On the occasion of Pickpocket Almanack’s Fall Season, an email exchange between Joseph del Pesco and Sean Dockray just prior to a public conversation at Bétonsalon in Paris, France, about the Pickpocket Almanack and The Public School.

KEY:
PA = Pickpocket Almanack
TPS = The Public School

Sean Dockray: Mainly I’ve been trying to think about how the projects could weave into each other a bit, instead of being like Coke and Pepsi; but how our thoughts and the projects could cohere and illustrate the world around, how they can remain distinct... More

In “I Dreamt I Was a Nymphomaniac,” Kathy Acker somewhat wryly describes the art world as “the bohemia of finances.” Still, questions of money and capital in the art world transpire. Occasionally during my tenure as blogger at OPEN SPACE, I will post discussions with local artists and curators about the economics of their practice. I recent... More

[Five questions to SFMOMA artists, staff, or guests. Today’s interviews are with two of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. If you’re from San Francisco, you’ve probably seen them around town, helping charities, hosting events, and bringing joy to the city. I caught up with Sister Selma Soul and Sister Tuna Noodle at one of Rebecca Solnit�... More

[Five questions to SFMOMA artists, staff, or guests. JD Samson of  Le Tigre and The New England Roses is also the cofounder of the performance group Dykes Can Dance. Her current project, MEN, performs TONIGHT in the museum’s atrium as part of Now Playing.]

Do you collect anything?

I collect small-scale RVs and camper vans. I have about 25 now. S... More

RENNY PRITIKIN, MEG SHIFFLER, BRANDON BROWN, PATRICIA MALONEY, ERIN O’TOOLE

Hosted by Suzanne Stein & Dominic Willsdon

9.23.10, 7 p.m., 2nd floor. Please join us!

Starting NEXT WEEK, Open Space will be hosting occasional, real-life Thursday-evening gatherings, here at SFMOMA. The idea is to take our online forum — which has been so dynamic... More

In “I Dreamt I Was A Nymphomaniac,” Kathy Acker somewhat wryly describes the art world as “the bohemia of finances.” Still, questions of money and capital in the art world transpire. Occasionally during my tenure as blogger at OPEN SPACE, I will post discussions with local artists and curators about the economics of their practice. I’ll b... More

In an exchange of emails with Peter Fagundo, we discussed our relationship to the “things” in our lives. Peter is an artist living and working in Chicago, we have never met, but share similar sensibilities in our work. I had first emailed a link to Peter, he responded and then I followed up other thoughts. Shortly there after I asked if... More

[Five questions to SFMOMA artists, staff, or guests. Multimedia artist Chris Johanson sat down with me for 5 questions while listening to  members of the band the 17th and Capps rehearsing in the next room.  They were all in town for the museum's Now Playing event in June. Many will know Chris as a San Francisco Mission School artist.  He current... More

On April 19th 2010, Chris Coy arrived at Hallway Projects for a One-Day Artist Residency. Within five minutes our short introduction continued towards “art” talk. We discussed making vs. NOT making, objects and NONobjects, looking vs. making. Recycling REcycling Baldessari, materials and BROWSERS, preTumblr, Tumblr, Teenage Girl Omnicap... More

[Five questions to SFMOMA artists, staff, or guests.  Today I spoke with Stella Lochman, the education and public programs assistant at SFMOMA. For those of you who've attended any public program in the past year, you've probably seen her, walkie-talkie in hand, making it happen. She is also a  San Franciscan, born and raised.]

If you could steal a... More

Browsing on YouTube I click play and a video begins showing pretty hipster girls gazing longingly at the camera. They are dancing with boys with long hair and handsome beards, all of them bathed in the golden light of youth and optimism. The day is almost over and they are dancing their hearts out. In Dolores Park, on rooftops and in front of the Golden Gate Bridge, this is young San Francisco remaking shot for shot an homage to an homage, a copy of a copy. They really mean this and they really are this pretty.

This video is part of an intriguing phenomena of call and response video’s posted on YouTube in homage to the fan video, “the brat pack mash up” which was first posted in the spring of 2009.

The original video, composed of various edited scenes mostly taken from the movies of John Hughes,  ‘mashed up’ with the song, ‘Lisztomania’ by French pop group Phoenix  inspired a group of twenty something friends in Brooklyn to remake it shot for shot with their beautiful ... More

[Five questions to SFMOMA artists, staff, or guests.  Today I spoke with Mary Biggs, the docent program assistant at SFMOMA.  Mary organizes every Look, Learn, Create tour for elementary and middle school classes as well as all the summer youth tours and daily docent tours. That's something like sixteen thousand schoolkids a year. It's truly a feat... More

The news keeps delivering entries for the popular, figurative sculpture file I’ve found myself building. Last week, we heard from the NYTimes that Mexico City police made some overzealous and apparently illegal raids on piñata vendors in recent months.  Their target: unlicensed pinatas!!!  The alarm over “counterfeiting business̶... More

[Five questions to SFMOMA artists, staff, or guests.  Sasha Wizansky lives in San Francisco and is editor-in-chief and art director of Meatpaper magazine.  Meatpaper, launched in 2007,  is the world’s only quarterly print magazine about the culture of meat.  For our new Now Playing Thursday evenings Meatpaper has been collaborating with Blue... More

This spring SFMOMA was lucky to be the recipient of a gift of five pictures by San Francisco-based artist Doug Hall. Hall studied anthropology at Harvard University and received an MFA in sculpture from the Rinehart School of Sculpture of the Maryland Institute of Art. He is known for his multimedia installations, films, and photographs and is repr... More

[Five questions to SFMOMA artists, staff, or guests. Walter Logue has worked at SFMOMA for 12 years as an operations technician.  Walter knows the building through and through and if things need doing, he's there to make it happen.  (He also has the best gossip).  Walter is also a visual artist—you can see some of his work here and here.  He l... More

Zachary Royer Scholz is one of the interesting young artists-who-write who have emerged on the local art scene in the past two or three years and who have added a great deal of optimism for folks like me. I was lucky enough to start to know Zach this year when he participated in my class on Art and the Invisible for SFMOMA’s Pickpocket Almanack, curated by Joseph del Pesco. After the last class a couple of weeks ago, Zach and I began a little exchange via e-mail about the ideas that the little group discussed that night. It had been a very warm, serious, open discussion that left everyone energized. It fulfilled, I suspect, the intention of del Pesco and Dominic Willsdon in launching the program—i.e., the initiation of processes that can lead to the creation of intellectual community. So it seems appropriate, in that spirit, at the end of my initial blogging period here, to share with the readers some of the work that my class did, and to offer the thoughts of Zach, who I think... More

[Five questions to SFMOMA artists, staff, or guests.  John Davis is an artist and filmmaker who lives in the Napa valley. John's film Mark You Make Believe My Dear, Yes is currently on view at the museum as part of the Long Play: Bruce Conner and the Singles Collection exhibition. SFMOMA is also lucky to have John on-call as  projectionist, operat... More

[Five questions to SFMOMA artists, staff, or guests.  Fiona is the Marketing Events Manager at SFMOMA. That means she organizes and shepherds through any outside corporate events or parties held here. And always with grace and aplomb.]

Do you collect anything?

I do. I collect rock climbing equipment and guitars. My house is full of things like c... More

[Five questions to SFMOMA artists, staff, or guests.  James Williams is senior graphic designer at SFMOMA, currently acting head of graphic design. He has has won many awards for his work at SFMOMA and elsewhere, including First Prize in the 2009 AAM Museum Publications Design Competition for Brought to Light: Photography and the Invisible, 1840�... More

[Five questions to SFMOMA artists, staff, or guests.  Local visual artist and educator Allison Smith is the creator of the SMITHS project.  Her Arts and Skills Service program continues through the spring with talks, conversations, workshops and activities. Join Allison this Thursday evening for SMITHS: Arts & Skills Service: On Shell-Shock, ... More

[Five questions to SFMOMA artists, staff, or guests.  Laetitia Sonami is a performer and sound artist who creates her own instruments, most notably her Lady's Glove.  Artist SUE-C creates live visuals by combining photographs, drawings and lighting effects.  The pair is collaborating on a performance for TONIGHT'S  Now Playing event.]

Do you coll... More

[Five questions to SFMOMA artists, staff, or guests. Steve Anker is the Dean of the School of Film/Video at CAL ARTS and the curator of three programs in the 75 Years in the Dark film series: Material and Illusion, Bush Mama and tomorrow's screening of Chris Marker's Le joli mai.  He lives between San Francisco and Northern Los Angeles.]

