I’d ignored the whole “this is what Earth would look like with Saturn’s rings” thing until Jason grabbed this screen of New York from the video.
Roy Prol made the various photos using the lat/long of various cities. With the combination of GPS and orientation data that’s baked in to so many digital photographs, it should be possible to create a filter–I hear the kids call them apps now–that automatically inserts properly positioned Saturn rings into any sky you want. So if somebody would just hop on that, thanks.
Category: etc.
And All Is Right With The World
For years, I’ve driven past the revival palazzo–the one with the Hummer and the Ferraris and the Porsche, the one that’s just the exactly wrong color of chiffon yellow–on my way in or out of town, and I’ve wondered who? And then I saw him walking the little dog, the portly man with the toupee the colors of a red ruffed lemur. I am now at peace.
Gene Smith And The Jazz Loft Project
I’m diggin’ the crazy cats at WNYC and The Jazz Loft Project. After abandoning his family in Westchester, longtime LIFE photographer W. Eugene Smith wired his 6th Ave loft for sound and recorded the hell out it for several years in the 1950s. Until 1998, no one had ever listened to the 4,000+ hours of tapes in Smith’s archive. Turns out they held the conversations, practice sessions, and jam sessions, and hundreds of jazz musicians, and they captured a remarkable slice of mid-century downtown/underground New York City.
They’re up to Episode 6 right now. Ep. 7 will be about how “urban pioneers in New York’s Flower District find ways to make lofts more livable.”
Catch up with the series and check out the enticing web extras at WNYC’s Jazz Loft Project page [wnyc.org]
The Mystery Of What To Eat At The Sphinx
This has to be one of the funniest pullbacks ever.
What Do People Do With Their Google Voice Numbers?
I took two main factors into account when I signed up for Google Voice:
I know it’s old-fashioned, but I wanted the area code’s geography to have some significance.
I wanted something catchy, brand-y, not just easy to remember, but worth remembering. My name, URL, etc. would have been ideal, but if not, then some usefully meaningful word or phrase would do.
Which is how I ended up with 34-SOUVENIR. 347 is a New York City area code, of course, but SOUVENIR was just about the longest word I could generate with the 10-digit numbers in Google’s pot. And it happens to have a nice resonance with my first short film series. And it happens to mean “remember” in French, so it’s built right in!
Now I just need to figure out what to do with it. Any thoughts or suggestions? Give me a call.
Lose 10 Lbs With My Exclusive Red Vines Diet!
1. Pop open a Diet Coke.
2. Eat all the Red Vines you want.
3. uh, actually that’s as far as I’ve gotten.
And That’s Why They Call It Total
So I’m just walking back in from the hardware store, when I realize I missed a call from a Utah number. I call it back, the ringer goes all funny, and it turns out to be the cell phone of my mom’s new husband Spence [congratulations, you guys!], and they’re on the side of the road in Giverny, on their way to dinner when the bad tank of gas they bought finally does their Hertz car in, and it won’t start.
Hertz France doesn’t do jack, and the Hertz Paris office closed early, apparently, and while the Hertz US folks are helpful and promise to file a poor service report on their French counterparts, that still doesn’t help them get back to their inn. American Express and their concierge service, for which they pay an inordinate annual fee, primarily on the off chance that, if they get stuck on the road somewhere, AmEx has their back, got disconnected just as they got all their info into the system, and that’s right when I called back.
So I call Hertz Paris, and it’s supposed to be open for another 45 minutes, but there’s no answer. Then I go to Mappy.fr, because really, their maps kill for Europe, and sure enough, there’s their hotel, and I can map all the service stations nearby and even see how much gas is. But there are no phone numbers, so I Google up the closest one with a service bay–because in the country, they sometimes just have tiny little gas-only stations–and call.
And some guy answers, and I explain I’m calling from the US, and my mother’s on the side of the road, trying to get back to the inn in whatever village, and he’s all, “Is that the one run by Nicole?” And I’m like, “Je ne sais pas,” but it’s the one just off Rue du Port, and he’s all, “Yeah, Nicole.”
And I tell him what they’re driving [grey Opel], and about where they are, and he says he’ll call Nicole and let her know, then head out to pick them up. And so I call them back, and I’m like, “Do you know someone named Nicole?” And they’re all, “Oh, she’s the woman who runs our inn.” And I’m all, “A guy from the Total station will be there in a few minutes.”
