Re. creating the curator

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THE AUSTRALIAN frequently takes pot shots at postmodern regard.

A few, quickly gathered

A postmodernist parliament (article here)
The Australian July 02, 2011
IF that was the new paradigm, we must now have entered the postmodern paradigm...

Paralysed by postmodernism (article here)
The Australian August 06, 2008
From a fashionable idea to a rigidly imposed dogma, its effect on some of our brightest students has been pernicious, writes Gavin Kitching

It's half-time, the game plan isn't working, it's time to start running into walls full-speed ( article here )
The Australian August 03, 2010
THE campaign has become post-modern and it's hard to tell the fakes from the phonies.
Julia Gillard yesterday : ...

The headline
In search of old meanings and lost information
by Amanda Bell, in today's Weekend Australian ( article here )
might well have indicated another such. Not so.

It was the sub-heading, in the paper edition, that first caught our attention:
Are our views being sculpted by social networks and search engines?

bLOGOS/HA HA is interested in view, views, viewers, regard, the act and the actors of looking et al. So, it was the first part of the question we particularly savored: Are our views being sculpted?

A prosaic reading of this asks if our views are being formed, being shaped by these certain forces. The article, however, is written by the creative principle of a Grammar School, pictured in the article with her students in a visual arts class (see photo below). Hence, the nuanced make-verb to sculpt. And thus, our reading here, that (one's/our) view can be (regarded as/viewed as) sculpture. View as sculpture.

The second part of the question relates to the tools of the sculptor/sculpting : ...by social networks and search engines?

The article is peppered with c words, concentrating on two: creativity and curator. Bell provides evidence - news here - that those who previously chose to name themselves as artist, now also claim themselves as curator.

Examples of the exponential up-take of the term curate in all its applications include a bank executive describing their customer engagement strategy as "curating memories"; an online author announcing content curation to be a new kind of authorship; an article on innovation applauding the emergence of "choice curation"; a journalist describing how they will "curate a list" of the world's 100 most powerful women; and a Twitter profile that describes the account owner as "curating interestingness".

The gist of concern...

While a concern here may be about the right to purloin specialised language such as creativity and curator and randomly change the application and meaning with overuse, it could be argued from a postmodern perspective that this is legitimate adaptation.

But there is a more insidious implication when curatorship combines with content, knowledge and communication reservoirs; there is the inference that deep care, research and valuable scholarship underpins the role.

More likely, our access to content via online curators is being manipulated at its worst and randomly distilled at best.

Therefore, are our views being sculpted through the social media networks and by the search engines and, if so, will they become the most successful and powerful propaganda vehicles in history?

Later...

Perhaps to bring this article's theme full circle, Rosenbaum is also the author of Curation Nation: How to Win in a World Where Consumers are Creators, which is a far cry from Keating's Creative Nation, where we were invited to imagine and develop an inspired future nearly two decades ago. What constitutes a curation nation is a scary thought, especially if we assume the traits of selecting, sifting and filtering apply.

Consider ( article here )

Amanda Bell with visual arts students ( photo : The Australian )
The student's open-fingered hand, in the centre of the photo, appears to be identifying with the tree she depicts with the other. Good get, that photographer. (Lyndon Mechielsen)

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Inspector In The Frame

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The Inspector inspects...

Fair cop?

Or classic photographer's set-up?

'Artless police officers prove the picture of gullibility' (The Age)

article here

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Choisissez! c'est à la carte

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Regardez!
la carte postale

one cart upon another
meta-cart (1912)

click image above to enlarge

Look!
Theatre of the Actors of Regard

one regard upon another
meta-art

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Disappearance Day Centenary

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Today is the 100th anniversary of the theft of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa [aka La Gioconda/La Joconde] from the Musée du Louvre, Paris, by Vincenzo Peruggia (below).

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Here are a few of y/our postcards from around that time

click image to enlarge

all of which, under your image, recount the bottom line :

LA JOCONDE, de Léonard de Vinci
Disparue du Musée du Louvre le 21 Aout 1911

On this first card someone's over-written that, upside down
so you can glance down and read,
and over your lovely mouth there's a smudge of postal ink

or somesuch

It's the sort of thing could provoke a young Marcel
to pen a saucy mot and
add a hairy frame a swell
o' tongue et la langue, even

by Marcel Duchamp (1919) : click image to enlarge

Here's another postal souvenir to celebrate this day and date.

Just three weeks since your disappearance,
the sender signs their initials and their date (Le 13/9/11)

over the monogram of the printer,

or is it of the publisher?

or some passing engraver tagger?

The more you are
the less you are

The less you are
the more you are
Infinitely Empty

Supreme Goddess as Void
with projection-space for image

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HAPPY RETURNS OF THE DAY

from all your admirers at

bLOGOS/HA HA

NGV Reveals Latest Acquisition

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Yesterday

senior actors

at the National Galley of Victoria

used a classic LOGOS-centric, Golden Guillotined painthing

Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist

by Correggio

as mise en scène

to the revealing of

the NGV's latest, 15oth anniversary acquisition

Black Veil ] Theatre of the Actors of Regard [

at a of cost of $AUD5.2 million.

bLOGOS/HA HA applauds this bold addition to the NGV collection.

