In the heart of New Mexicos Pecos Wilderness, Round Mountain rises to a height of 10,700 feet, offering panoramic views of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and the fertile Pecos valley. Brothers Char and Robby Rothschild share fond memories of visiting Round Mountain as children, so when they formed a musical duo later in life, they named themselves after that noble peak. Since then, theyve been cutting new trails with More …
Despite several formal high points, and some strong visuality, another show purporting to have artists talk deeply on science, well, bears out something Steina said 10 years ago. When the subject of the mutual inclination between artists and scientists comes up I think of a long-ago symposium held at SITE Santa Fe that sat some of those distinguished people next to one another along a dais. Rapt at ground level, More …
A prominent thinker on ecological economics, Nate Hagens, explains consumerism in terms of evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology, saying that our brains send out “shots” of dopamine (a reward chemical, which makes us feel good) when we decide to have a cigarette, buy another pair of shoes, or eat more ice cream. This biochemical response, which was once crucial to our survival (as in, motivating us to kill an antelope More …
In the largest room at LTMH Gallery, Shoja Azaris images of Iranian holy martyrs striking poses of power and courage shine out from backlit cases. It reminds you of movie displays from the 1920s. In those days, westerners associated Islamic countries with sex, rather than with political terror or stern religious regimes. Sheiks had harems then. Now theocracies plan a nuclear future and put dissidents in prison. Put all those More …
Most bands talk about “paying their dues” and basically what that means is playing their music for months or years to empty tables with menus sitting on them that list chili cheese fries as the premiere item on Tuesday nights. For Hypernova “paying their dues” meant illegally playing western inspired music (with arrest and public flogging as a consequence if caught) in truly underground clubs in Tehran for years, until More …
Thursday night is the opening preview for Art Chicago at the Merchandise Mart featuring 150 galleries and dealers from around the world. The Southwest and Rocky Mountain region is well represented by the following: Turner Carroll Gallery, Santa Fe Linda Durham Gallery, Santa Fe Eight Modern Gallery, Santa Fe Photo Eye Gallery, Santa Fe Riverhouse Van Straaten, Denver, CO Sharks Ink, Lyons, CO William Siegal Gallery, Santa Fe TAI Gallery, More …
Documentaries are always a reliable strength at the Tribeca Film Festival. This year, they are led by what might be called The Alex Gibney Show. Gibney, who won an Academy Award for his 2007 film, Taxi to the Dark Side, about the treatment of prisoners in the War on Terror, is premiering three films in the festival. My Trip to al-Qaeda is a portrait of the journalist Lawrence Wright, who More …
There are plenty of chronicles of the post-industrial landscape. Few are as allusively eerie as David Trautrimass. David Trautrimass Spyfrost Project of digital images pictures an unholy miscegenation between the Cold War and the cold landscape. Science may claim to study nature isolated in vitro; the cultural field of vision is more inclusive, if less neat. I looked at Trautrimass new pictures of disembodied industrial parts virtually reassembled into architectures More …
On June 19, 2002, Bangladeshi born U.S. Citizen Hasan Elahi handed his passport to a TSA Agent at the Detroit Airport. The agent took a long look at the passport and the blood drained from his lips. Elahi asked him if there was a problem. The problem was that Elahi was on some terrorist watch list. He had been falsely accused of housing explosives in a storage unit in Tampa, More …
In The Runaways, the debut feature for music video director Floria Sigismondi, the early tempestuous days of Joan Jetts rock career are revisited without any cloying nostalgia. Sigismondi has made a rousing portrait of the 1970s teenage band and taken a hard look at life on the road at a time when most girls with bands were the groupies. With two major young stars in the cast, the Runaways can More …
You have to stay through 1:08 of the video below (and see also 6:59) to see in situ the four diptychs of the Lorraine OGrady photo-mural at the Whitney Biennial, paralleling the white ambulance-hearse of The We Love America and America Loves Us installation by Bruce High Quality Foundation. This dyadic room, which curator Francesco Bonami has said he would pick as a “snapshot” of his show, deals in an More …
Theres no theme to the recently opened Whitney Biennial, in a year when the themes of collapse and disillusion that haunt the real world and the film world couldnt be more apt. This themeless-ness may be the only way in which the Whitney is bucking trends in the show that has defined the museum. The other theme might simply be that all the artists are American, which could mean anything More …