Emvergeoning

StoneHenge in San Antonio?  When I stopped to take the photograph, the homeowner came to the screen door and told me he was a carpenter. He said,  “if anybody needed any work done, to tell them to stop on by.” The address is 327 Lone Star, San Antonio, TX 78204.  Feel free to check it out for yourself.

8 Comments »

A Los Angeles Urban Ranger explaining something

The LA Times has a story up about the Los Angeles Urban Rangers, a group of “geographers, environmental and art historians, artists, curators, architects, and others” who dress up like park rangers and teach people how to enjoy public urban space responsibly. They lead urban safaris, such as a “guided hike of Hollywood Boulevard that deconstructed the famous street as if it were a natural park.” They teach people how to (legally) enjoy Malibu beach fronts where the homeowners have often (illegally) posted “Private Beach” signs.

San Antonio's Bike Gang Summit, 2008 (photo: Justin Parr)

This is what performance art should be: seductively entertaining while challenging implicit assumptions about what constitutes public space and how it should be used. In their own way, the Final Friday bike rides (and Bike Gang Summits) in San Antonio encourage this kind of urban exploration, albeit with less explicitly pedagogical goals. Mark Jones and the rides’ other organizers lead bikers through obscure urban environments on the edges of downtown, descending on unlikely VFW halls and pocket parks. It’s a social sculpture if there ever was one.

5 Comments »

“ and Skye Cosby will be destroying a historic piano upon which music legends such as Sam Cooke have played. The piano was a gift from the late artist Reverend Seymour Perkins’ family to commemorate his artistic career and legacy. Perkins and Castellanos collaborated extensively for the last 2 years of Perkins’ life. Afterwards, Castellanos will build a wall sculpture out of the piano pieces…” -Raul’s MySpace

“My performance partner suffered a heat stroke last week cancelling our performance but we are now able to guarantee that on Tuesday the 28th, at 7:45 PM, at 602 Nevada (and Hackberry) at Reverend Seymour Perkins’ famous cement slab/sculpture garden, I, Raul Castellanos, will be breaking a piano given to me by the Perkins family to honor the late controversial and legendary artist from the Eastside. My assistant is Skye who is also Perkins’ only authorized biographer. I collaborated on many projects with Perkins for a bit more than 2 years and was truly honored to do so.” -Raul’s MySpace

It’s hard to believe, but this event was actually as good as it sounded. Raul once had an art studio next to mine and he was always pretty intense- destroying perfectly good instruments to create paintings and sculptures that helped him represent his deafness to the world. Destroying this antique, though, seemed particularly irreverent as well as the fact that, this time, his chaotic artistic performance was taking place in the middle of one of San Antonio’s poorer black neighborhoods. For the most part, passing cars would just honk curiously at the gathering crowd. There were moments, though, when this art crowd might have felt they were on the wrong side of Sunset Station. One passing neighbor yelled at a nervous spectator and told him to put the piano back together. Overall, though, I felt a real sense of community built between artists, San Antonians, and the recently bereaved. It has often been said that in art- in order to create, you must destroy. What better place, then, than at the Reverend’s Revival Center which once strived to rebuild the tattered remains of strung-out lives.

UPDATE: A video of the event was just uploaded to .

8 Comments »

This “full” transcript of the Christian Bale rant, sans profanity, is like watching The Big Lebowski on basic cable: confusing and pointless.

3 Comments »

Steve Roden posts on a gig canceled, then rescheduled with only the Sun as audience. Be sure to listen to the audio linked at the bottom of his post.

1 Comment »

Matt Fleeger from KRTU 91.7 (where I am a volunteer DJ) just sent us his interview with Cruz Ortiz about the Contemporary Art Month Pushcart Derby. The interview aired this airs tomorrow morning, and the Derby is this Saturday at Dignowity Park (see our event listing). We’ll be posting photos and video of the derby for those of you out there who crave mediation. Click on the little play button below to listen.

2 Comments »

No Comments »

My admittedly slow-on-the-draw take on the Aliza Shvarts controversy was just published in the Current:

Art can be viewed as a sort of safe space in which society allows itself to push moral boundaries with the understanding that the artist is asking a question. Behavior that would otherwise be proscribed is permitted in order to catalyze moral evolution. We can draw analogies here to other safe spaces that humans set up in order to take otherwise unacceptable risks: the boxing ring, the therapist’s office, even the dreamworld, where desires and fears are explored without physical commitment. Therapeutic uses of art are well established, as is the connection between dreams and artistic production.

Problems arise, however, when the boundary between art and life is blurred. When we move from image to enactment, a crucial line has been crossed, and the artistic space becomes not so safe. As much as morally questionable performances have been integrated into the artistic canon, it is possible that they will always provoke trepidation, if not outrage, in the general public.

Further reading:

• Shvarts’ article in the Yale Daily News
• Kriston Capps in the Guardian

3 Comments »

13 Comments »

Ken Littles Rodeo HO HO made its final REGULAR appearance last night.  See for yourself :

a LOT more are available here.  

4 Comments »

Everything got screwed up. Emvergeoning’s calendar editor forgot to post Ms. Southtown, San Antonio’s artsiest drag beauty pageant, to our events listing; last night, when Ms. Southtown was happening, our trusty photographer was out working for The Man; and our amateur backup paparazzo filled up the camera memory right before the trophy was handed to the winner. I guess that’s why we don’t get the big bucks, and why I’m typing this from a cardboard box in an alleyway off Houston St. But here it is: Ms. Southtown in photos.

Continue Reading »

8 Comments »

7 Comments »

We here in San Antonio have begun following one of the more mighty traditions of the olde world every Christmas.. we grow Mustaches and celebrate them on the eve of Christmas Day every year, at noon, in front of the Alamo. 2007 was no slouch. (this post also settles the continuous question over the need for a “mustaches” category/tag..as you can imagine, proper spelling is also an issue.)

Continue Reading »

9 Comments »

I took part in San Antonios semi-regular Bike Gang Summit the other night for Halloween. During the process of riding through spooky parts of the city, we stopped at a cemetary on the East Side. It quickly degenerated into a game of Wheres Waldo..take a look (Waldo makes an appearance in each of these images).

To see images from the entire night go here.

Continue Reading »

No Comments »

38 Comments »

A lot has been written about the dispute between Christoph Büchel and MASS MoCA, so I won’t bother to summarize here (check out this post at a Walker Art Center blog for background). The ultimate resolution will have important implications for artists and museums, so it’s worth keeping an eye on. Tyler blames both the artist and the museum for the dust-up; the artist for being a jerk and the museum for not realizing this project would be a fiasco from the beginning (especially considering what a jerk Büchel is).

I wanted to note a couple of interesting tidbits about the case. First, the “final straw,” when the museum decided to break up with Büchel, was an item he requested that the museum procure: “the fuselage from a large jetliner, like a 767, that Mr. Büchel wanted to be burned and bomb-damaged and then hung from the ceiling.” Second, the fact that the judge in the case has deemed that the museum is a collaborative partner with Büchel, giving them at least some claim to the copyrights to the work (is this a first?). I don’t think MASS MoCA will actually try to claim any ownership of the work, but the precedent could prove consequential.

10 Comments »

An 8 foot tall Lego man was pulled out of the sea by the employees of a beach-side drink stall in the Netherlands yesterday. The words “No Real Than You Are” are printed on his chest, and the name “Ego Leonard” and the number 9 can be found on his back. A little googling turns up pictures of the Lego man at a music festival called Dance Valley in Amsterdam. Apparently it’s all the handiwork of an artist collective called “Ego Leonard” which is somehow connected to Du Fois. Here’s some video of the sculpture on the beach (his head turns!). Another mystery solved by the internet.

4 Comments »

I experienced this today on a weird wading walking type of thing..

1 Comment »

A group of satisfied Bike Gangers looks on at the renegade video projection stumbled on in “Tacoland Park,” this last Saturday Night. The Bike gang stopped by the SWC Club, Tacoland Park, The Cherry street Bridge, Brackenridge Golf Course, Pine Street stretch, above Sunken Gardens, Ghost Train Field, and La Tuna to name a few. (some of these place names are local lore and quite unofficial) . A collection of photos outlining the entire evening in its entirety can be found here.

Shouting at an oncoming train on the Cherry Street Bridge

Legend has it that when the moon is jussssst right you can still see the trains turning on imaginary tracks out here, emptying herds to slaughter at the union stockyards.

the Lebowski Rollers + many more can be seen here.

If you were one of the many who took part, Thank you!

1 Comment »