Other works sit more comfortably within fine art practice. A simple idea with high impact is Wars During my Lifetime by Martin John Callanan, which lists on newsprint all the wars that have taken place during his lifetime. There are 189 of them and he is only 30 years old.
Notes on 1. News
Merkske at London Art Book Fair, Whitchapel Gallery, 21–23 September 2012
Merkske will be with Slade Press for the fourth edition of The London Art Book Fair at the Whitechapel Gallery, it takes place from the 21–23 September 2012.
Merkske published Text Trends: Though Text Trends, Martin John Callanan deals with the spectacularization of information. Using Google data he explores the vast search data of its users. An animation takes the content generated by search queries and reduces this process to its essential elements: search terms vs. frequency searched for over time, presented in the form of a line graph, 16 of which are reproduced in this book.
Wars During My Lifetime – Whitstable Biennale 2012
This new work for Whitstable Biennale 2012, Wars During My Lifetime, collects together wars that have taken place all over the world during one individual’s lifetime. A fascinating – and rapidly expanding – document, the newspaper makes no comment, but quietly brings the list to our attention. Many are wars we hear about on the radio on a daily basis, others are long since finished, or so small or distant they haven’t touched our consciousness.
Available from Whitstable Library, Elliotts Coffee Shop, Tea & Times, and Harbour News, throughout the festival: 1st to 16th September 2012
Saturday 8 September, 2pm starting from HQ
for this special one-off event, a local town crier will read out the wars within the newspaper.
Video of Deed Poll, 5 July 2012, Whitechapel Gallery
On the fifth day of July in the year 2012 at the building known as 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX, Martin John Callanan (formally Martin John Callanan) assumed the name of Martin John Callanan. A Deed Poll was made to that purpose. A Statutory Declaration sworn and sealed by a Commissioner for Oath to that affect. The Deed Poll shall be enrolled in the Supreme Court of Judicature. A public notice was published in the Camden New Journal, 5 July 2012.
Whitechapel Curator Kirsty Ogg introduces The London Open exhibition
This exhibition showcases the most dynamic work being made in London in 2012. Take a journey through a selection of the latest art trends and see potential stars of the future amongst 35 artists chosen by a panel of international artists, curators and collectors
The London Open: Performances compilation
Includes Deed Poll, 5 July 2012
Free live performance as part of The London Open exhibition from artists Ruth Proctor, Lucienne Cole, Sarah Dobai, Charlie Tweed and Martin John Callanan
“Now or Lately Known As”: The Whitechapel’s London Open
Structuralist and post-structuralist linguistic theory has it that the relationship between the name (signifier) of a thing and its essence or identity (signified) is an essentially arbitrary one – there’s no reason why a thing should be called by one name and not another, save for habit or convention. In his performance Deed Poll, Martin John Callanan shows in an imaginative and quietly witty way how things aren’t necessarily so straightforward. By changing his name from Martin John Callanan to Martin John Callanan using the eponymous legal procedure, the artist demonstrated to a live audience at London’s Whitechapel Gallery the vectors of legal, political and religious power that underpin the day-to-day performative use of names in Western societies. The various hoops to be jumped through in order to satisfy banks and government bodies, including swearing on the Bible, spoken declarations, testimony from a responsible third party, signatures from witnesses, and the stamp and signature of an official registrar, are a far cry from the free movement of signifiers imagined by the post-structuralists.
Callanan’s performance accompanied the presentation of two of his works, International Directory of Fictitious Telephone Numbers and Letters 2004-2006, in The Whitechapel’s summer exhibition, The London Open. The gallery’s stated intent was “to showcase the most dynamic work being made in London in 2012”, with works being selected through an open submission process. The result is a mix of the poetic, the intelligent, and the tedious. Besides Callanan’s contributions, the intersections of power and language were also explored by Sol Archer, whose video work Palace in the Left spun a dazzling web of references encompassing hummingbirds, particle physics, Mayan rituals, neurobiology, and more. Just at the point when you are ready to believe in the interconnectedness of everything, however, the video concludes with the promise that all this is “coming soon to your future home”: networks of meanings made possible by their subsumption under the category of consumer product.
Notice of name change
Notice is hereby given that at the time of 3pm on the fifth day of July in the year 2012 at the building known as 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX, Martin John Callanan (formally Martin John Callanan) will assume the name of Martin John Callanan. A Deed Poll will be made for that purpose with a Statutory Declaration being sealed by a Commissioner for Oath to that affect. The Deed Poll shall be enrolled in the Supreme Court of Judicature.
