Recent texts and projects

A list of completed projects, published and unpublished texts, and some unfinished things.

Projects

Weak Signals, Wild Cards Amsterdam Noord 27th June-26th July 2009. Group project as part of de Appel Curatorial Programme A series of commissions for a society that does not yet exist.

Disclosures at Gasworks and offsite, ongoing. Residencies, commissioning, seminar and library project, co-organised with Anna Colin.

Resident at Gasworks November 2007. Residency and commissioning of public project with Renata Lucas, co-curated with Anna Colin.

Slash Fiction at Gasworks and offsite March 2007. Residencies, commissioning and exhibition project, co-curated with Nav Haq.

Reviews

Matthew Noel-Tod’s Blind Carbon Copy at Picture This, published issue 121 frieze March 2009

Soi Project’s Island at Ikon East Side, published issue 115 frieze September 2008

Fusion Now! at Rokeby published issue 113 frieze March 2008

Seduced at the Barbican issue 44 Untitled March 2008

Panic Attack! at the Barbican published issue 110 frieze October 2007

Take Care of Yourself - Sophie Calle’s French Pavilion at Venice Biennial 2007. Text submitted for frieze Writers’ Prize 2007.

Texts/publications

Node.London Reader II Documenting the second Node.London season of media arts in 2008. Co-edited with Jonas Andersson, Anna Colin, and Adnan Hadzi. Mute publishing 2009

Polished-up notes for a panel discussion at Women and the Archive: A Partial Disclosure March 2009, organised by Anna Colin at the Women’s Library as part of Whitechapel Gallery’s ongoing programme The Street.

Get down with the let down published Jan 2009 Concept Store

On Hamra Abbas’ ‘MoMA is the Star’ catalogue text for exhibition at Green Cardamom Nov-Dec 2008

My life is hanging by a thread – on Zeeshan Muhammad’s ‘Dying Miniature’ Catalogue text for exhibition at Green Cardamom Nov 08-Dec 09

Dilettantism and Extradisciplinary Artistic Collaboration on n.e.w.s. July 2008

Interview About Disclosures published April 2008 on undo.net. Responded to with Anna Colin.

Breda Beban in conversation with Mia Jankowicz issue 45 Untitled June 2008

Awards

frieze Writers’ Prize 2007 for new and emerging art critics.

Coming soon
The Sense of the Book – endnote to a thesis by Jenny Eneqvist.

On Hamra Abbas’ MoMA is the Star

Written as a contribution to the catalogue for Abbas’ solo exhibition at Green Cardamom, London, Adventures of the Woman in Black Nov-Dec 2008

Combined stills from Hamra Abbas' MoMA is the star (2004) digital video

At the Berlin Biennial this year [2008], I like everybody else visited the Neue Nationalgalerie. Such visits seem to be made up of seven parts distraction, three parts attention, and when I was caught between a sugar low and a Susan Hiller my eye fell on a small black and pink sticker. Das MoMA in Berlin it announced, in cheerfully bombastic graphics.

My life is hanging by a thread – on Zeeshan Muhammad’s Dying Miniature

On Zeeshan Muhammad’s ‘Dying Miniature’
Catalogue text for his exhibition at Green Cardamom Nov 2008-Feb 2009

My life is hanging by a thread.
- Florence Nightingale, 1896.

Zeeshan Muhammad, Dying Miniature, graphite on sandpaper 2008

Get down with the let down

G

Internet macro posted on the Livejournal community stupid_free in response to a call for images on the theme of 'BAWWWWWWWW'. The unknown author is thanked.

Disappointment is a difficult thing to glorify. In trying to come up with a good, pop-historical list of the world’s greatest disappointments for this text, I thought of nothing that isn’t better characterised by treachery, failure, and misfortune (all of which have their glorious aspects), and no disappointment that isn’t eclipsed by the tragedy of its own effects.

review – Soi Project’s Island

Soi Project – Island
Ikon Eastside, Birmingham, UK

Soi Project’s Island was not conveniently reached except by taxi, through an unlovely set of light industrial streets clearly earmarked for ‘cultural development’ by the local council. However, arriving at the Ikon Gallery’s newest offsite space, in Birmingham’s East Side, it was impossible not to marvel at the contrast – at least when I visited, on the most assiduously wet day of the year – with the fact that I was visiting a tropical Thai island. (Surely the gallery marketing department’s easiest sell ever.)

Interview about Disclosures

undo.net: Since 29th March 2008 you have been presenting at Gasworks (London) Disclosures, a project that looks at the manifestations of Open Source methodologies outside of the Internet. Why do you think that the Open Source world can be related to art?

Breda Beban in conversation with Mia Jankowicz

Breda Beban: While filming or taking photos, I tend to go blank. Editing becomes a process of trying to make sense out of the material generated. I think that my films become films when, after looking at the footage a pattern emerges and then the meaning is created.

Seduced at the Barbican – review

The viewer of Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Today is led chronologically through the most infamous periods of sexual depiction across various times and cultures, staying largely with the preoccupations of Western Europe but also delving into Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Persian and ancient Roman collections of works. The ground floor takes up the ‘historical’ perspective and the upstairs galleries hold contemporary and early modern works. The exhibition is accompanied by a curated season of events ranging from film screenings, burlesque nights, to flirting classes, serving to link the exhibition’s historical trajectory to our present day sexual consumption and habits. I visited on the night when the London club night Torture Garden was the guest event, and any pretence of an atmosphere of sober, historical reflection were whisked away entirely by gaggles of fetish clubbers and innumerable couples on dates.

Take Care of Yourself – review

‘Take care of yourself, yeah?’ is probably the last, and least sincere instruction made by those on the point of concluding a successful romantic disentanglement. Intended to instate a more platonically-based relation, in fact this throwaway line more realistically functions as the final signifier that your rapidly-becoming-ex lover has had the audacity to absolve himself of any responsibility for your welfare. Most of us, in our impotent fury, reach for whatever crutch it takes (gin, large bags of crisps, promiscuity) to get over it. For Sophie Calle, however, the resultant confusion is the basis for a project.