Given its subject–loss and longing that spans and haunts the characters’ entire lives–wouldn’t it be perfect if the two+ year delay in bringing of Wong Kar Wai’s 2046 to theaters was somehow intentional, planned, not just a part of the marketing, but of the movie’s experience itself?
It was a gorgeously made film, with incredible cinematography [pace Christopher Doyle], sound, music, acting, production design. But it’s so sad, relentlessly sad. Maybe not the best movie to see alone and away from home.
The Zone 2 DVD of 2046 has been out since May [or mai, comme ils disent]
Art: We’re Here To Please
Regine just posted about some artists in the Hungarian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale who made portable chairs available to visitors, [correction: turns out the chairs were sponsor-driven, not artist-driven.] and it got me thinking about the customer service side of artviewing, especially in a setting like Venice.
So much art is about the White Cube, the experience of seeing it, a “critique” of the institution/process, but yet so little of that actual process is actually addressed. A curator friend once told me of escorting her trustees around Venice (the last one, when it was August-hot at the June opening), and they actually had to debate going to see some art based on whether or not the venue was air-conditioned.
An artist like Francesco Vezzolli makes his art movie-trailer-short, sex-filled, and full of fashion and celebrity in order to stand out from the blur of Venice’s gossip-saturated, art-overloaded opening festivities. But that’s just a shrewd reading and anticipation of the setting.
I just came back from Tokyo with a hoard of Takashi Murakami fans, which they were handing out to people as they got off the Roppongi subway stop. It’s not art, I know, but it’s an artist’s move, based on a retailer/developer’s understanding of the viewer experience.
Then there’s Rirkrit Tiravanija’s meals, or last Venice’s Utopia Station, to an extent. Or 2001’s Venice cafe collaboration between Olafur Eliasson and Tobias Rehburger and ___ [I forget, but it doesn’t matter, because apparently it was altered so badly the artists removed their name from it. Somewhere in there, it lost the sanctity that non-artists grant to artwork.]
So what I’d love to see, I guess, is some kind of art-as-customer-service, someone who toys with or explores or highlights the fact that viewing and encountering and contemplating art is often –not exclusively, or even mostly, but often, and especially in the event-centered cases of fairs, biennials, and openings where much of the “art world” places itself– a cultural experience, an activity that its viewers choose over shopping, movies, other forms of travel or tourism, reading, what have you.
Anyway, just rambling when I should be heading out. It’s so hot, I think I’ll take one of these fans.
L.A. In A Nutshell
“Reasons for ever wearing anything like this have nearly disappeared from my world, and yet I love this pervy and glam Christian Louboutin shoe.”
A quote from artist/screenwriter/NY-expat Theresa Duncan’s newly launched blog, The Wit of The Staircase [named after l’Esprit d’Escalier, French for “what you should’ve said instead”]. Like the protagonist in Patrice Lecomte’s sublime film, Ridicule, Duncan’s an observer/participant in the deeply superficial royal courts, only hers is Hollywood.
Perfect for playing Six Degrees when you need to go from Pynchon to Christian Lacroix.
The Wit of the Staircase [theresalduncan.typepad.com]
A Video Game-Film Convergence Project Sure To Live Up To Its Name
Doom: The Movie seems about as stupid as Mortal Kombat: The Movie. At least they didn’t blow $1mm on a script by Alex Garland.
See the Doom trailer [apple.com, via fimoculous]
The Marketing Of The Penguins
If it’s any consolation, Japan looked like it had been plush carpetbombed by penguins, too.
WPS1’s Stephen Schaefer did an interview with Luc Jacquet, director of March of The Penguins, which was first broadcast on July 18th. [scroll down]
Beyond The Subtitles: Luc Jacquet Interview [wps1.org]
Strictly Murderball
Radar Online has a print-sized [i.e., too short] q&a with Murderball co-director Dana Adam Shapiro, but it’s mostly about his novel [The Every Boy] and his childhood. It’s interesting that filmmakers don’t get asked how autobiographical their work is as much as novelists do.
On A Roll [radaronline]
Meanwhile, Murderballer Mark Zupan talks to WPS1’s Stephen Schaefer as part of a cross-country, film-promoting, drink-a-thon, which he also blogs about on mtv.com. Zupan is like the wheelchair guy on Jackass, if Jackass had a wheelchair guy, so most of his schtick is about being such a badass.
Beyond The Subtitles: Mark Zupan Interview [wps1.org]
Rock & Roll, Mark Zupan’s blog [mtv.com]
“Films, like memories, seem to re-shoot themselves over the years”
J.G. Ballard takes a new look at the films of Michael Powell on the centenary of his birth.
I think of Powell as a prophet whose films offer important lessons to both film-makers and novelists, especially the latter, who are still preoccupied with character and individual moral choice. My guess is that the serious novel of the future will be serious in the way that Powell’s and Hitchcock’s films are serious, where the psychological drama has migrated from inside the characters’ heads to the world around them. This is true to everyday life, where we know little about the real nature of the people around us, and less about ourselves than we think, but are highly sensitive to the surrounding atmosphere.
The Prophet [guardian]
the National Film Theatre’s Powell retrospective continues through the end of August. [bfi.org.uk]
If I Can’t Have You…
I’ve gotten some pretty angry emails since my International Freedom Center post comparing GWB’s cult of infallibility to Kim Jong Il’s. Most of them single out my insensitive characterization of 9/11 family member Debra Burlingame as a toady, unwitting or not, for the current administration.
