South 12th

Two new pieces posted today.

Both pretty Minneapolis-y.

At Quodlibetica, a short essay on photographer Paula McCartney’s new book, On Thin Ice, In a Blizzard, and the way we talk about weather in the Upper Midwest. The images in the book are McCartney’s beautiful photograms of ice, created in the dark room:

It seems at first like this exercise may be McCartney’s way of exerting control over powerful natural forces; of bringing these phenomena inside the comfort of the studio, where they can be controlled and mediated. This is a common response to the obliterating harshness of a Midwestern winter -– a sort of denial. A cultivation of the idea that overcoming the cold is nothing more than a simple act of willpower, and that by simply willing away the elements, one can just get through it.

And on MinnPost, a stroll around the wilds of my own neighborhood, Powderhorn, and finding modernist dry cleaners, semiprecious gems, burger lords, and Emma Goldman:

I’ve taken more than one East Coast friend for a walk through these neighborhoods, only to have them look around with confusion and say, “This doesn’t look like a city. This looks like a really old suburb. This looks like New Jersey.”

“Toot! Toot!” Foley artistry with Dark Dark Dark and The Modern Times Spychestra.

This will probably sound ridiculous, but to a certain extent, I’ve tried to follow the example of two role models in my creative life: Studs Terkel and George Plimpton. Following Terkel’s example, I’ve tried to never pass up an opportunity to talk to someone about their story, and record it where I can. From Plimpton’s example, I’ve done my best to never pass up an opportunity to try doing something I’ve never done before, preferably while in front of people.

So it was with Plimptonian disregard for consequences or real ability that, when the great Minneapolis band Dark Dark Dark asked if I wanted to serve as foley artist for their live score to the Fritz Lang film Spies at the Walker Art Center last summer, I said “sure.” I’d only been a foley artist once, onstage, for an Electric Arc Radio Show performance. Dark Dark Dark happened to be guests on the show that evening. I think maybe they thought it was something I’d done a lot. It wasn’t.

That Electric Arc show was in front of maybe 150 people, most of whom I knew. This was an outdoor performance for 4,000 people at the Walker. I was, as I have honestly been very few times in my creative life, scared completely shitless.

It went well, though — I had a suitcase full of noise-making devices, including a train whistle that contributed nicely to the greatest scene in the film, a train crash in a tunnel. I doubt I will ever be asked the serve as a silent film foley artist again, because I really just wasn’t that great at it. But it was a lot of fun, and I’m grateful to Dark Dark Dark for the opportunity.

Bill Guzik made a film of the event, which was just posted at the Modern Times art tumblr. The video is below — you can see me in a few of the scenes:

Dark Dark Dark | Spies | Short Film from Guerrilla Waltz on Vimeo.

Let’s say you’re running a novelty mesh cap business in the 1970s. Maybe it’s called “Novelty Hats International, Ltd.” You have a hilarious idea for a hat that a guy that’s going hunting could wear. It’s a little class warfare-y, a little tongue-in-cheek. It suggests an absurd reality — a world turned upside down — where, upon entering the ranks of international finance, one is issued a red mesh cap that reads “INT’L FINANCE” on the front. And you, a hilarious 1970s dude with a mustache, have been entered into those ranks. 

(An aside: here’s a thing people forget — the ironic mesh cap is not an original product of the ’00s. There were armies of future dads walking around in the 1970s and ’80s with ironic mesh caps that ironically suggested that their bald spots were solar generators for sex machines, or that their beer bellies were fuel tanks for sex machines. The fact that their future children would co-opt these same ironic hats their fathers already wore ironically doubled the irony back on itself, creating a feedback loop of overpowering misunderstandings of the very concept of “ironic,” which is why you probably sometimes feel as if you’ve spent the last twelve years living inside a 30-page term paper written by a first-year cultural studies major at a “safety” east coast college. I know I have.)

But anyway, what typeface would you use, were you to design, create, and market such a hat?

Well, I guess you’d use Windsor.  

(Via iteeth, via Meshcaps.com)

Oh, god. My life is such a joke.

Hey look, Studio 54 is on Google Maps. “Beth” rated it three stars.

Today, I begin a new weekly (weekly!) column for MinnPost, here in Minneapolis. The Stroll will feature notable visual art-related objects or events around the Twin Cities — with each article focused on one geographic area, shown in a hand-drawn map. My hope is to draw readers’ attention not only to traditional works of visual art (though I’ll be writing plenty about those), but also to craft, architecture, design, street art, public art, advertising, fashion, furniture design, and the totally unclassifiable — anything a person could walk by and have a look at.

