Off to Prague for our project at the Nostic Palace.
More at http://owenmundy.com/site/difference

If you live in Prague, stop by October 3 and bring a lamp.
See details on the flyer above.

Craig Kaufmann

Craig Kaufmann at this summer's exhibition Primary Atmospheres
at David Zwirner.

Gallery Run Before Prague

We're off to Prague this Friday to do an installation in the Nostic Palace. Call for participation soon.

In the meantime, two highlights from yesterday's quick gallery run.


Tim Eitel. Reflektion. 2010. Oil on canvas. 205 x 250 cm | 80.71 x 98.43 in


Choi Jeong Hwa. Happy Together. 2010. Site Specific Installation.

Original 2009 at LACMA, this is a portion reinstalled at Aando Fine Art in 2010.

Glenn Kaino

Nice quote from Glenn Kiano's 2010 LAXART show, In a world that is truly upside down, the true is a moment of the false.

Not at Home

Yesterday I made my first visit to the library Bauhaus Archive Berlin. Below is a list of expat related books encountered during my research into the importance of color in the manufacturing of consumer desire and political ideology in Cold War Berlin. I’m still fascinated by expatriates’ inclination towards nomadism. The following quote from Christopher Reed’s 1996 book Not at Home helps to clarify related history.

The notion of domesticity itself an invention of the modern age—the home, the family, privacy as comfort as opposed to the workplace—has been challenged and ridiculed by modern artists, architects and designers. From 1859, when Charles Baudelaire’s The Painter of Modern Life casts the modern painter as a man of the crowd who curses the hours he must spend indoors asleep when he could be out recording ‘the landscapes of the great city,’ domesticity became the anti-thesis to modernity.

Kirsi Mikkola and Wolfgang Betke

Thinking about paintings from tonight. More risk-taking...


Kirsi Mikkola. Untitled, 2010, Construction of painted paper. 58 x 41 cm
Seen at carlierge bauer


Wolfgang Betke. Suche, 2008, Öl, Abschliff/ Lwd. 80 x 60 cm
Seen at ScheiblerMitte. Also http://www.betke.de/

The Difference Between Then and Now

October 7-24th, 2010
TINA-B Festival, Nosticuv Palace, Prague

In the October 2010 TINA-B Contemporary Art Festival in Prague, Owen Mundy and Joelle Dietrick will re-stage their 2006 project The Darkest Hour is Just Before Dawn. Originally developed in York, Alabama, USA, Owen Mundy and Joelle Dietrick borrowed lamps from the residents and installed them in an abandoned grocery store. Each lamp was set to turn on every night, and because of the inexactitude of the timers chosen, did so in an organic fashion, one by one, reflecting not only the participants in the community, but also the history of Alabama’s social movements. In an area where a nearby hazardous waste landfill caused the water undrinkable, the artists and the community collectively revived the vacant commercial space, removing roomfuls of damaged post-Katrina FEMA water boxes and transforming the downtown with the lamps, pulsing at their own pace, human in the imperfections and variety, and more powerful as a collection.



As if a scientific study with controls, the re-staging of the project in Prague and Venice studies the nature of site-specific and community-based art. Both cities provide unusual cross-cultural comparisons about domestic settings and the cultural, geographical and political structures that affect private space. The 2006 installation developed before the U.S. housing crisis, and these 2010 installations will develop as the global economy still recovers from the impact of the current economic downturn. In this context, the simple gesture of gathering of everyday objects and spaces can yield unusual insights into common assumptions about micro-macros shifts—the individual and the state, private spaces and public concerns, local and global.

More information

Economic Downturn in Dortmund: Impact on Living Space

Above is a picture of vacant building Jack Stenner, Patrick Lemieux and I visited in Dortmund. Locals often describe it as haunted because occasional night lights from local squatters. Svenja Noltemeyer showed us the space and is part of an initiative to open industrial spaces for use by the communities including artists in Dortmund. More at http://uzdortmund.blogsport.de/

Please let me know if you hear of similar buildings in Berlin.

no-place.org

Jack Stenner at University of Florida and Patrick Lemieux at Duke University just finished work on Open House. At the center of the project is a foreclosed home in Gainesville, Florida that you can control remotely. I love the idea so I downloaded the software to interact with the house from Berlin, Germany, but the interface seems a little slow. Maybe I'm the one that is slow... Although I love the magic realism of the intro on the front page at no-place.org, especially considering recent conversations with Patrick about zombies, I wish that the interface was more streamlined and immediate without the need to download the application. Again, this may just be my learning curve, not issues with the project. More soon...

House in Berlin

A friend asked me to post this call, related to expats in Berlin. Please contact Michelle James if you are interested.

If you are currently looking for or have recently bought a home in Berlin, House Hunters International would like to put your story on TV!

The hit show is looking for energetic individuals, couples and families to share their story about moving abroad. Participating in our show is a lot of fun and a great way to document your exciting search for a home and new life abroad. Contributors should be fluent in English.

If you are interested in participating with the show or learning more, please send an email to househunterscasting@leopardfilms.com. Please include your contact information, the locations you are moving from and to, and a picture of your family and your property.

Looking forward to speaking witth you soon,

Michelle

Michelle James
Associate Producer
LEOPARD FILMS USA
127 East 26th Street, New York, NY 10010.
+1 212 843 2821
michelle.james@leopardfilms.com
www.leopardfilms.com