From: Dan Rigney <>
Date: July 25 2005 01:28:22 EDT
To: thingist@bbs.thing.net
Subject: [thingist] Commute Naked
Reply-To: thingist@bbs.thing.net
Tomorrow in NYC, all persons on any sort of public transport will be subject to random search of any bags or parcels you may be carrying. That's on every bus train and ferry-plus all stations terminals and bus stops.
Therefore, I propose we all commute naked. That should speed things right along.
Dan Rigney
I don't know if every person will be searched, but, still ... anybody taking Dan up for the challenge?
New media art pioneer Mark Napier returns to bitforms gallery with a solo exhibition of new, interactive artworks, running from October 22 through November 26. Empire, a series of interactive installations, explores power in a post-national world through an unlikely merger of monumental architecture and software. Napier’s home-grown software puts a scale model of the Empire State Building in a three-dimensional environment. Both fragile and unbreakable, the virtual monument can be destroyed and recreated in a moment.
"I’m a little obsessed with the Empire State building." Napier says. "I love the beauty of the building, but I’m also struck by how prominent it is since the towers collapsed. I see it as a symbol of power, both economic and cultural. Empire is about a virtual monument, my personal take on the real building." In this computer-generated space, a ghostly scale model of the Empire State building wobbles, bends, and tilts. Using a mouse, the viewer can lift, throw, bounce, squeeze, bend, and break the building. Every motion of the building leaves a trail behind. Like thin wisps of paint, these traces coalesce as smoky backdrops starkly contrasting with the building’s facade. With programming techniques borrowed from high-end computer games, Napier creates a unique environment and a rich visual vocabulary.
Fun with right-wingers- It's entirely appropriate to view the contemporary extreme right wing of the other party as a dark, evil threat to civilization, dangerous to the American Way, and basically inimical to everything that is good and right in this world.
But let's not forget that they can also be funny as hell. I usually point to Ann Coulter as Exhibit "A" when I make this statement - but not anymore. They have outdone themselves. Here's the backstory: there's a RW group known as rightmarch.com that apparently believes that the key to winning the current battle for hearts and minds in America is - drumroll, please - really crappy country/rock music. Hence, they have crafted a song, to be sung by the Right Brothers, titled "Bush was right".
No, I'm not making this up. View Keith Olberman's take on it, courtesy of Crooks and Liars, here.
Rev Billy Shopocalypse Tour Accident- Around 1 am last night on Route 80 en route to Indiana, a semi-truck rear-ended the tour bus of anti-consumerism activists Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping. The rear of the vegetable oil-powered tour bus was up-ended, sending equipment, furniture and Church members tumbling toward the front until the bus came to rest. A team of 15 emergency vehicles, plus 1 helicopter, shut down that segment of Highway 80 for some time.
While there were no fatalities, tour movie director Rob VanAlkemade was seriously injured with a lacerated liver. He was flown out to a major hospital in the region. Other tour members were hospitalized locally, including Julie Talen, who has been keeping an online tour diary at RevBilly.com. Blogging as "Sister Julie," she suffered 3 cracked ribs but was able to post to the Church web site:
"We really thank everyone in the area who worked so hard for us in this bitter cold night and John Quilty for grabbing the camera and shooting. Explaining who we are...and why we have a problem with Wal-Mart to doctors, nurses and ER people while we awaited X-rays, (that) was our action for Ohio."
The tour group, including the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir, band members, documentary film crew, and technical and support volunteers, had just finished a successful visit to Oberlin, Ohio, where the Mayor of Oberlin granted Reverend Billy the Key to the City. That day Reverend Billy and the Choir staged a standing-room-only performance for Oberlin students and other members of the community, before attempting to exorcise a Wal-Mart construction zone. After a delay of several hours for bus repairs, the Shopocalypse Tour headed off into the night toward Chicago, their next scheduled stop.
