COWBOYZOOM

BUT IS IT ART?

Dumb Type: 2022, Japan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale

in Art Comment

Dumb Type: 2022, Japan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale

Dumb Type
2022
April 23–November 27, 2022

Japanese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale
Giardini, Venice, Italy

The Japan Pavilion at the 59th International Venice Biennale presents 2022, a new work by Dumb Type, a pioneering art collective engaged primarily in installations, video works, and performances in museums and theaters both in Japan and overseas.

2022
A new work by the artist collective Dumb Type.

“Mirrors on four stands rotate at high speed, reflecting lasers trained on them to project text onto the surrounding walls. The projected texts are all taken from an 1850s geography textbook, posing simple yet universal questions. The sounds of voices reading the texts are emitted from rotating parametric speakers, becoming highly directional beams of sound that travel around the room. In contrast to the discourses that surround it, the center of the room is an empty space—a place that exists nowhere, but at the same time a place that could be anywhere. We live in a time of post truth and liminal spaces. The center is void.” —Dumb Type

About Dumb Type

Founded in 1984, Dumb Type is comprised of artists from diverse backgrounds—visual art, music, video, dance, design, programming and other fields—all contributing to a great variety of stage and installation productions over the years. They have maintained an open-ended creative style with no fixed director and a changing roster of members participating in each new production as part of their on-going exploration of ever new possibilities in artistic collaboration. Since its formation, Dumb Type has worked toward a broadening of the possibilities for artistic expression. Derived from the diversity of its members and from the different media the group uses, Dumb Type’s work ranges across such diverse media as art exhibitions, performances and live music concerts. Their interdisciplinary efforts continue to transcend existing genres of fine art, theater and dance. Regardless of genre, the essence of their work addresses a variety of social issues related to contemporary society, and the today’s technological reality on a global scale.

Their works has been presented in numerous festivals and exhibitions, including the Guggenheim Museum Soho, New York (1994), Hong Kong Arts Festival (1996), Barbican Centre, London (1998), Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (1999), Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1999), New National Theatre, Tokyo (2000), Singapore Arts Festival (2002), Venice Biennale (2003), Seoul International Modern Dance Festival (2005), Melbourne International Arts Festival (2006), Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin (2007), The Athens Concert Hall (2009), Romaeuropa, Palazzo delle Esposizioni (2017), solo exhibition at Centre Pompidou-Metz, France (2018) and Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2019), among others.

The Dumb Type Exhibition at Haus der Kunst Munich will be held from May 6 to September 11, 2022.

Japan Pavilion at the 59th International Venice Biennale

Commissioner: The Japan Foundation
Artist: Dumb Type
Project Members: Shiro Takatani, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Ken Furudate, Satoshi Hama, Ryo Shiraki, Marihiko Hara, Hiromasa Tomari, Takuya Minami, Norika Sora, Yoko Takatani and others
Voices: David Sylvian, Maria Takeuchi, Kahimi Karie, Niki
Field recordings*: Yan Jun (Beijing), Crosby Bolani (Cape Town), Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Chiang Mai), Kali Malone & Stephen O’Malley (La Tour-de-Peilz), Mukul Patel (London), John Warwicker (Melbourne), Martin Hernandez (Mexico City), Giuseppe La Spada ( Mount Etna), Damian Lentini (Munich), Alec Fellman (New York), Andri Snær Magnason & Kaśka Paluch (Reykjavik), Jaques Morelenbaum (Rio de Janeiro), Atom Heart (Santiago), Cheng Chou (Taipei), Nima Massali (Tehran), Seigen Ono (Tokyo)
*originally recorded for the installation Playback directed by Ryuichi Sakamoto for the Dumb Type Exhibition at Haus der Kunst Munich in 2022

venezia-biennale-japan.jpf.go.jp

C-Heads Volume #37

in Magazines Comment

C-Heads Volume #37 Cover

C-Heads Volume #37 Spread 001

C-Heads Volume #37 Spread 002

C-Heads Volume #37 Spread 003

C-Heads Volume #37 Spread 004

C-Heads Volume #37 Spread 005

C-Heads Volume #37 Spread 006

C-Heads Volume #37 Spread 007

C-Heads Volume #37 Spread 008

C-Heads Volume #37 Spread 009

C-Heads Volume #37

A Love Affair.

Devoting your time with heart and soul to something you love can unveil elusive energy, undreamt possibilities.

This issue we dedicate to passion. The passion and love for what you do. The sort of passion that once it enters your life, you can‘t relinquish. It catches you, and like a wave, carries you up and down, impels you, and guides you to countless opportunities, endless like the vast ocean. Who knows where it carries you?

