In this film, Haim Steinbach discusses the ideas behind his exhibition ‘Travel’ at White Cube Mason’s Yard, observing how the notion of travel is both a state and an activity and something that we are all involved in for the duration of our lives.
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So let me tell you something, faithful Minus Plato readers. I have to confess that I have been debating taking a break from my daily posting on Minus Plato – I recently passed the 100 day mark of daily posts and didn’t want to burn out too soon (there is still so much to attend […]
In Homer’s Odyssey, while several female characters, both divine and mortal, are described in the act of weaving (and un-weaving), only two of them – Calypso and Circe – are depicted as singing while they work. In book 5, we encounter Calypso ‘singing with a sweet voice as she went to and fro before the […]
In Pythagoras’ speech in the 15th and final book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the vegetarian philosopher of rebirth tells the tale of the phoenix bird (Met. 15. 392-407). una est, quae reparet seque ipsa reseminet, ales: Assyrii phoenica vocant; non fruge neque herbis, sed turis lacrimis et suco vivit amomi. haec ubi quinque suae conplevit saecula […]
On hearing the news of the travel restrictions on passengers carrying large electronic devices in their carry-on luggage from 8 Muslim-majority countries, for some reason I was reminded of an obscure curatorial intervention in the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Between the years of 1993-2003 the then director Suzanne Pagé worked with […]
Although my posts of the last couple of days have moved away from my recent interest in contemporary ‘conceptual’ dance, I have still been reading and thinking about this work. Of course, today with the sad news of the death of Trisha Brown, I was brought back to its origins in this pioneer of movement. […]
Recently I have been thinking about the Forum as a model for an exhibition – not only the Roman Forum, but also the Imperial Fora and even Domitian’s palace complex. What would it mean for an audience to encounter performative artworks in the way ancient Romans encountered speeches at the Rostra, ambassadors at the Graecostasis […]
When Allan Sekula presented the third version of his work Shipwreck and Workers at Documenta 12 in Kassel, he employed an iconic ancient mythological figure as part of what he calls a ‘temporary monument’ to human labour: Hercules. The statue of the hero is located at the top of the pyramid and octagon, a baroque […]
Today at the Modern Institute in Glasgow, William E. Jones opened a new exhibition of his new film work Fall Into Ruin as well as a selection of photographs. The film, which I was lucky enough to see here in Columbus while the artist was editing it, explores his encounter with Alexander Iolas, the Greek […]
I have been reading the Ralph Lemon and Triple Canopy volume On Value, which contains this brief piece by Nari Ward on his work Ultra. I was intrigued by the way that Ward invokes the curious case of Robert Rauschenberg’s 1959 work Canyon (which was gifted to MoMA on account of the fact that it […]