SLon: sine qua non

The Artists



Logo by MonCherrie Afterthought



Cake by Nebulosus Severine

(to be continued)

SLon: DJ Party Update- SLon artists shown in RL Gallery- Some Background

Sowa Mai's Ghost Story is currently displayed in SLon des Refuses on Magoo, Dekka Raymaker and Mab stand at the end

Soup blog will temporarily be taken over by SLon des Refuses virtual world events and documentation. The usual sporadic but enthusiastic Soup postings will continue after SLon is over or as time allows. Mab sometimes tweets (link), if you would like to follow along, but only in the most irregular way as she has the attention span of a cat.

This is the (corrected) notecard that was sent out this morning to the Slon group in Second Life®:

Thursday 6 August 2009

Hi SLon Artists,

We're experiencing technical mire so the DJ party-on-the-grass with Arthole's Arahan Claveau (link) for Thursday's (today's) opening is postponed. We hope to get things straightened out and have it on closing day instead, which is Sunday 23 August. We're disappointed but such is life. We will keep you updated.

Update: Shirley Marquez will be DJ! Look for her on the green grass and enjoy the picnic! Arahan will be closing for us!

SLon Central on Magoo SIM (slurl)

The 2009 Unofficial Brooklyn is Watching Year 1 International SLon des Refuses (that's YOU!) will open in a relaxed and beyond casual way at 1PM SLT 6 August. The exhibition will occasionally be viewed live on a RL (Real Life) 52 inch mega-monitor screen by RL gallery visitors in the front space of the highly regarded RL Jack the Pelican Presents art gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, along with the SL 30 Best show hosted by the Department of Visual Art at the University of Kansas SIM ( KU ART to the South). To the North of 30 Best is the Impermanence SIM, also hosted by KU ART, where the new incarnation of Brooklyn is Watching now makes its home. So come to Magoo or KU and show off your avatar-as-artwork! Brooklyn will be Watching!

30 Best show on KU (slurl)

Brooklyn is Watching Now on Impermanence (slurl)

The RL Jack the Pelican Presents Gallery (link)

As you can see YOU are mentioned thusly (from the Jack the Pelican Presents website):

"Is virtual art for real? What is the nature of the medium? How do you talk about it? What are its conceptual and social-critical opportunities and limits? These are just some of the questions that Brooklyn Is Watching has been actively asking for the last year and a half.

Inside the gallery are five monitors, each featuring a virtual copy of the real space occupied by a different virtual artwork. These are "THE FINAL FIVE," created for this context by the nominated and elected best from hundreds of virtual artists who have exhibited in year 1 of Brooklyn is Watching.

This is an "official" show of virtual art. So much is at stake, it has already spawned a Salon de Refusés of over thirty virtual artists who didn't make the final cut."

The Final Five exhibition is being prepared inworld on East of Odyssey SIM. The opening is on Friday 7 August 4-6 PM SLT. The Final Five Artists are Bryn Oh, DanCoyote Antonelli, Glyph Graves, Nebulosus Severine, and Selavy Oh. They have each been given a replica of the RL Jack the Pelican Presents art gallery, recreated virtually by our own talented Dekka Raymaker, for their use in making new artwork for the Final Five show.

Final Five on East of Odyssey (slurl)

If you're nearby Jack the Pelican Presents in RL, join in the RL festivities and happenings which will occur simultaneously (they include commissioned work by Juria Yoshikawa, Oberon Onmura, and Jeff Ertz). Say hello to Jay Van Buren (Jay Newt inworld) and kiss Kristen Galvin (our very own beloved hardworking MonCherrie Afterthought)! Or vice versa.....

Read the Brooklyn is Watching blog for updates to the 30 Best and Final Five shows, as well as coverage of the panel discussion on virtual artists by Pavig Lok, Lori Landay, and Stacey Fox; and keynote speaker Jerry Paffendorf (Destroy Television).

Brooklyn is Watching blog (link)

Read more about these exciting RL events in this press release (link)

Although all the Slon Artists on Magoo are winners by virtue of being requested to be in the SLon in the first place, there are further rankings to be determined in the Official Brooklyn is Watching Year 1 Festival, including the awarding of the People's Choice and the Golden Eyeball. The People's Choice will be made by online poll and the Golden Eyeball will be presented to one of the Final Five on the basis of votes made by RL visitors to the RL Jack the Pelican Presents gallery, not all of whom will be familiar with SL art or its intrinsic nature. The Final Five works will be shown for this purpose over the term of the exhibit on their own wall-mounted monitors in machinima form (link) by filmmaker (and SLon muse) Penumbra Carter.

Details on People's Choice and Golden Eyeball (link)

For those of you not familiar with Brooklyn is Watching even though your artwork was nominated to be in the 30 Best of Brooklyn is Watching Year 1 (hey, it can happen!), here is a concise description by Juan Rubio from the press release:

"Brooklyn is Watching, conceived of by Jay Van Buren, executed as a collaboration with Boris Kizelshteyn and the Popcha! development team in February 2008, is a breakthrough relational art project that invites interaction between the two thriving art communities of Second Life and Williamsburg, Brooklyn accentuating the power relations between and among them. It consists of a series of inter-related spaces for artists, audiences, and participants. The primary spaces are a square parcel of land (sim) in Second Life where artists are invited to leave their work for one week (when it is automatically returned), and an alcove in the Williamsburg art gallery–Jack the Pelican Presents where the sim can be viewed on a large monitor and entered via an avatar."

