spring break 2008, Olympia, WA
Category Archives: art
some paintings
would you rather: princess edition
muxtape
I’m a little late in the game posting about this one but I’m really digging muxtape. I’ve never been able to get into sites like last.fm because they seemed so impersonal, and kinda creepy… a robot spying on your itunes and then comparing you to this huge database and telling you whats compatible with your personal record. Muxtape is old school curatorial, your friends putting together the exact songs stuck in their head at the moment, and in an order that makes sense to them. Plus I like the post-web2.0 design that seems to be all the rage today – simple, clean lines, big text, and no goddamn rounded corners. Click once to play a song, once more for it to stop.
Of course, for all you readers out there philosophically opposed to listening to music through your browser, and who can’t be bothered to hack it out (thnx jono!), I’ll try to keep an mp3 archive of each playlist I upload on this site, and calling it fair use. Here’s my first mix, a collection of tracks that have been stuck in my head (for better or for worse) during the past month:
01 – Stro – clothing song
02 – The Breeders – Walk It Off
03 – Bondage Fairies – He-man
04 – Teengirl Fantasy – Portofino
05 – Battle of Mice – Sleep and Dream
06 – RjD2 – Ghostwriter
07 – Blind Melon – No Rain
08 – Rihanna – Umbrella (VNDLSM remix)
09 – Mistah F.A.B – Hula Hoop
10 – The Killers – Smile Like You Mean It (Fischerspooner Remix)
11 – M.I.A. – Paper Planes
12 – Lali Puna – Micronomic (boom bip remix (compilation edit))
los campesinos! + the orion experience @ maxwell’s
It’s not a trip back home without a visit to Maxwell’s. Tonight I took my sister to her first rock show (and my first in some time– its been far too long since I’ve seen “live” music that consisted of more than a dude in front of a laptop or a coop jam session). It did not disappoint. I first discovered Los Campesinos! because of their animated music videos, but it turns out that they are one attractive band (their other videos attest to this). So I got to introduce lil’ sis to my favorite Maxwell’s ritual: its cozy enough that even if the music is lame, you can always content yourself ogling the cute boys and girls with guitars. Luckily in this case, the performance was fantastic, and the crowd great. I love shows in Jersey cuz people aren’t afraid to be enthusiastic. There was much dancing and cheering, and in a unsuccessful but valiant effort for an encore, even something of a sing-along.
I’m seriously all crushed out. Campesinos! are adorable; they sound like what when I was 15 I had hoped college would feel like. Sort of obnoxiously indie but so sweet that you have to smile. Anyway, tonight was the beginning of Campesinos! US tour. They’ve got shows in most of the cities that I have friends in, so if you dig indie-pop (think Apples in Stereo), definitely check em out.
Los Campesinos! – The International Tweexcore Underground
Also, the opening band, The Orion Experience, was lots of fun.
The Orion Experience – Blood & Money
The Orion Experience – The Cult of Dionysus
[audio:http://www.rrrojer.net/share/music/TheCultofDionysus.mp3]
The Orion Experience – Obsessed With You
[audio:http://www.rrrojer.net/share/music/ObsessedWithYou.mp3]
Los Campesinos! – My Year in Lists
[audio:http://www.rrrojer.net/share/music/MyYearInLists.mp3]
animated graffiti. wow. wow.
MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.
Check out BLU’s site for more awesome.
[via christina on del.icio.us]
prom
[via a beloved housemate]
We should not mistake the skeleton for the person it describes.
The problem lies in the fact that institutions devoted to preserving and promoting documents tend to think in terms of a legacy of objects. They see their work as part of a long chain of objects, and what counts to them is things with faces attached- not events or experiences. Their world is the world of paintings, and books; manifestos and letters of intent; things to be hung up, shelved, counted, sorted and named. They draw a circle around some, and not others- giving labels where perhaps none belong- and in doing so eliminate everything contradictory, ephemeral, and fragile.
Their imposed coherence can never do justice to something that is in fact unlimited, wild and unpredictable- something indefinitely growing and changing.
Something dangerous. This is a thing called culture- moments and shared experiences for the “us” who are watching, listening and making.
Right now.
It is the mandate of art institutions to manufacture art out of this culture- like taking corn and making corn syrup, or “discovering” indigenous medicinal plants and turning them into expensive pharmaceuticals. Institutions must make art objects out of culture, because art persists over time- and culture cannot. Art can be stored, it can be shelved, it can therefore be sold. Culture cannot.
Culture is alive- it can no more survive a mass exodus due to rising rents then it can be bottled up in a flat file with penciled-in toe tags .
If you pursue anonymity, if your act is in the production of moments to be experienced in real-time and not again- if you charge donations at the door rather than apply for grants- and if you never ask permission from anyone for anything- you must write your own history or expect this strange forced coherence and commodification to follow you from behind. Expect it to pass you on the highway going 90. It will reach the future before you do.
Raphael Lyon – Some Thoughts on RISD’s WUNDERGROUND from someone who was here and there.
get psyched!!
For ordinary Americans, though, it has been a different story. Real wages have been growing slowly; at just 1.6% a year on average over the latest upswing, well down on the experience of earlier decades. Business, of course, needs consumers to carry on spending in order to make money, so a way had to be found to persuade households to do their patriotic duty. The method chosen was simple. Whip up a colossal housing bubble, convince consumers that it makes sense to borrow money against the rising value of their homes to supplement their meagre real wage growth and watch the profits roll in.
As they did – for a while. Now it’s payback time and the mood could get very ugly. Americans, to put it bluntly, have been conned. They have been duped by a bunch of serpent-tongued hucksters who packed up the wagon and made it across the county line before a lynch mob could be formed.
The debate now is not about whether the US is in recession but how deep and long that recession will be. Super-bears have started to say that this is perhaps “The Big One”, by which they mean the onset of a new Great Depression. The need to rescue Bear Stearns has done little to still those voices.
America was conned – who will pay? – The Guardian
ZDay
Today is ZDay, a day of “awareness and activism” about the issues addressed in the delicious agitprop conspiracy doc Zeitgeist: The Movie.
I don’t have the patience to be a true conspiracy theorist, but I do believe the following: that the government is not to be trusted; that the elite are sketchy, secretive and often psychotic bastards; and that humanity has much to gain by ditching theistic religions, nationalism, and corporatism. But above all, I enjoy a good story. And for that reason alone I recommend taking two hours to watch Zeitgeist, preferably with a couple friends and your preferred paranoia-inducing substance.
[via alex o.]
