(incli)NATION

Glow, All Night Art-mania on Santa Monica Pier

So you couldn't make Coachella because you got the flu. You couldn't use your comped tickets to WMC because of a business trip to Birmingham. And you completely flaked on SXSW. Well now is your chance to make up for it: Glow, this weekend on Santa Monica Pier...

Here are some highlights via Thrillist:

Primal Source: Surreal images projected on this beach-based 40-foot wall of mist'll move based on the sounds of voices around the installation, allowing you to see what "Dude, that's totally a 40-foot wall of mist!" looks like.

The Amazing Mental Scope: Get hooked up with an EEG, then climb on the ferris wheel, and your brainwaves will be displayed via flashing lights on a cylindrical LED display. Onlookers will enjoy the soft glow of your Pleasure Center as you enjoy top-of-the-wheel "special alone time".

Poetry Boat: Use the provided phone to call the three poets on this off-shore boat, and they'll compose and read back to you on-the-spot custom poetry. Why are they out on a boat? Because that's where they put people with leprosy.

All the while, there'll be a kickin' soundtrack from Djs like KCRW's Garth Trinidad and Postal Service member Jimmy Tamborello, aka Dntel -- himself so accustomed to late-night shenanigans he once took his own E.

Check out all the craziness at GLOW

Dream Holiday: Bucky Fuller, Chris Burden and David Byrne

If I were not going to be floating in my father's Arizona pool week after next, here is a list of the things I would be seeing on my [imaginary] trip to NYC. [not that I in any way take for granted my father's generosity...]

Erector Set Skyscraper at Rockefeller Center Is Adult Fantasy: ...a sweet, old-fashioned tribute to boyhood optimism...Chris Burden's "What My Dad Gave Me"... [images]- Bloomberg News

Dymaxion Man: The visions of Buckminster Fuller: By staging the retrospective, the Whitney raises—or, really, one should say, re-raises—the question of Fuller’s relevance. Was he an important cultural figure because he produced inventions of practical value or because he didn’t?- New Yorker

and of course...

[David] Byrne’s new installation produced by Creative Time, “Playing The Building,” is located downtown in the Battery Maritime Building, which was built in 1909, closed in 1938 and hasn’t been open to the public for 50 years.

Weltanschauung: The Wind in the Trees

The Weltanschauung, Ignatius J. Reiley spoke of, if you haven't already guessed or if you've forgotten your high school German, is a kind of personal world view. Yesterday I had a confirmation of sorts of my current weltanschauung. I'd picked up a translation of Montaigne's 'Essays', and flipping through the collection literally 'at random', I read this passage from "Of idleness":

"Lately when I retired to my home, determined so far as possible to bother about nothing except spending the little life I have left in rest and seclusion, it seemed to me I could do my mind no greater favor than to let it entertain itself in full idleness and stay and settle in itself, which I hoped it might do more easily now, having become weightier and riper with time. But I find-

Ever idle hours breed wandering thoughts
                                                                --Lucan

"--that, on the contrary, like a runaway horse, it gives itself a hundred times more trouble than it took for others, and gives birth to so many chimeras and fantastic monsters, one after another, without order or purpose, that in order to contemplate their ineptitude and strangeness at my pleasure, I have begun to put them in writing, hoping in time to make my mind ashamed of itself."

And the moment for me took on the aspect of revelation. I shit you not. The experience of, 'seeing as in a mirror, dimly' my own reflection, reminded me of one of the things that first attracted me to art and literature; a process of discovery, of learning to be human.

Montaigne wrote this passage in the late 16th Century and it is just as relevant today as ever. Not in the term 'idleness' per se, but more specifically, in the false industry of instant information availability.  For example, do something like Google your name--'chimeras and fantastic monsters' indeed!

This is not the idleness artists need. What we need, what I need, is to be still; to listen to the wind in the trees. Godard said we need more films with wind in the trees. I trust Godard. I've got to go back into my DVDs and find the scene. Was it "Helas Pour Moi" or something much earlier?

Here's one from YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwrLmtlo1e0

Let's Get Lost @ NWFF Oct. 26 - Nov. 1, Seattle, WA

As long time Chet Baker fans, we can't wait to view this one:

OCTOBER 26 - NOVEMBER 1, Fri - Thurs at 7 & 9:15pm

LET'S GET LOST

(Bruce Weber, USA, 1988, 35mm, 119 min)
In the 1950s, Chet Baker's jazz trumpeting, edgy, intimate crooning and pretty boy good looks epitomized West Coast "cool."When famed photographer Bruce Weber caught up with him three decades later, time and drug addiction had ravaged his life and angelic beauty with deep valleys and crevasses. LET'S GET LOST artfully intercuts gorgeous black and white footage of the gaunt latter-day Baker, with images of the young jazz trumpeter in iconic 1950s early television and film appearances and photographs by William Claxton. Shot by Weber and cinematographer Jeff Preiss during what would turn out to be Baker's final year, the film also includes interviews with friends, family, lovers and associates. This transfixing, bittersweet portrait of the jazz legend won the Critics' Prize at the Venice Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award. Nearly 20 years since its premiere and nearly 15 since it has been seen in any medium, we're pleased to present a brand new 35mm print of a recent restoration done by Weber himself.

"It's the music doc as film noir, with a vampirish city-of-night gleam that suits the subject and his darkly romantic sound."-Jim Ridley, THE VILLAGE VOICE





OCTOBER 26, Fri at 7 & 9:15pm
NOT AVAILABLE ON VIDEO

"The World as a Stage" [feat. Catherine Sullivan] 24 October 2007 - 1 January 2008, @ The TATE

Catherine Sullivan will be one of the dozen or so artists in this show at the Tate so be sure to stop by during the fall continent hop! Or just stick around after Frieze is over...

"The World as a Stage brings together a key group of sixteen international, contemporary artists in an exhibition which explores the rich historical relationship between visual art and theatre. In a selection of large installations, sculptures, performances, films, participatory works and events, many of which are new commissions, the exhibition investigates the extent to which a sense of theatricality impacts upon the gallery visitor's experience and is carried into the world at large as an altered mode of perception. Different elements of the theatre form -- back stage, actors, props and audience -- are played with in relation to the customs of art and exhibition making -- studio, gallery, artist and viewer. Works will be displayed both inside and outside the exhibition space at Tate Modern, drawing attention to the theatrical nature of the everyday and incorporating the viewer into the work as both willing participant and oblivious performer viewed by others.

The artists featured are Pawel Althamer (b 1967), Cezary Bodzianowski (b 1968), Ulla von Brandenburg (b 1974), Jeremy Deller (b 1966), Trisha Donnelly (b 1974), Geoffrey Farmer (b 1967), Andrea Fraser (b1965), Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster (b 1965), Jeppe Hein (b 1974), Renata Lucas (b 1971), Rita McBride (b 1969), Roman Ondák (b 1966), Markus Schinwald (b 1973), Tino Sehgal (b 1976), Catherine Sullivan (b 1968) and Mario Ybarra Jr (b 1973).

The exhibition is curated by Jessica Morgan, Curator of Contemporary Art, Tate Modern and Catherine Wood, Curator of Contemporary Art & Performance, Tate Modern. "

more here: http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/theworldasastage/

Sympathy for the Devil @ MCA Chicago, 9.29.07

As far as I'm concerned, this is THE show to see this fall; a perfect storm of music, art, and politics with the likes of Tony Oursler, Richard Prince and Jack PIerson, together with (incli)NATION favorites like Marnie Weber, Dave Muller and Jason Rhoades, not to mention references to Warhol, Lou Reed, Destroy all Monsters, Red Crayola, and Kraftwerk among many others.

So now all we need to get are tickets and a schedule and see you there!

CHICAGO.-The explosive social and political climate of the late-1960s produced a revolutionary spirit that led to the fusion of avant-garde art and rock music. Artists as diverse as Andy Warhol, The Velvet Underground, Captain Beefheart, and Richard Hamilton burst forth with new creative endeavors. The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Chicago, presents Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967, the first major exhibition devoted to the convergence of contemporary art and rock music over the past forty years. Sympathy for the Devil opens on September 29, 2007, the MCA’s official 40th Anniversary and the kick-off of “40 Free Days,” and closes on January 6, 2008

more at the MCA

via Artdaily

Catherine Sullivan's "Triangle of Need" to Premiere @ Walker Art Center

One of the most interesting artists working today, Catherine's work is intellectually rigorous, aesthetically lush, and often more than a little perplexing. Expect nothing less from the sound of this new, multi-channel piece set to premiere the end of this month. Get there any way you can! I will...

Congratulations Catherine!

From the press release:

August 23-November 18
Triangle of Need Examines Wealth and Evolution

What do the Neanderthals have in common with an early 20th-century American industrialist? What are the connections between Nigerian cinema and a sprawling mansion comprising four centuries of architectural styles? These are some of the elements—physical and conceptual—that make up Catherine Sullivan’s new film project making its world premiere August 23 (beginning at 5 pm) through November 18 in the Walker Art Center exhibition Catherine Sullivan: Triangle of Need. In the multichannel video installation Triangle of Need, Sullivan orchestrates complex sets of ideas and participants to weave a nuanced story about evolution, class, wealth and poverty, and the inequalities and injustices in our global economy. The project is co-commissioned by the Walker, A Foundation (Liverpool), and Vizcaya Museum and Gardens (Miami), and will be presented in Liverpool (October 2007) and Miami (December 2007). The Minneapolis presentation is organized by Walker visual arts curator Doryun Chong...

via Walker Art Center

Michelangelo Antonioni 1912 - 2007

And now Antonioni. I am defeated. At a loss. Il Deserto Rosso is burned into my memory and remains a part of me physically, emotionally, spiritually.

I'm out of words for it has been 48 hours of death after death after death.

Be back soon.

d.

Ingmar Bergman 1918 - 2007

We read the terrible news this morning of the passing of yet another bright light in our world; the legendary Ingmar Bergman died yesterday at the age of 89.

Words fail. Let the rest of the press world encapsulate his life in 350 words or less, but let the blogosphere cry in anquish at this great loss. No, that's not melodramatic. Wild Strawberries was, to me, his greatest film. I first saw it in art school relatively late in my career and his carnal spirituality stood out against the background of American indie films being made at the time. This was the late 90s and I was in my 30s and professor Borg's journey is timeless.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3O01zxTTrQY

Oliver Mandić 'My Love Wants Only to Watch Kurusawa Films'

Below is "a music video from 1981 by Oliver Mandić, a big-time 1980s eastern European pop star, transvestite, drug experimenter, orientalist (natch), perfectionist and all-around controversial guy." --benperry.net

I think it is absolutley amazing and must be watched by everyone under the age of 20:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFGObRscWas

A big 'thank you' to benperry.net for this one