#site specific

[itscolossal]

In ‘Fictional Nature,’ Fabian Knecht Encloses Live Trees and Craggy Stones in a White Cube Gallery

[woundgallery]

Rebecca Horn, Room of Fire, Radiance, installation, 1992

[wildhumancore]

Andy Goldsworthy

[epresjampress]

Soupattack II. by Dulce Galán

[modernart1945-1980]

Izumi, Japan, 1987 "A soothing sculpture by the British artist Andy Goldsworthy, known for his transient, site-specific interventions using only natural matter. In this case, the land artist used a stick to carve circles into a block of snow, perched against a conical snow plinth—to beautiful effect—while visiting Izumi, Japan. Goldsworthy has often made use of snow and ice over the course of his career. In fact, in 1989, two years after this artwork was created, he travelled to the North Pole, where he crafted four vast snow rings that marked the pole’s exact position." via https://elephant.art/iotd/andy-goldsworthy-snow-circles-izumi-japan-1987/

 ‘Snow Circles’ by Andy Goldsworthy 

[8pxl]

PSA: Tumblr/Wordpress is preparing to start selling our user data to Midjourney and OpenAI.

you have to MANUALLY opt out of it as well.

to opt out on desktop, click your blog ➡️ blog settings ➡️ scroll til you see visibility options and it’ll be the last option to toggle.

to opt out on mobile, click your blog ➡️ scroll then click visibility ➡️ toggle opt out option.

if you’ve already opted out of showing up in google searches, it’s preselected for you. if you don’t have the option available, update your app or close your browser/refresh a few times. important to note you also have to opt out for each blog you own separately, so if you’d like to prevent AI scraping your blog i’d really recommend taking the time to opt out. (source)

[russellmoreton]

DSC_3757 Assemblage by Russell Moreton Via Flickr: Ceramic Vessels on Site Specific Ground 2019 On the nature of creative inquiry Indexical markings into the aesthetic realm between objects

[andyfi03]

RIVELAZIONI, due Artiste per il Museo Sant'Orsola di Firenze

E’ stata inaugurata lo scorso 28 giugno la mostra RIVELAZIONI, due Artiste per gli spazi ancora in restauro del futuro Museo di Sant’Orsola di Firenze. Continue reading RIVELAZIONI, due Artiste per il Museo Sant’Orsola di Firenze

[hexjulia]

something you really learn from this site is that 'sounding reasonable' is a writing style you can just adopt while saying bizarre things, and if you just sound sure enough you are in fact the most reasonable person online about 80% of all users will just assume you are in fact so very reasonable, that your sources check out and you are drawing reasonable conclusions from them. You don't actually need to make sense.

If you use the right tone you can also, essentially without effort, convince people anyone who disagrees has evil motivations or convictions in some way. Convincingly performed indignation makes people very apologetic/makes them side with you because this is a very scary emotion to them (the userbase is terrified of being guilty or siding with the guilty). Doesn't matter what you're actually saying this applies in basically any situation. But you cannot use dated memespeak or writing styles popular on this site 2+ years ago because those annoy everyone and make you look stupid and easy to make fun of.

again it doesn't matter what you're actually saying. This site is all about tone. It's basically like talking to a baby or perhaps a small dog. it's about sounding cool.

[itscolossal]

Otherworldly Zip-Tie Sculptures by Sui Park Crawl Across Galleries and Sprout in City Parks

[zehrcoolpotato]

A Touch from the Abyss

“To forget would not only be dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”— Elie Wiesel, preface to ‘Night’ (2006)

As if free-falling, the body plunged into darkness. Humid air dampened the skin, cooled the ground, and diffused an earthy scent. The wind’s symphonies sounded celestial from a distance, enchanting the listener into nocturnal woods. This ambience was characterised by “âm”, the form and expression of ‘And They Die a Natural Death’ (2022) by artist and filmmaker Nguyễn Trinh Thi. A homophone in the Vietnamese language, âm has different usages, some of which provide clues to understanding humanist concerns in this work.

In the Vietnamese language, the syllable âm denotes distinct meanings. As a Vietnamese observer, I realised an existing language barrier—artistically and linguistically—that poses a challenge in contextualising ‘And They Die a Natural Death’. By introducing the word âm, I attempt to illuminate foundational layers of Nguyễn Trinh Thi’s presence at documenta fifteen, which is arguably one of the most prominent global exhibitions.

