I’ve been postponing reflection on our trip to NYC for about a month and a half. I had some pretty negative reactions to being in Manhattan, and feeling like I was going around consuming art in the same way that I consume imagery on the television or internet. I’m still working out my thoughts surrounding that, actually. In the meantime, I wanted to go through the notes I took regarding art we saw that was actually interesting or inspiring to me, just as a way of digesting some of that massive amount of input from visiting 3-5 art spaces/day for 5 days.

I think one of my clearest realizations about my experience in New York was that I felt like I could have taken in quite a bit of that information online, and that I didn’t have to go to the place itself to take in the information. On top of that, I really have never enjoyed myself in New York, the place. I would rather go to other places that were more concerned with things like the environment, livability, affordability etc. Or maybe I’m just not wealthy enough to enjoy NY, to consume what it offers. It felt so commercial, and so concrete. I can’t figure out where the romance of it is. Not sure. I’m still working that out.

On one of my first nights in town, I went to a woman named Teague’s house for her 28th Birthday. Felicity and I were in charge of making vegan carrot cake cupcakes.

During the evening, I met a guy named Matt who was interested in my work with The Committee, and told me about another think tank called the Clock of the Long Now. I’ve done some research into this, and found the following links to be intriguing:
http://www.longnow.org/press/articles/Michael_Chabon_-_The_Omega_Glory.pdf
http://blog.longnow.org/
http://www.longnow.org/projects/

I think I need to spend more time with this. Maybe a long time. But it’s worth sharing.

Labels: Committee

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During my stay in Melbourne, I had two lovely hostesses – Lisa Radford from Damp, and Felicity Managan, a friend of Lisa’s and mine. These ladies picked me up from the airport, lent me a cell phone for the week, made sure my afternoons and evenings were booked with openings, music shows, dinners and parties, drove me out of the city to see the bush and beach, and introduced me to everyone we came across.
I always think it’s interesting to see pictures of people in their homes. so here are two pictures, Lisa moving across her apartment, and Floss on the phone in her kitchen on Lygon St.

One of my favorite events of the trip was a visit to an opening at what I hear is a new-ish gallery in Melbourne, off of a laneway (alley) north of the central business district.
When we showed up at the gallery, it was closed, and men in black ski masks were releasing freshly inked flyers out of the windows. Flyers that read things like “Shit is real”.
They also threw cans of beer, wrapped in tape out the windows like little molotov cocktails from the windows, while shouting derogatory remarks at the audience.
Understandably, the audience huddled across the alley under a the eaves of the sidewalk.

At some point, two long 2×4’s emerged out of a crack at the base of the venetian blinds, and two huge banners were unfurled.

For the remainder of the evening, the crowd watched, drank beer, picked up some of the flyers to take home (I kept the one that said “show us ya titties” for sheer shock value), and speculated about how the show would end.
Eventually, the banners were retracted, the guy who’d been massaging his crotch in the window for the past 45 minutes disappeared, and everything went quiet.
To the left of the gallery entrance was a tv monitor with live feed showing the interior of the gallery, and we watched as the men put on jackets, hats, and headed down stairs, out the door, on to the street, and down the alley. A little anticlimactic, but entertaining nonetheless.

Just before leaving town, Harrell emailed me a
link to an article in Melbourne’s paper about the new curator of contemporary art at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) and suggested I try to see up a meeting with him. We were able to have coffee together during the latter half of the week, and spent an hour or so discussing the differences between funding and organizational structures of museums in the US and Melbourne. We also talked a bit about the program, my work, and Alex’s prior work in Pennsylvania.

Alex was also gracious enough to come see my talk at VCA on Friday. Here’s a great picture of him saluting while we listened to the Mostlandian Anthem.