MONDES INVENT'S, MONDES HABIT'S
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Not Generative
Allan McCollum's project in which he's making a shape for every person. Bizarrely emphasizes that the artist is not "generating" the shapes out of a database or script, but instead labors over them in Illustrator. Curious to know more...
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Friday, October 14, 2011
Tomás Saraceno's Cloud Cities
BERLIN ARCH LINK : Cloud Cities at Hamburger Bahnhof
Tomás Saraceno's Cloud Cities (2011) at Hamburger Bahnhof, my favorite art space in Berlin. Reminds me of some of my early expat drawings. Beautiful.
Sunday, October 09, 2011
Zadie Smith on Maximalism
This is how it feels to me | The Guardian
While preparing to give a workshop on complex art forms driven by custom code, I flashback to Norman Bryson's description of Chinese Maximalism in his class on contemporary Chinese and Japanese art. By tapping into Wikipedia magic (however occasionally misguided), I find literary connections and am led to this compelling article by Zadie Smith. Enjoy...
While preparing to give a workshop on complex art forms driven by custom code, I flashback to Norman Bryson's description of Chinese Maximalism in his class on contemporary Chinese and Japanese art. By tapping into Wikipedia magic (however occasionally misguided), I find literary connections and am led to this compelling article by Zadie Smith. Enjoy...
Tuesday, October 04, 2011
Monday, October 03, 2011
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Virtuality, Technology & Feminism in the Museum at the Smithsonian
Virtuality, Technology & Feminism
Knew about this conference too late! Found out about it though a fantastic listserv called Faces about gender and tech. More here: http://faces-l.net/ Attended one of their meetings in Berlin. Important network of fascinating women.
Knew about this conference too late! Found out about it though a fantastic listserv called Faces about gender and tech. More here: http://faces-l.net/ Attended one of their meetings in Berlin. Important network of fascinating women.
Expanding the Documentary
Expanding the Documentary | New Media and Digital Documentary - SUNY Purchase College, NY
Upcoming conference at SUNY Purchase. Slight but important shift in re-thinking community-based work.
Upcoming conference at SUNY Purchase. Slight but important shift in re-thinking community-based work.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
LAURIE FRICK
A long walk thru cardboard from Yaddo 2010 was expanded to 100 ft and reinstalled for the Texas Biennial at Box13 Artspace in Houston 2011...experiments in rhythm using time studies of daily activity logs and sleep charts...More at Laurie Frick
Monday, August 29, 2011
Action Office
Mika Tajima Versus the Cubicle | "New York Close Up" | Art21 - YouTube: artist Mika Tajima
“She needs decor, color, warmth, vitality and something as basic and all inclusive as dignity. She’s an action secretary and she need Action Office.” From an Art 21 about artist Mika Tajima. The same better-living-though-design sentiment that drives my recent work.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Amie Siegel - Black Moon
Amie Siegel - Black Moon
If I was in Stuttgart, I would go see Amie Siegel's Black Moon. Nothing like scenes of armed women wandering around the empty architecture of financial speculation.
Monday, July 04, 2011
Sunday, July 03, 2011
Monday, June 27, 2011
Samantha Barber - Graphic Designer
Samantha Barber - Graphic Designer
Graphic designer / artist Samantha Barber with some work on female expat issues.
Thanks to Janis Conn for the link.
Graphic designer / artist Samantha Barber with some work on female expat issues.
Thanks to Janis Conn for the link.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace - video | Culture | guardian.co.uk
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace - video | Culture | guardian.co.uk: "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace"
Tuesday, June 07, 2011
Passive House
Last week we went on an excellent Creative Sustainability Tour given by the Institute for Creative Sustainability. More information here: http://id22.net/en/
Favorite stop: Passivhaus Schoenholzer Strasse (pictured above). More information at http://deo-berlin.de/
Thursday, June 02, 2011
Wednesday, June 01, 2011
Hiroshima: Ground Zero 1945 | International Center of Photography
Hiroshima: Ground Zero 1945 | International Center of Photography
Once-Classified Photos of Ground Zero Hiroshima
Commissioner of Good Taste
In two weeks we'll be in Cinque Terre where the colors of houses are regulated by the a commissioner of good taste in the regional government. Really.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Case-Shiller Index Expected to Show New Low in House Prices - NYTimes.com
Case-Shiller Index Expected to Show New Low in House Prices - NYTimes.com
Quotes from the article:
- After every giddy boom comes the hangover, they acknowledge, but that deep-rooted desire for a castle of one’s own quickly reasserts itself.
