This panel and discussion is sponsored by MICA’s MFA in Curatorial
Practice and the William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund, creator of the
Baker Artist Awards www.BakerArtistAwards.org.

CURATING TO PROVOKE: DANGEROUS IDEAS, DANGEROUS PLACES will feature presentations by Anita Durst, Maiza Hixson, Hannah Brancato, Rebecca Nagle, and Adam Void. These presentations will spark a lively discussion. The panel and discussion will take place Sunday, April 29,
1:00PM – 4:00PM at Area 405 in the Station North Arts and
Entertainment District in Baltimore. CURATING TO PROVOKE: DANGEROUS
IDEAS, DANGEROUS PLACES is the semester-end project for
Interdisciplinary Approaches to Curatorial Practice (IACP), a graduate
level course, taught by Marcus Civin, that focuses on revealing the
history of curatorial practice by analyzing influential curators and
influential exhibitions. Inspirations for CURATING TO PROVOKE include
the Occupy Wall Street Movement, politically charged artwork, and
community art.

Hannah Brancato, Rebecca Nagle, and Adam Void, are all Baltimore
curators and artists:

• Hannah Brancato works on a range of community based projects about
gender stereotypes, material culture, and power structures. She has
curated at The Creative Alliance, Whole Gallery, Current Space, and in
various public spaces, dealing with issues from rape and consent to
the accessibility of fresh food in Baltimore. Currently, she and
Rebecca Nagle are organizing a touring exhibition, series of video
screenings, and guerilla interventions as a part of the project FORCE:
Upsetting Rape Culture – a project committed to disrupting the culture
of rape and promoting a culture of consent.

• Rebecca Nagle has curated for Artscape, The Transmodern Performance
Festival, The Maryland Historical Society, and The Reginald F Lewis
Museum. Nagle’s projects engage issues of intimacy, the body, and
power. With Hannah Brancato, she is curating FORCE: Upsetting Rape
Culture.

• Adam Void works in galleries, art institutions, independent spaces,
and in public to engage the largest possible audience. Recently, Void
participated in “PANTHEON: A History of Art From The Streets of NYC”
at Donnell Library 53rd St. in New York City, across from the Museum
of Modern Art. PANTHEON was a part of a grassroots response to the
exhibition “Art in the Streets” at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los
Angeles.  PANTHEON pointed to New York City’s lack of institutional
acknowledgement of graffiti art and street art.

Two curators will visit Baltimore for this panel and discussion:

• Maiza Hixson is the Gretchen Hupfel Curator of Contemporary Art at
the Delaware Center for the Arts which presents between 20 and 30
exhibitions annually of regional, national, and international artists,
exploring topical issues in contemporary art and society. Along with
Lauren Ruth, she is the co-founder, director, and curator of The
Shaft, an unauthorized gallery space located in the elevator of the
Vox Populi building in Philadelphia. Her work was recently featured in
the People’s Biennial organized by Independent Curators International
and curated by Jens Hoffman and Harrell Fletcher.

• Anita Durst is the Founder and Director of Chashama which supports
creativity in New York City by repurposing vacant properties,
recycling them as work spaces and performance spaces, and granting
them at free or highly-subsidized rates. She has secured over one
million square feet of space in New York City for artists. She
believes programs like chashama are the vital building blocks to
ensuring cultural capital in New York City. Anita sits on the boards
of New York Foundation of Arts, Tai Chi Chuan Center, The Tank, Adarsh
Alphon Projects, Exploring the Metropolis, and Bindlestiff Family
Cirkus.

Hixson and Durst will bring outside perspective to our conversation in
Baltimore. This will be a great opportunity for curators in Baltimore
to meet and discuss issues relevant to curatorial practice. Everyone
is encouraged to join the discussion.

The idea that curatorial practice can provoke, in addition to educate
and inspire, is an idea that is gaining steam across disciplines.
Curators can challenge diverse publics by engaging place and sharing
artwork that reflects significant, contemporary global and local
issues and provides tools for engagement.

