THE LAST SESSION

THE LAST SESSION

Curated by Jan Van Woensel

Friday September 18th - Sunday October 18th, 2009

De Brakke Grond, Flemish Cultural Center, Amsterdam

The Session* is a collective of eight international designers and artists based in Amsterdam that creates thematic and interdisciplinary fanzines since September 2007. Belgian-American curator Jan Van Woensel (who lives and works in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles) is the first external editor, curator, and concept developer appointed by the members of The Session. Van Woensel curates a special edition around the theme of Endism and is not only a hard copy publication, but also takes the form of an international group exhibition, performances, curated film screenings, and live bands.

The participating artists are:

Tomas Adolfs, Stephan Balleux, Paulien Barbas, Delphine Bedel, Staffan Björk, YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES, Fia Cielen, Christine Clinckx, Martha Colburn, Orpheu de Jong, Hadassah Emmerich, FIENDEN, Andrea Galvani, Tony Garifalakis, Joris Ghekiere, ioulex, Gert Jan Kocken, Experimental Jetset, Matthias Kreutzer, Alexandra Leykauf, Jen Liu, Liesbeth Marit, Kalle Mattsson, Oskar Nilsson, Nick Oberthaler, Dear Reader, Rafael Roozendaal, Kalle Runeson, Etta Säfve, Steve Schepens, Jens Schildt, Seher Shah, Helmut Stallaerts, Tarja Szaraniec, Monica Tormell, Dennis Tyfus, Philippe Vandenberg, Chad VanGaalen, Filip Vervaet, Anne Wenzel, and Fabio Wuytack

Live bands September 18th, 2009

With Adolfs Butler (Live), Experimental Jetset (DJ), FNNN (DJ), Ignatz (Live, BE), The 1982 (Live, BE), Moon & Sun (Live), Rene SG (Live), and more…

Also check out Orpheu de Jong's The Last Session Radio:

http://www.thelastsessionradio.com

*The Session does not work with a standard form or a recurrent basic theme, but produces on the basis of a regular process. Per session, one of the eight artists and designers determine the theme. This person is then also responsible for the editing, the design and production. This time Jan Van Woensel fulfils this role.

The Session is: Jens Schildt, Staffan Björk, Monica Tormell, Tomas Adolfs, Tarja Szaraniec, Matthias Kreutzer, Kalle Mattsson and Orpheu De Jong

Jan Van Woensel curates a The Last Session publication release party at Envoy Gallery in New York City on October 4th, 2009. More details will follow.

Info: office.janvanwoensel@gmail.com

Philippe Vandenberg (1952-2009)

June 29th, 2009: artist Philippe Vandenberg passed away. 

"“Il faut bouger dans la vie” were some of the first words from Philippe Vandenberg in response to my inquiry as to what the common thread between his paintings exhibited at the Envoy Gallery on Chrystie Street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side was. “Il faut bouger dans la vie, in other words… you must move in life.” The Belgian artist’s reasoning behind such a statement was that through mobility, we are able to rescue ourselves from depression. To be static is to lose everything—therefore we are most enriched by nomadic sensibilities. Indeed, the press release, put together by the exhibition's curator Jan Van Woensel, chose to emphasize this point in its introduction to the exhibition. To paraphrase Van Woensel, ‘Vandenberg paints to resist stagnation.’"

Excerpt from Sam Mirlesse's review of the exhibition L'image Maudite (The Cursed Image); Philippe Vandenberg's solo exhibition at Envoy Gallery in NYC, Dec 2008-Jan 2009.

Philippe, you'll be missed. Rest in peace 

Bad Moon Rising 4

(Taravat Talepasand)

(Lee Ranaldo)

BAD MOON RISING 4 
curated by Jan Van Woensel

Marcin Cienski, David di Sabatino, Ida Ekblad, Hadassah Emmerich , Melissa Frost, Tony Garifalakis, Asma Kazmi, Richard Kern, Jannicke Låker, Lee Ranaldo, Reynold Reynolds and Patrick Jolley, Adie Russell, Seher Shah, Sigga Björg Sigurðardóttir, Taravat Talepasand

galerie sans titre - 22, BLVD Barthélemy - 1000 Brussels

June 3rd - July 11th, 2009 

galeriesanstitre@gmail.com  www.galeriesanstitre.com 

LAST DAY OF MAGIC

(image: Brindalyn Webster)

