Bits: 04.30.09

From Anna Skladmann's "Little Adults," a series of portraits of children of Russia's nouveau riche. Via Conscientious

• The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum just announced the winners of the 10th National Design Awards. A local winner: the Walker Art Center gets the Corporate Achievement Award. (Runner up was Dwell Magazine, creative directed by former Walker graphic designer Kyle Blue.)

• Video: Andy Warhol creates a digital painting of Debby Harry on a Commodore Amiga in 1985.

• Faber & Faber is republishing Samuel Beckett's works with a great series of type-only covers.

• Animal mummies at the Brooklyn Museum. Is this one?

• "Buddha with 1000 Hands," performed by the China Disabled Peoples Performance Art Troupe. [via]

• "Don't judge people according to their appearance."

Now online: Craig Baldwin's "Sonic Outlaws"

San Francisco filmmaker Craig Baldwin's essential "Sonic Outlaws" is now online in its entirety at Ubuweb. The 1995 documentary profiles the audio-collage band Negativland just after they were sued by Island Records for their parody album featuring U2 and audio of cussin' "American Top 40" host Casey Kasem. A classic for anyone interested in fair use, copyfight and culturejamming.

Watch it here.

Bits: 04.29.09

The Mill House, by Wingardh Arkitektkontor, via Curate

• Steve Lambert took the mobile arrow sign from his solo show at Charlie James Gallery in LA and hauled it around California, writing improvised messages at each site. My favorite, at a sprawling cemetery: "You are still alive."

• The Turner Prize shortlist: Roger Hiorns, Enrico David, Lucy Skaer and Richard Wright.

• Magnum offers a slideshow of photos by Paul Fusco shot from Bobby Kennedy's funeral train as it traveled across America on June 8, 1968.

• Rob Walker runs down the many faces (or lack thereof) of online anonymity.

• As NPR's All Songs Considered dubs Wilco "the best live band in America," Grammar Police reviews the new DVD "Ashes of American Flags" and Pitchfork reveals the name of Wilco's new album (due out in June): Wilco (The Album).

• The Big Picture runs a haunting, odd, beautiful, sobering series on "human landscapes from above," and GOOD follows it up with aerial views of California highways, shot by Benny Chan and on view at the Pasadena Museum of California Art (through September).

• Swine flu poster: "Keep Calm and Don't Sneeze."

The unreliable tour guide

Momus (aka Nick Currie) for Playing the City. Via Conscientious.

Bits: 04.27.09

Stencil by Broken Crow, Milwaukee, Wis.

• Minneapolis' John Grider of Broken Crow (above) and Brooklyn's Logan Hicks of Workhorse Visuals are being set loose on an abandoned bank in Brooklyn this week: Broken Horse will be the temporary installation of their collaborative work in the former Hamilton Savings & Loan Building. The opening reception is May 1; the following night Grider will be part of the Artbreak Gallery (Williamsburg) exhibition, The Great Out Doors.

• John Perreault: "Currently art is not global; but art education is. The stress-free Generational feels like, looks like, smells like any MFA thesis show that one might happen upon anywhere in the world." Via South 12th.

• Your own, personal Zaius! The Hollywood Wax Museum is auctioning off old stuff, including waxy resemblances of B.A. Baracus from The A-Team, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Gerald Ford and others. Via @artnetdotcom.

• Peter Eleey on the human skeleton buried in an unmarked location on the Walker Art Center grounds by artist Kris Martin: "Kris wanted to take a human skeleton that had been used for medical research and to bury it in an unmarked site, so this person who had been objectified would have a dignified resting place. You know it's there, but the anonymity makes it a powerful symbol of death itself... Kris' piece reminds us of how we treat our war dead. Until recently we didn't even allow photos of their coffins covered with flags. His piece only achieves the right to explore this issue because it's fundamentally rooted in a gesture of respect."

• VACUM, the Visual Art Critics Union of Minnesota (or VACUM), is officially dead, as is Conde Nast's media publication, Portfolio.

