Interview with Writer Megan Dunn

I'm feeling pretty punchy and irreverent, due to teaching, prep, and the decompression from both those previous activities and it's only mid-week! Yikes! In this state I was especially glad to run across an interview with my local art critical colleague (and writer of terrific fiction as well) Megan Dunn in Victoria University's Salient magazine. That is to say, Megan is a superlative conversationalist, witty, irreverent and engaging and this totally comes across in this short piece, stay tuned for such fascinating anecdotes as Kylie Minogue confronting a Jake and Dinos Chapman work...but lest I spoil the fun...also I will take this opportunity to call attention to Megan's wonderful piece Submerging Artist, posted last year. Like an increasing number of wordsmiths, Megan also has an informative Twitter feed. Man, I've gotta get with the program.

CIRCUIT cast: Cinema & Painting, Sydney Biennale, and Ken and Flo Jacobs interview

The most recent CIRCUIT (pod-)cast has just been posted online here. For me, the highlight is Mark Amery's interview with filmmakers Ken and Flo Jacobs by telephone from New York. Jacobs' work is now on view at the Adam Art Gallery and will be featured (in 3D!) in a screening later this month in Wellington. Mark also spoke with artist Nathan Gray, who has decided to withdraw from the Sydney Biennale, and with yours truly and curator Abby Cunnane on the topic of the Adam's Cinema and Painting exhibition. I will also be contributing an review of the show to an upcoming issue of the NZ Listener. 

Artists as Filmmakers

The Guardian ran a piece this weekend on a perceived upsurge in artists working as cinema directors, Oscar-winning Steve McQueen being the primary case cited (very few others are). Of course important to note that although there are many, many artists involved in making moving image works, very, very few of them would be working in remotely the same context as the one that bestows those little golden statuettes. 

Shannon Te Ao at the Physics Room opens this weekend

I just wanted to recommend to those who might be in Christchurch before April 13, to check out artist (and my Massey U colleague) Shannon Te Ao's new exhibition at the Physics Room. Shannon is probably New Zealand's most in-demand emerging artist at the moment, practically double-booked as an invited artist to the 2014 Sydney Biennale, which has engendered a firestorm of controversy of late. If anyone can weather this storm and the act of attempting to appear in several places all at one time, I'm hoping it's Shannon, as he's artist of great talent and energy, plus I want him to turn up to co-teach my classes in a coupla weeks!

The Abandoned Secret Cinema of the Sinai Desert!

I definitely thought it was worth reposting this amazing info from the blog Messy Nessy Chic on a truly strange cinematic monument in the Sinai Desert. For some very intriguing reading, check out the entire post here.

The Beat Writers: Film and Video Links

About to speak with my class "Conceptualisms, Conspiracies, and Counter-histories" about the Beat writers and thought I should "round up" some of the better links to films and film clips that are now abundant on the web. I tend to do some short presentations on ancient subcultures. Despite the eminently cool poster above, more interested in looking at the films capturing the writers, documentaries, etc. rather than those that clearly attempted to cash in on the craze! ubuweb of course is nearly a one stop shop for certain things, particularly video and sound material on William S. Burroughs, otherwise A Man Within is the most recent full length documentary on WSB. A film called Kerouac: King of the Beats has some important material and interviews. The Source is inclusive but also incorporates some rather cringe inducing "re-enactments" and readings if I recall correctly. Kerouac on the Steve Allen Show is essential, as is Pull My Daisy which I posted earlier. There is a lot of material on Ginsberg as well. And a nice film called Crazy Wisdom retrospectively chronicles the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, Colorado. Original Beats is a short film on Gregory Corso and Herbert Huncke. The wonderful poet and memoirist Diane di Prima delivers a lecture in San Francisco. The gregarious but not always coherent Neal Cassady sits in with Ginsberg at City Lights in this short clip. A drunken Kerouac asked to speak about Hippies on William F. Buckley's Firing LIne is absolutely excruciating to watch. Photographer Robert Frank, who filmed the Beats on several occasions, is a notoriously "reclusive" figure but there are at least two good documentaries on his work online. Fire in the East dates from 1986, and another profile Leaving Home, Coming Home from almost twenty years later. Also see my last post on Amiri Baraka, formerly known as LeRoi Jones.