And then I primed the inside of the closet and called them back, and they were at the inn, eating dinner, and the guy had told them, sure enough, “mauvais essence,” and he’s bringing their car back in the morning, pas de probleme.
And now I’m thinking it was only 1992 when we were freaking out over them monitoring the terrorist kill from Langley in real time in Patriot Games, and now here I am, literally watching paint dry while I give directions to the tow truck driver half way around the world. What a crazy world.
The Thom Assclown Affair
In the past, people criticized fashion shows because the looks from the runway never made it to the street. Well, Thom Browne sure showed them.
Tommy Ton’s photoset of Browne models waiting to enter his show is an instant classic.
Backstage: Thom Browne Lineup [jakandjil.com via kottke, the awl]
Ai Weiwei Undergoes Emergency Surgery In Munich
For a month after being beaten and detained by Chinese police, artist Ai Weiwei had complained of constant headaches. While in Munich to install a show, he went to a doctor, who sent him into emergency surgery to alleviate a cerebral hemorrhage. The news was reported, of all places, by the editor’s blog at Frieze magazine, which published accounts from his assistant and one of the artist’s fellow activists involved in publicizing the names of 5,000 children killed in school collapses in the Sichuan earthquake.
Ai has been publishing photos and updates [in Chinese] on Twitter.
Ai Weiwei in hospital after police brutality [frieze.com]
Ai Weiwei erhebt schwere Vorwürfe gegen Peking [sueddeutsche zeitung]
Much Is Published, But Little Printed
From Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, quoted by Mark Noonan in the Columbia Journal of American Studies
But while we are confined to books, though the most select and classic, and read only particular written languages, which are themselves but dialects and provincial, we are in danger of forgetting the language which all things and events speak without metaphor, which alone is copious and standard. Much is published, but little printed. The rays which stream through the shutter will be no longer remembered when the shutter is wholly removed. No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer?
For a long time we had construction on our street. The crew would store their portable signs in such a way that, on many mornings, they would reflect a rainbow in our window and across our living room ceiling. The kid took on the job of spotting them, which led to her taking pictures of them. This is one of the earliest examples. I suspect the memory of the rays will far outlast our shutters which, frankly, are nothing special and which I can’t wait to remove.
LLC Tuymans
16 Miles found the money quote [heh] about his upcoming US retrospective in Luc Tuymans’ TAN interview : “The US tour should lead to steady sales.”
But wait, there’s more! That guy has had it up to _here_ with American slowness in gettin’ on board the Tuymans train:
TAN: Are you happy with the selection of works for your US tour?
LT: Yes, it’s taken a long time for a US institution to ask me to do a show. There are 76 works. [Ed.: Exactly how long is a long time, Luc?] I’ve installed all 80 of my solo shows myself. This is the first time I can trust other curators to install my art. They’ve decided to re-create three exhibitions as they were shown in commercial galleries [“At Random”, Zeno X gallery, Antwerp, 2004; “Der Architekt”, Galerie Gebauer, Berlin, 1998; “Mwana Kitoko”, David Zwirner, New York, 2000] and then will work around this chronologically. It’s interesting as they’re not the most iconic works.
TAN: How do you think US audiences will respond to your work?
LT: The Demolition painting (2005) will be shown which has 9/11 connotations along with the Condoleezza Rice portrait (The Secretary of State, 2005). [1] Museum people didn’t buy it at the time because it was too topical. But then Glenn Lowry, MoMA director, decided to acquire it because she’s a public figure [Tuymans’s US dealer David Zwirner gave the painting to MoMA as a fractional gift in 2006]. It had been misunderstood in a private collection, it was out of place. The fact that it’s been acquired by a public collection is an interesting insight into how the American people think.
Belly up to the Tuymans bar, you molasses-assed American museum-curating bitches! Waitlist forms to the right, er, left!
Update/Note [1] Wait, a fractional gift? You mean David gave the Modern a great discount on his cut, or he bought it himself? Does your dealer still count as a private collection? Because Paul Schimmel told Tyler Green that “a lot of people wanted to buy the Condi,” and that Tuymans saw it as a diptych with Demolition. Both are now in MoMA’s collection. Demolition is listed as a 2006 fractional gift of Leonard and Susan Feinstein [of the Bed Bath & Beyond Feinsteins]. Ah, here it is: “The Secretary of State, Fractional and promised gift of David and Monica Zwirner,” with an accession number consecutive to Demolition. Sounds very smoothly orchestrated.
FWIW, MoMA’s description of Demolition directly contradicts Schimmel’s [or Green’s] statement that the painting “was not painted from photographs or video of the collapse of the World Trade Center, but it certainly recalls countless images from that day.”
Authenticity vs. Realness
Look, I dragged out my old Topsiders, too, same as the next guy. But I’ve just about had it up to _here_ with the obsession with “authenticity” that is the uncritical core of this dragging-on moment in men’s fashion.
It ranges from picayune discussions of selvedge denim carried on over your dad’s Miller High Life; to competitive fleamarket picking to rediscover the most obscure canvas tote bag manufacturer; to American-made worker boots for publicists; to the umpteenth reincarnation WASP-y preppy fashion, called Trad, just like it was in Japan in 1986. It’s as if the Emperor could somehow be naked and wearing two NOS Izod shirts, small batch, reissued Duck Head khakis, and Japanese export Redwings at the same time.
It all reminds me of nothing so much as Jennie Livingston’s documentary, Paris is Burning. Schoolboy Realness, Town & Country, Executive Realness. Here’s the late, great drag queen philosopher [and accomplished body-stasher!] Dorian Corey:
In a ballroom, you can be anything you want. You’re not really an executive, but you’re looking like an executive. And therefore, you’re showing the straight world that, “I can be an executive. If I had the opportunity, I can be one. Because I can look it.” And that is a kind of fulfillment.
Your friends, your peers, are telling you, “Oh, you’d make a wonderful executive.”
And just line this quote from Pepper LaBeija [above, in fur], legendary head of the House of LaBeija…
To be able to blend. That’s what realness is.
If you can pass the untrained eye, or even the trained eye, and not give away the fact that you’re gay, that’s when it’s real.
The idea of realness is to look as much as possible like your straight counterpart.
The realer you look means you look like a real woman. Or you look like a real man. A straight man.
It’s not a takeoff, or a satire. No. It’s actually being able to be this.
…up against the Trad guy in the Observer yesterday:
“When done right, it should almost be invisible,” said John Tinseth, 52, an insurance broker and longtime traddy who’s been writing a blog called The Trad–anonymously, until now–for the past two years. He was on the phone from his West 57th Street apartment, dressed, he said, in L. L. Bean khakis and moccasins and a striped yellow Oxford University rugby shirt.
“A guy should walk right by you and he’ll have the whole thing down and you won’t even notice,” Mr. Tinseth said. “That’s when it’s done perfectly.”
Authenticity is a pose, people, plain and simple.
Public Art On The Mall: Centerbeam & Icarus
While we contemplate the Colombian Heart Attack that has befallen Washington DC, it might be worthwhile to remember the good old days, such as they were, when the National Mall was the site of ambitious public art projects. Projects like Centerbeam and Icarus.
Centerbeam was the result of a 22-artist collaboration organized by MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies under the leadership of the artist Otto Piene. It was a 144-ft long 128-ft long [in DC] steel sculpture resembling a radio tower on its side, which served as a platform for an array of artistic deployments of cutting edge technologies, including laser projections on steam, holograms, neon and argon beams, and electronic and computer-generated music. And giant inflatable sculptures.
After a highly acclaimed debut at Documenta 6 in 1977, Centerbeam was reinstalled on the Mall during the Summer of 1978. The site was the open space north of the newly opened National Air & Space Museum, and directly across the Mall from the just-opened East Gallery of the NGA [where The National Museum of the American Indian now stands].
Centerbeam gave nightly performances/happenings/experiences throughout the summer, culminating in two nights’ performance of Icarus, a “sky opera” in steam, balloons, lasers, and sound created by Piene and Paul Earls.
Based loosely on Ovid, Icarus cast Piene’s 250-ft tall red and black flower-shaped sculpture as the title character; another red anemone-shaped balloon was Daedalus, and Centerbeam was the Minotaur.
