Riding the moving sidewalk at the National Gallery of Art

Visiting a friend in Washington this weekend I got nostalgic and went to look at the National Gallery and the other downtown museums.While I was there I got to do one of my favorite things. Ride a moving sidewalk! Riding the moving sidewalk under the National Gallery is always an exalted experience, bu this time I found out that it was even better because there was a light installation all around the sidewalk itself.

Like murmuration of starlings cast in LED, the lights undulate over your head making you feel your are not just going from point a to point b but are rather on a journey . I rode the moving side walk twice. I really liked it. I think it is interesting to contemplate how technology can imitate nature in some ways. I certainly felt like the lights here were trying to imitate something like migratory birds. I also think that imitating migratory birds is a great idea when you are moving people. I wonder if people will find inspiration in the movement of the lights, which seemed so much like the movement of beings. I think this installation would be really fantastic in a place like an airport terminal which is the natural habitat of moving sidewalks.

Simone Leigh: The Kitchen

A potter and musician who deals with issues of race in a perhaps more holistic than confrontational way.
The exhibit is divided into three rooms.
The back room had a stack of pots with tobacco leaves drying on them, in one corner. The three dimensional juxtaposition of a living thing in pottery is here sort of functional and mostly leave both unharmed Projected on the wall, is another story. There is a picture of the artist back her head covered by pottery shards, to the point where you think the head might be crushed.

Ambient music plays.

In the front room, pottery hung from the ceiling in nets like captured prey. Cowrie shells and They remind me of
animals caught in traps and hover over the head of the gallery visitor as they enter the gallery. Will they crash down,
like bobby traps.

In the space between the two rooms is a ceramic bust of a woman's head was covered by ceramic roses. It seems an interesting contrast to the head of the woman covered in pottery shards...
I wonder if there was some reference to roses and dreadlocks. I think roses are interesting because they are something you can have a multitude of and they can still be pleasing...

New Museum: Carsten Holler

One of the best ways of getting out of narrative is to make things more experiencial. There are lots of ways to go about this. One of these could be to turn the entire new museum into a huge playground. There are placebo pills you can take if you feel you need assistance having reality altered. All the floors of museum were bisected by a huge round slide which you had to sign up to use. The top floor had a mirrored swing carousel. All of these were experience by people who were suspended some place in between the " I have read much too much art theory to laugh at any of your jokes" attitude and the giddiness of people at say Coney Island. . Which I guess was a good if odd place.

Cages hung from the ceiling, and there was other wildlife as well in the form of catscan like fish tanks that you could stick your head into(I didn't but it looked interesting). Mutant neon crocodile statues lounged on the floor.

I got the very last pair of upside down glasses before the exhibit closed. It was recommended that you walk with the upside down glasses through a styrofoam tunnel I did this and also let an older lady experience this as well. It was interesting. I think were the glasses was a interesting as actually looking through them.

The artist apparently has a background in science and the question that often comes up. in situations like this is couldn't he be spending his time and education more wisely, but maybe this is a really wise way to invest it all. I am not entirely sure... I did like the show though. Still not sure how accessible it is to the general public... which is something that I find to be a larger problem that the New Museum struggles with.

Moss of Aura at the Stone NY

I have finally decided that real estate is really everything ( or a big part of what defines the current era.. it is a terrible market model) and that the reason Manhattan is so important it not that it is itself an important place but that it is easy to get to everything from there. It isn't where you are but were you can go, though that can come to define where you are. Manhattan is the empty center.
A couple of years ago I curated an event which dealt with this idea of the empty center. It was highly influenced by
the concept of the Mandala which is a a narrative or a bunch of narratives around an empty center. I think that sometimes
indigenous music can be a type of empty center. I did that event for personal reasons and I don't like to talk about ( though here I am ). Gerrit Whelmers of Baltimore's awesome " Future
Islands" did something which conceptually had a lot of closeness to what I did. There was a big gamelan called the Gamelan Kusuma Laras Invocation and then Mr. Whelmers played some stuff from his new solo project, which was really good, and danceable though people didn't really dance. This performance made my effort feel worthwhile. I really love " The Stone" as a venue, it so stark and still sort of feels in the mddle of nowhere. Even if that middle of nowhere sense if a like all of the East Village a bit contrived it doesn't matter, when you reach the center of the narrative there is nowhere to go the center of nowhere can become true anywhere.

Wonder of the Age: Master Painters of India 1100-1900

This exhibit was so interesting and so comprehensive. The art of India itself is so influenced from many different directions. Buddhist, Muslim, Mongol and animism The ample secondary sex characteristics of the various Buddhist deities in the first room were eye catching and memorable. I like my green Tara's with breasts that could belong in the Macy's Day Parade. But that is really just the beginning. There are also these. I am always impressed by the amount of narrative the Indian miniature painters manage to pack into a little canvas. There is a fantastic scene of a tiger hunt covering a hillside.

To a Great City: Arvo Part and Snohetta

The collaboration between the artist Arvo Part and Snohetta in lower Manhattan make for a compelling break from the bustle of the city. It argues that even in the city where you are constantly connecting to the small to your neighbor , you can also connect to the large, to the all.

The idea was that you would go to different sites in lower Manhattan and experience something in the city other than bustle. That you would experience a type of quiet in the middle of the bustling city, a type of quiet but also a type of music. Maybe a different type of music to the bustle that you normally hear. Maybe a music that compresses the experience the essence of the bustle of the city to something quieter.

You can wander through grass blown down in a cyclone fence on the battery listening to the performance. You can spend time in a office space abandoned by workers but still in possession of a view.

One of the sites takes you on a ferry ride to governor's island. You have to wander to the center of the island into the magazine.
In the magazine in the battery there are two balloons and music playing. The placement of a balloon within the vaults of the
battery is incongrous and strange. But one can argue that it is the incongrous and strange which can take us to something bigger than ourselves.

Stalker

I have a couple of interests in the movie Stalker.

It deals a lot with the unseen, the unknown, the fear in the human heart. It is simple and visually beautiful. It is terrifying yet in so many aspects a truly brave horror movie, where not only the scenes depicted in it are frightening but also the making of the film itself was courageous act, just as looking at our own humanity is.

It is scary because it is so realistic, and things happen in it that are just a bit strange, but still somehow realistic.