On December 5th, the Church of Stop Shopping launched a 5000-mile, coast-to-coast, Shopocalypse Tour to get America to stop their shopping this Holiday season. They have been traversing this great country, saving the souls of consumptive consumers, preaching the end of America's deepest vice and wickedness: love of buying and accumulating unnecessary and over-processed goods.
"Consumerism is killing us!" Shouted Reverend Billy to throngs gathered in Time's Square, the terminus of the November 25th Buy Nothing Day parade. "With our SUV traffic jams in the parking lots of our big-box stores, to get our plastic packages—shopping is a petroleum-based activity; we've got to get radically local to save ourselves. We've got to bring this message out of the cities and into our small towns, our countryside. We've got to bring it into our hearts."
The tour will be delayed at least one day while the Church and crew estimate the toll of this accident. According to Sister Julie “No one in the choir that I heard wants to stop.
Free Speech and the Danish Cartoons - a Panel with Mr. Peter Schwartz- Love them or hate them, these cartoons and the issues they bring up deserve discussion:
A Discussion on Free Speech and World Reaction
(1). A display of the controversial Danish cartoons depicting Mohammed.
(2). A panel discussion and Q&A on the meaning of the worldwide reaction to the cartoons.
Issues to be discussed:
What is Freedom of Speech? Does it include the right to offend?
What is the significance of the worldwide Islamic reaction to the cartoons?
How should Western Governments respond...if at all?
How should the Western Media respond?
All non-NYU attendees must register for the event.
Celebrate Wal-Martlessness with us Sunday 3pm- Celebrate Wal-Martlessness with us Sunday 3pm
From Wal-Mart No Way to the neighborhood believers, from living wage shouters to Rego Park Queens labor heroes – the anti-Wal-Mart community will be honored by Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir on Sunday March 26th at 3 PM, St. Mark's in the Bowery, 10th and 2nd Avenue. Those of you who have done the right thing – PREPARE FOR YOUR SAINTHOOD!
The preacher and the singers have for ten years defended healthy neighborhoods, especially indy shops and community gardens. The monoculture of chain stores and big boxes – that's the Devil! DELIVER US FROM EVIL!
Recently during the cross-country Shopocalypse tour, the Reverend and the church exorcised the Wal-Mart Home Office in Bentonville, Arkansas. Surrounded by corporate police in their SUV's, the church sang and prayed for today's freedom – freedom from the brutality of profits at all costs. CHANGE-A-LUJAH! DO WE HAVE A WITNESS!
All info and res: http://REVBILLY.COM/EVENTS
Mural Project Unveiling in Park Slope- Commerce Bank on 269 Fifth Ave. and 1st St. in Park Slope Brooklyn is unveiling a Mural Project and I want to invite you all to join in. Why? Because my step-daughter's art work will be in pride of place as the central of three panels! I have only seen her initial sketch of it, but it looked way cool.
There are two unveilings: a Press unveiling Friday May 19th at 11 AM and an "official" unveiling Sunday May 21st at 1 PM. I will try to make both events, though I am supposed to be at a symposium at NYU on Friday. But my step-daughter's big momment may be worth skipping part of the symposium!
Hope to see you there!
Mural Unveiling in Park Slope: Update- Well, today was supposed to be the "Press Unveiling" of the new mural, designed by Park Slope school children, including my step-daughter, at Commerce Bank on 5th Ave. and 1st Street. Well, after rushing to get a couple of hours work done, I rushed back home to Brooklyn to be there...but the event seems to have been rained out. No one was there but the rain poured down. And the bank said everything would be on Sunday. So right back to work...only to see the sun coming out now.
So, the official unveiling of the "American Dream" mural at Commerce Bank at 269 Fifth Ave. in Park Slope, Brooklyn is Sunday, May 21st at 1 PM. The mural is way cool...particularly the central panel!
On another note : You are all invited to the launch of Taschen's "New Media Art: Art in the Age of Digital Communication"-
Meet the trailblazers of the online collaborative revolution.
Taschen's "New Media Art: Art in the Age of Digital Communication" is a history of net art movement written by one of its grand poobahs, Mark Tribe along with Reena Jana, Wired reporter and one of the first witnesses (and reporters) of this digital revolution.
