Courtney Johnston
Reader, writer, and Director of the Dowse Art Museum.
Best of 3 (personal art, books, web & other stuff blog)- @auchmill on Twitter
- Goodreads book reviews
- Dowse Art Museum (work blog)
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Posts
- May 23, 13
I love this idea.
New York's Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) is this weekend running an event called Museum as Plinth: Take One, Leave One.
On May 28 and 29, the Museum will install a "take and leave" shelf of objects in its lobby. Visitors will be invited to exchange an object for their own for one from the shelf. Each object on the shelf is given a "From the Collection of the MAD Museum" and, MAD says, "in effect, admitted to the museum's collection." The event seeks to ask questions about how design is identified, valued, and treated in the museum context, and will be documented in an online catalogue and through a blog and social media.
The only thing that would make this better would be if one - just one - of the objects left on the shelf came from the MAD's collection. One secret sacrifice and unknown gift for a giver. - May 21, 13
Let's get classical(ish)
An urgent and driving debut track from Vampire Weekend member and violinist Sarah Neufeld, produced by our favourite, Nils Frahm
Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner and Nico Muhly's live performance of 'Earth'
Hilary Hahn & Hauschka's 'Draw a map' (it's worth watching the video) - May 19, 13
A lengthy, dreamy, precise and visceral mediation on the nature of collections, and collections of nature: Matthew Battle's 'Specimens'. Make a cup of something you like and settle in.
- May 16, 13
Three songs about getting the hell away from it all
Young Galaxy's 'Sleepwalk with me' (the sweetheart of the list)
The Yeah Yeah Yeah's glassy-icy 'Runaway'
And The National's tender and hurting song of the same name - May 15, 13
Today on the radio I talked about the Auckland Triennial and Bazinga! at Starkwhite
Auckland Triennial website
Bazinga! at StarkwhiteListening to @auchmill on the radio always makes me feel like a total caveman. "Ugh ugh. Ben type computer. What is art?" :(
— nzben (@nzben) May 15, 2013 - May 12, 13
From the occasional reviews department: Aaron Belz's Lovely, Raspberry.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Sometimes, it's okay for poems to be funny. Not Pam Ayres funny, but wry-life funny:
Every day I get emails
that say things like
BELZ! We should
have done that one
thing that one
time, remember?
Really though
how ARE things?
And I always reply
the same way,
like, DUDE!
I do not know
who you are.
Where do I know
you from?
But I never hear back.
I save all those emails
in a special folder
labeled "I hate my life."
Aaron Belz is funny. Funny and confiding. Funny and I-want-to-get-emails-from-him-with-thoughts-like-this-in-them:
'thirty illegal moves in the cloud-shape game'
Potatoes
Waves
Ghosts
A Rorschach blot
Fuzz
Clouds
A dragon head
Chèvre
A puddle
Cloth
A swab
Crumpled up paper
A blob
Trees
Jelly
Scallops
Fungi
Hair
Milk
A piñata
Chamois
Sheep
Feta
A fist
Algae
Alsace-Lorraine
Quiche
Stew
Bubbles
Pudding
I want Aaron Belz to write me a letter containing 'five beginnings of jokes'
1. Why did the elk, deer, chipmunks, coyote, sea stars, orca whale, sealions, newt, weasel, and many different kinds of birds cross the street?
2. Elk, deer, chipmunks, coyote, sea stars, an orca whale, sea lions, a newt, a weasel, and many different kinds of birds walked into a bar.
3. How many elk, deer, chipmunks, coyote, sea stars, orca whale, sea lions, newts, weasels, and many different kinds of birds does it take to change a lightbulb?
4. Elk, deer, chipmunks, coyote, sea stars, an orca whale, sea lions, a newt, a weasel, and many different kinds of birds were entering heaven, and St. Peter stopped them to ask a question.
5. What do you call elk, deer, chipmunks, coyote, sea stars, an orca whale, sea lions, a newt, a weasel, and many different kinds of birds at a party?
I want Aaron Belz to talk to his other friends about me, and when he does, to call me 'my chiquita'
We were friends. We dressed up as bananas
sometimes and went out on the town.
