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Poetry never far away: Regina José Galindo @ Exit Art

Prometeogallery di Ida Pisani, Milan. An image of simulated torture from Regina José Galindo's 2007 video “Confesión,” at Exit Art.

via NYTimes - Art in Review - Published: November 12, 2009:

REGINA JOSé GALINDO

Exit Art

475 10th Avenue, at 36th Street, Manhattan

Through Nov. 21

by HOLLAND COTTER

Regina José Galindo’s show at Exit Art doubles as an overdue New York solo debut for Ms. Galindo, a Guatemalan performer and poet born in 1974, and a 10-year career retrospective. It is also easily one of the most ambitious and moving shows by any young artist in the city at present.

Physical violation and psychological duress, applied on her own person, are the basic themes of Ms. Galindo’s endurance-test performances, with poetry never far away. Poetry is uppermost in her earliest videotaped piece, from 1999, when she suspended herself, dressed like an annunciate angel, high over a street in Guatemala City reading her verses aloud and dropping handwritten copies to a crowd gathered below.

Thereafter the performance took a darker, more carnal direction. In a 2002 work, still in an absurdist vein, Ms. Galindo endured a pummeling from a female wrestler. Two years later, in one of her most unnerving pieces, she submitted to — and filmed — reconstructive surgery to her hymen, a procedure undertaken or forced on women in the sex trade, for whom virginity, or the illusion of it, is an economic asset.

In recent years, episodes of debasement, self-imposed or otherwise arranged, though with unpredictable results, increased. Ms. Galindo sealed herself in an isolation chamber, had herself immobilized for days in a full-body cast and a straitjacket. In the video “Social Cleaning,” she is brought to her knees by water sprayed from a high-pressure hose, of the kind used by riot-control police officers. In 2007, the year of the revelations of abuses at Abu Ghraib, she had herself subjected to a version of waterboarding, then shot with a Taser until she collapsed, unconscious.

There are many precedents for this grueling, body-centered art. Marina Abramovic, Valie Export, Ana Mendieta, Gina Pane and Yoko Ono come to mind, as, of course, does Chris Burden. But Ms. Galindo’s version has its own fiercely focused recklessness, as well as a distinctive set of political and personal themes that come across most stirringly in some of her physically less extreme pieces.

In 2003, in response to the prospective election of a former leader of a military junta, Ms. Galindo walked through the main square of Guatemala City carrying a basin of human blood into which she periodically dipped her bare feet, creating a track of red prints leading to the National Palace. In a more passive performance in 2007, she lay motionless and barely breathing on a table while a funeral parlor cosmetician applied heavy makeup to her face as if beautifying her for burial.

As in most of her art, the references were twofold: to the frequent and premature deaths, through crime, poverty and disease, of women in her volatile homeland; and to mortality as a fact of human life. The performances do not succeed equally in joining topicality to existential metaphor; the sight of the artist moping around in chains has, possibly intentionally, a comedic edge. But in many pieces the fusion works, and the cumulative effect of the show — organized by Exit Art’s founders, Jeanette Ingberman and Papo Colo, with an insightful brochure essay by Nick Stillman — is potent.

VendorBar @ Editions | Artists’ Books Fair, X-Initiative, Nov. 5th - 8th, 2009

Kirby Gookin and Robin Kahn announce VendorBar, our newest curatorial endeavor hosted by the Editions | Artists’ Books Fair 2009 Nov. 5th - 8th, 2009.  
 
VendorBar presents artists who will directly engage the public by presenting actions, exchanges and services that result in the production and distribution of artists editions made specifically for the event.  As part of this year’s “E|AB’09 Special Events” series, VendorBar offers a unique site where interaction supersedes transaction.
 
