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Now They Tell Us
From Columbia Journalism Review, reporters from CNN, NBC, New York Times, Cox Newspapers, et al, reminisce about the immediate aftermath of the US invasion in Iraq--how bad it really was when they were telling the American public how good it really was (thus helping to usher in four more years of Bush).
Geffen Sells Pollock to Pay Paul
"[In addition to selling a Pollock for $140 million, j]ust last month Mr. Geffen sold two other 20th-century paintings — a Jasper Johns and a Willem de Kooning — for a total of $143.5 million. Given that he is among many business figures who has expressed interest in buying The Los Angeles Times, media industry analysts speculated that he was trying to raise cash for a potential bid." [via]
So, a man who made his pile robbing musicians in one old tech milieu (pre-Napster CDs) sells his holdings by artists who make even older tech objects, unique (uncopyable) paintings, most of which value never accrues to the artists directly, to buy yet another old tech (dying) business (newsprint), premised on gatekeepers choking the flow of information.
What a guy!
Republican-tied Bechtel Corp. Doesn't Stay the Course; "Cuts and Runs" in Iraq
This is interesting:
The San Francisco Chronicle reports:When will Bush be questioning the company's patriotism?
Bechtel Corp. went to Iraq three years ago to help rebuild a nation torn by war. Since then, 52 of its people have been killed and much of its work sabotaged as Iraq dissolved into insurgency and sectarian violence.
Now Bechtel is leaving.
The San Francisco engineering company's last government contract to rebuild power, water and sewage plants across Iraq expired on Tuesday. Some employees remain to finish the paperwork, but essentially, the company's job is done.
 Tomorrow, Thursday, Nov. 2, after Olia Lialina's talk at Bryce Wolkowitz I'm heading over to the Lower East Side to hear David Humphrey and Adam Hurwitz do DJ sets at Spinart. This series has been featuring artists who also spin records; Humphrey is a great painter whose work is in the poster above. Adam sez: Please come out and join David Humphrey and myself for what will be the last in the Spinart Thursdays series at Loreley Lounge in the lower east side. David is a returning Spinart veteran and he will definitely be getting the party started right with his hip hop infused eclectic selection. I will take over with the ass shakin' beats that will bust your bass-bins!As in bratwurst, etc, not auto-fellatio. An excellent Hurwitz mix of dubby techno house can be downloaded at the blog A Brooklyn Life. I can't name individual tracks but I especially like the growly thing at 25:00, the weirdly pitch-shifted thing at 29:20, the the Rhodes thing at 38:50 and the Berlinoid electro trance thing at the very end. |
Jonathan Horowitz looms large in the "art as mediacrit" field. He currently shows with Gavin Brown gallery, and has been an influential force on the New York scene since the early '90s. Although he now uses the Internet as a tool and playing field, his work came to prominence during the VCR era. In his piece Maxell, a tape made in 1990 and projected on a large scale at Greene Naftali gallery in 1998, a black screen with the single word MAXELL has been dubbed and redubbed on a VCR so that it gets progressively grainier. But it isn't just degrading--random visual and audial noise is being picked up and amplified with each copy that begins to aggressively overwhelm the original source, in a way that is almost performative. When projected on a large screen, ugly violent electronic sounds and wrenching, spasmodic lightning zaps build dramatically, so that by the end of the tape the video becomes assaultive, almost scary in its sense of total abject breakdown. The piece shows the unintended consequences of mechanical reproduction, data transmission that is supposed to be seamless taken to its most extreme conclusion, so that it actually feels toxic. In other words, Art reveals a dark side to technology that has been there all along. The ultimate irony is the use of MAXELL as subject matter, a brand built on clarity and trust.