Culture

I want to be like the Horts when I’m a grown-up collector. We own a few artists in common, and I like the fact that while they obviously have money, they’re spending it mostly on younger, emerging artists like Paul P. and Christian Holstad.

Well, sort of. Our friend Conrad Cummings, one of the most thoughtful and politically aware composers I have ever met, was part of a concert in January of sports-oriented music given by the Avian Orchestra in the 6th floor gym of the University Settlement on the Lower East Side. His piece, titled In Memorium Marge Laszlo is an hommage to the roller derby champion. She isn’t dead, just “retired” by the forces of capitalism. This is how Conrad describes the piece:

Marge Laszlo was one of Roller DerbyÂ’s great players. The game was born on the West Coast and grew up with the early days of television. During its heyday in the 1960s a dozen teams bused all over the country. It was one of the first sports that women as well as men could make a living playing, and it provided a home and a livelihood for any number of outsiders.

Roller Derby looked anarchic. Players smashed into each other, collided into huge heaps of bodies, threw each other over the ropes into the audience, screamed at each other constantly, pulled hair, and whenever possible beat up the umpires. The highlight move was the Whip, where five or six players would link wrists to propel the player at the end into the opposing team like a projectile. Bodies would fly everywhere.

But behind all the chaos and apparent violence was actually a big extended family of players who lived and traveled together and worked out every pile-up, Whip, hair-pull, and fight sequence ahead of time. Despite the drama, athleticism, and the passionate loyalty of fans to individual teams and players, it came down to a companionable bunch of people gliding round and round the same oval track. My piece goes around its track four times.

Marge Laszlo herself is alive and well, but the game, alas, is no more. It started to lose TV viewers in the early 70s and was done in by the energy crisis when the teams couldnÂ’t afford gas for the buses taking them from city to city. But Roller Derby lives on happily in my memory, and IÂ’d like to think that the end of my piece is MargeÂ’s farewell lap on her last game. Skate on, Marge!

You can hear this work, plus all of the others on the program, via New Music Box through April 15.

Go buy his CD Photo-Op. After hearing it we tracked him down and became friends with him. It is brilliant politically-aware music.

My recommended openings for the next few days, all in Chelsea:

Today (Thursday):

Stuart Hawkins at LFL Gallery
Paper Chase (group show curated by Renee Riccardo/Arena) at Axel Raben

Friday:

Joe Ovelman at 5BE Gallery

Saturday:

David Humphrey at Brent Sikkema

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Also, the Skyscraper Museum is now open in Battery Park City, in the Ritz-Carlton hotel.

Thanks to Paige West, our collectors interview on Mixed Greens is on their website again.

The day after tomorrow will be another Friday night in Williamsburg for us.

To see:

Peter Hendrick at Schroeder Romero, 6-9

Icelandic Love Corporation at Jack the Pelican Presents, 7-9 — I wonder if a certain Icelandic singer will attend?

Jennifer Nuss at Monya Rowe, 7-9

Heraldic Pomp Exhibition Opening for the Repellant Zine Festival at Brooklyn Fireproof, 6-11

Craig Hein at *sixtyseven, 7-10

We’re big fans of Carlos de Villasante’s work, as you can see from my various blog posts.

He has a solo show at Heriard-Cimino Gallery in New Orleans at the moment. When we visited New Orleans a few years ago, the gallery was one of our first stops because the fabulous director, Jeanne Cimino, is a friend of Margaret Evangeline.

Closer to home, we’ll be headed out to Williamsburg on Friday for the Williamsburg Gallery Association‘s Third Friday event. All galleries will be open until 9pm. It will give you a chance to see a few things I recommend. Several of these are opening that night:

Suzanne Wright at Monya Rowe – extended through March 21

Reed Anderson at Pierogi 2000

Christopher Johnson at Plus Ultra

Josh Stern at Parker’s Box

The always fun Brooklyn Fire Proof should be the place to end up, with their Fashion Social.

Of course, this whole schedule may change drastically when we find out more details on Cory Arcangel‘s performance at the Whitney on Friday night.

Yes, I have been to both Scope and The Armory Show, this weekend (one day for Scope, two for Armory).

At the moment I’m too exhausted for a blog post, other than saying that I was really impressed by the quality of the San Francisco and Los Angeles galleries I encountered at both fairs. The SF galleries were also much braver about showing political art dealing with the War on Terror and 9/11 than most NYC galleries (except for a few like Barbara Gladstone, the only blue chip NYC gallery to do such a thing with its Thomas Hirschhorn installation).

What was with the food at The Armory Show? It wasn’t so bad last year, and this year it was horrible, expensive, and accompanied by enough tables to seat about 5% of the people getting food at any one time. Also, BUY SOME DAMN BENCHES FOR THE ATTENDEES.

One more thought: No one came up to me to tell me how much they loved my weblog, which cannot be said about James.

Of course we’ll be there, and I welcome any of my readers to join us. The Civilians are one of my three favorite theatre companies in NYC. The other two are Target Margin and The Wooster Group.

It’s $60 for the whole thing, or $20 for just the after party.

Details:

GRAND HARMONIOUS VAUDEVILLE
Friday, April 16th, 8pm
Ticket price includes a buffet of Chinese appetizers.
Complimentary vodka and tequila cocktails courtesy of Grey Goose and Corazón.
Cash bar for other drinks.

Grand Harmony Restaurant
98 Mott Street (Chinatown, between Canal and Hester)

Featuring
Performances of never-before-seen texts by Civilians Advisors John Guare and Charles L. Mee, Jr.

New renditions of Civilians songs including selections from our upcoming show NobodyÂ’s Lunch.

Tony-Winner Karen Ziemba (Never Gonna Dance, Contact)
Bayne Gibby (HBO’s Out on the Edge)
Mo Rocca (Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show”)
and more to be announced soon.

GRAND HARMONIOUS AFTERPARTY
10pm – Midnight
with dancing and music by DJ Kozmik

Here is the link to the benefit page, including how to get tickets.

I have written about The Civilians quite a bit. If you want to hear what some of their songs sound like, I have some MP3s here.

Tracey Baran at Leslie Tonkonow. We have several works by Tracey. We have followed her work since we first bought two photos from Liebman Magnan at the Gramercy Art Fair, before she had even had a show.

Ester Partegas at Foxy Production. She was in the show “Soft Cell” at Foxy which I mention often.

Ugh. We saw Nicky Silver’s Beautiful Child at Vineyard Theatre last night.

I hated it so much I don’t even want to talk about it. If I hadn’t been on the second row I might have walked out.

I was actually angry when I left the theatre. It’s bad enough to see a mess of a play that’s a comedy, but to see an awful play about a child molester is just too much. If I had been The Vineyard, I would have told Nicky, “we’re not producing this one.” It was like bad dinner theatre Albee.

I wonder what Rex Reed thought? He was in the audience.