Emvergeoning

Nothing lost in translation, thanks to the Oldenburg props.

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Though the musical element suggests some strange, Novocaine soaked landscapes, the puppetry evokes Hans Bellmer and Bjork.

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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!

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Justin Parr took some cell phone video of Chris Kubick & Anne Walsh’s recent performance at UTSA, A Thousand Years of Sound Effects (below). It was a three-part performance, with each part focusing on a specific kind of sound effect. In all three parts, the performance was an interaction between the artists and a SuperCollider program designed to play sound effects in response to input parameters, with a certain amount of randomness thrown in. The first part, which was performed by Kubick alone, involved less physical performance than the others. This piece was a collection of bell sound effects, which were played as Kubick interacted with the program through the keyboard and other inputs. For the next piece, Kubick and Walsh both interacted with the computer by stepping on pressure sensitive inputs placed on the floor. The sounds used in this performance were of horses galloping or walking. The final piece used sound effects of people clapping, and the artists interacted with the computer by clapping into a microphone (you can watch a segment of this piece below).

The program also generated video to accompany the sounds. For most of the performance, the program displayed the name of the audio file(s) being played, giving a glimpse into the strange world of sound effect naming conventions. Many of the effects had titles such as “Fairy Belching” or “Claps of old powerful men, white.” Sometimes the titles referred to the location of the recording, other times to more abstract characteristics. The interaction between these sounds, which have no context and therefore a wide variety of potential meanings, and their titles, which at times provided absurdly specific cultural contexts, was of particular interest to the artists. During the horse performance, some images of horses were displayed rather than the titles of the sound effects. The images were fairly crude and had a sort of clip-arty feel.

The performance was rough, and the artists are clearly just beginning to explore the potential of this concept (in fact, this was the first time that the pieces have been performed in public). The work does, however, have a lot of potential, and it will be interesting to see how they develop these performances in the future.

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Potter-Belmar labs, among others will be part of the March 31st bike gang summit starting at 1906 south flores. The ride will wind through downtown and other parts of the city with stops in all manner of strange locale. I have just gotten word that at some juncture we will be finding a giant renegade video projection..
Come up with a good gang name and theme and dress it up! this is going to be really really really fun. (really!)

The Beto Gonzales designed flyer.

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we are alone with insects invading through the earth beneath us, flooding our walls, consuming our light. we are alone with the fruit, just out of reach, that pushes us from our substance; with the herbs that wander on the edge of death, buried in earth returned to the doors. we are alone pushing our feet across stones, dirt, and wood, searching blindly for an entrance that will never exist, or a curtain to collapse this hypothetical world. we are alone hoarding our eyes in unfired clay, in the spaces between blades of grass lifted up above our heads to protect us from the unbounded sky. our tools slowly abandon us more and more each moment for the peaceful dissolution of rust. yes keep moving on and on forward: glory glory glory.

[this post is a response to "unsettlement," a windowworks installation / performance by randy wallace, on view through april 29, 2007 at artpace. photos by todd johnson]

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On the threshold of Sound Space in Laredo, the two large pod sculptures illuminated within diaphonous plastic are softly breathtaking. The couple in collaboration, Megan and Murray McMillan, staged a performance and installation in propinquity with a video made during their Spring 2006 residency at Can Serrat in Barcelona. [Coincidentally, I recently returned from a writer in residency at the same 17th Century stone farmhouse].

The repetitive sounds of synchronized tap dancing inside a revitalized wine cellar add a lovely note of harmony to the entire installation. In keeping with the theme of their titled intentions, the couple choreographed a group of actors to speak in contrapuntal intervals between alternating loops of the video.

The large, plastic cocoon sculptures left interstices for the actors to sit comfortably inside the strange structures while feigning to read the local news. During their intermittent vocal performances, they would speak simultaneously in repetitive Spanish sentences. The only desideratum was amplification of the voices to balance the acoustics. With all the background echo and chatter, it was difficult to discern what was being conveyed through these perfunctory vociferations. Still, the structures themselves seemed like shrink-wrapped biospheres from a future where poverty reinvents housing from discarded materials similar to Central Park during the Great Depression. In this futuristic Hooverville, blurred inhabitants live pell mell between sheets of cob-webbed plywood and disassembled car doors. These pods are anything but airtight, as we can see feet sticking out and hear newspapers rustling behind the thick plastic, soft shelled sculptures. The artists leave thoughtful details like peepholes in the plastic so that you can see inside but the characters are still obscured. The notion of lives lived in proximity yet parallel makes the entire show resonate with a slight tension reconciling solitude with loneliness.

Sound Space continuously brings talented, young artists to the cusp of Texas/Mexico border and this show reinforces their importance in the South Texas art scene. Eduardo Garcia’s curatorial insight is making Laredo a bright light on the artistic horizon.

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The Austin art scene takes a couple of punches at sincerity and sweethearts with a show at Volitant Gallery called “Take Me To Bed or Lose Me Forever.” Prima facie, everyone cries crocodile tears about the floor, the floor, the immaculate misconception of marble floors. Still, it was perfectly suited for one of Bunnyphonic’s anachronistic and Schadenfreudian environments. Keeping true to the constitution of Emvergeoning in the new year, I am writing a review of my own group show because this is, after all, “The Most Difficult Art Blog in America.” Continue Reading »

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Spaztek, caught on video for the first time at the closing for Cruz Ortiz’ exhibit at FL!GHT.

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1. sit down on the stage. next to the scissors. we will cut away the stage, and cut away the cloth you hide behind. you don’t need all those layers. the stage only robs you of humanity. we can make you human again. you’re not healthy. but we can cut away the disease you hide behind. sit down and stay still.

2. how could you sit there, unmoving? how could you give us those scissors? the cloth is there for a reason, and so is the stage. you stole our humanity. you used the stage to make us destroy it. this is carnegie hall, not some peep show. and even a peep show has boundaries. you’re not an artist, you’re just afraid of being human.

3. i cut her bra. on the stage of carnegie hall, i cut her bra. no one else could. they are afraid of revealing desire. they are afraid of being human in front of an audience. she got scared. she didn’t know what she was asking for. i took the scissors and made her a woman. she didn’t know what she wanted. only i knew.

4. what could i do? i just sat and watched as they cut away the world. who could be human without anything to stand on? who could speak with scissors cutting right through the floor? this might take some time. cornball. where are they speaking from, now that everything is cut?

these are responses to the video above, a 1965 performance by yoko ono at carnegie hall.

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