Tomás Saraceno, "Our Interplanetary Bodies"
In a fabled experiment conducted in 1937, Harold
Saxton Burr, a neuroanatomist at Yale University,
proved the presence of electrodynamic fields
around salamander eggs. The experiment would
be fundamental to scientists who have since
posited that the basis of life is found in fields
of electrical energy, through which we interact
with other living things . . . Read more [PDF]
Luke Ching, "Glitch in the Matrix"
Visitors to Luke Ching’s solo exhibition at Para Site were immediately confronted with an unusual demand. Stood at the center of the entrance was a yellow sign asking audiences to “Take off your left shoe upon entry (Please leave it on the carpet).” There was nothing to justify the bizarre instruction . . . Read more [PDF]
Mika Rottenberg, "Sneeze"
Theoretically, we should not exist. According to physicists, the Big Bang created equal amounts of matter and antimatter. When the two met, they should have annihilated each other. And yet here we are, surrounded by stuff . . . Read more here.
Shirley Tse, "Stakes and Holders"
A match on Shirley Tse’s badminton-inspired Playcourt (2019–20) installation could involve two, 30, or any number of players. They could choose to compete or cooperate with each other. They might keep score, or not. There are no apparent rules; there isn’t a singular narrative . . . Read more here.
Mike Nelson, "Projektör (Gürün Han)"
In a modest public square halfway between the banks of the Bosporus and Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar is a bronze sculpture of a draper showing off an unraveled bolt of fabric. The statue commemorates a figure once common among the neighborhood’s hive of textile businesses, which now sell imported, mass-produced clothing . . . Read more [PDF].
Latiff Mohidin, "Pago Pago (1960–1969)"
German expressionist, great late colonial painter, modernist pioneer. Latiff Mohidin has been framed as all these things, due, in part, to the artist’s attitude toward his identity. He readily admits: “The critics gave me numerous personifications: individualistic, romantic, nomadic, pessimist, existentialist. To every label, I said yes.” Read more [PDF].
Debunking the Hocus-Pocus with the “Anonymous Society for Magick”
The veil separating delusion from magic is a thin one. This was apparent to the early-20th-century occultist Aleister Crowley, who distinguished his idea of “magick” from sleights of hand and other parlor tricks by tacking a “k” onto the word, referencing its archaic spelling . . . Read more here.
"Breathing Space: Contemporary Art from Hong Kong"
A neon sign of the Chinese characters that translate as “Unbeatable Sea View” casts a gentle blue glow that reflects off the adjacent and opposing white walls, basking the entire, otherwise dim, former barrack in an eerie blue . . . Read more here.
Amitav Ghosh and Salman Toor, Jungle Nama
Legend has it that when the avaricious demon Dokkhin Rai terrorized the whole Earth, it was the goddess Bon Bibi and her warrior brother Shah Jongoli who banished the ghoul to the Sundarban mangroves in the Bay of Bengal, restoring harmony between non-humans and humans. That peace was short-lived . . . Read more [PDF].
Hamja Ahsan, Shy Radicals
One of the things that Covid-19-impelled social distancing has surfaced is how impoverished our inner lives are. Why the proliferation of guides to at-home activities? Do people not know how to be in their own private domains? Why are some disgruntled spring-breakers, amid a global pandemic, willing to risk their lives “to get drunk before everything closes”? These are symptoms of the Extrovert World Order, predicated on loudly voiced but not necessarily well-reasoned Opinions, which are publicly exchanged for social (and actual) capital . . . Read more [PDF].
