The art: Emily Jacir, Crossing Surda (a record of going to and from work), 2002. Four stills from a two-channel video installation, one 30 minute video and one 132 minute video.
I can’t find any video to share, so here’s Jacir’s description of the piece: “Since March 2001, the Ramallah-Birzeit Road has been disrupted by a checkpoint manned by Israeli soldiers, APCs and sometimes tanks. This road was the last remaining open road connecting Ramallah with Birzeit University and approximately thirty Palestinian villages.
On December 9th, 2002, I decided to record my daily walk to work across the Surda checkpoint to Birzeit University. When the Israeli Occupation Army saw me filming my feet with my video camera, they stopped me and asked for my I.D. I gave them my American passport, and they threw it in the mud. They told me that this was ‘Israel’ and that it was a military zone and that no filming was allowed. They detained me at gunpoint in the winter rain next to their tank. After three hours, they confiscated my videotape and then released me. I watched the soldier slip my videotape into the pocket of his army pants. That night when I returned home, I cut a hole in my bag and put my video camera in the bag. I recorded my daily walk across Surda checkpoint, to and from work, for eight days.
All people including the disabled, elderly, and children must walk distances as far as two kilometers depending on the decisions of the Israeli army at any given time. When Israeli soldiers decide that there should be no movement on the road, they shoot live ammunition, tear gas, and sound bombs to disperse people from the checkpoint.”
The news: The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg has published a dozen or so blog posts in response to President Obama’s speech on the Middle East and North Africa. Highly recommended.
The source: Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London, Brooklyn Museum.
The art: Richard Misrach, Untitled, from the series “Destroy This Memory,” 2005.
The news: The Atlantic’s Alan Taylor-edited In Focus picture-blog featured Julie Dermansky’s pictures of Alabama after the tornadoes yesterday. Dermansky shot and Taylor included plenty of devastation porn, but both photographer and editor were particularly drawn to the messages people spray-painted onto homes, automobiles, plywood, cardboard and wherever else. Many of them are religious in nature.
Dermansky’s photos reminded me of photographer Richard Misrach’s post-Hurricane Katrina project. Titled “Destroy This Memory,” Misrach’s project built a 69-photograph narrative out of the messages New Orleans residents spray-painted onto available surfaces after the storm. The result is a strikingly clear, direct storyof devastation, pain, loss and hope. Aperture published Misrach’s photo-narrativeas a book last year (Misrach’s royalties go to the Make it Right Foundation). In addition, Misrach gave complete sets of the series to five museums: The the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the National Gallery of Art, MoMA and SFMOMA.
Modern Art Notes’ two-part review of Misrach’s book is here and here. You can buy“Destroy This Memory” here.
The source: Aperture Foundation.
The art: Richard Misrach, Untitled, from the series “Destroy This Memory,” 2005.
The news: The Atlantic’s Alan Taylor-edited In Focus picture-blog featured Julie Dermansky’s pictures of Alabama after the tornadoes yesterday. Dermansky shot and Taylor included plenty of devastation porn, but both photographer and editor were particularly drawn to the messages people spray-painted onto homes, automobiles, plywood, cardboard and wherever else. Many of them are religious in nature.
Dermansky’s photos reminded me of photographer Richard Misrach’s post-Hurricane Katrina project. Titled “Destroy This Memory,” Misrach’s project built a 69-photograph narrative out of the messages New Orleans residents spray-painted onto available surfaces after the storm. The result is a strikingly clear, direct story of devastation, pain, loss and hope. Aperture published Misrach’s photo-narrative as a book last year (Misrach’s royalties go to the Make it Right Foundation). In addition, Misrach gave complete sets of the series to five museums: The the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the National Gallery of Art, MoMA and SFMOMA.
Modern Art Notes’ two-part review of Misrach’s book is here and here. You can buy “Destroy This Memory” here.
The source: Aperture Foundation.
The art: Christopher Wool, Untitled, 1990.
The news: A United States special forces team has killed Osama bin Laden. ABC News has the first look inside bin Laden’s compound. The New Yorker’s coverage. The Atlantic doesn’t have a single page set up, but has a ton of coverage here, as does National Public Radio.
The source: Collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art and Flickr user M.V. Jantzen.
The art: Tina Barney, The Son, 1987.
The news: “Secret Fears of the Super-Rich: Does great wealth bring fulfillment? An ambitious study by Boston College suggests not. For the first time, researchers prompted the very rich - people with fortunes in excess of $25 million - to speak candidly about their lives. The result is a surprising litany of anxieties: their sense of isolation, their worries about work and love, and most of all, their fears for their children,” by Graeme Wood in The Atlantic.
The source: Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
The art: Emily Jacir, Rizek, a detail from Where We Come From, 2001-2003.
The news: “‘Miral’: Taking the Israel-Palestine Conflict Personally,” by Anna Louie Sussman for The Atlantic. The piece is a discussion of Julian Schnabel’s new film “Miral,” which examines the Israel-Palestine conflict from the point of view of a young girl and then follows her as she moves through her life. A decade ago, Jacir used a similarly personalizing, often young-people-focused strategy in Where We Come From.
The source: Collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
