ALIGHIERO BOETTI, GUATEMALA, 1974 AT TATE MODERN'S BOETTI RETROSPECTIVE

Alighiero Boetti
Guatemala
1974
4 photographs, on paper, unique
each image: 290 x 220 mm
Agata and Matteo Boetti Collection
Provenance: from the artist, 1987

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/alighieroboetti/

LEARNING TO DANCE WITH MICHAEL CLARK AT TATE

For the last two Friday's I've been going to Tate Modern where choreographer and dancer Michael Clark is teaching selected members of the general public a dance routine to perform at Tate Modern's Turbine Hall. Last Friday I went as a spectator, but this Friday I joined as a participant with my friends art historian Claire Bishop, curator Catherine Wood and artist Silke Otto-Knap in learning a routine with other 100 improvised amateurs, that we'll hopefully perform there by the end of August!

*****
Press Release
Tate Modern Live: Michael Clark Company

Widely considered as one of the most eminent and groundbreaking choreographers today, Michael Clark and his dance company transform the Turbine Hall into a space for experimentation and practice while they prepare a new work created in response to this monumental space. This unique display of live art provides an extraordinary opportunity for Tate visitors to witness the artistic process behind Clark's choreography.

Michael Clark is also inviting 100 members of the public to join weekly workshops with the company in July and August. The group of 100 untrained dancers will learn a piece of choreography to be performed en-masse over the August Bank Holiday weekend in the Turbine Hall in free public performances.

A programme of films and videos by Charles Atlas is presented in conjunction with Michael Clark Company's Turbine Hall residency.

ALEJANDRO CESARCO 'PRESENT MEMORY' AT TATE

Alejandro Cesarco, Present Memory

Uruguayan artist Alejandro Cesarco pays special attention to the construction of narratives and the practices of reading and translating. ‘I am interested in cataloguing, classifying, appropriating and reinterpreting texts’, he has said. Through different conceptual strategies and a range of media, including prints, books, videos and installations, he explores the various meanings of words and images in relation to context, experience and subjectivity.

Present Memory, a newly commissioned video, features an intimate portrait of the artist’s father, a doctor recently diagnosed with cancer. Using a 16mm camera, Cesarco filmed him in his medical practice in Montevideo with a series of close-ups and medium shots. He later projected this footage onto the same room and recorded the film screening with a video camera. The resulting video is now being shown at three different sites across the museum. Conceived as a projection of a projection, its repetition creates a visual echo and activates a sense of déjà vu every time the viewer re-encounters it.

The work documents both a constructed and anticipated memory of the father, through which the artist also explores the writing of his personal narrative amidst the museum's writing of its own history and memory.

Alejandro Cesarco was born in 1975 in Montevideo, Uruguay. He lives and works in New York City

Alejandro Cesarco. Present Memory is curated by Iria Candela

On view until 31 October on levels 3, 4 & 5

The Level 2 Gallery series is conceived and led by Tate Modern’s Assistant Curators, in dialogue with Tanya Barson, Curator

The Level 2 Gallery programme has been made possible with the generous support of Catherine Petitgas

http://www.cesarco.info/

FRANCIS ALYS 'A STORY OF DECEPTION' AT TATE MODERN

'A Story of Deception', 2003, filming of mirages in a desert highway in Patagonia, Argentina


'The Loop', 1997, going from Tijuana to San Diego without crossing the border and going around the world.


'Patriotic Tales', 1997, Alys leading a circle of sheep around the flag in el Zocalo in Mexico City


'Bandera', 2006, walking with a knotted flag, followed by dogs, around Mexico City's centre


'Ambulantes', (1992- ), street vendors pushing their carts around the centre of Mexico City


'Paradox of Praxis (Sometimes Doing Something Leads to Nothing)', 1997, Mexico City, pushing an ice block until it melts




'Re-enactment', 2000, walk around Mexico City centre with a gun until being arrested, repeat the action the next day with the complicity of the police


'Rehersal', 1999-2001, Tijuana, a VW beetle attempts to go up a hill without ever getting to the top


Continuous performance cancels the sequence of Events


'When Faith Moves Mountains', 2002, 500 volunteer students moving a dune in Lima, Peru



'The Green Line (Sometimes Doing Something Poetic can become political...', Jerusalem, 2005




Jerusalem/Palestine Paintings



'Tornado' 2010, trying to get inside the eye of the storm


It is the Struggle that defines Utopia




Press Release:
Francis Alÿs: A Story of Deception
15 June – 5 September 2010 (Press view: 14 June 2010)
Tate Modern, Level 4

Tate Modern will present a major exhibition of work by the celebrated artist Francis Alÿs (born Belgium 1959). Using diverse poetical and allegorical approaches, Alÿs explores political subjects such as contentious borders and economic crises. The exhibition will present iconic works alongside new pieces which have never been shown before in the UK. Working in a variety of mediums including painting, video projection, animation and sculpture, Francis Alÿs is one of the most important artists of his generation.

