Monday, November 8, 2010
Performance Artist
Performance Artist Confronts Chengguan Officers in Kunming
A performance artist in Kunming put a yoke around his neck – a punishment for prisoners in ancient China – and covered his clothes with 100 yuan notes on a public street. During the performance, he was confronted by chengguan (urban management) officers.
Friday, November 5, 2010
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Beast Women
Beast Women 2010 Spring Series
By J. Scott Hill
Why is the variety show a dead form on television? Being from Chicagoland, being of a certain age, my understanding of what counts as entertainment was formed by Bozo’s Circus. Bob Bell, Ned Locke, Marshall Brodien, and especially the great Roy Brown introduced me and countless other Midwestern kids to the old pie-in-the-face routine, The Grand Prize Game, The Stone of Zanzibar, and the slow burn (poor Cookie). Alongside these influential performances was an endless parade of variety acts: magicians, acrobats, wire walkers, unicyclists, singers, jugglers, and what seemed like a new plate spinner every single day. Even now, I can’t have lunch without hearing “Sabre Dance” in my head.
Variety may be dead on TV, but live cabaret still thrives in Chicago. Barely a mile away from 2501 West Bradley Place, from where Bozo’s Circus was on the air, PROP THTR plays home to the Beast Women and the 2010 Spring Series of their all-female cabaret.
Beastmistresses Michelle Power and Jill Erickson have assembled an eclectic clowder of whip-smart kittens. Michelle Power continued her role as emcee with confidence and guile, explaining the Beast Women concept with warmth and wit, managing the flow of the evening, and rousing the late-night rabble. The opening night lineup was a delight.
Singer-songwriter Annah London performed her own brand of Alanis Morissette-influenced folk rock with a hint of Kristy MacColl. Jen St. Stjärna brought a Carole King-meets-Tori Amos vibe with tracks from her forthcoming album Horizon. St. Stjärna’s “Harry Houdini” seems destined for immediate airplay and a wide audience; you can give “Harry Houdini” a test-listen at:
Not to be outdone by those lyricists, poetry slam-type spoken word performers Angela Oliver and Kay Kron each gave breathtaking performances, full of complex structure and dizzying internal rhyme schemes. Thankfully, they were not pitted against one another in verbal combat, lest the tippling crowd be sobered by the dueling fierce wisdoms.
Not all of the Beast Women were out to appeal predominantly to the ear. Deb Webb, with her impossibly long hair, performed a cabaret act that served up the tease without the strip. Belly dancer Mahira displayed amazing, sometimes baffling, muscular control. Sarah Lowry provided one of the show’s highlights with an extremely unique Burlesque: a reverse-striptease with a bizarre twist that thrilled the crowd.
At one point in the show, the audience was herded outside for Jessica Bonomo’s fire hoop act. (see top image) Bonomo worked a hula-hoop that had firepots jutting out of it at five of six equidistant points around its outside circumference. In the chill of that March night, the audience could feel the heat from every revolution of flames, as well as the absence of that heat when the blank spot on the hoop came around. This was great fun.
Original Beast Woman Jillian Erickson kept the audience’s full, rapt attention with a monologue about insomnia, sleep aids, and dreams. No one captures innocence and menace simultaneously with such a palpable and palatable texture as Jillian Erickson. She plays both sides of contradictions, building art in that no-man’s land in-between.
If a Beast Women show were a competition, the night’s winner would have been Roberta Miles. Roberta is well established around Chicago as a jazz singer, but at Beast Women she is a monologist. As she takes the stage, she gives off that classy air one might expect from a jazz singer or a classicist or an ethnographer about to regale the audience with tales from the field. When I have seen Roberta Miles perform, invariably her subject matter has been sexual misadventure, her own sexual misadventures. If the disparity between her poise and her sexual abandon does not grab you, the thoughtfulness of her self-effacing writing will. She covered a lot of ground: her naïve attempt in her youth to straighten a gay friend with her bed artistry, a spoiled three-way fueled by pot cookies, the truth about fellatio, and a list of sexual regrets that was both unique and unapologetic. Roberta Miles is not some trampy broad bragging about her many exploits; she is an articulate libido and a beguiling conscience. I laughed, I winced, I shook my head, and I laughed again.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Alicia Keys, Rihanna & Beyonce Among Winners At BET Awards
June 28, 2010
LOS ANGELES, Calif.
It was comeback night at the BET Awards.
