Dream of Life: Patti Smith

The phenomenal Patti Smith [born Patricia Lee Smith] turns 63 today. Below is a remarkable video of her on the 80's children's television program "Kids Are People Too," featuring a performance of the 1977 mega pop hit "You Light Up My Life" with composer Joe Brooks. Tonight and New Year's Eve, she'll be appearing with her band at the Bowery Ballroom in New York City. Rock on Patti.



more [Wikipedia entry]

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James Brown May 3, 1933-December 25, 2006

[Four days late, we mark the second anniversary of the death of singer/composer/performer James Brown with a YouTube of "Sex Machine" from his 1970 album by the same name.]

Write Now

[for your consideration:]

The New Republic
Write Now
Mark I. Pinsky
Why Barack Obama should resurrect the Federal Writers Project and bail out laid-off journalists.

Monday, December 08, 2008

Read On

[image from google search for 'typewriter.' The site on which the image was found includes a link to Cornelius' song "typerite lesson." ]

Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Fall 2008 Grants

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, a trail blazing leader in support of artist-centered initiatives, recently published a list of their Fall 2008 Grant Awardees.

The 'Stream' congratulates the recipients!

Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Fall 2008 Grants Awardees

[image from google search for 'Andy Warhol.' Caption: "Andy Warhol. Marilyn Monroe."]

Phil Ochs

"Philip David Ochs (December 19, 1940–April 9, 1976) was a U.S. protest singer (or, as he preferred, a "topical singer"), songwriter, musician, journalist and recording artist who was known for his sharp wit, sardonic humor, earnest humanism, political activism, insightful and alliterative lyrics, and haunting voice. He wrote hundreds of songs in the 1960s and released eight LP record albums in his lifetime."

Below, a performance of his anti-war anthem,"I Ain't Marching Anymore," still relevant today, regrettably, as the Obama administration prepares to scale up the war in Afghanistan.



[Biographical notes from WiKipedia entry. Click here to listen to tracks from his exquisite 1967 album, "Pleasures of the Harbor," his most lyrical, existential work.]

Hanging Chads 2008 edition: you be the judge

Check it out: a four part interactive feature from Minneosata Public Radio on the challenged ballots in the razor thin U.S. Senate contest between Senator Norm Coleman and media personality Al Franken.

Click here to compare notes and cast your votes.

[graphic from MPR Web site.]

"... street furniture, outdoor advertising, and pedestrians ..."

Metropolitan Museum of of Art
New York, New York

New York, N. Why?: Photographs by Rudy Burckhardt, 1937–1940
September 23, 2008–January 4, 2009
The Howard Gilman Gallery

In the late 1930s, Rudy Burckhardt—then a recent émigré to America from Switzerland—created what are today considered to be some of the greatest photographs of New York ever made. This exhibition will present in its entirety a unique album (acquired by the Museum in 1972) of 67 now-classic images of street furniture, outdoor advertising, and pedestrians, selected and sequenced by Burckhardt in 1940."

[image from Met Web site. Caption: "Rudy Burckhardt (American, born Switzerland, 1914–1999), "Eagle" Barber Shop Window, New York City], 1939. Gelatin silver print; 7 1/16 x 9 11/16 in. (17.9 x 24.6 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, Florance Waterbury Bequest, 1972 (1972.585.12) © Estate of Rudy Burckhardt."]

Sol LeWitt

Mass MoCa
1040 Mass MoCA Way
North Adams MA 01247

Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective

through 2033

more

[graphic from MoCa Web site. Caption: "Wall Drawing 86: Ten thousand lines about 10 inches (25 cm) long, covering the wall evenly. June 1971. Black pencil. Private collection."]

Fight the H8 With Love!

"Fight the H8 With Love. Take the day off work and volunteer to be of service."

[Graphic from Day Without A Gay Web site.]

Craft Hackers

Fri, Dec 12, 2008 | 7:30 PM
New Museum
235 Bowery
New York, NY 10002



Craft Hackers
Modertated by Marisa Olson

$6 Members, $8 General Public

Craft Hackers is a panel discussion among artists who use crafting techniques to explore high-tech culture and the relationship between needlework and computer programming. Panelists include Cat Mazza, who translates moving images into stills knit in yarn; Christy Matson, who uses Jacquard Looms (some of the earliest computers) to knit landscape images from computer games; Ben Fino-Radin, whose witty needlepoint sculptures translate the World Wide Web into yarn and plastic, one pixel at a time; and Cody Trepte, whose embroidery of retired computer punch cards rekindles an old-fashioned love affair with the hand of the artist.


[graphic: embroidered punch card by Cody Trepte]

Door to Door Poetry

Machine Project
1200 D North Alvarado Street
Los Angeles, CA 90026
213-483-8761

Poetry Delivery Service this Sunday

"In the spirit of giving this holiday season, Joshua Beckman, our December Poet in Residence, will be offering free door-to-door poetry deliveries at certain times throughout the month. The first installment of the Poetry Delivery Service will be this Sunday, December 7th between the hours of 1-5pm. Deliveries will be made exclusively on foot to homes or other locations within a 1 mile radius of Machine Project. More info and the number of the Poetry Phone request line here:
machineproject.com/events/2008/12/05/poetrydeliveryservice."

[graphic from Machine Project Web site.]

Vintage Tom Waits at 59

From Wikipedia: "Thomas Alan Waits (born 7 December 1949) is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."

[YouTube video from AquaticBigfoot of a vintage 1977 performance of Tom Traubert's Blues.]

Dave Brubeck Take 88

On the occasion of the eighty eighth anniversary of pianist and band leader Dave Brubeck we post a video of the jazz classic and surprise 1959 hit "Take Five," a composition by saxophonist Paul Desmond, featured in a post last month on the 'Stream.']

Proposition 8 - The Musical

[With thanks to KMcL in NYC for the scouting tip, below, a witty piece of star-studded Old School entertainment + 21st century, media-savvy activism.]

Photography and Depression

New Orleans Museum of Art
One Collins C. Diboll Circle
City Park
New Orleans, Louisiana 70124
Photography and Depression
Through March 1, 2009

"... an examination of depression in all its forms, including mental and financial, through 82 works from the Museum's permanent collection.

Featured artists include a virtual who's who of photography, including Ansel Adams, William Eggleston, Walker Evans, Lee Friedlander, Dorothea Lange, Danny Lyon, Eadweard Muybridge, George Tice, Alfred Stieglitz, Weegee and many more.

The works are accompanied by text excerpted from Culture and Depression, a 1985 book by Dr. Arthur M. Kleinman, the distinguished professor, psychiatrist, medical and social anthropologist who is also the director of the Asia Center at Harvard University.

... organized by [NOMA] Curator of Photography, Diego Cortez...."

[photo from museum Web site.]

World AIDS Day

[On the occasion of World AIDS Day, we re-publish in full the article below Agence France-Presse – AFP.

Graphic also from AFP. Click to enlarge.]

Go back to basics, says UN ahead of World AIDS Day
November 28, 2008

GENEVA (AFP) — The United Nations on Friday urged countries to focus on the roots of the AIDS epidemic and draw on a panoply of tried-and-tested tools to help prevent HIV spreading among groups of people who most at risk.

"There is no single magic bullet for HIV prevention, but we can choose wisely from the known prevention options available so that they can reinforce and complement each other," said Peter Piot, the outgoing executive director of UNAIDS.

Launching a report ahead of World AIDS Day on December 1, Piot called for understanding how the most recent HIV infections were happening and why they occurred in the first place.

"Not only will this approach help prevent the next 1,000 infections in each community, but it will also make money for AIDS work more effectively and help put forward a long term and sustainable AIDS response," he said.

Unlike previous years, UNAIDS did not give any fresh figures for the number of infections and deaths ahead of World AIDS Day, saying the relevant data had not yet been amassed.

Statistics published ahead of the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City in August say that around 33 million people had the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in 2007, in a range of 30.3 to 36.1 million.

Around 2.7 million people became infected, or on average around 7,500 people per day, while deaths were estimated at around two million.

Speaking at a press briefing, UNAIDS' director of evidence, monitoring and policy, Paul De Lay, said that so-called "combination prevention" -- which involves a behavioural, biomedical and structural approach to treatment -- was key to tackling the epidemic.

A biomedical approach could include male circumcision, or using anti-retrovirals to prevent mother-to-child transmission, while behavioural approach could include encouraging condom use or reducing the number of sexual partners.

"The epidemic is constantly changing, and therefore the analyses of new infections must be undertaken at regular intervals," he said.

Attention had to remain focussed on the most high-risk communities such as sex workers, injecting drug users and gay men, De Lay said.

Meanwhile, two leading organisations shone the spotlight on access to antiretroviral drugs, which can turn HIV from a death sentence to a manageable disease.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria on Friday announced that two million people living with HIV had now been reached with the lifeline treatment through programmes it supports, an increase of 43 percent increase over a year ago.

The Global Fund provides nearly a quarter of all international resources to fight AIDS.

In another development, the International AIDS Society (IAS), which organises the big international conferences, called on the Group of Eight (G8) to stand by their pledge, set down at their Gleneagles summit in 2005, for universal access to antiretroviral drugs by 2010.

"Based on the G8's own reporting at its July 2008 meeting in Hokkaido, Japan the IAS has calculated that G8 countries have, to date, pledged approximately 22.2 billion specifically for global HIV programmes between 2008 and 2010," the IAS said.

"This amount is just 36 percent of the UNAIDS-estimated 61 billion dollars that is needed over this period."

At the end of 2007, some three million people had access to antiretrovirals, marking a major upturn in previous years, but this was still two-thirds short of a goal of universal access of 2010 enshrined by the UN and supported by the G8.

A Museum Wrapped in Honeycomb

[article by Nicolai Ouroussoff, reprinted in full from the November 25 edition of the New York Times.]

A Berkeley Museum Wrapped in Honeycomb

By Nicolai Ouroussoff
Published: November 24, 2008

BERKELEY, Calif. — I have no idea whether, in this dismal economic climate, the University of California will find the money to build its new art museum here. But if it fails, it will be a blow to those of us who champion provocative architecture in the United States.

Designed by the Japanese architect Toyo Ito, the three-story structure suggests an intoxicating architectural dance in which the push and pull between solitude and intimacy, stillness and motion, art and viewer never ends. Its contoured galleries, whose honeycomb pattern seems to be straining to contain an untamed world, would make it a magical place to view art.

Beyond its aesthetic appeal, however, Mr. Ito’s design underscores just what is at stake as so many building projects hang in the balance. On a local level, the museum could help break down the divide between the ivory tower at the top of the hill and the gritty neighborhood at the bottom. More broadly, it could introduce an American audience to one of the world’s greatest and most underrated talents, sending out creative ripples that can only be imagined.

The museum would replace the existing Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, a bunkerlike building completed in 1970 that was badly damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

Standing on a rough commercial strip at the campus’s southern edge, the old building is still marred by the big steel columns that were installed after the quake to support its cantilevered floors. Its rough, angular concrete forms and oddly shaped galleries are awkward settings for art.

The new museum would rise several blocks away, at the seam between the main entrance to the university’s leafy hillside campus and Berkeley’s downtown area. Mr. Ito conceived the design as part of a drawn-out public promenade, and he has packed the bookstore, a cafe, a gallery, a 256-seat theater and a flexible “black box” onto the ground floor. The more contemplative galleries, which include spaces for temporary exhibitions and the museum’s permanent collections of Western and Asian art, are on the second and third floors.

In the renderings the building’s creamy white exterior vaguely resembles a stack of egg cartons that has been sliced off at one end to expose the matrix of contoured chambers inside. The forms peel away at various points to create doorways and open up tantalizing, carefully controlled views into the interiors, as if the building’s facade had been slowly eroding over the millenniums.

Teasingly voyeuristic, the effect brings to mind partly demolished buildings and the aura of intimate secrets about to be revealed. But Mr. Ito is not interested in simply obliterating boundaries, as you would with a conventional glass box. His aim is to create a relaxed relationship between private and public life: while acknowledging that contemporary museums are often hives of social activity, he understands that they can also be places where we want to hide from one another and lose ourselves in the art.

The ground floor is conceived as an intense, compressed version of the surrounding street grid. Once inside, visitors will have to pay to enter a formal temporary gallery just to the right of the main entry. Or they can slip around it and follow the procession through the more informal interstitial spaces, which will be used for video art and site-specific installations. The theater and black box space are tucked away in the back.

Mr. Ito once said that he would like to create spaces that are like “eddies in a current of water.” The interstitial spaces seem to swell open and close up to regulate the movement of people through the building; the self-contained, honeycomblike spaces, by contrast, produce a sense of suspension rather than enclosure, as if you were hovering momentarily before stepping back into the stream.

As you ascend through the museum, this effect intensifies, and the spaces become more contemplative. The main staircase is enclosed in one of the contoured volumes, giving you psychological distance from the activity below. Once you reach the main gallery floors, the experience becomes more focused: the rhythm through the rooms is broken only occasionally, when a wall peels back to allow glimpses of the city.

Mr. Ito has positioned most of the doorways in the galleries’ contoured corners, which allows for a maximum of uninterrupted wall space for the art while emphasizing the rooms’ sensual curves. Most of the galleries have a single opening; others are contained in interstitial spaces, part of the general flow through the building. The contrast, which creates unexpected perspectives, has more to do with Tiepolo’s heavens than with Mondrian’s grids.

As with all of Mr. Ito’s work, the building’s structural system is not an afterthought but a critical element of the ideas that drive the design. The honeycomb pattern gives the building a remarkable structural firmness, allowing for walls only a few inches thick. Made of steel plates sandwiched around concrete, they will have a smooth, unbroken surface that should underscore the museum’s fluid forms. The tautness of the bent steel should also heighten the sense of tension.

Of course, Mr. Ito is still fine-tuning his design, and critical decisions have yet to be made. Museum officials plan to eliminate two 30-foot-high galleries that were part of the original proposal to add wall space and cut costs. This is unfortunate: the soaring spaces would tie the building together vertically and create voids on the upper floors that would add to the sense of mystery.

The museum is also pushing to make the curved corners in the galleries more compact to add still more wall space, which could create an impression that the art is crammed in.

For decades now, Mr. Ito has ranked among the leading architects who have reshaped the field by infusing their designs with the psychological, emotional and social dimensions that late Modernists and Post-Modernists ignored. They have replaced an architecture of purity with one of emotional extremes. The underlying aim is less an aesthetic one than a mission to create a more elastic, and therefore tolerant, environment.

These ideas have found their firmest footing in Europe and Japan and are now filtering into the mainstream here. It would be a shame to leave Mr. Ito out of that cultural breakthrough. The museum would not only be an architectural tour de force but would also introduce him to a broad American audience, stirring an imaginative reawakening in a country that sorely needs it.

[graphic and photograph from the Times. Captions: "A model of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive." Toyo Ito & Associates, Architect." Photograph: "A photograph enhanced to show the area to be occupied by the new museum. University of California, Berkeley:]

Paul Desmond

[On the occasion of the anniversary of the eighty-fourth anniversary of the birth of composer|saxophonist Paul Desmond, a video of a 1975 performance of Johnny Mandel's "Emily, a tune that spotlights Mr. Desmond's exquisitely smooth approach to the instrument."

Paul Desmond died in 1977 on May 30.]

Limit one per customer!

[with thanks to conceptual Data Stream scout and investment analyst AHS in Oakland, CA for the forward of the spot-on bit of silliness below. Click on image to enlarge.]




.

Exactitudes

[thanks to GC in CC, NV for the scouting tip:]


"Rotterdam-based photographer Ari Versluis and profiler Ellie Uyttenbroek have worked together since October 1994. Inspired by a shared interest in the striking dress codes of various social groups, they have systematically documented numerous identities over the last 14 years. Rotterdam's heterogeneous, multicultural street scene remains a major source of inspiration for [them], although since 1998 they have also worked in cities abroad."

"Exactitudes"

[screen grab and text from project web site. The text is a excerpted from an introduction by by Wim van Sinderen, Senior Curator The Hague Museum of Photography]

Architectures of Survival

Outpost for Contemporary Art
Los Angeles, California U.S.A.

Architectures of Survival
Curated by Komplot and presented in conjunction with Art2102

"The work of Hungarian architect Yona Friedman (*1923, Budapest, lives in Paris) is the starting point for this exhibition with the title itself being a reflexive reference to Friedman's 1975 book 'Architecture Of Survival' (MIT Press, USA). The book looks at the precarious nature of modern society and suggests creative strategies for countering the problems thrown up by hyper-consumption and capitalist modes of spatial and social organisation"

artists | events

[graphic from Outpost Web site.]

Fringe in the rearview mirror

From November 13 through November 16, New Orleans played host to the New Orleans Fringe Festival.

Click here for an entire listing of the participating artists and venues of this remarkable event.

[graphic from Fringe Web site.]

Happy Birthday Mac Rebennack

[Today marks the 68th anniversary of the birth of New Orleans music giant Mac Rebennack aka Dr. John. Below is one of a generous number of YouTube videos of Mr. Rebennack performing his composition "Such A Night." Many happy returns!]

Marco Perego | Amy Winehouse | William Burroughs

Half Gallery
New York, New York

"NEW YORK.- Marrying the hyperrealist tradition of Duane Hanson and Andy Warhol’s prophetic approach to pop culture, Marco Perego unveils his most ambitious set piece to date, a sculpture of William Burroughs murdering Amy Winehouse entitled, “The Only Good Rock Star is a Dead Rock Star.” Perhaps only Maurizio Cattelan – another curious Italian— or Damien Hirst could come close to producing an artwork as macabre as it is hilarious. Perego’s installation speaks concurrently to the steep price of fame and an infamous literary game gone deadly, creating a provocative situation that while historically impossible is visually plausible through-and-through. The Minnie Mouse mask next to her lifeless body is not just a nod to Disney, but a reference to the infamous Amy Wine-mouse video of her partying with Pete Doherty. Perego challenges the viewer to abandon our antiquated notions of chronology and reinvent a timeline to match the projected calculus of our imagination. A series of drawings (some studies, some indirectly related) further explore the linkage between sex and violence, borrowing from childhood memories of chivalry, innocence and romance.

All images are included in the forthcoming Marco Perego monograph to be published by tarSIZ. The book features an essay by noted dealer John McWhinnie and French Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld, as well as a conversation with the artist himself."

[text and photo from artdaily.org web site. Caption: "Marco Perego, The Only Good Rock Star Is A Dead Rock Star (detail). Courtesy of Half Gallery." The exhibition opened on November 14.]

Workers

Austin Museum of Art
823 Congress Avenue at 9th Street
Austin, Texas

November 15, 2008 - February 8, 2009
Workers: Photographs by Sebastiao Salgado

"AUSTIN, TX.- The Austin Museum of Art (AMOA) presents Workers: Photographs by Sebastião Salgado. Sixty-two large-scale, black and white photographs are included in the exhibition. Salgado’s work poses many disparate questions. Do the photographs honor the dignity of labor, or expose brutal working conditions? Do they document economic growth and development, or provide insight into the human toil that supports our increasing consumption?

The exhibition also taps into Austin’s strong interest in photography, as reflected by numerous local galleries devoted to the medium, impressive public and private collections, and the many important documentary photographers who live in the region.

Educated as an economist, Salgado began his photography career in 1973. In the early 1970s, while working for the International Coffee Organization, Salgado borrowed his wife’s camera for a trip to Africa. It was after this trip that he decided to pursue his passion for photography. Salgado initially worked with the Paris-based agency, Gamma, but in 1979 he joined the international cooperative of photographers Magnum Photos. He left Magnum in 1994 and formed his own agency in Paris, Amazonas Images, to represent his work. Salgado began Workers in 1986. Over the next six years he traveled to 23 countries to photograph manual laborers. Workers was a monumental undertaking that confirmed his reputation as a photo documentarian of the first order.

...

Throughout his thirty-five-plus years as a photographer, Sebastião Salgado has remained committed to documenting humanity’s challenges and hopes. Salgado’s transformative images bestow dignity on the most isolated and neglected, from famine stricken refugees in the Sahel to the indigenous peoples of South America. His series, Workers, stands as a testament to the world’s laborers at a time of transition.

Divided into six categories—Agriculture, Food, Mining, Industry, Oil, and Construction — Workers is a global project that transcends mere imagery and affirms the enduring spirit of working men and women throughout the world. The photographs span the realities of work in myriad forms—from rolling Cuban cigars, to picking tea on Rwandan plantations to fishing in Italy. Salgado undertook this epic project because of concerns about changes in way the people work around the world. Fifteen years later, Workers stands as the activist-artist’s manifesto. Inspired by globalization, he set out to document its effects on methods of production in the developing world. Some agricultural practices in the third world, as shown in his photographs of workers gathering Brazilian cocoa or coal mining in India, have remained unchanged for centuries. Other countries, like India and China, have undergone an industrial revolution in the last decade, forever changing how work is defined in those societies. Salgado consciously reveals that much of the world’s work force still labors to make goods they cannot afford. With growing inequity between the first and third world, this body of work is relevant to today’s dynamic global markets. Sebastião Salgado’s Workers is a photographic homage to changing methods of work, and a tribute to the humanity of the world’s workers.

“I hope that the person who visits my exhibitions, and the person who comes out, are not quite the same,” says Salgado. “I believe that the average person can help a lot, not by giving material goods but by participating, by being part of the discussion, by being truly concerned about what is going on in the world.”"

[image and text from artdaily.org. Caption: "Workers emerging from a coal mine. Dhanbad, Bihar State, India, 1989, Gelatin Silver Print, 19 5/8 X 23 1/2 inches, Photograph by Sebastião Salgado/Amazonas Images.]

[Prospect.1] New Orleans for the long haul

"But in a way, [Dave] McKenzie's art taps as deeply into the root of Prospect.1 as any of the other event's stars. The show was devised as a gift to the damaged city. Many of the Prospect.1 artists have done their best to express their empathy and loyalty to New Orleans through their art. McKenzie has conceptually cut out the middle man, so to speak. He's expressing his empathy and loyalty to New Orleans by artistically adopting us, as simple as that. Why complicate matters by making a painting or sculpture?"

read full Times Picayune article by arts writer Doug MacCash.

[image from the NASA Visible Earth web site.]

Top 10 Ugly Buildings

[from Reuters]

"SYDNEY (Reuters Life!) - Travel can open your eyes to some of the world's most beautiful sights and buildings -- and to some of the ugliest.

Web site VirtualTourist.com (www.virtualtourist.com) has come up with a list of "The World's Top 10 Ugliest Buildings and Monuments" according to their editors and readers. Reuters has not endorsed this list.

"Some of these picks have all the charm of a bag of nails while others are just jaw-dropping in their complexity. Love them or hate them, the list is certainly entertaining," said General manager Giampiero Ambrosi."

read full article

[photograph of Tower of Montparnasse, Paris, France.]

"Today's Paper"

[With thanks to SL in NYC for the tip on FB, below a brilliant hypertext document. Text below from the 'Today's Paper' link on the front page of "The New York Times." Click on image to enlarge. Click the link while you can – we imagine it might not be active indefinitely.]


"The Fine Print
By Amal Maamlaji
Published: July 4th, 2009

This special edition of The New York Times comes from a future in which we are accomplishing what we know today to be possible.

The dozens of volunteer citizens who produced this paper spent the last eight years dreaming of a better world for themselves, their friends, and any descendants they might end up having. Today, that better world, though still very far away, is finally possible — but only if millions of us demand it, and finally force our government to do its job.

..."

Framing the Presidency

The New School - Tishman Auditorium
Alvin Johnson/J. M. Kaplan Hall
66 West 12th Street
New York City, New York

Wednesday, November 12, 2008, 7:00 p.m.
Free admission

Aperture Foundation at The New School
"Confounding Expectations, Photography in Context"
“Framing the Presidency”

"The Aperture Foundation, the Photography Department of Parsons, The New School for Design, and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School present a new season of panel discussions focusing on photography. The second event is “Framing the Presidency,” which explores the collision of photography, mass media, and politics in the 2008 presidential campaign and beyond. Artists and media experts share their experiences and explore the power of photography in constructing our image of the presidency.

With
Tim Davis, photographer
Robert Hariman, Chair of Communication Studies at Northwestern
University
Todd Heisler, Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist
David Scull, New York Times campaign picture editor photographer

[photo by Todd Heisler/The New York Times. Caption: "Clinton supporters at an event in Beaumont, Texas on Monday."]

Data Vis: 2008 U.S. General Election Results

[with thanks to MFC in Saugus, CA, click link below.]

Maps of the 2008 US presidential election results

[graphics from results Web site.]

Art Criticism and Its Enemies

The New School
Theresa Lang Community and Student Center
55 West 13th Street, 2nd floor
New York City, New York

Monday, Nov. 10, 2008 - 7 p.m.
AICA* Lecture: Linda Nochlin “Art Criticism and Its Enemies”

"In her far-reaching exploration of the art critic’s insights into every aspect of contemporary art, including performance, installation and video, Linda Nochlin pointedly refutes those who doubt the ability of art critics to assess the range of new media. In the course of this examination, she also distinguishes between the goals of the art critic and those of the art historian in terms of audiences and intention. What are the obligations of the critic, and what are the pleasures in writing criticism? Nochlin concludes this probing analysis with references to her own approach as a critic considering a wide range of artists, from Courbet and Manet through Lucien Freud, Jenny Saville and Sam Taylor-Wood.

Dr. Linda Nochlin is the Lila Acheson Wallace Professor of Modern Art at the Institute of Fine Arts/New York University. She has previously held professorial chairs at Yale, at the City University of New York, and at Vassar College.

* AICA: Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art

[still from The Last Century (2005) by Sam Taylor-Wood]

Bush Arts Appointment

[missed in the election excitement, with props to CB in NYC for the catch, from the November 3 Los Angeles Times:]

Bush appoints Lee Greenwood to National Arts Council
4:28 PM, November 3, 2008

Lee Greenwood's main claim to fame is writing and singing the hit patriotic hymn "God Bless the U.S.A." Soon Greenwood's blessing will matter on the American arts scene -- at least the part interested in tapping into federal largess via grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Appointed by President Bush and confirmed by the Senate, the Nashville-based country singer is scheduled to be sworn in Nov. 17 as one of the 14 regular members of the National Council on the Arts. Council members advise the NEA chairman, and their portfolio includes reviewing and making recommendations on applications for grants from the $145-million-a-year federal agency. Greenwood will serve a six-year term.

-- Mike Boehm

[Photo caption: Lee Greenwood performs "God Bless the U.S.A." in concert in Warner Robins, Ga., in late September 2001. Credit: Danny Gilleland / Associated Press"]

Art Guys Silver Jubilee

FYA: Don't Forget to Vote!

[With thanks to KMcL in NYC for the link: A visit to the CNNBC Website started for me with the following alert: "Notice: The video you're about to see portrays events that haven't happened... yet. It was prepared just for you. But if you go vote today you can make sure this joke doesn't become a reality."

For Americans registered to vote in the General Election, The Data Stream encourages you to do so! And please feel free to substitute your name for mine while viewing!]



[Brought to you by those wacky funmeisters over at MoveOn.org Political Action]

Nerve – U.S. Electoral Politics

[With thanks to HP in DC, here's a bit of U.S. electoral politics electronic anthropology. For those of us Stateside, the final hours until the votes are tallied, in what's felt to us in Iowa like an interminable, exhilarating race, are restless, anxious ones.]

enjoy

[graphic: screen grab from Nerve.]

Home

November 3 - 26, 2008
Monday - Wednesday 2-5PM
Home 1996 – 2008
1256 Leavenworth Street
(at the corner of Clay St.)
San Francisco

Home 1996 – 2008 is a site-specific installation/environment that utilizes the interior space of the home to explore and challenge notions of comfort and protection, private and public, and the boundaries between art/life/architecture/design.

And by appointment, please email: megawilson at aol dot com

more

[image from Megan Wilson Web site.]

Community in action

"And this is my belief, too: that it's the community in action that accomplishes more than any individual does, no matter how strong he may be."

Louis "Studs" Terkel
May 16, 1912 – October 31, 2008

[from NPR:]
"Born in 1912, Pulitzer Prize-winning oral historian Studs Terkel moved to Chicago shortly before the Great Depression. Although trained as a lawyer, he worked as an actor, sportscaster, disc jockey, writer and interviewer. Terkel hosted a Chicago radio program for 45 years and has authored 12 oral histories about 20th-century America."

listen to a segment on NPR's "This I believe."

[Ed C. in Buffalo, New York notes on his Facebook status that he "is sad that Studs Terkel didn't hang around just a few more days to see his fellow Chicagoan Barack Obama elected President."]

[photo by Nubar Alexanian from NPR Web site.]

Why Pets Hate Halloween

[fya, with thanks to DH in Boulder for the curious selection of photos, wishing one and all a festive Halloween!]

Grace Slick at 69

Grace Slick (born Grace Barnett Wing on October 30, 1939), lead singer of the seminal San Francisco psychedelic rock group The Jefferson Airplane, featured on this YouTube Video on the The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.

Walkin' Back To New Orleans

Tipitina's Uptown
501 Napolean
New Orleans, Louisiana

November 5, 2008
6:30 PM

World Premiere of a Concert Documentary Film: "Fats Domino: Walkin' Back To New Orleans"

The Tipitina's Foundation, LAE Productions, and the Recording Academy (Memphis Chapter), invite you to an unforgettable evening: the world premiere of a concert documentary film "Fats Domino: Walkin' Back to New Orleans", nationwide broadcast on PBS stations beginning in November. And the re-presentation of the Fats Domino GRAMMY Hall of Fame Awards by they Recording Acadamy, Memphis Chapter.

Featuring reception, open bar and live entertainment.

[photograph from Wikipedia Commons]

Oui on peut!

[With thanks to Joyce in Tacoma Park – via H.P. – for the tip, below a brilliantly filmed Zydeco campaign song for Senator Obama's bid for the presidency. Whilybirdbrand on YouTube provides the following information: "Music and Lyrics by Dirk Powell. ... Filmed at the Whirlybird in Opelousas, Louisiana. Musicians: Dirk Powell, Christine Balfa, Jeffrey Broussard, Zydeco Joe Citizen, Corey "L'il Pop" Ledet, and Linzay Young." Fans of this video are sure to enjoy the works of trail-blazing culture-ethnographer Les Blank.]

Our Urban Spheres

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
San Francisco, California

Oct 31, 2008–Jan 11, 2009
The Gatherers: Greening Our Urban Spheres

"The Gatherers: Greening Our Urban Spheres is an exhibition that brings together a diverse group of practitioners who combine art with cultural activism to explore questions of how we ensure sustainability for our growing urban populations. Artists and artist collectives in the exhibition include: Fallen Fruit, Amy Franceschini with Wilson Diaz, The National Bitter Melon Council, Oda Projesi, Marjetica Potrc, Public Matters, Ted Purves and Susanne Cockrell, Rebar, roomservices and Asa Sonjasdotter. The Gatherers is co-curated by Berin Golonu and Veronica Wiman."

[graphic from YBCA|Public Matters press mailing]

Bootsy Collins Birthday Party!

From Wikipedia:
"William "Bootsy" Collins (born October 26, 1951 in Cincinnati, Ohio) is a funk bassist, singer, and songwriter.

Rising to prominence with James Brown in the late 1960s, and with Parliament-Funkadelic in the '70s, Collins' driving bass guitar and humorous vocals established him as one of the leading names in funk.[1] Collins is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, inducted in 1997 with fifteen other members of Parliament-Funkadelic."

more

Happy Birthday, Bootsy!

"... a fermentation seminar"

SAP Open Studios
Seoksu Market 286-15, Man-an-gu
Anyang
031-472-2886

October 25
3pm

"Conceptual artist, Elaine Tin Nyo will present "Kimchi, Jeotgal, Makgeolli: a fermentation seminar." The seminar panel will consist of Korean food experts who will discuss how the method of wild fermentation makes Korean food unique in the world.

Anyang chef, Jeong Hyo Jin will provide examples of kimchi, jeotgal and makgeolli for the panel to begin the discussion. Also on the panel are Kim Soo Jin, President of Food and Culture Korea; traditional Korean alcohol authority, Park Rock Dam, ; Sin Soo Ji, curator of Kimchi Field Museum; biologist, I Chang Hong; and food-trend expert, Kang Tae An."

[graphic from public information announcement sent out by the artist.]

The Thursday Club

23 October 2008

George Wood Theatre
Dept. of Drama
Goldsmiths, University of London
New Cross
London, SE14 6NW

Time: 19:00 - 21:00

Tim Hopkins
Les Noces Project

Les Noces Project is inspired by the Stravinsky’s ballet cantata Les Noces. Stravinsky and his collaborators, Nijinska (choreography) and Goncharova (Visual design,) imported the rituals of a Russian peasant wedding onto the stage, exposing them to unflinching aesthetic investigation across their collaborative disciplines. The work was conceived using unusual musical forces, such as four electromechanical player-pianos. The work revealed a hitherto consoling cultural ideal to be a violent process of social coercion.

Tim Hopkins is the AHRC Fellow in the Creative and Performing Arts Centre for Research in Opera and Music Theatre Department of Music, University of Sussex.

"The Thursday Club brings together people from diverse fields and degrees of expertise, aiming to initiate discussion and debates among postgraduate students, researchers, academics, artists, theorists, and other cultural practitioners."

more

[image from a google search for 'Thursday Club.']

I love Beijing

Pacific Film Archive
2625 Durant Avenue #2250
Berkeley, CA 94720-2250

October 23, 2008 - October 27, 2008
I Love Beijing: The Films of Ning Ying

"... Ning’s films map the shifting physical and social topography of contemporary China, capturing places and people in perpetual motion.

Ning Ying is an artist in residence at PFA this fall, appearing in person to discuss her films and offering a master class on October 27. This series is presented in conjunction with the Berkeley Art Museum exhibition Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection."

more

[image from BAM|PFA Web site.]

Perverted by Art

Apex Art
291 Church Street
New York, New York

October 22 - December 6, 2008
Opening reception:
Wednesday, October 22, 6-8 pm

Perverted by Theater
curated by Franklin Evans and Paul David Young

With works by Laylah Ali, Mel Bochner, Luis Camnitzer, Kabir Carter, Ele D'Artagnan, William Daniels, David Dupuis, Igor Eskinja, Jackie Gendel, Kate Gilmore, Trajal Harrell, Elana Herzog, David Humphrey, Ross Knight, Virgil Marti, Ryan McGinley, Martin McMurray, Jim Nutt, Ann Pibal, Shahzia Sikander, Jack Smith, Mickalene Thomas, and Alexi Worth

Performances
Trajal Harrell: Oct. 22 during the opening
Kabir Carter: Nov. 1, 5-8 pm at apexart
John Jesurun: Nov. 2, 7 pm at Monkeytown in Brooklyn

"In his 1967 essay Art and Objecthood, art critic Michael Fried established as his central thesis “theater’s profound hostility to the arts”: “theater and theatricality are at war today, not simply with modernist painting (or modernist painting and sculpture) but with art as such.” Art was being “corrupted or perverted by theater.” Theater threatened art through its “sense of temporality” and, even worse, “theater has an audience – it exists for one – in a way the other arts do not.” Fried tied the audience to the creation of the subject/object relationship in the experience of art, which was like “being distanced, or crowded, by the silent presence of another person.” The purported horror of theater and its human presence, temporal dimension, and dialectical subject/object relationship were thus, according to Fried, the “negation of art.”

Cognizant of the critique of Fried by postmodern theory and contemporary art discourse, Perverted by Theater gleefully inverts Fried’s thesis, purposely selecting art for its theatricality and installing it in an environment molded by theater, to evoke temporality, the subject/object relation, the audience, the presence of the actor, the performance text, and the implication of dramaturgical concepts such as character, story, and plot structure."

more

[graphic from Apex press release. Caption: "Mickalene Thomas, Lovely Six Foota, 2007."]

Interview with Vito Acconci

The Bronx Museum of the Arts
1040 Grand Concourse
Bronx, New York 10456

Saturday, October 18, 2008
North Building - 2nd Floor
3:00 pm

"Read This Word"
An Interview with Vito Acconci

In an interview with writer and poet Craig Dworkin, editor of Language to Cover a Page—The Early Writings of Vito Acconci (MIT, 2006), Vito Acconci will discuss his early poetry and how it influenced the future phases in his rich career.

Admission: $5.00, free for Bronx Museum members

[Photo by Richard Kern from BXMA press release.]

Prep Materials

Art in General
79 Walker Street
New York NY 10013

In 1926 Carl Brigham developed the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) that has since been administered to millions of students every year in order for them to begin their college educations. The SAT is only the first of a long list of standardized tests that have been designed according to the Jeffersonian principle of providing equal opportunity in education to all citizens of the United States.

Effective implementation of standardized tests required the appropriate technology to print, distribute, and more importantly, score their answer sheets. In 1934 three companies in particular raced to patent a more efficient turnkey solution, accurately correcting more tests more quickly. In doing so IBM, Educational Test Service (ETS), and the Measurement Research Center (originally part of Iowa University) developed technology that, in the 1970s, would facilitate the invention of the ballot machine as well as our contemporary desktop scanners.

Prep Materials, presented as a series of pictures, a video and a drawing, takes its departure from archival research within these three institutions. Moving beyond the common criticism against standardization and its supposed translation into better education, Carla Herrera-Prats focuses on the fallacy of relying on more “efficient” technologies in order to realize the principles of democracy.

more

[graphic, result of google image search for 'standardized tests,' from studenthacks.org Web site.]

Blue Monk: Thelonius Sphere Monk - October 10, 1917

[On the ninety-first anniversary of the birth of Thelonius Sphere Monk, The Data Stream re-presents a track from YouTube featuring a searing, complex performance of his composition "Blue Monk."

rboliveira, who posted the video, supplies the following information: "Oslo, April 1966. Thelonious Monk - piano. Charlie Rouse - tenor. Larry Gales - bass. Ben Riley - drums."

Monk died on February 17, 1982.]

Invisible Whiteness & Colored Display

SPACES

Friday, October 10
6 pm

Identity Shows: Invisible Whiteness & Colored Display

Special guest blogger Ayanah Moor, Associate Professor at the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University, will continue her discussion on the dualistic experiences of contemporary "artists of color" and the manifold nature of racially specific programming. Moor, along with curator Angelica Pozo and Bi-Lingual exhibition artists Juan-Sí González, Paloma Dallas, Michelangelo Lovelace, Bruno Casiano, Nicole Marroquin and others will lead the dialogue.

A Meet & Greet Potluck will follow the program at 8pm.

[image from SPACES mailing. Caption: "Juan-Sí González & Paloma Dallas, Migracion of Language, multi-media installation, 2008."]

Hollywould... Freewaves 11th Festival of Experimental Media Arts

schedule|more

[graphic from Freewaves Web site. Congratulations to Freewaves, Anne Bray and all participating artists!]

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Bracketology - Wall Street Style

[With thanks to AHS in Oakland for the pointer, fya, a bit of gallows humor bracketology. Click here for previous, structurally related posts. Click on image to enlarge.]



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Tipitina's Foundation Benefit Party

[from the Tipitina's Foundation. Click to enlarge. "The mission of the Tipitina’s Foundation is to support Louisiana’s irreplaceable music community and preserve the state’s unique musical cultures."]



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Bryan Ferry

[A few days late, distracted by the first of three scheduled U.S. Presidential Debates, below, in commemoration of the September 26, 1945 birthday of Roxy Music lead singer Bryan Ferry, a 1973 vintage performance of the 1935 pop standard "These Foolish Things," the title track for his first solo album.]

Meet the Fellows

This past week, the recipients learned in a single phone call from

the Foundation that they will each receive $500,000 in “no strings attached” support over the next five years.

List of the 2008 Fellows

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