marshallastor.com

I developed both my love for futures past, and my love of bourbon watching Bladerunner as a teen, a movie that was the gateway drug to the heavy duty Phillip K. Dick addiction that has shaped my interpretation of reality for the past 15 or so years.  I discovered these images from a series of promotional illustrations done by futurist and Bladerunner designer Syd Mead for the United States Steel International Show on Boing Boing Gadgets & Paleo-Future and had to share. They were originally uploaded to Flickr by Professor Michael Stoll, and are all visible in this set.

Technorati Tags: Syd Mead, Bladerunner, Phillip K. Dick, Boing Boing Gadgets, Paleo-Future, futurism, illustration

It’s not everyday that I get to write a post that combines two of my favourite things - food and art. Michael Lewis Miller is taking part in the exhibition Ancestral Memory at the El Camino College Art Gallery, and one of the primary elements of his work for the show is a twelve-foot long, hand made table displaying cakes made from family recipes. In addition to the simplicity of the piece, the artful craftsmanship of the cut and woven paper mats used to decorate the table - there’s free cake involved, from the opening reception until the end of the exhibition. Michael has been baking several cakes a day to accommodate the demand, and I’m getting fatter for his efforts. A ton of cake slicing performance shots can be seen in my Flickr set for the exhibition.

This is also my opportunity to announce another project that Michael and his table, and myself and Edith Abeyta and Michele Hubacek and if you so choose, yourself, will be participating in, the Portable Potluck Project. The Portable Potluck Project or (P3, or PP3, for short) is envisioned as a conceptually based project where at specific dates and times various groups around the globe engage in simultaneous potlucks. We will be kicking off this effort with a themeless, inaugural potluck in the Pine Grove at Barnsdall Art Park on Sunday, March 23 at 6PM. Bring food or drink to share.

Above - Michael cleans his knife while slicing the lemon poppyseed cake.

Above - The table, set for the opening reception.

Technorati Tags: Michael Lewis Miller, Cake, food, food porn, El Camino, ECC, El Camino College Art Gallery, art, installation art, performance art, Portable Potluck Project

Laurie Hassold’s sculptures combine an eerie organic quality with what I find to be an almost comical source of assemblage materials. Up close, there’s a ton of things going on in the construction of these pieces. My pictures barely do the quality and complexity of their construction justice, so this is in definite get down there and check them out for yourself show. Here’s all five of the pieces I shot on my visit to Bert Green, where the show is up until March 1.

Technorati Tags: Bert Green, Bert Green Fine Art, Laurie Hassold, sculpture, art, art gallery, Downtown

I rarely come in contact with babies. I have almost no idea what one does with a baby, or how one keeps a baby alive until it can fend for itself. I tend to think babies should be born in incubators, raised in groups on isolated islands, where, through a Darwinian process, only the finest Ubermenschen are introduced to society upon maturity. They should be identified by number, wear uniforms and by adulthood know two things: 1) That I am their supreme leader. 2) That they are willing to do anything, including die, to serve my most immediate and trivial needs. Until the day comes when my jackbooted thugs set society straight, it looks like the public will have to interact with and care for babies in a non-state institutional manner. Theoretically, some day, I might even have to deal with one myself.

I have a nasty fetish for instructional diagrams and when Michele sent me this link to an array of graphic instructions on baby care from makememinimal, Instrucciones para cuidar un bebé, I couldn’t stop laughing. You. Click. Link. Now! Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: baby care, makememinimal, illustrations, baby, instructional diagrams, chess, crib, child care

The above piece, Set a Course For Wayward Schemes, is currently on view at Bert Green Fine Art in Downtown LA. I thought that the bright colours of the piece went perfectly with the rainy day on which I viewed it. Here’s a closeup of one window, and a closer-up of another.

Megan Geckler is an installation artist who, to my knowledge, works exclusively with flagging tape. I first saw her work in the form of the installation, Fill It Up and Pour it Down the Inside, at the Torrance Art Museum in 2006, and I later curated her into FR8, where she did an installation inside of a shipping container, I Can Tell You How This Ends (view time lapse video of the install here), as part of 2007’s Art on the Waterfront festival. So I can say from experience that the above install takes a tremendous amount of precise work to make happen, and that the results are worth the effort.

Technorati Tags: Megan Geckler, Bert Green Fine Art, Bert Green, flagging tape, art, installation art, Downtown LA, installation

I barely squeaked in to catch this show at Fringe Exhibitions before it went down yesterday, and I’m better for it. Dan is one of my favourite people - he combines an impressive enthusiasm and energy with the wit of a thoughtful critic, especially when he’s addressing public policy or environmental matters. His last solo project, Welcome Home, at Haus was delicious and challenging, and his container based video installation for our inaugural Art of the Waterfront/FR8 exhibition in 2006 was the hit of the festival. Dan seems able to do with his works what so many other video-based artists so often fail to do - interest the viewer. Sometimes I feel that many video artists hate the viewer, that their true goal is to test the viewer’s endurance or willingness to love - Dan does none of those things, but also doesn’t fall to the other extreme, that of simply providing a brief and easily digested entertainment.

The source imagery for Fate Machine is video shot at an industrial recycling plant, and the subject is the large toothed shredders that are used to reduce electronics and other large recyclables into shreds. All by themselves they are fascinating objects, but here Dan makes them mesmerizing. Objects appear on forklifts and are slowly and somewhat awkwardly fed into the bucket and teeth of the shredders. Once in the grinder, they are broken down in what I can only interpret as a death throe. A copier thrown into the bucket flips and jiggles recklessly and with savage energy as portions of it are caught in the teeth, until it is worn down to scrap and waste. It is not difficult for me to equate or metaphorise the death throes of the various pieces of office equipment with either our economy or our society, but that might just by my faith in/eagerness for the impending apocalypse jumping the gate.

Fate Machine consists of a trio of video projections, intercepted by a pair of angled scrims. The overall effect is that of a kaleidoscope, with the images fixing on a central axis and often dissolving or breaking into multi-axial deconstructions of the image. Constantly moving and shifting geometries, create a staggeringly beautiful image.

From multiple conversations that I’ve had with Dan since I’ve known him, I know that he’s particularly interested in the sheer volume of waste that our society produces, and is interested in the confrontation of the issues related to that waste and its eventual fate. In the simplest terms, this project combines the factory floor footage of an industrial documentary with the thoughtful and critical eye of the activist-artist, moving beyond the casual “it is what it is…” and into the territory of “this is what we are doing.” None of Dan’s video work (to my knowledge) involves imagery of individuals, the American public or any other mass of consumers - it is only the industrial and media infrastructure which is put on display - rendering the viewer as a representative and conduit for the greater public. This has a leveling effect, with the viewer unable to escape questioning their own actions and role in the process being addressed - plugging the viewer into the infrastructure that makes their way of life possible, of which they likely are only dimly aware.

Above: Cling wrapped electronics are fed into a shredder. At Top: The glistening teeth of a shredder await their next meal.

Technorati Tags: Danial Nord, Dan Nord, video art, installation art, Fringe, Fringe Exhibitions, art review, art, Chinatown, shredder, recycling

Just a couple of recommends for this weekend

Saturday, February 23

John O’Brien, (re) Siting (chapter and verse) @ Kristi Engle Gallery. John’s last show contained a single brilliant piece - I just got the invite to this one, and it’s devoid of detail, but, knowing John, it should be wonderful. Reception is 6-9 PM.

Tom Neely, Gin Stevens, Levon Jihanian & Scot Nobles, Igloo Tornado @ Black Maria Gallery. On the good side of lowbrow, and besides I’m enthusiastic about any exhibition that contains some post-Dungeons and Dragons artwork, like the piece at top, Mindflayer, by Levon Jinaian. I’m truly disappointed that there hasn’t been explosion of works referencing the true extremes of childhood geekdom. Reception is 7 - 10:30 PM.

Heather Rasmussen, Dawson Weber and Bret Nicely, Some Indispensable Concepts for Understanding this Beautiful Exhibition @ Confederacy for Creative Ephemera, in cooperation with Circus Gallery.  Curator Jessica Minckley.  Interesting and somewhat mysterious project by three Los Angeles artists.  Heather is the person responsible for taking shipping containers into the origami dimension - a piece that I’m looking forward to bringing to San Pedro in our next show at Angels Gate…  Reception is 7-9 PM.

Sunday February 24

Jennifer D. Anderson & Jessica Curtaz, Body Without Organs @ CSULB (Merlino Galleries). Described as “an exhibition exploring visual interpretations of Deleuze and Guttari’s Body Without Organs.” I’ve worked with Jennifer before, and I love her stuff. Reception is 5-7 PM.

Technorati Tags: John O’Brien, Kristi Engle Gallery, Tom Neely, Gin Stevens, Levon Jihanian, Scot Nobles, Igloo Tornado, Black Maria Gallery, mindflayer, Jennifer D. Anderson, Jessica Curtaz, CSULB, Body Without Organs, Deleuze, Guttari

Having a little trouble finding the time to post right now, so I’m keeping it brief.  I think by next week I should have some kind of understanding of my new schedule, which would be good, as I have a backlog of things to post about and photos to edit…

One of the things I’m most excited about in the upcoming Getty California Video show is that they’ve had the good sense to include the work of John Rees/Target Video 77. For those who live in a sad, punk-less cave, Target Video recorded many of the most important punk and new wave performers to cross the California border. When I was a lad, before YouTube and DVDs, We passed shoddy tape copies of these materials around like the relics of the saints.  Now these horsemen will ride alongside the icons of California video art (full listing of artists with known links here), where they belong.

The PR video I received for the show only contained a brief clip of The Cramps at Napa State Mental Hospital (full performance of The Way I Walk above, enjoy), but checking in with the Target Video blog, I noticed the awesome poster graphic at top (I really hope they produce and sell that poster, BTW), which indicates that they’re pretty much running selections from the whole Target Video catalog, with performance videos of: The Avengers, The Cramps, Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Crime, The Dils, The Dead Kennedys, DEVO, Diamanda Galas, Flipper, The Germs, The Mutants, The Screamers, Survival Research Laboratories, The Weirdos, and Zev. I’m like a pig in shit!

Technorati Tags: Target Video 77, John Rees, Getty, Getty Center, California Video, punk, video, music video, DEVO, SRL, Diamanda Galas, Circle Jerks, The Cramps, The Avengers, Black Flag, Crime, The Dils, The Dead Kennedys, Flipper, The Mutants, The Germs, The Screamers, The Weirdos, Zev, punk, music

I live in constant mental anguish and pain due to the staggering lack of Waffle Houses in California. The nearest one I know of is in Tuscon, Arizona. On any road trip East, when I’m taking the 10 back, it’s my last “road” stop. The dividing line and symbol that the marks the end of the sacred space of the road trip.

I keep a keen ear for any Waffle House related news. It doesn’t matter what it is, I get all hopped up and joyful.  I feel a sudden urge to go East, in search of the yellow signs that take me back to that first delicious bowl of grits, swimming with over easy eggs and a healthy dollop of Tabasco.  This morning I was driving to my yoga class, and I heard via NPR that a South Carolina Waffle House was the scene of a certifiable, beatify-able miracle - a man, Barry McRoy, was leaving the restaurant and was hit by a stray bullet, dispatched from a gun being argued about by, no doubt, to hillbillies.  In a “Waffle House is a temple blessed by God” miracle of Marvel Comics proportions, a DVD located in McRoy’s pocket deflected the bullet, leaving him with a mere bruise.  MSNBC story here.

Technorati Tags: Waffle House, miracle, miraculous, NPR, Barry Mc Roy, hillbilly drama, food, road food

It’s been almost a year since I was in Thailand, and I’ve finally gotten around to making another pass at the 3000+ images I shot there. One of the things I’ve been meaning to post are images of what I call “Chopper Tractors.” Everything in Thailand seems to be hackable - although it has the hallmarks of a consumer society, there’s a rejection of the complacency that seems to infect American culture, so every one of these, although built on the same general plan, is a little different.

I saw more crazy vehicles in Thailand then I thought possible, but these are my favourite. They ooze a Mad Max aesthetic that’s right out of the inevitable resource crunch of the mid-late 21st Century. I’m ready to strap some armour and animal hides to one of these and fight for what’s left of Mother Earth’s bounty…

Yodakeng, located in Isan province, is a farming village that’s only been using the internal combustion engine since the 80’s, so these machines are all part of a revolution in technology and farming culture that is empowering farmers and bringing up the quality of life.

Above - Big front wheels, headlight, great big handlebars - the general plan is always the same. Ski masks are everyday wear in Thailand, used to protect from the sun and keep dust out of peoples noses and mouths.  I saw whole construction crews in ski masks - you could probably walk into a bank wearing a ski mask and no one would bat an eyelash.

Above - same model as the one above, only sans headlight and with more wear.

Above - On the highway outside of town.  It’s worth noting that I never saw one of these moving more than 5-8 mph, even on the highway.  No matter how slow a vehicle was going on any highway, I never saw a driver seem either mad or in a hurry about it.

Above - On the road near the edge of town.  This is the end of town that doesn’t have a lot of farms and fields, so it goes right from town to jungle in like 20 feet.  And the jungle is relentless and impassable.

Above - This older model, with an extremely homemade cart, was parked behind my friend Ole’s house.  The Thai cowboy leaning on it  is Lek, who’s definitely rocking the strong, silent type image.  I took this photo while we were waiting around to eat iguana.

Technorati Tags: Yodakeng, Thailand, tractor, farming, farming vehicle, vehicle, chopper