HANNE'S ART AND CULTURE BLOG

Fia Backstrom is part of the show In Practice Projects at the Sculpture Center. Go to www.sculpture-center.org to read more.

Fia Backström
ART POLITIQUEMENT ENGAGÉ - POLITISCHE ENGAGIERT KUNST, 2007
Intervention 17: Sound piece, framed 28" x 20" inkjet prints, vitrine, magazine, photocopies

Pigeon 4/5 by Roe Ethridge, 2001, C-print, 30" x 38", collection of Andrew Kreps
Smoke & Mirrors #126 A&B by Eileen Quinlan, 2006, silver gelatin fiber print, one part of diptych, 40" x 30", collection of Michael Lynne. Printed matter, wheat paste, tempera paint, spray paint, inkjet printed wallpaper, light, ax. Domestic Affairs: video, framed silkscreen print, 2 bound scripts

Courtesy of the artist
Photo: Jason Mandella

Professional Surfer is a group exhibition that considers web browsing (aka 'surfing') as an art form. It brings together websites run by individuals and collectives who re-publish found digital material next to remixed graphics, video, performance and commentary. Framed as individual artworks, the websites employ appropriation in ways that are reminiscent of Pop, video or conceptual art, yet set apart by a deep immersion in their surrounding digital environment. Presented in blog posts, or across a series of interlinked web pages, their projects transform the anarchic territory of the Internet into an aesthetic that could only be borne out of a territory in which commerce and creativity, amateurs and professionals, as well as divergent cultures and styles are in constant flux and uncomfortable proximity. Open exhibition.

"By anybody's standard, 700,000 records sold is a huge success. By Brazilian standards, that's just incalculably enormous. 34 years ago, the Sao Paolo band Secos e Molhados ("Dry & Wet Goods") sold 700,000 copies of their eponymous debut record, and still nobody outside Brazil knows who they were - not even WFMU. Let's start knowing." Go to WFMU to learn more.

Laurie Spiegel Playing 1977 Bell Labs Hal Alles Synth. Concerto for Self-Accompanying Digital Synthesizer. The instrument is possibly the first realtime digital synthesizer, built at Bell Telephone Labs, NJ by Hal Alles and team, with C language software written by Laurie that processes the player's live input into an ongoing accompaniment that will continue to be played live against. This is a legal copy uploaded by the owner of the original tape. The OHM DVD's video was taken from this.

American composer Laurie Spiegel was born in Chicago on September 20, 1945. She has worked at Bell Laboratories and in computer graphics. Primarily known for her groundbreaking compositions and her software "Music Mouse," she also plays the guitar and lute.

Spiegel, who attended Shimer College, Brooklyn College, and Oxford University, received a degree in social sciences and went on to study composition with Jacob Druckman and Vincent Persichetti at the Juilliard School. Her early musical experiences were largely self-directed, beginning with the mandolin, guitar, and banjo she had as a child which she learned to play by ear; she taught herself music notation at the age of 20, after which she began writing down her compositions. Though Spiegel was a pioneer of the New York new music scene, she began to withdraw from it in the early 1980s as it began to focus on process over product, as the techniques were being developed over the music itself. Though she has continued to support herself though her software development, Spiegel's aim has been to use technology in music as a means of furthering her art rather than as an end in itself. This is Laurie's website. Via 53os.

Go here.

Go here.

The New Television Workshop originated at WGBH, a public broadcasting station in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1974 to support the creation and development of experimental video art. This experimental programming included dance, drama, music, performance and visual arts on video and film. As early as 1968, WGBH was committed to the development of video art through residency programs, with artists such as Nam June Paik. Many of these early works (pre-1974) were broadcast both locally and nationally. Go here.

Robert Cahen's work with video first developed as the result of his studies of electroacoustic composition with Michel Chion and Pierre Schaeffer at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique (CNSM) in Paris in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Within this context, Cahen developed a video aesthetic grounded in the principles of time in musical structuring and the ambivalence of the various 'time zones' interacting with each other. Interestingly, Cahen unfolds this structure by using narrative components that derive from cinema: in Juste le temps (1983, F), Cahen introduces the narrative motif of a train journey in order to intersect different experiences of time associated with a woman sitting in a train compartment and a man stepping into this compartment. When they watch each other and look out of the window, the image is temporally manipulated through scan processing (which resembles the Rutt/Etra Scan Processor used by the Vasulkas and Gary Hill). The overlapping of these varying views creates an abstract composition, a passage of images (défilement — a term introduced by Thierry Kuntzel), which cannot be attributed to the specific perspective of each individual's sights. In an interview with Jean-Paul Fargier, Cahen explained that in Juste le temps the perspective was that of the individual seated — the traveller's impression of what was taking place. Cahen wanted to emphasize that when we look to the distance, we do not see the same things that we see when viewing something close up. (From Fondation Daniel Langlois).

..but in palindromes.

How to make here.

"Very foggy in the beginning, I think I was in some bad 80's film and I was Jack Nicholson. I abused my wife daily until one day she set traps around the house and sewed my legs together." More here.

To Génica Athansiou

November 24, 1940

My very dear Génica,

You must find heroin at all costs and you must risk death to get it to me here. This is where matters stand. The Initiates have real instruments of torture, as I have already told you, and they use them from a distance to mutilate me while I sleep, each night a little more. If it is difficult to procure heroin or opium, it is solely because of me and because they know that it is the one thing that would restore my strength and make me fit to struggle against Evil. But the most serious aspect of the affair is that all my friends, including you, have rebelled, have taken up arms in Paris, have used force to get heroin for me, and that they extracted it from all of you by magic, and that they then caused you to lose consciousness of your rebellion and that they have weighed down your shoulders your heads and the backs of your necks with leaden spells in order to enslave you, for it is thus that the common people are avenged and it is the common people who are now in power and who feed on my suffering here. Search your memory and you will see that some part of the use you have made of your time eludes you. Génica, we must leave this world, but first the Kingdom of the Other World must come, and we need armed troops in great numbers. So that the Bohemians can enter this world in number as one disembarks from a ship I must have heroin so that I can open all the hidden doors and destroy the spells of Satan which are keeping them out and keeping me prisoner here.

I count on you and I embrace you.

Antonin Artaud

Two nights ago you thought you had a dream that brought you to Marseilles, boulevard Perrier, but in reality you were having a vision from Paris of a real scene which was taking place in Marseilles, in which one of the gods of Evil went forth with his armies. These armies were cut to pieces by the Bohemians who reappear at night but some of their soldiers were loitering in Saumur, in Toulon, and in Paris in the vicinity of the Vieux-Colombier. (via WFMU).

Bernardo Bertolucci, John Baldessari, Laurie Anderson, Vito Acconci, Joan Jonas, Jack Nicholson, Marcel Duchamp, Chris Burden, Michel Gondry, Isabelle Huppert, or what about a recording from 1952 called Paris in the 1920's? All is audio streaming from the MoMA historical audio archives.

HELLO I'M CRASHING.
a group exhibition featuring
Bozidar Brazda-Vidya Gastaldon-Laleh Khorramian-Paul Aymar Mourgue d’Algue, Chuck Nanney-Anna Parkina-Torbjørn Rødland-Iris van Dongen-Costa Vece. Curated by Fabienne Stephan.

Come join us at the opening on Sunday February 18 from 4 to 6.
Salon 94, 12 East 94th Street, New York, NY 10128, T 646 672 9212

With a total of six never before seen photographs of a young Prince on the verge of stardom taken by Minneapolis-born New York-based photographer Robert Whitman in the late 1970s, this exhibition sets out to capture images of the musical genius and pop cultural phenomenon at the onset of his musical career. In the mid-to late-1970s, Minneapolis was a cauldron bubbling with creativity in all the arts, but especially in music. The folk rock era of the early 1960s, which had spawned the young Bob Dylan, had given way to a spare and funky R&B sound. Pioneered by groups like The Suburbs, Lipps Inc, and Morris Day, no one took the sound further, or blew up bigger, than Prince.

Another young artist on the scene, photographer Robert Whitman was also beginning his career. Inevitably they met, with Whitman capturing Prince on film - just a couple of young Minneapolis artists on the verge of conquering the world. Whitman's career took off in the early 80s. From his early Minneapolis days and throughout his career Whitman's photographs have always been a testament to his talent of capturing elusive moments whether he is working in the controlled studio environment or simply walking down the street with his eyes wide open. From his vivid reportage of Cuban street life to intimate glimpses of languid embraces and gestures, his images emit a luminous movement that has become his trademark. Text from Black and White Gallery. For info on the exhibition go here.

Article on Schulze here.

In concert, Minneapolis 1979.

A short documentary ( in german) about a Conrad Schnitzler sound installation - early 1970s.

Conrad Schnitzler (b. Düsseldorf, 1937) is a German musician. Schnitzler has been a major, though reclusive, figure on the European music scene since the late 1960s. Schnitzler was one of the founding members of Tangerine Dream, and later the band Kluster. He left both bands soon, to focus on his solo-work. He continued to record from his home studio in Dallgow, Germany, creating CD-Rs which he sells independently. Schnitzler has also participated in several collaborations with other electronic musicians. He recorded Acon (2002), a somewhat abstract piece, with former bandmate Hans-Joachim Roedelius. His album with American electronic composer Michael Thomas Roe, Mi.T.-CON 04 (2005), has been compared to his earlier works such as Con/Ballet Statique and Con 3.

