Author: greg

Talk-abouts: John Baldessari and Jeremy Blake in Artforum

still, Winchester, 2003, Jeremy Blake, image:artforum.com

Editor Tim Griffin introduces In Conversation, a new feature in this month’s Artforum, artists talking to artists. To start: Jeremy Blake and John Baldessari, two artists with deep interest in the intersections between painting and ______(cinema, photography, technology, text, conceptual art). Both artists also have deep, abiding interest in film as well, which explains why this turned up on daily.greencine.com.
One great thread: Baldessari’s contested label as a Conceptual Artist.

JOHN BALDESSARI: Well, in the late ’60s, I was introduced to some painter at Max’s Kansas City and he said, “Oh you’re one of those �write-abouts’?” I said, “What do you mean �write-abouts’?” ‘You know, critics write about your work.’ To him, that’s what made a Conceptual artist.

Related posts from Feb. 2003: Jeremy previewing his Winchester piece last Feb and his haiku-like shorts for the Punch-Drunk Love DVD.

Michael Arad Interview at Arch. Record

[via Archinect] WTC Memorial designer Michael Arad discusses his original idea, design process, and experience in a too-brief interview for Architectrual Record Magazine.

Michael Heizer at Dia Beaon, image: artnet.com

Arad’s reworked proposal (with Peter Walker) attempts a return to his original vision, in which very clear, stark voids pierce the horizontal plane of the plaza. More and more, the experience sounds similar to Michael Heizer’s Nort, East, South, West installation at Dia Beacon.

The WTC Films of Etienne Sauret at Film Forum

Two films by Etienne Sauret, including the eerie WTC: The First 24 Hours, [which screened on the program with my first film at MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight] are showing at Film Forum today through March 16. Etienne will introduce the films tonight at 6:15 and 8:00.
Mark Holcomb reviews them in the Voice and gets cranky about the FDNY. Stephen Holden reviews them more straightforwardly in the Times.

In the WTC Memorial Kitchen: Still Baking, Lots of Cooks

The NY Observer’s Blair Golson reports on conflict brewing around Michael Arad’s design for the WTC Memorial. Apparently, he doesn’t want to be the malleable vassal the Jury and the LMDC had in mind when they chose his proposal. Some accuse him of pursuing “unlimited control [over the Memorial design], without any checks on his responsibilities.” They also say Arad threatened to take his displeasures public to gain negotiating leverage. This, coming from an anonymous LMDC source involved in the rebuilding process.
Meanwhile, somehow, the Observer also learned of complaints by Arad’s original proposal team members, who say he hogged all the credit on their group design. Someone’s trying to make a point that Arad doesn’t play well with others.

Read the Village Voice. BE the Village Voice

Still from Amar Kanwar's A Season Outside, image: peter blum via artnet.com

  • After screening at Documenta XI, Chicago’s Renaissance Society, Miami Art Basel, and MoMA Gramercy, Amar Kanwar’s excellent 1997 video, A Season Outside, gets its New York gallery debut–and a review by Jerry Saltz.
  • Guy Maddin takes his own sweet time publishing Part II of his production diary for The Saddest Music in the World, which opens at MoMA Gramercy on March 4. Tomorrow! Like with Jersey Girls, Full Frontal, and I Love Your Work, when production diaries go up against Hollywood publicists trying to control info in a film, the publicists still win. [Where’s Jeff Jarvis when you need him?]

    • On How A Musical Revival Takes Longer Than One Year

    Rebecca Traitser, oft of the NYO and some online zine called Salon, notes in the NYT that the studios haven’t quite ironed out all the details of that post-Chicago musical revival we’ve all been waiting for. Ignoring that Miramax-spun history of contemporary musicals for a moment (Moulin Rouge? South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut? 8 Mile?), it seems musicals need a certain studios ne savent quoi to escape development hell.
    Some examples: Broadway films [Do we know that Joel Schumacher’s Phantom won’t bring on the Apocalypse?], classic musical remakes, hip-hop musicals, pop stars performing, and –shockingly–something original. [I would add animated anime-style thriller to that list if I’d moved forward with it at all in the last three months…]
    The only musical in the article that doesn’t already bore me to tears is John Turturro’s Romance and Cigarettes, starring James Gandolfini and Susan “Rocky Horror” Sarandon. The producers call it “Pennies from Heaven meets The Honeymooners,” and say it’ll include covers of Engelbert Humperdinck’s “Man Without Love” and Tom Jones’s “Delilah” along with original music and choreography. [Christopher Walken’s in it, and as Spike Jonze’s Weapon of Choice video proves, the man can dance.]
    R&C is currently in post-production. Back in 2002, it was a Coen Brothers joint, they dropped out and left Turturro to direct. Greene Street Films is producing, and my boy Bingham Ray’s UA is distributing.

