April 26, 2012

Postcards from Italy

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July 18, 2011

BRLN = BRKLN – K

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July 27, 2010

Backlog

…a.k.a. link dump / linkage /clickage from the past month; more to come…

• Very Bushwick and very fabulous (NYT)
• You know how we do in Brooklyn (Inc.)
• Pitchfork is Times-worthy.
• I managed to avoid reading any commentary on Inception until I actually saw it for myself yetserday, though at this point, I cannot possibly hope to catch up with all of the bandwidth that has been spilled (not to mention plot spoiled)—in theory and in practice, for example—over Nolan’s polarizing masterpiece. Also: A.O. Scott on film criticism in the digital age in theory and in practice; Dileep Rao (who plays Yusef) gives us the straight dope; Jonah Lehrer speculates on the neuroscience behind the film. Plus, Jonah Lehrer on LSD (in a manner of speaking)
• Am I guilty of “a breezy writing style”? (The Economist; related: China’s microblog macro-crackdown)
• Amid all the talk of his new book Imperial Bedrooms, Bret Easton Ellis also finds time to reflect on American Psycho (The Guardian)
• Sasha Frere-Jones endorses music in cloud form (The New Yorker)
• Tom Vanderbilt included a link to Dave Horton’s unabashedly self-righteous five-part essay on the fear of cycling in his own musings on bicycle highways for Slate. Definitely required reading for anyone who chooses to bike for transportation (as opposed to simply for leisure), with the caveat that it feels a bit too much like justification for my sense of entitlement that I feel when I tell pedestrians to get out of the bike lane. Still, the car culture of the US is easily worse than that of the UK (where Horton’s expertise lies; at least London has congestion pricing) and the essay actually affirmed my fear that cycling still has a long way to go.

• Deitch’s new projects (NYT)
• Brillo: from design to art (Print via BoingBoing)
• An amazing tale of art forensics (highly recommended) (New Yorker; cf.)
• Brion Gysin at the New Museum (NYT); interview with curator Laura Hoptman (AnOther)
• Graffiti prosecution in the Bronx vs. abroad
• Rhizome visits Babycastles.
• Wu Guanzhong, Chinese Artist, Dies at 90 (NYT)
• Why the Art World Hates “Work of Art” (Salon)
• Why Saltz kind of likes “Work of Art” (NYMag); he’s been recapping the show lately. (GQ, for their part, has been interviewing guest judges lately, but New York, not to be one-upped, has exit interviews, including why token outsider Erik kind of likes Jerry Saltz.
• Saltz on the Whitney as it should be (NYMag); Christian Marclay reviewed by his significant other (NYT); plus, the Whitney as it might be and Whitneys that never were; last but not least,  The Future Is Stupid: Jenny Holzer × Keds × Whitney = Bloomingdale’s Live Art

July 16, 2010

Guerilla vs Guetta

I finally got around to seeing Banksy’s Exit Through the Gift Shop at Brooklyn Heights Cinema today. Of course, I went into the theater expecting to enjoy the film and it fulfilled itself: the pseudo-doc was thoroughly entertaining indeed, in keeping with Banksy’s ever-contrarian perspective on contemporary art. My only criticism is that Guetta is a little too perfect a foil for Banksy and the plot, in turn, is a little too perfectly ironic.

Conversely, I just watched Sebastian Peiter’s Guerilla Art documentary, available in full on Babelgum, which forgoes the knowingness for the straight dope… including interviews with the late Rammellzee.

His name was derived from RAM, plus M for magnitude, Sigma (Σ), the first summation operator, L for longitude, L for latitude, Z for z-bar, plus a couple more summation operators (Σ) for good luck.

–Daryoush Hah-Nahafi, Rammellzee Fashion, Viceland Today, July 7 2010

More obits at NYT / The Guardian, among other places.

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Also, a production worthy of Nowness:

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Related: Invader Walk

July 8, 2010

Big Bang Big Boom

June 7, 2010

Unsorted Links

UPDATE: Rearranged with respect to the next post; trust me, it’s better for everyone this way.

• Digital decay, visually.
• So-so Theophilus London music video.
• Not that you’d ever need an excuse to watch this video…
• Nice analysis of Nike’s “Write the Future” World Cup ad (which I like better than Adidas’ almost-as-star-studded Star Wars spot.)

Richard Barnes - Murmur 8, December 14 2005

June 2, 2010

Oldie but Goodie

Total classic.

May 26, 2010

Assorted Links

UPDATED, one last time before midnight.

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

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May 23, 2010

Photos

Amy Davidson of the New Yorker responds to Conor Friedersdorf’s critique of NYC narcissism for Atlantic. It’s a fairly accurate assessment all around to mark my upcoming two-year anniversary here.

Photos (click for full-size):

May 20, 2010

Imagery

Like Images… but, you know, ending with “-ry” instead of “-s”

• Andrew Kuo’s “My Wheel of Worry, May 2010″ (Tiny Vices via TWBE)

• Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle is screening in full at IFC through June 3rd 10th.

• Matthew Barney and Björk also had their pictures taken (opposite Marina Abramović, of course).

• Abramović fanboy Paco Blancas has sat with her 14 times (and counting), which is apparently enough times to get MoMA to interview you for their blog.

• Roy Lichtenstein at Gagosian

When we think of still lifes, we think of paintings that have a certain atmosphere or ambience. My still life paintings have none of those qualities, they just have pictures of certain things that are in a still life, like lemons and grapefruits and so forth. It’s not meant to have the usual still life meaning.

–Roy Lichtenstein.

Roy Lichtenstein
Still Lifes
Gagosian
555 W 24th St (at 11th)
New York NY 10011 [map]
212 / 741-1111
May 8, 2010 – July 30, 2010

• The new Banksy work in downtown NYC have already been, um, vandalized by the likes of IRAK and Poster Boy (supporters).

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