Madeline Yee

Posted on January 31, 2013

An Interview with Artist Taylor Deupree Taylor Deupree is a sound artist, graphic designer and photographer. He has founded the record label, 12k, in 1997 and since then, it has gained an international following by providing a platform for electronic musicians, composers and sound artists to experiment with conceptual music. Deupree approaches his sound work in the fashion of a minimalist, emphasizing a hybrid of natural sounds and technological meditation, with no hint of digital idolatry. His work, Thursdays, is included in the ICI exhibition With Hidden Noise. Mengyin Lin: How did you start getting involved with experimental sound? And how did you get to know Stephen Vitiello, the curator of With Hidden Noise? Taylor Deupree: I decided, over 25 years ago, that I wanted to be a musician, and do electronic-based music. So really, most of my life has been devoted to listening to and exploring sound and music. I think my interest in visual arts, as a photographer and graphic designer has made those different worlds combine into something unique. My sound art and visual art very much parallel to each other. My aesthetics and tastes really aren’t terribly typical so it was only natural for me to explore the more experimental side of art. Stephen and I met for the first time via the Internet when sound artist Rutger Zuydervelt (Machinefabriek) reached out to me about a collaboration he had done with Stephen and wanted to release on 12k. The album was called Box Music and it came out in 2008. Probably not too long after that Stephen and I met in New York City and became friends in person. We kept in very regular contact since then and see each other quite a bit. ML: Your work in With Hidden Noise, Thursdays, is a composition of field recordings, some are very personal and specific, such as a little boy singing Happy Birthday song at the beginning, and sound of footsteps, which can be very personal as well, as we often know someone’s approaching before their arrival by listening to their characteristic footsteps; at the same time, there are sounds of instrumental sound like acoustic guitar as well as electronic/synthetic sound. Some could fall better into the traditional category of music, and others may be considered as noise by the majority. What does it mean to you as the artist to bring all these sounds together – and what role does the difference in soundscape play here? TD: This piece was made from a sound project I made in 2009 where I recorded a sound every day of the year. These were usually field recordings. Outside with a microphone; nature, my travels, etc., but sometimes I’d construct sounds as well (playing on guitar or in the studio)… Thursdays is, literally, a montage and layers of sounds I recorded on every Thursday of that year. The selection of sounds was then determined only by Thursdays so whatever sound fell on those days was what went into the composition. The day selection (Thursday) is homage to my favorite piece of music, Thursday Afternoon by Brian Eno. The yearly project as a whole is a look at my life and where I went, an audio diary of sorts, and Thursdays is a slice of that that combines the sounds of my every day life: music, people, nature. It can appear to a quick listen as a jumble of random sounds but there are relationships and combinations that will stir up memories for any listener. Familiar sounds, hints of this or that; the piece serves, also, as an audio diary, how sounds work into our every day lives. ML: Do you have your own archive of sounds that you draw on to create a new piece, or you conceive an idea for a work first and then go out and record particular sounds you had in mind? What is your creative process to produce a sound artwork? TD: It’s definitely a bit of both. I’m always recording sounds or making sounds on synthesizers and creating banks and archives to serve as compositional starting points later on. When it comes time to compose a new piece sometimes I’ll draw from that archive if it sounds particular inspirational at that moment. This year, actually, I’m starting a new “per-day” project, which is a studio diary. Whereas my 2009 sound-per-day project were, for the most part, field recordings, this year’s project is all constructed sounds from inside my studio. Not only will it serve as a great learning and exploring experience but I’ll generate a huge body of sounds to draw from as well. I started it a week late due to busy holidays, but it can be found here: http://www.soundcloud.com/12k ML: I find a lot of the sounds in Thursdays very visual. Take the footsteps at the beginning as an example. They are steady, a little rushed, but not very heavy, which might suggest a particular emotional status. And it sounds like walking in the late fall or winter in the woods, when fallen leaves become dry and crunchy, which gives a context of the time, setting and location of this particular sound. But this is just how I picture it, I am sure audiences would have different visions based on their own life experiences. I think it’s the ability to recognize the sound that generates a vivid, lively visual, and then I noticed that you are also a photographer. As photo is sometimes used to freeze a moment, music and sound requires time and space to produce an experience. Do you see a relationship between the visual and the aural in your process of producing sounds? TD: Yes, there is absolutely a connection. One of my practices in music production is what I call “freezing time.” It’s not the literal technological technique of time stretching or time compressing sound, but more an idea involving loops and repetition. My music often involves series of loops that fall in and out of phase of each other and create this sort of churning bed that at once sounds repetitive but is always slightly changing. It gives the sense of being stuck in a loop, a moment in time, much like a photograph. And, also like a photograph, the myriad of details and perspectives within this looping bed of sound give the listener a very deep picture with many sounds and tangents to explore. I think also, growing up as a photographer and a musician side by side, the sounds that I find for my music just naturally tend to be quite visual and contextual. I think you can also say that some of my photography is quite musical and lyrical as well. Taylor Deupree, Facade, Kyoto, 2012.

