It might be an understatement to say it’s been a busy year for the Walker blogs: our nine main blogs published 317 posts, racking up more than 525,000 pageviews. Here’s a selection from our most popular posts. (See a selection of our most popular articles here.)
10.
Valentine’s Message: “I’m Your Man! Love, Sufjan”
“You’re making a mistake with this boy Ryan.” Consider it a perfect storm: Walker book specialist Ryan Brink was picking out a Valentine’s Day card for his girlfriend Claire just as Sufjan Stevens, at the Walker to perform with his supergroup Sisyphus, stopped by the Walker Shop. Long story short: Brink scored big points for the card he bought, signed with a personalized message for Claire by Stevens himself.
9.
Fighting Words: A Public Debate on the Relationship Between Social Practice and Art Institutions
“Does social practice belong in art museums?” Portland-based artist Ariana Jacob shares some of the arguments from a debate on social practice during last summer’s rousing Assembly: A Social Practice Get-together that took place at the Portland Art Museum. Published in early December, it’s already become one of the year’s most-read posts.
8.
Freezing Man: Putting a Temporary Autonomous Zone on Ice
“Inevitably, upon explaining the idea of the Art Shanty Projects to someone unfamiliar with them, a comparison to Burning Man will be made.” Artist Eric William Carroll visited this distinctly Minnesota event, which brings artist-made icefishing-style shacks to a frozen Twin Cities–area lake every two years, finding comparisons to the Black Rock City extravaganza lacking. “If community is to be understood as the central focus of Burning Man, Art, I would argue, is the focus of the shanties.”
7.
Living with Pottery: Warren MacKenzie at 90
“MacKenzie challenged the idea that sophisticated art cannot be an everyday object.” Marking Warren MacKenzie’s 90th birthday in February, Alex Lauer dug into the Walker archives, finding photos, clippings, and an issue of Design Quarterly dedicated to the career—including a 1961 Walker solo exhibition—of the legendary Minnesota potter.
6.
Defining a Vagenre: Categories of Nudity in Feminist Performance
“There are many different vagenres in contemporary performance and dance. It is not just one big category of vaginas on stage.” Despite the punny neologism, performing arts curator Michèle Steinwald offers a serious consideration of nudity in feminist performance, suggesting five levels, from “Performance with ‘frontal’ nudity, completely naked or just bottomless” to “Orgasm as educational tool.”
5.
All Possible Futures: Experimental Jetset on Speculative Graphic Design
“Nowadays, it might indeed be speculative projects that can give designers some sort of breathing space in an economic and political environment that is becoming increasingly tight and hostile.” While some graphic designers divide their work between “for fun” and “for profit” or “self-initiated” versus “client-driven,” Experimental Jetset avoids such compartmentalization. In this excerpt from Jon Sueda’s book All Possible Futures, members of the Amsterdam-based design studio state, discuss this idea, as well as the term “speculative design”: “We regard all our projects as self-initiated, whether they involve clients or not. The moment we make a choice to involve ourselves in a project, we are, in fact, initiating it. That makes everything that we do self-initiated.”
4.
Muriel Cooper: Turning Time into Space
“Her enthusiasm for shaking things up was matched by her eagerness for working with emerging technologies, a precursor to our increasingly seamless relationship with information and tech. All while barefoot.” The keeper of MIT’s graphic identity for more than four decades and an innovator in computer interface design, Muriel Cooper (1925–1994) was the subject of the exhibition Messages and Means: Muriel Cooper at MIT in 2014. Here Walker designer Dante Carlos interviews its curators, Robert Wiesenberger and David Reinfurt.
3.
Exclusive Video: Dessa’s “Fighting Fish” as Remixed by The Hood Internet
“To hear my lyrics delivered in a man’s voice was brain-scrambling. ” For a woman in the male-dominated world of hip hop, poet, Doomtree MC, and rapper Dessa says it was “brain-scrambling” yet gratifying to hear herself as a man—or, rather, to hear her voice slowed to sound like that of a male rapper. That’s what The Hood Internet—one of eight producers asked to remix vocals from her album Parts of Speech—did with “Fighting Fish.” In September, Dessa gave the Walker an exclusive first look at the track’s new video.
2.
“YOU’LL NEVER BELIEVE WHAT FONT THE WESTBORO BAPTISTS USE“
“Sometimes sparking a dialogue can be a good thing, as long as the end of it is obedience to God.” Walker design director Emmet Byrne’s research into unexpected self-publishing three years ago put him in touch with Steve Drain, a member of the notoriously anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church. With news of the church founder’s death, he dug out the interview, which sprang from one question: “Is there anything to be learned about design from someone whose values are so radically different from my own?”
1.
Radiant Discord: Lance Wyman on the ’68 Olympic Design and the Tlatelolco Massacre
“It’s fascinating the way a piece of design can accrete meaning over time, as new contexts are revealed, personal stories come to light, and history slowly reifies our perceptions of an era.” Interviewing the designer of the iconic identity for the 1968 Mexico City Summer Games (and 2014 Insights lecture series participant) design director Emmet Byrne looks at the ideas behind Wyman’s Olympic design and the ways the events on the streets affected its meaning: ten days before the games began the government violently suppressed a student protest in Plaza de las Tres Culturas in what is now known as the Tlatelolco Massacre.