Imagine being highly susceptible to hypnotism and electing to give yourself over to a series of trances investigating your subconscious.  When in your normal state you do not recall what you said or how you behaved during the hypnotic state, however emotionally you have undergone a transformation.  You now feel a sadness and may cry for no apparent reason.  These are a few of the sensations that Mexican artist Ale de la Puente experienced during a period of personal investigation with a Canadian hypnotist.

Ale traversed her past and her subconscious projection into her future.  She put herself in the trust of a hypnotist to experience and pay audience to the power of her subconscious (pay audience by watching the video documentation of her trance states).  Following this intense periods of hypnosis, Ale’s hypnotist proposed one more trance to offer her a gift.  Following the final trance, Ale experienced a week of incredible happiness.

This is the personal territory that has informed Ale de la Puente’s current installation at kbk arte contemporaneo, a gallery in Mexico City directed by Ubaldo Kramer.  Ale has created a visually rich landscape entirely made of confetti; more precisely a mountain scape of confetti formed through celebration.  By throwing a large amount of confetti about the room, eventually a series of mountains appeared.  She finalized the confetti-scape by placing specific colored confetti onto the shapes, creating a series of color plateaus.  The confetti composition is accompanied by a series of beautiful photos documenting the process.

Ale de la Puente at kbk arte contemporaneo, Mexico, D.F.

I’m too tired to comment much, but I’ve got lots of images accumulating without sharing. There’s been so much art in NYC lately that the work I shoot just ends up on my desktop. Here are a few from today:

I’ll never understand Murakami’s stuff - as long as people can’t ride it, what’s the point… well, other than making lots and lots of money. Takashi Murakami has a show at the Brooklyn Museum, I haven’t checked it out, but was briefly visually entertained by what’s in the lobby. Even the kids stare in awe, but it fades fast once they realized they can’t touch or ride the stuff… crazy eye candy.

Hopefully he’ll open an amusement park that hands out free acid upon entry.

Afterwards, I hiked it over to Wall Street to catch the tale end of Pia Lindeman’s Soapbox Event, where kids took turns outside of Federal Hall to get people’s attention and inspire participation.

And inside participants were given a nice new soapbox to stand on and exercise their freedom of speech. Assuming that there really wasn’t much of a point in addressing the ongoing wars that US citizens contribute to and allow to continue while hundreds of thousands of innocent people die along with several thousand US military… I complained about the dog shit and piss that litters the streets of NYC.

By the time I got there, most of the audience were the assistants, but given all the boxes on the floor, it was clear that there was lots of participation.  It seems as if the street would present a stronger venue.

And at the end of the afternoon, I made it to Martha Wilson’s exhibition at Mitchell Algus Gallery. On exhibit are a few of Martha’s early works, executed between 1971-74. It’s the work of a young woman, a feminist, a critical thinker that remains powerful today. The NY Times has an excellent review of the show.

After watching the video by Alfonso Curan inspired by Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism, I read “Latin America’s Shock Resistance” an article by Klein that briefly articulates some of the primary ideas behind the book. I have yet to get my hands on the book, but the article really angered me, so I had to write something in response, even if just a note to myself.

The article is a good read, but way too optimistic for me. For every positive change toward democratic socialism that the article sites, there are any number of privatizing and culturally negligent changes that are not mentioned, and are all too real to ignore. This for me takes a great deal out of Klein’s perspective. She’s right, Latin America has grown tired of the United States’ influence and power, changes are being made that counter 100+ year traditions such as School of the Americas and the banana republic diplomacy; these are changes that have been fermenting popularly since the 80s and for some groups much longer.  But there are new transformations occurring based on transcapitalist models that are not being countered and not being fully understood, yet.

I know what is happening in Nicaragua first hand, so it’s the only place that she mentions that I can write about and she is entirely mistaken. Much of the beautiful, untouched beach front property on the Pacific has been purchased by foreign wealth, primarily US development contractors and small pieces by retirees. The once untouched rain forests of the country have been deforested. At the current rate of deforestation the majority of Nicaragua will be a desert in the very near future. On paper the rate of deforestation has lowered, but in reality a great deal of illegal deforestation continues, even under Sandinista watch - the money is too easy.

The entire cultural landscape has been transformed and continues to loose the identity it once had. In parallel with the communal organizations that she sites (primarily in South America), there are any number of private tourism companies established. In some cases tourism is managed by government, but it remains one of the largest private markets in Latin America.  Nicaragua is trying to emulate Costa Rica’s tourism industry, an industry that overwhelms any cultural tradition, because culture is transformed into mere spectacle.  I hate to use this sort of neoMarxist language, but I’ve watched it happen first hand and in real time. The transformation and loss of tradition is immediate. Perhaps tourism that caters to US tourist expectations is the new world bank, is that any better? It might be financially but not culturally.

Daniel Ortega is an ignorant example of the rise of the left in Latin America. Ortega was only elected as president because his party’s majority (the Sandinistas in the National Assembly) changed the constitution to lower the percentage of votes so that a run off between the two top candidates would not be required. The percentage was lowered to what Ortega had been at every previous elections in which he tried to retake the presidency - that’s every election since loosing to Violeta. I don’t recall the exact numbers, but for explanation, lets say that previously if no candidate received 40% of the vote, a run off would be necessary between the two top candidates, one of these always been Ortega and each time he lost. Now the winning percentage has been lowered to what he generally gets, about 35% and a run off will only occur if that winning percentage isn’t a clear 5% higher than the next best. In a 12 party race, with the Sandinista’s being the most powerful and wealth party, Ortega arranged the numbers to what he needed.

In order to win the Christian vote, the Sandinista lead National Assembly made all form of abortion illegal, this was in October of 2006. Within the first two weeks of the new law the first victim died, a young woman who could only live if she underwent an abortion or would die along with her unborn child. She did not have a choice and both died. I know this because my cousin, a doctor in Nicaragua who fights for women’s rights, spoke at the UN and sited this case while seeking the UN’s in repealing the abortion law.

And as for these financial programs that allow countries to not borrow from the world bank, one must still follow the money and see where it ends up. Last year presidents, Ortega and Chavez made a business agreement - the largest oil refinery in Latin America is to be built of the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua. In five years that refinery will not be nationalized, it will be owned by the Ortega family… And the blackouts in Nicaragua are worse than they have ever been, only now they are regularly scheduled, a small improvement.

Actually the more I consider the article the angrier I get! It’s entirely one-sided, it describes a forming utopia south of the U.S. border. Countries that prosper due to their new found independence and this simply isn’t true. She apparently has no clue of some of the backroom deals being made by these leaders that she makes into heroes. Her article makes me wonder if she’s traveled to Nicaragua and if so, where did she stay, who did she talk to and what cosmetic version of reality was she given. I’d like to believe in her perspective, but it’s incredibly short-sighted. It wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t know that many people read her writing and believe it or consider it enlightening when there is so much missing that it is irresponsible..

“Only a crisis, real or perceived, produces real change” stated Milton Friedman, economist and vanguard of the free market and indeed the free market has prospered through human suffering. Friedman is a classic Conservative who believed that if one suffered, tough, one was dealt a poor lot, it is not upto society to fix the situation. According to Naomi Klein and Alfonso Cuaron there is hope for the disenfranchised even during the rule of the free market.

Hope is knowledge and communication (the basis of Enlightenment ideals - classical Liberalism) - “to resist shock is to know what is happening to you and why”. I’ve tried to believe this for a long time, but when I read of what is happening in our world and to consider the parallels of how it has happened before even within my liftime (and I’m not old), it’s difficult to believe in information as shock resistance. And hell, I’m a firm believer in informationalism, but one must have some level of entitlement, whether by birth, geographic location, migration, or availability of information. To say that information is resistance, assumes a great deal and only one that is entitled would be so careless to make that declaration. Perhaps the liberal revolution has lost to a powerful deity, one that was always with us, human nature - lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, pride… the engines of Western civilization.

Following my opening at Vox Populi on Friday, one person commented that sequences of my animation reminded her of the animations of Harry Smith. Not being familiar with Harry Smith, I searched for his work and discovered the animation above on YouTube, where several others are available.

Although technically I appreciate Smith’s strictly geometric abstractions, I’m much more drawn to this particular animation that presents figurative characters set against the geometric lights and shapes. It seems that his interest in anthropology presented Smith with a wide array of characters to draw from such as Buddhist deities. Considering the animation tools of the period, Smith’s films are inspiring in so far as the work of one man who was also a folk music archavist, sound artist and mystic.

My installation “On Transmitting Ideology” opened this past Friday at the artist run, Philadelphia gallery Vox Populi. The installation presents eleven wooden guns outfitted with radios broadcasting declarations on freedom and transformation in our society.

As I was listening to famous historical speeches concerning U.S. politics, I primarily became interested in the rhetoric that has established “Conservative” vs. “Liberal” ideology in the United States. Unfortunately due to the quality of sound of early 20th century speeches such as an excellent speech by Calvin Coolidge declaring the need for an imperial reach by the United States in the name of liberty, I narrowed the selection to speeches since the second half of the 20th century.

The broadcast is 18 minutes long and begins with the famous declaration by Barry Goldwater “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice and let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” The broadcast includes an excerpt from a debate between Buckley and Chomsky, and excerpts from speeches by Reagan, Martin Luther King, and Obama. For the most part I left the excerpts intact; it is only with King’s speech in opposition to the Vietnam War that I withdrew “Vietnam”, because his arguments against our intervention in Vietnam parallel all to well the current war in Iraq.

Pictured above, in the upper right corner of the gallery on a shelf sit a CD player connected to a miniFM transmitter. On each table are five hand-crafted wooden AK47s and Uzis (one is also mounted on the wall), each gun has an exposed pocket radio tuned to the transmitter.