Taylor Deupree, Winter Court, 2012. ML: Compared to other works in With Hidden Noise, your piece is relatively intimate and personal. What do you think of the capacity of sound to tell personal stories, to portray a specific time and place, and how does this personal experience transcend itself and transform into an work of art to a general audience? TD: I find my work to be very non-narrative, at least when I’m writing it. To me my music has no beginning or end; it’s like a street with “do not enter” signs on either end. You get in somehow and once you’re in you’re not sure where to go. Despite the linearity of music as an art form I try to make my music very non-linear. It sort of exists in this place where it can go on forever. I think of my music as being vertical, stacks, and layers, as opposed to a horizontal timeline. All that being said, I think just by the nature of the kind of sounds I use and the subtleties and quiet sounds that it can be quite enveloping when you listen to it, and with that comes a feeling of intimacy and with that comes some sort of made-up story or narrative. So it’s quite paradoxical in that way… starting out writing something very non-narrative and it ends up being able to make the listener feel a sense of place or memory or perhaps a particular time/story in their own life. ML: Your work has been developing from techno, electronic sound to a hybrid of natural sound, field recordings, etc. for over almost 20 years. After so many years of experimenting with sound, do you still see what you do as an “experiment” and if so, what is this “experiment” now as opposed to when you started making work 20 years ago? What is still exciting in your creative process? TD: Over 20 years ago when I decided I wanted to do this for a living I just jumped in with my first synthesizer and piles of books and magazines. It was all new and there was so much to learn. Music synthesizers, in the early/mid 80s were also relatively new at least in terms of being affordable for the masses. Digital sampling was becoming affordable, digital synthesizers, and then computers and software began to be developed for music. My learning and experiments were developing alongside the technology itself. When something new would be invented, or some new technology unveiled for music production, I was there learning it, taking it in. It was constant experimentation. I became incredibly interested in different sound synthesis methods. The way various synthesizers worked and how they created their unique sounds. It also goes without saying that recording in general, the techniques of mixing, producing and recording sound… well, you can never know all of it. There is always something new to learn and discover. This is what keeps it still exciting after all of these years, and, in fact, more exciting now than it has ever been. There is so much technology for sound, so many options and infinite ways to create and process any sound you can imagine. In fact, there are too many options, too many choices, too much to get in the way of productivity. So I really try to impose restrictions and rules on myself as I’m creating so I don’t get mired in too many options. Even with self-imposed restrictions my explorations are endlessly fascinating and keep pushing me in new directions. For the past few years I’ve really been moving away from the computer as an instrument, too — something that was so instrumental in the mid/late 90s experimental music scene. But I’m finding that computer-based instruments, software instruments, lack soul. I’m much more interested in hands-on electronic instruments and acoustic instruments, physical and tactile interfaces. It’s this ever-evolving interest in tools for creating sound that fuel the experimental process. If i haven’t used it before, it’s new and exciting. Guitars may not be new, but when I first started incorporating them into my music less than 10 years ago it was an entire world opening up to me. ML: As a current student in Tisch, I’m surrounded by a lot very talented and bold young artists, who are great inspirations to me. And I really appreciate that I get to study in New York, one of the best places for art. What was your experience studying art in New York City and what was the experimental sound scene like when you were a student? What influenced you from your experience as an art student? TD: I went to NYU (for Photography) specifically because it was in New York. I was less concerned about the school itself than I was the fact that it was in New York. It’s where I wanted to be, where I felt I had to be and I think it shaped me and gave me opportunities that have gotten me to where I am today. In those years, the early 90s, was the beginning of the techno scene in America coming out of the amazing late 80s acid house and club music from the UK and Chicago. I spent every weekend at clubs soaking in the music and eventually playing at the same clubs I used to frequent. It was the birth of the rave scene. It was wild and electronic dance music was exploding and new genres and styles splintering off as fast as people could name them. Thinking back to it, it was really pretty intense and incredibly energetic. As much as I loved the Photography Department at NYU, the rest of my school experience is a complete blur. I’m not even quite sure how I managed to get my degree without taking many tests or demanding courses. It’s not that I didn’t care about school but I spent every free moment either in my apartment writing music, out a club listening to music or at record stores buying music. School was just an excuse to be in New York City and the Photography Department was my home outside of my apartment. I guess back then New York City itself was all that was influencing me. The music culture for sure but also the energy, the museums and my photography and (then very early) computer art classes. But not too long after I graduated my artistic direction really changed. I was introduced, by a dear friend, to modern architecture and design, furniture, interiors, minimalism. It was discovering the works of people like Donald Judd and Hiroshi Sugimoto that changed my art forever. I saw in these works a rhythm that I was familiar with from my career in techno music: a steady pulse, divisions. But I also saw space, silence and organization, whether it was rigid or organic. This had an incredible effect on my music, which took a turn from something made for the club to something that could be made for the art galleries. At the time it was still very synthetic and often rhythmic, but I was attempting to capture that idea of space and timelessness that I saw in minimalist art. Those are the foundations that are still at the heart of what I do today, although they’ve been molded and matured by the years and by my interest in things more imperfect, decayed and organic. But there is this clear arc from the fierce synthetic rhythms of techno into the pure forms and space of minimalism and then roughed around the edges by nature and time. These distinct influences and eras of my music have slowly, gradually morphed and echoes of all of them still play around in what I do. ***Mengyin Lin is currently an Exhibitions Intern at ICI. She is a senior in New York University double majoring in Film/TV Production and Art History.