- No one ever renovated the kitchen or redid a room for the kids in a rental...
Reminds me of our recent visit to Dresden. On a tour of the city, our tour guide mentioned that when the wall fell, her parents bought their home and did renovations. She explained that few people did renovations, especially outside of their homes, when they were state-owned.
Quotes from the article:
- After every giddy boom comes the hangover, they acknowledge, but that deep-rooted desire for a castle of one’s own quickly reasserts itself.
- No one ever renovated the kitchen or redid a room for the kids in a rental...
Reminds me of our recent visit to Dresden. On a tour of the city, our tour guide mentioned that when the wall fell, her parents bought their home and did renovations. She explained that few people did renovations, especially outside of their homes, when they were state-owned.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Architecture + Art at UCSD
Kyong Park. 24620. Ongoing.
24620, a Kyong Park project, is an abandoned house from Detroit in search of a new home. The house was cut up so that it could be moved and re-assembled anywhere in the world. It is a 'fugitive house,' running from the city of Detroit, which has destroyed or burned more than two hundred thousand homes in the last fifty years.
24620 desperately extends its existence by travelling. Its first journey was made in April, 2001, when it crossed the Atlantic Ocean, and was re-constructed and presented in the 3rd annual Archilab exhibition in Orléans, France. Since then, it has been to five other European cities, and continues on.
With its pieces misplaced and their incisions permanent, the house, when re-assembled, replicates the condition of a dysfunctional city in the violence of dismembered spaces. Wherever it may go, the house takes the ideals and failures of modernism with it, creating discourses on the cultural state and destiny of each community.
Architecture folks affiliated with my alma mater, UCSD. Important work. Hurrah.
Teddy Cruz
Kyong Park
James Enos
Sam Kronic
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Paradise Valley, Arizona
Paradise Valley, Arizona - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In contrast to the Frankfurt Kitchen:
"It has expensive real estate, with a median home price at $1.74 million, with many exceeding $10 million and some over $40 million."
Frankfurt Kitchen at MAK Vienna
Frankfurter Kitchen, Wikipedia entry
M A K o n l i n e
This last fall, I received a DAAD Research Grant to look at 20th Century German compact housing and the use of color to lighten the country's mode during difficult economic times. The Frankfurt Kitchen was one example of designs that met these goals.
From MAK Online:
The cost savings resulting from the reduced size of the kitchen remained significant, however, so that the Frankfurt Kitchen offered the double advantage of lower construction costs and less work for the occupants. Only by arguing in these terms, was it possible to persuade the Frankfurt city council to agree to the installation of the kitchens, with all their sophisticated work-saving features. The result was that, from 1926 to 1930, no municipal apartment could be built without the Frankfurt Kitchen.
In this period around 10,000 apartments were built with the Frankfurt Kitchen.
Frankfurter Kitchen, MAK Vienna
Gretchen Morgenson: The 'Reckless' Origins Of The Financial Meltdown : NPR
Gretchen Morgenson: The 'Reckless' Origins Of The Financial Meltdown : NPR
In the interview, Morgenson kept mentioning characters in the housing crisis who were wrapped up in "the American flag of home ownership." It's the unsustainable model imploding in my recent artwork, especially a period when Wall Street players bet against the model's success. Arranging numbers. Repackaging and selling loans.
In the interview, Morgenson kept mentioning characters in the housing crisis who were wrapped up in "the American flag of home ownership." It's the unsustainable model imploding in my recent artwork, especially a period when Wall Street players bet against the model's success. Arranging numbers. Repackaging and selling loans.
How To Create a Job | This American Life
How To Create a Job | This American Life
Attracted to jobs overseas, my muse, the female expatriate, is constantly chasing a rainbow. Although more on domestic job creation, this episode from This American Life spells out how jobs get shuffled from state to state. Fascinating overview of how priorities warp through carefully crafted lenses like reduced regulation and people are encouraged to move away from traditional support structures.
Attracted to jobs overseas, my muse, the female expatriate, is constantly chasing a rainbow. Although more on domestic job creation, this episode from This American Life spells out how jobs get shuffled from state to state. Fascinating overview of how priorities warp through carefully crafted lenses like reduced regulation and people are encouraged to move away from traditional support structures.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Horst Ademeit at Hamburger Bahnhof
Hamburger Bahnhof - Berlin: "HORST ADEMEIT"
I'm still haunted by this exhibition last week. I'm currently working on an exhibition called The Excess of Memory that goes hand and hand with an expat's tendency to live many lives and mix those memories. My occasional obsession with journal writing attempts to sort out people and places from past lives. Horst's incessant journals and photo-taking (8500 polaroids in the exhibition!) reminded me of this tendency...
