Forthcoming

The first paragraph of my review of Alice Maher's major show 'Becoming' at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, published in the April edition of Frieze 2013.

This selection of works by Alice Maher, stretching from when she emerged in the late 1980s to today, was not a standard retrospective as such. Instead, the exhibition figured new relationships within the artist’s oeuvre, a rationale that was made clear by its title, ‘Becoming’. Maher’s interest in capturing the material qualities of transformation and the capacity of images and objects to register beguiling, resonant interest is not conducive to a historic or academic overview. Furthermore, as curator Sean Kissane notes in his accompanying essay, ‘Becoming’ contributes to the ongoing narrative of IMMA’s temporary space at the historic Earlsfort Terrace (which, among other uses, was the premises of University College Dublin for more than 100 years). One could, however, also argue that the significance of Maher’s career for contemporary art in Ireland over the last 20 years is not reducible to the details of its parts...

Myself and Steve Dutton's - of the University of Lincoln - exhibition of 20 artists has been extended to May 26th at the Bangkok Art and Culture Center. It's titled 'Possession (1)' and artists often contact me after a show opens. Here are two works by Justin Mills:

'God As Birth, Life, Death', 2010 rubber-modified bitumen, oil, acrylic, on canvas, 100 x 100 cm (credit: Rirkrit Tiravanija, 'Born, Live, Die', 2010, printed matter on a table)

'God As 18th Century Persian Calligraphy', 2010, rubber-modified bitumen, oil, acrylic, on canvas, 100 x 100 cm (credit: Abdul Majid Talighani, Persian Shikasteh Style Calligraphy, 18th Century)

Liam Morgan sent me the following image and email this morning:

It's a found-object piece I did entitled 1992.  The found objects are a bunch of negatives I found in an abandoned building, along with some bits of old wood I came across.  The pictures were from the construction of the building; they were taken in 1992. The photographer is unknown, but it would have been someone from the construction company taking 'evidence' photographs of the work in progress.  Of course the building was never finished. 

They were taken with one of those cameras which stamps the date on the negatives.  So, assuming the camera was set up properly, we know that the images were made on Feb 26th, 1992 and the negatives sat in the unfinished building until I picked them up 20 years later.  There are a lot of aspects of this that interest me.  Initially, that these were 'disposable images'; they were made to demonstrate evidence of a problem.  Once the problem was described to whoever needed to know about the problem, the images were no longer useful to anyone.  But because they are physical objects, their life went beyond their intended purpose and they changed and took on a life of their own.  And then I came across them and turned them into something very different from their original author's intended lot-in-life.  

In someways this is a pondering on the massive paradigm shift we have seen in the way people produce and consume photographs; images have become a means of communicating experience in (almost) real-time, rather than something captured to be kept and reminisced at some point in the future.  They are a spoken conversation, rather then the written letter they once were.  In fact, the photographs that make up 1992 were made in a similar spirit to how many people create photographs now; they are unintenional fore-runners of this great digital shift of visual literacy.   

Portrait of Me

Manuel Ocampo: My article in C-Arts, March 2011

http://www.c-artsmag.com/betac-artsmag/index.php/articles/view/163

One of my soon-to-be-curated favorite artists: Yvonne Hindle

Jakkai Siributr in his studio, March 6 2011

Nospace Gallery, March 3rd 2011

I am back!

Singapore Biennale 2011
Vernissage Programme Highlights

.....

One Way or the Other: Asian American Art Now

Asia Society and Museum

One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now
At Asia Society and Museum 725 Park Avenue (at 70th Street)http://www.AsiaSociety.org

“the Asia Society’s latest,and possibly best, foray into contemporary art.” Roberta Smith, The New York Times

Artists in the Exhibition Michael Arcega Xavier Cha Patty Chang Binh Danh Mari Eastman Ala Ebtekar Chitra Ganesh Glenn Kaino Geraldine Lau Jiha Moon Laurel Nakadate Kaz Oshiro Anna Sew Hoy Jean Shin Indigo Som Mika Tajima Saira Wasim Co-Curators Melissa Chiu Karin Higa Susette S. Min