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Posted on March 18, 2013

The debut exhibition of do it at Kunsthalle Ritter Klagenfurt, 1994. © rittergallery, Klagenfurt, Austria

Scores for Installations: Conversation with Robert Fleck (1996)

ROBERT FLECK: It was about 2 years ago that the project do it was started. How did the idea arise to mount an exhibition of only written descriptions of artists’ works to be carried out by arbitrary co-workers in the given museum?

HANS ULRICH OBRIST: The starting point was a coffeehouse discussion among Bertrand Lavier, Christian Boltanski, and me. Lavier as well as Boltanski talked that evening about operational instruction[s]. Lavier has been interested in the idea of the “translation” for years. There are his works from the ’70s, in which he had a text presenting operational instruction[s] for a project translated from one language to another. Each time the translation was realized, there arose a totally different object. As the language mutates in the translation, so the artworks also mutate. Christian Boltanski is frequently concerned with the idea of the “score” in the sense of music: an installation is like an opera or a musical piece, of which there is a premiere and then however many performances and actualizations. As scores, installations are carried out by others with the corresponding freedoms of interpretation. From that arose the do it-idea: an exhibition from “do-it-yourself” descriptions, from operational instructions by the artists. The interest in such a viral form can be found in all conceivable artistic and scientific contexts.

FLECK: An exhibition from faxed “do-it-yourself” instructions of the artists, however, needs an institution to become more broadly relevant.

OBRIST: In fall 1994 the AfAA (Association francaise d’Action Artistique), a department of the French Foreign Ministry, mailed the twelve operational instructions of the original version of do it as a diplomatic dispatch to each country with which France entertained diplomatic relations. Twelve artists were involved in this original version: Christian Boltanski, Bertrand Lavier, Maria Eichhorn, Hans-Peter Feldman, Paul-Armand Gette, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Fabrice Hybert, Ilya Kabakov, Mike Kelley, Alison Knowles, Jean-Jacques Rullier, and Rirkrit Tiravanija.

FLECK: Does the sending-out of construction directions for artworks to dozens of museums in the most diverse parts of the world, as took place in this case, not present great problems, e.g., in the control of what happens with the works on location?

