Tom Sachs's mission to Mars launched last night at the Armory in Manhattan.

 
His latest full-scale works are truly awe-inspiring in their detail; a unique blend of technical mastery and humour. Mission control patrol the area on skateboards, doing stunts on the Mars rocks. The lunar module is has 2 floors and a fully stocked bar at the top.

The two female astronauts who are living on Mars for the duration have a strange love-hate relationship. Their mission includes digging up the surface of Mars to plant opium poppies, the seeds for which are scraped off poppy-seed bagels.

In Tom's first piece of architecture they perform a tea ceremony in a hut built for the purpose.

There are demonstrations taking place weekly until mid June including an endurance demonstration of everything in there on June 7th. 

This is a major mission which you shouldn't miss. The whole crew have been training in space camp for weeks now. I just want to have a go at driving that Mars Rover!
 

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Following a stint in Copenhagen last year, Peter Jensen is taking his critically acclaimed exhibition Peter Jensen’s Muses to The Museum of Art at Seoul’s National University.Featuring the chorus line of weird and wonderful women who have prompted each of his collections in an ultra-literal sense, the show provides a priceless juxtaposition. Jodie Foster circa Silence of The Lambs stands in close proximity to Cindy Sherman, who is within waving distance of Jensen’s Aunt Jytte. If only mannequins and walls could talk.

Forays of imagination aside, the show provides an unprecedented retrospect of the evolution of Jensen’s work. From the designer’s Spring/Summer 2005 collection inspired by figure skating champion Tonya Harding, to his latest Autumn/Winter 2012 protagonist Thelma Speirs. Ensembles from a total of 18 collections are on show, accompanied by additional didactic and imagery per muse. POP caught up with the Danish Designer two days ahead of the opening to talk WOMEN.

Why Seoul?
I'd never been to Seoul and was curious, it's a good market for our brand so I thought it would be a good choice, and when the Museum of Art offered the space it seemed perfect. It's an amazing building designed by Rem Koolhaus, it's so exciting to see the exhibition there.


Are your muses born out of actual obsessions of yours or are they chosen for their idiosyncratic appeal?
Some of them are obsessions of long standing, and some are recent discoveries, but they're all women I love. I can't imagine a muse who wasn't idiosyncratic- she wouldn't excite me.
 

Do you have a favourite muse?
Right now it's Thelma (Speirs), she's the most recent and she's a good friend. But it's always changing, I'm a fan of so many women – I'm watching the Leveson enquiry right now and can feel an obsession with Rebekah Brooks coming on!

Motifs play a large role in your collections. Do you use them as key signifiers of the stories behind your collections?
Yes, I think that's right. I like the collection to have a narrative whilst remaining easy to wear. Motifs are a part of that.

Your fit has been described as ‘slightly wrong’. What is your thinking behind this?
I'm not sure who said that first, but it is definitely something I've played with. I like the ‘slightly off’ in general. I like the idea of imperfection, that the viewer's not quite sure how they're meant to see the clothes.
 

Tell us a bit about the curation of the show- was it a simple process?
The exhibition was shown first in Copenhagen last year, but we've updated it and adjusted it to suit the space. I chose outfits I felt captured the essence of each collection I guess.

Who is the Peter Jensen girl for you?
She's very diverse apparently, she can be any age or size, I think it's more an attitude than a type (that sounds a bit pompous but can't think how else to express it). I think she loves clothes as clothes as well as the way she feels wearing them, if that makes sense. She's probably got something in common with my muses.

Peter Jensen’s Muses is on show at The Museum of Art at Seoul’s National University until 8th July 2012.

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Last week on a rainy Thursday, a crowd of 500 congregated at the I.P.H. space on Wadeson Street for Haw-lin’s first exhibition. For those out of the know, Haw-lin was initiated by friends Nathan Cowen and Jacob Klein in 2008, to enable some casual image sharing. Part Revivalist, part taste-shaping visionary, the image-based website has since grown into an untouchable source of inspiration for simpatico creatives and design purists.

