Vitro Nasu

Studs Terkel, the ageless master of listening and speaking, a broadcaster, activist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author whose best-selling oral histories celebrated the common people he liked to call the “non-celebrated,” died Friday. (AP)

Studs Terkel “guerilla journalist”
(Painting by Beverly Finster)

Studs on Obama (Huffingtonpost)

I’d ask Obama, do you plan to follow up on the program of the New Deal of FDR?
I’d tell him, ‘don’t fool around on a few issues, such as health care. We’ve got bigger work to do! Read FDR’s second inaugural address!’
The free market has to be regulated. And the New Deal did that and they provided jobs. The government has to. The WPA provided jobs. We have got to get back to that. We need more reg-u-la-tion.
I was just watching Alan Greenspan, he’s an idiot, and by the way so was Ayn Rand!
Community organizers like Obama know what’s going on. If they remember. The important thing is memory. You know in this country, we all have Alzheimer’s. Obama has got to remember his days as an organizer. It all comes back to the neighborhood. Well I hope the election is a landslide for Obama.

Studs Terkel Org. (Conversations with America)<> <> Hard Times

Amy Goodman interviewed Studs Terkel (Democracy Now)

Bewildered, Insecure, Cynical: Studs Terkel on today’s troubled blue-collar worker

His interview on Vonnegut Speaking of Faith

Conversation with future Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing in 1969: Lessing: “You do still have gangsters [in Chicago], don’t you?” Terkel: “Yes, but these days they’re mostly in business, or politics.” (wikipedia)

Levi van Blevin

See additional images here, Levi van Blevin

In the case of the series The Material Transfer, all works were completed and photographed within a time frame of 24 hours and without any digital manipulation. Giving familiar elements such as cheap carpet, pebble stones and sterling wood a new context results in a confusing conflict between the objects normal associations and the new values assigned to it in the works. Levi van Veluw interrogates the attributes of daily life. (Hildamagazine)

Lenka Clayton was born in England in 1977 in a small village and grew up by the sea. She works as an artist and documentary maker and more often in the area inbetween.
Lenka’s work sets out to examine and question the naturally occurring order of things using organising systems and interventions to disrupt accepted modes of language and patterns of behaviour. She is interested in our shared experience of the judgements we derive from the authority of language. In the way we understand the world through documentation and how once produced that document becomes a shorthand for the original event. And in the simple question how do we live and why? (Hilda magazine)

Teeth by Lenka Clayton

Mermaid 2
Janaina Tschäpe (Blood and Sea)

Janaina Tschäpe is a visual artist working with video and photography for her installations. She was born in Munich, Germany but grew up in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

See more videos and images by J. Tschäpe here.

Tony and daughters came to SF for wonderful food and company. (Found youtube)

They obviously did not go to Fun Fin Fin fsfs – fake squid fast stop – Chinese Restaurant.
Jurgen, Hal and I prefer the Chinese Noodle houses – they are within our budget. They serve noodles, duck and rice soup and other standard Chinese food. Jurgen and Hal have never met in real life but that does not stop them from talking and choking on German artists. (Do not miss the great videos of Rebecca Horn and Eva Hesse).

Speaking of Noodle house, Milan Kundera was linked at my Noodle Place post I did last year February.
(Very chop suey like – with an image of “Debt to Pleasure – Imagining Kundera, Kureishi and Tanizaki”)

Chop Suey
by Edward Hopper

There are number of interesting films that came out of the Independant cinema world about Chinese restaurants in overseas.

Vivian Wu in Kinamand

“Chinaman”: the unconventional love story of a Danish plumber and the restaurant proprietor’s sister whose only hope of obtaining a residence permit is marrying a Danish national.

Trailer here (without English subtitles)

Trailer for “Combination Platter” – Tony Chan made this film.

See Čínská Restaurace in Prague. I have never been to this restaurant. The friend of a Czech family I knew fixed a Chinese dish to show off his skill once. Many Czech restaurants have one Chinese dish in their menu among goulash, dumplings and Palacinky (pancakes). It does not matter what you eat, wonderful pivo (Czech pilsner) beer washes down the food. At the train station stops you often see people drinking pivo at 8 am before their commute to work. “Ceske Pivo, Prosim” “How dare Milan leaving Pivo country! We will go after you like the befuddled tourists who get arrested in our public transport; their crime: not knowing where to buy the ticket.” Ticket booth is no where to be found, no gate to go through etc. Very mysterious system. (I don’t know if the Prague police are still harassing the passengers today. You pay a large fine on the spot to the police of course. For foreigners only.)

