Posts by author

Ari Messer

  • Nobody Knows the Way to BEA

    I was on my way to Book Expo America on Tuesday when the C train, still in Brooklyn, experienced a preposterously long delay–even for the C train. At first we were told simply that a “situation” was being “investigated” at…

  • In 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…

  • I’m Still an Animal

    I was actually glad to hear “Animal” on the new 90210 last week. The second most luscious (“Sans Soleil” wins that prize) and first most catchy track on Miike Snow‘s self-titled 2009 debut, fit perfectly with the elevated high school…

  • GENERATION 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.

  • Javier Marias on KCRW’s Bookworm

    Allen Ginsberg claimed that his reading voice was an imitation of the voice with which William Blake spoke to him in his visions and dreams.  Once you hear Ginsberg read, you are stuck in his dream forever. Javier Marias, the…

  • Amor Fati

    The group exhibition Amor Fati (Love of Fate) opens at the Joyce Gordon Gallery in Oakland tonight. Curator Lian Ladia has put together a potent mix of artists who aren’t afraid of politics and aren’t afraid of the subconscious. Highlighted…

  • In the Art Rags

    Larry Sultan is dead. The photographer behind Pictures from Home passed away from cancer on Sunday at the age of 63. The SF Chron, NY Times, and LA Times have similar obits. In 1990, Catherine Liu (yes, that Catherine Liu)…

  • Lights in Your Throat

    The 2009 music release schedule is winding down, so people have started making their arbitrary top-whatever lists. While such rankings might be more potent some years from now, when we see which albums are actually still in rotation (like tomorrow’s…

  • The Rumpus Interview with Alasdair Gray

    Writer and artist Alasdair Gray is his own best nightmare. It took the modern Scottish bard twenty-five years to finish Lanark: A Life in Four Books (1981), his fat, strangely inspirational novel of urbanism gone awry.

  • In the Art Rags

    At BushwickBK.com, Mimi Luse reports on a one-night-only multimedia Lil’ Wayne-related show, curated by Audrey Berman and Pete Deevakul. With Claude Léveque and Bruce Nauman squaring off at the Venice Biennale, Studio Von Birken’s Louis Vuitton-meets-Lil’-Wayne parody is as potent…

  • The Rumpus Partly Visual Interview with Hilary Pecis and Elyse Mallouk

    At what point does the viewer start seducing the artwork?

  • The Rumpus Long Interview with Doug Fogelson

    I keep the first picture in mind, but I frame each new picture as if it’s its own composition, bearing in mind that it is related to what came before it and what’s coming after it.