synthesism

partial migration

2009-08-04T20:22:00.004+09:00

Hi everyone! I am spending most of my time on this blog at present:
http://gratfortech.blogspot.com
also the main domain for my website is now: http://www.g4t.info
the rest of the references below should still work.
See you over in the next electron!

new post

2007-11-05T16:02:00.000+09:00

HI Everyone,

I'm posting again as part of a perhaps short-lived attempt to integrate as much new media into my life as I can during the next few months. This is all part of teaching by example my current course in Theories and Practices of New Media at Yonsei.

I started a facebook, myspace and am updating my del.icio.us and blogger pages regularly, I also intend to be intensely active on YouTube and SecondLife at least until end of the semester tying to generate as much cross-platform content as possible as I explore possible various forms of creativity between information, inanity, imagination and that loving touch of actual craft.

del.icio.us/baruch123
twitter.com/baruch
www.myspace.com/shudderthumpflutter
and, my long-neglected homepage
vociferous.org
also check out 'my' new media gallery at school
http://gallery.yonsei.ac.kr
and
the sound symposium I organized last month
http://sfx.yonsei.ac.kr

Check out my "president of the world" poll on the right... I hope the Yes Men will come along and help me make a site for a real global election. We need a new world government to mitigate corporate excesses. One world government, to more evenly redistribute global weath, develop sophisticated technologies of Fairness to undermine old-skool meaniecracy!

Opening in Berlin

2006-09-28T02:36:00.000+09:00

After one and a half years my and Jinran's façade work for the new GLS Campus building is being inaugurated. Without me, unfortunately, I am over in Korea teaching, but still it is a relief. The installation features an illuminated cornice feature I am particularly proud of. The idea came to me in the middle of the night and now it is permanently installed on a façade on one of the most popular streets of the new Berlin, Kastanienallee!
What I love about this work is its simplicity and mutability. You can put any six-letter message you want up there, but only a few will really work. I chose 'Dasein' for the opening, a nice jibe and parry for the German context.

I'll put some photos of the opening up soon.
toodle-lieu

Montreal: Artist posters city with own skin!

2005-04-10T15:59:00.000+09:00

new images of my work Lightskin/Peau Claire showing at O Patro Vys and all over the streets on Montreal!

As you can see, the work in the Gallery is a glowing core for the stuff in the streets

Lightskin - Peau Claire

2005-03-29T11:44:00.000+09:00

I'm heading off back home to Montreal tomorrow. Excited, nervous, trying to think of way I can be sure to sleep through the bulk of my 15+ hour plane trip. Usually I get razzed by the roar of the engines, the expanse of tarmac and the intertwisting wafts of jet fule and Dity Free perfume which sing "bon voyage".
I remember once listening to Debussy's 'Clouds' from above the clouds and looking down and being stirred as music can only stir me.

You'll excuse me if I keep this brief. I got a paper lamp design to figure out before a session with Venus Eclipse and the rest of the day coaxing the sluggish computers at Yonsei to churn out something passable to show at my opening...one week away.

Baruch Gottlieb - LIGHTSKIN

Baruch Gottlieb aka Brucie G aka Bru CG aka Spruce Bruce, long denizen of Montreal's underground music scene has been plumbing his art vein for the last few years doing performances installations and public art around the world.

In his first solo art show in Montreal, Gottlieb presents LIGHTSKIN: illuminated stpped-on, sat-on, slept-on canvasses printed with patterns of his freckled skin. 450 meters of 2nd-generation skin has additionally been printed up for this event which will be plastered around Montreal as well as in the space.

Come to O Patro Vys on April 6th for the opening and sample the freshly uncapped olfactory backdrop to the haunting illuminated skin tableaux, as well as performances and other treats.

Experience the deliciously twisted and uproarously indomitable sensibility that is your friend and typical Montreal native son of Baruch Bruce E Gottlieb, in his new show LIGHTSKIN.

