Travis Whitfield (left) with "The Porch Crew," 1973
One of the potential hazards of moving to a small town is that you may end up the Mayor. Such is the case with Travis Whitfield, an artist who was so enamored with the rural town of Keachi, Louisiana (pronounced Kee-chi), that he settled there, and inadvertently became the town’s appointed archivist, preservationist, historian and finally, Mayor. In the late 1960s, Keachi caught Travis’s attention during his regular drives between Shreveport and Houston (where he was an art student at U of H). If you recall the episode of The Twilight Zone, “A Stop at Willoughby,” Travis was like the commuter on that train who longed to get off at Willoughby, “a peaceful, restful place, where a man can slow down to a walk and live his life full measure.” Fortunately for Travis, stopping at Keachi was just the beginning of his adventure, unlike the fate of the poor sap on The Twilight Zone. Read the rest of this post on We Have The Technology, Glasstire.com.
Among the many treasures for sale in my marketplace
I’ve opened a virtual storefront to sell my books. From here on out, it’s the public library loan system for me. No more trees will be slaughtered in the name of Andrea’s entertainment, education, or mild curiosity. Kindly shop till you drop.
Subjects include film art, experimental film and video, trash cinema, cult film, horror film, video art, art, art criticism, art history, world cinema, documentary, boating, sexuality, feminism, ornithology, design, future studies, and music, if I can get Carlos Lama in on this. New items added daily! Prices so low, it’s practically insane.
Unnamed Skiff Project, Zach Moser
I’ve got nautical kitsch and art all mixed up in my head. As the daughter of a boat builder and an artist, I have a Pavlovian response to anything that combines art and boats. I grew up in a house that would have suited Captain Ahab just fine– stuffed marlins, whale bones, ships’ wheels, rope art, portholes, buoys, crab pots, fish lures, oil paintings of ships in storms, all that. Enter the Grover family residence and immediately feel like an extra in Mutiny on the Bounty. This posting has been a long time coming, but boat artists, you’re about to get your due. Look for future posts on Bas Jan Ader, Marie Lorentz, Roy Fridge, Swoon, Open_Sailing, Waterpod, and others. Suggestions welcome, mateys.
Art & Boats, Part 1: An interview with Houston (boat) artist Zach Moser
Zach Moser is a co-founder of Workshop Houston, an innovative art/education/community center based in Houston’s Third Ward. Moser recently conducted a boatbuilding workshop inside the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston as part of the exhibition, No Zoning: Artists Engage Houston. The project (conceived with Benjy Mason) was titled “Yacht Shop,” and invited the public to collaboratively build a boat over six months. Yacht Shop concluded with the ceremonious hull turning and launching of the vessel (by spontaneous night parade) down Montrose Boulevard. This was all primed with sea shanties and home brewed braggot, a kind of malt and honey beer. (You can imagine what the drivers on Montrose thought of this land-locked endeavor.) Moser, a graduate of Oberlin, has a keen interest in collaboration via unlikely platforms – “civic events, low income neighborhoods, dying industries.” And this was not Moser’s first foray into maritime collectivity; his earlier nautical-theme works include “The Shrimp Boat Project” (with Eric Leshinsky), “Voyages to the Unknown,” and the “Untitled Skiff Project.” Read the interview with Zach Moser on Glasstire.com.
Jill Magid, Lincoln Ocean Victor Eddy, 2006-2007, Courtesy Yvon Lambert Gallery, New York
The 60th anniversary of George Orwell’s science fiction opus 1984 came and went unnoticed last year. Why would such a prescient novel generate so little hubbub on its birthday? Perhaps the notion of a society numbed by perpetual war, newspeak (the reduction of language to suit ideological purposes), and constant government surveillance of the public is not that newsworthy. Do these ideas apply so aptly to the 21st century that 1984 seems redundant? Or is pointing out this trend toward total surveillance just harshing the mellow of the Net Generation who surrender their privacy with wild abandon? On my first day on Facebook, I jokingly posted my status as “Big Brother is watching you,” and was surprised by a slew of comments suggesting I was a buzzkill. Read the rest of my review on … might be good.
“Indirect Collaboration” is a blog that I and my indirect collaborators, i.e., SXSW co-panelists (Joe Alterio, Tim Lillis, Riley Crane & Josh Glenn), will be posting to in the lead up to SXSW Interactive. The theme of our panel is “The role of crowd-sourced input on the creative process.” I was invited to represent the art exhibition side of the equation, namely my involvement in organizing Phantom Captain: Art & Crowdsourcing at apexart, as well as a Never Been to Tehran, Never Been to Houston, and TxtMeL8r – all exhibits with works generated by the crowd. (Both of the Never Been exhibits were co-organized with artist Jon Rubin, my hero.)
I just got word from Javier Fadul of Culture Pilot that Houston is hosting a TEDx event on June 12, 2010. TEDx is the newly launched mini-me of the TED Conference (which started in 1984 to bring together the “greatest minds” in Technology, Entertainment and Design). The “TED Talks” videos are positively addictive (see “Confessions of a TED Addict,” Victoria Heffernan, NY Times), featuring eggheads who are at the forefront of everything from brain science to open-source architecture to spaghetti sauce (or rather the nature of happiness through spaghetti sauce as a metaphor, according to author Malcolm Gladwell). Drop tab, sit back, and watch the world unfold as a slightly better place. Read the rest of this post on my Glasstire blog, We Have The Technology.
