Felix Gonzalez-Torres Around New Jersey

 

This is the announcement (pdf here) of an outdoor exhibition, coordinated by the Princeton University Art Museum, of "Untitled" works by Felix Gonzalez-Torres. The works are dispersed on a dozen billboards around New Jersey.

Zoe Strauss

Today on NPR there was this nice segment on 54 billboard installations Zoe Strauss has placed around her hometown of Philadelphia. The "subjects" are Strauss's neighbors and acquaintances - here Antoinette Conti and Nathaniel J. Jordan.

Tucson Billboard

Gee, what is it like to live in Tuscon? Is all interaction, all communication about shooting? (This comes from HuffPost.) Are right wingers incapable of thinking without reference to this sort of metaphor or analogy?

L.A. Billboards

This is a post I have thought of doing for a while. Over the past six or so months the MAK Center for Art & Architecture (Los Angeles) has sponsored an exhibition called How Many Billboards? I don't really know anything about the Center; they basically commissioned twenty plus artists to create billboards that were dispersed around Los Angeles. the curators explain: "The philosophical proposition of the exhibition is simple: art should occupy a visible position in the cacophony of mediated images in the city, and it should do so without merely adding to the visual noise. How Many Billboards? Art In Stead proposes that art periodically displace advertisement in the urban environment." I think it is important to displace commercial uses for aesthetic and political ones in public spaces and so find this project appealing.

The Center now has photos* of the whole lot on line, accompanied by sometimes useful, sometimes not-so-useful (because thoroughly written in 'art speak') curatorial blurbs. Here are my three favorites in no particular order:

This first one is by Kerry Tribe, with whom I am unfamiliar. The curators write: "Tribe's billboard reflects the artist's interest in the problems associated with perception. Her abstraction of a darkening sky takes advantage of the proclivity to look up at billboards. Blending the site of the message with its airy backdrop, Tribe's image engages in a formal push and pull with perspective. Tribe's billboard transforms a space that typically directs one's attention outward (aiming the thoughts and desires of viewers toward a specific product) into a space of mental suspension, a hazy zone to lose one's thoughts within. . . . Tribe's billboard gives the viewer a mental break from the onslaught of visual imagery to simply ponder what the image might be, and what purpose it may serve."

Maybe so. To me it seems more like some sort of rip in the fabric of the sunny southern California skies, revealing the roiling troubles (social?, political?, economic?, environmental?) they disguise. Not clear sky hidden by clouds, but the reverse.

Since my tastes sometimes run to agit-prop, I also like this one by Allan Sekula. Indeed, I have posted on Sekula and the ways he has used this particular image here before. Once again, here are the curators: "Sekula deploys an image previously exhibited at Documenta 12. A welder at a construction site holding a lit acetylene torch and crouching over his work takes a moment to look directly at the viewer. The words "The rich destroy the planet" are superimposed in Spanish over the photograph. The lettering, which looks as if it were cut letter by letter from old magazines, is slightly disjunctive in scale but chromatically balanced and ultimately aesthetically appealing. The message, however, is blunt and accusatory, and it functions succinctly for both English and Spanish speakers, since these words appear similar in both languages."

Yeah, yeah. The rich are destroying the planet. And, by the way, they are working hard to shift blame onto the poor.

Finally (and hardly least) this one is by Ken Gonzales Day. And here are the curators, doing their best to obfuscate: "Ken Gonzales-Day . . . investigates, among other things, the role of photography in its relationship to the discourse of race and the dire consequences of racism Gonzales-Day's billboard project brings these histories into the present, reflecting upon how residues of oppression linger in varying forms, despite the many changes that society continues to undergo. His subjects, Bust of a Young Man (bronze with silver inlay eyes, by the Italian artist Antico) and Bust of a Man (black stone-pietra da paragone, Florence 1758, by the Englishman Francis Harwood), are owned by the J. Paul Getty Museum. Gonzales-Day photographed them as part of his Profile Series during a residency as a Getty Research Institute Scholar. The historical sculptures refer to the artistic styles and philosophies of the Renaissance and the Neoclassical period, both of which in their turn revived the achievements of Greek and Roman culture. The imaged sculptures serve as a reminder that despite the manifold social advancements we have witnessed, it is still with the vocabulary of the past that we speak today. The figures in profile also allude to the dawn of photography and the earliest technologies used to mechanically reproduce human likeness. In the third image, a Photoshop composite of the figures facing each other ignites an erotic charge as they stare into one another's eyes. As photographs of sculptures engaged in a virtual erotic dynamic, these profiles are thrice removed from their human referents, a fact which is emphasized by the brilliant highlights that bounce off the material-objects' surfaces."

As I have noted here a couple of times before, Gonzales Day produces very provocative, insightful, creative work. If I had not read the other two blurbs, I'd say this is one of the especially not-so-useful instances of art speak. Here we get lots of high-falutin' words (presented in irritatingly passive voice) to remind us that, despite our advanced technological accomplishments and embellishments, our racist past has not faded away; it still pervades our lives.
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* Please note: I've lifted all three of these images from the MAK Center web page; Photographs © Gerard Smulevich.

The British Election Campaign

Ah, British politics! There is an election campaign under way. A couple of months back I posted here on some of the early campaign graphics. But now the visuals are heating up a bit. This is a photo of an anonymously created London billboard 'taking the piss' out of the Tory candidate David Cameron. Deserved so, in my estimation. Earlier in the month The Guardian ran an April fool's spoof, claiming that Labour was mounting a campaign seeking to capitalize on the now notorious bad temper of the current Prime Minister Gordon Brown. My sweetheart Susan thinks 'Gordo' is pretty terrific, despite all the bad press. I agree that he is a big improvement on Blair who in Manchester parlance was 'all fur coat and no knickers!' So 'Gordo' is our household candidate. Here is one of the fake posters that The Guardian folk produced.

And, indeed, here is our Gordo out on the hustings, apparently scaring the tar-nation out of a young child. Perhaps Labour might've embraced the spoof? Perhaps the parents here are wondering how they will deal with junior's recurrent nightmares?

Gordon Brown and his wife Sarah in a coffee shop in Kirkcaldy.
Photograph © Dan Kitwood/Getty Images.

Now to the main point. In The Guardian today is this story reporting that the House of Commons has appointed photographer Simon Roberts as the "official election artist." The report notes an extremely interesting twist:

". . . Roberts . . . will, he says, be concentrating on the 'relationship between the politicians canvassing and the voting public with images from battle-buses and village greens to polling stations and shopping centres.' His images will be exhibited in the House of Commons this summer. Alongside them will be a gallery of photographs taken by members of the public.

. . . Roberts has therefore invited people to participate in what he calls the Election Project by sending their own mobile-phone or digital-camera images to a dedicated website. The aim, he says, is to 'create an alternative photographic vision alongside my own' – one that will 'add a collaborative and democratic dimension to the overall work.'"

I think this is a pretty remarkable, self-effacing initiative. Roberts has added a link to the Election Project to his web page. It will be worth following.

Annals of Fair Use ~ Keeping the Courts Busy

American Apparel Billboard. Photograph © Susan Sermoneta.

Today The New York Times has brief reports on two legal battles that revolve around who gets to use photographs and for what purposes. The first story I've mentioned before, is the pot and kettle tussle between AP and Shepard Fairey. The second story is an update on a legal battle between Woddy Allen and American Apparel over the company's use of Allen's picture on billboards like the one above.

More Disturbing News from The Twin Cities

Not long ago I posted on a set of quite remarkable portraits Suzanne Opton has done of Iraq and Afghan war Veterans. Much of the work was done at Fort Drum, which is only about an hour and a half from where I live. She has been displaying the portraits on billboards in cities like Buffalo and Syracuse. In that post I noted, with considerable skepticism, that Opton claims that her work is "art" and denies that it is political. This strikes me as wholly unpersuasive insofar as Opton's work clearly raises pointed questions about the highly asymmetrical distribution of sacrifice imposed by our current wars, and provides subtle evidence of the consequences of war on young men and women who fight.

According to this report in The New York Times others seem to have little trouble identifying Ms. Opton's work as political and so disturbing. Those others control the billboards on which she hoped to display some of her portraits in Minneapolis-St. Paul during the Republican convention this week. Based on their assessment they've decided to revoke a contract with her. Maybe now Ms. Opton might get it a bit more clearly. Showing people in the U.S. the consequences of the unjustified war being waged int their name is political. The effects of one's work on audiences are not easily predictable. Its effect on political operatives and business executives is, however. Of course, some of Opton's work was shown during the Democratic convention in Denver. To the best of my knowledge, everyone who saw it there survived.

This, of course, come on top of other disturbing reports about police and security guards harassing photographers in St. Paul in recent weeks.
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Thanks jc!

Soldier

Billboard, I-690 Syracuse, April-May 2006
~ Photograph © Xie Jiankun.

Downtown Buffalo, New York ~ Photograph © Xie Jiankun.