London Open Whitechapel Gallery, London
This exhibition showcases the most dynamic work being made in London in 2012. Take a journey through a selection of the latest art trends and see potential stars of the future amongst 35 artists chosen by a panel of international artists, curators and collectors.
Political and social subject matter is a theme in many works. The show features artists using performance and DIY approaches to making work whilst others investigate kitsch, outsider art and countercultural groups. The exhibition includes Arnaud Desjardin’s live printing press, Leigh Clarke’s negative casts of masks of political figures often worn during demonstrations, Nicholas Cobb’s photographs showing fictitious model riot scenes at Bluewater shopping centre and Pio Abad’s work featuring Saddam Hussein’s gold taps printed on an imitation Versace silk scarf.
The London Open includes work in a diverse range of media from painting, sculpture, film, textile and photography to installation and performance. It includes Paul Westcombe’s intricate illustrations on takeaway coffee cups, Alice Channer’s body-based sculptures, Lucienne Cole’s pop culture-inspired performances and Martin John Callanan’s conceptual works, such as International Directory of Fictitious Telephone Numbers (2011) and Letters 2004-2006.
The London Open is a chance to see some of today’s most innovative artists. The Whitechapel Gallery’s open submission exhibitions have shown artists including Grayson Perry, Bob & Roberta Smith and Rachel Whiteread early in their careers.
Artists: Pio Abad, Peter Abrahams, Caroline Achaintre, Greta Alfaro, Sol Archer, Thomas Ball, Martin John Callanan, Dale Carney, Paul Carter, Alice Channer, Leigh Clarke, Nicholas Cobb, Lucienne Cole, Beth Collar, Chris Coombes, Shona Davies, Jon Klein & Dave Monaghan, Arnaud Desjardin, Sarah Dobai, Shaun Doyle and Mally Mallinson, Ana Genoves, Mark Harris, Emma Holmes, John Hughes, Nikolai Ishchuk, Robert Orchardson, Heather Phillipson, Ruth Proctor, Amikam Toren, Charlie Tweed, Roy Voss, Paul Westcombe and Rehana Zaman.
Selectors: Patricia Bickers, editor of Art Monthly; artist Rodney Graham; collector Jack Kirkland; curator Marta Kuzma; and Whitechapel Gallery curator Kirsty Ogg.
Martin John Callanan will also have a Performance on 5 July
Global, Casal Solleric, press archive
The PDF press archive for Global at Casal Solleric solo exhibition (mainly in Castellano with some machine-translation to English).
The Present is a Point Just Passed
The Stephen Lawrence Gallery, Queen Anne Court, University of Greenwich,
Old Royal Naval College, Park Row, Greenwich, SE10 9LS
Private View: Thursday 7 June 6.30 – 8.30pm
Exhibition Dates: 7 June – 11 July
Opening hours Monday – Friday 10am – 5pm, Saturday 11am – 4pm
Martin John Callanan, Jan Dibbets, Lizzie Hughes, Aaron Koblin, Jonty Semper
The exhibition brings together works that record precise moments in time. Shown alongside the artworks are historical artifacts that could be seen as the raw data that the artists collectively share an interest in. Meticulously collating, analysing and visualising data are recurring themes and the singular objects, video and sound works are the result of the combined energy of a wealth of individual units of information.
The selected works deal with human endeavour and a desire to chart a world that often defines a comprehensible scale. Whilst firmly rooted within an analytical framework, tender moments and a delicate splendor inevitably surface from the rigor of systems and theory.
A text by Diane Sims will accompany the exhibition.
The exhibition is curated by Lizzie Hughes
Make the Living Look Dead
Letters 2004-06 book and All the people who have ever lived, and will ever live print included in
Make the Living Look Dead
Opening 17 April 6.30–8.30pm
18 April to 2 June 2012
The Showroom, 63 Penfold Street, London NW8 8PQ
March 2012, Time-Lapse
I Wanted to See All the News from Today included in March 2012, an 0nline exhibition presented as part of Time-Lapse
In 1969, Seth Siegelaub, pioneering supporter of conceptual art, organized March 1969 a.k.a One Month, an exhibition that existed only in catalogue form. Siegelaub invited thirty-one artists to contribute a work; one for each day of the month. Time-Lapse curators Irene Hofmann and Janet Dees have conceived of a project that is an homage to Siegelaub’s ground-breaking “exhibition,” updated for today’s virtual, technological world. March 2012 will be hosted on the homepage of SITE’s website. Each day during March one work by a different artist will be featured. The participating artists are an international and intergenerational group currently working with conceptual, time-based and media-oriented practices.
