Ground Zero

Giant, Previously Unseen Structure In Our Galaxy

"The structure spans more than half of the visible sky, from the constellation Virgo to the constellation Grus, and it may be millions of years old."

images by NASA

Niche Flushing Meadows Corona Park

AO& Fall Residency New York City

This fall, the Austrian collective AO& is on a residency in New York which is happening as a seperate event alongside of John Gerrards exhibition at Simon Preston gallery. For the NYC residency, AO& has adopted a yet-to-be-renovated building in the lower east side as their base to conduct the daily cooking of exquisit meals for a limited amount of people.

For their cooking practice AO& follow a distinct concept. They only use ingredients of 'disclosed origin' meaning they cook with foodstuffs they have themselves traced back to the producers.
It is important to note that this does not imply following the concept of local-regional foods (e.g. 'grocal'), but rather a practice concerned with 'connecting' to the origin of what we eat. This allows AO& to cook with a strong sense for the food, using it with respect and forwarding it with the best intentions, 'righteous' to the guests of their dinners. So the meals in NYC are composed of a mixture of  ingredients: salt from Altaussee, meat from upstate New York or lemons from California for example.

I enjoyed (truly) a meal cooked by AO& on last Sunday. The antidote of the raw space in the lower east side and the exquisite cooking was remarkable. AO& guided the guests through the evening with their cooking performance (see pictures below) and explanations about the ingredients used for the food. It was evident that AO& have, through the disclosure of aliments, a strong connection to the food they cook, which put quite simply tasted amazing.

An eleven course menu started with a simple glass of original NYC-water, followed by a light soup, then becoming heavier and saltier. The pictures below take you through some of the courses and show glimpses of how AO& works 'hand-on' to prepare the single courses.

AO&'s practice reminds us of how important and luxurious 'good food' is. Nowadays, that a healthy and benign nutrition is only available to the smallest portion of the population, one interpretation for their (cooking)art is to make clear how difficult it is to prepare food of good quality with the knowledge of what you are actually eating and as well how time consuming that can be.

This post has been updated with pictures from a second dinner with AO& in NYC. There was definitely an evolution happening in their cooking style during their NYC residency. Courses are shifting from day to day depending on inspiration and availability of condiments. The diversity of ingredients represented in the NYC fall residency cooking series was rather modest compared to other AO& dinners which nourish on a vast network of disclosed suppliers. In NYC AO& had to source all ingredients within a few days which caused a limited set of condiments which in turn made the dinners very focused and reduced.

 

 Even the microscopic leftovers made painters blush. 

John Gerrard's Cuban School

Since Thursday John Gerrard is showing his new work Cuban School (Community 5th of October) and his work Lufkin at Simon Preston gallery in the Lower East Side. There is another event attached to Gerrard's show, the fall residency of AO&, but more on that in a subsequent post. Find here some pictures and thoughts on the opening and works.

"Cuban School (Community 5th of October) 2010 is a portrait of an existing building, situated in the countryside outside Havana. Constructed in the 1960's to a modular Eastern Bloc design, the school is, though actively used and home to 75 school children, essentially a 'functional ruin', disinheriting its formal integrity through entropy and decay. The site continues the artist's interest in modular, pre-fabricated structures, questioning their resilience and capacity to exist as potent entities once complicit resources are depleted or removed." [source]

 Next to Cuban School, another Gerrard piece was exhibited at the gallery. Lufkin (image below) is portraiying a still working oil pump in the American landscape and is part of Gerrard's series of oil pump portraits.

Gerrard's pieces are representations, portraits of often invisible industrial icons or artifacts in the landscape. Through digital imaging, 3D modelling and gaming software these structures are revived in a digtal realm, kept alive by art boxes (customized computers) to become real time representations of themselves. As gaming is frequently a way to escape reality and to find ourselves in a world we can freely create, Gerrard's pieces draw a virtual portrait about real situations, maintaining them, making them visible and society able to dicuss them.Gerrard shows his pieces as well in public space (currently in London) which makes these art pieces accessible to the general public.

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During a recent lecture at MOMA, Gerrard showed his pieces 'Grow Finish Unit (near Eva, Oklahoma)' (image above) and 'Sow Farm (near Libbey, Oklahoma)' which are virtual portraits of fully automized pig production units in the American landscape. Describing his work process, Gerrard told about how he found these unmanned (only 'pigged') units in the landscape ('piggeries' are automatically feeding piglets and pigs which are 'harvested' according to schedule), documented and recreated them with his team in Vienna, Austria. For Gerrard it is interesting to render neglected instruments of industrial production visible as icons thereby picking up topics previously neglected by society. He as well mentioned his interest in the piggerie's role of producing excess nitrogen and showed works soon to be finished. I am very much looking forward to the explosive ballet. ;)

Gerrad works with the Austrian collective AO& which host dinners at his viennese studio during an annual 'fall residency'. Now AO& came to NYC to conduct their fall residency performing cooking events under a very strict codex for a limited amount if guests. We will experience that tonite and you can read about it in a subsequent post.

Buy Plastified Body Parts to be Fashionable

Did you ever think about owning a plasticized human being? Or wearing 'horse penis slice earrings'? You can fulfill your wishes now!

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Products such as these are now offered by 'Plastinarium Guben', a company founded by mister 'Body Worlds', Gunther von Hagens. I read an interview today in an Austrian newspaper in which he stated the potential of these products to be supporting female beauty for example.
I always found sections - through plant or animal tissue - very beautiful and can't help but finding these earrings and other products on the website on one hand extremely intriguing but as well far reaching. Is that what makes an artistic product? The products of Plastinarium are surely something to distinct yourself from others. Im curious where I will run into the first person using a 'bull penis walking stick' (for about 2500 €).

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Regarding the issue of wheater or not to use animal and human bodies for these purposes: According to von Hagens human bodies are only sold to referenced buyers who use them for educational purposes. At least you know what is in these products and you can see animal/biological beauty and showcase it on your own body. There are numerous items produced with animal ingredients of which you have no idea about so a well referenced, transparent and controversial item is by far better. Moreover, using plastified bull penisses as walking sticks may allow us to start a dialogue about body, beauty, decay, life etc. which may be much deeper than a dialogue arising from wearing a Svarovski crystal on your ear. ;)

 

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The Vanuatu Pacifica Foundation

During an exhibition last week my attention was drawn to a project founded by Dj Spooky. Spooky, together with Jordan Schachter, set out to start 'The Vanuatu Pacifica Foundation' on the island Tanna in Vanuatu. The fundraiser party for this project will be next Tuesday, November 9th. You can get tickets here.

"The Vanuatu Pacifica Foundation's mission with Tanna Center for The Arts is to provide contemporary arts, green energy and education programming that builds thriving creativity and quality of life for all participants. The center is a contemporary arts retreat that provides haven to invited contemporary artists while serving the subsistence economy of three traditional villages on the island through clean energy, eco-restorative operations." [source]

  The project was started by Dj Spooky during a visit on the island of Tanna as he was taken away by the heartly people of Vanuatu. While people of Vanuatu resisted the promises of a modern, urban life for a long time they are now faced with rapidly loosing their culture as young people get taken over by modern lifestyles which consume their souls and culture. Only by searching images on google with 'Vanuatu' as keyword you can get a feel of how fragile, already consumed and endangered the culture in Vanuatu is. The question is not to maintain people in their lifestyle, keeping them as sort of reminescence to the past, rather the stake is to empower them so they can proudly steer their islands into a sustainable future. One big issue in Vanuatu is the loss of languages, therefore the project explicitly aims at working together with locals to develop strategies to give young people in Vanuatu 'a reason to stay' as Esso Kapum puts it. 

 This project promises an interesting endeavour for highly skilled and capable individuals from the creative sector to take a step out of their world and spend time on Tanna in a residency program (it is called 'residency-in-context'). There they will be challenged and inspired by a situation being both pristine but as well rapidly developing as Vanuatu is exposed to global pressures such as climate change or urbanisation. The participants should therefore "explore their practise in a sustainable context" and "balance their engagement with art-making, applied technology, village culture and the perpetuation of a pristine setting"[source]. The residency will as well develop the participant's worldview and help them to subsequently work with an enriched experience when being back home in the urban jungle. 

 The next step in the project is fundraising (which looks good on kickstarter) and a competition for the architectural and development concept of the Tannac center for the arts. If you are interested to receive information about the project, sign up for the mailing list.  

All in all this is a very noble and promising project which is setting high stakes. I wish that the project will be a great success and will continue to follow developments. This should be a lighthouse project for projects which aim to make a difference by providing cultures the possibility to learn from each other.

EPOXI

One of the first amazing images of NASA's EPOXI mission flying by comet Hartley 2 at minimum distance of about 700 km (435 miles). The encounter took place at about 11 millions miles distance to earth. 

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Detail of the comet showing jets of gas heated by the sun.

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Watch the happy people at the mission's control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Closest contact in this video happens at about 01:35:00. Congratulations to mission control!