We talk a lot about the counterculture in the work we’ve been doing lately. It may surprise you to learn the term was coined no earlier than the 1960s by Theodore Roszak in The Making of a Counter Culture HERE. The tradition itself, though, no doubt goes back as far as societies have existed. I Read More
Tag Archives: Art
Beat
Yeah, well, maybe, I guess. One of those headlines that today we call clickbait. Do we want to read about what happened? An uprising of the counterculture? The fringe fraying from the body politic of the established order? Perhaps. We’ve been thinking and writing about the counterculture of the Sixties and Seventies, with a preamble Read More
Art and Artifice
Ruminating over a collection of slightly related subjects as a theme for this article. Art and artisan are featured here, and artful living in an age of late stage capitalism with its lure of artifice. Writing about a time in the past when creativity was rampant, life more carefree, aspirations communal, inevitably leads to contemplation Read More
Human Endeavor Writ (Very) Large
Once in a while, in the deluge of “information” washing over us every day, we encounter something that is immediately unforgettable, something so staggering, perplexing, or simply stunning to behold that we can’t let go of it. It demands contemplation. It happened to me when I was a young man riding a motorcycle in Western Read More
Ephemeral Things
Life as an artist. A career in the arts. It’s a passionate need for self-expression and a challenging way to make a living. Like most areas of enterprise in a capitalist system, a few people make a lot of money and most everyone else barely gets by. Employment for artists is an ephemeral thing, a Read More
Artistry
Art and artistry. Thank the gods and goddesses for blessing us so. Can’t imagine life without it. So many problems in this world of ours. Nothing but bad news. Gloom and doom. A global pandemic. Government everywhere in crisis. One American political party in the grip of a madman. The other in a maelstrom of Read More
Sociometry
YES! There really is an Institute of Sociometry and, yes, it is helmed by two artists, partners Heather Link-Bergman and Peter Miles Bergman, who claim a collective of over 700 special authorized agents in 23 countries join them in their efforts at culture jamming and guerrilla communications. As artists, they take a more adventurous approach Read More
Translocal Arts Activism
An interesting discussion with Complex Movements, an artist-activist collective in Detroit, about the intersection of art, technology, and commodification in trying to build “translocal” alliances for change here.
50 Years of Patti Smith
Highly recommend this brief, poignant interview with the artist Patti Smith as she prepares for an anniversary performance in London 50 years after her first appearance in New York City here. She’s covered a lot of ground in her time and produced some amazing work.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Interview
The late, great artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, who were preparing the ground for their proposed Over the River Project on the Arkansas River in Southern Colorado, sat down with me for an interview in January, 2002. The result, which was published in Eye Level and is reprinted below, was used by them on their Read More