New at Moving Image New York 2013

Moving Image is very pleased to announce several new programs and collaborations taking place at the 2013 edition of the fair.


The James New York and Moving Image Announce Partnership to Support Emerging Artists

Moving Image and The James New York are proud to announce an ongoing partnership dedicated to fostering artistic talent and supporting emerging artists. At this year’s Moving Image Art Fair, a $1,000 prize will be awarded to a presenting artist that demonstrates exceptional vision and artistic talent. In addition to the cash prize, the selected artist will also receive ongoing exhibition opportunities via The James New York’s collection and rotational video art series hosted at the hotel’s Urban Garden.

Located on the corner of Thompson and Grand, The James New York features an exclusive, proprietary collection by local emerging artists on each of their 14 guestroom floors. Unique event spaces and impeccable attention to detail are found throughout. The hotel boasts the highly acclaimed restaurant David Burke Kitchen in addition to a rooftop bar and lounge, Jimmy; an Urban Garden designed by horticulturist Rebecca Cole with outdoor dining by David Burke; a rooftop pool; a Penthouse Loft designed by Piet Boon; and a captivating Sky Lobby accessible by a signature glass elevator.  Follow The James New York on Twitter, @JamesHotels and Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/jameshotels.com#!/JamesHotels

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The Shortest Video Art Ever Sold
A project by Marina Galperina and Kyle Chayka - organized by Postmasters

The Shortest Video Art Ever Sold is a site-specific physical curatorial project, offering an exclusive "screening" of new art by top net artists in the newest social media format, Vine - a video all of six seconds long. SVAES is presented in a purposely analog/DIY format, a Fair Shopping Network "television program"  that will grant the fair goers opportunity to immediately purchase the Vine Edition of 1 and, for an extra fee, have the artist tweet the new artistic acquisition at the patron, so they can have their collecting acknowledged publicly. SVAES subverts the insular art market, the Vine brand, the "like economy" of the social media and video art as property/commodity.

Marina Galperina is the Art Editor of ANIMALNewYork, and a Brooklyn-based freelance journalist, specializing in Russian internet phenomena, conceptual vandalism and net art.

Kyle Chayka is senior editor at renowned art blog Hyperallergic.com and a freelance culture and technology writer based in Brooklyn. He is a participant of and spectator on various events and exhibitions in New York and elsewhere.

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Nitehawk Cinema to screen selected Films from Moving Image New York 2013

Moving Image and Nitehawk Cinema are happy to announce their partnership for the Moving Image Contemporary Video Art Fair New York in which three videos from the 2013 fair will be selected to screen in the cinema this spring.

Fostering the relationship between artist moving images and the cinematic space, Nitehawk programmer Caryn Coleman will choose the three video works from this year’s Moving Image to be screened in the cinema this upcoming April, May, and June. One video will be shown each month on the theater’s big screen before Nitehawk’s new signature series Art Seen that launches in April. Art Seen a monthly art-focused program showing artist documentaries, the art world in film, and artist directed features that also includes guest-curated artist moving image program pre-show. The April debut is a 35mm presentaton of Orson Welle’s F for Fake (1973).

Nitehawk Cinema is an independent movie house with a selective approach to film, food, and drink. Located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Nitehawk offers audiences an unparalleled cinematic experience by combining first-run, repertory film programming, and signature programming such as Live Sound Cinema, The Works, and Music Driven, along with tableside food and beverage service in all theaters. For more information on Nitehawk Cinema please visit nitehawkcinema.com

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Moving Image, the contemporary video art fair, will take place March 7-10, 2013. Located in the Waterfront Tunnel event space between 27th and 28th Streets with an entrance on 11th Avenue in Chelsea. Moving Image will be free to the public and open Thursday – Saturday, March 7–9, 11–8 PM and on Sunday, March 10, 11-4 PM. An opening reception will take place Thursday, March 7,6–8 PM.

