Tenkamaru. In a Tunner, Tochigi, 2005

On Thursday i went to Artissima. Turin's contemporary art fair lands in the agenda almost straight after Frieze and compared to the London's fair, it feels lighter, fresher, edgier. It also demonstrates a greater attention for the design -in all its forms- of the event. I'm a fan.

That evening I've discovered a dozen of artists whose works i'll mention in the coming days (or weeks given my propensity to write at the speed of a banana.)

Let's start with Tatsuki Masaru whose photos were exhibited by Gallery Side 2 (Tokyo). The artist spent a decade following the Decotora (an abbreviation for "Decoration Truck") subculture, photographing the trucks of course but also their drivers and in the long series of "Japanese do it better", these vehicles have a panache and extravagance that never reach bad taste.

In an interview to Photoeye, the artist explains that the phenomenon is subject to trends and economic woes: There was a peak in say 1980, that was the peak time in terms of the number of decorated trucks existing in Japan. This trend got started somewhere in the '60s when Japan's economy was growing and people were starting to spend money decorating their trucks. In the beginning it was like, "Who has the most number of lights on the truck," that kind of competition. But then in the '90s there started to be a little bit more specialization, and one area which became popular was Gundam, which are like Japanese transformer movies, and anime type of decoration, so there are some stages to its development. Recently, because of the economic difficulties like Japan's recession, and governmental regulations, traffic laws and all that, the [truckers] can no longer do the things they used to do. So in a way, they're sort of going back to the '70s style, which is a little bit less lighting, more heavy on the paintings, a little bit more subdued decorating style so they cannot get busted by the police.

A Member of Seirokai, Behind the Wheel, Ibrarki, 2005

Denshokumaru, Shinjuku, Tokyo, 2005

Misakimaru. At a Truck Stop, Saitama, 2005

Kuroshiomaru, Chiba 2007

Daichimaru II, Shizuoka 2007

Midnight Emperor, Shiga, 2002

More truck drivers videos

Both Photoeye and Pingmag have interviewed Tatsuki Masaru about the truck series. More images at photoeye.

Out of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital, by Ron Labaco, curator at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York.

Get it on amazon UK and USA

Publisher Black Dog Publishing writes: Out of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital examines the increasingly important role of digital fabrication in contemporary art, design, and architecture practice from 2005 to the present. New levels of expression will demonstrate the reciprocal relationship between art and innovation as seen through the lens of emerging twenty first century aesthetics.

Out of Hand, the first publication to examine this interdisciplinary trend, accompanies a major exhibition at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, bringing together for the first time an array of seminal works by more than 80 international artists, architects, and designers, including Ron Arad, Barry X Ball, Wim Delvoye, Zaha Hadid, Stephen Jones, Anish Kapoor, Marc Newson, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Frank Stella.

Roxy Paine, Scumak No. 2, 2001

Roxy Paine, Scumak No. 2 at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Out of Hand looks in detail at the rise of digital tools in the production of sculptures.

It is a lovely book in itself (nice images, texts explaining with clear terms each of the works, photos of the working process, etc.) It is also a useful publication for people like me whose interests do not focus solely on digital creation. Through its pages, I caught up with many projects, ideas and processes i was crassly ignorant of.

We might all be familiar with digital technologies but the introductory essays of the book made it clear that art created with the help of these same technologies still needs to be defended, that its existence and meaning still needs to be justified and that its relationship to materiality has to be carefully defined. At least to some audiences.

The focus of the book is sculpture but there are as many designers (of the chair and sofa genre) and architects as artists in this book. In fact, the authors write that digital technologies have enabled sculpture to infiltrate the boundaries of other disciplines: design, architecture, science, fashion.

I think the biggest quality of this book is that it brings side by side Anish Kapoor and Markus Kayser, Hiroshi Sugimoto and The T/Shirt Issue. Designers who have reached a superstar status online but don't have any gallery audience and artists who rely on museum exhibitions and press releases from galleries to give them some form of online presence.

Out of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital is organised around six themes. Modeling Nature looks at works inspired by biomorphic structures. New Geometries openly refers to the use of advance mathematical theories in the creation of new works that range from sport shoes to delicate plywood pavilion. Rebooting Revivals shows how artists and designers use 3D laser scanning to reinfuse life into forms associated with artistic movements from the past. Patterns as Structure is about the translation of sound, light, electrical activity and other data into shapes and decorative motifs. Remixing the Figure reinvents the human figure through innovative representations of the body and 3D-printed fashion garments. Processuality brings emphasis to the process of making, either by a fully autonomous machine that does all the work or by an intervention of the audience.

Shakurako Shimizu, "Wow," "Sneeze," and "Yawn" brooches, 2007

Achim Menges and Jan Knippers, ICD/ITKE Research Pavilion, 2011

Aranda Lasch, 20 Bridges for Central Park, 2011

Studio Wim Delvoye, Twisted Dump Truck (Counterclockwise, Scale model), 2011

Frank Stella, K.179, 2011. © 2013 Frank Stella : Artists Rights Society (ARS)

Frank Stella, K.162, 2011. © 2013 Frank Stella : Artists Rights Society (ARS)

Lucas Maassen & Unfold, Brain Wave Sofa, 2010

Geoffrey Mann, Shine from 'Natural Occurrence' series, 2010. Photo Sylvain Deleu

Geoffrey Mann, Shine from 'Natural Occurrence' series, 2010

Richard Dupont, In Direction, 2008

Richard Dupont, In Direction, 2008 (detail)

Michael Rees, Converge: Ghraib Bag, 2008

Behrokh Khoshnevis, Contour Crafting, 2012. Image: Behrokh Khoshnevis, Anders Carlson, Neil Leach, and Madhu Thangavelu

Softkill Design, Prototype for a 3D Printed House, 2012

Kent Pell, Bust of Lady Belhaven (after Samuel Joseph), 2011. Courtesy of Phillips de Pury and Company-

Object Breast Cancer, Extractions 3, 2011

Out of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital is an exhibition, curated by Ron Labaco and running at the Museum of Art and Design in New York City until July 6th, 2014.

The new episode of #A.I.L - artists in laboratories, the weekly radio programme about art and science i present on ResonanceFM, London's favourite radio art station, is aired this Wednesday afternoon at 4pm.

The guest of this episode is Usman Haque, one of the founders of Umbrellium. Usman is an architect who creates responsive environments, interactive installations, digital interface devices as well as many mass-participation initiatives. His skills include the design and engineering of both physical spaces and the software and systems that bring them to life. He is also the Founder of the sensor platform Pachube, now known as Xively.com.

Usman Haque happens to be one of the most thought-provoking people i know in London and today we're going to talk about the smart city vs the messy city.

Usman Haque & Natalie Jeremijenko, Flightpath Toronto, 2011. Photo: City of Toronto

Mario de Biasi, Gli italiani si voltano, 1954

A quick and hopefully efficient post to show some of the works i've discovered at Artissima, Turin's contemporary art fair which closed last weekend. As i mentioned a few days ago, Artissima is, in my view, far far more exciting than Frieze London. Maybe i'll explain why in a coming story (and get my Frieze 2014 request for a press pass refused in the process?!?) I didn't exactly rack my brain to figure out how to screen the many photos i had taken or received in the press package. This post will be mostly black and white. I won't insult you and say how the next one will look like.

Many of the works below were part of Back to the Future. The section presents solo exhibitions by artists active in the 60's, 70's and 80's and selected by a jury of museums directors and curators

Right, let's start with an image which isn't strictly b&w. The wall drawing below is a diagram showing internal correlations and their external consequences marked out by key figures of thought balancing between reflecting and representing symbols of power affected by the structures of human experience and the various forms of interpretation.

I'm not going to pretend that i fully understand Nikolaus Gansterer's constellations, diagrams and other representations of thought processes but i've been charmed and intrigued by his work ever since i discovered it. Keep your eyes peeled for that one.

Nikolaus Gansterer, The Gray Matter Hypothesis

I had never heard of Croatian artist Tomislav Gotovac before but he is a man who ran bearded and naked through the streets of Belgrade. A performance he reiterated 10 years later in Zagreb. Another one to keep your eyes peeled for, then.

Tomislav Gotovac, Breathing the air, 1962 / printed 2012

Tomislav Gotovac, Speak quietly

Linda Fregni Nagler collected a thousand anonymous images of babies and young children taken between the 1840s and the 1920s. Apparently the conventions of the time wanted that the mothers were hidden or erased from view. Some of the feminine figures are covered with a piece of fabric or a carpet, others have their face blacked out from the photo, others crouch behind a chair.

Linda Fregni Nagler, The Hidden Mother, 2006-13 (Monica de Carderas)

Linda Fregni Nagler, The Hidden Mother, 2006-13 (Monica de Carderas)

Linda Fregni Nagler, The Hidden Mother, 2006-13 (Monica de Carderas)

It is only fair that after those painfully hidden mothers, i'd show how in the late 1960s, Valie Export brought to a crude day light the relationship between the sexes. She walked her partner, Peter Weibel, on a leash, taking to the extreme women's liberation from male oppression.

Valie Export, Aus der Mappe der Hundigkeit (From the Underdog File), 1968

I wrote about the work of Sicilian photographer and photojournalist Letizia Battaglia in the post Portraying the Mafia. She spent decades covering the cronaca nera, the crime stories for the left-wing newspaper L'Ora in Palermo.

Letizia Battaglia, Palermo. 1976. Un uomo morto folgorato mentre rubava il rame nei tombini dell'enel (A man electrocuted as he was stealing the copper in the ENEL manholes). Cardi Black Box

Letizia Battaglia, L'arresto del boss mafioso Leoluca Bagarella (The arrest of mafia boss Leoluca Bagarella.) Cardi Black Box

Letizia Battaglia, Palermo, 1982, vicino alla chiesa di Santa Chiara un bambino gioca a fare il killer con una calzamaglia in testa (a kid plays the part of a killer with women's stockings on his head, next to the Santa Chiara church.) Cardi Black Box

And now for something completely different...

Kazuko Miyamoto, Untitled. Exile, Berlin

I couldn't resist pairing it with...

Bownik, Doe. Starter Gallery

One of the things i like about Artissima is that you won't see Frieze's usual suspects there. They might, however, make an appearance in other artists' photos.

Lina Bertucci, Maurizio Cattelan, 1994/2005 (Eleni Koroneou Gallery)

Lina Bertucci, Jeff Koons

Daidō Moriyama gained fame for the way he portrayed the dark sides of post-war Japan.

Daido Moriyama, Hokkaido

Probably not strictly speaking b&w either but since we're in Turin and the Mole Antonelliana is by far its most puzzling monument...

Armin Linke, Mole Antonelliana, 2005. Vistamare

Northern Ireland. South Armagh. Golf 40 (salent tower). 2006

I used to go to the Imperial War Museum in London just to watch the hanging planes, the V2, the tanks, etc. The place is under renovation right now and i stopped paying attention to their programme (the war machines are wrapped up somewhere.) Big mistake! A few weeks ago, they've opened Donovan Wylie: Vision as Power, a show that explores the impact of military architecture on the landscape.

Vision as Power brings together five projects from radically different parts of the world but that are interconnected through the surveillance apparatus. Donovan Wylie grew up in Belfast during the Troubles and living under military surveillance has had an undeniable impact on his work.

The Maze was one of Wylie's earliest investigations into the relationship between power, surveillance and control during the Troubles.

Built in 1976 to house terrorist prisoners, the Maze prison segregated men according to their political beliefs and membership of paramilitary organizations.

Wylie started working on the series in 2002, just as the prison had closed under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement and the last inmates had been transferred to other prisons.

Northern Ireland. The Maze Prison. H-Block 5. Excercise Yard B. 2003

Northern Ireland. The Maze Prison. Inertia Stage 2. 2003

Northern Ireland. The Maze Prison. Chapel, Phase 3. 2003

Main Gate, North Wall, Maze Prison, Northern Ireland, 2003 © Donovan Wylie/Magnum

Donovan Wylie, Fence. Deconstruction of Maze Prison. Maze Prison. Northern Ireland, 2009, from the series The Maze. Courtesy of the artist

Wylie then extended his research to the British Watchtowers, the surveillance architecture built at the height of the Troubles, when South Armagh was one of the most heavily militarised areas of Northern Ireland. The British army built a network of watchtowers and observation posts in order to control cross-border smuggling and paramilitary attacks but also to maintain an intimidating presence.

As part of the Northern Ireland Peace Process, the watchtowers were dismantled between 2005 and 2007. As Whyle documented their presence in the surrounding countryside, British troops were deploying to Afghanistan, taking with them elements of the Northern Ireland watchtowers.

The Maze informed the watchtowers, and the watchtowers informed the Afghanistan work. I wanted to show this evolution, the photographer explained in an interview for the British Journal of Photography. When I was making the pictures of the watchtowers, they were coming down [being dismantled] and many of the soldiers working on them were going to Afghanistan. Elements of the structures were being taken to Afghanistan. Modern warfare is very transient, it is built to move, but basically it's the same idea regardless of nationality or politics or whatever - take the high ground and use vision as a method of strength and protection. Ultimately what I think is fascinating is how we use landscape as a tool of war.

Northern Ireland. South Armagh. Golf 20. 2005

Northern Ireland. Observational sanger, Cookstown. County Tyrone. 2000

Romeo 12, South Armagh, Northern Ireland, 2005

Northern Ireland. South Armagh. Crossmaglen town. Golf 650. 2006

Northern Ireland, 2006. South east view of Golf 40, British Army surveillance post in South Armagh

Northern Ireland. South Armagh. Golf 40AB. North east view. 2006

From 2006 to 2011, Canada sent nearly 3,000 military personnel to Afghanistan where military engineers designed a system of outposts throughout Kandahar province. Built on natural promontories and commanding multiple lines of sight, these outposts offer a fascinating parallel with the British Watchtower, as both networks ensured oppression and control in the name of a "war" against terrorists.

Donovan Wylie, FOB Masum Ghar, Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, 2010, © Donovan Wylie/Magnum Photos

OP1. Forward Operating Base, Masum Ghar. Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, 2010 © Donovan Wylie/Magnum

OP3. Forward Operating Base, Masum Ghar. Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, 2010 © Donovan Wylie/Magnum

Watchtower, Combat Operating Post, Folad, Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, 2011 © Donovan Wylie/Magnum

Another series shown at the IWM explores American defensive structures in Baghdad, Iraq. The Green Zone was the international administrative zone of central Baghdad, controlled by the Coalition forces during the Second Iraq War. Wylie saw similarities in the way people were contained in the Green Zone and how they were imprisoned in the Maze.

Iraq. Baghdad, 2008. The "Green Zone"

Wylie's series Arctic closes the exhibition. The white and extreme environment is home to cyber radar stations unmanned and operated electronically to detect any presence seeking out lucrative natural resources along Canada's Arctic frontier made more fragile by global warming and the new routes though the Northwest Passage it enabled. Once again, the only analogy is with dystopian sci-fi. To Wylie, they are a striking example of surveillance attempting to deter future conflict.

Canadian Arctic, 2013. LAB 1 Royal Canadian Air Force Short Range Radar installation

Ultimately, the exhibition reminds us that surveillance is not confined to the spaces of military conflict. Surveillance is the default characteristic of our society, as the revelations about the extent of mass online surveillance have recently demosntrated.

Donovan Wylie: Vision as Power is at the Imperial War Museum in London until 21 April 2014.

