Muhheakantuck

The artist talk at Artists Space on Saturday afternoon -- "Mirror-Travel in the Motor City: A Conversation between Edgar Arceneaux and Julian Myers" -- looked rather interesting but wasn't so great. I had hoped for some compelling talk about Detroit as an art site with memories of the day-trip Christie and I took when she lived in Ann Arbor. The talk ended up being lots of Myers and not much of Arceneaux, not even much of Detroit. On the other hand, the Google Earth projection of the route between Heizer's desert project and the corner of Rosa Parks and Clairmont was pretty wonderful and played in the background during the talk. As the talk drew to a close at about 7:43 (the clock timer), I raced out and over to the Christopher Street pier for the 8 pm viewing of "Muhheakantuck: everything has a name" by Matthew Buckingham, sponsored by Creative Time. Watching the film as we went on a loop from the pier over toward Red Hook and back was incredible. The film slots had sold out but the Creative Time folks said that one should show up and they'd try to accommodate everyone. I was about the last person on the 8 pm boat but I am so glad I went. As the film went left to right at the front of the cabin, the waterfronts (NJ and NYC) went front to back. It was mesmerizing, aided by the pleasant drone of Buckingham's narrative about the Lenape and the Europeans. At the moment, Murray Guy -- http://murrayguy.com/ -- has a Buckingham show up.

A footnote or two from the Sunday paper:

* The special magazine section was on real estate. The cover had an aerial view of an exploded house construction process. There's an ampersand on the truck in the lower left, just a plain ampersand. The power of Helvetica and advertising: I see Crate & Barrel.

* Speaking of advertising, there's been a series of small ads with an old VW and some speech-bubble along the lines of "The people want peace and justice." That's not really one of them. One day, there was a bigger ad that VW was going to bring us a new revolution. No details but it all seemed pretty groovy.

* "Americans drink more bottled water than beer. But they consume more soda than bottled water and beer combined. And nearly 70 percent of that soda contains sugar in one form or another." No, tap water's fine. Thanks.