Artipedia - Arts News

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)

Is Photography Really Art?
Tuesday, November 27, 2007, 7 p.m.

Panel discussion:
Charlotte Cotton, Arthur Ou, Michael Queenland, and Mark Wyse
And launch of website:
http://www.wordswithoutpictures.org

On the occasion of the November 27 launch of http://www.wordswithoutpictures.org LACMA’s Photography Department has organized Is Photography Really Art, the first in a series of events responding to key issues in contemporary photographic discourse. In this panel discussion, Charlotte Cotton, curator and head of LACMA’s Photography Department, and artists Arthur Ou, Michael Queenland, and Mark Wyse weigh in on a question that continues to confound the field of photography–”Is photography really art?” The increased interaction between photographic practices and other media, as well as the pervasive presence of photography in today’s art market, brings renewed attention to this debate. The conversation will investigate why photography’s status remains up for review and will propose new possibilities for photography in contemporary art.

Check LACMA’s website http://www.lacma.org for details of future events.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Brown Auditorium | Free, no reservations required
5905 Wilshire Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90036
Phone: 323-857-6071
Fax: 323-857-4792
http://www.lacma.org

Office for Contemporary Art Norway

Evergreen Review, Vol. 12, No 56, July, 1968
Courtesy of Evergreen Review

Whatever Happened to Sex in Scandinavia?

Screening of Vilgot Sjomans I Am Curious
(Yellow), 1967
Tuesday, November 27th at 7:00 pm

Marta Kuzma on “Whatever Happened to Sex
in Scandinavia?”
Wednesday, November 28th at 7:00 pm

Havard Nilsen on “The Troll Circle - The Social Construction of Wilhelm Reich as a Pseudoscientist”
Thursday, November 29th at 7:00 pm
[OCA, NYC]
25 Broadway
NY, NY
R.S.V.P. to jorn@oca.no
http://www.oca.no

I Am Curious (Yellow)
“Men have landed on the moon but to many, I Am Curious (Yellow) will be the event of 1969.” Such read the headlines appearing in American newspapers when the film, directed by Vilgot Sjoman, was seized by U.S. customs officials on the grounds that it was pornographic. A film about a radical student who engages in a public inquiry into the social, political and sexual questions relevant to Swedes at the time, I Am Curious (Yellow) unfolds in terms of recording devices, pads and pencils, posters, Cinéma vérité, interviews, and fiction film. According to Vincent Canby, a New York Times film critic at the time, I Am Curious (Yellow), together with Andy Warhol’s Chelsea Girls (1966), “contributed to a mini-revolution in the commercial movie underground - that twilight industry made up of producers of sexploitation films.”

“Whatever Happened to Sex in Scandinavia? ”
Marta Kuzma takes as her point of departure Sjoman’s I Am Curious (Yellow) and its censorship edict in the U.S. to explore how the ban against the film served as a door opener to the pornography industry in the United States. In doing so, “Whatever Happened to Sex in Scandinavia? ” reflects upon the international perception of Scandinavia at the time as a sexual Utopia and deconstructs the reasons behind the building of these representations with the aim of investigating their mythical status. The presentation includes excerpts from the following films: Torgny Wickman’s Language of Love (1969), Dusan Makavejev’s W.R. - Mysteries of the Organism (1971), and Bo Vibenius’ Thriller - A Cruel Picture (1974).

“The Troll Circle: The Social Construction of Wilhelm Reich as a Pseudoscientist”
Freud’s controversial pupil, Wilhelm Reich, lived in Norway from 1934 to 1939, a period when he wrote The Sexual Revolution and launched psychoanalysis as an experimental laboratory science coining the concept of the “orgone”. Remaining active politically as a Communist, Reich developed a community with other political dissidents in Norway, such as Jacob Walcher, Willy Brandt and Leon Trotsky. Taking modern science studies and the notion of the social construction of science as a starting point, Havard Nilsen revisits the first public debate related to the experiments around sexual energy conducted in Norway, in order to argue that the political aspects were far more important than the scientific issues at stake in the debate, especially the so-called Trotsky affair at the beginning of the Moscow Trials.

