PHOTOS HERE (please be patient and I'll add all the attributions)
Viva umm'd and ahh'd but finally it was time for her to be kind to herself and take a holiday. But being Viva the workaholic she couldn't just slump into a man or a deckchair without intellectual edification. Miami Basel Art Fair here she went. After months of nothingness on the website here's a load of photos for your delectation. Don't have a clue what happened to Mr Fish my enthusiastic but somewhat errant snapper. I mentioned Miami and he went bright red! I guess there's unfishfined business down there. I rang 1-800-FISHBOWL and all I got was a gurgling. Whether the sharks finally caught up with him or not I don't know.
But Viva's back in charge - but for all the winking and beguiling she couldn't get her friend into the Scope closer party at Mokai: he was chastised for wearing shorts! Can you believe it? Shorts in Miami! HA! What cared we after a great evening of gallery crawling along North Miami Ave. The cavernous Zadok Gallery with art that really wasn't pandering to any aesthetic alongside Calder prints; a brand new little gallery We Are Here, a pop-up with flagons of wine and a curator who said he'd hung out and worked with art lover/collector Dennis Hopper. A fantastic thrift shop with a $5 honky-tonk piano/pianola and my insignificant other ;) bought me an early XMas prezzie. And low and behold another art fair Fountain (after the Duchamp urinal and housing the NYC Bushwick crowd) with a hugh pink bunny thing and a man reciting anti-Iraq war stuff whiles being body-painted, thence climbing a ladder to the roof and wondering/threatening to walk an adjutting plank. The crowd cheered his decision to err on discretion as the better part of valor. A change from some of our planet egging on the destruction of the human race.
Within the warehouse some really chilled out art. A gallery (whose name I'll add when I find the card) whose friends include Jonas Mekas, a chick from LA who does alluring ball-point pen totems of female something or rather, some tiny painted wooden plaques like the Bless This House embroideries that would hang on your mum's wall - only these were poignantly painted cries from the victims of economic downturn. And then a girl with the most beautiful hands I've ever seen who (very usefully) seems to do pretty much everything including tax. A multi-tasking gal after Viva's heart.
Sunday was spent at the private collections in the barren wastelands of Wynwood - teeny oasis (plural?) of culture among civilizations ruins. At the Rubell Family Collection a fantastically simple piece by the Rubell daughter Jennifer with dripping honey. A few feet away was a rather anemic booth with two 'nurses' dispensing yogurt that you would then reach out to top on your yogurt pot. Apparently the artist wasn't expecting all the bees coming to chill out at the 'bee bourbon' bar. A couple of days before the wind was blowing and honey was spitting everywhere. Last year Jennifer also constructed a breakfast piece. And the main collection is really superb with even the familiar names present with the best examples of their work.
Well - I'm off to catch what's left of the satellite fairs today and then get me some of that Wild Turkey I was swigging from Erwin Wurm's installation at the Bass museum opening Tuesday night. Another really simple yet inherently complex piece. Were there lines of transgression? Should one clean the glass of another (there weren't many), how much should/could one drink? Was the daring do you do really that daring at all!
Bottom line is if it weren't for the main Miami Basel Fair none of the other fairs would exist. NADA had great new emerging work, so did Scope and Pulse as well as SEVEN (that none of the other fair booths seem to know about) but hey - that's the fun of discovering stuff you never knew was there. A living room being winched into a black hole in the wall was one highlight, along with Leslie Thornton's work and some fab animation.
As fairs go it's all quite well co-ordinated with regular shuttle buses to Wynwood and all the other far flung places. Although I did experience 'art shuttle rage' when the sundown air chilled and collectors and public great and small were humbled into equality as there wasn't even an empty cab for love or money.
well - hope I made up for months of pixel neglect….
I'm sure I'll post agin before XMas ….famous last words
#::~~#__----'
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Monday, September 26, 2011
Live feed to Times Square tonight of Met Opera season opener, Donizetti's Anna Bolena
And/or;): 40th birthday today of 'free town' Christiania
+==^
And/or;): 40th birthday today of 'free town' Christiania
+==^
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Friday, August 26, 2011
Viva's a lazy bitch over the summertime. Really she is! But then, New York is one of the few places in the world that allows for such indulgence - 2 months away from the hurly-burly until Labour Day (how apt) kicks us all back into metropolis gear grind. I'm even missing the hurricane - nailing myself to a friend's roof-garden exploring the true forces of nature against our puny mortal existence.! But more, perhaps, of that later. Just wanted to mention two films that were quietly slipping under the summer radar.
Last April 2009, film director John Sayles gave an animated reading of his novel Some Time in the Sun (yet unpublished) at City University of New York's Gotham Center. In the meantime it became the powerful film Amigo about the long-forgotton 1900 Philippine–American War. Below is me co-interviewing Sayles at last year's London Film Festival (it still hasn't a Brit release slated).
Chilean-born Raúl Ruiz' Mysteries of Lisbon (last year's New York Film Festival and released a month ago) said that this film just might be his swan-song and alas, indeed it was. He died a few weeks ago. At 4-and-a-half hours it may initially seem a cinema of another time so removed from the instantaneous twitterings and internet flashings of today as to be hermetically sealed. And yet: any narrative worth its human salt is never instantaneous, easily grasped, immediately consumed. Ruiz' early catalogue was rare enough to find on video let alone DVD. Below is a post-screening Q & A with the film's producer, again from last year's London Film Festival. The film's cinematography is just stunning and one's amazed at how giving someone, André Szankowski, who'd barely done anything but some TV such an opportunity, can achieve these results.
Than That: Films by Kevin Jerome Everson (runs thru Sept. 18 at the Whitney) for those who missed him at Migrating Forms. And the wonderful world of Lyonel Feininger: At The Edge of the World (who? -shame on you;)is there too (thru Oct 16). There's a parallel show of his equally (if not more so) beautiful watercolors and prints at Moeller Fine Art (around the corner, sort of).
Ryan Trecartin: Any Ever (thru Sept. 3) at MoMA PS1
And Dialog in the Dark (mounted in 35 countries since 1988) is at South Street Seaport Exhibition Center. The concept was originated by a German journalist and filmmaker Andreas Heinecke, who was trying to help a friend who was recently blinded.
>>/__``;..
Last April 2009, film director John Sayles gave an animated reading of his novel Some Time in the Sun (yet unpublished) at City University of New York's Gotham Center. In the meantime it became the powerful film Amigo about the long-forgotton 1900 Philippine–American War. Below is me co-interviewing Sayles at last year's London Film Festival (it still hasn't a Brit release slated).
Chilean-born Raúl Ruiz' Mysteries of Lisbon (last year's New York Film Festival and released a month ago) said that this film just might be his swan-song and alas, indeed it was. He died a few weeks ago. At 4-and-a-half hours it may initially seem a cinema of another time so removed from the instantaneous twitterings and internet flashings of today as to be hermetically sealed. And yet: any narrative worth its human salt is never instantaneous, easily grasped, immediately consumed. Ruiz' early catalogue was rare enough to find on video let alone DVD. Below is a post-screening Q & A with the film's producer, again from last year's London Film Festival. The film's cinematography is just stunning and one's amazed at how giving someone, André Szankowski, who'd barely done anything but some TV such an opportunity, can achieve these results.
Than That: Films by Kevin Jerome Everson (runs thru Sept. 18 at the Whitney) for those who missed him at Migrating Forms. And the wonderful world of Lyonel Feininger: At The Edge of the World (who? -shame on you;)is there too (thru Oct 16). There's a parallel show of his equally (if not more so) beautiful watercolors and prints at Moeller Fine Art (around the corner, sort of).
Ryan Trecartin: Any Ever (thru Sept. 3) at MoMA PS1
And Dialog in the Dark (mounted in 35 countries since 1988) is at South Street Seaport Exhibition Center. The concept was originated by a German journalist and filmmaker Andreas Heinecke, who was trying to help a friend who was recently blinded.
>>/__``;..
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Viva's back! Well it was only my words that ever went away for a while. Maybe I should write a self-help book like Good Blogging is Hard (believe in pots of gold and rainbows). And what is good blogging anyway? Ask any 'proper' writer and they'll tell you that writing everyday is torture or as Brit poet Philip Larkin once described modern jazz (compared to ye olde music) akin to sipping a quinine martini whilst taking an enema. Bloggers still don't get a very good press these days. Oftentimes they're treated a bit like the teeny bots in Transformers: the Dark of the Moon- pets jangling about the house making witty informed comments, admired for their metallic transformative nature but never quite taken as seriously as the big guys human or otherwise. i.e. if you were really any good wouldn't your words be helping save the planet or something e.g. writing for The New Yorker? ;)
Julia Roberts' 'house husband' Dean (Bryan Cranston) in Larry Crowne (according to her and our eyes) does little more than post a few comments each day and surf porn sites - his two published books spilling over his study in multiples. And seeing the aforementioned duo of films out this week gets you thinking along the lines of recent New York Times articles about taste in cinema, pleasure, high/low art etc etc. You'd be unlikely to ever find that discussion in the Brit newspapers. Over there, Hollywood has been forever thus only occasionally being given a seat at the same table as the 'long live left-wing 'art-house' cinema'.
Who are the 'normal' people that will want to see Transformers: the Dark of the Moon? Having established Viva probably wouldn't have seen this out of choice, would she have forked out the dollars for la hunky date? And why is it none of these men nowadays ever seem to have any money or always insist on going 'dutch'!? They can't all have been downsized like Larry Crowne can they? But Viva seems to be the only one who has this problem. C'est la Viva....So: where were we? -yes, machines doing unspeakable things to the planet. Now if humans in these movies are allowed to cry at the loss of a 'dear' machine, why don't we ever see the machines procreating? OK: I'll tell you where I'm going with this....
Viva has to admit that she enjoyed Transformers. Well, you know she's a bit biased towards things cosmic. Great recent photos from NASA's Spitzer telescope orbiting the sun. And anything must be good that gets us into the Carl Sagan frame of mind and into the 'there must be more to the universe than Brooklyn'. Have you seen the last clip of the YouTube Life in a Day in which an ordinary working girl posts her almost midnight reflection that in her day THAT day nothing exciting happened? And then the play out credit sequence is a snail close up on what looks like a hard-boiled egg as said escargot munches it's way through a little Chinese cracker saying, "Mind your own business". I wish I'd sent my clip in now. That denouement is so politically refreshingly incorrect - life is beautiful, everyone is equal blah di blah di blah. Viva loves Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa (his real name meaning Mr. Person how alla monde can one get!). How he finds beauty and tranquility watching the daily round of the man who runs a corner store. But clearly THAT wasn't enough for Pessoa either! He had to create 100's of different personalities to write about the different ways he felt about our little planet.
So what in Gaia's name has all this to do with the Hollywood movie Transformers? The movie doesn't profess to be about real life but it is. It's French farce, except instead of doors frenetically flying open and shut we have the 'good guy' transformer machines from the last Transformers pic who've been helping humans, do battle with the bad bots who want ultimately to use humans as slaves to rebuild their own dead planet. Humans play masquerade games with other humans. Monsieur Dylan (Patrick Dempsey) secretly plots with the bots to be hailed the slave humans new leader. John Malkovich (Bruce) plots to save his hairstyle by being leader of a techno organisation and obsessed with color. The good human husband bots trick the bad husband bots into making them think they were 'done in'. And so on. Well not quite....
