I got out of NYC yesterday afternoon–actually, I was on Long Island and apparently couldn’t have gotten back in if I’d wanted to–by flying Southwest out of Islip to Baltimore. It felt like we were the only people getting anywhere.
Of course, now NYC sounds so fun, we’re going back. Besides, I’m sure our fridge has defrosted all over the floor.
On Christian Marclay
Christian Marclay’s awesome Video Quartet is on view now at LA’s Hammer Museum, as part of a mid-career retrospective of Marclay’s art-meets-music work. [In the LA Times, Chris Knight reviews the show–and misses some major points–with nary a mention of the video. the CS Monitor has a better review.]
I remember MoMA exhibiting his 1989 piece, Tape Fall, where an audio tape of running water pools onto the floor. It was cool, but Video Quartet blew me away. Marclay brings his sampling and mixing experience from DJ’ing to his artmaking, “plumbing the deeper meanings of that intersection.”
Of course, I found out about it one day too late, but it turns out the selling of Marclay’s 1995 work, Telephones, perfectly encapsulates the challenges video poses to artists and dealers.
According to a curator/dealer I’ve known for years, Telephones was sold in two editions: a small, signed edition of 25, and a larger, unsigned edition of, say, 100. They were priced at $1,000 and $200, respectively. [While not Jayson Blairing these numbers, I should say I don’t remember them exactly. They’re directionally accurate, though.]
But several people who bought the unsigned edition apparently felt no compunction in copying it for friends. Without the signature, these dubs were essentially identical to the unsigned tapes. The result [with no offense to the Fab Five]: it queered the market for the larger edition.
Infinite reproduction is, theoretically, at least, inherent in video-based art. But in Marclay’s case, the talismanic, even fetishistic, signature was enough to make some buyers think twice before dubbing. But it’s a little finger-in-the-dike, though, as the unsigned, now-unlimited edition proves. I’ll give Marclay a call about this some time.
Cremaster 2: Videotape Boogaloo
Until this spring, there was still a press release on Art House Films‘ website heralding the coming DVD release of The Cremaster Cycle . If Matthew Barney’s films are obsesed wtih potentiality, announcing and never releasing the DVD’s seems somehow appropriate. After all, cremasters are designed to rein things in, not let ’em hang out, right?
Inexplicably, nine hours in the Guggenheim’s theater didn’t give me enough Cremaster in my art/media diet. So after bailing on the mass market DVD’s, I went out and got me a copy–in the interest of journalistic research, you understand–of Cremaster 2 to watch at home.
As any of you who has dropped the six figs for the vitrine editions know, watching Cremaster at home is a different ball game (some pun intended). I have to say, If I were gonna spend that much money on a film, it’d be my own. And returning Netflix discs is stressful enough, so I didn’t borrow a real copy. Besides, how do you ask someone to loan you their art? Nah, I borrowed a super-clean VHS copy from, well, you’ll know where it came from, soon enough.
1. They’re video. Even in theaters, it was obvious that the first two installments (C4 and C1 had been shot on video. Not so for the last three, which were HD-to-film transfers. Barney squoze far more than ten pounds of production value into a five pound bag. Not since Sally Potter’s Orlando has a filmmaker gotten such an expensive-looking film out of such a small budget. [Howard’s End, yeah yeah, but I digress.] The copy I got was clearly not HD-to-film-to-DVD-to-VHS, though, and it shows. Like when I caught Agnes Varda’s Gleaners on TV; there’s something very “pull back the curtain” about seeing these works as video.
Cremaster 2 production still, Matthew Barney
image: Biennale of Sydney.org
2. It’s still long. Even though C2 is my favorite, it still felt long. Argue that Barney wants it to be long, to force the viewer to experience it at that pace, fine. But the power relationship shifts when you pop the tape in. Let me tell you, if you’ve got a remote control, you’re gonna use it. You can use it for good or for evil, of course, and it’s just as nice to rewind the salt flats as it is necessary to fast forward the seance.
3. The DVD’s coming out after all, but it’s The Order, the video game-like segment of C3 which played on the big monitors in the Guggenheim rotunda. It’s on Amazon right now, in fact, for $18.74.
Where the hell am I
Apologies for not posting as much lately. I’ve been on the road a lot, without net access, in the day, and working on an editing deadline for an upcoming, non-greg.org gig. Stay tuned.
