The Sustainable Dance Club www.sustainabledanceclub.com © Copyright Studio Roosengaarde

Many of us wonder why all the physical exertion in city gyms is not put to better use – while farmers slog the fields to grow crops, urbanites pump iron to flaunt faux muscles in aid of nothing but vanity.

Since cities covet the most energy, proposals abound to make them self-sufficient by utilizing the power of its own citizens. An idea put forward by Sustainable Dance Club uses the movement of pedestrians to create energy through its newly designed system, “Pavement Power” It is projected for use in France in areas of high pedestrian traffic. Sustainable Dance Club has also created a Sustainable Energy Floor, so a dance floor boogie can also power its disco lights.

The Sustainable Dance Club www.sustainabledanceclub.com © Copyright Studio Roosengaarde

A Dott Cornwall collaboration called Serious Play created a playground to potentially supply power to the national grid and generate more electricity through a new form of power play.

Serious Play by Dott Cornwall www.dottcornwall.com © Copyright Dott Cornwall

An interesting project put forward by GENeco for another car the Volkswagen, uses bio-fuel that is made from compressed methane gas extracted from human waste. This dung-beetle car, more politely named, the Bio-Bug Beetle harvests the methane from sewage treatment plants which is then tanked in the boot of the car.

Bio Bug by GENeco www.geneco.uk.com © Copyright GENeco

Portrait of Jean Cocteau by Irving Penn

As part of the Guggenheim’s “Chaos and Classicism” exhibition, curator Charles Fabius had organized a theatrical performance Coup De Foudre, based on Jean Cocteau’s film, The Blood of a Poet (1930). Paul Miller (DJ Spooky) had rescored the original film with his music to Melvin Van Peebles’ spoken word accompaniment and choreographer Corey baker’s (of Ballet Noir and Fela!) dance performance.

Corey Baker - COUP DE FOUDRE/Performance Photos by Enid Alvarez

Jean Cocteau - The Blood of a Poet, Film still by Sacha Masour

Cocteau had made this film with the support of Coco Chanel after having just come out of opium rehab. The film itself is a patchwork of metaphors, at times a puzzling reflection of the artist’s exploration of art and dreams,”a descent into oneself,” as Cocteau once put it. The artist enters his own psyche through the metaphoric device of a mirror, opening doors to his own subconscious imagination into childhood memories, dreams, sexual ambiguities and fears, which lead to exhaustion and a flirtation with death. Eventually the artist recovers and destroys the muse of his imaginations. Yet, this poetic film’s premise remains open to speculation.

DJ Spooky -Paul Miller, Melvin Van Peebles, Corey Baker at Guggenheim, October 10, 2010, photo: Kisa Lala

While Melvin Van Peebles translated Cocteau’s poems with a contemporary bent, Cory Baker added his own body movements as gestural vignettes to emphasize and reinterpret the actions of the film. Baker said after his performance, that he studied the main character, and in order to interpret the fluid movements of the film, he decided on making his gestures supple, less angry, approaching it with an actor’s perspective, infusing the production with ‘choreographic paragraphs’ – as opposed to creating one long piece.

A still from Jean Cocteau's The Blood of a Poet. Photograph: Kobal Collection

In the era of silent films, the actor’s movements and gestures were naturally amplified. Cocteau having worked with Diaghliev and Ballet Russes, was a master of movement, and also, ahead of his times as a multi-disciplinary artist.

Paul Miller (aka DJ Spooky), just returned from the North Pole, offered his interpretation: “The film is actually a poem: Cocteau is thinking of the film set as a code made into poetry, made into an architectural, physical space,” posited Mr. Miller, in a statement as equally opaque as the film.

Miller’s score began with a live solo cello played by the Telos Ensemble, and an electronic mix, which he ‘conducted’ using his iPad. His wonderful score actively paced the film’s non-narrative flow.

“Cocteau’s film was post geographic,” said Miller. As a DJ and musician, the era between the wars was a source of many inspirations – as disparate as Kurt Weill, Josephine Baker and Apollinaire. “The war had shattered everybody’s sense of continuity, and jazz was the soundtrack,” stated Miller.

The DJ also believes that his use of audio montage is in parallel to our ‘collage, non-linear imagination.’

“Sampling” he says,“is playfulness with memory; no one remembers anything exactly the same way.”

Whoever has the economics has the power to transform memory. The notion of regionalism, geography and limitation had passed: “For 21st century purposes anything goes.” Miller said.  “We are bombarded with masses of nothingness like a Bush speech.”  For Miller, it is about culling rhythm out of the chaos.

