How does the body relate to the machine today, if not clouded by emotion: complete alienation combined with moments of almost total alignment? ... More like this – of the presence or notable absence of the physical body – needed to be said in order to answer Carrion-Murayami’s valid question of the relationship between the machine and the body. It sounds like an axe to grind but why no young female artists were included is mysterious, especially considering the nexus of moral and political issues that new technologies bring to bear on women’s bodies. 

Melissa Gronlund assesses the New Museum’s ‘Ghosts in the Machine’, admiring the historical survey of art and technology but querying the show’s grasp on the contemporary.

Image: Richard Hamilton, Man, Machine and Motion, 1955/2012, exhibition reconstruction. Installation view, New Museum, New York, 2012. Courtesy the artist and New Museum, New York

http://www.afterall.org/online/machine-age

On Saturday 10 November 2012, Afterall is organising a symposium titled 'Artist as Curator' with speakers including Elena Crippa, Ekaterina Degot, Elena Filipovic, Alison Green, Ruth Noack, Willem de Rooij, Valerie Smith and David Teh.

This one-day symposium will bring together artists, curators and theorists to study key moments in the history of artists' engagement with exhibition-making, and reflect upon how these propositions have affected curatorial practice.

Speakers will discuss projects by, among others, Willem de Rooij, Group Material, ruangrupa and Mike Kelley. Other case studies include Apt Art and Trekhprudny in Moscow and the work of artists, architects and designers connected to the Independent Group in the UK.

Image: Group Material, Americana, 1985. Installation view, the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1985. Photograph: Geoffrey Clements. Courtesy Whitney Museum of American Art 

http://www.afterall.org/events/artist-as-curator