Company spokeswoman Samantha Garrett said McQueen’s body was found in the morning but that she had no information “in terms of circumstances.”
Police did not directly comment when asked about how McQueen died, but said officers were called by the ambulance service at 10:20 a.m. (1020GMT) to an address on Green Street, in central London, and found a 40-year-old man dead. They did not name him but said next of kin had been informed.
The force said a post-mortem would be held but that the death was not being treated as suspicious.
Believe me, I’m sure like many of you I wanna kiss this meme goodbye, but this time Hitler’s ranting against the cultural happenings in our own backyard: Eli Broad, MOCA, that museum’s controversial appointment of Jeffrey Deitch...Mike Kelley‘s “incomprehensible bullshit.”
A once-aspiring artist himself, Hitler manages to ground this rant a bit better than the others (as opposed to the one against, say, Watchmen’s missing space squid).
Check out this upcoming Genesis Breyer P-Orridge PANDROGYNY screening:
This year’s Panorama will present 18 feature films in its main programme, 16 will screen in Panorama Special and 20, in its Panorama Dokumenteseries. Of these films from 29 countries, 31 are world premieres, and 17 are directorial debuts.
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge was interviewed at length about her PANDROGENY project with her Other Half Lady Jaye by Jake Yuzna last y-era. The interview was integral to the research for this movie which has PANDROGENY and related means of perception as its central themes. If you can’t see it in Berlin, keep a look out for it. Change and R-Evolution are not easily catalyzed, but although PANDROGENY might seem the most difficult and less populist of all the Breyer P-Orridge and One True TOPI Tribe’s projects in Cultural Engineering, it is in fact having an impact in all sorts of locations and media. Last Y-era Breyer P-Orridge gave Lectures at Rutgers University, New York University (twice) and previously at the School of Visual Arts, NY and New School, NY on Pandrogeny. All were packed. At Rutgers we were told we broke the attendance record for a lecture in the Universirty Astory there! So do not assume this is too esoteric to be understood or relevant. In fact PANDROGENY is the natural endgame and conclusion of T.O.P.Y. and in fact everything we have done, activated and thought since we began way back in 1965 making poetry as litter to beautify the streets on Solihull, Warwickshire, England. Everything possible to imagine is possible to manifest in what appears to be material, social reality (though we nicknamed that “nonesensus reality”). Find the film. Find your SELF. Tell us of other projects you feel we should make people aware of via our webpage. We want to use this website to publicize and support projects, tracts, wo-manifestos and other projects that we believe in or feel people ought to have a chance to be aware of…
A man sits in a couple of different tacky/surreal hotel rooms (possibly the Madonna Inn ?) contentedly manipulating tape loops on an ancient flea-market deck, oblivious to the goings-on beneath the covers of the beds next to him. It’s the mysterious work of LAFMS master loopist Joseph Hammer and artist/ hypnotist Sayo Mitsuishi aka The Swinging Chandeliers. Play both at once !
other LAFMS posts previously on Dangerous MInds here and here
Mr. Novicoff and I got to meet the lovely Rachel Rosenthal today taping next week’s Dangerous Minds episode. She’s awesome and she brought her gorgeous, snow white, part-wolf canine companion, Sasha with her. You know you’re having a good day when it involves meeting a living legend and a “national treasure”—I called Rachel this on camera—of course it’s been said of her many times before—and she comically demurred and said that she’s more of a “local treasure,” instead.
Well that’s true too and if you are lucky enough to live in Los Angeles (some people like snow, I’m not one of ‘em) then coming up the weekend of February 19, for three performances, on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Rachel Rosenthal introduces her new improvisational theater group, TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theater Ensemble with monthly performances in Los Angeles, thereafter.
From the press release:
The name, loosely translated, means “collision or chaos” which Rosenthal describes as not what the Company does, but the process they go through to do what they do. Each monthly performance will span three nights during one weekend. All performance begin at 8:30pm. Tickets cost $20. Reservations are necessary to insure seats and can be made by calling 310-839-0661 or online via Brown Paper Tickets at www.rachelrosenthal.org. The Rachel Rosenthal Company’s venue, Espace DbD, is located at 2847 South Robertson Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90034. Street parking is available.
The Rachel Rosenthal Company’s TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theater Ensemble, the latest offering in the 83-year-old Rosenthal’s remarkable career, is inspired by Jean-Louis Barrault’s concept of “Total Theatre” and Antonin Artaud’s “Theatre of Cruelty.” Echoing Barrault’s and Artaud’s revolutionary notions about theater, Rosenthal’s performance aesthetic integrates movement, voice, choreography, improvisation, costuming, lighting, and sets into seismic experiences. This genre of work, total free improvisation, is completely unique. Nobody knows in advance what will happen – not Rosenthal, not Company members, and certainly not the audience. This uncertainty makes the performances psychologically charged for all involved.