The exhibition also features two recent video commissions that question the outcome of popular notions of freedom, liberty and the power of capital. “Arbol que nace torcido, nunca su rama enderece” (”Tree that is born twisted will never straighten”) is an animation created for the public commission “Carreta Nagua, Siglo 21″ (2007) that tells a tale of immigration, aging and cultural and familial loss. Two aging television super heroes, Ultraman and El Chapulin Colorado take the voices of my parents as they look back upon their lives and consider the price of immigration. The video “El Rito Apasionado” (2007) (commissioned for 50,000 Beds) takes place in a hotel room where three Guevarrian Neo-Marxist Latino Terror Revolutionaries from Cuba, Nicaragua and Mexico gather to prepare an act against the history of U.S. intervention.

“On Transmitting Ideology” will be open to the public Wednesday through Sunday noon – 6pm. For more information please contact Vox Populi: 215 238 1236

The NY Times has run a good story on the complexity of immigration in relation to national elections - “The Border and the Ballot Box”.  The author David Leonhardt points to historical reoccurence of xenophobia and national identity disorder regarding immigration as we like to think of ourselves as a nation of immigrants and yet we fear new waves of immigrants.  The article suggests that although immigration remains a national issue, it has not and will not present a primary platform for presidential candidates.  Personally the story is interesting because it presents a brief index of the historical national attitude toward immigration.

The article sites the 1850s anti Irish Catholic immigrant movement - “Know Nothings”,  the 1882 “Chinese Exclusion Act”…  However the article attempts to consider both sides of the issue and mentions the fact that illegal immigration undermines the notion of a nation and that the contribution of illegal immigrants is exaggerated when considering the overall effects.

But as it nears conslusion, Leonhardt points out that “No matter how it happens, the country will almost certainly need an influx of new arrivals in coming decades. The baby boomers are about to start turning 65. Someone will have to take their place in the work force — and help pay their Medicare and Social Security bills. “  Read the story.

Straight from Texas and gearing up for a big Tuesday - an Obama ranchera presented by Amigos de Obama

For his second solo-show at Sikkema Jenkins & CO., Mark Badford has created a series of large scale (approximatel 8′ x 12′) collage works. What I really enjoyed about these wall pieces is that they initially look like giant maps - intricate topographies of cities - and as one approaches them, tiny colorful details become apparent. Carefully looking at the works creates the effect of zooming in from an arial view to a street level view of a cityscape. According to the press release, these large scale rectangular collages are entirely made from found materials, materials that Mark gathers as he goes out into the city. In practice the works are commodified step children of the dadaist and situationist city expeditions - dérive - a “technique of locomtion without a goal.” However rather than drifting without motive, Bradford drifts through Los Angeles with the goal of gather materials to assemble precious art works.

As one studies the collages up close, the content appears to be primarily from comic books as Spider Man and Hellboy begin to pop out.

I’d love to know Marks process in creating these pieces. In studying them it looks as if he layered pages from comic books and magazines onto a large canvas and then topped it all off with reflective silver foam board. Once all the materials have settled down, he creates the topography with a router. Of course, I’m just guessing, I’d be surprised if this is his process because of how well the details show up in the final product.

There’s a much better image on the Sikkema Jenkins site, but here’s a detail:

As much as I enjoyed these large scale, attractive collages, in considering Mark’s work, I remembered what he did for inSite05 (a biennial-like exhibition that exits between San Diego and Tijuana) and recognized why I’m so drawing to work that exits in the public space and functions through a network of people.

With inSite05 Bradford organized the “Maleteros” project.  On the Tijuana side of the border, there are people who sell their service as bell boys for pedestrian border crossers.  These men will carry ones things from the point of entry to the nearest taxi for a small wage.  In collaboration with these guys and the Mexican border police, Mark organized these disparate workers into an institionalized version by giving them vests that would identify them as border bell boys and got them stations to place their hand carts and shopping carts.

Bradford’s “Maleteros” brings up all sorts of problems - is this a positive intervention, is it merely a brief imposition onto a foreign labor space by an artist for the length of an exhibition or does it propose a more organized system to a labor space that may be adopted or at least considered?  Either way such cultural work is adventurous for these reasons, by creating a situation in a social space, all sorts of consequences become possible and to me that is art.  I view this as art because it’s not a closed or individualistic process that ends as an object to be sold to a wealthy patron, rather it is an idea advanced into a situation with all sorts of possibilities.

Obsessing about the sun - it’s history, power, influence in relation to the history of the United States - Manifest Destiny, Native American genocide, slavery… has led Shuan O’Dell to create a series of drawings that are visually dynamic on view at Susan Inglett in Chelsea.

The drawings at once bring to mind a diverse set of aesthetics from Aztec codices to traditional U.S. quilts conveying Quaker imagery to geometric abstraction but O’Dell manages to meld these different visual elements into works that invite the viewer to attempt to follow a narrative. These are stories of travel, exploration and discovery.

As O’Dell considered his personal history with the sun. He asked others to write him with their very earliest memory of the sun. He then took these memories to create a sun drawing pictured below.

And in a small room at the rear of the gallery, O’Dell inserted a video of the ball of fire burning. It’s an incredible image, unfortunately it doesn’t work with the rest of the exhibition and I believe detracts from the drawings, because it leaves an odd punctuation. The show will remain open until March 15th.