Emvergeoning

MAN has the details on Robert Irwin’s forthcoming permanent installation at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa. Construction begins in 2010.

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Photo by Flickr user Art or Idiocy?

Here’s a Flickr preview of the Escultura Social show opening at Museo Alameda tomorrow (the photos are from the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, where the exhibit originated). For those keeping tabs on San Anto art connections, Escultura Social includes Julieta Aranda, who recently showed at Sala Diaz, and Stefan Brüggemann, who recently showed at TPS (aka Triange Project Space). Should be a good one.

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Emvergeoning’s exclusive footage from the 2008 Pushcart Derby:

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I’ve noticed this one for months (years?) on the access road to I-10:

Also, a followup on Justin’s great street art find from a couple months ago. Apparently this is by the same artist (it’s in the men’s bathroom at the Voodoo Lounge, aka SWC Club):

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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.

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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.

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(photo : James Ordner)

While my friend James spent some time in San Cristobal de las Casas last year, he took the time to document most instances of stencil graffiti that he came across. He has recently organized and uploaded it to this .   Its worth a look.  Awhile back, Michelle had highlighted a few of his images from his trip, but he had yet to post the entirety of what he had seen, hence the redundancy. Michelle also made the connection to some of the imagery we see on the streets of San Antonio from our local stencil hero “Scotch!“.

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(Ben Judson)

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According to the Grande Encyclopédie, the first museum in the modern sense of the word (that is to say the first public collection) would seem to have been founded on 27 July 1793, in France, by the Convention. The origin of the modern museum would thus be linked to the development of the guillotine. However, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, founded at the end of the 17th century, was already a public collection belonging to the University.

The development of museums has plainly surpassed even the most optimistic hopes of the founders. Not only does the totality of the world’s museums today represent a colossal accumulation of riches but, above all, the totality of visitors without any doubt represents the most grandiose spectacle of a humanity freed from material cares and dedicated to contemplation.

We must take into account the fact that the galleries and the objects of art are no more than a container, the contents of which is formed by the visitors: it is the contents which distinguish a museum from a private collection. A museum is comparable to the lung of a great city: every Sunday the throng flows into the museum, like blood, and leaves it fresh and purified. The pictures are only dead surfaces and it is within the crowd that the play, the flashes, the shimmerings of light technically described by the authorised critics takes place. On Sundays, at five o’clock, at the exit door of the Louvre, it is interesting to admire the torrent of visitors, visibly animated with a desire to be in all things at one with the celestial apparitions with which their eyes are still ravished.

Grandville has schematised the relations between the container and the contained in museums by exaggerating (at the very least, on the face of it) the bonds that are temporarily established between the visited and the visitors. In the same way, when a native of the Ivory Coast places polished stone axes of the Neolithic period in a container filled with water, bathes in the container, and sacrifices chickens to what he believes to be thunder stones (fallen from heaven in a thunderclap), he is doing no more than prefiguring the attitude of enthusiasm and profound communion with objects which characterises the visitor to a modern museum.

The museum is a colossal mirror in which man contemplates himself, in short, in all his aspects, finds himself literally admirable and abandons himself to the ecstasy expressed in all the art journals.

— Georges Bataille, Encyclopaedia Acephalica

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Since we’ve been incredibly lazy with the upcoming events list lately (please don’t hate us), I thought I’d highlight a couple of events happening tonight that should be fun: the Hometown Artist’s Rodeo at the Cove and Exhibit with a “Z” at SoHo.

The Hometown Artist’s Rodeo was once a monthly event featuring performances by many of San Antonio’s more talented artists and musicians. Ken Little resurrected the show just for July. Performers will include Ken Little with Rodeo Ho Ho, The Mark Little Jazz Experiment, Hills Snyder, Gary Sweeney, Chris Sauter & Rick Frederick, and Jason Trevino. There’s a $5 cover and the show goes from 8 pm to midnight. The Cove is located at 606 W. Cypress.

Exhibit with a “Z” includes new work by Alejandro Diaz, Kristy Perez, and Hector Ruiz, with appearances by tequila and empanadas. The show is organized by Franco Mondini-Ruiz and David Shelton. This one also runs from 8 pm to midnight. SoHo is located at 214 W. Crockett.

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An old friend sets out to chronicle New York City through its ATMs on a new blog, aptly titled :

UPDATE: ATMNYC’s author writes:

The photos on atmnyc are taken with my iphone and then emailed directly to the tumblr blog. So the pictures are all snapped and posted in almost the same instant. I like to think of it as a sort of updated polaroid style. The limits of the iphone camera, the problems with focus, the tendency to blur and glare, even the dimensions of the photo, actually remind me a lot of the old Polaroid Land Camera.

I do not photograph any indoor atms unless they are visible from the street. I take many of the pictures quickly from my bike. I make little effort at composition— the city takes care of that part itself.

I used to hate the sight of atms, thinking that they were a regrettable intermediary techno clutter, not unlike the cell phone towers tacked onto so many historic Manhattan apartment buildings. On the other hand I find payphones charming, perhaps because they are nearing their obsolescence. Likewise, New York’s rooftop water towers are beautiful appendages, so maybe cellphone towers should be indulged as well.

In any case, I’ve become fond of atms, and have come to see them as helpful little droids, standing on corners blinking their senseless cyclopes eye, waiting patiently to serve the needs of a passing master– for a small fee, of course.  In the meantime they are heaped with every abuse offered by graffiti, violence and the weather.

But despite my growing sentimentality for the things, I still get my cash from the teller at a local branch bank.

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I just learned that Bruce Connor died on Tuesday. Here’s a wonderful little film he made in 1966 featuring the dancing of Toni Basil (aka Antonia Christina Basilotta) and the music of Ed Cobb (NSFW — there are a few nude shots):

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Here’s an interesting post putting handwriting samples of typographers up against their type designs:

Lately, I’ve been asking just one question, though. Something which has always intrigued me: these people that help us communicate … how do they themselves communicate? If we strip away the monitors, and the printing presses, and the typefaces … how would William Caslon have written on a post-it note?

Would have been interesting to see historical examples, such as John Baskerville and Nicolas Jenson, but it’s pretty cool nonetheless.
[hat tip]

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Cruz Ortiz Demonstrates his catapult, part of his new show ‘Puffy Taco Plate Company” at Three Walls Gallery on First Thursday in San Antonio. Don’t you just love cell phone video?

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