At the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden:
Nam June Paik, Video Flag, 1985-1996
Mindy Shapero, The Infinite Truths of Flatterland (inside the black thing there remains everything, perpetually without motion), 2006
Juan Munoz, Last Conversation Piece, 1994-1995
Dan Steinhilber, Untitled, 2002, (paper-clad wire hangers)
At the National Air and Space Museum:
At the National Museum of Natural History:
We're currently doing some Spring cleaning, part of getting ready for our upcoming project in Finland. This week we're Ebaying old equipment: tools bought for projects years ago and never re-used.
We're also streamlining our project digital archives, focusing on projects completed before 2005 that have too many images taking up premium hard-drive space. Some projects have hundreds of images created to get the one or two images that would end up summarizing the project.
I don't want to throw anything away but I fear an untamed mountain of data more. It's also true that the more time goes by, the more we understand a project and can delete files reliably. Current projects have 1000s of images, but projects 8 years old seem to get edited down to less than 20 images [and in some cases less than 5].
It's like I remember things in my head. I have more memories of recent events and fewer memories of what it was like a while ago. It seems right to have fewer memories of older things.
Jacques Villeglé, Rue de Tolbiac, c'est normal, c'est normand, 1962, Ripped posters mounted on canvas, at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
Back in January 2005, before we wrote almost exclusively about art-related things, Murray wrote a blog post he jokingly titled "The Myth of Fast Metabolism" in which he complained about how his usually fast metabolism had failed him by allowing him to gain 5 pounds over the holidays.
It's a few dry-witted paragraphs that are about as far from sound dietetic advice as one could possibly get. He makes the entirely unscientific observation that "Unfortunately, fast metabolisms have a dark side: I gain weight just as fast as I lose it. " He also confesses that he's stopped exercising because he forgot to bring his exercise clothes on our trip.
This post, now well over three years old, is the number one reason people come visit our blog on Google searches. This post is currently listed third on a search for "fast metabolism," under other legitimate health-related sites. At times over the years, it's been first on the list.
Here's the thing about this post: it still gets comments. All. The. Time. What started with people vehemently correcting Murray's "analysis" of metabolism — "thats ridiculous, i have a super fast metabolism and do not gain weight." and "Debora, i completely agree with you sister. Don't ask that other dude [i.e., Murray] to add 1 + 1, he'll probably say the answer is 3." — has now become a place where people post their teary confessions about the struggles of living with high-speed body chemistry.
A normal person can go eating one meal a day. If I tried to do that I would be sick to my tummy crying in pain. If i [sic] go just a little to [sic] long with out eatting [sic] my body turns on my self and I swear starts to eat me.
i always had weight loss problem and in my case it is not good cause i am now a mum and sad to say im [sic] only 30 kg (66 lbs) and i cannot hold my child like the ordinary mums do...
my ribs and spine stick out, i have no chest, im [sic] too tall, square hips, all boney, no boyfriend... and people call me lucky.
Thank God I found this site. Now I dont [sic] feel so alone. People ask me if I'm bulimic and anorexic and I had to go through a family intervention!
Only one sly reader seems to get the irony:
Darn you Captain Matabo. You steer your ship of irony and wit into a sea of poor pathetic preachers drowning in their own myopic woe-is-me... Why must I lazily and rhetorically fall back into parallel structure. This is no soup opera. Why must I google you if you consume my life unless I just want to show you off. Oh it's a showdown between Captain Metabo and Calamity Vanity, I'd steak my life on it. I'm sure of it.
Bless you, Jon. You must have made good marks in reading critically.
our travels visualized on TravellersPoint.com
In seven weeks, we'll be in Turku, Finland, working on our next video project. Five weeks from now, we'll be Kökar, on the Åland archipelago, filming. Four weeks from now, we'll be exploring Hamburg with Murray's sister. In three weeks, it'll be Berlin.
Two weeks from now, I'll be in New Orleans on the 4th day of a cross-country road trip with a good friend and her three-year-old, en route from Providence to deliver the dog to my generous parents, who offered to keep him for the summer while Murray and I are in Europe.
In the span of the next seven weeks, I'm going to spend time in Boston; Providence; Baltimore; DC; Fredericksburg, VA; Asheville, NC; New Orleans; Houston; Dallas; London; Berlin; Bremen; Hamburg; Helsinki; Kökar; and Turku, Finland.
Forgive us if blogging is light for the next week or so as we finish up all the coordination needed to accomplish this journey. Once we're on our way, though, you can expect regular, daily updates.
Our new portfolio site features our new project, The Listening Array, full-length videos of all of our work and an improved interface.
"Transgressive Architecture"
Alex Schweder and Ward Shelley
Thursday, April 24, 6:30 pm
Sert Gallery, 3rd floor
Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts
24 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA
http://www.ves.fas.harvard.edu/BYO.html
Drinks and Dinner Provided
Ali Smith, Interplanetary Chart, 2007, Oil, acrylic on canvas, 64''x68''
Darren Foote, Flashlight #2, 2008, Poplar, 100''x7''x7''
Boston-based artist Darren Foote and LA-based Ali Smith's current exhibition at RHYS Gallery is full of playful spacial observations. Smith's vibrant explosions of oil and acrylic toy with dimensionality, while Foote's poplar sculptures defining the reach of artificial light sources make the intangible tangible.
RHYS gallery will be relocating to Los Angeles soon, so be sure to stop into the Harrison Ave location while it is still on this coast.
RHYS Gallery
Darren Foote + Ali Smith
April 03 - May 02, 2008
http://rhysgallery.com/
Toni Pepe, Untitled from the series Angle of Repose (Tablecloth with Dust), 2007, Archival Inkjet print [courtesy of the gallery]
Laura McPhee, Beaver Ponds on Fisher Creek After Wild Fire, White Cloud Mountains, Idaho, 2007, C-print [courtesy of the gallery]
Bernard Toale Gallery's current exhibition pairs the work of two artists, Toni Pepe and Laura McPhee, with strikingly different approaches to photography.
McPhee's dramatic mountains and forests are hauntingly still landscapes captured with the precise eye of a photographer's photographer. Pepe's Angle of Repose series is an idea-based collection of staged photos of women in various household environments, creating a dark and moody narrative along the lines of Cindy Sherman's art historical pieces.
You'll want to bring a McPhee home with you, but you'll still be thinking about Pepe the next day.
Laura McPhee, Two Years Later
Toni Pepe, Angle of Repose
Bernard Toale Gallery
450 Harrison Ave, Boston 02118
April 2 through May 10