I called her my Chiquita. All in good fun.
We talked about dating - whether we should
make our relationship official. We decided no.
We were happy to have the freedom
of just being friends with banana outfits.
And then I would confide back to Aaron Belz, and I would tell him stories about things that make sense in my head, but not out loud, like the 'things that i have only one of'
I have two kinds of things, she says.
I have things that I am in to
and things that I have only one of.
That there is more than one thing
that I have only one of is, of
course, the irony of ownership;
the real question, though, is
where do the circles overlap?
What are the things that I am in to
that I have only one of? she says,
and looks momentarily tired.
Perhaps, she muses; perhaps
there is a third kind of thing.
For I also have many things
made of leather. See? she says,
gesturing to a large collection
of leather objects. I am also
into ornithography. Now,
does that count as a thing that I
have only one of? For I do not
have more than one ornithography.
But occasionally Aaron Belz will write a long poem, with a complicated layout, full of tabs, and little narrative, and no funny bits (or no bits that I feel confident laughing at, in case he was trying to be serious, because he's tired of being thought of as that guy who writes funny observational poems, and couldn't people for once see that he has something to say, like, an important view on the world?). And I'll read those ones dutifully, but I won't be able to tell him that I didn't like them, because I didn't get them. Instead, I'll try to distract him by saying, "Hey, Aaron? What about that wand one? I really like the wand one. Read it to me again."
my best wand
Of all the magic wands
I've bought over the years,
only the steel one
with the sharp tip
really works -- you point it
into someone else and say
ABRACADABRA
and the person magically
becomes wounded. - May 09, 13
A covers list. From the 'I did not expect that' files - Daughter gives Daft Punk's comeback track a chilly air
Cousin Cole's slightly screwed-up dance version of one of my all-time favourites, 'Maps'
And I freely admit to having three versions of 'Say My Name' on my running playlist. Drake's 'Girls Love Beyonce' is the latest. - May 08, 13
This morning on Twitter I followed an American Federation of the Arts panel discussion being held at MOMA about blockbuster exhibitions.
Often I find following talks on Twitter frustrating, but this was remarkably well live tweeted. I've pulled together the threads of the conversation below, and inserted a couple of other articles that sprang to mind as well. There's a point towards the end that I find really interesting right now: how do we balance the needs, and enhance the experience, of 'silent' and 'social' visitors? - May 06, 13
As I write, I'm listening to the music of the spheres. This is nothing new (the notion of the music of the spheres, that is - me listening to it is unusual) but Whitevinyl's (aka Luke Twyman) delicate and simple version has really touched me.
I stumbled across this when someone on Twitter linked to the lovely Here is Today and I started picking through Twyman's back catalogue. The night before this happened, I'd been having a good whine to a friend.* "I feel like the angry old lady of the internet," I told him. "I'm starting to hate it all. Especially visualisations. And 3D printing. And interactive tables. Most of all, interactive tables."
And then along came a visualisation that cut me off at the knees.
It's the okay buttons that slays me. Every time you okay, you get another piece of context. Here is this month. Here is this year. Here is this century. ...It gets me because it mimics, exactly, how I follow along if I am intensely engaged when someone is explaining something to me. They'll give me a concept. I'll nod. I'll look down at my hands, maybe draw a little pattern on the table-top. And then I'll say Okay. Okay. Give me the next bit. Hit me with it. Okay. Hit me. Okay. Okay.
And with that, the whine was over.
*It was markedly unfair to be whining on this topic to this particular friend, as he supplies me with a considerable amount of the wonder I come across. - May 05, 13
Nearly two years ago (jeepers) I put together a reading list for a friend's teenage daughter, based on what she'd been reading lately. Recently a friend on Twitter requested some similar recommendations, so here goes: YA for the discerning reader. (Most of the links lead to one of my Goodreads reviews.)
From that 2011 list, a few still stand tall. For example. you can't go wrong with Philip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' (Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass) and Patrick Ness's 'Chaos Walking' - The Knife of Never Letting Go, The Ask and the Answer, Monsters of Men. And I continue to press Rebecca's Stead When You Reach Me on everyone I can.
Likewise, Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching series remains high in my regard. They are sweet, funny, wise books that teach you how to live strongly and well.
Since then I have read some very good books to add to the list. Mal Peet's Life: An Exploded Diagram does amazing things with time and perspective. I fell for John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, despite its Titanic-like purposeful heartstring twisting. Maggie Stiefvater's The Scorpio Races is not great, but it's eminently readable and I like that, in opposition to the Green, it doesn't set out to play your heart like a fiddle.
Lev Grossman's Magician King series is more like a homage to all things YA than YA itself. The first book is hipsterishly funny whilst also being a love letter to C.S. Lewis and (my god amongst writers) T.H. White; the second starts to dribble on a bit.
Two books I highly, highly recommend though: Margo Lanagan's beautiful dark twisted romance Tender Morsels and Karen Thompson Walker's quiet, almost mundane dystopian fantasy The Age of Miracles.
And I have a dreadful feeling that I left Meg Rosoffs' How I Live Now off that original list. I think it's a masterpiece. Her There Is No Dog is not as good, but still a blast.
And to go back in time. If you have reached adulthood without reading Richard Adam's Watership Down, Dodie Smith's I Capture The Castle and T.H. White's The Once and Future King, then shame on you. Fix that fast. - May 02, 13
I'm increasingly fond of Young Galaxy's new album
But not nearly as fond as this reviewer on Pretty Much Amazing. Some of the choicest sentences:
Astral and poetic though it may be, the restrictive labels of genre serve more to pigeonhole than categorize an album of this magnitude and thought.
The cordial clatter of festival drum machines embraces the listener in the clement grasp of a hypnagogic summer.
Violins emerge from the ether en masse like fireflies, filling the air with phosphorescent flecks of alternating melancholy and joy.
Nothing else on Ultramarine matches the wilting splendor so carefully cultivated on “New Summer,” though gems abound. Unabashedly resplendent with Balearic synths and a sing-along chorus set to a captivating calypso cadence, “Fall For You” abandons all hinting toward a tropical ambiance and embodies the paradise that lies beyond the celestial halo.
“Come sleepwalk with me,” she beckons, and with that she whisks you away to a sparkling synthetic azure. - May 01, 13
I am such a sucker for the American sports myth. I died a little death over most episodes of Friday Night Lights, and I wept over the original book. I inhaled books that unpick the mythologies. I recently fell in love with the Mike Schwartz, the burly, bearlike retaining wall of Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding.
And I am intrigued by this article on the recruiting criteria for Stanford's football team. The lede picks out vocabulary, but what the coach says they're looking for is kids who can lock eyes with someone and hold that gaze:They need a kid who will confidently stare another person in the eye, whether he's a coach on a recruiting visit or an acclaimed professor in class or a USC linebacker across the line of scrimmage or whatever comes later in life.
"I tell these guys all the time, the same mentality you take into a football game, you're going to take into a board meeting," Shaw said. "When you're the CEO of whatever company, you are going to walk into that board meeting with the same mentality we walk out onto the football field with."
What they're offering is a chance for kids to find other kids like themselves: the almost insane 1%, the academically, physically and socially talented. Having recently finished Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In, I'd love to know if there are coaches of women's sports doing the same thing. - May 02, 13Today on the radio I'll be talking about Glen Hayward's new installation at City Gallery Wellington, the Turner Prize nominees, and 3D printing in museums*
Glen Hayward at City Gallery Wellington
The Turner Prize 2013 shortlist
Picture gallery of Turner Prize nominees
The possibilities of 3D scanning and printing in museums
Sensory tours with 3D printed objects at Brooklyn Museum
*And, it turns out my Roomba vs 3D printer dream. It lives! - Apr 29, 13
One of my favourite recent additions to my twitter stream is life100yearsago.* It's a group account sharing daily snippets from diaries of New Zealanders from one century ago.
