Get FRAG'd FRAG’d is a hi-speed transcontinental feature-length documentary investigation into America’s LAN parties and gaming subcultures. Big and small, these events are amazing and interesting to a large, diverse, and rapidly growing community. We are coming to your town soon. Shooting on DV and super-8, we will be conducting interviews and capturing footage of your gaming competitions, events, and gatherings. We will start off in NY in late May and end up in Los Angeles at the end of June 2004. We are looking to capture a glimpse of the gaming cultural phenomena that have recently swept across the world: anything and everything from elaborate to funk’d: LAN parties, FRAG BBQs, BYOC garage parties, commercial LAN centers, old school arcades, your best friend’s basement rig, etc... We're planning to hit the cities listed below. If you’re in or around (or even if you're really far away from) any of these cities and have a fun event, location, or party coming up... email us! New York City, NY Philadelphia, PA Washington, D.C. Virginia Beach, VA Charleston, WV Pittsburgh, PA Cleveland, OH Columbus, OH Indianapolis, IA Springfield, IL St Louis, MO Columbia, MO Kansas City, MO Lawrence, KS Denver, CO Colorado Springs, CO Santa Fe, NM Albuquerque, NM Flagstaff, AZ Phoenix, AZ Las Vegas, NV Palm Springs, CA Los Angeles, CA San Diego, CA More info @ Meekermagic.com Send email to: The FRAG’d ‘04 Team FRAGd@meekermagic.com “We put the party in the LAN”

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posted by Japhy at 3/27/2004 07:30:00 PM || #

Spring Arts Review 2004 Welcome to Japhyjunket's look at what's new, what's good and what sucks deep donkey ass in New York's art world this spring. While the Spring is usually a good time of the year to check out New York's art scene, this year is especially good. With the arrival of the Whitney's 2004 Biennial, galleries have gone into overdrive to produce unique- and for the most part, "cutting edge" shows, even if the "cutting edge" is 1972. The review is not meant to be comprehensive. Look to Time Out or The New Yorker for gallery listings. Instead, the review aims to look at the larger trends evidenced by the art arriving into New York this year. With that in mind, the review will also include one theatre piece and - a japhyjunket first- one film review as well. It's my hope that this can be your guide to finding art which is devoid of pretension and as vital as spring itself. - Japhy

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posted by Japhy at 3/22/2004 01:00:00 PM || #

Spring Arts Review: Special Biennial Section Whitney 2004: An Old Navy Kinda Biennial To put it briefly- the most exciting thing about the Whitney Biennial this year was that I saw Lili Sobieski among the crowd of attendees. Considered to be the show which defines the state-of-the-art of art for America, no article about the Biennial can omit the phrase "the show everyone loves to hate." The problem, this year, is that the Biennial fails to fulfill its mandate- rather curators Chrissie Iles, Shamim M. Momin and Debra Singer have thrown in everything but the kitchen sink (actually...) in an attempt to please everyone, which is a shame. I'd rather the Biennial be incredibly wrong than banal. The thing about this banality tough, is that it's exciting- in a State Fair, Old Navy kind of way. It's bright, brash and has the feel of a midway designed to sell you easily digestible concepts. The seventies still remains the decade to draw inspiration from, as the psychedelia of assume vivid astro focus's pop art installation and Spencer Finch's Mylar and silkscreened macrame wallpaper more than attest to. Installation art makes up a larger part of this Biennial than previous ones, but it is video that reigns supreme. The best of the lot is Sue de Beer's Hans und Grete, a combination of both installation and video that is a satisfying trend. Too often, video is displayed against a blank wall- de Beer's displays her two-panel projection like a giant pop-up book and fills the space with oversized stuffed animals for the viewers to lay on. The video itself is a fascinating conflagration of youthful tomfoolery and savage violence. Two morose teenagers play on guitars in separate rooms- the whole thing plays like a bad school project, even the guitars are fake. De Beers then cuts to another youth savagely cutting open a bleeding dog- or is it another stuffed animal. Through the sopping blood, it's hard to know the difference. In every Biennial there emerges art which is great, regardless of trends. The best of the best include Roni Horn's, Doubt By Water- a series of photographs displayed in head height Plexiglas stands. Some are scattered in the stairwell, others in a jumble you have to navigate through. The images: of a tow-headed boy and of a raven are deglamourized and extremely accessible. The repetition of the images, even while subtly changing, combined with the presentation, are a subtle, but entirely engaging meditation on the nature of seriality. Kim Fisher's painting Beryl 81 is a wonderful addition to the minimalist genre. With the extra canvas spilling over the frame and onto the wall, Fisher's abstract geometries seem to burst with life. Other must-see artists include A-Z West's homespun narrative on creating sustainable architecture in the desert, Jack Pierson's evocative Self Portraits, actually photographs of other people taken to evoke himself at various ages and printed in soft pastels with inkjet on canvas, as well as David Altmejd's sculpture Delicate Men in Positions of Power, which seems to be unearthed bodies made of salt, glitter and twine. It's a shame the Biennial's curators were unable to provide some kind of synthesis for this show. On a case-by-case level, much of the art here is to be enjoyed, but take a step back and all you see is clutter. The Whitney Biennial is open now through May 30th. Tickets are available at the Museum and cost from $12-24 dollars. Fridays after 6pm is pay as you wish and generally a great pick-up joint. The museum is closed Monday and Tuesday. The Whitney is located at 846 Madison Avenue and 75th Street. You can reach the Whitney at 1-800-WHITNEY or http://www.whitney.org/

