Posts Tagged: art
Shutterclank!
Twice a year Shutterclank! magazine hits the presses to support traditional photographers and stir up discussion. Founded by photographers Kate Contakos, Chris Schuster, and Jake Reinhart, the hope is that the magazine will further the community of lens artists, spurring them to interact and collaborate as a result of Shutterclank!
Curbside Haiku
More than 200 colorful, haiku-ed signs will grace high-crash locations around NYC as part of the city’s “Curbside Haiku” safety initiative. John Morse is the poet and artist behind the signs (some of which you can view in their digitized form here).
...moreHIDE/SEEK in Brooklyn
Gallerina implores us to see HIDE/SEEK, “the groundbreaking examination of sexuality and gay identity in American portraiture” that opened last week at the Brooklyn Museum to the din of anti-gay groups. Noting its novelty and nuance, she breaks down the main reasons to visit the exhibit.
...moreTHE ART OF TAG TEAM:
A Dual Interview
Two artists, ten years, one body of work, and only two taboos: Jesus and blowjobs.
Albums of Our Lives: Willie Nelson’s Shotgun Willie
I refused to listen to the B-side. This was, I guess, an extension or reflection of the poverty of those years after leaving my marriage and buying the 10 Willie Nelson records at a small town Goodwill store for 10 cents each– a kind of hoarding of every meager resource, like the unopened cans of beans, moved from kitchen to kitchen, state to state.
Lying Artists
Artists and certain brain damage patients have overlapping tendencies—lying or “chronic confabulation,” in neuroscience vernacular.
The difference is in that writers fabricate experiences and consciously control their associations whereas people who have incurred frontal lobe damage may be unable to stop the rush of associations and storytelling inclinations.
...moreReal Life Honesty
“‘One of the most important reasons to write, to make art, to make music, to be an artist of any sort, is to connect. To show others, ‘I too have felt this way, share it with me.’ If you try and connect with anyone in a way that is not earnest, it isn’t a connection.
...moreArtistic Oppression
Where mythologizing dictators and threatening artists intersect, totalitarian art was born.
Find out about this cultural phenomenon and its many historical/contemporary examples.
“The crucial element in the creation of totalitarian culture was the involvement of the state, not indirectly, through the financing of culture, but directly, by imposing a ‘dictatorship of taste,’ as the Russian futurist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky enthusiastically called it.”
(via @aldaily)
...moreLovely Faces
“Welcome to the only dating site that lists real people, sincerely posting their real data and picture. You’ll feel comfortable watching them. Just like in Facebook.”
To construct Lovely Faces, the third column in their phenomenal Hacking Monopolism Trilogy, which began with Google Will Eat Itself and Amazon Noir, Paolo Cirio and Alessandro Ludovico borrowed info from one million Facebook profiles, then ran the pics through face-recognition software.
...moreGENERATION GAP #7: Mario Tama’s New Orleans
Now that It is over—now that the circus has come and gone, its glaring lights, its grips and its roadies; now that the visiting dignitaries have made their dignified departures and the newspapers have returned to publishing news
Fire In My Belly
For me, having been inculcated with pictures of a bloody, naked man nailed to a tree since I was five, any discussion of obscenity, homo-eroticism or sexual violence begins with Jesus, or at least the Jesus that hangs in churches, around necks and is furiously waved in the faces of “sodomites.”
...moreThe Dangers Of Making Art
“To be dangerous is to remind the world of what our humanity means to us, rather than allowing everyone to settle into complacency. To challenge us to dig deeper into reflecting on our lives, instead of just accepting what we’re told about what means what to us.
...more
The Creative Impulse: A Duet of Sorts
There is a romantic idea that great genius emanates from the tower.
The novelist, the philosopher, the architect, all retreat to their places of solitude to channel their minds and await inspiration. A few hours, days, months, years later, they emerge with a masterpiece.
...more
THE BLURB #18: The Long Haul
Though I have doubted my talent, I’ve never doubted my conviction that this was the path I had to be on. Writing is like my Siamese twin: freakish, alive, weighty, uncanny. Were we to be separated, I doubt that I could survive it.
...moreThe Seven Deadly Sins
Eli Levin’s etchings for The Seven Deadly Sins, featuring lyrics from R & B songs (University of Wisconsin Press, 1966):
...moreSometimes Still
In three different rooms on two coasts, artist Darren Almond is practicing visual alchemy.
One thing he does is take long exposures on full moons in ridiculously remote locations. Another thing he does is capture time itself. The still above comes from one of his two Sometimes Still projects currently showing at Matthew Marks in New York.
...moreMen with Balls
“This show is an act of complete personal indulgence. When the good people at apexart approached me about curating something in their space, they made a huge mistake. After some polite back and forth, Steven Rand said to me directly, ‘We’d like you to do something that reflects your passion.’ I responded, ‘Well, football or what you call soccer is my passion.
...moreThe Rumpus Sunday Book Blog Roundup
Good things happen when people who grow up listening to Thriller become poets.
There’s going to be a new Bukowski exhibit down Southern California way, including his “annotated racing forms” that will teach you his system for playing the horses.
Jason Pinter takes on the idea that men don’t read.
...moreIn the Art Rags
Rollo Press is continuing the slowest book swap in the world.
The often-thrilling little outfit has been playing around lately with Linus Bill, a photographer who has taken to silkscreening because, he tells Interview, “Until I made those silkscreens, I was never satisfied with how my work looked as prints….With the silkscreens, you really work with color.
...moreThe Heroic Return of the Baffler
After a hiatus of a few years, the intellectually-engaging, always interesting, often confrontational and downright maverick literary/cultural magazine The Baffler has returned!
I just picked up my copy at the bookstore where I work. Most bookstores with a decent magazine rack should carry at least a couple copies.
...moreTotalitarian Kitsch
“It is the official art of authoritarian governments, aimed at extending state control through propaganda. Totalitarian kitsch exists to glorify the state, foster a personality cult surrounding the dictator and celebrate ceaseless and irrevocable social and economic progress through images of churning factories and happy, exultant workers.”
I have long pondered the boundless evil of all things kitsch but now thanks to this article (via Bookforum) I have new reasons to fear it.
...moreGENERATION GAP #2: Artistic Research in Contemporary Beirut
Marwa Arsanios and Vartan Avakian are still young. They belong to a generation of artists who grew up during the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990), and their unique experience with artistic research in Lebanon is revealing new narratives for a catastrophic historical episode.
What Happened During The Blackout
Just when I thought I was unique, just as I’ve been spending the last six-odd months editing a short story about the misadventures of retail workers during a city-wide blackout (Santa Cruz, circa 2002) I read today that actually everyone has a blackout story.
...moreThe Joys Of Artists’ Television Access
I’ve been regularly attending events and film screenings at Artists’ Television Access on Valencia Street in San Francisco for almost a year now.
I’ve gone as both volunteer and audience member, in the company of wily friends or in my own, often more obtuse company.
...moreGENERATION GAP #1: Tomokazu Matsuyama’s Quiet Compass for a Noisy Revolution
One unintended consequence of David Ross’s appearance on the Colbert Report last year has been the misunderstanding of intention.