Holy smokes, we have seen Sprockets, and they are US.
And all this time I thought the weird-awesomest Monks were the guys publishing Monk Magazine from their motor home. This reminds me of the Pink Floyd track over the opening credits of Zabriskie Point. [via south willard]
Category: etc.
Announcing The Establishment Of The greg.org Home For Unwanted Gerhard Richters
Pet Shop Boys – Love Etc. (HD) [youtube via andrew sullivan]
For the moment, “Love etc.” is playing largest on the PSB’s homepage [petshopboys.co.uk]
Out Of The Bubble
Every time I log in to check my eBay links, I’m like, “Obama!”
See how he embraces John McCain’s strategy for the economy with no pride of authorship?
Did I Say Japanese Internment Camps? I Meant CCC Happy Camps!
Another thing that caught me off guard looking through piles of photos from the Civilian Conservation Corps, was the camps. My interest in the CCC didn’t come from the New Depression unfolding around us, but from learning over Christmas that while he was in the CCC, my grandfather helped build the Topaz Relocation Center, the Utah internment camp in which Japanese-Americans were interned during WWII.
That Japanese Americans were forced to live in “tar paper-covered shacks” of military design set up in remote, harsh locations is unrefutable evidence of the camps’ punitive, prison-like conditions and an integral element of the entire internment camp narrative.
But what I didn’t realize was that is exactly how participants in the CCC lived, too. The image above, cropped from the official photo of Callao Camp in Juab County, just north of Topaz.
Compare it to Ansel Adams’ photo of the barracks at Manzanar below, from the Library of Congress:
Of course, it doesn’t minimize the injustice of being forced to abandon your home and possessions, then being imprisoned in the desert by your own government because of your race. But–and I know it’s hard to have a “but” after a sentence like that–but I have to imagine that the seven-plus-year history of the CCC, along with the experience of millions of Americans who participated in it, along with the Depression itself, had a formative influence on how the internment camps were perceived at the time.
What would public reaction be today if thousands of Pakistani-Americans were ordered to report to a fenced-off city made of FEMA trailers? Would we be outraged at the outrageous violation of their constitutional and human rights, or would we say, in the wake of Katrina, Ike, and waves of foreclosures, “Hey, what’s the big deal? It’s not a prison”?
Art & Fear by Bayles & Orland
Whether it’s right or not, this book sounds fantastic:
Making art provides uncomfortably accurate feedback about the gap that inevitably exists between what you intended to do, and what you did. In fact, if artmaking did not tell you (the maker) so enormously much about yourself, then making art that matters to you would be impossible. To all viewers but yourself, what matters is the product; the finished artwork. To you, and you alone, what matters is the process: the experience of shaping that artwork.
Art & Fear, by Peter Bayles and Ted Orland [via kottke and kk]
Georgia Republican Saying Arts Workers Aren’t “Real People” Hits Nerve
From a Boston Globe article, “Stimulus funding for arts hits nerve”:
Representative Jack Kingston, a Georgia Republican, wants to transfer the proposed NEA funding to highway construction. He failed to get the House to vote on his proposal, so he is now trying to get on the conference committee that will determine the fate of the funding. “We have real people out of work right now and putting $50 million in the NEA and pretending that’s going to save jobs as opposed to putting $50 million in a road project is disingenuous,” Kingston said in an interview yesterday, adding the time has come to examine all of NEA’s funding.
It’s funny how, a few months ago, a city’s economic viability was measured by its ability to attract and keep workers in the “creative economy,” a definition which has the arts as a core, but extends far beyond the narrowestm, NEA definition of the term. And museums and other cultural institutions always made the case for themselves by demonstrating the high ROI that every dollar spent on culture generated for the local economy.
And where is any of this analysis and advocacy now, when at least one congressman says arts workers aren’t even “real people,” and shouldn’t be subsidized by the government at all? This from a politician who defines his district by its [government-funded] military base and its relevance to cultural production? [Fourth of four points: “The First District has also a been a background for top films including Academy Award Winning Best Picture Forrest Gump…”]?
I thought the $50 million stimulus proposed for the NEA was embarrassingly low, and I expected arts institutions to be contacting their congressional delegations to explain their supposedly dire financial situations, and umbrella organizations would make the case for emergency stopgap funding to keep performing arts organizations alive until the economy improves. Where has that been?
Dana Gioia, a poet who was NEA chairman until last month, recalled that when top Roosevelt aide Harry Hopkins was asked why the government wanted to hire so many artists and writers, he replied, “Hell, they’ve got to eat just like other people.”
Gioia, reflecting on that comment, said, “As far as I’ve heard, nothing has changed about the dietary needs of artists.”
Gee, with powerful, articulate advocacy like that, I guess I needn’t have worried.
Stop Me If You Think That You’ve Heard This One Before
Priceless.
“I have a strange and unpleasant announcement to make,” host Dave Hill, a comedian…announced. “There are too many women and not enough men. We’re not sure what to make of this, but we have to close the registration to women.”
…
“Is this for real?” our female friend wrote in a text after being denied a spot. “The girl with the Smiths tattoos got turned away from Smiths speed dating?”
