I don’t know if I have just acquiesced to the idea that I am hopelessly internet interconnected or my profound case of information overload has become terminal, but more and more I’m okay with my Google Brain.  I know there are videos, blogs, and articles about Google becoming a sentient artificial intelligence.  This is not what I’m talking about.  I’m taking about a low-fi cybernetic relationship between us and Google as stand-in for the internet as a whole and as an extension of our local, native, biological, or natural onboard memory storage system–our brains!  Like eyeglasses for your memory, our Google Brains just help us remember.  I have spent long hours fretting over this idea feeling somehow less smart having to resort to the internet to remember any number of minute facts, names, or places.  But, now that I have friends with 3G iPhones, or access to free wireless hotspots almost anywhere, I am feeling like the time lag I associated with use of my Google Brain has sped-up to make it almost realistically practical to use it in conversation.  On a resent visit from Kristen Spillane (kspill.com) we would be casually walking through the mall, a question would arise and seemingly out of the blue, she would answer it.  Kristen is very smart, but much of the knowledge she forwarded was really obscure, and regurgitation of obscure facts is not intelligence.  It was her iPhone working Google with digital (meaning fingers) acuity to pull information from her Google Brain to her local brain.  Last night at Lowell Beer works a group of my colleagues and I were trying to pullout the bass-player for Spinal Tap’s real name, out popped an iPhone, and the race began, imdb.com was slow and my local brain was quieted slightly by the drawing of an elephant’s ass the waitress drew on the check (really!), and I pulled-out “Harry Shearer” just milliseconds before the iPhone.  I beat the Google Brain this time, but there are numerous times throughout the day I access my Google Brain, and I am getting more comfortable with its use, and I think my acceptance has made my local brain more relaxed and work even better.

Borrowed Eyes took the stage around 9:20 or 9:30 pm with a round setup including a trumpet and trombone player, they were a eclectic mix of sound all firmly placed in America.  They seemed like an appropriate opening act for Cub Country and if they had been the only opening band I would have been delighted.  With Borrowed Eyes I could hear the singer and parse all the music without ear plugs, but something happened with the audio by the time Yoni Gordon and the Goods took the stage, something which seemed to get worse throughout the evening.  Again, Yoni and the Goods played music rooted in an America with a slight twang, absolutely what one would expect in an opening band for Cub Country, however, the audio had shifted and Yoni’s vocals were drowning in his guitar and bass and drums.  I have seen many great band’s shows suffer from a one note johnny sound guy, the worst being the consistently bad sound at the Belly Up in Solana Beach CA in the ’90’s.  Now don’t get me wrong he seemed very attentive stepping out from behind the board, listening, going back, appearing to move things, but the instrumentation just seemed to get louder and louder, leaving the vocals in the background and very hard to make out.  Yoni and the Goods finished their set and then The Big Big Bucks started, and “what the fuck?” was all I could think.  First off they had no business opening for Cub Country, despite well documented punk roots it didn’t work to have Bucks on the bill.  And secondly, they were just not right, The Big Big Bucks did at least three songs on which I’m pretty sure none of the band was in the same key!  This sort of “experimentation” coupled with skewed audio made for a cacophony of crap.  At least their set was short.
So now it is nigh midnight and Jeremy Chatelain and crew take the stage.  By now the thin crowd is even thinner, and it would have been nice to bring the audio down with less bodies in the room, and maybe the audio guy did but not much.  I was delighted by Cub Country, it was the old pros following the juvenile upstarts.  They had a job to do and they did it.  Jeremy apologized about the hour noting their appreciation for us staying as we probably had to go to work.  Cub Country’s set was smooth, if way too short, I wanted to hear more.  Jean and I even danced to one of the new songs, it must have blown the hipster’s minds who stood around almost too cool to head bob.  Professionals to the last, Cub Country played their set and all to soon the show was over with a twinge of sadness.  Walking out I thanked the band and they were genuine in there returned appreciation.  It had a soul, the music that is.

I blame the Middle East for stretching out the bill too far and too late for a Wednesday night, and having some sound issues.