In the age of the JPEG, the exhibition serves as the perfect backlash. With just seven works on show, this ultra-curation is light-years away from the mechanical scanning of online images that has become as second nature to us as copy-paste. Ensuring we don’t transmute into robots just yet, POP caught up with I.P.H Directors Christopher Gray and Chris Read to chat about the importance of taking it s-l-o-w.

Huge congratulations on the show. What triggered the idea of collaborating with Nathan and Jacob?
Thank you. We started a dialogue with Nathan and Jacob about an idea to takes images off the web and put them into a curated environment. We wanted a place where viewers were able to spend time to appreciate each individual piece without the constant distraction of other interesting imagery.

How well do you think this concentrated collection of works reflects the Haw-lin aesthetic?
We would hope really well. They are clearly very talented curators though on some level we can only comment on this as existing fans of their website. We gave them an opportunity to select a core set of imagery, which they believed represented Haw-lin in a way that a gallery audience would appreciate.
We think people had expectations of the show being loaded with wall-to-wall content, which we decided to move away from in the very beginning.

In your opinion, what is it that makes Haw-lin so noteworthy?
For us both there are a few reasons. Firstly, there is the dedication to producing and maintaining a quality website for years without it becoming stale or updated infrequently. So much of their content isn't purely re-blogged and comes from a source or an artist or photographer etc. The blog was started as an effort for them to share imagery that inspired them both privately which naturally grew over time through word of mouth and gives it credibility.

How heavily were you involved in the curation process?
Not at all. After they agreed to the show they were completely entrusted with selecting the artists and guaranteeing delivery of work for the exhibition. We believe this worked, as they didn't need us to meddle with their selection process and we could focus our efforts on all the other aspects of the show.

You mentioned the importance of transferring online images to a curated physical space. Do you think the onslaught of constant imagery posted online has a negative impact on creative voyeurism?
This is an argument that could go on forever. There are positive and negative aspects of online and offline content. We all are inspired by images we see online but of course being able to see something in person, in a physical space, allows you to appreciate the history and the craftsmanship of an object or art piece. This is something that appeals to us greatly. There is so much online content that it's difficult to constantly digest everything; we all dismiss so much of it without allowing it any time to breathe or have an impact on us. In a lot of ways this is unfortunate. There is also the argument of scale; seeing compressed small images online is never going to carry the weight of a 2 metre painting.
 

The selection of artists could be identified as a ‘mixed bag’, yet the curation remains seamless. Can you identify one binding theme that links all seven works?
For us that is the indefinable talent that Nathan and Jacob have which they brought to our space. The reason their website has been so popular is that they manage to maintain a contemporary collection of imagery which is carefully considered yet seems so effortless. Listening to them discuss and arrange the space was incredibly interesting throughout the hanging of the work, as so much of their thought process depended on the idea of a collection rather than an individual stand out image.

Which piece resonates the most with you?
For me (Christopher Gray) it's the Nathalie Du Pasquier painting. It is such a wonderful painting and my appreciation has also been influenced that she was so sincere about the exhibition that made me warm to her and her existing work. I'm really proud to have such a piece in the studio and hopefully we can keep it here for a sometime. I'll be sad when it goes or if someone decided to buy it.
 

For me [Chris Read], although I would have initially said the Maurice Scheltens and Liesbeth Abbenes piece, I think the Benjamin Vnuk is what I would most like to own. Even after having the work up in the space for a few days, my eyes are always drawn to Benjamin's piece. The skin tones are so balanced and composition wise I can't really fault it.

How was it meeting the artists at the opening?
Everyone we met was incredibly positive about the show. Andy Rementer surprised us when he mentioned that he had not come from the US just for the exhibition but it was certainly one of the main reasons. It was also Bruno's second time exhibiting with us, which he was very gratuitous about. We hope these working relationships can hopefully bring more interesting exhibitions to the space in the future.

What's next for I.P.H?
We have a series of on-going projects at the moment as both of us continue to collaborate on new things involving film, product, art and photography. We have such a talented network of people around us that for the moment whichever direction we take the I.P.H we have the best support.

