http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/feed/ ...might be good is a contemporary art e-publication based in Austin that reaches over 5,000 international subscribers. Understanding Austin as one hub within a larger network of art communities, …might be good provides a platform for thoughtful dialogue about artistic production and reception. Every two weeks, the publication offers a few reviews, interviews and features in response to noteworthy happenings within our immediate surroundings in Austin, our regional setting within Texas and the context of art communities worldwide. en-ca Copyright 2020 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/201 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/201

...might be good is currently on sabbatical. Previous issues can be located in the archives. ]]> Mon, 31 Dec 2012 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/200 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/200

Since 2003 this space has been host to countless opinions, introductions and questions. A forum for the editorial voice, it is the place where I and each of my predecessors has had the freedom to advocate for the ideas most consequential to us without fear or censorship. While the form has shifted under each editorship these core ideas remain unchanged. A look back through our archives will give you a sense of the breadth of opinion and discussion that makes its home here. Yet this letter is only the tip of the spear. What consistently follows are reviews, interviews, essays, recommendations and projects penned by writers and artists from localities around the world. These are the heart of ...might be good and we would not be the publication we are without them. As we celebrate our 200th issue I cannot reiterate my gratitude to our many contributors enough. You live in different communities, have divergent opinions,… ]]> Fri, 9 Nov 2012 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/199 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/199

The idea of fall is in the air. I say idea because from where I sit summer remains stubbornly locked in place. Two events thousands of miles away from one another made for some striking contrasts over the past few weeks of October. The first was the 2012 Creative Time Summit: Confronting Inequity, which took place at NYU’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts but was graciously livestreamed for those unable to attend. The presentations are currently available online and for this reason amongst many others, the summit is our Recommends for this issue. I won’t spoil the recommendation but will say how refreshing it was to hear artists, curators, theorists and activists engaged in an unflinching, complex and open conversation about the many difficult issues facing our world. Art is a powerful vehicle for this type of dialogue. On the other… ]]> Fri, 26 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/198 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/198

Another art fair is on the horizon here in Houston as well as on the other side of the Atlantic. (Hot on the heels of Frieze New York, Frieze London opens to the public this weekend.) While Houston’s fairs haven’t reached the fever pitch of say, Miami circa 2006, there’s still a palpable excitement in the air and the Texas Contemporary looks to capitalize on that buzz when it opens on October 18. Fluent~Collaborative is proud to be a cultural sponsor of the event and we hope to see you there wandering the aisles of the George R. Brown Convention Center. Aside from the standard fair fodder—commerce in-action, over-priced Turkey sandwiches, discussions and tours—Artadia will use the event to announce the winners of its sixth cycle of grants to Houston artists. Our congratulations go out to all of the finalists and we’re looking forward to seeing their… ]]> Fri, 12 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/197 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/197

Before you get to the meat of this issue I would like to take a moment and remind you of our ongoing plea for funds. We are seeking a partner and major funder who is willing to support us with a significant donation for the coming years and are asking for your help. Please contact our publisher Laurence Miller at: lmiller@fluentcollab.org to discuss the possibilities of partnering with us here at ...might be good. As always, thank you for your consideration, support and readership.This past weekend took me to Austin, as much to escape Houston, as to make the openings at The University of Texas’ Visual Arts Center and Okay Mountain. Neither space’s exhibition offerings disappointed. On tap for this weekend AMOA-Arthouse is opening an exhibition of Nick Cave’s sound suits… ]]> Fri, 28 Sep 2012 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/196 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/196

Welcome back! We hope you had a restful and productive month while we were away on hiatus. With the fall exhibition season already underway we’re thrilled to continue and provide you with bi-monthly coverage of exhibitions and art-world goings on from Texas and beyond. This falls list of upcoming events is immense, but to lead this issue off we’ve pared it down to a handful of exhibitions, books and lectures that we think deserve your attention. Think of it as a supplement to our Recommendations that we’ll continue to offer with each and every issue. As always, we welcome your own recommendations, suggestions and contributions to all aspects of our journal. Email us anytime at: askus@fluentcollab.org or post a comment on the site. In addition to our autumn picks, new and veteran contributors writing from Marfa, Austin and São Paulo round out this issue ]]> Fri, 14 Sep 2012 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/195 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/195

Everyone deserves a little break now and again. We here at ...might be good are no exception. This issue marks our last issue of the summer as we take a hiatus throughout the month of August. Don’t fret! We’ll be back on September 14 with our bi-monthly compendium of exhibition reviews, interviews, essays, artists' words, project spaces and recommendations from around Texas and the globe. Risking a little tooting of our own horn, we’ve been particularly excited about the quality and diversity of our content over the past seven months and invite you to peruse our archives to catch up on some of the great pieces of writing waiting for you there. But don’t be too hasty, we’ve got a substantial current issue for you to dive into first. Austin is waiting patiently for the fall when Louis Grachos begins his tenure as Executive Director at AMOA-Arthouse.… ]]> Fri, 27 Jul 2012 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/194 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/194

Near the end of June I attended two openings at Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies. Anti-Establishment, curated by Johanna Burton, and the subject of one of our Recommends this issue, was paired with Liam Gillick’s From 199A to 199B, curated by the programs Executive Director Tom Eccles. The two rigorous and, in many instances, irreverent exhibitions make a nice couple, especially during the summer months when the art world tends to put aside more serious matters. As mentioned in the last issue, it is the season of the summer group exhibition and for those fortunate enough to have the resources necessary to travel abroad, some big European fairs (Art Basel) and shows (Documenta (13) and Manifesta 9). Burton and Gillick’s exhibitions got me thinking about these… ]]> Fri, 13 Jul 2012 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/193 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/193

Summer is here. Alongside the increased predominance of images of the weather forecast appearing in social media feeds is the ubiquitous summer group show. Some are curated by art world big-shots, others organized by the gallery staff, some you apply for, some you have to be Canadian and others are put together by artists in some far away outpost. You name the premise and there’s a summer group show that it fits. I’ve attended a few already and like the infinite number of frameworks the quality is equally diverse. As a participant and viewer of these exhibitions I readily admit to enjoying them. Things are a little less serious in the summer, move at a more reasonable pace and are generally accompanied by some cold, cheap, beer. On a larger scale, Made in L.A., Los Angeles’ first biennial opened this summer with the work of sixty artists, three exhibiting venues and the $100,000 Mohn Prize which joins the Whitney’s Bucksbaum… ]]> Fri, 29 Jun 2012 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/192 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/192

Another critical piece to the Austin art community’s rebuilding puzzle was put firmly in place yesterday with AMOA-Arthouse announcing it had hired Louis Grachos to fill its vacant E.D. position. Effective January 1, Grachos comes to Austin after a productive decade at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, N.Y. where he oversaw the expansion of its permanent collection, the controversial selling off of a number of the collection’s antiquities in 2007, and countless internationally recognized exhibitions. On paper Grachos appears to be the ideal candidate to lead AMOA-Arthouse out of its post-merger blues and into what will optimistically be a new and dynamic chapter in the organizations future. While we can only peer into the crystal ball… ]]> Fri, 15 Jun 2012 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/191 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/191

It’s hard for me to imagine a more thankless task than curating a major biennial. There are few lightning rods for criticism more powerful than these exhibitions and their rotating roster of curators and premises. What essentially amounts to a group show on a massive scale, cities all over the world have been capitalizing on the idea of the biennial to bring a little taste of art-flecked internationalism to their corner of the world. Hot on the heels of 2011‘s Texas Biennial, Dallas is the most recent Lone Star locale to grab a seat on the biennial train—two in fact. The Dallas Contemporary’s Adjunct Curator Florence Ostende recently put together an anti-biennial of sorts, the Dallas Biennale, that occupied storefronts and spaces throughout the city. Writer and current MFAH Core fellow Sally Frater lends her critical eye to Ostende’s premise and the resulting exhibition… ]]> Fri, 1 Jun 2012 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/190 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/190

Coffee in hand it’s time to wade into the rising tide of discussion surrounding Ph.D’s for artists. Reading through some of the relevant literature on the topic did nothing to assuage my sense that I’m ill-prepared—and, with a mere M.F.A., woefully undereducated—to broach the topic with any skill.1 However, the broader issue of education, its head again on the budgetary chopping block in California and throughout the U.S, has forced my hand. Our choice to cut education while taking to the political pulpit to evangelize creativity, competition and American exceptionalism, is irony at its most mind-boggling. Art education, at the bottom rung of the ladder, has always occupied an uneasy relationship within the broader academic world. Its methodological markers and qualitative rubrics are slippery and variable, neither of which gel all that well with the standardized form of evaluation that make Universities go ‘round. An institution passing… ]]> Fri, 18 May 2012 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/189 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/189

Under no circumstance did I set out to write this weeks letter about art fairs. Our recommendation this week, with the warranted reservations and skepticism, of Frieze New York amounted to enough thinking about the unfettered marriage between art, commerce, and internationalism that fairs represent for me. Whenever money is perceived to tread too closely to art we tend to get squeamish, and art fairs are adept at making even those amongst us with cast-iron stomachs a little queasy. However, fairs (and anti-fairs) are the new norm, even requirement, for the players in the commercial art world, to say nothing of the artists who have to produce the work exhibited in them.1 Dallas, Brussels, Basel, Miami, New York, name the place and it’s likely they’ll be playing host to a fair at some point throughout the year. Fine, I’m not going to my hackles up over it. Fairs… ]]> Fri, 4 May 2012 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/188 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/188

After attending a 35mm screening of Canadian-filmmaker David Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1983) last weekend, my relationship to the screens in my life has become a little more uneasy. Cronenberg’s hallucinatory look into the pervading—some might say dehumanizing—influence of technology and its eventual symbiosis with our bodies managed to retain its theoretical poignancy in spite of its inescapable eighties aesthetic. Discovering the videodrome signal in a pirate television broadcast of plotless torture and murder, the films protagonist Max Renn (played to perfection by James Woods) begins having violent psychosexual hallucinations that mark his slide into a complete mental and physical breakdown. Reality becomes nothing more than a television induced mirage.Throbbing VHS cassettes are inserted directly into abdominal orifices, flesh merges with the metal of a pistol and television sets pulsate and respond to Renn’s loving caress. Amongst the Sci-Fi… ]]> Fri, 20 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/187 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/187

