"Surveillance technology strives for that same ability to look at something from above as Zeus throwing lightning bolts—how to emulate what we understand as the deity; how to put ourselves there."
"Speakers considered the various motivations behind heritage conservation and renewed conversations about the repatriation of looted objects, including who decides what remains and what is let go."
"Take for example the recent influx of hyper-professionalised, international blue-chip galleries that tend to deal in canonical luxury objects at the exclusion of local or lesser-known art."
"Is this the history that Hong Kong people want painstakingly and expensively preserved?"
"In the paintings, his models lounge, smoke or stare with their bellies and breasts out; they appear post-coitus, bored, reading or asleep—intimate poses that reveal the long exchange between artist and sitter."
"Before there were Instagram selfies with fanned-out cash, there were oil paintings of prized horses and plump naked women."
"It also represents an issue that the art world has failed to tackle, how to unravel its exclusivity to be inconclusive of a great portion of society who increasingly feel unheard and unimportant."
"Otherwise, the binoculars can only be used
to enhance the view of what is already close.
The bell on the church (due to age, in disuse),
the branches of the one shrub in four
that's so far been pruned
the boys with their motorbikes, leaning against
the cool, white statue in the centre of town."
"The Triennale's tagline, 'Art thrives here', seems entirely appropriate in the post-quake context. Have we lost sight of where art can be most important?"
"The bored and disinterested looks on the faces of the gallerists who are forced to interact with regular people reflect the true attitude of this art world: money talks, and there’s likely no place more privy to such elitism than here."