Moving Image was conceived to offer a viewing experience with the excitement and vitality of a fair, while allowing moving image-based artworks to be understood and appreciated on their own terms. The newly formed Moving Image Curatorial Advisory Committee for New York 2013 is inviting a selection of international commercial galleries and non-profit institutions to present single-channel videos, single-channel projections, video sculptures, and other larger video installations.

March 7–10, 2013
New York



Location:
Waterfront New York Tunnel
269 11th Avenue
Between 27th and 28th Streets
New York, NY 10001

Armory Film 2013

Moving Image are very pleased to announce the program for the 2013 edition of Armory Film, a series of 5 screenings of contemporary film and experimental video, each followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers/artists over the course of The Armory Show. 2013, as you may have read (in perhaps by now 100 places), is the 100th Anniversary of the 1913 Armory Show which nearly single-handedly ushered in the love affair New York still has with the avant garde (let me have that one, ok?). Indeed, the Friday film in the Armory Film program is a special documentary about that "show that shook the world," with a very special Q&A between the film's producer Richard Miller and renown dealer and Duchamp expert Francis Naumann.

In keeping with The Armory Show 2013's theme of all things Americana, the Armory Film program focuses this year on a wide range of ways in which the American experience is expressed in video art and film.

The full program is below. We hope you can make 4 or 5 of them at least! :-)

 
ARMORY FILM 

Each Armory Film screening is followed by a Q&A with the artist/filmmaker. 
Armory Film 2013 is organized by Moving Image. 

Wednesday March 6th 

Time: 5:00 – 6:30 PM 
Artist: Matthew Day Jackson 
Film: In Search Of...Zombies (2011) 
Duration: 47:27 
Panel: Matthew Day Jackson, David Tompkins (co-writer/director), and Joseph Hung (co-director) 
Gallery: GRIMM, Amsterdam 

In Search of... Zombies is the third in Matthew Day Jackson’s series of videos based on the '70s TV show hosted by Leonard Nimoy investigating supernatural and paranormal phenomena. Filmed in New York and across the American West, from Las Vegas to the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site in South Dakota, the episode focuses on the ubiquitous contemporary figure of the zombie. The program tries to figure out why zombies are everywhere, or at least appear to be, and proposes alternate or expanded ways in which we might think about them. 

Thursday March 7th 

Time: 5:00 – 6:30 PM 
Artist: Pavel Büchler 
Film: High Noon (2008) compilation 
Duration 40:00 
Gallery: Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin 

Each of the 13 separate loops in Pavel Büchler’s video installation High Noon is made of stills harvested from a single Google image search. As with all of Büchler's film loop works, they are made from images found on the Internet and provide a reflection of the fragmented modes of reception that Internet browsing seems to encourage. Created as very basic animations of just one or two frames, the loops each use a different animation technique, resulting in works that evoke drama without maintaining a narrative. The screening will include other short loops by Büchler as well. 

Friday March 8th 

Time: 3:00 – 5:00 PM 
Film: The Show That Shook the World: Marcel Duchamp and the 1913 Armory Show  
Duration: 1:00:00 
Panel: Richard Miller (producer) and Francis Naumann (scholar and art dealer) 

In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the original Armory Show, Armory Film is pleased to host the national debut of a new documentary on the famed International Exhibition of Modern Art. The one-hour film features a previously unknown illustrated talk by Marcel Duchamp. The object of much derision in 1913, Duchamp exhibits his famous candor as he gives us his take on the seminal event, including a critique of a number of iconic works. The screening will be followed by a discussion with the film’s producer, Richard Miller, led by Duchamp scholar Francis Naumann. 

Saturday March 9th 

Time: 5:00 – 6:30 PM 
Film: The Armory Show Focus Group (2012-2013) 
Artist: Liz Magic Laser 
Duration: 30:00 
Panel: Liz Magic Laser, focus group moderator Ben Allen (Labrador Agency), producer David Guinan (Polemic Media), student Justin Thornton, and dealer Esther Kim Varet (Various Small Fires) 

As the commissioned artist for The Armory Show 2013, Liz Magic Laser conducted a series of six focus groups in November 2012 to determine the nature of her limited-edition artworks and the visual identity of the fair. She invited members of the art community—a range of collectors, curators, museum directors, advisers and critics—to participate in group discussions that would ultimately determine how she would lend her identity to The Armory Show. Laser enlisted professional moderator Ben Allen to lead these groups of “art world consumers”, framing artistic decision-making as a matter of market research for the art fair. The resulting video, edited from twelve hours of focus group discussions, highlights the complex web of opportunities and compromises that define the relationship between market forces and artistic production today. 

