IF YOU IMPATIENT JUST GO TO:
www.hennessyyoungman.com/gradschool.html

“WHO GIVES A FUCK ABOUT MICHAEL FRIED WHEN YR SCOURING NYFA’s JOB LISTINGS…”

Jayson Musson started the youtube series “Art Thoughtz” last year. Performing as Hennessey Youngman–he simultaneously adopts the persona of a baller, an art star, a disenfranchised 20 something who’s finding success– and above all– an enlightened voice of reason. These lo-fi vids, though conceptually simple–mirroring the now ubiquitous confessional youtube tutorial– achieve a lot, and mostly through his use of critique, humor and irony. In his direct addresses, the Internet becomes an off-screen character of sorts–standing for a populace desperately in need of a wake-up call. The use of pop-culture and internet culture serve as vehicles to satirize the art world (professional and academic), and allow Youngman to dissect issues of race, class, taste and gender.

“In his video monologues, Youngman becomes a tutor to an audience of hopeful artists in search of success. By explaining traditional art concepts and relating them to pop culture and real world examples, he is able to expose issues and conflicts within contemporary art society. A scheme is perpetuated, through Youngman and the “Art Thoughtz” videos, of following an often sympathetic character, one who is apparently outside the art world, attempting to understand and permeate a seemingly exclusive cultural society. This sort of ‘underdog in the art world’ characterization can be seen in the work of video artist of Alex Bag or motion pictures such as the biopic Basquiat or the art world satire.”

Dirty Looks: On Location is a month-long series of queer interventions in New York City spaces. Over the course of July, Dirty Looks, a roaming series– which typically hosts screenings on the last Wednesday of the month–will install film and video work in queer social spaces and former sites of queer sociality (like shuttered bars, bathhouses and former meeting zones). A new piece, a different setting on each night of July. Please support their Kickstarter through June 2, 2012 here.

A truly experimental festival, Dirty Looks: On Location will promote a greater understanding of queer history around New York City, as postcards placed at each installation will elaborate on the historic significance of each venue. The project will also expand on Dirty Looks’ mission, to engage viewers outside of the experimental film community or art world sectors, since the works on view will reach innocent bystanders and casual passers-by. July in New York is hot, sticky and social. Installing moving image works around the city in bars, centers and “haunted” venues allows for the free flow of viewers to engage and celebrate with work, in evening events that commemorate contemporary moving-image production and its precedents in queer culture.

The film and video work was selected by a committee of emerging curators from the art and film worlds:
Tova Carlin (Time Out NYC)
Paul Dallas (Columbia)
Kathryn Garcia
David Everitt Howe (Abrons Art Center)
Jamillah James
Sarvia Jasso (Queering Sex)
Karl McCool
Bradford Nordeen (Dirty Looks)
Bryce Renninger (Rutgers University, formerly Newfest)
Abbe Schriber (Studio Museum Harlem)
Ethan Weinstock (Independent Producer)
Jake Yuzna (Museum of Art and Design)

About Dirty Looks:
Dirty Looks, a monthly platform for queer experimental film and video, has been in operation since January 2011. In that time they have screened experimental works by nearly 50 artists at venues like PARTICIPANT INC, Artists Space, Judson Memorial Church, P.P.O.W Gallery, White Columns (forthcoming) and the rooftop venue, Silvershed. They regularly receive attendance nearing 100 viewers and have reached crowds in excess of 200. They’ve partnered with queer institutions, like Newfest, MIX NYC, Spank, Union Docs, the L Magazine, Women Make Movies, Little Joe Magazine, Translady Fanzine, Birdsong Micropress, QT Reading series at Dixon Place, P***y F****t, and [ 2nd floor projects ] on events and publications and their screenings have been featured in publications like Bad At Sports, Gayletter, Art Fag City, Slant, Hyperallergic, the L Magazine, Time Out NYC and more.

“Just over a year old, this underground-style series is already way above ground, bringing its adventurous, open-minded brand of avant-garde to the West Coast.”
Shana Nys Dambrot, LA Weekly

“[Dirty Looks] has brought new meaning to camp, parody and the marginal.”
Bruce Benderson, Out

“Best Monthly series in New York”
Kate Wadkins, of Hyperallergic

Directed by Levi Beamish & Produced by Adam Thompson
http://www.chrysalisfilms.co.nz

Street Chant are Emily Littler, Billie Holliday, and Alex Brown. We spoke this afternoon about the process of making the two videos.

STV: When did you make the vids and how long did they take? Were the directors friends?

EL: Both took less than a month I think, or maybe around a month and a half from talk to the directors about our concepts to completion. The directors weren’t friends, I still don’t even think they have met – we had a premiere party but one of them had work so couldn’t come.

STV: The two videos have a totally different aesthetic– sleek and polished digital video and VHS analog. Can you talk about the experience of the tapings? Did they feel different when you were making them?

EL: New Zealand has an arts funding scheme where bands can send demos in and get money to make videos and songs, and we got one of them for Frail Girls (even though it was recorded in the same way as Salad Daze). When we decided to release the both at once it was pretty clear one was more commercial, plus we liked the idea of doing Salad as VHS (even went an bought a VHS camera and intended on doing it ourselves, but it didnt work properly), so anyway we decided to put all the money into Frail Girls.

Its shot in a big white professional studio and there was camera people, lighting people, a massive lighting rig, make up artists etc etc. So it did seem like kind of a big deal compared to what we were used to. We shot it over one long day, after they had been there the day before setting everything up. It was a really long day and my cavegirl costume was held together by safety pins and it kept falling off.

With Salad Daze it was completely different, we went into a big warehouse above the studio we record at and just filmed with Damian who used to be my flatmate. He had a big table full of gear and we had a basic concept and idea for the feel. We bought heaps of props from the supermarket, and I convinced Alex we should have some red cask wine as a prop. I ended up getting quite drunk and in some of shots I have quite bad red wine mouth.

Then Alex and I had found this brand new suburb, sort of like something out of Poltergeist which we thought might be good for the second half of the song – which seemed to have a creepy but sunny feel. So we hired a generator and went down there for the day where Damian used a lot less gear, and the gear he did have started breaking. He got one head of one of the machines to start working and we did it really quick. Alex and him drove around with the generator in the back seat of Alexs car to try and get some hip hop type neighbourhood moving shots, and the car filled up with smoke, they were both green when they came back from that shot.

Both were quite different to make but didn’t seem it, I guess New Zealand is so small that even when you do stuff in a studio its always people doing favours and you know most people there.

STV: Why didn’t the VHS work for you guys? Did you give the director the footage?

EL: It was just a crappy VHS player and we bought a really shitty usb converter and when we tried to convert some shots after testing it out, we realised we were kind of in a bit over our heads – since we wanted the videos to be done so soon. So I knew Damian and called him and asked him if we could borrow one of his cameras, he said he would rather be involved since the cameras were on their last legs and all require special tricks to get them to work, and I remembered another video he had done and I really liked it so he just became the director then and there, it was a bit of a relief. His cameras were all broken and stuff, but I think thats what gives them their own uniqueness especially with the colouring. Its a bit different to just the standard VHS look I think. But then he put it all through a desk as well after so thats probably it too, I don’t really know enough about VHS.

STV: Appropriately, it sounds like Salad Daze was a more Salad Days in spirit. Sounds like that one was more fun. I love those kinds of projects. But they both look great, congrats! I gotta get one of those 7″s I remember being so bummed that I couldn’t hear those songs after hearing you play them live. Both of them have been in my head for months!

EL: It was a bit more relaxed because there was no studio deadline, or people being paid by the hour etc, but Frail Girls felt almost similarly DIY just because the director and everyone were all so young, it was like “how did we get all this gear and studio and make up people?!”

Pre-Order here:

http://www.archhill.co.nz/

http://archhillrecordings.bandcamp.com/

http://itunes.apple.com/nz/album/frail-girls-salad-daze-single/id525350534

http://www.amplifier.co.nz/default,85372.sm

Ecstatic Alphabets opening, MoMA 5/1
+ Overall, it was a good party. There was lots of booze, with three fully stocked bars-indoor and outdoor. A total feast for people watching. Tons of artists featured in the group show came out to see their work enshrined in the greatest temple/bank of the arts.

-Nice outdoor setup in the Sculpture Garden: ideal for mingling with cocktail tables and open space. Lots of seating near the reflecting pool as well. Good outdoor bar, lots of pretty colored lights, and as always, great art in the museum’s courtyard.

-DJ was pretty weak, but whatever. What does the MoMA know about DJs? Why are all museums seemingly in the dark regarding these matters? I guess I can be a bit more critical of this with MoMA, especially because the institution is now strategically moving in the direction of being a taste maker for music in recent years. It doesn’t quite add up that their taste is pedestrian most of the time and that no one seems to actually have a strong sense of music history and how it coincides with visual art practice, but whatever. That is a rant for another time.

-The group show itself was pretty decent. It presented an interesting and coherent narrative of artists working with text and language-based aesthetics from the 60s through the contemporary moment. The party also reflected this: with lots of young mixed with older artists, collectors etc.

PPl watching: Lawrence Wiener, Shannon Ebner, Patti Smith, Michael Stipe, Anne Temkin, Klaus Biesenbach, David Velasco, etc.

