Brian Eno | Mistaken Memories of Mediaeval Manhattan

Brian Eno

Mistaken Memories of Mediaeval Manhattan

London, UK: Hendring Ltd, 1987

47:00 VHS in clamshell box

Edition size unknown

I can’t seem to locate my copy of this, which I have had since my teens. Before moving across the country six years ago I became pretty ruthless about parting with things that I didn’t need, and may have decided that - in the absence of a VCR - this was of no use to me. 

I only played it a few times, but I thought about it often. The tape consists of seven short videos totalling 47 minutes, each filmed from the artist’s thirteenth floor apartment in the early eighties, and scored with his ambient compositions. Most of the music came from the first and fourth ambient records (Music for Airports and the lesser On Land) along with an unreleased track. 

The "video painting” images of the skyline (with a nod to an obvious precursor - Warhol’s duration Empire film) required you to turn your television set on its side to view correctly. This was at a time when most TVs were housed in wooden boxes and weighed a hundred pounds. As he dis not own a tripod, Eno had shot the footage with his (faulty, found) camera on its side. 

The work anticipates the recent onslaught of vertical filmmaking on Instagram, TikTok and Youtube. Today Netflix announced an overhaul of their interface, in part to accommodate new vertical video. In an attempt to appeal to younger viewers, the CBC website has been posting news stories in this format for several months now. 

This may feel like a mixed blessing for Eno. Ambient artworks can be thought of as allowing for a more ‘passive’ listener/viewer experience (rewarding attention but not demanding it), but these works also required an active viewing experience. In addition to having to turn your set on its side, there were instructions for manually manipulating the hue, contrast, and vertical controls of your television. 

But they were also designed to be long, slow and contemplative. To combat the shrinking attention spans brought on from MTV culture. Today ‘longform’ vertical video can mean anything longer than thirty seconds. 

Talk Tonight

I was invited by Struts to participate in their “Swap Meet” presentations in which four artists speak about a particular subject. Last month the topic was Artist Residencies and this month it’s Influence. 

I’m going to speak about Kelly Mark, something I’ve been itching to do after spending so much time revisiting her work after her death earlier this year. 

Marion van Wijk | Let Go – Bas Jan Ader

Marion van Wijk

Let Go – Bas Jan Ader

Eindhoven, The Netherlands: Lecturis, 2015

192 pp., 17 x 24 cm., softcover

Edition size unknown

A Dutch-language account of Bas Jan Ader’s short life by artist/performer Marion van Wijk, who interviewed Ader’s friends and family, including his widow Mary Sue Andersen.

Roula Partheniou

Happy Birthday to Roula Partheniou. 

Diane Borsato, Kelsey Oseid | Mushrooming

Diane Borsato, Kelsey Oseid

Mushrooming: The Joy of the Quiet Hunt – An Illustrated Guide to the Fascinating, the Delicious, the Deadly and the Strange

New York City, USA: The Experiment, 2022

240 pp., 6.75 x 8.75", hardcover

Edition size unknown

One of the first friends to visit after we moved to New Brunswick was Diane Borsato, who was flown in to give a talk to students at Mount Alison University. Afterwards, we walked together into town with her while she conveying her shock that we were comfortable living somewhere so small. She asked about access to groceries and we said that we had two stores in town and several larger options in Nova Scotia, ten minutes away. 

She asked if there were any foods we just couldn't find. Roula answered that we missed oyster mushrooms. Diane said "You mean like those?" and pointed to a tree by the side of the road - not ten feet away - that was covered in them. She crouched down and collected some, wrapping them in a napkin and storing them in her purse. Later she advised that we try a small amount to ensure that they were safe. 

Mushrooming: The Joy of the Quiet Hunt is the result of many years of  intensive (often hands-on) research by Borsato. The book is filled with insights, anecdotes and details about more than 120 fungi from across the northern hemisphere, in forests, parks and grocery stores. 

Borsato examines Mushrooms as food, hallucinogenic, aphrodisiac and event and her charming stories are accompanied by illustrations by Kelsey Oseid.

"Fungi are an order so mysterious they push our wonder and horror buttons simultaneously. In Mushrooming, Diane Borsato uses her radical curiosity to consider what they have to teach us about interconnection, the diversity of life, and the wildly creative possibilities of risk and attention."

– Shary Boyle

Dara Birnbaum

Dara Birnbaum died today, at the age of 78. 

Three early obits: 

https://hyperallergic.com/1008907/dara-birnbaum-video-arts-wonder-woman-dies-at-78/

https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/dara-birnbaum-video-artist-dead-wonder-woman-1234740430/

https://www.frieze.com/article/dara-birnbaum-video-artist-has-died-aged-78

Yoko Ono | Blood Objects from Family Album

Yoko Ono

Blood Objects from Family Album

New York City, USA: UBU Gallery, 1995

17.5 x 10.2 cm.

Edition size unknown

A year after the founding of Ubu Gallery in 1994, Yoko Ono presented a solo exhibition there, comprising of two bodies of work. Works from the Franklin Summer 'automatic' pointillist drawings series sat alongside Family Album objects (bronzed versions of everyday items such as a splintered bat, a mirror, a high-heeled shoe, all splattered with blood red pigment). The latter recalled the image of her husband John Lennon's iconic glasses covered in his own blood after being shot in front of Ono outside their home in 1980, which adorned the cover of her first album after his murder. 

To promote the show is this brilliant bit of ephemera, which I think bests the works in the show. A house key is just as good a signifier of domesticity as a mirror or shoe, and all the better that it arrives for free in the mail, serving as the exhibition announcement. 

The true brilliance is the lack of expense: I suspect most households have a drawer full of keys that are no longer in use but that the owners are reluctant to discard. It reminds me of when Laurie Anderson performed on SNL in 1986 - she handed out expired batteries and house keys to the audience as a keepsake. 

Additionally, the key has been a consistent motif in the artist’s lexicon - she has produced several keys to open the skies or universe.