The need to feel and experiment, as opposed to possessing and accumulating, seems to be an increasingly established tendency in our society, which is generating an important revolution in the way in which we have understood our economic, social and/or cultural relationships. Maybe it is not something new, but now, faced with over-saturation from products, services and messages, attention is centered on all other differential questions, integrating intangible factors and values such as: creativity, cultural contextualization, ecology and sustainability, design, social responsibility, interactivity and participation and above all, the capacity to offer new and personalized experiences.

Anaïs Nin once wrote, “I will not be just a tourist in the world of images, just watching images passing by which I cannot live in, make love to, possess as permanent sources of joy and ecstasy.” This is the way I first approach art—from the gut and in a very instinctive, immediate way. Then, if the work “stays with me long enough,” this first emotional encounter leads the way to a more “rational” analysis of why I am attracted or repulsed by an artwork. In few cases, the initial sparkle turns into a love-story, and this is certainly one of those cases.

“When you and the sound become one,” wrote Zen master Seung Sahn, “you don’t hear the sound; you are the sound.” I sit with my instrument, the Iranian hand-drum called zarb or tombak. It’s a simple instrument: wooden, goblet-shaped, with a skin covering the larger end. Its technique is the opposite of simple: a complex weave of rolls, snaps and strokes that use all ten fingers to draw out every nuance of sound. Despite my New York Irish roots, I am an accomplished performer and teacher on this instrument, with a musical lineage that traces directly to the tradition’s greatest innovator, Ostad Hossein Tehrani.

This exhibition is simply about taking risks. As an emerging artist, I am well aware of the frustrations involved in trying make art while trying to survive in New York City. I found myself in the unique position of being "behind the scenes" as the Archivist at P.P.O.W, when I came up with idea for secretly throwing an exhibition when my bosses were out of town on vacation. After letting one of the gallery's artists in on this little fantasy, he suggested let the owners in on the idea. When I did, they enthusiastically supported my idea.

I have been making sounds with a laptop computer, field recordings and things around me for years. Although I deal with field recordings (often natural sounds), I'm not a stoic naturalist. I need electricity to live. I am the kind of person who sits in front of a computer screen for over ten hours per day. For me, having grown up in the city, artificial environments are the new ecology. They are as familiar as trees or volcanoes or mountains or sunlight. I am as used to the hum of refrigerators and air conditioners as I am to cicadas and bird songs. I therefore have an interest in the fusion of the digital and the organic.

The convergence of light and space takes on new meaning in the transparent surfaces of Tatyana Stepanova. A native of Siberia with a background steeped in Russian folklore and world travel, her return to her homeland with “Light and Space” at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art this fall is marked by transcendent personal narrative illuminating her mystical roots. In the 20th Century, the Abstract Expressionist movement sought to capture spirit while representational art reflected the objective forms of matter. Today, artists are struggling to find the self-defining forms that reconcile these opposites.

Christine Flok: What is it about the art of drag that enticed you to use it to compose much of your work?
Derek Jackson: I have never met someone who didn't like to play dress up. Fashion is—from child warriors in the Congo to Madison Avenue—it's a basic human impulse to express yourself through clothing and accessories, whether aesthetic, functional or ceremonial. It's a huge industry and simultaneously personal and subjective. Fashion is a language that I use to create possibility, an opportunity to take a safe risk, to deconstruct, subvert or empower our strategies for representation.

Peruvian artist Sandra Gamarra, 34, is the hottest ticket in appropriation art. Founded by Mr. Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), also famously explored by artists Elaine Sturtevant, Mike Bidlo, Sherrie Levine and Richard Pettibone. Sandra uses painting approximately 90% of the time to reflect on cultural utopia and the necessity of questioning contemporary art. Sculpture and video, the other ten percent, resultant of the painting, are done in small papers or large-scaled canvases. This young artist visits biennales and art shows around the globe and buys their catalogues, as well as art books, as a primary form of appropriating herself of the works of others.

It's as if San Francisco-based artist Kota Ezawa has taken a cleaver and hacked away at a fundamental axiom in Debord's seminal publication. Momentous occasions, such as Yoko Ono and John Lennon's hotel protest, have faded from the forefront of the American public only for a burgeoning artist to reinvigorate their significance. Ab initio, Ezawa leads viewers into a filtered rendering of historical and cinematic events through tracings, animations, aquatinted light boxes and static etchings. Currently on display at Artpace in San Antonio, the artist demonstrates an adroit ability to cull and cover relatively familiar images with thick, chromatic blankets.

In an inexplicable and continuously violent world where men make history through wars and count them as statistics, Rosana Palazyan has been showing us, for almost two decades, that “God lives in the details.” No statistics for her, deaths are as they should be; a loss or a salvation of a human soul. Praise for this meticulous, disciplined, laborious, demanding and courageous artist, who, like her contemporary Leonilson, has been embroidering mainly to produce a cure.Rosana attended the School of Visual Arts of Park Lage, the most prominent one in Rio de Janeiro at the time.

Susan Weil’s retrospective show at the Sundaram Tagore gallery opened on April 20th, 2006 in New York. This particular exhibition presented 50 years of Ms. Weil’s work in various mediums; paintings, limited-edition art books and collages et cetera. The gallery has published a catalogue to accompany the exhibition. The catalogue measures 12 by 17 inches and the color reproductions jump off the page. I’m particularly struck by a photograph of a piece she created in 1949, titled Secrets. The work resembles a collage but is closer to an abstract drawing; it consists of many words written on torn pieces of paper and framed under glass.

After the spectacular results of past years, the 11th Art Forum Berlin, the International Fair for Contemporary Art, again sets high standards. A by far wider range of international attendance and a fresher program than last year both represent the consistent renewal of Art Forum Berlin. Consequently, in its selection of a clear and compact group of participants, Art Forum Berlin provides a precise insight into the current, international contemporary art scene. One hundred and twenty galleries from 22 countries present stars and newcomers in exciting new constellations with both discoveries and enhancements.

The Edinburgh International Film Festival is one of few that devote an entire sidebar to experimental film and video. Its “Black Box” section is one of many bequests left to Edinburgh by Shane Danielson, the outgoing artistic director. The antipodean director’s muscular, and occasionally incendiary, style has made the last five years of Edinburgh almost as exciting for its gossip as its programming. The programming has, nevertheless, been nothing less than fascinating. “Black Box” sets out to bridge the gap between cinema’s sleek professionalism and the formal chaos of the video/art world.

For each error, the internet assigns a number; “404” means “Not found” and announces that what we are looking for is not there. This has become one of the most frequently read errors in internet searches. The first “4” indicates an error by the user, as in an incorrect address or a search for page that does not exist. The “0” means a general error of syntaxes—a mistake in a letter of the address—and the last “4” is for “Not found.” This mechanism obligates us to turn from an established route and to find another. And here is where the artist appears and turns the obstacle into an opportunity.

As we embarked on the 2006 California Biennial, we observed how tired clichés about California barely came into play. Long characterized as culturally isolated, young artists working in California are no more or less disconnected from one another than they are from either the rest of the country or the rest of the world. Many come here from other states or countries to attend one of California’s outstanding art schools or universities and stay after graduation because of abundant opportunities in this burgeoning climate of art galleries, museums and nonprofit organizations.