Not sure why there’s so much Williamsburg because he lives in Fort Greene…

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1. Nate Kensinger’s amazing photos of the Navy Yard (previously)

2. Brutalism in the UK

3. An experimental Plastic Dining Room in Vancouver by Goodweather Collective + Loki Ocean

4. Inside the Loew’s Pitkin Theater

5. Mount Fuji Architects Studio: Tree House

6. Though I’ve been to beach several times in the past couple weeks, I have yet to visit Rockaway Taco, which is now immortalized by photographer Todd Selby in his trademark interior / food porn-y style. “Gross” though it may be, Fort Tilden is the perfect place to spend a sweltering weekday, if you have one to spare.

7. Dalian oil spill on Boston Big Picture blog

8. Zhang Huan is easily one of my favorite contemporary conceptual artists—his clever treatment of Chinese culture is always on point—Designboom has some nice photos of his current exhibition at UCCA, Hope Tunnel.

Zhang Huan
Hope Tunnel
Ullens Center for Contemporary Art
Big Hall
798 Art District
No.4 Jiuxianqiao Lu [map]
Chaoyang District
Beijing, China 100015
+86 (0) 10 8459 9269 / 8459 9387
Through October 24, 2010

9. Who Is Afraid of Red, Amber and Green?

Li Hui
Who Is Afraid of Red, Amber and Green?
Centrum Kunstlicht in de Kunst
Emmasingel 31
5600 JM Eindhoven, Netherlands [map]
+31-(0)40-2755183

10. Phenomenal close-up photos of eyes (via Notcot)

11. Lego Tattoo Pilot Pen Ads

12. “…I have since learned you like tomato soup.”

I biked down the East River Greenway for the first (and possibly last) time a couple weeks ago, before this happened...

]]> http://idolizeyourkillers.com/2010/08/images-5/feed/ 0 http://idolizeyourkillers.com/2010/07/continued/ http://idolizeyourkillers.com/2010/07/continued/#comments Sun, 01 Aug 2010 03:39:24 +0000 Ray http://idolizeyourkillers.com/?p=3362

• Nice interview with Raf Simons (WWD via HB)
• Lengthy inverview with David Andrew Sitek (BV)
• Awesome interview with Bill Murray (GQ)
• Telling interview with Penn & Teller (Telegraph)
• Decent interview with Ari Marcopoulos (Dossier)
• Hip interview with Pedro Winter (Busy P of Ed Banger) (OC)
• Strange interview with Spike Lee (Gothamist)
• Passable interview with Rafael de Cardenas (S×H)
• Brief interview with Tara McPherson (PSFK)

China:

• Urban China, ever the work in progress (NYT)
• China’s Banks: Great Wall Street (The Economist)
• Bad PR for the nouveau riche in the PRC (WSJ via Gawker)
• The other oil spill (NYT / Salon)
• A green movement grows in China (The Economist)
• The Economist also draws an ophidian metaphor for China’s growth / lack thereof.

Music:

• That’s Cool But Can You Make It More Shit?—short James Murphy interview (Nowness)
• The Antlers were amazing at Pier 54 last week (pics / video / new song @ BV)
• Why Music Is Good for You (via 3qd))
• Lil’ Wayne on a typical day in the clink.
• (More on) the Gaga Effect (NYT)
• Trent Reznor scores David Fincher’s The Social Network (NIN via Pitchfork; trailer)
• Inception, musically (NYT)

Media & Technology:

• When cars fly: Wired / n+1 / Bits (Recommended)
• Pure CSS Fail Whale
• Meta-commentary on Old Spice’s post-racial social media marketing.
• Paywall doesn’t pay (The Guardian)
• Apple’s Antenna(e)gate (The Economist / Daring Fireball)
• AWAD items: Frenemies by tongue (NYT); Tech-neology (NPR)… also, autocorrect in theory and in practice.

Food:

• 101 quick grilling recipes. (NYT; Bittman also talks watermelon)
• From table (or kitchen, at least) back to farm; also, a pig in a blanket, six feet under, etc.
• Salon asserts that Top Chef is in top form this season, though I find that the casting and challenges for D.C. have been less-than-inspired.
• Um. (AdFreak)

NYC:

• The High Line, continued (Revs!) (Highly[ne] recommended)
• Diller Scofido + Renfro’s Culture Shed (PSFK)
• The Economist marks George Steinbrenner’s passing with a rough analogy between the man and the city he came to represent.
• The Times wants to know how we do in Brooklyn.
• Hotels host Manhattan’s nouveau nightlife (NYMag); compare and contrast to : “It is part of the legend of New York, real or imagined, that vastly different cultures can thrive quite separately on the same block.”

Random:

• An older article on Messi. (Wired)
• Do Typefaces Really Matter? (BBC News) (Yes; highly recommended)
• Um. (NYT)
• Yoko D is back (Racked)
• Galen Strawson on moral dilemmas; it’s another version the ‘Original Choice’ (which is not chosen but embraced, or ‘owned’) in Sartrean ontology… (The Stone)
• Moral dilemmas, again (3qd), which (sort of) leads to…
• Lebronicles: He got game theory; the China factor; Cavs owner Dan Gilbert is tragic sans his two-time MVP (is the original online anywhere?), but perhaps not as bad as some outspoken critics might suggest.
• What Caravaggio means to me (The Guardian)
• Where America Really Came From (via 3qd)
• 52 architects choose the 21 most important buildings from the past 30 years. (VF)
• Denzel Washington on Wesley Snipes (who is going to jail): “Wesley is like a mighty oak tree… Many who know him have witnessed the fruit of his labours. I have sat in his shade and even been protected by his presence.”

PBR: three letters that spell the beginning of the End for Eastern Civilization.

However, as with just about every Chinese variant, the adjective ‘bizarro’ prevails: Evan Osnos of the New Yorker applauds Danwei’s eye for PBR’s PRC rebranding as Blue Ribbon 1844 (蓝带啤酒), a premium craft beer.

That reliably blue-collar Milwaukee lager, later adopted by unbearable hipsters on the coasts, has turned up in China. And P.B.R., best known in the U.S. for being the cheapest beer on the grocery-store shelf, has—like so many expatriates before it—taken the move as an opportunity to change its image. For a beer, that appears to involve an elegant glass bottle and a fantastically ridiculous price tag. One bottle: forty-four dollars.

–Evan Osnos, Pardon Me, Would You Have Any Pabst Blue Ribbon
Letter from China blog on The New Yorker, July 19 2010

Osnos, ever duly diligent, also includes this link to PBR [advertising] through the ages. In fact, the story is so fascinating that he has just posted a follow-up post with a few choice quotes from PBR / BR1844 Brewmaster / Chief Representative – Asia Alan Kornhauser. Short of outright plagiarism, the relevant excerpt is reproduced below:

I formulated a special high-gravity ale called “1844.” It’s all malt, and we use caramel malts from Germany. The initial aging is dry-hopped rather heavily. Then we do a secondary aging in new uncharred American oak whiskey barrels. We bought 750 brand new barrels to the tune of $100,000. This is a very special beer; it’s retailing for about over $40 U.S. for a 720 ml bottle.

–Interview with Alan Kornhauser, All About Beer, July 2010

Indeed, Osnos’ colleague (New Yorker Beer Correspondent) Jesse Rodriguez notes that:

Traditional P.B.R. is light and fizzy with a distinct cloying malt profile, while the B.R. 1884 [sic] has a rounder mouthfeel with a notable hop presence on the front palate and finish. Is it worth the money? Probably not, but it’s definitely not a P.B.R.

–Jesse Rodriguez in Pabst in China, Continued,
Letter from China blog on The New Yorker, July 21 2010

The interview continues with a few more telling tidbits:

There’s an audience there for it?

There’s the nouveau riche, and in China, perception is everything—look at me, I’m rich. Then also, there is another group that may be part of our market, and that’s state banquet dinners. Normally, you’d drink brandy, and this beer kind of has the look of brandy—it’s a reddish-brown color, but it won’t hurt you as much.

The beer combines a new flavor and a Western status symbol. Apart from the prestige, how are you selling these new tastes?

It’s new on the market, so I’m not sure exactly how it’s going—I have very little to do with the sales side. There is a TV commercial that’s quite attractive, that uses old still photos of the early days of Pabst, back when they used wooden barrels there.

What’s Pabst’s story in China?

We were the first foreign brewery in China, since the liberation in 1949—as it’s called there. We’re doing about one and a half million barrels there. Our first brews were, I believe, 1993; I didn’t get there until 1998. At that time, the largest-selling foreign brand in China was Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Read all about it…

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Possibly more related than one might think: the hipster fashion cycle.

I would hypothesize that Chinese fashion fundamentally differs from Western trends (to which the infographic applies) at the mainstream and conservative stages, where the former tends to correlate with (said) nouveau riche and the latter is either mainstream in the Western sense or more traditional Chinese. Nostalgia, then, would be informed by Western trickle-down imagery, while the ironic stage is virtually non-existent.

Though there are examples of ironic style on display in China—Mao’s face, red stars, military regalia are today worn with something less than earnestness—there is also more at stake in young people’s fashion choices.

