Clock of the Long Now

On one of my first nights in town, I went to a woman named Teague's house for her 28th Birthday. Felicity and I were in charge of making vegan carrot cake cupcakes.

During the evening, I met a guy named Matt who was interested in my work with The Committee, and told me about another think tank called the Clock of the Long Now. I've done some research into this, and found the following links to be intriguing:
http://www.longnow.org/press/articles/Michael_Chabon_-_The_Omega_Glory.pdf
http://blog.longnow.org/
http://www.longnow.org/projects/

I think I need to spend more time with this. Maybe a long time. But it's worth sharing.

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Hostesses with the Mostess

During my stay in Melbourne, I had two lovely hostesses - Lisa Radford from Damp, and Felicity Managan, a friend of Lisa's and mine. These ladies picked me up from the airport, lent me a cell phone for the week, made sure my afternoons and evenings were booked with openings, music shows, dinners and parties, drove me out of the city to see the bush and beach, and introduced me to everyone we came across.
I always think it's interesting to see pictures of people in their homes. so here are two pictures, Lisa moving across her apartment, and Floss on the phone in her kitchen on Lygon St.

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Lane Cormick @ Neon Parc

One of my favorite events of the trip was a visit to an opening at what I hear is a new-ish gallery in Melbourne, off of a laneway (alley) north of the central business district.
When we showed up at the gallery, it was closed, and men in black ski masks were releasing freshly inked flyers out of the windows. Flyers that read things like "Shit is real".
They also threw cans of beer, wrapped in tape out the windows like little molotov cocktails from the windows, while shouting derogatory remarks at the audience.
Understandably, the audience huddled across the alley under a the eaves of the sidewalk.

At some point, two long 2x4's emerged out of a crack at the base of the venetian blinds, and two huge banners were unfurled.


For the remainder of the evening, the crowd watched, drank beer, picked up some of the flyers to take home (I kept the one that said "show us ya titties" for sheer shock value), and speculated about how the show would end.
Eventually, the banners were retracted, the guy who'd been massaging his crotch in the window for the past 45 minutes disappeared, and everything went quiet.
To the left of the gallery entrance was a tv monitor with live feed showing the interior of the gallery, and we watched as the men put on jackets, hats, and headed down stairs, out the door, on to the street, and down the alley. A little anticlimactic, but entertaining nonetheless.

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Alex Baker/NGV

Just before leaving town, Harrell emailed me a
link to an article in Melbourne's paper about the new curator of contemporary art at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) and suggested I try to see up a meeting with him. We were able to have coffee together during the latter half of the week, and spent an hour or so discussing the differences between funding and organizational structures of museums in the US and Melbourne. We also talked a bit about the program, my work, and Alex's prior work in Pennsylvania.

Alex was also gracious enough to come see my talk at VCA on Friday. Here's a great picture of him saluting while we listened to the Mostlandian Anthem.

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Citizen Boruk Gradman

When I sent the show announcement to the citizens, I mentioned I'd be in town for a few days and available to grab a beer if anyone was interested. We got what I thought were a surprising amount replies, and I managed to see several people, including Boruk, pictured above. I guess an Ambassador's work is never done.

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Group Group Show Images

I can hardly do it justice here, but I took some pictures of the Group Group Show installation with my hand-held camera. I'll post the images below the cut.


pictured: The Kingpins
Chicks On Speed showed a video, lots of nekkid ladies rockin out in a lush green jungle (?).

Damp's family tree- each member of the group worked with another member to try and draw the child they would have were they to have progeny. I believe there was flipping of coins to determine sex. See the original portraits above, and the final two children at the bottom.


Selected Originals from the Archives for the Recollection of Collections


There are obviously more groups - my connection is poor right now and each image is taking 3 minutes to load, so I'll get more up later!

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MIBEM

Another thing I did in while I was away was go to a night of the Melbourne International Biennial of Exploratory Music. One of my favorite pieces was by Lukas Simonis from Rotterdam, pictured below.


Trying to write about this kind of music makes me feel illiterate, however I will say that he had an impressive understanding of silence. That, and he was adept at using a flourescent green toothbrush with a guitar.


Other musicians playing during the night I attended were:
- Jérôme Noetinger, who theatrically made amazing sounds come from a reel to reel tape player,
- A band called POST, or maybe a person playing with a band who is known in solo as POST, who switched back and forth between sound pieces and country music
-David Chesworth & Sonia Leber, who filled the room with sounds of a group of 5 women making sighing sounds at intermittant intervals built up and overlapped over time
and
-DJ Downpat. An interesting turn in events lead me to meet Pat at a friend's birthday party. When he found out I was from Portland, he asked me to hand-deliver a letter to Mississippi Records. The letter is kind of like a fan letter mixed with a request to be able to distribute their music out of an artist run space in Melbourne. Not only that, but Pat was generous to give both me and Mississippi a free CD. Yay! I am enjoying the intrigue of being a carrier pigeon of sorts, and will update the blog once I know what happens with the whole transaction.

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Unmag Article

Here's a link to a PDF of unMagazine, with an article including The M.O.S.T. titled, "Conflict, Hierarchy, and Hard Work." (pg. 22)

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