In the next few months we will be starting a new commission, which involves a move to Paris and then Berlin for a short film series, and a solo exhibition, which will hopefully end with the launch of a line of shirts for a winter men’s collection. It is still so new for us so we are allowing ourselves to grow slowly without an unnecessary push in a certain direction. As for the space we have such freedom to do whatever we like here without the restraints of what is expected of a gallery. There have been talks of hosting food events and film screenings but we are always open minded about ideas of how to use the studio in interesting ways.

Photographer Sanna Helena Berger & Christopher Gray

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A year after the widely acclaimed Alexander McQueen retrospective, the Met's current Costume Institute exhibition explores the work and philosophy of two iconic designers from different eras.

Inspired by caricaturist Miguel Covarrubias' 'Impossible Interviews' for Vanity Fair in the 1930s, 'Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations' surrounds the very words of these two fascinating Italian women, and encourages us to view their work in a new light.

Directed by Baz Luhrmann, the videos of simulated conversation between Schiaparelli (played by Judy Davis) and Prada over a dinner table run throughout the exhibition and explore themes such as 'Waist Up / Waist Down', 'The Surreal Body' or 'Ugly Chic'. Both amusing and insightful (while Miuccia and Elsa do not always agree with one another), the conversations draw parallels between their conceptual and creative approaches to challenge conventional ideas of beauty and glamour, whether in their unexpected use of materials and imagery, surrealistic strategy or sartorial provocation.

The exhibition features approximately ninety designs and thirty accessories from the Costume Institute's collection, the Prada archive as well as other institutions and private collections, with highlights including Schiaparelli's tear dress, pieces from her Circus collection, Prada's S/S 1999 dresses embroidered with broken mirrors and S/S 2008 pieces featuring fantastical illustrations by James Jean. Prada shoe lovers and Schiaparelli millinery fanatics will not be disappointed!

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For those of you who think you’re unfamiliar with the artist Mati Klarwein, think again. For although you may not recognise his name, chances are you know his work. Klarwein’s surrealist, psychedelic artwork features on sleeves of some of the most prolific musicians of the 1960’s & 70’s including Earth, Wind & Fire, Miles Davis, Malcolm X, The Last Poets; and Santana, to name but a few.

Klarwein’s life was speckled with both terrible hardship and absolute good fortune. He grew up as Jewish in Nazi German, but with the help of a friend, his family escaped to Palestine in 1934. He lived there until he was 18 whence his parents separated before moving to Paris with his mother (his father, an architect, remained in Israel and went on to design and build the Knesset – Israel’s equivalent of the Houses of Parliament and one of the country’s most famous buildings). After a number of years in Paris, Mati travelled the world before finally settling in New York in the late 1950s. Good friends with Salvador Dali, Ernst Fuchs & Jimi Hendrix, he quickly became a fixture on the New York scene. In the early 1980s, after a long and fruitful period in the States, Mati moved to Deja, Majorca, where he remained until his untimely death in March 2002.

A decade after his death, Mati Klarwein’s original paintings for LP & CD covers have been collated into a limited edition book, Mati & The Music. It is a wonderful amalgam of Mati’s work: iconic images exist harmoniously alongside lesser known works and previously unpublished material. The beautiful volume also contains two never before released vinyl LPs of a Miles Davis show, recorded live in Copenhagen in 1969. I popped down to the book launch and had the privilege of talking at length with Mati’s eldest son, Balthazar (himself a visual artist), about his father’s life and work.

Your father had quite a difficult, somewhat disrupted childhood. Do you think this influenced his work?
Yes, I think this was probably the main influence… It is clear to me that his canvases, filled with multicultural celebration and religious unification, are his response to a childhood scarred by the atrocities of segregation and discrimination – experienced both in Germany and the new Israel. My dad had a hard time growing up in Israel – he had a blonde, German mother and wasn’t circumcised, and this left him feeling very different from the other Jewish kids (he was teased mercilessly by the boys for the latter). He hung out more with Palestinians but wasn’t fully accepted by them either. He always said he felt he was “a minority of one”. These feelings of dichotomy and segregation remained with him. In the late 1950s, in order to express his sentiments about the hostility between Jews and Muslims in the Middle East, Mati added "Abdul" (which means "servant" in Arabic) to his name. He maintained that “if all Jews adopted an Arab name and vice-versa, maybe it would help everything a little bit”.

Although not religious, religion clearly informed your father’s work immensely. Particularly, the ‘Aleph Sanctuary’…
Yes so the Aleph Sanctuary was a piece my father created while he was living in New York. It was a cubic temple of all religions, featuring 68 paintings, representing some Biblical passages such as “Anunciation” (1961) [later used by Santana for the cover of his best selling album, [Abraxas], “Crucifixion” (1963-1965) represented by a highly sexual tree of life which caused quite a turmoil within the puritan white establishment as well as with the black panthers, “Nativity”(1962), “Grain of Sand” (1963-1965), and many other of his best known paintings. It was in his studio in Union Square and it was a haven – a place for musicians, artists and other creatives to come and just hang out. In fact that’s how he got a large number of his commissions. People would come and hang out there and then love it so much they’d ask him to do something for them.

Who would hang out there on any given day?
Warhol, Hendrix, Dali, Davis – normal suspects.

And where is the Aleph Sanctuary now?
Mati actually dismantled the original and the paintings were all individually sold off. It was rebuilt, however, in 1992 using aluminum structures to hold Plexiglas reproductions lit by rows of fluorescent tubes. It’s now in storage in our hometown in Spain. It was last on show at the Tate Liverpool in 2006. We’re hoping to bring it out again soon.

Your father’s work is unquestionably psychedelic; did he take a lot of drugs?
Yes, I suppose he did. He certainly took a lot of acid. He always had mushrooms growing in the house, and stashes of weed in the freezer. But he didn’t have an addictive personality and so it truly was never a problem for him, as it was for many of his contemporaries. He certainly wasn’t high all the time (or at least wasn’t by the time I came along). He would always say “a little bit of everything is good for you, a lot will kill you”.

It’s a good moto.
Yes. He saw a lot of people’s lives destroyed by drugs and was more than aware of the potential for damage. He was forever leaving newspaper articles of horror drug stories around the house for my brother and I to read!

The reigning assumption is that your father’s work was inspired primarily by surrealism and the so-called psychedelic movement of the time and though this may be partially true, it seems increasingly clear that his extensive traveling and wide interest in non-Western deities and symbolism inspired his art far more than his use of psychedelic drugs. So… could you shed some light on this point of contention ; did he ever paint under the influence of anything

No way! He never painted on drugs, only coffee – his self-proclaimed painting drug. In fact, he painted the Santana piece before he’d even taken acid. His friend Timothy Leary once stated, that judging by the character of his paintings, “Mati didn’t need psychedelics!”.

Although best known for his art of the 1960s and 1970s, your father also worked more conventionally across a variety of genres including still life, landscape, and commissioned portraits (name drop alert: John F. Kennedy, Brigitte Bardot, Leonard Bernstein, Jimi Hendrix, Richard Gere and many more…). Which of your father’s works is your personal favourite?
Probably his “improved paintings”; a collection that he began in the 1970’s. He would purchase unwanted paintings in thrift stores and flea markets and bring them back to life by “improving” or recycling them, adding his own brush strokes to the originals, giving them a new meaning, often humorous, and if placed, always sharing both artists signatures.

What was your father like?
The Mati I knew was just like his paintings; vibrant, grand and mysterious with a funky, good sense of humor.  Filled with love and a humble wisdom with the desire to always keep on learning. As a father he was liberal when he had to be and tough when necessary. A perfect balance which made my brother and I know what our limits were. He rarely got angry, but the few times he did were enough for us not to want to piss him off again.

