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As I mentioned in my last post, Jessada took me for a ride to go see some Muay Thai while the iguana was being prepared. I had been asking about seeing some boxing since I got to Thailand, but I wasn’t sure if it was going to happen. What ended up happening was much cooler than seeing a big match in the city - I got to watch a boxing exhibition by some of the young students in the village in a makeshift home training ring.

The fellow who was training the students spoke no English, and to most of the kids in the village, I might as well been from another planet, so communication was a no-go. But they were super proud of their fighting skills, and they took the sparring match very seriously. The makeshift nature of the training equipment and area are proof positive that you don’t need to have tons of fancy equipment or gadgets to do serious martial arts training.

After my visit to Thailand, I got the feeling that Muay Thai has the same role in Thai society as baseball or AYSO soccer does in the states - something almost every kid does, but not many do it past adolescence. Everybody’s into it as a spectator as an adult, though. Only one of my friends in Kalasin seemed really into it as an adult, and he had the Bruce Lee physique and haircut to show for it.

You can see all of my Thai boxing photos here.  Two personal favourites are this image of the two boys facing off and this image of one of the students helping his fellow student tie his cup on in preparation for the match.

I ate a lot of new and interesting things in Thailand, including adding several new species to my list of “things that I’m definitely above in the food chain.” I don’t recall ever eating a reptile before, so Iguana works on two levels.

I’m usually pretty enthused about eating something totally new, but I was kind of nervous about the Iguana. I distinctly remember Iguana as being the one thing that Tony Bourdain has repeatedly described as awful, on the air, in print and in interviews, and that knowledge was definitely present in my mind. I’ve got a pretty decent photo narrative of the meal, from hunting, to cooking, to the finished meal, so I’ll let the pictures, with some commentary, tell the story.

above - Jessada with an Iguana. This is a little guy, and when Ole and Danoi arrived with it, we weren’t sure if there would be enough iguana or big enough iguana to eat. That’s Ole in the background, wearing the baseball cap.

above - Deceased iguana in a moped basket. There’s something “so Thailand” about a moped basket filled with lunch-to-be, and I can’t quite explain it.

above - Danoi shooting mangosteen with a slingshot. As far as I can tell, every male in Kalasin under 40 has a home made slingshot, and is deadly accurate with it. I was never quite able to figure out how old all of my friends in Kalasin were, but Jessada is in his 30’s, and they seem to have grown up together. Everyone got really, really into shooting at the mangosteen. Their enthusiasm reminded me a lot of being a teenager and spending months practicing with blowguns and throwing axes.

above - Back at Ole’s house, Lek (who’s personality totally goes with the awesome cowboy hat - strong, silent type, all the way) skinned and cleaned the iguana. One of these guys was totally alive throughout the whole skinning process, and was still moving when he hit the coals. If you’d like to see a close-up of the plate of skinned iguana, look here.

above - Ole cooks the iguana over a small charcoal brazier. My host, Jessada, had a house fully equipped with a modern kitchen, but everyone else in the village that I met did most of their cooking in the yard, over charcoal. This area where Ole is cooking is directly adjacent to their water storage cistern and is home to a variety of livestock during the day. The kind of kitchen sterility that we think is normal or healthy in the West is totally absent in rural Thailand.

After shooting this photo, Jessada said “You want to go see boxing?” and threw me onto the back of a moped to go see some young kids practicing their kickboxing, which was awesome. More on that in another post.

above - Here Danoi mixes and mashes the iguana with spices. I had no idea what he was doing, as I had been gone watching kids box for about 20 minutes. The mortar and pestle seem to be a basic part of food prep in Kalasin. Danoi and Ole were both enthusiastic cooks. That knife that’s on the plate in front of Danoi was used for every imaginable kitchen task, as was the big round of wood at the bottom of the photo. Despite the total lack of “Western style sanitation”, all of the cooks I saw in Kalasin were really meticulous about cleaning their cutting surface, and their blades.

above - Danoi cuts green papaya to make the ubiquitous green papaya salad that accompanies every meal in Kalasin. Usually there would be two kinds of salad, one spicy and one more savory.

above - the finished lunch, ready to serve. The dish in the center with the hard boiled eggs and the garlic is the iguana. Center, with the leafy herb is a sort of glass noodle with fish sauce, on the left is the omnipresent green papaya salad, the soup just above and to the left of the noodle was this pumkin/squash & beef soup that was insanely good, the dish to the right it more iguana with hard boiled eggs and the dish at the very top is another green papaya salad. The baskets all had Isaan style sticky rice. The whole meal was eaten with the hands, although I was still really clumsy at eating Isaan style and the guys brought me a spoon, since I was getting my fingers in everything.

To be totally honest, the iguana was not that interesting, although it was novel. It certainly wasn’t the off-putting disaster that Tony Bourdain encountered in Mexico, though. I actually didn’t realize that I was eating the iguana (it wasn’t really a big deal to anyone), until I was halfway through the meal. I kept thinking “where is the iguana?”, since I was gone for much of the prep. Only after eating a ton of it, with the egg, I realised “Oh, that’s the iguana!” According to my notes the flavour of the iguana was mint/chili/iguana.

The pumpkin/squash based beef soup was one of the best things I tasted in Thailand, and I’d kill to know how to make it myself. The squash had the best mouth feel, incredibly tender, awash in a barely oily beef broth.

I think this was the second meal that I ate with Kalasin style whiskey. In Thailand, any hard liquor is called whiskey, and the Kalasin style is basically a fermented rice grain alcohol. The fermentation appears to be somewhat inefficient, as it has a hard hangover. The plus side to the inefficient fermentation is the whiskey has a sort of raisin finish that’s really, really nice. Whiskey in Thailand is drunk as a shot, followed by a glass of water. Generally the whiskey and water are drunk out of a pair of glasses that are shared and passed around, which is a nice social experience. Thai people seem to have a general low tolerance for alcohol, as they really were concerned that I might drink too much and get plastered, but their version of plastered seems to be really conservative by American standards. I really miss Kalasin whiskey, now that I can’t get it.

Still churning through the thousands of images I shot in Thailand. This is one of my favourites. I shot this on my first visit to the fields near the farming village in Kalasin where I spent half my trip. There’s this beautiful orange/gray twilight in Eastern Thailand, that’s unlike anything we’ve got in the states, and it was settling over the fields when I first visited them, making them seem even more magical and alien.

Tattoos are casual and everywhere in Thailand. Even the army guys patrolling in Bangkok have prominent tattoos on them. I saw three separate tattooing booths at the Red Cross festival in Kalasin. Lots of text, and a fair amount of imported Western flash. Lots of European tourists sporting great big tribal flash pieces too. This guy had the coolest tattoo I saw in Thailand, a simple line drawing, full backpiece of a butterfly. He’s covered with other, faded tattoos as well, but you’ve really gotta zoom in to see those.

I ate a fair amount of fish while I was in the village, and I keep wondering if any of the fish I ate was the product of this man’s labour. I’ll never know, I guess. This guy was really nice - just like everyone else in the village. I shot two more images of him, but the on up top came out best. Alternate images here & here.

I’ve hiked my shorts up over my belly button to write this, but I’ve got a gripe with these young artists and their “on campus art opening” music. I’ve been to two on campus openings lately, a pack of BA/MFA openings at CSULB and an Open House at El Camino College, and I’ve found that no matter how much you’re spending to buy your way into the art club (that’s the primary purpose of art school, right?), you can’t buy taste in music.

I’m getting to be an old fart now, I’ve got very little ideas to what the cool bands are - I can’t tell an Arcade Fire from an Interpol, unless we’re talking about a video arcade on fire or a European police agency (an aside - the best reading in art is and always will be Interpol art theft reports). So when I go to an opening, I expect to be bombarded by the sounds of new music, music that’s alien, and hurts my soon-to-be-hairy ears. But no, what am I hearing? The sounds of the 80’s.

The DJ at the CSULB opening, was some poor little girl, who while crafting some of the worst musical transitions I’ve ever heard coming off of a turntable, seemed hired to play nothing but mid-late 80’s house party music. Songs like “It Takes Two to Make a Thing Go Right”. Sure, I’ve got a sticky sweet part of my musical soul that grew up on Power 106 bump and grind music, but watching two women in “slut uniforms” dancing badly to the booming sounds of 1987 was too much. I immediately figured it was some kind of performance art - only to be told that one of the sluts had hired the DJ and was herself having an opening.

At El Camino, we were at least spared the vinyl abuse. Another young girl, equipped with her laptop and iTunes, was busily appropriating the KROQ flashback lunch playlist, presumably from some point of irony. Great, the pop music of my youth is the ironic fodder for the generation younger than myself, much as the strutting guitar ballads of the 1970’s are to me. I didn’t get much irony, only the further frustration that a) no one apparently can do a sound check or work a mixing board, even a virtual one, for shit these days, and b) the music of today must really suck if the kids of today aren’t strutting it about at any public opportunity.

I’ve long been a musical outsider, my tastes tend to run independent of my own era, and I’ve walked through many a room playing the latest sounds, blissfully unaware of the identity or even genre of the artists. So I’m disappointed with today’s young artists - shouldn’t you guys be in a noise band, or some tight-pants outfit? Aren’t you supposed to be enmeshed in the creative whirlpool of your generation? I guess I’ve gone on enough here, and I’ve gotten my little lint-ball of frustration out.  Now I feel better.

Maybe I’m still too tired from last week’s craziness to appreciate this show. I’m still a little burnt out from putting together FR8.

I know that there’s a map of sorts that explains the organizational principles behind the arrangements of works, and there’s some obvious instances where clear relationships are created, but the whole thing looked like a muddle to me. It was nice to see some of the works in person, but I’d almost rather just read the catalog than view the show. Having spent the afternoon looking at it, it’s really hard to even write about it, so I won’t write a lot about it.

I come to the show with mixed feelings. I guess generationally/personally I feel so post-feminist that much of the work comes across as naive or alien. Too some degree it’s difficult or impossible for me to really understand or appreciate the context of much of the work in the show.

Everyone I know who’s seen this show has derided it as a vagina-fest, and that’s not a far off description. The Judy Chicago nook comes immediately to mind. There’s also a huge amount of work in WACK! that strays far from cliche-territory, like Marta Minujin and Richard Squires’ Soft Gallery, a cube-like structure made out of mattresses strapped to an aluminum support structure, which was one of my favourite things in the show. Back on the “genital centric feminist art” angle, it was great to see Cosey Fanni Tutti’s work in the gallery (I’m a huge Chris and Cosey fan), her pornography based work got stronger reaction from viewers than anything else that I saw there.

The exhibition struggles in the Geffen Contemporary space, which has to one degree or another handicapped every show that’s ever been installed there. I can never quite figure out why nothing seems at home in the space, but nothing does. I’m never quite sure if it’s a flaw of the space, or a failure of MOCA to employ the space. It’s massive, and massive spaces aren’t common in Los Angeles. Maybe the Los Angeles viewer is more accustomed or interested in the intimacy of smaller spaces - I finally got to Danial Nord’s show at Haus just before coming to see WACK! and I was much more interested and comfortable in his “two rooms and a hallway of ajar doors” installation that I was in the installation of works at the Geffen.

Has the internet finally made it possible for individuals to commission interesting art? Is art finally making its way to the common man? I’ve recently developed an addiction to these little internet based thematic commissions.

By sending off a name or descriptor, and a few bucks, you can now buy a semi-custom, postcard sized illustrations, by folks with some real skills. I can’t even draw a smiley face or a straight line without a projector. The coolest part is the scale. I own a lot of art, I own more art than I know what to do with. I have nowhere to put art, anymore. But these guys are barely bigger than trading cards, and all you need is a nice little cigar box to store them, when you don’t have them hanging on the wall. I can find room for a cigar box, somewhere…

Thus far, I’ve accumulated a Baba Yaga (above) and a Ham the Chimp, Retired Simian Astronaut, courtesy of Adam Koford, and a She-Cthulhus of the SS, courtesy of Len Peralta. I’m eagerly awaiting the delivery of Giant Baja California Land Urchin, also by Len Peralta. Each one of these little guys only set me back $20 - you can’t beat that. Both Adam and Len have been doing a series of thematic commissions, accepting 100-200 requests per theme.  Another artist, Joe Alterio, has taken a different route, charging $25 for an illustration of a robot or monster, described only with three descriptors (like robot - chicken-legs, rainbow, hippy), which will go to him and his wife’s SF AIDS Marathon charity fund.  Joe’s been flooded with requests, and it will take 6-8 weeks to fill them all, but he’s still taking them until the 22nd.

Looking at all of the illustrations, seeing the amount of hard work and fun that goes into the whole process has been exciting, all by itself.  Even though it does have the potential to bleed one’s wallet, I’m hoping more talented folks join this bandwagon, so I can collect more works.

The FR8 install is moving towards completion. There’s a massive number of pictures from the install in their Flickr set now. Above is my new favourite bit from FR8 - Beth Elliott’s salt lick.  It’s like a Matthew Barney readymade.  I may get to re-visit my No Fate piece from Contemplating Apocalypse sometime in 2008 and I think the throne is going to be made out of these.

I’m a big believer in the inevitability of things, both in art and outside of art. The piece below touches directly on this - it’s inevitable that someone would construct it at some point.

The above photo is an image of Show Card a site specific installation/solo show by Anna Leigh Gold (label here), a student at Cal State Long Beach. It’s entirely made of “show cards”, the postcards that galleries or artists produce to promote exhibitions and events (I’m betting we only see them in use for 5-10 years, before the whole deal goes online, enjoy them while you can). I seem to recall another student, possibly a CSULB MFA, doing a similar project several years back, but the show solely consisted of the cards, which were mailed or distributed.

I’ve got two thoughts on what might be happening here.

a) The artist, either fresh out of ideas, or struggling to compete in an environment where novelty trumps all other values was unable to “come up with anything new”, and hit the wall, so to speak.

b) The artist’s work is the keen analysis that much of the “value” in the art world today is defined by hype and advertising, by reducing the mechanical component of the artwork to the advertising medium, makes a powerful statement about the nature of that world and its values.

Regardless of the motivation, I love the piece, and I wish I had a bigger picture, as it took over the whole room. The cards were meticulously arranged in a way that suggests real planning, precision and hard work, a direct counterpoint to the potential laziness or cynicism one might infer from the concept of the work. The regular element of the scale and design of the show cards gives it a painterly effect, and I loved how it extended all over the floor, and was meant to be walked on. When the artist has total disregard for the longevity of their work, I tend to be much more sympathetic to it, I guess.

My current curatorial project is FR8, an exhibition of twenty-four commissioned and selected artists, as part of the Port of Los Angeles Art on the Waterfront Festival 2007. I curated a six artist “tester/mine canary” version of the exhibition for last year’s festival, and it was a pretty successful project. This year, I’ve curated fourteen artists, one curator and one documenting artist to execute twelve installations and a container featuring nine video artists. There’s also two additional containers for “skate art” that accompanies the skateboarding demos and contest that go on during the daytime festival.

It’s a tricky project. It’s more like putting up a series of solo shows in small project spaces, all at the same time, than putting up a group show. For almost all of these artists, this may be the first time they’ve ever been in a shipping container, a corrugated, steel box installation environment very different from the world of drywall that 99% of art occupies. Add to that the need to source all electrical power from generators, homeland security issues, cruise industry issues, municipal agency liability issues, and were not in the gallery anymore, Toto. There’s a bit of a reality show model in effect - limited budget, limited time, unusual working environment, creative projects, all followed by public reaction - will the audience dig it?

I’ll be posting daily updates (if my schedule permits) from the installation on Up at the Gate, the Angels Gate blog, and I may cross-post a few things here, and I may do some more “rambling theory/uneducated art schlub with a soapbox” posts that touch on the show here. Anyways…

Here’s the What, When, Where chatter:

FR8

an exhibition by twenty-four commissioned artists
installation, performance and video art in shipping containers,
all part of the Port of Los Angeles’ Art on the Waterfront Festival 2007.

Hours: 11 am – 5:30 pm & 7 - 9 pm

Installation/performance artists:
David Deany, Beth Elliott, Mark X Farina, Jeff Foye, Jocelyn Foye, Megan Geckler, Bean Gilsdorf, Dan Gilsdorf, Pato Hebert, Eric Medine, Christine Nguyen, Joe Sola, Matthew Thomas, Michael Webster

Video artists 11 am – 5:30 pm:
Jaco Bouwer, Sabine Maier, Hilary Mushkin, Agnes Nedregard, Karolina Sobecka

Video artists 7 - 9 pm
Sebastien Pesot, Mikael Prey, Aaron Valdez, S. Vijayaraghavan

Documenting artist - Slobodon Dimitrov

Installation and performance artists curated by Marshall Astor, Visual Arts Director, Angels Gate Cultural Center.

Video artists curated by Anne Bray, Executive Director, Freewaves

FR8 and the Port of Los Angeles’ Art on the Waterfront Festival - Saturday, May 12

Festival Hours 11AM – 5:30 PM, Artists Reception, 7 - 9 PM
All events are free to the public.

All events take place at Berth 87, at the intersection of 1st and Harbor Streets in San Pedro.

Directions: Take the 110 South to Gaffey, exit left on Gaffey Street; left at 1st Street; five blocks to the festival.

FR8 is made possible by generous support from The Port of Los Angeles, Fast Lane Transportation, Inc., American Portable Storage, and The City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

at top - The postcard image for FR8. You can view the back of the postcard here, and the festival has a Flickr set devoted to it, which right now is mostly exciting photos of containers.

Hyper prolific illustrative genius Adam Koford, a.k.a. Ape Lad, is busily illustrating just about everything - Hobos, Fairy Tales, who knows what’s next?

I recently ordered a Baba Yaga illustration from him in his you name the fairytale, I’ll draw it for $20 deal (which is an insane deal). I missed out on ordering “Phillbilly” which is the most likeliest hobo name of my comic book nerd roommate - and I wasn’t about to miss the next boat. I’ve always loved Baba Yaga, from the Ivan Bilibin illustrations that accompanied the story Vassilissa the Beautiful, which was in a series of Time-Life Books that I owned as a child, and from her re-occurring presence in the Sierra On-Line series Quest For Glory. She’s popped up in other works of fiction that I’ve enjoyed, most notably the Bruce Sterling short story The Unthinkable, which appeared in his anthology Globalhead.

One of the neatest parts about commissioning an illustration from Adam is that he takes pictures of his work in progress, so you get to see the pieces as they’re being worked on. I spent at least a whole week wondering which of the two Baba Yagas he was working on might be mine! Well, as that’s my hand holding a Baba Yaga right there, obviously I’ve found out, and I’m super happy.

Adam isn’t the only artist delivering commissioned art bargains by mail order - Len, another Hobo illustrator, just took orders for illustrations based on fictional monster movies - I’ve ordered an illustration of the “totally should be made” film She Cthulhus of the SS.