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).

Epic: '70s Hard-rock speed yodeling

My mind is blown. Via @zenrhino

Bits: 01.07.10

Cinq ellipses ouvertes, Felice Varini, via rebel:art

• Chris Hedges on "The Pictures of War You're Not Supposed to See," and a counterpoint to it. Via Conscientious.

• Vancouver Art Gallery expected to be center of anti-Olympics activism next month. Via @groundswellblog.

• Essay: Hans Ulrich Obrist's "Manifestos for the Future"

• Video: Walker Art Center senior registration technician David Bartley shows off his "top five things that have to be identified as art." Among them: Meyer Vaisman's Trash, bits from Fischli & Weiss' "Empty Room" installation, and a Cady Noland piece.

• Audio slideshow: Alec Soth narrates images from his trip to Las Vegas.

• Video: The 1985 International Emmy-winning documentary on painter Francis Bacon, part of the BBC's The South Bank Show.

• Best art story lede: "Having put out the call for vagina–related works to include in an exhibition, New York art dealer Francis Naumann was unprepared for the response. 'I've got vaginas coming out of my wazoo,' he says." Via C-Monster.

• Infographics from the 1930's and beyond.

• Chanel samurai armor by artist Tetsuya Noguchi.

• Yoko Ono's next book, due out in 2015, will be a memoir that will discuss for the first time details of how the Beatles broke up.

• Geek marriage proposal: guy uses a 3-million-candlepower spotlight to trace "Emily, will you marry me?" in light around the city as a rooftop-mounted DSLR camera with the shutter open captures it all.

"Gorram greebols!": A list of fictional swear words

Frinx!

Bits: 01.04.10

World's longest graffiti? Via Torontoist.

• Curator: That's one of the top 50 jobs of 2010, according to U.S. News & World Report. But don't expect big bucks: only the top 10 percent of museum curators make over $83,000 a year. Via Unbeige.

• Speaking of curators, here's your chance to stump some: Submit questions to the Walker Art Center by Wednesday, then show up Thursday for The Inquisition, an art quiz show of sorts, to see if curators or community members know the answers.

• Probably not making the top-jobs list: gallery monitors, guards and docents.

• Chicago exhibition: Photographer Anna Shteynshleyger's portraits of members of the Orthodox Jewish community at The Renaissance Society through Feb. 14.

• Forty UK museum face budget cuts because all the money's being funneled to the 2012 Olympics, reports the Independent (via Hyperallergic).

• News you can use: how to spot genetically modified food at the grocery story. (Via TWBE.)

NYT on C-Monstah

New York Times media writer David Carr says "Twitter will endure," and as if to offer proof, he lists nine Twitterers to follow -- including Eyeteeth pal C-Monster ("Visual arts savant, pop culture tastemaker," according to Carr).

New Year's message: Tom Waits reads Bukowski's "The Laughing Heart"

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 death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

P.S. !@%# you, 2009.

Via @halomode.

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 that doesn't happen: ROLU has launched scattered light, a participatory poster and attendant photo exhibition project by asdf, commissioned by ROLU.

• A "huffy" Canada has shut down two spoof sites critical of the country's response to climate change. Problem is, in the process they killed some 4,500 other sites as well.

• Artnet compiles its year-end list "completely at random": "We won’t go into the details of our procedure, but let’s just say it involved a 12-sided die, and it would make John Cage proud." Via Joy Garnett on Facebook.

• Speaking of Joy Garnett, she offers the ten "most scathing art review zingers of 2009." My fave: Artforum's Gene McHugh writes that the New Museum's Younger than Jesus triennial inaugurated "the era of the exhibition as status update."

• As C-Monster's Carolina Miranda looks at bug-based art, Art:21's Nicole Caruth recaps the year in meat.

• Speaking of C-Monster, check out her new gallery of street-art in San Jose, Costa Rica.

• Video: The most important 6-second drum loop in music history. Via Mediation.

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 completing works on the intersection of art and technology next year: Arlene Birt, Kyle Phillips, Janaki Ranpura, Tyler Stefanich and Tectonic Industries.

• Photographer Alec Soth is blogging again! Read him at Little Brown Mushroom. His remembrance of Larry Sultan is especially good.

• Salva Lopez's photos of abandoned water parks.

• Video: David Byrne discusses his book Bicycle Diaries.

• Posters 4 Tomorrow's 100 best posters of 2009. Theme: Freedom of expression.

• A new $1.99 contemporary art iPhone app, “Art for Mobile Life," starts out with a work by German artist Carsten Nicolai.

• The Web 2.0 Suicide Machine: Kill your social network.

• Dickens' ivory-and-gold toothpick sells for $9,150 at auction.

• Your moment of badass cat on Roomba.

