Bursting with contemporary art, fashion, music, literature, videos, and other uncategorizable materials…
Welcome to (Year 2: Month 2: Volume 2), the new exclusive collection for paid subscribers! Thank you again for supporting this project, I really appreciate it!
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Now then, without further ado…
OPTION 2022: Fred Moten, Brandon Lopez, Gerald Cleaver
Experimental Sound Studio & Patron Gallery co-present
Wadada Leo Smith “is a trumpeter and composer, working primarily in the field of creative music.” His visual scores were exhibited in 2015 at the University of Chicago
I am alone. I am sitting at a table, waiting. I don’t know what I’m waiting for. I get the feeling if I stop waiting before I know what I am waiting for I will never find it. My life will be destroyed by what I did not do because I did not know I had the option.
— from “The Black Shawl” by Blake Butler, via Forever Magazine
Thom Browne’s Fall 2023 “Little Prince” show on Valentine’s Day #NYFW
Barbara Chase-Riboud is an American visual artist and sculptor, bestselling novelist, and award-winning poet.
Still, the world casually lays plans to end
each tenure of breathing as I newly
develop an addiction to inhaling.
— from “Brass Bell with Tripwire” by Chukwuma Ndulue, via Black Sun Lit
Sondra Perry “is an interdisciplinary artist who works with video, computer-based media, installation, and performance.”
“Haitian electronic music composer Val Jeanty creates esoteric sounds that tantalize the subconscious while creating a healing / cosmic frequency. By synergistically combining acoustics with electronics and the archaic with postmodern, Jeanty incorporates her African Haitian musical traditions into the present and beyond.”
Val Jeanty: The Sound Chemist (2022)
Val Jeanty // Dancing The Divine (2018)
Area by Piotrek Panszczyk SPRING 2023 READY-TO-WEAR
Quaytman: I started calling the accumulation and research of my paintings a book as a mental exercise in self motivation, as I rounded the bend of turning forty in 2001. I found it a useful armature on which to hang my heart—it might inoculate me against the demands of the present, in the quickly appearing and fading calendar of the art world focus. It was a way to maintain a steady focus on my thought and work through all the noise of the present.
— from “R.H. Quaytman with Felix Bernstein: Paintings have their own grammar, in a sense. That one painting could affect the painting next to it, a little like words, is what excites me,” via The Brooklyn Rail
Lisa Alvarado “is an artist and musical performer born in San Antonio, Texas, and based in Chicago.”
Stephanie Lamprea: Quaking Aspen
An architect of new sounds and expressions specializing in contemporary classical repertoire, the performer, recitalist, curator, improviser, and Colombian-American soprano Stephanie Lamprea presents Quaking Aspen (New Focus Recordings, January 2022), her debut album of nature-music for voice and electronics, plus new additional works. From wordless avant-garde soundscapes to spurts of operatic flourishes and electronic poetic loops, Quaking Aspen unfolds vibrant and vulnerable interpretations of text, soaring vocalises, and mercurial acrobatics.
Lynn Hershman Leeson “is a multimedia American artist and filmmaker. Her work combines art with social commentary, particularly on the relationship between people and technology.”
Skinamarink’s facelessness, literally the fact that there are no faces shown, only breaks when it shows you incomplete ones, heads turned away, or smooth planes of skin where lips and eyes used to be. The entity does this to Kaylee, its explanation for taking her face that she needed to be punished. The nightmare skips and jumps as Kevin struggles to reach anyone outside the house, to escape from the house itself.
— from “Prosopagnosia: On Skinamarink and the Distortions of Fear” by Nicholas Russell, via BW/DR
Monique Mouton “born in 1984, Fort Collins, Colorado. Lives and works in New York, New York”
“For nearly two decades, Jonathan Berger’s practice has encompassed a spectrum of activity investigating three primary concerns: the archive as a constantly changing and living entity; the repurposing of the exhibition site, and how ideas and content are cross-pollinated therein; as well as collaboration as a shared experience of trust and belief.”
