OPEN SPACE

…………………………………………………..“That’s not perversity, people, that’s poetry.” Michael Fox……………………………………………

Olivetti in your pocket? Edigio Bonfante, Poster, 1953. Lithograph mounted on canvas.

I’m tremendously pleased this morning to welcome our latest cohort of columnist-bloggers to Open Space, as they begin to get started this week:

Renny Pritikin was director of New Langton Arts for more than a decade, chief curator at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and is currently director and curator of the Nelson Gallery and Fine Art Collection at UC Davis. He’s written a zillion catalogue essays, and is also a poet.

Dodie Bellamy is a novelist, essayist, poet, and teacher. Without giving too much away, I’ll say Dodie will be writing Open Space’s first long-form commission…

Anne Walsh is a visual artist who works with video, performance, audio, photography and text, and she’s already started! with two posts just below this one.

Many of our readers I know are already fans of the great Brecht Andersch, filmmaker and SFMOMA projectionist, who’s been writing about film here at Open Space intermittently since the get-go.

Last, and not even metaphorically ‘not-least’, REBAR. Our four-person group-within-the-group, REBAR is an interdisciplinary studio based here in San Francisco. Operating at the intersection of art, design and activism, their work includes conceptual public art, urban intervention, temporary performance installation, & digital media and print design.

!!!

As always, our columnists are writing in an EDITORIAL FREE ZONE. Like you, I just can’t wait to see what they will do. WATCH THIS BLOG.

Filed under:

• Columnists
• News

Tags:

! HELLO AND WELCOME !, Anne Walsh, Brecht Andersch, Dodie Bellamy, REBAR, Renny Pritikin

2 Comments

Last week a friend, the poet Joshua Clover, asked me to be a call in guest on his radio program at UC Davis and read Frank O’Hara’s poem “The Day Lady Died,” as it was exactly 50 years ago that Billie Holiday died and O’Hara wrote his famous surprise elegy for her. In his poem O’Hara links fandom to, well, death in a luminous and memorable way. When you listened to Billie Holiday “live” (a telling term), he recalls, “Everyone and I stopped breathing.” Naturally this made me think of how we all heard about Michael Jackson’s death, and I offered that somebody somewhere is writing “The Day Michael Jackson Died,” and Clover asked why didn’t I write such a poem. Maybe this is it.

Christophe Bull, official organist at Royce Hall at UCLA, playing the Jupiter Symphony as the crowd keft the auditorium

I flew out of SFO on the day Michael died (and Farrah Fawcett). I loved both of them probably for the same reason, they were both striking and glamorous stars who came to us cursed as though by jealous gods. At the Virgin America terminal, Virgin had transformed Gate 12 into a disco, the signage shook and glistened, while the stereo system boomed out “Scream,” “Beat It,” “Human Nature.” Next to the kiosk, the sign for Gate 12 announced Flight 945 for L.A. and beneath it read “Rest in Peace Michael and Farrah.” I actually didn’t want to get on the plane, it was more comforting to stay in that airport lounge and feel the community of people who Virgin thought would appreciate a greeting like “Rest in Peace Farrah and Michael.” That imaginary community Agamben predicted of people joined together by loss. (more…)

Filed under:

• Columnists

Tags:

Aida Ruilova, Alistair McCartney, Billie Holiday, Bob Flanagan, Charlotte Armstrong, China Art Objects, Dark Shadows, Dodie Bellamy, Ed Begley, Erlea Maneros, Farrah Fawcett, Frank O'Hara, Giorgio Agamben, Joshua Clover, Jr, Karen Black, Lara Parker, Michael Jackson, Michael Rashkow, Poetics Research Bureau, Raymond Pettibon, Sheree Rose, Skylar Haskard, Yoshua Okon

3 Comments