Engineer's Daughter

all the anxiety we bear with us

 

Those who know me know I love a good, disturbing, psychologically-complex film, and Ingmar Bergman's Persona is one of the best.  I first saw it as part of a SFMOMA film series in conjunction with their 2007 Jeff Wall retrospective where the artist picked titles that influenced his art practice, and while watching it again this week I remembered how it instantly imprinted itself on my psyche.  I imagine that Wall chose the film for the incredible cinematography by Sven Nykvist, as each and every shot is a miracle of light and composition, and for the way that Bergman and Nykvist reveal the process of filmmaking itself as a means of highlighting the descent into madness experienced by Bibi Andersson's Alma.  Her character is fascinating, a nurse tending the silent-but-otherwise-healthy Elisabeth at a secluded summer cabin who finds her personality merging with that of her charge.  Elisabeth herself is played by the incomparable Liv Ullmann in a performance that is rich with nuance and emotion despite her lack of speech, and Bergman said that it was on this film that he fell in love with her (it's easy to see why).  As the flame flickers out at the end plenty of unanswered questions remain and we even doubt the veracity of everything that has gone before.  The whole film stands as a enduring metaphor for the utter mystery of the human condition. 

feel

The Soft Moon Feel (self-released)

Local musician Luis Vasquez is one of my all-time fave Captured Tracks artists (oh, that show he did years ago at the much-missed 21 Grand!), and these self-released songs are up to his customary awesome gloom pop standards.  He will make you want to dance even as he chills you to the bone.  Minimal wave at its finest.

lazaretto

Markus Linnenbrink, Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco.  June 7, 2007.

unmasking the network

Clement Valla

Simone Niquille

James Bridle

Through May 18 - Unmasking the Network at ASC Projects.  Guest curator Ben Valentine uses the small space at ASC Projects to great effect in this group show that explores the current state of our interconnectedness and some of its more uncomfortable and misunderstood aspects.  Clement Valla's gorgeous floor-to-ceiling print of a visual glitch found on Google Earth questions the reliability of the data that is housed in the centers that Silvio Lorusso has documented in Postcard from a Data Center.  Devotee of my iThings that I am I was quickly sucked into the fragmented discourses about planned obsolescence and other timely issues in Nick Briz's Apple Computers, while Simone Niquille offers a different sort of fracturing in her t-shirts that remix the famous visages of Barack Obama and Michael Jackson into a "facial recognition dazzle" meant to camouflage the wearer by confusing any facial-recognition software.  Finally James Bridle's Drone Shadow project offers a chilling example of how we might feel if unmanned planes were more common in our own atmosphere instead of faraway foreign skies.

See also:

• ASC Projects
• Clement Valla
• Silvio Lorusso
• Nick Briz
• Simone Niquille
• James Bridle

matokie mix 05.11.14

mix

i know it's gonna happen someday

 

Dear reader, know this: during high school I named my teddy bear Morrissey.  I was also known to lie on my bed with Viva Hate on endless repeat, feeling all the feelings.  After the infamous 1991 show at UCLA that had to be stopped when Morrissey accidentally incited a riot by inviting the audience closer to the stage, my parents found me crying on a street corner in Westwood not because I'd been hurt but because he'd only gotten to sing, like, FIVE songs!  So suffice it to say it was with a healthy dose of nostalgia (not to mention intense curiosity) that I attended last night's show at the San Jose Civic after not having seen him perform live since my teens.  And even though I ceased being a Morrissey superfan about the same time I went off to college and finally started dating real flesh-and-blood men instead of dreaming about sexually ambiguous rock stars, I still laughed with joy to see him standing on a stage in front of me again all these decades later.  He knows that we know that we all made it thus far, bruises and broken hearts and all, so when he asks the audience in between songs, "Did you feel anything?  What did it feel like?" it now comes off more tongue-in-cheek than genuinely morose.  It was fantastic to hear that trademark voice live again as he sang Smiths songs (opening with "Hand in Glove", natch) and new songs and older deep cuts.  It was magical when a woman leaned out of the balcony and rained daffodils down on the stage.  And it was truly no suprise when the familiar "stage invasion" hugfest got a little out of hand during the encore and Morrissey gave up and abruptly left midway through "One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell".  As his traditional post-show opera music played us out of the hall I found myself grinning all over again.  We've both come so far in the past 20+ years, Moz.

we fly high

Mr. Peter Hayden We Fly High (Doognad / Ramekuukkeli / Mikrofoni)

Mr. Peter Hayden is not one distinct individual but instead a five-piece psych/drone outfit from Finland (in case you hadn't already guessed their country of origin from the label names above).  I loved their recent Born A Trip record that consisted of a single song spread out over an entire album, and they go long-form again here, splitting a 13+-minute track between the two sides.  Put it on and prepare to trance out.

solomon

Jupiter Hotel, Portland.  May 4, 2007.

go see this

Matt Lipps

Through May 10 - Matt Lipps: The Populist Camera at Jessica Silverman Gallery.  This show is well worth the venture to the gallery's new space firmly (and I do mean firmly) situated in the Tenderloin.  With available wall space about triple that of the old location Lipps's large-scale photographs really have room to breathe here, and it's a pleasure to see the group of them in series too.  For these images he extracted black-and-white photos from old Time-Life Library of Photography books and then positioned them on clear shelves against a background of his own color photos before re-photographing the whole shebang.  Lipps groups the cutouts in loose themes such as "children" or "art" that are fun to free-associate with, but I also enjoyed how he keeps the sticks holding up the photos visible, how he doesn't try to hide his process.

 

Kirk Maxson

Alexis Anne Mackenzie

Through May 10 - Kirk Maxson: Foraging and Alexis Anne Mackenzie: Synthesis at Eleanor Hardwood Gallery.  Flora and fauna proliferate in this fantastic double show at Eleanor Harwood.  Maxson's butterflies cluster on the walls near meadows of brass oxalis and mallow, and he uses waxed metal again to more weighty effect in his laurel and oak tree sculptures.  Meanwhile Mackenzie's collages in the gallery's project space are more delicate affairs that still utilize the natural world as reference, with her cutouts dizzyingly displacing the familiar. 

matokie mix 05.04.14

mix