Last Day of Magic
A Reenactment

Curated by Jan Van Woensel


Orange Alley Project
Saturday April 25th, 2009, from 6 to 9PM

Orange Alley (between 25th and 26th St)
San Francisco, CA 94110
http://orangealleyproject.com/

Featuring: Sung-Hee Chang, Emily Hoover, Amy Keefer, Dustin Kelly, Christine Kesler, Stephanie Lagarde, Elyse Mallouk, Amy Martin, Josh Martinez, Lynne McCabe, Piero Passacantando, Brin Webster

Last Day of Magic was a one-day closed performance of rituals about departure and transformation that took place on March 28th, 2009. The rituals are designed with a personal significance and shamanic purpose. They examine the artist's interpersonal experiences with belief, sacrifice, loss, disappearance, and memory. The undercurrent apocalyptic character of this project is based on the belief that after the last day of magic life ends. The project's focus however, is on the quality of the shared experience of a suspended moment before the end. In-group, the artists sang a song that honors the departed, built a fire, sacrificed personal objects, drank wine, and meditated. Last Day of Magic is a melancholic journey to the metaphoric edge of the cliff of life where the artists take halt, build a secret community and reside.

Each ritual is a performance designed by artists from Last Day of Magic and will only be performed by this group once. The original ritual ceremony of March 28th, 2009, is documented in video form, and as a set of published instructions that can be distributed and reenacted by others. At Orange Alley, twelve volunteers reenact the rituals and create their own last day of magic experience. The reenactment is open to the public.

Last Day of Magic is a project initiated, organized and curated by Jan Van Woensel in the framework of his 2009 cross-departmental class at California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA. http://www.last--day--of--magic.blogspot.com Jan Van Woensel is an independent curator based in New York City and the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of New York Magazine of Contemporary Art and Theory http://www.ny-magazine.org

New York Magazine of Contemporary Art and Theory

Founded in 2008, NEW YORK MAGAZINE OF CONTEMPORARY ART AND THEORY is an independent, paperless magazine that brings quality essays about art and art theory. Aimed at a new generation of artists, curators, critics and scholars, we address concepts that critically expand on the past, present and future of art.

JAN VAN WOENSEL
Founder, curator and editor-in-chief
RUBA KATRIB
Curator and editor

Advisors: Nathalie Angles, Julieta Aranda, Nicolas Bourriaud, Greggory Bradford, Tamsin Clark, Jill Conner, Christine Hou, Heather Hubbs, Anthony Huberman, Richard Julin, Thomas Lail, Marlene McCarty, Kate McNamara, Julian Myers, Melanie Ohnemus, Hans Op de Beeck, Steven Rand, Jerome Sans, Basak Senova, Catherine Spaeth, Nato Thompson

URL: http://www.ny-magazine.org
Email: editor@ny-magazine.org

UN-SCR-1325, an exhibition referencing the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325

Image credit: Yoko Ono, Snow Piece 1963, published in grapefruit, 1964. Wunternaum Press, Tokyo. Copyright of Yoko Ono

UN-SCR-1325

-An exhibition referencing the-
UNITED NATIONS SECURITY 

COUNCIL RESOLUTION 1325

Vanessa Albury, Claire Beckett, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Jen DeNike, Kathleen Hanna & Becca Albee, Karin Hanssen, Kati Heck, Ann Veronica Janssens, Marie-Jo Lafontaine, Marlene McCarty, Sofie Muller, Adrian Piper, Adie Russell, Leah Singer, Joëlle Tuerlinckx, and Cindy Wright

Curator: Jan Van Woensel
Assistant Curator: Vanessa Albury

March 6 – April 11, 2009
Opening reception: Thursday, March 5, 2009 from 6 to 9 pm

The Chelsea Art Museum, home of the Miotte Foundation, is pleased to present the group exhibition UN-SCR-1325, which brings works by eight Belgian artists together with works by eight American artists. Referencing the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, the exhibition focuses on the position of women in global and local sociopolitical contexts. The artwork in the show critically addresses topics such as religion, sex, identity, trauma and war.

UN-SCR-1325, adopted in 2000, is the first resolution passed by the Security Council that comprehensively addresses the impact of war and conflict on women and women's contributions to conflict prevention as well as conflict resolution and sustainable peace efforts. The exhibition acknowledges the great importance and value of this resolution. Instead of being illustrations of a political declaration, the individual works examine critical moments of social and psychological defect and disruption. Rather than portraying women as victims, the artists of the exhibition present works that expose the resilient reactions of women to negligence, discrimination and intolerance. Present and past occasions explored in this exhibition include the California Gold Rush, 9/11, the Iraq War, racial issues, domestic violence and sexism.

