David and Googliath
reviews 25.11.09 Erik van Tuijn
Amsterdam
Society of the Query conference
13/11/09 - 14/11/09
At the Society of the Query conference PHD researchers, cultural historians/analysts, new media specialists and artists all shared in the goal of critically assessing Google’s position as an information monopolist and the effect this has on us – Google users.
02/06/08 Paco Barragán
Art fairs are more popular than ever. If in the 1990s every city wanted a biennial, today they all want an art fair with international allure. It seems just a question of time before the art fair pushes the biennial out of everybody’s mind.
It's better to burn out than fade away. This adage of the bohemian artist has become the first commandment for freelancers everywhere in today's economy. Addicted to deadlines, with burnout lurking around the corner, people are working themselves to the bone. Jan Verwoert on the pleasures of exhaustion in the world of art.
Lonely at the Top
New Plans for the Stedelijk Museum
20/02/07 Jorinde Seijdel
A museum potentially has the possibility and the means to be a place of critical comparison and discourse, but apparently not in the Netherlands, where museums are in the thrall of an all-consuming market mentality. Take the recent policy statement of the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum. Instead of stepping back from gratuitous conformity to market forces, the museum is following with narry a whisper, with the top of the international museum hierarchy as their ultimate objective. Fundamental changes in society are meanwhile ignored.
Research by artists and thinkers presented in the new RESEARCH section, provides an analysis of contemporary art and the contemporary world. This first issue contains a description of the philosophy of the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, whose most recent book, Liquid Life (2005), appears to be conquering the art world.