To be con-temporary does not necessarily mean to be present, to be here-and-now; it means to be ‘with time’ rather than ‘in time’… To be con-temporary … can thus be understood as being a comrade of time.[^1] — Boris Groys In his 1925 essay ‘Everyday Life and the Culture of the Thing (Towards a Formulation […]
The ornate floral display of Drakaea confluens; the hammer orchid mimics the appearance of the female Thynnid wasp in an evocative display. When the male wasp observes this sensuous flower it tries to mate with the orchid and so transfers its pollen. With this intimate inter-species encounter the wasp and the orchid become entangled in […]
In history as in nature, decay is the laboratory of life. — Karl Marx 124,908 took place in the city of Rustavi, Georgia, as part of the 2nd Tbilisi Triennial: ‘Self-Organised Systems’. The title of the show expanded the threads of Lucy R Lippard’s ‘numbers shows’. Curator Tara McDowell and host, Galaqtion Eristavi (of Georgian […]
One year earlier, in 1925, the Russian socialist theorist and art critic Boris Arvatov wrote that by discovering the underlying ‘relations between people and things, knowing [their] socio-historical substratum’, we could direct the developmental tendencies of material culture.[^2] The Present utilises the Past. The Past shifts the Present. Touches the Future (Card 6): Arvatov wanted […]
[^1] There was a sense of urgency to communicate with the objects before our time was up. I had to let them know we are still out here, waiting for them, remembering them; that they weren’t forgotten. — Julie Gough, Trawlwoolway artist, 2015.[^2] The title of Soviet writer Sergei Tretyakov’s 1929 essay ‘The Biography of […]
The deep clap of bronze against bronze reverberates over a stretch of space. Areas can be observed to stir, inhabitants rustled by the tongue’s shudder cast through the air. Even if this movement is not perceived aurally, it registers as an attunement of bodies. The narrator makes a low, thick noise — indecipherable. Morning time. […]
Only he can see the whole, he says, because he can see there is no whole — Lázló Krasznahorkai, The Melancholy of Resistance.[^1] Moss is hard to draw. I’m sitting in the garden of a small temple on the outskirts of Kyoto. In front of me is a thick carpet of moss, only occasionally pierced […]
Imagine yourself strolling into a gallery. You pause at the entry to read the introductory wall text but find yourself struggling to see much over the shoulders of other patrons. Rather than stand on tiptoes, you use your phone to scan the QR code pasted on the wall. You are instantly taken to a page […]
It’s early October and I’ve come to Bétonsalon Centre for Art and Research for the opening of Co-Workers: Beyond Disaster. Three months since arriving in Paris, disaster is already decidedly in the air. The United Nations COP21 climate change talks (expected by most to be its own car crash of performative political inaction) are not […]
What is immediately striking about Boris Arvatov’s co-worker theory lies in a social reconfiguration of the relationship to the object; rather than urging a slowing or cessation of commercial production, Arvatov advocates for relationships with the material that are meaningful and productive. Where Arvatov sees the saturation of ‘thing’ as a ground for contemplation and […]
We don’t create our song and dance like the way a rock ’n’ roll muso creates theirs. Our song and dance are given to us in two ways. They come from family, like an inheritance we become custodians for. And they come fresh in our dreams from spirits and Country. You know when you wake […]
A thin veneer of immediate reality is spread over natural and artificial matter, and whoever wishes to remain in the now, with the now, on the now, should please not break its tension film. Otherwise the inexperienced miracle-worker will find himself no longer walking on water but descending upright among staring fish. — Vladimir Nabokov, […]
Kirsten Pieroth’s boiled and bottled copies of The New York Times, in her Conservation Piece (2010) in The Biography of Things, embody this material and relational perspective. The viewer is presented with a deconstructed language through physical reorganisation of the newspaper. Laid out like a school science experiment, the social and symbolic power of The […]
^7 He concludes by asking: Might archival art emerge out of a similar sense of a failure in cultural memory, of a default in productive traditions? For why else connect so feverishly if things did not appear so frightfully disconnected in the first place?[^8] As part of his research, Peoples has explored the ontology of […]
Choreographer Anouk van Dijk investigates the possibilities afforded by the blind spot in a piece titled Depth of Field, presented by Chunky Move, which took place in the ACCA forecourt over a series of evenings in March, 2015.[^9] Ostensibly, the performance consists of Chunky Move dancers James Vu Anh Pham, Tara Jade Samaya and Niharika […]
5. I dug for two months. When it rained I had to bail the water out with an old bowl. … 9. I walked all the bricks home that I could find. Mostly carrying them in my jacket in front of me. … 23. I called SSL on the Northshore line. I ordered pool plaster. […]
acontented slave Can name six beaches where deeper riots started and haven’t finished his moral necessity synthetic polymer surfboards with a human debt when does a man cease to be a man standing up in the water the foam over print standing, making contact contact meaning death Wutan #2 mother on the other side of […]
Before a wall of mirrors, five performers dance for their reflections. The room heaves with bodies and music pumps through the crowd like a pulse. The audience beyond the mirrors can’t see the performers, only screens transmitting a live-feed of the performance just out of sight. They cheer anyway. Sydney-based performance artist Bhenji-Ra’s practice foregrounds […]
The conversation that follows is woven together from a series of emails and Skypes between Ariel Goldberg and myself. Goldberg’s first book of poetry The Photographer was recently published by Roof Books, New York. They are also curate Friday Nights at the Poetry Project in New York City. Our discussion centres on the forthcoming publication […]
In Aotearoa New Zealand ‘Pacific art’ as a descriptor is taken for granted. As a curator—New Zealand–born with Sāmoan and English heritage—the question of labelling frequently comes up for me. In addition to being described as a ‘Pacific art curator’, I’m also placed in positions where I too need to contextualise and situate artists’ practices, […]