Yes, I’m back and I come bearing a story. He, my librarian (who, to be clear, is definitely not the hero here), was in Athens, at his second day at documenta 14. He is at EMST, in the gallery shared by the colorful grid paintings of Stanley Whitney and the reddened column of Tracey Rose […]
Yes, I’m still here. When he goes off, either on a trip or on a set of blogposts (and sometimes both at the same time, cf. Seeing Scores), I prefer to leave him to it. A librarian without a library (or in the case when he was in Dayton at that Bergamo Curriculum Theorizing conference, […]
After some delay, what says the public? It’s Joe’s time! So now, at long last, the smooth transition of a backwards flow towards normalcy softens the bite of an increasing viral death toll, trimming the long nails of Trumpism…for now. But in the meantime, what can art do for US? Either draw a line in […]
Hey you, yes you, in your BBQ/BEER/FREEDOM shirt, with your mask under your mouth, screaming at the world from my Twitter feed, I have created you to object to whatever is happening here at an unfinished exhibition. If everything turns out well (Hope is the Rarest Bird). Still if everything does turn out well, if […]
documenta 14 is not owned by anyone in particular. It is shared among its visitors and artists, readers and writers, as well as all those whose work made it happen. We write incarcerated by the myth of individual authorship. Whether poetry or prose (or whatever this is) I blow out hard from these puffed-up lungs. […]
O the virtue of ignorance! So much nothing in this Doom life! Here’s the thing: who’s going to read this? Ask anyone but me. By Hercules, no one, not one person, no single body. Either sing a duet or be dumb in silence. Nothing between. “How deplorable to be deploring of art!” (There’s no basket […]
Holiness is what is dear to the gods. Who said that? I dunno but it’s not helpful. Never mind, ignore it. Let’s check-in instead. So, how are you coping? Healthy and sane? My starting position (forced on each of us, black reader and white writer, by this writing and our society) were the sites of […]
While waiting at the Dubai International Airport after three whirlwind days at the opening of Sharjah Biennial 14 (hereafter SB14), I found myself idly looking back over my Instagram posts from the exhibition. Even though I had taken hundreds of photographs, videos and audio recordings of my experience at the exhibition, I had only shared […]
How can we hold onto the tragedy of Soweto? The sacrifice of these children who carry an ideal for us? So asks Dakar-born Beninese artist Pélagie Gbaguidi in her interview for the special education issue of the magazine Contemporary And (C&) titled: “If you’re running from history, it will eventually catch up with you”. She […]
Last episode I left you with Cornel West. He was speaking about the blues as part of the exhibition Blues for Smoke, which was on show here in Columbus at the Wexner Center for the Arts in 2013 at the same time as Chris Marker’s Le Joli Mai, with its concluding poetic call for the […]