About the Participants
A Swedish film director and former assistant of Ingmar Bergman, Vilgot Sjoman dealt with controversial issues of social class, mortality, and sexual taboos throughout the ’60s. Perhaps best known for the much publicized I Am Curious (Yellow), 1967, Sjöman directed many films, including My Sister, My Love (1966) and the censored 491 (1964), a film based on Lars Görling’s novel dealing with issues of homosexuality and juvenile delinquency. Having studied film at UCLA in the mid ’50s, Sjöman claimed his interest in the contradictions inscribed in Hollywood production codes. Director of the Office for Contemporary Art Norway, Marta Kuzma is a critic and curator who is currently working on an expansive publication and exhibition entitled Whatever Happened to Sex in Scandinavia? scheduled to open in Oslo in winter 2008. Havard Nilsen is a historian and social scientist educated at the Universities of Oslo, Strasbourg and Cambridge. He is currently the Editor at Res Publica, a pu
blishing house and think tank based in Oslo.

[OCA, NYC]
[OCA, NYC] is an experimental platform launched by the Office for Contemporary Art Norway in Oslo to initiate projects, seminars, talks, screenings, and to host short-term residencies as an alternative and satellite space. [OCA, NYC] is physically lodged within the historical Cunard Cruise Lines building (and former Police Museum), adjacent to Battery Park and accessible via subway by the 4,5 at Bowling Green, the 1, R, W at Rector Street or the J, M, Z at Broad Street.

Milton Keynes Gallery

Pascale Marthine Tayou, Jpegafrica/Africagift, 2006
Copyright: Ela Bialowska
Courtesy Galleria Continua, San Gimignana — Beijing

Pascale Marthine Tayou:
Plastik Diagnostik
Until 13 January 2008
Milton Keynes Gallery
900 Midsummer Boulevard
Central Milton Keynes
MK9 3QA

http://www.mk-g.org

Through his installations, drawings, films and performances, Pascale Marthine Tayou (b. 1966) articulates the nomadic existence of his life, from his birth in Cameroon to travelling throughout Europe and ceaseless journeying as an artist working internationally and moving from country to country. For his first solo exhibition in the UK, Marthine Tayou will show a selection of work that questions cultural and national identity and the role of the individual. His work is directly influenced by the drama that he witnesses on the streets of the countries he travels through, and is manifest in the personal artefacts and ephemera he collects, including train and airline ticket stubs, restaurant and shop receipts and labels or wrappings for socks, razors and batteries. His insistent reuse and recycling of these objects confirms the fluidity and borderlessness of space, culture and thought, and reminds us that one’s our lives are inextricably linked with economics, migration and poli
tics.

Two major works in the exhibition, Wall Street, 2005 and Jpegafrica/Africagift, 2006 refer directly to the continent of Africa. The first is a wall-based installation of neon signs and logos of hundreds of national and multi-national companies that permeate the Cameroon landscape, from petrol suppliers to skin and haircare products. The vibrant colour and placement of neon signs is at once a monument to commerce and an indictment of the homogenisation of global culture. Jpegafrica/Africagift is made up of every flag of each African country arranged in a large pyramid pile. Each flag is imbued with the symbolism of national identity and acts as a substitute for the African citizen or collective, continually reconfigured. Within in, the Cameroonian flag acts as a self-portrait within a larger picture. Marthine Tayou does not see himself as an African artist however, but like that of his peers, his work is bound up with the cultures and communities of Africa and its identity wit
hin the rest of the world. Rather than seeing the continent as one that is consistently needy, Marthine Tayou attempts, through his work, to provide a different view of Africa, one that has a people and culture that is valuable and has the capacity to give something back to the rest of the world.

The city of Milton Keynes provides the basis of one of the works in the exhibition. In the Cube Gallery, Marthine Tayou’s observations of the city as he has travelled to and from the gallery will be reflected in Graffiti Love, large-scale images of graffiti on the walls of the pedestrian underpasses in the city centre. The work will be accompanied by ballpoint pen line drawings from the series Love Letters, 2004, which represent the artist’s biographical universe, asking questions of cultural identity, global politics and individual emotions. As a whole, the work is intended as a gift to Milton Keynes and highlights areas that Marthine Tayou has taken an interest in during his visits to the city.

As well as other works in the exhibition, including intriguing crystal sculptures, Milton Keynes Gallery will present Marthine Tayou’s imposing work Plastic Bags, 2001-7 offsite at the city’s newly-opened MK Dons Football Stadium. The work, which has been shown previously at the Venice Biennale, is made up of hundreds of plastic shopping bags, fixed to netting and suspended above the ground. The installation is particularly apt for Milton Keynes, as a regional shopping destination. Here the disposable plastic bag becomes an icon of modern consumer society, a mirror held up to the excesses of contemporary living.

Talk

The artist will discuss his practice in an exhibition tour with Jérôme Sans on Wednesday 28 November.

Catalogue

A full colour catalogue with a text by Nicholas Bourriaud and an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist will be published to accompany the exhibition.