Minidoka on My Mind, Roger Shimomura’s new exhibition, opens May 8th in New York City at Flomenhaft Gallery. His unparalleled insights into the conditions of life in Japanese internment camps during WW II stunningly blend humor and popular culture styling with an unmistakable– and unforgettable bite.

Fernetici / Fernetti, video still, 2008

Ljubljana has currently no major exhibition space for contemporary art, with the exception of important independent spaces such as Skuc Galerija and P74. Although both galleries have socially and politically relevant shows on display, Mala Galerija, the contemporary art affiliation of the momentarily closed Moderna Galerija, presents the most compelling one: Lost Territories.

Considering every European nation as having a larger territory in its memory, sometimes extending beyond its present day borders, artist Saso Sedlacek regards territory not only as an abstract notion. In our everyday life, it is in the first place a piece of real estate: the house or apartment in which we live.

Trieste and its surrounding area is a historically traumatic region for both Italy and Slovenia. Once a grand cosmopolitan Austro-Hungarian city, it lost its central European setting after the First World War and became gradually a declining Italian harbor town. Trieste was the window onto the world for many Slovenes and consequently it permanently marked Slovene culture. Being close to Ljubljana, the two cities grew apart over the years.

With Lost Territories, Saso Sedlacek proposes to bring the two cities back together, imagining that eliminating the border in people’s minds would be mutually beneficial. He provokingly states: “In Kosovo, Albanians bought overpriced real estate from the local Serbian population for several decades and consequently established an independent state. Real estate in Trieste, which is an hour’s drive away from Ljubljana, is at the moment cheaper than in Slovenia. Today there is no longer a need to create new countries or officially move the borders in Europe. As is evident in Kosovo, these can be moved simply from one apartment to another.”

The exhibition is based on research into specific aspects of the elimination of the border between Italy and Slovenia caused by the Slovenian inclusion in the EU in 2004. The artist designed a new flag that combines the respective flags of both countries and hung it for one day at the border between Italy and Slovenia.

Lost Territories displays this flag as well as a video that documents the action. Different available real estate in Trieste is on display while a computer allows the visitor to go online and actually buy the property. Dealing with environmental issues in the broadest sense of the word, Saso Sedlacek redefines common notions of Slovene national identity within global trends of technology, ecology and the ideological void after the transition period.

Here for Saso Sedlacek.

Pau D’Amato, ‘Bedroom Door’, 2007

In his thoughtful exhibition essay accompanying Black Is, Black Ain’t, curator Hamza Walker considers race as a biological fiction “that remains a social fact whose history more than compensates for all that science disavows.” Taking its title from Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, it explores a shift in the rhetoric of race from an earlier emphasis on inclusion to a present moment where racial identity is being simultaneously rejected and retained. The exhibition brings together works by 26 black and non-black artists whose work together examines a moment where the cultural production of so-called “blackness” is concurrent with efforts to make race socially and politically irrelevant.

At the Renaissance Society in Chicago, until June 8.

Eyebeam’s expansive exhibition FEEDBACK brings together a wide variety of artists, designers, architects and engineers on the topic of “sustainability”. Projects range from public art projects and industrial design to DIY energy solutions and software tools, to inspire discussion and action around a topic that is becoming increasingly meaningless and overused.

The works on display are intended to enlighten and entertain, and ultimately compel viewers to move beyond passive spectatorship. Some of the projects explore civic engagement: Lean Gauthier’s Sow-In (see image above) activates the public, in partnership with local community gardening groups, to sow the seeds of those food plants most in danger of extinction.

Rebecca Bray and Britta Riley’s DrinkPeeDrinkDrinkPee questions the role that our bodies play in larger eco-systems. The project includes an installation and a DIY kit for turning your pee into fertilizer. Other ones, such as Andrea Polli’s Queensbridge Wind Power Project, offer conceptual proposals. Polli investigates how clean renewable wind power might be integrated into the landmark architecture of the Queensboro Bridge.

FEEDBACK is there to challenge and inspire, and while doing so offers pro-active but critical alternatives to the unsustainability of our way of life and culture in general.

Here for Eyebeam.

NaJa & deOstos, The Hanging Cemetery of Baghdad, 2008

In a recent article published on the Foreign Policy in Focus website, Provisions’ associate John Feffer writes about a compelling political project initiated by artist Joseph DeLappe. Iraqimemorial.org is an online exhibition and call for participation to propose concepts for memorials to the thousands of Iraqi civilians killed in the War. DeLappe has invited artists, architects and designers to submit their projects to a website, where they will be judged by jurors and the general public. The website itself will then be a virtual monument to the 81,632-1,120,000 civilians who have died. Reflecting on various issues that block the actual realization of monuments, Feffer writes: “In a world increasingly dominated by Facebook, Google and YouTube, such a virtual monument may well have as much longevity as anything made of concrete or granite.”

The diversity of approaches is remarkable:

* A three-panel painting of an aerial attack on civilians in homage to Diego Rivera.
* A representation of a wall destroyed by a bomb attack.
* A billboard proclaiming This War Is Unjust.
* A thin copper strip that encircles Baghdad.
* Photographs of a model in various locations wearing a T-shirt saying Kiss Me I’m Iraqi on one side and Kill Me I’m Iraqi on the other.
* Test of tubes of blood substituting for the profits of major oil companies as represented in a bar graph.
* A garden in the shape of Iraq.

Here for the online exhibition.

Here for the article.

Sam Durant, Proposal for Iraq War Memorial, Symbolic Transposition of effects of war in Iraq to the U.S. and England: 10 Downing St., Parliament, U.S. Capitol and the White House [detail], 2007

The ICA in London did a similar project last year when they invited 26 artists from around the world and used the exhibition medium as a backdrop for proposed memorials to the War. The memorials addressed topics such as the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the country’s slide into civil war, the deaths of soldiers and civilians, and the conflict’s relation to global jihadism and the War on Terror. The exhibition was self-critical, in the sense that it recognized the impossibility of finding a definitive memorial. It explored different views of the Iraq War and questioned what can or should be memorialized in the context of an ongoing conflict.

Here for an article on the ICA show, Memorial to the Iraq War.

Brian Boyko did a short-subject documentary (27 minutes) exploring the DIY/Maker movement via last Fall’s Maker Fair Austin.

The third annual Bay Area Maker Faire will be held May 3-4 at the San Mateo Fairgrounds. If it’s anything like last year’s, it should be a spectacular event. I’ll be there. Here’s what I had to say about last year’s Faire: Makers vs. The Blob.

Here to watch the documentary.
Here to find out more about Maker Faire.

Mapping as artistic practice can be a highly subversive tool; I’m especially attracted to its ability to provoke radical new perceptions of places, people and power structures. Merging geography, art, science and activism, it’s a perfect vehicle to promote social change. An Atlas is a traveling exhibition of radical cartography. The participating artists, architects and collectives take on issues ranging from identity to land-use to migration while exploring the map’s role as a political agent.

Currently on view until March 12 at the Redhouse Art Center in Syracuse, New York.

The exhibition coincides with a publication by The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest. An Atlas of Radical Cartography is a collection of 10 maps and essays about social issues from globalization to garbage; surveillance to extraordinary rendition; statelessness to visibility; deportation to migration:

[…] Such new understandings of the world are the prerequisites of change. We define radical cartography as the practice of mapmaking that subverts conventional notions in order to actively promote social change. The object of critique in An Atlas of Radical Cartography is not cartography per se (as is generally meant by the overlapping term critical cartography), but rather social relations. Our criteria for selecting these ten maps emphasized radical inquiry and activist engagement.

Edited by Lize Mogel & Alexis Bhagat, with contributions by Institute of Applied Technology, Trevor Paglen & John Emerson, Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), Jane Tsong, and many others.

Here for more info.

Organized by Leonardo Education Forum and the University of Texas at Dallas, Social Fabrics demonstrates “convergences between individual expression and statement making, on the one hand, and the phenomenology of ‘network society’ on the other”. To put it more simply: the exhibition is a fashion show in which artists combine wearable art, locative media and sensor technology to express social commentary on life in a high tech society. Commenting on our digital media-infused and fashion driven lifestyles, the artists in the show express themselves in provocative new ways. As curators Susan Ryan and Patrick Lichty point out, “Fashion and digital technology have been interdependent at least since the development of Jacquard’s loom in the 1800’s.”

Social Fabrics is organized in conjunction with the annual conference of the College Art Association, February 20–23.

Not in the show, but equally worthwhile checking out, is Dutch artist collective De Geuzen, ‘a foundation for multi-visual research’. They have done thought-provoking projects with wearables, tactile media, uniforms and mobility. Researching the connection between everyday life and open source software, De Geuzen make tools available that allow communities to actively participate in their projects and eventually, at least in theory, turn them into their own. However, while De Geuzen point out the complexities of distributed authorship, they make it clear that they are far from optimistic about the enthusiasm that surrounds the open source movement. Wearable Resistance is a dress adorned with LED that can be programmed to depict images or text, such as:

Here for other De Geuzen projects.
Here for Social Fabrics.

“with the garden as metaphor and inspiration, los angeles comes together for a fusion exhibition / fair / convention / party / happening / meeting / classroom / exhibit / town square / performance to experiment, meditate and speculate on our current and future ecologies.”

Artists, architects, designers, environmentalists, gardeners, and writers have taken on the ecology of Los Angeles for a six-week-long show, the gardenLAB experiment. With over 50 installations and events, as well as weekly programs including lectures, talks, screenings, and picnics; the exhibit is an extensive comment on our environment. Considering the garden as a laboratory, the projects range from ‘a school for corn to teach about the humans that control their fate’ to ‘a compost pile that slowly decomposes as the plants it feeds grow’. On view at the Wind Tunnel exhibition space at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, until Oct. 16.

Here for more info.

Here for an article.

Image: “Protesting On Demand” by The Floating Lab Collective, which premiered in Provisions’ Multimediale, April, 2007.

BrushFire is Provisions’ new national public arts initiative showcasing key contemporary artists whose public projects engage crucial social issues such as immigration, the war in Iraq, food, sustainable energy, housing, the electoral process, the economy, health, and the environment. Taking place in highly visible public settings such as state fairs, suburban shopping centers, public parks and highly trafficked recreational areas around the United States, BrushFire aims to enrich the environment for public discussion about the value of democracy in the crucial run-up to national elections in November, 2008.

BrushFire artists include The Beehive Collective, The Floating Lab Collective, Futurefarmers, Ligorano/Reese, Jon Winet, Rick Lowe and Michael Rakowitz. BrushFire will culminate in an exhibition at The American University Museum in September, along with a DC-wide festival of exhibitions and arts events on key social issues.

BrushFire is supported by the CrossCurrents Foundation.