# Re-Bound-Ary by Joon K. Choi

,Re-Bound-Ary is a student work from the Fine Arts Department of Pratt Institute by Joon K. Choi. Her beautiful and poetic work deals with the ambiguity of architecture gigantism, both fascinating and frightening. The pictures of the buildings plays with their endlessness and their state of construction when they looks like ruins before even having lived (a bit like Bangkok gigantic buildings which have never been fully achieved and are now urban ruins).

Here is the text she wrote about her work:

Joon K Choi have been involved with architectural images and a wide range of materials. In her art, building and clothing images repeat.
Joon likes to contrast two opposite feelings about architecture: fear and gratification. “When I see a skyscraper, I have both feelings at the same time”, she said. This probably is natural because a modern building is a metaphor of economic growth as well as its shadow. Though a skyscraper is regarded as a result of economic success, the success always involves a darker facet.
Based on this feeling, building images always pose to her an existential question; where are we from and where will we go. In history, humans have constructed many buildings for practical or religious reasons. These numerous buildings sometimes disappeared or even have been rebuilt. Even though skyscrapers stand securely and gloriously, it is hard to say that they will exist forever. It seems that all building are in a state of construction or decay and imply the insecure existence of human beings. That is why she likes to think of buildings as being insecurely in the present, between the past and the future.

# Two videos by Rob Carter

Here are two videos from the talented English (Brooklyn based) artist Rob Carter. The first one Metropolis is a decoupage/collage of the growth of a crazy globalized city (don't miss the spider like behavior of the highways) whereas the other Stone on Stone introduces an hybridization of Modernism (Couvent de la Tourette) with Gothic. One would regret Gothic eventually fully replaces Modernism but the moment of symbiosis is very successful and interesting in my opinion...
The technique used by Carter is also very interesting in the hybridization of hand made and digital processes of animation and succeeds to bring a poetic -and almost grotesque- aspect to his films.

Metropolis by Rob Carter - Last 3 minutes from Rob Carter on Vimeo.

Stone on Stone [CLIP] from Rob Carter on Vimeo.

# Dark lens by Cédric Delsaux

Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt's Empire has never been so visual thanks to Cédric Delsaux's amazing series called The Dark Lens and depicting our contemporary societies under the yoke of the dark force. As most of you may know, the Star Wars' Empire used the pretext of war (insecurity) to declare a perpetual state of emergency (read the previous article about Giorgio Agamben's state of exception) and establish an army as a quasi-omnipotent police. The comparison with the current state of the world is therefore easy and Cédric Delsaux, by a switch of context, succeeds with great talent to make the Empire troops extremely familiar to us.

much more pictures on Cédric Delsaux's website

originally via Transit-City. Thanks Francois B.

# Pixels by Patrick Jean

Pixels is a hilarious short movie by Patrick Jean who depicts a pixelated Apocalypse coming out from the primitive video games. The resolution of things decreases until the ultimate pixelization, one single cube. When Spinoza meets the computer...

Thank you Florian

PIXELS by PATRICK JEAN.

# (UN)WALL /// Plug-in Berlin by Etienne Boulanger

Our good friend Alexandre Pachiaudi is currently releasing on his blog Archiact, an excellent series of post about French artist Etienne Boulanger's work. Several of his projects could be appropriate for this (UN)WALL theme but the "performance" Plug-in Berlin drew my attention even more than the others. Between 2001 and 2003, he reproduced what Georges Orwell did in 1929 and described in his Down and Out in Paris and London, which is a voluntary choice for a temporary precarious life. During those two years, Etienne Boulanger built several shelters "into" walls providing thus a perfect camouflage of his presence:

"The time of occupation of each space is undetermined and varies depending on unpredictable external events (degradation, police, neighborhood). After having been inhabited, each shelter is abandoned as such on site. In two years, I used 17 interstices as shelters and 21 disused spaces as logistic support. This fragmentation of my environment generates a continuous moving through the city, close from nomadism. This experience of voluntary precarious life goes beyond the conventional field of art and the simple production of objects. The two years "performance" introduces the work in a political, urbanistic and social context which is necessary to a work that is directly inspired by contemporary society."

original text:
"Le temps d’occupation de chaque espace est indéterminé et varie en fonction d’évènements extérieurs imprévisibles (dégradations, police, voisinage). Après avoir été habitée, chaque construction est abandonnée et laissée sur place en l’état. En deux ans, 17 interstices me servirent d’abris et 21 espaces désaffectés, de support logistique. Cette fragmentation de mon environnement quotidien génère un déplacement constant à travers la ville, proche du nomadisme. Cette expérience de précarisation volontaire de mes conditions de vie dépassele champ conventionnel de l’art et la simple production d’objets. La “performance” de deux ans place l’oeuvre dans un contexte politique, urbanistique et social nécessaire à un travail ancré dans notre société contemporaine."

