Vitro Nasu

Birdquake
by Kai Vierstra

Other samples by Kai Vierstra Kessler’s Piss
His video Creedlequake animation

Skateboarding – Paranoid Park, Gus Van Sant
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George B and Igor (Early career of G.B on Yourtube)

Mr B and Stravinksy

More on youtube.
Pacific Northwesat performs George Balanchine’s JEWELS

What is the Curse of Balanchine?

Magic spells, poisons, potions and enchantments may be frequent plot devices at the ballet, but the art form itself is under a bewitchment of its own making. It’s the Curse of Balanchine. (Read more here at Washington Post Ballet Must Make Room Onstage for More Than One Genius)

Music:
‘The Magdalene Laundries’ Joni Mitchell

MagnalenaeSisters – film trailer

“Former Magdalen inmate Mary-Jo McDonagh told Mullan that the reality of the Magdalene Asylums was much worse than depicted in the film”

Magdalena Sisters Part I (youtube)

Irish Reform schools thousands beaten and raped.

David Ireland
Bay Area conceptual artist David Ireland passed away. He was 78.
Kenneth Baker’s obit here.

For an artist who worked in materials as graceless as cement, disused furniture and broken bits of mass-produced garden sculpture, Mr. Ireland enjoyed an unusually varied audience. His reluctance to take himself or his work too seriously nearly always made itself felt. Even people who thought contemporary art absurd often appreciated his willingness to affirm the quotient of absurdity in his work and methods.

Art collector bought his house.

18 great images from Karsten Schubert

Previous post on David Ireland here and here.

William Lamson’s homepage – watch his amazing and amusing videos.
Work and Trade will be on view Pierogi 22 May – 22 June, 2009
Opening reception | Friday, 29 May. 7-9pm

Miranda July at Venice Biennale

Miranda July has been selected to exhibit at the 2009 Venice Biennale alongside a pretty heavy list of talent. Amazing. The show runs June 7 through November 22nd and Miranda was awesome enough to let us have a sneak peek. Behold! (We love you so)

Previous post on Miranda July here and here (see her hallway)

Gretl
(Fabienne Leclerc – Via)
Mindgames of L.Wittgwnstein by Fabienne Leclerc and Margaret “Gertle” Wittgenstein painted by Gustav Klimt

Margaret “Gertle” Wittgenstein and her younger brother Ludwig Wittgenstein did not get along according to Alexander Waugh who wrote “The House of Wittgenstein” which has been receiving great attention in the literary world.

Waugh claims that Gretl was the warmest, kindest and most humorous Wittgenstein, but also the bossiest, most ambitious and worldly. The most normal was Helene, who married a civil servant. But it is the brothers who really fascinate Waugh. Three committed suicide (Via)

Ludwig distributed 100,000 kronen among various Austrian “artists”. These included the architecht Adolf Loos, the painter Oskar Kokoschka and the poets Rainer Maria Rilke and Georg Trakl. (page 61 – The House of Wittgenstein)

Here is a review from New Yorker, The nervous splendor – The Wittgenstein family had a genius for misery by Anthony Gottlieb.

Alexander Waugh is the grandson of Evelyn Waugh.

Alexander Waugh, the author of “The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War” (Doubleday; $28.95), is no stranger to family sagas. He belongs to the fourth generation of an English literary dynasty that includes the novelist Evelyn Waugh, who was his grandfather; his previous book, “Fathers and Sons,” is a memoir of the Waughs.

Waugh’s emphasis is on Paul the one hand concert pianist in this book.
Here is Marjorie Perloff (Bookforum), her review -Sniveling Rivalry -Alexander Waugh psychologizes the troubled Wittgenstein clan

Indeed, The House of Wittgenstein might have been a much more interesting book had it focused on the differences, rather than the similarities, between Ludwig and the other Wittgensteins. How was it, after all, that out of eight siblings—siblings brought up so similarly in such particular circumstances— a single one emerged as so unlike the rest?

House designed by Ludwig Wittgenstein.
(Stonborough House was designed and built by Wittgenstein between 1926-8)

In the late 1920s, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein designed and built a house in Vienna for his sister. Wittgenstein’s family was extremely wealthy (there were gold-plated faucets in the bathrooms at home), and the building proceeded without the usual financial constraint. In one famous instance, to better satisfy his sense of proportion Wittgenstein had the drawing room ceiling torn out and rebuilt three centimeters higher.
As a novice architect, Wittgenstein obviously had large ambitions. “I am not interested in erecting a building,” he once wrote, “but in … presenting to myself the foundations of all possible buildings.” Whether or not his sister’s house approached this high ideal, Wittgenstein himself judged the finished building to be austere and sterile. It has “good manners,” he later wrote, but no “primordial life,” no “health.” (Via)

Tolstoy and Wittgenstein

The impact of The Gospel in Brief upon Wittgenstein’s philosophy (especially the later passages of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus), and his general view of ethics.

Previous post on Wittgenstein + Bruce Naumann

And Lastly visit an interactive net art
88 Constellations for Wittgenstein:(to be played by the left hand)

Carting
A worker hauls phone casings on a tricycle. Despite the dangers it presents, the e-waste business in Guiyu continues to thrive.

(image via)

Shangba, China’s Village of Death

Cancer Village

A boy plays outside his home in in Xi Di Tou near the costal city of Tianjin. Villagers say the pollution emitted by chemical factories is causing cancer. Government figures show that 300 million people regularly drink polluted water and the effects are clear in the cancer village of Xiditou, near the port city of Tianjin, south-east of Beijing.
The Tianjin health authority admits that its cancer rate is 30 times the national average, a figure blamed on water and air contaminated by a rash of chemical factories.

A map of Cancer villages in China..

China’s “Cancer Villages” Pay Heavy Price for Economic Progress (Commondreams)

Stove
From Low Tech Magazine

This hallway (Miranda July‘s delightful installation)
See video here.
and that hallway (repost –Two for One Gallery)
The above installation by Michael Merchant.

I am in the mood for low-tech goofy fun.

<> <> <> David Ireland
Three Attempts to Understand Van Gogh’s Ear in Terms of the Map of Africa, 1987 (image source)

Part I (Bullshit – Van Gogh’s Ear)

Art historians claim Van Gogh’s ear ‘cut off by Gauguin’

While curators at the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam stand by the theory of self-mutilation, Kaufmann argues that Van Gogh dropped hints in letters to his brother, Theo, once commenting : “Luckily Gauguin … is not yet armed with machine guns and other dangerous war weapons.”

Headless ceramic wall piece.

Took a day trip to Taliesin West courtesy of our local library. Came back with these photos of his Asian collection.

Two images in the middle are from Japan.

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Photos: Where Frank Lloyd Wright comes alive Taliesin West slide show.

Imperial Hotel Lobby (replica) by Frank Lloyd Wright on youtube.

Frank Lloyd Wright Trivia

Actor Anthony Quinn once applied to study with Wright at Taliesin. Wright suggested he take voice lessons to help overcome a speech impediment.

Wright also advised him to become an actor rather than an architect, he felt that he would make money if he becomes an actor. (via) That was the right advice for Anthony Quinn otherwise we would never see his Zorba the Greek dance. On the other hand acting is just as precarious as being an architect.

Gammage Auditorium has perfect acoustics, but was originally designed for the city of Baghdad. The building looks out of place in Tempe, was designed by Wright and built by his students after his death.