Art Circuit Research Articles

'Entrance fees': Black youth and access to artistic production in Gqeberha, South Africa


 
 
 The arts sector in South Africa is portrayed as a multiracial, emancipatory and inclusive sector that promises to reduce youth unemployment and to mitigate inequality. In post- apartheid art institutions, artistic merit and perseverance are deemed to be sufficient in order to access the art sector and its market. The paths of individual black artists from poor areas who have succeeded in accessing the institutional art circuit are praised by the media, policymakers and curators. A romanticisation of their efforts is coupled with identifying them as role models for younger generations.
 Despite emphasis on the inclusivity of the art sector and the hailing of successful paths, black artists report a long-standing difficulty in gaining access to, and being fully accredited in, the institutional art circuit. The ambiguity of the art sector, which claims to be inclusive in word but is de facto exclusionary, deeply affects young black artists whose first steps into the art sector are often accompanied by a feeling of uneasiness and bewilderment.
 Drawing on the multivocal accounts of the everyday life of young black artists who work in the field of performance art in Gqeberha, this article unveils the ‘entrance fees’ that black artists have to negotiate in order to access the institutional art circuit, i.e. the obstacles they have to overcome, but also the deals and concessions they have to make in order to build their career and be fully recognised as artists.
 Moreover, the article sheds light on a double invisibility in the performing arts sector: on one side the economic, spatial and reputational obstacles that artists deal with are dismissed as part of the everyday life of individuals coming from marginal areas; on the other side, the performing arts and spaces that young black artists create within alternative or complementary circuits are not considered part of the city’s artistic production.
 
 

Arte queer e feminismo nas bienais de arte

A ampliação do número de bienais de artes visuais no Brasil vem contribuindo para a criação de um circuito dinâmico, internacional e conectado com as discussões contemporâneas. Neste artigo discuto o formato das bienais de arte e como o mesmo vem se expandindo pelo mundo. Reflito também sobre a possibilidade de compreendermos os curadores destes eventos enquanto arquivistas e editores capazes de produzir novas narrativas sobre arte. Finalizo visitando quatro edições da bienal de São Paulo (2006, 2010, 2012 e 2014) com o objetivo de refletir sobre como o exercício da curadoria pode contribuir para a visibilização de projetos artísticos que trabalham com questões de gênero e sexualidade.

Trabajo, movilidad y huella: Apuntes sobre el impacto ecológico del arte contemporáneo

El artículo plantea una pregunta sobre el impacto medioambiental del arte contemporáneo como sector profesional. Para ello establece una relación entre dicho sector y un creciente nomadismo en el circuito artístico global. Posteriormente reflexiona sobre los flujos, desplazamientos aéreos que trazan líneas en el mapa del arte contemporáneo, y sobre la condensación de estos flujos, analizando el caso de las ferias de arte. Por último, se mencionan algunas estrategias que pueden ayudar a reducir la huella ecológica y se imagina la posibilidad de otras movilidades más sostenibles

Ai Weiwei "<em>Law of the Journey</em>" in the Time of Instagram

I first encountered Ai Weiwei’s Law of the Journey as an amalgam of Instagram tiles (see photos on following page). The imposing sixty-meter-long rubber lifeboat—filled with faceless rubber bodies—was reduced to a scrollable algorithm. Posted across multiple time zones and geotagged in places like the Prague National Gallery to the most recent incarnation on Cockatoo Island (a decommissioned shipyard on Sydney harbor), Law of the Journey enjoyed much better travel rights and Visa entitlements than the actual refugees it depicted. While beyond the control of the artist or exhibiting venues, the mobility of images of Law of the Journey nonetheless made me think about the representations of refugees and border violence within the global art circuit.

As artes visuais sob vigilância

Tendo como ponto de partida os documentos referentes ao dossiê Non à la Biennale de São Paulo, dispositivo impresso que contribuiu para alavancar o boicote coletivo e internacional à Bienal de São Paulo, em 1969, em reação à política autoritária do regime civil-militar, este artigo propõe uma discussão sobre a vigilância, censura e repressão às manifestações artísticas desde os primeiros anos da ditadura até a efetivação do boicote à bienal, com o intuito de avaliar seus efeitos e os desacordos em torno dos julgamentos da arte. Ao impor critérios políticos e morais, desqualificando o pensamento crítico, o autoritarismo do regime interferiu no circuito e nos sentidos da arte.

