http://www.aapmag.com

2009 begins with a complex international financial crisis that has put a stranglehold on public and private cultural budgets, museum programming and the expansion plans of institutions around the world. But declining revenue isn’t the only pressing issue. The terrorist attacks on Mumbai in November have turned up the tensions between nuclear-armed neighbors India and Pakistan, and the conflict between Israel and Hamas over the Gaza Strip has reignited.

ArtAsiaPacific issue 62 follows the impact of these developments while highlighting a number of under-recognized but highly influential artists who have continued to work in challenging political and economic environments.

Among the artists winning overdue acclaim is Mike Parr, Australia’s elder statesman known for his physically demanding and often masochistic performances. In his conversation with the artist, contributing editor Michael Young found Parr “non-apologetic about the political dimension of his work, though he concedes that it can be terroristic.” The late Tetsumi Kudo, a Japanese postwar artist who was preoccupied by human destruction, created radical assemblages of hand-crafted severed body parts trapped in day-glo bird cages. Here, in a discussion with Kudo’s peers, Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center curator Doryun Chong talks with the modern Butoh dancers Eiko & Koma, about Japan’s political climate of the 1950s and 1960s.

In ArtAsiaPacific 62, we welcome AAP’s new features editor, Ashley Rawlings, who examines the career of Lee Ufan, a Korea-born artist and theorist of the Japanese avant-garde Mono-ha group. In his sculptures Lee pairs large rocks with steel plates, and his paintings are made with just a few precise brushstrokes. We also introduce contributing editor Donald Dinwiddie from London, who contemplates Kutlu? Ataman, a Turkish artist whose films and videos investigate collective memory, identity and utopia. Ataman has recently embarked on “Mesopotamian Dramaturgies,” an eight-part series that explores Turkish contemporary history. AAP managing editor HG Masters covers Yin Xiuzhen, whose site-specific installations and sculptures explore the rapid modernization and social changes China has undergone since Deng Xiaoping promulgated his “open door” policy in 1978.

In Profiles, AAP looks at several initiatives that have the potential to become influential cultural voices in their region, including the upcoming Sharjah Biennial and the third edition of Art Dubai in the United Arab Emirates’ burgeoning art scene. AAP also covers the new Nam June Paik Center in Korea, with its mission of encouraging the kind of experimentation practiced by video artist Nam June Paik and the 1960s avant-garde artist group Fluxus.

Adopting a more pensive mode in Essays, historian Cecelia Levin revisits Bengali modernism. For the Point, Hammad Nasar of the London nonprofit Green Cardamom gallery considers the ramifications of the Mumbai bombings on the cultural sector in the Subcontinent. In Projects, AAP sits down with Beijing-based painters Liu Xiaodong and Yu Hong, who discuss what it means to be an artist in China today. We also listen to one of Mumbai’s great modern painters, Jehangir Sabavala, who describes the colors that have inspired his work over the last 60 years. From Manila, Marlyne Sahakian takes us into photographer Ringo Bunoan’s studio for Where I Work. Rounding out the magazine is senior editor Don J. Cohn’s review of three recent books on contemporary Chinese art.

While the future may look economically bleak, there’s bound to be a silver lining in there somewhere. Gallerists, critics and artists will recall a not too distant moment when the talk shifted from “What does it look like?” to “How much does it cost?” AAP hopes that in the coming months we will see a return to an appreciation of the true value of art.

New Years
Hides Busy Hands
Time Now For All

1. The Journal’s 1st 3rd Sunday Telic/Public School Class
2. New Book, “A Call To Farms” Book joins Journal Press
3. Stories Inauguration Reading In LA
4. In Boston: Platform2 presents MANIFESTO!SLAM Inauguration night beantown fun

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1.1st 3rd Sunday Telic/Public School Class

Journal at the Public School:(http://thepublicschool.org/259/theory-in-3-actsthought-technique/)
Public School:(http://thepublicschool.org)

Sunday, January 18 12.00 Noon

The Journal Editorial Collective will be doing a monthly class at Telic’s Public School in Chinatown.
The goal is to expand upon the ideas in our issue #6 of the Journal

