Bad at Sports » World

Crisis of Credit Visualized

Christopher — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 00:59:54 +0000

Ebay Art Scam Broken Up In Chicago

Christopher — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 20:53:29 +0000

Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall and Andy Warhol were among artists whose works were counterfeited by seven people indicted for two art-fraud schemes that reaped a combined $5 million.

Those charged include three Europeans and residents of New York, Florida and Illinois, Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said today in a statement. They sold thousands of fake prints in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Japan and Europe, he alleged.

“Most of us have never owned a work of art signed by Picasso,” Fitzgerald said today at a press conference. Some people who believed they did, he added, “bought fakes.”

Some of the prints in the scam were sold on EBay Inc., the world’s largest online auctioneer, Fitzgerald alleged. Others were funneled through two art dealers in Northbrook, Illinois, prosecutors claimed.

The counterfeiting included the reproduction of actual works by the artists as well as the sale of fakes executed in each one’s particular style, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Nancy Miller, one of the prosecutors assigned to the case.

Fitzgerald urged art buyers to be wary. “Proceed with caution and seek guidance,” he said.

Some of the forgeries were made in Spain and Italy, Fitzgerald said. Others were created by one of the defendants, Leon Amiel Jr. of New York.

Amiel was indicted with art dealer James Kennedy of Northbrook, Illinois. Amiel allegedly distributed 2,500 counterfeit prints of work by Chagall and Calder. Kennedy is accused of traveling the country selling fakes as genuine limited-edition prints. The duo face nine counts of fraud and a demand to forfeit $1 million.

Kennedy’s lawyer, Michael B. Mann of Maywood, Illinois, declined to comment on the allegations.

In the larger of two cases, five people face 10 counts of fraud for their roles in importing forgeries from Europe and selling them through another Northbrook art dealer, Michael Zabrin. Prosecutors seek to recover $4 million from these defendants, Fitzgerald said.

Iraq Breakdown by Key Indices

Christopher — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 09:16:32 +0000

Here is a visual breakdown (view image full size) of key indices in relation to the state of violence, oil production, death rate, phone subscriptions, prison population & most interestingly the electricity production.

The most interesting measurement is when you compare to pre-war states, especially the electricity output.

Wafaa Bilal Censored at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Meg Onli — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 23:59:34 +0000

Via B. Blagojević for ArtCal “Iraqi American video artist Wafaa Bilal’s recent exhibition at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, Virtual Jihadi, was closed by the University’s administration a day after its initial opening on 5 March 2008.

A conservative commentator on the state payroll called for protests to Bilal’s exhibition before its opening in the pages of the Troy Record, citing a work based on an incendiary video game exhibited in a university art gallery.

The offending work, a video in which Bilal depicts himself as an Iraqi civilian radicalized by his brother’s death and driven to join an Al-Qaidea in Iraq cell as a suicide bomber, positions the artist’s character in an interactive video game called The Night of Bush Capturing, an Islamist détournement of Hunt for Saddam, an American first person shooter in which a protagonist U.S. soldier makes his way through a virtual world populated by stereotypical Iraqi men in an Odyssean journey to “hunt” and kill former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. RPI cited concerns that Balil’s work may make use of university resources to ‘provide a platform for what may be a product of a terrorist organization or which suggests violence directed toward the president of the United States and his family.’

Following the censoring of the exhibition at the university art gallery, Balil seems to have been blacklisted from campus and denied access to university buidlings, despite being RPI’s current artist in residence and being assured by the university president that he remains a welcome member of the community regardless of the recent controversy. Balil describes this and more in a recent video interview.”

To view the rest of the article please visit ArtCal

Anti-Racism Day PSA

Richard Holland — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 00:29:26 +0000

Mark your calenders cause Anti-Racism day is almost upon us. Well, kind of almost it is on March 21st…. Either way, to mark this UN sanctioned holiday the students of Oak Park High School in Winnipeg, Canada made the following PSA. You can read more here

Episode 119: James Elkins on Globalism!

Christopher — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 09:59:03 +0000

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Duncan talks with James Elkins about globalism, imperialism’s and all sorts of lighthearted stuff. This is audio that was recorded this summer at The Stone Theory Institute’s first iteration; 2007: The Globalization of Art, co-organized with Zhivka Valiavicharska.

