Summer Break

Not publishing much art action right now, but we'll be hot again at the end of June. Please check back then!

Eat, Sleep, and Pray: May 28

Eat, Sleep, and Pray: Everyday Rituals and Contemporary Art
Thursday, May 28, 6:30 pm
MoMA, Cullman Education and Research Building, Theater 3

Ever closing the gap between art and life, many contemporary artists incorporate everyday rituals, from kissing to cooking to teaching and talking, into their performances. As a result, they transform the environments in which they situate their work—and the people whom they engage—into parts of the work itself. Join artists Tino Sehgal and Lee Mingwei as they discuss their practice. Glenn D. Lowry, director of The Museum of Modern Art, moderates a discussion. Tickets $10; members $8; students, seniors, and staff of other museums $5.

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/events/1814

Gary Simmons + Henry Louis Gates, Jr: May 28

Gary Simmons in conversation with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Thursday, May 28, 7 pm
Whitney Museum

Artist Gary Simmons joins cultural historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr., for a conversation on narrating history, imagined communities, and the power of art to shape identity.

http://www.whitney.org/www/educational_programs/public_programs.jsp

Tom Klinkowstein: May 26

Tom Klinkowstein
Tuesday, May 26, 6:30pm
Drawing Center

In conjunction with the FAX exhibition, artist Tom Klinkowstein speaks with curator João Ribas in the Drawing Room.

http://www.drawingcenter.org/events_public_01.cfm

Hakan Topal: May 26

Tuesday, May 26, 7pm – 9pm
Cabinet, 300 Nevins Street, Brooklyn
FREE. No RSVP necessary

In this roundtable discussion, artist Hakan Topal will present the artist collective xurban's work, including their current research on the idea of neighborhood and local community in relation to post-industrial cities in various part of Europe. The presentation will form the basis for an active discussion of the subjects addressed by xurban, including regional conflicts, military spatial confinement, urban segregation, and "neo-liberal" exclusion strategies.

http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/events/eventspace.php

Younger Than Pontius Pilate: May 22

Younger Than Pontius Pilate
Friday, May 22, 6:45pm
The National Academy Museum
1083 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.

Four young writers: Colleen Asper, Becky Brown, Nora Griffin and Ben Larocco join David Cohen to review the New Museum's Younger Than Jesus. Followed by an end of the season party.

http://artcritical.com/REVIEWPANEL/index.htm

Eleanor Antin: May 19

Artist Talk + Screening
Tuesday, May 19, 2009, 6:30 pm
EAI, 535 West 22nd Street, Fifth Floor

Eleanor Antin has worked in film, video, photography, installation and performance for four decades. In the 1970s, Antin produced a series of feature-length narrative videos starring hand-painted paper dolls. Performing with a cast of two-dimensional characters, Antin tackled major issues of the day, while lampooning contemporary gender roles and cultural stereotypes. Antin will speak about this series and screen excerpts from works including The Adventures of a Nurse (1976), The Nurse and the Hijackers (1977) and The Angel of Mercy (1981). A Q&A with the artist will follow.

http://www.eai.org/eai/publicProgramArtists.htm?id=117

Optical Drama and Residual Modernities: May 19

Panel Discussion: Optical Drama and Residual Modernities
Tuesday, May 19, 6:30 p.m.
Americas Society, 680 Park Avenue

The Americas Society hosts a panel discussion on the role of the moving image in constructing discourses of modernity. Speakers include: Mauricio Dias, Artist, Walter Riedweg, Artist, Beatriz Jaguaribe, Associate Professor, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, John Hanhardt, Consulting Senior Curator for Film and Media Arts, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gabriela Rangel, Curator, Dias & Riedweg...and it becomes something else, and Heike Arzápalo, Independent filmmaker, (Moderator) This event is free and open to the public.

http://as.americas-society.org/calevent.php?id=505

Nancy Davenport on On Kawara: May 18

Nancy Davenport on On Kawara
Monday, May 18, 2009, 6:30 pm
Dia Art Foundation, 535 West 22nd Street

