Rashid Johnson in Conversation with Oliver Kielmayer
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ARTPULSEARTPULSE NO. 22 | VOL. 6 | 2015 WWW.ARTPULSEMAGAZINE.COM Theodor Adorno, Art Criticism and the Digital Commons Liz Deschenes Lily Cox-Richard Taylor Davis Rosa Barba’s Metaphors Julie Heffernan Marni Kotak: Performing Motherhood Dialogues: Franklin Sirmans Rashid Johnson in Conversation with Oliver Kielmayer 1 2 ARTPULSE l www.artpulsemagazine.com 1 4213 PONCE DE LEON BLVD. CORAL GABLES, FLORIDA 33146 | 305.446.5578 LORENZA PANERO www.americascollection.com Ribera Luminosa Series, luminograph on tempered glass, 471/4 x 271/2 inches each 2 ARTPULSE l www.artpulsemagazine.comMirror I, II, luminograph on paper in plexiglass 583/4 x 493/4 inches AMERICAS COLLECTION AD FEB 2015.indd 1 2/11/2015 1:13:08 PM 3 4 ARTPULSE l www.artpulsemagazine.com JOSEPH SMOLINSKI MIXED GREENS March 26 – April 25, 2015 MARK MULRONEY April 30 – June 6, 2015 GROUP SHOW CURATED BY LAUREN ROSS Curator of VCU’s Institute for Contemporary Art June 11 – July 17, 2015 Image Courtesy of Mark Mulroney >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> MIXED GREENS >>> 531 W 26TH ST, 1ST FL, NEW YORK, NY, 10001 >>> TEL: 212 331 8888 >>>>>> WWW.MIXEDGREENS.COM >>5 6 ARTPULSE l www.artpulsemagazine.com 7 8 ARTPULSE l www.artpulsemagazine.com 9 10 ARTPULSE l www.artpulsemagazine.com 11 12 ARTPULSE l www.artpulsemagazine.com 13 14 ARTPULSE l www.artpulsemagazine.com 15 16 ARTPULSE l www.artpulsemagazine.com 17 18 ARTPULSE l www.artpulsemagazine.com 19 The Postmodern Trajectory ARTPULSE In 1981, Jean Baudrillard started a conversation that we continue in this issue in dia- EDITOR IN CHIEF logical fashion. While so many postmodern theorists pointed to nuclear plumes as the Raisa Clavijo beginning and end of postmodern humanity, Baudrillard conversely saw the apoca- SENIOR EDITOR lypse beginning and ending as humanity imploding into simulacra. Even before the Stephen Knudsen World Wide Web, before social media, before The Matrix, Baudrillard saw it clearly: CONSULTING EDITORS the replacement of all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, maps and models, John Valentine Owen Duffy where human experience degrades into mere simulation of reality. Scott Thorp Precisely on point, Marni Kotak brings urgency to the “real” by giving birth in a CONTRIBUTING EDITORS gallery in 2011. In E.L. Putnam’s interview, Kotak says, “We are living in a contem- Paco Barragán Michael R. Smith, Jr. porary time that is dominated by an anti-life equation, which ties directly into the Michele Robecchi Kristina Olson Dennis Redmond Vanessa Platacis fetishization of the simulacra. The public’s reaction to The Birth of Baby X for me Oliver Kielmayer EL Putnam highlighted how taboos against birth are essentially driven by a fear of reality, the Scott Budzynski body, what we can touch and feel—actual human experience. This is built into con- CONTRIBUTING WRITERS temporary medicalized birthing practices, where women are ultimately alienated from Megan Abrahams Sarah Lehat their own embodied experience, hooked up to machines and numbed with epidurals.” Othiana Roffiel Mary Coyne Taliesin Thomas Irina Leyva-Pérez Dennis Redmond’s essay ironically places the video game, a Baudrillardian bane, in a positive Craig Drennen Richard Speer light. Redmond argues that the digital commons has leveled the playing field for artistic produc- Owen Duffy Daniel Bonnell Laura Burton Keren Goldberg tion, fostering fan labor in production of video games. To create is real, to be seen is real, and Emilia Quiñones-Otal Gretel Acosta the 21st-century digital constellation engenders promise for everyone connected. Keren Moscovitch Bo Bottomley Paul Laster If we are speeding off on a Baudrillardian path, it prompts the question, “What exactly does the future consist of?” This question is explored in Rosa Barba’s film installations. Scott LEGAL CONTRIBUTOR Octavio Robles Budzynski interviews Barba and Michele Robecchi contributes an essay about her work. Barba’s Subconscious Society shows us indeterminate figures in cavernous abandoned halls with languid EDITORIAL ASSISTANT cutaways to boarded-up theme parks and post-industrial detritus. In a manner unintelligible to Diana Lee us, projects are being planned. Relics and human traces also extend into the gallery space as old COPY EDITOR Gregg Lasky speakers, and vinegary 35-millimeter projectors perform in an orbit around the screen. Is this Jim Janson simulacra’s last breath before the electricity goes out? Kristina Olson’s interview of Lily Cox- Richard unpacks The Stand (Possessing Powers). These carved plaster sculptures re-create the TRANSLATORS Diana Scholtz Israel bases/props but exclude the nude figures in the works of Neoclassical sculptor Hiram Powers to reveal 19th-century assumptions on gender, race and class. Here Cox-Richard makes postmodern CONSULTING ART DIRECTOR Eddy López mischief out of Baudrillardian “first order” pre-modern simulacra. On the topic of “second order” simulacra, Liz Deschenes shows us work that is safe GRAPHIC DESIGNEr Hugo