My friend Elizabeth who goes by Everything In Pen when she plays music just released her first CD called Let Me Drive. I play guitar and piano on a couple of the songs. One of the songs on my last cd is a cover of one of her songs. Also I designed the cover of the album which has a picture her dad took and looks like this:
Here are some of my favorites, I play guitar and piano (and bass?) on the title track:
Let Me Drive by Everything In Pen
You or the Jehovahs by Everything In Pen
Don't Stake Your Claim by Everything In Pen
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Everything In Pen
Marina Abramović and Tim Burton
The Marina Abramović and Tim Burton exhibit at the MOMA have been the shows I've heard the most about recently. The response I get when I tell anyone I've been at the MOMA that day or the day before is either, "Oh, did you see the Tim Burton Exhibit?" or "Oh, did you see that exhibit with all the naked people?" The Tim Burton had a limited number of timed tickets to enter, which usually sold out, I feel like this added to the allure, it seemed like there was really something to see because unless you bought tickets early you weren't going to be able to get in (On Friday nights when the museum is free the first 1500 people in line get tickets to TB which is why I ended up seeing it).
While the Marina Abramović is all the way on the 6th floor Abramović herself is impossible to avoid. She sits in at a table inside a large box in the atrium on the second floor with an open chair opposite herself which people are invited to sit in one at a time for any length of time. She does not respond to people although I have not seen anyone do anything when they sat down except make slight facial expressions. When people get up and leave the table she puts her head down and closes her eyes. She reopens then once the next person has sat down.
The first two times I went to the MOMA while the exhibit has been running I wasn't planning on seeing anything but the Kentridge exhibit but it's very hard to walk by this performance and not stop for at least 5 minutes. The MOMA is already a strange environment becuase it is such a tourist attraction but it seems like a lot of the people who end up there don't really know what to expect. I wrote a little about this when writing about the Kentridge exhibit but it is a lot more evident along the perimeter of Abramović's box. The people who wander into the rooms at the Kentridge exhibit at least have decided to check it out but everyone who decides to take the stairs instead of the elevator has to walk by Abramović. If you listen to the passing chatter for a few minutes you'll definitely hear a few versions of: "I don't get it", "What is this?", or "I think it's a staring contest". But a lot of people also seem drawn in, maybe the performance is so mesmerizing becuase it is so much the center of attention and because there always so many people around, all focused on the same two still people but it's hard to pass by it without stopping.
The rest of the exhibit on the 6th floor is preceded by a few warning signs about "live nude performers". There are two entrances to the main part of the exhibit one, the "real" entrance" is a very narrow space between two walls with two naked people standing on either side of the opening. There is a line of people who pass through the space between the people one at a time. There are a few articles and a slide show from the NYTimes with pictures. Of course this being the only entrance/exit wouldn't work for safety reasons so there is a larger open entrance at the other end of the room. Surprisingly one of the most popular things about the exhibit seems to be gathering on the inside of the human entryway and watching people pass through.
The rest of the 6th floor part of the exhibit is images and videos of Abramović's past performances and re-creations of these performances by other people. This is where the paths of the Abramović and Tim Burton exhibit's converge in what is best described as a "Retrospectacle".
The entrance to the Tim Burton exhibit mirrors the entrance to the Abramović exhibit in a probably unintended way. After a warning about timed tickets and a ticket taker who rips off the stub on your ticket that tells you what time to enter the exhibit (6:30 for me) there is a narrow hallway with a row of televisions playing some of Burton's videos. This room serves a dual purpose as both "viewing room" and "hallway" sort of like the "human hallway" upstairs. On the 6th floor there is a MOMA employee there making sure you don't inapropriately touch the performers. On the 3rd floor there is a MOMA employee telling you, "there is no line, if you want to watch the videos stand against the wall, walk through on the left." It's a performance in the art of confusion.
