Thanks to CSP for introducing me to the work of New York City artist Lizz Hickey:

Two videos for you today:

The first is a 12min. short film called "Jo Jo in the Stars," Directed by Marc Craste. It was the winner of the 2004 Bafta for Best Animated Short Film. The description goes like this:

"A heart wrenching tale of two unlikely lovers: Jo Jo, a silver-plated trapeze artist and the nameless hero who worships her."

The second is this music video for Devendra Banhart's tune "A Ribbon," Directed by Lauri Faggioni & Michel Gondry:

Enjoy!

Polish artist Jacek Yerka:

Between Heaven and Hell

The Walking Lesson

The City is Landing

Australian artist Hannah Murray:

Until She Finds Someone New

Out Of The Dark She Carries Her Heart

My brother introduced me to this Canadian band called Crystal Castles. According to their website:

we are crystal castles
we are 1 boy and 1 girl
we are named after She-Ra’s home
we play rough

Here is a video for their song "Alice Practice," which uses the famous dance scene in Jean Luc Godard's Vivre sa Vie. Directed by Matthew Ferguson:

And here's the official video for their reworking of the noise band Health's tune "Crimewave" - for which I can't seem to find the name of the director:

Joseph Nechvatal is a post-conceptual digital artist and art theoretician who creates computer-assisted paintings using custom-created computer viruses. His work is informed and inspired by the work of Deleuze and Guattari, which makes him rad.

Here are three pieces from his Being is Difference collection:

Christine Buci-Glucksmann

Ken Goldberg meets Frank Gillette

Ebon Fisher meets G.H. Hovagimyan

Caitlin and I watched Juno.

I would recommend it.

There are funny parts and touching parts.

It has Michael Cera, Jason Bateman, and Jennifer Garner.

I like those actors.

Plus, the soundtrack is sweet.

American artist Deborah Oropallo:

George

(2007)

Napoleon
(2007)

Major Tease
(2007)

Interdisciplinary artist Peter Ciccariello:

The Remains of the Poet

Sister Queens

Poor Yorick, Remembering, Preparing

Italian artist Pierpaolo Campanini:

Untitled
(2003)

Untitled
(2006)

Untitled
(2005)

If you love the Pharcyde’s "Passing Me By" (video below) head over to Passion of the Weiss and check out Fatlip's commentary:

Click Here.

Japanese artist Chiaki Kamikawa:

The last day of being cool
(2007)

Kitchen Talk
(2006)

Once upon a time in Mexico
(2007)

Trent Call paints on floppy disks:

Here is a poem by Paul Eluard from his 1926 collection Capital of Pain, which is a key surrealist text and the basis of Godard's Alphaville:

HABITS

All my girlfriends are hunchbacks:
They love their mothers.
All my animals are obligatory,
They have furniture feet
And window hands.
The wind is bent out of shape,
It needs a suit made to measure,
Measureless.
That’s why
I tell the truth without telling it.

British artist Paul Alexander Thorton:

Untitled

Exquisite Chicken

Flowers

Three music videos directed by Julian Acosta:

Headlights - "Cherry Tulips"





Maritime - "Guns of Navarone"





Tilly and the Wall - "Rainbows in the Dark"

Linnea Paskow earned her MFA at University of Pennsylvania:

Dissolution
(2005)

Expulsion
(2005)

Crash
(2006)

Indian artist Dharmanarayan Dasgupta:

Untitled
(1994)

Untitled
(1988)

Untitled
(1986)

To help celebrate the fact that as of today I am no longer in my twenties, I have gone to page 30 in each of the following texts and transcribed the first full sentence on that page:


"Let us follow this tension between gesture and statement in Saussure."
-Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology


"The hope of rebirth or returning to consciousness after death, or between deaths, has always obsessed us."
-Alan Harrington, The Immortalist


"Evolution is complex and at times amusing, so much of an adventure that few of its wims or obbligatos frighten me."
-Diane Ackerman, The Natural History of the Sense


"She said "thunder" as if it were my name."
-Ben Marcus, Notable American Women


"Hello Louise."
-Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body


"This is the way it goes with the writers: they resent you to the degree that they depend on you."
-Jay McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City


"In the spring Vollard announced a show of Gauguin and they for the first time saw some Gauguins."
-Gertrude Stein, Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein


"She did not try to calm him down."
-Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude


"It is Wednesday dawn."
-John Hawkes, The Lime Twig


"It was some kind of monster I was grappling with, not Roger, and the sheer bloody reality of it terrified me."
-Robert Coover, Gerald's Party


"A demonstration of imaginary primitive elements may be based upon the entity that is most firmly fixed in our memories: the childhood home."
-Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space


"I'll keep quiet about that: poets and visionaries would be jealous."
-Arthur Rimbaud, A Season In Hell & The Drunken Boat


"Even if it's only/skin-deep, once you derive the area, consider/how the skin goes into the ears, behind the eyes,/down the throat, that's an awful lot of beauty."
-Dean Young, Skid


"Wittgenstein was cited for bravery three times during World War I."
-David Markson, Reader's Block


"Schizos, on the other, have sharp eyes and ears."
-Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus

New York Artist Christopher Wool:

Japanese artist Hidenori Mitsue:

game
(2006)

blindfold
(2005)

I and you other than me. No8
(2000)

Video artists respond to mememolly's Dear Body:

disneykid1




frenchling




whataboutadam




YourDailyApple

Mosaic portrait artist Jason Mecier:

Sigmund Freud
(made out of pills)

Phyllis Diller

Andy Warhol

If you have Netflix, a good rental place, or a local library with a decent DVD collection, you should treat yourself to Ron Fricke's Chronos. It's a 40min. nonverbal time-lapse film, a kind of cinematographic opera in the tradition of Godfrey Reggio's Qatsi Trilogy -- Fricke was actually the cinematographer of the first film in that trilogy, Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of Balance.

To say Chronos is beautiful would be a vulgar understatement. It is, to borrow a word from Shelley Duvall in Annie Hall, "Transplendent!"

To get everybody ready for the inevitable crowning of #24 as MVP, yesterday was Kobe Bryant Blog Day.

Some tunes for your Tuesday:

The Postmarks - "Goodbye"
Directed by Radical Friend




Ryan Stewart - "Equanimity"




Kid Koala - "Basin Street Blues"
Directed by Monkmus