For the first column, I walk around Uptown looking for art, and find sexy mannequins, etchings of Winnipeg, drawings of animals by Dave Eggers, and ceramic cats. Not a bad haul! You can read it here.

It’ll appear, as if by magic, every Wednesday morning. I’m really grateful to MinnPost — in particular, Susan, Kaeti and Corey — for giving me a regular platform to highlight all the weird, wonderful art-related things to be seen in these cities.

Coney Island, off-season.

I had a free afternoon in the middle of the week, so it was sort of a spontaneous decision to travel south with a Brooklyn friend and see Coney Island and the ocean. I’d never been south of Prospect Park before. Brooklyn is huge and I’ve never seen most of it. Riding down, I’m surprised to see the residential areas clustered around the southernmost part of Brooklyn look more like South Minneapolis than like other parts of Brooklyn. 

Everything on the boardwalk is closed, and the beaches are empty. The relatively temperate weather in the middle of January makes the whole scene even more surreal. On the beach, we meet a lone reporter from the New York Post, who asks us our opinion one building casinos on Coney Island. I tell him I’m just visiting, and he loses interest in speaking to me. He interviews my friend, and seems to be trying to coach her into saying something pro-casino. He’s every bit as obnoxious as you’d imagine a New York Post reporter to be. I realize I should have given him a fake name like “Randy Slurdevant” and told him I lived in some obscure neighborhood like Ozone Park and said, “I think they should tear the whole boardwalk down and build nineteen huge casinos, each one bigger than the last! Maybe they can get Donald Trump to do it! That guy is a winner!”

The only people out at all, besides New York Post reporters, are people on the pier fishing. There’s a few dozen of them bundled up in winter clothing and sitting on plastic buckets and bobbing fishing poles over the edges. It’s fascinating. The pier is littered with shimmering, iridescent fish scales and drops of bright red fish blood.

I walk past one guy fishing, and go into my usual Studs Terkel routine: “What sort of fish do you usually catch here?” I don’t know anything about saltwater fishing. I’d like to learn.

The guy frowns and silently makes a circular motion with this hand. The meaning is unclear to me. It seems to mean one of three things:

1.) “Oh, you know, we catch all kinds.”

2.) “Sorry, I don’t speak English.”

3.) “Please fuck off.”

The third seems the most likely. Walking away, I express surprise to my friend. She is a native Manhattanite, born and raised near Union Square. “This isn’t the Midwest,” she says. “You can’t just walk up to anyone and expect have a conversation.”

I am even more surprised by this. “Exactly!” I say. “This isn’t the Midwest! People don’t mind talking to strangers here!” I realize my friend and I have wildly divergent views on the social habits of New Yorkers vs. Midwesterners.

I always thought New Yorkers were pathologically opinionated loudmouths that were willing to get into noisy conversations with anyone. I always thought Midwesterners were stand-offish and tight-lipped and would do anything to avoid talking to a stranger.

She always thought New Yorkers were privacy-obsessed jerks that didn’t have the slightest bit of interest in making any sort of engagement with the teeming masses of humanity surrounding them. She always thought Midwesterners were warm, genuinely friendly people happy to make small talk with anyone.

I’m still not sure, though if the circular hand motion was a “fuck off” sign, my friend may have a point. This winter, I’ll have to go find some people ice-fishing out on one of the city lakes around Minneapolis and ask them about what they’re doing. Then we’ll know for sure. 

“Perhaps it is a stretch to say Crossings is the city’s most beloved piece of art, but I can say this: I spend a lot of time talking about artwork, and I can honestly attest to the fact that there are very few pieces which inspire such a wide range of discussion and speculation as this one.”

Here’s a piece I wrote for mnartists.org about the backstory and legend of that orange, silver and black painting with the deers and the buildings at the 331. You know which one I mean. Everyone loves that painting. 

C’mon, baby, let’s get dressed up and go down to the Stock Footage District. Seems like there’s always something gong on down there.

(Stock footage of the Stock Footage District was shot by Willard Van Dyke and comes courtesy of archive.org. The Stock Footage District is all vacant condos now.)

Actually, I should have used the minute it took to conduct that search and screen-grab the results to respond to an email. Damn it!

Maybe the good hypnotists only work by referral. I’d ask you to email your suggestions for self-improvement hypnotists, but you probably know already where that will get us.