Do you colle... More

[Five questions to SFMOMA artists, staff, or guests. Alexandro Segade lives in Los Angeles and is an artist working collaboratively with the band/performance/theater group My Barbarian.  He and his bandmates Malik Gaines and Jade Gordon will be performing at SFMOMA this Thursday as part of the Now Playing event.]

Do you collect anything?

Not really.... More

Art Practical is a new and ambitious platform for chronicling contemporary art and visual culture in the Bay Area. According to the website Art Practical “represents the current shifting landscape of arts journalism by serving as a juncture for critical dialogue…”  To learn more I posed four questions to the editor, Patricia Malo... More

In keeping with my interest in artists that access African spirituality in their work I interviewed multimedia artist Karen Seneferu.  Seneferu is a Bay Area artist working in natural and manufactured materials to produce figures that function as new sacred objects reflective of traditional African ritual artifacts. It was probably with the literary work of Ishmael Reed that we first got hipped to the idea of new forms of sacred African ritual power embodied in contemporary Black literature and art. In 1974 Reed described his obscure short sto... More

Conversation with Paolo Salvagione, lead engineer on the 10,000-year clock project, via e-mail in February 2010.

For an introduction to what we’re talking about here’s a short excerpt from a piece by Michael Chabon, published in 2006 in Details: ….Have you heard of this thing? It is going to be a kind of gigantic mechanical computer, slow, simple and ingenious, marking the hour, the day, the year, the century, the millennium, and the precession of the equinoxes, with a huge orrery to keep track of the immense ticking of the six naked-eye... More

The Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church in San Francisco’s Fillmore District is adorned with the icon paintings of Mark Dukes. Under the guidance of Archbishop Franzo King he has produced unique images of legendary musician John Coltrane inspired by a sound baptism. This is the final installment of a 3-part interview conducted in December of 2009.

(more…)

Painter Mark Dukes and Archbishop Franzo King of the Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church form a unique collaboration of expressive skills. The spiritual inspiration of the legendary John Coltrane’s music is the catalyst for the unique aspect of the collaboration. Dukes uses his craft as a visual artist and Archbishop King uses his as a p... More

The work of spiritual icon painter Mark Dukes has graced the Saint John Coltrane Church now located in the Fillmore district since 1992. During a spiritual awakening in 1989 that he describes as being baptized by sound, Mark was introduced to the music of John Coltrane by Archbishop Franzo King. Bishop King Founded the Saint John Coltrane Church in 1971 under a different church name. Today the Church is located at 1286 Fillmore Street in San Francisco and it houses the impressive religious icon paintings of John Coltrane by Mark Dukes. I spoke ... More

Darin Klein is an artist, writer, curator and publisher. His publications include Afterlife, To & From, Control Issues, Thing, Celebrity Themed Fan Zine, The Moment Collector, and Box Of Books Vol. and II. He is currently living in Los Angeles, where he works for the Hammer Museum.

1. BOX OF BOOKS: VOL II. IS ONLY THE LATEST OF YOUR PRINTING P... More

[Five questions to SFMOMA visitors, artists, staff, or guests.]

Name/Place of Residence/Occupation/Hobby?

My name is Rebekah. I am an optician and I live in Noe Valley with my husband Adam. My hobby is—a couple of things: I like playing with the dog, Oliver, and then I also make music with my husband, Adam.

My name is Adam and I live in San Franc... More

[Five questions to SFMOMA visitors, artists, guests, or staff]

After the Kuchar Bros. screening last Thursday evening (George and Mike Kuchar, Recent Preservations: Pussy on a Hot Tin Roof, Tootsies in Autumn, A Woman Distressed, and Lovers of Eternity) I trapped Mike Kuchar in the back of the catering kitchen, near the walk-in freezer, and conduct... More

December 6th marked the 40-year anniversary of what’s well known only as “Altamont”—the end of the sixties.  Los Angeles-based independent curator Jenée Misraje talks with two artists (named Sam) who’ve dealt with the history of Altamont in distinct ways.

***

JENÉE MISRAJE

1969. It began with Richard Nixon assuming the White Hous... More

[Five questions to SFMOMA visitors, artists, staff, or guests.]

Name/ Place of Residence/ Occupation/ Hobby?

My name is Christo. I am information desk attendant at SFMOMA. I’m also a painter. A hobby of mine would be photography.

Do you collect anything?

I’ve noticed a collection of cameras in my apartment. And that just kind of happen... More

[Five questions to SFMOMA visitors, artists, staff, or guests. George Kuchar, legendary San Francisco filmmaker, lives in the Mission district and teaches at the San Francisco Art Institute.]