OBRIST: For this reason we defined from the very beginning a few essential rules for do it, as wished by the artists. Thus the “do-it-yourself” descriptions were defined as “facsimiles” of artistic works. There is also no signature of the artist. In addition the museum is required at the end of the exhibition to destroy the operational instructions carried out. The work-facsimile may not serve as a continuous exhibition piece or fetish, but is given after the exhibition back to the context from which it came: the photos by Boltanski are given to the pupils, the candies by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, moreover, have disappeared or were eaten, etc. The entirety is therefore dissolved and takes on no trade value. The third rule is that the artist receives documentation of all facsimiles and executions of his “do-it-yourself” description in its various realizations. Mike Kelley perchance decided to make a CD from the sound recordings, which resulted from his operational instruction to record extraterrestrial noises. Other artists will make other works from this. Thus a gigantic documentation of realized do it facsimiles in the most varied cultural contexts is now growing. A further rule at the beginning was that whoever realized do it had in each case to realize all operational instructions, all artistic works. We have now changed that. I find it interesting that now a museum can select, e.g., 12 from the 24 artists of the American version of do it. As a result, other exhibitions and group constellations will arise each time. The difference among the individual realizations is becoming ever greater. There are not only other interpretations of the operational instructions but also other combinations. The virus mutates.

FLECK: How many realizations of this original version of do it have there been so far in museums?

OBRIST: The first realization of do it took place in the Ritter Kunsthalle in Klagenfurt, Austria. Then came Scotland (CCA, Glasgow), Nantes (Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain des Pays de Loire), Paris (Song Lines), and recently Iceland at the Munizipalmuseum of Reykjavik. In summer 1996 museums in Finland, Australia, Switzerland, Thailand, and Sweden are on the program. It is slowly accelerating, like a sort of chain reaction.

FLECK: Personally I found it interesting that at Nantes do it presented in a museum a current, highly informed, and international group exhibition on current art, but neither the artists nor you as exhibition leader traveled to it. The institution realizes the works themselves as facsimiles of the artists’ “do-it-yourself” descriptions, and thus the exhibited works are not originals. That is a courageous stride for the institution. It throws into question its normal functioning and enters a new relationship to the client, to the visitor. In Nantes and also in Reykjavik the discussions unleashed by do it were enormous.

OBRIST: do it provokes reflection on artistic practice and the notion of the original. An exclusionary notion of the original still reigns, despite conceptual art in the ’60s, Marcel Duchamp[‘s] and Joseph Beuys’s expanded art concept. With Duchamp’s, by the way, there were two notions of the readymade: the static and the fluid. The art industry accepted above all the static. The readymade was taken into the museum and Duchamp’s readymades are today antiques, fetishes with enormous transport and insurance costs. Indeed, Duchamp had a second readymade notion, which I respect much more. It deals with the operational instructions that appear in Duchamp’s diverse notes. For example, one takes the dictionary and crosses out all that deserves to be crossed out. Today we can do that here. We buy a dictionary and cross out all words which please or displease us, i.e., everything that deserves to be crossed out from the dictionary. This “do-it-yourself” work can be permanently realized through time. The work of art thus remains always fresh, like the salads by Giovanni Anselmo.

FLECK: Through sending the original version of do it to innumerable museums in the whole world two years ago, the project took on a double status. For one, there were realizations in the form of exhibitions. For another, however, the operational instructions lie in the museums’ archives, and the exhibition as such is an archival possession.

OBRIST: It is a potential and can again be exhibited years later. The idea from the start was that through the operational instruction and the independent realization on location, with which the usual transport problems disappear, the exhibition is no longer tied to the location.

FLECK: How is the current American version of do it different from the original version of 1994?

OBRIST: do it is integrated and expanded in the American version. In additional to the twelve mentioned, there are operational instructions from Michelangelo Pistoletto, who was very taken with this form in the ’70s, or from Allan Kaprow, who since the ’60s has written operational instructions for Happenings, as, e.g., how to transport dust from one room to the next, an almost invisible thing. Douglas Gordon, by contrast, is a younger artist who took up the ’60s vocabulary in the ’90s in the sense of repetition, but also of difference.

FLECK: Is the do it idea—despite the possibility of a cheap worldwide diffusion—not also a typically European or American art form merely by virtue of the technology it employs and the artists’ degree of reflection in the tradition of conceptual art?