Yesterday's presentation by NGV director Gerard Vaughan and NGV trustee Andrew Sisson was wholly inspired.

Few will question the appropriateness of this acquisition
Black Veil ] Theatre of the Actors of Regard [
but we wonder how many of yesterday's media assembly fully gauged the wit and wisdom of that presentation.

Some have since published in their articles and reports certain facts about the background artwork - the artist's stage name (Correggio), his given name (Antonio Allegri), the better known names of selected peers (Raphael, Leonardo, Michelangelo), the authenticity (tick), price, size, aesthetics, provenance and so on - but, apart from their various attempts to render the title of that picture, we have read no analysis as to why this object with this scene was centre+stage in yesterday's tableau. Why was this object this scene the one to receive the Black Veil?

That is where the cleverness lies. Rather than merely holding up, or down, or pointing to, or in some other way indicating a ready set stand-alone display of
Black Veil ] Theatre of the Actors of Regard [
as might well have been done
yesterday's presentation reveled in layers and levels.

First (as described in a 'live report' on ABC radio) the media theorin were led through a titillation of basement corridors into a room where they beheld against a black background an exemplar art historical object set within a Golden Guillotine, this all held aloft (see: Triumph of Christianity over Paganism, by Tommaso Siciliano, 1585) on an artist-style easel pedestal.

Act one :
Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist :
within the Four Right Angles of that painthing's Golden Guillotine is a tableau of three significant figures. At the centre is the baby Jesus. Later he will be known under the stage name The Christ and will be reckoned to be The Logos, The Word made Flesh, Agnus Dei - obviously bLOGOS/HA HA has an interest in this - and we all know he will come to be represented by the Sign of +he Cross, inverted torture frame of the Four Right Angles. In summary, we are presented with a classic, originary [Western, Christian] Phallo-LOGOS-centric opening scene. In the Centre, The One; with supporters of import to either side : mystical earth mother Mary and Media Agent to the Word, John the Baptist.

Act two replicates the form, then releases a killer punch.

Act two, tableau one :
Again the centre position is the most important. The Golden Guillotine, previously seen to frame that within its bounds, now is seen to turn on itself, as it were, and frame that without, in this case its supporters to either side : the Director as Ring Master (Frame Master) Advocate on one side and on the other the Trustee Provider Regardist ("You look at the way things move over time, and this is a great opportunity to buy something using our dollar and get a lot of value for it." - Andrew Sisson).

Act two, tableau two :
Cometh the moment...

...cometh the Thing.

Gallery unveils its newest, nearest and dearest
NGV unveils highest priced piece in its history
NGV UNVEILS MAJOR ANNIVERSARY GIFT - NGV Media

Black Veil ] Theatre of the Actors of Regard [

Gasps from the theorin, the immediate recognition of the rightness and boldness of this acquisition; then quiet as the implications begin to build

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This Heady Victory : A Restoration Comedie

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Oh, this moment of imperfect regard

'I have made a heap of all that I could find.' (1) So wrote Nennius, or whoever composed the introductory matter to Historia Brittonum. He speaks of an 'inward wound' which was caused by the fear that certain things dear to him 'should be like smoke dissipated'.

David Jones, from the quotation at the header of this bLOG

of this digital reproduction

of a damaged photographic print

of a damaged object

as regarded by Daphne Mayo

in this 1912 tableau vivant [ Theatre of the Actors of Regard ]

came to bLOGOS/HA HA attention

today

as, first, a roughly repaired, cropped, black-and-white

click above to enlarge

dot-screened detail



of an ink printed document

from the U Q ART MUSEUM

inviting us to attend

on 24 August

The Daphne Mayo Lecture 2011
Contemporary Australian Photography since 1980

by Anne Marsh

author of

Look :
Contemporary Australian Photography since 1980

photo by Polixeni Papapetrou

a post script :
Researching the 1912 tableau at University of Queensland Library - Daphne Mayo Collection ( here ) we were greatly surprised to also find there this image of another Daphne Mayo construction,
from 1921, The Student's Head

Thus ...

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the characters proclaim as One

O !
This is Our Moment
O Perfect Regard
o' Every Thing
Restored

this Play is done!

( laughter, exeunt)

UK umbratecture

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Interesting to see the UK acknowledging umbratecture.

click image to enlarge

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Those National Pavilions! ...

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Another something of influence on the present generation of Melbourne's BLACK BATS

THOSE NATIONAL PAVILIONS! ...
JUST LIKE IN MY DREAMS!

see :
ANACHROTECTURE NOW :
An Other Australia Pavilion for Venice Biennale

click image to enlarge

Above, with BLACK BAT umbratect at Ewing Gallery, 1984
at the exhibition ARCHITECTURA PICTA _ curator Tony Clark

From there into the Joseph Brown Collection, Melbourne.

