Tania Bruguera. Photo courtesy Yo También Exijo
Marking six months since her first arrest in Havana, when her passport was confiscated by police, Tania Bruguera made a formal demand on June 29 that “Cuban authorities permanently withdraw the criminal charges that impede her from traveling abroad, and requests the normalization of her practice as an artist.” On July 10, the artist’s passport was returned, but she doesn’t expect to leave anytime soon. “My argument has never been about leaving Cuba,” she said in a statement released by #YoTambienExijo. “My argument is about working so there is freedom of expression and public protest in Cuba. People should feel free to say what they think without fear of losing their jobs or university standing, of being marginalized or imprisoned.” She has also asked for government documentation confirming that if she leaves she’ll be granted re-entry into Cuba. On July 12, Bruguera was again arrested and released after participating in a peaceful protest with Damas de Blanco (Ladies in White), a group of family members of imprisoned dissidents who demonstrate weekly.
- Currently featuring a contribution from Creative Time’s Nato Thompson, the Kadist Art Foundation’s new project invites curators to write a single sentence, hyperlinking each word to a “web object”—text, video, etc.—to create a compact Internet-native conceptualization. The project site states: “The One Sentence Exhibition recognizes the tendency of individuals and institutions to produce abbreviated packets of information on the internet, and it aims to do so without forgoing the depth, diversity, and sophistication a condensed form implies.”
- Described by Sen. Harry Reid as a “magnificent work of art that this man spent half a century working on,” Michael Heizer’s remote City installation (1972–present) is part of 704,000 acres of Nevada’s Basin and Range area set to become protected as a national monument.
- Two outdoor works created for Documenta have been vandalized in Kassel, Germany. A rare Korbinian apple tree, planted by Jimmie Durham from seeds grown by a Bavarian priest imprisoned at Dachau, was “extensively destroyed,” while a portion of Heini Gut’s text sculpture, installed at the Kassel train station, was sawed off.
- Aiming for a “transparency and porosity” that invites in “the lively street life of 125th Street,” David Adjaye’s design for a new Studio Museum will create a 70,000-square foot home for the Harlem mainstay. The new facility is scheduled to open in 2019.
- As the EU’s referendum on Greece was underway last weekend, artist Oliver Bienkowski projected the message “Außer Betrieb” (“out of order”) on the European Central Bank headquarters in Frankfurt. “We want to leave it open to interpretation,” he said of the act’s meaning.
- For artist Julia Weist, a Queens billboard is a place to map the terrain of the Internet. She used it to print “parbunkells“—a word not previously appearing on the web—and let the Internet do its thing, sparking countless searches, t-shirts, Instagram and Twitter accounts, and mashups.
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