Art decade

[imomus]

Today's entry is more useful for me than interesting for you -- it's basically a CV-like list of all the art shows I've made or participated in since 2000. There's already a page like this for my records, but I've never put one together for my art stuff, and I want something I can link to when curators ask what I've done. It isn't just catalogue notes, though; you can click through to the Flash media piece I made (with Florian Perret) for MoCA in 2002. Marred by muffled sound, it's not one of my better pieces, but it's online. The best piece of art I've ever done, I think, is my 2005 show at Zach Feuer gallery with Mai Ueda, which wasn't recorded in any form (we had three rules: no preparation, no archiving, nothing for sale). I think the exhibition with Aki Sasamoto this May, again at Zach's gallery in New York, will be pretty interesting too.

2000

Momus
Folktronia: myths and songs of the electronic age
October 13th to November 11th 2000
Performance-Installation at LFL Gallery, New York
Co-curated by Kelly Taxter and Zach Feuer
More info

2002

Momus
Suffusia: a beautiful life
June 2002
Digital media lecture for digital gallery (visuals: Florian Perret and Momus)
MOCA, Los Angeles
Flash media lecture



Momus
Healing
November - December 2002
Looped DVD re-edit of a film by Takashi Miike, Ichi The Killer
Part of group show Urbanlenz
Hanae Mori Building, Tokyo, Japan
Curated by David D'Heilly, 2dk

2005

Momus and Mai Ueda
I'll Speak, You Sing
June 25 - July 15 2005
Performance
Zach Feuer Gallery, 530 West 24th St New York
Curated by Zach Feuer
Review

2006

Momus
Unreliable Tour Guide
March - May 2006
Performance
Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum, 945 Madison Avenue, New York
Curated by Chrissie Iles and Philippe Vergne

Momus
Whispering
June 2006
Text pieces performed by gallery staff
Part of group show The Title as the Curator's Art Piece
Blow de la Barra, 35 Heddon Street London
Curated by Mathieu Copeland

2007

Momus
Jokes
November 1st - 7th, 2007
Text pieces performed by gallery staff
Part of group show A Spoken Word Exhibition (Performa Biennial)
Swiss Institute, 495 Broadway, New York
Curated by Mathieu Copeland

Momus
6 Sessions
November 28 2007 - February 3, 2008
Musical performance and video archive
Part of group show 6 Sessions
Secession, Friedrichstrasse 12, Vienna
Curated by Nicolas Jasmin, Flora Neuwirth, Rita Vitorelli

2008

Momus
Various Texts
18th March - 20th April 2008
Performance in gallery, texts spoken by staff
Part of A Spoken Word Exhibition
Tranzit/Display Gallery, Dittrichova 9/337, Prague, Czech Republic
Curated by Mathieu Copeland

Momus
Performance
25th - 28th April 2008
Musical performance
Part of group show Call + Response
MUDAM Luxembourg
Curated by Candice Breitz

Momus
London as Tokyo Tour
June 28th - 29th 2008
Performance
Part of Hide and Seek Festival
Southbank Centre, London
Curated by Alex Fleetwood

Momus
White Trash (The Rice Experiment)
October 20th - November 2nd 2008
Performance
Part of Bridge Art Fair Berlin 2008
Curated by Marie Walz

Momus
The Munchausen Docent
Performance
November 20th 2008
Tour of five commercial galleries
Part of Speak and Spell, Vienna Art Week 2008
Various locations, Vienna first district
Curated by Rita Vitorelli and Christian Kobald

Momus
Floating Film
Looped online re-edit of Ozu's 1959 film Floating Weeds
December 2008
Part of NobelPrize.no project, Oslo
Curated by Aeron Bergmann and Alejandra Salinas

2009

Momus
Calendar
16th January to 15th March 2009
Text pieces performed by gallery staff
Part of A Spoken Word Exhibition
Baltic Mill, Gateshead, England
Curated by Mathieu Copeland

Momus
Whispering Opera
February 28th to March 22nd 2009
Performance and text pieces performed by gallery staff
Part of The Real Thing
Mu Eindhoven, Holland
Curated by Oliver Laric

Momus
Darwin's Monsters
Tour of Charles Darwin exhibition at the Schirn Kunsthalle
Part of Playing the City event, Frankfurt Long Night of the Museums
April 25th 2009
Schirn Kunsthalle, Romerberg, Frankfurt
Curated by Matthias Ulrich

Momus and Aki Sasamoto
Love is the End of Art
May 5th to 16th 2009
Performance
Zach Feuer Gallery, 530 West 24th St New York
Curated by Zach Feuer

Comments

[ferricide.livejournal.com]

my immediate reaction, at least given frequency, is that you've become more of an artist.

is that a meaningful observation?

