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mthvn · 7 years ago

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Truth and simulacrum: whose timeline is it? — Maja Bogojević on Possessed

Factuality itself depends for its continued existence upon the existence of the nontotalitarian world (Hannah Arendt)

Possessed, the latest film made by Metahaven—the collective name of artists and designers Vinca Kruk and Daniel van der Velden—in collaboration with documentary filmmaker Rob Schröder, takes their radical aesthetics and progressive politics a step further from their previous film The Sprawl: Propaganda about Propaganda. Their new hybrid artwork revisits the themes of contradictions and paradoxes of multiple realities, geopolitical landscapes, new technologies, power discourse and ensuing alienation in the age of “post-truth.” Similarly to The Sprawl, this film is not easy to categorise, as it explores the notions of consumer discourse, privacy, secrecy, transparency, surveillance, veiling and unveiling, the impact of social media networks and anarchic utopianism of the internet architecture on our individual and collective lives. Through a documented collage, blending a series of drawings, photographs, animated graphics, documentary footage and fictional reconstruction, it refers to various socio-historical narratives and their processes of subordination, power and inequality, commented upon by a single but multi-fold voice-over in a non-linear narrative, which breaks and fragments in order to not only reflect the fragmentation of multi-layered realities we live in, but also to challenge them.

Possessed begins with the images of burning smart phones, war-devastated cities and landscapes, and a water spring flowing over large dark stones, overlapping with the opening narrated question:

“Would you believe?”

These first spoken words trigger a series of questions relating to the search not of the ultimate truth, but of potential truths amidst fakeness and a fixed set of beliefs regardless of the information overload diversity. The answer is, inevitably, “no”.

But the answer to the question “Would you believe in angels?” is, in the age of cynicism and hypocrisy, a surprising “yes”. This abruptly shifts the initial dystopian tone, foreshadowing the underlying final humanistic message of the film, although “there is no hope” (“what for?”) and there is no answer to the question “would you love?”, followed by the sound of a human breathing next to a smartphone. In this prologue, before the opening credits unfold, Possessed suggests in medias res that the centre of the human universe is a smartphone. The next image shows more clearly a girl lying on a bare mattressed bed, in a ruined house devoid of any furniture, with the presence of only one object—a smartphone. She greets the viewers with the words—both vocal and written—“welcome to the modern age”, followed by:

“You may think that this is a house. But there is no house. You may think that this is a girl. But there is no girl. Don’t ask me who I am.”

Examining the complex mutual relationship between the socio-political context and the work of art which documents the historic period it emerged in, the words are intercut with film negatives of houses, a helicopter, the ‘invisible’ humans (“you never noticed me, I wouldn’t be missed”), a footage of Pope Francis, all accompanied with smartphone selfies made with a raised arm in front of the masses of people and monuments.

“When I was young, I was quiet, I didn’t talk with the others, we never talk, we message… All tenderness is radical in a broken world”… “I want to know, what is a devil today? Do you want to hear the truth? Let the suffering speak. I am a breathing fragment of nothingness. Who lives or dies to care for me.”

This verbal segment is intercut with the images of the cross and a drawing of a hand collaged with the real human arm holding a smartphone, as the new disease to be cured of (by exorcism) seems to be—the reality. The raised arm holding a smartphone becomes the pervasive film symbol—it is present in Vatican, over the heads of a faceless mass, in restaurants, in shopping centres, in our empty homes, in the streets, it is everywhere—questioning the beliefs of people. Religion becomes a kind of superstition, because no matter what people ‘know’ in the information age, they still interpret the world and the reality according to their pre-existing fixed set of beliefs.

As Hannah Arendt puts it (in The origins of totalitarianism): “The true goal of totalitarian propaganda is not persuasion, but organization of the polity. ... What convinces masses are not facts, and not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system of which they are presumably part of”.

Reconstructing artefacts of the recent and not-so-distant past, the film combines images, videos, TV, satellite/drone footage and an original narration into a seemingly incoherent and fragmented filmic reality, with many (meta)textual/discourse references, including videos of: Pope Francis in Rome, ruined Vukovar, Cologne, Aleppo, US soldiers’ flash mob dance in Afghanistan, Dubai fire and sandstorms, hurricane Katrina, migrant lines in Slovenia, queues of people in urban centres, glacier bridge collapse, statue of Liberty etc. Images of war-torn countries show demolished buildings, torn books, deserted homes with personal belongings left behind, posters hanging on the walls, newspapers, religious symbols etc.

The multiplication of simultaneously run narratives and realities and fragmentation of both the individual and the collective are reflected in the film along the axis of mainstream media/state/corporate structures vs. people/media users/consumers, conveying the notion that our agency in the information process is taking less and less responsibility. The more fake news we are served, the more the ‘truth’ becomes important: the mainstream media (and political leaders) have never been more obsessed with it, insisting in their marketing slots that they are all “telling the truth”, echoing Hannah Arendt’s visionary words: “Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow.”

And:

“The danger is not actual despotic control but fragmentation—that is, a people increasingly less capable of forming a common purpose and carrying it out. Fragmentation arises when people come to see themselves more and more atomistically, otherwise put, as less and less bound to their fellow citizens in common projects and allegiances.” (The origins of totalitarianism)

But because of the new media interface, there is a new level of complex fragmentation along the axes privacy/secrecy/transparency/surveillance and control/enslavement, causing a ‘mental implosion’, in Baudrillard’s terms—“simulacrum has been brought to perfection in the 21st century thanks to media interface.” The collaged images of face recognition software, smart phone pervasiveness, the statue of Liberty, war-devastated buildings, torn books, “god land” with a Vodafone tower in the background suggest that mainstream media and dominant consumer discourses tailor their surveillance methods according to the selling/consuming axis or what they perceive as fit for their consumers’ needs. What the overload of information has brought is the illusory display of capitalist consumers’ choices (various kinds of coffee, carrot cakes, brownies, smoothies), but there are no nuances in interpretation of cultural texts, and this precisely helps to sustain the capitalist order. As corporate profit dictates consumers’ privacy, Baudrillard’s “mental involution” (a phone is melting like a brain could be melting) is bound to materialise, leading to the loss of the autonomy of the agency, the collapse of subjectivity. The imaginary enemy is ‘identified’, the crisis is created, and innocents die as a result.

“The truth?”, the narrator asks and answers: “Let the suffering speak”.

Metahaven’s concept of black transparency is reminiscent of Baudrillard’s concept of simulacrum “Simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth, but the truth conceals that it’s not there. Simulacrum is true.” One fact can arise from many models simultaneously and this anticipation and confusion between the fact and its model leaves space for all possible interpretations, even the most contradictory ones. This is how the politically anomalous - what was regarded as political aberration – can become normalcy.

Hypocrisy, carnage of profile, masked identities, faceless multitudes…

“I grew up in a city of great wealth and beauty” – these words, as it is made clear by subsequent images, allude to the baroque town of Vukovar, destroyed in the Yugoslav war - the first majorly destroyed European town in a battle since World War 2. A sign reads “18. 11. 1991 - Vukovar, sjecate se?” (“do you remember?”), with a series of images of a ghost town, with decaying, deserted streets, demolished buildings and houses, dead bodies, streams of survivors fleeing… reminiscent of today’s devastated Syria. The authenticity of such footage images evokes the importance of the responsibility of the human race in the face of war crimes and atrocities committed by humans.

Possessed, therefore, wants to remind of and challenge human indifference. The shots show rooms empty of furniture but full of books and papers from the period of the existence of Yugoslavia (which was also the leader of the non-aligned movement of the so-called third-world countries): Marxism, Kumrovecki zapisi, Danas: Jugoslavija, samoupravljanje, svijet, Class struggle and socialist revolution etc. These and images of “red” books bargains, Mao posters, Russian symbols, accompanied by the sound of a Croatian traditional song (“Spavaj spavaj diticu”, to make a clear reference to the war in Croatia), are a testimony to the recent European past, as well as a statement against general amnesia that has marked both post-industrial and post-communist societies.

But, “the war is always somewhere else”. The photo of a passport is aligned next to the photos of war tanks, weapons and military airplanes. Footage shows US soldiers rejoicing and dancing to the sampled “music” of gunshot sounds in Afghanistan.

The ‘others’ imply that their bodies are more disposable and mortal, and the pain of ‘others; seems to be peripheral to the human masses, in spite of the power of photography and media. We have face recognition software, but what and how much of human suffering do we recognize in a photo/image? We get an easy automated response to our (consumer tailored) needs (Siri, hello?), but show no reactions to others. We appear to have google maps that locate everything, but there seem to be no ‘maps for human suffering’. “As one can become habituated to horror in real life, one can become habituated to the horror of certain images,” states Susan Sontag in Regarding the pain of others.

Statements such as “we obey a fictional eye” and “our faces were attuned to a watchful eye—to adjust to being seen and shared” question and interpellate the capacity of reason and observation, even ‘common sense’ of the uniform masses, as well as the authority of god.

Indifference ‘to the pain of others’ is underscored by the repeated images of selfies and posing smilingly for selfies with a stick – a prolonged arm for the phone, restaurant images of food and drinks and a supply of a crane for “the ultimate selfie” in order to share the ultimate happiness with the world. Thus, we have cranes for photos to be shared on social media and drones for more arrogant photos and bombs. In parallel realities, innocent people die and disappear in wars, but we insist on more of our presence around the globe, offering our joy to the world.

But is this happiness fake or real? If it is real, how real is it? Do we know we are happy or do we act by orders? “Smile, be happy.” The collapse of the subject in post-modern age of neo-totalitarianism, post-truth and post-Trump?

In The origins of totalitarianism, Arendt stated decades ago: “In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. ... Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness”.

As the mutations of the image follow the shifts of historical narratives, so the collapse of the subject as well as networks seems to be imminent. A pamphlet-like verbal segment declares: “Delete your own self, the networks collapse… the screen is crushed, instagram and facebook collapse”, raising a new set of questions: have smartphones become more clever than our brains? Do we base our knowledge on networks? Will our subjectivity collapse with the collapse of networks? Will our arm break together with the stick for selfies?

“The arrogance of the camera. This helicopter won’t come to the rescue. It will patiently film my killing”.

These words echo Susan Sontag’s statement that “the shock can become familiar: the ultra-familiar, ultra-celebrated image—of an agony, of ruin—is an unavoidable feature of our camera-mediated knowledge of war”. By analogy, they also mirror Glauber Rocha’s famous words that “the camera is a lie” or Jean-Luc Godard’s that “film is a reflection of the reality or the reality of reflection?”

The irony and powerlessness of the proliferation of narratives and realities can be demonstrated further by another example (not shown in the film): the phenomenon of Ron Haviv’s photo taken during the Bosnian war in March 1992, and used by Jean-Luc Godard in his video masterpiece Je vous salue, Sarajevo (1993), which pictures the Serbian soldier Srdjan Golubovic treading over a Bosnian female victim’s head; Srdjan Golubovic later became a famous DJ Max performing in various night clubs in Serbia, until he was arrested in 2012 not as a war criminal, but for possession of drugs.

“Good citizen, happy citizen, legal citizen, undocumented person, see-through person… I travelled here from far… I tried to forget what happened to me before I fled. No one believes me. I have to be the evidence. I’m my own document”

This verbal narrative is intercut with the images of identity papers shown at borders, finger print scan check at airports, and “Ausländer” signs & grafitti, showing that, in spite of techno advances in industrial capitalism that might signal the arrival of a cyborg citizenship, the Western context, actually, reflects the return to hierarchy of white capitalist patriarchy, struggling with transculturality (which is one of the most significant influences of late post-modernity in Europe) and becoming more homogenous, closed and insecure at a time of increasing fascism and racism.

“You were quiet, you never talked”. “I” becomes “you” as an older “I” (the new generation) speaks to “you” in the future “that you never saw coming”.

“Will it be enough to love yourself?”

Contradictions and paradoxes of technology suggest that human bodies have become a source of maximum exploitation in the visual age: is it the end of the image, the end of knowledge, of imagination? Is the future foreseeable based on facebook, instagram and twitter? New forms of expression and representation are needed to reflect the changing and challenged subjectivity in the process of becoming autonomous agents of knowledge.

As the film title suggests, we are all ‘possessed’ by multiple master narratives: by technological advances, corporate structures, general amnesia, by the collapsed subject, beliefs that border on superstition, by our “shared” need to broadcast our lives to the world, selfies, fake smiles, illusory happiness (“the device did one thing really well – it made us always smile”), fake choices, fake needs created by fake consumerist capitalist discourse, by our own voyeurism and exhibitionism, by insanity and monstrosity of political leaders, powerful consumerist discourse, by our own powerlessness and indifference, failure to take responsibility, by the absence of empathy and love (“love yourself”), possessed by our own negligence to use our ‘cultural mirror’ in the midst of the collapse of the notions of self, knowledge and truth. We have timelines, but no time in the age of multiplication of signifiers and the collapse of the signifieds.

“If I had all faith, but have no love, I am nothing. Love is patient and kind, it doesn’t envy or boast, it’s not arrogant or rude… it rejoices with the truth.”

The acknowledgement of the ‘fact’ that we forgot how to love adds a new ontological dimension to Metahaven’s visual research, a more hopeful one than most current sci-fi dystopian narratives, as the present reality we live in, not the imaginary future, is already dystopian. In other words, the imaginary of the social and technological can be equally democratising and constraining, but if approached responsibly, it will rather be the former.

By analogy to Alain Badiou’s Eloge de l’amour (2009), this new neither/nor space, which is not free of imperfections, but is free of estranging social confines and prohibitions, can work as an “angel of love”, a new imaginary space for a human encounter that may never occur, but could create a new unrestrained space of love and empathy.

Such an ending, in spite of the detached, almost robotic youthful voice-over, may offer a much needed disalienating, humanistic message, simultaneously subversive and self-authenticating, as the technological and hyper-rational advancements don’t necessarily imply human progress - to paraphrase Hemingway’s words: the invention of an airplane doesn’t mean that we move faster than a horse. An alternative to this ending is the return to pre-social, pre-linguistic, pre-discursive and – pre-technological, as the final images show warehouses in ruins, desolate lands and several masked women, wearing scarves to hide faces (with emojis, stickers & comic strip captions, designed by Metahaven), whispering inarticulately with their black shadows and holding big stones instead of smartphones.

Finally, in a call to challenge the structure of subjectivity, socio-political relations and the social imaginary that supports it, Possessed transforms the current debate of the binary opposition truth/facts and lies into questions of interpretation and epistemology, contextualising them, further, to not only how something is interpreted but who it is interpreted by (are we ‘preaching’ only to the converted?), who are the agents of knowledge and how newly gained knowledge serves to justify the existing beliefs of the masses. In other words, whose timeline is it?

This is, of course, only one of possible interpretations of the multilayered filmic reality.•

Maja Bogojević (PhD) is a freelance film theorist/critic, founder and editor-in-chief of the first Montenegrin film magazine, Camera Lucida, founder and President of the Fipresci section of Montenegro, and a member of FEDEORA and UPF. She has been, until recently,_ _film theory professor and Dean of Faculty of Visual Arts at Mediteran University Podgorica, and, previously, the Dean of Faculty of Arts at the University of Donja Gorica.

#majabogojevic #possessed #metahaven #robschröder

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listerious · 4 years ago

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Top 15 Interesting St. Stephen's Cathedral Facts

One of the most fascinating Gothic Cathedrals in the world can be found in the historical heart of the capital of Austria, Vienna. In this post, you'll discover the ultimate list of interesting facts about St. Stephen's Cathedral, an amazing church with a remarkable history commonly known as the Stephansdom.

1. The original church was built on an Ancient Roman cemetery

During the reign of Roman Emperor Augustus, in the year 15 B.C., the Romans built a fortified structure to protect a military camp that they had built on the site where the Austrian capital of Vienna is located now. They referred to the city they had founded as "Vindobona," which translates to "fair village, white settlement," and which is probably how modern-day Vienna got its name. It's only during the year 2000 that ancient graves were discovered about 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) below the surface. This means that the cathedral was built on the remains of an ancient Roman cemetery.

