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JUST SHORT of its fourth anniversary as part of the eurozone, the Republic of Cyprus announced in the middle of last year that it was on the verge of becoming the next member state to seek a bailout from the European Union. At the time of my writing, this had not become an actuality—but other dangers loom, and the future of the euro itself is less certain than ever. As if possessed of an ability to foresee the future, Cypriot artist Christodoulos Panayiotou worked with the Central Bank of Cyprus in the months leading to the country’s monetary changeover in January 2008 to rescue all the country’s Cypriot-pound-denominated banknotes from incineration and made the shredded bills into a sixteen-foot-high heap of paper, titled 2008.

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THE CONTEMPORARY MUSEUM often resembles a FedEx box: a generic packaging unit designed with just enough attention to the exterior to lend value to the contents, while the apparently neutral interior purports to accommodate anything. And just as there is no link between the box and its geographic location, the container and its contents have a perfunctory relation to each other. The recently opened Herta and Paul Amir Building of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, designed by Preston Scott Cohen, was eagerly anticipated in architectural circles for the way it promised to break with this paradigm and refute the logic of the box, inside and out. Pinched and pulled by the need to connect with the existing building, the triangulated, twisting, turning structure occupies a small and oddly shaped plot. Three of the building’s five…

http://artforum.com/inprint/issue=201201&id=29818

New York
01.21.12

Jennifer Lacey, Gattica, 2011. Photo: Ian Douglas.

“I’M GOING TO HAVE MY EYES CLOSED for a little bit. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not with you.”

So spoke Jennifer Lacey, the highly regarded American choreographer who has been based in Paris for the past twelve years. It was a line from her whimsical, agile solo Gattica, which had its American premiere here last week as part of the American Realness festival at Abrons Arts Center.

http://artforum.com/diary/