Nguyễn Trinh Thi, ‘And They Die a Natural Death’, 2022, chilli pepper plants, wind, bamboo flutes, projection, monitor. Installation view, Rondell, Kassel. Image courtesy of the artist.

Rondell (circular building on the left), exterior view, Kassel, 2006. Photo by Eva Kröcher. Wikimedia Commons. 

Âm 音: sonic, sound

A site-specific art installation, ‘And They Die a Natural Death’ was a public intervention reviving Rondell—Kassel’s long-standing defensive tower built in 1523 and was said to later house torture facilities in its underground vaults. As part of the installation, a high-tech system recreated and implanted the natural environment of Tam Đảo forest in Vietnam. Via this hidden automated design, the Tam Đảo wind was generated in Rondell’s interior, and composed rhythms with the bamboo flutes in the dome. In this absolutely dark cinematic space, sound became the main device to storytelling.

Recently, Nguyễn Trinh Thi began to incorporate new media in her work, including organic materials and natural forces, prioritising the art of listening over mere representation. She experimented with sound as the primary technical apparatus. An ethnographic research trip to the Central Highlands of Vietnam in 2021 touched the artist so significantly that she dedicated her film to the J’rai culture of listening.2 ‘How to Improve the World’ (2021) is the documentary film that acts as a prelude to ‘And They Die a Natural Death’. By appropriating musician John Cage’s diary titled ‘How to Improve the World: You Will Only Make Matters Worse’ (1992), the filmmaker suggests that we should listen to the world around us to survive ecological crises together.3

Âm 荫: tree shade

The Tam Đảo wind not only created sounds inside Rondell, but also activated a lighting system to blow up silhouettes of bird’s eye chilli plants hidden underneath the platform. Enlarged shadows reached the highest parts of the dome, casting a luxuriant forest onto Rondell’s circular wall. Using small plants as main actors, the artist built an eco-theater in which non-human agency played a crucial role in the retelling of death. Chilli pepper shadows inside Rondell formed a panoramic ink painting, and this visual quality could be said to reference East Asian traditional art. In feudal China, the landscape genre seeks to express harmony between Heaven and Earth and cosmic wholeness between humans and nature, and this is observed with the installation.

Nguyễn Trinh Thi’s use of shadow as a visual signifier is not unlike American American artist Kara Walker’s signature strategy, which elicits the legacy of slavery through stereotypical--often grotesque--cut-paper silhouettes. Such technique aids the artists to walk the lines between pleasure and pain, visibility and invisibility, power and oppression. 

Preparation of chilli pepper plants before being installed underneath the viewer's platform in the Rondell. Original caption: “She took care of everything - production, plants, people, and text. I’m deeply grateful.” Image courtesy of the artist.

The electrical system which measured the wind’s intensity was being set up in Tam Đảo, Vietnam. Originally captioned “Thank you so much Đức for sending us your wind!!!” Image courtesy of the artist.

Âm 喑: muteness

Like the other projects at documenta fifteen, Nguyễn Trinh Thi’s installation recalled a testimony denied by grand history. ‘And They Die a Natural Death’ was a mute cry for loss and brutality. The artist referenced a chapter in Bùi Ngọc Tấn’s memoir in prison, A Tale For 2000.4 In the labour camp, male prisoners longed for the spicy heat of chilli pepper. One day, the discovery of a vast pepper tree forest caused an uprising in the camp. Unable to control the mob, furious guards fired in the air and ended up shooting a prisoner. The mob went silent and returned to the camp; their hands still held on to the chilli peppers as if it represented fleeting freedom.

As a site-specific project, ‘And They Die a Natural Death’ connected to local history in Kassel. In the Nazi era, the city witnessed book burning, destruction of Jewish synagogue, concentration camps, and Adolf Hitler’s speech in the first Reich Warriors’ Convention. Within this context, the installation can be interpreted as a passive mourning. Its dim lights and eerie sounds gestured towards, in the words of philosopher Jacques Ranciere, “the representation of the inhuman.”5 This rhetorical device employs micro-description of actions, which highlights the absence of humanity experienced in prisoner camps from Bùi Ngọc Tấn’s memoir and Kassel’s Nazi past.