Please join us at Area 405, Sunday, April 29, 1:00PM – 4:00PM. Area
405 is one of Station North Arts and Entertainment District’s top
exhibition spaces for contemporary art directed to broad audiences.
Area 405 is housed in a living, working artist-owned building that was
once an abandoned warehouse. Thanks to its many volunteers, Area 405
has been hosting exhibitions, film screenings, performances, lectures,
and artist talks since 2003.

When: Sunday, April 29, 1:00PM – 4:00PM
Where: Area 405, 405 East Oliver Street, Baltimore, MD 21202, www.area405.com
RSVP encouraged at cpmfa@mica.edu
Here is the Facebook Invite: https://www.facebook.com/events/348926478488852/

Further Reading:

About Hannah Brancato and Rebecca Nagle’s project, FORCE:
http://bmore.ihollaback.org/2012/02/25/interview-the-artists-behind-force-upsetting-rape-culture/#comments…

About Anita Durst’s organization, Chashama:
http://www.thirteen.org/metrofocus/culture/no-vacancy-turning-empty-spaces-into-cultural-pop-ups/…

For context, perhaps it would be helpful to consider this statement on
the Occupy movement, by Rebecca Solnit:
http://www.thenation.com/article/166394/why-media-love-violence-protesters-and-not-banks.

This annual event is a celebration and survey of artist publications, prints, objects in multiple and much more. Co-curated with Nicholas Gottlund of Gottlund Verlag in conjunction with his show, Baker’s Dozen, currently on view at Open Space, this year’s fair promises a wide variety of artist publications and multiples from Baltimore and abroad. Exhibiting artists and publishers include: Chloe Maratta, Chris Day, Closed Caption Comics, Dylan Thadani, Friends Records, FUKT Magazine, Gary Kachadourian, Gottlund Verlag, Guest Spot, Half Letter Press, Important Comics, Jason Kachadourian, The Kingsboro Press, Noel Freibert, Nowork, OSO Press, Public Collectors, Real Guts, Schematic Quarterly, Spaces Corners, Suzanna Zak, Swill Children, Temporary Services, Video On Paper and Wtr Clr Records.

All of Underground Editions‘ publications will be available for purchase at Dylan Thadani’s table this weekend. Come check out TRAIN TO POKIPSE, LTD 2: Welcome to the Jungle, and 131 Fires in-person.

Open Space Baltimore is an artist run gallery space located in Remington in Baltimore City. Beginning as a collectively run art space in the fall of 2009, it has since hosted a wide variety of exhibitions and programming.

==| THE COMMUNITY SERVICED TOO |== from grossymmetric on Vimeo.

Summer 2011

This Saturday, Adam Void will be participating in the group show, Loaded Pistols. Curated by Samantha Fein.

Featuring the artwork of Tom Burkett, Alexandra Carter, David Eassa, Claire Felonis, Amanda King, Kim Llerena, Lloyd Lowe, Marian Ochoa, Ben Peterson, Tony Ransom, Jill Silverberg, and Adam Void.

LOADED PISTOLS

A Group exhibition exploring the relationship between text and imagery.

Opening Reception: Saturday, April 7, 7-9 PM

Short Prose Reading: 8 PM

Gallery 500, 5th floor Studio Center, 133 West North Avenue

Directions and map here

The exhibition, “An American Dream” has received incredible press from a variety of sources. Many thanks to RJ and Gaia at Vandalog for their mention and additional graffiti images. Brooklyn Street Art is always on point with their continued coverage of all things Avoid. Nick at Complex has shown lots of love recently and is greatly appreciated. The local, Bmore Art Blog also featured some images from the opening night. Finally, Popflys, a daily photo and design blog, mentioned Adam Void’s photography on March 22nd.

They are quoted as saying, “I can’t say I’m even on the edge of necessarily enjoying Adam Void’s photographs but I knew I had to post him out of some sense of having the chance to write about Adam Void before everyone is writing about him and his work. …there’s something there, something less voyeuristic and more point of view. A point of view on struggle, it just doesn’t feel like it’s through a photographers eye and I’m starting to like that.”

- a strange, but flattering comment from those guys.

