Author archives: Jon Cotner
Jon Cotner is an artist who has recently done walk projects for the BMW Guggenheim Lab, Elastic City, and the Poetry Society of America. He is the author, with Andy Fitch, of Ten Walks/Two Talks. Cotner lives in Brooklyn, NY, and teaches at Pratt Institute.
Posted to Lab Notes I on March 5th, 2012 by Jon Cotner
Lab Notes I: Trends from the New York Lab | Retrofitting Urban Life
"21st-century cities need artists who practice innovative, offbeat social science. The alternative is to perpetuate problems that traditional methods neither see nor touch."
WochenKlausur, a Vienna-based art collective, designs social interventions. Since 1993 it has staged more than 30 interventions involving 50-plus artists. Each project arises from a particular community’s needs at a particular moment in time. Embodying the Lab’s do-it-yourself spirit, WochenKlausur empowers people to build better lives for themselves.
The group’s name stands for “weeks of closure”—which evokes, as they say, “the concentrated atmosphere of a closed working-session.” When WochenKlausur receives invitations from cultural institutions, they’ll convert galleries (or whatever space they’re given) into an office where the projects get planned. WochenKlausur doesn’t manipulate canvases, stones, or paints. They believe “art” is irreducible to “mastery of craftsmanship.” It’s a flexible concept. Continue reading…
Posted to Lab Notes I on February 20th, 2012 by Jon Cotner
Lab Notes I: Trends from the New York Lab | Fast-Changing Citizenship
Anna Deavere Smith
Anna Deavere Smith is an astonishing chameleon. Over the years her solo performances have brought to life—via matchless attention to gesture and voice—hundreds of “characters” across the globe. These hard-to-categorize plays combine theater, journalism, biography, and social critique.
Smith examines complex cultural problems such as the health-care crisis or race riots by interviewing people, transcribing their speech, then restaging excerpts in productions that feature surprising juxtapositions of viewpoints. As she says in this Democracy Now! interview: “If you think of my work like a dinner party, it’s having people at the table whom you’d never think of having at the table together.” Continue reading…
Posted to Lab Notes I on February 8th, 2012 by Jon Cotner
Lab Notes I: Trends from the New York Lab | Emotional Cityness
Spontaneous Society provides a communication primer: a lesson in affectionate discourse bridging races, ages, classes; a reminder that the present, barring violence, is to be celebrated before it vanishes into nothingness.
Among his tips on turning cities into “engines for joy,” Lab Team member Charles Montgomery stresses interacting with strangers. He says: “Being kind is not just good for other people. My favorite neuroeconomist, Paul Zak, has shown that acts of altruism can flood your system with a happy hormone known as oxytocin.” Montgomery asks us to “help little old ladies cross the street,” to “merge politely in traffic,” and to “open doors for people,” all for the sake of feeling and passing on “the buzz.”
Continue reading…
