Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress

In February 2008, the President of the French Republic, Nicholas Sarkozy, unsatisfied with the present state of statistical information about the economy and the society, asked, Joseph Stiglitz (President of the Commission), Amartya Sen (Advisor) and Jean Paul Fitoussi (Coordinator) to create a Commission, subsequently called “The Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress” (CMEPSP).
The report distinguishes between an assessment of current well-being and an assessment of sustainability, whether this can last over time. Current well-being has to do with both economic resources, such as income, and with non-economic aspects of peoples’ life (what they do and what they can do, how they feel, and the natural environment they live in). Whether these levels of well-being can be sustained over time depends on whether stocks of capital that matter for our lives (natural, physical, human, social) are passed on to future generations.
Another key message, and unifying theme of the report, is that the time is ripe for our measurement system to shift emphasis from measuring economic production to measuring people’s well-being.

Read it here

One & Other: Walking the Plinth

I have been really interested in Antony Gormley's piece happening at Trafalgar Square because it encompassed all the good things and bad things about working within a community context. For starters there's the shared authorship that creates a product that is difficult to critique from a historical perspective on aesthetics. From a material perspective this work seems like a departure for Gormley. I have read about how the work is boring, highlights mundanity, is patronising and so on... In many ways I don't totally disagree, but I was still drawn to the work as its a huge public art project about participation, and luckily I was able to stand in for someone who missed their flight from Belfast.
As I'm working on the Everyman concept for the next year, I thought this would be an interesting place to doing a small intervention, and what a venue. What I found ultimately remarkable was the spontaneous community that was developed in the street. I went on at 2am on a Thursday thus faced a large amount of drunken loitering and heckling which was great. I felt both empowered and vulnerable and thought this is exactly the risk Gormley has taken. It reminded me of working in the community garden in NYC and having all sorts of obscene interventions that added to the work. It's a healthy dose of reality that I would recommend to any skeptic of the work.
One interesting character in the real stage, the pavements below, was Captain John (you can see him at about 36:36 in the video link below). He was a plinther and had since returned daily becoming part of the routine there. One of the main questions people asked when I was up there was 'what does it mean?', and it was the first question posed to me when I got down... But I wonder, does it need to mean something?
Jenna went up as well at 1pm on Saturday to much more docile crowd of tourists and locals. Many people had no idea what the plinth project was at all, and it was great to overhear all the possible assumptions. I realise that the real work of One & Other was this spontaneous dialogue amongst strangers in the street. If you're just looking up at the plinth you're missing the real artwork....

Everyman Walks the Plinth Video

Images

One & Other is a live artwork by sculptor Antony Gormley.
2,400 participants representing every region of the UK each spend an hour alone on the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square for 100 days and nights.

The Unavowable Community

The (first ever) Catalan Pavilion at the Venice biennale 'La Comunitat Incofessable' takes its title from Maurice Blanchot's 1983 book 'La Communauté inavouable' (The Unavowable Community), and from Blanchot's inquiry into the nature and possibility of community and interpreting communism as 'that which creates community'.

The project is divided into three parts: the exhibition taking Blanchot's reference to the library as a space for knowledge; the catalogue (with reprinted texts by Blanchot, as well as Jean Luc Nancy, Giorgio Agamben, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, etc.) as well as essays and interviews related to the artists projects by Gerard Horta, Iris Dessler, Jacob Lillemose, Manuel Delgado amongst others) and a website which will host a vast archive around the notion of communality.

The thread between the three projects is the questioning of the single authorship, as the artists constantly appropriate preexistent materials (photographs, data...) and reconfigure new archives, new readings of these materials.

Curatorial Text

Prize for Art and Social Change

The Creative Time Summit: Revolutions in Public Practice provides an opportunity to consider the work of more than 35 international cultural producers whose practice engages the public sphere on questions of social justice.
Their approaches intend to not only reflect, but also act upon moments of historic change, breaking the traditional barriers between art, culture, and politics.
The conference will open on the evening of Friday, October 23 with the presentation of the first, inaugural Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change, honoring an artist who has committed their life’s work to social change in powerful and productive ways. This prize is the first award of its kind, honoring impact and commitment over market trends. This year, the Prize will be given to The Yes Men

The Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change is an annual $25,000 award named in honor of Mrs. Annenberg’s life-long dedication to supporting the artistic voice in our culture, and to the vital role of art in educating and expanding our cultural dialogue. The Yes Men agree their way into the fortified compounds of commerce, ask questions, and then smuggle out the stories of their hijinks to provide a public glimpse at the behind-the-scenes world of business. This legendary group of culture jammers is, through their longstanding practice of invading and subverting modes of corporate communication, at the forefront of a movement to produce substantive change in our world. They are well known for projects ranging from impersonating representatives of major corporations to the distribution of thousands of copies of a simulated edition of The New York Times featuring idealistic, progressive headlines.