OBRIST: It is therefore important that it remains fluid. For the ICI version, I had the feeling do it must become more open. Also the conditions often invert themselves. Kcho, a Cuban artist who has now moved to New York, had long worked in Cuba on his operational instruction, because he simply could not realize these things there, and could not leave the country. Thus he sent an operational instruction as [a] “do-it-yourself” primer to South Korea and won the Seoul Biennale Prize with it. Besides him the following are also represented in the new version of do it: Pepón Osorio, a Puerto Rican artist, who has written operational instructions for a house altar; Jason Rhoades from Los Angeles, for whom the kit idea, the “to kit” and the “do-it-yourself” culture with tools, etc., play a big role; Angela Bulloch, Jimmie Durham, and Andreas Slominski, as well as some artists who have contributed decisively to the anthology of operational instructions since the ’60s: Yoko Ono, Dan Graham, and Lawrence Weiner. Weiner’s formula, “1. The artists may construct the piece. 2. The piece may be fabricated. 3. The piece need not be built. Each being equal and consistent with the intent of the artist, the decision as to condition rests with the receiver upon the occasion of receivership,” is a milestone in the history of the operational instruction. The idea of “virtualization,” defined by Weiner around 1968, plays a big role for younger artists of the ’90s.

FLECK: The American version of do it corresponds to the original version in so far as artists of the most diverse ages, who are usually considered to belong to the most different epochs, still come together.

OBRIST: From the very beginning it was important that do it extends beyond generations and that it shows no trend, but rather verifies that the operational instruction builds an intact redline throughout the 20th century. That began with Duchamp’s “readymade malheureux” from 1919. He told his sister by telegraph from Argentina what she should do on the balcony: “do it,” and she realized this “readymade malheureux” on her own. A little later Moholy-Nagy appeared with the first work in art history to be realized over the telephone. John Cage followed with the “Open Score,” which gave the executor unsuspected freedoms. The operational instruction also played a big role for Guy Debord and the Paris Situationists, who again and again alienated “How to do it” comics. Also, their “détournement” notion goes back to the operational instruction. Then there was, of course, the entire “do it” idea in Fluxus in the ’60s. Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit book of 1964 consists entirely of operational instructions. Alison Knowles with her Event Scores was among the “do it” pioneers: “make a salad”—each who carried out the salad realized a version, an interpretation, a facsimile of the artwork. Ilya Kabakov, like Boltanski, was concerned with the score idea. For each exhibition the artist worked out a thick book with all details of the installation, and sometime these scores can again be performed. It has to do with an idea of performing again, a “re-play.” That is also a link into the ’90s, when artists like Maria Eichhorn, Fabrice Hybert, Erwin Wurm, or Rirkrit Tiravanija again take on the idea of the operational instruction, as was found with Fluxus. It is interesting how Tiravanija, for example, again took up the idea of cooking from Alison Knowles, although with an entirely different audience.

FLECK: Are scientists also represented in the American do it version?

OBRIST: The English scientist Rupert Sheldrake has for a long time proclaimed a sort of “do-it-yourself science,” as was by the way common in the 19th century. Scientists had contact with hundreds of hobby researchers and their science was a result of communication with passionate amateurs. Today science, like art, is completely removed from that, leading to a heroic isolation. In this respect it is an important concern of do it to overcome this isolation. Thus the artist Rosemarie Trockel invited the author Shere Hite, who since the Hite Report in the ’60s has worked with a sort of “do-it-yourself” science in the area of sexual behavior. The do it idea appears, as I said, in all contexts, in poetry, science, literature, and music.

FLECK: There is another project, Home do it and do it (TV). Can you tell us more?