View of the church in Vienna / Pixabay

2. The Romanesque towers were completed in the mid-13th century

The original church on the site was built in the 12th century in the Romanesque architectural style. It was founded in the year 1137 and the initial construction phase was completed in 1147, which is the year the church was dedicated to Saint Stephen. This was an important event as it was the moment that Conrad III of Germany and his gang were getting ready to start their Second Crusade (1147-1150). The first church on the site was completed in the year 1160 and subsequently expanded between 1230 and 1245. This is when the 2 magnificent Romanesque towers we can still see today were completed. These towers stand 65 meters (213 feet) tall and are commonly referred to as the "Heidentürme," a reference to the fact that they were built on top of the Roman fortification. "Heiden" translates to "Pagans," so "Pagan Towers."

The Romanesque towers / Bwag / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0

3. The second church here dates back to the 13th century as well

Even though the two Romanesque towers were completed in 1245, the structure around them doesn't date back to this period. That's because a great fire destroyed much of the structure in 1258, except for these two towers. The towers were simply incorporated into an even bigger structure which was completed and dedicated shortly after on April 23, 1263. One of the most remarkable facts about St. Stephen's Cathedral is that this dedication in the 13th century is still commemorated every year. On this day, the big bells inside the tower ring for 3 minutes straight.

Detail of the old Romanesque part of the cathedral / Pixabay

4. The Gothic church we see today was finally completed in 1511

It didn't take long before another expansion phase was started, this time in the Gothic architectural style. In the early 14th century, King Albert I commissioned the Gothic choir which consists of 3 naves. This work was completed between 1304 and 1340 and dedicated by Albert's son, Albert II. This wasn't enough because Albert I's grandson, Rudolph IV or "Rudolph the Founder," started the construction of the westward Gothic extension of the church. The overall design of the church we see today with all its features was completed in 1511, the year that construction on the cathedral was halted altogether.

View of the Gothic additions to the cathedral / Pixabay

5. The main spire reaches the height of a modern-day skyscraper

During the final expansion phase, the church was seriously enlarged. It has a total length of 107 meters (351 feet) and a width of 70 meters (230 feet). The most prominent feature of this fascinating cathedral is the southern tower of which the spire reaches a height of 136.7 meters (448 feet). This tower was completed in 1433 and its height is the equivalent of an amazing skyscraper which turns it into the most dominant building in the area.

Drawing of the cathedral in 1847 / Wiki Commons

6. The north tower was intended to resemble its taller brother

The church could have been even more imposing if the original plan was completed. This would have turned the north tower into the twin brother of the south tower, but this plan was eventually abandoned when work seized in 1511. The construction of this tower was started in 1450 and it eventually reached a height of 68.3 meters (224 feet). Because the original plans were abandoned, this tower was topped with a Renaissance roof in the year1568, a common feature during the 16th century.

The north and south tower of the cathedral / Bwag / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0

7. The main door is probably named after a prehistoric animal

The main entrance of the church has its own name as it's referred to as the "Riesentor," or the "Giant's Door." There are a couple of theories as to why it's referred to as such, but it's assumed that it refers to the thighbone of a mammoth, a giant prehistoric animal. This thighbone was excavated during the construction in 1443 and dangled above this door for multiple decades. To both sides of this door we can find the old Romanesque towers from the 13th century.

Detail of the Riesentor / Uoaei1 / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

8. The most amazing feature of the church is its tiled roof

One of the most amazing facts about St. Stephen's Cathedral is that it features a magnificent roof that is covered with a grand total of 230,000 glazed tiles. This roof has a length of 111 meters (364 feet) and the south side depicts the symbol of the Austrian Empire under Habsburg rule, the double-headed eagle. The north side of the north depicts the coat of arms of both the City of Vienna and of the Republic of Austria, a remarkable sight to behold!

Detail of the tiled roof / Bwag / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0

9. It's home to the third-largest swinging bell in Europe

The cathedral's towers are home to a total of 23 ringing bells. The largest of them all is called the "Pummerin," or "Boomer," and is located inside the north tower. The original Pummerin was cast from 208 cannons captured from Muslim invaders during the Second Turkish Siege of Vienna in 1683. This enormous bell weighed 18,161 kilos (40,038 lbs) and it took over 15 minutes of 16 men pulling on a rope for the bell to ring. Unfortunately, this old bell was destroyed in the aftermath of World War II and replaced with the "New Pummerin" in 1951. The new bell weighs even more at 20,130 kilos (44,380 lbs), a weight that makes it the third-heaviest swinging bell in Europe. Only the Petersglocke in Cologne Cathedral (23,500 kg / 51,810 lbs) and the Maria Dolens (22,700 kilos / 50,044 lbs) in Rovereto, Italy, are heavier.

The famous Pummerin / Gryffindor / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0

10. A presumed miracle brought a Hungarian icon to the church

The interior of the cathedral is equally impressive as the exterior and multiple famous works of art can be found here. One of these is the "Pötscher Madonna," a Byzantine-style icon of St. Mary with baby Jesus that It was created in 1676 and brought to the church in the late 17th century from the church of Pócs in Hungary for a particular reason. After Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I received the word of the icon shedding tears on two different occasions, he ordered to be brought to Austria. It arrived in Vienna after a 5-month journey in 1697 but hasn't been seen shedding tears since. It can now be found in the southwest corner of the nave of the cathedral.

Pötscher Madonna / Bwag / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0

11. The 15th-century Altar underwent a costly 20-year restoration

The High Altar is the first one a visitor notices when entering the church. This Baroque altar was completed between 1641 and 1647 and represents the stoning of Saint Stephen, the martyr to whom the church was dedicated. The other famous altar in the church is the so-called Wiener Neustädter Altar, an altar that was commissioned by Emperor Frederick III in the year 1447. This altar wasn't moved to the cathedral until 1885 as it originally decorated the Cistercian Viktring Abbey near Klagenfurt (until 1776) and the Cistercian monastery of St. Bernard of Clairvaux in Wiener Neustadt. On its 100th anniversary in the church in 1985, a restoration program was started which would take 20 years to complete at a cost of 1.3 million Euro. It's only opened during weekends and opened up it depicts events in the life of the Virgin Mary. If closed, it depicts a painting involving 72 saints.

Wiener Neustädter Altar / Bwag / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0

12. A sculptor probably eternalized himself below the pulpit's chair

One of the most remarkable works of art is the stone-cut pulpit which is situated against one of the pillars of the nave of the cathedral. The sculptor is believed to be Dutch-born Nikolaus Gerhaert (1420-1473), but he didn't manage to steal the show so-to-speak. Below the pulpit, we can see the image of a man peaking through a window. This is believed to be a self-portrait of an unidentified sculptor who is referred to as the "Fenstergucker," or "Window Peaker."

Fenstergucker in St. Stephen's Cathedral / Uoaei1 / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

13. Some very famous people are buried inside the church

The Dutch sculptor who created the magnificent pulpit is also responsible for the creation of the tomb of Emperor Frederick III (1415-1493). This work started 25 years before his death and would take 45 years to complete. He's far from the only person who ended up being buried in the church as it's also the final resting place of Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663-1736) and 72 other members of the Habsburg Dynasty of the Austrian Empire whose remains are in the crypt.

Tomb of Emperor Frederick III / Bwag / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0

14. The south tower was completely restored in the 2000s

During the 2000s, the exterior of the church has been restored as the accumulated dirt turned most parts of the stones completely black. The most prominent feature of the church, the south tower, was restored as well. This restoration project, which mostly involved cleaning the limestone) was finally completed in the year 2008 and the south tower pretty much looks brand new again!

The south tower during restoration / Andrew Bossi / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5

15. The interior looks amazing after a renovation as well

One of the most fascinating facts about St. Stephen's Cathedral is that the interior looks amazing as well, especially following a similar renovation project. The cathedral features several chapels which are adorned with statues and amazing works of art. This means that entering the church is a must-do item on your Vienna bucket list!

The amazing interior of the Vienna Cathedral / Bwag / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 Read the full article

#Architecture #Churches #famouschurches #famouschurchesintheworld #FamousGothicCathedrals #LandmarksinVienna #MostfamousGothicCathedrals #StStephensCathedral #StStephensCathedralfacts #Vienna

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architectnews · 4 years ago

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BASTIAN Gallery, Berlin Dahlem

BASTIAN Gallery, Berlin Dahlem Building Project, German Architecture News, Images

BASTIAN Gallery, Berlin Dahlem

16 Oct 2020

BASTIAN Gallery

Architect: John Pawson

Location: Berlin, Germany

The Bastian family will establish a new gallery space in Berlin Dahlem, Taylorstraße. With construction already underway, the opening of the gallery space is scheduled for Autumn 2021.

The BASTIAN Gallery building will be located on the periphery of a park not far from Grunewald and, designed by renowned architect John Pawson, it will respect the proximity and context of the nature park by opting for the typology of a pavilion-like form.

John Pawson is considered one of the most important architects of our time. The international prestige of the British architect is built upon his uncompromising dedication to the principle of clarity. In the reduction of his designs, he strives for simplicity as perfection.

In 2019 Céline, Heiner and Aeneas Bastian donated their gallery building Am Kupfer-graben in Berlin Mitte to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation to help establish a centre for cultural education next to Museum Island. An exhibition space was also opened in the heart of Mayfair in London in 2019; the gallery continues to expand and fortify its international presence.

The new Berlin gallery will continue its exhibition programme of German and American post-war modernism from next autumn. The exhibitions will be accompanied by public lectures, readings, and concerts. The events will be open to the public and free of charge.

Aeneas Bastian comments, The decision to open a new location in Berlin is a sign of confidence in a difficult time due to the consequences of the pandemic and a firm commitment to Berlin as an important place for art.

Established by Céline and Heiner Bastian in 1989, the gallery is directed by Aeneas Bastian since 2016. 20th Century artists, such as Pablo Picasso, Jean Dubuffet, as well as German and American post-war artists including Joseph Beuys, Anselm Kiefer, Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol, form the core of the exhibition program.

The gallery publishes numerous exhibition catalogues, artist monographs and catalogues raisonnés. BASTIAN participates at international art fairs, such as MASTERPIECE London, Taipei Dangdai, Art Cologne and Art Düsseldorf.

From 2007 until 2019 BASTIAN Berlin has shown exhibitions dedicated to modern and contemporary art. At the beginning of 2019, the Bastian family donated their building Am Kupfergraben to the State Museums of Berlin, who have established an art education center there, which was inaugurated on 1 September 2019.

Located in Mayfair, the London gallery opened on 1 February 2019. Since its opening the gallery has presented solo exhibitions of Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly, Joseph Beuys, Dan Flavin and Hans Hofmann.

Architects: John Pawson

Image ® John Pawson Ltd, Courtesy BASTIAN.

BASTIAN Gallery, Berlin Dahlem images / information received 161020

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Location: Axel-Springer-Straße 65, 10888 Berlin, Germany

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New Media Campus for Axel Springer in Berlin Design: BIG + Bollinger+Grohmann + Man Made Land +Topotek 1 + Kardoff Ingenieure + Wenzel+Wenzel image by architects Media Campus Axel Springer Another of the three shortlisted entries for the new Media Campus for AXEL SPRINGER in Berlin, Germany.

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180abroad · 6 years ago

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Day 164: Nuremberg

Today we enjoyed one of our favorite, most eye-opening excursions of the entire trip: Nuremberg.

Like many other Americans, I suspect, I mainly knew about Nuremberg in connection to the Nazis. It was site of the infamous and iconic rally grounds where the Nazis displayed their strength to the world, as well as the site of the post-war Nuremberg trials where many Nazis were sentenced to death.

But that is only one side of that story, and that story is only one of many that Nuremberg has to tell. Nuremberg is a wonderfully picturesque city with a proud and long history stretching back nine centuries before Hitler and his cronies came to power.

As on the previous days, we started at the Radius Tours booth in Munich's central station, where we met our guide--a native of the region and a published historian. He was an absolute delight, and I'm very disappointed that I didn't record his name.

We'd be taking a series of commuter trains from Munich to Nuremberg. There, we would spend the rest of the morning seeing Nuremberg's medieval center, break for lunch, then move out to the fringes of the town where the old Nazi rally grounds still stand.

It was around this point, still standing outside the Radius Tours booth, that one of the other tour members spoke up, asking if our guide spoke German. "I speak excellent German," our guide replied in English. "I've written books in German. But this tour is in English."

"But I understand German better," the man replied.

"I understand, but this tour is still in English."

"What about Spanish? Do you speak Spanish?"

"A little, but this is still an English tour."

"But my English isn't so good."

"Then you should have booked a tour in German or Spanish."

I did feel a little bad for the man and his family, who were not going to enjoy the day they'd been hoping for, but for someone who deals with customers for a living, it was glorious.

The train ride was pleasant. We changed trains in Ingolstadt, which is the headquarters and main production center of Audi. Row upon row of side tracks were loaded with Audis ready for distribution, including some of my dad's favorite sports car--the Audi R8.

And as we moved out of the foothills and into the plains, we started to see the massive fields of hops that feed Bavaria's breweries. I'd never seen hops fields before. The towering rows of trellised V-shaped vines are fascinatingly unique.

One of the first things we learned was that although Nuremberg is currently part of the German state of Bavaria, it is culturally part of a distinct region called Franconia. For most of their history, Nuremberg and Franconia were independent entities within the Holy Roman Empire. Nuremberg was far wealthier and more politically important than Munich, which was considered an agrarian backwater by the rest of the empire.

It was only when the empire fell to Napoleon at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries that Franconia was given to the newly elevated kingdom of Bavaria as a reward for siding with the winning team. Resentment--of a harmless, half-joking sort, at least--still runs deep in the veins of many Franconians. Our guide was himself a born Franconian, and he proudly boasted that not only do Franconians make better beer than Bavarians, they make the best wine and schnapps in the world.

We can't necessarily agree about the beer, though the two glasses we tried were still quite good. Nor can we speak to the schnapps. But we can certainly confirm that Franconian wine is excellent. It's sadly almost impossible to find back home in the States, but it is instantly recognizable by its trademark teardrop bottle shape, known in German as the Bocksbeutel.

Stepping out of Nuremberg's central station, we were immediately presented with the city's impressive medieval walls.

We learned that Nuremberg started as something of a royal truck stop for the emperor whenever he traveled between the imperial cities of Frankfurt and Prague. The emperors were lavishly welcomed whenever they stayed in the city, and in return, Nuremberg was eventually given the status of a free imperial city.

Essentially, this meant that the city received the right to appoint its own rulers and control its own tax funds. Whereas the taxes of ordinary cities were largely siphoned away to pay for the wars and palaces of the regional lord, free cities could reinvest their taxes to improve infrastructure and promote commerce. Nuremberg took full advantage of its promotion, and before long it was second only to Cologne as the largest and wealthiest city in the entire empire.

And that is why the walls of Nuremberg were so important. Although Nuremberg and its neighbors were all part of the Holy Roman Empire, it didn’t stop them from the occasional bout of pillaging and inter-state warfare.

Our guide pointed out how each of the block was carefully carved to create an embossed dome in its center. In theory, this would have helped to deflect cannonballs when the city was under siege.

We learned that Nuremberg was even more destroyed by Allied bombing during WWII than Munich. The city was rated 95% destroyed after the war, and almost everything including the walls had to be rebuilt. The devastation was so complete that some people wanted to give up and simply repave the land with a brand new modern city.

Thankfully, that didn’t happen.

One of the rebuilt structures is the Mauthalle, another essential element of Nuremberg's history. Originally built around 1500, it was used to store grain. It was big enough to hold a lot of grain, and Nuremberg was wealthy enough to buy a lot of grain to hold in it. And it was this grain that--along with the city's heavy defensive walls--allowed Nuremberg to withstand prolonged sieges.

