phantom limbs

fantastic ice cream brand

Sam Zimmerman — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 04:33:00 +0000

I just returned from Chang Mai, Thailand, where I saw this amazing ice cream shop, iberry.

Here's the view from the street:

By the door:

The side of the building:

The counter:

A flight of 5 mini cones:

It's an amazing brand - immaculately art directed, but extremely comfortable and laid back. Just perfect.

Superamas Big 3rd Episode

Sam Zimmerman — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 00:24:00 +0000

Superamas Big 3rd Episode is a musical play that is very stripped down in its staging, but extremely complex in its production. The minimalistic process is very exposed: the control booth is on one side of the stage, the dressing room on the other, and, aside from two songs, the characters lip sync throughout, pacing repeatedly through two mechanically spliced and diced scenes - the men at band rehearsal and the ladies changing for dance class. The story is fleshed out with a rock anthem (mimed), a disco scene (with a girls-only battle), a light design car crash, and video vignettes that deliver the backstory (with cameos from Peter Sellers, Peter O'Toole, Jacques Derrida, Claude Wampler and Cake).

Everything is very squeaky clean, and the process is fairly nerdy, but the with much campy gossip about the characters' tawdry sex lives, and the undressing of the ladies set on infinite loop, there is enough fizz to weather the de- and re- and deconstructions. Chewy ideas cleverly guised as polite naughty fluff.

UPDATE: A video report by OC-TV.net about Superamas Big 3rd Episode is available here: http://www.oc-tv.net/superamas,big-3rd-episode.htm

Monkey Town does Mago

Sam Zimmerman — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 16:46:00 +0000

Following up on our 2006 project, Bacchanale, Monkey Town has assembled a team of 50 audio artists to re-imagine the sound for Mago (2002).

Mago, from Korean director Kang Hyeon-Il and writer Jang Kyung-Ki is one of the largest-ever Korean film productions, though few souls outside of that country have experienced its unique charms. Described alternately as "dazzling and daring, mind-blowing and surreal, beautiful and horrifying" or "pretentious, vulgar, unbelievable, mind numbing, and appallingly hypocritical," the film is most notable for the acreage of epidermis employed in telling its tale. Although the Korean government is very conservative about nudity and sexuality depicted in mainstream movies, Mago escaped the ban by relentlessly and with grim precision neutralizing sex with anti-sex for the duration of the film - a monumental and alchemical artistic feat with dubious and discomfiting results.

Purportedly depicting the zen story of creation, beginning with paradise and progressing into man's destruction, Mago is a mashup of nostalgic pre-Christian Korean creation mythology and critical vignettes from this misguided modern world we call home. The visceral implication: our hospitals, cyber cafes, discos and subways are a very poor substitute for a world where 825 care-and-clothing-free elemental goddesses spend their days frolicking or in benign appreciation of the air and nakedness.

Is it art caught in the culture gap or heartless exploitation fare? As with all misfit masterworks, opinions run the gamut:

"although I don't know much about Zen or the YinYang symbol, I found the film to be unique and a very moving experience. It's like nothing I've ever seen in American cinema! 10/10"

"It's quite beautiful and surprisingly wholesome, proving that the unclothed human body is a work of art and nothing to be ashamed of."

"yet more proof that Korean cinema is a force to be reckoned with."

or

"Mago's incoherence is only outstripped by its pretentiousness. It’s like the Cremaster cycle with a dub track by Greenpeace."

"ends up feeling like being locked in a room with a snotty teenage zealot who beats you with a stick"

"One of the biggest "HUH?" movies ever made."

For this exclusive remixed presentation, Monkey Town distributed short silent clips from the film to 50 audio artists. The artists composed a new soundtrack for their clip, and the film was reassembled as a 65 minute feature. Additional edits by Sam Zimmerman. Inserts by Shu Lea Cheang.

Screenings at Monkey Town in December 2007 were feature recommendations in Time Out, Village Voice, and Flavorpill.

