In Sometimes Making Something leads to Nothing (video), the artist Francis Alys pushes a block of ice through Mexico City until it melts. In When Faith Moves Mountains, (video) he convinces 500 Peruvian students to move a huge sand dune a few feet. He walks through Mexico City waving a handgun and he drizzles green paint in Palestine. Also, he walks into tornados (video). The Tate Modern opens an exhibition on Francis Alys. This guy is cool.
Nina Arsenault recently spoke at IdeaCity 2010 about her art and her body, and how she objectifies herself in the name of both. Read the whole ‘talk‘ because it’s super.
“And, I take my understanding of irony from Donna Harraway’s Cyborg Manifesto. She articulates irony not simply as the idea that an image can contain an implied and literal meaning. Harraway’s deep understanding of irony is that a single image or body can contain a cascading web-like structure of seemingly contradictory yet dependent meanings that can not even be pulled apart. To do so would be to deny the truth of the greater whole.
It’s a beautiful definition of irony.
Dialectics dissolve into one another. Male into female into real into fake into beauty into abomination, worshipfulness and self-annihilation. Cascading into one another.”
Parts of a tour documentary:
Danish photographer Tue Greenfort set up a hidden camera behind garbage and attached a frankfurt sausage to the other end. When animals bit into the sausage, it would trigger the camera and take a picture. In only one week, the animals learned to take the sausage without being photographed.
Cara Spooner and Alicia Grant are on the move again with a new piece and residency at the Harbourfront Centre as part of the HATCH emerging performance series.
Body Cartography
Created in collaboration with visual artist Simon Rabyniuk, as well as urban theorist Alex Marques, Body Cartography emphasizes and distorts the idea of a city within a city. A performance that mixes disparate details of balancing on rooftops, walking home alone at night, raiding secret swimming pools and feeling too close to strangers – employing installation, dance and question and answer periods.
“Cara Spooner and Alicia Grant make films, installations, curated events, subtle interventions and performances. They come from a contemporary dance lineage and integrate the physicality of their dance backgrounds into their practice and conceptual performances. They collaboratively create art that amplifies, distorts and/or frames everyday experience, drawing attention to disparate details like personal space, contemporary mythology, architecture of food courts and how fast cars can actually move with dances, installations and question and answer periods. They merge inner and outer stimuli to create live art events that are a convergence of their own bodies and the world around them. Their interdisciplinary collaborations unpack the notion of artist as social being into a relational art practice.” from Harbourfront site.
February 25 & 27, 8 p.m at Harbourfront Centre. Studio Theatre. York Quay Centre, 235 Queens Quay West (Map)
Regular: $12 Student/Senior or Arts Worker: $10
This will be my first official post to the artist bloc blog…
Since I finished school 5 years ago, like many artists I’ve felt a constant pressure to discover a way to make a living doing what I love. Last may I found it in the very place I swore I never would look…weddings…I won’t ramble on about my business as it has consumed by life completely over the past year. It has had me dabbling in occupations I never thought accounting, administration, customer relations, design, web design, computer programming. Drifting me further and further from what I love most about photography… Photojournalism.
I miss the excitement…the adrenaline rush of the experience, being completely consumed ..working to tell the story to capture the emotion of a moment. I love the thrill when you click your shutter its when you know you have that 1 image…its real, its honest it hides nothing… a picture that is truly worth a thousand words.
My inspiration is fueled by a passion, an idea, I’m on a hunt and ready for a new journey. I feel close but I am not quite there. I’ve been looking in the eyes and minds of my close friends artists…Dancers, Painters, Musicians, Photographers.
I’m suffering from an artist bloc.
Here are a few images of my friend Jolene, Jolene is a beautiful woman and talented Dancer. I photographed a recent performance, a dance piece called Neema choreographed by her best friend and neighbour Jonathon…thank you Jolene for your inspiration.
- NYC -
THE NIGHT AT THE OPERA
ASTRONOME: A NIGHT AT THE OPERA runs February 5th through April 5th and is a Richard Foreman/John Zorn music/theater collaboration. Ontological Theater
- TORONTO -
BODY FRAGMENTS
TWO NIGHTS ONLY!! Feb 12 and 13 at 8pm
location: The Theatre Centre - 1087 Queen St. West
The haunting paintings of Francis Bacon gave inspiration to this visionary production, commissioned by the Venice Biennale (2005), and performed to acclaim across Europe.
In town for two nights only, The Theatre Centre is the last stop on their three-city Canadian tour that includes Calgary (High Performance Rodeo) and Montreal (Theatre La Chapelle). An ensemble of stellar actors explore the edges of theatre practice in THEATERLABOR’s first Canadian tour.
“I have always known life was absurb. Life is nothing but a series of sensations. Life is so meaningless we might as well try to make ourselves extraordinary. I think of life as meaningless and yet it excites me. I always think that something marvellous is about to happen. How can I trap this transient thing? ” - Francis Bacon
*****
Incredibly Inspiring - light and music infused show. Body movements and actions fierce with intensity, like nothing I have seen before.
Great heart felt performance from the German crew.
The madness and the struggle of the artist show in all of its glory, abandonment and vulnerability. The tragic human condition captured in an no-holds-bar and disturbing way.
Bravo!
AG