December 2009
61 posts
New Year's message: Tom Waits reads Bukowski's... →
A wonderful happy-new-year message, Charles Bukowski’s “The Laughing Heart”:
your life is your life don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission. be on the watch. there are ways out. there is a light somewhere. it may not be much light but it beats the darkness. be on the watch. the gods will offer you chances. know them. take them. you can’t beat death but you can beat...
Bits: 12.30.09 →
Kermit on a bike: modified lane marker in Newtown, Sydney, Australia, by CallanB, Flickr • New York’s Museum at Eldridge Street has commissioned artist Kiki Smith and architect Deborah Gans to create a permanent stained-glass window for the historic 1887 Lower East Side synagogue. DesignBoom has the preliminary drawings. • This is definitely deserving of a long post of its own, but in case...
“Since Gov. Tim Pawlenty took office in 2003, not one public official has filed a...”
– Jon Collins @ MnIndy
Bits: 12.21.09 →
The River that Flows Both Ways, Spencer Finch, installed along the High Line, NYC • The Eyewriter is “a low-cost eye-tracking apparatus & custom software that allows graffiti writers and artists with paralysis resulting from Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis to draw using only their eyes.” • Northern Lights announces its 2010 Artist on the Verge grant winners, who’ll be...
Gunning Full Throttle into the Greenhouse
conscientious:
“What a disaster. The climate summit in Copenhagen has failed because of the hardball politicking of the United States, China and several other countries — and because people just can’t seem to fathom how catastrophic climate change will be. They probably won’t have long to wait before things become a bit clearer.” - Der Spiegel
“Like businessmen who insist a deal is legit,...
Bits: 12.15.09 →
• After the Vancouver City Council forced the removal of an art billboard (mildly) critical of the Olympics, the piece in question — Olympic rings with four frowny faces and one smile, created outside an art gallery — is back up, and the Council promises they won’t clamp down on galleries this way again. • “St. Gaudi”? PRI’s The World did a segment last night...
Canada promises to cut emissions by 40%... only... →
Canada’s “announcement,” given at a replica of the COP15 venue If it’s too good to be true… the Yes Men are probably involved. The legendary pranksters teamed up with “Climate Debt Agents” from ActionAid to announce Canada’s bold — but, alas, untrue — reversal in climate policies. Timed to coincide with the UN summit on climate change...
Bits: 12.14.09 →
Mobile Matrix by Gabriel Orozco, a modified whale skeleton on view in his MoMA mid-career survey • American architect Christophe Cornubert’s “CO2 Cube,” now on view in Copenhagen, is a glowing video cube displaying artwork and newscasts. But its size is what’s most important: At 19,683 cubic feet, it represents one metric ton — the amount of carbon dioxide the...
“In a soft voice, with no quiver or pain or disturbance, he said,...”
– Helen Nearing, co-author of the Good Life series of books on sustainability, describing her husband Scott’s death in 1983 at age 100 after he’d chosen to stop eating. From “At the End of a Good Life,” In Context, Summer 1990.
"War is Over," now in Braille, semaphore and...... →
Yoko Ono continues to add languages to her Flickr set of printable “War Is Over” posters — with new versions running from Croation and Burmese to semaphore, nautical flags and… Klingon. Yoko and her staff have created 60 versions so far, but much more is to come.
We’re also looking out for Amharic, Assamese, Azerbaijani, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Cantonese/Yue, Cebuano,...
U.S. zip code ScribbleMap →
All the zip codes in American connected by a single line in ascending order.
Schjeldahl on the "mildly talented" Urs Fischer →
Urs Fischer’s Cumpadre, 2009 Suffice it to say Peter Schjeldahl didn’t love the New Museum’s show by the “mildly talented” Urs Fischer. The kicker, from his New Yorker mini-review:
It’s all nicely diverting—but from what? If you spend more than twenty minutes with the three-floor extravaganza, you’re loitering. The New Museum could just as well not have done the show...
"War is Over" in 47 languages →
Yoko Ono has just posted versions of her “War is Over…” piece with John Lennon in 47 languages including Belarusian, Maltese, Japanese, Greek, Hebrew, Farsi, Mandarin, French and Turkish. Twenty-nine years ago today Lennon was murdered.
From the archives: Sonic Youth at the Walker Art... →
Just unearthed this 2006 photo I took while working at the Walker Art Center: Sonic Youth visits the exhibition Cameron Jamie.
Bits: 12.07.09 →
• Posterchild proposes… fittingly taking over a Manhattan subway sign to pop the question (above). • Ai Weiwei, recovering from an attack by police and having had his web site shut down by authorities, on why artists should engage with new media: “To use art is not enough, to describe your view, in the old traditional forms, such as painting, sculpture…as a citizen you need to express...
