Well, I Remember The First Time I Visited The Spiral Jetty

Former NGA curator and Dia director Jeffrey Weiss writes about the state of Land Art in the latest issue of Artforum. His focus: T.S.O.Y.W., a 3-hour Earthworks road trip movie/installation by Amy Granat and Drew Heitzler shown in this year's Whitney Biennial, and the Sculpture Center's recent exhibition of feminism and Land Art in the 1970's [which featured the Agnes Denes work, Wheatfield - A Confrontation in Battery Park City that I mentioned a couple of months ago.]

As Earthworks come of age, their fate has begun to look contingent and fragile. Those who are charged with caring for the sites are rightly doing what they can to forestall change; but a true poetics of Land art--given the very nature of the medium--must at least contend with the conflict between an ethic of preservation and the entropic pull of nature and culture that belongs to the content of the work. In this setting, Granat and Heitzler are melancholic visionaries. Their wheels, like reels, turn in order to draw a straight line and follow it: Their line is the road, a figure for unbounded space and inexhaustible time. But as their bike moves forward, their eyes gaze, historically, back; T.S.O.Y.W. shows us that memory has become a chief element of the temporal condition of the Earthwork. The film's end is a running-down and out, a sudden shift from images of the infinite desert to scarred film leader, then, abruptly, to nothing at all. Forever turns out to be the ultimate conceit. [emphasis added]

I'm intrigued by the idea that memory is a "chief element" of Land Art and its "temporal condition," if it somehow equates to the divergence between the contemporary condition and experience of visiting the work/site and its various representations, whether in film, photograph, or documenting ephemera.

For most art audience members over the intervening decades--curators, critics, collectors and artists included-- Land Art exists as books, photos, gallery presentations, and texts. At the Whitney's Robert Smithson retrospective in 2005, one symposium panelist went so far as to argue that Spiral Jetty was primarily a film and photo work, as if the jetty itself were just a location, a bit of IMDb trivia. It sounded to me then like just the kind of critical reading that a New York art worlder would make who'd come of age when the Jetty was submerged, and who'd never bothered going to Utah in the 10+ years since it re-appeared.

With images and expectations formed in our head, actually visiting an Earthwork can be as disorienting as meeting your favorite NPR host. Or if, as Weiss points out, the work has deteriorated over time, it's like meeting an author who hasn't updated his bookjacket photo for a while. And the disconnect can be jarring; When Titus O'Brien made his pilgrimage to Smithson's last work, Amarillo Ramp, he found the powerful sculptural form of the iconic 1973 photograph had become "a worn down, weed covered, neglected berm of dirt you'd just mistake for an old watering trough dam. A phantom."

But memory is more than the gap between reality and what we think reality is; it's the reconciliation and construction of the two. Weiss's concerns about the complications Land Art curators face is right, but maybe not in the way he says. From Marfa to the Lightning Field to the Jetty to even Michael Heizer's Double Negative and Turrell's Roden Crater, the Earthworks Road Trip has matured in the last decade as both a real experience and a concept. As more people make the pilgrimages and have personal encounters with these works, not only do their memories of the works change, but other people begin to perceive the works not just as images in a book or on a wall, but as visitable sites.

I wonder how the perceptions and understanding of Walter deMaria's Lightning Field change when they're based, not just on John Cliett's dramatic, official photos [via], but on firsthand accounts of the 24-hour visiting experience, very few of which appear to involve actual lightning? And how would that change if Dia and deMaria allowed visitor photographs? When it comes to Land Art in the present and future, there are still a few more conceits left to be addressed.

Why I FFFFFing Hate FFFFound

I'm sorry, but I think the deracinated, uncredited, untraceable image orgy Ffffound to be the nadir of the eye candy, surface-uber-alles design world. And the people at Things offer my contempt a half-full glass of niceness:

We've always known that the object in isolation is not as fascinating as the object within its cultural context. The internet provided not just a new context, but a new way of looking at existing contexts. It took a while to realise it, but the collection, presentation, and curation of objects has become an intrinsically revealing way of tracing the ins and outs of modern culture.

A School Called Hope

"This is the place that matters." And this just gets better and better. Walter Reed Middle School served as the backdrop for the presidential candidacy of Democratic congressman Matt Santos--as played by Jimmy Smits on West Wing.