What do you think your father was thinking when he created his work?
In his younger days probably sex, drugs and rock and roll. And in his later age, probably light, rocks and plants. He once wrote "There was a time when I dreamt of sex, and then I dreamt of drugs. Soon I will be dreaming light…" In his mid-life he started replacing the women in his paintings for beams of light in landscapes. He said that it was thanks to light that we were alive, and I guess he felt the same about women.
 

What did you think of your father's work when you were young?
I loved his work as a child and still do now, all his fantastical imaginary characters and magical landscapes hypnotized me. And so did the highly sexual images! My hometown friends and I would gather around his books at my mothers place and trip out over the painting of 'Crucifixion'. That was our introduction to sex. A pretty crazy one…

What does the future hold for Mati’s work?
We’ve just completed a recent collaboration with Western Edition, producing a limited edition set of decal’s featuring my father’s art cover to Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew. My father referred to himself (in jest, but quite aptly) as 'the most famous unknown artist'. I want to give a name to his work and show the world that he wasn't just an sleeve artist but an incredibly skilled painter of galactic imagination who left behind a huge oeuvre of relatively undiscovered work. We’d really like to organise a retrospective, which I think he so deserves.

So do we! Thanks Balthazar.

Mati & The Music is available for purchase at galerie213.com.

matiklarweinart.com
balthazarklarwein.com

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Influenced by the Futurism movement, artists Alexander Storey-Gordon, Kari Robertson and Deena Jacobs presented La Cucina Futurista at The Pipe Factory as part of the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art. The dinner for ten guests sampled meals from ‘The Futurist Cookbook’ written by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. The inspiration of Marinetti’s book was immediately recognizable when I was welcomed into the room which featured a series of works including a large scale print featuring elements of pasta. This gave a strong reference to the Futurists given their well documented dislike for pasta’s lack of aesthetic value. I also observed large metal wheel structures which harped back to the Futurists’ appreciation of the modern and industrial.

In the room there were also large scale projections of what first appeared to be a range of randomly selected words including ‘Surprise Banana’ and ‘Strawberry Breasts’. I laughed at these confusing messages, until I realized that this was what we were having for dinner.
The ten course dinner began with ‘Bombs of Ciberary’ which involved each guest taking a cracker and attempting to put cheese or pâté on to it from a rotating vinyl. This added an element of challenge to the dining experience.

Led by artist Alexander we were then encouraged to sample the second course of 'Areofood’ which was comprised of different textures including olives, kumkwat and onion. This course was accompanied by the sounds of an aeroplane engine, while in the background a surrealist Belgian film about aviation played. Whilst eating we were encouraged to heighten the tactile element of the food further by touching place mats made from sandpaper, velvet and silk.

Throughout the meal we were given cards asking us to direct discussions towards topics such as knives and steroids. This led to many a twist in the conversation. Awkwardly guests attempted to discuss their subjects as much as possible. I was unable to find an opening to allow me to speak about my subject, gymnastics without feeling too foolish. The use of these cards left me feeling manipulated by the artists and challenged by the environment they had created. Highlights of the meal included ‘Simultaneous Onions’ which was an unusual blend of vanilla ice cream and red onion. This left most of the guests shocked and wondering, had The Futurist Cook Book inspired Heston Blumenthal?

The meal ended with ‘Black and White’ a coffee where guests whipped their own cream and burned one pound notes into a mug before coffee was added. This was to give us the idea of having a drawing created in our stomachs, but left an unpleasant ashy taste in my mouth. This innovative and at points bizarre dinner was a bold way of exploring a movement which still provokes strong opinions due to its links to fascism, militarism and misogyny. Through the strength of their work the artists were able to create a provocative and enjoyable discussion on Futurism without glorifying or disparaging this complex historical movement.

Below, artist and organiser Kari Robinson talks us through the meal.

What was the inspiration behind tonight's meal?
It came from a collaborative process between myself and Alex. We are both interested in politics and absurdity and how futile it is to make politics a physical thing. To us this is what the Futurist Cookbook seemed to be trying to achieve. Tonight's meal seemed like a really good way of looking at absurdity, politics and materializing politics while looking at how it could be brought into a contemporary context.
 