Semiennial 4

Sam Zimmerman — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 02:34:00 +0000

Twice a year at Monkey Town we put together a group program of great video art - a semiennial - of the stuff that made an impression on us in the past six months. The curatorial criteria is no more complicated than this is the best new stuff we've seen.

For this program we teamed up with Gretchen Hogue out in Portland, who hooked us up with some psuper psychedelic pselections, and Don Carroll who always has some art damaged deviants on tap. The artists in the program included:

Guy Benfield
Ondrej Brody
DisneyNASABorg
Marianna Ellenberg
Jesse England
Andrew Erdos and Organ Celebration!
Liz Haley
Michelle Handelman
Gretchen Hogue
Hooliganship
Seth Kirby
Karl Klomp
Mack MacFarland
Shana Moulton
Takeshi Murata
Melody Owen
Michael Robinson
Margie Schnibbe
Grant Worth
Jemima Wyman

The goal of this series is to present challenging video art in a format that draws an audience and holds their attention for an extended program. This is essential for art that requires *time* to be fully appreciated. The gallery format - where people walk in, crane their head around, do the rat-run around the perimeter, and walk out - is biasing video toward flat, non-narrative, every-moment-is-equal directions. We're looking to counter that by putting on a show with a DJ mindset. Art should rock! Art should turn you on! Art should put on a lampshade and make a fool of itself too.

Circus movies

Sam Zimmerman — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 16:53:00 +0000

I've been putting together a midnight circus show with video and live acts, finding all of the circus-, carnival-, and sideshow-themed movies easily accessible in the IMDB/Netflix age. Here's a partial list:

3 Ring Circus (1954)
Alien 51 (2004)
Angel de Fuego (1992)
At the Circus (1939)
Barnum (1986)
Berserk (1967)
Big Fish (2003)
Big Top Pee Wee (1988)
Bigger Than Barnum's (1926)
Billy Rose's Jumbo (1962)
Chad Hanna (1940)
Chapiteau (1984)
Charlie Chan at the Circus (1936)
Circus Days (1923)
Circus Maximus (1980)
Circus of Fear (1966)
Circus of Horrors (1960)
Circus Palestina (1998)
Circus Palestina (1998)
Circus World (1964)
Clown House (1988)
Colossal Sensation! (2004)
Dangerous Curves (1929)
Devil's Circus (1926)
Dual Alibi (1947)
Duffy's Irish Circus (2006)
Fifi la Plume (1965)
First International Circus Arts Festival in Budapest (2000)
Freaky Circus Guy (2005)
Geliebte Bestie (1959)
Hero of the Circus (1928)
Krrish (2006)
La Strada (1954)
Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1928)
Life Is a Circus (1960)
Mazeppa (1993)
Merry Andrew (1958)
MirrorMask (2005)
Most Astounding Circus Acts of All Time (1989)
Octopussy (1983)
Parade (1974)
Peck's Bad Boy with the Circus (1938)
Roselyne et les Lions (1989)
Santa Sangre (1989)
Sawdust and Tinsel (1953)
Starkiss: Circus Girls in India (2003)
Stoney Knows How (1982)
The Big Cage (1933)
The Big Circus (1959)
The Circus (1928)
The Clowns (1970)
The Freakmaker (1974)
The Great Wallendas (1978)
The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)
The Most Death-Defying Circus Acts of All Time (1987)
The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus (1996)
The Secret World of... Circuses & Sideshows (1998)
The Unknown (1927)
Trapeze (1956)
Vampire Circus (1972)
Viva Lo Imposible (1958)
Viva Maria! (1965)
When Night Is Falling (VHS - 1995)
You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (1939)

Bacchanale in Chicago

Sam Zimmerman — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 16:45:00 +0000

Making it's third festival appearance, the Monkey Town remix of Bacchanale is screening at the Chicago Underground Film Festival on August 18th, 2007. For details, visit www.cuff.org

Too(L) much video

Sam Zimmerman — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 03:39:00 +0000

So I went to see the end of the big Tool tour at PNC Arts Center. Where I saw Tool in '99 open for Ozzy. Which really slayed actually, the crowd was completely on board as much as they were for Ozzy. Super solid performance, lots of long abstract segues, just great.