The account is run out of the Ministry of Culture and Heritage, as part of the WW100 programme, with a number of contributing organisations who are digitising material and writing tweets, including Te Papa, Kete Horowhenua and the Wairarapa Archive.
Te Papa is digitising the diary of Leslie Adkin, a Levin farmer, amateur photographer and scholar who made significant contributions to New Zealand science. Adkin did not serve in the war, but his diary describes life in New Zealand over this time. In 1913 the war is still a far-off thing; Adkin's diary currently records farming life (putting the "old ewes" through an arsenic footbath) and his steady pursuit of his soon-to-be wife, Maud (a saga a friend has described as Love in a Time Of Innocence: the Seduction of Maud).
One recent entry caught my eye though. Adkin's diary entries are usually short, but on the 18th of April 1913 he and a group of friends, including Maud (who seemed less discombobulated by the city than their other companions, he notes, admiringly) trained to Wellington to see the HMS New Zealand.
I've taken his lengthy entry from that trip and played with it below. It captures a sense of awe, but also of Adkin's lively and intense observation and curiosity.
She was a monstrous vessel
low grey hull
three funnels + two tall masts
a grim + formidable
fighting machine
She carries several 12 inch guns
wonderful engines of destruction – about ½ a chain
in length, about 2 ft
in diameter at the muzzle, + 5 ft
at the breech. The barrel is 6 inches
thick at the muzzle.
the complicated + marvellous machinery
could hardly be described
in 20 pages
They had just taken on 500 sacks of flour +
gangs of sailors were dumping the sacks to the chutes
leading down to the storeroom
others were swinging over the side
dusting the flour off
the armour-plates.
We were shown the galley
where there are no fires but where
the cooking + boiling apparatus consists of steam-pipes;
also the bakery where
a huge batch of fine white bread emitted
an agreeable odour.
Regaining the deck we passed along
a maze of passages
massive walls of steel on every side, + saw
the case of silver cups
+ other trophies
presented by the various Governments of the Empire to
the “NZ”.
On the walls of the superstructures
the ships’ motto + arms – the latter
in carved polished wood
with dates + the names of Cook + Tasman
on either side.
One motto was “Fear God; Honour the King”.
*I have a lot of friends working on this - inevitably - but even if I didn't, I'd admire it as a effective and engaging long-term project. - Apr 28, 13
Recently on a night out a group of friends and I got into a debate about whether kids should have limited screen time. Me, I'm confused by how we encourage kids to "get lost" in books but are freaked out when they get lost in an iPad; my friends - the parents amongst us - talked about the "zombie face" they see their kids assume when they become passive ingestors of screen content.
A few days after that, a friend sent me a link to Aaron A. Reed's 18 Cadence, and I've been returning to it over and over again.
18 Cadence tells the story of a house in New York and its occupants over a century. You click through years, rooms, and characters, and learn each person's story and their perception of the other characters along the way. You can also take the objects offered as you move through the years and remix them into your own stories, which can then be shared.
It's designed for the iPad, but I've just been fooling around on my laptop, because I'm more interested in following the story than shaping it for myself (a personal failure - I'm quite a passive reader by nature). Here's a blog post by Reed about the game/story.
I've found 18 Cadence really compelling. It feels like a missing bridge between using your imagination and having the screen give you the story that we debated over dinner. Just like Pippin Barr's games invite you to scrutinise your morals and assumptions, Reed's story invites you to explore and exert your curiosity. - Apr 25, 13
Girls on relationships this week.
Chloe Howl's 'No Strings': an appealingly Britishly dirty-mouthed take on a one-night stand (plus, spot those fuzzy Foster the People beats)
Leave before you go with Bank's 'Before I Ever Met You'
And after the break up, Tove Lo's 'Habits' suggests lots of shots and making out with random mustachioed men is the best way to get past heartbreak (if you've ever wondered what people mean by 'hot mess', have a look at the video) - Apr 23, 13The New Museum's exhibition NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star is matched by one of the nicest outreach programmes I've seen in a while: Recalling 1993. As they say in the intro video, they've turned 5,000 payphones throughout Manhattan into time machines: pick up the receiver, dial in the number, and listen to a person tell you s story about the area you're calling from, from 20 years ago.
