Search and Destroy

“The personal computer was exciting in a way that rock-and-roll used to be for me”-James Williamson, the former Stooges guitarist who co-wrote Search and Destroy and went on to study engineering and eventually become a VP at Sony electronics.

Little Richard made for TV Movie from 2000

Growing up in Macon, Georgia, Little Richard (Leon) discovers music through his church. After winning a local talent contest, Richard is encouraged to pursue a career as a songwriter and performer, and finds success and stardom following his first single, "Tutti Frutti." At the height of his fame, Richard abandons his career in favor of a religious life. His retirement, however, proves to be short-lived, and he soon makes a triumphant return to rock 'n' roll.

February 20, 2000

Director: Robert Townsend

Network: NBC

Music composed by: Velton Ray Bunch

Nominations: NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actor in a Television Movie, Mini-Series or Dramatic Special

Vanessa Beecroft: VB64 Performance / Sculpture at Deitch Studios, Long Island City

Well-produced documentation of VB64 here.

As interviewed by Nick Johnstone for the Guardian;

"When I was 12, I started to become a woman and my body began to change. I was devastated because I couldn't be a boy any more. I lost my boyish look. When I started to become something else, I didn't know how to keep it together. It was really painful - the more you eat, the more like a woman you become. That's when my obsession with food started. I felt very alone, but now I see that every woman in my family has an eating disorder. The anxiety of having eaten something and having it inside and not knowing how big and how much... I thought,  I'm going to write it down and look at it and see if it's really so much. And one day, I might give it to a doctor so they will analyse if it's OK. But then it became an obsession and I wrote down everything I ate. I would go all day thinking, I ate an apple at 12 o'clock, I must write it down, I mustn't forget."'

Felix Gonzalez-Torres: taking candy from a dead man

PROJECT No. 2 – SOCIAL TRANSPARENCY PERFORMANCE

Create a performance based on an ordinary task to be presented to our class in the Hurvis studio and documented. Use real materials and objects without pretending. You are not representing, not recounting, not-re-enacting, but simply doing. Ideally this activity will make sound and prompt viewer interaction. Use minimum language or none at all.  Contemplate Bourriaud’s statement that: “A work of art has a quality that sets it apart from other things produced by human activities. This quality is its (relative) social transparency… The “transparency” of the artwork comes about from the fact that the gestures forming and informing it are freely chosen or invented, and are part of its subject” (41-42).


It was really fun for me to be in on this one! Always think of my Christian background this time of year (Easter), and how that lore is all about aspects of performance in real life, pre-media. So i wanted to explore one that i always thought was pretty wacky, transubstantiation. In my improvised monologue i speculated that maybe 5 or 10% of the US population would regularly participate in the holy communion ritual, but with some flimsy research it seems to be much more. According to the Religion in United States wikipedia page 70.6% of our population considers themselves Christian, and 60% of those consider themselves devout. On a worldwide level we're 31.5% Christian, according to Major religious groups. What a bubble i live in!


This iphone documentation interests me in how ambiguous this all looks, and i really like to look at them as images without captions for that reason. The neutral black/gray environment of the studio adds to the level of displacement for me.

Allan Kaprow's LP

A how-to guide in LP form, because you need to dig these ideas often and repeatedly. There's also a nice short documentary of this period of Kaprow and crew at Rutgers.

Joseph Beuys Wants You!

The huge idea here is that Art can be everywhere, always, making every life experience a heightened, enriching, nurturing event. That everyone can participate in and comprehend. That Art can enlighten us and save our planet from destruction by humankind.