AUTONOMY AND DELIBERATION Official Trailer from Johann Rashid on Vimeo.

Can we talk about this video for a quick second? I mean what the FUCK is going on here, exactly?

A better version is here, but it has some lame intro which kills the delivery.

The Videofreex, “Videofreex member David Cort shooting Mayday Realtime,” 1971. Courtesy of Skip Blumberg.

Changing Media and Social Change from Portapak to Smartphone
November 1, 2012, 4–9pm

SVA Theatre
333 West 23rd Street
New York, NY
Free and open to the public

www.sva.edu

School of Visual Arts presents We’re All Videofreex: Changing Media & Social Change from Portapak to Smartphone, an evening symposium on the genealogy of portable video as seen through the viewfinder of the pioneering collective.

Between 1969 and 1978, the Videofreex produced hundreds of hours of real-time video documents shot with Sony’s Portapak, the then newly-invented portable video camera and recorder. The Videofreex were the first non-news organization to report hyper-local news using consumer technology and broadcast in a variety-format show. They captured the pivotal events and figures of 1970s counterculture. The Videofreex archives include interviews with Black Panther Chairman Fred Hampton and activist Abbie Hoffman as well as recordings of street demonstrations, rock music, erotica and performance art.

In considering the legacy of the Videofreex, the symposium investigates the media landscape today. Just as the Portapak (which hit the market in 1967) greatly influenced the Videofreex, the ubiquity of video cameras and broadcasting platforms like YouTube are again reshaping the way stories are told and distributed.

We’re All Videofreex: Changing Media & Social Change from Portapak to Smartphone is organized by art museum professional, educator and MFA Art Practice Department Chair David A. Ross and Paley Center for Media Curator of Television and Video Ron Simon. It is presented by the MFA Art Practice Department with support from the MFA Photography, Video and Related Media, BFA Fine Arts and the BFA Visual & Critical Studies Departments at SVA.

4pm – Part I: “Subject to Change”: Challenging Media
Moderated by Ron Simon
with former network executive Don West, radical editor Ray Mungo and Videofreex members Nancy Cain and Parry Teasdale

5:45pm – Part II: Re-Writing History
with Jon Nealon, Jenny Raskin and the Videofreex: Skip Blumberg, Nancy Cain, David Cort, Mary Curtis Ratcliff, Bart Friedman, Davidson Gigliotti, Parry Teasdale, Carol Vontobel and Ann Woodward

7:15pm – Part III: Real Time: Video After the Videofreex
Moderated by David A. Ross
with media historian Dierdre Boyle, documentarian Elizabeth Coffman, artist and Rhizome founder Mark Tribe and Videofreex members Skip Blumberg and Davidson Gigliotti

Earlier this week, Brooklyn Vegan posted a story on the melange of happenings in the world of Bob Pollard. Calling him a “multi-media hit-making machine” the post focused on his new solo record and tour dates, and also discussed his visual art practice, which mainly consists of collage. Bob’s zine, EAT Magazine illustrates these collage skills, and is now on it’s 9th issue, which features works from the art show The Big Hat & Toy Show: The Artwork of Robert Pollard & Tobin Sprout that opens tonight at Bushwick’s The Library is On Fire HQ, run by New York (and Ohio’s)  finest — Steve Five, Cory Race, and Travis Tonn.

By poking around on the website, I also saw that Rockathon is placing pre-orders for The Devil Went Home and Puked DVD, which comes out on 11/17. A video scrap book from Bob’s personal archives, The Devil Went Home and Puked collages together live and studio footage ranging from 1994-the present. Pretty excellent sounding, if you are a GB freak, excuse me– GBV motivated individual, like myself.

The Big Hat & Toy Show: The Artwork of Robert Pollard & Tobin Sprout

Buy EAT Magazine from The Factory of Raw Essentials (Rockathon Store) Here

Pre-Order The Devil Went Home and Puked

READ.IT.HERE.NOW.

