International Paneling/April 2024
Image by Juliane Pieper
In Terms of Transitions…
by Leo Kuelbs
St. Paul
St. Paul late winter storm. March 24th, 2024.
Somewhere between Los Angeles and NYC is the capital of Minnesota, St. Paul. I am sitting here right now, watching a late wet snowy blast outside my window. It’s nice, actually. The wet snow and the temperature just above freezing makes for moisture-filled air, which is second only to salty sea air for joyful breathing experiences. From somewhere in the middle of the USA, lazily trapped between winter and spring, this message of transition is beamed to you—wherever you may be.
It very much feels like we are all in states of transition these post COVID/pre-elections (USA) days. It is a not all-together awful time (unless you are enduring a war, famine, etc.), if you happen to be stable and on your own two feet. Clearly the hour hand has moved and the past has now become very much the past. Loss, in many ways, defines the times. But just as Winter and death signify endings, Spring and birth are about renewal. And we are somewhere between.
For the past decade and more, I have added humanity’s transition into the ever-greater digital experience, away from the terrestrial, into these archetypal (and now evolutionary) thoughts. Since this incarnation of Paneling, borne out of the COVID experience, I have often also openly tried to deal with the difficulty of changing times within evolving types of cycles.
But this time is a bit different. There is a clarity in recognition of the past being more permanently (seemingly) left behind. The future is about to happen, along with the old school flowers of spring. I am hopeful for whatever peace and growth I can encounter in the coming months. For surely, planning anything beyond that would be too much.
I mean, “not bad” is actually pretty damn good.
What I am trying to describe is that the recognition of helplessness when situations are beyond my control—so well learned during COVID—has also created a newfound ability to recognize and appreciate when things in my own life (and more within my control) are not bad. I mean, not bad is actually pretty damn good. I still can empathize with all of the endless suffering and death which abounds in this world. I truly know that there will surely be more rough and terrible days coming for me and all of us. I know it. I am sure of it. But, all I can do is my best to be prepared for whatever those times bring. But appreciating and remembering the “not so bad days” can help bolster hope during the rougher ones. And though it is often difficult and sad, trying to be present and prepared for being human in these strange days, is something I have learned to be okay with. And sometimes even hopeful for.
Video Shorty of the Week: "THE POMBAGIRA" by Tahian Bhering
Brazilian-born and Berlin-based artist, Tahian Bhering’s “The Pombagira” originally appeared as part of the video art series, Digital Fairy Tales: Myths of Brazil in 2023. The Pombagira is a Brazilian entity representing responses to human suffering and difficulty on many levels. A dweller of ephemeral states and places, the usually female-identifying figure may also use movement as a means of expression and exorcism. Transitional and expressive, the Pombagira also may represent thoughts of the Latin culture in an evolving time. Also, with its emphasis on the movement and spaces between, the Pombagira seems to fit right into aspects of Berlin’s larger social evolution as often expressed by its open and expansive club culture.
We have arrived at POETRY PLACE!
Image by ANANI
by Sanj Nair
Virginia Beach
Cu+ 29
It’s not as if the hollow flutes of bird bone
make an airplane rise. It’s different, this mash
and mangle of steel and heat and pointed things
we know how to mould out of elements around us.
At 29, I was certain that copper was the secret
element needed in all things face cream or worn woven.
I looked to cure the bruises on my thighs,
touched them and saw pools of oil
spilled from the leaking motor of an old Ford,
mixed with rain on the tarmac.
It was just another parking lot
to store botched things that moved
our botched bodies from one place to another
to buy one more serrated thing.
Lately, I don’t know how lucky I am
to know the people I do who work to own
planes. Not one of them is bird-boned, nor am I.
How silly any of us are
to think we know the real cost of flight.
