French artist Estelle Hanania:

Demonic Babble Procession
(2007)

Clad in Demon
(2007)

Demonic Babble 2
(2007)

Music mix for your Thursday...

Ratatat - "Mirando" (from their upcoming album)
Directed by E*VAX




Black Dice - "Roll Up"
live from their Brookyln studio, for BBC Collective




Japanther - "Satie"
Directed by Chad Von Nau




No Age - "Everybody's Down"
live at The Smell

London illustrator and designer Richard Wilkinson:

Infantile Disease
(2007)

Let's assume the picture is a self-portrait. You know what artists are like, navel gazing. Pseudo intellectual. Communist. Scheming. Duplicitous. A urinal is a fountain. This is not a pipe.
So if the boy is the artist what are the measles? Why is he barebacked? Why is his hair so vigorously brushed? And by whom? His mother? Whose mother? The artist's mother or the boy's mother?
Forget about the mother.

Let's get back to the measles.
What do they represent? Sickness? Too easy. A map of life's slights, a graph of the inaccessible "itches" of regret? What? No. Too la-di-da.

Is it a join-the-dots puzzle? I'll try.
No it isn't.

It's not about politics, is it? I hate it when it's about politics.
Oh, wait, is it a face when you turn it upside down?
No.
I don't now then.

--Richard Wilkinson, from the new issue of Juxtapose

Winner of the Best Experimental Film at the 2008 Artsfest Film Festival, "Charlie Rose by Samuel Beckett" (3min.37sec.), directed by Andrew Filippone Jr.:

Janet Karam earned her BFA at the Art Institute of Dallas:







The implausible gives pleasure.

The unfamiliar gives pleasure.

Lack of homogeneity gives pleasure.

Disillusionment gives pleasure.

Popping out of the stitches of suture gives pleasure.

- from THE POETICS OF L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E
by Bruce Andrews

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
now has an entry for
Gilles Deleuze

Since the powers that be won't allow an embed of Michael Jackson's Thriller, you'll have to click here to watch the original version directed by John Landis. What I can share with you is this shot-for-shot remake of the video using Legos -- unfortunately, I've been unable to find info on who directed it:

Today feels like a hodgepodge day:

New issue of Senses of Cinema is up.

Dinosaur Constellations is a cool spot for free music.

Eduardo Navas posted an excerpt from one of his chapters on the role of Remix in Art, titled "The Author Function in Remix." It outlines how the theories of Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault on authorship are relevant to New Media. It's pretty interesting.

Check out THE ULTIMATE RADIOHEAD REMIX COMPILATION

If you're writing about Kant's theory of aesthetics, like I am right now, you could look here for some fodder.

& finally...

Here are two strange videos directed by Johnny Woods:

Self Help For Children





music video for "Universal Splitz" by Slow Ghost

I'm really digging this new Metaform album. Dirty beats and violins, horns, flutes and samples, cymbals crashing, fingers snapping, chimes and loops and pianos. It's all over the place in just the right way.

If you enjoy the assemblages of Kid Koala, RJD2, DJ Shadow/U.N.K.L.E., Avalanches, and their ilk, you'll want to play this album on repeat.

CD Baby called Metaform a blend of "Anticon-esque fractured hip-hop beats with the experimentalism of Animal Collective and the beauty of Home Video, Mum or some other smokey-lounge act."

Weiss said, "...along with Dilla’s Donuts and Blockhead’s Uncle Tony’s Coloring Book, this is one of the best hip-hop instrumental albums in recent memory.

I agree.

You can hear examples on their myspace page.

Some of my friends here at OSU have launched a fantastic new venue for ideas called Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion. Caitlin & I contributed a short video project for their pilot issue, which you can check out here.

They are now seeking submissions for their first issue:

We're proud to announce Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion, a digital magazine and web forum dedicated to exploring rhetoric in everyday life. As the name suggests, Harlot is not another academic journal, nor is it a pop culture magazine. It's a combination of both and neither, and its goal is to provoke real conversations in the public sphere about how communication shapes our world -- from topics on reality television to public monuments to religion to pop music, and so on.

As a digital community, Harlot promotes collective invention and discussion through multimedia and traditional texts, creative pieces, artistic works, blogs, and wiki pages. We welcome submissions in a range of genres and media formats and imagine a variety of possibilities:

* art inspired by gaming culture
* a mock interview with a political candidate
* a short film on green architecture
* a collaborative review of a popular documentary
* an experimental poem about social-networking sites
* a parody of a popular advertisement
* whatever else will spark thought and conversation

We invite adventurous critics, artists, and thinkers to take part in promiscuous investigations into the social, cultural, and political powers of rhetoric ... for play with a purpose. Check out our site at www.HarlotoftheArts.org to learn more. For publication in Harlot's debut issue in Fall 2008, submissions must be sent in by July 1st, 2008.

The Harlot team
harlot[dot]osu[at]gmail[dot]com

Salvador Dalí on What's My Line?

Everyday Sculptures by Ton Zwerver:









Also...

Music by Blood on Tape
Music by luwarm
Check out Mairead's Reverie project.

Democracy Now interviews Žižek

Jonathan Gottschall argues, in The Boston Globe, that literary criticism should become a science.

My friend Adrian just sent me this crazy music video for Justice's tune "Stress" - Directed by Romain-Gavras. I think it's an extremely effective video, but it really makes me feel uneasy. It's raw and kinda scary. Ultimately, it reminds me that anarchy sounds cool until you consider the rise of droogs.

Viewer Discretion Advised:

Robert Rauschenberg has passed away.

Cardbird
(1971)

Treaty
(1974)

Monogram
(1955–59)

Untitled work by Canadian artist Mark Dixon:

Thanks to CSP for sending me a link to Kent Rogowski's work:

Untitled #3

Untitled #5

After twelve years in the league, the youngest player to ever start a game, the youngest player to be named to the NBA All-Defensive Team, the youngest Slam Dunk champion, the youngest player to score 20,000 points (surpassing Wilt the Stilt), 10-time NBA All-Star, 2-time scoring champion, 3-time NBA champion, and -in my opinion- the greatest basketball player in the NBA, has finally won the MVP award!!!

Tonight begs for some live experimental music....

Kría Brekkan covers Chemirocha on East Village Radio (2008)




Whit + Travassos - @ The Mascavado Festival in Lisbon (2008)




Riow Arai and Tujiko Noriko @ Shibuya O-nest (2007)




Lucky Dragons @ SXSW (2008)




The Books - @ the International House, U. of Pennsylvania (2006)

Owen Mundy will soon earn his MFA in Visual Arts from the University of California, San Diego:

Military Silhouette
(2007)

Self-portrait as Target
(2007)

Occupational History
(2007)

Some Links:

Terry Eagleton reviews Žižek's new book, In Defense of Lost Causes.

Stanley Fish discusses "French Theory in America," part one & part two.

Laurie Fendrich helps aspiring art students avoid pitfalls.

"I was all about socialism—but it became so working class."

Hulu offers -- for free! -- every episode of the original Battlestar Galactica.

What I am reading this weekend - here & here.

Californian artist Nina Katchadourian makes maps. Here are two from her Geographic Pathologies series: