arthur russell
Info. on new compilations of Arthur Russell music at Frieze.
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August 31, 2004
August 28, 2004
bits and pieces on a saturday
This morning: saw Rob's webpage with this pic posted of me in front of a Paul Smith display in Omote-Sando, flashing me back to my many times in Tokyo, thinking of what a different person I felt like there, missing the hot springs and food and people. Nick's weblog is the next best thing to being there.
Last night: good dance performance in Berkeley, work by Lesley Braithwaite & Katie Faulkner, sound by Michael Trigilio, reminding me that people are doing interesting work around here. But still, I crave something more challenging, like Magpie, when I saw them in Amsterdam several months ago. Artists are a bit too timid here still. Maybe it's all the anti-depressants Americans consume?
Tonight: probably not timid at all, short queer films at Artists Television Access.
Next week: seeling my body for science (Rémi is too). Well, really just sleeping for money, I can do that - quote - Subjects in the NAP condition take a 1 hr nap after 2.5 hrs of performing the task. The whole experiment occurs in the magnetoencephalography (MEG) machine, which records magnetic field potential from the brain, in a similar fashion as EEG. In addition, EEG electrode will be placed on your head and face during the nap.
August 25, 2004
it takes a teenage riot just to get me out of bed
I can think of no other country I've visited or lived in wherein a lack of money is stigmatized as severely as it is in the United States of America. Luckily, it's not necessary for me to put myself in environments where this stigmatization is most severe, as I keep to my friends, and I'm pretty selective about who they are. I was thinking about this again when listening to Laurie Taylor's report on the history of militant resistance to the disenfranchisement of Amsterdam's citizens in the 70's and 80's. In Amsterdam there are and were people who had the courage to stand up for their belief that urban space belonged to the citizens, and they had a right to live there regardless of their financial wealth. That's how my favorite Amsterdam club De Trut was started, by a group of militantly gay squatters who demanded the right to their space and their way of life, as Dutch citizens. It's the history of Kraakgeluiden, a performance venue that is finally able to receive full rights to their space and is also getting money from the government, after years of squatters inhabiting Overtoom 301, an old building in a great neighborhood. STEIM's history is similar, a group of anarchist electro-music artists got a small space and started programming the performances of their friends and neighbors. Now they're internationally recognized as a laboratory for new music and instruments.
But in America, even in San Francisco, the level of complacency and acceptance of the status quo is mind-boggling. It seems most people in this country do not have the energy to argue for their opinions, or to even be bothered to form them. Of course there are also many people who do not fit this mold, most of them living within this 7 by 7 mile area of San Francisco or in one of the 5 boroughs on the other coast, but the general disinterest in what is happening in this country right now is startling. Where is the rage? Sometimes I just simply wonder if the value placed on human life is lower in this country. Maybe it's a form of enlightenment, like a Buddhist recognition that all is temporary, so why worry anyway: no need to try too hard, this too shall pass. For a country that has produced so much mythology around individuality, self-expression, and democratic ideals, this current and startling national silence by its citizens speaks volumes, and what it says is rather frightening.
update: maybe the resistance is in nyc
Counter Convention
RNC Not Welcome in NYC
RNCWatch
amsterdam and a culture of resistance
The final episode of Thinking Allowed's study of Dutch culture and urban space is here. He focuses specifically on Amsterdam and its history of squat culture.
August 23, 2004
new track again
I just put a new version of another track, with the working title Let's Reset The Art Clock up at Sound Swap. I think it's one of the more interesting things I've been part of in a while, the filtered white noise is actually pretty hypnotic and soothing.
Right now, I am more interested in just playing with sound rather than giving myself specific goals. I'm trying to get to the point where I can just trust my intuition in music.
I'm getting lots of sound samples from friends, saying yes to all the sounds I can find, and sort of mixing them up and hoping to get something fresh out of it. So far, I've been pleasantly surprised by some of the results, maybe most so by this recent track that I just posted. I think it would sound best in a small, quiet space, with people sitting and laying on the ground, listening, with lots of little speakers all throughout the space.
new track
I just posted another version of the track Seamus Cater and I have been working on. There's more information over at Sound Swap.
wohlfarht -- rotterdam
Nice show coming up in Rotterdam!
August 22, 2004
merging info.
Jean Snow has a link to this fascinating site that merges latitude and longitude data with mobile phone pictures to get glimpses into Tokyo city life. It's called Tokyo Picturesque.
August 21, 2004
a bunny of a different color
Vincent Gallo's Brown Bunny is finally making it to San Francisco in a couple of weeks. Well, apparently it was here already, as Gallo has been driving it around the country, carrying the film in his truck, and showing it at select theaters, but I missed that showing. I can't wait to see it, and not just for the obvious reasons, but I actually expect it to be a nice film.
Gallo has it out with the New York Times in this article. His claim that - quote - I find Europe the loneliest place in the world. To leave the cities in Europe and move toward the suburbs or the countryside is the most dark, dank, sad, drunken, cheese-riddled, depressing thing in the world. - unquote - is just the beginning.
August 20, 2004
bergman in sf
I was delighted to find out that the Castro Theater has scheduled a fortnight of Ingmar Bergman films, with my birthday, next week, falling right in the middle. I've experienced several good omens since my return to San Francisco, I count this among them.
August 19, 2004
beautiful fiction
Yesterday I randomly found the most amazing novel: Vanishing Point, by David Markson. Absolutely gorgeous, very avant/experimental, but simultaneously completely human and touching, reaching a kind of perfect balance between the two. It's about the elderly "Author" who finds a box of random notes he's taken over many years, and attempts to create a work of fiction from them, while keeping himself out of the story. And he fails. If only I were clever enough to think of how to make a piece of music from this idea.
August 17, 2004
this is cute
click on pic to go to Toothpaste For Dinner merchandise
August 16, 2004
shigeru miwa
A friend of mine in London is interested in learning more about Japanese illustrator Shigeru Miwa. Maybe someone reading this blog knows where to find info. on him in English?
staring into the abyss
Daphne Merkin's recent essay in the NY Times Magazine is a clear-headed look at the psychological cost of living in a metropolitan terrorist target.
August 15, 2004
--- san francisco // amsterdam ----- sound swap
Seamus Cater, a good friend and superb composer, and I are doing an internet sound swap. I made a movable type page for it here. Seamus and I have worked together in the group trio Fancy Trash as well as on sound installations and several other projects in Holland. I think our sense of what music should be is very similar.
There are already two projects in progress posted on the site, they're both in the early stages, but we want to keep the process open to everyone, making the process as transparent as possible.
August 14, 2004
two cd's: one american, one nordic
Nordic:
Electric Leak - The North of it
Taking a wide open and non-pensive approach to sound, the artists on this CD cut a wide swath through historical electronic music techniques and current trends. They don't seem to get caught up in the faux-conceptualism that clogs up so much American sound art these days, instead making sounds that are playful and totally creative. I'm into this.
American:
Rock's Role (After Ryoanji)
Minimal and minimal, this was an installation held at Art In General in NYC a few months ago. With the only hint at a formal structure being the sound of someone making a shot on a billiard table at random intervals, this CD is straight from the John Cage playbook; it's knowingly indebted to him but is not a carbon copy, which is refreshing. It includes some people I admire as well: Ron Kuivila, Bernhard Gal, Maggi Payne, etc. Even with these disparate sound artists, it totally works, held together by freaky SuperCollider patches and old-school MIDI synthesizers. Very nice, and totally at the other end of the spectrum than Electric Leak.
August 13, 2004
from the Watching Out of the Corner of Our Eyes Dept.
I don't know if it's just because I know some of the personalities involved in this discussion, but these comments, on Jean Snow's blog, are really fun to read, almost a piece of art in themselves.
sf 9
I really have to work to readjust to being in San Francisco. In some ways it's great, there are so many things that I love about this place. Here are a few:
1. Tasty and cheap burritos!
2. OK to almost good public transportation, within the city.
3. Huge number of highly creative people per capita.
4. Three international airports that are very easy to reach, so it's easy to escape if I need to. If Bush wins in November, I'll probably be taking advantage of this option!
5. Some great bars with long happy hours.
6. Cool tech. companies, still making some pretty interesting and cutting-edge software.
7. Fog.
8. It's a small city where the odds are actually in your favor of that cute guy on the train also being into guys. Hey!
9. Lots of writers live here, which means there are some nice cafes populated with highly self-obsessed people. I seem to fit right in.
And these are the negatives:
1. A pervasive sense of malaise and laziness (which could also be on my good list, on some days).
2. There's no quality press about the arts and music.
3. A general inability to be serious about anything (again, this could also almost be on my good list).
4. Independent music and art venues are totally underfunded and stressed.
5. The artistic atmosphere is a little too hermetically sealed.
6. The men are flakes. Well, there are a couple exceptions, and men are pretty stupid creatures in general, but what is it about San Francisco? Or is it just a California thing? I don't get it.
7. It's a small city.
I might still have my rose-colored glasses on, but this is the way it seems to me now. Give me a few months, and the negatives will probably outnumber the positives.
where's my wifi
Oh my... the internet has been down all morning at my flat, and that means... Well, it means I got SOO much music work done, but also means that I'm a bit irritable and cranky, a bit like trying to get off cigarettes. And when the internet goes down, it also means my phone doesn't work, as I'm using a Lingo VoIP line. So I'm forced to go to a cafe just to check email, like it was 1999 all over again. Luckily San Francisco is the land of free and easy wifi so it wasn't so hard to find a signal.
OK, enough geekiness, it's the weekend after all.
August 12, 2004
smoking's all the rage
With glitchSlapTKO and Click Opera talking about smoking these days, I found this document to be totally interesting, it's an authentic internal document from RJ Reynolds tobacco about their marketing plans for people living in subcultural San Francisco, groups that range from "Alternative Lifestyle" to "International Influence" (that one made me laugh: is international influence now a dangerous subculture in America? Probably.) to "Street People." They called the campaign Project SCUM. No relation, I assume, to the Society to Cut Up Men, created by Valerie Solonas in the sixties.
August 11, 2004
omihachiman tea party, via click opera
I recently checked out Nick's account of the Omihachiman tea party, a music and tea event near Kyoto. Watching his video of the Phirip and YukoNexus 6 performances provided a short and sharp wake up call to me, reminding me of how bloated and heavy western aesthetics are. This is performance that is as exactly as quick pointed as it needs to be, and cuts right to the heart of things, without the sloppiness that we in the west tend to add. Highly recommended viewing!
August 10, 2004
sf 8
So many people in San Francisco complain about the fog, but I for one love it. Yeah, I guess for Californians, the weather in San Francisco is a little dark and dreary. But after a winter in Southern Holland, I cannot begin to say how lucky this city is to get the sunshine that it does. I mean, the sun does shine here, even if only in the afternoons. In Holland, the weather is truly a force to be reckoned with, gray on a good day, severe and honestly scary on a bad one. Here it's just playful, but never actually threatening. Even out on the beach, I still have a great time when the fog rolls in, it just gives everything an air of mystery and magic.
Now earthquakes, that's a different story...
August 9, 2004
herzog & de meuron in sf
The de Young Museum in San Francisco is going to re-open soon, in a Herzog & de Meuron designed building.
frankenstein photoshop
Robert has done something freaky with this picture...
August 6, 2004
a timely reminder
I reunited with Gilles (Toog) weblog today, and found the paragraph that I needed to hear, especially now, as I'm just starting to work on a new CD project.
August 5, 2004
a new flat
OK, I'm finally starting to feel like I live here.
Even though my new flat is a bit further outside of the city center than I'd prefer (it's sort of south east of Noe Valley and south west of the Mission, I don't know what the neighborhood is called), I like it. My flatmate is great with flowers, unlike me, so there are always bright colors outside my window. I imagine living in this neighborhood is a bit similar to living in Queens in New York: lots of families living American lives with tv's and satellite dishes. One of my favorite things about living here though is the J-Church line ride through Dolores Park, south of the Castro. It always gives a great view of this small city. (I'll try to get some pictures posted sometime soon).
sf 7
What happened to electronic music in America? Antonin, in Paris, said he wonders if America needs it right now. I wonder the same thing. Given the extreme abundance of it in Europe and Japan these days, it seems like America functions mainly as a clever factory, churning out cute G4's for artists in other parts of the world to actually use creatively.
There was a time, around 2001, when American laptop kids were becoming international superstars and people were making music like this (Lesser, from Gearhound, on Matador). But maybe now in America, we're just too busy with more important matters, like Ryan Junell trying to get Bush out of office by making political art. It just seems many artists in America are still sort of catching their breath from the last three heinous political years.
And now it seems I'm right back in that American world of tight security checks, bitter political divisions, and a curious mix of apathy and rage. Whatever comparisons one might make between the current state of America and early Nazi Germany, and there are so many factually accurate comparisons to be made, being here *feels* more like a loosely regulated anarchy than anything else. Or maybe that's just San Francisco.
sf 6
The Lab is another great venue in San Francisco. They just released their 20th Anniversary CD, with works from people like Minnie Pearl Necklace to John Bischoff to Randy Nordschow to Sagan. It's actually a great document of a specific time and place, reminds me that there are interesting things going on here. Or as Randy said the other day in New York, "good 'ol sf...she's steady as a rock, and while not rockin' all the time, still rocks."
Speaking of interesting events, last night I went to a very mellow party/fundraiser for Ryan Junell's project to "document" the Republican National Convention in New York. His idea is to have four video feeds, one for the speakers inside, one for the audience, one for the protesters outside, and one for the observers who don't fit in any other category. Sagan (J Lesser, Blevin Blectum, and Wobbly) will be doing a quad speaker live manipulation of this audio. Judging from the size of the audience, seems like he might have been able to raise some cash for it. So... All in all, I'm feeling totally optimistic about San Francisco, it's a big area when you include the East Bay, and things seem to be improving: rents are lower, interesting people are moving back, etc. But still, Japan is calling my name... But for the time being, I am SO here, have no funds to be elsewhere. And that's fine.
August 4, 2004
sf 5
If you're in Germany, check out San Francisco's own enduring retro-futuro-wacked-out-synth rock: Crack: We Are Rock.
amsterdam again
The first of a very interesting series exploring Amsterdam and its relationship to Dutch thinking, on BBC4's Thinking Allowed.
August 3, 2004
sf 4
Today I'm off to Swissnex for a meeting, it's one of the most exciting and interesting nodal points for artistic activity in San Francisco (New Langton is another). And their building is gorgeous!
This is what San Francisco needs more of: international, smart, and hip organizations that will help shake up the scene a little bit. San Francisco is much too isolated. Maybe this isolation makes for an interesting artistic ecosystem, but sometimes you need to just hit the reset button, introduce some fresh air. Amsterdam was a bit like this as well, producing amazing work, but none of it ever leaving the city, and very little coming in from outside the country. It's up to me to change this in San Francisco. Ha!
sf 3
San Francisco is America's rebellious teenager. And just like a teenager, even though he's fucking cool, he's still caught in this dialogue with authority. All of his attitude and bravado is in reaction to a strong father figure. In this case, it's America.
I don't think Japan has this problem. Tonight I am reading Tokyo Style in Gothenburg, and again wondering why I am not in Tokyo. Antonin is thinking of moving there. Half my friends are already there. OK, just give me a little time, I'll make it over there again. I'm closer to Tokyo now in San Francisco than I was living in Europe. Actually, Kyoto is very attractive to me these days.