Friday, May 20, 2011
Summer Reading
Form+Code in Design, Art, and Architecture by Casey Reas, Chandler McWilliams, and LUST (Princeton Architectural Press). 2010.
http://formandcode.com/
Related lectures by Casey from 2008
- http://vimeo.com/3847606
- http://vimeo.com/3864524
Saturday, May 14, 2011
On The Media: Transcript of "Two Cautionary Data Tales" (May 13, 2011)
On The Media: Transcript of "Two Cautionary Data Tales" (May 13, 2011): "Two Cautionary Data Tales
May 13, 2011
Data doesn’t always expose and explain; it can also lead us astray. OTM producer Jamie York looks at two times in the recent past when an overreliance on data has had disastrous consequences. Joe Flood, author of The Fires and Dennis Smith, author and veteran firefighter, tell the story of the RAND Corporation and the fires in the Bronx in the 1970s. Scott Patterson, author of The Quants and Michael Lewis, author of The Big Short, explain how math and science whiz kids nearly destroyed Wall Street."
Why I'm using code in these housing images. Data patterns gone unexpected directions, out of our perceived control.
May 13, 2011
Data doesn’t always expose and explain; it can also lead us astray. OTM producer Jamie York looks at two times in the recent past when an overreliance on data has had disastrous consequences. Joe Flood, author of The Fires and Dennis Smith, author and veteran firefighter, tell the story of the RAND Corporation and the fires in the Bronx in the 1970s. Scott Patterson, author of The Quants and Michael Lewis, author of The Big Short, explain how math and science whiz kids nearly destroyed Wall Street."
Why I'm using code in these housing images. Data patterns gone unexpected directions, out of our perceived control.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Friday, May 06, 2011
New Book from ExpatWomen.com
For all the ladies interested in living overseas, ExpatWomen.com just put their first book. Having been impressed by their website, I'm curious...
Link to the book on Amazon.
Owen Mundy, Art Opening May 7, 19:00, Bauer&Ewald, Berlin
Owen Mundy, A Single Composite, May 7–June 24, Bauer&Ewald, Berlin
My husband's art opening at 7 pm in Berlin tomorrow, May 7. Hurrah!
Bauer&Ewald
Lenaustraße 20
12047 Neukölln-Berlin
u8 schönleinstraße, u7/u8 hermannplatz
My husband's art opening at 7 pm in Berlin tomorrow, May 7. Hurrah!
Bauer&Ewald
Lenaustraße 20
12047 Neukölln-Berlin
u8 schönleinstraße, u7/u8 hermannplatz
Sunday, May 01, 2011
Metastadt
I'm working a new series of images related to my Sherwin Series, but inspired by domestic space, especially public housing in or near to Berlin. I'm especially fascinated by a project called Metastadt constructed Wulfen, 30 minutes west of the Bauhaus' second home, Dessau. The best description of the project is on this site about flexible housing at http://www.afewthoughts.co.uk/flexiblehousing/
I love the flexibility of the structure, and its tragic end, despite its utopian beginnings.
Influences on my drawing style these days:
1) Artists like David Shrigley
2) The repeated drawing of the Brandenburg Gate on the windows of the U1 trains here in Berlin
Sunday, April 03, 2011
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Housing in Berlin
Dessau | Kalle Koponen Photography
I'm working on a Berlin extension of my Sherwin Series. Being apartment-bound more than I'd like with a fussy baby, I'm thinking a lot about this city—its layers of history, the impact of 20th century housing policy, the psychological implications of these shifts, a resurgence of nationalism and anti-immigration stances, my ethnically diverse neighborhood Kreuzberg and its dense sea of early 20th century architecture covered in graffiti. This graffiti becomes a texture: it is mostly immature tags and a quarter in English.
My husband forwarded me the photo series of how urban areas continue to change 20 years after reunification. One picture and a link to the series included above. He sent me this link after we were discussing The File: A Personal History by Timothy Garton Ash. After interviewing countless former Stasi, Timothy Garton Ash considers how the Stasi provided father figures for men who lost their fathers in WWII. With the policies of the Stasi well known by all people our age who grew up in Berlin, I'm also thinking about these layers of this city.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Thoreau, Castles in the Air
If you have built castles in the air,
your work need not be lost;
that is where they should be.
Now put the foundations under them
—Henry David Thoreau, Walden
your work need not be lost;
that is where they should be.