Inside the Tim Burton exhibit is a mix of things ranging from pieces used in the animation of films like The Nightmare Before Christmas or a model of Johnny Depp in Edward Scissorhands to sketches and other images and videos Burton has created over the years. I didn't spend too much time inside, I walked around once, but there didn't seem to be too much organization to the whole thing, it was just stuff by Tim Burton. A lot of it was interesting but after hearing about "The Tim Burton Exhibit" for so long and being around so many people so excited! to be there it was more of a spectacle than a showcase.
Of course, the Abramović exhibit intentionally walks this line between showcase and spectacle but it comes off in the wrong way. As some reviews of Exit Through the Giftshop: A Banksy Film
have asked, is the performance in it's setting at the MOMA in 2010 doing more to work against itself than not? Abramović's current performance on the 2nd floor works because of it's solitariness, the retrospective on the 6th floor is too much at once. The spectacle which downstairs is kept at bay by the space around the performers and everyone's focus on the same space is lost on the 6th floor. I'm not saying that the participatory elements of the performances on the 6th floor detract from its effect but in the same way the Tim Burton exhibit loses itself in it's everythingness the spectacle of the Abramović retrospective overwhelms the interesting parts about it.
The Marina Abramović exhibit runs until May 31, the Tim Burton exhibit is now over. There is a live video feed of Abramović here when the museum is open. All images are from the MOMA Flickr. Click 'read more' to see still versions of the images. Did you catch Lou Reed in there?
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Kentridge Show
Friday was my third trip to the William Kentridge show at the MOMA and I finally was able to see all of it. The show is the same one that was at the SFMOMA last year, it is called "William Kentridge: Five Themes". The five themes are: Occasional and Residual Hope: Ubu and the Procession, Thick Time: Soho and Felix, Parcours D'atelier: Artist in the Studio, Sarastro and the Master's Voice: The Magic Flute, and Learning From the Absurd: The Nose.
Each theme is based around a series of videos looped in succession in one room or a few rooms or many videos played constantly in multiple projections in the same room. In the areas outside the video rooms there are "final" stills from some of the videos and other creations.
My first visit about three weeks ago I walked through all of the parts of the exhibit except "The Magic Flute" becuase it wasn't working that day. Last week I went to the exhibit for a second time and saw "Ubu and the Procession" and "Soho and Felix".
One of the highlights from these two parts of the exhibit was "Shadow Procession", a 7 minute video from 1999 which, "represents Kentridge's early experimentation with stop-motion animation". The figures in the video are made from "torn black paper". I really like the boots and the machines that seem to have no purpose.
Because of the size of the exhibit it was often very funny to watch people who didn't really know what to expect from it (including me on my first visit). It is pretty hard to make much sense at all from the exhibit without spending at least a few hours there (my three separate four hour Friday afternoon blocks were barely enough time to see everything). People's idea of how to behave in a museum also made watching them funny. The videos for "Ubu and the Procession" and "Soho and Felix were shown in large (15'x15'x15'?) black rooms (one for the two videos in "Ubu" and three for the nine videos in "Soho" with the projection shown on the entire wall opposite the entrance to the rooms. Most of the time there were many more people crowded around the large doorways to the video rooms than there were inside. In some of the rooms there was a single bench (these rooms were usually had the most people in them) but in some people either had to stand against the wall or sit on the floor. The crowd when I was there might have been unusual, with more people who did not really know what to expect because the three days that I went were Friday afternoons when the museum is free. It seemed like people stayed longer in the video rooms with the benches, happy to have somewhere to sit down.
"Soho and Felix" is a series of "9 Drawings for Projection" done from 1999 to 2003 which feature two characters Soho Eckstein and Felix Teitlebaum. These videos feature one of the techniques that Kentridge is most famous for which is charcoal drawings that are changed in each frame of the video. The technique is very interesting because each change in the drawing leaves behind a ghost image of itself like writing on a blackboard. Often these ghost images can add a lot to the image especially in depictions of motion. Two of my favorites of these videos are "History of the Main Complaint" and "Stereoscope". I especially like the driving scenes in "Main Complaint" (see 3:30 in the video).