West Wing producer-writer Eli Attie told the Guardian in February that the Santos character was based on Barack Obama:

"I drew inspiration from him in drawing this character," West Wing writer and producer Eli Attie told the Guardian. "When I had to write, Obama was just appearing on the national scene. He had done a great speech at the convention [which nominated John Kerry] and people were beginning to talk about him."

Attie, who served as chief speechwriter to Al Gore during the ill-fated 2000 campaign and who wrote many of the key Santos episodes of the West Wing, put in a call to Obama aide David Axelrod.

"I said, 'Tell me about this guy Barack Obama.'"

Watch Santos' hope-themed speech [youtube via tpm]

From West Wing to the real thing | Scriptwriters modelled TV's ethnic minority candidate on young Barack Obama
[guardian.co.uk]

Live By The Sforza, Die By The Sforza?

As a student of Sforzian backdrops, this scenario being discussed here is almost too... and yet...

Did the GOP really use:
- an image of the main building at Walter Reed
- only it's not the Army's Walter Reed Medical Center but
- Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood
- that looks like a giant Mediterranean-style mansion, perhaps the McCain's place in Palm Beach?
- And which has a giant green lawn
- that ends up recreating the horrible green backdrop of McCain's speech the night Obama took the nomination?

- and which has been used as a location for filming Malcolm in the Middle, Growing Pains, and Transformers?
It's like the Sforzian equivalent of blinking out a secret message in Morse code: O-B-A-M-A.

related? A WSJ profile of McCain's creative director and the guy responsible for "the planning of the program and the production of the videos shown [at the convention]," "Hollywood" Fred Davis [wsj.com]

That's Not-Change I Can Believe In

"Just from what little I've seen of [Michelle] and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they're a member of an elitist-class individual that thinks that they're uppity," Westmoreland said. Asked to clarify that he used the word "uppity," Westmoreland said, "Uppity, yeah."

-Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, Republican congressman from Georgia's 3rd District, as quoted in The Hill

This is the classic, Southern good old boy in the building industry racism that we have in North Carolina, too. Only stupider.

Sforzando

Laura Bush tells the audience at the GOP Convention that a new life awaits them in the off-world colonies. [image: Damon Winter/NYT. He's got a great one of Fred Thompson, too]

Pro-Life, Except In The Case Of Decorating

There's no photo credit, but I'm assuming that Gawker scanned this image of Gov. Sarah Palin from an issue of Alaska Interiors. I hope McCain keeps her on for a while, this is awesome.

"Hi, Howya Doin'? Gustav? Is That Swedish?"

Don't mind us, We just need to borrow The Big Board for a minute to take some pictures...

...and to see how Roddick's doing. No, no, don't let us bother you. You just keep looking like you're working."

From the Washington Post:

Even war has not disrupted political conventions in recent years, but the extraordinary decision to alter what had been a meticulously planned coronation reflected the powerful and lingering political impact of Katrina. Although convention officials refused to discuss any political links between the Bush administration's response to Katrina and their current predicament, some Republicans here were clearly hopeful that by quickly shifting the theme of the convention to aiding relief efforts, they could buttress their efforts to show that a McCain administration would represent a departure from Bush. "It's beginning to creep around the edges that this could be a plus," said one GOP operative who listened in on a campaign conference call Sunday.

[images: reuters/john gress; afp/robyn beck via yahoo]

Don't Go Chasing 'Waterfalls' Before Lunch

The water that falls half as long falls twice as bright.

If the best part of Olafur's New York City Waterfalls is how their manmade nature is emphasized by their somewhat arbitrary schedule, well, they just got twice as arbitrary, and so twice as good.

The Public Arts Fund has announced a 50% cutback [from 101 hrs/wk to 50] and revised operating hours for the waterfalls after complaints that the salty mist is killing shrubs in Brooklyn.

Beginning Sept. 8th, the new hours are:

5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. Mondays and Wednesdays
12:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

Please plan your dog walks accordingly.

Hours Are Cut for 'Waterfalls' [nyt/ap]

We're All Americans Now

Arrivederci, Sforza.