Viva kept wondering what footware Carly Miller had to save her pretty toes from annihilation - all that racing around the ruins as Chicago was pummeled to pieces. Director Michael Bay's shot list moves so fast in that last 45 minutes (of a 2.5 hour movie!) there was only a glimpse of low heeled strap on Carly having survived escape from the skyscraper eaten in half thence to shreds by the bad bots. Girls of NYC will crave for that pragmatic item of footwear. A merchandising point one doubts is in Paramount's arsenal;)
The trouble with our summer 'save humanity' blockbusters (including The Green Lantern) is that while they profess to be human there's little humanity in sight (a similar problem in Cars 2 though there we're talkin' about creative folks who have wit in abundance). Having said that, perhaps that path isn't such a stupid one to tread. Transformers: the Dark of the Moon is on the right track with their 'comic book' styling. It is funniest (though not often enough) when the reality is farcical. We first glimpse Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley)with her softly focussed bare derriere ascending the stairs (she was formally the Victoria's Secrets lingerie model) to greet boyfriend Sam in bed with white bunnies (stuffed variety). The set design is crumbly warehouse baroque and indeed this human couple could be straight out of Puccini's opera La bohème - both working/socialising with the jet-set though neither having the money to justly inhabit that world.
Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf)receives a medal from President Obama but is subsequently downsized (why...he smashed something in the Oval Office?, anyway not important). Every job interview he then has is akin to the hard-sell The Apprentice phi Beta cappa. But this couple of Sam and Carly are outside the box. And the movie seems to say that is precisely the reason why they survived. Much of their dialogue is risible and embarrassing - a cross between a chocolate bar ad and one for a sanitary towel. But again, this seems less accident than intention on the part of the filmmakers. NASA's power female Charlotte Mearing (Frances McDormand) plays the 'straight man' in all this (the end credits 'out take' of her kissing Seymour Simmons (John Turturro) should have been in that actual final moments of the film not an afterthought). The filmmakers also somewhat hedged their bets on the 'farcical' human qualities of the good bots (though not on the antics of the teeny ones) - bots have been working with humans long enough (half a century) to have picked up some nasty habits.
Larry Crowne (Tom Hanks) was always 'in the box' but just never realized. 20 years as a cook in the Navy, 'Gaia' knows how many years as a salesman at U-Mart. Then one day he's downsized - simple telling low angle shot of his car pulling into a lovely suburban drive-way after just being told. OK. Maybe he's not the 'everyman' figure in everyone's mind's eye but Hanks (both as actor and director) makes you believe that Larry Crowne is America's Everyman.
This self-directed movie could be ever-so cloying. And no doubt some will find it thus. But Larry Crowne seems to be the type of Hollywood movie (it's actually Hanks own company Playtone together with France's Canal Plus and ex-Warner exec Rousselet) that was the reason Hanks entered his profession in the first place. A film about people. Hanks wrote the script with Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding - the film that became the bread-winner for Hanks production company) and while Larry Crowne feels 'scripted' it's nonetheless believable and endearing. And though 'scripted' the film's pacing never feels forced. Viva's not what you'd call a Julia Roberts 'fan' but she's certainly always harbored a 'soft spot' for Ms. Roberts. And she makes it easy to see why her disillusioned college teacher character Mercedes Tainot ended up with that husband of hers. He was probably the only male appendage even in long range whose body shared the flimsiest of intelligent life a few feet above. Ms Tainot helped of course by copious medicinal cocktail hours.
And what film (such as this) with movie stars these days is courageous enough to have a dig at Facebook and Twitter and the declining attention span our young Americans?! I can't for the life of me see why the same audience for Transformers wouldn't go 'ah....that was sweet' without a hint of irony for Larry Crowne. There are no bastards in this movie only nice, good people. How could that possibly reflect the real world? In rhetoric response, do we go to the movies ever to see the 'real world'? The irony of cinema is that it began early last century frightening the bejeezus out of audiences with trains hurtling into their seats. Ever since, the cinema has tried every which way to reclaim that illusion of innocent spectatorship involvement. 3D tries desperately and will always fail miserably because we've seen it all before. (Great fun for cinematographers, though). The New York Times did precisely its job in airing the Dan Kois debate over eating his “cultural vegetables” by attending 'art house' cinema.
Do people really want to be educated at the end of a long week Friday/Saturday night? And what is it to be educated anyways? Does comedy educate us? Viva would answer most certainly, it reminds us of our human truths. Whether we do anything about it is another problem entirely. Don't shoot the comic for his message only for his bad delivery. And if everyone has/is entitled to different tastes then how can Hollywood studios possibly gauge through test screenings whether a film will rise or fall?
A fascinating meditation on all this is a film that scooped many of the prizes at this year's Berlin Film Festival, A Separation. Initially one's heart sinks as it forebodes plodding social realism. The intricacy of its fabric, though, becomes ever more intriguing. We are all the same but different seems its cliched message. But like every cliche it began its life as a human truth. The by turns liberating and depressing truth ruthlessly unveiled by the internet is that we are all covering or coveting something. All wanting to be left alone and yet be secretly be the star of the show. The commerce of Hollywood and the internet want to personalize everything for us in order that our lives be happier and more fulfilling. But how do we know what we want when our taste is constantly tempted for good or ill? When we flirt with being 'something else'?
Maybe the privilege of being a bat stuck in a movie theater ain't such a bad thing. Maybe being somewhat removed from the world can be only a good thing in understanding it. And maybe, just maybe, things that go 'POW', 'WHAM', 'WHALLOP' and 'I LOVE YOU' can live quite symbiotically within the seaweed of words and images that is the semiotics of cinema. But as my photographer Mr. Fish observed (without even having seen Peter Sellers' Being There, "you mustn't pollute the water man". Respect. Respect.
Julia Roberts' 'house husband' Dean (Bryan Cranston) in Larry Crowne (according to her and our eyes) does little more than post a few comments each day and surf porn sites - his two published books spilling over his study in multiples. And seeing the aforementioned duo of films out this week gets you thinking along the lines of recent New York Times articles about taste in cinema, pleasure, high/low art etc etc. You'd be unlikely to ever find that discussion in the Brit newspapers. Over there, Hollywood has been forever thus only occasionally being given a seat at the same table as the 'long live left-wing 'art-house' cinema'.
Who are the 'normal' people that will want to see Transformers: the Dark of the Moon? Having established Viva probably wouldn't have seen this out of choice, would she have forked out the dollars for la hunky date? And why is it none of these men nowadays ever seem to have any money or always insist on going 'dutch'!? They can't all have been downsized like Larry Crowne can they? But Viva seems to be the only one who has this problem. C'est la Viva....So: where were we? -yes, machines doing unspeakable things to the planet. Now if humans in these movies are allowed to cry at the loss of a 'dear' machine, why don't we ever see the machines procreating? OK: I'll tell you where I'm going with this....
Viva has to admit that she enjoyed Transformers. Well, you know she's a bit biased towards things cosmic. Great recent photos from NASA's Spitzer telescope orbiting the sun. And anything must be good that gets us into the Carl Sagan frame of mind and into the 'there must be more to the universe than Brooklyn'. Have you seen the last clip of the YouTube Life in a Day in which an ordinary working girl posts her almost midnight reflection that in her day THAT day nothing exciting happened? And then the play out credit sequence is a snail close up on what looks like a hard-boiled egg as said escargot munches it's way through a little Chinese cracker saying, "Mind your own business". I wish I'd sent my clip in now. That denouement is so politically refreshingly incorrect - life is beautiful, everyone is equal blah di blah di blah. Viva loves Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa (his real name meaning Mr. Person how alla monde can one get!). How he finds beauty and tranquility watching the daily round of the man who runs a corner store. But clearly THAT wasn't enough for Pessoa either! He had to create 100's of different personalities to write about the different ways he felt about our little planet.
So what in Gaia's name has all this to do with the Hollywood movie Transformers? The movie doesn't profess to be about real life but it is. It's French farce, except instead of doors frenetically flying open and shut we have the 'good guy' transformer machines from the last Transformers pic who've been helping humans, do battle with the bad bots who want ultimately to use humans as slaves to rebuild their own dead planet. Humans play masquerade games with other humans. Monsieur Dylan (Patrick Dempsey) secretly plots with the bots to be hailed the slave humans new leader. John Malkovich (Bruce) plots to save his hairstyle by being leader of a techno organisation and obsessed with color. The good human husband bots trick the bad husband bots into making them think they were 'done in'. And so on. Well not quite....
Viva kept wondering what footware Carly Miller had to save her pretty toes from annihilation - all that racing around the ruins as Chicago was pummeled to pieces. Director Michael Bay's shot list moves so fast in that last 45 minutes (of a 2.5 hour movie!) there was only a glimpse of low heeled strap on Carly having survived escape from the skyscraper eaten in half thence to shreds by the bad bots. Girls of NYC will crave for that pragmatic item of footwear. A merchandising point one doubts is in Paramount's arsenal;)
The trouble with our summer 'save humanity' blockbusters (including The Green Lantern) is that while they profess to be human there's little humanity in sight (a similar problem in Cars 2 though there we're talkin' about creative folks who have wit in abundance). Having said that, perhaps that path isn't such a stupid one to tread. Transformers: the Dark of the Moon is on the right track with their 'comic book' styling. It is funniest (though not often enough) when the reality is farcical. We first glimpse Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley)with her softly focussed bare derriere ascending the stairs (she was formally the Victoria's Secrets lingerie model) to greet boyfriend Sam in bed with white bunnies (stuffed variety). The set design is crumbly warehouse baroque and indeed this human couple could be straight out of Puccini's opera La bohème - both working/socialising with the jet-set though neither having the money to justly inhabit that world.
Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf)receives a medal from President Obama but is subsequently downsized (why...he smashed something in the Oval Office?, anyway not important). Every job interview he then has is akin to the hard-sell The Apprentice phi Beta cappa. But this couple of Sam and Carly are outside the box. And the movie seems to say that is precisely the reason why they survived. Much of their dialogue is risible and embarrassing - a cross between a chocolate bar ad and one for a sanitary towel. But again, this seems less accident than intention on the part of the filmmakers. NASA's power female Charlotte Mearing (Frances McDormand) plays the 'straight man' in all this (the end credits 'out take' of her kissing Seymour Simmons (John Turturro) should have been in that actual final moments of the film not an afterthought). The filmmakers also somewhat hedged their bets on the 'farcical' human qualities of the good bots (though not on the antics of the teeny ones) - bots have been working with humans long enough (half a century) to have picked up some nasty habits.
Larry Crowne (Tom Hanks) was always 'in the box' but just never realized. 20 years as a cook in the Navy, 'Gaia' knows how many years as a salesman at U-Mart. Then one day he's downsized - simple telling low angle shot of his car pulling into a lovely suburban drive-way after just being told. OK. Maybe he's not the 'everyman' figure in everyone's mind's eye but Hanks (both as actor and director) makes you believe that Larry Crowne is America's Everyman.
This self-directed movie could be ever-so cloying. And no doubt some will find it thus. But Larry Crowne seems to be the type of Hollywood movie (it's actually Hanks own company Playtone together with France's Canal Plus and ex-Warner exec Rousselet) that was the reason Hanks entered his profession in the first place. A film about people. Hanks wrote the script with Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding - the film that became the bread-winner for Hanks production company) and while Larry Crowne feels 'scripted' it's nonetheless believable and endearing. And though 'scripted' the film's pacing never feels forced. Viva's not what you'd call a Julia Roberts 'fan' but she's certainly always harbored a 'soft spot' for Ms. Roberts. And she makes it easy to see why her disillusioned college teacher character Mercedes Tainot ended up with that husband of hers. He was probably the only male appendage even in long range whose body shared the flimsiest of intelligent life a few feet above. Ms Tainot helped of course by copious medicinal cocktail hours.
And what film (such as this) with movie stars these days is courageous enough to have a dig at Facebook and Twitter and the declining attention span our young Americans?! I can't for the life of me see why the same audience for Transformers wouldn't go 'ah....that was sweet' without a hint of irony for Larry Crowne. There are no bastards in this movie only nice, good people. How could that possibly reflect the real world? In rhetoric response, do we go to the movies ever to see the 'real world'? The irony of cinema is that it began early last century frightening the bejeezus out of audiences with trains hurtling into their seats. Ever since, the cinema has tried every which way to reclaim that illusion of innocent spectatorship involvement. 3D tries desperately and will always fail miserably because we've seen it all before. (Great fun for cinematographers, though). The New York Times did precisely its job in airing the Dan Kois debate over eating his “cultural vegetables” by attending 'art house' cinema.
Do people really want to be educated at the end of a long week Friday/Saturday night? And what is it to be educated anyways? Does comedy educate us? Viva would answer most certainly, it reminds us of our human truths. Whether we do anything about it is another problem entirely. Don't shoot the comic for his message only for his bad delivery. And if everyone has/is entitled to different tastes then how can Hollywood studios possibly gauge through test screenings whether a film will rise or fall?
A fascinating meditation on all this is a film that scooped many of the prizes at this year's Berlin Film Festival, A Separation. Initially one's heart sinks as it forebodes plodding social realism. The intricacy of its fabric, though, becomes ever more intriguing. We are all the same but different seems its cliched message. But like every cliche it began its life as a human truth. The by turns liberating and depressing truth ruthlessly unveiled by the internet is that we are all covering or coveting something. All wanting to be left alone and yet be secretly be the star of the show. The commerce of Hollywood and the internet want to personalize everything for us in order that our lives be happier and more fulfilling. But how do we know what we want when our taste is constantly tempted for good or ill? When we flirt with being 'something else'?
Maybe the privilege of being a bat stuck in a movie theater ain't such a bad thing. Maybe being somewhat removed from the world can be only a good thing in understanding it. And maybe, just maybe, things that go 'POW', 'WHAM', 'WHALLOP' and 'I LOVE YOU' can live quite symbiotically within the seaweed of words and images that is the semiotics of cinema. But as my photographer Mr. Fish observed (without even having seen Peter Sellers' Being There, "you mustn't pollute the water man". Respect. Respect.
Friday, June 10, 2011
FIGMENT is back again this weekend. Even if you can't find some art you like, Governors Island is an installation in and of itself.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
The White Box has a benefit Tues June 7 (6-9pm): "Where is Ai Weiwei?". Performances by Margaret Leng Tan, Lutz Rath, Tim Rollins and K.O.S., poetry by Anthony Haden-Guest and a symposium with screenings.
RSVP to benefit@whiteboxny.org, suggested admission $50
Donations (tax-deductible)
Trisha Brown Dance Company's recreates Roof Piece on the 40th anniversary of its creation. In this work, ten dancers stationed on rooftops mimic each other's movements in an improvised and mutable series of movements. The piece will be recreated on roofs surrounding the southern end of the High Line, so that park visitors will be encircled by the performance as it unfolds. These performances are free and open to the public, and do not require any reservations in advance. June 9/10, 7:00 PM; June 11 at 5:00 and 7:00 PM. Each performance lasts 20 - 30 minutes.
Mr Fish's photos from the Bushwick Open Studios 2011 weekend:
brave fffing Mr.Fish to take photos with a cat on guard. Paintings all on the same theme (same theme? exact same paintings) - australopithecus man devoured by leopard - a 1960s book on primordial man (time-life type book) on drawing table as resource. Back part of studio at 114 Forrest St
Ian showed Mr Fish around and said 'ohh, man you are going to be amaaaazed.' and brought him back to see Meg Hitchcock's work. The pic he's holding up one of her talismans or something on her bookcase. She cuts out individual letters from sacred texts (bible, korans, etc) and pastes them together again into words spelling out passages from other sacred texts in these wonderful designs...built up 3d levels. Meg's having a solo show soon in Chelsea.
Michele Abramowitz, showing at Hart Studios 770 hart St.- Napoleon
Cojo (artsucks.com)...he did a drawing a day for a year (b&w drawings in wall and in bins) and they were categorized into four or so areas (sea life, aliens, etc) and now he's combining them into 10 large paintings. That is the first one completed. Palette of 72 acrylic colors (in other room).
Fish found a mermaid ;) Francesca Neiman who does pencil drawings in that apt. plus Julia Colavita's work.
Julia Colavita
Ben Godward's work, 49 Wyckoff 3rd floor. His pal Paul St Savage gave Fish his angry eel sticker.
Myles Bennet 49 wyckoff 3rd floor - canvases, painted/drawed upon, then threads stripped out. And worn (in photos alongside pieces pinned to walls). That's his painting in background.
Nathan Dilworth 49 Wyckoff 3rd floor
Patio of mexican restaurant Aztecaville at 91 Wyckoff. They showed photographer David Crespo there who photographs dancers.
Fashion is for Ugly People at Illuminated Metropolis Gallery 547 w 27th suite 529 (group show):
Woman wondering where Fish went...
Tomorrow & Tomorrow at Miyako Yoshinaga - Yana Dimitrova artist
Hisako Kobayashi
ß__ƒ
{..,,^
RSVP to benefit@whiteboxny.org, suggested admission $50
Donations (tax-deductible)
Trisha Brown Dance Company's recreates Roof Piece on the 40th anniversary of its creation. In this work, ten dancers stationed on rooftops mimic each other's movements in an improvised and mutable series of movements. The piece will be recreated on roofs surrounding the southern end of the High Line, so that park visitors will be encircled by the performance as it unfolds. These performances are free and open to the public, and do not require any reservations in advance. June 9/10, 7:00 PM; June 11 at 5:00 and 7:00 PM. Each performance lasts 20 - 30 minutes.
Mr Fish's photos from the Bushwick Open Studios 2011 weekend:
brave fffing Mr.Fish to take photos with a cat on guard. Paintings all on the same theme (same theme? exact same paintings) - australopithecus man devoured by leopard - a 1960s book on primordial man (time-life type book) on drawing table as resource. Back part of studio at 114 Forrest St
Ian showed Mr Fish around and said 'ohh, man you are going to be amaaaazed.' and brought him back to see Meg Hitchcock's work. The pic he's holding up one of her talismans or something on her bookcase. She cuts out individual letters from sacred texts (bible, korans, etc) and pastes them together again into words spelling out passages from other sacred texts in these wonderful designs...built up 3d levels. Meg's having a solo show soon in Chelsea.
Michele Abramowitz, showing at Hart Studios 770 hart St.- Napoleon
Cojo (artsucks.com)...he did a drawing a day for a year (b&w drawings in wall and in bins) and they were categorized into four or so areas (sea life, aliens, etc) and now he's combining them into 10 large paintings. That is the first one completed. Palette of 72 acrylic colors (in other room).
Fish found a mermaid ;) Francesca Neiman who does pencil drawings in that apt. plus Julia Colavita's work.
Julia Colavita
Ben Godward's work, 49 Wyckoff 3rd floor. His pal Paul St Savage gave Fish his angry eel sticker.
Myles Bennet 49 wyckoff 3rd floor - canvases, painted/drawed upon, then threads stripped out. And worn (in photos alongside pieces pinned to walls). That's his painting in background.
Nathan Dilworth 49 Wyckoff 3rd floor
Patio of mexican restaurant Aztecaville at 91 Wyckoff. They showed photographer David Crespo there who photographs dancers.
Fashion is for Ugly People at Illuminated Metropolis Gallery 547 w 27th suite 529 (group show):
Woman wondering where Fish went...
Tomorrow & Tomorrow at Miyako Yoshinaga - Yana Dimitrova artist
Hisako Kobayashi
ß__ƒ
{..,,^
Friday, June 3, 2011
A reminder that Bushwick's annual open studios starts tonight (June 3) - really generous, interesting artists and well-worth the trip (and hardly what one could call a trek). Let's hope for good weather.
the true existence in the dim appeals to my nocturnal sensibilite
and Alarums and Excursions - an exhibition of multiples and prints at Frontroom
"Why does a minor chord sound sad? Is there a formula for the perfect hit? Whistling, dancing, finger-snapping, and toe-tapping—what makes us do it? Find out when music and science join forces in an interactive bazaar of beats, sounds, and rhythm in the exhibition BIORHYTHM, created by the Science Gallery and presented at Eyebeam as part of the World Science Festival". Need to RSVP for BIORHYTHM events. THe Science Fest is highly recommended if it's as good as past years.
æ'--Ò
[..]
the true existence in the dim appeals to my nocturnal sensibilite
and Alarums and Excursions - an exhibition of multiples and prints at Frontroom
"Why does a minor chord sound sad? Is there a formula for the perfect hit? Whistling, dancing, finger-snapping, and toe-tapping—what makes us do it? Find out when music and science join forces in an interactive bazaar of beats, sounds, and rhythm in the exhibition BIORHYTHM, created by the Science Gallery and presented at Eyebeam as part of the World Science Festival". Need to RSVP for BIORHYTHM events. THe Science Fest is highly recommended if it's as good as past years.
æ'--Ò
[..]
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
What my fish photographer did teach me is to ponder! A quality rarely experienced on the isle of Manhattan. So for a few days X-Men: First Class has been apond my mind. I'm not a comic book geek (sorry, 'fan') but I did once have a boyfriend (well Viva doesn't really have such those things) so let's say significant 'geek-o'-the hun' who was into this. Methinks the geek and the etiquette niver quite meshed, though. TMI, I know...Hmmmm..And I never thought that Viva would enjoy an X-Men movie - I dimly remember seeing the first one a decade ago when I was but a jejeune. And I know I'm not supposed to like such things.
Viva should, instead, be raving about Godard's Film Socialisme out this week. Well, of course one should rave. Godard simply IS a genius. And his new film says more about the state of mankind, modernity and metropolis (even though it gyrates on an ocean liner) than any techno-geekno device you will ever order online. But America has a long way to go before it even catches up with Alphaville. Plus ça change.
Does X-Men: First Class really tell us anything about anything or is it so wondrously packaged that we throw caution to the wind and let ourselves just be entertained? Well, the latter is most certainly true. And you just KNOW that's not a given anymore in Hollywood or even in independent cinema. And if the philosopher Slavoj Žižek WERE to write about X-Men then maybe this one might set him flying. Superficially it may seem silly to put pen to paper to digital celluloid and link the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis to comic book mutants! But to even get a normal schoolkid to question any 'ffffing Hugh Jackman thing' is an A-plus achievement.
And another 'A' of Matthew Vaughn's direction is to let us other ring-side mutants into that inner realm without bamboozling our sensibilities. The narrative line (a historical prequel to X-Men, 2000 with Magneto's holocaust origins) is clear whilst never pedantic - all in the original comics I'm informed. And in the way Arthur C. Clarke's The Adjustment Bureau (and the recent film adaptation) forced one to consider just who is pulling the strings in our so-called democracies, X-Men: First Class may dazzle us with CGI bodily transformations but at heart these creatures are not simply puppets. They are willing to cut their strings, however reluctantly to question, if not exactly meet their maker. And it's lucky happenstance that the film was shot in England (yummy Architectural Digest photo spread) for there is a Celtic discombobulation of spirit- a dark, brooding, keening longing for the unknowable. The rune within ourselves: beyond and within all that bluster is the root of our evil and becoming. Those who have no more talent nor ambition but to create a fight. And those who lack any less talent nor ambivalence than to acquiesce to such primordial pomp. That's the kind of gravitas you get when a female producer (Lauren Shuler Donner - OK, she's Richard Donner's wife but hey...) is on board. Apparently Bryan Singer (director of X-Men 1&2 and 'story by' on the latest) bought Marvel Comics stock (pre X-Men) when it was in bankruptcy. A joke for a friend. Disney later paid $4 billion for the company! I'm now gonna go and rent me Matthew Vaughn's Kick Ass.
At the next SciCafe tonight Wed, June 1 (American Museum of Natural History) "Christopher Raxworthy, associate curator in the Department of Herpetology who has spent decades working in Madagascar, will discuss the mix of modern technologies—including satellite imagery and DNA sequencing—and “muddy boots” field biology to remote parts of the island that is making discovery possible today."
Hīc iacet Arthūrus, rex quondam, rexque futūrus
Viva should, instead, be raving about Godard's Film Socialisme out this week. Well, of course one should rave. Godard simply IS a genius. And his new film says more about the state of mankind, modernity and metropolis (even though it gyrates on an ocean liner) than any techno-geekno device you will ever order online. But America has a long way to go before it even catches up with Alphaville. Plus ça change.
Does X-Men: First Class really tell us anything about anything or is it so wondrously packaged that we throw caution to the wind and let ourselves just be entertained? Well, the latter is most certainly true. And you just KNOW that's not a given anymore in Hollywood or even in independent cinema. And if the philosopher Slavoj Žižek WERE to write about X-Men then maybe this one might set him flying. Superficially it may seem silly to put pen to paper to digital celluloid and link the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis to comic book mutants! But to even get a normal schoolkid to question any 'ffffing Hugh Jackman thing' is an A-plus achievement.
And another 'A' of Matthew Vaughn's direction is to let us other ring-side mutants into that inner realm without bamboozling our sensibilities. The narrative line (a historical prequel to X-Men, 2000 with Magneto's holocaust origins) is clear whilst never pedantic - all in the original comics I'm informed. And in the way Arthur C. Clarke's The Adjustment Bureau (and the recent film adaptation) forced one to consider just who is pulling the strings in our so-called democracies, X-Men: First Class may dazzle us with CGI bodily transformations but at heart these creatures are not simply puppets. They are willing to cut their strings, however reluctantly to question, if not exactly meet their maker. And it's lucky happenstance that the film was shot in England (yummy Architectural Digest photo spread) for there is a Celtic discombobulation of spirit- a dark, brooding, keening longing for the unknowable. The rune within ourselves: beyond and within all that bluster is the root of our evil and becoming. Those who have no more talent nor ambition but to create a fight. And those who lack any less talent nor ambivalence than to acquiesce to such primordial pomp. That's the kind of gravitas you get when a female producer (Lauren Shuler Donner - OK, she's Richard Donner's wife but hey...) is on board. Apparently Bryan Singer (director of X-Men 1&2 and 'story by' on the latest) bought Marvel Comics stock (pre X-Men) when it was in bankruptcy. A joke for a friend. Disney later paid $4 billion for the company! I'm now gonna go and rent me Matthew Vaughn's Kick Ass.
At the next SciCafe tonight Wed, June 1 (American Museum of Natural History) "Christopher Raxworthy, associate curator in the Department of Herpetology who has spent decades working in Madagascar, will discuss the mix of modern technologies—including satellite imagery and DNA sequencing—and “muddy boots” field biology to remote parts of the island that is making discovery possible today."
Hīc iacet Arthūrus, rex quondam, rexque futūrus
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) hosts an evening with artist and filmmaker Andrew Lampert, including a screening with performative elements and a conversation between Lampert and musician/writer Alan Licht - part of EAI's ongoing 40th anniversary programming. (6.30pm Tues May 31)- $7.00 / Students $5.00
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Just when one was about to give up on digital aquaticism, Mr Fish - my new photographer for the uninitiated (me thinks he's possibly a philosopher who prefers to ponder his subjects) redeemed himself with an interesting eye at these gallery previews below. And a reminder that Bushwick's annual open studios is next weekend (June 3) - really generous, interesting artists and well-worth the trip (and hardly what one could call a trek). Let's hope for good weather.
Jack Smith show Thanks for Explaining Me (Gladstone Gallery)
Untitled, 1958-1962/2011 Analog C-print hand printed from original color negative on Fuji Crystal Archive paper
Jack Smith film installation
Bob - Claire Fontaine (Metro Pictures)
Louise Lawler Fitting (Metro Pictures)
Martin Kippenburger Broken Kilometer (1990), with Kippenburger's Untitled (Wallpaper) (1991) on wall in background (I had Vision, (Lurhing Augustine Gallery) © Estate Martin Kippenberger, Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne
detail from Martin Kippenberger's Untitled, 1991
gummy bear detail from Martin Kippenberger Untitled (from the series Heavy Burschi), 1989/1990 © Estate Martin Kippenberger, Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne
detail from Robert Crumb Metamorphosis, 1994 (Pages 50-51) (Tony Shafrazi Gallery). Worth a visit for the Vladimir Tatlin and the Constructivist film posters.
James Cohan Gallery: painting on wall Trenton Doyle Hancock
(detail of table piece) Tom Friedman Small World, 1995-1997 (modeling clay) - James Cohan Gallery
detail from Business As Usual: The Tower at the Folkert de Jong Operation Harmony show at James Cohan Gallery (ended May 7)
ππ__}}
. . .
Jack Smith show Thanks for Explaining Me (Gladstone Gallery)
Untitled, 1958-1962/2011 Analog C-print hand printed from original color negative on Fuji Crystal Archive paper
Jack Smith film installation
Bob - Claire Fontaine (Metro Pictures)
Louise Lawler Fitting (Metro Pictures)
Martin Kippenburger Broken Kilometer (1990), with Kippenburger's Untitled (Wallpaper) (1991) on wall in background (I had Vision, (Lurhing Augustine Gallery) © Estate Martin Kippenberger, Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne
detail from Martin Kippenberger's Untitled, 1991
gummy bear detail from Martin Kippenberger Untitled (from the series Heavy Burschi), 1989/1990 © Estate Martin Kippenberger, Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne
detail from Robert Crumb Metamorphosis, 1994 (Pages 50-51) (Tony Shafrazi Gallery). Worth a visit for the Vladimir Tatlin and the Constructivist film posters.
James Cohan Gallery: painting on wall Trenton Doyle Hancock
(detail of table piece) Tom Friedman Small World, 1995-1997 (modeling clay) - James Cohan Gallery
detail from Business As Usual: The Tower at the Folkert de Jong Operation Harmony show at James Cohan Gallery (ended May 7)
ππ__}}
. . .
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Johnny Depp upstaged by the mermaids! Yeahhhh, life does still have meaning after all;) The disappointing thing about Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, though - and it'd be hard for Mr. Depp ever to disappoint, is that it just isn't that exciting. Dariusz Wolski's 3D cinematography should probably garner an Academy Award nomination next year in a sea of forgettable 3D Hollywood efforts. But when mortals comme moi begin analysing the 3D (and wow is it quietly and unobtrusively impressive) something must inevitably be lacking in other departments. It's a shame most of the mermaids are underwater and underused except for Syrena (Astrid Berges-Frisby-a promising screen future there) captured for her tear that would unlock the fountain of youth. Now: did the film's writers borrow that idea from a Tribeca 2010 film The White Meadows (Iranian writer/director Mohammad Rasoulof) about a man who sails around collecting tears? Credit where credit is due.
But this movie does what it says on the can. It rollicks often rollercoasts along and the musicals cred of director Rob Marshall (Nine, Chicago) is really valued in choreographing the film as a whole. A crying shame there just weren't any dance/singing numbers, though. People would pay good money to see Depp, Penélope Cruz and the gang besport themselves in merry moves.
Now if Mr. Fish had taken more photos for me he would have been treated to this watery fest. Can fish feel fear? Or even guilt? By process of osmosis who does that effect the DNA of a mermaid? Oh dear, Viva had better stay stum - that's what happens when you start dating a scientist.
Opening tomorrow is the annual experimental Migrating Forms film fest at Anthology Film Archive (May 20–29) with Melanie Gilligan's Popular Unrest . Loads of bounty here shining from the watery cine depths. Each year the fest highlights a neglected director and this year Brazilian Glauber Rocha has the honour. If you miss the screenings both Black God, White Devil (Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol) 1964 and Entranced Earth (Portuguese: Terra em Transe) 1967 are available on that bête noire of cineastes, DVD (thanks to a region free Brit outfit Mr. Bongo), but Antônio das Mortes (1969) is harder to find. Among the shorts are Cao Fei's East Wind (his exhibition Play Time opened at Lombard-Freid last night. BZV is Kevin Jerome Everson's latest (he opened last year's fest). And the the very Lower East Side Laure Provost (she's actually London based) receives a nice profiling.
Another treat for New York is the month long New Museum residency of Thai film director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (my favorite being Syndromes and a Century)
Tonight's opening at the Krause Gallery looks interesting. Michael Marshall is an artist, photographer, educator, physicist, platinum printer, creative ornithologist, gardener, digital image maker, illusionist, natural historian, cartographer, wood worker, yogi, encaustic painter, professor. Not backwards in coming forwards is Mr. Marshall. And Rob Tarbell has been working with smoke on paper for years: "With Vitreous Humor, Tarbellís interest lies in fabricating immediate yet elusive objects that play with a pleasurable deception as a way to channel a collective desire to suspend disbelief. The works consider how trust is gained and how obvious fictions become reality." Hmmm...
The Kitchen's Foreclosed. Between Crisis and Possibility interrogates the term foreclosure.
Continuing at Marianne Boesky's Chelsea space are Salvatore Scarpitta's Trajectory and Ted Stamm's Works on Paper in the Project Room. Matthew Porter's The Undefeated at Invisible-Exports is an artistic dialectic of Jane Fonda and John Wayne's hollywood careers. And any chance to see the work of Chaim Soutine shouldn't be passed up - you even get Francis Bacon for the same visit (Helly Nahmad Gallery – located in the Carlyle Hotel). Nor should hearing some of the legends of music in the Cafe Carlyle - Bobby Short's 'hang out'. Viva was in a spin for weeks after seeing Eartha Kitt there many moons ago. Spooning of moons....
Dinah Washington singing Destination Moon
And The American Museum of Natural History (Fri 20th 9pm-1am) has One Step Beyond vibing in the Hayden Planetarium with live bands, DJs, and VJs at the Rose Center for Earth and Space. Cocktails in space - tickets are $25 but that does include a free future visit to the museum. (You have to be 21 or over because of the alcohol though)
100th anniversary of Gustav Mahler's death yesterday. Can't wait to see Percy Adlon's (does anyone remember Zuckerbaby or Baghdad Cafe?) film Mahler on the Couch
!____==
\\>>
But this movie does what it says on the can. It rollicks often rollercoasts along and the musicals cred of director Rob Marshall (Nine, Chicago) is really valued in choreographing the film as a whole. A crying shame there just weren't any dance/singing numbers, though. People would pay good money to see Depp, Penélope Cruz and the gang besport themselves in merry moves.
Now if Mr. Fish had taken more photos for me he would have been treated to this watery fest. Can fish feel fear? Or even guilt? By process of osmosis who does that effect the DNA of a mermaid? Oh dear, Viva had better stay stum - that's what happens when you start dating a scientist.
Opening tomorrow is the annual experimental Migrating Forms film fest at Anthology Film Archive (May 20–29) with Melanie Gilligan's Popular Unrest . Loads of bounty here shining from the watery cine depths. Each year the fest highlights a neglected director and this year Brazilian Glauber Rocha has the honour. If you miss the screenings both Black God, White Devil (Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol) 1964 and Entranced Earth (Portuguese: Terra em Transe) 1967 are available on that bête noire of cineastes, DVD (thanks to a region free Brit outfit Mr. Bongo), but Antônio das Mortes (1969) is harder to find. Among the shorts are Cao Fei's East Wind (his exhibition Play Time opened at Lombard-Freid last night. BZV is Kevin Jerome Everson's latest (he opened last year's fest). And the the very Lower East Side Laure Provost (she's actually London based) receives a nice profiling.
Another treat for New York is the month long New Museum residency of Thai film director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (my favorite being Syndromes and a Century)
Tonight's opening at the Krause Gallery looks interesting. Michael Marshall is an artist, photographer, educator, physicist, platinum printer, creative ornithologist, gardener, digital image maker, illusionist, natural historian, cartographer, wood worker, yogi, encaustic painter, professor. Not backwards in coming forwards is Mr. Marshall. And Rob Tarbell has been working with smoke on paper for years: "With Vitreous Humor, Tarbellís interest lies in fabricating immediate yet elusive objects that play with a pleasurable deception as a way to channel a collective desire to suspend disbelief. The works consider how trust is gained and how obvious fictions become reality." Hmmm...
The Kitchen's Foreclosed. Between Crisis and Possibility interrogates the term foreclosure.
Continuing at Marianne Boesky's Chelsea space are Salvatore Scarpitta's Trajectory and Ted Stamm's Works on Paper in the Project Room. Matthew Porter's The Undefeated at Invisible-Exports is an artistic dialectic of Jane Fonda and John Wayne's hollywood careers. And any chance to see the work of Chaim Soutine shouldn't be passed up - you even get Francis Bacon for the same visit (Helly Nahmad Gallery – located in the Carlyle Hotel). Nor should hearing some of the legends of music in the Cafe Carlyle - Bobby Short's 'hang out'. Viva was in a spin for weeks after seeing Eartha Kitt there many moons ago. Spooning of moons....
Dinah Washington singing Destination Moon
And The American Museum of Natural History (Fri 20th 9pm-1am) has One Step Beyond vibing in the Hayden Planetarium with live bands, DJs, and VJs at the Rose Center for Earth and Space. Cocktails in space - tickets are $25 but that does include a free future visit to the museum. (You have to be 21 or over because of the alcohol though)
100th anniversary of Gustav Mahler's death yesterday. Can't wait to see Percy Adlon's (does anyone remember Zuckerbaby or Baghdad Cafe?) film Mahler on the Couch
!____==
\\>>
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
New York PhotoFest is upon us again from this evening. What's great is that there is something for everyone in these annual exhibits all within easy walking distance throughout Dumbo. The FotoVisura Pavilion (sponsored by The Viso Lizardi Family) in the Dumbo Arts Center shows In Love and War and Dia introducing "the work of present professional photographers who during the 60s through the 80’s used the camera as a simple medium of communication and documentation of their life, identity and reality. In doing so, these individuals come together due to a shared sense of identity." Talks and discussions include Sat May 14th, 4pm: E-Cite: The Phenomena of Online Blogs & Magazines at St. Anne's Warehouse (followed by cocktails...now you're talking;) and Sun 15th, 3pm: An Intimate Screening and Discussion with the artists from Love and War.
Under The Bridge: Projections Of A Revolution (Thurs 12th, 8pm - 10pm- Archway under the Manhattan Bridge) has photos and videos documenting the revolutions in North Africa. Hope: Between Dream and Reality shows "young photographers who neither provide a faithful representation of reality nor create an illusion, but who have impressed me with their ability to capture the essential aspects of life", writes curator Enrico Bossan. Subjective/Objective is curated by Elisabeth Biondi: "As images can no longer surprise by discovering unknown territory photographers venture into a more personal visual language. From the more traditional approach which strives to show the world in an objective way to a more contemporary subjective engagement. Photographers today are increasingly exploring their own vision."
Other shows in our fair isle? If clay's your thing then Hillary Harnischfeger at Rachel Uffner sounds like your kinda gal. She combines the substance with everyday objects: "Their lumpy shapes, ugly/beautiful sensibility and focus on the grafting of bodies and things draw on varied influences, such as ritualistic Haniwa terracotta figures, Eva Hesse’s eccentric abstractions and Rosemarie Trockel’s defamiliarized ceramics. The artist’s mixing of dyed clay, based on the Japanese method of Neriage, ensures that unlike traditional ceramics that are tinted and glazed only on their surface, these pieces are instead wholly infused with vibrant color."
More of Louise Lawler discovering larger worlds by photographing the seeming mundane in Fitting at Metro Pictures. Yet more 'bibs and bibs' in Simon Evans' wonderfully titled show Shitty Heaven at James Cohan.
Better known as an award winning film director, David Shapiro: Money Is No Object (in conjunction with the New Museum’s Festival of Ideas for a New City) redraws and repaints all of his bills and receipts on 12 vellum scrolls for the entire year of 2010. Wow, that's dedication to meditation on dialectical materialism!
Gillian Wearing is always fascinating and Katy Moran another Brit artist looks exciting.
And no one could resist new work by yet another Brit Richard Long Flow and Ebb, Rise and Fall (at Sperone Westwater in the new Norman Foster-designed gallery).
Jack Smith's Thanks for Explaining Me curated by Neville Wakefield includes 12 recently restored films (the film program is on Saturdays from 4-6 pm) and much hitherto unseen material. Each screening is introduced by film historians, scholars, friends and collaborators. Trust me, Smith's world was strange, wondrous and every significant artist of the 60s/70s openly acknowledges a debt of gratitude to him.
Another great pioneer often unsung outside architectural circles is Vladimir Tatlin: he of the Russian Constructivist movement and his huge never built tower- Monument of the Third International 1915-1920. What a 5 years of art history they were!
Martin Kippenberger's I Had A Vision mocks and muses what all became of us materialists "objects evince a self-mocking disposition expressed through the transmogrification of domestic décor'
Nothing will really make up for missing the William Kentridge exhibition last year at MoMA (opera designs and all) but Marion Goodman offers a meal rather than a taster in this latest show of recent work. Still running (thru June 4 at MoMA) is the Dziga Vertov film retrospective.
And you'll never leave a Chris Marker show without experiencing an altered state (both Peter Blum galleries): "over 200 photographs, made from digital images taken with a surreptitious camera by Marker on the Paris Metro during 2008-2010". Debates continue on the web as to what camera he actually used.
A banquet of movies and shorts in the 15th Annual Summer Series of Rooftop Films (presented by IFC and New York Magazine) features the World Premiere of New Yorker Zachary Raines' Freeloader (Sat May 14th), "a serious comedy following Frank, a feckless young man recently dumped by his girlfriend." You never know...
Bit disappointing that my new snapper Mr. Fish decided not to attend last Friday's gallery openings and chose instead "to practice skipping". I assume he meant the game of skimming pebbles on the water surface rather than some fetishistic aquatic water sport. But who are we to judge?
;;___]]
\\}}}
Under The Bridge: Projections Of A Revolution (Thurs 12th, 8pm - 10pm- Archway under the Manhattan Bridge) has photos and videos documenting the revolutions in North Africa. Hope: Between Dream and Reality shows "young photographers who neither provide a faithful representation of reality nor create an illusion, but who have impressed me with their ability to capture the essential aspects of life", writes curator Enrico Bossan. Subjective/Objective is curated by Elisabeth Biondi: "As images can no longer surprise by discovering unknown territory photographers venture into a more personal visual language. From the more traditional approach which strives to show the world in an objective way to a more contemporary subjective engagement. Photographers today are increasingly exploring their own vision."
Other shows in our fair isle? If clay's your thing then Hillary Harnischfeger at Rachel Uffner sounds like your kinda gal. She combines the substance with everyday objects: "Their lumpy shapes, ugly/beautiful sensibility and focus on the grafting of bodies and things draw on varied influences, such as ritualistic Haniwa terracotta figures, Eva Hesse’s eccentric abstractions and Rosemarie Trockel’s defamiliarized ceramics. The artist’s mixing of dyed clay, based on the Japanese method of Neriage, ensures that unlike traditional ceramics that are tinted and glazed only on their surface, these pieces are instead wholly infused with vibrant color."
More of Louise Lawler discovering larger worlds by photographing the seeming mundane in Fitting at Metro Pictures. Yet more 'bibs and bibs' in Simon Evans' wonderfully titled show Shitty Heaven at James Cohan.
Better known as an award winning film director, David Shapiro: Money Is No Object (in conjunction with the New Museum’s Festival of Ideas for a New City) redraws and repaints all of his bills and receipts on 12 vellum scrolls for the entire year of 2010. Wow, that's dedication to meditation on dialectical materialism!
Gillian Wearing is always fascinating and Katy Moran another Brit artist looks exciting.
And no one could resist new work by yet another Brit Richard Long Flow and Ebb, Rise and Fall (at Sperone Westwater in the new Norman Foster-designed gallery).
Jack Smith's Thanks for Explaining Me curated by Neville Wakefield includes 12 recently restored films (the film program is on Saturdays from 4-6 pm) and much hitherto unseen material. Each screening is introduced by film historians, scholars, friends and collaborators. Trust me, Smith's world was strange, wondrous and every significant artist of the 60s/70s openly acknowledges a debt of gratitude to him.
Another great pioneer often unsung outside architectural circles is Vladimir Tatlin: he of the Russian Constructivist movement and his huge never built tower- Monument of the Third International 1915-1920. What a 5 years of art history they were!
Martin Kippenberger's I Had A Vision mocks and muses what all became of us materialists "objects evince a self-mocking disposition expressed through the transmogrification of domestic décor'
Nothing will really make up for missing the William Kentridge exhibition last year at MoMA (opera designs and all) but Marion Goodman offers a meal rather than a taster in this latest show of recent work. Still running (thru June 4 at MoMA) is the Dziga Vertov film retrospective.
And you'll never leave a Chris Marker show without experiencing an altered state (both Peter Blum galleries): "over 200 photographs, made from digital images taken with a surreptitious camera by Marker on the Paris Metro during 2008-2010". Debates continue on the web as to what camera he actually used.
A banquet of movies and shorts in the 15th Annual Summer Series of Rooftop Films (presented by IFC and New York Magazine) features the World Premiere of New Yorker Zachary Raines' Freeloader (Sat May 14th), "a serious comedy following Frank, a feckless young man recently dumped by his girlfriend." You never know...
Bit disappointing that my new snapper Mr. Fish decided not to attend last Friday's gallery openings and chose instead "to practice skipping". I assume he meant the game of skimming pebbles on the water surface rather than some fetishistic aquatic water sport. But who are we to judge?
;;___]]
\\}}}
Saturday, April 30, 2011
If you've never seen the inimitable performance artist John Kelly now's your chance: The Escape Artist (Performance Space 122 thru TONIGHT!!!)
or...
Also last chance today, the Amsterdam-based avant-garde theater collective Dood Paard stage Schnitzler's play La Ronde as Reigen ad lib at the Guggenheim. Should be amazing or....
Snippet of Viva bird-brain - but Sigmund Freud was so amazed by this 1897 play that he wrote to the playwright stating that the play had elucidated every 'theme' of Freud's and Schnitzler was an artist 'to boot'!
And the great improv music, video etc Tony Conrad gives a lecture at the SVA (Tues)
For couch potatoes, the Mubi website streams 4 favorite films from past Tribeca festivals for @$2.99.
or...
Also last chance today, the Amsterdam-based avant-garde theater collective Dood Paard stage Schnitzler's play La Ronde as Reigen ad lib at the Guggenheim. Should be amazing or....
Snippet of Viva bird-brain - but Sigmund Freud was so amazed by this 1897 play that he wrote to the playwright stating that the play had elucidated every 'theme' of Freud's and Schnitzler was an artist 'to boot'!
And the great improv music, video etc Tony Conrad gives a lecture at the SVA (Tues)
For couch potatoes, the Mubi website streams 4 favorite films from past Tribeca festivals for @$2.99.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Perhaps top of my best things I did to celebrate Easter list was listening to BBC Radio 4's program on Carl Sagan, the guy who popularized astronomy years ago. As a kid he went to the public library and with his first card found a book informing that our sun was a star only close-up. "Suddenly," he said, "the universe became much larger than Brooklyn". I know just how he must've felt ;) Sagan was also the mover/shaker behind SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence)
Does the new film of Marvel comic Thor gets us thinking about our place in the cosmos or does it just thump us on the head? Well many will be pleasantly surprised at just how eloquently this film plays. Scriptwise, it doesn't labour over the original comic's detail of having Thor taught a lesson by his godly dad Odin and cast into a disabled human medical student body (Donald Blake). Instead it thrusts him into the New Mexico desert into the hands of mortals Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) et al, cuts to back story of the Frost Giants, then back to the desert again and off we go. Director Kenneth Branagh tells the tale with all the clarity garnered from his experience directing Shakespeare over the millennia. Subtle it isn't but it's cast so well that every nuance of Dr. Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard) is both wryly funny and plot anchoring as are many of the other performances. Anthony Hopkins as Odin is so fine an actor that he only needs one eye to convey a myriad of emotions. Thor isn't Iron Man cutting-edge Marvel cinema but it's oldy-worldy knightly quality really is quite endearing.
It's also a timely somewhat liberally politically incorrect film for younger audiences with it's message along the lines of: we shouldn't go seeking war but we must always be prepared should it go seeking us. The 3D element (at least at the screening I attended) did seem unintentionally too dark (a much publicized drawback of some 3D). At first you think it's artistic ombre but when the brighter scenes of the hospital or the daylight desert also seem dim you do begin to wonder. Maybe that won't be a problem in the IMAX version and it surely couldn't have been an oversight for someone as 'on the ball' as Branagh . But if Natalie Portman's Jane Foster character fosters a renewed interest in investigating the cosmos (albeit for they hope they a hunk like Thor might walk into the life of their data) then so much the better. Carl Sagan would not doubt have agreed and again rankled the stuffy scientific elite as he did with his many TV appearances.
Jerry Robinson (Ambassador of Comics) gives a talk Thurs at the SVA
Loads of other cool things to do (if you're not glued to the Royal Loo (English expression that I picked up on my visit - just the expression;) There's even an awards ceremony (not yet with Royal patronage)
Dana Rossi hosts a monthly merging of stories and songs at Poisson Rouge. Six artists--writers, comics, actors and musicians--tell the stories they associate with songs of their choosing.
Bitforms gallery has Recorded Delivery by Brit Tim Knowles (1st NYC show).
Eli Ping is at Susan Inglett Gallery
Special event with photographer Will Steacy with a Saturday talk at Michael Mazzeo
The Camera Club of New York shows photos of New Yorker Gerald Vezzuso - Mexico City's Distrito Federal.
Ooooh, and One Story magazine has a Debutante Ball benefit at The Invisible Dog (tickets start at $50, Fri 7-11pm)
Oh, and think I came to a rapprochement with Mr. Fish and his photos, by the way. Apologies to any artists who might have been a bit miffed at his antics. Should be some pics to see of last week's Marianne Boesky's uptown opening. Any day.
Don't think he can read (in spite of his good eye;) so let me tell you I heaved a sigh of relief at not having a temperamental fish to add to my problems. What is it with Viva and animals! I'm not the Mother Teresa of all things great and small you know. Cheese and sprinkhles!
Oh, I gotta go...I don't normally have visitors... ;)
Artwork in FISH JONES' photos copyright Sean Landers and Boesky Gallery
**,',
~~~
Does the new film of Marvel comic Thor gets us thinking about our place in the cosmos or does it just thump us on the head? Well many will be pleasantly surprised at just how eloquently this film plays. Scriptwise, it doesn't labour over the original comic's detail of having Thor taught a lesson by his godly dad Odin and cast into a disabled human medical student body (Donald Blake). Instead it thrusts him into the New Mexico desert into the hands of mortals Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) et al, cuts to back story of the Frost Giants, then back to the desert again and off we go. Director Kenneth Branagh tells the tale with all the clarity garnered from his experience directing Shakespeare over the millennia. Subtle it isn't but it's cast so well that every nuance of Dr. Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard) is both wryly funny and plot anchoring as are many of the other performances. Anthony Hopkins as Odin is so fine an actor that he only needs one eye to convey a myriad of emotions. Thor isn't Iron Man cutting-edge Marvel cinema but it's oldy-worldy knightly quality really is quite endearing.
It's also a timely somewhat liberally politically incorrect film for younger audiences with it's message along the lines of: we shouldn't go seeking war but we must always be prepared should it go seeking us. The 3D element (at least at the screening I attended) did seem unintentionally too dark (a much publicized drawback of some 3D). At first you think it's artistic ombre but when the brighter scenes of the hospital or the daylight desert also seem dim you do begin to wonder. Maybe that won't be a problem in the IMAX version and it surely couldn't have been an oversight for someone as 'on the ball' as Branagh . But if Natalie Portman's Jane Foster character fosters a renewed interest in investigating the cosmos (albeit for they hope they a hunk like Thor might walk into the life of their data) then so much the better. Carl Sagan would not doubt have agreed and again rankled the stuffy scientific elite as he did with his many TV appearances.
Jerry Robinson (Ambassador of Comics) gives a talk Thurs at the SVA
Loads of other cool things to do (if you're not glued to the Royal Loo (English expression that I picked up on my visit - just the expression;) There's even an awards ceremony (not yet with Royal patronage)
Dana Rossi hosts a monthly merging of stories and songs at Poisson Rouge. Six artists--writers, comics, actors and musicians--tell the stories they associate with songs of their choosing.
Bitforms gallery has Recorded Delivery by Brit Tim Knowles (1st NYC show).
Eli Ping is at Susan Inglett Gallery
Special event with photographer Will Steacy with a Saturday talk at Michael Mazzeo
The Camera Club of New York shows photos of New Yorker Gerald Vezzuso - Mexico City's Distrito Federal.
Ooooh, and One Story magazine has a Debutante Ball benefit at The Invisible Dog (tickets start at $50, Fri 7-11pm)
Oh, and think I came to a rapprochement with Mr. Fish and his photos, by the way. Apologies to any artists who might have been a bit miffed at his antics. Should be some pics to see of last week's Marianne Boesky's uptown opening. Any day.
Don't think he can read (in spite of his good eye;) so let me tell you I heaved a sigh of relief at not having a temperamental fish to add to my problems. What is it with Viva and animals! I'm not the Mother Teresa of all things great and small you know. Cheese and sprinkhles!
Oh, I gotta go...I don't normally have visitors... ;)
Artwork in FISH JONES' photos copyright Sean Landers and Boesky Gallery
**,',
~~~
Thursday, April 21, 2011
I intimated to you that Viva advised Mr. Fish not to be so 'enthusiastic' with Flickr. He now sees that showing every photo he takes might lead to people mistakenly thinking that he's a "flash in the water". And as much as he would like to embrace the eclecticism of electric eels it's really not his style. So we await Mr. Fish's photo album.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
If you've $80 to spare for a good cause then tomorrow 8pm-midnight is the Mabou Mines 40th Anniversary Gala Benefit at Paula Cooper Gallery in the space where they were born. The experimental Wooster Group are far better known these days in theater circles but Mabou Mines have consistently delivered ground-breaking performances.
Or there's An Evening with Laurence Gavron (as part of MoMA's Modern Mondays April 25, 7:00 p.m.) - Senegalese writer/filmmaker.
MoMA in tandem with the Austrian Film Museum has a 6-week Dziga Vertov retrospective - he's most famous for his Man With a Movie Camera (1929) but little of his other oevre ever gets shown.
And if you thought the Russians and the Americans had the space lead listen to the extraordinary tale of BBC Radio 3 Picard in Space-Out of This Stratosphere an opera by Goldfrapp's Will Gregory. The music may not always be as distinguished as its subject, but what a great idea.
And the last week of MoMA's comprehensive Charles Burnett: The Power to Endure (April 6-25)
In collaboration with the Museum of the Moving Image, the Fashion in Film Festival: Birds of Paradise is in full swing. The artist, photographer, and filmmaker Steven Arnold has an evening (Fri Ap 22) introduced by Stuart Comer from the Tate Modern, London with other rarely seen delights next weekend.
On Wed 20 Dirty Looks, a monthly platform for queer experimental film and video presents Michael Robinson / Jack Smith
This news story from liberal London's central West London Soho is rather disturbing
Gay rights protest at Soho pub that ejected two men kissing
Sean Landers' A Midnight Modern Conversation sounds just right for Marianne Boesky's uptown space from Ap 21 (coinciding with his show at Friedrich Petzel Gallery, Alone Around the World, May 7th). His point of departure was Hogath's 1732 painting hanging in The Yale Center for British Art.
And Tribeca Film Fest is upon us again from Thursday- Fire in Babylon is the hitherto untold story of West Indian cricketeers. I haven't the foggiest notion about cricket but it's not only a fascinating doco but also funny. Loads of free events as well as those ticketed in the Festival. The Tribeca Drive-In outdoor screening series opens Thurs 21 (doors open 6pm for dusk start) with 1980 classic Fame. But if that's just too passe, Haiti’s most celebrated big band Septentrional performs live jazz fusion Friday night! The free Pen to Paper panels at Barnes & Nobel, Union Square and SVA Theater afternoon panels. Tribeca (Online) Film Festival features five free areas: Festival Streaming Room (6 features 18 short films) , Live From..., Tribeca Q&A, Filmmaker Feed, and the Future of Film blog. Six films will be released nationwide via pay for video-on-demand with subsequent theater roll out.
Now, as you might have gathered, for some reason Viva has become somewhat of a bat (a very clean lovable one, though. Don't smirk). But as luck may have it, she just happened to meet a fish who likes to be out of water. So: drum roll please- drrrrdrrrrdrrrrrrrdrrrr...............................
Cosmic Viva wishes to introduce the cosmos to the one, the only FISH JONES - the only pixel popping, digital diving, aquatic acqua-tinting snapper in the known H2O. I wanted to credit him as Vodka Fin but he just wouldn't have it. No way.
An he insisted on his own Flickr site (well he is only a fish, give 'im time to get fancy finned with the web). So for your delectation the Fish Jones openings over the weekend. He is very particular so can't go to everything but will do his best not to do too much smooching and mooching, consummate pro that he is.
Picasso and Marie-Thérèse
Melissa Murray and
Steven Dobbin at Causey Contemporary
Sarah Frost's Arsenal (P.P.O.W.)
Given his, umm, fishosity Mr. FISH does need a carer to accompany him. But Judy does try to keep a low profile - as does Mr. Fish as modesty is a must in the bowl called FISH.
/'\"
-=-
Or there's An Evening with Laurence Gavron (as part of MoMA's Modern Mondays April 25, 7:00 p.m.) - Senegalese writer/filmmaker.
MoMA in tandem with the Austrian Film Museum has a 6-week Dziga Vertov retrospective - he's most famous for his Man With a Movie Camera (1929) but little of his other oevre ever gets shown.
And if you thought the Russians and the Americans had the space lead listen to the extraordinary tale of BBC Radio 3 Picard in Space-Out of This Stratosphere an opera by Goldfrapp's Will Gregory. The music may not always be as distinguished as its subject, but what a great idea.
And the last week of MoMA's comprehensive Charles Burnett: The Power to Endure (April 6-25)
In collaboration with the Museum of the Moving Image, the Fashion in Film Festival: Birds of Paradise is in full swing. The artist, photographer, and filmmaker Steven Arnold has an evening (Fri Ap 22) introduced by Stuart Comer from the Tate Modern, London with other rarely seen delights next weekend.
On Wed 20 Dirty Looks, a monthly platform for queer experimental film and video presents Michael Robinson / Jack Smith
This news story from liberal London's central West London Soho is rather disturbing
Gay rights protest at Soho pub that ejected two men kissing
Sean Landers' A Midnight Modern Conversation sounds just right for Marianne Boesky's uptown space from Ap 21 (coinciding with his show at Friedrich Petzel Gallery, Alone Around the World, May 7th). His point of departure was Hogath's 1732 painting hanging in The Yale Center for British Art.
And Tribeca Film Fest is upon us again from Thursday- Fire in Babylon is the hitherto untold story of West Indian cricketeers. I haven't the foggiest notion about cricket but it's not only a fascinating doco but also funny. Loads of free events as well as those ticketed in the Festival. The Tribeca Drive-In outdoor screening series opens Thurs 21 (doors open 6pm for dusk start) with 1980 classic Fame. But if that's just too passe, Haiti’s most celebrated big band Septentrional performs live jazz fusion Friday night! The free Pen to Paper panels at Barnes & Nobel, Union Square and SVA Theater afternoon panels. Tribeca (Online) Film Festival features five free areas: Festival Streaming Room (6 features 18 short films) , Live From..., Tribeca Q&A, Filmmaker Feed, and the Future of Film blog. Six films will be released nationwide via pay for video-on-demand with subsequent theater roll out.
Now, as you might have gathered, for some reason Viva has become somewhat of a bat (a very clean lovable one, though. Don't smirk). But as luck may have it, she just happened to meet a fish who likes to be out of water. So: drum roll please- drrrrdrrrrdrrrrrrrdrrrr...............................
Cosmic Viva wishes to introduce the cosmos to the one, the only FISH JONES - the only pixel popping, digital diving, aquatic acqua-tinting snapper in the known H2O. I wanted to credit him as Vodka Fin but he just wouldn't have it. No way.
An he insisted on his own Flickr site (well he is only a fish, give 'im time to get fancy finned with the web). So for your delectation the Fish Jones openings over the weekend. He is very particular so can't go to everything but will do his best not to do too much smooching and mooching, consummate pro that he is.
Picasso and Marie-Thérèse
Melissa Murray and
Steven Dobbin at Causey Contemporary
Sarah Frost's Arsenal (P.P.O.W.)
Given his, umm, fishosity Mr. FISH does need a carer to accompany him. But Judy does try to keep a low profile - as does Mr. Fish as modesty is a must in the bowl called FISH.
/'\"
-=-
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Viva's been devouring some more darkened rooms again this week. Director Kelly Reichardt turns her precise, sure-footed eye to a wagon train of settlers in 1845 Oregon. On pixel paper the story doesn't sound like much. But the transcendental quality of Meek's Cutoff will stay with the viewer for sometime to come.
The 'fly on the wall' doco Armadillo shows with eye-opening detail the daily round of Danish troops in Afghanistan is also just released. But writer/director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun's A Screaming Man (Un homme qui crie) is the daily round of Adam, an aging Chad luxury hotel pool attendant, as civil war creeps ever more closely. Once a champion swimmer he loves his job and is alas demoted by the hotel's new owners to the security gate - his own son taking his place. What transpires is a sad, soul searching tale of one ordinary family - lives irrevocably torn apart by a war not of their making.
The title is a quote from writer Aimé Césaire, "A screaming man is not a dancing bear." Mahamat-Saleh Haroun: "If there's a lesson in this film it's how to turn from spectator into player to change the course of history." The director has acknowledged the influence of Japanese director Ozu as well as Hou Hsiao-Hsien. An equally fascinating and underrated Japanese director is Mikio Naruse whose 1960When a Woman Ascends the Stairs is re-released this week as part of Film Forum's 5 Japanese Divas season. Criterion issued last month Silent Naruse to complement their other Naruse DVDs and Eureka's box set is also fab. It was only in recent decades that this director was resurrected from obscurity.
Haven't seen The Princess of Montpensier yet but everything French director Bertrand Tavernier does illuminates one's life.
And IFC have The Imperialists Are Still Alive!
For sheer fun, the Ice Age animation team brightens our Easter with Rio (3D). It's age range is probably broader than Hop and there isn't a favela in site to ruffle our feathers. But what's not to like about these well drawn memorable characters! And we've all met a two-faced cocky cockatoo like Nigel (he gets a great come-uppance). Not great PR for the Australian Feather Board but hey, there are enough nice Australians out there to make up for the Nigels of this world. Jermaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords) - and ironically a New Zealander- does the voice-over and co-wrote the bird's lines. Bird-butt kickin' soundtrack playlist too.
Quentin Tarantino and his macaw neighbours
Now it's time for Viva to groom her own feathers, throw my sunglasses out the window to get rid of the marmoset that's been on my couch for a week and head off to see the photos of Emma Bee Bernstein (Janet Kurnatowski Gallery)
Forgot to mention that Dogtooth (from last year's New Directors/New Films) is out on Kino DVD.
@@@;-
" " "
The 'fly on the wall' doco Armadillo shows with eye-opening detail the daily round of Danish troops in Afghanistan is also just released. But writer/director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun's A Screaming Man (Un homme qui crie) is the daily round of Adam, an aging Chad luxury hotel pool attendant, as civil war creeps ever more closely. Once a champion swimmer he loves his job and is alas demoted by the hotel's new owners to the security gate - his own son taking his place. What transpires is a sad, soul searching tale of one ordinary family - lives irrevocably torn apart by a war not of their making.
The title is a quote from writer Aimé Césaire, "A screaming man is not a dancing bear." Mahamat-Saleh Haroun: "If there's a lesson in this film it's how to turn from spectator into player to change the course of history." The director has acknowledged the influence of Japanese director Ozu as well as Hou Hsiao-Hsien. An equally fascinating and underrated Japanese director is Mikio Naruse whose 1960When a Woman Ascends the Stairs is re-released this week as part of Film Forum's 5 Japanese Divas season. Criterion issued last month Silent Naruse to complement their other Naruse DVDs and Eureka's box set is also fab. It was only in recent decades that this director was resurrected from obscurity.
Haven't seen The Princess of Montpensier yet but everything French director Bertrand Tavernier does illuminates one's life.
And IFC have The Imperialists Are Still Alive!
For sheer fun, the Ice Age animation team brightens our Easter with Rio (3D). It's age range is probably broader than Hop and there isn't a favela in site to ruffle our feathers. But what's not to like about these well drawn memorable characters! And we've all met a two-faced cocky cockatoo like Nigel (he gets a great come-uppance). Not great PR for the Australian Feather Board but hey, there are enough nice Australians out there to make up for the Nigels of this world. Jermaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords) - and ironically a New Zealander- does the voice-over and co-wrote the bird's lines. Bird-butt kickin' soundtrack playlist too.
Quentin Tarantino and his macaw neighbours
Now it's time for Viva to groom her own feathers, throw my sunglasses out the window to get rid of the marmoset that's been on my couch for a week and head off to see the photos of Emma Bee Bernstein (Janet Kurnatowski Gallery)
Forgot to mention that Dogtooth (from last year's New Directors/New Films) is out on Kino DVD.
@@@;-
" " "
Saturday, April 2, 2011
At the White Box - presented by Electronic Music Foundation - The Extended Piano Festival presents a series of concerts and installations highlighting the unique and rarely composed-for Disklavier. A robotic, MIDI controlled, grand piano, the Disklavier allows composers to create works with techniques and dynamics beyond human capabilities and to be presented without a performer. Tonight April 2nd (8 p.m) at White Box, Steve Horowitz celebrates the release of Stations of the Breath: Music for Disklavier (2010) - a disc highlighting the composer's activities on the Yamaha Disklavier, both in solo performance/composition and in duet settings. Live performers include Dave Eggar on cello, Elliott Sharp on guitar/bass clarinet, and Michael Evans on percussion. During the day Sat/Sun, Sharp and Horowitz have curated installed works for the Disklavier. Opening April 6 at the gallery is the first comprehensive US survey of Braco Dimitrijevic credited as the first Eastern European conceptual artist to gain international recognition.
Two Gates of Sleep (Video interview with HERE) has opened at ReRun Gastropub Theater (the 60 seater that opened last summer) and is curated by the critic and independent film distributor Aaron Hillis of Greencine website fame.
And you'd have to be pretty 'high-minded' not to enjoy Rubber (Cinema Village). Dispensing with the oft-troublesome lead actor, writer/director/editor/camera Quentin Dupieux casts a tyre with a mind if not a heart in the lead without ever resorting to a whiff of melting product placement. If your date for the night is severely challenged in conversational prowess, then not even the most macho quarterback, ney Rosie the Riveter, would leave you standing on the street-corner after this. A Freudian tyre movie - there is hope for the world after all;)
Katy Grannan's new photos and video are at Salon 94 in the Bowery
Speaking of dates, I was naughty enough once (with someone who I suspected of being 'dopey' - and I'm talkin' Disney character not drugs) to send someone in my second date place who looked sort of like me (but only if you'd stood on your head having downed several margaritas and had your eye-balls hanging out). Alas, the sod couldn't even tell the difference. Under table texting for once became a blessing.
So if you're lucky enough to nab a human who's even half-way observant (Michelangelo Frammartino's Le Quattro Volte filmed in Calabria (southern Italy) will see if your companion is watching the screen or their, umm, whatever. There's no dialogue in this film and nothing happens except the world turns and we see everything happen in this rural daily round. Its elemental nature reminded me of that Turkish film at the Tribeca Fest some years back Times and Winds only different.
.....,,,,&&......
~~~
(~)
Two Gates of Sleep (Video interview with HERE) has opened at ReRun Gastropub Theater (the 60 seater that opened last summer) and is curated by the critic and independent film distributor Aaron Hillis of Greencine website fame.
And you'd have to be pretty 'high-minded' not to enjoy Rubber (Cinema Village). Dispensing with the oft-troublesome lead actor, writer/director/editor/camera Quentin Dupieux casts a tyre with a mind if not a heart in the lead without ever resorting to a whiff of melting product placement. If your date for the night is severely challenged in conversational prowess, then not even the most macho quarterback, ney Rosie the Riveter, would leave you standing on the street-corner after this. A Freudian tyre movie - there is hope for the world after all;)
Katy Grannan's new photos and video are at Salon 94 in the Bowery
Speaking of dates, I was naughty enough once (with someone who I suspected of being 'dopey' - and I'm talkin' Disney character not drugs) to send someone in my second date place who looked sort of like me (but only if you'd stood on your head having downed several margaritas and had your eye-balls hanging out). Alas, the sod couldn't even tell the difference. Under table texting for once became a blessing.
So if you're lucky enough to nab a human who's even half-way observant (Michelangelo Frammartino's Le Quattro Volte filmed in Calabria (southern Italy) will see if your companion is watching the screen or their, umm, whatever. There's no dialogue in this film and nothing happens except the world turns and we see everything happen in this rural daily round. Its elemental nature reminded me of that Turkish film at the Tribeca Fest some years back Times and Winds only different.
.....,,,,&&......
~~~
(~)
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
The Village Voice and NYT reviews of the New Directors/New Films definitely entice me to see the Greek film Attenberg.
Some NYT video blog interviews.
Sounds like another very weird hit as was the Oscar nominated Dogtooth from last year's fest. Also recommended from last year and just out on DVD is Mia Hansen-Love’s The Father of My Children.
And a couple of gallery shows I forgot to mention:
The New Museum has a long overdue retrospective of Lynda Benglis (thru June 19) though Susan Inglett got there first a year ago. Now showing at Susan's gallery is Marcia Kure's Dressed Up - conceived while conducting research at the Smithsonian Archives as a Smithsonian Artist-Fellow in 2008: "explores symbolic codes of high fashion as imagined by hip-hop avatars and designers of historical haute couture."
Also catching my eye was Days of Hope and Bandages from emerging artist Karen Schiff - Flanagan Gallery (Community College of Rhode Island, Lincoln, Rhode Island). The show's closed but Schiff's fascination with intricate patternation certainly makes her someone to watch - though her work never comes across accurately nor strongly in reproduction. From her press release: "The show is a series of collage-paintings -- and an installation made of the gallery's pedestals -- all covered in pieces of hospital gowns. I began using these curiously textured gowns as a medium in 2009, when I started visiting my parents in hospitals. (They're both doing great now!)
