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.

Seth Price 9/11: New York Sadness

So I read about Seth Price in a class and then I googled his stuff. I actually really like NY Sorrow. Sometimes I think there can be something so pornographic about violence. And so much on the news is more about being titillated in the name of being informed. Blood and guts and explosions are not realism, unless you work in a meat processing plant or as a fireworks inspector. War is never as exciting as the news. When society is functioning relatively well and there is enough freedom and food, death itself is relatively boring. Grandma dies, everyone is sad, you look at photos of her life but there is relatively little blood and guts,maybe cake. And thats a good thing, it is a sign that things are ok in society. So in a way I like this tribute better than the crumbling buildings because if the towers still stood this footage would never make its way out of a personal video library, it is so mundane.

Jeu de Paume : Cahun and Mofokeng

The two photography exhibits currently at the musee of the Jeu de Paume deal with issues of memory and
identity.

Mofokeng claims to be looking for that which can not really be photographed, to be trying to photograph a shadow.
The first room delves into his beginning photographing workers on mass transit in South Africa. The shadow here is
perhaps what the commuters really want or are thinking. Perhaps they are the larger shadow in South African society as
well.
In the second room he photographs sacred places in Africa and other places in the world. The devote gather around
a cave to be blessed by water or smoke. There is a reflection on one side upon the equality between man and landscape.
On the other side of the room there are a photographs of landscape and caves which have been formed and damaged by
mining.
The new age lady and writer
( all of which are perhaps disqualifications for being a thinker) Marianne Williamson says that the most
sacred places on earth are those where a great evil has taken place but where that evil has turned into something positive. According to this logic a killing field made into a church would be especially sacred. In the third room of the exhibition Mofokeng doesnt make any new monuments, but he takes some nice picture of former mass graves in Namibia. The last room frankly left me a little unconvinced and uncomfortable, photos of Autchwitz torture chambers in an art gallery. Some wounds are perhaps best left raw for a bit longer. But maybe that is where the discussion is. Or maybe not. I dont know.

Cahun's major subject is herself and her refusal to accept the established norms for women in inter war Europe.
Cahun was a major part of the surrealist group in Paris after the first world war.
Starting with chopping off her hair and dressing as a man, she goes onto image herself as all of the images of exoticism
and the other which were rattling around and being oppressed in the collective imagination and society of early twentieth
century europe. She lays in a jungle/ garden like setting with leopard print. She creates human fingers out of misplaced objects, news paper papier mache. In the end she plays with the unnoticed corners of her own neighborhood photographing walls.

The Tragedy of the Commons at the Palais de Tokyo

A bunch of leaf cutter ants are going about their business in a plexiglass structure, which
is adapted to the ant colony as a home and to people as a work of art. The sound of the ants is amplified in the four corners of the room.

The tragedy of the commons itself is the idea that a bunch of people working together, even with the best of intentions will eventually deplete their resources.

There is a video of an animal behavior expert talking about the behavior of the ants.
It is very fascinating to watch the ants going about their business. The leaf cutter ants are offered various things to cut on various stands. They seem to enjoy the leaves and bits of flowers they are offered, however they ignore the book which has so thoughtfully been placed on the stand. At the far end of the room through a tunnel of plexiglass is the site where all the construction materials take form into a hive or common living space.