Chad's São Paulo Diary: Bienal Day 2

Friday 28th October



The Bienal is sardine-packed with school kids today, as it has been every day. The educational department is fabulous, and they have teams of volunteers explaning the work to groups from pre-primary kids up to adults. Its incredibly nice to see (although screaming children can make it hard to concentrate on the art). This was our tour guide explaing Kendell Geers to us:




Three works really stood out for me today, and true to this Bienal all of them live and work in developing nations. Emily Jacir, an artist from Palestine, produced a work called Lydda Airport. The airport was once the largest in the British Empire, and she makes a gentle slow black-and-white-film around the old building. It takes its cue from two legends.




The first is the mysterious disappearance of a Hannibal, one of the largest passenger planes of the 1940's, which was based at the airport. It vanished one day over the Red Sea, without a trace of the plane, pilots or full complement of passengers. The second is the tale of Edmond Tamari, an airport official who received a message that he should take a bouquet to the airstrip and wait for Amelia Earhart. She never arrived. Recreations of these stories are set against a ruined and abandoned airport. I found the combiation of waiting, sadness and disappearance to be very moving, as a film and in the context of Palestine. A model of the airport was situated behind the film room:

Francis Alÿs produced a video called Tornado, in which he films himself running into tornados. With shaking camera and the sound clipping from the high speed winds, he runs over and over into the tornados. Its a mythical contest between a man and nature. A Sisyphean task. The video climaxes when he breaks through a wall of wind and dust and stands in the eye of the storm.

One hopes for some calm, some purpose to this useless task. But the quiet barely lasts a few seconds, before he spins out into the dust. Then a new loop begins. Alÿs has been working on this film for numerous years, and this accumulated time extends the one-liner element of the work.

Antonio Marcotela's work is about exchanges, time and economy. Something similar to Santiago Serra, but with a little more heart to it. Over a period of three yearshe visited the Santa Marta Acotica Jail in Mexico City. There, where people have time, but no ability to use it, he started a series of exchanges. He would undertake a task in the outside world for an inmate, and in return the uinmate would spend the same amount of time producing an artwork for the artist, though relating to the prison. An example, he tries to find the love of an inmates life, and the prisoner scratches out the centre of the Count of Monte Cristo.

The nice part about the work is that they are understated, and he doesn't show his parrt of the exchange. In another exchange he serenades a mans mother, or watches his childs first steps or finds someone's son. These are incredibly emotional works.

Chad's São Paulo Diary: The Fruit Man

27 October

Biennale's are hard work. They should have them in cities where there is nothing else to see. Sahara Biennale, something like that. We headed off to the Mercado Municipal, the major food market in the city. On the way we stopped off at Benespa, the State Bank Building. Here they allow tourists up for a strictly cntrolled 5 minutes on their roof. You get the most fantastic views of the city. Three-hundred and sixty degree skyscrapers.

To get to the market you have to walk through the district of kitsch. Its cheap jewellery, cheap vases, a whole shop of imitation flowers to put in them and, bizarrely, costume shops. its absolutely bustling, like these are the things necessary for existence. Refreshingly, but annoyingly, there is no tourist junk (annoyingly because a t-shirt even mentioning São Paulo on it has become the holy grail of this trip.)

The food market is marginally less bustling, but no less bewildering. If you want some sense of authenticity to counter the madness outside, this is the place. Loops of chouriço, rolls of cheese, chewing tabacco and olives. Fresh rabbit, honey, pimentos, cashews, pickled garlic and bacalhau. The last is a type of salted cod, which is the market's speciality. Very salty but really good. Us eating all of the above:

The fruit was pretty amazing too. Shapes that are a far cry from the humble apple and colours to give a solid blow to your average mango's ego. I was just beginning to feel like a Paulista natural, when the fruit seller totally fleeced me. He tried to charge me R$ 80 (Reais is the currency here) for a strawberry dates and a mystery fruit. This is almost R360. Managed to bargain him down through hand gestures and scowly looks, but afterwards I realised I had still paid 4 times the right amount. Been grumbling about the sly fruit man all evening. Looking forward to heading back to the Bienal, where for a short time we can pretend to be free of mercantile capitalism.

Chad Rossouw's Sao Paulo Diary: Day One at the Biennale

Wednesday 27th

Wow. Thats all I can say.

The last few days have been absolutely amazing.

