John Joseph Lydon [born 31 January 1956]

[Below the first of three posts spotlighting punk, from London to Los Angeles: in this YouTube video, the Sex Pistols perform their anti-anthem "God Save The Queen" circa 1976. John Lydon, dba Johnny Rotten, is the lead singer.]

Beuys Music Video

Leibfrei, who posted the video to YouTube, comments: "The name of the song is "sun instead of Reagan". "Reagan" sounds like "Regen" (="rain") in German. It´s been made in 1982 and it´s mainly a charming statement of the anti-nuclear movement."

[with thanks to Nadija in Rijeka, Croatia for the tip!]

We Interrupt Your Program

Mills College Art Museum
through March 16, 2008

Organized by Marcia Tanner, Guest Curator

Continuing its commitment to the work of women artists and curators, The Mills College Art Museum presents We Interrupt Your Program: a group exhibition of video and new media works by fourteen emerging and mid-career female artists.

The works in We Interrupt Your Program intervene in, reconfigure, augment, and/or re-contextualize dominant narratives of war, power, science, technology, and gender from what are arguably distinctively female and feminist perspectives. Spanning a range of media and aesthetic strategies, the exhibition includes computer-manipulated video, digital animation, video installation, interactive sculpture, and photography.

All of the artists in We Interrupt . . . respond to contemporary mainstream media—including network television, mass market feature films, instructional science videos, and online communication platforms such as email and chat rooms—interrogating them as restrictive vocabularies and structures that routinely exclude the female voice and point of view. Their work, which often formally refers to art historical precedents like minimalism or landscape painting, as well as popular visual culture, is powerfully expressive, conceptually complex, and relevant to our cultural moment.


February 20th, 7:30pm
Mills College Visiting Artist Samara Halperin in conversation with Anne Walsh and Gail Wight

March 12th, 7:30pm
Lecture by Marisa Olson

All programs are in Danforth Lecture Hall, Art Building

Viewers interested in this exhibition might also like to visit Small Things End, Great Things Endure at New Langton Arts, which features works by Akosua Adoma Owusu, Maja Bajevic, Andrea Bowers, Zoe Crosher, Eve Fowler, Wynne Greenwood, Anna Maltz, Ali Naschke-Messing, Emily Roysdon, Jen Smith, Jonathan Solo, and Matilde ter Heijne, on-view through March 15, 2008.

[Image from exhibition press release: Shannon Plumb, Olympics, 2005 Single–channel video.]

New Orleans Mardi Gras February 5, 2008!

[Above screen grab of www.mardigras.com/ a terrific resource for information on Fat Tuesday!]

Dolly Parton - b. January 19, 1946

[Long before Dolly Parton was a Hollywood celebrity, she was a brilliant composer and performer. On the occasion of the sixty-second anniversary of her birthday, a day late, below Dolly performing her composition "I Will Always Love You," a song she wrote with her partner Porter Wagoner in mind, with whom she had a troubled, vital collaboration.]



Click here for a complete performance of the song.

A piece of her heart: Janis Joplin b. 19 January 1943

[YouTube 'caption:' "live @ Jahrhunderthalle, Frankfurt, Germany
Apr 12, 1969 (her one and only show in Germany)." On the sixty-fifth anniversary of the birth of Janis Joplin.]

Chris Ware, The Smartest Kid on Earth

Call for submissions for The Cult of Difficulty: Critical Approaches to the Comics of Chris Ware, edited by Dave Ball, Dickinson College, and Martha Kuhlman, Bryant University.

The Cult of Difficulty is a proposed collection of essays on the work of Chicago-based contemporary graphic novelist/comic book artist/ cartoonist Chris Ware. Author of Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth (2000, winner of the 2001 Guardian First Book Award), Quimby the Mouse(2003), and The Acme Novelty Library (2005), Ware has quickly emerged as one of the central figures in the recent ferment of graphic narratives and comics criticism. We are currently seeking abstracts for 20- to 25-page articles that analyze Ware's work, with particular interest in multi- and interdisciplinary approaches to his oeuvre. Essays that address the following questions are especially encouraged, but other topics are also welcome:

--How is Ware's work engage with the history of Chicago, and with the Columbian Exposition of 1893?
-- How do Ware's texts raise questions about representations of race, gender, class, and disability? In particular we are eager to receive analyses of Jimmy Corrigan and Acme Novelty Library that engage with these topics.
-- How has Ware's work as an editor, anthologist, and collector shaped the landscape of contemporary comics and informed his own corpus?
-- What is Ware's relationship to the literary canon (both in terms of graphic and conventional literature) and how does he re-imagine our relationship to the idea of literariness?

Please send 500-1000 word abstracts (or completed articles), c.v., and contact information in Word format to warecollection@gmail.com by March 10th. Papers from a diversity of disciplinary orientations and methodological approaches are especially encouraged.

India at the Mattress Factory

Matress Factory

India: New Installations II
Sept. 7, 2007–Jan. 20, 2008

Anita Dube
5 Words, 2007


[Image from Mattress Factory Web site. Caption: "Anita Dube (Indian, b. 1958) 5 Words, 2007. Steel, plastic mesh, found trash, drywall, paraffin wax, wood, books, salt, acrylic, pvc, rope light."]

41 Ideas

Congratulations to the artist and to Creative Capital!

[click on image to enlarge]

2008 New Orleans Mardi Gras

From the Krewe of Barkus to the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club :
The 2008 Mardi Gras Parade Schedule

[graphic: screen grab from Zulu Web page.]

Shibboleth

Tate Modern
Bankside
London SE1 9TG

Turbine Room
Doris Salcedo
Shibboleth

"... the first work to intervene directly in the fabric of the Turbine Hall. Rather than fill this iconic space with a conventional sculpture or installation, Salcedo has created a subterranean chasm that stretches the length of the Turbine Hall. The concrete walls of the crevice are ruptured by a steel mesh fence, creating a tension between these elements that resist yet depend on one another. By making the floor the principal focus of her project, Salcedo dramatically shifts our perception of the Turbine Hall’s architecture, subtly subverting its claims to monumentality and grandeur. Shibboleth asks questions about the interaction of sculpture and space, about architecture and the values it enshrines, and about the shaky ideological foundations on which Western notions of modernity are built."

more

[photo from Tate Modern Web site.]

Elaine Tin Nyo Cooking Lesson

OTO
60 North 6th Street (2nd floor) Brooklyn, NY, 11211
L train to Bedford Avenue
3 Blocks west on North 6th - just shy of Kent


On January 11, from 7pm to 10 pm, OTO is pleased to present “I Want to Make Some Tamales”, a cooking lesson by Elaine Tin Nyo.

Hands-on cooking lesson 7-8:30
Open public feeding 8:30 until the tamales run out

Enrollment is limited for the cooking lesson. Please contact mriver@mteww.com to reserve your place (materials fee: $5).

more

Tenth Annual Video Marathon: MEDIUM COOL

Friday 11 January and Saturday 12 January, 12:00-6:00pm

Art in General’s Tenth Annual Video Marathon Medium Cool explores the current state of video art, situated in-between institutionalized ‘Video Art’ and the work emerging from the flow and dynamism of the Internet. Taking the title of Haskell Wexler’s film of 1969, which suggested a critique of Marshall McLuhan’s distinction between ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ media, Medium Cool suggests that video is an idea rather than a technology; as an umbrella term for a particular set of practices, it promises democracy while at the same time threatening to reduce images to information. Through two days of screenings, three events, and a dedicated website, the Marathon looks at a range of video practices, including early experiments within the media itself, while dealing with issues of video distribution and copyright, the making of (art) history and legacy through moving images, and the general impact of technology on contemporary culture.

more

[image from Art In General press release. Caption: "William E. Jones, The Fall of Communism as seen in Gay Pornography, 1998, Courtesy of the artist."]

Dizzy Gillespie | October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993)

One day late, marking the 25th anniversary of the death of the legendary jazz musician and composer Dizzy Gillespie, below, a July 12, 1958 performance at Cannes of his brilliant "A Night in Tunisia."

FYWA:* Jello Time

[*For Your Weekend Amusement, from rhizome]

2008 Rhizome Commission
Rafael Rozendaal
Jello Time

more: "Gettin' Jiggly With It"

Your Ad Here

Apex Art
"291 Church Street - between Walker and White Streets, just two blocks south of Canal Street. The 1 and 9 trains stop at Franklin Station."
[New York, New York]

The (Self)Promotion Show
created and curated by you, the public

Opening reception:
Wednesday, January 9, 6-8pm
on view through February 16

* Do art and TV belong in the same sentence?
* Do people lie about watching TV?
* Are commercials better than programs?
* Can apexart get creative people to make a TV commercial about them?

Yes, yes, yes and yes!

Join us on Wednesday in the apexart living room as we gather around the television, forget the writers-strike worries, and watch nothing but ads. And if you can't join us here, make sure to watch the ads online and vote for your favorite: the winner gets $1,500 and their ad aired on network TV!


apexart recently held an open call, requesting submissions of a 30-second TV commercial about us from individuals and collaborative groups. In addition to being on view as part of the living-room-style installation, the commercials are available for viewing on our website, where viewers are encouraged to visit and cast votes for their favorite.

The exhibition was conceived to examine creative practices in contemporary culture and to reconsider the current promotional model of the art world.


Directions: A, C, E, N, R, W, Q, 6, J, M, Z to Canal or 1 to Franklin.

[graphic: first image from google search for 'televison ad.']