MoMA PS1 Frieze Opening Party.
+ Ok, Admittedly– I only went to this because I had a free pass- and the party at the MoMA the night before was so nicely done. This party, however, was not well done. Poorly organized, poorly policed, poorly staffed, and poorly attended (not in volume, but in quality); this was an odd fete indeed. Here’s why:
+ Weird prison style lights everywhere. Brought out the worst flaws in everyone. Was NOT a good look.
+ There was only one alcohol sponsor for the event, Bombay Saphire (barf) and the “open bar” ran out 10 minutes in. Then to get anything to drink, you had to buy tickets first and then wait in another line–which was too hard of a concept for everyone to understand. This resulted in a shit show/mosh pit scene to get beers. And the coked-out over-stressed manager did not help anyone feel better about the situation. There was only one keg, so it took forever. Lame.
+Weird bottlenecking at bizarre places- Not sure if it was because everyone was trying to avoid the prison lights, or if it was because of the oddly shaped geodesic-dome-tent in the middle of the courtyard, but it was nearly impossible to get into the museum for the first half of the party. You could really only hang in the tent or wait in line to go in to the geodesic-dome to see the performance.
+Klaus Biesenbach is no fun- During Martha Wainwright’s set, after she concluded a beautiful rendition of an Edith Piaf song, someone in the crowd hilariously and drunkenly screamed “FUCK YOU,” which only prompted the museum director to scold the crowd, saying “this is not a place to yell, it is a place to observe performance” Why so serious? Why so missionary?
+The worst part about the night, was that I went to this party to meetup with a potential client, and missed a performance in the city that I actually wanted to see.. Mike Watt, John Petkovic, and J. Mascis playing Stooges covers at LPR. I’m a dumbass. Would have been SO MUCH BETTER. We all make mistakes tho.

Frieze “Professional View” at Randall’s Island, Thursday afternoon
Granted, this was the first Frieze fair in NYC, but there were a lot of problems, I thought. The main problem being having the fair at Randall’s Island- which was extremely difficult to get to, and then again– had weird vibes. It felt generic, like any art fair, and it was a total bummer that Frieze didn’t stand out or depart with the traditional model in any way. I heard rumors that the only reason Frieze was held there in the first place was because Randall’s Island does not require the production team and all of the people involved with constructing the physical site for the fair had to be members of a union. So this was their way of saving money, and screwing workers. Hope that’s not the case.

The “VIP” room was a joke– $15 dollar glasses of champagne, $8 coffees. Stuffy jerks everywhere you looked. Or cranky kids, rightfully terrorizing their parents. Plus the decor was a weird combo between airport lounge and Vienna interior design. Blarf.

But there were some interesting things about Frieze. A general hater, I don’t typically find much that at fairs. But there were a few things I liked.

This was my favorite piece in the fair.

Katie Paterson- Langjokull Sncefellsjokull, Solheimajokul, 2007

Sound recordings from three glaciers in Iceland were pressed into three records, cast and frozen with the meltwater from each of these glaciers. They were then played on three turntables until they melted completely.

The records were only played once and now solely exist as these three digital videos. The turntables begin playing together, and the sounds from each glacier merge with the sounds generated from the needle on the ice record itself. The records play for nearly two hours.

What. the. hell.????? (Can’t decide how I feel)

Javier Tellez, Foxy Lady, 2012

Galerie Peter Kilchmann

Simon Denny Diligent Boardbooks Website Presentation, 2011 Friedrich Petzel

The people watching was pretty good too.

Bloomberg lookin guilty!

Kalup Linzy

Rachel Feinstein

RoseLee Goldberg

Matthew Higgs

Personally, I think the Roberta’s pizza operation was the purest form of art that I witnessed at Frieze. 5 people, a wood fired oven, and some seriously delicious pizza– they worked together effectively with no pretension; making jokes and interacting with collectors, exhibitors and gallerists with the most down to earth attitude I have ever seen. They stood for no amount of shit, but were so charming in their demeanor that people gave them the respect that they deserved. Roberta’s brought a much needed dose of honesty that the fair needed desperately. It was like a little reality oasis. AND their pizza was bangin.

Initially, I became acquainted with Harry Dodge’s absurdist, performance-based videos made with Stanya Kahn in LA between 2002-2008. Over the last 4 years, Dodge has generated a viscerally affective body of multimedia work, employing all manner of drawing, performance, video and sculpture. Three videos from her solo exhibition, on view currently at Wallspace Gallery will be celebrated once more for free at the Kitchen tomorrow evening. The multi-disciplinary show deals “what is unnamable, transitive, or “in-between,” among other things. The trilogy of videos, masses of drawings, and selected sculptures presented here are also united by their pointed interest in brutality, precariousness, humor and resilience.”

Made with urgency over the course of a six-month period, the video trilogy of Ipse Dixit (2011), Unkillable (2011), and Fred Can Never Be Called Bald (2011) explores the space in between language and image, as well as the inexorability of narrative progress or momentum itself in different tonal and formal registers. Ipse Dixit is a two-minute loop that uses the simplest tools of Final Cut Pro to deliver a short transcription on the end of the world. The black comedy Unkillable investigates the potency of images made from language by means of monologic performance: wearing a mask, Dodge performs a “text-story” of a would-be film made up of progressively appalling events. Fred Can Never Be Called Bald uses a combination of text cards, computer voiceover, and a distorted collage of YouTube clips to meditate on the translation and compression of material information into the digitized, virtual world.  Each piece in the trilogy edges its structural and metaphysical concerns with a measure of comedy and brutality, offering tough, tender witness to the vulnerability of the human animal and its enterprises. ”

Harriet “Harry” Dodge was one of the founders of the now-legendary San Francisco community-based performance space, The Bearded Lady, which served as a gathering point for a pioneering, poly-sexual, queer literary and arts scene in the early 1990s. During that time, Dodge also wrote, directed and performed several critically acclaimed, evening-length monologues including Muddy Little River (1996) and From Where I’m Sitting (I Can Only Reach Your Ass) (1997). In the late 1990s, Dodge wrote, directed, edited and starred in a narrative feature film, By Hook or By Crook, which premiered at the Sundance Festival in 2002, with Silas Howard. The film went on to become a cult classic, garnering five Best Feature awards at various film festivals. Dodge also performed in the 2000 John Waters film, Cecil B. Demented.

Stream Dodge and Kahn’s videos on Ubu

+All Together Now (2008)
+Can’t Swallow It, Can’t Spit It Out (2006)
+Masters of None (2006) The Ugly Truth (2006)
+Let the Good Times Roll (2004) Whacker (2005)
+Winner (2002)

The videos are made available for sale, exhibition, and education by Electronic Arts Intermix.

THE FILMS OF CARMELO BENE
Beginning this weekend, Anthology will present this retrospective encompassing all five feature films (as well as a couple shorts) directed by the vanguard filmmaker, actor, and playwright Carmelo Bene, one of the greatest figures in Italian avant-garde culture. Renowned for his work in the theater, Bene turned his attention to filmmaking for a brief period in the late 60s and early 70s, producing a small but unforgettable body of film works. Reflecting Bene’s lifetime of engagement with literature and theater – OUR LADY OF THE TURKS is based on his own novel, while his last three features are radical adaptations (or reworkings) of HAMLET, Oscar Wilde’s SALOMÈ, and Mozart’s opera DON GIOVANNI – his films are visionary, flamboyant, wildly excessive, and exhilaratingly unrestrained. It’s been decades since these works have been screened all together, making this an opportunity not to be missed!

“Founder of one of Italy’s most famous experimental theatres, poet, actor, author, playwright, and leading avant-gardist, Carmelo Bene is an unknown genius of contemporary cinema. … Bene’s films are visual, lyrical and auditory cataclysms, whose lava-like outpourings are of unequalled hallucinatory perversity. Their visual density and creative exuberance defy description.” –Amos Vogel, FILM AS A SUBVERSIVE ART

All films are in Italian with projected English subtitles.

Screening Schedule
Carmelo Bene- CAPRICCI
April 26 at 6:45 PM
April 28 at 9:00 PM

Carmelo Bene- DON GIOVANNI
April 26 at 9:15 PM
April 28 at 7:00 PM

Carmelo Bene- SALOMÈ
April 27 at 7:00 PM
April 29 at 4:00 PM

Carmelo Bene- ONE HAMLET LESS
April 27 at 9:00 PM
April 29 at 6:00 PM

Carmelo Bene- OUR LADY OF THE TURKS
April 28 at 4:00 PM
April 29 at 8:15 PM

A screening program of live performance footage, music videos, and cable access appearances with bands from the underground music scene in Columbus, Ohio. Featuring bands/artists such as: V̶-̶3̶, Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments, True Believers, Mike Rep+the Quotas, J̶i̶m̶ ̶S̶h̶e̶p̶a̶r̶d̶, Tommy Jay, Nudge Squidfish, Gaunt, Screaming Urge, Scrawl, Gibson Brothers, New Bomb Turks, as well as more recent bands, including: Times New Viking, Psychedelic Horseshit, Sword Heaven, and Unholy 2.

The footage comes from recently digitized VHS tapes, solicited in hopes of creating a centralized collection of moving image material to construct an archive providing a rich portrait of Columbus’ underground music scene. This archive is a work in progress, with content being added all the time, as it becomes available. Columbus will be the first focal point, with Dayton following and (hopefully) Cleveland after that.

Collector Scum Discography

Somewhere between video diary and music nerd tribute jerked on video–like Bill Nye, but cool– this gem of a CATV special maps out and documents the somewhat subjective, vastly complicated network of musicians and bands in the Bloomington Music Scene from 1977 through 1993.  ESAD Production’s History of Bloomington Music was hosted, taped, edited, etc. by Eric Indiana (aka Eric Spears– not sure what the AD part stands for) between 1991-1993 in what I’m going to speculate to be a garage–judging by the assortment of props he uses as pointers.  The special– which ran on Bloomington Community Access TV (BCAT) sourced a variety of video footage ranging from CATV, live performances, and footage made specifically for this project. The piece serves as an important document to the scene’s genealogy.

