Marfa, TX

Rising from the Big Bend is what might be the best big idea in the whole state of Texas. Yep, it’s that big!

Bigger than the rocket launches of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. Bigger than the football coliseums for the Cowboys, Longhorns, and Aggies. Bigger than any tech dream launched by the hipsters at Apple, Google, or Tesla in Austin. Bigger than the towering 10,000 Year Clock being inserted into a 300-foot deep cave in the Sierra Diablo Mountains near Van Horn. Believe it or not, there is something wondrous and profound happening in the Big Bend, far grander than anything happening in our big cities or on our electronic screens.

Imagine a huge swath of the modern world better integrated into the natural world here on Earth and the cosmos above—an area in which the bright skyglow of our cities is tempered in favor of the radiant starglow of the cosmos. In that difference between skyglow and starglow lies hope for a better tomorrow. That’s why we need to turn our gaze away from our screens, at least for a while, and experience our true place in the universe. We can find it in the Big Bend, site of this profound and beautiful project.

It’s called the Greater Big Bend International Dark Sky Reserve. You’ve probably never heard of it. But, I find this to be an incredibly hopeful project, not only for Texans, but for Americans and the rest of humanity Relax, this is not a political essay. It’s a story about hope for a deeper and richer understanding of our place on Earth and in the universe.

« Go to College! » clame le magazine Life en 1940.
Alors que l’Europe sombre dans le chaos, les États-
Unis s’évertuent à assurer la production internationale
des savoirs et à promouvoir un idéal alternatif de
démocratie éclairée. Au même titre que toute la
population, les artistes sont encouragés à converger
vers les universités pour participer à la fondation d’un
nouveau rêve américain, porté par la recherche.
Revenant sur ce projet politique méconnu, L’Artistechercheur
retrace l’émergence d’une figure de l’artiste
dont l’activité bascule soudainement dans le champ
universitaire.
Pour comprendre cette mutation, Sandra Delacourt
suit la trace de Donald Judd, artiste minimaliste, qui
dans la deuxième partie du XXe siècle fut désigné
ambassadeur d’un « art éduqué ». À travers lui,
l’auteure nous invite à suivre l’évolution, non linéaire,
d’un nouvel imaginaire pour l’art et pour la recherche,
et expose la manière dont différentes générations
d’artistes s’en sont emparées ou l’ont rejeté.
Alors que depuis quelques années la recherche
créative fait l’objet d’un nouvel engouement, cet
ouvrage propose d’explorer les désirs antagonistes qui
ont conduit l’art et le savoir à pointer un horizon
commun.

March 31, 2020

In this interview Mohn Family professor David Raskin at the School of Art Institute of Chicago talks about the essence of the American artist Donald Judd’s artistry.

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) presents the exhibition Donald Judd from March 1 through July 11, 2020, the first major US retrospective dedicated to Judd in over three decades.

David Raskin has spent more than ten years researching and writing the book Donald Judd about one of the most significant artists of the 20th century, who revolutionized the history of sculpture and who still exercises an increasing influence in the field of art, architecture and design.

This book is an extension of conversations began at Marfa Sounding, a three-year exploration into the acoustic processes of a specific place, which began as a 2015 curatorial residency with Fieldwork Marfa, an international program run by Beaux-Arts Nantes Saint-Nazaire, France; the University of Houston School of Art; and HEAD, Geneva.
Focusing on “phase shifting” in music, particularly as it relates to early experiments in Minimalism and artists whose practices run from the 1960s into the present, Marfa Sounding hosted writers from many different backgrounds—composers, sound theorists, art critics, dance historians, filmmakers, educators, students, curators, and archivists—who treat performance as a point of departure for thinking through the intersection of music, minimalism, and the political. Marfa Sounding treated sound as a frame for understanding how art integrates with, invades, and is effectively produced by its context. The spaces of Marfa also became frames for sound as individual and collective experience, where people come together at a specific place and time, in a site that enfolds them.

Edited by Jennifer Burris & Ida Soulard
Artists: Alvin Lucier and Éliane Radigue with Charles Curtis; Anna Halprin with Phillip Greenlief, Rashaun Mitchell, Silas Riener, Nina Martin, and Stephen Petronio; Tarek Atoui with Amma Ateria, Jad Atoui, and Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe
Texts by James Fei; Jennifer Burris; Erik DeLuca; Ida Soulard; Maria Chávez; Janice Ross; Andrew Abrahams in conversation with Cate Cole Schrim; Wendy Vogel; Claudia La Rocco; Ian Lewis; Amma Ateria in conversation with Caitlin Murray; Jad Atoui in conversation with Claire Amiot; Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe in conversation with Anthony Elms; Sabrina Tarasoff

DUST (Desert Unit for Speculative Territories) is an experimental research studio working at the intersections of spatial practice, critical theory and contemporary art. Run by les beaux-arts de Nantes Métropole (France) and The College of the Arts at the University of Houston (Texas) in the wider context of Fieldwork: Marfa, DUST initiated in 2016 a three-year series  of transdisciplinary seminars, lectures, events and workshops. A project conceived and organized by Abinadi Meza (University of Houston) and Ida Soulard (beaux-arts, Nantes).