Nancy Davenport, who was born in 1965 in Vancouver, lives and works in New York. Her recent solo shows include exhibitions at DHC/Art Fondation pour l’art Contemporain, Montréal (2008); Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, New York (2008); and MIT List Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts (2004). Admission is $6; $3 for members, students, and seniors. Tickets are available at the lecture only. For reservations call 212 293 5583 or artistsonartists@diaart.org

http://www.diacenter.org/prg/lectures/artists/index.html

Simon Starling: May 18

Simon Starling
Subjective Histories of Sculpture III
Monday, May 18, 6:30pm
SculptureCenter
44-19 Purves St, Long Island City

(Due to illness this event was rescheduled from May 4)

Sculpture is a medium-in-motion, eluding concise definition. As artists continuously re-invent its rules, materials, and conventions, we are challenged to incorporate new understandings of what, in fact, constitutes a sculpture. Linked to urbanism, architecture, and acoustic and visual perception, it is a charged territory that mirrors political, social and technological developments. As part of exploring how contemporary artists think about sculpture, SculptureCenter, in collaboration with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School, presents the third series in this partnership examining artist-led lectures alongside its exhibition program. In this series, established mid-career artists present specific works, bodies of work, texts, or even personal anecdotes, taken from inside and outside sculpture, and inside and outside “art” to tell their own story of sculpture’s history. These subjective, incomplete, partial, mis-remembered, or otherwise eclectic histories together examine sculpture’s evolving strategies, behaviors, dreams, and mistakes over the course of human civilization. The third lecture in this series is delivered by British conceptual artist Simon Starling, winner of the 2005 Turner Prize.

http://www.sculpture-center.org/eventsEvent.htm?id=11907

The ’90s vs. The ’90s: May 15

The ’90s vs. The ’90s
Friday, May 15, 7pm
New Museum
$6 Members, $8 General Public

This panel includes Michael Azerrad, Mark Greif, Emily Gould, A.S. Hamrah, Marisa Meltzer, and Aaron Lake Smith, and considers the legacy of the ’90s and how we are being shaped by them. If the ’70s was the “Me Decade” and the eighties was the “Greed Decade,” what were the ’90s? If we are nostalgic for the era, what are we nostalgic for? The critic Stephen Metcalf has called 1983 "the year the ’80s became the ’80s." 1991 is often referred to as "the year that punk broke" not only in reference to the Sonic Youth concert documentary of the same name, but also because it was a year of despair (the recession, the Persian Gulf War, the preceding decade of vapid pop culture). It has often been said that there was an obsession with authenticity in the ’90s, from slackers to sellouts. Does the selling-out debate exist any longer? What is the relationship between the economy, culture, and art? Is 2009 1991? Generation X is forever identifiable with the ’90s, but with many members of the subsequent Generation Y identifying with ’90s signifiers, are generations about birth year or identity? And how do you parse out the Gen X and Gen Y micro-generations?

http://www.newmuseum.org/events/336

The Free Skool at the University of Trash

The Free Skool at the
University of Trash
Sculpture Center
44-19 Purves St.
Long Island City, NY

The Free Skool at the University of Trash is an informal educational program that invites the public to become transient professors and students by proposing and participating in workshops, classes, meetings and more. Running during all open hours from May 11th- August 3rd, the University of Trash will host workshops ranging from weekly reading groups, book making workshops, to physical education intensives. To propose a project or event for the Free Skool, email freeskool@universityoftrash.org.

Editor's Note: I will post a number of Free Skool events on Hot Art Action! but for a complete schedule, please visit SculptureCenter's website or the Facebook page for University of Trash.

http://www.sculpture-center.org/eventsUpcomingEvents.htm
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Long-Island-City-NY/University-of-Trash/78339536852

This Thursday, and every Thursday through July 30, the Free Skool will host a "Capital Reading Group" from 6-8pm. The group will follow David Harvey's video lectures on Marx's Capital Volume 1 and discuss the reading and its relevance to the current crisis in an informal setting, likely to adjourn to a near by bar for further discussion. Attendance is open, however you must have your own copy of Capital Volume 1, Penguin classics edition.