OBRIST: That grew out of the first experiences with do it. When I flew back to London from Glasgow and the plane circled for 40 minutes over the suburbs of London, I thought that an album, for example, could potentially be playing in each of these suburban homes. Someone turned on the radio and someone else bought the album. It does not have to do with a universal demand that everyone in the world should have art. However, it has to do with the potential of a thing that is not bound to too narrow borders, that is with a hypothetical distribution. Thus arose the idea of Home do it as an album, which one can put on at home. It concerns a book for which artists conceived “do-it-yourself” operational instructions for home use. Up to now there are approximately 120 contributions from all over the world, from philosophers, scientists, poets, and musicians as well. In Japan there are these instruction books for things, which can be made at home. In American poetry of the ’50s there were operational instructions, “how-to-do things” or “how-to-do thoughts.” They exist also in political and other kinds of activism, where it constantly has to do with operational instructions, because these do not limit doing simply to a location but rather unleash a greater potential for action. The TV version arose with the museum-in-progress in Vienna and consists of small television clips, which the artists conceive themselves: operational instructions of approximately three minutes for “do-it-yourself” artworks for domestic use. The clips are broadcast in various television stations as an exhibition that takes place on TV. Thus the operational instructions come directly to the people and are no longer bound to an exhibition type.

FLECK:  Occasionally do it is seen as a polemic against the classic art exhibition. Is it to be understood in this way?

OBRIST: Authors know that publishers fear they would sell fewer books if they gave their texts to the Internet. In reality it is exactly the opposite. When texts are [o]n the Internet there is a run on the books. The book as fleeting object becomes known again though the Internet. In a certain sense the effect of do it could be similar. If one sees many facsimiles, one becomes truly conscious of the difference with respect to a work, which an artist conceives and constructs on location. Of course, the interesting thing about an exhibition is when it suspends rules and taboos. Thus do it is also seen as a breach of taboos, whereby the interest in operational instructions, which was implicit in the art of the last decades, becomes explicit. It is, however, not the case that do it wants to replace museums and galleries, the original, or whatever. do it is not a field maneuver against the original. I always say, “Not only this but also that,” rather than “neither nor” and “or.” It has to do with opening complementary paths, new possibilities and contexts, which would otherwise remain inaccessible.

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Posted on May 10, 2013

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CELEBRATE DO IT

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CELEBRATE DO IT

Posted on May 11, 2013

See the photos here.

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CELEBRATE DO IT

Posted on June 7, 2013

Derry Journal

Published on 04/06/2013 10:39

Curatorial Symposium at CCA Derry~Londonderry

“We are delighted to see such an outstanding group of participants from the region connect with their international peers and exceptional instructors in what promises to be the start of a number of long-term international conversations and collaborations,” said Aileen Burns, co-director of CCA.

“The experience has been completely overwhelming, in the best possible way,” said Belfast-based participant Eoin Dara who, along with Kim McAleese, runs Satis House gallery in Belfast.

“This Curatorial Intensive has been a great success,” Aileen Burns said, “and building on the intimate and intensive conversations about curating we were involved in this week, next year will see this dialogue opened up to a much larger audience when CCA will host the International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art conference. This conference, in spring 2014, will be an unprecedented opportunity for local artists and curators to gain exposure,” the CCA co-director added.

Read the full article here.

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Posted on June 14, 2013

do it has launched.

See a video from tranzit of Jerome Bel: Shirtology instruction by Tamara Zsófia Vadas. And a promotional video of all things do it from MU artspace.

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http://galleristny.com/2013/06/pharell-williams-wrote-a-pretty-cool-wish-on-yoko-onos-wish-tree/

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CELEBRATE DO IT

Posted on June 21, 2013

Inside the Bronx Museum of the Arts’ ‘State of Mind’ exhibit
By Yanan Wang

After enduring rain these past few weeks, New Yorkers longing for some West Coast-style sun need look no further than the Bronx Museum of the Arts. The museum’s new exhibition “State of Mind: California Art circa 1970” features conceptual works from artists influenced by the Golden State.  The exhibit, which opens Sunday, displays 150 works across a variety of media, including pieces by New York-based artists Martha Rosler, David Hammons and William Wegman that were created in California.

Read the rest of the article here

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State of Mind: New California Art circa 1970 at the Bronx Museum

Posted on June 22, 2013

Read the New York Times talk about State of Mind here.

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Posted on June 24, 2013

Watch the video here.

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CELEBRATE DO IT

Posted on June 27, 2013

Review the photos here.

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CELEBRATE DO IT

Posted on July 3, 2013

Read recent articles on do it: the compendium

Read the article from The Economist here.

Read the article from ART News here.

Read the article from Dwell Magazine here.

Read the article from Das Magazin here.

Read the Article from the Art Newspaper here.

Read the article from Eyes In here.

