Glowlab

new on Glowlab

Holly Tavel brings us another installment of The Psychogeographer's Film Guide in the journal, and we've just posted notes on our most recent Glowlounge.

Kunstraum der Universität Lüneburg

June 26th and 27th Kunstraum der Universität Lüneburg is holding a "symposium within the framework of republicart, organized and moderated by Stefanie-Vera Kockot (University of Athens), Diethelm Stoller and Ulf Wuggenig (Kunstraum der Universität Lüneburg)"

Go to the site to see the detailed information about this symposium.

http://www.republicart.net/img/ani/index/abs1.gif

Streeetmemes

For those interested in street works along the lines of Wooster Collective, Streeetmemes shows the variety of repetition in this art form. To note, this site features some images of the iPod "iRaq" tags in New York.

""street meme": a sticker, stencil, or poster that can spread a single image around the world. Unlike traditional graffiti art where each piece is unique, street memes can be copied repeatedly, taking on a life of their own, and spreading through the collective effort of people scattered around the world."

INTHECONVERSATION

Glowlab friend Sal Randolph sent this project along for those interested in conversations covering a large array of topics. Conflux participant Kathe Izzo is mentioned in the last line of this tag for her True Love Project.

"INTHECONVERSATIONis a new website which opens a space for talk about experiential, situational, and participatory art works. Topics will include social architectures, gift economies, games, street art and other public interventions, culture jamming and political actions. The hope is to develop a critical discourse, a way of talking well about artworks which are not objects, a way of thinking about the formal and aesthetic principles relevant to works which are primarily interpersonal."

"Intheconversation opens with an essay by Minneapolis-based Abinadi Meza introducing his participatory installation "The Burning Question," which explored intellectual property, copyright, and the impact of property on culture. Visitors were provided with computers, blank CD's, and over 24 hours of copyleft audio works contributed by composers, musicians, and sound artists from around the world. As visitors generated playlists to burn themselves CD's, they also generated an Internet radio broadcast streamed from the gallery. The gallery becomes a studio/radio station and users become DJ's.

"Also on the site is a statement by street artist and designer Dana Bishop-Root, whose text "practice active pause" suggests a way of altering our relationship to the language that surrounds us (especially the ubiquitous language of advertising). Her poetic and highly intentional use of language practices what it proposes. Coming soon will be a report by Kathe Izzo from her True Love Project."

Errand Feasibility Study

Errand Feasibility Study by Marc Horowitz (conflux participant) is a hilarious venture into the mundane tasks of the everyday. This is the seond part of an on going series of projects where Marc runs errands with a variety of variables. Currently, Marc is running errands with his pack mule Audrey, pushing the attention of performance art into the popular culture realm.
Go to his website and check out the video he has. You can also get onto his mailing list, which proves to be a humorous uplift everytime I get it.

SF Gate.com article about Marc and Audrey
Full news coverage in SF
News people are funny. Their rational is so funny... it seems they try to make everything part of the ordinary with the comment, "...and maybe to get on TV, as well...you think?"
What artists consider contemporary experimentation with the ordinary conception of art, the general public is still wary of, which is fine and expected. Marc is taking some large new steps with this project to see where the boundaries are between the arts of social acceptance (his dinner conversations) to the arts of social stirring. This project is able to create waves of creative expression in the SF area, while maintaining the social process for acting in public. That is, Marc is still getting all of the proper permits and correspondence such as having bike cops walk with him so as to not cause a "public disturbance", but keep the project a social interactive experiment. Pushing the project through the red tape of public projects, Marc is beginning to engage people that are commonly the reason for public performances to be stopped and using them to keep his project going. But, in pushing through the red tape, the popular culture avenue (news in TV and print) is covering the projects as they develop, curious, but (as I said eariler) trying to rationalize them with the ordinary.
Marc promises to keep this project updated, so get on his mailing list and see where his projects take him and the rest of San Fransisco, as well.

A New Way of Walking

Utne magazine covers Glowlab's psy.geo.CONFLUX festival in "A New Way of Walking" by Joseph Hart.

Frank

Frank was a seemingly permanent fixture on the corner of Bedford Avenue and N. 7th Street in Williamsburg. He was there almost every day – sitting on top of the newsboxes outside the deli, on the steps of the pharmacy across the street, or on the ground talking to a friend and playing with a dog. He had a shiny black motorcycle, and that's about it...except he also had severe diabetes. He was homeless, but well taken care of by the people of the neighborhood. Once a collection was taken up for Frank when he needed medical treatment. The deli kept his insulin, and people offered him food and cigarettes. He always had a smile, a friendly hello for everyone, and an opinion – he loved to tell us what was on his mind.

Frank had complained about his feet often during the past few months and mentioned needing an operation. Then he disappeared on his motorcycle one day. The deli owners thought he had gone upstate, but instead he was in the hospital. The pharmacy received the news a few days ago that Frank died in the hospital from his extended illness.

Now a makeshift memorial to Frank is growing on "his" corner. People stop, stunned, as they realize that he's gone. Cards, poems, flowers, and [of course] beer and cigarettes have been placed near his photograph, along with candles lighted in his memory.

Here's what one friend had to say:

DEAR FRANK!!!
YOU HAD LEFT "BEDFORD AVE AND NORTH 7TH STREET" BUT YOU NEVER LEFT THE PEOPLE WHO SAW THE TRUTH IN YOU. I 'M VERY GLAD I HAD A CHANCE TO MEET A PERSON LIKE YOU IN MY LIFE. YOU GAVE ME "EYES" TO SEE THINGS THAT I THOUGHT I SAW BUT DID NOT BELIEVE IN THEM. YOU MADE ME BELIEVE.
YOU WERE ONLY A BUM TO PEOPLE WHO WERE/ARE BLIND AND CARELESS. I HOPE THEY WILL FIND THEIR WAY SOMEDAY, BUT IT WILL TAKE THEM A WHILE IF THEY DID NOT GOT IT UNTIL NOW.
WATCH OVER US AND BE STILL WITH ALL OF US IN OUR HEARTS MY DEAR FRIEND. I'M VERY HAPPY THAT U MADE WHAT YOU HAD TO MAKE AND NOW YOU ARE WHERE YOU WANTED TO BE., LOVE YOU, AND F*CK THEM ALL, LIKE WE USED TO SAY AND LAUGH.

-- ANIA

Frank was a truly unique person, and a neighborhood character who will be missed by many. If you have a story about Frank you'd like to share, please click on "comment" below.

sounds via souljerky

souljerky just TrackBacked us for a recent post, which alerted us to check out his? her? blog where we found much goodness...here's a sample:

-- A Break in the Road - Luke Whittaker. [This post also mentions Soundwalk, which we've written about before. Here's a new article on Soundwalk and Talking Street.]

-- Field recordings of talking cicadas.

-- and our favorite, MP3s of Calvino's Invisible Cities

Santiago psygeo

"la deriva nos permite conocer y encontrar una serie de situaciones en su ambiente original, ya que al recorrer sin un objetivo ni dirección establecido, se está completamente abierto al entorno, el cual adquiere un valor particular."

individuels. is a group of psychogeographers devoted to exploring Santiago...we especially like this map...

Demonstration in support of CAE

If you haven't yet heard about the FBI's charges against Critical Art Ensemble (CAE), an artists' collective that produces artwork to educate the public about the politics of biotechnology, here's the story.

A demonstration will take place Tuesday, June 15 in support of CAE; here's how to get involved.