Found in the Attic Volume 1

It ain't no cansfull of uncirculated 19th century gold coins, but I thought this element from my 1997 solo installation at POST St. Sebastian Tom Sawyer Cathy Mishima Expo 67 was long gone, when I discovered it tucked in a corner of the attic while trying to staunch the flow of brown water onto my book collection and dinner table below... Disc®otu m’, 1997, soft double mirror ball, fabric, stuffing, optional motors, approx 40 X 30 X 24 ins. Me, from the JOAAP book FAILURE!:

"Descending in tandem from the rafters was the gender-corrected biorchid soft kinetic sculpture Disc®otu m’, a sack of mirror-encrusted fabric containing two motorized vibrating wads of material. I’ve always been puzzled by Duchamp scholars insistence that the title of his last painting Tu m' was an abbreviation of the French expression “Tu m'emmerdes” or “you’re shitting on (bugging) me.” As far as I can tell, it’s just a guess – it could be completed with any French verb starting with a vowel. Why not “Tu m’blank” as in “You blank me,” which, rather than sealing the tomb on painting because of some specific affect (irritation, beshitment, boredom), emphasizes (and probably expresses doubt in the validity of) the very hierarchical subject/object binary model of communication (and by extension reality itself) by which it achieves its agency. Disc®otu m’ in addition to presenting a disembodied teabag of Damocles that visually mimics the geometry-bound domes [Fuller geodesics played a central part in the installation's symbology], was intended to expand Duchamp’s contraction, doubling it with mirrors and subjecting it to seizure. Lazarus, Come forth!"

... and plenty more where that came from... 

This is the dude who ATE Michael Rockefeller.

How Occupy is that? It's like some Bataille wet dream.

"Don't you tell this story to any other man or any other village, because this story is only for us. Don't speak. Don't speak and tell the story. I hope you remember it and you must keep this for us. I hope, I hope, this is for you and you only. Don't talk to anyone, forever, to other people or another village. If people question you, don't answer. Don't talk to them, because this story is only for you. If you tell it to them, you'll die. I am afraid you will die. You'll be dead, your people will be dead, if you tell this story. You keep this story in your house, to yourself, I hope, forever. Forever..."

Read Carl Hoffmann's WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO MICHAEL ROCKEFELLER in the current Smithsonan Magazine. Or a boiled-down account of his new evidence in the NY Daily News.

Image: A 1973 photo of war chief Ajam, of the Dani Tribe of New Guinea, who told missionaries he killed U.S. anthropologist Michael Rockefeller in 1961, and was one of the tribesmen who ate parts of his body.

PS: In rereading Hoffmann's article, I just realized Michael Rockefeller died the day I was born.

Josh Aster on LARZ - Download Now!

The most recent (Valentine Slash President Feb 16 2014) episode of Doug Harvey's Less Art Radio Zine is now available for free download or streaming from the KCHUNG Radio archive. I was worried that the first half would be completely unintelligible because I left the stream feeding back into itself, but it turned out OK! And I remembered to take a picture this time, though I forgot to do a higher quality stereo recording of Josh's guitar and kalimba improvs. Oh well, lo-fi rules anyway!

Actually, though, for higher-res versions of recordings by his newest ensemble Voluminous Sparks, check out their Soundcloud page - Josh said he has some solo stuff up there too, but I can't access it yet, so get the show DL and check back for updates.

BREAKING NEWS! Fragonard Cookie Monster Lapdance Update

How could our research team have missed this? So obvious. Hopefully the last revelation.

Mannlicher Carcano - Bosch Butt Music MEGAMIX

An excerpt from the Feb 16, 2014 episode of The Mannlicher Carcano Radio Hour (www. mannlichercarcano.blogspot.com) featuring up to 9 simultaneous versions of the music recently transcribed rom the butt of some dude in Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights. Listen to Amelia & Luke's original here  and wellmanicuredman's choral version here.

Valentine Slash Presidents LARZ featuring Abstract Heartthrob Joshua Aster

Our Valentine Slash Presidents weekend edition of Doug Harvey's Less Art Radio Zine welcomes LA-based abstract painter and experimental musician Joshua Aster, whose reliably powerful and sumptuous new paintings (alongside those by under-recognized idiosyncratic paint genius Spencer Lewis) are on view at Edward Cella Gallery through March 1st.

Josh is a founding member of the post-rock jam band OJO -- whose diverse catalog we'll be dipping into -- and he'll also be performing some live solo acoustic guitar on the show. 

Hopefully Josh won't be all talked out by his and informal exhibition tour and Spenser's walkthrough conversation on Saturday afternoon at 5. But you might want to show up to that as well, just in case.