Corey Baker performs at COUP DE FOUDRE/Performance Photos by Enid Alvarez

Chaos and Classicism: Art in France, Italy, and Germany, 1918–1936, Jean Cocteau, The Blood of a Poet (Le sang d’un poète), 1930 – 35 mm black-and-white film, with sound, 50 min. can be seen at the Guggenheim Museum, New York City. October 1, 2010–January 9, 2011

I went uptown on what seemed like the coldest day this winter to find out exactly what it is that Tino Sehgal is doing as part of the museum’s 50th Anniversary celebration. You will not find any photographic or videographic evidence of Tino Sehgal’s latest exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York but, trust me, I saw it and it is there.  His latest mise-en-scéne promises to yet again push the boundaries of artwork through performance and participation. After going through his highly personal exhibition, I can attest that this London-born, Berlin-based artist has kept his promise. We, as spectators and participants, go with zero expectations, not even knowing the title of his piece, and leave with an invaluable experience. Any prior knowledge of his work will just taint one’s takeaway, and this is why I hesitate to say more. The existentialist in anyone will find inspiration and meaning in his work. If you can take my word for it, then you should stop reading this now.

Sehgal’s exhibition is perfectly set around the Guggenheim Museum’s Frank Lloyd Wright-designed rotunda. As you enter the building, you are quickly introduced to a slow-motion scene of two lovers rolling in the grassless lobby, caressing each other’s clothed bodies, kissing. The lovers are completely engrossed in their amorous performance yet, at the same time, still fully connected to their audience. At the heart of the museum, the duo anchors Sehgal’s work, setting the pace, setting the emotions for what is to come. They hypnotize you and they begin to blur your distinction between performance and spectatorship, between an act and reality.  The museum is suspiciously packed and busy and you wonder if those around you, like another couple on your left or the security guard on the other end of the lobby, are also part of Sehgal’s puppetry.

You remove yourself from the lovers’ scene and start your ascend from the base of the museum’s spiraling ramp. Walking up the second level, you find nothing but bare walls. No artwork is displayed except a glimpse through the pathway to Anish Kapoor’s concurrent exhibition at the adjacent Annex. You stroll higher trying to find more of Tino Sehgal and soon discover that it has found you. Ruby finds you and you join her in the act. Your life begins to slow down to the lovers’ pace. You are engrossed deeper in an experience where, now, the distinction between performance and reality is not merely blurred but eliminated. For the next thirty-or-so minutes of your life, you surrender yourself to Sehgal’s hands.

What I got out of it, you will never know, but you still have time to find out.

The exhibition, simply called Tino Sehgal, will be open from January 29 to March 10 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (1071 Fifth Avenue).

The Delusional Downtown Divas: Lena Dunham, Joana D’Avillez, and Isabel Halley

Getting all the Delusional Downtown Divas together in one room is a lot like herding cats. Nothing against the Divas, certainly, and nothing against cats, for that matter, but when it comes to the schedules of New York’s three most in-demand young performance artists, saying they’re spread thin is a bit of an understatement.

The trio of early-twentysomething gals first got on SPREAD ArtCulture’s radar in October at Rob Pruitt’s Art Awards at the Guggenheim. Acting at the event’s masters of ceremonies, they presented skits that poked fun at the very world they grew up in and have come to embody: New York’s highbrow art community. The downtown scenesters all have roots in the downtown art community, coming from parents who are painters, writers, and photographers. It’s only natural that they’d try to carve out their own niche into a world that’s shown them so much affection. Lucky for us, that happens to be creating a hilarious parody of the world that looks so very ridiculous as an outsider looking in.
Delusional Downtown Divas chronicles the adventures of Oona, Swann, and AgNess, three young women “hungry for art-world stardom but comically unaware of how to reach their goal of stylish domination. The DDD’s are downtown natives, living in AgNess’ father’s Tribeca loft. They spend their days changing outfits every few minutes and plotting about out how to worm their way back into the art world they were raised in—but now they’re adult women with professional aspirations, not just kids stealing pretzels from Leo Castelli’s gallery kitchen.” Spearheaded by the effervescent and imaginative Lena Dunham, is a wildly popular web series that embodies the personas the girls have created for our amusement. They ask performance artist Joan Jonas how she knows when she performing from when she’s just walking down the street. They pose Isaac Mizrahi with the “meaning of life” conundrum, which he answers,”Don’t panic…or panic. That’s the meaning of life. Maybe if you talk to me, that’s the meaning of life.”

The new season gives us Jerry Saltz commenting on the mozzarella sandwich he’s eating. This shows us the simplistic and effective genius of these three budding writers and performers: they break down the influential and cerebral minds and end up having them play along for us, whether they’re aware of their inner brilliance or not. Armed with a sense of renegade resourcefulness and the refusal to take no for an answer, the Divas are able to mold conversations to fill any void. They’re definitely on our list to watch out for in 2010.

Delusional Downtown Divas Episode 1

The Pruitt Award Is an empty champagne bottle surrounded by plastic ice, which is also a fully functioning lamp.

Was the art world ready for its Oscar moment? Regardless of that answer, the first annual Art Awards presented by Rob Pruitt took place last night in the Guggenheim’s rotunda.

A few choice members of the Hollywood glitterati (Kylie Mingoue, Julianne Moore, James Franco) blended into triviality among the bevy of art celebrities that were in attendance. As an extra perquisite, Rob Pruitt recruited as emcees the Delusional Downtown Divas, a satiric troupe of young, hipster women with an art-world pedigree (and a winsome schoolgirl crush on fellow presenter Jeffrey Deitch). In videos interspersed between the presentations, the Divas schemed to infiltrate the art establishment by any means possible. In one segment that was an animated homage to From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, they pitched a tent in the Guggenheim, doing their laundry and shaving their legs in the lobby fountain. In another, they made a pilgrimage to the downtown studio of a wryly shamanic Joan Jonas, deadpanning, “How do you know when you’re performing and when you’re just walking down the street?”

Ms. Jonas took home a lifetime achievement award, as did the curator Kasper Konig. Since the main categories weren’t split along the lines of actor/actress, everyone was keeping an eye on the gender balance, though, in the end, the women nominees ended up taking the majority of the awards home.

The Delusional Downtown Divas and Rob Pruitt

The Kanye-West moment of the evening was undoubtedly art vandal-turned gallery owner Tony Shafrazi’s acceptance speech for Best Group Show of the Year for Who’s Afraid of Jasper Johns? Upon taking the stage, Mr. Shafrazi narrowly escaped being pummeled with a dinner roll. His speech was peppered with jeers from spectators, clearly mesmerized by his egregiously narcissistic discourse, “I’ve probably known for a long time that I was great. This award comes as no great surprise to me.” Known more for his scandalous track record than his curatorial capabilities, Shafrazi was arrested in 1974 for spray painting “Kill Lies All” on Picasso’s Guernica when it was on display in the Museum of Modern Art. On the matter of destroying a priceless work of art, he says “I wanted to bring the art absolutely up to date, to retrieve it from art history and give it life. Maybe that’s why the Guernica action remains so difficult to deal with. I tried to trespass beyond that invisible barrier that no one is allowed to cross; I wanted to dwell within the act of the painting’s creation, get involved with the making of the work, put my hand within it and by that act encourage the individual viewer to challenge it, deal with it and thus see it in its dynamic raw state as it was being made, not as a piece of history.” And this was only one of the evening’s colorful winners/presenters.

The 200 guests enjoyed a seated three-course dinner that accompanied the show, and resulted in sucking a lot of energy out of the room, as did the monotone and banal acceptance speeches that seemed to drag on endlessly, the background music to cut long speeches short seemingly overlooked. Guests perked up briefly when Mr. Pruitt bestowed the “The Rob Pruitt Award,” voted on by a committee of one. It went to the artist Cynthia Plaster Caster, who has been making casts of rock stars’ genitalia for decades and is the subject of an upcoming documentary. Ms. Plaster Caster brandished her masterpiece, the Jimi Hendrix, on the podium as Mr. Pruitt giggled, confident that though first awards shows can be bumpy, he had successfully negotiated his way through the ceremony and had begun paving the way for next year. You could see him stealthily reclaiming ownership of the event, reminding guests that the art world will never take itself as seriously as Hollywood.

The final list of winners is:

• Artist of the Year: Mary Heilmann
• Curator of the Year: Connie Butler
• Exhibition Outside the United States: Jeff Koons, Versailles, Château de Versailles, France
• Group Show of the Year, Gallery: Who’s Afraid of Jasper Johns? Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York
• Group Show of the Year, Museum: The Pictures Generation, 1974–1984, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
• New Artist of the Year: Ryan Trecartin
• The Rob Pruitt Award: Cynthia Plaster Caster
• Solo Show of the Year, Gallery: Manzoni: A Retrospective, Gagosian Gallery, New York
• Solo Show of the Year, Museum: Martin Kippenberger: The Problem Perspective, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and Museum of Modern Art, New York
• Writer of the Year: Jerry Saltz

Rob Pruitt and the Delusional Downtown Divas

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum recently announced with event partner Calvin Klein Collection a new art event premiering in 2009: Rob Pruitt’s The First Annual Art Awards at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in Association with White Columns, to be held on Thursday, October 29, 2009.