Don’t be a butthole, listen to Bulletholes 4 Here

(Favorites in bold)

1. Feyodor- Get well soon
2. The Black Watch- The Stars in the Sky
3. Attics & Cellars- Sheep and Wolves
4. Vorn- A safe Pair of Hands
5. Rough Church- Goodbye to Greg
6. Sandra Bell- Caveman
7. Brother Love- Gravity is a State of Mind
8. One Man Bannister- You´d never know
9. Juan Los Bastardos- Peice you off
10. Dragstrip- Do Do Do
11. Enshrine- Side of my own
12. Starfire- Monster
13. AJ Sharma- Guess it doesnt matter anymore
14. New Hang Ups- The Girl in an Adult World
15. Malcontent- Meet me in Wellington (lie to me)– Liked the track, but this band invites so many jokes about Incontinence…
16. Black Wings- Black Ice– Cool buzzy bass
17. The Doubtful Sounds- Painting by Numbers
18. Gold Medal Famous- Gold! Medal! Famous! GOLD FUCKING MEDAL FUCKING FAMOUS!!
19. Azalia Snail- Helaine´s Journey
20. Cat & Sock- Exploring the Unknown

This October, several of the Bulletholes artists are heading out on tour to support the new comp, traversing NZ and CA in various formations at each show. Exploring the unknown (and the known)  over 11 dates will be Changing Same (aforementioned Matthew Bannister, ex-Sneaky Feelings), Sandra Bell, Come Down Kid, Nick Raven, Brother Love, Peter Gutteridge, Malcontent, A J Sharma, Dragstrip, Cat and Sock, Vorn, Gold Medal Famous, (Gold Fucking Medal Fucking Famous)  Black Wings and Grossburger.

Most of these songs are seeing their first release here – but the collection of great tracks on this album means that they won’t likely remain entirely Unknown for long.

[bandcamp album=3030190527 bgcol=FFFFFF linkcol=4285BB size=venti]

Stream to Bulletholes 4 Here

On the occasion of the forthcoming reissue of  Blue Clouds, here is a recently unearthed interview with TC+J’s Tony Doré, as interviewed by Rob Hatch-Miller. Primitive drum machines, early EMS Synth and lo-tech –but well thought out– four track production make this collection of unreleased (minimal psych?) gems one of my favorites this year.

How old were you when you first started writing your own songs? It seems like you already had a very strong songwriting voice, I imagine you must’ve written dozens of songs before you started playing with Caro and John. What kinds of music were you interested in when you were first starting out?

I started trying to play bass at the age of about 14, but soon moved to 6-string.  I started writing almost as soon as I could play a few chords.  I remember my first song was a teenage death song written with a friend (“then we crashed into a motorbike, for my gal that was the end….”).  After that the inspiration to write definitely came from the obvious sources growing up in the 60s - the Beatles and Dylan, who changed the whole concept of what it was admissible to write about.  I also began a lifelong interest in traditional music, both British and American.  The wider, more eclectic kind of folky music appealed hugely too, hence the debt to the Incredibles.  It’s great to see that kind of quirky stuff coming back again in the music of bands like Espers and singer-songwriters like Laura Veirs.

John and I were childhood friends.  He started out as a roadie to our high school band but picked up the bass when our bassist dropped out.  He was a brilliant influence and egged me on continually.

How did the three of you first meet, and why did you decide to start making music together? 

I met Caro in college in London, and round about 1970 the three of us moved into a flat together.  It was a bit of a hippy commune, although John and Caro eventually took day jobs and I had a PhD going.  Caro had a pretty voice and had sung in folk clubs in Bristol, her home town.  Meanwhile I was starting to seriously churn out songs.  So we played together, and enough people liked the music for us to be encouraged to try to record it.  We had no money, but John was a great technical improvisor -hence the bizarre low-tech way we built the tracks.
Your music was very unique, definitely different from the Incredible String Band who I know were an influence. It’s even quite different from groups like Trees that were coming from a somewhat traditional acoustic/folk angle but adding distorted electric guitar and other things like that. Were you listening to groups like that in the early 70s, when you were writing these songs? And why do your think your music sounds so different? Does the “homemade” aesthetic and amateur recording technique play a big role? 

I was definitely besotted by the Incredibles but I think its not just that we mimicked their sound, more that we liked their “anything goes” ethic.  We never heard Trees, believe it or not, and I’ve only recently discovered  their music.  Listening back to the album with the benefit of hindsight, I can definitely hear other influences.  Lennon on “No Greater Heroes”and Cat Stevens on “Meg II” for example.  I’ve come to realise that “Sargasso Sea” uses exactly the same  thematic  idea as Procul Harum’s “Salty Dog” but I’m pretty sure I hadn’t heard that at the time.  On the other hand, I’ve no idea where songs like “Morrison Heathcliff” or “Eclipse of the Moon” come from musically.  They were both straight descriptions of dreams, which were in turn probably seeded by whatever books I had been reading.

