Soup: Penumbra Carter's Tin Man

Eryri (slurl)

Field Trip: The Last Clean Shirt

Artist Alfred Leslie's film The Last Clean Shirt with subtitles by poet Frank O'Hara (who lifted some of them from Alfred Leslie) was first shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1964.

From Tate Modern (who screened the film this past Wednesday, 24 June 2009):

In a letter to his friend and collaborator, the poet Frank O'Hara, Leslie writes: 'We will shoot for two SEPERATE LEVELS on the film. One is the VISUAL, the other the HEARD & the spectator will be in TWO places or more SIMULTANEOUSLY. NOT AS MEMORY BUT AT THE SAME MOMENT. PARALLELISM! MULTIPLE POINTS OF VIEW!'

It is a blueprint for The Last Clean Shirt in which a man and a woman take a car ride through the streets of downtown Manhattan. A clock on the dashboard foregrounds the fact that the film is a single shot. The woman speaks in double-talk Finnish, interpreted by the beautiful and brilliant story told via O'Hara's subtitles that run throughout. (more)

From NYS Writers Institute:

The Last Clean Shirt is a rarely-screened film that has become even more intriguing and thought-provoking with the passage of time. A young black man and white woman get in a car at Astor Place, tape an alarm clock to the dashboard, and start driving around as the woman yaks in an unknown language. This action is repeated three times, each segment featuring a different subtitled stream-of-consciousness narration by poet Frank O’Hara. Predating the rise of structural filmmakers like Michael Snow and Hollis Frampton by several years, Leslie’s film anticipates later avant-garde interest in the limits of cinematic form. 

Snubbed by critics and booed by audiences . . . at the 1964 New York Film Festival, The Last Clean Shirt was considered audacious and excessive in its day. During a run at the New Yorker, one crowd hounded the owner of the theater so badly that he was chased out of the building and hid in a dumpster. (more)

From Jacket 23:

The Last Clean Shirt was even more avant-garde or visionary than critics were able to see at the time: it is not merely a film but a new form of work of art, a new literary object, in the wake of the simultaneous poem (Blaise Cendrars). One might then wonder how the film goes beyond simultaneity in the mapping of a new artistic space created between images and words . . .

The film betrays the concerns of the painter: lines, planes and dimensions are carefully organized on the screen and enter a field of tension. The spectator can see vertical lines: the characters, the street, the buildings, the windshield frame and the hands of the clock. Horizontal lines also come into play: the subtitles, the upper part of the seats and of the windshield and a series of small horizontal lines can be seen on different parts of the screen.
     

Circularity also finds its place with the clock, the wheel and various buttons on the dashboard of the car. There seems to be no depth, no relief whatsoever on the screen. It is as though Alfred Leslie went back to the early years of cinema to show us that what we take for granted i.e. verisimilitude, lifelikeness, 3-D relief are but a construct, an illusion. (more)

Alfred Leslie (link)

Frank O'Hara (link)

Soup: Dekka Raymaker's Prim Soup (Folly)

Eryri (slurl)

on form

. . . I soon realized that the assurance of his early formal patterns provided the warrant for following him when his patterns became more complicated and finally ceased to be patterns at all. In the twentieth century, this was a not uncommon progression among revolutionary spirits in all the arts. Picasso had conspicuously mastered every aspect of draughtsmanship and painting that had ever been applied to the recognizable before he moved on into the less recognizable, and the best reason for trying to follow what he was up to was that he had proved he could actually do what he was no longer doing. Stravinsky composed melodies you could hum and whistle . . . before he moved on to composing what could only be listened to, and the best reason for listening hard was your memory of the authority he had displayed when the listening was easy. In poetry, Eliot went on proving that he was a master of tight forms even as he became famous for works that apparently had no form at all, and that was the best reason for supposing that those works still depended on a highly-schooled formal sense. So there was nothing new about Merrill's progression from poems with apprehensible boundaries to poems whose lack of boundaries was part of their subject. It was in the tradition of Modernism. But it depended on an assurance that made paying attention compulsory.

-- Clive James (on James Merrill) "The Necessary Minimum" Poetry July/August 2009

(crossposted)

Soup: Selavy Oh's Cloud Chamber

Cloud Chamber by Selavy Oh can be accessed inside the house on Eryri here (slurl)

(For best viewing, set sky to midnight)

Update: Soup Port

A Soup Port has been added to the sidebar (to the top right) with SLurls to suggested destinations on Eryri. I'm trying to develop a teleport system inworld but it takes me a long time to learn things. I'll be adding a temporary notecard to the easel at the landing with a welcome and this information.

Field Trip: Warholapalooza

James Warhola, page from Uncle Andy via Andy Wales' Panel Discussion (link)

Warholapalooza: Family Day @The Smithsonian, Washington DC - Among numerous other events, James Warhola reads from his children's book Uncle Andy's: A Faabbbulous Visit with Andy Warhol @National Portrait Gallery - Saturday, 20 June 2009 (link)

You can read a review of the book here (paired with a review of Claire Hatfield's children's book Me and Uncle Romie inspired by the artist Romare Bearden) (link)

According to Audrey Regan:

James Warhola, more than anyone, can create the most frightening creatures and have them appear completely non-threatening and ultimately cool. The aliens he includes in his numerous paintings of bars are larger than life (or smaller than life) and they are portrayed by Warhola as fun seekers. James is also an illustrator and author of children's books. His most recent offering is "Uncle Andy's" which draws on James' childhood memories of visiting Andy Warhol at his home in New York city. The book is published by Putnam and is available in bookstores everywhere. (pic/link)

More on Jamie Warhola's website (link)

Andy Wales has a charming story about Warhola and Uncle Andy (link)

Field Trip: Appearing Rooms

Jeppe Hein Appearing Rooms (currently @Southbank Centre, London)

Hamlet and Jeppe Hein are both Danish and they could not be, at first glance, more apart in their approach to the reality that surrounds them. But in a way both indulge in a doubt about existence that makes them closer than it seems. Hamlet’s doubt is too famous to be repeated, but Jeppe’s doubt has not yet reached such notoriety, because maybe not even he knows what it’s about. His doubt is about art itself, how the individual can produce today a work of art that is not simply auto-referential and self-celebrating but addresses the nature of our social texture and blends with the basic flow of human actions. So the question for the young Danish is: “To be, just to be, or to be more, to be better?”

-- Francesco Bonami "Don't look! Move!"

Jeppe Hein's Loop Bench was featured @Art Basel, which ended today (link)

More (link)

Best of Brooklyn is Watching Year 1

Best of Brooklyn is Watching 1
Add nominations here

Aequitas 2009

CM Pauluh aka Nebulosus Severine Bending Trees (diptych) acrylic and thread on canvas 16 x 10 inches (2009) (link) now on exhibition at Aequitas

Aequitas@Artspace OSA NYC (link) June 1-June 30, 2009
Aequitas Second Life Version@Caerleon Art Collective (link)(slurl) June 26-July 3, 2009
Second Life Reception June 26 6:30-8:30 PM SLT

From Stephen Beveridge's blog sense and defense (link):

Social media has drawn together a group of international artists to New York for Aequitas, an exhibit of art based on childhood experiences.

Artspace OSA in New York City and the virtual community of Second Life will host a joint exhibition of international artists: paintings, digital work, and virtual world installations during the month of June 2009.

Artists can be a solitary lot but with the advent of virtual worlds and web 2.0 they are finding each other and communicating in the way they know best: making and exhibiting art together. This disparate group of artists, having never met face to face, nevertheless finds a common ground in exploring their childhood for art.
Sowa Mai, also known as the artist Stephen Beveridge, conceived and planned this exhibit as an extension of the relationships he had formed in the Second Life virtual world with artist/avatars from different time zones and cultural backgrounds.
The exhibit in Washington Heights, New York City will display paintings and digital work by the human artists. An exhibit in the Second Life virtual world will consist of (art) installations and scripted objects by the human artists’ avatar counterparts. Both exhibits are based around the theme of mining childhood experience for art.

Dekka Raymaker Andrew MacLachlan Penumbra Carter Beth Olds Nebulosus Severine CM Pauluh Sowa Mai Stephen Beveridge David Ferrando Banrion Constantine Robert Garlick Elif Arat

Aequitas
Artspace OSA
June 1 – June 30, 2009
Reception Friday June 19th. 6:30-8:30
178 Bennett Ave @ 189th St, NYC
1 train to 191st Street | A train to 190th Street

Second Life Version
Caerleon Art Collective
June 26 – July 3, 2009
Reception June 26th. 6:30-8:30slpm

(slurl)

Contact:
Stephen Beveridge
212 928 8351
SowaMai@gmail.com

Nebulosus Severine has more information here (link) and a slideshow of images here (link)

Aria from Bach's Goldberg Variations

Glenn Gould was possibly the most brilliant interpreter of J.S. Bach, at least in my opinion. He was passionately interested in new media of every kind and would have loved the idea of virtual worlds to play in. The little chair he uses in this video was the only chair he could feel comfortable in performing with so it was carried to his concert appearances as well as to his recording sessions all over the world. If you listen closely you can hear him crooning to the music. Eccentric, idiosyncratic, yes; strange, well yes, it's true; artist definitely.

Glenn Gould (link)

shades of gray

Second Life® Adult Content designation updated 1 June 2009 - from blog post by Cyn Linden:

Educational and cultural content will be exempted.

(read more)

The complete wording in "Knowledge Base>Second Life Info>Legal Matters>Policies>Maturity Ratings: an overview" is this:

We may take into account whether apparent or reported adult content or conduct on a particular Region serves only an extremely limited or passive function, or an important educational or cultural function, and therefore would be appropriate for all Second Life audiences.

(read more)

From Second Life Support Center Adult-oriented content controls FAQ:

Content is flagged as Adult in two ways:

Use of adult keywords in names and descriptions
Location on an Adult region

(read more)