ArtCast

Spring brings some ART meets ACTION: Playing and sporting the borders...Gracing our backyards in the next daze
BeatBagBohemia@BirdsEye, Banz@doppeldecker and Bunting@bblacckboxx
Brace yourself Question: is it art? is it sport? or grooving to the beat? Come see the answers for yourselves:
Tonight Beats Live show BEAT BAG BOHEMIA at Birds Eye: 2 sets and Zasb features Lucas Niggli who is among the most innovative jazz musicians in breaking down borders, is touring again with his unique swiss-southafrican drum quartet, fusing various elements of Rock, Metal, Jazz and african music traditions, promissing to captivate audiences: 21 May 8:30 11:30 pm. see trailer see TV

Friday 20 May Doppeldecker invites Stefan Banz artist / curator /author of risk and often working on the borders of the possible. Rarely seen in Basel but with the promising title: Cracked Like Teeth in a Rotten Mouth” as of 6:30pm recent rumors are there will be art as "action sports", to be seen till July 1. Banz has also documented door to door encounter with a neighbor's fall-ins and outs with tolerance levels. As curator of Swiss pavilion in Venice 2005 and Jury member of the Swiss Federal Art Committee till 2007, he has written extensively and showing currently at OK Linz. 22 May bblackboxx.ch launches the new summer program: working the borders making it all too real: Sunday the as of 3pm Ensemble of Andreas Liebmann warms up at Kaserne and engages in spontaneous improvisation with dynamic sports due Heath Bunting and James Kennardof last summers Drone vs. Stone, with new excersises to be continued all summer long giving carte blanche to their extensive new-works or art media activists. Competing West Camp opens friday in Zurich, yet acknowledging a disclaimer real or lame?

21 May 8:30pm Film screening: Platz für Andere Musik Uster
8:30 The Fellowship of the Drums, a documentary by Martin Fuchs DRS The Fellowship of the Drums is a roadmovie documenting the adventurous tour of the swiss-southafrican drum quartet Beat Bag Bohemia across Europe and Africa. The audience becomes witness to the captivating dialogues between the musicians off and on stage. Their invincible lust to experiment helps to overcome the effects of all odds and fatigue during their tour and amalgamates the band
10pm Live !!! Lucas Niggli Drum Quartet BEAT BAG BOHEMIA:
makes you want to dance a Sorsonet and drumming to the beat of my Teacher BichiniBiaCongo 30 years and still dancing.
May the games commence ?

Lost and Found is this years Shift Festival theme. The 4 edition of the National Electronic Arts event opens Friday with the question: " The end of Media art funding?" as a roundtable discussion of art funding adminstrators and ends Sunday with the question "Do you believe in Users?" as title of the closing Lecture posed by artist Olia Lialina. She was part of the pioneers of a net based art beginnings, recognized in 1996 for her on-line piece "When my boyfriend came back from the War" .The, then Moscow-based author, tells her personal story, that unfolds into many frames consisting of sentences and picture, as a poetic and innovative use of frames and artistic misuse of the functions, as web browser evolved in the 1990s) The piece has since opened doors for her to teach extensively, finding new homes for some otherwise ephemeral artworks, now maintained by computerfinearts collection of Universities.

The exhibition includes Critical Art Ensemble, of early "Institutional critic" (wonder if they will show-up) and Artists talks in The Lounge by swiss artist Manuel Schmalstieg ʻLow-Rez Stories / Solaris (1972-2010)ʼ
Thursdays' opening concerts include some local talents to en- JOY Frempong aka OY and Tomek aka kold.ch, leading up to what I hear will be an exceptional program of live sets, centered around the pioneering spirit and works of Bruno Spoeri an autodidact and swiss pioneer of electronic music outside of academia.

Under the over-all theme Lost realities, rediscovered archives and reconstructed perceptions, the film program is hosted at nearby Schaulager, integrating artworks of their in-house collection.
Shift festival is groving to the beat and building on the growing site of the upcoming "Haus der elektonische Künste" where aloted public funding of over 1 million ( 10 August incase you where on vacation).
a further move to foster a planned arts cluster as a "kunstfreilager".

15 years ago, a cultural platform was initiated as a BBS: THING.NET, set in a storefront open atelier in the central old town. It was started before Internet existed, becoming the 1st ISP access point in Switzerland to host "Art and Communication". This THING was located historically, vis à vis the site where Utopia ( 1516 by Thomas Morus) was first published, thanks to the combined efforts (some 500 years ago) of the humanist scholar Erasmus and the printing skills of Froben: Pioneering the newly discovered art of printing, at a cross road.

Have we learned from the lessons? "Form follows Format" "economy of means and reduction" as defining and determining 20th century modern art , with media art morphing also into virtual space.

