Holed Up mirrors the vain attempts by high street banks to plug gaps left in their buidings by the ad hoc removal of redundant ATMs. Jonathan Swain uses current art world trends to highlight evidence of contemporary urban decay and commercial deception. The exhibition at The Grey Area in Brighton, was accompanied by a series of discussions and tours of cash machines throughout the city.
With over twenty performers and music by Guapo, Tai Shani’s fantastical and dreamlike installation, Tetragrammatton's Home in the Abyss: Reduced to 6, is a Busby Berkeley-style extravaganza exploring the glitches and folds of the universe’s multiple realities.
www.taishani.com
21st December 2008
7.30pm - 10pm
6 Burlington Gardens
Royal Academy Of Arts
London
W1S 3EX
BEYOND THE HORIZON : Installation, social events, and performance by Spartacus Chetwynd (Helmut Newton Ladies Nights), Bob & Roberta Smith with Le Suisse Marocain and Leonardo Ulian (kiosk & piano bar), Mark Titchner (artist residency acid test), Gail Pickering (convention centre), Tai Shani (tableau performance feat. Guapo), Reza Aramesh (street occupation), Alexander Hidalgo (fashion/music event), Lindsay Seers (cinema performance), Pil and Galia Kollectiv (banquet), Anthony Gross (LED eyes), Luke Oxley (shop), Adam Nankervis (performance), Paul O’Neill (General Idea films and DJ set), David Burrows and Kit Poulson (contacting angels), David Blamey and Craig Richards (sound).
LAST DRINK FOR 1000 MILES: Live music by the Apathy Band, the Readers, the No No Band, Victor Mount, ‘Sawing off the Branch I’m Sitting on’: Selection by John Millar with Ruby Pester & Nadia Rossi, Hysteria On Film (films by Carol Morley and Richard Squires), Cara Ball Tolmie, Omnivore Demon, Let Me Feel Your Finger First, Ming Ming and the Ching Chings and Colin Miller & David James Grinly. Mark Pearson, Jason Underhill (karaoke), Evel Gazebo play Hawkwind's 'Space Ritual’. Young UK fashion show, Poker All Stars, Bistrotheque Monday Cabaret with Bourgeois & Maurice and Jonny Woo, and more...
About GSK Contemporary
31 October 2008 – 19 January 2009
This year marks the beginning of a season of contemporary art at 6 Burlington Gardens. GSK Contemporary features more than 20 art exhibitions, 40 live events and 100 film screenings.
The season sees East End restaurant Bistrotheque set up as FLASH, a temporary restaurant designed especially for GSK Contemporary. There is also a cafe and late-night art bar in an installation by temporarycontemporary.
The programme is divided into two main parts; Part 1, Molten States, explores the links between art, performance and experimental theatre. Part 2, Collision Course, reveals an apocalyptic vision, including a tribute to the artistic legacy of William Burroughs.
Also launching during the season is Event Horizon, a programme of new commissions by major London-based artists.
Event Horizon
31 Oct 2008 — 19 Jan 2009
6 Burlington Gardens
Royal Academy Of Arts
London
W1S 3EX
The ear is an open vein. Knowledge is a drug.To start the story now when batteries are so low. As the Winter closes in and the books come out.
Every horizon is obsolete.
This story would not be easier to tell if I hadn't already tampered with the text. Like a lover I worked with the words until their meaning was mined and gushed it's lubricant into fecundity. The dirt on the disk has consumed passion. Time seals the tombs of Pharoahs. The crimes of the future are taught in the past. Love is a corpse wrapped in transparent plastic.
So now you know nothing of the story that hides behind this fog in an ocean on translucent words..
So now you read the letters c-o-m-e with cruel indifference and who knows what special effects raise the machine from the dead.
So know you now both coda and tail?