• Etching: Dürer's "Apocalypse" (my favorite might be The Dragon with Seven Heads).

Deleted billboard

Ji Lee:

On April 25th, 2009, Jordan Seiler and PublicAdCampaign.com organized a massive takeover of these [unregistered, illegal] billboards called NYSAT (New York Street Advertising Takeover): 126 billboards throughout the city were white washed by dozens of volunteers. Then, over 80 artists transformed the advertising space into their personal pieces of art. Here's what I made.

"Enjoy Subprime Lending"

The call-and-response street-art campaign Enjoy Banking takes the visual vocabulary of marketing, especially the kind of low-low-prices hype seen in windows of discount stores and loan-hawking banks and renders them, fittingly in "bubble" type, on stickers for application around New York City. Via NEWSgrist and Edward Winkelman.

Bits: 04.25.09

Paul Fryer, Pieta

• Paul Fryer's Pieta, a sculpture of Christ in the electric chair, has been raising hackles in Gap, France. Some, including the newspaper Le Monde, reacted angrily to its installation in a cathedral, but the work (from the collection of Francois Pinault) was suggested by the local bishop, Jean-Michel di Falco. He says:

"Usually, one does not feel any real emotions in front of something really scandalous: the Crucifixion.

"If Jesus had been sentenced today, he would have to reckon with the electric chair or other barbaric methods of execution. Scandalous is therefore not Jesus in the electric chair, but the indifference to his crucifixion."

• Issue 56 of Visionaire, the editioned art and fashion publication, is "solar": it "uses photo-sensitive printing wizardry that instantly transforms black-and-white artwork—by contributing artists that include Yoko Ono, M/M Paris, Alex Katz, John Baldessari, and Ryan McGinley—into vibrant color when exposed to direct sunlight."

• There's little of interest in this Flavorwire interview on "redefining urban art at the auction house," except for the last paragraph, in which Phillips de Pury & Co. curator Alex Smith give props to artist Judith Supine.

• An excellent Bill Moyers interview with The Wire creator David Simon: Part I, Part II.

• New on Ubuweb: Derek Jarman's 1993 film Wittgenstein.

• Art & Ecology's William Shaw spots a gigantic tin of whale meat on his way to work.

• Comedy Central caption contest: Wax Obama and Hugo Chavez.

"Curb your God"

Photo by Sean Bonner via @bhoggard.

Videos: Curator Peter Eleey on "The Quick and the Dead"

Walker Art Center curator Peter Eleey discusses two works in the exhibition The Quick and the Dead, which opens tonight. Tobias Rehberger's All your last week's desires, which features 11 lamps that replicate and respond to the lighting conditions at the museum one week prior to the moment you're looking at it. Pierre Huyghe's Timekeeper, a simple work made by sanding down a spot on the gallery wall revealing the history of the room, like rings on a tree. (Kudos to the Walker on this: hopefully, many more such videos are in the works.)

Bits: 04.23.09

Matt Leines' Untitled (Red Heads), 2006

• The Guardian invokes artist Amy Francheschini's name in reference to the Obama's planting an organic Victory Garden at the White House, while agribusiness views the First Family's garden as an outrage, sending Michelle Obama a letter encouraging her to recognise the role of “conventional agriculture” in feeding the growing US population with a “safe and economical food supply."

• A visual guide to the world of street vendors, created by the Street Vendor Project, the Center for Urban Pedagogy and Candy Chang.

• Eyebeam/Anti-Advertising Agency guy makes "ADVERTISING: WE WANT GRAFFITI" stencils to apply to ads placed on graf walls.

• Stock market down, "agrivestment" up: "According to the NCREIF US Farm Index and the Lehman US Bond Index, returns to direct investments in farmland have exceeded stock and bond returns over the past 5, 10, and 17 years, with less volatility."

• An only somewhat fluffy New York Post piece on "how Minneapolis became an arts powerhouse."