Hobby?

I like making pictures, videos, movies. Videos now, etc.

Do you collect anything?

I got a whole bunch of things because I didn’t like painting the ... More

[Five questions to SFMOMA visitors, artists, staff, or guests.]

Name/Place of Residence/Occupation/Hobby?

Fayette Hauser, Los Angeles, California. Occupation is a dilemma. Right now I would say artist, writer—I’m writing a book, and archiving my photography, contributing to other peoples’ books, so it’s really a lot of history at this momen... More

In the first in an occasional series of posts focused on issues of conservation, managing editor of communications Apollonia Morrill talks with director of conservation and collections Jill Sterrett, about an installation by Barry McGee, and the ways the field of  conservation evolves to meet the demands of new artwork.

As a student of art history, I was always fascinated by the field of conservation. I started out studying medieval art; of those who work in with this material, conservators seemed most linked to its inner life and its makers. ... More

[Five questions to SFMOMA visitors, artists, staff, or guests. Here's Timothy Buckwalter in the Koret Visitor Education Center.]

Name/Place of residence/Occupation/Hobby?

My name is Timothy Buckwalter. I live in Albany, California. I’m an artist and I’ve recently started curating and I also write about art. I have a blog about art. If I... More

(The second in a two-part series from assistant curator of photography Lisa Sutcliffe, who organized both of our current collection exhibitions of Asian photography: The Provoke Era and Photography Now. Lisa posed a single question to the artists whose works are included in Photography Now. Part one is here.)

This week we’re returning to the question Why Photography Now? Photography Now: China, Japan, Korea presents SFMOMA’s new acquisitions by contemporary photographers working in Asia, and was conceptualized as a companion to our current ... More

I can tell you a bit about Ariel Schrag because I spent the last 4 weeks introducing her every night on the Sister Spit tour. Ariel grew up in the Bay Area, and did she waste her high school years drinking too much at the Rocky Horror Picture show and falling in love with bisexual witches named Perry? No she did not. Ariel, who went to Berkeley High, began documenting her experience as an out queer in the form of comics. They were ultimately compiled into 4 graphic novels – Awkward and Definition (9th and 10th grade, published in one volu... More

[Part two of a conversation, keyed to our One on One series, between Michelle Barger, deputy head of conservation, and Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher, assistant curator of architecture and design, on Robert Overby's Hall painting, first floor.]

Michelle Barger: How did you come to chose Hall painting, first floor for your One on One talk? Were you familiar with Overby’s work as a commercial designer prior to becoming an artist, and did this play into your decision?

Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher: In 2000, I was working at the UCLA Hammer Museum as the curatorial assistant when Robert Overby: Parallel, 1978-1969 was exhibited, so I have been familiar with all the various strains of his work since then, including the graphic design. However, this was before switching from a curatorial interest in contemporary art to architecture. When I was combing through the permanent collection database recently in search of works for an exhibition proposal, I was thrilled to discover that SFMOMA had one of ... More

[Alongside our weekly in-gallery curator "One on One" talks, we post regular ‘one on one' bits from curators & staff on a particular work or exhibition they're interested in. Follow the series here. This week and next, Michelle Barger, SFMOMA deputy head of conservation, & Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher, assistant curator of architecture and design, together take on Robert Overby's Hall painting, first floor.]

Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher: I was so excited to learn that Robert Overby’s large latex rubber cast of Hall painting, first floor from 19... More

[Five questions to SFMOMA visitors, artists, staff, or guests.]

Name/Place of residence/Occupation/Hobby?

K: Katherine, Tampa, Florida. I am an elementary school media specialist. Hobby: reading! What a surprise.

A: My name is Andy, Tampa Florida is our town. I’m an environmental consultant and my hobby is politics.

K: Not the same politics,... More

(The first in a two-part series from assistant curator of photography Lisa Sutcliffe, who organized both of our current collection exhibitions of Asian photography: The Provoke Era and Photography Now. Lisa posed a single question to the artists whose works are included in Photography Now.)

Photography, with its ability to “mirror” reality, has a more direct connection to the visible world than most other media, including painting and sculpture. It can also alter our perception of reality, either through the artist’s unique perspective, o... More

Sara Seinberg sits in front of me in the Sister Spit van, wearing a red flannel, her leonine hair piled atop her head, putting together this evening’s opening slide show on her computer. Seinberg does this every day in the van – assembles what has become a sort of opening credit to our nightly show, brightly moving pictures we project onto a screen or a curtain or in the case of last night, the back of some signage from a realtor’s office. We were performing in what was essentially an unused hallway of the office, a narrow room fashioned ... More

This week sees the arrival at last of the SFMOMA LiveArt/Performa 09 collaboration, METAL+MACHINE+MANIFESTO. Events started Wednesday evening with a symposium at the Italian Cultural Institute and continue through the weekend here at SFMOMA and elsewhere. Open Space has already seen some significant discussion of the project a few weeks back. Here,... More

[Five questions to SFMOMA visitors, artists, staff, or guests.]

Name / Place of residence / Occupation / Hobby?

My name is Raelle. I live in San Francisco in the SOMA district and I am the Artistic Director of Brava! For Women in the Arts in the Mission district in San Francisco. My biggest hobby is laughing, which I know sounds dumb but I like goin... More

One of our current collection exhibitions, The Provoke Era: Postwar Japanese Photography presents a number of pictures from that turbulent moment in Japanese history. After the devastation of World War II, Japan entered a period of American military occupation and modernization. Photographers reacted to the drastic sociocultural changes taking plac... More

For the past year artist Anthony Discenza has been installing, without permission, a series of street signs attached to sidewalk poles on Minna Street, near SFMOMA. Last month I emailed him a few questions about the ongoing project:

Let’s start with some stats on the The Street Signs Project. How many signs have you installed? How many have been confiscated vs. stolen? When did you start the project?

I started the project a little over a year ago, back in May or June of 2008.  To date, I think I’ve put up 14 signs; of those, 6 have ... More

[Five questions to SFMOMA visitors, artists, staff, or guests. Harry Parr and Sam Bompas  are jellymongers who will be giving a performance this Thursday, in conjunction with the exhibition Sensate: Bodies and Design. Bompas & Parr claim to spend so much time together that they have become psychic, so for this interview Harry answered for Sam ... More

[New series. The same five questions to SFMOMA visitors, artists, staff, or guests.  Let's see what happens with these over time. Enjoy!]

Name/ Place of residence/ Occupation/ Hobby?

My name is John, I live in San Francisco, California. I am a full-time film student and I’m a full-time cyclist too.

Do you collect anything?

I collect Vonnegut boo... More

I sat down with Andy Vogt recently to talk about his work, including the “Sustained Decay” installation he created with Joshua Churchill at Adobe Books last month. (My post about this piece can be read here.)

(more…)

Earlier this summer Miriam Bale asked if I might contribute to a weeklong compendium of comedy criticism under the title Comedy v. Criticism—this leading towards a screening of Elaine May’s film Ishtar at DCTV in New York on August 31st. (Richard Brody’s blurb on it here.) Miriam and I have talked about May for years, and this seemed ... More

When last I was in New York, the artist Fia Backström and I had a conversation about Sherrie Levine, by way of both “The Pictures Generation, 1974-84″ — an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum, of the early practice of Cindy Sherman,  Richard Prince, Sarah Charlesworth and others — and some thinking I’d done on some of Levine’s works. I planned to return to New York the following month, and we promised to re-engage our converstion then. But my plans changed. So around the date when I’d intended to be in New ... More

In May, Joseph Del Pesco and I posted a critical reading of the Art and Education Papers archive, which had then just been announced. In it, we contrasted that project with a site whose constitution we liked better, called AAAARG. AAAARG is many things, but is probably known best these days as a kind of digital library and radical public amenity, ... More

During the New Langton Arts debate a few weeks ago, Renny Pritikin, who with his wife Judy Moran directed the organization in its first decade and more, mentioned to me an essay he’d written that elaborated some of the early ideas behind the institution. I asked him to send it my way, and a week later it arrived by mail. Called “The Port Huron Statement and the Origin of Artists’ Organizations,” the essay connects the student movements of the 1960s — in particular,  ideas of participatory democracy espoused by the Students for a Democratic Society in 1962 — with the impulses and modes that defined Langton’s founding and first decade. You can find the original essay here; what follows below is a dialogue about the essay in retrospect. Renny is Director of the Richard L. Nelson Gallery and the Fine Arts Collection at the University of California, Davis.

JM: So, thanks again for this document. It’s interesting, and I think the reading you put fo... More

Taking inspiration from Robert Frank, Damaso Reyes has spent the last few years documenting social changes in the European Union for his project, The Europeans. Reyes is an artist and photojournalist who studied photography at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, honing his craft as a reporter for the New York Amsterdam News and other major news publications. The son of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Reyes grew up in a predominantly African-American neighborhood in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

As a Spanish-speaking, first generation American and a black man, Reyes, like Frank, grew up feeling he was both part of and outside of his community. That ability to be both insider and outsider is what allows him to move freely with his camera through worlds most people never see. As immigrants, Reyes’ parents were able to find a sense of civic belonging in the United States which, he has observed, continues to elude immigrants to the European Union. For this re... More

[Charles Bernstein responds to recent discussions about his review "Is Art Criticism Fifty Years Behind Poetry?" in last winter's Parkett. --SS]

Suzanne Stein has asked me to make some comments on two posts on Open Space, one by Kevin Killian and then Julian Myers’s response (to which several responses were subsequently posted). Both Killian (whom I know for many years) and Myers (whose name is new to me) focused at least in part on a review I wrote for Parkett magazine of Lytle Shaw’s Frank O’Hara: The Poetics of Coterie, titled “Is Art Criticism Fifty Years Behind Poetry?“. I wrote my review of Shaw’s book in December 2008 and it was published by Parkett this past winter.

In his post, Killian gently chides me for not giving the original source of my ironic title, which I guess I took for granted. But the sentiment has become a kind of received wisdom, removed from the specifics of Brion Gysin’s original remark:

Writing is fifty years behind pain... More

For the opening of SFMOMA’s new Rooftop Garden, Bay Area artist Rosana Castrillo Díaz was commissioned to create a mural painting on the bridge leading to the new outdoor space. Rosana was a recipient of the 2004 SECA Art Award &, if you’re a local reader, you might remember the wall drawing she created on the museum’s third-... More

Imin Yeh is a printmaker and recent graduate of the MFA Department at the California College of the Arts.  Her practice deflates cultural stereotypes and addresses issues of labor and consumerism through a critical and humorous lens.  Yeh’s piece “Everybody Loves a Skinny, White Boyfriend” was included in the exhibition For Lovers and Fighters that I curated at The Spare Room Project in February 2009. We sat down at a coffee-shop together last Friday and talked about her recent projects, her relationship to local art institutions, and the politics and negotiation inherent in making work that is deeply rooted in one’s own experience and identity. Yeh was a recipient of the 2009 Barclay Simpson award.  Her piece “Good Imports” is featured in the Chinese Cultural Center’s Present Tense Biennial 2009 and in a satellite installation in nearby storefront at 710 Kearny Street until August 23rd.  Her work will also be included in Intersection for ... More

Mai-Thu Perret, Borogrovess, 2008; MDF Ultra Light, synthetic foam, plastic mirror; courtesy of Timothy Taylor Gallery, London; photo: James Lander; © 2008 Mai-Thu Perret

“The Swiss artist Mai-Thu Perret produces multidisciplinary, installation-based work that integrates socialist subject matter, feminist politics, and classic modernist themes. Her protean artistic practice flows from a utopian narrative titled The Crystal Frontier that she has been writing for nearly a decade, and comprised of a series of discrete fictional texts that... More

Left: Auguste-Adolphe Bertsch, Male itch mite, ca. 1853–57; Salt print; San Francisco Museum of Art. Right: Wilson Alwyn Bentley, Snowflakes, before 1905; Printing-out paper prints; Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C.

[Here, our managing editor of communications, Apollonia Morrill, talks with SFMOMA associate curator of photography Corey Keller about the exhibition Brought to Light: Photography and the Invisible, 1840-1900. More than four years in the making, Corey's "science show"--as we often heard it referred to during the pl... More

[Hello all. A small group of us have been having the occasional post-screening discussion in response to the Jarman retrospective now on. As I noted yesterday, none of us have been quite sure how to gauge our encounter with Derek Jarman. Weighing in below are Brecht Andersch, our projectionist, and Stephen Hartman, film-loving psychoanalyst! (You may remember them from our summer of Alexanderplatz). If you have thoughts, we'd love to hear them.]

Stephen Hartman:

So fond of techno am I that I have always refused to listen to—I’m sure I’ve even said “hated”—opera without knowing much about it. Then, recently, a dear friend set out to convert me. We spent a wonderful evening listening and comparing. As I write now, my new heroine Régine Crespin is belting out Verdi. Alas, me…a convert?

