Dead Hare Radio Hour show #1 hits the airwaves

It's out of the bag.  The first show of the Dead Hare Radio Hour aired yesterday afternoon at 5pm.  We'll be doing it again next Tuesday at 5pm on Independent Radio, WVKR 91.3 FM in Poughkeepsie.

But you can listen to show #1 here:




The Dead Hare Radio podcast is available for download via iTunes today.

The Vassar College Newspaper, The Miscellany News ran an article this week on the Dead Hare Radio Hour.

Only through meeting with the Misc.'s arts editor did I learn that the paper has a fully populated and updated website, which is great news for anyone who has been stymied and frustrated by the lack of information coming out of Vassar about events and talks and the like that often happen at Vassar and to which the public is welcome..

The Dead Hare Radio Hour Coming Your Way 3/22/2011

 
I've been chained to my computer of late even more than previously.  The culprit behind this turn of events (aside from my own impetuous urge to get my self into burdensome, but rewarding projects) is The Dead Hare Radio Hour.
DHRH is a joint project with Matthew Slaats.  He had proposed to me the possibility of doing an art related radio show at least a year ago.  Ideas are easy to say yes to when they are just ideas.  Matthew had shopped the concept around to a couple of local internet radio operations before it occurred to him to check with Vassar College's radio station, WVKR. Matthew works at Vassar in the technology department.  The proposal was accepted and we were suddenly faced with a new recurring deadline, another unpaid gig that comes fully loaded with a vacuum custom made for sucking up hours of personal time.  We both had one of those "oh shit" moments.  Then we went forward, with trepidation and excitement at every step.
Our first show airs tomorrow, March 22 at 5pm, Eastern Time.  Our regular timeslot - provided we're not pitched from the station will be Tuesdays from 5-6pm.  In addition to the broadcast originating in the Hudson Valley (the signal strength is 3400 watts and can be heard in portions of five states,)  the show will be streamed live on WVKR's website, and it will be available for download as a podcast. (Podcast will be available for download by Wednesday evenings....consider subscribing to it - when the feed is set up this Wednesday.)

The format of the show will largely be talk, with interviews and conversations with artists and curators and such, but we also want to feature sound works from artists and musicians and folks who are engaged in radio as an art medium.
Matthew and I are of like minds on many fronts - one of them being that we both are interested in catalyzing and sharing conversations about art and culture -  but we bring different aspects to the show.  He's an artist with heavy a social practice bent and I tinker in the studio.  I think he's more concerned with investigating the role of the artist in society than I am and this may well be reflected in the directions we each follow in uncovering content for the show.

The Hudson Valley will be a major focus of the show content, a - because there's a lot of interesting people and projects based here, and b - because this is where we're at, and the content of the show will, in some way, be borne of convenience (but not of laziness.)  But it's not only going limited to this region...by any means.  We'll be capturing the folks we encounter on our art-driven paths.  It's a big/small world out there and we're interested in examining how concerns/inspirations/connectedness in large and small contexts intermingle and influence the work and conversations that are happening on the ground, in any region.  We will be bringing on board other contributors to add to our coverage.

Given our schedules, much of the show content will be pre-recorded, although we look forward to doing some live in studio things as we are able.  I think we're both far less interested in interviewing people than capturing conversations between people.  I, for one, am an avid listener.  I hope to set up situations that other folks are apt to enjoy listening to.

So Show #1 features two interviews.  We speak with Carolina Miranda of the blog c-monster.net and Duncan McKenzie of Bad at Sports.  I follow both of these individuals, gladly.  ( I've been an avid listener of the B@S podcast since 2007.  It is my weekly dose of art.)  Part of what I appreciate most about both of these projects is the mixture of intelligent reflection and humor (not rarely, the adolescent kind.)  High and Low, intermingled as they should be.
I find both of these interviews entertaining and informative. I hope ya'll will too.  This being our first show - there is some unevenness in the audio quality of show 1, but we're learning valuable lessons everyday as we get our radio legs.

Why the name?  There's a little context on the Dead Hare website, and I'll be posting a bit on that here soon too.

Today Angelika reminded me of these photos she took of a dead hare several years ago in Eastern Colorado.  Dead Hares are everywhere these days.

The Age of Exploration: Up River, April 2-5, 2010

A homemade, two person, tide and paddle powered vessel is scheduled to set off today on the Hudson River at Tivoli, NY and head north to the Troy dam.  On board the vessel will be artist Marie Lorenz and curator Diana Stevenson as a project by Lorenz called Up River and represents Stevenson's thesis which is part of the Spring line up of Bard Curatorial Studies Thesis Exhibitions.  A new round of graduate exhibitions open on Sunday, April 11 from 1-4pm.
Between today and April 5, the pair will be posting photos taken along the exploration on an hourly basis.  One can subscribe to the trips rss feed plugging into one's url:  http://www.marielorenz.com/inprogress/?cat=25&feed=rss2 , into your feed reader.  One may also choose to follow along on the Up River page of the artist's website.  There is also a facebook fan page for the project.
This project is a more subdued and, I expect, precise endeavor than Swoon's Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea which barrelled down the river in 2008.
The duo will give a lecture and slide show on the expedition on May 6, 2010 at 7:30 at the Tivoli Town Hall in Tivoli, NY.

My City Was Gone|What is ever lost? Mapping Place and "Space with Freespace

Matthew Slaats is not a fellow who is ever wanting for a way to fill his down time.  He concluded the Hyde Park Visual History Project last October with a long awaited interactive projection at the Hyde Park Drive In and now he's fully involved in the Midddle Main Revitalization effort, working to leverage artistic activity to invigorate the cultural and economic life in a stretch of Poughkeepsie's Main St.

Matthew's work is interactive and participatory.  His impulse is toward community building and he engenders that in activities which are engineered to pool the knowledge, experience and creativity of a given community.

His latest project is an online and real world project called Freespace.  The website of Freespace seeks to generate a network of sites of of significance - of personally held significance as opposed to significance on an institutional or national scale.  The nature of the project is open ended and will ultimately be determined by the aggregated character of submissions by the public, and the site will map those locations and experiences and individual's experiences tied to that location.   As stated in the website's About section, the impetus for the project arose out of a visit to the Vanderbilt Mansion in Hyde Park as a way to spur a sort of National Park System that reflects the American experience of the common individual.  The project is a cataloging of the relationships built between people and place.
When Matthew sent the link and an invitation to participate I was reading James Fallows' article How America Can Rise Again in The January 2010 issue of The Atlantic and the pairing felt particularly synchronous.
In the article, Fallows questions several individuals on the state of the nation's well being and tracks the attitude that's been ingrained in the American psyche since its infancy that the society's high point has passed and the downhill slide is underway.  Fallows' inquiry takes stock our current state and indexing the values of today's society against the real and perceived visions of our history.  Freespace is a similar activity, codifying the involuntary habit we all have of staking claims on our surroundings based on our experiences and emotions.  Freespace charts this new territory in land we all already to navigate it with new insight;
it's just one particular approach on remaking the concept of the commons.  Stake a claim, then open it up for your neighbors to enjoy and share.

This Summer of Kork

 Mark Creegan, Untitled, 2009.

Summer is a time of hiatus for many an art space, but not so for kork, the everpumping, everchurning cultural juggernaut in an accounting office in Poughkeepsie, NY.

The post Labor day gearing up of labor came early this season. For the months of May and June, Mark Creegan of Jacksonville FL, labored daily, and made labor daily for the accounting office staff, enlisting them in the creation of artwork with daily requests via email create and post photocopies of various subjects. There's a slide show of the collaboration's results on the kork blog.

Since the beginning of July and still up through Aug 31, Denver based artist Lauri Lynnxe Murphy presaged the weirdly wet Summer we've experienced by imagining the outcome of a clash between the forces of nature clashes and the manufactured atmosphere of the office space environment. What she's come up with is a bio/botanical form that look like animated shrooms sporting a margarita's salted rim.

Lauri Lynnxe Murphy, Untitled, 2009.

Christopher Patch and Bridget Mullen, both artists based in Brooklyn are teaming up to take the Sept/Oct shift on the board.

Matthew Slaats presenting material from the Hyde Park Project tonight in Staatsburg, 8pm

Matthew Slaats will be giving a presentation on the Hyde Park Project (the project's original blog is here.)tonight at the Staatsburg Library beginning at 8:30 pm.  The Staatsburg Library is located at 70 Old Post Rd.

Slaats has been collecting and digitizing a visual history of Hyde Park in the form of old photographs and films and he will be showing some of the material from the project tonight.

Details on tonight's presentation can be found here.

As the WOrMS Turns

After four years of organizing the Windows on Main St. project, Karlos Carcamo and I are passing the torch to whomever may want to pick it up.
KC and I instigated the project in 2005 as a way for artists to interact with the local environment, merchants and inhabitants of Beacon's Main St. We also envisioned the exhibition as an artist driven open source project that would shift in its form according to whomever is involved in developing the current incarnation of it.
In these four years, we've received an incredible level of interest and participation on behalf of our local merchants. We've also enjoyed the financial support of BACA, the Dutchess County Arts Council, The Community Foundation, and Rhinebeck Savings Bank.
We've been able to facilitate some great moments for the participating artists and, I believe, for street bound viewers. I have very much appreciated the ways in which my experience of Main St. has been altered or informed by the projects that been done. I've said several times before that my perception of this project is that it's an intimate endeavor. For me, the exhibition is summed up in the singular chance encounter between passerby and artwork at that very moment in the viewer's day in that very spot along the viewer's path. WOMS is also about the artist and business person who may become just a little more familiar with one another through the host/collaboration experience.
Karlos and I have spoken about taking the project into a fifth year, but at this moment, we feel that the moment is beyond ready for some new custodianship. I think these four years have been a good start and I hope someone will be willing to pick it up and explore new aspects of engaging our immediate surroundings in creative exchanges.
If anyone is interested in rolling WOMS forward, shoot me an email.

Bridge Music goes digital

Joseph Bertolozzi announced last month that, commencing in the Spring, his Bridge Music project will have a permanent digital presence on the Mid Hudson Bridge in Poughkeepsie. Listening stations located on the pedestrian portion of the bridge, at the bridge's two towers will serve up the musical composition at the touch of a button. A future feature will entail a low frequency transmitter by which the work can be listened to via car radio or other personal receiver on and in the vicinity of the bridge.
The original live performance has been postponed pending sufficient financial sponsorship.
A more formal release of information will be forthcoming as the implementation of the digital phase draws near.
Sources have it that Bertoluzzi, who is a recipient of a 2008 NYFA Artist Fellowship in Music Composition will be reaching a milestone birthday later this month.
If you're interested in finding out more about the Bridge Music Project, or supporting it, visit Joe's website.

Mike & Doug Starn's Big Bambu Taking Root in Beacon

image via: starnstudio.com

On Friday morning I met with George Mansfield at the former Tallix building here in Beacon to take a peek at Mike and Doug Starn's Big Bambu project. Press releases went out recently about the work that's been underway in Beacon since September (I first saw the p.r. on beaconite.ning.com).

Big Bambu is a matrix of bamboo stalks lashed together to create a structure that brushes against the 50ft high ceiling and pretty much fills the width of the main hall of the building. Construction began at the western end of the space, proceeding to the east for some length (to about a third of the length of the space?) where the top of the form overtakes the base, acquiring the aspects of the curve of a wave creating an arch as it curls to meet the floor. It will be from this point, when work resumes in the Spring after a Winter hiatus, that the whole bamboo form will begin "walking" or flowing onward. Piece by piece, poles of bamboo will be removed from the point of origin (now the rear) of the structure, and grafted onto the leading edge.
A dozen or so climbers from the Shawangunks are scaling and tying the poles together using their newly learned techniques implemented in bamboo scaffolding construction throughout Asia.
If you can't squeeze a discernible image from my description, check out the Starns' website. There are images and video of the installation and an animation that will give you a sense of the projected mechanics as this thing goes kinetic.

This thing is massive. The video give a better sense of the structure than the photos, but neither really captures the light organic messiness of the work that it has in person. Images capture the erector set-like geometry of the construction, but the varied widths of the poles and the addition of some with clusters of leaves on them softens the overall appearance. Some of the thinner poles have a bit of an arc to them as their ends bend freely in the voids and on the edge of the form . This is just enough to lend the appearance of being woven and pliable. Chris Burden's actual Erector Set Rockafeller installation from earlier this year was tame and lame compared to this invasive growth.
The cavernous space that surrounds Big Bambu is seeded with some of the artists' other works (ginormous framed photo/collages leaning or hanging at various heights as well banner sized digital prints on a translucent gauzy paper suspended from high up) in a very in situ kind of way created punctuated sight lines throughout. The naturally lit industrial space enhances the living, supple quality of the bamboo.

As I understand it, there's a possibility that the Starns will open up the project for public viewing in the spring.

Seeing this activity in this building serves as a reminder of the enormous amount of space of similarly extraordinary dimension that sits dormant in this city. It's amazing to think of the untapped architectural resources in the collection of factories and industrial buildings that could serve as the foundation for a wave of development and economic and creative activity - and perhaps one or two kick ass bars too.

Monday's NY Times is running an item on the Starns and the South Ferry Subway Terminal in NYC that they've been working on for the past several years.

Head and shoulders: Participants sought for photo shoot

Angelika Rinnhofer will be photographing at the Howland Cultural Center on Sunday, December 21, and she is looking for models.
As part of a project in development, Angelika will be on the balcony photographing groups of people from above.
Participants are asked to be at the Howland Center at 2:00 on Sunday Dec. 21, and wear dark colored clothes.

If you're interested in milling about for short time, brandishing your cowlick, shoot her an email at angelika[dot]rinnhofer[at]gmail[dot]com, and let her know.

Your participation in this project will help keep a photographer busy photographing, and not doing something crazy, like trying to drive a school bus.

Cast thine eyes Mt. Beacon-ward on the morrow

Tomorrow evening (Tues, Nov 25) from 5-9pm a series of light Beacons will be be ignited to commemorate the evacuation of British Troops from America way back when. The light project will be sited in 11 locations in NY and NJ.
The NY locations include:
Bear Mountain State Park, Bear Mountain, NYStorm King Mountain State Park, Cornwall, NYWashington's Headquarters State Historic Site, Newburgh, NYScenic Hudson's Mount Beacon, Beacon, NYScenic Hudson's Spy Rock (Snake Hill), New Windsor, NY.

Scenic Hudson, the Palisades Parks Conservancy, the Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area, the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, and the Palisades Interstate Park Commission have partnered together to produce this project.

Further information on the lighting project can be found at: HVPress.net, DailyRecord.com,