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 about the movement to canonize the Spanish architect, but apparently it's been going on awhile.

• Dischord Records co-founder and Minor Threat drummer Jeff Nelson put an autographed test pressing of his old band’s 1983 EP, Out of Step, up on eBay -- and sold it for nearly $6k.

• My favorite from the "Crappy Bootleg DVD cover" Flickr pool is this pirated Star Wars DVD from Malawi: Along with Anakin and Padmé, it features Schwarzenegger with a big-ass gun and the subtitle, "Science Fiction Perform Distinctive." (Thanks, Ron.)

• Thanks to a Facebook campaign, Rage Against the Machine's 1992 F-bomb-laden single "Killing In The Name" is edging out a tune by the winner of Simon Cowell's The X Factor on the top of the UK's holiday charts. Cowell called the campaign "cynical" and "stupid," but RATM's Tom Morello is a fan. Best part: The Facebook group is soliciting donations to the homeless group Shelter, which has earned more than £30,000 so far.

• Shuga Records asked me to come up with a top-10 list of best albums of 2009. Here it is.

• Weird Al does guest vocals on "I Bleed" at a recent Pixies gig.

• Mediaite looks at the last decade in logos.

Canada promises to cut emissions by 40%... only not really: The Yes Men at Copenhagen

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 in Copenhagen, the news came in a fake press release attributed to Environment Canada:

Agenda 2020 sets binding emissions reductions targets of 40% below 1990 levels by 2020 and at least 80% by 2050, in line with the recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and approaching the levels demanded by the African Group (link). The plan also introduces a new instrument, known as the "Climate Debt Mechanism" (CDM), committing Canada to much-needed funding to those developing countries facing the most dire consequences of climate change. CDM payments will begin with 1% and rise to the equivalent of 5% of Canada's GDP annually by 2030.

That was followed quickly by a response from a Ugandan official (also fake), who on a faux COP15 website, congratulated Canada: "This is a day that will define our century," said Margaret Matembe. "Today, we no longer have to wait for a COP20 or COP100 before the voices of our children are heard."

When the real Canada finally responded, they said, "More time should be dedicated to playing a constructive role instead of childish pranks," then accused green activist Steven Guilbeault, of Equiterre, of being behind the ruse (Guilbeault called it "shameful" that he'd be accused without proof).

Among Canada's transgresssions, according to a Yes Men statement: it's the only country in the world to bail on its Kytoto Protocol promises and was voted worst of all countries for it at last year’s climate summit in Poznan.

Update: The UpTake shoots video of the Yes Men explaining the Canada COP15 hoax.

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 average citizen of an industrialized country releases each month.

• In moving testimony at Copenhagen, Ian Fry from the Polynesian nation of Tuvalu told delegates of his frustration that real action on climate change is held up by a few American senators: "The fate of my country rests in your hands."

• 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.

"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

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

"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.

Update: Yoko's staff now have 60 versions, including Burmese, American Sign Language and Klingon.

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.

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.

WaPo correction: Public Enemy didn't say 9/11 was a joke

D'oh. From Thursday's Washington Post:

A Nov. 26 article in the District edition of Local Living incorrectly said a Public Enemy song declared 9/11 a joke. The song refers to 911, the emergency phone number.

Bits: 11.30.09

Weegee, After the Opera at Sammy's Nightclub on the Bowery, c. 1944, via Creative Review

• Jim Lambie discusses his music (Teenage Fanclub) and his art (colorful site-specific works made from masking tape).

• How graffiti of a pink, 60-foot nude woman came to be on the Malibu Canyon Tunnel in 1966 -- and where it went.

•New on UBUWEB: Stan Brakhage's Riddle of the Lumen (1972), of which Brahkhage said "the 'hero' of the film is light itself."

• For its 2010 contest World Press Photo added a rule to allow only "retouching which conforms to currently accepted standards in the industry." Whatever that means.

• Eyebeam Art + Technology Center -- a partner on Add-Art, which currently features my selection of Brian Ulrich photos -- announced its call for residencies and fellowships. Deadline for both: Mar. 1. Here's how to apply.

• Call for Entries: ARTCRANK Minneapolis is now accepting artist submissions for its 2010 poster show.

• Who knew? The Weisman Art Museum rents artworks to students and staff. Via @ckloecker and @weismanart.

• As the UK preps to tax high earners, gazillionaire artist Damien Hirst -- he of the $100 million diamond-encrusted skull -- plans a show in lower-tax Monaco. Via @artnetdotcom.

Bits: 11.25.09

VVORK: "Transformed rooms of the Neugerriemschneider gallery in Berlin, by Pawel Althamer. As a vanitas gesture, the gallery remained open 24 hours a day."

