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In case you haven't heard, curator Larry Rinder is leaving the Whitney Museum, not for another power-position in the art world but to return to the school from whence he came in California. Wow, can we have the last three years back? "BitStreams," "The 2002 Biennial," "The American Effect"--critically panned, enervating shows (or reportedly enervating; the picture of the superheroes in wheelchairs with IV drips, etc., did not inspire a $1.50 card-swipe for a trip uptown to see the last of the three).
The "whoops--never mind" of the Rinder years happened because of the Backlash Effect. Former director David Ross's supposedly "wild" programming (e.g. "Black Male") scared some trustees, so they hired "dapper fuddy duddy" Maxwell Anderson, as Slate.com described him (also now departed), as director. Anderson hired Rinder, who had served on the curatorial team for the bland 2000 Biennial. Despite a near-universally acknowledged mediocre eye, Rinder received much adoring press from non-critic journos, for reasons that remain mysterious. All that publicity, so little to publicize.
The art-jazz-electronic duo Plasmodium has a CD out titled Clairaudience, blending fusion, sampladelia, grunge, and twisted Southern humor. At the music's core are jazzy grooves performed by Jim Thomson (drums, vocals) and Bob Miller (trumpet and keyboards), augmented with loops, samples, and electronic treatments a la the "labfunk" of Recloose or Atjazz. Miller's nimble trumpet is a versatile lead instrument, moving from traditional muted phrasing to wah wah-ed electric guitar shrieks.
Veterans of the Virginia music scene centered around Richmond and Charlottesville, the pair has an interesting provenance: Miller gigs with the salsa group Bio Ritmo, while Thomson drummed in the 80s for the nuclear mutant hardcore outfit GWAR. Although mainly jazzy, Clairaudience spins a dazzling range of musical fictions, from "Tristay"'s reverbed rockabilly lament to the paranoid psychedelic dirge rock of "Space Eye" (think Alice in Chains meets Air, if that's possible). The daily indignities of hapless convenience store clerk "Clive Buckledown," recited in a deadpan, detective-story monotone over sensuous electric piano loops, recall the white psycho jazz rap of Kentuckyan-by-way-of-Dallas MC 900 Ft. Jesus.
In a more Cagean mode, the sound collage "Rethinking the Raven" presents echo-treated field recordings of a suburban smart guy spouting increasingly ridiculous, palsied nonsense syllables into fast-food driveup intercoms. ("Sir, can you drive to the window so we can take your order, we can't understand you.") The track is funny on a mean spirited Jerky Boys level, but also seductive, with the sound manipulations turning the baffled or bored utterances of the franchise employees into quasi-world music. One clerk's digitally twinned "I don't know/I don't know (I don't understand what you're saying)" becomes poignantly melodic through repetition, resembling an eerie call-and-response chant. In "Dr. Octobongopus" a bored lounge MC introduces the stage act of a polyrhythmic, multi-armed, but basically lame bongo player in a routine that is pure deadpan surrealism.
You can stream a few .mp3s at the Dry County Records site ("Space Eye" is especially good), or purchase the CD at CD BABY. Highly recommended.
Sexy fighting babes are the rage in the secondary school art set. Are these images (Saranety's "Crystal Shards" series, from theOtaku.com) sexist or empowering? It's an inane dichotomy, really. You have the infantile large eyes and the sexual come-on of the costumes but also strong, confident, dynamic figures in fighting poses with weapons. The contrast makes the drawings interesting.
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five by wenstrom
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I meant to post this pixel art assortment about a year ago. Many of the .gifs aren't still at the original links.
Is there a name for chickenhawks of the left? Josh Marshall needs one:
For someone who considers himself in many ways a hawk and who did and does believe in American power as a force for good in the world (most recently in the Balkans)1 it is difficult to describe the depth of the chagrin over watching the unfolding of a story [the Abu Ghraib torture] which reads in many ways like a parody of Chomskian screeds against American villainy.Uh, Josh, how about saying it this way?
[I]t is difficult to describe the depth of the chagrin over watching the unfolding of a story which proves Noam Chomsky absolutely correct.Does a country with two million people in prison and incarceration facilities that inflict great physical and psychological cruelty (23 hour days in solitary, uncontrolled rape, murder, etc etc) have any business appointing itself "policeman of the world"? I don't think so. One doesn't have to "hate America" to think bombing and torturing "for peace" is just crazy.
1. Not everyone agrees that bombing Belgrade and helping to ethnically cleanse Kosovo of Serbs was the right way to handle the situation in the Balkans. Also, it's been known for some time that our "contractors" in Bosnia and other hot spots do morally enlightened things like lease girls for six months at a time.
Lots of people have been doing search requests for "Army Pfc. Lynndie England," the woman holding a leash around a naked man's neck in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. What is this fascination with evil women? A guy in Fresno shoots 9 of his children and it's a local story after the first week, but Andrea Yates drowns her 5 and it's a national cause. People, Lynndie England is a distraction from the real issue. The government and a compliant media say that the naked men tied up and arranged in dogpiles were the work of a few bad (or "overstressed") eggs. That's not true. Military intelligence dreamed up all the simulated homoerotic activity and picture-taking to break down the sexually squeamish Iraqis and get them to "confess." Our government has crossed the line and they're handing you Lynddie England. Wake up and smell the coffee, folks.
Watch war criminal Donald Rumsfeld being heckled by protesters during today's Congressional hearing. Pretty gratifying.