Mixtapes, Hip Hop, & Hypocrisy In The NYT

The Times’ Kelefa Sanneh sounds pissed off, but weary, as he unpacks the contradictions and outright hypocrisy of mixtapes and the RIAA’s stunt raid on Mondo Kim’s last week:

So while record labels donate money to honor a man who helped promote mixtapes, the trade group representing the labels cracks down on those who sell them. And who goes to jail? Well, suffice it to say that the police haven’t arrested any of the major-label record executives who profit from the hype generated by mixtapes.And who scout out new talent at Kim’s. And the RIAA neglects to mention that the artists whose authority they claim also work hand in hand with mixtape producers to release, promote, test, and experiment with tracks.
Mixtape Crackdown Sends a Mixed Message [nyt]

I Cut Thigh With A Little Help From My Flense

drawing_restraint9.jpgFor the first time, Matthew Barney and Bjork have collaborated on a film and soundtrack called Drawing Restraint 9, after some of Barney’s earliest, pre-Cremaster works. In DR9, the two visit a Japanese whaling ship in Nagasaki, undergo various Shinto wedding-inspired rituals, form and reform a large Vaseline sculpture, and then themselves transform into whales by cutting each others feet and legs off with flensing knives.
Bjork’s soundtrack incorporates Japanese instruments, vocalizations, and both folk and court music traditions.
[No, I didn’t know, either. Flensing is the process of cutting strips of blubber off of a whale carcass, as in Moby Dick, or this 1970 National Geographic photograph of a flensing Icelandic whaler.]
No word yet on when/where this will be released. The film premieres July 1 along with an exhibit of Barney’s work at the 21st Century Museum in Kanazawa, Japan, and the cd comes out later that month. I love that a museum with this name still follows the antique Japanese corporate tradition of requiring postcard requests for seats. [kanazawa21.jp, via pitchfork]

Drawing Restraint 9 [bjork.com, via kottke, archinect]

What do Kim’s Video and Janet Cardiff Have In Common?

Why, copyright, for one thing. And a quaint, lingering fixation on outmoded technology for another.
Kim’s St Mark’s location got busted by the NYPD, the Feds–“everybody was here,” says one nonbusted employee–the other day, who confiscated all the computers and arrested four employees.
Although the store has been a speakeasy-type outlet for bootleg copies of Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle and Todd Haynes’ Barbie doll classic, Superstar!: The Karen Carpenter Story, neither Barbara Gladstone nor Christine Vachon–as intimidating as they are–was behind the raid.
No, it’s an even scarier outfit–yes, it’s possible–the RIAA, who patted the NYPD on the head in a statement given to MTV. Apparently the problem was the store’s brisk mixtapes business, which, according to the RIAA, were largely “urban in nature.”
And speaking of urban in nature [sweet segue, right?], artist Janet Cardiff’s audio/photo walking tour of Central Park, which was commissioned last year by the Public Art Fund, was so popular they’re bringing it back again this summer. The piece, titled “Her Long Black Hair,” can be experienced by picking up a CD player, CD, and stack of photos at a kiosk on Central Park South, Thursdays through Sundays until Sept. 11, only between 10 and 3:30.
I guess we should be only slightly thankful the original equipment–a Victrola in a wheelbarrrow and a watercolor set–didn’t work out. It’s nice to know that Cardiff’s work is so popular, but it’s too bad there’s no easier way to distribute a 45-minute piece of audio and a handful of images to large numbers of people…a Magical Media Mover– call it the MMM for short–and some kind of player for it, a 3MP… Oh, I give up. Never happen.
Police Raid Video Store in East Village in Piracy Case [nyt]
Police Seize 50 Cent, Jay-Z Mixtapes In Raid On NYC Store [mtv, 50 Cent? You mean the guy who launched his career via mixtapes? Someone’s hatin’ the game here.]
Read info from 2004 about “Her Long Black Hair,” by Janet Cardiff,, which is being restaged June 16-Sept. 12 [publicartfund.org]