Artists include:
Axle Contemporary, Daniel Bejar, Martin John Callanan, Beth Coleman + Howard Goldkrand, Ron Cooper, Matthew Cusick, Faith Denham, Brent Green, Hillerbrand + Magsamen, Jennie C. Jones, Tellervo Kalleinen + Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen, susan pui san lok, Conor McGarrigle, Linda Montano, neuroTransmitter, Huong Ngo (in collaboration with George Monteleone and Or Zubalsky), Paul Notzold, Geof Oppenheimer, Ben Patterson, Dawit L. Petros, Adrian Piper, Liliana Porter, Postcommodity, Mark Tribe, Claudia X. Valdes, and Donald Woodman.
Transactions, Centro Cultural de España en Guatemala, La Ciudad de Guatemala
Transactions, Centro Cultural de España en Guatemala, La Ciudad de Guatemala
Participan: A-153167 (Anibal Lopez), David Brooks, Martin John Callanan, Nemanja Cvijanovic, Detext, Caleb Larsen, Liz Magic Laser, Julien Previeux, Daniel Seiple & Kunst Re-Publik, Katarina Sevic, Santiago Sierra, Nedko Solakov, Nikola Uzunovski y otros.
Curaduría: Raúl Martínez y Marco Antonini
Entendiendo el arte como otra forma de intercambio, esta exposición explora los procesos invisibles, errores de cálculo deliberados y verdades encubiertas del modelo de producción capitalista. En un momento en que este discurso parece incuestionable, Transacciones ahonda precisamente en las contradicciones y fisuras de nuestro modelo económico, convirtiéndolas en un espacio de trabajo y lucha política.
Los artistas incluidos en esta muestra cuestionan la “lógica” que gobierna los procesos económicos, exponiendo los límites legales y éticos del actual modelo neoliberal a través de lagunas legales y vacíos institucionales. Conscientes de las dificultades de evadir las estructuras económicas, muchos de ellos las adoptan como su hábitat natural y campo de batalla.
Transactions, Centro Cultural de España en Guatemala, La Ciudad de Guatemala
DOCUMENTARY MATERIAL FROM AGAIN, A TIME MACHINE
A selection of visual documentation taken of the installation Make the Living Look Dead as part of the touring exhibition Again, A Time Machine at Spike Island, Bristol.
Includes my works Letters 2004-2006 and All the people who have ever lived, and will ever live
Büro BDP & the MINI Museum of XXI Century Arts
Broken Dimanche Press are delighted to announce that Büro BDP will be inaugurated with Martin John Callanan and the MINI Museum of XXI Century Arts.
Since 2007, Callanan has linked his status updates across social networking sites to display messages in unison. The updates always read “Martin John Callanan is okay“, with corresponding dates to show when they were published.
For the first exhibition at Büro BDP, Callanan has printed all the status updates on a single table sized sheet of roll paper. Using the obsolete technology of a pen plotter, which marks the text onto the paper with a standard writing pen, the text characters have been reproduced with machine precision. After the opening night, the table will gradually revert to it’s everyday use as an office desk.
The 209 updates are displayed sequentially in reserve chronological order on the MINI Museum of XXI Century Art which occupies the window on Emserstraße.
Vernissage & BBQ: Thursday 21 April 2011, 7-11pm.
Show: 22 April – 5 May 2011
Büro BDP
Emserstraße 43 / 12051-Berlin
Extimitat. Art, intimitat i tecnologia
Catalogue of the group exhibition on digital art curated by Pau Waelder. The exhibition proposes the spectator reflect on the new parameters introduced into the concepts of subject, body and interpersonal relations as a result of the development of new technologies, and how intimacy thus turns into extimacy, to use the term created by Jacques Lacan to define existence. The selection of works, interactive installations that involve the spectator through active participation, brings together renowned international artists: Gazira Babeli, Clara Boj and Diego Díaz, Martin John Callanan, Grégory Chatonsky, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Paul Sermon, Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau, and Carlo Zanni.
