Author: Caffeneko

Laurie Anderson, Slavoj Zizek, Guillermo del Toro, Wim Wenders pick film faves from Criterion

One of the things I miss the most from my jobs in the 90’s – working in cafes next door to bookstores, working at the UC and Elmwood Theatres in Berkeley, working at Tower Records and Virgin stores in multiple cities – was how close I was to books, music, films.  Daily I would receive recommendations from co-workers and customers. I had a finger on a cultural pulse and it was three-dimensional and organic. This was an experience that Amazon and Netflix’s algorithms have not been able to replicate.

Something that Criterion Collection has started comes close and I really hope they continue. They’ve brought in famous film directors (Wim Wenders, Guillermo del Toro), artists (Laurie Anderson) and popular philosophers (Slavoj Zizek) to go through their vaults (Laurie Anderson is absolutely delightful, she’s like a kid in a candy store), select and describe their favorite films.

Their enthusiasm is contagious – I’ve done my best to compile a list of their recommendations under the clips. Enjoy!

 

Gabriel Garcia Marquez archives now in Austin

One cannot mention the title source of the Strange Pilgrims exhibit without  reminding one’s readers that the Harry Ransom Center recently acquired the archives of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

“More than 75 boxes of documents constitute the archive of the Colombian-born author, journalist, screenwriter and key figure in Latin American history and politics. Researchers will have access to manuscript drafts of published and unpublished works, correspondence, 43 photograph albums, 22 scrapbooks, research material, notebooks, newspaper clippings, screenplays and ephemera.”

Wed. Oct. 27 there will be a webcast of acclaimed author Salmon Rushdie’s keynote speech for the symposium Gabriel García Márquez: His Life and Legacy.

Strange Pilgrims – Environment & Place

The Contemporary Austin is offering til January 24th of next year,  a surreal, experimental journey hosted in three parts, at the Jones Center, Laguna Gloria and the Visual Arts Center at UT.  Inspired in part by the title of the collection of short stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, these three showings feature “vignettes offering dark and surreal meditations on memory, mortality and the passage of time.” The following artists’ work is present in the exhibition:  Charles Atlas, Trisha Baga, Millie Chen, Phil Collins, Andy Coolquitt, Ayse Erkmen, Roger Hiorns, Nancy Holt, collective Lakes Were Rivers, Angelbert Metayer, Bruce Newman, Yoko Ono, Paul Sharits, and Sofia Taboas.  UT Press has published a 250 page catalogue of the exhibit.

The Jones Center is offering the first installment of the three-part exhibition, Environment and Place showcasing installation, video, architectural and landscape oriented works. 1960s-1970s conceptual and minimalist art by Bruce Nauman and Nancy Holt share space with contemporary artists Millie Chen, Andy Coolquitt, Roger Hiorns and Angelbert Metayer.

Bruce Nauman’s Green Light Corridor (1970) is about changing perspectives by inviting the viewing to walk through a narrow corridor lit by green neon lights. It’s presented within the large upper space of the downtown Jones Center, with its historical stone, wood and industrial walls. The juxtaposition of this piece with its neon to the cool, calm of the natural elements in the building is jarring.  I did not see many viewers volunteer to walk inside the corridor, perhaps because we are so often surrounded by neon and artificial light.  It would be interesting to compare audience perceptions from its original debut and environment 45 years ago.

Millie Chen’s Tour (2014) invites us to return to a different kind of temporal site.  In hers she presents four historical killing fields viewed while walking through tall grasses or meadows that have reclaimed the land. As we walk away from and through these sites of trauma we hear lullabies and gentle folk music from the Lakota, Khmer, from Rwanda and from Yiddish artists. Each site blends meditatively into the next allowing us to take this tour and reflect.