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Desert X 2021 showcases site-responsive installations that 'refuse the notion of the desert as homogenous entity'

2021-03-15T16:06:00-04:00

In January 2021, we previously reported Desert X's plans to postpone the third edition of the Coachella Valley's highly anticipated international art exhibition due to increasing Covid-19 cases. However, last Friday, the Coachella Valley "opened" their desert exhibitions to the public.

From March 12th to May 16th, visitors can experience site-specific installations that touch on the desert "as a place and idea." By honoring landscapes and its people, this year's programming will "build on themes explored in previous iterations, looking deeper at ideas essential to the sustenance of our future and identity and the histories, realities, and possibilities of the Coachella Valley and its many communities," shares Desert X.

Never Forget by Nicholas Galanin (2021). Image © Lance Gerber/Courtesy of the artist and Desert X

Desert X expresses their goals of unpacking issues pertinent to what society is currently facing today. Topics include "the history of land rights, ownership, and stewar...

The Palestinian Museum opens its first show: Jerusalem Lives

2017-08-25T18:41:00-04:00

The Palestinian Museum opens its inaugural exhibition this weekend focusing on the holy city of Jerusalem, a city that both Israel and Palestine claim as their capital. The wide-ranging, overtly political show focuses on the realities of living in Jerusalem as well as the idea that despite being seen as the original global city, it also serves an example of how globalization has failed worldwide.

The Palestinian Museum, located in Birzeit, Palestine’s West Bank, opened last May. Back then, however, the $24 million structure designed by Heneghan Peng Architects had no exhibits to show due to a sudden resignation of the museum's former director.

Its first show, Jerusalem Lives (Tahya Al Quds), on view from August 27, is participatory, consisting of four chapters that examine the cultural, political, economic and ideological aspects of Jerusalem. The exhibit will include works by contemporary artists, a display of 20 large-scale commissions in the museum’s extensive gardens 'based on ideas about land, openness and non-exclusion', featuring artists such as Mona Hatoum, Emily Jacir, Khaled Jarrar, and many more. Additionally, supporting events and programs will be held at other Palestinian institutions.

“What is going on and why are these exclusionary policies being accepted? How are people—artists, organisations and civil society—working against it? And how can we build togethe...

Editor's Picks #408

2015-03-16T11:50:00-04:00

Nicholas Korody profiled the Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND). jla-x was excited as has "been looking for a way to get involved with something like this".

News

- The world lost visionary Frei Otto and his death moved up the announcement of his winning the 2015 Pritzker Prize. Plus, the renowned Michael Graves died and his firm promised to "continue to honor Michael’s humanistic design philosophy".

While EKE thought Otto was "a spectacular choice. Bravo.", Eric Chavkin noted "Frei Otto's work inspired Glen Small's BIOMORPHIC BIOSPHERE and much of early SCI_Arc student work". RJ Magoon also opined "No matter your opinion on the man or his work, it's hard to deny Graves' enormous influence on the practice and education in the last quarter of the Twentieth Century".

Ayesha Ghosh reported in from the first of the Architectural League of New York 2015 Emerging Voices lecture series, with firms Aranda\Lasch and MANUEL CERVANTES CESPEDES / CC ARQUITECTOS. There Aranda claimed "we like th...

Sand/geo-politics, land reclamation, "sand wars" and secular(ism)

2015-01-26T19:30:00-05:00

To make matters more turbid, the nightmare of coastal reclamation occupies an imaginary and regulatory space created by several misunderstandings about territory itself. These become urgent against both the backdrop of our “oceanic” moment and the apparent dissolution of that idyll of 19th- and 20th-century geopolitical thought, the grounded state.

Joshua Comaroff writes about contemporary sand/geo-politics, land reclamation, "sand wars" and secular(ism).