Nick Cave Soundsuits, Courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery
Artist Nick Cave has been using his wearable Soundsuits in performances, collaborating with locals to create dynamic visual and aural sequences that are unlikely to be confused with the output of the other musician with the same name.
Nick Cave Soundsuits: Untitled, 2009 Digital c, print, Courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery
Master manipulator, Erik Sanko Photographed by Bobby Fisher at His Studio, 2011 ©Bobby Fisher
Coming up post-Halloween is Erik Sanko’s pagan puppet premiere at BAM for Phantom Limb’s performance of 69°S.
The production dramatizes the explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton’s harrowing 1914 trans-Antarctic expedition in which his vessel, the Endurance, was stranded amid freezing ice-floes for an entire winter only a few miles from the South Pole. 69°S is the latitude at which the intrepid arctic pioneers struck peril. The ensemble, led by Erik Sanko and Jessica Grindstaff, brings to life Shackleton’s adventure with elaborate hand carved marionettes in a series of tableaux vivants using music, film and photography to create a fantasy Antarctica.
Erik Sanko's marionettes. Photograph © Bobby Fisher, 2011
By Aaron Barr
Florence + the Machine at the Archway in Brooklyn / Photo by Bryan Derballa
The Creators Project, the unlikely partnership between Intel and Vice, made a quick stop in Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood this weekend. Defining themselves as an ‘ongoing global arts and technology initiative to support artists, musicians and filmmakers who are using technology to push the bounds of creative expression,’ The Creators Project, seeks to elevate artists and support new work.
Crowd at Tobacco Warehouse / Photo by Bryan Derballa
Ming Wong, Persona Performa - work-in-progress - 2011. Courtesy of the artist. Photo copyright Carlos Vasquez.
Performa will initiate its fourth international biennial on November 1 with a month long festival of performances through the city, with a premiere on opening night of live performances by the artists Elmgreen & Dragset.
The events calendar will be choc-a-bloc with films, live street performances, and theatrical events at art spaces through the city. Ming Wong will create a site-specific piece for the Museum of the Moving Image, inspired by Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 masterpiece Persona, and Spartacus Chetwynd’s Lion Tamer will be inspired in part by the Mae West film in which she tames the beasts on stage as well as ’society swells’ offstage.
Filmmaker Guy Maddin will create a live cinematic, musical event, based on his 1988 cult film, Tales from the Gimli Hospital: Reframed, which will be scored by an array of talented musicians including a superstar band of Icelandic composers. The original film, one of Maddin’s early cult successes, is a dreamlike tale of jealousy and intrigue between two men sharing a hospital room.
Guy Maddin, film still from Tales of the Gimli Hospital, 1988. Photo courtesy Guy Maddin. Performa 2011
By Aaron Barr
Shepard Fairey DJs at the closing party for ATP at Asbury Lanes on Sunday night / Photo by Kareem Black
“GREETINGS FROM ASBURY PARK,” shined the nostalgic light upon us as we arrived at this year’s annual New York-version of All Tomorrow’s Parties, a London-based festival that has been held variously at UK, USA, and Australia since 1999.
Although widely popular and respected, the festival’s organizers, Deborah Higgins and Barry Hogan, still consider it “boutique” as it doesn’t rely on corporate sponsors. You won’t find unsightly vinyl banners with beer logos or perky credit card representatives handing out extra large t-shirts in exchange for your signature and address. You won’t find very much intrusiveness of any kind, actually. What you will find, however, is an environment where artists wander among the crowds and a culture where art and music are the focus. Miles from the average music festival…
Beth Gibbons of Portishead on Sunday / Photo by Kareem Black
Geneviève Gauckler - Pictoplasmic Festival 2011
The organizers of Berlin-based Pictoplasma, a boutique festival and conference for graphic designers and illustrators, are arranging Character Walk, a fun walk-through New York with stopovers at galleries and concept stores, showcasing installations and exhibitions by participating artists throughout the city.
The exhibitions will highlight the hairy, furry, smooth, and ectoplasmic, a colorful array of monsters and ‘characters,’ which have developed ecstatic fan-bases amongst kids and adults alike.
BB Chokra performance outside at the Watermill Center, December 18, 2010 Photo By Hronn Axelsdottir - Copyright All rights reserved by watermillcenter
CHOKRA (Conscious Hoarding Of Kinetic Rage Associated) is an artist from United Arab Emirates, who uses pigment, smoke, scent, spices and powdered chilies to create mesmerizing performances that emphasize ritual and drama.
His pyrotechnic performances use multilingual rhythms set in Arabic, Urdu, Hindi and English. CHOKRA also explores trans-gender identity using sound animation, video and transnational costumes. His work is an incarnation of the cross-cultural and multi-ethnic potpourri feeding the construction boom in UAE, with immigrants bringing cultural contributions from the Indian subcontinent. The surge of art-traffic in connection with the Dubai art fair, and museums sprouting in Abu Dhabi increases the creative dynamic and encourages dialogue for Arab artists in the US.
CHOKRA | Al-Mtsaalh Haal (The Trucial Case) | December 18, 2010 from Watermill Center on Vimeo.
A photo taken at Burning Man, David Art Wales 2010
Festivals have been sprouting love, peace and happiness across the planet, and some like the Festival in the Desert in the Sahara in Mali, Afrikaburn, and Burning Man which take place over several days, become watering holes for artists, musicians and a place to show off distinct styles.
Escape to New York was a festival organized in early August in South Hampton New York with installations, live music, performance art and experimental theatre. The organizers put up private teepees, suitable for glamorous camping, “glamping,” to accommodate the Hampton’s taste for sanitized partying – in contrast to the tents and wagons that spawn chaotically in the crowded fields of Glastonbury.
Film still from Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, 2010 Directed by Sophie Fiennes.
Sophie Fiennes’ film Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, is a meditative and mostly wordless portrait of Anselm Kiefer’s studio in Barjac in France. Keifer left his native Germany in 1993 and took over a derelict silk factory, La Ribaute, in the South of France. It was an industrial landscape surrounded by woods, which Kiefer transformed by excavating subterranean passages, caverns and tunnels to create an ever-evolving architectural space.
By Aaron Barr
Photo by Jim Wright
East Village, New York City, NY – Walking down a set of concrete steps and stepping into a small shop, you’ll find guitars hanging like trophies and vintage amplifiers leaning patiently against the walls. Cans of paint and various tools give the appearance of usefulness, and a friendly face greets you as you walk through the door.
That’s Jimmy Carbonetti. Born on New York City’s Roosevelt Island, he has found his true calling creating handmade, one-of-a-kind guitars. They are marvelous pieces that are both form and function, pushed to their limits; equal parts precious museum and gritty dive bar.
Jimmy wears this craftsman role quite well and pairs it with a passion for playing music, identifying with iconoclasts before him like Ronnie Wood, John Entwistle, and George Harrison; artists that made their solemn vows to music and kept them through life’s many ups and down.
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