Dispatch

 

  • Specters of San Francisco Magazines

    By Joseph del Pesco
    Published June 18, 2010
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    Since the 1960s more than a dozen contemporary art magazines have circulated in the San Francisco Bay Area. A few have left but continued printing, but at present no printed periodical addressing contemporary art remains. There have been some gaps in coverage over the years, but looking back over the timeline, from the Sixties up to the present there’s always been at least one critical journal. This doesn’t, of course, mean they’ve been wildly successful or even widely distributed. This turn-over and transience is typical of the Bay Area, a place where new ideas are tolerated if not encouraged, and the persistent appearance of yet another new initiative means there’s always been an active scene here, if only just in the process of becoming. 

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  • Artists as Engineers in Vietnam

    By Zoe Butt
    Published April 1, 2010
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    Can artists be successful in creating systems for contemporary art production and interpretation?

    Late last year, one of Vietnam’s pioneering artists, Vu Dan Tan, passed away at the age of 63. He was a wiry, grey bearded man who loved the feel of paper and performance. Known for his vigorous body acts with paint, Vu was a man who had traced the journey from Vietnam to Cuba by train and boat in 1973, stopping in Beijing and Russia – his feet never touching capitalist ground. From 1987-1990, Vu lived in Moscow, where he was exposed to the artistic freedoms enabled under Russia’s Perestroika (political and economic reforms). His memory was vivid of how much these journeys had compelled him to examine the notion of independent thinking in Communist Vietnam – thus he started Salon Natasha in 1990, Vietnam’s first independent art space, where he encouraged artists in Hanoi to gather, chat and exhibit their work. It is this idea of arrival and departure; of fleeing and returning, of choosing and creating that I shall focus on in this DISPATCH. It is a sensitive topic in Vietnam, tempered by the remnants of colonial structures of social and educational life; a history of perceived betrayal towards refugees who have returned and a growing young elite who have successfully sought a foreign education.

     

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  • Experimental pedagogy and art practice in Mexico

    By Sofía Olascoaga
    Published February 2, 2010
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    This DISPATCH addresses the case of a growing scene at the intersection of education, pedagogy and art in Mexico.

    At this particular time there seems to be a collective, urgent demand for alternative strategies that provide new relationships of knowledge production and spaces for dialogue and encounter.

    In recent years, artist-led, self-organized, institutional and private educational initiatives in the contemporary art scene have opened up an active debate on the intersections of education and art. A number of artist-instigated educational projects have emerged, many of which are independently staged, while others are institutionally framed, and some privately funded.

    Within the contemporary art circuit, through many differences regarding perspectives, positions and objectives, universities, museums, and independent spaces in Mexico openly address questions and activate speculation on the relationship between education and art. As yet, there is no consensus on the concepts (and specific uses) of education and pedagogy, but proposals from artists and scholars test various ideas and approaches.

    This emerging movement is connected to broader phenomena of increasing attention to these themes in the international sphere. The Mexican cases share similar concerns to those being globally discussed, but they also embrace a contrasting complexity that comes from the particular conditions in which they exist.

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DISPATCH is ICI’s new bi-monthly online journal that features a different curator’s points of view on current developments in art. Practitioners based in different cities around the world are invited to use DISPATCH as their virtual base, building their research over time through text, image, and video. Taking advantage of the interactive platform, DISPATCH will also allow for comments and feedback from readers around the world, allowing for the development of a dynamic curatorial network.