“Let’s go back to the mid 70s. Now, WQAX Bloomington’s Community Access, Community University Access radio station had been organizing street dances that all these bands played at in the early 80s. Including the Dancing Cigarettes. Now the Dancing cigarettes were heavily influenced by MX-80 Sound.” [Something is thrown at the chalkboard, Eric Indiana, using pruning shears as a pointer starts laughing, and continues] “We’ll just ignore that and keep going, bc yknow although the dark demonic forces of the past are trying to disrupt this video by any means necessary, we will continue and seek out the truth.” *Cuts to MX-80 Sound Video*

Eric is very active on the The Indiana Music Archive and Online Community’s website, where you can go to see more of his footage and recent projects.

 Collector Scum Indiana Discography

Also– I swear I just saw a Gizmos World Tour 7″ reissue this weekend at Co-Op 87. Gonna see who put it out and add more info here soon.

Epic Auckland record store Real Groovy Records announced they will be releasing a double LP by NZ favorites, Toy Love in honor of Record Store Day 2012. The recording captures the band’s legendary –and one of last live sets at the famous Gluepot in Auckland, September 12, 1980. Transferred and prepared for vinyl mastering  from a desk tape recorded by Toy Love’s front of house soundman Doug Hood, the record has been pressed in Nashville at United Record Pressing, meaning there’s a decent chance that we may be able to get a few in the states.

Poster by Joe Wylie; courtesy of Toy Love Archives

Toy Love were no strangers to the Gluepot stage and performed there in the middle of September, their final month of life. At first, I thought it might be a live album (or even better some film) being slyly mooted, then had doubts and thought maybe it was just a teaser for a feature of the sort the magazine runs and that the Bride graphics were there to fill holes in the weekly’s advertising or maybe even just an April Fools joke.

So I pulled the piece only to have Chris from Counting The Beat email me and say Graham Reid mentioned a Toy Love live release in the Elsewhere newsletter. Then I remembered a previous Auckland rumours entry pointing out the level of activity on the Auckland live scene in mid-1980.

The mystery deepens and if nothing else this pursuit has been fun and intriguing.

A live disc that shows Toy Love at its peak would be a more than welcome addition to my record collection, and come to think of it, didn’t The Second To Last Song Toy Love Wrote, the group’s track on Goats Milk Soap come from one of their last live shows? So they were taping them. Just checked the Toy Love website, which says that song was recorded at the Gluepot on the last tour.

In my correspondence with Andrew Schmidt of Mysterex, he remarked:

For a group that lasted barely two years, they were incredibly well documented, but little of that media has been made available officially.. There’s a large body of film including a whole concert filmed for Television New Zealand in early 1980, a twenty minute documentary from late 1980 called Pointless Exercise, Current Affairs TV footage (if it survived) and videos for all the singles plus one b side. But the group have been a bit averse to having their past reexamined up close so hopefully this indicates a change in their thinking.

(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

As Terence Hogan (Toy Love’s Manager) notes in the liner notes for CUTS:

Toy Love’s music always seemed to be in a constant state of being formed and reformed, songs would warp and twist with every

playing. So, for all its undeniable power it could seem unstable, almost fragile, threatening to burst out of its own skin, shards and globs all over the place – every gig was like another attempt to make this strange creature hold together and live. At times it would only take off at a few unpredictable points, at others it would lift off immediately and roar through the air – an astonishingly compelling, unlikely flying thing full of dark folds and flashes of light. The best stuff was transcendent, and the near failures were so often funny or had the buzzy pathos of a crash site, you couldn’t look away.

Those early performances at Auckland venues like Zwines, XS and especially the Windsor Castle, sealed Toy Love’s reputation and set a benchmark that would challenge the band throughout its brief lifetime. They were still new, like a baby, but raw as a wound, bursting with invention and exuding a singularity that stood them apart from even the best bands around them. I don’t remember ever wondering what they might be doing in five years time… where do they go from here? Anything beyond what they were, and which might also be good, would be a surprising bonus. In retrospect those instincts were right.

Toy Love became (sort of) more consistent over time, without ever becoming set as if in a mould – they were too restless and honest for that – and they played terrific gigs right to the end. But I recall most fondly when they were that flawed and beautiful thing of those first few months. In amongst the smashed watermelon and broken glass, drenched in sweat and flecked with blood, the laughs, confusion, exhilaration… there was a complexity in the experience that’s all about the priceless, messy human-ness that drives great
rock’n’roll. There was a long moment when to see Toy Love in full flight was to get one of the best bands in the world, right at their peak– right where I lived.

Recently digitized Toy Love performance:

T R A C K L I S T I N G
F i f t e e n
B l a c k b o a r d G r i n
U n s c r e w e d U p
A m p u t e e S o n g
To y L o v e S o n g
I Wa n n a D i e W I t h Yo u
D o n ‘ t C a t c h F i r e
B e d r o o m
P h o t o g r a p h s o f Na k e d L a d i e s
L u s t
S e c o n d t o L a s t S o n g
To y L o v e E v e r Wr o t e
S h e e p
S w i m m i n g P o o l
F a s t Os t r i c h
Go o d Ol d J o e
I T h o u g h t I Ne e d e d Yo u
I ‘ m I n L o v e
Gr e e n Wa l l s
H o r r o r C o m i c s
R e b e l
C o l d Me a t
D o n ‘ t A s k Me
S q u e e z e
I D o n ‘ t Mi n d
A i n ‘ t I t Ni c e
T h e C r u n c h
D e a t h R e h e a r s a l
B r i d e o f F r a n k e n s t e i n
P u l l D o w n t h e S h a d e s

Gatefold Sleeve
Insert with commentary from all members and crew
LIMITED to 400 copies worldwide–on Black and Pink vinyl only

Jane, Paul, and Chris--Photo by Murray Cammick; courtesy of Toy Love Archives

Chris, Mike, Paul, Jane, Alec-- Photo by Maurice Lye; courtesy of Toy Love Archives

Chris-- Photo courtesy of Alec Bathgate and Toy Love Archives

Chris & Jane-- Photo by Carol Tippet, courtesy of Toy Love Archives

Chris at 301 Studios EMI, Sydney 1980, Photo courtesy of Alec Bathgate and Toy Love Archives

Toy Love at Zwines- Auckland, 1979; courtesy of Toy Love Archives

Christchurch Press: August 1980, by Nevin Topp; courtesy of Toy Love Archives

Press Release, 1980; courtesy of Toy Love Archives

Site specific projection by Doung Jahangeer and Rosa Menkman for the Stadsdeelkantoor, Westerpark, Amsterdam. Made during The Media City workshop at NIMK, 2010

Netherlands Media Art Institute will cease activities due to lack of funding at the end of 2012. A result of the Ministry of Culture’s decision to terminate funding, an announcement was made yesterday that the Institute will receive no further financial support, and will vacate its present premises on the Keizersgracht in Amsterdam in the course of this year. That being said, NIMk has developed several new projects, and has called upon other organizations to usher its current initiatives into the future.

After December 31, 2012, the 35 year old institute will continue via a number of projects described below:

One of the priorities is ensuring the continuation of collecting, conservation and distribution of art and technology with which NIMk attained its unique position here in the Netherlands and abroad. These activities and the unique knowledge and expertise that have been accumulated at NIMk over the past years, will be handed over to the new foundation ‘Formerly known as MonteVideo’ (VH MV, working title). The internationally acclaimed research projects in the field of conservation will also be transferred to this new foundation as at January 2013.

The ambitions of this knowledge centre are big. VH MV wants to innovatively draw the widest possible attention to issues of sustainability and conservation in the field of e-culture, with art as its central focus. This new ‘Sustainability Lab’, a multidisciplinary, open service centre and laboratory for the conservation of art and technology, will become a meeting place for today’s (aspiring) professionals in the field, who wish to work and reflect together from artistic, scientific, technical, theoretical and/or practical perspectives.

SMART Project Space in Amsterdam has developed plans for a new institute under the name of NASA: New Art Space Amsterdam. This new organisation will be entrusted with the experience that NIMk has built up in the fields of presentation and education. NASA is the presentation space of the future. Experience contemporary art and culture in a continuous programming in visual arts, music, live art and film, combined with symposiums, discussions, exhibitions, workshops and events. Along with the online Creative Learning Programme which runs parallel to all these components.
NASA focusses on the production of exhibitions, and of individual works on the basis of public–private cooperation, within interrelated and challenging programming. NASA offers educational projects in collaboration with Rietveld Academy and Sandberg Institute. NASA is home to a broad coalition of institutes, initiatives, festivals and conferences; a cross-disciplinary programme for a wide audience.

Under the name THX plans have been developed in consultation with STEIM towards a completely new centre for image, audio and digital culture in The Hague. THX aspires to be a platform for the creative industry: network, theatre, presentation and project space, laboratory (living labs), concert venue and online hub. THX strives to closely cooperate with V2_ Institute for Instable Media in Rotterdam.

In addition to this focus on the public and participation, THX is a knowledge centre, production house and educational institution for higher and academic education in the fields of art, technology and life sciences. Nearer the end of 2012 THX will start off as a project organisation, with irregular, nomadic projects. The ambition for the long term is to house THX on the Lange Voorhout, in the building by Breuer that is now the American Embassy.

via NIMk website

Initially aired on Johnny Carson’s ‘Tonight Show’ in 1968, Len Cella’s Moron Movies became a regular feature between 1983 and 1985, then eventually surfaced on ‘TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes’ as Len Cella’s Silly Cinema a title which he allegedly despised. Curiously available in every video store in North America in the mid 90s, even in the current information-saturated internet age of blogs and wikipedia,  details regarding Cella’s videos and ‘Moron Movies’ remain obscure, counter cultural entities.

Len Cella, a gray, drab middle-aged man stars, directs, and crews what some have referred to as  “flaccidly-punchlined, one-joke shorts. Watching his work is like staring into the face of hermetic isolation.”  A Philadelphia City Paper, covering the premiere of his opus ‘Crap’ in 2002 identified him as a native of Broomall, and then other sources identify the basement of the Lansdowne Theatre in Lansdowne, PA as his onetime home. A well researched article on Len Cella, his past and current shenanigans can be referenced here.

Absurd, simple, repetitive, yet completely DIY– Cella’s work straddles comedy, the perverse, and the macabre. Think what you want about the content of his work– he doesn’t give a fuck. Which is exactly what I gives these micro-pieces their cred. Unapologetic, self-made, ridiculous, but above all pure and direct–it’s a rare treat to find works of this nature, in a world where Lena Dunham is considered a DIY auteur.

He also wrote a book in 1987 called, Things to Worry About (In Case You Run Out): A Definitive Guide to the Ultimate in Worries, Phobias and Fears but I can’t find any photos or reviews on the interwebs.

Follow Len on twitter @Godcella

Special thanks to Tina and Kevin De Broux for the head’s up!

Re-posted with permission of David Keenan/VT and Bruce Russell

It’s all but impossible to consider the New Zealand underground without in some way giving the nod to the magnitude of The Dead C and specifically Bruce Russell’s contribution. Russell has worked harder than anyone to formulate a new bottom of the world rock aesthetic, whether live in the field with groups like The Dead C and A Handful Of Dust, as a critic, as a curator and as a label owner. Indeed, it’s hard to think of any other label outside of Siltbreeze and PSF that has so completely articulated an original aesthetic as much as Russell’s Xpressway and Corpus Hermeticum imprints. And he was there long before you were. His guitar formulations feel like the ultimate extension of 1960s free/freak modes into prole art garage rock while his criticism – somewhere between the scabrous unholier-than-thou intellectual ferocity of Roland Woodbe and the hermetic formulations of Giordano Bruno – remains some of the most insightful and far-reaching of the post-Noise era. To celebrate the release of the landmark compilation, Time To Go – The Southern Psychedelic Moment: 1981-86, Russell has penned a special VT column focussing on the genesis of the NZ underground.

TIME TO GO – THE SOUTHERN PSYCHEDELIC MOMENT: 1981-86

March 2012 sees the release of this compilation on Flying Nun. In a way, I’ve been working on it for my whole adult life. Even by the most conservative calculation, I’ve been working at it for six years, since I first pitched the concept to Roger Shepherd before he bought the label back from Warners. He came over for a chat one day when he was looking at putting together the Flying Nun ‘box set’ of CDs that he did in 2006 for that company, and I suggested he pitch my idea to them. That went nowhere, but as soon as he had bought the company back, a couple of years ago, he said ‘now we have to do that compilation of yours’.

I find myself in a funny position here. Compiling ‘my back pages’ thusly is, in quite a personally meaningful way, a return to my youth: not just because of the vintage of the tracks. Before I’d even written a line of rock journalism, and years before I recorded a second of my own stuff, I knew I could ferret out interesting music and persuade other people of its value – however improbable. And so I used to spend a lot of time doing just that, at a time when obscure music was much harder to find in New Zealand than it is now. Professionally, I also pride myself on my ability to compile music in a meaningful way, one that adds to the experience of listening. But I think this is the first compilation I’ve ever done that doesn’t contain any of my own output. I’m ‘in’ this one solely as a fan, rather like my 21-year old self in 1981.

I go on at length in the liner notes about the background to this music in NZ history. So I won’t bother now. But I have to say that at that time it was something of a radical leap to argue that popular music from this country could be anything other than a second-rate imitation of other people’s music. And I guess that despite having taken a big interest in NZ music over the preceding couple of years, it was not until after Flying Nun got going that I actually really got converted to the new cultural reality.

Appropriately enough that happened in November 1981 as I was finishing up my third-year exams at Otago University in Dunedin. I’d heard the Clean’s first single often enough, and quite liked it. And I’d seen them in April of that year and been quite perplexed by them. At that point their sound was still like standing next to a 747 on the ground as the engines warmed up. They were a lot more like the Gordons (who I’d seen the previous summer in Nelson, the holiday shithole I’d grown up in) than you can readily imagine. The Gordons gig was one where you felt the sound of the band so physically that crossing the dance floor was like wading through hot treacle full of bathing manatees.

My 1981 student association ID card. I recall was really pleased I looked so much like Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turk who tried to assassinate John Paul II. I recall thinking at the time he deserved another shot.

But in November 1981 I persuaded my flatmate to take a night off and go to the other end of town to this tiny bar in the Empire Tavern where bands were starting to play. We went to see the Clean. Of all the profound ways in which my life had changed in that epochal year (and since the preceding Christmas I’d become an enemy of the state, among other things), seeing the Clean was the biggest. I can still recall the certainty with which I knew then that they were at that moment the best fucking band in the world. I still don’t understand how I knew it, and in many ways I’ve spent a significant portion of the last three decades trying to disprove that hypothesis, but I haven’t done it yet. Maybe the Fall were better that year. But the fact that the last sentence contains ‘the Fall’, and starts with ‘maybe’, should alert informed readers to the enormity of what I was experiencing. It was like falling in love.

Skip forward to the end of the period under review in this compilation with me for a moment. I was in London, England. NME had released the allegedly ‘epochal’ C86 cassette. I checked out quite a few of the bands compiled there, as well as a bunch of others, and concluded that Britain had only two or three bands at the time which could stand up in the company of the best New Zealand had to offer. They were mainly feeble posers in leather trousers. So home I went, to get on with my life and try to do something to help my country be a little less of a boringly pleasant sheep and dairy farm than it had been for the preceding century. And the rest, dear readers, is ‘history’, at least as far as I’m concerned. A history, in my case, dominated by the Dead C. and related activities; which have, I immodestly believe, done a fair bit to achieve the goal outlined in the preceding sentence-but-one.

In London, at my 26^th birthday party in 1986, flying the friendly skies with Richard Ram of Wreck Small Speakers on Expensive Stereos. Richard had recently seen Spacemen 3 in a Rugby pub, but was so under-whelmed he didn’t mention it till about three years later. I think we went out and saw My Bloody Valentine after this, back when Kevin Shields still had a bowl-cut. They were utter shit, and I could never take them seriously after.

So to return to Time to Go (it’s a Clean lyric, by the way). For me, there are a few points to make. It’s not just a Flying Nun compilation. In some ways it was quite hard to determine what actually was a Flying Nun record, in that period. In some cases bands put money into manufacturing, as well as often covering recording costs. In that way, the Gordons’ album was actually released by the band, but later re-pressed by the label. Several of the tracks on this compilation were originally records distributed by the label, but not released by it. I could have thrown in more obscure things that were not on Flying Nun or distributed by them, but in the end, one way to limit the selection to a manageable level was to give preference to label releases. So the Puddle’s ‘Junk’ is in, and the And Band’s ‘Interstellar Gothic’ is out. Either one would have ticked the box marked ‘George Henderson’, a box that this compilation certainly had to tick. But I chose the one on Flying Nun.

It’s very definitely not a Dunedin compilation. If I had wanted to perpetuate lazy journalistic myths, I could have compiled the whole thing from Dunedin alone. But I’ve spent at least the last 25 years championing the peculiarly Christchurch strand of psychedelia which otherwise looked likely to escape wider notice altogether – so why would I want to stop now? In 1985 I reviewed the first Scorched Earth Policy EP in Garage (download the full run of these fanzines as PDFs from the Flying Nun site) and wrote a full page outlining the whole Victor Dimisich/Pin Group/Vacuum back-story to the record. I had to, because even then no one in New Zealand (let alone elsewhere) knew that these bands were as central (if not more central) to Flying Nun’s very existence than any number of ‘Dunedin sounds’.

This music was less about punk, than about what came before. Many of the key figures in that first wave of bands were 60s kids. John Halvorsen of the Gordons was actually active in teen beat groups in the mid-to-late 60s, in Ashburton, of all end-of the-world hell-holes. Look it up on the map, but that won’t tell you what provincial New Zealand was like back then. The sheer cultural deprivation of the town is unimaginable today, and yet they still have a disturbingly high teen suicide rate.

So in my opinion it’s the psychic discharge of pent-up frustration and inchoate rage that explains this music. The people making it were fed up with doing what was expected of them by a narrow-minded and conformity-mad society of people that presented as wowsers and drank like navvies. It also wasn’t about some posing vinyl-trouser-ed scene, as ‘new wave Auckland’ was around the same time. The thing that struck any remotely attentive observer was that these bands were hardly even aware anyone was watching. This music was so far from being ‘career oriented’ that it wasn’t even ‘audience oriented’. Listen to ‘It’s Cold Outside’ by the Victor Dimisich Band in a blindfold test and try to guess even what decade it was made in. Apart from some tincture of Television, it’s hard to guess between about 1968 and 1998. It’s that kind of ‘it came from the sky’ vibe that frankly defies categorisation. You can smell the reality. These people were very literate in rock music terms, they were literate in literary terms too, and they took drugs. It was what we did to rebel. Listen to ‘Russian Rug’. You don’t produce that kind of whacked-out blending of Pierre Henri with ? Mark and the Mysterians, without engaging in the desperate ‘datura-to-San Pedro’ sub-sub-culture which characterised the South Island of New Zealand at that time: and we invented home-bake heroin, don’t forget.

Throw in massive youth unemployment, impending economic collapse (by mid-1984 the government was weeks from bankruptcy, it was Greece with all the trimmings), and you have a memorable time to be alive – ‘and very heaven to be young’ as Wordsworth (or Steve Coogan) put it. So those were desperate times. And out of it came pop music that ‘advanced beyond the given’ (thanks Herr Lukacs) and aspired to make or say something more, something real. There was a feeling that things had to change. It was – truly -‘time to go’.

This project has been my attempt to pay homage to the times, to the people – many of whom have either passed on, or simply failed to thrive – and to the place. There’s a reason for the legend. This is it.

Bruce Russell
Lyttelton,
March 2012

Alex Bag and Patterson Beckwith
Team gallery 83 Grand Street
March 29th – April 28th 2012
Reception on Thursday March 29th at 6:00PM

Team presents a collaborative installation by New York-based artists Alex Bag and Patterson Beckwith, featuring their rarely shown public access show which ran between 1994 and 1997. The weekly cablecasts were twenty-nine-minute long and aired on Channel 34 at 2:30 a.m.on Wednesday nights. The bits I have seen of this work through EAI were spot-on brilliant, and greater access to the work should be considered a small triumph for (CA)TV as a creative medium.

Each episode of Cash from Chaos opens with Bag and Beckwith destroying the previous week’s program, housed temporarily on the predigital age’s VHS tape. The artists burned, melted, and smashed tapes — once even taking a cassette to a shooting range for use in target practice. This destructive act epitomizes the artists’ fast-paced, in-the-moment approach to the shows, which demanded that they provide twenty-nine minutes worth of new material each week. This time constraint forced them to act on quick impulses in developing each episode’s idea, rarely allowing the luxury of thorough consideration. The work is volatile and highly personal, and showcases the raw, unfiltered conceptual creativity of the two artists.

The show also acts as a document of a specific New York City, one both individual and totally foreign to the two artists. Some episodes follow them meeting with artists and friends or visiting galleries, giving the viewer a sense of Bag and Beckwith’s milieu. In others, they become tourists in their own city, using television as an excuse and enabler for activities they either would or could not otherwise take part in, such as a helicopter ride over Manhattan or a visit to a sheep farm. Their roles as “television producers” allowed them myriad opportunities, and always free-of-charge. As Bag explained in a 1996 interview, “people take you very seriously when you tell them that they or their business can be on TV.”

Cash from Chaos and Unicorns & Rainbows turn TV against itself, punk-rock satires of the most pervasive form of mass media. The artists, however, recognize their own complicity in both its consumption and production. In one segment, titled Cable Theft Today, Beckwith explains in detail how to steal cable, conceding the omnipresence and even necessity of television in contemporary American culture, while at the same time subverting the corporations and establishments responsible for it. At another point in the show, the two artists visit a fortune-teller, who gives a tarot reading of the show’s future: “I can feel that you guys are into questioning authority,” the psychic deftly intuits.

The total running length of the project, some 60 hours in duration, was edited down by Bag and Beckwith to  twelve hours, stored on hour long DVDs fed onto twelve dedicated monitors. These Sony cubes are arranged somewhat haphazardly in a kitschy communal environment cobbled together from materials bought at various home decoration centers. Visitors can lounge on bean-bag chairs, swing from ceiling-mounted hammocks, or recline on shag carpeting, while choosing which monitor to watch – a white-cube approximation of channel surfing stoned in yr parents basement in the suburbs. Or hanging out in yr friends’ apartment during yr early 20s.

bitforms gallery presents an exhibition on video artist Beryl Korot. Featuring her landmark video installation “Text and Commentary” (1977), the show also includes two of Korot’s more recent investigations into the medium,“Florence” (2008) and “Yellow Water Taxi” (2003).

Recognized since the early 1970s as a pioneer of video art and of multiple channel work in particular, Beryl Korot explores the physical mark of human history and the programmatic structures of data that convey it. The rhythmic impulse in her compositions embraces text, weaving, and video.

“The thing that attracted me to the loom was its sophistication as a programming tool— it programs patterns through the placement of threads, in a numerical order that determines pattern possibilities,” said Korot to Grace Glueck in a 1977 New York Times article. “It’s like the first computer on earth.”

An active player in New York’s then emergent video art scene, Korot had, by 1977, been featured in exhibitions at The Kitchen, the Leo Castelli Gallery, Everson Museum of Art, the Whitney Biennale, Documenta 6, and several important traveling shows: Circuit Invitational, Radical Software, and ICI’s Video Art USA in the Sao Paulo Biennial. Korot’s first multiple-channel works, “Text and Commentary” and “Dachau 1974”, are groundbreaking efforts that moved the video medium beyond the television’s frame and into a vocabulary of installation, both of which were featured at the Whitney Museum of Art in 1980.

When “Text and Commentary” debuted in 1977 at the Leo Castelli Gallery, Jeff Perrone of Artforum described the installation’s systematic approach: “Process was reduced to a small set of actions repeated in space (repeated diamond designs in each hanging, and on each screen) and time (repeated in the work in the loom and repeated on the tape). The patterns in drawing, in making, in editing, in form and design—all converged little by little, after close scrutiny, creating a unified work which reflected a larger reach of human time¬— from primitive loom to modern video”.

The installation is illuminated by two scores, also on view in the exhibition. Instructions for Korot’s five-channel weavings are marked on graph paper in pencil. A pictographic notation indicates the rhythm and pacing of her video editing, which was recorded and edited on ½” reel to reel tape.

Running 33 minutes in length, “Text and Commentary” speaks to an age of endurance viewership, as with many artist’s videos of the 1970s. A reaction against television in its radical approach to time and its challenge of linear narrative, this piece also expands the video frame into a multiple-channel viewpoint. In particular, by banding a horizontal strip of video screens together, the visual structure also references celluloid film (which was typically cut by women who were film editors, another reference to handiwork such as weaving).

“Florence”, a more recent single-channel video by Korot, is organized by a black and white grid comprised of waterfalls, boiling water and snowstorms. Taking the form of a soliloquy or poem, the ten-minute piece condenses various texts by Florence Nightingale and unfolds linearly as a meditation on the transcendence of fear– not in a momentary instinctual way, but over a sustained period of time. It is floating poetry, using other people’s words, with each word moving vertically down the screen with its own position, transparency and speed.

“Yellow Water Taxi” presents the viewer with a colorful scene of movement, bound by a woven grid underlying its electronic image. Korot remarks in a recent catalog about the work: “A morning walk to the Esplanade, near where the Towers had been– just to watch and record water taxis ferrying people between New Jersey and New York City– then riding across a piece of handmade canvas scanned into the computer.”

Jud Yalkut is  easily one of my  favorite video pioneers. In conjunction with many other events around NYC celebrating John Cage’s centennial, Anthology will screen Yalkut’s 1973 video 26’1.1499” FOR A STRING PLAYER; a recorded video manipulation of Cage’s composition of the same title.  Performed in 1973, the video features Charlotte Moorman and Nam June Paik. An ultra-rare surprise video will also be screened afterwards, “featuring Cage and a very special partner,”  according to the Anthology website.

Beloved Brits Throwing Up are coming back to the States to play some shows. In NYC, it is a rare treat to see the London-based three piece rip it up live, but I can say that I was blown away after seeing them play at Bruar Falls with Blood Orange a year ago. Tantrums, riffs, hooks, looks, funny banter, you name it. They have a good dynamic– which translates as pure fun, not giving a fuck about breaking rules. Exactly how it should be. I’m 300% stoked.

PS: When I play this song out, sometimes I follow up with this Scrawl song. Make fun all y’like. Shit rulz. And Marcy Mays is a goddess.

Transverse, the exclusive collaboration project between Factory Floor’s Nik Void and Chris and Cosey will be out on Mute Records March 27, 2012.

Earlier post on Transverse here.
Transverse is an experimental collaboration between Chris Carter, Cosey Fanni Tutti (TG) and Nik Void (Factory Floor) created especially for the Mute festival at the Roundhouse in 2011. Late last week, Mute Records announced they will release the recordings of the project this March.

The tracks were prepared in the studio and then performed and recorded live in front of an audience. Outside of the trio, these recordings were unheard prior to the festival and the popularity of the performance left many being turned away at the door.

Said The Quietus of the performance: “…a warm embrace, creating a deep connection… Carter at the back manipulates the electronics while on either flank, Void scratches noise with bowed guitar and Tutti plays while singing vocals that she mangles and distorts… there is no nihilism in this noise, nothing but a deep and wonderful sense of love.”

Most Lynch fans already know that he began his career as a painter, and has always been equally committed as a visual artist, despite his iconic status as a  filmmaker. Like many others that began with painting (Tony Oursler is the best example), Lynch began to make short films in an attempt to animate is work– or make his paintings move. An all-around master of composition, Lynch has consistently imbued various forms of visual media into his work throughout his career (from paintings, sculpture, works on paper to  photography). An exhibition of these facets of his creative practice (if articulated properly) should provide insight to the conceptual underpinning for his oeuvre. As well as perspectives regarding the future direction his creativity will head.

Fisherman's Dream with Steam Iron (aka: David Lynch is the original Seapunk)

According to the exhibition’s press release, his recent works “combine primitively drawn figures and text with thick textured areas of paint and, often, inserted lit colored light bulbs.  Narrative subjects exhibit Lynch’s trademark whimsy, wit and humor along with his recognizable penchant for the ambiguous, yet precisely depicted, frozen moment that unveils an instinctual,
often violent or tragic human emotion, almost verging on the absurd.

Lynch’s abstract sculpture, also incorporating lit light bulbs, is simultaneously anthropomorphic, surreal and humorous. More than anything, Lynch’s art is, in all its manifestations, a vessel for his own quirky but unified and consistent vision. A formal line and shape, surrealist and biomorphic in nature, unites the narrative watercolors and paintings with the more abstract photographs, “Distorted Nudes,” the sculpture on display, and the 42-second film also being shown in this exhibition. Lynch’s world view and his ability to capture a mysterious undercurrent in the American psyche illuminates his art across all media.”

Tilton Gallery
8 East 76 Street
New York, NY 10021
P:212.737.2221

Celebrated Japanese avant-garde filmmaker, Hiroshi Teshigahara’s 1964 film Woman in the Dunes is available in it’s entirety on youtube. With its psycho-sexual undercurrent from the beginning, the film presents a seamless unity between reality and metaphor in terms of  its subject, style, and concept.  Suna no Onna‘s literal translation– “Sand Lady” registers much more as chiller flick than the saccharinized, elevated translation– Woman in the Dunes.  A gorgeously styled psychological thriller impregnated with metaphor and visual dynamism, it is also deeply concerned with the modernist (dare I pin it contemporary?)  theme of both private and interpersonal terrors associated with domestic partnership leading to psychological malaise and hysteria. (Think-Possession, The Shining, Rosemary’s Baby, A Woman Under the Influence–tons) There’s a rich tradition of this theme–cross pollinating amongst genres, and registering as different gradients on various spectra. I digress.

The basic plot of the film: An amateur traveling Etymologist voyages to a remote desert to study a rare specimen of beetle and misses his bus back to Tokyo. He is directed to a hut at the bottom of a sand dune, where a young widow feeds him, as sand leaks down from the roof like rain. The woman must shovel the sand daily, or she and her hut will be swallowed by the sand’s relentless assault.  When the visitor wakes the following day,  his ladder to freedom has been removed, and he is henceforth stranded with the widow, and condemned to endless sand shoveling for survival. Indeed, the sand is a metaphor for the circumstantial contingencies in life from the get-go, functioning as a character in it’s own right. It Provides a haptic quality within the visual structure of the film, a centrifugal force within the narrative of the film; while functioning to fuse reality and metaphor together– a large part of the film’s success in rendering its meta narratives so psychologically palpable. An intense reading of the film’s symbology requires a lot of unpacking, and is beyond the scope of this post–but see for yourself.

Moving Image, Contemporary Video Art Fair 3/8-3/11
Thursday– Saturday, 3/8–3/10, (11–8 PM)
Sunday, 3/11, (11-4 PM).
Opening: Thursday, March 8, 6–8 PM.

Located in the Waterfront Tunnel event space between 27^th and 28^th Streets with an entrance on 11^th Avenue in Chelsea. 

In its second year, Moving Image presents a selection of international commercial galleries and non-profit institutions showing  single-channel videos, single-channel projections, video sculptures, and other larger video installations.

In addition to the selection of works for the fair, there are several events planned throughout the weekend:

Friday, March 9, 2012
5:00-6:30 pm
Hidden Treasure: Special Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) Presentation on Video Preservation

EAI Executive Director Lori Zippay will discuss EAI’s pioneering video preservation program, exploring how this initiative has led to the “rediscovery” of significant but virtually unknown early works by artists. Anthony Ramos’s rarely seen, politically charged performance videos of the early 1970s will be featured (with other seminal works) as examples of how preservation can result not only in technical restoration, but also in the restoration and illumination of forgotten histories.

Saturday, March 10, 2012
12:00 -1:30 pm
Panel Discussion : Moving Image Technology of Tomorrow
Moderated by Bridgette Howard (Ogilvy Digital Lab, New York)
Panelists include Jacob Gaboury (staff writer Rhizome.org and Doctoral Candidate, Media, Culture and Communication, New York University); Steven Sacks (owner of bitforms gallery, New York); and Anne Spalter (artist and digital art collector, Providence, RI).

2:00 – 3:30 pm
Moving Image Spotlight Panel : What Do You Get When You Buy Video Art?
Moderated by Rebecca Cleman (Distribution Director, Electronic Arts Intermix, New York)
Panelists include Lisa Dorin (Associate Curator at The Art Institute of Chicago); Jefferson Godard (video collector, Chicago); Berta Sichel (Curator-at-large at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, independent curator and art writer, Madrid/Berlin); and Fabienne Stephan (Curator, Salon 94, New York)

Featuring:
AES+F / Anna Schwartz Gallery (Melbourne / Sydney, Australia)
Sama Alshaibi / Lawrie Shabibi (Dubai, UAE)
Josh Azzarella / DCKT Contemporary (New York, NY)
Janet Biggs / Winkleman Gallery (New York, NY)
Eelco Brand / [DAM] Berlin | Cologne (Berlin, Germany)
Josef Dabernig / Andreas Huber (Vienna, Austria)
Song Dong & Yin Xiuzhen / Chambers Fine Art (New York, NY)
VALIE EXPORT / Charim Gallery (Vienna, Austria)
Jesse Fleming / The Company (Los Angeles, CA)
Alexa Gerrity / The Company (Los Angeles, CA)
Kate Gilmore / Braverman Gallery (Tel Aviv, Israel)
Christopher K. Ho / Winkleman Gallery (New York, NY)
Susanne Hofer / Christinger De Mayo (Zurich, Switzerland)
Ken Jacobs / Electronic Arts Intermix (New York, NY)
Yael Kanarek / bitforms gallery (New York, NY)
Kelly Kleinschrodt / Carter & Citizen (Los Angeles, CA)
Julia Kul / Postmasters (New York, NY)
Mary Lucier / Lennon, Weinberg (New York, NY)
Jesse McLean / Interstate Projects (Brooklyn, NY)
Jaakko Pallasvuo / Future Gallery (Berlin, Germany)
Zhang Peili / Saamlung (Hong Kong)
Jenny Perlin / Galerie M+R Fricke (Berlin, Germany)
Daniel Phillips / DODGEgallery (New York, NY)
Alex Prager / Yancey Richardson Gallery (New York, NY)
Hunter Reynolds / P.P.O.W Gallery (New York, NY)
Miguel Angel Rojas / Sicardi Gallery (Houston, TX)
Mariateresa Sartori / Galleria Michela Rizzo (Venice, Italy)
Jaan Toomik / Temnikova and Kasela Gallery (Tallinn, Estonia)
Stefanos Tsivopoulos / prometeogallery di Ida Pisani (Milan, Italy)
Martha Wilson / P.P.O.W Gallery (New York, NY)
Marina Zurkow / bitforms gallery (New York, NY)

Transport over to Spectacle Theater in the Williamsburg sector of Brooklyn on March 10th for a special midnight screening of Sci-Fi video shorts presented by Straighttovideo.org. In this not-to-be missed assemblage of lo-fi/sci-fi video art, music videos, and cable access oddities, we will be presenting shorts from as far back as the 70s to some made as recently as last week–including new works created specifically for this program. Help fight the forces of defeat in this physical universe by exploring the infinite wealth of time and space in the realm of the human MIND. Teleporters welcome.

Vids by:
Erica Magrey
Jennifer Juniper Stratford
Multinauts
Steve Nice
Luke Wyatt
Aurora Halal and Jason Letkiewicz
Sabrina Ratté
Doin it Wrong
Milky Sway
Jacqueline Castel
Andrew Deutch
Nudge Squidfish
Roboshithead
Wendy Vainity
…and more

Spectacle is a collective of film collectors, filmmakers, editors, musicians, performers and misfits. 124 S. 3rd St. Brooklyn, NY

Email straighttovideo@gmail.com for more info.

There hasn’t been much noise about this, although, to be fair, @MoMAFilm did tweet about the Brakhage and Godard screenings back in November. To be even more fair, this is a gargantuan exhibition — the Art Tattler has a fairly thorough overview — and not every work’s going to get its own press release. But now you know.

Night Music (1986)

Addition:

You may recall a previous alertin mid-December regarding what amounts to a fairly extensive retrospective of films by Stan Brakhage going on at MoMA in New York. There wasn’t much noise being made about it at the time, and now, several weeks on, there still isn’t, so here’s a second alert. The screenings are taking place daily at 3pm in the Time Warner Screening Room on the 2nd floor of the Museum’s Lewis B and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building, with the program changing once a week on Wednesdays. The schedule through March 5:

February 1-6:
Confession. 1986.  16mm. 18 fps.  Color. 24 min
Night Music. 1986. 16mm. Color. 30 sec.
Loud Visual Noises. 1987. 16mm. 24 fps. Color. Music compilation by Joel Haertling. 3 ½ min
Kindering. 1987. 16mm  24fps. Color.  Music by Architects Office. 3 min
Rage Net. 1988. 16mm. Color. 30 sec.
Babylon Series.  (1-3). 1989. 16mm. 18 fps. Color. Total: 12 min.
The Dante Quartet. 1987. 35mm. 18 fps. Color. 8 min
Garden of Earthly Delights. 1981. 18fps. Color. 3 min.

February  8-13:
Matins.  1988. 16mm 18fps. Color. 2 ½ min
I… Dreaming. 1988. 16mm. 24 fps. Color. Music by Joel Haertling (and Stephen Foster).  7 ½  min
Marilyn’s Window. 1988. 16mm. 18fps. Color. 8 min
City Streaming.  1989. 16mm. 18fps. Color. 25 min
The Thatch of Night. 1989. 16mm. 18 fps. 6 min
Visions in Meditation. 1989. 16mm. 18fps. 18 min.

February  15-20: 
Arabic Numeral Series 1-8. 1981. 16mm. 18 frames per second (fps). Total running time: 67 min

February 22-27:
Arabic Numeral Series 9-12. 1981. 16mm. 18 fps. Total running time: 77 min

February 29- March 5:
Arabic Numeral Series 13-19. 1981/1982.  16mm.  18fps.  Total running time: 52 min

Update, 2/26:

March 7-12: Roman Numeral Series III-IX. 1980/81. 16mm. 18 fps. Color. Total running time: 32 min. / Unconscious London Strata. 1981. 16mm.  18 fps. Color.  23 ½  min.

March 14-19:  Faustfilm: An Opera. 1987. Music by Rick Corrigan. 16mm. 24 fps. Color. 43 ½ min.

March 21-26:  Faust’s Other: An Idyll. 1988. Sound and Music by Joel Haertling. 16mm. 24 fps. Color. 44 ½ min.

March 28-April 2: Faust 3: Candida Albacore. 1988. Music by Doll Parts; Sound by Rick Corrigan. 16mm.  24 fps. Color.  27 mins / Faust 4. 1989. Music by Rick Corrigan. 16mm. 24 fps. Color. 37 min.

The Clean begin their first American tour in over two years on May 30th at The Echo in LA and continue eastward, finishing up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on June 8th. Times New Viking will be along for approximately 71% of the dates.  I heard the infoz on the phone a few weeks ago– and successfully kept my big mouth shut until the first press release was released earlier today here and then here.

“Tally Fuckin Ho” says Adam

May 30th Los Angeles, CA – The Echo
June 2nd Austin, TX – Chaos in Tejas
June 4th  Allston, MA – Brighton Music Hall *
June 5th  New York, NY – Le Poisson Rouge *
June 6th  Philadelphia, PA – Johnny Brenda’s *
June 7th  Washington, DC – Rock and Rol Hotel *
June 8th  Chapel Hill, NC – Local 506 *

* w/ Times New Viking

STV: When did you hear Rocket to Nowhere?
Ravage: I heard it in 1978. Mike [Rep] gave me a copy.
STV: Did you know Mike well at that point? Or just around in the same scene?
Ravage: Yes, I knew him. He’s always been around.
STV: Ever beat him at pool?
Ravage: I need to make something clear– I paid for the pressing Of Homework, and asked Mike if I could pretend it was on a label and he just said Ok, and that was it. I even redrew the label. The Sin- Sing release it’s the first we are making any money off of homework. Mike had nothing to do with it. I just redrew the new age logo.
Rock: Yet he lists it as one of his releases.
STV: Funny how time and lack of clarification can re-historicize a narrative sometimes– but it totally makes sense. Had you wanted him to release it initially?
Ravage: No–I just thought it would be funny to make it look like there was a label.  After that, he started putting out other new age records.
STV: A forged label–clever.
Rock: I think “Accept It” was first. His band’s. [True Believers] and hw was #2
Mike Rep has a listing somewhere on the web for New Age releases.

STV: Earlier today, I was sitting around my apartment looking at The Offense, which reviews The Ramones and Screaming Urge at The Columbus Agora in 1981. It mentions “Myke Rock’s stage antics were well received by the crowd” Can you describe this stage persona? Were you channeling someone in particular? What was the audience’s response?
Rock: First, the Homework video nicely illustrates my movements, “antics”. I’m not sure I’d know how to channel someone if I ever had to. I just moved to how the music moved me. It was an internal urge and nothing to do with anyone or anything outside of me, the band and the music. I think about half the crowd at the Ramones show were into us and if memory serves, the rest were politely waiting for the main course. Never the less, it was a great experience and to meet the Ramones back stage. There was a big celebration in the Ramones dressing room for Johnny’s B-day (don’t know if it was actually the date of his birth, but they sure celebrated). They trashed their dressing room and asked us if they could switch with us. We said “sure, you’re the RAMONES!!”. Then we saw the total confetti, cake and unidentifiable debris, mess left behind! I might have had some left over cake.

Ravage: You’ll notice in the videos that most of the jumping around was done by Myke rock, I was unable to, due to a heart condition–it goes out of sink all the time, so I had to watch myself. Myke has gone through ceiling and more than a couple of walls, I think it’ was as fun for me to watch as the audience. In the videos from 1979 you’ll see me looking around a lot to see where Myke is at, I kinda always strolled around, which I still do. When we played live, in those days Rock was a lot wilder on stage than in the videos. Rock’s telling of us and the Ramones is right on track, but I was very nervous because right to my right, out of sight of the crowd Johnny Ramone was watching the whole thing, so I was thinking “oh shit” he’s checking out my guitar playing.

STV: You started the  Nowhere Fest in 78– the show that brought the first four Columbus punk bands together.  Which everyone agrees was a success. So what happened next–how did the scene solidify? Did it take time to catch on, or was it an immediate response? Once venues saw that you could draw a crowd, how gradual did their interest accrue? How did you see the Columbus punk scene changing after that first Nowhere 78 show?

Rock: The Nowhere ’78 I’ll leave to Ravage as I wasn’t there.

Ravage: I put Screaming Urge together in May of 1978 with some members coming and going for just 2 or 3 rehearsals, we didn’t make our debut until November 3rd, 1978 after I rented a hall with a stage and got a hold of the other 3 bands, meaning there was no place to play at all. I do believe it is because of nowhere that clubs began letting punk in, because of that show drawing a huge crowd, it made the papers and clubs took notice, after that things really began to change, there were at least 5 or 6 clubs we could count on to play locally, and a lot more bands popped up.

Nowhere 80 flier- "A secret society poster" bottom left, indicating that it was possibly created by Arlus Stitch (Courtesy of Blake Davis)

Nowhere 80 Poster (Courtesy of L.J. Altvater)

Nowhere 80 Poster (Courtesy of L.J. Altvater)

Photo taken during Nowhere, 1981--Courtesy of Avery Behrouz-Tazwell Cassell "Olena, Jeffrey and Jerry"

(Courtesy of LJ Altvater)

STV: How much work went into all of this planning, and how did you even find out about bands at the time that were coming from other cities? I think the H2D website mentions something about Mr. Unique and Leisure Suits– from Detroit. Did Screaming Urge befriend bands in other cities mainly through touring? Or was it through syndication?
Ravage: We were booked on the same bill at a club in Detroit with Mr. Unique and the Leisure Suits, we loved them and they loved us, so we knew we wanted them in Columbus, for Columbus to enjoy, and Myke was the one who took care of this one, renting out the Garden, getting a hold of the suits, and doing a lot of the promo. There were a lot of bands that we became fast friends with, but over the years most of the names escape me, Superman’s Girlfriend come to mind, they were from Texas.

STV: What was yr relationship with Cleveland bands and that whole scene like? How did you perceive them and vice-versa?
Ravage: Our favorite band from up around the Cleveland/Akron area I’m pretty sure I’d say is The Human Switchboard, but I also enjoyed playing shows with the Lepers, The Adults, we still have a nice relationship with the Human Switchboard as you can see thay are in our “Likes” on our facebook page. We thought of Cleveland as the bigtime!

Pere Ubu and Screaming Urge Poster, 1980-1981. (Courtesy of Marco Capalino)

Human Switchboard Poster 1980-1981. (Courtesy of Marco Capalino)

STV:Screaming Urge were signed to Stiff Records in 1980–H2D said that the deal was botched by yr manager at the time–but you continued to tour. Was there interest in a UK tour at some point? Did you continue to tour to try and find a record deal?
Rock: I remember speaking to several management types in the UK, but nothing really materialized. I don’t remember ever speaking with Ravage and Manic about how we must tour to find a record deal. Sure, it would have been nice, maybe, but that never was something to define the band. We toured, basically, because we generally got the respect we felt we deserved in places other than Columbus.
Ravage: The deal with stiff was botched by our “so-called” manager, Steve Garner, they wanted to release our first album, as it was, by me sending them the album, I have saved several letters from Stiff, they gave up after Steves relentlessly telling them he “owned” the songs and wanted more money than they were willing to give, I think they ended up telling him Fuck You. We kept touring because we loved to play, still do, if you could get us a booking in NYC we are there!
STV: It seems that graffiti was ubiquitous to the punk scene in those days. It shows up in many stories and photos from the scene during this period. Was it something that was appropriated from the whole Graffiti scene in New York?
Ravage: I have to give full credit to Zero Watts of the Blades, the very 1st. punk band in Columbus, he started it and all the bands copied him, I think we were all unaware of the NYC graffiti at the time, for us it was a way of getting the name out in public, so then when you put a flyer up, people would go, oh, I’ve heard of them.

Zero Watt Graffiti, (Courtesy of Blake Davis)

Arlus Stitch, ca. 1980 with Zero spray paint (Courtesy of Blake Davis)

Zero Watts on cover of Rave Zine #1, (Courtesy of Tony Tone)

Screaming Urge in Albany New York, 1983. Michael Ravage, L.J. Altvater (replacing Dave Manic on drums), and Myke Rock. (Courtesy of LJ Altvater)

Cover of the first issue of the Ohio-based, internationally distributed zine "The Offense" (Courtesy of LJ Altvater)

Twisted Shouts Poster (Courtesy of Susan Kendzulak)

Schoolkids Records 1985 Listeners Poll: Cover art by the lovely and talented Bruce Siple. 1) Nick Cave: Firstborn is Dead 2) Meat Puppets: Up on the Sun 3) REM: Fables of the Reconstruction 4) Tom Waits: Rain Dogs 5) The Replacements: Tim Bubbling under: The Fall, J&M Chain, Butthole Surfers, Husker Du, Prefab Sprout, Minutemen, Robyn Hitchcock, Lloyd Cole, Pogues and more. Top shows: Butthole Surfers: Staches Sonic Youth: Staches Minutemen: Staches Red Hot Chili Peppers: Newport 10.000 Maniacs: Staches (Courtesy of Gerald Moss)

Hyped2Death

New Age Discography via Collector Scum

Other Paper Interview

*The Vertical Slit LP was indeed released in 1977, most likely in Columbus- and most likely pressed at Musicol. An insert for one of his records mentions his arrival to Columbus in 1976. Also, Rep’s notes included in “Blind Boy in the Backseat” mentions that “I first met Ron House on stage.  It was 1978, the day Keith Moon died.”   7.Sept.78 -Rep also saw them a week prior clear the room at Stache’s.  ’78/’80 are the dates credited to the music on that release.  Since Nowhere 78 happened  nearly in ’79 (November of 78) maybe the bands hadn’t yet come into contact with one and other? Twisted Shouts and Vertical Slit were most likely around in 78, but facts surrounding this moment seem to be murky in a lot of ppl’s memories.

*Special thanks to JAMES E  for assistance and fact checking*

Screaming Urge is recording a new album featuring never recorded Urge material and new songs. They  are open to discussing this project and other potential vinyl reissues via email, and they expect their new official website to be launched soon.

The Policy in their practice room, 1984. Original video filmed and edited by Campbell McLay and Ritchie Venus for the Onset-Offset video compilatiion ‘Get Up and Go’. The song is from their first EP ‘Dust to Dust’.

Christchurch alt-rockers tear through a Soft Boys cover in their practice-room, 1984. Filmed by Lawrence K on super-8, who falls over at 1:57. From Lawrence and Lisa Lens’ ‘Frantic’ (1984).

Kiwi garage-punk mavericks the McGoohans perform ‘Psychedelic Texas’ in the back yard of a well-known Armagh St flat in Christchurch New Zealand. Lineup was me on guitar/vocals, Ian Blenkinsop on guitar, Susan Heney on bass and her sister Mary guesting on drums. Suitably psychedelic video shot and edited by Ritchie Venus and Campbell McLay. Go on, take the brown acid. I DARE ya to…

1977-vintage video for the first-ever Kiwi punk rock single (released early 1978). Glammy Auckland art-punks gleefully alarming society with their wild grimaces, bin-liner clothes, New York Dolls guitar riffs and a drawn-on Hitler moustache.

Someone recently recommended I revisit Jem Cohen’s documentary on FugaziInstrument. Released by Dischord Records on VHS in 1999, the film documents the band, its followers and also traces Cohen’s personal relationship with Ian MacKaye back to the 1970s DC, where the two met in high school. Shot between 1987 through 1998 on super 8, 16mm and video; the film is composed mainly of live concert footage, interviews with the band members, practices, tours and Fugazi’s studio sessions for the recording of their 1995 album, Red Medicine. The film also includes portraits of fans as well as interviews with them at various Fugazi shows around the United States throughout those years.

When asked what the goal was in making Instrument, Cohen responded:

I did feel that there were a lot of people that either didn’t have access to the band or had something of a misconception of what they were like. I wanted to address those issues to some degree, but what I really wanted to do was just capture music-making and try to make something that felt, visually, like music, and something where the music was inextricably tied in with the moving pictures.

Instrument’s Official Press Release:
“A collaboration between filmmaker Jem Cohen and the Washington DC band, the project covers the ten-year period from the band’s inception in 1987. Far from a traditional documentary, the project is a musical document: a portrait of musicians at work. Says Cohen: “With no desire on my part or the band’s to create a factual career survey or any kind of promotional vehicle, the project presented an opportunity to cut things loose. Mixing sync-sound 16mm, Super-8, video, and a wide range of archival formats, the piece includes concert footage, studio sessions, practice, touring, interviews and portraits of audience members from around the country. Piecing it together over the course of about 5 years, I thought of bringing “dub” to documentary — of a project where unadulterated real-time performances, abstract, rough-hewn Super 8 collages and archival artifacts would collide and conjoin in a way that honestly represented musical experience. The project was edited with band members and extensively uses soundtrack elements provided by Fugazi specifically for the film.”

Ink 19 Interview with Jem Cohen
Austin Chronicle Review and Interview
Complete list of Jem Cohen’s films

In true democratic spirit of cable access TV and DIY ethics so associated with the revolutionary NYC show TV Party, some excellent person has shared the recent documentary of the show on Youtube. Much has been written on the now iconic show, so we’ll leave that at bay for now–but check this well-executed documentary out!

I can recall the days of having to buy these on bootleg from Kim’s, or jump through hoops to watch them at Fales– so enjoy the convenience of being able to see them online for free. (At least for the time being…)

Now, someone needs to post some episodes of the TV Party’s LA counterpart, Peter Ivers’ New Wave Theater.

Useful:
UN-TV
Out of the Vast Wasteland
The Poor Soul of Television
TV Party

There are a lot of paths the narrative in this book could potentially go. Comprised of 52 prose poems, each a mini elegy for Kurt Cobain, the book will most likely be an explaination/apology to a friend who’s demise was largely caused by Erlandson’s long term bandmate combined with a general assessment of that whole scene. The longest Hole member, Erlandson no doubt bore witness to the various waves of psychological warfare Courtney would wage upon people in her life. The recent documentary ‘Hit So Hard: The Life and Near-Death Story of Drummer Patty Schemel,’ is another recent first-hand example of this.

Love and Erlandson, the two founding members of Hole had a contract stating that neither one could perform or release music under the Hole moniker without eachother’s participation. When Courtney announced her 2009 solo record would be released by “Hole” (but without Erlandson) things got ugly. Courtney’s management illegedly told Erlandson that the album would never be finished– and therefore there was no real threat. But it did– which definitely violated the “contract” in place. Even if Letters to Kurt doesn’t shed light on that particular situation, perhaps it will lend some insight to the general tone and current relationship between Courtney and Eric.

“Nearly two decades after the death of Kurt Cobain, a friend and fellow musician not only continues to mourn his suicide, but also rages against the culture that he holds responsible. These 52 ‘letters’ . . . combine the subject matter of the Byrds’ ‘So You Wanna Be a Rock and Roll Star’ with the fury of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl . . . A catharsis for the writer and perhaps for the reader as well.”
–Kirkus Reviews

“The reverberations of Kurt’s suicide last to this day, and have touched the lives of many. Dozens of people could have written their own version of this bracingly candid book; Eric Erlandson has written one, filled with rage and love, landmined with detail, that can stand for them all.”
–Michael Azerrad, author of Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana

“Eric was the spirit-boy in the Nirvana/Hole dynamic. Quiet, bemused, intelligent, and curiously intuitive to the power of hugging the devil, to say we will all be okay. The early 1990s were an explosive and defining period of creativity and excitement for the underground punk/post-punk scene, particularly with the manifest poetry of Kurt, who we were so proud to have as a light in our shared time and space. Eric expresses how enchanting Kurt was, how the whole scene was, with his thoughtful, radical adult/prose love. Bring on the future, darling.”
–Thurston Moore, musician

“Eric. He was always there: supportive, observing, in the thick of it. Hidden in plain sight . . . Without him, I can’t imagine Seattle or L.A. or a dozen other places. This book is beautiful, brutal, brief. Happy-sad eloquence. Boy Scouts playing with the complimentary cologne in the heart of the ghost town. Listen to the man. He knows.”
–Everett True, author of Nirvana: The Biography

LETTERS TO KURT IS AN ANGUISHED, ANGRY, AND TENDER meditation on the octane and ether of rock and roll and its many moons: sex, drugs, suicide, fame, and rage. It’s part Dream Songs, part Bukowski, Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, and the Clash. Rants, reflections, and gunshot fill these fifty-two prose poems. They are raw, funny, sad, and searching. This will make a beautiful book for anyone who loved Nirvana and Hole and the time and place when their music changed everything. Ultimately, it’s an elegy for Kurt and the “suicide idols” who tragically fail to find salvation in their amazing music.

ERIC ERLANDSON was born and raised in San Pedro, California. He is best known as cofounder, songwriter, and lead guitarist of the alternative rock band Hole, which he formed with Courtney Love. Their albums Pretty on the Inside, Live Through This, and Celebrity Skin achieved international recognition and success. Live Through This was named one of the top 100 albums of all time by Time magazine. Since the breakup of the band in 2002, Erlandson has been involved in a number of musical and literary projects. He has a BS in Economics from Loyola Marymount University and practices Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism. He currently lives in Los Angeles.

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