The new issue of e-flux/journal is up online and I am giddy over it.  This is their tenth episode as the journal, which makes it nearly a year old, as they publish monthly. Though the journal is a relatively new application of the e-flux program, e-flux.com has been around since January 1999 beginning with an email announcement about a small exhibition in a Chinatown Holiday Inn hotel room.  A decade later e-flux is still based out of New York with far reaching out posts in Berlin, and the corneal receptors at the far end of the yawning, immeasurable distance that is the internet.  Today this network includes over 50,000 visual art professionals.  E-flux is one of my favorite contemporary art journals, it is edited by Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood and Anton Vidokle if you are at all unfamiliar with it I urge you to take some time to get to know their project. Whether the journal or one of their many educational and collaborative projects there’s bound to be something that moves you, it changed my life.  Testimonials aside, e-flux/journal #10 this month discusses the limits to which the democratization of image production can become a tool for making versus being at home in the world.  With essays from Sherif El-Azma The Psychogeography of Loose Associations, Luis Camnitzer, ALPHABETIZATION, Part Two: Hegemonic Language and Arbitrary Order, Paul Chan What Art Is and Where it Belongs, Céline Condorelli Life Always Escapes, Peter Friedl Secret Modernity, Hans Ulrich Obrist Ever Spero, and Hito Steyerl In Defense of the Poor Image. E-flux/journal #10, hot off the presses!

http://www.e-flux.com/journal/issue/10

Got a response to this post? Let us know! Email your comments to  mail@badatsports.com. We’ll feature thoughtful responses to issues generated by our posts in our Letters to the Editors Feature on Saturdays.

Bravo’s “Art Star” reality show hasn’t even hit the air waves yet, and already we’ve got another art contest on our hands. Our vote for most ridiculous news of the week comes with the Guggenheim’s announcement of Rob Pruitt’s “First Annual Art Awards,” modeled after Hollywood’s Oscars. Pruitt  conceived the awards to celebrate “select individuals, exhibitions, and projects that have made a significant impact on the field of contemporary art during the past year.”  Oh, and just to keep things bubbly, the star-studded list of presenters will include boyfriend-girlfriend art/fashion design couple of the moment Nate Lowman and Mary-Kate Olsen. There’s a formal dinner afterwards, and after that an after-party and, and….oh, just click on the link and read the rest for yourself (including the video of the nominee announcements). I can’t take anymore. The rest of our midweek round-up, some of which is actually meaningful (though you’ll have to be the judge of that) as follows:

*Art Institute of Chicago appoints Alison Fisher as the Harold and Margot Schiff Assistant Curator of Architecture in the Department of Architecture and Design. Her focus will be on the Art Institute’s architecture holdings from 1850 to 1945, and she will oversee the drawings, models, and archives of Frank Lloyd Wright, Daniel Burnham, Louis Sullivan and other American architectural masters.

*Artist Mark Bradford among those awarded 2009 MacArthur Genius Grants.

*Bill Viola changes mind, decides to meet with Pope for Vatican cultural dialogue on the relationship between faith and art.

*Franklin Sirmans appointed chief curator of contemporary art at LACMA, succeeding Lynn Zelevansky.

*Proposed Pennsylvania budget agreement extends state sales taxes to arts and cultural performances and venues but exempts movies and sports events; Philadelphia arts leaders organize in protest.

*Brandeis committee recommends keeping Art Museum open, but punts on the issue of the proposed sale of its collection.

*NEA Chair Rocco Landesman explains reasoning behind demotion of communications director Yossi Sergant.

*Paul Chan’s “Top 5 Things That Will Get You Arrested in Minneapolis” aka Top 5 Things We Should Do Together To Make Something Interesting.” (Via Eyeteeth).

*Virtual flip book: View all 160 pages of Proximity magazine in less than 20 seconds. Then go buy the real thing. It’s a good issue, as always.

*A visit to an exhibition about the history of Ikea.

*Artnet writer Grant Mandarino provides Cliff’s Notes on the new Fall art magazines.

*Chicago job posting: Projectionists and room monitors needed for upcoming College Art Association (CAA) Annual Conference in Chicago. If you’re interested, see here.

Here’s what I’d go to, if I were you…
1. Co-Prosperity Sphere

Bert Stabler is bending you brain this 4th of July with SALAD-CHURCH-EXERCISE: A show about self-improvement through self-denial. With work by over 20 local artists, a massive salad potluck, and taglines like, “While large-scale organs of control, such as schools, hospitals, and prisons, enforce the social contract through a restriction of choice and a remote delegation of authority, personal or cultural techniques for redirecting and mastering libido, the inner primordial chaos we carry within, can be found in the options represented by salad, church, and exercise.” How could you go wrong. You can take the Orange Line to Ashland, Saturday from 2-6pm.

2. Julius Cæsar

For the day after Independency Day, lets raise our torn jean jacket clad arms an Question Authority! Mmm…high school. But seriously, Kaylee Rae Wyant and Jerome Acks are doing something cool over at Julius Caesar called Hear Here. Framed as work “examining the many ideals and complexities encompassing freedom, democracy and revolution” it should be interesting to contemplate after a flag choked day of “patriotism”.

3. BEN RUSSELL

How many ways can you put your own name on a show? Well, if you are Ben Russell, as many as humanly possibly. How is “Ben Russell, presented by Ben Russell, at Ben Russell” for ya? Weird thing is, it ain’t a solo show. Ben Russell is a new space in Pilsen, go there and check out work by Marco Kane Braunschweiler, Martine Syms, Paul Chan, Miguel Cortez, Roxane Hopper, Julie Rudder, and Kelly Kaczynsk are doing their performance piece at 9pm the opening night. Drop by for the Sunday opening from 6-10pm.

4. MCA

As a celebration of the closing of the Bucky Fuller exibition, the MCA is hosting Jen & Ira & You at the MCA Meet Buckminster Fuller Meeting the Hippies in Golden Gate Park, a performance piece by Jennifer Karmin & Ira S. Murfin. Ever wondered why hippies loved this son of the atomic age? Well, here’s your chance to find out. The performance is free with the cost of admission, so if you get into the MCA free, you’re good to go.

Friday

Saturday

“The Foolish Toys” will build a post-decadent shrine or memorial to our excessive past. Materials, objects, sounds, actions, and images, will be incorporated into one large sculptural form that evolves over time. Viewers are invited to leave a remembrance of things past: useless, excessive, non-essential items.  Check out their website for more information.

• The Renaissance Society: Paul Chan: “My laws are my whores”

March 01 – April 12, 2009

5811 S. Ellis Avenue
Bergman Gallery, Cobb Hall 418
Chicago, Illinois 60637

“My laws are my whores marks the premiere of a new ensemble of works by Paul Chan. Using the writer and philosopher Marquis De Sade (1740–1814) as a point of departure, Chan has created moving image works, ink and charcoal drawings, a sculpture, and a set of computer fonts that evoke what the Sadean legacy might look like today and how his obsessions with forms of sex, violence, freedom, and reason echo in the 21st century.” The fonts that Chan has created are also available for free download via the Ren’s website.

Sunday

Spertus: Black Like Us

Lecture/Multimedia Presentation
Sunday, April 5, 2009
2pm
Spertus
610 S Michigan Ave
Chicago, IL 60605
$20/$15 members/$10 students

“The fates of African Americans and Jewish Americans have often been seen as entwined, as an index of the nation’s capacity to live up to its democratic ideals. With audio and visual examples, Dr. Stephen J. Whitfield lectures on stories of both minorities—separately and together—overcoming barriers and speaking out through literature and the arts.” More information at the museum website