Later, rejected by the National Gallery of Victoria when Joseph Brown donated his collection to that institution. Sent to auction.

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ANACHROTECTURE NOW : An Other Australia Pavilion for Venice Biennale

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AUSTRALIA [SIC] wants to update it's Official Anachrotecture at the Venice Biennale.

It is proposed there be a new Australia(n) Pavilion to replace the present one, designed by Philip Cox and opened in 1988.

From Day One, the presentecture was regarded by some as unsatisfactory, as Australia unFelix unSettled unKnown.
O Antipodean Pavilion of Restless Desire
O Objecture of Self Craving

There is much discussion about who should be permitted to enter the proposed Official Competition for A Nuther One.
( Click here for Ray Edgar's article "Top talent edged out" in yesterday's Melbourne AGE. )

Some are calling for a Sectional Open Competition (i.e. Open to ARCHITECTS ONLY. Click here for that. )

Others are calling for an anonymous, fully open Open Competition. Others (aware that "A politician always wins") are calling for an Open Judgement. Others are merely calling COOEEEEEE!

Whatever is chosen as the Chosen One, you can bet from Day One it too will be regarded as... unsatisfactory. ("We have nothing to unlearn but ignorance itself.")

bLOGOS/HA HA has been researching National Pavilions at International Expositions, from the first Venice Exposition in 1896 onwards. (To see a selection of these click here. ) To us, they all look OK - they are what they are - and they all look funny. All in and out of time. All anachronistic anachrotecture.

Future designs so far proffered appear to us no more or less anachronistic than those of past and present.

The Australia allotment at Venice is beside a waterway.

Here is how it is described at this website : [2008.04.22] Ideas Competition for a New Australian Pavilion at Venice Biennale

THE CURRENT AUSTRALIAN PAVILION
The current Australian Pavilion was designed by Sydney architect Philip Cox and opened in 1988. There was pressure at the time to build quickly or lose the opportunity to the last position available in the Giardini della Biennale. It was prefabricated, and within a month of the planning permit being issued it was open for the Arthur Boyd exhibition. The pavilion was always viewed as temporary. It has long been criticised for it being a very difficult space to curate.

“They forget the whole project was virtually gifted to the Australia Council. We donated our services and we got BHP to provide the steel and Transfield to also provide materials. And on the record and to be perfectly frank, it gives me the f—ing shits considering we all worked so hard for nothing to put it there.” Philip Cox

Here next, with a comparable waterway setting and boat people passing, is Ernest Coffin's depiction of the Australia Pavilion at the British Empire Exhibition, Wembley, England 1924.

One of the 30 painteds exhibited in that pavilion ( see them here ) offered any alert regardist a surprise meta-critique.

James R Jackson's The holiday (1916) depicts two early Australian umbratects abroad, arriving by boat and settling themselves under their own satisfactory umbrellatecture, on an embankment not dissimilar to that outside the Official Pavilion.

This scene and the sly wit of its inclusion in the Motherland Official Oversight of 1924 would later be taken as inspiration by Melbourne's BLACK BATS.

So to Pavilion Australia Future Past . The 2008 Ideas Competition for a New Australian Pavilion at Venice Biennale was promoted by Di Stasio and staged as an exhibition at Heide Museum of Modern Art.

Theatre of the Architors of Regard _ click image to enlarge

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Here is the "Professional Winner" of that competition - Davide Marchetti, Rome. (There was also a "Pre-Professional Winner". Conclusion: the overall winner is The Profession.)

So, an architect from Rome is chosen by The Profession as the Ideas Competition winner for Pavilion Australia at Venice.
Here's the Pantheon, Rome. Go figure?!

image courtesy : Theatre of the Architors of Regard

And instead of the tomb of Raphael...

image courtesy : Theatre of the Architors of Regard

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Same Time Same Place : The Scratch

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another Saturday night
listening to/ listening to/ listening to/ listening to/ listening to/

another scratchy old LP/
old LP/ old LP/ old LP/ old LP/ old LP/ old LP/ old LP/ old LP/

click image to enlarge

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☀ ( ( BLACK ☂ BATS { { : ) : )

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In Sydney (
late 2oth century (
under the aegis of Theatre of the Actors of Regard (
members of Melbourne's BLACK BATS

{ see: umbrellatecture / umbratecture }

perform a tableau of proscenium arcs and mindful regard

The BLACK BATS original sketch for the Sydney tableau...

...was, in part, inspired

☀ ( ( ☂ { { !

by Jørn Utzon's 1957 spark of clustered arcs

submitted to the competition for a Sydney Opera House design.

The BLACK BATS sketch, in toto ((((

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Melbourne umbrellatecture / umbratecture

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Melbourne has a lively culture of architecture, and of its shadow
umbrellatecture (see also : umbratecture)

Below is the logo of the BLACK BATS (MELB)

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