2 April 2010

Those Patio Lanterns


Model: Gordon Laurin.

Date: Thursday, August 9th, 1984
City: Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Venue: Nova Scotia College of Art and Design Cafeteria

In the August '98 issue of "Chart" magazine, Jay Ferguson from Sloan interviews Thurston (and Steve) and they discuss this show:

Jay: The reason I mention Halifax is because Sonic Youth actually came and played here in the early '80s...do you have any memories of that?

Thurston: Yeah, the Nova Scotia College contacted us; it was really early on... They asked if we wanted to come up and do a symposium. I didn't really have any idea what that meant. I just thought we were going to play a gig. I think Kim and Lee had more of an idea but they didn't really, sort of, translate it to me. They just figured I knew as well [laughs]. Anyways, the first thing we had to do is go to this class and sort of talk about ourselves... and then we were walking out, thinking "What are we doing?" There was no real agenda except to go to this class. We just sat around and talked to some students. And then I made a flyer for the gig that night.

Jay: A friend of mine has one of those.

Thurston: Oh, wow... I just took it out of a film book... It was from some 80s horror movie.... [Just then, Steve Shelley pipes up: "Evil Dead?"] ... Evil Dead! It was a picture of this hand coming out of a grave and grabbing this woman like this. [Thurston illustrates by grabbing his throat with his hand, to much laughter.] And I wrote "Sonic Youth Live Halifax," et cetera. We hung them up all over town and all over the university. There was a large feminist contingency there and they were just incensed.

Jay: Oh, really?

Thurston: Like, "Who are these people coming here and putting this obscene imagery all over the place?" And they tore 'em all down and spread the word to ban the show. At the same time, there was a huge hardcore gig in town. I think it was D.O.A. and, like, 20 other bands. So the kids who were going to go see something, they were gonna go to that. And the art students were sort of conflicted about going. So I'd say there was maybe eight people there.

Jay: I think it's one of those shows that 150 people claim they saw but there was only.... Well, eight people.

Thurston: We also, at the time, picked up a lot of stuff from the streets of Halifax and brought it to the gig. We did a lot of banging on garbage cans. A lot of clatter.

(from the Sonic Youth website)

23 March 2010

Flight Centre



"Against the explosion of 'self-expression' among many 'avant-garde' artists, 'New Measurement' proposed a principle of 'elimination of individuality', which has become the basis of their entire research. In this group whose membership has consisted, at different periods, of three-to-six artists, no room has been allowed for individual or personal ideas, experiences, and expressions. Instead, it undertakes collective work operating mechanically (measuring, calculating and drawing...) strictly respecting the collaboration rules based on 'numerical relationships' between things. The result of their work, then, consists of a large amount of rules, formulas and diagrams, signs and manuscripts, which record the discussions, calculations and presentations. Such a process, more importantly, has given birth to a 'non-art language' (or a 'quasi-language') situated between letters, mathematics and linguistic research. Hence, ideological problems or troubles have been transcended and even eliminated by a purely numerical, rational and un-individual research and the invention of its language."
–Hou Hanru, 1996

20 March 2010



Dear all, as I am sure you’ve probably guessed, this Pavilion show is not going to go through. There are two sides to this equation: Heritage Canada who initiated the project and asked if I wanted to do it and Cirque du Soleil which is in charge of the artistic programming and (I think is probably putting a lot of money into this pavilion because of their interests in China.)

I presented my proposal to Heritage Canada and to Cirque du Soleil a few weeks ago and they took forever to get back to me and when they did, they flat-out rejected it.

I am very sorry to have raised your hopes. The heritage Canada side lead me to believe that it was a sure thing but the curator from Cirque was not willing to collaborate. She basically had her own show planned and wasn’t willing to make the effort to include us.

Again I am very sorry to have wasted your time. Believe me I feel just as upset about this whole situation as you do.

I hope though, that we may have a chance to collaborate in the future!

19 March 2010

Campaign


"Termite-tapeworm-fungus-moss art," Farber contends, "goes always forward eating its own boundaries, and, like as not, leaves nothing in its path other than the signs of eager, industrious, unkempt activity."

