Theory

GUGGENHEIM FORUM: Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance

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There is an Online Forum going on now presented by the Guggenheim Museum on in relation to their current exhibition Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance. Every photographer should take a hard look at the debates in this forum and the art in the show. The show is one of the best group photography shows I have seen in a long time. Many of the artworks I have seen before or have learned about in school but its great to see them in relation to other works that are unfamiliar.

Tonight there is an Live Forum. I'm looking forward to seeing how its run and comparing it to how we have been doing #artphotochat.

On Repeat: Session 1

On Repeat: Session 2

On Repeat: Session 3

PARTICIPATE ONLINE IN THE GUGGENHEIM FORUM Panel Discussion: Mon, June 21–Fri, June 25 Live Chat: Thurs, June 24, 3 pm EDT Join thinkers from a variety of fields to discuss the cultural impulse toward repetition in life and art, inspired by the current exhibition Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance. Learn how reenactment and reiteration have become important devices in contemporary artistic practice across creative mediums.

The Guggenheim Forum is a continuing series of moderated online discussions catalyzing intelligent conversation on the arts, architecture, and design. This fourth installment, titled On Repeat, runs now through Friday, June 25. Visitors from around the world are invited to share their thoughts and participate in a live chat session with participants on Thursday, June 24, at 3 pm EDT.

Participants

  • Drew Daniel, professor at Johns Hopkins University, author of 20 Jazz Funk Greats, and one half of the electronic music-duo Matmos
  • Simon During, professor at the University of Queensland and author of Exit Capitalism: Literary Culture, Theory and Post-Secular Modernity
  • John Malpede, director of acclaimed theatrical, installation, and public-art projects. His workBright Futures was shown at the 2009 Performa Festival
  • Amy Taubin, contributing editor of Sight & Sound and Film Comment magazines, a frequent contributor to Artforum, and former curator of video and film at the Kitchen

Editing Memory

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From the NY Times,Brain Researchers Open Door to Editing Memory. Quite startling new research being done on memory, which could change the way we deal with traumatic events. The drug allowing the editing of these memories may only be a few years away but what are the implications? if we experience something and it makes us who we are but that experience is taken away aren't we changing who we are?

best quote from the article comes at the end:

Yet as scientists begin to climb out of the dark foothills and into the dim light, they are now poised to alter the understanding of human nature in ways artists and writers have not.

Which also brings up the question are memories reliable enough to be edited in the first place? Recent research indicates that memory is more slippery that we would like to believe. In a study I am reading for research into a new project written by New Zealand researchers, Maryanne Garry, Matthew P. Gerrie titled, When Photographs Create False Memories they argue that memory itself can be fabricated. So, how will these new drugs know whet they are deleting 'real' memories or faked or fantasy memories? and what of these memories contribute to who you are?

WORDS WITHOUT PICTURES is gone...

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WORDS WITHOUT PICTURES is a project of the LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART. And grew out of the now dead project entitled TIP OF THE TONGUE. This one year experiment between the internet and photographic discourse in now over and it looks like it will become a book.

WORDS WITHOUT PICTURES is now closed as we collect our thoughts for a book which will be published in May 2009. In the meantime, the collected PDF essays which appeared on this website every month over the course of one year are offered for download. In addition to online essays and a selection from the discussion forums that accompanied these texts, the book publication will include other material relating to the project such as excerpts from our panel discussions and conversations with artists.

Many of the essays written here will become the required reading for students in the future. I have already had once class handout an early essay from TIP OF THE TONGUE by Charlotte Cotton "The New Color: The Return of Black-and-White." Although the original site has been dissolved there is an archive of this essay in PDF here. PDF via Paul Turounet's blog (or how he calls it, Forum) Beyond The Surface