2010

Burnett contributed to The New City Reader, part of the exhibition “The Last Newspaper” that ran at the New Museum in Lower Manhattan during Fall and Winter 2010/11. The NCR is a project that re-conceived the newspaper as a public space. It was part of a performance-based editorial residency running concurrently with the show on contemporary art and paper-based news media. Burnett did a piece on “Outsider Science” for the issue edited by David Benjamin and Livia Corona.

Burnett and fellow Cabinet editor Christopher Turner curated “The Slice: Cutting to See,” an exhibition that, moving across historical moments and disparate fields, examined the peculiar traditions that link the keen eye to the sharp blade. Everything you ever wanted to know about the microtome. The exhibition ran from Friday, November 19, through Wednesday, December 15, 2010, at the Architectural Association School of Architecture Gallery in London. See reviews of the exhibition in BMJ and the Independent. Watch a video walk-through of the exhibition below.

“The Slice: Cutting to See” Walk-Through. Video by Luke Currall. Thanks to Vanessa Norwood and the AA School.

Burnett wrote the introduction to Cabinet Books’ recently published A Little Common Place Book. Part pocket-sized filing cabinet, part indexing guide, this hardcover notebook includes an essay on the art of commonplacing as practiced by John Locke and 144 blank pages for collecting your thoughts. For images or to purchase, go here.

Burnett has an essay in the catalog of the 2010 Mark Dion show at the Oakland Museum. Click here for more information about the show, and here for a link to the book, The Marvelous Museum: Orphans, Curiosities & Treasures, with contributions from Lawrence Weschler, Rebecca Solnit, and others.

In 2009, Burnett and a friend began working on a conceptual project involving chess and the novel. For a taste, click here to read an experimental essay in “ludic criticism”; or click here to go right to the first fruit of the collaboration, an online computer program that lets you pit one novel against another in a chess match. The US Chess Federation recently ran a story about this project—click here to check it out.

Burnett and video artist Lisa Young teamed up in 2010 on a multimedia project that premiered as part of “Seeing from Above,” a conference at the Wellcome Collection, London. Part éloge, part montage, the collaborative piece, “Free Fall: The Life and Times of Bud ‘Crosshairs’ MacGinitie,” is an experiment in biographical sky-diving.

In celebration of 10/10/10, on Wednesday October 6, 2010, Burnett hosted a discussion and screening of Charles and Ray Eames’s short film Powers of Ten. The screening took place in Elebash Recital Hall at the CUNY Graduate Center, 365 5th Avenue in New York, at 7 pm. For more information, click here.

Burnett had a hand in organizing a show that opened on March 30, 2010: “An Ordinall of Alchimy,” at the Cabinet Space in Brooklyn. It’s about collecting, art, money, and the internet. After Cabinet, it moved on to the Slought Foundation in Philly, where was on view from April 30 until June 14. Click here for more on the project from Cabinet and here for more on its stay at the Slought Foundation.

On June 8, 2010, Burnett convened a discussion between Lawrence Weschler and Lena Herzog at the NYPL-Live series. The occasion: Herzog’s new show (at the ICP until September 12)—Burnett did an essay for the catalog, Lost Souls.

On the 7th of June, 2010, Burnett showed an installation version of NovelChess at WhiteBox on Broome Street. Music by Les Chauds Lapins! Here’s the invite.

On Thursday, the 27th of May, 2010, Burnett chaired a post-performance discussion of Cynthia Hopkins’ The Truth: A Tragedy at the Soho Rep Theater in Manhattan. Dave Herman was there from the City Reliquary Museum.

“Military Dreams and the Deep-Sea Mind.” On May 15, 2010, at 6 pm, at the Cabinet Space, Burnett screened some old Navy propaganda films concerning its Marine Mammal Program; he was in discussion with Laurel Braitman afterwards. More here.

On Saturday the 8th of May, 2010, at 3 pm, Burnett read “Two Bubbles, and a Third” at Art in General, and talked with Italian artists Hilario Isola and Matteo Norzi about their new project, Liquid Door, realized in conjunction with the New York Aquarium. For more, click here.

On the 5th of May, 2010, at the Natural History Museum in NYC, there was a screening of Ric Burns’ new documentary on American whaling: Into the Deep. Burnett is one of the talking heads in the film, and he also served on the board of advisers for the project, which was funded by the NEH and WGBH Boston, where it broadcast on May 10. More here.

On Sunday, April 11, 2010, at the Cabinet Space in Brooklyn, Burnett joined in conversation the distinguished Swiss critic and historian of neuroscience Michael Hagner, who screened Pudovkin’s creepy 1926 documentary The Mechanics of the Brain. This event was been supported in part by the Mellon Foundation. Click here for more.

Burnett wrote a catalog essay for a gallery show that ran from January 15 to April 5, 2010, at the Drawing Center, in Soho. The show, curated by Nina Katchadourian, was entitled “Sea Marks,” and it featured three contemporary artists whose work deals with the ocean.