Generosity is the New Political - Wysing Arts Centre

'Generosity is the new political' explores the complex and ambiguous concept of generosity. Rooted within a system that merits symbolic value over market worth, acts of generosity contradict the accepted notion of production and exchange.

Community-minded new commissions include a performance by the Freee Art Collective, who will ceremoniously rename Cambridge streets after 18th-century radical thinkers while dressed in period costume. ~ The Guardian

The Museum of Non Participation

Karen Mirza and Brad Butler conceived The Museum of Non Participation in 2007 when - during the Pakistani Lawyers movement in Islamabad - they viewed the protests and subsequent state violence from a window in The National Art Gallery. Since then they have pursued ideas connected to their position that day - through conversation, images, activities and narratives following strands of dialogue to different people, places and contexts.

That is what the press release says... I am always skeptical of work that is participatory but which involves funded western artists exploring the geopolitical outside of their own boundaries, as it can often be a form of neoliberal-colonialism, and probably because works like this parallel my own practice, interests and fears.

I arrived early at the Museum located in the back of one of the hairdressers dotting Bethnal Green Road. The hairdresser was buzzing away at a young Asian lad's hair while a group of older men sat in the waiting chairs chatting and socialising. I love the diversity of the East End, but am acutely aware of its lack of cultural integration. I walked into the shop as everyone turned around and we all smiled at each other, as I awkwardly tried to figure out where I was going. The exhibit is not immediately apparent and that makes entering this shop an intrinsic part of the experience of this piece. Walking through a back door into a courtyard I was greeted by the standard opening affair, small bar and some last minute setting up. I wandered into the exhibition space, a small white space and encountered a minimal information-based aesthetic, binders, slideshow, videos with headphones and beanbag cushions...

Spending some time with the work, it opens a window into a process that successfully engages participation and critique, honouring community yet presenting a critical aesthetic encounter. From the video of a solitary action of a woman in various sites in Karachi, to newspaper clipping '10 arguments against violent conflict' by Saeed Ur Rehman speaking about prioritising the cultural over the biological, the exhibition makes you think, rethink and consider. ...

Friday 25 September – Sunday 25 October 2009

Yaseen’s, 277 Bethnal Green Road, London E2 6AH

Open Tuesday – Saturday 1pm-8pm Sunday 1pm- 6pm Closed Mondays

Free Entry

Everyman, an enquiry

We'll be hosting a discussion group at the Whitechapel Gallery that will kickstart a year of performance workshops building the new Lotos Collective event 'Everyman'. With invited guests from a variety of professions we'll be investigating the archetype of the Everyman across disciplines, attempting to decipher a universality of the urban citizen.

Discussion group is free and is part of The Nature of the Beast installation by artist Goshak Macuga.

The discussion will open to audience participation for the latter portion, come share your ideas!

Triangulated City: Beirut - Show Images

Site A: Zoukak (alleyway)

Site B: Central Parking, B7 (-7 underground)

Site C: Luna Park

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

مواعيد غامضة مع «المدينة المثلّثة» - Dates with a mysterious «tri-city»

نوال العلي

المسرحيّ روبرتو سانشيز كامو يدرك مفهومه عن المدينة المثلّثة. أمّا فهم بيروت، فيكاد يكون مهمةً مستحيلة له. ثمة فعل ورد فعل وشاهد على كل هذا. لهذا وقع الاختيار على الشكل المثلث، كهندسة نموذجية لتقديم شهادة عن الحياة. لماذا أتى هذا النيويوركي التشيلي إلى هنا ليطبق مفهومه عن الفن الحيّ والمسرح التفاعلي و«المدينة المثلّثة»؟ قال إنّه أتى مدفوعاً بتاريخ متشابه من أحداث دامية جرت في العاصمتين سانتياغو وبيروت. ورغم تقارب التاريخ وكونه دافعاً لاستكشاف هذه المدينة، يراد لهذا المفهوم الذي ابتكره سانشيز أن يترصد مستقبل المدينة لا كيف كانت.

Click for Google Translation

مدينة متلته Triangulated City عرض مسرحي تفاعلي في ثلاثة مواقع

English version down

الأصدقاء الأعزاء

مدينة متلته

Triangulated City

عرض مسرحي تفاعلي في ثلاثة مواقع

19-20-21 آب 2009 الساعة السادسة والنصف مساءً (الدخول مجاني)

ثلاث عروض في ثلاثة مواقع سرية في مدينة بيروت

للوصول إلى أي موقع، توجهوا إلى احد نقاط اللقاء التالية:

- موقف السيارات المواجه لمسبح اللونغ بيتش، المنارة.