Hosted by: Rhizome.org and the New Museum Store
Location: The New Museum of Contemporary Art
556 W 22nd Street at 11th Ave, NY, NY
When: Friday, June 2, 6:30pm to 8:30pm
6/14 @ 8pm Rev Billy's Fabulous Worship!- St. Mark's Church 10th St and 2nd Ave, East Village, NYC
Wednesday June 14, 8 PM, $5 Reserve: RevBilly.com/events
Featuring a new song from the choir --
ARE YOU MY LOVER OR ARE YOU MY LOGO?
In this Fabulous Worship, we plan to reflect on The Shopocalypse Tour. We took two buses across the country last December - trying to Save Christmas from the Shopocalypse!
Since then the church faithful have been singing and preaching in California and in Switzerland, before returning by way of Columbus, Ohio (which is like the Lake of Hellfire, only less interesting). It was there the Reverend confronted Victoria's Secret shareholders at their annual meeting. Their MILLION (stupid semi-porn) CATALOGUES A DAY come from clear-cut, virgin, boreal forests.
Now back home - We have joined the Wal-Mart Free NYC campaign, trying to keep the Bronx out of the big box. The retail Devil has even set up a fake but very well funded Bronx Chamber of Commerce. Evil never rests. Will somebody give us a CHANGE-A-LUJAH!
FABULOUS WORSHIP
St. Mark's Church 10th St and 2nd Ave, East Village, NYC
Wednesday June 14, 8 PM, $5 Reserve: http://RevBilly.com/events
Hey gang. I'm feeling a bit daughter-of-Israel-ish this morning. I woke up with a hankering of [w:Matisyahu|Matisyahu].
Yah.
Even though I talk about my being atheist, religion and spirituality have always been important in my life. I take seriously people's claims of a life of divinity. It's why I come down so harsh on x-tian fundamentialist dominionists who use the name of Jesus not just in vain but for Power.
It's also why, when I come across people like Matisyahu, I stand in awe.
If you get a chance in the next couple of weeks, check out Trevor Paglen's show BLACK WORLD at Bellwether Gallery (10th Ave. between 18th and 19th). Paglen photographs and videotapes secret government bases through telescopes from around 20 miles away; the videos in particular shimmer like the surface of a scrying pool. More recently, Paglen has gotten interested in the CIA's use of shell companies and clandestine flights to transport suspects to unacknowledged prisons in Eastern Europe. [...]
Perhaps my favorite piece is a simple 2-minute video taken at a distance of a mile, showing commuters at McCarran airport in Las Vegas getting on the 737 to either Area 51 or the Tonopah Test Range. They're ordinary fat Americans and they waddle, which tickles me. His photo of the "Salt Pit" CIA interrogation facility outside Kabul is also quite moving, in the hell-looks-like-an-ordinary-building sense.
Maybe not quite what I'd like to have hanging on my dining room wall, but it's interesting to consider out of what unpromising material aesthetics are made.
Creepy Science: Wedding Rings Made From Your Own Bone (with some musings about corpses)- Scientists can now take bone cells from an extracted wisdom tooth, grow them on a scaffold in a lab and form new bone. Great breakthrough for medicine, right?
But...they are quick to use the idea in a rather odd way. Some couples are having their own bone cells grown in the shape of a wedding ring so they can exchange rings made of their own bone at their weddings. From BBC News:
Scientists obtain bone cells from wisdom teeth and then grow them on a "scaffold" material in the lab.
The efforts are part of a collaboration between scientists and artists aiming to learn how to craft complex shapes from bone tissue.
Examples are to go on display at an exhibition at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital in London.
Harriet Harriss and Matt Harrison, one of five couples involved in the project, have just been presented with their rings made from their bone cells.
Not sure what I think of that. Maybe I am just a traditionalist, but gold seems fine to me. (Mine happens to be three kinds of gold layered using a similar technique that samurai sword makers use to make swords, made by a Greek artisan).