Among the few structures that weren't destroyed were the bell towers of Nuremberg Cathedral, which were left standing to serve as navigation aids for Allied bombers. The rest of the cathedral was wrecked, however, and if you look closely you can see the line where the new walls rise up from the stumps of the originals.

Unlike Munich and the rest of non-Franconian Bavaria, almost all the churches in Nuremberg are Protestant. According to our guide, the Franconians converted not out of religious conviction but rather out of spite for Bavaria. Unlike virtually every other Protestant cathedral we've visited, however, I noticed that the Nuremberg cathedral still had statues of saints filling its nooks and niches. Unlike most other European Protestants, the Franconians largely abstained from violent iconoclasm during their conversion.

We also stopped at the nearby St. Sebaldus Church, where our guide pointed out some uniquely disturbing architecture. Among the many carvings and grotesques that adorn the outer walls is a Judensau. As the German name implies, a Judensau is a depiction of a Jewish person with a pig--generally engaged in some form of carnal activity. These anti-Semitic tableaus were once common decorations on churches throughout Germany, and many still remain as controversial historical artifacts.

As our guide put it, the Nazis never had any original ideas of their own. They simply took old ideas and blew them up to insane proportions.

We saw the city's central market square and learned that Nuremberg hosts one of the world's oldest and largest Christmas markets every year. We saw a store that only sells Christmas decorations and plays Christmas music all year round.

In one corner of the market square is an impressively ornate fountain dating back to the late 1300s. Our guide pointed out two brass rings hidden in the intricate wrought-iron fence. Spinning the ring is said to grant good luck and many children to the spinner.

We saw a bakery that allegedly produces the world’s best Lebkuchen–a kind of very dense gingerbread originally treasured for its high caloric density and now treasured in spite of it. As tempted as we were, we ended up deciding to pass.

We also saw a smokehouse that allegedly produces some of the world’s best bratwursts. Apparently, it has its own abattoir on site, so the meat is as fresh as you could ever get. Or, as our guide put it, the sausages served at lunchtime were still squealing that morning.

We ended up going back for lunch and they are at least very very good. Nuremberg bratwursts are small, little larger than a finger. This is supposed to create the ideal balance of meat and smoky flavor. The meat was as flavorful as I had expected, but it was superbly fresh and expertly smoked.

Before heading to the castle, we stopped for a few minutes to discuss Nuremberg's favorite son, Albrecht Durer. Durer is far from obscure, but neither Jessica nor I could have said very much about him. A contemporary of Leonardo Da Vinci, Durer was himself a consummate Renaissance man and could be considered the Da Vinci of the north. He was a master of painting and the human form, and he was one of the first European artists to draw plants and animals with scientific accuracy and treat them as worthy subjects in their own rights.

We ended the first half of our visit at Nuremberg Castle, which offered great views of the surrounding cityscape. We learned that the name Nuremberg derives from an archaic German word meaning steep rocky mount–which is an accurate description of the hill that the castle is built on. Between this natural defense and some very clever designs (like curved bridges to prevent the use of long battering rams), Nuremberg castle is considered one of the most impregnable castles in all of medieval Europe. Indeed, the only time it was ever captured in battle was by the Americans during WWII.

We learned that the Holy Roman Empire never had a capital–the capital was wherever the Emperor was. But Nuremberg is sometimes considered one of its main unofficial capitals. Between its wealth, independent status, and relatively central location within the Empire, Nuremberg became the natural meeting point for the Imperial Diet–a forum where the various dukes, princes, and archbishops of the empire could meet to discuss policy and settle disputes.

After the aforementioned lunch, we returned to the unavoidable topic of Nuremberg and the Nazis. And the main theme of the tour–apart from Nazi atrocities–was just how disorganized and incompetent the Nazis really were.

Cramming into a city bus, we rode out to the outskirts of the town where the remains of the Nazi rally grounds stand. The main structure is called the Congress Hall, and it was intended to serve as the Nazi party congressional building after the war. Guide asked us if the building reminded us of anything. Jessica and I recognized it immediately--the three levels of arches and windows were an obvious homage to the Roman Colosseum

Today, the hall houses a Documentation Center dedicated to illuminating the causes and consequences of the Nazi movement. Symbolically, the entrance to the Documentation center is not in the front of the building but in a back corner, through a strikingly out-of-place metal staircase crashing through a hole in the wall as if it were the gangway of a downed spaceship.

We didn't spend long in the center, however--just long enough to get our bearings.

Our guide pointed out a map of the rally grounds. They're huge. There is the Congress Hall and the Zeppelin Field--the iconic parade grounds where Hitler was filmed saluting an endless progression of saluting soldiers--but they were only the beginning. The rally grounds were to be a city unto itself, as big as the rest of Nuremberg combined.

[I should also say here that the people of Nuremberg had no special love for Hitler or the Nazis. Hitler chose Nuremberg for the project for two reasons: the historical significance of the city during the First Reich (aka the Holy Roman Empire) and the fact that Nuremberg was one of the only cities in Bavaria that would actually allow the Nazis to hold a rally back when they were still a radical fringe group.]

Most of the rally grounds were never completed, however, for very simple reasons that our guide explained as we made our way to the Zeppelin Field.

We’ve all learned in school and from any number of movies and TV shows that the Nazis relied heavily on propaganda to spread their lies. But we didn’t realize just how much their propaganda actually succeeded and continues to influence people to this day.

The vast majority of people know that the Nazis were evil and wrong. Most people seem to acknowledge that Hitler was either crazy, stupid, or both–at least by the drug-addled end of his reign. But somehow people–including us, until today–continue to believe in the myth of Nazi efficiency and industriousness.

There's this pervasive image of the Nazis as a force of ruthless efficiency, dragging Germany out of the shambles of the Great Depression and transforming it in less than a decade from Europe’s most broken country into its greatest industrial powerhouse. When people think of Nazis, they think of hard-drilled soldiers dressed in immaculate Hugo Boss uniforms and goose-stepping in perfect synchronization while doing a "heil Hitler" salute.

But that was all part of the propaganda too. A sham.

Yes, Hitler’s government dramatically reduced unemployment, but it did so by taking on massive loans from countries around the world that it never intended to pay back. A bit like The Producers, ironically, Hitler built his industrial sector on fraudulent loans.

I’ve heard people–including myself–speculate to the tune of, “If only Hitler had focused on economic growth and not started a war….” But the reality is that if Hitler hadn’t started World War II, Germany would have been flat broke in a matter of months.

And even then, the industrial powerhouse that Hitler had built from his ill-gotten funds was still mostly just a show. For example, when Hitler lit the Nuremberg rally grounds in 1934 with over 150 military floodlights--a so-called Cathedral of Light--he was using the nation’s entire strategic reserve. His generals were aghast, but Hitler rightly gambled that it would intimidate the rest of the world into thinking that Germany must be so industrially powerful that they had floodlights to spare.

A famous “documentary” of the 1935 Nazi rally, Triumph of the Will, was actually a painstakingly crafted propaganda reel that took days of reshoots just to get enough footage to allegedly depict the Nazis marching in unison at the parade. And the reason actual parades took place at night wasn’t just to show off the Cathedral of Light–it was so that neither Hitler nor the international visitors would notice that the marchers were almost all reeling drunk.

The Nazi ideology attracted exactly the same people then that it does now--angry, disaffected twenty-somethings--largely without higher education or exposure to intellectual or cultural diversity--who've failed at their ambitions, feel abandoned by society, and want an easy target to blame for their misery. Gathering almost a million such people into a city of half that population wasn't the formula for a stoic display of military might. It was the formula for a debauched frat party of epic proportions.

It was all a sham. From the beginning, the Nazis’ only plan was to leverage their strengths to create greater and greater illusions of power until they had bluffed the entire world into submission. And maybe then they would get around to figuring out how to actually do any of the things they were pretending to have done already.

Take the rally grounds themselves. They were presented as one of the great examples of Nazi German industry. But only a small percentage of the planned complex was ever actually built. To complete it as planned would have taken three times the entire country’s annual GDP--a laughable impossibility.

And the little they actually managed to build was built badly. The construction of the iconic grandstand of the Zeppelin Field was an embarrassment. The designers used unsuitable building materials and didn’t even think to give it a proper foundation. Within a few years it was already starting to crumble and sink, and to this day Germany spends millions of Euros every year just to slow the decay while they ponder longer-term solutions.

As we entered the field, we could see for ourselves the cracked, crumbling, and weed-riddled husk that the stands have become. On the walls behind the podium where Hitler once stood, state-sanctioned graffiti now shouts the mantra "Nie Wieder Krieg"--Never Again War.

We all got to stand on the spot where Hitler stood, giving speeches and saluting his troops. It was surreal, and more than a little creepy. Jessica's phone froze and crashed as soon as she approached it, and I got stung by a wasp from out of nowhere. I'm not particularly superstitious, but none of these things exactly helped to put me at ease.

Even if all these Nazi structures had been properly built from quality materials, the designs themselves were rotten to begin with. Having made our way back to the Congress Hall, we stood inside the open field that was meant to be its main central chamber. Our guide asked us how much bigger or smaller it was than the Roman Colosseum. Having just been a few months ago, Jessica and I felt confident in our guess that it was about the same size--maybe closer to twice as big.

The Congress Hall is six times bigger than the actual Colosseum, but it doesn’t feel like that at all. Albert Speer and his team of Nazi architects had wanted to make something that dwarfed the Colosseum, so they took its dimensions and multiplied them. They didn't realize that there's more to making a building feel big than simply making it big. Which shouldn't be a very advanced concept for someone tasked as the chief architect of an entire regime obsessed with monumental design.

And besides all that, modern architects speculate that the building was impossible to begin with. Even if the construction funds hadn't run out during the war, there’s no way they could have built the hall’s roof with the technology available at the time. It would have either collapsed immediately or required a major retrofit to stay standing.

Hitler's core gang of Nazi leaders generally weren’t highly educated, and what education they had wasn’t suited for their roles. They were school teachers, craftsmen, and bit-rate journalists living out delusional fantasies of being great philosophers, nation-builders, and statesmen.

They had simply found themselves at the right place at the right time, with the singular skill of stoking outrage and fear to trampoline their way to heights far beyond their depth.

Tucked away in one corner of the congress hall, we saw cold hard evidence of the rotten cornerstone of the Nazi’s industrial strategy. Stacks and stacks of granite cut by slaves in the concentration camps. Like the war, the concentration camp system wasn’t just an unfortunate misstep. It was a core element of what little industry the Nazis were actually able to accomplish. They knew they couldn’t afford to build what they promised, and they needed the slave labor to help bridge the gap.

Unwilling to either destroy this evidence of Nazi crimes or profit from it, the people of Nuremberg have left the granite stacks to stand as a small memorial in their own right: A worthless pile of sub-par material, brutally bought with the blood and dignity of the innocent, left to crumble into dust amidst the ruins of a dream that was not only abominable but fundamentally unfulfillable from the start, having accomplished nothing of value to anyone.

I think they're the most fitting memorial to the Nazis that anyone could ever make.

Last Post: Neuschwanstein (and the story of Mad King Ludwig)

#180abroad #munich #nuremberg #germany #franconia #history #castle #medieval #wwii #nazism #rally grounds #nie wieder krieg

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topfygad · 5 years ago

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Gothic Hotels (and Songs by R.E.M., Part 2) — The Agenda by Tablet Hotels

It’s Halloween, so we’re taking a look at hotels with Gothic architecture, a style synonymous with the mysterious and macabre. Why did we also include songs by R.E.M.? The answer may shock you.

Earlier this year, we wrote about some of our favorite Southern hotels, comparing them to songs from one of our favorite Southern bands, R.E.M. So why write about R.E.M. again? Well, the band actually saw the first story, liked it, and asked if we’d do a part two. Not since Coppola and The Godfather has anyone had such a good reason to make a sequel.

There’s hardly been a better time to talk about “scary” hotels, either. This is Halloween week, of course, and it’s also the week that R.E.M. releases the 25th Anniversary reissue of Monster, their terrifyingly titled ninth studio album. But instead of another list of haunted hotels, we’re focusing on the style of architecture most commonly associated with things that go bump in the night.

Gothic architecture secured its association with the spooky and supernatural in the 18th and 19th centuries, when writers like Horace Walpole, Edgar Allen Poe, Mary Shelley, and Bram Stoker chose Gothic castles and abbeys as the backdrop for their stories of darkness and death. An entire genre of horrifying literature became known as Gothic fiction, and an entire mode of architecture was never viewed the same again.

R.E.M. has crossed paths with the Gothic label as well — especially during the first half of their career. With a sound driven up from underneath Georgia’s genteel facade, the Athens natives were considered a sort of modern musical counterpart to the Southern Gothic literature of William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor. Sonically and thematically, their music reflects the murky and eccentric spirit of the region, underscoring its postbellum tensions and investigating its idiosyncratic characters.

And so, without further ado, enjoy this selection of thirteen hotels with Gothic architectural elements, paired with some of R.E.M.’s most Southern Gothic songs.

Follow along with our R.E.M. — Southern Gothic playlist on Spotify or Apple Music.

The Qvest

Cologne, Germany

“Wendell Gee” — from Fables of the Reconstruction, 1985

The 19th century obsession with Gothic elements comes through loud and clear in The Qvest. Now a hotel, the 1897 building initially housed Cologne’s archives and a public library. In keeping with the reigning aesthetic in those days, a neo-Gothic influence touched just about every element in the construction: ribbed vaults, lancet windows, hood moulding, tracery, and an overarching verticality all remain visible today. Similarly, all the elements of R.E.M.’s Southern Gothic signature come through in “Wendell Gee,” one of the band’s most under-appreciated pieces of musical mastery, and the final track from their darkest and most overtly South-saturated album.

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1898 The Post

Ghent, Belgium

“Strange Currencies” — from Monster, 1994

“Strange Currencies” might not feel at first like a song with Southern folk roots, but imagine it without Monster’s trademark distorted guitars and you begin to hear the swagger and sway of classic country-blues. It’s the kind of plaintive-yet-hopeful ballad that R.E.M. perfected throughout their career, and it’s paired on this list with 1898 The Post, a hotel that’s equally the shining example of a genre. The old Central Post Office in Ghent was completed at the turn of the last century, and while its neo-Gothic style makes it look much older than that, a brand-new renovation has this beautifully preserved structure ready to host guests in the current century and beyond.

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Bryant Park Hotel

New York City, New York

“Carnival of Sorts (Boxcars)” — from Chronic Town, 1982

Starting with the gargoyle on the cover, R.E.M.’s debut EP Chronic Town oozes a dark, peculiar, and highly literary Southern Gothic vibe. And “Carnival of Sorts (Boxcars),” with its calliope intro and images of clandestine railway activity, all but revels in the murky mood. Gargoyles don’t make an appearance on the Bryant Park Hotel, despite its home inside the American Radiator building, a strange and imposing black-gold gothic skyscraper that towers above the midtown park like something out of a comic book — or out of Ghostbusters. Penthouse guests might be safe from that movie’s statues-turned–terror dogs, but the hotel does look down on the New York Public Library, where other ghost-busting scenes were filmed.

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Kruisherenhotel Maastricht

Maastricht, Netherlands

“The One I Love” — from Document, 1987

“This one goes out to the one I love…” — the instantly recognizable first line from R.E.M.’s 1987 hit sets the stage for a song that practically drips with heat and humidity. This song, as much as any other, announced to the world that R.E.M. was a contemporary sonic interpretation of the steamy South found in the plays of Tennessee Williams. Kruisherenhotel Maastricht is another thoroughly modern interpretation, this time of a fifteenth-century Gothic monastery. Designer Henk Vos transformed the original monks’ cloisters into handsome hotel rooms that are anything but ascetic, and even the relatively undisturbed spaces are deeply altered by the introduction of sleek furnishings and bits and bobs by the likes of Le Corbusier, Philippe Starck and Marc Newson.

