I suppose the problem with picking a record is that you have to talk about it.
This Artforum “Scene and Herd” post, attached to the object of which it speaks Marina Abramović The Artist Is Present, the HBO doc chronicling the performance artiste as she prepared for her well-publicized MoMA show of the same name.
“Getting back to my pal who wondered if the doc[umenatry] was a stealth-camp send-up of an Artist’s hagiography, I think it’s more like straight-up art-world kitsch. Marina Abramović is where irony goes to die. The earnestness celebrated here takes this somewhere Oscar Wilde addressed when he said: “All bad poetry is sincere.””
film stream link (semi-seedy website)
“How Microbes Defend and Define Us” by Carl Zimmer in the NYTimes.
“In 2008, Dr. Khoruts, a gastroenterologist at the University of Minnesota, took on a patient suffering from a vicious gut infection of Clostridium difficile. She was crippled by constant diarrhea, which had left her in a wheelchair wearing diapers. Dr. Khoruts treated her with an assortment of antibiotics, but nothing could stop the bacteria. His patient was wasting away, losing 60 pounds over the course of eight months. “She was just dwindling down the drain,” Dr. Khoruts said.”
An essay so fast, and so low on citations, it’ll leave you breathless. Where is your god now Guy Hocquenghem?
Photograph of Agnes Martin by Todd Eberle:
http://toddeberle.com/portraits.html (you gotta scroll through, but it’s only set up for the major heroism that is Agnes Martin taken in Gallisteo, New Mexico 1992)
The climax at the end of Nairy Bagramain’s talk at the New School where she shows the famous scene from Contempt featuring Brigitte Bardot and immediately Q&A opens up and is immediately asked a direct question about showing that clip and proceeds to answer the question directly. Flawless.
http://youtu.be/Hisvu0Rm4TM
here is my transcript of the talk which is poor and unfinished (because of course I should have known that when a known german artist gives a speech at a respectable new york school the content is worth something, and was, of course, going to be published eventually, if I had only waited, and which would render my transcript valueless, and which here is a poorly scanned copy of Texte zur Kunst’s edit of the talk printed from Midway Contemporary Art’s Library.
Best Meme 2012
Romney-san Obama-san
Thing we enjoyed most this year: Generating Content. Smoking.
