Archive for November 2010
I stopped using Firefox last year, when I began using Chrome (through the development version Chromium) in September 2009. As it underwent rapid development versions on the Mac, I updated frequently and I began to taking periodic version snapshots until January of this year, shortly before Chrome went official for Mac.
2009-10-06 1:52pm
Chrome = 4.0.220.1
Chromium = 4.0.221.5 (27975)
2009-10-15 9:06pm
Chrome = 4.0.222.5
Chromium = 4.0.223.1 (29225)
2009-10-23 11:43am
Chrome = 4.0223.8
Chrome = 4.0223.11 (8:56pm)
Chromium = 4.0224.3 (29892)
2009-11-15 1:48pm
Chrome = 4.0.254.0
Chromium = 4.0.249.0 (32026)
2009-11-24 8:58pm
Chrome = 4.0.249.12
Chromium = 4.0.257.0 (32997)
2009-12-20 10:31pm
Chrome = 4.0.249.43
Chromium = 4.0.277.0 (35069)
2010-01-06 7:11pm
Chrome = 4.0.249.49
Chromium = 4.0.288.0 (35431)
2010-01-14 8:29pm
Chrome = 4.0.249.49 (35163)
Chromium = 4.0.299.0 (36242)
2010-01-24 10:37pm
Chrome = 4.0.249.49 (35163)
Chromium = 4.0.306.0 (36978)
2010-11-28 1:18pm
Chrome = 7.0.517.44
Chromium = 6.0.443.0 (50319)
Munk Debates
In the late 2140s, people have a thing about masks. More later.
Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, University of Toronto’s Graduate Geography and Planning Student Society and The Tendency Group present:
Talking Stats 1: Artists
Date: Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Time: 7pm
Place: Music Room, Hart House, Universityof Toronto, 7 Hart House Circle
14 accomplished art workers sit before you and disclose every single terrifying detail of their economic life: what they make, what they spend, where they spend it, what they’ve saved, what they own, what they owe and what they anticipate inheriting. No detail will be spared. Then we’ll crunch some of the stats, throw around a few distributions, some pie charts and then we’ll talk.
Featuring the fully disclosed economies of:
Bill Burns, Timothy Comeau, Siya Chen, Heather Haynes, Sheila Heti, Amy Lam, John McCurley, Srimoyee Mitra, Amish Morrell, Daniel Nimmo, Darren O’Donnell, Ngozi Paul, Camille Turner and Carl Wilson.
There’s a lot of discussion about the purpose and value of art. Does it make the world a better place? Does it improve the economy? Is a good social investment? Is it a good economic investment? What is the value of artistic production for cities? Can art do anything more than make the city more attractive to tourists? Can artists improve the qualities of neighborhoods?
These are all great questions. None of which we plan to answer.
Lost in this cacophony are the naked economic facts of the life of the art worker. What exactly does it mean to your bank account to be an artist? Is the starving artist stereotype an accurate one? Who is really funding the arts?
Those are the questions we will begin to answer.
Talking Stats 1: Artists
The Music Room at Hart House, University of Toronto
7 Hart House Circle, Toronto
The Tendency Group is a flexible research-based collaboration directed by Darren O’Donnell, with Eva Verity, Marney Isaac and Yi Luong. For more information: darren@tendency.ca
things don’t just happen, they tend to happen
Justina M. Barnicke Gallery
Hart House, University of Toronto
7 Hart House Circle
Toronto, ON M5S 3H3
CANADA
www.jmbgallery.ca
416-978-8398
When I first read this I thought it was a nice way of pointing out the dangers of an aristocracy – the exact thing the 18th Century Enlightenment thinkers made their reputation attacking. At that time, the awfulness of society was seen in part to be the result of the establishment being ill-educated and having been merely born into their positions of power.
I read this as saying:
The best argument exemplifying of an elitist-aristocracy is ‘you shouldn’t have to know something in order to be in charge of it’
or perhaps
By their example, “in favour of this” they show the limitations of thinking that people shouldn’t need to know something in order to run it.
But then again, is it a defence of elitism? His Goldsbie actually saying:
“The best argument for an elitist society is the example of those people who think they can run things without knowing anything about it. We should have an educated elite who know what they are doing.”
Je ne sais pas.
Santiago Sierra and the Art World Politics of Rejection | Selby Drummond
It’s hard to imagine, given these parameters, a country from which Sierra would accept an award. And, with this in mind, even harder not to conclude that Spain virtually volunteered itself to go like a lamb to the slaughter. Conflating notions of artistic gesture and political protest, Sierra’s work has pretty much been sending Spain this same rejection letter since, like, 1999, in so many words. The artist has paid Chechen refugees minimum wage to remain hidden inside cardboard boxes in a gallery for long stretches (2000), Iraqi immigrants to stand docile while he sprays them with insulation foam (2004), prostitutes [whom he paid in heroin] for the privilege of publicly tattooing their backs (2000), and African immigrants to dye their hair blonde (2001). Sierra uses money to buy people and subject them to degradation and abuse at so low a price that the audience is forced to wonder if endemic government failure hasn’t flat-out subsidized the transaction, let alone created the conditions for its occurrence. Taking a page from the terrorist strategy book, Sierra makes a gratuitous show of ethical violence in order to mirror and expose its proliferation in what we might call “society.” And the show goes on because of, as Sierra says in his letter, “the freedom… art has given me… which I am not willing to resign.”
curation.ca/673/
[audio:http://timothycomeau.com.s3.amazonaws.com/audio/20101101_jan_verwoert.mp3]
Download
The Justina M. Barnicke Gallery presents:
Jan Verwoert
Why are conceptual artists painting again?