Many of the works presented in the exhibition find their inspiration in concrete time and place. From the staged repetition of a random action in the work of Joëlle Tuerlinckx, to the notions of space and isolation in the work of Sofie Muller, to the relational complexity between "you" and "me" in Vanessa Albury's work and to the survival objects of collaborators Kathleen Hanna and Becca Albee: these works reveal how the artists reflect upon the here and now. The exhibition confronts the viewer with physicality, femininity, transgression and action. "If women suffer the impact of conflict disproportionately, they are also the key to the solution of conflict", said former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2002. The exhibition UN-SCR-1325 demonstrates how women can be an important force for change in a situation of conflict. Through this exhibition we are invited to think consciously about how change can be suggested, accepted and successfully integrated in our societies. [JVW]

The exhibition UN-SCR-1325 is sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belgium and supported by The Armory Show, Capitalatwork, Yasmine Geukens and Marie-Paule De Vil, and Office Jan Van Woensel.

http://www.unscr1325.blogspot.com
office.janvanwoensel@gmail.com
www.geukensdevil.com

The Chelsea Art Museum
556 West 22nd Street (at 11th Avenue)
New York, NY 10011
USA

Bad Moon Rising 3, review #2

Featured Review: Bad Moon Rising

By Jessica Baran
Published on January 27, 2009 at 2:23pm

Bad Moon Rising 3

A cacophony of rage and ruin, this traveling group show takes a laundry list of individual work and re-contextualizes it to look like a dense, end-all hideout for the current spirit of discontent. On blaring TV sets, videos depict a middle-aged woman crouching in an alleyway, looting the stuffing from a discarded Spiderman toy; a tuxedoed lounge singer repetitively crooning that sorrow conquers happiness; everyday folk testifying to having succumbed to the radical Christianity of a gay hippie preacher; and a primly suited man opening a black umbrella, setting it on fire, then dropping it and walking away. Absurd and ineffectual tangents punctuate and mitigate the larger claims of other work that points directly at specific political indiscretions. By balancing the prescriptive with the intuitive, curators Jessica Silverman and Jan Van Woensel achieve a rare success: a politically driven show that refrains from shrillness, issuing instead a kind of ominous forecast.

Through February 28 at Boots Contemporary Art Space, 2307 Cherokee Street; 314-773-2281 or www.bootsart.com. Hours: noon-5 p.m. Wed. and Sat. and by appointment.

Read the article online here

Bad Moon Rising 3, review #1

Review: Boots kicks in with a dose of reality

By Ivy Cooper, Beacon Art Critic

Posted 5 p.m. Mon. Jan. 26 - In the midst of all the hoopla, hope and humanity generated by the Barackalypse, it had to happen: a reality check, something to remind us that the world still is in a desperate state and one election won’t — can’t — change all that’s wrong with this country.

Actually, reality checks have been springing up all over the place, if you care to look for them, in magazines and newspapers and, naturally, the Internet. Now at Boots, “Bad Moon Rising 3” is the art-world’s version of a reality check. Curated by Jessica Silverman and Jan Van Woensel, this traveling show is spreading serious cautionary tales in sometimes brutal, sometimes humorous language, and it ought to be required viewing.

More than 50 artists and cooperatives have put together a noisy bunch of videos, prints, flags, collages, montages, paintings, you name it. Standing in the maw of the show, it’s hard to know where one work ends and another begins, and that sense of collectivity is admirable, forcing your attention toward the message, and away from petty distractions like titles and dates and who-made-what. And what is the message? Not to abandon hope altogether, surely, but to temper it with a heavy dose of realism.

Ivy Cooper is an artist and professor of art history at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. To get in touch with her, contact Beacon features and commentary editor Donna Korando.

Read the article online here

BAD MOON RISING 3

BAD MOON RISING 3

Boots Contemporary Art Space (St. Louis, MO)
January 16th, 2009 - February 28th, 2009

Opening reception January 16th, 6:30 - 10:00 pm

Vanessa Albury & Marthe Fortun / Tariq Ali / Julieta Aranda / Yossi Atia & Itamar Rose / Claire Beckett / Brice Bischoff / Zee Boudreaux / Greggory Bradford / Irma Cannavo / Mauro Ceolin / Lori Cheatle & Daisy Wright / Brian Conley / Meg Cranston / Custer's Revenge / Alain Declercq / Messieurs Delmotte / Blue Firth / Lonnie Frisbee & David di Sabatino / Tony Garifalakis / Daniel Goodwin / Deva Graf / Simon Gush / Hamza Halloubi / George Hennard / Pamela Jue / Jason Kalogiros / Paulus Kapteyn / Richard Kern / Ragnar Kjartansson / Wonder Koch / David Matorin / Christina McPhee / NECK FACE / Joe Heaps Nelson / Federico Nessi / Dustin Michael Pevey / Job Piston / Luther Price / Rage Against the Machine / Lee Ranaldo / Max Razdow / Ruth Sacks / Yoji Sakate / Joaquin Segura / Irgin Sena / Ben Shaffer / Elin O'Hara Slavick / Travis Sommerville / Ginger Wolfe-Suarez & Jeanne Moen Wolfe / The Weather Underground / Philippe Vandenberg / Ben Vautier / Pete Watts / Jackson Webb /

Curators: Jessica Silverman and Jan Van Woensel
Assistant Curator: Kara Smith

The traveling group exhibition Bad Moon Rising exposes some of the dark sides of the world's self-proclaimed greatest nation: the United States of America. With the election of a new President in November 2008, people are optimistic about the future of the USA's national and international politics, economy and warfare. Nevertheless, the country's continual increase in unemployment, poverty, the financial downfall, expensive and unreliable health care, equal rights and overprized education are problems that are yet to be resolved. Although the mantra-esque "Yes, We Can" encourages us to believe in a better future, we cannot start dreaming. Offensive, annoying, naughty and whimsical, Bad Moon Rising 3 helps to reminds us of some of the most disturbing facts of the USA's past and present. Through a selection of artworks, artifacts and a-historical references, major themes such as politics, religion, society, family, war and the media are disturbingly portrayed, casting a dark shadow over the USA's promised ideologies of freedom and prosperity.

**Photos are now available on Bad Moon Rising's website

**As an extra component to Bad Moon Rising 3, Jessica Silverman and Jan Van Woensel have invited the curatorial collective NAIL to create email exhibitions based on the concept of the project. A selection of 500 art professionals will receive the Bad Moon Rising email exhibitions. From January 19th - 31st, 2009, they receive one email per day containing each member of NAIL's contribution to Bad Moon Rising 3. For info please contact Jan Van Woensel at projectbadmoonrising@gmail.com

Please use the following link for more information on NAIL

Bad Moon Rising 3 is supported by the BRITISH COUNCIL and ARENAMEXICO

L'Image Maudite (The Cursed Image)

Philippe Vandenberg (photo: Sam Mirlesse)

December, 2008, Philippe Vandenberg at ENVOY Gallery. Curated by Jan Van Woensel. Article in Whitehot Magazine. 

By Sam Mirlesse

“Il faut bouger dans la vie” were some of the first words from Philippe Vandenberg in response to my inquiry as to what the common thread between his paintings exhibited at the Envoy Gallery on Chrystie Street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side last week was. “Il faut bouger dans la vie, in other words… you must move in life.” The Belgian artist’s reasoning behind such a statement was that through mobility, we are able to rescue ourselves from depression. To be static is to lose everything—therefore we are most enriched by nomadic sensibilities. Indeed, the press release, put together by the exhibition's curator Whitehot’s own Jan Van Woensel, chose to emphasize this point above all others in its introduction to the exhibition. To paraphrase Van Woensel, ‘Vandenberg paints to resist stagnation.’

The paintings presented as part of “L’Image Maudite (The Cursed Image)” --at Envoy until January 25th-- offer a range of topics, mostly political in commentary, and both furious and playful in temperament. Where in one we see a caricature of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat splattered with graffiti (a man to whom Vandenberg compared Jesus Christ in casual conversation with me), in the next we see swastikas masquerading as party-goers, sporting colorful paper hats and dancing across a white canvas, to which Vandenberg comments that he means to reference the fascism we experience today—a fascism in disguise. Other paintings include a drawing of four women over a whitewashed canvas, underneath which the artist explained is a layer of animal blood (he calls this piece “Misery of the Day”), as well as a smaller work hung above where the absinthe is being served that depicts a smiling face drawn over some brown liquid – apparently the artist’s own blood this time, (this one called “The Laugh”). What is the common thread again? Indeed, the paintings span a period of time beginning in 1989 and leading up to the last few years of the artist’s life, and as a viewer, you certainly are aware of the collection of concerns and moments, one jumping off into the next.