Âm 陰: the underworld

Nguyễn Trinh Thi is neither the first nor the only artist to adapt a ruin’s history in a retelling of memory. However, her philosophy, deeply rooted in Taoism, fostered aesthetic qualities that were peculiar to East Asian and Vietnamese worldviews. In 1987, German artist Rebecca Horn also addressed history by staging a site-specific installation ‘Concert in Reverse’ in a Munster fortification, which was built around the same time as Rondell. While both artists intrigued their audiences with cinematic experiences and sounds from ordinary tools, for Nguyễn Trinh Thi, darkness was crucial to the mise-en-scène of death. Such an artistic strategy inserted the Vietnamese spiritual belief that the dead are not far gone, and that their souls stay in the underworld. With its 10-metre-thick wall, humid air, and absolute absence of light, Rondell became a vessel, displacing viewers to enter a space outside of time. The haunting yet meditative ambience enchanted listeners to feel a tender touch from the abyss.

A story about death is a reminder that nature’s flow waits for no one. However, by narrating death, both storyteller and listener resist this flow and encounter the deceased in a parallel reality. This temporal convergence offers a space for grief, and in some cases, the telling of death helps to make sense of loss.

At documenta fifteen, Nguyễn Trinh Thi presented her ongoing investigation of anti-representation, nonhuman agency, and power. She conceived of  “landscapes as quiet witnesses to history.”7 ‘And They Die a Natural Death’ was a live theatre in which nonhuman actors--wind and chilli pepper plants--took centre stage. In this nonverbal retelling of death, artistic strategies were utilised to engage the viewer’s multiple senses. By imagining a gate to the underworld, the artist staged a landscape that connected Kassel and the Tam Đảo forest where the prisoner died a natural death.

[antonia-gergely]

Food Research III

Agnes Denes, Wheatfields.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1576033?searchText=agnes+denes&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dagnes%2Bdenes&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A6d6e0d801860ce21c84a919bb8c30c3d&seq=3

WHEATFIELD - A CONFRONTATION

“My decision to plant a wheatfield in Manhattan instead of designing just another public sculpture grew out of the long-standing concern and need to call attention to our misplaced priorities and deteriorating human values. Manhattan is the richest, most professional, most congested and, without a doubt, most fascinating island in the world. To attempt to plant, sustain and harvest 2 acres of wheat here, wasting valuable real estate and obstructing the "machinery" by going against the system, was an effrontery that made it the powerful paradox I had sought for the calling to account. It was insane. It was impossible. But it would call people's attention to having to rethink their priorities and realize that unless human values were reassessed, the quality of life, even life itself, was in danger.”

“Placing it at the foot of the World Trade Center, a block from Wall Street, facing the Statue of Liberty, also had symbolic import. My work usually reaches beyond the boundaries of art to deal with controversial global issues. Wheatfield was a symbol, a universal concept. It represented food, energy, commerce, world trade, economics. It referred to mismanagement, waste, world hunger and ecological concerns. It was an intrusion into the Citadel, a confrontation of High Civilization. Then again, it was also Shangri-la, a small paradise, one's childhood, a hot summer afternoon in the country, peace, forgotten values, simple pleasures.” 

Using the idea of wastage and blocking of resources to call attention to potential issues down the line – makes sense although a bit paradoxical, seems to have been intentional, or at least reasoned as such.

The contrast between the wheat field - growing on a landfill site - and the surrounding Wall Street area of Manhattan, with a view of the Statue of Liberty - a lot going on.

Apparently some people cried at the harvest. The golden wheat had been a part of their landscape, and had to be reaped in the autumn. This in itself might make an office worker consider their physical place more actively, when going about their day-to-day drivels in the concrete jungle of one of the world's largest cities. The wheat has deep metaphorical and historical connotations.

Wheat was one of the first crops to be commodified, and in small societies before globalisation was the signifier of power - whoever controlled the wheat (therefore major source of food, bread) had power. Wheat growing freely by Wall Street (where the market for milling wheat exists as a benchmark for world prices - inflation, deflation, depression, etc.) directly goes against its monetary limitation and quantisation within the exchange forum. Here's some abstract concept you all buy and sell, you are not moving around 50 tons of milling wheat at a time. It is numbers, computers and theoretical stocks. Here is my field of wheat. Actual wheat that I can harvest and eat after tending to it. I find it very powerful because of its humanity. Denes does not throw numbers at us and chastise our lack of action. She puts the world as it used to be, and potentially should be, into the world as it is, and allows us to decide what we want, and study where we might have gone wrong with regards the environment and human interference.