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Conservatorium Hotel

Amsterdam, Netherlands

“Country Feedback” — from Out of Time, 1991

The Conservatorium is a radical repurposing of Amsterdam’s Sweelinck Conservatorium building — its soaring institutional spaces and ornate century-old neo-Gothic construction transformed into a contemporary design hotel. Offering a focus on pop music alongside more traditional conservatory studies like classical and jazz, there probably was a surprising bit of guitar feedback heard in the Conservatorium during its time as a music school. There’s a bit of feedback heard in “Country Feedback” as well, wandering almost incongruently in between and around more traditional country sounds like pedal steel guitar and organ, adding the right amount of frustration and edge that the song’s cryptic lyrics cry out for.

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Ace Hotel Downtown L.A.

Los Angeles, California

“So. Central Rain” — from Reckoning, 1984

Legend has it that “South Central Rain” refers to massive downpours and flooding in R.E.M.’s home state of Georgia in 1983. The band was apparently out on tour, and wasn’t able to check in on family members because the storms had knocked out the phone lines. Specifically, the legend asserts, they were in Los Angeles, which is the reason for this hotel-song pairing, and not because of L.A.’s South Central neighborhood. For the Gothic connection, look no further than the United Artists building, a 1920s Spanish Gothic Revival tower and theater that is the current home of Ace Hotel Downtown L.A.

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SINA Centurion Palace

Venice, Italy

“Oh My Heart” — from Collapse Into Now, 2011

Michael Stipe wrote “Oh My Heart” about post-Katrina New Orleans. His lyrics can sometimes be impenetrable, but not here. This is very clearly a song about resilience in the face of tragedy and persevering into the future so we can continue to honor the past. There are no New Orleans hotels on this list, but maybe that would’ve been too cute. Instead, we turn to another timeworn city fighting back against Mother Nature and climate change: rising sea levels have led to regular flooding in Venice, the home of Centurion Palace and its postcard-perfect Venetian-Gothic exterior. The former convent is located in one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city, which has survived everything from World Wars to the Black Death, and we’re confident it will survive its latest challenge.

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Chicago Athletic Association

Chicago, Illinois

“Oddfellows Local 151” — from Document, 1987

Long before a recent renovation converted it into a stunning boutique hotel, the Chicago Athletic Association was a private club for the city’s (male) movers and shakers. Dating back to the final decade of the 19th century, this Venetian Gothic landmark hosted the kinds of government and business elite that “Oddfellows Local 151” suggests are at least partially responsible for the plight of the characters in the song: the homeless population that was left behind by the political and economic machines of 1980s America. Document was an album filled with fiery passion as R.E.M. found their political footing — no more so than on this, its closing track.

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High Line Hotel

New York City, New York

“Swan Swan H” — from Life’s Rich Pageant, 1986

Chelsea’s High Line Hotel makes its home in an imposing red-brick Collegiate Gothic seminary — and its designers, the local duo Roman and Williams, managed to created an enormously fun hotel in what was an otherwise solemn environment. R.E.M. pulled the same trick, but in the opposite direction, with “Swan Swan H.” At first glance, this song about the Civil War appears to be a celebration of freedom, but as it progresses the true cost of a destructive moment in American history becomes more clear. And while the lyrics reference wooden beams of a presumably different sort, for the purposes of this list, we’ll think about the ornate ceiling of the Hoffman Hall event space, pictured above.

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Le Chateau Frontenac

Quebec City, Canada

“World Leader Pretend” — from Green, 1988

A century-old Gothic Revival castle high on a bluff over the St. Lawrence river, Le Château Frontenac is Québec City’s most famous landmark, and has hosted some of the world’s most famous guests. Musicians, movie stars, and titans of industry have walked its halls, but powerful politicians may have left the greatest influence — suites are themed after heads of state who have stayed at the hotel. According to Michael Stipe, “World Leader Pretend” was the most political song of the band’s career up to that point, and it might continue to be so today. After clashing with Donald Trump over his unauthorized (obviously) use of “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine),” the band followed up by contributing “World Leader Pretend” to an anti-Trump compilation.

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Chateau Marmont

Los Angeles, California

“Drive” — from Automatic for the People, 1992

The Chateau Marmont was constructed to the specifications of the Loire Chateau Amboise in France, and scattered throughout are certain reminders of the French late Gothic Flamboyant style. But though inspired by France, this particular chateau and its infamous scenes of Hollywood decadence could only exist in Los Angeles. Likewise, “Drive” is a song that could only have come from R.E.M. With an echoey atmosphere as haunted as the hallways of the Chateau, the song drives forward slowly and madly, calling out like a pirate radio station in the middle of the night, seeking to empower the youth through rock and roll.

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St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel

London, England

“Life and How to Live It” — from Fables of the Reconstruction, 1985

In R.E.M.’s hometown of Athens, Georgia, there once lived a man named Brev Mekis. Suffering from schizophrenia, Brev split his house into two totally different apartments, each with its own unique furniture, books, clothing, even pets. To suit his disparate personalities, Brev would periodically switch back and forth between his two lives. After he passed away, discovered inside the house were hundreds of identical copies of a book he had written called: “Life and How to Live It.” The great Gothic structure at St. Pancras has a split personality of its own. On the one hand, it is a lavish, luxurious hotel. On the other, an introduction to a busy, full-functioning rail station. Taken all together, it is the ideal of a grand European railway hotel.

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Borgo dei Conti Resort

Perugia, Italy

“Find the River” — from Automatic for the People, 1992

Borgo dei Conti Resort is a deeply romantic place. Originally built as a fortress in the 13th century, the estate was remade into a noble home some 500 years later. Surrounded by acres of gardens and lawns and parkland, the building is a dramatic example of 19th-century neo-Gothic architecture, still as imposing as ever today. On its sprawling grounds, you’re likely to find some of the herbs and fruits mentioned in “Find the River,” a song that celebrates life specifically because death is always present. Despite the heavy themes, “Find the River” is a gorgeous and uplifting song. It closes out an album full of radio hits, and is equal to or even better than each of those more well-known singles. All of this is coming your way.

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source http://cheaprtravels.com/gothic-hotels-and-songs-by-r-e-m-part-2-the-agenda-by-tablet-hotels/

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micaramel · 5 years ago

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Artist: Mathis Gasser

Venue: Ginerva Gambino, Cologne

Exhibition Title: Structures and Institutions 2

Date: September 7 – October 26, 2019

Click here to view slideshow

Full gallery of images, press release, and link available after the jump.

Images:

Images courtesy of Ginerva Gambino, Cologne

Press Release:

The sky has always served as humanity’s site for prophecy and projection. From astrology to augury, it is a vast exhibition space, a crystal sphere for the foretelling of history. Up there, earthly experience takes shape in mythic constellations, prodigious comets and apocalyptic UFOs. Observing distant sites and structures is an act of creative interpretation and a mirror for the vagaries of life on earth. Fortunes continue to be told up there today—perhaps more so than ever— as science and its fictions deliver us toward “the final frontier” of outer space. As technology brings humans closer towards the stars, cosmic vehicles will engender further questions about our own past trajectories.

Mathis Gasser’s new works deliver these chimeric combination of worlds and skies. Here, in painting, terrestrial imagery loses gravity and scale. Iridescent spacecraft float like tiny sea creatures through the cosmic depths and buzz over urban skylines on insectile wings. Earthly structures tumble through pictorial space, telescoping freely between near and far, monumental and microscopic, past and future, utopia and dystopia. Entitled Structures and Institutions 2, the series expands on a group of works produced in 2018, blending contemporary architectural projections with science-fiction concept art and fanbase images from the internet. The current series continues to explore the vehicles and structures that might govern, preserve or even potentially destroy planetary life, testing the visual and cultural relationships between them.

Gasser alienates institutional architecture through the forms of traveling spaceships. In science fiction, the alien mothership serves as the literal vehicle of an entire civilization, much like the buildings which convey our own technological, political, economic and cultural might. On the one hand, the megastructure’s monumental exterior imparts an aura of mystery that fuels the imagination. Concept art for space travel and science fictionillustrates interstellar vehicles and buildings whose interiors exist solely in the mind’s eye. As such, the geometric, self-contained world of an interstellar ship can possess a wondrous utopian quality: they are not only the future bearers of people and cargo, but also the vessels for potentially new and better forms of political and social organization. For archeologist Jerry Moore, such monumental edifices “are structures designed to be recognized, expressed by their scale or elaboration, even though their meanings might not be understood by all members of society.”(1) They are meant to be seen from outside and at a distance, dwarfing the beholder, who cannot see the complex and often chaotic operations occurring within.

Thus, while the spaceship’s unitary structure might bear the marks of a progressive society, its contents, as well as the motives of its occupants, remain more uncertain. In science fiction narratives, the moment of alien arrival is tensely indeterminate: the alien vessel hanging in the skies over awestruck Earthlings momentarily suspends the fate of humanity between salvation and destruction. Gasser’s painting Objects in the Skycaptures this very uncertainty, as three different alien vessels hover above a city skyline. (2) The ships reference three recent movies with an alien invasion plot: District 9 (2009, top), Childhood’s End (2015, middle), and The 5th Wave (2016, bottom). For Gasser, the on-screen re-emergence of these alien megastructures coincided with very real Earthly catastrophes, including the 2009 global financial recession, ongoing refugee crises, and climate change. For example, District 9 inverts the traditional alien invasion into a parable of post-Apartheid South African society, turning extraterrestrial immigrants into hostages of Earth. In The 5th Wave, alien technology provokes natural disasters and epidemics, and Childhood’s End presents alien visitors as seemingly benevolent overlords with the power to erase war, poverty and disease. Gasser’s alien megastructures provide a form for the volatile forces that govern human life, such as the increasingly violent fluctuations of the global economy and environment. These structures can serve as harbingers of catastrophic change, but can also act as as doubles for the globalized instutitions which attempt to navigate them.

Even in its most utopian renderings, our starships must always navigate the crooked path of human history. The ghostly image of a clipper ship haunts Gasser’s collage views of modern buildings and space stations, inserting the specter of humanity’s colonial crimes perpetrated within the previous maritime frontier. While the seafaring ship can symbolize human discovery, collaboration and technical ingenuity, it also recalls the violent conquer and destruction of other civilizations, carried out by ship. However, times and motivations have changed for these next pioneers. As the planet’s resources run thin and the environment changes, a fearful urgency drives our current dream of space colonization. The anthropologist Gökçe Günel states that “the spaceship insists on addressing the planetary-scale questions of survival in the unknown, the sustenance of the species beyond ecological catastrophe, and the preservation of an existing civilization, albeit in highly limited and confined form.”(3) Gasser addresses such concerns in his painting Elysium / Von Braun Space Station, which pairs two similar circular ships. The upper half features the space station from Neill Blomkamp’s 2013 film Elysium, which was designed after the one pictured beneath it, a hypothetical rotating space station first proposed by the aerospace engineer Wernher von Braun (1912-1977). In Elysium, the megastructure serves as a haven for Earth’s elite, now living far beyond the atmosphere of a destroyed and impoverished home planet. Yet the limits of utopian ideology become clear in the all- too-human history of its own model, which was designed by a scientist who, prior to his career in American aerospace, created ballistic missiles for the Nazi regime.

Although Gasser’s series presents architectural designs supposedly conceived and occupied by a myriad of collaborating agents, these real and imaginary spaces remain conspicuously empty. The very absence of inhabitants begs the question of who these supposedly progressive, utopian structures are intended to bear— or, perhaps, who they might someday exclude, or even eradicate. His vessels and megastructures remind us that science fiction can be a critical tool. Indeed, the philosopher Henri Lefebrve has juxtaposed “abstract utopias,” in which the ideal loses contact with reality, with that of “the experimental utopia,” which constitutes an “exploration of human possibilities, with the help of the image and the imagination…a ceaseless reference to the given problematic in the ‚real’.”(4) To this day, starships can provide our current society and its institutions with this experimental mode of thought. For literary critic Frederic Jameson, the starship narrative’s trajectory can never truly be untethered from our world: “So it is that en route to space and to galactic escapism, we find ourselves locked in the force field of very earthly political realities.”(5)

1 Jerry D. Moore, Architecture and Power in the Ancient Andes : The Archaeology of Public Buildings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

2 See the artist’s text: Mathis Gasser, “Objects in the Sky,” Brave -New-Life, January 31 2019: https://brand- new-life.org/b-n-l/objects-in-the-sky/

3 Gökçe Günel, Spaceship in the Desert: Energy, Climate Change, and Urban Design in Abu Dhabi (Durham: Duke University Press, 2019), 42.

4 Quoted in Tod McDonough, “Metastructure: Experimental Utopia and Traumatic Memory in Constant’s New Babylon,” Grey Room, No. 33 (Fall 2008): 85, 88.

5 Frederic Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. (New York: Verso, 2005), 266.

Link: Mathis Gasser at Ginerva Gambino

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aerotrekka · 5 years ago

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The Hanseatic League was a medieval and renaissance era alliance of Baltic and North Sea trading ports and merchant guilds whose footprint stretched from the east coast of England to the river city of Novgorod in Russia. Starting from a group of German cities in the 1100s and operating until its decline in the late 1600s, and run for the benefit of their merchant class, the League was instrumental in creating strong city-states that complemented the traditional land-based aristocratic and religious power of the time. They created trading networks based on law and mutual obligation, backed up by regional law courts and periodic league conferences in the port cities. The League negotiated relief from tariffs, fought pirates and attempted to monopolize certain trades.

This way, you could somewhat reliably ship a cargo of goods (a “Hanse” was a protected convoy) from Cologne to Tallinn, and get paid, when for a time Mongol invasions further south and east were live news. Lubeck’s merchants were principal originators of the League, trading from a hub between the German hinterland, Scandinavia and the Kievan Rus (itself a Federation of areas that now comprise parts of western Russia, Belarus and Ukraine).

You can still see this active society reflected in the buildings and communities in places such as Lubeck, Rostock and Stralsund, which were important Baltic sea ports at the time. It still figures in German culture, from the name of their airline to the local football clubs, and an “H” put before the town letter on car number plates.

Lubeck

Lubeck has a large and well-defined medieval city area, which is an island that the Trave River flows round. It is very walkable and has a neat port area on its northwest side along An der Untertrave with a few historical ships, including a lightship, for your nautical fix. The city’s renaissance-era ceremonial gate, the Holstentor, with its chubby ceremonial towers that appear to lean in to each other, is suitably impressive. You can “almost” not see post-renaissance buildings as you walk towards it.

The Holstentor

Heading into the central Markt, south of the 13th-century Marienkirche, you find many well-preserved (or restored – Lubeck was bombed in WW2) medieval features, including the medieval city hall.

Lubeck Market Square

Hansamuseum. Lubeck’s European Hansamuseum (An der Untertrave 1) is well worth a visit to understand how trade developed in the early middle ages and developed today’s Baltic cities into prosperous commercial centers, driven by considerations separate from the Church and aristocracy. (hansemuseum.eu)

Gunter Grass House. Lubeck was home to Gunter Grass, one of Germany’s most important 20th-century writers, who was born (1928) and raised in Danzig. Danzig, now Gdansk, Poland, was part of East Prussia and mostly ethnic German at the time, and absorbed into the German state in 1939. It was the city in which the novel and film The Tin Drum was set. After wartime service and art school in Dusseldorf, Grass eventually settled in Lubeck, and the Gunter Grass House (Glockengiesserstrasse 21) is well worth a visit. Grass was politically active and attempted to articulate West Germany’s postwar identity in much of his work. Notably, he failed to reveal until 1996 that part of his forced wartime service had been in the SS, which was considered an oversight at the time.

Willy Brandt House.The garden of Gunter’s house adjoins the birthplace of Lubeck’s other famous son, the postwar politician Willy Brandt, who is best known for Ostpolitik – advancing detente between Germany and the Soviet Bloc during the 1960s and 1970s. Brandt was West Germany’s Chancellor between 1969 and 1974 but had worked his way up as Mayor of Berlin (hosting John F. Kennedy’s famous 1961 speech), Foreign Minister and other posts since the 1950s. His tenure as Chancellor was cut short by the revelation that one of his aides was an agent for the East German intelligence service, the Stasi. The Willy Brandt House (Königstrasse 21) is a good place to get an understanding of Germany’s postwar history.

