Cosmic delights or dearths

Retro postcards by Franco Brambilla with aliens imposing upon the paper view.

Stephen Hawking takes a hard line on aliens but is he right?

but the aliens themselves would no doubt find Erik Johansson's manipulated photos more fun.

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TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL 2010

A Woman is a Woman: The Female POV (a film festival at the Maysles Institute curated by Miriam Bale) opens with a doco on the history of feminism in Italy in the 60's and 70's, We Want Roses, Too. For the male perspective, Ferzan Ozpetek’s Loose Cannons screens in the World Narrative Feature Competition of the Tribeca Film Festival. Best known for his gay themed Le Fate Ignoranti (Ignorant Fairies) the director's other films rarely get seen outside of Italy. Ozpetek began as an assistant to Massimo Troisi (Il Postino) in 1982 and had a Filmmaker in Focus survey at MoMA in December 2008. A Perfect Day (Un giorno perfetto) screened at the London Film Festival in 2008 and was never released. There's a touch of Italian melodrama to everything he does but it's always balanced out by Ozpetek's acute eye for casting, character and sad, gentle comedy.

Greencine interview with Ozpetek

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ANTONY GORMLEY in Madison Square and HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON at MoMA

British sculptor Antony Gormley cast himself in iron or fiberglass and these 31 naked men have arrived in New York - 4 on the ground of Madison Square Park and 27 on rooftops and ledges of the Flatiron District. It's a re-invention of the sculptor's 2007 Event Horizon that invaded London's South Bank and the Thames River and the idea of an NYC event had been tossed around unsuccessfully since the mid-80's. Gormley really caught the public's attention when he got on of the commissions last summer to sculpt Trafalgar Square's empty Fourth Plinth the other rocks in the Square occupied by statues of the famous dead. Each visitor had an hour of fame standing aloft.

Most New Yorkers will bathe in ignorance of this event not even batting an eye. But what Gormley has achieved is a more a conceptual work raising questions about who might see all those almost unseen Paul Auster-esque moments in the big city - the invisible artisans of the architraves who are both material and metaphysical. Gormley could have chosen a plinth idea for Manhattan and it would have been gossiped about in the same vein as the all those cow sculptures that dotted the pedestrian pastures a decade ago. But there's something more quietly insidious about Gormley's manifestations - the invidious inverse of a delirious New york.

CosmicViva's own rooftop installation. In true NYC one-upmanship she became a sound sculptor;)
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The temporary office of artist Banksy releasing his film Exit Through the Giftshop in NYC.

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Arguably the best known photographer of the C20, Henri Cartier-Bresson is an unmissable MOMA show. So well known are his images that the mind plays games on itself trying to work out which photos are the unseen one-fifth of the show. Moreover, one of Cartier-Bresson's favorite quotes was from French painter Degas: "[it is] wonderful to be famous as long as you remain unknown."

Cartier-Bresson died in 2004 and MOMA's show is the first major retrospective since (83 B/W prints). And so often, a famous artist's estate is governed by a perhaps well meaning but difficult spouse. In Cartier-Bresson's case, though, his second wife (1970) Martine Franck is a well-known photographer in her own right and a member of the Magnum Photos agency (Phaidon just published a new selection of her photos in their 55 Series). Since 1964 she's been documenting Ariane Mnouchkine's Théâtre du Soleil (the company seen last year at New York's Armory) and in 2003 Franck founded the Fondation Cartier-Bresson from which most of the hitherto unseen photos originate.
Martine Franck discusses what her husband would have made of new digital technology (CosmicViva bribed her bankrupt Brit ex-boyfriend with free exhibition entry and coffee to conduct the interview)

Visitors to the show are initially met with huge maps of the photographer's world travels and in an NPR interview, Martine Franck expressed her admiration for and amazement of her husband's ability to be in the right place at the right time: "I think Henri had an innate intuition of what was going on in the world and what was important. I mean, you were in India when Gandhi was assassinated. You were in China when the communists arrived... You were in Russia at the right time." As Franck stated in the video interview, her husband's photos were equally about choices: "the simultaneous recognition in a fraction of a second of the significance of an event, as well as the precise organization of forms that give that event its proper expression" wrote Cartier-Bresson. In 1952 his first book Images à la Sauvette was published - The Decisive Moment (English edition). The title was from his preface in which he quoted the 17th-century writer, Cardinal de Retz: "There is nothing in this world that does not have its decisive moment".

The Decisive Moment was reiterated at the exhibition's launch by curator Peter Galassi: "you become who you are through exposure to the outside world around you...photography as a great medium for meeting the world." Perhaps this is why Cartier-Bresson's photos never seem to loose an iota of power no matter who he snaps (both celebrated and not with a hand-held Leica) an no matter how many times they are viewed. Martine Franck was asked in an ArtInfo interview about her own work, do you see photography as a tool for describing difference?
"A tool for describing difference? Maybe I do express difference in my images. I’m sure I express loneliness. I hope I express happiness. But you know, I never think about these things when I photograph, because what I do is so instinctive. I happen to meet people and then I photograph them; I don’t have any strategy about it. It’s not done in any purposeful way."

The show travels to the Art Institute of Chicago (July 24 - Oct. 3); the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (Oct. 30 - Jan. 30); and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta (Feb. 19 - May 15).Martine Franck at the launch of MoMA's exhibition Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century

all video and photos on this site copyright 2010 CosmicViva unless otherwise attributed
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15th Annual Gen Art Film Festival Awards

With the New York early spring weather reminded Viva that she is quite partial to sunning herself on an intergalactic rock, she braved the nightlife last night for the 15th Annual Gen Art Film Festival Awards. As of this posting no one seems to have uploaded anything yet on the web so the winners were:

The Acura Grand Jury Prize for Best Feature Film ($10,000)
Tanner Hall

The Acura Grand Jury Prize for Best Short Film ($5,000)
The Poodle Trainer

The Wonderwall Stargazer Award
Rooney Mara (Tanner Hall)

The Audience Awards for Best Feature
"happythankyoumoreplease"

The Audience Award for Best Short Film
The Hirosaki Players (supporting Mercy)

Wonderwall takes a look back at stars who've joined the Gen Art indie scene over the past 15 years while vlogger David Jr. has interviews with the Tanner Hall and Teenage Paparazzo (HBO will air later this year) folk. Busy at pre-screens for the Tribeca Fest, CosmicViva was in the ethereal blissful position of not having seen any of the features or shorts i.e. not having to pretend you liked something to avoid loss of face in true NYC fashion. But at the Mercy BLVD nightclub after-party (directed by celebrity photographer Patrick Hoelck and written and produced by Scott Caan-son of famous movie star dad James) the film was deemed very moving by some 'normal' non-scene people) and the Don Julio tequila (sponsored by Diageo) was as good as at the launch party - good spirit drinking can indeed be akin to good eating. Rooney Mara (Tanner Hall) was even more beautiful and alluring in the flesh, and Daughters short directer Chloé Zhao matched her in elegance (she was hotfoot on a train to Florida this morning for more festival promotion). Tatiana von Furstenberg and Francesca Gregorini (Tanner Hall - the private world of an all-girls boarding school in a run down New England town) modestly basked in the limelight of the film's just announced acquisition by Moving Pictures Film and Television (MPF&TV) -it premiered at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Then there was the guy who reminisced to me about his time with Iron Maiden (did you know that Bruce Dickinson was also a fencer, airline pilot etc) - ahhhh New York don't you love it- not such a bad bit of rock to be stranded upon.
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White wine and Sisyphus upon a balmy Saturday

At the always interesting White Box, OFF THE MAP: Rutgers in New York - MFA Graduates 2010 opened on Saturday without disappointing. Dale Klein didn't start painting until her 40s and when fellow students peeked into her studio, she said, they despaired at her 'realist' approach. Having moved on, her Untitled oil is a very promising start to a late career - with lines of force and gravity conflicting for attention on the canvas. Allan. Brian Bulfer, Misti Asberry, and Jessica Bottalico also catch one's attention.

Throughout the evening New Jersey based performance and installation artist Avi Lazare presented Tow: "Two people. Two sides. One wall." Although focusing on the Palestinian/Israeli power struggle, it was even more powerful if one hadn't read the blurb before. In the dark basement were two warriors, two Sisyphuses - their rock threaded through with a chain around each of them.

At the same venue on Tuesday, April 13 at 8pm is Defragmented: a concert of emergent systems, featuring Finnish-based composer/sound artist Marko Timlin alongside thenumber46, the collaborative effort of electro-acoustic flutist Suzanne Thorpe and electronic musician Philip White.
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Maria Irene Fornés' 80th birthday

Careful perusal of the Village Voice listings a week ago revealed a festival of free readings starting March 25 presented by INTAR and NYU's Department of English and its Program in Dramatic Literature to celebrate playwright Maria Irene Fornés' 80th birthday. Casting director Billy Hopkins helmed the reading of Fefu and Her Friends at Theatre for a New City, on Monday, March 29 starring original cast member Rebecca Schull. If anything could engender a lifelong passion for the uniqueness of the theatrical experience then this play would certainly be up there with the American greats; as if an innocent gentle breeze wafted through one's being yet hung on the heart forever and a day.

Author of the forthcoming Fornés book Scott T. Cummings and moderator of the Saturday, April 3 evening reads the final tribute of the evening. Excerpts from Michelle Memran's film The Rest I Make Up: Documenting Irene were screened along with reminiscences from Edmund Gaynes, Aileen Passloff, Alice Playten and Rebecca Schull.



Happy Birthday Irene Fornés



Irene's conduct dance of life

On Monday April 12th at New World Stages (340 West 50th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues) as a benefit for The Off-Broadway Alliance: concert performance of Maria Irene Fornés and Al Carmines' Promenade on Monday, April 12 at New World Stages, directed by Pamela Hall, with musical direction by Ken Lundie. At Saturday's tribute Alice Playten gave an unforgettable rendering of the song Irene wrote specially for her. No video could properly capture that sublime moment.

Last Monday, April 5 at the Cherry Lane Theater, Mayra Ferrer, Felipe Javier Gorostiza, Jacquelyn Landgraf and Kay Matschullat each directed a one act play performed together for the first time as the tetralogy What of the Night? proving just how funny, mischievous and perceptive is Fornés of human foibles and our often utter failings.
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=.......photos and video shot by CosmicViva