5 March 2010

26 February 2010

The Bistro System


"An economist who's agnostic about economics is unemployable"
- Sir Alfred Sherman

24 February 2010

FX


Note: butt stamper whose sand is stamped with FX hotel brand, in the foyer outside the elevators.
[Brecht was insisting on the need for what he called a 'smokers theatre' where the audience would puff away at its cigars as if watching a boxing match, and would develop a more detached and critical outlook than was possible in the ordinary German theatre, where smoking was not allowed. 'I even think', says a fragment 'that in a Shakespearean production one man in the stalls with a cigar could bring about the downfall of Western Art. He might as well light a bomb as light his cigar. I would be delighted to see our public allowed to smoke during performances. And I'd be delighted mainly for the actors' sake. In my view it is quite impossible for the actor to play an annatural, cramped and old-fashioned theatre to a man smoking in the stalls.']

- Brecht on theatre: The development of an aesthetic, edited by John Willett

22 February 2010

“policy of ambiguity.”


"If you’re not in China, you’re not playing the game."
Lester Thurow, Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

18 February 2010

Return to sender



"Dear BH Billington,
Knowles Eddy Knowles is an international collaborative art group founded in 2004. We have been invited to participate in a fascinating and well-esteemed exhibition at the West Space art centre in Melbourne. Our idea necessitates the use of diamonds in the gallery space; of course, the diamonds would be on loan and would be returned at the end of the exhibition. West Space is run by good, honest Australians who would make sure the precious stones are safely installed and maintained.
Any colour will do. In fact, the more colours the merrier. Variety is the spice of life- KEK's message- and that's why we would like to construct a buffet table on which the diamonds could be safely displayed behind protective glass. Seeing as how the diamonds will not be adorning anyone's fingers, we have decided that it would be perfectly acceptable if not all of the diamonds are perfect- we welcome the flawed ones.
KEK would like to request to borrow diamonds from BH Billington for our show. Please carefully consider our request and send your reply to us through the West Space art centre.
Thank you and look forward to hearing from you.
Knowles, Eddy, Knowles
Mon, May 9, 2005 at 12:40 PM"

13 February 2010

HQ


Windows in the side of a hill in Hogo, Shaanxi Province. Forty million people live in cave houses in Northern China.

"Therefore, we don't consult with the Titito [dear little uncle] any more. He used to appear formerly, but now he can't. He is completely tired out and he can't. It is in vain that they ch'alla [perform ritual] for the Tio. We made him of great stones that had metal in it. He used to look like a person smoking a cigarette just like us. After he finished the cigarette he would chew coca, chewing with the women from their bags of coca. We used to enter before the Tio with our silk shawls. We used to consult him. We reached for the metal in his hands. It was beautiful, like raw sugar."

- June Nash and Manuel Mar
ía Rocca. Dos mujeres indigenas, Antropología Social Series, vol. 14, pp. 1-130. Mexico, D.F.: Insituto Indigenista Interamericano. 1976. Quoted in The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America by Michael Taussig

11 February 2010

if i don't respond to this by end friday can you remind me to?





"One hundred and forty-four participants were randomly assigned to one of three independent groups, and subsequently performed the Cognitive Drug Research (CDR) computerized cognitive assessment battery in a cubicle containing either one of the two odors or no odor (control). Visual analogue mood questionnaires were completed prior to exposure to the odor, and subsequently after completion of the test battery. The participants were deceived as to the genuine aim of the study until the completion of testing to prevent expectancy effects from possibly influencing the data. The outcome variables from the nine tasks that constitute the CDR core battery feed into six factors that represent different aspects of cognitive functioning. Analysis of performance revealed that lavender produced a significant decrement in performance of working memory, and impaired reaction times for both memory and attention based tasks compared to controls. In contrast, rosemary produced a significant enhancement of performance for overall quality of memory and secondary memory factors, but also produced an impairment of speed of memory compared to controls."
- International Journal of Neuroscience 2003, Vol. 113, No. 1, Pages 15-38

5 February 2010

lumpen


"16. (Trans.) A paraphrase of the controversial aphorism 'l'art est le plus haute joie que l'homme se donne a lui même', which Lefebvre attributed to Marx in Contribution à l'esthetique (1953), but which he later admitted was his own invention. This 'forgery' was one of the reasons given for his exclusion from the PFC in 1957."
-Henri Lefebvre Critique of Everyday Life, Volume 2


George Baker

citing Moyra Davey citing Roland Barthes in 1977: "When we attach a lot of importance to certain networks of friendship it is because we're always trying to reproduce the utopia of a childhood space, that of a child playing around its mother. Ultimately, in an affective relationship, whether or not its amorous, we always simulate a certain maternal space, a space of security which is, why not say it, a gift space."

