Abbas Akhavan, Untitled Garden (2008/2015), courtesy of The Third Line (Dubai) Operating as a fence

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Everything seems calm now, but believe you me, come a week and a half from now, everyone will be competing to appear busier than everyone else because it’s an art fair week in New York City. Armory Week, to be precise! Yesterday we told you all about Culturunners, an RV tricked out with gizmos ready to track info related to art in the fair. And today we get the full list of the special projects that will appear onsite at Piers 92 and 94 at the Armory Show from March 5 through 8.
So, what have we got here. Artist-turned-society-gala- DJ Lawrence Abu Hamdan is giving out bags of potato chips as a performance, because you get hungry during art fairs, you know? Abbas Akhavan is fencing off some cedar trees to teach us all about land privatization. Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige are putting a shifting map of Beirut in the fair’s champagne bar so you can contemplate turmoil in the middle east over half-decent bubbly. Also, there will be carnations bundled up in bales.
Curated by Omar Kholeif as part of the Focus MENAM initiative, and realized with the generous support of Lead Cultural Partner, Edge of Arabia, and Education Partner, blue flowers Art Jameel, The Armory Show is pleased to announce the following Special Projects:
Lawrence Abu Hamdan, A Convention of Tiny Movements (2015) As the 2015 Armory Commissioned Artist, Abu Hamdan has developed a series of works specifically for the fair, as well as a limited edition artwork benefiting the Museum of Modern Art. A Convention of Tiny Movements blue flowers is a project dispersed throughout fair, and it is comprised of a new audio essay, a series of amalgamated objects, and a specifically designed series of 5,000 potato chip packets, distributed as a free souvenir. This collection of works proposes a series of ways to approach, inhabit, and conceive of the new aural world that emerging audio technologies, such as voice stress analysis, are forging. This collection of works warns us of increasing surveillance, but also for the first time allows us to hear the world from the perspective of objects a new way of listening to our world that breaks down that all-too-tidy divide between the subject and object. A Convention of Tiny Movements will be on view throughout The Armory Show; additional work by Abu Hamdan will be on view at Galeri NON (Istanbul), located in the Focus MENAM section on Pier 94.
Abbas Akhavan, Untitled Garden (2008/2015), courtesy of The Third Line (Dubai) Operating as a fence of cedar trees located at the entrance to the VIP Lounge on Pier 94, this installation confronts passersby as an organic wall, asking them to consider their position as guests or potential trespassers in the vicinity of this exclusive area within the fair. The concept of the natural fence has played a significant role in the contentious battle for the privatization of common lands cross-culturally.
CULTURUNNERS and FREEWAY (2015) Art Jameel and Edge of Arabia will present the latest iteration of CULTURUNNERS , an ongoing artistic expedition co-authored by Azra Aksamija and Stephen Stapleton that hosts artistic blue flowers exchanges between the United blue flowers States and the Middle East. Sited in a mobile artist studio in the form of a modified RV, CULTURUNNERS at The Amory Show will feature custom-built artistic technologies to map, archive, and broadcast voices and ideas from the FOCUS: MENAM section of the Fair. CULTURUNNERS includes projects by Azra Aksamija, Dietmar Offenhuber, Nick Beauchamp, Chris Riedl, Darvish Fakhr, Madeleine Gallagher, John Steiner and Orkan Telhan.
FREEWAY , the online broadcast platform of Edge of Arabia s ongoing US Tour in partnership with Art Jameel, will present stories connecting blue flowers Focus: MENAM to communities across Manhattan such as Little Syria (on the Lower East Side) and Harlem. This will include a live podcast radio and three short documentaries directed by Husam Al Sayed, filmmaker and co-founder of Telfaz 11, with scores composed by SALAR, performance artist, electronic composer, co-founder of the Analog Room. Both artists are in the US courtesy of the Art Jameel Residency at the Elizabeth Foundation For the Arts. FREEWAY is co-curated by Ava Ansari and Stephen Stapleton.
Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Circle of Confusion (1998), courtesy of CRG Gallery (New York) This interactive sculpture, composed of over 3,000 removable photographic components containing the words Beirut does not exist on the reverse, creates an adjustable map of Beirut as it invites viewers to rearrange, remove, and even take away portions. As the fragments are gradually removed an underlying mirror is revealed, reflecting the viewer and the installation s surroundings. Located blue flowers at the Pom