I’m absolutely sure the do-it-yourself attitude and primitive recording was responsible for the sound.  Just imagine having to re-record the mono backing track together with your overdub every time.  Only one chance to mix, and that’s in real time.  We couldn’t save copies, so if we screwed the tape up, the track was gone.  But having to do that forced us into all kinds of improvised solutions which seem to have made for a quite distinctive sound.  I think there’s definitely something in this.  “Sgt Pepper” was recorded on a 4-track and still sounds astonishing today.  Today’s music has access to infinite channels and every sound imaginable, but often comes out overproduced and cluttered.  We didn’t have that option.

Did a lot of the experimental flourishes (backwards guitar etc) come from John, since he was the one operating the tape machine? Or were those ideas more collaborative? 

It worked like this:  I would have some weird idea or soundscape in my head but I didn’t know how to make it happen.   I would tell John.  He would say “That’s impossible”.  Then a couple of hours later he would come back and say “I’ve figured out how to do it”.
It seems like what you guys were doing (recording at home and releasing your own LP) kind of pre-dated the Do-It-Yourself aesthetic that would become big in England in the late 70s, with the punk scene. Did you know of many other groups in the early 70s who were doing what you were doing, recording your own album at home and getting a limited number of copies pressed? 

No, we genuinely didn’t know of many – or even any – others.  It wasn’t that common, although as you say it became so later. The company that did the pressing for us took us into a real studio, because the tracks had to be compressed to go on to vinyl.  That’s when we realised how low tech we really were.

Not surprisingly, when the punk scene came along I loved it.  If we had been starting at the time we would probably have produced “punk folk” instead of “psych folk”.
Was there even any commercial interest in TCJ? It seems like you guys had all the elements that record labels would have been looking for at the time… an adventurous sound, but with strong vocals and good harmonies and memorable songs. Were you ever approached about a proper record deal? If not, why do you think it didn’t happen for you guys? Just poor luck? 

We didn’t try very hard.  We touted it around a few labels and got encouraging remarks but nothing in writing (you know the drill).  But mostly we just sold it to friends or at gigs.  One day a couple of guys in sharp suits turned up at the flat and said they were interested in putting our stuff out on their label, one of the earlier independents.  But they then went on to tell us that they wanted “more ballads with the chick singing”.  We weren’t inclined that way, so that was the end of that.  John sent a copy to John Peel, who briefly had his own label at the time, Dandelion.  He obviously gave it some thought, because we’re told a copy exists somewhere with Peel’s detailed notes all over the lyric sheet.

This may not come over as genuine, but the satisfaction of making an artistic product meant more to us than fame or money.  It still does. And at least we’re in profit on AOTFD after the re-release and a few royalty payments.
Was the band Forever And Ever that came after TCJ an extension of the same sound? Were you playing Tony, Caro and John songs when you performed?  

The band formed almost immediately after we put out the album.  It wasn’t appropriate to call it TCJ because we had some new band members including Simon Burrett on lead guitar and vocal, Caro’s brother Jonny Owen on harmonica and vocal, and my sister Julie on backup vocal.  A bit later Rod Jones, another childhood friend, joined us to play one of the earliest synths (you know, the ones where you had to plug in all kinds of connectors to make a sound).  We played primarily TCJ songs, including some that postdated the album or were left off, plus some of Simon’s songs. We’ve been active on and off until quite recently.  The Forever and Ever website is http://www.forever-and-ever.co.uk/
How did the Shadoks CD reissue of All On The First Day come about? Before that happened, were you aware of the cult interest in your music, and did you know that your album had become a collector’s item? 

Thomas Hartlage, the boss of Shadoks, wrote to every Doré in the UK trying to track us down.  This was around the beginning of the millennium.  Eventually one of the letters got to us.  Thomas is a collector as well as a businessman, and has a passionate interest in reviving underexposed music, particularly 60s and 70s psychedelia.  We were astonished that he truly seemed to love the album, knew all the tracks, and had his firm favourites.  We had almost forgotten the album because we’d moved on and made a lot more music since then.  Thomas wanted to reissue the album on vinyl and CD.  Normally with obscure limited-edition LPs he has to just use the old vinyl copy and decrackle, remaster, etc.  But because of John’s obsessive archiving of our music, we had pristine tape copies of all the album songs.  Thomas also wanted out-takes and roughly contemporary songs as bonus tracks, so we dug some up.