Jimmy De Sana, Cigarette, 1979. Wilkinson Gallery, London

Final post about Artissima, Turin's contemporary art fair. Once again, i'm merely going to format and paste as many photos as i can stomach and add sporadic comment.

I'm leaving aside the purely decorative artworks (well... kind of as the limber lady above these lines will attest) and focus on art that has bite and a story to tell.

I approach fairs in the most disorderly, most inept way. I hop from one booth to another, zoom in on a work i think i can recognize from afar, pay too little attention to the names of the artists (that's when the gallerists actually bother to add a label next to the works) and end up missing art pieces that would otherwise have been among my favourite. That's how i walked passed Danilo Correale's The Warp and the Weft hanging tartans.

I think Correale is one of the most exciting artists right now. For a number of years, the artist has been investigating the rites, gestures and codes of the global financial system.

Each of the tartans he was showing in Turin was woven using the colours of the logos of the 5 most powerful financial institutions in geographical areas where they exert the most powerful influence: North America, South America, Africa, Europe and Asia. The higher the assets of a financial corporation in an area, the stronger its chromatic presence in the fabric.

Danilo Correale, The Warp and the Weft, 2012. Supportico Lopez, Berlin. Photo art agenda

Danilo Correale, The Stumble N.1, 2012. Courtesy Raucci/Santamaria Gallery Naples

Danilo Correale, The Stumble N.2, 2012. Courtesy Raucci/Santamaria Gallery Naples

I actually discovered the artist through his photography-based work such as The Stumble which attempts to give a glimpse of the human beings hiding behind the stern facade of financial capitalism.

On their way to physical downfall, they appear as fragile and faulty as the economical system. I almost feel sorry for them.

Adrian Paci, The Column, 2013

Adrian Paci's video and photos were showing the transformation of a block piece of marble from the moment of its extraction in a Chinese quarry to a classical column. The process doesn't take place in a workshop but on a cargo ship. To ensure that the column will arrive as fast as possible to its final destination (Paci's gallery in Paris), sculptors carved and worked along the way, during the long weeks of transport by sea, to give the piece of rock its final form.

The Column is an extraordinary demonstration of the extent to which today's capitalistic laws of profit will go: merging manufacturing time with transport time.

Film.

Ron Amir, Nashaat, 2010. Hezi Cohen Gallery

Ron Amir, Nashaat, Mhamad and Nunu, 2011

In his series Invisible Presence, Israeli artist Ron Amir photographed the sleeping quarters in which Arab workers are living during the night. These are located on the very construction sites where the men work during the day.

Slaven Tolj, Volim Zagreb (I love Zagreb), video still, 2008

Slaven Tolj, Volim Zagreb (I love Zagreb), video still, 2008

I love Zagreb was a reference to the performance Zagreb I love you by Tomislav Gotovac from 1971. In slightly warmer attire.

I mentioned Nikolaus Gansterer recently. Here he is again, i just can't help it:

Nikolaus Gansterer, The Thinking Matters Lecture

Francesco Jodice, What We Want, Bethlehem, T62, 2010. Podbielski Contemporary

Francesco Jodice, What We Want, Jerusalem, R31, 2010.

Since 1995, Francesco Jodice has been researching how landscape is shaped and seen as a projection of people's desires.

Images without comment:

Hrair Sarkissian, Untitled No. 2, 2010 (Kalfayan Galleries, Athens - Thessaloniki)

Georges Rousse, Torino

Ahmed Mater, The Empty Land, 2012. From Desert of Pharan series (ATHR gallery)

Ahmed Mater: Desert of Pharan / Ground Zero. 2011 - 2013, Video composed of mobile phone footage by construction workers in Makkah

Claudia Losi, Biotope VI, detail

Steven Pippin, Simultaneous, 50 50

Steven Pippin, Non Event

Gilbert & George, Death Plunge

Ruth Proctor, Car Drawing 1

Barry Reigate, Equation 9, 2013. Galerie Alex Daniels

Marcus Harvey, Clown and Skull

Look! Visitors even had easy access to smoking spaces:

Other posts about the 20th edition of Artissima: Japanese Truck scene and Artissima in Black and White.

The new episode of #A.I.L - artists in laboratories, the weekly radio programme about art and science i present on ResonanceFM, London's favourite radio art station, is aired this Wednesday afternoon at 4pm.

Today's guests are Evan Roth, Becky Stern, Geraldine Juárez and Magnus Eriksson from the Free Art and Technology Lab (F.A.T. Lab), a network of artists, engineers, scientists, lawyers, and musicians who are committed to supporting open values and the public domain through the use of emerging open licenses, support for open entrepreneurship, and the admonishment of secrecy, copyright monopolies, and patents.

F.A.T. Lab (Kyle McDonald), The Englishman from the series Liberator Variations, 2013

Some of the members were at the MU gallery in Eindhoven last week for a F.A.T. Lab retrospective as well as for the launch of THE F.A.T. MANUAL. In this episode, we will be talking about 3D printed guns, Ideas Worth Spreading which allows you to deliver your own pirate TED talk, open culture and how to remove Justin Bieber from your web browsing.

F.A.T. GOLD Europe. Five Years of Free Art & Technology is at MU in EIndhoven until January 26, 2014. THE F.A.T. MANUAL is on print on demand but you can also download it for free.

Jaime Giménez Arbe, alias "El Solitario"

Nuría Güell graduated from the University of Barcelona with a degree in Fine Art and continued her studies under Tania Bruguera at the Behaviour Art School in Havana, Cuba. Güell has won several awards in Spain and her work has been exhibited in biennials, museums and galleries across the world. What makes her work particularly thought-provoking and relevant today is that she is an artist who doesn't just stop at commenting on social injustice and unethical practices. Instead, she immerses herself into the mechanisms responsible for them and then turns them upside down in order to develop projects and alternative models that will foster a critical understanding and independent thinking of the public.

In 2009, the artist wanted to understand the ongoing recession and started studying monetary politics. The result of her research is the manual How to Expropriate Money from the Banks. It's a guide packed with strategies, legal consultation and analytical texts that people can download for free and apply to their own life.

More recently, she worked with Jaime Giménez Arbe, a famous Spanish anarchist and bank robber known as El Solitario ("The Loner") and convinced him to design the plan to rob a bank from the high security prison where he was detained. She sold the first chapter through an auction house and gave the money obtained to El Solitario.

For Deterrence, she teamed up with Enric Duran (an activist who, in 2008, cheated the banks out of 498.000 Euros he then used to finance projects that offered socially-conscious alternatives to capitalism) to teach high school students about the current financial system. That's the kind of knowledge we are all in dire need of. Yet, the concept of money and what it entails is not part of any school curriculum (at least any that i know of.)

In Intervention # 1 the artist established a cooperative and used it to hire a construction worker who had lost his job and been evicted from his house. The objective of the contract was to remove the entrance doors to empty buildings that Caja Mediterráneo (CAM) had acquired at auction after evicting families who lived there. The contract signed through a legal entity ensured the impunity of the worker. Banks use a similar strategy to circumvent the Ley de Enjuiciamiento Civil (Civil Indictment Act) with impunity and purchase evicted properties for half of their valuation.

Intervention #1, Jaula de Oro, Alicante 2012

I could go on and on but check out her website if you're curious about her projects. In the meantime, I'm very happy that Nuría has accepted to answer my questions for the blog. If you want to read her answers in spanish, i copy/pasted her original answers at the bottom of the post.

I'm amazed by all the information provided for the project Displaced Legal Application #1: Fractional Reserve: videos, conference, a detailed PDF on "How can we expropriate money to banks?", etc. Are there lessons in this project that a citizen apply easily in their every day life?

Yes! This was the objective of ​​the work which, in addition to functioning as a potential exercise for thinking, also functions as a resource for citizens to use. I want all my projects to propose a strategy that can be replicated. Sometimes it is implicit through the process of the work but in this case, being a manual, the idea that this is a resource for citizens is more explicit. There is a chapter entitled Step by Step, which details all the steps necessary for any citizen to expropriate banks. And if anyone has any questions, they can always write us, they won't be the first to do so and we will be happy to advise them.

Check out the PDF: How to expropriate money from the banks.

Ayuda humanitaria / Humanitarian help, 2009. Photo via art21

I actually learnt a lot while watching the videos on the project page. I learnt things that should be basic: what is money, how does a bank generate money, etc. So i would say that your work has had an impact on my own life. But more generally, what do you think is the role of an artist working on socially-engaged projects? Can they really have an influence on the issues they denounce/engage with?

I believe that we are at a critical moment, both historically and socio-politically, and that the role of the artist and the art should thus measure up to the situation, without being condescending. That's why I want my projects to work on two levels: within the art context but also outside of it, since the transformation through art projects into something real interests me far more than the mere representation. My goal is that they function not only as resources for citizens but also as potential devices for thinking through the conceptual density. I'm not interested in representing political ideas but in offering opportunities for thinking and resources through the action, that can truly counter political systems (albeit on a micro level) or generate a counterweight.

The roles of art and the artist can be many, but for me, at this time of urgency, I think that political art is the one that holds a discursive struggle that manages to subvert the hegemonic discourse that subjects and oppresses us. Hence my interest in projects that have a life outside the art context, as I want to reach other segments of the population and not only the elite who visits art institutions.

The concept of operativity is important to me when working on projects that have a social dimension. And by that I do not mean operativity in the art project itself but an operativity that transcends art and the project and that it is effective for people who engaged with the work.

Yes, I think you can exert a real influence or transformation through art. I know of people who are expropriating banks by following the manual, my Cuban husband got his nationality by marrying me as a result of an art project (and we're getting divorced!) and María, a political refugee from Kosovo who has been living illegally in Sweden for 9 years because the government has denied her asylum twice, will receive a work permit in a month thanks to a contract we did through a museum that hired her to play hide and seek with the visitors of the Göteborg biennial.

Too Much Melanin, Sweden, 2013. Image a-desk.com

Poster for Too Much Melanin, Sweden, 2013

Also does the fact that you are an artist helps your projects? Because on the one hand, being an artist gives you certain liberties and ensures that you will reach a certain type of audience. On the other hand, the fact that you are 'labelled' as an artist might make you seem less serious, some people might dismiss some of your work because they are actually 'only' art projects.

Right. This is another feature of art that I use for projects: Autonomy. As we all know, throughout history, art has attempted to break free from the powers -religion, monarchy and politics- that wanted to use it for their own purposes. But as you say, this achieved autonomy makes art a more permissive space with the consequence that some people, as soon as they learn that it is an artistic project, refuse to consider it as a possible force that can have transformative effects on reality. What interests me is to instrumentalize this autonomy in favor of achieving the objectives of the projects. I call it using art as umbrella, in the sense of a 'space of protection'. And I use it strategically to carry out certain alegalities which work for me as a significant resource. Somehow, I think there is also a less conscious desire to test the boundaries of art, if there's any such thing.

For now, apart from a death threat, I never had any problems, although I am aware that there is a legal risk in all my projects and perhaps at some point the protection that art gives us with won't be enough anymore.

Jaime Giménez Arbe making mocking face at the police photos

Wanted

Displaced Moral Application # 1: Exponential Growth, 2010-2012 (photo Roberto Ruiz)

If i understood correctly Jaime Giménez Arbe was in a high security prison when you got in touch with him. How easy/difficult was it to communicate with him? Did you manage to actually meet him or did the whole project take place via letters? Phone or email conversations?

Yes, the fact that Jaime is locked in a high security prison has made the whole process of the project more complex, because many of the letters are intercepted by the guards. At first we communicated well through letters but at some point they cut our exchanges. The police put me on the blacklist and the letters that Jaime was sending me never arrived. Part of the information could get out of the jail with the help of the lawyer who visited Jaime, and the other part of the robbery plan was hidden within the letters that Jaime was sending to his family who later had it sent to me. Communicating via e-mail is impossible since prisoners are kept incommunicado and without access to the internet. After more than two years of correspondence, he was sometimes authorized to talk to me on the phone. Although it was always for a brief moment as they cut the call right away.

Drawing with the instructions to build a thermic lance included in the plan

For your project, "El Solitario" wrote a book to describe various strategies to rob a bank. How could such a document get out of the prison? I always imagined there would censorship and that communicating such texts would be illegal in prison. Does the fact that this is an art project gave him more license?

In this case not even art could justify the content.

Something we had in our favor was that Jaime was writing in Spanish and Portuguese while prison guards were Portuguese wardens and therefore could not fully understand the contents of the letters and i was receiving most of the controversial information until they put me on the black list and our communication channels were cut.

For another project I've done with political prisoners in Spain it was indeed through "art" that we managed to get information about the systematic institutional torture to which prisoners living under the F.I.E.S.1 regime (Special tracking inmates file) are submitted.

Could you give more details about the result of the sale of the first chapter of the book at the auction house? Do you know who bought it and where the text is now?

What interested us the auction is that if someone bought the first chapter, it was because of the symbolic capital that the Spanish state itself and the police have given to Jaime with their criminalization campaigns that labelled him as "public enemy number one." The first chapter was auctioned and the money went to Jaime.

I do not know who bought it, the auction house keeps the anonymity of their buyers.

What do you think were El Solitario's motivations to participate in the art project?

I think Jaime had several motivations. First of all, I think, was the fact that I was already working on the project D. L. A. # 1: Fractional Reserve in collaboration with two anarchists appropriators of banks whom Jaime highly respects, that made him trust me.

On the other hand, there was an ideological affinity. In his letter of response to my proposal, he said he wanted to work on any project that exposes and visualizes banking ethics and the perverse strategies used by financial institutions to generate profits.

And finally, imagine living a life of total isolation and solitary confinement, perhaps having contact with someone from the outside will be like a window of air and light that somehow pierced through the walls of darkness within which he is confined.

Do you see many parallels between financial activity and the art business?

Yes, I see parallels with the art business. In both cases what matters is profitability, and by that I mean the creation of value out of a potential value, a key strategy in the inflation that both banking and speculation in the art business are based on. The objective in both cases is to generate maximum profit, often without regard to cultural, social and / or human values.

Cardinal testing a Pietro Beretta Ltd's weapon, one of the major arms manufacturing companies in the world, the Vatican Bank (IOR) is its largest shareholder

I'm also very curious about one of your work in progress APLICACIÓN MORAL DESPLAZADA #2: AD PIAS CAUSAS. Can you already tell us what the project will be about?

One day before the "International Day for the cessation of weapons", I stole some hosts from the parish church of my town preventing the Priest to give the Holy sacrament to the parishioners and avoiding the collection of funds for the Holly Roman Apostolic Church. I was interested in commercialising the hosts in the art market.

With the profits from this action my intention is to order an hypothetical practical plan to commit an outrage against the Vatican Bank which is the first investor of one of the major weapons world companies. The aim of the plan is to expropriate the Bank's goods and it will be design using all the weapons that the Bank finances.

The Holly Roman Apostolic Church is the authority symbol by excellence and one of the most influential powers in the world on a political level. Its major wealth is sustained by the commitment of the faithful even thought in a political level this is backed up by all the material wealth of which the Church is the owner. As a result of the two concept of "guilt" and "sin" that have been perpetuated along the centuries, the Church has increased its earnings through the selling of the forgiveness. Throughout its history, the Church has destroyed, slavered and pillaged entire communities with the pretext of the evangelisation, helping Nazi war criminals to find refuge in foreign countries in order to escape international justice, covering sexual abuses among the priest community in the media and funding terrorism from the investments done by their financial institution.

