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Lucidities
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Speaking of provincialism...
Following up my Lucid Dreaming column from this month's mag, you can hear for yourself the muddle-headed panel put on by the New Museum, "Location, Location, Location: Is Provincial a Dirty Word?" at this link:http://newmuseum.org/Transcripts/LOCATION.mp3.
Don't expect to be able to follow Teddy Cruz's presentation, even though that was the most interesting part of the presentation. A Guatemalan-born architect, Cruz has been doing some really interesting work with the built environment as it crosses the politically-charged border between San Diego and Tijuana.
The reason you won't be able to follow him, though, is that he spoke VERY FAST, and his presentation was very dependent on the images he showed, which are not available via the podcast.
As interesting as his presentation/analysis was, however, it really didn't seem to have much to do with this whole provincialism issue that was the putative topic of the panel. As I mentioned in the column, I was really disappointed to see how absolutely clueless the New York art establishment seems to be when it comes to understanding their own massive blindspot--the fact that they're more provincial than just about anybody else on the globe these days.
Much amusement is to be found, however, in this blog entry/report on the panel that appears on the Saatchi Gallery website. Where the Saatchi blogger sees profundity, I experienced merely confusion dressed up in hip-sounding jargon. (I think the "arching and complex theoretical questions" he heard coming from Roger Buergel, curator of Documenta 12, which opens this summer, is simply a reflection of the writer feeling like the discussion was going over his head.) His analysis of the "eloquent and charming" Julie Mehretu (that's her in the attitudinal portrait at right) presentation has me in stitches—the visuals projected during her talk functioned as wallpaper (she didn't discuss any of the images in particular), and, anticipating a residency she was about to start in Berlin, she peppered the images of her own work with cutaways to unexplained, undiscussed pictures of various Nazi events and individuals...which seemed to leave the German Buergel a bit non-plussed. (Perhaps that's the reason that when the panel turned to him, Buergel ditched his notes, saying he'd rather respond to the previous speakers...except without a peep about Mehretu's Nazi images.)
Chalk this panel up as reason #278 to be extremely dubious about any aesthetic pronouncements you hear coming from New York....
Beth E. Wilson has served as the resident art critic for Chronogram since 1999. Trained as an art historian, she also teaches art history at SUNY New Paltz.