# (UN)WALL /// Dante Ferreri in La Periferia Domestica

La Periferia Domestica who is still following our theme of (UN)WALL just posted this amazing work of Dante Ferreri for Venice's Biennale 2007.

# Crime and punishment in the Orsay Museum

The Orsay Museum in Paris is releasing a new exhibition curated by Robert Badinter (Francois Mitterand's Minister of Justice who obtained the abolition of the death penalty in France in 1981). Its name, Crime and punishment as an homage to Dostoyevsky.

The exhibition Crime and Punishment looks at a period of some two hundred years: from 1791, when Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau called for the abolition of the death penalty, to 30 September 1981, the date the bill was passed to abolish it in France. Throughout these years, literature created many criminal characters. The title of the exhibition is itself taken from a work by Dostoyevsky. In the press, particularly the illustrated daily newspapers, the powerful fantasy of violent crime was greatly increased through novels.
At the same time, the criminal theme came into the visual arts. In the work of the greatest painters, Goya, Géricault, Picasso and Magritte, images of crime or capital punishment resulted in the most striking works. The cinema too was not slow to assimilate the equivocal charms of extreme violence, transformed by its representation into something pleasurable, perhaps even into sensual pleasure.
It was at the end of the 19th century that a new theory appeared purporting to establish a scientific approach to the criminal mind. This tried to demonstrate that the character traits claimed to be found in all criminals, could also be found in their physiological features. Theories like these had a great influence on painting, sculpture and photography. Finally, the violence of the crime was answered by the violence of the punishment: how can we forget the ever-present themes of the gibbet, the garrotte, the guillotine and the electric chair?
Beyond crime, there is still the perpetual problem of Evil, and beyond social circumstances, metaphysical anxiety. Art brings a spectacular answer to these questions. The aesthetic of violence and the violence of the aesthetic - this exhibition aims to bring them together through music, literature and a wide range of images.

Robert Badinter - les Matins
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# (UN)WALL /// Moment by Yukihiro Taguchi

La Periferia Domestica keeps helping boiteaoutils to gather architectural projects or art pieces that apply a process of unwalling and just posted this wonderful video (see below) called Moment. This work has been achieved by Japanese Berliner artist Yukihiro Taguchi; it fragments the elements of the floor in order to create an important quantity of various spaces more or less sculptural, more or less functional.

# Contemplating the void / 50th anniversary of the NY Guggenheim

A lot has been already written about the current Guggenheim's exhibition, Contemplating the void, that gathers two hundred artists and architects who have been commissioned to create a work related to the famous and fascinating void of New York's Guggenheim. The interesting thing is that those artists and architects comes from very different backgrounds (generational, influential, geographical etc.), therefore the result is extremely various. A lot of propositions are nevertheless similar probably due to a lack of time and ideas, but thus prove the intellectual poverty of this period.
However, some works are worth looking at and you have here a very little selection of those:

- Doris Salcedo (Bogota): Tribute to Hans Haacke and Edward Fry
- Powerhouse Company (Rotterdam): Tryptich
- Luzinterruptus (Spain): A museum inhabited --> see previous post
- Arne Quinze (Brussels): Untitled --> see previous post
- Mass Studies (Seoul): Art Trap --> see previous post
- TheVeryMany (Brooklyn): Along the void --> see previous post
- N55 (Denmark): Untitled

# Jim Kazanjian

Young American artist Jim Kazanjian is using photomontage as a medium in order to compose surrealist post-apocalyptic landscapes. I particularly like the first image depicting a raft of survival suburban houses...

# (UN)WALL /// Tunnel house by Dan Havel and Dean Ruck

This incredible tunnel house has been posted everywhere two years ago when it has been achieved by artists Dan Havel and Dean Ruck in Houston. This installation evokes a black hole that absorbs the house's material from inside. People have then the opportunity to experience this vortex.