Memorial

Memorial to the Iraq War
23 May - 27 June 2007

The Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Mall
London England SW1Y 5AH

"The ICA has invited 26 artists from around the world to make proposals for a memorial to the Iraq War. These memorials address topics such as the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the country's slide into civil war, the deaths of soldiers and civilians, and the conflict's relation to global jihadism and the War on Terror. The intention is not to find a definitive memorial to a war - a difficult task at any time, and especially in the context of an ongoing conflict. Instead the exhibition explores different views of the Iraq War, and different perspectives on what can or should be memorialised."

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[image from ICA Web site: "Proposal for Iraq War Memorial, Symbolic Transposition of effects of war in Iraq to the U.S. and England: 10 Downing St., Parliament, U.S. Capitol and the White House [detail], 2007, Sam Durant."]

Deindustrialization

SPACES
Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative

Shrinking Cities

"Shrinking Cities examines the worldwide phenomenon of urban population decline. Artists, architects, filmmakers, journalists, cultural and social researchers present the changed reality of four cities and regions: Detroit, Michigan, Manchester, Liverpool, United Kingdom, Ivanovo, Russia and Halle/ Leipzig, Germany."

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[image from Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative project Web Site]

Crime & God

Apex Art
The Museum of Crime and the Museum of God

Organized by Luc Sante

May 16 - June 23, 2007

"The Museum of Crime and the Museum of God is at once an illustrated essay--employing the walls of the gallery as its page--and a lurid, seedy, extremely suspect carnival attraction, as attractive as it is repellent.

Born and raised into a belief system--European peasant Catholicism--that routinely employed sensational and threatening images to manipulate the emotions of its practitioners, Luc Sante entered adulthood an ocean away, in a sensational and threatening metropolis. He found himself drawn to the imagery of crime, both the laconic factuality of evidence and the highly colored and erotically charged packaging of fiction. Eventually he realized how much this attraction owed to the conditions of his upbringing--and the many ways in which religion and crime are fatally linked together, accomplices that pretend to be polar opposites."

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[images from the Apex Art Website]

Accordions at the Met

Metropolitan Museum of of Art

Accordions and Harmonicas of the 19th Century
November 22, 2005–September 9, 2007
Musical Instruments galleries

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[image from museum web site:
Accordion, ca.1860. G. Kaneguissert, Maker. Paris, France. Wood (palisander, softwood), mother-of-pearl, paper,
leather, brass, nickel-silver.]

Low

Museum of Contemporary Art - Chicago

Hip-Hop Theater Festival
May 1-6, 2007

Sunday, May 6 - 2 pm:
Rha Goddess: Low
with ASL interpretation for the hearing impaired

"In its Chicago debut, Rha Goddess's Low is a major theatrical event. Her trademark style of spoken-word delivery, known as "floetry," permeates this piece about the perils and pitfalls of low self-esteem and clinical depression. Low is a rhythmic and linguistically brilliant performance journeying through a woman's mental struggles and reunion with her spiritual and emotional strengths."

As part of Sunday's performance by Rha Goddess, audience members are invited to participate in a mental health study that looks at the impact of Low on beliefs about emotional wellbeing - ""Sunday Civics - A performance-driven safe arena for open dialogue and authentic expression about mental health."

Interested participants must arrive by 1:15 pm to complete a 15 minute pre-show survey, and stay immediately following the performance to engage in 30 minute community dialogue groups.

Participation in the study and in the discussion groups is completely optional and confidential. It is conducted by City College of City University New York's Program in Clinical Psychology with assistance from the Family Institute of Northwestern University."


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[Image from Actors Theatre web site, which features additional information on "Low"]

Arab Women

SF Camerawork Exhibition:
Not Given: Talking of and Around Photographs of Arab Women

"A 1940s Hollywood glamour girl wannabe in Egypt throws a practiced ‘come hither’ look over her bare shoulder at the camera. A serious young Lebanese woman poses for a portrait dressed like an English gentleman in a pinstriped suit. The Arab pop music equivalent of Charo wears a traditional headscarf with a wry expression. These images and more gleaned from the archive of the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut are the subject of a fascinating new multimedia installation entitled "Not Given: Talking of and Around Photographs of Arab Women" on view at SF Camerawork. Using a soundscape of recorded voices, projected large-scale images and photographic prints, the installation unveils stereotypes and examines how the authority of photography can get lost in translation. This is the only U.S. venue for this thought-provoking show curated by art historian and critical theorist Dore Bowen and French media artist Isabelle Massu."

Through May 26 , 2007

[image from SF Camerawork Web site]

On The Trail Of Brotherhood

[the Data Stream is delighted to again highlight an exhibition in the North Oakland Temporary Museum, a brilliant project by curator artist writer Scott MacLeod.]

NORTH OAKLAND TEMPORARY MUSEUM

"An online & sometimes offline museum presenting modern & contemporary work from the 20th & 21st centuries."

Jíří Kalousek: On the Trail of Brotherhood

"This month's exhibit features images scanned from a travel journal made by my friend Jakub Kalousek's father Jíří (George) in 1953. These watercolours depict scenes from a hike/walk taken by Jíří, his wife Milena & their friend Ludya through then-exotic forests & villages of far-eastern Czechoslovakia and Hungary. I think these images are charming because even from this temporal distance they offer immediacy rather than nostalgia."

visit the exhibition

[image courtesy of The North Oakland Temporary Museum]