Everything That Happens Will Happen Today

From the Guardian:

"As a foreigner in New York," Eno explained, "I was surprised by how little attention Americans paid to their own great indigenous musical invention: gospel. It was even slightly uncool - as though the endorsement of the music entailed endorsing all the religious framework associated with it. To me gospel was a music of surrender, and the surrendering rather than the worshipping was the part that interested me. This idea has informed my music ever since: I guess it's the reason I use modes and chords which are easy to follow and easy to harmonise with. I want the music to be inviting, to offer you a place inside it."

"I think David responded to this with sensitivity and skill, and his natural edginess made those familiar progressions sound new to me."

For Byrne the challenge in this "electronic gospel" style is to write songs that are "simple but not corny, basic but heartfelt. The results, in many cases, were uplifting, hopeful and positive- even though there were lyrics about cars exploding, war and similarly dark scenarios."

Don't forget the last time these two worked together:

And Now, a Word from Our Sponsors

Whores

I am not naive. I live smack dab in the middle of our mass consumer culture and know that every object, institution, idea and tradition carries at minimum a small stain of commercialism. This modern fact of life causes minor tremors of nausea when I ponder the specifics in detail, so mostly I avert my eyes and hum to myself. However, every once in a while there is a cataclysmic lowering of the bar that manages to catch my attention and drain the few remaining drops of optimism I have left.

Case in point, these two recent stories from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times:

Chew on This: Hit Song Is a Gum Jingle
Sharp-eared pop-music fans may have noticed a brief reference to an old chewing-gum jingle buried in "Forever," Chris Brown's top-10 hit. "Double your pleasure/double your fun," the R&B singer croons in the chorus.

What listeners don't know -- and what Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. planned to reveal Tuesday -- is that the song is a commercial.

A Product’s Place Is on the Set
In recent weeks, anchors on the Fox affiliate in Las Vegas, KVVU, sit with cups of McDonald’s iced coffee on their desks during the news-and-lifestyle portion of their morning show. The anchors rarely touch the cups.

Executives at the station, one of 12 owned by Meredith Corporation, say the six-month promotion is meant to shore up advertising revenue and, as they told the news staff, will not influence content.

Again, I am no Pollyanna when it comes to the pervasiveness of product placement and both of these events seem kind of inevitable, but I've always been slightly buoyed by the pretense that the content of music and news are sacred ground. Now it looks like all pretense has sunk and the race to the bottom has begun.

This got me wondering whether fine art might be the next sacred cow to tip and, more importantly, how I can ride that product placement vanguard all the way to the bank? I had it all wrong when I dreamed of mass merchandising my work. Clearly, the surer path to riches can be found by charging others to place their products in my work. Bridgestone Tires, please call me now.

Here now a musical editorial from our correspondent, Neil Young:

Of Killer Rabbits and Fireworks

Over the past four weeks I have been aggressively focused on making new images for Domesticated. This typically involves weekday trips to Matamoras with my intern, Olga, to scout locations and work out the details and then a return trip on the weekend to shoot. The journey to Matamoras is about 200 miles round trip and on a summer weekend it can take upwards of two hours to get out there. I think I have a couple of new winning shots in the bag, but I want to make at least four or five more over the next couple of months.

Every trip to Matamoras is an adventure.

The weekend before last we were shooting with rabbits. What a disaster. Rabbits are little bastards with sharps claws and the predisposition of a meth addict. Don't ever be fooled by their cuddly appearance or their cute names. Little Bunny Froo Froo my ass. A couple of hours and endless rabbit scratches later we called off the shoot.

Actual scene from our rabbit shoot

This past weekend was an experiment with fireworks, a raccoon and trash dumpster. A visit from Matamora's finest and a small dumpster fire forced us to face facts and call it a night. It was almost 9pm at this point and we had been in Matamoras since 1:30pm. We were a little hungry and dubious of food possibilities at that hour, so we set out on a quest for nourishment.

After a short drive down I-84 we found ourselves facing an unholy trinity of theme-restaurant options: Outback, Chili's and T.G.I. Friday's. Typically I don't eat at these restaurants and when I do I feel like I need my stomach and my soul pumped. We rolled the dice and picked T.G.I. Friday's (the only major brand in the US with an implied "God" in the name). As we prepared to enter the front doors we noticed the glowing restaurant sign which suggested the Friday's in the name was not a reference to the day of the week, but some kind of of Dada-esque motivational acronym. Food-Real-Innovative-Drinks-American-You-Service. Genius.

We ate as fast as we could, put on the Black Keys and made the long journey back to the friendly confines of New York.

We will be back at it again next weekend and the weekend after that and the weekend after that...

I've Been Hijacked

I just received two copies of the wonderful new photo book, Hijacked Volume One: Australia and America. The book was edited by Mark McPherson & Max Pam and is an excellent survey of emerging photographers in Australia and America. They were kind enough to include eight of my photos over twelve pages in the book. Also included are friends Jon Gitelson, Lisa Kereszi, Bill Sullivan, Shen Wei, Grant Willing and Alana Celii.

Mark McPherson has been quite the hustler and has managed to set up book launches and exhibitions in New York, Berlin and Australia. The video below is from ABC Australia about the exhibit at The Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney.



Pick up a copy today.

Not MySpace Anymore

I just watched NAS perform "Sly Fox" on the Colbert Report and it immediately struck me that every time I visit or promote MySpace I am supporting News Corp, Fox News, The New York Post and the whole Rupert Murdoch evil empire.

Screw that!

I am done with MySpace. Just pulled the plug. And if you are sick of Fox News and their "fair and balanced" propaganda pap you should cancel your account too.

Battle Photo: Hungry Eyes!

© Peter Sutherland

vs.

© Andrea Galvani

He Would Look Good Above the Couch

Amani © Jon Feinstein

On Thursday I went to the opening of the I'll Be Your Mirror...So You Can Break Into Endless Shards group exhibition at Heist Gallery. No air-conditioning plus a steady stream of hipsters usually equals bad news in my book, but I was hanging with Amani Olu, Tim Briner, Geoff Ellis, Greg Wasserstom and Ali Malone, so the evening turned out to be a blast.

We were on the premises to support Jon Feinstein and see his piece in the show. And what a striking piece it is (see above)! When I first met Jon and Amani a little over a year ago I thought they were a couple and told them they were very cute together. They still laugh about that today and then quickly change the conversation to their girlfriends and the Jets as they crush beer cans with their manly hands.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

From National Geographic News:

Bees Enlisted to Attack Crows in Tokyo
Conservationists hope bees will repel the crows, based on the insects' tendency to attack anything dark-colored that approaches their hives.

This year beehives from rural areas were relocated to the top of a large water-treatment facility near Tokyo's international airport, where as many as 4,000 birds known as little terns nest after a long migration from Australia, New Zealand, and Papua New Guinea.

This has Bad Idea Jeans written all over it.

Eight Photographers, Eight Weeks

White Horse © Tema Stauffer

Tonight the Randall Scott Gallery in Washington, D.C. kicks off an interesting summer program. Randall has lined up eight amazing photographers to do four two-week, two-person shows. The opening tonight will include work by all eight photographers and then Saturday begins the first two-person show featuring Tema Stauffer and Kyoko Hamada.

In the coming weeks Randall will be presenting two-person shows featuring Jessica Dimmock and Peter Van Agtmael, Alexandra Catiere and Shen Wei and Alison Brady and Ryoko Suzuki. If you are in the district this is a rare chance to see some great photography in rapid fire succession.

Here are the details:

Eight Photographers
Randall Scott Gallery
July 11th—Sept 5th
1326 14th Street NW
Washington, D.C.
Opening Reception: Friday, July 11, 7-9pm

But The Good News Is...

From The Pod People series © Peter Snyder

The bad news is that for globe trekking foreign fighters Pakistan is the new Iraq (which was the old Afghanistan), the Senate just sold out your privacy and chicken tastes better with money.

But the good news is...

You can still see lots of great work from the 2008 Review Santa Fe participants at Flak Photo. Highlights so far include work by Peter Snyder and Thomas Broening. Look for the work of Eric Percher, Colleen Plumb and Rachael Dunville in the next few weeks.

Tom Holton is still selling $175 limited "benefit" prints to help the Lams who lost their home to fire. You can read more about their story and see the prints here. If you are interested, contact Tom directly at thomas@thomasholton.com or call him at (917) 364-8044.

I bought this print from Tom:

© Thomas Holton

And, good news for all you moderate drinkers, a new study indicates that abstention from alcohol has the equivalent effect of taking a handful of Quaaludes and then reading The Bell Jar with Morrissey. So drink up. Cheers!

Light Rail Coyote

Inspiration rarely lands fully formed in my lap ready to party. Sometimes inspiration comes in fevered flashes of random images as I sleep; most of the time it comes in a slow march of real world dots and dabs that eventually add up to something grand. For Domesticated some of those dots came from the now defunct band Sleater-Kinney.


Sleater-Kinney's exploration of the tense space between the natural and human world seemed to begin at about the same time I was exploring the initial ideas behind my project. Starting with the song "Light-Rail Coyote" (inspired by the newspaper article above) and ending with the cover art for their final album The Woods and the video for "Entertain," Sleater-Kinney's choice of imagery and words helped inform the direction of my work in ways I didn't fully realize at the time.

Todd Hido and Suicide Story

© Todd Hido for The New York Times

In case you missed it, great moody images from Todd Hido illustrate an article on suicide in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine.

New American Fables Opening Thursday at Robert Koch Gallery

Unititled (Spiderman) 2005 © Amy Stein

I am traveling to San Francisco today for the Thursday opening of my New American Fables show at the Robert Koch Gallery. The show features work from my Domesticated and Halloween in Harlem series and runs through August 23.

If you are San Francisco tomorrow stop by the opening and say hello.

Here are the details:

New American Fables | Amy Stein
Robert Koch Gallery
June 12 - August 23
49 Geary Street, 5th Floor
San Francisco, CA
Opening Reception: Thursday, July 3, 5:30-7:30pm