E-mail to a young lady working in an art gallery in the Bowery, New York

October 29, 2008

Dear Maggie:

Aren't you wonderful to think of us? (1) We already have a VIP package for the Basel Miami Art Fair, and (2) I don't think we'll be going this year. I think we have attended every one since Miami Basel started, and I don't think there is much new to see. Every year the Rubels go over the top, and every year makes it more apparent that there is more striving for a thin shock of the new rather than new discovery. But don't let THAT dampen your youthful enthusiasm.

We were VIP's at FIAC [at fair in Paris] last week. The fair was only C+, although incredibly elegant, but the peripheral shows (Picasso and his Masters, Nolde, Futurism meeting early Parisian cubism, Lee Miller, etc.) were terrific. This weekend we are VIP's in Berlin, and Friday late afternoon I am appearing on a panel on trends on collecting and the market (the answers are none and none).

I see you have a Sam Lewitt show starting on November 2. I will send you a jpeg of our installation of the piece we have. It looks good.

Also, please be advised that I am probably the only client of the gallery that has read about two thirds of Badiou's book on set theory ontology. I will try to finish it. I can't stand it that these brilliant Frenchmen still fret about communism, particularly since we might be replacing it with something worse.

s/ Ptolemy

Concerns of younger folks (continued):

Announcement for an evening of video in Chelsea, lower Manhattan, to wit:

NADA VIDEO NIGHTS
Wednesday 10/29
6:30-8pm

at John Connelly Presents
625 W 27th Street (between 11th and 12th Avenues)
NEW YORK CITY

Feature program: The State We're In - A selection of videos from the collection of the Artist Pension Trust (Dubai) that in different ways and via a wide variety of references seem to offer pertinent reflections on the accumulating states of global turbulence, and the resulting feelings of indecision and confusion. Curated by November Paynter, Director of APT Dubai, and independent curator, the program features work by Fahrettin Örenli, Ergin Cavusoglu, Ahmet Ögut, Vlatka Horvat, Basim Madgy, Loukia Alavanou, Wael Shawky, and Mario Rizzi.

Invitation to a party for launch of new edition of a spirited, avant magazine

This invitation arrived in Ptolemy's mailbox from John Connelly Presents, a first rate young Chelsea (West 27th Street, New York) art gallery. In case you were wondering what many "artistic" young people are concerned about. The Magazine is called "K48."

Dear Friends,

On October 28th from 11pm to 4am, join your fellow K48osmonauts at Santos (100 Lafayette St) as we escape the Earth's problems and celebrate the launch of K48: Starship Couterforce, issue No. 7—NYC's most awesome artist's fanzine. There will be music and dancing all night as we countdown the last minutes before take off—put on your space suits and bring favorite aliens.

Live performances by Come Rad Comrade, Brother Bruno, Tha Pumpsta, Living Days, Popular Science—featuring Tobell von Cartier and DJ set's by NYC's Kingdom, Michael Magnan, Atomly, Telfar and Fatima Al Qadiri.
_______________________________________________________________________

Press Release:

K48 is proud to announce the launch of its seventh issue: Starship Counterforce.
In this edition, K48 explores space, science fiction and our race toward the future.
Our planet is dying. The world faces environmental and economic collapse, consumption continues at even faster rates and governments wage war to feed corporate greed and oil dependency... we feel more and more imprisoned by the forces of gravity and wish to break free of our oxygen bubble—this spaceship Earth.

Today it's hard to imagine what the future might look like... one example that has inspired K48 from the start is George Lucas' student film, THX 1138. In his film, which he calls "an artifact from the future", what's left of life of Earth is sedated and confined to living in a subterranean world under constant surveillance and where emotions are against the law. There's no more love, only work to build a robotic police state and to consume —"buy more now," and "be happy".

We're not that far off from Lucas' vision. In the late 70s and through the mid 80s the pages of OMNI made the future seem glamorous. Today, however, in light of the very real and practical space station, deep space exploration and the search for other habitable planets has lost some of its magic. Nevertheless, the idea of space still resides in our culture as a means of hope and escape. The clean geometric constructions, spectral patterns, cosmic powers, and quantum physics associated with space let us turn away from our human problems and desire to imagine a world uncontaminated by our presence.

Excursions within the issue include photos by Marco Boggio Sella that bring news of the moon landing to a small West African village in Burkina Faso, a fashion spread of Telfar Clemen's 2008 ECO Society collection abstracted by Jason Farrer, prose by Amir Mogharabi theorizing the meaning of a last breath in The Cosmogony of Deceit, and an interview with Klaus Schulze the father of electronic music by editor Scott Hug. The issue's cover is a specially designed gold-embossed spacemetric construction by Jonah Groeneboer and each issue comes with a sculpture of light produced by Anne Koch and a soundtrack CD compiled and mixed by Samuel KkLOVENHOOF of led er est.

Special events include a preview exhibit at the 3rd Annual New York Art Book Fair, a launch party with band performances at Santos Party House on October 28th, an exhibition at Rekord in Oslo, Norway and a satellite launch party at the Aqua Hotel in Miami on December 5th. Further events will be posted on thek48bullet.blogspot.com.

