—Ai Weiwei, 02.23.2006
Bushwick Open Studios 2011. Part 2.
bushwick open studios 2011. Part 1
—RIOT GRRRL MANIFESTO sisters unite!
antigua. memorial weekend. 2011.
Last night I watched a documentary on The Sherman Brothers, titled The Boys.
The brothers are responsible for the lyrics and music of some of the most memorable movies, theater and 1950’s hits - songs we all know but are unfamilar as to how - music that, now, are ingrained in the psyche of childhood - optimistic rhymes and graceful tunes that get stuck in your head for hours: think chim-chimney, chim-chimney chim chim cheree.
The Shermans are a relic. They were Walt Disney’s right hand men. They wrote music that encompassed great human ideals simply, purely and timelessly…(yes…they wrote the music to Disney’s most famed ride: It’s A Small World After All).
learn the order, rituals, codes and rules of TOM SACHS’ studio.
10 bullets.
(i think they are applicable to life in general).
yes. #mustsee (i’m behind the times).
counter revolution. conviction. uprising & hysteria.
the crime of complacently.
dada.
Current must-see shows in the city: KARA WALKER @ Sikkema Jenkins Gallery and GLENN LIGON @ The Whitney Museum.
Two of the most influential modern african american artists. Both deconstruct historic and contemporary codifiers, labels and what it means to be BLACK by taking identity and ancestry and personal history head on - constructing their own libraries of perspective and remimagined ways of responding to collective memory, collective identity, stereotypes, struggle and self awareness.
Both Kara Walker and Glenn Ligon have works that seem to speak directly to one another. They are black and white. Using block letters to make out very startling messages. Block letters recall reassemblage. Bring to mind quilts. Makes me think of diaspora. Visually each block looks like a tomb stone. Kara Walker’s words punch. She recalls ‘im black and beautiful’ sisterhoods of the 70’s. Glenn Ligon’s works feel heavy - as your eye falls from top to bottom the weight of the words feel dramatic - loosing meaning, as they blur to black, and just as you seem to loose meaning when you repeat something over and over again.
Such words would have held little meaning for ancestors who may have been illerterate. But BLACK on WHITE is contagiously understood. Momentum and movement. Steps to a dance.
“I don’t like art that points at a thing. I like art that is the thing.”
“Everyone is an immigrant at some point.”
“Tania Bruguera has eaten dirt, hung a dead lamb from her neck and served trays of cocaine to a gallery audience, all in the name of art. She has shown her work at the Venice Biennale, been feted at the Pompidou Center in Paris and landed a Guggenheim fellowship.
But now she is sharing a tiny apartment in Corona, Queens, with five illegal immigrants and their six children, including a newborn, while scraping by on the minimum wage, without health insurance.”
