Stephanie Davidson

Her painting and drawings are pretty meh, but check out these great gifs. There are about 15 pages of these gems.

Amazing aura gif sequence

Hello from Ohio

Columbus, Ohio's Sword Heaven played their last show on Sunday March 27th at Death by Audio in Brooklyn. Drummer Aaron Hibbs is moving to New Dehli, India for the near future. There will definitely be more Sword Heaven shows, but knowing Hibbs, there is no telling where his future--or travel escapades-- will lead him. The band never disappoints, each show they play embodies a certain progression, peak and denoument; appropriately sanctioning itself as a succinct and contained experience in time. In my mind, none of their shows run together, they each constitute their own entity, which is part of the genius of the experience. Eventhough there is no substitute for seeing Sword Heaven live, I attempted to capture some of the essence on video at the Brooklyn show.










Sword Heaven pics

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The "Museumification" of Performance Art

IT’S HISTORY NOW: PERFORMANCE ART AND THE MUSEUM
A Panel Discussion About Current Performance
Presented by Performa’s Not For Sale Series

Last night, Performa’s educational series Not For Sale presented It’s History Now: Performance Art and the Museum, a panel discussion that examined the long history of performances presented in museums, from commissioned performances to artist-driven actions and protests, and attempted to explain the many reasons for the current performance boom.

Performance is in the middle of an extraordinary resurgence in popularity, with performance-based exhibitions currently on view at several major New York museums and galleries, a rapidly growing interest in performance programming at art fairs and biennials, and entire departments devoted to performance at The Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern and beyond. Panelists discussed whether it is possible for museums to accurately re-present radical historic performances, many of which were specifically intended to be anti-institutional. They also asked if the function of the contemporary art museum itself has changed so radically that it welcomes such organized anti-institutional approaches.

Panelists for It’s History Now included Alexander Alberro, Chrissie Iles, Martha Rosler, and Glenn Wharton, Conservator in the Department of Conservation at The Museum of Modern Art. Respondents included Eungie Joo, Curator at the New Museum, and Adam Pendleton, Artist. The panel was introduced and moderated by Performa Director RoseLee Goldberg.

The ever brilliant Chrissie Iles started the talk off by presenting a large @ symbol, which was acquired earlier this week by MoMA. This, insofar, launched into her central argument that museums have collected performances, but they have done this by collecting photographs, videos, installation, documentation, writings, and other secondary media formats. Here, I noticed Martha Rosler roll her eyes dramatically at the mention of Cindy Sherman's photos acting as an object-based indexing to version of the performance that the photos document. This notion of the haptic, which Iles signaled to, was further discussed through her analysis of James Lee Byer's "The Perfect Smile" and later Valie Export's Action Pants: General Panic (1969). That documentation of these performances provide one with a window into the performance, but the museum's way of re-performing these works adds a whole other layer of theatricality to the original concept of the work. Iles stated that:

“Performance challenges categorization, which was originally its point. But museums are about archiving, categorizing, and indexing. It’s not always an easy fit, but maybe what’s interesting is the way in which the past is reframed in the present."
Martha Rosler began her lecture by letting everyone know that she was going to disregard the time constraints. What followed was a defamatory, hostile accusation of museums as being guilty of elitist tastes, privileging certain histories over others, and commoditizing once radical art works in the process. She argued that museums force artists to succumb to their "model" when re-presenting subversive works, an assertion that I believe to be a gross generalization. A purist, she believes that such works have no business being re-performed, collected, housed, or documented within museums, because she considers institutions to be sites that facilitate revisionism.

There were many issues with her argument-- the most obvious one being the hypocrisy of her own work being presented within institutions. At one point, she praised the archive as the appropriate place for historically significant works of art. The issue with this is access and therefore agency; a tremendous amount of work goes into archival research, whereas a stroll through the MoMA's media gallery might only take 25 minutes. Generally speaking, the work, whether original or re-installed, will reach a greater amount of people through the museum setting, allowing greater visibility within cultural and historic memory. I wanted so badly to discuss these issues in greater detail, because of all of the contradictions they implied, but I didn't want her to continue along her tirade.

I guess, generally speaking, I see a performance entering a museum as a beginning to a new life, as opposed to the end of one. Of course individuals within the museum owe the work a huge amount of maintenance, investigation, and contextualization througout this lifetime. Inevitably, we must accept that the work will change with time. Therefore, now is the time to document what elements of performance works can be elastic, and which must be finite. Inviting the unexpected around art is afterall, what makes performance interesting.

Marina Abramovich at MoMA

Queens of Noise

All in all, the Runaways was pretty decent. Of course there were problems with it, but this much is inevitable with Hollywood films looking back into a specific time period. Dakota Fanning plays a seriously great drug addict towards the end of the film. Especially considering that she is still only 16 and comes from a long line of athletic stars. (mother a tennis pro, her father played baseball for the Cardinals, Grandfather played American football, and her aunt is an ESPN reporter). I also found out in the first paragraph of her wikipedia page, Fanning is currently the captain of the varsity cheer-leading squad at her high school. (Weird!?)

Actresses exploiting themselves, you say? Well, that is fitting, seeing as exploitation and selling an image was the concept behind the formation of the actual band the Runaways. Somehow the cheapness of content in Hollywood screenwriting seems fitting for the story. As does the mass distribution and targeted audience: dudes and teenage girls.

Donatella Versus the World (Again)

I don't claim to know much about high fashion, but I do love aesthetics and imagination. When my best friend Beth Murphy told me about Donatella Versace reviving the dormant "Versus" label from the 90s, I had flashbacks to ads scotch-taped to my suburban wall, such as this one:



A bit of internet-spelunking revealed that the new advertising face for Versus will be none other than Georgia May Jagger, the 17 year old Bardotian daughter of Mick and Jerry Hall.



Versus, the young Versace line originally launched in 1989 and designed by Donatella Versace under her brother Gianni's supervision before it was discontinued in 2005. Donatella divulged that "It was the first collection that my brother Gianni let me work on, on my own, so it's very precious to me."

The line, which targets "Young Hollywood," or women between 20 and 30, is currently being sold in the new Versus showroom in Milan. Don't really see "Young Hollywood" in these designs so much, but I love them anyways. Wait, umm... is that because I am a young woman between 20 and 30....? Damn you, consumption and desire!

Next two are my favorites:

While we're on the subject, see also: nymag article on Gilt Groupe

If only: Bruce LaBruce in Berlin

PERES PROJECTS BERLIN
Schlesische Strasse 26
January 30–April 24

Ever since seeing Otto, and LA Zombie, I have been smitten with Canada's Bruce LaBruce, who has seemingly transformed from a DIY queer-zine-making/gay porn star to a fully matured cineaste. I would love to see how his work translates in gallery space. And what a fun project, to create an exhibition around his work! I really hope that the exhibition embodies a sense of humor, parallel to his films. There's so much potential to mine in this regard!

A Review:

Francois Sagat, the star of Bruce LaBruce’s latest film and a series of monochromatic silk-screened portraits in his exhibition “LA ZOMBIE: The film that would not die,” has a gladiator physique and tattooed scalp that on first glance seem at odds with the usual flesh eater’s starved silhouette. But the French-Arab gay porn star’s sensitive face sets him apart from his role as the unseeing zombie obsessed with satiating unquenchable desires.

In the director’s sixty-five-minute film, LA ZOMBIE, 2010, Sagat appears as both an uncommonly comely homeless man scavenging for trash and an electric-blue zombie who finds murdered men and then penetrates their wounds with his massive pointed penis. After he ejaculates blood, the men are resurrected as fellow zombies. The young man who picks him up hitchhiking in the opening scene and whose heart he pumps after a fatal car crash sits on the wreckage lovingly and mournfully watching Sagat dress himself to leave him. The moment establishes Sagat as a romantic character, akin to the melancholy vampire rather than the amoral and greedy zombies who typically inhabit the genre.

By transforming Sagat into a mutant of his genre, LaBruce humanizes the actor and creates an odd but compellingly optimistic view of mankind. Those familiar with George A. Romero’s films will be particularly aware that we might be in the throes of a zombie society that mindlessly devours everything in sight. Even our appetite for Twilight and other vampire-themed pop is evidence of rampant consumer lust. But Sagat’s sensitive zombie seems to possess greater depth and existential self-awareness, more even than the mortal businessman whose dead body he defiles."

Ana Finel Honigman for Artforum

Seeing as I just went to a General Idea screening last night that was introduced by fellow gay-vid-art-Canuck A.A. Bronson, and I just came across these photographs taken by Bruce LaBruce, here is that too...

Art Fair Weekend 2010

My fear of being blinded from too many patent leather Christian Louboutins as well as lack of trusting myself not to pick a fight with some trophy wife/art snob/dickish gallery owner told me not to seek out the festivals this year. However, I still went to the Armory, and the Independent. There were some highlights I suppose.

The Armory was surprisingly the best that I can recall. Of course it is always overwhelming, with endless amounts of galleries, artworks, flourescent lights, and glitterati that seem to have confused the Piers with a runway. The work was good, and several galleries had gave strongly curated showings. Possibly my favorite, was Elizabeth Dee Gallery. A panel talk given on the future of Biennials was also worth the haul out to no-womans-land.

After feeling like I spent enough time in the rabbit-hole that is/was the Armory, I left to catch a bus down to Chelsea, to go to the Independent, a fair supposedly intended to critique art fairs.

The Independent
Funny that this show should open with a completely banal exhibition of contemporary art. It's only edge was that the gallery had presented a number of art-work pairings. I am not sure if it was a conscious decision or not, but the gallery was in no way different from every blue-chip allotment in the Armory show. Gah... it is what it is... I am going to come back to this...
(First two picks are from the Independent)

The above painting speaks volumes about what I think about the Armory.

Why? A similar painting read "The Beuys are Back in Town"... Give me cancer now, god.