Go see Cub Country in NYC tonight at the Cake Shop or Maxwell’s on Friday or both, praying for longer sets and early on times.

Untitled (UMA! with three planes) by Jim Jeffers, 2009

I walked around Genii Loci (Ghosts of Protection) an exhibition by Jim Jeffers (the guy who runs this site) looking for a piece I knew only to find it not included.  I asked Jim where the “rabbit with the gas mask and the three planes” piece was.  He told me it was hanging in the lobby of the Dean of U-Mass Lowell’s office.  I thought, “Cool” and then on to other matters.  I would not have given the matter another thought except while out with Jim and Jean, I mention to Jean how much I dig the drawing of Uma (their rabbit, the model for the piece), and she asks me if I want to buy it as it is back from U-Mass Lowell.  I’m thinking I don’t have the cash, but then I think, “why is it back?”  So she tells me it only hung for about two weeks before someone in the administration found it “inappropriate.”

“What the fuck?”  I say, “Why? How could this image be ‘inappropriate’?”

Now I understand that maybe the chesty gas-masked ladies might set the imagination off, but a rabbit?  The semiological leap-frogging from rabbit to bunny to playboy playmate might be doable, but who wants to do that?  I think this kind of editing is the symptom of a much larger unspoken secret in Massachusetts.  People here are afraid.  Afraid of seeming unseemly, but ‘gawd’ knows this is only thin veneer.  For it takes a special kind of dirty mind to jump from rabbit to bunny to playmate to bondage scene to the apocalypse!  And it takes a mind so dark and dirty to think the thin layer of prophylactic-like ‘protection’ encasing the purity of essential moral rectitude could be ‘offended’ or compromised by an image of a rabbit in a gas mask that it would defy measure.  People are busy in Massachusetts keeping us ’safe’ from burned-out LED Mooninites and MIT students who are too smart to think the rest of the neighborhood could be so dumb.  Puritans know best what is filthy down below.  Okay, so those of you reading this in the deep south are thinking, “Massachusetts is filled with liberal elites who love abortions and bible burning right?”  No, the brand of liberalness in Massachusetts is grounded in caring for those less fortunate than you.  Which I might point out is not out of line with over wrought protection. After all in Massachusetts you MUST have health insurance or pay a penalty. And again this is not out of step with ‘appropriateness’ and “putting yourself in other people’s shoes.”  My problem with this ideal taken to extreme is “I know what is best for you” arrogance and eventual intolerance.  My response is, “Fuck no, you don’t know me.” and “with that said I think you underestimate the audience in general.”  There are heros who push community standards, Jeffers, sure ain’t one of them.

Perhaps ‘gawd’ blessed greater Boston with a paucity of natural disasters and cursed it with appallingly suck weather, but lighten up will you.  ”Art is the Handmaid of Human Good” (Lowell City Motto) don’t second guess the audience, they are smarter than you think (mostly).