Centerbeam was officially sponsored by the National Park Service, which has jurisdiction over the Mall, and the Smithsonian. The directors of both the NGA [Carter Brown] and the Hirshhorn Museum [Abram Lerner] are thanked for their encouragement in MIT’s 1980 catalogue of Centerbeam, but no Smithsonian art museum–and no art curator–appears to have been involved in the presentation of the work. Most of the coordination was handled by Susan Hamilton, who worked in the office of Charles Blitzer, the Assistant Secretary for History and Art. In fact, the Air & Space Museum’s director and staff gets the most effusive praise and seems to have been the most closely involved with the project, even to the point of using the NASM as Centerbeam‘s mailing address.
The Washington Post did not review Icarus, and in the paper’s only feature on the opening of Centerbeam, Jo Ann Lewis cited anonymous critics who “generally saw it as a big, endearing toy, but not art. There seems no reason to amend that conclusion here.”
Of course, no one cares what the Post says about art, and Piene and his CAVS collaborators probably did not mind the absence of more traditionally minded art worlders. Since his days as a founder of Group Zero in the early 1960s, Piene had been self-consciously seeking a path that would lead art out and away from the rareified, precious object fixations of collectors and museums.
Group Zero was ahead of several curves, and their place in the story of conceptualism, minimalism, Arte Povera, and other important developments of art in the 1960s is getting a boost. And Piene’s work looked pretty nice and strong in Sperone Westwater’s very fresh-looking Zero show last year. Are Centerbeam and Icarus really just wonky art/science experiments, examples of the played out model of unalloyed, Utopian technophilia that spawned earlier collaborative dogpiles like the Pepsi Pavilion at the 1970 Osaka World’s Fair?
Or is there a real history of “real” art by Piene and his collaborators that needs to be looked at again? Despite the apparent indifference of its official art world at the time, was Washington DC actually the site of some significant artistic production that did not involve freakin’ Color Fields? Inquiring balloon-sculpting minds want to know.
District Of Colombia??
W. T. F.???
The National Mall is ringed with Smithsonian museums, none of which seem to have programmed a piece of public art or sculpture outside their own walls in at least a generation.
Washington DC has no public art program to speak of. And that’s not just because you can’t call those insane “parades” of paint-a-pandas and paint-a-donkey/elephant “art”; they’re tourist marketing, pure and simple.
And yet. Another such parade seems to have miraculously materialized on the District of Columbia’s streets. A parade of hearts. There was one in front of my family’s hotel when we picked them up to do the tourist circuit. There were three along our walks to the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Smithsonian’s American History Museum.
Each is painted with quotes and factoids about Colombia, the country. They turn out to be part of Colombia es Pasion, an official [Colombian] government branding campaign designed, according to a regurgitated press release in the Examiner, “to educate and show the world the true Colombia.” In addition to the three we saw, there are 37 other giant fiberglass hearts which “appear along city streets in high-traffic areas. They will be hard to miss, standing eight feet tall, featuring colorful, hand-painted designs that showcase a particular aspect of Colombia that may surprise visitors.”
Visitors and locals both. Who the hell gave this thing the green light? The campaign was created for the Colombian government by BBDO Sancho, the Colombian subsidiary of the global ad agency, and was designed by another Bogota agency called Sistole. But there is absolutely no one–no agency or overseeing organization or authority from Washington DC or the US mentioned in the press release/article.
I can think of approximately one thousand art projects that would be better to see on the streets and plazas of Our Nation’s Capital before a bunch of South American heart-shaped billboards.
So the only way I can make sense of their presence is that Washington DC is now an open, international platform for sculpture, art, whatever! The way Houston has no zoning laws, and you can build whatever the hell you want next to whatever the hell is already there, Washington’s many complex, overlapping bureaucracies have thrown out the rulebook and thrown open the streets for whatever cockamamie scheme you’ve been cooking up. Bring’em down and set’em up!
An invitation to Discover Colombia Through Its Heart [examiner.com]
Colombia llegó a Estados Unidos/ Colombia came to the US [and just dumped their marketing bullshit on our street corners] [colombiaespasion.com, google translate]
Fall 2009 NY Events Calendar
For anyone interested in improving his chances of running into Brian Sholis at a brainy and/or arty event, he has compiled a rather awesome calendar of openings, symposia, talks, readings, screenings, and other happenings in New York.
Me, I just loaded it onto my iPod Touch calendar, so I can be reminded nearly every day that I’m missing something interesting. Though I definitely plan on going to James Welling’s talk with Jan Dibbets at MoMA on–well, it’s right there in the calendar.
Fall 2009 New York Events Calendar [briansholis.com]