Unfortunately, diving back into Derek Jarman after many years had the opposite effect. Where I was once an Act Up boy overwhelmed by the poetry of The Garden and in... More

Tom Marioni, The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends Is the Highest Form of Art, 1970 – 2008, 1979 installation view at SFMOMA; © 2008 Tom Marioni; photo: Paul Hoffman

Part two of my conversation with Curator of Media Arts, Rudolf Frieling, on The Art of Participation. Yesterday we covered some specific projects in the exhibition and what an ‘art of participation’ might be; today we’re talking about the build-it-yourself cardboard furniture in the Koret Visitor Education Center, and the particular challenges and delights... More

Matthias Gommel, Delayed, 2002; closed-circuit sound installation; photo: courtesy the artist; © 2008 Matthias Gommel

A few weeks back I had the chance to talk with Curator of Media Arts Rudolf Frieling about The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now, rolling in this Saturday. The exhibition looks at ways artists have been engaging audiences as col... More

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………Photo: Ramona Labat

On November 4, we’ll be screening two democracy-themed projects by Bay Area artists. Chris Sollars’ documentary C RED BLUE J explores the red state/blue state divide of 2004, as Chris juggles his beliefs with those of a sister work... More

Last Friday here at the SFMOMA, we celebrated the opening of one of the most highly anticipated exhibitions of the year: the SFMOMA Staff Art Exhibition. In a city where every cab driver is a filmmaker and every filmmaker is a musician is a writer is an artist is an installation crew member, it should come as no surprise that the SFMOMA staff has ... More

[This is the first in an occasional series focusing on people in and around the Bay Area who help make it such a lively place for art & culture. Dear local person and personality, Mr Andrew McKinley, is owner of Adobe Books and a long-time dedicated patron of the arts. Adobe Books in San Francisco's Mission district has been the heart & soul... More

And so at last we bid our beloved friend Franz Biberkopf goodbye. It’s been a long but wonderful month watching, thinking, and talking together with everyone about all things Berlin A & RWF. Farewell Mieze, farewell Lina, farewell Franzë, Cilly, Ida, Pums, Meck—look, even in a blogpost I’m loathe to wish “fare well” to those awful villains Rheinhold & Luders!—

Dominic & I both want to thank all of our round-table-ees: Brandon, Cynthia, Julian, & Stephen, as well as Brecht our projectionist, Dana Ward our Cincinnati correspondent, and everyone else who’s been along with us in the theater on Thursdays and Saturdays, and in the comment boxes all along the way.

It seems kind of sweetly fitting to close with this last post in from Dana Ward, who didn’t quite make the summit with us:

———

“…What a shame for me that just as I had calibrated the pace of my reading with the bundles of your viewing, I w... More

[Another illuminating post from Brecht Andersch, our projectionist and Berlin Alexanderplatz expert-in-residence, as we wind our way down:]

Hanna Schygulla has said that Fassbinder told her he identified profoundly with all three main characters of Alexanderplatz; “I am Biberkopf, Reinhold, and even Mieze, too.” He had discovered the novel at the age of fourteen, and it served as a mirror to this budding genius, reflecting back the splits within his own psyche. He used his experiences as petri-dish experiments in order to acquire both self-knowledge and an understanding of his world, and his findings became increasingly disturbing: humans, through their own natural needs – love, security, self-protection, etc. – were, consequent to their acquiescence to the powerful, or to the power of the collective, the source of their own oppression. The only answer lay in further, deeper self-knowledge – but how to achieve this in a nation of “StupidheadsR... More

[Or, the other side of the mountain. The BA roundtable/support group on the last round of Fassbinder's epic masterpiece. We'll wind down our discussion over the next few days. Ms. Heidi at Engineer's Daughter says everyone deserves a t-shirt; I'm like to agree that all of you readers do too.]

————

Brandon
Well, we watched Berlin Alexanderplatz.