Remembering writer and activist Amiri Baraka (1934-2014)

The great American writer Amiri Baraka died this past January. I have been looking at a lot of material online and thank goodness there is a lot! Baraka was an immensely significant figure in manifold ways: music historian, Beat colleague and publisher, poet, Black Nationalist, Communist, activist, founding member of the Black Arts Movement, and incisive critic and speaker. Despite this (and to a degree because of this) he hasn't always been recognized as widely, because of his allegiance to "subversive" ideas and challenging notions. Baraka's writings are vivid and lively on the page and they will stand, but he was an engaging persona as an interviewee, lecturer, performer so I thought I would collect some links. Democracy Now held an informative panel discussion on Baraka's legacy; and the Hammer Museum hosted a lively conversation between Baraka and his daughter the art historian and curator Kellie Jones; some other interesting talks include a 2011 lecture at the University of Virginia; and a 2008 reading/discussion at the University of Minnesota. He read his poetry on HBO's Def Poetry Jam and heaps of vintage audio on MP3 is posted on ubuweb: sound. Just a start....

The Verdict(s) on True Detective...

I've only watched the first few episodes of the HBO-produced crime series True Detective, being often too bleary eyed to begin to stream video in the wee hours, but from what I've seen it's definitely got interesting performances, production design, and a certain creepy stylishness about it. And typically with series of this type there's a lot of criticism being batted around, one review by the New Yorker magazine's Emily Nussbaum comments: "To state the obvious: while the male detectives of "True Detective" are avenging women and children, and bro-bonding over "crazy pussy," every live woman they meet is paper-thin. Wives and sluts and daughters—none with any interior life...." You can read the rest of her interesting critique here and for more on the critical discussions around the show, there's a good overview by Ian Rogers called "On the shallowness of True Detective." Meanwhile (neo-)film noir and crime show addict that I am, I believe I'll make some strong coffee soon, and watch the rest of the series....verdict yet to come...

Blank City: New York No Wave Documentary

Blank City (2011) is director Céline Danhier's clip and interview-rich documentary on the downtown New York scene of the early 1980s. It features lots of time capsule imagery and comments by a host of infamous participants, including Jim Jarmusch, Debbie Harry, Steve Buscemi, John Waters, John Lurie, Lydia Lunch, Richard Kern, Thurston Moore, Fab 5 Freddy, Amos Poe, and James Chance. A bucketload of arty excitement and now-vanished filth. 

The force of nature that is Eugene Chadbourne!

The eclectic music innovator Eugene Chadbourne made a great impact on me back in the 1980s when I saw him perform twisted country western inversions, avant-garde noisy skronk, topical protest songs, and play an ingenious instrument of his own devising, an electrified (garden) rake! But alas Chadbourne once had a higher profile in the indie music scene, and has returned to be one of the stellar living monuments of a kind of secret neo-avant-garde. (see a recent article on the changing fate of Chadbourne’s reception. This is all crudely put, as Chadbourne is simply far too broad in his interests, inclinations, talents, and collaborative impulses to be categorized neatly. And in many respects, besides the plainly unlistenable cacophony he often produces, alongside beautifully nuanced acoustic soundsthe very multifarious nature of Mr. Chadbourne makes him fairly elusive. Here are a few starting points, in terms of documentary footage, past and present: an interview from PitchforkTV, a short clip shot in London, and another vintage doco. And Chadbourne has collaborated with many fine and unlikely co-conspirators, including: the late great Jimmy Carl Black (best known as the drummer in Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention); Texas roots-rock guitarist Evan Johns; John Zorn; and the indie band Camper Van Beethoven (as Camper Van Chadbourne). I am very partial to Chadbourne's record of C & W covers There'll Be No Tears Tonight, but there's so much to choose from elsewhere also, and what's wrong with that? For current info on Chadbourne do check out his eye-burningly psychedelick website House of Chadula (if you dare!).