Today’s Guardian asks twelve actual historians to lend their authoritative-sounding accents on politicians’ arguments that Iraq is the next [check all that apply] So what about 1914? The strongest military power in sight (Germany) is made to feel insecure by a terrorist outrage. Instead of confining its response to the known source of the terrorism (Serbia), it lashed out at one country, which it suspected of abetting the terrorists (Russia), and then at another country (France), which was linked to the first. Then it lost the plot. Worst of all, it calculated that the war would be won by Christmas. Forget Rupert’s minions walking in Foxstep, Code Orange, duct tape, Sadaam-huggers and cheese-eating surrender monkeys. Thanks to this one-day storm, you’re gonna have to pry our SUV’s from our cold, dead hands. Highlights from a Clear Channel memo showing how the war will play out on their homogenized network of radio stations (via robotwisdom): For future reference, Ben Hammersley’s interesting Guardian article about emerging bands like The Grateful Dead, Phish and others who are starting to let concertgoers to make and trade high-quality recordings. etree.org brings them all together, and the Internet Archive has even more. Brewster Kahle mentions it, too, while preaching about the coming paradise of shared human knowledge in this LOC speech. {via boingboing] “What did he read to you,” Mrs. Kellam was asked… The story has the best ending I’ve ever read. Forget duct tape. We have people for that kind of thing. About the Oscar nominations: Chicago is to movies what painted cows are to art.
Elmgreen & Dragset, a pair of artist friends, have a show up at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, called Phone Home. Five answering machines on a pentagon-shaped table in one gallery record the conversations from five working phonebooths in another. Another friend‘s very cogent writing puts the piece in context.
They were nominated for the Guggenheim’s Hugo Boss Prize, and just won the Hamburger Banhof Prize (from the museum in Hamburg, you see). I included a piece of theirs in a show I curated in 2000-1, but a friend jammed and bought it before I could close the deal.
Update: The artists will talk about their work Thursday evening, 2/20 at 6:30.
If Ric Burns Calls, Tell Him You’re Busy.
1939 Germany
1956 Egypt
1967 Israel
1991 Iraq
1963 Vietnam
1899 South Africa
1936 Ethiopia
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away Naboo
As someone who made a movie (S(N01)) about looking at the past (WWI) to make sense of the present (Sept. 11), I’m interested. One big lesson is best expressed by Simon Schama: “I’m allergic to lazy historical analogies. History never repeats itself, ever. That’s its murderous charm.”
Another: historians are almost as likely as politicians to slip from historical analogy to histrionic advocacy. For example Andrew Roberts‘ unsubtle derision: “The League of Nations, on the morning after Poland was invaded, had on its urgent agenda the standardisation of European railway gauges. Today’s United Nations is fast shaping up to be equally ineffectual.” (See if you can read between ‘ lines.)
And even though it would catapult S(N01) up the relevance scale, I hope Norman Davies is wrong comparing Iraq to 1914 Russia: Location, Location, Location
shot
Our street gets relatively little through traffic. The result: it’s usually an oasis of easy parking, and it’s tertiary (at best) on the snowplowing list. After opting for the garage, last night, though, this Mercedes pulled into our favorite spot (the one right in front of our house, duh) as we walked back. (That’s an S-Class buried there, btw; I can’t tell the make of the car being snowblown under across the street.) This morning, I’m free of the twinge of regret that comes with losing a sweet Manhattan parking spot.
TO: Arianna, FROM: New Yorkers RE: Abetting The Terrorists
Who Are The People In Your Neighborhood v4.0
Like the $20 tickets for Rent, you had to get there early if you actually wanted to reach the site of today’s protest rally in NYC. By the time I printed out my sign at Kinko’s (above, made in Powerpoint, thank you), the rally became a march and the march came to us. We never got closer than 3rd Avenue and 55th street, and spent a crowded hour+ getting back to Bloomingdale’s, five blocks away. It was like the Saturday before Christmas shopping-meets-WTO; stores were open everywhere, and full of consuming marchers. The beverage of choice for NYC peacelovers: Diet Coke. I’d have had an easier time finding a roll of duct tape in Arlington.
Our calculation of the crowd size, using Prof. Clark McPhail’s technique: 250-300,000, which turns out to be low.
While exhilarating, no one really got my sign, which is fine. It means I < heart > Old Europe. But when an art world friend saw it, he first thought it meant, “I < heart > Olafur Eliasson.” [Which I do, don’t get me wrong, Olafur…]Why It Got Awfully Quiet All Of A Sudden
Get Your War Plan On
Our Coverage will be called America’s War with Iraq In writing copy please call our coverage, ‘LIVE In-Depth Team Coverage of America’s War with Iraq.’ ”
It’s A Small World After All
It’s time we’re aware
designed by Mary Blair image: bobstaake.com
Which, according to some people, should make it easier for the US to tell it what to do.