On the fractional domain generalization of memristive parametric oscillators

AbstractIn this research, we generalize a family of electronic parametric oscillators in the fractional domain by using a state of the art circuit element namely fractional memristor. Such family o...

Representations of the Soviet Period and Its Traces in the Works of Contemporary Artists from the Baltic States

This paper examines how Soviet and post‑Soviet history is presented and reflected upon in select works of contemporary artists from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. As the contemporary art scenes of these newly independent states developed and joined the global contemporary art circuit, a number of Baltic artists have participated in the recent “historiographic turn” in art. Through the analysis of examples, we look at four approaches employed by these artists when tackling the subject of history seen through personal narratives; history told from the point of view of ethnic/linguistic minorities; a focus on women’s experiences; and a debate on the preservation, removal, and building of commemorative monuments. This paper aims to show how these artists integrate reflections of the Soviet and post‑Soviet experience into the building of complex, inclusive, positive post‑Soviet identities.

Hard Ground-Soft Politics: The Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana and Biting of the Iron Curtain

In 1955, the Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts was founded. It was the first curatorial initiative that aimed to link graphic artists working around the world and with those divided by the Cold War. The Ljubljana Biennial became a major success and its model quickly spread worldwide, augmenting the international circulation of prints and exchanges of artistic concepts. Over the next twenty years similar exhibitions were established in Krakow, Tallinn, San Juan, Santiago de Chile, Cali, Tokyo, Cairo, Fredrikstad, Frechen, Sofia and Bradford. The Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts offered an opportunity for artists from Yugoslavia, Eastern Europe and Latin America, such as Andrzej Lachowicz, Mauricio Leib Lasansky, Adolfo Quinteros and Aleš Veselý, to exhibit their works alongside the protagonists of the western contemporary graphic art circuit such as Robert Rauschenberg, Antonio Segui, Yozo Hamaguchi, Max Bill and Victor Vasarely. The network of exhibitions that followed the example set by Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts became a window into the world not only for printmakers, but also for a number of artists who were affected by Cold War cultural exclusion. The network of dedicated international print exhibitions created favourable conditions for an emerging third space, which became a platform for communication between the cultures divided by the Iron Curtain. This article focuses on the curatorial assumptions that brought the Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana to life and questions its position as a cultural cornerstone for the Non-Aligned geopolitical order.

É possível falar em “potência jovem”? Desafios e perspectivas para pensar as juventudes contemporâneas

Neste texto, nosso objetivo é discutir o conceito de “potência jovem” fora do registro essencial, humanista e vinculado à ação que nos propõe a representação do sujeito jovem protagonista – quase um modelo hegemônico nas ações voltadas para a juventude no Brasil. Buscamos pensar que outros sentidos de potência jovem poderiam nos ser oferecidos por outras experiências juvenis na contemporaneidade. Para tanto, estabelecemos um debate acerca do conceito central do texto – o conceito de potência – partindo das discussões desenvolvidas por Giorgio Agamben. Metodologicamente, o trabalho orientou-se por uma proposta de inspiração etnográfica, com ênfase numa ideia de “presença participante”, desenvolvida entre os meses julho a novembro de 2015 no Sábado Cultural: Circuito de Cultura e Arte, uma experiência juvenil pautada pela organização de encontros culturais em diferentes pontos da periferia cidade de Porto Alegre (RS), Brasil. Selecionamos alguns elementos das práticas do Sábado Cultural a fim de mostrar como os encontros promovidos nesse espaço nos permitiram tecer premissas sobre os jovens e suas múltiplas formas de experienciar suas juventudes e sobre o modo como isso está vinculado a um outro tipo de “potência jovem” no contemporâneo.