Kanye West opened Sunday’s show in his first TV appearance since dissing Taylor Swift at last year’s MTV Video Music Awards. T.I. made a triumphant return to TV for his first performance since being released from prison in December. And 1980s hitmaker El DeBarge blazed back onto the stage to play old hits and the title track from his first new album in 16 years
Jay-Z Leads Nominees At Music-Filled BET Awards
June 27, 2010
LOS ANGELES, Calif.
Jay-Z and Justin Bieber. Kanye West and T.I. John Legend and Prince.
Hosted by Queen Latifah, Sunday night’s BET Awards promise to be a star-studded affair, and organizers say it will be packed with more performances than in previous years.
June 23, 2010
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa
The World Cup might be half way around the globe in South Africa, but Hollywood was glued to the action on the field on Wednesday morning as they watched the American team advance to the second round following a win over Algeria.
Jay-Z
Jay-Z: 'I've Been Invited To The White House A Couple Of Times’
February 20, 2010
LOS ANGELES, Calif.
Jay-Z says he hopes Barack Obama is President for eight years – so he’ll have time to visit.
“I’ve been invited to the White House a couple of times,” the busy rapper told the BBC’s Jonathan Ross on Friday. “Hopefully we’ll keep him in for eight years, so I’ll have time to get there.”
Sunday, October 31, 2010
news
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
Sunday, September 26, 2010
GLI.TC/H in Chicago 2010.09.29-2010.10.03
GLI.TC/H BUMP from Max Capacity on Vimeo.
GLI.TC/H is an international gathering of noise & new media practitioners in Chicago from September 29 thru October 03, 2010!
GLI.TC/H features: realtime audio & video performances with artists who misuse and abuse hardware and software; run-time video screenings of corrupt data, decayed media, and destroyed files; workshops and skill-share-sessions highlighting the wrong way to use and build tools; a gallery show examining glitches as processes, systems, and objects; all in the context of ongoing dialogues that have been fostered by experimentation, research, and play. GLI.TC/H is a physical and virtual assembly which stands testament to the energy surrounding these conversations.
Projects take the form of: artware, videos, games, films, tapes, code, interventions, prints, plugins, screen-captures, systems, websites, installations, texts, tools, lectures, essays, code, articles, & hypermedia.
JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON THE
GLI.TC/H BLOG
web click here
Friday, September 24, 2010
Hacking attitude
she said it was not the day before yesterday but the one becoming the tuessssday dayday
From Cyborgs to Hacktivists: Postfeminist Disobedience and Virtual Communities Carolyn Guertin
for the whole discussion click here
... further discussion of Carolyn Guertin's "
click here
smart mistakes nice new works ... and a prize
2nd?7th November, 2010
Regional Museum of Natural Science
Turin, Italy
-------
Every year, the Share Festival chooses a special topic to focus on, to
help broaden our minds, sharpen our skills, and inspire creative
expression. So don?t miss this year?s festival from 2nd?7th November,
2010 in Turin!
Smart Mistakes ? Share Festival 2010
ERROR, mistake, mutation, failure, dysfunction, discrepancy, accident,
unexpected change, chance discovery, the aesthetics of error, mass
waste, project failure, abandon project, disaster, flaw, inconvenience,
misappropriation, side-effect, slip-up, flop.
This year, the VI Piemonte Share Festival will be focusing on the
artistic and cultural significance of mistake, in all its broader
senses. The creative potential of analysing and looking into what lies
behind an error is truly great, as it represents the uncovering of an
issue. Which is of particular interest in this year of global
emergencies. The issue uncovered then demands attention, which in turn
elicits controversy, while it is controversy that generates solutions
and innovation.
In the art and culture of our digital age, does mistake still play the
role of instigating change and activating value?
Share Prize 2010
Now are you ready to discover the group of artists called to Turin to
take part in a Share Festival?
Some 270 projects from 20 countries were submitted for consideration for
the Share Prize 2010. The aim of the Share Prize is to discover, promote
and support the digital arts. The competition is open to artists that
use digital technology as a language of creative expression, in all
shapes and formats.
The cultural aim of the Share Prize is to make participation in the
Share Festival open and accessible to all artists.
An international panel of judges consisting of Jurij Krpan (Ljubljana),
Andy Cameron (London), Fulvio Gianaria (Turin), and Bruce Sterling
(Austin/Turin) assessed the submissions. After a very interesting
meeting and a professional, in-depth analysis of all the works, it is
with great pleasure that we announce the six incredible artists who have
been short-listed for the Share Prize 2010.
Read the judges? statement here
The prize winners will be announced at the Share Prize award ceremony on
7th November, 2010 at the Regional Museum of Natural Science in Turin.
