Writer-in-Residence

Money/Market

Money/Market

Let’s face it. Occupy Wall Street, and just about everything else, is about money – who has it and who doesn’t – and how the market can help or hurt …

What Is To Be Done?* Conversations, Commerce, and Collaborations

What Is To Be Done?* Conversations, Commerce, and Collaborations

Canceled: Exhibiting Experimental Art in China, presented at The Smart Museum of Art in Chicago in 2000, was a metaphorical representation of It’s Me, a 1998 Chinese experimental art exhibition that was …

Happiness as an Aesthetic Strategy

Happiness as an Aesthetic Strategy

After 22 years of Richard M. Daley, the longest-serving mayor in Chicago’s history, our city has a new mayor, Rahm Emanuel. While artists often greet new politicians with a screed …

Encounters with Generosity, Cooperation, and Community

Encounters with Generosity, Cooperation, and Community

The unpredictable and often ephemeral encounters that occur when art, community, audience, and ideas intersect are what excite me most about working with artists. For my last project at the …

New Guest Blogger: Tricia Van Eck

New Guest Blogger: Tricia Van Eck

Our huge thanks to previous guest-blogger Rachel Mason for her fantastic profiles of some of the most interesting performance artists and performance-related work taking place right now in New York, …

Chris Vargas

Chris Vargas

Chris E. Vargas and I went to high school together at Grover Cleveland High, a public school in Reseda, in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles. The tattooed …

MPA

MPA

A few weeks ago I went to Chelsea to see Robert Melee’s show at Andrew Kreps Gallery. As I was enjoying the way the gallery space seemed to unexpectedly take a turn, …

Chris Bogia and The Fire Island Artist Residency

Chris Bogia and The Fire Island Artist Residency

I want to devote this entry to Chris Bogia who envisioned and created (along with co/founder, curator, and writer Evan Garza) the Fire Island Island Artist Residency (FIAR). About a …

Dawn Kasper

Dawn Kasper

  When I was a kid my grandmother took me to visit her hundred-year-old aunt in a nursing home in Phoenix, Arizona. I was hopelessly bored for several days. Wandering …

Circus

Circus

I always wonder what to say when people ask me about the Circus of Books. My brothers and I enjoy sending each other Yelp reviews of my parents’ business. Like …

Organs in the Snow

Organs in the Snow

Several months ago, I was invited to perform at an event organized by Scott Kiernan. I didn’t fully know what it was, but it had something to do with a …

New Guest Blogger: Rachel Mason

New Guest Blogger: Rachel Mason

Thanks to Chris Cuellar for his wise, witty, and highly informative series of “How To” guides to art-making on the Internet and off. We’re also grateful to Chris’ contributor-collaborators Mark …

Because Our Work is Never Done, or How To Make Art with an iPad (and Hot Dogs)

Because Our Work is Never Done, or How To Make Art with an iPad (and Hot Dogs)

OMG we managed to cover SO MUCH in the past two weeks!!! Many thanks to all of our talented and knowledgeable contributors for sharing their arcane art-making secrets. We can …

How To Embed A Microcontroller Inside a Sea Shell to Generate “Real” Ocean Sounds

How To Embed A Microcontroller Inside a Sea Shell to Generate “Real” Ocean Sounds

In this How-To, we’ll go through the steps of assembling a small circuit to generate a continuous ocean sound from a microcontroller. This will require some basic soldering skills and …

How To Play a Vonome

How To Play a Vonome

You’ve probably already heard of the Monome, or (if you went to ITP), you may have even already made one of your own. In this tutorial, we’re going to take …

How To Harness the Creative Potential of the Video Feedback Loop

How To Harness the Creative Potential of the Video Feedback Loop

Video feedback. It’s a phenomenon as old as the medium of video itself. In fact, it might even be considered an inherent attribute. The infinite tunnel of psychedelic light-forms that …

How To Use Python To Create A Simple Flickr Photo Glitcher

How To Use Python To Create A Simple Flickr Photo Glitcher

In today’s How To, we’ll write a small program in Python that searches the photo sharing site Flickr for images with a given tag, downloads them, and then glitches them …

How to Climb the Tallest Mountain

How to Climb the Tallest Mountain

1. Collect as many images of mountains as you can get. Source from Internet using Google, Corbis, etc…. Images should not contain any visible evidence of human technology or the …

How to Make a Series of Poignant Conceptual Sculptures Based on the Physical Differences Between Your Body and Another Person’s Body

How to Make a Series of Poignant Conceptual Sculptures Based on the Physical Differences Between Your Body and Another Person’s Body