• 14 postcards that rhyme with "Happy New Year," including "Mappy Nude Rear."

• A Spock spork, The Enterprise Project (artist-modified versions of Capt. Kirk's ship), a preposterously (or enviably, back in the day) large collection of Star Wars figures.

Facebook, analog version

click to enlarge

Following up my post on traditional crafts addressing internet-age content, here's a nice simple project by Michael Simons and Paul Shoebridge, of The Goggles. A project "dealing with notions of technology and our relationship with books," it's called Facebook.

Cross stitch: "Thank You, Internet, for letting me Observe so many Crazy People from a Safe Distance."

A pattern, a cross stitch, a meme.

Related: Facebook, analog version.

Found photo: Life is a rollercoaster

Found somewhere in North Minneapolis within the past four years, unearthed in my office this week. Sometimes I feel like the guy in the middle.

Bits: 04.22.09

Cezary Bodzianowski: “Great Gatsby”, Center for Contemporary Art (CCA), Tel Aviv, 2009

• Exhibition: Playing the City, now through May 6 in Frankfurt.

• A trailer for the 25th anniversary edition of Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant's book, Subway Art.

• The New York Times highlights Minneapolis College of Art and Design students as a "community of technical artists who build bikes from new and leftover parts, not only to save money but to create something of pride." Via @tlcminnesota.

• Congratulations to Justin Heideman and the Walker new media staff: their RNC-themed My Yard Our Message project -- much blogged right here -- won best of the web at Museums and the Web 2009 in the innovation category. Here's a recap of the conference.

• Kottke has links to original scripts from HBO's The Wire, plus writer David Simon's original pitch for the show. And Nieman Journalism Lab does a video interview with Simon about whether newspapers can learn how to survive by copying HBO.

• Homewood Studios in North Minneapolis is opening an exhibition of works by Peyton, co-founder of the urban art center Juxtaposition, tomorrow night, April 23. While art is Peyton's first love, his main job at the moment is as a professional kickboxer: On May 1, he's fighting for the title of U.S. light welterweight champion.

• Congrats to Art of This for winning "Best Art Gallery" in City Pages' Best of the Twin Cities.

• Source material: The Bush administration's secret memos about extreme interrogation techniques.

Trailer: Art21, Season 5

Featuring Mary Heilmann, William Kentridge, Yinka Shonibare and others.

Lo-fi pop: Vintage computers play Queen, Lipps Inc.

Lipps Inc.'s "Funkytown," as played by a Commodore 64, several TI-99s, an Intel modem and other vintage computer hardware, followed by an equally lo-fi remix of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody," with a dot-matrix printer playing lead.

Onion headline:

Here.

Bits: 04.19.09

Jason Lazarus, Untitled (2008), via i [heart] photograph

• Rest in Peace: Novelist J.G. Ballard.

• The idea of making fake utopian newspapers is catching on: The Yes Men's faux New York Times (Nov. 2008), a ginned-up Financial Times (Mar. 2009); and Attac's forward-looking fake Die Zeit, distributed in 90 cities across Germany last month.

• The Guardian's Jonathan James: "The reason I don't like street art is that it's not aesthetic, it's social. To celebrate it is to celebrate ignorance, aggression, all the things our society excels at. For middle class people to find artistic excitement in something that scares old people on estates is a bit sick."

• Smash for Cash: An emergency stash of bills installed near an ATM machine, by Imbue.

• Fire graffiti by Ellis Gallagher.

• Trailer: Food, Inc.

AT-AT anatomy t-shirt

Redbubble:

Anatomy of the AT-AT

Since the Dark Side started using genetically modified walkers, they found many had to visit the Imperial Veterinary Clinic of Osteology suffering with acute pain in their hip joints. X-rays revealed their skeleton structure was just not strong enough to manoeuvre wearing those heavy boots. No amount of Cod Liver oil would ease their pain.

Via Coudal.