The Only Important Awards for the Year

Now including Videogum-related categories! Plus you can win stuff. I’m voting for “Kittens Inspired by Kittens” only because “The Best Burrito” isn’t an option

http://stereogum.com/gummys/

Photographers vs. Hasids in Times Square

Eddie Anderson, 21, Houston, Texas

Philip-Lorca diCorcia is one of the most critically and financially successful American photographers of the last 20 years. He studied for his MFA at Yale, and has had individual shows at Tate Modern in London and at the NY Museum of Modern Art. He also was included in the 1997 Whitney Biennial. His most famous and popular works are these highly stylized staged compositions that are at once baroque and banal. They are lush and theatrical and have a high level of saturation, both emotional and chromatically.

Ike Cole; 38 years old; Los Angeles, California

In 2000, diCorcia set up a lighting and camera rig in the middle of Times Square that would visually isolate random passers-by and allow him to snap a photograph just as the passer-by entered into his artificial spotlight. The results were shown as a series called Heads.

Head #5

Head #6

Head # 9

Head #8

The Heads were uncomfortable and uncanny – the look on the unknown subjects’ faces, almost across the board, lies somewhere between uncaring and vacuous. Is this a result of the location? Does the overwhelming lights, sounds, and general stimulation of Times Square turn people into pale, zombie-like versions of themselves? Is it a defense mechanism that helps navigate through it all? Or are people just so immune to their surroundings that they walk through them as though in a dream? The frightening part, to me, is that I can see myself in these pictures. There is a universality to them that is unnerving. They remained on display for a couple of years, and then published in a book in 2002.

Then, in 2005, one of the subjects of Heads found out that he was, in fact, one of the subjects. Erno Nussenzweig, an orthodox Jew and retired diamond merchant from New Jersey, discovered his portrait in diCorcia’s book and sued, claiming that the photographer had violated his privacy. Nussenzweig claimed that he claimed tthe photographs violated sections of New York’s Civil Rights Law that prohibit the use of a person’s likeness, without consent, “for advertising or for purposes of trade.” The courts, however, ruled in diCorcia’s favor – on the basis that his work was “art” and art, even when being sold for profit, transcends the concerns of “trade.” diCorcia’s use Nussenzweig’s head was not “commercial” but rather an act of artistic expression, protected with unlimited vigor by the First Ammendment.

Head #13

So, photographers 1 – Hasids 0.

Kitsch is a way that posh people admit to themselves that they like things that ordinary people like.

From a short interview with Brian Eno:

http://pitchfork.com/features/interviews/7723-brian-eno/

A New Auteur

I’m going to just quote Gabe (the editor of Videogum.com) on this one, since he says pretty much what I feel about this video.

Thousands of young Americans enter film school every year with the hope of making the next Citizen Kane (but this time, “Rosebud” is a pair of rollerblades!). Most of them, of course, won’t succeed as directors, and will eventually find themselves moving on to more reliable work in other fields, or toiling in the belly of the entertainment industry, or writing a pop culture blog. So it must be discouraging to these hopeful and ambitious young artists to realize that this little girl, with nothing more than a video camera, a couple of American Girl dolls, and a song about the best burrito she has ever had, just created something better than anything they will ever do in their entire frustrated and unsatisfying lives.

Well said. Check it out:

Support Bay Area Underground Filmmaking!

I’m really glad I discovered the Artists’ Television Access.  From their website:

Since the early ’80s, Artists’ Television Access has provided equipment, education, and a screening venue for independent film and video to artists and the community in San Francisco’s Mission District. Our mission is to bring the tools of the mass media within reach.