As much as I liked the little stories, and could imagine wandering the streets for a day, picking up phones, I loved what happened as you zoomed out on the maps even more. - Apr 21, 13
If I could make a couple of extra days in each week, I would spend them on two things:
- I would write a book. (I don't know what book. But I would write A Book.)
- I would start a podcast. (Heavily influenced by my love of the Slate Culture Gabfest.)
Of course, it's not really time holding me back, it's priorities and commitments I've already elected. Luckily, while no-one else can write my book for me, two people have started a podcast that does one of the things I would love it.
Museopunks is a brand-new podcast from Suse Cairns and Jeffrey Inscho. As Suse explains in a blog post:Museopunks is a podcast for the progressive museum. Each month, we’ll invite passionate practitioners to tackle prominent issues and big ideas facing museums in the modern age. With innovation, experimentation and creativity as focus points, Museopunks features forward-thinking people and projects that push the sector into new territories.
The first episode of Museopunks has just been released, launched at Museums and the Web. Titled 'Kick out the jams', the episode investigates museums in "the age of scale". It begins with Jeffrey and Suse introducing themselves, then looking at this idea with two people: the Smithsonian's Michael Edson, and New Zealand's own Paul Rowe, of Vernon Systems.
There's a really interesting tension touched on in the podcast: the question of how much our visitors want us to innovate. Many museums have adopted the imperative Innovate or die; museums also attract curious, questioning, restless employees. I often find myself wanting to pursue ideas and experiences that are quite wide of the mark of the 'traditional' museum, and I've increasingly found myself wondering What would we do if we stripped ourselves back to our basic building blocks: a container, lots of objects, some people, and the internet. What would we make out of them then? - Apr 18, 13
A little pop selection, to make up a little for the sad boys we've had recently.
Frida Sundemo is one of my high rotate Scandi poppers. 'Jaguar' is just too lyrically ridiculous for me to handle, but I've come to love both 'Indigo' ('Impossible to rise / With shoulder blades of velveteen') and 'Snow' (Goodbye Mr Snow / I'm begging you to go').
While we're Scandi popping, some new Fallulah (fun, but still not nearly as good as 'Out of it')
And a complete change of pace for Dark Dark Dark's 'What I Needed', which has this rather sweet nostalgic juke-boxy sound. Put on your pouffy skirt, Brylcream your hair, and have a good sway around your bedroom. - May 02, 13
Exhibitions at movie theatres, missed connections in New York museums, and two exhibitions at the Sarjeant Gallery.
Art exhibitions go to the movies - The Globe and Mail
Exhibition: Great Art On Screen
Missed connections in the art world - Artinfo
Sarjeant Gallery exhibitions - Apr 16, 13A fascinating article on Auto-Tune, the pitch-correcting software for singers and musicians, whose creator was (a) a classical flautist* and (b) using algorithms designed for the oil industry.
When I flipped that article to a friend, he sent me back this one from 2009, talking about the spread of Auto-Tune in North African and Arabic music, and makes a really interesting point:Contemporary raï and Berber music embrace Auto-Tune so heartily precisely because glissandos are a central part of vocal performance (you can’t be a good singer unless your voice can flutter around those notes): sliding pitches sound startling through it. A weird electronic warble embeds itself in rich, throaty glissandos. The struggle of human nuance versus digital correction is made audible, dramatized. Quite literally this is the sound of voice and machine intermodulating – a far cry from [music critic Jody] Rosen’s conclusion that T-Pain uses the technology to ‘impersonate a computer’.
Chalk another one up for machines that make art. Speaking of which, when I sent the top article to another friend, he responded with this - and I'm not even sure where to go when the world starts imploding like that.
* Where does that extra a come from? - Apr 14, 13
A friend sent me a link to this post about Leo Caillard's Art Games with the single word "Heresy".