Laser’s The Armory Show Focus Group (2012-2013) will also be displayed throughout the course of the fair in the Various Small Fires (Los Angeles) booth in the Focus section curated by Eric Shiner. This film will be shown alongside the contractual documentation of the commission as well as the paraphernalia that ultimately gave form to the 2013 visual identity of The Armory Show. 

Sunday March 10th 

Time: 5:00 -6:30 PM 
Artist: Janet Biggs 
Films: Fade to White / A Step on the Sun (2010 / 2012) 
Duration: 9:05 / 12:28 
Gallery: CONNERSMITH, Washington DC 

These two films by Janet Biggs were shot in near opposite, yet equally inhospitable, locations: the frozen wasteland of the Arctic Circle and the hellish sulfur mine deep inside an active volcano in Indonesia. Fade to White was shot while Biggs was traveling aboard an ice-class, 2-masted schooner, built in 1910, and focuses on a crew member as he navigated the ship through iceberg -filled seas, and paddled a kayak past glacier walls and polar bears. In A Step On the Sun, the artist focuses on hardships overcome by a sulfur miner in the Ijen volcano. Amid clouds of toxic sulfur dioxide gas, he carries heavy loads up a steep, rocky path from the crater floor to the rim, then to a distant weigh-station.

From the Inbox : Responding to Bad Reviews | Open Thread

It feels like we've covered this on the blog once, long ago, but the question keeps coming up, and opinions do evolve, so I thought I'd take the opportunity upon receiving an email query about it to delve into the discussion again. 

Critics, in particular, don't shy away from diving in here.

From the Inbox: 

Dear Edward,

I have a question.
If a show receives a bad review, should a gallerist ever respond?
A current show at my gallery received a negative review.
I am thinking about a brief, polite response in the comments field of the online version of the review.
Are there any circumstances where this is called for or can be done tactfully?

Thanks!
{Name withheld}

Not that we've ever, ahem, had a bad review in our gallery, mind you (selective memory loss can be a blessing, you know), but my personal opinion on the matter is that it's best not to respond at all, unless there's clearly an important error in the review (some incorrect factoid that could have lasting negative impact on the artist because of a misunderstanding or [yes it happens] misinformation offered by the gallery). What constitutes a "lasting negative impact" will be a matter of opinion, most often, but when it's clearly just a matter of disagreement (about the quality or intent of the work), I feel strongly it's best to not respond.

First in my thought process about this, is that we (the artist and the gallery) are putting the work out there for a response, and the writer is most certainly entitled to his/her opinion. Negative responses are the risk you take for asking people to come by and see the work. That doesn't make them easier to accept. Behind closed doors, often over cocktails, we may occasionally debate the taste [and once, perhaps, the possible mixed-species genealogy] of a critic who pans one of our shows...er, I mean, one of our friends' shows that we also like. But we did ask for a public response. And so, we got one. If you don't want one, don't let the critics in.

Second though, and this is more important, I respect the job the critics do, and I want them to keep coming to see our shows. So I don't want them to think it's not worth reviewing our shows because we'll just argue with them about their professional opinions if we don't like them (I've sense the exasperation in the response from critics we've sent "corrections" to; I can only imagine it gets old on their end very quickly). Moreover, no gallery I know gets positive reviews for every show. I'd suspect they weren't trying hard enough if they did.

Finally, though, in this era of constant commenting for online reviews, the gallery risks inviting even harsher feedback by objecting (especially in a public way) to a critic's take on a show. Where billy-goat-eating readers might simply share approval of a negative review they agree with in the comments section, should the gallery or artist step in to offer disagreement, the gloves often then come off and the artist can them be subjected to a brutal barrage of highly personal attacks. I suspect this is because no one likes a "sore loser"...that if you're lucky enough to get a show...and then on top of that lucky enough to get a review...even if it's negative, the troll-o-sphere feels you should be bloody grateful and just shut up.

But those are just my opinions. Help this inquirer by sharing your own.

Tonight! Re-opening and Book Party for Yevgeniy Fiks @ Winkleman Gallery

Yevgeniy Fiks' exhibition, Homosexuality Is Stalin's Atom Bomb to Destroy America, had been open all of one day before damage from Hurricane Sandy closed the gallery for 10 weeks. All the artwork from the exhibition was safe, though, and we are very pleased to celebrate the reopening of Yevgeniy's exhibition with a party to celebrate the publication of his new book, Moscow.*

 

Yevgeniy Fiks

Homosexuality Is Stalin's Atom Bomb to Destroy America

 

February 15 - March 16, 2013

Opening Reception and Book Party: Friday, February 15, 2013, 6-8 PM

 

Winkleman Gallery is very pleased to present Homosexuality Is Stalin's Atom Bomb to Destroy America, our third solo exhibition by New York-based artist Yevgeniy Fiks. Taking its title from a 1953 article by the Cold Warrior and pundit Arthur Guy Mathews, this exhibition explores the historical and ideological links between anti-Communism and homophobia in the United States, as well as the intersections between Communism and sexual identity as it played out during the 20th century. Works in the exhibition range from dry factuality to humor, and farce, and posit the 20th century queerness as the shared Other of the Communism-Capitalism dichotomy, while tracing the uneasy yet tangible historical links between the early 20th century Communist activism and the gay rights movement of the second half of the century.
 

The exhibition delves into the interlocking histories of the “Red” and “Lavender” scares during the McCarthy-era, when anti-Communist and anti-gay sentiments were fused together in the Cold War witch-hunt rhetoric. Pundits and government officials went as far as envisioning a sinister conspiracy: the Soviet Union is promoting homosexuality as a tool to destroy America. Concurrently, the federal government purged homosexuals that it employed, calling them “security risks”—vulnerable of being blackmailed by Soviet agents into working for them.  Ironically, in response to and mirroring its ideological enemy, the American Communist Party also purged known gays from its ranks—marking them as “security risks”—for fear that gay Communists were vulnerable to blackmail and could become informants for the Feds. The official charter of the Communist Party USA even before its 1950s anti-gay purge strictly prohibited gays from membership, adhering to the policies of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union where homosexuality was officially criminalized under Stalin and stigmatized as a "capitalist degeneracy."
 

Works in the exhibition include Stalin's Atom Bomb a.k.a. Homosexuality, a series of prints that highlights paranoid anti-communist and anti-gay quotations from American politicians and pundits of the era. Another series, Joe-1 Cruising in Washington, DC includes photographs of a six-foot cutout of the 1949 Soviet nuclear test explosion RDS-1—codenamed in the US as "Joe-1"—posing, in 2012, at locations that had been popular gay cruising sites in Washington D.C. circa 1930s-1950s. The Security Risk Map of Manhattan maps gay cruising and Communist meeting sites of the 1930-1950s, presenting an open ended question about the "conspiracy" and overlap between the two groups.

 

Two installations focus on a particular historical figure whose life epitomized this ironic and widely unknown intersection of policies. The piece History of the CPUSA (Harry Hay) consists of a 1952 edition of History of the Communist Party of the United States by William Z. Foster, with inserts about the life and work of Harry Hay (1912–2002). Harry Hay was a communist activist who was forced out of the CPUSA during the McCarthy era, and who later became one of the founders of the gay rights movement in the United States. The work Marxism and the National Question (Harry Hay) is an installation that consists of Joseph Stalin’s 1942 English edition books, Marxism and the National Question, in which Stalin outlines his definition of national minorities. This book sparked Harry Hay’s groundbreaking concept that “gay” constitute a minority—similar to African-Americans or Jews—and as a separate people they are entitled to civil rights. In a whim of historical irony, Hay appropriated the writings by the oppressive Soviet Thermidorian dictator and turned them into a tool of liberation, laying a foundation for the gay movement in the United States.

