more info HERE
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Ashley Olsen
Listen to Leg Warmer on a Brain HERE. Blood Pillow is an audio project I'm working on with Andrew Leland.
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On Harry Dodge for Art in America
I'm at the Harry Dodge screening at The Kitchen. The first video starts. Onscreen, someone wears a mask with a cube affixed to its forehead. There's no telling if it's a man or a woman, but the mask suggests the ugliness of a dude, and the perverse, uncouth way this person speaks also seems masculine. It's probably Harry. The person describes a film to the camera, walking us through it like a director would with his cinematographer. There's a lot of talk about a "super nice carpet" and a description of a photo of a woman with a "sperm-covered head," and the way it would look when her "perfect pink tongue" pops out. Film talk, like "POV" and "cut!" is thrown around. Lots of elements of the imaginary film are described as "beautiful" and "lovely" and "fuckable" but all you see is a person in a drab room in a hideous mask, its lips removed to reveal the narrator's lips moving. The video, called Unkillable (2011) goes on like this for about 15 minutes.
In the audience, people are constantly tittering. I am, too. It's funny, and not in a particularly subtle or refined way. The monologue is funny because the delivery is strong and smart, like a good comedian's, and because most of the jokes are about sex ("he has a boner the size of Tennessee") or violence (a man is described as having a "ball of viscera" instead of a head).
A new video starts: "Do you know how the world dies?" asks the text on a screen, and then the response: "It gets all its trees and animals off the hill and lies down on its side and it dies. That's how the world ends." This repeats. The piece ends.
Another begins: the definition of the word "latent" appears on screen; a scientist describes the concept of continuum; a guy at the beach is trying, with difficulty, to wear a pair of pants as a shirt; teenagers engage in some pyromania and set themselves aflame; an elephant falls over; fireworks are set off on people's heads; Alan Watts is heard speaking about the duality of mind and body; a defanged king cobra attacks a child; tornado chasers wait in their car as the cyclone approaches: "It's coming right at us!" The word "analog" is defined, a guy is pissing and shitting in his underwear for the camera, a firework goes off, another one, another one, a terrible accident occurs in which a man attempts to do a back-flip off a vending machine but falls flat-faced onto the pavement. The scene is repeated at an agonizingly slow pace. Audience members wince. I'm writing as fast as I can, but the clips are quick and I'm missing half of it. All sorts of definitions pop up—for words like "digital," "pixel," "transitive"—with none of them seeming to be correct. The sound is strangely out of synch with the video. Teenagers are suffocating and strangling themselves until they pass out. The screen goes solid blue. An astonishing eclipse of the sun appears. A person weeps beside a deathbed. The third video ends.
People applaud. Someone at the back stands and offers to answer questions ("if anyone has any"). It's apparent that this is the same person who wore the mask in the first film--same voice and face shape. Harry appears masculine, and the filmmaker's name, "Harry," suggests a man. He descends the bleachers and stands in front of everyone, wearing a tight black shirt and tight black pants, sailor tattoos, medium-length hair slicked behind his ears. No questions come at first, and then they pour in. "Could you explain the purpose of the rubber mask?" A woman asks. "I'm interested in faces," Harry says, gesturing in the same way as the masked character. He wipes his nose. "My background is performance . . . What would performatively be revealed without a face?"
"How much of that first film was scripted?" a man asks. "All scripted. The script was in my lap. I was looking down at it." "Is that what all the edits were about?" "Yes, I looked down every two lines."
"I like the way you changed dictionary definitions," a low-voiced woman says. Harry's eyebrows arch. He stands with his arms behind his back for a while. "Is something lost in change?" he says, "Or does everything change in change? Analog and digital, alive and dead."
No one has any more questions. "Thanks so much everybody," Harry says. "I really appreciate it."
Red and white wine are served in the lobby and Harry talks to audience members. I tell Harry the films were "great" and I give him a thumbs up.
Later, at home, I click around on some Harry Dodge links. I learn that Harry is short for Harriet. Harry is a woman—a "radical queer" woman, as several sites declare. She has previously collaborated with the artist Stanya Kahn. I go to YouTube and type in their names and watch a video called Masters of None (2006). It looks like a family running around with pink bags on their heads. I laugh with the same titter inspred by Dodge's twisted monologue in Unkillable. The masks and use of sound also give me a similarly disoriented feeling. Other than that, I don't make any big connections among the works. I type "liminal" and "transitive" into the search bar but I find none of the perverted, blooper-ish clips Dodge seemed to find. I consider going to Harry's exhibition at Wallspace gallery tomorrow, but instead, I go to the gallery's site and look at the little drawings and sculptures for a while.
In the audience, people are constantly tittering. I am, too. It's funny, and not in a particularly subtle or refined way. The monologue is funny because the delivery is strong and smart, like a good comedian's, and because most of the jokes are about sex ("he has a boner the size of Tennessee") or violence (a man is described as having a "ball of viscera" instead of a head).
A new video starts: "Do you know how the world dies?" asks the text on a screen, and then the response: "It gets all its trees and animals off the hill and lies down on its side and it dies. That's how the world ends." This repeats. The piece ends.
Another begins: the definition of the word "latent" appears on screen; a scientist describes the concept of continuum; a guy at the beach is trying, with difficulty, to wear a pair of pants as a shirt; teenagers engage in some pyromania and set themselves aflame; an elephant falls over; fireworks are set off on people's heads; Alan Watts is heard speaking about the duality of mind and body; a defanged king cobra attacks a child; tornado chasers wait in their car as the cyclone approaches: "It's coming right at us!" The word "analog" is defined, a guy is pissing and shitting in his underwear for the camera, a firework goes off, another one, another one, a terrible accident occurs in which a man attempts to do a back-flip off a vending machine but falls flat-faced onto the pavement. The scene is repeated at an agonizingly slow pace. Audience members wince. I'm writing as fast as I can, but the clips are quick and I'm missing half of it. All sorts of definitions pop up—for words like "digital," "pixel," "transitive"—with none of them seeming to be correct. The sound is strangely out of synch with the video. Teenagers are suffocating and strangling themselves until they pass out. The screen goes solid blue. An astonishing eclipse of the sun appears. A person weeps beside a deathbed. The third video ends.
People applaud. Someone at the back stands and offers to answer questions ("if anyone has any"). It's apparent that this is the same person who wore the mask in the first film--same voice and face shape. Harry appears masculine, and the filmmaker's name, "Harry," suggests a man. He descends the bleachers and stands in front of everyone, wearing a tight black shirt and tight black pants, sailor tattoos, medium-length hair slicked behind his ears. No questions come at first, and then they pour in. "Could you explain the purpose of the rubber mask?" A woman asks. "I'm interested in faces," Harry says, gesturing in the same way as the masked character. He wipes his nose. "My background is performance . . . What would performatively be revealed without a face?"
"How much of that first film was scripted?" a man asks. "All scripted. The script was in my lap. I was looking down at it." "Is that what all the edits were about?" "Yes, I looked down every two lines."
"I like the way you changed dictionary definitions," a low-voiced woman says. Harry's eyebrows arch. He stands with his arms behind his back for a while. "Is something lost in change?" he says, "Or does everything change in change? Analog and digital, alive and dead."
No one has any more questions. "Thanks so much everybody," Harry says. "I really appreciate it."
Red and white wine are served in the lobby and Harry talks to audience members. I tell Harry the films were "great" and I give him a thumbs up.
Later, at home, I click around on some Harry Dodge links. I learn that Harry is short for Harriet. Harry is a woman—a "radical queer" woman, as several sites declare. She has previously collaborated with the artist Stanya Kahn. I go to YouTube and type in their names and watch a video called Masters of None (2006). It looks like a family running around with pink bags on their heads. I laugh with the same titter inspred by Dodge's twisted monologue in Unkillable. The masks and use of sound also give me a similarly disoriented feeling. Other than that, I don't make any big connections among the works. I type "liminal" and "transitive" into the search bar but I find none of the perverted, blooper-ish clips Dodge seemed to find. I consider going to Harry's exhibition at Wallspace gallery tomorrow, but instead, I go to the gallery's site and look at the little drawings and sculptures for a while.
Read it at Art in America HERE.
Listen HERE to a mixtape of "new composition" I put together for New York's classical radio station, WQXR.
On Cindy Sherman for Interview Magazine
I'm at the Cindy Sherman opening at Metro Pictures. Jerry Saltz is here too. I know who he is because I've read some of his articles. I know what he looks like because of that television show he's on, the art competition, and even though I haven't seen it, I have seen a still from the show in which Saltz's right eyebrow is raised and his head is tipped with critical suggestiveness. At the gallery tonight, he's having a private conversation when a photographer approaches him to snap a picture. Saltz flashes a quick peace sign and goes right back to his conversation. The move has the whiff of a well-timed cultural ritual, the photographer and Saltz engaged in a smooth, effortless choreography.
I read Saltz's current feature in New York about "How to Make it in the Art World" and there's a little sidebar chart that lays out all the trends in new art, one of which is "Cindy Sherman-esque." From what I can discern about the three images Saltz uses as examples, "Sherman-esque" means theatrical art, art that involves a lot of dress-up and make-believe—the artificial look, the obviously constructed image. Sherman's not exactly trying to trick you into believing her photos represent reality, but they still trick you. It's like when you see a picture of Jerry Saltz flashing a peace sign at an opening. You picture him having the sort of night where he'd just casually throw up a peace sign to any passerby, photographer or not. But that's not true: really, he just throws up a quick one for the photographer and goes back to having his conversation. He's not trying to trick you, but the photograph is.
The Cindy Sherman photos, on the other hand, have been Photoshopped and manipulated and they don't try to hide it. Sherman looks like she's separate from these painted landscapes. She's in the photo but she's definitely on top of the backgrounds. And even though the women in the photos have vague relationships to their landscapes, there's something wrong about the correlation. The connections aren't real, and the photos are constantly reminding you of that. It's different from the way Jerry Saltz flashed the peace sign at the camera. Whereas maybe that single action was rehearsed, or habitual, or staged, you couldn't call the photo inauthentic. Saltz isn't controlling the photo. All he's doing is flashing a peace sign (and a smile!): Everything else is up to chance. Like, I noticed how the photographer made the choice to shoot Saltz from a lower angle, which could lead to the double chin effect that lower camera angles encourage—something I'm sure Saltz did not intend. Also, whatever bystander happened to wander behind Saltz is now dragged into the picture. Saltz might not identify with this person, but he is forever linked to them in the Internet's photo archive. Or maybe one of Saltz's eyelids is half-closed, giving him that confused/bored/ill expression.
Each one of the Shermans, on the other hand, has a perfect expression. They are immobile and meticulously positioned. All the photos are untitled and the subjects—all women—are nameless. There's the sick lady living among what looks like a landscape of feces, somewhere near the rocky seaside cliffs around the turn of the 20th century. The one in the Little House on the Prairie garb who wears a homely expression, a Jew fro of tight, maroon curls, and a fat silver ring. The one with the plotting cook and frightened bride on a hilly Scandanavian vista. The woman with a nose job and a kimono-ish robe living on the bayou. The white-trashy one, whose severe haircut and gaze seem out of place amidst the placid rural landscape. The contemporary high-culture one where the art critic is flashing a peace sign at an opening and all those celebrated photographs are hanging on the wall behind him. - Ross Simonini
Read it at Interview HERE
Download a mixtape I made RIGHT HERE
Aayega Aanewaala by Lata Mangeshkar
Spell by Bela Bartok performed by Schola Hungarica
Nobody's Dirty Business by Mississippi John Hurt
Snake by Henry Flynt
He Gives Us All His Love by Randy Newman
Taraka by Daniel Tombo
Rustem by Taraf De Haidouks
For you by Susanna Wallumrød
Dame, a vous sans repolir by Guillaume de Machaut
Upcoming NewVillager Shows in NYC
03-27 Brooklyn, Glasslands with Big Scary
04-11 Brooklyn, Zebulon with Hannis Brown
04-14 New York, Bowery Ballroom with Reptar and Quiet Hooves
04-19 Brooklyn, Public Assembly with Tiny Victories and Monogold.
05-11 New York, Shea Stadium with Soft Soft
05-17 Brooklyn Museum, Audiophile series
NewBrockovich Mixtape
Download NewVillager's NewBrockovich mixtape RIGHT HERE. The audio follows the trajectory of a monomyth with clips from Soderberg's Erin Brockovich and music: rod stewart randy newman carl stalling helmet faith no more cass mccombs the fleetwoods prefab sprout buddy holly elizabeth cotten
Georgia Sea Island Singers Melted Toys Mariah Carey Capleton Randy Newman Rickie Lee Jones Roll Deep Robert Altman's "Dr. T and the Women" Marvin Gaye Reverend Dr. James Cleveland
Download it RIGHT HERE
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