A Novel Self-Power SSHI Circuit for Piezoelectric Energy Harvester

Piezoelectric energy harvester (PEH) has been used to feed loads in military, health, animal tracking, and many other applications. A considerable amount of energy is dissipated in PEH to flip the output voltage through the internal capacitor and resistor of piezoelectric (PZT) material. One of the most effective techniques to harvest this power loss is called a synchronized switch harvesting on inductor (SSHI) technique. A parallel SSHI technique has been used to flip the terminal voltage of the PEH through external inductor. A new, simple, and effective circuit has been introduced in this paper for this purpose. The new circuit uses two capacitors only to detect the flipping points of terminal voltage replacing two resistors, eight diodes, and two capacitors in the state of the art circuit (SAC). The new proposed circuit (NPC) showed about 26% reduction in losses, 18% increased output power, and 10% increase in efficiency compared to the SAC in normal operating condition. Also, the NPC showed 38% improvement in output power compared to the SAC in different operating conditions. Besides these benefits, the NPC extends the vibration frequency operating range 10 times higher than the circuit without the SSHI and 2.5 times the SAC. The simulation and experimental results showed the superiority of the NPC.

A produção intectual e artística da mulher nas revistas Plástica e Revista del Arte y la Arquitectura en América Latina

The article seeks to examine the active role played by women in the art circuit, as writers and as artists, in light of the journals Plástica and Revista del arte y la arquitectura en América Latina. The analysis focuses on articles that deal with several exhibitions, both solo and group shows, involving women artists in the 1970s and 1980s. One may note that although women were increasingly involved as participants in the field, working as artists, as managers and as writers, in the case of women artists certain guidelines favored only some figures. The question remains open as to which conditions prevail over the discourse of women in Colombian art, by virtue of which the latter is neither diverse nor wide. That is, there is no place in such discourse for a heterogeneous variety of artists since, to the contrary, it highlights and praises only certain women, thus rendering invisible many women who played an active role in the field of art.

The Logic of Disorder: The Sculptural Materialism of Abraham Cruzvillegas

Two models of object experience dominate definitions of sculpture today. One argues that commodification is a universally uniform experience of relentless violence that frames all materialities everywhere within the demands of the globalized market. The second argues that the "unruliness of things" can still disrupt the "rule of the commodity." The autoconstrucción sculptural practice of Abraham Cruzvillegas, argues Greeley, marks a third position. Derived from the "self-building" architecture of the squatter settlement on the edge of Mexico City where he grew up, Cruzvillegas’s work is located in the dialectic between object experience in developing countries and object experience in the hegemonic 'centers' of developed countries and the market-driven international art circuit. Under the rubric of autoconstrucción, Cruzvillegas exploits this dialectic, not to claim any utopian redemptive space outside the world market system, nor to insist on a universally uniform experience of commodification within it, but rather to assert the asymmetries of object experience induced by global economic integration.

Reverse Engineering for the Purpose of Intellectual Property Protection and Accelerated Product Development in SOC and SIP Structures

Technical analysis of intellectual property (IP) is conducted for the purpose of legal protection and product development. A brief review of the process of IP analysis and associated terminology is...

(Mis)seeing in/as Contemporary Art: Kiluanji Kia Henda and the AfroNauts

Since 2007 Kiluanji Kia Henda’s artworks have been shown extensively on the international art circuit and included in exhibitions from Guangzhou to São Paulo, from Luanda to Venice. By considering some notable art projects and exhibition experiences that have occurred in this compressed time span and these different locations, this essay addresses the young Angolan artist’s engagement with the perils and possibilities of art practice as it transverses multiple art worlds. Kia Henda’s artworks engage with the potential of mis-seeing, the visual equivalent of mistranslation, in cultural exchanges between Angola and the larger world.