Imagining Recovery: May 13

Imagining Recovery Competition:
Announcement of Winners and Public Jury Discussion
Wednesday, May 13, 7pm
Studio-X, 180 Varick Street, Suite 1610

The competition calls on designers to act as mediators between policy and the public by producing an image of the lived experience of recovery, increasing the transparency and intelligibility of the charts, maps and graphics of Recovery.gov. This image is to be supported by a design strategy offering a means to get from the present to recovery. The competition brief is a living document, collectively written by the design participants and a select panel of public policy students from prestigious policy schools around the world.

The event will include a slideshow of all works submitted, and a discussion of the competition, the deliberation, and an announcement of the winners by jurors, moderated by Reinhold Martin. The competition jury includes:

Mark Wigley – Dean, Columbia GSAPP
Bernard Tschumi – Bernard Tschumi Architects
Barry Bergdoll – Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, MoMA
Michael Rock – Founding Partner & Creative Director, 2x4
Kate Orff – Founding Principal, SCAPE
Damon Rich – Founder, Center for Urban Pedagogy; Urban Designer/Waterfront Planner, City of Newark
Brian Loughlin – Chief Architect, Jersey City Housing Authority

A dedicated publication, a spread in Volume Magazine, and a traveling exhibition – currently committed in the US, Beijing, Rotterdam, Mumbai, and Amman – will follow the results of the jury. To learn more about this open international design ideas competition, please visit www.imaginingrecovery.com, and contact imaginingrecovery@gmail.com with any inquiries.

The Improvisers: May 13

The Improvisers
Wednesday, May 13, 6:30 - 8:30pm
White Rabbit, 145 Houston Street

In anticipation of its fall 2009 opening, the MFA Interaction Design Department at SVA presents “Dot Dot Dot,” a monthly public lecture series exploring interaction design, business and aesthetic inspiration. This month, practitioners from diverse backgrounds, including music, theater and comedy, will discuss how designers can use the principles and processes of improvisation to bring spark and perspective to their work. The speakers include Armando Diaz, instructor at Magnet Theater; Heather Gold, speaker and performer at The Heather Gold Show; Graham Marshall and Sunmee Kim of Innovation & Design, Motorola Inc.; and Charlie Todd, founder of Improv Everywhere.

Free and open to the public. Please RSVP at http://bit.ly/theimprovisors

http://www.schoolofvisualarts.edu/events/index.jsp?sid0=70&page_id=181&content_id=2885

AA Bronson and Nils Norman: May 13

AA Bronson and Nils Norman in conversation
Wednesday, May 13, 7pm
Kraine Theater, 85 East 4th Street

This conversation between AA Bronson, a founding member of General Idea, and Nils Norman will launch a series of artist talks leading up to CreativeTime's PLOT09: This World and Nearer Ones, a major group exhibition on Governor's Island opening in June. The talk will be moderated by curator Mark Beasley.

Note: Admission is free but the event is currently at capacity. You can get on the waiting list here: http://www.creativetime.org/govtalk/

Vito Acconci & Hans Ulrich Obrist: May 12

Vito Acconci & Hans Ulrich Obrist
Tuesday, May 12th, 8:30pm
e-flux, 41 Essex Street
Admission is Free

This conversation is organized in the context of Unbuilt Roads.

Unlike unrealized architectural projects, which are frequently exhibited and circulated, unrealized artworks tend to remain unnoticed or little known. But perhaps there is another form of artistic agency in the partial expression, the incomplete idea, the projection of a mere intention? Starting on Saturday, April 11th, the book project Unbuilt Roads: 107 Unrealized Projects has been on view as a public archive at e-flux. Bringing together descriptions of unrealized projects by 107 artists, the selection constitutes the result of several years of international research conducted in the late 90s by Obrist and Guy Tortosa. The exhibition will remain on view through Saturday, May 16th.

http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/6747

Learning in Present Tense: May 12

Learning in Present Tense
Tuesday, May 12, 7:15pm
16Beaver Street, 4th Floor
Free and open to all

In the last 10 years, the question of pedagogy in general and the university have re-emerged as a critical site of contestation. This evening comes out of a dialogue with Emma Hedditch and Nils Norman and students from the School of Walls and Space – a class from the Royal Danish Art Academy in Copenhagen, which Nils leads. Together with 16Beaver participants, Whitney Independent Study Program participants, students from the NYU and New School occupations,
Father Frank Morales, and friends (including yourselves), we will try to conjure what the possibilities of learning will look like projected upon a plane of our own making?

