Mika Rottenberg's Squeeze

 Last Saturday Mika Rottenberg's solo show Squeeze opened at Mary Boone gallery. Rottenberg's piece was previously shown at San Francisco SFMOMA and will later travel to Europe (tba).

"Mika Rottenberg’s latest work Squeeze continues the artist’s inquiry into the mechanisms by which value is generated, considering the logistics of global outsourcing and the alchemy of art production. Through movie-magic portals, Rottenberg links video of her Harlem studio stage set to on-location footage of an iceberg lettuce farm in Arizona and a rubber plant in Kerala, India. This composite factory toils ceaselessly to create a single precious object, one small sculpture. The video is presented in a custom-made theater. The sculpture is inaccessible – preserved offshore, out of reach for public or private viewing." [source]

The white cube, viewing machine for the video Squeeze, inside the white shiny space of Mary Boone gallery in Chelsea. Everybody had to squeeze inside the box to watch the ~20mins video. You leave the bright scenery of a representative art opening and walk into a box where is becomes darker with the pace of your steps.

 The inside of the narrow exhibition space mirrors tactile qualities of exchangable office spaces across the globe. Acoustically perfectly tuned airconditioning and generic ceiling materials (asbestos?) comfort your way into the white box to watch the video of the machine which in turn features the same elements (aircon, ceiling, flowerpot). You are not outside the system.

Inside you are anonymous with the other spectators sitting in a box watching another box acting as machine and inevitably become part of what is happening in the video.I don't write too much here. Go and see the show yourself. ;)

The small sculpture, produced by the machine featured in the video, presented by Mary Boone. This image is sold as c-print in life-size.

Detail of the small sculpture. Resin holding together rubber, cosmetics and lettuce as analogies for female survival strategies in a society of capitalised bodies.

 The sculpture could have been a valuable artpiece, produced for a hungry global art market to make and represent money, exhibited around the world and traded among galleries, museums and curators. Rottenberg in turn decided to have it stored "in perpetuity" in the financial offshore hotspot Cayman Islands. Just as so much capital is sitting banked offshore, untaxed and useless for other purposes, Rottenberg's sculpture is locked away from the public and will slowely degrade in a crate inside of a warehouse on Cayman Islands (notice the shipping company 'Tropical Shipping'). Collectors can meanwhile buy shares of the blush-salad-rubber-cube which, just as any piece in the art market, may increase or decrease in value. Buying Rottenberg's art has become a real investment and metaphor of the functioning of the global art market intertwined with global business and industry.

Squirting air condition for a livable home on the outside of the installation.

Power supply. This detail of the installation was very intriguing for me. The power cord runs unhidden through half of the gallery before nurturing the video and providing conditioned air within the tight projection space. At one point during the opening a small boy almost unplugged the power supply for the installation. (Only his mother's courageous intervention could prevent the disaster!) This showed in a nice and coincidential way the fragility of the whole picture and as well the pressing issue of energy security which is so necessary to maintain a system of globalized capitalist production.

Squeeze was shot by Mahyad Tousi, the set built by Quentin Conybeare and spcial effects done by Katrin Altekamp. The aesthetics of the movie's working scenes reminded me of films such as 'Our Daily Bread', 'We Feed the World' or 'Workingmans Death' which, of course, are merely personal analogies. ;) 

 "
Squeeze
heavy mass
magnetic force
friction
a crack
a squeak
twinkling stars
electromagnetic fields
a buzzzzz
tongue flickers
fountain squirts
space expands
pressure applied to Rose's cheeks
Redness extracted
Iceberg Lettuce
Pure Latex Cream
pressure at its max
moist butts
bouncing ponytails
two holes align
ice crackles
temperature declines
space shrinks back to first position
shrinks, back to first position. Ingredients willed in, first layer is laid.” [source]

Worst EU Lobbying Awards 2010

The award for worst lobbying interventions in Brussels in 2010 is now open for vote again. This year the awards deals especially with lobbying which prevented forewardlooking climate policies and employed the financial crisis in favour of corporate interest.
The 'Worst EU Lobbying Awards' are organized annually by CEO (Corporate Europe Observatory), Friends of the Earth Europe, Lobby Control and Spinwatch.

"[U]nderhand tactics, combined with the strength of big business, have allowed corporate lobbyists to continue for-profit lobbying at the expense of more climate- and consumer-friendly regulation; putting profits before people and the planet.


If these damaging and dirty lobbying tactics worry you, then fear not, help is at hand, and you can be part of the solution. This year’s Worst EU Lobbying Awards is here, with a twofold focus – climate and finance. And, with the help of Lobby-Cleaner, and your vote, we can clean up the lobbying scene in Brussels, discourage controversial lobbying practices by publicly exposing the worst offenders, and discredit the big business lobby among EU decision-making circles." [source and image credit]
See the nominees here and vote!

