In preparation for the Contestational Cartographies Symposium, which begins today with a talk by Trevor Paglen, I had an interview with the artist and author in last week’s Pittsburgh City Paper. And lucky you, you can check it out here!
More on Paglen, experimental geographies, and agit-prop mapping after the weekend!
The new Paste magazine is out, including my article on Pogues co-founder Jem Finer’s conceptual art/music installation, Longplayer – a 1,000-year long piece of music that recently celebrated its first decade of constant performance. It’s worth noting that Longplayer’s commissioners, Artangel, have also just put up online the recording of the Long Conversation – a dialogue that accompanied the piece’s first live performance, last September. This dialogue includes luminaries from art, science, architecture, literature, and more such as Jeanette Winterson, Cory Doctorow, Andrew Kotting, Rachel Armstrong, and many more.
This week’s Pittsburgh City Paper includes my review of the Julius Shulman: Palm Springs Modern show at the Carnegie Museum of Art.
At the time I saw it and wrote the review, I was consumed with thoughts of empty swimming pools and abandoned airports, thanks to a brief revisiting of the Ballard obsession. That got toned down a bit in the final piece, but I really think there’s a way to look at this exhibit that’s about the ephemerality of America’s human impact on the landscape. There’s a sense of mastery – of people overlooking their empire, and dominating nature like something to be placed in a museum display – for certain. It’s very ’50s-’60s, very Mad Men, very celebrityphile and leisure-ruled. But at the same time, Shulman’s photographs show a kind of ‘knowing’ – a foresight that nature will, one day, reclaim this landscape from the modernist architecture that has attempted to infiltrate it somewhat seamlessly.
Some of the photographs are reminiscent of Doug Aitken’s Migration, done for the Carnegie International and shown on the Museum’s facade at night. (Video is from its NYC gallery installation.)
Shots like the Raymond Loewy House photograph imply a forthcoming re-deserted world in Califormia, after the inhabitants of these luxury artworks depart for whatever the next gold-rush is, whether that’s in 100 years, 1,000 years, or next March. It fits in beautifully with the culture’s ‘oughties obsession with inhabited locations’ emptiness – whether that’s in urban explorers’ love for abandoned mental facilities, big-budget flicks like I Am Legend, 28 Days Later, and a few Dr. Who specials that portray our metropolises bereft of humanity, or artists like Rachel Lichtenstein (“Rodinsky’s Room”), Douglas Aitken and (to use another Carnegie International alum) Haegue Yang (“Sadong 30″) exploring deserted urban dwelling spaces.
Is there a part of our 21st-century mindset that has begun to grapple with ideas of our own cultural and imperial ephemerality? Is there, implicit in these obsessions – whether they be artists and hobbyists working with these images and concepts, or curators and critics approaching work from the likes of Shulman and Ballard anew – an understanding that what we see now, what we understand as our world around us, is by no means permanent? Something that certainly British art of the 1990s referred to was a kind of permanence, the swaggering machismo of artists whose every utterance they thought to be of Warholian importance. Is the response of the past 10+ years to begin to imagine that permanence of any kind is a myth?
It’s the kind of thinking that began to infect writers and artists in 18th- and 19th-century England, at the height of Imperial Europe – like Thomas Browne’s Hydrotaphia: or Urn-Burial, which included this most vicious blow to the European ego:
There is no antidote against the opium of time, which temporally considereth all things: our fathers find their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors. Gravestones tell truth scarce forty years. Generations pass while some trees stand, and old families last not three oaks. To be read by bare inscriptions like many in Gruter, to hope for eternity by enigmatical epithets or first letters of our names, to be studied by antiquaries, who we were, and have new names given us like many of the mummies, are cold consolations unto the students of perpetuity, even by everlasting languages.
Like in Shelley’s “Ozymandias,” the eradication from memory of classical antiquity’s greatest heroes and most vital deeds connects, in the minds of many writers and artists and purveyors of culture, strands of a less-than-permanent future. In this light, perhaps there’s another way to see Shulman’s photographs – and these tangentially (OK, very tangentially) related works: as Urn-Burial’s of today’s vulnerable empire – the Graveyard Poets of the accelerated culture, and the soothsayers of a world that we may not live to see, but that we will assure with the “enigmatical epithets” of our bank statements and exhaust pipes.
