For the last 4 years, the Tasmanian Museum of Old and New Art has been running an installation called The Ladies Lounge. Only people who identify as ladies are allowed to enter. In the lounge, they can sit in luxury and look at famous artworks by Picasso etc, which are not available elsewhere in the museum. They are served champagne and pampered by male butlers. It was meant as a comment on exclusionary men's clubs (which still exist in Australia and elsewhere).
Some dude got upset about it and sued the gallery for entry at the anti-discrimination tribunal. The artist, Kirsha Kaechele, said she was "absolutely delighted" that the exhibit had been taken to court. “The men are experiencing Ladies Lounge, their experience of rejection is the artwork,” she said.
She then turned the tribunal hearing into part of the art as well, by having a group of women observing the hearing dress like her and mimic her every move. They did not disrupt the hearing, and at the end of proceedings they exited the tribunal to the song Simply Irresistible.
Kaechele argued in her defence the Ladies Lounge was a “a response to the lived experience of women forbidden from entering certain spaces throughout history” and promoted equal opportunity.
The tribunal found against the gallery and is ordering them to allow men to enter the exhibit. MONA is removing the exhibit instead.
New art thread for 2024 starts here! This is a mostly daily thread with a different artist featured in each post, primarily modern and contemporary stuff since that's my thing.
"Phantom of Surrealism" performance piece by British artist Sheila Legge, 1936, photographed by Claude Cahun. Dressed in a bridal gown and floral mask/headdress, Legge opened the London International Surrealist Exhibition by parading through Trafalgar Square.
I've featured her several times in other iterations of this account but today in the wake of Carl Andre's death I must honor Cuban American performance artist Ana Mendieta with a brief glimpse into her pioneering practice of the 1970s.
Works by multidisciplinary Japanese artist Mariko Mori, 1990s, whose early performance photography addressed gender inequality and sexist stereotypes in Japanese society.
This is Vietnamese laser programmer and performance artist Lại Trần Ninh Kiềm. He is doing some mind-blowing things with his art form.
The transition between environmental and manual control of the lasers is wild. And he has meticulous, granular-level control over the illusion. It’s quite remarkable.
In 2018 a tour group in Thailand stumbled upon a group of unfamiliar creatures. They thought they had discovered a new species of animal or something alien or paranormal.
The creatures were actually an installation by performance artist Tori Wrånes. Actors in elaborate costumes. The exhibition was called Naam Yai.
This early morning as the sun comes up here in Seattle, i'm going to share one of my favorite albums i'd like to listen to.
The band is Panivalkova from Kyiv, Ukraine and their music is fantastic. They are no longer together as a band but two of the artists are still releasing solo music and the other is doing performance art around the world.
I was able to import this CD before the war began and it means a lot to me. I also love their solo music and they are just fantastic people.
The CD's are out of print but you can support them on Bandcamp if you'd like.
Ok starting a new art thread for 2023! Here's the deal: a mostly daily thread with a different artist every day (sometimes I repeat from previous years if I feel like featuring other work/projects), primarily modern and contemporary since that's my thing. I'm even making a hashtag for it in case that makes it easier for folks to follow. Enjoy! #art#BigArtThread
"Art/Life One Year Performance" (aka "Rope Piece") by Taiwanese-American artist Tehching Hsieh and American artist Linda Montano, 1983-84, a work of endurance art for which the artists tied themselves together by an 8-ft rope for one year, never touching one another except by accident and documenting the experience through photographs and audio recordings. Montano said they fought about 80 percent of the time. #art#PerformanceArt#BigArtThread
I run Systems Structure Ltd., a US consultancy that provides fractional CISO services for pre-A to post-C round #startups, along with #threatmodeling training and #securityarchitecture reviews.
I've been working in #security since 2003 and did a spell in NGOland from ~2011 to 2016, working with NGOs and news organizations targeted by states and on tools they use, including the #briar messaging app. The field work I did then fundamentally reshaped my approach to security, and I recommend that everyone in the field learn about the reality of being a high-risk user.
I live in #Helsinki the days, although in the before times (and hopefully soon again) I spent a fair bit of time in #NYC and #London. I run a #queer performance space out of my home, along with my partner, called The Attic (@theatticfi on insta), where we make space for #drag, #burlesque, #performanceart, and music, along other things. Before I moved here, I spent six or so years traveling full time.
I have written various essays over the years, which you can see on dymaxion.org, and I'm slowly writing a book. While security pays the bills, I spend a lot of my time thinking about #complexsystems, and in particular how the human and technical bits mesh, how they fail, and how to redesign them to fail better. In practice, this has meant everything from consulting on a constitution to thinking about what comes after the #climate apocalypse. The "recruiting barbarians" in my bio refers to being more comfortable outside of institutions, but I'm starting to think more about community and infrastructure building now that I live somewhere.
I'm also an #artist; I paint and am slowly learning my way around a #synthesizer, and I've been accused of being an #architect. I'm active in the #nordiclarp scene, where we take larp serious as a dramatic form and do everything from a reworking of Hamlet played at the actual Elsinore castle to a larp about the early days of the HIV crisis. I'm primarily a theorist and critic there, as well as player, and I've edited two books and written a number of essays. Nordic larp has the best toolkit I've seen anywhere for analyzing the human parts of complex systems and especially for building new systems; it's heavily influenced my security work, along with my #designfutures thinking.