Now put the foundations under them
—Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Friday, March 11, 2011
Lebbeus Woods
Leave it to bldgblog to always take me where I need to go.
As I'm wandering around Berlin, taking photos of architecture to take The Sherwin Series to the next stage, I learn about Lebbeus Wood's film treatment for Underground Berlin. Then I stumble on this quote from Woods which is exactly aligned with the behavior of the forms in my 2010 prints.
As I'm wandering around Berlin, taking photos of architecture to take The Sherwin Series to the next stage, I learn about Lebbeus Wood's film treatment for Underground Berlin. Then I stumble on this quote from Woods which is exactly aligned with the behavior of the forms in my 2010 prints.
Architecture and war are not incompatible. Architecture is war. War is architecture. I am at war with my time, with history, with all authority that resides in fixed and frightened forms. I am one of millions who do not fit in, who have no home, no family, no doctrine, no firm place to call my own, no known beginning or end, no "sacred and primordial site." I declare war on all icons and finalities, on all histories that would chain me with my own falseness, my own pitiful fears. I know only moments, and lifetimes that are as moments, and forms that appear with infinite strength, then "melt into air." I am an architect, a constructor of worlds, a sensualist who worships the flesh, the melody, a silhouette against the darkening sky. I cannot know your name. Nor you can know mine. Tomorrow, we begin together the construction of a city.
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
Boycotting Swiss Air
I normally don't make posts like this, but I feel the need to vent and help others avoid dealing with Swiss Air.
My husband Owen and I are in Berlin this academic year, funded by the DAAD. More about their programs here in case you are interested. http://daad.org/?p=gradstudy_arts
To make this adventure happen, last April we booked Swiss Air flights to Berlin on July 31, 2010, returning April 15, 2011 (because you can book further into the future), and it cost $1000 per person. They told us to call back after the new year to change the return flight home and that because of our circumstance, they would put a note in our file saying we could change once without a re-booking fee. We were told to pick a date when we thought we would come back. Our understanding was that this date was approximate and flexible so we picked July 30. They also said that we could add an infant ticket when we change the return ticket, and it would cost 10% of a normal ticket (also confirmed on the site: http://www.swiss.com/web/EN/services/before_flight/children/Pages/infants.aspx)
This past Monday, we called to change the return, knowing that there would be a fee difference. Researching in advance, we learned that July 26 was cheaper, so we asked for that date, but learned that we would have to pay $250 per person in rebooking fees. What more? To have our child sit on our lap, we would need to pay $600 for an infant ticket (they say a one-way ticket in summer is $4000, 10% is $400 plus refueling and other fees). So we had to stick with July 30, pay the difference in price ($225 more per person) + the $600 for daughter who will 8 months when we fly. That's $1050 more! I'm never flying Swiss Air again. In the future, I'm taking even more meticulous notes and will insist on something in writing. Bastards.
My husband Owen and I are in Berlin this academic year, funded by the DAAD. More about their programs here in case you are interested. http://daad.org/?p=gradstudy_arts
To make this adventure happen, last April we booked Swiss Air flights to Berlin on July 31, 2010, returning April 15, 2011 (because you can book further into the future), and it cost $1000 per person. They told us to call back after the new year to change the return flight home and that because of our circumstance, they would put a note in our file saying we could change once without a re-booking fee. We were told to pick a date when we thought we would come back. Our understanding was that this date was approximate and flexible so we picked July 30. They also said that we could add an infant ticket when we change the return ticket, and it would cost 10% of a normal ticket (also confirmed on the site: http://www.swiss.com/web/EN/services/before_flight/children/Pages/infants.aspx)
This past Monday, we called to change the return, knowing that there would be a fee difference. Researching in advance, we learned that July 26 was cheaper, so we asked for that date, but learned that we would have to pay $250 per person in rebooking fees. What more? To have our child sit on our lap, we would need to pay $600 for an infant ticket (they say a one-way ticket in summer is $4000, 10% is $400 plus refueling and other fees). So we had to stick with July 30, pay the difference in price ($225 more per person) + the $600 for daughter who will 8 months when we fly. That's $1050 more! I'm never flying Swiss Air again. In the future, I'm taking even more meticulous notes and will insist on something in writing. Bastards.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Der Traum vom Fliegen - The Art of Flying
Der Traum vom Fliegen - The Art of Flying
4 March–8 May 2011
Opening:
3 March, 7 p.m
Haus der Kulturen der Welt
John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10
10557 Berlin, Germany
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Hal Foster, American Academy of Berlin
Wave Garden Yusuke Obuchi, 2002 (in Hal Foster's 2004 lecture at UNC Charlotte, http://vimeo.com/13465894)
Two nights ago I saw Hal Foster speak at the American Academy of Berlin. Ah to have a professor like him as an 18 year old. How lucky that would have been. His American Academy project is called Strategies of Survival 20th-Century Art, and last Thursday talk, How to Survive Civilization or What I Have Learned from Dada.
Wednesday, February 09, 2011
After Death, Protecting Your 'Digital Afterlife' : NPR
After Death, Protecting Your 'Digital Afterlife' : NPR
I'm an incessant notekeeper + journal writer. Moving so many times leaves me with memories from too many places that shuffle and overlap, sometimes morphing into inaccurate images and half truths. My notes are my feeble attempts to get it all down to reference later. As organized as I am, I rarely revisit my journals, my delicious bookmarks, etc but I still do it, comforted by the idea that should I need them, I can dig up details. For these reasons, I found this Fresh interview about the digital afterlife fascinating. Enjoy.
Made me think of Danica Phelps contour line drawings with notes on her daily activities. The only ones I could find online separated the notetaking from the images, but when they are hung in the gallery together, you make the connection. A few images here.
I'm an incessant notekeeper + journal writer. Moving so many times leaves me with memories from too many places that shuffle and overlap, sometimes morphing into inaccurate images and half truths. My notes are my feeble attempts to get it all down to reference later. As organized as I am, I rarely revisit my journals, my delicious bookmarks, etc but I still do it, comforted by the idea that should I need them, I can dig up details. For these reasons, I found this Fresh interview about the digital afterlife fascinating. Enjoy.
Made me think of Danica Phelps contour line drawings with notes on her daily activities. The only ones I could find online separated the notetaking from the images, but when they are hung in the gallery together, you make the connection. A few images here.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Friday, December 17, 2010
Slate Article, MFA vs NYC
My friend Elisabeth Condon recommended this Slate article about the MFA in Creative Writing, found online at http://www.slate.com/id/2275733/. Excellent food for thought regarding MFA programs in the Visual Arts.
Passages I highlighted with a few thoughts below...
- analysis would be to lay to rest the perpetual handwringing about what MFA programs do to writers (e.g., turn them into cringing, cautious, post-Carverite automatons)
- ...even if the writer has somehow never heard of an MFA program...if she's read any American fiction of the past 60 years, or met someone who did, she's imbibed the general idea and aesthetic. We are all MFAs now - programs...so lax and laissez-faire as to have a shockingly small impact on students' work
- ingenious partial solution to an eminent American problem: how to extend our already protracted adolescence past 22 and toward 30, in order to cope with an oversupplied labor market - what percentage of the total income of American fiction writers comes from the university, and what percentage from publishing contracts—but it's safe to say that the university now rivals, if it hasn't surpassed...
- the diffuse network of provincial college towns - each affords its members certain aesthetic and personal freedoms while restricting others; each exerts its own subtle but powerful pressures on the work being produced
Regarding the article’s short story vs novel debate, perhaps it's ok to let the system evolve as it will. I do, however, have a problem when the explosion of MFA programs cultivates artwork that is didactic and too burdened with theory. If the MFA programs could support their faculty, giving them ample time off for studio production that seeks breakthroughs with formal-conceptual synergy, the quality of artwork in our country would be improved. Germany, with a strong safety net of basic social service and belief in the value of cultural production, is an excellent role model.
Passages I highlighted with a few thoughts below...
- analysis would be to lay to rest the perpetual handwringing about what MFA programs do to writers (e.g., turn them into cringing, cautious, post-Carverite automatons)
- ...even if the writer has somehow never heard of an MFA program...if she's read any American fiction of the past 60 years, or met someone who did, she's imbibed the general idea and aesthetic. We are all MFAs now - programs...so lax and laissez-faire as to have a shockingly small impact on students' work
- ingenious partial solution to an eminent American problem: how to extend our already protracted adolescence past 22 and toward 30, in order to cope with an oversupplied labor market - what percentage of the total income of American fiction writers comes from the university, and what percentage from publishing contracts—but it's safe to say that the university now rivals, if it hasn't surpassed...
- the diffuse network of provincial college towns - each affords its members certain aesthetic and personal freedoms while restricting others; each exerts its own subtle but powerful pressures on the work being produced
Regarding the article’s short story vs novel debate, perhaps it's ok to let the system evolve as it will. I do, however, have a problem when the explosion of MFA programs cultivates artwork that is didactic and too burdened with theory. If the MFA programs could support their faculty, giving them ample time off for studio production that seeks breakthroughs with formal-conceptual synergy, the quality of artwork in our country would be improved. Germany, with a strong safety net of basic social service and belief in the value of cultural production, is an excellent role model.
Tuesday, December 07, 2010
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Owen Mundy
Owen Mundy
Our house is blocked on google view! Fascinating history on privacy in Germany. Details at Deutsche Welle: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,6151344,00.html
Our house is blocked on google view! Fascinating history on privacy in Germany. Details at Deutsche Welle: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,6151344,00.html
Monday, November 01, 2010
Monday, October 25, 2010
Left Behind - Slide Show - NYTimes.com
Left Behind - Slide Show - NYTimes.com
Since desire for the right home (expat quest) in these tough economic times translates to the desire for any home at all, my research in foreclosed homes continues. Excellent related article about the US Housing crisis: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/picturing-the-crisis/
Image above by Ellen Brownlee
BLDGBLOG: The Migration of Mel and Judith
BLDGBLOG: The Migration of Mel and Judith
Looks my tangled home fragments in a lamp. Brilliant.
Excerpt from bldgblog.blogspot.com. Always a good read:
Like the spaceships in Stanley Kubrick's film 2001, the walls of their representational frame simply turn and turn, bringing us over and over again back through the same space, as if unwilling to let go of what's come before...retired into this deliberately over-nostalgic world of their own making, constantly cycling back in memory through their shared past. They have built a frame to fit themselves within, as if to give their lives narrative completion.
Sometimes nest-building feels like this. It's fascinating to me when expats do this, even in temporary homes as Bachelard described the home—the I that separates from the non-I.
For this reason, I'm currently collecting photos of expat domestic spaces. If you have a moment, please email a photo of any part of your home overseas, particularly an interior room, to jdietrick@gmail.com Thanks!
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Exhibition Next Month at CSU
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For more information, contact:
Joelle Dietrick
Reichenberger Straße 149
10999 Berlin
Germany
home: +49(30) 70221305
cell: +49 (174) 6481271
jdietrick@gmail.com
http://joelledietrick.com
skype: jdietrick
JOELLE DIETRICK
THE SHERWIN SERIES NOVEMBER 11 - DECEMBER 13, 2010
OPENING RECEPTION
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 11TH, 4 - 6 PM
Curfman Gallery, Colorado State University
VISITING LECTURE BY MELINDA BARLOW
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 10TH, 5:30 PM
Fine Arts, F101, Colorado State University
The Curfman Gallery at Colorado State University is pleased to present The Sherwin Series, an exhibition of recent work by JOELLE DIETRICK, on view from November 11 through December 13, 2010. A lecture about the work will be given by University of Colorado, Boulder Film Professor Melinda Barlow on November 10 at 5:30p at in Fine Arts, F101. An opening reception will be held in the Curfman Gallery on Thursday, November 11th, from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m.
ABOUT THE SERIES
The Sherwin Series is a group of paintings, prints and animations that remix foreclosed homes and Sherwin-Williams 2007 Color Forecast paints. Sherwin-Williams chose the colors during the height of the housing bubble before the foreclosure epidemic began. Dietrick developed the series of paintings in 2010 with the end of the housing crisis not in sight.
Color forecasts have always been inextricably linked to commerce and politics. As Greg Castillo explained in his recent talk at Columbia University’s conference, Architecture and the State: 1940s-1970s, color choices of post-war domestic interior walls and appliances exported overseas to sell the American way of life that were not always well-received. For example, a sunshine yellow kitchen came to embody the clash of civilizations between Soviet consumer austerity and Western consumer excess.
Likewise, Cornell West in the film Examined Life (2008) questions the sustainability of last century’s American prosperity. The subtitle of the series, Rejecting Romanticism, evolved from West’s ideas and foregrounds the psychological impact of a bubble bursting. West suggests that rather than lamenting paradise lost, we “ride the dissonance.” Designed harmonious color palettes filling fragmented structures mirror this updated approach to beauty.
The paintings’ process, acrylic on canvas from computer-generated studies, mimics micro to macroeconomic shifts. The animations behave similarly, using the blur of scraped data from foreclosed home websites to make more memorable visuals resonate. As global trends continue to affect local jobs, contemporary ideas about our relationship to place continue to shift. Reflecting our struggle to maintain identity in the face of tough economic times, the resulting artworks—full of domestic architecture stretching and morphing, adapting to a new era—revisits the American dream to obtain and maintain basic necessities.
