August 29, 2015: Go to Istanbul to hear singing from below the diaphragm

For one of the deepest and most profound "musical" experiences I dare you to have, station yourself on a park bench about sunset on some evening in the Old City of Istanbul midway between Santa Sofia and the Sultan Ahmet (so-called Blue) Mosque and listen, with goose bumps on your goose bumps, as the competing muezzins from each mosque belt out their respective evening calls to the faithful to pray. These guys have a dynamic volume and a range over about three and a half octaves (or so it seems as one sits transfixed) that is unmatched at the Met or likely any Christian choir.  One of them calls and then the other answers, and the dialogue must go on like a roller coaster ride for ten minutes.  Think LeBron James dribbling and backing into the basket against Karl Malone.

I'm not a big supporter of Islam, but we could use a few calls to regard the Almighty in this society like the vocal arabesques of these Turk muezzins.

August 26, 2015: Today's sculpture has nowhere to go. They might as well try this:

I mean, gee whiz, another detour back to the1960's and Merleau-Ponty?

A new exhibition and write-up from our good friend, Frederike Nymphius, Berlin-based gallerist and curator:

NOTES ON SCULPTURE A plea for deceleration

A sketch for Krobath l Vienna

by Friederike Nymphius, Berlin 2015 for “curated by_vienna”, 10.9. - 17.10. 2015

Martin Boyce, Martin Creed, Dominik Lang, Monika Sosnowska, Katja Strunz, Tatiana Trouvé

In his essay “Notes on Sculpture” (1966) Robert Morris pointedly refer- red to the significance of autonomy and form in the context of contemporary sculpture. The artist advocated sculpture that turns the form its- elf into its theme, eliminating any painterly elements such as colours.

In addition, Morris also closely examined the circumstances of perception, referring to a publication by the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty entitled “Phenomenology of Perception”, which became a key text for the minimalists of that time. According to Merleau-Ponty, reality is not absolute but rather depends on the various and sometimes even random factors of perception, which cause constant changes to or different manifestations of reality. The ideas developed by Robert Morris are still relevant and highly topical for today’s younger generation of artists. The focus, however, has shifted from the object to the subject, from perception of the form to perception of individuals in society. These young sculptors counter the volatility and flurry of modern life with the marked physical presence of their sculptures. 

The works of Martin Boyce, Martin Creed, Dominik Lang, Monika Sosnowska, Katja Strunz and Tatiana Trouvé are deeply rooted in the pre- sent. The radical style and the bulky materiality of their works eliminates all traces of playfulness and creates situations that can only be described as physical and psychological confrontation or total refusal.

Their works thus deliberately evade quick consumption and the superfici- al utilisation mechanisms of the progressively commercialised art market. Their sophisticated response to our increasingly fast-paced industrial society is to decelerate and explore the “conditio humana”. The act of decelerating thus becomes key to finding the adequate pace for humans to en- gage with themselves and their permanently accelerating environment.

curated by_vienna: TOMORROW TODAY
11 September – 17 October 2015

August 11, 2015: Today presents solid and rare grounds for optimism.

            First, we have the news of the acquisition by Berkshire Hathaway of Precision Castparts for $37.2bn including its debt — possibly the largest deal in Berkshire’s history.  According to the Financial Times, Precision “is an unflashy business run by an unflashy management, with a dominant position in industry sectors that are not going away any time soon — short-term wobbles among its energy customers notwithstanding.”  The key, however, is the FT”s headline this morning, describing Warren Buffett’s “elephant deal” as a “$37bn bet on US manufacturing.”

            May we all shout hallelujah.

            Then we have a fascinating article today by Simon Bisson in “500 words into the future” regarding the reorganization of Google announced yesterday.  Bisson calls the new entity, Alphabet, the “singularity” company and asks “Could Google's surprise reorganization be the biggest bet of all: a bet on the future?”

            Bisson continues:

"If you look back at my recent list of futurist SF, you'll find one of my favourite novels. Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End is a fascinating story of a near future San Diego on the verge of a phase change in both technology and what it means to be human. It's a tale of a man relearning his world as he recovers skills and memory after a receiving an experimental Alzheimer's cure, going back to school to learn to use the technologies that infuse tomorrow's world.

"Vinge's tomorrow is a fascinating place, one infused with ubiquitous and ambient computing technologies, where wearable devices have changed the way we work and play, and where autonomous and robotic devices are reshaping our homes and cities. It's also a tomorrow that Vinge puts a decade or so away.

"Perhaps best known for his original paper on the concept of the technological singularity (the point where the future is made unpredictable by advanced technologies), Vinge has been the inspiration for many modern technologists. So it perhaps wasn't surprising to read that Google was restructuring as Alphabet, making, as Larry Page notes in his blog post, an "alpha-bet" on transformational technologies -- the very same technologies around which Vinge structures Rainbows End."

            It never occurred to me to hyphenate “alphabet.”  Once again, may we all shout hallelujah.

August 6, 2015: What an art school in Sweden is up to

Easy to comprehend.  Please don't pretend you don't get this on first reading:

Pedagogies of Space: Oskar Hansen and Open Form 12–23 August 2015 Opening: 11 August 2015, 17:30–20:00 With an exhibition opening on 11 August, Index launches a six-month project dedicated to the pedagogy of Open Form, created by Oskar Hansen (1922-2005). Hansen was a Polish visionary architect, artist and urban theorist. Informed by theoretical concepts deriving from architecture, Hansen’s teaching enriched art education with issues of processuality and interaction. His work became an important reference point for visual artists who treated their practice as a form of social experimentation. The exhibition will present original materials by the architect and his collaborators, including some of his didactical apparatuses — devices used to teach basic rules of composition and to exercise perception — and film documentation of “open-air exercises” developed in the 1970s. In the next months, the project will be further developed with student groups from the Royal Institute of Art / KKH and Konstfack and within Index’ pedagogical program. The project will culminate in an international conference in November 2015. The project is co-curated with Aleksandra Kędziorek. With kind support by the Polish Institute in Stockholm, the Polish Presidency in the Council of Baltic Sea States, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. Index The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation Kungsbro Strand 19, 112 26 Stockholm, Sweden T. +46 8 502 198 38 www.indexfoundation.se