In Post-Speculation, the Yams collective has illuminated New York gallery P! with an array of Ferguson-related media to address police brutality and “threats to personhood.” In conjunction, the group has launched thewayblackmachine.net to “archive activism around the Internet.”
- For his new show at Paula Cooper, Los Angeles artist Sam Durant has used artillery shells to make bells for a wind chime. Tapping into the history of “trench art,” the work stands as “a reminder of the inextricable link between war and art, violence and culture.”
- For their new show, Allora & Calzadilla look at the unlikely juxtaposition of geology and emotions: Boys from select choir schools are instructed to climb atop rocks scattered in the gallery and angelically sing literary-sourced insults to composed music.
- “A rose in a cornfield is a weed,” says experimental musician Mark Stewart of Bang on a Can, urging a reconsideration of the difference between noise and music. Bang on a Can’s contribution to the YouTube video series Art Assignment: find everyday sounds–a dryer’s whir, the hum of a light—and make music with it.
- Upon finding a spittoon shaped like a black man’s head at a flea market, artist Nick Cave says, “I literally just flipped out.” For his new show, he’s assumed the role of “an artist with responsibility,” curating such objects into a series of enigmatic assemblages.
- Painting and sculpting are transcendent processes; compelled by vague forces, one finishes a work and experiences a rebirth, says Anselm Kiefer, who intends his survey at the Royal Academy to be a “concentration” of his sprawling studio compound in France.
- “A lot of times the clothes actually determine [the personality of] the character,” says Cindy Sherman in a style discussion with Molly Ringwald, whose character in Office Killer (1997) was dressed by contemporary art’s master of disguise.
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