Thomas’s interest made us check the net, something we hadn’t done before.  Again we were amazed.  There were hits all over the place.  We were even more astonished by the price original albums were selling for.  The highest I saw was 3700 pounds (UK).  We also found the album had been bootlegged, probably in the Netherlands – even the homemade cover had been meticulously reprinted.  Now, after the re-release in 2002, there are even more internet references via reviews, radio play, YouTube etc.  In 2006 a  now very successful Baltimore indie duo called Beach House covered “Snowdon Song”, the first track on the album. It’s a very interesting version. They retitled it “Lovelier Girl” but do not contest the origin, and we are currently sorting out copyright issues.

Can you tell me about the archival tracks?  When are they from, why has it taken so long for them to finally be released, et cetera. It sounds like some of them must have been recorded after the songs on the album, so are those actually Forever And Ever songs? 

The archival songs are mainly slightly later than AOTFD.  They’re coming out now simply because several interested parties asked us what we’d got in the coffers.  John kept absolutely everything from recorded tracks to jams, and updated it all to modern formats, so we had a big advantage there.  The remaining listenable tracks recorded the “old way” (mono sound on sound) were used as bonus tracks on the AOTFD re-release, so you’ll hear that the new tracks are mostly in stereo. Yes, John had bought a new tape recorder!  Still just a 4-track, but definitely a step up.

I estimate most tracks were recorded between 1972 and 1975.  You can hear one of the first British synths made by EMS on “Where The Elephants Go To Die” and “Fountain of Snow”, played by me because Rod had not yet come on board.  The live tracks are definitely from 1974.  The only one where the date escapes me is “Home”, my wife’s favourite tune.  There’s a primitive drum machine on it, so that probably tells us something.  The tracks were written by me except “Reels”, “Pretty Saro” and “Brigg Fair”, which are traditional, “Grandather’s Clock”, and “Sally Free and Easy” written by a folksinger called Cyril Tawney in the 60s.

“Bye Bye I Love You” features a flautist whose name I can’t remember.  He just drifted in one day when we were recording, offered to put down the part, then drifted off again.  That’s how things were at the time…….

Strictly the live tracks are by Forever and Ever, the name we performed them under, but the band are OK with marketing these as TCJ because it’s a TCJ release and the name is more “known”.
The live recordings sound wonderful. How were those recorded? Did you guys perform often, or was it more of a hobby band that played only occasionally? 

Glad you like them.  We have lots of live recordings from the time, but unfortunately recorded in mono on cheap cassette players and of terrible quality.  This gig was at the Collegiate Theatre in London and we were lucky that the concert was recorded on a decent machine which belonged to the venue.  It was only a stereo pair (so no chance to mix) but still better than anything else we have from the time.  Our very transient drummer had moved on, so we had to resort to a semi-acoustic format.  Simon is playing through a tiny practice amp miked through the house PA.  By pure serendipity, the format seemed to suit us quite well.  The live version of “Road to Avalon” is the only existing recording of that song so I’m glad it’s seeing the light of day.

We gigged around colleges etc as the opportunity came up but by no means regularly.  We certainly didn’t make any money at it.  Simon hates it when I describe music as a “hobby”, because he thinks it is on a completely different level, but personally I can live with that definition.
Are you still in touch with Caro and John? Do you guys still play music together?  

In the mid-70s John settled down with Caro and I with my wife-to-be Barbara.  We stayed very close and our kids grew up together.  Forever and Ever became primarily a jamming band and we played together regularly, although not in front of a paying audience after the 70s.  About 2004 we put together a CD sampler of music spanning the last 30 years (“Retrospect”) which you can hear bits of on the site.  Simon also plays with a regular gigging rock band called The Blue Bishops (bluebishops.co.uk/).

