- from whitney.org
so(hot)right(now)
life or something like it
Nicolas Lampert: The Problem With Taking "Art in the Streets" Into the Museum
I would be shocked if “Art in the Streets” reaches beyond anything but a gala celebration of the genre. An ominous sign is the name of the show itself, which ideally should have been titled “Street Art in the Museum.” That name alone might have suggested a more critical exhibition, one that would take a careful look at street art and its history and ask the tough questions. For starters, what happens when a subculture gets too cozy with the brokers of mass cultural and economic power, be it street artists showing in major museums or designing products for corporations? What happens when a genre becomes represented by two polar extremes — celebrated art-world stars and taggers who are viewed as criminals and vandals?
- from artinfo
LA’s Broad Art Museum: ambition vs reality
Just as bad is his failure, in the view of many (myself included), to grasp the peculiar beauty of Los Angeles, its oddly hypnotic blend of flimsy houses and muscular freeways, raw nature and metropolitan grit. His urban ideal, to the degree that he has one, seems to be based on the Upper East Side of Manhattan or on central Paris — models that, however attractive, have little to do with Los Angeles’s sprawl.
Some of us saw the new museum building, which will be called the Broad Art Foundation and will occupy a site on Grand Avenue in the city’s downtown, as this 77-year-old philanthropist’s best — and perhaps last — chance at redemption. And there is something alluring about the design, by Diller Scofidio & Renfro. Its honeycomblike exterior is a smart counterpoint to the swirling forms of Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall next door. And the sequence of spaces that leads you through the building makes subtle but important nods to the city around it — not only to other, nearby cultural institutions, but also to the Latino community a few blocks to the southeast, which many of those institutions historically ignored.
- from Architecture Review: Not All Sweetness in a Honeycomb Museum
David Mitchell: Gap-year travel won’t broaden the mind – it just turns the young into fantasists
For Britain, this could be the one good outcome from the whole tuition fees betrayal. For one generation at least, our student population won’t be contaminated by a vociferous minority who think they’ve seen the world and have the beaded bracelets and ethnic ponchos to prove it. And they haven’t seen the world – they’ve seen Peru. The world’s not like Peru – not the bit that Britons tend to inhabit when they graduate. It’s more like Reading.
- from guardian.co.uk
Upcycling: Latex Roll Pouf
Angela Mensi, Cristina Merlo and Ingrid Taro make objects and furniture out of waste materials – in this case, from off-cuts from rubber insoles – priced at under -$100.
- from BETTER LIVING THROUGH DESIGN
Let’s Bury the Not-a-Word Myth
Often, people just don’t trust their own (or other people’s) ability to use affixes, even though it’s the nature of prefixes, suffixes, and infixes to be versatile. In fact, affixes are so versatile that I can use one of each type in the word “pre-Mayan-freakin’-pocalypse,” which I just made up to describe 2011. As far as I know, “pre-Mayan-freakin’-pocalypse” has never been used before, but guess what? It’s a word. In fact, words like that are a huge part of why I enjoy writing and thinking about language. Without such Lego-like word-making power, we would be stuck talking about blizzards and snowstorms and never hear about a snowpocalypse, snowmageddon, or—more recently—snownado. Affixes are useful tools for making real words—even if they’re not in a dictionary or smiled upon by the chain-rattling ghosts of our sixth grade English teachers.
Fear has a lot to do with this topic, I reckon. Besides ghosts and English teachers, most of us fear chaos. That fear drives us to comforting ideas like, “There are real words and fake words, and all the real words are in ‘the dictionary.’” But the world is a helter-skelter place, especially in the lexicon. Dictionaries can never keep up with our ever-changing world of words, so we have to trust ourselves. We should listen to McKean, former editor of the New Oxford American Dictionary, who memorably wrote: “Being in the dictionary is not a badge of honor. People aren’t limited to words I’ve managed to capture and pin down. A dog doesn’t have to be registered with the American Kennel Association to be a dog. It still fetches your slippers; it just isn’t pedigreed.”
Kicked to the curb
The outrageously awesome Emma Schneish documents the discarded Chistmas trees cluttering Brixton’s pavements, and that awkward feeling of bumping into yesterday’s heroes…
You know what it’s like. Each year you have a friend who comes to stay for christmas, they get all dressed up in christmas gear and look quite flash. By New Year’s Day they’ve outstayed their welcome and start to smell funny so you tell them to shove off and you’re pleased to get some floor space back in the loungeroom. But there’s always that awkward feeling as you bump into them again on your street. You used to be friends, but it’s over. And they just sit there like a loveable drunk, messing up the neighbourhood and you look down and keep on walking.
“Beauty is boring. It becomes conventional too quickly.”
John Baldessari being interviewed by Caroline Baum at the Sydney Opera House.
Open Senate | New York State Senate
“Open Senate” is a series of award-winning technology initiatives, implemented beginning in January 2009, that seek to maximize the transparency and accessibility of legislative information for all New Yorkers, and provide new ways for citizens to participate in the legislative process.
- from nysenate.gov