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posted by Japhy at 3/22/2004 12:54:00 PM || #

Spring Arts Review: Theatre The Best Dream I've Ever Seen BAM presents The Watermill Theatre's triumphal all-male version of A Midsummer's Night Dream Oh, what a gimmick these Brits do have! Directed by Edward Hall, this UK import of Shakespeare's most beloved comedy is a fantastically inspired work of genius. Playing at BAM through March 28th, any Shakespeare lover should hightail it over to Brooklyn as fast as they can. The aforementioned gimmick is that this version of the play is played, just as it was in Shakespeare's time, exclusively by men. Michael Pavelka's designs do little to try to hide this fact, dressing the ladies in dresses, but leaving the actors stubble firmly on their cheeks. It is the all male twist that brings out the enduring heart of this play. The tale of mismatched lovers crossing in the fairy woods is, in the hands of these actors- funny. I'm talking Curb Your Enthusiasm funny. With all the characters played by men, the femineness of the male lead roles, Lysander and Demetrius become all the more apparent. The Fairy Queen and her King take on greater stature when we are constantly aware of their artifice and Puck, well, Puck becomes a tutu-wearing Loki God. The concept's great, but it is the actors here who are the real heart of this brilliant staging. Jonathan McGuinness's Helena takes what is usually considered a rather undistinguished character and brings her into hilarious three dimensionality. When the two men who previously had no interest in her fall in love with her under the fairy spell, her response is not demure bashfulness- it's outright indignation. As they heap on talk of love that she can only perceive as joking taunts, she screams and slaps the young men. Simon Scarfield, as Puck is really one of those actors who is just fantastic to watch. His timing is impeccable and even in the background, he becomes a mischievous presence- the very spirit of potential mayhem waiting to be unleashed. The greatest moment of the play, however, is usually the part that director's first cut. The Mechanicals production of the "lamentable comedy of Pyrimus and Thesbe" is usually, kind of a snoozer, but with Tony Bell's Bottom at the lead, the play within in a play becomes an uproarious bit of sketch comedy come to life, constantly topping laugh for laugh, stunt for stunt- it's as if Monty Python's Flying Circus had taken up residence in the Bard of Avon's head. This production has actually expanded my idea of what Shakespeare was capable of. It's one thing to see the best production of a play you've ever seen, it's another to see a play which expands your idea of what going to a play can be. A Midsummer's Night Dream is playing through March 28th at Bam's Harvey Theatre. Tickets are $25,40,60 and available at the box office or online at www.bam.org or by phone at 718/636.4100

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posted by Japhy at 3/22/2004 12:54:00 PM || #