Words are mnemonic equations that derail the senses as they track a world that disappears before them. In books words convey cultural traffic across invisible borders. Words are signs that lead us astray.
www.bookworks.org.uk
At the same time Punishment could also refer to Orimoto's private situation, especially to the lack of recognition his works has received in his own country, about which Tatsumi often complains. It is not new that the artist makes from his private issues a public matter. This is most evident in his project Art Mama, through which Tatsumi publicly documents the physical and mental decline of his mother, Odei, who has the Alzeimer disease and whom he takes care of since 1996. Through the bread that stays on the floor in Punishment we are witnesses from another decadence as well: the one from a wasted communication.
Tatsumi Orimoto (Kawasaki, 1946) studied at the Institute of Art, California. In 1971 he moved to New York, where he assisted Nam June Paik and was introduced to Fluxus. He returned to Kawasaki in 1977, where he currently lives and works, and takes care of his mother. His performance Breadman was shown in several countries in public as well as institutional contexts, such as the Biennales of Sydney, Sao Pablo and Venice.
A panel Discussion was held on 2nd November at the Goethe Institut Berlin The dilemma of collecting art in times of dematerialization Organized by Galerie DNA and Valeria Schwarz.
Speakers: David Elliot, artistic director of the Sydney Biennial 2010, Jan Hoet, director of MARTa Herford museum in Herford, Fumio Nanjo, director of Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Berta Sichel director of audiovisuals at Museo Nacional de Arte Reina Sophia in Madrid, Mark Waugh exective director of the A Foundation in London and Liverpool. The panel was chaired by Mark Gisbourne, who is based in Berlin and is part of the editorial board at ART.ES.
So rushed was this operation before the Biennial party that some of the walls were still wet with fresh paint. Walking around for the first time, I felt like this was no mans land, like I didn't belong there. I experienced that feeling you get when walking somewhere you know you shouldn't be, trying to find something you know you shouldn't be looking for.
On Friday 19th September 2008, a huge party overtook an industrial area near central Liverpool. Within the masses of people wanting their free drinks and overpriced Paella were three exhibitions. Yet one of these, by the ego free ‘Artists Anonymous' had been removed. Over two weeks of intensive installation, a team of assistants helped the Berlin based art collective build a huge warren of rooms within The Furnace space of the A Foundation. Each room was decorated, and in the end resembled some sort of dilapidated yet hip house putting on an art exhibitionfor themselves.
Of course, were this to be the end, that would be fine, people may walk round with intrigue or excitement, but no. Rather than be rational, Artists Anonymous decided on Thursday that the work wasn't right and they were to remove everything. All objectsfrom the rooms were taken out, all patterns stripped from the walls before they were painted white.
In each room was a small photograph on the wall showing what the space had looked like only hours before. Why would they be showing us what the space looked like, could they not have saved some time and effort for us to see the real thing? The aftermath, something that only works in the most remarkable of situations, is prevalent here. With the aftermath as the art rather than as remnants of the art, nobody misses out, everybody is allowed to visit the space and stumble across rooms, write their name in the wet paint on the walls (or complain about the wet paint that has unwittingly covered their clothes).
The piece felt politically charged too - thinking about the lines of refugees carrying trailers full of all their belongings. I imagine a ghost town of stark, empty houses, and with signs of living removed, memories and history within that town will fade as the photos do.
This is art as an event and as spectacle, an odd attraction that bewilders people as much as it arouses them. Will the work still feel as fresh in one month, or even one weeks time, when the paint has dried and the smell of alcohol and sweat has left? I can't be sure, but seeing it on day one allows it to stand out in a fantastic year for the Biennial.
www.a-n.co.uk
We definitely enjoyed the range of feelings, experiences and connections. The talks worked well in the mix, not repeating or trying to explain away the magic of the performances, but bringing in more understanding around the 'periphery' and a chance to distance from the immediacy of the live work, enough for alternative reflections. Cosey and Andrew's talk was a good example of a related aspect, as they talked not just about their work and the theoretical background of it, but also the everyday life around / intermingled with the work. There were all sorts of questions about the boundaries of art, and the art of boundaries, or lack of.
