A Water Falls in Brooklyn

First the telectroscope and now the waterfalls. New York's on a public art kick. Look out!

Some Danish guy who likes making fake weather environments decided that New York City could use some waterfalls. So the Public Art Fund and a bunch of private donors (Look, conservatives! No tax money for art!) got together to spend seven-and-a-half bajillion dollars to execute Hamlet's vision: four waterfalls along the East River, all south of the Manhattan Bridge.

From the Brooklyn Bridge portion of my daily commute, I can see three of the four waterfalls (Governor's Island, Brooklyn Heights, and the Manhattan Bridge). Naturally, the one I can't see is the one at the Brooklyn Bridge because I walk right over it. I thought it might be cool to look at it through the slats on the walkway of the Bridge, but it was decidedly underwhelming.

Which, frankly, is how I feel about the whole endeavor. The rendering posted above for your reference is, after all, a rendering. Maybe if the real thing looked a little bit like that it'd be impressive. As it is, we've got some weak-ass waterfalls trickling over scaffolding in a few locations.

A few years back, Christo and Jean-Claude did their "Gates" project in Central Park. Orange fabric floating along the pathways of the Park. It sounded sort of stupid, but I checked it out. And it was great. It drew people in and built a community around public art. It was aesthetically satisfying, and the experience of being there with New Yorkers and tourists, children and adults, black and white and brown was largely the point of the whole project.

The waterfalls have to be observed from afar. I mean, you can get relatively close to them, but you're never really sharing the experience with other people. At least not where I've been. Yes, they're terrific engineering feats. But all they do is remind me that it's been a while since I've seen a good waterfall in nature.

And maybe that's part of the point. But ultimately the waterfalls leave me feeling unsatisfied, and if that's part of the point, then there's something a little short on the "public" side of this public art.

Richie Was Having a Great Time

There's this art event happening in New York and London for the next few weeks, and I went to check it out this morning. It's the Telectroscope! If you want to know more about the Telectroscope and the myth the artist made up around it, you can follow the link.

What the Telectroscope does, in short, is allow Londoners to see New Yorkers, and New Yorkers Londoners. Just so you know you're really looking at London, New Yorkers get a view of the Tower Bridge in the background. Londoners get to see Lower Manhattan.

Because I'm a shallow simpleton, I tend to like gimmicky art. And I thought it would be fun to go check this sucker out and see if I could also catch a glimpse of a college friend now living in London. I went with another college friend (read her excellent review here), who pondered, "Wouldn't Skype be a lot easier and better since you can actually speak to each other?" "Yes," I said, "but this is art!"

When we got there, it was just us and a guy named Richie.

Our friend wasn't on the other side. We were a little early so we just sorta hung out for a while.

They had a whole system going on the London side. Giant crowds were being corralled a few at a time in front of the lens to spread their messages of good cheer or, more often, "What's your name?" written on the whiteboards provided. Richie wrote, "I'm Richie" probably about a dozen times in the ten minutes we were gawking at Londoners.

Meanwhile, I didn't know what to write (what do you want from me? I'm a writer), so I just sort of stood there awkwardly, somehow realizing that I was one-third of the people representing New York to the thousands of Londoners on the opposite side of this Telectroscope. Not only that, but we learned that the Londoners were being charged a pound to come up close to this thing, so I felt the pressure of giving them their money's worth. At least I was wearing my Mets cap, so I felt like a real New Yorker representing some real New York. A Yankees cap wearer in London didn't recognize the Mets logo. How does that work?

So you stand there with your whiteboards and try to communicate. Every two minutes or so, new Londoners were marched in front of the Telectroscope. Here's how they looked:

You can barely read the fucking whiteboards. But hey, look! The Tower Bridge!

Richie meanwhile was instructing the Londoners, through charades, how to hold their signs to make them legible. When you could finally read the goddamn things you learned some other stranger's name. Terrific. "Hi, Sophie, I'm Richie."

Because it was just the three of us, I felt bad leaving, but I really needed to get to work. So I wrote on my whiteboard, "We have to go to work. Bye." We got a hearty wave from the Londoners, and then we took off. The Londoners were left waving and writing to Richie, who was laughing in full merriment.

