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The hiphop years: detail of F-Factor 2.
"Pixel Monster - Faier" by pixelthork at 400 X 350 pixels
Below are some Flash claymations (and one cartoon) by Prikedelik. Incredibly crude clay figures act out the artist's raging id in a perfectly ordinary apartment setting. Against background scenery consisting of books, papers, cigarette packs, and computer hardware, these lumpen, miniature superheroes dance, fight, and try their best to survive the blind forces of nature. Much of it's mindless slapstick ("cautious," "repressed," or "anal-retentive" are not words you would use to describe this work) but like the best slapstick it's funny. Turning on the speakers is recommended as the accompanying music--heavy on the electronic club anthems--is choice. Some shorts are interactive, so if you see a command like "Dance" or "Die" be sure to click it. Animations load quickly on broadband; not sure about dialup.
| Death to the Blue King! Destiny (interactive cartoon) |
Congratulations to Sue de Beer, Cory Arcangel/BEIGE, and James Siena for getting picked for the Whitney Biennial this year. Other names I appreciated seeing on the list were Erick Swenson, Yayoi Kusama, and Richard Prince, although you couldn't find a more unrelated group of artists. I had a longer post written with my thoughts on this year's lineup, but I just don't feel comfortable second-guessing the choices. Well, yes I do, to the extent I don't understand the inclusion of Robert Mangold, Paul McCarthy, Robert Longo, or Elizabeth Peyton. The institutional politics and horse-trading that go into such a high-profile project weaken it considerably, and one always wishes it would say more. Sometimes the curating's just bad: Larry Rinder might have pulled off his "high tech/primitive" duality last time if he'd picked more compelling art. Anyway, I was glad to see some people in it this year whose work I really like.
UPDATE: Someone asked to see a list of the artists; it now appears in the comments to this post.
F-Factor 2, MSPaintbrush painting, ink on paper, 55" X 50" (rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise)
(the "Xtreme detail" .gif is perversely titled "The hiphop years." If you don't see it in the larger piece, don't worry, it's very small and cut off by the top edge.)
Entertainment Industry Goober of the Month: Tom Rosenberg
One of [The Human Stain]'s producers, Tom Rosenberg, of Lakeshore Entertainment, said the trick was to translate a complex novel into film terms while deploying a cast that could draw moviegoers. Would audiences accept any white actor as an African-American? Or was a British-bred actor somehow harder to accept in the role? Mr. Rosenberg insists that in research screenings, few moviegoers questioned the casting.previous goober (actually the award isn't monthly, just when something especially dorky leaps out at me) / newer goober"When I read the book, Anthony Hopkins was who I thought of from the beginning," Mr. Rosenberg said in October. "I needed an actor who was very accomplished and who meant something in the film marketplace. I have a friend in Chicago who could be Anthony's fair-skinned cousin, whose parents were both African-American. I knew casting Anthony was grounded in reality." (via NYT)
Instead of "gook" our soldiers are using the term "hadji" to refer to an enemy combatant (sorry, liberatee) in Iraq and Afghanistan. (As in "killing some hadjis" or "mowing down some hadjis.") This article spells it "hajji" or "hodgie" and says it refers to the Arab term for "pilgrim to Mecca," but the writer is either over 60 or grew up in a country without TV because any fool knows Hadji, the Calcutta orphan with occasional mystical powers, who was Jonny Quest's sidekick. I mean, duh. The show has been in endless syndication since the '60s so it's not just a boomer thing. A semi-educated guess is the trend started in Afghanistan and spread to the Iraq theatre; maybe that's wrong, but it seems a lot more likely than appropriating "pilgrim to Mecca" as a derogatory term.