One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now brings together 17 artists from across the country who challenge and extend the category of Asian American art. The title of the exhibition, inspired by the 1970s Blondie hit, suggests that there has never been a formulaic way of making or seeing art, either back then or now. Instead, these artists initiate a new set of conversations that highlight the multidimensional ways of conceptualizing and producing art today.The selected artists came of age in various parts of the United States during the late 1970s and 1980s. They have at their disposal a wide array of art historical practices, popular culture references, and local influences. What characterizes much of their art, as distinguished from the work of previous generations, is a freedom to choose, manipulate, and reinvent different kinds of languages and issues, whether formal, conceptual, or political. The works in the exhibition, many of them made especially for this show, reflect this energy. Together, the artists and their work defy a definitive conception of Asian American art.

A fully illustrated catalog, One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now, is available at AsiaStore, http://www.AsiaStore.org For information on related programs, visit the One Way or Another exhibition website or call the Asia Society box office at (212) 517-ASIA.

INTERCITY: URBAN ARTS FOR SOUTH EAST ASIA

VENUE: Galeri Seni Maya
No.12, 1st fl, Jalan Telawi 3, Bangsar Baru, 59100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

DATE: Saturday, 23 September 2006

TIME: 3 PM

An Introduction to META HOUSE, Promotion of Cultural Exchange and International Dialogue

Nico Mesterham, a filmmaker from Berlin based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia will be at Maya Gallery on 23 September 2006, Saturday to introduce META HOUSE (“meta” means “compassion” in Khmer), Cambodia’s first Art & Communication Center and elaborate on the INTERCITY project. Meta House is scheduled to open on 5 January 2007 with an exhibition cum event entitled INTERCITY: URBAN ARTS FOR SOUTH EAST ASIA. Broad ranging creative activities are planned for the opening night and revenue donated to the “Children’s Help Cambodia” Foundation, which is building a children’s village for 96 orphans and vulnerable children in the outskirts of Phnom Penh.

This event will be the start of the first phase (COM.PILING/2007) of a 3-year long project. Within the second phase (COM.MUTING/2008) several SE Asian cities (Bangkok, Hanoi, Saigon, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Manila...) and artists are linked throughout an exchange program and workshops. The third phase (COM.PREHENDING/2009) will result in a catalogue, an interactive DVD and an exhibition in Berlin/Germany.

The three-year project INTERCITY is dedicated to city cultures from Phnom Penh to Berlin – from "New Asia" to “Old Europe", from the glitzy boulevards to the backyards of societies, to the basements and undergrounds and back to the future of our neighbourhoods. How do citizens envisage their living environments and how can they shape them? What skills are needed to survive in a hostile environment? Whose ideas prevail if they are not documented? Can art be a vehicle for social change, or should art be a self-critical discipline that pursues primarily aesthetic ends? What is the relationship between art and mass culture? They are not only encouraging artists, painters, sculptors, filmmakers, photographers, poets, performers or musicians, but also forethinkers, urban planners, architects, politicians, scientists and journalists to contribute something special and unique to the INTERCITY project."

We encourage those interested to attend this talk cum open dialogue to meet with Nico Mesterham and get a better understanding of Meta House’s 3-year plan and how you can be involved. For more info, contact Terry at +6-012 297 2357

Dirty Yoga: 2006 Taipei Biennial

Since the 1960s, people have gradually turned from radical politics and ideologies to a preoccupation with approaches to living, as manifested in the satisfaction of “desire” in our daily lives. Desire has replaced science and ethics as the primary social motivation for progress, while its essence and symbols have undergone constant change. This highlights the role played by consumerism and marketing mechanisms in shaping our perception of what it is we think we want. This expression of desire is also a manifestation of energy. Increased desire leads to greater fear of loss. People today are afraid of losing their health, their beauty, their youth and their wealth. To counter their fear of facing this reality, they invent different spectacular spaces and collective activities centered on the perfection and reinforcement of their lifestyle choices. Gradually, these spaces and activities are replacing abstract religion and turning into a universal belief.

As these broad social changes unfold, the underlying structure of rational thought is also changing. Rational binary logic has long transcended the status of mental tool and become a modality of thought in itself. Our largely dormant capacity to imagine productive thought occurring outside of binary dualisms subtly governs our way of perceiving and interacting with the outside world. With Western civilization slowly loosening its hegemonic grip on the rest of the planet, the power of the binary over our shared humanity shows corresponding signs of crumbling. ‘Them’ can be a useful category only when we possess an equally sharp notion of who ‘us’ is. Otherwise, we are all just ‘us,’ in a confusing and sloppy way, and there is nothing else. Enemies and allies, good and evil, beautiful and ugly, rich and poor…today they shift about on unstable supports, more relativized with each rhetorical effort to incorporate the outmoded codes into the new meta-language of fear and desire.

Through this lens, we will treat Taipei as the epitome of a globalized community, observing the different new and trendy lifestyles that people adopt through the extremely rapid social changes and fashions of living. These lifestyles amply illustrate the complexity of the issues surrounding the satisfaction of desire and the fear of loss. The new lifestyles sought by the contemporary urban population (organic food, reshaping the body, spiritual renewal etc.) suggest a fundamental conflict with existence and progress, and indirectly question the real values of civilization. This also applies to yoga, a burgeoning activity that seems to have moved away from its original spirituality towards an entirely different set of values of existence. It has become the quintessential model and symbol of contemporary lifestyle. From these themes of lifestyle, we will extend the discussion to include economic and political structures, and pose questions about history and about the contempor ary trends of globalization to find out exactly what we desire and exactly what we fear.

In recent years, artists everywhere have begun creating objects and situations that promote a ‘third way’ of understanding the world -- not according to direct opposition of thesis and antithesis, but beginning with a synthesis of the many, and leading to compromise, hybridity, consensus, and other forms of non-oppositional resolution. They are participating in a discourse of ‘between-ness’ that produces hybrid, mutated, nomadic meanings that are always contingent, and often subject to multiple interpretations, just as the noun ‘between-ness” suggests a state of possessing two meanings and neither of those meanings at the same time. While the state of “between-ness,” like a utopia, may never be realized, it often leads to the possibility of understanding and recognition through some kind of confrontation, like that implied by the meanings of the words “restricted” and “dirty” in our daily lives.

Rising up from far less exalted roots, ‘dirty’ is the all-purpose adjective for anything that social propriety cannot endorse. Whether it means being literally unclean or merely too demonstrably prone to lascivious impulses, something that is dirty seems to exist in a state of suspension, while awaiting its ultimate destiny: getting cleaned up. Until that state is achieved, whatever is currently dirty is not entitled to pass through the portals of high culture. Even in cases where the word ‘dirty’ suggests a liminal state where normal restrictions do not apply, the fact that civilization can be measured by our degree of success in expunging dirt from our lives speaks eloquently about the body’s unstoppable trajectory towards a state of inert matter.Coining the title Dirty Yoga for an international biennial of contemporary art is a way of foregrounding some of these inherent discrepancies. By underscoring the latent discord between the body’s living perfection and its ultimate state of demise, Dirty Yoga proposes tossing all of our preconceptions about the subject of mind-body relations overboard. With its echo of the various modernized branches of yoga practice, Dirty Yoga proposes a hypothetical state of heightened spiritual engagement with one’s lower order of impulses and actions. Although according to our latest information, ‘dirty yoga’ does not yet exist as a practice in any of the hundreds (if not thousands) of yoga centers opening up in the world’s major cities, the co-curators of the 2006 Taipei Biennial are convinced that it is only a question of time before it is widely available.