Other things worth seeing as you wander round this pretty town include the Buddenbrookhaus (Mengstrasse 4), which is a museum dedicated to the author Thomas Mann, and the Holstentor Museum, which is a good way to understand Lubeck’s history and to explore the two towers.

Food & Beverage. Lubeck has a local brewery, Brauburger ze Lubeck (Alfstrasse 36), that is also worth a visit afterwards. Brewed on-site, their traditional zwickelbier is highly regarded, although they have dipped a toe into IPAs.

There are plenty of solid (some literally) food options in town. For a traditional north German effort, Alstadt-Bierhaus Lubeck (Braunstrasse 19) is worth visiting. The Kartoffelkeller (Koberg 8) is a popular cellar restaurant offering plenty of options around the potato. The Junge Die Bäckerei, a regional chain on the south side of the main square, is a good breakfast or cake/coffee stopoff, and the Kaffeehaus Lübeck (Hüxstrasse 35) is a nice out of the way place.

Rostock

In contrast to Lubeck, Rostock has a more modern feel, largely due to it’s role post-WW2 as the German Democratic Republic’s (GDR) main sea port and shipbuilding center. Coming from Lubeck, which was in West Germany during the Cold War, Rostock contrasts with postwar reconstruction carried out by the GDR, which existed between 1949 and 1990. It’s a pleasant mid-sized town that doesn’t deal with overtourism and is a good base for the surrounding region.

Rostock’s city is worth a look to see Soviet-era architecture, such as its postwar Communist parade, Lange Allee, which splits the city north and south. What is left of Rostock’s rebuilt old town, to the north and east of the center, is pleasant and unassuming and you can pass through it on the way to the waterfront on the north side of town.

Rostock maintains many of the Communist-era street names, so it will be possible to find Karl-Marx Strasse and Rosa Luxemburg Strasse – although this isn’t unusual in former GDR cities.

Rostock is a good base to see two nearby attractions, the beach town of Warnemunde and the preserved East German merchant ship Typ Frieden, which has a unique exhibit of East German shipbuilding and its merchant marine. Both can be done in the same journey as they are along the same local S-Bahn rail line that runs north to the beach.

Warnemunde. Warnemunde is a rather touristy (receiving cruise ships) but fun German seaside resort which as a fishing village grew from the late 19th century, when working and middle-class Germans – especially from Berlin and other large cities – started to be able to take vacations. It’s not really worth an overnight stay unless you are a beach person. You can either go to Rostock Hauptbahnhof and take the S-Bahn local train up, or if located in central Rostock, take the No. 1 or 5 trams west to the Rostock Holbeinplatz S-Bahn station and take the train north from there.

From the train station, you can cross west over the Alte Brucke and wander up Am Strom to the beach, and grab a backfisch and a beer along the way. It’s quite pleasant and laid back. There are also some decent places for lunch away from the main crowd if you head south along Am Strom from the Alte Brucke – zur Krim was good and had a nice garden out front.

The Typ Frieden. Rostock’s Shipbuilding and Maritime Museum is located in the cavernous cargo hold of the Typ Frieden, a 1957-vintage merchant ship built in Rostock that operated as the Dresden until 1970. It has a very comprehensive museum of shipbuilding and the merchant marine of the industrially diligent GDR. Now that that the GDR has been gone for 30 years, it’s an insight into a bygone era of communist heavy industry.

The ship’s large multi-deck cargo hold contains the museum, which has mainly photographic, equipment and model exhibits. If you are interested in heavy post-war industry or how socialist shipping lines served Soviet Bloc routes to Cuba, this is the place to go.

The bridge, engine room and crew quarters are preserved in all their 1950s glory.

To reach the museum, take the train to the Rostock-Lütten Klein stop and walk east via the conference center and the park (which is a wetlands area) to the riverfront. (www.schifffahrtsmuseum-rostock.de)

Food, Beverage & Accommodation. Rostock has a good range of food options and doesn’t suffer from overtouristed clip joints. The Braugasthaus Zum alten Fritz brewpub, located on the waterfront at Warnowufer 65, has a typical German menu and fresh draught or bottled Störtebeker beer (https://www.alter-fritz.de), brewed in nearby Stralsund. The Altstädter Stuben, in the old town to the east at Altschmiedestrasse 25, is a good neighborhood restaurant. Kaminstube, at Burgwall 17, is another low-key place in the northern old town with a large outdoor veranda to get a beer from the local brewery or a meal. I stayed at the Pentahotel, Schwaansche Strasse 6, which is central and modern, with a good lounge area on the ground level and outside.

Transport Logistics. Rostock and Lubeck are easily reached from Berlin. I went via Copenhagen to Lubeck, and both bus and rail journeys (about 4 hours) connect via the Rodby-Putthaven ferry link. You can book online (ferry ticket included) through Flixbus (www.flixbus.com) or German Rail (www.diebahn.de).

The Full Hansa: Lubeck and Rostock The Hanseatic League was a medieval and renaissance era alliance of Baltic and North Sea trading ports and merchant guilds whose footprint stretched from the east coast of England to the river city of Novgorod in Russia.

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dashalbrundezimmer · 1 day ago

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gneisenaustraße // köln nippes

architect: paul georg hopmann

completion: 1974

this brutalist gem, which houses a kindergarten and a community centre, is located in the heart of cologne's nippes district. the striking façade design of pure concrete and red window and door frames, as well as the fragmented structure, make the building a real eye-catcher. the red colouring also extends to the railings, letterboxes and service openings, contributing to the coherent overall impression.

dieses brutalistische kleinod, welches einen kindergarten und ein gemeindezentrum beherbergt, befindet sich mitten in köln nippes. die bemerkenswerte fassadengestaltung von purem beton und roten fenster- und türrahmungen sowie die zergliederte struktur machen das bauwerk zu einem echten hingucker. die rote farbgestaltung erstreckt sich außerdem auf geländer, briefkästen und versorgungsöffnungen, so dass dies zum schlüssigen Gesamteindruck beiträgt.

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caveartfair · 6 years ago

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The 25 Rising Power Players Who Will Run the Art Market

As an older generation begins to cede control of major galleries and auction house departments, a new guard is taking shape. To identify this cohort’s brightest rising stars, we talked to dozens of market specialists, old and young, to create a list of 25 ambitious individuals who are currently powering this $63.7 billion industry—and who will eventually be running it.

We decided to focus of this group on the women and men rising up within established centers of art world power—primarily large galleries and auction houses—rather than on people who have launched their own firms (though we have and will continue to celebrate those entrepreneurs elsewhere). That’s not to diminish the bravery it takes to start a business in an industry where the economics are often stacked against newcomers, but instead an opportunity to highlight the hard work that takes place away from the evening sale floor and beside gallery owners’ desks.

Here’s a look at 25 individuals at galleries and auction houses who are increasingly calling the shots.

Yuki Terase is nothing if not patient. In May 2017, Sotheby’s auctioneer Oliver Barker opened the bidding on a Basquiat skull painting, and a bidding war erupted between her client, the billionaire e-retail businessman Yusaku Maezawa, and a man in the room bidding on behalf of the Ferttita brothers, the Las Vegas wrestling moguls. For 20 minutes, the bids kept coming, with Terase calmly nodding her head, nudging her client higher, until the Fertittas bowed out and the painting was Maezawa’s for a hammer price of $98 million, or $110.5 million with fees. Since joining Sotheby’s in 2011, she has been a key figure in Sotheby’s plan to make inroads with Asian collectors and establish itself as the go-to place for the region’s collectors to buy.

What’s the biggest change you think we’ll see in the market in the next 10 years?

The average age of collectors will be younger, predominantly driven by Asia. It is fascinating to meet so many new collectors coming into the market, learning very rapidly about the art world by travelling and seeing art firsthand. Forty percent of our new clients in Asia are under 40. I also think collecting will be more personal, in a way that people will start to curate their own aesthetics and not be bound by conventional categories.

Installation view of “Katharina Grosse: Prototypes of Imagination” at Gagosian, 2018. © Katharina Grosse and VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo by Lucy Dawkins. Courtesy of Gagosian.

Installation view of Gagosian’s booth at Art Cologne, 2017. Artwork © Artists and Estates. Photo by Thomas Lannes. Courtesy of Gagosian.

Installation view of “Sprayed: Works from 1929 to 2015” at Gagosian, 2015. Photo by Mike Bruce. Courtesy of Gagosian.

Jona Lueddeckens is just 29, but he’s spent nearly half of his lifetime in the thick of the art market—he bought his first work at 15, and started working at Galerie Mark Müller in Zurich three days after his high school graduation. He’s been at Gagosian Gallery since 2010, and as a native German, Lueddeckens has connected the mega-gallery to artists and collectors in his home country.

He was instrumental in bringing Katharina Grosse into the gallery’s program, and at this year’s Art Cologne, he organized an all-sculpture booth that paired Chris Burden’s magnificent Sex Tower (Architectural Model of 125 foot high Sex Tower) (1986) with a very realistic Piero Golia dog. When real dogs being walked through the fair saw it, they started barking.

What’s the biggest change you think we’ll see in the market in the next 10 years?

Electronic information has had a massive influence over the past 10 years, not just that everyone is much better informed, but it really enabled the market to grow. I wish I knew the biggest change in the next 10 years, but I think we’ll certainly see a lot more activity in Asia.

Both sides now, 2017. Sam Moyer Sean Kelly Gallery

Many dealerships become family affairs, with parents handing down control of a gallery to the next generation. But Sean Kelly Gallery, on the upper reaches of Chelsea, goes beyond that—founder Sean Kelly employs both his son, Thomas, and his daughter, Lauren, as directors at the gallery. In addition to bringing on artists such as Sam Moyer into the stable, 25-year-old Lauren Kelly has been the gallery’s point person for a number of Cuban artists it has shown, including Lolo Soldevilla, the only female member of the Cuban group of artists called Diez Pintores Concretos—and who, Lauren noted, is unfairly undervalued by the market. “Unfortunately, she is often overshadowed by her male counterparts,” she said.

What’s the biggest change you think we’ll see in the market in the next 10 years?

I think the biggest change we face in an increasingly digital world is making sure that the physical acts of visiting a gallery and standing in front of an artwork remain vital experiences for younger generations, whether you are a collector or simply an art enthusiast. Instagram and the internet are excellent places to promote artists and our program, but there is nothing that can replace experiencing an artwork in person.

Image courtesy of Phillips.

Each of the big three auction houses have a mid-season sale of young artists, and the “New Now” sale at Phillips is often the most risk-taking of the three. Run by Sam Mansour in New York, the auction has introduced a slew of artists to the secondary market with impressive results. In February, a work by Jon Rafman with a high estimate of $20,000 sold for $50,000, and a Shara Hughes painting with a high estimate of $15,000 sold for $75,000.

Prior to the September “New Now” sale, Mansour unleashed on his Instagram images of the hot young artist Borna Sammak’s Hope For Men (2013), an installation of two TV screens held up by a unwieldy sling made of extension cords. It’s not usually what you sell at the rostrum—this was Sammak’s auction debut—but Mansour boldly slotted it at the first lot. It ably sold, and the sale went on to notch new auction records for nine different artists.

Which artist’s market do you think is undervalued?

From a secondary market perspective, it’s always tough to evaluate works that don’t fall neatly into the “paintings and drawings” categories—Conceptual art, Light and Space work, land art—any work that requires prolonged critical and intellectual reflection is always going to be undervalued from a resale perspective. Luckily, there are dedicated collectors and dealers who continue to support those artists.

What’s the biggest change you think we’ll see in the market in the next 10 years?

We’re seeing a ton of attention paid to art fairs lately, and I think something’s got to give there. They’re far from the ideal setting in which to show work, even in a dedicated booth, and yet they’ve come to dominate such a part of the market in both good and bad ways.

Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Diddy, 2018. Courtesy of Salon 94.

Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Kurt the Flirt, 2018. Courtesy of Salon 94.

Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn’s Salon 94 has historically championed women artists and black artists, well before works by Kerry James Marshall were selling for over $20 million and Joan Mitchell became the hottest artist at Art Basel. But gallery director Ashley Stewart, who is black, thinks there’s still a long way to go. “Recently, I have witnessed a surge of collectors wanting to add African-American artists to their collections, but I think it’s important to ask them why,” said Stewart, who came to the gallery in 2015 from David Zwirner.

By showing artists such as Nathaniel Mary Quinn, whose current Salon 94 show opened in September, Stewart wants to ensure collectors are buying for the right reasons. “Do they really respond to the work or are they responding to political, cultural, and social pressures?” she said. “There are plenty of articles in the press about the trendiness of ‘black’ art and overtures to inclusivity and diversity, but the art world is still a far cry from an accurate reflection of our modern world.”

What’s the biggest change you think we’ll see in the market in the next 10 years?

Overall, I believe gallerists will continue to scale back as they are forced to think more strategically about visibility, artist placement, how their staff functions, and general models of efficiency. Innovations in technology will continue to influence how collectors experience and buy art. It may even allow some gallerists to operate without a physical space.

Since joining Sotheby’s in 2014 just months after graduating from Harvard, Caspar Jopling stayed relatively behind the scenes, working closely with CEO Tad Smith to develop business strategies during a tumultuous ebb in the market and significant personnel changes at the house. He’s also moonlighted as a specialist, selling what the house described as “a number of important works of contemporary and modern art” in private sales, as at auction.

This makes sense, given he began collecting as a teenager in London, encouraged by his uncle, White Cube founder Jay Jopling. In March, the younger Jopling, 26, came out from the background when the Sotheby’s website posted a slideshow of work from that month’s “Contemporary Curated” sale, which had been hand-selected by Jopling and his fiancée, pop singer Ellie Goulding. Jopling chose works by artists including Ed Ruscha, George Condo, and Andy Warhol; Goulding opted for Charline von Heyl, Richard Serra, and Sherrie Levine, among others.

Which artist’s market do you think is undervalued?

I wouldn’t be so brash as to discuss publicly individual artist’s markets. What I will say (and this is not a novel observation, but is important to reiterate) is that there is a huge number of female artists, both modern and contemporary, that are still overlooked. Given the importance many female artists have played in pushing the boundaries of art, I look forward to seeing their reputation catch up, and undoubtedly their “market” will follow suit.

What’s the biggest change you think we’ll see in the market in the next 10 years?

Data. There is no question that data is going to play a much greater part in the market in the next decade, most likely driven by blockchain technology. Also, I see augmented reality and mixed reality technology having a huge effect on the market—mostly due to the “accessibility” of having masterpieces on your wall at home.

Installation view of Joan Jonas, “Reanimation, 2010/2012/2013” at Gavin Brown's enterprise, New York, 2017. Courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown's enterprise. Photo by Thomas Mueller.

Installation view of work by Arthur Jafa at Gavin Brown's enterprise, New York, 2018. Courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown's enterprise. Photo by Lance Brewer.

Exterior view of work by LaToya Ruby Frazier at Gavin Brown's enterprise, New York, 2018. Courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown's enterprise. Photo by Thomas Mueller.

Installation view of Rachel Rose, Lake Valley, 2016, at Gavin Brown's enterprise, New York, 2018. Courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown's enterprise. Photo by Thomas Mueller.

Installation view of work by Sturtevant at Gavin Brown's enterprise, New York, 2017. Courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown's enterprise. Photo by Thomas Mueller.

Thor Shannon has been one of the most universally well-liked people on the New York scene since starting at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise in 2013 as an assistant. By 2015, he was an integral part of the transition from the gallery’s one hub in the West Village to two locations: a second-floor Chinatown space and a gigantic warehouse in Harlem, where it’s able to host multiple museum-scale shows at once. At the new space, Shannon has been an indefatigable organizer of shows, such as Arthur Jafa’s GBE debut, which hosted the New York premiere of his now-famous video work, Love is the Message, The Message is Death.