Next years SHIFT festival is planned to be part of OOArt Museum/Store short for "Owning Online Art" based on academic research study by experts . The site, real and virtual is planned and to be located in the same neighborhood agacant to the Art School : the anticipated " cultural cluster" is the largest development site of Switzerland, today. All encompass the master-plan.
Will the Pioneers of net based arts be there?

To build a playing field, is not childs' play, neither is deconstructing it: what to make of the debris?
Meanwhile Lost and Found also the theme of Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG offers a radio active ride in Manchester: On a rusty, soviet-style sculpture re-built.

Survival Training and dialectical Media Art by General Stumm for DigitalBrainstorming.ch text: German version Original
( see also bblackboxx Mirror No 4 Sept. 2010 as PDF )
Bunting and Kennard have spent the last two weeks in Basel doing their usual thing, just as they do back home in Bristol, among friends: practicing stone-throwing, tree-climbing, and the use of ropes. But Bunting and Kennard are not merely enthusiastic outdoorsmen. Clearly, the art of survival gives them a great deal of obvious pleasure, but they also understand and practice these techniques as a reflection on our overly-technological and media-dependent society. Theirs is no reflection in word, but rather in deed. One could say they are creating a symbolic reaction. As Bunting himself confidently asserts in a short biography on his website www.irational.org, he is the Britain's most important "practicing artist." And according to Kennard, their work is a reaction to contemporary society which "is in decline!!"
Stone-throwing, which harks back to the dawn of our civilization, is a very early form of human use of technology, Kennard said in an aside one of his Blackboxx workshops last week. These early technologies were displays of power and violence, but also of physical splendor, beauty, and drama, Kennard explains (see his video manifesto.) The highway which runs behind the Bblackboxx project space, represents a similar technology, just as violent, just as demanding of human ingenuity. But for Kennard this highway embodies a destructive form of violence.

But the artistic practices of Kennard and Bunting, their attempt to create an alternative form of violence, is meant to be more than just a nonverbal commentary. Bunting demands of himself that his art be useful. His goal, as stated in his biography, is to become "a skillful member of the public." Neither fleeing nor retreating from civilization, but rather searching for a useful life within it, while still maintaining some distance from it, is the ultimate goal. To be surrounded by society and yet to live as freely as possible!

To mediate and manage this dialectical relationship (insider/outsider; participant/rebel) Bunting employs the non plus ultra of the 21st century: a globally networked computer. Already in the mid-90s, Heath Bunting was seen as an internet artist par excellence, but by 1997, just when the internet hype reached its height, he proclaimed himself retired and pulled out of the scene. But his retreat did not imply a disengagement from the computer--after all, he founded the artists' platform www.irational.org. Rather, he wished to liberate himself from society's and fellow artists' expectations, and use communication media with the greatest possible freedom.

To transform a model airplane and a digital camera into a drone, and use what is commonly thought of as military technology for one's own purposes, as Bunting and Kennard have done in Basel (see our report) can be interpreted as doing just that. They have a talent for taking what society offers up and redesigning it to suit their purposes. If reality is a snug necktie, Bunting and Kennard are adept at loosening it in order to breathe more freely. Anyone who has ever walked past a prison (and the route to Bblackboxx leads past a Basel prison and asylum center) knows how oppressive prison walls loom, even when viewed from the outside.Bunting and Kennard's newly-fashioned, homemade drone soared above those forbidding walls and gave the participants in their Basel Bblackboxx project an unsanctioned, unexpected, unofficial view of what is usually kept hidden. This glimpse--made possible by know-how, initiative, and without any outside suport--reveals a great deal about Kennard's notion of positive violence, splendour, and freedom.

Text by General Stumm for www.DigitalBrainstorming.ch / English translation: Danielle Lapidoth / Barbara Strebel

Survival or Acts of splendor...  in the woods?
This is the question. Action-sport or Survival-training?
Heath Bunting and James Kennard spent an artist-residency at Bblackboxx.ch as a workshop to share their art practice: stone-throwing, river-crossing , using low or high-technique, also surveying the local territory with a drone border crossing. Fun and game? A group of people collect around them, divergent languages blur as the group fuses into movement and action, passing on the skills using stones, rope and climbing trees. Beaming smiles are shared as the faces emerged from the woodlands of a newly charted territory. This point in Basel is both on the border to the Asylum-seekers center, France, Germany as well as recreation-area for local leisure walkers and their dogs. Mothers with children share their first swim, testing the "wild" streams, while swings and ropes are spun for river -crossing practice. Immersed in nature, workshop or not: a day in August drenched in sunshine, shared with (the kindness of) strangers. To "commune with nature", is a classic... also question on innocence. Is the " pure force of nature", Pastoral or Violent? Is the simplest act and oldest of Human skills (literally) a-stone's-throw to violence, bringing-up questions also to the host Almut Rembges DRS2 interview.