In the mean time, I still have to post about the meeting two weeks ago with Avery, who’s composing a great new electronic score for Souvenir November 2001.
For suddenly film-related reading, add Gawker to the list: Elizabeth‘s in LA, doing a driveby of the Mormon temple (as if Spielberg’d live below Sunset. hah.) and not pitching film ideas.
In the mean time, the animation on MTV’s Spiderman is pretty sweet. For all the attempts to coax more realism out of CG, it’s amazing how long it took for people to master the aesthetic benefits of simplicity.
What if you combined Gigli-bashing, a terrorist futures market, and never reading your own paper?
Yeah, it’s August, but someone’s really phoning it in at the Guardian. After spotting some headlines in the IHT about the twin critical flops of Gigli and John Poindexter’s terrorism futures exchange, Duncan Campbell straightfacedly proposes “a futures market in which we all bet on filmic atrocities.” [Note to Duncan: If you call it, oh, the Hollywood Futures Exchange, don’t be surprised to find your British arse sued by the positively ancient Hollywood Stock Exchange.]
This is an unusually daft article, and not just because HSX was repeatedly reported as an inspiration for the Pentagon’s policyanalysismarket.org. I mean, the Guardian already discovered the seven-year old HSX way back in January.
“The most un-American thing I’ve ever seen in my whole life.”
That’s John Wayne, of all people, talking about High Noon, a vengeance-filled film he turned down. Depressingly, Burt Kearns, the producer of a documentary on the retired White House projectionist, says this is also the all-time favorite movie of American presidents, screened by all, including GWB. [The docu’s on Bravo, and it’s painfully shallow, full of “the magic of movies” homilies from president-spawn (Ike’s daughter) and demonspawn (Jack Valenti) alike.]
Triangulate John Wayne’s comment, “Bush Doctrine” author Donald Kagan’s view of the US in the 21st Century (“You saw the movie, High Noon? We’re Gary Cooper.”), and Jim Shephard’s Believer Mag rumination on laconic cowboy precedents for Rumsfeldian obfuscation (work with me here, people): it follows that Bush’s admin is “the most un-American” ever.
talking about filmmaking, v2
I’m working on a couple of new features, or Features, interviews with some interesting filmmakers.
Greencine must know that, because they’re throwing up so many interesting filmmaking reads, including:
Steven Soderbergh and Richard Lester’s Getting Away With It: Or: The Further Adventures of the Luckiest Bastard You Ever Saw,
and Lawrence Grobel’s Above the Line: Conversations about the Movies
. Read an Austin Chronicle review for excerpts.
Euan’s baby announcement on Gawker
Congratulations to Euan and Lucy on their new baby, who’ll have a helluva time fitting his name into application forms for anything: Heathcliff Felix Alistair Euan Rellie.
As for the distinction of being the first baby reported on Gawker, well, that speaks for itself. To schedule a playdate with little Heathcliff, check out his Friendster account, or drop by the SoHo House nursery.
Santiago Calatrava to design WTC Station?? That Rocks.
In the NYT, Ed Wyatt reports that the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava has been selected to design the train station at the World Train Center site. Now we’re gettin’ somewhere. [Finally, Herbert Muschamp weighs in, too, and favorably.]
I’ve been a huge fan of Calatrava’s sensual combination of organic form and hardcore engineering since seeing his competition-winning proposal for the Cathedral of St John The Divine in 1991, something of a departure from the train stations and bridges which have long been Calatrava’s specialties.
The bridges were an inspiration for my own impulsive Pentagon Memorial sketch. And the philosophy that led to his being selected to create the Times Capsule would be a welcome addition to the WTC rebuilding dialogue.
What began as an off-hand suggestion turned into an elaborate, thoughtful exploration of what should be preserved for a thousand years, and how, practically, to preserve it. Rather than bury it (and hope people will find it –and open it– on schedule, the capsule advisors suggested creating something attractive enough to draw people to it in any age. “Beauty might be its own defense,” they figured. Counting on at least some degree of continuity in human civilization over the next 1,000 years, the Times noted, “Ultimately, we are throwing in our lot with culture.” Sometimes, I wonder if that idea’s already ancient history.
Learn it, know it, live it.
Gigli is getting some The Postman– and Battlefield Earth-scale bad reviews. In the Times, for example, A.O. Scott compares it to a Project Greenlight production.
