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Momenta Art, celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, recently moved to a new location at 359 Bedford Ave., between S. 4th and S. 5th in Williamsburg. The gallery consistently serves up engaged, political (or politically-tinged) art and introduces many artists who go on to be exploited by the system, I mean, become stars. One of the great things about New York is there are pockets of cultural life here that resist the prevailing "happy talk" that started with '70s news media and gradually spread to every facet of our society. Momenta is such a pocket. Consider this press release for "The Unhumane Society," opening Friday, September 15, from 6-8 pm:
The work of each of the artists in this exhibition slides easily between the human and the animal world. In a video by Daniel Herskowitz, the artist eavesdrops upon conversations among primatologists. As they discuss group behaviors of lower primates, the group dynamics of the scientists seem not so distant. In Stefaan Dheedene’s video an African hunter methodically describes his process of trapping and killing animals. Our attention is displaced by his clinical description of his work punctuated by the diminishing screams of a baby antelope as he clubs it to death. Similarly, in a video by David Burns, a farm family considers the interpersonal relations of their chickens and discuss which chicken must die – as the video presents the loser chicken, beheaded and plucked in reverse. In a video by Liselot van der Heijden, the viewer is left alone to commune with the endlessly looping final breath of a dying zebra. Tom Moore also offers a kind of quiet communion. His photographs of primate cages from the Berlin Zoo, also empty of humans (and of animals) document a frighteningly perfect animal habitat that fulfills every need. And Mark Dion's natural history photographs offer the disquietude of our animal curiosity.One is tempted to say, lighten up, guys. For sure no Chelsea gallery would ever send out a press release that disturbingly bleak. (A member of the patron class might get "bummed out" and stop coming in.) But I happen to believe that humanity will have much to answer for vis a vis the rest of nature when we stand before the Immortal Aliens for cosmic judgment, so kudos to Momenta--this sounds great.
The other works in the show slip more precipitously between the human and the animal. Rachel Lowther offers us a sculpture representing the glistening inflated-to-bursting obscene reality that is a rat urinary and genital system after said rat has 'received' excess amounts of testosterone in the form of Perandren. Breyer/P-Orridge’s absurd, fetishistic sculptural object of a wheeled gumball machine filled with used tampons and topped with a wolf’s head suggests the machinistic fetishization of a feminine primal order. Human/animal hybrids are more directly represented in the works of Rita Ackerman and Jason Fox – with his painting of a pathetic creature separated from the viewer by a chain-link barrier and her charming, brutal, doe-like vampires. All pretense falls away with the work of Grace Roselli. In her classically rendered painting, a pregnant woman hunches over skeletal human remains in a post apocalyptic sewage-scape; unable to cope with the human world she becomes subsumed in an idealized nightmare of our animal side taking over. As pathological as it is clinical, it is a nightmare that we all share.
Opening tonight at artMovingProjects, 166 N. 12 Street in Williamsburg from 7 to 9 pm, an exhibit by Marcin Ramocki, an artist previously discussed here. He directed the 8 BIT movie that is opening next month at the Museum of Modern Art. Aiming to "sabotage and displace the familiar context of the software interface," the exhibit includes Torcito Portraits, digital animations based on re-purposing the old Macintosh musical program Virtual Drummer, and Anti-Pharmakon, pictured above (photo courtesy artMovingProjects), an interactive installation composed of a treated computer keyboard, CPU and a wall projection. Further explanation will be forthcoming, once I actually see the work.
Also showing in the Project Space is Jillian McDonald's Zombie Makeup, a video documenting the day the artist rode the L train from one end to the other applying George Romero-ish zombie makeup to her face. As the artist says, "Instead of improving my features, like the woman who steadily applies makeup en route to work or play, I become gruesome."
Update: Anti-Pharmakon is an interactive sound piece. When you press a key on the actual keyboard, the corresponding key moves on the projected one, and a recorded sound issues from speakers in the gallery. The "sound bites" are single words or phrases uttered by popular or historical figures, listed here (scroll down)--for example, “significant progress” (Dick Cheney); “Arabs and Israelis” (Anwar Sadat); “the white men” (Malcolm X); and “life” (George W. Bush). The sounds overlap when multiple keys are pressed, created intermittent cacophony in the gallery, depending on how many are clicked at once.
My MSPaintbrush version of the Dex graffiti mural I posted earlier--drawn freehand from the photo. I tried to compensate for the steep angle of the wall in the original shot, but as you can see it still recedes on the left. Oh, well, regardless, I'm bad. Unfortunately I don't know what the tag signified originally and I guarantee I don't now.
