The Arts Catalyst

2nd International Artists Airshow

Click to Play

Documentation of the 2nd International Artists Airshow, presented by The Arts Catalyst and Landscape+Arts Network Services, 30 June 2007 at Gunpowder Park, Sewardstone Road, Waltham Abbey, Essex, UK.

 This was a day of international artists projects reflecting the explosive and ephemeral nature of Gunpowder Park a former testing ground for high explosives - and investigating the artists' almost impossible dream of flight.

Australian artist Ben Blakebroughs one-person flying craft Winged Self points at a lost future of personal flight. Ruth MacLennan (UK) worked with a flying eagle to document the Airshow crowds. Anne Bean, Mark Anderson and Nick Sales (UK) created a new black cloud to mingle with those lurking overhead, and a white mist which swept away across the park. Around the park, installations by Sonia Khurana (India) and HeHe - Helen Evans and Heiko Hansen (France) could be discovered. Rachel Chapman (UK) mapped the air by collecting airborne spores from peoples clothing. Environmental artist Brandon Ballengee (USA) led bug walks in the park. The event was accompanied by a symposium 'The Aesthetics of Impossibility' featuring the Airshow artists and including the premiere of Simon Faithfulls new work Gravity Sucks, as well as artists Janette Paris and Usman Haque, and cloudspotting expert Gavin Pretor-Pinney. The event was MCd by Simon Munnery

More information about the event - http://www.artscatalyst.org/projects/space/airshow2.html

1st International Artists Airshow

Click to Play

Documentation of The Arts Catalyst's first International Artists Airshow, held at the Royal Aeronautical Engineering Workshops, Farnborough, Hants, UK, on the 12 September 2004.

Artists Airshow was an experimental day of art and flying in and around Europe's largest wind tunnel. Airshow used the now deserted research facility where supersonic flight was developed and the ghosts of sixties rocket projects linger.

Artists flying projects and installations by Simon Faithfull, Stefan Gec, Zina Kaye, Anne Bean, Luke Jerram, Miles Chalcraft, Tim Knowles, Flow Motion, Louise K Wilson. Guided tours of the wind tunnels by the Farnborough Air Sciences Trust. Talk by Marko Peljhan.

More information ... http://www.artscatalyst.org/projects/space/airshow.html

Steve Kurtz case dismissed

BUFFALO, US. Artist Steve Kurtz, a member of the Critical Art Ensemble, has had the mail and wire fraud case against him dismissed by Federal Judge Richard J. Arcara.

In June 2004, Professor Kurtz was charged with mail and wire fraud stemming from an exchange of $256 worth of harmless bacteria with Dr. Robert Ferrell, Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh. In May 2004, FBI agents and the Joint Terrorism Task Force had raided Kurtz’s home, seizing art works and research materials (as well as the bacteria) for the Marching Plague project, which aimed to critique the history and current status of biowarfare research. Despite this and initially being suspected of being a bioterrorist, Kurtz was able to reconstruct the research and produce the film Marching Plague, commissioned by The Arts Catalyst.

The prosecution has the right to appeal this dismissal. For more information about the case, please visit: caedefensefund.org

Nicola Triscott, Director

Image: Steve Kurtz during the Marching Plague project, Stornoway, Isle of Lewis

Missing Russian artist: body found

With great sadness, we report that police in Berlin have found a body they say is probably that of the missing Russian artist Anna Mikhalchuk. "So far there are no indications that Ms. Mikhalchuk was the victim of a crime," police said in a statement, "She apparently took her own life."  Latest report

Nicola Triscott, Director

Czech artists acquitted for nuclear bomb prank

PRAGUE, Czech Republic: Czech artists Ztohoven who hacked into a national television weather broadcast last year to show what appeared to be a nuclear explosion have been acquitted of the criminal charge of spreading false information. More details.

Nicola Triscott, Director

Where is Anna Mikhalchuk?

Russian artist, Anna Mikhalchuk, has disappeared in Berlin. 

Anna Mikhalchuk (also known as Anna Alchuk) has been living in Berlin with her husband, the philosopher Mikhail Ryklin, since 2007. Both are well-known critics of President Vladimir Putin's regime. Anna left her apartment on March 21, telling her husband she planned to run errands, but has not been seen since. Anna was tried in Russia in 2005 for inciting religious hatred in relation to a 2003 exhibition in Moscow. The exhibition featured works of art that were seen as blasphemous by many Russian Orthodox believers. Mikhalchuk was cleared, but two associates were convicted and fined.

Anna and Mikhail took part in Arts Catalyst's MIR project in 2001.

