Category: art

This is Not Paradise, and Thank God, for We are Imperfect: Blip Festival 2007

BlipvertHaeyoung Kim AKA Bubblyfish

I jumped a groove this weekend and took in one night of the still-ongoing Blip Festival 2007, where I saw, among others, the above-depicted chiptune DJ Bubblyfish. It’s not a scene I’m really familiar with, this 8-bit, lo-fi, chiptuning scene, but it’s clearly a font not only of amazing people-watching, but of the stuff of authenticity as well. It’s a scene built around limitations, and limitation becomes a kind of currency, affirming identity and memory in the type of music that is created by 8-bit tech. Through repetition and nostalgia, we are reminded that that we are in our way real and we are human. The artists are un-self-conscious, and everyone is clearly doing this not out of a sense of commercial betterment (what market is there be for 8-bit music?), but out of nostalgia and a studied joy. Sure, the palette can be constraining, but you fool yourself if you think that every form of expression is not restrictive in its own right. To be limited and to express yourself -literally to stand up and say who you are and that you are with the opportunities that you are given and the tech on hand – is to live.

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The Summer Stays Cold and the Things I am not Keeping Track Of Continue to Outdo my Attempts to Stay on top of Them (Which Attempts Are not Attempts, Per Se)

Ok, this is the week in which falls the great U.S. great Independence Day. That means that we are already 1 month through the summer, and I haven’t really done any of the great NYC stuff that there is to do for free here. It’s the season when the city sort of apologizes in a caddish, over-the-top Tad Allagash more brash than sincere kind of way for being basically unlivable.

What is happening this week?

The New Pornographers and Midlake are playing on the 4th in Battery Park, continuing for the second year running the practice of hiring a non-American band to headline the biggest free show in the country on Starsy & Stripesy’s “I was once a baby” day.

The Boredoms play on Saturday in the Brooklyn Bridge park. I’ve never seen the Boredoms, nor have I listened to more than about 10 seconds of any of their songs, but I’ve always imagined that listening to them brings all the middle-class emotional rewards of other kinds of committed diligence. It must be nice.

Cinematic Orchestra is also playing on Saturday in Central Park at Summerstage. For free.

Recommended to me was Banks Violette’s opening this week.

Banks Violette at Whitney
This artist sounds like a visceral type figure that acts on desires and creative impulses with felinity, and does it while hanging out with cool fucking metal rockers.

And if I could visualize the thing that would truly be amazing to report on, I’d be able to tell readers that this week I’d be on a plane embarking on a Gran Turismo of bravado and tall tales, divested of all financial worry.

Dig the week, and please let me know if there’s something cool going on.

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