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
ARTifariti - Western Sahara Collective, Andrea Beeman & Ken Montgomery, Mike Bidlo, Alan Bowman & Alison Knowles, Gaye Chan & Nandita Sharma, Geoffrey Hendricks, Nancy Hwang & Elaine Tin Nyo, Amanda Keeley, Cary Leibowitz, Larry Miller, Peter Nadin, Yoko Ono, Tom Otterness, Sal Randolph, Showpaper, Robert Watts

VendorBar poster design by Tom Otterness [click for pop-up]
        
Schedule
 
THURSDAY  5th (Opening Night Preview to benefit PS1)
7:00 pm          Alison Knowles & Alan Bowman, Lentil Etching for Charles Curtis
7:00 pm          Mike Bidlo, Not Marcel Duchamp
 
FRIDAY  6th
11:00 am        Peter Nadin, Noses & Old Field Farm Collective
2:00 pm          Showpaper, Party Lab (made-to-order cassettes), Flipswitch video program, Blissed Out + Graffiti Monsters collaboration, (3:00 pm)
4:00 pm          Geoffrey Hendricks, Headstands for Peace and introducing a new special edition “Tooth & Nail”
5:00 pm          Nancy Hwang & Elaine Tin Nyo, Happy Hour: Big Ball Bar
 
SATURDAY  7th
12:00 pm        Sal Randolph, Free Money Actions
1:00 pm          ARTifariti-Western Sahara Collective, Sahara Libre Wear Fashion Show
2:00 pm          Tom Otterness, VendorBar Poster Signing
3:00 pm          Larry Miller, Meme, Even
5:00 pm          Nancy Hwang & Elaine Tin Nyo, Happy Hour: Big Ball Bar
5:00 pm          Andrea Beeman & Ken Montgomery: Lamination Ritual Featuring Ken, the Minister of Lamination and Amanda, the Enchantress of Bioluminosity.
 
SUNDAY  8th
12:00 pm        Amanda Keeley, Love/Hate
1:00 pm          Cary Leibowitz, bumper stickers – pass it on
2:00 pm          Showpaper,  Party Lab (made-to-order cassettes), Flipswitch video program, Eskalators perform, (3:30 pm)
3:00 pm          ARTifariti- Western Sahara Collective: IPCNY Discussion
 
ONGOING (Thursday thru Sunday)
Gaye Chan & Nandita Sharma, Eating in Public
Yoko Ono, Add Color: Imagine Peace -Stenciling Action
Robert Watts, Fluxpost
 
LOCATION:
 
E|AB’09 Fair at the X-Initiative ( formerly DIA )
548 W. 22nd Street  New York, NY (between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues)

E|AB’09 is free and open to the public Friday to Sunday.
 
 
FOR INFORMATION CONTACT:
Kirby Gookin /   Robin Kahn
kirbygookin@yahoo.com
robinkahn@yahoo.com

Up, Up and A-wa-ay...

via NYTimes:

Op-Ed Columnist

In Defense of the ‘Balloon Boy’ Dad

By FRANK RICH

Published: October 24, 2009

FOR a country desperate for good news, the now-deflated “balloon boy” spectacle would seem to be the perfect tonic. As Wolf Blitzer of CNN summed up the nation’s unrestrained joy upon learning that the imperiled boy had never been in any peril whatsoever: “All of us are so excited that little Falcon is fine.”

Then came even better news. After little Falcon revealed to Blitzer that his family “did this for the show,” we could all luxuriate in a warm bath of moral superiority. No matter what our own faults as parents, we could never top Richard Heene, who mercilessly exploited his child for fame and profit. Nor could we ever be as craven as the news media, especially cable television, which dumped a live broadcast of President Obama in New Orleans to track the supersized Jiffy Pop bag floating over Colorado.

Or such are the received lessons of this tale.

Certainly the “balloon boy” incident is a reflection of our time — much as the radio-induced “War of the Worlds” panic dramatized America’s jitters on the eve of World War II, or the national preoccupation with the now-forgotten Congressman Gary Condit signaled America’s pre-9/11 drift into escapism and complacency in the summer of 2001. But to see what “balloon boy” says about 2009, you have to look past the sentimental moral absolutes. You have to muster some sympathy for the devil of the piece, the Bad Dad. And you can’t grant blanket absolution to those in the American audience who smugly blame Heene and television exclusively for the entire embarrassing episode.