[pillowpest]

green ants

[epresjampress]

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

i'm begging you guys to start pirating shit from streaming platforms. there are so many websites where you can stream that shit for free, here's a quick HOW TO:

1) Search for: watch TITLE OF WORK free online

2) Scroll to the bottom of results. Click any of the "Complaint" links

3) You will be taken to a long list of links that were removed for copyright infringement. Use the 'find' function to search for the name of the show/movie you were originally searching for. You will get something like this (specifics removed because if you love an illegal streaming site you don't post its url on social media)

4) each of these links is to a website where you can stream shit for free. go to the individual websites and search for your show/movie. you might have to copy-paste a few before you find exactly what you're looking, but the whole process only takes a minute. the speed/quality is usually the same as on netflix/whatever, and they even have subtitles! (make sure to use an adblocker though, these sites are funded by annoying popups)

In conclusion, if you do this often enough you will start recognizing the most dependable websites, and you can just bookmark those instead. (note: this is completely separate from torrenting, which is also a beautiful thing but requires different software and a vpn)

you can also download the media in question (look for a "download" button built into the video window, or use a browser extension such as Video DownloadHelper.)

[shikata]

“Growing scenery / 成長する景色” 2023

Video :

-

Material: Stainless steel, Aluminum, Concret

Size: 1.9 x 6.6 x 2.05 (m) *可変サイズ / variable size 黒島・福浦アートプロジェクト(2023) / Kuroshima Fukura Art Project2023

会場 : 福浦港 (志賀町) / Fukura Port (Shika-machi)

写真 / Photo : 木村 悟之 / KIMURA Noriyuki

--

小さな割れ目からでも生えてくる植物のように、景色はどんなときも成長し、この場所となる。

本作品は、現在、この地域にある港に迫り出した建造物である人工地盤によってかたちつくられている。この建造物の内部より少しだけ高い、多数の構造体を押し込め、風で振動する程度の動きを含みながら形状は固定される。私たちは、この場所との合意で変形した細長い金属板面に映る目の前の海や町、時間帯による光の変化や風などの現在、そしてこれからの状況変化と、間も無く役目を終える建造物とを重ね合わせて見ることになる。また、この作品は、互いにも反射し合うため、あなたが見る場所によっては、あなたが見えなかったもしくは気にも止めなかったことに目をむけることもあるだろう。この場所、この景色を認識することは、他のそれぞれが在ることを意識することでもあるのだ。

今の風景の一部となっている、この構造物もいつか役目を終え、そこには構造物はないかもしれないが、また新たな風景の一部が生まれていくだろう。自然のあり方からはじまった歴史の堆積が、今の風景つくってきたように、この場所も、次のこの町の風景の地盤となるだ。この作品は、この場所の原型である自然と、それによってつくられてきた風景とを、様々な角度から重ね合わせて見ることなる。この地の長年徐々に変化してきた、この風景を見つめてほしいと思う。見ることとは、ただ見えるではなく、認識することだ。それをただ知っているではなく、意識して読み込んでいくことでもあり、次の風景のための、この土地の可能性や未来の姿に目をやり発見していくこと、そして、この場所を更新していくための最も重要な行為に思うのです。

--

Like a plant growing from even the smallest crack, the landscape grows and becomes this place at any moment. The work is shaped by the artificial ground, a structure currently looming over the harbour in the area. The shape is fixed, containing a number of structures, slightly higher than the interior of this structure, pressed into it, and containing only enough movement to vibrate in the wind. We see the sea and the town in front of us reflected on the surface of a long, thin metal plate that has been deformed in agreement with the site, and the changes in light and wind at different times of the day, in the present and in the future, superimposed on the structure that will soon end its role. The works also reflect each other, so depending on where you look, you may see things you didn't see or didn't care about. To be aware of this place, this view, is to be aware of the presence of each of the others.

One day this structure, which is now part of the landscape, will have served its purpose and there may be no structure there, but a new part of the landscape will be created again. Just as the accumulation of history that began with the state of nature has created the landscape of today, this place will become the ground for the next landscape of this town. This work overlaps the original nature of this place and the landscape that has been created by it from various angles. I want people to look at this landscape, which has gradually changed over the years. Seeing is not just seeing, it is recognising. It is also not just knowing it, but consciously reading it, and I think it is the most important act for the next landscape, for looking at and discovering the possibilities of this land and its future, and for renewing this place.