reproductions as a creative principle

Sorting through ancient unread emails, I came across a listing for an artist presentation and discussion on February 21st at Location One: "Artists and images: reproduction as a creative principle" with Pierre-Lin Renié and Allan McCollum. Darn, sorry I missed it. It would have fit with my reading of Benjamin's essay on The work of art in an age of mechanical reproduction.

ode to nina and rick

* synthetic mastery, or, potorg gigi - post-cannibalism
* Sable Island - roll cloud, only occurs in two places, "morning glory"
* parthenogenesis and the Blessed Virgin Mary
* "my ego was bruised by a semiotician"
* whistling languages
* the pillow won't come dry
* Pierre Fauchard
* LaMonte Young - recording ocean waves in the Hamptons
* bird mimickry - British Library website
* Murmurs of earth - songs set to words by Jimmy Carter - probes to outer space
* amphibrach - emphasis on the middle syllable

= on the occasion of a performance by Nina Katchadourian and Rick Moody at Proteus Gowanus, they sang, he talked, they sang, she talked, they sang, he or she talked, challenging each other with a word or a phrase. Maybe you had to be there.

2+2 & steven holl

When you're looking for someone's contact information, it can be very frustrating when the staff list for an organization is totally behind firewalls or the information is so general that you can't get an email or mail address. At the same time, none of us needs any more spam and I guess the crawlers can get addresses from easily available sites. I was looking at the webpage of the Faculty of Theology at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and they ask a simple question and then you get a helpful profile of affiliates. The simple question stops the crawlers but not those who know what 2 + 2 is. Go to http://organigram.kuleuven.be/8/50000102.htm and click on one of the names. The page will ask you to give a simple sum (last night, 2 + 2; this morning, 7 + 7) before it gives you any profile page. You only have to do it once, per session.

Wednesday's Times had a paean by Nicolai Ouroussoff to the Bloch Building. It's the new wing of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. When we were there for VRA in March, it was possible to visit the library even though the rest of the building wasn't ready for the public yet. The Bloch Building, designed by Steven Holl, has now opened. To get to the library, you went through some of the main circulation space and it was magnificent: layers of building and space, light, angles. The picture in the Times looks magical with the building glowing and being reflected in the pool along with the original neoclassical building. http://www.nelson-atkins.org/

And then yesterday's paper had an article on Philip Johnson's Glass House (complex) in New Canaan which opens this month. Most of the article is comments from art world folks. I went there on an SAH tour in the early 1980s and it is surprising even if you've seen a million pictures of it. I guess that's the genius loci.

back from the swiss circuit

Mac and I had a good trip to Switzerland, making a circuit from Zurich (3 nights) to Sankt Gallen (2) to Chur (1) to Lugano (3) to Basel (4) and back to Zurich (1). Architectural highlights: villas all around (especially Zurich and Sankt Gallen); Shavian pile on Zurich lakefront; Stiftskirche and Stiftsbibliothek in Sankt Gallen (one of the great mss sites of the early Middle Ages so just being there was exciting); Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein in Vaduz; the Castello in Lugano (have to check and see if it's by the Coppedè; my Coppedè book is in the Alfred annex); the ex-Casa del Fascio by Giuseppe Terragni in Como; the cathedral in Como; Kunstmuseum Basel; Le Corbusier's Maison Blanche for his parents; Schaulager Basel by Herzog + de Meuron; Vitra Design Museum and complex. Lots of interesting art too. The mountains are, of course, spectacular. We took the Bernina Express from Chur to Lugano (train from Chur to Tirano and post bus on to Lugano). Not many stamps in the passport even though I was in four countries over the two weeks (the Liechtenstein stamp is 2 CHF at the tourist stand). Only the Italians stamped the passport when we got to Tirano. Languages lots of fun: we passed from German to French to German to French between Basel and La Chaux-de-Fonds. I'll be working on a travelogue as soon as the email pile gets a bit smaller.

gingras in circles

Just got out of a performance of "CYP17" at Danspace at St. Mark's. Wow. It was incredible dancing. André Gingras, choreographer; Kenneth Flak, dancer. That, on top of interesting conversations with Sueyoung earlier today and finding the Dave Hickey essay. Somehow, Sueyoung and I were discussing Benjamin and my thesis that he prefigured social computing in The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. The distance between the author and the reader lessened. Now, with blogging, we are all authors. We are all readers. Sueyoung said I was post-poststructuralist. She said that she'd been mulling over the distance of author and reader, the return and ubiquity of the author, the post-Benjamin rebirth of the author, going in circles. And then I happened upon the Dave Hickey essay in Harvard design magazine, number 25, fall 2006/winter 2007.

One of my most memorable theatrical experiences was "In circles" by Al Carmines, set to words of Gertrude Stein. I thought he'd largely constructed the script/score from her essays but then found much of it in a collection of her plays. I saw "In circles" when I was in college. Dorothy and I saw it with Richard Barons. We bought the recording and, gradually, the recorded version overtook the memory. The words still reverberate. When anyone says "Messages are received," I hear the singing. It's a little like the reverberations of the words in the work of Nina Katchadourian: "that's amazing" or "in Beirut."

jenny holzer

Just got home from the ARLIS/NA conference in Atlanta. The programs in general were full of information and interesting. During the convocation reception at the High Museum of Art, I happened upon Jenny Holzer's bench with the slogan that's been on my list of favorite quotes for many years. I scribbled down the text 20 years ago, give or take, from a wall installation at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. For years, I didn't know the author but, not so long ago, someone referred to it, or part of it, in conjunction with Jenny Holzer. I googled some of the less common words and the attribution was confirmed. As I was standing near the bench, I mentioned to some friends who were standing nearby that I was excited to find the text that was in my commonplace book and they said that they'd just been discussing commonplace books. And earlier in the conference, Kitty Chibnik was telling me about her fascination with The tipping point by Malcolm Gladwell. He talks about connecting and links between sources of information.

The quote:
More than once I've awakened with tears running down my cheeks,
I have had to think whether I was crying
or whether it was involuntary like drooling.

129 to 100

Friday evening we were at Blind Tiger Ale House on Bleecker at Jones. Elizabeth and I were trying to figure out the demographics: lots of men but not the high proportion of visibly gay men that you might have expected in the West Village. Today's paper had an article about the ratio of men to women in downtown NYC: 129 men to 100 women. So it's all of those Wall Street guys! It seems that women are looking for neighborhood amenities and men are looking for a good commute.

Our reason for being at Blind Tiger was to wish Emily a good next stage. She is leaving NYU and will be sorely missed. She has brought humanity with good management skills. She brought life to our dysfunctional work "family." And she was a fine colleague in so many ways.

It's a gorgeous day. I got up early -- arrived at Silver Spurs at 7 a.m. When I woke up, the thoughts about the introduction to my ARLIS/NA session swirling in my head. I'll throw off the slides and just talk for a while. I figured out how to work Benjamin into those introductory words; that's my private joke for Sharon. When I told her that I had found some inspiration in Benjamin, she wondered if she had time to whip out the introductory issue of Not Walter, our faux journal of critical theory dreamed up when we were at the symposium honoring Angela Giral on the occasion of her retirement at Avery Librarian. The journal issue didn't happen but then it would probably be Not Not Walter.

melancholy in the work of bosch

Just reading through email, I came across the notice for the grad student art history symposium sponsored by IFA and the Frick. One of the papers is "The Delusion of Delight: Melancholy in the Work of Bosch" by Anna Ratner, Columbia University. Both "melancholy" and "Bosch" trigger my interest. I'll have to watch for her dissertation or articles.

It's been a while since I've put anything here. My brother called a bit ago to say there's a northeaster coming this way. If I don't go to Alfred this weekend, it will be June before I could easily get there again so we'll face the weather. The bus is usually pretty stalwart.

Bill Connor visited last weekend and we went to the Met to see the Barcelona and Venice shows. The Venice and Islam show was interesting and there were some nice works; more Islam in Venice than otherwise. The Barcelona show was fantabulous! Lots of architecture, including a wonderful model of the Spanish Republican pavilion at the Paris 1937 expo. Robert and Andrew had both talked to me about Spanish Civil War stuff in the past week, partly the authority work for the various Spanish armies of the mid-late 1930s. So I was ready to be intrigued. And "Guernica" was in the pavilion, as well as big Miro stuff. The Barcelona show was a nice mix of painting, architecture, dec arts, objects (as Roberto said, it's strange that the Met has multiple big shows at the moment that are more material culture than fine arts).

Bill and I also went to his uncle's opening at Andre Zarre Gallery on West 20th where we ran into Carol and Bob Krinsky. Carol had been a camp counselor with Adele who is now Uncle Russell's wife. Small world. Bill spent the afternoon gallery hopping while I saw the Robert Moses show at Columbia with Francie, Liza and John, and then went for pizza at V&T on Amsterdam. The Moses show was fun with such avid New Yorkers who know intimately one or more of the neighborhoods where projects were proposed and/or built (Washington Square and Pratt, principally).

ohmygod, it's walter!

On the flight back from Kansas City, I was reading "The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction" by Walter Benjamin. I was struck by his comments (chapter X in the Schocken paperback edition) about how printing blurred the line between writer and reader. That set me to musing about how blogging and other social computing really blurs those edges, almost to the point of extinction. We are all writers, we are all readers!

Before I started reading the Benjamin essay, I was finishing An unquiet mind by Kay Redfield Jamison. When in a manic state, she couldn't read. My moods or racing thoughts do sometimes get in the way of reading but I haven't been debilitatingly devastated for long. If you haven't read the Jamison book, I recommend it highly.

VRA in Kansas City

VRA was a fabulous conference. Kansas City was really good to us: mostly good weather, warm with thundershowers and hard rain (but not for long). A few of my favorite things: Jonathan Furner on FRBR (I was part of that panel and my paper was misdirected but the discussion after the presentations was splendid); Megan Winget on Flickr; walking back and forth between the conference hotel and my guesthouse (about 20 minutes walk); driving about with Nancy Green and her husband Scott through the fancy suburbs old and new and then supper at Blue Koi; lots of good meals with friends old and new; Country Club Plaza; the wonderful symmetrical brick building at the foot of Baltimore Street; walking from my guesthouse to downtown and finding the city market; the Caravaggio at the Nelson-Atkins; running into Brian at the Nelson-Atkins and talking about a couple Indian sculptures and other stuff; getting into the new library reading room at NAMA, designed by Steven Holl and filled with diffuse light (the galleries open in June but you could get in to see the reading room if someone was available to guide you); the wind so strong it tried to steal my Birkenstock; LattéLand's medium latté; going dancing at Missie B's with Elaine, Lia and Pep (and, mentioning Lia, getting my own "Don't ask me about metadata ... ask Murtha" t-shirt!). Though that list is more about stuff around the meetings than about the meetings, I did hear many good papers and discussions. Once I've studied my notes, I might even do up a summary.