How I Spent My (Techno) Summer
Below is the music I made in June, July, and August (and early Sept.) of this year. This is roughly a CD's worth of tunes (approximately 54 minutes). I guess I consider this techno, because I like old school techno, but it's produced for bookshelf speakers or headphones, not necessarily the dance floor. It's not "art" music--it hews pretty close to certain genre conventions and isn't "deconstructing" anything. Except, I suppose, I'm not that interested in typical song composition dynamics where you always have to have a verse, chorus, bridge, break, and reprise. Simplest is best unless you absolutely have to use those dynamics. In any case, the music's not "electronica"--I hate that late '90s marketing word. If that buzzword refers to anything it's a hybrid of electronic dance and Les Baxter/Esquivel-style lounge exotica, and I'm definitely not doing that. "Home computer techno?" That doesn't quite get there either, because the sound is bit fuller than what I think of as the typical "amateur," or pardon me, Garageband sound. Oh, I give up.
Addendum: I also don't like the term "IDM," agreeing with Simon Reynolds that the use of "intelligent" to describe music you make or like is inherently wankerific. I want the music to be dumber, not smarter.
"808 Straight" [mp3 removed]
"Algebra 2 Trig (Beats)" [mp3 removed]
"Anthropos Essentia" [4.8 MB .mp3]
"Amiable Floater" [mp3 removed]
"Aruba '85" [3.1 MB .mp3]
"Bass-o-matic" [mp3 removed]
"Everyone Fights, No One Quits" [mp3 removed]
"Heartbleet" [3.6 MB .mp3]
"Hey" [mp3 removed]
"Hiphop Snares" [mp3 removed]
"More Marching Morons" [mp3 removed]
"Mutator OD Bass (Long Version)" [4.8 MB .mp3]
"Our Rulers From Space" [mp3 removed]
"Pitch Sequences" [mp3 removed]
"Pop Mechanix" [mp3 removed]
"Rubber Elephants" [mp3 removed]
"Sacred Machines Homage" [mp3 removed]
"Teleclysm" [3.3 MB .mp3]
Oskar Fischinger is the late, great abstract animated filmmaker who started his career in Germany and wound up in Hollywood, influencing Disney's Fantasia and countless other works. His style could be described as Art Deco psychedelia, both trippy and very precise. Note to the Fischinger estate. You are not very smart for telling YouTube to remove Motion Study No. 1 from its database. See, there's this thing called "resolution," spelled R-E-S-O-L-U-T-I-O-N. When videos are copied in "low resolution" and presented in "smaller screen sizes" they are not exact copies. What they do is "whet the appetites" of "potential consumers" who will "buy" your videos, thus bringing you "money." This gosh darn consarned newfangled technology thing can really be your friend if you let it.
I ordered the Fischinger videotapes several years ago from Jack Rutberg Fine Arts, to my continuing delight. Rutberg is still offering them for sale, but now some of the works on the tapes are available on DVD from the Center for Visual Music. Here are the contents of that DVD. I have noted with asterisks which films are on the Rutberg tapes. Looks like 3 films are on the DVD that haven't been available before. That's worth 30 bucks, since you're also getting the other films at slightly better quality.
*Also on The Films of Oskar Fischinger Volume 1 (VHS), along with Muratti Gets in the Act and Study No. 8
Spirals
Study no. 6
Study no. 7*
Kreise*
Allegretto*
Radio Dynamics
Motion Painting No. 1*
Wax Experiments**
Spiritual Constructions*
Walking from Munich to Berlin**
**Also on The Films of Oskar Fischinger Volume 2 (VHS), along with Muratti Privat, Study No. 5, Study No. 9, Study No. 12, Composition in Blue, American March, Organic Fragment, Mutoscope Reels, and Muntz TV
According to the Fischinger website, CVM also released a VHS tape in 2004 with the following films: Spirals, Spiritual Constructions, Study 6, Liebesspiel, Radio Dynamics, and Motion Painting No. 1. Liebesspiel is the only piece that is neither on the Rutberg tapes or the DVD.
More Sketch and Swap. I just screen-captured the one above, by some random genius, after I submitted my image of a grandma stepping on a pompadoured guy's head.
It's Mario, of course, with a tiny cap, broad shoulders, and bull neck, kind of like those superhero Marios that popped up about a year ago.
Sally McKay recommended this site where you make a drawing and it disappears into a database and in exchange you get to watch a clip of someone else making a drawing that also disappeared into the database. I flouted the process by capturing my drawing and coloring it in in MSPaint.
LoVid has redesigned their website. I added it to my side links since I plan to go back many times to absorb what's there. They are an exemplar of how to combine so-called new media with so-called traditional art. Completely loose and funky but relentlessly creative and productive, it's as if they don't have time to get hung up on what categories they are or are not falling into. I will probably update this post or do subsequent posts as I look at their site and thoughts occur to me.