CREEPY ELEPHANT

Ease Limo

2012-01-21T22:29:00.000-08:00

--------

2012-01-21T22:12:00.000-08:00

sup

2012-01-21T21:42:00.000-08:00

A Hundred Ghosts

2011-11-30T22:31:00.000-08:00

Wonderful people. This is the end of their almost 2 hours performance at the Haunted Art Gallery. It's taken me too long to upload this. I wish it was better quality...

LOST LOTTIE

2011-10-31T13:50:00.000-07:00

Photos of "Lost Lottie"

2011-10-30T08:48:00.001-07:00

The white and gray tulle spins around on a disco ball motor while lights help cast a shadow on the opposite wall. There's also a fan in the corner adding to the fabrics movement creating a haunting feeling and exploring the entire space of the room. As the viewer walks into the room a cold rush of air is blown over their heads to add an extra chill to the atmosphere. The sound in the previous post is playing constantly on a loop and can be heard from two floors down in the lobby. The building itself is haunted with three ghosts, so the owner and other regulars are sufficiently creeped out. SCORE.

Sound Piece for "Lost Lottie" installation

2011-10-27T23:53:00.001-07:00

Horormusic by stevelena

SNEAK PEEK OF HAUNTED ART GALLERY

2011-10-24T13:07:00.000-07:00

gross.

Haunted Art Gallery

2011-10-18T18:33:00.001-07:00

UPDATE: OCT 27TH OPEN RECEPTION

GALLERY IS OPEN FROM OCT 27TH UNTIL NOV 5TH 6:00PM-10:00PM

OCT 27TH and NOV 2ND

2011-10-18T17:10:00.000-07:00

International Day of Action Against Austerity & War 10/15/2011

2011-10-15T18:20:00.000-07:00

MORE PHOTOS: International Day of Action Against Austerity & War

OCCUPY SAN DIEGO DONATIONS

2011-10-12T19:30:00.000-07:00

:

Fire Extinguishers & Tents
Sleeping bags,
Ear plugs and pillows
... Power: (batteries or Solar) gas for the generators,
Throat lozenges, oven Mitts, kitchen tongs,
Socks,
Hand sanitizer,
Desktop oganizers,
Plastic containers for comp equip plse
Blankets and exercise mats as they protect from the cold

MAIL DONATIONS TO: 2801 B Street #61 San Diego, CA 92102 -

If you have donations to drop off, please drop at 3rd. Ave & B. St. San Diego Civic Center

If you would like to donate one of the items on the list, but can't make it down there let me know and I'll gladly pick it up and drop it off for you.

Sudden Art Gallery

2011-10-11T22:24:00.000-07:00

DEAD THINGS:

Red Hummer
Yellow Dayz
Sally's Sunday

OCCUPY SAN DIEGO 10/7/2011

2011-10-08T18:11:00.000-07:00

MORE PHOTOS... unedited..

Spore n' Spew did it again.

2011-09-23T13:58:00.000-07:00

JOBA KOBA plus others on the index page.

MIXED MEDIA MASSACURE

2011-09-20T17:42:00.000-07:00

SHOW ON OCTOBER 7th

MUZAC

2011-09-18T16:09:00.000-07:00

SPORE N' SPEW BANDCAMP

CHE CAFE BENEFIT

2011-08-29T17:28:00.000-07:00

CHE CAFE BENEFIT, PLEASE DONATE
"The Ché Café, founded in 1980, is a community space, DIY venue, vegan café, resource center for radical grassroots activists, and a whole lot more. We host all ages shows, serve tasty vegan food and host numerous political and social events."

href="http://cheunderground.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/cheguevara.jpg">

"This fundraising page will serve as a collection of music, art, photographs, videos, and words from a community that supports the perseverance of the Ché. Financial adversity is now threatening the venue's existence, and we need everyone to come together and help achieve our goal of raising $12,000--enough money to renew the Ché’s insurance policy and ensure that this crucial community space will remain in operation."

CHE CAFE BENEFIT, PLEASE DONATE

two dudes that put this together, check em' outttt
JESSE KRANZLER
GEORGE PRITZKER

BREAKFAST

2011-08-20T13:03:00.000-07:00

Creating Fun Through Fear: Seth Marinello

2011-08-19T22:34:00.000-07:00

My brother giving a lecture on Fear in video games at the Game Design EXPO in Vancouver. Lovecraft, Dead Space 2, and fear in life and fiction.

Dinner

2011-08-18T15:27:00.000-07:00

5 courses

INTERVIEW WITH AESTHETIGEIST

2011-06-21T15:22:00.000-07:00

interview

THE READER

2011-05-26T16:17:00.000-07:00

Art and Music Festival on the cover of San Diego's THE READER

Art and Music Festival

2011-05-26T16:09:00.001-07:00

Location: Queen Bee's Art & Cultural Center
Time: ‎7:00AM Saturday, May 28th

MEDIOCRE IMAGES FROM THUMBPRINT GALLERY INSTALLATION

2011-03-31T23:03:00.001-07:00

RADIATION.

STRING NAILS NECK PAIN.

aLEXANDER sALAZAR

2011-03-31T22:59:00.000-07:00

Alexander Salazar Fine Art
1040 7th Avenue
San Diego, CA

First Year Anniversary Party for the
...Alexander Salazar Fine Art Gallery
Saturday, April 2, 2011
5pm with Libations and Food
7pm LIVE ART AUCTION

$10 donation at the door. 100% will be donated to
It's All About The Kids Foundation.

New Piece at Alexander Salazar Gallery in Downtown San Diego

2011-03-31T22:31:00.000-07:00

WATERCOLOR, LEMONS, AND SALIVA.

ALEXANDER SALAZAR FINE ART IS LOCATED AT THE CORNER
OF 7TH AND BROADWAY

640 BROADWAY SAN DIEGO, CA 92101ALEXANDER SALAZAR FINE ART

SUM COLOR

2011-03-26T15:07:00.000-07:00

WILLIAM KENTRIDGE ON ART:21

2011-03-25T11:56:00.000-07:00

WILLIAM KENTRIDGE AT MCASD

2011-03-25T09:50:00.000-07:00

South African artist, William Kentridge will be at MCASD in La Jolla on April 7th at 7pm giving a lecture and receiving an award for being awesome. PLEASE COME WITH ME.

Wiki on Will K-Ridge

Order tickets here and read a bit about what will be discussed!

Featured on WOOLOO.ORG

2011-03-24T02:19:00.000-07:00

WOOLOO.ORG has made me a featured artist on their websiiiiite! I don't know what it means besides lots of free exposure, which is pretty sweet. Check it out if you're bored and need something to look at. WOOLOO.ORG,FEATURED ARTISTS

Article on ARTHASH blog about upcoming show

2011-03-24T01:57:00.000-07:00

Thumbprint Gallery will host Aesthetigeist San Diego California Art Exhibit

I AM CHANGING THE INSTALLATION AROUND TOMORROW, SO IF YOU CAME LAST TIME, MAKE THE TREK ONE MORE TIIIIIIIIIIIME. please?

Show at Thumbprint Gallery

2011-03-11T21:06:00.000-08:00

Press Release for Aesthetigist show at Thumbprint Gallery

"As part of the collective’s show at Thumbprint Gallery, Selena Marinello will be creating an installation that explores the concept of space surrounding the individual. Marinello focuses on “corners” which she says carries a heavy connotation for each individual. For example, in Russia corners are where an idol sits for worship. However, some children may see corners as a place of punishment or a place to count while playing hide-and-seek. Corners are what usually gives a room its limitations, however the artist wants the viewer to consider space as infinitely expanding beyond the corners"

Re-Vamp the Camp

2011-03-07T19:45:00.000-08:00

Been a few ticks on the clock since I've been here, but once again I'm picking it back up. Starting with some random photos:

Wooloo interview.

