Screen capture from Lady Gaga's Google Chrome commercial/film project
This past weekend while Lady Gaga was making her much anticipated guest appearance on Saturday Night Live, the Twitterverse was abuzz with news of a special message that Gaga would deliver to her fans during one of the commercial breaks in the program. For those who may have missed it, the special message came in the form of a creatively edited video (see full video below) that features dozens of Gaga's fans singing to her newly released single "Edge of Glory" from her new album "Born This Way."
A clever commerical for Google Chrome, the video was created in an impressive 10-day period prior to the video's airing. According to Google, it began with the Lady Gaga shoot that opens the video (May 10th), followed by Gaga's tweets and messages to her fans to begin uploading YouTube videos of themselves singing and dancing to "Edge of Glory" in the days following the single's release. Editing and selection of video for the final version of the commercial was completed by May 18th to ensure its final debut on SNL.
"The web is what you make of it" reads the closing words of the video echoing Google Chrome's slogan, and it seems that the world of community film projects has been redefined once again through Gaga's experiments in digital mediation. The fact that this video forms part of the battlefield of the digital art wars-- score one for Google-- also makes it all the more compelling.
No, the world did not come to an end on May 21st despite all the chatter on Twitter. And how could it when the Canucks are almost ready to play in the Stanley Cup final?! Just finished watching that terrific game and all of the hooting and hollering outside promises a great finish to the long weekend. Grab a beverage and enjoy a few of my favourites from around the Twitterverse. Go Canucks GO!
How the Internet Kills Great Neighbourhoods
Portraits of Authors in Their Own Words
Prepare yourself for the #rapture by looking at some apocalyptic art
French artist JR's #TED Prize wish already having an impact
Postgraduate Work in Bergman Madness
Top Ten Tips to Sell Your Art
The youth of today design a better classroom for tomorrow
Sherman's Untitled 153 (1981) broke the record this week for the most expensive photograph sold at auction
A significant milestone was reached last week when a Cindy Sherman photograph displaced Andreas Gursky’s previous record as the most expensive photograph ever sold at auction. Sold for a staggering 3.89 million dollars, the art work in question, Untitled 153, features a stunning self-portrait of Sherman clutching a personal ad in her right hand as she reclines seductively on a kitchen floor (see image above). At first glance, an image like this may be mistaken for any number of similar self-portrait projects that permeate contemporary art exhibitions today—the subtle pose, the air of the banal, and the deliberate play of cinematic lighting and staging that translates a snap shot image to something of greater substance or implied narrative meaning. The image’s performative gesture however is also crucial as the viewer’s awareness is focused on the careful staging that goes into the final photograph. This is a photograph that declares its constructed nature-- it is a photograph about the nature of photography.
But the date of the work – 1981—reminds us just how long-standing, influential, and thoroughly relevant the aesthetic of Sherman’s photographic self-portrait projects remain. These are images that speak to a culture of accelerated technological mediation and the tension between real life and “on-line” identities. As art historian Amelia Jones argues in her research related to the self-portrait photograph as a technology of embodiment, “The photographic self‐portrait is like history or the memory that forms it: it never stands still but, rather, takes its meaning from an infinite stream of future engagements wherein new desires and fascinations produce new contours for the subject depicted.”
Andreas Gursky, 99 Cent II (2001)
In this sense, Sherman’s photograph has many thematic connections to the work it ceremoniously displaced, Gursky’s 99 Cent II (2001). Gursky’s is a photographic work focused on the superficial display of consumer goods, digitally manipulated to reduce perspective. In many ways, it is a self-portrait of a different kind, carefully reflecting the process of reification and new subjectivities engendered by our contemporary culture. It is also a meta-narrative that acts as a nice counterpoint to the much more intimate portrait provided by Sherman’s Untitled 153. Whatever the case may be, female artists and photography enthusiasts alike can rejoice for the moment in the landmark valuation of both the medium and one of its most important contemporary pioneers.