So there used to be this ska band, and it was a pretty damn good ska band, if I do say so myself…
The B-3s existed in the City of Pittsburgh and its surrounding environs from about 1996-2003. We played a bazillion shows, drank a rather dangerous amount of beer and whiskey, did some touring, met a lot of amazing people, and – in between – recorded a 7″ single and three CDs worth of material. Two of those CDs (the first and third) are pretty good.
So I’ve uploaded ‘em, with artwork, for your free downloading pleasure – something I meant to do ages ago, but since it’s Christmas Eve, it’s – ya know – a present.
The Devil’s Bluebeat disc, which I guess is an EP or something – shit, I dunno – came out in 1998 and was an immediate smash success across all media, hurtling through the until-then unbreakable “Ska Ceiling” by becoming the first ska disc of the modern revival to make it into the national charts, peaking at #14 and staying on the Billboard Hot 100 for 22 weeks.*
Devil’s Bluebeat featured the original, though not necessarily best-known, lineup of the band with local punk legend, Bad Genes and Necracedia bassist Sean Whelan providing guitar and Stu Braun making his first appearance on harmonica, guesting on “Devil Blues.” (A song I wrote after we played with a Christian ska band and I realized that, even though we dabbled in booze and cussing and wrasslin’ and such, none of us quite had the devil knockin on our door.)
Besides myself (guitar/vocals) and Sean and Stu, there’s the B3s bedrock of Greg Brancati on bass, Scott Killebrew on sax, Joelle Levitt on drums, Mike “The Kid” Shockling on trumpet, and Bill Fulmer on trombone. So, ya know, we got that goin’ for us. Twelve years on, I can shoot my mouth off about some songs, so real quick: >> “Sharpshooter” is, oddly enough, about a friend who’d then-recently come outta the closet – which makes some of the lyrics pretty funny (“in the trenches / he works on his hands and knees / when there’s no one around”), but really it’s about trying to imagine the wartime espionage fear that must grip someone in that closeted situation. (“He’s getting tired of tinted windows / he’s getting tired of locked doors / he’s getting tired of the people that move through his room at night / searching for something more.”) >> “Smith Kidd” emulates our boy Jesse Smith’s strange bow-legged walk, a subtle tribute to an fellow who left too soon. >> “New Orleans” is about that first moment when you realize, ‘ya know, don’t really WANT to stay out til 2am every night anymore…’ >> “Puddy’s Gone” is one Bill Fulmer wrote when his cat died, and it’s become my favorite song – lush and beautiful, long tones, chilled, lovely. Nice job, billy.
*This stuff about the charts is, obviously, a complete fabrication.
The 
Krakatoa disc came out in 2000 at the infamous B-3s CD release party at Pipers Pub. The first and last time Pipers had a full band play at the bar. Yikes. An odd little label outta the Midwest called Kick Save Records put it out – to this day, I’ve never met the guy who ran it. After some point, he ceased all contact. So, as you’d imagine, it wasn’t necessarily a lucrative venture for him. But shit, putting out a B3s album was a pretty dumb idea.
This one’s got me, Stu, Billy, Joelle, Brew, “The Kid,” Grrrrg, plus The Queen B’s: Jordan Valentine and Jennie Luvv on vocals. It’s also got “Mantequilla” written for us by Ben Hartlage (to Stu’s tune), which probably turned out to be our best song, lyrically, as it’s about chickens ‘n’ stuff, and “Hard Times Come Again No More,” possibly the first – and CERTAINLY the best – ska cover of a Stephen Foster song, and definitely the first ska use of an arrangement by bluegrass band The Dry Branch Fire Squad.
Peter Beckerman recorded this, played some percussion, and had the idea to do about 10,000 vocals overlayed on “Russian Men’s Eggs,” which made it sound like there was a massive choir of Hunkey drunks in the studio – when, in fact, there were only about 12. And since Beckerman’s other credits include working on a Fela Kuti album, we figured this one might sound good – and I think it does, to this day. Yeah, ya know what? This is a pretty damn good album… check it out.
My XLR8R interview with global-music DJ of the first order, Uproot Andy, is online in Issuu form – which means, if you haven’t used it, that it’s kinda-like reading the actual magazine, photographed, except that it’s harder to take with you to the bathroom. now in normal XLR8R website form.
And while it’s just a shorty, maybe check out this review of the new DJ/Rupture and Matt Shadetek mix-CD project, Solar Life Raft, which I figure to be album-of-the-year. (If nothing else, it introduced me to the writing of Caroline Bergvall, which is already becoming a huge influence, personally…)
I’ve got a review out today in City Paper of the Experimental Geography show currently exhibited at the Miller Gallery at CMU. It’s a fantastic show, simply on the basis of its work, but it’s also a great event for Pittsburgh as a home for contemporary art: A cross-section of international artists working in a vital contemporary theme, curated by an internationally regarded name from outside the city.
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t, by any means, have the “things outside Pgh validate us” attitude – quite the opposite. But it seems like a logical next step: now that the city’s GOT the local-art ‘thing’ down, to the point that the independently operated galleries are regularly displaying quality local work alongside equally quality national work, perhaps the next step is for a bigger-name, bigger-funding, gallery like Miller to bring in shows such as this, the 29 Chains to the Moon show, the Yes Men show, and others that they’ve worked lately. Which goes to spread the city’s reputation as a creator, and displayer, of fine, contemporary, conceptual artwork.
Two new stories up online this week for Carnegie Magazine:
First, another in what’s become a long line of stories about the Carnegie Museum’s Section of Invertebrate Zoology. This one’s a profile of Chen Young, the Taiwan-born crane fly specialist whose love for a bug that most people mistake for mosquitos – and which, to many of us, has about as much appeal – has made him one of the world’s foremost researchers of this strange li’l fella’.
Secondly, a preview of the upcoming season of the Andy Warhol Museum’s Off the Wall performative art series – another thing I’ve fallen into the habit of doing regularly, and another one I look forward to! This year, Ben Harrison and Off the Wall have started taking their success with 13 Most Beautiful to heart, and are making some bold, ambitious steps forward in turning the Warhol into a major national player on the performance scene.
Finally posted the entirety of my miners-strike-history interview with Boff from Chumbawamba over at The Old Weird Albion. There’s actually been a few new posts over there, maybe worth checking out? Eh? Huh?
Original 7" artwork by Pgh rock legend John Roman
It’s been about 18 years since Pittsburgh’s second-ever ska band (big-ups to Kingpin, who I never got to see!) made its debut, and about 1.5 years since I started saying I was gonna put the recordings I have of that band up online for any masochists to download. Well, now it’s gone and happened, hasn’t it, so – yeah – here’s a link to download the complete recorded output of THE SKABLINS (not to be confused with this Skablins, the alter-ego of Canadian garage punks Thee Goblins, or this one, some new band in the NW that has a logo much like a Wychwood beer).
From 1991-1996 (ish), The Skablins played a bunch’a shows, released one solitary 45, and drank a kind-of absurd quantity of canned beer with names like American, Schlitz, Jacob Best, and even Lushan (a Chinese beer that bassist K.T.’s dad bought a truck-load of and then sold us for, like, $4 a case or something… it had stuff living in it…).
Back cover featuring the famous (huh?) Peps Your Step logo
These recordings include a vast span of lineups, especially considering there’s only about 25-ish minutes of music. There are live recordings from our stronghold of Lancaster, PA, with the original Skablins lineup; there are studio recordings from that-one-guy’s house who ate bunches of hallucinogens while you recorded but only charged about $15/hour; there’s the songs done for our two-song single (“Food Chain” and “Staring Into the Sun”). Some of it’s from DAT’s, most of it’s from a cassette that JimiFred Hendrix found under his couch cushions or something. So, yeah – TOP-NOTCH sound quality.
OH, AND HERE’S THE LINK TO THE SENDSPACE THINGY SO YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THIS CRAP.
Early Response
A historical statement disguised as a review of Tim Kaulen’s ‘artist of the year’ show at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. There are magnificent things happening in Pittsburgh these days, with an influx in both quality and quantity of non-profit arts and cultural organizations and funding for like projects. But I think it’s incredibly important to remember that, a very very few years ago, there was very little organizational and funding opportunity for the artists who catalyzed this current renaissance in a lot of different direct and indirect ways. And that’s one of the things that made Pittsburgh – and MAKES Pittsburgh – such a special place to live: It’s a place of chaos, and through that chaos, a special breed of self-motivated opportunity, rather than the traditional ones. It’s brilliant that there are ‘third way’ and even governmental and business opportunities springing up, and that’s a huge important step. But that doesn’t mean that we should leave out the people and groups that function outside those borders.
