this is nowhere (december 1st)

2 weeks until the show opens.

An abbreviated list of Books I've given as gifts over the years:

The Book of Imaginary Beasts
Invisible Cities
Things That Fall From The Sky
As I lay Dying
Fictions
Birds of America
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

roman signer on the brain

close your eyes and .....

This is James Casabere. He creates these miniatures of stark and desolate spaces which are then photographed and printed (in large sizes..). I haven't seen one in person. I just ran into his work for the first time a few weeks ago so I'm not familiar with it at all.

july and it's hot

This image is incredible. I'm not sure the distance from the explosion that it's shot from, nor the altitude of its top (10thousand to15thousandfeet?).

Sabre-rattlers out there take note, and be wary of your war mongering.

I just began reading Kevin Brockmeier's new collection of short fiction, The View From the Seventh Layer. After Things That Fall From The Sky, and A Brief History of the Dead I've developed a real appetite for his work.

In an effort to save cash, more frequent trips to the Library have temporarily added these books to the coffee table:

1)Phaidon's SCULPTURE TODAY

2)The Architectural Unconscious (James Casabere + Glen Seator)

3)The New Urban Landscape , edited by Richard Martin

4)PAUL McCarthy, published by the New Museum of Contemporary Art , NY

a great list...I'm suddenly very interested in James Casabere's photographed miniature spaces, especially the flooded ones. I'll have to look for an image to post here.

this is nowhere too

I've been thinking about the precise center of nowhere.

(more) Minor Transgressions....

We saw Michel Gondry's new film last night, Be Kind Rewind. A lite comedy about two videostore goofs who ,after filming short and glib low-budge remakes of well-known movies , reclaim their town's past and in turn their own. Propoganda for relational aesthetics, and a democratization of the art making process, the film insists - as does so much of community based art - that there is redemtion through art, and that feel-good conclusions are an inherent product of these all-inclusive formats. Gondry's film falls subject to the fluff that dooms so many egalitarian / community participation based projects: It is overly sentimental and sappy.
Despite moments of genuinely funny moments, it wasn't Gondry's best.

And, a last word on relational aesthetics. I just don't buy so much of this kind of work that seeks to branch out and include "everyone", that seeks individual epiphany and growth via communal experience. Harrell Fletcher, Miranda July, and all others alike, I don't buy it. Their comes across as genuinely insincere and, frankly, lazy. I'll admit that the organizational abilities of these and like-minded artists is applause worthy, but their works (and i realze i'm generalizing here..) tend to leave me feeling empty, uninspired, bored.

and to combat said boredom, I give you the above....