Public Stoning by Edward Ruscha for James Frey (2007)
Oh James Frey.......why? That is all I could think as I sat down yesterday to watch the first part of a two-part interview he agreed to do with Oprah Winfrey. It was like déjà vu all over again watching him sit and visibly squirm discussing the details of the now infamous controversy surrounding his memoir A Million Little Pieces and his appearance on the Oprah show in 2006 where he faced the accusations. Last year, I had reflected on Frey’s predicament in a blog post exploring the possibility of creating a conceptual piece of literature that could operate something like a conceptual piece of visual art. At that time, Frey had captured media attention once again for launching Full Fathom Five, which amounts to a book-churning company on an Andy Warhol model of art production. His immediate goal was to hire young writers and create an assembly line for the creation of young-adult novels (among the fastest growing genre in the book market today). Needless to say, many observers were less than impressed with his application of an art factory model to the task of writing.
The book that sparked all the controversy
Perhaps that is why it was somewhat surprising to see Frey appear on Oprah again. He had long ago appeared to give up apologizing or even trying to defend his decision to market A Million Little Pieces as a memoir. In fact, Frey had in the past several years crafted a well rehearsed argument about the limitations and inherent problems with the genre—posing the very valid question of just how far the truth and reality of a memoir could be bent or manipulated for the sake of literary art. In many ways, the genre and the discourse surrounding his book had been critical in signaling the crisis within our broader culture about the limits and reliability of representing events that are claimed as “real.” I mean, have you watched a “reality show” lately?
In any case, what was apparent in the interview yesterday was that Frey had come to admit that what he did was somehow wrong. In true Oprah confessional fashion, the show was promoted, presented, and edited to capture Frey as truly repentant (see sensationalized promo clip below). Frey spoke of his regret in continuing to discuss the book as completely non-fictional, and he even apologized to Oprah for not being completely truthful about the details surrounding the book’s publication as a memoir. Even so, Frey was strategic in pointing out how his fate in the public sphere following the book controversy was one of the misunderstood artist. It was at this point in the interview that he spoke of his retreat into the art world with friends that understood him best. He even spoke of leaving the US for several months following the Oprah show controversy and living in France as part of a self-imposed exile.
On the one hand, I suppose there is something very sincere about what Frey is doing in revealing the strategy he took to sell his book. The bottom line is that no publisher was interested in publishing A Million Little Pieces as fiction. This is a crucial point that Oprah did very little to push or explore. On the other hand, Frey is continuing to leave open the question of what the artist owes its public. In one fascinating segment of the interview, Frey discussed how he had collaborated with famed conceptual artist Edward Ruscha on an art work that reflected Frey’s position following his memoir debacle. Titled Public Stoning (see image at top of post) the stark canvas with minimal text acts as another kind of powerful yet failed representation of what actually happened. I must admit that I even smiled a little when Oprah said that she had seen the painting at an exhibition and was left confused. Perhaps there is some method to James Frey’s madness in doing such a public appearance again. Part Two of the interview will air today, and no doubt I will be watching.
James Frey in Part One of his interview with Oprah (an excerpt only):
I will make this short and sweet since I am literally running out the door to watch what will hopefully be the epic first game of the Stanley Cup Western Conference final starring our much beloved Vancouver Canucks. First time in 17 years that this will be happening, so the city is buzzing. Yes, I am an art historian, but I am also a true Canadian hockey fan! Here are a few of my favourites from around the Twitterverse this past week, and in case you want to follow the game via Twitter, check out the Canucks official Twitter page.
Cannes 2011: live blog - weekend update
Art Speech: A Symposium on Symposia
Up Close and Personal: Art by street artists in and for a NYC apartment
Twitter meets the Breakfast Club
#TATEDEBATE Pere Portabella is a filmmaker who suffered censorship & political exile. Can filmmaking still be political?
Cool story! 1790 library book found in CA, returned to Camden, ME library after 150+ years!
Are you a digital addict? Take our quiz to find out. And learn more next Thurs on the #doczone