Bill Batson: He's Also a Cool Artist! Politics Meets Art.- During the 2006 Democratic Primary season in Brooklyn (a hotly contested fight in a place where few Republicans do well leading to the idea that through most of Brooklyn Democrats could run a sponge cake and still beat Republicans) I met a gentleman named Bill Batson.
The very first time I met him, he discussed contriversial issues that my wife and I had skirted, but had yet to publicly discuss. I rapidly became a supporter in his (ultimately unsuccessful) run for Assembly, but I also came to see him as an example of what I call a "community candidate," a political candidate who comes from a background of community activism and participation. Bill's opponents tried to portray him as a lightweight, a nobody. This was grossly unfair to a man who had served his community for years. He was the New York State Senate Democratic Leader David A. Paterson’s Director of Community Relations, the chair and Co-Founder of ACRES, (American Civil Rights Education Services), has worked at The Coalition for the Homeless, 1199 SEIU and the New York Civil Liberties Union, was campaign manager for Norman Siegel's campaign for Public Advocate, served as a mediator between a public sector union and a non-profit health care company, facilitating the end of a nine-month dispute, and has served as a member of Community Planning Board 8, co-chairing the Fire Safety committee and the special sub-committee on the Environmental Impact of Brooklyn Atlantic Yards Development. All of this he brought into politics when he decided to throw his hat into the ring. His failed bid for Assembly came because he ran as a grassroots candidate against big money and development interests. But he has not given up activism.
Just got an email from my friend Susan well worth passing on; it's an article in Frieze Magazine written by her sister, Nancy Spector, who is Curator of Contemporary Art at the Guggenheim and Commissioner of the US Pavilion for the Venice Biennale 2007.
The impact of the Bush administration on the art world, I always thought, was confined to its serving as malignant inspiration for any number of deprecatory pieces. We tend to forget that they have their hands on the slender levers of the government's arts funding; and lo and behold, the results are the same rot we've come to expect everywhere.
When I received a gold-engraved card from the White House inviting me to a reception to launch the administration’s new Global Cultural Initiative, I thought at first that it must have been an art-world prank – perhaps a tactical media intervention by the Critical Art Ensemble. But then I realized it was my current role as the commissioner of the US Pavilion for the 2007 Venice Biennale that had earned me this unexpected distinction. The correlation between the Bush White House and culture seemed oxymoronic to me; the title ‘Global Cultural Initiative’ does, after all, have the same vague propagandistic ring and sinister undertones as ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’.
Set in the White House’s grand East Room lined with portraits of past presidents, the presentation was introduced by Laura Bush, who reminisced about the influence of culture during the Cold War, citing the Voice of America’s broadcasting of jazz music into the Soviet Union as a catalyst for the dissolution of communism. Under-Secretary of State Karen Hughes, Bush’s personal propaganda tsar, proceeded to outline the multiple-agency programme, stating that ‘art and culture can play a vital role in helping achieve our strategic public diplomacy goals’. She stopped short of explaining what those goals might actually be.
So not only are there goals, to the delighted astonishment of the world, but they can be achieved through jazz. Nobody knows, of course, if Osama bin Laden is a jazz fan. Perhaps if we'd actually, you know, caught the man, we'd know.
Some site notes- The Daily Gotham is pleased to announce a new contributor, Richard Rothstein; Richard will be blogging here, and - we wish for want must have - hopefully sharing his stupendous photography, otherwise featured on his other blog, Manhattan Details. Richard was recruited straight off Daily Kos, where he currently has a featured diary, which in turn led us to him. Here's a sample of his work:
So, welcome aboard, Richard.
Upcoming Cultural Events in Brooklyn this Week- Brooklyn Children's Museum
Planet Brooklyn: Chinese New Year celebration will kick off the Year of the
Boar at Brooklyn Children's Museum on Saturday, February 10, from 12-5pm. Families can create their own lanterns, learn to play shuttlecock and other Chinese games, and meet real "dragons" from the Museum's live animal collection. And don't miss a special performance by the lion dance team from Yee's Hung Ga Kung Fu Association of Brooklyn - including a peek inside the lion's head!