When I sat down on Sunday evening to watch Morley Safer’s 60 Minutes exposé on the contemporary art world I went in with low expectations. His first story, circa-1993, hadn’t set a very high bar and as it turned out, this one maintained the same standard. No real surprise there, I don’t look to CBS for a nuanced look at art. Wandering the isles of Art Basel Miami Beach, or, as Safer called it, “an upscale flea market,” he cloaked his aesthetic judgements in the guise of a story about the shocking amount of money a portion of artists and dealers are making. Monetary gain is apparently an artist's new worst crime. Smugly, he plugged just how controversial his 1993 art world story had been, proudly flashed his philistines badge, flippantly questioned whether or not objects qualified for the label of art, schmoozed with market luminaries Jeffrey Deitch, Larry Gagosian,… ]]> Fri, 6 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/186 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/186

As I find myself in the frenetic last week of my stay in Omaha, the idea of place has once again come to the fore of my thinking. If place is the transformation of space through accumulating experiences, an engagement with specific communities and the resulting residue of memories, then over the course of the last three months, Omaha has completed that metamorphosis for me. I’ve enjoyed my time here in the Midwest, smack in the middle of downtown Omaha, cozily nestled along side the Missouri River, living and working since January. As technology and globalism render the world increasingly flat it strikes me as increasingly critical to actually be in the place I happen to find myself. ‘Be present, be here’ is a familiar refrain heard between my ears these past few months. Presentness is one potential antidote for the erasure of cultural differences that has become all too common. It makes little sense to me to write places off, to go somewhere but never really be there, to be unaffected… ]]> Fri, 23 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/185 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/185

When I stepped away from teaching and the trappings of academia two years ago, I readily admit to some fairly aggressive abdominal butterflies. At that point I’d been in school, in some form or another, for my entire existence—moving from student to professor along the well-worn path many MFAs and PhDs tread. Rightly so. Saddled with student debt and few traditional career opportunities, teaching is a beacon; replete with enticing notions of health insurance, stability, a steady paycheck and time to pursue ones own studio or scholarly work. Downright utopian, no? But utopias, as we know, are unattainable, impossible scenarios. This however is not a screed about academia (at least not entirely), as my time working with students in the halls of higher education was quite enjoyable. Life on the other side of the bubble is good though, and bubbles, in one form or another, are the crux of the issue. The academic and art world’s are full of such bubbles, large and small. Artists'… ]]> Fri, 9 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/184 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/184

We talk a lot about democracy in this country. Much is made of our high-minded ideals of inclusivity, tolerance, choice and the freedom from intrusion into our lives from the government bogeyman. Whether or not our actions line up with the verbiage remains to be seen, though lately the gap between them seems to be steadily widening. Political rhetoric and its hypocrisies are apparent enough, but the important issue is whether or not we choose to let it represent us. Do we simply adopt the talking-points handed out by pundits and ad-jockeys, or do we choose another track? Do we permit intolerance fear-mongering, bigotry and racism to gain a foothold, or do we choose to speak and act differently? Perhaps finally completing our transition from citizen to consumer, the supreme court and U.S law now grant corporations the dubious honor of also speaking as people—a troubling condition that questions… ]]> Fri, 24 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/183 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/183

Much has been written about our dwindling attention spans in the face of the digital deluge. Our brains are apparently in a permanent state of jet lag—caffeine addled and unable to focus for more than thirty-seconds at a time. Pop music’s catchy hooks, the internet smorgasbord, a landslide of TV news pundits, politics, and reality television amount to a jittery information glut of monumental proportions. When combined with the pressure to maintain a constant state of ‘productivity’ is it any wonder we feel a constant and steady tug at every one of our synapses? There’s a tendency to romanticize our analogue past—the smell of a book, the feel of a newspaper, the power of a muscle car, the warm crackle of a vinyl L.P.—and the slower pace it… ]]> Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/182 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/182

Time and space; two characteristics that any artists residency program worth its salt provides plenty of. Mix in a healthy dose of support along with a stipend and you’ve got the ideal scenario: an oasis for artistic experimentation and production. Since the beginning of the year I’ve found myself in just such a place—The Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, NE—which provides all of the above and more. I’ve embraced every aspect of the opportunity Bemis so graciously provides, which includes working quite hard, being in a place and discovering a new city, and of course plenty of time at the bar with my fellow residents. As is to be expected, my time here, which will continue through… ]]> Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/181 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/181

Welcome to the future! The beginning of any new year is a time for speculating on what the next 365—make that 352—days will hold. Resolutions, those time-honored and often unfulfilled declarations of self-improvement jotted on Post-its, journal pages, and computer screens are all too familiar this time of year. After-all, who doesn’t need a little mental cleanse now and again? Really it doesn’t much matter if resolutions are fulfilled or not—the very act of writing them is a form of catharsis that embraces the potential that they represent. This shouldn’t stop us from looking ahead. We need simply to keep in mind the nature of such visions—speculative and discursive—and not be too hard on ourselves when our gym membership goes unused. Quantifiable results are measuring sticks better suited to corporate boardrooms than ones list of aspirations for the days that lie ahead, to say nothing of the work that makes up the subject and backbone of our journal.Let's just… ]]> Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/180 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/180

T'is the season for being in transit. Our familiarity with airports, car seats, buses and train stations increases this time of year as we make our way from one holiday engagement to the next. I happen to enjoy waiting in the airport. Once one comes to terms with the prodding at the hands of the TSA, the likelihood of delay, bland overpriced food options and the fruitless jockeying for position by fellow travelers, the airport can be a good place to get some thinking done. Airports are an in between place—neither here nor there—where we go to be jettisoned through space to our next destination. They are hubs, points in a perpetual middle, where we can see—in the red LED faces of scrolling signs—connections to places around the globe. When we’re at the airport, we’re at the airport, our behaviors rhythmic and repetitive as we await flight.1 Since airports facilitate travel, we have to be present within them, and maybe it is this… ]]> Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/179 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/179

There’s a tendency to embody art objects with a certain amount of agency. ‘What is that work doing,’ echoes the common phrase in crit. rooms, artists’ studios and critics’ computer screens around the globe. As a young artist fastidiously writing my statement, I would frequently find myself making claims for ‘the work’ and what ‘it was doing.’ While there were moments when I wished the work felt empowered enough to act on its own (to say nothing of self-generate, at least the tedious bits) the fact remained that without my hand, or eyes for that matter, the work didn’t do much except collect dust. ‘My work’ was a better phrase. At the very least, it was now attached to its maker and no longer had to bear the responsibility of its success or failure alone. Still, I felt odd about taking so much ownership as it ignored those who might see it, thereby waking it from its otherwise inert slumber, even if for a moment. To say that the object… ]]> Fri, 2 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/178 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/178

Here in the northeast the days are getting noticeably shorter. If an October snowstorm wasn’t enough of a reminder, the arcane tradition of daylight savings time went to work, exacerbating the steadily diminishing daylight and the murmurs of an impending winter. This is the time of year best suited to thinking. For me it has meant a moment of self-reflection regarding the multiple roles we occupy within our lives, a state far from unique to anyone making their way in the arts. Some days I’m an artist, others an editor, and part of the time an assistant for another artist. For a while I was a professor, and through most all of it I have managed to put down words in some form or another. Since taking on this editorial position, I’ve become acutely aware of these roles, partly because each comes with their own set of diktats, to say nothing of stereotypes, which guide my behavior and your assumptions. Old hat, no? Perhaps, but as this occupation of multiple roles by arts workers… ]]> Fri, 11 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/177 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/177

Arts relationship to politics and social movements is, by necessity, a thorny one. How do artists and arts publications retain the potency of their doubt while simultaneously embracing the firm position social movements and politics demand? We should also recognize the dilemma in criticizing a system made up of individuals, corporations and banks that fund a majority of the arts in this country. In spite of these predicaments, it is necessary to express our support for the movement initiated by Occupy Wall Street. As the consequences of neoliberal thinking continue to play out with reckless abandon, it impels us to question the path of global capital and its deep-rooted inequality, violence and privatization of all things except losses.[1] Quite simply it asks us to begin talking about alternatives and ultimately, how we might do better. The numbers aren’t news, yet remain a stark reminder of the nature of the capitalist machine and our failures… ]]> Fri, 28 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/176 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/176

For all practical purposes I set out with this issue looking to make a series of observations regarding what’s labeled the Texas art scene. Think Darwin aboard a virtual HMS Beagle, taking notes, collecting specimens and shaping them into a coherent set of postulations whose parts evidence larger themes while providing a map for future endeavors. But alas, that ship has sailed, and sunk, many times before and with little practical effect; the grand panacea for Texas’ art world woes is an elusive if not an altogether hallucinatory species. We can easily list the basic characteristics of this beast, but when it comes to witnessing these qualities at work and in practice we’re left staring longingly into our binoculars, or are we? Cozily nestled in the digital age I tend to think of each of Texas’ cities as parts of a whole that together represent what people think of when they hear the phrase ‘Texas art scene.’ This is not to ignore the many differences between… ]]> Fri, 14 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/175 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/175

Arts capacity to reveal a set of truths—or fictions for that matter—places it in a distinct position within the catchall bin we currently label ‘culture.’ Representing a space of potential, art provokes us to alter our preconceived ideas about the world by resisting easy interpretation and clear facts. If nothing else, art can problematize the very definition of the term ‘truth,’ while laying bare the processes through which truth is obfuscated, and falsities gain foothold. It would be a dubious and risky business to claim that every artwork contains an irrefutable truth; after all, art is a human endeavor, and as such is subject to the position and weaknesses of its maker. However, what it does do on a consistent basis is reveal something to us, and that ability is a place from which art can draw significant power, while posing a significant threat to the passive nature of the status quo. Gender politics, sexual identity, West Coast Utopia and the ceaselessly rickety… ]]> Fri, 30 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/174 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/174