Later in the day, I heard from my friend in London who said there was a two-hour wait on her end, which totally blew our meeting time. Her four-year-old twins were disappointed, but forgot all about it when they got ice cream instead.

The unbridled enthusiasm for the project on the London side really made the New York side seem sad. Granted, it was 9:00 a.m. on a work day, and it's not like the Fulton Ferry Landing (the Telectroscope's location in New York) is easily accessible. But come on, man, there were three of us. From a city of nine million people, there were three of us. Oh, and a couple of workers. And one news guy who really couldn't have cared less. At one point, the Londoners got only a few of the news guy's ass. For two hours they waited just to see an arse. Poor bastards.

Still, my London-based friend and I may try again. Maybe Richie will still be there. At least he was saving me from terrible awkwardness.

That's What We Call Full Spectrum

Ask pretty much any Scotsperson and they'll tell you that the Scots invented everything. Generally speaking, when such topics of conversation come up in my presence, I nod and agree and fall back on a completely true positive statement: Scotland is the most beautiful place I've ever been.

Yes, I do think that many superlative statements about Scotland are valid. But the Scots seem to like living in the extremes. It's the most beautiful country in the world, perhaps, and it's also the knifingest country in Europe and the drinkingest. They've got the world's preeminent theater and arts festival and bucketfuls of heroin addicts.

The Scots also offer us the best and worst in English language poetry. We'll use this simple love/luve poem by Robert Burns to demonstrate some of the best (from 1794):

O my Luve's like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June:
O my Luve's like the melodie,
That's sweetly play'd in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry.

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare-thee-weel, my only Luve!
And fare-thee-weel, a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho' 'twere ten thousand mile!

Burns plays with language and repetition and beauty, and one can really feel the power of his luve. Yes, it's good shit, and Robert Burns is so revered (and rightly so) he gets a national holiday.

William Topaz McGonagall--poet, tragedian, hand loom weaver--is also a product of Scotland. Widely hailed as the writer of the worst poetry in the English language, he composed his poetry "under the divine inspiration." Yes. Yes, he did. For example, from some time in the late 1800s:

'TWAS on a Monday morning, and in the year of 1884,
That a fire broke out in Bailie Bradford's store,
Which contained bales of jute and large quantities of waste,
Which the brave firemen ran to extinguish in great haste.

They left their wives that morning without any dread,
Never thinking, at the burning pile, they would be killed dead
By the falling of the rickety and insecure walls;
When I think of it, kind Christians, my heart it appals!

Because it has caused widows and their families to shed briny tears,
For there hasn't been such a destructive fire for many years;
Whereby four brave firemen have perished in the fire,
And for better fathers or husbands no family could desire.

It goes on for eighteen stanzas, dear B&E readers, but I think you get the point. If you haven't yet had your appetite for McGonagall sated, this archive is your online home.

A special thank you to Yahoo! News for bringing my attention to the Bard of Obvious Rhymes.

Doris Lessing is Nonplussed

Man, I do love it when a Brit wins the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Back in 2005, during his pre-recorded Nobel Prize acceptance speech, a very ill Harold Pinter hit us full in the face with his anger. He doesn't much care for lying, and he shared his thoughts on lying with the power of his fully-operational battle station:

...the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed...

It got even better as he went on, giving the U.S. of A. a rather stern talking to. Apparently, he thinks our nation is a bunch of fucking liars. I'll stop discussing and give you an opportunity to watch the video yourself.

The fine people of the Nobel committee in venerable Stockholm took a break from the literary Brits for 2006 winner Orhan Pamuk but returned this week to name Doris Lessing the 2007 winner.

Doris was apparently quite surprised to see the paparazzi at her home, as she lugged her bags of groceries out of her taxi. Now 88 years old, when the reporters told her she won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Doris had quite a response:

Oh, Christ. I couldn't care less. I've won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one, so I'm delighted to win them all, the whole lot, OK? It's a royal flush."