The I.O.R. (Vatican Bank) benefits from the privileges of the Vatican Bank to move money around the world avoiding international laws and working as a tax haven. It is located in the tower of Niccolò V inside the city of the Vatican and it is a bunker that keeps cash money, golden ingots, goods, as well as art works stolen by the Third Reich and offered to the Church. Currently, it is the major shareholder of Pietro Beretta Ltd, one of the major companies producing weapons of the world.

Paradoxically the I.O.R. justifies all its actions under the concept of "ad pías causas", that is to mean by the religious qualities: its compassion and mercy.

Thanks Nuría!

---------------------

Answers in Spanish (the last question was answered directly in english):

I'm amazed by all the information provided for the project Displaced Legal Application #1: Fractional Reserve: videos, conference, a detailed PDF on "How can we expropriate money to banks?", etc. Are there lessons in this project that a citizen apply easily in their every day life?

Sí! Esta era la idea de la obra, que además de funcionar como un potencial dispositivo de pensamiento funcione también como recurso para que los ciudadanos lo puedan usar. En todos mis proyectos me interesa que haya una estrategia que sea replicable, a veces está de manera implícita a través de la operación de la obra pero en este caso, al ser un manual, es más explícita la idea del recurso ciudadano. Hay un capítulo titulado Step by Step, que relata todos los pasos para que cualquier ciudadano pueda expropiar bancos. Y si alguien tiene alguna duda, que nos escriba que no será el primero que lo hace y para nosotros será un placer asesorarle.

PDF: Cómo expropiar dinero a entidades bancarias.

I actually learnt a lot while watching the videos on the project page. I learnt things that should be basic: what is money, how does a bank generate money, etc. So i would say that your work has had an impact on my own life. But more generally, what do you think is the role of an artist working on socially-engaged projects? Can they really have an influence on the issues they denounce/engage with? 

Considero que estamos en un momento histórico y socio-político crítico y que por tanto el rol del artista y del arte debe estar a la altura del mismo, sin ser condescendiente. Por eso intento que todos los proyectos funcionen a dos niveles: dentro del contexto arte y fuera del mismo, ya que más que la representación lo que me interesa es la transformación en lo real que se puede llevar a cabo a través de los proyectos artísticos. Mi objetivo es que además de como recursos ciudadanos funcionen como potenciales dispositivos de pensamiento a través de la densidad conceptual. No me interesa representar ideas políticas sino ofrecer posibilidades de pensamiento y recursos a través de la acción, que realmente puedan contrarrestar sistemas políticos (aunque a nivel micro) o generar contrapoder.

El rol del arte y del artista pueden ser muchos, pero para mí, en este momento de urgencia, creo que el arte político es el que lleva a cabo una lucha discursiva que logra subvertir el discurso hegemónico que nos sujeta y oprime. De aquí mi interés en que los proyectos también vivan fuera del contexto artístico, ya que me interesa llegar a otras esferas de la población que no son solo las elites que frecuentan las instituciones artísticas.

El concepto de operatividad para mi es importante en los proyectos de carácter social, pero no me refiero a operatividad dentro del proyecto artístico sino de una operatividad que transcienda al arte y al proyecto y que sea efectiva para las personas qué con el proyecto se han relacionado. Sí creo que se puede ejercer una influencia o transformación real a través del arte. Sé de gente que está expropiando bancos a través de seguir el manual, mi esposo cubano obtuvo su nacionalidad a través de casarnos a raíz de un proyecto artístico (ya nos estamos divorciando!) y María, una refugiada política de Kosovo que lleva 9 años viviendo en Suecia de manera ilegal porque el Gobierno le han denegado el asilo dos veces, en un mes ya tendrá permiso de trabajo en Suecia gracias al contrato que le hicimos a través del museo para que jugara al escondite con los espectadores de la bienal.

Also does the fact that you are an artist helps your projects? Because on the one hand, being an artist gives you certain liberties and ensures that you will reach a certain type of audience. On the other hand, the fact that you are 'labelled' as an artist might make you seem less serious, some people might dismiss some of your work because they are actually 'only' art projects. 

Exacto. Esta es otra de las características del arte que utilizo a favor de los proyectos: La autonomía. Como todos sabemos a lo largo de la Historia el Arte ha tratado de liberarse de los poderes que lo querían usar para sus fines, como fue la religión, la monarquía y la política. Pero como tú bien dices, esta autonomía lograda hace que el arte sea un espacio más permisivo, hasta el punto de que alguna gente al saber que es un proyecto artístico lo desacredita como posible potencia transformadora de efectos en lo real. A mí lo que me interesa es instrumentalizar esta autonomía a favor de lograr los objetivos de los proyectos. Yo lo llamo usar el Arte como paraguas, refiriéndome a un espacio de protección. Y lo uso de manera estratégica para llevar a cabo ciertas alegalidades que me funcionan como recurso significativo. De alguna manera no tan consciente creo que también hay una voluntad de testar lo limites del Arte, si es que tiene.

De momento, más allá de una amenaza de muerte, no he tenido ningún problema, aunque soy consciente que en todos los proyectos hay riesgo a nivel legal y que quizás en algún momento la protección que nos brinda el Arte no sea suficiente.

If i understood correctly Jaime Giménez was in a high security prison when you got in touch with him. How easy/difficult was it to communicate with him? Did you manage to actually meet him or did the whole project take place via letters? Phone or email conversations?

Sí, el hecho de que Jaime esté encerrado en una prisión de alta seguridad ha complejizado todo el proceso del proyecto, ya que muchas de las cartas son interceptadas por los carceleros. Al principio nos comunicábamos bien a través de las cartas pero llegó un momento que nos cortaron la comunicación. La policía me puso en la lista negra y las cartas que Jaime me enviaba a mí nunca me llegaban. Parte de la información la pudimos sacar de la cárcel gracias a la abogada que visitaba a Jaime, y la otra parte del plan de atraco Jaime lo camuflaba dentro de las cartas que él enviaba a su familia y después ellos me las hacían llegar a mí. Comunicarnos vía e-mail es imposible ya que los tienen incomunicados y sin acceso a internet.

Después de más de 2 años de correspondencia, alguna vez le han autorizado permiso para que pudiésemos hablar por teléfono. Aunque siempre ha sido bien breve ya que enseguida cortan la llamada.

For your project, "El Solitario" wrote a book to describe various strategies to rob a bank. How could such a document get out of the prison? I always imagined there would censorship and that communicating such texts would be illegal in prison. Does the fact that this is an art project gave him more license?

En este caso ni el Arte pudo justificar los contenidos.

Algo que teníamos a nuestro favor era que Jaime escribía en español y que los carceleros eran portugueses, por lo tanto no entendían completamente el contenido de las cartas y mucha información controversial me llegó hasta el momento que me pusieron en la lista negra y nos cortaron la comunicación.

En otro proyecto que he realizado con presos políticos en España sí que fue a través del "Arte" que logramos sacar información sobre la tortura institucional sistemática a la que están sometidos los presos FIES1.

Could you give more details about the result of the sale of the first chapter of the book at the auction house? Do you know who bought it and where the text is now?

Lo que nos interesaba de la subasta es que si alguien adquiría el primer capítulo era debido al capital simbólico que el propio Estado español y la policía han otorgado a Jaime con las campañas de criminalización a su persona tachándolo de "enemigo público número uno". El primer capítulo se subastó y el dinero fue para Jaime.
No lo sé, la casa de subastas guarda el anonimato de sus compradores.

What do you think were El Solitario's motivations to participate in the art project?

Creo que la motivación de Jaime fue por diversos motivos. Primero de todo creo que el hecho de que yo ya estuviera realizando el proyecto D. L. A. #1: Fractional Reserve en el que colaboraban dos anarquistas expropiadores de bancos a los que Jaime respeta mucho, a él le dio cierta confianza.

Por otro lado había una afinidad ideológica, en su carta de respuesta a mi proposición me dijo que quería colaborar en cualquier proyecto que denunciara y visibilizara la ética bancaria y las perversas estrategias que usan las entidades financieras para generar beneficios.

Y por último, imagino que viviendo en un régimen de vida de aislamiento total e incomunicación, quizás el hecho de tener contacto por carta con alguien del exterior debe ser como una ventana de aire y luz que de alguna manera agrieta los muros de la oscuridad a la que está condenado.

Do you see many parallels between financial activity and the art business?

Sí, con el negocio del Arte sí veo paralelismos. En los dos casos lo más importante es la rentabilidad, ósea generar valor de un valor potencial, estrategia clave dentro de la inflación en la que se basa la banca y la especulación del negocio artístico. El objetivo en ambos casos es generar los máximos beneficios, en muchas ocasiones sin tener en cuenta valores culturales, sociales y/o humanos.

I'm also very curious about one of your work in progress "APLICACIÓN MORAL DESPLAZADA #2: AD PIAS CAUSAS". Can you already tell us what the project will be about?

One day before the "International Day for the cession of weapons", I stole some hosts from the parish church of my town unabling the Priest to give the Holy sacrament to the parishioners and avoiding the collection of funds for the Holly Roman Apostolic Church. I was interested in commercialising the hosts in the art market.
With the profits from this action my intention is to order an hypothetical practical plan to commit an outrage against the Vatican Bank which is the first investor of one of the major weapons world companies. The aim of the plan is to expropriate the Bank's goods and it will be design using all the weapons that the Bank finances.

The Holly Roman Apostolic Church is the authority symbol by excellence and one of the most influential powers in the world in a political level. Its major wealth is sustained by the commitment of the faithful even thought in a political level this is backed up by all the material wealth of which the Church is the owner. As a
result of the two concept of "guilt" and "sin" that have been perpetuated along the centuries, the Church has increased its earnings through the selling of the forgiveness. Throughout its history, the Church has destroyed, slavered and pillaged entire communities with the pretext of the evangelisation, helping Nazi war criminals to find refuge in foreign countries in order to escape international justice, covering sexual abuses among the priest community in the media and funding terrorism from the investments done by their financial institution.

The I.O.R. (Vatican Bank) benefits from the privileges of the Vatican Bank to move money around the world avoiding international laws and working as a tax haven. It is located in the Torreón of Niccolo V inside the city of the Vatican and it is a bunker that keeps: cash money, golden ingots, goods, as well as art works stolen by
the Third Reich and offered to the Church. Currently, it is the major shareholder of Pietro Beretta Ltd, one of the major companies producing weapons of the world.

Paradoxically the I.O.R. justifies all its actions under the concept of "ad pías causas", that is to mean by the religious qualities: its compassion and mercy.

Richard Mosse, The Enclave, 2013. Video still

There's a couple of cities where i keep going over and over again just because they have an art center worth a several hour long journey. Some of them may or may not be on your usual culture map. There's Eindhoven, Hasselt, Manchester and there's Florence where i traveled again a few weeks ago to see the exhibition Unstable Territory. Borders and identity in contemporary art at the Centre for Contemporary Culture Strozzina.

The show presents artwork that reconsiders the notion of territory in a time when the obsolescence of concepts such as the nation state and borders coincides with new forms of nationalism and a corollary desire to affirm the individuality of a community or to protect their privileges with the construction of new physical demarcations. The map of the walls being erected to separate people from each other that The Guardian has recently published illustrates the extent of the latter tendency.

Platon (North Kivu, Eastern Congo), 2012

Richard Mosse, The Enclave, 2013. Photos Martino Margheri

Richard Mosse, Stalemate, North Kivu, Eastern Congo, 2011

The Enclave, by Richard Mosse, shows territory in the grips of violence. The six-channel video-installation translates the ongoing civil war opposing the central government of the Democratic Republic of Congo and groups of rebels for the control of the provinces of North and South Kivu, into disturbing yet seducing hues of pink and magenta.

The pink colour is due to the special infrared film that Mosse is using. The Aerochrome film was developed for surveillance purposes in the 1940s (Kodak stopped the production of the film in 2007 but Lomography has since brought it back to life.) This infrared technology allowed the army to detect armaments that were concealed by vegetation. Since the DRC landscape and the camouflage outfit of the militia are dominated by shades of green, the resulting images come with an eerie balance of threat and beauty.

The Enclave does not allow us any firm ground, a perspective from which to contemplate reality according to conventional standards like good and evil. Mosse does not explain, or tell a story, or illustrate, nor does he seek symbols for a possible further meaning. The Enclave seems to hover between brutality and poetry, between the testimonies of dramatic stories and unusual experiences and the universality of images of Africa at war.

Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, Chicago #2, 2006. Chicago, Tze'elim Military Base, Negev Desert, Chicago

I've mentioned the work of Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin several times in the past. I had actually discovered them a few years ago at Manipulating Reality, another exhibition at Strozzina.

This time the artists are presenting Chicago, a series of images of the mock-up of an Arab town built in the middle of the Negev desert by the Israeli Defense Force for urban combat training. "Everything that happened happened here first, in rehearsal". All wars led and to be led by Israel in the future get a test run in the streets of Chicago, where the only traces of human beings are photographs of Arab militia used for target practice. Chicago comprises different settings that reflect the terrains where the IDF might have to strike: a fake refugee camp, a fake downtown neighbourhood, a fake rural village, a dense market area, etc.

Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, Mini Israel, 2006, video. Photo Martino Margheri

Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, Chicago #5, 2006. Chicago, Tze'elim Military Base, Negev Desert, Chicago

Two large wallpapers on the walls of the gallery room communicate "real" details of the "fake" Chicago. The star-shaped hole in the cement walls is a scar left by "worming", a tactic used by IDF soldiers to move through dense urban areas while avoiding streets and squares where they are more likely to be attacked. Using explosives or hammers, the soldiers carve their way horizontally through walls and vertically through ceilings and floors. The fact that some of the buildings they invade are inhabited by innocent civilians is an irrelevant detail for the IDF. This form of movement, described by the military as 'infestation', sought to redefine inside as outside, and domestic interiors as thoroughfares, explains Eyal Weizman. The IDF's strategy of 'walking through walls' involved a conception of the city as not just the site but also the very medium of warfare -- a flexible, almost liquid medium that is forever contingent and in flux.

The privacy of the home is thus violated. Meanwhile, the other wallpaper shows the opposite end of the spectrum or how the road, a public place of movement and exchange, is instead literally walled up. The wallpaper is indeed zooming on a detail of the walls that border the roads built for the transit of Israeli colonists through the Palestinian territory in which they live, to arrive safely in their workplaces in Israel.

Mini Israel

Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, Mini Israel #2. Mini Israel, Latrun, Chicago, 2006

Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, Mini Israel #4. Mini Israel, Latrun, Chicago, 2006

Broomberg & Chanarin are also showing a video of Mini Israel and that one was new to me. Mini Isreal is an automated model of the country, built as a tourist attraction and it looks far more sophisticated than the Mini Europe my parents always tried (and failed) to convince me to visit when i was growing up in Belgium. Just like Chicago, the miniature park filters reality, reflecting on the theme of the real vs the symbolic construction of a territory. Emphasis is put on ancient history and the building program of new infrastructures and new settlements. The Arabs, however, are mere extras, they are dressed in traditional attires, they pray, attend to their livestock and generally seem to be far less refined and modern than the Israeli. Furthermore, the makers of Mini Israel have chosen to represent their country as one devoid of any Wall, checkpoints, nor observation tower.