I actually really like them. They remind me of all the things I've been thinking about in terms of art made with technology and things like Anonymous Paintings.They also remind me very much of the work Local Projects has just done on Cleveland Museum of Art's Gallery One; in fact, Caillard's work, though earlier, feels almost like the logical end point of what Gallery One is doing. Not in stated intent, but in aesthetic, or perhaps unstated intent - a totally permeable collection and art experience, online and real world. Once again I find myself groping for words to describe an only-just-future state. - Apr 11, 13
The Art Newspaper recently published its yearly issue on exhibition stats. Among some of the interesting articles:
The 2012 attendance survey - led by a tour of paintings from the Mauritshuis to the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum
The massive boom of museum visitation and building in Brazil
And this fascinating opinion piece by Blake Gopnik on the ever-growing, and in his opinion, spirit-sapping, focus on blockbuster and temporary exhibitions, on which I have yet to make up my mind. - Apr 09, 13
Another entry for the machines making art files: snowball poems written with Markov chains, by Paul Thompson.
(See also Curatorial poetry and Times haiku.) - Apr 08, 13
So, I don't usually talk much about work here, but I am quite, quite excited about an experiment we are running at The Dowse this week.
I love watching exhibitions get installed. That kind of behind-the-scenes access - along with visiting the collection store - is the biggest treat of the job. There's an intimacy to the way you can be with the art, and a camaraderie in the team, that just makes it a lovely experience.
This week, we're experimenting with opening this up to visitors. Normally, it would be risky to have people in the space while we deal with loan works, trundle scissor lifts around, futz with lighting and play with power cables. But Kerrie Poliness's big elegant drawings - executed straight onto the wall with permanent markers - are basically damage-proof.
Plus, the process is the point of the work, as you can see in this blog post I wrote about the works. Letting visitors watch the drawings get made - allowing them to be part of the planning, if they're in the room at the right time - felt like such a natural idea. We've seen time-lapses of installations of Poliness's work, but never an open installation. So that's what we're trying.
From today (Tuesday) through Friday, you can visit The Dowse and watch Cat Auburn and her team making the three drawings we've selected for the show. Come along at the right time, and you could even get to map the starter points out.Laura choses her four starting points for the drawing by eye - no rulers allowed.
Kerrie Poliness Black O 1997. Jim Barr and Mary Barr Loan, Collection of The Dowse.
I have no idea if this will work, be popular, or be worthwhile. But nothing ventured, nothing gained.
(Fortuitously, at the same time that we started this experiment, Suse Cairns posted about the value of "process stories" for museums - those chances for visitors to get more deeply involved in their visit, to get an extended form of access. I hope to write a follow-up piece about how this works out here.)
Oh! And you're welcome to take and share your own photos of your visit. That would make me super happy.
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Tweets
- I am so frequently confused by the contemporary world.May 25, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- @ThisCJ Don't expect it to be anything like the two earlier books http://t.co/lnmoHCITnM
- Alan Garner's "Boneland". 150 pages of rather beautiful WTF.May 24, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- Saturday rolling bruise tally: two good 'uns, a constellation of fingertip marks. One elbow in the head (not the face, thankfully).May 24, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- I wonder what it will be like for people in 10 year's time listening to songs from the early 2010s with their twitter and hashtag referencesMay 24, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- This year's @NDFNZ presentations (should they be accepted) will be brought to you by a combo of Nils Frahm and The National.May 24, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- Popcorn and Public Servants.
- @rachaelking70 Congratulations! @geckopress
- @talkingtothecan Unfortunately, they're much better at that stuff than me. I'm biding my time for a surprise act of revenge @adriankingston
- @talkingtothecan @adriankingston Someone called me "cupcake" recently. I admired their nerve.
- @adriankingston And not-address you as "that guy" @talkingtothecan
- @adriankingston I do like the simplicity of my job title. Then again, sometimes I think it would more accurate to be called "Emailer".
- PSA: The people at Rotorua Museum are super duper on to it.May 23, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- @adriankingston Is it too late to rearrange that title so your acronym can be DISCO?
- @adriankingston Boss? Chief? Sir?
- @julialomas I want to be classier than that - but I must have played it 5 times while getting ready for work. Total pop crack.
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