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by differx

unnoticed art festival 2014

  
(No One Knows) What Will Be Happening?
The Unnoticed Art Festival takes place during an ordinary weekend in May, in an ordinary Dutch city. 
The location of the festival will remain a secret, even to the performers, until the weekend itself.
The Unnoticed Art Festival involves a series of performances that are ‘hidden’ within every-day activities in public spaces. 

Artists from all over the world responded to an open-call for performance concepts that explore the balance between public/private spaces and expected/unexpected behavior.

The chosen concepts are written in the form of manuals or instructions. A group of 35 volunteer performers will execute these performances, without knowing before-hand the location, or setting, of their act. 
The performers have a double role: they are the participants, as well as the only audience that is aware that an art festival is taking place.
What Then? On the 31st of August, an event will take place in

the Pictura art space in the town of Dordrecht. During this event, we will hold a panel discussion on ‘Unnoticed Art’, and present some re-enactments of several festival performances. 

A book on ‘Unnoticed Art’ will be distributed on the day, containing all the performance concepts that were put into action, along with the experiences of each performer. The book will also include an essay on the subject of ‘Unnoticed Art’, written by Dutch artist and festival director, Frans van Lent.

Although there will be no recordings made of the Unnoticed Art Festival – we will be making a video recording of the panel discussion, and making this available on the festival website. 

      
Why is this festival significant?
This festival is significant because it serves as an experiment. 
By revealing as little information as possible, the festival functions as a spontaneous performance, an ‘unnoticed’ public intervention.
The meaning of the festival is encapsulated in the experiences of the performers, as they explore through their act(s) the blurring contours between performer-audience, and the precarious balance between public/private spaces and behaviors. 
How Can You Help? 
For this festival to take place, we plan on camping with a group of 35 volunteers and the organizers, close to the city where the festival will take place. We need funds to cover: transportation, camping and food costs for those two days.
Because the Unnoticed Art Festival requires a level of secrecy, and also due to its experimental nature, we want everyone involved to be completely immersed into the experience for these two days. By traveling, camping and eating together, all the performers will be able to reflect upon their role(s), and how it relates to everyone else’s. With your support, we can strengthen the reach and impact of this festival to its full potential. 
If you are intrigued and curious about art and performance mixing with everyday life in unexpected ways, please help us by making a donation and/or sharing our campaign. We appreciate all your help! 
*
Artists Involved:
Rafael Abreu Canedo (BRA), Sarah Boulton (UK), Derek Dadian-Smith (USA), Craig Damrauer (USA), Dino Dinco (USA), Mr. and Mrs Gray (NL), Linda Hesh (USA), Hiroomi Horiuchi (JPN), David Horvitz (USA), Daan den Houter (NL), Jeroen Jongeleen (NL), Ienke Kastelein (NL), Jonathan Keats (USA), Joke van Kerkwijk (NL), Kees Koomen (NL), Margreet Kramer (NL), Gavin Krastin (ZA), Steef van Lent (DE), Gretta Louw (AUS), Lilla Magyari (HU), Andrew McNiven (UK), Janet Meany (AUS), Tim Miller (UK), Marnik Neven (BE), Joyce Overheul (NL), Nico Parlevliet (NL), Malin Peter (SWE), Jess Rose (UK), Julie Rozman (USA), Roekoe M (NL), Joshua Schwebel (CAN), Jack Segbars (NL), Edwin Stolk (NL), Topp & Dubio (NL).
by differx

on the moon (1971)

   
the story here:
http://io9.com/this-is-the-only-piece-of-art-weve-left-on-the-moon-1485630117

This tiny sculpture is called Fallen Astronaut, and was placed on the lunar surface by the crew of Apollo 15 on August 1, 1971.
The figurine, which was crafted in the likeness of an astronaut-in-spacesuit, measures just more than three inches tall, but the “Smallest Memorial in the Universe,” as Walter Cronkite called it in a 1972 interview with its creator, Belgian sculptor Paul van Hoeydonck, gave rise to storm of controversy disproportionate to its physical size. Over at Slate, Corey S. Powell and Laurie Gwen Shapiro have the in-depth story of the scandals and conflicts that “obscured one of the most extraordinary achievements of the Space Age.”
It begins:
One crisp March morning in 1969, artist Paul van Hoeydonck was visiting his Manhattan gallery when he stumbled into the middle of a startling conversation. Louise Tolliver Deutschman, the gallery’s director, was making an energetic pitch to Dick Waddell, the owner. “Why don’t we put a sculpture of Paul’s on the moon,” she insisted. Before Waddell could reply, van Hoeydonck inserted himself into the exchange: “Are you completely nuts? How would we even do it?”
Deutschman stood her ground. “I don’t know,” she replied, “but I’ll figure out a way.”
She did.
At 12:18 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time on Aug. 2, 1971, Commander David Scott of Apollo 15 placed a 3 1/2-inch-tall aluminum sculpture onto the dusty surface of a small crater near his parked lunar rover. At that moment the moon transformed from an airless ball of rock into the largest exhibition space in the known universe. Scott regarded the moment as tribute to the heroic astronauts and cosmonauts who had given their lives in the space race. Van Hoeydonck was thrilled that his art was pointing the way to a human destiny beyond Earth and expected that he would soon be “bigger than Picasso.”
In reality, van Hoeydonck’s lunar sculpture, called Fallen Astronaut, inspired not celebration but scandal. Within three years, Waddell’s gallery had gone bankrupt. Scott was hounded by a congressional investigation and left NASA on shaky terms. Van Hoeydonck, accused of profiteering from the public space program, retreated to a modest career in his native Belgium. Now both in their 80s, Scott and van Hoeydonck still see themselves unfairly maligned in blogs and Wikipedia pages—to the extent that Fallen Astronaut is remembered at all.
And yet, the spirit of Fallen Astronaut is more relevant today than ever. Google is promoting a $30 million prize for private adventurers to send robots to the moon in the next few years; companies such as SpaceX and Virgin Galactic are creating a new for-profit infrastructure of human spaceflight; and David Scott is grooming Brown University undergrads to become the next generation of cosmic adventurers.
Governments come and go, public sentiment waxes and wanes, but the dream of reaching to the stars lives on. Fallen Astronaut does, too, hanging eternally 238,000 miles above our heads. Here, for the first time, we tell the full, tangled tale behind one of the smallest yet most extraordinary achievements of the Space Age.

by differx

from Radna Bilježnica

 
stuff i like:

http://radnabiljeznica.blogspot.it/2012/11/blog-post.html
http://radnabiljeznica.blogspot.it/2012/08/blog-post_24.html
http://radnabiljeznica.blogspot.it/2012/08/blog-post.html
http://radnabiljeznica.blogspot.it/2012/06/radna-akcija-1-pljuni-radna-biljeznica.html
 
                                   

by differx

Katie Paterson, Inside this desert lies the tiniest grain of sand

A nano-sized grain of sand, buried deep within the Sahara desert.
<a href="http://www.katiepaterson.org/images/Katie_Paterson_Inside_this_desert.jpg" rel="all" title="Inside this desert lies the tiniest grain of sand, 2010, silver gelatin print, 120x180cm
Haunch of Venison”>Katie Paterson
A grain of sand collected from the Sahara Desert was chiseled to 0.00005mm, using special techniques in nanotechnology. This new minute grain of sand was then taken back to the Sahara and buried deep within its vast desert sands.