Sunflower Seeds on Sunflower Seeds

The italian artist group IOCOSE has thrown some real sunflower seeds on Ai Weiwei‘s porcelain ‘Sunflower Seeds’:

“The porcelain seeds, previously exhibited at the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, are now part of a new artwork. The new artwork looks exactly the same as the previous one, as the natural seeds and those made of porcelain are indistinguishable from each other. IOCOSE reclaims the authorship of the new installation and reminds viewers of Ai Weiwei’s previous statement: ‘what you see is not what you see, and what you see is not what it means’.”

But who said art has to cost money?

Challenging thoughts in this Francis Ford Coppola interview:

“We have to be very clever about those things. You have to remember that it’s only a few hundred years, if that much, that artists are working with money. Artists never got money. Artists had a patron, either the leader of the state or the duke of Weimar or somewhere, or the church, the pope. Or they had another job. I have another job. I make films. No one tells me what to do. But I make the money in the wine industry. You work another job and get up at five in the morning and write your script.

This idea of Metallica or some rock n’ roll singer being rich, that’s not necessarily going to happen anymore. Because, as we enter into a new age, maybe art will be free. Maybe the students are right. They should be able to download music and movies. I’m going to be shot for saying this. But who said art has to cost money? And therefore, who says artists have to make money?

In the old days, 200 years ago, if you were a composer, the only way you could make money was to travel with the orchestra and be the conductor, because then you’d be paid as a musician. There was no recording. There were no record royalties. So I would say, “Try to disconnect the idea of cinema with the idea of making a living and money.” Because there are ways around it.”

[via kottke]

The Time Machine in alphabetical order

The Time Machine in alphabetical order, by Thomson & Craighead:

“The Time Machine in alphabetical order is a complete rendition of the 1960’s film version of HG Wells Novella re-edited by us into alphabetical order from beginning to end. In doing so, we attempt to perform a kind of time travel on the movie’s original time line through the use of a system of classification.”

[via vvork]

Photo report: Order and Progress

“Order and Progress is the first Italian solo show by the Dutch artist Rosa Menkman (Arnhem, The Netherlands 1983), curated by Domenico Quaranta at Fabio Paris Art Gallery (Brescia).
The title of the show, inspired by the Brazilian flag (Menkman developed one of the works on show in Brazil, during a residency at the São Paulo Museum of Image and Sound), is an ironic and cynical reference to the ideology behind all technological developments: an ideology that the artist combats with her obsessive exploration of the aesthetic, poetic and cultural consequences of the error.
Menkman’s work focuses on visual artifacts created by accidents in digital media. The visuals she makes are the results of glitches, compressions, feedback and other forms of noise.”

I took some pictures :-)

Demolish the eerie ▼oid from Rosa Menkman on Vimeo.

Every website is a monument

Every website is a monument is the first solo Italian exhibition of Greek artist Angelo Plessas at Gloriamaria Gallery (Milan). In his work Plessas combines animated drawings with domain names to create websites. He treats websites as places where we can imagine and experience objects, the same way we can admire a sculpture in a public space.

More infos here.

A serious artist

Yesterday I went to the Tate Modern to visit Gabriel Orozco’s exhibition. I thought I knew his research quite well upon entering the show, but I found myself surprised and amused more than expected. Orozco’s mix of lightness and depth is quite unique.
Unfortunately photographing was not permitted, so I’m posting some “found” pics of the works I enjoyed the most. If you happen to be around London, don’t miss it…