By
Jacob Gaboury on
Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 at
10:00 am
Hosts Matt and Jaimie from Whoop Dee Doo
Whoop Dee Doo is a kid's show, run by about 20-30 volunteers in Kansas City. The show is filmed in the style of public access television shows of the 70s, 80s, and 90s, drawing heavy inspiration from the likes of The Carol Burnett Show, The Gong Show, Pee Wee's Playhouse, You Can't Do That on Television, Mr. Wizard, Soul Train, Double Dare, public access horror show hosts like Svengoolie, and the Chicago public access program Chica-go-go. The group has put together shows around the country and internationally, from the Smart Museum in Chicago, to a holiday party at Deitch Projects, and a collaboration with Loyal Gallery in Malmo, Sweden. In each new venue they draw on local communities of performers and artists to collaborate and contribute. Performers range from musical acts and performance artists to Civil War Re-enactors, Celtic Bagpipers, Christian Mimes, drag queens, drill teams and science teachers. Kids help build the sets and make props along with artists and volunteers, and they are a huge part of the show itself. Whoop Dee Doo is intended to showcase the diversity of artistic talent within the community, and to create an opportunity for these groups to work, and party, together. Unlike many kid's shows, Whoop Dee Doo is in no way dumbed down or infantilizing, and it forms an important part of the vibrant and creative Kansas City arts community.
The show is hosted by artists Matt Roche and Jaimie Warren. Matt plays a quiet, awkward werewolf, and Jaimie is generally wearing red spandex and covered in empty food packaging. I spoke with Jaimie about the art scene in Kansas City, about working with kids and technology, and about the philosophy of Whoop Dee Doo.
Jaimie Warren: We try to make the show a project that is truly inclusive. I have always wanted to create something that really involves the community in a way that is actually effective and meaningful, and that is something we are totally striving to do. We work with a lot of under-served youth groups like the Boys and Girls Club, so [we try to make it] a pretty memorable and unique experience for them. The kids are also a huge part in making the show – they help make props, costumes and sets, so you have 20- and 30-something artists making the look of the show alongside kids and community members, and it ends up looking pretty rad. Plus our workshops and shows are always free, so the kids who don’t have money are always able to attend.
Matt Roche acts as sort of the Art Director of the show, but it is a super collaborative process, and artists like Chris Beer, Roger Link, Erica Peterson, Rochelle Brickner, and our remarkable new gem named Lee Heinemann, who is a 17-year old genius, help set the stage for the way everything looks. And it looks AMAZING!!
I feel like all of the examples I have seen in the past of the art world infiltrating the community have always had this unavoidable cheese-y factor, like having the homeless make art and invite them into the gallery or something. We hope that Whoop Dee Doo can occupy a position that is highly respected as both community art and contemporary art, which is something I've always felt was very difficult to achieve. It sort of strips away the divisions between high art and low art, and it all blends together in a really successful way.
By
Ceci Moss on
Monday, August 16th, 2010 at
1:30 pm
This Is My Life (Shirley Bassey) by Conrad Ventur was one of my favorite pieces in PS1's "Greater New York," so I was delighted to come across this short interview with the artist on MoMA/PS1's INSIDE/OUT blog. Burrowed away in a small room in PS1's basement, the work involves a number of projectors looping performances by singer Shirley Bassey sourced from YouTube. Slowly rotating crystals hang over the lens of the projectors, refracting the images and illuminating the room in a soft, hazey light. Ventur discusses his interest in connecting to the past through repurposing old performance footage and the affective quality of his installations.
By
Jacob Gaboury on
Monday, July 26th, 2010 at
11:00 am
Transitioning between heirloom mentalities is hard. Calista knows and isn't afraid to speak her mind about it! Every girl needs something colorful in her life and that's why impressions always stick best while wet. So the next time you're ready to uproot your sandcastle watercolors, just remember: nobodys gotcha back like dollys on the beast team. In fact, no East Coast Sisterhood (ECS) ever felt so good! So relax! Sit back and track the date.... cause this calender is about to get B.E.A.T. U.P.!!!!!!!!!!!
By
Jacob Gaboury on
Monday, July 26th, 2010 at
10:00 am
[Stills from various episodes of PARTY FOOD.]
PARTY FOOD: THE DOO-OVER
PARTY FOOD is a multi-dimensional art project that began as a few drawings and short stories in 2006. What followed has become a blend of performance, installation, and media that cannot be defined but through experience.
Fantasy Vision Meditation (In Color), a room-sized sculptural video installation, is the first "episode" in a series investigating the parallel historical narratives of disco, gay liberation movements and AIDS. Lozano creates a phantasmagoric elegy for the fallen soldiers in the hidden cultural wars of the 70s and 80s by transforming two sources generally dismissed as vapid and disposable. "I Need Somebody To Love Tonight" by disco singer Sylvester James (a victim of AIDS) and producer Patrick Cowley (who succumbed to AIDS less than three months after the disease was codified) and A Night At Halsted's by queer porn auteur Fred Halsted (who overdosed on sleeping pills after the death of his lover from AIDS) helped in defining the culture of the era. Lozano imbues his materials with pathos by a careful and labor-intensive digital exegesis of the unconscious spiritual elements hidden in the originals.
Video and performance artist Shana Moulton, whose series "Whispering Pines" Brian Droitcour profiled here on Rhizome recently, will speak at EAI tonight at 6:30pm. This is her first artist talk in New York City, and it includes a screening of her newest additions to "Whispering Pines." This should be worth checking out, plus, it's free to the public! More information here.
By
Jacob Gaboury on
Monday, June 14th, 2010 at
12:00 pm
When R&B singer Ginuwine's jam Pony came out in 1996, it became the
classic soundtrack to grinding, and its (admittedly, hilarious)
refrain "ride it, my pony" a fixture in American pop culture. More
recently, A.Mart from Hamburger Eyes launched "Dancing Alone to Pony"
-- a tumblr blog compiling solo videos of people dancing to the
track. The site has encapsulated this micro-meme. Here are a few of
the highlights, visit Dancing Alone to Pony for more.
Video artist and community access television personalityJaime Davidovich will host Adventures of the Avant-Garde at the Anthology Film Archives next Thursday, May 13th. Co-sponsored by Anthology Film Archives and Electronic Arts Intermix, the event promises a guided "eye-popping art-historical tour" through 20th century radical art and television, which will be rounded off with a screening of two early video works by Davidovich, INTERIORS (1976) and ADVENTURES OF THE AVANT GARDE (1981). If you weren't able to catch Davidovich's exhibit at Cabinet a few months ago, this evening is another good opportunity to experience Davidovich's showmanship and humor.
By
John Michael Boling on
Friday, April 30th, 2010 at
12:00 pm
For today's General Web Content I have assembled a collection of images that repurpose traditional models of data visualization for humorous/bizarre/illuminating effect. This meme has been around for several years now, first coming into mainstream awareness with the emergence of the overwhelmingly brilliant website "rap represented in mathematical charts and graphs," and continues to be a persistent mechanism for creative expression across the web. (Especially in forums such as b3ta, 4chan, and Something Awful.) The intent of this collection is not to present a best of, but merely to convey a broad overview of the meme. Enjoy.
Found objects have had a place in art for nearly a century, but the practice has seemed particularly pervasive in recent years, as approaches from both contemporary and historical perspectives have attempted to redefine it as appropriation, nonmonumental, unmonumental, or "combining crap with crap." Fascination with old or overlooked marginalia could be regressive melancholia spawned of the Bush era's resigned cynicism, or sympathy for the poor objects in spite of high-tech consumption. Whatever the case, the sensibility saturates Shana Moulton's Whispering Pines, a series of videos and performances. While sculptural assemblage clusters objects in space, Moulton spreads her thrift-store and gift-shop finds over time. Rather than tracing the artist's web of references through stationary contemplation, the viewer of Whispering Pines is led through the process as Cynthia, the heroine, interacts with the things she has chosen to surround herself with. A Magic Eye 3D poster transports her to a zone of free movement. A swamp-colored facial mask opens a green-screen gateway to a forest clearing. If, in a readymade or sculptural assemblage, the artist endows objects with totemic power by isolating and emphasizing their formal properties (or the subjective associations they evoke for her), then Moulton gives that principle a radically literal interpretation in Whispering Pines, where objects' properties and associations acquire the power to shape the narrative.
Moulton gets inspiration for episodes from her finds rather than "casting" them in predetermined storylines. Objects drive the plot. Wonder at a thing's appearance can be a narrative hook that doubles as a more conventional dilemma, and ultimately offers a key to an episode's insight. At the beginning of Whispering Pines 3, Cynthia is composing a diary entry about her runaway cat and a newly acquired knickknack that baffles her with its twisted script. "I found a wonderful wall hanging today," she says in a voiceover. "I really like its texture. But I can't understand what it is trying to say." Next Cynthia is in a forest, chasing her cat with a butterfly net, when she spots her wall hanging, turned on its end in the gnarl of a tree. Cocking her head, she can suddenly read it: "Towels?!" Back in her armchair, Cynthia fingers a plush cat's head nestled in her collar as she sits beneath the "Towels" sign. She's content. But the viewer feels uneasy. Did Cynthia ever have a cat? Or did she misplace a toy that she equates with the living thing it represents? And now that she knows what the wall hanging says, shouldn't she put it where it presumably belongs--above a towel rack? Consideration of the wall hanging leads to a conclusion of its ridiculous redundancy--it's a sign meant to index a nearby object that can easily be identified by its appearance, while the sign itself is ornate to the point of illegibility. The real referent of the "Towels" sign is not towels, but domestic comfort. Moulton arrives at this idea by giving the wall hanging the power to send Cynthia home, and matching it to the cozy act of stroking a pet--even as she retains the aura of strangeness around it with the abrupt cut from forest to house, and the unsettling sight of Cynthia nuzzling a disembodied stuffed animal.