The Exhibition encompasses a diverse range of contemporary artists, both Taiwanese and international.Artists: Alexandre ARRECHEA (Cuba/Spain), Monica BONVICINI (Italy/ Germany), CAO Fei (China), E Chen (Taiwan/US), CHOU Meng-te (Taiwan), Jonas DAHLBERG (Sweden), El Perro (Spain), Katharina GROSSE (Germany), GUO Fengyi (China), Subodh GUPTA (India), Emily JACIR (Palestine/US), JUNG Yeondoo (Korea), An-My LE (Vietnam/US), LEE Bul (Korea), Nalini MALANI (India), Yuko MURATA (Japan), Eko NUGROHO (Indonesia), Damian ORTEGA (Mexico), Arthur OU (Taiwan/US), Araya RASDJARMREARNSOOK (Thailand), Mauro RESTIFFE (Brazil), Robin RHODE (S. Africa/Germany), Carolee SCHNEEMANN (US), Shazia SIKHANDER (Pakistan/US), Regina SILVEIRA (Brazil), Valeska SOARES (Brazil), Jennifer STEINKAMP (US), Vivan SUNDARAM (India), Kazuna TAGUCHI (Japan), TAKE2030 (UK). Koki TANAKA (Japan), Francesco VEZZOLI (Italy), VIVA (Taiwan), Nari WARD (Jamaica/US), Hong-Kai WANG (Taiwan/US), Chun-Hui WU (Taiwan)

Architecture and Sculpture

Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg

ArchiSculpture Dialogues between Architecture and Sculpture from the 18th Century to the Present DayKunstmuseum WolfsburgHollerplatz 138440 WolfsburgGermany

info@kunstmuseum-wolfsburg.de
http://www.kunstmuseum-wolfsburg.de

The reciprocal relationship between sculpture and architecture is one of the most exciting artistic phenomena of the 20th century. From its inception in the 19th century, modern sculpture has continually absorbed important new influences from architectural history, such as Aristide Maillol from Classicism or, later, the Constructivists from Gothic. Installation art in the 1970s even transformed sculpture into walk-in architecture, giving the viewer an entirely new perception of their own body. Conversely, in the 1920s architects began to base their building designs on sculptural forms. Current architecture has developed such markedly sculptural qualities that it sometimes appears to continue the history of sculpture.ArchiSculpture, curated by Markus Brüderlin, the new director of the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, explores this process of mutual inspiration in striking spatial displays. Original pieces of art by outstanding sculptors are juxtaposed with models of world architecture. The exhibition includes examples of both disciplines from the past 200 years and brings together the work of around 120 artists.

Notable Thai artists 1: Wit Pimchankanapong

From Perfect Thais series: Perfect Thai passenger.

My Lawrence Chua profile: Art4D May 2006

The interest of Thailand to writers and intellectuals who work from a variety of perspectives is hardly a secret, questions of what is permissible within the country notwithstanding, yet the range and depth of contemporary writing about, or just inspired by, Thai culture can seem surprisingly unnoticed amidst the literature that is promoted within the region. Lawrence Chua is a cultural critic, novelist and academic who has drawn on Thailand throughout his career but his profile here remains somewhat minor. After being raised for his early years in Southeast Asia he grew up in North America and emerged during the late 80s as a writer of note in that part of the world. His output is diverse but underlined by a sense of directness and an exceptional capacity for translating insights and ideas from different traditions into accessible and widely relevant text. With essays such as "Speaking Parts: Silence, Language and the Postcolonial Faggot" Chua explored the power of language and the challenge of silence for disempowered groups, citing Khun Noi Chantawipa Apisuk of sex-workers' rights group EMPOWER on the necessity of language to gain control and avoid exploitation. Or, with 'Blood and Business: The Sweet Science of Thailand's Boxing World’ he builds a commentary on capitalism with highly evocative descriptions of the history and spectacle of Muay Thai. Fiction such as the short story 'Love in a Cold Climate' examines the dynamics of gender, desire and gay male identity for a young Thai couple. With so much divisive theorizing and argumentation over the cultural impact of globalization Chua effortlessly moves across or melds the forms of difference that can trap other writers.