Lately Austin’s art community has been getting chummy with transition. Major changes, that within the next few years will dramatically change the face of Austin’s visual art scene, have been unfurling at a rapid pace. Amidst some turmoil, Sue Graze, at the helm of Arthouse for the last twelve years, announced last week that she would be stepping into an advisory role as Director Emeritus beginning October 14. We can only speculate, but it’s likely that her successor will oversee the future arts conglomerate created by the merger of Arthouse and the Austin Museum of Art, whose long-time director Dana Friis-Hansen also recently vacated Austin to become the Director and CEO of The Grand Rapids Art Museum. Not immune from the flux bug, Houston was also met with news of departure from one of its most venerable institution’s directors. Diane Barber, Co-Director and at the wheel of Diversework’s visual art offerings for the past fourteen years, announced last week that… ]]> Fri, 16 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/173 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/173

The ‘local’ has an increasing amount of cache these days. Applied to nearly everything in our lives from produce to politics, the local is, once again, the trusty antidote to Globalism-induced fatigue. Efforts at establishing a public sphere that crosses oceans and transcends boundaries of all sorts, while not a total failure, have not manifested themselves as the global Utopia oft touted by their proponents. Coupled with technology and Global Capitalism’s merciless efforts to push us ever closer together, it should come as no surprise that we look for comfort in our local communities and within familiar things. In reality, who can resist a little navel-gazing now and again? Tunnel vision, coyly wrapped in nostalgia’s seductive blankets, is always looming just around the corner. The resulting Isolation and self-indulgence are Localism’s biggest potential drawbacks. Characteristics that, where art communities are concerned, can very quickly become realities. Parochial… ]]> Fri, 2 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/172 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/172

I’m terrible at saying goodbye (or “until I see you again”), so it’s with bittersweet sentiments that I write this letter from the editor, my last before I leave Texas on July 1st. Editing the last 20 issues of …might be good has been a rewarding and unforgettable experience. I have been extremely fortunate to work with a brilliant and sensitive team at Fluent~Collaborative. My deepest thanks go to them: Director Laurence Miller, Production Associate Emily Ng, Editorial Intern Nancy Lili Gonzalez and Production Intern Kelly Hanus. Your warmth, intelligence and collegiality have made each day of work a true pleasure. I’d also like to extend my gratitude to Mike Chesser and Claire Ruud for the stimulating feedback and conversations over the last year. Of course, it goes without saying that I must also thank all of the writers, artists, gallerists, curators and others who have worked with me on these issues of …might be good. Your generosity, enthusiasm… ]]> Fri, 24 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/171 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/171

Even the most optimistic supporters of Austin’s expanding contemporary art scene can admit that it is suffering some institutional growing pains. The Blanton Museum, under the leadership of new director Simone Wicha, is currently in search of a new curator of contemporary art. Arthouse has remained quiet about their new curatorial plan since their announcement about eliminating former Curator and Associate Director Elizabeth Dunbar’s position, citing budget difficulties. The Austin Museum of Art has not replaced former director Dana Friis-Hansen since his January 2011 resignation, even as the staff prepares to vacate their home on Congress Street. Speaking of relocations,… ]]> Fri, 10 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/170 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/170

In Texas, where we’re unlikely to see temperatures below 90 for a good three months, summer is in full swing. After a whirlwind of semester-end business, parties and galas, I’ve been escaping the heat by reconnecting with my Netflix queue. I’m indulging my addiction to the “dark and cerebral” categories by watching Twin Peaks, and I’m not the only one. A recent brunch with friends revealed that there’s a whole group of us in Houston who have independently gotten sucked into David Lynch’s televised dream world. What has drawn us in, one by one, twenty years later? It’s not only pining for sweater weather, rain and the smell of Douglas-firs. Nor is it just the dramatic work of some of Lynch’s most favored actors, including the flawless young faces of Sherilyn Fenn, Lara Flynn Boyle and Kyle MacLachlan. For me, it’s the way that Lynch and co-creator Mark Frost have crafted a world— a surrealistic, sexy, moody, melodramatic, aestheticized world— where… ]]> Fri, 27 May 2011 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/169 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/169

If we can subscribe to philosopher Jacques Rancière’s notion that politics and aesthetics are inherently bound together in “distribution of the sensible”—that is, all that is seeable, sayable and knowable—the capture and death of Osama Bin Laden is doubtless the most significant aesthetic event of the past two weeks. Immediately after the announcement, the loudest demands were made not for the accountability of the chain of events leading up to his death, carried out on secret order, but rather for the release of photos of his corpse. While the photographic evidence was soon circulated to journalists, pundits and politicians, who have gravely reported on their “gruesome” nature, President Obama has halted their distribution to a wider public. (Not unlike the stifling of images of war.) Politicians argue that the photos should be kept under wraps due to fear of the wider ramifications—namely, retaliation. The counterarguments range from cathartic release for soldiers… ]]> Fri, 13 May 2011 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/168 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/168

More big changes are in store in Austin’s art world and for Texas museum stewardship overall. A statement released yesterday revealed that Blanton Museum director Ned Rifkin will be stepping down from his post as of May 31. Rifkin will remain on the faculty at UT Austin, where he is currently a professor of art and art history and leads a junior seminar on the year 1962 as part of the Plan II program. In The Blanton’s statement, Rifkin said: “Much as I will miss working with the outstanding staff at The Blanton, I believe my eagerness to teach more and my desire to pursue meaningful research on a variety of topics will better suit me. I wish every possible success to The Blanton as it continues to offer quality programs to transform lives through art.” Rifkin came to The Blanton in 2009 from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. where he held the position as Undersecretary for Art and oversaw the workings of… ]]> Fri, 29 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/167 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/167

The blogosphere is abuzz this week with proclamations of Austin’s art implosion. On Monday April 11, news surfaced that Elizabeth Dunbar’s position as Curator and Associate Director of Arthouse at the Jones Center was eliminated in a series of budget cutbacks. Arthouse Director Sue Graze stated that the organization’s “newly revised, board-approved operating budget incorporated reductions to our staff salary line," and that the exhibition programming would be handled by a rotating series of guest curators and traveling exhibitions. The same day, Arthouse staff member Jenn Gardner announced her resignation after ten years at the nonprofit, stating that she strongly disagreed with the concept of Arthouse existing without a full-time curator. Artist… ]]> Fri, 15 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/166 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/166

This week our critical community was dealt a disheartening blow. On Wednesday, March 30, the Texas-based journal Art Lies announced that it will cease production and publication of its quarterly printed publication and online content, effective as of May. The role that Art Lies has played in forging a dialogue about contemporary art made and presented in Texas is immeasurable. Since 1993, Art Lies has grown from a grassroots staple-bound bimonthly publication based in Houston to a quarterly printed publication and online platform with national and international reach. Throughout its expansion and transformation, it has remained committed to thinking about Texas in concert with art being created elsewhere. These efforts to foster exchange have also led to the development of the Art Lies Distinguished Critic Lecture Series and Guest Editorial Contributor Program. In rethinking the way Texas art is presented discursively, Art Lies helped shaped… ]]> Fri, 1 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/165 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/165

It’s no secret that I’m an amateur astrology buff. So it’s no coincidence that the title of this week’s issue of ...mbg, plucked from Mike Osborne’s textual collage review of Christian Marclay’s The Clock, features a quote from poet Walt Whitman—who shares my birthday. The phrase comes from “Sparkles from the Wheel,” part of his literary masterwork Leaves of Grass. In the poem, Whitman fancies himself a sort of American flâneur, “effusing and fluid—a phantom curiously floating” among the crowd bustling along the city street.I found this evocation especially poignant when reflecting upon the events over the past few weeks in Austin. In very sad news, UT Professor Emeritus Kelly Fearing, celebrated artist and art educator, passed away at age 92 on March 13th in Austin. Fearing began his mature career when he moved to Fort Worth in 1943. There, he joined a daring group of artists embracing abstraction and surrealism that… ]]> Fri, 18 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/164 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/164

While the disciplines of poetry, literature and visual art commingle less in the pages of contemporary art publications than in the heyday of the poet-critic of the 1950s and ‘60s, there is still a mutual admiration and correspondence between the fields. In his Art Lies Distinguished Critics lecture in October 2009, Raphael Rubinstein gave a schematic overview of contemporary poetry composed in response to visual artwork. Although the belletristic conventions of critical writing have waned in the past decades, giving rise to theoretical considerations, it’s clear that a rigorous and creative approach to merging form and content inform successful works of all artistic genres. And in some cases, radical approaches to authorship have shaken both disciplines to the core, from the appropriationist techniques of visual art to appropriative or conceptual poetry (fittingly, the introductions by Kenneth Goldsmith and Craig Dworkin… ]]> Fri, 4 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/163 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/163

The events of the past few weeks have bespoken romance—both of the Cupid’s-arrow variety and of revolution. This Valentine’s Day followed on the heels of recent political turmoil in Egypt that led to the resignation of Hosni Mubarak. The series of riots and protests were as exciting as they were tumultuous. As onlookers from abroad, we collectively identified with the passionate testimonies of oppressed individuals concretized in a cascade of violent, dramatic press images. While the democratic future of Egyptian politics is uncertain at this point, few of us have remained unmoved by watching the struggle play out in the Middle East. Thinking about the political possibilities of taking to the streets and the themes that repeatedly surface in this issue of …mbg, I kept returning to the title of Yvonne Rainer’s 2006 autobiography Feelings are Facts. An update of the ‘70s feminist maxim “the personal is the political,” Feelings are Facts… ]]> Fri, 18 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/162 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/162

‘History occurs the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.’ This oft-cited paraphrase from Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte has been applied to the analysis of contemporary art practices that construct a new reading of historical circumstances. Of course, the mining of history is at the core of postmodern practice. Pop artists of the 1960s and the 1980s Pictures generation appropriationists both defamiliarized received meanings through fragmentation and repetition, the latter through the heavy filter of deconstructionist semiotic theory. Artists today are indebted to these precedents, along with that of the Situationists, who worked through the “catacombs of visible culture” to produce subversive twists on existing media stereotypes. By becoming experts in the language of spectacle and narrative, many of the artists discussed in this issue critically upend the binary between fact and fiction.The understanding and playful misuse of… ]]> Fri, 4 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/161 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/161

In my previous letter from the editor, I made a case for the connection between editorial and curatorial practice. That weekend I spent some time in Devon Dikeou’s solo exhibition “You Can Observe A Lot By Watching” at Domy Books in Austin. The exhibition’s cornerstone was undoubtedly the back issues of zingmagazine on display, which Dikeou—a recent transplant to Austin—has been editing and publishing since 1995. Subtitled “a curatorial crossing” (the “zing” is a twist on the signage abbreviation XING), the magazine’s format comprises a series of rotating guest-curated projects that span art, architecture, design, fashion, fiction and poetry. zingmagazine takes its inspiration from Fleur Fenton Coles’ pioneering Flair magazine,… ]]> Fri, 21 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/160 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/160

At the beginning of 2011, we find ourselves at the dawn of a new decade—one in which the technological advances and networking capacities of the Internet 2.0 have been assimilated into our daily lives.* In the spirit of new year’s navel-gazing, this editor’s letter and issue of …mbg is devoted to the question of creating an engaging critical discourse in the age of infinite hyperlinking possibilities. When nearly every website, from social networking platforms to self-published blogs to leading newspapers, offers a comment option to the ambitious amateur critic, one may wonder where the specificity of criticism even lies and where the public intellectual finds his or her platform. The editors of the New York Times’ Sunday Book Review had the same questions in mind this week. In a feature entitled “Why Criticism Matters”, they asked six prominent critics to address… ]]> Fri, 7 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/159 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/159

This holiday season finds us taking stock more soberly. The passing away last week of Peter Marzio, the longtime Director of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, tallies another huge loss to the Texas art community. As the year draws to a close, we honor his legacy and accomplishments, along with the work and spirit of recently deceased San Antonio artist Chuck Ramirez and Chicago-based critic Kathryn Hixson, who was completing her PhD dissertation at UT Austin. Their contributions and visions have made a lasting impact on the art world at large.On the national radar, the controversy over the removal of David Wojnarowicz’s film A Fire In My Belly from the National Portrait Gallery exhibition Hide/Seek rages on. Last week, following my letter from the editor, Fluent~Collaborative released a powerful statement by Dan Cameron,… ]]> Fri, 17 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/158 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/158

As a follow-up to this week's Letter from the Editor and in support of David Wojnarowicz's work and the exhibition Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, Fluent~Collaborative has released a statement from Dan Cameron, which can be accessed here. For many art enthusiasts, the first week of December entails an abrupt shift of gears: familial bonding over turkey and stuffing quickly gives way to hobnobbing with the glitterati at Art Basel Miami Beach. We at …might be good, however, are staying put in Texas to bring you coverage of “another life of the made.” This title implies the idea of reception itself as a participatory process—to paraphrase Duchamp, that it is the viewer (or critic) who completes the work of art. Circulation, through word of mouth or in print, can give a work a fresh spin and make it visible to another audience.… ]]> Fri, 3 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/157 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/157

This issue of …might be good, the first after the midterm elections, revolves around reconceptions of the artwork and the art world. Dropping out, getting off the grid and appropriating space for radical purposes—whether in the pages of a magazine, out in the desert, or in your parents’ apartment—are some of the strategies recounted in these virtual pages. This spirit hearkens back to the legacy of the Art Workers’ Coalition, a loose collective of creative practitioners called to action in 1969. Embracing concerns as varied as artists’ rights to assert control over where their work was exhibited, sexism, racism and the Vietnam war, the A.W.C. encouraged direct action and led to the formation of splinter groups such as the Guerrilla Art Action Group (G.A.A.G.) and Women Artists in Revolution. Of course, we know that these groups did not topple the prevailing order of the… ]]> Fri, 12 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/156 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/156

By the time this issue goes live, many of you in Austin will have already visited Arthouse at the Jones Center. After a long and suspenseful wait, the building, transformed by the New York-based architectural firm Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis, reopened its doors last weekend in style. Thousands clamored to see the architectural trio's tour de force, a game-changer for museum spaces in Austin. Incorporating the history of the site with expanded gallery square footage, clean lines and unexpected architectural details, the building served as a conversation piece along with the art it showcased. Events included three evenings of requisite dinners and member receptions. And in true Austin spirit, those with some extra pocket change could come to the Friday night afterparty to enjoy a rooftop performance by Brooklyn-based band and art collective MEN. The weekend finished off… ]]> Fri, 29 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/155 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/155

Two spectacular art events were slated to take place in Houston last week. The explosion on October 6 of Cai Guo-Qiang’s gunpowder drawing Odyssey, commissioned by the Museum of Fine Arts Houston for a hefty price tag, took place with a cast of over one hundred unpaid volunteers at an exclusive reception at a Houston warehouse (a video recap of the event is chronicled here). Across town, the performative climax of Mary Ellen Carroll’s project Prototype 180 was scheduled for that Friday, October 8. Carroll’s 180-degree rotation of an unoccupied mid-century house in Sharpstown is the centerpiece of a project ten years in the making that seeks to “make architecture perform.” The house will serve as an institute… ]]> Fri, 15 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/154 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/154

Fall is here, and with it comes a new chapter in the history of …might be good. For weeks now, I’ve been thinking about the best way to introduce myself to you as your new editor. It hasn’t been an easy task. I take up the mantle from a line of witty, critical, fierce and fearless female predecessors at the editorial helm, to which I am proud to add my name. From Regine Basha, who co-founded Fluent~Collaborative with the ever-inspiring Laurence Miller, to Caitlin Haskell, Risa Puleo, and Claire Ruud, whom I had the pleasure to work with and learn from, I have a daunting legacy to take on. These women and their collaborators and colleagues at Fluent (too numerous to mention here) have helped form a critical community in which I have been an eager participant since my arrival in Texas. I am so grateful for the productive conversations I’ve had so far about this journal and contemporary art, and I look forward to pushing the dialogue further. I am also extremely… ]]> Fri, 1 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/153 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/153

I find it difficult to write this, my final letter from the editor. Most of all, I want to express how much I’ve appreciated the writers, artists and curators with whom I’ve worked, the readers who’ve read …might be good and the visitors who’ve come to testsite. Collectively, you have taught me a tremendous amount about how to participate in an emerging scene like Austin’s. The reflections that follow condense the wisdom of my peers into a few concise points. It’s nothing new to you; you are the ones who’ve modeled these ideas for me over the past four years. They bear repeating not as prescriptive advice, but rather as a reflection of this community at its best. I’ve been deeply shaped by you, and these are the practices, attitudes and strategies I’ve learned here that I want to take with me now.(1) Be RelevantUnderstand the art scene close to home—both the work being made and the institutional models being used—in relationship to the… ]]> Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/152 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/152

There is something so fun about mixing art and science. For one, it’s got a certain naughtiness about it—an illicit union between two fields that, more often than not, avoid even a passing glance in each other’s direction. For two, experiments are exciting no matter what field they’re in. When I was invited to guest edit this issue of …might be good I noticed that a number of exhibitions, in Texas and elsewhere, were addressing various topics that brought this union to light—the nature of experimentation, the precision of looking and the differences between the subjective and the objective, to name a few.The standard view of science and art is that they fundamentally exist at opposite poles of human endeavor. Science uses logic, math and systematic reasoning to attain a pure, objective understanding of the world that is descriptive on a practical level. Art, on the other hand, is a subjective event that expresses individual experience and interest in the… ]]> Fri, 16 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/151 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/151

Dear Reader,In this guest-edited issue of …might be good I sought out writers who just-so-happen to be friends, gave them a lot of leeway on the material they turned in, and what I got was what amounts to be a meditation on the notebook, the place where the personal meets the outside world like no other, representing emotional, intellectual and artistic expression in its purest form. Most editors/curators/gallerists promote their friends. Though many would not admit it, I think, because to own up to this is to reveal partiality, cliques and subjectivity, where tastemakers want to bronze themselves in an armor of impartiality, openness to new voices, and objectivity. I became an independent publisher of poetry because many good writers I know had trouble getting their books published by established presses. So, I sought to remedy that, but then I was publishing friends or friends of friends. That is the way it is. Like the notebook, publishing is where the personal meets… ]]> Fri, 2 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/150 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/150

I never pick themes for issues beforehand; I prefer to allow continuities to appear among features serendipitously. As an editing methodology, I like this: I collect the thoughts of others, look for threads and then weave them together, or highlight a particular idea, in this column. This editing methodology is about listening carefully to other writers and then drawing their monologues together into dialogue in the journal. Even with the rise of blogs and bloggers, journals and editors will always be irreplaceable for this reason. A good editor creates a conversation out of individual voices, and, in the best cases, helps to write a community into being. Fittingly, perhaps, for …might be good’s sesquicentennial issue, the threads I found running through this issue weave around the relationship between real and imagined art communities.In her Mexico City round-up, the Blanton’s Curator of Latin American Art, Ursula Davila-Villa, returns to her hometown to reflect… ]]> Fri, 18 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/149 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/149

When I was invited to guest edit this issue of …might be good, I was planning a trip to New York. There, the art-world vogue for performance (and vogueing) continues to gain momentum… and hype. From the spectacularized Performa biennial to the creation of curatorial departments devoted to the medium in major museums, live performance has become, if not mainstream, certainly institution-friendly. The performative turn has equally informed a recent spate of exhibitions in Texas exploring notions such as identity construction, the alter ego, the performative qualities of process and participatory practice. This issue doesn’t attempt to synthesize different strands of artistic practice into one statement, but rather offers a variety of positions on what I’d like to dub the élan vital and its afterglow. Henri Bergson first theorized the élan… ]]> Fri, 4 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/148 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/148