Certainly he has moved, as he says, he has painted, and participated in his fair share of stagnation resistance. But the thing that strikes you the most is perhaps less this notion of the nomad, and more the sense of the frenetic mind, something slightly disturbed, something slightly out of step with the pace of the paint stroke itself, as if perhaps even frustrated by it. Indeed we get the sense of a nomadic thought process, more than a nomadic behavior or physical movement. It comes as no surprise therefore when Vandenberg tells me he is an admirer of the work of Francisco Goya, well-known for the often dark but satirical, thoroughly mad content of his work.

Perhaps this is his point, however—that Vandenberg should intellectually interact with his own political and social concerns through painting them. Like many artists before him and contemporary to him, his work is driven by his expression of a critique of the world we live in, an image-making for the purpose of exposing something that is true in his eyes. In this sense we can understand the thought process of a nomad as that being focused on search as a means to survival. To be stagnant would be to express nothing, to choose silence over a vocalization of stream-of-consciousness through paint would be to die, intellectually speaking. ‘The cursed images’ offered to us by Vandenberg this month in New York are proof of his own personal search, they are debris of a man’s movement.


Sam Mirlesse is a photographer and writer living in New York City. She is currently working on her MFA in Photography at Parsons the New School for Design. She has written for both the Amsterdam and Montreal editions of WhiteHot. Contact her at sabine.mirlesse@gmail.com or at her website www.sabinemirlesse.com

PHILIPPE VANDENBERG. L’IMAGE MAUDITE (THE CURSED IMAGE)

(Left: independent curator and art dealer Jan Van Woensel, right: artist Philippe Vandenberg)


(Exhibition view: Envoy Gallery)


(Exhibition view)


(Exhibition view: painting "The Abyss")


(Exhibition view: painting "d'Apres le Chien de Goya")


(Exhibition view: painting "Kill Them All")


envoy enterprises . 131 Chrystie Street . New York . NY 10002
B D train to Grand Str . F train to 2nd Ave or Delancey Str . J M Z to Bowery . p: 212.226.4555 . e: office@envoygallery.com

Opening 18 December, 2008, 6 - 9PM

Exhibition 19 December, 2008 - 25 January, 2009. TUES - SUN 12 - 6PM


PHILIPPE VANDENBERG. L’IMAGE MAUDITE (THE CURSED IMAGE)

Curated by Jan Van Woensel


"The nomad image has been a scapegoat for civilization, which contrasts its own excellence with the nomad's raw and wild life. The nomad image has become an icon of anti-civilization and the nomad has been given the role of civilization's curse." (Niillas Oskal, Philosopher, Norway)

Philippe Vandenberg’s second solo exhibition in New York City presents a selection of paintings and drawings from the last twenty years that lead us through a complex, poetic and emotionally intelligent oeuvre of one of Belgium’s most prominent contemporary artists.

L’image Maudite (the Cursed Image) is an exhibition about nomadism. Philippe Vandenberg paints to resist. This act of resistance is one that carries the potential of safeguarding the artist from stagnation and immobility, artistically and conceptually. Resistance is not only the leitmotif of the painter; it is his attitude. Vandenberg continuously pushes his work to its most critical point, its ultimate deadline: the moment when the painting transcends and escapes the painter in order to fulfill its own potential. Metaphorically, the artist compares the act of painting with the kamikaze, and he obsessively scrawls L’important c’est le Kamikaze (The Important is the Kamikaze) on a series of large-scale canvasses. In one of his early writings the artist muses that There is no emergency exit. One can’t escape from his destiny. It is Philippe Vandenberg’s destiny to resist, revolt, curse, sacrifice and live the life of a painter in the margins.

“I am as free as I decide myself; as a painter I don’t have to justify myself nor do I have to consider other people.” Philippe Vandenberg, Painting as a challenge, 1984.

Philippe Vandenberg. born in Ghent (Belgium) in 1952, lives and works in Brussels (Belgium). His paintings and drawings were recently on view in The Visions Come exhibition at NADA in Miami and the traveling group shows Bad Moon Rising 1 at Silverman Gallery in San Francisco and Bad Moon Rising 2 at ISCP in New York. Le Point Zero, Vandenberg’s first solo exhibition in New York was hosted by the Orensanz Foundation | Center for the Arts in NYC. From April to August 2008, Philippe Vandenberg was the artist in residence at the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent, Belgium. Vandenberg’s works were exhibited together with paintings by Hieronymus Bosch, James Ensor, Theodore Gericault and Karel Van de Woestijne, among others.