He is currently a Fellow in the History and Theory of Architecture at Cornell University, where he is researching the conjoined genealogies of modernity and the sports stadium.Here Lawrence is concerned with the ways that contemporary experience is, I quote, "mediated by a scopic regime that was historically shaped in such arenas". Wembley Stadium is the particular object of this interest but as a lateral thinker and prolific writer he moves in many directions and was in Chiang Mai during December to present his paper titled (disarmingly enough) 'A Chink in the Works: Building, Dwelling and Translating the Penang Mansion of Zhang Bishi' at the 10th anniversary conference of SEASREP: the Southeast Asian Studies Regional Exchange Program.The conference was titled Southeast Asia, A Global Crossroads and Chua's paper traces the conjunction of modernity and tradition in the construction and design of the so-called Blue Mansion (Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion) in Penang, built by Hakka migrant Zhang Bishi in the late 19th century and subject to a UNESCO conservation award in 2000. Bishi has been described as China's first capitalist and last mandarin; he became a millionaire through various means (plantations, opium syndicates, trading with the Dutch army and navy) and held consular appointments in Singapore and Penang as well as being appointed a supreme mandarin by the Q'ing court. Chua is concerned with how Bishi's national, regional and global interests came to be represented by the Blue Mansion - which includes Gothic, Art Nouveau, Cantonese and Hokkien elements - at the historical juncture when Imperial China was approaching its death and European empires were expanding in Southeast Asia.He explained, "I'm interested in the ways that our lives are effected by and effect the built environment. We're the children, or grandchildren more likely, of a radical process of territorialization that created sovereign nations and colonies in the 19th century. Today we're experiencing another radical spatializing process: globalization. I'm interested in the relationship between these two historical moments. In short, I'm interested in the ways that the built environment conditions our habits and in how those habits, in turn, come to shape our lives".

Thailand has also been a notable source for such considerations and we met to discuss the significance this country holds for him. His 1998 novel Gold by the Inch, for example, entwined stunning descriptionsof Bangkok with accounts of an Asian-American man's return to sites of formative memories, meditations on the nature of migration and academic and popular discourses on colonialism and postcolonialism. The descriptions include 'the city as bitch, a sonorous lullaby of hungry flies', 'a sloppy patchwork of unassimilable stories' and, my personal favorite, the more prosaic 'ugly cities have great futures'. He told me, the most accurate and most simple thing to say is my relationship with Thailand is complicated. I was born in the region, so there's already that very complicated family genealogy. Although I went back a few times as a child, it wasn't until I was in my 20s that I really returned in a conscious way to the region. It was the 1980s and the cultural scene in the U.S. was immersed in the politics of identity. It was eye-opening to me to see the ways that a broad spectrum of Thai society (from artists to minor royalty; from sex workers to young professionals) dealt, and had been dealing, with similar issues of identity in a much more engaging and empowering way. It was an exciting time and for almost every time I was made to feel completely at home, there were moments where I was reminded of the tentative quality of that term. One of my interests in writing Gold by the Inch was how I could construct a novel that would somehow be true to the experience of someone returning 'home' in a way that revealed the many layers involved in the fantasy that there is a 'home' itself".

Chua has said elsewhere, "my background of growing up inside and outside of things, living between continents, nations, cities, houses, language and customs, is hardly remarkable but perhaps it has made [me] more ambivalent about identity, the tidiness of its spaces and the promises of empire". He expanded, "when I arrived in Bangkok in my twenties I fell into a place where I was made to feel empowered and, this sounds weird, liberated. I was struck by the ease with which people moved across boundaries of class and gender.The facility with which people from diverse backgrounds conversed. Possibly this wasn't the way itwas. Possibly I was drunk or high at the time, but I felt as if I was welcome into a discourse that was culturally empowering. Here I was, in a culture that appeared almost continuous with New York in terms of popular culture and yet it was being produced by black people. Nothing about it was marginal. Everyone I met, from noodle stall owners to princelings to bar owners to drag queens to magazine publishers knew that they were the producers of culture, they were at the center of it all. Not only that, they were descended from a long trajectory of cultural producers. Part of it is very simple, I suppose, and has to do with being in a culture where you suddenly realize you form part of the majority. Things weren't being defined for me in relationship to a hegemonic culture. You experience things differently in such a space. For one, you own your language instead of just using it (for better or worse). That was my initial, adoles-cent and mostly uninformed, impression of the place. Later I was exposed to Ajarn Sulak and other intellectuals. They really gave me the language to articulate my experience of conventions of identity. I think Ajarn Chah says it best, a convention is something that appears to be there but really isn't. It may be useful in some situations and even necessary, but it’s not a good idea to get too attached to it".

