Who’s Afraid of Conceptual Art?
People often react negatively when encountering conceptual art. Reactions range from the indifferent to the dismissive to the outright hostile. I am less concerned with those who indifferently walk on by looking for something else. Rather the actively aggressive naysayers who charge such art to be “inauthentic” and “insincere” bother me. They argue that certain [...]
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What does it mean to kill an animal in the name of art?
While I was visiting Finland in September I ran into two artist projects that involved the death of animals: Terike Haapoja’s video installation at Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, titled Community, presents life-size video projections of real-time infrared images of the energy leaving the bodies of recently dead animals (see http://www.terikehaapoja.net/2009/). As the [...]
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On Disappearing
By Jan Estep
“When I go I leave no trace. The beauty of the country is becoming a part of me.”
—Everett Ruess (1914-1934)
“…an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”
—Federal Wilderness Act, 1964
In the summer of 2001, I visited Davis [...]