Only a few thought then…
So once again, thanks it was a pleasure for us both to work with you, and everyone at A Foundation. For myself, Nadege, in particular to give me the possibility to engage on a curatorial level , it has certainly stimulated and open my understanding and enthusiasm about (Live) art events.
And for me, Orion, it was of course a very rich experience to have my own work put into parallel or counter-position with such a divergent range of related artistic approaches in such a carefully considered context."
Saturday 15 November - Sunday 15 December 2008
In association with MEASURE
The Permanent Gallery
20 Bedford Place
Brighton BN1 2PT
T. 07919 184417
www.permanentgallery.com
The Regency Town House
Brunswick Square
Brighton
This two site exhibition features three film-works by Ben Rivers projected within self-built huts made of reclaimed wood.
Within each hut is screened a unique film, two of which portray the lives of individuals who have made the isolated pockets of Northern Europe their home. Living self-sufficiently off the land, the subjects of the films are independently evolving a way of life that quietly, but resolutely, refuses to submit to the demands of conventional living. The third, shown at Permanent Gallery, was made of a film-set in Hamoroy, Norway.
The title of the exhibition refers to the name of a book by Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun. Hamsun held a deep mistrust for civilisation and believed a life’s fulfillment was only to be found through the soil. ‘On Overgrown Paths’ came about as a final defense following Hamsun’s condemnation by fellow Norwegians for sympathising with the Romantic ‘Volk’ elements of the Third Reich. Hamsun embodies the principles that the characters within these films adhere to, whilst his life-story demonstrates the political misappropriation that the return to nature has suffered.
Mimicking the cluttered liberty these recluses seek, Ben’s camera moves with a sensitive and inquisitive abandon. Using experimental processing techniques and utilising the fragmenting effect of the 30sec longest continuous shot of a wind-up Bolex, the films emphasise the incomplete nature of the cinematic portrait, while preserving a sense of the private. What emerges is a richly textured and intimate ode to the patterns of the lives portrayed.
What name would you like to be known as in this interview? The image is from an archive of untitled self-portraits from the late 80’s early 90’s. A small collection of them are being reproduced on DVD. I have undergone too many transformations to remember since and have used so many pseudonyms, from Maxx Shurley to Anoushka Arya and currently Johnny Shekontai. But here, now, today, it’s George Chakravarthi. 
Challenging the idea that rationality and enchantment are incommensurable. Made Up weekend invokes the spectres that haunt not only the artistic imagination. A vision of the world familiar yet often disturbed by occultural visions, scientific anomalies, magic or sublime irrationality. Unbound by critical orthodoxies, Made Up's aporia will entertain many and exasperate some, no doubt encouraged by the multitude of explanations resonating with the city itself.
Performances included the UK premiere of Love Club, by acclaimed European artists God’s Entertainment and a rare opportunity to hear the Theremin, one of the earliest electronic musical instruments, played live by Dorit Chrysler.
A Foundation’s executive director Mark Waugh said: “The Made Up weekend goes behind the vernacular phrase to explore why we make things up and how artists use the imagination as a tool to communicate the way they see the world."
“It will be a stimulating weekend remixing science, critical debate and conversation, performance art, film making, music and pyrotechnics.
Guests include Richard Wilson, whose Turning the Place over has captured the imagination of Liverpool and other artists, including Gods Entertainment from Vienna, Mingering Mike and Tai Shani."
The programme of events ran from 12 noon until 10.30pm, where artist Tai Shani performed the work Parallax Sci-Fi Hypnosis – CCTV to parallel universes, hypnosis, black holes and time travel and Banana by Orion Maxted.