Bad At Sports sat in on the whole thing and has pretty much every second on tape. We will be posting five sections over the next month or two as raw audio with a short introduction by Elkins himself. These will not be the polished “podio” that you have been used too but for those of you academically inclined it will be freaking awesome…

check the blog regularly as we will update with out notice.

We have a James Elkins original picture of all the scholars involved with their names for download at…http://www.badatsports.com/megsmagic/2007-panorama.jpg

The show opens with an indictment of Duncan’s mean-ness.

Joseph Mohan
James Elkins
Stone Summer Theory Institute
Howard and Donna Stone
Re-Enchantment: Religion and Contemporary Art
Zhivka Valiavicharska
Jeff Wall
Michael Ann Holly
The Getty
Fred Jameson
Dario Gamboni
Xu Bing
Nam June Paik
Susan Buck-Morss
Venice Biennale
Documenta
Carol Becker
Kathryn Hixson
Andrea Fraser
Gilles Deleuze
Félix Guattari
Foucault
Derrida
Tom Wolfe
Roland Barthes5
Shigemi Inaga
Christie’s
Jeff Koons
Stanley Fish
Salvador Dalí
Gerhard Richter
Hal Foster
Benjamin Buchloh
Rosalind Krauss
Jerry Saltz
Lucy McKenzie
Mess Hall
Temporary Services

Direct download: Bad_at_Sports_Episode_119-Elkins_on_Globalism.mp3

How to write Australian Political Ads

Christopher — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 00:12:06 +0000

Episode 108: Marc Fischer

Christopher — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 17:26:54 +0000

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This week Anthony Elms and Duncan talk to Marc Fischer about the Public Collectors project and other things.

Then Marc LeBlanc and Brian Andrews talk about how Marc is turning Japanese, he thinks he’s turning Japanese, he really thinks so….

The intro discusses how Philip von Zweck is a thug.

Anthony, please, dear God, talk in to the mic, seriously.

The following blurbs were shamelessly stolen from PVZ’s site:

Marc Fischer is 1/3 of the group Temporary Services, 1/11th of Mess Hall- an experimental cultural center in Roger’s Park (where he co-organizes the Hardcore Histories series), and an artist who curated the prison-themed exhibition “Captive Audience” at Gallery 400 earlier this year. In addition to believing that vinyl remains the superior format for the appreciation of recorded music, Fischer still refuses to own a fucking cell phone.

Anthony Elms overcame his youth as just another punk in Michigan to become the assistant director of Gallery 400, the editor of WhiteWalls, and a writer whose works have appeared in like every freakin’ magazine ever (except Artforum, whatever), plus in some exhibition catalogs for stuff that didn’t happen at VONZWECK, but was still ok. He’s pimped himself out at times; and participated in some panel discussions, but I think the panel discussion is always a bad idea, always. Anthony agrees.

On Public Collectors:
VONZWECK- as an entity, doesn’t care about art. You know it, you always have. But VONZWECK likes administration, and… stuff. Especially other people’s stuff! So does Marc Fischer. He likes stuff so much he’s started a whole new initiative to get to see it, and, being the unselfish soul that he is, to share it.

It’s called Public Collectors and it is founded upon the concern that there are many types of cultural artifacts that public libraries, museums and other institutions and archives either do not collect or do not make freely accessible. Public Collectors asks people that have had the luxury to amass, organize, and inventory these materials, to help reverse this lack by making their collections public. It’s voluntary and it’s free. Not about selling, or buying and not restricted to art. It’s about getting to see something you might not have access to otherwise and exchanges of knowledge.

For this – the kickoff, the ribbon cutting, Marc will be sharing one of his collections: records. That’s right actual records, long players, vinyl, what have you. Many will be on display; many more will be brought to the space for listening on request.

But the idea isn’t just for you to see Marc’s stuff, it’s for you to share your collection(s) and view other peoples’. Other collections are online and many more will be added soon at www.publiccollectors.org.

Gene Siskel Film Center
Helvetica
Marc Fischer
Anthony Elms
Public Collectors Project
Philip von Zweck
Mess Hall
Harold Washington Public Library
Angelo
Bruno Richard
UBU
Jonestown Punch
Steve Lacy
Stephen Perkins/Subspace Archives
Maximum Rock ‘N’ Roll
Tim Yohannon
Magma
Cheetah Chrome Motherfuckers
Bern Porter
Negazione
Declino
The Jesus Lizard
Stoner Rock
Dan Graham
’68 Democratic Convention
Jean Genet
Allen Ginsberg
David Yow
John Miller
Walter Benjamin
University of Chicago
Carol Jackson
Shannon Stratton
Ota Memorial Museum of Art
Le Corbusier
Julia Barnes
Nakaochiai Gallery
Clint Taniguchi
Misako and Rosen Gallery
Will Rogan and Yuki Okumura
Triple Base Gallery
Magical Art Room
Shugo Arts and Gallery Koyanagi
Superflat
Kerry James Marshall

Direct download: Bad_at_Sports_Episode_108-Marc_Fischer.mp3

Woman views her own heart on display

Richard Holland — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 18:48:12 +0000

by Alistair Strachan of The Fortean Times

Transplant patient Jennifer Sutton paid a visit to an exhibition in London called The Heart today, mainly to check out a particular item on display – her own heart.

Jennifer, 23, from the New Forest, UK, had a heart transplant at Papworth Hospital, Cambridge, on 4 June 2007. She lent her heart to the Wellcome Collection for the exhibition to increase public awareness of donation and Restrictive Cardiomyopathy, the disease that would have killed her.

As you might imagine, she found the experience very odd and moving. “Seeing my heart for the first time is an emotional and surreal experience. It caused me so much pain and turmoil when it was inside me. Seeing it sitting here is extremely bizarre and very strange. Finally I can see this odd looking lump of muscle that has given me so much upset. It’s tremendous it has become an object of fascination and will get people thinking about the disease, heart transplants and organ donation.”

The exhibition is on at the Wellcome Collection until 16 September 2007. If you haven’t yet been we fully recommend a visit (though that’s easy for us to say – it’s just 5 minutes up the road from FT towers). The show gathers together depictions of the heart from a wide range of sources – folk art, medical books, ancient myths – along with recent surgical equipment that, to my eyes, looks more at home in a print shop than an operating theatre. You can also compare the heart beat rates of squirrels, cats, whales and other mammals, a demo which proves that we have more in common with pigs than we realise.

Also, while you’re there, don’t forget to peruse the other oddities in the permanent collection, including Charles Darwin’s blingtastic walking stick.

Episode 105: Mucho Stuffo

Christopher — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 08:53:14 +0000

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This week Clare Britt from Fraction Workspace stops by to give the run down on a couple of the European shows with Duncan and Joanna. Namely Documenta and Munster. She will be back next week To consider Venice.

Also the fine and wacky folks from The Alliance of Pentaphilic Curators show up to encourage Philip von Zweck’s friends to explain why it should have been them while they “roast the bastard” in recognition of the sizable grant he won this year.

The opening and closing songs of this week’s show are there largely to amuse Kaveh Soofi.
If you don’t get it, you don’t, sorry.

Clare Britt
Fraction Workspace
Documenta
Skulptur Projekte Münster 07
The Alliance of Pentaphilic Curators
Philip von Zweck
Kaveh Soofi
James Elkins
Kerry James Marshall
Inigo Manglano-Ovalle
Peter Paul Rubens
John McCracken
Rembrandt
Clement Greenberg
Donald Judd
Peter Friedl
Gonzalo Diaz
Mary Kelly
Tseng Yu Chin
Martha Rosler
Danica Dakic
Hans Peter Feldman
Mike Kelley
Jason Rhodes
Paul McCarthy
Martin Kippenberger
Raymond Pettibon
Cindy Sherman
Dieter Roth
Robert Gober
Green Lantern
Caroline Picard
Deb Sokolow
Shannon Stratton
Threewalls
Dan Anhorn
Nevin Tomlinson

Direct download: Bad_at_Sports_Episode_105-Mucho_Stuffo.mp3

Bad at Sports » World

Crisis of Credit Visualized

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Ebay Art Scam Broken Up In Chicago

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