memory bits
Robert, in Tokyo, sent me music by Yuji Takahashi, which reminded me to check his webpage. I find that he has posted a poem for Earle Brown.
Memory Bits for EB by Yuji Takahashi
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July 30, 2007
July 25, 2007
three pieces, july 24th
Three Pieces was last night and it was pretty great. Good performances, presentations, and audience. Now we've got to start getting ready for the next one.
Here are a few pics:
GradCom (Hamburg) setting up before the show.
Testing the connection with Jetske in Rotterdam (5 AM her time).
Me checking out the video.
Deric Carner helping Zoe Crosher set up.
Zoe performing.
Drink refills between sets.
Jetske presenting her work via Skype from Rotterdam.
Zoe's notes to herself.
Pic from Axiomatic Integration's (Hamburg) set. Click here for YouTube video.
After the show.
Gradcom asking Deric why the Dutch get to have all the fun. Click here for video of Gradcom performing.
July 23, 2007
three pieces TOMORROW
If you're in San Francisco, tomorrow night is going to be the next Three Pieces. Deric and I have invited three very special artists.
Zoe Crosher, a renowned artist with numerous exhibitions throughout the US and abroad, whose work plays with fictional documentary and the reconsidered archive, will give a talk entitled '32 Days - The Dis/Reappearance of Aimee Semple McPherson'.
S.T.O.P. will present new work, live from Holland, via internet audio/video connection. S.T.O.P. is the Dutch Governmental Agency of Future, Organization and Planning; dedicated to researching the impact of group dynamics on individual behavior. They are currently doing research on all places where test subjects come together like chat rooms, classrooms, public transport and markets.
Also, there will be two solo live sets from electronic musicians visiting from Hamburg, Germany: GradCom and Axiomatic Integration. GradCom makes live performance from stretched and distorted fragments of acoustic sources and Axiomatic Inegration makes amazing improvised music.
Tuesday July 24th, 2007
1112 Larkin Street, #307
7 to 9 pm
door closes at 7:30 pm
Free, space limited.
July 21, 2007
forced to confront what you'd rather ignore
One thing I notice living in San Francisco is that there are so many people with severe disabilities apparently living out on the streets. Everywhere. Just walking down a block from my apartment, I confront at least two people in wheelchairs panhandling while talking to themselves and someone else with a severe limp holding a conversation with a garbage can, his wild hair and blank store give the look of a war veteran. I don't know how I have learned to make this connection between a certain crazed look and someone having seen war firsthand. It's probably from noticing so many people with those cardboard signs that say "Homeless Veteran, Please Help" and extrapolating that anyone with wild eyes like that must be a former soldier.
And I have often thought that this surplus of severely disabled street people is largely due to the nearly nonstop armed conflict the United States has been involved in since the Korean war, producing a huge underclass of mentally fragile and physically disabled people, mostly men, with little or no money, living a nearly homeless life, struggling to get over the brutality they've inflicted and received in combat.
But at a dinner party we had with David and Adrienne the other night, it was proposed that there are not, in fact, more homeless and disabled people in San Francisco. It is simply that they are less inhibited to be in public here. With the constantly warm and sunny weather, a public infrastructure designed to accommodate wheelchairs and the disabled in general, and civic government disinclined to make an effort in reducing the number of street people (this is definitely not Giuliani-era New York) the result is a robust culture of the disabled with plenty of time on their hands and the desire to see and be seen amongst their peers. Much like the muscle boys promenade through the Castro, the mentally challenged parade through the streets of the Tenderloin, fanning out into packs inhabiting neighborhoods all the way out to Golden Gate Park.
It was also pointed out how, in fact, it may be very good for those of us who have a better grasp on reality, more money, and four limbs to be confronted by people living these difficult lives. It's good to be shown that there are wildly divergent interpretations of reality, and to see how suffering is a common characteristic of life as a human. And in essence I agree, but at the same time, formulations such as these allow for an avoidance of the underlying sickness of American culture. We, as a culture, are fundamentally Darwinian, with little time nor inclination to think about those who are less fortunate. In other developed countries, the care needed for the disabled is a function of national government, relieving the populace from guilt and worry. But here, in something approaching for better and worse a more brutally literal democracy, collective good will functions only as much as the base lowest common denominator allows. Which is not so much. So we are stuck with few services other than local charity to improve the lives of those in the worst situations. The bitter consolation is that we get an education in the fragility of life from facing such desperate living on a daily basis.
July 17, 2007
ultra-rare pics of divina lugosi at work in the studio
For Divina, this is as close to a happy face we've ever seen.
July 16, 2007
my night out was great fun
Last night was a blast. The best dance music I've heard in San Francisco in ages (maybe ever) was at the Transfer's first Tea With Honey Sunday afternoon party. All the DJ's were good but in my opinion Safety Scissors stole the show. I'd never heard him DJ before.
Jano got to meet Justin Bond who is in town for the three week run of Kiki and Herb.
A happy kid with a beard enjoying the tunes next to a mischievous Kunsole member.
July 15, 2007
installation up at hideo wakamatsu store
I made the music for a Kunsole piece, animation by Rebecca Miller. It's being shown at the Hideo Wakamatsu luggage store in the Mission. The song is called "Bags" with lyrics intoned in a low electronically fucked up voice like: "Bags. One bag, one trip. Two bags, one trip. A bag in a bag, a life in a bag." The animation by Rebecca is amazing. Go check it out if you're down there! It's part of the Art Walk Through the Mission, organized by Julio Morales and Intersection for the Arts.
update: They had the DVD turned off when I went today, but if you ask they'll happily turn it on.
July 13, 2007
now, all music is light
The other day, I accidentally deleted my entire iTunes folder, at least 40 gigabytes of music I've been collecting over the years is gone. And I feel fine.
In an interview with Bettina Funcke, Peter Sloterdijk (whose trilogy Spheres is tragically not found in English) suggests, in Bookforum, that we live in an age of lightness, "the modern and the postmodern [...] construct a world based on mobilization and easing of burdens. I think it is through the occurrence of abundance in the modern that the heavy has turned into appearance - and the essential now dwells in lightness, in the air, in the atmosphere."
This is comforting. And I'm now 40 gigabytes less weighty than last week, free to branch out and make new audio entanglements, or to use a very German word: Verschränkung (oooooh).
July 12, 2007
is this thing on?
My blog has been down for a while now, due to some internal changes at thing.net. I've had pretty extreme withdrawal symptoms, but I think it might be working again.
update: Yes, I think it is!!! Yay!