No Gimmicks

This 1986 tv ad stars Glenn Beck, Tim Hattrick, and Zippy the Chimp:



(Thanks, Julie!)

The Fun Theory

Man cannot live by bread alone.



And artists are, among other things, funmongers.

(Thanks, Ben!)

Chinati Open House Weekend '09, Marfa, TX

Another great weekend in the tiny town in a big landscape.

Attendance was the lowest I think I've seen since Open House '03; good in some ways, not in others. Speculation was, it resulted from the cutbacks on perqs for artists (esp. in '08), combined with the ongoing "recession."

The Book Company's given up some space, but it still has the gallery, which was occupied by a great show of small press books. The Pizza Foundation was open again. And there's a new "Shade Structure" next to the RR tracks; now you can stay cool while chewing Shark, plus the structure served as a concert venue.

Chinati's programs centered on the re-opening of Donald Judd's freestanding works in concrete.

Apart from Chinati's and the Judd Foundation's more or less permanent installations, the art generally struck me as somewhat less spectacular this year than in some past; but then, I didn't see everything.

But I'd like to mention a couple of items. Perhaps most interesting to me was the free Dan Deacon concert. As the concert began, the crowd was tightly packed around Deacon's performance area, which was level with the crowd. Here's his opening assay, as best I can transcribe it (video here):

Everyone raise your right hand. Now ever so slowly, start raising our index finger straight up in the air, pointing straight up. And now we'll slowly start bending at the wrist, so our finger that was pointing proudly up at the heavens is pointing down to the ground [audience laughs {picture the gesture}]. Now let's put our left foot a little bit in front of our right foot, and start bobbing up and down at the knees, that's good. Now let's slowly bend at the knees, taking one knee down to the ground, really slowly. Now let's look around the space and find someone who's not doing this [audience roars]. But that's ok; don't be afraid! You've made a choice to remain different and that's alright. But now let's point directly at somebody who's not doing this, point directly at them [audience roars again]. We're not judging them in any capacity [audience laughs]. We're just pointing right at their mouth. Now open up the palm of your hand, look at the palm of your hand. Now back at their mouth. Now back at the palm of your hand. Now back at their mouth, where your eyes will stay as your hand moves closer and closer to your own mouth. Closer and closer still until you give your hand a kiss while looking at that mouth. Now, don't turn away, don't stop looking at that same person but reach and put that kiss on someone else's face. Plant it right there; then put your hands on the ground, and let's start to dance, let's do it.

At this point, the music began in earnest.

Deacon clearly raised the possibility of ostracizing those who don't go along with the crowd's relatively blind obedience to at least initially nonsensical directions. If my transcription is correct, the few who don't go along not only get singled out and pointed at but also get it rubbed in their faces that they're not being kissed and everyone else is – a relatively mild form of ostracization, but for some of us, sufficient perhaps to stir a few pangs. The initial, "rock concert" context evidently provides a set of conditions in which the crowd is prepared to suspend whatever autonomy they might otherwise exercise and collaborate with a leader in order to achieve their own entertainment – and they know not what all else. Though it was all in fun, there were a number of moments at which things could have taken, or indeed did take, a disturbing turn.

The music was techno-jungle, a driving droning, mostly in major scales, and was accompanied visually by goofy, strobe-flashing skulls and video featuring crisply geometric, crudely amorphous, or Wolfram-esquely psychedelic patterns. To me, the visuals though fitting seemed unspectacular, at least by contemporary standards, and I wondered if they rather served as part of the contextual "concert" set-up for the relational experiments that were to transpire.

Deacon suggested more than once that people should put their cameras away, presumably because they tend to remove the shooter from emotional immersion in the action.

In the next exercise, Deacon directed the crowd to form a large circle and designated two team leaders who selected others, who in turn selected others, all to compete in a dance contest. Clearly, for a good and unforgettable time, nothing beats actually DIY'ing it, esp. in front of a lot of other people. In the next experiment, Deacon selected one fellow from the crowd and directed everyone else to mimic him in a giant "Simon Says," thus establishing that the crowd would blindly obey not just Deacon but anyone he might designate. The scene was distinctly tribal; the video here gives a sense of that.

In the next exercise, Deacon directed the crowd to form a human tunnel, with people at the back end running through it to add themselves to the tunnel at the front, so as to gradually extend the tunnel out the front of the Shade Structure and across the street to a building housing the Judd Foundation on the other side. As this action played out, the street was obstructed. A car pulled up, blocked; then two more with cops and flashing lights – though as I understand, Marfa only has one police officer; but presumably they'd mustered others from surrounding towns (the nearest being a half hour away).

It was a demonstration of the power of the crowd, for good or ill, even against the police; though the latter seemed merely amused, if not actually complicit.

The concert functioned as a participatory, relational art performance very much concerned with how individuals and perhaps esp. crowds react when under certain conditions directed to carry out certain protocols. Most of the attendees had a fun, perhaps heart-warming or even uplifting experience; for me, the implications seemed a bit more complex and even ambivalent. Organized into concerted effort, we're all but invincible; but we also have a disturbing proclivity to suspend not just our disbelief but our critical faculties, and the collective can be deployed to discourage independence.

I also liked Adam Bork's installation (right), at El Cosmico; more pics and vidis of all that starting here.

You can find more visuals of more works, and links to more info, starting here.

Affordable Healthcare for ALL (Even Artists)

Sun., Oct. 25, 11 - 12:00: PAC-WE "flash mob" convenes at the Morton Meyerson Symphony Hall, Dallas, TX, under the Mark di Suvero sculpture (the big orange-ish - red, x-ish, pendulum thing).

Many if not most artists and art professionals are independent contractors who must either pay dearly for health insurance or go without. PAC-WE is being organized in order to demonstrate in support of the meaningful health insurance reform so many of us badly need. As I understand, yellow ponchos will be provided in return for a very small donation, for participants to wear. The organizers write,

PAC-WE: An ACTION by and for the North Texas Art Community calling for health care reform.

PAC – WHAT? The Professional Artist Coalition is a ‘flash mob action’ creating a bright public yellow signal for health care reform. A first for Dallas, and this cause.

PAC - WHO? The North Texas art community. This includes thousands of citizens daily engaged in the visual, performing, literary, media, and commercial arts.

PAC- WHERE? Morton Meyerson Symphony Hall- convene under the di Suvero Sculpture ‘Proverb/ Pendulum for preparation of happening.

PAC- HOW? Show up and bring your friends, your coffee and donuts.

PAC- WHY? Because artists of any kind stand with the American people to demand a change to the status quo of a broken health care system. Because artists are unique victims of the health care status quo. Most are independent contractors, uninsured or underinsured. Because artists are fed up with other PAC's (Political Action Committees) funded by insurance and drug companies that are fighting to care for profits instead of health. Because the North Texas art community realizes that at the very moment that Dallas is celebrating its new PAC (Performing Arts Center), with architects and programming imported from elsewhere, it has no plan to sustain its own creative community. Because artists have been silent and invisible for too long when it comes to the health and care of our society.

PAC WE - The Origin of the Concept. PAC MAN is a sign of consumption. We often consume health care and culture without thinking about its wider context. We don't ask why healthcare costs so much or why so many are left without it.

We also don't ask about the livelihoods and healthcare of the artists that are seen as culture providers. Since the cuts in arts funding on a national and local level (most notably during the culture wars of the 1990s) artists have been cultural workers who contribute to our communities with little or no support in return.

But PAC MAN is also a sign of the earliest glimmer of technology and its promise for the future. When it was invented in the 1980's we would never have guessed that the internet would create a world that was so connected and empowered by the access to information. These qualities drive this event by connecting us and empowering us, based on our access to information that is so condemning of the status quo. These qualities bring us together on this day for this action.

We use the yellow color of PAC MAN as a sign of wisdom, optimism, clarity and awareness.

At left is a map of the location/route (click on the image for a larger version). See PAC-WE's facebook page, and more details soon at PAC-WE.

ALSO, MoveOn is holding a "Whose side are you on?" rally at noon on Wed., Oct. 14, at Senator John Cornyn's Office in north Dallas at 5001 Spring Valley Rd., Dallas (map).

The Yes Men's New Movie,

Fixing the World (larger version here). Keep watching at least 'til you get to the "Halliburton Surviva-Ball." More info here.

Kittywigs iPhone App

now available; details here (see also my previous post here). Can't wait to see it on my boyfriend.

Monofonus Press's

American Trashcan field recordings is worth visiting even if just to see the header (you have to watch for a bit to get the full benefit).

The entries look cool, too.

FBI Investigates Coder for Downloading Public Records

Per Wired, 22-year-old programmer Aaron Swartz has been investigated by the FBI because the Government Printing Office experimented with offering free access to its database of public court records, and Swartz made the mistake of accepting their offer.

Swartz downloaded 19,856,160 pages, uploaded them to amazon.com's EC2 "cloud" service, and donated them to public.resource.org, "an open government initiative spearheaded by Carl Malamud as part of a broader project to make public as many government databases as Malamud can find. It was Malamud who previously shamed the SEC into putting all its EDGAR filings online in the ’90s, and he used $600,000 in donations to buy 50 years of documents from the nation’s appeals court, which he promptly put on the internet for anyone to download in bulk."

Prior to the GPO's experimental offer, the records had been available only for a fee of 8¢ per page, or more if purchased through a privately-owned, commercial intermediary. When the gummint figured out what was happening, they abruptly terminated the experiment and notified the FBI that the database was "compromised."

A partially-redacted FBI report shows they ran Swartz through a full range of gummint databases, among other things checking his work history, his Facebook data [see, e.g., here and here], whether his cell number had ever come up in a federal wiretap or pen register, and checking him against a private data broker’s database; they also obtained his driver's license photo and considered a stake-out of his home (which they concluded would be too conspicuous, since few cars parked on Swartz's dead-end, suburban street).

"The feds evidently identified Swartz in the first place by approaching Amazon, which provided his name, phone number and address. . . . Amazon’s user agreement for its cloud computing solutions gives it the right to turn over customer information to the government on request."

More at Wired. (And for more on Amazon's role, see Amazon EC2 and Amazon VPC.)

(Thanks, Ben!)