Summer Break

Hot Art Action will be back online mid-August with listings just in time for the Fall season!

Readings on the Rocks: July 12

Thursday, July 12, 7pm
Speak Easy: Readings on the Rocks
Sculpture Center
44-19 Purves St, Long Island City

Bring blankets and snacks for a relaxed summer evening with readings by Ross Cisneros, Sarah Lookofsky, Joanna Malinowska, Jackie McAllister, Adam McEwen, Haley Mellin, Maria Mirabal, Montevideo (Rita Ackermann and Emily Sundblad), Olivier Mossett, Michael Portnoy, Garrett Ricciardi, Michael Smith, Trevor Smith, Agathe Snow, Mindy Vale and special guests.

www.sculpture-center.org

Magnum Photographers This Saturday June 16

MAGNUM @ 60

Saturday, June 16, 2007
at 7:00 PM
Celeste Bartos Forum
Humanities and Social Sciences Library
5th Avenue and 42nd Street (directions)

LIVE from the NYPL books

$15 general admission and $10 library donors, seniors and students with valid identification

In celebration of the 60th anniversary of Magnum Photos, Live from the NYPL and Magnum Festival '07 bring together a night of conversation with Philip Jones Griffiths, Keith Beauchamp, Susan Meiselas, Gilles Peress, and Larry Towell.

With the advent of technologies that promote the proliferation of media content, the sheer number of images available has thrown the nature of photojournalism, and even the power of photography itself, into a new light. In addition, the boundaries of what constitutes “truth” and “veracity” are constantly being blurred. In light of the increasing diffusion of the media, along with the rise of media conglomerates, it is pertinent to question the responsibility of today’s media as well as to discern with whom that responsibility lies.

• Now that Internet blogs such as YouTube have emerged as a leading form of news transmission and a large population of the world owns digital cameras, how does this democracy change the role of the journalist?


• What role does the “citizen journalist” play?


• Does this undermine traditional journalism or empower it?


• Does traditional journalism have a place in the future?


• Will digital journalism ever be accepted as a major documentary/art form?


• What happens to the idea of responsibility in the world of easy, quick and cheap photo-making?


• Do photographers still have a responsibility to their subjects? To their audience? And how are they held accountable?


• How will the Magnum ethos be affected by this brave new world of image making?

About MAGNUM

In 1947, four young photographers—Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, David Seymour, George Rodger—founded Magnum Photos two years after witnessing the atrocities committed against humanity during World War II. In forming a co-operative, these men were bound by a common goal of telling the world’s stories with uncompromising responsibility to authorship. They sought to break free of editorial constraints and challenged the prevailing idea that a magazine or newspaper could “own their images.” Thus, the Magnum ethos, which still guides the agency and its photographers, sought editorial freedom and ownership of copyrights.

This event is co-presented by Magnum Festival '07
http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/pep/pepdesc.cfm?id=2902

6/28 Yates McKee Monstrous Event Cancelled!

Please note that according to the Sculpture Center website, the previously announced event listed below has been cancelled due to a scheduling conflict.

Thursday, June 28, 7pm
Yates McKee Presents: The Monstrous
Yates McKee is a New York-based critic and art historian. He has contributed to publications including October, Flash Art, and the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest. McKee will address the aesthetico-political problem of the monstrous in contemporary art. Followed by a screening of Brian de Palma's Hi, Mom! (1970).

www.sculpture-center.org

Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed: Events June 12 and 16

CCCP SMALL TALKS

To mark the closing of the exhibition CCCP: Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed, Storefront will host two lectures by eminent architecture historians on the influences and inspirations behind Soviet architecture of the '70s and '80s. The lectures will be followed by a reception and a late viewing of the exhibition.

Tuesday, June 12, 6:30pm
Anna Bronovitskaja: Soviet Architecture 1970-1989

How could such unusual and eclectic architecture be produced in a era notorious for mass-prefabrication and highly-standardized construction processes? This talk will offer an insight into the social and cultural context into which the buildings documented in the CCCP exhibition were born, with specific reference to key events such as the exhibition of Finsterlin drawings in the Moscow Museum of Architecture or the construction of a Buckminster Fuller pavilion in the 'America' exhibition in Sokolniki.

Anna Bronovitskaja is editor of Moscow-based architecture magazines Project Russia and Project International. She is also Associated Professor at Moscow Institute of Architecture, and the co-author of the guide-book Moscow Architecture
1920-1960.


Saturday June 16, 6:30pm
Anna Sokolina: Architecture as Collateral Damage: War Memorials and Rebirth of Patriotism in Soviet Russia

This talk will trace the role of monuments and war memorials within the framework of constructed social utopias, touching on issues of looting and provenance in art, the designs of war memorials across Russia and Eastern Europe and the global discourse of totalitarian architecture and democracy. Tracing the parallels between Khrushchev’s Thaw (1960s), Brezhnev’s Stagnation (1970s) and Gorbachev’s Glasnost (1980s) and their resonances in Soviet Modernism, Technologism, and Postmodernism, this lecture will offer an insight into the architectural manifestations of mass propaganda, political delusion and deception, and the climax, twilight, and demise of Communist Utopia.

Anna Sokolina is an architecture/art historian and Assistant Professor at Miami University School of Fine Arts Department of Architecture and Interior Design. Sokolina received her Ph.D. in Architecture from the Russian Academy of Architecture and Construction Sciences Research Institute for Theory of Architecture, and M.Arch. from the Moscow Architectural Institute. She is currently working on two book projects, Architecture Behind the Iron Curtain: Russia and East Germany 1945-1990, and second edition of Architecture and Anthroposophy.


The CCCP Small Talks were made possible thanks to the generous support of the Trust for Mutual Understanding.

Luc Sante on An-My Lê at Dia:Beacon June 30

June 30, 2007 1pm

Gallery Talks at Dia:Beacon are a series of presentations that take place the last Saturday of every month at 1 pm and are free with admission to the museum. Focused on the work of the artists in Dia's collection, the one-hour presentations are given by curators, art historians, and writers, and take place in museum's galleries. Reservations are suggested. Please call Dia:Beacon at 845-440-0100 ext 44.

www.diacenter.org

Art Book Swap (NADA and Regency Arts Press Ltd)
27th Street between 11th and 12th Avenues
Saturday, May 19, noon-6pm

Swap one for one or pay $5 for three, $10 for six, $15 for nine books

http://www.newartdealers.org/events/2007artbookswap/2007artbookswap.html

Ann Hamilton on Richard Serra: May 31

Thursday, May 31, 2007
Ann Hamilton on Richard Serra

Born in Lima, Ohio, in 1956, Ann Hamilton's one person exhibitions include presentations at Moderne Museet Stockholm (2005); MASS MoCA, North Adams, Mass. (2003); the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2002); the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1994); and Dia Art Foundation, New York (1993). In 1998, she represented the United States at the Venice Biennial.

Richard Serra's Torqued Ellipse I (1996), along with several other works, is on view at Dia:Beacon.

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

Mark Dion and Nils Norman Slide Slam: May 1

Mark Dion and Nils Norman Present:
The Slide Dialectic of the Seven Seas
May 1, 7pm
LIC Bar, 45-58 Vernon Boulevard at 46th Avenue
Join us for a slide slam with Mark Dion and Nils Norman. These established artists and researchers will present their archives, curiosities, and recent endeavors.

www.sculpture-center.org

Charles Ray: April 18

Charles Ray
April 18
6:30pm at The New School
John Tishman Auditorium / 66 West 12th Street

For more than three decades, Charles Ray's wide-ranging art has continually entertained viewers and upended expectations. With a lively, self-deprecating sense of humor and virtuoso craftsmanship, the Los Angeles-based artist depicts familiar elements of everyday life and modern art in disarmingly altered ways. His abstract and figurative sculptures—many of them among the most iconic artworks of our time—are the result of "some everyday thought that sticks," as he puts it. From his black ink-filled minimalist cube to his elaborate cast-aluminum sculpture of an abandoned piece of work equipment, Untitled (Tractor) (2003-05), Ray's boisterous works cause shifts in perception and address sculpture's most fundamental questions: mass, space, color, and gravity. Interested in the active processes that are happening when one looks at art, Ray's work encourages viewers to focus not just on subject matter, but also on how a sculpture occupies and shapes its surroundings. Toy Truck (1993), a Tonka fire truck scaled up to the size of the actual thing was the show-stopping icon of the 1993 Whitney Biennial. Parked in front of the museum, its one-to-one scale with the city suggested that perhaps everything else around it was a toy version of itself, too.

http://www.publicartfund.org/pafweb/talks/talks-s07.htm