Category Archives: Art

The Production and Decay of Strange Particles – A Film by Jon Behrens

by Cimaxion

Seattle avant-garde filmmaker Jon Behrens made this gorgeous piece in 2008 with 16mm film, latex paint and inks applied directly to the film surface. It creates a mysterious space travel and exploratory sensation that has some connection – at least in my mind – to Kubrick’s 2001.  There’s a big pile of magnificent work waiting for you to enjoy from this filmmaker.  Visit his Vimeo page and personal website for more information.

You can rent Behrens’ films for 16mm projection from Canyon Cinema.  He also has a DVD of collected works.

Inside Penguin’s Publishing Offices

by Cimaxion

Guy Kawasaki over at Holy Kaw! posts about the various team members and office spaces at his publisher, Portfolio, which is an imprint of Penguin.  He’s put up a bunch of photos he took inside the Manhattan office building where all the book work goes on.

It’s all more or less just fine… until we get to the photo of the art department (although I don’t trust smiling publishers).  The poor art people are given those brutally unprivate low-walled cubicles to work in.  All management teams use the exact same excuses for these open work areas:  fosters team spirit, allows easy direct communication over cubicle walls, lets the window light spread throughout the work area.

The real reason management installs low-rise cubicles is for observation and control.  It puts all employees, even the most dedicated and creative ones, in the position of monitoring each others’ work habits and arrival/departure times.  Low-rise cubicles are an insult to employees and do not foster team attitudes.  Professionals build teams by sharing their skills, not by watching each other.

Here’s Kawasaki’s book at Amazon.  And the cover really just truly sucks.  It’s about how to convince people to do the things you would like for them to do in business.  It probably helped convince the art designers to work in this cubicle hell.  His next book should be about how to smash furniture.

MOCA Film on Artist Alexis Smith

by Cimaxion

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles is producing a series of short films about LA artists in their studios. They sort of lean toward the cute clever artist in their oh so picturesquely messy work spaces mentality. But sometimes it’s nice to see a little mess and hear a few comments from an artist. I happen to like this one about Alexis Smith. I like her comments about not knowing where her art is going and how she keeps all this stuff around to make it with. I think what she means is that she just digs around in pile of crap and throws a whole bunch of junk together and suddenly goes ‘Oh wow! There it is!’  Of course, to do that you’ve got to have a really fine pile of junk.

R. Crumb and the Corporate Mono-Culture

by Cimaxion | 1 Comment

Cartoonist Robert Crumb gets interviewed by a Los Angeles Times writer and talks about his living in France and his hatred for the pervasive corporate mono-culture that Americans seem unaware of.  He can’t stand it and chooses to live outside of it.

Really good perspective.

In a culture where you’ve got a Supreme Court actually giving corporate entities the rights of individual human beings, you’ve got total corporate control of every single living man, woman and child.  You can see this complete robotic control on very prominent and horrific display in the current president of the United States.  He a corporate hologram who moves only when commanded to by his boardroom overseers.  The entire country is oriented around cop/lawyer shows on television which are specifically designed to make you feel close and personal with the state/corporate stooges who work for police departments and gleefully lay disadvantaged people out on their faces on subway platforms and slaughter them with bullets fired straight into their backs from six inches away.  ‘The Mentalist’ is probably the supreme example of this attempt to make the corporate/police control mechanism seem odd and quirky and just a little cutely but intelligently eccentric.  ‘Medium’ is another.  The individual with oddball abilities or perceptions is entirely consumed and controlled by the state apparatus.  All cop shows are meant to make as many viewers as possible feel completely comfortable being visited by and talking to the police.  That is the entire truth of American television.  It’s message is simply this: when we come knocking, open the door.

That is the true subtext of every single show ever produced by American broadcasting companies.

R. Crumb is totally right.