On Saturday, December 3rd, I attended the Mission district neighborhood march for housing rights, where I heard Sara Powell speak at a rally in front of the 24th Street BART station. Powell is a longtime activist and artist who opened the neighborhood community art and education space Kaleidoscope Free Speech Zone in 2009. Located near the corner ... More

The Artist Bloc No. 1 zine is in circulation! This publication takes up the question of whether or not art is labor, and considers the contribution of artists to the current Occupy movement and social justice movements in general. It features contributions from Christian L. Frock, Joseph del Pesco (Open Space columnist), Julia Bryan-Wilson, Mary Christmas, Elizabeth Sims, Adrienne Skye Roberts, The Beehive Collective, Welly Fletcher, Morgan R. Levy, Hannah Gustavvson, Paulina M. Nowicka, Zeph Fishlyn, Leslie Dryer, and the Art Workers’ C... More

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Artist Sharon Lockhart reflects on the presence of the individual in the context of industrial labor through film, photography, and printed matter. For Lunch Break (2008), she spent a year at a naval shipbuilding plant in... More

Our regular feature, Collection Rotation. Each month we invite someone to organize a mini-“exhibition” from our collection works online. Today, please welcome artist and critic Bruno Fazzolari.

Hey, what do you think of our new look? I have to say, I’m awful pleased with what we’re looking at — however, I’m not the only one who needs to be happy here, and we’re in a beta frame of mind about this, so I hope some of you will give us feedback on the new look and the new functionality. Our main goals were to make it easier to access the FABULOUS CONTENT our writers have been producing over the last four years, and to better highlight those writers and contributors. We also wanted a cleaner, lighter, more, uh, “open” look. Spend some time clicking around to see what’s different. Details on some of the new features:

Recent Contributors: We’ll still have our rotating cohort of columnists each season. Rather than a static display of just those columnists, however, our Contributors widget will now float ... More

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Artist Sharon Lockhart reflects on the presence of the individual in the context of industrial labor through film, photography, and printed matter. For Lunch Break (2008), she spent a year at a naval shipbuilding plant i... More

Images have always had as much to do with the hand as with the eye. This photograph is elegant proof of image-making as an inherently physical, haptic act.

Although, is this what we call an image? It’s not the result of someone holding her hand in front of a camera for an exposure. “Digital effluvia” comes from pressing — the hand of the attributed photographer’s relative, in this case — into the toxic gelatin silver of the wet negative paper or plate. “Effluvia” meaning an invisible emanation, a lightless image made rather than... More

Commodified Cinema: Art, Advertising, and Commodities in Film, plays at noon on December 6 as the free Tuesday program. Museum and program admission are free.

Some years ago, I tipsily cornered Peter Kubelka at a small gathering being held in his honor. Here was my opportunity to grill him regarding his stunning Schwechater, surely the greatest one... More