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has reached the Loop Current, a powerful and horrifyingly concrete metaphor for the manner in which this oil is swirling around in all kinds of thoughts and conversations in our day-to-day lives right now. Only one writer, Lee Webster on Marina Zurkow’s Slurb, mentioned the Gulf oil spill by name in this issue, but the crisis seems to lurk below the surface in many other features as well: Kate Watson’s discussion of Cloud Eye Control’s Under Polaris and Wendy Vogel’s review of Cosmos, to name two. When Webster wonders whether imagery that “traffics in the apocalypse” merely increases the emotional distance between viewers and a very real future, when Watson asks Under Polaris… ]]> Fri, 21 May 2010 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/147 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/147

Editor's Postscript: This week, The Texas Observer and ...might be good embark on a new collaboration. Select ...might be good features will now appear in the Observer's online section "Arts & Minds."Also, 2010 Austin Critics' Table Awards: Visual Arts Nominations.I have encountered two reactions to Anna Craycroft’s installation Subject of Learning/Object of Study at the Blanton: (1) disinterest and mild distaste (2) enthusiasm. The former response comes primarily from visitors who encountered the installation bereft of activity, while the latter is expressed most often by visitors who attended events—conversations, lectures, performances—in the… ]]> Fri, 7 May 2010 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/146 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/146

Continuing its pedagogical journey, in this issue, ...might be good brings you teachers in a museum and a museum in a teacher's office: a review of Substitute Teacher curated by Stuart Horodner and Regine Basha at The Atlanta Contemporary and an interview with artist Michael Corris, who recently opened the Free Museum of Dallas in the Office of the Chair at Southern Methodist University. Horodner and Basha's exhibition poses the question, "if a museum is an educational space, what kind of substitute teacher is an artist?" while Corris's Free Museum asks, "how can a museum inside the academy (and I mean really inside, not just kind of) affect the space of education?"Michael David Murphy's review of Substitute Teacher is also interesting in relationship to John… ]]> Fri, 23 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/145 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/145

There are rumblings that around this time next year, a coalition of art organizations may be kicking off a city-wide extravaganza the likes of which we haven’t seen in Austin yet. In late spring 2011, the Texas Biennial, the Austin Museum of Art’s New Art in Austin triennial, the annual Fusebox Festival and Art Alliance Austin’s annual Art Week will collide. Arthouse’s New American Talent could join the fray, too. Will it be mayhem or rhapsody?With all this on the horizon, a bunch of us are bringing Dan Cameron, the Founding Director of Prospect New Orleans, to town to pick his brain. In 2008, Cameron orchestrated the vast Prospect.1 across New Orleans’ entire cityscape, from the Contemporary Art Center to abandoned… ]]> Fri, 9 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/144 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/144

This week, as promised, ...might be good is joining the conversation about artist-run schools. To kick things off, in the thoughts that follow I scratch the surface of the relationship between today's artist-run schools and the museums and galleries that are increasingly supporting such projects. Meanwhile, in a related exploration  Mary Walling Blackburn addresses pedagogy and aesthetics in "Classroom as Ornament."Within the field of art production, a lineage for artist-run schools* could be traced to the rise of relational aesthetics in the 1990s. It is not a large leap from the laboratories and workshops Bourriaud labeled as such to the classes and schools established more recently by a younger crowd. However, artists themselves are reluctant to claim this lineage; gargantuan names like Rikrit Tirivanija and Liam Gillick seem to bludgeon the nuance out most any conversation at this… ]]> Fri, 26 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/143 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/143

This week, e-flux’s most recent issue and  Anna Craycroft’s Subject of Learning/Object of Study at the Blanton continued to contribute to the current investigation of pedagogy and artists' pedagogical projects. With all the fresh words spilled on the subject, we'll wait until our next issue to add fuel to the fire. Sometimes, there is only so much of a topic one can handle at a time. Claire Ruud is Associate Director of Fluent~Collaborative. ]]> Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/142 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/142

Recently, the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex has been home to a cluster of exhibitions and artist projects in vacant commercial and residential spaces. In large part, this issue is devoted to those, with features on Modern Ruin (which occupied a never-occupied WaMu building and, to everyone's delight, drew the attention of NPR's Marketplace) and November House (which occupied an vacant residential rental property.) Next weekend, the Metroplex will be home to another such event, Three Propositions and a Musical Scenario in empty storefronts in an artist studio complex.Looking ahead to the coming months, we're hoping to publish a series of features that join the conversation about contemporary art and pedagogy. Artist-run schools have been popping up right and left. Close… ]]> Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/141 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/141

First of all, definitely go see Desire at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin. The last show in Austin that stirred up so much conversation around the office at Fluent~Collaborative might have been Geometry of Hope, way back in 2007. I review Desire in this issue.On a completely different front, quite a bit of institutional news has popped up in the Austin art world over the past two weeks. Perhaps 2010 will be a year of fresh starts following the house-cleaning provoked by the recession.The Visual Arts Center at UT Austin finished its remodel, and the galleries are… ]]> Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/140 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/140

A conversation about art and economy may easily descend into a list of shortages (shortages in government funding, philanthropy, collectors, galleries, studio spaces) and, in response, a celebration of certain types of abdication from the system (the DIY, the temporary, the collective). Rightly, we perceive dysfunction in commercial and capitalist models. However, out of frustration, it’s tempting to complain about the systems too much and examine our own responses too little.The question begs to be asked: what is your personal economy?This is one of the questions raised in Art Work: A National Conversation about Art, Labor, and Economics, a newspaper and website recently released by the Chicago-based collective Temporary Services. In a series of articles entitled “Personal Economies,” anonymous artists write about the way they make ends meet. These stories begin to uncover the many ways that artists support… ]]> Fri, 29 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/139 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/139

Last week, The Blanton made two small announcements that add up to something much more significant: the institution is continuing its move to reposition itself as the city’s destination museum, not merely a better-than-average university museum. The announcements were as follows: first, the price of admission went up by $2 across the board (museum entry remains free for University of Texas at Austin faculty, staff and students); second, Third Thursdays, the museum’s monthly free evening, will enjoy augmented programming, while B Scene, the museum’s late night party, will move from a monthly to a bi-monthly basis.In regard to entry fees, we’re talking a 28% increase to the price of general admission ($7 to $9) and a 40% increase to the price of a senior/student ticket ($5 to $7). For comparison, I checked the regular admission prices of other museums. The new ticket prices are comparable to those of other university museums, if on… ]]> Fri, 15 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/138 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/138

2009 was a hell of a good year for seeing visual art in Austin. The year opened with a series of shows that brought us back to Austin’s DIY roots. At Arthouse, Matt Stokes delved into the archives of punk to produce these are the days, an exhibition of punk ephemera and a film installation capturing the ecstasy of the live punk performance. Meanwhile, Art Palace showed meticulously drafted and vibrantly painted canvases by seasoned Austinite Heyd Fontenot, whose playful and tenderly rendered nudes (many of them figures who have made up the backbone of Austin’s art world) hinted at the webs of relationships and private moments that hold our lives together. And of course, the Texas Biennial, a prime example of what Austin’s DIY culture can produce, brought us gems such as Lee Baxter Davis’s rich allegorical drawings and Kelly Fearing’s mystical mid-century paintings.Granted, the fact that 2009 was a good year for seeing art in Austin does not mean it was an easy… ]]> Fri, 25 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/137 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/137

This is new for …might be good: we’ve added a donate button to our site.* For the first time, we’re asking you, our readers, to invest in the work we do. Our long-term partners have been supporting the journal and its sister project, testsite, since their inception in 2003, and we’re asking you to join them.With each issue, …might be good reaches 5,000 subscribers. These subscribers and our regular visitors hail from over 125 countries around the world. Your partnership will enable …might be good to continue to bring national and international exposure to contemporary art in Austin, throughout Texas and beyond, as well as provide a publication venue and engaged editorial feedback for emerging art writers at a moment when critical writing is gravely under-funded.In 2009, we published:• 24 issues• 32 writers• 157 features• 106,447 words (not including announcements)About 50% of our coverage was… ]]> Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/136 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/136

Fluent~Collaborative congratulates Austin-based collective Okay Mountain, the winner of the 2009 Pulse Prize for best emerging artist at the fair, where they showed Corner Store, an installation presented by Arthouse at the Jones Center.Don’t mistake that sculpture outside Okay Mountain’s Corner Store for a garbage can. “We were emptying that sculpture of [Pulse Miami] fairgoers’ trash 30 or 40 times a day,” says Sterling Allen, a member of the Okay Mountain collective. “People kept coming in and trying to purchase bottled water, too. At one point, two women wanted to buy some lottery tickets, until they found out they weren’t really scratch-offs.” The goods in question were art objects. Okay Mountain made or repurposed everything in the store, from canned “Green Things” to “howthefuckyousaythat”… ]]> Mon, 7 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/135 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/135

Joan Jonas’s recent workshop on drawing and performance, held in Austin just before Thanksgiving, centered on the idea of the list. Artists, Jonas pointed out, use lists all the time and in all sorts of ways. Reflecting upon this point, I considered doing a feature on artists' use of lists. But when I began to enumerate examples, my list of possibilities became increasingly unwieldy.Ever since Jonas’s workshop, I haven’t been able to shake the list. Partly, this has to do with last week’s holiday. A few nights before the big day, my girlfriend and I sat down with a bottle of wine (the best accompaniment to a good list) to write a “to do” list—mostly cleaning duties in preparation for the arrival of our family—and a grocery list for our Thanksgiving meal.Then, on Monday, Artforum and Bookforum arrived in my mailbox. Artforum’s December issue always revolves around “best of” lists. (…might be good will put out its… ]]> Fri, 4 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/134 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/134

I just got back from San Antonio and I saw a Thanksgiving-worthy cornucopia of great work. Highlights included Adrian Esparza, Adriana Lara, and Mario Ybarra, Jr. at Artpace, the Mel Bochner show at Lawrence Markey and Diamond Life opening tonight at Unit B. I’ll take more time to write about some of these shows next week. For now, check out Dan Boehl on Teresita Fernández, Alison Hearst on Death of the Propane Salesman and Nicole Caruth on William Cordova. I know in my last letter, I promised a review of Okay Mountain’s booksmart and the Noriko Ambe exhibition at Lora Reynolds, both will be in the next issue, so keep your eyes peeled. Until then Happy Thanksgiving.Claire Ruud is Associate Director of Fluent~Collaborative. ]]> Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/133 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/133