Because they think it’s a good idea.
November 1, 6:00 – 8:00
George Ignatieff Theatre
Trinity College, University of Toronto
15 Devonshire Place (between Bloor and Hoskin)
Admission is free
Presented in conjunction with Traffic: Conceptual Art in Canada 1965-1980
September 10 to November 28, 2010
University of Toronto Galleries
Berlin-based critic Jan Verwoert has been examining the developments of art after Conceptualism. Held in conjunction with the exhibition Traffic: Conceptual Art in Canada 1965-1980, his lecture is concerned with the way in which the basic conditions of art practice have changed and what words and models might be used to open up the potentials at the heart of the developments in art after Conceptualism.
As he writes: “The dominant models no longer satisfy. It makes no sense to melodramatically invoke the “end of painting” (or any other medium-specific practice for that part) when the continuous emergence of fascinating work obviously proves apocalyptic endgame scenarios wrong. Yet, to pretend it were possible to go back to business as usual seems equally impossible because the radical expansion of artistic possibilities through the landslide changes of the 1960s leave medium-specific practices in the odd position of being one among many modes of artistic articulation, with no preset justification. How can we describe then what medium-specific practices like painting or sculpture can do today?
Likewise, it seems that we can still not quite convincingly describe to ourselves what Conceptual Art can be: An art of pure ideas? As if “pure” idea art were ever possible let alone desirable! An art of smart strategic moves and puns? We have advertising agencies for that. The social and political dimension of Conceptualism has been discussed, but often only in apodictic terms, not acknowledging the humour, the wit, the existential, emotional or erotic aspects, as well as the iconophile, not just iconoclast motives, that have always also been at play in the dialectics and politics of life-long conceptual practices.
Unfortunately, a certain understanding of conceptualism has had incredibly stifling effects on how people approach their practice, namely the idea that to have a concept in art means to know exactly why you do what you do – before you ever even do it. This assumption has effectively increased the pressure on artists to occupy the genius-like position of a strategist who would clearly know the rules of how to do the right thing, the legitimate thing. How could we invent a language that would describe the potentials of contemporary practice, acknowledge a sense of crisis and doubt, yet break the spell of the senseless paranoia over legitimation – and instead help to transform critical art practice into a truly gay science based on a shared sense of appreciation and irreverence?”
Jan Verwoert teaches art at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, works as a contributing editor to frieze magazine and writes for different publications. His book Bas Jan Ader – In Search of the Miraculous was published by Afterall/MIT Press in 2006. The collection of his essays Tell Me What You Want What You Really Really Want has just been published by Sternberg Press/Piet Zwart Institute.
The lecture is presented in advance of the international conference Traffic: Conceptualism in Canada. Organized by the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, the conference is held in conjunction with the exhibition Traffic: Conceptual Art in Canada 1965 – 1980 which is on view at the University of Toronto Galleries until November 28.
Registration opens November 1, 2010.
The exhibition and conference are made possible through the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Hal Jackman Foundation.
Justina M. Barnicke Gallery
Hart House, University of Toronto
7 Hart House Circle
Toronto, ON M5S 3H3
CANADA
jmb.gallery@utoronto.ca
www.jmbgallery.ca
416-978-8398
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[Monday] May 14 [1934]
Dear Mother and Dad,
The new cookies are fine, even though not as good as old standby. So is the bread. You’ll only have one more lot to send this year, that is if you want to.
Last week was much cooler again and there hasn’t been any more swimming since I wrote you. We are also mowing lawn here, though I don’t have to mow as much as I would if I were home.
I’m sorry to hear the old car is acting up, though apparently this wasn’t anything serious. When my license renewal blank comes I wish you would send it here (or if it doesn’t come, send the old stub and I’ll get a blank.) I can fill it out an have the license sent home again.
This week we took all day trip in Farm Management. We went through Geneva and saw the Agricultural Experiment Station, then north to Lake Ontario, stopping to see three farms on the way. It was the first time I had seen the lake and it is quite like the bay at home. Of course, you can’t see the other side, and it is not as blue as the bay.
Two of the farms are in the fruit belt along the lake, and are little more than big orchards. The cherries were in blossom and the apples were just ready to come out. The trees there don’t seem to be much hurt by the winter cold.
This weekend several hundred high school boys who expect to come to Cornell soon were up to visit the place. It is a new thing this year, called Cornell Day, and seemed to go off pretty well. Two boys stayed here in the house and seemed to enjoy themselves.
Did you see any of the dust cloud the papers were talking about over New York? It must have missed us. It is pretty dry even here, though.
Friday night George and I walked down to see George Arliss in “The House of Rothschild.” It was one the best I have seen him in.
Saturday night there was an electrical exhibition in the Electrical Engineering College. They had artificial lightning, power line connections and generators, teletype, telegraph, telephone, radio, and a lot of other exhibits, all very interesting. They advertised it by a loudspeaker hung out the window. You could hear it easily a quarter of a mile away, but it was very distinct also. There was also a track meet Saturday, in which we beat Penn. very easily, so that it wasn’t very interesting.
It’s warmer now – maybe there will be swimming this afternoon.
Love,
Orville
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The House of Rothschild, from Archive.org:
