In/Site: Reflections on the Art of Place is my blog devoted to art, architecture and urbanism, using Chicago as a vantage point for reflections on the work of contemporary artists, public art and urban projects that reinvent the spatial environment of the city. In/Site offers a quasi-geographical focus on the topic of art and urbanism, what cultural theorist Rosalyn Deutsche refers to as an “urban-aesthetic,” through essays and reviews that analyze how artists, as creative agents and critical thinkers, reimagine the physical and conceptual spaces that culture can occupy. The impetus for In/Site comes from the desire to retool my critical writing and to reengage with artists and ideas that are often absent from the mainstream art press. The title, while referring to various site-specific art practices, spins on the idea of site as a physical and geographic space, and on a vision of place (or insight) that is contextual and self-conscious.
This project is supported by the Creative Capital / Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grants Program.
I Walk the Line: On the Art and Politics of Walking in the City
I walk a lot. I walk to get from one destination to another. I walk to clear a space in my head. I walk to connect to my neighborhood, to my city, and to those places less familiar. I have never been good at reading a map (or folding one), thus I often let my impressions and senses guide me, or when lost, ask others to point the way. There is a romance to walking, linked to our need to connect to nature and the physical environment, as well as our will to be alone.
Art. Criticism. Now.
As I am confronted with this blank page after the disastrous results of the election, I must admit I feel lost as to what I am supposed to do next. I can tell you how I feel; like others, I feel angry, betrayed, confused, afraid, but thankfully not alone. But now even those sentiments feel overused. There is a familiarity to this, not unlike the early aftermath of 9/11, when many of us in the art world questioned the importance of what we do and asked ourselves what is art’s role in times of uncertainty and struggle.
The Chicago Architecture Biennial 2.0: Axes and Praxes
The recent announcement of the new artistic team to lead the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB) has prompted me to consider some of the political dynamics at play and to share a few ideas about what I think the next installment of CAB could be. Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee of the Los Angeles-based firm Johnston Marklee are its Artistic Directors, following 2015’s Sarah Herda and Joseph Grima, with Todd Palmer, of Chicago’s National Public Housing Museum, as Executive Director. Johnston Marklee brings an insider’s perspective to the project both as a participant in the inaugural biennial and as practicing architects.
Towards An Architectural Journalism
Alfredo Cramerotti’s book Aesthetic Journalism: How to Inform without Informing (2007) explores the relationship between contemporary art and documentary journalism, challenging established definitions of each. This blurring of the margins between art and journalism Cramerotti terms Aesthetic Journalism, a strain of contemporary art in which artists using the tools and methodologies of investigative journalism — archival and field research, interviewing, documentary and narrative storytelling, surveys, infographics and other display formats — offer alternative views of reality, political and otherwise, than those presented by mainstream media.
Some Reflections on the Chicago Architecture Biennial
The Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB), the city’s first international survey of contemporary architecture, has come to a close. Writing this as a postscript, I am uncertain about what the impact of CAB is or what it really means; thus what follows are some reflections on those projects and issues that, in retrospect, still resonant with me. No doubt it was a coup for the city’s tourism and institutional players. According to press materials just released by CAB organizers, over a half-million visitors attended the biennial across its various sites, the main hub being the Chicago Cultural Center.
Painting as Urban Archeology
Although my critical practice has not been as deeply engaged with painting as other disciplines (albeit with some exceptions), I’ve been thinking a lot lately about its political potential outside of such lineages as History Painting (whether Delacroix or Kerry James Marshall) or the modern mural movement. Thus, I’ve been looking at painting projects that directly intervene into the contemporary social landscape – rather than represent it – performing an urban archeology that acts as a catalyst for change, while reinvesting the medium with political meaning.
The City Lost and Found
At a time when my own thoughts about what role art and artists play in meeting the challenges of contemporary urban life have been reawakened, the exhibition “City Lost & Found: Capturing New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, 1960-1980,” recently on view at the Art Institute of Chicago and now at the Princeton University Art Museum, seemed rather fortunate. This seminal piece of scholarship (curated by Katherine A. Bussard, Alison Fisher and Greg Foster-Rice) gathered images and documentary materials by artists, journalists, filmmakers, architects, and urban planners that together showed the convergence of creative ideas and urban practices that sought to transform these American cities during the political years of the sixties and seventies.