Image by TD Rotenberg
Appropriation Art – Legalize her!
by Dirk Lehr
Berlin
Not long time ago the US Supreme Court ruled that the Andy Warhol Foundation must pay damages to the photographer who took a picture of music star Prince. Warhol used the photo as a template for a series of portraits of the pop star. The US Supreme Court ruled that Warhol's performance does not fall under the fair use doctrine, which allows for the reuse of a work of art or its elements in the creation of new works, since he did not create anything fundamentally different and new. In addition, his portrait primarily served commercial interests. Even if this judgment is controversial among lawyers because it would stifle any kind of creativity - in Europe the courts would not have decided otherwise. Artists are repeatedly confronted with claims for damages and injunctive relief because they are said to have violated the rights of other authors by using their works as a template for their own work. Richard Prince, Jeff Koons and Luc Tymans should be mentioned as the most prominent examples.
A new art movement emerged in New York in the late 1960s. Artists like Elaine Sturtevant questioned the notion of the original. Sturtevant, for whom the copy is the original, made identical copies of motifs by other artists such as Andy Warhol, Frank Stella or Jasper Jones, sometimes in the same year as the creation of the “original.” These artists were not concerned with making mere reproductions of templates in order to exploit them economically. They see themselves as conceptual artists who examine and question the power and autonomy of the original. Appropriation Art experienced its first peak in the early 1980s, again originating in the USA. More and more artists, such as Richard Prince, Robert Longo, Jeff Koons, Louis Lawler or Sherrie Levine, made the strategic appropriation of foreign works the focus of their work. In the early 1980s, for example, Prince photographed the advertisement for the Marlboro cigarette brand, which showed cowboys riding horses, and made it “his” work of art. Sherrie Levine took photographs of photographs or of reproductions, which in turn represented works of art, which should be understood as an indication of the demise of modern art and a questioning of autonomy and authenticity. Today, artists such as Francesco Vezzoli make collages of foreign portrait photographs, photo-realists use the photographs of others in order to copy them as perfectly as possible, others such as Christopher Winter copy existing image material, such as commercially available postcards, in large-format paintings, photo artists such as Thomas Ruff take it up images they look for on the Internet, Jeff Koons makes clones of objects from kitschy souvenirs, or conceptual artists such as Elmgreen&Dragset use icons from art history to make them the protagonists of their video work.
Appropriation Art is not just a Zeitgeist phenomenon, but has long been a cultural reality and a fixed and recognized part of the art world. On the one hand, it is an established part of art history and enjoys a high reputation in the art world. It is indispensable for a cultural discourse. Legally, however, it moves in a gray area, since the use of someone else's copyrighted work inevitably interferes with the rights of the author concerned. However, the copyright laws of most states do not provide a general legal justification for this that takes into account the special features of appropriation art. Legally, the sword of Damocles of the illegal always hangs over her.
Appropriation art is therefore conceptual art. The dilemma of Appropriation Art is that there is no separate fact in copyright law that would justify encroaching on someone else’s copyright.
One speaks of appropriation art (from Latin appropriare = to appropriate oneself) when artists consciously and with strategic considerations copy the works of other artists, whereby the act of copying and the result itself are to be understood as art or, in a broader sense, any art dealing with found aesthetic material. The representatives of Appropriation Art are thus pursuing an artistic strategy in order to make their own independent statement of content, independent of the “original,” which necessarily requires the recognisability of the template. Appropriation art is therefore conceptual art. The dilemma of Appropriation Art is that there is no separate fact in copyright law that would justify encroaching on someone else’s copyright. It is therefore fundamentally unlawful in the first place. It must be checked in each individual case whether the specific work is exceptionally legally permissible because it falls under the fair use doctrine, as is the case in the USA, for example. Due to the cultural significance of appropriation art and the fact that its fundamental breach of copyright is equivalent to a curtailment of artistic freedom and a corresponding ban on practicing a profession, there is a legal gap that needs to be filled. Because the legislature cannot avoid recognizing that Appropriation Art is an art movement that has grown and established over decades and is an integral part of cultural reality and opinion-forming. It is long overdue to free the artists of Appropriation Art from the stigma of the “thieving” copyist and to legally recognize their indispensable contribution to cultural discourse and art history. It is time to finally legalize Appropriation Art as a legal institution in its own right.
Coinbase Review
Image and text by Mark Bailey
Alan Turing from the collection History and the Machine. More at the button below.
