Henri Cartier-Bresson's portrait of Sartre is currently on view in his retrospective at MoMA

As with his entire body of work, Sartre’s theory of imagination refers to—and, naturally, affirms—his ontology, in which he explores Husserl’s tenet that “all consciousness is consciousness of something” in the context of the ‘detotalized totality’ of being-in-itself / being-for-itself dualism. Sartre postulates an admittedly underdeveloped notion of image consciousness in his early work The Imaginary (1940), though these writings are largely eclipsed by his later political [viz. Marxist] proclivities; nevertheless, his theory of imagination is a sufficient foundation of a phenomenological aesthetics.

Notably, Sartre implies that the imaginary (or ‘irreal’) has the same ontological import as the real: if the real is never beautiful, it is simply because beauty is, by definition, imaginary, where imagination is a permanent possibility of consciousness. A painting, photograph, film, song, performance, etc., necessarily transcends perception—i.e. consciousness of oil on canvas, ink on paper, a projection, an actor, etc.—as an object of image consciousness, which overflows with the meaning of the portrait (etc.): a particular arrangement of brushstrokes or sounds immediately presents itself to consciousness as an image or melody. The abstract, then, is that which escapes us in experience qua perception; colors transcend pigment to conjure mood or geometry.

Hence, Images (in no particular order):

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KEY:

1. Liu Bolin opening in Soho this weekend (I used one of his pieces to illustrate my very first blog post). (ArtCat)

Liu Bolin
On Fire
Eli Klein Fine Art
462 West Broadway (between Houston & Prince)
New York NY 10012 [map]
212 / 255-4388
April 30, 2010 – June 4, 2010
Opening Reception: Friday, April 30, 6-9pm

2. Scott Campbell’s first solo show in NYC (OHWOW via S×H; also on Nowness)

Scott Campbell
If You Don’t Belong, Don’t Be Long
OHWOW
109 Crosby Street (at Prince)
New York NY 10012 [map]
April 29, 2010 – May 30, 2010
Opening Reception: Thursday, April 29, 6-8pm

3. Skye Parrott of Dossier curated a photography show at BAM

Younger Than I’ll Be
Curated by Skye Parrott
Natman Room
BAM Peter Jay Sharp Building
30 Lafayette Ave (between St. Felix & Ashland) [map]
Brooklyn NY 11243
718 / 636-4100
April 7, 2010 – May 23, 2010

4. Michael Joo & Damien Hirst: Have You Ever Really Looked at the Sun? (S×H) [A: Yes.]

Michael Joo & Damien Hirst
Have You Ever Really Looked at the Sun?
Haunch of Venison
Heidestrasse 46
10557 Berlin, Germany [map]
+49 (0) 30 39 74 39 63
May 1, 2010 – August 14, 2010

Hirst also has work at the Oceanographic Music of Monaco.

5. Barzman’s “Pink Terror” = slow-motion video and Stephen Hawking over a hot beat. (Barzart via 3qd)

6. Faile & BAST bring their street artcade to New York (TBWE; interview on Gothamist; previewed at AM; previous [London] coverage))

Faile & BAST
DELUXX FLUXX NYC
158 Allen St (at Rivington)
New York NY 10002 [map]
April 30, 2010-May 27, 2010
Opening Reception: Friday, April 30, 7:30-10:30pm

7. Maya Lin’s so-called last memorial What Is Missing at Times Square (DB)

8. Zaha Hadid for the 2012 Olympics in London (DB)

9. Longo-esque Trent Mitchell photography (ISO50 on FFFFound)

10. The Tribeca Film Festival saw the New York premiere of Tamra Davis’s documentary Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child (Nowness)

11. Bursts of Color in Public (KitsunéNoir via FFFFound)

12. Whistler’s Father (FFFFound via TBWE)

13. Dead or Alive at MAD (Animal)

Dead or Alive
Museum of Arts & Design
2 Columbus Circle (SSE Corner)
New York NY 10019 [map]
212 / 299-7777
April 27, 2010 – October 24, 2010

14. Marina Abramović Made Me Cry (via Marco Anelli’s flickr); for more on The Artist Is Present, Kottke aggregates so I don’t have to.