Joshua Aster and Spencer Lewis in Conversation
Saturday, February 15th, 2014 | 5 pm
Edward Cella Art + Architecture
6018 Wilshire Blvd.,
Los Angeles, CA 90036

Doug Harvey's Less Art Radio Zine

Sunday Feb 16th, 12 Noon

www.kchungradio.org

Images: Contentcontainer, Oil on linen, polyester, or canvas/linen over panel 18 x 18 ins; Shifting Gears, Oil on linen 30 x 24 ins; OJO in alphabetical order: Aster, Avitabile, Cole, Medina, Ore-Giron & Youngblood; Avatar, oil on linen, 50 x 42 ins; Thru a Net, Oil on linen 30 x 24 ins; Wistful Thinking, 2014, Oil on linen 78 x 82 ins. All paintings by Joshua Aster 2013, except that last one.

Fragonard Cookie Monster Lapdance

Further research on the Fragonard offered recently at Sotheby's by  Lynda and Stewart Resnick (as reported in William Poundstone's LACMA on Fire blog) reveals that the original title was not "Two Girls on a Bed Playing With Their Dogs" but "Cookie Monster Lapdance" -- until the always-litigious Sesame Street mob demanded a paint-over.

LAFMS on LARZ on KCHUNG Vol 1

I once again forgot to take a photo during the Less Art Radio Zine session -- but here is a wholly convincing artist's rendition of what it must have looked like, with Rick Potts, Dennis Duck, and Joe Potts - founding members of the Los Angeles Free Music Society, who joined me for well over an hour of scintillating historical anecdotes and audio rarities. Stream or download the show from the KCHUNG archives here. And stay tuned for further installments of LAFMS on LARZ on KCHUNG.

Where's LaBeouf?

Chinese New Year meant that the L.A. Printed Matter Art Book Fair at the MOCA Geffen Contemporary on Saturday was chaos - it took me 40 minutes to find a parking space, and all my collaborators on rADIO fREE 'pITA3 had to bail... except for Shia LaBeouf, who read his Meta//Modernist Manifesto, thanked his supporters, and apologized again to Daniel Clowes. Did you ever notice that his last name is one letter "shy" of being an anagram for the name of another hero, Beowulf?

If anyone needs to get up to speed on Mr. LaBeouf's trajectory to art world legitimacy, here's a nice precis. We're not sure if anyone got video, but we're hoping to get further documentation of this magical event uploaded ASAP!

While the brainwashed masses were watching the Super Bowel...

Yeah, I'm talking to you. Brainwashed Mass! I came off my shift at the pirate radio station to find the skies of LA in an uncharacteristically cluttered state, and went to the fields of Elysium to document them. You won't believe what happened when I pointed my camera and pressed the button!

Christian Shredding, Christian Crooning

Christian Cummings shreds Saturday afternoon on the KCHUNG stage at theL.A. Art Book Fair! Awesome as ever. Check out his album SLAVEBATION here:http://www.pleonasmmusic.org/2012/05/christian-cummings.html

I also made a video of the performance, which I will upload when I get tenure. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Here's the review I wrote of the album in the Nov 2012 Artillery Magazine:

"... His latest album of original songs, entitled “Slavebation,” is something of a watershed. Fusing Cummings’ long-standing avant-gardist embrace of primitive casio keyboard sounds with a previously tempered lyrical desperation, the 13 tracks that make up this extraordinary long-player somehow manage to gel in spite of the extreme dislocation at their heart.

Cummings has a gift for melody, but here it is fractured and off-register: repeated preset arpeggios vie with microtonal trumpet solos to conjure a nightmarish easy listening aesthetic, while the vocals generally only manage to clamber on board the tune at the choruses, resulting in what could be plausibly categorized as rap music. I could also see it being entered into evidence at a committal hearing.

Cummings’ song lyrics are classic voice-in-the-wilderness, treading a fine line between channeled revelation and paranoid rant, albeit leavened by considerable doses of humor and literary invention. Consider this passage from the lurchingly swinging “Tickle My Tushy”:

O wikileaks, wikileaks, loose lips sink ships,
Even ships designed to navigate oceans of shit?
Shits that can only flow backward from oceans to sewers, up toilets, through your intestine, out your mouth and onto skewers.
And then from there into the fridge, then the grocery bag, onto the shelf, the butchers knife, and then back to pasture.
Then back into the womb of its mother, to a time before the chain of life was broken.
Using advanced technologies we can trace the evidence backward through time forever, and still never shake the hand of an creator.

Alternating between elegiac despondency, apocalyptic vision, didactic discourse, and guided deprogramming exercises (often in the space of a single lyric), Cummings convincingly positions himself as a nerdish prophet of doom. The revival of cassette networking has a distinct subtext of retreat to a position where subcultural activity still seemed to promise an escape, or at least shelter. Christian Cummings is facing our crazy life head on, in all its bewildering entropy and Gordian knottiness, and in doing so has produced the first great protest album of the 21st century."

