Lecture # 3: Paul Shambroom

I really enjoyed artist Paul Shambroom’s lecture on his different photo series.  During the lecture he showed a variety of work that he has done, and while they are all different from each other, they are all connected with their focus on power.  While many of his photographs take place in mundane settings, they are still quite enthralling because we are getting a glimpse into the secret world of corporations and weaponry that make America so powerful.  It is evident in all of Shambroom’s series that he has a fascination with power—and what it is that makes us so formidable as a nation.  Shambroom credit’s this obsession with power to the fact that he grew up during the cold war era, with the constant threat of death and nuclear warfare.   In all of his photographs, particularly the ones dealing with political issues of nuclear weapons and homeland security, Shambroom emphasizes his stance on maintaining a neutral political tone, and photographing the subject matter from a very straight-forward perspective.  While at first I thought that this conservative viewpoint began to look a little redundant, I later started to appreciate thae fact that Shambroom is taking these photographs and then offering them up to the viewer to put their own spin on them.  

Thursday Posting: Defense Architecture: Moats

Barrier

“A deep, wide ditch surrounding a castle, fort, or town, typically filled with water and intended as a defense against attack.”

-Merriam Webster Dictionary

Colin, Chris.  “Sipping from a Utopian Well in the Desert.”  The New York Times.  16 Sept.

            2007. 

In this article Colin discusses the ecological-friendly community Arcosanti, located right outside of Phoenix, Arizona.  Arcosanti is the design of Italian architect Paolo Soleri, a former Frank Lloyd Wright student.  Construction started in 1970, and has yet to be completed.  As Colin explains it, “With its radical conservation techniques and a brilliantly scrunched-together layout, Arcosanti was intended to reinvent not just the city, but also man's relationship to the planet: picture a 60s vision of a Mars colony, but with a cutting-edge, eco-friendly design. Evaporative cooling pools release moisture into the air. In winter, heat from the foundry furnace is collected by a hood and sent through the apartments above.”  This revolutionary community, referred to by Mr. Soleri as his “desert utopia” has yet to be finished.  Despite this, however, Arcosanti is home to about 100 residents.  Colin describes Arcosanti : “An educated, diversely aged and surprisingly international collection of residents rises early each morning for on-site duties: silt casting, or foundry work, or a general tending of the odd, gray structures they call home.”  Currently Arcosanti faces financial problems; funding to keep the place running is getting short.  In the plans for this utopian commune but yet to be built is an “energy apron around the perimeter, wherein greenhouses trap heat and disperse it throughout the apartments in winter months; there, enormous concrete armatures reaching out to one day support a canopy for the music center. A moat runs around the stage, cooling it.” You can experience Arcosanti yourself, with rooms running anywhere from $30 to $100 a night, depending on the view. 

I really enjoyed reading this article about a sort of failed utopia that still manages to serve a purpose, and a good one at that.  It was also the only article I found that mentioned a new and different use of a moat other than as a protective barrier.  But perhaps one can look at the use of a moat to cool a space as different kind of protection—a protection from increasingly hostile environmental changes.  

Monday Post: Robert Polidori

Robert Polidori is a French Canadian artist born 1951 in Montreal.  In the 1970s he produced avant garde films with the filmmaker Jonas Mekas.  In 1980 he earned a M.A. from State University of New York at Buffalo, and then went on to make very detailed large-scale color photographs.  According to Flowers East, an art gallery in London, Polidori “is fascinated by the remnants and traces of life that he finds scattered in hallways, left in back rooms and worn on facades. His photographs are simultaneously seductive and melancholy, portraying the rich colours and textures of neglected and estranged cities, including Chernobyl, Versailles, Havana and most recently New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.”  There has been controversy over a photograph that he took of the aftermath of Katrina, which portrays a dead person in their own bed.  Polidori currently lives and works in New York.

Gallery representing artist:

http://www.houkgallery.com/polidori/polidori.html

Artist Interview:

http://www.nicooved.com/words/polidori.htm