The 27-year-old Shannon also blessed the art world by organizing a 2015 party bus equipped with stripper poles and stocked with champagne to shuttle dozens of crazy downtown kids to Rob Pruitt’s opening at the Brant Foundation in Greenwich, Connecticut. The suburb has never been the same since.

Which artist’s market do you think is undervalued?

Joan Jonas is the artist who immediately comes to mind. It astounds me that, for example, a highly significant, encompassing, complex, poetic multimedia installation of hers—what would be a pearl of any museum’s collection—could sell for less than an abstract painting made this year by someone in their twenties. That said, I am unendingly shocked (though at this point, I shouldn’t be) at how undervalued artworks by women are in relation to their male peers, Joan [Jonas] being a prime example.

What’s your favorite part of your job?

Gavin [Brown] has created a gallery that is unique in the art world, I think, in the contradictions it embodies simultaneously. It is somehow, all at once, an enormous and intimate place, hyperglobal and hyperlocal in its focus, cool and uncool, cerebral and stupid, boisterous and restrained. It has this elastic ability to shapeshift with the times, continually evolving to stay ahead of the pack, while rigidly refusing to deviate from its original, radical, politically oriented, community-oriented, and artist-oriented point of view. In six years of working here, it has never stopped being interesting, challenging, and very, very fun.

What’s the biggest change you think we’ll see in the market in the next 10 years?

It’s 2028. There are literally infinite Infinity Rooms across the globe. Every city has its own Hauser & Wirth Hotel and respective art fair (#ArtChernobyl). Gagosian opens a new exhibition in one of its 8,000 global locations every hour. A contemporary art evening sale is held at Christie’s every other night; every other other night, Sotheby’s holds theirs. Phillips only hosts day sales, but every day. Every television network has its own show set in the art world—deadpan mockumentary MoCA PS3 on NBC; prestige ’90s period dramedy Matthew’s Marks with sultry intrigue on HBO; the talk show Listen at Lisson on VH1, et al. Every museum has hosted, per a globally ratified agreement, at least one Beyoncé and/or Jay-Z video. Montreal is the new Auckland, which was the new Helsinki, which was the new Cairo, which was the new Berlin. Marina Abramović has turned permanently to stone. The Venice Biennale happens underwater.

According to the 2018 Hiscox Online Art Trade report, online sales across the three major auction houses went up more than 15 percent in 2017. Of those three, Phillips may be in third place in terms of overall sales, but it’s making serious headway by focusing on online-only auctions—in 2017, it hosted 44 of them, compared with Sotheby’s 36 and Christie’s 85.

And according to Katherine Lukacher, the new head of all online sales at Phillips, that is just the beginning. “Phillips introduced online bidding in 2014, and in just four short years, clients are becoming more and more comfortable buying art online,” Lukacher, who is 30, said. “As some of these newer buyers enter the market, I’m sure we will see a surge in activity across the board, for both mid-range pieces, as well as for those with loftier estimates.”

Which artist’s market do you think is undervalued?

One of my favorite artists who has been undervalued over the years is Ree Morton, who rose to fame in the 1970s with her post-minimal works of art, but whose career was somewhat brief. Fortunately, she has since been academically justified with the opening of her first major American retrospective in [nearly] four decades, which is open right now at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia.

Hauser & Wirth co-owner Iwan Wirth often jets around the world, checking in on the mega-gallery’s spaces in a former brewery in Zurich, a historic ski chalet in Gstaad, and in a block-sized former factory in downtown Los Angeles. Wherever Wirth is, it’s likely that 29-year-old director Michael Walker—who works most closely with the gallery’s co-founder and has helped with its global expansion—is there at his side. But part of the gallery’s role is to stay local, and Hauser & Wirth keeps at its core a focus on nurturing artists and serving many of its original clients, said Walker. He added that he’s working on an artist residency in northern Kenya, and working there with Roni Horn, Paul McCarthy, Rachel Khedoori, Diana Thater, and Djordje Ozbolt.

Which artist’s market do you think is undervalued?

For me, a clear example of this is Philip Guston’s work from the early 1960s. This body of work links his celebrated Abstract Expressionist period of the 1950s (where he was a leading figure in the New York School) with his later exploration of figuration in the 1970s. It is a period in which he confronted the aesthetic concerns of the New York School—questioning modes of image-making and what it means to paint abstractly. In that sense, they are extraordinary, radical, and hugely important in terms of art history, yet offer great buying opportunities relative to the early and later work.

What’s the biggest change you think we’ll see in the market in the next 10 years?

I think the market will continue to grow at the extraordinary rate that it has been in recent years. Of course, there will be pullbacks (due to external shocks that are not tied to the art market itself), but I believe the entrance of new players will continue unabated. We have seen this through the rise of China, and this market will continue to grow, albeit with challenges for dealers to target it in the right way. There is a thirst for art globally, both in the commercial and institutional sectors, so the market will expand in line with this.

Harold Ancart, Untitled, 2018. © Harold Ancart. Photo by JSP Art Photography. Courtesy David Zwirner, London.

Harry Scrymgeour joined David Zwirner in February, having previously worked at Michael Werner overseeing a gallery roster chock full of German post-war masters, and a stint at Clearing, the gallery with outposts in Brooklyn, the Upper East Side, and Brussels. It made sense, then, that a few months down the line, David Zwirner announced it would be giving a solo show in London to Harold Ancart, the longtime Clearing artist who turned heads when one of his paintings sold for $751,500 at a Christie’s afternoon sale in November 2016.

Which artist’s market do you think is undervalued?

There are lots of artworks that seem really cheap to me; late André Derain, [Félix] Vallotton, or Odilon Redon…or Paul Klee drawings.

What’s the biggest change you think we’ll see in the market in the next 10 years?

I imagine there will be a lot more digital stuff happening in the market at large, and our digital tools will certainly improve, but it won’t have a huge effect on the corner of the market that I’m involved in. Art has to be a multi-sensory experience. As you walk through the rooms, the feeling and sound of your feet on the floorboards, and the shifting light that comes through the tall windows, have a profound effect on the way you experience and understand an artwork. This is something that can’t be replicated on a screen.

Emily Kaplan started out as a floater doing temp work at Sotheby’s in 2010, and spent the next five years working as an assistant, a cataloguer, and a specialist before taking over the “Contemporary Curated” mid-season sale in 2015. This year, the 30-year-old was poached by Christie’s post-war and contemporary team, which is led Sotheby’s vets Alex Rotter and Loïc Gouzer.

Which artist’s market do you think is undervalued?

Abstract Expressionist artists Joan Mitchell and Lee Krasner have long been overshadowed and degraded as second-tier Abstract Expressionists. For a long time, Krasner was identified simply as Jackson Pollock’s wife, and not the masterful painter she is in her own right. Barkley L. Hendricks and Sam Gilliam, to name two African-American artists working in the 1960s and 1970s, rose from relative obscurity only a few years ago, and have only recently gained recognition in the marketplace, partly because of the travelling [show] “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power.”

Another market I am watching is Color Field. Works by Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, and Kenneth Noland in particular are both historically significant and commercial, and very well-collected around the United States, but I can see the prices rising over the next few years.

Alex Logsdail’s father is Nicholas Logsdail, who, at 21, founded Lisson Gallery, one of London’s first contemporary art galleries, in 1967, and has run it ever since. But Logsdail’s fils wasn’t always going to follow in his father’s footsteps and start working for Lisson right off the bat: While in college, Alex went to Basel with his dad and ended up hanging with the crew from Artforum, which led to an internship at the magazine.

After graduation, Alex worked at Deitch Projects and Team before eventually joining his father’s London gallery in 2009. In 2012, he opened a Lisson Gallery office in New York, and in 2014, plans were announced to open a grand space underneath the High Line. That space opened in 2016, and is currently hosting sculptures by Carmen Herrera, the 103-year-old artist whom Logsdail, 32, began showing at the gallery in the early 2010s. In 2017, the gallery inaugurated a second space around the corner to host complementary programming; this is where Logsdail showcases younger artists such as Hugh Hayden, who officially joined Lisson in September 2018.

What’s your favorite part of your job?

There is nothing quite as satisfying as hanging a show with an artist and seeing their vision for their work become a reality in real time.

What’s the biggest change you think we’ll see in the market in the next 10 years?

In today’s world, 10 years is an eternity. I doubt any major predictions I had would become a reality. There is certainly some basis for technological advances in how the art world operates, but it has been very resistant to adopting anything significant so far.

Wolfgang Tillmans, ¿dónde estamos?, 2016, at Sonora 128. Photo by PJ Rountree. Courtesy of the artist and kurimanzutto, Mexico City.

Nobuyoshi Araki, qARADISE, at Sonora 128. Photo by PJ Rountree. Courtesy of the artist and kurimanzutto, Mexico City.

In March 2016, a billboard went up in the Mexico City neighborhood of La Condesa featuring a weird-looking cactus and the phrase ¿Dónde estamos? Stylish passersby likely thought it to be a strange ad, but art insiders knew it was a work by Wolfgang Tillmans, set up by art dealer Bree Zucker for a space called Sonora 128 and supported by the gallery she worked for, Mexico City and New York’s influential Kurimanzutto.

When that gallery began planning to open a project space in New York, Zucker, who is 31, was tapped to run it alongside senior director Lissa McClure. There, she’s been applying the skills she honed running Sonora 128 to present shows with the gallery’s deep artist roster, which includes Danh Vō, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Anri Sala. The first show at its New York space had Abraham Cruzvillegas installing items suspended from the ceiling, causing gallery-goers to swerve and duck. The opening also had a little taste of Kurimanzutto’s hometown: Zucker was filling guests’ plastic cups with mezcal.

What’s the biggest change you think we’ll see in the market in the next 10 years?

Nothing that the market hasn’t seen before. There are always periods of expansion, concentration, and later, contraction. However, what I would like to see is a return to valuing art for the art itself, not just for its market value. Which is another way of saying that the art world should start supporting real art, instead of mediocrity, which happens to be in fashion at any given moment.

Flesh and Spirit (1982-83) by Jean-Michel Basquiat is viewed during a Sotheby’s preview of the May Evening Sale of Impressionist and Modern Art, in New York on May 4, 2018. HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP/Getty Images.

In fall 2015, Sotheby’s experienced a drain of its senior staff, which gave rival Christie’s a pronounced advantage. In January 2016, Sotheby’s made an $85 million bet that the firm Art Agency, Partners, could reverse its fortunes by bringing Amy Cappellazzo, the former Christie’s rainmaker, into the fold.

Cappellazzo’s protégé, Bernard Lagrange, a cataloguer and Princeton grad, has since become a key player at Sotheby’s, assisting Art Agency, Partners, in sourcing consignments for auction, and lining up clients to bid on those consignments at the evening sales. In May, the 27-year-old Lagrange was on the phone at Sotheby’s post-war and contemporary evening sale with the client fielding the winning $27 million bid on Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Flesh and Spirit (1982–83).

Which artist’s market do you think is undervalued?

Recently, I have spent a lot of time thinking about and looking at Thomas Schütte. I think he is a giant and one of the greatest artists of our time. Each encounter with his work has left me with a deep-seated primal impression that is difficult to verbalize. I have no doubt him being undervalued will not last very long.

What’s the biggest change you think we’ll see in the market in the next 10 years?

I don’t know if this will happen in the next 10 years, but it is going to be very interesting to see what happens when Larry Gagosian decides to hang up his boots. His vision and empire have played a significant role in the popularity that modern and contemporary art has today.

Installation view of “Zeng Fanzhi: In the Studio,” at Hauser & Wirth, Zürich, 2018. © Zeng Fanzhi. Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth.

Installation view of “Poetic Structures: The Work of Three Great Masters,” West Bund Art & Design Fair, Shanghai, 2017. Photo by JJYPHOTO. Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth.

Installation view of Hauser & Wirth’s booth at Art Basel in Hong Kong, 2018. Courtesy of the artists and Hauser & Wirth.

Hauser & Wirth recently announced that the gallery would open its ninth space in St. Moritz, the tony Swiss ski town where gallery founder Iwan Wirth organized some of his first exhibitions. But the real expansion is happening in Asia: Over the last year, Hauser & Wirth opened a gallery in the H Queens building in Hong Kong, set up offices in Shanghai and Beijing, and took on worldwide representation of Zeng Fanzhi, who became the most expensive living Chinese artist when his Last Supper (2001) sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong for $23.3 million in 2013.

Director Fiona Römer, 31, is working closely with the artist on the three-city Zeng Fanzhi extravaganza to be held in the galleries in Zurich, London, and Hong Kong. Even from her perch in Zurich, Römer has been integral in the gallery’s forward guard, building up its collector base in China at fairs like West Bund, ahead of the bigger Hong Kong push. As she told Artsy at the West Bund Art & Design fair last year, “You have to take the region seriously.”

What’s your favorite part of your job?

Art is my passion and I made it my profession. Working in different cultures and acting within them continues to fascinate me. I have lived in London, New York, [and] Berlin; I travel extensively for work, and have been part of the gallery’s expansion in China from the beginning. It’s always interesting to meet people with this shared passion around the world, and everyone has a personal success story to share.

What’s the biggest change you think we’ll see in the market in the next 10 years?

I believe the art market will expand into other regions. More people will have access to art and art education, which will lead to a cultural awareness and an expansion of the art market. At the same time, people are looking for new ways of experiencing art, and are on a quest for inspiration. My travels to places like Naoshima, Teshima, or Marfa have been enriching, and the creation of such cultural concepts will keep evolving.

Rashid Johnson, Untitled Escape Collage, 2018. Courtesy of Christie’s.

In 2013, Vivian Brodie was involved with the nonprofit collective Young & Starving (Y&S), an incubator that supported young artists struggling to become noticed. Christie’s asked Y&S to collaborate on a sale where the buyer’s premium would be waived, and all the funds would go straight to the artists. Five years later, the 28-year-old Brodie is now running all of Christie’s mid-season contemporary auctions, including the house’s biannual “Post-War to Present” sales, which present works by emerging artists, many of whom are getting their first exposure on the rostrum.

Brodie is also tasked with monitoring the potential of artists who are fresh to the secondary market, but might have the potential to become big names in Christie’s day sales and, eventually, evening sales. And she’s still committed to philanthropy. At the most recent “Post-War to Present” sale, which went down in New York on September 27th and reaped $20.1 million, 20 lots were donated by the artists to benefit the Global Wildlife Conservation.

Which artist’s market do you think is undervalued?

I have a long list that is constantly evolving as I see more artwork and discover new artists. My top few undervalued artists this week are Carl Andre, Mary Bauermeister, Billy Al Bengston, Piero Manzoni, Ed Paschke, and John Wesley.

What’s your favorite part of your job?

When I started at Christie’s 10 years ago, I was most impressed with the physical action. The energy in the room was exhilarating, and that first auction’s excitement was what fueled the beginning of my career. Now, my favorite parts of my job are the artworks I get to handle. Paintings always reveal so much more in person than they do in the initial JPEG, and I have never been disappointed to see a work in the flesh.

What’s the biggest change you think we’ll see in the market in the next 10 years?

The biggest change in the marketplace in the next 10 years is the scope of the market. More people are creating art, studying art, going to see art, and buying art than ever before. We see new buyers in every sale, and most especially in our online sales, showing that more people are entering the marketplace each season.

Untitled, 1984. Vivian Springford Almine Rech Gallery

Untitled (Tanzania Series), 1971. Vivian Springford Almine Rech Gallery

You can’t credit Almine Ruiz-Picasso with predicting Brexit, but she did pick the right time to add a New York space to the Almine Rech Gallery stable. Just as the new outpost opened on the Upper East Side in October 2016, the British pound and other European currencies came crashing down due to Brexit, and having a business in New York seemed like a great idea. She made another key decision when she hired her son Paul de Froment as the space’s director, who was living in New York following a stint as a private equities trader in Paris.