- مقهى ومطعم البارومتر، مقابل مستشفى خوري، الحمرا.

- قارعة الطريق، مفترق سامي الصلح وفرن الشباك، العدلية.

لمزيد من المعلومات: info@zoukak.org ; www.zoukak.org

مدينة متلته / Triangulated city عرض مسرحي في "الفن الحي" يحقق في حركة الإشاعات والخرافات التي تنتشر في شوارع بيروت.

خلال ثلاثة أيام، في ثلاثة مواقع، ثلاثة عروض ستتالى في وقت واحد كل ليلة. الجمهور مدعو إلى ثلاث نقاط لقاء، حيث سيعطى كل فرد منهم إشارة تقوده إلى موقع العرض. هذا ما سيبدأ مغامرة تقود الجمهور لإكتشاف المواقع الثلاثة المتواجدة في مدينة بيروت، مستخدمين سلسلة من مفاتيح وشيفرات وأسرار وإشاعات تنتقل بهم وتنقلهم من مكان إلى مكان. كل موقع يتوافق مع العناصر الثلاثة التي تشكل بنية "الخرافة" Superstition -: الإقناع والطقس ونذائر النحس.

عملت فرقة زقاق المسرحية (لبنان) بالتعاون مع مجموعة لوتوس (لندن + نيويورك) ومجموعة من المشاركين على خلق عالم هذا العمل في المسرح الموقعي، المتعدد الوسائط الفنية. من خلال القصص والذكريات والأساطير المدينية، يكتشف الـ "مدينه متلته" السرد القصصي الساري في طرق الجغرافيا المدينية لبيروت وشوارعها. في حين يتنقل الجمهور في المدينة من موقع إلى موقع، يمتد العرض ليشمل الرحلة التي يقيمها كل فرد من الجمهور، مموهاً الحدود المتواجدة بين مواقع العروض والعالم الواقعي.

مدينه متلته/ Triangulated city تشجع الجمهور المشارك لمشاهدة المدينة في كل موقع كعرض حي ومكان للقاء والمواجهة.

Dear friends

Triangulated City
An interactive Live Art event in 3 locations

19, 20, 21 August 2009 at 18:30 - Free Entry

3 performances in 3 secret locations in Beirut. To disclose each location meet at any one of these 3 meeting points at 18:30 on the 19, 20, 21 August 2009:

• Long Beach Parking Area, Manara • Barometre Pub (facing Khoury Hospital), Hamra
• Corner of Furn el Chebak & Sami Es Solh, (intersection)

For more information: info@zoukak.org www.zoukak.org

Triangulated City is a Live Art event that investigates the movement of superstition and rumour that spreads through the streets of Beirut.

Over three days, in three locations, three performances will unfold simultaneously each evening. The audience is invited to three (3) meeting points where they will be given a clue to the location of the sites. This begins an adventure where the audience explores these three locations spread throughout the city, using a series of keys, codes, secrets and rumours, that will move with them from place to place. Each location corresponds to one of three structural elements of superstition: conviction, ritual, and omens.

Zoukak Theatre Company and Cultural Association has worked in collaboration with Lotos Collective (London/New York) and with invited participants to create this
multi-disciplinary site-specific performance world. Through the stories, memories, and urban legends born from the sites, Triangulated City explores the geographical and geopolitical movement of narrative through the streets of Beirut. As the audience moves through the city from location to location, the performance expands to include the journey each individual may take, blurring the boundaries between performance site and reality.

Triangulated City encourages spectators to view the city as a living performance with each location a place of confrontation and encounter.

Beirut Blog and pics

Check out Muzna' Stories at her blog http://hakaya.blogspot.com/

"Hakaya, is the Arabic word for narrated stories. This blog was created during the Israeli assault on Lebanon in July-August 2006, as my space to choose how to live and narrate stories that it forced unto our life. The arms might have stopped firing, but the Hakaya continue."

Also a random assortment of city images... Click for my Flickr Site

Kaprow's Yard

Hauser & Wirth New York will open in September with YARD, a seminal Environment first made in 1961 by Allan Kaprow, the American painter, assemblagist and pioneer of performance art known as the inventor of ‘Happenings.’

"Life is much more interesting than art," he wrote. "The line between art and life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps indistinct, as possible." Kaprow staged interactive events within and beyond the traditional museum and gallery context.

More than forty years ago, he filled the backyard of a Manhattan townhouse with rubber auto tires heaped randomly for viewers to climb in and around. That work was Yard and the townhouse, then home to the Martha Jackson Gallery, was located at 32 East 69th Street, the address soon to be Hauser & Wirth New York.