Tadashi Kawamata, Tree Huts, 2013. Site-specific installation, façade of Palazzo Strozzi, Florence. Photo: Martino Margheri, Markus Bader

Tadashi Kawamata, Tree Huts, 2013. Site-specific installation, courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi, Florence. Photo: Martino Margheri, Markus Bader

Tadashi Kawamata, Tree Huts at Palazzo Strozzi / CCC Strozzina (more backstage images)

The exhibition leaves the field of political conflicts with the temporary constructions that Tadashi Kawamata has grafted on the facade and courtyard of the Palazzo Strozzi, creating an amusing contrast between the majestic Renaissance building and his parasitic precarious wooden constructions that evoke dwellings erected in emergency situations. The Three Huts redefine and redesign the territory of the palazzo: they are attached to it and as such extend its borders but they are also alien structures bound to be dismantled and rebuilt in some other part of the world by the artist.

Isola d'emergenza ("Emergency Island"), 2013. In cooperation with LAC - Laboratorio Arti Civiche

Kawamata has also created a new installation for the CCC Strozzina gallery space. Having discovered dozens of disused doors and windows that were left in storage at Palazzo Strozzi, the artist flipped them from their usual vertical position to an horizontal one and had them hang above the heads of the visitors. The result is stunning. I would normally never pay much attention to doors but seeing them floating from the ceiling give them a poetical dimension. The doors suggest a world on the other side and as such, they redefine the proportions of the space.

Paolo Cirio, Incorporation Certificate, Loophole4all project

Paolo Cirio, Loophole for All, 2012. Installation at CCC Strozzina. Photo Martino Margheri

Paolo Cirio, Loophole for All, 2012. Installation at CCC Strozzina. Photo Martino Margheri

Loophole for All, by Paolo Cirio, looks at the notion of territory from an economic perspective. At the core of the project are the offshore jurisdictions, the tax havens where corporations place their headquarters in a bid to avoid tax controls. After a thorough research of the mechanisms that enable the 'de-territorialization' of data, money and information (see video below), the artist made accessible to every citizen a scheme to benefit from the tax evasion in the Cayman Islands that so far was the sole privilege of multinational companies.

Loophole4All.com investigates offshore centers through interviews with experts (excerpts)

More videos.

The artist set up a limited liability company with headquarters in London, Paolo Cirio Ltd. He then created an online platform where anyone can select a company from the over 200,000 companies fiscally registered in the Cayman Islands and obtain, for 99 cents, a certificate that enables them to generate invoices in that company's name. For $50, the user can also obtain their own post office box in the Caymans where they can receive invoices that, through the intermediary of another post office box in New York, are returned to the user's real address anonymously.

On his website, Cirio sells certificates bearing his signature as the proprietor of the company granting licenses. These documents become the physical and concrete result of his work, works that allow an ironic critique the notions of authorship and reproducibility of a work of art, but also of the system of attribution of its commercial value. The forced closure of the account associated with Cirio's website by PayPal further amplified this type of reflections, leading the artist to opt for free concession of the license certificates that a user can select on the Loophole4All.com website and that are in distribution during the exhibition.

Zanny Begg & Oliver Ressler, The Right of Passage (video still), 2013

Zanny Begg & Oliver Ressler, The Right of Passage (video still), 2013

Zanny Begg & Oliver Ressler, The Right of Passage, 2013. Installation at CCC Strozzina. Photo Martino Margheri

The Right of Passage investigates how the nation state dictates the conditions of political, social and economic inequality through the granting (or denial) of citizenship. The artists interviewed curator Ariella Azoulay, philospher Antonio Negri, political theorician Sandro Mezzadra as well as a number of people who live, under various degrees of legality, in Barcelona. It is striking to hear how a white guy who has no 'paper' encounters less hurdles in his everyday life than a black guy who lives in Barcelona legally.

Ressler and Begg question the relationship between the structure of the Nation-State--the legacy of an order that has been superseded, if not by laws, then by facts--and the individual who, if deprived of bureaucratic documentation, finds his or her freedom of movement, and very identity, denied.

The Cool Couple, Stivali cosacchi, Arta Terme #001

Cossacks studying a map in a wood, unknown date

Series "Approximation to the West", 2013. Photo by Marino Margheri

The Cool Couple, aka Simone Santilli and Niccolò Benetton, investigated a little-known episode from the final months of the Second World War. Between October 1944 and April 1945, Carnia, a peripheral region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, was occupied by over 20,000 Cossacks. The soldiers and their families were assigned the area, re-baptized "Kazackaja Zemlja" (Cossack land in Northern Italy), as a thank you gift from the Nazis for their help during the war against the Soviet Union.

The episode offers another opportunity to examine the concept of the Nation-State and the enforced encounter between different ethnic groups and cultures.

Research revealed that traces of the Cossacks passage had been concealed, and often gleefully destroyed by local people after the victory of the Allies and the repatriation of the Cossacks. The memory of the events transforms into reconstruction, and above all narration, which takes account of the reality but also of the projections and the suppressions.

Fiume Tagliamento, Trasaghis #001A/B, from the series "Approximation to the West", 2013

Fiume Tagliamento, Trasaghis #001A/B, from the series "Approximation to the West", 2013

The Fiume Tagliamento, Trasaghis #001A/B diptych shows the Tagliamento River, taken from the same viewpoint with a 180° rotation: this was the border crossed by the Cossacks when they invaded the area, and then crossed again when they were sent back to the Soviet Union.

Unstable Territory. Borders and Identity in Contemporary Art was curated by Walter Guadagnini and Franziska Nori. It remains open at Centre for Contemporary Culture Strozzina, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence until 19 January 2014.

The new episode of #A.I.L - artists in laboratories, the weekly radio programme about art and science i present on ResonanceFM, London's favourite radio art station, is aired tomorrow Wednesday afternoon at 4pm.

My guest in the show will be Alex Fleetwood who founded London-based Hide&Seek in 2007. Hide&Seek is a game design studio which re-imagines public space as a place to play. They create new games and experiences, curate and support the work of artists and designers, and right now they are working on games inspired by a month-long Christmas party that King William III held at Kensington Palace in 1699.

Alex is going to talk about big and tiny games, digital design and the importance of play in contemporary culture.

Halley VI, Copyright A. Dubber, British Antarctic Survey. Image © Anthony Dubber

Last week i went to Manchester. I could never go too often to that city, especially when a number of exhibitions made another day in London less attractive. My first stop was for Ice Lab: New Architecture and Science in Antarctica at MOSI - Museum of Science & Industry.

Google Street view of the geographic South Pole (image slashgear)

The show focuses on some spectacular research structures but it also presents some of the most extraordinary scientific and geological characteristics of Antarctica. That's the bit that got most of my attention. Here's some of random facts i learnt while visiting the show:

Because of its extremely cold and dry climate, Antarctica is the closest analogue to an extraterrestrial site on Earth. The region is thus used to test technologies that might be used for Mars exploration. The NDX-1 is a planetary suit prototype designed by a team of graduate students lead by Pablo de León and mobility expert Gary L. Harris.

The NDX-1 space suit

Nacreous clouds form only when temperatures in the high atmosphere drop below -85 degree Celcius. They might be beautiful but they also trigger the depletion of the ozone layer.

Nacreous Clouds glowing in the winter sky above Rothera. Image British Antarctic Survey

The Antarctic Plateau, at 2800m high, is great place to observe planets and stars. The air is unpolluted and the atmosphere is stable and very dry. The geographic South Pole hosts a complex of telescopes that use wavelengths other than visible light to look for evidence of dark energy and for cosmic microwave signature left over from when the universe was formed.

The South Pole Telescope built to investigate cosmic rays and explore dark matter. Photo Keith Vanderlinde / National Science Foundation (via Smithsonianmag)

Ice cores, obtained by drilling into an ice sheet or glacier, are formed of layers derived from snow that fell at a certain time, and each layer is like a time capsule. The bubbles of ancient air they contain reveal information about the past climate and environment, such as Palaeolithic weather patterns for example.

A slice of an ice core showing trapped air bubbles. © British Antarctic Survey, Pete Bucktrout (via Discovering Antarctica)

The McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica are located in a polar desert blasted by ferocious winds. The harsh environment provides ideal circumstances for the creation of ventrifacts, geologic formations shaped by the forces of wind.

Ventifacts in the Dry Valley. Photo by George Steinmetz via from Amazing photography

But let's get to the architectural part. The exhibition presents 5 case studies: Halley VI, UK (Hugh Brougton Architects) Princess Elizabeth, Belgium (International Polar Foundation), Bharati, India (bof architekten/IMS), Jang Bogo, South Korea (Space Group), and the Iceberg Living Station (MAP Architects), a speculative design for a subterranean station carved out of compacted snow.

Architects of the research stations face three main challenges: ensure inhabitants a pleasant working life sheltered from the harsh weather conditions, build a station that will be strong enough to withstand the Antarctic's onslaught and construct a structure that will have minimum environmental impact.

The featured projects are:

Halley VI, Copyright A. Dubber, British Antarctic Survey. Image © Anthony Dubber

Aerial view of Halley VI Research Station. Halley VI, Copyright A. Dubber, British Antarctic Survey. Image © Anthony Dubber

Aurora above the Halley signpost. Halley VI, Copyright A. Dubber, British Antarctic Survey. Image © Anthony Dubber

Halley VI Research Station in winter. Halley VI, Copyright A. Dubber, British Antarctic Survey. Image © Anthony Dubber

Close-up view of Halley VI's legs. Halley VI, Copyright A. Dubber, British Antarctic Survey. Image © Anthony Dubber

Fully operational since February 2013, the British Antarctic Survey's Halley VI was designed by Hugh Broughton Architects and engineered by AECOM (UK). Located on a floating ice shelf, the structure is the first fully relocatable polar research station, it is also self-sufficient, able to withstand freezing winter temperatures of minus 55ºC and has minimal impact on Antarctica's pristine environment.

Halley VI is built using modules supported by hydraulically driven legs with giant steel skis which allow the station to mechanically 'climb' up out of the snow every year. As the ice shelf the station is built on moves out towards the ocean, the modules can be towered by bulldozers further inland, to eventually be taken apart when the time comes.

Princess Elisabeth Antarctica Research Station © René Robert - International Polar Foundation

Princess Elisabeth Antarctica Research Station © René Robert - International Polar Foundation

Princess Elisabeth Antarctica Research Station. Photo © René Robert - International Polar Foundation

The newly-discovered 9,000-strong emperor penguin colony on Antarctica's Princess Ragnhild Coast. Photo © International Polar Foundation/Alain Hubert

Belgium's Princess Elisabeth is the first zero-emission station in Antarctica. Perched on a nunatak, the aerodynamic stainless steel structure integrates renewable wind and solar energy, water treatment facilities, passive building technologies and a smart grid for maximising energy efficiency. It has no interior heating system.

Polarlicht. Bharati.bof Architekten IMS.copyright NCAOR (National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research

Bharati Research Station India's third Antarctic research station by bof Architekten / IMS is made from 134 prefabricated shipping containers.

Architect Impression: Jang Bogo / Space Group and KOPRI

Jang Bogo Korea, by Space Group (South Korea), will be one of the largest year-round bases on the continent when it opens in 2014, able to accommodate up to 60 personnel in the Summer.

South Pole Section, Iceberg Living Station / MAP Architects © British Council Architecture Design Fashion

MAP Architects, Iceberg Living Station. Animation made for Icelab Exhibition

Unsurprisingly, the speculative design for a research station was the one that seduced me the most.

Iceberg Living Station, the concept for a future research station by David Garcia / MAP Architects, would be made entirely from ice. The station would be holed out of a large iceberg, using caterpillar excavators that are traditionally used to clear snow. Icebergs have an average life span of about 12 to 15 years. The inhabitants would then leave the iceberg, taking with them all the energy and work infrastructure, "leaving only the architecture behind to melt away and be part of the oceans again," Garcia explained.

Finally, Torsten Lauschmann was showing two a new audio and light works, 'Whistler' and 'Ice Diamond', both commissioned for the exhibition.

Torsten Lauschmann, Ice Diamond (still), 2013

Torsten Lauschmann, Whistler (still), 2013

View of the exhibition space. Photo Jo Fells

You can (and you should) download the free eBook version of Ice Lab catalogue.

Ice Lab: New Architecture and Science in Antarctica was curated by Sandra Ross of the Arts Catalyst and initiated by the British Council. The exhibition remain open at MOSI - Museum of Science & Industry in Manchester until 6 January.

Trees, Woolsington, 1967-8 by Gordon Ryder of Ryder and Yates. Listed grade II. Photo James O Davies/English Heritage

Brutal and Beautiful: Saving the Twentieth Century was a very small but enlightening exhibition that celebrated post-war listed architecture in England. I went to see the show one day before it closed so, for once, i have a good excuse for the ridiculously late review. It took place at the Quadriga Gallery, on the second floor of Wellington Arch right in the middle of Hyde Park Corner. I don't think i had ever been to Hyde Park Corner before.

Brutal & Beautiful: What is Brutalism?, one of the films by Alun Bull, James O Davies and Leon Seth about twentieth century listed buildings, written and presented by architectural historian, Elain Harwood

Brutal and Beautiful, thus. The images below speak for themselves and I won't need to comment much on the adjective 'beautiful', even if, for many people, their aesthetic qualities are somewhat debatable. But brutal, in this context, requires a few lines of explanation. It comes from the term New Brutalism coined by architects Alison and Peter Smithson in 1953 to define a style that used the béton brut (raw concrete) as much as it used light and innovative materials. The term probably contributed to the unpopularity of the style but in fact, what the Smithsons had in mind was not concrete aggressively poured all over the country but 'honesty of expression and of natural materials.' This is therefore not a show about brutalism even though the style has a strong presence in the gallery.

Engineering Building, Leicester, 1961-1963 by Stirling and Gowan. Listed grade IIº. Photo James O Davies/English Heritage

Centre Point, designed 1959-1962 by George Marsh of Richard Selfert and Partners, built in 1962-1966. Listed grade II. Photo James O Davies/English Heritage

RAF Upper Heyford, 1950-1. Photo © James Davies, English Heritage

The exhibition presents brutal and beautiful cathedrals, libraries private houses, landscapes, war memorials, schools and industrial buildings. They were built between 1945 and the 1980s, in times of austerity and boldness. Each of them has been listed which means that they may not be demolished, extended, or altered without special permission from the local planning authority. Buildings and landscapes can be considered for designation once they are 30 years old. Younger structures can be protected when they are under severe threat or are considered outstanding, that's how the Lloyd's building became the youngest listed edifice. And ultimately, the exhibition invites us to rethink what makes a historic building:

Now the Royal Festival Hall and Coventry Cathedral are popularly admired but at the time post-war listings were fiercely debated and the future Tate Modern was rejected. Brutal & Beautiful looks at our love/hate relationship with England's recent architectural past and asks 'what is worth saving?'

It's fascinating to see how buildings that have been much maligned are now seen as iconic. Think of the Trellick Tower --and the smaller but equally arresting Balfron Tower-- by Ernö Goldfinger, an architect as famous for his arresting council blocks as he is for his unpleasant character so much so that, as you probably know already, Ian Fleming named one of James Bond's villains after him.

Trellick Tower, Cheltenham Estate, Kensington, 1968-1972 by Ernö Golfinger. Listed grade IIº

The Barbi! The upswept balconies, i read in the gallery, reduce wind resistance.

Cromwell Tower, Barbican, City of London, 1964-1973 by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon. Listed grade II. Photo James O Davies/English Heritage

Photo James O Davies/English Heritage

That said, all's not rosy and cheerful in the world of Brutalism. The Heygate Estate, in Elephant & Castle, provided the gloomy setting for violent scenes in the Luther tv series until its demolition started and John Madin's Birmingham Central Library will be teared down in 2014. But, hey, at least the the Preston Bus Station is doing ok.

