Bits: 03.11.10

• The landscape of helipads (above), by the Center for Land Use Interpretation.

• Tyler Green looks at Kendall Geers' proposal for the Guggenheim's Contemplating the Void exhibition through the lens of torture. Geers' plan would install his 1995 text-based work in the museum rotunda:

A bomb has been hidden, somewhere within this exhibition, set to explode at a time known to the artist alone. While it is not my intention to kill anyone, that risk does exist. I apologize in advance for any injuries, fatalities, damage or other inconvenience that my work, will cause. In this matter I have no choice, being as much a victim of the course of Art History and contemporary politics as those who are hurt in the process. I take consolation in the fact that chance will be entirely responsible for the final statistics.

• Hrag on the New Museum's unofficial new ad campaign.

• A work by the late Simon Sparrow, a self-taught artist and preacher in Madison, Wis., and the subject of one of my first in-depth bits of art writing, was featured on Antiques Road Show last week (fast-forward to 3:56). Here's a piece of his at the Smithsonian.

• Architecture of Consequence, on view now through May 20 at the Netherlands Architecture Institute, Rotterdam. Via The Pop-Up City, which calls out a floating island designed for Amsterdam by Dutch architect Anne Holtrop with Studio Noach and botanist Patrick Blanc.

• The daughter of Korda, the Cuban photographer whose image of Che Guevara is inarguably the most iconic in the country's history, is suing those who use the now-copyrighted image.

• Burlesque interviews Broken Crow about their SXSW murals.

• This video of Kirsten Dunst singing "I'm Turning Japanese," directed by Takashi Murakami, is "so two months ago," I'm told. Via Hiroshi Sunairi on Facebook.

Bars v. grocery stores in the upper midwest

I live in a red state after all -- when red means there are more bars than grocery stores in a given area. Via Andrew Sullivan via Flowing Data.

Bits: 03.02.10

A photo from Umida Akhmedova's censored series on women in Uzbekistan

• Last month, an Uzbek court found documentarian/photographer Umida Akhmedova guilty of slander -- er, "offense through mass media" -- against the nation for her photographs and film about the plight of newly married women there. While she could've been sentenced to three years in prison, she was released under an amnesty tied to the 18th anniversary of Uzbekistan's independence. Created through a grant from the Swiss embassy, her film The Burden of Virginity hasn't been shown in her native country, but is viewable online. Here's a selection of the offending photos, from the series "Woman and Man: From Dawn till Night."

• Assignment 3 of ROLU's participatory poster project Scattered Light is out. Send your "photo of a wall" today.

• Bovine bombing by "popagandist" Ron English.

• Avatar is the top-grossing film of all time... only it isn't.

• It's about time: "Crumpled City Maps are soft, yet hard-wearing, waterproof and meant to be creased and crumpled."

• When mascots defy the brand, things get apocalyptic: The logo-laden Oscar-nominated animated short Logorama features a foul-mouthed, AK-47-toting Ronald McDonald, a bird-flippin' Michelin Man cop, a booger-flinging Big Boy and hundreds of other corporate symbols run amok. NSFW: language, implied Jolly Green Giant wiener. (Via A Whole Lotta Nothing; thanks, Ed.)

• Banksy, on why he won't be doing any gallery shows soon: “I’ve come into contact with a lot more villains since I moved from vandalism into selling paintings. The art world is full of shady people peddling bright colours. Anti-graffiti groups like to say tagging intimidates people, but not as much as modern art. That stuff is deliberately designed to make normal people feel stupid. I could try and get more legitimate mural work, but scaling a drainpipe is still probably a lot easier than getting an original idea past a committee.”

• Another animated short: David Lynch recounts meeting with George Lucas, who wanted him to direct Return of the Jedi.

• The Groundswell Collective's new journal is dedicated to crisis folklore. Just ten bucks.

• Alec Soth is on Twitter.

• Telling: The first image in ArtInfo's slideshow preview of the Armory Show isn't art, but a bejeweled woman in a cocktail dress.

• Your moment of barfing Windsor guard.

Paul Schmelzer as signed by Rep. Michele Bachmann

The illustrious Minnesota congresswoman participates in my Signifier, signed autograph project, joining the likes of Paul Wellstone, Noam Chomsky, Yoko Ono and 70 others in signing my name.

Bits: 02.09.10

Sue Coe, Helping Hands (2010), via Graphic Witness and Provisions Library

• The new issue of the Journal of Aesthetics & Protest includes Futurefarmers founder Amy Franceschini in discussion with Spanish organic farmer Javier Perez about "whether it's possible to undertake projects outside the market" and the "social banking" Perez and Coop 57 do.

• RIP Bob Noorda, designer of the NYC Subway's iconic signage.

• Art critic Jerry Saltz makes art cry: He says he took so long talking to a girl who was "performing" a Tino Seghal work at the Guggenheim that she broke down in tears. It's "the only time in my life I ever wrote a letter of abject apology to a work of art," he says.

• Read: Susan Sontag's 1967 essay, "The Aesthetics of Silence."

• A sculpture that endlessly tries to sell itself on eBay: "Every ten minutes the black box pings a server on the internet via the ethernet connection to check if it is for sale on the eBay. If its auction has ended or it has sold, it automatically creates a new auction of itself."

• Yes Man in Minneapolis: Mike Bonanno, co-founder of The Yes Men, will be in town for a screening of The Yes Men Fix The World this Friday night at Oak Street Cinema.

• Minimalist posters for Star Wars planets and moons -- like Endor!

• The haters at Westboro Baptist Church shouldn't have all the sign-making fun. And a WBC counter-protest outside Twitter headquarters gets delightfully absurd.

• Artboobs, via @TylerGreenDC.

Shaq on art

High-larious. Shaquille O'Neal, interviewed by New York Magazine on curating the Flag Art Foundation show Size DOES Matter (opening Feb. 19), on an art project he'd like to fund:

“I’d like Ron Mueck to do a sculpture of me. I would like to make it twenty feet tall and put it in the middle of a residential neighborhood—make it two stories high and in the head I’d have my office.”

Bits: 01.31.10

Rosemarie Fiore, who recently made firework "drawings," is now creating large-scale works by attaching airbrushes to amusement-park rides. (Thanks, Kristina.)

• RIP Howard Zinn. I haven't been able to write about this yet: so much to say, such a tremendous inspiration, lots of sadness. For now, suffice it to say, I'm grateful for the lessons offered by a true "radical" (etymology: "from the roots").

• The dream Alice Walker had the night she heard of her friend and teacher Zinn's death: "We (Someone and I) were looking for the place we go to when we die. After quite a long walk, we encountered it. What we saw was this astonishingly gigantic collection of people and creatures: birds and foxes, butterflies and dogs, cats and beings I’ve never seen awake, and they were moving toward us in total joy at our coming. We were happy too. But there was nothing to support any of us, no land, no water, nothing. We ourselves were all of it: our own earth. And I woke up knowing that this is where we go when we die. We go back to where we came from: inside all of us."

• RIP Karen Schmeer, film editor for films including Errol Morris' Standard Operating Procedure, who was run down in New York at age 39 by a getaway car fleeing a pharmacy robbery. (Via @agentmule.)

• "'Grid cells' that act like a spatial map in the brain have been identified for the first time in humans, according to new research by UCL scientists which may help to explain how we create internal maps of new environments." (Thanks, Chris Steller.)

• BLDG BLOG looks at "an artificial island and devotional chapel constructed in Montenegro's Bay of Kotor."

• Saber again discusses his graffiti-based video project on heathcare reform that so enraged conservatives.

• Festival: The Influencers -- featuring The Yes Men, Critical Art Ensemble and the Black Label Bicycle Club, among others — Feb. 2–4 in Barcelona.

• Basquiat stencil.

Time-lapse of Flight 1549 emerging from the icy Hudson

Posted on Kontain.com - [Flight 1549] from David Martin on Vimeo.

This time-apse footage of the salvage operation of Flight 1549 after its crash in the Hudson last year is truly remarkable -- even moreso because of the cinematic music David Martin sets it to.
Via Doobybrain.

Bits: 01.26.10

John Morefield's booth at the Ballard Farmer's Market, Seattle. Photo: Jim Bovino

• Falling on tough times, out-of-work Seattle architect John Morefield decided to get entrepeneurial: He set up a stand at a farmer's market where passersby can ask him about home design and more. Half networking, half community service, it's also decent marketing. His story's been picked up by the New York Times, NPR, Media Bistro and others.

• Gilding the pierogi: Northeast Minneapolis artist wants to erect a sculptural homage to the Eastern European dumpling. Pricetag: Around $100k.

• Zanadesign's sand printer is a person-powered wheel that leaves a message -- in this case, a commemoration of Spain's 1812 constitution -- on the beach. Great idea, but how soon 'til Coke or Corona get hold of it?

• As part of the Toronto exhiition Public Realm, Broken City Labs created a series of fill-in-the-blank text-based projections raising questions about how we think about public space.

• @TheNassassin points out what looks like a fascinating new PBS series: Sound Tracks. The first episode includes Fela 2.0, Borat v. Kazakh musicians, and a look at the man behind Putin propaganda.

• As Jose Luis Rodriguez is accused of using a tame Iberian wolf in a shot that won a wildlife photography prize, the Financial Times reports that Moscow's stray dogs are becoming more wolf-like. (Moscow averages 84 strays per square mile!) Via @Shardlow.

• The BBC to air a film shot entirely by chimpanzees. Tune in Wednesday night; Dramamine recommended.

• Auto-tuning MLK.

Bits: 01.22.10

Adi Nes, Untitled (Boys 7), 2000, via I Heart My Art

• Artist Andrea Zittel discusses 100 Acres, a "habitable island" she's building in Indiana that'll have temporary residents the next few summers. Fitting the theme, on Zittel's favorite-books list is The Hidden Messages in Water by Masaro Emotu, which examines how thought can affect water molecules.