Spring Arts Review: Galleries Spring Galleries Now. What to see in New York this spring. Kashya Hildebrand Gallery Tianbing Li: New Hybrids March 4 - April 17th 531 W. 25th St. #:212/366.5757 e: infony@kasyahilebrand.org http://www.kashyahildebrand.org Tianbing Li's deal in the kind of surreal hyperrealism usually reserved for David Cronenberg films. His New Hybrids deal directly with the interlocking of Chinese and American Culture, but rather than portraying it as a cultural war, sees mutation as the result. The paintings are done in an intense pallette that betrays Li's attempts at painting in a style "based on ancestral techniques". Metis 2, shows a series of bizzare creatures, including a lizard-dragon with Louis Vuitton logos instead of scales, on a flat cerulean background with Chinese text alongside, reminiscent of the illustrated menu boards used for foriegners in China; a sly suggestion that both cultures will be feasting on the freaks that result from our genetic swapping. Self Portrait V shows the artist as a bulbous organic plume of smoking, facets of the face arising from flesh. Most prominent is a set of bared teeth, but to the left another plume of flesh has burst, a failed experiment of recreation. Tianbling Lee's work is not only masterful, but disturbing. Gallery Henoch Eric Zener: Recent Paintings 555 W. 25th St. #:917/305.0003 e: ghenoch@earthlink.net http://www.galleryhenoch.com Eric Zener's painting, Releasing, is the first painting I've ever viscerally needed to own. Maybe it's because she reminds me of my mother's way of swimming in the ocean, but this woman staring up at an uncoming wave seems fraught with the crackling energy that comes when any two opposites attract. It is the binary of Life/Death that concerns Eric Zener's latest paintings, nearly all of which deal with swimmers in underwater scenes. Though Zener rarely gives us a face to view, these bodies, gliding beneath the current or curled up into a suspended fetal ball in the water become pockets of life in death. There's a real tension that undergirds what are essentially bucolic scenes. Even in his non-water-related-work, Zener seems caught up in the danger and drama of suspended animation. In Journey, a bather stands on a small green platform off of a tall metal ladder that continues beyond both the top and bottom edges of the canvas. He's high up, as the clouds below attest to, but we don't know whether he is terrified or confident as he looks away from us- and down at the Earth below. Evocative and subtle, these are paintings to be lingered over and God, Almighty, do I ever want to own one. Sandra Gering Gallery Leo Villareal: Chasing Rainbows 534 W. 22nd St. #:646/336.7183 e: sandra@geringgallery.com http://www.geringgallery.com Chasing Rainbows is an apt title for Leo Villareal's LED installation at Gering Gallery: It is too exuberent to be Minimalism and too fanciful to be Light Art, though, I suppose, technically it is both. A series of three panels made up of plastic tubes filled with LEDs, they shimmer and undulate according to cellular automata inspired software. The software running it looks like it's no more complicated than the game Life that used to come bundled with Windows 95, but it's entertaining to watch. The piece captures the sometimes organic qualities of technology in what is really, at it's heart, a fun way. The piece does not require much of the viewer other than someone who can enjoy looking at a really cool Lite-Brite, but sometimes that's all you need. Ziehersmith Wes Lang: Home at Last Karin Weiner: Shades of White Chiem & Read Lynda Benglis: A Sculpture Survey (1969-2004) Mary Boone Gallery Barbara Kruger: Twelve 303 Gallery Thomas Demand: New Work LFL Gallery Jim Meyerson: "More than you want, less than you need" Yossi Milo Gallery Alec Soth: Sleeping by the Mississippi Andrea Rosen Gallery Sean Landers: New Paintings and Sculptures PaceWildenstein Sol Le Witt: Structures 1962-2003 Sonnabend Andrea Robbins & Max Becher: Where Do You Think You Are?, France in America, America in France Candice Breitz: Becoming Haim Steinbach: Selected Works from the Late 80's Max Protetch Brian Alfred: Overload Museum of the American Indian George Longfish: Continuum 12 Nora Naranjo-Morse: Continuum 12 Matthew Marks Gallery Martin Honert: Selected Works

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posted by Japhy at 3/22/2004 12:54:00 PM || #

Spring Arts Review: Film

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posted by Japhy at 3/22/2004 12:53:00 PM || #

Censure Bush A gigantic Spring Arts Review is on it's way (including the Whitney Biennial), but today, I'd like you to take a look at this interview with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. I'd then ask you to call your representative (if you live in New York, his name is Congressman Charles B. Rangel. His DC phone number is 202-225-4365. His aides are very polite) and let them know that you are a constituent and that you support and urge your representative to begin censure proceedings against the President for deliberately misleading the American people. What He Said: “Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraqi regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.” President Bush, March 17, 2003 (from official White House transcript) What He Knew: “We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq used the period since 1998 to reconstitute its Weapons of Mass Destruction programs.” CIA report, February 2003

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posted by Japhy at 3/18/2004 01:26:00 PM || #

"How was your trip to L.A.?", people ask me. Well, I'll tell you later- for now, read this L.A. Craigslist Ad, which is a.) funny and b.) so very sad.

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posted by Japhy at 3/12/2004 11:10:00 AM || #

Greetings from La La Land- So, I'm in L.A. doing writer stuff. Here are the impressions so far: -All the stereotypes are true. I walk in to a coffee shop in the Valley with my producer and there's not one Valley Girl- there's 8, one of them in her mid-fifties, but with roots as straw blonde as Britney and lip liner as black as Whitney. - Oddly, the work ethic in L.A. is much stronger than in New York. People go to bed early, get up early and work a lot. My guess: Nothing better to do. - The weather is wonderful. Even smog has it's charms. More to come. Off to enjoy the sun :^)

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posted by Japhy at 3/06/2004 10:51:00 AM || #