How would you describe the work in tonight's meal?
The whole experience is the work, I wouldn't say the food is just the work, or the setting is the work. It was about the people who got back and how they came together. Therefore I guess tonight's work was mainly eclectic and experimental.

What is it about the Futurist movement's manifesto on food which is of interest to you?
The idea that you can take food as being basic sustenance and try and change that to alter people's politics was a very interesting idea to me. The amount of humour which is within the manifesto was appealing to Alex and myself. Alex in particular uses a lot of humour in his work. There was also something quite interesting to look back on a movement that looked forward.

Why do you feel Futurism is a movement worth creating work about today?
This is something we have struggled with. Whether or not we were eroticizing or historicizing Futurism. But I do believe Futurism is relevant again today in the context of recession and in how people respond to these things in a practical way. It's interesting in the way you do not understand your life is influenced psychologically by economic turmoil as well as on a practical basis.
 

What do you want the guests tonight to take from the experience?
To think about the relationship between food and thought and food and politics. If there is one thing to be learnt from Futurism it is that they were masters of manipulation through strange methods. The more you are aware of someone trying to manipulate you the less you hopefully won't allow yourself to be manipulated.

What do you believe the connection between art and food is?
I feel they are both a deeply intertwined set of subjects. On a basic level there is in both a need for artists and there is such an amount of creativity involved in both. I think there is also a relational aspect and how you can orchestrate and interaction through food. It has been very interesting tracing the relationship back to where food and art first intertwined.

Why do you feel GI festival is important?
I think it's important for Glasgow because you get a sense that everyone is involved in one thing and there is a buzz about the city. But I also think it is really important when you are a small artist-run space to have a presence in GI festival. As I feel there is a danger of it becoming bigger and therefore homogenized and about more commercial spaces. Therefore I also feel it is important to create work that contributes to the festival while also challenging it.

THE PIPE FACTORY is a new artist run studio, residency and events space situated in the Barras.

The exhibition runs until 7th May.
 

www.glasgowinternational.org

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Alighiero Boetti at Sprüth Magers London, 2012.

It started at the Tate Modern. Then Sprüeth Magers decided to host a quick show. Now the Sprovieri gallery on Heddon Street has curated a selection of works by the hotter-than-hot Italian artist. It seems London just can’t get enough of Alighiero Boetti.

Opened yesterday, Works on Paper highlights a very charming side of Boetti. Crafty mixed media drawings, newspaper exercises and the artist’s signature postal works are all included at the Sprovieri, yet differ greatly from other recent displays.

Alighiero Boetti Works on Paper at Sprovieri, 2012.

As an exercise in space, Sprüeth Magers’ intimate curation highlighted the very casual and impulsive elements of the artist, combining his various works, including Boetti's notorious rugs, illustrations, film and photography in an extremely intimate setting. The gallery’s wall-pinned paper works, accurate use of the rugs and abstract placement of projects (note the small piece above the door) sat in wonderful contrast to the Tate's canonical retrospective.

Alighiero Boetti at Sprüth Magers London, 2012.

Of course the Tate’s Game Plan is the largest and most extensive selection, acting as a sort of preliminary crash course on the Post-war artist.

Alighiero Boetti at Sprüth Magers London, 2012.

My recommendation for viewing: hit the Tate first, and then the Sprovieri. You’ll appreciate the selection and curation more.

Alighiero Boetti at Sprüth Magers London, 2012.

Alighiero Boetti Works on Paper is on at the Sprovieri until 16 June.
Alighiero Boetti Game Plan is on at the Tate Modern until 27 May.

sprovieri.com
spruethmagers.com
tate.org.uk

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Last night, in conjunction with the current Hans-Peter Feldmann exhibition on at the Serpentine, the V&A hosted a short talk with the gallery’s curator Hans Ulrich Obrist.