– from Adam Martin’s coverage of Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now, a Smiths fan speed dating event in Greenpoint last week, for New York Magazine. [nymag via tmn]
Richard Serra Sculptures On Google Maps
The whole thing about the only human construct you can see from space is the Great Wall of China will be amusing to people growing up in the Google Maps era, where you can’t hide anything from the satellite’s surveilling eye. It’s the geospatial equivalent of explaining TV before remotes and cable: it’ll just make you sound old.
So kudos to Richard Serra for being ahead of the curve [no pun intended] on making work that turns out to be well-suited for viewing from our new conveniently God-like vantage point.
I started to make a list with the Torqued Ellipse in front of Glenstone, Mitch Rales’ foundation in Potomac, and the suggestion from Guthrie of T.E.U.C.L.A., a torqued ellipse in the Murphy Sculpture Garden behind the Broad Art Center at UCLA, described at its installation in 2006 as “the first public work by sculptor Richard Serra installed in Southern California.”
And that reminded me that the Broads have had a Serra titled No Problem in their backyard for a while, which, thanks to Google Maps, is now public. Searching for that image led me to pmoore66’s collection of bird’s eye view Serras around the world at Virtual Globetrotting. If you count Robert Smithson’s Amarillo Ramp, which he helped complete after Serra Smithson’s death [!], pmoore66 has sighted 44 Serras around the world using either Google Maps, or Microsoft’s Bird’s Eye View, plus another four shots on Google Streetview. [Here are the search results on Virtual Globetrotting for “Richard Serra”, but that link looks a little unstable.]
With more than 1,700 entries so far, pmoore66 appears to be almost single-handedly pinning down the modernist canon for architecture and outdoor sculpture. This warrants some looking into. Stay tuned.
The more oblique angles of birds-eye-view seems to suit Serra’s sculptures better, and they remind me of a series of little desk tchotchke-sized versions of monumental sculptures called minuments that I saw in the ICA London bookshop a few years ago. As soon as I can figure out how to get Google to stop spellchecking for me, I’ll get the artist’s name.
No, The Other Greg Allen
Greg Allen’s 25 Rules For Creating Good Theater [neofuturist.org via x-reference]
Bill Cunningham On The Inauguration
Do not adjust your speakers. After hearing Bill Cunningham narrate his photos from the Inauguration, I don’t know how I ever got by just looking at the newspaper. [nyt]
A Prophetess Has No Honor In Her Own Five Towns
The only thing worse than daytrippers is being one.
Every week, we’d drive into the city, parking our cars in another section each time and walking till our legs gave out. It was revitalizing just to see the differences! The differences in buildings, people, stores, sidewalks, streets. We’d spend hours in a strange food store, choosing things to take back home. Often, we’d strike up a conversation with the people we’d meet. Negroes. Puerto Ricans. Italians. I felt I was part of the world again!
One Woman’s Confession: I HATE SUBURBIA (Lady’s Circle, Sept 1965) [modernmechanix.com via city of sound]
Boro Boro
I just have get this out there, even though I know it drives Jean quietly crazy. I like wearing clothes with holes in them. I just do. Not cutouts, obviously, and not really rips, but stuff that wears out, wears through.
I don’t know when exactly it started, but I have some clues, and I suspect Rei Kawakubo bears a lot of the blame, even though my Comme des Garcons is in great shape. And it’s not entirely her fault, because I know I was holding onto at least one wonderful cashmere sweater I bought at the opening of Fellissimo on 56th street which got a hole in it the middle of the chest just a couple of years after I bought it, and that was before I bought The Shirt.
The Shirt is this blue CdG dress shirt that’s plain in every way, except that it has wrinkles permanently pressed into the lower half of the sleeves. There’s no better way to really get to know your dry cleaner–and to have him remember you–than to bring him a shirt that must be ironed in such a way that the wrinkles don’t disappear. It’s over ten years, and The Shirt is still properly wrinkled, and I think the conscious choice of buying and flaunting, frankly, a piece of disheveled clothing helped pull me over the line between not throwing out something [expensive/comfortable] I liked and wearing something with a hole in it, even if I looked like a hobo.
The Fellissimo sweater was a start, but the real foundation of my shredded wardrobe is a Ralph Lauren blue buttondown oxford shirt [pictured], which I wear with something akin to cheapskate preppy pride. It’s almost 20 years old, and the collar and cuffs have been ragged for at least the last 5-6 years. Everything else about the shirt is solid–oh wait, no, the left elbow wore through last fall, a result of my typing posture. It’s happened on a couple of great sweaters recently, too.
But I think the point the shirt makes [to me] is clear: I’m not going to replace this shirt. First off, there is no way in hell I’d buy a blue buttondown oxfordcloth shirt at Ralph Lauren today, in 2009. Ralph and I have both traveled too far, and it is just not the same thing. [And it’s not some Made in USA, not Sri Lanka problem, either. I think mine was made in Hong Kong. And it’s not like I’d ever buy a vintage shirt, shredded by someone else. Maybe if it was deadstock, but who’s got time to hunt down vanilla 1980’s Ralph Lauren shirts these days?]
