Art + Architecture + Design
Literature
Catherine Sullivan’s “Triangle of Need” to Premiere @ Walker Art Center
Aug 9th
One of the most interesting artists working today, Catherine’s work is intellectually rigorous, aesthetically lush, and often more than a little perplexing. Expect nothing less from the sound of this new, multi-channel piece set to premiere the end of this month. Get there any way you can! I will…
Congratulations Catherine!
From the press release:
August 23-November 18
Triangle of Need Examines Wealth and EvolutionWhat do the Neanderthals have in common with an early 20th-century American industrialist? What are the connections between Nigerian cinema and a sprawling mansion comprising four centuries of architectural styles? These are some of the elements—physical and conceptual—that make up Catherine Sullivan’s new film project making its world premiere August 23 (beginning at 5 pm) through November 18 in the Walker Art Center exhibition Catherine Sullivan: Triangle of Need. In the multichannel video installation Triangle of Need, Sullivan orchestrates complex sets of ideas and participants to weave a nuanced story about evolution, class, wealth and poverty, and the inequalities and injustices in our global economy. The project is co-commissioned by the Walker, A Foundation (Liverpool), and Vizcaya Museum and Gardens (Miami), and will be presented in Liverpool (October 2007) and Miami (December 2007). The Minneapolis presentation is organized by Walker visual arts curator Doryun Chong…
Happy Birthday Franz Kafka!
Jul 5th
Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
- Franz Kafka
La Gentillesse Flagorneuse – Colette
Jun 1st
J’ai déployé tour à tour, pour me pousser au premier rang, la brutalité d’une acheteuse de grands magasins aux jours de solde et la gentillesse flagorneuse.
[In order to push myself to the front row, I displayed, alternately, the brutality of a department store shopper during sales season, and fawning kindness.]
–Colette, Ouvres complètes
“Flight: A Novel” by Sherman Alexie
May 29th
Local boy Sherman Alexie has a new novel on the shelves after a 10 year hiatus. I’ve only just cracked my copy, but the NYT is raving (sort of). My review to follow:
And yet, for all the death and violence he navigates, Zits clings to small moments of connection in the lives of his temporary souls — a wife to come home to, a father to comfort him, a friend with whom to soar to the heavens. “Flight” might be categorized as a novel for particularly precocious young adults, but it also works on deeper levels. It’s raw and vital, often raucously funny, and there isn’t a false word in it.
–Tom Barbash, NYT
Information Sickness Cure: Explode the Continuum of History; Walter Benjamin’s Best
Apr 24th
"Beset with information sickness and time fever, our challenge is to explode the continuum of history, as Benjamin realized in his final and best thinking.
Empty, homogenous, uniform time must give way to the singularity of the non-exchangeable present. Historical progress is made of time, which has steadily become a monstrous materiality, ruling and measuring life. The ‘time’ of non-domestication, of non-time, will allow each moment to be full of awareness, feeling, wisdom, and re-enchantment. The true duration of things can be restored when time and the other mediations of the symbolic are put to flight.
Derrida, sworn enemy of such a possibility, grounds his refusal of a rupture on the nature and allegedly eternal existence of symbolic culture: history cannot end, because the constant play of symbolic movement cannot end. This auto-da-fé is a pledge against presence, authenticity, and all that is direct, embodied, particular, unique, and free. To be trapped in the symbolic is only our current condition, not an eternal sentence…."
Link: Insurgent Desire – The Modern Anti-World .
Via: ::: wood s lot ::: "the fitful tracing of a portal". and WIT
Join the NY Media Elite – FREE!
Apr 22nd
This is just so much dorky goodness that I have to post the full entry. From Kottke.com:
I might be shooting myself in the foot by posting this, but the table of contents for the newest issue of the New Yorker is usually available on Sunday on newyorker.com, the day before the issue hits the newsstands and arrives in subscriber mailboxes. All you need to do is hack the URL of the TOC from the previous Monday. Here’s the URL for the April 23 TOC:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/toc/2007/04/23/toc_20070416
“2007/04/23″ is the date of the issue and “toc_20070416″ refers to the date of the posting. This then is the URL for the April 30 issue:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/toc/2007/04/30/toc_20070423
At right is the cover for tomorrow’s issue, which includes Adam Gopnik’s piece on the Virginia Tech shooting, a new piece by Atul Gawande, and Anthony Lane’s review of Hot Fuzz. Monday’s New Yorker on Sunday is usually only available to the select few of the Manhattan media elite who are sped their new issues hot off the presses. Now everyone can have a similar experience on the web.
Enjoy.
via kottke.org
Bleakness Rules the Day; Cormac McCarthy Wins 07 Pulitzer
Apr 22nd
Cormac McCarthy’s "The Road" is as bleak as it gets. The end of the world. Fire. Nuclear winter. Fanaticism. Cannibalism. Blood, bones and dust.
It’s McCarthy’s 10th Novel, and at 73 it seems things are looking worse than ever to the author of such standouts as "All the Pretty Horses" and "Blood Meridian". Apparently the Pulitzer committe sees it that way too.
Be sure to check the articles at the NYTs for more. HERE
Alamo: A Radio Play by Rick Moody, with Miranda July and Ethan Hawke
Apr 15th
"In this radio drama, middle-aged, doctoral candidate Irving Paley is obsessed with a work of contemporary sculpture in downtown Manhattan, and the ways it affects those who pass by it regularly. On an answering machine he collects the stories of a range of New Yorkers, all of whom have some relationship to Alamo, aka “the Cube.” Over the course of an interview with a public radio reporter about the project, Paley reveals how the Cube has slowly consumed his life, while back at the sculpture, a mystery surrounding the artwork deepens."
You can find more on this one here http://www.thirdcoastfestival.org/audio_library_2004.asp Be sure to check out the interview with Moody:
> You’ve recorded several of your short stories for the radio, with musicians and artists playing along. How do you imagine the experience of hearing these versions of the stories differs from reading them?
Well, I think literature really benefits from being performed. It makes the beauty of the language more apparent, and it makes an implied voice an actual instrument. I always feel like I understand literature better when I’ve heard it read aloud. For example, there’s a recording of James Joyce reading some of Finnegans Wake. That’s a very difficult book, but it sounds fabulous when Joyce reads from it.
10 Famous Literary Bars
Apr 15th
Eagle and Child, Oxford
Literary Patrons: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien
CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien spent many an hour in deep discussion in the Rabbit Room at the Eagle and Child. Every Tuesday morning, these two luminaries held meetings of the Inklings, a literary group consisting of fellow writers in the Oxford community. Although the group began gathering across the way at the Lamb and Flag pub in 1962, the Rabbit Room remains the favorite spot for literary fans.
Link: 10 Famous Literary Bars | ForbesTraveler.com.
via Wit
Rare The Little Prince Drawing Discovered
Apr 5th
"A rare, original illustration by The Little Prince author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry has been discovered in Japan. François d’Agey, the author’s nephew, was among those at a media conference in Tokyo on Wednesday announcing the discovery.
"Seeing [the drawing] made me very happy," the 81-year-old d’Agey told the gathering of reporters.
The image depicts the businessman on the fourth star visited by the title character of Saint-Exupéry’s beloved story. The man is so busy counting stars that he pays no attention to the philosophical little character.
The precious drawing is only the sixth discovered of the estimated 47 illustrations by Saint-Exupery (1900-1944). Most of the author’s drawings are missing, officials said.
The drawing has been kept by Minoru Shibuya, head of the Ehon Museum Kiyosato in Hokuto, Yamanashi Prefecture, which displays the works of picture-book writers from around the world and who is said to not have realized the drawing’s value (!).
via http://www.cbc.ca/arts/books/story/2007/04/04/little-prince-drawing.html
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