A silent collective, shared and unspoken force emerged and morphed the original Stove vs Drone theme, leaving James to return the model-airplane back home with him, almost intact except for a minor scratch, and leaving us with summer memories of the universal language of play or first contact also with civil disobedience?
Press: includes Digital Brainstorming.ch,  SWR; DRS2; BAZ;  WOZ An der Grenze denken:Das Kunst- und Theorieprojekt «bblackboxx» in der Nähe des Basler Ausschaffungsgefängnisses Bässlergut 
bespielt den Nichtort an der Grenze zum vierten Mal – eine «Schule der Wahrnehmung» WOZ 2008

On a hot summer night.. ever feel like breaking out into song & dance? Im Fluss on the banks of the  river Rhein?  Saturday: singer Roli Frei & the Soulful Desert or  Chill am Rhy acoustics 6-8pm Mon-Wed-Fridays
Open-Air Art any one? et Voila:
29 July 6-9pm finissage Wink Witholt at  Artachment in  former Zollamt.
31 July Matthew Barney - Cremaster Cycle all-day marathon at Schaulager.ch to prepare or compare to Bristol action-sports-Artists Heath Bunting  (interview) and  Jame Kennard, keep on playing the borders August 4-14  at Bblackboxx.ch to  bring us somehwere between art, action and survival. Looking forward to  jump, learning to stone-throw and swing myself and mobile...portraits by Bunting.
 
6-7 August Celtic Road concert Augusta Raurica at Roman ruins in Augst
6-9 August Michael Taussig in Saas Fee,my radical anthropology Prof  at European Grad school evening talks are public.
7 August Ausstellungsraum.ch opens with questions on art and photography.

 August 13 discovery of  My Heart Belongs to Cecilia Winter  at  Kaserne Basel 3day / 90 artist Water fest : claimed  beyond swiss border to be the years musical surprise :"introduces us to romantic ballads, thundering guitars, whooping voices and massive bass sounds" is in Zürich Theater Spectal later.

14 August in the museum  park?  under the motto 10-10pm à 10 Beyeler opens to all day viewing
Fondation Beyeler Sommerfest , in the Museum and in the Park a program of art and music
 Program: 10am - 10pm= 10 Chf = Basquiat and Felix Gonzalez-Torres
2:30pm tour «Basquiat» in English,  5pm in French , 10am-6pm Workshops, Graffiti and Museumgames
Music: 2-3pm Trio «D‘Schiksn», Klezmermusic/ 5-8pm Salsaband Son Alarde then Live Tango Punta Tango till 10 or Just for fun hop on an  Oldtimer-Tram of Tramclub loops from Trainstation.

 Back in Basel finally again  Sheila She loves  you in Stadtkino August 19 & 21 in Kuppel; the 12th in Rock Oz Arénes, Avanche
Going  south later as the summer warms up in mid-August (after the Montreux crowds have gone) , the more bold can dare go see what the leisure class is doing in suburban Leman area with mysterious festival For noise invited Local Natives on 19 August with aka Cecilia Winter group, then 20th, goes Peaches who got lost in a big old house. to be continued... summer-time sometimes.
 

Hans Haacke ’s first solo exhibition in Italy, of German-American conceptual artist addressing political and power issues, opens 20 July, as site-specific installation inside a former church, to mark the conclusion of the of "Give and take" for the Advanced Course in Visual Arts at Fondazione Antonio Ratti, extensive high-quality guests lectureres. Haacke looks at relationship between art, power, money, and has addressed the issues of free expression and civic responsibilities in a democratic society. With his sharp statements, something has to happen in Como. (possibly a screening in a cinema near you of Videocracy?)
"Show and tell" is his Opening lecture 1 July 2010,at 7 pm in Villa Sucota, Como.
The exhibition at the Spazio Culturale Antonio Ratti, Largo Spallino 1, in Como, open to visitors until 5 September 2010,(no admission) Tuesdays to Sundays, from 4 to 8 pm. Publications documenting the activities of the CSAV and Hans Haacke’s projects will be presented in November at the end-of-course exhibition, which will be held by the Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan. I will try to get there, Como, for you, with come conversation with participant of the XVI Advanced Course in Visual Arts. Post-Art market coverage. Seems to be a consentration in the Alpine region as cauldron of thinking persons meeting or oasis of resistance ? Como or Saasfee at EGS with Michael Taussig. Move over Videocracy

