Charles Simic on “memory traps”
The poet Charles Simic has written a short essay on “memory traps”–places that have vanished but which linger in the mind, and which anyone who has lived in a city for a long time will recognize: It doesn’t take much. A deserted street at dusk, with the summer sunlight lingering on the upper floors of […]
Wikileaks and Latin America
Now that my colleague has introduced US President Barack Obama to the blog, it seems an opportune moment to point you toward a special issue of The Nation published last month. Its theme: Wikileaks and Latin America. Click through to be taken to the Table of Contents, which features articles on such subjects as how the […]
The “Busy” Trap
The writer and artist Tim Kreider recently published an essay in the New York Times on being “busy.” As the scare quotes suggest, he believes we make ourselves seem busy, and that our compulsion to do so is rather needless: If you live in America in the 21st century you’ve probably had to listen to a […]
Joni Sternbach
A review by Vince Aletti in the New Yorker alerts us to Joni Sternbach’s exhibition of surfer portraits at Rick Wester Fine Art. Aletti writes: Sternbach’s photographs of surfers, taken in the past six years in Malibu, Montauk, and Australia, look as if they could have been made any time in the past half century of […]
Have A Seat
Emeco debuted a new designer collaboration at the Salone del Mobile in Milan last week. The Broom chair created with Philippe Starck is recycled and recyclable, a mix of 75% reclaimed polypropylene, 15% reclaimed wood fiber and 10% glass fiber.Â
Dreaming
Man’s moral conscience is the curse he had to accept from the gods in order to gain from them the right to dream.—William Faulkner in The Paris Review, Spring 1956
River of Doubt
Join the Harmony Blog at a studio visit with artist Sandy White as he discusses how Teddy Roosevelt’s journey inspired the drawings in his first solo show.
Leap Year
The leap year’s extra day is necessary because of the “messiness” of our Solar System. One Earth year (a complete orbit around the Sun) does not take an exact number of whole days (one complete spin of the Earth on its axis). In fact, it takes 365.2422 days, give or take.—BBC’s Leap year: 10 things […]
The End of the World As We Know It?
PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo. What do you think about this proposed legislation? To learn more or take action, go here.
Bigert & Bergström, The Last Calendar
The perfect gift for your favorite prophet! From Cabinet: When the current cycle of the Maya Long Count calendar concludes on 21 December 2012, the world will end. Of course, this is hardly the first time the planet’s demise has been prophesied. And so Cabinet offers you, doomed reader, a guide to the brief time that remains. […]
VOGUE
Tropes can elicit ooohs, aaahs, oh no, not that again—a place where affect is held in suspension over the historical and its signifiers. It is the experience of “I know what the overused parts are and will they only remain as themselves, or is there some combinatory manner in which they achieve something unpredictable that […]
Romance downtown
Last week I mentioned an exciting project I was going to participate it in. It was simple effort but made a huge impact on the intended party as well as many passersby. My neighbors are an Australian couple named Craig and Greg. They moved to NY in June of last year and I took the […]
A little different transmission tower
A transmission tower near Újhartyán, Hungary, was built to resemble a clown. The pylons follow a worldwide trend in trying to make large industrial objects more humanoid.
The Sky Above
Corporeality puts our feet on the ground and our head in the sky. The temporal, what we see at a particular moment is for that moment. Our consciousness and physical presence makes this possible.
REPOSE
A PHYSICAL FILE CONTAINING PHOTOGRAPHS AND PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE EXISTS. FAME, IS NOT A PART OF THE CRITERIA, IN FACT IT CAN REMOVE ONE FROM THE SYSTEM. INCLUSION IS BASED ON CONTRIBUTION, SOME WOULD CONSIDER IT CULTURAL CAPITAL. IT RANGES FROM A WOMAN WHO DROVE TO HER HOME TO GET A WIRE COAT HANGER WHEN KEYS […]
Fiction & Non-Fiction (People who live in glass house build another house in brick to sleep in.)
New York has been delivering of late. The service laden city has been providing narrative(s)—the best of which hover over fiction, but in fact are real. A well occupied truism, that is in fact, true. People can be classified in this manner as well. Practitioners or objects themselves that maintain a position along this precipice […]
DOLE
In most times, and conversations for that matter, if a bit of excavation is done, one can expose many historical strata of exercises in contrast. Geologic time is intentionally being invoked—as it has to do with flow and expectations, and a certain vigilance in the examination and questioning of not only of who we are, […]
Climate Week NYC
Time to say goodbye to Fashion Week and hello to Climate Week NYC. From today until September 26th, New York City will host an annual summit with meetings between the world’s leading businesses and governments and an array of events focused on driving a “clean industrial revolution.”
The Everglades by Lisa Elmaleh
A Brooklyn-based photographer preserves an essence of the Everglades with beautiful, haunting images.
Ultra-Ex
Ultra (Urban Long Term Research Area) scientists have found an interesting use for vacant urban lots—they study “bird and insect populations, watershed systems, soil nematodes and urban farming” in these abandoned areas. According to the Times, “Ultra-Ex advances a forward-looking mission: to document the ecological benefits that vacant lots might provide and to redefine the […]
Paul Thek, Untitled Seascape
Also, if in LA then there’s still time to see the best show of the year (so far)—Paul Thek’s retrospective. It’s on view at the Hammer Museum until August 28.
Lesley Vance, Untitled
If in LA, don’t miss Lesley Vance’s solo show at David Kordansky Gallery. Closes August 13. Review here!
Lawrence Weiner, Rocks Upon the Beach Sand Upon the Rocks
“Weiner’s medium is language. As a Conceptual artist his constructions of words and phrases seek to affect our perception of the spaces they are presented in. In appearance the language used by the artist is plain and neutral. In effect, however, this particular piece is quite evocative—the artist invites us to imagine ourselves surrounded by […]
Raymond Pettibon, No Title (Some things…)
“I don’t think I’ve ever done an image that was meant to be reoccurring in the beginning. What happens is that after drawing one you can’t leave them. They have more to say to you. In a way it can take on a life of its own. I guess people probably think that these are […]
