November 3, 2009

the highway of eden

by Atti?

the barrel spit a seed through the marrow
that grew into a leaf,
and bloomed on the backside
of his head-
his final thoughts were roses,
and the crown of thorns
that had circled round his door
before they plucked the buds from his skull

and buried him in the pricker bushes
-because the flowers are too dirty
to hold his contradiction
in the bosom of this rotten soil.

he died in the music of a soft suicide
where the razor gently kissed his lips
and his wrists
stared into the sky for prayer
-and under the headstone
his heart broke as he slipped
the silken silver
through the ill form of its dinner;

he swallowed the bumpers
and twisted steel
through a hollow dream sequence
that replayed on backside of the blade,
before it began to play-
he still chokes on sirens
before the headlights trickle down
his jagged face

-still remembering his first,
where the sunset on his forehead
and his fragile eyes
shattered on glass that proved to have
a thicker head then his.
his first,
where the scream ran
from the back of his head
to the swell of his lips
where the angel had forgot to kiss,
before it wrapped itself around his breath

.. it was his first death.

as his parents fell to their knees
he grew well on his feet,
in a coffin coughing on, support,
that threw the covers back over it’s lazy fucking head
to go back to sleep
after scribbling R.I.P. on the screens
that learned to double for a heart
with a bass line that could hardly
beat.

the airbags bloom
in a field of glass shards,
where twisted metal
grows from debris on the first day of spring,
and nature is mechanic tragedy
where jersey barriers
wear the blood stains like fresh fruit
as the bush in a massacre
that spilled it’s guts on Eden’s highway-

and prayers stumbled into the bone yard
sponsored by your local
internet provider-
along the cold steel
that doubles for a monorail
as the weekday starts.

the fiber optic cable
puke’s hopes and dreams at his feet,
as the news cast covers the story
with a funeral
live on TV.
his headstone is engraved
with his death date followed by “News Channel 8,”
and a microphone sent
to the homes of family and friends,
to catch their final words
of the dead.

.. and he dies again
-a suicide dive for the end,
where the eyes really tear
before the mourning has raised,
and the shoulders for a fallen family
aren’t connected to the back of an acronym!

so he tries to die;
enough to where he’s reached an afterlife
where touch isn’t lust,
and love isn’t digitally rebuffed
-rolling in his grave in disgust
to tighten the rope,
in hopes of finding a life where the feeling is
real.

swoon

SWOON is a street artist from New York City who specializes in life-size wheatpasteprints and paper cutouts of figures.



Swoon, real name Caledonia “Callie” Curry, studied painting at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and started doing street art around 1999. Swoon is also a member of the Justseeds Artist Cooperative.

Swoon's worlds are often populated by realistically rendered cut-out street people, often her friends and family. Riding bikes, talking on a stoop, going grocery shopping - these people traverse a cityscape of her own unique invention. Bridges, fire escapes, water towers and street signs create crisscrossing shadows and spaces through which her figures move. Inspired by both art historical and folk sources, ranging from German Expressionist wood block prints to Indonesian shadow puppets, Swoon uses cut paper to play with positive and negative space in a conceptually driven exploration of the experience of the streets.

the rat : the writer

by Atti?

i theologized reincarnation
between adolescent angst
and a mid-life crises thirty years in the making
of a twenty year old canyon dweller
in the state
of mind that has been said by many to be
"grand, er"

i've constructed monuments of my own failure
on each side of this exit way;
while i feed the city of garbage where i play,
i'll keep throwing sour love songs
tangled in last nights leftover-
dones'
and wish i could see the sun
just once,
as if i'd even know what to do with it
other than close my eyes until
it was done;

then write some ambiguously coherent poem
that doesn't even end about it,
on the backside of a napkin,
who's backside grins with jovial idiocy,
who's for-side is a notebook,
who's backside is a tragic epilogue
regeneratively:

i am the rat
who packed all his belongings in to a poem,
and bothered to recycle for the sake
of a more conducive environment-

but i'm beginning to see more saturdays
in these rotten heaps,
than fridays to be their predecessors:
TGIF - yes, Thursday Goes Infinitely Forever
between misplaced clocks
in a lot of rusted suffix where the pre-fix
apparently,
is not.

trace my own circumference
until i walk a circle around my own misdirection,
trying to justify the end
of every poem i've thrown
into the construction of this second-hand home
-with out the means
to remember what it is i wrote.

i'm the trophy wife of beautiful words,

who can't even count to the sum
of his own accomplishments
without a second hand
-who can scribe for the first.