The catalogue has been published with a heat-sensitive cover. Includes colour reproductions of the works displayed and critical texts by Pau Waelder, Pau Alsina and Francesc Núñez. 2011, ISBN 978-84-938055-4-8, 184 pages, 23x17cm, Catalan, Spanish, English and German.
“an instant vortex of images I can’t quite see”
The International Directory of Fictitious Telephone Numbers. That’s a title that brings about an instant vortex of images I can’t quite see – their speed and variety and the worlds they cause to collide are more numerous than I can count….(read more)
Extimacy: the intimate is Other
EXTIMACY: ART, INTIMACY AND TECHNOLOGY
Es Baluard Museu d’Art Modern i Contemporani de Palma
29.01.2011 – 01.05.2011 (opening 28.01.2011)
GAZIRA BABELI, CLARA BOJ, MARTIN JOHN CALLANAN, GRÉGORY CHATONSKY, DIEGO DÍAZ, RAFAEL LOZANO-HEMMER, LAURENT MIGNONNEAU, PAUL SERMON, CHRISTA SOMMERER, CARLO ZANNI.
Inside the immense flow of data exchange, the new technologies have facilitated an interdependency between the spheres of what is private and what is public, between interior and exterior, leading us to reveal, in an increasingly natural manner, our experiences, thoughts and feelings, enlarging the circle of intimacy to the point of sharing our inner life with the invisible, abstract audience of Internet users. Things personal become collective, things belonging to others become our own and intimacy is no longer something that is preserved and kept in our innermost circles, but something that is projected in all directions in an eccentric movement. Thus intimacy turns into extimacy, to use the term created by Jacques Lacan to define the existence, within the most intimate sphere of the I, of a “foreign body”, that which is external to the individual and with which one identifies.
We need to share our intimacy because what we are is defined both by our subjectivity and by what surrounds us. In the realm of digital art, several artists have worked with the new parameters of subject, body, interpersonal relationship and intimacy introduced by the new technologies. Their works enable us to initiate a reflection on the ways in which the mobile phone, e-mails, chats, social networks and instant messaging systems modify, increase or condition our communication with others. They also allow us to consider where the boundaries of our personal space lie, where our “I” ends and that of others begins.
“Extimacy. Art, intimacy and technology” is a group digital art exhibition which puts forward a proposal that spectators reflect on these concepts through the presentation of works by recognised artists from the international scene. Interactive installations, mainly, that involve spectators in what is active participation with the work, which never ceases to be a piece with its own identity, the fruit of the firm artistic background of creators who combine art and technology in their work. In an era in which the user adopts an active role in the diffusion and manipulation of information on the global network (known as web 2.0), in art, too, a change in roles between spectator and work is taking place, with interactive art as the best expression of this new paradigm. The works of some great names from this sphere, such as Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer or Paul Sermon, for instance, are combined with the creations of promising artists like Gazira Babeli, Clara Boj and Diego Díaz, Gregory Chatonsky, Carlo Zanni or Martin John Callanan. All of them exhibit the multiple facets a concept as complex and at the same time as simple as extimacy can present, from different angles and with diverse intentions.
Several Interruptions
To celebrate 15 years of ground breaking research in electronic media, the Slade Centre for Electronic Media in Fine Art (SCEMFA) will hold a 14 week exhibition, showing new works from eight internationally acclaimed artists: who use emerging practices to explore electronic and digital media, as both a source and material.
Martin John Callanan, 24 – 30 January
Thomson & Craighead, 2 – 13 February
Tim Head, 15 – 20 February
Simon Faithfull, 22 February – 6 March
Brighid Lowe, 8 – 13 March
Melanie Jackson, 15 – 20 March
Susan Collins, 23 March – 17 April
An exhibition that revolves every fortnight between each artist, acting as a showcase for the best of contemporary art in the UK, and highlighting the Slade’s pivotal role in the history, development and current research in the many varied forms of electronic media.
SCEMFA is a research group at the Slade School of Fine Art. SCEMFA opened in 1995 and for the past 15 years has provided the opportunity for leading artists to focus on research into Electronic Media and Fine Art, contributing to debate on a national and international level for events, exhibitions, broadcasts, collaborations and online.
Tuesday – Friday: 10 am – 5pm, Saturday & Sunday: noon – 5pm
North Lodge, University College London, Gower Street, WC1E 6BT