overdue

When Dan Cameron curated his first CAC show, Elizabeth Underwood and I tried some "video blogging" and interviewed some of the artists at the opening. Those posts can still be found in mostly in the February and March archives. What I neglected to do was finish the series by posting the curator's statement (!)
I decided now is as good a time as any to rehash what we've seen, in anticipation of what's to come. For the show last January, titled "Something from Nothing," Elizabeth and I were very curious to find out what "nothing" was. It turned out that "nothing" was the stuff of community. While I think the title stung a bit, the show had some great work dealing with issues and ideas timely to new orleanians. As you will hear in the clip, "situational aesthetics" within the context of an alternative economy is the ground of Dan Cameron's concept. The Victor Burgin text from 1969 "Situational Aesthetics" is dense with ideas about art as institutional critique, art as activity, art existing in a psychological space as much as a physical space... I'm curious about how this idea will play out with Prospect 1, with the biennial as the institution and a "differently-functioning" city as the context.