Independent Media Voices

September 13 | 10am–6 pm
2009 Brooklyn Book Festival

Borough Hall Community Room (209 Joralemon Street)
4:00 pm: Independent Media Voices

"Radical radio, insurgent ’zines, the Fourth Estate and social networks old and new. Who and what is the independent media? Voices that stand out from the crowd? Defenders of a new way of thinking? A discussion about the challenges of forging a new media voice. Host of Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman (Standing Up to the Madness), Jessica Hopper (Hit it or Quit It, The Girls Guide to Rocking) and Pamela Newkirk (Letters From Black America).

All events are free. Tickets are available one hour before the program begins at Festival Information booths on the plaza.

[graphic from Google image search for 'Brooklyn Book Festival.' Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

August 29, 2005 | 6:10 a.m.

Marking the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, below is the brilliant performance of Randy Newman's "Louisiana 1927" from the September 2, 2005 "Concert for Hurricane Relief" by New Orleans' own Aaron Neville.

Katrina reached New Orleans on August 29, 2005 at 6:10 a.m.



[Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

Last Chance

Fifth Street School Auditorium
401 South 4th Street
Las Vegas, NV 89101

Friday, September 4 , 2009 @ 7:00 PM
Artist's Lecture and Screening:

Christoph Draeger - Last Chance

Born in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1965, Christoph Draeger is known for investigating the events and sites of disaster and, more recently, the utopian thought and culture of the late 1960s.

The evening's program includes opening remarks by curator, Alise Upitis, followed by a screening and remarks by the artist. The screening includes:

Bunkerball,the tale of a man who believes himself the last surviving human. He passes his time by playing a one-person game of soccer in a fallout shelter, although he is all the while haunted by memories of the past. Pastoral images of Bavarian home life are inter-cut with the flashes of horror that may explain his lone status, such as masses of chickens infected with bird flu, chainsaw-wielding monsters, and scenes of both government and terrorist sponsored executions. It serves as a reflection on the hyper-media status of professional sports and the extreme disjunction produced by contemporary media practices.

Three other films will be screened.

Co-Sponsored by The City of Las Vegas Office of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the Contemporary Arts Center of Las Vegas, and the Swiss Arts Council

[text from City of Las Vegas Office of Cultural Affairs press release. Graphic from artist's website. Caption: "Still from Hippie Movie, 2008. Hippie Movie, shot in HD video and Super-8, is a funny, post-romantic documentary about a Hippie movement named Tropolicalia, which was founded by Christoph Draeger in Warsaw as an ironic remake of San Francisco's Summer of Love 1967. In the light of rising social injustice, an unpopular war in Iraq, ecological concerns and a new cold war looming, the film is a meditation on political, social and cultural behavior first coined in the 1960's by the Hippies, who protested and contested many issues that seem to make a comeback today. It is also a celebration of the inventions of 1960's rock music, and last but not least, a hallucinatory, post-psychedelic visual trip." Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

A Map of Ideas

GAK [Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst]
Teerhof 21
D-28199 Bremen
Germany
Tel. +49(0)421-50 08 97

29. August – 15. November 2009

City as a Map (of Ideas)
Matt Mullican
with Janneke de Vries

American artist Matt Mullican (born 1951, lives in Berlin and New York) explores our desire to understand the world we inhabit.

Mullican's use of other idiosyncratic systems of classification provide the foundation and raw material for his art, which draws on a variety of models used to give order to our world (including encyclopaedias, tabularized lists, maps and pictographs).

Created between 2003-2008, Mullican's City as a Map (of Ideas) is comprised of 70 drawings, plans, collages, photographs and objects. Setting its sights on Hamburg as an exemplary city, City as a Map (of Ideas) explores new ways of representing urban space.

[text edited from a GAK press release. Graphic from GAK website. Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

The Data Stream takes a vacation ...

The Staff of The Data Stream will be on vacation over the next two weeks, so the flow of posts will be interrupted during that time. Look for us back at full strength after August 21.

Thanks for your support and encouragement!

[photograph from Google image search for 'island.']

Bead Quiz

Seattle Art Museum Downtown
1300 First Avenue
Seattle, WA 98101-2003
206.654.3100

A Bead Quiz
through February 28, 2010

"Beads travel vast distances, pulling different parts of the world together like miniature magnets. In this installation, you'll see how small glass "seed beads," manufactured in the Czech Republic and Venice, Italy, have circled the globe. They decorate a hat for a storyteller from Tibet, a flag for a ceremony in Haiti, garments for a bride in South Africa and for a horse in Japan.

Just as beads traverse the world in unpredictable ways, this installation will not be strictly geographic. Instead, you'll be able to test how far your knowledge of this distinctive medium can take you. There will be beads made out of ostrich egg shells, bamboo, glass, human bone, gourds, metal, coral and plastic. Small beads, the size of a seed, are used to form densely constructed patterns; others, large globes of amber or turquoise, establish bold accents. Bead connoisseurship can be both about the bead itself and about where it has traveled to take hold as an art form.

As a final test for the bead expert, the gallery will feature a collection of bead necklaces by an accomplished world traveler who has sought out hundreds of strands from remote locations. If you can identify each and every bead and where it was strung, your expertise as a world bead connoisseur is assured. Let the test begin."

–Pam McClusky, Curator of Art of Africa and Oceania

[Text and graphic from Seattle Art Museum website. Caption: "Carrying bag, first quarter of the 20 th Century, Philippine, Mindanoa, Bagobo culture."]

Liberace and Me

Liberace Museum
1775 East Tropicana Avenue
Las Vegas, Nevada 89119-6529
phone: 702-798-5595

The Cabaret at The Liberace Museum Presents - "Liberace and Me," staring Philip Fortenberry

Every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday at 1:00 PM
$17.50

"Join Philip Fortenberry, the extraordinary artist and renowned pianist, improvisational composer and cast member of "Jersey Boys," as he performs his intimate acoustic cabaret-style piano performance, "Liberace and Me," at the glittering Liberace Museum. Philip will thrill you with his versatile styles that encompass a wide range of musical genres."

[graphic from museum web site.]

The Qur’ans of Daghestan

The Hermitage
Dvortsovaya Naberezhnaya, 34
190000 St Petersburg, Russia

The Triumph of Holiness and Beauty: The Qur’ans of Daghestan

An exhibition of 19 Qur’ans from the collection of oriental manuscripts of the Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnography of the Daghestan Scientific Centre under the Russian Academy of Science, as well as eight Qur’ans from the collection of the Hermitage.

through September 6

more

[Text and graphic from Hermitage website. Caption: "Qur’an. Shawwal 704 AH (April 27th and May 25th, 1305). Calligrapher Muhammad, ibn Muhammad, ibn Ahmad, grandson of al-kadi as-Savi. Naskh script. Paper, ink, cardboard, leather; stamping. Iran. The Daghestan Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnography. Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]