Here’s what rocks about Austin: the turnover. You think I’m joking? I’m not. As Art Palace prepares for a move to Houston, heed its director’s warning. In an exit interview with Kate Watson on Glasstire, Arturo Palacios spoke these pearls of wisdom about our city, For artists, this place is a great incubator, a place to be ambitious and take big risks. For someone like me, Austin is still a place where an Art Palace... can be born, nurtured and can grow without the pressure of a top-heavy gallery system. The potential is great here. I’m with Palacios. The constant turnover in Austin creates a lot of space for people with ideas and energy to experiment and grow. Art Palace has been good to us, and we’ll miss it. Palacios’s energy and hard work, and the caliber of his exhibitions has been unmatched. Now, Palacios’s move to Houston is right for him and his artists.… ]]> Fri, 6 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/132 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/132

At a moment when contemporary art practices may feel almost paralyzingly diverse, standards about how to look at art, and how to evaluate it, seem equally diffuse. For a critic (or viewer) navigating this heterogeneous landscape, the act of looking is sometimes plagued by the range of possible ways of looking. For such a viewer, an exhibition like the recent Works on Paper: Jo Baer, James Bishop and Suzan Frecon at Lawrence Markey can be refreshing because the work offers a clear framework for looking—a formal one. Because of our history with it, it’s almost as if this type of work comes with an instruction manual: look at it in person; look at color, line, shape, dimensionality, texture. When Wendy Atwell describes this show as “a contemplative, peaceful break” in this issue, this is what I think of—the peace of mind that arises out of knowing how to look.We “know” how to look… ]]> Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/131 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/131

And I am sunburnt. On Tuesday I spent four long, sticky hours in UT Austin’s football stadium as a volunteer for artist Pablo Vargas Lugo’s Eclipses for Austin, the next WorkSpace project at the Blanton. About one hundred and fifty of us—less than half the number of volunteers the Blanton had hoped to recruit—staged four eclipses that day. Vargas Lugo had hoped to film all 10 solar eclipses that will occur here over the next 340 years. But with enough volunteers to create only half of the sun in any one sitting, he had to scale back at the eleventh hour. Left with the physical reminder of my sunburn, I keep wondering: apart from an unpleasant itchiness and a lingering woozy feeling, what are we to take away from this event?Vargas Lugo’s plan was ambitious: Three hundred and fifty art-lovers converge on the mecca of Longhorn football and dramatize the next three hundred and forty… ]]> Fri, 9 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/130 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/130

Today, Fluent~Collaborative is hosting a Satellite Summit for this year's National Summit on Arts Journalism. This year, the summit is focusing on new models in cultural coverage on the web. What new possibilities for format, content and coverage does the internet present? And, importantly, what creative business models are out there for funding these projects?These are huge questions. They are the practical side of the conceptual question, what is arts journalism today? In a matter of four hours, we can only scratch the surface. I'll report back next week on our discussion.Enjoy this issue, and if you're looking for a quick roundup of what's on the walls of Austin's galleries right now, check out this week's ...might be good recommends.Claire Ruud… ]]> Fri, 2 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/129 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/129

After my latest visit to Artpace San Antonio, I’m thinking about artist residencies. Austin has long clamored for a residency program. But if we had our way, what kind of program would we build? Where are the most interesting models? What are the weaknesses of those models, and how would we address them? I figure the authorities on residency programs are actually the artists who do them, so I called some up. In response, Riiko Sakkinen writes a letter on residencies and hypermobility, and Sterling Allen, Harrell Fletcher and Vijai Patchineelam, offer some of their thoughts, too.Also in this issue, Subtext Projects, a young curatorial collective based in Dallas, offers a fresh… ]]> Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/128 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/128

Lori Waxman, the 60 WRD/MIN Art Critic, spent three days in Austin at the beginning of the summer, and her performance at Arthouse sparked a series of conversations about art criticism among …might be good’s writers. Waxman spent three days sitting at a desk in the window of Arthouse writing 200 word reviews. She reviewed the work of any artist lucky enough to get an appointment with her, and she wrote each review in 20 minutes flat.One premise of the 60 WRD/MIN Art Critic project is that it puts “the review” up for review. So it seems fitting that artists should review Waxman’s work. Back in July, artist Eric Zimmerman offered a mixed review of the performance on Cablegram. In this issue of …might be good, a few more artists—artists whose work Waxman reviewed at Arthouse—weigh in on the… ]]> Fri, 28 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/127 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/127

This issue of …might be good is our guide to exhibitions opening in Texas and beyond this fall. So make yourself a gin and tonic (or an Orange Julius, if that’s how you roll), and take a look. If you’re a visual learner, just click on the “view gallery” icon and scroll through the images. I’ve been drooling over a few of these babies (and the prospect of cooler months) for the past couple of weeks.Our next issue of …might be good hits the proverbial stands in three weeks on August 28. Look forward to a feature on the 60 Wrd/Min Art Critic’s recent visit to Austin, reviews of Polymict at Okay Mountain and Lonely are the Brave at Bluestar and an interview with Eduardo Xavier García, the curator of this year’s ]]> Fri, 7 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/126 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/126

First things first: ever since Merce Cunningham passed away last weekend, I've been thinking about him. In particular, I keep flashing back to an installation I saw last summer at Dia:Beacon,Tacita Dean's Merce Cunningham performs STILLNESS (in three movements) to John Cage’s composition 4'33" with Trevor Carlson, New York City, 28 April 2007 (six performances; six films). For this issue, I've written a brief reflection about Cunningham and Merce Cunningham performs STILLNESS.This short, mid-summer issue also contains two features about the Blanton. With new director Ned Rifkin, the institution has entered a period of reassessment. In an interview with Rifkin, I ask about his first impressions of the Austin, his priorities at the museum and his love of guitars. Meanwhile, Dan… ]]> Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/125 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/125

Ever since the June 1 New Yorker arrived in my mailbox, I’ve been thinking about health care and the economic cultures of cities. Required reading in the White House, Atul Gawande’s “The Cost Conundrum” makes a provocative case for the vast differences in health care costs across the country. Gawande suggests that a few key figures in a community can set a tone that may take root within the community and then intensify with time. Thus one or two hospital directors might instigate a profit-driven culture in one city, while an alliance of private practice doctors might trigger a patient-driven culture in another. The rule of thumb Gawande uses here is common sense, and seems applicable to local art scenes—one or two big players can deeply affect the character of the communities in which we live.Gawande uses sociologist Woody Powell’s anchor-tenant theory of economic development… ]]> Fri, 10 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/124 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/124

It's hot out, and time for trashy summer reading. I picked up the Twilight books a couple weeks ago and couldn't put them down. As many have pointed out, they're unbelievably sexist (as my girlfriend put it, "They're vampires; they can do anything, and heterosexual monogamy is their big dream?!") but it turns out they're also a cultural touchstone. Since I started reading them, quite a few artists and curators (all female, mid-twenties to thirties) have admitted to reading the books with relish, too. While it may lack the epic intensity of werewolf versus vampire, I hope you find some tasty treats of your own in this week's ...might be good.Claire Ruud is Editor of ...might be good and Associate Coordinator of testsite. ]]> Fri, 19 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/123 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/123

Summer time, and ...might be good will grace your inboxes every three weeks from here on out, through those hot sticky months of June, July and August. In this issue, Kate Watson recommends a few shows in Houston, and Dan Boehl and I review two shows to see in Austin: Practice, Practice, Practice at Lora Reynolds and Nathan Green at Art Palace. In the Project Room at Art Palace, also check out Kara Hearn's funny yet tender videos, which got a nice little review at The New Orleans Museum of Art on artforum.com this month. Best part of the installation in Austin, though, is Hearn's letter to Steve… ]]> Fri, 29 May 2009 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/122 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/122

Ned Rifkin, who resigned from his position as Under Secretary for Art at the Smithsonian Institution last spring, has been appointed director of The Jack S. Blanton Museum at The University of Texas at Austin, where he will also hold the positions of professor of art and art history and special advisor to UT president William Powers. Rifkin succeeds Jesse Otto Hite, who retired last year after 15 years as director of the museum.The Blanton must be looking for good connections, good money and stability.Rifkin is scholarly. In 1977, he received a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Michigan, where he wrote his dissertation on the films of Michelangelo Antonioni, and then taught for three years at The University of Texas at Arlington. Since then, he’s produced a distinguished list of publications, including Agnes Martin: The Nineties and Beyond (2002) and Sean Scully: Twenty Years , 1976-1995 (2001). A scholarly choice makes sense… ]]> Fri, 8 May 2009 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/121 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/121

In the face of adversity, Austin artists and art institutions—from the most DIY to the most established—are rallying. We’re envisioning coalitions, alternative economies and creative synergies that might transform the worst of time into the best of times.These tough times call for even tougher conversations. (As if the financial crisis isn’t already hard enough to stomach.) Like Obama’s administration, we have to look for programs that aren’t working and radically re-envision them. Rather than replicate the same old models, Austin’s art institutions need to pool their resources, each one focusing on what it could potentially do best. At testsite,… ]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/120 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/120

When I say Birth of the Cool, do you think modish mid-century art and design or sleek large-scale portraits of African-American sitters by Barkley L. Hendricks? Two exhibitions by the same title coincided this year: Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design and Culture at Midcentury (at The Blanton through May 17) and Barkley Hendricks: Birth of the Cool (closed March 15 at the Studio Museum and traveling). This incident reinforced my misgivings about the art and design exhibition at the Blanton. Racial politics and nostalgia are at issue here, and no one wants to go there.At the Blanton, Miles Davis’s tunes drift through the space, amping up the “coolness factor” of the hard edged paintings and chic furniture decorating the gallery. The work of Anglo-American painters and designers… ]]> Fri, 10 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/119 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/119

