sweet freedom

lets go giants!

leave me alone

"...please do not e-mail, text-message, instant-message, direct-message, Facebook-message (if you’re still on MySpace or Friendster, that’s just plain creepy), Facebook-chat, iChat, tweet, retweet (don’t even mention Twitter mentions), StumbleUpon, LinkIn with, zoom into, Google Buzz, Plaxify, Jigsaw, Digg, Skype, Spoke, poke, flick, or tag me. Don’t boxball, squareball, jingl, jangl, mingl, mangl, FairShare, Foursquare, twosquare, do-si-do, or swing your laptop round and round. I just want to be left alone."

This New Yorker Shouts and Murmurs piece is so funny.

"Pure Beauty" by John Baldessari

John Baldessari is becoming one of my new favorite conceptual artists. To me, he represents all that a 'true' artist should be...progressive, humble, slightly solitary, inventive, serious without being too serious, fun, smart, quirky, and ever-curious.

Xiao Hao is a 3 year old

who is fat and happy. or maybe his buddy just appreciates a pillow.

Gambia

an artist-buddy Eelus just got to Gambia for the coolest project ever (Wide Open Walls) and shared this beautiful photo from his room. I really like it for some reason. Maybe the colors...

burning hula hoops

Went to the Burning Man Decompression last night in the city...quite a scene. I've not yet been to Burning Man (although it might have to be added to my 'things to do before I'm 30' list) but it was a kinda cool taste of the BM vibe. I find it refreshing to be around people who truly do not give a fuck and just have fun.
It was exactly as I expected it to be, with it's techno music, fur-clad dancers, pulsing light strobes, massive metal sculptures, friendly glow stick clad folks, and - my favorite - fire dancers. Flaming hula hoops?!? That and so much more...an awesome performance and definitely not the usual Sunday activity dancing in green fishnets with glittery gold insect antenna bouncing on my head.

I gotta find a good frame now

my giftie from Wendy MacNaughton arrived today! loves it.

I will be 26 in December, so by 30

I'd like to:
• Skydive
• Travel to Africa, Israel, Australia/New Zealand, and anywhere else that seems right at the time
• Get published somewhere new
• Take an extended road trip
• Learn to swim freestyle
• Return to grad school
• Go to Coachella
• Go to Burning Man
• And probably some other smaller stuff I will have to think about

Back in 1996

hip hop was still fun, ladies regularly rocked the T-Boz cropped haircut, and leather gloves were a regular accessory for guys in music videos. As one of my all time favorite songs, I'm not sure how I only just saw the official video for Return of the Mack this morning. It's even better than I'd expected.

yes, I was browsing cute animal videos last night

and this is possibly the cutest thing I've ever seen.

the bottle

Not only is the narrative surprisingly cohesive and deep for not actually having any dialogue, this great stop-motion action must have taken foreeever.

the picture

I liked best from my visit to Wendy's yesterday. It may or may not also be my new desktop background.

Story to Be Told

M.I.A. kinda changed my life when I first heard the song 'Galang' at Beauty Bar of all places back in my sophomore year of college. I've held a strong affinity for her music and crazy unique style ever since, plus she spent her early years in Sri Lanka which is completely badass. Anyways, her last couple songs didn't really do it for me but Story To Be Told came out yesterday and I like it. The choppy graphics in the video are funny, especially when all the comments on YouTube clearly think she's actually serious about the aesthetic.

Tavi

I definitely do not follow fashion but I do care about good writing/reporting and while this 14 year old kid Tavi Gevinson is all over the place now, after reading a New Yorker profile on her, I kinda get why people are so fascinated by her.
Not only does she have an unusually keen vocabulary, but she has this rare and wide understanding of culture that few young teens posses.
She injects references to 90s TV shows, 60s fashion ads, mythology, and advanced literature. Talking about her social life she said, “I go between a Daria mind-set and Atticus Finch.”
anyways, she made me excited about youth and even mildly interested in fashion for about 20 min, two things that don't often peak my interest. plus, her rap video to designer Rei Kawakubo is friggin adorable and hilarious. an intriguing little person she is.

so fresh...this gave me chills.

It's all about timing

never gets old

America, you concern me

Glenn Beck made his way to DC and gave his version of the I Have a Dream Speech (on the same day as MLK’s speech on the Lincoln Memorial steps) to a crowd of scary conservative supporters.
“This day is a day that we can start the heart of America again and it has nothing to do with politics. It has everything to do with God, everything turning our face back to the values and the principals that made us great.”

What. The. Fuck. Everything to do with God? What ever happened to a separation of church and state? I love Right Wing people that are so fearful of losing ‘individual rights’ and turning into a ‘socialist society’ (I just heard that more than a half of Americans now believe Obama is socialist), citing the Constitution to prove their point, but then go directly against it when their personal moral/religious views come into play. Feel free to think whatever you want, but stop watching Fox “News” and get facts straight. This is why I think the Left and Right cannot even have a discussion. People are uninformed and stubborn.

Dena Schuckit

Abstract painting can be tough to master; I actually think it's one of the hardest forms of art to create because it can look messy, but oftentimes each line, scratch, and splatter is carefully thought out and positioned, waiting for the viewer to 'get it.'
Anyways, I like this work by Dena Schuckit. Her poetic compositions are images derived from plane crashes, automobile accidents, war, fire, and the aftermath of severe weather culled from online news sources. Color, chaos, civilization and nature. I only found her stuff today and was impressed.

pink boobies

This month's subscriber cover story is an article I wrote on London artist INSA. The chosen cover image was too racy to put on the newsstand cover, because I guess Christian moms in Kansas don't want their kids buying mags with boobs covered in dripping pink paint at Borders, so we put in on the subscriber edition.
INSA was a very cool guy to meet and got me thinking about female representation in the media. It was nice to hear that he had a cohesive and pointed message behind his sexual imagery, as I think a lot of people (our readership included) might dismiss his work as fetish or even porn. But really most of it, ironically, is far more tame than the cover image.
It's still been great to have to attach a 'disclaimer' to the cover when sending my dad the new issue to read.

Miami x Art Basel vid

This made me smile today. BooksIIII sent me over this awesome video they just released of last year's Primary Flight in Miami during Art Basel in anticipation of this year's. The video is so good and took me back to a great 4 days with these guys last December.
BooksIIII is such a good guy and seriously renews my faith in nice people and art on the regular.

I'm wondering why

I haven't already written about Wendy MacNaughton. Her work knocked my socks off today. my new favorite artist for the time being.
I wrote about her here.

“contemporary art hates you.” by John Waters

I love John Waters' interview in our current issue.


Noel Nocciolo: In rewatching Pecker, I especially loved the part, with regards to art and noticing things, of Shelly (Christina Ricci) saying to Pecker (Edward Furlong), “You’re crazy, you see art when there’s nothing there!” Has that been a blueprint for your life?

John Waters: Art is exactly when there’s nothing there and only you can see it. Art’s magic. If you go to art galleries all day and you really learn to see, when you walk home, at least for a couple hours, you’ll see something on the street that will remind you of art. It fades; you have to go back to galleries. But then everything you see will look like art, if you learn to not have contempt about what contemporary art asks you to do, which is usually see things that regular people can’t.

I did a piece once that said, “contemporary art hates you.” It does. It hates you, if you’re the kind that walks in and says, “my kid could do that,” or “that’s ridiculous,” because you aren’t giving it a chance, because you aren’t seeing it in a different way. If you can’t see it in a different way, it hates you. You have to stop, and not have contempt before investigation, which most people have about contemporary art as they walk through the door of a gallery. That’s why galleries don’t care if they’re in out of the way neighborhoods; they don’t want people to walk in off the street, because they will hate it. They want people that want to go there; that’s why Chelsea started.

Run free

This new-ish piece by artist friend Skinner spoke to me this morning. I'm feeling his more monochromatic, simpler works.

Gary Shteyngart: Finding 'Love' In A Dismal Future

Gary Shteyngart's speaking my language in the most engaging interview I've listened to in a long time with my girl Terry Gross. It's about his new book, Super Sad True Love Story, is a black comedy set in America at some point in the near future.

transcendent

fever ray remixed by bassnectar. go to about 1 min in. listen to it with the bass all the way up in headphones. I'd say it feels like having liquid ecstasy dripped all over your body.

Calma animation x Karen O

Yest another reason why Calma is amazing.
A new music video from The NASA Project: "Strange Enough," featuring Karen O. of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Fatlip from Pharycyde, and Ol Dirty Bastard of Wu Tang (which is reputed to be his final recorded track). Animation art by Stephan Doitschinoff aka Calma.

Blu's new stop motion wonder

a full year in the making.

doubt into hope

Herakut have long fascinated me, and the day I met Jasmin (one half of the duo) was seriously one of the better days I've ever had. She is so authentic and intelligent and genuinely talented. The cool, but sometimes even frustrating thing, is that she doesn't seem to know how amazing her and her artistry really is and so when she sent me a long email about her recent struggles with doubt and how she battled those thoughts and fears by embracing hope through her work, I was really flattered. She was so open and I could relate to much of what she had to share.
This is the new video she sent along explaining their last 6mos. Their short films always amaze me. The text, the imagery, the editing. Hera always makes me happy.

Rainbows in Rio

I finally learned more on this amazing rainbow project in Rio. "The initial idea of the Favela Painting project has always been to paint an entire hillside favela in the center of Rio, visible to all inhabitants and visitors."
I gotta see this in person some day.
www.favelapainting.com/

feels like summertime today

remember when old school hip-hop videos always featured the rappers chillin and/or dancing with a bunch of girls -- and everyone actually looked relatively normal and were friends who actually knew each other? I should have been born about a decade earlier. I would have rocked a mean crimped half-ponytail.

can't get enough

of my inspiring friend Kristin here. bad days? not here.

Andre3000

Hey, thanks for existing Andre3000. You changed my life and don't get enough credit for all you've done for the music and fashion industry. Southern rap owes you a whole lot, as do a ton of other biters out there. You are a true innovator. I fucking love you but you really need to get your ass back in the studio.

Reports: Military Fails To Diagnose Brain Injuries

I almost never post negative things here because I use it as a sort of online bookmark for lots of things I like, but this news enraged me to such a degree that I had to share it.
NPR reports: “The military's medical system is failing to diagnose brain injuries in troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. NPR's Daniel Zwerdling and T. Christian Miller, of the nonprofit investigative news organization ProPublica, talk to Steve Inskeep about a new series of investigative reports. They looked into the military's system of caring for soldiers, who suffer from traumatic brain injury.”
Listen to the story here. The portion where the soldier (tries to) speak brought me to tears.

Linda + Paul

For one reason or another, I started reading up about Paul McCartney today (probably because he just received the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song — the American government's highest honor for pop music). I grew up listening to and loving The Beatles. Their songs were simple, short, and the quartet seemed to symbolize all that was fun and groovy about the sixties when I fancied myself a sort of budding hippie flower child.

A successful and talented poet is able to sum up truths we all know succinctly and beautifully. Each and every word seems to pack more meaning than the average paragraph and I think this is why The Beatles, and especially Paul, were so successful. They said a lot without saying too much.

In one of the bios I was reading on Paul, I learned that in their 30-year marriage (1969-1998) Linda and Paul spent one night apart from one another (when Paul was jailed in Japan).

“I always think of Linda still as my girlfriend. That's how we started out in the '60s, just as friends. Whenever I was working late somewhere, I just never fancied it. I thought: Well, I could stay overnight in this posh hotel, or I could go home to Linda. And it was always the brighter of the two options: Yeah, go home to Linda. It was just I liked being with her, quite frankly.”

Sometimes (okay, well at lot of the time) I find myself dreaming of the simpler America. The America that really was a place of hopes and dreams; of new ideas, no internet, and civil unrest. True, the grass really does always seem greener, but with the debt crisis, oil spill, volcano, earthquake, war…the world at large does seem to be getting a little melancholy if you really stop and think about it.

“When we went for a drive, Linda always wanted to get lost. I had an in-built panic about being lost. I always want to know where London is. I don’t want to get to, say, Staines and not know my way back. We would go down to the most obscure places, have a great time, find a little tearoom or a riverbank. She taught me little things like that, to relax and be down to earth. It was very valuable to me then, a great part of the healing process after The Beatles broke up ... Linda was a very natural woman. She loved the fresh air and the freedom and the privacy of the countryside ... She was just a great person to hang out with: very funny, very smart and very talented.”

Nasa scientists discover evidence 'that alien life exists on Saturn's moon'

ummm...okay. So there are totally aliens out there. The other month, genius man Stephen Hawking pretty much confirmed that other life forms exist (and told us not to try and talk to them), and now Nasa does as well? I find this super duper exciting and not scary in the slightest. Finally, we have some proof that we're not the center of the universe.

“Researchers at the space agency believe they have discovered vital clues that appeared to indicate that primitive aliens could be living on the moon.

“Data from Nasa's Cassini probe has analysed the complex chemistry on the surface of Titan, which experts say is the only moon around the planet to have a dense atmosphere.

“They suggest that life forms may have been breathing in the planet’s atmosphere and also feeding on its surface’s fuel.”
Read it all from the UK telegraph here.

well, this is thought provoking

Mad Men + Broken Bells = seriously awesome video.

Weegee (Arthur H Fellig) - Palace Theatre, c.1940

Berlin likes beer

well, all of Germany likes beer but I was in Berlin and this is a symbolic image from our first meal in the city. I'd been to Berlin about 7 years ago and stayed for 1 month, but this trip had an entirely different feel to it. Maybe beacuse I'm older and was staying with friends my age. Berlin is so mellow! I never realized how laid back and relaxed the whole city and its residents can be. This has its pros and cons, but it was definitely a welcome change after the hecticness (and expense) of London.

Plane Food: From Shadows to Facebook

I often do my best thinking on planes. You have nothing else to do and leaving planet Earth to briefly exist suspended in mid-air is consistently inspiring. While returning from a recent work trip, I got to musing about the F-word. Facebook.

It all started with takeoff. While peering out of the plane, rapidly snapping photos of clouds (perhaps I was having a Glen Friedman moment), I was struck by the shadows they cast. We all see shadows everyday. Virtually every object in existence has the ability to cast one, but I’d never really seen a shadow the way I saw these.

Each and every cloud cast a unique shadow onto the ocean below due to the simple power and presence of the sun. Shadows are inescapable; omnipotent and unavoidable. The sun, any amount of light, provides radiance to see an object in many ways. A good artist knows this and often devotes much time developing their understanding and correct use of lighting.

By nature, shadows are a reflection of their object. This is literal and metaphorical, as shadows are often referred to as the negative side of a person or situation; their ‘dark’ side. Every object and person has more sides to it and what ultimately defines it, is how you respond. The shadow looks differently at every moment of the day. What angle and time of day we choose to define the object or person has every impact on how we perceive it.

This led me to think about the nature of humans and our increasingly connected, fast-paced, and sometimes overly exposed, society. It got me thinking about art and why it’s so important.

On a basic level, art unites people. It creates an anecdotal grand historical narrative, a collective reference through time that any person is invited to enter. You only have to be interested to join in this ongoing conversation. Art takes you out of the everyday, out of oneself, out of the mundane and fleeting. It transports you to an intellectual, emotional, communal space where you can get as serious or as playful as you want. Even if you only see a piece of work once, or never, you are invited to carry it with you for as long as you see fit.

This in turn got me pondering how this collective value might be shifting. People personally interact with one another less and less. Children don’t play outside as much or explore as feely. There are many good reasons for this, but I think there are also hazards. Kids increasingly spend their formative years attached to cell phones, videogames, TVs, movies, the internet, and Facebook. Technology can be freeing, connecting, and informative. But it can be concerning in this context because without the value of real communities, the face to face tangible interaction, we loose out on a special nuanced space that is created when creative minds – or even developing creative minds – gather and advance.

I wonder how this will affect young emerging youth to develop unique and innovative ideas and artwork. Museums, galleries, classrooms, playgrounds, and even city streets offer immeasurable knowledge; an open space waiting to cradle collective thought, experimentation, failure, and success.

I love online venues and utilize the internet daily. I’ve kept in touch and reconnected with countless friends on Facebook. I’ve gotten feedback on ideas and projects. But this is always the second step in the process. The first must be the raw experience of meeting a person or formulating the project. To reconnect with someone on Facebook, you must have already developed the relationship somewhere else. You must foster the idea to be able to invite it into the online world.

Art is one of history’s greatest gifts, but it must be recognized, fostered, and preserved. It must be treated as a living entity to be interacted with, to breathe new life into, and keep growing so that the amazing feats of the past are not lost. I’m excited about the future and intensely curious about where it will go.

And that’s my plane food.



“’Who controls the past,’ read the Party slogan, ‘controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.’”

memories swimming in my mind today...

Montezuma in Costa Rica


Varanasi in India


Camel Trekking in the Thar Desert


Koh Phi-Phi in Thailand


Monkey Temple in Kathmandu

The Swagger Wagon fam gets real

this very seriously made my Tuesday.

travel is freedom

The trick is to remember how one feels while traveling; to enact the things you learn when away while back at home. I feel like these apples right now...with a balloon attached, able to float away

and that's London

Very cool but damn expensive.

word.

Favelas

Daaamn. Now I really need to get this Brazil trip going. Painted favelas whuuut.

tender.

Calma Lives In Other Worlds (and I would like to live there too)

I'm almost speechless. An exhibit hasn't pierced me like this in a long time like Stephan Doistchinoff aka Calma's CRAS. In images he sent me by Lost Art, it's clear he took it up about a million notches (if that's even possible cus his work is always amazing).
Calma is on some next level shit. I'm totally head over heels enamoured with this work and his mentality. Fantastic work. Peep more pics here.

Caymans Shmaymans

Grand Cayman Island was stunning. Definitely the best work trip I've ever been on, as Gatorade balls hard. Also, hanging out with pro-skaters Chaz Ortiz and Sean Malto was surprisingly cool.
This was the view right outside my hotel room. Below is one of my fav funny shots of James Sullivan of BNQT out Friday night at a rad little beach side bar (before we jumped in the bathwater ocean at 2am).
Yesterday: tanning on a Caribbean beach. Today: in my little office in HP. Thankfully, memories last forever (well, until you get Alzheimer's or dementia).

goldies

These really might be my all time favorite pair of kicks I've owned. So comfy and they go with everything (plus they were on sale!) I love them way more than you should ever love shoes.
Simple pleasures.

goddamn, mexican wrestler masks are creepy

For one reason or another, Mexican wrestler masks totally weird me out. It's not even like a creepy clown thing - if anything, it may have to do with the fact I saw Pulp Fiction too young and that gimp wears a mask that reminds me of Mexican wrestler masks.
This dude was in line in front of us at last week's screening of Exit Through the Gift Shop. Porous Walker videotaped him. I didn't wanna get near him. Like, why dude. Why?

wise words from jasmin

Boogie woogie.

Boogie has long been one of my favorite photographers. I feel like in this day and age with digital photography and the internet and Photoshop, it's really tough to be a stand out photographer, but Boogie's story is what makes him so rad.
My friend and writer Matthew Newton shared a fantastic interview he just conducted with Boogie and it really got me thinking.
Boogie is an immigrant who came to NYC in 1998. He won a visa over and did the whole 'living in a shit hole loft on a mattress with nothing, shooting photos to get by' thing. Born in Serbia, Boogie documented his country's civil war. These images cut straight to your heart- I don't care how many sad or amazing photos you've seen.
He went on to photograph gang members and drug addicts in Brooklyn’s housing projects; neo-Nazi skinheads in Serbia; and transsexual prostitutes in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Okay, so my point is this: I was having a really tough Monday, and then I reminded myself of what whimps so many of us are. Most folks have no idea what real struggle or hardship is all about...myself included. Yeah, I've seen and been through some raw shit, but nothing like a civil war, genocide, starvation, homelessness, or genuinely fearing for my life.
Hearing some realness from Boogie was refreshing to say the least.

Reflections by Fidel Castro Ruz

Everyone really does have a blog these days. Including … Fidel Castro?!? Why am I just hearing about this now?

Well this is a great vision

Globetrotting

Lined up for the next next month: Cayman Islands, UK, Berlin. magical.