Sarah Lyall’s Times article: “A Sense of Fine Qualities Trampled and of Something ‘Terribly Wrong'”
Steal This Music, Please. In Which Case, It’s Not Stealing
Tina Brown: Sorry, Charlie. I Wanna Be Like Larry
Hmm. Wethinks the lady doth protest too much. Hannity gets a mention, as does Colmes, but Charlie Rose is conspicuously absent from Tina Brown’s column on her “round table discussions rather than solo interviews” talk show. So who’ser daddy? “Solo interviewer” Larry King, of course. Tina’s gleanings from the master:
Bonus 1: The artist Daniel Bozhkov created a giant crop circle of Larry King. His exhibit about the project (including on-air discussion of the project by Larry and his guest, the art critic formerly known as Matthew Perry) closes at Andrew Kreps Gallery this weekend [Where’s the website, Andrew?]
Bonus 2: Talking Points Memo has hilarious-but-painful-but-true commentary on Larry’s interviewing style. Required reading for new talk show hosts. You will be graded on this.
On Thomas Struth On Art
Alte Pinakothek, Selftportrait, Munich, 2000, Thomas Struth
The other night, I heard the photographer Thomas Struth talk about his work. A friend (who has a far more serious art habit than even I do) hosted a reception for the artist in his office. Extra Struths, brought out of storage for the evening, rested on stacks of printer paper, an installation technique you don’t see at the artist’s current one-man show at the Met.
Struth spoke very quietly, but determinedly, about his work and the ideas and process behind it. He’s clearly contemplative, and some of his most well-known works are unabashedly about contemplation (his Paradise junglescapes and his photos of museumgoers). He described his decades-long relationship with the 1500 self-portrait of Albrecht Durer (above) and his fascination with its unusual gaze. By putting himself in the photo (that’s Struth’s shoulder), he wanted to capture a moment of a conversation, while readily allowing that the two figures may not be saying anything to each other.
He caught me off guard, though, by referring to the photo’s cinematic character; but sure enough, the framing, blocking and “sightlines” are from one half of a shot/reverse-shot, the continuity editing staple for depicting a two-person conversation. Struth wanted to portray a conversation that crosses 500 years (he shot it in 2000), a long-term perspective Struth finds shamefully absent today.
“No one [in the current political situation] looks forward even 50 years; they only look to their next election.” Struth then ruminated on art worlders and what they could do to pull the real world back from the brink of war. “We’re here, in the office of [one of the wealthiest men in the world], there are so many influential people in the art world. Why don’t people use this powerful social network” to avert this global disaster?
Nervous silence, nervous chatter, and then a spurt of panged/defensive hands, as a few people tried to explain how our “standing here sipping champagne” was actually alright. An older guy with a Palm Beach tan leaned over and murmured to me, “I think we’re going in the wrong direction.” “That’s exactly what he’s talking about,” I deadpanned, “Oh, you mean the conversation.” Soon, we returned, quickly, safely, and completely, to discussions of how, exactly, he was able to get that amazing shot of the Parthenon. (“Because I’ve tried to shoot it every time I go, and it’s just so dark!”)
One implication in Struth’s photo, which cannot be avoided, of course, is our own responsibility. Shot/reverse-shot technique uses two components to establish the shared space; a reverse shot is needed. It would be a shot of Struth (and all of us, in the present day, standing in museums and galleries and private collections) from the perspective of Durer’s painted space, maybe over the 16th-century artist’s shoulder, a shot looking far into the future.
When Do You Cry Reading The Home Section?
Hardly ever, frankly. But William Hamilton’s wonderful story of the Kellams, a couple who lived alone, together, on an island off Mount Desert Island, really got me for some reason. Hamilton mentions David Graham’s book about the couple, Alone Together, published by Ponds Press
“It was always the right thing,” she answered…
Kippy Stroud, a summer resident who runs an arts camp on Mount Desert Island, said, “We just admired them so much.” Ms. Stroud introduced Mr. Graham, William Wegman and other artists to Placentia to see the Kellams’ world as it faded, like a patch of light in a forest.For My Upper East Side Emergency Kit
A quick turn around the neighborhood reveals what’s really standing between me and preparedness:
The Oscars: A Musical Comedy
What’re THINK Thinking?
Team THINK’s winning WTC design: lattice towers with a, um,
museum? embedded in it image: vinoly.com
Goin’ to hear THINK architect/model Rafael Vinoly at Urban Center tonight (as suggested by Gawker)? Ask him if the reason he was a no-show yesterday on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show was that listener’s early comment, which surprised Lehrer, about how THINK’s towers appear to have an airplane embedded in it? Listen to the exchange is in the “3rd audio clip. [2016 updated link to WNYC archive page currently has no audio.]
[Note: If you watch THINK’s video on The NYT‘s slideshow, the shape of the “airplane” is quite different; it looks more like a giant aluminum cheese straw. For THINK’s sake, I hope that’s closer to their intentions. One team of architects trying to sneak a shudder-inducing memorial past us is more than enough, thanks.]
[2016 update: lmao of course most of these links are dead, I cannot BELIEVE that the realaudio of WNYC’s show from 13 yrs earlier is not there anymore! But I un-hotlinked and updated the image and the Vinoly link. Swimming against the tide of time, also Gawker RIP]
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the making of, by greg allen