The videos for both "Artist in the Studio" and "The Nose" were all playing in one room each simultaneously. In "Artist" each video was of a different length. On two walls facing each other "Seven Fragments for Georges Méliès", seven videos featuring Kentridge played in their own loops, on each wall of the room. On each end of the room a larger projection played "Journey to the Moon" and "Day for Night". The "Seven Fragments" incorporate backwards video, disrupting the cause and effect that normally exists in a linear narrative. The fact that the videos played in an endless looped added to this. I also like this one but I can't embed it. "The Nose", featuring Kentridge's most recent work complements Kentridge's staging of Dmitri Shostakovich's 1930 opera The Nose based on a 1836 story by Gogol. The videos in this part of the exhibit are an installation called "I am not me, the horse is not mine" which consists of 8 videos of the same length which play in a continuous loop. This video is taken from a slightly different set up of the exhibit but is in some ways a good example of what it feels like to be inside a room with 8 videos playing at once.
It's interesting watching what people do when they wander into a room with 8 videos playing at once. It seemed like the people crowded outside the video rooms for "Ubu" and "Soho" were trying on their best "Museum" outfits, doing their best to not get in anyone's way, to not block any views, but in "Artist" and "The Nose" the people who enter the room become part of the exhibit (more on this later this week when I write about the Tim Burton and Marina Abramović shows), many people are so mesmerized by so many different movements and lights that they hardly notice that they are standing directly between another projection and another person. It's a strange experience staying in these rooms for enough time to watch each of the videos in it's entirety, to see the crowd ebb and flow to see who stays for a long time, sits down and picks out a few videos to watch. The only problem with staying for this long in the rooms is that the same music loops the whole time, only one of the videos in "Artist" has music and the videos in "The Nose" are all the same length and are set to the same music.
My favorite part of the exhibit was "The Magic Flute" based on and featuring the Mozart opera. There were three videos in this part which played once an hour. The videos are projected onto "two animated miniature theaters" and a blackboard and feature moving robotic parts. "The Magic Flute" was out of order on my first visit, on my second visit I saw the end of the third of the videos and on my third visit I was able to see the whole thing. "The Magic Flute" contains the two longest videos in the exhibit. This video is of the blackboard section.
This room provides probably the most entertaining people watching. The two animated miniature theaters are at each end of a row of 5 benches, the blackboard is on a third side, opposite the two entrances to the room. Because many people enter the room as the previous showing is ending and see people sitting facing the last movie that played they all sit down facing the same direction as the people getting up had been sitting. HOWEVER! The first movie starts on the blackboard to the right (which only requires minimal shifting for most people) and then the next movie is on the mini theater behind them! For some reason this was really funny to me but probably isn't in my description of it. Anyway, the animations for "The Magic Flute" are really amazing, I liked the second part the best but I find it difficult to describe any of the parts of it that I liked.
Fun times at the MOMA! Soon I will write about the Tim Burton and Marina Abramović shows which were surprisingly complementary.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Blog-a-log
I added a tumblr to the sidebar of the blog over there: -->
This way I can post more pictures that don't really merit a full blog post, to see any of them bigger you can click on the "tumblr" button at the top of the sidebar. Also this way I can link to other interesting things, post videos and songs easily. I'm going to the Kentridge show at the MOMA again today, I will probably post about that soon.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Taxes!
New York state has so many tax forms! I never filed state taxes while living in California, not sure if I was supposed to. . . but I had to fill out a 4 page form for NY State taxes, plus two more forms that I couldn't even get at the library today so I have to go print at the store tomorrow. Another bike ride over the bridge so I can hold off on getting a metro card until Friday probably!
Here's the view from the Brooklyn Bridge last weekend:
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Summertime
Today is the fifth day of summer! It was so nice on Sunday that I decided it was the first day of summer, it was also Easter. Spring was short but sweet. It's 90° out today. When I took my bike out two weekends ago I realized that my brake pads, in addition to being very worn down, were dried out and disintegrating so today I walked to a bike store that I just found out about close to my house and got some new ones.
In addition to working at the bookstore I am working at the Census now. It is a strange operation and nobody at all seems to have any idea what is going on. So far they have spent more than twice as much time "training" me as I have spent actually working for them.
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