Kuai Auson (EC), 0h!m1gas (2008)
0h!m1gas is a biomimetic stridulation environment, based on the activity
of an ant colony under video and audio surveillance, transforming the
ants into DJs and creating a sound-reactive space which reveals the
connection between scratching, as an aesthetical expression created by
human culture, and the stridulation phenomena produced by ants as a
communication mechanism.
http://kuaishen.tv/0hm1gas
Perry Bard (CDN), Man with a Movie Camera (2007)
Man With a Movie Camera: The Global Remake is a participatory video shot
by people around the world who are invited to record images interpreting
the original script of Vertov?s Man with a Movie Camera, and upload them
to http://dziga.perrybard.net, where software developed specifically for
this project archives, sequences and streams the submissions as a film.
http://dziga.perrybard.net
Sonia Cillari (IT), As an artist, I need to rest (2009)
The artist is lying still on the floor of the exhibition space, exhaling
through a very long cable, which departs from inside her left nostril
and ends at the centre of the main screen, suspended from the floor. A
digital creature which she calls 'feather' is entirely generated by her
exhaling into the suspended screen. During the performance, Sonia
Cillari exhales 14,000 digital elements and brings the digital feather
into more than 6 different states of beings, from 'addition' to
'resistance' patterns of life.
http://www.soniacillari.net/AaA-IntR_dedicated.htm
Ernesto Klar (IT/VE/USA), Luzes relacionais (2009-10)
Luzes relacionais" (Relational Lights) is an interactive audiovisual
installation that explores our relationship with the
expressional-organic character of space. The installation uses light,
sound, haze, and a custom-software system to create a morphing,
three-dimensional light-space in which spectators actively participate,
manipulating it with their presence and movements. "Luzes relacionais"
is pays homage to the work and aesthetic inquiry of Brazilian artist
Lygia Clark.
http://www.klaresque.org/luzes_video.mov
knowbotic research (CH), Macghillie_ just a void (2009-10)
In the public performance project MacGhillie, urban sites are visited by
a figure, clad in a camouflage suit, who shows neither the traits of an
individual, or even of a person. The so-called Ghillie Suit was
originally invented in the 19th century for hunting and was later also
used during the First World War (bis heute). Its camouflage anonymizes
and neutralises of the person who wears it in public. The figure
oscillates between the hyperpresence of a mask and visual redundancy.
http://krcf.org/krcf.org/?p=249
Teatrino Elettrico (IT), DC12V (2009)
DC12V is a board-game version of elektrolivecircus. Sounds are generated
using analogue instruments only, recordings of movements, percussion,
friction and the electromagnetic fields of various everyday machines.
Small in converted into big, futile into necessary, objects into
personages, the board into a location. A desktop tragedy in one act for
self-propelled machines.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idaVeVj7ZMc
--------------------------------------------
Share Festival 2010
2/7 NOVEMBRE 2010
Associazione "The Sharing"
Via Rossini 3
10124 Torino
tel. 011 5883693
fax.0118391304
Thursday, September 23, 2010
scoring the play - Rosemarie Fiore
Long exposure photographs of videogames by (for more click) Rosemarie Fiore:
“These photographs are long exposures taken while playing video war games of the 80’s created by Atari, Centuri and Taito. The photographs were shot from video game screens while I played the games. By recording each second of an entire game on one frame of film, I captured complex patterns not normally seen by the eye.”
the dancing/stutter'n ineffable by alan sondheim
(it takes a while to upload worth the patience)
inviolable, inviolate, legendary, marvelous, mythical, noncommunicable,
exceptional, extraordinary, fabulous, heavenly, holy, ideal, happiness";
untouchable, unutterable, unwhisperable, venerable, wonderful "unutterable
contempt"; "a thing of untellable splendor", incommunicable, expression or
description; "indefinable yearnings"; "indescribable awesome, awful, cele-
stial, divine, empyreal, empyrean, ethereal, beauty"; transcendent, tran-
scendental, undefinable, unexampled, unmentionable, indefinable, indescri-
bable, inenarrable, inexpressible, innominable, "ineffable ecstasy"; "in-
expressible anguish"; "unspeakable defying unnameable, unparalleled, un-
precedented, unspeakable, untellable, noteworthy, numinous, phenomenal,
portentous, prodigious, religious, remarkable, sacred, sacrosanct, spiri-
tual, stupefying, stupendous, {indescribable}, {unspeakable}, {untella-
ble}, {unutterable}] abstract tiny little elusive object of no consequence
but moving alan dojoji to hir inescapable unreachable destiny, only one
s/he has decided for hirself, no one else has made this journey for hir
Humlab, Sandy Baldwin, Alan Sondheim
Alan Dojoji avatar responding to 'go to' command but constantly thwarted;
s/he is also controlled by several altered mocap animations. The result is
a constant skittering motion, achieving nothing - the condition of the
fan, or anyone relegated to a problematic subaltern relation to visible
signs of in-visible power.
