hammer lover other

Barbara Hammer showed her documentary film "Lover Other" at Tisch this evening and then talked with us for a while afterwards. The film is a dual biography of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore who made art together and resisted the Nazi occupation on Jersey from 1940-1945. The film was beautiful and compelling, with a fine vocal soundtrack by Pamela Z.

In the talk back, Hammer was asked about what she's working on. She is developing a new film with a younger filmmaker entitled "Generations" for the granting agency and "Bolex Dykes" more informally. She and her collaborator are using Bolex 16 mm cameras and shooting footage at Coney Island. As she said "the end of film, the end of Coney Island." She has a contract with the Feminist Press of CUNY to write her memoirs, which she hopes will be done by the spring of 2010 when MoMA plans a retrospective of her films. She spoke of the memoir and retrospective as a record of her life and career, in a touching and encouraging way, not sentimental.

With retirement in the brain and emotions, I have also been ruminating about such things. I hope to renovate my artcataloging.net site over the next year. At the same time, I have been asked by Rit Premnath if I want to participate in his curatorial project "On Certainty." His interest is based on his having read the paper on anonymous artist relationships on artcataloging.net. The paper is mostly the words of Liz O'Keefe but is a collaboration of the Cataloging Advisory Committee of ARLIS/NA with input from the Data Standards Committee of the Visual Resources Association.

We catalogers deal with certainty, and authority, as we go about our cataloging business. It is pleasing to think of it as part of a curatorial project.

bisuburbanality

Lovely morning. Not warm, nice spring chilly. I got out fairly early for a Saturday and wasn't able to get a haircut appointment before 10:30 so I meandered over to the Center to get the weekly rags: HX, Next, Gay city news, Blade, Philadelphia gay news. Really good walking temperature. And still it wasn't 10:30 and St Mark's Bookshop doesn't open until 10. I sat on a bench in Cooper Square but with construction on two or three sides, it wasn't good diary writing or reading space. Off to St Mark's where I found Worlds away: new suburban landscapes. Why is it that if I love walking the city streets so much that I am also drawn to studies of suburbanization process. Is it just that land use and human geography are so much a part of sprawl, strip stores, Googie architecture, etc. Or is it because I'm a Gemini? Christina Peter and I had quite a conversation last night at NYTSL about how we're not overly astrological but recognize that one's sign is reflected in our life course. Her folks said she was a bad Leo and good ... can't remember. She's not aggressive enough to be a normal Leo but has some of the characteristics.

Worlds away has a wonderful lexicon of "suburban neologisms" by Rachel Hooper and Jayme Yen (p. 270-288). It's in the salmon-colored pages. There are also green, blue, ochre, gray, and white pages. I bought the book partly because I knew Laura Migliorino had some works illustrated but also because it's aesthetically pleasing. It's published by the Walker Art Center and was designed by Andrew Blauvelt and Chad Kloepfer. Laura's photos are of families overlain on their domestic setting. The Walker bought a copy of "Egret Street" a year or two ago.

Sitting in Cooper Square was a bit of future tripping. The Technical Services Department is scheduled to move out of the Bobst Library building at the end of the year. Bobst is the central library for NYU, and NYU's libraries are fairly central so there aren't lots of branches though Courant, IFA, and REI aren't dinky operations to be sneezed at. Anyway, we're moving because zoning won't allow NYU to develop any new classrooms East of Broadway. Our space in Bobst is therefore to be converted to classrooms and we'll get windows. The building at 20 Cooper Square looks like a nice loft/warehouse building. Unfortunately, the space can't be ours permanently and we'll have to move in a couple years again. Since the office culture could use a good jolt, I'm hoping that the new environment will be a good jolt. What are the chances of that? A few weeks ago, I would have accepted a retirement offer in a second; recently, I've been feeling more optimistic. ARLIS/NA conference? Visiting with Geurt Imanse who was in town last week? Spring? Or just the Gemini flow?

sat(isfi)ed

Sometimes you go gallery hopping to a couple dozen galleries and you're still a tad hungry. You may have had some good morsels but you need some vegetables to pull it all together. And then there are the days when you visit a couple galleries and, wow, you're just beautifully sated. Today has been the latter.

Mac had mentioned the "Male" show at White Columns with works from the collection of Vince Aletti. The works were interesting (some for very obvious reasons) and the display was wonderful: in clusters on the various walls, some partially in front of others, some attached to the wall, some resting on a picture rail at waist level. A couple busy panels of small photos, art and/or just plain porny, were in the wall cases near the door.

Though I liked "Male" for the predictable reasons, two of the other shows were also interesting to say nothing of the folks gathered for the book launch of Theft is vision by Bob Nickas. One of the smaller galleries had a collection of "Recent acquisitions, gifts, and works from various exhibitions 1985-2007" from the collection, etc. of Bob Nickas. The installation was complementary to the style of "Male."

The next room had about a dozen photos by Janice Guy. I know her way better as one of the owners of Murray Guy Gallery, one of my favorite art spaces and programs. The photos were done in 1979 and feature the artist looking at her naked self through the lens: revealing and concealing.

I didn't have a lot of gallery time today so I thought I'd stop by Tracy Williams and then come on back home. I get the flyers from Williams but couldn't remember what the show was. I missed the Barbara Bloom show which I'm sure was splendid. The recent catalog of The Barbara Bloom Collection is magnificent and compelling. Now at Tracy Williams is Anna Craycroft's "The Agency of the Orphan." Downstairs is a collection of movie star stills, real and imagined, with Craycroft captions. Upstairs is a gallery with two fountains with child heads spewing water and a gallery of large drawings with a short table and chairs at which you can peruse the catalog. Craycroft investigates the idea of orphan and Orphan, identity in the face of social interaction, etc.

So now I'll go home and try to finish the newsletter or at least the parts that I can do. Then in a few hours I'll go to Spaced gallery to gather with others in memory of Judith Holliday who died in February. One of the great collection developers and bibliographers, though I do recognize it was a true copacetic attachment that we both had to architecture, Ungers, Italy, Rowe, Italian, joy.

And then Carnegie Hall for the Thomas Ades edition of "Making music."

I've been thinking a lot recently about moving toward retirement, mostly because work has just been too much of a drag lately. The dysfunction in the office is rampant in so many ways. At the same time, there have been several new challenges on the professional side: SEI Advisory Group, Joint LC/PCC LRCI/RDA Task Group, SEI instructor, VR cataloging at ARTstor. I imagine I could live happily anywhere, including Alfred, the small college town in upstate New York where the 130-year old family home is. Still, it's days like today with a couple galleries under my belt to great satisfaction (plus a nice little visit to Three Lives & Company bookstore where I found a newly published for the first time early work of Tom Spanbauer, an author I really enjoy) that makes me realize one has to find your way. New York City may drop more of it in your lap or under your feet but I do think I could find my way most anywhere.