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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