Outside the Lines Studios
70 Colby Street
Medford, MA 02130

Okay so let’s start this by saying I missed most of Big Bear’s set, but what I did catch sent me right back to the noise of my childhood and I could not help thinking this sounded a lot like Santa Cruz circa 1993–with much much much less plaid.  Not to say good or bad, just the kind of discordant soundtrack over cyclical vocals people were playing with in the bay area before the more melodic and directional music leapt the bridges and hit the mainstream.  They were loud, and maybe for good reason.
Next, Sunburned Hand of the Man, started their set with a kind of chanted ‘blessing’ by a black-dressed guy, bearded, ponytailed, and freaky.  The music then poured forth from two drummers and two guitarists plus gadgets.  The music was fine, and the attendees seemed in to it.  They were earnest, but something about them just bubbled-up anger.  Sunburned Hand of the Man, just made me mad.  And not mad, like ‘I just spent 10 bucks and these guys suck,’ but rather a profound visceral soul anger, that made me want to punch someone.  At a point in the set, after cruising along sans vocals, the greasy ponytail snaked his way through the audience frotaging his boozy cigarette stink on me and the Pabst swilling guy next to me, and up to the mic.  As soon as he started singing, more like chanting, my personal anger was hitting a tipping point.  When the bearded ponytail started taunting the audience to dance in post-punk high pitched vocal waves, I couldn’t take it anymore and shot through the audience and grabbed the first non-lethal thing from a sink area next to the band and poorly winged a plastic lid at the entranced band.  At this point I lost my cool totally and yelled at the band, spilling forth nonsense swear words, there bearded ponytail said something about my courage and handed me the mic into which I blew my voice out, I grabbed the bearded ponytail by the lapels and shook him, then sprang back and whipped off one of my flip-flops at a time and threw them at the band.  Regaining my senses for a moment, and needing my shoes, I hit the stage again to retrieve my sandals, which I did along with the poor guitar player’s last Sierra Nevada which he was willing to fight for, so I opened it for him and handed it back.  I’m not sure if this was what Sunburned Hand of the Man was going for but that’s what they did for / to me.
Last up, Onieda.  Onieda is a five-man crew powered by drums.  They sounded like the best soundtrack to the best car chase sequence ever, for an hour plus.  The rhythm holds the tonal drift in tight reins, and moves the transitions smoothy through waves of sound.  Some of their songs had vocals, but where neigh impossible to make out.  The end result was a power meditation, a loud trance state of muscle, poignant feedback and synthesizers, creating a ride more than a show.
Somehow by the time a got home I had torn the front open of my favorite pair of camouflaged shorts.

Tepthida Khmer
115 Chelmsford Street
Lowell, MA  01851

The interior of Tepthida Khmer is elegant but, with a prominent bar and at least one massive flat-screen TV, there is a general comfortable feel to the place.  The service was very good, with ample warnings and questions about how authentic we wanted our food.  This is good and bad.  Good, if this is your first trip to eat South-East Asian food, and are not initiated to the tastes of fish sauce / paste.  Bad, if you are well aware, and just want to order your food.  I am reminded of sending back the calamari at another Lowell jewell, Viet Thai, because it did not have the red pepper to which I am accustomed, asked, “do you want three star?” and I said, “Yes, three star!”  It came back great and spicy.  But, this is really material for another review.

We started with drinks: I with a chinese beer, Harbin; and Jean with a glass of Argentine Cab.  My beer, was a typical asian lager, and Jean’s wine was fine, if a bit long in the tooth for being opened.  The next thing to come out was the crispy rolls in vegetarian, which were really nice, with a light vinegary dippy sauce with peanuts floating in it.  These rolls were perfectly cooked, not greasy, with a filling including mung bean threads and julienned vegetables. For our shared main dishes, we ordered the Cha Greung with chicken, and the Teuk Greung.  Let’s start with the Teuk Greung.  This dish consists of a bowl of ground fish, with lime juice, spices and green onions, and a plate of lightly steamed broccoli, cauliflower, raw eggplant, cucumbers, and cabbage.  We are instructed to eat the salty-sour protein with the vegetables. This was very good, but not for the unadventurous.  The Cha Greung with chicken was more familiar, being one of the many dishes in south-east asian cuisine employing red chillies and basil on meat.  This was really great, the chicken was coated with spices, and green beans carried the bulk of the vegetable component; not too spicy but with enough kick to get me interested.

All and all our meal was excellent, and we plan on going back.

Ritual ideas relativety
Only buildings no people prophecy
Timeslide place to hide nudge reality
Foresight minds wide magic imagery

Space guy fell from the sky
Scratched my head and wondered why
Time slide into time
Across international dateline
Scientist eats bubblegum
Hall of fame baseball
Senators a Hoodlum
Big chiefs in the hall
Ritual ideas relativety
Only buildings no people prophecy
Timeslide place to hide nudge reality
Foresight minds wide magic imagery

Lyrics from “E=MC2″ by Big Audio Dynamite

Bucky ROYGBIV by Matthew Day Jackson, 2007

Matthew Day Jackson, now playing at MIT’s List Visual Arts Center (May 8th-July 12th, 2009), sets fire to the place.  He knows we know he knows, and he goes there.  For example, in Lonesome Soldier (2008) one is instantly reminded of Charles Ray’s Plank Piece (1973), which was a humanized performance riff on Richard Serra’s Prop (1968), but Jackson’s is not a sheet of lead, or his own body, but rather a felt space man, oh Beuys!  We are in the presence of greatness, all the time.  But, at times it feels a little bit like the Leonardo DiCaprio / Claire Danes version of Romeo and Juliet, in that Jackson brings guns instead of swords, or carbon fiber instead of marble; but is it still Brancusi?  I guess as much as that movie was Shakespeare.  We know, the permission for this work was hard fought, it takes guts to place a Hemi drag racing motor on rod power pyramids (like my parents picked-up at the crystal-hopped new age store when I was a kid) as Jackson does in Heart of Prometheus (2009).  There are themes here (racing, space chasing, atom bombing, geodesics, so on), but I can’t help thinking Jackson’s meta-story is getting thick like another Matthew, Barney.  This is not bad, and in fact maybe the saving grace of Jackson’s work, his earnest sincerity.  For no matter how many layers of great artists (and thinkers, and, and, and) he can stack like a Dagwood, I believe Matthew Day Jackson believes in this work.  And faith goes along way here, even tangled in the miasma of testosterone-fulled modernism on fucking atomic-powered Red Bull.

Go see it before it comes down, and check out Duncan Campbell’s film Bernadette in the other gallery, but bring a hoody it’s cold in there.

Chariot II-I Like America and America Likes Me by Matthew Day Jackson, 2008

P.S. I thought about just leaving the B.A.D. lyric quote as the review, I heard it on the radio on the way home, and thought it summed up the exhibition well.  But, ElPezCore would have none of it!

Last night in Lowell, MA - Something was happening at 119 Gallery, there was cooking smoke, a belly dancer, porn from the advent of moving image, and fuck-an-A, ART!  I cruised by the opening of Seduce Me curated by Setheyny Pen, and featuring the work of: Ebenezer Archer Kling, Anthony Palocci Jr, Christopher Eastwood, Hali Vik, Christine Tuccelli, and Timothy Goguen. And was pleasantly surprised to find an elegant show of thoughtful work by a crew of smart young artists.  Concurrently, was “Improvised Comfort Device (food) (Superhero Action)” a performance by relative old-timer, Jim Jeffers: “as a piece [sic] offering to swine 40 pounds of chicken will be grilled and eaten” (from a flyer at the event).  Where, Jeffers dressed in a red jump suit, and partially covered by a blue tarp strung off the back of a hatch-back, grilled chicken and served it up to the tentative audience.

Standing out were the tightly crafted 40’s (40 oz. beer bottles) with sexy lesbian silhouettes, both clearly celebratory but evoking some sad alcoholic fantasy of lesbian prosthetic copulation, black & white and cracking, by Timothy Goguen.  Also, Ebenezer Archer Kling’s drawings, abstracting images pulled from ukiyo-e Japanese erotica, are quirky, smart, and delightful.  Jeffers, who was not on the bill for Seduce Me, must have crashed the party, but at least he brought beer and chicken…fucking good chicken, served on a blue blanket (like my little brother sucked his thumb through until he was twelve), evidently these “Improvised Comfort Devices” are a series, can’t wait to see what’s next!
(Jeffers, has a solo exhibition coming up a UMass Lowell this Fall: http://www.uml.edu/Dept/Art/galleries/university-gallery.htm)

Check out Seduce Me curated by Setheyny Pen, at 119 Gallery up now until July 11th, 2009, worth the trip to Lowell, MA!
(and check out the kick-ass Cambodian restaurant on the corner by the gallery, so good).

The rejection letter is commonplace for most of us in the Arts, and for that matter Academia. We compete in an ever-expanding market, with an ever-contracting supply. The stuff we produce is marginally quantifiable and highly speculative; as artists can take many positions with vastly different levels of cultural esteem, acceptance, or even understanding – and as academics, educators or researchers we are phantasms to laypeople, and subjects for dissection by peer-review and collegial probing by the anointed. Our job, my job is to be creative, but not ‘creative’ like the team that came up with, “I’m cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!” or the Manhattan Project, or is it? As Artist-Academics we are obligated to find in the world a mode of expression both new and fresh, but fitting within the ‘norms’ or normative forces of hegemonic institutionalization present in keeping a paying gig at the university.

So, as I have defined my job—i.e., make creative research (a.k.a. art), find esteem for it, and keep it understandable by peers, both interdisciplinary and intergenerational—as difficult. Now imagine you have to quantify and qualify this job in the form of multiple-page documents, slides, CDs, DVDs, copy laser copies, letters of reference, websites, word of mouth, and so. One could do a continual hustle just in the documentation and explanation of all the creation and academic protocols, not mention actually making art or teaching. And the reaction, after all this sound and fury, is what? A letter; nice on bond or laid paper with thoughtful logo, neatly typed, and signed by hand—preferably in blue. Maybe I am trying to find the Art in rejection, or at least the professionalism, implying a level of respect, a nod to the time and effort on one’s part in putting all this shit together, proof of your humanity, or at least tangibility—you have an address, on the earth. Now we have another form, the e-mail rejection. It is fast, clean, better than the phone call, no need to hear the faux cheer and understanding, and doesn’t cost your institution the 44¢ of the letter. E-mail is nicely informal, an extra level of coolness in a business filled with ice, coated in the mostly fictional face of creative fertility, academic rigor, and warm nurturing education. We are in just that, business, slow, arty farty, warm and fuzzy, business, so bring on the e-mail rejections just make sure they contain at least a few emoticons. And for my part I will just make a .pdf head shot, and put my artist talk on Youtube and just forward links to everyone on the committees in massive cc’ed e-mail myself.

Community Intersections Tangent Interests Environments and Situations
(C.I.T.I.E.S.): A Drawing of Monumental Scale

by Prof. Stephen Mishol and Prof. Jim Jeffers
Art Department, UMass Lowell

Everyday we travel through the history of the Merrimack: old mill towns, red brick walls, bridges, smokeless smoke stacks, and canals – shaped by the flow of this river, Lawrence, Lowell, and Nashua have persevered as living artifacts. We propose an artwork on the ground of these three cities, focusing on a site of historical loss in each, which takes the viewer / participant on an unexpected journey through experience, perception, and digital artifact.

As artists we have been exploring urban space for years: Mishol, through Painting and Drawing; and Jeffers, through Video, Performance, and Web-Art.

We propose finding one site in each of these three cites, lost to history, and in grand form create drawings on the ground, that in profound fashion illuminate the space for engaged participant and casual viewer alike. As these drawings are being performed for live audience, the signal would feed to a remote exhibition of multi channel video, and recorded for a lasting visual record on a permanent website. The performance / drawings themselves would be created with only ephemeral permanence out of non-toxic materials, utilizing drawing equipment of the type and scale of an athletic field.
(Please see the attached appendix of images of our related work)

We feel deeply that this proposed artwork is a contemporary exploration of the ties we have to the Merrimack valley as artists and educators living and working in Lowell.

We will be utilizing the skills of UMass Lowell Art majors or any interested undergraduate students in this endeavor in joint faculty-student research, as a project of this scale will require at least 15-20 individuals to realize.

Finding places, and revealing spaces, new ways of looking and thinking about our everyday experience is philosophically underpinning both our respective creative research models. Bringing to bear an intermedia approach to an artwork, while presenting a problem solvable only with the resources of undergraduate student participation, and community involvement is an ideal for both of us as contemporary artists and educators.

Budget:

Materials:
3 field chalk lining machines $1200.00
*purchase would allow
re-presentation of the piece
Chalk, in 50lbs quantities, in various colors $1000.00

Video Production Costs:
Videography and wireless feed costs $800.00
3 Scissor Lifts (“cherry pickers”) rentals $800.00
*to allow for aerial video
Dedicated digital archive system / website costs $1500.00

Artist and Crew Costs: $2000.00
Including research time,
Transportation, framing, conventional art materials