Pressed Coffee 02: May 22 - 28, 2020
Good morning! We've definitely begun drinking our coffee cold, but other than that our ritual remains the same. Here is some material from this past week that we found worth checking out.
Above: The Artist As Curator edited by Elena Filipovic
Independent curator of visual arts, Isabella Achenbach, gives us her 30-second review of her favorite read during isolation times.
On Society & Politics
It’s definitely been an intense week of heartbreaking news. Here is a round up of some. Let’s get the anxiety-inducing stuff out of the way…
May 21
How White Backlash Controls American Progress
The Historian Lawrence Glickman gives an in-depth history of the “white backlash” of the civil rights era and attempts to connect it to the right-wing (and dominantly white) protests against pandemic protocol today.
Written by Lawrence Glickman for The Atlantic
May 23
Detroit Neighborhood Group Sees Gentrification As The Enemy
A large New York-based development agency bought a run-down building on Detroit’s Eastside. This story is nothing new, but the high chances of the neighborhood fighting the influx of high rent somewhat is.
Reported by John Carlisle for Detroit Free Press
May 24
Biden’s “You Ain’t Black” Comment Is Symptomatic Of Democrat’s Deeper Race Problem
This is but one “gaffe” in a long history of unjust and weirdly odd actions taken by the Presidential candidate, but one could argue that it sheds more light on the Democratic establishment than on him alone.
Written by Briahna Joy Gray for Current Affairs
May 28
“No Justification”: Minneapolis Demands Murder Charges For Police Office Who Killed George Floyd
We’d like to think that it goes without saying that what happened to George Floyd was wrong; that the four cops should be charged with murder. However, the voices that repeat this cry continue to go unheard, injustice continues to flourish, and the police continue to abuse and terrorize communities of color.
From Democracy Now
If you have $20 in your bank account to spare, consider splitting it between these two fundraisers:
Official George Floyd Memorial Fund organized by Philonise Floyd, George Floyd’s brother.
Arts & Scraps to provide families with creative learning supply kits. This amazing Detroit-based organization utilizes art-making as a mode of learning STEM subjects. They are in the process of creating project kits for children stuck at home during the pandemic and are hoping to raise enough money to provide kits to 3,000 Detroit families!
On Arts & culture
News and related material in arts & culture
May 22
Paris Announces $16.5 Million Relief Fund For Culture
Living in Detroit, I think profoundly about what it would be like if our government (either local, state, or federal) found the same sort of value in arts & culture as a city like Paris does. How many architectural treasures would be preserved? How many people would be employed? How many children would be able to learn visually through the arts? What would it be like to have our local economy depend on more than just cars and real estate?
Reported by Artforum
Contradictions and Tensions: Shiva Ahmadi Interviewed By Naomi Falk
I was first introduced to Shiva Ahmadi through her artwork in the Wayne State University Art Collection. This interview re-introduced me to her and illuminated her history, one that continuously shapes her creativity.
Published in BOMB Magazine
May 26
“Artists In Quarantine,” Public Intellectuals, And The Trouble With Empty Heroics
“Artists and thinkers might consider the reasons to seek a public platform, and what to do with it. They should be prepared to acknowledge uncertainty, to embrace instability, and to rethink their ideas. Rather than filling the void with empty rhetoric, at the very least what’s needed are reflections on what it means to live in that void.”
by Jörg Heiser for Art Agenda
Pressed Coffee Conversation with Lorena Cruz
In case you missed it last week! Check out the first Pressed Coffee conversation with artist Lorena Cruz. A new conversation will accompany Pressed Coffee every other week.
Blue basket handwoven by Lorena Cruz. Image courtesy of the artist.
Last week’s conversation is with the lovely Lorena Cruz, who recently sold handmade baskets to help fundraise for undocumented families in SW Detroit. We had an amazing (but far too short) conversation talking about the populations most vulnerable to a global pandemic; essential workers and the working class; as well as the history of her art practice and how it has shifted under our lockdown situation. Enjoy!
What we’re loving
Within Reach: Jordan Casteel at New Museum
The New Museum in New York recently released full installation shots of the exhibition, Within Reach, along with high-resolution photos of some of the artworks via ArtViewer.org. The show includes over 40 paintings from Jordan Casteel’s career, making up her first solo museum exhibition.
“In these richly colorful works, Casteel draws upon ongoing conversations on portraiture that encompass race, gender, and subjectivity, connecting her practice to the legacy of artists like Alice Neel, Faith Ringgold, and Bob Thompson, among others.”
Come On In: Faye Driscoll at Walk Art Center
This is a different form of meditation, something slightly (or, rather, very) different from the new yoga routine you adopted while under lockdown. It’s not that the dancer Faye Driscoll reconfigured the art of dance, but, alas, the museum reconfigured their definition of “museum quality” art. Take a few minutes to engage in this act from home.
What We’re Reading
Pages from The Artist As Curator edited by Elena Filipovic
The Artist As Curator edited by Elena Filipovic
I like books where I don’t have to start at page one, and finish hundreds of pages (and weeks!) later. The Artist As Curator (An Anthology) has been my go-to quarantine read, with 22 scholarly essays about exhibitions that changed the way people view and think about art and, equally important, how and why it is shown. The important connecting thread between each of the spotlighted, ground-breaking exhibitions: they were all curated by artists. The editor, Elena Filipovic, wrote in her introduction,
Many artist-curated exhibitions—perhaps the most striking and influential of the genre—are the result of artists treating the exhibition as an artistic medium in its own right, an articulation of form. In the process, they often disown or dismantle the very idea of the “exhibition” as it is conventionally thought, putting its genre, category, format, or protocols at stake and thus entirely shifting the terms of what an exhibition could be.
Questioning and shifting the form of exhibitions feels particularly pertinent today, and these historic examples of artist-initiated projects are important research (and inspiration!) for contemporary innovation—the best kind of which usually doesn’t come from within institutions.
–Isabella Achenbach
Isabella Achenbach (IA) is based in Detroit, MI and works as an independent visual arts curator while holding a position as the curatorial affairs manager at Cranbrook Art Museum.
On Everything Else
May 24
Scenes Of Isolation Amid Pandemic In The Vermont Countryside
Thinking of Vermont makes me think of my dear friend Aisling, who posts almost daily of jaw-dropping Vermont sites just from her everyday encounters with them. I’m thankful to her for giving me a taste of what I crave most while in urban Michigan.
Reported by Tara Wray for NPR
May 26
Kara Walker On The Post-Lockdown World
One can imagine the artist Kara Walker sitting amid silence at her computer, or maybe journal, writing and contemplating, producing a message with introspective undertones but all the same overt, meant for all classifications of readers.
Written by Kara Walker for Frieze
LULA + RAIKOU <3
Raikou eating watermelon and loving summer (until recently, when it hit above 80°F)
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