Read the articles from Brainpickings here and here.

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Posted on July 4, 2013

Read recent articles on do it 20 13: From The Guardian here, here and here.

From Artsy.

From The Economist.

From Art Lyst.

From Art Daily.

And from ART News.

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do it 2013 at Manchester Art Gallery

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ART TERRITORY THE GUARDIAN THE WHITE REVIEW ARTSY

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Posted on July 12, 2013

West Coast Art (Not Laid-Back)
A California ‘State of Mind,’ Circa 1970, at Bronx Museum
by Holland Cotter

If you’re even just a little weary of the well-made, no-risk, eye-on-fashion fare in so many Manhattan summer group shows, consider a trip to the Bronx Museum of the Arts, where the exhibition “State of Mind: New California Art Circa 1970” has breezed in from the West Coast, bringing with it a tonic of gawky rawness and moral purpose.

California in the 1970s was one of the weirder spots on the planet, home to radical strains of politics on both the right and left. It was a hub of the nation’s defense industry and a feeder for the Vietnam War, to which disproportionate numbers of Latinos and blacks were consigned. Teachers at the state’s universities were required to take loyalty oaths. Dissidents and deviants of various stripes were under the gun.

To read the rest of the article, click here.

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State of Mind: New California Art circa 1970 at the Bronx Museum

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Circa 1970: Pacific Standard Time at the Bronx Museum
by Gillian Young

Relative to the artistic movements of the 1960s and 1980s, California art of the ‘70s remains, historically speaking, uncharted terrain. The diverse practices pioneered by West Coast artists were often inextricable from countercultural lifestyles and many may well be resistant to institutional representation. Endeavoring to map these experiments in art and life, “State of Mind: New California Art circa 1970,” on view at the Bronx Museum of the Arts (through Sept. 8), presents the work of familiar figures such as John Baldessari and Paul McCarthy alongside lesser-known artists like Lowell Darling and Barbara T. Smith. A range of more obscure projects illuminates a broader context for Californian artists who have since risen to prominence, such as McCarthy, whose work is currently on view at the Park Avenue Armory and other venues in New York.

Read the rest of the article here.

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State of Mind: New California Art circa 1970 at the Bronx Museum

Posted on July 19, 2013

Amalia Pica, Throw a Party, 2012. Courtesy the artist.

ICI invites you to throw a party – do it style!  Show us your interpretation of Amalia Pica’s Throw a Party and win your very own copies of Hans Ulrich Obrist’s do it: the compendium! Share your party photos and videos with us on the do it Facebook page or on Twitter and Instagram by mentioning @doit_INTL and using hashtag #doit.  We will pick our lucky winner on August 10, 2013, so just do it and get partying!

PARTY PHOTOS

Gund Gallery MU Art Space

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do it: social media

Posted on September 6, 2013

Bronx Museum of the Arts: ‘State of Mind: New California Art Circa 1970’

By Holland Cotter

Last Chance: California in the 1960s and ’70s was one of the weirder places on the planet, home to radical strains of both right- and left-wing politics, a hub of the national defense industry and a breeding ground for alternative cultures from Beat to hippie. It also produced its own strain of Conceptualism, the international art style that valued ideas and actions over things. This Bronx Museum show gives a vivid sense of the West Coast version, with its gawky rawness, sense of moral purpose, humor, and dovetailing of braininess and zaniness. Read the rest of the article here

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State of Mind: New California Art circa 1970 at the Bronx Museum

Posted on September 9, 2013

Martha Wilson
Retrospective Traces Evolution of Artistic Self-Experiments
by Brian Staker

In our celebrity-obsessed culture, artists are often as much absorbed with creating a persona for themselves as with creating a body of work. The first contemporary artist to really make his persona the focus of his work was Andy Warhol; then performance artists in the 1970s and 1980s started using the medium for social and political commentary.

For four decades, Martha Wilson has been at the forefront of this movement, with her work in live performance, video and photo-text juxtapositions in the late 1970s collaborating with DISBAND—“the all-girl band of artists who couldn’t play any instruments,” as she puts it—and founding the nonprofit art space Franklin Furnace in Brooklyn. The traveling exhibition Martha Wilson: Staging the Self at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts traces the development of her work and herself as an artist.

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Martha Wilson at UMFA