at the Institute of Cultural Inquiry
Long-time ICI associate, Christel Dillbohner and friend of the ICI, Christine Nguyen, are featured in a new show titled WASHED UP: Ocean in Peril. In the wake of Hurricane Sandy and the tsunami that hit the coast of Japan in 2011, ‘the twenty artists gathered in this exhibition individually respond to the bewildering problems in the deep and on our adjoining shores.’
The exhibition is showing at El Camino College Art Gallery from February 11 – March 7, 2013.
What would Claes Oldenburg think?
Festival of (In)appropriation
Sunday, November 11, 2012 at the Egyptian Theather.
Co-curated by our current Visualist-in-Residence, Greg Cohen
Brought to our attention by Christian Smith, an ICI collaborator, 100/10 curator and photographer (see his recent portfolio of artists here) – here is Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence — in pictures.
The Museum of Innocence is both a novel and a museum by Orhan Pamuk, that were conceived together. The two exist and can be enjoyed separately but provide a platform for greater depth and understanding when enjoyed together. The novel was published in 2008, the museum opened in Istanbul, Spring 2012.
Appropriation Art results from borrowing elements of visual culture (either completely or in part) and re-contextualizing them into new works, that play on the ideas of the original. But what happens when an appropriation artwork becomes iconic enough to be appropriated in its own right?
What are we to make of it when an object of appropriation appropriates its resulting artwork? Can the re-appropriated object be considered art as well or is it merely an ironic byproduct of popular culture? Where do we draw the lines of distinction between art and product?
Shocking at first and second glance. The Las Vegas police received numerous panicked calls at 6:30a.m. on Wednesday, August 8th about a billboard located on I-15.
This billboard, reacting to the record high unemployment and suicide rates in Nevada, was slated as vandalism and promptly removed; however, questions surrounding the act remain.
What was someone trying to achieve through this act? Is it an act of vandalism or publicity? Activism or Guerilla art? Would we think of it differently if it was signed by Banksy or any other contemporary street artist?
Where do we draw the line of distinction between these categories?
→√ΔØ! Pictorial Signs (also known as pictographs or ideograms depending on their form) are meant to relay ideas beyond the barrier of language, yet ironically, their simplified messages can sometimes create cultural and linguistic ambiguities.
Some signs can be considered reactionary as in the case of signs that popped up in a Los Angeles movie theater recently. (No guns?) (Were these here before?)(Why are guns representative of all weapons?) (Was this somehow permissible beforehand?)
While others may be reflective of cultural norms, as in the case of a sign in the backseat of a Parisian taxi cab. (No baguettes?) (Is bread symbolic of all food?) (Why bread?) (Is other food OK?) (Does this mean, “no eating”?)
It is here in these ambiguities that we find the possibilities to dive deeper into the cultures that surround them. Signs may be meant to instruct, warn, or inform us but sometimes they only lead to more questions…
Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, a film by Alison Klayman is now playing in theaters.
Like some of the most profound wisdom, “The Mystery Spot” manifested itself on the rear end of a car.
According to Sandlot Science, Mystery Spots are the product of the great depression, when the entertainment industry was trying to market strange phenomena. Operating on optical illusions that are “driven by spatial distortion and misdirection,” half the fun of Mystery Spots seems to derive from the buying and selling (if only half-so) of the varied phenomenological explanations for these charmed locations. Oh, and of course, there’s the bumper sticker.
Like bumper stickers that keep you guessing, the allure of the ‘Mystery Spot’ is its low-culture charm, and despite knowing the truth or not, everyone shares the same delusory experience.
Ghost Bikes are small and somber memorials for bicyclists who are killed on the street. The memorial consists of a bicycle which is painted all white and locked to a street sign near the crash site, accompanied by a small plaque. The bike serves as a reminder of the tragedy that took place on an otherwise anonymous street corner, and as a quiet statement in support of cyclists’ right to safe travel. The first ghost bikes were created in St. Louis, Missouri in 2003. According to the ghostbike website, there are over 500 ghost bikes that have since appeared in over 180 locations throughout the world.
Ghost bikes are a common sight in New York City. They are hard to miss; their white surface stands out against the grey dust of that urban center. Recently, a ghost bike appeared on the Pacific Coast Highway near the California Incline in Santa Monica. Set against the sparkling sea and leaning against a light pole on one of the clean, wide sidewalks Los Angeles is known for, the quiet monument disappears into the visual field of a Southern California summer…
…but hopefully not its poignant message.