On Friday, highlights included Art Beyond Science – Tomas Saraceno in conversation with Rob La Frenais and Tony White; Ulf Langheinrich spoke with Fact director Mike Stubbs and other talks throughout the day including Cosey Fanni Tutti, Manuel Vason and George Chakravarthi ending with The Amazing Careers of Imaginary Soul Superstars, where Bluecoat artistic director Bryan Biggs was in chatted with David Blandy, the Barefoot Lone Pilgrim, and Mingering Mike, before a DJ set by the latter.
At 10pm, there was the UK premiere of Love Club, a performance by Austrian artists Gods Entertainment.
On Saturday Anne Bean was in conversation with artist Richard Wilson. 
There was a chance for a Face-to-Face encounter with SJ Curtis and to experience Super Nase & Co throughout the day. Chila Kumari Burman, Yeondoo Jung in conversation as well as a panel discussion with Jim Holland, James Lawler and Gary Everett followed by an evenings entertainment that included a presentation by Stewart Home and Sally O'Reilly. Patricide punctuated the event, after film screenings that included Artists Anonymous.
Participating Artists, Theorists and Thinkers
Orion Maxted, S J Curtis, Daniel Odier, Cecille Gravensen, Fritz Stolberg, Stuart Comer, Super Nase & Co, Tai Shani, Tomas Saraceno, Rob La Frenais, Tony White, Ulf Langheinrich, Mike Stubbs, Manuel Vason, Amelia Jones, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Andrew Wheatley, George Chakravarthi, Lois Keidan, David Blandy, Mingering Mike, Barefoot Lone Pilgrim, Dori Hader, Brian Biggs, Dorit Chrysler, Gods Entertainment, Anne Bean, Richard Wilson, Rachel Withers, Chila Kumari Burman, Courtney Martin, Jiyoon Lee, Yeondoo Jung, Jim Holland, Gary Everett, James Lawler, Paul Domela, Mark Bennett, Mark Waugh, Sally O'Reilly, Stewart Home, Artists Anonymous, Patricide.
photos by Julia Waugh.
The Liverpool Biennial on Flickr.
www.flickr.com/photos/liverpoolbiennial
Rob La Frenaise'blog
artscatalyst.typepad.com
In practice, this results in a more participatory experience within the store, with consumers actively producing, or part producing, the product they wish to buy. In SOI Project’s work, visitors are invited to construct a piece of paper fruit using the templates provided. They may then add their construction to a fake fruit stand, in exchange for a piece of real fruit, or simply buy what they’ve made and take it away.
Also available at the store are comics, toys, music, wallpaper and more. In the process of participating, visitors/shoppers will gain an insight into the experience economy; the commodification of ethnicity; the intertwining of economics, consumerism and culture; and the process of production. Through this new model for cultural/commodity consumption, Far West Metro ask visitors/shoppers whether this level of open participation is a form of consumer emancipation, or whether it is simply the next stage in corporate appropriation.
Far West is curated by Nav Haq, Curator and Tom Trevor, Director of Arnolfini, Bristol. Far West is the first in the CONCEPT STORE series of projects at Arnolfini, exploring the interlinked notions of marketing, design, and experience economy.
Far West has been funded by The Arts Council England - Grants for The Arts, China Now and The British Council - Connections Through Culture, with support from Merlio Retail Systems.
New Contemporaries board chair Sacha Craddock grabbed me and scrambled over Joe Doldon’s intricate cardboard Untitled (Floor) sculpture to rally the artists. The trio summoned—Raakhee Lakhtaria, Paul Bratt, and Haroon Mirza—seemed pleased but dazed (no doubt at the thought of taking those first tentative steps into the shark-infested waters of the art market) by the first-night jamboree. Indeed, work by fellow artist Steve Bishop was already being snapped up. His taxidermied fox shot through with fluorescent light tubes (Suspension of Disbelief)—one onlooker cheekily remarked that “taxidermy is a bit 2007”—obviously found favor with a Norwegian collector, who bagged the piece. The Scandinavian follows in the footsteps of Charles Saatchi, who bought two works by Bishop at his recent Royal College of Art MA show in London. Meanwhile, two soberly suited men from sponsor Bloomberg pored over video work by another young artist, Beth Collar.
