Empty stretch (New Blog)

Installation View of No Man's Land by Christian Boltanksi. Photo by James Ewing. Courtesy Park Avenue Armory

Christian Boltanski’s No Man’s Land is currently on view at the Park Avenue Armory in New York through June 13. If you’re in NYC it is a must see.

I thought discussing No Man’s Land would be a nice way to sign off on the blog, as the work – in fact Boltanski’s entire oeuvre – is about preservation, memory and loss via his career-long use of found photographs, old clothes, bare lightbulbs and mausoleum-like structures. Through his work we see an autobiographical approach to an ever-shifting identity that is examined almost from a post-mortem state. “Every individual is unique yet at the same time so fragile that, after two or three generations, he or she disappears completely,” he says. “My work is a sort of exploration of uniqueness and disappearance.”

Detail Installation View of No Man's Land by Christian Boltanksi - a 50 ton mountain of used clothing. Photo by James Ewing. Courtesy Park Avenue Armory

What drives me as an artist is that I think everyone is unique, yet everyone disappears so quickly. I made a large work called The Reserve of Dead Swiss (1990) and all the people in photographs in the work are dead. We hate to see the dead, yet we love them, we appreciate them. Human. That’s all we can say. Everyone is unique and important. But I like something Napoleon said when he saw many of his dead soldiers on a battlefield: ‘Oh, no problem – one night of love in Paris and you can replace everybody.’ – Christian Boltanski

Unlike a large portion of his previous work, No Man’s Land does not employ the use of photographs. First installed at the Grand Palais in Paris under the title “Personnes” (a French word meaning both ‘nobody’ and ‘somebody’), the work is a combination of clothes, a crane, a wall of rusted boxes, exposed lighting and a soundtrack of recorded human heartbeats, all put together in a large interior space. Since 2005 Boltanski has collected heartbeat recordings (a visitor to No Man’s Land can have their heartbeat recorded by a docent in a lab coat). Each of the recordings are placed in Boltanski’s Archives Du Cour, a monumental project that will secure and preserve over 35,000 heartbeat recordings safely underground on a remote Japanese island. Some people, such as writer Anthony Haden-Guest, have begun referring it as Boltanski’s own “LOST” island. You can read Haden-Guest’s much blogged about article here: Christian Boltanski’s Lost Island. And check out a video interview made during the Grand Palais exhibition here:

Christian Boltanski preparing for No Man's Land at the Park Avenue Armory. Photo by James Ewing. Courtesy Park Avenue Armory

“We can preserve nothing,” Boltanski says. “I collect heartbeats. But this island is going to be an island of dead people in a few years. And if somebody goes there he is not going to see the presence of the person. He is going to see the absence of the person. Each time you attempt to preserve something, you fail. But I think that’s the beauty, to fail.”

And so, as our time together on this blog comes to a close, I want to wish you all the best in your future attempts – in both your successes and your failures – and hope you may find the beauty in all outcomes. I have the highest hopes for each of you and look forward to seeing how you will all continue to grow in your art making. This has been a great year. You’ve made good work. May this blog be a testament to our partnership and learning together and a marker of not who you are, but of the potential of who you will become.

I sat for decades at morning breakfast tea looking out my kitchen window, one day recognized my own world the familiar background, a giant wet brick-walled undersea Atlantis garden, waving ailanthus (“stinkweed”) “Trees of Heaven,” with chimney pots along Avenue A topped by Stuyvesant Town apartments’ upper floors two blocks distant on 14th Street, I focus’d on the raindrops along the clothesline. “Things are symbols of themselves,” said Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. New York City August 18, 1984 – Allen Ginsberg

Nan Goldin Seeking Studio Manager

This is a four day a week job for a highly organized and responsible person with excellent office, communication and photo skills.
There are many aspects to the job – correspondence, coordinating commercial work, archiving, financial stuff, travel plans, overseeing other assistants and interns, reporting back to Nan by email at the end of each day. A can-do, problem-solving approach is essential, along with previous artist assistant experience. Travel will sometimes be necessary, as Nan is living in both NY and Paris and often travels for shows or commercial work. French language skills a big plus. Please send a resume and cover letter to
nangoldinstudio@mac.com.

contests….

http://www.i-got-framed.com/

http://www.shotsmag.com/menu.htm

http://jpgmag.com/

http://www.editorialrm.com/concurso/index_eng.html

http://www.onehourphotoproject.com/

http://adaa.adobe.com/us/content/home

http://www.photocrati.com/photocrati-fund/

http://www.burnmagazine.org/emerging-photographers-fund/

http://www.whnpa.org/studentcontest/

http://cds.aas.duke.edu/bp/index.html

http://campaign.constantcontact.com/render?v=001y4Ou-PBFbAZCPx7chK5J-N9K2GPh2JnBFSfFK6BplpCmv2JzizLCH87Hgpli7A6JVOS8JDc4LAPsNkrYxWqc7ueCXsdeEjy2zkqvSW8QvrUy-Vymz3EeVg%3D%3D

http://www.foammagazine.nl/talent

http://pmaphotocompetition.org/

http://tellmumeverythingisok.com/

http://www.factorprize.org/topic.asp?pid=1

http://www.hearst8x10.com/index.php

http://www.pdncuratorawards.com/index.shtml

http://josh-greene.com/serviceworks/

http://creativedivergents.com/category/winter-2009/

http://futuregenerationartprize.org/

http://www.acarts.org/calltufts.php

http://www.pictureblackfriday.org/main.html

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http://www.thegalaawards.com/prizes_and_awards.html

http://www.luciefoundation.org/education/index.html

Its always easy to get your work shown, just look at the previous winners and see if the people jurying your show would be interested in what you do…

See y’all in critique.

Side note, I’ve been publishing all of my work/writings over on my individual page for the past few weeks; there are some good PDF’s at the bottom of the page for those interested…

First.

With New Orleans/ the South continuously on mind and my restless feet aching to get out, I was pleasantly surprised when I found a preview of Ned Sublette’s book The Year Before The Flood. Ned moved to New Orleans a little over a year before hurricane Katrina hit and actually moved away just weeks before it all happened. From the preview it seems like it is going to be a mix of narrative, essay, and photographs; with a lot of focus on the local music and people. He paints such a vivid picture of his drive south and of the culture of the road trip. It will be interesting to see if the book holds up to the preview.

Second.

In keep with New Orleans, I found a video of a 1956 Mardi Gras parade and a collection of photos from that same years parade.

Third.

When first seeing David S. Allee’s work, I thought of Pavlos’s work and Will Knipshers’s. I don’t know how to express why I like his photographs so much, other than how pleasing they are both color and composition wise.

Last.

I seem to have a knack for rediscovering work that I have previously viewed and liked, as is the case with Doug Aitken’s Blow Debris.The video evokes a sense of wanderlust and travel, while also a discomfort. The video being twenty videos, I suggest watching the whole thing, but if you do not have the time just skip ahead to fifteen minutes and watch from there.

From the Stephen Chalmers series "Dump Sites"

Both reflect the sense of place and truth in a way I’m trying to, as well as the quality of light they are able to capture.

Also, in an interview about his new series Out There, Christian Patterson discusses the idea of the phantom event, something heavily considered in my image making process:

I have long been fascinated with and inspired by phantom events—events that have little or no physical presence in a place or an image but have a very strong relationship with the place that is photographed. The resulting images focus on the quiet, spatial context and emotional energy of a place. I feel that these images exhibit a certain otherness—a sense of what was, or what could have been.

From Christian Patterson's series "Out There"