These guys sound awesome! I’m really excited to check this place out…it looks like they have regular screenings of films by independent and underground filmmakers. They even have a month open screening, where anyone can submit a film to be shown – obviously this could result in some hit-or-miss programming, but it’s really a great opportunity for people to have their work shown. ATA has an 100-person screening room and is located in the Mission. They provide a space for some really inventive film/video stuff – some upcoming events include live music accompanied by improvised video projection, a screening of McSweeney’s Wholphin Issue 10 (this Friday), a full day-to-night event exploring the uses of light, and some film and lecture events. They also have a Film & Video Festival every year, and put on a weekly TV show Sundays at Midnight on channel 29. They are always accepting submissions for their Open Screenings and their TV show. Check out their website for submission guidelines, as well as their upcoming schedule: http://www.atasite.org/

 

Christopher Walken Reads the Work of Lady Gaga

99 Cent Store

Not too long ago I was shopping in a 99 cent store in West Berkeley and was surprised to see huge photograph (or reproduction of a photograph) depicting a 99 cent store hanging on the wall.

My first thought was well, the wall decoration must be a reproduction of one of Andreas Gursky’s famous photos of 99 cent stores. Then I realized that the 99 cent store depicted in the photo looked very similar to the one I was shopping in at the time. Was it possible that Gursky’s 99 Cent, the precursor to 99 Cent II Diptych (which is the most expensive photograph in the world) was shot here, in Berkeley, where I was purchasing a 99 cent bottle of chili sauce, a 99 cent flower pot, and a 99 cent tube of off-brand toothpaste? Here’s what it looks like:

Andreas Gursky, 99 Cent, 1999 (click to see full-size, and trust me, it's much better that way)

Although I couldn’t figure out where Gursky took his photo, I realized it couldn’t have been the store we were in; the Berkeley 99 Cent Store is brand new -  it opened in 2008, 9 years after the photo was shot. I guess the store’s owner just has a post-modern sensibility.

Gursky makes these gigantic prints by using a large-format 4×5 camera, taking multiple shots at the same site and then digitally reconstructing the image later on. The result is a huge print with surprising detail – too much detail really, so much so that in the case of the brightly colored 99 cent store, it is a bit sickening. It also creates an alien-ness to his work – he takes photographs of the familiar but defamiliarizes his subject via the impossible point of view. You know for a fact that what his camera sees is not possible and yet it is. He was on the cusp of digital technology, and his work is impeccable – no matter how hard you look, you can’t find the seams between the different shots.

Andreas Gursky, 99 Cent II Diptychon, 2001, (sold for $3.34 million, most in history for a photograph)

Giant Squid = Art

Artists Todd Freemen and Meg Perec have recreated a 60-foot long giant squid as part of a site-specific installation in (unfortunately) Grand Rapids, Michigan. This is the artists’ work statement:

Large animals captivate like few other beings can. They are deified, hunted, consumed and catalogued. While our culture has seemingly amassed a working knowledge of all living species on the planet, one of the world’s giants has successfully eluded the scientific community for centuries. Save for a few partially decomposed specimens virtually nothing is known of Architeuthis dux, the Giant Squid. Architeuthis is a 60 foot ghost, moving unnoticed through deep and dark.

Our representation of the giant squid was conceived out of a need to see the animal for ourselves, beyond pale museum subjects or small renderings in books. At life size, the true scale of Architeuthis becomes clear, a massive, unfamiliar animal deserving of the same fascination and wonder owed to any whale, elephant or dinosaur. Our intent is to bring the myth into a gratifying real space, and give the viewer a chance to be confronted with one of the largest and most secretive animals to ever live.

Detail of The Piece

Found Object Section

The only picture ever taken of a live giant squid, caught off the coast of Japan in 2008.

Find out more here: http://www.artprize.org/artist/id/4156

NaNoWriMo

Its National Novel Writing Month, and I’m going to take a stab at writing my first-ever long-form piece of fiction. I don’t really know what it’s about, but I’m going to try to write about 1700 words a day for the next 30 days, and hopefully forcing myself to get words on the page will result in something mildly interesting. Maybe I’ll post excerpts as I go, if it turns out I like it.

Twin Peaks on the Internet

You can now watch all episodes of Twin Peaks on CBS’s website. I wonder what weirdo at their corporate offices thought “yea, now seems like a good time to bring back Twin Peaks. We’ll stick it between Two and Half Men and Undercover Boss

http://www.cbs.com/classics/twin_peaks/