- via facebook

4 February 2010

“The Tao produces the one. The one produces the two. The two produces the three. The three produces all beings.” -Lao Tzu



"The scent of cigarettes became his madeleine.
(3)

(3) If we consider Proust to be the first man who articulated the idea of remembrances of things past, then this would be the perfect time for the remembrances of things present - we can contribute the ever-growing list of consumed items through the years (product names, price, serial number), as well as records of chance encounters in shopping malls, travel groups around the world (height, weight, body type). Compared to these overly material-based data, He Shan's involuntary memory of the cigarettes would appear to be more poetic and lasting. That scent of cigarettes surrounding the woman has always allowed him to sense the continuity and reality of life."
–Hu Fang, Garden of Mirrored Flowers, 2009.

28 January 2010

HELLO... I'M ON THE TRAIN... NO, THE TRAIN... YOU'RE BREAKING UP...



"It just feels right to hold the internet in your hands as you surf it.
And with a screen this large you can just see more of the web, as
you're surfing it... The whole website... in the cleft of your ass..."
- Steve Jobs

18 January 2010

A Very Young Artist


"Recruited as plantation hands, they frequently showed themselves unwilling to work steadily. Induced to raise a cash crop, they would not react "appropriately" to market changes: as they were interested mainly in acquiring specific items of consumption, they produced that much less when crop prices rose, and that much more when prices fell off. And the introduction of new tools or plants that increased the productivity of indigenous labour might only then shorten the period of necessary work, the gains absorbed rather by an expansion of rest than of output. All these and similar responses express an enduring quality of traditional domestic production, that it is production of use values, definite in its aim, so discontinuous in its activity."

Marshall Sahlins -
Stone Age Economics quoted in The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America by Michael Taussig

17 January 2010

"PETER" or "CRUSHING THE SPIDER"


Hidetsu Yagi, co-inventor of the Yagi Antenna.

transitive verb or adjective.

Diagnostic terms invented by two very different 20th C
artists to describe the methodology of rehearsing a
tired (pre-existing) artistic formula for the sake of
market success.

11 January 2010

"Your Beautiful Internet"



Given that his character chain-smokes his way through most of Nine, it seems safe to assume that he was smoking off camera as well. "Oh, all the time," he says. "All the time."

Daniel Day-Lewis interviewed in The Guardian

10 January 2010


entwürfen für müttergenesungswerke

designs for rest stations for mothers

by Martin Kippenberger

22 December 2009

"The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate being made from a single pearl" –Book of Revelation 21:21



"Analogy, functioning as a circular mode of thought, makes it possible to tour the whole area of art and luxury without ever leaving it. Thus Château Margaux wine can be described with the same words as are used to describe the château, just as others will evoke Proust apropos of Monet or César Franck which is a good way of talking about neither (...)"
–Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction, p. 53.

18 December 2009

heterotopias


"....the divans and settees in the final room were placed just so to give visitors a spot to rest and discretely breastfeed a newborn baby, or to sink into a space of lazy, navel-gazing thought - as someone might on the therapist's couch."
- T'ai Smith "West(ern) Waste(land): On Franz West at the Baltimore Art Museum" published in Texte Zur Kunst, June 2009

15 December 2009

Nothingness in the air






Chess Game Performance
Marcel Duchamp / John Cage
Ryerson Theatre, March 5, 1968


Avrom Isaacs recounts that, after the chess game "performance" between Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, Duchamp visited his home, and in true Duchampian fashion, "nothing happened."

(See, also, Dennis Reid, "Duchamp in Canada",
Canadian Art [Winter 1987]: 52-54).


Yuppie Flu: "a psychological stress condition that paralyzes the performance of talented people and produces long-lasting flu-like symptoms."
–David Harvey The Condition of Postmodernity, 1990

12 December 2009

The art dealer says: "I like that Jeremy and Neil come from a kind of urban-downtown-punk-skate-band based kind of culture"



"Note that billion in traditional British usage means a million million, not, as in American usage, a thousand million. Editors working with material by British writers may need to query the use of this term."
–Chicago Manual of Style