Brooklyn is Watching will also make a machinima appearance at SLCC in San Francisco, 15 August, in the Grand Ballroom (link)

###

SLon des Refusés 2009

WHAT’S THE TIME?

‘TIS TIME FOR LUNCH ON THE GRASS!

YUMMMMMM!

Crossposted from Brooklyn is Watching via MonCherrie Afterthought:

The beyond casual unofficial committee, of the first annual (Best of Brooklyn is Watching Year 1) SLon des Refusés, is pleased to make this very official exhibition announcement!

(This is where I imagine the horns blowing and red carpets rolling.)

With works by: Ally Aeon, Hollow Prim, Socks Clawtooth, Banrion Constantine, Klink Epsilon, Strawberry Holiday, Man Michinaga, Sowa Mai, Shirley Marquez, Robin Moore, nessuno Myoo, soror Nishi, Tuna Oddfellow, Cinco Pizzicato, Azdel Slade and Elle Mehrmand, Arm Strom, Sunn Thunders, elros Tuominen, Betty Tureaud, Corcosman Voom, Shellina Winkler, Tsui Yamabushi, four Yip, and others!

Location: Magoo
Exhibition Dates: Aug 6-Aug 23, 2009
Opening Reception: Monday, Aug 10, 7PM SLT, with a special performance by Tuna Oddfellow
Closing Reception: Special performances and festivities are currently being arranged. Check the Brooklyn is Watching blog for all SLon event updates!
Additional Performance: Tuna Oddfellow, Sunday Aug 9, 11AM SLT

About: Well there is a rich history of Salon des Refusés, most notably the Salon des Refusés of 1863, so why not in SL? It only seemed fitting to create a platform for twenty-first century brilliant rejects, care of the Brooklyn is Watching Year 1 30 Best jury and voting process.

The SLon des Refusés 2009 is at its heart a celebration of the artistic breeding ground that is Brooklyn is Watching. It is a nod to all of the hybrid SL/RL art that Brooklyn is Watching has showcased and inspired and contained and contended with over its first year; as ephemeral digital artworks left on the sim to be looked at and pondered and combined and chewed up, and as a group conceptual installation of an evolving artistic body of work in its entirety, including more than a year’s worth of ongoing dialogue and documentation. And beholding.

Finally, it is a love letter to Jay Van Buren who has the vision to encourage a real-life community of artists and muses against daunting odds, working hard to give them the gift of freedom to explore the potentials of digital art and at the same time to do what they find beautiful.

SLon: Salon des Refusés

Le déjeuner sur l'herbe by Édouard Manet

In preparation for the Beyond Casual SLon des Refuses being organized by digital curator MonCherrie Afterthought with Mab MacMoragh, to be composed of artists nominated in the wiki for Best of Brooklyn is Watching Year 1 but not voted into 30 Best (link), Soup offers the following explanation for the spirit of the show:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Salon des Refusés, French for “exhibition of rejects”, is generally an exhibition of works rejected by the jury of the official Paris Salon, but the term is most famously used to refer to the Salon des Refusés of 1863.

It should be taken into account that during this time, Paris was a breeding ground for artist of all forms, poets, artists, sculptors, etc. Paris was the place to be, and the capital of the art world, any artist that wanted to be recognized, at that time, was required to have exhibited in a Salon, or gone to school in France. Being accepted into these Salons was a matter of survival for some artist; reputations and careers could be started or broken, based solely on the acceptance into these exhibits.

As early as the 1830’s, Paris art galleries had mounted small-scale, private exhibitions of works rejected by the Salon jurors. The clamorous event of 1863 was actually sponsored by the French government. In that year, artists protested the Salon jury’s rejection of more than 3,000 works, far more than usual. "Wishing to let the public judge the legitimacy of these complaints," said an official notice, Emperor Napoléon III decreed that the rejected artists could exhibit their works in an annex to the regular Salon. Many critics and the public ridiculed the refusés, which included such now-famous paintings as Édouard Manet's Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l’herbe) and James McNeill Whistler's Girl in White. But the critical attention also legitimized the emerging avant-garde in painting. Encouraged by Manet, the Impressionists successfully exhibited their works outside the Salon beginning in 1874. Subsequent Salons des Refusés were mounted in Paris in 1874, 1875, and 1886, by which time the prestige and influence of the Paris Salon had waned.

Émile Zola incorporated a fictionalized account of the 1863 scandal in his novel L'Oeuvre (The Masterpiece) (1886).

Today by extension, salon des refusés refers to any exhibition of works rejected from a juried art show.

For information as to the progress of the juried show, see the official Brooklyn is Watching blog (link)