Cet obscur objet du désir
Many years ago I came across a lamp that screamed my name at a local Williamsburg thrift store, it was a LIP LAMP!!! For one who has been wearing too many layers of lipstick for years (and years and years!) this lamp seemed like a MUST HAVE. The shop was closing when I spotted the object of my desire and when I inquired abut it the worker said there was no price tag on the lamp and he would have to ask his boss for a sale price, he thought it would be no more than $75 bucks or so. I was told to come back the next day and he would have a price. So I did. At which time I learned that the owner of the shop decided NOT to sell it… I was heartbroken!!! I thought about the lip lamp often (I really did… I was in Love, L-U-V!) This was probably about 4 or 5 years ago… by 2013 dreams of owning the lovely lip lamp had almost completely faded from my memory.
However, this past Sunday, my desire to possess le lip lamp sprung to life again… thanks to the Frieze Art Fair. At the fair I came across a newer, shinier, mo’ red LIP LAMP! These light up lips were installed in a gallery booth, surrounded by very expensive contemporary art.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. Upon reading the label I realized the lip lamp was an editioned piece, first made in an edition of 25 in 1969 and now available again from a 2000 edition of 25. The lamp was created by an artist called Nicola L., from France. I inquired with the gallerist about the price of the lip lamp, and I was quite shocked to hear him utter the price tag, $16,000 dollars, cold hard cash. The luscious lip lamp WOULD NOT BE MINE once again.
I need to go back to my local thrift store to see if the slightly beat up 1969 edition is still kicking around somewhere in the back. I am not sure how much the older version would be worth but I imagine more than $75 buckeroos. Maybe once I explain to the shop owner
how it is fate that the Lip Lamp and I be united, at last, she will cut me a deal.
Oh, how I long for the glorious, plastique LIP LAMP again!
Charles Atlas
Quite possibly my favorite video of all times.
Choreographed by Michael Clark, filmed by Charles Atlas, & music by The Fall.
Hail The New Puritan
Not sure if Charles Atlas will talk about this particular film but I am sure he will talk about his collaboration with Michael Clark throughout the years.
An Evening with Charles Atlas
At MOMA, Modern Mondays, February 18, 2013, 7:00 PM.
New York–based media artist Charles Atlas (American, b. 1949) discusses his creative development, the intertwining of social scenes and art, and his preoccupation with process. Since the early 1970s, Atlas has collaborated with artists, musicians, and dancers—Merce Cunningham, Antony and the Johnsons, Michael Clark, and Mika Tajima, to name just a few—to create films, video installations, and live events that explore “in-between states of identity.” He discusses his recent work, including Joints Array (2011), Ocean (2011), and, most recently, 143652 (2012), in which numbers move across a wall-sized projection as if in a digital ballet.
My Barbarian
Tourists from the Future
An Evening with My Barbarian
Monday, April 16 (that’s tonight!), 7 PM, Theater 2, MoMA
Science-fiction new wave musicals, the selling of souls to witches, the culture of excess, alter-egos, Los Angeles cultural production, the middle class collapse—these all seem like topics worthy of discussion on a Monday night.
From MoMA’s website:
The Los Angeles–based performance collective My Barbarian—Malik Gaines (b. Visalia, California, 1973), Jade Gordon (b. Santa Rosa, California, 1975), and Alexandro Segade (b. San Diego, California, 1973)—combine their eclectic background in theater, theory, and contemporary art to create incisive, campy, site-specific plays, concerts, theatrical situations, and video installations. All three group members will be present to discuss their most recent works.More info here.
Silver Minds
Broke People’s Baroque Peoples’ Theater
Dance Witches Dance
Short interview with My Barbarian below.
canned hamm
Graphic design almost broke my brain this evening, thank you Canned Hamm for making it all seem better!
Nathaniel Russell
Spending time looking on les internettes* for artists to publish in Cheap & Plastique is one of my favorite past times. Tonight I came across the work of Nathaniel Russell. I especially like his fake fliers! He is a funny gent! Check out his website for additional fliers, illustration, lots o’ artwork, and an entertaining blog.
*I usually discover way too many radical peeps to include in the current issue of the zine & end up with little blue “future artistes” folders all over my desktop. When there is a goal in mind for these searches though I feel MUCH less guilty surfing the web, as it is not so much wasting time but work/research, some people actually get paid to do this, goddamnit!
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