Francis Alÿs’s work often starts with a simple act, either by him or others, which is then documented in a range of media. Working in urban settings and dramatic landscapes, he creates interventions which frequently address a historical or political concern attached to a specific site. Alÿs moved to Mexico City in the mid 1980s at a time of political unrest. He began to make work which recorded every day life there, capturing images of street sleepers and workers. In Paradox of Praxis 1 1997 Alÿs pushed a block of ice around Mexico City until it melted. The work stood as an allegory about failed modernisation strategies in the region and dramatised the idea of applying maximum effort for minimum results.

Alÿs has carried out actions across Latin America, addressing economic and political crises through extraordinary acts. When Faith Moves Mountains 2002 is described by Alÿs as ‘land art for the landless’.The work involved organising a line of 500 Peruvian students walking over a sand dune in Lima, digging as they went, shifting the dune by a few centimetres. While the alteration of the mountain was minimal, the event explored the power of communal action. The exhibition will also feature The Green Line 2004. Over two days, Alÿs walked through Jerusalem trailing a line of green paint from a can as he paced along the route of the armistice border, known as ‘the green line’, drawn between Israel and Jordan in 1948. In this work he questioned whether a poetic act could have relevance in a highly charged political situation.

Alongside video and film installations, the exhibition will include Francis Alÿs’s dream-like paintings Le Temps du Sommeil 1996-present and different objects that he makes with various fabricators in Mexico. The exhibition closes with the first ever display of Alÿs’s powerful video Tornado 2000-10.

Francis Alÿs was born in Belgium in 1959. His work has been included in biennials including São Paulo (1998, 2005), Istanbul (1999, 2001) and Venice (1999, 2001, 2007). He has had solo exhibitions at major international institutions including the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (2004) and the UCLA Hammer (2007). Francis Alÿs: A Story of Deception is curated by Mark Godfrey, Curator, Tate Modern and Kerryn Greenberg, Assistant Curator, Tate Modern. The exhibition has been organised in collaboration with WIELS where it will be curated by Dirk Snauwaert and The Museum of Modern Art, New York where it will be curated by Klaus Biesenbach and Cara Starke.

JUAN DOWNEY'S 'VIDEO TRANS AMERICAS' EXHIBITED AT TATE MODERN AS PART OF THE COLLECTION

Uros 1975


Lima /Machu Pichu 1975


Yucatan/Guatemala


New York/Texas 1974


Lima/Machu Pichu 1975



Juan Downey's 'Video Trans Americas' combines aspects of travelogue, visual anthropology, the study of architectural and geographical space, politics and poetry. Responding in part to the 1973 military coup in Chile, Downey wanted to foster a transnational Latin American identity. He initially envisaged his project as a road trip, from New York to the southern tip of Latin America, during which he would videotape aspects of the distinct cultures )art, architecture, cooking, dance, landscape, language, etc.) of the regions he passed through. At the same time, he would show the local inhabitants previous tapes shot along the way, in order to share information and overcome the isolation of individual communities.

In practice, the fourteen videos that eventually formed the installation were made over a series of journeys between 1973 and 1976. each video es positioned on a map of the Americas to show the location of filming.

Juan Downey (1940-1993) was born in Santiago Chile. He lived and worked in New York.

'Video Trans Americas' acquired for Tate by the Latin American Acquisitions Committee.

'NO SOUL FOR SALE' INDEPENDENT SPACES AT TATE AND AN OPEN LETTER TO THE TATE ASKING FAIR PAY FOR ARTISTS

Mariana Castillo Deball at Peep Hole


e-flux journal


Form and Content


Taking the Tate to Task
AN OPEN LETTER TO TATE
TATE: NO SOUL FOR SALE // ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM // FAIR PAY FOR ARTISTS
reposted from http://halfletterpress.tumblr.com/post/598525511/tate

“We don’t really cherish our artists to the degree we should.”
Sir Nicholas Serota, Director of Tate, quoted in the Evening Standard 23.04.10

As a grouping of national and international artists, we publicly challenge No Soul For Sale (NSFS) at Tate Modern over the weekend of 14th-16th May 2010.

