"Why Design, Why Biennial?": International Istanbul Design Symposium

The first pre-event of the İstanbul Design Biennial will be organised at Kadir Has University, Cibali Campus, on 2-3 December 2010.

Titled "Why Design, Why Biennial?", the symposium aims to create means for a productive debate on the interaction of design and diverse fields such as environment, culture, politics, economy, education, technology, and science. With presentations of leading figures from various sectors, the issue of design and the city will also be elaborated with a specific focus on Istanbul. Within this framework, the symposium is structured around four main thematic parts: Design and Its Genetics, Design and Its Micro-Components, Design and Its Macro-Components, Design and the City.

With speakers from institutions such as Design Business Association, Design Management Institute, Designboom, Zona Tortona, Design Museum in London, and Material Connexion, as well as prominent figures of design in Turkey from both the academia and the practical field, the Symposium invites you to a two-day gathering of design and everything that it is connected to.

Please click for the symposium programme.

FemLink's "ARTISTS' LOVE SONG" - Call to Visual Artists

FemLink's Call to Visual Artists

"ARTISTS' LOVE SONG"

An artists' initiative :
The international Love Song
composed by Visual-Artists

Why create "Artists' Love Song" ?

I - Symbolic Reasons

We live in a world of friends and enemies, cleaved from all sides, fragmented, a world under the influence of deaf and autistic powers extending themselves in words, year after year, while men in arms, in charge of enforcing the law, protect and assert boundaries, build and protect walls, and, worse yet, decide on the life and death of others, on freedom and the subjugation of peoples.

We live in a world where goods and capital move overseas, over mountains and continents; while men, women and children stay for hours, days or years, behind bars in confined control zones, in borders, behind walls and barbed wire, separated by silence and misunderstanding, in a vacuum, sometimes hidden by or even buried under rubble.

«What world is our world? Is it still possible to sing in this world ? What are poets for in a destitute time? », asked Holderlin (“Bread and Wine”) .

A group of artists have decided not to allow goods and capital to be the only things that circulate freely and fast. They want to show that another world is possible. In the face of loneliness, despair and indifference, they want to demonstrate that art, of the kind that is not simply a part of the all embracing Market, has always had, and still has the sense of what is to be human.

And yes, it happens that human beings sing, they sing now as always, and they sing all over the world: love songs. This is their strength.

This is a love song that we visual artists have decided to offer as a joint effort.

Fragments of all the love songs sung by artists are glued together to compose and present their song of universal love.

Anticipating a future where people will again want to sing together, we artists are involved in what Herder called, « the great symphony of humanity ».

Crossing this territory without borders, without guards, and unarmed, the vast, warm and welcoming Land of Art, artists weave a network across the world by combining their love songs: a generous initiative, bold, utopian…crazy, indeed.


II - ARTISTICS REASONS

Artists must rebuild art. We can no longer produce as yesterday. Labor, tools, processes of production, and circulation of goods have changed. Their nature and materiality have changed as well. Work becomes an ever-more intangible process, and tools become more and more mental instruments.

Art cannot escape this major change that affects extra-aesthetic production, because the major processes of artistic creation have always been historically linked to those of social production.

"The aesthetic productive force is the same as productive labor and has the same teleology," says Theodor Adorno, while stressing "the double character of art as autonomous and as a social fact" (Aesthetic Theory, p. 6).

The "Artists' Love Song" will be part of the new conditions of what Marcelo Lima calls a “collective creative intelligence”, that is, "an aesthetic and artistic collective mind at work within the potentialities of a new technological environment of communication and exchanges, and a new cultural universe being born amid the paradoxes and the conflicts of the present. It foresees in the arts, beyond the ambiguities, impasses and contradictions of our current situation, and beyond the restrictions and limits of the existing domain of the arts as socially and ideologically structured today, a new collective artist in the making". (http://thepanoptikon.blogspot.com/2010/01/this-is-color-of-my-dreams-surrealism.html)

With the international video collage "Artists' Love Song", artists rely on networks and their tools are embedded in relations of communication and cooperation that underlie and compose their common work. The spatial mobility and temporal flexibility of their means give artists freedom to display and disseminate their works, but also to invent new relationships between art/artists, artists/performers, and artists/art/public.

In other words, the international video collage "Artists' Love Song»", contributes to the creation of other art forms, new surfaces of inscriptions, other materialities, other aesthetic systems, another logic of sense….in short: a "Artists' Love Song" for another world.

1 - THE PRINCIPLE

1 - A visual artist (painters, videographers, sculptors, photographers…) shoots a video showing another visual artist(s) who are singing a love song.
2 - S/he sends 20 seconds of this video (with its sound) by email to us : femlinkinfo@eim.ae
That's all.

