Anodyne
Sunday, June 30, 2013
 

ACT (Aesthetically Claimed Thing): Jimmy Robert, Reprise, 2010

"Robert’s performance coupled with its remaining ephemera will be accompanied by his sculptural installation Reprise (2010). The work references artist Jeff Wall’s photograph A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai) (1993), which captures four figures physically responding to a strong wind. The composition in Wall’s work is a recreation of Japanese painter and printmaker Katsushika Hokusai’s woodcut Ejiri in Suruga Province (Sunshū Ejiri) (1830–33). The theatricality in the movement of the figures in both works acts as a point of departure for Robert’s Reprise. Here, he captures in large-scale photographs the movements of dancer Shiho Ishihara with gestures akin to those seen in Hokusai’s and Wall’s pieces. Depicting movement in both the dancer’s body as well as in the installation of the photographs, Robert demonstrates the ability for objects to become performative. Together with his live work, Reprise offers new possibilities for movement and performativity to exist outside a live event."

Contrast Reprise with 90% of the bookworks cataloged in MIT's new Various Small Books Referencing Various Small Books By Ed Ruscha, which I flipped through last week in Fairhaven, growing more and more frustrated as I went.  The question of reprise vs. reproduction.  Deploying the same ground rules doesn't -- can't -- equal aesthetic success.  Because then you either have a billion micro-genres, or a new "genre of individual works," and genres are always the enemy of ambitious art.

But isn't Boys Walking, & etc...?

I hope not.  Identical places, but different methods (amateur tools!) & points of concern.
- posted by cjb @ 4:18 PM
 

Touring the Texas White House

"The Texas White House was officially opened to the public on August 27, 2008. The entire ground floor is available for public tours. Rooms on the tour include the President's Office, living room, dining room, and the Johnsons' bedroom suites. The majority of rooms have been restored to their appearance during the presidential years (1963-1968) while the bedroom suites retain their appearance at the time of President and Mrs. Johnson's deaths."
- posted by cjb @ 2:29 PM
Saturday, June 29, 2013
 

Two Arrested in Elaborate Police Blogging Sting

"Beginning in 2008, the department launched the SPD Blotter as part Operation Blog Jam. Detectives went undercover as 'bloggers,' providing information to the public about various crimes in Seattle, while secretly carrying out an effort to lure criminals into a speed trap on the Information Superhighway."

Via the Seattle PD.  I've read this thing half a dozen times, and still can't decide if it's straight-up or part of some elaborate Onion-style practical joke.  The line graph reproduced above is a thing of wonder.
- posted by cjb @ 4:08 PM
 
"Over the course of the summer, I saw countless pigeons."
- posted by cjb @ 12:51 PM
Friday, June 28, 2013
 

A Walk on The Bronx New York’s “Crack Tracks” - The Old Port Morris Branch including the St. Mary’s Tunnel

"The tunnel’s ceiling vent. Pitch blackness, plenty of filthy water and still more discarded needles made kneeling to get this photo a challenge. The surrounding walls that fall in the occasional light of the vent are now covered with graffiti."
- posted by cjb @ 3:42 PM
 

ACT (Aesthetically Claimed Thing): The moral arc of the universe
- posted by cjb @ 11:08 AM
Thursday, June 27, 2013
 

"Fuck local businesses. Amazon is incredible! I ordered this shit yesterday and boom! Granola!"
- posted by cjb @ 3:36 PM
 
A Younger Curator Writes

YC:  Hey CJB, want to write on a group show at INSTITUTION X?  My friend, SLIGHTLY OLDER ARTIST-CURATOR, says you're a great art writer.  We want to pitch a review to ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE SMALL CIRCULATION CANADIAN ART MAGAZINE.  Oh, by the way, I'm totally unfamiliar with your writing.  Could you please submit a biography and some published samples?

Dear YC,

I wrote prolifically at one point, but no longer.  Maybe a better way to phrase it is that I only write now "as an artist," usually in connection with my somewhat esoteric interests (landscape photography; appropriation; "repetition"; the so-called Vancouver School and its descendants).

Thanks for thinking of me, but I'd prefer to sit this one out. 

Best,

CJB

ps/  As to your request for a "biography" and "published clips," here, LMGTFY.
- posted by cjb @ 3:07 PM
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
 

"Call Me Maybe, Maeby"
- posted by cjb @ 7:25 PM
 
Seasonal Ontario Food - excellent gardening/recipe blog collecting several of my "five topics of conversation" (L.'s fine phrase) into one.
- posted by cjb @ 6:34 PM
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
 
Lee Bacchus' splendid Splinter In Your Eye returns from hiatus.
- posted by cjb @ 5:38 PM
Monday, June 24, 2013
 
Lorem Gibson

"[V]ehicle San Francisco sub-orbital table beef noodles carbon spook dolphin BASE jump assassin digital. [A]rtisanal courier knife systemic meta-cartel RAF assassin numinous geodesic construct. [O]rder-flow j-pop tiger-team post-courier sensory car camera tower semiotics neural. [V]oodoo god girl vehicle wonton soup construct youtube Kowloon city dome chrome BASE jump. [F]ace forwards savant fetishism free-market Kowloon BASE jump Legba corrupted sentient augmented reality artisanal. [V]inyl gang fetishism jeans woman chrome hotdog city shoes wristwatch carbon. [T]ower grenade camera physical digital drugs advert voodoo god fluidity j-pop motion. [S]oul-lag realism corrupted dome media motion shanty town weathered market carbon into."

(via W. Gibson)
- posted by cjb @ 3:27 PM
Saturday, June 22, 2013
 

Wandering Rocks

 "[C]ritic, Mervi Lane cites the physical presence of mirrors as an allusion to the reflexive nature of the vignettes themselves. She contends that each vignette offers a mirror image of an earlier (and sometimes a later) chapter.

 Lane contends that each episode of ‘Wandering Rocks’ offers the reader an inverted image of the chapter to which it corresponds and offers individual examples from each of the vignette."
- posted by cjb @ 9:38 AM
 

- posted by cjb @ 9:30 AM
Friday, June 21, 2013
 

- posted by cjb @ 11:18 PM
 

"The show thus developed even more elaborate interlocking plotlines, with each of these character’s apparently individual storylines proving to feed directly into one other, their actions impacting upon each other’s experiences in myriad, imperceptible ways. With each return to an already viewed scene, the show expanded the ramifications of these events with new context, the comedy compounding exponentially, the narrative becoming endlessly more than the sum of its composite parts."
- posted by cjb @ 10:10 PM
Saturday, June 15, 2013
 

"I don't know what this puppeteer from the Muppets did, but he's clearly in trouble for it."

(via Bougie blog)
- posted by cjb @ 2:43 PM
Friday, June 14, 2013
 
The great Patton Oswalt:

"Hecklers are not critics.  Critics have to submit their work to editors, have to sign their name to their opinions, often have to face those they criticize.  Sometimes, if they live long enough, they have to cringe when their opinions don’t stand the test of time better than the work they initially critiqued.  Even Roger Ebert admitted, in his superlative Great Movies essays, to being wrong in his initial assessment of some of the movies he was writing about.  Of not seeing the neo-Realist miracle of The Killer of Sheep because it didn’t have enough story for him.  And, ironically enough, not recognizing The Good, The Bad and The Ugly as the masterpiece it was because it was too entertaining.  Is there anything more mature – more manly – that flat-out saying, 'Wow, I was wrong'?"
- posted by cjb @ 3:30 PM
 
ACT (Aesthetically Claimed Thing): Values-Based Giving

"Each year, my accountant calculates the size of donation that will reduce my income tax to zero. Through this process I see the government allocate my tax dollars to trail work in parks they may not otherwise do, instead of using them for other government projects that rank lower on my scale of values.

I recently chose to make donations over three successive years to upgrade a trail to one of my favorite places in Garibaldi Park. These donations are paying for the installation of two bridges over river crossings and 11 kilometres of trail reconstruction from Elfin Lakes to Mamquam Lake. I wanted to give something to future generations so they could experience the joy I felt when discovering these wild places."
- posted by cjb @ 8:59 AM
 

- posted by cjb @ 8:31 AM
Thursday, June 13, 2013
 

"There was another matter Johnson mentioned, and Oltorf did not allude to it in the oral history he gave the Lyndon Johnson Library, although he included it -- or at least part of it -- in his interview with the author. 'Then he asked me did I ever see Alice [Glass]. That was something he very seldom asked me. And I said [I saw her] off and on. He said, "How is she?" and I said all right, and then he said something I didn't tell you and I don't think I'm going to.'"
- posted by cjb @ 11:19 PM
 

- posted by cjb @ 10:56 PM
 

ACT (Aesthetically Claimed Thing): Jack Shadbolt & Robert Linsley, by Brian Nation

 Double self-portrait!
- posted by cjb @ 10:53 PM
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
 

The author and his family. Left to right: Marcus, some bald dude, brother Dru. Photo courtesy Dru's better half.
- posted by cjb @ 11:25 AM
 

Some Bees, 2013

The remains of the colony, knocked out of the tree by this morning's rain, now lying dead and dying on the sidewalk.

Making a picture doesn't change anything for anyone, least of all the bees, who remind me, in their stunned incomprehension, of the guy in the gutter in Roy Arden's Rupture (1985), but simply affirms that someone noticed them, that they were registered as living things by another living thing, and that that registration will persist, at least for a while.

"Leave me alone this morning."  (Burton Cummings)
- posted by cjb @ 9:27 AM
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
 
Mentally ill woman at bus stop leafing through huge ratty photocopied stack of JPEGs of Hannah-Barbara vultures.
- posted by cjb @ 9:40 AM
Sunday, June 09, 2013
 

@LUMINOUSBOOKS, via Twitter.

"Pulp Fiction is a really interesting independent bookstore model, now with three locations within Vancouver. They offer a great selection of used books alongside a considered range of new titles. The knowledgeable staff, always generous with their recommendations, offer a great ordering service that can get hold of pretty much anything in print at a decent discount on the cover price. Pulp Fiction offers a real and active alternative to Chapters, Vancouver’s chain bookstore, providing an engaging space for the local community. The Main Street branch (pictured) is my favourite , it has a great fiction and beat writing section, inspiring displays that often lead in unexpected directions and it is also very conveniently located for good coffee on Main Street, always important when planning a day of book shopping!"
- posted by cjb @ 10:35 AM
Friday, June 07, 2013
 
Amongst The Sharpies

A pal & former staff member writes,

"Hey CJB, I worked the launch of [ANTIQUARIAN BOOKDEALER]'s memoir, last night. Surrounded by the sharpest of sharpies, most of 'em decked out in sweat pants and tweed jackets. When they weren't subtly trying to peddle their wares to me, they were consoling each other on the perils of online poker ('It's definitely rigged'). The sweat-panted sharpie is a trans-provincial entity."
- posted by cjb @ 9:20 AM
Thursday, June 06, 2013
 
Willie Rosario, By The Time I Get to Phoenix
- posted by cjb @ 9:08 PM
 

"According to Black, Nixon 'thought that he was doomed to be traduced, double-crossed, unjustly harassed, misunderstood, underappreciated, and subjected to the trials of Job, but that by the application of his mighty will, tenacity, and diligence, he would ultimately prevail.'"
- posted by cjb @ 8:37 PM
Wednesday, June 05, 2013
 

- posted by cjb @ 9:39 AM
Tuesday, June 04, 2013
 

- posted by cjb @ 12:48 PM
 
Scarce here for a few days, reading Jaron Lanier's Who Owns The Future?  About three quarters done. Confident stating that it is the most useful & relevant book I have read since opening PFB thirteen years ago.  Anyone who is a semi-regular here, or even remotely interested in the networked economy's assault on (a.k.a. "transformation of") the so-called creative professions, should find a copy ASAP.

Lanier's dreadlocks and straight-outta-1991 web page might make some less charitable readers think that I've been hoodwinked by some flaky New Media hippie.  Not so.  Lanier's book is a mix of speculative aesthetics, political philosophy, economic theory, and idiosyncratic cultural criticism.  It's directly, profoundly relevant to my work as a photographer, writer, and small business owner, someone with more creative capital than $.  Like Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft, another recent favorite, it's written in clear, direct, jargon-free language.  Yet its simplicity is deceptive, packed with so many different simultaneously expressed ideas that it demands to be read very slowly.

Back soon.
- posted by cjb @ 6:39 AM
Saturday, June 01, 2013
 

- posted by cjb @ 11:32 AM

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