Emvergeoning

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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This is the only film that should have ever been made about 9/11.

In the process of archiving and digitizing analog tape loops from work I had done in 1982, I discovered some wonderful sweeping pastoral pieces I had forgotten about. Beautiful, lush cinematic truly American pastoral landscapes swept before my ears and eyes. With excitement I began recording the first one to cd, mixing a new piece with a subtle random arpeggiated countermelody from the Voyetra. To my shock and surprise, I soon realized that the tape loop itself was disintegrating: as it played round and round, the iron oxide particles were gradually turning to dust and dropping into the tape machine, leaving bare plastic spots on the tape, and silence in these corresponding sections of the new recording. I had heard about this happening, and frankly was very afraid of this happening to me since so much of my early work was precariously near the end of its shelf life. Still, I had never actually seen it happen, yet here it was happening. The music was dying. I was recording the death of this sweeping melody. It was very emotional for me, and mystical as well. Tied up in these melodies were my youth, my paradise lost, the American pastoral landscape, all dying gently, gracefully, beautifully. Life and death were being recorded here as a whole: death as simply a part of life: a cosmic change, a transformation. When the disintegration was complete, the body was simply a little strip of clear plastic with a few clinging chords, the music had turned to dust and was scattered along the tape path in little piles and clumps. Yet the essence and memory of the life and death of this music had been saved: recorded to a new media, remembered.

As far as Sept. 11th goes, perhaps you had to be here and see it with your own eyes and experience the horror and the ghastly smell, and smoke, sirens, no television or telephone, F-16s strafing the city at ear splitting volume, the fear, agony and deep sadness, see peoples faces in the subway, the deep longing bonded look people gave each other, the lip compression signifying compassion, to understand the magnitude of what we felt here. This was the end of the world…and we were literally sitting up on the roof all day and into night watching without believing as NYC burned, and listening to the heartbreaking Disintegration Loops…I thought…it’s the soundtrack to the end of the world…I had been assigned the job without knowing the details, it was done, and here we are…The Greatest Show on Earth, Armageddon. We were all literally losing our minds in terror, each person looping onto what holds him or her together..clinging to that which could provide some kind of release or explanation..just as each of the individual melodies in the Disintegration Loops did…at their own pace, seeming to hold onto that which made the melody unique, while letting go of the unimportant sustains or gently adding rests incrementally before the downbeat…it really blew my mind.

I hadn’t really though t of trying to “achieve” anything. But perhaps, if the music enabled listeners to contemplate the temporal nature of life in this world and come to some small inkling or understanding as I did of a redemptive spirituality that animates us and continues on, then that would be an achievement.

— William Basinski

As far as I can tell, Otonson is the only place where you can still buy the DVD.

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At our annual sales meeting, the proposition that it is imperative for Emvergeoning to raise the sex-appeal ante received unanimous consent. So, to keep yall coming back, here’s a little T ‘n A courtesy Yoko Ono circa 1967 (for more moving images by Yoko, check her page at UBUWEB):

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Interesting festival excerpt from the brilliant sound culling machines known as Sublime Frequencies. Also watch the trailer for their film “Sumatran Folk Cinema.” I miss Thailand!!

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Sorry I’m a little slow on the draw here, but I just learned about this today. The San Antonio Public Library Foundation is hosting a free reading at by five Texas authors. From the Express-News article on the event:

From the most meticulously researched history of al-Qaida to a 10-year study of the death penalty, serious topics are on the table as the San Antonio Library Foundation’s popular Copyright Texas program returns this week.

Five Texas-based authors will read from recent works at the event, free and open to the public, set to begin with book sales and author signings at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday in El Tropicano Riverwalk Hotel’s Coronado Ballroom.

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Artscape is offering a residency program for artists on Toronto Island, Canada. The submission deadline is February 21st, and the program runs from June 1 to June 30. From their website:

The Gibraltar Point Residency transcends political, aesthetic and geographic boundaries, welcomes diversity and provides a spawning ground for unique cultural alliances. The program is open to Canadian and international artists who are engaged in the research, development or creation of work. Emerging, mid-career and established professional artists are invited to apply. Participants in the residency program receive accommodation, a private work studio and all meals at no cost. Travel and material costs are the responsibility of participating artists.

NOTE: This program accepts all kinds of artists, including musicians and writers; I even saw a costume designer in their list of alumni. It looks like a good opportunity to work alongside creative people dealing with a wide variety of media.

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Though the title conjures a leitmotif of sutures and open wounds, I’d like to share an observation in local art scene group dynamics. The Legendary Criswell predicts that “the future is where you and I will spend the rest of our lives whether we like it or not.” And with that caveat, I predict that 2007 will be the year of Closings. Don’t be a part of the booboisie, showing up at 8 p.m. on Opening Night! Eegads, the horror of uncovering your social ineptitude when you realize that the Closing Night is so much more important and jubilant. There’s a sense of urgency and inaccessibility at a Closing Party because, hey, that art gets deconstructed tomorrow and this is your last chance to see it! But at the Opening Night, pffffft. Awe, rasberries. Those objects d’art will be there collecting dust bunnies for almost a whole month.

We here at Emvergeoning Headquarters pride ourselves in observing and documenting the latest patterns in art weather fluffery. So, we can’t stress this enough people. Do your fellow artists a flippin’ flavor and snub the art openings, for closure is what we all seek.

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This coming Saturday the S. Flores kids will be at it again. FL!GHT opens with krazy new sculptural work by Derek Allen Brown, skirting the edges of neo-post-modernity. Salon Mijangos exhibits new psychomorphic paintings by Marisa Aceves. And of course Gallista offers up another too-much-art-to-keep-track-of extravaganza. And all in a one-block area! This is the last month of One9Zero6’s hiatus, so get ready for the Benavides experience in February…

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Walking around First Friday the other night before Erick Michaud’s performance at Unit B was.. fun? exciting? trying? hmm.. I’m not sure really. but I did see a lot of folks who I hadn’t run into lately, and I handed out a bunch of postcards for the Derek Allen Brown show coming up this next Saturday at FL!GHT .. I also really enjoyed Mary Hawthornes show in the little room of Joan Grona Gallery, and I found a keen photo opportunity in the Blue Star Gallery four. Upon closer examination however, I noticed something was amiss(i think) .. Someone seems to have added an empty obituary box of their own to the display on the wall with an arrow pointing to it with the words “Time magazines person of the year.” .. Upon first viewing it, I thought it was part of the piece..and then after reflecting on it earlier today, and reading the handout I had picked up in the gallery, I was almost sure it was not exactly part of it, but some First Friday reveler’s idea of a prank. Anybody know for sure? (in my original photo look to the guy on the left, at his right side)

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Subtlety and simplicity make art a welcome benediction. Cherubic Riley Robinson consistently reminds us that sculpture is his metier- second only of course to his alacrity for keeping Artpace on the forefront of the contemporary art scene in America. “A Short History of Television” offers habitues of Sala Diaz the thrill of a lunar landing or at least the re-enactment of an interstellar disembarkation.

Perhaps the virescent gem of this show dwells inside the carefully preserved torsion of a coveted pair of bib overalls. The patina on this article of clothing is a perfectly captured color of distress and creates a ghostly uninhabitable space. Robinson’s decision to place the work upright makes it seem like these jeans had been burnt to a crisp and blown against the gallery wall by some white hot, solar flare. The straightforward lemma of television pulls Mr. Green Jeans into the same lost channels of the 1960s that followed the lunar landing while alluding to the conspiracy theory of Hollywood mise en scene surrounding that “small step.” A signed, framed publicity photo of Mr. Green Jeans adds a tender touch to a remarkably delightful show.

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OK kids, here’s the rundown on First Friday. We’ll start with the Blue Star complex. Blue Star Gallery itself is (still) showing the “Baroque Visions and Urban Verities: Seven Houston Painters” show that went up in November, along with Sarah Moore and Roy LaGrone. Three Walls is having a closing reception for Luke Savisky’s S/X installation (pictured above – sort of). This is kind of an immersive intermedia video film show (if you know what I mean). I’d highly recommend checking in with this, if you haven’t already. UTSA Satellite Space will be showing Adrien Carin Ryder’s “Thread Bare” and Erin Guy’s “Slip On” – both groups of raiment-related work, with sculptural and flat pieces.

Moving on down to Stieren, Unit B will be having a closing reception for “Once Upon, Ever After”, a group show featuring Seth Johnson, Eric Michaud, and Charlie Morris. Eric Michaud will be performing at 9:15 pm. Across the street, Sala Diaz is showing new work by Riley Robinson.

Well, that’s all I know about for now. If you have info on more shows, post em in the comments.

UPDATE: ElRay just scolded me in comments, so I just thought I’d apologize for my sloppiness – the excellent Luke Savisky show was indeed a film (not video) experience. The show would have been very different had it been done with video. (Check the comments for ElRay’s concise but enlightening description of this distinction.) Sorry about that.

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Found this by way of the BBC today:

As I emerged from my little transport capsule, I initially felt that something was off, but quickly came to see that something really was quite on. Paint was everywhere. On the ground, on the tiles, across adverts, covering tube maps and even electronic signs. A grin spread across my face as I realised that Camden Town tube station got massively graffiti bombed!

Say what you will, but I love a good graffiti bomb. Perhaps it’s my inner psychedelic soldier still fighting for the freedom of the mind or perhaps it’s my resistance to becoming too much of an adult, but I love seeing the normal world bathed in colour, reborn in Pantone.

Thats an excerpt from a blog written by a guy named Dave Knapik from Chicago who has recently moved to London. I was also recently in London and spent time in this, the busiest of the london tube stations overall. From the amount of CCTV cameras and security EVERYWHERE in that city, something of this scale being pulled off is quite a feat. Here’s Flickr account with over 50 photos of the incident.

The online debate over the validity of this kind of thing is raging in full swing, I thought it might be fun to rage along over here as well.

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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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