2011-02-13T20:38:00.001-08:00

MY INTERVIEW WITH WOOLOO

yikes......

sunflower seeds

2010-10-12T09:10:00.000-07:00

"But you can trudge over them, walk or skip or dance on these seeds, all of them Made in China. Or scoop up handfuls and let them run through your fingers, in the knowledge that someone, an old lady or a small-town teenager in Jingdezhen, has delicately picked up each one and anointed it with a small brush. Every seed is painted by hand. The town that once made porcelain for the imperial court has been saved from bankruptcy by making sunflower seeds. It is absurd."

What if the temptation to put one of these lovingly made objects in your pocket becomes too great? Smiling, he said: "They might also want to eat one, and that would be a safety issue for the museum." He added: "If I was in the audience I would definitely want to take a seed. But for the museum, it is a total work, and taking a seed would affect the work. Institutions have their own policies. But I know I would want to take a seed."

Put your petticoats on, kids!

2010-07-14T16:23:00.001-07:00

TEA PARTY FUNDS OBAMA HITLER SIGN IN IOWA

Tonight

2010-06-15T20:56:00.000-07:00

new painting. I am painty...oh so painty.

Mount Vernon

2010-05-18T18:15:00.000-07:00

Hirshhorn and National Gallery in D.C.

2010-05-18T18:12:00.000-07:00

More MICA and Virginia

2010-05-18T17:45:00.001-07:00

Sam Graebner MICA commencement

MICA commencement and Bull Run Park, Virginia

2010-05-18T17:39:00.000-07:00

Heather Donahue

LEMURS LEMURS LEMURS

2010-05-13T09:26:00.001-07:00

John Cleese with Lemurs!!!!

Help out the Lemurs!

gimme yer numbers

2010-05-12T14:55:00.000-07:00

call me or e-mail me your numbers please! My phone decided to die and take them all with it. So Satan has your numbers if you're wondering who is making all those prank calls.

People

2010-05-08T20:54:00.000-07:00

"A thousand years ago, popular birth control methods in the Western world included spitting into the mouth of a frog, eating bees and wearing the testicles of a weasel. In Córdoba, Spain, which was supposed to be on the scientific cutting edge, women were told to leap up and down vigorously after sex, and then jump backward nine times." New York Times

Over the last couple years I've met some people that I don't know if I'd ever really like to see again, or if I will ever see again, but I felt like I should document them in some way since I never took a picture of them. sooooooooo.....

(p.s. this is going to be out of order and this suddenly became very gushy and gross and boring and bleh. I think this is more for me than for anyone else.)

1. Lulo Luloloko:

The African artist I met while living in Florence near Santa Croce. I ran into him with my roommate, Alex, one night while walking home not entirely sober when we came across his studio. It had to have been about 3 in the morning and we stupidly decided to take the alley way home, but it ended up being really fortunate. He worked as an artist...and as a ummm..tree grower...and believed himself to be the only African artist in Italy. Hardly true I'm sure, but at his 5'6" stance you won't want to disagree with him. He spoke mostly french and some broken Italian so communication was difficult as I spoke very little french and lots of drunken Italian. Alex spoke french, so she communicated as he drew out portraits and told me I was his muse.

long story short, he became infatuated with me. ugh.

There was a day when I was walking home and I hear someone yelling, "Bella, Bella!" and I didn't want to call attention to it because men in Italy tend to make gestures at women that aren't always desired. Anyway, it was Luuklolkaoakloloalaoaloko and I felt bad that I didn't respond so I went to his studio to apologize and he ended up painting a portrait of me, creating two masks out of gasoline jugs, and writing a french love poem in my honor. I didn't know how to respond so he started pulling at my arm hair and rubbing my forearms as if he was going to shoot me up with heroine. He called it an "African massage" and he said that he'd never met a woman with so much arm hair. I didn't know if that was supposed to be a compliment or not, but it was interesting... I never saw him after that night and I left Florence for good two weeks later. I still have the poem he wrote me and I can't read it because it's in french. I'm four inches taller than him and his hands are two inches smaller than mine. He painted a portrait of me that was 7 feet tall and I never got a picture of it. I have no idea what he did with it.

2. Rocco:

Rocco worked as a fortune teller during the summer months to make butt-loads of cash from the tourists that would sit and watch a man dancing around dressed as Charlie Chaplin. During the winter months he owned a tea shop where he would mix the leaves himself and he would also mix some other kind of leaves....I'm starting to notice a pattern here...anyway, If you wanted to go to his tea shop you had to know someone who went there AND you had to have a special membership in order to drink his tea. I've never heard of such a thing for a tea shop, maybe a crazy, flashy club, but not a place where you sit on a fabric covered floor and drink tea. The first time I went there it was about 10pm and my group of usual hangout lovelies were taking me to the tea shop. We ended up staying until about 3am drinking tea, singing and playing his piano among other things. He sang a lot of 60s tunes and asked me to sing for him. I refused, but the next time I came to visit him we sang. He played the piano, taught me a song in Italian and read my palm.
He told me that I had the oldest soul he'd ever encountered and that I will forever be alone. He said it was how my soul needed to live. Rocco also told me that my hands were "healers hands" and anything or anyone I touched would instantly feel better because my hands would provide them warmth and happiness. My hands told him a lot of other things, but I'd rather not mention them. I don't believe in this stuff and I don't know if he really does, but if a grown man cries when he looks at my hands, something has to be real, right?

3. Save-A-Lot Amputee

I don't know this man's name, but once a week I go to the grocery store to buy new produce and I see this older man in a wheel chair blasting Billie Holiday, Mahalia Jackson, Ray Charles, Howlin' Wolf etc.. on his old radio. He was out there in the snow and now he's out there in the heat. He always waves to me whenever I pass and I went up to him the other day and asked him how he was doing. He told me he was fine and waiting for God to come and grant him his wishes. He said it was why he played his radio so loud. He wanted to bring music back to the people through God and the kind of music he was playing was the only way he knew how. I listened with him for a while and gave him an apple.

4. Peanut Butter Sandwich Drooler

When I was working in a soap store in San Francisco there was a handicapped guy that would walk up and down Castro begging for money or food. The shelter he lived in would drop him off every day and sometimes pick him up, but not always. He was always hunched over, drooling, and his skin looked like it was crusting off his little body. He would walk to the doorway of my store and shout something incoherent at me and watch me move around the store for a bit before he'd continue down the street. Most people avoided him, pretended he didn't exist. My boss would yell at him to get him to leave. He'd even call the police to kick him off Castro st. because he was bad for business. I felt guilty because I pitied him, but I didn't know what I could do. I couldn't give him money everyday and I couldn't have a conversation with him, so I started making him a peanut butter sandwich everyday. It seemed to make him happy enough. He would smile a little and walk away, stuffing his sandwich in his front pocket.

Right before the store was closing he stopped coming by. I was worried because he was always there around the same time every day. I kept thinking the worst and it's probably what happened to him in the end, but I still don't want to think that. I still want to believe he's walking up and down Castro, drooling for money and eating my peanut butter sandwiches.

4. DeathHawk.

Styro-foam, dead hawk in backyard, tall. His name was DeathHawk. Enough said.

5. Guns and Roses Sargent

I used to go to a pub called, the Dublin, in Florence with my friend Thom allllllllll the time to get a Guinness and one night we met a group of US soldiers that were stationed in Pisa and waiting to be sent to Iraq. The one I spent the most time talking to was named John and he love Guns and Roses and drawing guns and roses. He saw that I had been drawing in my sketchbook earlier and wanted to draw something so I'd remember him. He drew a picture of a large gun with skull and cross bones and some writing, I can't recall what it said now, but I remember feeling really strange knowing this image was sitting in a sketchbook with my writings and drawings. He talked to me while he drew telling me about how many friends of his had died in war and how he wished he had never joined the army. He wanted to be an artist, but his father insisted that he joined the army. I bought him a beer and he ended up crying when he mentioned his best friend and told me how he had died three weeks prior to his arrival in Pisa. John said he hadn't really talked about him much, but that the gun he drew in my sketchbook was for his friend. I don't feel so weird about the drawing anymore.

5. Ben Franklin:

Yes, that's really his name. He's a wonderful, older man that lives above my friend, Sam, and he loves his cats, painting, and his purple hair. He walks with a pimp-like cane, skull covered head scarf, and large black glasses during the day and at night he puts on a black turtleneck shirt and pointy boots while he serves up the strongest drinks of your life at the Tavern. He likes that I can drink a scotch straight, but told me he couldn't ever do it. "It's the devils drink" he said to me once. Ben told me the last time he had scotch it made him into an angry person. I didn't know different alcohols could have different effects on you. Ben thinks vodka is like water, pure and simple. I think he's nuts.

6. Saxophone Man:

My first year in San Francisco I lived in a shitty area called, The Presideo. It was a converted military base that had traces of mustard gas in the water, lead paint that was flaking off, and mice that would jump on my bed at night, and sometimes on my face. I kept my hair shorter then because I had a dream they were going to start a next in my hair and then eat my brains. But anyway...

I took a walk most nights to a 24 hour pastry shop that had the best damn coffee I've ever had in my life. It was on Chestnut st. near the Marina and was pretty similar to downtown Del Mar, but a little more character. The Thai family that owned the coffee shop baked the best treats at 3am so I would stay up most of the time working and would take a break by walking to get some coffee and act cute enough to get a free scone. Every night when I walked there I would pass a man that would sit in front of Gap and play his saxophone. He had a deep, raspy voice and a gut that sat on his thighs as he played classic songs that would keep tourists dropping coins into his case. I bought him coffee a couple of times and he would always play, "you are my sunshine" whenever I would pass by.

There was a time during my first move up north, where I was flat broke. So broke I didn't know what to do and I didn't want to own up to it. I only had two packets of stale crackers and one can of vegetable broth to live in for a month. I don't remember much from that period, but I remember going out for food one day in the dumpsters behind a restaurant called, The Grove, and my saxophone man was walked by and saw me. He bought me coffee and a scone that night and I swear I would have married him if he asked me to.

7. Dead at 30 girl

I had a neighbor in the Presideo named, Mel or Melanie I think, and she was determined to be dead by the time she was 30. I asked her why and she said she never wanted to be old and she wanted to be able to use heroine as much as she wanted without giving a shit about anyone else. She was my age and probably is dead by now if she stuck to her word. I kept thinking that she was someone's baby at one point.

I'll write more when I'm not about to pass out.

Run like a lizard on water

2010-05-07T22:20:00.000-07:00

Art is dangerous. Gotta wear your safety pigtails.

2010-05-04T12:25:00.000-07:00

WHAT I HAVE BEEN UP TO

2010-05-01T18:53:00.000-07:00

and just because.....

2010-05-01T13:59:00.001-07:00

this is not how you should eat eel.

2010-05-01T13:56:00.000-07:00

Ched dies after feeling "eel"

"A CHEF has died after an EEL was put up his bum.

Shocked doctors in Sichuan, China, found the sea creature in the 59-year-old man's rectum after his death, it has been reported.

The 50cm long Asian swamp eel was allegedly inserted into the unnamed man's bottom, after he passed out drunk, by pals playing a prank on him.

Medics said the eel had devoured his bowels."

MIA-Born Free

2010-04-26T14:46:00.001-07:00

can you spot chris richmond? CAN YOU?! Revolution of the gingers.

Typical Night

2010-04-25T10:54:00.000-07:00

FEEL THE POWER OF THE GREAT DIVIDE

2010-04-23T16:13:00.000-07:00

Take out your boobs ladies. Let's start some earthquakes

"Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes," Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media. Sedighi is Tehran's acting Friday prayer leader.

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahahaApril 26, 2010. Show off your boobs to test the quake.

New Obsession, Don't tell my mother!!!!!!!!!!!

2010-04-21T19:43:00.000-07:00

wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.

Holy shit I want to do this.

Luc Ferrari and OtomoYoshihide

2010-04-19T09:18:00.000-07:00

Leslie Uke's HankyBooks!

2010-04-17T08:01:00.000-07:00

HANKYBOOKS ALL THE COOL KIDS ARE GETTING THEM

My dear friend Leslie has made herself a business and it's pretty kickass.

Death of the Sea Monkey's

2010-04-16T16:46:00.000-07:00

Today is a sad day.

For the past couple of weeks my sea monkey's have dedicated themselves to reproducing their kind until my tank could barely contain them all, and then it happened....

They sexed themselves to death.

I don't know what else to conclude, I didn't change the routine that the Sea Monkey Maniac's website said....but, maybe their eggs lived? I'll have to see.

Stupid horny monkeys.

Selena by Meg Pierce

2010-04-13T19:08:00.000-07:00

my friend wrote a poem about the two of us. <3<3<3

Selena

We’re just two old souls
Sharing stories of the world
About our wants and needs
In this place across the sea.

And over a cup of tea,
Spoons stirring in the leaves,
We manifest our dreams.

We’re just two old souls
Living in this world
That never quite makes sense,
But we hope for the best.

And when time dies
We’ll continue to survive,
And wait for the others
To join our sides

And in the night,
When we truly thrive,
We stare and take in
All that has survived.

We’re just two old souls
Waiting for an answer,
Asking each other questions,
Figuring out our cancer.

The boys in our lives,
The girls who pass us by,
Where do they really stand?
In the spectrum of our life.

We’re just two old souls
Sipping our steam,
Toying with the others,
Playing in the biggest game.

With nothing better to do,
But stew up herbal remedies
And drink down our miseries.
And love everything dearly.

We’re just two old souls
Let our bodies curl
Let our hearts swell
Let us be in this world.

Sweet Potato Chip, Sea Monkey Porn, and Roof-top Hopping with Sam

2010-04-11T09:35:00.000-07:00

More pictures of my roof-top adventure on Stevelena

Sea monkeys!!!

2010-04-05T08:35:00.000-07:00

This is their pirate ship. I found out that Steve is actually Stevelena, Paul is Paulina, and The Professor....is still the Professor, he just wears a skirt.

Sea Monkey update

2010-03-28T16:49:00.000-07:00

Since I know you are all on the edge of your seats for information on my Sea monkeys, I'm willing to put you out of your misery for a little while....
I HAVE NEW ONES!!!!! Not only are they alive, but little babies keep popping up out of no where!! I keep finding new ones, now I have 5!

Their names are: Steve-o, Paul, Charlie, Gus Gus, and The Professor. They will remain boys until one of them gives birth. That's how they do it in The Pirate Cove. I think Steve-o has babies...but I"m not positive He has really large white balls on his tail

......shut up.

They might be babies? Might not be. Anyway The Professor showed up the other day and he's hanging nicely with the other kids.

Hopefully I can get my External HD to work so I can put up photos soon.

peace out!

Best Short Ever.

2010-03-26T08:45:00.000-07:00

It's sooooo cute!!!

Art Students are in so many words-dumb.

2010-03-25T07:39:00.000-07:00

Food Stamps, Baltimore, Bitch Art Students

n the John Waters-esque sector of northwest Baltimore -- equal parts kitschy, sketchy, artsy and weird -- Gerry Mak and Sarah Magida sauntered through a small ethnic market stocked with Japanese eggplant, mint chutney and fresh turmeric. After gathering ingredients for that evening's dinner, they walked to the cash register and awaited their moments of truth.

"I have $80 bucks left!" Magida said. "I'm so happy!"

"I have $12," Mak said with a frown.

The two friends weren't tabulating the cash in their wallets but what remained of the monthly allotment on their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program debit cards, the official new term for what are still known colloquially as food stamps.

Magida, a 30-year-old art school graduate, had been installing museum exhibits for a living until the recession caused arts funding -- and her usual gigs -- to dry up. She applied for food stamps last summer, and since then she's used her $150 in monthly benefits for things like fresh produce, raw honey and fresh-squeezed juices from markets near her house in the neighborhood of Hampden, and soy meat alternatives and gourmet ice cream from a Whole Foods a few miles away.

"I'm eating better than I ever have before," she told me. "Even with food stamps, it's not like I'm living large, but it helps."

Mak, 31, grew up in Westchester, graduated from the University of Chicago and toiled in publishing in New York during his 20s before moving to Baltimore last year with a meager part-time blogging job and prospects for little else. About half of his friends in Baltimore have been getting food stamps since the economy toppled, so he decided to give it a try; to his delight, he qualified for $200 a month.

"I'm sort of a foodie, and I'm not going to do the 'living off ramen' thing," he said, fondly remembering a recent meal he'd prepared of roasted rabbit with butter, tarragon and sweet potatoes. "I used to think that you could only get processed food and government cheese on food stamps, but it's great that you can get anything."

pizazzzz

2010-03-20T18:02:00.000-07:00

Summer 2010:

Plans have changed, what else did you expect from me?

Destination: Home

I am a Sea-monkey Mama

2010-03-18T13:57:00.000-07:00

EEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!

I'm a proud mama to four very strange looking sea-monkeys. They are happily swimming around their sunken pirate ship and dancing to my noises.

MAN!!! SO COOL! pictures will come later when they get bigger, and if I don't kill them.

Capitalist win again.

2010-03-12T06:38:00.000-08:00

Me want Starfucks

Murcia is one of the fastest growing cities in Spain, the proud capital of the country's south-eastern market garden region. But the coffee guzzling citizens of Murcia say it still lacks the one thing that would prove they have made it onto the global map of cities that count: the green, white and black sign of a local Starbucks.

Now the city's cappuccino and mocha starved citizens have mounted a Facebook campaign to join the list of 16,000 places on the planet with a Starbucks.

"They have got it everywhere but here," complains Alicia Delgado, a recent contributor to the Starbucks campaign wall. "It is about time we had one too."

Enrique Marhuenda agrees: "The day we have a Starbucks, Murcia will be an important city."

uh oh.

2010-03-04T04:42:00.000-08:00

Geert Wilders full story

"A party that calls Islam a backward religion, wants a ban on headscarves in public life and has compared the Koran to Hitler's Mein Kampf has made major gains in local elections in the Netherlands.

Geert Wilders' Freedom Party (PVV) has become the biggest party in the medium-sized city of Almere, and the second biggest in the political capital of the Netherlands, The Hague.

Mr Wilders was visibly buoyed by the results, but was also combative in his reaction, and called the results the first step in the upcoming campaign for parliamentary elections.

"The national campaign begins today. Today, in Almere and The Hague, tomorrow in all of the Netherlands… On 9 June, we'll conquer the Netherlands," he said.

The question remains whether the party will be able to join local government in those two cities. Dutch politics features a plethora of parties, and compromise is necessary to form coalitions.

Geert Wilders has said his party is ready to find the middle ground, but now he will be tested. Other Dutch parties are loath to work together with the PVV because of its outspoken standpoints. "

snownwonsonwsosnosnosnsonwonsonsow

2010-03-03T08:50:00.000-08:00

YUP. WEARIN' A DREEEESSSSSSSSSS in SNOW! HA, nothing will stop me. Hate pants. Hate Hate hate pants.

Shirin Neshat- Turbulent

2010-03-03T08:38:00.000-08:00

Shirin Neshat

Roommate Team Work.

2010-03-03T07:50:00.000-08:00

Man.....MAN. some photos

2010-03-03T07:20:00.001-08:00

Roommates PLUS new project.

I'm in lvoe iZ"m in love I'm in lovelveovperoigndspor;!!!!

2010-02-28T15:33:00.001-08:00

I"M IN LOVEOMVOEMVEOOVELEOV LOVEOVEOEO!!!!!

I'm so utterly attracted to all of these boys and girls I'm going to pass out!

70 Million by Hold Your Horses ! from L'Ogre on Vimeo.

SEXY ART

2010-02-21T11:21:00.001-08:00

Sebastian Wickeroth is the new sexy in art. No nude can top this.
http://www.wickeroth.de/

Dave Carlson's only Future

2010-02-15T04:53:00.000-08:00

in a Mickey Mouse shirt and studded yellow cap. "Can ya dig?"

rOBERTA sMITH Message to curators: Whatever you're doing right now, do something else next.

2010-02-14T08:55:00.001-08:00

February 14, 2010

POST-MINIMAL TO THE MAX

By Roberta Smith

To paraphrase Jerry Lee Lewis, there is a whole lot of art making going on right now. All different kinds. But you'd hardly know it from the contemporary art that New York's major museums have been serving up lately, and particularly this season.

The current exhibition of Gabriel Orozco at the Museum of Modern Art along with the recent ones of Roni Horn at the Whitney Museum and of Urs Fischer at the New Museum have generated a lot of comment pro and con. So has the Tino Sehgal performance exhibition now on view in an otherwise emptied-out Guggenheim rotunda. But regardless of what you think about these artists individually, their shows share a visual austerity and coolness of temperature that are dispiritingly one-note. After encountering so many bare walls and open spaces, after examining so many amalgams of photography, altered objects, seductive materials and Conceptual puzzles awaiting deciphering, I started to feel as if it were all part of a big-box chain featuring only one brand.

The goal in organizing museum exhibitions, as in collecting, running a gallery and - to cite the most obvious example - being an artist, should be individuation and difference, finding a voice of your own. Instead we're getting example after example of squeaky-clean, well-made, intellectually decorous takes on that unruly early '70s mix of Conceptual, Process, Performance, installation and language-based art that is most associated with the label Post-Minimalism. Either that or we're getting exhibitions of the movement's most revered founding fathers: since 2005, for example, the Whitney has mounted exhibitions of Robert Smithson, Lawrence Weiner, Gordon Matta-Clark and Dan Graham. I liked these shows, but that's not the point. We cannot live by the de-materialization - or the slick re-materialization - of the art object alone.

After 40 years in which we've come to understand that dominant styles like Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism and Pop are at best gross simplifications of their periods, it often feels as though an agreed-upon master narrative is back in place.

What's missing is art that seems made by one person out of intense personal necessity, often by hand. A lot but not all of this kind of work is painting, which seems to be becoming the art medium that dare not speak its name where museums are concerned.

Why hasn't there been a major New York show of Philip Taaffe, whose layered, richly colored paintings are actually taking the medium of painting in a direction it hasn't been before? Why has a retrospective of the painter Chris Ofili - with his volatile mix of color, pattern, popular culture and identity politics - opened at the Tate Britain but not yet been scheduled for a New York museum? And why not see what a survey of the work of an artist as endlessly varied and yet dauntingly consistent as Joe Zucker - a veteran of the Post-Minimalist outfield - might look like? If the public can handle an empty museum as art, it can deal with some paintings made of cotton balls. I, for one, would rather see a tightly organized overview of Mr. Zucker's work than Marlene Dumas's warmed-over Expressionism, which was recently displayed in bulk at the Museum of Modern Art.

How did we get to this point? In the 1970's the Whitney used to be committed to showing artists from across the United States; they were called regional artists in those days. That term has thankfully fallen out of fashion, but the artists have all but disappeared from museum walls. The Modern, for its part, used to present several works each by 10 to 15 artists under the rubric of its "Americans" show.

But a combination of forces threatens to herd all of our major art institutions into the same aesthetic pen. The need to raise and make money sends curators hunting for artists with international star power who work big at least some of the time, deploy multiple entertaining mediums and make for good ad campaigns (like the self-portrait featured in the MoMA ads for its coming exhibition of William Kentridge). The small show devoted to an artist who doesn't have an immense reputation and worldwide market becomes rarer and rarer.

The consistent exposure to the big-statement solo exhibition becomes self-perpetuating, as these shows condition not only curators but the public to expect more of the same. I realize to my horror, for example, that the idea of seeing a survey of contemporary painting at the Modern makes me squirm. It would look - I don't know - too messy and emotional, too flat, too un-MoMA.

The New Museum is a notable exception to all this. Compared with other museums in town, it deserves credit for trying to sum up recent trends outside latter-day Post-Minimalism. "Unmonumental," its inaugural exhibition in its new building, explored recent developments in collage and assemblage, while "After Nature" plunged into a range of mediums in pursuit of a humanistic theme. Both shows sprawled to the point of incoherence but were still ambitious attempts to account for swaths of contemporary art.

The Guggenheim doesn't play it as safe as the Modern or the Whitney. With its Sehgal show, as with its "Theanyspacewhatever" exhibition in 2008, it acts like a place where anything can happen. But shows where we encounter an artist's single-minded, highly personal pursuit that proceeds one object at a time tend to feature past masters. The Guggenheim's recent, fantastic Kandinsky exhibition was an example (as was the Modern's Ensor show). Yet there are plenty of artists working this way now. They may not be making history (or entertainment, either), but they are still making really good art whose very unfolding has its own integrity and is exciting to see.

I wouldn't have a problem with these shows of the gods and godlings of Post-Minimalism if they were balanced and mixed with other stuff that is completely different. But that other stuff is largely missing in New York museums, though there is plenty of it around.

It is amazing that some aspect of Laura Owens's or Dana Schutz's work is not thought worth some kind of small, well-organized museum show. The same goes for Lari Pittman, who could sustain something larger. European artists, who bring a little more wit and accessibility to Post-Minimalism, include Rosemarie Trockel and Fischli & Weiss. Someone should do a show of the early paintings of Peter Doig.

And there is more demolition work to be done on the master narratives of the recent past. It would be interesting to see how the eccentric California painter Roy De Forest holds up, what with the several returns of representation and of painting since he emerged. Similarly, the midcentury West Coast painter David Park - more than Richard Diebenkorn - could do with another New York retrospective. He's the kind of artist who can light a fire under a young artist and also teach the public a great deal about looking at painting, a skill we seem to be in danger of losing.

The paintings of John Wesley, an elder statesman of alternative Pop Art, were seen in quantity at the Venice Biennale; he had a retrospective at P.S. 1 in 2000 but has never had a show of any size in a Manhattan museum. Other deserving painters who emerged in the 1940s and 1950s, often working small and usually beyond the pale of Abstract Expressionism, include Alice Trumbull Mason, Beauford Delaney, Steve Wheeler, Loren MacIver and Lois Dodd - who, by the way, is still making art.

You'd never know from looking at museums that figurative painting, running the gamut from realist to quasi-expressionist, is on the rise. (Speaking of which, if some New York curator didn't see Nicole Eisenman's recent show at Leo Koenig and at least consider doing a show, we are in trouble.) Some kind of local museum attention could be given to the realist painter Rackstraw Downes, the abstract painters Thomas Nozkowski, Larry Poons and Stanley Whitney, or to an artist like Dona Nelson, who refuses to commit to either camp and whose eccentricities are a good match for Joe Zucker's. These painters seem slated to become the forgotten artists of the future. David Bates is having a perfectly interesting career without any attention from the New York art establishment, thank you very much.

New York missed out on a recent retrospective of the cantankerous political surrealist Peter Saul. A survey of the work of the painter Jim Nutt - our era's crazed answer to the Northern Renaissance - being organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, does not yet have a New York stop. And it has finally been determined that the long overdue survey of the abstract ceramicist Ken Price that has been undertaken by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will come to the Metropolitan Museum. I'm glad it will be seen here, but the fact that the Guggenheim, the Whitney and the Modern could not fit it into their schedules shows an appalling narrowness of vision. I don't care how many scheduling conflicts can be cited.

If this sounds harsh, let me also say that I think curators of contemporary art in New York museums have some of the toughest jobs in the art world. They rarely seem able to act on their own without some kind of committee oversight and are under unbelievable pressure to succeed at the box office. Museum gallery space is at a premium and is almost uniformly unforgiving. Excepting the idiosyncratic flexibility of the Guggenheim's ramp, there is barely a decent gallery among our main museums, although we seem to have stopped talking about the effect this has on curators, their exhibitions and thus on the seeing and comprehending of art.

New York museum curators also have to compete with New York galleries, which are out there discovering new and overlooked artists and - increasingly - mounting invaluable historical shows. At the same time the amount of inspiration and information curators can gain from galleries is unparalleled. However, gathering it requires spending more time seeing shows beyond the six or eight galleries whose artists get most of the big museum shows these days. The idea that a moment's most visible artists are concentrated in a handful of powerful galleries is only superficially true. By now we know too much not to willfully work against this notion.

Museum curators need to think less about an artist's career, its breakthroughs and its place in the big picture and more in terms of an artist's life's work pursued over time with increasing concentration and singularity.

They have a responsibility to their public and to history to be more ecumenical, to do things that seem to come from left field. They owe it to the public to present a balanced menu that involves painting as well as video and photography and sculpture. They need to think outside the hive-mind, both distancing themselves from their personal feelings to consider what's being wrongly omitted and tapping into their own subjectivity to show us what they really love.

These things should be understood by now: The present is diverse beyond knowing, history is never completely on anyone's side, and what we ignore today will be excavated later and held against us the way we hold previous oversights against past generations.

Message to curators: Whatever you're doing right now, do something else next.

Pics

Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Weather

2010-02-10T16:01:00.000-08:00

I've just realized that every time I move, the city seems to be experiencing the "worst" weather in 40-90 years.
2006 San Francisco 30 days straight of pouring rain and snow across the bridge. (that hadn't happen in 50 years prior)
2007-2008 San Diego hottest summer in many years...
2009 Florence record summer highs...hottest heat wave from Africa.
2010 Baltimore's snowiest weather in 90 years. I think we've had 4 feet in the last week? and two week before that was about 5 feet. Baltimore has had more snow than Buffalo, NY...which is INSANE.

Now it seems the rest of the East Coast is catching up! Keep warm, dudes.

WOO! Weather woooooo!!!
I have to say I have been enjoying myself in the snow..Maybe some photos will appear from the shenanigans that happened last night.

Marcellus Wallace

2010-02-08T20:18:00.000-08:00

I used to live next to a black, bald, not really a bitch man named, Marcellus Lovelace. He liked Doritos, the spicy kind.
Spaghetti Western, also known as Italo-Western, is a nickname for a broad sub-genre of Western film that emerged in the mid-1960s, so named because most were produced and directed by Italians, usually in co-production with a Spanish partner.

The typical team was made up of an Italian director, Italo-Spanish technical staff, and a cast of Italian and Spanish actors, sometimes a fading Hollywood star and sometimes a rising one like the young Clint Eastwood in three of Sergio Leone's films. The films were typically shot in inexpensive locales resembling the American Southwest, primarily the Andalusia region of Spain, Sardinia, and Abruzzo.

Because of the desert setting and the readily available low-cost southern Spanish or southern Italian extras, typical themes in Spaghetti Westerns include the Mexican Revolution, Mexican bandits, and the border region shared by Mexico and the U.S.-Wiki.

neeeeeeeeeeeeew art

2010-02-06T20:13:00.001-08:00

Steeeeevelena check it!

2010, a New Year for New Things.

2010-02-05T22:15:00.000-08:00

SUCH AS: SNOW and PANTS

Here is proof that I have experienced BOTH....and my face clearly says I'm not please by either...although I have to say it was really fun running through the snow, in the middle of the road. My roommate, Heather, took this picture on her phone while we were on a mission for Whiskey and Sours, but could take the snow.

WOOO!!!

Sea Monkey, Do Monkey?

2010-02-05T06:41:00.000-08:00

Ted Victoria, Sea Monkey Installations

"The centerpiece of the exhibition is a sculpture titled Live Bait that employs five projectors to project live images of brine shrimp (popularly known as "sea monkeys") inside a sculpture resembling a cage. The tiny, prehistoric crustaceans are projected up to 50 times their actual size onto the inner surfaces of the structure's opaque plexiglass walls, appearing to be kept captive in their "cage". Viewers will not only see the enlarged projected images of the creatures, but can also see the actual centimeter-long brine shrimp housed in five small aquariums which extend from the top and sides of the sculpture. The translucent shrimp-like creatures swarm to the beams of light produced by the projectors and seem to dance in the luminescence. The brine shrimp are removed each night from the sculpture and kept in an aerated holding tank where they are fed algae and brewer's yeast. Brine shrimp are usually raised by aquarium and pet supply stores to be fed to tropical fish as a live meal. "

Monkey See, Monkey Do:

Wiki says, "Monkey see, monkey do is a saying that popped up in American culture in the early 1920s. The saying refers to the learning of a process without an understanding of why it works. Another definition implies the act of mimicry, usually with limited knowledge of the consequences. [1]

The saying probably originates from the folklore of Mali, West Africa, made well-known by Esphyr Slobodkina's retelling, which she calls Caps for Sale (A Tale of a Peddler, Some Monkeys and Their Monkey Business). There are also various other versions of this folklore, such as The Hatseller and the Monkeys by Baba Wagué Diakité, set in Mali."

St. Christopher Fazio

2010-02-03T16:38:00.000-08:00

Pure Bliss.

Humans Vs. Zombies

2010-02-02T18:06:00.000-08:00

I just got this e-mail from my Student activities....MAN I'M GONNA BE A ZOMBIE!!!!

The MICA Student Organization The Guild Presents HvZ MICA!

For your information, between the dates of February 17-22, MICA will be overrun with a campus-wide game involving students, faculty & staff. It will essentially be a massive game of tag known as Humans vs. Zombies. In this game, the Humans must fight for their survival, warding off the waves of Zombies with socks and Nerf Blasters, and embarking on missions that result in strategic advantages. For distinguishing purposes, Humans will be wearing bright orange fabric around their arms, and the Zombies will be wearing them around their torsos. The Humans vs. Zombies game was created by our neighbors at Goucher, and is now played on more than 250 campuses worldwide on 4 continents, and we are happy to add MICA to that list.

Please note that the game is to take place outside of the classroom and academic offices, so if you have any disruption in your areas, please contact Student Activities immediately. We are hopeful that this will be a week of organized, moderated, childish chaos. So when you see a group of college kids (and most likely members of the staff and faculty) running around throwing socks at each-other, be not alarmed! It is merely a week of fun, play, and the Apocalypse.

I want to live in a bucket

2010-01-31T16:02:00.000-08:00

Hiroshi Sugimoto

mooooooore snow

2010-01-30T13:33:00.000-08:00

The Building I live in, along with more snow

2010-01-30T08:29:00.000-08:00

Lady Thatcher was eating up to 28 eggs a week as part of a high-protein diet in the run-up to the 1979 general election, newly-released files suggest.

Intended to help her shed 20lb (9kg) in two weeks, the diet is outlined in a note found in a diary from that year.

"I think she was looking to get in trim for the cameras," says Chris Collins of the Thatcher Foundation.

The foundation's files also show Lady Thatcher expected to become PM two years before her 1979 election win.

The papers released relate to the first year of her premiership.

Mr Collins suggests the diet note "has to be pre-election".

The yellowing note was found inside her 1979 black leather Economist magazine pocket diary.

Sideways Snow and Frozen Toes

2010-01-30T08:21:00.000-08:00

This is the court yard in my building. I won't be drinking coffee here for a while...

This is "ShoeFly Pie" or Selina.
My body went into shock yesterday because of the really cold winds and NOW there is nothing but SNOW outside... gaaaaaaaah.

I hope this brings you as much joy as it brought me

2010-01-29T13:36:00.000-08:00

Pigs

Beards, http://www.beards.org

2010-01-28T09:57:00.000-08:00

There is a boy in my Modernism class that dresses like a Knight. He made his own armor and wears it everyday.

He called himself Gamblin.

Longest Male Beard:
Back in 1997, Shamsher Singh of Punjab, India, had his beard officially measured at an impressive 1.83 m (6 ft) from the end of chin to the tip. This is the longest beard on a living male.
The longest beard ever was grown by Hans Langseth of Norway, whose whiskers stretched an incredible 5.33 m (17 6 in) when measured upon his death in Kensett, Iowa, in 1927. The beard was presented to the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, in 1967.

Longest Female Beard:
Vivian Wheeler of Wood River, Illinois, USA, grew a full beard after the death of her mother in 1990. The longest strand from the follicle to the tip of hair was measured at 27.9 cm (11 in) in 2000.

ZZTop Facts:
The only guy without a beard in ZZTOP has the surname Beard. I've always known they had class.

Pogonophobia or fear of beards:
refers to an abnormal and persistent fear of beards. Symptoms typically include shortness of breath, rapid breathing, irregular heartbeat, sweating, nausea, and overall feelings of dread, although everyone experiences pogonophobia in their own way and may have different symptoms.

"Photos for Tino" by Ben Davis, Artnet Magazine

2010-01-24T07:19:00.000-08:00

Photo of Tino Sehgal’s Instead of allowing some thing to rise up to your face dancing bruce and dan and other things (2000) at the Muzeum Sztuki, by "wrr.", from Flickr. http://www.artnet.com

"The exact form that Tino Sehgal's hotly anticipated show at the Guggenheim Museum will take, Jan. 29-Mar. 10, 2010, is not yet known. One thing that is definitely known, however: No photos will be allowed.

No other artist has made so much out of the seemingly generic museum prohibition against visitors taking photographs of the art in their exhibition galleries. The London-born, Berlin-based artist, renowned for ephemeral choreographic art interventions, is sometimes billed as a "dematerialist" or "immaterialist." Part of what this means is that he does not allow documentation of his work, at any stage, ever. Even the press release has to go out via email only.

In the case of the upcoming Guggenheim show, that press release tells us that Sehgal's "mise-en-scene" will consist of two parts. The ground-floor rotunda will be transformed into "an arena for spectatorship," with "quasi-sculptural choreographed movement." Meanwhile, the Gugg's famous spiraling ramp is to become a platform for "direct interaction" between museum visitors and performers trained by the artist. A casting call was held for children, so perhaps it will resemble his 2007 show at the ICA London, which consisted of visitors interacting with groups of children who were brought in to play in the galleries.

In Sehgal's practice, we are told, "a visitor is no longer only a passive spectator, but one who bears a responsibility to shape and even to contribute to the actual realization of the piece." The description of the show goes on to add, "The work may ask visitors what they think, but, more importantly, it underscores an individual's own agency in the museum environment."

I know, I know: Making fun of press releases is too easy. But all the rhetoric about how Seghal empowers the viewer is worth taking note of, because it stands in intriguing conflict with the ban on photography. The latter is about denying spectators a mode of relating to their own experience, and, presumably, maintaining the author's monopoly on how it is experienced. Therein lies a contradiction and, in general, when you sense a contradiction, you have arrived at the interesting part.

What is the reason behind the photo prohibition? Those tasked with enforcing it are often tied into knots trying to explain. Sehgal's project for Massimiliano Gioni's lyrical "After Nature" at the New Museum in 2008 was one of the best pieces in that show. At the press preview, I innocently snapped a pic of the work, which consisted of a woman, slowly writhing on the floor at the bottom of the museum's long stairwell. When I used the image to illustrate my review, a New Museum press rep called to request that I take it down, explaining that Tino Sehgal didn't allow reproductions of his work for ecological reasons, as he didn't want to add to pollution by having his work printed. When I pointed out that I wrote for an internet publication, she just fell back on asking me to do it out of respect for the artist.

I felt bad at causing a headache for someone who was just doing her job -- but "just because" is not a good enough reason for me (after all, why should an online press release be OK, but not a photo on the internet?) The ban on photographing Tino Sehgal's work seems to me to fall into a gray zone: How far can an artist go towards mandating how viewers interact with his or her works? Van Gogh wanted some very specific framing and display conditions for his paintings, not all of which are always obeyed. Kafka ordered that his writings be burned, and the world is better for having been exposed to them. Would it be OK for Sehgal to insist that people not write about his work? Would it be acceptable for him to say that part of the "concept" of his art was that critics only write good things about it?

Sehgal's ban came up as an example during a recent panel at Art Basel Miami Beach featuring two power-curators, Peter Eleey of the Walker Art Center, and Anthony Huberman of the Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis. Their presentation centered on the notion of "disappearance" in contemporary art, with reference to works that make themselves deliberately inaccessible or involve the artist removing him- or herself from public view. Eleey and Huberman seemed to take the claims about such works at face value, simply dwelling on the contradiction of art that appears in the mode of not appearing. "How are we supposed to relate to these works?" was the endpoint of the talk, not the beginning.

I prefer Claire Bishop's take on Sehgal in an Artforum essay of a few years ago, "No Pictures Please." Bishop suggests that rather than representing a way of opting out of the society of the spectacle, Sehgal's prohibition on documentation is actually a canny kind of "viral marketing," a sure-fire way to get attention, to generate buzz and interest. More generally, the prevalence of "disappearance" as a strategy in recent art really just expresses the paradox of the avant-garde artist in an oversaturated world; immersed in a smog of seductive, shocking, jarring, intense images-on-demand, the best way to get attention and give art an aura of specialness again is often to play hard-to-get.

Sehgal is clearly talented. His tableaux often have a diaphanous gravity, an off-handed poetry and a romantic attention to the physical that is entrancing. You could argue, however, that the elaborate prohibitions that he has constructed around the documentation of his work, dipped and deep-fried in a thick batter of theory, represent the most unique thing about the experience. Much is often made about how his works exist as "scores," recreated by different actors, and thus always changing based on the circumstances of their embodiment. But this mode of art-making has been around at least since Fluxus (not to mention the invention of theater!). When the Guggenheim press release informs us that Sehgal's pieces "fulfill all the parameters of a traditional artwork with the exception of its [traditional artworks'] inanimate materiality," you wonder if the author remembers that we just had a performance art biennial in New York. Using "animate material" -- i.e. people -- is quite "traditional" and not at all novel in and of itself. In fact, it has fully entered into the sphere of commercial spectacle and exchange via artists like Vanessa Beecroft. Even Satan Himself, Damien Hirst, just staged a work where he hired identical twins to pose with identical paintings.

And yet there's more to the photo ban than just the sheen of novelty and rigor that it imports to Sehgal's work. To tease this out, you need to investigate another feature of his practice, the fact that his works are all performed by others. (The only piece that Tino Sehgal performs himself has the same subject as the most viewed YouTube video of all time, Jud Laipply's "Evolution of Dance?" In Bishop's description: Sehgal "dances for fifty-five minutes in the style of twenty dance aesthetics of the twentieth century.")

In 2008, at a Sehgal show at the Walker Art Center, when I purchased my ticket, the woman behind the desk leaned forward and mumbled, "The clocks in Brooklyn are ticking and in synch; Tino Sehgal, 2008" (or something like that). "What?," I said. She blushed and repeated the phrase, and I realized that it was an artistic intervention. Later on, I watched the same woman repeat the phrase to a disoriented elderly couple. Elsewhere in the galleries, a female security guard warbled the words "this is propaganda" over and over again. A male guard caught my eye and then began to do jumping jacks.

It would be very difficult to say that any of these pseudo-Brechtian interventions "woke me up" in relation to the institution -- their putative justification -- because they are so clearly museum-sanctioned. If you're hip to the rules of the game, they are easy to process; if you're not, like that elderly couple, you are liable to just be irritated. In each case, my reaction to the works at the Walker was embarrassment for the person roped into participating. There is a manifest sense of coercion, of actors performing a scenario sketched out for them by some ringmaster (which is not to say Sehgal's subjects are not enjoying themselves -- the videos I have glimpsed of guards performing Sehgal's this is propaganda certainly seem to be).

What really makes Sehgal's work stand out in relation to the history of performance is that, while the tradition of "happenings" was identified as countercultural and, in theory at least, anti-commodity, Sehgal wholly identifies with the museum and the market. While commentators tend to dwell on the perceived radical difficulty of buying and selling his immaterial "gestures," the focus should actually be on the fact that he has made the answer to this problem so simple: Unlike other performance artists, Sehgal has fully thought through the problem of trading in a non-object-based economy -- you buy the "rights" to stage a Sehgal, certified in the presence of a notary public. The fact that his background is in economics often comes up in critical debates about Sehgal; he sees commodification as all-pervasive and inevitable, and his medium -- performance - expresses his comfort with that fact, not a questioning of it: "The reason I don't use solid materials or make copies is because I know that the thing-in-itself can be commodified."

As for his relation to the museum, in an interview with Tyler Coburn, Sehgal speaks articulately about his practice in relationship to a very sophisticated theory of the art institution as a space for subject constitution. The classical museum, he notes, was a place where citizens learned to be passive observers, respectful, disciplined subjects of the state who obeyed the rules. In our contemporary society, however, Sehgal tells us (in a delightful bit of econ-speak) that the center of power has moved to the "demand side," i.e. the consumer, which implies that the desired subject is more active, constructing and seeking out an identity. Sehgal thus pitches his practice as updating the viewer's relationship to the museum for the contemporary era: His works are infinitely different, depending on who participates, but also take place within a "frame" of rules that he provides, in much the same way that the ideal contemporary subject has the perception of free choice but is ultimately docile and accepts the options he or she is given. It is striking to hear an artist cheerfully admit that his work disciplines viewers for their roles as modern-day consumers.

How does this aspect of his work relate to the photo ban? If you think about it, Sehgal's identification with power, submitting his viewers to arbitrary constraints, also accounts for a certain lurking erotics of his work. Sehgal is into light bondage; a whiff of brainy sadism runs through his oeuvre. Sometimes this undercurrent is more abstract and theoretical, as with his work involving children. His piece for the 2003 Frieze Art Fair, This is right, involved using kids as props to debase sacred ideas of esthetics, having them describe art they didn't understand and mouth art-theory terms. With regard to his 2007 work at the ICA London, critic Tom Morton took note of the "darker corners" of the project, which had schoolchildren play in the gallery, but required that they judge their games for visitors, declaring their activities a "success" or a "failure." The "binary phrasing" of This Success/This Failure, as the work was called, "replicates the language of embedded power, and invites them [the children] to also use it to judge themselves," Morton tells us.

Often, however, the perverse dimension is closer to the surface. For This objective of that object, also staged at the ICA, the artist had the five "interpreters" of his score stand around, withholding face-to-face contact with visitors, and engaging in circular theoretical discussions with each other, denying the satisfaction of a direct response to any question they might be asked. In Bishop's description, this was a "quasi-cultish assembly," conveying an "overwhelming sense of exclusion." For Sehgal's more lyrical and openly erotic work Kiss, a couple kisses in the galleries, but are required to submit this intimate act to successive poses given by classical works of art. In "After Nature," the slow writhing of the model in the piece, titled Instead of allowing some thing to rise up to your face dancing bruce and dan and other things, represents movements cited from Bruce Nauman and Dan Graham pieces. Isolated, they become ambiguous signifiers of both pleasure and pain mingled.

When you strip away the theoretical contrivances, Sehgal's perverse temperament, finally, seems to me to be the real underlying explanation for his ban on photography. It is a hollow, theatrical prohibition, of course -- there can be no real effective way to forbid documenting Sehgal's work; images of his projects are available online in various forums, including Flickr and YouTube. The urge and ability to photograph is so all-pervasive that Sehgal's prohibition on pictures really can only be another arbitrary restraint to intensify his visitors' desire for his work: a pair of velvet handcuffs; a chastity belt. The mandate to enforce his ban is simply a further piece of the "score" for his elaborate "mis-en-scene" itself, drafting a limitless network of guards, museum officials, journalists and ordinary visitors to play out the rules of his game.

This game, of course, becomes more difficult the more famous Sehgal becomes, and the Guggenheim show is his most high-profile spectacle yet. We shall see what kind of masochistic "subjects" contemporary New Yorkers make with regard to this museum show. You want to take photos of "Tino Sehgal," don't you?"

Learning and Learning

2010-01-23T21:48:00.001-08:00

I met another Selena tonight, except she spells her name, "Selina". My roommate Heather introduced us and the night was very confusing and we tried to come up with new nicknames to make it easier for everyone, so we came up with "Shoofly Pie" because this is an actual pie.

This is Shoofly pie. It's a molasses pie that is mostly made in the South. There is a book called Selena and the Shoofly Pie.

I went down to the Harbor tonight and had a "Naughty Margarita" and picked up a new word, "Black-a-butt-o-licious" this is used when a black woman walks by and you want to put a "drink" on that "shelf". How to use this term:

Rotund woman walks by, you are male and horny.
"Daaaaamn sweet thang, you black-a-butt-o-licious. I want to put my drank up on that shelf. We can go 'ba-dunk ba-dunk' all night, sweet sugar lips. Mmmmm mmmm." While doing this one much snap their fingers in order to get said woman's attention, make jesters with your hands in the shape of a round buttocks, and shake your own booty when saying, "ba-dunk ba-dunk". Growling after she has walked away is appropriate only after happy hour.

I also met four guys that are working towards their PhD's at Johns Hopkins in Physics. We all shared Ethiopian food and watched CNN while making comments about Fred Astaire and Frat boys.

I want to learn how to rap.
I have a new quilt.
I can't stop thinking about Haiti.
Structuralists are invading my brain at night.

First Week in the Mary Land.

2010-01-22T14:58:00.000-08:00

This is just a silly shot outside of schoooool:

My roommate Heather had an art opening this week and this is her stuff! She made an installation out of rice paper and hung them from the ceiling. They kept falling down, but that was kind of the point. It made a really awesome sound when you walked across it.

This is the view from my bedroom. Not that exciting, but it's still nice to look at from my desk.

more to cooooommeeee.....

Bodymore, Murderland

2010-01-21T09:34:00.000-08:00

PIDFSOINJPODFInjsdpfknm'dslgiu'ozinJ"PGNSOG
SEPIGFsodgjns;odgf

SD"OFNSD"FOBNEFON
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Everything is true.

I'll post pictures soon, but here are some cool things that exist in Bmo':
(very list-like, sorry)
Book Thing: a large area where thousands of books sit in boxes and they are all FREE. FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. You can take as many as you want, granted it takes a while to go through them, but they are all FREE.

H&H: coolest camping store in the world. Everything is cheap. I'm buying a knife and a cast iron skillet.

MICA Library: I drooled a little.

MICA shuttles: private shuttles for all the college students around town= totally rad and totally free.

Things that are no so cool about Baltimore:

I can't go out alone after sundown. This was attempted and quickly backfired.
I can't bring my camera out into the open for photographs, hence the lack of photos so far.
I haven't felt my toes in about a week.
Extreme Pessimism

A little grated child sprinkled on top of any pasta dish makes my day

2010-01-18T15:35:00.000-08:00

2010-01-18T13:27:00.000-08:00

BBC video of US helicopter aid drop off.

Their arrival comes amid reports of violence and looting and as UN and US forces pushed back an angry crowd at the airport gates with batons.

UN chief Ban Ki-Moon said he would recommend the UN Security Council boost police and troop numbers by 3,500.

People have been continuing to flee the capital and many are seeking US visas.

The BBC's Mark Doyle in Port-au-Prince says perhaps 5,000 people have lined up outside the US embassy, desperate to join relatives among the large Haitian-American community in the US.

But UN humanitarian chief John Holmes played down worries over security, saying that despite incidents of violence, the overall situation was calm.

AT THE SCENE
David Loyn
David Loyn, BBC News, Port-au-Prince

The US military took over the airport within hours of the earthquake and there's some disquiet at their large presence among aid workers who believe that humanitarian relief should be purely a civilian affair.

But for their part, the civilian aid effort has been very slow to get into gear. The aid system that existed before was fractured like so much else in the disaster and the responses lack co-ordination.

The deputy head of the World Food Programme here, Ben Yatiri, said that within only a few days many more people would receive food than the 100,000 now being fed - but the worsening security means that every truck that goes out needs very careful planning and a military escort, otherwise it would be attacked.

The delay in delivering aid has made the job far harder now.

His message was echoed by the leading US general in Haiti, Lt Gen Ken Keen, who said there was currently less violence in Port-au-Prince - already a troubled city - than there had been before the earthquake.

Earlier, Gen Keen said up to 200,000 people may have died in the disaster.

He said the disaster was of "epic proportions", but it was "too early to know" the full human cost.

Delivering aid to the centre of the capital is getting much more difficult, as anger fueled by hunger reaches boiling point, and military escorts are needed for trucks carrying supplies, the BBC's David Loyn in Port-au-Prince says.

US Navy helicopters have been dropping packages of ready-to-eat meals and water from the air, but they can only feed a few people at a time, our correspondent adds.

2010-01-17T14:09:00.000-08:00

New York Times

Mrs. France

2010-01-11T13:17:00.000-08:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carla_Bruni-Sarkozy
“ I'm monogamous from time to time, but I prefer polygamy and polyandry.”
“ I want a man with nuclear power.”

Woo!

Basketball 2009

2009-12-29T11:16:00.000-08:00

Basketball Bumblings

2009-12-25T11:46:00.000-08:00

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http://stevelenaart.blogspot.com
new f.art

Tara Donovan

2009-12-22T20:44:00.000-08:00

Oct 25, 2009–Feb 28, 2010 at MCASD Downtown, Jacobs Building.

gooooooo seeeeeeee

artartartartartart art.

2009-12-19T18:10:00.000-08:00

I'm going to put all my art on a new blog until I make a real website since mine sucks right now. This blog will be used for my ramblings.

http://stevelenaart.blogspot.com/

whuddup.