eyeteeth

Bits: 12.14.09

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 11:11:00 -0600

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 average citizen of an industrialized country releases each month.

• RIP Larry Sultan: The California photographer died after struggling with cancer at age 63.

• RIP Robert Heft: He designed the 50-star American flag… as part of a high school project in 1958.

• RIP Giorgio Carbone: “After convincing his Seborgan neighbors [on the Italian Riviera] of their true significance, [he] was elected prince in 1963. He gracefully accepted the informal title of His Tremendousness, and was elected prince for life in 1995 by a vote of 304 to 4. Voters then ratified Seborga’s independence, which, by the prince’s interpretation, it already had.”

• Hiroshi Sunairi’s Tree Project — featuring plants grown from seeds of trees that survived the bombing in Hiroshima — is on view at the Horticultural Society of New York through Feb. 12. Here’s my interview with him.

• After a preview at Art Basel Miami Beach, Tamra Davis’ documentary Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child heads to Sundance next month for its world premiere. It features a long interview with Basquiat shot just before his death at age 27 in 1988.

• Here’s who’s in the 2010 Whitney Biennial.

Scott Nearing, via the Independent.

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 09:35:24 -0600

Scott Nearing, via the Independent.

"In a soft voice, with no quiver or pain or disturbance, he said, ‘All…right,’ and..."

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 08:08:00 -0600

“In a soft voice, with no quiver or pain or disturbance, he said, ‘All…right,’ and breathed slower and slower and slower ‘til there was no movement anymore and he was gone out of his body as easily as a leaf drops from the tree in autumn, slowly twisting and falling to the ground.”

- 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.

The entire population of Tuvalu lives below 2 meters above sea...

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 20:12:00 -0600

The entire population of Tuvalu lives below 2 meters above sea level. Ian Fry, the representative of the Polynesian nation, tells delegates at the UN summit in Copenhagen what’s at stake in the climate-change hearings now going on:

Madam President, we are not naive to the circumstances and the political considerations that are before us. It appears that we are waiting for some senators in the US Congress to conclude before we can consider this issue properly. It is an irony of the modern world that the fate of the world is being determined by some senators in the U.S. Congress.

Concluding, his voice breaks:

I clearly want to have the leaders put before them an option for considering a legally binding treaty to sign on at this meeting. I make this a strong and impassioned plea. We’ve had our proposal on the table for six months. Six months, it’s not the last two days of this meeting. I woke this morning, and I was crying, and that’s not easy for a grown man to admit. The fate of my country rests in your hands.

(via age-of-ecology)

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 20:08:05 -0600

(via age-of-ecology)

My name, as signed by Ed Ruscha, Noam Chomsky, Studs Terkel,...

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 11:29:40 -0600

My name, as signed by Ed Ruscha, Noam Chomsky, Studs Terkel, Yoko Ono, Errol Morris, Paul Wellstone, Jenny Holzer, David Sedaris and Frank Gehry

Hidden away in a dark corner of the internet is a project I started long ago that’s been dormant awhile. Called Signifier, signed…, I’m reviving it here thanks to a suggestion by Erica.

Many years ago I had lunch with an 8-year-old named Spencer and his father, Ron. We were at an outdoor restaurant in Madison, Wisconsin, and one of that town’s favorite sons, jazz musician Ben Sidran, sat at a nearby table. Ron urged Spencer—who has Asberger’s Syndrome, a milder form of autism—to get Sidran’s autograph, and Sidran, accustomed to such requests, gladly obliged. But when he handed the autograph back to the boy, Spencer scolded,

“Not your name. Mine!”

After regaining his composure, the musician scribbled out his own name and rewrote the boy’s.

Several years later, inspired by Spencer’s impromptu deconstruction of celebrity, I began asking artists, writers and political figures to sign my autograph, either in person or through letters. A simple enough premise, my intention was to both critique celebrity (what does it mean that Yoko Ono signed the name of a complete unknown? And is there any value to that signature?) and celebrate those who have shaped my beliefs, by either their positive or negative examples (Studs Terkel versus, say, rightwing musician Charlie Daniels).

I’ve pondered what these responses might mean to me (it’s zenlike, this repetition of my name; it’s egotistical; it’s a transfer of energy from those I respect to me; it’s a bit like the mantra-like repetition of a graffiti writer’s tag; it fits into an art historical context alongside explorations by Richard Prince, Bruce Conner, Alan Berliner, and others), but always return to this simple belief: the autographs stand alone and don’t need all this intellectual justification.

More than 70 celebrities so far have contributed to the project, and another 40 either didn’t understand it, and signed their own names (Robert Redford, the late great James Brown), or left the autograph business to their handlers, who mail out preprinted 8x10s (a rare response: Mikhail Baryshnikov, took the time to write “Not interested. Thank you.”—a full four syllables longer than my name).

In the summer of 2005, I had the chance to meet the painter Chuck Close. When I asked him to sign my name on a poster featuring his 1968 Big Self-Portrait, he gamely agreed, but later in the day, during a signing session, he forgot and signed his own name. Funny to be disappointed to get a famous artist’s autograph.

Those who have participated include some who have passed on (Sen. Paul Wellstone, Spalding Gray, Merce Cunningham), high-profile artists and architects (Matthew Barney, Frank Gehry, Maya Lin, Laurie Anderson), performers (Kim Gordon, Dave Brubeck, Henry Rollins), filmmakers (Peter Bogdanovich, Wim Wenders, Errol Morris), a few infamous politicos (Pat Buchanan, Jesse Ventura), and even the voice of Homer Simpson (Dan Castellaneta).

Maybe someday I’ll turn the project into, naturally, an autograph book. Or would that be a biograph book?

"War is Over," now in Braille, semaphore and... Klingon?

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 13:39:00 -0600

"War is Over," now in Braille, semaphore and... Klingon?:

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, Fula/Fulfulde, Gan, Georgian, Gujarati, Hakka, Hausa, Igbo, Inukitut, Javanese, Kannada, Khmer, Madurese, Maithili, Malagasy, Malay, Malayalam, Marathi, Min, Nepali, Oriya, Oromo, Punjabi, Serbo-Croatian, Shona, Sindhi, Sinhalese, Sunda, Swahili, Tamil, Telugu, Tibetan, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Wu, Xiang, Yoruba & Zhuang and many others.

We were very happy to receive Klingon and Lojban and welcome more esoteric submissions.

For the record, “War is Over” in Klingon is: “VES ‘OH GHOSTA.’”

U.S. zip code ScribbleMap

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:36:33 -0600

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

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:36:00 -0600

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 while saying it did. The effect would be roughly the same: expressing a practically reptilian institutional craving for a new art star.

Obama head cremation urn. Via Wonkette. But take note: The...

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:34:39 -0600

Obama head cremation urn. Via Wonkette.

But take note:

The personal urn does not come with hair. For hair we can digitally add hair if you wish, as you can see with our sample of president Obama. For people with longer hair we can add a wig from your specifications. This cremation urn comes on an elegant solid marble base. A Plaque and nameplate are also available.

Personal cremation urns can be designed to look like anyone. We just need good pictures. We prefer one picture from the front and one from the side. Complexions can be adjusted in the final stages and customers get a chance to proof the results.

Ask Reddit question.

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:52:53 -0600

Ask Reddit question.

Push Button, Receive Bacon.

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 20:39:27 -0600

Push Button, Receive Bacon.

kbollox: ridexfixed: sablerichard: (via kanroo) it’s a rudy...

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 19:23:13 -0600

kbollox:

ridexfixed:

sablerichard:

(via kanroo)

it’s a rudy underwater!

iheartmyart: William Lamson, Intervention 02/20/08,...

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 08:34:47 -0600

iheartmyart:

William Lamson, Intervention 02/20/08, 2008

via Phillips de Pury

Kid goes nuts at 55 seconds. “My Guitar Gently...

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:39:58 -0600

Kid goes nuts at 55 seconds. “My Guitar Gently Weeps” by a wee uke master.

curate: A girl playfully hangs from the door handle of a train,...

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:58:28 -0600

curate:

A girl playfully hangs from the door handle of a train, in Chittagong, Bangladesh. Aftab Tuhin, photographer. findout

Fox News says 120 percent of Americans believe scientists...

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 12:47:18 -0600

Fox News says 120 percent of Americans believe scientists falsify global warming stats.

"War is Over" in 47 languages

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 10:43:00 -0600

"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 Center

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 23:21:29 -0600

From the archives: Sonic Youth at the Walker Art Center:

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

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 23:21:00 -0600

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 your views. Writing, blogging and giving interviews is a part of that, otherwise you will very easily be misunderstood by the establishment…as long as there is power and people there will be a struggle.”

• Businessfolk weigh in on art — and don’t like it. BusinessInsider’s Clusterstock says a mural at Goldman Sachs by “obscure” artist Franz Ackermann is ugly, “loud and cartoonish,” and they don’t like Julie Mehretu’s piece much better. (Via The Awl.)

• Richard Wright wins the Turner Prize.

• The Schlong War: Copulating critters and a man with a giant penis make up a vaguely Bosch-like facade on a building in Berlin. Apparently, it’s part of a feud between lefty newspaper Taz and mainstream behemoth Bild.

• NEA adds linky circuitousness to sites to avoid rightwing harangues about politicization of the arts.

• After that last one, lower your blood pressure with Kimsooja.

• Highly recommended: The documentary The Cats of Mirikitani, a moving and at times enraging documentary about a homeless Japanese-American artist facing post-9/11 America.

• Just in time for the UN climate change summit in Copenhagen, Art Threat looks at the exhibition Rethink: Contemporary Art & Climate Change.

• Video collage artist Craig Baldwin’s The 70s Dimension.

• Norman Rockwell’s source photos .