This year the award features comic heroes which personalize the grassroots movement in a superhero-style. Lobby-Cleaner "the Worst EU Lobbying Awards’ anti-heroine, roams the corridors of power cleaning lobbies, and cleaning lobbying. She is here to clean up the mess created by corporate lobbyists in Brussels." [source and image credits]

Gowanus Canal: Approach II by Bike

I was approaching the Gowanus canal this time by bike downstream from 3rd street. Contrasting the upper/inner part of the canal this area is characterized by huge private industrial and retail lots located directly at the canal. This propoerty context creates a variety of borders which materialize in numerous intertwined fences and in-between spaces along the canal. Nicely enough these derelict areas left out of sight are the places where succession can take place and accomodate biological succession and human shadowy existence. At the end of the tour I met some people interested in the peotics of the Gowanus as well. The oil slick on the water was almost gulf-like this time.
Find here some peeks at the canal, into private lots, through fences and borders, onto landmarks and on situations of unintended beauty.

Mycelia Digested Materials for a Better World

I was very excited today during a TED talk of Eben Bayer, CEO of the company 'ecovative design', who presented ecovative's decomposable materials made with the help from fungi mycelia. Two materials are on the market already, 'ecocradle' for packaging and 'greensulate' for insulation purposes.

 [source]

The process is as smart as it is easy and environmentally benign. A wide array of lignocellulosic feedstock can be fitted into molds where its overgrown by the fungal mycelium which is partly processing the material and gluing it together. It takes five days to produce small packaging elements with a fraction of the energy used to produce a comparable styrofoam element. Ecovative materials are as well a perfect example of the 'craddle-to-craddle' concept as they can be readily composted in your backyard (if available) or centrally after collection. The 'ecovative' business model for global expansion foresees distributed production facilities which each use a local lignocellulosic feedstock.

There are some untold benefits as well. Carbon is stored temporarily in the products and it is easy to imagine how many CDEs can be put into a slower carbon cycle while being used as packaging material. From an urbanistic point of view these materials can be, amongst others, a way to enhance urban soils by decomposing a fraction of the material inflow to cities, thereby saving considerable amounts of primary energy used today for production and disposal of packaging products. The landscape field should be wide opened for these materials as well. There are so many materials used in landscape construction which would actually function in a better way if they became over time a structural component of the soil. hm...lets imagine.

It is good to know that a market-ready product is out there to compete with today's environmentally adverse packaging materials. I wish the team of ecovative all the best in their future development and am curious about more products which can be developed from mycelia-molded lignocellulosic materials. !!!

UMASS Crits

Yesterday I was at University of Amherst, Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning, as guest critic for their 'Senior Urban Design Studio' in fall 2010 with the topic “Springfield’s Upper Lyman Warehouse District: Visions for Revitalization” instructed by Elizabeth Thompson & Frank Sleegers. I truly enjoyed the student's visions and seeing differences from student's works in Europe. 

Model of the study area: 

"In Studio 497A, students contunued their work in downtown Springfield and turned their attention to the Upper Lyman Street District. The Students created short and long term visions fpr this underdeveloped area with great potential that is in the vicinity of the train station and the cultural assets of Springfield" [from cit flyer]

See some details of the student's fine freehand drawings and other presentation material. 

 

Study: Big Oil Goes to College.

A new study by Jennifer Washburn at the Center for American Progress investigates recent inflictions between big oil companies and universities in the US.

The report asks:

"Why are highly profitable oil and other large corporations increasingly turning to U.S. universities to perform their commercial research and development instead of conducting this work in-house? Why, in turn, are U.S. universities opening their doors to Big Oil? And when they do, how well are U.S. universities balancing the needs of their commercial sponsors with their own academic missions and public-interest obligations, given their heavy reliance on government research funding and other forms of taxpayer support?" [source]

And comes up with the following results:

"

The results of this report’s analysis of these 10 large-scale university-industry contracts raise troubling questions about the ability of U.S. universities to adequately safeguard their core academic and public-interest functions when negotiating research contracts with large corporate funders. This report identifies eight major areas where these contracts leave the door open to serious limitations on academic freedom and research independence. Here are just a few brief highlights:

• In nine of the 10 energy-research agreements we analyzed, the university partners failed to retain majority academic control over the central governing body charged with directing the university-industry alliance. Four of the 10 alliances actually give the industry sponsors full governance control.
• Eight of the 10 agreements permit the corporate sponsor or sponsors to fully control both the evaluation and selection of faculty research proposals in each new grant cycle.
• None of the 10 agreements requires faculty research proposals to be evaluated and awarded funding based on independent expert peer review, the traditional method for awarding academic and scientific research grants fairly and impartially based on scientific merit.
• Eight of the 10 alliance agreements fail to specify transparently, in advance, how faculty may apply for alliance funding, and what the specific evaluation and selection criteria will be.
• Nine of the 10 agreements call for no specific management of financial conflicts of interest related to the alliance and its research functions. None of these agreements, for example, specifies that committee members charged with evaluating and selecting faculty research proposals must be impartial, and may not award corporate funding to themselves. (See summary of main findings for details, pages 52-59, and the Appendices beginning on page 75.)" [source]

You can download the full report here, or read more about it on the homepage of the Center for American Progress.

From a European perspective this report is a valid argument to be careful with letting private business into funding public universities. Only real academic freedom and non-steered research can come up with very important innovations for a benign development of future societies.

Jon Kessler Retrospective

At the opening of 'Jon Kessler - Sculpture from the 80s and 90s' at the Fischer Landau Center for Art.

Pink Milkweed

Aphis nerii in upstate New York.