145 Brooklyn Avenue
Brooklyn Museum
Celebrate Heart of Brooklyn's fifth anniversary in Brooklyn Museum's spectacular collection of ancient Egyptian masterpieces. The galleries include more than 1,000 treasures spanning 5,000 years, from pre-dynastic times through the reign of Cleopatra. See beautifully decorated coffins, a mummy, monumental stone statues, jewelry worn by the pharoahs, and a relief with the world's first-known representation of a kiss, all a part of the collection considered to be one of the finest in the world. And be sure to catch the newly opened Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism. This exhibition has over forty superb examples of nineteenth century French and American landscapes by such artists as Gustave Courbet, Claude Monet and John Singer Sargent.
Scorsese *finally* wins a frigging Oscar- He should have gotten one for Raging Bull, for Taxi Driver, for Gangs of New York; but last night, the Academy finally gave in and gave Martin Scorsese his Oscar.
I say, what took you so long?
On a related note, was this the most international awards show in living memory, or what? Was the Academy trying to apologize to the rest of the world for certain recent, cough George Bush cough, offenses to every other country on earth?
Oh and, forget about Al Gore running; not with those extra pounds, Mister.
Judy Chicago's "Dinner Party" comes to Brooklyn- FINALLY! I have known for over a year that the Brooklyn Museum of Art had acquired Judy Chicago's "Dinner Party." But they have been building a new area to display it. Finally, it is about to open. Judy Chicago doesn't seem as well known here as she is out in Los Angeles. So it is nice to see her art reaching Brooklyn.
I have not met Judy Chicago, but my brother has worked with her on her show "Envisioning the Future" (mentioned here and pictured in the photo on the right in the Hawaiian shirt
Dont go to church on sunday
Dont get on my knees to pray
Dont memorize the books of the bible
I got my own special way
Bit I know jesus loves me
Maybe just a little bit more
I fall on my knees every sunday
At zerelda lees candy store
Well its got to be a chocolate jesus
Make me feel good inside
Got to be a chocolate jesus
Keep me satisfied
Well I dont want no anna zabba
Dont want no almond joy
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With all the people AG Spitzer screwed in the business community - entire industries - can't you imagine a groundswell of folks out there eager to see him pay for his crimes?
Meet the trailblazers of the online collaborative revolution.
Taschen's "New Media Art: Art in the Age of Digital Communication" is a history of net art movement written by one of its grand poobahs, Mark Tribe along with Reena Jana, Wired reporter and one of the first witnesses (and reporters) of this digital revolution.
Hosted by: Rhizome.org and the New Museum Store
Location: The New Museum of Contemporary Art
556 W 22nd Street at 11th Ave, NY, NY
When: Friday, June 2, 6:30pm to 8:30pm
The very first time I met him, he discussed contriversial issues that my wife and I had skirted, but had yet to publicly discuss. I rapidly became a supporter in his (ultimately unsuccessful) run for Assembly, but I also came to see him as an example of what I call a "community candidate," a political candidate who comes from a background of community activism and participation. Bill's opponents tried to portray him as a lightweight, a nobody. This was grossly unfair to a man who had served his community for years. He was the New York State Senate Democratic Leader David A. Paterson’s Director of Community Relations, the chair and Co-Founder of ACRES, (American Civil Rights Education Services), has worked at The Coalition for the Homeless, 1199 SEIU and the New York Civil Liberties Union, was campaign manager for Norman Siegel's campaign for Public Advocate, served as a mediator between a public sector union and a non-profit health care company, facilitating the end of a nine-month dispute, and has served as a member of Community Planning Board 8, co-chairing the Fire Safety committee and the special sub-committee on the Environmental Impact of Brooklyn Atlantic Yards Development. All of this he brought into politics when he decided to throw his hat into the ring. His failed bid for Assembly came because he ran as a grassroots candidate against big money and development interests. But he has not given up activism.
So, welcome aboard, Richard. 