Andy gets a haircut (1972)
Thinking of Doug Michels made me think of Andy Mann, the person who introduced me to Doug, and the whole history of video art, for that matter. Andy, an early video pioneer, left his entire video collection to Aurora Picture Show, the organization I founded. We were close friends from the time we met (circa 1996) till his death from pancreatic cancer in 2001. This winter, the Andy Mann Video Tree was lovingly recreated by friends at Discovery Green Park.
There is no question that Andy Mann was one of the seminal figures in the early video scene, in particular for his remarkable “street tapes” which continued and amplified a tradition in film history marked by such works as Helen Leavitt’s In the Street.–Gene Youngblood, author Expanded Cinema
Andy Mann’s videotapes are classic examples of the “street tape” genre-a video equivalent of “cinema verite,” drawn directly from life, with a minimum of staging, acting or editing. The direct, candid style of Mann’s tapes reflects the enthusiasm sparked by the new equipment amongst a whole generation of first-time video users; the possibility of capturing subjective experiences and details of the world in which one lived was tremendously exciting at that time, and was reason enough to go out and shoot a video.–Video Data Bank, Chicago
The late media artist Andy Mann (1947-2001) was born in Manhattan, grew up in Yonkers, and, as an alternative to completing a high school term paper on Ayn Rand, joined the Navy in 1965. During his time in the Navy, he worked on several submarines as a sonar technician, which introduced him to electronics and a different way of looking at video. Mann described the images as being “like watching a kind of abstract television,” and credits his technical training as his introduction to good camerawork.
In 1969 Mann moved to Manhattan and began attending NYU, where he quickly became associated with several historic video collectives such as Global Village, Raindance, Perception, Videofreex, and TVTV (Top Value Television), as well as a contributor to the video art magazine Radical Software, founded in 1970. Mann also acted as video documentarian for performances by artists Hannah Wilke and Chris Burden, and interviewed subjects such as Phil Ochs, Mark Lombardi, and Fennie Shakur.
Recognized for his groundbreaking camerawork, Mann was one of the earlier artists in the US to receive grant funds from the National Endowment for the Arts to produce video art (1975 and 1978). His videos were included in the 1973 and 1975 Whitney Biennials at The Whitney Museum of American Art; the 1973 Sao Paulo Bienal; the 1977 Documenta VI, Kassell, Germany; as well as exhibitions at the Walker Art Center; Los Angeles County Museum of Modern Art; and Leo Castelli Gallery. Mann moved to Houston in the 1980s and began working in video installation and public sculpture. He was a producer for Access Houston cable since its 1987 inception, hosting a hybrid live video art program/talk show. Mann continued to produce videotapes until a few weeks before his death in 2001.
There is an excellent interview with Andy on Davidson Gigliotti’s site “The Early Video Project.”
Doug Michels communing with dolphins
The late artist Doug Michels often got sideways looks when he brought up his idea for a dolphin/human space colony, which he called “Bluestar.” Earlier in his career as a member of Ant Farm, he had embarked on establishing a “Dolphin Embassy” in Australia (partially funded by Rockefeller Foundation). Michels believed that dolphins had superior animal intelligence, and were capable of much more inter-species communication than was currently being explored. Doug would have been happy to see the January 3, 2010 edition of The Times with an article titled “Scientists say dolphins should be treated as ‘non-human’ persons.”
“Dolphins have long been recognised as among the most intelligent of animals but many researchers had placed them below chimps, which some studies have found can reach the intelligence levels of three-year-old children. Recently, however, a series of behavioural studies has suggested that dolphins, especially species such as the bottlenose, could be the brighter of the two. The studies show how dolphins have distinct personalities, a strong sense of self and can think about the future.”
See you in the future, Doug!
The Temporary Space opens Jan 15
I just received word from a former student, Keijiro Suzuki, that he and others are launching a new artist-run space in Houston called “The Temporary Space.” According to the website, every six months a new group of artists-in-residence will develop projects and exhibitions for the space. “The Temporary Space aims to create and share critically engaging experiences such as contemporary art exhibitions, experimental music performances, critical visual critiques and publicly engaging projects as basic components. In addition to this, focusing on interdisciplinary practices, the temporary space explores different topics and subjects by research and experiment, as well as by dialogues and discussions.”
Visit The Temporary Space, 1320 Nance, Houston, TX, 77002 by appointment.
Contact Keijiro Suzuki, cell: 832-867-9207, manager@thetemporaryspace.com
Kia Neill in her Grotto at Lawndale
With the Climate Change Summit wrapping-up in Copenhagen, and it not looking so pretty for the future of this blue planet, I recently made tentative “end of the world” plans with my husband (we probably have spent too much time discussing Cormac McCarthy’s The Road). My husband (being at a physical disadvantage) assumed that he and our asthmatic daughter would become sacrificial lambs in the fight against barbarism, while my fit daughter and I would retreat to a well-stocked, ammo-supplied remote cave dwelling (yet to be located). While a morbid scenario, we are not alone in entertaining fantasies of retreating into the hollow earth. Read the rest of this post on my Glasstire blog, We Have The Technology.
