Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

New Provisions Library Website – Soft Launch

Saturday, July 31st, 2010

SignalFire has moved here.  In the coming weeks, data from Provisions old site will be updated and migrated to the new site.  Keep checking the new site for updates and enhancements. Send your feedback to: provisionslibrary@gmail.com.

The Imagination Station

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

Just one more example of artist run activism rejuvenating our nation’s post-industrial capital: The Imagination Station

“The Imagination Station is exploding from the ashes of a firebombed flophouse standing — barely — in the shadow of Detroit’s abandoned, antique train station. Painted colors splash from a second story window, and people congregate on the lawn to plan the future. It’s the work of a racially and generationally diverse team of community organizers, artists and activists who’ve united to show how dilapidation can be recycled into inspiration: They envision a combination community center, public art space and living quarters for resident artists. They also want to establish a model for sustainable restoration. The Imagination Station is a refinery pumping out the brand of idealistic, DIY fuel that’s helping rebuild, if not at least re-envision, Detroit.”

Click here to read on.

http://www.vimeo.com/13320745

I don’t own a pair of Keds, but that’s about to change…

Saturday, June 26th, 2010

On June 24th 2010, the all-American sneaker Keds announced its sponsorship of the Whitney Museum of American Art. In celebration of this sponsorship, Keds launch of the KedsWhitney Collection that will feature designs by celebrated conceptual artist Jenny Holzer printed on the iconic Champion® style shoe.

Holzer_kedswhitneycollection_low

Holzer, who has exhibited work during the famed Whitney Biennial, is known for using words and political phrases in a range of media such as LED signs, stone benches, T-shirts and grand-scale light projections in public spaces. For the KedsWhitney Collection, she has created a fresh take on the Keds classic Champion® silhouette by drawing inspiration from her own designs. Jenny Holzer’s limited-edition styles will feature a phrase from one of her signature text series, Survival: PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT applied to the Champion®, expected to retail in the range of $70 – $75 per pair. The shoes will be available at select Bloomingdale’s stores nationwide and online. The good part: All Keds’ profits from Jenny Holzer’s line will directly benefit the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Holzer_kedswhitney_hightopBLK

Holzer_KedsWhitneyCollection_hightopWHT

Usually a skeptic of corporate intentions behind cause-related marketing, it was odd to find myself raving in full support about this particular project. Most likely my admiration for Holzer’s work and the many visits to the Whitney have naturally made me an easy target for this particular product. Although I have never bought into any other cause-related marketing campaign before, I truly believe in this unique and utterly brilliant collaboration.

Given the three strong corporate players, this project has the potential to reach new audiences, promote Holzer’s work, generate funding for the Whitney Museum- and, most importantly, bring art into people’s everyday lives. I also enjoy the fact that having dozens of people boasting punchy Holzer phrases across the U.S.  fits neatly into Holzer’s overall artistic intent.

Keds will continue the collection in the Fall with artists Laura Owen and Laura Owens and Sarah Crowner, also two Whitney Biennialists. A portion of the sale profits will also go to the Whitney Museum. The more I think about the project, the more I like it. So, mark your calendars for the release on July 8th,2010 —I have a feeling these sneakers are going to be museum-worthy.

Who should I cheer for?

Monday, June 21st, 2010

demographic comparison of Brazil and Portugal

[With thanks to A.P. for the tip.]

Love Football | Hate Poverty: Ranking the World Cup 2010 teams based on social justice indicators

Who Should I Cheer For?

[Cross-posted to the blog of Goal 2010!, a soccer and social media project. Graphic: screen grab of comparison of  Group H teams Portugal and its former colony Brazil.]

Men With Balls in New York

Sunday, June 20th, 2010

Zidane Head Butt

apexart
291 Church Street
New York, New York

June 10 – July 11
Men With Balls: The Art of the 2010 World Cup

Curated by Simon Critchley

Including work by artists Miguel Calderon • Mark Leckey • Hellmuth Costard Maria Marshall • Liam Gillick • Santo Tolone • Douglas Gordon and Uri Tzaig • Philippe Parreno
memorabilia from Roger Bennett • Bill Shankly
match results read by Mark E. Smith

“The FIFA World Cup is the most important and widely watched sporting event in the world. The germinal idea for this exhibition is very simple: to create the perfect football environment, a sort of mini-soccer paradise at apexart for watching games. Around the games themselves, there will be talks, events, and a series of works, objects, and activities that will expand the spectacle into a more conceptual and sensual rumination on the meaning and significance of football/soccer.

The World Cup is a spectacle in the strictly Situationist sense. It is a shiny display of nations in symbolic, atavistic national combat adorned with multiple layers of commodification, sponsorship and the seemingly infinite commercialization. It is an image of our age at its worst and most gaudy. But it is also something more, something bound up with difficult and recalcitrant questions of conflict, memory, history, place, social class, masculinity, violence, national identity, tribe, and group. The hope of the exhibition Men With Balls is to construct a unique situation where these questions can be ruminated on collectively.

Football is working-class ballet. It’s an experience of enchantment. For an hour and a half, a different order of time unfolds and one submits oneself to it. A football game is a temporal rupture with the routine of the everyday: ecstatic, evanescent, and, most importantly, shared. At its best, football is about shifts in the intensity of experience. And stories will multiply from that experience, stories of heroes and villains, of triumph, and a gnawing sense of the injustice of defeat. The aim of the exhibition is to produce with this show some experience of being together with others in a group, watching a game, waiting for something marvelous, unexpected, and possibly magical to happen. And it will happen.”

MORE [schedule of screenings of matches and curator's statement.]

[Cross-posted to the blog of Goal 2010!, a soccer and social media project. Text and graphic from apex press release.]

16 June: This is our day!

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

16 June 1976: ‘This is our day’
by Lucille Davie

“It is a day violently etched on the South African collective conscience. Commemorated over 30 years later as Youth Day, an official holiday, it is the day that honours the deaths of hundreds of Soweto schoolchildren, a day that changed the course of the country’s history: 16 June 1976.

On that day the government and the police were caught off guard, when the simmering bubble of anger of schoolchildren finally burst, releasing an intensity of emotion that the police controlled in the only manner they knew how: with ruthless aggression. SA History Online puts the number of dead at 200, far higher than the official figure of 23.”

more

[From the History and Heritage section of SouthAfrica.info. Photo by Sam Nzima. Cross-posted to the blog of Goal 2010!, a soccer and social media project.]

Futbol Day

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

Outpost for Contemporary Art
1268 N. Ave 50
Los Angeles, CA

Outpost Cup

ON June 6, 2010, Outpost will host the Outpost Cup to launch its new South American initiative and to bring the community together for a day full of soccer, art, music, food and fun.

Taking place one week prior to the World Cup, the Outpost Cup soccer tournament will encourage local artists, art fans, families, college students and soccer players to bring their creative and athletic talents to the field.

Tournament Structure
* 8 players vs. 8 players.
* Games will be played on both halves of the field, simultaneously.
* Games will be 30 minutes long with no halves.
* Teams will be scheduled to play 3 games each during the day
* The day will end with a championship game in the “competitive division.”
* The Outpost Cup Championship Trophy will be a one-of-a-kind artist-made masterpiece!

South American Artist Residency Cycle
Devoted to building bridges between our local community and the larger global landscape, Outpost’s next residency cycle will bring six South American artists and artist teams to Los Angeles over a period of two years to produce City-based projects fueled by the artists’ extended presence in our community.

[Cross-posted to The Data Stream. Text and graphic from Outpost.]

“Up There”

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

The loss of public space to obtrusive advertisement is something to lament. Billboards and the like stain our landscapes and architecture. That being said, the following is a beautifully told story of a dying art form: that of hand painted billboards. The following artists use a similar technique to that which Michelangelo used to paint the Sistine Chapel, but must constantly contend with faster and cheaper means of advertisement: a remaining luddite’s sentiment highlighted by the complexity of the ever mobile forces of production, advertisement, and invasion in the current age.

Up There” from The Ritual Project:

http://www.vimeo.com/11175747

Women are Heroes

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

kenya_kibera_JR

Anonymous artist/photographer, JR, has been exhibiting his art in the public realm for several years now – always in unsuspected places, mostly illegally. His up-close full frame portraits detail human expression and its worth and show up in sometimes controversial settings with the purpose of non-violent confrontation.

“Portrait of a Generation” portrayed suburban “thugs” which was “posted, in huge formats, in the bourgeois districts of Paris.”

“Face 2 Face” was allegedly the largest illegal photo exhibition to date. Portraits of Israelis and Palestinians were posted face to face in eight Palestinian and Israeli cities, and on the both sides of the Security fence / Separation wall.

“In 2008, he embarked for a long international trip for “Women,” a project in which he “underlines the dignity of women who are often the targets of conflicts.”

The following is the trailer for JR’s new film, “Women are Heroes,” the story behind this recent project.

The film showed at this years Cannes Film Festival.

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Concert for the Coast

Friday, May 14th, 2010

The effects of the oil catashrophe in the Gulf worsen daily just as more and more corporate and governmental greed and incompetency, which has caused and perpetuated the problems therein, are revealed.

In response, the Hangout Beach Music and Arts Festival, which will be held this year in Gulf Shores, Ala. from May 14 to May 16, as well as a one-night gig in New Orleans on Sunday, is now donating all profits to Gulf Coast relief.

The festival, now titled “Concert for the Coast,” will feature artists such as The Roots, Girl Talk, John Legend, Ben Harper, Alison Krauss, Ozomatli, Jakob Dylan and Three Legs Feat. Neko Case and so many others, making quite the eclectic mix.

If you are thinking of attending and donating to a necessary cause here is video of Jakob Dylan and Three Legs Feat. Neko Case to get you pumped up:

YouTube Preview Image