i've subscribed to my own literary magazine
of half concluded exposays-
from the first issue in Novemeber of 1988
up until the presently future day
-where again i'm writing the past
because i've already forgotten of today.

i know
i'll throw this issue away too
-help build a solid foundation for my adobe hut.
my own bullshit makes for the best mortar;
even if its backside starts to grow flowers,
and its for-side can cup a coward,
and its backside can be picked for hours
by its for-side's half-fully empty coward;

i make two cent's of every message in a bottle
i recycle after sending it adrift to myself.
i've lost it all and earned it back with every poem,
and chanced it every time again
in hope that it will always come back to me

in the very end.
.Or the very beginning
depending on where it starts..
.. or it's ending?

???

September 8, 2009

September 4, 2009

Antony Micallef

Antony Micallef (born 1975 in Swindon), Englishcontemporary artist and painter.

26c.jpg image by thereddoll

Internationally acclaimed artist Antony Micallef appeared on the art scene in 2000, winning second prize in the BP National Portrait Award. Since then his mix of political imagery fused with contemporary expressionism has won him world wide acclaim. Recent exhibitions include group shows at the Royal Academy and the Tate Britain. It’s reported that collectors of his work include Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and Damien Hirst among others.


http://www.antonymicallef.com/

September 3, 2009

Mimmo Rotella


Domenico "Mimmo" Rotella
, (October 7, 1918January 8, 2006), was an Italian artist and poetbest known for his works of décollage and psychogeographics, made from torn advertising posters.



Décollage, in art, is the opposite of collage; instead of an image being built up of all or parts of existing images, it is created by cutting, tearing away or otherwise removing, pieces of an original image[1]. Examples include inimage or etrécissements and excavations. A similar technique is thelacerated poster, a poster in which one has been placed over another or others, and the top poster or posters have been ripped, revealing to a greater or lesser degree the poster or posters underneath.
























"meet me in montauk"



just aint gonna work out

by Mayer Hawthorne

Mayer Hawthorne (born Andrew Mayer Cohen[1][2] in 1978 or 1979[4]) is a singer,producer, songwriter, arranger, audio engineer,DJ, rapper and multi-instrumentalist[1][3][4] based in Los Angeles, California, USA[1]. The stage name "Mayer Hawthorne" is a combination of Cohen's real middle name (Mayer) and the name of the street he grew up on in Michigan (Hawthorne Rd).[2] "Mayer Hawthorne and The County" is a name Cohen often uses when performing or recording as Mayer Hawthorne with other artists. In Cohen's words, "The County" is basically anyone who plays an instrument or sings on his album. It’s also his band when he performs live.[3] Cohen also performs and records Hip Hop music under the stage name "Haircut", sometimes as part of the groups "Now On" & Athletic Mic League.[3]

Born and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA,[1][4] Hawthorne moved to Los Angeles after being signed to LA based Stones Throw Records by label head Peanut Butter Wolf.[1][4]

Mayer Hawthorne draws influence from the music of Curtis Mayfield , Isaac Hayes, Leroy Hutson,Mike Terry, Barry White, Smokey Robinson and the legendary songwriting and production trio ofLamont Dozier, Brian Holland, and Edward Holland, Jr. (known collectively as Holland–Dozier–Holland).[1][4]

His debut single, Just Ain't Gonna Work Out/When I Said Goodbye, was released on a red heart-shaped 7" record on Stones Throw Records on November 4, 2008.[5] His second single Maybe So, Maybe No/I Wish It Would Rain was released on a 12" record on Stones Throw Records on April 19,2009.[6] His debut album, A Strange Arrangement was released on CD and LP on Stones Throw Records on September 1, 2009.[7]

Birdstone

by Tim Clark


There's a high outside of height
that can paralyze the air if your
breathing becomes numb.
While in flight I try to feather step
around heavy clouds; rain skipping
across the sky like pebbles.

Inevitably, I'll come down because
it's not wings that are needed,
it's a mind that can rape gravity
and puncture solid substances
to abuse mass as science tames
the masses with airplanes.

Take a seat, we'll be on our way.
Pass the pipe if you want to see your
tarot cards thrown out the window.
We're parrots, soon to breed elephants
who wait for crackers and peanuts.
Attendants to our grass cage addiction
are saying "I'm sorry for the weight."

I'll use the sun to light my cigarette.
If the captain sees us exhibit fear then
clearly we're affiliated with terrorists.
Security checked my shoes and
made me tap dance over trip-wires.
While everyones alarmed I pull fires
towards the door for kids ordering
tickets to travel in smoke circles.

Radius hates circumference
So set your sights to deep purple.
As the squares go round about
faces radiate but retain doubt.
Oxygen remains our anesthetic.

Jonathan Borofsky

Jonathan Borofsky (born 1942 in Boston,Massachusetts) is an American artist who lives and works in Maine.

He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University in 1964, after which he continued his studies at France's Ecole de Fontainebleau and received hisMaster of Fine Arts from Yale University in 1966. In the 1960's, Mr. Borofsky's art sought to interconnectminimalism and pop art.



play me, i'm yours

A Street Piano is a piano placed in the street which passers-by are encouraged to play. The best known examples are the Play Me, I'm Yours projects by artist Luke Jerram.

Street Piano, Leadenhall Market

Play Me, I'm Yours

A Play Me, I'm Yours piano being played near london's Millennium Bridge

Artist Luke Jerram has put together street pianos instalations in various cities. The initiative comes as a reaction of a creative individual to the general rule, prohibiting anyone to play music in public places without special arrangement - no matter how skilful you are at playing your piano or how popular your music is with the audience. Any musician would have been stopped immediately by security outside the City of London and Sing London festival.


Birmingham

In 2007 artist Luke Jerram installed 15 streetpianos across Birmingham,UK for the public to play. In just 3 weeks 140,000 people across the city played, listened and connected with one another.

Jerram said "Questioning the rules and ownership of public space 'Play Me I'm yours' is a provocation, inviting the public to engage with, activate and take ownership of their urban environment."

[]São Paulo

13 pianos have been installed in São Paulo.[1] Luke Jerram reported that many of those who stopped at the pianos had never played a real piano or even seen one.[1]

[]Sydney

30 Street pianos were set up across Sydney for the Sydney Festival 2009. A website (www.streetpianos.com) was set up for the public to upload and share their films, photos and stories of the pianos being played.

[]London

In June - July 2009 30 Play Me, I'm Yours painted pianos by Luke Jerram were installed across London "like a creative blank canvas" for members of the public to play. The painting on each paino was chosen to suit it's location.[2] The project was produced by Sing London and City of London Festival[2] at a cost of £14,000.[3] A music license had to be obtained for the location of each piano.[3]


Schoolgirls Kaila Trought (r), 7, and Maisy Isles (l), 7, play a public piano on the corner of Broadwick Street on June 11, 2009 in London, England. The free public piano is part of the "Street pianos" scheme which is installing 29 pianos, which have been individually customised by artists, across the city of London from June 23 to July 14.  (Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Kaila Trought;Maisy Isles


Nane Neu, on holiday from Germany, plays a public piano on the corner of Broadwick Street on June 11, 2009 in London, England. The free public piano is part of the "Street pianos" scheme which is installing 29 pianos, which have been individually customised by artists, across the city of London from June 23 to July 14.  (Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Nane Neu

The Street Piano in Sheffield

The Sheffield Street Piano

In Sheffield The Street Piano was a piano on the pavement on Sharrow Vale Road in Sheffield, UK. It was originally left outside temporarily because the owner could not get it up the steps into his new house. As a social experiment the owner and a friend then attached a sign inviting passers by to play the piano for free. This offer was taken up by a great many people and the piano became a part of the local community. It has so far survived for over a year, including being stolen and subsequently replaced by a newer model (having 4/5 separate volunteers willing to provide a new one).

It became the center of a local campaign once the council decided it constituted an abandoned item, and the campaign to save it spread quickly to local news outlets, and several articles on Indymedia. As of July 2006 a spokesman said in an interview for the National BBC Radio 4 that the piano was no longer under threat of removal.

object orange

Object Orange (formerly Detroit. Demolition. Disneyland.[1]) is anartistic project in Detroit, Michigan which seeks to draw attention todilapidated buildings by painting them oran

The project is composed of local artists, who go by their first namesonly (Christian, Jacques, Greg, Mike[3] and Andy[4]) for fear ofprosecution. James Canning, communications coordinator for the Mayor's office of Detroit, views the artists' actions as unlawful andvandalism, stating that any demolitions which took place following the project's painting expeditions have been coincidental.[5]

objectorange.jpg image by paulcoors

The artists chose the color "Tiggerific Orange[6]" from the Disney paint catalog by Behr[1] for its similarity to traffic cones and the safety orange worn by hunters.[5]