In the two years since the inaugural New York show, which featured work by Alexander Calder and Pablo Picasso (Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, Almine’s husband, is the artist’s grandson), de Froment has overseen a program that’s oscillated between blockbuster displays of work by famous artists like Julian Schnabel and showcases for young artists, such as market darling Jennifer Guidi. By focusing on programming that brings both bold names and artists who usually wouldn’t show on the Upper East Side, he’s turned the gallery into a must-see amidst a host of other great Upper East Side galleries.

Which artist’s market do you think is undervalued?

I can think of the artist in our current New York exhibition, Vivian Springford, and also of the German painter A.R. Penck, of which we’ll have a piece in our London show curated by Norman Rosenthal.

What’s your favorite part of your job?

Studio visits, because it’s a fantastic experience to be able to spend time and talk with an artist in the middle of his creative environment.

What’s the biggest change you think we’ll see in the market in the next 10 years?

It’s already started, as shows are becoming harder to produce cost-effectively due to shipping and insurance. More and more alternate options to show and sell art are developed, such as online viewing rooms, online auction houses, etc. Interactive museum shows with little or none of the actual art will start appearing, as well. This might translate into people buying more art from computer images, and thus being less adventurous in who and what they collect. Art that is JPEG-friendly will also sell better.

Installation view of “Invisible Man” at Martos Gallery, New York. Courtesy of the artists and Martos Gallery, New York.

Pope.L, Well (elh version), 2017. © Pope.L. Courtesy of the artist, Martos Gallery, New York, and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York.

Pedestal, 2017. Pope.L MARTOS GALLERY

Untitled, 2017. Kayode Ojo MARTOS GALLERY

Jose Martos has had galleries from St. Barts and SoHo to the North Fork of Long Island and the outskirts of Chelsea, and his Shoot the Lobster project space has popped up in Marseilles, Vietnam, and Iowa. But his most elegant gallery yet may be the one he opened in May 2017 in Chinatown, on a block of lower Elizabeth Street blissfully untouched by matcha bars and SoulCycle.

The first show was curated by director Ebony L. Haynes, and it was a stunner: “Invisible Man,” a group show inspired by Ralph Ellison’s classic book, commented on the black body in lush, subtle ways. Pope.L hung a water fountain from the ceiling and set glasses of water on small pedestals, and Kayode Ojo flipped a sofa on its side and placed a shimmering sequin dress atop it. “The works of these artists just so happen to execute an idea that I had of representing an absent body,” she said at the time. “[They] speak to the lack of visibility of artists of color in the gallery space.”

Which artist’s market do you think is undervalued?

Mary Heilmann and Beverly Buchanan.

What’s the biggest change you think we’ll see in the market in the next 10 years?

In 10 years from now, artworks will be seen less as units of investment, and any attempts—hopefully few to none—at international art market regulation will be morally sound. The consideration will be equal across all types of galleries and artists, and not focus on the slow-shifting “Top 5s.” And the recent interest and value placed on works by artists of color will have proved to not be just a glitch in the matrix. But that could be a bit of a far stretch.

Marlborough Fine Art has had a presence in London since the 1940s and on New York’s 57th Street since the 1960s. In 2007, the gallery opened another space, Marlborough Chelsea, on West 25th Street, and in 2012, that space was taken over by Max Levai, the 24-year-old son of director Pierre Levai. Immediately, he started hosting some of the more adventurous programming in the city, from the intricate worlds of Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe to the large jacuzzi sculptures of Mike Bouchet. In 2017, Levai announced that the gallery would be taking over the second floor of a building in London’s Mayfair and, together with the New York space, would be rebranded as Marlborough Contemporary.

Which artist’s market do you think is undervalued?

Take a look at the work of German painter Werner Büttner. His historic importance is undeniable and his new work is some of the most fresh and successful painting I have seen in a while.

What’s the biggest change you think we’ll see in the market in the next 10 years?

Hopefully, new adventurous clients will sustain what is already in place, and will set the standard for living [with] and collecting art that is more ambitious than the generation of collectors that precedes them.

Antony Gormley, State III, 2012. Courtesy of Phillips.

KAWS, Untitled (MBFF9), 2014. Courtesy of Phillips.

As part of CEO Ed Dolman’s global redesign, Phillips began to challenge more established rivals in 2014 by moving into posh new London headquarters on Berkeley Square—a 73,000-square-foot building on one of Mayfair’s most attractive blocks. Key to Dolman’s plan for London domination has been to corner the market on younger artists by being the first place to auction them. Simon Tovey, 30, oversees the London-based “New Now” sales, and helps Phillips find the new superstars. Phillips was, after all, the first house to bring Mark Bradford and Jonas Wood to auction.

Which artist’s market do you think is undervalued?

I recently went to a small and wonderfully curated show in London that surveys the female Abstract Expressionists, including artists such as Yvonne Thomas, Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler, all of whom exhibited in the seminal Ninth Street exhibition in 1951. I think there is such a fascinating narrative around these groundbreaking women and their pivotal impact on 20th-century art in America. Artists such as Mitchell and Frankenthaler are already commanding high prices; however, I am excited to see how these works will lead others some of the lesser-known names of the same era. Similarly, I am excited to read Mary Gabriel’s forthcoming book Ninth Street Women,which will also tell the story around five of these influential female artists.

Installation view of “UN(COVERED): MIRÓ I HAMMONS” at Nahmad Contempoary, 2018. Courtesy of the gallery.

While at Jack Hanley Gallery, Brandy Carstens brought the young artist Elizabeth Jaeger into the gallery’s fold and oversaw its 30th anniversary show in 2017, which featured many artists that the gallery had nurtured, including Joe Bradley, Robert Gober, and Maurizio Cattelan—the latter of whom served as the receptionist for the opening.

In mid-2017, Carstens joined Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, one of Chelsea’s more consistently experimental blue-chippers, which represents artists such as Olafur Eliasson and opened an outpost in Los Angeles this year. Most recently, the 33-year-old Carstens organized the gallery’s summer group show, which included works by Kelly Akashi, Emily Mae Smith, and Jaeger.

Which artist’s market do you think is undervalued?

Lois Dodd and Paul Laffoley.

What’s your favorite part of your job?

Beyond the extraordinary artists at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, our audience brings a range of perspectives and experiences to the work. It’s compelling to see exhibitions through their eyes.

Installation view of “The Tissue of Memory” at Simon Lee, New York, 2018. Courtesy of Simon Lee.

London-based dealer Simon Lee leased a space in an Upper East Side townhouse in 2014 to use as a viewing room—he wanted a New York gallery, but with a family in London and a gallery in Hong Kong, he wasn’t sure he had the bandwidth to operate it. Enter James Michael Shaeffer, a former director at the dealer James Fuentes’s Lower East Side space, who became the director of Lee’s New York gallery in January 2017.

Shaeffer has helped build out Simon Lee’s New York space from an appointment-only viewing room into a full gallery with regular shows. He’s also helped to re-contextualize the artists Lee was showing by putting them in conversation with younger artists whom Shaeffer, now 29, had been showing downtown. The current group show up at Simon Lee, “The Tissue of Memory,” juxtaposes two lush Cy Twombly works on paper with a Win McCarthy installation featuring a glass facial mask—a witty and stirring match.

Which artist’s market do you think is undervalued?

Gary Simmons, Lois Dodd, and Stanley Brouwn.

What’s your favorite part of your job?

Showcasing younger artists at the beginning of their careers with more established, canonized artists. It excites me to contextualize artworks like that for the first time.

Mitchell-Innes & Nash became a Chelsea powerhouse because of the twin skills of the gallery’s two married founders: David Nash is the former global head of the Impressionist and modern department at Sotheby’s worldwide, and Lucy Mitchell-Innes is the former global head of the post-war and contemporary department at Sotheby’s.

This deep understanding of two fields allows the gallery to operate on the primary market, representing the risk-taking black artist Pope.L, and on the secondary market, by staging at the gallery surveys of work by Tom Wesselmann and Joseph Beuys—and bringing a $25 million Jackson Pollock painting to the Art Basel fair in Basel, Switzerland. To forge connections with artists of the next generation, the gallery relies on a young staff led by the 30-year-old Josie Nash. She’s been the driving force behind several recent additions to the gallery’s roster, including Jacolby Satterwhite, who signed with the gallery in July, a month after a VR project at the Morán Morán booth at Art Basel wowed fairgoers.

Which artist’s market do you think is undervalued?

Jessica Stockholder. I traveled to Texas last week for the opening of her wonderful exhibition at The Contemporary Austin, entitled “Relational Aesthetics.” She’s exhibited at prestigious museums all over the world and influenced a whole generation of artists.

At just 25, Max Moore started out downstairs in Sotheby’s cataloging department. Now, Moore heads up the day sales, a thrilling place to be when a successful sale can anoint new market stars. Moore was steeped in contemporary art growing up—his father is the revered collector Frank Moore, who recently retired his practice as a brain surgeon and took a job at Gagosian Gallery; rumor has it that Larry Gagosian is grooming the former doctor to take over the empire. Perhaps, down the line, there will be a place for Max there, as well.

What’s the biggest change you think we’ll see in the market in the next 10 years?

Social media has had a profound impact on the art market through its dissemination of information at a global scale. I can’t predict the exact outcome, but I have no doubt that new advancements in technology will continue to play a significant role in shaping the art and the market over the next 10 years.

Though Joe Nahmad comes from one of the biggest collecting families in the world, he was determined to make a name for himself when, in 2013, he opened a space at 980 Madison, a building that also hosts the flagship outpost of Larry Gagosian’s empire. Just 23 years old at the time, he used the deep connections forged by him and his family during their decades of collecting to source heavyweight works, while also keeping room in the calendar to stage shows of then-market darlings the Still House Group, as well as off-the-cuff experiments—like when he paired Alex Israel and Dan Flavin in a single room, the glow of Flavin’s bulbs bouncing off Israel’s giant sunglasses lens. Last month’s five-year anniversary show included iconic examples of works by famous artists: a Richard Prince joke painting, a Wade Guyton “U” canvas, a Christopher Wool text work, and even a yellow-and-orange Mark Rothko.

Which artist’s market do you think is undervalued?

The European post-war abstract painters such as Hans Hartung and Antoni Tàpies are still undervalued. Also, the conceptual minimalist artist Daniel Buren. Even for artists who have a heated market, there are lesser-known bodies of work within their oeuvre that are largely under-appreciated. For example, Rudolf Stingel’s Celotex and Styrofoam works, Richard Prince’s “Fashion” photographs, Albert Oehlen’s “Grey” paintings—each of which have been the focus of an exhibition at Nahmad Contemporary. Also, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Xerox paintings, which the gallery will present in our May 2019 exhibition.

What’s your favorite part of your job?

Hanging an exhibition after months and months of research and conceptualization is always rewarding. I also love connecting diverse artists in surprising ways. Our current exhibition, for instance, presents Joan Miró’s “Sobreteixims” alongside David Hammons’s tarp-cloaked canvases.

from Artsy News

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evoldir · 3 years ago

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Fwd: Postdoc: UCologne_Germany.PlantEvolutionarySystemsBiology

Begin forwarded message: > From: [email protected] > Subject: Postdoc: UCologne_Germany.PlantEvolutionarySystemsBiology > Date: 15 January 2022 at 07:41:49 GMT > To: [email protected] > > > 1 Postdoc position - 36 Months > Evolutionary Systems Biology in Arabidopsis lyrata > Lab. J. de Meaux - Cologne > > Recently, our lab started to explore the genomic and evolutionary > features that associate with the mode of gene expression inheritance. By > bridging approaches in population genetics and transcriptomics with the > traditions of quantitative genetics, we systematically dissect the > component of genetic variation that can directly sustain a response to > selection and try to understand the factors that influence the adaptive > relevance of specific molecular plant traits. The postdoctoral research > associate will expand this line of work and integrate epigenetic, > transcriptomic and phenotypic analyses of variation in the obligate > outcrossing species A. lyrata. In close collaboration with our > international team, the postdoc will also mentor students and actively > participate to the lively scientific culture of our lab. > > This project is funded by the German Ministry of Research and Education > (BMBF) for 36 months. The applicant must hold a PhD in Evolutionary > Biology or Quantitative Genetics (Comparative Genomics, Evolutionary > Genetics, Plant Breeding or Population genetics) and hold advanced > skills in bioinformatic analysis of omics data. Language in the lab is > English. Applications or questions regarding the position should be sent > by mail to [email protected], with the following subject line – > Postdoc application Evol Sys Arabidopsis – de Meaux lab. A letter of > motivation, a CV and the contact of 3 referees should be provided, all > in a single pdf file. Revision of applications will begin in February > 15th 2022 and continue until the position is filled. Funding is for up > to 3 years starting on April 1st 2022 (flexible starting date). For more > information on our lab and research, visit our website > https://ift.tt/2OqstBD. Applicants still in the > process of completing their PhD are encouraged to informally contact the > PI if they have questions concerning the position. The University of > Cologne is an equal opportunity employer in compliance with German laws. > People with disabilities are strongly encouraged to apply. Women are > also strongly encouraged to apply. > Cologne is Germany’s vibrant Metropolis on the Rhine. The city is well > known for its wild carnival, its famous Kölsch beer, its Cathedral and > its vivid contemporary art and musical scene. Cologne is the fourth > biggest city in Germany with over a million inhabitants from all over > the world and an interesting mix of restored historic buildings and > modern post-war architecture. Most importantly, Cologne University is > one of the oldest and largest Universities in the Country. Our research > group is hosted at the Biological Center of the University of Cologne > and associated to the Collaborative Research network SFB680 > (https://ift.tt/3tpc80W) and to the Excellence Research Cluster > CEPLAS (http://ceplas.eu/de/), which fosters active interactions between > plant scientists of the Universities of Cologne, Düsseldorf and the Max > Planck Institute of Plant Breeding Research. In this context, our lab > members are assured to start their scientific career in a world-class > scientific environment. > > > > > Prof. Dr. Juliette de Meaux > University of Cologne > Plant Molecular Ecology > Institute of Botany > Biozentrum > Zülpicher str. 47b > D-50674 Cologne > Germany > > Tel: +49 221 470 8213 > [email protected] > > https://ift.tt/2OqstBD > > > Juliette de Meaux > via IFTTT

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phenomenist-blog · 6 years ago

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3. Mainz, Germany

Mainz is an inconspicuous giant in the Germanic world. It is one of the first two capitals in ancient Germany, along with mighty Cologne. In the Middle Ages, Mainz becomes one of the most spiritually-powerful and historically-influential cities of human history. It is the unsung hero of German cities.

While Trier is older than either of them, the Roman cities of Mainz and Cologne become formal capitals of the province of Lesser Germania. The ability of these two cities, to eclipse the obvious cultural power of Trier, and hold on to positions of administrative and political power over the Germanic world, stems from their strategic geographic location. Mainz, specifically, lies at the intersection of the Rivers Main and Rhine, two of the most important rivers in Germany, and the Romans never seem to forget how important this intersection is, as they build, maintain, and even rebuild vital military garrisons, including a river fleet, at Mainz, throughout antiquity. The Romans also place Mainz at the edge of the “Limes,” the wall of fortification that marks the Northern Roman frontier and protects against “barbarians.” This makes Mainz the most vital defensive point in the North, a center of politics, from the beginning.

Because of its position of strength, Mainz remains vital to the Romans until the very end, so much so that the sack of Mainz by Attila the Hun in 451 A.D. sparks the greatest and most final battle of the ancient world, namely, the Battle of Catalaunian Plains. It is the famous face-off between the “Last of the Romans,” Flavius, versus Attila, who is perhaps the greatest threat of all time to Western Civilization. In this epic, and unprecedentedly large, battle, Attila threatens to swallow the Western continent in a Mongolian-style domination, but to his dismay, a polyglot alliance of Germanic, Celtic, Roman, and other soldiers joins together and fights with surprising unity to defeat the polyglot army of Huns and those who follow Attila. The defeat of “Attila the Hun” ends the Eastern threat for over a thousand years in the West, until the formidable march of the Ottoman Turks in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which returns as a second wave of an existential threat from the East.

