Hap Mo Da

Mother's Day window painting, Phoenix Bakery, Chinatown.

A Likely Story

BUS STAGE INWARD

Finally got around to watching Lindsay Anderson's 1967 short The White Bus, which - informed by his background in industrial PR documentaries - is kind of like Magical Mystery Tour if it had been made by Throbbing Gristle. It's just one of 80+ films on my streaming queue that are suddenly scheduled to disappear on Mayday - including Kubrick's sumptuous noir Killer's Kiss, Altman's early JD B-flick The Delinquents (starring Tom "Billy Jack" Laughlin), Ken Loach's Kes, Richard Lester and Spike Milligan's The Bed-Sitting Room, Billy Wilder's One, Two Three, and Peter Brook's Marat/Sade -- as well as such less widely celebrated celluloid artifacts as Alan Johnson's Solarbabies (one of the finest post-apocalyptic rollerblade movies in the canon), William Dear's Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann, Denis Sanders' Invasion of the Bee Girls, and Philip Kaufman's debut Fearless Frank - a high-camp 1967 Jon Voight superhero vehicle narrated by Ken Nordine! I'll have to burn the midnight crackpipe to plow through all this material by Wednesday, but luckily the whippets are all tuckered out from their triumphant visit to Eugene. More on that later...

Pitta in the 'pITA

The highlight of the San Francisco launch event for 'patacritical Interrogation Techniques Anthology Volume 3 at ATA/Other Cinema (Craig Baldwin's 28-year-old underground microcinema) was undoubtedly Pitta of the Mind (Maw Win & Amar Chaudhary) translating found email spam poetry from the turn of the Millennium into swinging intergalactic electro-transmissions. I made a video, so hopefully that will find its way online soon, but in the emantime, here's a couple of action shots, and a sampling of the spoems:

  

bodhisattva cohomology

Any dahlia can brainwash short order cook of, but it takes a real lover to for lover.Any trombone can approach fundraiser toward, but it takes a real guardian angel to traffic light of cleavage.piroshki remain sprightly.

lower adult drum electrophoresis

              - Essie Russell

earring 6 alchemists

Sometimes tornado about flies into a rage, but inside grizzly bear always learn a hard lesson from cream puff defined by!Most swamps believe that from fruit cake graduate from around scythe.And derive perverse satisfaction from the dark side of her scythe.

giuliano liable spine pullman devious symbolic groom atkins

            -     Colleen Hunter

cab driver 666 cream puffs

Indeed, toothache about require assistance from polar bear of reactor.Most cigars believe that grizzly bear from pour freezing cold water on bottle of beer defined by skyscraper.globule defined by toothache is frozen.

propagate inholding dactylic ballast riotous deuce bad

             -     Simone Boudreaux

decor briar drawl

Unlike so many boys who have made their niggardly roller coaster to us.Unlike so many cups who have made their cosmopolitan reactor to us.bottle of beer around is ghastly.Where we can ostensibly mourn our nation.For example, living with chestnut indicates that class action suit living with organize recliner around dilettante.

sheridan factual folklore mammalian moorish halfhearted carte

               -     Tommie Esposito

Art Art of the City, Art Art Oh yeah!

I'm lookin' lookin' lookin'! The April 2013 issue of Los Angeles Magazine includes a brief and by any measure incomplete overview of the LA Art Scene (check the lower right hand corner of the cover above), but I got to write about a few people I haven't written about often enough, like Nancy Evans, Juan Capistran, Brenna Youngblood, Jennifer Bolande, and Devin McNulty (!), plus a few - Jim Shaw, Jeffrey Vallance, Marnie Weber, etc. - about whom I've written plenty (and will continue to do so). Anyway, it's on the stands now at the low, low cover price of $4.95 and there doesn't seem to be any of the content online except this calendar of coming activities (It's Time to Canvas the City!) which I apparently blogged a few days ago! There's a few other recent writings I need to post about here, hang on...

Achieving Otherhood

Venice renaissance man Gerry Fialka, who introduced Craig Baldwin's Tribulation 99 at the EPFC Launch Event for 'patacritical Interrogation Techniques Anthology Volume 3, wrote an essay for Otherzine entitled Nothing and Stay Out, which links 'pITA3 with Rodney Ascher's film Room 237: Being an Inquiry into The Shining in 9 Parts and Robert Guffey's book Cryptoscatology: Conspiracy Theory as Art Form. Here's the link: http://www.othercinema.com/otherzine/?issueid=29&article_id=172

Otherzine is the inhouse organ for Baldwin's Other Cinema, which will be hosting the 3rd 'pITA3 Launch Event at ATA Gallery in San Francisco's Mission District at 8ish on Saturday, April 6th - stay tuned for details!

Ecce Flentem Homo

Packing up for the trip back from Vegas with the truckload of art I made as AIR at UNLV over the last 8 weeks - a helluva commute I tell you what. Chloe on her high horse contemplating one of my series of paintings depicting men weeping as they sniff flowers - this one is Tigris of Gaul from the movie Gladiator. She was actually checking it out for a while, then when I got out my camera she lost her focus. I think she's looking for a signature here. Sorry Chloe - Artworld doesn't want artists with stylish signatures. Artworld wants artists with signature styles!

Gone to that great Gumboot Clogeroo in the sky!

Just heard on the Mannlicher Carcano Radio Hour that Canadian C&W icon Stompin' Tom Connors has ceased stompin'. Which I guess makes Mannlicher Carcano the greatest living Canadian musical act. Assuming Gogo is still going. In any case, if you are unfamiliar with this great man's oeuvre, it's sort of like Mike Myers doing Johnny Cash - Gumboot Clogaroo is as good an entry point as any, but I recommend spending some time exploring or reacquainting yourself.

Tordiment! Tordiment!

This very day a tordiment shall commence which will decide forever who is the true cool guy - a noble, courageous audio collagist striving to bring humanity's listening habits in line with today's amazing future, or a couple of bitter punk-rock fashionistos wallowing in a phony nostalgia for a cultural moment that never really existed? Come cheer for your team. There will be blood! I mean wine.

PS: Friday Feb 15 1-3 PM
The Prospectus at The Pacific Design Center
Ste B226 8687 Melrose Ave
Bring a picnic luncheon and floor cushion
(Current show "Paper" includes work by 2 of tordimenters.)

Narcissus Rex

Had some time to kill in my DIY printmaking class and the subject was Valentine's Day cards...

A Night at The Bellagio

 ...with Chihuly, Warhol, Rafat, and Renoir! Plus Chinese Flower Children! Tang Dynasty disco ball horse by Venue Arts. This is like what I imagine that kid in Equus is seeing! "...and Fleckwus spoke out of his chinkle-chankle, saying Behold!"

Actually I'm guessing all the Chinoiserie is by Venue Arts, including the big snake. I couldn't quite hear, but I think Pasha was saying "Get the hell out of the shot, kid - this is MY scene!" Fake Warhol polaroid portrait of the author in front of fake Factory wall on it's way...

They wouldn't let me take pix inside the show, which has a silver double Elvis, a silver Liz taylor, a dance step pattern, and much later work, including an awesome diamond dust portrait of Georgia O'Keefe. But dig these two Warhol/chocolate intertextualizations. Blow this one below up to read the amended Warholisms- "14 minutes longer than this chocolate bar will last!"

First Videos of 'patasonic Research

Christian Cummings performing a folky translation of his song Everything is Industrial Looking from his free DL LP "Slavebation" at the 2nd Launch Event for 'patacritical Interrogation Techniques Anthology Volume 3 at The Institute for Figuring in Los Angeles, Feb 01, 2013. The uplifting coda was left off because it would blow too many minds too quickly, and my Canon Powershot's memory card filled up. But we have some HD tape as well and will be compiling a complete version when our schedule permits. 

Everything is Industrial Looking

From out of the men's room

a whistler passed me

passed some gas, shirt tails out, hands washed,

whistled "I'm a yankee doodle dandy."

Launch Event 2 for ‘patacritical Interrogations Techniques Anthology 3

            

Launch event for ‘patacritical Interrogations Techniques Anthology Volume 3

8 PM Friday, February 1st

The Institute for Figuring, 990 N. Hill Street, #180, Chinatown Los Angeles, CA 90012

In conjunction with the Printed Matter LA Art Book Fair

Featuring performances, screenings, and readings by Christine Wertheim, steve roden, Brian Tucker, Sheridan Lowrey, Christian Cummings, Colin Sackett, and Margaret Wertheim. PLUS: A rare screening of the hippy-era interpretive dance film depiction of Protein Synthesis

Free and public, donations welcome, refreshments will be served!

Editor Doug Harvey, The IFF, AC Books and r.a.m. publications + distributions present the second in a series of salons investigating the permutations and combinations of ‘patacritical Interrogation in conjunction with the publication of the ‘pITA3 collection.

'patacritical Interrogation – a real world implementation of the principles of French playwright Alfred Jarry’s science of ‘pataphysics -- picks up where James Shelby Downard’s King-Kill/33: Masonic Symbolism in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy leaves off – on the brink between paranoid conspiracy theory and avant-garde literature.

‘pITA3 offers a solid introduction to this exciting new field for readers unfamiliar with ‘patacriticism, as well as a samplings of the very latest developments for those already entrenched in the discipline, with contributions from Craig Baldwin, Peter Blegvad, Christine Wertheim, steve roden, Jerome Rothenberg, John Higham, David Cameron, Jerome McGann, Richard Shaver, Clayton Eshleman, Peter Frank, Doug Harvey, Sheridan Lowrey, Colin Sackett, Edward Lear, and more! Copiously illustrated.

‘patacritical scholar Christine Wertheim’s offering a brief introduction to Belle-Époque ‘pataphysical saint Jean-Pierre Brisset and the performance of frOg-sExe-sOng-crOak an original Brisset-inspired text-sound composition.

The world premiere of artist/musician steve roden’s new short film you, like a bridge.

you, like a monorail. which charts the hidden connections between a map of the Disneyland monorail and the sheet music for Simon & Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water.

Independent researcher Brian Tucker presenting a brief overview of the life and work of Richard Shaver -subterranean alien contactee and discoverer of prehistoric holographic “Rock Books”

A continuous looped screening of UK bookmaker Colin Sackett's passively dictatorial subliminal Powerpoint poem "aboutenminutes"

Maverick art historian Sheridan Lowrey projecting the insights of her Duchamp After The Museum of Jurassic Technology Before the Fall essays into cyberspace and the speaker/audience landscape in a talk based on her current online project at www.centerforresearch.blogspot.com entitled To Give to Be Seen: How to Stand to Present

by Duchampian/Lacanian Mechanics

Artist Christian Cummings, known for his Spectral Psychography project in which dead artists create drawings via a ouija board, will contribute an as yet undisclosed musical performance, which may or may not be translated to or from the Esparanto.

Science writer Margaret Wertheim on the outsider physics of James Carter, including a demonstration of his giant smoke ring generator made from garbage cans and a disco fog machine.

PLUS: A rare screening of the hippy-era interpretive dance film depiction of Protein Synthesis directed by Robert Alan Weiss for the Department of Chemistry of Stanford University .

Also on view will be the IFF’s current exhibit Making Space featuring the in-progress business-card model of the Mosely Snowflake Fractal Sponge Tower

For more info on the book itself, visit here.

For more on the Printed Matter LA Art Book Fair, visit here.

Technological Miracle!

I am uploading this image from a Greyhound Bus in Las Vegas!

Portland Shrouded Canine Tapestry Booth

Can't talk now!

The Reality Show

OMG!OMG!OMG! Cover girl/Cover boy Atsuko Okatsuka & Cory Zachariah herald the publication of my review of Pearblossom Hwy! Here's a taste: 

"LA filmmaker's Mike Ott's last movie—LiTTLEROCK (2010) was a surprise smash in indie terms, racking up the kewpie dolls at LA's AFI Fest, indie fests in Boston, Reykjavik, and Montreal and the Independent Spirit and Gotham Awards—the latter included a limited commercial theatrical run in NYC. Eventually the moody low-budget feature was picked up for DVD distribution by Kino Lorber and instant streaming on Netflix.

That's a helluva act to follow, and expectations have been riding high for Ott's follow-up, Pearblossom Hwy, which had its North American debut at the AFI Fest in November and is currently making the rounds of the festival circuit. A sequel of sorts, Pearblossom seems to pick up with the two main characters of LiTTLEROCK—Japanese tourist Atsuko/Anna and SoCal white-trash stoner Cory—a couple of years down the line, but still stranded in the buttcrack of the Antelope Valley.

At least Cory seems to be the same character—though he seemed to have a dad in the earlier movie—the latest hinges on a road trip to reintroduce him to the man he believes to be his biological father. Atsuko is now an immigrant reluctantly studying for her citizenship test, and has picked up considerably more English than the none she conspicuously spoke in LiTTLEROCK. Several of LiTTLEROCK's strong support cast—Roberto Sanchez for example—show up in other roles in Pearblossom.

Fans of LiTTLEROCK might find this slightly disorienting, but it's really just the first level of a complex and rewarding indeterminacy at the heart of Pearblossom's successful simultaneous embodiment of bleak alienation and heart-rending humanism. Not to mention a healthy dose of hilarity—usually accompanying Cory's attempts to fend off or cope with the demands of the square world. His efforts to make something of his life are pretty much limited to compiling a rambling, drug-fueled audition tape for a reality show called The Young Life, and jamming with Cory & the Corrupt, his death metal band.

The deeper ambiguities of identity and authorship are embedded in Cory's recurring video diary sequences, where he talks about his history, family, sexuality, and ambitions, or recites fragmentary poems and song lyrics. These were generated when Ott gave the actor Cory Zacharia a camera and told him to start recording whatever was on his mind, which—over the course of several months—added up to over 100 entries. The cream of the crop are dispersed along the story arc, as the character Cory Lawler confronts his feelings about his domineering older brother and absent father, and explores his ambiguous sexual orientation—until close to the end, when the director's offscreen voice interrupts one of Cory's monologues to ask "Are you talking about your real Dad or talking about your Dad in the movie?..."

Read the rest of The Reality Show here, or pick up a hard copy at your local art gallery or Barnes & Noble.

Watch the Pearblossom Hwy trailer here,  and keep track of screenings at the Small Form Films website or on FB I guess.

I asked and I better get!

"Don't even mention Christmas, Chicklette. My parents are gonna be real sorry if I don't get them cha-cha heels."
        - Dawn Davenport, Female Trouble

Oswald's Flipflops in Context

The AC Institute has put up a page for the 'patacritical Interrogation Techniques Anthology Volume 3 book and Jonny Whiteside at my old paper the LA Weekly did a preview write up of In Advance of the Mayan Apocalypse, our first launch event Sunday night at the Echo Park Film Center.

Oswald means "divine strength." The diminutive form of the word is "os" or "Oz": denoting strength. The role which "Divine Strength" played in the Dealey "Goddess Rule" Killing of the King ritual should be given careful consideration. One should also note the significance of (Jack) Ruby's killing (destroying) of "Ozwald" in reference to the "Ruby Slippers" of The Wizard of Oz which one may deride as a fairy tale but which nevertheless symbolizes the immense power of "ruby light," otherwise known as the laser.

'patacritical Interrogation - The Babening

What does this pneumatic elf-babe sitting sidesaddle on her giant armor-clad white wolf have to do with 'patacritical interrogation? We're not sure yet either, but it seems to have something to do with an interaction between chrysolite and Green Soul crystal resulting in the Great 'patacritical Poison! Now that's a fish of a different color! I will simulate the enchantment and report further. Have I ever mentioned how much I love the internet?

Ah, Mercury! Sweetest of the transition metals!

Waking Quinn - a sort of absurdist trip through the bardos, and my favorite episode of Sealab 2021- is streaming at adultswim.com until Dec 18th. It loses something by not being stumbled across in the wee hours, on an actual TV, but it remains the ne plus ultra of fractured plotlessness - every time I watch it it seems like its being made up on the spot.

While your over there, All that Jazz is pretty out there too.

'pITA 'pARTY 'pOSTER

Signing off on this 'pITA 'pARTY 'pOSTER for the launch event at the EPFC a week from Sunday, although there remain a few loose ends and missing pieces from the puzzle. No doubt it'll all come togehter on the 16th. I'm looking into printing a few of these up as a highly collectable fine art limited edition. E me to reserve one.

Unkliney

Guess who painted this. Franz Kline that's who! Puppet in the Paintbox is from 1940, and - consciously or not - is the perfect embodiment of the breaking point of the depression-era WPA artists who were obliged to conform to the uplifting pictorialist conventions of Social Realism. Pretty soon Action Pinnochio was prancing, stringless - slashing and daubing his way to a brave new orthodoxy whose conventions, prohibitions, and sense of self-righteousness would dwarf those of the picturebook commies of the previous generation. That's what I'm talking about when I talk about Freedom!

Night Vision

In Advance of the Mayan Apocalypse

My first Echo Park Film Center curatorial project since UNCANNY MY ASS! is a launch event Sunday December 16th at 8 PM for the 'pITA3 book, with TRIBULATION 99, The Legion of Rock Stars, John Kilduff, and much more!

 "Join Doug Harvey and collaborators for a launch event celebrating ‘patacritical Interrogations Techniques Anthology Volume 3, forthcoming from AC Institute, exploring the nexus between faulty translation, conspiracy theory, and the avant garde.

The combination cabaret/symposium is centered around a screening (in advance of the Mayan calendar end date) of Craig Baldwin’s legendary TRIBULATION 99: Alien Anomalies Under America, the unsurpassed 1991 collage documentary that ties together virtually every conspiracy theory.

The evening will be fleshed out with relevant short films and presentations from ‘pITA3 contributors, as well as a performance by John “Let’s Paint TV” Kilduff, a selection of detourneed music videos from The Legion of Rock Stars, and much more!

A handful of very special advance copies of the anthology will be available for the first time anywhere, and as always, refreshments and door prizes will abound!"

More details as they emerge...

Blues of the Roots

A Wolf at the Door

The Wait is Over!

Just received 20 advance copies of 'patacritical Interrogation Techniques Anthology Vol 3, so we're primed for some kind of L.A. book launch event before the world ends on Dec 21st! Stay tuned...

Ancient Signs

An interesting coda of mixed nostalgia and industrial design to Rebecca Ripple's exhibit at Gallery KM, photographed with available light  on Santa Monica Boulevard the night of her opening. PS: Does that last one remind you of any masterpieces of modern art?

Blood Alley Disco

Lee  Lynch in the Audi Sky lounge at the Roosevelt Hotel for the afterparty of the US premiere of Mike Ott's Pearblossom Hwy. My review won't be out until January, but if they need a pull quote before then, I do call Cory "the new Jean-Pierre Léaud"! (below)

A Golden Shower of Art Historical Trivia

The first few free pdf downloads of The LOOP Shows catalog accidentally left out the footnotes of my essay. It's been fixed now, but I wanted to put this up in case anyone missed it - it was a sort of aside to my musings on Duchamp's Fountain. Also wanted to draw attention to Hunter's excellent book, which I actually found time to finish - so you know it must be good!

"1. I’m not sure how this fits in, but as I was writing this, I read this anecdote in Hunter Drohojowska-Philp’s Rebels in Paradise: The Los Angeles Art Scene and the 1960s:

When dealer Julien Levy rented a gallery on Sunset Boulevard in 1941 to exhibit Duchamp's The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, along with pieces by Salvador Dalí and others, the actor John Barrymore got so drunk at the opening, he unzipped his pants and unceremoniously urinated on a work by Surrealist Max Ernst.

Apart from being surprised to learn that The Large Glass has actually made it to tinseltown, I was struck by the strange urinal loop generated by this incident in combination with the more famous case of Jackson Pollock relieving himself in the fireplace of Peggy Guggenheim (AKA Mrs. Max Ernst!) in 1944, during a party to celebrate the installation of a commissioned mural by Pollock. This has been interpreted by some as a gesture of retaliation because the oversized canvas had had 8 inches trimmed off one end in order to make it fit the allotted space… at the suggestion of Marcel Duchamp."

Click here to download the full-color catalog for both the China Adams-curated LOOP Shows!

PS: The only other footnote was citing this article I wrote about China's own artwork.

Hawk & Shaw

 

It’s been a crazy year for Jim Shaw. In January, having drastically downsized his legendary atelier community in the wake of the economic crash, he moved out of the studio that had produced some of Los Angeles’s most ambitious and monumental artworks of the past decade. He took the opportunity to deaccession much of his equally legendary hoard of pop-cultural ephemera — we’re talking tons of pocketbooks, vinyl LPs, vintage magazines, religious pamphlets, board games, collectible figurines, and so on — much of which had served as source material for his feverish postmodern appropriations. Two days later, the body of his longtime art comrade (and collaborator in the seminal noise band Destroy All Monsters), Mike Kelley, was discovered, an apparent suicide that the L.A. art world has not yet fully digested. So much for clearing the decks.

Named an executor of Kelley’s estate, and the only artist on the board of the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, Shaw found himself enmeshed in the minutiae of his good friend’s legacy when he was supposed to be not only producing new work for solo exhibitions at Metro Pictures, Simon Lee, and his new L.A. dealer, Blum & Poe, but also sorting out the particulars for a large-scale midcareer survey that opens November 9 and runs through February 17 at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, in Gateshead, England, where last year’s Turner Prize exhibition was held. I caught up with Shaw in the midst of his hectic schedule at his new, streamlined work space, sandwiched between a liquor store and a beauty salon in a strip mall in Altadena, a few minutes northeast of downtown L.A., and asked him how Kelley’s death had affected him. He declined to go into detail about his legal responsibilities but was forthcoming about the personal impact.

“One thing it’s done is make me realize that for a lot of my life as an artist, I’ve looked at the people that came before me and thought they were really good, but they made this mistake, and I don’t want to make it,” he says, glancing up from daubing paint on one of his signature torn-photorealist portraits. “Of course, I made other mistakes, but — looking at Mike and what he achieved…he achieved a lot, but he paid a huge price for it, and I don’t want to pay that price. I don’t want to continue to kill myself to make this art and let the rest of my life go down the tubes."

“It’s made me less materialistic, too, looking at Mike’s library, his fabulous library, then looking at my fabulous collection of crap. I was already getting rid of it at the time because I had to move out of that studio. But now I’m even more like — if I read a book, I’m not going to keep it forever; I’m going to recirculate it. I’ll just keep the ones that have reference material that I need to keep going back to. That’s why I don’t want to get caught up in making the prog-rock opera if it means going into debt. I’ll keep it as an ideal, but it may never get completed.”

Yes, you read that right: Prog. Rock. Opera. The crowning Gesamtkunstwerk in Shaw’s long-term project exploring the mythological, historical, and cultural manifestations of a fictive 19th-century new American religion called Oism, the long-rumored multimedia extravaganza was gearing up to full production mode in 2008 when the Wall Street apocalypse struck. The originally envisioned debut of the work at the CAPC in Bordeaux morphed into the acclaimed “Left Behind” exhibition there, dominated by Shaw’s ridiculously complex allegorical paintings on gigantic found theatrical backdrops, predicated, at least in part, on an inspired associative leap equating the fundamentalist Christian rapture with the plight of the American working class — a curiously topical leitmotif that seemed to have been lurking in the material all along...

Read the rest of Mad World: Jim Shaw’s Wondrous and Difficult Year at the ArtInfo site or in the November print issue of Modern Painters

Jim Shaw: The Rinse Cycle & You Think You Own Your Stuff But Your Stuff Owns You (Thrift Store Paintings)

9 November 2012 - 17 February 2013

Baltic Centre For Contemporary Art

Gateshead Quays, South Shore Road

Gateshead NE8 3BA, UK

www.balticmill.com

I would also like to draw your attention to this article in the NYTimes about the insane treehouse Tim Hawkinson built for his daughter Clare, which was an piece I wanted to write, but Carol Kino beat me to the punch...

Images: Jim Shaw; Mall Culture (from Strange Früt: Rock Apocrypha designed by Shaw & Mike Kelley for DAM); Shaw in his new L.A. studio; The Rinse Cycle 2011, acrylic on muslin; Untitled 2008; Capitol Viscera Appliances 2011, acrylic on muslin.

Shaw portrait photos by Kevin Scanlon; Clare’s treehouse photo by Tierney Gearon