I’m no pundit, and I don’t honestly know why anyone cares what I think, but let me say it straight out: I think both the IFC and The Drawing Center should be removed from the WTC site as it’s currently planned. From the beginning, I’ve thought they were, respectively, an awkward, artificial, potentially controversial sham born out of political expediency, and a wholly inexplicable, inappropriate mis-fit with the site. Both institutions were canaries in the coal mine of the WTC rebuilding process; that they’re now controversial and should not be part of the WTC Memorial should’ve surprised no one observing this Georgian (Bush or Pataki, pick your poison) mess.
So on the basis of outcome alone, I would say that Burlingame and I and Jarvis–and now the FDNY, apparently–can agree on the most appropriate outcome: no Other Centers at the World Trade Center site. We only disagree on the reasons (i.e., the politics) why.
Burlingame has repeatedly put herself, and by implication, the families of 9/11, at the service of GWB’s political agenda. In this case, that agenda is served by deflecting responsibility for the Snohetta Centers debacle away from the Bush/Pataki crowd who made this politically exploitative bed. And every time the stalking horses of “America-bashing” and “liberal, politically correct” historical revisionism are cited as the reasons for these institutions being cut–and no mention is made of Pataki et al’s long record of pandering and political manipulation of the WTC rebuilding process–that obfuscatory agenda marches on.
Klein Dytham’s Billboard Building
This new building is across the street from my in-law’s apt. in Tokyo, in the Minami Azabu neighborhood about 5-min. walk from Roppongi Hills.
It just went up a few months ago, and the evening I went over to examine it close up, the young Japanese architect happened to be there with a photographer, taking pictures for the firm’s website. These pictures, in fact, at Klein Dytham.
The site used to be a tiny parking lot, he said, but then the road/sidewalk was widened, cutting into the lot. As you might expect, there’s a tiny little service core in the tapering end at left, but if there’s a basement, its entrance is well-hidden. Basically, what you see is what you get: a rare spec building with a strong architectural presence.
Now, one day back from Tokyo, just as I’m about to post this, I find that Regine has already scooped me on the building that I’ve been walking by almost daily for the last month.
Billboard House Moto Azabu [huh? klein-dytham]
Greg Allen At The Fringe Festival! [No, The Other One]
The other Greg Allen, I mean. The Chicago one. The Neo-Futurists, of which that Greg Allen is a co-founder, are performing next week at the Fringe Festival. What are they doing, you ask? The Last Two Minutes of the Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen. It’s part of a Chicago fringe theater mob takeover of the East Village.
The Neo-futurist’s site has info on the production, while the Int’l Fringe NYC site has info on the performances. So break out that $20, and you get change back.
Coming Soon: The Debra Burlingame Center For International Adoration Of Our Peerless Leader
Did you know George W. Bush shot a miraculous 11 holes-in-one on the first round of golf he ever played? This and other such signs of his divine leadership in the face of terror will soon be on display, if Debra Burglingame, in her infinite wisdom, permits it. She campaigned for Bush, though, so I’m optimistic.
Freedom Center’s Place at Ground Zero in Question [nyt]
Tokyo Snapshots 3.1: The Plight Of The Bourgeois
Art is used to lend Roppongi Hills, the massive land grab mall/office complex I’m loving hating these days, cultural credibility. Minoru Mori, the developer, clearly fancies his development is Tokyo’s Rockefeller Center–and, by extension, he’s Japan’s Rockefeller.
At least two pieces of large-scale sculpture that were previously shown at Rock Ctr are currently installed at Roppongi Hills: Takashi Murakami’s Mr. Pointy & co., and Louise Bourgeois’ Maman [above].
Maman was first shown at the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. But for some reason, organizers at neither previous venue thought to turn the work into a cafe.
Tokyo Snapshots, 2.3: Michelangelo’s David
Walking along the street dividing Shibuya-ku and Minato-ku (ku’s are wards, as if the Lower East Side had its own government bureacracy), I was startled to find a life-sized bronze cast of Michelangelo’s David, as the central element in an ugly, low-rise concrete office building. There’s a granite plaque at the foot of the statue, but it only gives basic info on the original. And the stone’s grain is so pronounced, it’s nearly impossible to read. All very odd.
Tokyo Snapshots, 2.2: Women-Only Train Car
This is the entrance to the Women-only train car on the Tokyu line. There are enough pervs to require this sort of thing, it seems.
Meanwhile, although the Japanese have 42 different words for “excuse me,” there is no way to say “Rethink the hair.”
Tokyo Snapshots, 2.1: Waketokuyama, by Kengo Kuma
Near where we’ve been staying in Tokyo is this striking building, which I had to check out. The screen-like facade turns out to be cinder block-colored bricks set on end in a blackened steel frame. A meter back is the entry courtyard and the stark glass box of the restaurant, which feels suspended in the thick forest behind it. Of course, it’s on a busy corner of a major street (gaien higashi-doori, if you’re coming).
The restaurant is called Waketokuyama, and it’s apparently the Per Se of Tokyo, from the stunningly simple cuisine made with super-fresh ingredients, to the difficulties of getting a reservation. We’ll still look into eating there, but it was the architecture–by Kengo Kuma–which first caught my attention.
Kengo Kuma and Associates [kkaa.co.jp, such a big browser window for such little pictures]