It would be lovely, for instance, to believe that cable audiences doubled in size that afternoon because they were rooting for little Falcon’s welfare. But as Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler would say on Weekend Update at “Saturday Night Live,” “Really?!?” Many of those viewers were driven by the same bloodlust that spawns rubberneckers at every highway accident: the hope of witnessing the graphic remains of a crash, not a soft landing.

It would also be nice to think that the “balloon boy” viewers were the innocent victims of a dazzling Houdini-class feat of wizardry — a “massive fraud,” as Bill O’Reilly thundered. But even slightly jaundiced onlookers might have questioned how a balloon could waft buoyantly through the skies for hours with a 6-year-old boy hidden within its contours. That so few did is an indication of how practiced we are at suspending disbelief when watching anything labeled news, whether the subject is W.M.D.’s in Iraq or celebrity gossip in Hollywood.

“They put on a very good show for us, and we bought it,” the local sheriff, Jim Alderden, said last weekend, when he alleged that “balloon boy” was a hoax. His words could stand as the epitaph for an era.

In this case, the show wasn’t even that good. But, as usual, the news media nursed it along, enlisting as sales reps for the smoke and mirrors. While the incident unfolded, most TV anchors hyped rather than questioned the aeronautical viability of a vehicle resembling the flying saucers in Ed Wood’s camp 1950s sci-fi potboiler, “Plan 9 From Outer Space.” But no sooner had the balloon been punctured than the press was caught in another flimflam. Reuters and CNBC delivered the bombshell that the United States Chamber of Commerce had abruptly reversed its intransigent opposition to climate-change legislation. The “spokesperson” source turned out to be the invention of liberal activists who had attempted to stage a prank press conference at Washington’s National Press Club.

Incarnational Aesthetics opens Friday (10/23) in Chelsea

INCARNATIONAL AESTHETICS

Tamy Ben-Tor, Slater Bradley, Mathieu Briand, Coco Fusco, Rico Gatson, Michael Joo, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Molly Larkey, Nikki S. Lee, Joanna Malinowska, Rachel Mason, Alex McQuilkin, Yasumasa Morimura, Clifford Owens, Jeffrey Porterfield, Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen, and Cindy Sherman.

October 24 – November 25, 2009

Exhibition Opening: October 23, 2009, 6-9 p.m. with performances by Mathieu Briand, Rachel Mason, and Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen.

@

New York Center for Art and Media Studies (NYCAMS)
44 W. 28th Street, 7th floor (between 5th and 6th Ave.)
New York, New York  10001

The New York Center for Arts and Media Studies (NYCAMS) is pleased to announce the opening of Incarnational Aesthetics on Friday October 23, 2009. Organized by Stamatina Gregory and Jenny Jaskey, Incarnational Aethetics unites contemporary artists who use embodiment or “role play” in their work as a means of interrogating and deconstructing the public and private boundaries between self and other. More than a play-on-words or riposte to Nicholas Bourriaud's term “relational aesthetics,” it is also a kind of inversion. The wide swath of practices to which this term refers reframes public, social interactions as aestheticized space. Conversely, the work in Incarnational Aesthetics turns inward, using various strategies to represent, embody, and empathize with a specific person or entity, exploring the formation of subjectivity while testing its limits. Through performance, video, photographs, sculpture, and works on paper, the exhibition revisits iconic moments and underrepresented histories, and reexamines the raced and gendered politics of representation, the focus of media culture on simultaneous idol worship and destruction, and the relationship of identity to the state.

The postmodern practices of Cindy Sherman are continued and complicated by Slater Bradley, Nikki S. Lee, and Yasumasa Morimura, the artists inserting themselves into social subcultures and iconic artworks. Michael Joo, Rachel Mason and Alex McQuilkin embody the affectations of political figures and movie stars: along with the work of Tamy Ben-Tor and Molly Larkey these artists refuse and deflect simple analyses of the processes of identification. Other projects by Rico Gatson, Clifford Owens, Jeff Porterfield and Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen reenact iconic moments in art and social history: Gatson becomes his ancestorsʼ racist oppressor in Flaming Hood (2000), and Owens revisits Benjamin Pattersonʼs Fluxus performance Lick Piece (1964). Coco Fusco and Joanna Malinowska take extreme measures to empathize with their characters: Fusco reenacts twelve-hour detention and interrogation of a Mexican maquiladora worker, and Malinowska treks to the Canadian Arctic in the steps of anthropologist Franz Boas. Photographic collages that document “Roberta Breitmore” (1974-1978), a performed character that was played by Lynn Hershman and three ʻmultiplesʼ, explore identity construction and precede her later agent-based works driven by artificial intelligence. Through the course of the exhibition, Paris-based Mathieu Briand invites participation in his work Identity is Property (2009) in which the artist offers his identity for sale to the public.

Sound the Mutantrumpets!

Ben Neill

Ben Neill and Bill Jones will perform at the MMiX Festival on Sunday, October 11th at Theaterlab:

NEW TECHNOLOGY • NEW INSTRUMENTS • NEW MUSIC

MMiX Festival of Interactive Music Technology

@

137 W 14th St.
New York, NY 10011

contact@theaterlabnyc.com

212-929-2545

October 8 – 11

$20 each night. $15 Students and Seniors

MAP

featuring:

Todd Reynolds
Luke DuBois
DJ Rekha
Elliott Sharp/Janene Higgins
Patrick Grant Group
Ben Neill and Bill Jones
Kathleen Supove
Jon Margulies
Joshua Fried/RadioWonderland
Dan Trueman and his Mini Laptop Orchestra
Bora Yoon
Chronotronic Wonder Transducer

Check schedule for free events and workshops

Visit the MMiX blog at themmixdown

Stay tuned for updates and further information 

via The MMiXdown:

Sound the Mutantrumpets!

October 5, 2009

Ben Neill’s Tripycal is one of those albums that looms large in my personal soundscape. Back in my publishing days, I used to wrestle with 300 page manuscripts and marathon voice recording sessions. My head was so often jammed with words and speech, that I’d escape to my office and put on Neill’s record, with it’s ambient, dub-oriented jazz that seemed to knock the text-based stress right out. And on weekend chill-out nights, I’d sometimes hear those sophisticated bass lines and spacey horn notes floating through The Cooler, that old metal dungeon of a nightclub on far West 14th street.

More than 10 years later, I have the pleasure of seeing innovative trumpeter and composer, Ben Neill perform this week at the MMiX Festival on Sunday night. Neill invented the mutantrumpet, a trumpet that’s been tricked out with extra valves, knobs, switches and electronics so that he can use the it to control audio and video components in live performance. He first introduced the instrument in the ’80s, working with synthesizer pioneer Robert Moog to create the electronic interface, and he further developed its computer capabilities during a residency in Amsterdam during the ’90s. The result is several albums’ worth of uniquely trippy, adventurous music flavored with jazz improvisation and dance-floor grooves, plus a career that includes many collaborators such as Mimi Goese, DJ Spooky, DJ Olive, John Cale, Page Hamilton from Helmet and the late artist David Wojnarowicz.

A few years ago, Ben Neill began working with photographer and visual artist Bill Jones, with whom he created Palladio, an interactive, playable movie based on the novel by Jonathan Dee.  In their performances together, both VJ and trumpeter control music and video as a single hybrid form – a truly interactive, live duet of images and sound.

Ben Neill’s latest album is Night Science, available on Thirsty Ear Recordings. Ben Neill and Bill Jones will perform at the MMiX Festival on Sunday, October 11th at Theaterlab.

- Jocelyn

"Hopeful", an exhibition by David Levine, opens @ Cabinet, Oct. 3

Photo courtesy Claire Laude/Galerie Feinkost Berlin

"Hopeful," an exhibition by David Levine.

Location: Cabinet, 300 Nevins Street, Brooklyn, NY (map and directions here).
Opening reception: Saturday, October 3, 6–8 pm (featuring a performance by Christian Hawkey)

Exhibition dates: October 3–24, 2009
Gallery hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 12–6 pm

Cabinet is pleased to present "Hopeful," a solo exhibition by Berlin- and New York-based artist David Levine. "Hopeful" explores headshots—photographs of actors looking for work rather than publicity portraits of stars—both as genre and as material artifact. First appearing in the 1950s, these peculiar images routinely disregard conventions of portraiture: the intended viewer, who is in a position to hire the actor, is offered no environment, professional emblems, or trace of social context.

Today, New York City agents alone receive an estimated ten thousand headshots weekly, ninety-nine percent of which are routinely thrown out. What is the ecological impact of this rejected material? And how much waste—not only trashed photographs but also image CDs, demo tapes, slides, and manuscripts—does the culture industry need to generate in order to maintain its meritocratic reputation?

For the opening of "Hopeful," poet Christian Hawkey will stage a collaborative, polyvocal performance of his poem "i am writing to inform you of what i am currently doing," which draws its inspiration from Levine's installation.

A version of "Hopeful" was exhibited at Galerie Feinkost in Berlin in the summer of 2009. [Artforum Pick; Art in America Review]

About the Artist
David Levine's work encompasses performance, theater, installation, and video. His projects, which examine the premises of acting and spectacle, have been seen at Documenta XII (with Cabinet), Gavin Brown's Enterprise@Passerby, Galerie Feinkost (Berlin), Galerie Magnus Mueller (Berlin), the Goethe Institut (Berlin and New York), HAU2 (Berlin), PS122, and the Sundance Theater Lab, as well as more traditional venues such as the Vineyard, Atlantic, and Primary Stages theaters. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Artforum, Bomb, Art in America, TDR, The Village Voice, The Believer, Theater Der Zeit, and Theater Heute, and he has received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Kulturstiftung Des Bundes, and Etants Donnes/French Fund for Performance. Represented by Galerie Feinkost, Levine lives in New York and Berlin, where he is the Director of the Studio Programme at the European College of Liberal Arts. He will be giving a presentation on "Hopeful" at Prelude 09 (preludenyc.org) on October 2. [see below]

About Cabinet
Featuring exhibitions of both contemporary art and historical materials, as well as an eclectic schedule of talks, screenings, and events, Cabinet's space was inaugurated in the fall of 2008 to extend the award-winning magazine's engagement with art and culture into the public realm. Located at 300 Nevins Street (between Sackett and Union) in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn, Cabinet's space is open Tuesday to Saturday 12–6 pm and by appointment, and is fully wheelchair-accessible.

Also, @ Prelude09:

David Levine

Friday, October 2

5.30-6.15pm

MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER
The CUNY Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY10016
ph: 212.817.1860

Levine's presentation will focus on unsolicited actors’ headshots and cover letters. Specific topics to be covered: the history of the headshot, the economy of the headshot, the demonic & vengeful nature of those hopeful stares, the tragic and transcendent ontology of the unsolicited submission.

[more info, directions]

Mental patient walks into a bar...

via Borowitz Report, 9-24-09:

Mental Patient Breaks into U.N., Gives Ninety-minute Speech

Breach of Security Under Review

An escaped mental patient broke into the United Nations yesterday, getting all the way to the General Assembly and delivering a ninety-minute speech.

A day after the stunning security breach, U.N. officials were still attempting to sort out how it was allowed to happen.

"We're trying not to play the blame game here," said U.N. spokesperson Carol Foyler. "The simple fact is, a legally insane man somehow got all the way to the podium, so how do we keep that from happening again?"

Theories abound as to how the mental patient made it to the U.N., with some suggesting that he may have escaped during a field trip to a county fair.

Reacting to the rambling and incoherent ninety-minute rant, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton echoed the feelings of many: "I was like, where's Kanye when you need him?"

Down to Earth @ ecoartspace

via email:

Please join ecoartspace and Solar One on Saturday Oct. 3rd for events with the Habitat for Artists Collective
and a performance piece Mothers and Daughters at Solar One by artist Chere Krakovsky from 1 – 4pm
Solar One -23rd Street and the East River, NYC

Followed by an opening at ecoartspace NYC, for Down to Earth from 6 – 8pm
ecoartspace - 53 Mercer St. between Broome and Grand, 3rd Fl, NYC

Down to Earth Artists:
Joan Bankemper, Knox Cummin, Stacy Levy, Ann Rosenthal/Steffi Domike, Susan Leibovitz Steinman, Simon Draper and the Habitat for Artists Collective, including Todd Sargood, Cathy Lebowitz,
E Odin Cathcart and Jeff Bailey.

Additional Contributing Artists:
Jacinto Astiazarán and Fritz Haeg, Lenore Malen & The New Society for Universal Harmony, Eve Mosher, Andrea Polli and Chuck Varga, Andrea Reynosa/Kevin Vertrees-SkyDog Projects and Christy Rupp

Album Release Party: Ben Neill + Bill Jones LIVE @ Galapagos, 8pm Wed. Sept 23!

Ben Neill's new album, NIGHT SCIENCE, just dropped! He and video collaborator Bill Jones will be playing live at Galapagos this Wednesday night. Special discount tickets available to NEWSgrist subscribers and friends:

(that’s $5!!) Go to SMARTTIX and enter the discount code SCI

Read the reviews as they come in:

AllMusic.com

All About Jazz (Mark Corroto)

Short and Sweet NYC

Sitting Ovation

All About Jazz (Lyn Horton)

GoatsDen

BoomKat

IndiePit

Thirsty Ear Recordings is proud to announce the release party for Ben Neill’s new CD Night Science at Galapagos Art Space in the DUMBO section of Brooklyn on Wednesday, September 23 at 8 PM.  Neill will perform music from the new CD along with live interactive video by his visual collaborator Bill Jones.  Also appearing on the show will be composer/saxophonist Peter Gordon and dubstep DJ Dave Q from NYC’s widely acclaimed Dub War crew.

Neill is a composer, performer and producer who melds acoustic trumpet work into a new realm using a truly unique instrument, the uncanny mutantrumpet. His new CD combines dubstep beats and bass lines with the trippy, otherworldly sonic explorations of his instrument, which was completely redesigned in 2008.  Creating an alchemy between electronic music and his own improvisationally manipulated trumpet work, Neill has succeeded in crafting a dubstep/jazz album that shatters conceptions about either genre.

Night Science has been highly influenced by Neill’s involvement with the dubstep scene in New York City.  A veteran of the drum and bass, illbient and electronica scenes, Neill has performed at Dub War and his music has been played on the BBC Radio 1 Experimental show by Mary Anne Hobbs, the British DJ who many credit with breaking the dubstep sound internationally.  Neill continues to meld the technological advancement of interactive electronic music with DJ culture as he has done in previous recordings on Astralwerks, Verve and Six Degrees

Neill’s video partner Bill Jones has created a body of interactive video to accompany the music using the luminous black and white images of film noir as its inspiration.  In performance the dynamics and notes of Neill’s playing animate Jones’ moving images, creating an improvised narrative that is directly tied to the music.

Peter Gordon first gained attention with his Love of Life Orchestra, which helped define the fusion of experimental composition with punk and jazz infused dance music in the 1980’s. Gordon has worked with some of the most influential artists and musicians of the past decades.  His collaborations with video-artist Kit Fitzgerald have pioneered live video performance.  Gordon is currently working on a new LOLO album for DFA Records.

Dave Q is the founder and resident of the US's original dubstep party, Dub War NYC. He has played at London's seminal DMZ night and many of the leading dubstep events around the US. Along with fellow Dub War residents Joe Nice and MC Juakali, DQ has been at the forefront of breaking the dubstep sound in the US and plays a selection of the most sought after dubplates from the scene's top producers, as well has his own productions.