The Preston Bus Station, 1968-1969 by Keith Ingham and Charles Wilson of Building Design Partnership with E. H. Stazicker. Photo Dr Greg via wikipedia

And i'm going to leave you here with some brutal and not so brutal archi porn:

Photo © James Davies, English Heritage

British Gas Engineering Research Station, Killingworth, 1966-7. Designed by architect Peter Yates of Ryder & Yates. Listed Grade IIº. Photo © James Davies, English Heritage

British Gas Engineering Research Station, Killingworth, 1966-7. Designed by architect Peter Yates of Ryder & Yates. Listed Grade IIº

Lloyd's Building, City of London, 1981-1986 by Richard Rogers and Partners. Listed Grade I. Photo © James Davies, English Heritage

Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, Liverpool, 1962-7 by Frederick Gibbero and Partners. Listed grade IIº

Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, Liverpool, 1962-7 by Frederick Gibbero and Partners. Listed grade IIº

The Royal Festival Hall, London, 1949-51 by the London County Council. Listed grade I. Photo: James O Davies/English Heritage

Library (Phillips Building) to the School of Oriental and African Studies, 1964-1974 by Denys Lasdun and Partners. Listed grade IIº. Photo James O Davies/English Heritage

Templewood School, Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire County Council, 1949-1950. Job Architect A.W. Cleeve Barr. Listed Grade IIº. Photo via The Decorated School

Rogers House, Wimbledon, City of London, 1981-86 by Richard Rogers and Partners. Listed grade I

Royal College of Physicians, Regent's Park, London, 1960-4 by Denys Lasdun and Partners. Photo: James O Davies/English Heritage

Brutal & Beautiful: The Royal College of Physicians, Regent's Park, London, designed by Sir Denys Lasdun. One of the films about twentieth century listed buildings, written and presented by architectural historian, Elain Harwood and screened at the exhibition Brutal and Beautiful

Stockwell Bus Depot, 1951-3 by Adie, Button and Partners. Listed grade IIº. Photo: James O Davies/English Heritage

Stockwell Bus Depot, 1951-3 by Adie, Button and Partners. Listed grade IIº. Photo Courtauld Institute of Art

Bracken House, City of London, 1955-9 by Albert Richardson for the Financial Times. Listed grade IIº

Elliott School, Putney, 1953-6, by London County Council. Photo: James O Davies/English Heritage

Apollo Pavilion at Peterlee in County Durham, 1963-1970 by Victor Pasmore. Listed grade II*. Photo James / cacophonyx

B2 Prefab, 55 The Crapen, Cashes Green, Stroud, 1948

Turn End, Buckinghamshire, built in 1967 by Peter Aldington. Photo James O Davies/English Heritage

Brutal & Beautiful: Peter Aldington and Turn End. Shot by photographers and filmmakers Alun Bull and James O Davies and screened at the exhibition Brutal and Beautiful

The photographs in the exhibition were by James O. Davies. They will appear in a forthcoming book, Space, Hope and Brutalism: English Architecture 1945-1975 which will be published next year by Yale University Press. I'll definitely get my hands on that one.

Related: Utopia London.

Brutal and Beautiful: Saving the Twentieth Century is thus closed. The next exhibition to open at the Quadriga Gallery, however, seems to be equally interesting: Almost Lost: London's Buildings Loved and Loathed. It will run from 4 December to 2 February 2014.

Thomas Cimolaï, Trophies from the Sixth Continent, 2010. Photo Patrick Galais

Another focus on one of the artworks i discovered at the GAMERZ festival in Aix-en-Provence in October...

The Trophies from the 6th Continent are lifeless, plastic 'skins' of computer generated models found in 3D environments. Deflated of any volume nor life, they were hanging in the gallery of the Ecole d'Art of Aix-en-Provence like bloodless carcasses. Cimolaï tracked down these hunting preys on the 'sixth continent', the land of our 3D digital entertainment made of video games, special effects, post-production works, etc.

Thomas Cimolaï, Trophies from the Sixth Continent, 2010. Installation view at the GAMERZ festival. Photo Luce Moreau

Thomas Cimolaï, Trophies from the Sixth Continent, 2010. Installation view at the GAMERZ festival. Photo Luce Moreau

Thomas Cimolaï, Trophies from the Sixth Continent, 2010. Photo Luce Moreau

The concept and result are quite simple. Yet, they are brilliant. The empty plastic parts of vehicles are pitiful and you can't help feeling sorry for these former glories of the screen.

Scroll down if you want to read the original french version of Thomas Cimolaï's answers.

Hi Thomas! I read that the objects you brought into the gallery were originally protected by copyrights. Where did you find these objects? And why do you call them trophies?

The Trophies from the Sixth Continent constitute a fiction collection. The whole process is based on "an adventure story" developed from gestures made with a computer - vision, research, tracking, targeting, intrusion into forbidden territories and capture. The Sixth Continent is the land accessible through screens and through data transmission technology (in this case, internet). The collection includes the debris of computer generated objects found on the web and originally intended for video games and special effects.

Why was it important for you to engage with shapes protected by copy rights?

The attack on copyright is part of the game.


And once you've extracted these objects from their original universe, what remains of their copyright?

I think there's nothing left, just like their shape and their initial state. They are out of order :).

What was the creation process that led from 3D virtual forms to these deflated, miserable bits of flying engines? How did you make them?

I was surfing on the net looking for a hat for a project inspired by the novel The Invisible Man when some objects attracted my attention. Engines belonging to memories of television such as the Iraq war, games or mythical fictions (Airwolf , Platoon, etc.) and that were all destined to simulation in video games and movie post- production. There began a fiction where the challenge was to be the main mode of relationship to my subject. Once the objects had been acquired, I looked for the technical way to understand their construction so that, gradually, I could disassemble their mechanism, as if it were a dissection, an anatomy. Once they had been re-appropriated, I decided to push the craziness further. The objects were pulled out of the screens, their original environment, and I brought them back to the "real" sometimes on a one-to-one scale. By doing so, I could appreciate the availability of their heads, of their wheels and other means of traveling or of their antennas and other detection tools. They were stripped of their power.

Thomas Cimolaï, Trophies from the Sixth Continent, 2010. Photo Patrick Galais

Thomas Cimolaï, Trophies from the Sixth Continent, 2010. Photo Patrick Galais

I fell really sorry for these objects. Am i slightly deranged or were you expecting these trophies to trigger some emotions in people?



There was absolutely no premeditation to cause emotions. I work with what I have in me, which is a certain way to look at issues related to freedom, to the industrial cultural object and to our relations with digital interfaces. This project embraces the concepts of play and power and also the desire to own. Everything is voluntarily orchestrated with symbolism and a mock-heroic tone.

Thomas Cimolaï, Trophies from the Sixth Continent, 2010. Photo Patrick Galais

How do people used to see these objects 'alive' in video games react to the work?

They come not only from video games but also from special effects. The most recognized one is the big black head of the stealth aircraft called F-117 Nighthawk which first appeared in conflicts broadcast on TV and soon after in games Night Storm, Empire Earth or Zero Hour which I have not played. Then, because the collection is partitioned into categories relating to motor, sensory devices.... few people can remember which wheel, radar or reactor belongs to which vehicle. The younger generations tell me that "it's cool" or "that's interesting" and will see the logic of simulation and of video games pushed to their limits.

Merci Thomas!

------------------------------

Version française de l'entretien:

I read that the objects you brought into the gallery were originally protected by copyrights. Where did you find these objects? And why do you call them trophies?

Les trophées du sixième continent constituent une collection fiction. Toute la démarche est basée sur « un récit d'aventure » élaboré à partir des gestes effectués avec un ordinateur - vision, recherche, traque, ciblage, intrusion en territoires défendus et capture. Le sixième continent est le territoire accessible par les écrans et par les technologies de transmissions de données (ici, internet). La collection regroupe des dépouilles d'objets de synthèses trouvés sur la toile et destinés à l'origine aux jeux vidéos et aux effets spéciaux. 



Why was it important for you to engage with shapes protected by copyrights?

L'attaque du copyright fait partie du jeu.



And once you've extracted these objects from their original universe, what remains of their copyright?


Je crois qu'il n'en reste rien, comme de leur forme et de leur état initial. Ils sont hors service :).



What was the creation process that led from 3D virtual forms to these deflated, pitiful bits of flying engines? How did you make them?



J'étais sur le net à la recherche d'un chapeau pour un projet inspiré du roman de l'homme invisible quand certains objets ont attirés mon attention. Des engins appartenant à des souvenirs de télévision comme la guerre d'Irak, de jeux ou encore à des fictions mythiques (Supercopter, Platoon...) et qui avaient tous comme destinés la simulation dans des jeux vidéo ou la post-production cinématographique.
Une fiction où le défi serait le principal mode de relation à mon sujet commençait. Une fois les objets acquis, j'ai cherché le moyen technique d'en comprendre la construction pour petit à petit en démonter la mécanique, comme une dissection, une anatomie. Une fois réappropriés, je décidais d'aller plus loin dans le délire.
Les objets ont été extirpés de leur milieu initial, c'est-à-dire les écrans, et je les ai ramené dans le « réel » parfois à l'échelle un. Ainsi je pouvais apprécier la mise à disposition de leurs têtes, de leurs roues et autres moyens de déplacements ou encore de leurs antennes et autres outils de détection. Ils étaient défaits de leur pouvoir.

I fell really sorry for these objects. Am i slightly deranged or were you expecting these trophies to trigger some emotions in people?



Absolument pas d'émotions à provoquer de manière préméditée. J'ai fonctionné avec ce qui me constitue, c'est à dire un certain regard sur les questions liées à la liberté, à l'objet culturel industriel et à nos relations avec les interfaces numériques. Ce projet embrasse des notions de jeu et de puissance et aussi de désir de possession. Le tout mis volontairement en scène avec du symbolisme et sur un ton heroï-comique.



How do people used to see these objects 'alive' in video games react to the work?

Ils n'appartiennent pas seulement aux jeux vidéos mais aussi aux effets spéciaux. Celui qui est le plus reconnu est la grande tête noire de l'avion furtif dénommé Faucon de nuit - Nightfalcon f117 qui est d'abord apparu dans les conflits retransmis à la télévision puis a rapidement été le sujet des jeux Night Storm, Empire Earth ou encore Heure H auxquels je n'ai pas joué. Ensuite, comme la collection est compartimentée en catégories relatives à la motricité, aux appareils sensitifs..., peu de personnes peuvent se rappeler à quel véhicule appartient telle roue, telle réacteur ou encore tel radar. Les générations plus jeunes me disent que « c'est cool » ou encore « c'est intéressant » et y voient la logique de la simulation et des jeux vidéos poussés à leurs paroxysmes.

Merci Thomas!

Previously:
Constance, an installation in weightlessness.

I could have titled the post "Gift ideas for Christmas" but to be honest, these books are not christmassy in the traditional sense of the word. Neither is my blog, for that matter. The truth is that this is a list of books i've enjoyed but never found the time to review as they deserved. I always meant to but here we are in mid-December and the "to review ASAP" pile of books is reaching skyscraping dimensions on my table. So here's a few publications that shouldn't be off your radar:

Bulletproof Skin. Exploring Boundaries by Piercing Borders, by Jalila Essaïdi, was the very good surprise of the year. Its starting point is the famous project 2.6g 329m/s, aka the 'bulletproof skin' developed with the help of the Designers & Artists 4 Genomics Award. The publication is described as A stunning hardcover book with a special cover and paper that feels soft like skin/silk, counting 160 pages that visually explore the process of creating bulletproof skin. Which is true but doesn't do the book justice. What Bulletproof Skin. Exploring Boundaries by Piercing Borders does what very few books about biotech art do: it brings the project but also the whole field into a broader context. Scientists, philosophers and renowned people involved in the 'biotech art' world contributed to the volume with essays that ponder on the ethical, cultural, artistic and scientific meaning of the project and of biotech artworks in general. Among them are Symbiotica Director Oron Catts, Director of the Center for PostNatural History Richard Pell, artist Clifford Charles, scientific director of the Center for Society and the Life Sciences Dr Hub Zwart, expert in spider silk (and its many high tech potential uses) Randy Lewis, science writer Simon Ings, forensic firearms expert Benno Jacobs. A space is also given to random people who commented on the project.

Bulletproof Skin. Exploring Boundaries by Piercing Borders is a smart, entertaining and thought-provoking book. It's also splendidly designed, i can't recommend it enough.

You can get it through amazon UK. Maybe it will be back on amazon USA one day. You can also order it directly from the artist.

The F.A.T. Manual, edited by Geraldine Juarez in collaboration with Domenico Quaranta. Published by Link Editions.

Yes, i've mentioned that one already. It's a 'best of' F.A.T., a guide to copy/replicate/customize their most astute or ludicrous projects. I still can't believe they've allowed me to plaster a text inside the book.

This one's print on demand (this way, please) and as you can expect from F.A.T., it's also available for free as a PDF. Alternatively, you're very welcome to ruin yourself on amazon UK.

I'd also like to recommend Beyond New Media Art by the same publisher. I reviewed the original version (the one in italian) 2 years ago.

Outerviews. Conversations with Artists, published by MoTA. 17 interviews with artists, selected from the pretty spectacular archive of the ArtistTalk.eu project. The conversations included illuminate the processes behind the making of art works, which in have in our view proposed the most interesting challenges to the common conceptions of art.

Included artists: Zbig Rybczyński, Eyal Sivan, Harun Farocki, Piotr Krajewski, Jorge Rodriguez Gerada, Arjan Pregl, Societe Realiste, Zimoun, Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen, Emptyset, Plaid, Burnt Friedman, Julian Oliver, Roy Ascott, Joe Davis, Ion Sorvin - N55, Biennale de Paris. Endless fun though.

You need to email the address at the bottom of this page for a copy. Well worth the trouble.

Narcoland. The Mexican Drug Lords And Their Godfathers, by Anabel Hernandez. Published by Verso.

The definitive history of the drug cartels, Narcoland takes readers to the front lines of the "war on drugs," which has so far cost more than 60,000 lives in just six years. Hernández explains in riveting detail how Mexico became a base for the mega-cartels of Latin America and one of the most violent places on the planet. At every turn, Hernández names names--not just the narcos, but also the politicians, functionaries, judges and entrepreneurs who have collaborated with them. In doing so, she reveals the mind-boggling depth of corruption in Mexico's government and business elite.

This one's on my kindle and i've only just started reading it but so far, so very good. Gripping, informative in the 'i can't believe i'm reading this' sense.

Available on Amazon USA and UK.

Landscape Futures: Instruments, Devices and Architectural Inventions, edited by Geoff Manaugh. Published by Actar.

From autonomous tools for remote archaeology to radio telescopes scanning electromagnetic events in space, by way of colorful mechanisms allowing children to experience the animal superpowers of other species, Landscape Futures looks at the world of extraordinary scientific machines and their hypothetical alternatives that filter, augment, clarify, and transformatively reproduce the world they survey.

Another book from the one and only Manaugh, the guy who makes good old planet earth look like a distant, slightly bonkers and ever fascinating planet.

Available on amazon USA and UK.

FABRICATE: Making Digital Architecture, by Ruairi Glynn and Bob Sheil. Published by Riverside Architectural Press.