The first class is described below:
An noon, Tensions of Power and Creativity in Acts of Distributive Protest kicks off a series of 6 classes by the Journal of Aesthetics & Protest, called “Theory in 3 acts/thought technique.” Meeting on the third Sunday of every month through June, Journal editors Robby Herbst, Christina Ulke, and Marc Herbst expand on the subject matter contained in Issue 6. The Journal (or a part thereof) will also be joining the Public School committee (D.A.N.) to expand the theoretical reach of the Journal beyond “Theory in 3 acts” and into the school curriculum as a whole. (http://thepublicschool.org/259/theory-in-3-actsthought-technique/)

From Telic:
In the USA, Sundays in January mean one thing – theory! And we’ve got three theory classes on Sunday, January 18 at our ongoing project, The Public School. If you’re interested in any of the classes, you’ll need to register and download the readings and find out other pertinent information.

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2. New Book, “A Call To Farms” Book joins Journal Press

A snowy trip to chicago. We return with this important document for sale.
Why doesn’t every region have a Radical Culture Corridor?

Purchase it online here:
http://www.joaap.org/press.htm#farm

A Call to Farms
Continental Drift through the Midwest Radical Culture Corridor
$10.00
Edited by Sarah Kanouse et al

60 pages
Edition size: 500

From June 4 to 14, 2008, a group of people traveled through Illinois and Wisconsin in search of a Radical Midwest. Continental Drift is a series of spacial-political inquiries initiated by theorist Brian Holmes and the 16 Beaver Group. This book documents an iteration of this search by a group of artists and theorists who wander the Northern Plains looking for moments of social and ecological frictions and divergences. Made up of short essays on sites and means of travel- the book is a sweet application of Lucy Lippard’s “Lore of the Local” and some kind of neo-situationist extended road trip. This is a publication that hints at ways to develop deeply contextual theory and to outlive the grids of mechanization. Stops include organic dairies, urban farms, the Black Holocaust Museum and the Experimental Station.

Contributions by: mIEKAL aND, Brett Bloom and Bonnie Fortune, Martha Boyd and Naomi Davis, Lisa Bralts-Kelly, Ryan Griffis, Eric Haas, Sarah Holm, Brian Holmes, Sarah Kanouse, The Langby Family, Nicolas Lampert, Jessica Lawless and Sarah Ross, Claire Pentecost, Dan S. Wang, Mike Wolf and Rebecca Zorach

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3. Stories Inauguration Reading In LA

Inauguration Subversion Event at Stories Books

Time: 7 pm, Tuesday, January 20, 2009. Inauguration night.

Place: Stories. 1716 Sunset Blvd. (Echo Park) Los Angeles, CA 90026. www.storiesla.com

The Journal has asked a few local’s to read haikus for the occasion. A song may be sung.
Katie Bachler, Ken Ehrlich, Colin Dickey will grace us with their poetry.
Artillery Magazine represents along with one of our favorite literary provocateurs, Jason Flores Williams.

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4. In Boston: Platform2 presents MANIFESTO!SLAM Inauguration night beantown fun

This came in over the wire from Andi Sutton

Platform2 presents MANIFESTO!SLAM

An evening of 5-minute manifestos performed by YOU.

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 – Inauguration Day – 7-9PM.

We invite you to stand on a soap box to read, sing, dance, scream, build, perform – to SLAM! – your own (or your favorite) manifesto. In this celebration, we will climb aboard a bio-diesel bus and drive through Boston broadcasting our individual and collective voices throughout the city. Join us to manifest the visions we have, the politics we feel, and the movements we revere.
We will gather together words, thoughts, and gestures of action.

We will distribute them on loudspeakers from the windows of a bio-diesel bus.

We will mail hard copies and documentation to the White House.

We will provide a soap box and musical interludes.

You will provide the manifesto.

Hello!

We always appreciate your comments, suggestions, ideas and feedback. Be in touch.
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Right on.