–J. David Goodman, Are There Really No Hipsters in China?, Slate, April 21 2010

Flavorwire via PSFK

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Why the FCH is still a rare breed: Smart, Young and Broke; insert bad pun about higher education not necessarily being hire education. (Thanks Eugene; cf.)

Ridiculously amazing photos of WC2010 buildup on Boston.com's Big Picture

• (UPDATE) First things first: The World Cup, Translated into American.

• Slate has the scoop on the secret history of American soccer in the first quarter of the last century (i.e.,the Roaring Twenties), featuring the Boston Wonder Workers, the Brooklyn Wanderers, and, of course, the infamous Fall River Marksmen.

• Even the New Republic has a soccer blog, where you can find gems such as Tom Vanderbilt’s on-point “Meditation on Loyalty.”

I hope I encounter this in real life at some point in the next month...

• Coolhunting aggregates World Cup 2010 merchandising.

Os Gemeos & Blu (Works in Progress) in Lisbon

Street art’s symbiotic relationship with the Web makes you wonder whether the genre’s broad popularity stems from the fact that its characteristic features—swift execution, quicksilver response to pop culture and politics, the dominance of quotation and commentary, snarky attitude, fragmented statements embedded in the world rather than meant to stand apart from it—actually reflect the way that plugged-in people process information, more so than “traditional” art. There is something particularly contemporary about street art’s whole M.O., in this sense.

–Ben Davis, Is Street Art Over?, Slate, May 26 2010 (Highly recommended)

Fresh Stuff from Ron English in Queens

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Two perspectives on Marina:

She and MoMA have brought some magic back into art—the sort of magic that all of our courses in art history and appreciation had encouraged us to hope for.

–Arthur C. Danto, Sitting with Marina, The Stone blog on NYT, May 23 2010

There are euphoric moments and then intensely sad feelings of heaviness. Whatever you’re feeling becomes intensified. Certain truths about things I need to fix in my life are revealed to me. Marina says that in her own life she’s not so disciplined—that the performance gives her structure.

–Deborah Wing-Sproul, The Performer Made Bare, NYMag, May 23 2010

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• Bill Simmons’ awesome Guide to Mikhail Prokhorov. (Recommended; thanks Tony)

[As Prokhorov] explained to “60 Minutes,” “I don’t use a computer. We have too much information and it’s really impossible to filter it.”

You know what? He’s not necessarily wrong. Do we REALLY need all this information? Like, right now—you’re reading this column and hopefully enjoying it, but ultimately, could you have survived the weekend if you missed it? I say yes. Just about everything online fits that mold—you have to sift through loads of bad writing and irrelevant information to find the occasional entertaining/funny/interesting thing, and even then, it’s not something that’s making or breaking your week. Ever been on a vacation and had little-to-no Internet access that week? You survived, right? Maybe the big Russian is on to something.

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Candy reminds us of the postmodern notion of self-creation—the way we don social signifiers with the same ease as clothing, constructing our selves bit by bit from cultural cues and images. Rather than the solid frameworks we cast them as, our selves are more like sweaters we put on and take off. When it comes to social identity, we’re all a wee bit in drag.

–Caroline Hagood, New Documentary Tries to Solve the Riddle of Andy Warhol’s Candy Darling,
The Huffington Post, May 21 2010

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• With the 2010 World Cup just 16 days away, Nick Hornby and Sean Wilsey debate the U.S. vs England match on June 12. (GQ)
• Five Bold Predictions for the 2010 French Open.
• Jamie XX’s [dubstep] mix for Colette.
• Play Me I’m Yours: public pianos in NYC this summer. (Animal / BV)
• Michael Pollan on the Food Movement, Rising.
• Eddie Huang of Baohaus on Foodies and Hypebeasts.
• Carl “A.C.” Newman of New Pornographers fame talks maple syrup with T Magazine.
• The First Yardstick for Measuring Smells.
• Alber Elbaz of Lanvin on the Future of Fashion.
• Magritte’s Missives (The Economist)
• McSweeney’s via Salon: 20 Fascinating Self-Portraits.
• Sony’s roll-up digital display (Bits)
• Don’t Ice Me Bro! When Memes Meet the Marketplace. (Thanks Em)
• AT&T / BBDO Worldwide vs. Christo & Jeanne-Claude. (Media Decoder)
• Pay what you want to see the Whitney Biennial for the next 48 hours (Artsbeat)
• Wired has a feature on traffic theorist Charles Komanoff, who makes an ironclad case for congestion pricing. (Highly recommended—seriously, I love shit like this.)

