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Torture is still in the air. Only two months ago, United States Attorney General Eric Holder confirmed that no further action would be taken to prosecute anyone for the deaths of two men held by the CIA, one in Iraq in 2003, and the other in Afghanistan in 2002. These were the last of one hundred cases of alleged mistreatment that were investigated, but not one of which resulted in either indictment or trial. A few days after that announcement, Human Rights Watch published a report documenting previously unacknowledged uses of waterboarding…
I remember walking past the newly renovated condos that constrict the Pine Street Inn, entering the aisles of dimly lit galleries stacked upon themselves like a mini-mall in Carmel. I moved through the plaza between the galleries, peering into the windows to see displays of pottery platter-ware, paintings of sailboats, (and in the more contemporary galleries) grayish-black blurs on hazy white walls. It was summer, the sun had yet to fully set. And the event had already ended. I walked past the first pub within reach and I heard the jabberings from…
America’s deep South conjures innumerable images. In fact, just to get in the right mindset to write this essay I have taken off my shoes and shirt, moved my computer to the front porch, and am blasting Lynyrd Skynyrd, which I am accompanying on dueling banjos. The South is, after all, the place where the state universities have dogs as mascots. Tennessee’s is a Bluetick Coonhound named Smokey and Georgia’s is a Bulldog named UGA. UGA IX, to be exact, in the great Southern tradition of naming things repetitively, usually some permutation…
dOCUMENTA, one of the largest and most important contemporary art exhibits in the world, takes place in Kassel, Germany every five years. In 2012, the 13th edition of dOCUMENTA presented work by more than 300 artists at eight major venues in Kassel as well as at sites in Kabul, Afghanistan; Alexandria and Cairo, Egypt; and Banff, Canada. 2012 curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev described the focus of dOCUMENTA (13) as “terrains where politics are inseparable from a sensual, energetic, and worldly alliance between current research in various scientific and artistic fields and other knowledges,…
Second nature: abstract photography then and now is a lot more “now” than “then.” Loud, crowded and eye-pleasing, the show has a lot to look at, but doesn’t immediately beg an intensive viewing. Hung salon-style in a smallish second floor gallery of the deCordova, second nature feels more than anything like it could use more space. The multiple-layer hanging screams of necessity rather than intention, and odd pairings and arrangements of works only further confuse any kind of narrative reading. However, the curator emphasizes that this is not a survey, rather “a…
Ethel Baraona Pohl develops her professional work through links to numerous architectural and design publications. She has collaborated with blogs and magazines, including Domus, Quaderns and MAS Context, among others. She has been invited to present work at events like Postopolis! DF and the international architecture festival eme3. She was co-founder, with Cesar Reyes Najera, of the independent publishing company dpr-barcelona, whose projects, both digital and printed, subvert the limits of conventional publications, and approach the architecture and design publications of the future. Currently, Ethel serves as associate curator of Adhocracy one…
The 11th Hour Gallery was cold. It was upstairs at 20 East Street, and in the very early 1980s, it was home to Mike Carroll and Penelope Place. Blocks away from South Station, on the outer edges of what was the Combat Zone until the mid 1970s, the 11th Hour was situated among parking lots and big businesses. Carroll and Place had found the space when they needed somewhere to make work for the Boston Film Video Archive. They weren’t supposed to be living there as it was a commercial building, and…
The Institute of Contemporary Art has announced the finalists for The Foster Prize 2013 James and Audrey Foster Prize. The four finalists are Sarah Bapst, Katarina Burin, Mark Cooper and Luther Price. The Foster Prize is the ICA’s biennial for Boston-area artists. The prize was first established in 1999 then known as the ICA Artist Prize, it was endowed with a $1 million dollar gift by James and Audrey Foster—collectors and supporters of contemporary art. Past recipients include Ambreen Butt (1999), Laylah Ali (2000), Taylor Davis (2001), Alice Swinden Carter (2002), Douglas…