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'Artist and designer Julien Berthier has been sailing around the globe in "Love Love", a weird ship that looks like it’s about to sink. He actually cut a sailboat in half, sealed it with fiberglass and fitted it with two motors, which make it fully functional, despite its capsizing look. The 35-year-old says his ever-sinking sailing craft is perfectly safe and easy to maneuver, especially in calm waters. He admits he has put the coast guard and harbor masters on full alert a few times, after people alerted them about a sinkings ship. Berthier, who says he “wanted to freeze the moment just a few seconds before the boat disappears, creating an endless vision of the dramatic moment”, has sailed his sinking boat on many trips through famous harbors like London’s Canary Wharf, and France’s Normandy.' -- Propaganda
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'French artist Nils Guadagnin's "The Hoverboard" is a project born in 2008 for an exhibition named "Back To the future". This work is a copy of the hoverboard from the movie Back to the Future II. Integrated into the board and the plinth is an electromagnetic system which levitates the board. A laser system stabilises the object in the air. "In the making of this work, I was thinking about different ways of presenting sculpture. In fact it's a reflexion on the multiple possibilities of how to give a sculpture full spatial autonomy," explains Guadagnin.' -- newslite.tv
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'Like a pair of folding screen paintings, "CLOUD FOREST Patio A" and "CLOUD FOREST Patio B," the collaboration of Fujiko Nakaya's "Fog Sculptures" and Shiro Takatani's illuminations and acoustic work, are juxtaposed in this piece displayed in the large exhibition spaces inside and outside of Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM) where the 2 artists resided and worked specifically for this exhibition.
'Surrounded by glass, allowing sunlight and rain to pour into the rectangular structure, "CLOUD FOREST Patio A" and "CLOUD FOREST Patio B" are exhibited in the courtyard. In this space, fog, light, and sound are the three elements that produce altering environmental situations that fleetingly appear, as the weather and the milieu within the venue influence the entire installation. Exhibits A and B continuously display different expressions depending on the placement and timing of the fog dispenser and the angle of the light.
'At one moment, the vision in front of you suddenly turns white so that the mist swallows the person standing next to you, and you feel as if you have wandered into the fog. At another moment, the reflections of the light rays shining through the fog gives a fantastic spectacle. And yet another time, thick fog collects below while the space above remains wide and clear, reminiscent of an ink painting.' -- Shift
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'+ Pool, an initiative by a collective of artists and architects, is designed in the shape of a plus or cross and can be utilized in a number of different ways. With four distinct areas, the floating pool offers a variety of activities for different types of swimmers. Two shallower pools serve as a lounge and kid’s pool, while two deeper pools serve as a lap swim area and a sports pool. The whole pool can be used for larger swim events or opened up to 9,000 sq ft for free swim.
'With so many new and developing parks around the city, the + Pool has a wide range of options for locations in the New York City rivers – including East River State Park, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Riverside State Park, Battery Park City, Chelsea Piers or Governor’s Island. The pool would be constructed of concentric layers of water-cleansing materials that remove bacteria, pollutants and odors, leaving clean and safe water for swimming.' -- psfk.com
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'"The Floats"—or motorized mollusks—that artist Robert Breer took up producing again at the end of the 1990s, emerged in 1965. Primary shapes, neutral colours and, for the most recent, an industrial aspect, the Floats were then made with polystyrene, foam, painted plywood, and, more latterly, out of fibreglass. At first glance, these simple structures appear immobile. In fact, they are moving, imperceptibly, within the space they inhabit. They glide unbeknown to the visitor, following random paths that are interrupted by the slightest obstacle that they encounter. The Floats produce what should be named ”mechanical uncertainty”.' -- Musee d’art contemporain de Bordeaux
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'Ebru (water marbling) is the art of creating colorful patterns by sprinkling and brushing color pigments on a pan of oily water and then transforming this pattern to paper. The special tools of the trade are brushes of horsehair bound to straight rose twigs, a deep tray made of unknotted pinewood, natural earth pigments, cattle gall and tragacanth. It is believed to be invented in the thirteenth century Turkistan. This decorative art then spread to China, India and Persia and Anatolia. Seljuk and Ottoman calligraphers and artists used marbling to decorate books, imperial decrees, official correspondence and documents. New forms and techniques were perfected in the process and Turkey remained the center of marbling for many centuries. Up until the 1920's, marblers had workshops in the Beyazit district of Istanbul, creating for both the local and European market, where it is known as Turkish marble paper.' -- turkishculture.org
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'About 20 feet in diameter, artist Andrea Zittel's "Indianapolis Island" is a fully inhabitable experimental living structure that examines the daily needs of contemporary human beings. "Indy island" is installed at the Indianapolis Museum of Art's "100 Acres" Art and Nature Park, where over the course of four summers it will be occupied by commissioned "residents". Each resident will will adapt and modifying the island’s structure according to their individual needs, while also performing hosting duties that will help facilitate public viewing of the work. Inaugural island residents Jessica Dunn and Michael Runge who lived on the structure over the summer of 2010 created a project called "Give and Take": http://www.imamuseum.org/island/' -- zittel.org
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“Dancing on the Ceiling: Art & Zero Gravity” is a unique group exhibition where contemporary artists explore and recreate the condition of weightlessness on earth. During this year’s event, Berlin-based sound artist Thom Kubli exhibited his new work called “FLOAT! Thinktank 21,″ which allows the users to experience zero gravity by soaking in salt water and listening to a new audio piece by Kubli for 5 minutes. This process is followed by 40 minutes of soothing silence. The installation piece features an egg-shaped flotation with a custom underwater sound system that plays audio recordings. According to Kubli, "Zero gravity can be read as a condition where prevailing reference models are suspended. “The condition of zero gravity might be evoked by willingly refusing a social and political model."' -- bornrich.com
EMPAC: Dancing on the Ceiling Exhibition Opening
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'Li Wei is a contemporary artist from Beijing, China. His work often depicts him in apparently gravity-defying situations. Wei started off his performance series, 'Mirorring', and later on took off attention with his 'Falls' series which shows the artist with his head and chest embedded into the ground. His work is a mixture of performance art and photography that creates illusions of a sometimes dangerous reality. Li Wei states that these images are not computer montages and works with the help of props such as mirror, metal wires, scaffolding and acrobatics.
'Many of Wei's photos have layered meanings, demonstrating various aspects of Chinese society. In “Li Wei's Body of Art” by Julie Segraves, Wei comments on his “Falls” series, in which he demonstrates the shock of societal progression. He notes: “If you picture someone falling to earth from another planet, there would really be no soft landing, whether the landing were in China or in another part of the world. This feeling of having fallen headfirst into the unknown and of having nothing firm under one's feet is familiar to everyone. One doesn't have to actually fall from another planet to feel that way."' -- Chaotic Earth
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'The island of Robert Smithson was formed over about a week, in a ragged-looking barge yard on Staten Island, shaped by a public art group, a landscape architect, a contractor, an engineer, a project manager and various other dedicated conceptual art workers using a 30-by-90-foot flat-decked barge, 10 trees, 3 huge rocks, a bunch of shrubs, rolls of sod, a whole lot of dirt and even more ingenuity.
'The result, which will began a brief period of daily travels in 2005 along Manhattan's shores, was much more than just a week's work. It was the culmination of more than 30 years of sporadic efforts to build the ambitious floating artwork that Mr. Smithson sketched out in a rough drawing three years before he died in a plane crash in 1973, an image that showed a tiny, forested, man-made island being towed by tugboat with the city's skyline in the distance.
'Mr. Smithson tried to find backers to build the project, which he called "Floating Island," during his lifetime but had no luck. In the years after his death, other admirers and artists also tried unsuccessfully to get the project going.
'The Whitney Museum, which sponsored, "Floating Island" described it as a kind of "anti-'Gates,' " referring to the saffron-colored extravaganza by Christo and Jeanne-Claude that had wound through Central Park during the previous winter.
'In part this is simply because of the modest scale and cost of the island project - about $200,000, compared with the $21 million said to have been paid to create "The Gates." It is also because, as public artworks, "The Gates" and "Floating Island" are like a split personality: "The Gates" invited public interaction and was, in effect, completed by it; the island, reflecting Smithson's intellectual and generally chilly aesthetic, floats off at a distance, inaccessible, inhabited by no one.' -- NYTimes
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p.s. Hey. ** Empty Frame, I do love me some Bill Murray, yes. What I've seen of Peter Cook's stuff has been amazing. Ah, yes, the walked dog as human social lubricant. I think that's at play in the US too, and probably here, although, like I think I've said, I've seen fewer people in Paris walking dogs than I've sighted Karl Lagerfeld's mug through the tinted windows of his town car. Were you and I ever at the same Serpents Tail do? Actually, was I ever at a ST do? I recall weasling myself out of attending a few of them. I have a query about you out to Lynne who I think is on a jet heading to New York as I type. 'The Double' ... I don't think I've read that one. Cool, I'll fish around for it. The medium-meets-author idea/premise sounds or rather is fascinating. I hope you nail your perfect approach 'cos you've gotten me very intrigued. I do like Toop, yeah, but I haven't read 'Sinister Resonances'. I think I might well do that, though. I'm reading Simon Reynolds' new one 'Retromania', which is a very different kind of thing but very good. ** David Ehrenstein, Hey. Yeah, obviously, I guess, I felt the Bresson connection in 'ToF' too. It had that kind of incredible effect on me. Jonathan Winters is an interesting case. When I was younger, he was mostly talked about as a comedy genius, and I can see that, and I suspect his work might end up having a lot of resonance yet, we'll see. I used to love Moms Mabley. Lots of times when my friends I got high, we'd end up spending hours listening to her albums. Really nice that W. Goldberg is planning something about her. ** Dan Callahan, Hi, Dan! Of course I'm really happy to hear you're so taken with 'ToL' like I am. I still haven't shaken off its effect. Amazing. I can't wait to read your piece about it. If you don't mind, could you post a reminder when it's readable either here or on FB? Thanks a lot. Nice to see you, Dan. ** MANCY, Hey. I hope so. It's up to the powers that be. But I'll try nudging them and hopefully pushing me in Seattle's direction. ** Allesfliesst, Oh, yeah, I do remember your project on 'the Beloved'. Obviously, I'll be excited whenever that gets aced. Hamburg ... I've always wanted to go to Hamburg. I don't know why. It has some special status in my imagination among German cities for reasons mystical or forgotten. Enjoy that. ** Sypha, Hey. I can totally see Cormac McCarthy having that effect, yeah. Have you found that his writing ended up influenced yours in a any detectable way? Or was it more like his books set a benchmark, or ... ? Oh, you weren't ranting. Anyway, ranting's fine and even good/interesting at times. I do it. We all do. No, what you said just got me thinking aloud in general about what happens to people's energies and anger and so forth on the internet, and how the internet is such a strange mixed blessing when it comes to shaping and sometimes rerouting people's responses to bad things in the 'real' world. ** Tosh, Hey. Oh, I remember that about the Pynchon/P. Corey thing now that you mention it. Hunh. Corey is still alive although very old and still doing his professor routine, which surprised me, but I guess he must have been playing much older than he was actually was. ** Kevin Killian, Hi, Kevin! I've been really enjoying the online evidence of that spelling bee of which you were and remain the King. Let's promise that if you or I ever win a National Book Award, ha ha, we'll bring outrageousness if not sexy back. They were giving away my galleys as prizes? Weird, cool. So, you're the -- or at least a -- King of my galleys too! Thank you kindly, maestro. I pray you'll like it. ** FreeFox, Hey. I read a couple of chapters yesterday, and I was thoroughly impressed. I love what you're doing. The prose is just terrific, lush and yet not in this super appealing way, and the way you're melding the narrative with it is very, very interesting. I think you're onto something with this novel shaped thing. I definitely encourage you to continue with it because both the path and the methodology are totally there, I think. That's exciting, man! I'm going to keep reading today, and thanks much for the link to the mirror site. I'll continue there. Everyone, I encouraged you yesterday to go over and read the novel-in-progress by FreeFox, and I not only doubly encourage you after having read more of it myself and