Emily Harvey Foundation & Guess Jeans

A Long time ago a very nice lady Emily Harvey started a gallery for her Fluxus friends artists. She bought a old building in 1985 from French Fluxus Artist Jean Dupuy on Broadway and decided to show only Fluxus, mail art and performance art. People like;
Olga Adorno, Eric Andersen, Ay-o, Brian Buczak, Philip Corner, Jean Dupuy, Henry Flynt, Robert Filliou, Ken Friedman, Albert Fine, Geoffrey Hendricks, Christer Hennix, Dick Higgins, Ray Johnson, Joe Jones, Milan Knizak, Alison Knowles, George Maciunas, Jackson Mac Low, Larry Miller, Alain Arias-Misson, Charlotte Moorman, Nam June Paik, Ben Patterson, Takako Saito, Carolee Schneemann, Daniel Spoerri, Berty Skuber, Anne Tardos, Ben Vautier, Yoshi Wada, Bob Watts, Emmett Williams, Christian Xatrec, LaMonte Young and Marian Zazeela.
Now Emily is dead. But the building is still here and curator Christian Xatrec works here in the spirit of fluxus. It has become a foundation, with also a space in Venice.
A few of these artists live in the building now. Nice old artists that did crazy stuff, but no money. And now the best part of this story; The ground floor space is being rented by Guess Jeans (the rent is probably between 30 and 40.000$ a month). Making not only these senior fluxus artists live for free, but also getting a allowance!

DREAMS by Jim Shaw

Found the perfect bed reading book; This book was first published in 1995 and has now just been reprinted.
I saw a big show of Shaw a year ago at Metro Pictures and totally felt for his work.
He's been around for a long time, but not that well known. His work is very divers; always a slow career.
These dreams are from 87 - 95. But the drawings date from 93 - 95.
Like most dream art; To be taken in small doses.
3 or 4 Dali's I can enjoy. But a whole museum of Dali, becomes like a amusement Park. Makes me visual immune . That's also a bit my problem with the famous dutch dream drawer Paul Kleemann.
But here in this book, the simple texts by the artist guide you through his brain after-closing time. On the right side of the page the dream is written down in the very fragmented way dream are. On the other side of the page the visualisation of the dream in precise pencil.
A real joy to go from text to drawing and vise versa. Perfect artistbook. This book is cheap, rich , funny and thick.

'Kunst ligt op straat' Lower East Side

Homage to Peter Luining's Amsterdam blog..

obama-fatigue? Hell no!

Michelle Obama by Elisabeth Payton (NY art scene-society art star) at The New Museum (painting is a few days old)
(sorry for the bad pic ; "NO PICTURES!!" a guard shouted at me)(anyway, the painting is not that great)
(I prefer the Sid Vicious looking like a cute, gay, fashion doll)
(more on this show soon..)


Some soundbites from todays NPR radio.
(the word Obama is heard at least once every 5 minutes)

'don't ask what Obama can do for you, but ask what... etc,etc'
"New progressive patriotism."

"copies of last wednesday's NYTimes go for 1000$ on ebay"

T-shirts, hats, jumpers, posters, etc, etc. Everybody adores him.
Even Bush & McCain love him. It's great.
He's the new Santa Claus

1th chelsea strole/3 great shows

Richard Prince at Gagosian. (I was not allowed to take pictures; (this was the opening) ;I can tell you; the work is very good. Using collage & paint to make trashy Mademoiselles d'avigon's
(with exception of the car; that's pretty lame) (artists should never paint on cars)






Olaf Breuning at MetroPictures; Very silly, smart, overwhelming












Matthew Monahan at Anton Kern;

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.