Engineer's Daughter

miscellany 12.05.11

Leslie Shows, from her current show at Haines Gallery

I've been taking some time to recover after spending the week of Thanksgiving in Copenhagen, but soon I should have my pictures sorted out and then will do a proper post about the trip besides (sneak peek a video here).  In the meantime I wanted to post a few quick links from some of my recent art and culture intake.

• Leslie Shows: Split Array at Haines Gallery.  Shows is already one of my favorite local artists, and she pushes herself forward into another dimension in this exhibition of new work, creating paintings on reflective metal with complex geological layers.  Next Wednesday 12/14 she and BAM/PFA director Lawrence Rinder will be discussing her work at the gallery.
• Tania Bruguera's Immigrant Movement International.  Bruguera is in the midst of this ongoing project that explores the rights and identity of contemporary immigrants.  She spoke at the Kadist Foundation Wednesday night and encouraged everyone to participate in the actions that are being planned for International Migrants Day on Sunday 12/18.  She was joined by Adriana Camarena, who read from her essay "The Geography of the Unseen" (included in Rebecca Solnit's book Infinite City) as well as from newer stories she has been collecting on the streets of the Mission.
• Thea Farhadian.  I saw Farhadian perform at the Luggage Store New Music Series Thursday night, beautiful looped violin compositions that merged classical Arabic music with noise and electronica.  No upcoming shows are listed on her website, but you can check out some documentation of a collaborative project she did with artist Silvina Der-Meguerditchian here.
• Frances Stark: the whole of all the parts as well as the parts of all the parts at the Mills Art Museum.  Block out an hour and go spend it with Stark's confounding, moving, and very funny video piece, which as it progresses leads you from screen to screen through the length of the whole museum.  Major bonus points for including an homage to Lady Gaga's "Telephone" as well as use of online avatars and chat conversations.  Stark will be speaking at Mills this Wednesday 12/7, and I would wager she'll incorporate PowerPoint somehow.
• Like Crazy.  Drake Doremus gives us a film not so much about how inextinguishable love is but rather about how it would often be better if we just got over it when it ends.  Move the fuck on, embrace real life instead of fantasy.  That's what I took away from it anyway, in between enjoying the scenery shot in London and Santa Monica.

Want more?

• The Headlands First Look party Wednesday 12/7 is going to be killer, cocktails and yummy bites aplenty plus the chance to be the first to hear who next year's residents will be.
• Scout Niblett is in town this week, playing Vitus in Oakland Wednesday 12/7 and the Hemlock in SF Thursday 12/8.
• And if you don't feel like going out: Errol Morris's Tabloid is available to rent from iTunes and Netflix has about a hundred episodes of No Reservations.

agenda 10.04.11

Thursday, October 6:

• Fast in Solidarity with Prisoner Hunger Strike + 10/7 Rallies
• San Francisco Olympians Festival II: Heavenly Bodies at The Exit Theater

Friday, October 7:

• Art Walk Featuring: Brice Bischoff, Tabitha Soren, Ellen Black at Johansson Projects
• Random Rotations at Berkeley Art Museum
• Time: Opening Reception at The Lab
• Heller, Curtains, War Of Aggression, Assumptions, Dead Set at 924 Gilman
• 120 Minutes: Sleep∞Over (Live) w/ S4NtA_MU3rTE, GuMMy†BeAR, Nako at the Elbo Room

Saturday, October 8:

• “Don’t Be Upset—I’m Only Crying in English” - Kevin Killian & Ajit Chauhan at Sight School
• Nuclear Rabbit at 924 Gilman

Sunday, October 9:

• Make Art with Veronica de Jesus at the Berkeley Art Museum

Monday, October 10:

• Monday Night Live at East Nile

agenda 09.07.11

Two full weeks of events tonight, since I'll be out of town next week.  I'll try to update if anything crops up on my radar before I go too.  Because I love you guys.

Thursday, September 8:

• "Everybody's happy nowadays." opening reception at Mina Dresden Gallery
• Peter Daltrey (UK Kaleidoscope) + Kelley Stoltz + Bart Davenport + Asteroid #4 at Cafe Du Nord
• The Twelfth Annual San Francisco Electronic Music Festival at Brava Theater Center

Friday, September 9:

• Rex Ray at Gallery 16
• Terry Riley at the Berkeley Art Museum
• Experimental Notations at Royal NoneSuch Gallery and MacArthur b arthur
• Sabertooth Zombie record release show + Creatures, Prizehog, more at 924 Gilman

Saturday, September 10:

• Mission Creek: Free Concert in McLaren Park
• Keeping an Eye on Surveillance Opening Reception at the Performance Art Institute
• Young and Free: Contemporary Australian Street Artists at 941 Geary
• Battalion Of Saints, Attitude Adjustment, Visual Discrimination, Oppressed Logic at 924 Gilman
• Ikue Mori - final concert of David Tudor Residency at Littlefield Concert Hall, Mills College
• Ninjasonik at Bhopal
• Chick Habit at the Ruby Room

Sunday, September 11:

• Soul Food Farm Work Days in 3 parts- Week 1
• Enough War, We Declare Peace at the Golden Gate Bridge
• The Vibrators, BOATS!, Emily's Army, Bobby Joe Ebola, Ol' Cheeky Bastards at 924 Gilman
• Marco Eneidi Quartet/Thomas Dimuzio/With Strings at Amnesia

Monday, September 12:

• RTX + Ty Segall + Heavy Cream at the New Parish

Tuesday, September 13:

• Medusa's Mirror: Fears, Spells & Other Transfixed Positions at Pro Arts

Friday, September 16:

• Create: The Artists Are Present at the Berkeley Art Museum
• Opening Reception for Todd Bura and Madiha Siraj at Triple Base
• Connected - Theatrical Opening Weekend in the S.F. Bay Area
• Rorschach (NJ), Brainoil, No Statik, Needles at 924 Gilman
• The People: San Francisco at Z Space
• Official SJMADE Pre-Party at South First Street Billiards
• Victory and Associates - Record Release with Repeat After Me, Sister Grizzly at Brick and Mortar Music Hall
• The Album Leaf at the New Parish
• SHAKE! Presents Magic Christian Live In Concert at Milk Bar

Saturday, September 17:

• SJMADE with SJEATS, Fall 2011 at San Pedro Square Market
• Rock Make Street Festival 2011 at Treat Ave @ 18th Street
• BBQ w/Kitchen's Floor (AUS), Fat History Month (BOS), Waste Rig, GAZE at 3137 Telegraph
• Coarse Drawn Heart and other stories: new work by Tim Svenonius at Truesilver Gallery
• Zounds (UK), Swann Danger, Fucktard, Bite, Falcon A at 924 Gilman

Sunday, September 18:

• Godwaffle Noise Pancakes does Electronic Puppenhorten at The Lab

Monday, September 19:

• Theater Pub 2.9: Home-Fair Lanford Wilson's Roommate Plays at Cafe Royale

Tuesday, September 20:

• Bob Mould in conversation with Shepard Fairey at Herbst Theatre

Wednesday, September 21:

• Organ Spectacular at The Lab

the golden trumpet

A week into our new administration and I'm still pinching myself to make sure it's all real.  Every time I open the paper I'm eager to see what awesome new thing Obama has done since the last time I looked, and I feel unspeakable happiness as eight years of incompetent leadership is undone bit by bit.  On inauguration morning my company set the huge flat-screen TVs in our board room to show the footage coming in from CNN, and I sat on the floor in the midst of dozens of my coworkers and wept with joy as Obama placed his hand on the Bible.  While listening to his speech I cheered aloud at the inclusiveness of naming unbelievers with believers, and at the declaration that science would be restored to its rightful place (with a pointed cut of the camera to Dubya sitting there like a lump).  I've been surprised at how quickly some people have dismissed the speech for not having any real highlights, though it's true that in places the traditional rhetoric Obama delivered admittedly seemed a little dull, such as this line near the beginning: "At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because we, the people, have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents."  But Obama's words carried a sharp bite, if you listened carefully.  In a piece written for the Guardian this weekend that gives a close reading of the speech Jonathan Raban says that Obama had a very particular purpose in the language he chose:

Under the guise of noble platitude Obama was able to get away with murder, cloaking in familiar and emollient language an address that otherwise defied convention. There was a hint of this in his ritual bow to the outgoing president, in which he spent five words acknowledging Bush's service to his country and 10 in thanking him for his departure from office. In no inaugural has a president so completely repudiated the policies of his predecessor as Obama did on Tuesday. Look back at the "forbearers" sentence, and see the sting in its tail: "true to our founding documents". Most of the crowd of more than a million who packed the Mall, a few of whom loudly booed Dick Cheney when he was wheeled on to the stage, believed that the Bush administration had done its best to shred the constitution. The distinction between "we the people" (who are loyal to the founding documents) and "those in high office" (who stand accused of abusing them) hung ambiguously in the air. If you wanted to hear it, it was there; if you didn't, it wasn't.

I absolutely did hear it, and in fact I was shocked and thrilled at the boldness of Obama in his utter dismissal of Bush throughout the speech.  I kept waiting for any sign of recognition to register on Dubya's face, but it remained the all-too-familar blank slate up through the moment he boarded that waiting copter and flew away (hopefully never to be seen again).  Obama's speech once again reinforces our new president as the kind of man who can introduce something fresh into tired old tropes, not by wiping them out completely but by cleverly updating the game at the same time he makes his new direction clear.  That bodes very well indeed for the next eight years.

entropa: the great eu art hoax

Poor Alexandr Vondra.  Two weeks into 2009 and the Czech deputy prime minister is already having to apologize for the sculpture the Czech government commissioned to commemorate their new presidency of the EU.  Artist David Cerny initially reported that he worked with 27 artists from the EU member-countries and asked them each to create a representation of their home for "Entropa" (pictured at right), but when the piece was unveiled to show the Netherlands underwater, Spain as a construction zone and Bulgaria as a Turkish toilet there were already quite a few raised eyebrows.  Vondra stood behind the sculpture, saying, "I am confident in Europe's open mind and capacity to appreciate such a project."  But then this week Cerny revealed he had put the piece together with just a couple of friends with no international involvement whatsoever, and now people are righteously pissed.  Cerny said he just "wanted to find out if Europe is able to laugh at itself", and to those who question whether "Entropa" can still be seen as art Michael Archer says, perhaps now even more so:

In the end, one presumes Entropa will be dismantled because the EU requires unanimity on all things. Too many people will decide that they are not quite able to shrug off its irreverence. It will be said that its humour is childish, inappropriate, harsh, or ignorant. What this is likely to mean, though, is that Cerny's project is unacceptable because it is art. You can commission a sculpture or a painting or a mural to mark an occasion or represent some belief or other, but you can't commission a work of art, because art cannot be anything other than ambivalent.

And hey, at least more people are likely to recognize Alexandr Vondra's name now.  For more pictures of "Entropa" please click through to the gallery here.

routemaster buses

The year I lived in Coventry I spent an inordinate amount of time on the city's double-decker buses, riding them from my flat on Broomfield Road to Warwick and back again.  I never quite got over the novelty of scampering up the steps to the second floor, and I loved gliding along above traffic with that bird's-eye view.  Of course Coventry's battered silver buses were mere workhorses compared to the shiny red London Routemasters, still one of the iconic symbols of England's capital even though the traditional hop-on-hop-off open rear platform design sadly went out of regular service back in 2005.  Two weeks ago London mayor Boris Johnson (pictured right) announced the top designs that emerged from a recent contest to rethink the Routemasters, and the two winning plans by Capoco Design and a team-up between Aston Martin and Foster and Partners are not only sleek and modern but utilize cutting-edge environmental technology as well.  Jonathan Glancey talked to London's transport commissioner Peter Hendy about how soon the new buses would be hitting the streets:

"The Routemaster was so good," says Hendy, "because it was developed over two decades. Specifications for the bus were drawn up in 1946, the first prototype was unveiled in 1954 and production models began regular work five years later.
"What we should aim to create now is not just a Routemaster replacement, but a whole new generation of London buses that could affect the future of the entire industry. You can't rush that, but we'll definitely have some working prototypes for passengers to look at and ride on as soon as we're able to."

Something tells me the engineers will be working hard to get the new buses into operation by the time the Olympics arrive in 2012, and I for one cannot wait to go cruising around London in them.  Check out pictures of the new prototypes as well as some wonderful snaps of the old Routemasters' glory days in the gallery here.