MonkeyTown & ISCP Williamsburg

Went to ISCP openstudios. Nice & rough new location in Williamsburg. Much better then the terrible building where it used to be, and where I stayed when I was there. But quite disappointing on the presentations.
Seen one video I liked a lot. By a group from Bologna called zimmerfrei. Street theater like video. Simple, smart & beautiful.
After that we went to this bar Monkey Town that has a nice little theater in the back. Many places with nice little backspace for event here in W'burg.
Tonight there where 4 computer/video performances. More or less as boring as the everywhere. But with a greater variety of dullness that it was actually quite interesting. Earlier this year after I had visited the SonicAct festival in Amsterdam, I came with this short theory; A group of people are working in a cultural-niche. Can be anything. Everyone of them wants to be the best. One easy way, to get there is to go extremely radical. To go radical you exclude as many rules as possible, until you only have the essential left. Everybody wants to becomes radical. After a while being radical they all end up at exactly the same dead end (or full circle). At that moment radical-art has become folk-art with all its laws and rules again.
The laptop music scene is a perfect example of that. (As graffiti, painting, video, comics, movies, etc,etc,etc)
But to my surprise yesterday the visuals where much more divers and better then what I've seen over the years in Amsterdam. Especially Naval Cassidy, with analogue live stuff
and
Jeremy Slater with very dark road movie style simple footage.

Annie Gosfield/Roger Kleier at The Stone

After Badiou lecture I went to my favorite music place The Stone. Hidden in a old corner shop on Avenue C. Sitting there I realized the place must be about the same size as my apartment without walls. There's like 25 chairs, no bar, no desk, no stage and the toilet is behind the stage. It's mainly Tzadik Zorn stuff playing here. Like yesterday I saw this; Was OK.
Roger Kleier (guitar) Annie Gosfield (keyboards) Trevor Dunn (bass) Ches Smith (drums, percussion)
Annie and Lauren Radnofsky perform "Four Roses" for cello and sampler, followed by El Pocho Loco, Roger Kleier's new quartet, with an emphasis on noisy guitar instrumentals and improvisation. The premiere of the group features Roger Kleier, Annie Gosfield (composer), Trevor Dunn and Ches Smith.