More Cali then….

I finally saw The Cool School yesterday night. I was ready to Writte and writte and writte….until bore the thing out of myself but what a surprise!! look what I found in the New York Times By MANOHLA DARGIS. So Just read at her post, it is quite good. I did not learn anything new on the process of modern art in America to be honest or in the way it has become what it is today in Los Angeles or I New York. We all know the Story. But I enjoyed to see this guys( Robert Irwin, Ed Ruscha, Wallace Berman, Ed Kienholz, Ed Moses etc…) playing the cool machos in the 50s and 60s California beaches and sharing a family together while they struggled to find the identities of their own work, work that has changed the world for so many. I specially loved to hear Duchamp voice and look at his calm and serenity in a very short part of  interviews that took place for his retrospective at the Pasadena Museum of Art (now the Norton Simon), in 1963.

The documentary is solid and comprehensive….maybe too conprehensive …

The Best fruits of Southern California….

Well..Today for the first time in more than 6 years I played Bad Religion’ song 21st Century Digital Boy. God! (…God?!…Here?!) I wake up to the american punk rock music with that song. Even when I was already familiar with the band since I was 15 and I was in love with  the albums Suffer and Against the Grain, Stranger than Fiction killed me. It was Perfect! I was born I Spain in 1976 so the same year the dictatorship finally collapsed in Spain and lead to a democratic period until today. Then, as many of us back there, I was politically involved as a very early age. Music, of course, specially all kind of music with politic messages was more intellectually interesting for us that books and school. It was fuel for teens. And of course Bad Religion was part of the menu. BUT What I am about to say bring me a lot of interesting question. Today in the band web, I have for the first time in my life understood what the lyrics means!! I…we… did not speak english! The most interesting part of the story is that I used to feel every single moment of this song under its punk rock notes but I had no idea que they meant, today I realize that those lyrics were exactly what I would have always dreamed it to mean. It could have not been better….These guys did not need the language. My mother was not in Valium ( not that I knew ) but the rest was like if I would have written  it myself when I was 17 years old.

“Oh yeah, I’m a 21st century digital boy,
I don’t know how to live (or read) 
But I’ve got a lot of toys, 
My daddy is a lazy middle class intellectual, 
My mommy’s on valium, she’s so ineffectual, ain’t life a mystery? “

Anyway ….enough of me…As you all know professor Greg Graffin on top of being the Vocalist of Bad Religion, attended El Camino Real High School then double-majored in Anthropology and Geology as an undergraduate at the University of California, Los Angeles. He went on to earn a master’s degree in geology from UCLA and received his Ph D From Cornell University. The Ph.D. dissertation was officially a Zooligy Ph.D. supervised by William B. Provinne at Cornell. The dissertation was entitled “Monism, Atheism and the Naturalist Worldview: Perspectives from Evolutionary Biology.” It is described as being essentially an evolutionary biology Ph.D. but having also relevance to history and philosophy of science. Well so the News is tha the has just came up with a new book: “Anarchy Evolution”, and that it was just  published by Harper Collins and it is on the street since April 14th.  Here is a you_tube presentation of the book by Mr Graffin ( click here ). The Man is just so real.

34th West

As European the 34th street west area (all this dark area around to the Lincoln tunnel) it always feels so apocalyptic to me. The feeling could relate with a Jean Pierre Jeunet movie some how. At night it is always empty and you can still feel the dirt of Manhattan in every corner lighted by the green fluorescent of the big delis. Let’s face it, is creepy. Around this area I always feel like if Harrison Ford is going to jump out of a taxi biting the shit out of a replicant.

I go often over there to meet my friend Robert Blake, Not the serial killer but the Robert Blake, photographer, curator and Chair Emeritus of the General Studies Program at the International Center of Photography. He lives in the Penthouse and if you haven’t been there it is hard to explain how the place looks. I can say that is a small one room apt surrounded almost entirely by a large terrace. It is the only place in the city where standing outside surrounded by his tons of sylvester plants that he loves to grow, I understand where I am, what is New York and where I am living 7 years ago. All you are out there is a small atom surrounded by hundred thousand pounds of cements, neon lights and one hundred roads at different levels underneath. It is all there in front of you and you don’t have to look at it, you can feel it with your eyes closed.

Inside the place is a real mess, old books stand on top of the kitchen counter holding some plates where a bone from a New York steak rest next to a Pace/ Macgill promo card o of a Frederick Sommers photography exhibit 5 years ago. It is the portrait of Max Ernst . 1913’s 8by10 cameras share their living space with empty packet of cigarettes and drawings from Robert students. The whole space is full with books that have a difficult time to find themselves in any kind of geometrical or logical order. They just stay where they have been left after being read at some point and there they will be until somebody else or Robert himself would find it appropriate to give them a try again and relocate them in a more exciting location.

I use to go there and show Robert my work every time I have a new project. Usually are only he and I, but this time I went to his place for a dinner party. The place did not change a thing for the event…who cares?! I don’t…I like it just the way it is. You always have the feeling of being in the same kind of environments that Friedlander must have been or Robert Adams must have been…it has this old school and real photographer’s life texture. So between delicious almost raw Steak (that’s how Robert like the meet) and Rivera del Duero Wine (that I brought) I had the chance to talk to an American Clown called Ambrose Martos. It turned to be that he knew Joseph Levitt Gordon who is also a friend of mine and that he played at Slava Snow Show, (My favorite Broadway show for a long time). Then he told me that Yllana Producciones are here with their show 666. I know Raul Cano, one of the artists in the show and I could not believe that they could find production and were capable to bring the show to NY. I was so happy to hear that and Tuesday I am going to see the show. Then I will have something to write about it, I have seen the show more than 10 years ago in La Latina, Madrid, but I don’t want to give anything away until I see it again in NY. I am excited also to talk about Robert work and his exhibit at 601 ArtSpace the last year also, but he is going for a very interesting trip these days that I can not talk about and I am going to leave it for a more appropriate moment…

MOON after clucking…..and Andrei Tarkovsky

After 14 hours of work and insanity having to isolate myself from the rest of the work to be able to finish what I have started I went back home and watched Moon. It could have not been a better ending for a day souranded by 4k HMI and Chickens. Even when my favorite roll of Sam Rockwell is in Gentlemen Broncos (a crude representation of the actual reality of American comedy), Duncan Jones, the director of Moon has been capable to demonstrate his controversial poetry in a science fiction movie that was made in 33 days and where all the outdoors special effects took place in over 8 days according to Cinefex magazine July 2009. Apparently it was also shot during a writer’s strike, which had caused most other productions at Shepperton studios to shut down.

Beyond the bitter and camouflage reality of corporations in a near future and the brilliant cinematography based on classic cinema bases (almost theatrical), the modern aspect of the movie is in its plot. There are lots of messages that one need to pick with a photographic eye. The image with the names written on the screens crossed and next to it saying the word Judas, in the galley, the shelf is marked ‘Soylent’ (Soylent Green is a 1973 American science fiction film depicting a dystopian future suffering from pollution, over pollution dying oceans and a hot climate due to the green house effect)

I like also the games Duncan plays related with our history in cinema. Like the way we uncontrollable feel an untruthful reaction when we meet Gerky  (The Computer and only partner of Sam in the Moon) by thinking of Hal 9000 from 2001 A Space Odyssey. And that way of the director of forcing us to think of this that movie as much as the very ambitious thought of   of making us the Tarkovski masterpiece Solaris (1972) too. “Solaris” is an allegory on man’s place in the universe, the twisted concept of reality, the meaning of love, grief and – ultimately – life. Aspect that Duncan has been also put in scene in Moon. But with all my respect I don’t think there is a better science fiction movie ever made than Solaris and Duncan still has to go a long way to demonstrate his capacity to be at the level of one of the most interesting thinkers and poet that Russia has ever gave birth. 
…Lovely Cover too….

The Good and The Bad…Almodovar and Maurizio Cattelan

Unusually for me I have not been thinking a lot about PedroAlmodovar lately….Yesterday I played Dark Habits (1983) again. I have to say that I’ve seen the master piece more than 5 times but probably I haven’t played it since I am in the US, ( 6 years ago). It was a trip to see the reality of a dead and unrecorded period, the beginning of the 80th. I say unrecorded because even when we have more documentation of the 80th than we do from the past decades before the 80th seems to me this period where art got initially corrupted by marketing in all its aspects. Music, Fine Art, Cinema….after Duchamp and Before the 80th everything was an experiment, after the 80th as we know everything is a business. And it feels like he struggle of the politic situation and the lack of cultural approach in the first years of this magic decade in Spain was ( as it usually is) the perfect ingredients for the most powerful stimulation of creativity based on critics of a society that was about to get economically improved and culturally screwed.

Even when Pedro Drama feels heavier than a Richard Serra piece, one has a hard time to make the difference between good and bad. So it is from the representation on his characters to the way of filming. Nothing is left to accidental encounters even when it all feels part of a great accident. Not bad from a guy born in Calzada de Calatraba.

After thinkning of that aspects of Pedro’s films I think of the work of Maurizio Cattelan who being an 11 years younger artist, was also born in a society washed by the influences of Christianity. He as well has dedicated his career to create art that is satirical and controversial under similar questions on the good and the bad that we can see in Pedro’s work. Don’t miss the interview (click here) to Maurizio by MICHELE ROBECCHIfor Interview Magazine. By the way the “original” Photo is from Mr Sorrenti…

Time to Get Serious

I have decided to give a try to the blog industry. A couple of years ago I started this intend…definitely not a success. So now that I have much more free time and all I have to do is to get out of about 3 major debts, find a way to pay my landlord the last 2 months of rent, start shooting for a new project, leave and pack all my life in the next 2 months, find a new place to live in new Haven for the next Year…and the rest of a normal life, I have decided to also start writing a the blog everyday.

In a way I see it as an scape from the hysterical reality in where I can not find a moment to sit down and think about what is probably the most important things I should be thinking. Therefore that means that you are going to be reading about what I consider to be the most important things.

In the other hand I also I expect that by doing this blog I will be capable to express myself better in this democratic english language of yours that constantly drive me crazy. And for sure my english writing will drive you nuts quite often I am sorry about that. It is never easy for an latin language speaker dig into the grammar and vocabulary of the saxon languages and so I hope you will be compressive about my constants mistakes.

 I have promised to myself that the post will never be more than a couple of lines. I hate long articles in blogs as much as I dont like Long books, I prefer short stories. I have a terrible problem to focus so long stories bore me . So I am leaving this here now and I will start banging you with the ext post.