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This week: Duncan and Richard at CAA 2014! We talk to Michael Rakowitz in the first of what will eventually be a multiple interview series, this time we discuss his work The Breakup, currently on view at Rhona Hoffman Gallery. Next Richard’s new hero Jenna Frye on Makerness, BAS pal, artist, curator Jesse Malmed on WACH, and art book genius Matthew Smith of http://arenotbooks.com/.
This show is an epic. E P I C. So we put our hands up like the CAA can’t hold us.

Who on Earth eats spearmint gummy. Yuck.

Is this ok? Is this a responsible use of this privilege? How much does Bad at Sports pay its writers? Its readers? I’m like you, reader. I’m in the weeds. I’m in the thick of it. Everyone is paying everyone else too much. Our government runs smoothly but we don’t have any use for it. There are no trains and no one runs for anything, not even office.

It’s been a month, but I’m saying it’s been a week. This is what I’ve been thinking about recently: bpNICHOL wrote for Fraggle Rock.

This is a record of this moment but also a place to put open tabs. We should all share all the open tabs. The radio today told me social media was 2000 years old because we used to tell each other things too. I turned off the radio and listened to myself singing and chopping.

I’m excited about this project: MAI through FVNMA at SAIC as run by EF. 

• Jim Davis (Princeton [but for this work: Chicago] filmmaker)
• Jim Davis (Muncie visual artist, writer) (also excellent to see a sentence where both “artists” and “entertainment” are in quotation marks)
• Jim Davis (“Dallas” actor)

Fugue State(s)

Also, this band, The Fugue, that I saw at Bard in 2002 or 3 (first year of college). They were friends of a friend and they played a good show. Then, this year, I found this funny clip on youtube (though my interest in television courtroom interruptions).

This led me to re-visit this.

And this.


(which is really part of that this)

I can pretend I’m not thinking about this pretty often. Especially when linked with this.

The re-release of Codex Seraphinianus by Luigi Serafini (which learned about from Bad at Sportsers PvZ and RH).

idyrself by Krystal South.

Editions and Additions by Jacob Edmund

Morgan Fisher on Ivor Cutler. Morgan Fisher of Mott the Hoople, not Morgan Fisher of Projection Instructions and ( ) and other marvelous films.

(Draft for) Infinite Black Flag 

This other medium inane idea I just made up.

A gif for every one of 1001 Nights.
A list of the dumbest lists on BuzzFeed.
Under 1 who is under 1 (part of a profile on an athlete/artist who is 8 months old).

Sibling Cinema (thanks to the Frameworks list-serv for responding so well to my query) :

• George and Mike Kuchar,
• Jonas and Adolfas Mekas,
• James and John Whitney,
• Mark and John Jr. and Michael Whitney,
• Paul and Greg Sharits,
• Peter and Kathy Rose,
• The Lumière Brothers,
• Jane and Louise Wilson,
• The Brothers Quay,
• Jem Cohen and Adam Grossman,
• Dziga Vertov and Boris and Mikahil Kaufman,
• Tom and Ed Bowes,
• TwinArt Sisters,
• Soda_Jerk,
• Bruce and Norman Yonemoto,
• Reggie and Warrington Hudlin,
• The McDonagh Sisters,
• Nadjoua and Linda Bansil,
• The Cifuentes Sisters,
• Albert and David Maysles,

These three, posted elsewhere, but that do something together:

Guy Sherwin — Man with Mirror (1976/2011)

Peter Campus — Three Transitions (1973)

The Marx Brothers — Duck Soup (1933, excerpt)

I was missing the earth so much that I watched a 98 minute movie of the light changing from day to night high up in the Sierra Nevadas. The trees are beautiful in the way trees are, but not too showy. There is no discernible movement in the frame beyond the changing position of the sun and the automatic shutter of the camera slowly trying to adapt. I was missing the earth and I was thinking of duration and those were things I would have been thinking and feeling even if I hadn’t been at the final day of the Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival. But I was and those were things to think and feel about.

James Benning‘s Nightfall is a curious piece. His works are often challenging structurally, but saying the logic of this one is simple is like saying the simple logic of this is one. We watch the trees and they are still. We watch the light and it changes slowly. It would change more slowly, but the camera is doing what it can to keep up. Fauna haunts the aural space and I thought I even heard what sounded like human sounds. Mostly I floated in and out of the cinematic space (the seats, the people around me, my thirst, someone else quenching theirs, the size of the rectangle, the quality of this light) the represented space (the trees are so beautiful, there are fourteen main trees, there are an additional dozen supporting trees, the light coming through the branches looks like someone I know, the light through these branches looks like a stranger) and the space between (could I sit on the stump I’m imagining for this long?, when was the last time I spent this long seated with my head facing one direction?, when was the last time I spent this long seated with my head facing one direction outside?, how much better must this be to be there instead of here?, how has the concept of nature become so abstracted from [my own, at least] daily life?, what is that phrase about seeing forests and trees?, is this based on that?).

I do well with so-called durational works. Maybe it’s because I meditated as a child or have a very (let’s not say hyper-) active interior life (though my suspicions are that everyone does) or because my durational muscle has been honed through years of grueling training. Whatever the reason, I found Phil Solomon’s Empire to be satisfying, beguiling and eminently watchable. Immediately after the screening, I asked Patrick Friel, the festival’s director, if there would be another chance to watch it. Empire is a 48 minute remake of Andy Warhol’s film of the same name. Instead of, or maybe in the stead of, an indexical film in which the titular State Building takes center stage, Solomon’s video takes place in Grand Theft Auto’s Liberty City. Time passes quickly—two minutes in the game representing an hour in the world—even if slowness is the dominant feeling.

I was going to and still might write through Empire, telling you everything that happens. I might make a newspaper of it and then scan that and put it on a thousand flash drives and throw them from the top of a scale replica of the Empire State Building (from Liberty City). I don’t have it in front of me, so my memory will have to suffice. This is another type of reenactment, of bootlegging, covering or translating. The first thing I remember is the glistening, glittery reflection of the sun in the water that I chased long after it had gone. There is slow but continuous garbage flying toward us: perhaps someone printed out my newspaper. Airplanes appear regularly about an eighth of the way across the screen. They fly a straight line and disappear once they pass by (or seemingly hit) the unharmed protagonist. At a certain point light orbs pass from one side of the screen to the other, while the building abides. The sky changes, drastically. The different buildings turn on and off at different times. The sun. The wind is mostly steady and a truly delicate lull. The moon. I saw no cars. The splotches of fog that signaled incoming weather were terrifying. The rain almost shook me to my core with anticipation. I don’t ever play video games but I feel like I should, like I’m missing some of the critical ways that culture is moving. Sometimes I read about video games so I won’t be an alien in the senior home.

I had seen Empire before, on a monitor. I probably watched for a few minutes. I chuckled because I know about Andy Warhol and know about Phil Solomon and know about video games and know about the new media one-liner and know about duration and know about simulation and am a sensitive viewer with a rich interior life. But I probably watched it for a couple of minutes at most. I am an advocate for the space of the cinema. I think it’s ok for a work of art to be bossy and tell me to sit still and watch the whole thing until the lights come up. No talking, no texting. I also love talking and texting, but I know sometimes that makes listening and watching and being present and letting the mind wander a lot harder. I’m not telling you these things because I don’t think you know them, I’m just telling you them because this is my turn to be bossy. Even if we’re both talking and texting during the production and reception of this text.