(Image from the New York Times)

Youtube Commentary Project

Artists Space, a New York-based alternative space, has selected a piece of mine for a webcast project of theirs. They've started a monthly "Youtube Commentary Project," in which artists select a clip on Youtube, and lay some commentary over it, in the manner that a commentary track might be laid over a DVD. Mine, below, tries to link together Marilyn Monroe, Dirty Harry, Richard Brautigan, and the color red within the space of a minute-- over a clip of a gun-owner playing with his .44 Magnum.



And these are the prior Youtube commentaries:

Steve Lambert (who is a friend -- he went the extra mile of getting several people to read aloud the "comments" posted to the original video, a clip of Leonard Bernstein conducting Shostakovich -- he was amused by the fact that even "high culture" material on youtube attracts extravagant vituperation. I have been working on a couple ideas reacting to the "culture" of comments on the web, but Steve cut into it in a very funny and direct way):



Jon Rubin on Milton Friedman:



Nina Katchadourian on a drawing of a freehand circle:



Cesare Pietroiusti on a performance by the Italian diva Mina:



The Artists Space youtube channel is here (and features much more material than the youtube commentaries). I think the notion of Youtube "Commentary Tracks" is a wonderful idea, and an interesting strategy for "curating" the material that's out there on youtube -- I think I'll continue to make ones of my own, outside the auspices of Artists Space's project.

Suckle

Last Thursday Gregory Roberts gave a very engaging talk for his show, "Suck On This," currently up at the Tahoe Gallery. Above, a set of canoodling teapots and some groupthink Fezes, made of carved honeycomb ceramic.


Several pieces in the show are ceramic vessels modeled after plastic water bottles, wrapped with images that were drawn from the New York Times. Daily effluvia is given a feeling of handmade permanence. Roberts said that clay felt like an appropriate material for aping water bottles -- like the plastic cylinders that are destined to sit in landfills for thousands of years, "clay lasts forever."



Below, a gallery-goer stands in front of a metal sheet, where an image of Condoleeza's Rice's smile is formed by ceramic casts of male nipples, affixed to the metal with magnets. Roberts admitted a pseudo-obsession with the former Secretary of State.



Other works: bombs that could be suckled, and a ring of gilt ceramic water bottles set on a rotatable mirror. On the "labels" of the water bottles were lipsticked lips; a microphone was set up on the table in front of them. The gilt bottles reflect each other like a ring or mirrors enclosing a fundamental emptiness. They seemed to speak of the empty talk that fills us invisibly and passes through our system like water.



Water bottles and water bottles everywhere, and not drop to drink.

Logan Lape's Provisional Constellations

Logan created a cool video for new genres that's up on youtube, titled "Refusing to Short-Circuit." Watch below:



I got the feeling I had as a kid, looking over an astronomy book, and wondering how those beautifully filigreed zodiac designs of gods and animals were able to spring from the underlying angular geometric arrangements of stars.

Review: The Pilgrim's Progress

I wrote up a review of a good show in San Francisco, Ben Peterson's "The Pilgrim's Progress," for the Shotgun Review. It's an intriguing collection of drawings -- read the full review here.

Unacceptable Art in Iraq

The above statue, a tribute the Iraqi journalist and shoe-thrower Muntazer al-Zaidi, was removed from the site of an orphanage by Iraqi police. The AP story is here.

Al-Zaidi is currently in jail, awaiting trial -- evidently, he was able to vote in the Jan. 28 elections.

Feeling Pixilated

On her blog, Becca recently posted a video of some animation experimentation she's doing, using her own face as the puppet. Which seems like a good excuse to mention the art of Pixilation -- which is the name for the technique she's using. ("Pixilation" itself, as a word, lives in the funny zone between being "pixilated," which means being drunk, and being "pixelated," which means being broken up into boxy lo-res squares).

Wikipedia has a page on Pixilation here, which is a good starting point for hunting down examples of the technique -- probably the two most famous animators who have used it are Jan Svankmajer and Norman McLaren. McLaren won an Oscar for his pixilated short "Neighbors," posted below:



"Neighbors" is actually one of my least favorite of the McLaren films I've seen -- once you know where it's going (which is pretty early into the film), the rest seems a foregone conclusion -- though there are some nice bits of whimsy strewn along the way. A smaller (but better quality) version of "Neighbors" is posted up on the National Film Board of Canada's website -- their animation section has posted up many of the animated films they produced over the years -- it's an amazing collection of work, now up for web viewing, and any enthusiast of animation owes it to themselves to spend some time browsing.

A Moment of Zen

Click on the above image for a web page that keeps getting better and better the more you scroll down.

BFA NOW!!

BFA students....here is a not to miss opportunity to show your work!

"The 2009 event is a painting and printmaking competition."

"There will be five printmaking and five painting awards given for the 2009 competition.  Over $10,000 in awards and scholarships will be give to award winners, and all 10 artists will participate in a 1-week exhibition program during the summer in New York City. 'Students will work live and work together in a workshop environment to design, construct, hang, and ope their own show.  Each award winner will be provided travel expenses, room and board, the cost of shipping artwork to the event site.  At the conclusion of the show, BFA Now will host a rooftop party with 360 degree views of New York City.' "

FOR MORE INFORMATION CHECK OUT:

www.bfanow.org

"Red Colored Elegy" Review in The Believer

The new issue of The Believer has my short review of Seiichi Hayashi's "Red Colored Elegy," an amazing comic first serialized in Japan in 1970-71, and receiving its first english translation late last year. Formally experimental and emotionally wise, it's easily one of the best comics I've read in the last few years.

The first two paragraphs of the review are posted online - for the whole thing you need to hit the magazine stands.