Helvete - Historien om Norsk Black Metal (Part One — all four parts here)
directed by Thomas Alkärr & Håvard Bråthen
The extreme metal scene is a highly skewed field of cultural production in which women are greatly underrepresented. As tokens, women are likely to be subjected to gender-biased evaluations, the male gaze, and are held accountable when breaking gender roles. This paper investigates the online gender dynamics in extreme metal by conducting a content analysis of the comments on videos of female and male performers of ‘vocal covers’ on YouTube.
— from “Grunting Alone? Online Gender Inequality in Extreme Metal Music” by Julian Schaap and Pauwke Berkers, via the Journal of the IASPM
Aviva Silverman “is an American artist and activist who works in sculpture and performance. Their practice makes use of religion, gender nonconformity, miniatures, and nonhuman actors to investigate existing forms, in particular, technologies of spiritual and political surveillance.”
Steve Reich Introduces Mivos Quartet Recordings
Pulitzer Prize-winning American minimalist and living legend, Steve Reich, is both an influential composer and a fast-talking New Yorker. For this New Sounds, he presents the Mivos Quartet’s recording of his complete works for string quartet (Triple Quartet, Different Trains and WTC 9/11.)
Contemporary American artist Ragen Moss
Dana Schutz: At the edge of the World
“I think of colour as a material.”
Meet American painter Dana Schutz and her fascinating universe of paintings in between abstraction and the concrete.
“When I was younger, I used to feel very hesitant to use the word expressionistic. But today, I would say the paintings are probably pretty expressionistic. And I don’t mean that their gestures are so much about me, but I feel like they are meant to express an idea, a feeling or just a way of being in the world.”
“A lot of times, a painting is about problems. I think that’s an interesting way to begin a painting – something that is either difficult to depict or the painting is itself talking about a problem. I don’t see that the painting offers a solution, but it’s a place where these problems can play out.”
“I feel like the paintings can sometimes be like people. You can have this exchange with them. I would never assume what a viewer should think or take away. I don’t have this clear sense of audience when I am painting. I just hope they can have their own sense of reality.”
Susan Cianciolo is a fashion designer and artist.
Dermisache’s work thus gives shape to a complex universe in which a range of issues cross, connected both to conceptual and timeless philosophical questions (the aesthetical dimension of communication, the dynamics between the expressible and the inexpressible), and to the mentioned historical determinations specific to the local context. Her visual work represents an extremely personal project that allows us to rethink, from new angles, the prevailing trends in the Argentine art scene during those years. At the time of the expansion of research into the dematerialization of the artistic object, Dermisache obsessively focused on the manual production of calligraphic pieces. And, going against the trends of the time, she persisted with her “writing” as a means of reflecting, from a visual arts perspective, on the very essence of language.
— from “On Language and Its Limits: The Illegible Writings of Mirtha Dermisache” by Fernando Bruno, via MoMA’s post
Satoshi Kojima “(b. 1979, Tokyo, Japan) is a painter currently based in Dusseldorf, Germany.”
CHIRP FACTORY SESSION 005 - CIRCUIT DES YEUX
Circuit Des Yeux joined us for an exclusive Live Session with their full touring band lineup. The band features Haley Fohr on Guitar & Vocals, Whitney Johnson on Viola, Adam Luksetich on Drums, Rob Frye on Flute & Bass Clarinet, and Matt Jencik on Bass & Organ. The session was engineered by Mike Lust of Manor Mobile Recording. Video and editing by Big Foot Media.
Circuit des Yeux - "Vanishing" (Official Music Video)
Writer, Director... Haley Fohr
Circuit des Yeux - "Dogma" (Official Music Video)
Writer, Director and Oracle… Haley Fohr
Circuit des Yeux - "The Manatee" (Official Music Video)
Rudy Rubio - Director, Editor & Colorist
Haley Fohr - Concept
As I take the highest dose of Pick-
Me-Ups, I think of a gold-topped
LEGO crate. Where did the bricks
go? I hear egodystonic but see
Whispers in the mirror. 4 walls
descending, liar, liar, liar
at the edge of memory. I don’t know
— from “Pure O” by Dani Putney, via Beaver Magazine
Marius Engh “(1974, Oslo) understands objects by their ability to give and retain information, as representatives of a standardized, everyday way of life whose function and meaning refer to a given inheritance. His work appropriates these already existing forms and then replaces them in another context or under new readings, creating a sort of formalist encounter whose expression displaces the predominant cultural narrative, as well as the way of relating to its environment.”
A man is in his car and halfway to work, when suddenly he slams on the brakes.
Goddammit, he says.
He forgot to get the forms from his wife to give to the insurance company.
The man makes a U-turn and quickly heads back. He parks out front and hurries up the walk.
Honey? he says, opening the door. Honey?
But no one answers back.
— from “The Ship on the Horizon” by Ben Loory, via Air / Light
Irma Álvarez-Laviada “(Gijón, Asturias,1978) has a degree in Fine Arts from the University of Vigo, she lives and works in Madrid.”
Maison Margiela Co-Ed Collection 2023 by John Galliano
Dominique White “weaves together the theories of Black Subjectivity, Afro-pessimism and Hydrarchy (from below) with the nautical myths of Black Diaspora into a term she defines as the Shipwreck(ed); a reflexive verb and state of being. White’s sculptures, or beacons, prophesy the emergence of the Stateless; “a [Black] future that hasn’t yet happened, but must.”
Reading Chasm is like entering a fog, a realm where the known and unknown cross each other in the night, their knives honed sharp and clean readied for the event that will never happen. Nothing can happen in this world. Yet, this is not some static world of timeless instants, but rather a world whose clarity and resilience shift among the paranoid dreams of a crew of misfits all heading toward their own private dooms.
— from “Nick Land: Philo-Fiction, Chasm, and the Abstract Manifesto” via The Dark Fantastic: Literature, Philosophy, and Digital Arts
Outright Insanity at Berlin Fashion Week - via Bliss Foster
When is fashion week going to be more than a focus on New York, London, Milan and Paris? Today, we’re featuring designers at Berlin Fashion Week 2023, who chose to show in Berlin for many reasons, like the innovative metaverse fashion work taking place there, a more unique public relations approach, and to highlight a city ready to showcase a blend of its metropolitan and historical lifestyle. Berlin Fashion Week featured OUTSTANDING talent, proving that good design can come from anywhere. We meet the people behind Odeeh and their famous sweater, Ukrainian designer Lilia Litkovska’s folk roots, and Namilia’s Need for Speed collaboration this season. Don’t miss out on many more interviews!
Rey Akdogan “creates subtle interventions into the spatial, temporal, and material conditions of a given environment through an understated use of repurposed industrial and display materials.”
St Francis Hotel - You'd Gotta Be Alive
Animation and Directed by RUFFMERCY
St Francis Hotel feat. TT - The Truth Is Dead
Animation and Directed by RUFFMERCY
Liam Bailey + St Francis Hotel - Divine Light
Animation by RUFFMERCY
Years later when the world was changed and exactly the same, the Big One collapsed in line at the post office. As he fell, he was a young man again, then a teenager, then ten going on nine, rushing to greet the thing he’d always known was coming.
— from “You Were Only Waiting for This Moment to Arrive” by Kathy Fish, via Ghost Parachute
Olga Balema “is a Ukrainian-born American artist and sculptor. One of the major concerns of her work is form, another material. Another is paying attention to where and how things go into a space. Sometimes the work can be called site respondent, other times it responds only to itself.”
Rochelle Feinstein “is a contemporary American visual artist that makes abstract paintings, prints, video, sculpture, and installations that explore language and contemporary culture.”
Eva Löfdahl, “born 1953 in Gothenburg, Sweden, lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden.”
Amitai Romm “is an artist and researcher living in Copenhagen.”
On The Edge: Improvisation in Music
4-part series
Written & narrated by Derek Bailey. Produced & directed by Jeremy Marre