Release: 2021
Cover: Lisa-Marie Bosbach
Photographed by Marcel Boer
Limited edition – 1000 copies
196 pages
21.8 cm x 27.6 cm 1,3 cm – perfect binding
Cover: Softcover, MUNKEN
Inside: Matt coated paper. Shrink wrapped
Language: English
Heidelberg offset printing, Kopa – Lithuania

Contents: Exclusive Interviews, Editorials, Poems and Essays: Sandra Dangers by Markus Henttonen, Norman Parkinson, Rocio López by Mario Lomas, Eliya by Jordan Larz, Amberly Valentine, Anita Millonig, Klara by Emanuel A. Klempa, Lea Hermann by Fabian Zelinsky, Winny Nzeyimana by D. Kelly Rosa, Amelie Kammel, Chiara Christmann & Michelle Gerndt by Markus Wachter, Taya by Mariona Vilarós, Tauany Coelho by Ray Litsala, Nara Jackson by Roxana Neacsu, Lucy Bluma by Oliver Sutton, Sarah Bahbah, Lisa-Marie Bosbach by Marcel Boer, Sans Soucis, Karolina Dlha by Viktor Cicko, Shristi Jaiswal, Romi Koren by Yoad Shejtman, Ashleigh Holmes, Madison Flowers by Clay Fields, Elena Breuer

C-Heads

Drift, Volume 12: Paris

in Magazines Comment

Drift, Volume 12: Paris 01

Drift, Volume 12: Paris Spread 01

Drift, Volume 12: Paris Spread 02

Drift, Volume 12: Paris Spread 03

Drift, Volume 12: Paris Spread 04

Drift, Volume 12: Paris Cover 02

Drift, Volume 12: Paris 03

Drift, Volume 12: Paris

As one of the most recognizable backdrops in the world, Paris is a globally celebrated lookbook of quaint vignettes and glittering excess. Perhaps more than any other city in the world, it is the visual yardstick by which all others are measured. But this treasured gem is multifaceted, offering more than just the well-worn patina of emperors and flâneurs.

Introducing Drift, Volume 12: Paris

Drift Volume 12 is a bundle of postcards from this beloved capital of art, culture, romance, history, fashion, and cuisine. But until recently, Paris wasn’t celebrated for its coffee. Although the city’s famous sidewalk cafes have become a glamorous backdrop against which people want to be seen, coffee merely served as prop—good for looking, not for drinking. Fortunately, changing tides have brought waves of coffee entrepreneurs and aficionados, who are creating an exciting, new coffee culture that has invaded Paris’s picturesque alleyways and grand boulevards. This issue visits the centuries and arrondissements, and peeks behind the old façades and new, that, together with the imagination and passion of Parisians and expats alike, make the City of Light an emerging destination for serious coffee roasters, brewers, and drinkers.

Drift Volume 12 includes:

  • A bright, yellow tricycle peddles (and pedals) coffee around the city in hopes of changing the lives of Paris’s homeless for the better.
  • How an unlikely Ottoman, who received a frosty royal reception, introduced coffee and “Turkmania” to Parisians.
  • Reflections by a lovesick traveler, in a Paris of cigarettes and coffee for a layover.
  • Wading into the divide between brasseries from coffee shops, and appreciating their differences.
  • From the chipped-paint storefront of an old cordonnerie—cobbler—to a fashion label in the gardens of a former palace, the face of Paris’s coffee shops are changing.
  • And more…

Drift Magazine

David Shrigley, It’s All Your Fault, 2019

in Art Comment

David Shrigley, It's All Your Fault, 2019

David Shrigley
It’s All Your Fault, 2019

20 Colour Screenprint on Somerset Tub Sized 410gsm Paper
75.00 x 56.00 in
190.5 x 142.2 cm
Edition of 125
Signed by the artist on verso.

David Shrigley is an artist and illustrator best known for his mordantly humorous cartoons. Self-branded as an outsider in the art world, Shrigley is known for making flat compositions that take on the inconsequential, the bizarre, and the disquieting elements of everyday life. Like the musings of a very wise child displaying the wit and humor of a seasoned observer of the adult world, his illustrations feature crossed-out words, scribbled, uneven lines, and darkly funny aphorisms about the world.

In recent years, Shrigley has expanded his practice to include filmmaking. He directed the video for indie-king Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s song Agnes, Queen of Sorrow and co-directed an animated film with award-winning director Chris Shepherd based on Shrigley’s book Who I Am and What I Want. A weekly contributor of cartoons to the Guardian Weekend magazine, he released his first spoken-word album Shrigley Forced to Speak With Others in 2006, which was followed by a double-CD of artists, including David Byrne, Islands, and Grizzly Bear, who put Shrigley’s book Worried Noodles to music.

Shrigley’s work has been exhibited widely, including solo shows at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen, the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow, and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. In 2013, he was nominated for the prestigious Turner Prize for his solo show David Shrigley: Brain Activity at the Hayward Gallery in London.

David Shrigley on His Funny Way of Making Art