Mission District Wall Painting I spent the most of the '80s in NYC back in the heyday of the train graffiti. It was such an alive art form; fun, ironic, unashamedly bright, daring and political. Just the way the paint was applied had a living energy. You had to enjoy it in the moment because you might never see it again. Some of it ended up in books and galleries, but most was power-washed away or painted over. You never knew for sure who did it or why. I worked as billboard painter or "wall dog" at the time, which prompted my appreciation of these works of art in progress. There were similarities in the brash, temporary slickness of both mediums and they often competed for real estate. Unlike more formal painting, walls are constant ... [Read more]
Containing Multitudes
Ralph Lemon/Cross Performance: How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere? Ralph Lemon takes the long view in the latest work from his Cross Performance company, How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere? presented at the REDCAT, Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater space November 10-14, 2010. His previous company followed a traditional annual touring schedule, presenting a mixture of old and new works. With Cross Performance, he creates large-scale multi-disciplinary projects over many years. This single-project approach creates an atmosphere in which Lemon, a Guggenheim and US Artists Fellowship recipient, among many other awards and honors, feels comfortable attempting to integrate his responses to ... [Read more]
Gone in the Air
“My Name is Gauhar Jaan!” The Life and Times of a Musician, by Vikram Sampath (©2010) Rupa Publications, New Delhi, ISBN 8129116185 In 1857, following the deposition of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the cities along the Ganges one by one slipped into the hands of the British East India Company and three hundred years of Mughal reign in the subcontinent ended. Shifts in fortune, power, patronage, and custom at the eye of the pyramid dripped down the walls of Indian society, north to south; new power structures were erected, and with them new technologies and customs emerged, new histories were written, and new fortunes were made, many of them sealed with blood. It was against this unutterably complex social transformation that a young girl ... [Read more]
Show and Tell
Alfred Brendel: On Character in Music, REDCAT October 28, 2010 The assignment of character or poetic meaning in music of the last half of the last century has been an unfashionable practice. Perhaps practiced in secret in the hearts of all composers, but not openly discussed by many. Pure musical theories of chromatic scale, tonality and form have been the favored pursuits of "new music", a turning away from the over laden portentous Romantic zeal that dominated the late 19th and early 20th century. But as of late there has been a distinct, albeit slow, shift back towards easy listening. The toot and bleep that has been so closely identified with composers of contemporary classical music is steadily being subverted with sound thats ... [Read more]
Owning the Means of Connection
The Social Network, David Fincher, Director, Aaron Sorkin, Screenplay, 2010 – If you’re like me, you’re partial to narratives of hope. You want things to work out, for yourself certainly…but also for the people you care about and the traditions you identify with and think are healthy. From childhood on you’ve felt burdened by a sense that something is wrong, a little bit wrong maybe, or maybe a lot wrong, depending on your temperament. We can talk about that sense of wrong-ness as free-floating anxiety, dukkha, original sin – my point is only that, like me, you probably tend to assemble daily experience into story lines – narratives – that make a plausible case for why your world is moving in a less-wrong ... [Read more]
The Commitment to Witness
Wrought Iron Fog, Tere O’Connor, REDCAT, October 14-17, 2010 New York choreographer Tere O’Connor’s latest work, Wrought Iron Fog, was performed at REDCAT during its four-performance west coast premiere last month. O’Connor, a former Guggenheim and Rockwell fellowship recipient and creator of dances for Jean Butler, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and the White Oak Dance Project, is rightly regarded as an original figure in dance, as much for his deliberately varied creative processes as for the results he achieves with his dancers. Wrought Iron Fog leaves no doubt about its uniqueness while it solicits inquiry from its very first moments. The work begins on a spare darkened stage, with a rippling blue curtain at the rear and dozens of ... [Read more]
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