After a mad dash for some air and alcohol at the alfresco bar, I spotted artist David Altmejd and his London dealer, Stuart Shave, chatting by the nearby paella stand. The Canadian artist, known for his disquieting, fantastic creations (who else has made werewolf heads such a hot topic?), continues to be one of the art world’s most prolific practitioners. Already on the plate are a solo show linked to the opera Doctor Atomic, at the Metropolitan Opera’s gallery in New York; an exhibition of works at Shave’s gallery in October (which Altmejd claims will be “very sexual”); and a stint at the Art Gallery Ontario.
Soon the action moved to a second retrofitted factory space across the road, where the primary “Made Up” biennial bash was kicking off. Artist Sarah Sze and museum directors Simon Groom and Reyahn King were spotted en route, as were Laurence Sillars, curator at Tate Liverpool, and Branwen Jones, director of Andrea Rosen Gallery.
Perhaps it was the lower lighting (sex-shop red) or the presence of local personalities such as drag queen Mandy Romero that prompted an upbeat change in the evening’s tempo. Guests were ready to let their hair down, including biennial director Lewis Biggs, who danced with artist Lisa Milroy while sporting what looked like a blue garter wrapped around his upper arm. Curator Adrian George, looking dapper, encircled the pool of manic dancers. But it was performance artists Corinne Mynatt and Angus Braithwaite who proved to be the most stylish movers on the floor, closely followed by Cedric Christie, who is showing his two “art cars” in the city. The motors, which will eventually be crushed and displayed as paintings, were a big hit with the Liverpudlians. As Christie noted, “Artists Teresa Hubbard and Alexander Birchler even showed me a photograph of their dealer perched on the hood.”
— © Gareth Harris 2008
www.artforum.com
All Photos © The Liverpool Biennial
www.flickr.com/photos/liverpoolbiennial
The A Foundation welcomes its guests; Artists Anonymous, Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2008, Far West Metro, Fantasy Studio Project and Manuel Vason and extends it's welcome to our audience for whom all this has been orchestrated.
Like Artists Anonymous, we are archeologists of surface information and believe in the power of spaces to locate communication. In the words of Jeremy Hillary Boop Ph.D, as we juggle a few theories of the existential type about blackholes and the economics of representation, "Ad hoc, ad loc and quid pro quo. So little time - so much to know."
So on we go - treading a radical margin between inside and outside; following the purloined line of letters escaped from copied manifestos. The mantra of participation we hold close can be found in the Situationist Manifesto as a weapon that mobilises us against the spectacle. We'll leave it for you to decide if that's an ironic position to occupy in 2008 as Liverpool celebrates its year as Capital of Culture.
***
VAGA
We are hosting a number of events during the biennial including REALISING OurSpace- The Digital Future and Visual Arts organised by VAGA on the 26th September.
www.vaga.co.uk
Dear patrons, please charge your glasses and drink heartily
for tomorrow you may die�
In the exhibition, the warped collective imagination of LE GUN presents a dysfunctional family of many generations, including a man with a crab on his head, the leopard walking heiress Marchesa Casati, and the original fat boy actor Joe Cobb. Raised on the the streets of parallel metropolis Legundon, an eccentrically Anglo-Saxon place of loose women, gin and cream cakes, and Francis Bacon�s butchers shop, they are an unusual dynasty. LE GUN�s gigantic black and white ink drawings record the families journey from their home cities murky streets and dens of vice, across a wild unchartered ocean to an outlandish Interzone of mind bending intoxicants and bordellos, and the jungle funeral of unloved street urchin Caliper Boy.