No One Cares About An "Arts Policy" This Year

I've had some intense conversations with people who wanted to know what the US presidential candidates thought about the arts, who is advising them, and what their policy statements were on the matter. Frankly, I couldn't have cared less at the time, and now that I know the answer, I can hardly think of a less significant or important issue on which to base a decision. What the two presidential candidates do and say in other realms--in fact, their entire governing philosophies and the way they would lead the country--will have exponentially greater impact on US's culture, arts, and artist communities than whatever handful of legislative bullet points they throw out in a campaign.

Which incorrectly makes it sound like both candidates have even thrown out some bullet points. John McCain's arts policy is apparently not to have one. His website doesn't mention the arts, arts education, or federal arts organizations like the National Endowment for the Arts at all. His stated education policy makes no mention of the arts at all. I have a hard time trying to imagine an issue that would matter less to McCain and his campaign, much less to a McCain administration, and when the campaign can't pull together a comprehensible policy for technology and the internet, an articulated arts policy seems unlikely to come during McCain's lifetime, even.

In place of any official position of the McCain campaign, I took a look at the GOP's 2008 Party Platform. Which turns out to be a kind of grass roots/YouTube stunt to allow everyone to write the platform together. Interactively! There are five submissions that mention the arts. One is a cutnpaste 10-point "bipartisan" position paper from Americans for the Arts.

John from Damon, TX recommends eliminating most cabinet-level government departments including the "department of veterans affairs (I think the world of our veterans, but they don't need a cabinet position), and if you need more, take out the department of engery (they haven't done anything use full to date). then turn our attention to social programs. Most should be eliminated over time. Grants to the fine arts should be eliminated NOW (including PBS)."

Two others mention liberal arts in school, and then there's Stephen from Coopersburg, PA:

I would like to see martial arts added to the standard curriculum in schools, Not only because I teach Tae Kwon Do to kids age 4 & up, (and that would be a sweet job) but because it teaches them to focus, helps them with agility, and cardiovascular training, instills self confidence, dicipline, and teaches them how to overcome obsticles & fear (as well as kick Butt if needed).

As reported on Artsjournal, Barack Obama does have an arts policy, freshly drafted by a 33-person arts advisory committee. The policy, grandly titled "A Platform In Support Of The Arts," [pdf] closely mirrors the issues championed by the Arts Action Fund, an advocacy group and PAC associated with Americans for the Arts that's hosting the document. It's a tiny bundle of noncommittal platitudes and proposals ["reinvest in arts education," create an inner city "artists corps"], expressions of support for existing programs [public/private school partnerships, the NEA], general campaign issues that impact the arts world [universal health care, US stops acting like a total dick to rest of world], and a tax code tweak proposed by Senator Leahy that lets artists donate works to museums at fair market value. That's it. You feeling the Obamamentum yet?

The advisory committee, too, seems as slight as the platform they propose. It's headed by the veteran producer/director George Stevens Jr., whose name you might recognize because he was an uncredited PA on two of his father's landmark films, Giant and Shane. His own work tends toward the Kennedy Center Presents programs, celebrations of what passes for culture in Washington, DC. The other co-chair is Margo Lion, the Broadway producer behind Hairspray. Then there's Michael Chabon, and a raft of arts industrial complex types: foundation directors, a few philanthropist/trustees, arts council and university folks. Despite the prominence of the artist tax deduction--it's the only legislation in the proposal--there doesn't appear to be a single person affiliated with a museum or associated with fine art.

update: poking around Americans for the Arts' website, I found ArtsVote 2008, an attempt to raise awareness during the presidential campaign and conventions for the arts industrial complex. There's a page with links to policy statements by all the candidates. All the candidates who responded and submitted them, anyway. Which is to say Obama has three statements. McCain, none. Also, John Baldessari made a poster.

An Artist In The Medium Of Fake Fireworks

No doubt, Cai Guo-Qiang has always had a tricky line to walk, working in the ephemeral, unpredictable medium of explosives and fireworks and all. The expectations for spectacle get built up in the art world among collectors and work/performance sponsors, and ideally, there's a payoff, a takeaway, something received in return for one's outlay. If it's not the breathless experience of watching something explode [beautifully, one hopes], then at least there's the scorched canvas or charred hull or whatever that can be sold or donated later as, ironically, ephemera.

