"Sea lions in the Palamino Islands", SOURCE: Guardian.co.uk

Water, water, everywhere! Ever-changing and ever-constant, see a glimpse into Roni Horn’s vast exploration of this traveling landscape in this weeks Art21 Video Exclusive. Want more? In NYC? Visit the Guggenheim and the Whitney

Art21 Guide to PERFORMA ‘09 :

• DAZZING – -See it ! In addition, William Kentridge will perform I am Not Me, the Horse is Not Mine
• PROMPT: A Conceptual Social Club, under the influence by the Futurist Variety Theatre. Participants include Mark Dion among many others.
• DARKLY FUNNY: The Day is Done Judson Church Dance by Mike Kelley
  Tuesday November 17 – Thursday, November 19 at 8pm and 10pm
• UNPREDICATABLE: physicality, dance and ACTION. It’s part of 3-Day Weekend, a performance piece directed by Oliver Herring. Friday, November 20, 6:30-8:30pm, Saturday, November 21, 3-5pm, and Sunday November 22, 3-6pm

Still hungry? Stay tuned.


Source: Vallatra-Adventures.com

Artist Roni Horn discusses the paradoxical identity and dependency of water, paired with scenes of Icelandic landscapes. Water and Iceland serve as both subjects and metaphors in the artist’s work, coming together most recently in Vatnasafn/Library of Water, a building designed by the artist in Stykkishólmur, Iceland.

Roni Horn explores the mutable nature of art through sculptures, works on paper, photography, and books. Horn describes drawing as the key activity in all her work because drawing is about composing relationships. Horn crafts complex relationships between the viewer and her work by installing a single piece on opposing walls or in adjoining rooms.

Horn’s work can be seen in two exhibitions currently on view in New York: Roni Horn aka Roni Horn, a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art (through January 24th, 2010) and Paired, Gold: Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Roni Horn at the Guggenheim Museum (through January 6th, 2010).

VIDEO | Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera: Terry Doe & Mead Hunt. Sound: Ron Garson & Mark Mandler. Editor: Jenny Chiurco. Special Thanks: Hauser & Wirth, London.

William Kentridge: I Am Not Me, the Horse is Not Mine
Monday, November 9 – Tuesday, November 10, 8:00pm
A comic and visually dazzling performance by Season 5 artist William Kentridge, in I Am Not Me, the Horse is Not Mine, Kentridge gives an unusual presentation related to his current opera-in-progress: a work inspired by Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich’s satirical opera The Nose, based on the Nikolai Gogol short story of the same name.
>> WATCH: William Kentridge preview from Art:21 Season 5

The PROMPT (a night club)
Wednesday, November 11 – Sunday, November 15, 8:00pm
A conceptual social club under the influence of Futurist Variety Theater, cues and propositions are offered each night in the form of conversation pieces, rules, performances and soundtracks, transforming this destination into a pressure cooker for ideas and intimacies. Participants include Art21 artist Mark Dion, among many, many others. Space is limited. RSVP: theprompt@kunstverein.us
>> WATCH: Mark Dion in Art:21 Season 4

Mike Kelley: Day is Done Judson Church Dance
Tuesday November 17 – Thursday, November 19 at 8pm and 10pm
In the first of two related Performa projects, Season 3 artist Mike Kelley will present three short dance/performance pieces in the Judson Memorial Church inspired by the darkly funny vignettes in his 2005 film and video installation Day Is Done. Premiering will be Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction #33 (Ladder Piece), a work involving 13 people assembled on and around a large ladder playing music on horns.
>> WATCH: Mike Kelley directing Day is Done (Art:21 Season 3)

Oliver Herring: 3 Day Weekend
Friday, November 20, 6:30-8:30pm, Saturday, November 21, 3-5pm, and Sunday November 22, 3-6pm
3 Day Weekend is both a performance and material for a live video shoot. The Weekend will unfold as a series of interactions built over the course of three days with a group of people who were chosen through an open application process. The actions will be physical, dance related, mostly unrehearsed and therefore unpredictable. Art21 artist Oliver Herring will both “direct” the actions and film the footage.
>> WATCH: Participant Davis Thompson-Moss talking about working with Oliver Herring (Art:21 Exclusive)

A Fantastic World Superimposed on Reality: A Select History of Experimental Music
Friday, November 20 and Saturday, November 21, 6pm – midnight
Mike Kelley project #2: a mini noise music festival. In 1973, Kelley formed his own band, Destroy All Monsters. A Fantastic World continues Kelley’s continued interest in musical subcultures and focuses specifically on avant-garde music and sound art. Staged over two days, the festival will present both historic works from artists such as John Cage, Fred Frith, Fluxus, Bruce Nauman, and Max Neuhaus as well as performances by contemporary proponents of experimental music including Airway, Joan La Barbara, Tony Conrad, Jad Fair & Lumberob, Arto Lindsay, Genesis Breyer P.Orridge, z’ev, and John Zorn.
>> WATCH: Mike Kelley playing and recording music (Art:21 Season 3)

Nancy Spero, "The Hours of the Night II," detail, 2001. Handprinting and printed collage on paper, 11 panels approximately 9 x 22 feet overall. Photo by David Reynolds, © Nancy Spero. Courtesy the Artist and Galerie Lelong, New York.