• Via C-Monster, something we midwesterners hear all the time: the space-age sounds of frozen lakes. (You might hear 'em if you head to Art Shanty Projects, now through Feb. 7 on Medicine Lake.)

• Jeffrey Deitch's last show at his New York Gallery, before shutting it down to become director of LACMA, is a Shepard Fairey solo exhibition. Fairey recently discussed his copyright battle with the AP -- and lying about the source for his Obama posters -- for the series Brave New Conversations.

• Via Fimoculous, online video of three episodes of Andy Warhol's early '80s cable TV shows.

• The Tate has purchased eight William Blake etchings that were unearthed in a box of used books in the '70s.

• The Vancouver Art Gallery is hosting three off-site projects for the Olympics, including a giant mural by Michael Lin and, by Ken Lum, three scale replicas of squatter’s shacks from Maplewood Mudflats settlement in North Vancouver.

• Homelessness is très chic... according to Vivienne Westwood, at least.

• The Banksy-produced documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop debuts at Sundance on Sunday.

• Mashup: Wu Tang v. The Beatles = Enter the Magical Mystery Chambers.

Broken Crow time-lapse: Sprinting lion

Broken Crow Stencil Mural - 1 Day Time lapse - Lion Man from The BFC on Vimeo.

Nice time lapse of Mike Fitzsimmons and John Grider, AKA Broken Crow, installing their lion-man stencil mural in downtown Minneapolis. Via l'etoile.

Avatar: $500 million and the best font they can afford is Papyrus?

Artnet tweets:

Best "Avatar" critique: a $500-mil budget and they chose “Papyrus” as their font?

My thought exactly (except for the "best critique" part: I'd save that for musings on race and gender in the film). But one entity thrilled by it is "Papyrus" itself -- actually, the site Pr*tty Sh*tty -- which wrote fanmail to director James Cameron. An excerpt:

Goodness knows I’ve worked hard the past 26 years to make a name for myself. And it’s felt great coming to the aid of New Age spa owners, suburban party planners, and young couples looking to save money by making their own wedding invitations. But only now, by appearing in your movie, have I been given mainstream, high-level recognition as a serious typeface. And for that, I thank you.

The Finches: Birds do avant rock

From an installation by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot commissioned for the Barbican. Thanks, Taylor.

Artist Joy Garnett to donate painting to collector who gives $10K to Haiti relief

Joy Garnett's Evac (2005), an abstraction of New Orleans on fire after Hurricane Katrina

Artist Joy Garnett scours the media for news images of disasters, man-made or natural, that become the basis for her evocative paintings on canvas. Events from the Paris riots to Hurricane Katrina have sparked her work, but it's that last tragedy that's the subject of a painting (above) she says she'll give to the first collector who donates $10,000 or more for relief in earthquake-struck Haiti. Like the southeast Asian tsunami of 2005, Katrina is "a disaster that still reverberates," she tells Hrag Vartanian at Hyperallergic.

No collectors have come forward -- yet -- but she says she has been contacted by an artist who wants to do the same thing. And maybe other, bigger-name creators will follow suit:

After posting, it occurred to me that while I may have the capacity to raise thousands, or perhaps tens of thousands, through the donation of one or two paintings, more established artists whose work commands a lot more certainly have it in their power to follow suit.

For instance: Damien Hirst is opening at Gagosian in New York on Jan 20th. I imagine he might take it upon himself to donate some portion of those inevitable sales. Just a suggestion.

For those of us with non-collector incomes, consider donating to the Red Cross by texting “HAITI” to 90999 to have $10 added to your phone bill.

Bits: 01.13.10

OOF, Ed Ruscha (1962-1963), via ArtObserved

• MoMA's using Ruscha's piece above on its 404 pages, says Hyde or Die.

• Photo Essay: Earthquake in Haiti. Donate here. Via C-Monster.

• The big news among art insiders (which I'm way behind the curve on): Art dealer Jeffrey Deitch is closing up his New York gallery to accept the directorship at LAMOCA. Tyler has a three part interview with Deitch (1, 2, 3).

• Design guru Bruce Mau's 43-point "Incomplete Manifesto for Growth."

• Bill T. Jones and the cast of FELA! on Colbert.

• Peter Ross on how he ended up photographing all of William Burroughs' stuff.

• RIP Gumby creator Art Clokey.

• Art Shanty Projects 2010 opens Saturday, Jan. 16 on Medicine Lake west of Minneapolis.

• Video: If the French made Star Wars.

Video: Graf artist Saber on the flag video that earned him rightwing death threats

Graffiti artist Saber on his flag piece that sent the right into conniptions. An epileptic who can't get health insurance because of his pre-existing condition, he made the graffiti piece of layered graffiti over a flag image for Organizing for America’s Health Care Video Challenge, where it was a finalist. He drew the ire of rightwing media outlets like Fox News and NewsMax and death threats from online commenters. To that, he says, bring it on: "I'm happy to be America's Enemy No. 1. Please. By all means. It makes my art more valuable."

Not safe for work (language).