a freestanding wall with post-modern pretensions
a formal directive to pass through modified by an informal nudge
to instead ... pass around ...
If, on the way to the office, you saw a child drowning in a pond,
would your intention be to save it? Would that intention change
if you were wearing new shoes and saving the child meant
they’d be ruined and you’d be late for your business meeting?
So begins a thought experiment rendered here as a door knocker at what could be the entrance to a suburban family home. A provocative thought exercise formulated by moral philosopher Peter Singer, on the doorstep of moral behavior’s ancestral site of safe keeping. This idea represents a touchstone of sorts for the Effective Altruism movement, a global community of economic empaths who employ a quantitative approach to charity using evidence and reason to maximise aggregate long-term happiness and to minimise suffering.
The knocker you grasp to rap on the door—a brass figurine—renders visible Singer’s challenge: does distance matter? Cast of metal it’s demeanour remains set - deep in thought, unaware, eyebrows minus eyes, whilst on its left, scratched into the door a child appears struggling in water. Why do we not recognize the same duty toward those who are physically distant? To reach the door, however, a front porch must first be traversed. Composed of raw fused plastic waste, this one nods to the past (and squints at the future). If your shoes are not yet ruined by an intervention at the pond of moral uncertainty, they’re sure to be sullied in this garbage.
2023 »Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop: seating proposals for a Grantmaker«
Michael Lett Gallery, Auckland
a freestanding wall with post-modern pretensions
a formal directive to pass through modified by an informal nudge
to instead ... pass around ...
If, on the way to the office, you saw a child drowning in a pond,
would your intention be to save it? Would that intention change
if you were wearing new shoes and saving the child meant
they’d be ruined and you’d be late for your business meeting?
So begins a thought experiment rendered here as a door knocker at what could be the entrance to a suburban family home. A provocative thought exercise formulated by moral philosopher Peter Singer, on the doorstep of moral behavior’s ancestral site of safe keeping. This idea represents a touchstone of sorts for the Effective Altruism movement, a global community of economic empaths who employ a quantitative approach to charity using evidence and reason to maximise aggregate long-term happiness and to minimise suffering.
The knocker you grasp to rap on the door—a brass figurine—renders visible Singer’s challenge: does distance matter? Cast of metal it’s demeanour remains set - deep in thought, unaware, eyebrows minus eyes, whilst on its left, scratched into the door a child appears struggling in water. Why do we not recognize the same duty toward those who are physically distant? To reach the door, however, a front porch must first be traversed. Composed of raw fused plastic waste, this one nods to the past (and squints at the future). If your shoes are not yet ruined by an intervention at the pond of moral uncertainty, they’re sure to be sullied in this garbage.
2023 »Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop: seating proposals for a Grantmaker«
Michael Lett Gallery, Auckland
—a counterweight decoupled from its troubled empirical rival: the seething mess of American corporate interests swallowing the country’s GDP. This was not simply a metaphorical swallowing: the revolutionary government of Jacobo Árbenz recently had begun a programme for agrarian reform, upending the dominance of the United Fruit Company, the world’s largest banana producer. For some 15-months the MONIAC witnessed this geopolitical standoff before in 1954, a CIA-led coup toppled Árbenz. Soon after the machine disappeared, its fate today remains unknown. As a promissory note betokening a different future, the MONIAC turned into a kind of sunk cost fallacy of the past.
2023 »Chosen Memories, Contemporary Latin American Art from the
Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Gift and Beyond« Museum of Modern Art, New York
2017 »Primordial Saber Tararear Proverbiales Sílabas Tonificantes Para Sublevar
Tecnocracias Pero Seguir Tenazmente Produciendo Sociedades Tántricas –
Pedro Salazar Torres (Partido Socialista Trabajador)« Regen Projects, Los Angeles
2012 »Magic Love Trade Objects« Artgenève, Geneva
2011 »The Global Contemporary, Kunstwelten nach 1989«
ZKM, Museum für Neue Kunst, Karlsruhe
2011 »Michael Stevenson« Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
2008 »History Acts« Göteborgs Konsthall, Göteborg
2008 »Not Quite How I Remember It« The Power Plant, Toronto
2007 »The Irresistible Force« Tate Modern, London
2007 »Answers to Some Questions about Bananas« Vilma Gold, London
2006 »c/o The Central Bank of Guatemala« CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts,
San Francisco
© 2024. Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence
—a counterweight decoupled from its troubled empirical rival: the seething mess of American corporate interests swallowing the country’s GDP. This was not simply a metaphorical swallowing: the revolutionary government of Jacobo Árbenz recently had begun a programme for agrarian reform, upending the dominance of the United Fruit Company, the world’s largest banana producer. For some 15-months the MONIAC witnessed this geopolitical standoff before in 1954, a CIA-led coup toppled Árbenz. Soon after the machine disappeared, its fate today remains unknown. As a promissory note betokening a different future, the MONIAC turned into a kind of sunk cost fallacy of the past.
2023 »Chosen Memories, Contemporary Latin American Art from the
Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Gift and Beyond« Museum of Modern Art, New York
2017 »Primordial Saber Tararear Proverbiales Sílabas Tonificantes Para Sublevar
Tecnocracias Pero Seguir Tenazmente Produciendo Sociedades Tántricas –
Pedro Salazar Torres (Partido Socialista Trabajador)« Regen Projects, Los Angeles
2012 »Magic Love Trade Objects« Artgenève, Geneva
2011 »The Global Contemporary, Kunstwelten nach 1989«
ZKM, Museum für Neue Kunst, Karlsruhe
2011 »Michael Stevenson« Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
2008 »History Acts« Göteborgs Konsthall, Göteborg
2008 »Not Quite How I Remember It« The Power Plant, Toronto
2007 »The Irresistible Force« Tate Modern, London
2007 »Answers to Some Questions about Bananas« Vilma Gold, London
2006 »c/o The Central Bank of Guatemala« CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts,
San Francisco
© 2024. Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence
Think of it as Gaming the System in a transcendental sense: lots of rules, mercy as a liability, zero sum. To counter these spatial possessions, the rules of common property law are applied. Curiously, the demonic hierarchies comply.
The ramshackle assemblage that composes this instruction appears to be little more than an aircraft tyre, an electric piano stand, and an in-flight blanket. But those who have knowledge will see more. It may well pass as a wishing well, but wishes run in multiple directions. It is a well that foments its own rules, order, and worldview.
2023 »Humans & Demons« steirischerherbst'23, Graz
2021 »Disproof Does Not Equal Disbelief« KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin
2019 »Serene Velocity in Practice: MC510/CS183« MUMA, Melbourne
2018 »SUPERPOSITION: Equilibrium & Engagement« 21st Biennale of Sydney, Sydney
2017 »Serene Velocity in Practice: MC510/CS183« Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland
Think of it as Gaming the System in a transcendental sense: lots of rules, mercy as a liability, zero sum. To counter these spatial possessions, the rules of common property law are applied. Curiously, the demonic hierarchies comply.
The ramshackle assemblage that composes this instruction appears to be little more than an aircraft tyre, an electric piano stand, and an in-flight blanket. But those who have knowledge will see more. It may well pass as a wishing well, but wishes run in multiple directions. It is a well that foments its own rules, order, and worldview.
2023 »Humans & Demons« steirischerherbst'23, Graz
2021 »Disproof Does Not Equal Disbelief« KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin
2019 »Serene Velocity in Practice: MC510/CS183« MUMA, Melbourne
2018 »SUPERPOSITION: Equilibrium & Engagement« 21st Biennale of Sydney, Sydney
2017 »Serene Velocity in Practice: MC510/CS183« Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland
Volume II provides another path and the navigation for the broader Disproof Does Not Equal Disbelief exhibition; from the Volume’s contents page the full project can be reviewed and then traversed accordingly.
CONTENTS:
Michael Stevenson
Profiles in Serine Velocity
Book II: Kayfabe Logic
(Disproof Does Not Equal Disbelief)
»Preface«
»Serene Velocity in Practice: MC510/CS183, Michael Stevenson (photo documentation)«
»Disproof Does Not Equal Disbelief, Michael Stevenson«
»Kayfabe Logic, Anna Parlane (essay)«
»Appendix, Michael Stevenson (ephemera material)«
»Schund, Heike Geißler (fiction)«
DESCRIPTION:
248mm x 319mm, 144 pages, 32-page colour section
DESIGN: Will Holder
Published jointly by KW Institute for Contemporary Art and Sternberg Press, Berlin, 2021
ISBN: 978-3-95679-615-9
Volume II provides another path and the navigation for the broader Disproof Does Not Equal Disbelief exhibition; from the Volume’s contents page the full project can be reviewed and then traversed accordingly.
CONTENTS:
Michael Stevenson
Profiles in Serine Velocity
Book II: Kayfabe Logic
(Disproof Does Not Equal Disbelief)
»Preface«
»Serene Velocity in Practice: MC510/CS183, Michael Stevenson (photo documentation)«
»Disproof Does Not Equal Disbelief, Michael Stevenson«
»Kayfabe Logic, Anna Parlane (essay)«
»Appendix, Michael Stevenson (ephemera material)«
»Schund, Heike Geißler (fiction)«
DESCRIPTION:
248mm x 319mm, 144 pages, 32-page colour section
DESIGN: Will Holder
Published jointly by KW Institute for Contemporary Art and Sternberg Press, Berlin, 2021
ISBN: 978-3-95679-615-9
Outbound and inbound legs share the same time coordinates and flight paths. At some point mid-flight they pass through each other seamlessly. Predestined, uncanny, and foreboding, yet entirely without material consequence, each departure continues on to become the next successful arrival ...