Spero’s art was suffused with [a] very human hope, which she saw as being grounded in the intractability of human struggle. Her work was never crudely utopian—as she told me, “utopia, like heaven, is kind of boring.”

Beyond a body of pioneering and exceptional work spanning more than half a century of tumultuous social change, this sense of hope will be her legacy. It was an everyday hope that she lived and breathed, and a hope for today rather than tomorrow…

— Hans Ulrich Obrist, “Ever Spero”

Read the full essay here.

Filming Mary Heilmann in Bridgehampton, NY, 2008. Art in the Twenty-First Century, production still, 2009. © Art21, Inc. 2009.

Why are there only 4 episodes a season, and 1 season every 2 years? How do you choose the artists to feature? What is it like filming [INSERT ANY ARTIST] in their studio?

Here’s your chance to ask us these questions or anything else that you’ve ever wondered about Art21.

Earlier this year, associate curator Wesley Miller gave us a look inside the curatorial process. That same week, series producer Eve Moros Ortega took us behind the scenes of the production process. This week, both Wes and Eve are back to field questions from our audience. The latest installment of the Inside PBS blog’s Q&A series opens the door for you to ask us anything—anything—about what we do here at Art21.

Please feel free to leave a question either here or on the Inside PBS blog, and Wes and Eve will try to answer as many as possible. The answers will be posted next week on the Inside PBS blog.

Need to refer to Season 5 episodes for inspiration? Not to worry, we’ve got you covered on the PBS Video portal! Just interested in a discussion about clowns? Well, the PBS Facebook audience has you covered there!

Wow! We can’t believe Season 5 of Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century is over. Hopefully you joined the over 4 million viewers who watched Season 5 on PBS during October, or were able to go to one of the more than 600 screenings nation-wide and in 24 foreign countries as part of Art21 Access ’09. Additional thousands followed Art21 on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms to catch all the Season 5 news.

You can also join the many others who are recognizing this moment in Art21’s history by making a donation today.

Please consider supporting Art21 with a donation of as little as $5 in honor of our fifth season. Your contribution would help underwrite Art21’s activities and programs in the coming year.

Thank you for supporting Art21 and for watching Season 5!

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Bergen Biennial Conference

In September, the Bergen Kunsthall hosted “To Biennial or Not to Biennial” in Bergen, Norway. The goal was to gather a group of people in the arts to discuss the effect and the potential of biennials on a global scale. Here are a few observations noted by Quinn Latimer (who blogged for Art21 not too long ago!) in a two-part article in Frieze Magazine (full articles here and here):

Noting that our current biennials are structurally indebted to these perennial exhibitions of the past, [MIT art historian Caroline A.] Jones argued that at the same time the biennial form has created key structural shifts – that, essentially, ‘biennial culture is the term we can use to describe this appetite for art as experience.’ One of her most interesting points was that the 21st century’s emphasis on experiential art works – now sometimes derided as ‘biennial art’ – is an echo of the 19th century, suggesting that the 20th century’s emphasis on form ultimately failed. If videos and installations are the genre of the new millennium, Jones claimed, then biennials are ‘their regulating salons.’ Since biennials have changed the art world, we must acknowledge that the ‘placement of the art object inside a world picture produces both the object’s and the picture’s significance.’ She then laid out her central philosophical question: ‘What are the conditions of possibility for the global work of art?’

Laura Steward, the Phillips Director of SITE Santa Fe, offered perhaps the funniest observation of the conference. Sighing, she asked: ‘Do you think it’s possible to exhaust your local audience?’ Pointing to biennials in ‘exotic’ locales like Santa Fe, Tirana or Bergen, she cited her own biennial, for which international artists often want to do site-specific works with the local community. ‘The Navajos are telling us: enough with your German artists already!’ To laughter, she offered an example for Bergen: ‘Will there be a work about the fish market in every biennial?’

Kiki Smith, "Rapture" 2001, Courtesy PaceWildenstein

I use Art21 for a kick in the pants from time to time, whether it’s to inspire my teaching by watching Carrie Mae Weems or to give my studio practice a jolt by listening to Kiki Smith talk about her process for making works of art. I mean, everyone needs an occasional kick in the pants, don’t you think?