Jan Van Woensel is an independent curator based in New York and Los Angeles and Philippe Vandenberg’s agent in the USA. Philippe Vandenberg's website: www.philippevandenberg.be

LAST DAY OF MAGIC

LAST DAY OF MAGIC

Artists: Virginia Arce, Amanda Charchian, Claire Cregan, Katrina Duesterhaus, Charlie Edmiston, Michaelvincent Garcia, Michelle Johnson, Elizabeth Mauceli, Kour Pour, Jonathan Stofenmacher, Carly Strauss

Curator: Jan Van Woensel

Bolsky Gallery
Otis College of Art and Design
9045 Lincoln Boulevard
90045 Los Angeles, CA

December 8th – 12th, 2008
Mon – Fr: 10am – 5pm

Opening: Monday December 8th, 6 – 8pm
Opening: Wednesday December 10th, 6 – 8pm

LAST DAY OF MAGIC is a project organized and curated by Jan Van Woensel in the framework of the Fall 2008 critic-in-residence class he teaches at Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, CA.

LAST DAY OF MAGIC is an examination of illusion as well as disillusion that magic provides in culture: the search for the intangible; the revealing of deception, the removal of what’s obscuring. Magic changes the perception of reality. Magic is about surprise but also about secrets, lies and false beliefs. Each individually, the artists in the exhibition created a new artwork that interprets magic. The result is a multi sensory experience of artworks that touch upon themes as varied as entertainment, depression, belief, identity, addiction and the void.

More images will be posted online on the website of LAST DAY OF MAGIC

ONTHAASTING: About Spare Time and Slower Worlds

ONTHAASTING: About Spare Time and Slower Worlds

Artists: Guillaume Bijl, Jacques Charlier, Cel Crabeels, De Brassers, Messieurs Delmotte, Gery De Smet and Harald Thys & Jos De Gruyter

Curators: Jan Van Woensel and Niels Van Tomme

Onthaasting is a mental diversion through the use of recreation as an "escape" from the perceived unpleasant aspects of daily life. It takes place on the outskirts of contemporary life: on mountaintops, in wide-open plains, in churches, in landscapes, in gardens... but most of all in the mind. The exhibition presents Belgian contemporary video artists within this conceptual framework.

1. Gallery Talk: Onthaasting; The Exhibition as a State of Mind
Date/Time: November 22, 2008, 5:00 PM
Location: AU Museum at the Katzen

Co-curator Niels Van Tomme will explain the concept of the exhibition Onthaasting: About Spare Time and Slower Worlds. Through wide-ranging references, Van Tomme plans to merge the national with the personal, the theoretical with the anecdotal.

2. Gallery Talk: Belgians on Holiday
Date/Time: December 20, 2008, 4:00 PM
Location: AU Museum at the Katzen

Jan Van Woensel, co-curator of the AU Museum exhibition Onthaasting: About Spare Time and Slower Worlds, explores the peculiar behavior of Belgians during their vacation at the beach. The lecture takes the 1996 surreal cult movie Camping Cosmos as a key example.

American University Museum
Katzen Art Center
4400 Massachusetts Ave NW
Washington, DC 20016-8031
USA

http://www.american.edu/cas/katzen/museum/index.cfm

JOSHUA TREE

The High Desert Test Sites are a series of experimental art sites located along a stretch of desert communities including Pioneer town, Yucca Valley, Joshua tree, 29 Palms and Wonder Valley. These sites provide alternative space for experimental works by both emerging and established artists.

On November 7th, 8th and 9th, 2008, The High Desert Test Sites will host an expanded desert event in connection with the California Biennial.

Under the vision Lauri Firstenberg, curator of this year’s California Biennial, the exhibition has expanded beyond the scope of the museum to engage venues and sites from as far south as Tijuana, and as north as San Francisco. As a non-institution dedicated to the encouragement and support of art that "lives in the world" HDTS will host the following artists for a three day event.

HDTS CB08 is affiliated with the 2008 California Biennial, organized by the Orange County Museum of Art.

(In these pictures: artist Jeffrey Wells)