Julia Calfee's“Vanishing Glaciers“ installation now  showing at Johanniterkappel  in Rheinfelden , is part of “The Last Songs of the Glaciers”: a quest to capture remnants of ice memories. The artist/explorer grasps the very same trickels, as disappearing ice forms and recording, to collected in an artistic cauldron on the Rhineriver banks. Beginning in Vals Baths by Zumtor as a  Book , followed the streams up to the ice and living in a contaner, Julia Calfee challenged the glaciers melting away. She continues a career documenting social currents and profound changes in the modern world, from via Chelsea Hotel or Mongolia to the Silk road.
The vast issue of global warming has been portrayed inVideo and Richarda Simonett won the Radio feature Prize recently. Calfee's intimate and artistic manner, single-womanly and with 100 recordings of ice and water, inspires. Preview a slideshow.
Listen and enjoy

Ireland maybe having a financial crisis but that doesn't stop it putting on a great show..Dublin Dance Festival is fast becoming one of the most exciting and innovative events on the dance calender..Seamus Hughes visits his home town and reports on the 6th Dublin Dance Festival...rediscovers Dublin past and present..
New approach by director Laurie Uprichard. Review of International diversity of contributions, from Australia to Spain, to Yvonne Rainers' re-enactment of Rites of Spring: RoS Indexical Spiraling Down.
Listen and enjoy

Wondering where the Art Party is this year? Better yet: Art is your bet! Yes it is June and time again for Artists to make Party Manuels ? to work-up-a-sweat or the latest: Bet on Kunstwette.ch is exclusively open to candidates of Swiss Art Awards. Artist MARINA BELOBROVAJA auctions herself off "Taking a critical look on the swiss art scene and the way it deals with the local art sponsorships". Adapting artistic practices in sync with real-life? Art Basel and Casino being the height of the bet-on-your-favorite-artist-tour and Basel in June the meeting-point of the Art World...Now betting meets Art-ists and goes Online or Mobile, criss-crossing the ups and downs of swiss landscape and culture. You too can put some money on and sympathise with participant of the second round. Yes Marina is up to it again. Back in 2006 at Liste/Kasko Party Manual made us "peddle to party", generating energy while revealing the gratuitous consumption needed to light up the spotlights. Shedding light on art, it works! yet somewhat painfully. So do get expert advice first from their sources. You too can bet!. and sweat with us artist: Swiss Art Awards will open June 14 Vernissage 6-9pm at Messe Hall 3 awarding 20-40 Swiss architects and artists and their vermittlung under the age of forty.
"In accordance with the practice of horse racing one can win money on the winners" of the Annual awards of Federal Office for Culture, will be announced by the federal (BAK) jury." and interviewed by the artist. Meanwhile in real-life, some made off with 100 thousands of francs, hit and run style, seemingly with little restraint and have not been heard from since.

Youthful innocence? or a playful note Karussel 2008 Kunstkredit Karussel is low tech childs play, no sweat. But if you like to compete and are 30 something between art school, CH > 40, registration opens December 2010.

You might find yourself as I, entering my home towns' Art Museum Basel Museum via it's website entrance .. Video of the vernissage to encountered Adds rolling... ( since removed! so this blog works! ) before any Art was to be seen, Artist heard, or Curators' speech? My Art Museum, Basel's 500 years heritage among the oldest public art collection, currently offers blasting "Car Ralley" or Camera Adds, with especially irritating audio that is not Sound Art, no. Meanwhile back home at... call it Artcast, it is possible to distribute efficiently since 2005Artcast or Learning as Tate offers or Artcast SFMoma does, or higher forms of "Audio Arts hosted at Tate "Bill Furlongs lifes-works as quality interviews of a 30 year spam with Artists from Acconci, B= Beecroft-Beuy to Wallinger.
Ok, Directors may say, they are unaware that the imbedded adds, that automatically play (btw to get to the Art part, you have to close repeatedly click windows more then once with sound blasting in the background from coast-to-coast USA followed by Ambient sounds of a crowded Vernissage) I am sure not intentional but we, as the artist, are trapped in this delimma and are not shown the Exit to the way out.
The current artist, Gabriel Orozco in his own voice is still at Moma, yet the exhibit still travels-well as a simple audio-slide-show; Voila a tribute: a warm encounter with the Artist, treated with respect, as is the visiting public. As a "major survey show", traveling Paris to London, Basel is proud to be an International player at a level of excellence, yet lacking Internet awareness at the level Tate offers . In a time when Artists do work on and with the Internet and collections are digitized, Public Institutions' communication skills must rise to the occasion, as public access to art on-line is here and now and to be expected.
Meanwhile museum exhibitions can be both anticipated and Art enjoyed ( Moma) as long distance visit to current Abromovic retrospective at Moma or audio an almost complete experience, almost like being there, without the Co2 emission.