Affective Encounters in Feminist Media- conference papers
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
100 anti-thesis to cyberfeminism
100 anti-theses
cyberfeminism is not ...
- cyberfeminism is not a fragrance
- cyberfeminism is not a fashion statement
- sajbrfeminizm nije usamljen
- cyberfeminism is not ideology
- cyberfeminism nije aseksualan
- cyberfeminism is not boring
- cyberfeminism ist kein gruenes haekeldeckchen
- cyberfeminism ist kein leerer kuehlschrank
- cyberfeminism ist keine theorie
- cyberfeminism ist keine praxis
- cyberfeminism ist keine traditio
- cyberfeminism is not an institution
- cyberfeminism is notusing words without any knowledge of numbers
- cyberfeminism is not complete
- cyberfeminism is not error 101
- cyberfeminism ist kein fehler
- cyberfeminism ist keine kunst
- cyberfeminism is not an ism
- cyberfeminism is not anti-male
- sajbrfeminizm nige nesto sto znam da je
- cyberfeminism is not a structure
- cyberfeminismo no es uns frontera
- cyberfeminism nije poslusan
- cyberfeminism nije apolitican
- cyberfeminisme is niet concreet
- cyberfeminism is not separatism
- cyberfeminism is not a tradition
- cyberfeminism is not maternalistic
- cyberfeminisme id niet iets buitenlands
- cyberfeminism is not without connectivity
- cyberfeminismus ist nicht mehr wegzudenken
- cyberfeminismus ist kein oxymoron
- cyberfeminism is not on sale
- cyberfeminism is nor for sale
- cyberfeminismus ist nicht gut
- cyberfeminismus ist nicht schlecht
- cyberfeminismus ist nicht modern
- cyberfeminismus ist nicht post-modern
- cyberfeminism is not natural
- cyberfeminism is not essentialist
- cyberfeminism is not abject
- cyberfeminism is not an avatar
- cyberfeminism is not an alter ego
- cyberfeminismus ist nicht truegerisch
- cyberfeminismus ist nicht billig
- cyberfeminismus ist nicht willig
- cyberfeminisme n'est pas jaloux
- cyberfeminism is not exclusive
- cyberfeminism is not solid
- cyberfeminism is not genetic
- cyberfeminismus ist keine entschuldigung
- cyberfeminism is not prosthetic
- cyberfeminismo no tiene cojones
- cyberfeminisme n'est pas triste
- cyberfeminisme n'est pas une pipe
- cyberfeminism is not a motherboard
- cyberfeminism is not a fake
- cyberfeminism nije ogranicen
- cyberfeminism nije nekonfliktan
- cyberfeminism nije make up
- cyberfeminism nije zatvoren prozor
- cyberfeminism is not a lack
- cyberfeminism is not a wound
- cyberfeminism is not a trauma
- cyberfeminismo no es una banana
- cyberfeminism is not a sure shot
- cyberfeminism is not an easy mark
- cyberfeminism is not a single woman
- cyberfeminism is not romantic
- cyberfeminism is not post-modern
- cyberfeminism is not a media-hoax
- cyberfeminism is not neutral
- cyberfeminism is not lacanian
- cyberfeminism is not nettime
- cyberfeminism is not a picnic
- cyberfeminism is not a coldfish
- cyberfeminism is not a cyberepilation
- cyberfeminism is not a horror movie
- cyberfeminism is not science fiction
- cyberfeminism is not artificial intelligence
- cyberfeminism is not an empty space
- cyberfeminism is not immobile
- cyberfeminism is not about boring toys for boring boys
- cyberfeminismus ist keine verlegenheitsloesung
- cyberfeminism is not a one-way street
- cyberfeminism is not supporting quantum mechanics
- cyberfeminism is not caffeine-free
- cyberfeminism is not a non-smoking area
- cyberfeminism is not daltonistic
- cyberfeminism is not nice
- cyberfeminismo no es callado
- cyberfeminism is not lady.like
- cyberfeminismus ist nicht arrogant
- cyberfeminismus ist keine nudelsauce
- cyberfeminism is not mythical
- cyberfeminism is not from outer space
- cyberfeminismo no es rock 'n roll
- cyberfeminism is not dogmatic
- cyberfeminism is not stable
- cyberfeminism has not only one language