Via lens culture I discovered the portraits of American military veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan that Suzanne Opton has made. The exhibition as a whole is called "Soldier" and the portraits are, when viewed from close-up quite disconcerting. Captions provide the subject's last name and the number of days (if known) he or she served in Iraq and/or Afghanistan. The portraits were taken when the soldiers were home on leave and scheduled to return to duty. It is easy to detect a sense of great distance and a depth of injury, perhaps irreparable, in these young faces. Provocatively, Opton was not satisfied to leave her images in galleries and secured funding to get some of them out into local communities. She has worked on a follow-up series entitled "Citizen" which consists of portraits of Iraqis now residing in Jordan, having been displaced by our war. The lens culture feature includes this audio interview with Opton.

P.S.: Added a bit later ~ Opton lives & works in New York City. She took portraits at Fort Drum near Watertown, which is not far from where I live. In the audio interview she discusses the difficulty she had in obtaining access to a military base. After describing how her requests were rejected multiple time, she remarks: "And then I called Fort Drum. The Public Affairs Officer asked 'Is this political?' and I said 'No, it's art. I just want to do portraits of soldiers.'"

Now, I simply do not get this. I do not get the Officer's question and I do not get Opton's reply. In her remarks Opton acknowledges that she has a son who is draft age (although there is no draft) and that she doesn't know any young men or women who had volunteered for the service. So why did she find the subject of soldiers pressing? Why now? Why did she move on to make a parallel series of portraits of displaced Iraqis? These portraits are about trauma and service and freedom (volunteers?) and war and so forth. It seems disingenuous to deny their is no political (as distinct from partisan) motivation here. Perhaps Opton was denying the obvious simply because she needed access to the soldiers. But the notion that these images are not political - and have not from the start been political - is completely unpersuasive.

As for the Public Affairs Officer at Drum, he simply could not have been that credulous. Opton is not a young woman - I'd guess she is my age. A quick check would've revealed that she is an accomplished photographer and that this was a fairly dramatic departure from her previous work. What could he have thought was prompting her to want to take portraits of soldiers just now? Apolitical art?

Who's Making a Monkey Out of Who?

I have been visiting my son August for a few days on each side of a trip to the University of Oregon in Eugene to give a paper. The paper was, I think, quite well received and the faculty at Oregon are a rare combination (for academics) of smart and nice ~ they offered a bunch of very useful comments and objections. On the drive to Eugene and back I half-way noticed a number of billboards bearing this image:

The first couple of times I didn't pay much attention, assuming it was an advert for some sort of idiotic radio host or other. If only. The billboards are funded by some group of anti-evolution Christians. Their web pages announces: "Who Is Your Creator uses media, including display advertising, to raise awareness of the serious misrepresentations and lack of scientific proof for the theory of Naturalism and Darwinism. Who Is Your Creator is a 501(c) 3 public charity registered in the State of Minnesota and donations are tax-deductible as provided under the IRS tax code. (Who Is Your Creator has no paid directors or employees.) We believe that God is The Creator, and that Jesus is The Way, The Truth, and The Life. Our hope is that we can Advance His Kingdom by countering the false foundations for the faith of evolution and to offer Christians more opportunities for sharing the Gospel." Terrific.

Santu Mofokeng - Billboards

"Democracy is Forever" (2003) © Santu Mofokeng

"Township Billboard" (2002) © Santu Mofokeng

"Wiinter in Tembisa" (1989) © Santu Mofokeng

Santu Mofokeng (b. 1956) is a South African photographer who has, over the years, been preoccupied with the politics of representation across classes and races in South Africa. The three images above are part of his "Rethinking Landscapes" series which feature billboards (although none about sex or cell phones). Here is part of his statement from a 2004 exhibition shown in Berlin/Vienna/Johannesburg:

"Billboards have been the medium of communication between the rulers and the denizens of townships since the beginning. The billboard is a fact and feature of township landscape. It is a relic from the times when Africans were subjects of power and the township was a restricted area, subject to laws, municipality by laws and ordinances regulating people´s movements and governing who may or may not enter the township. It is without irony when I say that billboards can be used as reference points when plotting the history and development of the township. Billboards capture and encapsulate ideology, the social, economic and political climate at any given time. They retain their appeal for social engineering. (...) At the high speed of a minibus taxi, the billboards roll by like flipping pages in a book. The retina registers arcane and inane messages about sex and cell-phones, mostly sex and cell-phones. Perhaps this is a coincidence. I wonder."

Andrew Esiebo

One of the photographers featured in the new issue of PRIVATE is Nigerian photojournalist Andrew Esiebo who provides a series of photograhs from Lagos, including this image of a billboard. The sales pitch, while humorous, also is serious.


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PS: On the seriousness of closing "the sanitation gap" between the developing and developed world see, for instance, this 2002 report - Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries - from the Disease Control Priority Project, "a joint effort of the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Bank, and the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH)." (Quoted phrases are from this press release.)