From Frieze: Brian Dillon on Art Criticism and Style

The really terrific writer Brian Dillon whose own work spans and bridges several genres, including criticism, memoir, novel, history wrote a nice essay for Frieze magazine last year on the notion of teaching writerly style in the (art) seminar room: "Does turning in the classroom or on the public stage to the question of style mean a retreat from the open field of ‘art writing’? Quite the contrary, I think. Because the crux is this: once you have delimited a certain space of experiment – delimited it precisely by its lack of limitations – what then? Where is the real work to be done?" Very much worth a read. 

R.I.P. Casey Kasem

I remember his disembodied voice saying the most inane things (‘keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars’?!) but with measured aplomb. Weekend afternoons that seemed endless and I’d be sitting on some amber shag carpet, bunk bed, or dog-gnawed beanbag chair flicking through my cousin’s teen magazines, and waiting for some music or anecdote that might stick in the head for some good reason rather than the horrible catchiness of the utterly average from the Bay City Rollers to Shaun Cassidy. This is how I recall my experience of listening to the seemingly ubiquitous Casey Kasem in the 1970s. Now dead and gone, following Dick Clark and John Peel to wherever it is that dead radio personalities go…You can read New York Times critic Jon Pareles’ more thoroughgoing sketch of Kasem’s pop cultural significance here. 

From The Wire: The British Library's Sound Archive

From The Wire magazine's site, a short video tour of the underground recesses of the British Library's sound archive and the attempts of some truly dedicated folk to preserve exceedingly rare recordings for posterity. "The 20th century was about audiovisual material, our memory of the 20th century is heavily audiovisual, but our sense of the 21st century is going to be a different kind of audiovisual... archiving is not going to be so much about what we can bring in, but about what to exclude," according to Will Prentice, British Library Audio Engineer.

Now on Twitter: @DrMartinPatrick

I've slowed down my blog posting last couple of days, but I have finally succumbed to Twitter as of last night and I can be followed at @DrMartinPatrick. Many thanks to those of you who have checked in already. I've been welcomed effusively and with great wit. Perhaps on Sunday mornings (as I've suspected) we are no longer hunched over newsprint as in days of yore, but social networking our collective butts off. Myself, I jumped on to Twitter to avoid marking papers but hey, it's much more fun than doing the washing up!

From Hyperallergic: Over 100 Artists and Intellectuals Call for Withdrawal from Creative Time Exhibition

From Hyperallergic, Mostafa Heddaya writes: "Over 100 artists and intellectuals — including Judith Butler, Lucy Lippard, Chantal Mouffe, Walid Raad, Martha Rosler, and Gayatri Spivak — have signed on to a public letter calling on participants to withdraw from Creative Time’s traveling Living as Form exhibition on the grounds that it is currently showing at an institution with a 'central role in maintaining the unjust and illegal occupation of Palestine.' " You can read the full article here.

From the NY Times Blog: "The Second Life of Performance"

From the NY Times Blog, Katie Kitamura contributes a story entitled Art Matters: The Second Life of Performance on the "mainstreaming" of performance art and the related efforts of the longtime writer, curator, and advocate for the medium, RoseLee Goldberg.

Short course on humour in art

English actress Tamsin Greig (Green Room, Black Books) offers a 5 minute short course on the significance of humour to modern and contemporary art, with quick glimpses of many artworks, from Marcel Duchamp and Bas Jan Ader to Maurizio Cattelan and David Shrigley.

What We Do in the Shadows

More messing about with the hokey Wellington sign out near the local airport, at least this time as promotion for what looks to be a very humorous piece of cinema, What We Do in the Shadows, co-directed by Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement. Looking forward to its imminent release here in NZ. Official trailer below:

R.I.P. Rik Mayall (1958-2014)

British comedian Rik Mayall died suddenly yesterday at the age of 56. Mayall was best known for his work in manic situation comedies such as The Young Ones, which I remember I found alternately confounding and captivating when it aired on MTV many years ago. The Guardian has a good selection of coverage, including an appreciation by critic Mark Lawson, and a series of clips including a terrific acting out of Roald Dahl's wicked children's story George's Marvellous Medicine. And below is a nice interview with Ben Elton on the origins of The Young Ones and its impact on TV comedy.