The publication comprises of 38 illustrated articles on built projects received through a Call for Work. Punctuating these articles, a series of conversations between world leading experts from design to engineering, incl. Mark Burry, Philip Beesley, Gramazio & Kohler and Hanif Kara, discussing themes on drawing to production, behavioural composites, robotic assembly, and digital craft. This densely illustrated publication is intended to impart unequivocal evidence to the reader on how these projects were made, to encompass the breath, complexity and skill required in making digital architecture (i.e. its not as easy as some make out), and to impart the vitality of making as a collaborative and exciting practice.

The book accompanied a conference that took place in 2011. I only got my hands on it a few weeks ago. And because it is still as relevant as ever, it's now available in paperback.

You can get it on Amazon USA and UK.

Art Since 1980: Charting the Contemporary, by Peter R. Kalb. Published by Laurence King.

Art Since 1980 charts the story of art in contemporary global culture while holding up a mirror to our society. With over 300 pictures of painting, photography and sculpture, as well as installation, performance and video art, we are led on an illuminating journey via the individuals and communities who have shaped art internationally.
(...)

Kalb approaches art from multiple angles, addressing issues of artistic production, display, critical reception and social content. Alongside his analysis of specific works of art, he also builds a framework for readers to increase their knowledge and enhance critical and theoretical thinking.

I wouldn't advise this book to anyone who has only a flimsy interest in contemporary art, they'd be put off by the amount of information to ingest. However, this is a solid reference book for people who are passionate about art and think they lack some of the basic knowledge necessary to better understand and appreciate its meaning and context.

Available on Amazon USA and UK.

All that Is Solid Melts Into Air. Jeremy Deller. By the aforementioned and publisehd by Hayward publishing.

Deller explores how the trauma of the Industrial Revolution and chaotic urbanisation affected British society, focusing on emblematic figures including: Adrian Street, born into a Welsh mining family, Street rejected a life in the mines to become a flamboyant androgynous international wrestler; James Sharples, a 19th centrury blacksmith and self-taught painter from Blackburn, famous for his much-reproduced image, The Forge; and rock stars from industrial towns whose roots can be traced back through generations of workers in factories and mills. The radical transformation of the landscape in the early industrial era is powerfully evoked in Victorian images of factories ablaze at night, shown alongside an apocalyptic painting by John Martin. Industrial folk music, the incessant rhythms and racket of the factory floor, and heavy metal will also permeate the exhibition in sound installation and film.

I read this one in a couple of hours. I'm obviously biased. I love Jeremy Deller's work and i've always been fascinated by the Industrial Revolution. The artist clearly isn't the best writer in the world but some of the parallel he draws between now and then (in particular the working conditions in factories in Northern England at the time of the IR and today's culture of zero hour contracts) are worthy of consideration.

This is the publication that accompanies an exhibition of the same name. It's now up at the Manchester Art Gallery and i'll review in the coming days.

It's on amazon USA and UK.

Obviously, i enjoyed these books too in 2013.

Image on the homepage: Bio-artist Jalila Essaidi, who used Professor Randy Lewis's special spider-goat silk to create "bulletproof skin". Picture: AP Source: AP.

Ron Haselden, Fête. Photo Chris Hill

A couple of weeks ago, i was in Derry/Londonderry. It was my first trip to Northern Ireland. Beautiful landscapes as i'm sure everybody knows, super friendly people, vegan-approved yummy food at the Legenderry Warehouse, some stunning socially-engages exhibitions i'll tell you about later and a city-wide event called Lumiere. Lumiere is a festival of 17 projections and installations that lit up as the night came onto the city. It is a crowd-magnet, a place to bring your family and marvel at what artists and designers can do with light. But don't be mistaken: some of the works had depth and bite.

Here's some of my favourite:

Cleary Connolly, Change Your Stripes. Photo Chris Hill

Cleary Connolly, Change Your Stripes. Photo Denis Connolly

I don't think i would have been that impressed had i seen Change Your Stripes by Ann Cleary and Denis Connolly inside a gallery. But in the street of Derry, when evening is coming and people are out to walk the dog and stumble upon the installation, it gains a touch of magic. The artwork only comes to life as you walk past.

The huge ondulating black and white stripes are projected on the facade of the Derry Credit Union. They move as people walk by it. Passersby silhouettes are multiplied and distorted in a fluid, dancing stream like in a living version of a fairground Hall of Mirrors.

At this point, i feel like i should add a few words about Derry/Londonderry's political context. First of all because i found the installation to be absolutely brilliant but far less fascinating than the surrounding Bogside murals. And second because it is difficult to avoid mentioning politics when you find yourself in a city which carries political tensions in its very name(s). Please skip the coming paragraph if, unlike me, you are not crassly ignorant about the local history.

The Free Derry Corner might be a good introduction to the whole Derry or Londonderry issue. It was painted in 1969, shortly after the Battle of the Bogside, one of the first major confrontations of The Troubles, the 30-ish year old conflict about the constitutional status of Northern Ireland and the relationship between the unionists and loyalists (the mostly Protestant community who wanted Northern Ireland to remain part of the UK) and the Irish nationalists and republicans (the Catholic community who dreamed of a united Ireland.) If you're a nationalist you'll call the city Derry, and if you're a unionists you'll use the name Londonderry.

Now allow me to open a parenthesis. From now on i will refer to Derry/Londonderry as 'the city'. I'm already tired of typing that double name over and over. End of the parenthesis .

The sum up above is a bit rough but that should provide you with some context. The Bogside is also the area where Bloody Sunday took place in 1972.

The Petrol Bomber (Battle of the Bogside), painted in 1994. Image by Keith Ruffles

Bloody Sunday Mural. Photo by Keith Ruffles

Operation Motorman, The Summer Invasion. Image by Keith Ruffles

But let's get back to Lumiere.

Some artists openly engaged with the local context, others didn't. As was to be expected, Krzysztof Wodiczko created a sharp, deeply moving work about local people's perception and memories of the past conflicts and their hopes for the future of the city.

Krzysztof Wodiczko, Public Projection Derry-Londonderry, at Lumiere Derry 2013. Photo Chris Hill

Krzysztof Wodiczko, Projection at Lumiere Festival Derry Londonderry Ireland. Video by Maria Niro

Krzysztof Wodiczko, Public Projection Derry-Londonderry. Photo Maria Niro

Public Projection for Derry~Londonderry was a series of extracts from interviews the artist had conducted with local people. Their words were screened from an ambulance (a fairly ubiquitous vehicle during The Troubles) onto several facades throughout the city .

Wodiczko talked to a cross-section of people, from ex-police officers to victims of the Troubles, from young people growing up in the aftermath of the conflict to people who had got into troubles for being on the 'wrong' side of the political divide at a certain time.

I saw people with tears in their eyes in the crowd....

A Stitch in Time, Tim Etchells, 2013, Photo Chris Hill

Tim Etchells piece being lifted into place on the roof of Rosemount Shirt Factory. Instagram by Artichoke

Tim Etchells, A Stitch In Time. Picture Martin McKeown

Tim Etchells installed a few words that paid homage to Derry-Londonderry's shirt-making industrial past on top of the old Rosemount Shirt Factory.

The work was 23 metre long and 2-metre high making it visible from afar.

Deepa Mann-Kler">Deepa Mann-Kler, Teenage Kicks. Photo via saatchi online

And so was Teenage Kicks. By this time, you've figured how much i (and the Lumiere festival) like to see big letters invading a city.

The 30m-long neon sign reading "A teenage dream's so hard to beat" sat on top of the city's BT building. It was inspired by the 1978 pop song of the same name, the greatest hit of Derry band, The Undertones.

"My impetus for this artwork is to celebrate a key moment from the history and culture of Derry," explained Deepa Mann-Kler. "I am an Indian woman who grew up in England, but came to live in Northern Ireland in March 1996. One of my abiding memories while growing up in Leicester, were of Northern Ireland during The Troubles, the TV footage of the army, rioting, and then the music of The Undertones."

Fire Garden, Compagnie Carabosse, 2013. Photograph by Chris Hill

Fire Garden, Compagnie Carabosse, 2013

Fire Garden, Compagnie Carabosse, 2013. Photo Martin McKeown

Fire Garden, Compagnie Carabosse, 2013. Photo Martin McKeown

Fire Garden. Video by Derry~Londonderry 2013

Fire Garden by Compagnie Carabosse lit up the whole St. Columb's Park and made you feel like you had just stepped into the set of one of those lavish BBC period drama.

Holywell Trust and the Nerve Centre, The Empty Plinth. Photograph by Chris Hill

The empty plinth was originally topped by a statue of Governor Walker, until it was bombed (twice) by the IRA in 1973/4. It has remained unadorned since then.

Nerve Centre and Holywell Trust gave it a new life with a simple column of white light, as a symbol of togetherness and tolerance of a protestant and catholic cultural identity.

These sound like suitable words to close the post.

A few more images though...

Daan Roosegaarde, Marbles. Picture Martin McKeown

RMS Design, Grove of Oaks. Picture Martin McKeown

The Lumiere public. Via Telegraph Belfast

Lumiere was produced by Artichoke for Derry-Londonderry UK City of Culture 2013.

Related: Krzysztof Wodiczko: The Abolition of War.

More art adventures in Derry/Londonderry....

Willie Doherty, Remains, 2013. Video still

Willie Doherty, Remains, 2013. Video still

Willie Doherty is currently at the City Factory Gallery with some of the photos and videos he made from the mid-Eighties in and around Derry/Londonderry. The show is called Unseen. Because unseen is the way Doherty used to work when had to remain as inconspicuous as possible to the British military that kept a close watch on Northern Ireland.

Unseen are also the memories of violence, control and conflicts that are lurking in overcast landscapes and dark city corners. There's always something in his images (and their laconic title) that seem to conceit and conspire. At least that's what the viewer suspects because Doherty is a master of making them paranoid.

Remains (Kneecapping behind Creggan Shops), 2013

Willie Doherty, Silence After A Kneecapping, 1985/2012

TO THE BORDER. A Fork in the Road The place where Ciaran Doherty was executed in February 2010, accused of being a British informer, he was abducted two hours before his body was dumped at the side of the road, 1986 - 2012

HEADLIGHTS, Border Road At Dusk, 1993 - 2012

Doherty, I keep reading, was born in the city, witnessed the Bloody Sunday killings from his bedroom window when he was 12, was later told by the media later that 'it didn't happen' and is still looking at the indelible marks that past violence has left on the local community.

Doherty, however, doesn't do documentary photography, he uses dark images to explore issues of surveillance and brutality but also the truth that a photo can both hide and reveal, the multiple meanings of an image and the blurring between fiction and non-fiction.

The voiceover of his new film, Remains, dispassionately describes three kneecappings. This form of punishment for serious offence was often carried out by paramilitary groups who imposed their own idea of "justice," especially at a time when police was regarded as the enemy.

The fictitious work is situated in Derry and it is based, said Doherty to The Guardian, on real events. Two of the kneecappings took place in the 1970s, the other is much more recent. "A father from a prominent republican family in Derry was told to bring his son and another boy, a cousin, to a certain place to be kneecapped." This was a punishment for drug use, an activity the IRA saw itself as policing.

"It had happened before that a father had been told to bring in a son to be kneecapped or expelled from the city or be murdered," Doherty said. "So I used these locations and the idea of the generational nature of the conflict, how it passes through families and how there is a vicious circle that people get caught up in."

Willie Doherty, Remains, 2013. Video still

I very much enjoyed this retrospective of Doherty in his hometown but it could have been titled UNTOLD as well because the exhibition space contained so little information about the works. It was frustratingly intriguing.

A video profile of Willie Doherty. Directed by Vincent O Callaghan and produced by the Nerve Centre

Willie Doherty, Ghost Story, 2007 (video still)

Willie Doherty, Last Bastion, 1992

Willie Doherty, Shifting Ground (The Walls, Derry), 1991

Unseen is at the City Factory Gallery, Derry/Londonderry, until 4 January.

Related story: Donovan Wylie: Vision as Power.

Field_Notes: From Landscape to Laboratory - Maisemasta Laboratorioon, edited by Laura Beloff, Erich Berger and Terike Haapoja.

From the back-cover: Every second year the Finnish Society of Bioart invites a significant group of artists and scientists to the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station in Lapland/Finland to work for one week on topics related to art, biology and the environment. "Field_Notes - From Landscape to Laboratory" is the first in a series of publications originating from this field laboratory. It emphasizes the process of interaction between fieldwork, locality and the laboratory. Oron Catts, Antero Kare, Laura Beloff, Tarja Knuuttila amongst others explore the field and laboratory as sites for art&science practices.

I was about to add this book to the list of books i liked in 2013 but i decided at the last minute that i might as well give it its own space.

In 2011, the Finnish Society of Bioart organised the Field_Notes - Cultivating Grounds laboratory. Five working groups led by Oron Catts, Marta de Menezes, Anu Osva, Tapio Makela and Terike Haapoja developed various art and science projects while in contact with nature and ecology in Kilpisjärvi, a rural area in Lapland, Finland.

The book contains seventeen articles (in both English and Finnish) that report and meditate on the research, reflections and activities that took place during the scientists and artists' stay in Lapland. Field_Notes offers one of the very few residences that allows people who engage with art&science to work and experiment directly in a natural environment and not exclusively in laboratories or galleries.

I wouldn't say that this is a book for anyone who's interested in bioart. It's not the kind of crazy sexy pop bioart you read about in Wired magazine (or in my own blog.) It is sober and at time theoretical, but not less surprising and thought-provoking than any razzle-dazzle bioart works you've read about in the past.

Field_Notes offers is a great mix of essays by scientists and lively stories of experiments by artists. I particularly enjoyed reading Laura Beloff's essay on how experience is a key aspect (and sometime even the main objective) of art practices that use organic materials or has some affinity with science. Professor Antero Järvinen wrote about the icon of global warming that is the Arctic charr and more generally about the difficulty of drawing simple conclusion of complex material systems and phenomena. Oron Catts came with the most unexpected essay about a piece of plexiglass from a German aircraft that had crashed in Kilpisjärvi in 1942 and how the discovery led him to explore 'new materialism in action'. Andrew Gryf Paterson has a great piece about berries foraging and a proposal to set up Berry Commons which sounds trivial until he makes you realize the politics of berries. Maria Huhmarniemi looked at the dilemma of preserving the endangered Capricornia Boisduvaliana butterfly or building an hydroelectric power plant.

I'll close with two of the many projects i discovered in this book:

Laura Beloff, A Unit, 2012

A Unit is a miniature green area an individual would wear on their shoulder. A Unit speculates on the concept of green environment and its beneficial impact. It experiments with an idea of wearable miniature green space that becomes part of one’s everyday existence and asks if this can be considered as natural environment with potential health benefits?

A Unit contains a GM-plant or other primarily human-constructed plant and as such acts as a training device for our changing relation with organic nature for the future when both humans and nature are artificially modified or constructed.

Niki Passath, The Tourist (infected with moss)

Niki Passath took his touristic robots for walks around Kilpisjärvi and soon found out that fungi and bacteria had adopted them as a habitat. Traces of moss and lichen started to grow on the structures.

So there you are: a serious, solid book for anyone who'd like to go beyond the easy reductions, the fast conclusions and simplification that sometimes characterizes articles and books about bioart.

Ben Roberts, from the series Amazon Unpacked, 2011. In their bright orange vests, 'pickers' deliver goods between various areas of the warehouse

There's an exhibition called All That is Solid Melts into Air right now at the Manchester Art Gallery. It's been curated by Jeremy Deller. So of course i took the train to see it.

In a show which title refers to a passage in Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto, Deller takes a personal look at the impact of the Industrial Revolution on British popular culture, and its persisting influence on our lives today.

This is not an exhibition of Deller's work (apart from his film about glam rock wrestler Adrian Street.) Neither is it a historical treatment of the industrial era. Instead, Deller brings side by side historical artefacts and contemporary works to explore several threads that expose the impact of the Industrial Revolution on British cultural life.

I was particularly interested in the connections drawn between the digital revolution and the Industrial Revolution, in particular working conditions. They were notoriously harsh in the 19th century: low wages, long hours, child labour, etc.

A document entitled Rules to be Observed in this Factory, Church Street Mills, Preston (c. 1830) informed workers that to give their notice they must do so on Saturday only, in writing and one month in advance. Whereas the "Masters have full power to discharge any person employed therein without any previous notice whatsoever." The same documents states that workers are to be at the factory from 6 in the morning to 7.30 at night, with half an hour allowed for breakfast and one hour for dinner.

But accounts from the time deplored the fact that managers did as they liked, with clocks brought forward in the morning and back at night. Some clocks were even made to measure productivity as time. One of the artefacts in the gallery is a two-faced clock that was connected to a watermill at a silk factory and would show 'lost' time if the wheel did not turn quickly enough. The time would then have to be made up at the end of the working day. The struggle to shorten working days was hard fought by successive generations.

Nowadays however, the growing use of 'zero hours contracts' in the low wage sectors of the service and digital economy is shaping a new form of day labourer, imposing another time discipline where the worker is informed often at short notice if their labour is required. A tapestry (by Ed Hall, maker of remarkable protest banners), hanging near the clock, is adorned with the words, 'Hello, Today you have day off', a message texted to a worker on a 'zero hour' contract on the morning his shift was due to start. No work, no pay.

Also next to the clock are photos from Ben Roberts' series that documents the inside one of Amazon's nine UK 'fulfilment centres' where employees spend 10½ hours a day picking items off the shelves.

Visitors have no problem joining the dots by themselves....

Ben Roberts, from the series Amazon Unpacked, 2011. The interior of Amazon's giant fulfilment centre is the size of nine football pitches

Swainson Birley Cotton Mill near Preston, Lancashire, 1834.. ©Science Museum/SSPL

The last object on that wall is a Motorola WT4000, a computing device worn on the wrist by people working in a warehouse. Retail giants rely on this kind of device to monitor the speed of orders and the efficiency of its staff in fulfilling them. It can also send warnings if the worker is falling behind schedule.

Motorola WT4000

But as can be expected with Jeremy Deller, there's a great deal of music in this show. Here he is posing next to a jukebox visitors are welcome to activate. Pressing buttons triggers archive recordings from factory machinery, folk songs or quarrymen singing at work.

Jeremy Deller with Jukebox, 2013 and mural backdrop by Stuart Sam Hughes. Courtesy Alan Seabright / Manchester City Galleries

All That is Solid Melts into Air also looks at heavy metal and rock bands such as Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Happy Mondays and Slade and at how they are the products of the industrial towns their members came from. Many came from working class backgrounds and their music echoed the loud and traumatic rhythm of the factories.

Judas Priest, Unleashed in the East (album cover), 1979

The only Deller work in the show is a film about Adrian Street. Street was born into a Welsh mining family but he refused to follow in his father's footsteps and spend his life working in the coal mines. He left home as a teenager and became a flamboyant wrestler and for a brief time also a glam rock singer.

The photo showing Street posing next to his father in the Welsh coal mine he had fled from embodies a country attempting to get to grip with its new role: services and entertainment.

Adrian Street and his father, 1973 (photo: Dennis Hutchinson) © Dennis Hutchinson 2012

Jeremy Deller, So many ways to hurt you, the life and times of Adrian Street (excerpt)

More images from the exhibition:

Iron Workers, Tredegar, Wales, 1865, W Clayton. Manchester Art Gallery. Photographs courtesy Manchester Art Gallery

Iron Workers, Tredegar, Wales, 1865, W Clayton. Photographs courtesy Manchester Art Gallery

Stockport Viaduct 1986. ©John Davies

Mersey Square, Stockport 1986. ©John Davies

G. Greatbach, 'The Black Country' near Bilston 1869 Engraving. ©Science Museum / SSPL

Chapman, W.J., Francis Crawshay Workers Portraits. Courtesy National Museum Wales, Cardiff

Portraits of Scuttlers, members of youth gangs characterized by their carefully coiffed hair and colourful scarves (and as such precursors of the Teddy Boys)

All That is Solid Melts into Air: Jeremy Deller is an exhibition curated by an artist so don't expect academic interpretations and rigorous narratives. It is an eclectic and thought-provoking show that confronts with each other elements from our past and present, draws parallels, and triggers all kinds of associations.

If you're curious about the show but can't make it to Manchester, you'll find more information in the film that Deller shot together with BBC. And, obviously, in the exhibition catalogue:

All that is Solid Melts into Air Curated by Jeremy Deller is at the Manchester Art Gallery, until 19 January 2014. The exhibition will tour to other cities known for their strong industrial heritage: Nottingham, Coventry and Newcastle.

Related stories: Ed Hall, the art of protest banners and Audio CD review - Jeremy Deller: Social Surrealism.

Eniarof Aix 2013. Photo by Manuel Braun

I've been hearing about, seeing and discussing the work of Antonin Fourneau for a few years now. I even met him and played with his works on more than one occasion. Yet, I never took the time to properly sit down and have an online interview with him. I'm sure many of you have read about Antonin's rather magnificent Water Light Graffiti or about his interactive pieces that revisit and reposition classic video games. Maybe i'll sit down again one day and interview him about his artworks but right now, i felt it was high time to get him to talk about ENIAROF, the geeky funfair he's been orchestrating since 2005. Eniarof looks like nothing you've ever experienced. It's like a very wild, very Far West version of a digital art festival, with elements of village fair, hacker meeting and circus thrown here and there.

Eniarof is a reinvention of the funfair where the concept of the attraction becomes an excuse for art. The creators of each Eniarof take their inspiration from popular culture, ancestral and new, obeying the rules of the "Dogmeniarof". Karaoke, Lucha Libre, video games, art installations, performances, gory films and curiosity cabinets can all be found on the jolly & unprejudiced grounds of the Eniarof funfair.

The last edition of Eniarof looked a bit like this....

Eniarof Aix 2013. Video by Alex "A2HN" Napoli

And without further ado, here's what Antonin had to tell us about Eniarof. Scroll down if you prefer to read the interview in its original version (french).

Hi Antonin! What is the story of ENIAROF?

I was a student at the Art School of Aix-en-Provence when I started Eniarof. The idea for the project started to germinate in 2004 when I was participating in the exhibition Power at Villette Numérique with the collective Téléférique.

The piece "Fan" contained already quite a few tracks for collaborative collaboration that i wanted to keep persuing in the future. At the same time, entertainment industry workers with intermittent contracts were protesting in France. In the context of the scandal of amusement park employees (Mickey, Minnie and the others) working all year long but under a casual employment contract, I had the opportunity to read an article about the disappearance of funfair model in favor of a business model closer to the amusement park. The article also echoes Rem Koolhaas' book Delirious New York in which I discovered that an attraction was a rather interesting object at the crossroad between installation, pop culture and innovation.

That was in 2005 and now the situation has changed a little: people are more tech-savvy thanks to the smartphone in the pocket, they are also more comfortable with the idea of ​​interacting. But when I created Eniarof, my idea was to decompartmentalize digital creation as much as possible and to disinhibit it while mixing it with other forms of interaction, with the public but without a computer. I thought it needed ​​different degrees of public interaction. So in general people go through an arcade with a new breed of interaction then they'd venture to slip on a jumpsuit made out of tyre to play 'pogo bumper car' or wear a wig to play HardRock simply by shaking their head. That's how Eniarof was born.

Eniarof Aix 2013. Photo by Manuel Braun

Eniarof Aix 2013 photo by Manuel Braun

How did it grow from a student project to a village fair slash high tech geek festival that counts 13 editions?

I've always been bad at promoting Eniarof. If you search online, you'll need to fish for information. Nonetheless, whenever I had the opportunity to present the project, I found that people were seduced by the concept. Soon enough we received proposals from festivals or cultural structures that were willing to welcome us just through word of mouth. I did not want to confine the project to a repetitive formula that would be presented each year at the same place. When I launched the project I was talking about a 'downloadable' funfair and I imagined a system of fair that would be easily duplicable. A bit like Dorkbot or Maker Faire. In the end, Eniarof did not go in that direction and I think that ultimately what we managed produce with our Eniarofer group is a kind of family and festive cohesion even though we meet only once or twice per year but the public knows us and returns because Eniarof's atmosphere cannot easily be compared to anything else.

Then there must have been a small evolution over the past few years because even the City of Poitiers called us to organize Eniarof 12 in a space of Blossac Park in connection with their Christmas fair. Eniarof is quite a polymorph party that comes with an array of representations and organizations that vary depending on the context. The Eniarof we ran in Aix-en-Provence or in Slovenia in collaboration with organizations that trust us have turned into real residence laboratories to build over a short period of time (2 to 3 weeks) what were essentially new attractions. In other Eniarof, you get 50% new attractions and 50% attractions that are already running with success and that guarantee a good atmosphere.

Arcade Backpack (UCLA) @Eniarof, ESAAix with the Eniarof Fanfare next to the town center of Aix. Photo Daan de Lange

Eniarof Aix 2013. Photo by Manuel Braun

There is an ENIAROF dogma, however, the event is still in the hands of a lot of improvisation, DIY, freedom, and collective efforts. So i suspect that things might not always run smoothly. What have you learnt over the editions of ENIAROF?

The main objective of the Dogmeniarof is to set the tone and give an idea of ​​the spirit of Eniarof but in reality we hardly ever fully comply with the rules of Dogmeniarof.

What works, what doesn't?

We could say that, in general, what does not work anymore in an edition of Eniarof is something that used to work well. For example, this year, we have a sound fencing game that met with such success that on the first night someone ripped the device cable from the wall. Which is great and proves that an attraction works when you do not even have to explain people how to play with it.

Monsieur Moo, Brouette Tuning. Eniarof Aix 2013. Photo by Manuel Braun

Alexandre Saunier, Helmetron. Eniarof Aix 2013. Photo by Douglas Edric Stanley

I'm curious about some of the projects shown during the last ENIAROF in Aix-en-Provence. In particular: the Wheelbarrow (Brouette tuning), Helmetron, and Arcade Concrete. Could you tell us a few words about these works?

Brouette Tuning first appeared in 2007 during the Eniarof in Slovenia. We've since presented it at 4 or 5 editions of Eniarof. This is a piece by Maxime Berthou aka Mr. Moo. It embodies in an object what Enairof is: pimped recycling, a touch of technology, mobility and lots of fun. The wheelbarrow is our best way to attract people. Just go out in the street with it and people wonder what's this UFO.

Helmetron was created by Alexandre Saunier and piloted as an Eniarof trio with Douglas Edric Stanley and me.

A few words of explanation from the author:
"""""
This is a light and sound instrument for computer. A bit like Isaac Asimov's Visi-sonor in the Foundations series except that here, the computer is the interpreter. In the end, we are immersed in the very heart of the computer and in its data stream, we are bathed in the files it reads and converts into light and sounds. It's 'glitch', it's hardcore, it looks a bit like a digital machine dream, it's a bit like Tron but without Disney's special effects.

Alexandre Saunier, Helmetron. Eniarof Aix 2013. Photo by Manuel Braun

Two of my favourite anecdotes:

A guy took off the helmet and asked me:
" - What's the color inside the helmet?"
" - There's only orange, it's the only light I'm sending at the moment"
" - Oh, right, I was wondering cuz I've seen some green, blue, white and orange."

And then there was this girl who was shaking and trembling from time to time, I was afraid she was epileptic. When she took off the helmet she told me that she felt like she had tiny animals, insect-like, that were walking on her.

Otherwise what is interesting is that the reaction of people is always different, depending on their physiology / nervous system, some see circles, other see fractals, colors, etc.
.
"""""
What attracted me to his work is its Clockwork Orange 2.0 side which I think very few people would have enjoyed in another context. Here, however, we had people queuing to scan the mazes of the computer. This is one of the reason for Eniarof success: we take the public on board by mixing borderline and conceptual things in many different experiences and the public completely indulges.

Antonin Fourneau and Manuel Braun, Arcade Concrete. Eniarof Aix 2013. Photo by Manuel Braun

Arcade Concrete is a project I developed with Manuel Braun with whom I've done several pieces (Patch&ko, Eggregor8, MadNes, Domoludens, spongegame ... ) which often revolve around the idea that the game interface can be sculpture material like any other and this sculpture material involves specific mechanisms and forms related to the gameplay of the software. It's as if every video game could get a materialization of its physical interface other than the standardized one and this materialization would involve a re-reading of its gameplay.

The context of the game offers an interesting space to observe our behavior. The halls of game arcades in the '80s and '90s used to play the role of physical and community space of video games. Arcades then disappeared in favor of 'in-house' games. And finally the video game is back in the urban space thanks to mobile devices. Arcade Concrete questions the place of video games in urban space. Playing on your iPhone in the underground is not the same as standing in front of a terminal and playing in front of everyone. There is now a terminal that sits at the entrance to the Art School of Aix-en-Provence and it became a space for discussion. Our objective is to multiply performances by casting terminals all over the world. A bit like Invader pasting mosaics, we will try and optimize the placement of a terminal and we will write down a user manual in the Eniarof book.

Antonin Fourneau and Manuel Braun, Eggregor, 8 players are 1 pacman and try to play together. Photo decept.org

Antonin Fourneau and Manuel Braun, Eggregor. Eniarof Aix 2013. Photo by Manuel Braun

And if you had to chose 5 projects shown at ENIAROF over the years, which ones would they be?

We have quite a few projects that have become "best playable" and that got more exposure such as:

Hyper Olympic by Djeff Regottaz and Loic Horellou where you play a remake of Track & Field with a very physical interface. It has now become a staple of festivals and it makes for a great atmosphere.

The Hyper Olympic Party - Parizon@dream - Gaïté Lyrique - June 9, 2012 - Dekalko

Eggregor8 by Manuel Braun and myself where 8 people play Pacman at the same time, as if 8 people were using the same joystick.

What's funny is that in 2010 there was a video game exhibition at the Centre Pompidou and most of the works invited were Eniarof pieces but they didn't even realize that the pieces were connected.

We could call it the BeaubourgNiarof.

There's also a work called "A battre" which Raphael Isdant created during the second edition of Eniarof in Aix-en-Provence. That one traveled a lot too.

Raphael Isdant, A BATTRE

There are also works that are either more unexpected or more specific to Eniarof Aix-en-Provence.

Such as Pogo Tamponneuse, a fighting ring where you need to put on a suit made of tyre in order to face your opponent. Video soon!

Or the Fucking Machine battle which was a bit borderline and totally surrealist.

Eniarof Aix 2013. Photo by Manuel Braun

Eniarof has a dogma that mentions that ENIAROF has to take place in the proximity of an Emmaüs. Could you tell us why?

Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg's Dogme 95 often refers to economy of means. When I mounted Eniarof, my goal was to avoid going overboard with projects that swallow too much money simply because I could see that there was no budget for young artists. At the time, I was often hanging out in Emmaus where I saw many materials that Emmaus did not necessarily know what to do with. In addition, it is often nice to recycle, it gives you the feeling of having done something ecological.

