In 1999 Mikael Kennedy, then a 20-year-old college student, took his first cross-country trip with his thrift store-bought Polaroid camera in tow. This “exhilarating and at times terrifying” experience of living out of his car and “documenting anything and everything” via Polaroid would become both his way of life for the next 12 years and the subject of his epic series Passport to Trespass. In Kennedy’s Polaroids you see a young nomad exploring lush evergreen forests, dirt roads, cityscapes under the murky moonlight, deserts, and oceans. You also see his friends: bright-eyed and bold 20 somethings, living rough yet seemingly immersed in their present. In 2005, having accrued more than 1000 images, Kennedy created the acclaimed website to which he uploaded groups of photos arranged in chronological order. Their laconic titles and lack of description leaves context and meaning up to the viewer. The medium, however, of Polaroid film fosters intimacy— one sees Kennedy’s life as an open book. 
 
Kennedy’s recent show at Clic gallery in New York titled Between Dog and Wolf culminated his series with a look at the tension between two worlds he’s come to know quite well: domestic and wild. PLANET spoke to Mikael Kennedy about his current state of transition.
 
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Once seen as an obscure and elusive genre, performance art has been gaining public awareness over the past decade. But it still lacks a permanent presence in a museum setting, historically because of its anti-institutional nature and recently because of its time-based and spontaneous tendencies. This summer Tate Modern opens The Tanks: Art in Action, a 15-week inaugural series for its new exhibition space, the first of its kind dedicated to live and performance art. The former Bankside Power Station’s oil tanks provide the perfect setting for the multitude of media found in live art. Dance, large-scale installation, film, and soundscapes by the genre’s most cutting-edge artists fill the underground tanks, fostering a very physical interactive experience.

Performance art deals with the desire to engage with art without relying on an outside object—to use one’s body as the artistic tool. Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker exemplifies this notion with an adaptation of her seminal performance piece Fase: Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich. Keersmaeker responds to Reich’s repetitive compositions with synchronized, metronomic movements, resulting in a dizzying and bemusing display. The Tate’s first commission for the Tanks is of the interdisciplinary video artist Sung Hwan Kim, who’s incorporated actors, excerpts of Rainer Maria Rilke, a girl with a beating heart at the top of her neck, paintings, and sculpture into his live work in the past.

Tate: Art in Action runs 18 July-28 October 2012

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Last month the third annual NoHo Design District Festival filled the downtown stretch between Bowery and Broadway with events and installations from both established and emerging talents. NoHo, with its long-standing reputation as an artists’ community, was the perfect atmosphere for the edgy, collaborative experience NDD organizers had in mind.

FABnyc, a program aimed at reinvigorating public spaces, asked visitors to reconsider the sidewalk beneath their feet with “Music Machine” by multidisciplinary artist Sonni. Bringing life to the otherwise dim alleyway behind the former CBGB was Sonni’s sidewalk mural of bright, primary-colored cartoon illustrations. A designer from Baggu was on hand to paint the pop-inspired brand’s grapefruit, mint, or citron-colored leather pouches with emoticons on the spot. On the second floor patio of the Standard, East Village Hotel, visitors found shelter from the sun inside designer Mat Gagnon’s “Knit Fort,” a flexible, multi-dimensional structure of woven wood and rubber cord that can be expanded and shaped according to one’s needs.

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