Austin’s got its fair share of round-up exhibitions these days: Arthouse’s annual New American Talent, AMOA’s triennial New Art in Austin and the Texas Biennial. Do we really need them all? I’m beginning to wonder whether we could pool our resources and develop one single biennial (or triennial) instead—something both broader and deeper than any one of us could orchestrate alone. We need a coalition—a temporary alliance—that works across our various organizational structures and purposes. Together, we could support a larger, city-wide exhibition of public art and solo shows at a variety of venues, from Arthouse to Big Medium to testsite.Coalition isn’t easy. To build an event like this, TXB and AMOA might have to give up their regional parameters.… ]]> Fri, 27 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/118 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/118

Recently, LA Times critic Leah Ollman mentioned to an audience at The University of Texas that critics publishing on the internet trade the relative silence of a print audience for the relative inanity of web audience posting off-the-cuff comments. Nonetheless, this issue of …might be good introduces a comments feature. You can now (finally, we know, it’s been a long time coming) post your thoughts and responses at the bottom of any article.Boston’s Big Red & Shiny beat us to this a while ago. In their most recent issue they address the tone of the comments posted to their articles, and Steve Aishman notes the differences between an argument and a fight. We welcome arguments.Take advantage of our new comments section to join the conversation about the Texas Biennial in this issue:… ]]> Fri, 13 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/117 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/117

“The Texas art world.” In anticipation of the 2009 Texas Biennial, opening in Austin next weekend, we’ve been hearing this phrase bantered about. But what does it mean?Maybe the Texas Biennial actually brings a Texas art world into being. Outside of the Biennial’s boundaries, this world may not exist, or may exist quite differently. The production of the Texas Biennial, understood in this way, is a generative (rather than reflective) act that allows the curator and his team to conceptualize, and to a certain extent actualize, a Texas art community.In a very different format, the East Austin Studio Tour also gives us an opportunity to come together and examine the “big picture” of what is happening in our local art spaces and studios. Once a year, Austinites who never come to openings flood the east side and often walk away with a massively new perspective on the creative energy in our fair city. DIYers meet designers; comic book literati and professorly… ]]> Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/116 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/116

Dan Reclining and, for that matter, Heyd Fontenot’s entire show at Art Palace right now, reek of Lone Star Style. In that infamous article printed in the pages of the August 2006 New York Times Style Magazine, the Austin art scene saw itself reflected at a moment of burgeoning potential. That summer, Okay Mountain and Art Palace were just taking off and everything seemed to be gelling for the first time. Then along came fashion critic Cathy Horyn looking for the “real deal”—an antidote to the shallowness and media frenzy of the New York fashion world. The only catch: in her quest for authenticity, she transformed Arturo and Ali, Art Palace, Austin and Texas into one magnificently cool scene, one idealized image of itself.And what a beautiful image it was. As… ]]> Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/115 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/115

Yesterday, Leah Ollman (of Art in America and the LA Times) and Phong Bui (of The Brooklyn Rail and P.S.1) offered a few gems of wisdom about art criticism to those who attended the first in a series of three Viewpoint 2009 lectures at UT Austin. Four of the most memorable moments from these lectures follow. You might say the first two are about "critical taste," and the second two about "critical discourse"...Bui: "What are you painting?"Audience member: "Whatever I feel."Bui: "That sounds so spoiled."Ollman: [clicks to a slide of an Elizabeth Peyton portrait] I don't like art of entitlement.Bui: There's a Vietnamese proverb, "when you argue with a smart person, you can't win, but when you argue with a stupid person, you can't stop."Ollman:… ]]> Fri, 6 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/114 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/114

Hello readers, are you reading this? We're pleased to note that you've made it to the 18th word. Words 19 through 43 are even more rewarding: in them we reveal that we've just devoted three whole days to thinking about what you want.We feel fresh and revived after a productive staff retreat, and you are bored, sitting in your office selecting VVork links to send to your friends. Stop skimming Artforum's diary for candid photos of Matthew Day Jackson and consider this: what do you want?We know It's Complicated but we want to get a little closer to you. Click "send comments to our editors" and drop us a line. In the very near future, we'll be rolling out a comments section, too, for your discursive pleasure.(For your reading pleasure, try Lane Relyea’s review of Olafur Eliasson: take your time at the Dallas Museum of… ]]> Fri, 23 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/113 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/113

As you wrap up the old year and bring in the new, …might be good sends a retrospective look at the past twelve months in and around Austin. In no particular order, our Best of Austin 2008 come to you hand-picked by our editors and new staff writers—Dan Boehl, Rachel Cook, Katie Geha, Lauren Hamer, Alvaro Ibarra, Laura Lindenberger Wellen, Mary Katherine Matalon, Allison Myers, Lee Webster & Eric Zimmerman.Happy Holidays!Best New SpaceDomy BooksHaving opened their Austin site in May 2008, Houston-based Domy Books has already proven itself to be Austin's go-to place for the most exciting books on art, design and culture. From the black-light prints back in June to Lane Heraclitus' drawings of blues-men currently up in the gallery, they've also given Austinites yet another reason to look toward César Chavez for fun and interesting shows. AMBest… ]]> Fri, 26 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/112 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/112

This week, I’m feeling extremely sanguine about visual arts writing in Austin in the coming year. A few nights ago, a group of ten Austin-based writers gathered at Fluent~Collaborative to talk about regional arts criticism. Not only eager to converse about the subject, but also ready to act, these ten will officially become …might be good staff writers on January 1, working to increase the quality and scope of arts coverage in and around Austin. Simply put, it’s a big deal to have such a solid group of writers committed to covering Austin’s visual arts scene next year. (Look forward to our new staff writers’ “Best of Austin 2008” picks, forthcoming during the holidays.)In addition to having a closer-knit, larger writing team at …might be good, we want to hear what you, our readers, think about …might be good. Your comments will help us to shape the future of the magazine. We would really like to hear from you via this online… ]]> Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/111 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/111

While you recover from yesterday’s festivities, enjoy an abbreviated issue of …might be good from our editors. Last weekend, the East Austin Studio Tour (E.A.S.T.) took over 78702 and beyond, with a whopping 151 studios and galleries participating. E.A.S.T. brings out all my insecurities as an Austin arts writer. The pressure is on to “discover” hot artists, to be perfectly up-to-date and to assess the cultural moment with perspicacity and intuition. But, as it turns out, my first big “discovery”—the photographer Barry Stone—is decidedly behind the curve. You might remember Stone from The Fifth of July, his two person show with Anna Krachey at Okay Mountain last summer. There, the installation did a disservice to both artists, whose unique and compelling voices got somewhat muddled in the pairing. This time around in Stone’s studio, the work cohered into an evocative monologue.Stone had a wide variety of work—mostly photography—up… ]]> Fri, 28 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/110 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/110

Recent interest in the punk scene comes to a head this weekend in Austin: Ian Mackaye (of Minor Threat, Fugazi and The Evens) speaks tonight at St. Edwards; Matt Stokes films tonight’s punk concert at The Broken Neck (Inepsy, Lebenden Toten, Unit 21 and Vaska) into the early hours of tomorrow morning—footage he will use in his upcoming exhibition at Arthouse; Temporary Services presents the culmination of months of conversations with Austin punkers (such as the Big Boys and The Dicks) at Domy on Saturday night and testsite on Sunday afternoon. An obsession with punk isn’t limited to Austin either. Last year, Susan Dynner’s Punk’s Not Dead (2007) made the film festival circuit and later this month, Christie’s is holding its first ever auction of punk memorabilia. The question is: why punk now?Perhaps punk music and the punk ethos are responses to economic crises engendered by trickledown models. Reaganism, for instance, infused the poles of wealth and poverty… ]]> Fri, 14 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/109 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/109

This issue of …might be good marks the approach of the United States presidential election. Many of our features address this election and some of the issues surrounding them: our economy (Dan Boehl on the Okay Mountain mural at capitalist venture company Austin Ventures and Lee Webster on Knifeandfork’s The Wrench and labor), the environment (Arnaud Gerspacher on Andy Coolquitt), race (Audrey Chan on Barack Obama and Adrian Piper), activism (Cody Trepte on MTAA’s Our Political Work, myself on The Activist… ]]> Fri, 31 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/108 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/108

A fascinating group of features in this issue cluster loosely around the concept of “damaged romanticism,” as Blaffer Gallery puts it in the title of its current exhibition. In her review of Damaged Romanticism at the Blaffer, Allison Myers suggests that the concept revolves around a “mix of emotionality and disillusionment—a mix that bridges the gap between the romantic and the realistic.” After reading Allison’s review, I began to see much of the other work discussed in this issue in light of this marriage of brokenness and beauty.Kate Watson’s piece on The Marfa Sessions at the Ballroom—and on Marfa more broadly—captured, for me, a subtle disquiet lurking behind the romantic art world destination and expressed through the static and distortion she encountered in so many of… ]]> Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/107 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/107

The University of Texas at Austin has been a lively source of activity in the visual art community over the past couple of weeks. Tongues are wagging about the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s loan of 28 sculptures to the University through the Landmarks program, the opening of two significant exhibitions—Reimagining Space and The New York Graphic Workshop—at the Blanton and the first of this year’s Lectures on Art in the Black Diaspora. …might be good will dedicate many of our virtual pages to these events over the next month: the Met sculptures will enjoy Eric Zimmerman’s attention in our next issue and reviews of Reimagining Space and The New York Graphic Workshop will appear in early November. However, the most recent lecture in the series, Lectures on Art in the Black Diaspora, steals the spotlight today.In the first of three lectures in the series occurring this fall, Kobena Mercer spoke under the title, “What Difference… ]]> Fri, 3 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/106 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/106