In the last few months, I found an old white Ralph Lauren oxford in a box of clothes I’d packed and stored after business school. I put it into heavy rotation, and now it, too, is starting to fray along the collar.
One shirt with a scraggly collar might make people wonder–don’t worry–if I didn’t notice, or worse, maybe that’s the only shirt option I had. But put a cashmere sweater with a worn out elbow over it, and they’ll have to know it’s a choice. Not that they’ll know what to make of it.
The real holey clothes, then, are the cashmere sweaters. I have 30- and 40-year-old cashmere sweaters that look brand new, and I have 4-year-old sweaters that are falling apart. [Cashmere has really diminished since it went mass market a while back, and paying a lot for it is no guarantee of quality or durability. It’s really a shame.] But worn-through cashmere feels kind of nostalgic, I guess, not just too expensive or wasteful to toss out.
Up until World War II or so, dirt poor Japanese farmers used to save every scrap of fabric they could get their hands on, repairing and reusing indigo-dyed cotton and linen with great care. The Japanese term for worn out, boro boro, has since become its own aesthetic, and the more intricately patched and repatched the futon cover or jacket is, the more highly it’s prized.
I get it, but that’s not quite where I am yet, I think. For one thing, I haven’t figured out any strategy to mend any of my holey sweaters. They’re all too far gone for the French-American Reweaving Company to do anything about them, though they do excellent work repairing snags or the occasional moth hole. Really great work. But mending something or reworking it, or patching it, is a conscious move; it’s doing something about the holes instead of just letting them be. I think I’d rather be comfortable and content to let the clothes run their course.
But for the question of why I bring this up at all: I think wearing clothes with holes in them is going to be increasingly popular over the next couple of years, and I just want it to be clear that I was doing it first.
Muji Village: “Green, Plain, Community”
Muji has teamed up with real estate developer Mitsubishi Chiso [Mitsubishi Estate] to create Muji Village, a three-building condominium complex in Chiba Prefecture, the New Jersey of Tokyo. Or maybe it’s the Westchester of Tokyo, and Saitama’s New Jersey, but still. [here’s a Google map of the site. It’s near Maebara and Tsudanuma stations, and it used to contain a six-building municipal housing complex from 1960.]
The concept for Muji Village boils down to three points: Green, Plain, and Community. Green means trees, not ecologically sustainable. Plain means “white, 100 year concrete” and design that won’t go out of fashion [sic], plus flexibility to remodel as your family configuration changes, and Community means common spaces like libraries and a couple of gardens.
Frankly, even though Muji is pervasive to the point of saturation in Japan, I’d still suspect that Muji Village is being built on the premise of a particularly brand-centric “feel good lifestyle,” and that it is intended to attract like-minded Muji aficionados–Mujillas in this case, not Mujillahs.
Last month at the flagship store in Yurakucho, Muji Atelier exhibited poster-sized Muji Village floorplans in a grid of stacks on the floor. They were meant for you to roll up and take home, so you could discuss them at your kitchen table and decide the layout you preferred best. Such presentation, such collaborative spirit, such freedom of choice! It’s as if Muji Village’s exclusive broker was Felix Gonzalez-Torres.
I can’t find any info on prices, or photos, or renderings. And yet the Muji Village website says they are currently looking, not for buyers, but for “members.”
update: Aha, here it is. 9 stories, 152 units, Sounds like Mitsubishi came with an existing project. Muji’s doing the exterior, unit interiors, and common areas, including the Community “living rooms.” Sales and model room debut in late January for Feb. 2010 occupancy. [via nikkei business preess, sept. 08, before the real estate development world ended]
Muji Village info page and exhibition [muji.net]
Muji Village website [muji-village.com]
The Fake Wedding Singer
Even he had to admit that this was as pleasant a concert setting as could be imagined. The stage was a flatbed trailer set up in front of a log cabin; it was a breezy summer afternoon, and people brought folding chairs and beach blankets. His mother was there, with a collection of aunts and uncles. Parsons, shirtless in swimming trunks and as skinny as advertised, sang some charming, shambling mountain songs with his band, and then there was a fake marriage ceremony, in case the neighbors were watching–they had been told that the gathering was for a wedding, on the theory that this would make them less likely to call the police. Then Oldham took the stage, with Parsons and the band surrounding him. He was wearing a maroon tank top, orange-and-pink pants, blue Crocs, and a pink Boston Red Sox cap, with “cam” and “odia” scrawled on either side of the “B.”
– Will Oldham transfigures American music, by Kelefah Sanneh [newyorker.com via southwillard]
Donate To ArtFagCity’s Year-End Pledge Drive
Paddy Johnson does great work at AFC. By contributing today–right now, in fact–you can help support the expansion online of art, its creation, exhibition, and its thoughtful interpretation. And thanks to her collaboration with Momenta Art to manage AFC’s fundraising and the appropriate, non-profit use of the proceeds, your contribution is tax-deductible.
details, discussion, and donation: The Art Fag City Year-End Fundraiser: the final stretch [artfagcity.com]