“There’s slime in the ice machine” is a Houston saying made popular by the late TV personality Marvin Zindler, a white-suited, surgically-enhanced, makeup wearing investigative reporter cum restaurant inspector for KTRK Channel 13. “Slime” was the worst offense a food establishment could perpetrate; fashion was perhaps Zindler’s. I invoke Marvin Zindler in order to write about Buffet DVD, Volume 1, a DVD magazine of short artist-made videos, because they both address food, Houston and breaking the mold, so-to-speak.
The Drift, Kelly Sears, 2007
Buffet, Volume 1 features 13 artist-made videos related to Houston and food, plus interstitials (shot at Luby’s, Fiesta, Sengelmann Hall and a private kitchen) made by the creators of the DVD, artists Kelly Pike, Kara Hearn and Sasha Dela (I appear as a grocery shopper at Fiesta, however, the producers did not buy my groceries in exchange for this review). The self-titled “Buffet Chefs” describe Houston as “an endless sterno-warmed parade of variety (food, weather, culture).” It’s the perfect environment to grow cultures. The side of Houston that “Buffet” hopes to capture with this first release is the city where one can establish a career as a respected reporter while dressed as a dandy, build an amusement park in tribute to oranges, or barbeque on your car’s engine without worry. Read the rest of this review on 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.
H Box, designed by Didier Fiúza Faustino
Cinema Arts Festival Houston, “the only U.S. festival devoted to films by and about artists,” launches November 11-15, 2009.
When two New York real estate promoters, commonly known as “The Allen Brothers,” founded the city of Houston in 1836, their intention was to make the township a center of commerce and government. Houston’s bid to be the capital of the Republic of Texas was short-lived, but its status as a center of commerce has stuck like the very first ships that ran aground in what the Allen Brothers dubbed Houston’s first “port”– the shallow and silty intersection of Buffalo and White Oak Bayous. Houston’s forefathers in a long line of hucksters, Augustus and John Allen sold Houston to potential settlers, at $1 per acre, using advertisements that promoted this subtropical marsh as “an elevated land” replete with “waterfalls.”
Now 173 years later, Houston is concretely known as a place to do business – home to the largest petrochemical manufacturing area in the world, and an international hub for biomedical research and the aerospace industry. With no great range of topography, and a nose-to-nose race (on and off since 1999) with Los Angeles for smoggiest city, Houston is no high-ranking vacation destination.
So in 2008, when Houston Mayor Bill White (who has moved mountains so-to-speak to improve Houston’s aforementioned image) tapped his friend Franci Crane to spearhead a new film festival, there was no chance of luring travelers with ski slopes or sandy beaches– the likes of those at Sundance or Cannes. But what Houston did have on a monumental scale was art. Around 7 million visitors per year come to Houston for the Museum District alone; Houston’s Theater District is exceeded only by New York in its number of seats in one geographic area; not to mention the plethora of non-profit arts organizations, folk art environments, art galleries, art chapels, art parades, art festivals, and so on. Read the rest of this post on my blog, We Have The Technology on glasstire.org.
Jonas Mekas receiving a fruit basket from Andrea Grover and the 2009 Artist Award from NAMAC
This Jonas Mekas quote speaks to the reason I started Aurora Picture Show, and everything I believe about art.
In the times of bigness, spectaculars, one hundred million dollar movie productions, I want to speak for the small, invisible acts of human spirit: so subtle, so small, that they die when brought out under the clean lights. I want to celebrate the small forms of cinema: the lyrical form, the poem, the watercolor, etude, sketch, portrait, arabesque, and bagatelle, and little 8mm songs. In the times when everybody wants to succeed and sell, I want to celebrate those who embrace social and daily failure to pursue the invisible, the personal things that bring no money and no bread and make no contemporary history, art history or any other history. I am for art which we do for each other, as friends.
–From Anti-100 Years of Cinema Manifesto, Jonas Mekas, 1996
Read the full manifesto on INCITE!