Nicola Triscott, Director

Walking the Cabbage and other non-Olympic activities

To Manchester, where the first Asia Triennial, covering a wide swathe of new art activity from China to S. Asia via Singapore, was opened by UK Culture Secretary Andy Burnham. Making reference to last week's photo-shoot of himself and fellow minister Ed Balls on a children's swing he added that it would not be a bad thing if more cabinet ministers played on the swings, a sentiment no doubt shared by the organisers of last week's International Tree Climbing Day.

Next weekend the Asia Triennial is continuing the theme of unconventional alternative sporting activity when artist Han Bing will orchestrate 100 volunteers from all walks of life to walk the streets pulling an individual cabbage (Chinese of course). Bing sees his work, brought to Manchester by International 3, as 'exploring the struggles and desires of ordinary people in China's "theatre of modernization" '

Down the road, in Cornerhouse, in the exhibition by S.Asian women What Do You Want, Shaina Anand has created an intriguing multi-layered work based on conversations between a group of students introduced by the artist and CCTV operatives in their control centre: sample conversation 'It's just like 1984 in here' - 'Actually the equipment isn't quite that old'. In one projection a group of the participants friends on the outside invent a new sport with their mobiles - phone up and the cameras point at you.

Back in London on Sunday a new Olympic sport with China in mind has been invented - grab the Olympic torch and free Tibet...

Rob La Frenais, Curator

Truth - The Interrogation

The Arts Catalyst team spent a very cold day in a dilapidated, darkened office suite in Liverpool on Saturday, processing the volunteer 'self-experimenters' who came to take part in the Office of Experiments' art performance/experiment Truth Serum.  It was fascinating to see the volunteers as they arrived and waited for processing - having first been whisked away from FACT in a car driven by a sullen man in sunglasses to this secret location, accessed through an anonymous door in an indoor CCP car park.  Some were white with nerves, others looked apprehensive but game, one approached the exercise with confrontational belligerence, one attempted to run away as soon as she stepped out of the car and had to be persuaded to come back, two towards the end of the day just grinned confidently (had they been briefed, or simply been in the FACT bar for a time?).  Guided from darkened room to darkened room by shady persons calling themselves Randy, the volunteers were assigned a number, asked to sign a waiver, given a truth serum if so designated, and asked to wait for their interrogation.

Truth Serum was an artistic experiment in gentle disorientation and destablilisation and an exploration of truth, belief, responsibility and art.  It incorporated a number of mild interrogation techniques and psychological games.  In the event, all the participants – however nervous they looked beforehand - responded well to the interrogation and appeared to leave calm and thoughtful.

We are very grateful to all the brave souls who took part. 

Abnormal

Ju Gosling's exhibition 'Abnormal' is at the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) at Mill Hill in North London until the end of the month. Ju has been artist-in-residence at the NIMR, looking at how scientists regard disability and "normality" and whether there is a 'scientific model of disability' as distinct from the much-discussed 'medical model'. Her residency has included a series of conversations with the scientists Malcolm Logan and Evelien Gevers - recorded on the project's website. Ju concludes that there is a 'Scientific Model of Disability' held within society - disability is abnormal: science will 'cure' it - but she notes that this model is neither scientific nor reflects the views of individual scientists. She argues that it is, in fact, extremely unhelpful to scientists, placing unnecessary pressures on them and hampering their work. Whilst some of the artworks in this exhibition have unequivocal messages and the wall-texts are highly informational, the conversations that the artist has had with the scientists, and the context in which she has been working, has led to a series of works that come across as thoughtful and enquiring, rather than polemical.

Nicola Triscott, Director

Image: Design4Life, Ju Gosling, 2008 (click to enlarge)

Meanwhile, on Mars ...

I gave a talk at the Barbican on Saturday night, as part of the programme for the Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art exhibition.  I was on a panel to explore the boundaries between fact and fiction, reality and fantasy.  The other speaker was the poet Maurice Riordan  and it was chaired by Sian Ede, Arts Director, Gulbenkian Foundation.  I showed Jem Finer and Ansuman Biswas' Zero Genie, from 2001, and Simon Faithfull's Escape Vehicle No. 6 from 2004, and asked the question why do this stuff for real rather than simulate it.  The audience was a real mix, from families with pre-teen kids to academics, so a very enjoyable conversation that ranged from solar sails to Second Life.

The Martian Museum itself is a neat concept from which to explore contemporary art.  Its starting point is that some people find contemporary art as incomprehensible as extraterrestrial communication.  With this irreverent device, the exhibition playfully juxtaposes more than 100 works by artists including Bruce Nauman, Joseph Beuys, Thomas Hirschorn, Mona Hatoum, Damien Hirst, Joseph Beuys, Maurizio Cattelan, Jenny Holzer and Susan Hiller.

Nicola Triscott, Director

Image: Zero Genie, Ansuman Biswas & Jem Finer, 2001