The problem of negative externalities [refers to] costs that accrue when the self-interested actions of one person leave bystanders worse off. The biggest example of a negative externality is global warming: When we burn carbon-based fuels, we benefit ourselves while imposing a great cost on billions of other present and future inhabitants of the planet.

–Felix Salmon, The Man Who Could Unsnarl Manhattan Traffic, Wired, May 24 2010

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GOOD Picture Show has a gallery of J. Bennett Fitts' incredible photos of Middle America

Tobey Maguire interviews KAWS

Andrew Kuo's cryptic Glo-Fi infographic for NYT

Mapping tourism—predictable but interesting nonetheless.

Hedi Slimane looks a little fed up with Terry & Mary Kate...

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Apple’s iconic “Get a Mac” ad campaign is no more: Jobs & Co. have pulled the plug on the cheeky TV spots that pitted stuffy-button-down-middle-aged-guy John Hodgman against relatable-young-hip-dude Justin Long (human representations of PC and Mac, respectively).

Here’s a montage of some memorable moments between the two titans of technology:

It’s an easy metaphor for the shift from the PC vs. Mac decade to a full-fledged, multi-platform war between Apple and everyone from Google to Adobe to Amazon—not to mention Microsoft ever-looming in the background—though it’s far to early to tell who will be the next Hodgman.

Full press release at Slam×Hype; metacommentary (re: Facebook) on the Times’ Media Decoder

Nike has also opened two pop-up spaces in NYC, which are just around the corner from each other in Nolita (click on images for more details):

Will Oldham plays a human being opposite a robot brewmaster—more Conchords than Daft Punk—in this chuckle-worthy 11-minute promotional video for Dogfish Head Brewery’s “glee-increasing product.”

Sample interaction:

Robot: Knock knock.
Jonathan Smart: Who’s there?
Robot: A robot… Oh shit.

–Robot Brewery Tour, (5:45)

Not-really-a-spoiler-at-all: brewmaster Sam Calagione plays the robot, who nonchalantly skims over profound issues such as whether it is possible for robots to believe in anything (2:09).

The Awl via the Daily Swarm

While the Delaware-based craft brewery doesn’t spend any money on advertising, this marks their first foray into digital/viral territory: as per Burkhard Bilger’s brilliant 10,000-word, borderline-hagiographical 2008 profile of the ever-charismatic Calagione for the New Yorker: “He designs many of Dogfish’s labels and cites Andy Warhol and Coco Chanel as inspirations—’that fusion of commercialism and art.’” Truly fascinating stuff.

Also: Calagione in his own words (Inc., July 2009)

Related: “The more intelligent, who scored high on a vocabulary test, would drink more than the dumb…” –Razib Khan, People of Class Drink Alcohol, Discover Magazine, May 2 2010

Coincidentally, I’m looking forward to enjoying Dogfish Head’s Red & White, which I picked up at Brooklyn Beer & Soda yesterday.

Henri Cartier-Bresson's portrait of Sartre is currently on view in his retrospective at MoMA

As with his entire body of work, Sartre’s theory of imagination refers to—and, naturally, affirms—his ontology, in which he explores Husserl’s tenet that “all consciousness is consciousness of something” in the context of the ‘detotalized totality’ of being-in-itself / being-for-itself dualism. Sartre postulates an admittedly underdeveloped notion of image consciousness in his early work The Imaginary (1940), though these writings are largely eclipsed by his later political [viz. Marxist] proclivities; nevertheless, his theory of imagination is a sufficient foundation of a phenomenological aesthetics.

Notably, Sartre implies that the imaginary (or ‘irreal’) has the same ontological import as the real: if the real is never beautiful, it is simply because beauty is, by definition, imaginary, where imagination is a permanent possibility of consciousness. A painting, photograph, film, song, performance, etc., necessarily transcends perception—i.e. consciousness of oil on canvas, ink on paper, a projection, an actor, etc.—as an object of image consciousness, which overflows with the meaning of the portrait (etc.): a particular arrangement of brushstrokes or sounds immediately presents itself to consciousness as an image or melody. The abstract, then, is that which escapes us in experience qua perception; colors transcend pigment to conjure mood or geometry.

