Avatar has made more dollars in the last month than there are people in China, but not all of its fans left the theater feeling happy. Psychology Today reports that some experienced depression and even suicidal thoughts after seeing Avatar. Here’s an example of the post-movie melancholia an Avatar fan felt:

“Ever since I went to see ‘Avatar’ I have been depressed. Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na’vi made me want to be one of them. I can’t stop thinking about all the things that happened in the film and all of the tears and shivers I got from it. I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do it I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora and the everything is the same as in ‘Avatar.’

No, it’s not because Avatar has a silly script or condescendingly simplifies the complex historical narratives of native peoples. The reason is that some Avatar fans can’t handle being thrust back into the bleak reality of early 21st century Earth, a dying planet whose quickly decaying beauty can’t match the shimmering, bioluminescent landscapes of Pandora (the planet where Avatar is set). Finding the IMdB discussions full of “trolls and 12 year old deconstructors”  (according to one Avatar enthusiast) the blockbuster film’s fans have created their own online forum communities, one of which includes a thread entitled ‘Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible’ And an antidote is indeed desperately needed.

Another forum member offered a rather comprehensive solution:

“Start living like Neytiri: in touch with nature, the environment, and not being greedy and wasteful. Pass on the burger, for something more healthy for you and less cruel to animals. Spend your time on this forum, or volunteering in your free time, instead of getting high or drinking, twiddling your thumbs, being apathetic and complaining about how bad the world is. Don’t get swept away by the wave of negativity, live your dream. Your life has only two switches, to shine or not to shine. There is no ‘apathy’ setting. If you’re on apathy setting you might as well sign your world away to destruction. When you get discouraged by everyone around you, be courageous like Jake, and jump on the leonopteryx. Be the change you want to see in your world. There are only so many people on this earth, the more of them that are doing positive things, the less of them that are out there doing negative things. It’s unfortunate that we live in a world where, just by pulling a trigger or making a corporate decision, one single greedy human being can wipe out the hard works of love of many people. But this is why we need to stop focusing on money and start focusing on our environment. Because we have the intelligence to kill ourselves, but not the wisdom to stop it. What will our money buy, when everything that is worth having is destroyed? The only way you can fill the emptiness you feel after this movie, is to jump on the leonopteryx.”

Speaking as someone who has seen this movie (in Copenhagen, actually, so the Danish subtitles sort of distorted some of the experience, since parts of the dialogue are in Na’vi, the lilting language of idyllic Pandora’s noble natives) I can tell you that it’s not worth getting this worked up about, just in case that wasn’t clear. It’s a great looking movie but it’s certainly not a great movie. Indeed, Jake Sully, the Na’vi’s human advocate (dressed up as an alien for diplomatic purposes (don’t worry, it’s  a long story)) fulfills the tired troupe of White Savior, like some sort of interstellar Lawrence of Arabia or Kevin Costner’s character in the eponymous Dances with Wolves. Don’t take my word for it though, this is Ezili Danto’s interpretation. Personally, I can’t find a reason to disagree with her. So maybe one way to beat those “Avatar blues” is to remember that, at the end of the day, two important facts a) the millions of dollars James Cameron spent making Avatar (and the subsequent cost of pricey tickets for 3-D showings) all could’ve gone to, I don’t know, cleaning up The Chesapeake Bay or subsidizing wind farm construction. At least something less vain, frivolous, and decadent  than a major motion picture.  And, of course, b) it’s just a movie. A great antidote to movies are books. I suggest Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece Blood Meridian, a novel depicting panoramas surpassing Pandora’s in primordial beauty.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art
5905 Wilshire Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90036
1.323.857.6000

Your Bright Future: 12 Contemporary Artists from Korea
through September 20

“The exhibition features work by a generation of artists who have emerged since the mid-1980s—some well-known and others on the brink of recognition—working on the cutting edge of international art trends and within a distinctly Korean context. Featuring site-specific installations as well as video, computer animation, and sculpture, the exhibition represents each artist through a large-scale installation piece or substantial body of work.”

more:
Los Angeles Times review by Christopher Knight

Los Angeles Times article, “From 99-cent Only Store to LACMA, Korea-style,” on participating artist Choi Jeong-Hwa

[Text from the LACMA website. Graphic from the LA times. Caption: "Bahc Yiso, 'Your Bright Future,' 2002/2009, electric lamps, wood and wires. Cross-posted to The Data Stream.Thanks to FB friend JJ in LA for the tip. ]

Just minutes before the early arrivals on the mythical red carpet for the   81st Annual Academy Awards, we’re jumping the gun and awarding the closing credits of Slumdog Millionaire the Best Picture Oscar. [Click here to view it on the "Fans of Slumdog Millionaire" Facebook page.]

And in the spirit of full disclosure, we are in fact rooting for this curious picture to do well tonight, in great measure in the hopes it will promote a thoughtful discussion of India and globalization.

‘Slumdog’ brings to mind John Singleton’s 1991 “Boyz in the Hood” and Michael Cimino’s 1978 “The Deer Hunter” as much as it does the more often cited “Oliver Twist” [1838] by Charles Dickens. ‘Slumdog’ depicts an India rife with peril, poverty and cruelty.  ‘Boyz’ depicts a hypertense and violence-ridden Los Angeles ‘hood.’ The Deerhunter, an imagined Vietnam where betting on dueling Russian roulette contestants fuels a local gaming industry. In all three, there’s an overstating of difference and otherness in the treatment of their subjects.

That said, buzzkill comments above aside, the exuberance and against-all-odds hopefulness of the film justifies the throngs it has won over. Clearly it captures the worldwide zeitgeist of what may well come to be known as the Obama era. And as stated, the closing music + dance sequence, the film’s most direct nod to Bollywood style, is absolutely Oscar-worthy.

For more, we recommend the Wikipedia entry that includes reporting on international reviews, and the mixed reception the film has received in India.

Feeling deceived and pessimistic after the 2004 US presidential election, Seattle artists Deborah Faye Lawrence conducted an e-mail survey asking artists, writers, friends and strangers to share their concept of an ideally perfect place, and their thoughts on the social, political and moreal aspects of this utopia. Simply she asked:”What does utopia look like to you?” The 15,000 words which she received in response to her question were then worked into her art and resulted in 26 mixed-media collages that critically and satirically speak out against injustice and apathy.

“Treating pictures and words with equal weight, it is not only what Lawrence says, but how she says it. Images shift in scale and pictoral style. Photographs, reproductions, occasionally painted illustrations and words are flawlessly integrated within an imaginary field….She lays her heart and intellect on the line in each piece. While her arguably relevant concerns are set out with communication as a goal, each narrative is laced by the sheer power of what David Hickey called to our attention several years ago- visual beauty. And that, matched with intellect and passion, is immensely satisfying.”
-Frances De Vuono, Review Artsweek, September 2006

‘Dee Dee Does Utopia’, Deborah Faye Lawrence, Published by Marquand Books, 2008

Here’s a video interview with Lawrence.

The much talked-about Romanian film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, opens in wide release this week.

Set in Romania in the 1980s, towards the end of Nicolae Ceauşescu’s dictatorship, the film’s straightforward narrative explores ‘a day in the life of’ a college girl who arranges an illegal abortion session for her pregnant friend.

The way director Cristian Mungiu treats the story reveals his extraordinary talents as a writer as well as a director. His visual style –a realist technique that occasionally adapts cinematic forms of various film genres, including the thriller– and the seemingly improvised, but in fact meticulously authored, dialogue turn the film into a masterpiece that goes beyond a simplistic discussion of the pro-choice debate.

Instead of taking sides, Mungiu explores the moral implications of the characters’ decisions, as “attention is focused on choice itself- the countless choices we make every day- as the determining factor of our character and of our humanity,” notes film critic Amy Taubin.

Exploring the final game of the 2006 Soccer World Cup through 12 different vantage points, this multi-layered video-installation by Harun Farocki analyzes the spectacle of sports through technology and statistical information. The event, held in Germany, was reportedly seen by 1.5 billion viewers worldwide. Unfolding in simultaneous, real-time montage, Deep Play depicts the artist’s own footage of the game, official FIFA footage, charts of player stats, real-time 2D and 3D animation sequences, and stadium surveillance, exposing the visual, informational, and technological design of these grand social events. Deep Play, the latest installment in Farocki’s ongoing investigation into the politics of audiovisual representation, premiered last summer at Documenta in Kassel and is currently on view for the first time in the US at Greene Naftali Gallery in New York. A must.

There’s an interesting combination of exhibitions currently going on at the Orange County Museum, CA. One of them consists of musically new works by the unique Joseph Grigely. Here’s a text I wrote when the same body of work was being shown at the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore earlier this summer:

“We presumably know what a conversation sounds like – but what does a conversation look like?”

(Joseph Grigely)

Joseph Grigely caught the attention of the art world at the beginning of the nineties with a series of works he called Conversations with the Hearing. Deaf from the age of ten as the result of an accident, Grigely collects the chats he has with people who don’t know sign language and to whom lip reading proves difficult. Ranging from intimate displays on tables or walls to room-sized installations, the series displays handwritten notes that are exchanged between Grigely and his conversation partners at social gatherings; mostly gallery openings, bars or restaurants. The resulting series of witty and wry installations, explores the full potential as well as the numerous limitations of everyday human communication.

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Why would anyone want to go to a war-show? Why would anyone interested in contemporary art want to visit an exhibition that explores the exact same territory as that which we witness abundantly in the media on a daily basis? When talking about the war, it is all too easy to touch upon common ground: the knowledge of a continuous fiasco that is a widespread presumption. So, why raising consciousness about something that we already know everything about? And, if you decide to explore this dicey terrain, how to be at the same time critical and have an artistically compelling significance?

Here is an exhibition that proves the full potential of politically significant but poetic exhibition-making.
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The world of popular culture and the world of contemporary art both idolize the artist as superstar, a rapidly rising (or falling) hero; as a brilliant and foremost individual genius. This star-maker machinery keeps the Western cult of individuality permanently alive, which renders it continuously superior to the non-objectivity of ideas, politics and social imagination. Despite our self-declared and cultivated postmodern personas (which declared the death of the author a long time ago), we simply like to cling to the ego fetish of old-fashioned Romantic genius.

In their recent book Collectivism After Modernism, Blake Stimson and Gregory Sholette adventurously attack the cult of the mastermind while delving into the specific histories of collective art practice. Spanning the globe from Europe to Japan, to the United States, Africa, Cuba and Mexico, the editors have asked significant writers, curators and theorists to explore ways in which collectives function within cultural norms and social conventions. Although each of the contributors brings a highly personal and geopolitical approach to the exploration of these themes, Stimson and Sholette set forth some compelling ideas in their provocative introductory text.

The authors relate collectivism directly to modernism and the avant-garde. Indeed, when considering the historical avant-garde before the Second World War, it is clear that modernism was an attempt to develop an alternative to the then present social life by means of art. From Mondrian’s aim to struggle “against everything individual in man” to Magritte’s “L’invention collective”, modernism was directly involved with the realization of communist ideals, to affirm community and social being. The modernist dream came abruptly to an end immediately after the Second World War, when collectivism was strangled by Cold War paranoia.

In the US and Western European countries, collectivism became associated with a loss of individual will. Instead, a new kind of gathering was established in random social, urban and work related groupings. Stimson and Sholette underline the constant banishment of collectivist tendencies from these groupings, and point out their return in mass-consumed popular culture as the unnamable and dangerous “others” (in the form of aliens, animals or secret societies). A new dynamic collectivism, one of mass culture, replaced old notions related to communism. This so-called ‘collectivism after modernism’ represented the desire of artists to speak collectively and to initiate artworks outside institutional structures, delivering them straight into the world of mass culture.

Stimson and Sholette make a very clear point: despite the art world’s inability to disconnect artistic value from individual achievements, many art practices are accomplished through their collective nature. The other texts in the book illustrate this notion clearly and urgently, sometimes maybe too extensively. But that’s just a minor critique: Collectivism After Modernism is a superb provocation of the market driven art world, a statement in favor of something more social, more collective and more real than art.

More info: here.

‘Collectivism After Modernism’, Blake Stimson and Gregory Sholette, editors, University of Minnesota Press, 2007

(This text first appeared in hART magazine.)