Ed Keinholz by Robert Bucknam, © Nancy Reddin Kienholz
It turns out that I’ve been stalking The Menil Collection for so long that they’ve gotten used to me, and even invited me to host a semi-annual screening series of works from The Menil Archives. I have earned my official “media archeologist” badge, and get to work about 20’ below ground in the engine room of the museum – the archives. My underground partners are archivists Geri Aramanda (incidentally, Geri has worked with the Menils since 1968) and Lisa Barkley, who both help me unearth works on audio, video and film. The archive was begun by media studies pioneer, Gerald O’Grady in 1968. The new screening series is called “Menil Movies.”
Schedule
Friday, September 25, 2009, 7:30pm
Menil Collection, 1515 Sul Ross, Houston TX 77006
Menil Movies: Body in Fragments
Films and videos related to the exhibition Body in Fragments. Included is work by or about Ed Kienholz, David McManaway, René Magritte, Georges Méliès, James Rosenquist, and Roy Fridge. Highlights include an outrageous 1962 made-for-television documentary on Ed Kienholz, home movies of René Magritte, and a Georges Méliès silent film from 1898.
About Menil Movies
“Menil Movies” is a semi-annual educational screening series that highlights rarely seen film and videos from the Menil Archives. The series was created to introduce audiences to the range and abundance of the museum’s moving image holdings, including filmic art, documentaries, informational videos, avant-garde film, animation, Soviet cinema, Surrealist and DADA films, and documentary footage of artists and curators affiliated with the museum. For the series, films and videos are grouped by subject and presented to the public as one-hour curated compilations with overview and commentary. The educational component is an essential part of this series. Each movie is introduced with an explanation of its significance to contemporary art and film history, biographical information on the filmmaker or artist, and a summary of the larger film or art movement to which his or her work is attributed. Many of these movies are rarely shown, and in some cases represent one of just a few film prints of a title available anywhere. Some of the historically critical filmmakers represented in the archive include George Méliès, the Lumière brothers, Dziga Vertov (considered to be among the earliest auteur filmmakers); silent film error director F.W. Murnau (Director of the celebrated film Nosferatu); and acclaimed Surrealist filmmakers René Clair, Joseph Cornell, and Man Ray. Videotaped interviews, lectures, and exhibition installations that took place at the Menil Collection make up another rich section of the movie archive. These tapes encapsulate important information about the artists’ ideas and processes, and are valuable documents for research and scholarship. Artists in this section of the archive include 20th century masters Max Ernst, Yves Klein, John Chamberlain, Robert Motherwell, Robert Rauschenberg, and Larry Rivers, to name a few. This screening series makes these works accessible to a broad audience, and raise awareness about the significant resource that the Menil’s movie archive represents. Comparable movie archives do not exist in Houston.
Read the Preview in Houston Press
Screening of Tamás Wormser’s Touched by Water
A free screening of Tamás Wormser’s Touched by Water, a documentary about bathing rituals around the world, will take place on the back lawn of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston on Thursday, June 11, 2009 (with additional screenings on June 25 and August 6). A functioning hot tub will be setup on the lawn with open dipping and snacks available from 6:30pm-8:30pm. Screening starts at 8:30pm. Viewers are invited to watch the film from the lawn (bring a lawn chair or blanket) or request reservations for hot tub seating by calling (713) 284-8257 (limited space). Event postponed in the event of rain.
Presented and hosted by artist/curator Andrea Grover, this screening is part of a series of public programs produced by Grover for the current CAMH exhibition No Zoning: Artists Engage Houston, on view through October 4, 2009. This program follows the tradition of thematic, collage-style, site-specific, and social screenings that Grover created for Aurora Picture Show, the microcinema she founded in 1998.
Film to be screened:
Touched by Water, 2006, Tamás Wormser, 46:00, color, video From the holiest rituals to fashionable leisure, from ancient Roman baths and elite European spas, via Turkish hammams and ritual dips in the Ganges, to high-tech, multi-media pools, this film looks at bathing cultures around the world and explores our essential bond with water-—the sensual pleasure we derive from it as well as the spiritual renewal. Touched by Water is both an ode to the social ritual of public bathing and a thought-provoking look at water’s spiritual significance.
