Reconnaissance - installation view

Andy Warhol the computer geek

This video, and the interview re-published at artnode, seem like more proof that the brilliance of the artist is often quite distant from the brilliance of the onlooker. Surrounded by "modern technology", he might, in retrospect, appear like a child enjoying his toys. Especially in the interview, it seems like it's the journalist who has all these great ideas, and Warhol just happily agrees with what he hears...
The enthusiasm for new technologies, when watched twenty years later, has something funny, but also something eery about it.
But if you read carefuly, there is one remarkable moment: when the journalist suggests that Andy (and the other artists) can now do everything by themselves - music, video, editing, etc., the artist agrees. But when asked if he has been doing it, he answers he hasn't had time because he is still exploring the visual art side of the computer.
So beyond this enthusiasm for all that is new, lies an aproach that is at once pragmatic and somehow... healthily conservative?

(via)

Watching this with you would have been so much better

Here is what I imagine:
I invite all of you to my house (Warsaw, Poland), and together we sit and watch I Love Alaska. Maybe it's not because this is the perfect work to be enjoying with a group of people you've only just met. (It probably isn't). Maybe it has more to do with how surprizingly far this blog has led. In many ways.
One of them is you. Right now, there are hundreds of you coming to this blog every day. There is over a hundred people following New Art "formally" via blogger.com, plus many many others via feeds and such, plus the hundreds of people who drop by every now and then... I've been receiving your kind e-mails, and enjoy visiting all the blogs, portfolios, sites that you publish or recommend. Some of you have been coming here nearly since the beginning, but it's also very exciting for me to get feedback from newcomers. I've come to know you a little, and, so to speak, enjoy your company on this ride. Many of you are in the arts, others are students, for many of you I suppose this is more of a curious entertainment. All this means not only that you enjoy the art I showcase, but certainly, to some extent we share a common sensibility. Wouldn't it be delicious to have just a part of us meet and enjoy some of this art together? Sit down, have a glass of wine, watch the film, then talk about art and life and simplicity and complexity, and how the mountains are majestic, and America does or doesn't influence the world, and share other references (all the Brokeback Mountains, Into The Wilds, Cremasters that come to mind...), ideas, passions. (You know, meeting in real life someone you've hardly even known online ;))
Not a festival, but a get-together.
And then of course we would party all night, and probably go to the shore of the Vistula river, and maybe make a field trip the next day. But the moment of a genuine and common esthetic experience, together, would have been ours.
This is what I imagine.
And you know what? - we actually could do it.
(To be continued)

Two works by Christiane Löhr

Oh were this the universe!
Were it but a combination of lines, a simple picture of perfection, were the universe a set of twigs and seeds with their mathematical omnipotence!
Oh were there nothing else, nothing but the point where everything meets, nothing but the shape it all embodies. And the shadow of the reflection of a shadow of the Work, just to outscore its very depth of space, just to give us the distance we need to be closer.
Oh were it all we need, the joyful meeting of vectors, the unswerving presence of fragility.

Oh were there no shadow in the top left corner, coming from elsewhere.

Both pictures are of sculptures by Christiane Löhr.

Robin Hood Above

The artist going by the name of Above made this stencil in Lisbon. (I actually know the lady sitting on the right - she is one of Lisbon's classic characters). In a gesture the artist herhimself admits robinwoodesque, Above is selling prints of this picture and will give all the profits to two charities she has previously selected. More info here.

The Actors - Reconnaissance, by Wojtek Ziemilski

This is a short fragment of my work called The Actors. The first volume - Reconnaissance lasts 50 minutes. You can see this excerpt in sort-of-HD here.
Any galleries interested in showing this work, write me, and I'll send you a DVD.

My New Art

I've been very very busy with the opening of my video installation.
Today is the opening night
I won't tell you much, and will leave you with the small text that accompanies it instead:


THE ACTORS
Part 1: RECONNAISSANCE

reconnaissance. or: finding oneself. or: recognition. the recognition of someone else. someone is recognized. or: recognizing. you are (this) someone. this is (this) someone. or: meeting again. discovering again something one knew already. electra's paradox: electra knows, and does not know, that it is her brother standing before her.

reconnaissance. checking. how far. how far one can go. how far one needs to go to. where are the borders. when do i fall into something else. and whatwho is this something else.

i like knowing so little about them.
i like that they remain actors.
and that they are actors in a way no different from all the others.
i like what they're able to do because of how we called them: actors.

The Actors opens (link in Polish) at the TR Warszawa in Poland.
Hopefuly I'll be able to post a short excerpt of the video soon...