The comparison between Bangkok and New York would affirm many peoples' view and experience of the former. ‘Globalization has made this continuum obvious. I just read something Thongchai Winichakul wrote about post-Westernization in Thailand. He made the point that there can be no globalization without localization. Many interesting things can happen in that localization that recast the relationship of the local as being a merely passive space'.This is a point that has great pertinence for Thailand, the US academic Brian McGrath gave a university lecture last year and pointed out how Thai people can bring their lifestyles to all those new suburban estates popping up in places like Rangsit. So now Greek columns share space with spirit houses and food vendors and colors and decorations emerge on the houses in a way that wouldn't be allowed in most Western contexts."This is something that also interests a lot of Thai intellectuals. The invention of Thailand is inextricably linked with the invention of modernity and the instrumentality of classical forms to legitimize both nationhood and colonialism. During his tour of Europe, King Rama V wasn't that impressed with the modern architecture he saw but he was wowed by the baroque and rococo, all those things the moderns wanted to sweep under the rug. When he visited a casino in Monte Carlo he wrote a letter back home saying how beautiful it was and that 'it should have been a palace'. It's interesting to consider how the 19th century growth of Britain as both a nation and an empire are entwined and the ways that the classical was used by the British to establish both their own legitimacy as imperial rulers and as national subjects. I think a similar thing was happening in Siam at the time".

Finally, as a reviewer of Asian art and film since long before such a practice became fashionable, I ask Chua his view of Thai artists. His preoccupations remain consistent, "I'm inspired by Apichatpong Weerasathakul?s work and his architectural approaches to narrative. The experience of watching his films, even Iron Pussy, is a bit like navigating spaces in Bangkok or other Southeast Asian cities.The distinctions between inside and outside are sharp, sudden, and yet seem so ambiguous. It's like walking down a very busy, tight soi and suddenly turning into a gate and finding yourself in the middle of a garden and then moving into a dark, cool sala. I'm also a great admirer of the editing in his films, which is the work of another fine young filmmaker, Lee Chatametikool".

World Art

World Art Art World: Changing Perspectives on Modern and Contemporary ArtKeynote address, Friday, April 28, 6:30 p.m.Symposium, Saturday, April 29, 10:00 a.m.–4:30 p.m.

The Museum of Modern Art hosts its second annual graduate symposium, World Art Art World: Changing Perspectives on Modern and Contemporary Art, which examines the effects of accelerated globalization on art and scholarship. Papers presented and discussed address new forms, subjects, and interpretations of world art and culture.

Keynote Address: Friday, April 28, 6:30 p.m.Professor Wu Hung of the University of Chicago will present the keynote address. Professor Wu is the Harrie H. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor of Art History, East Asian Languages and Civilizations; Director, Center for the Art of East Asia; and Consulting Curator, Smart Museum of Art.Symposium:

Saturday, April 29, 10:00 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Morning session Larissa Buchholz, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York “The Global Rules of Art”

Daniel Ricardo Quiles, The Graduate Center, City University of New York "Some Aspects of the South American Question: Tucumแn Arde’s Bid for an Argentine Public Sphere"

Jennifer Josten, Yale University"From Local to Global: Recovering Gabriel Orozco’s Naturaleza recuperada"

Afternoon session Roberta Bonetti, University of Bologna and l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Science Sociales, Paris "In Transit: Fantasy Coffins between Ghana, the Art Market and Museums"

Wendy Morris, Institute for Research in the Arts, University of Leuven, Belgium" (Un)Lived Situations: Mem๓rias อntimas Marcas"

Leora Maltz, Harvard University "William Kentridge's Rock and the 'Weight of Europe Leaning on the Tip of Africa'"

Tickets can be purchased at the lobby information desk and the Film and Media desk at The Museum of Modern Art or online at http://www.ticketweb.com

Please visit http://www.moma.org/education/symposium.html for updated information about the graduate symposium.

Favourite Artist 2: Lisa Yuskavage

Lady Military Boys

Thai military to declassify transgenderism as a “mental disorder”From this year, Thai transgenders (and transsexuals) who are called up for mandatory military conscription will no longer have to suffer a “mental disorder” label being slapped on them.

The drafting of new recruits this year begins April 1-10 nationwide. The landmark agreement was reached recently by Ministry of Defence, a group of local LGBT organisations and the National Human Rights Commission of Thailand. Advocates expect the ministry to eventually drop transgenderism from a list of diseases used in exempting conscripts. In the old-aged list, the word transgenderism, when translated into Thai, could mistakenly fall into the same category as hermaphrodism (a person with two sexual organs). Up till now, post-operative transgenders (or transsexuals) are classified as having a mental disorder as their reassigned gender is not reflected on official documents. The terms described in exemption certificates of transgenders could also be varied, depending on the personal view of the doctors in charge and their choice of terms. Thailand's celebrity transsexual kick-boxer Parinya Charoenphol, known as Nong Toom, was registered as having “a mental disorder-with the mind of a woman” in 2002, while another, Samart Meecharoen, was registered as having "permanent mental disorder" in 2005. Samart said she have had problems when looking for a job. The label causes problems for transgenders not only for applying for a job, but also legal complications such as insurance, passport and contracts as they are considered mentally disabled persons. Many employers are found using the draft exemption certificate issued to them, as an excuse not to hire them, said Naiyana Supapeng from the Human Rights Commission.

In April, men aged 21 have to show up at draft venues for physical examinations. The drafting of new recruits this year begins April 1-10 nationwide. In Bangkok alone with 50 districts open for the drafting, there is an average of one transgender per one district, said deputy army spokesman Colonel Chalermphol Thammasoonthorn, a spokesman of the ministry.As legal amendments will take a substantial amount of time and advocates want the new ruling to go into effect as soon as possible to benefit those who have been called up for conscription this year, the military has agreed not to classify transgendered conscripts with breast enlargement or who have undergone sex change surgery as having a "mental disorder." While they will be exempted, military doctors and officials will have to adopt other terms such as “problems with body features” or “body type” as a temporary solution.

However, pre-operative transgenders still have to go through the draft and physical check-up as other conscripts. While regular conscripts undergo physical examinations and assessment as a batch, transgenders who have undergone hormone therapy and have begun sex reassignment surgery will be examined in private rooms and will not be required to go shirtless as other recuits are required to. The military has also held training for officers at the drafting venues nationwide. Newspapers and the media have previously featured transgenders with bare breasts being ridiculed in the drafting venues. Naiyana said for those who were given “mental disorder” in their certificates, they are encouraged to file legal complaints to make cases so that the court will open hearing and the process of legal changes will hastened. Thailand’s mental health department has announced in 2002 that homosexuality is not regarded as a mental disease to reflect World Health Organization’s 1992 resolution on the same subject.

Funny Bunny

Telepresence & Bio Art: Networking Humans, Rabbits, and Robots by the artist Eduardo Kac.

This book presents a compendium of writings spanning 12 years by Kac that explore the multiple implications of his own art. Crisscrossing the boundaries of inventor/artist and questioning basic notions of creation, Kac writes to investigate internet art, robotics, and bio art.

While best known for genetically engineering a live rabbit to glow in the dark, Kac has worked on a range of projects that push the boundaries of new media art towards merging with the fields of electronics, telerobotics, and biotechnology. As an artist utilizing new technologies, Kac performs detailed research into past methods and approaches writing as integral to his work. He stresses a commitment to communication in order to create artwork where the active participation of the viewer forms an essential component in the reception of the piece as opposed to a more traditional model where information flows one-way from the artwork to viewer.

The writings in Telepresence & Bio Art are arranged to reflect different aspects of Kac's artistic practice. They include essays that trace the development of telecommunications art since the beginning of the twentieth century, offer a theoretical framework to understand robotic art as separate from sculpture, and consider the significance of the Internet for the future of art. The book also includes texts that discuss the creation of new life in art. Kac's signature essays, including "The Dialogic Imagination in Electronic Art", "Transgenic Art", and "GFP Bunny", are all collected in this volume.

Published by University of Michigan Press, the book is 320 pages with 145 photographs and diagrams with 8 color plates that include previously unpublished images. The forward is by James Elkins, a professor of Art History at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, who specializes in the history and theory of images in art, science, and nature.

More information about the artist is available at his website: ekac.org For additional information, please contact James Hoff, Director of Development at (212) 925-0325 or at jhoff @ printedmatter.org.