15. Shepard Fairey’s May Day marks Deitch Projects’ last hurrah. (Full mural image & coverage at AM (also on NYT); video and other news on Animal; listing on ArtCat)

Shepard Fairey
May Day
Deitch Projects
18 Wooster St (at Grand)
New York NY 10013 [map]
212 / 343-7300
May 1, 2010 – May 29, 2010
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 1, 6-8pm

16. Herzog & de Meuron Special (ArchDaily)

17. DQM Spring 2010 Lookbook (HB)

18. For the 13th-consecutive single-artist installation on the Roof Garden of the Met: bamboo. (NYT via Inhabitat)

…Twin brothers Mike and Doug Starn (born in New Jersey in 1961) will present their new work, Big Bambú: You Can’t, You Don’t, and You Won’t Stop, opening on April 27. The monumental bamboo structure, ultimately measuring 100 feet long, 50 feet wide, and 50 feet high, will take the form of a cresting wave that bridges realms of sculpture, architecture, and performance. Visitors will witness the continuing creation and evolving incarnations of Big Bambú as it is constructed throughout the spring, summer, and fall by the artists and a team of rock climbers. Set against Central Park and its urban backdrop, Big Bambú will suggest the complexity and energy of an ever-changing living organism.

–Doug+Mike Starn on the Roof: Big Bambú

Doug & Mike Starn
Big Bambú: You Can’t, You Don’t, and You Won’t Stop
The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Ave (at E 82nd St)
New York NY 10028 [map]
April 27, 2010 – October 31, 2010

19. Peter Root’s Ephemicropolis; see also NYC in staples. (DB; making-of video)

20. Shanghai Expo 2010 Pavilions (Dezeen / ArchDaily)

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Not as coherent but also interesting:

Images from the earthquake in Yushu, China (Boston)

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Mother for Stella; see also: Fading Ads, Pickled in Pixels (NYT)

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Parting Shot: [the view from Brooklyn Bridge Park] Glowingly (Animal)

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Interpol goes in a new [art] direction. (BV)

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Nike Music Shoe revisited: it was Ableton all along. (Core77)

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fin.

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1. Bracketology (1985-2009) infographic by Leonardo Aranda.

2. Jan Smith photographed the abandoned ships at Nouadhibou in Mauritania. (GOOD)

3. Jeff Koons × BMW (NYT / PSFK)

4. Domino Sugar Factory bombed by NEKST, ADEK, HAELER, and CHEW. (TWBE)

5. My boy Eugene from Hypebeast is curating a photography show in Hong Kong. (HB)

Day Job
curated by Eugene Kan
Above Second Gallery
31 Eastern Street [map]
Sheung Wan, Hong Kong
852.3483.7950
Opening Reception: Friday, April 9, 6-10pm

6. Photo gallery of construction for the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai. (Boston Globe)

7. Work by Beijing-based photographer Phoebe Jin. (NeochaEDGE)

8. Usugrow – Shinkai, from Hasadhu, in the Night Before a Storm. Juxtapoz / s.butterfly

Usugrow
Hasadhu, in the Night Before a Storm
StolenSpace Gallery
Dray Walk, The Old Truman Brewery
91 Brick Lane [map]
London E1 6QL
+44 (0) 207 247 2684
Through April 18, 2010

9. Zuriick website re-design: the Salt Lake City-based footwear purveyors are stepping it up this season with the new premium ‘Shug‘ silhouette, just in time for the nice weather.

10. Photorealist painter Emily Burns is cutting her teeth as a Koons studio assistant. (Notcot)

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Bonus pic: Springtime at Nighttime in NYC (Terry Richardson)

The Persistence of Trite Imagery

Since this Sunday marked Daylight Saving Time, I decided to put my philosophy degree to good use by pondering the psychology and metaphysics of this semi-annual ritual.

First of all, there is technically only one daylight to be saved: contrary to folk wisdom that might suggest otherwise, daylight is an indivisible entity. In a sense, daylight is like money—which is also grammatically singular but conceptually plural (insofar as one would hope to have more than one money)—such that daylight is quantifiable, at least in terms of daylight hours. In other words, official terminology denotes that summer is ‘Time to Save Daylight’—i.e., Time for Daylight-Saving—while the colloquial (if not altogether prevalent) shorthand “Daylight Savings” is a gerund, as per the nominal usage of “Savings” for that type of  bank account. (Even the Wikipedia URL for the Daylight Saving Time entry is Daylight_savings.)

The monetary metaphor is useful in illustrating how DST’s pithy essence “spring forward, fall back” belies the curious phenomenon that either occasion—the turning of the clocks in spring or in fall—can be described as gaining or losing an hour. Common parlance suggests that we have indeed acquired a full 60 minutes, yet this increment simultaneously seems to have slipped through a mysterious temporal rift in the wee hours of Sunday morning. It appears that we have both gained and lost an hour on Sunday, a discrepancy that reveals two divergent systems of belief concerning time and how it is measured: absolute vs. relative. The two views correspond to a scientific picture of an independent physical world and a pragmatic ‘lived’ experience of time, respectively.