I found everyone’s responses last week to be, to varying extents, trying to come to terms with the violence Franz displays against Mieze. The violence and initial recuperation took place at the very end of our screening. Even if indeed some of the bloggers may have been “tip-toeing” around it, everyone (including commenters) seemed to be trying to situate the crisis in terms of Franz’s character. Was it jealousy that provoked his outburst? Does Franz have enough of a subject position to really comprehend “jealousy” and act accordingly? Is Franz’s brutality derived from an abandonment c... More

[Who isn't at least a little in love with the sweet creature Mieze? I have so many feelings of excitement & anxious anticipation for tonight's Berlin Alexanderplatz finale! Here to give us a sweeping recap and analysis of much of what we've seen thus far, is our projectionist Brecht. If you haven't been following along to date, you can see ALL our Alexanderplatz posts by clicking the tag Mount-Everest-of-modern-cinema. See you tonight!]

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Early in the film, Franz visits the sister of his manslaughter victim, Minna, and rape... More

[Continuing our month-long discussion of Berlin Alexanderplatz]

Brandon, Dom, Suzanne,

Forgive me for saying so, but I think you’ve been tiptoeing around what all of us experienced as a profoundly disturbing passage of film – the last forty minutes of episode eleven, wherein Franz tries to murder Mieze, the person he loves most, in exactly the same way, in exactly the same place, as he murdered Ida. Indeed Fassbinder insists on this disconcerting repetition, replaying Ida’s murder three times in the previous episodes, investing it with an ominous and totemic power.

If these scenes don’t erase my great enjoyment of the series so far, they certainly transform, violently, the terms of that enjoyment. It’s not just the beating that Franz inflicts. Unbearable as it is, we at least know it is coming. What is so horrible is first the character of Mieze’s anguish – a strangulated screaming that goes on for what feels like minutes. Is any moment in cinema so raw and devastatin... More

Hi readers! It’s Brandon, just here in small print to say how happy I am that this conversation has continued here on the blog! If it is the Mount Everest of modern cinema, then I think we’re seeing some clouds breaking at the top. Which is exciting, and terrifying! See you in the comment box!

Brandon
We made it through another thrillin... More

For everyone looking for the Berlin Alexanderplatz support/discussion group posts, you can catch up with us by following the tag Mount-Everest-of-modern-cinema. We’ll post the next support-group installment sometime on Saturday.

……This just in from Julian, who’s sticking it out with us for the Thursday night duration…..
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I want to follow up on Brecht’s fantastic post. He mentions in his description the “cynical yet upbeat tone of Weimar culture.” Insofar as the series has a theme, it might be this mindset and way of viewing the world; atrocities occur, but are met by a strange and passive acceptance. Franz loses his arm and barely seems to react. The newspaperman has his balls removed one after the other, but well, ever forward. I recalled Hannah Arendt’s puzzlement, in her analysis of Adolf Eichmann’s 1961 trial in Jerusalem, over the “odd limits” of his conscience. I want to say that Fassbinder presents Franz as inhabiting a particular, peculiar, brittle, false sort of innocence – if that didn’t immediately sound so daft. (We know what is coming…)

To recall just a few moments that have stuck... More

Hi readers! It’s Brandon, just here in small print to say how happy I am that this conversation is continuing here on OPEN SPACE, pertaining to Fassbinder’s epic (and ever more enjoyable) Berlin Alexanderplatz. Comments are not only welcomed but highly encouraged. Enjoy!

Brandon
Much of our discussion of the first episodes of Berlin Alexanderplatz explored Franz’s character as a subject from psychoanalytic and socioeconomic perspectives. A crucial point of departure for all the bloggers and commenters is the fact of Franz in relation to others, which overwhelmingly take the form of social/sexual violence. It’s difficult to imagine a conversation about this work that doesn’t center on Franz to the moderate exclusion of the other characters, though one viewer last night suggested to me that the conversation on the blog was, in her view, excessively judgmental of Franz as a character in a narrative. I noticed some sense of that concern in the comment box, whe... More

[Offering another view of the unfolding Berlin Alexanderplatz narrative, field correspondent Dana Ward is reading the novel but NOT watching the film. Welcome, Dana!]

Hey Brandon & Cynthia & Suzanne, & nice to meet you Dominic & Julian & Stephen & all readers. My name is Dana Ward, & Suzanne asked me to act as a correspondent to y’alls roundtable concerning Fassbinder’s “Berlin Alexanderplatz” by reading Döblin’s novel, something I’d wanted to do and not found an occasion to̵... More

“…to dispute the SFMoma’s blog: it not at all like climbing Mount Everest in the least, it’s actually more like watching a super long, super German mini-series. Who falls asleep in the middle of climbing a mountain: not a lot of people. Who falls asleep while watching a super long, super German miniseries: a lot of people.”