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Read more about the low-fi exhibition (my last post concerned a work exhibited there) in this excellent review at mazine.ws).

Picture the world

How important is your country? Does it even exist in an international perspective? Or has it disappeared in the midst of liberal media wars? Vanishing Point is an attempt at portraying the issue

Vanishing Point consists of a map of the world connected to a database fed by news coming from several international newspapers. The visibility of each country on the map results from the quantity of media coverage the country receives, so those countries that do not make the news disappear progressively.

It is actually quite a scary sight. The question is: why? What makes some countries so attractive for the media, and others completely insignificant? Does it all come down to $? And is it a good power-meter?
One could surely argue this work is more of a social-interest site than an art work. We cannot forget, though, that it is a clear interpretation of the world, its transformation for the purposes of a very broadly understood mimesis. What's more, it seems increasingly apparent that our appreciation of the world is difficult to separate clearly into an aesthetic and extra-aesthetic one. Thus, (remembering, as well, that the eye of the beholder is the final criterion), if we look at Vanishing Point from this perspective, we may find a deeply, though subtly, artistic endeavor.

(via)

Technorati: internet art, net art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Landscape

What we need is a point of view.
Somewhere to look from.
And then, somewhere to look to. That might just be the landscape.
Whatever frees itself from the arms of focus to go behind, outside, further, deeper.
Focusing on landscape is an oxymoron.
Try focusing on Andreas Gursky's house
Oh but this is not a landscape
(says someone).
This is a house. But of course, it is a landscape, exactly because we get lost in it. A house, namely, this house, may very well be a landscape.
To put it more positively: landscape envelops our sight.
I like that.
The seminar I participated in, about New Ways of Approaching the Landscape, had an incredible diversity of people using this envelop. There was a land artist, a scholar studying the aesthetic aspects of landscape, a photographer, a cinema director, a digital photo effects specialist (hence the Gursky reference above...) and a multimedia artist working with(in) landscape.
Of course, each of them spoke about a somewhat different landscape. Each of them caught me off guards in a specific, particular way. What became clear was that, somehow, landscape has become an object. How can one objectify what we can't even focus? (someone asks)
I guess it is the simple fact of the sight being a construction that turns our sights into objects. But this doesn't seem to answer the question, as landscape is considered precisely this outer limit of our sight's grasp. Maybe it instinctively guarantees some sort of firm ground? And yes, let's admit it: this guarantee is false. Which is bad news for the believers, and great news for the manipulators - artists. Suddenly, the artist's playground extends beyond the sic et nunc of his focus. It gains a haziness that irritates the precise purist minds and fascinates the romantics. It creates the challenge of containing space. That is what constitutes the paradox of art dealing with landscape: it confines the thing defined through openness. That is why a picture of a landscape at the same time seems the most direct way of representing landscape, and the most false one - as the frame kills space.
Liz Larner, Corridor Orange/Blue, 1991

At the seminar, the philosopher Nuno Nabais introduced the topic by referring to landscape (as art) as a way of applying Kant's concept of the sublime to art. One of the main characteristics would be its limitless quality. Kant opposes the sublime to the beautiful - the sublime has no limits, no balance, no order, while the beautiful has all these qualities. Could we thus say that artists that work with the landscape approach the sublime with the instruments of beauty?

(The speakers during the seminar were: Claudio Melo, Duarte Belo, Ivan Franco, Maria Lino, Nuno Mendoca, Nuno Nabais, Sandro Aguilar)

Enrique Zabala, Isn't It Colder 05 (2004)

I'll be spending the next four days on an artistic residence in northern Portugal, that came about as a continuation of ArtLAB's seminar and a second part of the Landscape workshop. I'll try posting from there.

Technorati: visual art, art installation, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Frog in a pond

Geof Huth, f r o g . p o n d (2002)

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3D=2D (Sheep)

Kyle Trowbridge, Cavlery (2005)

Technorati: art installation, installation, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Possibilities

I have been very busy recently, helping out the ArtLAB with an excellent initiative of theirs, a conference about New Approaches to Landscape (it took place yesterday here in Lisbon at the Superior Institute of Agronomy). It was very inspiring, I learned a lot and will write some more about it soon, but first I have some material that got delayed because of all the activity. For starters, a web project about alternative lives. The possibility of having other lives is so tempting , and for anyone spending some time in the virtual realm it is so close to reality, that it seems almost natural to re-write one's life in a "what if" narrative. Surprisingly though, we rarely go through with it, we rarely actually dare to imagine what ways our lives could have gone, and think it out till its ultimate consequences (those latter being altogether quite similar in all cases). The whatif project by Craig Robinson is one project that went all the way. In it, you can follow the author's (the politically correct version: "his alter ego's") life through all its possible events, with their often surprizing consequences. Wandering through these possible lives, I remembered the contemporary philosophical discussion about "possible worlds" (Saul Kripke is one of the main actors in this discussion), a very "fun" concept for a very un-fun environment that analytical philosophy can be. The question often asked is: "what do we talk of when we talk about possible worlds?" To put it in another way: how real are they and what's the use of talking about them? We could say they're useless inventions. But take a look around Robinson's possible worlds. Surprizingly enough - they tell us a lot about his actual world, the possible choices, events - and outcomes - all fit snuggly in one universe. You might accuse this universe of being too light-hearted and smartass-funny (I suppose I would agree with you), but nonetheless you do get a clear picture of who Craig Robinson would like to be, thinks he could be, thinks he could have been, thinks who he thinks he is not, and all the other possible options - that could well tell you a good bit about who Craig Robinson is.

(via)

Technorati: net art, internet art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Self-portrait with a view

(see previous post for sample reference)

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