The Data Stream

On Hiatus

2011-04-15T00:01:00.000-07:00

[nb: posted originally summer 2010.]

The Editor | Publisher of The Data Stream has apparently wandered off into the woods. We'll track him down and expect to have him back on the arts & culture New Media beat in later this fall.

[Graphic from a Google image search for 'color bars'. The image is a screen grab from the Jackson Mo Weather Site at a down moment.]

Nathaniel Adams Coles (March 17, 1919

2011-03-17T00:01:00.000-07:00

Nathaniel Adams Coles (March 17, 1919

Dr. John @ 70

2010-11-21T00:01:00.000-08:00

Malcolm John Rebennack born November 21, 1940

Many Happy Returns!

Joni Mitchell

2010-11-07T00:01:00.000-07:00

Joni Mitchell
born Roberta Joan Anderson; November 7, 1943

"Few contemporary voices have aged more shockingly than Joni Mitchell's. The craggy alto on ''Both Sides Now,'' her intermittently magnificent new album of standards (including two of her best-loved original songs), is so changed from the sweetly yodeling folk soprano of her earliest albums that it hardly seems possible the two sounds could have come from the same body.

In refusing to fight or try to camouflage the ravages of time, Ms. Mitchell belongs to an interpretive school that includes Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra, whose vocal deterioration brought them greater emotional depth and realism."

[Excerpt of New York Times article "Something's Lost and Something's Gained" by Stephen Holden, published February 13, 2000. Many Happy Returns, Ms. Mitchell!]

Two Heads: Gracie at 71

2010-10-30T00:01:00.001-07:00

Grace Slick (born Grace Barnett Wing on October 30, 1939), lead singer of the seminal San Francisco psychedelic rock group The Jefferson Airplane.

[YouTube notes: "Jefferson Airplane - Two Heads (The Rock Scene, 14 Sept 1967)"]

Isaac Hayes

2010-08-20T00:01:00.001-07:00

Isaac Hayes

From Wikipedia: "Isaac Lee Hayes, Jr. (August 20, 1942 – August 10, 2008) was an American singer-songwriter, actor and musician. Hayes was one of the main creative forces behind southern soul music label Stax Records, where he served as both an in-house songwriter and producer with partner David Porter during the mid-1960s. Alongside, Bill Withers, the Sherman Brothers, Steve Cropper and John Fogerty, Hayes & Porter were named to the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2005 in recognition of their string of successful hit songs for Sam & Dave, Carla Thomas and others In the late 1960s. Their hit song "Soul Man" by Sam & Dave has been recognized as one of the best or most influential songs of the past 50 years by the Grammy Hall of Fame, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Rolling Stone magazine, and the RIAA Songs of the Century.

In the late 1960s, Hayes became a recording artist, and recorded successful soul albums such as Hot Buttered Soul (1969) and Black Moses (1971) as the Stax label's premier artist. In addition to his work in popular music, Hayes was a film score composer for motion pictures. His best known work, for the 1971 soul cinema classic film Shaft, earned Hayes an Academy Award for Best Original Song (the first Academy Award received by an African-American in a non-acting category) and two Grammy Awards. He received a third Grammy for the album Black Moses.

Robert Plant

2010-08-20T00:01:00.000-07:00

Robert Anthony Plant, born 20 August 1948 in West Bromwich, England. Composer, with Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, of "Stairway to Heaven." Enjoy and many happy returns.

Through the Grapevine

2010-07-30T11:46:00.000-07:00

The Center for Land Use Interpretation

9331 Venice Blvd.
Culver City, CA 90232
1.310.839.5722 office

Thursday August 12
Through the Grapevine Bus Tour

"Join us for a tour of a place meant to be passed through - a tour, essentially, of a highway. We will visit contemporary and historic lines of conveyance through the transitional geography between Central and Southern California - the epic Tejon Pass region.

The tour is part of the CLUI exhibit Through the Grapevine: Streams of Transit in Southern California's Great Pass, on display through August 29.

The bus will depart from the Center for Land Use Interpretation's Los Angeles location at 9 AM and return by 7 PM.

Tour ticket price is $30. Tickets go on sale on Tuesday, August 3rd @ 12 noon PST, and must be purchased online."

[Text and graphic from CLUI press mailing. Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

Holland 0-1 Spain [and now back to life as we usually know it ...]

2010-07-14T10:42:00.000-07:00

[As The Data Stream returns from its month-long soccer indulgence, we feature one last bit of World Cup media - a deft English salute to the ultimate game.]

Brick-by-brick fussball: World Cup Final: Holland 0-1 Spain

A recreation of the 2010 World Cup final "in which Spain kept all their pieces together despite dirty play from the Dutch" from the brilliant and sadder-but-wiser mates staffing the Guardian sports desk.

One of a suite of their riveting marriages of stop frame animation Legos and actual match audio.

WATCH to relive the yellow cards held high – and Iniesta's ball finding the back of the net.

Link to all the videos, including a painful recreation of Rob Green's 'awful moment in the USA-England match, featured earlier on Goal 2010!.

Reminder: The Data Stream ==> Goal 2010!

2010-07-06T22:24:00.000-07:00

NB: through July 12, The Data Stream has relocated to Goal 2010!, a blog focusing on the World Cup and South Africa.

Goal 2010!

[Graphic: screengrab from Goal 2010!]

Stephen Foster

2010-07-04T00:00:00.000-07:00

[We take a brief break from the World Cup–see post below–to mark the anniversary of the birth of Stephen Foster.]

From Wikipedia: Stephen Collins Foster (July 4, 1826 – January 13, 1864), known as the "father of American music," was the pre-eminent songwriter in the United States of the 19th century. His songs, such as "Oh! Susanna," "Camptown Races," "Old Folks at Home" ("Swanee River"), "Hard Times Come Again No More," "My Old Kentucky Home," "Old Black Joe," and "Beautiful Dreamer," remain popular over 150 years after their composition.

Above: performance of "Hard Times" by Mare Winningham is from the Ulu Grossbard's 1985 film "Georgia."

It's official! The Data Stream relocates ...

2010-06-20T14:32:00.000-07:00

It's official! The Data Stream has temporarily relocated to the blog of Goal 2010!, an online and social media project in conjunction with the FIFA World Cup.

Up through the final match on July 11, the project will focus on the tournament and related activity, and the social issues spotlighted by the first World Cup in Africa. We hope you'll visit often, and we invite your comments and feedback.

Goal 2010!

[screengrab from Goal 2010!]

16 June: This is Our Day!

2010-06-16T07:20:00.001-07:00

16 June 1976: 'This is our day'
by Lucille Davie

"It is a day violently etched on the South African collective conscience. Commemorated over 30 years later as Youth Day, an official holiday, it is the day that honours the deaths of hundreds of Soweto schoolchildren, a day that changed the course of the country's history: 16 June 1976.

On that day the government and the police were caught off guard, when the simmering bubble of anger of schoolchildren finally burst, releasing an intensity of emotion that the police controlled in the only manner they knew how: with ruthless aggression. SA History Online puts the number of dead at 200, far higher than the official figure of 23."

more

[From the History and Heritage section of SouthAfrica.info. Photo by Sam Nzima. Cross-posted to the blog of Goal 2010!, a soccer and social media project.]

Goal 2010!

2010-06-10T06:46:00.000-07:00

Capital City Arts Initiative
CCAI Courthouse Gallery
885 East Musser Street
Carson City, Nevada

June 7 - September 10 • 2010

Goal 2010 !
The FIFA World Cup Fine Art Poster Portfolio

To celebrate the first football World Cup in Africa, the Capital City Arts Initiative in association with David Krut Publishing, Johannesburg | Cape Town | New York will exhibit the complete portfolio of seventeen posters.

Exhibition Reception: Friday June 11 • 5 - 7pm
Gallery Hours: Mon - Fri 9am - 5pm

[Cross-posted to Signal Fire. Graphic: "Bicycle Kick," 2009, by William Kentridge. Kentridge is a leading South African artist internationally famous for his prints, drawings, films, animations, theatre and opera productions. Click on graphic to enlarge.]

To Believe

2010-06-09T10:13:00.000-07:00

La Mama La Galleria
6 E. 1st Street
New York, NY
1.212.505-2476

[thanks to SO for the tip. Click on graphic to enlarge.]

Futbol Day

2010-06-03T00:01:00.000-07:00

Outpost for Contemporary Art
1268 N. Ave 50
Los Angeles, CA

Outpost Cup

ON June 6, 2010, Outpost will host the Outpost Cup to launch its new South American initiative and to bring the community together for a day full of soccer, art, music, food and fun.

Taking place one week prior to the World Cup, the Outpost Cup soccer tournament will encourage local artists, art fans, families, college students and soccer players to bring their creative and athletic talents to the field.

Tournament Structure
* 8 players vs. 8 players.
* Games will be played on both halves of the field, simultaneously.
* Games will be 30 minutes long with no halves.
* Teams will be scheduled to play 3 games each during the day
* The day will end with a championship game in the “competitive division.”
* The Outpost Cup Championship Trophy will be a one-of-a-kind artist-made masterpiece!

South American Artist Residency Cycle
Devoted to building bridges between our local community and the larger global landscape, Outpost’s next residency cycle will bring six South American artists and artist teams to Los Angeles over a period of two years to produce City-based projects fueled by the artists’ extended presence in our community.

[Cross-posted to Signal Fire. Text and graphic from Outpost.]

We Work Here

2010-06-01T16:46:00.000-07:00

Intermedia Arts
2822 Lyndale Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55408
phone(612) 871-4444

"This participatory art installation will ask what ideas and projects the community values, and what resources it will take to realize them. Our interactive Storefront for Ideas, Temporary Employment Agency for Creative Workers, and Exhibition Reading Room will inspire conversation and solicit creative ideas around the value of creative work to our lives, our economies and our communities.

We invite you to stop by during gallery hours to share a cup of coffee with exhibition organizers, take part in our brown bag lunches and creative dialogues, and exchange ideas through a series of playful interactions with the artists. On Saturdays, a "Sidewalk Sale" will feature special activities designed for you by Storefront artists."

MORE

[Cross-posted to Signal Fire. Graphic and text from Intermedia Arts mailing.]

Dennis Hopper

2010-05-29T11:18:00.000-07:00

"Breaking News Alert
The New York Times
Sat, May 29, 2010 -- 2:03 PM ET
-----
Dennis Hopper, Cinematic Iconoclast, Dies at 74

Dennis Hopper, whose portrayals of drug-addled, often
deranged misfits in the landmark films "Easy Rider,"
"Apocalypse Now" and "Blue Velvet" drew on his early
out-of-control experiences as part of a new generation of
Hollywood rebel, died at his home in Venice, Calif., on
Saturday, according to reports. He was 74."

See comments for link to Terry Gross interview on Fresh Air.

[Screen grab from Easy Rider trailer.]

[Added later, from The New York Times ArtsBeat Blog, reprinted in its entirety:]

May 29, 2010, 2:56 pm
Dennis Hopper, Actor and Iconoclast, Dies
By The New York Times

3:19 p.m. | Updated

Dennis Hopper, whose portrayals of drug-addled, often deranged misfits in the landmark films “Easy Rider,” “Apocalypse Now” and “Blue Velvet” drew on his early out-of-control experiences as part of a new generation of Hollywood rebel, died at his home in Venice, Calif., on Saturday. He was 74.

According to the Times obituary written by Edward Wyatt, Mr. Hopper died from complications of prostate cancer. His death was first reported by Reuters.

Mr. Hopper, who said he stopped drinking and using drugs in the mid-1980s, followed that change with a tireless phase of his career in which he claimed to have turned down no parts. His credits include at least six films released in 2008 and at least 25 over the past 10 years.

Most recently, Mr. Hopper starred in the television series “Crash,” an adaptation of the Oscar-winning film of the same title. Produced for the Starz cable channel, the show had Mr. Hopper portraying a music producer unhinged by years of drug use. During a promotional tour last fall for that series, he fell ill; shortly thereafter, he began a new round of treatments for prostate cancer, which he said was first diagnosed a decade ago.

Inverting a famous line of dialogue spoken by Peter Fonda in “Easy Rider,” Manohla Dargis wrote of Mr. Hopper in The New York Times:

"Dennis Hopper — actor, filmmaker, photographer, art collector, world-class burnout, first-rate survivor — never blew it. Unlike the villains and freaks he has played over the decades — the psycho with the mommy complex in “Blue Velvet,” the mad bomber with the grudge in “Speed” — he has made it through the good, the bad and some spectacularly terrible times. He rode out the golden age of Hollywood by roaring into a new movie era with “Easy Rider.” He hung out with James Dean, played Elizabeth Taylor’s son, acted for Quentin Tarantino. He has been rich and infamous, lost and found, the next big thing, the last man standing."

Cornfield

2010-05-27T08:55:00.000-07:00

Transformer
1404 P Street, NW
Washington, DC 20005
202-483-1102

Nancy Bannon | Cornfield

Through May 29

"... installation by Nancy Bannon that manifests a life-size, fabricated cornfield within Transformer's project space, inviting audiences to consider uses and preservation of natural resources. Cornfield is a visual work consisting of a wall-to-wall field of seven-foot tall, sculpted corn stalks made of painted wood, wire and visqueen, along with projections and a surrounding soundscape."

[Text and graphic from Transformer website. Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

Robben Island: A Greater Goal

2010-05-23T06:54:00.000-07:00

Last night U.S. television sports channel ESPN premiered a short film on South Africa's Robben Island as part of its Outside The Lines series.* Through interviews and footage of the country's most infamous prison, 'home' to revolutionary opponents of apartheid, the documentary charts the relationship of the formation of a prison soccer association to the crafting of the 1996 South African constitution - one based on both the rule of law and the practice of justice.

Robben Island: A Greater Goal
RT: 18:37

WATCH

[* "The series examines topical issues off the playing field. It includes interviews and opinions from leading authorities on the issue at hand. Hosted by veteran journalist Bob Ley, Outside the Lines has investigated trends and topics ranging from sports teams' hazing to the overseas labor practices of U.S. sneaker companies." Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

Art Heist

2010-05-20T08:27:00.000-07:00

"Priceless masterpieces stolen from Paris museum"

Actually make that price around $600,000,000.00.

more

[Graphic and headline from The Guardian.]

Spoken Views in Reno

2010-05-19T17:13:00.000-07:00

West Street Market
148 West Street
Reno

Spoken Views

"Come listen to some of Reno's best poets @ Spoken Views, the longest running Poetry Open Mic in town! Doors at 7 pm. Show at 8 pm. $3 before 8:30pm|$5 after to help support our out of town act Amir Rikkah on his regional tour! Come out see something amazing! These cats will make you love poetry if you don't already! All Ages As Always! be peace."

[Cross-posted to Signal Fire. Text and graphic from Facebook invite. Click on image to enlarge.]

SPace

2010-05-19T00:01:00.000-07:00

Museum Africa‎
121 Bree Street
Johannesburg 2001
South Africa
011 833 5624‎

SPace – Currencies in Contemporary African Art

Berni Searle
Avant Car Guard
Godfried Donkor
Barthelemy Togue
Willem Boshoff
Kudzanai Chiurai
Collectif 212

"The concept SPace embodies two notions, space and pace, which signify sites/contexts and tempos/energies that are part of societal make up. Space is wherein ideas are negotiated and meaning produced through various human activities and social practices, while pace is speed, the rate at which change or advancement of such activities and practices take place in society."

Statement by Thembinkosi Goniwe and Melissa Mboweni, Curators

Through July 11 - the final day of the first World Cup to be held in Africa.

[Cross-posted to Signal Fire. Graphic from Museum website. Caption: "Berni Searle. 'Water's Edge II.' From the series 'Black Smoke Rising.' Archival pigment ink on photographic paper. 2008."]

Tina Fey

2010-05-18T00:01:00.000-07:00

Tina Fey
Born Elizabeth Stamatina Fey on May 18, 1970.

According to Wikipedia, she "was singled out as the performer who had the greatest impact on culture and entertainment in 2008 by the Associated Press, who gave her their AP Entertainer of the Year award."

Happy 40th!

The Data Stream Takes a Vacation

2010-05-13T00:01:00.000-07:00

AS the staff of The Data Stream makes its way west to temporary headquarters, we'll be taking a brief vacation. Look for us after May 18. Thanks!

[Graphic from Google image search for 'vacation.']

Saints and Sinners

2010-05-09T05:52:00.000-07:00

Saints and Sinners Literary Festival *
New Orleans, Louisiana

Marigny Theatre
2240 St. Claude Avenue
New Orleans, LA

Brushup 10
by Jerry Rabushka
Directed by Michelle Embree, author of Man Stealing for Fat Girls & Hand Over Fist, the hit from SAS's 2008 playwriting contest

* The Saints and Sinners Literary Festival was founded in 2001 as a new initiative designed as an innovative way to reach the community with information about HIV/AIDS, particularly disseminating prevention messages via the writers, thinkers and spokes-people of the GLBT community. It was also formed to bring the GLBT literary community together to celebrate the literary arts.

Now in its eighth year, the Festival has grown into an internationally-recognized event that brings together a who’s who of GLBT publishers, writers and readers from throughout the United States and beyond. The Festival, held over 4 days each Spring, feature panel discussions and master classes around literary topics that provide a forum for authors, editors and publishers to talk about their work for the benefit of emerging writers and the enjoyment of fans of LGBT literature.

[Cross-posted to Signal Fire. Text and graphic from Festival and Theatre websites. Click on image to enlarge.]

Mad World: Messages to the Future

2010-05-08T10:31:00.000-07:00

Galeria De La Raza
2857 24th Street
San Francisco, CA 94110-4234
(415) 826-8009
May 8 - June 26
Mad World: Messages to the Future
a group exhibition seeking artistic Insight into the future

Opening Reception - Saturday, May 8th @ 7:30 p.m.

Featuring Jose Arenas, Carlos Castro, Emael, Chris Granillo, Erika Hannes, Hector Dio Mendoza, Johanna Poethig, Lady Reni, Joshua Short, Jose Antonio Suarez, Robert Trujillo, Christina Velazquez, Rio Yanez, and Marilyn Yu.

Work by artists’ that imagine the future in 40 years through a fictional history of objects. In considering work for the exhibition, artists’ were asked ponder the statement, ‘If you’re interested in the future, Invent it.” Responses range from both the artistic representation of objects 40 years from now, to witty and thoughtful statements about our cultural evolution. Through works such as future almanac entries, nomad friendly furniture and functional objects made from discarded material, the exhibition will display a unique imagining of what’s to come.

Last year, Galería organized an exhibition entitled Strange Hope in response to the ambivalent feelings of expectation and despair brought on by the inauguration of the Obama era and the simultaneous downfall of the economy. One year later, with the world in worse shape than ever before, we invited artists to think beyond the troubling times and instead summon a creative visioning of the future.

The exhibition paves the way for Galería’s 40th anniversary season. The exhibition will include an interactive component in which the public will be invited to share their thoughts, desires, and aspirations of Galería in 40 years. Entries will be included in a catalog as a ‘time capsule,’ which will then be preserved in Galería’s archive at the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives at UC Santa Barbara.

[Cross-posted to Signal Fire. Text from Galleria website. Special thanks to EH.]

Le Grand Magasin

2010-05-06T06:28:00.000-07:00

Collegium Hungaricum Berlin
Dorotheenstr. 12
10117 Berlin-Mitte
S+U: Friedrichstraße; Bus+Tram: Am Kupfergraben
t: +49 30 212 340-0
collegium [at] hungaricum.de

May 8
Le Grand Magasin

"Le Grand Magasin dedicated itself to the investigation of collective forms of production. This initiative not only facilitated cooperation between artists and European cooperatives, but for over a year also operated a model department store in Berlin, for goods manufactured by producer cooperatives. In conclusion, artists and curators introduce the results of the 2-year process and, with their invited guests, discuss the redefinition of the concept of work and artistic entrepreneurship."

[Cross-posted to Signal Fire. Text and graphic from Magasin website. Caption: "'Plane / Flugzeug.'Moulin Roty. Nantes, F."]

Twisted Toys

2010-05-04T06:53:00.000-07:00

The Exploratorium
Palace of Fine Arts
3601 Lyon Street
San Francisco

Saturday, May 8: Twisted Toys and Mechanical Mischief

Artist in residence Michael Brown and the Learning Studio hosting the first annual, invitation-only "Twisted Toys and Mechanical Mischief" workshop.

Twisted Toys is a "live" event: Exploratorium visitors will watch the creative projects unfold over the course of the day. In the spirit of Project Runway, we'll videotape the workshop and capture each artist describing their toy-inspired vision and process. Michael Brown will play the helpful host (à la Tim Gunn), interviewing artists and offering guidance with the toys' mechanisms, as well as other general assistance.

23 creative individuals will take part in a day-long process of reinvention and reinterpretation. Each participant will begin with one of 23 identical, battery-operated toys. They will spend the next six hours using their favorite tools, a handful of pre-chosen supplies, and all of their skills and imagination to transform their toy into something special. At the end of the day, we'll demonstrate how 23 people can remake the same object into a variety of creations.

The finished works will be displayed at Maker Faire, May 22 and 23, and return to the Exploratorium's Studio gallery through June.

[Text and graphic from FB Event Page.]

2010 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival Line-up - Sunday May 2

2010-05-01T08:00:00.000-07:00

2010 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival

Sunday, May 2

* Van Morrison * The Neville Brothers * BB King * Irma Thomas * B.B. King * The Radiators * The Dead Weather * Maze feat. Frankie Beverly * Richie Havens * Clarence Carter * Juvenile & DJ Mannie Fresh * Wayne Shorter Quartet feat. Brian Blade, John Patitucci, and Danilo Perez * Tye Tribbett * Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars * The Radiators - Pre-War Blues * Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue * Ellis Marsalis * Clarence 'Frogman' Henry * DJ Captain Charles * The Davell Crawford Singers * Ruthie Foster * Gal Holiday & the Honky Tonk Revue * Luther Kent * Sherman Washington & the Zion Harmonizers * The Preservation Hallstar Revue * Mia Borders * Jimmy Johnson Band * Benny Grunch & the Bunch * Tribute to Juanita Brooks feat. Wanda Rouzan, Barbara Shorts, and Topsy Chapman * Big Chief Bo Dollis & the Wild Magnolias * Delfeayo Marsalis & the Uptown Jazz Orchestra * John Rankin * Tim Laughlin * Don Vappie & the Creole Jazz Serenaders * Val & the Love Alive Fellowship Choir * Willie Tee * Warren Storm & Cypress * Feufollet * Reggie Hall & The Twilighters * Ernie Vincent & the Top Notes * Phillip Manuel * TBC Brass Band * Los Po-Boy-Citos * Dukes of Dixieland * Margie Perez * Keith Franks * Young Audiences presents Gal Holiday & the Honky Tonk Revue * Blodie's Jazz Jam * Nova NOLA feat. Sasha Masakowski * Jonno & Bayou DeVille * Kumbuka African Drum & Dance Collective * Some Like It Hot * Jo 'Cool' Davis * St. Joseph the Worker Choir * Franklin IV * Hazel & the Delta Ramblers * N'Kafu African Dance Ensemble * Wild Tchoupitoulas, Black Eagles and Wild Apaches Mardi Gras Indians * Morikeba Kouyate & Friends * Highsteppers Brass Band * Original Lady Buckjumpers and Original Prince of Wales Social Aid & Pleasure Clubs * Ven Pa' Ca * Zulu Male Ensemble * Golden Sioux and Apache Hunters Mardi Gras Hunters * O. Perry Walker Kuumba Players * Hobgoblin Hill Puppet Theater * Lady Rollers * Original CTC, and Nine Times Ladies Social Aid & Pleasure Club * Morning Star Mass Choir * KIDsmART Performer Showcase

[Cross-posted to Signal Fire. Information from Jazz Fest website. Graphic from Google image search for 'Wild Tchoupitoulas'.]

"We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint"

2010-04-27T12:24:00.000-07:00

[Below, excerpt and link to article by Elisabeth Bumillerin today's New York Times.]

"'PowerPoint makes us stupid,' Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander, said this month at a military conference in North Carolina. (He spoke without PowerPoint.) Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster, who banned PowerPoint presentations when he led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005, followed up at the same conference by likening PowerPoint to an internal threat."

The entire article.

Chris Ware's rejected Fortune cover

2010-04-25T07:07:00.000-07:00

From Boing Boing:

"It's not surprising that the editors of Fortune rejected cartoonist Chris Ware's fantastic cover for the May 2010 issue. It contains too much truth for comfort. Also, it hearkens back to the golden age of Fortune as an exemplar of beautifully designed and illustrated magazines, and so would have invited unkind comments about the magazine's typical current level of design aesthetics."

From Indie Pulp, reporting on the C2E2 [Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo] panel that Ware participated in:

"[Ware] showed a cover he did for Fortune magazine which was supposed to be on the Fortune 500 issue. He accepted the job because it would be like doing the 1929 issue of the magazine, and he filled the image with tons of satirical imagery, like the U.S. Treasuring being raided by Wall Street, China dumping money into the ocean, homes being flooded, homes being foreclosed, and CEOs dancing a jig while society devolves into chaos. The cover, needless to say, was rejected."

"Click image for big version so you can see the jokes."

["Click image for big version so you can see the jokes." Cross-posted to Signal Fire. Thanks to CDN in Napa for the tip.]

Dream-In

2010-04-24T06:56:00.000-07:00

Saturday May 1-Sunday May 2 7pm – 9am

Hammer Museum
10899 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90024
310.443.7000

A Hammer Dream-In

Hosted by artSpa and Machine Project.

"Dreamers are invited to camp out in the Hammer courtyard and collect any dreams that occur during their stay. The evening will feature experimental dreaming workshops, concerts, and bedtime stories, followed by a waking concert in the morning, all facilitated by a dreamy batch of local artist-psychonauts. The following day museum patrons may encounter dream reenactments, workshops, and napping music during their visit.

A Hammer Dream-In will feature:
- Experimental dreaming workshops with Claire Cronin, Ecstatic Energy Consultants, Katie Bachler, Krystal Krunch, Laura Steenberge, and Marc Herbst.

- Bedtime stories with Amanda Yates and Joshua Beckman

- Music and sound by Moon, BYOFF, Claire Cronin, and Aaron Drake & Clay Chaplin

…. plus, watch out for sporadic dream reenactments on May 2nd by Gawdafful Theater.

MORE DETAILS:

This event runs RAIN OR SHINE! Participants should plan to attend the entire Dream-In, from 7 PM on Saturday May 1st until 9 AM on Sunday May 2nd. No late entry or early departure will be permitted. Check-in for registered campers begins Saturday May 1st, 7-8 PM. Packing up begins Sunday May 2nd, 8-9 AM.

Even more information:

- Participants should pack food and sleeping bags as if they were really camping, as none of these amenities will be provided and guests must commit to staying at the Hammer until morning. Toilets, sinks and hot water will be available to guests. Sorry: no tents, generators, amplified music, fire, alcohol or pets allowed. Event is open to guests 18 and over only.

- In exchange for their overnight fortitude and Sunday morning dream-recollections, Dream-In campers will receive complimentary admission to the Hammer Museum for Sunday May 2nd, which reopens to the public at 11am.

- More information on the event schedule and what to bring will be provided after you register.

This event is being held in conjunction with the Hammer’s Red Book exhibition.

[Text and graphic from Museum website. Thanks to MFC in Silver Lake for the tip.]

Tipitina's Jazz Fest line-up

2010-04-21T19:48:00.000-07:00

Tipitina's Uptown
501 Napolean
New Orleans, Louisiana

[Cross-posted to Signal Fire. Graphic from Tipitina's electronic mailing. Click on image to enlarge.]

The Bag Factory | Border Farm

2010-04-18T04:52:00.000-07:00

The Bag Factory
10 Mahlatini Street · Fordsburg
Johannesburg · 2001

mailing address: PO Box 794 · Newtown ·
Johannesburg · 2113
South Africa

+27 11 834 9181

Border Farm

"...an exhibition conceptualized by Thenjiwe Nkosi, featuring videos and writing by migrant farm works on the South African/Zimbabwe national border The show features works by Nkosi, Raymond Marlowe and the Maroi Farm Art and Drama Group.

Nkosi has been participating in a group project called Living In-Between, based in Musina, in Limpopo Province – the last town before the Zimbabwean border. Due to its ongoing history as a mining town surrounded by several productive farms, Musina’s population is largely comprised of migrants. The community of Maroi farm is made up of both Zimbabwean and South African farm workers.

Through a series of workshops held by Nkosi and Marlowe, along with Tapiwa Marovatsanga, Michelle Harris and Daniel Browde, a group of farm workers from Maroi Farm have been taking photographs, filming and writing about their experiences. Through their experiences one sees a confluence of contemporary issues and questions about national borders and their impact on individuals and communities – particularly communities under pressure. The idea of belonging is central to how self and group identities operate in situations of dislocation."

Through May 5.

[Cross-posted to Signal Fire. Text and graphic from Factory website.]

Ndizakuyivula Ibhayibile

2010-04-17T08:30:00.000-07:00

Blank Projects
113-115 Sir Lowry Road
Woodstock
Cape Town 8001
South Africa

Khanyisile Mbongwa
Ndizakuyivula Ibhayibile

Artist's Statement:
"Looking at the black body as raced, gendered and classed in a literal, symbolic and figurative sense – becomes manifest of the ‘othering’ and its objectification. The availability of the black female body is precisely because black is available. The placing of African female bodies as the sentient black body is bent by colonial weight and injustice into the exotic, savage and fantasies of white imagination. The element of the performing black female body is undertaken in the representation of black identities as subjugated or silent – i.e the victim or the apologetic black.

Post-colonialism is still a western concept, a political project of subversion and deconstruction concentrated on Eurocentrism by reacting against the imposition of European cultures. By no means is this a deconstruction the black female body, but instead it constructs it further for the ‘Pleasure of European Gazers’. But the black female body is not only subjected by this white capitalistic supremacist gaze, it is further subjected to black patriarchy constructing the black female body through its own objectifying lens.

The black vagina can be used as a weapon against oppressors yet it also stands as a site of oppression, i.e: it is the site of contest – men fighting against each other inside and outside the colonial and radical demarcations; it is where war can be resolved and ignited (but this by no means propagates that white will fight or die for black pussy). It can exude a politic of positivity. The impetus of religion (Christianity) in reading the racial and gendered is important for the construction of the black female body. This is only a start of interrogating the content, context and function of religion on black women’s bodies. The idea is to bring to surface the process of subsuming everyday life; the mute world of commodities; text – textures and forms; and the religious reproduction in the contemporary."

Khanyisile Mbongwa was born in 1984 in Gugulethu, Cape Town, she is one of the founding members of the experimental art collective, the Gugulective, that has exhibited locally and internationally. In 2007 she established THE BINARY, a discussion group critically engaging with issues around the black condition and marginalization. She was part of the Cape 09 Bienalle , the fringe collective Artpays and has also served on the board of VANSA Western Cape. Khanyisile continues to produce and perform independently, while contributing to various collective arts initiatives.

In her most recent work, the physical video piece Fragments, Khanyi explores the subjects of racial inequality, intimidation and invasion as it is manifest in the Apartheid legacy.

Through May 1.

[Cross-posted to Signal Fire. Text and graphic from Blank Projects website. Caption: "Khanyisile Mbongwa. Untitled (2010). Production Still.]

2010 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival Line-up - Saturday May 1

2010-04-11T05:53:00.000-07:00

2010 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival

Saturday, May 1

* Pearl Jam * Jeff Beck * Teena Marie * Pete Fountain * Band of Horses * Kenny Wayne Shepherd * Galactic * Sonny Landreth * Sugarfoot's Ohio Players * Rebirth Brass Band * Allen Toussaint * Cyril Neville & Tribe 13 * Old Crow Medicine Show * Marcus Miller * The Dirty Dozen Brass Band * Henry Butler * BeauSoleil avec Michael Doucet * Chris Thomas King * Sagbohan Danialou of Benin * The Allen Toussaint Jazzity Project * Brian Blade & the Fellowship Band * Shamarr Allen & the Underdawgs * MyNameIsJohnMichael * Charmaine Neville Band * AARON NEVILLE * Banu Gibson with Swing Out & Tap! * Bobby Lounge * Chubby Carrier & The Bayou Swamp Band * New Birth Brass Band * Germaine Bazzle * The Johnson Extension * Betty Winn & One A-Chord * Pine Leaf Boys * Gregg Stafford & the Young Tuxedo Brass Band * Jumpin' Johnny Sansone & the XL Band * Mem Shannon & the Membership * Russell Batiste & Friends feat. Jason Neville * Driskill Mountain Boys * DJ Soul Sister * Pinstripe Brass Band * Jockimo's Groove feat. War Chief Juan & Billy Iuso, Lynn Drury, Evan Christopher and Tom McDermott * AsheSon * White Cloud Hunters Mardi Gras Indians * Zion Trinity * Kenny Bill Stinson & the ARK-LA-Mystics * Roderick Paulin & the Big Easy Groovers feat. Nicole Slack-Jones: A Tribute to Julian 'Cannonball' Adderly * New Leviathan Oriental Foxtrot Orchestra * Connie Jones & the Crescent City Jazz Band * Trouble Nation and Ninth Ward Hunters Mardi Gras Indians * New Generation * First Emmanuel Baptist Church Choir * Arthur Clayton & Purposely Anointed * Paula & the Pontiacs * Xavier University Jazz Ensemble * Baby Boyz Brass Band * Jonno's Cajun Experience * Jamil Sharif * Ayla Miller * Undefeated Divas, and Lady Jetsetters Social Aid & Pleasure Clubs * Saltimbanqui of Mexico * Stephen Foster's Foster Family Program * Cherokee Hunters, Wild Red Flame, and Mohawk Hunters Mardi Gras Indians * Donnie Bolden, Jr. & the Spirit of Elijah * Tyronne Foster & the Arc Singers * Craig Adams & Higher Dimensions of Praise * Westbank Steppers * Valley of Silent Men, and Pigeon Steppers Social Aid & Pleasure Clubs * Alana Villavaso

[Cross-posted to Signal Fire. Information from Jazz Fest website. Graphic from Google image search for 'Beausoleil'.]

One Shot!

2010-04-09T00:01:00.000-07:00

B.P.S.22
espace de création contemporaine
Boulevard Solvay 22
6000 Charleroi
Belgium

6 March – 11 July 2010

ONE SHOT!
Football and contemporary art

"... an exhibition dedicated to contemporary art and football until 11 July 2010. Far from limiting itself to sports news (the Football World Cup) this project, entitled One Shot!, approaches numerous facets of this popular sport in connection with a multitude of challenges of the contemporary world. It also brings out the relationship that current artists maintain with the universe of football.

The starting point for this exhibition is the thoughts expressed by the Hungarian writer Péter Esterházy, who among others wrote Journey to the Depths of the Sixteen-Metre Line, a brilliant and comprehensive survey of both philosophical and autobiographical considerations on football. A former amateur footballer himself, Esterházy considers Ferenc Puskás, the mythical Hungarian football player of the 1950s, as a perfect metaphor for the modern world: "Puskás is the last public figure in football, a familiar personality, the last flash of light in modernity, the way towards the unique metaphor. After him, there are no more (only) stars, the situation of existence no longer has solutions, there are only versions of the answer, exemplary versions, of a high level (Cruyff, Pelé, Maradona)." And further in the book: "In other words: It is with Puskás that the game stops and that the age of entertainment begins."

Could football, the way it is covered by the media nowadays, metaphorically summarize the challenges of today's world? It is therefore based on this assumption that the first two works of the exhibition were selected. Rather than Ferenc Puskás, the Northern Irish player George Best is the one who seems to have best embodied the fulfilment of the modern dream, especially in the film Fussball wie noch nie that German director Hellmuth Costard dedicated to him: throughout a match against Coventry City, six 16-mm cameras closely follow Manchester United's star attacker, without paying any attention to the match itself. With all the attention focused on him alone, Best is therefore able to control his own space-time continuum, while the very fluid editing, alternating between quick accelerations and recovery stages, follows the moves of the one they used to call the "5th Beatles".

In reverse, thirty years later, artists Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno use seventeen cameras to follow the French player Zinedine Zidane during a match with Real Madrid, his last club, against Villareal. They thus deliver the portrait of an individual who is omnipresent in the media, yet whose personality remains elusive as it is exploded in a multitude of different stances. The pace of the film is made to be breathless, frantic even, via an editing technique taking its inspiration from both a video clip and the aesthetics of a video game. The combination of both projections, in the museum version of the work, heightens even further the feeling of speed and explosive power. The player appears disembodied, a purely virtual construction subject to a pace that is outside his control and imposed by media rules that, more than ever, have a crucial impact.

Another fifty works or so have been added in-between those two works, each exploring an aspect of today's football that might echo the modern world."

Artists: Juan Pérez AGIRREGOIKOA, Taku ANEKAWA, Mathias BRASCHLER & Monika FISCHER, Roderick BUCHANAN, Paolo CANEVARI, Jota CASTRO, Joseph CHATELAIN, Cedric CHRISTIE, Claude CLOSKY, Freddy CONTRERAS, Hellmuth COSTARD, Josef DABERNIG, Laurent DANDOY, Robert DAVIES, Stephen DEAN, Raoul DE KEYSER, Wim DELVOYE, DEMOCRACIA, Marie DENIS, Julius DEUTSCHBAUER, Patrick EVERAERT, mounir FATMI, Thierry FONTAINE, Massimo FURLAN, Kendell GEERS, Douglas GORDON & Philippe PARRENO, Andreas GURSKY, Julie HENRY, Runo LAGOMARSINO, Ingeborg LÜSCHER, This LÜSCHER, Laurent MARESCHAL, Andrea MASTROVITO, Eugenio MERINO, Priscilla MONGE, Gianni MOTTI, Laurent PERBOS, The Plug, PSJM, Jean-Pierre RANSONNET, Javier RODRIGUEZ, Pierre SCHWARTZ, Walter SWENNEN, Pascale Marthine TAYOU, Uri TZAIG, Yoann VAN PARYS, Marijke VAN WARMERDAM, Maria ZGRAGGEN

Curator: Pierre-Olivier Rollin

Catalogue (64 pages / Languages: English, French): designed as a testimony to the Panini albums, the catalogue compiles the exhibited works, a short explanatory note, and a general overview of the guiding principle. It also includes a number of stickers!

[Cross-posted to Signal Fire. Text and graphic from eFlux website. Thanks to SC in Newcastle Upon Tyne and the globe for the tip!]

Jacques Brel

2010-04-08T00:01:00.000-07:00

For better or worse, Jacques Brel, born on April 8, 1929, is primarily known in the United States–if at all–for the 1968 off Broadway production "Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris," a musical revue of his songs.

An indelible icon of French popular music and culture, Brel was a brilliant, explosively emotional singer, willing to take an unflinching look at the dark side of bourgeois existence and the hopeless heartbreaking despair of romance.

Brel died of lung cancer at the age of 49.

Below is a video of "Une valse a mille temps." Headphones - encouraged - as is a review of all his songs.

Road to Freedeom

2010-04-07T06:07:00.000-07:00

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

Road to Freedom: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement, 1956–1968

During the span of twelve years, a series of events, later hailed as the Civil Rights Movement, would forever change the social and political course of America. The exhibitions chronicles these pivotal moments in the nation’s history.

Organized by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination.

[Cross-posted to Signal Fire. Text adapted from museum website. Graphic from Google image search for 'Bob Adelman.' Caption: "Bob Adelman. 'Kelly Ingram Park, Birmingham, 1963.' Gelatin silver print.]

Bike Night at the Hammer

2010-04-05T00:01:00.000-07:00

Hammer Museum
10899 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90024
310.443.7000

April 8
Bike Night at the Hammer

"Grab some friends and pedal on over to the Hammer for a bike-centric evening of free food, live music, film, and fun. Enjoy free museum admission, screenings of Pee Wee’s Big Adventure and a series of bike-related short films, musical performances by Dobrega and Fusion, free vegan food bar, and an appearance by a VERY SPECIAL SURPRISE GUEST! Free bike valet parking provided by LA County Bike Coalition. Presented by the Hammer Student Association (HSA) in conjunction with artist Lisa Anne Auerbach."

7 pm
Bike Valet opens
Dobrega performs

7:30 pm
Screening of student Bike Shorts

8 pm
Fusion performs

9 pm
Screening of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure

[Cross-posted to Signal Fire. Text, information and graphic from Hammer website.]

Tabla-rama

2010-04-04T06:37:00.000-07:00

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

Monday April 5, 2010 - 7 pm
Tablacentric Launch Party.

Featuring PremaSoul (Sheela Bringi and Clinton Patterson) & Mandeep Sethi (MC).

Video segments of tabla masters presented by Jaeger Smith.

***

April 6-17
Hammer Museum
10899 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90024
310.443.7000

"Join Robin Sukhadia and his 12 pairs of tabla interactive tabla workshops/events Open tabla classes will be interspersed with live performances from LA based Indian classical artists."

more

[Cross-posted to Signal Fire. Information and graphic from Machine Project website. Click on image to enlarge.]

CLUI in Northern Nevada

2010-03-31T05:57:00.000-07:00

Carson City Library [map]
900 N. Roop Street
Carson City
ph. 775-887-2244

Wednesday, March 31 | 7 pm

CCAI Nevada Neighbors Lecture Series

"Everything Is Land Use: Humans and the Common Ground in America" Illustrated Talk by Matthew Coolidge

"Nevada Neighbors, the Capital City Arts Initiative's ongoing series of illustrated public talks, will host Matthew Coolidge, director of CLUI – The Center for Land Use Interpretation.

From Nevada’s location on the western edge of the Intermountain West in the center of the Great Basin, environmental issues speak to the heart of the state. A look at these issues through work created by scholars, environmental activists, and artists will provide new information and perspective on our delicate high desert environment.

Southern California-based CLUI has an experimental field station near Wendover in northeastern Nevada. Founded in 1994, CLUI takes a broadly interdisciplinary approach to the investigation of land use, drawing on the natural sciences, sociology, art, architecture, and history.

Mr. Coolidge is the author and editor of several books, including "Overlook: Exploring the Internal Fringes of America with CLUI", and "The Nevada Test Site: A Guide to the Nation's Nuclear Proving Ground."

[Text from CCAI press release. Image courtesy of CLUI. Caption: "Center for Land Use Interpretation Field Session at the Desert Research Station. Credit: CLUI Archive. 2001." In the spirit of full disclosure: the Data Stream editor serves on the board of CCAI and acts as its curator.]

Eric is Derek

2010-03-30T00:01:00.000-07:00

[Clearly best known by most in this century as the most polished of guitarists, Eric Clapton has a formidable history as a bluesman and rocker. Below is a brilliant and somewhat enigmatic vintage 60's performance by Cream of "Sunshine of Your Love," on the occasion of Mr. Clapton's sixty-fifth birthday.]

Eric 'Slow Hand' Clapton. Born in Ripley, Surrey, England on March 30, 1945.

2010 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival Line-up - Friday April 30

2010-03-29T05:34:00.000-07:00

2010 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival

Friday April 30

* Aretha Franklin * Allen Toussaint * Gipsy Kings * Kirk Franklin * Jose Feliciano * Take 6 * Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi Band * Kermit Ruffins & the Barbecue Swingers * The Dixie Cups * Stanley Clarke Band feat. Hiromi * The Subdudes * John Mooney & Bluesiana * Elvis Perkins in Dearland * Stanley Buckwheat Dural * Eric Lindell * Nicholas Payton Sextet * Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys * Louis Prima, Jr. * The Iguanas * Nadirah Shakoor * Fredy Omar con su Banda * PJ Morton * New Orleans Spiritualettes * Astral Project * John Boutte * Kent Jordan * The Jon Batiste Band * Mardi Gras Indian Orchestra * Onward Brass Band * New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra * The Selvys * Big Al Carson * Hadley J. Castille Family & the Sharecroppers Cajun Band * Fi Yi Yi & the Mandingo Warriors * Jimmy Robinson * The Rocks of Harmony * Connie & Dwight with the St. Raymond/St. Leo the Great Choir * Papa Blue Viking Jazz Band of Sweden * Dee-1 * Buckwheat Zydeco * Thomas 'Big Hat' Fields * Julliard Jazz Ensemble * Pfister Sisters * Ray Abshire * Kid Simmons' Local International Allstars * Brother Tyrone * J. Monque'D Blues Band * Forgotten Souls Brass Band * Bamboula 2000 * Kristin Diable * Creole String Beans * Rev. Jermaine Landrum and Ebenezer Baptist Church Choir * Kora Konnection feat. Morikeba Kouyate of Senegal and Thierno Dioubate of Guinea * Marisa y Mariachi Agave * Fleur de Ladies Brass Band * N'Fungola Sibo West African Dance Company * Voices of Peter Claver * Gospel Inspirations of Boutte * Heritage School of Music Band * Gloria Bell & the Revelation Gospel Singers * Nashville Children's Choir * New Wave Brass Band * New Orleans Indian Rhythm Section * Original Big Seven and Original Four Social Aid & Pleasure Clubs * Adella Adella the Storyteller * KIDsmART and ISL Circus Arts Program * Young Magnolias Mardi Gras Indians * Scene Boosters * Ole N Nu Fellas, and Secondline Jammers Social Aid & Pleasure Clubs * KIDsmART Artist Troupe * The Jazz Cats Marionettes

[Cross-posted to Signal Fire. Information from Jazz Fest website. Graphic from Google image search for 'Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys'.]

2010 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival Line-up - Thursday, April 29

2010-03-28T00:01:00.000-07:00

2010 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival

Thursday, April 29

* Widespread Panic * Elvis Costello & The Sugarcanes * Gov't Mule * Average White Band * Steve Martin with the Steep Canyon Rangers * Blues Traveler * Ivan Neville's Dumpstaphunk * Dee Dee Bridgewater: A Celebration of 'Lady Day' * Bernard Allison * Martin Sexton * Four Freshmen * Amanda Shaw & the Cute Guys * C.J. Chenier & the Red Hot Louisiana Band * Soul Rebels * Sunpie & the Louisiana Sunspots * Kirk Joseph & the Sousaphone Symphony Parade honoring Anthony "Tuba Fats" Lacen * Inspirational Souls of Chicago * Paul Sanchez & the Rolling Road Show * Shannon Powell's Organ Combo feat. Charlie Gabriel, David Torkanowsky, and Peter Bernstein * Bobby Lonero's Tribute to Louis Prima with Johnny Pennino & the New Orleans Express * Geronimo Hunters and Creole Hunters Mardi Gras Indians * Kirk Joseph's Backyard Groove * Orange Kellin's New Orleans Deluxe Orchestra * Elysian Fieldz * Derek Miller * Willis Prudhomme & Zydeco Express * GROUPA - Nordic Folk Fusion * The Roots of Music Marching Crusaders Band * Cedric Watson & Bijou Creole * Topsy Chapman & Solid Harmony * Dala * Black Seminoles Mardi Gras Indians * Red Hawk Mardi Gras Indians * Walter Payton with Snapbeans & Gumbo Filt * Vivaz! * Jazz Ladies Sing the Blues feat. Gina Brown, Angela H. Bell, Tereasa B., and Heather Rothstein * R. Scully Rough 7 * Coco Robicheaux & the Swamp Monsters * Classie Ballou & the Family Band * Mark Adam Miller * Grupo Sensacion * 101 Runners * Paulin Brothers Brass Band * Mario Abney Sextet * Lafayette Rhythm Devils * Loose Marbles * Hot Club of New Orleans * Joe Hall & the Cane Cutters * Lucky 7 * BonSoir Catin * Sean Johnson & the Wild Lotus Band * McDonogh #35 * O. Perry Walker, and McMain High School Gospel Choirs * Lyle Henderson & Emmanuel * White Cloud Hunters Mardi Gras Indians * Eddie 'ChopChops' Paris * Tulane University Jazz Ensembles * Thunder Hill * The Wright Brothers * Dillard University Jazz Ensemble * White Cloud Hunters Mardi Gras Indians * Heavenly Melodies * Pastor Terry Gullage & the Greater Mount Calvary Voices of Redemption Choir * Tornado Brass Band * VIP Ladies and Bon Temps Roulez Social Aid & Pleasure Clubs * David & Roselyn * Miss Claudia & her Traveling Troubador * White Cloud Hunters Mardi Gras Indians * Jazz Fest Residency Showcase with Seva Venet and the Wilson Charter School * OPSB Talented in Theatre feat. McMain Secondary, Bethune, and Franklin Elementary Schools

[Cross-posted to Signal Fire. Information from Jazz Fest website. Graphic from 'C.J. Chenier, Jr. Myspace page.]

Poem (Lana Turner has collapsed!)

2010-03-27T00:01:00.000-07:00

Poem (Lana Turner has collapsed!)
Frank O'Hara

Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up

=

Frank O'Hara. Born March 27, 1926

[Photo from Google image search for 'Frank O'Hara.]

Jake Dilley and the Color Pharmacy

2010-03-25T16:53:00.000-07:00

March 26 - 8 pm

Gabe's
330 East Washington Street
Iowa City, IA

Jake Dilley and the Color Pharmacy

“…Psychadelic -folk pieces – Think Syd Barret and Neutral Milk Hotel.” — Chris Riemenschneider, The Minneapolis Star Tribune

QNTV

2010-03-25T00:01:00.002-07:00

Queen's Nails Annex
3191 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 648 4564

Friday, March 26th

QNTV
Screenings at 8pm + 10pm

Performance by Wanda and Wonder between the screenings, around 9pm.

"Introducing QNTV: the first in a series of video screenings at Queen's Nails Projects that showcase work blending performance, music, video and song writing. Join us this for a fantastic line up of local, national and international artists whose practices range from conceptual/ performance bands, to straight-up music promos, to videos that feature music as the inspiration for the artist's work."

Austin Young/ Jackie Beat, Baby Got Front, 2007
Andrew Steinmetz/ Jennifer Sullivan, Sexual Healing, 2010
Japeth Mennes/ Judson Claiborne, Moonraker, 2009
Mark Locke/ Jeffrey Lewis, Willamsburg Will Oldham Horror, 2005
My Barbarian, The Night Epi$ode, 2009
Sofia Córdova, Dip Si Dai Ver, 2010
Ely Kim, Boom Box, 2009
Lew Baldwin/Juiceboxxx, Thunder Jam III, 2005
Cody Critcheloe/ Ssion, Bullshit, 2009

Curated by Rachel Adams and Zoë Taleporos.

[Text and graphic from Queen's Nail mailing. Poster by Robin Muccari.]

William Kentridge

2010-03-24T07:01:00.001-07:00

The Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53 Street
New York, NY 10019
(212) 708-9400

William Kentridge: Five Themes

"This large-scale exhibition surveys nearly three decades of work by William Kentridge (b. 1955, South Africa), a remarkably versatile artist whose work combines the political with the poetic. Dealing with subjects as sobering as apartheid, colonialism, and totalitarianism, his work is often imbued with dreamy, lyrical undertones or comedic bits of self-deprecation that render his powerful messages both alluring and ambivalent. Best known for animated films based on charcoal drawings, he also works in prints, books, collage, sculpture, and the performing arts. This exhibition explores five primary themes in Kentridge’s art from the 1980s to the present, and underscores the interrelatedness of his mediums and disciplines, particularly through a selection of works from the Museum’s collection. Included are works related to the artist’s staging and design of Dmitri Shostakovich’s The Nose, which premieres at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in March 2010."

Through May 17

[Cross-posted to Signal Fire. Graphic from The L Magazine.]

Drift and Surge

2010-03-19T00:01:00.000-07:00

Outpost for Contemporary Art
1268 N. Ave 50
Los Angeles, CA

Saturday, March 20
3 - 4:30pm

Mike Wolf - Drift and Surge

"For the past four years, Mike Wolf has been an itinerant cultural worker, circulating in the upper Mississippi and Western Great Lakes parts of the Midwest, with a home base in Chicago. He helped to organize Mess Hall, an experimental cultural space in Chicago; and contributed to The Compass Group, a group of activists, artists and theorists working to unleash the decolonization campaign of the Midwest Radical Culture Corridor.

Wolf will present "Drift and Surge: How We Conjure A Radical Culture Corridor" where he’ll draw on images and anecdotes from various collaborative projects such as walking pilgrimages, exhibitions based on Midwestern wanderings, and the campaign to decolonize North America; experiences that brought him into contact with the broader landscapes of the Midwest, beyond the traditional urban cultural centers. He will also discuss the plans of The Compass Group leading up to the U.S. Social Forum, held this June in Detroit, and his encounters with other Midwestern-based groups like "Boggs Center To Nurture Community Learning" and "Unsettle Minnesota."

[Cross-posted to Signal Fire. Text from Outpost Facebook invitation. Graphic from Google image search for "Midwest map.']

2010 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival Line-up - Sunday April 25

2010-03-18T00:03:00.000-07:00

2010 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival

Sunday April 25

* Anita Baker * Allman Brothers Band * Darius Rucker * Jonny Lang * The Levon Helm Band * Juan Luis Guerra y 440 * Imagination Movers * Keely Smith * King Sunny Ade & His African Beats * Blind Boys of Alabama * Susan Cowsill Band * Marcia Ball * Shawn Colvin * Donald Harrison * Voice of the Wetlands All Stars * Theresa Andersson * Louisiana LeRoux feat. Tab Benoit * The Radiators - Pre-War Blues * Wayne Toups & Zydecajun * The Wonderful World of Louis Armstrong feat. Wycliffe Gordon, James Andrews, and Victor Goines * Irvin Mayfield & the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra * Big Chief Kevin Goodman & the Flaming Arrows Mardi Gras Indians * Free Agents Brass Band * Golden Blade and Ninth Ward Navajo Mardi Gras Indians * Golden Star Hunters and Carrollton Hunters Mardi Gras Indians * Jeremy Davenport * Big Chief Monk Boudreaux & the Golden Eagles Mardi Gras Indians * Terrance Simien & the Zydeco Experience * Preservation Hall Jazz Band * James Andrews & the Crescent City Allstars * New Orleans Klezmer Allstars * Susan Cowsill * Grayson Capps * Mark Braud's New Orleans Jazz Giants * Guitar Slim, Jr. * Tribute to Juanita Brooks feat. Germaine Bazzle, Leah Chase, and Betty Shirley * Storyville Stompers Brass Band * Lionel Ferbos & the Palm Court Jazz Band * The Electrifying Crown Seekers * Watson Memorial Music Ministries * Honey Island Swamp Band * Seguenon Kone & L'Ivoire Spectacle * Marc Stone * BateauKracBook Stiltwalkers * Kim Carson * Michael Ward * Original Dixieland Jazz Band * Miss Sophie Lee * Sammy Rimington's Jubilee Band * Goldman Thibodeaux & the Lawtell Playboys * Sonny Bourg & the Bayou Blues Band * Nineveh Mass Choir * Gospel Soul Children * Rumba Buena * Minister Jai Reed * Robert 'One String' Gibson * Julio y Cesar * White Cloud Hunters Mardi Gras Indians * Untouchables * Furious Five, and Big Steppers Social Aid & Pleasure Clubs * Young Pinstripe Brass Band * Gospel Stars * Voices of Distinction * University of New Orleans Jazz Ensemble * White Cloud Hunters Mardi Gras Indians * Olympia Aid * New Look, and the First Division Social Aid & Pleasure Club * Young Audiences presents Gal Holiday & the Honky Tonk Revue * Angela the Yarnspinner * New Orleans Traditional Brass Band with the Heel to Toe Steppers * White Cloud Hunters Mardi Gras Indians * Red Hot Brass Band * Kai Knight's Dance Academy * Guardians of the Flame

[Cross-posted to Signal Fire. Information from Jazz Fest website. Graphic from Google image search for 'Marcia Ball 'Photo by Mike Perry.]

2010 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival Music Line-up - Saturday, April 24

2010-03-18T00:02:00.000-07:00

2010 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival

Saturday April 24

* Simon & Garfunkel * My Morning Jacket * Drake * Better Than Ezra * Ledisi * Sam Bush * the funky Meters * Campbell Brothers * Smokie Norful * COWBOY MOUTH * Red Stick Ramblers * Big Sam's Funky Nation * Walter 'Wolfman' Wahington & the Roadmasters * Papa Grows Funk * Tab Benoit * Sax For Stax Featuring Gerald Albright, Jeff Lorber, Kirk Whalum * Kirk Whalum * Jeff Lorber * Preservation Hall with special guests Jim James and Terence Blanchard * Davell Crawford and One Foot in the Blues with special guests Dr. John and Jon Cleary * Creole Wild West Mardi Gras Indians * Golden Comanche and Seminoles Mardi Gras Indians * New Orleans Bingo! Show * Rockin' Dopsie, Jr. & the Zydeco Twisters * Terence Blanchard * Wild Mohicans, and Red, White & Blue Mardi Gras Indians * Savoy Center of Eunice Saturday Cajun Jam * Bonerama * Bounce Extravanganza feat. Big Freedia Sissy Nobby, Katey Red, and Magnolia Shorty with DJ Poppa * The Wiseguys * Jewel Brown with the Heritage Hall Band * Dr. Michael White & the Original Liberty Jazz Band feat. Thais Clark * The New Orleans Bingo! Show * Treme Brass Band * Bill Summers & Jazalsa * George French & the Original Storyville Jazz Band * Johnny Sketch & the Dirty Notes * Lil' Buck Sinegal Blues Band * Guitar Woodshed feat. Steve Masakowski, Todd Duke, and Jake Eckert * Roddie Romero & the Hub City Allstars * Midnite Disturbers * Kirk Joseph & the Sousaphone Symphony Parade honoring Anthony "Tuba Fats" Lacen * Tin Men * Judy Spellman * Mahogany Brass Band * White Cloud Hunters Mardi Gras Indians * D.L. Menard & the Louisiana Aces * Rockie Charles & the Staxx of Love * Kirk Joseph & Tuba Tuba * Curley Taylor & Zydeco Trouble * Andrew Duhon & the Lonesome Crows * Panorama Jazz Band * The Red Stick Ramblers * Blessed * Patrice Fisher & Arpa and the Honduran Connection * Louisiana Repertory Jazz Ensemble * Chris Clifton * Bleu Orleans * Tonia Scott & the Anointed Voices * Leo Jackson & the Melody Clouds * N.O.C.C.A. Jazz Ensemble * Black Feathers * White Cloud Hunters Mardi Gras Indians * Da Souljas Brass Band * Culu Children's Traditional African Dance Ensemble * Loyola University Jazz Ensemble * Resurrection Mass Choir * Greater Antioch Full Baptist Church Mass Choir * Betsy McGovern & Patrick O'Flaherty * Lindsay Mendez * Ladies of Unity * Dumaine Gang, and Divine Ladies Social Aid & Pleasure Clubs * White Cloud Hunters Mardi Gras Indians * Johnette Downing * Archdiocese of New Orleans Mass Gospel Choir * Golden Voices Community Choir * Curtis Pierre & Samba Kids * RRAAMS Drum and Dance * Single Men and Nine Times Men Social Aid & Pleasure Clubs

[Cross-posted to Signal Fire. Information from Jazz Fest website. Graphic from Google image search for 'Rockin' Dopsie, Jr. 'Photo by NealyBob.]

2010 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival Music Line-up - Friday April 23

2010-03-18T00:01:00.000-07:00

2010 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival

Friday April 23

* Lionel Richie * Dr. John * Steel Pulse * George Clinton & Parliament/Funkadelic * Baaba Maal * Elvin Bishop * Chocolate Milk * Jon Cleary * Frankie Ford * Deacon John * Joe Lovano * Bob French & the Original Tuxedo Jazz Band's 100 Year Celebration * Irma Thomas' Tribute to Mahalia Jackson * The Joe Krown Trio with Walter 'Wolfman' Washington and Russell Batiste Jr. * Lena Prima * Anders Osborne * Jumpin' Johnny Sansone with Anders Osborne and John Fohl * Dwayne Dopsie & the Zydeco Hellraisers' Tribute to Rockin' Dopsie Sr. * Black Crowes * Maurice Brown Effect * Black Mohawk Mardi Gras Indians * Kenny Neal * Glen David Andrews * Mia X with Ms Tee and Cheeky Blakk * OTRA * Nathan & the Zydeco Cha Chas * Leah Chase * Bruce Daigrepont Cajun Band * Little Freddie King Blues Band * The Revivalists * Semolian Warriors and Comanche Hunters Mardi Gras Indians * Leroy Jones & New Orleans Finest * Tommy Sancton New Orleans Quintet * Lost Bayou Ramblers * New Orleans Night Crawlers * The Revealers * Rotary Downs * James Rivers Movement * Spencer Bohren * Jesse McBride presents the Next Generation * Jeffery Broussard & the Creole Cowboys * David Egan * Kipori Woods * White Cloud Hunters Mardi Gras Indians * Mas Mamones * Shades of Praise * Franklin Avenue Baptist Church Mass Choir * Clive Wilson's New Orleans Serenaders feat. Butch Thompson * Jambalaya Cajun Band with special guest Merlin Fontenot * Real Untouchables Brass Band * Beth Patterson * June Gardner & the Fellas * Kevin Thompson & the Sensational Six * Native Nations Intertribal * Chip & Polly Radke with the God's House Choir * Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Ensemble * Mount Hermon Mass Choir * Smitty Dee's Brass Band * Alexis Marceaux Band * White Cloud Hunters Mardi Gras Indians * Kat Walker Jazz Combo * Natasha Richard of Canada * Delgado Community College Jazz Ensemble * John Lee & the Heralds of Christ * The Bester Singers with the Dynamic Smooth Family Gospel Singers * Keep N It Real and Single Ladies Social Aid & Pleasure Clubs * Grey Hawk * Brass Band Throwdown with the Behrman Charter & O. Perry Walker School Bands * Family Ties and Big Nine Social Aid & Pleasure Club * McDonogh #42 Elementary School Performers

[Cross-posted to Signal Fire. Information from Jazz Fest website. Graphic from Google image search for 'Irma Thomas.']

It's a great day for the Irish.

2010-03-17T00:01:00.000-07:00

Óró 's é do bheatha 'bhaile

"... a traditional Irish song, that came to be known as an Irish rebel song in the early 20th century.

The song in its original form, Séarlas Óg (meaning "Young Charles" in Irish) refers to Bonnie Prince Charlie and dates back to the second Jacobite rising, during the reign of George II in 1745-6.

In the early 20th century it received new verses by the nationalist poet Padraig Pearse and was often sung by IRA members and sympathisers, during the Easter Rising. It was also sung as a fast march during the Irish War of Independence."

==

When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.
Dennis Morgan: "The very fine Hollywood actor with the excellent tenor voice sings this famous ballad from the film Tear Gas Squad."

[Óró 's é do bheatha 'bhaile text from Wikipedia. Dennis Morgan text from YouTube.]

Umm Kulthum

2010-03-15T06:14:00.001-07:00

Below are links to "Umm Kulthum: 'The Lady Of Cairo," a feature on National Public Radio by Neda Ulaby. The March 15, 2010 report is part of the U.S. radio network's "50 Great Voices" series.

READ | LISTEN

[Cross-posted to Signal Fire. Graphic from Google image search for "Umm Kulthum"]

Performing Public Space

2010-03-14T10:10:00.000-07:00

Performing Public Space

La Casa del Tunél
Calle Chapo Márquez 133
Colonia Federal, Tijuana BC Mexico

Saturday, March 20
Closing Party

2:00 pm: Fallen Fruit: Acción Fruta Urbana
4:30 pm: Lauren Bon: Tia Juana Day
7:00 pm: Portable City Projects: People's Café Dance Party
7:30 pm: John Geary: A Touch of Evil

"As towns and cities are increasingly overwritten by the needs and desires of globalized capital, so public spaces and the behaviors they support are becoming evermore shrunken and controlled. At the same time however, everyday examples of common usage – a skate boarder curving past a crowd, a girl chopping and bagging melon on the sidewalk, a child dancing up a mountain of steps – counterpoint homogenization and regulation.

Curated by Owen Driggs, Performing Public Space (PPS) is both a celebration of artists who consciously adopt such tactics and instrumentalize their bodies in an effort to bend, expand, or puncture dominant spatial narratives, and an inquiry into the ways in which public space is articulated through real use.

Like tumbleweed, the inquiry is designed to pick up more material as it roams. Understanding that, despite the strategies of corporate commerce, local spatial conditions vary, at each place it visits PPS will work with local citizens to create a city-specific archive. Documenting both quotidian uses of public space and witting artist interventions the archives will be included in the exhibition and become part of a growing website that considers local, national, and international interpretations of 'public space' and approaches to its preservation, generation, and augmentation."

Lauren BON
FALLEN FRUIT
FINISHING SCHOOL
John GEARY
Anne HARS & Bill
WHEELOCK
Ari KLETZKY
Paul PESCADOR
Nancy POPP
PORTABLE CITY PROJECTS
Jane TSONG
L.A. URBAN RANGERS

[Text and graphic from organization. Caption: "'Ryan, Freerunner, 2009.' Owen Driggs." Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

Security

2010-03-13T00:01:00.000-08:00

Root Division Gallery
3175 17th Street (at S. Van Ness)
San Francisco, CA 94110
415.863.766

Security

Marisa Aragona | Andrea Chung | Gary Duehr | Oasa duVerney | Benjamin Echeverria | Stephanie Ellis | Pete Hickok | Glenn Hirsch | Yu-Hang Huang | iiiahh Collective | Jeremiah Jenkins | Suzanne Kehr | JP Kelly | Lee Lee | Alma Leiva | Paula Levine | Lesley Louden | Lisa Martin | Masako Miki | Randall Miller | Robert Minervini | Nancy Popp | Renée Rhodes | Paulina Velazquez | Serena Wellen | Doug Williams | Kathryn Williamson

Guest Curators: Stephanie Ellis & Serena Wellen

"Security means simply, the provision of safety. Security is related to the oldest meaning of curate: to care for souls. Today, the business of security is a global and corporate phenomenon. Its primary agenda is the production of fear; its ideal consumer is immobilized by dread.

Security (the exhibition) seeks to address this pivot between asylum and alarm. We are painfully aware of the brutality that so-called professional security may engender. Unspeakable ugliness appears when protector and protected warp into perpetrator and victim, but the curators of the exhibition seek to upturn rather than reproduce the fear, uncertainty, and mistrust already so pervasive in our everyday. To that end, they looked for humor, gentleness, and a light touch as well as acuity, provocation, and gravity in the works selected.

The artists chosen for the exhibition touch on the care or solicitude necessary for collective wellbeing as well as artists who tackle the charms or fetishes necessary for security's sell. How we define security for our communities and our world will determine how we get there and where we arrive."

Reception: Saturday, March 13, 7 to 10 pm

Through March 27

[Text and graphic courtesy of the gallery and curators. Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

Virtuoso Illusion

2010-03-12T02:25:00.000-08:00

MIT List Visual Arts Center
20 Ames Street, Bldg. E15
Atrium level
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
617-253-4680

Virtuoso Illusion: Cross-Dressing and the New Media Avant-Garde

"... explores what has traditionally been called gender crossing or cross-dressing (drag) as a tactic for media artists that has been central to the development of the current avant-garde. The show explores how experimental art has been invigorated and advanced by artists who cross dress for many different reasons as part of their conceptual process. It is not intended as an exploration of identity issues specifically, but more as an in depth look at current and historical strategies of cross dressing as an art of the irrational, the unexpected."

Through April 4.

more

[Text from List website. Graphic from Google image search for "Claude Cahun." Caption: "Claude Cahun (Lucy Renée Mathilde Schwob), French (Nantes, France, 1894 - 1954, Saint Hélier, Jersey.) 'Le Mystère d'Adam (The Mystery of Adam).' 1929. photograph | gelatin silver print.]

Umpiring Under the Amateur Code of Rules

2010-03-10T00:01:00.000-08:00

Outpost for Contemporary Art
1268 N. Ave 50
Los Angeles, CA

Saturday, March 13, 2010 7 - 10pm

"T-shirt Revival Night" with Kiki Johnson

"For a minimal charge ($3 for one, $5 for two), Kiki will "revive" your old T-shirt, canvas bag or whatever other clothing you bring in by silk-screening one of five designs onto it.

Titled "Umpiring Under the Amateur Code of Rules" Kiki Johnson will use drawings inspired by spring training and the approaching baseball season for the silk-screening event.

Johnson redraws historical images, not as duplications or copies, but as reenactments of the images. Subjects such as sailors and witches are placed side by side, revealing how these two apparently dissimilar subjects are in fact treated as equals within historical discourse. By collecting images from history books, rather than history itself, Johnson creates delicate and eerie images that collapse the languages of maritime history and superstition. As Johnson's drawings are more performative then representational, her work also expands into performances in which she reenacts historical rituals such as baking a Great Depression era recipe or burning a Christmas tree to fry pancakes over the fire on Shrove Tuesday. Whether images or performances, her work confronts viewers with the results of history, stripped of its supporting context. The viewer must justify these images and actions as they exist now, and also question the meaning of the word “yesteryear.” Replacing the authoritative voice of history with her own voice brings cause to question the accuracy, authenticity, and truth of history as it is presented.

In conjunction with NELAart Second Saturday Gallery Night."

More

[Text from Outpost FB invitation. Graphic from Kiki Johnson's website. Caption: "Baseball Crest, ink on paper, 8.5”x11”, 2010." Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

Listening Party

2010-03-07T06:20:00.000-08:00

Thursday, March 11 | 7-8:30 pm

The Holland Project
Holland Project Headquarters
30 Cheney Street

March Listening Party

"Come let your hair down, or whatever? You know the deal. Person + album + more people +rock talking = Holland monthly listening party.

Brad Nelson of RN&R, Reno Noise, and other sundry publication fame will be here to play a record of his choice (maybe a double LP - so bring a pillow)!

Certainly, it's going to be a great night. Hope you can join us!"

[Text from Holland FB invite. Graphic from Google image search for 'listening to 45's.' Caption from Life Magazine: "Group of teenagers listening to 45 rpm. records as they shop for the latest hits at a record store. Photo: Nina Leen/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images. Dec 01, 1944."]

free size

2010-03-06T09:33:00.001-08:00

March 13 - April 17, 2010
apexart

Sinudom Silk Screen Factory
35/21 Moo 1, Sakaegnam Road
Samaedam, Bang Khun Thian
Thailand

Franchise Two: "free size" **
Curated by Logan Bay

Participating artists: Alvaro Ilizarbe, Jen Stark, Juan Angel Chavez, and P7

"In a mass produced world of global goods, the act of creation is often lost or forgotten. Hidden machinery cranks and sweats out elements of our everyday life, yet we rarely glimpse the environment where ideas are physically forged. To produce the exhibition free size artists Alvaro Ilizarbe, Jen Stark, Juan Angel Chavez, and P7 will work directly in the Sinudom Silk Screen factory along side employees creating works of art. By bringing these contemporary artists into a global manufacturing hub the realms of production and creation will exist in a simultaneous space, transforming this modest factory into an active generator of creative capital. The Sinudom Silk Screen factory is located on the edge of Samut Sakhon a province that houses many factories. Over the past few decades Thailand has worked to become a producer of exportable goods and inexpensive items for domestic use. While the manufacturing machinery is abundant, many of the products are designed elsewhere. free size will encourage viewers to see that industrial spaces can also be incubators for creative thought and social evolution.

** For Franchise Two we excluded submissions for exhibitions to take place in large cities like New York, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo, to focus on locations with less than 500,000 people — places such as Moshupa or Priboj, Baton Rouge or Lübeck, Cadiz or Az-Zawiyah, Heidelberg or Zinder. In response we received 243 exhibition proposals from 63 countries, and jurors submitted over 5,000 votes to identify a winner."

Opening reception: March 13, 2-6 pm

[Text and graphic from apexart. Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

Worms at work for the environment

2010-03-02T07:52:00.001-08:00

Wednesday, March 3 - 11am

Public Space 1
Iowa City, Iowa

F@S Session 4: Worm Composting

"Don't know what to do with your banana peel? What about those coffee grounds? And that moldy takeout?

Why not compost?

Don't have enough space? Come to 827 E. Market St. #2 to learn how to build a worm compost bin that fits under your sink! If you would like to build your own, please bring two large, plastic bins with lids and some newspaper."

More:
Worm Composting
Composting With Red Wiggler Worms

[Information and graphic from organization mailing. Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

Sunday Music Workshop at Tip's

2010-02-27T08:13:00.000-08:00

Tipitina's Uptown
501 Napoleon Avenue
New Orleans, LA
ph. 1.504.895-TIPS

February 28 | 1 – 3:30 pm
Sunday Music Workshop Series
Featuring The Johnny Vidacovich Trio

"Resurrecting a program that was popular in the early '90s, the Tipitina's Foundation proudly announces the Sunday Music Workshop Series, the brainchild of Stanton Moore and Johnny and Deborah Vidacovich. These free workshops take place every other Sunday fro, when students have the opportunity to play with and learn from the best musicians in the city.

Sunday Music Workshops offer young, aspiring musicians from all walks of life the unique opportunity to play with and learn from some of the area's most experienced and celebrated musicians. Each workshop offers students a hands-on, improvisational approach to music education. Students should bring their instruments! Each child will have their own chance play with the veteran musicians or solo on the famed Tipitina’s Uptown stage. Usually, workshops close with a jam session mixing students and veteran musicians together for a real Tip's concert experience! As many of the city's various music programs have been put on hold since the storm, these workshops are serving a vital need in the rebuilding process: passing on the musical traditions to a younger generation. Featured artists so far have included Stanton Moore, Johnny Vidacovich, Kirk Joseph, and Theresa Anderson. The free on-stage workshops are only for students, but all members of the public are welcome to attend."

[Text from Tipitina's website. Photo from NolaFunkNYC. Cross-posted to Signal Fire.

A Video Serenade

2010-02-25T05:11:00.000-08:00

EFA Project Space
323 W 39 Street, 2nd Floor
New York, New York

Tuesday March 2, 2010 | 6:30pm

A Video Serenade:
Selected works by artists from Norway, Serbia, Russia, and the UK

Recent works selected by ArtVideoExchange (AVE) and Format Network.

A VIDEO SERENADE presents a wide range of contemporary video, from the performative to the personal to the fictive and the documentary. The program aims to reflect the unique mix of themes and approaches to video as exemplified by the artists supported by these two groups.

AVE – Serbia
Program selection by Bojana Romić

Big Bang / Bojana Romić / 2009 / 2:30 min.
Never Gonna Give You Up / Goran Micevski / 2006 / 4:00 min.
Exhaustion of Europe / Jovan Čekić / 2005 / 8:07 min.
Clay Pigeon / Milos Tomić, 2005 / 6:41 min.
Atomic Watch / Nenad Kostić / 2006 / 1:13 min.
FPS (First Person Shooters or Frames Per Second) / Wim Janssen / 2006 / 3:08 min.

Format Network, UK
Song Archive / Yvonne Buchheim / 2009 / 5:00 min.
Weightless / Matt White / 2008 / 7:55 min.
A Hard Place / Ronnie Close / 2009 / 4:54 min.
Curtain / Peter Bobby / 2009 / 4.52 min. (extract, HD Video)

AVE–Russia
Program selection by Vika Ilyushkina, CYLAND Media Lab

Son of King / Julia Zastava / 2008 / 4:29 min.
Little Black / Nikolay Kurbatsky / 2008 / 1:51 min.
I want to live through your death / Olga Jitlina / 2009 / 5:44 min.
Storage / Anton Hlabov / 2009 / 2:20 min.
Expulsion from the Paradise / Andrey Ustinov / 2003 / 2:01 min.
Vertigo / Kirill Shuvalov / 2003 / 1:43 min.
Never ending / Masha Sha / 2005 / 2:12 min.
Mom / Yuri Vasiliev / 2002 / 0:55 min.
Feedback / Maksim Svishev / 2009 / 5:42 min.
Purification / Veronica Rudyeva-Ryazantseva / 2008 / 4:30 min.

AVE – Norway
Program selection by Mona Bentzen

Amerika / Ane Lan / 2003 / 3:15 min.
Che Guevara’s Rolex / Birgitte Sigmundstad / 2009 / 4:40 min.
Par Hasard / BULL.MILETIC / 2009 / 5:15 min.
Opacity / Farhad Kalantary / 2005 / 5:30 min.
Erase / Margarida Paiva / 2009 / 3:30 min.
Felix Culpa, A Handmade Massacre / Martin Skauen / 2007 / 5:06 min.
RUR / Mona Bentzen / 2010 / 2:16 min.

A VIDEO SERENADE is organized by Madeline Djerejian, AVE-USA, in cooperation with ArtVideoExchange and Format Network, with support from the Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA), CYLAND Media Art Laboratory (St. Petersburg, Russia), and the St. Petersburg branch of the National Center of Contemporary, Art (NCCA).

AVE is an international exchange program and initiative between artists and curators that promotes the production and circulation of video programming worldwide. Format Network is an artists’ group based in Bristol, UK that focuses on staging activities of exchange and engagement, including screenings and exhibitions, lectures by invited artists, critics and theorists, and open-mic performance evenings.

[Text and graphic from EFA website. Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

Unavoidable and Inescapable Trouble

2010-02-24T00:01:00.000-08:00

Latitude 53
10248-106 Street
Edmonton
Alberta Canada

Patrick J. Reed
"Wadcutter"

"... a series of drawings about unavoidable and inescapable trouble. It is about getting prepared for the worst. In the words of T.S. Eliot, “I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”

[Text from organization website. Graphic from exhibition flier. Click on image to enlarge.]

Odd Overtones

2010-02-19T00:01:00.000-08:00

Friday, February 19 | 8–10 pm

Royce Gallery
2901 Mariposa St (between Harrison & Alabama Streets)
San Francisco, CA

room: ODD OVERTONES

Pamela Z presents an avant-chamber music evening featuring three stellar, Bay Area clarinetists. Beth Custer, clarinets; Ma++ Ingalls, clarinet; Cornelius Boots; bass clarinet. Each artist will perform solo, and then all will perform an ensemble piece at the end of the evening with Pamela Z on voice & electronics.

[Information from Facebook event page. Graphic from Google image search for "Pamela Z." Photo credit: Donald Swearingen.]

Admission $10 (at the door or through Brown Paper Tickets)

The Literary Map of Africa

2010-02-17T00:01:00.000-08:00

Ohio State University Libararies
The Literary Map of Africa

"The Literary Map of Africa is a bio-bibliographical database, designed to be a comprehensive research and information tool on African literature. It does not focus on selected authors or national / regional literatures, nor does it follow the sometimes rigid North – sub-Saharan Africa divide; instead, the database seeks to cover the whole continent. This wider scope makes it possible for writers from different regions and countries, with varied histories and cultures, and who produce works in diverse African and European languages to be represented in one project. One objective this project hopes to fulfill is to include as many emerging writers as possible, especially those based in Africa. Many in this category of creative writers do not have a readership beyond their national boundaries and are therefore hardly represented in many bibliographies and encyclopedias."

visit

[text and graphic from Ohio State University Libararies website. Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

Get Bent for Lent!

2010-02-16T00:01:00.000-08:00

[Arguably celebrating non-stop since their beloved Saints' NFC Championship win sent the team to the Super Bowl, New Orleanians' biggest party begins today. Below is a video by Michael DeMocker from the Times Picayune's nola.com capturing some of the sights and sounds of Mardi Gras 2010.]

Orpheus Rolls Down Uptown Parade Route

index of all Times Picayune Mardi Gras videos.

Zulu Lundi Gras Festival

2010-02-15T00:01:00.000-08:00

Monday February 15
10 am – 5:30 pm
18th Annual Zulu Lundi Gras Festival
Woldenberg Park
1 Canal Street
New Orleans

"The festival event will feature local and world -renowned entertainers performing on three stages. Musicians such as Kermit Ruffin, Amanada Shaw and the Cute Guys, Ed Perkins, Rebirth Brass Band, Pinstripe Jazz Band and many more will be providing non-stop music.

The Lundi Gras Festival will add flavor to your day when the 17 food vendors kick up the Cajun aroma of crawfish pie, shrimp creole, file' gumbo, alligator sausage, Jamaican chicken, crawfish bread, barbeque ribs, seafood pasta, catfish po-boys, peach cobbler, pecan pie, and many more New Orleans delicacies. There are other attractions to wet your festive appetite. Everyone can join in a second line as the Zulu Mardi Gras Carnival Characters parade every hour through the thousands of revelers wearing their colorful flamboyant costumes. Who knows -- you may be one of the lucky ones to receive a treasured carnival throw -- the Zulu Lundi Gras Coconut!

Also, witness the arrival of the Zulu King and Queen by U.S. Coast Guard Cutter along with their entourage at 5 pm."

Free.

[Text from Festival website. Graphic from NOLA.com. Caption: "Staff photo by Ted Jackson. Larry Roy, official Zulu Minister of Fun displays a coconut for the crowd, enticing them with the Mardi Gras prize during the Zulu Lundi Gras Festival in Woldenberg Park in the French Quarter."]

"Love is in the Air"

2010-02-14T04:58:00.000-08:00

Sunday, February 14 | 5 pm
Krewe of Bacchus Parade
New Orleans, Louisiana

"With more than 1,350 members and 33 animated super-floats, the Krewe of Bacchus is revered as one of the most spectacular Krewes in Carnival history."

Superbowl XLIV Champions New Orleans Saints quaterback Drew Brees will reign as King of the Krewe of Bacchus.

The theme of this year's parade is "Love is in the air."

parade route

Mardi Gras 2010 Parade Schedule

[Text and graphic from Krewe website.]

Krewe of Isis

2010-02-13T07:47:00.000-08:00

Mardi Gras 2010

February 13 | 6:30 pm
Metairie, Jefferson Parish
Krewe of Isis

"Isis was the mother of Horus and the sister and wife of Osiris in the mythology of ancient Egypt. She was honored as the goddess of the earth and the moon, a symbol of motherhood and fertility. Isis was also worshiped in the Greek and Roman empires. She was traditionally represented as a woman wearing a cow's horns with a solar disk between them.

In 1973 this all-female organization was charted in the city of Kenner, and the women held their first 7 processions there before adopting the standardized veterans Memorial Boulevard parade route, which more than a dozen Jefferson krewes share."

Krewe of Isis Facebook Fan Page

[text and graphic from Mardi Gras Parade Schedule website. Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

The Continuous Flexagon

2010-02-12T06:41:00.000-08:00

The Center for Book Arts
28 West 27th Street, 3rd Floor
New York, NY 10001

Friday, February 12th , 6-9pm

Book Arts Lounge
Moveable Meaning: The Continuous Flexagon

The Continuous Flexagon is a simple moveable folded structure that yields intriguing possibilities. Artist and bookbinder Ana Cordeiro will lead us through conceptualization and construction of these delightful contraptions. Loungers will incorporate found text and pressure printing on the Vandercook to create flexagons that might contain multiple meanings, hidden messages, or even secret Valentine's signals. Bring along several words of found text, and ideas for interesting impressions: lace, string, or other flat and flexible texture-making items.

$10 suggested donation/ $5 CBA members

[Text from Center website. Graphic from Google image search for 'continuous flexagon'.]

Parafictions

2010-02-10T06:57:00.000-08:00

[NB: Due to extreme weather conditions, this event, originally scheduled for February 10, has been rescheduled of February 17.]

EFA Project Space
323 W 39 Street, 2nd Floor
New York, New York

Wednesday, February 17 | 6:30 - 8 pm
Performance-Presentations
Parafacts and Parafictions: Helguera, Blachly & Shaw

'Parafacts and Parafictions: Helguera, and Blachly & Shaw' is an evening of performance-presentations organized in conjunction with the exhibition Companion, curated by REV- and currently on view at EFA Project Space. Pablo Helguera and Jimbo Blachly & Lytle Shaw will enact live components to their projects included in Companion, followed by a Q & A session moderated by Marisa Jahn, artist and exhibition curator.

"Art historian Carrie Lambert-Beatty offers a definition of the term 'parafiction', a term used to describe an emergent genre of artwork that plays in the overlap between fact and fiction: "Like a paramedic as opposed to a medical doctor, a parafiction is related to but not quite a member of the category of fiction as established in literature and drama. It remains a bit outside. It does not perform its procedures in the hygienic clinics of literature, but has one foot in the field of the real." If a 'parafiction' operates in that space between fictional and real, alongside this term we might position a second: a 'parafact'-an artwork that more stringently draws from the real-but a 'real' whose narrative is so curious, exquisite, or implausible so as to call into question its own veracity. Pablo Helguera, and Jimbo Blachly & Lytle Shaw's performance-presentations engage both of these tacts. In so doing, the artists raise questions about the function of truth and fiction-its bearing on knowledge, ethics, or aesthetic transformation.

The Temporary Museum of Vaseline in Perth Amboy is the latest iteration of J. Blachly and Lytle Shaw's ongoing research into the cast of characters known as the 'Chadwick family.' While following up leads about missing Chadwick family relics in the New Jersey city, the duo instead stumbled upon the possibility of naturally occurring Vaseline springs in the region.

Pablo Helguera's 'What in the World' replicates a popular television show from the 1950's in which artifacts were presented to a team of archaeologists, artists, and aficionados to decipher. Adapting the show's theatrical conventions for a You Tube generation, Helguera departs from the objects to focus on the eccentric museum staff, positioning the institution itself as the subject of the ethnographic inquiry."

[Text an graphic from EFA press mailing.]

Waste and Recycling

2010-02-09T00:01:00.000-08:00

Centro de Arte y Naturaleza
Fundación Beulas
C/ Doctor Artero, s/n
Huesca
Spain 22004
t. +34 974 239 893

Exhibition:
Rummaging in the garbage: Waste and recycling in the contemporary art

"The first notions that usually come to mind when considering garbage, waste and deterioration are generally negative, when not outright nauseating. We are aware of the physical and chemical processes of the matter around us, beginning with the cycles of nature itself, including industrial processes, technical constructions and manufactured consumer items, and ending with the very materiality of the human being as a living organism. This crisscrossing of elements and activities-which, after all, is what makes the human being civilized and cultural, negotiating and struggling to domesticate and exploit the landscape and the ecosystem, the planet, in short-generates endless reactions, overpopulation and overproduction, upsets and imbalances, and therefore waste, before which we often do not know how to react or that, metaphorically, but also in the practical reality, we end up sweeping under the rug and looking the other way."

more

[text from Centro website. Graphic from Google image search for 'Chris Jordan,' participating artist Caption: "Recycling Yard #6." Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

Social Aid & Pleasure

2010-02-08T06:28:00.000-08:00

February 8, 2010 | 7:30pm–10:30PM

Mardi Gras 2.2 Social Aid & Pleasure Marching Club Parade
New Orleans

"Have fun it's Mardi Gras"

"Throws: We give out Purple, Green & Gold flowers from canes.

History: We follow in the footsteps of the Garden District Carnival Club which originated in the Irish Channel. Our King, who started our club, marched in the GDCC as a child along with his father & grandfather. We will be stopping in at 5 locations along St. Charles Ave. during our march for refreshments, starting at Fat Harry's and including Commanders Palace to make 6 stops in total.

We are open to all and encourage involvement, we meet on the 22nd of each month at La Playa on Clio. We do not charge dues but ask for donations to pay for the band & NOPD. Mardi Gras costumes are required to march and ladies wear tu-tu's and any guys that want to."

Mardi Gras 2010 Parade Schedule

[Text from Parade Schedule website. Graphic from image search for "Mardi Gras Parade" – MIT website."]

For Your Consideration

2010-02-07T00:01:00.000-08:00

NBC Universal Presents Bravo Reality Series "Work of Art: The Next Great Artist"

PASADENA, CA.- Bravo's latest stroke on the reality canvas brings Golden Globe and Emmy Award winner Sarah Jessica Parker and her production company, Pretty Matches, together with the Emmy-nominated Magical Elves ("Top Chef," "Project Runway") and Eli Holzman, to produce "Work of Art: The Next Great Artist,” an hour-long creative competition series among contemporary artists. "Work of Art: The Next Great Artist” will bring together 14 aspiring artists to compete for a solo show at a nationally recognized museum and a generous cash prize.

Hosting this colorful new series is art enthusiast China Chow, alongside world-renowned art auctioneer, Simon de Pury. Joining them on the judging panel are experts Bill Powers, a New York Gallery owner and literary art contributor, Jerry Saltz, current art critic for New York Magazine, and Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, esteemed curator and owner of Salon94 gallery.

In each episode, contestants are faced with the challenge of creating unique pieces in a variety of media such as painting, sculpture, photography, collage and industrial design. The weekly assignments are exciting, original and will challenge the artists to push the limits of their technical skills and creative boundaries. Completed works of art will be appraised by the panel of top art world figures alongside a new celebrated guest judge every week. Through a gallery showing at the end of each challenge, the industry luminaries dictate which artists have successfully mastered the subject matter and creation of their piece, as well as whose concept leaves the greatest impact.

"Work of Art: The Next Great Artist" is produced by Pretty Matches and Magical Elves for Bravo. Dan Cutforth, Jane Lipsitz, Sarah Jessica Parker, Alison Benson and Eli Holzman serve as executive producers.

Coming Summer 2010.

more

[Text from artdaily.org. Graphic from tv.com. Thanks to DLP in IC fo the tip. Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

Puppy Bowl VI

2010-02-06T06:58:00.000-08:00

For the few of you out there who have not been waiting with fierce anticipation for months for this year's event, we send notice of Puppy Bowl VI, riveting Super Bowl counter-programming by the Discovery Channel's four-legged Animal Planet Channel. The two-hour program will be screened many times during "Super Sunday." [Note that some of you may prefer to watch it 'MOS*' after three or four viewings.]

2008's innovations included the spectacular Water Bowl Cam that according to the Puppy Bowl Wikipedia page, "provides shots upwards through the transparent bottom of a special water bowl built into the stadium floor, with a wide-angle lens that allows viewers to watch the puppies drink water up close."

And don't miss the feline hijinx during the Kitty Half-Time Show that features, again as researched and reported on the Wikipedia page, "kittens playing for 30 minutes with lights, laser pens, balls of yarn, a scratching post, flint sweepers, and a wide variety of other toys."

more

* MOS = Mit Out Sound

[Video above looking back to highlights of the glory that was Puppy Bowl IV. Note that this post is a slight update of last year's notice of Puppy Bowl V.]

A year at the South Pole

2010-02-04T22:52:00.000-08:00

Farmlab
1745 North Spring Street, Unit 4
Los Angeles, CA 90012
1.323.226-1158

Friday, February 5, 2010, Noon

Metabolic Studio Public Salon
Simon Balm

A Year at the South Pole

Simon Balm will describe his experiences during a year spent at the South Pole conducting astronomical research in one of the coldest and extreme environments on Earth.

A native of London, England, Simon Balm received his Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from the University of Durham in 1988 and his Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from the University of Sussex in 1992, working with Nobel Prize winning chemist Sir Harold Kroto. After graduate school he spent two years as a NATO Postdoctoral Fellow in the UCLA Astronomy Department followed by four years as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, MA where he helped to design, build and install a radio telescope at the geographical South Pole. After several Summer visits to the Antarctic he wintered-over with the telescope at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole station during the 1995-1996 season as a scientist with United States Antarctic Program.

[text and graphic from Farmlab website. Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

... in a most dangerous manner

2010-01-29T00:01:00.000-08:00

SPACES
2220 Superior Viaduct
Cleveland OH 44113
216.621.2314

January 29–March 26
" ... in a most dangerous manner"

Curated by Steven Lam and Sarah Ross

"'... in a most dangerous manner' serves as a working research archive that demonstrates how 'economic crises' have often been used to restructure and restore class divisions. The exhibition seeks to recast current economic conditions as not quite a crisis, a temporal anomaly, nor a failure in governmental regulations, but as a cycle common to the last 150 years of American (and increasingly global) financial markets. Employing abstraction, metaphor, and narrative, the artists inject their work into current discussions surrounding economic recovery and stability, while imagining potential exits from this system.

Featuring projects from a mix of emerging and established national artists, "...in a most dangerous manner" showcases art, a publication, found objects, documents, screenings, performances, and town-hall discussions. The exhibition presents work that names and locates the various physical and material sites that have been invested, degraded, and subsequently contaminated by a culture of market-driven speculation.

Artists presenting in the exhibition include Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber, Julia Christensen, Elaine Gan, Benj Gerdes and Jennifer Hayashida, Lize Mogel, Claire Pentecost, Ohio University School of Art Critical Regionalism Initiative (Kainaz Amaria, Matthew Friday, Ray Klimek, Jeff Lovett, Yates McKee, Jason Nein, Spurse), Katya Sander, and Allan Sekula."

[Text and graphic from Spaces website. Caption: "Image courtesy of Claire Pentecost." Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

Catcher in the Rye' author J.D. Salinger dies

2010-01-28T10:35:00.000-08:00

[Associated Press article by Hillel Italie reprinted in full from the Washington Post.]

Catcher in the Rye' author J.D. Salinger dies

By Hillel Italie
The Associated Press
Thursday, January 28, 2010; 1:12 PM

NEW YORK -- J.D. Salinger, the legendary author, youth hero and fugitive from fame whose "The Catcher in the Rye" shocked and inspired a world he increasingly shunned, has died. He was 91.

Salinger died of natural causes at his home on Wednesday, the author's son said in a statement from Salinger's literary representative. He had lived for decades in self-imposed isolation in the small, remote house in Cornish, N.H.

"The Catcher in the Rye," with its immortal teenage protagonist, the twisted, rebellious Holden Caulfield, came out in 1951, a time of anxious, Cold War conformity and the dawn of modern adolescence. The Book-of-the-Month Club, which made "Catcher" a featured selection, advised that for "anyone who has ever brought up a son" the novel will be "a source of wonder and delight - and concern."

Enraged by all the "phonies" who make "me so depressed I go crazy," Holden soon became American literature's most famous anti-hero since Huckleberry Finn. The novel's sales are astonishing - more than 60 million copies worldwide - and its impact incalculable. Decades after publication, the book remains a defining expression of that most American of dreams - to never grow up.

Salinger was writing for adults, but teenagers from all over identified with the novel's themes of alienation, innocence and fantasy, not to mention the luck of having the last word. "Catcher" presents the world as an ever-so-unfair struggle between the goodness of young people and the corruption of elders, a message that only intensified with the oncoming generation gap.

Novels from Evan Hunter's "The Blackboard Jungle" to Curtis Sittenfeld's "Prep," movies from "Rebel Without a Cause" to "The Breakfast Club," and countless rock 'n' roll songs echoed Salinger's message of kids under siege. One of the great anti-heroes of the 1960s, Benjamin Braddock of "The Graduate," was but a blander version of Salinger's narrator.

The cult of "Catcher" turned tragic in 1980 when crazed Beatles fan Mark David Chapman shot and killed John Lennon, citing Salinger's novel as an inspiration and stating that "this extraordinary book holds many answers."

By the 21st century, Holden himself seemed relatively mild, but Salinger's book remained a standard in school curriculums and was discussed on countless Web sites and a fan page on Facebook.

Salinger's other books don't equal the influence or sales of "Catcher," but they are still read, again and again, with great affection and intensity. Critics, at least briefly, rated Salinger as a more accomplished and daring short story writer than John Cheever.

The collection "Nine Stories" features the classic "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," the deadpan account of a suicidal Army veteran and the little girl he hopes, in vain, will save him. The novel "Franny and Zooey," like "Catcher," is a youthful, obsessively articulated quest for redemption, featuring a memorable argument between Zooey and his mother as he attempts to read in the bathtub.

"Catcher," narrated from a mental facility, begins with Holden recalling his expulsion from a Pennsylvania boarding school for failing four classes and for general apathy.

He returns home to Manhattan, where his wanderings take him everywhere from a Times Square hotel to a rainy carousel ride with his kid sister, Phoebe, in Central Park. He decides he wants to escape to a cabin out West, but scorns questions about his future as just so much phoniness.

"I mean how do you know what you're going to do till you do it?" he reasons. "The answer is, you don't. I think I am, but how do I know? I swear it's a stupid question."

"The Catcher in the Rye" became both required and restricted reading, periodically banned by a school board or challenged by parents worried by its frank language and the irresistible chip on Holden's shoulder.

"I'm aware that a number of my friends will be saddened, or shocked, or shocked-saddened, over some of the chapters of `The Catcher in the Rye.' Some of my best friends are children. In fact, all of my best friends are children," Salinger wrote in 1955, in a short note for "20th Century Authors."

"It's almost unbearable to me to realize that my book will be kept on a shelf out of their reach," he added.

Salinger also wrote the novellas "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters" and "Seymour - An Introduction," both featuring the neurotic, fictional Glass family which appeared in much of his work.

His last published story, "Hapworth 16, 1928," ran in The New Yorker in 1965. By then he was increasingly viewed like a precocious child whose manner had soured from cute to insufferable. "Salinger was the greatest mind ever to stay in prep school," Norman Mailer once commented.

In 1997, it was announced that "Hapworth" would be reissued as a book - prompting a (negative) New York Times review. The book, in typical Salinger style, didn't appear. In 1999, New Hampshire neighbor Jerry Burt said the author had told him years earlier that he had written at least 15 unpublished books kept locked in a safe at his home.

"I love to write and I assure you I write regularly," Salinger said in a brief interview with the Baton Rouge (La.) Advocate in 1980. "But I write for myself, for my own pleasure. And I want to be left alone to do it."

Jerome David Salinger was born Jan. 1, 1919, in New York City. His father was a wealthy importer of cheeses and meat and the family lived for years on Park Avenue.

Like Holden, Salinger was an indifferent student with a history of trouble in various schools. He was sent to Valley Forge Military Academy at age 15, where he wrote at night by flashlight beneath the covers and eventually earned his only diploma. In 1940, he published his first fiction, "The Young Folks," in Story magazine.

He served in the Army from 1942 to 1946, carrying a typewriter with him most of the time, writing "whenever I can find the time and an unoccupied foxhole," he told a friend.

Returning to New York, the lean, dark-haired Salinger pursued an intense study of Zen Buddhism but also cut a gregarious figure in the bars of Greenwich Village, where he astonished acquaintances with his proficiency in rounding up dates. One drinking buddy, author A.E. Hotchner, would remember Salinger as the proud owner of an "ego of cast iron," contemptuous of writers and writing schools, convinced that he was the best thing to happen to American letters since Herman Melville.

Holden first appeared as a character in the story "Last Day of the Last Furlough," published in 1944 in the Saturday Evening Post. Salinger's stories ran in several magazines, especially The New Yorker, where excerpts from "Catcher" were published.

The finished novel quickly became a best seller and early reviews were blueprints for the praise and condemnation to come. The New York Times found the book "an unusually brilliant first novel" and observed that Holden's "delinquencies seem minor indeed when contrasted with the adult delinquencies with which he is confronted."

But the Christian Science Monitor was not charmed. "He is alive, human, preposterous, profane and pathetic beyond belief," critic T. Morris Longstreth wrote of Holden.

"Fortunately, there cannot be many of him yet. But one fears that a book like this given wide circulation may multiply his kind - as too easily happens when immortality and perversion are recounted by writers of talent whose work is countenanced in the name of art or good intention."

The world had come calling for Salinger, but Salinger was bolting the door. By 1952, he had migrated to Cornish. Three years later, he married Claire Douglas, with whom he had two children, Peggy and Matthew, before their 1967 divorce. (Salinger was also briefly married in the 1940s to a woman named Sylvia; little else is known about her).

Meanwhile, he was refusing interviews, instructing his agent to forward no fan mail and reportedly spending much of his time writing in a cement bunker. Sanity, apparently, could only come through seclusion.

"I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes," Holden says in "Catcher."

"That way I wouldn't have to have any ... stupid useless conversations with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they'd have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me. I'd build me a little cabin somewhere with the dough I made."

Although Salinger initially contemplated a theater production of "Catcher," with the author himself playing Holden, he turned down numerous offers for film or stage rights, including requests from Billy Wilder and Elia Kazan. Bids from Steven Spielberg and Harvey Weinstein also were rejected.

Salinger became famous for not wanting to be famous. In 1982, he sued a man who allegedly tried to sell a fictitious interview with the author to a national magazine. The impostor agreed to desist and Salinger dropped the suit.

Five years later, another Salinger legal action resulted in an important decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court refused to allow publication of an unauthorized biography, by Ian Hamilton, that quoted from the author's unpublished letters. Salinger had copyrighted the letters when he learned about Hamilton's book, which came out in a revised edition in 1988.

In 2009, Salinger sued to halt publication of John David California's "60 Years Later," an unauthorized sequel to "Catcher" that imagined Holden in his 70s, misanthropic as ever.

Against Salinger's will, the curtain was parted in recent years. In 1998, author Joyce Maynard published her memoir "At Home in the World," in which she detailed her eight-month affair with Salinger in the early 1970s, when she was less than half his age. She drew an unflattering picture of a controlling personality with eccentric eating habits, and described their problematic sex life.

Salinger's alleged adoration of children apparently did not extend to his own. In 2000, daughter Margaret Salinger's "Dreamcatcher" portrayed the writer as an unpleasant recluse who drank his own urine and spoke in tongues.

Ms. Salinger said she wrote the book because she was "absolutely determined not to repeat with my son what had been done with me."

[text and graphic from the Washington Post. Caption: "FILE - In this 1951 file photo, J.D. Salinger, author of "The Catcher in the Rye", "Nine Stories", and "Franny and Zooey" is shown. (AP Photo, file) (Anonymous - AP)".]

Haiti Teach-In

2010-01-26T09:08:00.000-08:00

Friday, January 29 | 7 pm
"The Modesto Junior College Civic Engagement Project invites the community to a Haiti Earthquake Symposium in Sierra Hall 132 on the west campus.

The event is free and will feature a panel of presenters including geology Professor Garry Hayes speaking about the geology of the recent earthquake; history Professor Curtis Martin addressing the history of Haiti; MJC agriculture students from Haiti; and a report on Haiti relief efforts.

The symposium will be moderated by Professor Bill Anelli. A question-and- answer session will follow the panel speakers.

For more information, contact Richard Anderson at 529-5182."

[Text from the Modesto Bee. Graphic from Wikipedia. Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

The End

2010-01-21T11:13:00.000-08:00

The Banff Centre
Walter Phillips Gallery
Glyde Hall, St. Julien Way
Banff, Alberta, Canada

January 30 – April 18
Ragnar Kjartansson: The End

"A self-described radical post-romantic, the Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson traveled westbound towards the Rocky Mountains in search of the epic. Working primarily as a performance artist, Kjartansson is known for his spectacular and humorous stagings of extreme character types, from the knight and rock outcast to the lonely crooner. In Banff the artist sought to create a cacophonic folk-country music video in the guise of a Davy Crockett-clad outlaw. Drawing on the nostalgic representations of nature found in sources as varied as paintings by Caspar David Friedrich and the cover of the Supertramp album Even in the Quietest Moments, his work is a dramatized engagement with Canada’s frontier.

The End -- Rocky Mountains is a five-channel video installation synched together as a single disfigured country music arrangement in the chord of G. Produced with the support of The Banff Centre for the Icelandic Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale, the piece was developed by Kjartansson in collaboration with Icelandic musician Davíd Thór Jónsson at the Centre in February 2009."

Artist’s Talk: January 28, 4 p.m.
Opening Reception: January 29, 7 p.m.
Country & Western Hour: Friday, January 29, 9:30 p.m.

[text and graphic from gallery website. Caption: "Ragnar Kjartansson production shot The End (2009) Photo: Laura Vanags. Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York; and i8 Gallery, Reykjavik." Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

"I have a dream."

2010-01-18T00:01:00.000-08:00

For the second year running, on the occasion of the U.S. national holiday in his honor, we present below a recording of Dr. Martin Luther King most well-known speech.

From the Wikipedia entry for Martin Luther King: "I Have A Dream" is the popular name given to the public speech in which Dr. King spoke of his desire for a future where blacks and whites among others would coexist harmoniously as equals. Dr. King's delivery of the speech on August 28, 1963, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, was a defining moment of the American Civil Rights Movement."

[Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

Something in life to avoid at all costs ...

2010-01-17T00:01:00.001-08:00

For your consideration: click here

[From Erdëm Gultekin, "Internerd Explorer." Thanks to NR in NYC for the tip.]

Truth & Lies | Truth and Reconciliation

2010-01-16T13:57:00.000-08:00

Robben Island Museum
Off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa

"From the 17th to the 20th centuries, Robben Island served as a place of banishment, isolation and imprisonment. Today it is a World Heritage Site and museum, a poignant reminder to the newly democratic South Africa of the price paid for freedom."

Jillian Edelstein
Truth & Lies Exhibition

Based on her documentation of hearings that revealed gross human rights violations during proceedings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) from 1996 to 2000.

The photographs are a reminder of an apartheid ‘hell-hole’ that was prevalent in South Africa prior to 1994; a South Africa that the young of today might only have heard about. The Edelstein photographs also represent seemingly innocent scenes of murder, torture, secrets, lies and the uncovering of truths.

A visit to the exhibition goes hand in hand with a deeper understanding of Nelson Mandela’s words of wisdom at the dawn of our democracy: “Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another.”

On view through March.

[Text from Museum website. Graphic from Good & Evil: Stories and photographs from South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Accompanying text below by Jill Edelstein.

DIRK COETZEE
Pretoria, 26 February 1997

"I follow Dirk Coetzee’s detailed instructions down Jacaranda-lined Isipingo Street. For a few short weeks every year, this dull brown town is turned purple by a mass of exquisite blossom. My first impression is of how heavily Coetzee has incarcerated himself. His rottweilers are snarling, and the barbed wire around the metal gates glistens in the sunshine. Tea is served in china cups on a floral tray. So civilized, I think, holding my cup and saucer. I notice that wherever Coetzee goes, the leather purse which hangs off his wrist like a little handbag goes with him. ‘It contains my gun,’ he informs me. ‘I take it everywhere, even when I go to the toilet.’"

– From Jillian Edelstein’s diary.

Dirk Coetzee was the first commander of the special ‘counter-insurgency’ unit at Vlakplaas. He had ordered the deaths of many ANC activists, including Griffiths Mxenge, a human rights lawyer, who was stabbed 40 times at Umlazi Stadium in Durban, and Sizwe Kondile, a young law graduate from the Eastern Cape, who was interrogated and beaten then handed over to Coetzee who had him shot and his body burned. Coetzee’s career at Vlakplaas was short-lived. He was demoted first to the narcotics division and then to the flying squad and in 1986 was discharged from the police force. In 1989, prompted by the last-minute confession about the unit at Vlakplaas by one of Coetzee’s colleagues, Almond Nofomela,who was attempting to avoid execution on death row for a non-political murder, Coetzee exposed the undercover operations of the SAP in an interview with the journalist Jacques Pauw. For the next three years, Coetzee lived in exile. He returned to South Africa in 1993, and in May 1997 was tried and found guilty for his role in the murder of Griffiths Mxenge. But he had applied to the Truth Commission for amnesty and in August 1997 he was granted amnesty for Mxenge’s murder. At the TRC hearing in Durban, Coetzee was asked what he felt about what he had done to the Mxenge family. He said he felt:

“... humiliation, embarrassment and the hopelessness of a pathetic, ‘I am sorry for what I have done’ ... What else can I offer them? A pathetic nothing, so in all honesty I don’t expect the Mxenge family to forgive me, because I don’t know how I
ever in my life would be able to forgive a man like like Dirk Coetzee if he’d done to me what I’ve done to them.”

[Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

Eric Rohmer

2010-01-11T13:27:00.000-08:00

[article by Dave Kehr reprinted in full from the New York Times]

January 12, 2010
Eric Rohmer, New Wave Filmmaker, Dies at 89
By Dave Kehr

Eric Rohmer, the French critic and filmmaker who was one of the founding figures of the internationally influential movement that became known as the French New Wave, and the director of more than 50 films for theaters and television, including the Oscar-nominated “My Night at Maud’s” (1969), died on Monday. He was 89.

His producer, Margaret Menegoz, announced his death in Paris, Agence France-Press reported. Relatives said he had been hospitalized a week ago but gave no further details about his condition, the news agency said.

Aesthetically, Mr. Rohmer was perhaps the most conservative member of the group of aggressive young critics who purveyed their writings for publications like Arts and Les Cahiers du Cinéma into careers as filmmakers beginning in the late 1950s. A former novelist and teacher of French and German literature, Mr. Rohmer emphasized the spoken and written word in his films at a time when tastes — thanks in no small part to his own pioneering writing on Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks — had begun to shift from literary adaptations to genre films grounded in strong visual styles.

His most famous film in America remains “My Night at Maud’s,” a 1969 black-and-white feature set in the grim industrial city of Clermont-Ferrand. It tells the story of a shy, young engineer (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who passes a snow-bound evening in the home of an attractive, free-thinking divorcée (Françoise Fabian).

The conversation, filmed by Mr. Rohmer in a series of carefully but unobtrusively composed long takes, covers philosophy, religion and morality, and while the flow of words at times takes on a distinctly seductive subtext, the encounter ends without a physical consummation. But a bond is formed between the two characters that movingly re-emerges five years later, when they meet again in the brief postscript that closes the film.

“My Night at Maud’s” was the third title in his “Six Moral Tales,” a series of films that Mr. Rohmer began in 1963, though for economic reasons it was the fourth to be filmed. In each of the six films, a man who is married or engaged finds himself tempted to stray but is ultimately able to resist. His films are as much about what does not happen between his characters as what does, a tendency that enchanted critics as often as it drove audience members to distraction.

“I saw a Rohmer movie once,” observes the Gene Hackman character in Arthur Penn’s “Night Moves” (1975). “It was kind of like watching paint dry.”

In his private life, Mr. Rohmer was reclusive if not secretive. “Eric Rohmer” was, in fact, a pseudonym, one of several that he experimented with early in his career. According to “Who’s Who in France,” he was born Maurice Henri Joseph Schérer in Tulle, a city in southwestern France, on March 21, 1920; other sources give his birth name as Jean-Marie Maurice Schérer and place his origins in the northeastern city of Nancy.

After publishing the novel “Elisabeth” under the name Gilbert Cordier, he moved to Paris in 1950, where he began frequenting the ciné-clubs of the Latin Quarter, making the acquaintance of four other young cinephiles with whom his career would remain intertwined: Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol and Jacques Rivette. With Mr. Rivette, he founded a short-lived film magazine, La Revue du Cinéma, but when that initiative collapsed after five issues, he joined the reviewing staff of Les Cahiers du Cinéma, a publication that acquired a fashionable notoriety for the violently iconoclastic reviews of the young Truffaut.

In 1952, Mr. Rohmer made his first attempt to direct a feature film, to be titled “Les Petites Filles Modèles,” but the project was abandoned when its producer declared bankruptcy. No footage is known to exist. Not until his Cahiers colleagues began to enjoy a measure of success as filmmakers — the term La Nouvelle Vague (The New Wave) was coined by a journalist for L’Express in 1957 — was Mr. Rohmer able to mount another long form production. But “Le Signe du Lion” (1959), a moody tale of an American expatriate who finds himself down and out in Paris, did not capture the public imagination the way Truffaut’s “400 Blows” and Godard’s “Breathless” did, and Mr. Rohmer returned to editing Les Cahiers, a job he held until 1963.

Mr. Rohmer’s real breakthrough came in 1962 with the 26-minute short “La Boulangère de Monceau” (“The Bakery Girl of Monceau”). Filmed in 16-millimeter black and white, it was the first of the “Six Moral Tales,” based on fictional sketches he had written, he later said, long before he dreamed of becoming a filmmaker.

After a second short film, “La Carrière de Suzanne” (1963), Mr. Rohmer returned to the feature length format with “La Collectionneuse” (1967), the fourth episode of the series but the third to be filmed. The story of a young woman (Haydée Politoff) who systematically collects lovers, the film won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and restored Mr. Rohmer’s place in the front rank of the New Wave. The series continued with three more features: “My Night at Maud’s,” “Claire’s Knee” (1970) and “Love in the Afternoon” (1972).

After experimenting with two stylized period films, “The Marquise of O ...” (1976) and “Percival le Gallois” (1978), Mr. Rohmer initiated a new series, “Comedies and Proverbs,” with the 1981 “La Femme de l’aviateur.” The six films in this group were illustrated traditional sayings or quotes from celebrated authors (from La Fontaine to Rimbaud), and were largely built around the flirtations and fickle emotions of young people, and incorporated, notably in “Le Rayon Vert” (1986), a new element of improvisation.

Mr. Rohmer undertook a final series, “Tales of the Four Seasons,” with “Conte de Printemps” in 1990, this time providing a philosophical love story for each season of the year. The series ended with the exquisite “Conte d’Automne” in 1998, in which Mr. Rohmer moved beyond his focus on youth to tell a movingly autumnal story of a widow (Béatrice Romand) with a teenage son who finds love in an unexpected place.

Mr. Rohmer’s late career found him moving happily among small projects for television (including “L’Arbre, le Maire et la Médiathèque,” 1993), an early experiment with digital technology (“The Lady and the Duke,” 2001), and a true-life spy story (“Triple Agent,” 2004). His final theatrical film was the 2007 “Astrée and Céladon,” a retelling of a 17th-century love story with magical overtones, filmed in a self-consciously academic style that suggested the paintings of Poussin and Fragonard.

He is survived by a younger brother, the philosopher René Schérer, and by a son, the journalist René Monzat.

In opposition both to the intensely personal, confessional tone of much of the work of Truffaut and the politically provocative films of Godard, Mr. Rohmer remained true to a restrained, rationalist aesthetic, close to the principles of the 18th-century thinkers whose words he frequently cited in his movies. And yet Mr. Rohmer’s work was warmed by an undercurrent of romanticism and erotic yearning, made perhaps all the more affecting for never quite breaking through the surface of his elegant, orderly films.

[Film still from "My Night at Maud's]

"... the rich culture of communal sweat bathing"

2010-01-10T00:01:00.000-08:00

January 16 - February 7, 2010
Medicine Lake
Plymouth, MN

The Black Bania
Elaine Tin Nyo, Taavo Somer, David Frank, Rik Horton, Paul D. Dickinson, Dwayne Williams, Thomas Thorpe, Matthew Schum

Black Bania is a smoking hot room on a frozen lake. A tipi will house a sauna room available for use by the public on a bring-your own-towel basis and provide additional space for restorative sauna related activity. We will explore the rich culture of communal sweat bathing referencing Finnish saunas, Russian banias, Roman baths and Turkish hammams, Korean zzimzilbangs, and Native American sweat lodges by providing a space for a series of intimate performances, intellectual exchange, and wholesome physical cleansing.

Part of Art Shanty Projects: "a four-weekend exhibition of performance, architecture, science, art, video, literature, survivalism and karaoke, ASP is part sculpture park, part artist residency and part social experiment, inspired by traditional ice fishing houses that dot the state’s lakes in winter."

[graphic from Google image search for "communal sweat lodge."]

Guitar Virtuoso Jimmy Page Hits 66

2010-01-09T00:01:00.000-08:00

Jimmy Page, born January 9, 1944, featured in two performances of "Dazed and Confused" with The Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin.

Rock on Jimmy.

The King

2010-01-08T00:01:00.000-08:00

[With all due respect to Michael Jackson, we take a moment to salute the undisputed King of Rock 'n Roll on the occasion of the seventy-fifth anniversary of his birth. In this clip the King, looking uncannily like a bad boy version of the Infant of Prague, sings the signature song of his post army, post bad Hollywood movie, Las Vegas Showroom era to adoring Hawai'ian fans bearing lays. Rock on Elvis.]

Elvis Aaron Presley January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977

Below are links to an assessment of Elvis tunes by the brilliant rock critic Ann Powers, writing for the LA Times.

King vs. King: Debating Elvis Presley's best songs
King vs. King: Debating Elvis Presley's best songs Part II

[Thanks to MFC in Valencia for the tip.]

In the Arts, Bigger Buildings May Not Be Better

2010-01-05T12:56:00.000-08:00

[With thanks to SB in Carson City for the tip, reprinted in full from the December 12, 2009 New York Times, follow up to a November 2008 post regarding the Berkeley Art Museum.]

In the Arts, Bigger Buildings May Not Be Better
By Robin Pogrebin

Within months of its opening in 1997, Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum Bilbao had given the language a new term and the world a new way of looking at culture. The “Bilbao effect,” many came to believe, was the answer to what ailed cities everywhere — it was a way to lure tourists and economic development — and a potential boon to cultural institutions.

Municipal governments and arts groups were soon pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into larger, flashier exhibition spaces and performance halls.

Now the economic downturn has reined in a lot of these big dreams and has also led to questions about whether ambitious building projects from Buffalo to Berkeley ever made sense to begin with. Some are arguing that arts administrators and their patrons succumbed to an irrational exuberance that rivaled the stock market’s in the boom years.

Organizations were “blinded by the excitement of what it would be like to have this great new facility,” said D. Carroll Joynes, a senior fellow at the University of Chicago’s Cultural Policy Center.

The recession, he said he believed, is not solely to blame for a recent wave of projects that have been delayed (like additions to the St. Louis Art Museum and the Cincinnati Art Museum); scaled back (like the new building of the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, N.Y.); put into question (the new Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center and the renovation of the New York Public Library’s main Fifth Avenue branch); or abandoned altogether (the expansion of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo).

In Mr. Joynes’s view, “The recession is exposing the weakness of a lot of institutions that were seriously overstretched” before it began.

“It’s exposing poor management and poor planning,” said Mr. Joynes, who is collaborating on a study of 50 cultural building projects completed from 1994 to 2008 and their planning processes. These were situations, he added, in which “nobody actually asked: ‘Is there a need here? If they build it, will they come?’ ”

Last month the University of California abandoned plans for a new 140,000-square-foot Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. The project, designed by the high-profile Japanese architect Toyo Ito, was intended to replace a smaller existing building that does not meet seismic standards, but also to do much more: with its towering windows, huge interior spaces and curvaceous steel exterior, it was destined to become “an icon for the entire Bay Area,” Berkeley’s chancellor, Robert J. Birgeneau, said in 2008.

Less than half of the $200 million needed to build the Ito design had been raised, from private donors and the university, and the new economic reality put additional fund-raising in serious doubt.

But the museum was worried about more than just construction costs. While new wings and buildings can lead to increases in both visitors and donations, at least at first, they can also be a major drain on an organization’s operating budget.

“What has been thought of as a short-term asset can be a long-term problem,” said Jonathan Katz, the chief executive of the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies. “Facilities cost money to operate, and they deteriorate. The facility itself becomes a series of expenditures.”

Lawrence R. Rinder, the museum’s director, said the decision to build the Ito design came out of a “well-reasoned expectation” of what was financially possible before the recession. Still, he acknowledged, “the ongoing economic shock inspired us to evaluate not only the shorter-term capital campaign but also strategies for sustainable operation.”

The building, he said, would have increased operating costs 10 to 20 percent above the $8 million the museum now spends annually on all its operations. It is in the process of coming up with a “smaller-scale” plan for a new home, he added, which will probably cost about as much as the current building to operate.

Most arts professionals describe their building projects as born of necessity: they needed larger galleries to bring permanent collections out of storage; they needed audience amenities like larger restrooms and upgraded air-conditioning to draw ticket buyers; they needed a building that was up to current code. But some concede that it was hard not to be caught up in what Mr. Joynes called the “frenzy of building” made possible by the booming economy and spurred on by highly visible projects like Walt Disney Concert Hall, the expanded Museum of Modern Art and the new Alice Tully Hall.

“Museums, when they saw how much money other museums were raising, said, ‘Oh, we can’t miss out on this,’ ” said Terry Riley, a former head of the Museum of Modern Art’s department of architecture and design, who helped oversee that museum’s renovation by Yoshio Taniguchi. In many cases, he added, “it’s almost as though money drove the decision.”

Maxwell Anderson, the director of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which finished a major expansion in 2006 and is now completing a 100-acre park, said that “in part, all of us have been watching how these projects are perceived.”

“There is a keeping-up-with-the-Joneses quality to museum building,” he continued.

The Dia Art Foundation, which once had big plans for a 34,000-square-foot, column-free space at the entrance to the High Line in New York — before losing a board chairman who was also its main benefactor in 2006 — announced last month that it would instead build a 25,000-square-foot space on the site of a former garage it already owns on West 22nd Street in Chelsea.

Philippe Vergne, who became Dia’s director last year, defended the original plans: “It was what the world was — more was more.” But the recession “forced us to slow down” and really consider institutional needs, he said. What the foundation wants now is a simple, utilitarian space that makes art the main event.

“I want the ambition to be for the program, not the building — not, ‘Let’s go big because we’re addicted to big,’ ” Mr. Vergne said.

The economic downturn has had this effect on a lot of arts organizations, said Adrian Ellis, the executive director of Jazz at Lincoln Center and the founder of AEA Consulting, a leading arts consultant.

“Cultural buildings became the way in which cities articulate their identity and vitality — they were driven not by the artistic community but by a civic agenda,” he said. Now the economy is pushing organizations into “deep reflection about what their purpose is and how best to realize it,” he said — reflection that can lead back to an arts-focused agenda, and to a renewed concern about “protecting their capacity to take artistic risks.”

“When you overexpand, you limit your ability to take those risks,” Mr. Ellis said. “Although expansion is usually seen as a sign of health, it is not always a sign of vitality.”

Mr. Joynes, of the University of Chicago, said that his study of cultural building projects aimed to explore this issue. “Do you do many more ‘Swan Lakes’ and take fewer chances artistically because you have big bills to pay?” he asked.

Cultural agencies and foundations are also reflecting on the institutions they help finance, albeit in more practical terms.

“We have become increasingly concerned about the sustainability of organizations as a result of these building projects,” said Alice L. Carle, program director of the Kresge Foundation, which supports nonprofit organizations nationwide. Ms. Carle said her foundation had decided to prioritize “renovation and repair projects over new construction and large expansions.”

“We’re more interested in helping shore up what organizations have already built,” she said.

Many institutions, of course, managed to complete their big projects before the downturn, though some may be experiencing builders’ remorse. For example, the $461 million Carnival Center for the Performing Arts in Miami, designed by César Pelli — whose vision statement promised it would transform the city into “the cultural capital of the Americas”— ended its first year, in October 2007, with a $2.5 million operating deficit, thanks to low ticket sales and high operating costs. (It has been kept afloat with the help of a $30 million gift from a philanthropist, Adrienne Arsht, for whom the center has been renamed.)

In Chicago, the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies owes $43.6 million of the $51.6 million it borrowed for its new building on South Michigan Avenue, completed two years ago. The institute’s galleries are now open only on alternate Sundays and the second Thursday of every month, its Wolfgang Puck kosher cafe is closed, and 26 percent of the staff has been cut.

The institute had expected income from event rentals and catering to help with revenue, and still hopes to find organizations that want to share the space. “We counted on a whole lot of weddings, bar mitzvahs, private parties,” said Hal M. Lewis, who became president and chief executive of Spertus in July. “These have materialized with less intensity than anticipated.”

Mr. Lewis, who was not around when the decision to build was made, says it was well intentioned, but describes the result as “an operating model and a debt service that requires us to live beyond our means.” Much of his energy these days is spent on efforts to change that result, though he tries not to dwell on what might not have been.

“I wish my hair would grow back too, but I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about it,” Mr. Lewis said. “Now I’ve got to go on.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 25, 2009
Because of an editing error, an article on Dec. 12 about building projects by arts institutions that have been delayed or canceled because of the economic downturn erroneously included one museum among those that have delayed plans to build additions. The Columbus Museum of Art says that while fund-raising has been delayed for its addition, the project itself has not.

==

[graphic from The New York Times. Caption: "# Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects. A digital rendering of the canceled Berkeley museum’s exterior and pedestrian walkway."]

Burj Khalifa

2010-01-04T21:00:00.000-08:00

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, tonight officially opened the tallest building in the world and revealed its new name: Burj Khalifa.

The glass-and-steel structure is now, officially, the tallest in the world, at 828 metres–2716.5 feet.

more

[text and graphic from The National]

Tipitina's celebrates its 32nd anniversary!

2010-01-03T18:03:00.000-08:00

Tipitina's
32nd Anniversary Show featuring The Chilluns

Friday, Jan 15, 2010 10:00 pm (9:00 pm Doors)
Tipitina's (Uptown)
New Orleans, LA

"featuring Dave Malone (of The Radiators), Annie Clements (of Sugarland), Cranston Clements (of Twangorama), Johnny Malone, Darcy Malone, Spencer Bohren, and Andre Bohren (of Johnny Sketch & The Dirty Notes)"

$15.

From The Best of New Orleans :

"One of the best traditions in New Orleans music is its multigenerational families of performers. The names of Crescent City musical clans read like royalty: Marsalis, Lastie, Andrews, Neville, etc. The Chilluns combines several families, including the Malones (Dave, Johnny, D'Arcy), the Bohrens (Spencer and Andre) and the Clements (Cranston and Annie). The group will play some appropriate Motown and British Invasion covers as well as originals from both the elders and youngsters. Everyone has played with so many national and local acts that the repertoire is as full as a phone book. Johnny Sketch and the Dirty Notes open. Tickets $15 – David Kunian"

more | Tipitina's Calendar

[Graphic from Google Image search for 'Annie Clements']

New Year's Eve with the Dead

2009-12-31T00:01:00.000-08:00

[For some Americans, NYE Dead Concerts rivaled Dick Clark and the ball dropping in New York's Times Square. NB: audio of hundreds of hours of Dead shows are available at archive.org. Wishing one and all a brilliant 2010!]

Hey Patti Smith

2009-12-30T00:01:00.000-08:00

[Below, a vintage performance by the brilliant, irrepressible Patti Smith on the occasion of her sixty-fourth birthday. Rock on Patti!]

[Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

Happy New Year | Happy Endings

2009-12-29T00:01:00.000-08:00

[a nod to the end of a momentous year, wishing all a brilliant 2010]

le cinema a 114 ans

2009-12-28T00:01:00.000-08:00

The first public film screening was held on December 28, 1895, at the Salon Indien du Grand Café on the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris by The Lumière brothers, Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas and Louis Jean . This history-making presentation featured ten short films. Each film is 17 meters long, which, when hand cranked through a projector, runs approximately 50 seconds.

[Text from Wikipedia. Still from "L'arroseur arrosé," one of the films included in the program. Many happy returns to SC in Newcastle, and heartfelt appreciations to DLP.]

My Parents Were Awesome

2009-12-27T16:00:00.000-08:00

My Parents Were Awesome

[Photo from My Parents Were Awesome website. Thanks to ASP in Berkeley for the tip. Caption: "'Flo and Brunov.' Submitted by Adrienne."]

Larry Sultan

2009-12-23T07:32:00.000-08:00

American photographer Larry Sultan died earlier this month at the age of 63. Below is a link to a 1989 interview on NPR's [National Public Radio] Fresh Air. The interview with host Terry Gross explores "Pictures from Home," his decade-long project chronicling his father's job loss and the effects it had on the family.

Listen

[Information and graphic from Fresh Air website. Caption: "Dad Looking into Pool," from "Pictures from Home"']

Removed from the Crowd

2009-12-22T02:47:00.000-08:00

Skuc Gallery
Stari trg 21
SI - 1000 Ljubljana
Slovenia
ph: + 386 1 251 65 40

23 December - 15 January 2010
Removed from the Crowd:
The Fate of Outer Planets

Concept: Ivana Bago and Antonia Majaca
(Institute for Duration, Location and Variables – DeLVe)

"Removed from the Crowd / The Fate of Outer Planets is a curatorial/art-historical piece based developed through an ongoing research that considers the phenomenon of the New Artistic Practice in the Socialist Republic of Croatia during the 1960s and 1970s outside the context of the analysis of the actual artistic production of that time, involving new elements and fragments with each new presentation.

The first phase of the long-term project was the publication Issue-ing the Revolution published as the 83rd issue of the Life of Art Magazine/Zivot umjetnosti with contributions by Jens Kastner, Waler Seidl, Marco Scotini, Maroje Mrduljaš & Srećko Horvat, Jelena Vesic & Dušan Grlja, Sezgin Boynik, Artur Zmijewski, Maja & Reuben Fowkes, Hedvig Turai and the editors Ivana Bago & Antonia Majaca (hart.hr/izdanja/zivot-umjetnosti), while the second phase eveloved as the educational program Kustoska platforma comprised of 10 monthly seminars with the students of art history in Zagreb initiated in Spring 2008 and focusing on the history of curatorial and exhibition practices Croatia.

The first 'staging' of the project, presented earlier this year in Belgrade in the framework of the exhibition Political Practices of (Post) Yugoslav Art focused on the modes of collaborative work of artists and the forms of self-organisation while the second one, at ŠKUC Gallery, includes a new chapter focusing on progressive curatorial strategies and innovative exhibition models during 1960s and 1970s.

Fragment 1: New Collective Practices - Artists' Association Beyond Manifesto and Program stems from a consideration of the three-year activity of the Podroom Working Community of Artists. Podroom, an artists-led space initiated by Sanja Ivekovic and Dalibor Martinis, was a working and exhibition space that between 1978 and 1981 brought together the key figures of the New Artistic Practice. A transcript of a conversation (a working meeting) held in Podroom and published in the 'catalogue-journal' First Issue (1980) serves as a point of departure for the rendering of narrative about self-organised artistic initiatives and the history of associations from Gorgona Group at the beginning of the 1960s to the establishment of the artist –run PM Gallery in Zagreb in 1981. What is common to all the initiatives, irrespective of their duration, is the specific, non-programmatic and organic manner in which they group together around an only adumbrated common goal. The fragment focuses on temporary manifestations of collectiveness, on models of 'being singular plural' or more exactly, on being-with as a search for a different understanding of the relation between individual and collective, but also for the point of a collective itself and the possibility of a joint programme.

Fragment 2: New Curatorial and Exhibition Practices brings the focus to innovative curatorial and institutional practices with the special attention given to the projects initiated and curated in the 1970s by Ida Biard in Zagreb and Paris. Selected curatorial projects, as well as institutions and informal spaces in which they took place, are here not seen merely in the role of mediators who present artistic products to the audience, but as the active protagonists and initiators of innovative approaches to contemporary art, whether these concern the New Tendencies movement, early conceptual art of the 60s or the New Artistic Practice of the 70s.

The title Removed from the Crowd (taken from the title of a piece by Mladen Stilinović from 1979) thus becomes a signifier not only of the differentiation of the 'associated individuals' as against the ideologically propagated collectivity but also a signifier of the actual methodology.

Accordingly, the intention of the project is not the creation of a 'convincing' and scientifically well-grounded historical or art-historical narrative - it aims rather to indicate an associative cartography functioning as memory script, a map that selects the facts about processes, methodologies and situations considered to be relevant for us today as well as from a series of speculations derived from the enlargement of details, deliberate omissions, arbitrary connections, all in the aid of articulating a different viewpoint, a temporary and unstable truth through a different 'performance' of the writing of the history of contemporary art.

Skuk

[Text from e-art now. Graphic from Skuk website. Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]