really loving it, but, courtesy of FF, here's a link to a place where reading it is even more user friendly. Proceed, if you will. Thank you for the really kind words about the blog. I mean, listen, if this place helped you with that work in any way, it's a real honor, so, yeah, thank you, man. You being here enriches this place a lot, believe me. ** JoeM, Yeah, hard not to grin kind of wildly whenever Jo-anne Worley is doing her thing. She has a peculiar and lovely talent. America used to have quite a number of really great sitcoms that I hope have stood the test of time although I haven't seen most of them in ages: the two you mentioned, Batman, Green Acres, Ozzie & Harriet, Mary Tyler Moore, ... gosh, a lot, actually. No, that isn't what I was saying at all. The words 'maybe' and 'more than' were there for a reason. There's obvious value in talking things out. That's a given. I was just saying that there are other ways to channel your outrage that can actually effect a change re: the thing that bothers you, or at least initiate an attempt. I didn't say it's one or the other. Well, some street protests/actions have the intended effect and some don't. Sometimes there is an important effect but the effect is not immediately apparent. Insurgency is always a crap shoot. I haven't read that Nation piece. Looks interesting. I will later. Thanks for the pass along. ** Frank Jaffe, Hi, Frank! Good on the zine progress and blu-ray goody. Yeah, of course I know about the Von Trier thing. My opinion is that all the banning did was give him a big Xmas gift. His film is still in competition, and the only effect the ban is going to have is to give Von Trier what he wants more than anything -- a big controversy that he can milk and play around with and use to make himself seem more daring, and I'm sure he'll be trumpeting about his having been banned for years and years. I think Cannes basically and accidentally gave him nothing but a big kiss. My zine thing goes steadily but slowly. It's actually more of a ltd. ed. chapbook thing than a zine, I guess. Uh, I think I'll keep what it is under wraps until I'm more sure that's actually going to work and happen. Take care, man. ** Steevee, Hey. Like I just said to Frank, if I was more of a conspiracy theorist, I'd think Von Trier orchestrated the ban himself. Given that his film was mildly received, it's more like they gave him a special jury prize than punished him. The whole thing is just ridiculous. Well, excellent on getting through step one vis-a-vis the anchor. So, it's that the higher ups see him being in a film as a situation where he'll be representing them or something and, hence, they want his part to reflect positively on their enterprise? I hope a DMT reference won't stop them. Weird situation, that. ** Andrew, Hey, Oh, right, I know Encyclopedia Dramatica. The entries there can be big fun. That said, I'm perfectly happy that there isn't one about me there, knock on wood. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Oh, very cool about the Mercy thing being up. I'll link people over there and then dive in later when I'm not typing. Everyone, our pal and one of the editors of the beloved Yuck 'n' Yum, Mr. _Black_Acrylic, has a lovely little thing about YnY and William Beckford newly up on the Liverpool-based art and design site Mercy. However, you can also see it on our chum's own blog, and I hereby direct to its portal and attempt to coax you through it. ** Chris Cochrane, Hi, C. Yeah, I think we're on the road to making Paris happen. We'll see, to be safe. I'm still tiptoeing around later King Crimson. Yeah, Sinfield's lyrics, uh, yeah. Okay, I await your Skype request, and I'll hope to talk to you in a day or so. ** Alan, Well, they weren't all terrible, so that answer doesn't work. No, I didn't expect answers really. I thought maybe there would be a discussion about the genre of comedy and if it has an expiration date that's earlier or different from that of other genres, or ... I don't know. Mostly I just thought asking why was a curious thing to do, and I was wondering what would happen, and now I know. Yes, understood about your reservations re: DSK. ** Mark Gluth, Hi, M. Oh, where does Matthew work? Maybe I can hook the HP people up to him. Thanks! Yeah, it would be great to see you and get there. The last time I was there was for the LHotB West Coast Road Tour -- Derek McCormack, Benjamin Weissman, Martha Kinney, and moi -- and that was forever ago, it feels like. ** Postitbreakup, First of all, I'm happy to see you, man. And I think the way you employed sarcasm is quite impressive. Pulling off that kind of conceit, even at that medium length, with grace and continuing cleverness is not easy at all to do. So, not only am I happy to see you, I'm very impressed. How's that for a welcome back? Love, me. ** Misanthrope, Well, you may be 20 years younger than me, but you're clearly an old, wise soul, so that explains it. Yeah, that 'guys my age' thing was kind of loosey-goose. I just kind of rattled off that title. I used to love the Carol Burnett Show too. I was all about the hilarity of Harvey Korman, I think. Hope you're doing good, man. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, San Francisco is kind of like Siberia. Ha ha, kidding, you Friscans. No, for a city that's also a hell mouth, it's really quite lovely. Ha ha, kidding again. Your life would make a really cool movie or a really good high end cable TV series. Has anybody ever told you that? I'm not kidding. iPhones have 'period charts'? Well, of course they would, I guess. I still only use mine to talk and text, and I do sometimes feel like a monkey in a spaceship. There's a cafe really near where I live that used to be just one of the billion usual French cafes, but about a year ago they got this weird idea that putting garden gnomes all over the cafe and stationing a gnome at the door would make the place special and attractive, and I had thought it worked until a week or so ago when I walked by to find that the place was being gutted and restyled yet again. Yeah, thanks to my TV being French, I've been shown the clips of Dunst/Von Trier/Gainsbourg a whole bunch of times in the last day. I just don't like that dude and his things. My day: My usual d.l. friends K&O and I metroed over to the 13th arr. to look at some art, most particularly this group show that has work by the great (and our own) Alex Rose in it. Alex's three pieces were amazing, of course, and the show had its other moments too and really wasn't bad. I'll show you some pix at some point soon in my next slideshow post. The show next door at the Air de Paris gallery was okay: Sarah Morris, a Brit, I think. The area we were in used to be the hot gallery section of Paris, but most of the galleries have moved to hotter spots now, so we spent more time looking at the dead facades of former galleries than at art. But it was okay. It was sunny and beautiful out. We had a coffee, chatted, sunned a bit, and then metroed back here before parting ways. Then the day settled into its usual grind of a bit of writing, some blog stuff, stuff related to the London art show, some emailing and phone talking. Nothing out of the ordinary. My FB friend count dipped to 4997, so I accepted three new people's friend requests. It's weird because I don't how to choose new 'friends' in a highly selective way because they all seem perfectly nice, and I have over 90 friend pending requests now. I checked the latest Cannes news, found out about the Von Trier thing, read some reviews of the new Almodovar, which people seem to like although they keep saying that it wasn't as great as they had hoped it would be. An Australian woman who lives down the hall got a little peeved at me for smoking in the stairwell, but I think I kind of charmed her into a state of tolerance. Oh, I got the new book from Ken Baumann's Sator Press in the mail, and it's a total beauty that I'm going to read today, so that was really nice. I was going to watch some TV, but everything on every channel was either just people sitting around and talking and arguing about the Dominique Strauss-Kahn thing or French-dubbed boring American TV shows like 'Bones', so I guess I just randomly searched the web and stuff until bedtime. What is it, Friday? Yes, it is. Please tell me how yours turned out. ** Bollo, Hey. Those two pieces look awesome at a quick glance. A lengthier look later. Everyone, two new artworks by the artist who visits here whilst sporting the moniker Bollo but who is actually named Jonathan Mayhew can be yours to see with a click. Prints, next week, yum, thanks. Fingers way crossed about your meeting with the curators. What happened? ** Colin, Hi, C. Oh, I'm not yet sure if I'll be here on June 28th. I have this LA trip I need to figure out, and it might be happening then, but I'm not sure. Man, I'll so be there at that reading if I am here, and I definitely want to hook up for a visit/coffee if you have the time. That's great! I'll try to get my trip plans cemented soon, and I hope they don't interfere. ** Michael_karo, Hey, man. Oh, yeah, I bet you remember a bunch of those comedians too. The weird thing, for me at least, is that the Smothers Brothers' show was important and edgy and great, but I never thought that their wacky folk song singing/mangling comedy routine itself was the tiniest bit funny. Brother Theodore, yeah, I remember him. Weird. Who was that old guy ... oh, Larry Bud Melman. I used to love him. I thought he was completely hilarious. That was some seriously good poetry from Persephone, no kidding. Wow. Hope your rest was restful. ** Today's post is pretty self-explanatory, I think. right? It's yours, in any case. Enjoy being its whatever. See you tomorrow.
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