Dunce Cap Quarterly - Daily

Who can afford Contemporary Architecture in Historic NOLA?

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 19:00:39 -0500

Ai Weiwei Freed, Immediately Set Upon by Mob of White Reporters

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 22:00:00 -0400

Chinese authorities released provocative artist and recent international cause célèbre Ai Weiwei late yesterday in Beijing after holding him without formal charges for more than 10 weeks. DCQ Arts + Architecture Editor Ali Rodberg was there in the wee hours to document the scene as Weiwei emerged from his home in Caochangdi — the suburban Beijing arts hub Weiwei helped master-plan as a grassroots alternative to the city’s tourist-friendly 798 District — to address a clamoring throng of mostly Western journalists.

Weiwei refused to answer substantive questions, explaining that he could not grant interviews since he was free “on bail” — a line of reasoning that suggests Chinese authorities demanded silence from the noted dissident in exchange for his release.

Ali, for her part, jumped and jumped, and managed to capture a clump of Weiwei’s matted beard (and is that an eyebrow?) with her point-and-shoot through the tall forest of accredited Caucasians.

Fortunately, DCQ pal Nick Gervasi swooped in with sharp elbows and long arms to capture this video of the poor guy, who clearly just wanted to drink a hot toddy and catch up on Treme:

Meanwhile, at least four of Weiwei’s less-prominent associates — along with innumerable other political prisoners — remain detained in unknown locations “at high risk” of torture, according to Human Rights Watch. Woohoo! Here, forget that bit of unpleasantness by watching this excellent short on Weiwei’s preparation for his “Sunflower Seeds” exhibit at London’s Tate Museum last year, wherein the artist put 1,600 Chinese villagers to work hand-painting hundreds of thousands of porcelain orbs to resemble the show’s namesake:

Taschen's "TRESPASS": Your Ticket to 2011 Art-World Booty

Wed, 25 May 2011 02:16:00 -0400

Thanks to recent patronage and recognition by historically holier-than-thou academies — to wit, JR’s TED Prize, Banksy’s Oscar nomination for Exit Through the Gift Shop, even Shepard Fairey’s moonlighting turn as political propagandist — street art is under a mainstream microscope like never before. Grimy subversion is trendy again among the artistic aristocracy, and this time the momentum isn’t limited to a couple New York City crossover street artists with interesting names and/or marketable minority status. Rest assured that, just as disco supplanted the longhair political ballad, as Eminem’s daughter replaced Eminem’s homicidal mushroom trips, as the Macarena hokey-pokeyed all over Cobain’s grave, pretty shiny things will soon return to favor — Jeff Koons, breath easy.

Until then, however, the masses need to prep for First Thursdays and Third Firstdays in Soho and Soma, in Silver Lake and the Marigny and the Pearl, at Moma and Lacma and the De Young and other venues and warehouse neighborhoods where the promise of free Rossi and cocktail wieners attract the more self-respecting and educated of the city’s impoverished alcoholics. They need banter material, and to banter passably, one must know enough to feign expertise — preferably in something current, hip, and, crucially, appealing to attractive members of the desired sex.

Herein, as always, enters Taschen: In Trespass: A History of Uncommissioned Urban Art, the iconic publishing house provides an encyclopedic overview of 150 of the most influential and relevant players in the game today. In profiling the core of the famously insular clique, Trespass sheds light upon an esoteric world dominated by semi-anonymous characters and complex discourse over the last few decades.

The book, released worldwide earlier this year, features context and commentary from the likes of Marc and Sara Schiller (Wooster Collective founders) and Carlo McCormick (senior editor at Paper magazine) alongside sprawling images tracking the evolution of the art form from its emergence in the early 1980s through the present day. The inconsistent quality and chronological distribution of the book’s photos would seem to owe much to advances in technology: Due to its ephemeral nature, urban art has long proven difficult to document, but thanks to the ubiquitous camera phone and the viral immediacy of twitter and its ilk, most works by today’s prominent artists are captured, disseminated and critiqued by the graph-geek crowd long before city workers or property owners get a chance to paint over them.

Portraying works by Keith Haring, Richard Hambleton and Paolo Buggiani, Trespass traces the roots of modern street art to Banksy and other contemporaries while posing a fundamental question about the motivation of its practitioners: Is street art an evolutionary step in the progression of human visual communication, or simply an instinct to mark territory as a dog would with its urine? This latter notion of human “aesthetic territorialism,” editor Ethel Seno asserts, dates back to the Paleolithic, in the form of cave paintings. And thus the crux of the debate is clarified: Is street art intended to push boundaries and awaken a systematically numbed public, as many of its major players claim, or is it merely “Kilroy was here” delivered in ever-more-elaborate forms? In other words, for all the artists’ grandiose proclamations of subversion and iconoclasm, is the basic motivator really just a yearning for recognition? In the case of NYC train bombers, BNE guy, Neckface, and your average neighborhood tagger, the answer would appear to be a resounding “yes.” When it comes to Banksy and Swoon, among others, the verdict is “uhhhh…well, that, uh…depends?”

To step backward for a moment — and not to get too abstractly philosophical up in here — many artists do seem to crave recognition and its attendant trappings of respect and, with the right medium and image, riches. Banksy can spit in the face of collectors and authority all he likes, but he’s no fool — he knows the best way to make a name (and a few enemies) is to upset the status quo. So when street artists attribute their work’s inspiration to principled flashpoints like “promoting the First Amendment” or “speaking truth to power,” digest this with the knowledge that controversy and artistic emergence are often symbiotic.

This, as outlined in Trespass, is where the prospect of publicity and mainstream acceptance threatens to endanger the multifaceted medium: Street art began as a form of protest — against the galleried art world, against municipal intrusion on freedom of expression, against crooked politicians, against the concept of rules and authority in general (although the anarchist angle rings hypocritical considering that old-school street artists operated under rules of etiquette so revered that they were often backed up with the promise of violence). Now, with its international profile on the rise and its most prominent artists on display in chic galleries and auction houses on both sides of the Atlantic, street art must accept the fact that it has become, in large part, a contributor to the art-world status quo. While perhaps not a full-privileges member of the establishment just yet — with Warhol’s Marilyn portraits in mind, let’s wait five or so years before issuing such a declaration — the subculture has surrendered some measure of its power to subvert simply by virtue of gaining acceptance. As the authors of Trespass point out, a fundamental tenet of street art is that it question general consensus from an outsider’s perspective — from the viewpoint of the willful nonparticipant oppressed by the whims of society’s majorities. The question is, will the medium’s leading artists retain the ability to effectively speak truth to power if they’re on the inside looking out? Can street artists still subvert now that their work has been sanctioned by the powers that be (cops excluded, of course)?

To that end, street art’s celebrities must reassess the impetus behind new work: With a newly-informed public finally thinking critically (and en masse) about street art — that is, dismissing authorities’ adorably outdated blanket condemnations of street art as vandalistic rubbish — the audience for such artworks has grown dramatically of late. Whereas street artists originally painted and drew with only their fraternity in mind, striving to out-do the next guy in terms of innovation and — perhaps more importantly — base prolificness, the primary audience of today’s stars has expanded to include the art establishment and the general public. With this in mind, street artists stand to make money (and plenty of it). One must assume that this will affect the intentions of some street artists while encouraging more persuadable (or desperate) practitioners of classically acceptable artistic genres to try their hand at street art.

The relationship between street art and the gallery crowd has recently undergone a radical reinvention, both following and stoking renewed public interest in, and acceptance of, prominent artists and works. This, in turn, is placing successful street artists in a conflicted position, one in which commercial success may prove groundbreaking while simultaneously calling into question the artist’s ability to carry out one of the original aims of their craft. How this will all play out is anybody’s guess, but Taschen’s Trespass does well to supply readers with the street-art background necessary to formulate such a prediction — a prediction, we remind you, that should prove très useful at the gallery next week when you’re trying to impress that waif with the regrettable fixie tattoo. And don’t forget a Ziploc: Nothing screams “breakfast!” and “free!” like a pile of soggy celery sticks and picked-over cheese wheels. Godspeed.

Brian Wilson: Throwing Darts, Manipulating Generation TMZ?

Thu, 10 Mar 2011 17:09:39 -0500

Disclaimer: Do not read this post unless you’ve got absolutely NOTHING better to do. Seriously. You will not feel better about yourself for knowing the following, though it may give you and your co-workers something to gab about over happy hour at Fuddrucker’s tonight.

Keith Olbermann just went public with what the conspiracy theorists among us have suspected for weeks: Charlie Sheen’s “meltdown” seems to be an act inspired by San Francisco Giants closer Brian Wilson.

It makes sense, and it’s not complicated: Wilson reportedly flew from spring training in Arizona to Los Angeles on Friday, February 18th, to meet with the actor and several former ballplayers — Kenny Lofton and Lenny “Ashtray Money” Dykstra among them. They all hung out at Sheen’s house. They reportedly did guy stuff. They probably ate things and said cuss words. Cocaine, alcohol, video games and/or prayer may have been involved. Who knows. Who cares. At some point, they allegedly watched Major League with some other Hollywood folks in Sheen’s private theater.

The details are irrelevant. What matters is the overarching plotline, and this can be boiled down to two all-important events:

February 18, 2011: Wilson jets to Sheenland for several hours of male bonding.

February 24, 2011: Sheen delivers the infamous rant; “meltdown” media frenzy ensues.

The common thread between the two happenings: As Olbermann observed, Sheen’s rant (and subsequent media appearances, hastily-produced online videos, etc.) reflect a persona that mimics Wilson’s in many ways. Peep the videos:

More than a passing resemblance.

Wilson told the press that he flew out to help Sheen understand the mentality and preparation that define a successful big-league closer — this in anticipation of the apparent unwarranted resuscitation of the Major League franchise (does nobody remember this?!). But Sheen’s vocabulary, cadence of delivery and overall demeanor in his subsequent meltdown productions suggest that the Wilson’s visit impacted the actor in a more immediate manner. The resemblance is too uncanny to be purely coincidental.

This assumption, then, prompts other questions: Is Wilson writing Sheen’s material? Did he help Sheen draw up the meltdown blueprint that fateful Friday night? Or did Sheen hijack Wilson’s persona without the pitcher’s permission? More importantly, did Dykstra wear shoes or arrive barefoot?

Then there’s the “Machine” angle. Wilson surpassed his teammates as the media fave last season thanks partially to the appearance of recurring masked S&M character “The Machine” (lifted from Nic Cage’s 8MM and reportedly reprised by teammate Pat Burrell) in televised interviews. As SF Weekly’s Peter Jamison points out, Sheen, playing himself in Being John Malkovich, is referred to as “Ma-Sheen” in once scene (a point not lost upon the creators of insta-site www.DreamMasheen.com). Tenuous, yes, but another similarity between the two.

The Sheen story is dumb, but that’s the point: He has capitalized on America’s celebrity obsession to reinvent his career, feeding his tabloid tormenters a perfect “Hollywood crisis” story — a paparazzo’s wet dream. True, Sheen may have lost millions by seemingly slamming the door on “Two and a Half Men,” but hey, now he doesn’t have to be on “Two and a Half Men.” Overnight, he again became relevant to the under-35 crowd (while simultaneously alienating millions of senior citizens who never bought into the radical notion of cable television). Let’s hope he can parlay this into meaningful projects and avoid becoming this year’s Betty White.

The extent of Wilson’s involvement in the saga may never be revealed, and Sheen may, indeed, prove to be mentally ill, but what’s clear is that there’s more to the story than People would have you believe. As with Banksy’s Exit through the Gift Shop and the Joaquin Phoenix faux-breakdown before, gamesmanship appears to be at play. The media, with its 24/7 emphasis on immediacy over accuracy (which encourages the publication of planted stories and devalues time-consuming endeavors like investigative journalism), are the enablers — though they also join the American public, once again, as the pawns.

40 — Check That, 42 — Years Later: The Greenwich Village Weathermen Explosion

Sun, 06 Mar 2011 02:06:00 -0500

Note: This post has run in a slightly different form in years past.

More important note: Recent paucity of DCQ Daily posts notwithstanding, we’re still working on things over here. Big things. Potentially monumental things. Just not the daily-blog-post sort of things. Please trust us. Your boundless loyalty will be rewarded in the not-so-distant future. Details coming soonish.

Pop quiz! Guess which of these Greenwich Village townhouses exploded exactly 40 42 years ago today…

a.) The one that looks different than all the others; or
b.) One of the others

Answer: A! The building with the funky-angled protruding living room.