At the Serpentine, Feldman’s large body of work extending from the early 70’s to his most recent contemporary projects is displayed. And while the works range widely in shape and form, repetition and re-presentation prove to be major motifs throughout. “I like to makes copies”, he says.

In the lecture space, Hans & Hans reviewed the German artist’s history and practice currently touring galleries worldwide. Interestingly, the talk was extremely reflective of the exhibition itself: what you see in Hyde Park is exactly what you get from Hans-Peter, both in humour and concept.

“Don’t tell anybody, but it’s very easy to make art.”

An investigator of truths, his camp collections – and collecting – highlight what he likes to call “Daily Art”. For Feldmann, art is synonymous with language. He transfers images from one space or setting to another, changing its context and its meaning as a result.

A major hit during the Q&A session was Feldmann’s most recent handbag project, where in an effort to confront the taboo of what's inside a woman’s purse, the artist offered strangers five hundred euros for full possession of their handbags, which he has emptied and displayed the contents of at the Serpentine show.

My favourite: Feldmann’s Sunday Pictures, where he's converted typical posters and ideal imagery from the 1970’s to black and white before photocopying each picture in an attempt to reduce their beauty. “I couldn’t destroy them.” Seems that some symbols can’t be altered.

Hans-Peter Feldmann is on until 5 June at the Serpentine Gallery.

Serpentinegallery.org
Vam.ac.uk

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As the analogue to digital switchover signals the end of fuzzy television transference, the medium remains the message in the ICA's new show Remote Control.
 

The exhibition transports us back to a time when television was regarded (in some creative circles, at least) with pervasive suspicion. Reproductions of photocopied manifestos detail a call to arms for the media to be liberated; a collective push for independent control over the 'videosphere’.

 
What remains in the power of this programming, now that the freedom in on-demand choice has widened to make the terrestrial foundation of a five-channel selection obsolete?
 

A wall of boxy, glass-fronted televisions – objects already bound to nostalgic relic – line the lower gallery. Here, video works explore how this medium, acting as a collective bond for numerous decades, has offered artists a platform to engage with these themes of consumerism, propaganda, and identity.

 
‘The one thing electronics have not done is teach us how to have real contact,’ artist Lynn Hershman declares in her video work Desire, Inc. (1990). Her monologue weaves a narrative between a series of seductive television advertisements she created inviting audience participation, and the resulting interviews she conducted with the respondents.

 
The clips segue, like the flick of a remote control, between unnerving confessions of sexual expectations. We see women’s dejected desires to assert the American dream, adjacent to a particularly hilarious demonstration of what one man describes as his talent for ‘hula hands.’ By addressing this relationship between the fickle and serious, which at times can be intense, Hershman demonstrates the fragility of our engagement within the public sphere.

The majority of the videos displayed, by artists such as Antek Walczak, Joan Braderman, Kevin Atherton and Marcel Odenbach, were produced in the late 80’s and 90’s. The upper gallery houses more modern works. Upstairs, images from Tauba Auerbach’s Static series amplify electronic screen glitches into large-scale prints, highlighting a plausible and systematic beauty hidden within malfunctions.

 
By erasing the crackly terrestrial irks in transmission, we shrink the possibility for error. Technology dates easily, of course – adding a significant time stamp to the majority of the exhibition – but the state of society’s disrepair is a message that remains inherent and undiluted.

 
Adrian Piper’s 1988 video installation Cornered engages with direct address. An upended table acts as a physical barricade between the viewer and monitor, on which the artist appears centred between two copies of her father’s birth certificates on the walls behind her. On screen, Piper sits plainly behind a wooden table with a newscaster stance. She looks us dead in the eyes, ‘refusing to join our racial club’, as she says, and confronts her audience with a series of questions: Do you feel fronted, embarrassed, or accused? Maintaining unrelenting eye contact, her calm demeanour and penetrating delivery onscreen utilises the sense of unease that she believes the audience perceive in a deliberate attempt of self-reflection. It is a powerful work.

