References to the abuse of pink and octopi, a nudie flip book sequence with an ode to spider webs voice over and a series of all-to-brief, intimate conversational excerpts found in the trailer for Eileen Yaghoobian’s doc about rock posters all leave me hoping it way to the states much sooner than later.

The film’s description and featured artist list from the site only serve to hammer the anticipation home. See for yourself:

Died Young, Stayed Pretty is a candid look at the underground poster culture in North America. This unique documentary examines the creative spirit that drives these indie graphic artists. They pick through the dregs of America’s schizophrenic culture and piece them back together…Yaghoobian shows these artists for what they are: the vivisectionists of America’s morbidly obese consumer culture.

Brian Chippendale • Art Chantry • Print Mafia • Andrew Bird • DMBQ • Clyde Jones • Ron Liberti • Tom Hazelmyer • Stephen McClellan • Bryce McCloud • Seripop • Ames Bros • Methane Studios • El Bado/William Ballard • Tyler Stout • Rob Jones • Jay Ryan • Mat Daly • Nick Butcher • Keith Herzik • Steve Walters • Shawn Wolfe • Noel Waggener • Jeff Kleinsmith • Mig Kokinda • Dale Flattum • Mike King • Dan Schlissel • Stainboy • Uncle Charlie • American Poster Institute

via: Eileen Yaghoobian / diedyoungstayedpretty.com

Share This

Dustin Humphrey’s new work for the Insight DOPAMINE campaign and video does for surfing what Crazy Dan Sturt did for skateboarding with booms and other assorted means of breaking envelopes beyond the fisheye. Brilliant.

via: ffffound / designyoutrust

Share This

Continuing with the toner thread, I recently found the blatantly semi-local (mere excuse for a JFA ref) Jason Willis Flyer Collection (’81-’06) while searching out resources for giving visual direction to one of our designers on a Nemo project. I actually remember receiving multi-generational copies of these used as stationary for scrawled notes folded into zines during the early eighties. 

Bryan Ramond Turcotte has a wider sourced compilation in his book, Fucked Up and Photocopied: Instant Art of the Punk Rock Movement, the predecessor to Punk Is Dead Punk Is Everything and the source of this post’s title.

It seems obvious to mention Bryan Coley, Lydia Lunch and Thurston Moore’s No Wave — a chronicle of the collision of art and punk in the New York underground of 1976 to 1980. No Wave was recently released with an exhibition at KS Art and a Teenage Jesus and The Jerks show at Knitting Factory NYC. Thanks to Rich for the tip on this one.

more: TJ+tJ show (sb_t) / No Wave (prefix,vid)

Share This

I’ve been spending a lot of time gathering new findings of intentionally unintended, random beauty from the school of experimental field recording lately. As a result, Xeni Jardin’s interview with David Byrne regarding his project, “Playing the Building” for BBTV naturally caught my attention when it wound through some friend’s sites over the past week.

Watch: Playing the Building (stills via the header)

Alhough the audio acoustics of Byrne’s Building are intentionally engineered and by definition more installation-based than field recording, the resultant environmental susceptibility certainly blurs the line between the two. Beautifully.

Straight jacked from Roy Christopher’s site, June 10th, 2008:

My favorite Talking Head, David Byrne, turns an entire old building in New York City into a giant sound machine in an installation called “Playing the Building.” Xeni Jardin takes a tour.

Under David’s manipulation, New York’s hundred-year-old Battery Maritime Building becomes a giant sound sculpture. He explains:

“Devices [have been] attached to the building’s structure — to the metal beams and pillars, the heating pipes, the water pipes — and are used to make these things produce sound. The activations are of three types: wind, vibration, striking. The devices cause the building elements to vibrate, resonate, and oscillate so that the building itself becomes a very large musical instrument.”

Read the full post at Roy’s site, soon to include the 2008 edition of his reknown, Summer Reading List.

via: Dave Allen / Roy Christopher / Xeni Jardin / David Byrne / Boing Boing

Share This

New, official site for all things related to the show, There is Xerox on the Insides of Your Eyelids. Updates, show calendar, galleries.. the works.

xeroxeyelids.com

Share This

The coordinated effort of reconnecting the mind to the eye to the hand is no easy task after clicking mice and clacking keyboards for far too long an interim. Upped a few recent scrawls to Flickr™ and sharing them here as a humbling incentive to keep the connections wide open.

Thanks to a grueling month of life-implosion, the drawing that served as the initial impetus made it to Cinders Gallery in New York too late for the opening of the show, Don’t Paint Your Teeth — yet another show the prolific artist/organizer and incentive-engine, Rich Jacobs (tixotioye) invited me to take part in.  Bummer too, considering the amazing company it would have shared the wall with. Next time.

I should mention that the drawing for the show is a tribute to Asobi Tsuchiya’s Long-Eyelash photo set, which has captivated and freaked me out for years.

via: MyFlickr (spiralstares) / Cinder’s Gallery / Don’t Paint Your Teeth: Opening Night, Drawings

Share This

Needles + Pens have updated their site with new images from opening night of There is Xerox on the Insides of Your Eyelids. They’ve also made the show Catalog/Zine by Rich Jacobs available for $5 along with #13 of his ongoing exploration in toner, MOVE.

Speaking of Rich, I just received word that he’s hanging the next installation of the show in London. More to follow…

Opening photos / Catalog / Move #13

Share This

Mark Leyner: My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist (part 4/4) (42.8MB, mp3.zip, MF)

via: i was an infinitely hot and dense dot
(mc,mg: pt.1/pt.2/pt.3)

Share This

David Berman is a young Virginian poet with a sly, intense regard for the past. He comes on like a prankster, restocking the imperial orations of Wallace Stevens and the byzantine monologues of John Ashberry with the pop-cultural bric-a-brac of a new generation: ‘I am not a cub scout seduced by Iron Maiden’s mirror worlds.’ But his words have an easy, eloquent gait; each line needs to be a line. The landscapes are crisply American, and history, especially Southern history casts a shadow. A poem about the death of Lincoln ends, ‘The assassin was in mid-air / when the stagehands wheeled out clouds.’ —The New Yorker, Oct 4, 1999

David Berman’s Actual Air is one of the most coveted books on my shelf.

I originally picked it up because the cover design reminded me of Henry Miller’s The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (which coincidentally has some beautiful display errors going on at Google). It was the first collection of poems that deeply inspired and moved me since scouring Powells Books for every original printing of Richard Brautigan’s writings I could find and devour. I’ve bought dozens of copies of Actual Air for friends and family and plan to do so until one or the other runs out.

After posting about Open Field from the new Silver Jews release, Look Out Mountain, Look Out Sea, I dug through backups in search of the only two recordings of Berman reading I was aware of. I ended up finding them at The Corduroy Suit, along with a newfound recording from an Impossible Shapes show (Live at 2nd Story). Either this is it, or I’m not looking in the right place. If anyone out there is aware of more, please (please) let me know.

In the meantime, enjoy Idle Hour, an all too brief collection of readings by David Berman and another bundled repackaging following in the same vein as my previous two (here and here). This time with the jacket shot by Bobbi Fabian instead of my own.

David Berman: Idle Hour (3.4mb, mp3.zip, MF)

via: The Corduroy Suit (Actual Air/Biblio/Interviews) / Open City / Drag City / More Interviews: 01/02/03/04 / Silver Jews / Silver Jew trailer / Bobbi Fabian Photography

Share This

Mark Leyner: My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist (part 3/4) (42.8MB, mp3.zip, MF)

via: i was an infinitely hot and dense dot
(mc,mg: pt.1 / pt.2)

Share This