When the Huns, and the Roman Empire for that matter, leave behind the Germanic region in the fifth century, Mainz falls squarely into the hands of the Germanic people, for all time. “Germany” would not exist today, without Mainz, it is such a strategically-important foundational point for the development of early European Civilization. The stout city of Mainz serves as an Eastern capital for the Franks, the most powerful of all the Germanic Kingdoms. This puts Mainz center-stage in the Frankish Kingdom, alongside Paris and Cologne.

Like Trier, Mainz is an early Christian city in the West. In fact, Mainz is the central hub for the Christianization of the Germanic and Slavic peoples. St. Boniface, known as the “Apostle to the Germans,” is the first archbishop of Mainz, which puts the city literally at the center of the Medieval-Germanic worldview, a time and place when Christianity means everything to the development of the continent. Because of this, the Archbishop of Mainz becomes the most important of the seven Electors of the Holy Roman Empire. This means that Mainz is basically the “unsung capital” of the early Germanic world, the place where the Emperor regularly receives his title, a sacred election ceremony that is, in the Middle Ages, just as important as the naming of a new Pope in Rome.

In fact, the Archbishop of Mainz becomes a substitute for the Pope, North of the Alps, and besides Rome, Mainz is the only “Holy See” in the Catholic Church. This makes Mainz the only city to be an unofficial capital of both the Holy Roman Empire and the Roman Catholic Church, the two most powerful organizations of Medieval Europe. Does that make Mainz the most powerful Medieval city of all of Europe? Little wonder, that by the end of the twelfth century, Mainz is the second-largest Germanic city. It is the spiritual heart of the Germanic people and a conduit through which the Christianization of both East and West takes place.

Finally, and appropriately, perhaps the most influential German of all time comes from Mainz: a High Medieval printmaker named Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press. This invention marks a new era in human progress. It is a far-changer in World Civilization. It makes possible the availability of books to laypeople, and for this reason, many historians consider Gutenberg, of the fourteenth century, to be the most important inventor of the last two Millennia, if not all time. His system of movable type expands the human mind and spirit like nothing before it. It makes possible the mass production and consumption of the written word. Human intelligence will always owe much of its advancement to the mechanical system of type of the lowly German printmaker.

The most important single book to print its words on the Gutenberg press is the historically-crushing Luther Bible, a document that single-handedly ends the intellectual and political domination of the Catholic Church over Europe and signals the daw. Of a new era: the transition from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, which then leads to the creation and building of the modern world through revolutions in math, science, philosophy, literature, democracy, industrialization, and mass communication. You certainly wouldn’t be reading this blog post, on the Internet, without an invention like the printing press. The Gutenberg Age is essentially the age of global mass communication. When it comes to the flowering of the Golden Age of Western Civilization, one truly considers Medieval Mainz a central point in human history.

It is also important to know that the Germans consider the Gutenberg invention to be of special significance to them, personally, because not only donGermans like to read more than most, but their entire language relies on the Gutenberg Bible for its written format. Before the Gutenberg publication of the Luther Bible, there is no unified German language, and the Culture is so perennially decentralized that no language may ever form, without help. The “help” comes when Luther is able to publish his translation of the New Teatament into the common speech, and this unites the scattered Germanic tongues and forms a single German language, for the first time. Thanks to the Gutenberg press, the German people are now able to come together under a single Culture, which enables them to begin in the sixteenth century to adopt a uniform identity and eventually form organized countries. Without Gutenberg, there is no “Germany.”

In WWII, Allied bombers destroy 80% of Mainz, one of the highest percentages for a large Medieval city, more than Cologne. The bombing destroys a dense Cultural heritage, to say the least. Many of the supposed targets of the bombing remain undamaged by the end of the war. Only the Medieval Old Town, with its cultural sites, is thoroughly ravaged. Thus, it is supposed that the real motive behind the bombing of Mainz is to eviscerate the German soul. The loss of so much cultural wealth from such a city is an irrevocable tragedy and a poignant loss that few in the West have remotely acknowledged.

Overall, the historical importance of Mainz is hardly second to any other city, in the West. It is one of the two original capitals on the Roman map, North of the Alps, but then it remains the most important Christian city of the Germanic world, acting as a second “Rome.” Simultaneously, Mainz is the most stable political center in the unsteady Holy Roman Empire, because it is the permanent home to the most powerful of the seven Electors, in an age where the Emperor seat changes sometimes every few decades. In this environment, Mainz is the “Rock of Ages” to the Germanic world, one of the spiritual-political centers of Medieval Europe. The emergence of the titanic figure of Johannes Gutenberg pushes the city over the edge, when it comes to pure historical centrality. How could a city be more influential than Mainz and yet receive less recognition? Few cities of the world inhabit such a unique position of undeserved obscurity. Although Mainz rarely receives the same level of attention as its twin counterpart Cologne, certainly if spiritual history were the only criteria on which to judge, then Mainz would actually be the best candidate for “most authentic German city.” Even with its destruction in WWII, there persists something distinctly “German” about the architecture of Mainz, that makes it feel representative of some authentic essence of the culture. Certainly, if economic weight is not a factor, then Mainz is the “most authentic German city,” at least prior to its destruction in WWII. It is the soul of its Civilization. Anyone who likes to read books and is not of noble birth probably owes it to Gutenberg. A pilgrimage to Mainz, the city where the democratization of the written word all begins, seems in order.

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theodorasresearchjournal-blog · 7 years ago

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RESEARCH ARTEFACT // Research Update IV - A focus on generative, algorithm-based art

Definitions of Generative Art

“The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.” — Sol LeWitt, 1967.

-art that in whole or in part has been created with the use of an autonomous system

-It should be evident from the above description of the evolution of generative art that process (or structuring) and change (or transformation) are among its most definitive features, and that these features and the very term 'generative' imply dynamic development and motion. ...(the result) is not a creation by the artist but rather the product of the generative process - a self-precipitating structure (Clauser, 1998)

-Celestino Soddu, Chairman of Generative Art Conferences, Director of Generative Design lab of Politecnico di Milano University, Scientific Director of ARGENIA Association => a contemporary overview of Generative Art:

“Generative Art is the idea realized as genetic code of artificial events, as construction of dynamic complex systems able to generate endless variations. Each Generative Project is a concept-software that works producing unique and non-repeatable events, like music, images or 3D Objects, as possible and manifold expressions of the generating idea strongly recognizable as a vision belonging to an artist / designer / musician / architect /mathematician. This generative Idea / human-creative-act make an unpredictable, amazing and endless expansion of human creativity. We can create species of events with a recognizable identity, following our vision. Computers are simply the tools for its storage in memory and execution. This approach opens a new era in Art, Design and Composition: the challenge of a new naturalness of the artificial event as a mirror of Nature. Variations, like in Bach music, are the best strong communication of the Idea. Once more man emulates Nature, as in the act of making Art. This approach suddenly opened the possibility to rediscover possible fields of human creativity that would be unthinkable without computer tools. If these tools, at the beginning of the computer era, seemed to extinguish the human creativity, today, with he generative approach, directly operates on codes of Harmony and on codes of Identity. They become tools that open new fields and enhance our understanding of creativity as an indissoluble synthesis between art and science. After two hundred years of the old industrial era of necessarily cloned objects, music, architectures, communications the one-of-a-kind object becomes an essential answer to emergent contemporary aesthetical needs.”

- In essence, all generative art focuses on the process by which an artwork is made and this is required to have a degree of autonomy and independence from the artist who defines it.

- John McCormack identifies a distinction between what might be termed “strong” and “weak” generative art. Strong generative art gives creative autonomy and independence primarily to the computer, minimising the creative signature of the human who designed the system. In contrast, weak generative art uses the computer more passively as a tool or assistant, the human artist having primary creative responsibility and autonomy.

-This distinction is complemented by different views of art within the generative art community. These views range from a perception that art primarily refers to stand-alone art-objects that are evaluated for their formal aesthetic value, to understanding art as an embedded social and cultural activity within which machines are currently unable to participate independently. In this latter view, relations and artistic meaning emerge through a network of interactions between people and their activities.

-”This (generative art) is a typical example of the move in art towards automation arising from the current mathematisation of the world. A phenomenon that is certainly inescapable and all the more revolutionary as it also puts the role of human beings in the creative process in perspective. “ (Extract from http://media.digitalarti.com/blog/digitalarti_mag/algorithmic_art_the_age_of_the_automation_of_art)

Philip Galanter on Generative Art:

“What is Generative Art? Complexity Theory as a Context for Art Theory” Philip Galanter, BA, MFA

Generative Art and the Question of Authorship

- “Certainly when one turns the creation of a work of art over to a machine, and part of the work is created without the participation of human intuition, some will see a resonance with contemporary post-structural thinking. Some generative artists work specifically in the vein of problematising traditional notions about authorship. But the generative approach has no particular content bias, and generative artists are free to explore life, death, love, war, beauty, or any other theme.”

Hans Haacke’s ‘Statement’ as a proposed manifesto for generative art

- “As curators for the exhibit “COMPLEXITY – Art and Complex Systems” Ellen K. Levy and I were thrilled to be able to present Haacke’s 1963 piece “Condensation Cube”. A simple acrylic cube with a bit of water at the bottom and sealed shut, “Condensation Cube” becomes a miniature weather system as an ever changing display of condensation forms on the cube’s walls.

This work anticipated meteorologist Ralph Lorenz’s discovery of chaotic strange attractors, and stands as a wonderful example of generative art. The following artists statement written by Haacke in 1965 could stand today as a manifesto for generative artists exploring complex adaptive systems.

_______________________________________________________________________

‘HANS HAACKE

Statement

...make something which experiences, reacts to its environment, changes, is non-stable...

...make something indeterminate, which always looks different, the shape of which cannot be predicted precisely...

...make something which cannot 'perform' without the assistance of its environment...

...make something which reacts to light and temperature changes, is subject to air currents and depends, in its functioning, on the forces of gravity...

...make something which the 'spectator' handles, with which he plays and thus animates...

...make something which lives in time and makes the 'spectator' experience time...

...articulate: something natural...

Cologne,

January 1965.’ ”

_______________________________________________________________________

Generative Art in the context of postmodernism

“Certainly one can make generative art that exhibits a postmodern attitude. Many do. But one can also make generative art that attempts to refute post-modernism.

Two of the most significant impacts of post-modernism on art are: (1) the proposed abandonment of formalism and beauty as a meaningful area of exploration, and (2) the proposed abandonment of the notion that art can reveal truth in any nonrelativistic way. Form, beauty, and knowledge are held to be mere social constructions.

Generative art can be used to attack these fundamental points head on. First, generative artists can explore form as something other than arbitrary social convention. Using complex systems artists can create form that emerges as the result of naturally occurring processes beyond the influence of culture and man.

Second, having done this, generative artists can demonstrate by compelling example reasons to maintain faith in our ability to understand our world. The generative artist can remind us that the universe itself is a generative system. And through generative art we can regain our sense of place and participation in that universe.”

(Full text available at

http://jonmccormack.info/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/TenQuestionsV3.pdf)

10 Questions Regarding Generative Art

1: Can a machine originate anything? That is, can it generate something new, meaningful, surprising and of value: a poem, an artwork, a useful idea, a solution to a long-standing problem? Certainly, computers have played a role in creating all these things and more, but how much of the creativity comes derives from the program and how much from the programmer?

2: What is it like to be a computer that makes art? The goal of programming a machine to be an autonomous artist seems to impose a double standard: we’re asking the machine to be autonomous, yet we’re also asking for human creativity, assessed by human standards. If we abandon this second constraint, we then have the problem of recognition – what could possibly be the defining characteristics of an autonomous computer artist?

3: Can human aesthetics be formalised? If an aesthetic measure or algorithm can be devised, then it could be used to automate the generation of aesthetic artefacts (using evolutionary techniques or machine learning, for instance). If the formalisation included knowledge of individual tastes and preferences, the artefacts could be tailored differently to every individual, uniting modern mass-production with aesthetic haute couture on an unprecedented scale.

4: What new kinds of art does the computer enable? Computation is a relatively new medium for creative expression, but computers appropriated for digital art may simply use them as display devices, or for automating prior processes or paradigms [4]. Generative art predates the digital computer and many widely respected generative artworks do not involve digital computers. So what – beyond generating more art – does generative computer art bring that is new to art? Does the computer change or enable artistic possibilities beyond mimicry, automation and remediation?

5: In what sense is generative art representational, and what is it representing? Unless software design is conceptualised directly at the level of individual bits, it is impossible to write a computer program without recourse to some form of representation. The nature of programming enforces this constraint. Generative computer art often draws on ideas and algorithms from the simulation sciences. A simulation involves the representation of important characteristics and dynamical behaviours of some target system. However, few generative artists would view or conceptualise their works as direct simulations of reality. If generative art is representational, what is it representing?

6: What is the role of randomness in generative art? What does the use of randomness say about the place of intentionality in the making of art? John Cage wanted to take the artist’s ego out of the production of the work, but in Iannis Xenakis’s compositions “randomness is introduced as a necessary part of a willed product”.

7: What can computational generative art tell us about creativity? Creativity is highly sought after. Brains and bodies do it, societies do it, and evolution does it, but how do these things give rise to artefacts and ideas that are new, surprising and valuable?

8: What characterises good generative art? Why is generative art in need of special quality criteria? Is it better considered alongside other current practices? Consider two important principles that differentiate generative art from other practices. The first is that the primary artistic intent in generative art is expressed in the design, specification and construction of the generative process. This process is what the artist creates, and as such should arguably be the subject of scrutiny in appreciation of what it produces. Secondly, the way this process is interpreted or realised is also the locus of artistic intent, and is intimately intertwined with the first principle.

9: What can we learn about art from generative art? Generative art redistributes traditional notions of authorship and intention, introducing autonomous processes and agents, allowing us to appreciate the systemic aspects of contemporary art production, exhibition and consumption from an illuminating perspective. [...] Additionally, generative art’s emphasis on algorithmic techne and explicable mechanisms alienate it from the mainstream art world, which often remains tied to the “irreducibility of the work of art” [5]. What then, is generative art’s place and role within contemporary culture? Is it confined to academic research or just a commercial-art tool currently in vogue, but possibly nearing exhaustion? Is its role simply as a generator of new techniques for application in the design and cultural industries? Is it closer to craft practice than art practice?

10: What future developments would force us to rethink our answers? The staggering changes brought about by developments in computing technology present us with many opportunities to rethink our relationship to the world. In recent years, digital technology has bound itself to our social organisation and is slowly pervading everyday objects to create an internet of things. These in turn present new niches for technological evolution, social and creative change. The complex, emergent nature of these relationships makes prediction of their long term impact difficult. But change will undoubtedly occur, and these changes will force us to rethink our questions.

Excerpts from the research paper “Ten Questions Concerning Generative Computer Art Jon McCormack”, Oliver Bown, Alan Dorin, Jonathan McCabe, Gordon Monro and Mitchell Whitelaw, 12 April 2012.

(Full text available at:

http://jonmccormack.info/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/TenQuestionsV3.pdf)

Resources on algorithmic and generative art:

- a walkthrough theoretical perspectives and central artists:

https://www.mat.ucsb.edu/~g.legrady/academic/courses/01sp200a/students/brentYokota/200a_fin.html

- An ample overview by Robert Verostko:

http://www.verostko.com/algorithm.html

- ‘The Methodology of Generative Art’ by Tjark Ihmels, Julia Riedel:

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/themes/generative-tools/generative-art/1/

- the ‘Vademecum of digital art’ by GRATIN:

http://www.gratin.org/vademecum_en.html

-’Art in the Information Age: Technology and Conceptual Art’ by E.A. Shanken

https://www.leonardo.info/isast/articles/shanken.pdf

- ‘Read_me, run_me, execute_meCode as Executable Text: Software Art and its Focus on Program Code as Performative Text’ by Inke Arns

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/themes/generative-tools/read_me/1/

#compartsresearch

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