Art

Shit
Piss
Fuck
Cunt
Cocksucker
Mothterfucker
Tits

An amazingly simple legacy of free speech, civil disobedience, philosophy of language and culture criticism all wrapped up in the guise of stand up comedy.

New York City to me has rarely been to me the voice of Woody Allen or Seinfeld. New York City has always been the voice, the "tawk" and the raunchy wit of George Carlin.

Shit
Piss
Fuck
Cunt
Cocksucker
Mothterfucker
Tits
Fart
Turd
Twat

To celebrate George Carlin as a champion our civil rights and the integrity of the US Constitution I give you thee the original stand up skit that went into the Supreme Court Decision of FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION v. PACIFICA FOUNDATION, 438 U.S. 726, 98 S.Ct. 3026 (1978).

While I was at the conference at UCLA, I took a break to see what they had at the Fowler Museum, UCLA's little cultural museum. This museum, though small (usually only 4 small exhibits) can sometims have real gems. One time they had the Treasures of Sipan, the only American museum to have this spectacular exhibit of Peruvian artifacts. It was compared to the Treasures of Tutankhamen...and rightly so.

Nothing that spectacular is on display right now at the Fowler, but there is one exhibit that we quite loved. It was an exhibit of art by West African artist El Anatsui using, quite simply, garbage to make beautiful tapestry-like pieces.

(image from Artifacts Net)

For more images, take the photo tour from the Fowler Museum website (if the link works! If not go to their website through the link above).

His stuff is amazing and is made from things like the bits of metal that are used to seal liquor bottles (which are non-recyclable, so El Anatsui recycles them into art!).

My brother, Marty Michaelson, is an artist. His biggest project was working with the artist Judy Chicago on her last project. We are lucky in that the last couple of times we went to Los Angeles we were able to see his latest shows. I meant to publicize his latest when I first came back from LA, but other things kept coming up. Now there are only 8 days left til it closes so I better plug it now!

My brother came to art somewhat late and somewhat randomly. But he loves it and his style keeps developing. You can see some of his stuff (and he is quite prolific, so this is only a small sampling) if you click here.

Among my personal favorites are one he did based on pictures my wife and I brought back from our honeymoon in Japan:

And this rather surreal one called "Frida Kahlo on Monster Island:"

(this gives you an idea of some of his unique themes)

Here's the info on the latest show:

"From The Depths . . ." Showcases Local Art Work

From the depths of downtown Pomona, 17 artists have risen from their basement gallery to spread the word that organisms and objects of all types have come "From The Depths . . ." of space, the jungle, the ocean and their minds and can be found at the Progress Space Gallery in Pomona during the months of June and July 2007.

MARK NAPIER
new software art and prints

Thursday, April 12, 2007
6:30-8:30 pm

bitforms gallery
529 West 20th Street, NYC
(btw. 10th & 11th avenues)

If you live at a relative stone's throw from the Empire State Building, what does the ultimate symbol of capitalism become before your very eyes? How is this place tranformed by digital culture after 9/11?

In the creative mind of Mark Napier, the ESB is a cyclops formed of brick and mortar yet powered by flesh and cicuits. It is a symbol of a crumbling physical power caught in the webs of immateriality forged by software and the net. It is the very essence of the shifting structures of power.

Mark has been at work on this project for about 2 years now. It's interesting and horrific to live with a working artist. There is no reason for him to code the software that created the print for the sites or the actual artwork, yet it's more than just like a disease. He codes because he has to. That's how he builds his sculptures and paints his digital canvases.

I can't comment any further on this show beucause I haven't seen the show installed. Tonight should be as interesting to you as it will be to me.

Please come for the art, but more importantly, come meet the "Mr.

Just got an email from my friend Susan well worth passing on; it's an article in Frieze Magazine written by her sister, Nancy Spector, who is Curator of Contemporary Art at the Guggenheim and Commissioner of the US Pavilion for the Venice Biennale 2007.

The impact of the Bush administration on the art world, I always thought, was confined to its serving as malignant inspiration for any number of deprecatory pieces. We tend to forget that they have their hands on the slender levers of the government's arts funding; and lo and behold, the results are the same rot we've come to expect everywhere.

When I received a gold-engraved card from the White House inviting me to a reception to launch the administration’s new Global Cultural Initiative, I thought at first that it must have been an art-world prank – perhaps a tactical media intervention by the Critical Art Ensemble. But then I realized it was my current role as the commissioner of the US Pavilion for the 2007 Venice Biennale that had earned me this unexpected distinction. The correlation between the Bush White House and culture seemed oxymoronic to me; the title ‘Global Cultural Initiative’ does, after all, have the same vague propagandistic ring and sinister undertones as ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’.

Set in the White House’s grand East Room lined with portraits of past presidents, the presentation was introduced by Laura Bush, who reminisced about the influence of culture during the Cold War, citing the Voice of America’s broadcasting of jazz music into the Soviet Union as a catalyst for the dissolution of communism. Under-Secretary of State Karen Hughes, Bush’s personal propaganda tsar, proceeded to outline the multiple-agency programme, stating that ‘art and culture can play a vital role in helping achieve our strategic public diplomacy goals’. She stopped short of explaining what those goals might actually be.

So not only are there goals, to the delighted astonishment of the world, but they can be achieved through jazz. Nobody knows, of course, if Osama bin Laden is a jazz fan. Perhaps if we'd actually, you know, caught the man, we'd know.

During the 2006 Democratic Primary season in Brooklyn (a hotly contested fight in a place where few Republicans do well leading to the idea that through most of Brooklyn Democrats could run a sponge cake and still beat Republicans) I met a gentleman named Bill Batson.

The very first time I met him, he discussed contriversial issues that my wife and I had skirted, but had yet to publicly discuss. I rapidly became a supporter in his (ultimately unsuccessful) run for Assembly, but I also came to see him as an example of what I call a "community candidate," a political candidate who comes from a background of community activism and participation. Bill's opponents tried to portray him as a lightweight, a nobody. This was grossly unfair to a man who had served his community for years. He was the New York State Senate Democratic Leader David A. Paterson’s Director of Community Relations, the chair and Co-Founder of ACRES, (American Civil Rights Education Services), has worked at The Coalition for the Homeless, 1199 SEIU and the New York Civil Liberties Union, was campaign manager for Norman Siegel's campaign for Public Advocate, served as a mediator between a public sector union and a non-profit health care company, facilitating the end of a nine-month dispute, and has served as a member of Community Planning Board 8, co-chairing the Fire Safety committee and the special sub-committee on the Environmental Impact of Brooklyn Atlantic Yards Development. All of this he brought into politics when he decided to throw his hat into the ring. His failed bid for Assembly came because he ran as a grassroots candidate against big money and development interests. But he has not given up activism.

True art does not make one comfortable. What it does is reorder our sense of the world and our internal narrative.

I don’t believe that bare life has anything to do with art. We are all on the edge of a potential tragedy. Since I am of a certain age people around me are succumbing to various diseases. My brother-in-law is lying in a hospital bed in a stupor from a brain aneurism. My poor sister is suffering terribly. One day everything is fine, the next you are confronted with your fragile world as it collapses.

I live eight blocks north of the world trade center. My windows face the buildings. I saw the planes crash into the buildings as I was doing my morning exercises. I saw the people jumping from the burning buildings. No it was not on videotape for me it was “bare life.”

I have a second home in northeastern Pennsylvania. Huge rainstorms and snowmelts have flooded the Delaware River as well as many creeks and streams in the area. People lose their homes. One teenage girl in Livingston Manor became paralyzed with fear and could not jump to safety as her home was swept away by the floodwater. The floods are classified as one hundred year floods but they have occurred three times in the last three years.