Kerckhoffs from the “second order” breakdown of the original that mass reproduction brings. Her photograms are not fixed. The works change over time, making still-reproduction of PHOTO EDITOR their primary essence impossible. Michael R. Smith, Jr., evaluates this work in his essay Gady Alroy “Between Representation and Abstraction.” PHOTOGRAPHY Then Michele Robecchi reports on recent deliberations on simulacra in a Belgian court, where Mariano Costa-Peuser - Charles A. Shaw Luc Tuymans lost a case in which his appropriation of a photograph was judged to be plagiarism. ADVERTISING ASSOCIATES In the Baudrillardian “third order” simulacra, that associated with postmodernity, there is no Carl Sutton Amy Beaumont longer any difference between reality and its representation; there is only the full-blown simula- crum, the hyper real. In Paco Barragán’s essay “A Voyeur’s Tale,” we encounter Yan Duyvendak’s ADVERTISING [email protected] performance My Name is Neo (for fifteen minutes). The artist is dressed as the protagonist, Neo, from The Matrix. Duyvendak mimics Neo’s moves as part of the film is played on a television DIRECTOR José López-Niggemann monitor. This performance takes us into a Baudrillardian wormhole: a Hollywood tale of “third order” simulacra is an object of indulgent reproduction. ARTPULSE is published four times per year To veer away from Baudrillard, perhaps humanities’ machine-driven rush toward the inhuman SUBSCRIPTIONS ARE: will be put in check by our own good conscious and growth aided by our technological prowess. $30 USA / $50 Mexico & Canada / $60 International Consider, for example, advances in Post-feminism (see my interview with painter Julie Heffernan) EDITORIAL INQUIRIES and in the Post-black movement (see Oliver Kielmayer’s interview with Rashid Johnson). Also [email protected] contributing to the sociopolitical discussion, Paco Barragán interviews department head curator GENERAL INQUIRIES of contemporary art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Franklin Sirmans. [email protected] One can also wish for the real and hyperreal to commingle to good ends. Taylor Davis flirts SUBSCRIBE ONLINE with such sentiments in forests of real wood veneer tubes covered in text. Grain and text exist in www.artpulsemagazine.com “shared status as living history,” as Vanessa Platacis says in an interview with Davis. PUBLISHER But then if Baudrillard is right, the hyperreal swallows all. So even if our evolving collective ARTPULSE LLC conscience is not enough to save us, then we may have to look to Lyotard’s silver lining in his text P.O. Box 960008 Miami, Fl. 33296 1-786-274-3236 The Inhuman. Perhaps it is a good thing to give our thoughts over to our machines. What else is going to make sure that human thought is carried to gentler cosmic climes when the sun burns up ARTPULSE LLC, is not responsible for and does not neces- sarily share the opinions expressed by its contributors, nor our solar system in another five billion years? does it assume any responsibility for unsolicited materials or Stephen Knudsen contents of advertisements. No portion of ARTPULSE may be used or reproduced in any form without the express writ- Senior Editor ten permission of the publisher. All rights reserved. 20 ARTPULSE l www.artpulsemagazine.com CONTRIBUTORS Stephen Knudsen is the senior editor of Paco Barragán is an independent curator and ARTPULSE. He is an artist and profes- arts writer based in Madrid. He recently cu- sor of painting at the Savannah College rated “Erwin Olaf: The Empire of Illusion” of Art and Design and a contributing (MAC, Santiago de Chile, 2014) and “En- writer to The Huffington Post, Hyperal- rique Marty: Group Therapy, Act of Faith, lergic and other publications. He is an Dark Room” (DA2 Salamanca, Spain, 2014). active visiting lecturer at universities and He is also a Ph.D. candidate in advanced stud- museums, and his forthcoming anthology ies in art history at the Universidad de Sala- is titled The ART of Critique/Re-imag- manca, Spain. Barragán is co-editor of When ining Professional Art Criticism and the a Painting Moves...Something Must be Rot- Art School Critique. ten! (2011) and author of The Art Fair Age (2008), both published by CHARTA. Michele Robecchi is a writer and cura- EL Putnam is a part-time lecturer at the tor based in London. A former managing Dublin Institute of Technology in the School editor of Flash Art (2001-2004) and senior of Art, Design and Printing in Dublin. Her editor at Contemporary Magazine (2005- writing and research centers on continental 2007), he is currently a visiting lecturer at aesthetic philosophy, performance studies, Christie’s Education and an editor at Phaid- digital studies, feminist theory and examin- on Press, where he has edited monographs ing the influence of neoliberalism on artistic about Marina Abramović, Francis Alÿs, production. She is also a visual artist affiliat- Jorge Pardo, Stephen Shore and Ai Weiwei. ed with the Mobius Artists Group in Boston. Dennis Redmond is a lecturer of communica- Michael Smith is a post-doctoral fellow at tions at Miami Dade College.