Ein Blick über das verlassene Zentrum Berlins am Potsdamer Platz am Ende der 60er. Musik: Eruption (Conrad Schnitzler, Klaus Freudigmann, Wolfgang Sequenza Seidel The deserted center of Berlin at the end of the sixties with the atmospheric music by: Conrad Schnitzler, Wolfgang Seidel, Klaus Freudigmann.)
recorded ca 1972, released 2006 by QBICO (www.qbicorecords.com)

The Wire-November 2005 issue 261:
"Eruption was a multidisciplinary freeform ensemble put together by cellist, violinist and early electronic improvisors Conrad Schnitzler in 1970 as an adjunct to his work with Kraut bahamoths Tangerine Dream and Kluster. They seem to have functioned more as a thinktank for the then explosive Krautrock scene than a straightforward gigging group, with a revolving memebership that at points included members of Embryo, Ash Ra Tempel and Agitation Free. Details of Eruption's Berlin actions have appeared in most comprehensive German rock overviews, but up until now there has been no audio documentation, making Qbico's archival unearthing of a 1970 live performance from Studio Freudigmann, Berlin all the more significant. Although the picture on the back features footage of a big band show with members of Amon Dulul and Ash Ra Tempel, the LP documents a trio set from Schnitzler, Wolfgang Seidel and Klaus Freudigmann that is much more punk than the group's links to such centres of kosmische boatfloat might suggest. The music starts out fairly fragmented, with sustained violin drones caught in a flux of scattershot percussion, short passages of silence and wowing effects. Although it feels a little tentative at first, this slightly more deliberate approach is borne of a hard-thinking improvisatory ethos, based more on exploring aspects of interactive dialogue than free rock gush. But after the parameters of the exchange have been fully established, the trio start to move the music out, with tracks based around oscillating analogue tones, feral violin and distorted improvised vocals that sound uncannily like the freeform punk of Dylan Nyoukis's Blood Stereo and Decaer Pinga. Side two feels a little more of its time -a good thing- with fuzz-wah, organ and drums generating circular hymns to nada that are as ferociously monosyllabic as anything by Klaus Dinger's La Dusseldorf. The inspired combination of rock dynamics, freely improvised dialogue and manhandled electronics makes this another one of those historically upending releases that captures a moment of conceptual precognition decades before it would be fully assimilated. But all the jawdropping formal considerations aside, Eruption makes for a thrilling stand-alone ride" David Keenan

After his departure from TD Schnitzler, Moebius and Rodelster formed Kluster. No film footage exists from the early days. This scene from a tv documentary was done with the few photographs that survived and shots from record sleeves

Mister H has horrible hair. This is from the 1970's version of "The Letter People". When the show was updated in the 1990's, "horrible hair" was changed to the more P.C. "happy hair".

Elayne Reiss-Weimann and Rita Friedman created The Letter People in 1972. They sold their idea to educational publisher AlphaTime (later AlphaOne), and illustrator Elizabeth Callen was hired to design the look of the series and its characters.

The program's basic concept was simple: Each letter of the English alphabet was represented by a unique character with traits derived from its letter. The consonants were male, and the vowels were female (the "Letter Girls"). Reiss-Weimann, Friedman and Callen also wrote two series of books about the characters, Fables from the Letter People and Read-to-Me. Each Letter Person also had an accompanying song (available on 8-track cartridge and vinyl record), and inflatable vinyl effigies in two sizes (12-14 inches or 30-inch "life-size") known as a "Huggables". Other merchandise included filmstrips and flash cards. Educators who adopted the program were trained in its implementation, and The Letter People was soon picked up by hundreds of schools across the United States.

The way we do art now and other sacred tales by John Baldessari, Vertical Roll by Joan Jonas and Soundings by Gary Hill. For more art video clips on youtube, go here.

Habitat '67 is a striking housing complex located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, on the Quai Marc-Drouin on the Saint Lawrence River. It was designed by architect Moshe Safdie based on his master's thesis at McGill University. It was designed to integrate the variety and diversity of scattered private homes with the economics and density of a modern apartment building. Modular, interlocking concrete forms define the space. The complex was built as part of Expo '67. The project was designed to create affordable housing with close but private quarters, each equipped with a garden. The complex was originally meant to be vastly larger. Ironically, the building's units are now quite expensive rather than "affordable" due to its architectural cachet. It is now a privately owned condominium complex since it was purchased by its tenants in 1985.

Safdie hoped that his vision of interlocking modules would become widespread. However Safdie's attempts to build similar structures elsewhere in the world all failed to be funded. Habitat '67 has a website.

Numo has a blog.

via Channel 53

Anders is part of Willy Wonka Inc., which he started together with Ida Ekblad. Here is more of his work.

Here.

A video of Jay Z and Big Jaz that shows where Jay got his start in rapping.

New video, and live;

The game is played by John Cage and Teeny, Marcel Duchamp's wife.