Tag Archives: Walter Benjamin

Art Monthly Talk Show 9th December 2013

All Clear

Paul O’Kane sees through the rhetoric of transparency

Recent claims that transparency – particularly the kind heralded by online technologies – is a panacea for democracy veil the fact that, in terms of power relations, these technologies often function more like the one-way mirrors of interrogation rooms. Perhaps artists ought to look back to the radical repurposing of mainstream culture in the tumultuous 1970s for inspiration as to how to reveal the unseen.

‘Can we complacently claim that the will of the people is the rule of the people by the people while we enthusiastically give our time and agency over to commodified wizardry whose complex algorithms keep us “sitting in a room, by ourselves, staring at a chunk of plastic”, as a recent Facebook post confessed.’

The programme is hosted by Matt Hale who has worked at Art Monthly since 1991.

Previous episodes are available on Art Monthly’s website www.artmonthly.co.uk/events.htm

Art Monthly magazine offers an informed and comprehensive guide to the latest developments in contemporary art.Fiercely independent, Art Monthly’s news and opinion sections provide regular information and polemics on the international art scene. It also offers In-depth interviews and features; reviews of exhibitions, performances, films and books; art law; auction reports and exhibition listings

Art Monthly magazine is indispensable reading!

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Art Monthly Talk Show on Resonance104.4 FM, 9th November 2012

John Douglas Millar discusses his feature article on Conceptual Writing and asks “Is writing still playing catch-up with art?” 

The term ‘Conceptual Writing’ was coined in 2003 to define literary works that may function as Conceptual Art, where the ideas behind the rule-based texts cannot be separated from the act of writing itself. But does this reliance on the act of authoring undermine the movement’s distanciating intentions?

‘Conceptual Writing might not seem particularly radical. After all, the Oulipo group have been experimenting with constraint-based writing for over 50 years and citation and appropriation are a fundamental of much modernist literature.’

Colin Perry discusses his review of Matthew Darbyshire at Zabludowicz Collection, London, The Associates at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, Theaster Gates at White Cube Bermondsey, London. He suggests that over these past few recessionary years, the context available for art in the UK has changed in line with public spending cuts. Creativity has increasingly sought a home in two types of well-funded organisations: private collectors’ kunsthalles, in which public and private functions mix freely; and the domestic houses and mansions managed by the heritage sector, in which art is programmed to respond to a permanent collection. But many artists show a deep ambivalence about such contexts.

The programme is hosted by Matt Hale who has worked at Art Monthly since 1991.

 

Previous episodes are available on Art Monthly’s website www.artmonthly.co.uk/events.htm

 

Art Monthly magazine offers an informed and comprehensive guide to the latest developments in contemporary art.Fiercely independent, Art Monthly’s news and opinion sections provide regular information and polemics on the international art scene. It also offers In-depth interviews and features; reviews of exhibitions, performances, films and books; art law; auction reports and exhibition listings

 

Art Monthly magazine is indispensable reading!

 

Special magazine subscription offer for Resonance 104.4 listeners.Subscribe now with the new £25 discount offer.

 

www.artmonthly.co.uk



Art Monthly Talk Show on Resonance104.4 FM, 12th October 2012

Paul O’Kane and Sophie J Williamson discuss their features in the October 2012 issue of Art Monthly-

On Making Art by Paul O’Kane on the act of making and the making of the act The notion of creativity has been subjected to rigorous critique in the postmodern era but the act of making – the business of negotiating the idiosyncracies of the artist’s chosen medium – still remains central. In the digital age, however, the media of mundane labour and creative expression are often the same, so is it time for artists to reconceive the act of making and the making of the act?

The Artist as Cynic by Sophie J Williamson writes in praise of shamelessness.The scandalous Cynics of ancient Greece lived a life free from social restraint, speaking their minds – and indeed performing their bodily functions – in public and thereby exposing the hypocrisy and political motivations underlying most social conventions. Many performance artists, such as Marina Abramović and Cosey Fanni Tutti, have utilised similar techniques, but in an age of voluntary and involuntary surveillance through social networks, how have artists such as Christoph Schlingensief and Ai Weiwei tapped into the spirit of the Cynics for political protest?

 

The programme is hosted by Matt Hale who has worked at Art Monthly since 1991.

 

Previous episodes are available on Art Monthly’s website www.artmonthly.co.uk/events.htm

 

Art Monthly magazine offers an informed and comprehensive guide to the latest developments in contemporary art.Fiercely independent, Art Monthly’s news and opinion sections provide regular information and polemics on the international art scene. It also offers In-depth interviews and features; reviews of exhibitions, performances, films and books; art law; auction reports and exhibition listings

 

Art Monthly magazine is indispensable reading!

 

Special magazine subscription offer for Resonance 104.4 listeners.Subscribe now and save 40% on the cover price at

 

www.artmonthly.co.uk