Hence, Images (in no particular order):

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KEY:

1. Liu Bolin opening in Soho this weekend (I used one of his pieces to illustrate my very first blog post). (ArtCat)

Liu Bolin
On Fire
Eli Klein Fine Art
462 West Broadway (between Houston & Prince)
New York NY 10012 [map]
212 / 255-4388
April 30, 2010 – June 4, 2010
Opening Reception: Friday, April 30, 6-9pm

2. Scott Campbell’s first solo show in NYC (OHWOW via S×H; also on Nowness)

Scott Campbell
If You Don’t Belong, Don’t Be Long
OHWOW
109 Crosby Street (at Prince)
New York NY 10012 [map]
April 29, 2010 – May 30, 2010
Opening Reception: Thursday, April 29, 6-8pm

3. Skye Parrott of Dossier curated a photography show at BAM

Younger Than I’ll Be
Curated by Skye Parrott
Natman Room
BAM Peter Jay Sharp Building
30 Lafayette Ave (between St. Felix & Ashland) [map]
Brooklyn NY 11243
718 / 636-4100
April 7, 2010 – May 23, 2010

4. Michael Joo & Damien Hirst: Have You Ever Really Looked at the Sun? (S×H) [A: Yes.]

Michael Joo & Damien Hirst
Have You Ever Really Looked at the Sun?
Haunch of Venison
Heidestrasse 46
10557 Berlin, Germany [map]
+49 (0) 30 39 74 39 63
May 1, 2010 – August 14, 2010

Hirst also has work at the Oceanographic Music of Monaco.

5. Barzman’s “Pink Terror” = slow-motion video and Stephen Hawking over a hot beat. (Barzart via 3qd)

6. Faile & BAST bring their street artcade to New York (TBWE; interview on Gothamist; previewed at AM; previous [London] coverage))

Faile & BAST
DELUXX FLUXX NYC
158 Allen St (at Rivington)
New York NY 10002 [map]
April 30, 2010-May 27, 2010
Opening Reception: Friday, April 30, 7:30-10:30pm

7. Maya Lin’s so-called last memorial What Is Missing at Times Square (DB)

8. Zaha Hadid for the 2012 Olympics in London (DB)

9. Longo-esque Trent Mitchell photography (ISO50 on FFFFound)

10. The Tribeca Film Festival saw the New York premiere of Tamra Davis’s documentary Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child (Nowness)

11. Bursts of Color in Public (KitsunéNoir via FFFFound)

12. Whistler’s Father (FFFFound via TBWE)

13. Dead or Alive at MAD (Animal)

Dead or Alive
Museum of Arts & Design
2 Columbus Circle (SSE Corner)
New York NY 10019 [map]
212 / 299-7777
April 27, 2010 – October 24, 2010

14. Marina Abramović Made Me Cry (via Marco Anelli’s flickr); for more on The Artist Is Present, Kottke aggregates so I don’t have to.

15. Shepard Fairey’s May Day marks Deitch Projects’ last hurrah. (Full mural image & coverage at AM (also on NYT); video and other news on Animal; listing on ArtCat)

Shepard Fairey
May Day
Deitch Projects
18 Wooster St (at Grand)
New York NY 10013 [map]
212 / 343-7300
May 1, 2010 – May 29, 2010
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 1, 6-8pm

16. Herzog & de Meuron Special (ArchDaily)

17. DQM Spring 2010 Lookbook (HB)

18. For the 13th-consecutive single-artist installation on the Roof Garden of the Met: bamboo. (NYT via Inhabitat)

…Twin brothers Mike and Doug Starn (born in New Jersey in 1961) will present their new work, Big Bambú: You Can’t, You Don’t, and You Won’t Stop, opening on April 27. The monumental bamboo structure, ultimately measuring 100 feet long, 50 feet wide, and 50 feet high, will take the form of a cresting wave that bridges realms of sculpture, architecture, and performance. Visitors will witness the continuing creation and evolving incarnations of Big Bambú as it is constructed throughout the spring, summer, and fall by the artists and a team of rock climbers. Set against Central Park and its urban backdrop, Big Bambú will suggest the complexity and energy of an ever-changing living organism.

–Doug+Mike Starn on the Roof: Big Bambú

Doug & Mike Starn
Big Bambú: You Can’t, You Don’t, and You Won’t Stop
The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Ave (at E 82nd St)
New York NY 10028 [map]
April 27, 2010 – October 31, 2010

19. Peter Root’s Ephemicropolis; see also NYC in staples. (DB; making-of video)

20. Shanghai Expo 2010 Pavilions (Dezeen / ArchDaily)

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Not as coherent but also interesting:

Images from the earthquake in Yushu, China (Boston)

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Mother for Stella; see also: Fading Ads, Pickled in Pixels (NYT)

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Parting Shot: [the view from Brooklyn Bridge Park] Glowingly (Animal)

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Interpol goes in a new [art] direction. (BV)

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Nike Music Shoe revisited: it was Ableton all along. (Core77)

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fin.