Baruch Gottlieb - "PEAU CLAIRE"

Baruch Gottlieb, dit Brucie G, Bru CG, ou encore Spruce Bruce,
autochtone de la scène musicale Underground montréalaise, poursuit
depuis plusieurs années sa démarche artistique en réalisant des
performances, des installations et de l'art public tout autour du monde.

Lors de sa première exposition personnelle à Montréal, Gottlieb a
présenté "PEAU CLAIRE": de grandes toiles illuminées, imprimées d'un
motif en grandeur nature créé à partir d'une photographie de sa peau, et
présentées sous la forme de grands coussins. Les visiteurs y ont
déambulé, s'y sont assis ou allongés pendant les cinq semaines qu'a duré
l'exposition à la Galerie Pince Takamado de l'Ambassade du Canada à Tokyo.

Il présente aujourd'hui une "nouvelle peau": "PEAU CLAIRE" 2e
génération, d'une longueur de 450 mètres, qui sera exposée dans l'espace
urbain de Montréal.

Venez nombreux le 6 avril 2005 à "O Patro Vys" pour le vernissage de la
nouvelle exposition de Baruch Bruce E. Gottlieb, "PEAU CLAIRE". Une
performance musicale et olfactive, ainsi que bien d'autres surprises
vous y attendent!

http://www.opatrovys.com

update

2005-03-15T02:19:00.000+09:00

hey all - for those anonymous and silent who visit this spot of weblicious candour and convey. I'm back in Seoul since Friday, expecting the delivery of materials from Tokyo. I will reprocess them into large square lamps to hang along the long wall at O Patro Vys in Montreal. It's really art on the edge of decor, but the fact that the imagery is from my skin, it has that macabre element which seems to push it artward.

I researched the legend of the lamps made from human skin. They are famous, but did they really exist? According to all I read, despite the reality of the horrifical scale of nazi atrocities, the lamp of human skin remains a legend and has never been proven to exist.

I didn't choose to make these lamps. I have been working with surfaces of skin for 4 years now. The idea just occured to me and I was inspired... only after reflecting on it I became aware of it's historical resonance. The lamp of human skin has come to represent the nec plus ultra of repugnant acts committed by the Nazis, in part, I believe because it is so horribly beautiful. despite the circumstances of its removal the idea of illuminating a human from inside eternally, with electric light has a kind of faustian ecstacy about it.

The lamp made of human skin may or may not have existed, but I have come to acknowledge that it has a horrible glamour that captivates the world to this day. Jews and non-jews alike. The story, if it is only that, came from people in conditions of excruciating misery and utter despair. The story, the image itself is evidence of the unbearable experiences and sheer unmenschlichkeit (inhumanity) of the industrial extermination and work camps of 60 years ago.

A few weeks ago I visited the Shoah museum in Paris, right across the street from where I was staying at the Cite International des Arts. From the window I could see the queues stretching around the block on the weekends, they long strands of schoolchildren shepherded there before lunchtime on field trips, and tourists and locals waiting patiently to go though the bullet- and maybe bomb-proof security booth so discretely built into the enterance you don't know its there until it's almost your turn.

Some Parisians complained that the Shoah has become a kind of religion in France. I guess this is a valid comment to counterbalance with gallic irony the startlingly articulate, hard-hitting and well paced communication in this museum. Compared with the crowded, confused and ineffectual exhibit in the Jewish Museum Berlin, the Shoah museum packs a real punch and stays coherent - I haven't seen the Holocaust Memorial in Washington, but it would be hard to beat this one, especially in its frank and in depth acknowledgement of French tolerance, involvement and collaboration with the worst of Nazi policy.

One of the most horrible exhibits is a bag made fromhuman hair. If one looks closely one can see the little curly ends of hair lifting indomitable from the woven surface of the bag. incredible. unforgettable. and yet, please don't hate me, a person does not have to die for hair to be harvested for industrial applications such as this. There is a gulf of mournful meaning between the physical evidence of the heartless reuse of human materials for industrial applications and the lightless void and screamless silence of the unrecoverable exterminated millions.