• The (awesome) Groundswell Collective is launching a print journal. And they're looking for submissions on the topic of "crisis folklore": "How we imagine future stories that describe our current time period can give us an alternative glimpse of the cultures we are shaping in the here-and-now." Oops: the deadline is Nov. 30!

• Loving Cooper Union's new Roni Horn-esque signage.

• Spec-lash! "In an effort to educate Visual Communication Designers and those who use their services, on the damaging effects caused by spec work and spec-based design contests, a group of designers from all over the globe banded together, fueled by passion and a lot of caffeine, to bring NO!SPEC to the public."

• Errol Morris' favorite scenes from Frederick Wiseman films.

• Did REVOK really tag a Greek airliner with the phrase "Stay High"?

• Beautiful Decay looks at the work of Minneapolis' own, Roxane Jackson.

• Google has photographed some 14,000 objects from Iraq's national museum and will put them online early next year.

• Pop-Up City's look at Russian pop-up culture -- "flexible buildings, DIY campers, truck houses, and limousine-caravans" -- reminds me of this Northern Minnesota stretch limo I stumbled upon a few years back.

• Brian Sholis interviews Luc Sante on his new book about early 20th-century folk photography.

• Should you be passing through Durban, South African next March, don't miss the 2010 Art and Social Justice Conference.

• You've heard of the 100-Mile Diet; now there's the 100-Mile Thanksgiving.

Dark Stores: Brian Ulrich for Add-Art

I curated the new edition of Add-Art, a free Firefox extension created by artist Steve Lambert that replaces online ads with art. With Black Friday a few days away, I selected work from Chicago photographer Brian Ulrich's "Dark Stores" series. Featured works include: Worcester Mall, Shapes, JC Penney, Dixie Square Mall, Metro North Mall, Circuit City, HH Gregg, and the iPhone shot, Saturn (below). Following is my essay to accompany the project. See more in situ shots here.

There’s a distinct trajectory to Chicago-based photographer Brian Ulrich’s work over the first decade of the new millennium. His focus six or seven years ago -- documentation of overabundant mall environs and big-box stores packed to the rafters with affordably priced synthetic goods – eventually started shifting to the next stage in the lifespan of consumer objects. From the sales floors where “brand-new” promises were proferred, they made their inevitable way to secondary markets like thrift stores where, dirty and tattered, they’re left for those further down the socioeconomic ladder. Today, Ulrich’s lens is trained increasingly on the long tail of this arc: the empty shells of malls shops, car dealerships and megastores that have been abandoned in the wake of economic downturn.

Ulrich’s work is a natural fit for Add-Art: It’s e-commerce, after all, that’s contributing to the demise of bricks-and-mortar stores. And while the ebullient optimism of in-store promos or zany used-car commercials may be fading in suburban Chicago or downtown Detroit, these online ads – banners flashing to attract the eye to home refinancing deals, popping up (or under) to remind us of weight-loss schemes – maintain their focus-group-tested opulence. Temporarily, that realm will be taken over by Ulrich’s images of a teenybopper mall boutique stripped of everything but the neon “Ear Piercing” sign; the branded architecture of a Circuit City store reduced to a still-branded ruin; a blaze-orange “0%” banner, once touting low-low prices at a car dealership, now advertising the showroom’s abandonment.

It’s a bit of visual jujitsu: using the seductive power, placement and vocabulary of online advertising against itself -- to deliver an image that serves as a kind of warning against putting too much faith in the promises of consumerism. In an interview last spring with Chicagoist, Ulrich said, “I think about what the Internet has done for photography that's really wonderful: it has amplified photographys' ability to be propaganda… I'm really trying to promote an ideology and a certain level of thinking and responsibility about consumerism to as many people as possible.”

In that regard, putting his images not only on the internet, but in the places where ads are supposed to be doing their seduction seems like perfect propaganda.

Brian Ulrich earned his MFA at Columbia College Chicago, where he now teaches. Awarded a 2009 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, his work has been exhibited at a variety of museums including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Carnegie Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Photography and the Walker Art Center, and has appeared in publications including Adbusters, Mother Jones and the New York Times Magazine. His monograph, Copia, was published by Aperture as part of the MP3: Midwest Photographers Project in 2006.

Happy Art Week?

Via Ben Sisario, h/t @philouza

Os Gemeos in 3D

Eyegunk points us to a series of amazing shots of O Estrangeiro, a public performance in São Paulo by Plasticiens Volants that included an inflatable Os Gemeos character/parade float and the Brazilian duo's trademark giant murals.