 
In the Fox Reading Room, previous broadcasts of Auto Italia LIVE from collective Auto Italia South East hint at future innovation within the medium. On 9 June 2012 they will present a live broadcast of their fourth episode, designed as a prototype for artists who could potentially use this format.
 

The display forms part of the exhibition’s event program, Television Delivers People, with a line-up that includes performance artist Jonny Woo, curator talks and an Artists’ Film Club. There are plenty of reasons to bathe in the glow of the fading terrestrial screen at the ICA.

 
Remote Control shows at the ICA until the 10th of June.

ica.org.uk

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After spending some time in Jo’burg, I was extremely impressed by capital’s art scene. After rooibos tea and Vuvuzela’s, artist Jodi Bieber stood out to me as one of the country’s greatest exports.

A documentary style photographer, Bieber received universal acclaim following the publication of her very first project Young Afghan Woman as pointed out by Time Magazine in 2010.
Her reportage style permits a glimpse into the lives of her subjects, thus the assignment of her latest book Soweto proves highly successful as well. The artist illuminates life in the notorious Gauteng township, almost 40 years after the country’s cultural uprising. I caught up with Bieber to get some insight on Soweto and find out what she’d discovered during her process.

In your new book, you depict very mundane life in the city of Soweto. Why did your work take you to Soweto? How was this concept born?
A friend of mine who lives in Paris and is also a writer often visits South Africa. And when he visits, I always suggest that we should do something about Soweto, and he said you know, there is no contemporary book presenting Soweto today. So he suggested I really consider a project surrounding Soweto. It was also an interesting moment because it was just prior to the world cup and there was such a great deal of negative publicity surrounding South Africa in the media discussing black crime and how dangerous Johannesburg is. It was the predictable negative representations, and it was only after the world cup that we became successful in the eyes of the media.

So at the time, I went to a Soweto radio station where this young woman said to me ‘So you don’t have to leave Soweto now, everything is here. It’s like Hollywood to me’.

So that sort of set the tone. I wanted to destroy the stereotype of how a place like Soweto is perceived outwardly, or even to demonstrate that there is a normality that exists; a quietness that the media doesn’t show us.

You photographed various people for the book. How did you select these characters?
Well I drove several thousand kilometers and everything there happens on the streets, so if I saw something that attracted me or someone interesting for example I would stop my car and speak to them, just to see if they would welcome their portrait taken. I also looked at various types of people that coexist within the town. I wanted to show the diversity there. There is one picture in the book of a mother and a daughter. It’s specific as I was looking to examine the different generations present in Soweto. You know the mum looks very traditional and the daughter has this expression of the ‘born free’ generation…

I had specific people I wanted to get hold of however most subjects were spontaneous.

Which stories stand out to you after making the book?
It wasn’t so much one person’s life as more a story of ‘Soweto life’. Really, from the fact that growing up in the suburbs of South Africa, I sat very much behind closed doors. So what I was envious of in Soweto was that everything happens on the streets, it’s much more of a community-oriented place. When I traveled during those three months, everyone asked me which country I was from, as it is usually tourists that go to Soweto…

South Africa has a long history of racial repression. How do you think you tackle this subject through your work?
I don’t really get involved in racial issues. I see it as being too obvious. I’m more interested in contemporary life; I’m not going to go out looking for racial things. It’s been done and gone and everyone wants to move on now. It does still exist but that’s not something I choose to depict.

Do you find there are limitations being a practising artist in South Africa?
I think we’re very blessed for our diverse society, which is constantly changing and evolving and is also quite young. We have a lot to document; you see a lot of the photography is quite serious in subject and also quite contemporary. But we have a big pallet and a lot to say. I think because we are so far away, we are very invested here. The only disadvantage we have is the many galleries overseas which we don’t have to showcase our work.

What have you taken away from the experience making this book?
I show the work all over the world and my intention, at the end of the day, is to try and shift stereotypes that exist. And while most stereotypes that exist hold some truth, they’re not the full truths. My work is really about trying to shift attitudes. The photographs tell a story of contemporary life here, and through this I hope to represent South Africa.

jodibieber.com

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