She said that since the Nobel folks have to award a writer who's still alive, they probably figured this was their last chance to give it to her before she "popped off." She's also already resenting all the scalawags who will be begging her for a piece of the $1.5 million prize, although she does admit that if her works are read by a larger audience, it would be "very nice."

I just hope those readers stay off of her lawn and keep their goddamn music down.

Ian McEwan, Good With the Words

I've been reading fiction again. In recent months, it had been a struggle. Hell, I've always been a bit of a reluctant reader. As a kid, I much preferred playing outside. I couldn't keep my eyes on a page if my life depended on it. I couldn't take in the information. I'd flip pages and have no idea what I'd been reading.

It wasn't until college that I managed to begin really enjoying reading. Sometimes I would read standing up in my dorm room to keep from dozing off. Still, I was able to read books. Real books. It was a revelation to be riveted by 850 pages of Anna Karenina. I didn't think it was possible.

Still, reading's never been easy for me. Since college, just for the sake of continuing to read, I've been much more likely to pick up a "good read," rather than a "good book."

Which leads me to my point. I'm six years late, but I finally read Atonement by Ian McEwan. I bought the damned hardback when it came out in 2001, and except for my two attempts at reading it, it's been doomed to live a life on my bookshelf.

Meanwhile all my smart friends and the smart missus have told me how great this book is. E'en so, in my previous two attempts, I never made it past page thirty.

For some reason, on the third attempt, I was riveted from page one. It finally hooked me in a way it hadn't hooked me before.

And yes, it's fucking good. Read it.

I've read other McEwan books, and they've all been great. (A couple were more like "good reads," I admit. I'm thinking of you, The Innocent.) Atonement is my favorite.

McEwan not only has a deep understanding of human emotion but he's also able to express said understanding. Let's face facts: this is why he's a writer. Or rather, this is why he's a great writer.

Some of you may have heard of September 11th (sometimes known as "9/11" or "Giuliani's Political Ambition Realized"). It was a day that happened in 2001. Look it up.

I was here in NYC, and I heard the boom of the (second) plane, I saw the burning towers, and I saw some jumpers, and for quite some time after, I couldn't make any goddamn sense of what had happened. Who could?

Actually, Ian McEwan could.

To this day, it amazes me that the Guardian published Ian's essay on September 15th. So he wrote it on the 14th or earlier? Holy crap. If you're ready to journey back at all, read the man's essay, but I offer this tidbit to you, as it was this line that brought me to tears at the time:

There was really only one thing for her to say, those three words that all the terrible art, the worst pop songs and movies, the most seductive lies, can somehow never cheapen. I love you.

I was brought back to this line again while reading Atonement. It turns out that Ian borrowed it from himself for the essay. In the book, he uses the sentiment for a much smaller moment in the context of the world, but no less earth-shattering for his characters.

A film adaptation of Atonement comes out this fall. I implore you all to read the book first. Ian McEwan's writing makes us better people.

Badass Tattoo Artist - Follow-up

Here's the full New York Times story about Duke's adventure that the City Blog promised yesterday. And yes, I would say that the video embedded in the article is worth the four minutes of your time.

Badass Tattoo Artist

So the missus got a new tattoo by a fella called Duke Riley. The outline was done prior to our trip to Sweden. Here's a picture of the work being done:


When we returned the missus had Duke fill in the outline with some shading (there's apparently still a bit to be done), and here's how it looks today:


I accept that all tattoo artists are badasses, especially in comparison to me, an un-inked, office worker with hardly a callous on his poor writer's hands. But if I thought Duke was a badass before, it was nothing compared to what I thought about his badassedness after what he did today.

Duke is an artist, who pays the bills with his tattooing. For his latest performance/installation, Duke built a replica of a Revolutionary War "submarine" called "The Turtle."


Duke's mission was to get his submarine as close as possible to the Queen Mary 2, a monstrosity of a cruise ship currently docked in Red Hook, Brooklyn. He got pretty close. Here's Duke getting busted and looking quite pleased about it:


I implore you, dear B&E readers, to read the NYTimes city blog about the event. Be sure to watch the photo slide show (from which those last two photos are borrowed), as well.