EXCERPTS FROM THE CATALOG
From Melinda Barlow’s essay “Embracing Contradiction”
Conceived in Salzburg, created in Florida and Pennsylvania, and animated in Berlin for exhibition in Colorado, the twenty-eight prints and four paintings in The Sherwin Series by Joelle Dietrick attest to an artistic process invigorated by travel, and an abiding concern with the notion of home. Featuring shattered house forms in the harmonious hues of Sherwin- Williams’ 2007 Color Forecast, the roofs, beams, doors, and windows flying skyward in this series evoke a housing market sent into a tailspin by widespread foreclosures, an effect even more striking when the images are set in motion.
Transformed into a restless mass of colored shards held in check by shifting text scrapped from websites listing foreclosed homes by state, and punctuated by the rhythmic scrape of a desktop drive’s degraded media, this “data house cloud,” as Dietrick calls it, is at once a barometer of our current anxiety, and a vision of how to stay afloat.
From Denis Wood’s essay “Balanced Living”
When Leonardo da Vinci wrote – in his notebooks, “Of Representing the Deluge” – “Let the dark and gloomy air be shown battered by the rush of contrary and convoluted winds bearing hither and thither numberless branches and the ruins of mountains collapsing above the rivers and blocking the valley, the pent up rivers bursting forth, the disintegration of the high buildings raising dust that like smoke or wreathed clouds rises through the descending rain,” he did not have in mind the collapse of the housing industry whose waves we’re still struggling to ride these three years later.
Yet it is precisely this face of the collapse – we say the word with so little attention to its figurative implications – that Joelle Dietrick confronts in her Sherwin series, not just the weight of the collapse and the debris cloud invariably raised, but the way the ensuing torrent catches everything up to take it for a ride.
ADDITIONAL LINKS
Webpage with small images: http://joelledietrick.com/site/sherwin
Hi-res images for print: http://joelledietrick.com/_site/content/sherwin/PR-images.zip
Pdf of catalog: http://joelledietrick.com/_site/content/sherwin/sherwin_catalog.pdf
Animation with link to HD Video: http://joelledietrick.com/site/sherwin-animation
Quicker loading video on Vimeo: http://www.vimeo.com/15341440
ABOUT JOELLE DIETRICK
Joelle Dietrick is an American artist and DAAD grant recipient based in Berlin, Germany. Her current research into housing extends her interest in our complicated relationship to place. With attention given to ever-evolving divisions between public and private space, she combines digital and traditional art media to echo the fragmentation inherent in contemporary global economic systems. Selected exhibitions of her work include MCA Chicago, MCA San Diego, Long March Space Beijing, ARC Gallery Chicago, Soho20 New York and upcoming installations in Prague and Venice this fall 2010. http://joelledietrick.com
ABOUT MELINDA BARLOW
Melinda Barlow, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Film Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where she received the Boulder Faculty Excellence in Teaching Award, the Gold Best Should Teach Award, and was the Dean's Senior Honors Teaching Fellow in 2009-10. The editor of Mary Lucier: Art & Performance (JHUP, 2000), Professor Barlow researches the work of contemporary women film and video makers and is currently writing a memoir on film, female identity, and art collecting titled My Museum. http://www.colorado.edu/FilmStudies/faculty/mbarlow.shtml
For further information, please contact the Curfman Gallery at +1.970.491.2810, or email lsc_curfmangallery@mail.colostate.edu.
CURFMAN GALLERY
Lory Student Center
Colorado State University
T 970.491.2810
lsc_curfmangallery@mail.colostate.edu
http://www.curfman.colostate.edu
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Exchange! Congress Berlin
Exchange! Congress Berlin
20 October 2010, Berlin
Exchange! Congress Berlin
10:00 PECHA KUCHA BRUNCH with Wolfgang Krause (art boys, Berlin), Joelle Dietrick & Owen Mundy (Florida, USA), Lilia Dragneva (KSA:K, Chisinau, Moldova), Solvita Krese (LCCA, Riga, Latvia), Barbara J. Scheuermann (Babusch, Berlin), Louise Taylor (UK), Andrew Stooke (Oliver Holt Gallery, UK), Jörn J. Burmester (Performer Stammtisch, Berlin), Club Real (Berlin).
14:00 VIDEO SCREENING (Highlights from Attitude Festival Bitola, Macedonia)
14:30 PERFORMANCES (Liverpool Performance Artist and Drag-”Queen of Culture” Mandy Romero, Sound Artist Alex Decoupigny, Performance Artist Dovrat ana Meron)
15:00 ROUND TABLE TALK with Artists and Exchange Radical Moments! Co-organizers
16:00 TEA TABLE TALKS, an encounter scenario with 12 tables and 24 chairs. Come, sit down and talk to artists, curators and organizers.
