herpes simplex

so today i had my teach for america interview, 'twas quite interesting. i was pretty nervous during my sample lesson but whatever, i did good in the actual interviewing. the teach for america employees (both ex-teachers in the program) were kinda scary, in a "it's so great to see all of your interest in joining our movement!" kind of way. i mean, it's definitely for a good cause, but i still felt like i was joining a cult.

some of the sample lessons were frightening though... one girl said hers was intended for "pre-kindergarden" (not an option as far as i know) and proceeded to hand out barnyard animal finger puppets and have us sing "old mcdonald." in the course of doing this she noted that "sheep are important because [something garbled about europe and milk and cows] and their wool is where we get the cotton to make our clothes! [chucks puppet at someone] and we eat their meat. " she's graduating from BU. of course. then another girl had a little lesson about the freedoms granted to us by our constitution which basically amounted to we have the liberty and freedom to work a job, buy a house or a car, and have a family. mmhmm. of course, i made jokes about my hair using double negatives and then quoted george orwell (shut up, it was good example).

if anyone wants some mp3s of jonny greenwood's performance at the ether festival that just took place in london (two totally awesome instrumental pieces--i'm talking like steve reich kinda good--as well as two radiohead tracks) just let me know and i'll gmail them to you.

ALSOALSOALSO!!!! did anyone know that ubuweb has classic avant-garde films you can download and watch? check it out--kenneth anger, un chien andalou, john cage, guy debord, marcel duchamp, 37 short fluxus films, isidore isou, laszlo moholy-nagy, robert morris & stan vanderbeek, robert rauschenberg, man ray, hans richter, harry smith, and jack smith! granted they're probably low-quality rips, but talk about good stuff--holy shit!

(also, mick jagger's soundtrack to 'invocation of my demon brother'. can we award ubuweb the Best Website in the World Award yet?)

oh yes, for katie/non-blogger-users/ghosts/government agents out there who might be reading this, i made comments open to anyone. use that shit!

(ps. more MU.)

partial truth
Originally uploaded by theqman.

if only all flags said 'partial truth'... just one more reason to go to the hamburger bahnhof i guess!

don't know if y'all heard about this: banksy hangs his own art in four big new york museums. brilliant. check out his website, he's definitely one of the better graffiti/stencil artists going.

i've always been a big fan of the radiohead documentary meeting people is easy, despite everyone else whinging and whining about how dull it is. i don't know if this proves it's good or not, but some guy wrote a paper called Modernist Thought and Practice in the Documentary Meeting People is Easy by Grant Gee. my first reaction to the introduction (esp. his tenets of modernism) was 'ummm, duh, it's radiohead' but hey, at least someone besides myself likes the film.

::We watched a bunch of Bruce Connor in American Independent Film today: Mongoloid, America is Watching, A Movie, Vivian, Take the 5:10 to Dreamland, and Valse Triste. Finally, Ray Carney is coming through on the avant-garde tip. Too bad he never looks at me during class--I actually have things to say now, damn it!

::Drew Daniel's Musique Concrete Smash Hits.

::The Korsakow System. Apparently lets you do real-time image manipulation stuff... I'm in the computer lab so I can't test it out right now, but hey, it's a free download...

a thousand years of immortality
Originally uploaded by theqman.

this picture is of a fantastically useful and not-at-all-gimmicky construction right beside the memorial to all the people who died trying to escape east berlin. think about it when you're over there, jess. immortality for only a few euros!

also, here is some hamster music. i am somewhat suspicious of a hoax, but only because the music sample he's got up there is actually pretty good. (via pitchfork. did you know drew daniel is reviewing tracks for them now?)

big pointy
Originally uploaded by theqman.

i'm gonna keep posting photos of berlin until jess leaves. why not?

this one goes up in dedication to last night's drunken conversation with katie and nicole about how dominant societies seem to be the ones who build the best big pointy things. there's a definite continuity from churches getting ridiculously huge up until, oh, say, the 20th century, when we start seeing things like the washington monument, skyscrapers, tv towers, and so on...

prague (as always) is a good example of this all in one city. the two dominant figures of the skyline are the giant st. vitus cathedral in the castle complex up on the hill, and across the river, the massive tv tower finished by the communists in the late 1980s. interestingly, i can't seem to find a picture anywhere where you can see both of them.

in other news: subterranean cinema has pulled the text of amos vogel's film as subversive art. apparently there's going to be a re-release, and vogel requested it be taken down. i can't find a damn bit of information anywhere else about the book being reprinted (internet, you FAIL me today!) but let's cross our fingers, i guess. maybe he's even adding a chapter or two on recent subversive stuff!

parting shot: totally kick-ass art blog. she seems to have a guest poster of late, but scroll down and read the entries from March 13th and 14th. the archives ain't bad either--i found the site when i was googling vito acconci's the red tapes. awesome.

i hear a green world
Originally uploaded by theqman.

speaking of bruce nauman... that's roya from my study abroad program and her boyfriend jackson inside a little nauman construction in berlin.

the hamburger bahnhof is awesome. i don't know if i ever stressed to everyone how amazing what we saw there really was. click on the link and read about the freidrich christian flick collection (click the picture then 'collection').

what we weren't quite aware of at the time beyond the level of rumor* was that the whole thing is rather controversial--apparently flick's grandfather was a well-know nazi war criminal. unfortunately the magazine that the museum administration put together to talk about the various issues at hand is all in german (you can read some general info on the site under 'newspaper'), but handy me found a very general BBC article and a much better one on artnet that interviews some artists as well.
in other weird offspring-of-a-notorious-person news, dario argento's daughter asia has a movie showing at the new york underground film festival called The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things; the trailer is worth checking out. she appears to be an experienced actress (judging by the length of her imdb entry); mostly french films and stuff directed by her father (go figure), although she did star opposite vin diesel in XXX! i remember someone very booby slinking around in the adverts but there are always slinky booby people in spy movies i guess. it also looks like this is the seventh thing she's directed, which could of course be a good or a bad omen, depending on how you look at it. whatever. it's got marilyn manson in it. boringpopculturenamecheckingwoohoo!

*actually roya might have known, i'm a dumbass though and just enjoyed the hell out of it.

oh my fuck, did i ever go on a binge. i wish i could be more interesting, but the list format is the only possible way of conveying the full extent of the whole thing. ergo:

Odd Obsession/Facets:
Super 8 1/2 (1993) -- Bruce LaBruce
Cremaster Pt. 1 (1995) -- Matthew Barney
The Servant (1963) -- Joseph Losey
Alucarda (1975) -- Juan Lopez Moctezuma
House (Hausu) (1977) -- Nobuhiko Obayashi

Video Data Bank:
Baldessari Sings Lewitt (1972) -- John Baldessari
Weather Diary 3, A Rocky Interlude, 500 Millibars to Ecstasy, Return to the House of Pain (1987, 1990, 1989, 1988) -- George Kuchar
Learn Where the Meat Comes From -- Suzanne Lacy
EVOL (1985) -- Tony Oursler
Face Off, The Red Tapes, Water Ways: Four Saliva Studies (1972, 1976, 1971) -- Vito Acconci
Chris Burden (documentary, 1991) -- Peter Kirby
John Cage: Conversations (interview, 1978) -- Artists TV Network
Joe Dimaggio, The Waltons, When I Was A Monster, I Am Crazy and You're Not Wrong (1991, 1996, 1996, 1997) -- Anne McGuire
Imitations of Life (2003) -- Mike Hoolboom
annnnd
Surveying the First Decade, Program 2: Investigations of the Phenomenal World
Black and White Tapes (excerpt, 1972) -- Paul McCarthy
Stamping In The Studio (excerpt, 1968) -- Bruce Nauman
Double Vision (1971) -- Peter Campus
Boomerang (1974) -- Richard Serra
Island Song (1976) -- Charlemagne Palestine
Cycles of 3's and 7's (excerpt, 1976) -- Tony Conrad
The Children's Tapes (1974) -- Terry Fox
Soundings (1979) -- Gary Hill
Lightning (1976) -- Paul and Marlene Kos
Sweet Light (1977) -- Bill Viola

for what it's worth, i did see a fair bit of the city as well, and had a talk with an admissions person at the SAIC.

PART 1.11: BIG FAT HEAD DAY

i don't want it to seem like i'm chronically reading myself into smart people here (see part 4), but i can't help but quoting a bit of that soft pink truth invisible jukebox and noting that it's pretty much the exact same trajectory i've followed over the past, oh, six or seven years. creepy.

"But I will say that between punk rock and academica for me there is a continuity. When I discovered punk rock I was also discovering a set of critical attitudes towards the society around me which was the key to unlock something. When I discovered certain forms of critical theory like psychoanalysis or Situationist-inflected Marxism, these are keys to unlock what's around you, to criticise ideologies, to criticise gender. What's implicit in a lot of punk rock is a critical stance."

see, i've been fooling myself into believing that i'm smarter than everyone else by submersing myself in media that serve to reinforce that belief for a long time now!

ps. drew daniel has a really goofy laugh.

PART 187: ON AN UNDERCOVER COP

a bunch of people who post on internet message boards about letting music completely bitchwhip their entire lives has created a blog wherein said people post, a track at a time, an entire mix cd. they're working on a third right now. i've put together the first two, and goddamn if there aren't some fucking amazing songs. like grace jones getting a bit lost herself in joy division's "she's lost control." dance/funk/disco weirdness. yes.

the entire effect reminds me very much of the four tet "late night tales" mix, although very much off on a different tangent, but nevertheless a very good thing. yes.

and now that i look at the tracklist of that four tet album--i'm missing the last two songs, including one by manitoba! yes.

PART 4: ZING! SPIFF! POW! SPLAT!

hmm. postmodernism totally rips off dada.

"However, there is one difference between the original Dadaists and these particular postmodernists (or “neo-Dadaists”, as Richter would call them). The original Dadaists all believed that modern culture had become empty and insane, and by tuning into this insanity, they themselves might bring about positive change (Richter 1965; Rubin 1967). For many, Dada was characterized as an attempt to transcend “...the world of stale conventions in society to again face the irrational chaos of life and answer to the nothingness of existence” (Rumold 1996: 205). They saw the world as irrational and mad, but believed that this was acceptable, as long as we all realized and accepted this condition (Dachy 1990; Richtor 1965). This may seem arrogant, but at least it was optimistic. Baudrillard and Lyotard do not share such optimism. They believe that something irreplaceable has been lost, and culture has advanced into a state of implosion and/or emptiness from which it cannot escape (Baudrillard 1988; Connor 1989; Lyotard 1984; Kellner 1990; Youngblood 1989). I argue that this pessimism is ultimately rooted in conservatism."

this has always, in my admittedly peripheral contact with the whole issue, kinda driven me insane. i wrote a whole paper on white noise basically complaining about how people insisted on reading at some sort of bleak empty catastrophe scary pomo thingie, which i think totally misses delillo's point, because he recognizes there's no disconnect in history (i mean, think about it for one fucking second--actually, think about that one fucking second. when exactly was it that history ended? how do you actually prove something like that? oh what's the use, i'll probably read something next week that'll totally change my mind...)

PART 2: DEFENDING THE ISLAND OF NUCLEAR CHILDREN

it is totally not fair that books cost so much sometimes.

examples.

Crisis in the Arts: The History of Dada. Stephen C. Foster, ed.
Circles of Confusion. Hollis Frampton.
Andy Warhol's Interview.

the relative inexpensiveness of certain books makes my wallet leak.

examples. (aka "purchased")
Dada: Art and Anti-Art. Hans Richter.
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol.
Writing on Drugs. Sadie Plant. hardcover. 4 bucks. drugs!
The Writings of Marcel Duchamp. The publisher's website is the only place I could find any info but it was enough to sell me.

And the new Mars Volta because boy do I love me my overblown pomposity in fantastically rocking formats. mars volta, i think, is what hair metal might actually be if it were good.

PART 10: IN WHICH ethan TALKS ABOUT PRETTY THINGS HE SAW ONE TIME AND explodes

animation at the harvard film archive was pretty sweet. since this info doesn't seem to be posted online, i run to the rescue:

Masters of Animation: The Dreaming Mind
This evening of masterful animation shorts, curated by VES visiting animator Lorelei Pepi, is pulled from both the Harvard Film Archive and private collections. These films explore one of the prime aesthetics of the animated film: the fantastical imagination that exists beyond conscious reality. Each film goes into a different realm of the unreal yet present, the unseen yet sense, the unconscious yet known, all pulled into a realized manifestation through the animated moment.

La Picolla Russia. Directed by Gianliuigi Toccafondo, Italy 2003, 16mm, color, 17 min.
Pas de Deux. Directed by Norman McLaren, Canada 1967, 35mm, 13 min.
The Trap. Directed by Amy Kravitz, US 1988, 16mm, color, 6 min.
Street of Crocodiles. Directed by the Brothers Quay, UK 1986, color, 20 min.
Rhinoceros. Directed by Jan Lenica, Poland 1963, 35mm, color, 11 min.
Tale of Tales. Directed by Yuri Norstein, USSR 1979, 16mm, color, 29 min.

I will try to be a good boy and write some comments for these later.

don't you fear, little brendan, i have many devious ideas for the corruption of your sanity. oh yes.

like, for example, making a list of all the shows that're going off for the rest of the semester! the ones in bold are the one's i'm definitely converging upon, with and despite all my attendant manias.

thu. 7. apr.
(middle east) sole / pedestrian / dosh

tue. 12. apr.
(paradise) m83 / ulrich schnauss

sun. 17. apr.
(middle east) animal collective / ariel pink

thu. 21. apr.
(middle east) melt banana

tue. 26. apr.
(middle east) dizzee rascal

sat. 30. apr.
(mfa) the books

mon. 2. may
(tt's) mice parade / boom bip

tue. 3. may.
(middle east) caribou / junior boys / russian futurists
ALTERNATIVE:
wed. 4. may.
(bowery ballroom, nyc) same lineup, with four tet
OR:
wed. 6. may.
(north six, brooklyn) four tet, prefuse 73, battles, and beans

wed. 6. may.
(tt's) out hud / hella / certainly sir

sun. 8. may.
(middle east) mountain goats

mon. 9. may.
(paradise) autechre

thu. 12. may.
(tt's) stereo total / les georges leningrad

mon. 16. may.
(avalon) gang of four

wed. 18. may.
(tt's) monade (laetitia sadier)

also, beware beheading hoaxes, for in many cases they lead you to dark places like ogrish.com (because you can't resist clicking on the link that says "CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE EXTREMELY GRAPHIC VIDEO") and you end up spending an hour or two watching people get killed and maimed in various different ways.

see, i told you i gots plans.