More Nice Mail

Oliver from vvork sent me a nice parcel today which includes a copy of Lodown Magazine, for which they contributed a little curated project of work about clocks, particularly fitting as I wrap up my 'time' piece here this week. I'm gonna save the magazine for the plane, but it looks an interesting read. There are features on Arthur Russell, Black Metal and Errol Morris' documentary Standard Operating Procedure. I thought the film was weak but the press Morris did for it was good. He told a story about journalists excited that he was taking on the subject of Abu Graib and who kept asking him "Have you found the smoking gun?!?" which he notes is the wrong question. We've all already seen the smoking gun. Abu Graib is the smoking gun.

Also included is issue #22 of Used Future Magazine, which is an artist periodical began in 2005 and up to nearly 40 issues now. The vvork issue takes the same approach that makes www.vvork.com one of my favorite websites: it includes several artists' projects with no accompanying text beyond their website address. It is loosely curated in the sense that it lets the works themselves suggest the projects that follow, which hold together in subtle and smart ways . The booklet reads a little like Maurizio Cattelan's Charley Magazine. It includes two artists that I'm working with for Nuit Blanche (Michel de Broin and Jacob Dahlgren) as well as some other faves like Erwin Wurm, Santiago Sierra, and Jeroen Diepenmaat, whose site I found on vvork two years ago and which I have bookmarked for potential future curatorial projects. It also includes the piece I did two years ago for the CCL1, Untitled (for William Tager).