Free entry! We ask for registration. Please send email with name and subject “Exchange! Congress”
RSVP on Facebook
19:00 – 22:00 PMC EXPERIMENT: Performance Art Meets Constellation Work (this is with invitation only!)
Location:
GLS Campus Berlin
Sprachschule, AULA
Kastanienallee 82, D -10435 Berlin
20 October 2010, Berlin
Exchange! Congress Berlin
10:00 PECHA KUCHA BRUNCH with Wolfgang Krause (art boys, Berlin), Joelle Dietrick & Owen Mundy (Florida, USA), Lilia Dragneva (KSA:K, Chisinau, Moldova), Solvita Krese (LCCA, Riga, Latvia), Barbara J. Scheuermann (Babusch, Berlin), Louise Taylor (UK), Andrew Stooke (Oliver Holt Gallery, UK), Jörn J. Burmester (Performer Stammtisch, Berlin), Club Real (Berlin).
14:00 VIDEO SCREENING (Highlights from Attitude Festival Bitola, Macedonia)
14:30 PERFORMANCES (Liverpool Performance Artist and Drag-”Queen of Culture” Mandy Romero, Sound Artist Alex Decoupigny, Performance Artist Dovrat ana Meron)
15:00 ROUND TABLE TALK with Artists and Exchange Radical Moments! Co-organizers
16:00 TEA TABLE TALKS, an encounter scenario with 12 tables and 24 chairs. Come, sit down and talk to artists, curators and organizers.
Free entry! We ask for registration. Please send email with name and subject “Exchange! Congress”
RSVP on Facebook
19:00 – 22:00 PMC EXPERIMENT: Performance Art Meets Constellation Work (this is with invitation only!)
Location:
GLS Campus Berlin
Sprachschule, AULA
Kastanienallee 82, D -10435 Berlin
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Flickr Flow / Fernanda Viegas & Martin Wattenberg
Flickr Flow / Fernanda Viegas & Martin Wattenberg
Another design by Viegas and Wattenberg, this one charting color use in flickr by month.
WIRED 2008 / Fernanda Viegas & Martin Wattenberg
WIRED 2008 / Fernanda Viegas & Martin Wattenberg
Charting color use in Wired Magazine covers for 15 years.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Among the Believers - New York Times
Among the Believers - New York Times
My friend Denis Wood was just interviewed by The Believer, and I am embarrassed to say that I was not aware of the magazine so I thought I'd share. Like the author of this 2005 New York Times article about magazines that insist on printing in the age of blogs, I remain fascinated. Excerpt from the article:
Indeed there is something precious about getting away from this computer, kicking up my feet, and thumbing through the pages of a good magazine...or having it handy and light-weight to be taken on Berlin's u-bahns. Glad to see that The Believer is still going strong. http://www.believermag.com/
My friend Denis Wood was just interviewed by The Believer, and I am embarrassed to say that I was not aware of the magazine so I thought I'd share. Like the author of this 2005 New York Times article about magazines that insist on printing in the age of blogs, I remain fascinated. Excerpt from the article:
These, at least, seem to be among the ambitions driving The Believer and n+1. Their editors are young, and their circulations are not large. (It may, indeed, be hard to find these publications outside of independent bookstores in larger cities and college towns.) The names of the writers who contribute to them are, for the most part, not well known: first- or second-time novelists, graduate students and moonlighting academic mavericks, with an occasional celebrity professor or foreign writer thrown in for good measure. Modest though the magazines are in scale and appearance, there is nonetheless something stirringly immodest - something "authentic and delirious," as e.e. cummings once wrote - about what they are trying to do, which is to organize a generational struggle against laziness and cynicism, to raise once again the banners of creative enthusiasm and intellectual engagement.
Indeed there is something precious about getting away from this computer, kicking up my feet, and thumbing through the pages of a good magazine...or having it handy and light-weight to be taken on Berlin's u-bahns. Glad to see that The Believer is still going strong. http://www.believermag.com/
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Back from Prague!
More about Prague Project in cooperation with Tina B Festival and Exchange Radical Moments. Maybe thanks to all who contributed lamps.
- Website about project + Twitter feed at bottom: http://owenmundy.com/site/difference
- Photos from installation
More soon...
- Website about project + Twitter feed at bottom: http://owenmundy.com/site/difference
- Photos from installation
More soon...
