On Wednesday evening I will be making a fool of myself in the Mark Lombardi show at the AGO, in company much better equipped than I to address Canadian art, politics and foreign affairs. I will, however, be armed with cue cards and small diagrams. If you are in Toronto come on by and heckle.
Global Theory Slam
Wednesday, October 20, 7 to 8:30 pm
Mark Lombardi’s extensive research into the relationships that define contemporary cultures, economies and geopolitics, is often dismissed as ‘conspiracy’. Join Toronto personalities in the exhibition space as they share their theories on the relationships that underpin Canadian art, politics and foreign affairs.
Free admission
WOOOO HOOOOOOOO!
I am so there for you Sally!
uh-oh. Best heckler in town.
Sorry, Sally.
I am pretty sure I have the making-a-fool-of-oneself-in-public market cornered.
Just be sure to have fun.
Here is a link to an interesting article about Mark Lombardi and his work. Very informative for someone like myself who was not aware of this artists work. http://www.wburg.com/0202/arts/lombardi.html
good prep reading for tonights talk!
Here's my negative view of Lombardi. He was from Houston, and I met him once in New York around the time his work took off (and before his suicide, obviously). (1) The pictures aren't interesting enough visually. It's just his elegant handwriting and the flow charts. You could find this sort of material in any office. It's all about the research. By the way, has it ever been fact checked? I doubt it. (2) What is act 2? Does he keep making flow charts of conspiracies as his art ad infinitum? I see no growing room for his project, and from what I've heard from people who knew him, he worried about it, too. The art world acquired an almost instant bandwagon mentality for his work, without fully considering these questions.
And with all this in mind, best of luck tonight, Sally.
good vibes being sent your way sally mckay.
Thanks all. It went well last night. My co-presenters Louis Jacob and John Marriott were right on, as was the audience. Will make a post about it soon. I am not a big fan of Lombardi, but I am not disinterested either. More soon.
'By the way, has it ever been fact checked?'
This comment brings to mind something that came up in the lecture last night. There seems to be a need for people addressing his work to find answers within it. A need to look to him as a sort of authority on the subjects he is mapping. He has, for the record, stated that his work is always aesthetic, never investigative. Appearently he gathered all his information from published materials. There is indeed a chance some of those publications had faulty fact checkers. Another response to his work and untimely death appears to be a consideration of how he would respond (guide us?) to the many conspiricies surrounding Sept. 11 and the Bush administration. I would imagine he would map out all the key players as before and nothing would truly surprise anyone. Perhaps looking to his work for answers is misguided, we all have the capabilities of conducting our own reaserch and forming our own opinions.
Good points, mnobody. Whenever I dislike an art work, I always wonder if it's simply due to a prejudice of taste on my part, but in this case I was very unsatisfied. And, being an info-pig, I was even more unsatisfied.
Though I will argue with Tom Moody's point #2. Where the artist can go with this can't be in my criteria for further judgment. (I'm showing an obscure sign of respect by stating that is always the artist's problem, not mine as a viewer.)
That said, here I go agreeing with Tom, is this a practise that merits accumulation? (obscure and, now, inconsistent with the paragraph above)
I had a good conversation with a friend this morning who was also at the talk and saw the show. It seems pretty clear that people are frustrated with the opaque aspects of Lombardi's work: both as politics and as art. But I do think that what rises off the elegant flow charts is a sense of urgency about the impossibility of the task at hand. It's impossible to map all these connections in a way that communicates, or I suspect, in a way that actually explicates all the intricate relationships between conspirators. But the fact that an individual would obsessively take it on, is in itself a telling phenomenon of the corporate world we live in. The relationship of Lombardi to all this information is both political and structural and I think that while the works themselves are impenetrable to all but those already conversant with the material, they make a sad and somewhat desperate picture of something bigger. Even if I could spend the hours and hours it would take to comprehend even one of Lombardi's diagrams, what good would it do me? The data on it's own is raw and requires some kind of action to transform it into activism. But Luis Jacob spoke to this well in the question and answer period, saying that for us, in the fine art context of the AGO, the work may seem like an abstract and theoretical project (my angle on it, for sure) but for people in countries that suffer the bloody outcomes of these networks, this information and these relationship patterns are not obscure or abstract at all, as they underpin immediate life and death challenges.
As usual, Sally, the power of your analysis humbles me.
(don't worry, it's temporary)
|
On Wednesday evening I will be making a fool of myself in the Mark Lombardi show at the AGO, in company much better equipped than I to address Canadian art, politics and foreign affairs. I will, however, be armed with cue cards and small diagrams. If you are in Toronto come on by and heckle.