Nice work, Duke. On the tattoo and on the artistic mayhem.

My Summer Vacation - Part V - Art

There's a lot of public art in Stockholm. So I'm about to hit you with some photos.

We found ourselves at Sergels Torg a lot. It's in the middle of the city where there's a lot of bustling.


This is underneath the fountain at Sergels Torg:


Sodermalm is Stockholm's Brooklyn. With more time, we'd have spent more time exploring. There was a lot of cool there. This fountain was sorta weird:


The subways (Tunnelbana) aren't afraid to get in on the art action. All of these are underground, just on and around the platforms. The piano keys are on the ceiling of the escalator.





Not to be outdone, the Lutherans paint up their churches:


The Moderna Museet thinks this guy's art is pretty good, too!

An Artful Response

I was giving MoMA some time to respond to my email before naming them Dickhead of the Week (which I may have to change to Dickhead of the Bi-Month). After all, I sent my note to their general email address, and I figured it would take some time before it got into the appropriate hands.

Still, I was probably two days away from giving them the DotW honor for their lack of response when, of course, they responded.

Dear Mr. [Bald & Effective],

Thank you for your e-mail of May 19, 2007. We appreciate the time you took to share your thoughts with us and thank you for advising and reminding us about the sign atop the MoMA QNS building. Your e-mail has been forwarded to MoMA's Director of Operations as well as other critical senior staff members who are currently making arrangements to have the sign fully dismantled.

The Museum was proud to be open to the public in Long Island City for 2 1/2 years, and truly grateful for the wonderful community support during that time. Although the Museum's exhibition programs have moved back to Manhattan, the MoMA QNS building is still an active study, research, and storage facility. Therefore we remain connected to Long Island City and Sunnyside--indeed all of Queens, and truly want to keep the respect of our Queens neighbors.

We apologize for not taking down the sign sooner, and ask you to please accept our apologies. We always welcome comments from our museum neighbors and visitors so that we may continue to improve service and enhance the quality of the MoMA experience--in BOTH boroughs.

Please feel free to contact me should you have any questions in the future.

Sincerely,
Diana Simpson
Director of Visitor Services
Director of Government and Community Relations
The Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street
New York, NY 10019

Their return email ended up in my junk mail folder. Since I like art (and they were responding to me) I opted to inform my email accounts that MoMA isn't a bunch of spamming bastards.

And while I'm not so sure I buy their need to be "reminded" about the sign atop their Queens building, Diana Simpson, Director of Visitor Services and Director of Government and Community Relations, crafted (or perhaps her assistant crafted and she sent) a thoughtful response that was appropriately conciliatory in tone. I feel like my needs were addressed, and my anger is somewhat diffused.

Of course, if her response isn't followed-up with action on the sign, I might have to get so angry that I'll... write another email!

Now if they could just do something about their damned $20 ticket prices...

Silence

In response to my correspondence to MoMA and Councilman Eric Gioia, I've received nothing. From MoMA, not even an acknowledgment of receipt. From Councilman Gioia, I got an automated response informing me that it was taking more than four hours to deliver my message but that I needed to take no further action.

Meanwhile, there's still a blight on my neighborhood, about which I'm reminded every time the 7 train makes its turn into Sunnyside.

Gosh, it pisses me off.

An Open Letter to MoMA

As some of you probably know, I've been rather pissed off at the Museum of Modern Art since they so unceremoniously came and went from my Queens neighborhood. Then they raised their ticket price to $20 because art should only be enjoyed by those who can afford to enjoy it.

Anyway, their leftover sign has been in its current state (pictured) for many months, and I'm tired of it. (That's part of the A of MoMA on the right. There are better angles than this one, but this will have to serve for the time being.) I wrote this email to MoMA this morning...

Dear MoMA,

Please show some respect for our neighborhood.

As a resident of Sunnyside, I was thrilled that MoMA came for a temporary stay during renovations to its midtown location. As the 7 train approached, the sign on top of the building (you know the one -- with the cubes spelling out MoMA) added some excitement to the arts scene in our fair borough.

But ever since you left Queens to move into your new space in September of 2004, I've been waiting for you to do something about that sign. For a while it was promoting nothing but your leftover storage and office space.

Then it appeared you were finally taking it down. And for what seems like the past year (maybe longer, maybe shorter), the sign has been half-removed.

Do you think we don't care how our neighborhood looks? It's one of the first and most noticeable things you see as the 7 train crosses over the rail yards into Sunnyside. Your lack of respect for our neighborhood, after we welcomed you so warmly for your temporary stay, is truly astounding.

Even if you really don't care about Sunnyside, Long Island City, or Queens in general, I would think that the issues surrounding the sign would be handled by your communications department. Surely someone at MoMA is aware that the half-sign is exceptionally poor use of the MoMA brand. A proud, aesthetic, arts organization is being associated with -- and indeed causing -- urban blight.

Please do something about your sign. We're not art snobs obsessed with beautification but, for crying out loud, we don't need you making our neighborhood uglier.

I've copied this email to my City Councilman Eric Gioia in the hopes that the City of New York will encourage you to do something about the mess you left behind in Queens.

My mother taught me to clean up after myself. It's not too much to expect the same from (to quote your mission statement) "the foremost museum of modern art in the world."

Thank you,
Dan
Sunnyside, Queens

52-Second Film Festival: A Reminder

52 Second Card
Originally uploaded by dangunderman.

Today is Art Day at B&E!

You've got just over one week to go to get your entry postmarked for the 52-Second Film Festival. Films fifty-two seconds in length can be done in much less time than that. You even have the whole of the coming weekend. Enter. You know you want to.

An insider's tip... Chances of winning this year (the Festival's first) are much higher than they will be in the future. If Hall Farm's other programming is any indication, the application/entry numbers will continue to grow each year.

Do it. Come on. Do it. It'll be fun. And all the cool kids are doing it.

Art: A Shout-Out

massive
Originally uploaded by dangunderman.

More specifically, I'd like to give a special shout-out to Storm King Art Center, which is a sculpture park about an hour and a half north of New York City.

Storm King covers acres and acres of rolling hills and woods, with sculptures dotting the landscape. The planning is outstanding. Sometimes you arrive at vistas with distant views of many pieces of art, and at other times, you find yourself in the presence of a single piece with little or no awareness of the rest of the world around you.

Public art, particularly outdoor art, might be a little hippie for some tastes, but I'm a believer. What could better than taking a hike through nature while looking at art?

Highlights include pieces by Mark di Suvero (like the one pictured), Alexander Calder, and Andy Goldsworthy. (As an aside, if you haven't seen the documentary about Goldsworthy, Rivers and Tides, put it at the top of your Netflix queue immediately. It will inspire you.)

The only problem with Storm King is that it's not accessible by public transportation. Maybe that helps keep the crowds down.

But dude, the place totally rules.

Oppenheimer's Resurgence

oppenheimer
Originally uploaded by dangunderman.

Those of you interested in such things as the Pulitzer Prize may have already heard that the prize in the biography category this year went to a book called American Prometheus, a little ditty in 736 dense pages by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. Its subject matter is Robert Oppenheimer, father of the nuclear bomb, and it took the authors nearly three decades to complete.

Nope. Haven't read it. But the news of its Pulitzer Prize victory reminded me of a fella who was once in residence up at Hall Farm. While an artist-in-residence at Hall Farm, Tim Guthrie of Omaha, Nebraska began work on his own little mixed media Oppenheimer ditty, and while it didn't take him three decades to complete, it will still haunt you more than that scene from Poltergeist in which the guy rips off his face.

This posting is turning into more of a shill than I anticipated, but Tim's whole site is worth a perusal, and in case you miss it, the video of Bush getting heckled in Omaha... Yup. That's our buddy Tim doing the heckling.

52-Second Film Festival - A Shill

52 Second Card
Originally uploaded by dangunderman.

Loyal B&E readers,

My primary employer is presenting The 52-Second Film Festival, which is a nice opportunity for those interested in dabbling in the film medium.

In 1895, the Lumiere Brothers presented to the public their cinematograph, which was a camera, printer, and projector, all rolled into one. Their reels were 52 seconds in length.

In 1995, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Lumiere Brothers' presentation, a replica of the cinematograph was handed off to film directors around the world, each of whom made a 52-second film. The result was Lumiere and Company.

Hall Farm was hosting its annual artist residency program two summers ago, when someone had the idea of the Insufferable Film Festival, a nightly screening of some of world cinema's most pretentious films. Lumiere and Company was screened, and the artists-in-residence (being artists) universally declared, "I can make a better 52-second film than most of those."

Well, since it was only 52 seconds, Hall Farm's director said, "Go to it, then, artists. We'll screen them when you're ready."

The results were amazing. There was animation, stop-motion digital photography, one-take ridiculousness, collaborations among artists, and even Hall Farm staff participation.

(The video of my bobbing head came from this idea as well, but we were unable to stop at only 52 seconds.)

It was out of this fun experiment that the 52-Second Film Festival was born. We'd like everyone to participate, not just filmmakers, and honestly, not just artists. Power to the people, baby. Give us 52 seconds, and we'll give you the world. Wait. That's CNN or something...

Anyway, the only rule is that films must be 52 seconds in length. Since I know most of my readers (and I therefore know how creative many of you are), I hope you'll all submit films to the contest. You could even win $500.

Get more details and application forms here. And I guess I can answer any questions you might have, as well.

Hank's - A Shill

broncrider
Originally uploaded by dangunderman.

My part-time employer is having a fundraising event on Monday, March 6 at Hank's Saloon in Brooklyn (at Atlantic and 3rd Avenues). Everyone in the New York City area should go. It'll be fun. I promise.

It's country karaoke. With a live band. What could possibly be more fun than that? There will be giveaways, raffles, prizes, and beer. There are details, including a downloadable song list, here.

Have a honky-tonkin' good time. YEEEEEE-HAAWWWWW!

The Art Opening - A Review

I'm not reviewing the art. I'm reviewing the opening. Maybe someone can let me know if this is typical for Upper East Side gallery openings. I think this was my first.

I attended this opening in somewhat of an official capacity. An artist that had been in residence at Hall Farm was a part of the show. I like her and her work very much, and she had a prominent wall dedicated to her stuff. First-rate.

Right. So. The scene...

First of all, the place was tiny. There were seven artists in this group show, and there wasn't even room for them in this gallery, much less the loads of people they invited. To give you an idea of how crowded it got, I opted to spend a good portion of the evening standing outside in New York's sweltering heat.

One of the artists in the show was the dude who played Furio on "The Sopranos," which I didn't expect. Who would? I liked his work, actually. It combined the Italian Renaissance with elements of modernity. Furio was wearing a really sharp suit, and his paintings were priced literally ten times what everyone else was charging. And I was scared of him.

Then there was this reality show TV crew there. I asked them who or what their subject was, fully expecting them to reply "Furio," but no. They were apparently waiting for some lawyer to arrive. Why this lawyer? I guess he lives an interesting life. So their plan was to follow him around on a typical day and put together a presentation for Court TV. The TV crew put a sign up on the door informing us that by walking in we granted permission to use our voices and persons on the public airwaves. They got some good footage of Furio and a stretch limo that pulled up. When I left, the lawyer hadn't shown up yet.

The gallery owner seemed to be working the room like a pro. His wife, well, she seemed to be dressed like a pro. I wanted to get a photo, but it actually seemed indecent to do so. She was wearing a gold... top, I think? It almost covered her ample bosom. Her skimpy bra was in full view the entire time (it hooked in the front), and her skirt was high enough to see the hint of butt cheeks. She was in her fifties. She was not unattractive, except for how she put herself together. She made everyone in the room feel overdressed. The artist I knew made a "wardrobe malfunction" joke, but I assured her that the woman's outfit seemed to be functioning exactly how she intended it to.

I would describe the overall crowd as high-monied/low-class. And it freaked my shit out.