The bienal is full of art, and it can be a little overwhelming to take it all in. Some works that have stood out are David Claerbout's The Algiers's Section of a Happy Moment. It's a single photograph of a man feeding seagulls on a rooftop in Algiers. Its a slideshow, which shows the same image from hundreds of different angles and viewpoints. Its a masterpiece of compositing, and complete freezing of every possible moment of the photograph.

Aernout Mik produced a silent film of a political gathering. Without any clues as to motivation or intent, he gestures of the crowd become very loaded and intense

Chantal Akerman produced a series of videos called D'est. Many of them are slow pans across the streets of Russian cities, during the early nineties. Very moving

Chilling in between stretches at the Biennale, in the Park Ibipeura

Joseph Kosuth: Amazingly boring in the flesh!

Chad's São Pualo Diary

Wednesday, 27 October
Accursed Internet! Online but struggling to upload images. You can see some stuff on Facebook here; http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=544318&l=d123b1e7fb&id=623495290

Chad's São Paulo Diary: Computer Says No

Struggling with connectivity today. Apparently a virus on my camera destroyed the computer at the hostel! I don't think it was me. Tomorrow morning I'll find an Internet Cafe, and put up a double post. Lots of action today.

Chad's São Paulo Diary: Bienal

Monday 25th October

Even Sunday's in Sao Paulo are mad. Traffic, both human and cars, pack the streets. We woke up early, and did a little exploring of our neighbourhood before the madness. There's this strange graffitti everywhere called pixaçao. It's a mixture of gangland marking and bravado. You see this stuff on top of skyscrapers and other impossible places (apparently people literally abseil of the buildings). It looks kind of runic, or pictographic. At the 2008 Bienal, the one with the empty floor, pixaçao artists broke in tagged the whole interior. This year, some artists got invited especially (perhaps to avoid the problem through official inclusion). But more on that later.

Some relatively tame examples of pixaçao

The architecture here is really wild. My camera died in the afternoon, so some of the crazy Modernist stuff is going to be left to the imagination (though think strange cantilevers and raw concrete slabs). Here are some examples just from our neighbourhood:

The skyline is 360 degrees. Everywhere you look you see more and more buildings.

We walked down to the Bienal at around 9ish. It sits in the fabulous Parque do Ibirapuera in the Ciccillo Matarazzo pavilion designed by Oscar Niemeyer. This building is made for art.

I'll talk a bit more about the work on the Bienal when I have had a closer look. But here is a work by Ai Weiwei, Zodiac Heads/Circle of Animals, consisting of oversize reproductions of the heads which used to adorn the Old Summer Palace in Beijing, before being destroyed in the Opium Wars:

Chilling after a hard days looking:

In the afternoon we went to Liberdade. It's the biggest Japanese community outside of Japan. There was a Sunday market, and I ate a fantastic Udon soup from a stall.

I'm not sure how I ordered this, because there is very little English spoken. Apparently, I have enough Portuguese to say "One Udon Soup , please."

And then home on the efficient metro.

I'll post some more images tonight, as we also managed to squeeze in a visit to the enormous Cathedral.

Chad´s São Paulo Diary: Wide-Eyed

Sunday 24th October
It´s just before 7 in the morning, and I am uncharacteristically awake. This time zone thing is pretty bizarre.

First sight of Brazil coming into Guarulhos Airport

The flight was long and arduous, with the Wedding Singer on repeat, and a lot of cloud outside. But as we came down to land I got the first sight of Brazil. Green and hilly.

Things get interesting already: I lose my custom declaration form (How?) while one of my companions on the trip Mohau loses his passport in his pocket. But we get through alright, grab a couple of cabs and head out. The road from Guarulhos Airport to Sao Pãulois stunning, and really gives you a first sense of the city. High-rises in the distance, palm trees, and lush flowering purple green things. We´re staying pretty centrally in a suburb called Vila Mariana, and to get there we head through the centre of town. It´s awesome, an architect´s wet dream. Modernist brutalist concrete next to tiny colonial buildings, next to Japanese pagoda style stuff. The scale just keeps on shifting. And suddenly between two enormous shiny glass skyscrapers a little house straight from the Alps. I couldn´t get a good picture, because it was dusky and taxi-drivers here follow the archetype. They drive bloody fast. (In fact, even Saturday night traffic is crazy. Hundreds of cars speeding down central highways. Bridges and tunnels and crossovers)

Went for a wander around the streets and dinner, beer and sleep. Heading off to the Biennale tomorrow.

Some of my companions, drinking beer and shaking off the post-flight blues.

Chad Rossouw's São Paulo Diary: Pre-flight Jitters

São Paulo is the seventh largest city in the world. You could fit half the population of South Africa into the city. Or 4 and a bit Jo'burgs.

It still hasn't really sunk in that I'll be flying out there on Saturday. But the ticket is booked, the money is changed, so I guess it is happening. I'm going as part of my Master's programme at Michaelis to see the Biennale. Its one of the major perks of this degree, and an exceptionally generous gesture from the school.

The São Paulo Biennale is one of the longest running and biggest biennales outside of the US or Europe. This seems really significant as an artist working outside of those spaces. After the 2008 Biennale was a strange beast (self-critical biennale with no budget) and not particularly well received, I'm curious to see what the curatorial team pulls together this year. The line up is massive, with more than 160 artists from around the world. The theme too is broad, dealing with the political in art. The title is "Há sempre um copo de mar para um homem navegar" (There's always a cup of sea to sail in), a line from the poet Jorge de Lima. I'm going to try with this diary to share some of the experiences of the art and the city. I'll try and keep it fresh everyday with loads of pictures and interesting commentary.

Unless, of course, the caipirinha's get me.

K Smith in Moscow

Kathryn Smith is the only South African-based participant in Qui Vive? II Moscow Biennale of Young Art, which opens in Moscow on July 1. The biennale will present the work of some 500 artists from all over the world, the majority from Russia and Europe, in a number of venues all over the city of Moscow. See http://www.youngart.ru/en/

Context
It was towards the end of 2009 when I received a notice requesting applications for a biennale in Moscow I had not heard of before. Called Qui Vive?, it was to be the second presentation of a biennale of ‘young’ art. I immediately warmed to the title, which means to be on the alert, vigilant; historically equivalent to “To whose party do you belong?'” or “Whose side do you support?” It seemed like the recipe for an interesting collection of work that would have something to say, a position to declare. I made an application without thinking too much about it. I was interested to visit Moscow (who wouldn’t be) and also to think about another version of my project ‘In Camera’ where I could work specifically with the story of Andrei Chikatilo (watch Chris Gerolmo’s haunting film Citizen X before you stumble onto any weird websites).

Some months later I was notified that the project was accepted, and would feature on Darya Pyrkina’s exhibition ‘Glob(E)scape’, to be installed at ArtPlay Design Centre. Some online research attempts did not produce very much, and having to rely on Google Translate to understand the Russian made for some amusing interludes. My communication with the organisers and their assistants was prompt and detailed, but did occasionally end up being a bit confusing, what with technical matters being discussed and translated back and forth between Russian and English. There was to be no support for flights, but the biennale would cover accommodation. Although they also offered to ship works, I wanted to make a new suite of drawings, which would mean carrying them as part of my luggage as their work would not be complete in time. After a pretty terrifying experience in Stockholm last year, presenting the same project (it worked out wonderfully but the communication with the gallery was extremely difficult), I also realised I would have to make what was an extremely hardware-heavy project much more portable and flexible than its previous iteration, and so set about trying to find out who could assist and I was confident that it would be an amazing experience regardless of what could go wrong. The biennale team are very young – in their early twenties – but seem to possess an admirable energy and will and I want to be a part of this.

June 14, 2010
It’s less than two weeks before I am supposed to arrive in Moscow and the promised support for my flight has not yet materialised. And I must still apply for a visa. What to do? Coming very close to cancelling the whole operation, the Dean’s office at the University of Stellenbosch comes to the rescue and I suddenly have a flight. They have never once let me down and I am grateful for such a supportive environment in which to work. The visa is no problem - the biennale have organised it through the Russian Ministry of Culture and the Russian consulate in Cape Town has a telex about my participation, so the process is hassle-free.

June 22, 2010
My flight departs on June 25 (3 days away) and I have just received an email from the biennale to say they have moved my venue to a space called Proekt Fabrika (the Factory Project). I check it out online and it looks great. Instead of staying in a hotel, I will now stay in the residency apartment of the project. This sounds perfect to me. I had never seen images of the other space, so it’s no real problem. The only worry is that I was initially planning a room of 20 sq/m, and this space is now 120sq/m! Fortunately I went a bit mad with the drawings and ended up making them far bigger, and making more, than I had anticipated. Now it seems I will not have to edit them. I still don’t have photographs of the space, only a floorplan, so I cannot see if there are clean walls, windows, or what condition it is in. I have assurance of technical support, but just in case, I pack a mini-toolkit and every conceivable manner of fixing the unframed drawings to whatever surface I can imagine.

Lists for the Listless

by Paul Edmunds

I knew the 'plane was headed home when I caught sight of a Sunday Times headline in the galley. It could have been from 2 months ago: threat of strike action during the World Cup. After a mad dash through OR Thambo and a little hitch at customs, we boarded our connecting flight to Cape Town to find in front of us Archbishop Emeritus Tutu and behind us Badhi Chaabaaan, reminding us of the tightrope we walk, tautly strung and twitching side to side from hope to cynicism.

All of this gave me pause to reflect, and what I came up with is this, which I've named after a piece by Paul Krassner (thanks), but which, after 20 hours on an aircraft, may well have been called 'Lists for the Listing'.

Fauna (various):
- Red-tailed hawk
- Bluejays
- Northern Cardinals
- Two raccoons dozing in Central Park
- Debbie Harry
- Lenny Kaye
- Chipmonks (much smaller than I thought, more mouse than squirrel)
- Pinellated woodpecker

You can't see Lenny Kaye, but he's there, just behind Debbie Harry

Music we wigged out to:
- Apples in Stereo
- Generationals
- Jim Campilongo
- Andy Friedman
- Natalia Zukerman
- Holopaw

Weird but good weird:
- A ferret on a leash in a bicycle basket
- A symposium on the Grateful Dead and New York at the New York Society for Ethical Culture
- If you watch the Tony Awards you'll see me atop a rock in Central Park claiming to be 'King of the hill'. This should really be 'Other weird' but it's everyone's dream to be on TV in America, no?

Other weird:
- Artisanal pencil sharpening
- A bog roll ad compelling me to 'Enjoy the Go'. (OK. Thanks)
- Bathrooms in every restaurant have a sign that says: 'All employees must wash their hands before returning to work'. (If you look closely you'll see there's an asterix at the end, and then if you hunt around the bathroom you'll find its friend on a sign which states: 'All employers must have a sign which says "All employees must wash their hands before returning to work".') Honest.

This is a rip off! They do it for $11.50 down the road

Things I don't want to know:
- What exactly a 'Philly cheeseteak' is

Wild:
- Being rear-ended by a hipster on a brakeless fixed gear bike because I stopped at a red light
- Using the Dyson hand dryer at MoMA

A Dyson hand dryer on Monday

Museums of extraordinary interest (but you knew that):
Dia: Beacon
MoMA
The New York Historical Society

Artists I had previously not known or to whom I had paid less attention:
Meredith James
Hilary Berseth
Wes Lang
Marina Abramovic
The Romans
Sol LeWitt (doh!)

With that I leave you and extend, once more, my thanks to Jack Ginsberg and the Ampersand Foundation for the invaluable opportunity afforded to us. So long...

From the Left Bank to the Right Brain

by Paul Edmunds

It was completely coincidental that I visited the Gagosian's 'Claude Monet: Late Work' and Pace Gallery's 'Carsten Nicolai: Moiré' on the same morning. Both artists ostensibly explore the optical experience, and, in retrospect, both have engaged with the nature of artmaking in their practice.

On paper, Carsten's was the show which should have really appealed to me. He has a bit of that left-brained, rational approach to making art that I like to think my practice shares. Nicolai is ostensibly very hip, involved with nightclubs, music, and makes whacky works with jellyfish and an architectural proposal so bold as to alter one of the city's sacred cows: Frank Lloyd Wright's untouchable Guggenheim.

The Guggenheim tomorrow (possibly)

With Monet, I guess, it depends who's asking.

I've never doubted that he was the father of modern painting, and all the work in that lineage, from Jackson Pollock to pure Greenbergian abstraction, has always appealed to me. That might have to do with how it was taught to me in art school, and that it seemed a lot more exciting than early Renaissance painting (in light of an earlier experience I may have to revise this too). On the other hand, his work is so darned pretty and we're taught to mistrust that. Also, it's not that far a leap from Monet to this:

Claude Monet: 'It wasn't me'

Or is it? Perhaps too much is made of the relationship between early experiments in photography and the gestural colour mélange characteristic of much Impressionism; and maybe this detracts from the likes of Monet whose painting appears so uncalculated and so born of an instinctive response to what he saw.

Carsten's monochromatic exploration of the moiré effect is doubtlessly engaging and provides plenty of visual candy for the likes of me. In one work he creates interference by stretching black chords across a wall, shining a light on them to produce parallel shadows behind. This light moves up and down on a track, causing the shadows to move. In addition, the 'wall' is actually made of latex which inflates and deflates continually causing the shadows to warp, sending shifting patterns of interference across the chords. A lot of trouble, but a bit contrived, perhaps?

Nicolai's claim that his work does the groundwork for scientific and aesthetic exploration of the effect is a little tenuous, and I remain uncertain of where he thinks this can go, and how it goes further than what anyone has done before. I'm not sure that he reaches a conclusion, and I'm not sure that leaving that up to the viewer is likely to yield any results.

Perhaps the work's value lies in the fact that Nicolai undertakes these experiments and sets up conditions for these experiences in an artmaking context. And it is great to see ink drawings, LED's, inflatable PVC walls and brain-warping computer graphics, but ultimately, it's a little like a sculpture at a science fair, only here the scientists are wearing black coats.

I don't think Monet set out to explore colour, light and surface in a predetermined way, it was just that the way he saw things, and how he articulated his observations, disassembled painting's conventions and reconstructed the practice in such a way as to explore its very nature. But he did this without putting a full stop (or a period, as we say here) at the end of his sentence. Now there's progress!

So, while the way may be fraught with uncertainty, some things are unchanging. Like happens all too often these days, I was reminded of my age at the Monet show when I found myself wondering what it cost to insure.

My very own theme park

by Paul Edmunds

Went to the Museum of Art and Design on Columbus Circle where I saw a fantastic piece by Tim Hawkinson, and another by Alastair Mackie. Downstairs was an exhibition of bespoke handmade bicycles, including some beautiful machines by the inimitable Jeff Jones. Later I strolled up to the the New York Historical Society to pick up a button badge for the Dark Star Orchestra concert on Saturday night. Walked through Chelsea on my way back home and stopped in at a whole bunch of galleries. Made it home in time to listen to an interview with Joey Ramone on KEXP on the occasion of his would-be birthday. Went out to dinner at a vegan restaurant with a gallerist.

Did anyone say 'focus group'?

Tim Hawkinson, Point

Classic Rock

by Paul Edmunds

There are some things they won't tell you about New York. Firstly, you'll need a five-sided spanner if you want to open up a fire hydrant for a summer shower. Secondly, if you go near a park in the summer, you will hear a saxophone. Something they will tell you though, wherever you go, is that youth is wasted on the young.

In order not to waste what there is left of my youth (not much, actually), we headed to the Met, largely, I will tell you, to see 'Big Bambu', this season's installation by New Jersey-based Mike and Doug Starn. I mean, what's not to like? A large sprawling bamboo structure atop a stuffy old museum? Made by guys with tattoos and named after an album by Cheech and Chong?

Big Bambu

The thing is, that was the less attractive part of our visit. We kind of got hung up on the Classical antiquities. Honestly. Hell, I learned about this in high school, in Art History and Latin (yes, I know, but it's not that surprising is it?), in History of Art at art school as well as in 'Classical Civilisation' which was most often taken by Fine Art students because it overlapped with History of Art. I really didn't pay much attention, it was just something to be got through.

In a later part of my receding youth I wandered the halls of the Louvre several times, which is not short of such antiquities either. It was vaguely interesting, I guess.

A Roman sculpture yesterday

So it was with great surprise that I felt myself so drawn to 2000 year old marble busts, lapidry, wall painting, and work in glass and gold. It felt like a glimpse into a world where artisanship was raised to supreme artistry, where patronage of the arts was quite the norm. It's well accepted that this was a society at its peak, and what remains is an invaluable record of such a society's cultural production. Oh, and Western society pretty much based its philosophy and law on theirs too.

The Starn ploy is brilliant. Draw crowds of people up through the museum (where many of them are led blankly by an iPhone held aloft) into this edgy, fresh construction on the rooftop where they can all feel important. Or as a woman I would call a 'kugel' back home, said into her phone as she walked past me with a glass of something bubbly: 'I am in heaven!'. The thing is, after all the extraordinary craftsmanship downstairs, and that glimpse into a society where life revolved around cultural production, the arts and philosophy, the bamboo construction looked kind of messy.

