35 posts tagged “information”
A new Astrarium is up: Bazaar Bizarre.
Compare and Contrast: two engravings by Andreas Vesalius, Switzerland, 1543
I posted a new Astrarium last night! It had been far too long. Next thing you know, salons will be back again. Stay tuned in 2008...
Against Landlords! For Land Reform! Stencilled poster, Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA), USSR, 1920
from Moe's Books:
"NYC's most celebrated hip downtown writer, Arthur Nersesian, is the author of six novels, including the smash hit The Fuck-Up (MTV/Pocket Books), Chinese Takeout (HarperCollins), Unlubricated (HarperCollins), Manhattan Loverboy (Akashic), Suicide Casanova (Akashic), and dogrun (MTV/Pocket Books). He is also the author of East Village Tetralogy (Akashic), a collection of four plays. He lives in New York City...
Underground legend Lydia Lunch was the primary instigator of the No Wave Movement, and the focal point of the Cinema of Transgression. A musician, writer, and photographer, she exposes the dark underbelly of passion confronting the lusty demons whose struggle for power and control forever stalk the periphery of our collective obsessions."
"He can't forget being rejected by his mother and father at the age of 11. They sent him away, alone, into a primitive community of licensed bullies and pederasts."
"You mean he went to public school."
"Exactly."
"Look Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over."
At Ratio 3 - Takeshi Murata: Escape Spirit VideoSlime. Ratio 3 has a new space, and expanded hours! About the show: "Takeshi Murata's new video furthers his exploration into digital abstraction. For this piece, Murata employs existing film footage of nature and chimpanzees, giving the viewer a connection to recognizable images that continuously pulsate and liquefy. The powerful combination of shifting colors and moving fluid shapes offer an intense experience in which the viewer witnesses the possible devolution of a species. This is the U.S. debut of Escape Spirit VideoSlime."
I woke up yesterday morning with very little desire to leave my house, so I missed out on the Día de los Muertos festival in Fruitvale Village and the Cardboard Tube Fighting League tournament that took place late yesterday afternoon in Justin Herman Plaza, though undoubtedly I would have found said events both healing and cathartic. Carnacki and I raised over $600 for KALX last night, and after being on the air with him I feel sufficiently warmed up to DJ my own fundraiser show this Friday. 9pm to midnight. Have I mentioned it?
In the meantime I am awfully sleep-deprived and down in the dumps today (and eyeing the upcoming time change with pure dread), so if you have any extra good energy lying around that you can spare please send it my way. I feel nothing like a conquering heroine these days and more like some dull creature who barely manages to muddle through.
After an epic brunch at Jimmy Bean's on Saturday, my brother and I BARTed into the city to dip our feet in the LoveFest, which I hadn't attended since the first year when they were still allowed to call it the Love Parade. Brent was suitably reassured that San Francisco dance music culture is still going strong, if suffering a little from the interest of frat boys and Marina chicks, after we watched float after float make its way down Market on the way to the Civic Center. Personally I'm always happy to see the Space Cowboys with their Unimog, bass thumping away.
We took a break from said bass to walk up to St. Boniface Church for their 18th annual Blessing of the Animals in honor of St. Francis. While we were there a small group of companion dogs lined up to be blessed both as a group and individually, each one of them also receiving a sprinkle of holy water. Outside in the courtyard the SF SPCA had cages of kittens hoping for adoption, and Brent and I almost went home with a pair each.
At CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts - Pioneers. The Wattis is back with a bang this fall, starting off with this show comparing and contrasting pioneering Bay Area artists with the historical pioneers who first settled this area. Artifacts from the Society of California Pioneers are shown next to video by Bruce Conner, Ant Farm, and the Cockettes, and the show also features selected works by Robert Bechtle, Jay DeFeo, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Jess, Dorothea Lange, Diego Rivera, Achilles Rizzoli, and Mario Savio. In other words the show covers an impressive amount of ground in a fairly small space, and it made my heart swell with love for San Francisco at the same time.
Had Brent and I not already had plans to see They Might Be Giants in Santa Cruz Saturday night, we might have instead hunkered down at the Presidio for their Film in the Fog outdoor movie screening featuring Creature from the Black Lagoon. But instead of freezing my ass off I was bouncing up and down at the Rio, laughing and yelling along the lyrics to Mammal. Thank you again for suggesting the evening's activities, Deb!
And then Sunday afternoon we blew off Comedy Day in Golden Gate Park in favor of sheer laziness in the East Bay. Brent also finally got to play Katamari Damacy, and he now fully understands its wonder. Time well spent, with him back to Africa this coming Saturday.
So my brother Brent arrived home safe and sound Friday night, and Saturday morning already my parents jumped him back into life in the U.S. by escorting him up to the San Francisco Ukulele Festival in Yerba Buena Gardens. I took BART into the city myself and met up with them just as Kimo Hussey was really getting going on his set in front of a very appreciative crowd. It was a gorgeous day on the lawn, perfect for reacclimation and listening to traditional and non-traditional uke tunes alike. We stayed through the Carey Camacho's beautiful slack-key guitar set and then wandered off to find some food.
After lunch we jumped on a bus to Ghirardelli Square, where I don't think I'd been since I was about 10 years old, for this year's Chocolate Festival, a benefit for Project Open Hand. We bought a ticket that allowed us 15 different tastings, and proceeded to sample chocolate coconut mooncake, nutty fudge brownies, chocolate truffle cake with whipped cream and raspberry, Irish coffee, Victoria's chocolate almond toffee, chocolate malts, milk chocolate chip cookies, and a white chocolate toffee cookie. Live music from accordian musician Steve Albini (not to be confused with the guy who recorded In Utero) drifted down over the Fountain Plaza as attendees jostled each other trying to get their treats. There were also sundae-eating contests and cupcake-decorating demonstrations going on, solidifying the whole experience as a veritable orgy of sweets. Yeah that's how we do things in America.
At White Walls Gallery - Richard Colman: The Ghost. Colman creates highly stylized, iconic images of humans and other creatures set against hypnotic geometric backgrounds, sometimes accented with gold leaf as if they were actual altarpieces. At the opening Saturday night I was also interested to see one of his figures rendered large as a freestanding sculpture, and a collection of drawings clustered into one corner of the gallery seemed to speak about mortality, reminding me very much of Barry McGee's work.
The body in question: anatomical drawing, Iran, late 16c
After a brief sojourn at Ritual to revive myself with some chai and a mini cupcake, I walked up to Bernal Bubbles for a lecture by awesome art couple and Bernal Heights residents Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens about their seven-year-long Love Art Laboratory project. They have assigned each year the color of a chakra and its associated properties (2007 is courage and power) and do tons of performance art designed to spread the love, and they are married in an elaborate color-themed ceremony each year as well. The project is a thrilling example of life lived as art, and it was also incredibly moving to see how they incorporated Sprinkle's battle with breast cancer in the very first year, the year they had already decided was about survival.
There was even more love (of a sort) in Golden Gate Park the next day, as the Summer of Love 40th anniversary party took over Speedway Meadow. I was there fairly early and caught the Rowan Brothers, Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks, and the New Riders of the Purple Sage, but already they were counting 20,000 people in attendance before noon. I swear anyone who wasn't at Burning Man was in that crowd. And maybe I was experiencing a contact high from the gobs of fragrant smoke floating around, but I have to say there was an excellent vibe going on. People were smiling at each other instead of closely guarding their blanket space, the music was awesome, the weather was gorgeous. Even the youngsters mimicking the tie-dye and beads of their elders looked pretty cute. Maybe we really are finally shifting out of the "me" to the "we" generation. Or nostalgia is just a powerful drug.
On my walk over to lunch in the Haight I stopped by Peacock Meadows for the annual Doin' It in the Park party. Things were just getting warmed up but already a DJ was spinning some tasty down-tempo tunes and the free BBQ was sizzling away. There was a bouncy castle for the young ones, and for us older kids they'd lined up a bank of classic arcade games like Centipede, Galaga, and Dig Dug, no quarters necessary. I tried my hand at Ms Pac-Man and made it to the first cut scene before getting chomped by ghosts and hard.
After fortifying myself with a huge bowl of noodles at Citrus Club I took the bus over to the Presidio for Shakespeare in the Park's performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream, as they blatantly copied AtmosTheatre's choice of a summer show. Still, it was an excellent production, with Titania and Oberon as bleached-blonde cyberpunk types, and I also loved the liberal use of recorded music from the likes of Nico and Billie Holiday. "The course of true love never did run smooth," especially in this play. I confess I always enjoy the scenes in the forest when the couples are freaking out on each other, the more histrionic the better. "Lord, what fools these mortals be!" And then Puck's soliloquy at the end never fails to get me in the chest, after everything has resolved itself so neatly. "Give me your hands if we be friends."
I confess I pooped out on all of my plans this weekend due to the fact I was left feeling absolutely ragged after my week last week. So I didn't make it to Mission Cultural Center's 30th anniversary art sale (no money for it either), nor to the SF Video Edit at Citizen Space (no footage for it anyway). I also confess that when my alarm went off this morning I lay in bed for 15 minutes trying to think of one thing I was excited about getting up for, and instead all I felt was dread. Gloomy, grey, worry-filled days, all stretching out endlessly in a line.
