Entries from February 2008
White People Love Me, 2005
Uncle Tom, 2003
Paul Klein at Art Letter had this to say about artist Rashid Johnson:
“Rashid Johnson is talented. He certainly is affable. Unfortunately I see him playing in the shallow end of the pool of issues about race in America…It’s time we grow up. I’m eager to see what Rashid will do when he tires of this successful game of white people liking him.“
Aren’t all issues of race deep? This pool metaphor gives me a headache.
I doubt wanting white people to like him is anywhere near Johnson’s thought process when he’s working.
WTF.
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South African photographer Pieter Hugo spent 10 days in Nigeria with 10 men, four baboons, three hyenas, and two rock pythons.
pieterhugo.com
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Materials & Applications is a research center dedicated to pushing new and underused ideas for art, landscape and architecture into view.
It is also an outdoor exhibition space that is visible from the street 24 hours a day; they produce instillations twice a year and host regular open air discussion, workshops, and film screenings.
1619 Silver Lake Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA
emanate.org
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The more adventurous San Franciscan might have noticed this ship docked down in the dogpatch for a few years now.
It is the former SS Independence, and took up residence at Pier 70 in 2006. Launched in 1951 the ship spent almost two decades carry passengers between the United States and Europe – including a 1958 voyage with President Truman and his wife. Later, the Independence was repurposed for leisure cruise duty during the 1980’s and 90s, mostly between islands in Hawaii
A global slump in travel in a post-9/11 world put the ship into extended retirement. That was until a few weeks ago, when surprisingly it took to open water destined for what is rumored to be Dubai, or Norway.
Jonathan Haeber was able to sneak on the ship and document it in all its decaying wonder.
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February 26, 2008 · 1 Comment
Those living in the USSR during the 1930s, 40s, and 50s who wanted to hear Western music had to rely on records coming through Eastern Europe, where controls on records were less strict, or on the tiny influx of records from beyond the iron curtain. Such restrictions meant the number of recordings would remain small and precious. But enterprising young people with technical skills learned to duplicate records with a converted phonograph that would “press” a record using discarded x-ray plates. This material was plentiful and cheap, and millions of duplications of Western and Soviet groups were made and distributed by an underground roentgenizdat, or x-ray press, which is akin to the samizdat, the notorious tradition of self-publication among banned writers in the USSR. The one-sided x-ray disks costed about one to one and a half rubles each on the black market, and lasted only a few months, as opposed to around five rubles for a two-sided vinyl disk. By the late 50’s, the officials knew about the roentgenizdat, and made it illegal in 1958. Officials took action to break up the largest ring in 1959, sending the leaders to prison.
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The UCLA Charles E. Young Research Library Department of Special Collections has selected and digitized 5,746 of the more than three million images contained in the Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles Daily News photographic archives. The photographs chronicle the history and growth of Los Angeles from the 1920s to 1990.
Enter the archive here.
You can gully down with some hot Ed Ruscha steez.
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