Modular Microsystems with Embedded Components

Each system is designed to fulfill the desired purpose. It is defined by its inputs, outputs, structure, environment, boundary, and the including elements (subsystems). Due to the ongoing miniaturization and integration the complexity of subsystems increases continuously. This paper is intended to demonstrate the build-up of modular Microsystems. By using the embedding technology, each subsystem (module) is interchangeable and stackable. Therefore, the functionality of the entire system depends solely on the selected modules. Moreover, the enhancement, expansion or redesign can be accomplished by replacing existing or adding new modules. The communication between the individual modules is based on the standardized I2C bus. Additionally, a USB interface has been implemented to manage the data transmission between the embedded camera module and a computer. The whole system recognizes each module and performs accordingly. The user can access sensor values, watch the video stream, and change the parameters of each module via a Graphical User Interface (GUI) on his computer. To achieve the build-up of the modular Microsystems we only used packaged active and passive components. Depending on the complexity of each module a core of up to eight layers is build up. The components are then soldered onto both sides of the core. At this point the components are embedded using a laminating press. The afterwards even surface is then structured again, to enable the stacking of the modules. Each step of the entire assembly process is done via state of the art circuit board processing technologies, including laser drill and laser-direct imaging.

The Uroborus Effect

This article explores some contradictions that arise from the recent prominence of Brazilian contemporary art within the international art circuit. One can note on the one hand a denial of any specificity relating to notions of national identity, while on the other this new globalised condition is defended by the incorporation of theories emerging from the struggles against cultural derivation from European modernism. The contradiction pertains to the fact that such theories were themselves elaborated on the assertion of cultural specificity. The article concludes that instead of using the presence of contemporary Brazilian art within the international circuit of art fairs, biennials, European and North American museum collections as a gauge for its recognition and pertinence within the new global order, a more productive means of assessing its standing within the international context would be to analyse the state of consolidation of collections and art historical narratives within the national context.

Art as a ‘thing-in-between’: Negotiating boundaries and values in an art circuit event

By introducing the analytical concept ‘thing-in-between’, in other words a mediating entity acting from a border position between dual categories, the dynamics and processes of value creation and boundary work in an art circuit event in the south of Sweden is analysed. Drawing on nondualistic notions of the social-material world and more specifically on two paths of the works of Georg Simmel — his sociological theory of value and his concept of the triad as a social form — it is argued that art objects act as the third part in the art circuit experience. As intermediaries with subjective as well as objective qualities, they (re)order boundaries in the cultural/economic nexus of the art-trail: between the commercial and non-commercial; the public and private; between and among consumers and visitors, and between gazing and doing/touching modes of experiencing. Through the boundary work of the art circuit, three types of value emerge: ‘aesthetic consumption’, ‘vicarious life style consumption’, and ‘the value of being together’. It is further argued that these values are more or less socially consolidated, and more or less articulated in different communicative contexts, thus pointing at the situated, performative character of value construction.

CONTROL AND DESIGN ASPECTS OF POWER ELECTRONICS CONVERTERS USING PSPICE

In order to understand the functionality and design aspects of power converters, circuit simulation software PSpice has become an industry standard. In a Power Electronics course the students are required to understand the operating principles of a variety of static power converters using different control techniques to achieve the desired input-output characteristics.This paper presents PSpice-based design projects that can be used as pre-Lab exercises in a Laboratory course accompanying a lecture course in Power Electronics. The students can be made to implement their design in the laboratory with actual hardware components. The transition from design to simulation and finally to experimental verification will aid to strengthen their understanding of the operation, control, and design aspects of power converters. The design projects are geared towards bringing out the importance of power quality and cost issues that are relevant to state of the art circuit design.The design examples in the paper will start with a set of design guidelines and input-output requirements of a given power converter system. The design will involve selection of the proper control algorithm, switching frequency, and input-output filter values to meet the design goals. The following are the basic converter systems that will be covered in the various design projects: single phase and three phase rectifier, single phase and three phase inverters, buck and boost converter.

The art circuit

Give an adult some discarded bits and pieces of a computer, and chances are they'll help you cart it off to the dump site. Give the same technology fragments to children and they'll most likely use it to create cities, animal-filled scenes, or even the outer reaches of space.

Donald Barthelme, postmodernist American writer

Viewed in it's context of upscale New York, the art circuit and The New Yorker, the canon of Barthelme's work is an invaluble repository of the literary, philosophical, political and cultural ecology of his time.