Another thing that surprised me in the dogma is that the barman is paid as much as an artist. Why do you think it is important that every participant receives the same fee?

At the beginning of my career as an artist I was horrified to see that a festival was paying the guard or the bartender more than they were paying me. I wondered what was the future for us if artists were forced to sell themselves off just to get some exposure. Add to that that during this festival my work ended up being destroyed. Fortunately, the trend has now reversed for me, but it used to be a bit of a rule to remind me that I don't sell off artists the way i was sold off.

The Book of Eniarof

What is next for ENIAROF?

We're working on a book.
We have a call for donations on KissKissBankBank.

We are also in touch with people on the other side of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean to make other editions of Eniarof over there but nothing's confirmed so I won't speculate too much.

Thank you Antonin!

If you want to see more images of Eniarof, check out:
Antonin's flickr set.
ENIAROF pool.
Daan de Lange flickr set.
The very staged HEAD Media Design flickr set.

Eniarof Aix 2013 photo by Manuel Braun

Eniarof Aix 2013 photo by Manuel Braun

If after this long interview you're still wondering what Eniarof is, this video might enlighten you:

-------

and now for ze frenchy version:

What is the story of ENIAROF?

J'était étudiant à l'Ecole d'art d'Aix-en-Provence lorsque j'ai démarré Eniarof.
L'idée du projet a commencé à germer en 2004 lorsque j'ai participé à l'exposition "Power" à Villette Numérique avec le Collectif Téléférique :

La pièce collaborative "Fan" du collectif regroupée déjà pas mal de piste de création collaborative que je voulais mener à l'avenir. Puis à la même époque nous avions des soulèvement intermittent en France. Avec le scandale des employés des Parc d'Attractions (mickey, Minie et autres) travaillant à l'année mais considéré comme des intermittents, j'ai eu l'occasion de lire un article sur la disparition du modèle de Fête Foraine d'avant au profit d'un business modèle plus proche du parc d'attraction. L'article faisait aussi écho au livre New York Délire de Rem Koolhas dans lequel j'ai pu découvrir qu'une attraction était un objet assez intéressant entre installation, culture pop et innovation.

Il me manquait juste le côté Freaks artistique que l'on trouve dans un fête foraine mais peu dans un parc d'attraction. Je me suis ensuite simplement demandé dans quel milieu j'aimerai évolué après l'école d'art et la vision d'oeuvrer seulement dans le milieu art numérique me faisait flipper. J'avais la sensation d'un milieu ghetto en manque de reconnaissance du milieu de l'art et ne voulant pas embrassé son côté populaire.

C'était en 2005 et maintenant la donne a un peu changé les gens sont plus numérisés avec des smartphones dans la poche et plus à l'aise avec l'idée d'interaction. Mais à l'époque au moment où je fonde Eniarof mon idée était de décloisonner un maximum la création numérique et la décomplexer tout en la mélangeant avec d'autres formes d'interaction avec le public et sans ordinateur. Je pensais qu'il fallait apporter différents degrés d'interactions au public pour le décomplexer. Ainsi en général les gens passe par une salle de jeux vidéo revisités avec des formes d'interactions qu'ils connaissent pour ensuite oser s'aventurer à enfiler une combinaison en pneu pour faire du pogo tamponeuse ou encore enfiler une perruque pour jouer du HardRock simplement en secouant la tête. Ainsi Eniarof est né.

How did it grow from a student project to a village fair slash high tech geek festival that counts 13 editions?

J'ai toujours assez mal communiqué sur Eniarof il n'y a qu'a regarder sur le Net il faut partir à la pêche aux information. Cependant à chaque fois que j'ai eu l'occasion de présenter le projet les gens ont accroché au concept. Donc assez vite on a eu des propositions de festivals ou structures qui voulaient nous accueillir simplement grâce au bouche à oreille ils ont entendu parlé du projet. Je ne voulais pas enfermer le projet dans un projet récurent qui serai présenté chaque année au même endroit. A l'époque où j'ai lancé le projet Je parlais d'une fête foraine téléchargeable j'imaginais un système de fête duplicable facilement. Un peu à l'image des Dorkbot ou Maker Faire. Mais eniarof n'a pas vraiment pris cette direction et je crois que finalement ce que nous arrivons à produire avec notre bande d'Eniarofer c'est une sorte de cohésion familiale et festive même si on ne se retrouve que 1 ou 2 fois par an le retour du public qui nous connait est que l'ambiance dans un Eniarof et difficilement comparable à autre chose.

Ensuite il y eu une petite évolution ces dernières année car lors du Eniarof 12 c'est carrément la Ville de Poitiers qui a fait appel à nous pour occuper un espace du Parc de Blossac dans la continuité de leur fête foraine de Noël. Eniarof est une fête assez polymorph qui a un tas de représentation et organisation différentes selon le contexte où nous sommes. Les Eniarof que nous avons mené à Aix-en-provence ou en Slovénie dans des structures qui nous font confiance étaient l'occasion de vrai laboratoires de résidence pour quasiment construire en un temps court (2 à 3 semaines) essentiellement de nouvelles attractions. Dans les autres Eniarof c'est un 50/50 de nouveautés et d'attractions qui roulent déjà bien et garantissent la bonne ambiance.

There is an ENIAROF dogma, however, the event is still in the hands of a lot of improvisation, DIY, freedom, and collective efforts. So i suspect that things might not always run smoothly. What have you learnt over the editions of ENIAROF?

Le DogmeNiarof est surtout là pour donner le ton et une idée de l'esprit dans lequel se déroule un Eniarof après effectivement on est très rarement dans le respect intégral des règles du dogmeniarof. (je vais te donner un lien URL du dogme on est en train de refaire le site)

What works, what doesn't?

On dit en général que ce qui ne marche plus lors d'un Eniarof est quelque chose qui a bien marché. Par exemple cette année on un jeu d'escrime sonore qui a super bien marché. Tellement que dés le 1° soir quelqu'un a arraché le dispositif de câble du mur. Ce qui est génial et prouve qu'une attraction marche c'est quand on n'a même pas à expliquer aux gens comment jouer avec notre attraction.

I'm curious about some of the projects shown during the last ENIAROF in Aix-en-Provence. In particular: the Wheelbarrow (Brouette tuning), Helmetron, and Arcade Concrete. Could you tell us a few words about these works?

Brouette Tuning est apparue en 2007 pour le Eniarof en SLovénie et fût présenté à 4 ou 5 Eniarof depuis. C'est une pièce de Maxime Berthou aka Monsieur Moo. C'est un symbole concentré en un objet de ce qu'est Enairof : de la récupération pimpée, un zeste de technologie, de la mobilité et beaucoup de fun. La brouette c'est notre meilleur moyen pour attirer du monde. Il suffit de sortir dans la rue avec et les gens ce demandent c'est quoi cette ovni.

Helmetron est une création de Alexandre Saunier qui a quasiment drivé Eniarof en trio avec Douglas Edric Stanley et moi.
Quelque mot de l'auteur pour quelques explications :
"""""
C'est un instrument lumineux et sonore pour ordinateur. Un peu comme le luminophone d'Isaac Asimov dans le cycle des fondations mais ici c'est l'ordinateur qui est l'interprète. Au final on plonge dans au coeur meme de l'ordi et on vit ses flux de données, on est stimulé au fil de ses fichiers qu'il lit et qu'il transforme en lumière et en sons. C'est glitch, c'est hardcore, ca fait un peu pensé à une dream machine numérique, c'est un peu comme Tron mais sans les effets spéciaux à la Disney.

Pour les anecdotes, mes deux préféré:

-> un mec a enlevé le casque et m'a dit
"Y'a quoi comme couleur dans le casque?"
"y'a que du orange, c'est tout ce que j'envoie comme lumière pour le moment"
"Ah. j'me demandais, perso j'ai vu du vert, du bleu, du blanc et du orange."

-> y'a une nana qui avait des secouses/frémissements de temps en temps, j'ai eu peur qu'elle soit épileptyque d'ailleurs^^
quand elle a enlevé le casque elle m'a dit qu'elle avait l'impression d'avoir des petits animaux, genre insectes, qui se baladait sur elle.

Sinon ce qui est intéressant c'est que la réaction des gens est toujours différente et dépend de leur physiologie/système nerveux, certain voients des cercles, des fractales, des couleurs...

www.alexandresaunier.com .
"""""
Ce qui m'a séduit dans sa pièce est le côté Orange Mécanique 2.0 auxquels je pense peu de gens auraient adhéré dans un autre contexte mais là on avait une queue de gens qui voulaient scanner les méandres de l'ordinateur. C'est une de nos réussite dans Eniarof en mélangeant des choses à la fois borderline et conceptuel on arrive à embarquer le public dans plein d'expériences différentes et il s'y livre avec plaisir.

Arcade Concrete

C'est un projet que j'ai réalisé avec Manuel Braun avec qui j'ai réalisé plusieurs pièces (Patch&ko, Eggregor8, MadNes, Domoludens, spongegame...) qui tournent souvent autour de l'idée que l'interface de jeu peut être un matériaux de sculpture comme un autre qui implique des mécanismes et formes particulières liées au gameplay du software. Un peu comme si chaque jeu vidéo pouvait avoir une matérialisation de son interface physique autre que standardisé et qui impliquerai une relecture de son gameplay. Le contexte du jeu est un bel espace d'observation de nos comportements. les salles de bornes d'arcades dans les années 80-90 jouaient pour nous ce rôle d'espace physique et communautaire du jeu vidéo. Les salles d'arcades ont ensuite disparu au profit des jeu en salon. Et finalement le jeu vidéo est revenu dans l'urbain au travers des dispositif mobiles. Arcade Concrete est un questionnement sur la place du jeu vidéo dans l'espace urbain. Ce n'est pas la même chose de jouer sur son iphone dans le metro que de s'afficher devant tout le monde debout entrain de jouer devant une borne. Il y a maintenant une borne qui trône à l'entrée de l'école d'Art d'Aix-en-provence et c'est devenu un lieu de discussion. Notre idée est de multiplier les performances en coulant des bornes un peu partout dans le monde. Un peu à la Invaders qui pose ses mosaïques nous on va chercher à optimiser la pose d'une borne et on va rédiger un mode d'emploie dans le livre Eniarof.

And if you had to chose 5 projects shown at ENIAROF over the years, which ones would they be?

On a pas mal de projets qui sont devenu des "best playable" et les plus exposés comme :
hyperolympic de Djeff Regottaz et Loic Horellou où vous jouez à un remake de track'n field avec une interface de jeu très physique qui est devenu maintenant un incontournable des festivals pour mettre la grosse ambiance.

The Hyper Olympic Party - Parizon@dream - Gaïté Lyrique - June 9, 2012 - Dekalko

et Eggregor8 de Manuel Braun et moi où vous jouez à Pacman mais à 8 en même temps comme si vous étiez 8 sur la même manette

C'est drôle d'ailleurs car il y a eu en 2010 une exposition dans l'espace 13-16 du centre Pompidou sur le jeu vidéo et ils ont invité essentiellement des pièces Eniarof sans même se rendre compte qu'il y avait un lien entre nous.

On pourrait appeler ça le BeaubourgNiarof

Il y a aussi la pièce "A battre" de Raphael Isdant qu'il avait créé lors du deuxième Eniarof à Aix-en-Provence et qui depuis à aussi beaucoup tourné

Raphael Isdant, A BATTRE

ensuite in y a des pièces plus inattendus ou très spécifique à Eniarof Aix-en-provence

comme Pogo Tamponeuse un ring de combat où vous devez enfiler une combinaison en pneu pour affronter votre adversaire.
vidéo prochainement

ou encore combat de Fucking Machine qui était border line et complètement surréaliste.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/atoimage/10856699295/in/set-72157637674537996
http://www.flickr.com/photos/atoimage/10856672265/in/set-72157637674537996

The dogma mentions that ENIAROF has to take place in the proximity of an Emmaüs. Could you tell us why?

Dans le dogme93 de Lars von trier et Thomas Vinterberg il est souvent question d'une économie de moyen. Mon but quand j'ai monté Eniarof était de ne pas tomber dans l'excès des projets qui engloutissent trop d'argent car tout simplement je voyais bien qu'il n'y avait pas de budget pour les jeunes artistes. Je traînais souvent à l'époque dans les Emmaus et je voyais qu'il y avait beaucoup de matériaux dont les Emmaus ne savaient pas forcément quoi faire. En plus c'est souvent agréable de recycler un objet on a l'impression d'avoir fait un acte écolo.

Another thing that surprised me int he dogma is that the barman is paid as much as an artist. Why do you think it is important that every participant receives the same fee?

Au début de ma carrière d'artiste j'étais horrifié de voir que le vigile ou le barman était mieux payé que moi sur un festival. Je me demandais quel avenir pour nous artiste si on était obligé de se brader juste pour s'exposer. En plus dans ce festival ma pièce s'est en plus faite détruire à la fin. La tendance c'est heureusement inversé pour moi mais c'était un peu une règle pour me rappeler à moi même si je dois inviter des artistes que je ne les brades pas come on m'avait bradé moi.

What is next for ENIAROF?

on a un livre en cours de réalisation
d'ailleurs on a un appel au don ... J'ai pas encore l'URL du KissKiss

et on a eu pas mal de bon contact pour réaliser d'autres Eniarof d'ailleurs de l'autre côté de l'Atlantique et au bord de la Méditerranée mais encore rien de validé donc je ne m'avancerai pas trop.

Merci Antonin!

The Age of Collage. Contemporary Collage in Modern Art. Edited by Dennis Busch, Robert Klanten, Hendrik Hellige. Preface by Silke Krohn.

Available on amazon USA and UK.

Publisher Gestalten writes: The Age of Collage is a striking documentation of today's continued appetite for destructive construction. Showcasing outstanding current artwork and artists, the book also takes an insightful behind-the-scenes look at those working with this interdisciplinary and cross-media approach.

The collages featured in this book are influenced by illustration, painting, and photography and play with elements of abstraction, constructivism, surrealism, and dada. Referencing scientific images, pop culture, and erotica, they reflect humanity's collective visual memory and context.

Through confident cuts, brushstrokes, mouse clicks, or pasting, the work in The Age of Collage gives the impossible a tangible form. It expands the possibilities of the genre while turning our worldview on its head along the way.

Nils Karsten

A book with Yul Brynner on the cover was always going to get my attention.

The Age of Collage adopts the model that made the success of Gestalten books. Plenty of efficient images and a few comments about each of the 80 artists whose work is presented. The intro is more informative than usual (or maybe that's just because i know so little about collages), it says a few words about the strategies of collage, its history and even more interestingly about its presence in contemporary culture from the Beastie Boys' video Sabotage to sampling or mood boards of ads agencies (or even Pinterest i would add.)

And because this book is a visual joy from cover to page 285, i'm going to leave you here with a few discoveries i made while flipping through it:

Jorge Chamorro, Handmade collages for Poisson Soluble, 2013

Jorge Chamorro, Pair, 2013

Beni Bischof

Brian Vu, Outer Limits, 2011

Valero Doval, Arlequin Series, 2009-2011

Valero Doval, Monkey Twins

Valero Doval, Circus dog I

Linder Sterling, Oh Grateful Colours, Bright Looks, 2009

Sarah Eisenlohr

Nils Karsten

Dominic McGill, The Splitting of Reality in Two Parts is a Considerable Event, 2009

Nicholas Lockyer, Leave me no choice but to plot my revenge, 2012

Views inside the book: