Where High Gets Low.
A while back, Edward Lifson and I were riffing on what L.A.’s High School #9 — designed by the fancy pants Coop Himmelb(l)au — looks like. After my most recent visit to SoCal, I’ve changed my mind from my original stance that it resembles a watchtower…
…’cuz what this thing really looks like is Godzilla on a train-munching rampage!!!
Train graffiti in Italy makes a visual reference to the country’s current nuclear power referendum, the first of its kind. (Photo by fabrye.)
Ai Weiwei’s Detention
I feel like I’ve been uncharacteristically silent on artist Ai Weiwei’s imprisonment by the Chinese government, partially because the news of what happened caught me while I was on the road. The short of it is that Ai’s detention is now entering its third month and blogs such as Art City, Eyeteeth, Modern Art Notes and Hyperallergic have been covering the hell out of the story, so read them!
Image courtesy of Akmezero4
Naturally, a lot of the talk is about how U.S. museums and other Western cultural institutions should deal with China’s imprisonment of Ai, a figure who has been a vocal critic of his government’s corruption, censorship and negligence. (The government is accusing him of tax evasion.) Certainly, I think it’s important to have powerful institutions protest Ai’s detainment, as well as the imprisonment of countless other intellectuals, writers and activists. Keeping pressure on the Chinese government from all angles is key. But I also think we each have a personal connection to what’s happening, supporting an oppressive regime by slavishly purchasing the goods that come out of the country, be it the latest, hottest iWhatever or the bounty of pressed wood furniture that lines our living rooms. Even the rebel flag shot glasses that clutter so many gas stations in a wide swath of our country are…made in China. Yes, it’s significant that our cultural institutions protest Ai’s detainment. But I wonder how effective these condemnations can be as long as we continue to support such an oppressive regime with our wallets.
My 15 Nanoseconds of Fame
Cruising in Brooklyn
I made it onto Google Street View while riding my bike in the vicinity of the Brooklyn Museum. (Full disclosure: I saw the Google car and followed it for a few of blocks because that’s the kind of cheap, internet fame whore I am. Sorry, Joerg.) The whole thing inspired me to look up some of the addresses I’d lived in over the course of my life on GSV— the vast majority of which aren’t online because my family had a penchant for inhabiting incredibly bizarre, out-of-the-way places. It was a trip back in time, except it wasn’t, because I’m seeing all of these spots in the pseudo-present. (A selection: the place I was born in, the road leading to the house we lived in when I was 10, the donut shop where I used to ditch high school English class and the college dorm that was the site of various inebriated indiscretions.) Which brings me to this highly interesting essay — which I discovered by way of Conscientious — about photography in the age of GSV.
Random Linkage
The design schematic for Apple’s corporate headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. (reportedly conceived by the Dark Lord Foster, the same architect who was ready to mar a pristine stretch of the Bulgarian coast with a luxury resort)…
…bears a striking resemblance to an inflatable hemorrhoid ring. Available for only $13 at Able Healthcare DME. Starchitect not included.
In 1971, Trisha Brown gathered nine dancers dressed in red and scattered them across rooftops in lower Manhattan. For half an hour, the dancers — all of whom stood blocks apart — relayed a series of movements to each other, in the dance world’s version of the game of telephone. The work, called Roof Piece, was staged several times during the early 1970s, but had not been performed in its original rooftop context since 1973.
Last night, Brown’s dance company restaged the piece in the vicinity of the High Line Park on Manhattan’s west side, on the rooftops of office buildings, butchers and trendy restaurants. The weather, initially, did not cooperate. (An end-of-the-world thunder shower — complete with lightning — left all of us spectators huddling under the Standard Hotel shortly before the show was supposed to begin.) But once things cleared, everyoe took their positions. Ironically, the steely skies made a perfect backdrop to the bright red outfits worn by the performers.
There was something beautifully zen/tai chi about the whole exercise, with one dancer’s gesture inspiring another’s and then another’s, over several square blocks, in a rippling chain reaction. If you have a chance, there are still three more performances over the course of the weekend (and they’re free). Find the schedule here. For a good take on the original performance, see this write-up by photographer Babbette Mangolte.
All photos by C-M.
Swampy, in Oakland. The artist has a solo exhibit coming up this weekend at Fifty24SF, in San Francisco. Things get started this Saturday, June 11th, at 7pm. (Above image courtesy of EndlessCanvas.com.)
Richard Serra, Hand Catching Lead, 1968. Around the time Serra created this video, he had compiled this verb list, which he went about illustrating through his art. The whole exercise was about material and the body meeting in one simplified action or process. Questions of identity, motive, or emotion are completely separated from this work. It’s simply a hand and a verb.
I recently organized a show of new media works, and realized that my series of short photo essays exploring the human figure in contemporary art was missing a new media presence. With this in mind, I focused my attention towards those dark rooms designated for video art in museums in Beacon, Indianapolis and New York City. Here’s what I found:
Occasionally, there’s a graphic novel that comes along that grabs you by the eyeballs and doesn’t let go. David B.’s Epileptic would be it — a memoir of the author’s youth that is centered on his family’s struggle against his older brother’s all-consuming epilepsy. All I gotta say is: Read. It. Now. (Thanks to Douglas Wolk for pointing the way on this one. Find his New York Mag review of the book right here.)
Find my New York City Datebook here — and see pix from the group show Eraser, at Magnan Metz, featuring the above collage by Christopher Michlig.
What I Learned Today: Star Cigarettes, a division of Philip Morris, sold a limited edition pack in Europe in the early ’90s that celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall. Shown on the package is a piece of graffiti-covered slab being removed from the wall. It’s bubbly letters read STAR. An ad from the period shows a man’s hand clutching the commemorative pack.
Conceptual artist Martin Kippenberger used this image to create the wallpaper shown above in 1991. (It’s now on view at Luhring Augustine through 6/18). It is so many levels of conceptual: A cigarette company using a political act and someone’s tag to sell cigarettes which are then turned into art that is itself commodified. In other words: the art merch becomes the art. Like, whoa.
Find a bunch of Star Cigarettes special edition packs here. (Scroll to the bottom.)
Eye-popping overload: My review of MOCA LA’s Art in the Streets is now up at ARTnews. And, in case you missed it, my bit on Studio 360 (from April) about graffiti outside the museum. (Photo by C-M.)