Yes, that’s the one. A few members of the Weathermen (l/k/a the Weather Underground) apparently mishandled some nails and dynamite and…yeah, kablooie. According to ever-reliable Wikipedia, it took nine days of body part collection to determine that three people had died in the blast. Two others survived and escaped arrest, with one remaining on the lam for more than a decade before getting pinched for pulling an armored car heist with Tupac’s stepdad. We are not making this up.

A slightly more thorough reflection from Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn here.

Attack of the Noncerts!!! Members of Ween, Walkmen Wow BK

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 04:25:00 -0500

Only in Williamsburg can one find the back of an otherwise unassuming café housing, somewhat surreptitiously, an unexpectedly excellent art and music venue. And that was precisely the case on Sunday night, when the “Noncerts” series kicked off its inaugural show at Cameo Gallery, located off North Sixth Street behind the Lovin’ Cup Café. (“Noncerts,” naturally, describing the new nonprofit string of concerts, the first of which benefited Brooklyn public schools.)

The brainchild of Dave Godowsky (who performs as John Shade), Noncerts’ mission may seem high-minded, but the proof is in the (concert) pudding: The show took on an otherworldly air, rendering quiet the rapt, capacity crowd. The ethereality of the show was further spurred on by the flawlessness of an all-star backing house band (the likes of which have played with everyone from Jay-Z to Lou Reed).

Featuring Gene Ween of Ween, Hamilton Leithauser of The Walkmen, and songwriter Dave Dondero, the show quickly hit a dynamic stride, with Godowsky taking the stage first. His string-backed set — punctuated by his admission that he was surprised that his idea for the Noncert had actually come into fruition — set the tone for the evening, its initial equanimity belying a quiet intensity. Dondero, Leithauser, and Ween’s respective sets followed in step with the tone, with more than one audience member unable to keep from yelling the encouraging comments to themselves — such enthusiasm a rarity for live shows in the area.

More shows allegedly on the way — check back here, here, here.

"Exit Through the Gift Shop": Finally, a Reason to Watch the Oscars

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 07:25:00 -0500

Late. Late. Late, late, late. As always, we’re late on this. Well, actually, that’s subjective: If you’re in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Miami, New Orleans, Portland, Seattle, D.C., Austin, Chicago, or the Greater Tri-State Area, we’re a good year late. If you’re in the rest of the country, we’re right on time. And if you’re in Mississippi, we’re eight years ahead of schedule. For you, Jed, we’re delivering news from 2019. Runtell your Unclebrothers and Sisterdaughters.

Exit Through the Gift Shop is Banksy’s feature filmmaking debut, and he remains true to iconoclastic form: Famous for his bold, rebellious street art and legalities-driven obsession with anonymity, Banksy has made his name — and, more recently, growing fortune — by undermining institution. And the movie, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2010, certainly excels in this regard, and on multiple levels.

First, though, a thorough, semi-spoiler (!!!) synopsis for the uninitiated: Exit is essentially a profile of Thierry Guetta, an excitable, thirtysomething Frenchman with no discernible job, a lovely and supportive family, and a habit, rooted in childhood trauma, of videotaping everything lest he forget anything. Guetta’s cousin, the film asserts, is the prominent street artist whose nom de guerre, “Invader,” is derived from the mosaics he epoxies to the sides of buildings in cities worldwide — works inspired by the heavily pixelated classic video game “Space Invaders.” Guetta follows and videotapes this cousin as he and other street artists decorate the walls of Paris, London, and other European locales before eventually landing in Los Angeles. Guetta’s big break comes when he meets up with Shepard Fairey in an L.A. Kinko’s (Invader is “sick” and thereafter more or less absent from the film) and convinces the RISD alum to let him shadow him; before long, Guetta has proven his mettle to Fairey as both a documenter and accomplice, and the unlikely pair sets off on a trans-continental spree of rooftop stenciling, scaffold wheatpasting, and cop-ducking.

However, for all Guetta’s happenstance success in videography — the courageous and innovative vandalistic exploits captured in Exit are many, and much of the footage is breathtaking — the film’s protagonist is never sated. Guetta is portrayed throughout as more or less ignorant of the genre’s major players and their oeuvres, yet for reasons only cursorily clarified in the film (personable guy, trusted accessory, charming accent, “eccentric” facial hair?), he’s fully cleared to tape their illegal nocturnal (and occasionally diurnal) forays. Never star-struck (because he doesn’t know who the stars are), Guetta is nevertheless entranced by the thrill of street art, and for a brief time, he seems relatively fulfilled — that is, until somebody clues him onto the existence of Banksy, the Zeus of contemporary graf-culture mythology.

Guetta immediately and inexplicably develops an obsession with meeting and taping Banksy, and — wouldn’t you know it — through another brilliant stroke of luck, he eventually succeeds. As with Fairey, Guetta rapidly gains Banksy’s trust, and the two jet around together for a while until Banksy suggests that Guetta, y’know, do something with the reams of potentially groundbreaking tapes he has amassed. Guetta returns to L.A. — where his patient wife continues to raise their small children and, apparently, live off somebody’s trust fund — and produces what Banksy deems “an hour and a half of unwatchable nightmare trailers — essentially like someone with a short attention span and a remote control flicking through a cable box of 900 channels. I told him I hadn’t seen anything like it, and I wasn’t lying about that.”

Banksy, sensing that he himself needed to take control of Guetta’s documentary, suggests his faithful sycophant (who has by then begun stickering the Southland with his own likeness) “put up some more of (Guetta’s) posters and make some art, you know, have a little show, invite a few people, get some bottles of wine…and off he went to Los Angeles and he left me alone with the tapes.” Guetta, goes the story, embraced Banksy’s diversion to the fullest, renting a studio and emulating Damien Hirst’s practice of employing an (uncredited) army of production artists to churn out his art — a melange of mildly altered works of various other artists, with a heavy Banksian/Warholian flavor — “on a commercial scale.” Operating under the moniker “Mister Brainwash,” Guetta rents the 15,000-square-foot former CBS studio in Hollywood for his grand premier, hires constructions workers, promoters and contract artists for the show, and plasters the region with billboard ads announcing said event through endorsements by Fairey and Banksy. Helped along by an LA Weekly cover preview, the exhibit generates enormous buzz, and thousands show up to investigate — and contribute to — the hype.

Mister Brainwash, the narrator declares, is an overnight success — commercially, that is: The film reports that the show sells nearly $1 million of art by week’s end. As for critical respect? Not so much: As Exit draws to a tidy conclusion, its creators take great lengths to paint Guetta as a charlatan, a huckster whose success lampoons the herd mentality of the contemporary art world (remember, street art was considered an urban blight by the establishment until Basquiat and Haring captured lightning; Banksy’s art now fetches six figures at Christie’s).

Leading the offensive are, curiously, his primary benefactors, whose assessments of their friend and his show are just a tad too tone-perfect: Of Guetta’s instant fame (which, incidentally, really shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with the pulse of Los Angeles), Banksy marvels at the fact that “most artists spend years perfecting their craft, finding their style, and Thierry seemed to miss out on all those bits. I mean, there’s no one like Thierry, really, even if his art does look quite a lot like everybody else’s.”

Delving more deeply into one of Guetta’s many obvious influences, Banksy labels him “the rightful anti-Andy Warhol in a way. Andy Warhol made a statement by repeating famous icons until they become meaningless, but he was extremely iconic in the way he did it. But then Thierry…really…made them meaningless.” Face hidden by lighting techniques and a dark hooded sweatshirt, the elusive Brit is essentially apologizing for Guetta’s success by film’s end (“I mean, I always used to encourage everyone I met to make art; I used to think everyone should do it…I don’t really do that so much anymore.”), and vows in the credits to “never again help anyone make a documentary about street art.” Fairey, for his part, maintains that he “had the best intentions” in supporting Guetta’s ambitious effort, but that “even if you have the best intentions, things can go awry.”

The movie runs 86 minutes, and through perhaps 70 of those, the story comes across as plausible, as real — as the documentation of a passionate, relentless and charmed neurotic’s pursuit of a series of tasks for which he was tragicomically unprepared. But the sum of those last scenes — the cutesy quotes, Guetta’s adoption of the John Belushi look as his fame grows, the whimsical French music in the closing montage, the fact that Guetta is shown creating art for only the most fleeting of moments — creates the distinct impression that Exit is an elaborate farce.

Mister Brainwash, mind you, did throw the immense 2008 show depicted in the movie; the signs were all over L.A. And that LA Weekly cover story did, indeed, run. The art really did sell. And Mister Brainwash did, as the movie asserts, receive credit for designing the cover of Madonna’s Celebration in 2009. All of these things happened. But Thierry Guetta was not, in all likelihood, much more than the unassuming and highly entertaining face of the operation.

More plausible is the suspicion, already forwarded by many, that Banksy (with a possible assist from Fairey) created the Mister Brainwash brand with the intent of highlighting the absurdities of art-world hype. Banksy, who, it turns out, is credited as Exit’s director, provides insight into his mentality, if not this theory, when he admits that “I don’t know what (Guetta’s success) means…maybe Thierry was a genius all along. Maybe he got a bit lucky. Maybe art is a bit of a joke.” Fairey, toeing the company line, elaborates on the notion, stating that “I do think that the whole phenomenon of Thierry’s obsession with street art, becoming a street artist, a lot of suckers buying into his show, and him selling expensive art very quickly…anthropologically, sociologically, it’s a fascinating thing to observe, and maybe there’s some things to be learned from it.”

In this sense, Exit Through the Gift Shop is a remarkable achievement, a scathing and insightful indictment of the very industry that props up the film’s makers. In the same vein as Banksy’s “Morons” — a print depicting bidders at a Sotheby’s art auction in London that sold in 2008 at a Sotheby’s art auction in London — and I’m Still Here (Joaquin Phoenix’s prankumentary sendup of celebrity obsession), Exit is, at its core, a criticism of the very audience to whom it strives to appeal, a meta-insult of sorts.

As to the true extent of Thierry Guetta’s involvement with Mister Brainwash — well, that debate just gained an infusion of urgency: Exit is up for an Academy Award as a documentary feature. (The film’s classification as a documentary would clearly be jeopardized should it come to light that Guetta was merely a pawn.)

And while the media analysis and speculation will surely heat up again now that an Oscar’s at stake, it’s Guetta himself whose words, issued just before the credits roll, most aptly sum up the saga: “An artist is not a guy that you see in one show and you can decide who he is…it’s about time. You’ll see in time who I will be. Because with time, you’ll see my creativity. You’ll see if I’m a real artist or not.”

The Freaks Brave Leaks for Thievery Corp: Sea of Dreams 2011

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 08:37:00 -0500

Considering its use as a catch-all for music originating in the general “not North America or Western Europe” region, the “world music” label, while technically accurate, is arguably the laziest addition to the English language since Martha Stewart coined “fixer-upper” in 1914 (a title challenged in recent years as Twitter spawned The Verb That Shall Never Appear Herein).

If the sprawling genre should apply to any musical production, though, it would be to that of Thievery Corporation: Sure, Beltway stalwarts Eric Hilton and Rob Garza serve as the group’s core, but a revolving, polyglotic galaxy of guest contributors define the Corporation’s identity. From Anoushka Shankar to Seu Jorge, the collection has drawn from disparate corners of the globe over the past 15 years, mixing genres to oftentimes brilliant effect. Loyalists laud the mega-collab as groundbreaking in its synthesis of foreign sounds and cultures; detractors accuse the band of aspiring to a Starbucks-worthy brand of vapid backpacker trip-hop. Last weekend, it scarcely mattered: Thievery Corporation brought its lush consonance to San Francisco’s annual “Sea of Dreams” New Year’s festival, and 7,000 revelers converged to greet 2011 as one pulsing, euphoric mass of Day-Glo.

This isn’t to suggest, however, that the conglomerate played alone: Berlin’s Modeselektor and gypsy-punk-evolved Balkan Beat Box topped the roster of nearly two dozen acts on four stages. Thievery, in fact, effectively opened for brash SoCal DJ MiMOSA, whose 70 minutes of “crunk-step dub-hop” (his words) shut down the venue before an entranced crowd that thinned only minimally after Thievery stepped off. The throngs jiggled through a vast maze of stages, sideshows, vendors, and recovery stations, with throwback candyravers, goths, and all sorts in between ogling an impressive assortment of hanging jumbo neon constellations and other visual treats. Elaborately-bearded tea mavens from San Francisco’s OmShanTea served up hot refreshments in a Bedouin tent-like environment, while upstairs, UC-Santa Cruz grads and other mellow-outers vied for prime puffing position in the aptly named Hookahdome Lounge.

Thievery Corporation, which took the stage shortly after midnight and played well past 2 am, ran through a host of standards (yes, “Lebanese Blonde” included), drawing heavily from its latest and most political album, 2008’s Radio Retaliation (playing “Vampires,” “Sweet Tides” and “33 Degree,” to name a few). Co-founders Hilton and Garza — still the band’s only official members — presided over the stage behind twin turntables as longtime vocal mainstays LouLou (France), Sleepy Wonder (Jamaica) and Emiliana Torrini (Iceland) swapped turns in the spotlight with several other toasters, funksters and songstresses. Meanwhile, a DC-heavy collection of instrumentalists layered sitar upon sax, trumpet upon guitar, bass upon bongoes until the roof of the main hall, wracked from beyond by a howling winter’s storm and from within by relentless and rolling basslines and the heat of many thousands of sweating bodies, could take no more and dropped the first raindrops of 2011 onto the heads of the revelers below.

Never before has a leaking roof been welcomed with such enthusiasm.

Multimedia overload below:

Thievery Corporation (above and below).

Above: Vocalist Emiliana Torrini w/ Thievery Corporation; Below: Silver dude.

Thievery Corporation (above and below).

Above: DJ MiMOSA; Below: Thievery Corporation horn section, with Eric Hilton (l) and Rob Garza (r) between in background.

Above: “I cannot fucking believe he just ate all of my Adderall again”; Below: RASTAFARIANISM!!!! Badda-dingding-dingding-whooooaaaa…

Above: Klub Kidz Rool; Below: Mid-MiMOSA — 4 am and going strong.

Below: Decent videos with bass-blown audio. Maybe don’t watch.

Mister Heavenly: Nick Diamonds Tells All...most nothing

Wed, 08 Dec 2010 06:32:00 -0500

Nick “Diamonds” Thorburn and Honus Honus share vocal duties for nascent indie super-conglom Mister Heavenly when they’re not fronting Islands and Man Man, respectively. (Yes, the same band that features Modest Mouse’s Joe Plummer and (for now) Michael Cera.) We caught up with them after their show last week at San Francisco’s Cafe du Nord. Among much malarkey and nonsense emerged these nuggets: Mister Heavenly’s as-yet-untitled debut album should come out around the end of next year (a new Islands album is also slated for release around the same time). Their current sound is “doom wop”; the ultimate goal is “reed-based jazz” (this means NO flügelhorn), and everybody respects everybody. Just watch the damn video already. Full transcription below.

Dunce Cap Quarterly: So tell us how this came to be — how you guys got together. Tell us the genesis.

Nick Diamonds: Mutual friendship. Just mutual friendship.

DCQ: And it’s been a few months in the works, right?

ND: Yeah, it’s been about a year. We came up a year ago, and we said we wanted to make a song or two together, and we ended up making a whole album, and we just mutually respect each others’ work.

DCQ: And you’re still doing the Islands thing, right?

ND: Still doing the Islands thing. Gonna make an Islands album in January. I think it’ll come out at the end of the year. The Mister Heavenly album will probably come out at the end of the year, too — the end of next year.

DCQ (referencing Cera): How does that Hollywood guy, the actor guy? I forget his name. He did he get involved?

ND: Oh, Keanu Reeves.

DCQ: Yeah. How’d you get him in the band? How does that work?

ND: We were just big friends of Bill & Ted’s, and The Matrix, and we just thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if Bill — or Ted — played bass for us?’ It was bogus, but…Bill was our first choice, but we got Ted, and…

DCQ: And the rest is history.

ND: …take what you can get, you know?

DCQ: This is a typical musical pseudo-journalism question, but what sound are you going for?

ND: Jazz. We’re trying to make a really authentic jazz record.

DCQ: Jazz? You seem like you might be a little bit…off.

ND: We’re working on it. I think it might take a couple records to get it to completely jazz. Right now what we’ve settled on is doom-wop, and that’s our genre. Doom-wop.

DCQ: Doom-wop.

ND: Doom. Wop.

DCQ: Describe that.

ND: Well, it’s doo-wop with doom-like subcultures. Sub…subcultures? Subtexts.

DCQ: Sub-something…

ND: Lyrically it’s doomy, but with a doo-wop aftertaste.

DCQ: Gotcha.

ND: But what we really are all into is clarinet-based jazz. Reed-based. Anything with a reed in it. So bass clarinet, clarinet, saxophone…

DCQ: What about flügelhorn? Flügelhorn?

ND: Nope, it’s gotta be reed-based…

DCQ: No flügelhorn.

ND: …but we’re getting there. We’re getting there.

DCQ: Well, we’re looking forward to it…And what’ll this album be called?

ND: I don’t wanna scoop too much, but…we haven’t settled on a title yet. But Mister Heavenly is the band — that we know. Sub Pop is the label — we’re contractually obligated to put (that) out. And (the rest)…we’ll figure it out.

(irrelevant non-sequiturious banter, cut to credits)

We also got ahold of the set list from one of Mister Heavenly’s earlier shows (not sure if this is from Portland or Seattle). Some guy told us that the track “Charlyne” was an ode to Michael Cera’s ex-girlfriend, but we have no way of verifying this, and, what’s more, nobody really cares. Song names, courtesy of Honus Honus:

Michael Cera + Islands + Man Man + Modest Mouse = MISTER HEAVENLY

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 14:43:00 -0500

This happened at Café du Nord in SF last night. Mister Heavenly, signed by Sub Pop before they played a show, is Joe Plummer (Modest Mouse) on drums, Nick Thorburn/Nick Diamonds (Islands) on vocals, Honus Honus (Man Man) on vocals, keys, and…uh…Michael Cera on bass. All played admirably, the place was packed, and nobody knew the words. Also, Honus Honus rules. More words and pictures soon, maybe.

Bad Religion: An Adolescent Obsession and a Show Last Friday

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 06:40:00 -0500

by Jon Toulouse

Remember BMG? When they offered “Ten CDs for the Price of One,” they must have assumed that most of the kids who enlisted were too hopped up on Pogs and Big League Chew to mail back the overprints they tried to foist upon you with every delivery. I was no such mark. I monitored the mailbox religiously and ‘returned to sender’ with abandon, collecting my ten damn CDs for the low damn price of one, just like the good folks at BMG had promised. Never mind the fact that I spent the next year scrawling ever-more-threatening letters in an ultimately successful campaign to make them stop sending me Kenny Loggins compilations — I had my treasure trove, and among the trendy (Nirvana’s In Utero), obligatory (Marley’s Legend), educational (The Cream of Clapton), peculiar (Green Jellÿ’s Cereal Killer Soundtrack), and Sinbad-ish (Heavy D’s Peaceful Journey), I uncovered an album that would influence my adolescence more than any other: Bad Religion’s Stranger than Fiction.

At turns uptempo and anthemic, the album is defined by Greg Graffin’s relentless, scathing vocals and driving guitar work led by Brett Gurewitz in his premature swan song with the band (he famously split with the band to lead Epitaph Records’ evolution into a major indie force). Half punk, half thrash, half rock opera (yes, this shit gets three halves), Stranger than Fiction recruited kids like me and my friends on pure aesthetics, with singles like “Infected” featuring singalong hooks conveying vague malcontent and others, like “Hooray for Me,” issuing messages that no youngster would reject: “Can you imagine for a second/Doing anything just ‘cuz you want to/Well that’s just what I do/So hooray for me…and fuck you!”

But the extent of Stranger than Fiction’s impact only began to reveal itself once “21st Century Digital Boy” got stale around the 30th repeat and we started listening carefully to the rest of the album: I would wager good greenbacks that Americans born between 1980 and 1985 learned more middle-school vocab from this album than from the oeuvres of Twain, Steinbeck and Judy Fucking Blume combined. This from “Inner Logic,” as told to a 12-year-old more accustomed to the diction of Penthouse Forum: “Graduated mentors stroll in marbled brick porticos/ In sagacious dialog they despise their average ways/ Betraying pomp and discipline, they mold their institution/ Where they practice exclusion on the masses every day.”

My discovery of Stranger than Fiction laid the groundwork for exploration of many sorts, from exhaustive encyclopedia research on all things “-theism” to the rest of Bad Religion’s work. Frustratingly, my efforts to complete the former were thwarted by the band’s expansion of the latter throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s as they continued to mine such common themes as oppression and alienation in the context of contemporary events (notably those of the political variety). Along the way there were moments of creative paralysis and subsequent rebirth (Gurewitz’s return in 2001 seen by some as a flash point in the band’s return to form). But no album, to my mind, has come close to eclipsing Stranger than Fiction.

So, then, it was to my great pleasure that Bad Religion, while touring to support their 15th studio album, Dissent of Man, dipped well into the past as it played a sold-out Regency Center in San Francisco last Friday night. In addition to early staples such as “Fuck Armageddon…This is Hell,” the band played a handful of Stranger than Fiction cuts for the heaving crowd, most of which was significantly younger than the artists (though a sprinkling of grayhairs lurked in the rafters, heads bobbing). Graffin stoked EssEff pride by launching into the ambiguously-spirited “Los Angeles is Burning,” eliciting middle fingers and hearty “Fuck LA” chants not long after proclaiming San Francisco the band’s “second city” and describing how he was once accosted by a transvestite here during an early tour. The singer, less physical a performer than he was in his salad days, nevertheless exhibited the same moxie that impressed so many young people a quarter-lifetime ago (and clearly continues to lure new generations), charging through 25-plus songs in the two-hour set and leaving the audience screaming for more even after a second encore.

I was trying to think of a clever closing line, but it’s 5:50 a.m., and goddammit, I have to get up at Doesn’t Matter tomorrow, so just enjoy these crappy videos and pipe down already:

A Case for Twinsies: Sinbad and Heavy D

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 05:22:55 -0500

Evidence — sweet, indisputable evidence: Worst-case scenario, they’re long-lost brothers. Best-case scenario, they’re two large men, one even larger body. Two minds, one heart. Four eyes, four ears, two arms, two impeccably manicured soul-tees. Half Overweight Lover, half Oh, That Guy. And one pair of sunglasses until the next unemployment check arrives.

Fifteen years late on this, yes, thank you.

The Dears at BK Knitting Factory: A Live Music Unicorn?

Thu, 04 Nov 2010 18:42:00 -0400

“If you stick with us now, you’ll get all the shit you want later!” advised Murray Lightburn, lead singer of Montreal-based group The Dears, at the beginning of their show at Brooklyn’s Knitting Factory on Wednesday. He was referring, of course, to the fact that The Dears were playing their new unreleased album, Degeneration Street, in its entirety. Frankly, playing a full album is as a live show is an ambitious — and sometimes risky — maneuver when it’s one that people actually are familiar with. So to play a new and unheard album in full is ambitious indeed — but The Dears, it seems, are the ones to pull it off.

So what does such an undertaking take?:

… first of all, charisma and confidence, which thankfully, the band has in droves. Lightburn commanded the stage clad in a black leather jacket, black dress shirt and black tie, leading the Dears troops into a musical battle not for the faint of heart (or for haters of ’80s — although their music isn’t retro, some touches, like the keytar, are). If you wanted to know what happened to catharsis in music, it’s right here.

…secondly, a very solid album. Check that one: Onstage, the new record came out of the gate with a high-octane opener (single “Omega Dog”) that segued into the rest of the show. While not every song was as high-energy (“Galactic Tides,” for one, took its time building into not a climax but an edgy cresendo), nothing felt remotely diluted.

And true to his word, Lightburn, after playing the full new album (free set lists of the new album were available at the merch table, so frantic bloggers didn’t have to guess), lit on the fan favorites, including “The Second Part,” “You and I Are a Gang of Losers,” “Hate Then Love,” “Lost in the Plot” and “22: The Death of all Romance.”

Besides putting on one powerhouse of a show, Lightburn and crew provided an opportunity for a study in aesthetics: In Williamsburg on a weekday — a sometimes extremely homogenous (read: white and flanneled) zone — it’s nice to see a band take the stage that doesn’t conform to the white, pasty, tipping-the-scales-at-90-pounds-soaking-wet standard. Amazing, in fact.

Are The Dears a live music unicorn?

Lou Barlow Ends North American Tour at Maxwell’s

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 22:36:00 -0400

By Stephanie R. Myers

At the Hoboken rock institution Maxwell’s last Saturday night, Lou Barlow is onstage telling us that he’s 44. While the baby-faced singer doesn’t look it, it’s a difficult detail to wrap one’s mind around. After all, the incarnations of bands and projects the rock legend has been involved in over the years seem as though they must add up to a full lifetime’s worth of work. The man responsible for Dinosaur Jr., Folk Implosion and Sebadoh certainly must be hovering around 77 due solely to his sheer prolificness, right? Apparently not, but that bodes well for fans — if he keeps this pace up, he may end up leaving behind a Library of Congress-sized catalog of music.

Maxwell’s is already an intimate venue, but Barlow’s opening with a solo acoustic set made it even more so. Leading off with “The Ballad of Daykitty,” Barlow thanked the hushed audience, explaining that he’d tried to do acoustic songs in previous shows, only to be met with audience rumblings.

“That was humbling. Apparently I hadn’t been humbled quite enough yet,” he joked.

The Missingmen joined Barlow onstage after his solo set, charting the night down a decidedly harder-rocking course. The three-piece didn’t cut any corners, putting on a tight set that managed to avoid feeling overly spare. If there’s such a thing as understated showmanship — a great sense of performance that manages not to cross over into ostentatiousness — Lou and the Missingmen have cornered the market.

However, due to the somewhat overlong set by openers Wye Oak, Barlow’s set seemed shorter than it should have been. When he checked his phone and seemed surprised that it was already 9:30 (Maxwell’s books two shows a night, including a late one), the crowd cajoled the band to keep playing. They obliged, taking the set up until doors were opening for the next show.

Barlow fans know that the only downside of seeing a live show is that you’ll never end up getting more than a cross-section of his expansive repertoire in any given concert. Somehow though, after being genuinely thanked for helping end the tour on a positive note, you can handle the trade-off of an abundant discography.

Five Years Later

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 15:43:00 -0400

Five years ago today, a day after the western flank of Hurricane Katrina crawled over New Orleans, floodwaters continued to billow through dozens of levee breaches as they worked toward inundating four-fifths of the city. Thousands of displaced locals headed to the Superdome, joining the tens thousands who had sheltered there during the storm. In residential neighborhoods across much of the city, survivors who had defied Mayor Nagin’s order to evacuate — out of stubborn defiance or for a basic lack of the wherewithal to do so — adapted to the surreal reality that their city, an American city in the twenty-first century, had in many respects been abandoned by the powers that were.

Those who would survive would do so largely on their own.

But five years have passed, and New Orleans is rebuilding. There’s been a plethora of worthy journalism on the subject in recent days and weeks — a few examples here, here, here. We’re heading down there next week to see for ourselves and to work on a couple projects you’ll see in the coming months.

In the meantime, to tide you over, last year’s review of graphic novelist Josh Neufeld’s “A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge” (with a crucial footnote at bottom):

Graphic novels as journalism? On Josh Neufeld’s masterful “A.D.”

by Ben Fuchs

Bolstered by a glowing Sunday-edition New York Times book review, Josh Neufeld’s “A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge” plowed through a gauntlet of Batman-related titles to earn a spot on the Paper of Record’s Graphic Hardcover Bestseller List last month. However, for all the publicity Neufeld engendered through such critical acclaim and a modest book tour, the book’s tenure on the list ended after two weeks; apparently people are more interested in studying The Joker’s origin than in reliving Hurricane Katrina.

Neufeld, who built comic-geek street cred illustrating “American Splendor” for Harvey Pekar, truly began working on “A.D.” during the three weeks he spent working with the Red Cross in Katrina-ravaged Biloxi, Miss. after the 2005 storm: His blog on the experience spawned a self-published collection of choice works, which in turn drew the attention of SMITH Magazine. With the online mag as a platform, Neufeld expanded both his narrative breadth and the scope of his geographical focus (he migrated to a New Orleans angle after discarding, for logistical reasons, a considered examination of the larger Gulf Coast). Earlier this year, Smith — with Pantheon on board to bankroll — published “A.D.” in hardcover.

Neufeld’s work straddles a line between fact and fiction in a manner that might make traditional journalistic purists uneasy: “A.D.” is a novel, albeit one rooted in historically-accurate details, and Neufeld makes no claims to the contrary* (Ed: see correction below). Some of the book’s seven central characters, whose divergent narratives reflect the vastly different backgrounds of their subjects, are real people, while others are hybridized creations based on multiple real New Orleanians. Accordingly, Neufeld warns in the book’s first pages that “…some names and details have been changed for dramatic purposes….” As Neufeld told the Times in its “A.D.” review in August, “I did whatever worked to make the emotional truth of the stories much clearer. It’s what makes a certain scene emotionally satisfying in a way that makes the whole book add up to a novel.” But Neufeld’s intricate attention to detail (in addition to the obvious phone and in-person interviews he conducted, Neufeld “took tons of photos” in order to replicate precisely such minutiae as the contents of of one featured couple’s DVD collection) lends credence to Dave Eggers’ characterization of “A.D.” as “one of the best-ever examples of comics reportage.”

The human perspectives Neufeld provides certainly reflect a level of journalistic integrity rivaling or exceeding that exhibited by much of the mainstream media during and after Katrina. He wisely resisted the urge to overtly damn the federal agencies’ abominable reaction to the crisis (FEMA isn’t even a blip on the book’s radar), instead forcing readers to draw their own conclusions based on his characters’ hyper-localized trials. In doing so, we see thugs — left, along with everyone else, to their own devices by unresponsive authorities — maintaining peace at the city’s convention center, rather than raping and pillaging as had been reported at the time. (This isn’t to say that none of the atrocious rumors relayed ad nauseum by CNN and its ilk during the catastrophe played out as fact. But the erosion of these sensationalist outlets’ fact-checking standards during the meltdown was palpable, and their follow-up on such rumors during the recovery period was markedly insufficient.)

Neufeld, however, does mimic Anderson Cooper — as much a Gonzo student as a straight-edged, impeccably-coiffed WASP can be — by inserting himself into the story at book’s end. Neufeld introduces this narrative transition to bring closure to each character’s tale, portraying himself following up with the seven by phone from his Brooklyn apartment. Some of the characters initially moved away from New Orleans after the hurricane, while others stayed in the area; all have since returned to New Orleans or have plans to do so. By describing each of these stories in polychromatic form and without regard to the “official” assessment of conditions in the city during and after Katrina, Neufeld provides a raw, revelatory and intensely personal perspective on the largest domestic humanitarian failure of the 21st century.

Perhaps of equal importance in these sad, helpless days of print media consolidation and syndication, though, “A.D.” confers a considerable measure of legitimacy on a form of quasi-journalism Neufeld by no means invented (see: “Maus”): Comics and graphic novels as social conscience.

*EDITOR’S NOTE: Josh Neufeld contacted DCQ after this piece first ran to clarify a “misperception” that he says originated in the Times piece mentioned in the first sentence. In the article, Times critic George Gene Gustines concludes that the book “is a novel, not a documentary: Mr. Neufeld edited parts of the survivors’ stories and combined some characters.” Gustines goes on to quote Neufeld as saying that he “did whatever worked to make the emotional truth of the stories much clearer. It’s what makes a certain scene emotionally satisfying in a way that makes the whole book add up to a novel.” Neufeld wrote to us to clarify that “…in truth A.D. IS journalism, and IS a documentary. I did not combine any characters when it came to the main players and their stories (I did take out a couple of people — who we never meet — from certain scenes when it became too confusing)…I felt my job as artist was to synthesize the characters’ experiences into a complete whole that FELT novelistic. I guess it sounds a bit high-falutin’; what I meant is that I did what any good journalist does when writing their story: edited it and refined it to make it a good read.”

Pearl Paint, Canal Street

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 23:52:00 -0400

Casiokids Spend a-ha Kroner on Cowbell, Rock Castro

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 18:47:00 -0400

by Stephanie R. Myers and John Toulouse

If there’s one word that would accurately describe Casiokids, it’d probably be funkalicious. Not in a strictly Parliament kind of way, mind you — in a way that’s distinctively all their own. Marrying more-than-danceable beats with instrumentation that often manages to sound like it came from an excellent mid-‘80s pre-programmed keyboard loop, the Norwegian kids (okay, the ruse is up — they’re hardly Smoosh) puts such a union to its best use possible — getting the prim to dance, getting the pedantic hipster off his feet. In short, Casiokids may arguably be the best thing to come out of Norway since the Jotunheimen mountains.

The ‘Kids, fronted by Jesse Eisenberg doppelgänger Ketil Kinden Endresen and backed by several other talented Scandinavians with lots of k’s and bisected o’s in their names, brought their lo-fi Atari sound to San Francisco’s Cafe du Nord last Thursday, where Mission kids, Castro queens and European art school students witnessed a typically raucous performance: By the time a six-foot-tall dancing chimp helped the band closed its set with an extended version of hit single “Fot i Hose” — the same monkey, it would appear, spotted onstage when we caught Casiokids last summer at Manhattan’s South Street Seaport — the band that recently won a cool million kroner from Norwegian legends a-ha had employed a keytar, cowbells and a set of pineapple maracas, in addition to their trio of eponymous throwback keyboards.

Yeah, those ones there.

Thanks to Best Buy and its borderline-felonious warranty policy, DCQ’s vaunted West Coast A/V department is working with limited resources at the moment, so please excuse the tinnitus-inducing sound quality and grainy, jerky video in this camera-phone recording of “Verdens Største Land.” In other words, you’d be a fool not to watch:

Big Boi's Confession: "I Love Red Lobster's Cheesy Bread"

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 05:33:00 -0400

edited list via Big Boi’s official website; original list via Us Weekly

25 Things You Don’t Know About Me: Big Boi

1. Kate Bush and Bob Marley are tied for my favorite artist.

2. I love to play myself on Def Jam’s Icon video game.

3. Jane Fonda is a good friend.

4. I love the cheesy bread at Red Lobster.

5. I have three kids: my sons, Cross, 9, and Bamboo, 10, and my daughter, Jordan, 15.

6. I have a dog kennel, Pitfall Kennels.

7. I have a room in my house called the Boom Boom Room. It’s where all the fun happens.

8. My family loves dancing to “Pants on the Ground.”

9. Martha Stewart taught me to cook fried lobster tail.

10. I have a lot of security cameras, so don’t try nothin’!

11. I named my dog Halle Berry; she’s got a cute face.

12. When my family bowls, we call ourselves the Water Buffaloes like on The Flintstones.

13. My pet shark is named after blues singer Billy Ocean.

14. One of my favorite movies is Iron Man.

15. I like taking my kids to their football games.

16. I have multiple rap personalities.

17. I don’t eat beef or pork.

18. I have more than 400 pairs of sneakers.

19. OutKast got signed when we were age 16.

20. I love to play Eric Clapton’s “Cocaine” on the Atlanta freeway on a Sunday afternoon.

21. I always start working on albums on Martin Luther King Day. It’s a good luck charm.

22. My favorite color is purple. It’s what real playas wear.

23. I’ve done ballet — but not with the slippers.

24. ~~Andre 3000 and I were rival MCs in school.~~ <— False.

25. Queen Latifah gave art to my charity, Big Kidz Foundation.

Your Weekend. Love, Dunce Cap.

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 21:55:00 -0400

FRIDAY: GHOSTLAND OBSERVATORY w/ Samira. Doors 8/Show 9. THE WARFIELD, 982 Market St., Tenderloin, SF

SATURDAY: HELLA MORE FUNNER: “EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME RIGHT NOW!” (Solo show, free). 7 to 11. HOLD UP ART, 358 E. 2nd St., Little Tokyo, LA

SUNDAY: CHROMEO (w/ The Suzan and The Trapezoid (Free show, last one of the year, maybe…ever?). 2. EAST RIVER STATE PARK, 8th and Kent, Williamsburg, BROOKLYN

↑↑↑↑↑↑↑ This piece is like 27 feet tall in real life. ↑↑↑↑↑↑↑

Urs Fischer's Super-New Show at the Old Museum

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 03:45:00 -0400

Swiss artist Urs Fischer took over three floors of the New Museum — the ones sandwiched between the lobby and the consistently underwhelming “educational” top floor — for his “Marguerite de Ponty” show last winter. Fischer’s offerings ranged from a Gheorghe Mureşan-sized British telly booth to the assortment of oddities and aluminum sculptures pictured above (the only shot we squeezed off before security got uppity). Fischer (or, more likely, peons thereof) cast the hulking sculptures from small clay models, reproducing the shapes with such mega-scope and precision that fingerprints from the original models reappear in large form in the finished product.

Fischer also exhibited (ha! get it? er.) a sense of humor and an appreciation for smaller-scale works, as the exhilarating video below aptly displays.

That’s all we’ve got for now; our Art + Architecture Editor has locked herself in a studio in New Orleans and isn’t coming out till Gay Mardi Gras. Fareal. Read The New Yorker and The New York Times talk good about the show’s meaning here and here, respectively, while Artforum’s got the TMZ angle covered here.

And yes, we know this all took place nine months ago. Stop trying to foist your traditional interpretation of “timely reportage” on us, conformist swine.