In this new miniature documentary from the fabulous School Of Life series, Socrates’ ideas about democracy are explored. He favored”intellectual” democracies, but warned against “democracies based upon birth” which he believed could easily lead to demagoguery.
A timely video for us all.
“As an artist you have to fight and survive the wilderness to keep your creative freedom. Creativity is very fragile. It’s like a leaf in the fall; it hangs and when it drops you don’t know where it’s drifting.” –Karel Appel
Karel Appel, (Christiaan Karel Appel April 1921 – 3 May 2006) was a Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet. He started painting at the age of fourteen and studied at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam in the 1940s. He was one of the founders of the avant-garde movement Cobra in 1948.
Continue reading THE REALITY OF KAREL APPEL, 1962, 15 minutes
SUBMIT TO ME is underground filmmaker Richard Kern’s third film, from 1985. Featuring Lydia Lunch, Cruella DeVille, Phil Forrest, Audrey Rose, Lung Leg, Brian Moran, Margie, Margo Day, Chris, Clint Ruin, Tom Turner, Amy Turner and
Richard Kern. Music by the Butthole Surfers.
“He (Kern) first came to underground prominence as part of the underground cultural explosion in the East Village of New York City in the 1980s, with erotic and experimental films like The Right Side of My Brain and Fingered, which featured underground personalities of the time such as Lydia Lunch, David Wojnarowicz, Sonic Youth, Kembra Pfahler, Karen Finley and Henry Rollins. Like many of the musicians around him, Kern had a deep interest in the aesthetics of extreme sex, violence and perversion and was one of the leading lights of the movement called Cinema of Transgression, a term coined by Nick Zedd.” – wikipedia
In 1985, the late Chris Burden created a piece entitled Beam Drop for Art Park in New York. The piece, involving a ‘performance’ of sorts while ultimately producing an art object as well, signals Burden’s transition to sculpture.
“Sixty enormous steel L-beams fall a dizzying 100 to 120 feet from a crane into a foundation of wet cement. They stick up like awkward, hostile pillars, clanging as they crowd together in a bulky clump. “Using chance as an integral element in art-making has historical precedence in the works of such renowned artists as Jackson Pollock, Marcel Duchamp, and John Cage,” wrote Burden in a statement on the piece. “However, most artists of monumental steel sculpture have not embraced randomness as the essential component of their work.”-Interview Magazine Continue reading CHRIS BURDEN :: BEAM DROP
The late Chris Burden discusses the making and showing of his famous and subversive “Commercials” which he exhibited by purchasing air time on local television stations. Continue reading CHRIS BURDEN :: THE TV COMMERCIALS, MOCA TV
In this lecture, Professor Paul Fry explores the semiotics movement through the work of its founding theorist, Ferdinand de Saussure. The relationship of semiotics to hermeneutics, New Criticism, and Russian formalism is considered. Key semiotic binaries–such as langue and parole, signifier and signified, and synchrony and diachrony–are explored. Considerable time is spent applying semiotics theory to the example of a “red light” in a variety of semiotic contexts. Continue reading AN INTRODUCTION TO SEMIOTICS & STRUCTURALISM, a lecture by Paul Fry, Yale University
Bay area based, internationally-shown artist Clare Rojas works in a wide variety of media: painting, installations, video, street art, and children’s books. Her work has been considered to have been emblematic of San Francisco’s Mission School, “a loose group working in San Francisco in the nineties who shared an affinity for old wood, streetscapes, and anything raw or unschooled. They take their inspiration from the urban, bohemian, “street” culture of the Mission District and are strongly influenced by mural and graffiti art, comic and cartoon art, and folk art forms such as sign painting and hobo art. These artists are also noted for use of non-traditional artistic materials, such as house paint, spray paint, correction fluid, ballpoint pens, scrapboard, and found objects.”-clare rojas, wikipedia; mission school, wikipedia; dana goodyear, a ghost in the family, the new yorker
Rojas’ work referenced: “…West Coast modernism, Quaker art, Native American textiles, Byzantine mosaics, and Outsider art, Rojas tells stories through painting, installations, and video. Often her narratives concern relationships between the sexes and among humans and animals, in their struggle to find harmony and balance. Many works quietly celebrate the traditional strengths of women, depicting them like Russian nesting dolls in conventional roles without critical undertones or hints of sexual exploitation. Quilt-like patterns in vivid colors accentuate the folk art-inspired scenes present in some works, while simple geometric forms and stark interiors evoke Bauhaus design in others.” -clare rojas, biography, artsy.net
Over the past 8 or so years, her figurative, folk art-toned work has given way to pure geometric abstractions. Her paintings are made with oil paint on both linen and paper.
Rojas also plays guitar and banjo under the stage name Peggy Honeywell. As Peggy Honeywell, she wore a long wig and flouncy calico dresses, and sometimes, because she was shy, a paper bag over her head. She has released two albums: Faint Humms (2005) and Green Mountain (2006)
Daughter are an indie folk band from England. From the album, If You Leave, 2013.
from the scottish post-rock band’s third album, Rock Action, 2001
from the album: Mono – Holy Ground: NYC Live With The Wordless Music Orchestra (2010)
MONO is a japanese post-rock band, formed in 1999 in Tokyo. Pure As Snow was originally recorded on the 2009 concept album by Mono, Hymn To The Immortal Wind. The album was recorded and mixed in June and November 2008 at the Electrical Audio Recording Studios, Chicago, Illinois, by Steve Albini. A music video for “Follow the Map” was released to promote the album. There is a short story enclosed with the CD to go along with the music. Continue reading MONO :: PURE AS SNOW 2010
The Incubator 