Nominate a project for Architecture for Humanity's "Design Like You Give a Damn 2"

Architecture for Humanity co-founder Cameron Sinclair, interviewed on Eyeteeth back in 2006, reports that the group's popular book Design Like You Give a Damn is getting a sibling: Volume II is scheduled for publication in September 2011. In preparation, he's looking for nominations of projects that

"...highlight breakthrough design solutions with the power and potential to improve our lives and the world. These designs may improve the human spirit, increase awareness of the environment, or respond to areas of need in the world, whether to provide shelter and clean water or address climate change and humanitarian crises."

Nominate projects here, or follow current submissions here, like the Thai Butterfly Houses (Soe Ker Tie), built for Karen refugees along the Burma-Thai border (pictured), by TYIN Tegnestue.

RIP Jeanne-Claude

Jeanne-Claude, wife and 51-year artistic collaborator with Christo, has died at age 74. She passed away Wednesday night in New York from complications of a brain aneurysm, the Times reports. The duo created memorable large-scale "temporary works of art" like The Gates in Central Park, Wrapped Reichstag and Surrounded Islands. In a note on the pair's website, Christo says Jeanne-Claude's body will be donated to science and that he's committed to completing works in progress, Over The River, Project for the Arkansas River, State of Colorado, and The Mastaba, Project for the United Arab Emirates.

Update: Here's PBS' Art Beat on the Colorado project. And here's the Times' full obituary.

It feels pretty good to not be dead.

Your moment of vaguely-uncomfortable-but-wholly-infectious inspiration. Via Slog.

Bits: 11.16.09

Artists displaced by wealthy urbanites in 1921 Greenwich Village. New York Times via Bloggy.

• Krzysztof Wodiczko describes his ICA Boston exhibition, …OUT OF HERE: The Veterans Project, an immersive soundscape based on soldiers' experiences of attacks in Iraq: “It could be an interior of a soldier who came back from war and who is re-living, remembering, recalling some scenes and moments — perhaps similar to the one that I’m trying to create." Listen to WBUR's segment on the installation.

• "Burning Man Obama," by Chinese artist Liu Bolin. Here's a Reuters video story on it.

• Billboard intervention by mob ster: "GO GO GO / WORK WORK WORK / PRODUCE PRODUCE PRODUCE."

• The Walker and eight other museums are in the early stages of figuring out how to give visitors "prodigious [online] access to artists’ works in the permanent collections," thanks to a new Getty grant.

• Anyone got a parlor I can borrow? Guessing who forked over $43.7 million for Warhol's 200 One Dollar Bills is "becoming something of a parlor game," the Times tells us.

• Minnesota-based cryptographer Bruce Schneier to get his own action figure.

• The Detroit Institute of Arts in LEGOS.

• Work at McDonald's Gitmo!

Is culture-jamming dead?

From Borat to Punk'd to The Yes Men, pranks have really taken off since the early days of adbusted billboards and "subvertisements." But with a surplus of flash mobs, fake newscasts and gag YouTube videos, it's worth asking: have political pranks jumped the, uh, snark?

Dave Gilson ponders the question at Mother Jones, noting that while The Yes Men's 2004 spoof, in which they posed as Dow Chemicals execs to take belated responsibility for the Bhopal disaster, cost that company $2 billion in stock losses, today we're saturated with pranks. He writes:

After [The Yes Men's] unveiling the Halliburton SurvivaBall—a "gated community for one" that turns the wearer into a giant beige gumball—to a roomful of insurance managers, Yes Man No. 2 Mike Bonanno laments, "Instead of freaking out, they just took our business cards. Our effort had been a failure. And come to think of it, all of our efforts had been failures...Maybe making fun of stupid ideas was a stupid idea." After playing the fool for so long, the Yes Men have come to suspect that they've become fools themselves.

Gilson says that pranksterism has become mere entertainment and, along the way, serious intentions behind such acts have, in many cases, been replaced by a serious desire for attention -- quick celebrity. Further, as the hijacked Obama TIME cover -- where he's depicted as Batman's arch-enemy -- suggests, it's no longer the domain of the left. Nothing wrong with rightwingers reading Rules for Radicals to muck up town hall meetings, I suppose, but the fact that they are suggests some of the beloved tactics of the left have, perhaps, outlived their usefulness.

Related: Where's all the rightwing street art?

Mail-art: Abe's Penny Vol. 1.8 (4 of 4)

A bit late, here's the final edition of October's issue of micro-magazine/mail-art project Abe's Penny.

Mail-art: Abe's Penny Vol. 1.8 (1 of 4)
Mail-art: Abe's Penny Vol. 1.8 (2 of 4)
Mail-art: Abe's Penny Vol. 1.8 (3 of 4)

Street-art: "Warn your kids about Glenn Beck!"

The Seattle Stranger's Slog blog posts a public-service announcement/street sticker by Narboo, spotted by reader Brian Geohagan.

Milwaukee street stencil: "A house divided..."

Via Just Seeds.