It’s little wonder we Americans are feeling small, despite our nation’s massive carbon footprint, enormous economy ($13.8 trillion GNP) and gargantuan military-industrial complex. There are still forces greater than we are. Consider the weather. Over the past five years California wild fires, severe droughts, Hurricane Katrina and regional floods have overpowered the government’s resources, decimated [...]
Archive for April, 2008
Feeling small? There’s “The Man” with the movie camera.
Posted in Architecture, Exhibition, Installation, tagged creativity, Jeremy Mora, Joe Fig, Michael Peter Smith, miniatures, Ryan Boyle, scale models, shrinking dollar, small, tableaux on April 28, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Slingshots and Checkpoints
Posted in Films, tagged Documentary, film, hip hop, Palestine on April 24, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Several weeks ago I attended the NYC premiere of a film called “Slingshot Hip Hop” at MoMA. It’s a feature length documentary film produced by first-time director Jackie Reem Salloum. It may have been her first film, but you would never know if she didn’t say so—in front of a sold-out theater. Through cinéma vérité [...]
Something is rotten in the arts and cultural state of OZ (Australia)
Posted in Beyond Borders, Check out... on April 24, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Something is rotten in the arts and cultural state of OZ. At this point in time there is a critical need for arts, cultural organizations and venues (as providers of goods and services) to recognize that we in Australia have a moral and, more importantly, legal obligation under the Commonwealth Disability Discrimination Act to provide [...]
Competing Relationships: Art, Money and the Power of Time and Space
Posted in Art or Commerce?, Exhibition, Installation, Multimedia, tagged 2008, art, artists, audience, biennial, money, museum on April 23, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Earlier this spring, as we stepped off the elevator on the top floor of the Whitney Biennial, my company at the museum made the rather amusing but to my mind also very accurate observation that it all looked like “an open studio at an MFA program”. My friend was reacting against the lack of space [...]
Radical Cartography
Posted in Books, Exhibition, Mapping, tagged art book, artists, geography, history, Mapping, maps, psychogeography on April 17, 2008 | 3 Comments »
From the first known map of the trading world (inscribed on a Babylonian clay tablet in 600 BC) to Abu Abd Allah Muhammad al-Idrisi’s 1154 world map, to National Geographic’s rendering of the earth’s ocean floor, cartographic representations have helped us imagine and navigate trade routes, political states, scientific discoveries and geographic territories. Published maps [...]
P.S. on Cebu Prison dances
Posted in Conflicts of Interest, tagged CPDRC, dancing, organized crime, prisoners on April 17, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
“Sydney journalist Adam Jasper visited a number of Filipino prisons earlier this year, and …. says that the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Centre was one of the most disturbing prisons he saw, mainly because the man running it – whose family nepotistically runs Cebu province and has extensive ties to organised crime – treats [...]
Fun fitness or institutional coercion?
Posted in Conflicts of Interest, tagged algorithm dance, Cebu, dancing, Philippine prisoners, prisoners, Thriller on April 15, 2008 | 1 Comment »
By now you’ve no doubt seen at least one of the 23 YouTube videos of 1,500 Filipino prisoners in orange jump suits doing precision dancing. The first video appeared back in July 17, 2007. It was a routine done to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”
Le Chant des Partisans
Posted in Beyond Borders, Films, tagged Anna Marly, Joan Baez, Le Chant Des Partisans, Leonard Cohen, Prokofiev, Toulouse on April 13, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Yesterday I learned about another remarkable Russian woman from a documentary entitled Anna Marly, Russian Muse of the French Resistance shown at the first annual Russian Documentary Film Festival. Anna Marly (née Anna Yurievna Betulinskaya) wrote and performed the rousing anthem “Le Chant Des Partisans.” It became the theme song of the Resistance—during the occupation [...]
OTM’s (other than mexican)
Posted in Border Violations, tagged border racism on April 12, 2008 | 1 Comment »
The one true god, across all borders
Posted in A Picture is Worth..., tagged Corporate Media, fame, fortune, Miss America, religion on April 12, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Introducing the newly crowned Miss America, representing the state of Texas! Between party-planning, running a motivational speaking company and modeling, Crystle Stewart plans “to dedicate her life to international philanthropy.” That’s after she works out with the weights, touches up her makeup and sucks in that stomach!
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