The Walker Curates the News: 08.18.14


Natalie Bookchin. Now he’s out in public and everyone can see (tw0-minute sample clip), 2012. 18-channel video installation; 16-minute loop.

  • Last week, following the police killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teen in Ferguson, Missouri, Twitter blew up with a series of diptychs showing contrasting selfies—“the young man that all suburban mothers want their sons to be” beside “the one you worry your son wants to emulate.” Hashtagged to ask the not-so-hypothetical question, which image would the media use #IfTheyGunnedMeDown, the images demonstrate how “those in our culture who are usually controlled, shaped, and silenced by a barrage of images projecting their ‘hostile’ nature have been able to break open a closed dialogue,” writes M. Neelika Jayawardane.
  • Maximo Caminero, the artist who smashed an Ai Weiwei vase at Miami’s Pérez Art Museum in February in protest of a dearth of exhibition opportunities for local artists, won’t be doing time. He pleaded guilty Wednesday and will pay $10,000 and put in 100 hours of community service, teaching kids to paint.
  • Los Angeles artist John Baldesarri aims to give 100,000 people a dose of fame in the City of Light. Beginning September 13, his monthlong Your Name in Lights project will illuminate each person’s name for 15 seconds on a stretch between Paris’s Pont Neuf and Pont des Arts.
  • Berlin artists Mischa Leinkauf and Matthias Wermke took credit for placing two white flags atop the Brooklyn Bridge on July 22. The action, which they taped, marked the death of the bridge’s German engineer, John Roebling, and aimed to celebrate “the beauty of public space.”

Follow Art News From Elsewhere on the Walker Art Center homepage or via @walkermag, the Walker’s editorial-focused Twitter feed.