MTV Unveils New Art Breaks Videos

A new round of five Art Breaks videos launches today on MTV. Artists contribute 30-second videos that will be seen by MTV's 600 million global viewers, starting with Guido van der Werve today and Andrew Kuo, Divya Mehra, Semâ Bekirovic and Cody Critcheloe (SSION) to follow over the coming month. The project is a collaboration with New York public art organization Creative Time and New York's MoMA PS1.

This is the second installment of a project that launched earlier this year with Mads Lynnerup, Tala Madani, Rashaad Newsome, Jani Ruscica in collaboration with Sinii Pelkki, and Mickalene Thomas. The project revives a series that aired in 1985 with videos by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Richard Prince and others.
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Broad Museum Raises Gauntlet in Michigan

A singular, bold work of chiaroscuro in slashing steel by Pritzker Prize-winning architect, Zaha Hadid, the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum opened this weekend in East Lansing, Mich., interpolating its uncompromising modernity into the Michigan State University Campus like a dare.

Two exhibitions inaugurated what the museum says will be a perpetually rotating series of exhibits: "In Search of Time," a compelling collection of multi-media contemporary and historical art and "Global Groove," a collection of 12 video installations by artists from 10 different countries. (There are no plans for a gallery to house the permanent collection.)
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ICI Awards Emerging Curators

Jay Sanders and Nav Haq are the recipients of this year's Independent Vision Curatorial Award from Independent Curators International, New York. The biannual award for early or midcareer curators comes with a $4,000 stipend to be put toward a new project.

The winners were selected by Hans Ulrich Obrist, co-director of Serpentine Gallery, London, from a field of 16 candidates who were nominated by 15 international curators.
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Mix and Match at Meditations Biennale

Even with 90 artists from Europe, Asia and the Americas, the third Mediations biennale in Poznan, Poland, is a low-key event. This is less a result of the biennale's location than of its history, as a continuation of the Inner Spaces Festival, the informal gathering of artists, critics and curators initiated in 1993 by artist/curator Tomek Wenderland, now the biennial's director. Founded with the intention to consider globalization from a Central European perspective, the first Mediations biennale in 2008 consisted of some 16 sub-exhibitions, and works by over 240 artists.

This year, four curators—Denise Carvalho (the Americas), Friedhelm Mennekes (Europe), Fumio Nanjo (Asia) & Tomasz Wendland each would interpret the theme "the unknown" [through Oct. 30]. The selected artists were then installed in an integrated installation spread over five sites: a synagogue, a Jesuit Church, Zamek Castle Cultural Centre, the National Museum in Poznan and the Archdiocese Museum. While their interpretations differ widely ranging from the spiritual to the political, the curators share a common aesthetic sensibility—straightforward, emotive and slightly grainy.
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