When a half-filled auditorium heard Elie Wiesel ask "WIll the world ever learn" to close his commemoration speech for the 60th anniverary of the liberation of the Nazi death camps , many must have sighed with despair. This eloquent witness made a simple and moving appeal, but the fact is that human beings can only evolve so fast. Despite the unbridled exploits of our technology, we humans are deep down largely the same animal we were 10,000 years ago. The world will learn, Mr. Wiesel, but slowly, with excruciating setbacks and unsung accomplishment.

2005-02-13T04:50:00.000+09:00

title page of the new catalog

2005-02-13T04:47:00.000+09:00

great land of korean chicken

since this is a blog...and not just a kind of adjunct to my cv

2005-02-13T03:54:00.000+09:00

I'd better put a new post here once in a while.

My new catalog of the last four years large-scale permanent installations with Jinran Kim and solo is out - I'll post an image here above.

Kang Yong-min's first show is opening on Monday but I'll miss it because I'm off to Paris. In Paris I plan to buy some exotic fabrics and fabric related bric-a-brac for the lamps I will show in Montreal in April. also I hope to find some antique light fixtures.

I sent out a bunch of lunar new year's greetings this year...I tried not to get to macabre on the theme of 'year of the Chicken' - but inevitably....

Japan show

2005-02-08T14:00:00.000+09:00

Hi! I created this blog as a replacement to the guestbook forum I had on my site at
http://www.gottlieb.ca

Here's a few update photos from my show "Pinked Galicia" in the Canadian Embassy, Tokyo. (still running until March 5th, 2005, so check it out if you're around)

Exhibition Announcement December 2, 2004

"Pinked Galicia"
January 28 - March 5, 2005
Canadian Embassy Prince Takamado Gallery

The Canadian Embassy will present an exhibition by Montreal artist Baruch Gottlieb. "Pinked Galicia" features a large-surface installation installed on the floor, creating an impressive monolithic effect. The exhibition will be held at the Canadian Embassy Prince Takamado Gallery, from January 28 to March 5, 2005.

Repeatable patterns have been used through human history to represent the rhythms of nature, to serve as calming analogues to the rhythmic repetitions of our daily human life. In the 21st century humanity increasingly exists in an urban sphere, where the rhythms of civilisation's human nature prevail. Today's information technology society works on principles of patterns of human behaviour - thus he has postulated decorative patterns derived from human forms.

For this exhibition he uses a pattern derived from photography of his own skin, spread out life-size and repeated to fill the room. A personal pattern, to resonate recurrence in his own life and in yours.

Baruch Bruce Edward Gottlieb is working on four continents. Trained as a filmmaker at Concordia University in Montreal he has created inter- poly- and pan-disciplinary work in a great variety of contexts. From art-money interventions in Senegal, to massive permanent public art works in Korea, Radio-art in Liverpool, Montreal and Prague to art-space installations around the world, Gottlieb's talents defy easy classification, yet unifying all the work is a deep concern and comprehension for contemporary human interaction, exchange and intimacy. His CV can be seen at www.gottlieb.ca.

DETAILS DETAILS

TITLE: "Pinked Galicia"
DATE: January 28 to March 5, 2005
Weekdays 9:00 to 17:30, Saturday 13:00 to 17:00
*closed February 11
PLACE: Canadian Embassy Prince Takamado Gallery
(7-3-38 Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo)
ADMISSION: Free
CONTACT: Canadian Embassy, Public Affairs Section tel: 03-5412-6200
MEDIA CONTACT: Ryuko Iikubo (ext.3347)

2005-02-08T13:19:00.000+09:00

detail of the floor pattern

2005-02-08T13:18:00.000+09:00

spotlight projection and floor spots

2005-02-08T13:17:00.000+09:00

the floor with pinked blur projection and acrovista cushions

2005-02-08T13:16:00.000+09:00

opening day