Doug Harvey's LESS ART Radio Zine Cassette Zine #1

Now available from KCHUNG Records only in this EXCLUSIVE OFFER at the Printed Matter LA Art Book Fair! While supplies last. Slightly higher in Canada.

(This is the Jim Shaw episode of LARZ, which I edited and expanded as a KCHUNG mixtape for the book fair, which is now over. Nevertheless I urge you to seek it out at the next KCHUNG event! $5 CHEAP $5!)

Checked out the fair last night, caught AIRWAY after walking the dogs through Chinatown in the rain. Today is long-delayed F practice, tomorrow is the MCRH then a special edition Less Art Radio Zine about the 'patacritical Interrogation Techniques Anthology Volume 3, followed on Sunday by an LAFMS LARZ with the Potts boys and Dennis Duck. Then Thursday a rare Mannlicher Carcano live performance in dandy San Diego. I guess you could say I'm in a sonic mode.

AIRWAY Live at MOCA

I have a sudden compulsion to perform CPR...

Mannlicher Carcano Live at Mesa College

As part of the exhibition Lure: all is not what it seems, international improvisational audio collage and radio art collective Mannlicher Carcano will perform Switch & 'bate, a rigorous deconstruction of delusional consumerist tropes of romantic love, as an inoculatory ritual in advance of St. Valentine's Day. Projections, theatrical gestures, and the detourneeing of copious amounts of love song vinyl may be expected, and opportunities for the public to pledge their troths will be knocking. Unless the van is rocking. In which case rainchecks and/or rain gear will be issued.

Thursday, February 6, 6:30 - 8 PM, Mesa College Art Gallery

San Diego Mesa College, 7250 Mesa College Drive, San Diego, California, 92111-4998

LAFMS on LARZ!

In the first of a projected gazillion shows devoted to the Los Angeles Free Music Society, on Sunday February 3rd, 2014 Doug Harvey's Less Art Radio Zine welcomes founding LAFMS operatives Rick Potts, Joe Potts, and Dennis Duck, fresh from their opening-night gig at the Printed Matter LA Art Book Fair. The LAFMS were a loose aggregation of like-minded audio experimentalists that emerged from Pasadena in the mid-70s; part of a global phenomenon of artists who suddenly came into possession of the trickle-down means of production to make and distribute records, tapes, and magazines. We'll barely have time to scrape the surface of the back catalog of just these three -- Mr. Duck was the drummer for Dream Syndicate, after all, and Rick Pott was 1/3 of Solid Eye, one of my favorite local bands of the 90s -- but we'll have fun trying.

12 Noon Saturday Feb 3, 2014 at 1630 AM in Chinatown, LA or www.kchungradio.org

Photo by Fredrik Nilsen

Karen Carson is Whom!

Karen's one of those always-surprising artists who switches her game with virtually every show -- although what drew me to make these detail photos was the fact that the consummate paint handling reminded me of her purely abstract work from the 80s - look it up! And get cooking on that retrospective, Vergne!

http://rosamundfelsen.com/artists/karen-carson/

rADIO fREE 'pITA3 at the LA Art Book Fair

On Saturday, Feb 1st 2014 from 3 - 4 PM, Doug Harvey's Less Art Radio Zine will present rADIO fREE 'pITA3 -- a special program based on the 'patacritical Interrogation Techniques Anthology Volume 3, live from the KCHUNG Radio booth at the Printed Matter LA Art Book Fair.

The program will include live performances and interviews from contributors to 'pITA3, plus a selection of audio materials of varying pertinence, including musical selections by Peter Blegvad, steve roden, Adolf Wölfli, and the Legion of Rock Stars; spoken words from Raymond Roussel, Christine Wertheim, Edward Lear, J&H Productions, pitta of the mind, and Francis E. Dec; experimental theory from Sheridan Lowery and Craig Baldwin; and recordings of glossolalia, inuit throat singing, and scat from the ethnopoetics collection of Jerome Rothenberg.

Copies of the book will be available (with a possible signing event after the broadcast) at the RAM Publications table.

Listen on www.kchungradio.org/stream.html

Off White

In 1968, Beatle Paul McCartney approached Richard Hamilton, inventor of Pop Art, to design the cover for the follow-up LP to the game-changing Sgt. Pepper album of the previous year. Hamilton came up with a typically droll and elegant solution by taking the opposite extreme to Pepper’s psychedelic horror vacui—a completely white album cover with “The Beatles” embossed at an angle on the front and individually numbered in the lower right corner (making it a limited edition of 3 million or so), improbably linking the Fab Four to then cutting-edge visual art strategies of Minimalism and Conceptualism.

Fast forward 45 years: California-raised artist Rutherford Chang fills a SoHo gallery with the 600+ copies of the original vinyl pressing of The White Album he has accumulated over the last few years, mostly from trolling the Internet. That show—“We Buy White Albums” —presented the collection in a stripped-down version of a retail record store, with bins full of the same LP organized by serial number, a wall of display copies and two listening stations where audience members were invited to audit 4 ½ decades-worth of wear and tear on one of our culture’s most familiar and beloved sound artifacts.

 The real aesthetic payoff was the album jackets, with Hamilton’s minimalist void altered idiosyncratically with tags of ownership, repositioned track listings and more than occasional attempts to provide the psychedelic cover art that never was. On top of this layer of horror vacui graffiti is the abrasion and grime from years of handling, and the frequent random disintegration of the white cover slicks to reveal the brown cardboard beneath.

 The result is a strangely moving inversion of Walter Benjamin’s description of the elimination of an artwork’s unique aura through mass media reproduction—what began, at least in part, as a knowing wink at the vacuous genericism of the globally marketed commodity The Beatles had become, became the tabula rasa for thousands of uniquely individuated artifacts. Presented in a pre-loaded “white cube” gallery space and not available for purchase, Chang’s collection of White Albums were allowed to reveal their truly iconic function.

The second phase of Chang’s project was to compile the accumulated differences into a singularity—a limited edition mixdown of multiple versions of the time-worn vinyl into a dense, off-register thicket of sound. This artifact has just been released via Chang’s tumblr page(though the link to purchase the LP mysteriously vanished after a few days—intellectual property goons?).

dustandgrooves · White Album - Side 1 x 100

Read the rest of UNDER THE RADAR: The Other White Album at artillerymag.com or in the print edition, or ATJ.

Visit http://rutherfordchang.com/white.html and http://100whitealbums.tumblr.com/

UPDATE: Rutherford Chang wrote to say, "the album is in fact a composite of 100 different albums with no mixing at all. Sound engineers thought I was crazy, but that's how I proceeded nonetheless."

Details of Paintings by Whom?

Here are some detail photos of a recent painting show in Los Angeles. Can you guess the name of the artist? Check back in a day or two for the answer!

 

Pre-Post-Hubris

I just realized that the two main books I'm reading right now with considerable pleasure -- The Cleft (Doris Lessing's second-last, and her last speculative fiction novel) and The World Without Us by Alan Weisman, are about the very beginning and very end of human civilization. I guess it's always been all that inbetween stuff that gets on my nerves.

Annie Lapin on Less Art Radio Zine

After experiencing some brief technical difficulties, KCHUNG has uploaded the most recent edition of Doug Harvey's Less Art Radio Zine, featuring Annie Lapin discussing her new work, which opens to public view at Honor Fraser this Saturday from 6-8 PM, and playing the music she listens to in the studio, ranging from R.L. Burnside to Mongolian throat singing to the glitch remix of Dolly Parton's Wildflowers. Download or stream it here: Annie Lapin on Less Art Radio Zine

Image: Annie cutting a section from DH's St Sebastian Soylent Rainbow Labyrinth at PØST Gallery
September 4, 2009.

Marvel Mocks the Underground, Mildly, in 1968

Another discovery in my current scanning frenzy is this page torn from a probably 1968 issue of Marvel's Not Brand Echh, a comic much in the vein of early MAD. What I thought was really interesting was that this is a parody (drawn by Herb Trimpe) of the cover for Big Brother's Cheap Thrills album, drawn by R. Crumb in his underground comix style (also inspired largely by MAD) -- and that it was done almost simultaneously with the emergence of undergrounds. Strange loops.

Jack Rules the World!

My nephew Jack on the back landing of my parents' house in what - 1993? Must be from when my Dad was dying. Anyhoo, I've been trying to spend a bit of time doing each of the 50 things I swore I was going to accomplish on my break from teaching, one of which was to start archiving all the analog media I have piled up, and this used to be a 35mm slide. I scanned about a hundred so far, so watch for more. Now I'm going to go put this on his Facebook page...

Annie Lapin on Doug Harvey's Less Art Radio Zine

My guest this Sunday (January 5th 2014) will be LA-based painter Annie Lapin. We haven't had a lot of time to work out the details, as Annie's busy finishing up her solo show Forget the Name, which opens at  Honor Fraser Gallery on Saturday the 11th from 6 - 8 PM. One for sure playlist item is the new CD Ritual by flugabonist David Dominique, which features cover art by Annie, and was recorded in LA with a group of local improv and new music luminaries. Tune in at 12 Noon Sunday to AM 1630 or www.kchungradio.org to hear what else Annie has up her sleeve.

Image: Various Peep Shows (Through), 2013 Oil on canvas 82 x 72 inches