February 2008 Archives

• Perl College - creative merger of job training and job fairs
  free top quality training to qualified junior level Perl developers
  tags: perl training job

Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen recreates Shigeko Kubota's 1965 performance "Vagina Painting" at her opening at Renwick Gallery. Click the screen icon below the image to make it bigger. This was one of 13(!) recreations in addition to her performance of her piece "The Artists' Song" in a three hour time span. She is hardcore.

Yes, that guy in the yellow shirt in the background really is working his Blackberry the entire time. I was standing near him earlier and heard him raving about security prices in after-hours trading.

I will be adding some images to a flickr set when I have time to edit them a bit, but here is one of her reenacting Janine Antoni's "Loving Care", 1992-1996.

Click here if you don't see the video at the top of the post.

It's time to brave the cold and support one of these two wonderful art non-profits.

DUMBO Arts Center Silent and Live Auction

David Humphrey, Landscape Kitties, 2004

The d.a.c. benefit reception begins tonight at 6pm, with a live auction at 8pm that includes the David Humphrey painting above in the impressive roster:

Ivin Ballen, Sarah Beddington, Christo, Andrew Eutsler, Tolland Grinnell,
Mimi Gross, Mary Heilmann, Christopher K. Ho, David Humphrey, Kristian
Kozul, Thomas Lendvai, Jessica Levine, Guy Richards Smit, James Siena,
Nicolas Touron Claes Oldenburg, Liselot van der Heijden, Lawrence Weiner,
Robert Whitman, Peter Young, Purvis Young, Daniel Zeller, Balint Zsako

Visit the website to view all of the works. You can bid on the excellent silent auction online.

• blogchelsea: School of Visual Arts Set to Buy Chelsea West Cinemas Building
  excellent news. much better than an ugly apartment tower.
  tags: art chelsea sva film realestate nyc

Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen, The Artist's Song, 2007

Corrected: The Elk Gallery show opens Friday.

Who could have expected it? There are 2 openings I can't wait to go to tomorrow night, not on the LES or in Chelsea or Williamsburg, but in Soho! One is the inaugural show, titled The Cult of Personality: Portraits and mass culture, of artist Peter Scott's new gallery called Carriage Trade. As the gallery's about page tells us:

Through presenting primarily group exhibitions, carriage trade will function not as a means to promote the careers of individual artists, but to provide contexts for their work that reveal its relevance to larger social and political conditions prevalent today. A project of the artist / curator Peter Scott, whose exhibitions have attempted to highlight this relevance over the value of any given artist’s work within the hierarchy of the art market, these projects will intentionally combine well known with lesser known artists, and historical pieces (60’s, 70’s, 80’s) with very recent work. Originally influenced by the approach of magazines like The Baffler and Harper’s which combine fact based readings with editorial commentary, Scott’s curatorial approach often integrates relevant found material as a means to broaden the scope of an art exhibition by positioning the “evidence” of everyday experience in direct relation to an artist’s mediation of social conditions.

Some themes to be addressed in upcoming shows include issues of propaganda in mass media, the effect of neo-liberal policies on the built environment and social relations, as well as the concept of “mistaken identity” and likeness within the realm portraiture. The location of Soho, a neighborhood that could be seen as a now historical model for the intense gentrification taking place in cities everywhere, provides an appropriate setting for addressing the cyclic nature of urban transformation, (Soho enjoyed a previous incarnation as a high-end shopping district in the mid -1800’s during America’s Gilded Age) due to seismic shifts in economic relations.

Peter Scott made one of my favorite things I've ever seen at the Brooklyn Museum -- the "Suspect" piece at the 2004 exhibition "Open House." Read this review by Stephen Maine on artnet.com for a description.

The second is an opening with a performance by Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen whose work James and I saw in Miami at the NADA art fair. It's at the Renwick Gallery.

Correction: Opening Friday

The third is the exhibition "Dropped Frames," described as a "A Collaborative Experiment in Film," at Elk Gallery. We're interested in anything that includes Andres Laracuente and Elizabeth Huey. Admittedly, this one is kind of between the LES and Soho.

[image above is from the invitation JPEG I received from Renwick Gallery.]

Paddy Johnson has written an article for the ArtCal Zine about the ArtCal survey results.

Libby and Roberta encourage artists to sign up for the Culture Pundits artists program. Wouldn't you rather have your images show up on smart culture blogs rather than next to trashy gossip? Also, our footers on the images are much more subtle. Here is an example for Jonathan Podwil:

From Roebling Hall's press release for the Doug Young show opening this Friday:

Doug Young has exhibited widely in New York and Chicago. In 2001 he was awarded the Guinness Book World Record for the longest nonstop banjo performance in history—24 hours total.

For all of the "things would have been perfect with Gore" people responding to news of Ralph Nader's announcement, I would like to remind them that the VP candidate was Joe Lieberman. I might have voted for Gore, but there was NO WAY I could have voted for him once Lieberman became the VP candidate. That man is a wacko war-monger, and he serves as the head of John McCain's state campaign in Connecticut.

Here is a nice item from Think Progress:

On the 2/12 edition of Bill Bennett’s radio show, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) explained that he was supporting Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) for president because he believes that withdrawal from Iraq would “abandon” the country “to the killers” and “empower them to come after us again.” “McCain will never let that happen,” claimed Lieberman.

“The guy has been almost always right on the big issues of foreign policy over the last twenty years,” said Lieberman. “That’s why I want him to be my president,” he added.

Also, read this post by Howie Klein on Huffington Post on Lieberman's homophobia, reporting that he "sided with Jesse Helms on removing federal money from public schools that counsel suicidal homosexual teens that it's OK (or 'an acceptable lifestyle,' in Lieberman's and Helms' disapproving parlance) to be gay."

Letting the Democratic Party know that they have your vote, no matter what kind of candidate they choose for us, is stupid.

James already wrote about this, but here are my photos taken the same day. This is part of the "Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today" exhibition opening next week at MoMA.

• CNN Asks Viewers: Does Obama Show Proper Patriotism?
  includes a screenshot of the poll - disgusting
  tags: barackobama press media cnn politics
• Attacks Show Easygoing Jamaica Is Dire Place for Gays - New York Times
  things I think of when (straight) friends mention a trip to Jamaica...
  tags: jamaica queer violence caribbean
• MyDD :: NY Cops Deny Press Pass to Respected Police Blogger
  Leonard Levitt, who has written about the NYPD for 20+ years for Newsday, the New York Post and the AP
  tags: nypd nyc media press blogs politics

• artnet Online Auctions
  artnet.com launches online art auctions with only a 10% commission next week
  tags: art auction artnet
• Kimberly Brooks: First Person Artist Rachel Mason: The Candidates And Their Gestures - Living on The Huffington Post
  I'm a big fan of Rachel's work. Check out this article / interview on Huffington Post
  tags: rachelmason art performance music hapsburgs history politics

Tim Sullivan 2007
2007
c-print
24 × 20 inches

Despite my dazed feeling by the time I reached Aqua Wynwood, the work I saw by Tim Sullivan, being shown by Lisa Dent Gallery, really stood out. The image above is from his series of self portraits taken once per year. Below is an installation shot of the video "Hamburger A/Hamburger B" from 2007. The image above is from the artist's website, and the one below is courtesy of the gallery. Apparently he has never been in a show in NYC!

James and I are headed to this on the 15th. For the art crowd, you may have heard of Ichiyanagi's wife from 1956-63, Yoko Ono.

Ensemble Origin at Zankel Hall
March 14th and 15th, 7:30pm

Featuring the Shinnyo-En Chorus of Japan and Music by the Seminal Japanese Avant-Garde Composer Toshi Ichiyanagi, Ensemble Origin’s Founder and Artistic Director

Presented with support of The Japan Foundation
and the cooperation of the Consulate General of Japan in New York
and the Institute for Medieval Japanese Studies at Columbia University.

Sponsored by Shinnyo-En

In 1998, fifty years into a storied career, the Japanese composer Toshi
Ichiyanagi undertook an ambitious project with a two-part mission: to
reconstruct ancient instruments preserved in Japan and to employ them in the
creation of a new kind of music. He and a diverse network of collaborators
would present the music‹performed on the restored Silk Road instruments‹in
concerts around the world. By 2006, with assistance from the Buddhist order
Shinnyo-en (as part of their contribution to the arts), the project had
succeeded in recreating 14 kinds of ancient musical instruments, including
examples from China and other parts of Asia, and in assembling a team of
musicians who could play those instruments, under the name Ensemble Origin.

Meghan McGeary as Hannah

I wrote about an extraordinary musical theater work called "The Blue Flower" in early 2003. A quote:

The historical context and references range from the events leading to WW I, the Weimar Republic, a fictionalized menage of Franz Marc, Max Beckmann, Hannah Höch, and Marie Curie, plus Dada. Part of it takes place at the Cabaret Voltaire -- the last time Zurich was really interesting.

There is a new production running through March 2nd at The West End Theater (86th and Broadway). Visit www.theblueflower.org or go here to buy tickets.

Visit their myspace page to hear some of the music.

[the image above is from the Blue Flower's website]

performance by Flora Wiegman at Elizabeth Dee Gallery, 8/14/2007

James and I already bought our tickets to this. Can't wait!

Amy Granat, Felicia Ballos, and Flora Wiegmann: An Evening with Cinema Zero

The Kitchen
512 West 19th Street between 10th and 11th Avenues

February 22 and 23 (Friday and Saturday), 8pm
Tickets: $10

Filmmaker Amy Granat teams up with choreographers Felicia Ballos and Flora Wiegmann to present a new collaborative film and dance performance. In addition, Granat has selected a film and video program featuring short works by Hollis Frampton, Joan Jonas, Peter Kubelka, Richard Serra, and Joyce Wieland, among others.

Cinema Zero is an ongoing project that activates connections between artists of different generations and fosters experimentation across disciplines.

James and I don't only follow the purely visual arts. We attend a lot of theater, dance, and other performance. The next few weeks have a lot of things of interest. I'll do several posts with recommendations, but this one is really important, and has a visual component too. Come see it with us on the 1st.

Ensemble Pi: The Rest is Silence

Saturday March 1st, 2008 at 8pm
Tickets at the door $15.

Venue:
The Great Hall at Cooper Union
7 East 7th Street at Third Avenue
map

Program:

• William Kentridge, Philip Miller: Two Shorts from Nine Projections featuring a live performance of original score for string quartet, trumpet and piano (2003)
• Frederic Rzewski: Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier, for piano (2003) U.S. premiere
• John Harbison: Abu Ghraib, for cello and piano (2006) N.Y. premiere
• Kristin Norderval: Far From Home, for two voices and computer-generated sound (2007)
• Dmitri Shostakovich: Piano trio No 2 in E minor, opus 67 (1944)

Guest Speaker: Naomi Wolf, author: The End of America

[image at top is Eyal Danieli, invitation for Ensemble Pi]

• 20x200 : Darkness moves
  New print by Wendy Heldmann from Jen Bekman's 20x200 project
  tags: art editions bargain wendyheldmann jenbekman

• Obama Fundraiser with Rufus Wainwright at Paula Cooper Feb. 23rd
  With Rufus Wainwright and some SERIOUS arts hosts - Serra, Marden, Toni Morrison, Tony Kushner, Agnes Gund, Robert Gober, etc. Tickets start at $1000
  tags: art literature politics barackobama paulacooper

• BAE: secret papers reveal threats from Saudi prince | World news | The Guardian
  Saudi Arabia's rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to attack London unless corruption investigations into their arms deals were halted, according to court documents revealed yesterday.
  tags: saudi-arabia bribery corruption england tony-blair arms-trading bae

• Is Zaha Hadid the New Leni Riefenstahl?
  good post from Hrag Vartanian
  tags: zaha-hadid architecture politics oil despotism azerbaijan sellout human-rights

[screengrab from my profile]

Via C-Monster, I learned that the Brooklyn Museum is sharing images of works in their collection via a Facebook application called Artshare. They set it up so that other institutions can join in too, and so far the list includes

• Metropolitan Museum
• Victoria & Albert
• Indianapolis Museum of Art
• Picture Australia (which combines images from multiple collections)
• Powerhouse Museum
• Walters Art Museum

I particularly liked this, from the Museum's blog announcement:

For the past week, we’ve been uploading (OK, well, Francesca Ford has been uploading…thanks, Francesca) our collection highlights into the application, but then we hit a snag when we got to our Contemporary collection. Since artists often retain the copyright on contemporary works, we stopped uploading and started making phone calls and sending emails to artists and galleries seeking permission to include their work in the first phase of this project. I have to extend my thanks to the artists (Jules de Balincourt, Barron Claiborne, Anthony Goicolea, Rashid Johnson, Lady Pink, Kambui Olujimi, Suzanne Opton, Andres Serrano, Swoon, Yoram Wolberger) who saw the worth in this kind of endeavor and said go for it. We will continue to contact more of the contemporary artists in our collection and add to these initial works, but we wanted to pause now and launch ArtShare for beta testing.

If you're already on Facebook, go here to add it.

Related:

• The Brooklyn Museum group on Flickr
• the ArtCal Facebook page
• the Culture Pundits Facebook page

The Democratic Party's nominating convention in Denver could get interesting.

From the Boston Globe:

Hillary Clinton will take the Democratic nomination even if she does not win the popular vote, but persuades enough superdelegates to vote for her at the convention, her campaign advisers say.

The New York senator, who lost three primaries Tuesday night, now lags slightly behind her rival, Illinois Senator Barack Obama, in the delegate count. She is even further behind in "pledged'' delegates, those assigned by virtue of primaries and caucuses.

But Clinton will not concede the race to Obama if he wins a greater number of pledged delegates by the end of the primary season, and will count on the 796 elected officials and party bigwigs to put her over the top, if necessary, said Clinton's communications director, Howard Wolfson.

"I want to be clear about the fact that neither campaign is in a position to win this nomination without the support of the votes of the superdelegates,'' Wolfson told reporters in a conference call.

"We don't make distinctions between delegates chosen by million of voters in a primary and those chosen between tens of thousands in caucuses,'' Wolfson said. "And we don't make distinctions when it comes to elected officials'' who vote as superdelegates at the convention.

Justin Marshall, Baby, I wanna make-out, 2006, C-print

Justin Marshall had a solo show at Thomas Robertello Gallery in Chicago a few months ago. The image is from the gallery's website.

Don't take this as any indicator of our relationship, but James and I both referred to the holiday accidentally as Halloween on Wednesday.

• McCain votes to kill anti-torture bill after making 'opposition to torture' one of his signature issues
  John McCain flip-flops on torture. He's now for it.
  tags: torture johnmccain politics

Here is a nice quote from McCain in 1998 (via Attytood):

Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno.

-- Sen. John McCain, speaking to a Republican dinner, June 1998.

I fail to understand why some people think he is a "straight shooter" or someone more reasonable than the other crazy GOPers.

• blogchelsea: CHELSEA NOW EDITOR LARRY LERNER OUSTED
  this sounds bad
  tags: chelsea realestate media

This is one reason why I'm not worrying too much about policy papers at this point:

But most of the issues that matter to me are either mainstream Democratic issues that all serious candidates for the Democratic nomination know to support or they are so out of the mainstream that all serious candidates know better than to publicly embrace. For example, I want single payer health coverage for every American. I have no ideological interest in the health care plans being put forward by Edwards, Clinton, or Obama, and I could give two shits about the minor distinctions between them. When I see someone like Paul Krugman get all worked up about mandates to make every American purchase health insurance from a giant health insurance corporation, I think Paul Krugman is a complete pinhead asshole. The idea that someone would throw a temper tantrum over someone's campaign proposal for a shitty (and bound to be profoundly unpopular) boon to the insurance corporations...a policy masquerading as progressive policy...is enough for me to put a fist through a Princeton professor's office wall. But I recognize that if you have dedicated the last decade of your life, under Republican congressional rule, desperately trying to cobble together a lukewarm pro-corporate health care plan that might pass through Tom DeLay's House, you might just get upset if people don't leap for joy at your plan to force every American, no matter how poor, to become a customer of some giant HMO provider.

Visit the Booman Tribune's post to read more on judging candidates by their "crowd."

• 5 Years Ago: When the Press Helped Colin Powell Sell the War
  disgusting performance from papers including the NY Times and Washington Post
  tags: media war colinpowell iraq

The ArtCal weekly newsletter went out to just over 2000 subscribers today. We sent out the first one on March 30, 2006.

• The CIA operation that should have prevented the Iraq war
  Iraqi scientists who risked their lives to tell the CIA that Iraq had no WMD
  tags: cia iraq war colinpowell bush
• tom moody > For Obama Against the Clintons and Bushes
  Payback time for Clinton's support of Bush is tomorrow, folks.
  tags: hillaryclinton barackobama politics

Until yesterday I had never seen someone seated in the front room of 303 Gallery. I'm wondering if this is in response to James Kalm's "down low" video tour of the Karen Kilimnik show, as 303 Gallery, despite its founder's interest in appropriationist art, has a strict "no photography" policy. Here is James's video on the subject. Use this link if you don't see the video below.

There is also an interesting comment thread on this post at Edward Winkleman's blog.

This Tuesday when I vote in the Democratic primary, I'll be voting for Barack Obama since my only choice is either Hillary Clinton or him. I would have voted for Dennis Kucinich if he were still in the race. I will admit that I have some concerns about Obama's tendency to consort with anti-gay bigots.

My main reasons for voting against Hillary Clinton:

• She voted for the Iraq War. I think she did it cynically. If she could be fooled by the Bush administration's "intelligence" she is too stupid to be President, but I think she was actually just doing it because she thought it was somehow good politics. Never mind that the overwhelming majority of her constituents (including a million plus demonstrators in the streets of NYC) thought she should vote no.
• She voted for the PATRIOT Act.
• She supports the Defense of Marriage Act, again cynically arguing that it was good politics to ward off a constitutional amendment. Really?! Bring it on. I would like to have seen the anti-gay right try to get that passed in 3/4 of the states in this country. I would welcome that discussion of whether this is really what the USA wants for its constitution.
• She says that gay marriages / civil unions should be left to the states. Given that federal law covers Social Security, inheritance, and taxes, that is a deeply flawed position. I have not seen her argue that other anti-discrimination laws, or abortion rights, should be decided at state level. Did you know that covering your married spouse's health insurance through your employer is not taxable, but that it counts as income if it's via a domestic partnership? Tell that to your states' rights friends.