It’s directed by Martin Brest, whose last film was the glacial Meet Joe Black, (which I affectionately call Architectural Digest: The Movie). It was 20 years ago, but Brest did make Beverly Hills Cop, so go figure.
And, oddly, he’s in the morgue scene in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which is on my DVD at this very moment. Of course, practically everyone was in that movie, as it turns out. Seriously. check out the cast.
Some thoughts after watching Fast Times for the first time in over a decade:
1. We haven’t–and I’m not saying this in a Judge Reinhold kind of way–we haven’t seen nearly enough of Phoebe Cates lately.
2. Fast Times, Dead Man Walking and The Thin Red Line. We’re No Angels, Shanghai Surprise and (the mawkish Ernest Borgnine chapter of) 11’09”01. Is Sean Penn really just a man?
3. At business school, I ordered pizza during a 4-hour marketing final one evening, a move which yielded me lasting, but dubious, acclaim.
The symmetry is too good to pass up
Why I Hate DC just turned up on Aaron’s site, and then David Ross just forwarded me I HATE New York City. Thanks to weblogs, I can now hate wherever I live, which is very convenient.
One thing I hate about DC: They take forever to tow a car, which means wrecked or abandoned cars line the roads, Mad Max-style.
New York, on the other hand, tows your car almost instantly, even if you just run into the post office for a few minutes. Bastards.
“Punch-Drunk Love is less a story than it is a poem”
How’d I miss this? GreenCine has a lyrical article/review about Punch-Drunk Love, PT Anderson, and Jeremy Blake, by Tom Tykwer, the German director of Run Lola Run and Heaven.
Punch-Drunk Love is FINALLY available on DVD, by the way. And it includes Blossoms & Blood, a short Paul and Jeremy made with John Brion’s music, which was previously only available to friends and family. And people on Paul’s Valentine’s Day card list.
INT – NYC PROMOTIONAL MERCHANDISE SHOWROOM/COPY STORE, DAY
A bustling Manhattan mid-day. A female EVENTS PLANNER, 30 years old, shoulder-length brown hair, Barney’s Label sleeveless blouse and pantsuit, stands at a glass display counter. She shops for silkscreenable trinkets with which to reward attendees for an impending business conference. A mid-30’s SALES ASSOCIATE with not-so-recently applied blonde highlights makes smalltalk as she retrieves digital clocks and desk caddies for consideration.
SALES ASSOCIATE
Do you like your job?
EVENTS PLANNER
Wha–? Oh– sure.
It’s been so hectic lately.
SALES ASSOCIATE
What is your exact title?
EVENTS PLANNER
(hesitant, slightly confused) I plan special events.
SALES ASSOCIATE
Ah, so you’re not in actual public relations, then.
EVENTS PLANNER
(getting up to speed, but not jumping fully into the conversation) No, I only do special events.
This one’s been real tough. To get everything pulled together… And I worked through the weekend…
SALES ASSOCIATE
Oh, I know. I’ve had a rough few days, too.
I have breast cancer.
Ugh. It should be called “American Publishers Yawn at Foreign Fiction”
In the NYT, Stephen Kinzer easily pulls some horrible quotes from major publishers about how Americans don’t want to read books translated into English. From a marketing hack at Harcourt: “We [Americans] are into accessible information. We often look for the story, rather than the story within the story. We’d rather read lines than read between the lines.” And from a hack at Hyperion: “The hard fact is that given the reality of the world, we [Americans] simply don’t have to be concerned about Laos, but people there might well want to be or have to be concerned about America.”
Granted, it’s not literature, but if a webful of kids can translate Harry Potter in German in two weeks [read Kottke comments here], why can’t the world of people who don’t work for ridiculous publishers start bubbling these things to the top and translating them collaboratively? Just to see what sticks.
If I were Jeff Jarvis, I’d say this was a project for webloggers.
Familiar Stranger and Digital Patina
_small.jpg)
Anne Galloway‘s on a roll these days. Until this Fall, I can’t say exactly why I find her posts about Intel Research Lab Berkeley’s Eric Paulos’ work so highly relevant just now. I can say that it’s very heartening to find an affinity with someone so smart and forward-thinking.
What the hell am I talking about? First is the social phenomena of the Familar Stranger, the people that you (don’t) meet/ when you’re walking down the street/ the people that you (don’t) meet each day. Second is Paulos’ interest in what he calls a “digital patina,” a layer of information, laid over a physical space that communicates what/who has come before. Paulos suggests RFID technology might make this possible.