Megan and Murray

The Listening Array: Essay

on the set at The Listening Array photo and video shoot

I have spent my week listening to secret tapes from Kennedy’s office during the Cuban Missile Crisis and reading the transcripts of Reagan and Gorbechev’s Cold War dinner parties in Reykjavik, Iceland. It all boils down to espionage, really, and the bug the Russians put in the U.S. seal at the American embassy in Moscow. That seal, plus fifty-year-old listening devices and gold halos in historical art: that’s the jist of this project.

It doesn’t necessarily make sense, and that used to bother me, back when I was suspicious of postmodern art, before I started making serious art myself. Yet it does make a kind of sense when you see it all in context. This project we're working on is called The Listening Array: a term that refers to a series of microphones connected in different intervals that correlate data to determine position. It’s a device used for spying. It’s also exactly what it sounds like: an arrangement of things that are used to listen. In this project, it references both meanings.

The Difference Between Art Practice and Artful Living

When we lived in LA, what we loved about the city was that on a given day, we could see a great exhibition at a number of world-class museums; see new work at galleries in a handful of art districts; browse the numerous specialty art, architecture, design-related bookstores; hear a visiting artist speak at any of the umpteen area universities; go to an arthouse theater, or a silent film theater, or a foreign film theater. That gargantuan city has seemingly endless opportunities to expand your horizon as an art and culture lover.

But practically, it's a hard place to make art. Studio space is scarce, pricey and often limited in size. The cost of living is high. And there's something about limit-less opportunities that makes it easy to neglect your own work in favor of doing something more appealing. To spend your money on tickets to RedCat instead of artmaking materials.

Now that we've set up studio in Providence, we're starting to hear the same complaints from artists who have fled "The City" [this seems to be what East Coasters say in reference to NYC] in favor of this artist-friendly town. Providence has in spades what more notable culture centers don't: abundant, cheap industrial studio space; low(ish) cost of living; and — most importantly, I think — fewer distractions.

At the same time, we're not geographically isolated from the rest of culture. Murray and I have established an art-viewing routine here that involves going to Boston at least weekly and to New York almost monthly. We travel in this country and abroad often enough to get our fill of new ideas and the current dialogue in the art world at large. But on a daily basis, we have the luxury of time and space in the studio. Good coffee on our way there. Other artists, industriously working nearby.

For us, it amounts to a vibrant, daily practice. And that's a good trade-off.

Sandburg: Sand Scribblings

Carl Sandburg

V. Mist Forms
26. Sand Scribblings

The wind stops, the wind begins.
The wind says stop, begin.

A sea shovel scrapes the sand floor.
The shovel changes, the floor changes.

The sandpipers, maybe they know.
Maybe a three-pointed foot can tell.
Maybe the fog moon they fly to, guesses.

The sandpipers cheep “Here” and get away.
Five of them fly and keep together flying.

Night hair of some sea woman
Curls on the sand when the sea leaves
The salt tide without a good-by.

Boxes on the beach are empty.
Shake ’em and the nails loosen.
They have been somewhere.

Search-Word Poem (the words that get you here)

As eldests, we do not know
the woes of being a middle child,
but of mexico sickness, we have some experience.
With a little thought, we could provide
a list of bull fighting films,
or expose that secret society of avant guard woodworkers.
Perhaps it's only the sexy words
of Camus or Susan Stewart
that draw you here, or the promise
of slowing down your fast metabolism.
That christian art picture of guy with hammer at crucifixion?
It could have been anyone, really.
Hammers are just the messenger, innocent as a
possum bite, or the virtues of work.

[thanks to Amy Kane for the idea]

Changing the History of Art: A Real Allegory

Gustave Courbet, The Painter's Studio; A Real Allegory, 1855

The good news is that many people seem ready to do something about this situation, rather than just get through it. Things are simmering. More and more artists, gallerists, and curators, disturbed by the status quo, are taking matters into their own hands. Much more needs to happen. Artists should curate shows, write about them, and make their own publications. The agenda needs to be set by artists, not the market. Supply-and-demand thinking has to shift to production-and-experience thinking. Small communities or cells of artists, curators, and critics should band together, take positions, make cogent arguments, and put those things out there. If these positions are hostile to one another, fine; art isn't about getting along. Disagreement and criticism are ways of showing art respect.
- Jerry Saltz, excerpted from The Battle for Babylon

St. Marks Pirate Radio

In the early 90s, my family lived down the street from St. Mark's School of Texas, an elite private school for boys. The boys of St. Marks were smart, rich, nerdy and off-beat. They drove vintage, bumper-stickered Beemers and listened to Belle and Sebastian. They affected Monty Pythonesque British accents. They wore Dockers and Polos, but refused to tuck their shirts in or brush their hair. Let me tell you: they were the boys the girls of Dallas secretly dreamed about while dating the "yes ma'am" boys on the basketball team at the local high school.

It just so happens that St. Marks is where the Wilson brothers, Owen and Luke, went to high school. Owen was expelled in the 10th grade; Luke ran track and still holds the record in the 400m and the 800m. Wes Anderson went to a similar all-boys school in Houston, and the film Rushmore is loosely based on those two schools.

St. Marks had a pirate radio station with a very weak signal. In fact, KRSM first broadcast on the local PA system at the school. Late at night, when they should have been home doing homework like the rest of us, those mysteriously sad-eyed and worldly, rebellious boys of St. Marks would send songs into the dark, tree-lined neighborhoods of Preston Hollow. Brian Eno. Frank Zappa. Stereolab. The Beastie Boys. Nirvana. Slowdive. Spiritualized. Joy Division. And late at night, I would curl up in my windowseat in my house on Orchid Lane, my tinfoil wrapped antenna pointed toward the brick and ivy fortress down the street and that boy-DJ who was out past curfew, my ear to the speaker.

Related: The History of Dallas/Ft. Worth FM Radio; the quintessential Dallas neighborhood at night.

Rendered Null: A Review of the Robert Smithson Exhibition

[I wrote the following review when the Smithson retrospective opened at MOCA last fall. Since the show has just opened at the Whitney in New York, I thought I'd dust if off and post it. I haven't yet seen the show at the Whitney, so I have no idea how the exhibition is handled in that particular space. Check out From the Floor for an up-to-date look at the NYC exhibition.]

The Robert Smithson retrospective at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles has been widely touted as a successful exhibition, particularly in the West Coast media. The exhibition is an uncannily timed coup, taking advantage of a natural phenomenon — the drought which has lowered the level of the Great Salt Lake, thereby exposing Smithson’s most acclaimed Earthwork, Spiral Jetty, which has been submerged for most of its existence — and this has led to increased public interest and media coverage of the influential artist.

Andrew Hamilton on NYC, Food, and Roundheads

[The following is a guest post by Andrew Hamilton.]

I have a strange memory.

My wife repeatedly tells me things I cannot for the life of me recall a mere two minutes later. This is a regular, nearly daily occurrence. She accuses me of not listening to her, and she may well be right, though I will never admit to it.

It’s not that I have a bad memory. I have a strange memory, or (in fairness to my wife) what might be called a selective memory. I can’t remember that she told me take out the trash or check on a pending bill, but I can pinpoint the precise moment in my high school history class (sophomore year) when I learned that the dissenting Protestants in 17th century England were called “Roundheads.” I could cite countless examples of this unfortunate phenomenon, if I could only remember them.

Last March, my wife and I traveled to New York with some friends. It was my first visit, and I was impressed. We toured the new MOMA, the Whitney, and the labyrinthine conglomerate of galleries that is Chelsea. We saw many poignant, important things, which I vaguely remember formulating poignant, important impressions about, all of which I have subsequently forgotten.

Erasing De Kooning

Robert Rauschenberg
Erased de Kooning Drawing, 1953 [source]

Doug MacCash, the art critic for the New Orleans Times-Picayune has written a gonzo article on his "audience" with Robert Rauschenberg. The article culminates in a great story of the genesis of the erased De Kooning drawing.

"That's how DeKooning came into the picture, because he was the best-known American artist, so I got a bottle of Jack Daniel's, took a deep breath and knocked on his door. Almost unfortunately he was home. I was praying he not be there. So (when he answered) I explained to him what my idea was. And told him I needed his help to carry it out." -Robert Rauchenberg, 2005

Read the whole article here. Get a better look at the Erased de Kooning Drawing at SF MOMA.

White Noise

The other day, over thrift shopping at St. Vincent's, my good friend, an artist and recent MFA grad, summed up the problem with L.A. in a perfect punchline: "I think I'm in a dysfunctional relationship with this city — I hate it; it treats me badly; but I just can't let it go."

It's a sentiment I hear echoed a lot, especially among artists, and it's a sentiment that rings with crystalline clarity in my own experience. While I could make a laundry list of complaints against this country-western song of a city, I'll just focus on the one that causes the most problems for the creative types I know: it's too stimulating.