Douglas Coupland

Brian Droitcour

Simon Castets

#artselfie opens with an incisive remark by Douglas Coupland, who warns us that "Selfies are mirrors we can freeze. ... Selfies allow us to see how others look at themselves in a mirror making their modeling face when nobody's around-- except these days, everybody's around everywhere all the time." #artselfie emerged in 2012, right as the recent photographic phenomenon known as the selfie reached its tipping point. It was subsequently activated by New York based collective DIS, as an aggregated mode of art-tourism and documentation. These selfies and their dialogue with art are an opportunity to revisit fundamental questions such as: if art is a mirror, what happens when we place ourselves between it and the camera? The traditional trajectory from photographer to subject via the camera has been subverted, and with it, the nature of images and our perception of them. The #artselfie makes every participant both protagonist and collaborator, consumer and producer. Including an introduction by Douglas Coupland (author of Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture and ruthless observer of contemporary society) and a discussion between Simon Castets (director of the Swiss Institute in New York and co-founder of the 89+ project) and DIS, #artselfie allows us to experience how significant -- and seductive -- this viral phenomenon is.

Dis: #Artselfie

Karen Marta

In the "St. Petersburg gamble," the house offers to flip a coin until it comes up heads. The payoff doubles each time tails appears. By conventional definitions, the St Petersburg gamble has an infinite potential return; nonetheless, most players feel that they should not risk more than a few dollars each time. Explaining why people offer such small sums for something with infinite potential remains contentious in both economics and philosophy. "The St. Petersburg Paradox" embodies Swiss Institute's longstanding dedication to producing inventive group exhibitions, putting artists across a century (Marcel Duchamp, Ericka Beckman, Hans Arp, Amalia Ulman, Tabor Robak) in dialogue with each other to explore the precarious nature of gaming and the impulses that underlie the way risk is calculated. Embracing the conceptual framework of an exhibition at Swiss Institute and its related public programs, each book in the SI Series adds retrospective context through seminal essays, archival materials, event transcripts, artist portfolios and exhibition documentation, as well as reprints and new translations of important texts. Each book in the series assumes a unique format to delve into the work of an artist, an artistic movement or a philosophical conundrum.

The St. Petersburg Paradox

Ian Luna

A large-format tribute to the influential brand's most visible collaborations features critical essays that examine and position the firm's patronage, in an exploration of the art, fashion, and architecture that was created in conjunction with such notables as Annie Liebovitz, Vanessa Beecroft, and Olafur Eliasson.

Simon Castets

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