K48#7 Artists/writers:

Jarrod Anderson
Fatima Al Qadiri
Marc Andreottola
Hrafnhildur Arnardottir (a.k.a. Shoplifter) w/Erez Sabag and Edda Gudmundsdottir
Hackworth Ashley
assume vivid astro focus
Brian Belott
Matt Bua
Michael Bilsborough
Jesse Bransford
Coley Brown
Bureau V
Christophe Chemin
Telfar Clemens
Ryan Compton
Claire Corey
Brent Cowley/Asher Penn
TM Davy
Will Duty
Chris Duncan
FACE
Jonah Freeman
Jack Goldstein
Jonah Groeneboer
Andrew Guenther
Wade Guyton
Jonathan Hartshorn
Brandon Herman
Hood by Air
Timothy Hull
Xylor Jane
Craig Kalpakjian
Shaun Kessler
Anne Koch
Terence Koh
Jeff Konigsberg
Michael Lazarus
Paul Lee
Severiano Martinez
Gloria Maximo
Keith Mayerson
Justin McAllister
Josh McNey
Robert Melee
Nicholas Messing
Johnny Misheff
Amir Mogharabi
Slava Mogutin
John Monteith
Mary Nicholson
Micki Pellerano
Misaki Kawai & Pete Pezzimenti
PFFR
Scott Reeder
Tyson Reeder
Theo A. Rosenblum
Samuel de la Rosa
Ezra Rubin
Borna Sammak
Justin Samson
Desi Santiago
Anja Schwörer
Marco Boggio Sella
Hiro Sugiyama
Robert Sumrell
James Swain
Mungo Thomson
Donnie & Travis
Jan Wandrag
Pete Watts
Grant Worth
Will Yackulic
Yemenwed

K48 Music by:

Fatima Al Qadiri
Der Räuber und der Prinz
Nacho Patrol
led er est
Medio Mutante
Brother Bruno
Living Days
Tha Pumpsta
Atomly
Kingdom
Popular Science
Come Rad Comrade
Tobias Bernstrup
2vm
Jeffrey SFire
Grackle
Frank Alpine

Race relations in the pre-Obama era

My son, George, is 46 years old, unmarried, living in Tacoma and a pretty good basketball player, by his own admission. By general agreement of his peers, he was in his time the best player at the Harvard Graduate School, faint as that praise might be.

One on his pastimes is playing pick-up basketball at playgrounds or occasionally a public gym. Until recently he was living in Pacific Palisades, and most of his basketball activity was in playgrounds along the Santa Monica or Venice beach area or elsewhere in West L.A. The regulars at these games are of all races but mostly black, good players and generally friendly and accommodating. If you want to get into a game, you get in. The only taboo I have ever heard of from George is the strict prohibition against wearing any clothes with a logo or a recognizable derivation. Pro or college t-shirts are not allowed – a Laker logo, for example, would incur instant banishment. One could wear a t-shirt from Southwest Kentucky State Teachers College.

A day or two ago, having some time to kill before a job in a wet and dark wooded area somewhere in the Tacoma environs, he chanced upon a schoolyard game. All the players were black. Upon asking if he could play, a tryout was put in play that required George to drive on the basket. After negotiating the drive with some success, a player was heard to remark, “See, I told you he was hard and dirty.” That sufficed to let George into the game.

For a while, all went as well as could be expected. The leader seemed to be the point guard, and George was fed the ball in normal order. After a while, George was not getting the ball. A black observer shouted to the point guard from the sideline, “Why don’t you feed the white guy; he’s your best player. Nothing doing. George was frozen out.

In the meantime, the patter among the players was becoming increasingly exclusionary in tone, although George did not report that it was directed toward him. George derived the following: White language is derided. Whites are soft and incapable. The blacks are intensely tribal. The whites are the others and worse. Conclusion: The period of desegregation is over. In urban areas, taking into account that in areas like Tacoma live men in the manner of left-over loggers, we are now back in South Africa. My guess is that Venice Beach integration is increasingly illusionary.

Luca Trevisani - young Italian artist

Trevisani is an Italian, about 28 years old, living and working in Berlin. Probably the next Olafur Eliasson.

The white painting is by the Viennese artist, Heimo Zobernig, and the small piece in the lower left is by the Frankfurt artist, Andreas Slominski.

Site is the loft of Mrs. Ptolemy south of Market in San Francisco.

A play read by Internet bots

I saw and heard this play performed at the Lab (Mission District, San Francisco) recently. Very interesting.

http://mark.antsclimbtree.com/

An all female percussion group called Morse SL also performed a "musical" piece based on Sartre's "No Exit," which affected the strained hopelessness that is the subject of the play. The performance was very well done.

Berlin techno band

Photo taken with iPhone at 1:30 a.m. September 6, 2008, at the Club Mighty, 15th and Utah Streets, San Francisco, during performance of the Berlin techno group, Modeselektor:

Start

The blog starts today, October 4, 2008. Thanks for looking in.