A Psychic Vacuum
October 28, 2007 at 11:17am | In art, design, new media, video | Leave a CommentTags: a psychic vacuum, mike nerlson, oliver laric
Last week, I went to New York with a class; we visited a number of galleries and art exhibits on the Lower East Side, including Mike Nelson’s “A Psychic Vacuum,” a conversion of the Old Essex Street Market into a massive, maze-like installation. The empty rooms of the former market are scattered with random, ominous and bizarre objects – taxidermic animals, portraits of the Kennedy family, statues of Buddha, voodoo dolls. By making random turns through the seemingly infinite space, I eventually came to the end of the installation – a massive warehouse space, full of sand. The confusing, endless, empty hallways and their strange contents (all right in the center of New York City) are simultaneously enticing and off-putting – the piece functions as a sort of contemporary art haunted house. “A Psychic Vacuum” closes today (October 28th) – if you’re in New York, check it out!
Another art discovery (care of Your Daily Awesome), just in time for Halloween – German-born, Tokyo-based artist Oliver Laric’s “Webchat with Andy,” a piece composed of “a conversation with Andy Warhol, contacted through a psychic with mediumistic abilities via webchat.” Laric’s other works – video, music, design, 2D and digital media – have the same playful approach – art with a sense of humor. I’d definitely recommend looking at his other works, especially the video “Aircondition.” Laric’s work is definitely a welcome break from the deathly seriousness of contemporary art that has been bothering me for weeks.
The horror, the horror
October 27, 2007 at 2:35pm | In art, culture, literature | Leave a CommentTags: comics, dracula, halloween, horror
Senses Working Overtime posts Halloween-themed content for the month of October, which led me to a 1972 issue of Dracula, a Spanish fantasy and horror comic book. The stories in “Fear, Sweet, Fear” by Enric Sió (particularly “Krazy”) are amazing – they tell simple, bizarre stories of everyday life transformed into something alien and terrifying – the trademark tone of the best horror. The use of vibrant, cheerful colors only drives home the strangeness of it all.
Next Tuesday, the Kelly Writers House is hosting a comic book event, featuring comics expert Douglas Wolk and Hans Rickheit, creator of Chrome Fetus Comics. Chrome Fetus is somewhere between Edgar Allan Poe, David Cronenberg and David Lynch; like Sió, Rickheit takes a similarly detached tone, using his illustrations to emphasize bodily transformations and the intersection of technology and the body. Wolk is present to talk about comics in general, and the need to approach them as a serious and distinct art form (as he discusses in his book, Reading Comics); while this recent reception of comics into “high culture” is great for currently working (and living) artists like Rickheit, I’m not sure if anyone has ever looked back to 1970s Spanish horror comics to seriously think about Sió’s work as art. Did he even think of himself as an artist?
Was The 20th Century A Mistake?
October 24, 2007 at 10:31am | In art, culture, film, history, photography | Leave a CommentTags: bffs, dickhead in a good way, henry viii's wives, rad senior citizens, the 20th century, werner herzog
This is the most amazing thing I’ve seen in a while: Iconic Moments of the Twentieth Century by Henry VIII’s Wives. Who are these people and how do I make them (the artists and the rad senior citizens who agreed to participate in their project) my BFFs 4 life????!! (Found thanks to the weirdos over at VVORK.)
Also, Werner Herzog will be speaking for free tonite at the University of Pennsylvania’s Meyerson Hall. The event starts at 5pm; seating is limited. Not really sure what Herzog (who professes to hate the academy, has been quoted as saying, “film is not the art of scholars, but of illiterates,” and is kind of a dickhead in the best way possible) is doing here, but apparently the talk will address the question, Was the 20th Century a Mistake? I don’t know about that, but I’m pretty sure you could make a case for the 21st Century being a mistake, at least thus far.
Awesome Tapes from Africa
October 8, 2007 at 6:19pm | In art, culture, design, music | Leave a CommentTags: casette tape covers, copy-cat culture, hiplife
Thanks to the superbly-well curated Your Daily Awesome, I found two great African music blogs — both written by someone who identifies themself as “thursdayborn” but who I’m pretty sure is named Brian — Awesome Tapes from Africa and The Hiplife Complex. Awesome Tapes from Africa is, umm, exactly what it sounds like. Not just well-designed cassette tape covers like this one, but also mp3s of all their tracks. Hiplife is “a copy-cat culture and an indigenized national phenomenon” in which Ghanian youth rap about contemporary issues over pirated beats. Blogger thursdayborn spent a year in Ghana chronicling this culture and its artists. Make sure to check out Obrafour’s amazing video for “Kwame Nkrumah.” Or tune into the stream at wqhs.org tonite at 8pm to hear some of this stuff and other exciting jams.
The Good Dude
October 5, 2007 at 10:37am | In culture, sociology | Leave a CommentTags: 2007, 2008, drinking forties on the corner, subcultural phenomena, the good dude
About a year ago, MT and I discussed what we considered a sort of cultural phenomenon, and which we called, “the Good Dude.” I forget when the Good Dude first came into our consciousness/vocabulary, but I remember that it was either while walking home from the radio station or while drinking forties on a corner in South Philly. Whatever. The Good Dude sprang into being, somehow, and he is real.
The Good Dude is a subcultural phenomenon; maybe he crosses the boundaries of multiple subcultural spaces, but so far we have found him in punk/indie rock. He’s the guy who sets up the shows, who knows everybody, who’s always chill and doesn’t harsh your mellow or whatever. HE IS ALWAYS A DUDE. Everybody knows him and when you drop his name in conversation, they say, “oh yeah, ______, he’s a good dude.” The Good Dude is always a dude because it is essential that his sexuality not be involved with his good dudeness. The Good Dude is probably single, or even asexual. If he has a girlfriend (a boyfriend is possible, but less probable), she is really cute but not beautiful or whatever, and she wears cute dresses or whatever. We hypothesized that the Good Dude is always and exclusively a dude because a woman’s sexuality would become too involved/scrutinized if she was at the apex of a large social network. Gross, but probably true.
In terms of sociological network analysis, the Good Dude has DEGREE CENTRALITY: he is directly tied to many people, they KNOW HIM and they even all LIKE HIM. He might also have some BETWEENNESS CENTRALITY: he is such a good dude, that he is free to transcend his own subcultural existence. He is the kind of guy who is friends with everybody and “likes ALL kinds of music!” He doesn’t have structural autonomy because it is essential that many of the people he knows know each other. They must talk about what a good dude he is in order to reinforce his status as the Good Dude.
Let’s ALL be good dudes to each other in 2007/2008.
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