    Mario Brothers: The Other Movie

    It’s like ur-machinima. The Citizen Kane of 8-bit filmmaking. Little movies set in Marioland, but made in Flash, that combine classic cinematic devices like flashbacks, dramatic pullbacks and closeups with authentic 8-bit graphics. Oh, and a melodramatic score that incorporates game sounds. And atmospheric perspective. And DVD-esque chapter menus.
    The 3-part story (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) is by AlexanderLeon.
    You’ll laugh, you’ll cry. And if you play it in the same room with a sleeping baby, she’ll cry. [via boingboing]
    Related from May 2003: Buddy Icon Cinema, and comparing Donkey Kong to Matthew Barney’s Cremaster 3.
    Related links: NY artist Cory Arcangel‘s 80’s video-game-inspired works at Filmmaker Magazine’s blog and at the upcoming Whitney Biennial [shabby website, Whit]

    On “Ephemeral Elegance” at the WTC Site

    Fred Conrad's photo of SHoP's Rector St footbridge, image:nytimes.com

    Read David Dunlap’s evocative account of the “temporary” architecture–the PATH station, footbridges and viewing wall–that surrounds and inhabits the World Trade Center site. These structures, “erected in a hurry,” are utilitarian first, Dunlap notes, but they still sometimes “approach the sublime.”
    While I stayed consciously uncommitted on the exact form they would take, Dunlap’s experience sounds like a reasonable approximation of what I imagined the paths of my own memorial proposal would be like. Fred Conrad’s picture of SHoP‘s Rector Street pedestrian passage is similar to some concept photos I used on my submission, which makes sense; SHoP’s passage was among my inspirations.

    WTC Memorial Juror to speak at Dartmouth, 3/2/04

    [Thank Hugh] “Memory and the Monument after 9/11: Deliberations at Ground Zero” is the title of the presentation by WTC Memorial Juror, Prof. James Young, at Dartmouth College. Young is as close as we’ve got to a professional memorialist; he’s a veteran juror and adviser to memorial design processes around the world, and he is the author of several incisive books on remembering the Holocaust, including The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning.
    You’ll be hard-pressed to find an opportunity for a more articulate account of the WTC Jury’s experience.
    Young will speak Tuesday, March 2, 5:30 PM, at Dartmouth’s Loew Auditorium.

    The Hollywood Gospel According to John Lesher

    While the NYT‘s Sharon Waxman finds plenty of righteous indignance among (anonymous) studio executives over ever working with Mel Gibson again, the scales have fallen from Endeavor agent John Lesher’s eyes. As a result, he wins the award for best Passion-related quote of the week:
    “People here will work with the anti-Christ if he’ll put butts in seats.”

    What’s on this weekend

    Lynda Obst gives Slate‘s David Edelstein a juicy piece of Lost in Translation gossip, that Sofia’s father gave her three pages of notes on the film, which she stuffed. Edelstein calls the movie “Chekhovian,” which is high praise in his book. Sofia, you’ve come a long way, baby. Good luck.
    Meanwhile, at Edelstein’s other gig, Fresh Air, Terry Gross ran a 1999 interview with LIT star Bill Murray, while the site promises an upcoming interview with Ms Coppola herself.
    March 30 or so, MoMA’s Film Department is giving Sofia Coppola its Work In Progress Award. They called it early last year, by the way, no dogpiling there. Stay tuned for more greg.org coverage.
    My favorite Bill Murray story goes like this: when somebody recognized him on the street in NYC, Murray walked up to him and popped him on the forehead. Then he bent over to the stunned man and whispered, “no one’ll ever believe you,” and walked away. Maybe that’s what happened to Scarlett Johansson’s character at the end of LIT.
    At this house Saturday, we’ll be watching the IFP Independent Spirit Awards, which are a lot more fun. Assuming we’re not sacked out from exhaustion, that is. Oh, and no sooner did I post about Cassavetes’ Shadows, that it turned up in my mailbox, a forgotten gift to myself from my DVD rental queue.
    related: my interview with Sofia. My hanging with Alexander Payne and David O. Russell, previous MoMA honorees. My own Edelstein-inspired Chekhov reference. Me me me me me.

    Chasing Shadows

    Title still from Cassavetes' Shadows, image: Ray Carney, cassavetes.comBU professor Ray Carney tells about his maniacal decades-long search for a copy of the “original version” of John Cassavetes’ first feature, Shadows, in a riveting, suspenseful, and enlightening Guardian article. It feels like he doesn’t leave out a single twist or turn (i.e., it’s both entertaining and long).
    Here’s the trailer: Cassavetes was so displeased with audience reaction to late 1958 screenings of Shadows, he re-shot much of the footage in early 1959 and re-edited it with some “original” footage to make the version we know today, aka the “second version.”
    With little more than a passing mention of a single, existing print of the “original version” to go on, Carney embarked on an increasingly ridiculous search for “the holy grail of Independent Cinema.” When that wore thin, he took to reconstructing the original “from the inside” by interviewing all the cast, crew, and audience members he could find, and by scouring the second version for minute forensic evidence–including, literally, comparing the length of shadows in each shot to determine the time of day–of Cassavetes’ shooting and editing choices. The result: Carney’s now the go-to guy for Cassavettes’ process, and at least he published a book in 2001 with BFI.
    Whatever of the outcome; the article makes for great reading.
    Buy Shadows–the second version–on DVD. Check out Carney’s acadamn fine fan site, cassavetes.com.