Hans Haacke, Cultural Production, and Tishman Speyer in Stuyvesant Town

The previous quarter's issue of October addressed the question "In what ways have artists, academics, and cultural institutions responded to the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq?" to a series of thinkers.  The variety of answers is pretty remarkable.  Hans Haacke, in one of the more straightforward answers offered in response, discussed the Peace Tower of Mark di Suvero and Rirkrit Tiravanija at the 2006 Whitney Bienniel and some of the work at the Storr-curated 2007 Venice Biennale before concluding:

Cultural production should indeed be a "socially and politically communicative, transgressive, or critical activity." It requires professionalism of the highest level.

Haacke's most recent show was at Paula Cooper at the beginning of this year. It featured some recent work and one of his best older pieces, Sol Goldman and Alex DiLorenzo Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, which looks more terrifyingly prescient each day and lives up to the polemic he wrote for October. 

The New York Times is reporting today that Tishman Speyer has been using a private investigations service and three law firms to find residents in Stuyvesant Town, who are breaking the terms of their rent-stabilized leases, falsely accusing a large percentage of them in the process. In effect, they're reversing the direction of the research that Hans Haacke completed on Manhattan real estate in the 1970's - which famously led him into a showdown with the Guggenheim in 1971 (of which Sol Goldman... is a part).  Tishman Speyer's behavior in Stuyvesant Town is, of course, just one part of a much larger picture, and - I'm more pessimistic than Haacke (and Chomsky, apparently) - it's troubling to survey the lack of any sort of critical resistance within the American (or international) academy or art world on foreign and domestic issues in this election year.

Works cited: Hans Haacke, "[Untitled Response]," October 123 (Winter 2008), p.82
Photo: Paula Cooper Gallery

Television Interventions 1 / Video Art 11 - David Hall, Tap Piece (1971) [Excerpt]

Embedding is disabled for David Hall's Tap Piece, so you need to click through to view it.
Nicky Hamlyn in the short-lived Coil Magazine explains the project:

In 1971 David Hall made ten TV Interruptions for Scottish Television which were broadcast, unannounced, in August and September of that year (a selection of seven of the ten was later issued as 7 TV Pieces). These, his first works for television, are examples of what television interventions, as they came to be known, can be.

This is the first post in a series of television interventions. To come: Stan Douglas, Chris Burden, et al.

Performance 1 - Carolee Schneeman, Meat Joy (1964) [Excerpt]

Compendium of performances in Paris, London, and New York filmed by Pierre Dominik Gaisseau.

Schneeman, in a letter to Jean-Jacques Lebel:

There are now several works moving in mindseye. ... Meat Joy shifting now, relating to Artaud, McClure, and French butcher shops - carcass as paint (it dripped right through Soutine's floor) ... flesh jubilation ... extremes of this sense. ... Smell, feel of meat ... chickens, fish, sausages?

Dan Flavin - The 1964 Green Gallery Exhibition at Zwirner & Wirth [Review]

Noting the recent proliferation of galleries restaging entire, earlier exhibitions in their spaces (highlighted by Karen Bookatz in Art Critical, among others), it’s tempting to suggest that some form of collective historical crisis is motivating the phenomenon. Indeed, with the threat of an art market collapse seemingly eminent and the concomitant fear that some of the excesses of the past decade will be wiped away very much present in the minds of many, there’s a clear comfort in retreating into the past.

In Zwirner & Wirth’s replication of Dan Flavin’s 1964 Green Gallery show, one encounters everything necessary for such a project to be effective: a familiar name, acclaimed and accessible work, and a landmark event. It was here that Flavin abandoned paint to work solely with industrial lights for the first time, establishing the iconic brand that would define the rest of his career. Coming at a time when, as R. C. Baker puts it, “Gotham [was] both on edge and brilliantly edgy,” the Vietnam War and Andy Warhol in their ascendancy, the exhibition, for Flavin’s minimalist allies, then, was also a significant register of change.

Many Flavins that have become trademarks are here: the 45 degree-tilted Malevich-made-electric Diagonal of May 25, 1963, the effervescently pink Untitled (to Jasper Johns) glowing in the corner, and my favorite, The Nominal Three (to William of Ockham), composed, in sequence of sets of one, two, and three shining white lights. But there are also revelatory details: drawings by Flavin that show him working out the arrangements of the colors for Primary Picture and the works inside the gallery (configurations he would later change after seeing the pieces in the space).

Architecture, design, and art were being put effortlessly and instantly together. Shown all together, their power cords stretching along the walls and floor into visible outlets, Flavin’s works look a little less pure, a little more sexy than they tend to when sitting pristinely-installed inside museums.

Historical recreations (at least in the art world) are by their very nature triumphalist affairs. They applaud coherent narratives and, in a sense, function as kitsch, simulating for the viewer the experience of encountering genuinely revolutionary art. Entering the gallery, we already know we’re supposed to enjoy the work. Encountering Flavin’s pieces at the very start of a cloudy evening on the Upper East Side, though, as the warm color from the sculptures stretched further into the gallery’s shadows, one couldn’t help but ratify that judgment, even while hoping that some of the confidence and risk on display would spill over into the present.