Code-switching is the linguist’s term for substituting one language for another in the course of a single conversation. “Oye, Teacher Bean,” a student once told me, “I couldn’t do mi tarea because mi tia was late and I had to watch mi sobrino hasta medianoche.” Notice that even though the sentence ping-pongs between Spanish and English, it’s still grammatically correct. To code switch, you need[…..]
Courtesy of the arts blog Hyperallergic, today we bring you the artwork of William Powhida. You have just a few more hours to catch his solo show “Bill by Bill” at Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles. If you’re in the area you should definitely make the effort to go: the work is sharp and funny and outspoken in a way that’s rarely seen in a[…..]
Driving the bleak stretches of highway to south-western Sydney to see “Pigeon Auction” at the Casula Powerhouse, an arts centre housed in a post-industrial relic between a polluted river and a railway line, I had time to reflect on the curatorial premise for the show. An examination of ‘suburban subcultures’ is fertile ground for contemporary art. I was intrigued to see how a coherent narrative could[…..]
When you enter your local supermarket, the door will most likely slide open automatically, welcoming you as it senses your presence. There’s nothing remarkable about that, you’re accustomed to the simple technology of motion sensors. What is remarkable is that technological fixtures such as motion sensors have become so ubiquitous that we scarcely notice them anymore. They are a part of your daily routine, a[…..]
Tracey Emin’s work presents an unfiltered and often embarrassingly personal view of emotional pain. It reflects the kind of desperate or careless narcissism that is the territory of the depressed. Emin is concerned with the primacy of her own experience—and the narrative of her own sadness is the unabashed subject of her work. Emin’s oeuvre has always felt most valuable to me in terms of[…..]
Everyone I know who saw Christian Marclay’s Clock raved about it. The 24-hour sequence of film clips, most with a view of a clock face, is more action-packed than I’d imagined it would be. The focus is as much on the events surrounding the passage of time as on the instruments we use to measure that passage. In this way, The Clock isn’t about clocks[…..]
Last year, Theaster Gates and a team of collaborators took over a run-down building in Kassel, Germany called Huguenot House, renovating the space for performances and creative interventions as part of 12 Ballads for Huguenot House, the artist’s contribution to dOCUMENTA (13). It was a fitting gesture considering the restorative origins of the first dOCUMENTA in 1955, which reintroduced modern art to Germany after years[…..]