2016 »Signs & Wonders« Carl Freedman Gallery, London
2016 »Signs & Wonders« Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis
2015 »Signs & Wonders« Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen
Outbound and inbound legs share the same time coordinates and flight paths. At some point mid-flight they pass through each other seamlessly. Predestined, uncanny, and foreboding, yet entirely without material consequence, each departure continues on to become the next successful arrival ...
2016 »Signs & Wonders« Carl Freedman Gallery, London
2016 »Signs & Wonders« Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis
2015 »Signs & Wonders« Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen
At Portikus the equivalent inaccessible space is the attic, which becomes projectionist’s booth-cum-cockpit, and locus of perceptual protraction. Here a single-engine aircraft, the Aleph-1, is assembled, and positioned. The plane is a replica of one once owned by the avaitor, mathematician, playwright, and professional bodyguard José de Jésus Martínez. His fascination for the mathematician Georg Cantor's Aleph series (ℵ)—a ground-breaking formula to define an infinite hierarchy of infinities—lead to a perculiar naming system for his flying machines: Aleph(0), Aleph(1)... Aleph(∞).
In the attic shooting and projecting, take-off and landing, are simultaneous. A dynamic cinematic continuum is composed; a single yet multidirectional event occurs, and, in this way, processes and temporalities are stretched and diffracted. End and Beginning have no fixed location; filmic notions of time, including duration, pacing, and frame count, are recalibrated towards the infinite. Aleph-1 ... a tiny speck in an uncountable blue.
2012 »A Life of Crudity, Vulgarity, and Blindness« Portikus, Frankfurt
At Portikus the equivalent inaccessible space is the attic, which becomes projectionist’s booth-cum-cockpit, and locus of perceptual protraction. Here a single-engine aircraft, the Aleph-1, is assembled, and positioned. The plane is a replica of one once owned by the avaitor, mathematician, playwright, and professional bodyguard José de Jésus Martínez. His fascination for the mathematician Georg Cantor's Aleph series (ℵ)—a ground-breaking formula to define an infinite hierarchy of infinities—lead to a perculiar naming system for his flying machines: Aleph(0), Aleph(1)... Aleph(∞).
In the attic shooting and projecting, take-off and landing, are simultaneous. A dynamic cinematic continuum is composed; a single yet multidirectional event occurs, and, in this way, processes and temporalities are stretched and diffracted. End and Beginning have no fixed location; filmic notions of time, including duration, pacing, and frame count, are recalibrated towards the infinite. Aleph-1 ... a tiny speck in an uncountable blue.
2012 »A Life of Crudity, Vulgarity, and Blindness« Portikus, Frankfurt
Contacts
Contacts
A lot has changed, since 1973 oil has peaked in price, increasing ten-fold and, with it a new client-class awash in petrodollars. The effects are everywhere: inflation and stagnation (both at the same time in the US) amidst fortunes and bribes and flattery and, palace invitations to New York’s art world. New wealth creates illusions, excess, and contemporary art collections – in the oddest of places. A purpose-built art palace is erected in Tehran and Tony Shafrazi enters the fray as it’s consultant. Western facing, European, it epitomises the Shah’s vision for a modern state.
Beyond the looted gallery, above the city, the palace lights still burn. It will take a further 78 days until they finally burn out.
2011 »Michael Stevenson« Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
2005 »Art of the Eighties and Seventies« Städtisches Museum Abteiberg,
Mönchengladbach
2005 »The Smiles are not Smiles« Vilma Gold, London
A lot has changed, since 1973 oil has peaked in price, increasing ten-fold and, with it a new client-class awash in petrodollars. The effects are everywhere: inflation and stagnation (both at the same time in the US) amidst fortunes and bribes and flattery and, palace invitations to New York’s art world. New wealth creates illusions, excess, and contemporary art collections – in the oddest of places. A purpose-built art palace is erected in Tehran and Tony Shafrazi enters the fray as it’s consultant. Western facing, European, it epitomises the Shah’s vision for a modern state.
Beyond the looted gallery, above the city, the palace lights still burn. It will take a further 78 days until they finally burn out.
2011 »Michael Stevenson« Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
2005 »Art of the Eighties and Seventies« Städtisches Museum Abteiberg,
Mönchengladbach
2005 »The Smiles are not Smiles« Vilma Gold, London