Artist Rob Pruitt, whose conceptual practice is rooted in a pop sensibility and a playful critique of art world structures, has conceived the event as a performance-based artwork which follows the format of a Hollywood awards ceremony. The Art Awards will be an annual celebration of select individuals, exhibitions, and projects that have made a significant impact on the field of contemporary art during the previous year, specifically, for this year’s ceremony, from January 2008 to June 2009.

According to Mr. Pruitt, “This annual gesture will function as a community-building and philanthropic event for the Guggenheim Museum, White Columns and, in 2009, Studio in a School, while simultaneously mobilizing the wide ranging talents and energies of the international arts community, focusing on our mutual admiration and support for one another’s unique endeavors.” Mr. Pruitt continued, “With one eye on supporting our great institutions, and the other on injecting our community with a renewed sense of energy, spirit, and a dash of showbiz glamour, we are pleased to announce this very unique event.”

Richard Armstrong, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and Museum, stated, “As the impresario behind the First Annual Art Awards, Rob Pruitt presents a daring new event model injected with the humor that underscores his work. Pruitt’s orchestration of this performative piece—with the rotunda as center stage—is aligned with the Guggenheim’s mission to continue to engage and present contemporary artists.”

“The First Annual Art Awards, held at the Guggenheim Museum, will celebrate today’s most interesting and respected artists, in an entirely innovative way,” said Malcolm Carfrae, EVP Global Communications, Calvin Klein, Inc. “Calvin Klein, Inc. has always been a huge supporter of the arts and we are thrilled to be a part of such a groundbreaking event that celebrates the arts community and gives it the recognition it deserves.”

Pruitt has invited the Delusional Downtown Divas to preside over the event as Masters of Ceremonies, and Glenn O’Brien will step in as the Announcer, or, as Pruitt describes his role, as “the Voice of God.” An additional distinguished list of presenters will participate in distributing the awards, created by Pruitt to resemble a celebratory bucket of champagne that also serves as a fully functional lamp. The presenters will include Cecily Brown, Sofia Coppola, James Franco, Knight Landesman, Nate Lowman, and Mary-Kate Olsen, among others. Original music has been composed by Matthew Friedberger of the Fiery Furnaces, who will perform at the event. Christine Muhlke, food editor of the New York Times Magazine, is curating the cuisine for the seated dinner.

Lifetime Achievement Awards, determined by Rob Pruitt along with organizing partners the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and White Columns, will be awarded to Joan Jonas and Kasper König. In addition, a group of more than four hundred art world professionals has been invited to form a Nominating Council that will select four nominees in nine categories that focus primarily on exhibitions and projects that took place over the preceding eighteen months (January 2008 to June 2009), in the United States, as well as one category recognizing an international exhibition. The Rob Pruitt Award is being decided solely by the artist. Of the following list of nominees, a larger group (including the Nominating Council) will establish the eventual winners, who will be announced at the live awards ceremony on October 29. The ten categories—in addition to the Lifetime Achievement Award—and the nominees for each category are:

Artist of the Year
• Louise Bourgeois
• Urs Fischer
• Dan Graham
• Mary Heilmann

Curator of the Year
• Klaus Biesenbach
• Daniel Birnbaum
• Connie Butler
• Massimiliano Gioni

Exhibitions Outside the United States
• Francis Bacon, Tate Britain, London
• Jeff Koons, Versailles, Château de Versailles, France
• Mike Kelley: Educational Complex Onwards: 1995–2008, Wiels Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels
• Wolfgang Tillmans: Lighter, Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin

Group Show of the Year, Gallery
• A Twilight Art, Harris Lieberman, New York
• Who’s Afraid of Jasper Johns? Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York
• Your Gold Teeth II, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York
• ZERO in New York, Sperone Westwater, New York

Group Show of the Year, Museum
• After Nature, New Museum, New York
• The Pictures Generation, 1974–1984, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
• The Quick and the Dead, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
• WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, New York

New Artist of the Year
• Elad Lassry
• Daniel McDonald
• Marlo Pascual
• Ryan Trecartin

The Rob Pruitt Award
• To be announced the evening of October 29, 2009

Solo Show of the Year, Gallery
• Cindy Sherman, Metro Pictures, New York
• Manzoni: A Retrospective, Gagosian Gallery, New York
• Paul Sharits, Greene Naftali Gallery, New York
• Picasso: Mosqueteros, Gagosian Gallery, New York

Solo Show of the Year, Museum
• Dan Graham: Beyond, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
• Lawrence Weiner: As Far as the Eye Can See, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
• Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton, New Museum, New York
• Martin Kippenberger: The Problem Perspective, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and Museum of Modern Art, New York

Writer of the Year
• Tim Griffin
• John Kelsey
• Walter Robinson
• Jerry Saltz