ART21 welcomes the Walker Art Center to the Magazine, where readers can now find a curated list of contemporary art news gathered weekly by the Walker’s Web team.
Otto Piene. The Proliferation of the Sun, 2014. Installation view Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin. Photo: David von Becker
- Genre-defying German artist Otto Piene is dead at age 86. Founder of the renowned ZERO group, which he explained as “the immeasurable zone in which an old state passes over in a new one,” he’s the subject of the just-opened survey More Sky at Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie.
- Does Coco Fusco consider herself as a provocateur? “I don’t see myself as someone who is just trying to get attention,” the interdisciplinary artist tells artist Elia Alba in a Q&A for BOMB. “I am interested in politics as sculptural material. I look at relationships of force, of power and control.”
- “Copyright is Over (if you want it)”: Citing examples from supercuts like Christian Marclay’s The Clock to sound-sampler Girl Talk to appropriation artist Richard Prince, Kenneth Goldsmith celebrates the creative potential of disregarding copyright law. Of UbuWeb, “the largest site on the web for free distribution of avant-garde works,” which he founded, he notes: “Taking a cue from Marclay, we assume that if we contextualize the works respectfully, artists will appreciate it, and they’ll be okay with it. For nearly two decades, that’s been the case.”
- Noting that “internet art remains less recognized, less supported,” Rhizome and Beijing-based Tsinghua Art & Science Media Lab (TASML) and Center for Art and Technology (CAT) announce the Prix Net Art, a “no-strings attached” prize that’ll give $10,000 to artists “making outstanding work on the internet.” Awarded three times, in 2014, 2015, and 2016, the prize will also include a “second-distinction” prize of $,5000.
- “Why have my artistic pursuits landed me in a national database potentially linking me to ‘terrorist’ activities?” James Prigoff, a photographer of public art for 69 years, is among plaintiffs in an ACLU lawsuit challenging the government’s Suspicious Activity Reporting program.
- “Surveillance isn’t going away,” says London-based artist and writer James Bridle on his project to float cameras and darknet routers in a hot air balloon above London, “so then the very first step is democratizing access to it and making […] what it’s doing more transparent.”
- The International Teletext Art Festival, opening next month in Berlin, pays homage to the low-fi format that preceded the Internet. Artist Dan Farrimond notes the simplicity of teletext: “There isn’t that unconscious pressure to make things realistic.”
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