Milan Kundera

This must be the time of Prague Fall as the memory of Prague Spring has become murkier and distorted.
Accusation Against Writer Reopens Traumas of Czech Past (NYtimes)
A friend who knew Milan Kundera for 50 years said,

Milan was always introspective — he was not a fanatical Communist, and I completely exclude that he could have denounced someone in this way,” Mr. Pondelicek said. “It just does not match his pattern of behavior.”

Milan is a writer and his writings should speak for us. (Though some like Ed Champion is ready to say that Kundera is overrated)
Here are some samples.
Milan Kundera on Francis Bacon (from Hypergraphia – For Tate)

Milan Kundera on Ecstacy

Jtwine on Milan Kundera

I always think of one of his quotes:” kitsch is the absolute denial of shit.” I like that a lot.

(Check Jurgen’s neat photos and Fassbinder video at FSFS – fear should fall short – Shark fin project Merde, I got enough of celebrity-art-talk now.)

Swimming Pools in Milan Kundera’s novels by Jorn Boisen

Maria from Mexico commenting, (from Prague Life)

I teach literature in Mexico. My high school students have loved “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”. I just want to say that Sabina´s longing of the two lighted windows has haunted me always as well as her despair. Thomas, Teresa, and Sabina are some of the most memorable characters of all times. To have a bunch of Mexican 17 year olds thinking this is their favorite novel of all times is the best reward an author could have.

Four Milan Kundera related youtube samples
Elas – a video animation from Brazil – based on Unbearable Lightness of Being

(repost from last year Halloween)

2) The Unbearable Lightness of Being on Tube (a cute youtube experiment)

3) A reader put his enthusiastic review of the Unbearable Lightness of Being on youtube- “Incredible”.

4) A funny clip of Milan Kundera sitting on an inflated plastic chair answering in French, rocking himself uncomfortably. (1968) (Youtube)

(Tristram Shandy Portfolio by John Baldessari via)

An example of Baldessari collages, made from stills of old B-movies superimposed with geometric shapes, is seen in an illustration for a special edition of Tristram Shandy.
When Hoyem learned of Baldessari’s interest in Laurence Sterne’s novel of 1760, he invited him to participate in a new publication that matches Sterne’s disregard for plot and punctuation with the artist’s own disjointed imagery. The project also includes a volume of the complete text with all its eccentricities intact, and another containing a critical essay. (MoMa – Baldessari’s Trsitram Shandy)

Studio<> <> <> i8 Gallery <> <> <> Five Pickles and Fingerprints

Vintage Baldessari Some Narrow Views (either tall or wide)

Apparently FSFS (Fish Stink From Space) – Fung Shark Fin Soup is picking up with Shark fin sighting when we thought we were finished with Finning.

Baldessari got shark fin covered and he painted yellow to go with a blue dog.

Man, Dog (Blue), Canoe/Shark Fins (One Yellow), Capsized Boat, 2002 (via)

Extra, watch Tristram Shandy film trailer.

Now let us go to San Francisco, SFSF – FSFS and visit Jurgen’s I Like American and America Likes Me (Beuys, L. Bourgeois and Duchamp)

Tyler Green started an American Flag project.

Ethan Ham submitted Vito Acconci (1980)’s Instant House.

This week Modern Art Notes is featuring prominent curators identifying favorite works of contemporary art that feature the American flag.

The American flag images below are from my collection and not part of Tyler Green’s project.

Google eagle <> <> looking for prey (digital photo collage by Fung Lin Hall)

<> <> <> <> < Flag pols and Kid (photos by Fung Lin Hall via The Land Project – dlsan of Italy) <> <> <>

Jürgen Trautwein made an Election game for you. (Who’s afraid of red white and blue?)
Objective: remove the small red squares out of the big square. You can turn down the sound.

<> <> <> <> <
<> <> <> <> <

Robert Gardner is a glass master from Asheville.
Robert Gardner

Extra – Palin-Pleasure related links
Party with Palin at the white house. (Flash fun) Touch the door more than once.

“The Book Ends” or “In God we trust.” by Robert Gardner

Janet Paparelli watching Sarah Palin on TV

Tous Les Matin du Monde – Improvisation sur les Folies

Note: Imgmar Bergman loved “Tous les Matin du Monde’ directed by Alan Corneau. Later Alan C. made a film “Fear and Trembling” with Sylvie Testude who memorized Japanese text full of lengthy dialogue phonetically.

R.I.P Guillaume Depardieu, 1971 – 2008

Guillaume had starred alongside his father for the first time in director Alain Corneau’s Tous les matins du monde (All the World’s Mornings) in 1991.

Guillaume Depardieu

(youtube trubute set with music by George Delerue)

Obit from Guardian Papa Depardieu told Paris Match, “He’s a real poet who touches me enormously, but who is very difficult, incorrigible … “

He had his right leg amputated in 2003 as result of a hospital infection developed during operations to recover from a motorbike accident in 1995.

Touching obit from Glenn Kenny

Guillaume D. relished working with Jacques Rivette in “Ne Touchez Pas La Hache” based on Balzac’s novel.

Guillaume D. was in Pola X.
Saw this movie called Pola X many years ago, I just found out this is another film loosely based on Herman Melville. (Beau Travail by Claire Denis is another example).

The film is loosely based on the Herman Melville novel Pierre: or, The Ambiguities. The film title is an acronym of the French title of the novel, Pierre ou les ambiguïtés, plus a Roman numeral “X” indicating the tenth version of the script draft that was used to make the film. Pola X has been associated with the New French Extremity.

Enough!

My geisha cacti are playing Sarah Failin and John McInsane this morning. We have a few more weeks to put up with this team. (Previously Fear and Trembling and Memoirs of C. Geisha – Andy W and Glenn G)

Some readings I’ve done recently…..

Kenneth Baker interviewed Zizek

Kenneth Baker interviewed by Timothy Backwater, and Part II
(I’ve always enjoyed reading Kenneth Baker’s reviews on art at the SF Gate, now I got to see what he looked like and learned about his background.)

Laughing with Kafka by David Foster Wallace (This one remind me of Nabokov lectures to his student on Kafka)

Nabakov on Kafka – Vladimir Nabokov played by Christopher Plummer

Part II of Nabakov on Kafka

Michel Houellebecq directed a film called A Possibility of an Island, starring Benoît Magimel (He was in The Piano Teacher, had a daughter with Juliette Binoche).

Right Again: The Passion of John Stuart Mill (by Adam Gopnik at New Yorker) Delightful reading, J S Mill’s wife was a feminist and so was he.

This one from Michael Berube

That one isn’t good for you
Though he may want you too
This one wants you back again

Oh, and this one would be happy
Just to love you, but oh, no, no, no
That one won’t be happy
Til he’s created a huge new
health care bureaucracy

This one would be John McCain
Would always feel McSame
If this one gets you back again

And finally don’t pass up on this Dickhead whose life was cut short tragically, unlike another dick-cheney-head who is hiding in his bunker.

Shark fin tissue used for Shark fin soup.

JTwine and I have started a Fung Shark Fin Soup project.
A misspelling of my name Fung Fin Hall by Jurgen had led to this new exploration and creative possibilites. He is German and I am Chinese we don’t like to waste anything. This should keep us busy for a while.

Now back to my other new project.
Tissue 2

Tissue 2 is my response to the current controversy regarding Issue I.
Tissue in this instance is not from our body or shark but more like the tissue you find as Angel Soft, Cottonnelle, Northern or Charmin. (Pay attention to different patterns from these brands – this is a digital photo based collage.)
See Flickr Tissue here.

Featuring the work of 3, 164 poets. Completely unpermissioned and unauthorized, pissing off the entire poetry community. Either you’re in or you’re not.Issue I from Poetry anthology.

i think this is funny and i approve of it -Tao Lin(a reader of depressing books)
i’m excited, i really like Tsuyoshi Yumoto – Tao Lin (again, in one sentence.)

Mme Levy of La Vache qui lit called out a certain delusional old poet for his post on Issue I

Lime Tree

I take this to be a characteristic pathology of artistic/intellectual community on the web: the constant panic over whether one is presenting oneself in the most sophisticated and even-handed light, and whether someone else has outdone one in this regard. I don’t know if the project was consciously deployed in light of this dynamic, but that’s certainly the way it’s manifesting its effect. Or maybe this is just me projecting. Oh my god, I’m so embarrassed.
Lime Tree on Issue I

I am bothered that he is bothered

Dear The Future,
Even though I’m not actually
Ron Silliman, I’m pretending
to be just for the sake
of this poem. (read more from Hitler’s Mustache)

I enjoyed reading Shaviro’s response, here.

The Author, Resurrected – Amy King’s Alias

Filed under: Artifice, Blogging, Entertainment, Poetics, Poetry, Sexy — amyking @ 3:23 pm
Tags: Author, Barthes, Death of the Author, Internet, Ownership, Poetry Anthology, poets, Situationist, Spectacle

Issue #1 Faux Anthology – Nick Piombino of fait accompli

I would just call it-The Unbearable Lightness of Issue #1. There is something about that huge sudden ironic parody that calls for instant recognition of the non serious nature of the intervention. This is the “unbearable lightness of blogging” as I have termed it, par excellence.

<> <> <> <>
TP Meditation

Li Shun <>
Rouge Flower – Silkscreen and Oil

141 works by 96 artists are represented in Mahjong:Contemporary Chinese Art from Sigg Collection now at Berkeley Museum.

Ai Wei Wei Han Dynasty Urn with Coca-Cola Logo (Click to enlarge)

Shi Xhinning Duchamp Exhibition in China. (Another Mao painting by Shi Xhinning)

Here more click through below,

Obssessive Memories – Liu Jiang Hua (In the mood for lost arms and body parts? Wong Kar Wai in porcelain).

Great Walls 2000 Years ago and Restaurant by Miao Xiao Chun

It looks like a landscape Liu Wei, Born 1989 in Beijing – Liu Wei

Wave by Li Song Song
(Mme Mao Tse Tung or Lady Maobeth and scarier than Sarah Palin, Chiang Ch’ing was another no talent actress when she met Mao. )

Chen Zai Yan – Three Famous Xingshu Documents

Hai bo – They Recorded for the Future

Hon Hao Beijing No5

Mostly Mao here for this post, extremely narrow and biased selection, neverthless we must acknowledge that Mao was good for artists.

Yu Youhan
Insiders View of China’s Art – Kenneth Baker

The collector explained that the Berkeley Museum’s architecture muddled the plan to have 12 thematic sections, which gave rise to the title “Mahjong.”
Uli Sigg: The exhibition concept doesn’t derive from mahjong, but it plays with it. It’s a game with 144 stones and you will have 12 groups of 12 stones. … Mahjong has been played since the Ming Dynasty and today it is played on the Internet, so it has a very large audience. It looks back into the past and also into the future. And the third element is that each time you play, the stones are combined differently, and as the exhibition travels, works will be combined in different ways.

A review from C-Monster

But here at Mahjong was a consumer vocabulary I could understand. There were fun clothes and bright constructivist posters and plastic tchotchkes, all sensationally over-obvious in their message. I wanted to buy, buy, buy!

Denis Diderot

October 5 was a birthday of Diderot and Louis Lumiere.

French philosopher, and man of letters, the chief editor of the L’Encyclopédie, one of the principal literary monuments of the Age of Enlightenment. The work took 26 years of Diderot’s life. In seventeen volumes of text and eleven of illustrations, it presented the achievements of human learning in a single work. Besides offering a summary of information on all theoretical knowledge, it also challenged the authority of the Catholic Church. (Via)

Diderot was a freethinker who disregarded any dogma, tradition or authority, ecclesiastical or secular, over his mind—his right to think and express his thoughts. He never found the answer of his quest, but he described the enigma of our existence (via)

La Religieuse (The Nun)
Jacques Rivette’s La Religieuse (The Nun), 1966 is the adaptation of Denis Diderot’s novel (1760).
The film was banned despite Anna Karina”s” great presence and acting.

What is a Diderot Effect? (Beware of trading up – the burden of wealth).

Beware of the contamination of sudden wealth. The poor man may take his ease without thinking of appearances, but the rich man is always under a strain.

L’espirit d’escalier

that moment of belated inspiration when you think of the perfect comeback for a difficult encounter only when you’re walking down the stairs after the conversation is over. That’s another Diderot effect I observe too often in myself. (On Diderot Effect)

Late Theresa Duncan named her blog The Wit of the Stairecase

From the French phrase ‘esprit d’escalier,’ literally, it means ‘the wit of the staircase’, and usually refers to the perfect witty response you think up after the conversation or argument is ended.

Snowball Fight

See also The Card Game (1896) on youtube.

“The moment the object jubilates gush forth its qualities”
—Francis Ponge

Michel De Broin works in Montreal and Berlin’

Questions and answers via artnet de

(5) What is the purpose of your art?
As a strategy, I often intensify the function to show its absurdity, but I see art as what frees itself from any function or intension.
(7) What does your art change?
Change is understood as something positive, but we should consider that what we call change as a natural process participates in a progressive and irreversible degradation of resources, slowly forwarding us to an inexorable end. In that sense it is probably better to not be held responsible for too much change.

Pedal car meets the law in Canada, video on youtube here

the case was thrown out. The Shared Propulsion Car was deemed nothing more than a glorified bike with a roof. (Pedal car not guilty)

See Lost Object and a hilarious video Inside Out

When a visitor penetrates into the space, the latex form retracts and hide into the wall like an improbable animal.

Black Whole Conference consists of 72 chairs 400cm in diameter.