• S.F.: Skewville, Playground Tactics, at White Walls. Opens Saturday, at 7pm.
• S.F.: An American Language, at Guerrero Gallery. Opens Saturday.
• L.A.: Daniel Richter, A concert of purpose and action, at Regen Projects. Through February 18, in West Hollywood.
• San Diego: John Banasiak, George Brown’s Bar, at Joseph Bellows Gallery. Opens Saturday, in La Jolla.
• NYC: Giles Thompson, New and Used, at Pandemic Gallery. Opens Saturday at 7pm.
• Plus: Get my latest New York picks over at Gallerina…

Hey Folks:

I’ve got a feature in this month’s ARTnews on artists making art about the art world that often serves as a stinging critique of our little corner of human civilization. Covered in the piece are rants by William Powhida, installations by Jennifer Dalton, biennial pieces about biennials and my favorite: Joe Sola’s jump-out-the-window-during-studio-visits piece.

You can read the story online. Or, better yet, pick up the mag at your nearest newsstand.

xox,
C.

Like many people who live in New York City right now, Occupy Wall Street has occupied my mind. Like many people, I’ve been of a mixed mind about it. As has been repeated ad nauseum, there is no unifying message, no unifying issues, no unifying ethos. The protests’ goals are unclear. And the scene in Zucotti Park is a borderline circus, complete with naked-lady body painting, relentless bongo drumming and enough patchouli to gag an ox.

But as chaotic as the protests are, they have energized me — or something in me that has felt powerless before a power structure (Congress, corporations, the Koch brothers) that stacks the deck against people like myself. I’m a freelancer. I am almost 40 years old. I have almost no benefits to speak of and neither does my husband. I make less money now than I did five years ago — even though I work twice as hard. The prospect of an eventual retirement seems almost morbidly hilarious. I am, to be cliché, the 99%. Which is why I’ve supported the protests (I’ve made food donations), even if I don’t entirely know what they’re about and even if I’m not really the type to grab a sleeping bag and camp out. I also support the right of the protestors to remain firmly in place — as a noisy, irritating thorn in the side of an establishment that seems to care less and less about people like me.

All of these thoughts were consuming my brain as I paid a visit to the Living as Form exhibit in the abandoned Essex Street Market on Manhattan’s Lower East Side on Thursday. Organized by Creative Time’s chief curator Nato Thompson, the show is less a collection of aesthetic objects than a gathering of projects and project documentation that in some way speak to social action. In other words, this isn’t a show that is easy to look at. You’re not going to jet in and out and be blown away by some kaleidoscope of color or some highly photogenic installation.

Living as Form explores the ways in which many artists are engaging social issues in their work — whether its Pedro Reyes (see the image above), who collected guns and quite literally, transformed them into shovels, or Rick Lowe, who for a decade and a half, has dedicated himself to the community inhabiting a row of historic shotgun houses in Houston, a project that in every way imaginable functions like a traditional non-profit. There is a gripping video by Jeremy Deller, which recreates a historic encounter between union miners and the Thatcher government and a simple bookshelf, installed by the L.A. collective Finishing School, which displays books that have been branded “dangerous” under the Patriot Act. Some of these are obvious (The Anarchist Cookbook), others are downright befuddling (a tome about how to live off the land).

How is this art? Thompson says neither he nor the exhibit necessarily have the answer. The show is merely a way of exploring the way in which art plays a role in the lives of the many communities it inhabits. “It’s good to be aware that art isn’t universally regarded as a ‘good,’” says Thompson. “Talk to people on the Lower East Side and they might be, “I don’t want your art. I want affordable housing.” The show includes their voices, too (in the form of walking tours around the neighborhood). This may all feel a little unmoored, but that’s the point. It’s all part of the moment that we’re living in.

Living as Form will be on view through this weekend at the Historic Essex Market on the Lower East Side. Definitely go and check it out (and give yourself plenty of time when you do). Want to do a little more reading? Mira Schor has an essay on this very topic…

A section of the space is devoted to sign-making for the Occupy Wall Street protests. The protests began right around the time the exhibit opened.

In a pile of textile cast-offs, artist Surasi Kusolwong dropped a few pieces of gold jewelry. Visitors are invited to search for them.

An exercise video by the group Madein Company blends movements from hundreds of different cultural and religious ceremonies.

A bulletin board in a section organized by Ourgoods.org allows people barter goods and services.

In the neighboring Olympic diner, the Danish group Superflex recreated a fully functioning executive bathroom from JP Morgan Chase. The bathroom will remain a permanent part of the diner.

Hey Folks:

I did a feature story on the L.A. Chicano art collective Asco for Studio 360 (complete with reference to Chihuahua skulls), tied to their big retrospective at LACMA. It’s my first big piece for Studio 360, so please have a listen!!

xox,
C.

Jennifer Dalton’s latest exhibit began with an inkling. She was watching the Daily Show, in which some male guest was expounding at length about something when she realized she couldn’t remember the last time a woman had sat in that place. “I thought it was me, that I was just looking for that,” she says. “Then I went into the archives and I was like, ‘No fucking way.’” Dalton counted up all of the guests listed on the program’s online archives for all of 2010. During this time, 79% of the Daily Show‘s guests were men and only 21% were women.*

She then went and performed the same exercise on a bunch of her other favorite programs. All of them featured an overwhelming majority of male guests. The Colbert Report had a guest line-up that was 82.5% male. Charlie Rose came in at 80%. Bill Maher had 74%. And Rachel Maddow — Rachel effing Maddow! — featured dudes 80.5% of the time. Public radio fared somewhat better: Leonard Lopate‘s guests were male 66% of the time, while Brian Lehrer came in at 68%. Fresh Air, however, which is hosted by a woman, checks in with a low lady-guest ratio. More than 79% of Terry Gross’s guests are male. (Bands and other groups were counted as single guests, hence the fractionals.)

Dalton's "What does an important person look like?" (Click to supersize.)

“My gut is that it’s entropy,” says Dalton. “It makes me think that people are lazy. Like they’re just reblogging the same stuff.” The artist, who has previously charted the ways in which female cultural figures have been visually portrayed in the New Yorker (hint: cheesecake), has used this research to create new works for her latest solo show at the Winkleman Gallery. The central piece (shown at right) is devoted to the Daily Show, the program that spurred Dalton’s recent quest. In it, she has organized the guests by subject areas (authors, athletes, etc.) and placed the men in gold frames and the women in silver ones. The colors say it all.

Dalton says the piece was born of equal parts rage and glee. “These are heroes of mine and I think they’re doing really important work,” she explains of figures such as Stewart and Colbert. “But I just end up confused. It’s like are you with me or against me? I think of you as on my team, but maybe you don’t think of me as on your team?” She hopes that her work might get someone in some aspect of the media business to think a little bit more critically about what they do: “I would just love for these producers to be like, ‘Here’s a pile of women we rejected. Did we reject them too quickly?’” In order to do that, some of these programs might have to start by hiring a few more.

Jennifer Dalton: Cool Guys Like You opens today, at the Winkleman Gallery, in Chelsea.

*Update: Made a small correction to the Daily Show figures above. I previously had them as 78/22 male/female. The correct figures are actually 79/21.

**Further Super Duper Important Update (9/12 at 8:50pm): Some of the discussions I’ve seen on the internet about this piece suggest that Stewart’s male/female ratios are skewed towards men because he interviews so many political figures and most politicians are men. That is not the case. According to Dalton: only 18% of Daily Show guests are political figures. Of those 25 guests, only one was a woman (for a male/female ratio of 96/4). Just so you can draw some sort of comparison, the 111th Congress, which was in session when Dalton created the piece, was 17% female.

It’s actually authors and actors that make up the majority of Stewart’s guests — not political figures, as is frequently assumed. Together, these two arts-related categories make up 63% of the Daily Show‘s guests. And within these, the male-female breakouts remain nothing short of depressing. Of all the authors featured on the program in 2010, only 25% were female. Of all the actors, only 33% were women. In several categories (chefs, military figures, and filmmakers), the line-up was 100% male. Though, to be fair, he only featured one chef. What does this mean? It means that culture, as viewed through the Daily Show lens (as much as I love many parts of it), is heavily male. And don’t make me go to the gallery to count the minorities. ‘Cuz I’m sure that area is probably a hot mess, too.

Which brings to mind this delicious little video that Dalton recently Tweeted: Too Many Dicks on the Daily Show.