In a few minutes I will be participating in an Urban Foraging tour in Brooklyn. The tour will be given by Ava Chin and “Wild Man” Steve brill, two well know foragers in NYC area. The event grew using The Public School (NYC)

My interest in urban foraging began while working on art project on plants and plant knowledge… Ava is here…more later!

Wild Seeds, 2005, by Yael Bartana (video still)

Just found out video artist Yael Bartana will be participating in the “Ours: Branding Democracy” exhibition at the Parsons/The New School. The Exhibition goes beyond the the gallery to include, panel discussions, presentations, charrettes with the students (open to public), and performances. I’ve read about Yael’s work and have seen some of here videos here and there. (youtube: Mary Koszmary)… Anyhow, this Sunday Oct 19th at 10a.m. Union Square, she will have students reenact her video Wild Seeds, 2005 (above still), in which itself is a reenactment of the removal of Israeli settlers in Occupied Territories. 

The exhibition has many other interesting events throughout the duration of the show.. Sam Durant will also be mock-protesting in Union Square with students… Liam Gillick produced a stage for delivering of presentations for the exhibition… etc… Ours: Democracy in the Age of Branding

p.s. Check out our calendar for more events like this and at petitemort’s Editor’s Picks

Just by chance, we decided to drop in on an event that caught my eye yesterday. It was a reading at KGB bar in the East Village arranged by the new MFA in Design Criticism at SVA. The topic was food and 3 professors from the new department read their criticism from a podium near the bar. To my surprise the Senior Curator of the Design Dept in MoMa, Paola Antonelli was there and she read her article on Pasta, Paul Lukas read about the butcher meat chart design, and Akiko Busch read about the vegetable peeler, which we missed since we arrived after her reading. Overall I thought is was a great idea that should be carried over to art criticism. I mean, wouldn’t it be so much different if the art critics would have to face a crowd and read their criticism? I would figure that it would make critics a bit more conscious of their writing given the fact that it would be presented in front of a live audience, an audience who can immediately react to their words or not.

I also happen to be watching CoolHunting the other day when again, Paola Antonelli was in one of their videos, a video discussing “Design and the Elastic Mind”, her recent curatorial project at the MoMa. I didn’t mention this earlier but I think she will also be teaching in the department, this just adds to the list of heavy weights over at SVA. By the way, the department is still accepting applicants for fall 2008. And I think that the next DCrit reading will be at the end of June , check back on their website for more info. (I almost forgot to mention, there is a big conference on Design, The Arts and The Political being held in October at SVA. More about that later)

For all those who don’t know what circuit bending is, here’s a primer:

I was pleasantly surprised to find Stuart Bailey listed as one of the artist to be included in this years Whitney Biennial 2008. I’m curious as to what he will be offering to the show. From what I gather, his work is without form, or if in a tangible sense then in book form, that is, ideas put into print.

Stuart Bailey is Dexter Sinister (the occasional bookshop) is Dot Dot Dot (the design + culture musings magazine). I’ve read a few bits here and there, specifically his “Towards a Critical Faculty” lecture notes (pictured on left), which gave me, among many other things, ideas on how to move away from an object/skills-centric course and it also gave me the impetus to modify the existing design thinking process by making it more active, despite it being discouragingly labeled overly optimistic and un-pragmatic. I also learned that he taught at the Rietveld Akademie in Amsterdam at some point, before my student days there (1995). Back then, I might have not taken his course anyhow since I was in the sculpture department which was a good hop skip and a jump away from the main “practical” arts building.

On the topic of the biennial’s selection, a few weeks ago I was talking to a friend of mine who mentioned that many artist he knows will be in this years Biennial, he and I had this I-don’t-know-why feeling that some how this year’s selection seems different: Not not so much “noise”, or at least not yet. Which is a good thing, Stuart Bailey/Dexter Sinister should fit right in.

More Dexter Sinister PDF publications can be found in the Library… enjoy.

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UPDATE 03/11/08:

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Paper Mag has this scoop:

” [...] Stuart Bailey and David Reinfurt [...] invited 25 other artists to write press releases, to be distributed at the Park Avenue Armory.”
-All In The Family by Alex Gartenfeld, PaperMag March 4, 2008

left: 50th Anniversary of the Armory Art fair, and right, it’s 75th Anniversary.

By the way, there is also an interview with the 75th anniversary event organizer Sanford L. Smith, who is also the organizer of the Art20, Modernism, The Outsider Art Fair (mentioned below), Works on Paper, and The New York Antiquarian Book Fair.

If this desperation isn’t enough to keep you out, then perhaps the cost of education will do the trick: The 2 year MFA from Columbia University is now nearing the 80K mark. ($77,624 tuition alone)

Outsider Art Fair (website)

January 25 – 27, 2008
Friday
Saturday
Sunday 11am – 8pm
11am – 8pm
11am – 7pm

The Puck Building
295 Lafayette Street, corner of Houston Street,
Soho, New York City