Seth Siegelaub: Beyond Conceptual Art

Seth Siegelaub: Beyond Conceptual Art is an incredibly dense, beautifully designed (by Irma Boom) and intelectually deligthful book, dedicated to the curator, writer and dealer Seth Siegelaub (1941–2013), best known for his decisive role in the emergence and establishment of conceptual art in the late 1960s.  Siegelaub was also a gallerist, independent curator, publisher, researcher, archivist, collector, and bibliographer. Often credited as the ‘Father of Conceptual Art’, he was (and remains) a seminal influence on curators, artists, and cultural thinkers, internationally and in Amsterdam, where he settled in the 1990s. The book explores the various facets of and connections in Siegelaub’s work, from his groundbreaking projects with conceptual artists and his research and publications on mass media and communications theories to his interest in handwoven textiles and non-Western fabrics.

FROM MIRIAM ELIA'S "WE GO TO THE GALLERY" P. 3

Farmhands in Factories and Boas in Brasseries

Two voodoo dolls from the Polish countryside, displayed in the minuscule and rather gloomy exhibition Farmhands in Factories and Boas in Brasseries at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. 

#makinguse 14

New World Academy Reader #5: Stateless Democracy provides key texts that offer an overview of both the political and cultural dimensions comprising what has now come to be known to history as the Rojava Revolution. The texts in the reader are as much an introduction to the model of stateless democracy practiced in Rojava, as a potential political paradigm through which to confront the many related crises in politics, economy, and ecology that we face across the world.

The book was edited by Renée In der Maur and Jonas Staal in dialogue with the Kurdish Women’s Movement —an umbrella organization that has been foundational in shaping the political objectives of the Kurdish liberation movement internationally.

atrapanieblas

Atrapanieblas (fog-catchers) is the common name for constructions used to collect fog in the Atacama desert in Chile, one of the driest places on earth. The method was developed and patented in the 1960s by Carlos Espinosa Arancibia, an engineer at the Catholic University of the North in Antofagasta. He then assigned his patent to UNESCO so that it could be copied free of charge. Now atrapanieblas are being tested in over a dozen desert regions around the world, including Israel and Tanzania. 

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South as a State of Mind magazine hosts documenta 14, temporarily becoming the documenta journal until the opening of the exhibition in Athens and Kassel in 2017. 

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One of the priceless readings for Making Use. Life in Postartistic Times project is Center for Land Use Interpretation's website. The photograph above: "A major automotive R&D test track, located in Wittmann, north of Phoenix. It was built in 1985 for the Volvo company, which used it until Ford took it over in 2009. It has several different types of track, including a 2.2 mile high speed oval, a 2.1 mile long straightaway, a 2.6 mile long low speed windy track, a 12 acre wet pad, and many dirt track and rough road test areas. It is also known as the Arizona Proving Ground, and is one of around a dozen such tracks in Arizona and California." 

from miriam elia's "we go to the gallery" p. 2

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Tom Marioni's 1970 exhibition, The Art of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art, was a forerunner of a type of contemporary Relational Aesthetics practices that involve eating, drinking and other social activities. In this memoir, Marioni demystifies and defines conceptual art and answers the question, "What is art for?" Thomas McEvilley, in the introduction, enlarges the historic context, comparing early Conceptual art activities in New York to the work of California artists like Marioni and John Baldessari, who embraced directness and humor. 

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Reverend Billy & The Stop Shopping Choir is a radical performance community based in New York City and led by the Reverend Bill Talen, an artist, activist, and self-styled lay preacher. Appropriating the gesture and tone of the televangelical minister, the Reverend and the Choir focus their canonical message on the destructive ills of pollutants, consumerism, and gentrification. The Reverend Billy Project by Savitri D and Bill Talen is a firsthand account of the Reverend’s work, from his early Starbucks “casting out of demons from cash registers” continuing across several continents, up to his run for Mayor of New York City in 2009.