Simultananeously the new LE GUN publication will be launched.The net has been cast far and wide; LE GUN #4 promises a rich and slippery harvest of pictures and words, a catch that includes Polish artist-crustacean Andrzej Klimowski, Will Sweeney, creator of Tales of Green Fuzz, visionary draughtsman Paul Noble, and writing from beat generation expert Barry Miles and dandy of the underworld Sebastian Horsley, as well as fresh fruit from young novelist Richard Milward, ethnographic writer Iain Sinclair and the Hunter S Thompson of Hartlepool Michael Smith.
Added to these afore-mentioned are the less well known but equally delectable new voices that have been chosen for fullness of flavour
and keenness of eye...
The result is a vivid story of stories and stands as an independent work in its own right; somewhere between pulp fiction and an
artist�s edition. Undigestible in one sitting, this confection asks to be treasured and revisited...
www.legun.co.uk
LE GUN / Nomad 2008
www.nomad.org.uk
* * *
Gelitin - The Movie
Gelitin Paint on Trampolines
The Viennese art collective perform Yes OK Ex at the A Foundation Rochelle School.
On Friday night, Gelitin performed Yes OK Ex at the Rochelle School in Shoreditch, presented by Grizedale Arts and A Foundation as part of Agrifashionista. Gelitin are four male artists from Vienna, Austria. They are currently showing their boating lake Normally, Proceeding and Unrestricted With Without Title at the Hayward show Psycho Buildings.
On arrival at the Rochelle School we had to sign a waver. We were then invited inside to find four half-naked men bouncing on two huge trampolines, paint-brushes in hand.
The wall and ceiling opposite the audience was the prepared canvas. They jumped with their rears to the audience, floaty chiffon skirts revealing all. We may have felt excluded until we realised that they were painting us. We were the subject of their work.
Whether it's digging a hole for seven days, knitting a monster bunny in the Hills, or fitting a balcony to the World Trade Center, Gelitin produce work which invites everyone to participate.
- © Morgan O'Donovan 2008
www.DAZEDDigital.com
***
Port City: on mobility and exchange - A Summer at Greenland Street
26 June - 24 August 2008
Yto Barrada, Ursula Biemann, Mary Evans, Meschac Gaba, Melanie Jackson, Erik van Lieshout, William Pope.L, Zineb Sedira and Magreb Connection Screening Programme
Port City is an international cross-artform touring project, addressing issues of global migration, trade and contemporary slavery.
Traditionally ports have been seen as gateways to a wider world, representing a point of contact and exchange with different countries and cultures, facilitating the movement of people as well as goods and ideas. However in an era of globalisation, port cities have ceased to have such territorial allegiances, becoming simply trading points on a worldwide network. The works by the artists in this exhibition explore the idea idea of a port city as a symbolic site of cultural exchange.
Several works in the exhibition and screening programme draw attention to the experience of migration, in particular between North Africa and the Mediterranean. Ursula Biemann presents Sahara Chronicle a video installation focusing on migration routes and also curates a screening programme of artists’ moving image works and documentary films that will be shown throughout the exhibition.
The exhibition also includes a video presented in a giant pillbox by Erik van Lieshout, an installation made in response to the media and looting frenzy that resulted from the wreck of the MSC Napoli by Melanie Jackson, and a vast model of a global cityscape made from sugar by Meschac Gaba, to which an iconic Liverpool building will be added during the course of the exhibition.
Sweetest Building
Thank you for voting for which building you wanted to see added to Meschac Gaba's Sweetness cityscape. The winning building is the Liver Building, which has been added to to the sculpture and will be on display until the exhibition closes on 23 August.
Saturday 2 August 2pm-4pm
A special event to unveil Liverpool's sweetest building with artist Meschac Gaba
Saturday 23rd August, 2-4pm
Port City Symposium
Join Paul Domela (Programme Director of Liverpool Biennial), Mary Evans (Artist), Tom Trevor, (Director of Arnolfini),Mark Waugh (Director of The A Foundation) and Claudia Zanfi (Director of MAST - Museo di Arte Sociale e Territoriale) for a discussion around the themes and issues raised by Port City, commemorating UNESCO's International Day for the Rememberance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition.
