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LiteratureJasmina Te?anovi?: Made in Catalunya / Lou and Laurie
Essay By Jasmina Te?anovi?; Photos by Bruce Sterling. Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson performed a poetry session in Kosmopolis Barcelona. She was big on the screen from somewhere in US, while he was small and live in front of us, on the black and red stage, with a bunch of loose sheets of paper from which he was reading verses. It was a weird session from this recently married couple, who have always had a huge audience all over the world. They were not singing but speaking of Catalonia, to the Catalans, using the words of Catalonian poets. Transgressive, brave, underground. angry verses of poor, gay, wronged, talented, wild personas -- translated into English. The verses rang around the packed crowd as an electric wave on the spine. The sleepy spoiled bourgeoisie of the new mainstream, who came to see a celebrity punk dancing and singing, were shaken to their bones. Some applauded, some left, but the emotive response was visible. Video: Made in Catalunya with Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson (YouTube) in his press conference Lou Reed said he was fed up with being asked about his darkness, about his bad boy attitudes. The Velvet Underground rockstar was fed up with the press, but the press is not dismissing him or his new book, just published in Spain. Barcelona is the center of Spanish publishing, it is multicultural and leftist, and yet it is also separatist and nationalist, as proud and touch as right-winged poor illiterate cities . The Catalans claim their own language, their own culture and they want to split away from the rest of the Spain. Kosmopolis is a Barcelona festival of literature, new media and politics: it invites prominent artists, writers and political activists from all over the world. The city is proud of their culture and of their literary guests. The streets outside the venue are full of tourists, street artists, Catholic beggars, pick pockets , transvestites, émigrés, music bands, cafes, young desperadoes and old jet setters. Lou and Laurie performed their "Made in Catalonia" show as gypsy jet setters -- a crowd who make Catalonia a nationalist region with cosmopolitan principles. The new nationalism smells of cosmopolitan elitism -- splendid separatist islands, eluding a world in decay. If you don't want to be with them, you will have to do without them....
Published: Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:12:44 GMT - Source: Boingboing.Net - Read the articleLibrariesIt's not only rock'n'roll, baby
As usual, my blog posting comes far too late. A few months ago, this could have been an encouragement to go to Brussels and see an interesting exhibition, but typically me, I write about it when it's almost over. Two days left, to be precise.
So I was in Belgium last weekend, mostly to meet friends (like Zoe and Quarsan), see a Sun Kil Moon concert and gain weight by eating lots of fries, mussels, carbonades and stoemp, but particularly bad weather on Sunday persuaded me to see two exhibitions -- apart from the Pavilion of Temporary Happiness (made of 43,000 empty beer crates -- so much about temporary happiness) there was of course the Bozar (Palais des Beaux Arts), which is always good for interesting exhibitions.
It's not only rockn'roll, baby features art exhibits by rock musicians -- Alan Vega, Antony, Bent van Looy (Das Pop), Bianca Casady (Cocorosie), Brian Eno, Chicks on Speed, David Byrne, Devendra Banhart, Fischerspooner, Jonsi Birgisson (Riceboy Sleeps), Kembra Pfahler, Kyle Field, Laurie Anderson, Miss Kittin, Nick Zinner (Yeah Yeah Yeah's), Patti Smith, Pete Doherty, The Kills, The Residents and Yoko Ono, an obvious concept if you consider how many musicians started out as art students.
Mixing the old and the young, the established and the upcoming, the settled and the unsettling made for an interesting show of strikingly varied quality -- enter a room and you'll immediately notice what and how much a certain musician has to say and is able to express through visual arts. Some of the exhibits were stunning, others seemed oddly flat and void of substance.
Pieces that impressed me were of course Yoko Ono's massive installation "Ex It" with trees coming out of coffins; Nick Zinner's photographs and Brian Eno's meditative "77 million paintings". David Byrne's tree diagrams were funny in his usual way; the Residents' photographs were good, but known from album cover art; Devendra Banhart's drawings intriguing if a bit schizophrenic; and The Kills' video installation and polaroids surprisingly effective.
Eno's "77 million paintings" is an application of his music to the visual arts by presenting a seemingly static, but really very slowly changing image. You don't really notice that anything is changing, but after a while you realize that you are staring at a completely different image.
And why was I not surprised that Pete Doherty made his drawings using his own blood? They were better than I expected though.
It's not only rock'n'roll, baby, 20 June to 12 September 2008, Bozar, Rue Ravensteinstraat 23, 1000 Brussels, Belgium. Catalogue available from Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.
Published: Thu, 11 Sep 2008 00:29:00 GMT - Source: Homepage.Univie.Ac.At - Read the article
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