Artdaily.cc - The First Art Newspaper on the Net

'Johanna Billing: Each Moment Presents What Happens' now on view at Whitechapel Gallery
LONDON.- Whitechapel Gallery is now exhibiting Each Moment Presents What Happens (2022), a new moving image work from artist Johanna Billing (b. 1973, Sweden) which continues her interest in improvisation, collaboration and education. Billings work explores the idea of performance and the possibility it holds to impact the public and the private, as well as the individual and the collective. Realised over several years, the project was commissioned by Bristol Grammar School where Billing spent time working with staff and invited guests and students from schools around Bristol. Collaboratively, the group developed a new work inspired by the American composer and music theorist John Cages radical 1952 performance piece Untitled Event (Theater Piece No. 1). Billings film shows the process of students engaging with Untitled ... More

Weaving, sculpture, performance and installation included in work by Igshaan Adams at Thomas Dane
LONDON.- Thomas Dane Gallery, London, is now presenting PrimÃªre Wentelbaan, the gallerys first exhibition with Igshaan Adams (b.1982, Cape Town). Adamss cross-disciplinary practice combines weaving, sculpture, performance and installation to explore ideas of personal and political history, race, religion and sexuality. Adamss densely crafted work brings together cultural and religious references which map and mark his own history: the geometric patterns of linoleum floors found throughout the homes of friends and neighbours, the geographical and socio-political terrain of his environment, and the material and iconographies of Islam. For the exhibition at Thomas Dane Gallery, Adams presents three large-scale tapestries and hanging cloud sculptures, conceived as an interconnected installation across the gallery walls and floor. The ... More

Giving a voice to the London readers don't often hear
NEW YORK, NY.- Yahya Bas, the hero of Guy Gunaratnes new novel, Mister, Mister, is a tricky character to pin down. Is he an idiot, poet, jihadi or all of these at once? As Gunaratne answered this question and found Yahyas voice, the authors own self-conception evolved. This book fundamentally changed how I think about my own identity, Gunaratne, who was born in Britain to Sri Lankan parents, said during a recent interview in central London. This self-inquiry, which comes with an extended period of writing, led me to assert parts of myself that had gone unaffirmed. Now, Gunaratne identifies as nonbinary, and uses they/them pronouns. There are passages within this novel where Yahya is trying to lend language to how he feels about his own desires for others, Gunaratne said. That might run the risk of being misread if you werent ... More

Terence Davies, 77, dies; Filmmaker mined literature and his own life
NEW YORK, NY.- Terence Davies, a British screenwriter and director known for his poetic, intensely personal films including Distant Voices, Still Lives and literary adaptations such as like The House of Mirth, died Saturday at his home in the village of Mistley, Essex, on the southwest coast of England. He was 77. His manager, John Taylor, confirmed the death but did not specify the cause, saying only that Davies had died after a short illness. An obituary from the British Film Institute said, No one made movies like Davies, who precisely sculpted out of a subjective past, creating films that glided on waves of contemplation and observation. The very specific Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) starred Pete Postlethwaite as a violently abusive Liverpool father who terrorizes his wife and children. When the film was rereleased in 2018, The Gu ... More

Is the literary hat the new tote bag?
NEW YORK, NY.- Zadie Smith. Elif Batuman. Joyce Carol Oates. Dionne Brand. Alice Munro. Patricia Lockwood. Olga Tokarczuk. Lydia Davis. Rachel Kushner. Deborah Levy. Rachel Cusk. Yoko Tawada. Chris Kraus. Mary Gaitskill. Sheila Heti. Fleur Jaeggy. These are the women whose novels are spotlighted in personal collections and bookstores alike. They are a mainstay on bestseller lists, amassing accolades that include the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize. And you have most likely read them all you may even have a favorite. Recently, these writers inadvertently found their names, quite literally, at the center of the latest maelstrom brewing on X, formerly known as Twitter. The culprit? Hats. On Sept. 22, Minor Canon described as a fan project, not a brand or an art project on its website, where it sells book ... More

Hollywood writers ratify new contract with studios
NEW YORK, NY.- Hollywood film and TV writers voted overwhelmingly to approve a new three-year contract with the major entertainment studios, the Writers Guild of America said Monday, formally bringing to a close a bitter five-month labor dispute. During the one-week voting period, more than 8,500 writers submitted ballots, and the contract was ratified with 99% of the vote, according to the Writers Guild, which represents more than 11,000 screenwriters. Together we were able to accomplish what many said was impossible only six months ago, said Meredith Stiehm, president of the Writers Guilds western branch, in an email to members. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of the major studios, congratulated the union in a statement, adding, It is important progress for our industry ... More

Prism of art used to study the relationship of humans with nature in exhibition by Josefine Klougart
Nature no longer exists. That wild, untamed nature, untouched by human beings, is a thing of the past. So states the author Josefine Klougart in her essay After Nature. Today is the opening of an eponymous exhibition: a kind of 3-D essay, in which the authors texts will interact with the Glyptoteks landscape paintings. The sensuous design of the exhibition is the work of the set designer duo Vang Stensgaard. In After Nature A New Reading of the Glyptoteks Paintings by Writer Josefine Klougart, Josefine Klougart uses the prism of art to study the relationship of humans with nature. Nature as we knew it no longer exists. Klougart explores its beauty, and its disappearance from our modern reality. The exhibition and the text go hand in hand; both feature seven chapters. The artworks paint a picture of the period when industrialisation ... More

Skeletons of 1918 Flu victims reveal clues about who was likely to die
NEW YORK, NY.- The flu typically kills the very young, the old and the sick. That made the virus in 1918 unusual, or so the story goes: It killed healthy young people as readily as those who were frail or had chronic conditions. Doctors of the time reported that, among those in the prime of their lives, good health and youth were no protection: The virus was indiscriminate, killing at least 50 million people, or between 1.3% and 3% of the worlds population. COVID-19, in contrast, killed 0.09% of the population. But a paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences challenges that persistent narrative. Using evidence in skeletons of people who died in the 1918 outbreak, researchers reported that people who suffered from chronic diseases or nutritional deficiencies were more than twice as likely ... More

The cosmic, outrageous, ecstatic truths of Werner Herzog
NEW YORK, NY.- I dont believe a word of filmmaker Werner Herzogs new memoir, which bears the self-deprecating title Every Man for Himself and God Against All. (What is this, a Metallica album?) But then, Im not sure were supposed to take much of it at face value. Like Jim Smiley in Mark Twains The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Bob Dylan, and Tom Waits, Herzog is an old-school, concierge-level bluffer. And ham. He wont tell you the truth, not quite, unless it falls out of his pocket accidentally, as if it were a cigarette lighter. Speaking about his documentaries, Herzog uses the phrase ecstatic truth. When you imagine that phrase uttered in his droll, stoic German accent, it sounds less evangelical and less like something Kellyanne Conway would say. The first three paragraphs of Every Man for Himself and ... More