Nonwrestler Blog

Art with issues

Went to the revamped Dowse gallery yesterday and saw some interesting stuff there, including an exhibition that was essentially a series of portraits of people who identify themselves as trans gender or trans sexual, called "Assume Nothing".

There was a little sign at the start of the exhibition that said something like:

Warning: This exhibition, which deals with an important issue within our society, contains some nudity and images which may offend some people.

That's from memory, but that was the gist and I think I've got the tone about right.

I reckon it's fine to have a sign like that, but that relative clause, "which deals with an important issue within our society", annoyed me. First, seems very righteous to assert the importance and, second, seems like a weird assertion about the circumstances in which it's OK to show cocks in public. "Don't worry, this penis exposure is by no means frivolous!"

Beyond the signage, I found it interesting that the exhibition actually did deal with the issue it claimed to in a very explicit way, inasmuch as it was basically an entirely documentary thing about identity politics, consisting of the portraits, text from the subjects and the photographer, and then, for another layer of info, video documentaries about the same.

As a way of communicating ideas about an issue, that seems to be a much more successful approach than something that requires specialist knowledge of art history, post-modernist theory or both. The flipside is the exhibition had a very different feel from others in the gallery, and the photographer and film-maker both seemed fairly outside the art establishment - not in the sense of being "outsider artists" or savants or whatever, but in that the work shown was much more in line with a TV crew, a coffee table book or maybe a library display (barring the subject matter).

I found it all fairly dissatisfying, which has lead me to wonder if I ever like art to be about politics. I'd got much more excitement out of looking at some abstract felt pen drawings, some pretty photos of Antarctica and an incredibly detailed mock blueprint for a "brothel or prison" elsewhere in the gallery.

To draw a crude analogy to music, I much prefer to listen to lyrics that are either dumb and rude or arty and obtuse than to conscious political music. I like conscious political views, but I don't listen to music to get educated, and I don't know if I want visual art to be trying to educate me either.

Thinking out loud here, probably not as black and white as all this. Interested to hear what others reckon.

Labels: misc time-wasting

Posted at 12:08  4 Comments Links to this post

Finding Nemo's sex

Just read on the oh so reliable Wikipedia page about clownfish that they are all born male and change sex. So apparently Nemo's dad should've taken over as Nemo's mum after his wife died in the movie.

Seems kinda funny that famously conservative Disney made a movie about a naturally sex-changing fish. I'd love it if there were a sequel in which Nemo is a girl, but where that's just completely incidental to the plot...

Labels: misc time-wasting

Posted at 22:39  0 Comments Links to this post

Wu Tang Clan founder starts chess-playing site

Curious. Having won the, ah, coveted (?) Hip-Hop Chess Federation tournament last year, RZA has launched a weird online business...

WuChess

Labels: misc time-wasting

Posted at 09:53  0 Comments Links to this post

cat prin - the tailor for a cat you know

Courtesy of good ol' popbitch comes a fine Japanese site extolling the virtues of costumes for cats.



I think the site explains its raison d'etre best:

"You need to dress a cat. And you will say to a cat together with a family. 'It has changed just for a moment'. [ 'it being very dear' or ] You will pass pleasant one time."

Right on. Seems to me a logical impossibility that this won't result in lolcats...

Edit - It turns out the original Japanese page have a lot more designs. With consistently miserable looking cats... :)

Labels: misc time-wasting

Posted at 17:52  0 Comments Links to this post

Crazy time waster - flickrvision

Someone's mucked about with the Google Maps and Flickr APIs to create a site which grabs the last 20 or so photos uploaded to Flickr and then bounces about the world map displaying them for you.

flickrvision.com

Labels: misc time-wasting

Posted at 11:54  0 Comments Links to this post

Paramodel: Graffiti-style Rail Track Art

Pretty impressive stuff, I reckon.



Paramodel: Graffiti-style Rail Track Art

Labels: misc time-wasting

Posted at 12:41  0 Comments Links to this post

Going nuts MP3 shopping

I stumbled upon an MP3 shopping site called Amie St , which works on the premise that songs are initially free and increase in price as demand goes up, i.e. as more people download. Alongside that when customers sign up with some credit they also get "RECs", so they can tag a song as one they recommend and write a little blurb about why they like it. If the price goes up they get additional credit. So basically it's encouraging customer-driven promotion and customers to check out unknown stuff.

Intrigued, I had a chat with Shanan and we agreed to put our Montano album up there. It's kinda stalled after slipping over the threshold into pay-per-download, which seems to be the case for most any unknown material out there. So am not sure about the artist side of it being so beneficial for complete unknowns. For that matter I don't think there's any electronica that's actually making returns, beyond some Ninja Tune crap, but I may be wrong.

Still, on the customer side of it I'm totally hooked. Having got the cable modem set up at home I've got the latest downloads page as my home page and keep checking in to see what I can grab while it's still dirt cheap. I've downloaded a lot of stuff that I've quite liked but never been so moved as to buy at full price in the past, a few things I would've bought on sight at full price, and a bunch of cool things I'd never heard of before. Plus some absolute horse shit. :)

Highlights:

• Antiguo Automata Mexicano's Kraut Slut for free. Have to update my best of 2007 list, this is absolutely superb micro-house / ambient-techno / modifier-noun stuff from Mexico (duh)
  
• Mudd's Claremont 56 for free. As above, absolutely superb 2007 release, this time in the realms of ballearic / beard disco / whatever. Strange mix of slow motion disco, blistering guitar solos and whatever else. Hm. Suits the sunny weather.
  
• Ridiculous amounts of Big Dada's back catalogue, including every Roots Manuva album, every TTC album, both Ty albums, and something from Company Flow's Bigg Jus, all for free.
  
• Completed my Dabrye collection, with his first album and the 12" with the Prefuse 73 remix for free. Dunno why I thought this stuff wasn't worth picking up, it's almost as good as Instrmntl.
  
• Lots of other Ghostly International / Spectral Sound 12"s that I wouldn't bother to buy on vinyl, but which often have a couple of great tunes on them.
  
• J Dilla's Ruff Draft for US$8. Lots more Stones Throw stuff there, but I already have the ones I wanted to get. Keep vacillating over getting Aloe Blacc's album.
  
• A huge Roedelius retrospective for free, going back to Kluster, Cluster, his collabs with Brian Eno and whatever else. Some of it even sounds good.
  

There're lots of things I don't like about how the site works, but it's suckered me. Kind of like watching Lost, I s'pose. ;) Plus they've just published me waxing lyrical about DJ Vadim for extra credit, so I guess I'm on the payroll now. ;)

It's funny, this has curbed my illegal downloading a fair amount.

Labels: misc time-wasting, music

Posted at 11:55  1 Comments Links to this post

Analog(ue) Audio Tape Cassette Nostalgia

This site delivers exactly what it says.

tapedeck.org analog audio tape cassette nostalgia

Spent a good half hour of, yes, nostalgic enthusing at the galleries within. Gonna reskin my MP3 player with one of them, I think.

Labels: misc time-wasting

Posted at 17:53  0 Comments Links to this post