John died in 2005, far too young, and we all miss him badly.  In many ways he was the hub of the band.  Loyal to the music, organizer of  jams, a wonderful archivist and definitely the most technically gifted.  At the moment the rest of us are a bit spread out.  Barbara and I are in Houston, Caro in London, Simon in Devon and Rod in France.  We all remain firm friends and recently reunited for my birthday in the English countryside, where you can imagine music featured high on the agenda.

Blue Clouds comes out 11/6/2012 on Drag City/ Galactic Zoo Disks.

Holy Balm is Anna John, Emma Ramsay and Yoni Hochman.

I was stoked to read on their Tumblr that they will be coming to the states this fall. Their live sets sound and look super fun. CTI meets Wax Trax vibes renders their post-house post-synth party jam haze. Holy Balm was initially put out on (the brilliant)  RIP Society in Sydney and now Not Not Fun in the US.  I hear that there is also a remix record coming out on Michael Ozone’s Home Loans Records label.

From NNF:

Last year’s LA Vampires club-cruise across Australia unearthed a multitude of uplifting experiences (Cairns hippie aerialists, Newcastle hardcore, Melbourne acid sangria, etc), but chief among them was the live actualization of Sydney post-power trio Holy Balm, who slyly gene-splice strands of mutant new wave, freeform house, digital trashcan tribalism, and minimalist pop into something playful, primitive, and splatterpaint-party perfect. After a few micro-limited split tapes and a single 7”, the band finally enlisted the help of Jon Hunter at Magnetic Recording Council Studios to record and mix their debut full-length, resulting in the whacked-out hypercolor majesty of It’s You. Comprised of live classics (“Take It,” “Holy Balm Theme,” “Town Called Hope”) as well as some wild, extended studio experiments (“Phone Song,” “One & Only”), plus a Y Pants cover, the album captures HB’s wobbly electronic freak-funk and paradise garage grooves gloriously. September finds them embarking on their first ever U.S. tour/voyage so now’s the time to Balm up. Released in Australia via esteemed pan-genre punkers R.I.P. Society. Funky cactus cover artwork and layout by Sydney conceptual painter Mitch Cairns. Edition of 915.

[soundcloud url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/46870217" iframe="true" /]

Holy Balm – Holy Balm Theme from Not Not Fun on Vimeo by the lovely Angel(a) Bermuda

FavoriteSweater from Gail vachon on Vimeo.

At first I was like, “why are Sing-Sing reissuing a Bats single??”, but then duhhhhh I realized it’s a different Bats. Before the NZ Bats formed in 1982– these bats were playing around New Haven, CT in the late 70′s early 80′s with  a sound that “melded New Wave, Ventures noodling, well-meaning but misplaced prog and, best of all, catchy, beautiful pop. Another quote from the previous 1982 Billboard review suggested this record “To those who wake up every morning to well worn copies of the Raspberries’ “Go All the Way,” this one’s for you.”  Wow- never knew us Eric Carmen geeks actually constituted a market segment. That little geode of knowledge makes me smile nonetheless.

The Bats also released one LP, How Pop Can You Get  in 1982– and had three rippers included in Numero’s power pop comp Yellow Pills: Prefill from 2005. Also worth mentioning–is the fact that Jon Brion was the Bats’ frontman. Weird.

The Bats were initially listed on Gustav records who had a handful of releases in the early 80s– including a comp that I am now curious to hear, appropriately titled, It Happened…But Nobody Noticed. This tracklist has got me wondering now:
Poodle Boys- Pop Party
Subdueds- Subdued
Scout House- Talkin ‘Bout You
Hot Bodies- From The Inside
Furors, The (2)- Hey, Joni
Saucers- Muckraker
Snotz, The- That’s Life

TV Neats- Dear Abby
International Q- Small Talk
Troupe Di Coupe- Funeral Row
No Music (2)- Same Old Shit
October Days- Do The Right Thing
Bats, The (2)- Living In Alaska

Once upon a time, two friends began working on a script for a experimental non-narrative video project called Torture is Boring. It was more or less a way to collaborate over long distances; as one friend (Beth) lived in Ohio, and the other (me, Kellie) lived in New York. The project expanded over several semi pre-conceptualized shoots, and we eventually amassed so much footage, that the concept for the initial project was completely obfuscated; and with geographic barriers, work schedules etc., things got put on hold. But I am happy to report that in the mean time, until Torture is Boring does finally come together, Beth made this video, for her band Times New Viking. It gives a taste of the first part of the video tryptych.

Liliane Lijn: Collected Film and Video Works

In a two program retrospective, Straight to Video and Spectacle are proud to present the film and video work of visual artist, Liliane Lijn. Widely known for her Poem Machines (invented in 1962 alongside Burrough’s and Gysin’s Dreamachine,) in which Lijn stirred a conversation more relevant now than ever: the relationship between language and time, text and movement. Lijn’s application of text onto rotating cone-shaped “koans” stripped language of its meaning as it dematerialized the volume of the cone, inducing a hypnotic state – not unlike the nullifying effect that the increased rate of information has today. Lijn’s Poem Machines were featured recently in the MoMA’s Ecstatic Alphabet exhibition this past spring.

Lijn works across a broad range of materials and media, making extensive use of new technologies to create works that view the world as energy. Particularly interested in the interaction between light and matter, her recent work uses video as memory encapsulated in light. Her sculptures use light and motion to transform themselves from solid to void, opaque to transparent, formal to organic– a constant dialog of opposites.

Sunday, August 5th
Program 1: 7:30
Program 2: 10:00

Sunday, August 19th
Program 1: 7:30
Program 2: 10:00

Program 1: Practice/Process
+Factory Snaps, 1970
+Fire Water, 2007-8
+Caution Matter, 2011
+What is the Sound of One Hand Clapping, 1971-1973
+Power Game, 1974
+Power Game The Arches, Glasgow, 2011

Program 2: Life/ Context/ Construction of Identity
+Inner Space Outer Space, 2010
+It Never Happened Before, 2008
+Look a Doll! My Mother’s Story, 1998-2000
—Early Events—
+Seagate: the Sea in my Elbow
+Great Neck: Shouldering the Burden of Childhood
+Lavender Queen
+Paradise Lost

About the Artist:
Widely known for her Poem Machines (invented in 1962 alongside Burrough’s and Gysin’s Dreamachine,) in which Lijn stirred a conversation more relevant now than ever: The relationship between language and time, text and movement. Lijn’s application of text onto rotating cone-shaped “koans” stripped language of its meaning as it dematerialized the volume of the cone, inducing a hypnotic state – not unlike the nullifying effect that the increased rate of information has today. Lijn’s Poem Machines were featured recently in the MoMA’s Ecstatic Alphabet exhibition this past spring. What is the Sound of One Hand Clapping documents these sculptures in a montage that is perhaps the ideal way to experience the breadth of their impact. Always one to stay current, Lijn has used the evolutions of science, industry, and technology as fertile hunting grounds for unearthing the archetypal resonance within. This query begins with vignettes of industry in Factory Snaps, a series of production close-ups captured in Super 8 film using factories that aided Lijn in her work throughout the late ’60s in London. She trades the autobiographical jumping off point for one rooted in mythology in Fire Water and Caution Matter, initially a video installation, but shown in this program as vignettes. Fire Water further crops industry to specifics, while expanding its key to the logical mythographic end, which is to say the beginning, as Lijn documents two factories found along The Sacred Way – the connecting road from Athens to Eleusis. A “reconnection” of art and science is the central thread of Inner Space Outer Space, a series of interviews with scientists from when Lijn was a resident at the Space Sciences Laboratory at UC Berkeley interspersed with moving images of her life’s work. But it is the timeless absurdity of Power Game that has provided the most coherent touchstone in Lijn’s career. The stipulations for this send-up of power, which uses the ambiguity of language as currency in which complicit “players” hedge their bets, was first staged by Lijn in 1974. This video enfolds layers of the original game with its subsequent re-stagings up to 2010. These films, along with a batch of autobiographical works that enlighten Lijn’s familial ties and early awareness of the body as matter, will be shown August 5th and August 19th at Spectacle Theatre in Brooklyn. Films in which art critic Frank Popper has heralded as instrumental in “the passage from the mechanical to the electronic in art” are not to be missed as we find ourselves approaching even more guarded passageways in art, technology, science and industry. –Elizabeth Murphy

Curated by Kellie Morgan/Straight to Video

About Spectacle: Spectacle Theater is a nonprofit cinema space located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Our programming features rare films, lost oddities, missing classics, and special events. All screenings are $5 unless otherwise noted.

wikipedia.org/wiki/Liliane_Lijn
lilianelijn.com
spectacletheater.com

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