Weekendly clickables XIII

  • For the first time in the history of humanity, there are more people living in cities than in the countryside. Fact! And of those many billions of city-dwellers, every 1 in 3 is living in a slum. The Places We Live is an immersive online series of audio slideshows and environments that document several slums around the world.
  • Ze Frank does the news. Update: Ze Frank wonders what you think of him doing the news.
  • “Children taking part in a study to measure how much exercise they do fooled researchers by attaching their pedometers to their pet dogs.” (via)
  • WARRUG.com, traditional hand-woven rugs from Afghanistan with some contemporary imagery, for your purchasing pleasure. #buymethis
  • Here is a very very high-resolution picture of Prague you can have fun zooming around in.
  • Europa Film Treasures, an impressive archive of early films. Check out the Gordon Highlanders (from 1899), Ki Ri Ki – Japanese Acrobats (fake!), Nocturno, The Saucy Chambermaid (porn!), The Cuckolded Pierrot, and The Airship Destroyer (awesome music), and Farfale (a colorized film from 1907).
  • Turning the corner, a neat-0 infographic on the business cycle since 1969.
  • Apology calling card.
  • “He may love [Scarlett Johansson], but up til now, Woody Allen has misused her. Here, she plays her age and, for the first time I can think of, a character whose inner and outer lives both seem organically compatible with the unconscious carnality the actress herself exudes. And someday entire grad school thesis will be written about the way Allen shoots every sex scene that she’s in, in extreme, soft focus closeup on her head, letting the camera drift to concentrate on her blonde hair spilling out of control to consume the frame.” Yeah, something like that!
  • The Google Chrome OS is a bad idea, will probably fail, and suggests an unsettling trend for Google.
  • An now, a little bit of internet art to soothe your frazzled nerves.

Weekendly clickables XI

Sale Purchase and Steal Agreement

“Artist sells to Collector and Collector purchases from Artists this Sale Purchase and Steal Agreement … Artist guarantees that he — after having sold and delivered the Artwork — will steal the Artwork back from Collector, or have it stolen from the Collector by a third party to be assigned by the Artist (hereinafter: “the Theft”).” That’s IT, conceptual art is DONE.

May art walk, 2009

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New Glexis Novoa wall drawing at Castillo. Bodies left hanging from the architecturally ambiguous tower!

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In the project room, Pepe Mar’s installation.

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Felice Grodin’s show at Diana Lowenstein, a must-see.

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Detail.

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Custom poetry composed while you wait! Seriously, the energy is a little weird around Wnywood. I guess part of it is the impending approach of Summer, but there’s more. The Prevailing Economic Climate is making sales of actual art increasingly unlikely. There’s the move of Twenty Twenty Projects to Hialeah(!) and the move of Locust Projects to the Design District (a location “secret and for the most part inaccessible to those not closely associated with the residents”). It’s hard to not believe that the PEC is not behind both relocations.

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Peter LaBier’s gremlin painting at Gallery Diet!!

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Sinisa Kukec’s installation in a new space across from the street from Kevin Bruk. (The space is a nice collection of staggered rooms which evokes the Margulies, and I’m looking forward to future shows there. Provided by Goldman Properties, it is one of the positive consequences of the PEC.)

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At Dorsch, Ernesto Caivano’s spectacular dissolving knight series of etchings

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Alyssa Phoebus’ Good Woman, which I believe is not a graphical presentation of Cat Power lyrics (but am prepared to accept evidence to the contrary. Seriously though, you should see this show too, if at least for the Patricia Smith pieces, which were beautiful but hard to photograph).

MAM building fundraising update

Oh, speaking of Herzog and de Meuron, how far is the Miami Art Museum in their fund raising for the building? Not bad, reports Daniel Chang in Sunday’s Herald — the MAM has secured $45 million in pledges from private donors. This is out of targeted $120. The science museum is to raise $100 million, and various public funding for the two buildings comes to $280 billion. No word on what happens when if the project goes overbudget.