Minneapolis
Ten years ago when I bought my first bitcoin, I made the purchase through Coinbase. As crypto exchanges go, Coinbase is as simple as it gets. Technically, all it really offers are market buys and sells, plus secure asset custody. There are no limit orders. No margin trading. And in times of serious price volatility, the exchange often goes down completely, preventing users from entering or exiting positions in the most crucial moments.
Despite its shortcomings, I've always found Coinbase to be trustworthy and reliable. It's also relatively easy for crypto beginners to figure out. And at this point, a few years into the US government's war on crypto, Coinbase is one of the only exchanges that still allows Americans to trade. For these reasons, I've been recommending the exchange for a long time.
One nice thing about Coinbase is that it offers a Visa card that can be funded with the crypto token of your choosing. I love my Coinbase card, though I don't use it very often. Recently, with the price of bitcoin recovering from a protracted slump, I logged into Coinbase to adjust my card's funds and I noticed something fishy.
The first mysterious payment drained the card's funds and the next 30 or so payments were declined.
Though it had been sitting unused in a desk drawer for over a year, the card had been run dozens of times between January and February of this year. The first mysterious payment drained the card's funds and the next 30 or so payments were declined. Since I had done literally nothing with the card, the security breach could only have come from the card provider.
Of course I canceled the card immediately and changed my passwords. After spending over an hour on the phone, I was told by the customer service rep that he couldn't order me a new card. I had to do this myself on the website. The web form wasn't working for me, and I was told I had to re-verify my address with another rep on chat support. After another hour, I was told by this chat support rep that I needed to submit address verification docs to a secure web portal.
After following all of the instructions and trying again, I was able to submit the form that ordered a new card. But when I received an email notifying me that a new card was being sent, my address appeared incomplete. I tried contacting chat support again but kept getting booted out of the system because my issue wasn't listed on any of the options it gave me.
After hours of dealing with their terrible customer support, it still isn't clear if I'll receive a replacement card, and their investigation of the unauthorized activity could take 90 days. The whole thing is a fiasco. I don't blame Coinbase for it entirely. But their customer service sure has gone down hill in the last few years.
Budapest Art Notes
by Balazs Kulcsar
Brussels
Eike Berg on Paris-Budapest Metro
Compared to a typical weekend destination such as Prague, Budapest is not in the art map at all. It’s evident the regional center is Vienna, which with well-established institutions like Albertina and Mumok, well known galleries, and even art fairs is definitely “European.”
But when you cross the border further east to Hungary, you immediately recognize it’s something else. The driving style is Balkan, the more aggressive driver wins. And the economy is dependent on the oligarchs, so the art is made by a few fanatics who would do that anyway. Selling or not. It’s no surprise that the most famous artists already emigrated from the country before they started their career.
Hungarians still believe they are part of the nation. But let’s be honest: Brassai or Robert Capa, or most recently Judit Riegl, Simon Hantai, Vera Molnár, were born in Hungary and never came back after they left the country. There is another effect that makes Hungarian artists less visible: “When you have a Hungarian friend, you don’t need enemies anymore,” say the Bon Mots, and that’s so true. One of the most influential artists in the 1970’s was Miklós Erdély, multi-disciplinary artist, writer, painter, performer filmmaker, etc. But I’m 100% sure that you never heard the name. His name is not mentioned in the art history books And since he died in 1986, he has had only one retrospective exhibition, and still no catalog or book.
Kinga Toth at Grazer Stadtschreiberin 2018
Why? He was pursued in the socialism era, because at that time there was an official narration of what art should be, and anyone who spoke alternatively was prosecuted. He was well known by a small group of people, but it was forbidden to publish anything (his first publication came out in Paris). After he died, his successors fought over how to divide the legacy. They never agreed, so they put all the materials into a basement where it got destroyed by water. End of the story.
Nowadays, this kind of Hungarian depression is natural in the art scene. Art (and drawing) teaching was already eliminated from the schools, and the official narrative has the only voice, leaving the independent art players, once again, fighting for survival. The most important organization to mention is “Off Biennale,” because unlike in Hungary, they are trying to collaborate, and they are also have an international-facing identity. They participated in the “scandalous” Documenta Fifteen, which was the biggest mention so far for them. The exhibitions they organize are not always part of the mainstream and often highlights big social problems.