On the other hand, a couple of weeks ago we went out to listen to some music with a guy who knows about these things. After a very long pizza we set off on foot for The Living Room, passing by the Bowery Ballroom. Our host started begging the doorman there to let us have a peak inside, in the hope of catching whoever may have been playing. The doorman was almost too eager to let us in, as if to say, 'You asked for it'.

Onstage were rock 'n roll histrionics of the most dramatic and cliched sort. We caught the band in the midst of their grand apopleptic finale. While the bass player windmilled like Pete Townsend, the drummer beat up a storm and the androgynous lead singer slunk off stage, the guitarist somehow managed to climb up onto the venue's gallery where he began humping his guitar against the railings. With dramatic flair the singer reappeared wrapped in a large banner covered in pictures of himself. His face emerged jawa-style and he introduced the band, leaving himself for last:'Justin Fuckin' Stanter'.

We left there speechless with laughter and excitement, but able to appreciate with the benefit of our advanced years the self-belief and serious intentions of everyone there, as well as the shallow, unchecked energy of youth. The Living Room was an entirely different story. The Jim Campilongo Electric Trio were talented, funny and quite literally mind-warping, playing all styles of music but playing none of it straight (thanks to TONY for that description). It's hard to explain.

I got a little sad there, lamenting the fact that it doesn't really pay enough for anyone to be that good at home, and it doesn't pay enough to have that kind of sound system in a venue a little larger than a lounge. It's nothing like Ancient Rome. But then I remembered, some things don't change anywhere, at any time. Just the other day in a chichi little basement Mexican restaurant, I heard the Gypsy Kings.

I know what The Artist is getting for Christmas: I have felt her presence

By Paul Edmunds

MoMA is currently recovering from a 'perfect storm', I'm told. My Inside Source tells me that such a storm is taking place for a number of reasons.

First and foremost amongst these was the Tim Burton show, which closed a week ago. So popular was this that visitors had to book entrance times once they had entered MoMA, and the show ran for 5 months, a very rare occurrence at the museum.

At the same time, the museum has been staging a major Marina Abramovic retrospective entitled 'The Artist is Present'. This includes a performance she has been staging since March 14, and some re-enactments of earlier pieces by ersatz Marina Abramovic's.

There is also a major Henri Cartier-Bresson retrospective, and of most relevance to us, William Kentridge's 'Five Themes'.

And did I mention Picasso?

So, as my Inside Source states it, between the Tim Burton show, Picasso, one of the giants of 20th century photography, Kentridge, all the 'naked people upstairs' performing Abramovic's earlier works (including Imponderabilia where one is forced to squeeze between two naked strangers), and the artist's current performance which invites participation from visitors, the museum has seen upwards of 17 000 people passing through its doors daily. Of these, up to 6 000 have been visiting the Kentridge show.

The latter includes the wonderful model theatre playing Learning the Flute and the quite extraordinary, completely automated theatre and animated projection Black Box. I'm ashamed to say that I had previously seen neither of these works.

Getting back to Marina Abramovic, let me be upfront and say that I generally circle cautiously around performance work before approaching. I must be honest again and say that is largely due to my fear of 'audience participation' which is well founded. In one performance I found myself tied up by a topless woman (whom I knew, but not that well), and once I found myself with a Brazilian standing on my shoulder juggling burning torches.

Abramovic has completely changed me in that respect. However, I'm afraid she has taken the polish off any other performance I will ever see. The documentation of past works of hers, particularly the series she produced with Ulay, has been nothing short of illuminating. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that even such a hardened, non-romantic like myself was nearly reduced to a jibbering wreck when viewing the final work they produced together. It seemed, as I took it in, that the story of their collaboration was a love story wrought in a furnace the heat of which I have never encountered.

'The Artist is Present' (which you can view live here) is surprisingly powerful. This is in no small part due to Abramovic's presence, which is obviously an integral part of the work. A large portion of her performance hinges on her particular brand of presence, one which is both cerebrally and physically remarkable. She really does seem to occupy time and space in a particularly impressive and assertive fashion.

In this piece she sits on what seems to be a slightly over-sized chair facing, across a similarly scaled table, another such chair. It is here that visitors are invited to sit and engage her. She wore a long red dress on the day I visited, which dropped onto the floor and spread out, hiding her feet and contact with the ground completely.