The title No Soul For Sale re-enforces deeply reductive stereotypes about the artist and art production. With its romantic connotations of the soulful artist, who makes art from inner necessity without thought of recompense, No Soul For Sale implies that as artists we should expect to work for free and that it is acceptable to forego the right to be paid for our labour.

It has come to our attention that many participants are not being paid by Tate Modern for their efforts. In fact, most are self-funding their activities throughout the weekend. Tate describes this situation as a “spirit of reciprocal generosity between Tate and the contributors”. But at what point does expected generosity become a form of institutional exploitation? Once it becomes endemic within a large publicly funded art space?

Reciprocal generosity is the lifeblood of independent art communities throughout the world. This spirit is not however the property of any one institution, artist or curator and it is complacent for Tate to believe that their position is comparable to ground level arts activity. It therefore seems disingenuous for Tate to claim that their hosting of NSFS is somehow altruistic or philanthropic. Tate publicly has the most to gain, yet we have discovered that Tate’s reciprocity does not even extend to the provision of basic resources, such as the use of chairs and tables for some of the participants in NSFS. Tate will commercially benefit from NSFS through increased audiences and the inevitable increase in the sale of books, magazines, merchandise, refreshments, donations and exhibition entry fees. Is the nature of this exchange really occurring on a level playing field? Is the relationship as reciprocal as it could be?

As many of us in Making A Living have worked with Tate and other major art galleries, we understand that the expectation of free labour and self -funding is not exclusive to NSFS. During our discussions it has come to light that Tate has not paid artists for some exhibitions, workshops and events, including last year’s Tate Triennial, and that this policy has existed over a considerable period of time, long before the current economic crisis became an issue for arts institutions.

We call for an end to this poor practice and manipulation of generosity as Tate Modern celebrates its 10th birthday. We call on Tate to make public its policy in regard to artists’ fees.

If artists continue to work for free, or are expected to pay for their efforts when working with our major art institutions, then we deny opportunities to the great majority of artists who simply cannot afford to take such financial risks. Tate and other major publicly funded galleries risk spoiling their good work by unwittingly limiting their pool of future exhibiting artists to individuals who can afford to pay for the privilege, or who are content or able to work for little or no pay. If NSFS manages to start a productive conversation about this ‘elephant in the room’ then we think it may yet be described as a success.

M.A.L
(Making A Living: A discussion group of Arts professionals currently active across the UK)
makingaliving@live.co.uk

LEARNING FROM EARLY JOHN BALDESSARI

The Backs of All the Trucks Passed While Driving from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara, California, Sunday, 20 January 1963


A Painting That Is Its Own Documentation, 1966-1968


Everything is Purged, 1966-1968


Clement Greenber, 1966-1968


Tips for Artists Who Want to Sell, 1966-1968


Econ-O-Wash, 14th and Highland, National City, Calif., and Looking East on 4th and C, Chula Vista, Calif., 1966-1968



California Map Project Part I: California, 1969


Goodbye to Boats (Sailing Out), 1972-1973


Goodbye to Boats (Sailing In), 1972-1973


One Rented Painting Hung Crookedly, 1971


Baldessari Sings LeWitt, 1972
Baldessari sings each of Sol LeWitt's Sentences on Conceptual Art, an aphoristic manifesto consisting of 35 statements that LeWitt published in 1969. Each sentence is sung to a different pop tune after the model of Ella Fitzgerald Sings Cole Porter.


John Baldessari is such an influential artist to artists of my generation who often quote and recreate his work, that I thought it would be interesting to visit and re-learn from the original sources. Unfortunately, the security man stoped me before I could do any photograph of Baldessari's 1969 Commisioned Paintings, where amateur artists would do paintings to his specifications and which have also been higly influential to later generation of artists, including to Francis Alys' 1993-97 'Sign Painting Project'.

Sadly, it also seems the new economy has affected Tate Modern, and now you don't get the free useful exhibition guides when you visit (well i guess most visitors threw them to the trash afterwards anyway!). "The Tate is going green", the man at the entrance of the exhibition told me, but between you and me he said "I think they're just on a budget!", and laughed.

Read a conversation between John Baldessari and curator Jessica Morgan here.

John Baldessari
Pure Beauty
curated by Jessica Morgan and Leslie Jones
Tate Modern 13 October 2009 – 10 January 2010
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/johnbaldessari