Trafo gallery is also an important piece in the puzzle. Trafo itself is a contemporary center for theatre, performative art, etc, But the gallery has very limited space, so normally I wouldn’t recommend a visit, but that’s one of the few places which has a connection with the outer world.
Hungary is famous for its separation: people do not speak any other languages, they are not open to trends, and also not into knowing what’s going on in the rest of the world. Recently, Hungary even fell out from Erasmus university program.
Now, after I set up the scene, and showed the overall depression of the country, let’s talk about happier things. After an emigrated artist gains attention abroad, he/she usually tries to deliver some fresh air into the field. Berlin-based writer, performer Kinga Tóth does this well. She is active both in Berlin and Budapest and is doing alone more than her cultural ambassador counterparts.
It's also impossible not to write about Eike Berg, who was director of Trafo Gallery in the 90s, and after he made his own gallery called Videospace. Eike now lives near Munchen, and he can guide people to what’s happening with Hungarian artists. This is the key element to finding out about the Budapest artist scene: find a local artist who can show you small places what you otherwise never find. Go to Horánszky street 5 to meet Ákos Bánki and Residentart, or go to Art Quarter Budapest in Nagytétényi út. Go to Jurányi ház to see independent theater.
Most of the artists I know are open to showing their studios. Ágnes Verebics or Nagy Kriszta Tereskova both have an absolutely unique views on life and art. But, of course, you can find other artists as well. There are a lot of for- profit galleries these days. And Budapest even has a gallery street, but you might be disappointed when you go there. Nowadays all styles and all genre live together, and galleries want to sell. But it is a rather uneven set of galleries reflecting the somewhat damaged history of Hungarian art and artists.
There is only one bookshop I want to mention, which is ISBN Gallery and Bookshop, near Blaha Lujza square. It offers great and personal selection of amazing books, also zines and artists’ publications.
I still like people from Budapest. Mihály Surányi, former gallery owne,r told me once that he always recognizes Hungary. For, when he comes back by car, it’s the only country where people are talking, even at 3 in the morning. Somehow, you can even see and feel them from the highway.
Between Waves: A Breath of Fresh Water
Dispatch from the Wake: An Excerpt from the Essay
by Kamilah Foreman
Harlem
“How are you” is a paralyzing, nonsense question. The start of most conversations, it has somehow caught me by surprise for weeks. To answer in a meaningful way suggests that I still recognize myself, that I am not trapped in an ever-shifting past nor overwhelmed by an impending sense of doom. I can’t tell when I was thrown from the ship of my everyday life: Was it during a writers’ conference in early March when my fellow editors and I fantasized about being quarantined together and never returning home? Was it weeks into lockdown when I, a single woman who lives alone, realized that I may not touch another human being for over a year? Was it after millions of people watched yet another snuff film streamed online of an unarmed Black man, George Floyd, murdered by the state?
Image by ANANI
This is how I am: drowning. As a person whose identity is largely defined in opposition (not white, Black; not male, female), I often feel at a remove. Ontologically speaking, I first learned to know myself through what I am not. In fact, I have a remarkably clear memory of sitting in a diner booth at six years old and noticing a blonde, white girl, approximately my age, staring at me from the next table. Regardless of whether she was curious about a potential playmate, I already had the wherewithal to suspect that I might be the first Black person she had ever seen. No matter my attempts to ground myself in the present and place myself at the center, the world perpetually reminds me of my displacement. My story is in the asterisks, subcategories, qualifications, and exceptions to the predominant narratives and classifications. I am “in the wake,” still trapped in the ripple effect from the schism ironically known as the Middle Passage. During the transatlantic slave trade, my ancestors were not buried at sea after rebelling or suffering from illness or simply as part of the captain’s strategy to reduce dead weight when the ship ran low on supplies. My people survived on a new, hostile continent, even as they lost their names, language, and family. Through successive and interlocking systems of oppression—slavery, Jim Crow apartheid, and their contemporary afterlives—I and their other descendants have continued to reject the psychic and material violence of this othering while reclaiming and rebuilding the parts of our heritage that washed up on these strange shores.
The CDC, the federal government’s public health agency, lists discrimination as one of five “factors that contribute[s] to increased risk.”
My neighborhood, Harlem, is one of the areas of New York most affected by COVID-19. Despite the intense gentrification of the last few years, it is still predominantly Black and Dominican and home to numerous low-paid essential workers who sustained (and continue to sustain) society during lockdown. For weeks, I could track time by the ambulances, my days punctuated by sirens; every fifteen minutes or so, another soul was carted along the River Styx. I sometimes think that those may have been the lucky ones, people so sick that the EMTs realized they needed immediate care, not those seemingly well enough to stay home and whose deaths are only recorded as probably due to COVID in the official statistics.
Thus far, throughout the pandemic in the United States, Indigenous, Black, and Latinx people have suffered from higher rates of infection and death than other people of color and white people. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the federal government’s public health agency, lists discrimination as one of five “factors that contribute[s] to increased risk.” Far more interesting, however, is the CDC’s recommendations to ameliorate the situation, which include “finding ways to maintain support and connection” (to and from whom? not specified) before suggesting that resources such as “easy access to information, affordable testing, and medical and mental health care” should be better allocated. In asking what “what we can do,” the generic “we,” which refers to everyday individuals, community organizations, businesses and not primarily the government itself, should prioritize such vagueries as reaching out and connecting before organizing or lobbying for free healthcare, lower doctor-to-patient ratios, better hospital equipment, greater access to clinical trials, higher wages, or paid sick leave for one’s self or family—some of which are documented factors in improving one’s chances of surviving COVID.
If racism limited your life expectancy or increased your chances of spending much of your life cycling in and out prison, why would you care about a pandemic?
After eleven weeks alone in my apartment, leaving only to buy groceries once a week, I went to my first anti–police brutality protest in years. Those photos of an empty Times Square and other deserted tourist sites during the height of lockdown belie the daily reality of people walking their dogs, picking up prescriptions, and caring for elderly and immunocompromised neighbors. Social distancing is nearly impossible on any New York street. Even masked, everyone embodies a threat, vectors for a not-quite-alive entity that prospers through our desperation for a paycheck, social contact, or some sense of normalcy. Nonetheless, for months, while I stewed silently when someone came too close on the sidewalk, I patiently explained to white coworkers or neighbors why fewer people wore masks or maintained social distancing in communities like mine. If racism limited your life expectancy or increased your chances of spending much of your life cycling in and out prison, why would you care about a pandemic? If politicians, officials, or administrators continually talked about returning to a reality vastly different from your own, why follow anything they say? A nasty undercurrent flows barely below the surface: I will defend the groups of maskless young, un- or underemployed men hanging out on street corners as they piss off white people; I just don’t want them to bother me.
After all, would an abrupt pause in capitalist excess arise through anything but disaster?
The last night before I entered isolation, I attended a dinner party of mostly writers of color, where we debated the unthinkable. We joked about what we imagined would be our blissful productivity, if only daily demands would slip away. Introverts all, we could stay home, away from people, and no longer lie about our desire for solitude. Buried in our own private worlds, we would blossom. I am struck now by our naivete. Of course, we could not foretell the financial ruin that would accompany our utopia. After all, would an abrupt pause in capitalist excess arise through anything but disaster? How could we not have anticipated that this sudden silence and calm amid our normally ebullient city must be predicated on violence, in this case precipitated by severe state neglect?
…the implicit knowledge that my presence in public, out for a crucial errand during the week-long curfew or protesting, could lead to my arrest.
A membrane dissolved. Weeks of fearing others quickly morphed into solidarity with my fellow denizens. The invisible biological threat was subsumed by the routine menace of the NYPD. As the protests continued, the usual danger metastasized through the implicit knowledge that my presence in public, out for a crucial errand during the week-long curfew or protesting, could lead to my arrest. At the same time, the horizon was no longer blocked by the buildings outside my windows, and my sky had risen beyond my three-meter ceilings to the exosphere.
continued next issue…
A Very Short Art Check-in from Kiev
by #headacheeartlaboratory
Kiev
