New Work

Hey everyone,

Great meeting today. I'm really stoked on working with everyone again.

Anyway, here are two new photographs I've made. These are just quick scans.

Also, here is the link for the music video I made with Raph. (This is a low quality version)

It's called "Reading Rosalind Krauss" by The Size Queens.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF6l4X-EhJA

The right way to play a Piano

I've heard of two left feet, but...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/epiclectic/3978305225/sizes/m/

Digital Rectal Massage Cures Hiccups and Bra Doubles as Gas Mask

Dr Elena Bodnar's bra that can be converted into two gas masks

A Link to to a BBC article on the 2009 Ig Nobel Prize Award

I'm Watching You: Surveillance and the Body in Mona Hatoum's Influential Work

Mona Hatoum, born 1952, is an artist currently based in London. The first image is from a performance from 1983 made in response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, titled The Negotiating Table. It consisted of the artist's body with feet bound wrapped in plastic and gauze, covered in entrails and blood. She lay completely still, breathing, on a table flanked by two empty chairs. The whole scene was lit by a single light bulb. Speakers above played news reports of the invasion.

The second image is from a 1980 performance called Don't Smile; You're on Camera, where she trained a video camera onto a seated audience in front of her. Behind her was a video monitor apparently displaying what the camera recorded. Behind the scenes was an assistant mixing the feed so that when Hatoum trained the camera on someone's clothed chest, either an image of a naked chest appeared, a chest clad in underwear or an x-ray of lungs. At times the gender would be switched as well. Audience members left in anger.

The Negotiating Table, Mona Hatoum, 1983

A short video excerpt from The Negotiating Table

Don't Smile, You're on Camera, 1980

Hatoum on the Negotiating Table: “My performance work at the time was not necessarily a response to events in Lebanon and the Middle East (with the exception of The Negotiating Table), but dealt with the generalized issue of the relationship between the ‘Third World’ and the West.”

Hatoum: “I think artworks are rooted in one’s history and life experience. So inevitably there is a sense of conflict, threat and instability in my work, but it is not meant as an illustration of my own experience.” Her artworks, while rarely autobiographical or explicitly topical, communicate many of her life’s experiences: an outrage at the entrenched racism and sexism in liberal democracies; the condition of exile; the plight of women; and a wariness of state-sponsored surveillance."

The Vagina as Parenthetical: Baylee Hikawa, CCA

What more can I say? I love these. They are direct and funny and yet unexpected. All great qualities in art provoking ambivalence in this viewing subject. Baylee Hikawa's intervention in a Dick and Jane book reminds me of the character, Claudia MacTeer, the nine-year old narrator in the Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. If I had a prize for the grotesque, she would get it this month.