Franklin Furnace’s Goings On
July 28, 2005
CONTENTS:
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1. Joseph Nechvatal, FF Alumn, new streaming internet interview
2. Deborah Garwood, FF Alumn, interviewed online at artcritical.com, and more
3. Irina Danilova, FF Alumn, at 59 Franklin Street, NY, July 31, 9 pm
4. Bradley Eros, FF Alumn, at Le Petit Versailles, Aug. 28, 8 pm
5. Ken Butler, FF Alumn, at Knitting Factory, NY, July 30, 8 pm
6. Tibor Varnagy, FF Alumn, at Liget Galeria, Budapest, August
7. Crash, James Romberger, FF Alumns, at Manhattan Borough President’s Office, now thru Sept. 29, opening Aug. 16
8. Matthew Sandager, FF Alumn, in the New York Times, July 21
9. Re:Place at White Box Annex, thru Aug. 10, 2005
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TOP
1. Joseph Nechvatal, FF Alumn, new streaming internet interview
Joseph Nechvatal interview for ZKM now @ http://interviewstream.zkm.de/
Yours in increasing bifurcations,
Joseph Nechvatal
http://www.nechvatal.net
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2. Deborah Garwood, FF Alumn, interviewed online at artcritical.com, and more
Greetings,
I’ve been interviewed! Please log onto www.artcritical.com to read:
Studio Visit: Deborah Garwood discusses her work with Pamela Crimmins
http://www.artcritical.com/studiovisit/PCGarwood.htm
Also, quick reminder about the RECEPTION this THURSDAY 7/28/05 from 6-8pm:
Paris at Spring Equinox, 2004: Parc des Buttes Chaumont
Suite of 20 digital images by Deborah Garwood
BERLITZ LANGUAGE CENTER
40 West 51st St. (betw. Fifth Ave. & Ave of Americas)
Rockefeller Center complex
New York, NY
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3. Irina Danilova, FF Alumn, at 59 Franklin Street, NY, July 31, 9 pm
Dear Friend,
An additional First Screening of International 59 Second Film/Video Festival will
be on view on Sunday, July 31st, at 9 pm at 59 Franklin Street, in Tribeca (few blocks bellow Canal), between Broadway and Lafayette, Second Floor (above GAS gallery).
Program can be viewed at www.irinadanilova.net/59_sec_fest/screenings/.
Screening is free.
RSVP is preferable at irinadanilova@earthlink.net
Please arrive at 8:30.
We had a successful two shows on July 13th and are happy to present our first collection one more time. Please come and invite everyone who might be interested.
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4. Bradley Eros, FF Alumn, at Le Petit Versailles, Aug. 28, 8 pm
Allied Productions,Inc. PO Box 20260 New York New York 10009
www.alliedproductions.org info@alliedproductions.org 212 529 8815
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ***** FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ******
Press contact: Peter Cramer 212 529 8815
Le Petit Versailles Garden Season 2005
346 East Houston Street < Avenues B & C
F / V trains to Second Ave. Walk east on HOUSTON St. or J / M trains to Delancey. Walk northeast to HOUSTON St. Rain or Shine. FREE or voluntary donation.212 529 8815 www.alliedproductions.org petitversailles@earthlink.net
NESTS – Exhibition by Elizabeth Hamby
August 6 – 28 Reception August 6 5-8 pm
Artist’s Statement-
My work is concerned with the intimacy of site. I use symbols and materials that are at once familiar and abstract: my use of circles and spheres refers to a wide naturalistic imagery that ranges from water droplets, to the rings in trees, to stars and planets. My vocabulary is concerned with inscribing a specific place for quiet examination, while learning new “words” to understand the utterly ordinary and everyday.
In particular, I am interested in the concept of nests and nesting. Nests, I think, provide a perfect model for intimacy and specificity. They are sized according to their inhabitant and their environment, simultaneously, and they are made out of material that simply re-enters the life cycle upon their abandonment. In his book The Poetics of Space about nests and shells, Gaston Bachelard says, “With nests and, above all, shells, we find a whole series of images that I am going to try to characterize as primal images; images that bring out the primitiveness in us…a human being likes to “withdraw into his corner,” and that it gives him special pleasure to do so.”
Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Beacon Press: Boston, 1958, pg. 91.
August 23 7:30 pm
Organized Color Intoxication by Jonathan Zalben
Multimedia installation with video projections, original music & audience participation.
August 27 8pm
MIKE DIANA – The first comic artist to be jailed in US for his art; join us for portraits & performances captured on video including Mike Kuchar’s “Cupid’s Infirmary” and Cramer & Waters “Introducing Mr. Diana” plus more unseen footage and excerpts.
A discussion on censorship will follow. http://www.testicle.com/mikediana.htm
August 28 8pm
“ Dance of the Dark Soul”
Butoh Dance & Films! AVANT GARDE(N) in conjunction with Howl Festival. Dance of Darkness co-curated by Bradley Eros and M.M. Serra.† http://www.howlfestival.com
Events are made possible by Allied Productions,Inc.,Gardeners & Friends of LPV,The Trust for Public Land, Citizens for NYC, GreenThumb/NYC Dept. of Parks,Materials for the Arts; NYC Dept. of Cultural Affairs,NYC Dept. of Sanitation & NYC Board of Education, WNYC-FM and Manhattan Neighbourhood Network (MNN). LPV Programs are made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State agency
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5. Ken Butler, FF Alumn, at Knitting Factory, NY, July 30, 8 pm
Ken Butler’s Voices of Anxious Objects
Live this Saturday July 30th @8pm
On the bill with Haale and her band at 9pm
http://www.haale.com
Knitting Factory
74 Leonard St. @ Broadway
http://www.knittingfactory.com
$12
Ken Butler: hybrid strings, vibraband
Matt Darriau: (reeds), gaida, kaval, alto, clarinet, flutes
Seido Salifoski: dumbek, tapan, percussion
Bass: TBA
“Hybridized world rhythms on instruments made from tools and household objects”
The artist-musician performs mesmerizing world textures and driving melodic gypsy grooves with passion and purpose on an amazing arsenal of amplified hybrid string instruments made from household objects and tools. Duchampian Dada meets Hybrid Hindu Hendrix.
KEN BUTLER is an artist and musician whose works have been featured internationally and throughout the USA, including The Stedelijk Museum and The Apollohouse in Holland and The Kitchen, Thread Waxing Space, Exit Art, The Knitting Factory, The Brooklyn Museum, Lincoln Center, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. His works have been reviewed in The New York Times, Artforum, and The Village Voice and have been featured on PBS, NBC, CNN, and MTV, including an appearance on The Tonight Show. Awards include fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has performed with John Zorn, Laurie Anderson, Butch Morris, The Soldier String Quartet, The Paradox Trio, and The Master Gnawa musicians of Morocco. His CD, Voices of Anxious Objects is on John Zorn’s Tzadik label. Website: http://www.mindspring.com/~kbhybrid/
MATT DARRIAU was named one of the most influential jazz musicians of the last fifteen years by Jazziz Magazine for bringing Balkan rhythms and melodies into jazz. In addition to being a leading innovator in the eclectic downtown scene of the 90’s with his Paradox Trio (three CD’s on the Knitting Factory label) and for the past eight years with The Klezmatics, Darriau is also active as composer and musician in the Recycled Waltz Orchestra, Ballin the Jack, and Septeto Roberto Rodriguez.
SEIDO SALIFOSKI is a percussionist and drummer specializing in the dumbek. He was born in Prilep, Macedonia of Rom ancestry and came to the US at a young age. He has performed in New York for 20 years for the Macedonian, Rom, Bosnian, Albanian, Turkish, and Armenian communities as well as tours of Europe with his current group the Paradox Trio. He has numerous recordings, has played with Yuri Yunakov and Tarkan, among others, and has taught Balkan music workshops on both coasts.
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6. Tibor Varnagy, FF Alumn, at Liget Galeria, Budapest, August
Idem – Farkas Gabor kiallitasa / exhibition of Gabor Farkas megnyitó / opening: 2005 augusztus 2-an, 19 oratol, a kiallitas megtekintheto / open: augusztus 25-ig
www.ligetgaleria.c3.hu/304.html
LIGET GALERIA
1146-H BUDAPEST, AJTÓSI DURER SOR 5.
NYITVA / OPEN: SZE – H: 14 – 18 h / WE – MO: 2 – 6 PM
www.ligetgaleria.c3.hu
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7. Crash, James Romberger, FF Alumns, at Manhattan Borough President’s Office, now thru Sept. 29, opening Aug. 16
Our Howl Festivle Art Opening Party:
Manhattan Borough President
C. Virginia Fields
in association with ARTERIES
presents
Business Unusual II:
ROOM AT THE TOP
Curated by:
Marguerite Van Cook
James Romberger
Samara Sussman
Roger DeGennaro
featuring
Jody Culkin
Stephen Lack
Crash
Gibby Haynes
Marcus Leatherdale
Thom Corn
Oscar A. Alzate
Giovanni Galella
Karan Mitchell
Opening reception
Tuesday August 16th , 2005
6:00-7:30 pm
with a performance by C. Eule Dance
thru September 29th, 2005
Viewing Monday through Friday
10:00 am-4:30pm
Or by appointment: call (914) 843-1410
Office of the Manhattan Borough President
Municipal Building
1 Centre Street , 19th Floor South, NYC, NY
IMPORTANT: Photo ID is required to enter
the building at all times.
Produced by Arteries,
and part of the program of
the HOWL Festival 2005
www.howlfestival.com
and a free boxing event…
Rumble on the River
An amateur boxing event that is outdoors and free to the public will take place on Pier 54 in Manhattan (Pier 54 is on 14th Street and the West Side Highway). The event is on Thursday July 28 th, starts at 7pm and should end at about 10:30pm (ish). If you are taking a car or a cab, you cannot drop off at the pier. The nearest drop off point is 14th Street and 10th Avenue. From there it is about a 3 minute walk to the pier.
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8. Matthew Sandager, FF Alumn, in the New York Times, July 21
July 21, 2005 The New York Times Keeping T-Shirts in the Moment By GUY TREBAY
NEVER underestimate the power of a martini when drafting a business plan. This point may not be taught at the Wharton School, but it is probably worth keeping in mind. It was over a boozy discussion of guy trouble three years ago that Kristin Bauer and Liz Vassey had the light-bulb moment that led them to found JustDumped.com, a company that makes T-shirts with slogans that read like semaphores flared from the battleground of contemporary romance.
“It seemed so unfair that you had to hang around with someone for six months before you found out what their issues were,” Ms. Bauer said by telephone from the annex of the house in Burbank, Calif., where she runs her business. “Why not put it all out front?”
Why not? The first shirts produced by the two women, who both work regularly as actresses, bore the tag lines, “Wasn’t picked for Cheerleading,” “Ignore Me and I’m Yours” and “Emotionally Unavailable Men Rock.” If the messages were a little heavy on the ironic masochism, the result of the women’s impromptu foray into business was surprisingly empowering.
“We had six of each phrase printed up for $15 a shirt, which is an outrageous price I found out later,” Ms. Bauer said. “And I wore one to all the press stuff for a show I was doing for NBC called ‘Hidden Hills.’ “
The sitcom was eventually pulled, but the shirts caught on when a TV Guide reporter wrote an item about Ms. Bauer’s new company, so loosely organized at the time that it lacked a dedicated phone line. “After TV Guide came out, we got a call that ‘Extra!’ wanted to do a story. We had 60 shirts we were giving to a few friends and a Web site that didn’t work. So we went out to dinner, were drinking martinis again, came back and logged on and there were 500 orders,” Ms. Bauer said. “We decided, ‘O.K., I guess we get some boxes and figure this thing out.’ “
Without realizing it, the two women had accidentally stumbled into the slipstream of a pop cultural trend.
Lately limited edition T-shirts, most likely made in someone’s cellar in Brooklyn, have suddenly become the hipster’s preferred mode of expression. Whether produced by college pals with studio art degrees or sold by highly organized Web companies like threadless.com – visitors to the site offer ideas and vote on designs, which are then put into microproduction – the limited edition T-shirt has become impossible to avoid.
Often crude and uncommercial-looking, its imagery represents a kind of generational response to the bland uniformity of the mass-marketed “vintage” lines found in every mall. This development has not been lost on those same manufacturers, however. Some are already producing T-shirts that mimic the do it yourself look of indie T-shirts. “T-shirts are a really cheap blank slate,” said Ariel Foxman, the editor of Cargo, Condé Nast’s shopping magazine for men. “People have found a relatively inexpensive way to distinguish themselves.”
The trend partly reflects the great democratic welter of the e-commerce ether, and it partly serves as a marker of hipness, defined by the savvy with which a consumer can navigate the Web labyrinth in search of the coolest obscurities. For a snapshot of the estimated 1,500 sites now selling limited edition T-shirts, one might double click on Wowch.com, whose designs ring changes on the visual conventions of painting-on-velvet kitsch, or to Trainwreck Industries, a 10,000-shirts-a-year site run by a San Francisco designer, Alec Patience, whose motifs run to sight gags like Mao as a D.J., or Che Guevara’s face morphed into that of Ace Frehley, the lead guitarist of the rock band Kiss.
For that matter, one might even check out Prada’s recent foray into the arena, a collaboration with the Chilean graffiti artist Flavien Demarigny, also known as Mambo. His shirt, the first in a series of proposed limited edition T-shirts grouped under the highfalutin’ title “Unspoken Dialogues,” has a drawing of a figure and a boom box that could politely be termed an homage to Keith Haring, as if drawn by a 5-year- old.
“It all goes hand in hand with the vintage thing,” said Molly Spaulding, the proprietor of Narnia, an inventive boutique on the Lower East Side of Manhattan that was known as Pullover until about a week ago. “People like the idea that there’s only one, there’s only one size. They like the feeling that it’s their own style.”
That identification with what Kim France, the editor of Lucky magazine, calls “the thinking coolsters,” may help account for the insider fan base behind the success of Kadorables, a subscription T-shirt company Paul Marlow and Matthew Sandager run from a cellar hidden below a sewing factory in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
In a subterranean space that can be reached through sidewalk trap doors, Mr. Sandager, a 32-year-old graphic designer, and Mr. Marlow, 33, who has a background in fashion, print their designs onto T-shirts that are then sold to subscribers who have paid $145 to receive a shirt a month by mail for five months. Like Ms. Bauer and Ms. Vassey, the Kadorables duo (the name is a loose play on a Spanish phrase meaning, roughly, “How cute”) hatched their T-shirt business several years ago over drinks with a friend.
“We were just boys who wear jeans and great tennis shoes, and we wanted great T-shirts,” Mr. Sandager said. “And a friend said, ‘Why don’t you make me five shirts and gave us some cash.’ “
Now, Kadorables shirts have been featured in GQ and Cargo and the two are on their 34th edition of shirts in oddly appealing de rigueur drab colors and with unassuming and often primitive graphic motifs. “In order to buy into it, you have to go into the unknown and be excited about that,” Mr. Sandager said.
As recently as three years ago, when mass marketers latched onto the Salvation Army tastes of a generation, a consumer bored with fake vintage trucker or high school team T-shirts would have been lucky to happen on a place like Zakka, an inventive boutique in NoLIta in Manhattan.
There, in what amounts to a toy store for the dedicatedly hip, Toshiki Okazaki, the owner, sold the obligatory anime drawings and plastic collectibles by James Jarvis or Be@rbrick, alongside racks of delightfully original and subversive shirts silk-screened by artists as well known as Ryan McGinnis or as obscure as Print Mafia, Civil Defense, Akane Kodani, Star Electric Eighty Eight or Mana Mizukuchi, a Japanese graphics designer whose bleach-painted T-shirts go on view at the Grand Street store at the end of the month.
“With a T-shirt, it is much easier to show your work than trying to find a gallery,” said Mr. Okazaki, referring to the production of T-shirts in limited editions made by artists looking less for a killing than a populist way to present their art. “Four years ago, nobody really did this,” he said.
These days, whenever two or more people gather to consider the future of consumer society, “customization” and “niche” are certain to be their most frequently uttered terms. Bored and satiated, consumers first took music dissemination into their own hands, via Internet programs like Napster, and then information, in the form of blogs, and, finally, even so-called hard goods, now that it is clear that anyone, more or less, can start a clothing company. As with garage bands and personal Web pages, a little alcoholic lubrication rarely seems to hurt at the point of conception; neither does a taste for unabashed amateurishness, communal expression and the exuberantly ad hoc.
“We could spin our wheels and do progressive graphics all day long, but we didn’t want a force-fed brand aesthetic,” said Olin McKenzie an architect and partner in Momimomi, a three-year-old two-man operation based in Los Angeles. Their limited-edition T-shirts feature poetic images inspired by aerial photographs of freeway traffic patterns or else drawings made from photographs of friends asked to enact expressions of joy or rage.
“The beauty of this whole thing is that no one’s trapped by a dominant brand aesthetic,” Mr. McKenzie said. “And if you’re not locked into that, then the aesthetic is free to change.” There is, of course, one other irresistible element of the T-shirt as cultural marker and Web-era phenomenon. “T-shirts, like blue jeans, are forever,” Mr. McKenzie said. “Nobody is going to stop wearing them any time soon.”
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9. Re:Place at White Box Annex, thru Aug. 10, 2005THE ANNEX PRESENTS
RE:PLACE
Exhibition through August 10, 2005
Curated by Emily Anderson
Artists:
Hajarah Abdussabur / Mirelle Borra / Zoë Ghertner / Karen Gilbert / Zach Gold / Nick Gottlund / Eric Graham / Laura Macchia / Kelly Meyers / Jennifer Piette / Afshaan Rahman / Lisa Ramsey / Molly Shea / Francis Stallings / Ann Thottam / Anwar Torres
Sixteen artists were asked to explore the title RE:PLACE. For some, the term is an acknowledgement of a place pertinent to them, for others it takes on more unexpected directions. RE:PLACE gives young and emerging artists, some still in the throes of art school, the opportunity to experience first-hand the emotions involved in mounting an exhibition of their own work in a professional gallery space.
The artists are connected through their internships, past and present at White Box. The non-profit art space is a portal for the interns, facilitating access to the grit and the glamour and also providing a clean, sobering view to what’s behind the New York art world.
The title RE:PLACE is by no means didactic, the semi-colon breaks up the word giving it a multitude of layers and meanings. It now has various connotations of place and of the need to respond to something. RE:PLACE does not favor or alienate, it gives the artists an opportunity to explore themes as widely flung as landscape, isolation, travel, national identity, culture, dialogue and even the exotic. In response, the artists have offered up a fresh take on what a summer show consists of by interpreting the title RE:PLACE from a multitude of angles and using a variety of media: sculpture, painting, video, drawing and photography. Each season interns bring an eclectic mix of culture and artistic background. They come to New York from distant lands and from just over the Hudson River to pursue their individual ‘dreams’; various artistic ambitions that only a city like New York and a setting like White Box can provide. The exhibition received generous assistance from Mirelle Borra, Dalit Anolik, Joanna Dawiskiba and Daisy Lin.
Please contact Emily Anderson on 212-714-2347 or emily@whiteboxny.org for more information.
THE ANNEX
601 W. 26th St, 14th Flr
New York, NY 10001
212-714-2347
www.whiteboxny.org
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~~end~~
Goings On are compiled weekly by Harley Spiller
Click http://www.franklinfurnace.org/goings_on.html
to visit ‘This Month’s World Wide Events’.
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80 Arts – The James E. Davis Arts Building
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Brooklyn NY 11217-1506 U.S.A.
Tel: 718-398-7255
Fax: 718-398-7256
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mail@franklinfurnace.org
Martha Wilson, Founding Director
Michael Katchen, Senior Archivist
Harley Spiller, Administrator
Dolores Zorreguieta, Program Coordinator