The former system holds that time marches forward of its own accord and that to push a clock forward—from 2AM to 3AM, say—disturbs the clockwork of the universe to the effect that humans have erased an hour from their day. Here the bank analogy must be modified: on Sunday, we withdrew an hour on credit, which we will pay back in October; for the next six months, we owe one hour to the universe, or nature, or whatever. We have lost it in the interest of practicality—we need to borrow the hour for the better half of the year—though we plan on restoring balance in six months or so. For the absolutist, the hour is deferred.

Those who abide by the second perspective, on the other hand, see time as more malleable, where chronology is purely pragmatic: we gained an hour on Sunday because we now have an extra hour of sunlight—and, ostensibly, productivity—to the effect that the days themselves grow longer. By springing forward, we stake a claim to the greater daylight afforded by the rotation of the Earth, silently folding one hour into the shroud of slumber in order to extend each and every day in those six months. For the relativist, it’s possible to save daylight like money albeit not in the interest of yielding a long-term dividend: everyone cashes out the same predetermined amount at the end of each day.

Of course, both schools of thought understand that the actual demarcation of time to be incidental (i.e. pragmatic in a broad sense)—otherwise we wouldn’t have license to give and take (or take and give) hours as we please. Nevertheless, I wonder if there is any correlation between the saving(s) locution and the gain/loss dichotomy: are relativists more predisposed to regarding DST as a savings account, as opposed to absolutists who treat the extra time as a line of credit?

Does that even make sense? Rather, does it even matter?

Now for the real news:

• Advertising 2.0: This Time, It’s Personal. FaceBook is now crowdsourcing targeted advertising like social AdSense (=AdBook?). (NYT, Future Perfect) Also, Product Placement: Geolocation is so hot right now (NYT)
• Mattel Mentality x Mad Men = Barbie. WTF. (NYT)
• Google Maps now has (spotty) bike directions: Gothamist blurbs, Streetsblog mentions, Wired crowdsources; Bike Snob NYC is more thorough, with an incisive riposte to the Post
• Big ups to the Alma Mater in the Times. But seriously, the prospect of digitally tracking writers’ inspiration and composition process is quite fascinating.
• Stanley Fish on Pragmatism’s Gift.
• I’ve always been a stickler for free throws (i.e. I don’t understand why every player isn’t shooting 90+% from the line), so I was pleased to see that Wired has posted a guide on How to Nail a Free Throw.
• Old news, but here’s a couple of interesting articles on sports video games and their source material; specifically, how video games are have become increasingly true to life for athletes: League of Gamers (ESPN); Gamechangers: How Videogames Trained a Generation of Athletes (Wired)
• Speaking of video games, Virtusphere. Just watch the damn video.
• G4 (correctly, I think) identifies Chatroulette’s ‘Merton.’ NYMag’s Vulture (correctly, I think) identifies Ben Folds as a “Fin de siècle singer-songwriter.” Just watch the damn video.
• (Over)analysis of Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” music video. (Vigilant Citizen)

Music news:

• What Would They Know: Matthew Perpetua interviews Liars for Pitchfork.
• Time to Get Away: LCD Soundsystem finishing up their last record. (Daily Swarm)
• Wanna Be Startin’ Something: MJ posthumously lands a massive record deal. (WSJ, NYT)

Art news:

• Deitch Mark II (ArtInfo)
• Rhizome / New Museum presents Seven On Seven (April 17th).
• Marina Abramovic at MoMA: Reperformance art or selling out? See for yourself or read all about it. Plus a short intro vid on Nowness.
• Saltz on the demise of Dia / X-Initiative / Independent (NYMag)
• Ai Weiwei in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall this October (ArtForum via the Guardian)

Bonus Trailer:

Homework is currently showing at London’s Kemistry, an independent gallery in Shoreditch that showcases outstanding graphic design.

Homework: Modern Polish Poster Design
Kemistry
43 Charlotte Rd [map]
London EC2A 3PD
+44 (0)20 7729 3636
March 12, 2010 – April 11, 2010
M-F: 10-6; Sa: 11-4

Guardian / DB

Banksy’s been giving granting a lot of press lately, in his version of a PR campaign for his documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop, including two British magazine covers.

Proof that he did the Sunday Times Magazine cover:

Check out Time Out London’s feature and interview.

Read the Sunday Times Magazine article here.

Larger cover images after the jump.

HB via s.butterfly; High Snobiety via AM