Motown was down the street and they called me up asked if I wanted to do album covers, so I said I’ll send you an example. So, I sent them that ball of noise just to show my kind of disdain. I didn’t even know what it was at that time. It wasn’t anything. It was just a little record company down the street in an old house that said Hitsville, USA and I was a big time Detroit automotive advertising designer. I was too snobby to actually want to do anything for them. So I just sent them that ball of noise as a joke, just to end the whole thing. At the time I didn’t know what it was, nor did I care. It was just kid’s music and I was more interested in Jazz. I didn’t want to bother with this little shitty neighborhood record company that was just down the street from the building I worked in. I was just a snobby artist, even in high school. I wouldn’t be caught dead listening to Elvis Presley or any of that kind of stuff. Beatniks didn’t listen to pop music. Beatniks listened to Shostakovich and Coltrane. When I was in high school the big thing was beatniks and so beatniks were high culture. They weren’t pop culture. If you were a beatnik, you were a bohemian artist type, so you would be into Classical and Be Bop Jazz and then finally folk music, but very authentic stuff. I listened to that Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music.
From an interview with Ed Fella.
Working is interested in businesses which are rooted in physical spaces (e.g., offices, studios, storefronts) instead of freelance situations that can be transported city to city. The physical nature of these businesses demonstrates, at the least, a commitment to the city where their practice occurs, something increasingly important in stemming the homogenization and scaling of our cities and of unifying the strange divide between where we live and where we work.
Watch/more: here (Tramnesia)
Make Sounds, Hear Sounds
Through September 17
At Postalco, Kyobashi (Tokyo)
Above: Photograph from Riley and His Story; below: from the 1942 MoMA bulletin about The Road to Victory; more/via The Road to Victory and Beyond (greg.org).
"A recent client asked for a New Ritual to relieve some of the anxiety of her daily urban commute... For the mornings, we choreographed the “zip up dance” based on zipping in good feelings from her home environment, and provided a sachet for her to gather fresh herbs from her garden to take into the subway for holding and smelling. For the evening, we choreographed a happening where a masseuse met her at a specified place and time on the subway platform where she then received a hand, arm, shoulder, and neck massage while waiting for her train. She reported a great sense of emotional and physical relief in her daily commute, now having both the ongoing sachet collection morning ritual to take into the train, plus a reason to smile on the subway platform in the evenings with the massage memory. Both activities added to the memory of the space."
New Daily Dance is "a service that choreographs personalized, contemporary rituals and happenings that bridge the gap between where you are now and your most desired future."
Exciting Places for Boring People
By Andy Rementer
Published by Nieves
Edition of 150
Get yous a copy at the NYABF.