 

Yevgeniy Fiks was born in Moscow in 1972 and has been living and working in New York since 1994. Fiks has produced many projects on the subject of the Post-Soviet dialog in the West, among them: Ayn Rand in Illustration, a series of drawing pairing descriptive text from Atlas Shrugged with uncannily complimentary Soviet Socialist Realism classic artworks; “Lenin for Your Library?” in which he mailed V.I. Lenin’s text “Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism” to one hundred global corporations as a donation for their corporate libraries; “Communist Party USA,” a series of portraits of current members of Communist Party USA, painted from life in the Party’s national headquarters in New York City; and “Communist Guide to New York City,” a series of photographs of buildings and public places in New York City that are connected to the history of the American Communist movement. Fiks’ work has been shown internationally. This includes exhibitions in the United States at Winkleman and Postmasters galleries (both in New York) Mass MoCA, and the Philadelphia Museum of Modern Art; the Moscow Museum of Modern Art and Marat Guelman Gallery in Moscow; Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros in Mexico City, and the Museu Colecção Berardo in Lisbon. His work has been included in the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2011, 2009, 2007 and 2005), Biennale of Sydney (2008) and Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art (2007).

 

Image above : Yevgeniy Fiks, Joe-1 Cruising in Washington, DC (Monument Grounds), 2012, photograph.

 

 

BOOK PARTY

Friday, February 15, 2013, 6-8 PM

 

About the book
Yevgeniy Fiks’ newest book — Moscow (Ugly Duckling Presse, Brooklyn, 2013) — documents gay cruising sites in Soviet Moscow, from the early 1920s to the USSR’s dissolution in the early 1990s. Photographed in 2008 in a simple but haunting documentary style, these sites of the bygone queer underground present a hidden and forgotten Moscow, with a particular focus on Revolutionary Communist sites appropriated by queer Muscovites. The book concludes with the first English-language publication of a 1934 letter to Joseph Stalin in which British communist Harry Whyte presents a Marxist defense of homosexuality in light of its recriminalization in the USSR.

UGLY DUCKLING PRESSE | $35 | ISBN 978-1-933254-61-6
Cloth-bound & foil-stamped | 104 pages | Full Color | 8” x 10”
Release Date: February 15, 2013

 

For more information, contact Edward Winkleman at 212.643.3152 or edward@winkleman.com.

Moving Image New York 2013 Participating Artists / Galleries & Non-Profit Institutions

Moving Image, the contemporary video art fair, is very pleased to announce the artists and participating galleries and non-profit institutions in our 2013 New York edition. Returning to the Waterfrot Tunnel in the Chelsea District of Manhattan, March 7-10, 2013, with an international selection of single-channel videos and installations from Europe, Asia, South America, and North America, Moving Image has been conceived to offer a viewing experience with the excitement and vitality of a fair, while allowing moving-image-based artworks to be understood and appreciated on their own terms.

 

Highlights of the 2013 New York fair include historical works by highly influential pioneers of video and filmmaking, including Hermine Freed (Video Data Bank, Chicago, IL), Tommy Turner (PPOW, New York, NY), and Michel Auder (Newman Popiashvili Gallery, New York, NY). Among the newly expanded installation section this year are works by Jan Tichy (Richard Gray, Chicago, IL / New York, NY), Jennifer and Kevin McCoy (Postmasters, New York, NY), and Ted Victoria  (Schroeder Romero,  New York, NY). New works at the fair include those by Marinella Senatore (Peres Projects, Berlin, Germany), Bryan Zanisnik  (Aspect Ratio, Chicago, IL), and Edin Vélez  (presented by El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY).

 

For updates on exhibitors and our special panel discussion programming information, please visit the Moving Image website  http://www.moving-image.info/.

 

 

Moving Image New York 2013

Participating artists / Galleries & Non-Profit Institutions

 

Greta Alfaro / Moving Image Presents (New York, NY)

Michel Auder / Newman Popiashvili Gallery (New York, NY)

Cathy Begien / Winkleman Gallery (New York, NY)

Janet Biggs / Winkleman Gallery (New York, NY)

Khalil Charif / Artur Fidalgo Gallery (Rio De Janeiro, Brazil)

Sam Curtis / Division of Labor (London, UK)

Kota Ezawa / Haines Gallery (San Francisco, CA)

Hermine Freed / Video Data Bank (Chicago, IL)

Mihai Grecu / Hengesbach Gallery (Berlin, Germany)

Malak Helmy / Krowswork (Oakland, CA)

Tellervo Kalleinen & Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen / AV Arkki (Helsinki, Finland)

Oswaldo Macia / Nuartlink (Westport, CT)

Jennifer and Kevin McCoy / Postmasters (New York, NY)

Marko Mäetamm / Temnikova & Kasela Gallery (Tallinn, Estonia)

Tang Maohong / ShanghART Gallery (Shanghai, China)

Eva and Franco Mattes / Postmasters (New York, NY)

Kambui Olujimi / Catharine Clark Gallery (San Francisco, CA)

Cheryl Pope / Mark Moore Gallery (Los Angeles, CA)

Jan Tichy / Richard Gray (Chicago, IL / New York, NY)

Marinella Senatore / Peres Projects (Berlin, Germany)

Rbt. Sps. / Interstate Projects (Brooklyn, NY)

Zefrey Throwell / Gasser & Grunert Gallery (New York, NY)

Tommy Turner / PPOW Gallery (New York, NY)

Edin Vélez / El Museo del Barrio (New York, NY)

Ted Victoria / Schroeder Romero (New York, NY)

Nina Yuen / Lombard Freid Projects (New York, NY)

Bryan Zanisnik / Aspect Ratio (Chicago, IL)

Zhao Zhao / Chambers Fine Art (New York, NY / Beijing, China)

 

 

Moving Image has been conceived to offer a viewing experience with the excitement and vitality of a fair, while allowing moving-image-based artworks to be understood and appreciated on their own terms. The newly formed Moving Image Curatorial Advisory Committee for New York 2013 is inviting a selection of international commercial galleries and non-profit institutions to present single-channel videos, single-channel projections, video sculptures, and other larger video instdallations.

 

Curatorial Advisory Committee for Moving Image New York 2013:
 

Kathleen Forde
Artistic Director at Borusan Contemporary
Istanbul, Turkey

 

James Hu
Chief Curator and Critic, 53 Art Museum
Guangzhou, China

 

Omar Lopez-Chahoud
Independent Curator
New York, USA

 

Elena Sorokina
Independent Curator and Art Historian
Paris, France

 

Eve Sussman
Artist / Co-Founder, Rufus Corporation
New York, USA

 

 

Moving Image gratefully acknowledges the generous support of our media partners and sponsors:

• Safiniart
• 42 Below Vodka
• GalleryLOG
• The Art Newspaper
• Artnet
• Art Review
• Spain Culture of New York
• FAD Website
• Platypus : Fine Art Installation Services
• InFocus
• The James Hotel New York
• 'Wichcraft
• Hotel Giraffe
• Video Data Bank
• Hotel Americano
• ArtFacts.net
• Independent Collectors
• el Museo del Barrio
• Nitehawk Cinema
• Dazian Creative Fabric Environments

 

Selected press about Moving Image New York:

• Nov 22, 2011: Julia Halperin, “Double Feature: Moving Image, New York’s Video-Only Art Fair, Joins Forces With the Armory Show,” Artinfo.com
• Nov 23, 2011: “Armory Show verbündet sich mit Video-Kunstmesse,” Monopol: Magazin für Kunst und Leben
• March 2, 2012: “Martha Wilson and the 2012 Moving Image Fair,” Independent Curators International
• March 5, 2012: Jarrett Moran, Grace-Yvette Gemmell, & Nicci Yin, “The Armory Week Guide,” ARTLOG
• March 6, 2012: Jane Harris, “Fair Grounds: Contemporary Video Art for the 21st Century,” The Huffington Post
• March 7, 2012: “Preview: Moving Image the contemporary video art fair,”  FAD
• March 7, 2012: Katya Kazakin, “Melted Legos, $5.8 Million Kline, Hotel Beds: Armory Week Guide,” BLOOMBERG News
• March 7, 2012: “Happening | Armory Film and Moving Image,” Paddle8 Blog
• March 8, 2012: Kyle Chayka, “Moving Image, New York’s Video Fair, Returns With Bigger, Better Screens (and More Nudity),” Artinfo
• March 9, 2012: Kyle Chayka, “Meet Jaan Toomik, the World’s Foremost Estonian Contemporary Artist,” Artinfo
• March 9, 2012: Scritto da Redazione, “New York Updates: piccole fiere che prendono piede. La Moving Image Art Fair, alla seconda edizione, inizia a convincere. Con una formula tutta sua,” Artribune
• March 11, 2012: Paddy Johnson, “The Snail Survives: Highlights from the Moving Image Fair,” AFC
• March 30, 2012: Bakul Patki, “Review: Moving Image Art Fair 2012 New York,” FAD
• March 2012: “ART FAIR contemporary video: MOVING IMAGE,” Gencsanat Art Magazine from Istanbul, Turkey
• April 6, 2012: John Haber, “Video Fair Game,” Haber Arts

 

Moving Image

March 7–10, 2013

 

Waterfront New York Tunnel
269 11^th Avenue
Between 27^th and 28^th Streets
New York, NY 10001

 

 

Moving Image was founded by Murat Orozobekov and Edward Winkleman. For more information about Moving Image, contact Ed or Murat at 212.643.3152 or email us at contact@moving-image.info. Or visit the www.moving-image.info.

 

Image: Mihai Grecu, Coagulate, 2008. Courtesy Hengesbach Gallery, Berlin, Germany.

Hell No, Obama! Not Even You!

I'll accept up front criticism for not objecting to this BEFORE the election. It was a cowardly thing to do on my part, but in this case I sincerely believe that cowardice was justified, given that the alternative was President (I hate poor people, let's bomb Iran, greed is good) Mitt Romney. Apparently, I'm not alone in my cowardice, though. [h/t FE]

But now that a secret white paper (outlining the Administration's argument for its right to kill American citizens overseas who can, in disturbingly vague terms, be viewed as a "threat" to the US) has been leaked to the press, and there is no longer any doubt that Obama has claimed for the executive branch the role of judge, jury and executioner, with absolutely no oversight, no one in the US can afford to simply ignore this outrageous abuse of power. Here's why this matters:

According to the white paper, the Constitution and the Congressional authorization for the use of force after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, gave Mr. Obama the right to kill any American citizen that an “informed, high-level official” decides is a “senior operational leader of Al Qaeda or an associated force” and presents an “imminent threat of violent attack.”

It never tries to define what an “informed, high-level official” might be, and the authors of the memo seem to have redefined the word “imminent” in a way that diverges sharply from its customary meaning. It talks about “due process” and the need to balance a person’s life “against the United States’ interest in forestalling the threat of violence and death to other Americans.”

But it takes the position that the only “oversight” needed for such a decision resides within the executive branch, and there is no need to explain the judgment to Congress, the courts or the public — or, indeed, to even acknowledge that the killing took place.

As carelessly defined as this argument is, an "imminent" threat could be construed to justify killing a hated member of the opposition party who "intelligence sources" confirmed had booked a room in same hotel as a member of Al Qaida while on a tour of the Middle East. Sure the political blow back for such a killing would be swift and furious, but according to this white paper the President who carried it out would be within the law. Now I know Obama is a popular president and is (mostly) trusted by a majority of voters. I voted for him twice myself. But all anyone needs to see how insane, dangerous, and un-American Obama's argument here is, is to imagine a President Rick Perry or President Sarah Palin with the same power, making the same arguments.