Step 1 – Measure Begin by taking the measurements of yourself and someone else (this could be your artistic collaborator, your lover, someone you dislike, your dog, etc.). For both …

How To Make a Blogging Robot

How To Make a Blogging Robot

One of the most undeniably thrilling things about the web today is the endless opportunity it affords for interacting with complete strangers. One downside is that it’s often pretty difficult …

How To Create A Color-Coordinated Site of Relaxation and Bodily Engagement in a Large Scale Exhibition, Airport, Hotel, Mall, Bank, Spa, or Biennial

How To Create A Color-Coordinated Site of Relaxation and Bodily Engagement in a Large Scale Exhibition, Airport, Hotel, Mall, Bank, Spa, or Biennial

1.0. Open three windows in Google Chrome – one for Target.com, one for WalMart.com, and one for Google Shopping. 1.1. In each window, begin searching for turquoise and white products that are suitable …

How To Create A Bitmap Image File By Hand, Without Stencils

How To Create A Bitmap Image File By Hand, Without Stencils

  As someone deeply invested in the art world, chances are you’ve found yourself playing art-guide to your friends or relatives on trips to the museum. And chances are, your …

Production of a Sol Lewitt Wall-Drawing

Make-It-Yourself

Make-It-Yourself

It’s a fact that artists have been more likely to steal than to share. Nevertheless, we are quickly reaching a cultural moment where appropriation will no longer be controversial or …

New Guest Blogger: Chris Cuellar

New Guest Blogger: Chris Cuellar

A big thanks to guest blogger Mike HJ Chang for his enlightening series of posts on the state of contemporary art and performance in Singapore. We hope to check back …

Talking to Kai Lam about Performance Art, Invisibility, and “Art Laws” in Singapore

Talking to Kai Lam about Performance Art, Invisibility, and “Art Laws” in Singapore

  First, before I start, I would like to complain a bit: Singapore prides itself on being a city of electronic gadgets and connectivity-on-the-go. There are many people watching videos …

Arts Funding, Censorship, and Writing in Singapore

Arts Funding, Censorship, and Writing in Singapore

  Soon after writing my first post for this blog, I realized how unnecessary it was for me to point out that things are different between the States and Singapore.  …

A Classroom Chat with Artist and Farmer Louisa Conrad

A Classroom Chat with Artist and Farmer Louisa Conrad

  As the artist-in-residence at an all-girls high school in Singapore, I have been working on an environmental project with the students. Twenty students and myself have each been carrying …

In Your Court

In Your Court

Before I start, I have to confess: let’s just say writing about/for other people is not my strong suit.  Writing about other people’s art gives me the nausea. Writing about …

New guest blogger: Mike HJ Chang

New guest blogger: Mike HJ Chang

Thanks to guest blogger (and Lives and Works in Berlin regular) Ali Fitzgerald for her always entertaining and insightful posts. Follow her exploits back on the column throughout the year. …

Museum of…Stuff.

Museum of…Stuff.

Continuing my inverted vision quest in search of non-art, I went to the Museum der Dinge (Museum of Things), whose name and plucky mission beckoned me.  The MDD sits on …

Bongoût!

Bongoût!

Thinking about my no. 2 resolution in learning to love art more, this week I turned to spaces that are not exclusively about “art,” but rather about the fused, sometimes …

How Not to Be an Art Hater

How Not to Be an Art Hater

As my Piscean nature and sluggish thyroid would suggest, I am fairly susceptible to bouts of ennui.  This summer (if summer began in March), I’ve struggled with attendance and indifference, …

New guest blogger: Ali Fitzgerald

New guest blogger: Ali Fitzgerald

Thanks to Thea Liberty Nichols for her terrific interviews with Chicago-based artists and practitioners. Up next is Ali Fitzgerald. A regular writer for our Lives and Works in Berlin column, …

PictureBox Inc.: Rewriting Post-WWII Visual Culture

PictureBox Inc.: Rewriting Post-WWII Visual Culture

Thea Liberty Nichols: While trying to determine how to define what it is that you do, I hit upon the idea of just describing all of your activities in one …

Lilli Carré: Rhythm and Written Sound

Lilli Carré: Rhythm and Written Sound

Thea Liberty Nichols: I’ve had the pleasure of curating one of your self-published books into a show I put together a few years ago, and recently you were kind enough …

Roxaboxen Exhibitions: Community Community Community!

Roxaboxen Exhibitions: Community Community Community!

Thea Liberty Nichols: I have to bashfully admit that, despite it being just a bike ride away, I’ve never visited Roxaboxen Exhibitions before. But, for a while now I’ve been …