Music Videos @ Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati

Another visit in Cincinnati was to the Contemporary Arts Center, which for a while was the only building in the U.S. designed by Pritzker-prize-winning, Rem Koolhaus-protege, Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. From wiki: “A winner of many international competitions, theoretically influential and groundbreaking, a number of Hadid’s winning designs were initially never built: notably, The Peak [...]

Nick Cave Soundsuits @ Cincinnati Museum of Art

We made a little Spring Break visit to Cincinnati this week, and one highlight was the show of Nick Cave “soundsuits” at the Cincinnati Museum of Art.  This is not the Australian musician Nick Cave of the Bad Seeds but the African-American, Missouri-born artist.  (At first I thought, geez, if you have the same name [...]

Brilliance/ Craziness of the St Louis City Museum

We had a great visit with friends to St Louis this weekend.  The zoo was fantastic… the Botanical Gardens amazing: we especially enjoyed a temporary exhibit up at the moment on “Extreeme Tree-houses” — at least a dozen “tree houses” made by artists, these not up in trees but around the bases.  All enchanting/engaging in [...]

“Are we truly the crocodiles?”: Herzog’s “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” at IU

We were very excited to catch what was apparently the first commercial/non-festival showing of Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams in the U.S.  This showing was introduced by Jonathan Sehring, president of IFC Entertainment, which is distributing the film.  He buttered us up in a nice way, effusing that “This is one of the best, [...]

100 Acres, Goose the Market

Indianapolis has always seemed like a surprisingly unexciting city for its size (pushing a million), even if I’m glad we live an hour away from the airport and a big-city mall, Trader Joe’s, etc.  (We’re sort of sick of the Children’s Museum, but it is very good.)  But lately the city has seemed to be [...]

“Catfish” and “The Shop Around the Corner”: Opening the Envelope

We watched Catfish the other day.  It would make a good double feature with Banksy’s (fascinating) Exit Through the Gift Shop — both movies feel very of-the-moment in what they do with documentary form and what they say about 21st century mediated identity.  Catfish is hard to discuss without giving too much away.  It’s about [...]

Kenneth Anger at the IU Cinema

I’ve been looking forward to Kenneth Anger‘s visit to the IU Cinema for quite a while.  The 300 tickets for the evening showing of some of his films sold out at least a month ago, so I was not the only one.  My understanding of Anger was actually pretty received and second-hand.  I own his [...]

Montreal: Bagels, Otto Dix

So, I am not going to write about my entire trip to Montreal now, just two details. Montreal Bagels.  I learned about the Montreal Bagel phenomenon a month or two ago when I read a review of a new “Montreal-style” bagel place in NYC.  Hmm, cannot seem to find that review now but here is [...]

Valentines

Today’s project was making valentines for school (classmates and teachers).  I gave them a big pep talk about how much better homemade ones are — they seemed to buy it. Target was predictably disappointing.  There’s a whole section of the store now dedicated to Valentine’s Day stuff, but no colored construction paper to be found [...]

Funerals and Bis Poles

I hadn’t been to one in several years, but this week I went to funerals on Friday and Saturday nights: Friday night here in town, a colleague who was murdered, Saturday night in NYC, a relative, younger than me, who died suddenly.  It was very weird to be in that funeral space, literally and psychologically, [...]