Boy howdy what a weekend! Hope you all had a good time and good fun. I had an interesting weekend full  of a variety of adventure of differing quality and type.

Friday we went to the opening of a new space in Soho called the Rover. The less said about that the better. Yikes. Then Saturday afternoon we hightailed it out to Sunnyside to check out THE PROSTITUTES WILL PRECEDE YOU INTO THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN at the Thalia Theatre. The Thalia is the first and only bilingual Hispanic theatre in Queens, serving one of the most diverse communities in the United States, including more than one million Hispanics from every Spanish-speaking nation in the world. It was interesting to check out the show which was very Catholic. The whole experience was muy ethnic.

After that we hightailed it back to the LES for the X-YU Festival. We missed the 5PM show of WAYS OF LOVE by Maja Delak* & Luka Prinčič.  I had to make do with dinner at Pulino’s (yummy food, too much at one sitting for this solo diner but well-worth it.) and then returned to Dixon Place to see the other two shows in the festival. Kudos to Ivan Talijancic – the shows I saw were compelling and exciting. Matija Ferlin’s “sad sam/almost 6″ was a beautiful and simple solo, basically of the artist incarnating his childhood self. After that, at 9PM was Dalija Aćin’s HANDLE WITH GREAT CARE which was a spooky, creepy duet for two performers in shadow on mattress. It was really creepy and cool. Hard to explain but really lovely and disturbing and weird.

Sunday we took our parents to the Met and checked out the Starn Bros. Big Bambu, which was supercool. Also checked out the King Tut’s Burial exhibit and the contemporary photo exhibit “Surface Tension” – all good stuff.

Monday we woke up late and headed out to the BK for the TEAM’s “leaving for las vegas” memorial day BBQ which was a lot of fun. Saw a bunch of folks we know and enjoyed beer and snacks in DUMBO.

All-in-all a nice holiday filled with art and adventures.

Hope yours was a good one and the summer is off to a good start.

Speaking of which – the series I curate happens all summer long. So check out the line-up for SITELINES and I hope to see you this summer!

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Have you seen this commercial?

If you read the fine print it says, “The artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude have no direct or indirect affiliation or involvement with AT&T.” But is that really sufficient? What do you think?

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My Name is Blue Canary

Name: Joshua FRIED
Title/Occupation: composer, producer, RADIO WONDERLAND founder and sole band member.
Organization/Company: Could use more of the former; i’m good with the latter.
URL: http://radiowonderland.com

1. Where did you grow up and how did you end up where you are now?

I grew up in LA but NYC controlled me like Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance”. I always knew someday I’d live in an *apartment*, hang with artists and go on adventures worth telling stories about. I went to college upstate and moved down soon after graduation, to spend as much time as possible in clubs and lofts. Not all of those adventures are worth telling stories about.

2. Which performance, song, play, movie, painting or other work of art had the biggest influence on you and why?

Probably a tie between Another Green World, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Both share an impersonal sheen, flat affect, consummate technique and formal rigor, while evoking an intense individual experience. And that experience can be transpersonal as much as emotional.

3. What skill, talent or attribute do you most wish you had and why?

The ability to channel obsessive energy, meter it, and charge by the kilowatt. Seriously though obsession takes me places but it’s a wild horse.

4. What do you do to make a living? Describe a normal day.

I listen to recorded conversations for the NSA, wrap them up in canvas bags and insert them manually into non-volatile RAM. That’s on Mondays. Then on Tuesdays I extrude the best parts, sneak them out the trash chute, and run them over to Santos Party House where the DJs pay me in Twitter Dollars up front. The rest of the time I gig with RADIO WONDERLAND or else I kick back, but I do shave my head every other day.

5. Have you ever had to make a choice between work and art? What did you choose, why, and what was the outcome?

Yes, starting from about age 20, but I didn’t know it at the time. I realized much later that the choice was always arf, I mean art. The outcome was pre-ordained by the Rent Stabilization Board.

*****

ICMC “RED LIGHT” CLUB EVENT
11pm Tuesday, 1 June 2010
@ City Winery
155 Varick Street
New York, NY  10013
(212) 608-0555
Corner of Vandam & Varick: 3 blocks below Houston, 1 block west of 6th Avenue
1 train to Houston, C/E train to Spring
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Robert Ratcliffe/Sarah Watts [UK]  Bass clarinet hits the dance floor
David Casal [UK/USA]  AI-enhanced dubstep on homemade instruments
Prisoner of Vampires [USA] Harmonious strata of synthesized tones for public consumption
RADIO WONDERLAND [USA] Turning bits & bytes of mass culture into the backbeat for our dance of independence

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“We came along at a moment where there was definitely an enormous need for an alternative place,” Mr. Rogers said. “People want a different way to do it, I think.”

Read the rest of this great article about the Chocolate Factory in the Times.

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photo by | Zack Brown

Thursday night took Culturebot to the opening of Andrew Dinwiddie’s GET MAD AT SIN ! at The Chocolate Factory. This fiery sermon is based on a 1971 record of evangelist Jimmy Swaggart recorded at the First Assembly of God in Van Buren, Arkansas. It is both historical document and portrait of Swaggart in his element before his televised rise to fame. And it is powerful stuff.

The easy route would be to make fun of Swaggart, but Dinwiddie wisely plays it straight, delivering the sermon with sincerity, passion and conviction. His performance is impressive, mastering the accent, rhythm and dynamics of Swaggart’s delivery. By performing it head-on, without irony, Dinwiddie leaves the audience the room to make its own inferences and to draw its own conclusions. Though some of the references are dated and inspire knowing laughter, mostly this is serious business. The intensity and focus of the sermon are reminiscent of early rock-and-roll or even punk rock. This is an all-out full-frontal assault on sin, driving forward with a fierce and important message. It is easy to see how Jimmy Swaggart’s relationship to his first cousin Jerry Lee Lewis is somehow symbolic of the relationship of evangelical Christianity and sinful entertainment. Just like Gospel and Soul music are cousins, in America the line between sinner and saved is a thin one.

The space in the Chocolate Factory is set up on a diagonal with two rows of seats on either side of a carpeted stage area with a podium on one side and a window on another. It looks like a small church and the intimacy of the setting is a powerful choice. You really get the excitement of seeing a preacher at the top of his game, before he gets big, when he’s still making a name for himself. I keep coming back to Punk Rock – the energy, the rebellious attitude. And make no mistake about it, Swaggart sees himself rebelling against a mainstream society plagued with drugs and licentiousness, with evil and sin. He’s gotta battle those forces and save his flock – save your soul.

Dinwiddie recreates Swaggart’s extraordinary oratorial skills and draws you in. You don’t question his authority, you go with it. And what’s weird is that from time to time you might even find yourself agreeing with him. Not very often, but every once in awhile there are points beneath the Hellfire and Brimstone that make a lot of sense. It is difficult to tell though, because the cadences, the rhetorical structure, are meant to whip you into a frenzy, to free associate, to follow the twisty paths of Swaggart’s logic.

This is fundamentalism before the big money hit, this is when it was down and dirty, before the Moral Majority came into existence, before there were fundamentalist Universities and Political Action committees and a huge infrastructure to support a right wing political agenda. This is Swaggart when he was in the trenches, battling for souls one small church at a time.

And now is a good time to revisit Swaggart’s early years. In the age of Sarah Palin and the Tea Party, of Rick Warren and megachurches, it is important to remember the well of religious conviction from which all of this sprung. Those of us in the Big City are out of touch with this movement, but there is no doubt that it is alive and well in a lot of America.

I really enjoyed the show and recommend checking it out. GET MAD AT SIN! is more than just an anthropological experiment, it is riveting theater.

Watch a video here:

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Furthering its mission to support Brooklyn artists and nurture contemporary art audiences, BRIC Arts | Media | Bklyn launches the BRIC Contemporary Artist Registry as a fully web-based resource at http://registry.bricartsmedia.org.

Since its inception in 1983, the Registry has grown to include the portfolios of more than 1,200 visual artists who live, work, or were born in Brooklyn, New York. BRIC’s annual Artists from the Registry exhibition is curated solely from this resource. As a fully-digital resource, the online Registry will readily connect Brooklyn artists with curators, collectors, writers, and audiences worldwide. The Registry is not curated, costs nothing to join or use, and is open to anyone.

Director of Contemporary Art Elizabeth Ferrer said, “Brooklyn is now recognized as global creative capital; art lovers from around the world look to Brooklyn as a barometer for new ideas in the visual arts. Online and intuitively designed, I anticipate the Registry will grow in size and impact over the coming years.”

The BRIC contemporary art team collaborated with New York-based ClearDev. Supporters of the 2009 BRIC Contemporary Art Gala, co-chaired by Kerry Strong and Leslie Alexander, provided financial support for the project. BRIC’s Executive Director Leslie Schultz said, “Establishing the Registry online has been a longstanding goal. Thanks to the generosity of our 2009 gala supporters last fall, we were able to make this a reality.”

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LITTLE THEATRE

Monday, June 7, 2010 —  8:00 pm @ the new Dixon Place
161A Chrystie btw. Delancey & Rivington (F/V 2^nd Ave; 6 Bleecker; JMZ Bowery)

FEATURING:

HOPE! CHANGE! BLAH
Written and directed by Ben Gassman
With Eliza Bent and John Anthony Russo

It’s a tour! It’s a play! No, it’s…Hope! Change! Blah.  A jagged shard of tourism theater.

SYMPOSIUM ON SLIPPAGE THROUGH TIME’S COARSE GRASP (EXCERPT)
Written and performed by Laylage Courie

After my well-documented office escapade involving post-it-notes, power cords, flood-waters, lipstick, and a rain of flaming tootsie rolls, I was elected to serve as the Organization’s representative to the un-annual Symposium on Slippage through Time’s Coarse Grasp.  I’ve returned with a power-point update of the proceedings.  Prepare for tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and a runaway bus.

CROSSING THE COW FIELD OR AN ODE TO INERTIA
Written by Valerie Work
Directed by Meghan Finn

A short play about cows, fields and epistemology

Three songs from THE UNFORTUNATE SQUIRREL
Text and lyrics by Sonya Sobieski
Music composed by Alden Terry
Performed by Andrew Cassese

Excerpts (songs, mostly) from a play about everyday life.

SUMMER PJs
Created and performed by Beth Kurkjian

a solo dance theater piece
that includes
a doll (she’s Jewish)
matching pajamas
possibly a new bra
rock ‘n’ roll hair.

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THIS Thursday, May 27…

Galapagos Art Space presents
- and -
Beth Morrison Projects produces

21c Aria
(glimpses of the future of opera)
as part of the 21c Salon Series

8 o’clock pm
Galapagos Art Space
16 Main Street
DUMBO, Brooklyn, NY

$20 door/$15 in advance (or with student i.d.)
purchase tickets at www.galapagosartspace.com
or by calling 212-868-4444

featuring World, US and New York Premieres from:

American Lyric Theater
American Opera Projects
Beth Morrison Projects
Center for Contemporary Opera
The Coterie
Metropolis Opera Project

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The Twenty-Five Cent Opera of San Francisco
theater | performance | entertainments
FOURTH INSTALLMENT
SUNDAY | MAY 30th | 7 PM | $7 suggested donation

THIS MONTH, MORE NEW
WORDS & WORKS for the tiny Brooklyn stage!

LAKEVIEW TERRACE
by martial artist SCOTT ADKINS
with JOCELYN KURITSKY & TRAVIS YORK

PATIENT BOY
by laconic stylist AARON LANDSMAN
with direction by MALLORY CATLETT

NIGHT OF THE BROKEN EYE
by goldmine playwright MISHA SHULMAN
with PERCUSSION

GENUINE DISPLAY
by oceanic scholar KEN L. WALKER
with TED DODSON & ANDREW REYNOLDS

Always @ Barbès | 376 9th Street | Brooklyn
Always brought to you by THE PLAYWRITING FIRM of Shulman Delaney Gassman Kosmas & Copp.
Always all proceeds go directly to the ARTISTS.
Always, we hope to see YOU THERE.

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Stateless: A Hip Hop Vaudeville
by Dan Wolf and Tommy Shepherd with Keith Pinto
Music by One Ring Zero and Felonious
Inspired by original songs by the Gebrüder Wolf (Brothers Wolf)
Directed by Ellen Sebastian Chang

Wild and wildly successful, Stateless is a labyrinth of hip hop performance, live music, theater, vaudeville shtick, magic tricks, history and re-mixed folk songs starring Felonious members Dan Wolf, Tommy Shepherd and Keith Pinto and Brooklyn’s One Ring Zero (Michael Hearst and Joshua Camp). It is a show about performance and performers, brothers and friends, the past and the present and connects these contemporary performers to a famous, 1920s German-Jewish vaudeville troupe, The Gebrüder Wolf.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010 at 9:30PM at Joe’s Pub

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