This immersive installation will feature new paintings, sculptures and writing. An American Dream forces the viewer to interact with often overlooked subcultural groups in a sophisticated and intelligent manner. Topics addressed include homelessness, evangelical religion, freight hopping, protest culture, surveillance and urbanization.

Friday March 23 – April 1

MICA Decker Gallery

1301 West Mount Royal Ave.

Baltimore, MD

*******************************************************************************

Outtakes

by Steve Dalachinsky

Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune, courtesy of Michael Ochs.

Gil Scott-Heron’s explosive memoirThe Last Holiday is a must for any Scott-Heron fan. Published posthumously, it covers his life from childhood through his career up until the 1980s. As Scott-Heron states at the beginning, writing helped him retain his memories since he was 10, and he hopes his book “will remind you that you can succeed, that help can arrive from unexpected quarters at times that are crucial.” It’s published by Grove Press, an independent giant founded by Barney Rosset when, as a young literary enthusiast, he sought an outlet to publish such important authors as Samuel Beckett.

Right up until his recent death at age 89 Rosset was championing unknown and lesser-known writers such as 30-year-old novelist Rami Shamir, and his post-Burroughsian, post–Sonic Youth novel Train to Pokipse, on the independent imprint Underground Editions. This intense first novel was 10 years in the making, capped by Shamir’s legal and emotional struggles to get the rights back from a big-time publisher who “stole” the manuscript and started selling it online, resulting in a two-year lawsuit. Rosset, who was the main editor for the book, crowned it a “Catcher in the Rye for the new century,” which is no small achievement, considering that this is the man who helped birth such major 20th-century works as Tropic of Cancer and Naked Lunch. Shamir wrote much of his book while listening to “noise” albums, transferring the music/noise into words (a perfect example of one language becoming another). In this novel about what Rosset called “a new lost generation,” the music never ceases, whether it’s the author screaming or the many lyrics, ranging from Erase Errata to Sonic Youth to Bob Dylan, that accompany him to the novel’s frightening finale. Pokipse is a reading must from one generation to all generations.

Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune, courtesy of Michael Ochs

On a lighter but no less serious note, there’s Jake Marmer’s first book, Jazz Talmud, from the Sheep Meadow Press. The pairing-up of jazz and poetry goes back to the Harlem Renaissance, and the marriage of Judaism and poetry goes even further back to the Song of Songs,but what Marmer has managed to create is a fresh, new genre by mixing the two in a very personal, intimate, and at times disquietingly comfortable way. Being a secular Jew who writes little about ethnicity and religion, and a poet who has spent the better part of my life writing through and about music (mostly jazz), I almost immediately and for very different reasons wanted to intellectually and emotionally resist these poems. My instinct is to shy away from Judaism and constant references to religion, and co-mingling them with jazz seemed ridiculous. But the more I heard Marmer read his poems, with or without musical accompaniment, the more I found the work to be heartwarming, charming, stimulating, intriguing, and irresistible. It is nearly impossible not to get drawn into Marmer’s wordscapes, where jazz and Judaism intertwine, intersect, collide, melt, and meld. His is a world where the angel Gabriel gets to blow his horn in a New Orleans funk band, where the “pure music of a jazz groan” comes out of a Golem in Brooklyn, where Thelonious Monk gets to travel to Jerusalem, give directives, play piano through the morning, and have Marmer try on his gloves. Marmer invents worlds that are convincingly real, and presents real worlds that seem to only thrive in a fertile imagination. Like good music Marmer has found a harmony and balance between all he sees and invents. It is an irreverent and bumpy ride since “god is a conveyer belt” and “a purveyor of superb nonsense.”

Cover of Jazz Talmud by Jake Marmer. Designed by The Sheep Meadow Press.

This book is an alternative to what’s out there, so don’t let Marmer’s words linger in your “pocket like pebbles” but allow them to, as Marmer puts it, “fly upwards … or at least diagonally.” The great jazz and surrealist poet Ted Joans stated that “jazz is my religion.” I do believe that in Marmer’s case this statement truly applies, and that, conversely, religion is Marmer’s jazz.

Musican/poet Drew Gardner has a new CD out with his Flarf Orchestra, which consists of several poets reading their work to music written and conducted by Gardner, à la Butch Morris. Though the poetry is mostly not to my liking and often borders on sick humor, Gardner’s concept has been refined and works most of the time. One problem is that the recordings are live, and the sound quality suffers.

What I learned at this year’s second annual Alternative Guitar Festival is that the guitar is still one of the most overused and boring instruments, while at the same time capable of being used in an innovative and unique way.

Look for the independent label INTAKT’s two-week residency at the Stone this month. Performers will include the label’s co-founder, Irène Schweizer, along with Oliver Lake, Andrew Cyrille, Pierre Favre, Ingrid Laubrock, and many more.

Worse placement of music in a film: Coltrane playing “My Favorite Things”segueing into Michael Fassbender’s suicidal sister singing a tawdry, dismal version of “New York, New York”in what is supposed to be a downtown club but is way too chi-chi, in the suicidal film Shame, which tries to be much more important than it is. It’s a shame it was ever made in the first place. I saw it back-to-back withA Dangerous Method, wherein Fassbender plays Jung. Except for his ability to completely disappear into his role I give these non-epics, with their hysterical female lead roles, four thumbs down.

The Last Holiday by Gil Scott-Heron.

A must-see whether you are a fan or not is the documentary of the tragic life of Phil Ochs There But for Fortune, recently aired on PBS. I had known of Ochs’s life, but not in such depth, was a fan of some of his songs but not of him. This doc completely converted me, while at the same time saddened me to the brink of tears. Highly recommended.

So when listening for new sounds, new ideas, press your ear against the wall of heaven or the floor of hell, be happy you’re not a liberal, and as Shamir puts it, “hear the voice of the thunder and the clash” breaking through and the “wind sluicing around the curves of a downfalling body.”

This column is warmly dedicated to Barney Rosset, fierce, independent publisher, photographer, and founder of Grove Press, whose publications were some of the biggest inspirations in my life. Barney passed in February at age 89 still going strong. He was a cultural icon and truly the last of his kind.

Mighty Tanaka

Alex and crew will be putting together a large booth with the work of “long standing Tanaka artists as well as some new faces.”

Come visit them at Booth C-203 at the Southwest corner, right near the bar!!

Featuring art from: Abe Lincoln Jr, Adam Leech, Adam Void, Alexandra Pacula, Alice Mizrachi, Andrew H. Shirley, Burn 353, Cake, CAM, Celso, Conrad Carlson, Criminy Johnson, Curtis Readel, Don Pablo Pedro, Drew Tyndell, ELLE, Ellen Stagg, EVOKER, Flying Fortress, Gigi Bio, Gigi Chen, Greg Henderson, Hellbent, Hiroshi Kumagai, Infinity, JMR, Joe Iurato, John Breiner, Katie Decker, Lamour Supreme, Masahiro Ito, Matt Siren, Max Greis, Mike Schreiber, Nathan Pickett, Nathan Vincent, NEVER, Peat Wollaeger, Robbie Busch, See One, Sofia Maldonado, TooFly, UFO, Vahge, VengRWK, VIK

Location:

Booth C-203

69th Regiment Armory
68 Lexington Avenue @ 25th Street
March 9 – March 11, 2012

General Public Hours:
1pm – 7pm, daily
$10 day pass / $15 weekend pass
buy discounted tickets online!

Fountain is an exhibition of avant garde artwork in New York during Armory week, Miami during Art Basel Miami Beach and Los Angeles during Pacific Standard Time weekend.

The long awaited project from Underground Editions, TRAIN TO POKIPSE, is officially here. Rami Shamir’s generational coming-of-age story exists in beautifully saturated print on 100% recycled paper with a wraparound photo-collage cover from Adam Void. There is only a total of 911 copies produced, so if you want to secure yours, be sure to visit Underground Editions’ webpage or go to St. Mark’s Bookshop in Manhattan. Rest assured, POKIPSE will be available at more locations and through other distributers in a couple of months, but it may not be available for long.