[syndicate] Fwd: Bastard Art Gallery opened on 20 september 2006

[beate zurwehme]

The Bastard Art Gallery opened its space on 20 september 2006 to a 
selected crowd of bootleg, mash-up and remix art-lovers.

<<http://www.bastard-art-gallery.com>>

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  While our striking hostesses served exquisite drinks supplied by our 
sponsors (Veuve Cliquot, Johnnie Walker and Martini), every room of the 
premises was open for the public. The photo ops were many, the 
bastardly celebs select! On hand were a who's who of the artworld power 
plays and a lot of very caring, generous persons who truly love the 
bootlegged arts.
  A selection of photos from the opening event are available at our 
website.

<<http://www.bastard-art-gallery.com>>

The term Bootleg may refer to an otherwise unavailable audio or video 
recording of a performance that was not officially released by the 
artist or under other legal authority, distributed without the artist's 
consent. The first bootleg was "The Basement Tape" from Bob Dylan, 
released in 1969 (Jerry Hopkins. "'New' Dylan Album Bootlegged in LA.', 
Rolling Stone, 20 September 1969, pp. 5-6). "Bootleg" may also refer to 
bootleg liquor, an alcoholic beverage sold without regard to legal 
regulations and taxes. In the early 2000s, "bootleg" became an 
alternate term for "mash-ups" or "bastard pop". Mash-up is a musical 
genre which, in its purest form, consists of the combination (usually 
by digital means) of the music from one song with the acappella from 
another. Typically, the music and vocals belong to completely different 
genres. At their best, bastard pop songs strive for musical epiphanies 
that add up to considerably more than the sum of their parts. A Remix 
is an alternate version of a song different from the original version. 
It can often include 'featured' artists. A song is often remixed to 
extend its popularity or to give a song that wasn't popular a second 
chance. Remixes are 'the norm' in modern dance music allowing one song 
the ability to appeal across many different musical genres or 
dancefloors.
  The general "mash-up" idea also had some origins through painter and 
writer Brion Gysin who fully developed the "cut-up" method of writing 
and painting after accidentally discovering it at the Beat Hotel in 
Paris on 20 september 1959. He had placed layers of newspapers as a 
matt to protect a tabletop from being scratched while he cut papers 
with a razor blade. Upon cutting through the newspapers, Gysin noticed 
that the sliced layers offered interesting juxtapositions. He began 
deliberately cutting newspaper articles into sections, which he 
randomly rearranged. His book "Minutes to Go" resulted from his initial 
cut-up experiment: unedited and unchanged cut-ups which emerged as 
coherent and meaningful prose. Gysin introduced writer William S. 
Burroughs to the technique and the pair later applied it to printed 
media and audio recordings in an effort to decode the material's 
implicit content, hypothesizing that such a technique could be used to 
discover the true meaning of a given text. Burroughs also suggested 
cut-ups may be effective as a form of divination saying, "Perhaps 
events are pre-written and pre-recorded and when you cut word lines the 
future leaks out".

  Our main focus at the Bastard Art Gallery is "Diggin' for Gordon". On 
20 feb 2006 the digging of a hole started at an unknown location. It is 
a tribute to Gordon Matta-Clark who made his last monumental work 
"Office Baroque" in Antwerp in 1978. The hole is 130 x 130 cm and cuts 
through the basement floor of a brick building, the earth is shoveled 
into buckets and hauled up by use of a pulley. At first the earth was 
dumped at a container park, then some of it was distributed in the 
performance "13 Galleries and only One DDV in town" and recently it is 
used to fill up "James Lee Byars' Tomb". The diggin' action is visible 
24 hours a day through a webcam. To enlighten the action "Dan Flavin is 
descending steps into Hell" by a row of slant placed fluorescent 
lights. Since 16 september 2006 our featured artist is checking the 
obituaries in the newspaper to see if On Kawara is still alive. The 
newspaper pages with the obituaries are pasted onto a memorial slab and 
pictures thereof are posted onto a weblog.

  The Bastard Art Gallery provides you with full access to the "Diggin' 
for Gordon" webcam still images, movies and sound from our website. We 
also offer previously unreleased documentation on all related projects 
and full covering of the events happening in the near future.

  On the opening night there was a 'Re-Formance' of Terry Fox' "Corner 
Push", originally performed at Reese Palley in San Francisco in 1970. 
You can watch the video on our website in the 'events' section.

<<http://www.bastard-art-gallery.com>>

  The afterparty to the Bastard Art Gallery opening event was enlighened 
with an audio-illustrative diggin' set from none other but Carl 
Cryplant.
  Carl travelled all the way West from his native village Mirwart in the 
Belgian Ardennes with two turntables and a microphone, cassette players 
and a synthesizer to trash the party. For the sake of history he 
recorded his set onto a good old & trustworthy C-90 audio-cassette for 
all you to play in your walkmen or car stereos while cruising the 
streets to pick up some girls or boys that went astray on this flat, 
flat planet.
  Since Carl is such a fan of the Bastard Art Gallery's sole artist, he 
decided to make this set into a kind of illustrative tribute of the 
recent projects on show. Each song represents one way or another some 
of the latest pieces, maybe they might even lift some of the veils that 
shroud them in mystery....
  You can download the DJ-set from our website, just use "Beate" as a 
password to retrieve the file.

  For more information on our projects, events, text and info please 
check our website at the url below or contact Holly at the Bastard Art 
Gallery.

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<<http://www.bastard-art-gallery.com>>






| interlinking of media
| practice with gender related issues
http://zurwehme.org/