[(Anonymous)]

I was at the Baltic today and I had "Who killed bukkake?" whispered in my ear.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It depends how you measure it. In a decade's work in art, I've only sold one piece -- a $200 video during the Folktronia show. After that I decided not to sell anything, though I do charge a fee for performances. So I'm certainly not living, financially, by being an artist. It has to be subsidised by other work.

In terms of the number of pieces done, 2008 was my busiest year so far in the art world. It was also the year I began writing for art magazines Frieze and Spike. So I do seem to be moving more into that world. But I don't think of it as any more than an interesting sideline, really. I like how eccentric the art world allows you to be.

One of these days I want to make a Click Opera piece about my records this decade, from Folktronic to Joemus. I think they've been made much more interesting by my parallel career in the art world -- they've definitely been taken somewhere more rich and strange by that exposure, that influence, those preoccupations, that toleration for eccentricity and freedom, which I really don't think exists any more in the music world (hence reviews which call me "uncomfortably close to insane" (http://imomus.livejournal.com/253620.html)).

[imomus.livejournal.com]

That would have been a nice one to include! Alas, it isn't in there. "How nice to be a cum bum rasta," however, is.

If anyone is really in Newcastle and drops by the Baltic, I'd love to hear how your request for a Momus text piece was met, how the whispering sounded, who delivered it and where.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Actually, if you follow that last link to a gig review two years ago, the journalist publishes his entire, uncut original review down at the end of the thread, and it makes a lot more sense. I guess it's just subeditors who over-emphasize the "mad Momus" angle. The main thing the music industry does if they think you're mad is just ignore you... until their "sanity" and boringness wipes them out and they're no longer there to stare through you.

[(Anonymous)]

Nought wrong wae lists. Good journalism is an art in itself but, after years blogging, I have to remind myself that there's more to words than analysis. Open imagination doesn’t stand a chance - imagine trying to write poetry with 50 people calling you a cunt every day.

New York Show

[(Anonymous)]

Evening Nick

What dates for the New York piece? I will be NYC for the last week in May.

ever

maf

Re: New York Show

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Hi Maf, still waiting for the final dates on the show, should know next week.

[count-vronsky.livejournal.com]

Donald Judd's Kitchen/Le Corbusier's Studio (http://referencelibrary.blogspot.com/2009/01/interiors.html)

[count-vronsky.livejournal.com]

gallery with Mai

[pay-option07.livejournal.com]

With all the marvels of miniaturized printed matter you good have it all printed out on a grains of rice to fill a large pickle jar or a emblazoned Grecian Urn with those swarthy wrestler types on it . It might be perceived as arrogant or sarcastic though lunatic might fit as well. How are we like Susan Sontag's "Against Interpretation"

Content is a glimpse of something, an encounter like a flash. It's very tiny--very tiny, content.

-WILLEM DE KOONING, in an interview

It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
-OSCAR WILDE, in a letter

"None of us can every retrieve that innocence before all theory when art knew no need to justify itself, when one did not ask of a work of art what it said because one knew (or thought one knew) what it did. For now to the end of consciousness, we are stuck with the task of defending art. We can only quarrel with one or another means of defense. Indeed, we have an obligation to overthrow any means of defending and justifying art which becomes particularly obtuse or onerous or insensitive to contemporary needs and practice."

Nic, have you become less innocent and more theoretical/cold about your performance pieces?

http://www.cis.vt.edu/modernworld/d/sontag.html

Re: gallery with Mai

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I would disagree with the last phrase of Sontag's Against Interpretation:

In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.

We don't need to make it an either/or, we can make it an and/and.

Love, you see, is the end of art. In both senses of the word "end". Art begins in the erotics of the unconscious, becomes art, but then ends (completes and finishes itself) when it becomes erotics once more, full circle. Art is what happens between that beginning and that end. It must contain both hermeneutics and erotics. That's why, in my May show, I'm playing an art critic who is also a lover.

[diesel-pioneer.livejournal.com]

I'll ask my mum to go - she works at the Sage, so it's a hop, skip and jump away.

It can be like a late 64th birthday present