[Let me say I speak with experience, as someone who felt painfully but predictably sandbagged by Cai's rainbow firework arc across the East River, a work commissioned by MoMA to celebrate the temporary move to Queens. It is not easy to turn Kiki Smith riding a sedan chair into a highlight, but Cai's instantly underwhelming piece somehow managed to pull it off.]

Anyway, I was never too worked up about NBC's use of fake, computer-generated fireworks footage for Footsteps of History, the foot-shaped firework march across Beijing during the opening ceremony. Rewatching the scene, it was clear by the announcers' careful descriptions of the magic that they were trying not to get busted for claiming it was real.

But Cai himself issued a statement that tries to declare the CG, which, by his description, amounted to a backup video for the broadcasters, as a valid work of art itself:

From my own perspective as an artist, there are two separate realms in which this artwork exists, as two very different mediums have been utilized. First, there is the artwork that exists in the material realm: the ephemeral sculpture. This was viewed by people attending the ceremonies inside the stadium and standing outside on the streets of Beijing. This artwork was documented from various vantage points on video, which has been broadcast by many international media outlets.

Second, there is a creative digital rendering of the artwork in the medium of video. It is a single version of the event viewed by a large broadcast audience. Such a conceptual work can exist simultaneously in these two separate realms. And perhaps to also take Footprints of History into this second realm was necessary because in many of my explosion events, such as Project to Extend the Great Wall of China by 10,000 Meters, the very best vantage point is not the human one.

The video above shows Footprints from the human vantage point, a crowd in Tianenmen Square. Frankly, it works; it's pretty cool, in fact, though the footprints march across the vast space and are gone before some folks in the crowd even realize they're there. I would hope Cai managed to capture footage or images from his intended [sic], god-like vantage point. But in the mean time, the fleeting human view of Footprints of History needn't be discounted; it's interesting enough.

Cai Guo-Qiang Responds to Olympics Fireworks "Controversy" [art21.org via c-monster]

Except For The Infanticide, It Was A Great Party

These British losers sound awesome, but I guess I missed the part of the article where they force the bars to sell them eight drinks for a euro or whatever:

Reports of scandalous incidents rumble on regularly here [in Greece's Redneck Riviera] and elsewhere, helping to cement Britain's reputation as the largest exporter of inebriated hooligans in Europe.

Earlier this summer, flying home to Manchester from the Greek island of Kos, a pair of drunken women yelling "I need some fresh air" attacked the flight attendants with a vodka bottle and tried to wrestle the airplane's emergency door open at 30,000 feet. The plane diverted hastily to Frankfurt, and the women were arrested.

In Laganas, on the Greek island of Zakinthos, where a teenager from Sheffield died after a drinking binge this summer, more than a dozen British women were charged in July with prostitution after taking part, the authorities said, in an alfresco oral sex contest.

More alarmingly, a 20-year-old British tourist partied with her sister and a friend into the early hours in Malia also in July, then returned to her hotel room and -- although she had denied being pregnant -- gave birth. Her companions say they returned later to find the baby dead; she has been charged with infanticide.

Some Britons Too Unruly for Resorts in Europe

Biden Brings Foreign Policy Expertise, Serifs To Obama Campaign

That's a very non-elitist-yet-gravitassy typeface you got there, Senator.

The Politico Does Not Permit The Expensing Of Unapproved Hostess Gifts

"The guys from The Politico brought her [my mom, Cindy McCain] flowers, which I still think is the most adorable thing ever, so thank you. I thought it was so cute that they decided to bring my mom flowers, because it's rare; they are journalists. [laughs]"

That's my favorite line from Meghan McCain's video of the Memorial Day weekend BBQ her parents hosted for the DC press corps at their ranch in Sedona. The first time I heard it, I thought Meghan was being a snob about how poor journalists' manners are.

But after seeing how she's so kind towards the help--the family's chef is a "longtime friend" and the caretaker couple at the ranch are "our other really good friend[s]"--I realized she wasn't being snobby or mean, just the opposite.

The wheels of Washington journalism are greased by a vast supply of hostess gifts, but many news outlets refuse to reimburse reporters who buy their hostess gifts instead of using something from the company's official hostess gift closet.

Of course, it would have been equally adorable and cute if they had made Cindy something themselves; a loaf of banana bread, perhaps, or a mosaicked flower pot in the colors of the Southwestern desert?