At the beginning of this year I was introduced to TED.com, and while it’s not devoted to contemporary art the way Art21 is, it has become another way of sending my thinking and planning in fantastic directions. If you are familiar with TED.com, you’ve probably had a few jaw-dropping experiences. If not, then let me share with you TED’s introduction and mission statement:

TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then our scope has become ever broader…. We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. So we’re building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world’s most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other. This site, launched April 2007, is an ever-evolving work in progress.

Since becoming a full-fledged TED fan, I have shared segments with colleagues, students, family and even complete strangers that I’ve met at conferences. Recently, I was pleased to offer Sir Ken Robinson’s lecture as an introduction to a meeting with my K-12 art teachers, asking everyone to think about what “creativity” really means and how we cultivate it.

TED gives all of us the chance to spend time with great thinkers, artists, scientists, writers, teachers and performers- from Rory Sutherland to Jane Goodall to Theo Jansen to Vik Muniz. The parallel with Art21 is that the videos are manageable in terms of length. You don’t need to set aside 90 minutes to watch a TED video since most are between 5 and 25 minutes long. You have just enough time to be blown away (or not), to think about it, and then kick yourself in the pants to do something with what you’ve just learned, even if it’s simply an idea worth spreading.

Spencer Finch, "White (Niagara Falls obscured by mist, April 17th, 2006 5:30pm)"

Today we launch the next Flash Points topic, Art & the Environment. We first addressed this issue in Season Four’s episode, Ecology, which delved into the work of artists who relate their work to nature in distinct ways. Over the next two months, we’ll expand upon these concepts and further explore how art is reacting to the environment, how the environment reacts with art, and everything in between.

From sustainability and alternative energy solutions, to green-collared jobs and maintaining a low carbon footprint, environmental concerns and how our world is addressing them is an ever-present issue. As artist Mark Dion stated in the episode, “We have a test ahead of us in terms of our relationship to the natural world. If we pass the test we get to keep the planet, but I don’t really see us doing a very good job of that right now.”

Take American national parks, for example. We’re reminded not only of how valuable these landscapes are as a national resource, but also how tenuously they hang in the balance. The parks were established in opposition to the commercialization of our country’s natural wonders—Niagara Falls being an often-used example. This place is still symbolic of both the beauty of our natural landscapes, and what happens when we try capitalizing on them.

Alec Soth, "Rainbow Inn," from the series "NIAGARA," 2005

Art as both a reaction to our environment, and as a method for building public awareness, aren’t new concepts. Carleton Watkins enticed Easterners in the 19th century to see the spectacular landscapes of Yosemite with his photographs. Artists of the Land Art movement of the 1960s and 1970s rejected the idea of the museum or gallery as a place to perceive art, and instead traveled to the remote outreaches of the U.S. and used the land as their medium. These ideas continue with artists today, who both showcase the natural world and react to the many environmental concerns that constantly threaten its survival. This includes artists such as Maya Lin, whose work immerses the viewer in the environment, inviting us to examine our own relationship with it.

Maya Lin, "Storm King Wavefield," 2007-2008

Another artist working in this vein is Eirik Johnson, who brings attention to the damage caused by national resource-based industry, and what this does not only to the landscape, but also to the people whose lives have been affected by it.

Eirik Johnson, "Elwha River Dam, Washington," from the series "Sawdust Mountain," 2006 – 2008

We’ll explore institutions that make it their mission to incorporate works of art with their surroundings, such as Storm King Art Center in upstate New York and the Chinati Foundation’s beautifully minimal desert, as well as the efforts made to protect both the art and the land.

Donald Judd, 5 untitled works in concrete, 1980-1984

Here are a few more of the questions we’ll be addressing over the coming weeks.  We’d love to get your thoughts, and any ideas you have for additional sub-topics, in the comments below:

• How does art factor into the conversation on environmental preservation?
• How do artists react to today’s environmental issues?
• Can art be used as a way to contextualize and understand environmental concerns?
• When art is placed within the environment, what kinds of steps are taken to ensure its conservation, if any?
• Can art and nature co-exist?

Art21 is pleased to introduce our new Flash Points editor, Rachel Craft. Rachel is the Communications and Web Manager for the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts.  In addition to managing the institution’s website and online exhibition catalogues, she helped start a collaborative blog with the neighboring Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis called 2buildings1blog, and initiated many program-based blogs, designed to showcase the behind-the-scenes workings of the Pulitzer.  Most recently, she’s worked on St. Louis Art Map, a city-wide visual arts blog developed with representatives from museums and non-profit-spaces around St. Louis.