Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Robert Rauschenberg: 1925-2008
Robert Rauschenberg
(born Milton Ernst Rauschenberg; October 22, 1925 – May 12, 2008) was an American artist who came to prominence in the 1950s transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art.
Rauschenberg is perhaps most famous for his "Combines" of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations. While the Combines are both painting and sculpture, Rauschenberg has also worked with photography, printmaking, papermaking, and performance. Rauschenberg had a tendency to pick up the trash that interested him on the streets of New York City and bringing it back to his studio to use it in this works. He claimed he "wanted something other than what I could make myself and I wanted to use the surprise and the collectiveness and the generosity of finding surprises. And if it wasn't a surprise at first, by the time I got through with it, it was. So the object itself was changed by its context and therefore it became a new thing."
Robert Rauschenberg
Bed
1955
mixed mediums, ca. 75 x 32 x 8 in.
Museum of Modern Art
1955
mixed mediums, ca. 75 x 32 x 8 in.
Museum of Modern Art
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Kayo Dot is…
…an American avant garde group that was formed in 2003 by Toby Driver. They released their debut album Choirs of the Eye on John Zorn's Tzadik Records label that year.The music of Kayo Dot bridges several genres, from heavy metal to classical music. Their songs involve complex instrumentation (composed by singer and frontman Driver). They are substantially longer than typical rock songs, often ranging from 8 to 15 minutes in length.
Tzadik's descriptive label on that album reads: "Kayo Dot powerfully integrates elements of modern classical composition with the layers of guitars and vocals more common to rock and metal. With a compositional map that is strict in form yet malleable in execution, Kayo Dot uses a vast array of instrumentation to create an exciting convergence of violence and serenity."
Black Postcards
A wickedly honest and unsparing account of a journey through the music world-the artistry and the hustle, the effortless success and the high living as well as the bitter pills and self-inflicted wounds-by a brilliant and fearless participant-observer, Black Postcards is absurdly rich in rewards for anyone who was ever in a band or just took an interest in indie music over the past twenty years-a sort of Kitchen Confidential written by a different species of front man. Black Postcards also captures what has happened, for good and ill, to the entire ecosystem of popular music over this time of radical change, a time when categories like "indie" and "alternative" started to morph beyond all recognition. Rolling Stone called Dean Wareham's band Luna "the greatest band you've never heard of " and named its album Penthouse one of its 100 greatest rock albums of our time. Black Postcards is also about what it's like to have to pretend to be civil as you answer the same helpful question over and over again, "Why aren't you guys more famous?" Why indeed?SOURCE: PenguinPress
Monday, May 12, 2008
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Bloody well told!
When people think of "Activism", most envision some form of awareness program, protest or public disobedience. While these forms of Activism are functional and important, they often only operate on a limited level, usually failing to address root causes. In fact, our whole society tends to address any and all social problems from a superficial standpoint.
SOURCE: zeitgeistmovie.com
In The Year of the Pig
Simultaneously nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary and the subject of bomb threats and innumerable editorial attacks, In the Year of the Pig became a rallying cry for the growing anti-Vietnam War movement and a sensation whenever and wherever it screened. In the Year of the Pig remains not only a great document of the era but also a sad and still relevant meditation on the hubris of power.Print courtesy of the UCLA Film and Television Archive.
SOURCE: Film Society of Lincoln Center
Portishead: 3rd times' the charm
What Barrow and Gibbons have cooked up now ain’t no party, ain’t no disco, ain’t no fooling around.SOURCE: PASTE
Friday, April 25, 2008
Village Voice Poetry Roundup
Last week's annual Poets House Showcase held in the West Village displayed more than 2,000 poetry books and related materials published in 2007. As impressive and even overwhelming as that number might seem, it represents a sliver—as any overview must—of poetry's current state, a large portion of which also exists off the page in readings and classrooms, on the Internet, and via word of mouth. [READ MORE]SOURCE: VillageVoice
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Trust your tribes
In the company's own words:Praized Media is a startup company working on a web-based application that will enable you to find and discover local places and merchants with help from people you can trust. It’s also a tool that will structure local conversations within blogs and a new platform for local search providers to generate leads from the untapped social media market.
SOURCE: PraizedMedia
Monday, April 21, 2008
He who speak to fork tongue
Pitchfork invited El Guincho to submit to a guest list column. See how he answered the extremely banal questions.[CLICK HERE]
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