2 - WHAT DO WE DO WITH THIS 20 SECONDS ?

We will remove one frame from the 20 sec. video :
- to obtain one still for the photo-exhibitions
- to add this frame to a new compilation video (that will include all the submited frames).
All the sounds will form a soundtrack of the new video "ARTISTS' LOVE SONG"

DETAILS OF THE PROJECT

WHO IS INVITED TO PARTICIPATE? Professional visual artists (any gender) who accept this call. Artists are invited to pass this call onto as many other artists as they wish.
WHO IS INCLUDED IN THE VIDEO ? Only visual artists (ie, painters, printmakers, videographers, sculptors, photographers, installation artists…). The artist who shoots the video can be on the video also.
Important : artists can ONLY appear ONE time (one frame) in the final compilation.
HOW MANY ARTISTS ARE ON THE VIDEO ? Your choice.
WHAT ARE THE ARTISTS DOING IN THE VIDEO? They are singing a love song chosen by the artist who shoots the video (the langage of the song is chosen by artist).
IN WHICH LOCATION IS THE VIDEO SHOT? CLOTHES ? COLOR OR BW ? Wherever you like. Whatever you like. Whichever you like.
AFTER YOU HAVE SELECTED YOUR 20 SECONDS OF VIDEO ? - let us know you are ready and we'll send you the Form and "Application Agreement Document"
WHEN IS THE DEADLINE ? The project will span 3 years (the end will be december 2013). Our frames collage will be presented in exhibitions and screenings as soon as possible. So, please keep in mind that the sooner we receive your 20 sec. video, the sooner your frame can be shown in the events.

OTHER QUESTIONS

Why 20 seconds if we use only one frame ? 20 seconds is the minimum that we can send by email with the format .mov (quicktime)
Who selects the frame : artists select their own frame (by indicating the exact frame on the entry form)
Who edits together the final video (with all frames and sound)? The FemLink's team at www.FemLink.org
With 29 frames / seconde, it will be impossible to see anything on the video ! Correct, it will not be possible (please, read the concept of Artists' Love Song)
Who organizes screenings and exhibitions?
1 - FemLink. The way we'll organise them will depend on the hosts. We are open to all possibilities.
2 - Every artist who sent a frame can ask to receive (by internet) the compilation video and the stills. In this second case, the screenings and exhibitions are the artists' responsibility ; they can organize them as they wish. We are very flexible, and open to participating artists’ suggestions. Please let us know where, when and how so we can update the information on our website.
Please note, we are not a gallery, and do not represent artists commercially. All submissions become the property of FemLink for the above stated usage. We reserve the right to put a listing on our website as well.
What do you do with the lyrics ? The lyrics of each song will be presented during the exhibitions next to the still.
Do you charge a fee to participating artists ? No !!!
What are technical details and format : 4:3 / AVCHD, AVI, DV, MOV, MPEG-1/2/4, DivX, XviD, VOB, dossier VIDEO_TS, iMovie, EyeTV
Pal or NTSC ? Either (but we prefer PAL).
Maximum length? 20 seconds Minimum length ? 20 seconds
Should my video contribution have a slug at the beginning or just start with the first frame ? just start with the first frame (no black)
Should it have a title ? no title and no credits. We will add the credits at the end of the video of ARTIST'S LOVE SONG ourselves from the information you provide.
Should I send my work to you on dvd or by email ? Only by email to : femlinkinfo@eim.ae
Any honorarium ? Sorry, this is impossible for several reasons: the majority of places which organize exhibitions and screenings don’t pay fees; if they do, the funds are minimal and as there be thousands of participating artists, the dividends would be too small and the administration too costly... If some funds are generated by the project, we intend to invest the money in documenting the project by the publication of a book with a DVD of "Artists' Love Song" in order to increase the visibility and reach of the work and the participating artists, or to invest in a new project.
How can we know where "ARTISTS' LOVE SONG" will be shown ? On the FemLink's website : www.femlink.org.
There you’ll find the list of screenings and exhibitions, the list of participating artists. The website will also present the stills, the list of the artists presented on the stills and the titles of the songs.
To read more about FemLink and about our artistic points of view : www.femlink.org
To receive the Form and the "Application Agreement", please contact one person from the contact list (list of artists from Europe, CIS, Middle-East, Asia-Pacific, Africa, North America, South America.) or contact femlinkinfo@eim.ae

link: FEMLINK

Interview with John Bavaro

John Bavaro - iPhone paintings/ Primates series

Marcelo Guimarães Lima – We can start with a brief introduction so the readers can situate the artist: what can you tell us about your background and your present personal, artistic and professional circumstances?

John Bavaro - I’m a professor of Painting, Drawing and Design at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. I’ve primarily been an oil painter for 15 years, but recently with the purchase of an iPhone, and the discovery of the “Brushes” app, I discovered that I could expand into a digital practice that felt “right” for me. I was particularly drawn to the fact that I was painting with the touch of my finger. This seemed to remove a barrier between the product and the artist that had long held me back from digital art. I started to “paint” iPhone portraits to be a complement to my “GENUS” series, which is a series of 100 oil paintings of human and non-human primates.


MGL – In your artist statement you write about the iPhone paintings as a “natural extension” of your art practice. Can you elaborate on that?

JB - I really never thought that I would like the digital medium. People like to expound on how it is the “wave of the future,” but I’ve always thought that it was cold, impersonal, and that its populist appeal was actually something that worked against it, because it started to blur the lines between what was art, and what was popular culture. As an oil painter, with that traditional pedigree, I think I’ve also always held the belief that a piece that is exponentially reproducible, and crafted of pixels cannot ever compare to a masterpiece that exists in real space, and has a history and a presence. I still paint in oils, and I do indeed value those pieces, but I’ve ceased to see it in such dichotomous terms.

MGL – Has the practice of digital painting on its turn extended or “extended back” also into your previous ways of creating “physical” paintings, that is, using the traditional materials and techniques?

JB - Whether we accept it or not, we really do live in a “new world” where the social networks, the instant accessibility of information and imagery (i.e. the instant sharing of images) have truly forced a new paradigm. When a person makes a body of work with traditional materials, that requires that he/she have a space to show them, the resources to ship them and most importantly, an audience to take the effort to go to that space and see them. That’s all good, I don’t dispute that. I just went to MOMA last week and stood in awe of the great masterpieces of Abstract Expressionism, particular those of Jackson Pollock and Clyfford Still. Original pieces of art are seemingly eternal, and when we see antiquities, for instance, we marvel at their aura, as well we should. That doesn’t negate however that a piece of digital art is still a piece of art. In it’s own way, it occupies “space” somewhere, whether that’s on a screen, projected on a wall, or printed out in a gallery. Look at James Cameron’s Avatar. Am I to believe that this is merely a “ghost” that has no legitimacy? Absolutely not. It’s probably equivalent in scale and scope to the Sistine Chapel of our day. Of course film making is not exactly the same, because it’s more linear, still, the CGI marvels we see every day are very “real” in their own way. Film, and digital processes are the dominant art form of the day, whether we like it or not.

MGL – In this age of profound technological transformations affecting not just our perceptions and representations of reality but also our own material selves and physical connections with the world via, for instance, genetic engineering, new medical technologies, neuroscience and the material extensions of the workings of the human brain and the human mind, the idea of a kind of remaking of humanity has been explored in different ways by art and philosophy. I think here of the notion of the transhuman or of a posthumanity. By looking “back” to the “sub-human”, and I mean the term here as a purely descriptive term relating to our ancestral kinship with other primates, you promote on one hand an exercise on “anthropomorphism”. Anthropomorphism is a playful (also baffling, or even disturbing at times) and familiar reaction of empathy we all have experienced facing animals, and specially primates, and their fascinating and intriguing behaviors in our zoos, etc. On the other hand, I think your series can be said also to relate in certain ways to this probing of human limits at this time of announced and / or anticipated radical transformations of humanity. Not just transformations regarding our knowledge of our selves, but of our genetic makeup and identity, and of our material possibilities. These issues are summarized and problematized in the idea of the transhuman or posthuman. Is this something that you could somehow recognize in your work, or am I going in the wrong direction regarding your artistic intentions in this series?

JB - I don’t know if it’s directly that deep in its intentions. I think there are some artists out there who are really pushing the boundaries of science through transgenic experimentation as art projects etc. They seem to be the big stars of the modern biennials, etc. I do think that my work reflects the new paradigm I talked out however in theory and practice. I’ll direct you to my artist statement where I talk about the “missing link” actually being something more elusive and ephemeral than something that will be found in a fossil record. Mapping human genome was one grail quest, but it hasn’t necessarily gotten us closer to the “emotional” or “thought” link that we might share with related species. If there’s one thing that I believe about juxtaposing humans (naked apes) with primates (hairy humans), it’s that they have as much claim to our common ancestry as we do, and in fact “they descended from us” as much as we “descended from them.” That point is moot anyway, but people still continue to espouse this belief system, that it is all somehow linear. We are different branches of the same tree, and not one descended from another. The operative word here is SAME-we are from the same tree, so then one could say we literally have the same parent. When seen that way, it changes my perception about these creatures (the non-human primates), and makes them less of the “other” and more “us.”…thus the term “genus”

John Bavaro - iPhone paintings/ Primates series

MGL- I agree that our relationship to animals is indeed a very complex and multidimensional subject requiring a complex conceptual approach. The French philosopher Michel Serres, for instance, speaks about a constant process of bifurcation, one that not simply occurred in the past but keeps occurring in the present, the emergence from animality is what defines us historically, and at same time a process never to be “finalized”. Man, we can say, is the incomplete animal. And animals are therefore both in our past and in our future. Now, returning to painting: portraiture appears to be a central theme or subject in your work. How do you approach the task or challenge of portraiture, if indeed these faces and bodies are meant, as they appear to be, to represent individuals? How do you relate to your models? Who are your models? Are you also, when painting animals, describing individuals? Can we speak also of “animal portraiture” in your work, if something like that makes any sense to an artist (the knowledge of individual animals may make sense to a specialist on animal behavior, for instance)? So, the question is also how do you relate to your animal “models”?

JB - Ironically, I’ve always approached portraiture with a little skepticism. In some respects, it seems like a default practice for an artist who has no ideas. Ouch! I know that’s pretty harsh, but the times that I’ve gone into it full bore have been the times when I seemed to be lacking a conceptual direction, but really needed to keep working. In truth, I don’t really believe that it reflects a lack of ideas, any artist can make alchemy out of what he/she decides to do, if he is reflective and truly honest about why he sought something out. I like to portray humans (and non-humans) gazing directly at me (when possible), meeting my eyes, and reflecting my own thoughts about them back at them. For non-humans, to lock eyes is a confrontational act, a call to war so to speak. For us, it can be a call to mate, a call to share, or a call to fight…depending on the intention of it, but it really is an important way that we communicate with each other. I think that artists have the ability to interpret things that science cannot. Science sees things empirically, and relies on testable hypothesis. Art is the antithesis of this. Art relies on the “spiritual” or “emotional,” and what an artist portrays, if it works aesthetically should work on some sublime level that causes a viewer to recognize a “truth” in it, whether that exists or not. I can’t even pretend to have the knowledge of animal behavior that a zoologist would have, but I have been an observer of zoo animals. I’m struck by how I almost recognize something human about them, but that’s also an anthropomorphic projection. I hope that my art about humans and non-humans might cause people to contemplate the aesthetics of the subjects, and if I’ve done it well, then MAYBE some kind of truth will emerge from it .


MGL - What is the iAMDA (The International Association of Mobile Digital Artists)?

JB - iAMDA is a really exciting venture. It’s the brainchild of six other artists and me, and it’s an international group devoted to promotion of artists who work with the “mobile media,” which is any kind of work done on iPhones, iPads, iPods, Droids, etc. We even have some artists in the group who have done work on the Nintendo DS and the Wii. It represents a truly international group, with members in 15 countries, and we just had our inaugural conference at NYU’s Tisch ITP last week. I think I might save some time here by directing you to last week’s Macworld article, because it tells all the details of what I would like to communicate about it. If there’s any larger point about it, however, it’s that this medium is not a fad. With the launch of the iPad, artists are seeing the potential for a competitor to the Wacom tablet and other high end, professional hardware and software. It’s an amazing time, and the medium is getting more and more publicity, and gaining a larger reputation daily.

John Bavaro - iPhone paintings/ Alyssa Fayum

MGL - What can you tell us about the projects of the Bruce Gallery Press?

JB - Bruce Gallery Press is a small press that I established here at school to publish catalogues for artists who we show here at Edinboro University. We aren’t a for-profit press, and we do the best with what we have, employing student designers to do layouts, and local printers to actually make the project. It’s a labor of love, and small in scope, but we’ve been able to produce some high quality catalogues especially for regional artists in Northwestern Pennsylvania.

MGL – What can you tell us about your current and future projects?

JB - I’m most excited about another iPhone/iPad project called the iPhone/iPad Fayum Portraits. In this body of work, I’m “re-creating” versions of the famous Fayum mummy portraits, from Roman Egypt by repainting iPhone portraits of friends, family, fellow artists etc and then placing “skins” of them over weathered wood with beeswax and gold leaf embellishments.

The original portraits represent the oldest surviving examples of encaustic portrait painting. They were realistically painted to be stand-in effigies for the deceased, and placed over their mummies as faceplates so that they might be recognized by Osiris and ushered correctly into the afterlife.

