I am excited about the potential of In Protest, an event organized in tandem by the Kadist Art Foundation and the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, to be held Wednesday, May 9^th at 7pm.

Artists have been asked to design posters with a specific or abstract political message to be given away at this one night event. The list of artists includes many whom I instantly associate with politically charged practices such as Rigo 23, Martha Rosler, and Natasha Wheat and many whose posters may help recast their interests in a more political light.

The artists are Zarouhie Abdalian, John Baldessari, Amy Balkin, Dodie Bellamy, Charlie Dubbe, Amy Franceschini, Doug Hall, Kevin Killian, Paul Kos, Tony Labat, Shaun O’Dell, Rigo 23, Piero Golia, Jordan Kantor, Martha Rosler, Allan Sekula, Mungo Thomson and Natasha Wheat.

Questions of art praxes’ political potentials and limitations are constantly swirling, all the more so in these highly charged times of active protest movements. The world has yet to come to terms with the revolutions recently transpired or those still afoot. And the future is less than settled in nations whose ‘completed’ revolts in the Arab Spring have left them in a terrible and dangerous state of flux. A military government is still in control of Egypt and in advance of elections, vying political factions are falling victim to massacres such as the one in Cairo on May 2^nd.  Closer to home (and much tamer despite the press’ over emphasis on its outlying criminal element) we have our local Occupy, revitalized in its May Day general strike. In each of these protests and in the more everyday ones (usually in the grand tradition of labor struggles, but also against abortion and pro or against various political personalities and parties) the arts play a major role, both as means of message production (signs, banners, et al.) and as a foothold for giving the myriad people some cohesiveness (ex. the various strains of music performed and DJed).

During a March 31^st talk at the Kadist curator Nato Thompson, whose excellent exhibition Living as Form is about to finish its satellite run in SF, discussed various ways in which art could engage with a wider audience, purpose and potential, noting (I’m paraphrasing) the worst thing we could do is commission a bunch of posters. But is such a curatorial proposal so untenable? In the introduction to Dorathea von Hantlemann’s excellent How to Do Things With Art (2010), she describes her theme as, “How does art become politically or socially significant and what preconditions must be fulfilled in order to enable artworks to attain such significance?”

In Protest will raise these questions anew, confronting Thompson’s challenge and interrogating Hantlemann’s question. Each artist will address both the specific audience in attendance and the vitality of their medium (the poster and art as a whole) in the context of the museum and the wider political conversation. And we,  the viewers,  will walk away with works of art.

Honig performing at "Happy Oasis" (Photo: Jenna Duffy)

Our guest contributor Ezekiel Honig is a composer of ambient music, a sound artist and designer, an electronic music producer, and founded the music labels Anticipate and Microcosm. He recently scored music for the film “Florent: Queen of the Meat Market” (2010).  Last month Zeke performed at “Happy Oasis” a show that I produced, proved to be a smooth and yielding experience to work with a truly professional music artist. As we’ve been exchanging thoughts and philosophizing on art, music and life, I invited him to write a column focusing on just that–music. In the following words Zeke amplifies his thoughts and different takes as a music artist on the definition of “Genre.”

I think about genre all the time.  To be more specific, musical genre in music which is difficult to categorize, that falls between certain margins.  As someone who produces material that is in this landscape, but perhaps more so as someone who runs a music label, I’m always looking to frame an artist’s work, to give it the context it needs to relate to something which already exists, and the distance it needs from that thing in order to be original.  This is the constant tension experienced by artists (of all kinds) and one could easily argue, of humanity as a whole.  We want to be connected to something larger than ourselves but also uniquely individual. In this way, musical genre is a scaled-down version of a principle that runs a thread through everything, but that is perhaps a larger discussion.

So where does music fall in this balancing act?  Where does genre help and where does it hurt?  Should it serve some basic functions and then be left alone, or is it something stronger that needs to be lauded over and nurtured, or simply re-translated, with people paying homage to a concept and institution larger than themselves?  To put it quite simply, I would say yes. Yes to all those paths and the multitude of less severe ones in between.  There’s no actual answer, which is good, because it means these topics are in flux, never standing still, always developing…as they should be.

The Balancing Act of History

A genre is at its best as something which grew on its own out of customs of producing music, passing ideas and experience along the way. It’s important to remember the historical counterpart, a lineage which allows musicians to build on what each previous generation has done, to progress (or at least change) what was happening, rather than needing to go back to the beginning without learning from the mistakes and experience of the past.  Everyone is getting a head-start because of everyone who came before, which gives us all a means of referencing influences in order to position and understand current work in a different way.  Regardless of one’s time in history, originality is extremely difficult, but where genre has taken a movement in sound can be a stepping stone, a base from which to act and a healthy set of limitations, if one chooses to traffic in them.

I speak about this from my own experience of acknowledging my influences and looking for more, to help shade the original ones.  I’m always thinking in terms of broad connections like house, dub, techno, ambient, because those are categories which have tropes built into them now, and one can quickly hint towards that without going too far down the path of defining the material as being that thing, or easily go all the way down that path if it’s the goal.  Genre can be used to color something without covering it entirely, like applying a cultural footnote without explicitly saying so.

The Club Definition

In electronic music, different forms of dance music (or club music, or however you refer to it) control the conversation because they are such ingrained genres and even when something is clearly not meant for the function of dance music, it needs to often define itself by the degree to which it doesn’t do that, which in and of itself is kind of an odd concept.  The function of dance music is interesting though. If people are dancing then it’s doing what it’s supposed to do.  It’s almost like comedy. If people laugh, it’s working, though there will always be a level of criticism that may demand it makes one dance (or laugh) in a specific way, with a specific thought in mind.  Once these basic standards are established there is room to build.  When there is a function involved genre becomes even more essential because it lets you experiment within the confines, or stretch what the confines mean.  That’s my favorite place, where something is new but has the subtext of, “by the way, this is also techno, sort of.”

This constant tension exists for concepts themselves.  Though many may disagree with this statement, I think that – at least at this point in musical history – once a genre becomes codified and the list of what makes it the thing which it is becomes a known quantity, it begins to die.  It becomes too easy to copy and homogenize and has little else to offer, removing the initial excitement of this new discovery.  Simultaneously, if someone doesn’t know what to call something it makes them less likely to talk about it with their friends (which isn’t to say they won’t, but it requires more creative conversation).  Words actually mean things even if they mean different things to different people. There are exceptions, where something seems new and trendy and coming out of nowhere, but is actually rooted in some long-standing forms and emotions (i.e. disco, house, hip hop), which is what allows it to keep developing and spawning off new genres with further and further subdivisions. If it has a deep base that it stands on it has an easier time jumping off, knowing where it’s tethered to the past, acknowledging that it can only stray so far.  Once it becomes unique enough to be a new sub-genre unto itself with a tidy name to describe it, it begins the process of its own dismantling.

Last week, while walking south of Houston (SoHo) I noticed a group of people huddled around a circle, looking bogged down from the heat waiting to make a move. They turned out to be architects and local artists creating a series of urban mini-landscapes down the narrow strip of Allen Street in the Lower East Side.

Through the Hester Street Collaborative and public funding, this Summer we will see circles of maps with handmade benches transform the once-rundown strip full of trash and reeking smells, into a pretty and welcoming passage. I’m really excited to see this long-neglected path finally revamped into being a pleasant walkway. Dylan House, who’s one of the leading architects of the project shares optimistic thoughts about the little changes happening in our urban landscape, such as more bike lanes and even installing bike traffic lights! The completion date, with the help of many volunteers, should be by the end of August. Don’t expect this installation to be around for long though, it’ll probably come down in a few months, so don’t miss out on the rotating benches made out of recycled rubber tires and found wood.

Artists involved: Dylan House, Carolina Cisneros, Mateo Pinto, Marcelo Ertorteguy, and Sara Valente.

Sitting in complete darkness I closed my eyes and brought myself closer to the Dreamachine.

The potential hypnotic, hallucinatory effects that this machine promises is a huge expectation for its sitters, myself included. Of course, at the time when Brion Gysin manifested this machine his state of mind was more or less LSD- or hashish-induced. A poet, painter, performer, inventor, and thinker, Gysin collaborated closely with beat poet William S. Burroughs. Their tight friendship is evident in correspondence letters and openly shared in the exhibition Brion Gysin: Dream Machine. Gysin is one of the founding fathers of the Beat movement, and well respected for his endless experimentations with words and images, which eventually led to sound recordings as well. This man traveled greatly both in the physical and spiritual world, freeing himself to what has been taught, searching for the unknown.

As the yellow light continuously flickers on my face at 78 rpm, I cannot imagine what Brion Gysin saw, in my sober state, instead I heard sounds from some distant land. And shed a tear.

Brion Gysin: Dream Machine
at The New Museum until Oct. 3, 2010

(bottom 2 images: Lee Renaldo of the Sonic Youth performs an improvised instrumental act in honor of the exhibition)

(circa 1924, courtesy nycsubway.org)

If you haven’t already noticed the MTA has just put out the new subway map to replace the previous one, which has constantly been updated for the past 10 years. This new map shows more defined routes compared to the previous map, which had a lot of unfinished business. The new map that launched this month  is graphically cleaner with finer attention paid to the color scheme, although I think the bright blue is a tad loud. The New York Subway system must be the oldest in the world, you can witness this history at the Chambers Street station, where you can still feel the grit of New York’s past times. Updating the map is a sign that the city is putting an effort for these improvements, and evidently they are enhancing some of the stations, albeit at a slow rate. I think there are still lots of technological advancement that we can learn from other cities such as the London Undergound, which has a superior information design navigational system (online and onsite), and Berlin with its time table that is precise to the second, and other cities in Asia such as Tokyo and Hong Kong that are admirable for their service to riders. And perhaps even Barcelona, that gives riders an ad-free commute.

The NYTimes did a great article comparing the map of MTA’s present and past here.

I walked across a bridge tonight,
a poet among poets, in line and abreast
east bound toward Brooklyn
with mighty bridge as pathway
Say poet, are you lonely, are you hungry
Pray poet, are you frightened, are you sorry
Play poet, dance at mid-bridge and kiss her
Stay poet, calm this gathering, this gay poetry crowd
Clasp the hand of humanity for poetry
aboard these lazy tongs
reaching with anchored heart
before the collage called city
Tell the story of elders, culture and space
tell it true without restraint
Speak of personal or general
river beneath you
loosening or guiding

This is a call to all poets… or follower of poets
to walk the bridge of poetry
then turn
and start again.

June 2010/Gabriella Radujko

Related article here
Read more on Marianne Moore’s description of the Brooklyn Bridge.

(Above photos: BenYakas/Gothamist)

(all images courtesy Rob Beschizza)

While the NY Public Libraries are under the stress of budget cuts, the nation’s Library of Congress has been busy digitizing its collections with a grand vision for the future. The Library of Congress houses the largest database in the world with original manuscripts, ancient books, renaissance-era maps, audio/video files, and historical artifacts. I came across an interesting photo essay by Rob Beschizza revealing some interesting facts about what is going on behind the library’s preservation department.  It is both interesting and exciting to see how they are handling cultural artifacts using intelligence from specialists (perhaps researching from other countries as well) to realize a whole new digital culture, hence a different way of researching and learning.

My hope is that as they develop, they will preserve the traditional values of a library, as a powerful resource and cultural establishment, going into the future to advance digitally. As Eric Hansen, chief of the Preservation Research and Testing Division puts it, “You can learn about a culture from how it builds and stores things.” Browse the LoC’s digital collection online.