A young woman naps on a pedestal-like bed, unperturbed by Soviet-era propaganda music and sensual Latin melodies playing a few meters away.
The setting is the New Museum in New York and the sleeping beauty is a living sculpture by Chinese artist Chu Yun. For the next three months a rotating group of women fueled with sleeping pills will recreate Chu’s island of serenity — snapping photos is allowed — as part of the museum’s lively first triennial, The Generational: Younger Than Jesus.
Guilt-free voyeurism and exhibitionism are common threads among the works by 50 international artists born after 1976 (hence the title reference to Jesus, crucified at 33). No surprise here. This crowd grew up in an era where it’s perfectly acceptable to share the most intimate or mundane details of your life on the Internet.
There’s not much rebellion in Younger Than Jesus. This cyber-savvy generation instead remixes vast quantities of visual information from all kinds of sources to construct its own reality, all to spirited effect.
Armenian artist Tigran Khachatryan’s aggressive, fast-paced video weaves grainy, black-and-white footage from Soviet avant-garde films with shots of teenage skinheads fighting, giving Nazi salutes and jumping away from speeding trains.
China’s Liu Chuang approached strangers on the street, offering to buy everything on them for US$500. It’s unclear how the handoffs took place, but at least three people said yes. Their personal items — from underwear and socks to makeup and credit cards — are neatly arranged on three platforms. For this group, anything can be displayed as art.
VIDEO DOMINATES
All mediums are represented, though video and photography dominate. More unusual experiments include Mark Essen’s video game, projected onto a wall that visitors can play with; Icaro Zorbar’s collage of three turntables surrounding a fourth one playing Latin music and Ruth Ewan’s jukebox with 1,200 protest songs.
Painting doesn’t seem to be popular among the 145 works on display.
One exception is Poland’s Jakub Julian Ziolkowski whose imaginative, painstaking canvases contain labyrinths but almost no empty space. The Great Battle Under the Table is a large maze of tiny warring soldiers, barbarians and dragons. The scene recalls Hieronymus Bosch; the layered compositional intricacy brings to mind a Persian rug.
THUMPING MUSIC
Many of the artists have an affinity for videos that either dwell on images of ultimate doom or move at time-warped speed while playing thumping music.
In his animated Panoptikon, Turkish artist Emre Huner’s post-apocalyptic scenes are a mix of science-fiction imagery with patterns from Turkish textiles and ceramics. French artist Cyprien Gaillard’s footage of gangs of fighting young men on the outskirts of St Petersburg, Russia, bring to mind Khachatryan’s manic youths.
Gaillard’s video is set to a fabulous dance soundtrack by the French musician Koudlam. Like the music, the actions of the men have a repetitive, meditative quality. The correspondence between the sound and images makes the piece engaging.
Philadelphia-based Ryan Trecartin’s hyperactive videos depict a world populated by hysterical characters with ambiguous genders. They speak gibberish at breakneck speed in digitally manipulated voices. Many sport blue teeth and garish makeup.
Trecartin has a huge following on YouTube. I got a headache 10 minutes into watching it. But that could be because I am two years older than Jesus.
Dec. 16 to Dec. 22 Growing up in the 1930s, Huang Lin Yu-feng (黃林玉鳳) often used the “fragrance machine” at Ximen Market (西門市場) so that she could go shopping while smelling nice. The contraption, about the size of a photo booth, sprayed perfume for a coin or two and was one of the trendy bazaar’s cutting-edge features. Known today as the Red House (西門紅樓), the market also boasted the coldest fridges, and offered delivery service late into the night during peak summer hours. The most fashionable goods from Japan, Europe and the US were found here, and it buzzed with activity
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo, speaking at the Reagan Defense Forum last week, said the US is confident it can defeat the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the Pacific, though its advantage is shrinking. Paparo warned that the PRC might launch a “war of necessity” even if it thinks it could not win, a wise observation. As I write, the PRC is carrying out naval and air exercises off its coast that are aimed at Taiwan and other nations threatened by PRC expansionism. A local defense official said that China’s military activity on Monday formed two “walls” east
The latest military exercises conducted by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) last week did not follow the standard Chinese Communist Party (CCP) formula. The US and Taiwan also had different explanations for the war games. Previously the CCP would plan out their large-scale military exercises and wait for an opportunity to dupe the gullible into pinning the blame on someone else for “provoking” Beijing, the most famous being former house speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022. Those military exercises could not possibly have been organized in the short lead time that it was known she was coming.
The world has been getting hotter for decades but a sudden and extraordinary surge in heat has sent the climate deeper into uncharted territory — and scientists are still trying to figure out why. Over the past two years, temperature records have been repeatedly shattered by a streak so persistent and puzzling it has tested the best-available scientific predictions about how the climate functions. Scientists are unanimous that burning fossil fuels has largely driven long-term global warming, and that natural climate variability can also influence temperatures one year to the next. But they are still debating what might have contributed to this
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