About Tamás Wormser Tamás Wormser was born and raised in Budapest, Hungary, and has lived in Montreal, Canada since 1986. Touched by Water was inspired by Wormser’s native experience of public bathing in Hungary, as well as his interest in the social rituals of bathing. He shot this film single-handedly over ten years in 13 countries, with a small video camera that allowed him to unobtrusively capture rarely documented locales, including a Turkish hammam, and a mikvah, or Jewish ritual bath. Wormser is the founder of Artesian Films through which he has directed eleven films, including Traveling Light, a film about nomadic artists.
Astrodome Cinema screens tonight, May 28, 2009, 6:30pm at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston!
CAMH exhibition puts iconic Astrodome on silver screen
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ent/arts/theater/6444037.html#
Astrodome Cinema- CAMH exhibit takes a look at the former “Eighth Wonder of the World”
http://www.houstonpress.com/2009-05-28/calendar/astrodome-cinema
On May 28, 6:30pm I’ll be screening two Astrodome-related films as part of my projects for No Zoning: Artists Engage Houston at CAMH.
Nicknamed the “Eighth Wonder of the World,” “Can Do Cathedral,” and “Taj Mahal of Sports,” the Astrodome opened in 1965 as the first domed sports stadium in the world. During its height, the Astrodome hosted historical gatherings such as the “Battle of the Sexes” (a theatrical tennis match between Bobby Riggs and Billy Jean King); “Millenium ’73 (a convening of followers of Divine Light Mission and the Guru Maharaj Ji); an Elvis Presley concert that broke all previous attendance records; and a 13-car motorcycle jump by Evil Knievel. According to the Astrodome’s mastermind, Judge Roy Hofheinz (former Mayor of Houston), its design was inspired by a visit to the Circus Maxiumus in Rome, and indeed it reigned as one of the largest stages in the world until it closed in 2000. A mere 35 years after its spectacular unveiling, the Astrodome had become a relic. In 2001 on the same complex, Reliant Stadium was built– the first retractable roof football stadium, with 20,000 more seats than the Astrodome. Today, the Astrodome is vacant and its fate is unknown.
The Pleasures of this Stately Dome, 1975, Geoff Winningham, 54:00, 16mm on video, color, sound
A study of the Houston Astrodome as a folk theater, created on the 10th anniversary of the opening of the dome. Winner of the Documentary prize at the Edinburgh Film Festival in 1976, and funded in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The film includes vintage footage from the construction and grand opening of the Astrodome in 1965, plus footage from ten years of diverse and memorable shows, including destruction derbies, Evil Knievel, Billy Graham, chariot races, rodeos, calf scrambles, and various professional sports. The film is punctuated by an extended interview with Judge Roy Hofheinz, who conceived and built the Astrodome.
The Lord of the Universe, 58:00, 1974, TVTV (Top Value Television), color, sound, video
Sixteen-year-old guru Marahaj Ji attempts to levitate the Houston Astrodome in this 1973 DuPont award winning documentary. Follow the guru from his New York mansion to limousines in Houston and listen to his followers celebrities and non-celebrities alike extol his virtues. TVTV’s creative use of graphics, live music, and wide-angle-lens shots to convey the desperate efforts of these lost children to find a leader. “If this guy is God, then this is the God the United States of America deserves.” Abbie Hoffman. Courtesy Video Data Bank
Further reading:
Last Innings at a Can Do Cathedral, Jim Yardley, October 3, 1999, New York Times
Ode to the Astrodome, Brock Bordelon, astrosdaily fansite
Tuesday, June 16, 2009, 8:30pm
Dia Art Foundation and The Hispanic Society of America present ‘Tuesdays on the Terrace’ @ Audubon Terrace at The Hispanic Society of America
Broadway between 155th and 156th streets, New York City
Lessons in the Sky: A Filmic Tribute to Audubon
Curated by Andrea Grover, founder Aurora Picture Show
John James Audubon’s New York farm, Minniesland, once occupied 40 wilderness acres of what is now the Washington Heights Neighborhood in Upper Manhattan. This cinematic tribute to the universal pastime of bird watching is a nod to the farmland that once comprised this region, Audubon’s life work with wildlife, and the timeless current of artists’ studies of the natural world. This screening will showcase short films and videos on birds and natural history in a variety of genres including film and video art, documentary, experimental, animation, found footage, historical and silent films.
Image: The realTime and Life of John James Audubon, Emily Kuehn, video and animation, 2009