WPS1: Northern Italian Exposure

northern_exposure.jpgGood Morning, Cicely! Whether that’s Cicely Brown or Cicely, Alaska, only time will tell. WPS1 is broadcasting live from a party barge near the Arsenale, site of the Venice Biennale.
The web audio programs will should be up within a couple of hours days, max, of their actual creation, so if you’re the other [*cough*] art world groupie not in Venice at the moment , you can still follow along online someday.
But who cares what you think if you’re not in Venice, anyway? And if you are, you won’t care, because you’ll be gettin’ your WPS1 on over the air, via one of the 10,000 free WPS1 fixed-frequency radios being distributed to the masses of VIP’s. (And you’ve probably expended too much energy trying to get it upgraded for one of the 5,000 VVIP radios, which, although they look less cool, still, in an irrational way you can never adequately explain to your parents over Thanksgiving dinner in that leafy suburb you fled with disdain, signal your ascendance into the top third of your class, 67th percentile, which if you think about it, is barely passing. Hope they’re grading the art world on a curve.)
Anyway, by pumping out a low-power FM signal on the ground [sic] in Venice, WPS1 is making a play to become the local radio station for the art world’s small town. Entertain yourself with the notions of artmacher flashmobs and storming the Arsenale if you like, but it suddenly reminds me of Chris, the DJ on Northern Exposure, who later packed it all in, changed his name to Aiden, moved to the city, and hooked up with a neurotic sex columnist.

WPS1 Live Venice Broadcast Schedule [wps1.org, most of Monday’s shows are up. must be one helluva party on that barge]

WPS1: Northern Italian Exposure

northern_exposure.jpgGood Morning, Cicely! Whether that’s Cicely Brown or Cicely, Alaska, only time will tell. WPS1 is broadcasting live from a party barge near the Arsenale, site of the Venice Biennale.
The web audio programs will should be up within a couple of hours days, max, of their actual creation, so if you’re the other [*cough*] art world groupie not in Venice at the moment , you can still follow along online someday.
But who cares what you think if you’re not in Venice, anyway? And if you are, you won’t care, because you’ll be gettin’ your WPS1 on over the air, via one of the 10,000 free WPS1 fixed-frequency radios being distributed to the masses of VIP’s. (And you’ve probably expended too much energy trying to get it upgraded for one of the 5,000 VVIP radios, which, although they look less cool, still, in an irrational way you can never adequately explain to your parents over Thanksgiving dinner in that leafy suburb you fled with disdain, signal your ascendance into the top third of your class, 67th percentile, which if you think about it, is barely passing. Hope they’re grading the art world on a curve.)
Anyway, by pumping out a low-power FM signal on the ground [sic] in Venice, WPS1 is making a play to become the local radio station for the art world’s small town. Entertain yourself with the notions of artmacher flashmobs and storming the Arsenale if you like, but it suddenly reminds me of Chris, the DJ on Northern Exposure, who later packed it all in, changed his name to Aiden, moved to the city, and hooked up with a neurotic sex columnist.

WPS1 Live Venice Broadcast Schedule [wps1.org, most of Monday’s shows are up. must be one helluva party on that barge]

Alex Kuczyinski’s Desperate Plea For Netflix Recommendations

How else to explain this totally out-of-nowhere reference to one of the worst “short films on a theme by different directors” compilations EVER? Kuczyinski is fast becoming the Times’ new crazy auntie, Joyce Wadler.
“I wandered from one rack to the next, dragging my mitts over the textures and beading, feeling like Buck Henry in the 1987 movie Aria, when he spends an ecstasy-fueled evening stroking the iconographic statuary at the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo, Calif.”
Let Clothes Be Your Guide to Adventure [nyt]
Look–but don’t touch, rent, or buy–Aria at imdb.com
Hey Alex, I have a Netflix recommendation for you–switch to greencine.

Alex Kuczyinski’s Desperate Plea For Netflix Recommendations

How else to explain this totally out-of-nowhere reference to one of the worst “short films on a theme by different directors” compilations EVER? Kuczyinski is fast becoming the Times’ new crazy auntie, Joyce Wadler.
“I wandered from one rack to the next, dragging my mitts over the textures and beading, feeling like Buck Henry in the 1987 movie Aria, when he spends an ecstasy-fueled evening stroking the iconographic statuary at the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo, Calif.”
Let Clothes Be Your Guide to Adventure [nyt]
Look–but don’t touch, rent, or buy–Aria at imdb.com
Hey Alex, I have a Netflix recommendation for you–switch to greencine.

Don’t Book That Spiral Jetty Trip Just Yet

Recent record flooding in Utah has raised the water level (elevation, that is) of the Great Salt Lake to a five-year record high of 4,198 feet, enough to submerge the Spiral Jetty and scuttle any art world latecomer’s summer pilgrimage plans.
With mountain runoff, the lake is expected to keep rising through July.
Meanwhile, the rest of the artworld is in Venice, which is also sinking. Coincidence? I wonder.
Floods pump life back into lake [sltrib, thanks, dad]

Don’t Book That Spiral Jetty Trip Just Yet

Recent record flooding in Utah has raised the water level (elevation, that is) of the Great Salt Lake to a five-year record high of 4,198 feet, enough to submerge the Spiral Jetty and scuttle any art world latecomer’s summer pilgrimage plans.
With mountain runoff, the lake is expected to keep rising through July.
Meanwhile, the rest of the artworld is in Venice, which is also sinking. Coincidence? I wonder.
Floods pump life back into lake [sltrib, thanks, dad]

Maybe Red vs. Blue: The Script Will Fare Better

But gee, people really eat this stuff up at E3…
After skimming the bullet points in Trade Show Product Launches For Dummies, Microsoft and their Hollywood assistants at CAA did a quick find-and-replace to kick off the studio auction of the Redmond-funded script for Halo.
The Halo armor-clad bike messengers who delivered the scripts looked so rad, several studio execs got confused and, thinking this was the Quicksilver 2 auction, and bid the price into outer space.
Supposedly, the script somehow manages to suck and blow at the same time, a talent Alex Garland might need when this game is over.
Halo: The Studio Stunt [defamer]
Previously: Waiting for Halo
Virtual Warriors Have Feelings, Too [nyt, my interview with rvb’s Burnie Burns]

Seeing Cy Twombly Naked

Actually, when I saw Cy Twombly, he wasn’t naked, and neither was I. I’d gone to Houston for work, right after graduating from college, and I had an extra day, so I set out to find this Rothko Chapel I’d heard about. No luck, or maybe it’s that low-slung grey clapboard building. With the blackboard Twombly in the lobby. Holy moley, what is this place?
It was, of course, the Menil Collection, and while I was standing in front of one of my favorite paintings, a tall, elderly man came around the corner from behind it and stood there, too. I looked at him, then at the painting, then back. “Excuse me, are you Cy Twombly?” “Yes I am.” I babbled something—I was obviously clueless but well-meaning–and he was gracious, then he left.
I later learned he had come to do an interview for the exhibition catalogue of “Rauschenberg: The Early 1950’s,” a tremendous show which was organized by Walter Hopps at the Menil, and which traveled to the Guggenheim. (Remember when the Guggenheim used to have good shows?)
I was reminded of this incident by the article in the Times about the panoply of Twombly shows in Houston at the moment. The artist told of a Menil guard who came upon a French woman standing naked and transfixed in front of a large Twombly canvas.
A Celebratory Splash for an Enigmatic Figure [nyt]
Buy Hopps’s 1991 Rauschenberg: The Early 1950s catalogue for –sheesh, $255?? [it’s that and more–up to $400 on abebooks]