Switch To A Mac

The One and Only . . .

Back several years ago, Apple came out with all these switch to Mac ads. As I remember, this girl became a cult phenomenon, mainly due to speculations to her state of mind during the shoot, among other reasons. Now you can watch all forty of the "Apple Switch" ads, plus one extra. While you are there, check out the DJ Q-Bert spot.

The Emergency Biennale

A biennale co-curated by Evelynne Jouanno and Jota Castro will be traveling to an as-yet unnamed location in Grozny, Chechnya ["it could be the large Concert Hall"] in the form of a suitcase filled with "works, projects, and concepts" by 60 different artists. From the look of their list of artists, there seems to be a pretty good selection.

Wishing to react to the phenomenon of proliferation of Biennales, we decided to create the concept of the 'Emergency Biennale', without funds and on an emergency footing. The first Emergency Biennale, in collaboration with the FIDH (International Federation of Human Rights Leagues), was conceived in a geopolitical context which has become so complex that it seemed necessary to mobilize the artists.

...


All kinds of information on Chechnya will also be presented. Mylene Sauloy's and Manon Loizeau's films on daily life and culture of Chechens since the beginning of the first war in 1994 will be screened.

In addition, an internet post with webcam and direct access to the website created for the occasion - WWW.EMERGENCYBIENNALE.ORG- will do its utmost to connect with Chechen partners, to receive images and information on the suitcase and the organization of the exhibition in Grozny. A discussion forum will also offer an opportunity to react and exchange on the subject across and beyond all borders.

A publication is in preparation. It will comprise texts on the situation of human rights, some theoretical articles on art, political and social sciences as well as images of the various artistic projects.

King Tut Two Cents

The flyer for the King Tut show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art came in the mail last week. I have been wondering when it would come ever since I renewed my membership through a LACMA membership representative about a couple of weeks back. I must say that I have been irked by LACMA's frequent rental of its galleries to these blockbuster shows. Since 2003, I believe there were something like four special ticketing events. This means that instead of paying the normal charge for the museum admissions, one has to pay a higher price to see these "wonderful, special shows".

Now we have the King Tut Two show:

The Egyptian government need hundreds of millions of dollars in order to build a new museum near the Pyramids for their archeological finds. A private, for-profit company has stepped in and proposed an internationa tour of the Tutankhamun artifacts, in hopes of repeating the huge success of the first King Tut show, which gave birth to the very phenomena of the museum blockbuster. [from Edward Goldman's Art Talk]

It is all fine and good for the government of Egypt to want to fundraise its project with the showing of the Tutankamun artifacts. It is absurdly rediculous to be asking the prices that they are.

And unlike their previous blockbuster shows of the past couple of years, LACMA does not allow its memberships to view the exhibition free of charge [two tickets per member], unless one is a patron level card holder.

So while I would really like to go see the show [and bring someone who might be interested in seeing this show as I have in the past with other LACMA blockbusters], I will have to think twice whether shelling out twenty dollars [which is better than the thirty for the general audience] is feasible.

One thing that LACMA and the Egyptian governement will definitely miss out with their exorbitant admission price is the fact that the very audience they would like to draw to the show, may be turning away in numbers, for the possibility of not being able to afford the tickets.

Tutankanmun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs
June 16 - Novemeber 15, 2005
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
5905 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
Telephone: (213) 623-4200

Saturday Outing

After a night and morning of heavy rain, the sun finally came out in the afternoon. I had decided against visiting the Los Angeles galleries because of the rain, but with the sight and ray of the sun, I decided to make it a go. But just my luck, by the time I reached Los Angeles, the rain came down heavily again. I was able to snap a view of Downtown amidst the downpour:



However, the trip was rectified by this little view:



My first stop was at Sarah Bain Gallery in Brea. She was showing a nice selection of images by the late Theodore Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss. He is probably someone whom you know well, because his work has so permeated the American popular culture, but seeing these images in a context apart from the published books are something new altogether. One of the thing that disappointed me was the fact that most of the images on show were mostly editioned prints. Even the purported paintings up on the upper gallery were in fact serigraphs of original works. One cannot blame the gallery since it would seem that is how the Seuss Estate allowed these paintings to come into the market. What would have been nice, though, is that I would love to have seen original concept sketches or inked pieces. I noticed that there was one color proof, but since there were so many serigraphs, my memory does not serve me well whether it may have been one also

As I have mentioned before, the sun came out in the afternoon, and that made me decide to make a little trip to Los Angeles. Since it was well into the day, I knew I was not going to be able to see all of the shows that I would like to have seen.

The first stop in L.A. was at Solway Jones Gallery on Wilshire. They have a show, Percussion Music, up, with the always wonderful Steve Roden being a part, along with Tom Marioni and Paul DeMarinis. Tom Marioni's work I became familiar with during lectures at my alma mater in the sound classes run by Charles Boone. Marioni's Drum Brush Drawing is a work on paper whereby the artist "drew" onto fine, white sandpaper with Jazz drum brush, one in each hand, then move the brushes in overlapping patterns to make the gray delicate marks. The sounds, or the percussive, part of this piece is all but imaginary, implied by the artist's actions during the process.

Upon entering the gallery I was caught off guard by the gallery owner, who was enthusiastically explaining away the pieces in the show. One comment that I overheard was how one of Paul DeMirinis' pieces had to be taken out due to the fact that it broke down. That seems to be one of the problems of interactive or mechanical pieces. What does one do as an artist when a piece fail to communicate one's intentions because of mechanical failure.

The show as a whole was strong. Chana Horwitz's 1969 sound sculpture Breather was one of those works that require attention: A clear plastic form inflates and deflates slowly and continuously inside a treated Plexiglass encasement. It was hard to hear the sounds made by the plastic form inside--if there were indeed sounds to be heard--from the constant cars passing by on Wilshire outside. The same was true of Steve Roden's work. Roden is known for producing his lowercase sounds, ones that are often amplified at such low volumes by Roden that it often requires effort to enjoy them.

Of all the other shows that I saw this Saturday, the one that stuck in my mind the most was probably Tara Donovan's solo show at Ace Gallery. Donovan is someone who is not new to Ace Gallery. They have put up a couple of her pieces several times over the past years. If one was to draw similarities between the previous show, as exemplified by the works of Marioni, Roden, and Horwitz, with Donovan's, it is what I will attempt to group as a "lowercase" aesthetic. By this I mean the fragility of Donovan's work seems to have been amplified by the need for extreme attention. In a piece that exemplified this is Toothpicks, 2001. Tens of Thousands of ordinary toothpicks are held together in a minimalist form only by its frictions and the gravity. Looking at it, one wants to get closer, to appreciate its humbleness of achieving such grand gesture through delicate means; but one is also afraid to be so close as to place a small puff of breath onto the sculpture as to possibly cause it to all fall apart.


Tara Donovan. Toothpicks, 2001.


Tara Donovan. Transplanted, 2001. Ripped and stacked tar paper.

In another room, a wall of shining white form undulates wavelike. Upon closer inspection, one realizes that what made up this wall were ordinary drinking straws. In Christopher Knight's review of the show, Knight referenced Tom Friedman's use of humble materials to Donovan's. A large cloud made of Styrofoam cups clings to the upper ceiling of one gallery. The florescent lights filters through the translucent forms. It is hard not to be enthralled by it. Looking at this piece, one has to wonder whether such words as "transcendence" still has a place within the Contemporary Art discourse.


Tara Donovan. Untitled.

With all the shows that I saw in L.A., and the wading through the heavy rain on the way back, I was simply out of it to go to any of the openings that were happening that night. Truthfully, I tend to dislike openings in general since one often has a hard time really looking at the artwork itself. One event that I had hoped to attend but did not was the opening at The Office in Huntington Beach. It would seem that despite the rain, a good number of people showed up.

Mobile Phone Virus Found In Santa Monica

A variant of the first mobile phone virus, Cabir, which was placed into the wild last June, has been found on deivces at a store in Santa Monica. The virus infects the Symbian OS equipped mobile devices with Bluetooth support. The virus utilizes the Bluetooth capability of the phone to spread itself to other mobile phones. Once infected, Cabir blocks all Bluetooth connectivity as well as draining the device battery.

From F-secure:

Cabir is a bluetooth using worm that runs in Symbian mobile phones that support Series 60 platform.

Cabir replicates over bluetooth connections and arrives to phone messaging inbox as caribe.sis file what [sic] contains the worm. When user clicks the caribe.sis and chooses to install the Caribe.sis file the worm activates and starts looking for new devices to infect over bluetooth.

When Cabir worm finds another bluetooth device it willstart sending infected SIS files to it, and lock to that phone so that it won't look [at] other phones even when the target moves out of range.

According to internetnews.com, Symbian phones are not as yet commonplace in the United States; however, it has a market share of 80 percent of global market, with an estimate of 20 million units.

Mobile Phone Virus Found In United States
Cabir Hits U.S.

Wittgenstein's Spelling Dictionary On Sale

Returning from the Great War, Wittgenstein gave away his fortune and became a teacher in rural Austrian schools. I remember my teacher giving an aside during a discussion on Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus about how Buddhist an act it was. And of course he was right. I don't remember much from those lectures accept the first proposition from that work. I must admit I had a hard time understanding Wittgenstein until I found a hypertext version of Tractatus [see below] and had nary a thought about him in many years, with the exception of that one time at the DJ Spooky talk at the MOCA when I saw a younger gentleman reading a Wittgenstein book during the lecture.

Today I came across this article in the British newspaper The Guardian. Apparently, the proof of the 42-page dictionary annotated in Wittgenstein's handwriting is now up for sale at a price tag of £75,000. "I had never realised dictionaries would be so mightily expensive. I think, if I live long enough, I will produce a small dictionary for elementary schools. It appears to me to be an urgent need," Wittgenstein told Dr Ludwig Hansel, an idealistic educationalist he met as a POW in the Italian prison. The article goes on to mention how now that most of Wittgenstein's colleagues and friends are now passing on, there are more and more of the manuscripts are coming onto the market.

There is also an excerpt from the preface of the dictionary in Guardian another article.

Wittgenstein's works online

Philosophical Investigations
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
On Certainty

Moving On In The Post Tsunami Disaster

I ran across this article in the New York Times about a fishing village in the Southern Thailand. It makes one realizes how difficult and heartbreaking it is for the survivors to deal with the lost:

Nam Khem is now a haunted place, echoing with the last moments of terror of the people who died here.

Some of the dead appear in the dreams of those they left behind, or even in their waking moments, and the villagers say some of the survivors have collapsed with grief.

Pharpa Chanmuang [Lost six of 11 family members. She outraced the wave on her motorbike, carrying a child. Her mother, who was also on a motorbike nearby, was pulled under the wave to her death]: "My father just sits and stares. One day he asked me for a suitcase. I said, 'We don't have a suitcase.' He said: 'Go buy one. I want to get away from here.' I don't think he is really leaving, though."

Prayun Chongkraichak:

Most of the men fish, and only half a dozen of some 300 boats survived the waves. "Our real problem is we have no way to make a living," said Prayun Chongkraichak, 38, who runs a small collective of surviving fishermen.

The men busy themselves weaving hundreds of new fish traps, but even if they had boats, they fear that any catch would be contaminated with waste. "We have lost our trust in the sea," Mr. Prayun said.

Am Changkraichok [a 68 years old fisherman]:

"It was fate. If you were meant to die, you died. People visiting here to see friends, or foreigners here on holiday, all were here because their time had come to die. I've lived here all my life but I was spared. How do you explain that? My time had not yet come. When I think like this, it makes me feel better. Nature decides. Things come and things disappear. If you just don't let go, it can make you crazy."

Mr. Changkraichok's sentiment reflected those of mine during the time immediately following the disaster. Everytime when someone asked me how I felt about the disaster, all I could tell them was that it was just a part of the natural cycle of life. Like Mr. Changkraichok mentioned, nature decides, and no one could have predicted how the events could have unfold. It may seems like a very easy way to brush aside such an enormouse event, but one must also understand that it is a very Buddhist way. Everything is part of life, and one has no way of controlling it. The simplest way is to let go.

Saengarun Pholasen:

Every evening now, on an empty beach at the southern edge of Nam Khem, Saengarun Pholasen, 50, a metal worker, brings three cans of beer and sits on the patio of a ruined restaurant. He takes two cans for himself and pours the third into a plastic cup for his best friend, Somsak, one of the victims of the wave.

"Four or five nights ago, I saw him standing by my bed and he said no one was caring for his soul," Mr. Saengarun said. "It wasn't a dream. He was standing there. So I come out here now where we used to drink together after work."

Mr. Saengarun calls out to his friend, "Somsak! Somsak!" to let him know his beer is waiting for him. Then he sits alone watching a huge red sun sink into the sea, one beer in his hand, the plastic cup untouched, as cicadas buzz in the pine trees, the daylight fades away and the entire world around him grows dark.

The U.S. media may no longer cover the disaster in urgency the way they did immediately following the event does not mean that things simply stop happening in those parts of the world affected. My parents read the local Thai newspapers frequently, and there are always items regarding the Tsunami weekly. Most of these news source are in a foreign language, so many may not be able to read the articles. Many good thai newspapers are available online such as The Bangkok Post or The Nation.

The Premiere

It would seem that I am always way behind on most trends. I have come to know myself as more of a spectator than a participant. And even as the spectator, I am not even one who becomes part of the moment. It has not always been this way. I remember as a child playing soccer with my neighbors on the street. There was a certain jouissance that was definitely there in the act, as well as the development of friendships and trust. It was probably the time that I arrived in the States that I became the spectator I mentioned above. To delve into the why this happened would probably mean taking several college courses in Psychoanalysis.

There was a certain time when I had wanted to have some sort of published body of work. The interest goes back--again--to childhood. One memory that pertains to this topic was the time back in elementary school when I had put together a little "zine" of cut-up articles from the children magazine, not at all dissimilar to Highlights, that they sold to us for a couple of baht. I would glued those fragments of the articles, some cartoons, and the like, onto notebook papers, making sure to arrange them in the correct signatures. Done: I would request that my father take the loose leaves to his office to be "put into binding." I had a secret trick that I told my father, on how to correctly staple the leaves so that it had the look of real magazines. The idea was to not simply just staple the folded papers, which would result in a binding that was not straight through the middle of the folds. The way that I suggested to my father was to take an eraser, a pink rubber eraser, say, places it directly underneath the folds, then staple through the crease into the eraser. Done in this way, the staple binding resembles that of the magazine binding.

I used to purchase Factsheet Five on a regular basis when it was still being published in the nineties and early 2000's [when exactly it ceased publication is now vague to me]. Through it I discovered many comics and magazines that I continue to read--or wonder what has become of some--today. I still own a very memorable copy of Bunnyhop, the only copy I ever ordered, that contained articles on the phonographs, Joseph Cornell, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, and other topics. There are, of course, comic book artists whom I discovered because of Factsheet Five: Adrian Tomine | Dan Clowes | Jessica Abel | Megan Kelso. And of course I ran across others like John Porcellino that I totally ignored, but adore today.

The long and short of it, of course, is that I never created my own zine, never published my own mini comics. I was just another spectator, looking from the sideline. So perhaps this is why I'm starting my own blog. Who will actually read it except friends and family, if anyone at all?

All this blogging phenomenon was of course preceded by the "letters to the editor," as Walter Benjamin talked about in his paper:

For centuries a small number of writers were confronted by many thousands of readers. This changed toward the end of the last century. With the increasing extension of the press, which kept placing new political, religious, scientific, professional, and local organs before the readers, an increasing number of readers became writers-at first, occasional ones. It began with the daily press opening to its readers space for "letters to the editor." And today there is hardly a gainfully employed European who could not, in principle, find an opportunity to publish somewhere or other comments on his work, grievances, documentary reports, or that sort of thing. Thus, the distinction between author and public is about to lose its basic character