June 2, 7-10PM 2501 Bryant St @ 23rd St San Francisco - free Million Fishes Artist Collective Phenomenon: an evening of art and music curated by in-house artist Ulrika Andersson.
Nate Boyce, Shawn Lani, Charles Sowers and Paul Stepahin, with musical performances by the sound collective TripKnight.
"Phenomenon showcases artwork based on tangible behavior, as opposed to metaphor and illustration. Each artist uses his or her medium to display a natural interaction -or to impact the human sensory system- in a way that reveals the nature of the medium itself. Like patterns in nature are often observed without interpretation, this exhibition is a display of artwork that operates without added meaning. The artworks are phenomena complete onto themselves."
"Black Light/White Noise will be the first exhibition to explore the contributions of black artists within the historical context of the sound and light aesthetic, blending them with the dynamics and sensibilities inherent in black art."
[a day late, but given the extraordinary quality of the video clip, we thought we'd celebrate none the less.]
Robert Alan Zimmerman b. 24 May 1941, Hibbing, Minnesota. His first album, "Bob Dylan," released in 1962.
[You Tube clip description: "Phenomenal 1966 performance of Like A Rolling Stone in City Hall, Newcastle." We're guessing Newcastle Upon Tyne in the U.K., given the strains of "God Save The Queen" playing in the background as Mr. Dylan makes his exit off stage.]
Utopian Mirage: Social Metaphors in Contemporary Photography and Film
May 25 - July 29, 2007
[image from exhibition: Ruins of Drop City Commune,Trinidad, Colorado, August 1995. Joel Sternfeld, 2005]
"Utopia, the notion of an ideal society, imagines a place or a community where social contradictions are annulled in a collective dream in which peace and harmony are perfected. ... But what has come of these utopias in the 21st century? The artists whose work is included in Utopian Mirage, revisit these dreams today to discover that they have often been overtaken by the dystopian realities of urban decay, corruption, loss of innocence, and nature's entropic cycles."
Below a link to a remarkable multimedia project by Magnum photographer Paolo Pellegrin and producter Tia Dunn. Further evidence of the convergence of media ...]
Guantanamo [image by Paolo Pellegrin from project Web site.]
[image from The Daily Advertiser, Lafayette, LA: credited "courtesy of David Simpson, LSUE:" "Legendary Creole musician Alphonse "Bois Sec" Ardoin has died Wednesday in Eunice at the age of 92. Ardoin and his musical partner, the late fiddler Canray Fontenot, played music for more than 50 years. The Creole music of Ardoin's generation laid the foundation for modern zydeco."]
[Below, article from the May 20, 2007 New York Timesby Jon Pareles]
Bois Sec Ardoin, Musician and Nurturer of Creole Tradition, Dies at 91
Alphonse Ardoin, a Louisiana Creole accordionist and singer nicknamed Bois Sec whose music stalwartly sustained South Louisiana tradition, died Wednesday of natural causes in Eunice, La., where he had been living in a nursing home, said his son Morris. He was 91 years old.
For five decades, Alphonse Ardoin worked regularly with the fiddler Canray Fontenot, trading quick-fingered passages on some of the oldest known Creole tunes and infusing Cajun waltzes with the blues. English speakers sometimes called the style “la la music,” but it was known by its players simply as “la musique Creole.”
Eventually, the Creole waltzes and two-steps would be punched up, plugged in and fused with rhythm and blues, creating the zydeco music that still fills South Louisiana dance halls. In 1986, Mr. Ardoin and Mr. Fontenot (who died in 1995) both received from the National Endowment for the Arts the National Heritage Fellowship, the highest American award for traditional arts.
Alphonse Ardoin was born in 1915 in rural Duralde, La., the son of sharecroppers, and he worked on farms all his life. As a child, he was nicknamed Bois Sec (“dry wood”), because he had a reputation for being the first in the cotton fields to seek shelter during Louisiana’s sudden downpours.
Mr. Ardoin took up the button accordion, an instrument that had a family tradition. His cousin Amédé Ardoin made pioneering recordings of French Creole music with the fiddler Dennis McGee. Alphonse Ardoin took up the accordion and learned his cousin’s style, in part by playing triangle in Amédé’s band. According to Michael Tisserand’s book “The Kingdom of Zydeco,” Alphonse told his cousin, “It won’t be long until I catch up with you.”
But music remained a sideline until the 1940s, when he started working regularly with Mr. Fontenot. As the Duralde Ramblers, they played at dances and parties and on a live radio show broadcast from Eunice. Their reputation spread so widely that they were booked at the 1966 Newport Folk Festival. On the way back south from the festival, they stopped in Virginia and recorded their first album, “Les Blues du Bayou,” which was later reissued by Arhoolie as “La Musique Creole.”
As the old Creole style was replaced by zydeco on the dance-hall circuit, Mr. Ardoin and Mr. Fontenot took their music to folk festivals and concerts worldwide. In the 1970s, Mr. Ardoin added his sons Morris, Lawrence and Gustave to his group, which became the Ardoin Family Orchestra.
He also recorded and performed with the Cajun fiddler Dewey Balfa and later with a younger generation of Creole traditionalists, notably Balfa Toujours, led by Dewey’s daughter Christine, with whom he made the 1998 album “Allons Danser.” And through the years, Mr. Ardoin’s songs made their way into the repertory of zydeco bands and traditionalist groups like Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys.
He is survived by a brother, Delphin; his children, Morris, Florence, Mildred, Amelia, Dorothy, Juanita, Emily, Alberta, Matilda, Lawrence, Ronald and Russell; and “a whole bunch” of grandchildren, Morris Ardoin said. Three of those grandchildren — Dexter, Sean and Chris — lead their own bands, playing Creole music and zydeco. [video clip below credited as "Delta Blues Cajun Two-Step, Music from Mississippi & Louisiana, Newport 1966; Canray Fontenot and Alphonse "Bois Sec" Ardoin.]
"Viewed through the lens of art, science, humor and philosophy, the exhibition's unifying theme is this notion of one home - personal and collective. During the course of this exhibition, our Community Gallery will gather poignant, first-hand testimonies of just what "home" and the animals in our lives can mean - contributed via a special partnership honoring the experience and wisdom of Baltimore-area homeless families as well as by our animal-loving or service-animal dependent visitors of all ages.
"If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men." --St. Francis of Assisi"
* Pavel Banka - Photographer, Prague, Czech Republic * Barsamian - Installation Artist * Thurman "T" Brown - Digital Media Artist, Photographer, Writer * Ray Carrington - Photographer * Rita Duffy - Painter, Belfast, Ireland * J. Hill - Sculptor, Installation Artist, Oral Historian * Lynne McCabe - Interdisciplinary Artist, Great Britain
Round 26, through June 24, 2007, focuses on the "People, Places, and Things of the Northern Third Ward"
Participating artists engage with residents within a 35-block area targeted by Project Row Houses "to capture, reflect and/or tell the stories of area residents."
"The intent of this Round is to inform the public about the rich history of the Northern Third Ward residents. The neighborhood is currently undergoing economic and demographic changes. As a way to cultivate positive relationships among the new residents and existing residents that are based on mutual respect, this Round aims to document and celebrate the history of the Third Ward community."
more [image of Project Row Houses campus from PRH Web site.]
"Celebrating all things two-wheeled, the Seventh Annual Bicycle Film Festival presents five days of film, art, music, and plenty of peddling. Anthology Film Archive hosts 14 programs of films covering every spoke, from the DIY antics of the Black Label Bicycle Club to the activist pursuits of Critical Mass and an account of January's memorial ride in honor of those killed in traffic. It's not all politics and flicks, though, as bike jousting, trail riding, and everything BMX all represent, too. So hit one program or buy a weekend pass, then change that rusty chain and ride over. (RB)"
[from the festival web site:] STREET PARTY May 19 | 1pm-7pm 2nd St at 2nd Ave Fun bike games other fun events presented by TRACKSTAR. Footdown, trackstands, and skids for all. FBM hosts BUNNYHOP CHALLENGE w/ cash prizes. Performance by Ines Brunn.
andBIKE PARADE May 19 | 1pm Meet at 33 W 17th St. near 5th Ave Calling all tall bikes, short bikes, long bikes, regular bikes to the streets of New York. Show your colors! Ride your most fun bike: with your team, club or your biker friends. Dress yourself up and your bike.
The Institute of Contemporary Arts The Mall London England SW1Y 5AH
"The ICA has invited 26 artists from around the world to make proposals for a memorial to the Iraq War. These memorials address topics such as the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the country's slide into civil war, the deaths of soldiers and civilians, and the conflict's relation to global jihadism and the War on Terror. The intention is not to find a definitive memorial to a war - a difficult task at any time, and especially in the context of an ongoing conflict. Instead the exhibition explores different views of the Iraq War, and different perspectives on what can or should be memorialised."
more [image from ICA Web site: "Proposal for Iraq War Memorial, Symbolic Transposition of effects of war in Iraq to the U.S. and England: 10 Downing St., Parliament, U.S. Capitol and the White House [detail], 2007, Sam Durant."]
"Shrinking Cities examines the worldwide phenomenon of urban population decline. Artists, architects, filmmakers, journalists, cultural and social researchers present the changed reality of four cities and regions: Detroit, Michigan, Manchester, Liverpool, United Kingdom, Ivanovo, Russia and Halle/ Leipzig, Germany."
Apex Art The Museum of Crime and the Museum of God
Organized by Luc Sante
May 16 - June 23, 2007
"The Museum of Crime and the Museum of God is at once an illustrated essay--employing the walls of the gallery as its page--and a lurid, seedy, extremely suspect carnival attraction, as attractive as it is repellent.
Born and raised into a belief system--European peasant Catholicism--that routinely employed sensational and threatening images to manipulate the emotions of its practitioners, Luc Sante entered adulthood an ocean away, in a sensational and threatening metropolis. He found himself drawn to the imagery of crime, both the laconic factuality of evidence and the highly colored and erotically charged packaging of fiction. Eventually he realized how much this attraction owed to the conditions of his upbringing--and the many ways in which religion and crime are fatally linked together, accomplices that pretend to be polar opposites."
[image from museum web site: Accordion, ca.1860. G. Kaneguissert, Maker. Paris, France. Wood (palisander, softwood), mother-of-pearl, paper, leather, brass, nickel-silver.]
Sunday, May 6 - 2 pm: Rha Goddess: Low with ASL interpretation for the hearing impaired
"In its Chicago debut, Rha Goddess's Low is a major theatrical event. Her trademark style of spoken-word delivery, known as "floetry," permeates this piece about the perils and pitfalls of low self-esteem and clinical depression. Low is a rhythmic and linguistically brilliant performance journeying through a woman's mental struggles and reunion with her spiritual and emotional strengths."
As part of Sunday's performance by Rha Goddess, audience members are invited to participate in a mental health study that looks at the impact of Low on beliefs about emotional wellbeing - ""Sunday Civics - A performance-driven safe arena for open dialogue and authentic expression about mental health."
Interested participants must arrive by 1:15 pm to complete a 15 minute pre-show survey, and stay immediately following the performance to engage in 30 minute community dialogue groups.
Participation in the study and in the discussion groups is completely optional and confidential. It is conducted by City College of City University New York's Program in Clinical Psychology with assistance from the Family Institute of Northwestern University."
SF Camerawork Exhibition: Not Given: Talking of and Around Photographs of Arab Women
"A 1940s Hollywood glamour girl wannabe in Egypt throws a practiced ‘come hither’ look over her bare shoulder at the camera. A serious young Lebanese woman poses for a portrait dressed like an English gentleman in a pinstriped suit. The Arab pop music equivalent of Charo wears a traditional headscarf with a wry expression. These images and more gleaned from the archive of the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut are the subject of a fascinating new multimedia installation entitled "Not Given: Talking of and Around Photographs of Arab Women" on view at SF Camerawork. Using a soundscape of recorded voices, projected large-scale images and photographic prints, the installation unveils stereotypes and examines how the authority of photography can get lost in translation. This is the only U.S. venue for this thought-provoking show curated by art historian and critical theorist Dore Bowen and French media artist Isabelle Massu."
[the Data Stream is delighted to again highlight an exhibition in the North Oakland Temporary Museum, a brilliant project by curator artist writer Scott MacLeod.]
"An online & sometimes offline museum presenting modern & contemporary work from the 20th & 21st centuries." Jíří Kalousek: On the Trail of Brotherhood
"This month's exhibit features images scanned from a travel journal made by my friend Jakub Kalousek's father Jíří (George) in 1953. These watercolours depict scenes from a hike/walk taken by Jíří, his wife Milena & their friend Ludya through then-exotic forests & villages of far-eastern Czechoslovakia and Hungary. I think these images are charming because even from this temporal distance they offer immediacy rather than nostalgia."
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The Data Stream launched in 2005 as a feature of|compliment to the NAAO [National Association of Artists Organizations] web site.
Hurricaine Katrina Relief - The City of New Orleans
"The Tipitina's Foundationa 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, has worked diligently to uplift the music community of New Orleans. After Hurricane Katrina devastated the city, the Foundation responded by rebuilding New Orleans' music culture. Initially, the Foundation addressed the immediate needs of our exiled musicians and allowed them to carry on with their lives. Now the foundation is using the legendary music club, Tipitina's Uptown, as the center of its relief efforts by hosting a newly-opened Music Co-op Office that allows musicians to conduct their business activities during the daytime, free legal and accounting seminars, free music lessons for music students, regular Master Seminars, and help with housing information.
An important aspect of the rebuilding process has involved finding replacement instruments for both professionals and music students alike. So far the foundation has given away over $500,000 of new instruments. Through these efforts, the Tipitina's Foundation is saving the musical traditions of New Orleans."
"The Tipitina's Foundation is making sure New Orleans' heart and soul, its music, continues to flourish."
June 2, 7-10PM