September 11, 2001, obviously had a dramatic impact on our national psyche and reportedly (and understandably, if true) served to put unprecedented pressure on our intelligence services, who had been seen to fail tremendously in not preventing the attacks. A shift seems to have followed in how we, as a nation, went about protecting ourselves. In the interest of doing whatever it took to not let it happen again moving forward, our very character began to change. The pressure on and naturally resulting desperation among the national security segment of the government has even seeped into the popular culture, where we see angry, driven, and even imbalanced CIA agents (such as Jessica Chastain's character Maya in Zero Dark Thirty or Claire Dane's character Carrie in Homeland) cutting all kinds of ethical corners, unimaginable for a real  American "hero" before 9/11, in their determination to get the culprits and prevent them from striking again. This fear-driven obsession is cowardly and corrosive, and it's time for us to put an end to how it's enabling a power grab among the residents of the White House.

No American, not even President Barack Obama, has the right to destroy this country's soul in their pursuit to protect it. What we temporarily might (only might, mind you) gain through an abdication of our rock solid commitment to due process and governmental checks and balances (the foiling of a particular plot) must be weighed against what we unquestionably lose (our collective sense of right and wrong and, more importantly, our built-in defenses against tyranny).

I objected strongly to the executive overreach that defined much of George W. Bush's time in office. I am just as opposed to it in Barack Obama's time in office. Congress needs to curb this now.

Today (and Tonight) : All-Day Performance and Evening Reception : Michael Waugh @ Winkleman Gallery

Michael Waugh performance and reception for the artist | Today!

Stop by 27th Street, Friday, February 1, during an all-day performance or stop in the gallery afterwards for an artist's reception.

Performance: 10:30 am through 6:30 pm
Reception: 6 - 8 pm

Winkleman Gallery in conjunction with Schroeder Romero Gallery are pleased to announce an all-day performance by artist Michael Waugh as part of his ongoing solo show Offenses Against One’s Self. The artist will read, non-stop for an eight-hour work day, starting at 10:30 am and ending at 6:30 pm. Please join us at any time during the performance, or catch him during the home-stretch: The final half hour of the performance (6 to 6:30 pm) will overlap with a reception for the artist from 6-8 pm. 

Waugh will be reading aloud from Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, which is the text that Waugh uses in most of the work on view in the gallery. This marathon-length performance helps underscore the artist’s ongoing exploration of labor and value in artistic production. This reading will be a continuation of the performance that Waugh began at the University of Connecticut’s School of Business (see image above), where he read from the beginning of Smith’s book – also for eight hours, non-stop. He will continue staging eight-hour performances (later in 2013) until he has read aloud the entirety of the book.

The date of February 1st was chosen for this performance as a memorial for the artist's great-great-great-great grandfather, Gideon Dexter, who died in a working-class rowing accident on January 31, 1827, having rowed himself to exhaustion against an unexpected storm. His frozen body was found off the coast of Martha's Vineyard and returned home the next day, February 1st.

Michael Waugh began doing live readings and performance while earning his MFA in poetry at Texas State University. After earning his second Master's degree (in visual art) from New York University, Waugh began combining his training. In September of 2000, he staged his first 8-hour long performance, on the corner of 20th St and 11th Avenue in New York. He has also staged 8-hour performances at the Austin International Poetry Festival, the College Art Association's annual conference, and at the PULSE contemporary art fair in Miami. His video work presents documentation of even longer, performative projects. And his labor-intensive drawing practice, in the context of his performance background, exists as a fetishized record of his Herculean (or perhaps Sisyphean) efforts. Waugh's work has been exhibited at Winkleman Gallery (NY), Schroeder Romero Gallery (NY), Ronald Feldman Gallery (NY), Diverse Works (Houston), El Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Havana), the Arkansas Arts Center (Little Rock), The University of Connecticut (Storrs), and the Crystal Bridges Museum of Art (AR), among others. He has received awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, The Marie Walsh Sharp Space Program, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation.