The blog of author Dennis Cooper

Dominique Gonzales-Foerster Day

 

‘Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s installations could be described as oneiric mises en scène. Mise en scène is the process of arranging actors and scenery on a stage or film set. Gonzalez-Foerster combines being a filmmaker with being an installation artist and the intersection of the two media in her work is of interest because in installation art the mise en scène becomes the work of art.

‘Those who enter a mise en scène viewing it as a work of art enter an environment that is profoundly illusory because the illusion does not take place within the evidently immaterial confines of a two-dimensional surface but in a real, physical environment. One remembers the Surrealists deconstruction of photography. Here was a medium thatwas supposed to be a direct imprint of the real: the camera ‘could not lie’. But Surrealist photography showed that the photograph could be the stage for a profound dislocation of our habituated ways of seeing.

Something similar is happening in the work of Gonzalez-Foerster. We enter rooms that are real enough, and experience objects that are real enough such as ladders and artificial grass, but the overall experience is not real but hyperreal. Typically her work will use devices such as painting the walls of a gallery a particular colour to create the effect of a ‘colour field’ with its concomitant psychological effects; using physical materials on the floor such as sand or plastic grass; and using imagery such as photographs or video to introduce a nonlinear narrative dimension into the oneiric mise en scène. Gonzalez-Foerster speaks of these rooms in terms of ‘narrative’ noting that “colour is an entry into a narrative; the colour rooms and the clues they usually contain give a certain number of elements to which the viewer adds what she/he needs to comprehend the work, link those various existing elements. It is not quite like reading, although reading is a possible means of completion; rather it is a way to generate a narrative, therefore emphasizing the importance of interpretation.”

‘But to be more precise, we are not speaking about a linear narrative. We are describing something much more oblique and poetic. It appears that one of the purposes of Gonzalez-Foerster’s installations is to place the viewer in a situation in which she or he has to exercise his or her imagination. Now, of course, we always exercise our imagination when looking at art. But Gonzalez-Foerster’s rooms are more demanding because the data is not in one place as is the case in a painting or integral sculpture. And this splitting or fragmenting of the experience into parts differs from immersive experiences such as the instances by Janssens and Eliasson that have been referred to in this text. When we walk into Gonzalez-Foerster’s rooms we walk into a ‘picture’ as is the case in an Eliasson installation and we experience immersive-like sensory effects, such as the colour field of painted walls and the feel of sand or Astroturf under foot. But her work does not end at perceptual experience. Instead there is a demand that we exercise our imaginative-cognitive facilities.

The fact that we have to use our imagination, in particular, is significant because in the philosophy of David Hume (1711-1776) imagination stands in between ideas (thoughts) and impressions (sensations and feelings). It is Hume’s interconnection between bodily-sensory experience and ideas which is especially interesting for a consideration of installation art. In the context of Gonzalez-Foerster’s installations what is significant about such philosophical meditations is that sensation, perception and cognition are intertwined, and I think that Gonzalez-Foerster’s ability to integrate perceptually immersive experience with a demand on the viewer’s cognitive-imaginative faculties is a particularly significant feature of her installations.

‘Another facet of Gonzalez-Foerster’s rooms is the way in which they can evoke an absent self that is entirely fictive. In that sense the absent self is an empty signifier that the viewer can fill. When the viewer enters one of Gonzalez-Foerster’s rooms she or he becomes akin to an actor on stage who can assume the identity of absent inhabitant. Or one could imagine a novel in which the author left a blank space for the reader to inhabit. One thinks here, also, of the strangeness of Paul Pfeiffer’s videos of sporting events in which he erases principle props and actors. Placed in such oneiric circumstances we reflect upon our identity as a species of construct woven out of a web of influences most of which have become distant memories.’ — Graham Coulter-Smith

 

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Further

Dominique Gonzales-Foerster Website
DG-F @ 303 Gallery
DG-F @ Corvi-Mora Gallery
DG-F @ Esther Schipper Gallery
‘This was a red jungle.’
‘Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s grand design’
‘DOMINIQUE GONZALEZ-FOERSTER: public-personal space’
‘Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, chronotopes & dioramas’
‘Soy una escritora frustrada’
‘Clothes as Personal History’
‘interior gulf stream: Housing and studio for Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’
Video: ‘Soleil vert par Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’
‘DOMINIQUE GONZALEZ­FOERSTER’S TOP 5 PERFORMANCES OF ALL TIME’
‘archive and quotation in the work of Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’
‘Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster is taking the town by storm’
‘Subjective Histories of Sculpture III: Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’

 

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Extras


DOMINIQUE GONZALEZ-FOERSTER INTERVIEW EXTRACT


Gonzalez-Foerster installation at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall


Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster / Atomic Park (2003)


Antonioni Zone 2 par Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster – Blow up

 

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Interview
from Flash Art


 

Hans Ulrich Obrist: In a previous conversation, we spoke about moving into fields different from contemporary art. You mentioned Friedrich Kiesler. Let’s start from here.

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster: I think one reason why Kiesler is less famous than other artists is because he never wanted to be only a gallery artist. He was doing architectural work and all sorts of things, such as windows for big department stores or gallery spaces. The methods he developed have indirectly influenced many artists who don’t even recognize it. Certain artists — such as Kiesler or Isamu Noguchi when making lamps and furniture — wanted to expand the field of experiences. But art history makes it difficult for artists to escape a linear way of developing a career, and usually these artists are rediscovered much later. The art world is very conservative when it comes to behavior.

HUO: You have implemented a lot of these expanded projects: a park has happened in
Kassel at Documenta 11, another park in Grenoble, and a house in Japan.

DGF: I always look for experimental processes. I like the fact that at the beginning I don’t know how to do things and then slowly I start learning. Often exhibitions don’t give me this learning possibility anymore. With the house in Japan, I was constantly confronted with people; they were explaining to me, say, possible grids and at each meeting I was learning something new. I like meeting with people who are very specialized in their field. I don’t find these learning moments in art enough.

HUO: I always felt that routine is the enemy of exhibitions.

DGF: Yes. There is also something very slow in the art world. People build a stage for a concert in one day; they do more in one day than they do in a gallery space in a year in terms of activity. Of course each system has it’s timing, but once you have been dealing with other speeds it is really hard to go back to this slowness.

HUO: When I first came to France I was asked if I wanted a ‘plan d’evasion’! It was a card for buying tickets, like national flights’ tickets. There’s also a book by Laborit, Éloge de la fuite…

DGF: There is something very human in ‘escaping.’ What drives transformation is the fact that at a certain point an environment is not stimulating to you anymore. You feel you need a change; it’s a human drive to escape the too slow or too repetitive or too deadend situations.

HUO: Recently somebody told me about the great landscape architect Dominique

Gonzalez-Foerster! They didn’t know that you had an artistic background. There are other people who see your films at film festivals and talk about this young filmmaker. Suddenly you are gathering a multitude of identities.

DGF: I don’t want the films to be seen as artist’s films or the garden to be seen as an artist’s garden. I think it is important for artists to develop their role as producers or directors, which means providing a public situation for an audience — an exhibition, a theater piece or a film serve this purpose too. And for that you get a fee.

HUO: There’s a recurrent question in my interviews… what is your unrealized project?

DGF: The thing I have been dreaming of for some years is a swimming pool on the beach. This is why I went to Brazil; I wanted to make it there. It would be a kind of ‘tropical university’: a place, a swimming pool, with some umbrellas to create shades. You sit in the water on the beach and discuss your ideas and projects! It has never been realized until now.

HUO: What is your next project?

DGF: Writing a science fiction novel together with Philippe Parreno, keep thinking about new sorts of public spaces and playgrounds as I did for the current São Paulo Biennale, working on an ‘opera/exhibition’ with lots of artists and friends for the Manchester International Festival, preparing a proposal for Skulptur Projekte Münster 07, and of course remaining unpredictable even for myself!

 

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Balenciaga Flagship Store, Paris
‘Balenciaga’s 60th directly operated store — boasting 40 feet of frontage on the bustling Rue Saint-Honoré — symbolizes how the company has quickly accrued critical mass in retail, which now accounts for more than half of its revenues. (Less than five years ago, it only had three locations.) Balenciaga’s space, formerly a gas station, offered the brand a vast, rectangular space of about 3,200 square feet spread over one level — a rarity in a city full of landmark buildings with higgledy-piggledy layouts. As in all Balenciaga units, creative director Nicolas Ghesquière and the French contemporary artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster collaborated on the interior concept. She calls the Rue Saint-Honoré store a “catalogue” of its key boutiques, each of which has a different color scheme and mood. Pedestrians strolling on Rue Saint-Honoré are surely to be struck by the store’s division into vertical strips — like a theater stage with its various backdrops viewed in cross-section.’ — WWD

 

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Cinema

Belle comme le jour (2012)
‘The story of Severine before she married Pierre and became ‘Belle de jour’. Staying at the Hotel Regina next to rue de Rivoli, she goes to visit the Louvre and has a deeply disturbing conversation with a complete stranger.’

 

Noreturn (2009)
Noreturn is a short film lasting sixteen minutes featuring a group of school children playing, reading, talking and ultimately sleeping in the cavernous space of Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. The film was shot during the last days of the artist’s installation for the Unilever Series commission for the Turbine Hall, entitled TH.2058. The beds, books, sound of rainfall, replica artworks and large LED screen that comprised the installation are all used in the film as props and staging for the children’s activities, which appear to be unsupervised, suggesting that the children may have taken shelter in the apparently abandoned space. The film’s soundtrack was specially devised and recorded by the musician Arto Lindsay, and provides a jarring acoustic accompaniment to the visual action.’

Trailer

 

Marquise (2006)
Marquise is a film that features Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster‘s contribution for the 27th Sao Paulo Biennial in 2006, her work “Double Terrain de Jeu (Pavillon-Marquise)“. The installation consists of several plywood columns Gonzalez-Foerster added to the open groundfloor of a pavillion built by architect Oscar Niemeyer at the public park Ibirapuera in Sao Paulo. The film documents the work “Double Terrain de Jeu (Pavillon-Marquise)“ and fictionalizes it at the same time. While one sees the narrator, a small boy, walking through the installation space with his parents, he recounts the imaginary story of how these columns appeared to him at one point to be movable. But he cannot prove this im- pression to his parents. The film is edited with slight cross fadings, which may give the viewer the impression that the columns appear to move.’

Trailer

 

Parc Central (2005)
‘A collection of 11 short poetic psycho-geographic portraits of cities and spaces from artist Dominique Gonzelez-Foerster. Ranging from the revisiting of a scene of Ming-Liang Tsai’s ‘Vive l’Amour’ through the eyes of its protagonist, to a ticker-tape parade in Buenos Aires, from a reflection on the filmic qualities of Brasilia,to an observation of the observers of the 1999 eclipse in Paris. All soundtracked by a sensitive balance of field-recordings and carefully chosen delicate music.’

 

Atomic Park (2003)
‘Atomic Park is a place in the White Sands desert (New Mexico), not far away from Trinity Site, where the first atom bomb exploded in 1945. This national park provides an ambivalent landscape, as well suited for a picnic as for ballistic tests. A white desert, like a natural exhibition hall every movement can provoke diverse interpretations. Like a faint echo we hear Marilyn Monroe’s desperate monologue and accusation about man’s violence from The Misfits (1961).’

 

Bashung(s) (2004)
‘Alain Bashung, géant de la musique pop française, nous a quitté en mars 2009. Le plus primé des artistes pop français était considéré comme le meilleur chanteur depuis la disparition de Serge Gainsbourg. Il était aimé de toutes les générations. Sans compromis, excentrique mais toujours très humain et respectueux, il a mélangé tradition de la chanson française, surréalisme et rock & roll avec une dimension poétique abstraite et érotique. Ce dernier documentaire sur lui révèle son travail de création à travers des scènes de composition en collaboration avec d’autres artistes, de tournage d’images projetées en concert, de répétitions de spectacles, de scènes de concert et d’interviews de ses proches. Alain Bashung lui-même se livre à Pierre Lescure et nous aide à recomposer le puzzle de sa personnalité multiple.’

Excerpt

 

Central (2001)
‘Gonzalez-Foerster has said that ‘I think I’m obsessed with a world through which one walks in spirit’. In one of her favourite books, Adolfo Bioy Casares’ Morel’s Invention (1940), the narrator – a nameless exile – pitches up on a tropical island inhabited by a group of sophisticates, including Faustine, a woman who instantly captures his heart. Like Casares’ novel, Gonzalez-Foerster’s Central ponders the gap between the viewer and the viewed. A sign, slightly weathered, tells us that we’re at the Star Ferry Terminal, Hong Kong. The camera cuts to a boat, then to the waterfront, then to various solitary souls standing on its edge. It’s all very melancholy.’

Excerpt

 

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Sculptures & installations

Et la Chambre Orange, 1992
“Colour is an entry into a narrative; the colour rooms and the clues they usually contain give a certain number of elements to which the viewer adds what she/he needs to comprehend the work, link those various existing elements. It is not quite like reading, although reading is a possible means of completion; rather it is a way to generate a narrative, therefore emphasizing the importance of interpretation.”

 

La bibliothèque clandestine, 2013
A revolving door doubles as a bookshelf holding one of Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s libraries, La Bibliothèque clandestine, 2013 (Nabokov, Salinger, Bret Easton Ellis, Lovecraft, Verne, etc.). Through this Hitchcockian portal, viewers enter a remake of a show Philippe Parreno saw in 2002 at New York’s Margarete Roeder Gallery, featuring elegant framed drawings by John Cage and Merce Cunningham.

 

Tapis de Lecture, 2007
In Tapis de lecture (Reading Carpet), a large orange carpet is edged with unequal piles of books in five different languages: Hebrew, English, French, German, and Japanese. The diversity of languages suggests a multicultural, tolerant, and non-hierarchal approach, as do the books’ casual arrangement and the participatory nature of the work – visitors may sit on the carpet and read as they like. The very personal selection of books includes masterpieces of literature and science fiction. Postcards from different places the artist has visited are planted at random inside some of the books; they add another, autobiographical, layer of memories and feelings to the work. The reading carpet creates a new liminal space – in between public and domestic, outer world and inner realms, and even conscious and unconscious. It melds space, time, color, and personal sensations, thoughts, and associations.

 

Three dioramas, 2008
Dominique Gonzales-Foerster created three dioramas inspired by the origin of forty novels that influence her. The books are the only actors of those dioramas and the visitor moves and blinks in order to be able to read the titles … The authors are Paul Auster, A. Casares, Edgardo Cozarinsky, Lorca Garcia, Franz Kafka, W. Sebald, Gertrude Stein, Enrique Vila-Matas, Roberto Bolano, Jorge Luis Borges, Ray Bradbury, Carlos Castaneda, John Fante, Frank Herbert, Dorothy Johnson, Dorothy Scarborough, Mario de Andrade, James Graham Ballard, Elizabeth Bishop, Paul Bowles, Richard Brautigan, William Burroughs, Joseph Conrad, Samuel Delany, Philip K. Dick, William Gaddis, Edouard Glissant, Ursula Le Guin, Clarice Lispector, Vladimir Nabokov, Anais Nin, Thomas Pynchon, Patti Smith, Kurt Vonnegut and Rudolph Wurlitzer.




 

Repulse Bay, 1999
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster calls her large installation work Repulse Bay (1999) after the famous beach in Hong Kong. The work, in effect, is a blue-lit room with three beach towels laid out next to one another. You enter the room by climbing down a ladder. Once in, you are immersed in a cool, dark world that looks nothing like the bright and warm stretch of beach in Hong Kong. The natural variety and disorderliness one finds on the beach have been drastically simplified into repetitive, anonymous forms. Only one’s imagination can complete it.

 

Untitled, 2011Book: Robert Bolano’s ‘Los Detectivos Salvajes’ and sand

 

Dominique Gonzales-Foerster as Edgar Allan Poe
“I work against theatre, I am completely against theatre, I like the idea of mise-en-scène, I like the idea of the stage, but the idea of theatre …. I see very little theatre. I really have trouble with actors, although now I am starting to understand them a bit better.” -DG-F

 

Splendide Hotel, 2013
In the exhibition SPLENDIDE HOTEL, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster puts forward a journey that transports the viewer into spaces and times, where the imaginary is mixed with reality and where literature maps out the guidelines to follow for inhabiting this oneiric world, taking the artwork beyond the meaning of its objects.

The Hotel Splendide in Lugano was opened in 1887, with the name already coming into being previously in Arthur Rimbaud’s poem Après le Déluge, published in 1886. Splendide was also the name of the hotel in Évian-les-Bains, where Marcel Proust holidayed with his family. This date coincides with the year the Palacio de Cristal was built in the Retiro Park in order to house the plants and flowers for the General Exhibition on the Philippine Islands.

It is this idea that Gonzalez-Foerster wants to transfer, recreating one sole room in this imaginary hotel. A rug covers the floor of the room and its surroundings, various rocking chairs invite viewers to take a seat and become participants in the work, immersing themselves among some of the many books chosen by the artist for the occasion. José Rizal, Dostoyevsky, Rubén Darío, H. G. Wells and Enrique Vila-Matas are just some of the authors submitted by the French artist for this journey.

 

Bahia Desorientada, 2005

 

The Daughter of a Taoist, 1991
‘The Daughter of a Taoist presents, with some intimacy, the childhood memories of gallerist Esther Schipper and objects formally organized according to their allusionary and chromatic potentiality, a predominance of red. Thus, Dominique explores the tacit contract (spoken) that connects the gallery owner to “his” artist, one inscribing himself / herself in the personal history of the other.

 

Chandigarh book, 1996
Collage on plexiglass, 13 plates, each : 25x25x0,3cm

 

Cité de la nuit, 1993

 

Moment Dream House, 2004
In 2004, Gonzalez-Foerster designed a house, the Moment Dream House, for Daisuke Miyatsu in Tokyo.

 

Human Valley, 2011
The press release for “Human Valley,” a yearlong installation and screening space created by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Tristan Bera for the Kunsthalle Zürich’s temporary site, describes the project as consiting of “hybrid presentations of borderline topics” and “sentimental research on stimulating links.” In its current iteration, the first of four planned phases, the project mines the oeuvres of Balzac and the French New Wave—the connection being, of course, the deep debt the latter’s fervently literary auteurs owe the legendary writer.

Like late New Waver Éric Rohmer’s film quartet “Tales of the Four Seasons,” Gonzalez-Foerster and Bera’s project is split into four seasonal chapters. Summer inspired the participating Paris-based artists to outfit three petite rooms as, in order: a cinema’s anteroom featuring wall vitrines filled with Nouvelle Vague film posters; a Godardesque mise-en-scène with bed and bookcases filled with old Penguin paperbacks (Balzac novels and related fare—Barthes, Flaubert, Bret Easton Ellis, Catherine Millet); and finally a screening room itself.

On my first visit to the beguiling space, the bookcases were crammed with the aforementioned titles, many of which were noticeably missing on my second visit, pilfered by museumgoers with itchy fingers. It seemed apt that the books were revered enough to be stolen, given that the inspired start to “Human Valley” itself was a welcome acknowledgment of literary and critical influences on other artistic media, and the most persuasive of the self-styled “social projects” I’ve encountered of late.

 

Une chambre en ville, 1996
Recently, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster created an installation entitled Une chambre en ville: a silent but on TV, a phone that people can call from outside, a clock radio, a few newspapers of the day piled in a corner. Where both the absence of the owner and the multiplication of the modes of communication reign. The whole with changing lights, alternate colors, kind of bright scenario that makes the room a small movie theater: “My rooms are like pictures but in which we can go in. We are physically surrounded by the image, a as in the cinema, and I have an obsession with a narrative, even with a spatial narration, and I would like to be able to generate sensations as strong as a book or a film.”

 

T. 1912, 2000
Artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster created a site-specific staged audience experience in the museum’s rotunda, inspired by this historic event and wherein the audience played a role. Gavin Bryars’s The Sinking of the Titanic was at the core of the installation, performed by The Wordless Music Orchestra.

 

Valise Biographique (Hannah Hoch), 1992
Suitcase, comb, toothbrush, mirror, colour Xeroxes.

 

euqinimod & costumes, 2014
The show is a sampling of Ms. Gonzalez-Foerster’s self-portrait in textiles, youthful artworks and beloved objects, presented in a way that evokes a stretched-out closet, a store window or — thanks to a velvet-covered pouf ottoman — the more formal precincts of a museum. The scene is set with walls painted pale yellow, violet, blue and pink, and a continuous row of Shaker clothing pegs installed at a height of eight feet that creates a disorienting, outsize wainscoting effect.

Hanging from the pegs are articles from Ms. Gonzalez-Foerster’s wardrobe, childhood garments and grown-up designer clothes, all looking well used but glamorous, from Comme des Garçons, Balenciaga and Maison Martin Margiela. Their flow — which resembles a timeline — includes chairs by Thonet and Arne Jacobsen, childhood photographs of the artist, art by her aunt and archival inkjet prints of mixed-media works on paper from 1981 that were part of her application to art school. Her pieces from this period bespeak an admiration for Matisse, Raoul Dufy and Florine Stettheimer, and have each been reproduced in editions of three.

 

Cosmodrome, 2000
Cosmodrome is a “spectacle environnement,” a dark room. A comprehensive environment like a “son-et-lumière”, with music especially composed by Jay-Jay Johanson, an experience of audio and visual sequences, lasting 9 minutes.

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** DC, Wah-wah. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. You don’t know Sonic Youth? I was never much into Roth’s work, but RIP for sure. Ah, cool, your review! I’m heading over there in a coupla secs. Everyone, the mighty Mr. Ehrenstein has applied his vast knowledge of things filmic to Göran Hugo Olsson’s new and hotly awaited documentary ‘That Summer’ concerning the Beales of ‘Grey Gardens’ renown. Hit it. ** Steve Erickson, Hi. Like I said, there was no problem with using  the lyrics in ‘Guide’. It may be that lyric quotations are legally fair game, perhaps because music reviews need/use them? I only read some early Roths and determined his writerly thing wasn’t sufficiently within my interests to continue. ** Jamie, Hip hip, J-ster. Oh no, not at all. Any frustration that my responses evinced was about the problem, not in any way about you or anyone else alerting me to it. The hosting site did what they could. They said the problem is or should resolve. It’s an issue with certain browsers having issues with the interface re: this site’s set up, and they said they can’t fix those browsers’ issues, so we’ll have to soldier on. I’m pretty okay. I/we are supposed to get the producer feedback on the TV script this morning, which I will believe when I see it, and the script is supposed to go to ARTE on Monday, ditto. Yow, well, I’m glad the MRI is history then. Really, really, really hope the puzzle will be solved at last in that bit of time. Consider my brain a votive candle and a vegan ‘animal’ sacrifice to the gods of biology. I wouldn’t say Thurston and I are close friends, but we’re friendly, for sure. He’s the one who arranged for me to write the liner notes for SY’s ‘Sister’ album as seen in the post. Yeah, he’s super great. I like him and admire him a lot. This week will be, I guess, doing whatever hopefully extremely minor TV script corrections and hopefully doing a serious go-over on the film script and a deep talk with Zac about the short film we’d like to make, and just unpredictable this and that otherwise. And you, starting with today? Ha ha: that convertible,  coolness. May your today find life on Mars. Chocolatey goodness love, Dennis. ** Sypha, Hi. As I told Jamie, my host says they have done what they can do to correct the problem, and it’s an issue of some browsers freaking out with the way this site works, and they said they can only try to help those browsers figure things out from afar. So I think we’re as corrected here as we’re going to get. I should reread ‘IB’. It was definitely my least favorite of his novels at the time, but it’s a quickie, so I’ll try to revisit it. ** Wolf, Whoa, I’m not even going to try to outthink and out-type that greeting, at least today. You just get an affectionate howl for now. Yeah, we would have found each other if I had Facebook on my phone because that’s where we were making plans, but I don’t want Facebook on my phone, so my being a man lost in time was the problem. But next time I’ll suggest meeting at, I don’t know … some spot less revolutionary like Voltaire or something. Okay, interesting, quite interesting about Provence. Huh. Then I have been there because I spent five days in Nice in 1975, but I think that’s the totality of my time there unless Marseilles qualifies, and surely it doesn’t. That piece you especially liked at the St. Martins show does sound really magical. Maybe some iPhone toting, youtube loving dude will share a few seconds of it. Yesterday … not much. I’ve been trying for days to find/buy a picture frame, or two rather, that are 60×85 cm, but apparently that’s freaky size because I’ve had no luck other than finding one with a huge, ugly black frame. I wanted to frame and hang the posters for ‘PGL’ and ‘LCTG’, but I think I’m going to have to just pin them to wall like a teenager at this point. Anyway, that store Leroy or whatever it’s called by Beaubourg, and the patrons of a certain stretch of the 11 and 1 metro lines, was the highlight of what I saw with my two eyes yesterday. Kind of sad. What’s newly bright in your bright eyes? ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, B. Yep, they surely did. Any progress on the YnY boxes front? ** Chris Cochrane, Mr. Cochrane! Ish put a pic of the new gang on FB. Oh, wait, that was you! Sorry. Looking good. Excited to add another old guy to the mix. New Iceage is awesome, I think. Yesterday I was listening to emamouse ✕ yeongrak’s album
‘mouth mouse maus’, here, and a bit of the new Grouper, and a few Branca things, most belovedly ‘The Spectacular Commodity‘.  ** Misanthrope, No, no, not bugged. Bugged by it itself, not by its whistleblowers. Like I said, it’s as fixed as it’s going to get. If you still have issues it’s ‘cos your browser doesn’t like my firewall and interface, but maybe it’ll gradually figure out how to work with here. Back when albums were only on vinyl, and especially in the days of psychedelia and, later, prog, there was that same Chu Bops problem you mentioned, only the prog and psychedelic discs weren’t edible unless you were goat, and I was not. ** JM, Hi, man. The new Godard is being broadcast on the TV channel ARTE, I think next week! I’m delirious with anticipation. It’s not getting a theater release, I don’t think, but he’s made a related art exhibition that is coming here pronto. Relived to hear that in at least some cases the blog thing is sorted, phew! Thanks. How’s today sitting? ** Right. Dominique Gonzales-Foerster is both one of my fave artists and also a collaborator of mine (on a long-term opera project) and a great person to boot. So be with her and hers today please. See you tomorrow.

8 Comments

  1. Wolf

    Dennis, eyup petal!
    Marseille totally, 100% qualifies. Total bull’s eye.
    Very lovely day today; really like the colourful spaces, although I reckon little pics on my phone don’t do them justice. She’s working on that mad never ending opera? How’s that all going?
    My day is sloggish. Spring refuses to stick around. I think maybe my bonsai is sick. I just reconsidered my views on shooting people in the face after having to suffer through 5 minutes of an Irish ‘pro-lifer’ spewing forth her nonsensical judgmental bullshit ahead of the abortion referendum tomorrow. ‘I saw a 13 weeks foetus! It had hands and eyes!’. Yes, and it wasn’t any closer to being fully formed than your arguments are, and also, so fucking what. Go fuck a chainsaw. Here’s hoping our pals from across the narrow sea don’t fuck it up.

  2. David Ehrenstein

    I’d heard of Sonic Youth but wasn’t all that familiar with them.

    Dominique Gonzales-Foerster’s work is quite lovely. I’m fascinated by art works that create what might be called “provisional spaces” in that they’re not designed to be lived in (though they look like they are) but simply “visited” I trust you recall Lucas Samaras’ mirrored rooms.

    A new book has just come out of uncollected Roland Barthes material that sounds quite interesting, particularly for his apparently unrequited love of long ago and Sanitarium stays (very Thomas Mann).

  3. Sypha

    Dennis, yeah, I think I re-read all of IB over a 24 hour period, ha ha. That’s one thing it certainly has going for it, brevity… but I would like to see Ellis do something with the scope of a GLAMORAMA again one day. My big issue with IB (aside from the fact I don’t find noir super-interesting) is that a lot of it seemed to be Ellis digging into the proverbial bag of tricks: some of the violent bits were kind of AMERICAN PSYCHO-ish, the dreams of the ghostly dead young man reminded me of LUNAR PARK, the conspiracy angle brought to mind GLAMORAMA… also, much like LESS THAN ZERO, there wasn’t a heck of a lot of the black humor that works well in his other books…

    I forgot to ask you this yesterday, but what’s your favorite Sonic Youth album? My two go-to ones are usually either DAYDREAM NATION (I know, cliche) or MURRAY STREET.

  4. Jamie

    Hey!
    How are you, Dennis?
    Did you get the script feedback? How was it?
    I’m jealous of your Thurston friendship.
    I’ve just been rejigging a wee bit more of my screenplay, to hand in as a Writing Gang sub, and you know what – it’s not bad! I’ve been slightly avoiding it, for fear of it being rubbish, but I’ve really got to stop doing that.
    Rest of my week is some work work, dinner with Hannah on Friday evening, Writing Gang and Champion’s League final, which I’m oddly looking forward to.
    I’ve only had time for the most cursory look at today’s post, but I got the feeling that it’d be one that would reward a close, slow lookover, so will be doing so tomorrow. It looks great, ta.
    May Friday give you constant deja vu of your previous BEST DAY EVER!!
    Jelly bean rain love,
    Jamie

  5. Steve Erickson

    Here’s my review of the Catalan film SUMMER 1993: http://gaycitynews.nyc/young-girls-gaze/ and the second album by Thalia Zedek’s current band E: http://gaycitynews.nyc/thalia-zedeks-e-releases-second-album/

    I heard Bonnie Tyler’s FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF NIGHT album for the first time today, although I’ve always liked her big hit “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” With Jim Steinman producing at least half of this album, it sounds like a less Springsteen-influenced and funkier BAT OUT OF HELL in places (although she sings an Ian Hunter song also covered by Blue Oyster Cult.) There’s something more palatable to me about her than Meat Loaf for some reason although I can see the same basic aesthetic at work (maybe because there’s the same theatrical/operatic sensibility without going as far as inserting fake baseball game samples into her songs.)

    I’m visiting my parents this weekend, now that my mom’s knee has fully healed. I had hoped to visit Sypha in Providence, since that’s only a 45-minute train ride from the station nearest their house, but it didn’t work out.

  6. _Black_Acrylic

    It’s been a delight getting to know DG-F’s work here, and I can’t even imagine what this opera will turn out like. Do you have any more details like an expected completion date for the project? Because I’m excited about it already.

    Re the Yuck ‘n Yum Compendiums, I’m advised that the Generator are going through some big staff turnover right now. It might explain the unanswered emails, but it hardly excuses them in my view. Anyway I’m still on the case and I’ll keep you updated on my progress.

  7. Chris Cochrane

    I like this bunch, maybe a little more serious than the last, though there was so humor and fun tonight, we’ve tried a lot of things with them, no pun…Ish is great. Still trying to figure out a couple of the dancers, damn it’s only the second night.
    I’ll report more, if there is more to report. I haven’t met the Goat guy since auditions, he will be around more towards the end. love and warmer weather being sent in your direction

  8. JM

    Today sits well as always. Yourself? Been shorthanding the comments lately because of general busy-ness and stuff. I’ll be in and out and less consistent over the next few weeks. Happy blogging. I’ll probs ask for a generalized update of some sort when I’m back…

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