A saving cinematic grace (or is that coup de) for many Manhattan mums this Easter will be Hop from the Despicable Me team - opening world-wide this week. I could happily sit through this film again but I'm guessing the age attention span cut off is around 10 or 11 years old - unless your teenagers have a sense about the irony of their own existence. Not a quality I've ever found very abundant in our young movers/shakers and couch vegetables. There's a nice dinner table conversation line given to the O'Hare family's adopted 10 year-old daughter Alex (Tiffany Espensen): "You only adopted me because Fred was such a disappointment."
Now Fred (James Marsden) is 30 going on a couch potato of 17. His 20 something sister Sam (Kaley Cuoco) coerces him into a job interview lured by a housitting gig at her boss' mansion. Meanwhile in the animation 'Dr. No' Easter egg manufacturing 'Metropolis' beneath the stone statues of Easter Island, the Easter Bunny's (Hugh Laurie) son E.B. (Russell Brand) is shirking his heir-egg apparant-cy and dreams of becoming a drummer.
E.B. does a runner down the rabbit hole winding up outside the Hollywood Playboy mansion hoping for recognition of his 'bunny' status. Instead, he ends up faux convalescing in Fred's house-sit mansion after being run over by his car. The film is directed by Tim Hill of Alvin and the Chipmunks notoriety and there's a large amount of that cloying chirpy human meets CGI character bonhomie can't wait for the bon voyage about everything.
But Hop is all so delightfully silly and the voice animation so droll one just slumps, high on the saccharine ride.
Geeks and wicked 're-mixers' would no doubt prefer Russell Brand's own face beneath the rabbit ears instead of E.B.'s bunny features - a la the final scene in The Fly. And even the brainiest kiddie would be stumped finding any irony (let alone of a religious bent or even the tremor of a rabbit double entendre in the film's 'Have a Happy Easter' message. But hey, if we want our consciousness pricked and our existence on earth affirmed there's always MoMA and New Directors/New Films. Whereas where else but Hop could you coagulate The Blind Boys of Alabama, David Hasselhoff, an Easter Bunny and the fat foreman chick with a shoulder chip Carlos (Hank Azaria)? Oh wait: isn't there a city called New York just like that;)
**\\++=
;=##*
Some NYT video blog interviews.
Sounds like another very weird hit as was the Oscar nominated Dogtooth from last year's fest. Also recommended from last year and just out on DVD is Mia Hansen-Love’s The Father of My Children.
And a couple of gallery shows I forgot to mention:
The New Museum has a long overdue retrospective of Lynda Benglis (thru June 19) though Susan Inglett got there first a year ago. Now showing at Susan's gallery is Marcia Kure's Dressed Up - conceived while conducting research at the Smithsonian Archives as a Smithsonian Artist-Fellow in 2008: "explores symbolic codes of high fashion as imagined by hip-hop avatars and designers of historical haute couture."
Also catching my eye was Days of Hope and Bandages from emerging artist Karen Schiff - Flanagan Gallery (Community College of Rhode Island, Lincoln, Rhode Island). The show's closed but Schiff's fascination with intricate patternation certainly makes her someone to watch - though her work never comes across accurately nor strongly in reproduction. From her press release: "The show is a series of collage-paintings -- and an installation made of the gallery's pedestals -- all covered in pieces of hospital gowns. I began using these curiously textured gowns as a medium in 2009, when I started visiting my parents in hospitals. (They're both doing great now!)
A saving cinematic grace (or is that coup de) for many Manhattan mums this Easter will be Hop from the Despicable Me team - opening world-wide this week. I could happily sit through this film again but I'm guessing the age attention span cut off is around 10 or 11 years old - unless your teenagers have a sense about the irony of their own existence. Not a quality I've ever found very abundant in our young movers/shakers and couch vegetables. There's a nice dinner table conversation line given to the O'Hare family's adopted 10 year-old daughter Alex (Tiffany Espensen): "You only adopted me because Fred was such a disappointment."
Now Fred (James Marsden) is 30 going on a couch potato of 17. His 20 something sister Sam (Kaley Cuoco) coerces him into a job interview lured by a housitting gig at her boss' mansion. Meanwhile in the animation 'Dr. No' Easter egg manufacturing 'Metropolis' beneath the stone statues of Easter Island, the Easter Bunny's (Hugh Laurie) son E.B. (Russell Brand) is shirking his heir-egg apparant-cy and dreams of becoming a drummer.
E.B. does a runner down the rabbit hole winding up outside the Hollywood Playboy mansion hoping for recognition of his 'bunny' status. Instead, he ends up faux convalescing in Fred's house-sit mansion after being run over by his car. The film is directed by Tim Hill of Alvin and the Chipmunks notoriety and there's a large amount of that cloying chirpy human meets CGI character bonhomie can't wait for the bon voyage about everything.
But Hop is all so delightfully silly and the voice animation so droll one just slumps, high on the saccharine ride.
Geeks and wicked 're-mixers' would no doubt prefer Russell Brand's own face beneath the rabbit ears instead of E.B.'s bunny features - a la the final scene in The Fly. And even the brainiest kiddie would be stumped finding any irony (let alone of a religious bent or even the tremor of a rabbit double entendre in the film's 'Have a Happy Easter' message. But hey, if we want our consciousness pricked and our existence on earth affirmed there's always MoMA and New Directors/New Films. Whereas where else but Hop could you coagulate The Blind Boys of Alabama, David Hasselhoff, an Easter Bunny and the fat foreman chick with a shoulder chip Carlos (Hank Azaria)? Oh wait: isn't there a city called New York just like that;)
**\\++=
;=##*
Friday, March 25, 2011
Opening this 40th year of New Directors/New Films (presented by MoMA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center) on Wednesday night was the much heralded Margin Call (J.C. Chandor) - a fictional film about the men whose mismanagement of dollar trillions caused our economic woes. Slated US general release October. This Indy website also recommends Swedish archival doco The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (Sat 26th and Mon 28th) and Stacey Steers' 16min short Night Hunter "that has to be the most innovative piece of movie magic in the entire [Fest's history]" (Fri April 1/Sat 2nd).
While absent from this year's previews, I did see four of this year's offerings at last year's 54th BFI London Film Festival. All their characters seem to be on society's margins but in reality are far closer to the centre of our fraught everyday lives. I wasn't much wowed by Marc Fitoussi's Copacabana but what's not to like about Isabelle Huppert? Interesting podcast on this link. Pia Marais' At Ellen's Age (a further screening Sat 26th) is the haunting tale of an air stewardess who 'does a runner' from her African stopover and is befriended by animal rights liberationists. (This was made well before that American steward went bonkers at a passenger and slid down the emergency chute). Short interview below:
Ahmad Abdalla's Microphone (Tues 29th/Thurs 31st) explores the fun, energetic youth arts culture in the port city of Alexandria, Egypt. (Audio Q&A here). Li Hongqi's Winter Vacation (Sun 27th/Tues 29th) is one of the strongest Chinese films to emerge recently. "I shoot movies the way I play chess," says the director. "Many people think about how to play the game more brilliantly, more beautifully, more elegantly. As for me, I just want to move the chessmen off the chessboard." Winner of last year's Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Fest, its title refers to the schoolkids' bleak 'slacker' 'no mans land' holiday break. Great understated atmospheric music score, too.
And the art world.......hummmm...
Williamsburg photographer Meredith Allen (1964 - 2011) died last week - Ed Winkleman's obituary.
Lanquidity, the first solo show of paintings by New Yorker Jimbo Blachly opens at his gallery tonight.
And this week Elizabeth Taylor also passed away- even more reason to see her in A Place in the Sun that I mentioned last post. Also worth attention is Joseph Losey's Boom! with Taylor and Richard Burton (plus a great score from the recently deceased John Barry)
dwelling, the fourth exhibition in Marianne Boesky's wonderful uptown brownstone, finishes Sat 26th (sorry...April 2).
Dwellings with a difference in Home Theater, a solo exhibition of large-scale, multiple-panel, color photographs by the New York based, Croatian photographer, Hrvoje Slovenc. "He solicited people on internet sex sites, ultimately gaining their confidence and being invited into their homes. An exploration of domestic spaces in which specific areas have been designed, decorated, and outfitted for sadomasochistic sexual activities." Michael Mazzeo Gallery (thru April 23)
Also the award winning Raphael Dallaporta at L.Parker Stephenson goes crazy for Paris organs. Did you know (Ok my bird brain often has inter-stellar bird-flu enhancement)that Macy's in the Philadelphia's Wanamaker Building has the largest operational pipe organ in the world!
Another opening not to miss tonight is The Museum of American Illustration at the Society of Illustrators R. Crumb: Lines Drawn On Paper celebrating his last 40 years' work.
Opening Saturday at Higher Pictures is New York Means Business- Max Kozloff's color photographs from 1977 to 1984.
Boris Smelov photos continue at Sputnik Gallery
Hong Kong based Lee Kit's 1st US solo show is at Lombard Freid Projects
New work by Stan Douglas at David Zwirner
And a new Gary Hill multi-media show at Gladstone Gallery
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}
While absent from this year's previews, I did see four of this year's offerings at last year's 54th BFI London Film Festival. All their characters seem to be on society's margins but in reality are far closer to the centre of our fraught everyday lives. I wasn't much wowed by Marc Fitoussi's Copacabana but what's not to like about Isabelle Huppert? Interesting podcast on this link. Pia Marais' At Ellen's Age (a further screening Sat 26th) is the haunting tale of an air stewardess who 'does a runner' from her African stopover and is befriended by animal rights liberationists. (This was made well before that American steward went bonkers at a passenger and slid down the emergency chute). Short interview below:
Ahmad Abdalla's Microphone (Tues 29th/Thurs 31st) explores the fun, energetic youth arts culture in the port city of Alexandria, Egypt. (Audio Q&A here). Li Hongqi's Winter Vacation (Sun 27th/Tues 29th) is one of the strongest Chinese films to emerge recently. "I shoot movies the way I play chess," says the director. "Many people think about how to play the game more brilliantly, more beautifully, more elegantly. As for me, I just want to move the chessmen off the chessboard." Winner of last year's Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Fest, its title refers to the schoolkids' bleak 'slacker' 'no mans land' holiday break. Great understated atmospheric music score, too.
And the art world.......hummmm...
Williamsburg photographer Meredith Allen (1964 - 2011) died last week - Ed Winkleman's obituary.
Lanquidity, the first solo show of paintings by New Yorker Jimbo Blachly opens at his gallery tonight.
And this week Elizabeth Taylor also passed away- even more reason to see her in A Place in the Sun that I mentioned last post. Also worth attention is Joseph Losey's Boom! with Taylor and Richard Burton (plus a great score from the recently deceased John Barry)
dwelling, the fourth exhibition in Marianne Boesky's wonderful uptown brownstone, finishes Sat 26th (sorry...April 2).
Dwellings with a difference in Home Theater, a solo exhibition of large-scale, multiple-panel, color photographs by the New York based, Croatian photographer, Hrvoje Slovenc. "He solicited people on internet sex sites, ultimately gaining their confidence and being invited into their homes. An exploration of domestic spaces in which specific areas have been designed, decorated, and outfitted for sadomasochistic sexual activities." Michael Mazzeo Gallery (thru April 23)
Also the award winning Raphael Dallaporta at L.Parker Stephenson goes crazy for Paris organs. Did you know (Ok my bird brain often has inter-stellar bird-flu enhancement)that Macy's in the Philadelphia's Wanamaker Building has the largest operational pipe organ in the world!
Another opening not to miss tonight is The Museum of American Illustration at the Society of Illustrators R. Crumb: Lines Drawn On Paper celebrating his last 40 years' work.
Opening Saturday at Higher Pictures is New York Means Business- Max Kozloff's color photographs from 1977 to 1984.
Boris Smelov photos continue at Sputnik Gallery
Hong Kong based Lee Kit's 1st US solo show is at Lombard Freid Projects
New work by Stan Douglas at David Zwirner
And a new Gary Hill multi-media show at Gladstone Gallery
;
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}
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