Tonight we're doing the second taping of "Soft Focus with Ian Svenonius," a music talk show that will start airing soon on VBS, the new online TV network produced by VICE. Last week we talked to Henry Rollins and Ian MacKaye, and this week's guests are Will Oldham and Andrew WK.
The show is a sort of "Inside the Actor's Studio" for musicians, taped in front of a live audience at the Guggenheim Museum's theater. And if you're in NYC, lucky you - we've got a few spots left on the guest list.
Guest list is first come, first served with RSVP to events@viceland.com, so don't show up without getting a confirmation back.
The only time that a serious case of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) is a good thing is when you’re an artist and it helps you to be better at your craft. Helen Neville is an artist from Melbourne who grew up with a weird strain of OCD whereby she feels compelled to put like colours together. For instance she likes to pass her time by grouping different shades of the same coloured textas into piles and “marvel at how they stimulate her eye.” As a teen, her disorder manifested itself in a problem with the colour blue where she was only comfortable sitting on blue chairs, eating blue food and wearing blue clothes.
Her new show features a series of specifically coloured still life style photos. She asked a different artist to create a response to each piece — each of which sit on the opposite wall. We went to the show and it looked great but we had no idea what she was on about.
In cities saturated with art-school brats who think cutting out a stencil and doodling their nickname across some poor grocer's window = challenging the status quo, it's nice to see someone putting a little thought and effort into their street art. Check out a few of Mark Jenkins's recent projects. The packaging-tape babies and giraffes may
be a wee bit twee for some tastes, but who can deny those fake hobos for making the walk to work a little more interesting?
So here's a guy from Austin, Texas who creates masterpieces on the rear window of his car by drawing patterns in the layers of dust. His whole community "Oooh"s and "Aaah"s over his gorgeous animals, handsome men, beautiful recreations of classics like the Mona Lisa and Kinky Friedman and such. But at the end of the day, his car is still covered in shit. He rolls his cute little Mini-Cooper in filth and sticks his cute little fingers in adorable dead skin cells and poo. How bored are you, guy? I know DIY car detailing is super kitschy and sweet but you're going to get E.Coli if you keep this up. Pick up a copy of the Vice Guide to Austin. Your city isn't a total drag. Go have a good time. Oh, who are we kidding? This is what Austin is all about. Sigh.
Peter Beste is great because he really gets into his subject. Guess what a year of writing a Black Metal column has taught us? That every Norwegian guy in a satanic, nationalistic metal band’s favourite photographer is an American. They just go nuts over him. In VICE you’ve seen Peter’s photos from Gorgoroth’s infamous Polish live show (they got sued for that. But that’s not the reason Gaahl’s in jail right now) ...
While most young artists are content to scribble some harebrained combo of skulls, antlers, and flowers on a piece of notebook paper and call it a day, scene vets like Ron Athey are laying around in Soho galleries in mortal agony.
We just went to see Athey’s recent “endurance performance” at Artists Space and holy fuck was it intense. He was lying there, using a scaffold as a bed, with fishhooks holding his eyelids open. Something (still don’t know what) had been done to his dick and balls because they were swollen up into one sweltering mass. It looked like a softball coated in pale pink lip gloss. Then, for a little piece de resistance, he had a baseball bat shoved up his ass! We were invited to grab some rubber gloves from the pile on a nearby table, slather our hands with the industrial-sized tub of Vaseline, and touch him, but our photographer could barely get close enough to take this pic without puking.
Remember those old copies of Time from the 50s and 60s that were the only thing to read at your Grandma's apartment? You know the ones with the awesome covers that looked like Tex Avery doing official state portraiture (back when folks actually spent time illustrating stories instead of just slapping text over a digital photo)? Most of those were done by one guy, Russian emigre Boris Artzybasheff, who also did a ton of equally cool and trippy stuff for books and science magazines and advertisements (back when folks actually spent time illustrating products and ideas instead of just slapping a shades on a skateboarding zebra). Like a lot of the amazing illustrators from the time, Boris was largely written off by the serious art world as "just a cartoonist" but has finally been getting his due in recent years. Ken Steacy just put out a reprinting of his 1954 collection As I See.
Check out this gallery for a smattering of his works--it's like what Dali might have done if he kept up with technology and world affairs instead of just jerking off all the time.
Recent Comments