Brain overloaded. Let's see if I can untangle some of the threads and start to think clearly again?

Istanbul, Endless Bridge between East and West... on my mind lately. Galata Bridge, here I come!

This beautiful iron work by a Canadian artist Cal Lane, who transforms shovels, oil drums and currently a submarine into delicate lace-work, using the blow torch as a 'subtractive tool', burning away the steel to reveal intricate patterns.

A friend Luka aka Nova Deviator and his partner Wanda are making this intriguing telematic telepresence peformance, Transmittance. Watch a fragment of their preparations.

“Variations on the theme of videoconferencing, audio and visual connections between remote sites, are often referred to as telepresence in an art context. Related terms compete for bandwidth. Communicating a poetic sense of what is concealed has been referred to as teleabsence (Lozano-Hemmer 1997), and other projects are more appropriately designated as telerobotics, indicating action at a distance, and telepistemology, referring to knowledge at a distance (Goldberg 2001). The termtelematic (Roy Ascott 2005) broadens the scope because it is not pinned to presence or to the visual. Telematics permits fo a play across absence and presence, as well as range of dynamic impulses, both human and nonhuman. The suffix “matics” is quantly mid-twentieth-century (evoking “modern” kitchen appliances like “blend-o-matic”) is infused with enough ambiguity for it to be open to diverse underspecified interactions. [...] How are the human senses of intimacy and physical connection dependent on playing across what is revealed and what is concealed (rather then simply on what is visually displayed) – not just presence, not just absence, not just action, not just knowledge — all of these and more.”

– Susan Kozel in “CLOSER – perfomance, technologies, phenomenology

NGBK Gallery currently has a show 'Other Possible Worlds - Proposals on this Side of Utopia'. Always intriguing, although I don't go there as frequently having lost my much loved and sadly missed studio which was on the 4th floor. I'll have to wander down O'strasse and check it out, especially since I've just renamed my 'meta-nation' Bridgeland as a 'conceptual utopia'.

Aren't ALL utopias conceptual? I can hear you ask. Yes; indeed - some more than others!

This 6th MOMENTUM BIENNIAL sounds intriguing, and I just noticed one of the curators is a friend. There you go.

Imagine Being Here Now

The 6th Momentum Biennial, held in Moss, Norway, is predicated upon a conviction that the complexities of orientating the world depend on factors of memory and imagination that inevitably transpire within time and space. Indeed, we tend to emphasize the latter when considering human experience, but for each individual time and space expands back and forth, up and down and even sideways (to whatever elements each person takes into consideration at any given moment). The inherent present of each individual not only extends to momentary impressions but to his or her past as well as their expectations of the future, owing to the fact that we have the ability to imagine being somewhere else entirely, in any other place at any other time.

Curated by:
Markús Þór Andrésson (IS), Christian Skovbjerg Jensen (DK), Theodor Ringborg (SE), Aura Seikkula (FI), Marianne Zamecznik (NO)

That reminds me, an exhibition opening at MOP Space in Sydney, tomorrow night:

When Good Curators Go Bad. Genius!

curated by Michael Dagostino

If you stop creating do you stop being an artist? Are years of study wasted if you don't go on to have an arts practice? Can you be an artist and curator at the same time? Without being sentimental the exhibition framework for When Good Curators Go Bad is quite simple, if a curator/director/arts administrator has completed an arts degree or equivalent, practiced and has worked within the arts industry for a period of 5 years without making, than they were selected. When Good Curators Go Bad opens up a dialogue from the past to question what is an artist and how it is defined in today's society

This may shock you, but not all people who have Fine Arts qualifications end up as successful practising artists. I know, right? Who'da thought it. When Good Curators Go Bad is an exploration of what happens to the people who get degrees in art and are working in the arts but not as artists. "Was there a point?" the exhibition asks, and "What are you doing now?" and "Hey, wanna be in a show?" Conceived by Michael D'Agostino, who is Studio Co-ordinator at Parramatta Artists' Studios, the show features artists who are known for their careers as arts professionals. Kon Gouriotis is director of visual arts for the Australia Council, for instance, Lisa Havilah is CEO ofCarriageWorks, and Bec Dean Michael Rolfe is CEO of Museums & Galleries NSW. These are people who are doing pretty well. But, one must ask, is it ART?

Interesting as we had a similar provocation to discuss in Nida symposium, offered by Hanna:

'everyone can be an artist, can everyone be a curator?' seems to be a hot topic.

Now onto the second row of tabs, maybe once I get all these filtered out I'll free up extra brain cycles available to actually focus on getting some work done. Although I have comprehensively updated T_R_A_C_E_S Editions with all kinds of interesting reading material - still more to come!

Aymeric de Tapol released his latest CD, Static Island - sounds beautiful and minimal. Buy it.

Looking forward to the McLuhan Centennial Weekend in Berlin: Celebrating the centenary of Canadian media philosopher and visionary Marshall McLuhan, and his impact and legacy on European art and media culture. Especially the launch of DJ Spooky album (curious after picking up signals from a fascinating interview he did on Radio France International during my sojourn in Nida - listen above) the symposium and film screenings, also finding myself some new Canadians at the Embassy :)

«Art at its most significant is a Distant Early Warning System that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen to it»

Marshall McLuhan, 1969

The ufaFabrik, International Centre for Culture and Ecology in Wedding is opening on 16th June.

The Naked and Famous, Young Blood is my song of the day...

Going to try my hand at google sketch-up for all the project ideas that I need to plan in 3D. How hard can it be? At least some of the many singing bridge models and instruments may be realised.

Made a batch of something similar to but not quite Baba Ghanoush.

Definitely want to do the Marimekko design workshop at Design Festival International.

These are things I didn't write about yet, but have kept on tab from the last few days:

How to use a semicolon; instructions complete with dinosaurs...

On important men and their defense due entirely to level of perceived importance.

Why to boycott the Italian Pavilion at Venice Biennale - in a word: NEPOTISM

This American life podcast - The Invention of Money

KCRW Morning Becomes Eclectic - The Low Anthem - nicely melancholic in a summery way