Some of the questions we may circle around:

• What would or could a place for learning be like?
• What are places for learning?
• Where could we find ourselves learning?
• What is the form of life that is proposed in the figure of the student
• today? What can the life of students today say about our relations to the
• present, to history, to experience and to the idea of progress?
• How do the economic and political rationalities of the present confine,
• direct, and limit the potential exploration and research within situations
• of learning?

For full details, please visit: http://www.16beavergroup.org/monday/

NADA Panel: May 12

"Laying low, aiming high, and keeping the faith in contemporary and emerging art"
Tuesday, May 12, 6:30 pm
The Drawing Center

The New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) presents a panel discussion of art professionals titled, "Laying low, aiming high, and keeping the faith in contemporary and emerging art". The panel will include collectors: Dr. Dana Beth Ardi, Joshua Adler, and NADA Members Candace Worth, Augusto Arbizo, and will be moderated by Lowell Pettit.

http://www.drawingcenter.org/events_public_01.cfm

Dias & Riedweg: May 12

Dias & Riedweg...and It Becomes Something Else
Tuesday, May 12, 6:30 pm
Americas Society, 680 Park Avenue

Mauricio Dias and Walter Riedweg. The Raimundos, Severinos and Franciscos (1998). Public art project and multimedia installation. Image courtesy of the artists.
The Americas Society hosts artists Mauricio Dias, Walter Riedweg, and curator Gabriela Rangel in a conversation about their practice and the pieces presented in the exhibition, reflecting on its relationship to poetic and contemporary thinking. AS members-only reception to follow.

This event is free and open to the public. To make a reservation, email culture@americas-society.org.

http://as.americas-society.org/calevent.php?id=503

Dana Hoey: May 14

Dana Hoey
Thursday, May 14 7pm
Whitney Museum

Dana Hoey's carefully staged photographs marry documentary detail and imaginary narratives to create nuanced statements on the dynamics of women's relationships. Spanning an array of subjects and photographic conventions, her allusive tableaus center gender politics in the space between fact and fiction. Join her this evening as she discusses how manipulations of scene and setting relate to our sense of community and identity.

Image Credit: Dana Hoey. Trunk Lab. 2002. Digital c-print, Ed. of 6. 49 x 61 inches/124.5 x 154.9 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York

http://www.whitney.org/www/educational_programs/public_programs.jsp#seminars

Aperture Lectures at NYPH: May 13-17

"Aperture Presents"
A series of panel discussions daily at 5:00 pm
Wednesday, May 13 – Sunday, May 17, 2009
The New York Photo Festival
St. Ann's Warehouse, 38 Water Street, Brooklyn
FREE with Festival Admission
(image credit: Penelope Umbrico)

Thursday, May 14 – Artist-Publisher: Mass Produced for Mass Dissemination
The panel discussion series premieres with acclaimed NYPH08 curator and Aperture publisher, Lesley A. Martin, moderating a discussion on “artists-as-publishers” with photographer/designer Jason Fulford and artist/designer Leanne Shapton, co-founders of the small non-profit press J&L books; photographer Richard Renaldi who recently started his own publishing company with his partner, Charles Lane Press. Their debut book Fall River Boys, Renaldi ‘s second monograph, documents young men and cityscapes in the town of Fall River, Massachusetts. (Other panelists to be announced.)

Friday, May 15 – The Edge of Vision: Abstraction in Contemporary Photography
This panel moderated by writer and critic Lyle Rexer coincides with the exhibition he is curating, opening at Aperture Gallery on Saturday, May 16. The Edge of Vision: Abstraction in Contemporary Photography, showcases the work of more than twenty contemporary photographers who base their practice in some form of abstraction. Rexer and artists Jack Sal, Silvio Wolf, and Penelope Umbrico, all included in the show, will discuss their diverse and engaging abstract approaches. The panel will be followed by a book signing of Rexer's recent Aperture publication The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography, the first book in English to document this phenomenon and to put it into historical context.

Saturday, May 16 – Cuddle (with Bill Hunt)
This discussion moderated by photography dealer and collector Bill Hunt, co-founder of Hasted Hunt Gallery, New York, will review and then synthesize the issues discussed in three prior panels organized by NYPH09 curator Chris Boot, which will tackle topics related to Boot’s Gay Men Play project. Porn, art, censorship, issues of representation of gay male sexuality— Bill Hunt breaks it all down, getting down to brass tacks with Svetlana Mintcheva, director of the arts program of the National Coalition Against Censorship, and other panelists, to be announced.

Sunday. May 17 – Photography After Frank, Conversation between Philip Gefter and Andy Grundberg
Philip Gefter, longtime New York Times writer and former picture editor will be in conversation with independent critic and curator Andy Grundberg about contemporary photography and the debts owed to its predecessors, as well as its evolution over the past fifty years. This discussion will be followed by a book signing to celebrate the release of Gefter’s highly anticipated Aperture publication, Photography After Frank. In this new compilation of essays, Gefter presents the tale of contemporary photography, starting with a pivotal moment: Robert Frank's seminal work in the 1950s, The Americans. Throughout the book, Gefter connects the dots of photography’s transformation into what it is today connecting Robert Frank’s legacy with the work of dozens of important artists who have followed in his wake, from Lee Friedlander and Nan Goldin to Stephen Shore and Ryan McGinley.

http://www.aperture.org/events/keywords.php?id=nyph

5x20x20 at MoMA

5 x 20 x 20
MoMA
Cullman Education and Research Building

A special series of talks in the format of Pecha Kucha, an informal Japanese lecture style. In each session, approximately five artists who are represented in MoMA's collection discuss twenty slides of their work, twenty seconds per slide. ($5)

Monday, May 11, 12:30-1:30pm
Aaron Johnson, Marlene McCarty, Michael Scoggins, Renato Orara, Chloe Piene

Thursday, May 14, 12:30-1:30pm
Katerina Lanfranco, Marcia Hafif, David Opdyke, Yuri Masnyj, Robert Buck, Michael Rodriguez

Monday, May 18, 12:30-1:30pm
Kurt Kauper, Tamara Gayer, Rachel Selekman, Dave Muller, Gerry Hayes, Randall Sellers

Thursday, May 21, 12:30-1:30pm
Jonathan Horowitz, James Siena, Joan Banach, Simone Shubuck, Stephen Sollins

http://moma.org/visit/calendar/events/1730

Walking to Guantánamo: May 8

Virginia Beahan and Richard Fleming: Reading and Discussion
Friday, May 8, 7pm
Cabinet
300 Nevins Street, Brooklyn

Photographer Virginia Beahan and author Richard Fleming will present their recent works on Cuba. Beahan, a lecturer in the visual arts at Dartmouth College, will present images from "Cuba: Singing with Bright Tears," a book of 8x10 View Camera images made over the course of eight separate fortnights spent traveling the island since 2001. Fleming, in what is likely an irrelevant coincidence, also spent almost exactly four months in Cuba, when he set out to walk the length of Cuba in the year 2000, all in one stretch. He will read selections from his recent book "Walking to Guantánamo," choosing passages evoked by his own reaction to Beahan's images. ("Walking to Guantánamo," he warns, is not a book about the use of the Guantánamo Bay navy base as a camp for the detention of alleged terrorists, but rather a chronicle of abandoned aspirations, both personal and political). The duo will then pepper one another with pointed questions, and answer any interjected by the audience.

http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/events/eventspace.php