In my modern versions are small pieces like the originals (roughly 12” x 7”), but I make them distinctly modern by covering them with a glossy resin. If I really wanted to re-create them, then I would do them in encaustic medium, but I want them to be something “other” and rendering the images on the iPhone is important to the concept because it reflects an ancient form done on the most current medium. If you’ll direct your readers to the process of making the portraits, I would appreciate it. The video is at Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNsjktZSjds

links:
John Bavaro
John Bavaro at AUD, November 1-28, 2010
iAMDA

John Bavaro: iPhone Variations (GENUS Series) at Rotunda Gallery, AUD

John Bavaro
iPhone Variations (GENUS Series)
Rotunda Gallery, AUD, Dubai
November 1-28

"I bought an iPhone for the reason that most have, and that’s for its multi-functionality and the amazing way that I can consolidate “life” in one small gadget. What I didn’t know however was that this would also expand to include one of the most important aspects of my life, which was my artist practice. When I first began to paint in the “Brushes” app, it seemed like a novelty-like playing a game or just toying around with some new, cool play app. What surprised me, however was the fact that I soon began to do “legitimate art” on it, and I also began to connect with many other artists, worldwide, who were also starting to incorporate it into their regular process. There is indeed “an app for that,” and it seems that art has not escaped its very versatile reach.

Connecting my new iPhone art practice to my regular practice proved to be a very natural extension. I had been going to zoos and photographing apes and monkeys, and then painting their “portraits.” I intuitively saw a connection between their mannerisms, facial expressions, body characteristic and family interactions to those of my own. It’s often said that they look “so human,” and indeed they do, when one sees a mother orangutan, protecting and coddling her clinging newborn, or a father gorilla gently roughhousing with an adolescent son, it’s hard not to apply anthropomorphic values to our perception. But in this case, perhaps anthropomorphism isn’t such a stretch.

The connection between “us” and “them” is more than anecdotal by now- it’s become almost cliché to cite how we are all genetically related through a distant pedigree via DNA similarities, et, al. Science hammers home that point clearly with each new discovery. But it’s a little more conjectural to know what “emotional” similarities we might share.

Perhaps that is where art can go where science cannot. I try to paint the non-human primates and the human primates with the same essential feeling to the way that they are composed, and how their gaze meets ours. To paint a gorilla in a candid moment, in the style of Velazquez or Frans Hals (to name a few), and then to pair it with portrait of humans of different ages causes me to see more deeply into the emotions of each species. There is as much “humanity” in a great ape as there is “wildness” in a human being. And there is mystery in all of us. It’s true that non-human primates are “the other,” but they are also “us” too. Biology and Psychology are beginning to solve puzzles about cognizance, emotion and “intelligence” in non-humans and humans, but artists can take a role in this too. The poetic, interpretive powers of art can look into the soul in a way that a microscope, telescope or brain scan cannot. There are probably “truths” that science can never know, but art, on the other hand, can possibly serve as the missing link."

John Bavaro

Hamadryas Baboon,
iPhone painting by John Bavaro

John Bavaro (Erie, Pennsylvania) is an Associate Professor of Art at Edinboro University where he teaches Painting, Drawing and Design. He received his BA in Literature from Miami University and his MFA (Painting) from the University of Cincinnati. He has had numerous solo exhibitions, including shows at the Erie Art Museum, Erie, PA, the International Gallery of Contemporary Art, Anchorage AK and the Carnegie Arts Center, Covington, KY, and been featured in numerous national and international group exhibitions. His series of 100 fish paintings, “The Fish Story Altarpiece,” featuring portraits of caught, or directly observed fish, was purchased by the permanent collection of the Erie Bayfront Convention Center Authority in 2008, and he has continued this modular study of subjects into human and non-human primates.

He is the editor/publisher of Bruce Gallery Press, a subsidiary art press of Edinboro University of Pennsylvania (USA), and the director of Edinboro’s Bruce Gallery. Bavaro uses classical references, influenced by artists like Velazquez, Rembrandt and Gainsborough as a framework for his traditional oil painting, but also he has recently brought these influences into his digital work on the Apple iPhone and the iPad.

He's been featured in many national and international iPhone art exhibitions, including a recent iPhone art exhibition "Illuminated Touch" in New York City. He has also created a series of "iPhone/iPad Fayum Portraits," in which he transfers a digital product onto weathered surfaces to emulate the encaustic Fayum mummy portraits from Roman Egypt. His work has been featured in New American Paintings, Dialogue-Voicing the Arts, The Artist’s Magazine, Macworld and two recent national iPhone art catalogues. Bavaro is one of the founding members of iAMDA (The International Association of Mobile Digital Artists).

link: John Bavaro