Screen grab of Britney Spears’ “Oops, I did it again” video. Watch it.

Just heard on a BBC report that the Beatles song “Across the Universe” is being literally beamed across the universe through NASA’s Deep Space Network. It’s aim? The hope that it’ll be intercepted by an alien life form on it’s route to star Polaris (wiki:polaris, 431 lightyears away). I can only imagine the sad possibility that somewhere in the vicinity of Polaris an alien life form that is extremely sensitive to sound is being blow apart by the lines “Jai guru deva om”~~~oops, we did it again!

Across the Universe
by the Beatles

Words are flying out like
endless rain into a paper cup
They slither while they pass
They slip away across the universe
Pools of sorrow waves of joy
are drifting thorough my open mind
Possessing and caressing me

Jai guru deva om
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world

Images of broken light which
dance before me like a million eyes
That call me on and on across the universe
Thoughts meander like a
restless wind inside a letter box
they tumble blindly as
they make their way across the universe

Jai guru deva om
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world

Sounds of laughter shades of life
are ringing through my open ears
exciting and inviting me
Limitless undying love which
shines around me like a million suns
It calls me on and on across the universe

Jai guru deva om
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Jai guru deva
Jai guru deva

Beatles Hit to Be Played in Space, BBC website

This CBS news clip I found on the site of Sanford L. Smith’s website got me thinking about the future, the year 2013 to be exact. I was wondering what shape the New York Armory Art Fair will be like when it turns 100. The clip is a 1988 report on the 75th Anniversary of the Armory Art Fair. In the clip is another older clip of the 50th Anniversary with a few words from Marcel Duchamp (seen below as the fuzzy gray figure in front of the Nude Decending a Staircase No.2).

left: 50th Anniversary of the Armory Art fair, and right, it’s 75th Anniversary.

By the way, there is also an interview with the 75th anniversary event organizer Sanford L. Smith, who is also the organizer of the Art20, Modernism, The Outsider Art Fair (mentioned below), Works on Paper, and The New York Antiquarian Book Fair.

The annual Outsider Art Fair in New York opens tonight and continues through out the weekend. Outsider art still fascinates me when I think of how much some artists are struggling to establish themselves in the context of contemporary art, meanwhile these outsiders are just doing their thing. Why fuss about money and fame if that isn’t the real goal of the game? I notice that this desperation is the cause of the passive-cattiness in the system.

If this desperation isn’t enough to keep you out, then perhaps the cost of education will do the trick: The 2 year MFA from Columbia University is now nearing the 80K mark. ($77,624 tuition alone)

Outsider Art Fair (website)

January 25 - 27, 2008
Friday
Saturday
Sunday 11am - 8pm
11am - 8pm
11am - 7pm

The Puck Building
295 Lafayette Street, corner of Houston Street,
Soho, New York City

Waiting for Godot in New Orleans photo by Donn Young and Frank Aymami, more photos here.

A couple of nights ago we bumped into artist Paul Chan at a mini film festival of Apichatpong Weerasethakul at Anthology Film Archives.* I remember having read that he had just completed a production of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” in collaboration with the Classical Theater of Harlem. At that time I was hoping to see the play, the only problem was that it wasn’t being performed in some alternative performance space in New York City but in an empty lot in New Orleans 9th Ward.

What does it mean to bring something like a play into a devastated landscape like New Orleans in a way in such that is becomes aesthetically interesting but locally sustainable?” - Paul Chan on producing/art directing Waiting for Godot, New Orleans 2007, Creative Time documentary video by Matt Wolf

The play was completed at the end of 2007, around the time when all of NYC art world was wheeling and dealing in Miami Basel, and to my understand it was successful in a way that it revived the spirit of the community. Their patience and hope was in some way rekindled.

This experience has been the most exciting of my life,” Pierce said. “This was the best of New Orleans, the humanity of New Orleans, all kinds of people coming together as one: 9th Ward residents, people who may never have been to the 9th Ward and everyone in between. New Orleans was one, unified in spirit. And I haven’t seen or felt that in a long, long time. For me, there were times when it wasn’t a play, it was so beyond the play… And theater did this! That’s what art is all about. Art is to the individual what thoughts are to the community. —Wendell Pierce, actor interviewed in Times-Picayune, November 10, 2007

Creative Time has since them created a micro site of the project complete with documentation of the concept and events that took place and continue to operate in the community such as the Shadow Fund for the rebuilding of the community. There is also a reader to accompany the entire event, so check back, it lightly references the Susan Sontag’s wartime production of “Waiting for Godot” in Sarajevo as being part of the reader.

I’m left wondering, where to next? He’d been to Baghdad in 2003 before the war**, at the Republican Convention in 2004***, and now in New Orleans 2007. One thing is for sure, where ever he goes you can count on him to keep his feet on the ground.
-AS

Creative Time Website: Paul Chan’s Waiting for Godot in New Orleans, A play in two acts, a project in three parts.

A Broken Tree. A City. Evening. “Waiting for Godot in New Orleans” review in the New York Times by Holland Cotter. Dec. 2, 2007.

UPDATES-
A taste of the play in NOLA from a reader:
http://www.nola.com/photos/t-p/index.ssf?GODOT_ptw/

Paul Chan is represented by Greene Naftali Gallery in New York City.

Coming up later this year the New Museum will be exhibiting “The 7 Lights“. April 9 thru June 29, 2008.
—

Paul Chan, 5th Light, 2007. Digital video projection, 14 min. From Greene Naftali, New York. Photo by Jean Vong.

* Also at the event was Rirkrit Tiravanija, who coincidentally will also speaking at New Museum’s Night School along with Paul Chan and others.

**NYPL’s 2006 event: Paul Chan in conversation with Kathy Kelly on nonviolence and his work with Voices in the Wilderness. (Audio recording of the event available)

***Along with the Friends of William Blake, he produced a map for the “The Peoples Guide to the Republican National Convention” in New York City 2004, that map is still available as a PDF on Activist magazine’s website.

Things they come and go and boy have the times a’changed! So what’s left -besides our memories- if we don’t preserve today what will prove historical in the future?

The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation in New York is one organization that is on the mission to preserve historical landmarks in and around the village belt of the city. We blogged about them last year when we heard that one of the last turn-of-the-century horse-and-carriage buildings slash former studio of Frank Stella was set to be demolished. It’s seems like as an organization it has been growing stronger since then. Click here to get an idea of their recent highlights in preservations. Their site is full of useful information about the past, present, and future of the village area or Manhattan (although some of the information is sometimes a little bit hard to find).

Memories and souvenirs, is one way to remember the past, this year the GVSHP has put up a few interesting items just in time for the holidays. They are also selling $25 individual/$37 Dual or family memberships to the GVSHP, which gives you (according to GVSHP membership page):

• Regular issues of GVSHP’s newsletter, The Anthemion
• Free 6-month subscription to The Villager newspaper for you or a friend
• Free access to GVSHP’s extensive research resources
• Invitations to attend GVSHP’s many lectures, symposia, discussion series, and walking tours–many at a discounted rate
• Give at the $100 level and above and you will receive a set of lovely Greenwich Village note cards
• Give at the $500 level or above and you will receive an invitation to a special thank you event at a unique Village location

If you’re less interested in gifting membership there are also other more tangible items that you can purchase for the holiday season… More in the GVSHP merchandise page…

I just discovered RadioDays, a temporary 30 day radio program held by De Appel back in April 2005. It’s archives have some interesting blast-from-the-past interviews and discussions, for example there is an interview with Anton Vidokle of E-Flux discussing some project he was working on back then before PawnShop (see post: Art Pawnshop by Eflux) (Also for those who didn’t catch the switch, Saskia Bos was the director at De Appel but in 1995 moved to NYC to become Dean of The Cooper Union School of Art.)

Anyhow, here are a few, more at radiodays.org Enjoy:

-

DAY 02 - Saturday 2nd - 17:50
Interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist
20 minutes
http://www.radiodays.org/m3u/04021750hansobrist.m3u

Interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist
A renowned interviewer himself, curator for ARC / Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and co-curator of the 1st Moscow biennial, Hans Ulrich Obrist is asked about the medium specificity of radio in contemporary art. (Recorded in Moscow 30.01.05)
20 minutes

-

DAY 03 - Saturday 3nd - 18:30
Live Interview with Anton Vidokle
40 minutes
http://www.radiodays.org/m3u/0403avidokle.m3u

Sunday 3rd - 18:30
Live Interview with Anton Vidokle
Anton Vidokle is a Moscow-born, New York based artist. His work has been exhibited in international shows such as the Venice Biennale, Dakar Biennale, Lodz Biennale, and at the Tate Modern, London; Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana; Musee d’art Modern de la Ville de Paris; Museo Carrillo Gil, Mexico City; UCLA Hammer, LA; ICA, Boston; Haus Der Kunst, Munich; P.S.1, New York; amongst others. Together with Julieta Aranda, Vidokle put together e-flux video rental, which started in New York last fall and is currently travelling to Kunst-Werke, Berlin, as well as other venues. This summer, Vidokle will be working in residence and presenting a solo exhibition at ArtPace, San Antonio. As the founding director of e-flux, Anton Vidokle produced and published online projects and print publications such as Next Documenta Should Be Curated By An Artist, Do it, Utopia Station poster project, and others including an upcoming project and an exhibition entitled An Image Bank for Everyday Revolutionary Life, co-curated with Lauri Firstenberg and based on the photo archive of David Alfaro Siqueiros.
40 minutes

-

DAY 24 - Thursday 28th - 16:00
Saskia Bos, Your Host (Live)
60 minutes
http://www.radiodays.org/m3u/04281605saskiabos.m3u

Your Host (Live)
Saskia Bos
Director of Stichting De Appel, Saskia Bos, will host Radiodays with an hour of perspectives on contemporary art and 10 years of De Appel CTP (De Appel Curatorial Training Program). She will talk to Steve Mc Queen, Marina Abramovic and Henrik Plenge Jacobsson.
60 minutes

-

UPDATE 12/06/07: Radiodays.org is back up! -editors

UPDATE 12/04/07: That’s funny, for some reason the Radiodays site just went OFFLINE. What a shame. I’ll let you know when the site goes back online. Perhaps I’ll email De Appel to see what the problem is. Sorry for the inconvenience, I hadn’t even finished listening to the Saskia Bos interview myself. -editors

If you missed Ryan Gander and Stuart Bailey’s events in this month’s Performa 07 (“Loose Associations Lecture v.1.1″ reading at Drawing Center, or the radio performance of “Appendix Appendix” on WFMU) You’ll be happy to know that their radio performance is online now as a mp3 from the Dexter Sinister site. We attended the radio listening party at Home Sweet Home but it was hard to concentrate with the noise from the bar, not to mention they had what looked like very retro radio’s and small speakers.

“Appendix Appendix” is an exploration of many things, art, design, philosophy, and more within the format of a TV series via a TV script. The radio performance for Performa is the 1st Pilot episode in the series. I think they are really shopping the script around for possibly actually producing the show.

“Appendix Appendix” mp3 page on Dexter Sinister