general

"Sunshine Stomp" [mp3 removed]

Sort of acid house-y thing mostly made with the Sinebeats Reaktor instrument but with dubbed in analog percussion and synth.
Nerdy electro house.

My post on the removal of artist Diana Kingsley's work from a curated show in the lobby of a 5th Avenue building ("Get those breasts out of the lobby, they're offending women") drew some lively online discussion: 1 2 3 4

I want to add that it is also being discussed on the blog "How's My Dealing?", where commenters anonymous and otherwise weigh in on art world power brokers (gallerists, critics, curators). The blogger, "Buck Naked," assigns a red X or a green O to the personage "based on your positive or negative feedback, and my sense of your sincerity. It's an imperfect system."

Currently curator Elisabeth Akkerman has a red X because of the Kingsley incident. She is a curator hired by arts patron and real estate businessman Francis Greenburger to organize exhibitions in his lobbies; she picked the Kingsley piece, named the show after it ("Blue Ribbon"), and then removed it after complaints. We don't know exactly who complained or what Greenburger's role was in vetting the work after it was installed.

An anonymous commenter on "How's My Dealing?" chides Buck Naked for his/her anonymity and says:

I would only hope that someone who chooses to host a blog on NYC dealers, curators and critics - and appoints him or herself judge, jury and executioner - has some serious creds. I'm very familiar with Akkerman, OMI, her boss, and the complex politics involved. Although it was very unfortunate that the piece was removed (I've had my own work censored in a public space before, know how it feels), blaming Akkerman is naive. [link to the Greenburger-endowed Art OMI added]

My reply in the comment thread:

What are these complex politics? Please share. Also, any particular reason you didn't mention Akkerman's boss by name? Lastly, how in the world can you have a beef with someone for posting anonymously when you do the same?

Hopefully we'll get more facts about the incident and who actually made the decision to remove the work. (Right.)

Just noticed from the MTAA blog that Michael Sarff (M.River) co-curated the "Lo-Fi Baroque" show in 1998 at Thread Waxing.

I saw that show and while I thought it was a mixed bag of work the conceptual Povera aesthetic it limned was influential on me personally and from the photos and descriptions I've seen of the New Museum's show "Unmonumental" (I'm actually seeing it this week) it appears to be a late riff on Sarff's ideas. Rachel Harrison is central to this style and is in both shows--Sarff's exhibit also included James Hyde, Gregory Green, Chris Hanson & Hendrika Sonnenberg, and Cary S. Leibowitz/Candyass who were all going strong in 1998 and probably still are but have been replaced in the smart assemblage canon with newer, hotter artists (Jim Lambie, Gedi Sibony, Sarah Lucas).

My own wrinkle (literally) was to apply the aesthetic to digital subject matter. This dropped me into a deep crack I'm still digging my way out of.

On the AIDS-3D website (Berlin artist duo recently linked to on VVork), one notices the quaintly agitpropish link "OUR DEMANDS." Who couldn't click that? Here they are:

1. NO MORE DVD REGION CODES
2. FREE WIFI EVERYWHERE
3. RELEASE THE OWNER OF TV-LINKS.CO.UK FROM JAIL
4. STANDARDIZED INTERNATIONAL VOLTAGE
5. CHEAPER TEXT MESSAGING
6. BAN SIM-CARD LOCKED CELL PHONES
7. ALLOW SCREEN CAPTURE DURING DVD PLAYBACK IN MAC OSX*
8. END THE NTSC/PAL COLD WAR
9. DECRIMINALIZE FILE SHARING
10. MORE BANDWIDTH!

*To which I would add, let us printscreen DVD stills in MSPaint and return the "screen grab" functionality to Intervideo WinDVD, you controlling bastards, for those of us too lazy to learn workarounds in code (and otherwise).

Both members of AIDS-3D are using Rupert Murdoch's MySpace to do art stuff, and they obviously use Macs, so certain accommodations to the system are being made here. That doesn't mean you can't have demands, or "demands," and most of these seem reasonable, if doomed in our "bricks over clicks" society.

Update: wizardishungry says he figured out a solution to #7. His proof (but not necessarily the solution) is here.

My blogroll got drastically pared down when I moved to this URL, for reasons that are stupid and trivial having to do with the design of this site. I want my "categories" near the top and can't figure out how to reconfigure this Word Press template to move the blogroll below the categories where they could grow willy nilly.*

On the old blog I tried to avoid a ghetto of "art only" blogs. I've noticed these springing up when newbie art bloggers launch. This is the Internet, it's a new medium, why limit yourself to a field that was defined (and I would argue failed) around the convention of people talking a specialized language about objects and events in certain types of physical spaces?

Presumably artists read and have interests other than the gallery world. A blogroll is a way to define those interests, and yourself.

But mainly it's so you have the sites you visit at your fingertips (it's kind of quaint already with the prevalence of RSS), which incidently serves as a declaration of what (or who) matters to you.

(edited--the original rant may be floating around on some RSS readers)

*Thanks to CA for emailing about this. I have tried to change the sidebar in the theme editor--the html tag "get links list" pulls up both "my pages" and "other pages"--it treats them as a unit when I move "other pages" to the bottom of the sidebar. I want "my pages" up at the top where it is now. My Digital Media Tree blog was much more configurable. I found early on the limitations of Word Press for the casual coder. A lot of changes I'd like to make, such as putting an image in my header, can't be made without screwing up some CSS designer's perfect little scheme. Any changes to the basic layout cause a ripple effect in the delicate pick up sticks pile of commands to put a tasteful underline here or a font such and such size there. So I decided to just use his template in the most generic, off the shelf way. The idea of picking another design from a menu of prepackaged themes to "express my personality" doesn't appeal. There are limits to my interest in presets.

Update, 2013: The above post was written during the long period where I was using the "Word Press Classic" theme. My current design is a bit more configurable but still not as fluid as my 2001-2007 blog's.