It is in part a re-enactment of a work she did with Ulay, where the two sat opposite one another and looked into each other's eyes for some interminable period. Here, the interaction is something other than a staring match, but something more than a friendly engagement across a table. Abramovic has been there since March 14.

You can understand that a visitor, fears of audience participation aside, may want to engage with the artist whose presence is so tangible. You can probably understand too the desire that we each secretly harbour to be the one whose presence is such, the penetration of whose gaze is so powerful, that we break the artist's stride. This would really make us special.

Only one person has so far achieved this. Amir Baradaran engaged Abramovic in a work of his own entitled The Other Artist is Present. Even then, it was only when he proposed marriage that she reacted, and then it was with a smile.

My own visit to MoMA met with a little less success. My Inside Source offered us a ride in the Staff Elevator, which we accepted. The doors opened to reveal an elevator the size of a Gauteng garage. I stepped in to find only one other person there, and he was wearing the same shirt as me.

Mayday!

So it was the first of May on Saturday, and to that end my lovely wife and I went to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens for the annual Cherry Blossom Festival, known as Sakura Matsuri. Possibly due to the very wet winter, most of the trees had lost their blossoms already but there was no lack of action.

We caught the end of a wildly energetic Taiko drumming set and also saw some 'Japanese Gypsy Rock' music which was better than it sounds. There were loads of kids, both Japanese and not, dressed as Manga characters and Harajuku boys and girls. We strolled around the beautiful Hill and Pond Garden, ate a slice of cherry pie and exchanged niceties with all the other people who were out enjoying a beautiful spring day.

The day's beauty and innocence were slightly disturbed by an unusual event however. Shortly after we had settled down on a soft grassy bank, some commotion roused me from my would-be-slumber.

I had heard about New York's red-tailed hawks before but never expected to encounter so gruesome a sighting as this. On a branch, metres away from me, landed a hawk with a very much twitching and very 'nonplussed' rodent of a large variety, a squirrel perhaps. Said hawk dispatched his lunch without ceremony and tucked into some hors d'oeuvres before moving off to another spot where he was not the subject of 250 cameras wielded by a bunch of Harajuku and Russian tourists. My favourite NYC blogger captured a similar event recently:


New York's most famous Red-Tailed Hawk is known as Pale Male and he has been nesting on a very chichi 5th Avenue building adjacent to Central Park since 2002. Pale Male has apparently sired 26 chicks with several mates over the years. The building's owners were a little 'nonplussed' about this at some point, and removed the nest, before being seiged by a barrage of twitching New Yorkers (including Mary Tyler Moore), who demanded the return and preservation of Pale Male's abode.

Talk of blond birds brings me to the next item on my busy calendar last Saturday - Debbie Harry. After attending a Maypole dance, I followed the procession of dancers to Deitch Projects for the Shepard Fairey opening. He's the guy who produced this image when Courtney Love was sentenced to Anger Management classes:

And this, when the Obama kids were petitioning Pops for a Portugese water dog:

New Yorkers are not afraid to stand 'on line', as they say, and this they were doing in great numbers in order to get a glimpse of the work. The line snaked three deep all the way around the block and didn't appear to be moving. Deitch Projects closes after this show and director Jeffery Deitch is moving to LA to take up his post at MOCA there, so I guess this is part of the reason for the excitement. Besides, New York has always done pretty well at elevating artists from the street to the gallery; see Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat for example.

I had a Dim Sum date later and I'm not as good as standing 'on line' as New Yorkers, so I retired to the doorway of an abandoned building across the road to watch the parade (This doorway, incidentally, did not reek of piss, and I attribute this either to Giuliani or the fact that New Yorkers have bladders like airships.)

I was joined there by a girl from New York and her boyfriend from Milan. It was he who identified Lapo Elkann, 'playboy' and heir to the Fiat fortune, as the driver who pulled up in a Ferrari and parked badly in a spot just vacated by a black SUV that appeared to placemarking for him.

This was not nearly as exciting as Debbie Harry though. I would say she was tottering on vertiginous heels, but so broken up is the surface of Wooster Street, that you would even totter in a pair of Whoppers. I didn't really see what she was wearing to be honest, but it certainly wasn't this.

It was then that I realised I was ahead and should quit. I had hoped to meet Shepard and propose that we collaborate on a work. In his absence I've just gone ahead by myself, and here's what I came up with:


Paul Edmunds, New York 2010