Archipeinture: Artists build architecture at Le Plateau, Paris

Between the instantaneous metropolitan diagrams of Julie Mehretu (Ethiopia), the clashing contemporary urban worlds of Franz Ackermann (Germany), the realist architectural paintings of Yves Bélorgey (France), and the utopian housing complexes of Berdaguer and Péjus (France), the representation of the modern city has grown to be a theme of vast importance in the contemporary art world.

Created in collaboration with the Camden Arts Center of London, the exhibition “Archi/Peinture” has thus been doubly conceived to better grasp the various contexts (socio-political, cultural and architectural) in which the two arts centers currently function. A thematic exhibition, “Archi/Peinture” intends to explore the different ways in which urban architecture and contemporary art tend to influence one another, including: the use of painting as an architectural form in public or private spaces; the effect of recent developments on the representation of the modern metropolis; the links between architecture and other mental or psychological spaces…Here the representation of architecture will be less a question of mixing together various structural remnants than one of going beyond the typical exhibitory framework towards a whole new modeling of space and time.

The exhibition will above all serve to represent a multitude of architectural forms and practices, anchored more or less in painting, which the visitors will discover as they pass from constructed to deconstructed spaces, from architectural representations to mental landscapes…

Neterotopia

Neterotopia: Artists online in advertising space
http://www.neterotopia.net

Curated by: Daniele Balita project by: NICC ( http://www.nicc.be) and Love Difference ( http://www.lovedifference.org), in collaboration with: Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto ( http://www.cittadellarte.it)

From 16th March to 31st March 2006. Locations: Palais de Tokyo - site de création contemporaine Paris. NICC, Antwerp. Careof, Milan.

Artists: 0100101110101101.ORG, Christophe Bruno, Ghazel, Susan Hefuna, Nathalie Hunter, Yuji Oshima, Peter Lemmens and Eva Cardon, Adam Vackar, Stephen Vitiello, Luca Vitone, Version (Gabriela Vanga, Ciprian Muresan and Mircea Cantor).

Internet Sites: http://www.arman.fm, http://www.corriere.it, http://www.film.it, google ad words, http://www.inrockuptibles.com, http://www.liberation.fr, http://movies.tenuae.com, http://www.sortiraparis.com, http://www.viamichelin.it, http://www.villagevoice.com, http://www.wunderground.com

Neterotopia is an event that takes place from 16th to 31st March in various spaces on the Net. Eleven artists from different countries have been invited to choose an Internet site and use the spaces usually reserved for advertising: Christophe Bruno on http://www.liberation.fr, Ghazel on http://www.sortiraparis.com, Susan Hefuna on http://movies.tenuae.com, Nathalie Hunter on http://www.google.com, Yuji Oshima on http://www.arman.fm, Peter Lemmens and Eva Cardon on http://www.wunderground.com, Adam Vackar on http://www.inrockutibles.com, Stephen Vitiello on http://www.villagevoice.com, Luca V itone on http://www.viamichelin.it, Version (Gabriela Vanga, Ciprian Muresan and Mircea Cantor) on http://www.corriere.it, 0100101110101101.ORG on http://www.film.it. These spaces are thus transformed into exhibition surfaces and points of access to a pathway branching through the public and virtual space of the Internet, the major node of which is the http://www.neterotopia.net website. The project, ideated and curated by Daniele Balit, is the result of works between the European organisations NICC (New International Cultural Center), Love Difference and the Pistoletto Foundation. Neterotopia is simultaneously hosted via web by three European exhibition spaces, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the NICC in Antwerp and the Careof in Milan. Through the stations installed in physical space, the public can see the artworks on-line, and experiment with digit@al, a special device by artist Pierre Mertens that puts a new slant on the rules of chatting. Neterotopia traces the confines of a hybrid space, with a changeable and heterogeneous geography, drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of Heterotopia. As opposed to the non-places of Utopia, Heterotopias (literally: places of difference), are defined by Foucalt as “other spaces” capable of accepting difference and possibility, while not detaching from the real world. Neterotopias are therefore inserted into the Network system of communication, observing its rules and limits, while giving a new value to these advertising spaces.