The current exhibition at the Austin Museum of Art and a recent conversation with Linda Pace Foundation Director, Rick Moore, got me thinking: perhaps art professionals and serious collectors should hold a larger proportion of the influential positions on the boards of some Austin and San Antonio art institutions. We cover both AMOA and the Pace Foundation in this issue in the form of a review of Where Are We Going? at AMOA and an interview with Pace Foundation Director Rick Moore.The Austin Museum of Art’s Where Are We Going? is one half—the contemporary half—of a two-part exhibition, Modern Art. Modern Lives: Then + Now. Curated by Director and Chief Curator Dana Friis-Hansen, the exhibition draws from the museum’s own holdings and Austin-based private collections… ]]> Fri, 19 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/105 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/105

At risk of beating a dead horse, I agree with Austin’s bloggers: the state of art criticism in Austin still leaves much to be desired. Inadequate dialogue is an age old problem for young art communities. I find it amusing that in 1952, Harold Rosenberg was similarly bemoaning the state of criticism surrounding the American Ab-Exes (as we know them today):So far, the silence of American literature on the new painting all but amounts to a scandal.(Harold Rosenberg, “American Action Painters,” Art News, December 1952)Not only a lack of smart criticism, but also an inchoate community and an underdeveloped infrastructure contribute to the frustration we’ve been hearing on Austin’s blogs recently. I have a couple of thoughts about steps we can take to develop the community of artists and critics we’ve already begun to build.First, we have to make sure we’re… ]]> Fri, 5 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/104 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/104

This issue has become, somewhat informally, an issue largely dedicated to arts institutions. Two interviews offer a director's point of view on two recently established Texas art institutions, The Goss-Michael Foundation in Dallas and The Landmarks Public Art Program at UT Austin. A review by Rachel Cook urges Austin's graduate students to break the mold with their annual summer show at the Creative Research Laboratory and a letter to the editor from Eric Zimmerman calls for increased participation in public dialogue on the arts in Austin. Further afield, Lillian Davies's review considers the curatorial… ]]> Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/103 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/103

A number of new art venues have sprouted up around Austin over the last six months. Most notably, Domy Books, of Houston fame, opened a branch in Austin this spring. The bookstore not only carries an eclectic mix of art books, comics and periodicals, but also showcases work by a variety of artists (see …might be good recommends to find out what’s coming up at Domy). On a recent visit, I saw catalogues from lora reynolds gallery on the shelves, as well as books that seemed to respond to Texas art happenings, such as Fritz Haeg’s Edible Estates recently at Arthouse and Kara Walker’s retrospective currently at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. In addition, I noticed quite a selection of books on environmental concerns and sustainable living. And finally, if you’re interested in street art, skateboards or anime, it’s my impression… ]]> Fri, 25 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/102 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/102

In the words of artist Cliff Hengst, a number of small galleries “burned briefly, yet brightly” in San Francisco’s Mission District during the 1990s. One of these galleries, Kiki, run by the late Rick Jacobsen, is receiving attention this summer in the form of a retrospective exhibition, Kiki: The Proof is in the Pudding, at Ratio 3 in San Francisco. Last week, Mary Katherine and I talked to Cliff, Scott Hewicker and Larry Rinder about the significance of Kiki within the San Francisco art scene. Although the gallery was open for only eighteen months beginning in the summer of 1993, it fostered a vibrant community of young artists and presented work by such artists as Nayland Blake, Kota Ezawa, Catherine Opie and Yoko Ono. Both Cliff and Scott showed work at Kiki and, during our conversation last week, Larry mentioned that Kiki… ]]> Fri, 27 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/101 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/101

During a short visit to Houston last week, I stopped by CAMH to see curator Toby Kamps’s exhibition, The Old, Weird America, and then popped over to DiverseWorks to visit artist Stephen Vitiello’s installation, Four Color Sound. I was hoping a visit to The Old, Weird America would provide insight into Kamps’s conceptual framework for the exhibition—an exploration of American folk aesthetics and American history in contemporary art. As Scott Webel points out in his review in this issue, the premise of the exhibition depends upon an artificial separation between “contemporary” and “folk.” What criteria, I wanted to know, does Kamps use to distinguish between “contemporary artists exploring folk” and “contemporary folk artists.” Disappointingly, after visiting the exhibition, I've come to the conclusion that Kamps has somewhat complacently accepted… ]]> Fri, 13 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/100 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/100

This, our 100th issue, celebrates ...might be good's 5-year anniversary, almost to the day. On May 28, 2003, Fluent~Collaborative sent out the first edition of …might be good: a short listing of current art events in Austin—“choice cuts,” as the editors called them. Since then, the publication has grown in scope, and now offers interviews with influential art personalities, short reviews of exhibitions and presentations of new work by artists throughout Texas and beyond. In this issue, we mark our birthday with a series of features converging around the theme of contemporary art writing.First off, …might be good talks to Richard Shiff, who holds the Effie Marie Cain Regents Chair in Art at The University of Texas at Austin, about distinctions between Shiff’s writing and scholarly work that… ]]> Fri, 30 May 2008 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/99 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/99

This issue opens with an interview with Jessie Otto Hite, who recently retired after 15 years as the Director of the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art. In the interview, she talks with ...might be good about, among other topics, the future of the Blanton and the large number of museum director job openings in institutions across the country at present. In light of our recent conversation with former Blanton Curator Gabriel Perez-Barriero in these pages, I found Hite’s comments on the Blanton’s position vis-a-vis Latin American art particularly interesting.In addition to a review of University of Texas at Austin Professor Troy Brauntuch’s recent show at his New York gallery, this issue features six brief… ]]> Fri, 16 May 2008 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/98 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/98

When I was invited to guest edit this issue of … might be good I had just wrapped up a conversation with Michelle White, wherein we talked at length about what we have termed "intellectual whimsy. " It may be suicide to even mention the term "intellectual" —an idea that is in less than reputable regard as of late. But I believe in its roots as a humble activity, driven by curiosity and open-mindedness. Ideally this issue reflects these qualities, and the wonderful things that come from it. Many thanks to …might be good for this opportunity, and to all of the participants for their time and contributions."The historian and the astronomer" — this phrase has followed me around for a number of years, and while I can’t recall its origins the phrase has a magnetism that hasn’t let me put it aside. These two vocations share many connections in my mind,… ]]> Fri, 2 May 2008 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/97 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/97

This issue opens with the second installment of a series of conversations with art critics spearheaded by our Associate Director, Caitlin Haskell. This installment, an interview with New York-based critic and art historian Katy Siegel, complements Caitlin's interview with Barry Schawbsky in Issue #95. In both conversations, Caitlin raises important questions about the role of the art critic and the state of art writing today. In addition, Caitlin recently had a chance to see How Artists Draw, organized by newly appointed Chief Curator of the Menil Collection Drawing Institute and Study Center, Bernice Rose. Caitlin’s review of the show considers the expansive vision of “drawing” that Rose presents through… ]]> Fri, 18 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/96 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/96

The buzz of lively conversation filled the air at Fluent~Collaborative this week. A fortnight ago, we picked up Sunday’s New York Times Magazine off our coffee tables and discovered "After Frida," a feature about Mari Carmen Ramirez, Curator of Latin American Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The article revived the specter of a longstanding rift between Mari Carmen and the Blanton Museum of Art. It was no news to us that Mari Carmen doesn’t speak to Gabriel Perez-Barreiro, the Blanton’s Curator of Latin American Art. But the Times made it appear as if the dispute between these curators were more personal than philosophical, quoting Mari Carmen: “He [Gabriel] had to build a position against me to establish his own position, so he has been speaking against the specificity of Latin American art.” However, personal rivalries aside, Mari Carmen’s… ]]> Fri, 4 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/95 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/95

At Art Palace, where Eric Zimmerman’s solo show Atlas is installed this month, a graphite rendering of Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International—a monument never built—hangs in the entryway. For me, Eric’s drawing of the Monument captured the self-aware and alternately optimistic and melancholy idealism of his project. In the Atlas series, Eric places himself among myriad utopian architectural movements, begging the formidable question: To what end have utopian artistic movements attempted to restructure space and express an understanding of the world through this restructuring? In  this issue,Eric and Michelle White, Assistant Curator at The… ]]> Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/94 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/94

Austin Museum of Art’s triennial 20 to Watch: New Art in Austin opened three weeks ago, showcasing a new crop of Austin-based artists. In my review of New Art in Austin in this issue, I critique the triennial’s arbitrary geographical parameters and the exhibition’s injudicious installation. While I appreciate the gesture that New Art in Austin makes to support Austin’s emerging artists, I would like AMOA to reconsider—and strengthen—its commitment to these artists. An interview with AMOA Executive Director Dana Friis-Hansen, though not specifically focused on New Art in Austin, provides an alternative view of AMOA’s role in Austin's art community. When …might be good’s editorial staff read my review… ]]> Fri, 7 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/93 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/93

After reading Andrea Guinta’s review of Jorge Macchi: The Anatomy of Melancholy, I returned to the Blanton to see the show for a third time. Macchi has said that the city of Buenos Aires is his muse; his use of the city—through maps, newspaper clippings and snapshots—make this statement literal. However, as Guinta conveys, the delicacy of Macchi's work, his sense of timing and his engagement with music—both written and performed—make his treatment of the city and the themes he finds there particularly bewitching. Another highlight of the past two weeks was a visit to Ivan Lozano’s Fantasy Vision Meditation (In Color), a multimedia video installation at MASS Gallery, which is reviewed… ]]> Fri, 22 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -5 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/92 http://www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/index.php/letterfromeditor/index/92

We at Fluent~Collaborative are delighted to re-launch … might be good, our contemporary arts e-publication based in Austin, Texas. As you’ll notice … might be good has a new look and feel; we’re deliberately offering shorter, more concise issues and pithier features for your reading pleasure.Five years ago, in 2003, Fluent~Collaborative recognized a need in Austin for communication among the film, music, performing and visual art scenes and between the university and arts organizations in Austin. In response, we created … might be good as an arts listing service to foster interaction and dialogue between these communities. Over the years, the publication grew to incorporate critical reviews, interviews and artists’ work and eventually our scope expanded to include coverage of art events farther afield than Texas.As … might be good takes off again in 2008 with… ]]> Tue, 12 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -5