Tordiment! Tordiment!

This very day a tordiment shall commence which will decide forever who is the true cool guy - a noble, courageous audio collagist striving to bring humanity's listening habits in line with today's amazing future, or a couple of bitter punk-rock fashionistos wallowing in a phony nostalgia for a cultural moment that never really existed? Come cheer for your team. There will be blood! I mean wine.

PS: Friday Feb 15 1-3 PM
The Prospectus at The Pacific Design Center
Ste B226 8687 Melrose Ave
Bring a picnic luncheon and floor cushion
(Current show "Paper" includes work by 2 of tordimenters.)

Narcissus Rex

Had some time to kill in my DIY printmaking class and the subject was Valentine's Day cards...

A Night at The Bellagio

 ...with Chihuly, Warhol, Rafat, and Renoir! Plus Chinese Flower Children! Tang Dynasty disco ball horse by Venue Arts. This is like what I imagine that kid in Equus is seeing! "...and Fleckwus spoke out of his chinkle-chankle, saying Behold!"

Actually I'm guessing all the Chinoiserie is by Venue Arts, including the big snake. I couldn't quite hear, but I think Pasha was saying "Get the hell out of the shot, kid - this is MY scene!" Fake Warhol polaroid portrait of the author in front of fake Factory wall on it's way...

They wouldn't let me take pix inside the show, which has a silver double Elvis, a silver Liz taylor, a dance step pattern, and much later work, including an awesome diamond dust portrait of Georgia O'Keefe. But dig these two Warhol/chocolate intertextualizations. Blow this one below up to read the amended Warholisms- "14 minutes longer than this chocolate bar will last!"

First Videos of 'patasonic Research

Christian Cummings performing a folky translation of his song Everything is Industrial Looking from his free DL LP "Slavebation" at the 2nd Launch Event for 'patacritical Interrogation Techniques Anthology Volume 3 at The Institute for Figuring in Los Angeles, Feb 01, 2013. The uplifting coda was left off because it would blow too many minds too quickly, and my Canon Powershot's memory card filled up. But we have some HD tape as well and will be compiling a complete version when our schedule permits. 

Everything is Industrial Looking

From out of the men's room

a whistler passed me

passed some gas, shirt tails out, hands washed,

whistled "I'm a yankee doodle dandy."

Air Force One at The Reagan Library

Here's a few artsy details of Air Force One in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Center for Public Affairs in Simi Valley from my visit there in January 2006. Actually, I just remembered I wrote an article comparing it favorably to the newly reopened Getty Villa... let's see....

Ah yes, here's the relevant bit, and I'll post the whole shebang after the jump...

Luckily, you don’t have to go far for an authentically fake vanity-museum experience, as I recently learned on an expedition to the wilds of Simi Valley. The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum is in its 15th year of operation but has only really been beckoning strongly since Ronnie’s highly publicized funerary rituals and, more recently, the installation of the full-size, intact, actual Boeing 707 that served as Air Force One from February 1973 (Nixon) to August 29, 2001 (you know who — conspiracy-buff alert!). 

Reagan, like all politicians, was a sociopath. What set him above the herd was the combination of a fierce authoritarianism (unswervingly oriented toward accumulated wealth) with an otherwise relaxed amiability utterly devoid of content. This pretty much describes the conceptual parameters of the RRPLM as well: It insists on Reagan’s greatness but never bothers to make any kind of argument to support it, offering up instead an array of discontinuous diversions of dubious — or nonexistent — historical merit. So where there are a pair of captioned photos tucked in a corner that obliquely reference the Reagan administration’s sponsorship of the Afghan mujahedeen, there is a massive gallery devoted to the history of the U.S. Cavalry, though RR served only sporadically in the reserves. 

But I’m nitpicking. Apart from the busloads of schoolchildren, what kind of person would go to the Reagan Museum to learn anything about history? You go there to see the enormous portrait of the president made entirely out of jellybeans. And the replicated section of the Berlin Wall with graffiti conveniently translated into English. And the broach spelling out “Just Say No” in rhinestones presented to the first lady. And the gummy stealth bombers and “Peace Through Strength” sportswear in the giftshop. And the fashion-mannequin-guarded re-creation of Checkpoint Charlie. And the mismatched copper-finish thrift-store coffee urns in the replica Situation Room. God is in the details. Or is it the devil?...

Launch Event 2 for ‘patacritical Interrogations Techniques Anthology 3

            

Launch event for ‘patacritical Interrogations Techniques Anthology Volume 3

8 PM Friday, February 1st

The Institute for Figuring, 990 N. Hill Street, #180, Chinatown Los Angeles, CA 90012

In conjunction with the Printed Matter LA Art Book Fair

Featuring performances, screenings, and readings by Christine Wertheim, steve roden, Brian Tucker, Sheridan Lowrey, Christian Cummings, Colin Sackett, and Margaret Wertheim. PLUS: A rare screening of the hippy-era interpretive dance film depiction of Protein Synthesis

Free and public, donations welcome, refreshments will be served!

Editor Doug Harvey, The IFF, AC Books and r.a.m. publications + distributions present the second in a series of salons investigating the permutations and combinations of ‘patacritical Interrogation in conjunction with the publication of the ‘pITA3 collection.

'patacritical Interrogation – a real world implementation of the principles of French playwright Alfred Jarry’s science of ‘pataphysics -- picks up where James Shelby Downard’s King-Kill/33: Masonic Symbolism in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy leaves off – on the brink between paranoid conspiracy theory and avant-garde literature.

‘pITA3 offers a solid introduction to this exciting new field for readers unfamiliar with ‘patacriticism, as well as a samplings of the very latest developments for those already entrenched in the discipline, with contributions from Craig Baldwin, Peter Blegvad, Christine Wertheim, steve roden, Jerome Rothenberg, John Higham, David Cameron, Jerome McGann, Richard Shaver, Clayton Eshleman, Peter Frank, Doug Harvey, Sheridan Lowrey, Colin Sackett, Edward Lear, and more! Copiously illustrated.

‘patacritical scholar Christine Wertheim’s offering a brief introduction to Belle-Époque ‘pataphysical saint Jean-Pierre Brisset and the performance of frOg-sExe-sOng-crOak an original Brisset-inspired text-sound composition.

The world premiere of artist/musician steve roden’s new short film you, like a bridge.

you, like a monorail. which charts the hidden connections between a map of the Disneyland monorail and the sheet music for Simon & Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water.

Independent researcher Brian Tucker presenting a brief overview of the life and work of Richard Shaver -subterranean alien contactee and discoverer of prehistoric holographic “Rock Books”

A continuous looped screening of UK bookmaker Colin Sackett's passively dictatorial subliminal Powerpoint poem "aboutenminutes"

Maverick art historian Sheridan Lowrey projecting the insights of her Duchamp After The Museum of Jurassic Technology Before the Fall essays into cyberspace and the speaker/audience landscape in a talk based on her current online project at www.centerforresearch.blogspot.com entitled To Give to Be Seen: How to Stand to Present

by Duchampian/Lacanian Mechanics

Artist Christian Cummings, known for his Spectral Psychography project in which dead artists create drawings via a ouija board, will contribute an as yet undisclosed musical performance, which may or may not be translated to or from the Esparanto.

Science writer Margaret Wertheim on the outsider physics of James Carter, including a demonstration of his giant smoke ring generator made from garbage cans and a disco fog machine.

PLUS: A rare screening of the hippy-era interpretive dance film depiction of Protein Synthesis directed by Robert Alan Weiss for the Department of Chemistry of Stanford University .

Also on view will be the IFF’s current exhibit Making Space featuring the in-progress business-card model of the Mosely Snowflake Fractal Sponge Tower

For more info on the book itself, visit here.

For more on the Printed Matter LA Art Book Fair, visit here.