Global Theory Slam
Wednesday, October 20, 7 to 8:30 pm
Mark Lombardi’s extensive research into the relationships that define contemporary cultures, economies and geopolitics, is often dismissed as ‘conspiracy’. Join Toronto personalities in the exhibition space as they share their theories on the relationships that underpin Canadian art, politics and foreign affairs.
Free admission
- sally mckay 10-19-2004 6:03 am
WOOOO HOOOOOOOO!
I am so there for you Sally!
- LM (guest) 10-19-2004 9:03 am
uh-oh. Best heckler in town.
- sally mckay 10-19-2004 4:55 pm
Sorry, Sally.
I am pretty sure I have the making-a-fool-of-oneself-in-public market cornered.
Just be sure to have fun.
- Tino (guest) 10-20-2004 9:58 pm
Here is a link to an interesting article about Mark Lombardi and his work. Very informative for someone like myself who was not aware of this artists work. http://www.wburg.com/0202/arts/lombardi.html
good prep reading for tonights talk!
- mnobody (guest) 10-20-2004 11:37 pm
Here's my negative view of Lombardi. He was from Houston, and I met him once in New York around the time his work took off (and before his suicide, obviously). (1) The pictures aren't interesting enough visually. It's just his elegant handwriting and the flow charts. You could find this sort of material in any office. It's all about the research. By the way, has it ever been fact checked? I doubt it. (2) What is act 2? Does he keep making flow charts of conspiracies as his art ad infinitum? I see no growing room for his project, and from what I've heard from people who knew him, he worried about it, too. The art world acquired an almost instant bandwagon mentality for his work, without fully considering these questions.
- tom moody 10-20-2004 11:48 pm
And with all this in mind, best of luck tonight, Sally.
- tom moody 10-20-2004 11:49 pm
good vibes being sent your way sally mckay.
- selma 10-20-2004 11:57 pm
Thanks all. It went well last night. My co-presenters Louis Jacob and John Marriott were right on, as was the audience. Will make a post about it soon. I am not a big fan of Lombardi, but I am not disinterested either. More soon.
- sally mckay 10-21-2004 9:28 pm
'By the way, has it ever been fact checked?'
This comment brings to mind something that came up in the lecture last night. There seems to be a need for people addressing his work to find answers within it. A need to look to him as a sort of authority on the subjects he is mapping. He has, for the record, stated that his work is always aesthetic, never investigative. Appearently he gathered all his information from published materials. There is indeed a chance some of those publications had faulty fact checkers. Another response to his work and untimely death appears to be a consideration of how he would respond (guide us?) to the many conspiricies surrounding Sept. 11 and the Bush administration. I would imagine he would map out all the key players as before and nothing would truly surprise anyone. Perhaps looking to his work for answers is misguided, we all have the capabilities of conducting our own reaserch and forming our own opinions.
- mnobody (guest) 10-21-2004 10:00 pm
Good points, mnobody. Whenever I dislike an art work, I always wonder if it's simply due to a prejudice of taste on my part, but in this case I was very unsatisfied. And, being an info-pig, I was even more unsatisfied.
Though I will argue with Tom Moody's point #2. Where the artist can go with this can't be in my criteria for further judgment. (I'm showing an obscure sign of respect by stating that is always the artist's problem, not mine as a viewer.)
That said, here I go agreeing with Tom, is this a practise that merits accumulation? (obscure and, now, inconsistent with the paragraph above)
- LM (guest) 10-22-2004 1:40 am
I had a good conversation with a friend this morning who was also at the talk and saw the show. It seems pretty clear that people are frustrated with the opaque aspects of Lombardi's work: both as politics and as art. But I do think that what rises off the elegant flow charts is a sense of urgency about the impossibility of the task at hand. It's impossible to map all these connections in a way that communicates, or I suspect, in a way that actually explicates all the intricate relationships between conspirators. But the fact that an individual would obsessively take it on, is in itself a telling phenomenon of the corporate world we live in. The relationship of Lombardi to all this information is both political and structural and I think that while the works themselves are impenetrable to all but those already conversant with the material, they make a sad and somewhat desperate picture of something bigger. Even if I could spend the hours and hours it would take to comprehend even one of Lombardi's diagrams, what good would it do me? The data on it's own is raw and requires some kind of action to transform it into activism. But Luis Jacob spoke to this well in the question and answer period, saying that for us, in the fine art context of the AGO, the work may seem like an abstract and theoretical project (my angle on it, for sure) but for people in countries that suffer the bloody outcomes of these networks, this information and these relationship patterns are not obscure or abstract at all, as they underpin immediate life and death challenges.
- sally mckay 10-22-2004 10:30 pm
As usual, Sally, the power of your analysis humbles me.
(don't worry, it's temporary)
- LM (guest) 10-23-2004 9:53 am