“Improvisational theater is the most difficult art form in the world. You can’t perfect your technique and there are no lines to rehearse,” says Rosenthal, “Everything happens in the moment.”
TOHUBOHU! total free improvisation pieces typically start in a similar manner; there is a group warm-up, then Rosenthal directs the group with a few words — sometimes only three or four. The words she selects reflect an idea she’s been thinking about, something related to a current event, a random verb, or perhaps instructions for the number of elements to include on stage. The studio space is darkened for a few moments. One of Rosenthal’s dogs might run by, wagging its tail, as colored lights and sound emerge from the darkness.
Sets are composed on the spot from lengths of bright fabric, boxes, and folding chairs. Props might be added in by Company members from a large backstage collection of objects that include items such as a dress form, telephone handsets, old books, a houseplant, a bird cage, an oscillating fan, fake plastic flowers, and paper bags. The Company stirs in recorded music, sounds, live music, or perhaps chanting.
These initial seeds germinate a piece. From here, the convulsive physicality of the Company begins. The members’ primal actions operate in concert with each other as well as the formal aesthetic elements of light, sound, props, and physical space. Text, which is primary, even tyrannical, in traditional theater, is absent in uniquely ephemeral TOHUBOHU! Through a mysterious alchemical process, the players act, react, and respond to surprises. They collaborate with each other, and everything around them, to create composition, form, and meaning. Since there is no established narrative to satisfy audience expectations, viewers are forced out of passive complacency as they digest what’s going on and anticipate what might happen next.
Performances function formally in space more like visual art than traditional theater, requiring the audience to actively interpret all the various elements. Results can be either abstract or realistic.
“When it’s good, it’s sublime. And when it’s bad, it can be a painful experience. Much like human existence,” says Rosenthal in a naked assessment of the art form, “Sometimes you walk away scratching your head wondering what the hell you just watched. We embrace that sort of uncertainty and chaos which is counter to highly processed culture.”
If you find yourself looking for unusual Valentine’s Day cards, look no further, because pop culture-obsessed artist Brandon Bird has come up with what are probably the most unusual valentines you are likely to find—ever! Yup, the kitschmeister supreme responsible for the classic painting No One Wants to Play Sega with Harrison Ford has done it again with: SVU Valentine’s Day cards, or, as Brandon prefers, “Saint Victims Unit” cards.
Nuthin’ says lovin’ like a DNA specimen jar or a spiteful Fred Thompson scowl, are you with me? And what’s more, there are high-res versions you can download and print out yourself that are 100% free on his blog.
P.S.: When you visit his website, do not miss the Letters to Walken section documenting an art project of Bird’s that saw schoolchildren writing their annual Christmas letters to ... Christopher Walken.
Arthur magazine spotted this on the blog of Rick Veitch, one of the best artists in weird comics. Rick Veitch did some of the best issues of Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing in the 80s, taking on the art duties after Steve Bisette and John Totleben. He later took on the writing duties as well after Moore left, and became a one-man tank churning out monthly issues of the best horror comic at DC. As far as I know those issues have never been collected, but they’re amazing. Anyway, Mr. Veitch just saw his soul in a dream:
Over the last couple weeks I’ve found myself in a number on conversations with different people about the nature of the soul. The soul is one of those subjects that everyone has an opinion of but nobody really knows what the darn thing is or even if it really exists. Interestingly, I had a dream the other night in which I saw my soul! It was basically a globe with lots of geometric shapes attached that was constantly changing at a rapid rate. I’ve made a quick little black and white animation that kind of gets it across. In the dream there was an ever-changing riot of pattern and color on each of the geometric shapes. Maybe at some point I’ll do a color version of this to make it complete…
Although it may come as a surprise to some readers of this blog, I’m a huge Ugly Betty fan and have been from the beginning. It’s got one of the best casts of any TV show on any network today and I look forward to seeing all of them going on to new projects. America Ferrera is one of the most charismatic young actresses out there, I’ve enjoyed her performances immensely in everything I’ve seen her in and I hope the dynamic comedic pairing of real life best friends Michael Urie and Becki Newton lives on in future projects. (And if no one will pay them to do something together, they should do it themselves, like a talk show. All they need is a camera and someone to talk to and it will be great). Such memorable characters, all of them.
And Ugly Betty had some of the best writers, directors, stylists, art directors and set designers in the business. Each and every episode was a meticulously crafted, deeply moving gem. It was creative down to the transitions between scenes. It upped the ante for TV comedy in some many different ways. In its entire run there were very, very few “eh” episodes. Maybe only one.
ABC say that fans of the show will be satisfied at how the series is resolved—there will be eight more episodes—and I hope that’s true, but it was a sad day in our household when we heard that Ugly Betty would be no more.