This time around, they're sporting a stadium lightshow that completely overshadows the performers. Maynard sings the whole show unlit at the back of the stage, siloutted against a video wall. The stage is mainly dark, so the audience attention is dragged in to the screens and lights and lazers like moths to that stuff moths like. But why? The show rocks on it's own merits. No one needs to be sold on it, everyone there is already converted. Why not let the audience see you work out - it adds emotional impact. I'm guessing that the reason is the band is bored and the whistles and bells keep their interest up slogging through one of these tours.

But for me, too much video made the show pretty flat.

3rd Monkey Town Semiennial

Sam Zimmerman — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 00:59:00 +0000

At Monkey Town we offer a twice-yearly video art program - a semiennial - of the high water marks, the standouts, the stuff that made an impression. The immersive video equivalent of "come hang out a my place and listen to some records."

The curatorial criteria is no more complicated than this is the best new stuff we've seen. We've continue to be turned on to great work and we're just itching to pass it along. But we can offer up a few rough rules for what appeals to us:

video that loves its content more than its technology
video that doesn't mistake a technique for an idea
video that is in conversation with contemporary art as a whole
video that doesn't take itself too seriously
video that sells itself
video that rocks la casa

The next installment is June 15 and 16, seatings at 7:30 and 10:00 both nights. Featured artists include:
Josh Atlas
Lew Baldwin
Michael Bell-Smith & Aa
Josephin Böttger
John Michael Boling
Raul Vincent Enriquez
Wesley Heiss
Daniel Joseph
Kent Lambert
Ellen Lake
Mary Magsamen & Stephen Hillerbrand
Jillian McDonald
Marisa Olson
Open Arms
Zachariah Rockhill
Kelly Sears
Daveed Shwartz
Ray Sweeten
Skye Thorstenson & Xiu Xiu
Ryan Trecartin
Jemima Wyman

Curated by Montgomery Knott, Nick Hallett, Sam Zimmerman, and Christopher Borkowski, with Andrea Grover, Shoshana Brand and Don Carroll

Special thanks to:
Perpetual Art Machine
Venturous Vanguard Video Festival
Jack The Pelican Presents
Aurora Picture Show

Bacchanale in San Francisco

Sam Zimmerman — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 18:22:00 +0000

Bacchanale screened at ATA in San Francisco on May 11, 2007 as a selection in the Mission Creek Music/Film Festival:

http://www.atasite.org/calendar/?x=2288

Bacchanale

Sam Zimmerman — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 19:11:00 +0000

The Monkey Town revival/remix of Bacchanale (1970, dir. John and Lem Amero) was included in the New York Underground Film Festival:

nyuff.com

Bacchanale is an inspired adult arthouse film from the tail end of the "grindhouse" era. I discovered the film four years ago while exploring the community of self-appointed librarians of lost exploitation and porn films. Bacchanale is currently not available commercially - in fact we are working to track down any surviving prints.

This remix project involved cutting the original film into its individual scenes which were passed out to 50 artists to create entirely new audio for the visuals in their clip. The clips were reassmbled back into the feature length film, which debuted at Monkey Town in December 2006.

At the NYUFF screening were participating artists Luke Dubois, Bradley Eros, Nick Hallett and Zach Layton. Nick has been corresponding with John Amero, who was unable to attend but gave his approval to our reappropriation of his film.

Thanks to Mo Johnson and everyone at NYUFF!

Scraps!

Sam Zimmerman — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 00:34:00 +0000

After two months of gestation in Lewis Canfield's loft, and with a big assist from Abby Bender, I'm pleased to announce the opening of "Nest" by Saviour Scraps, a large-scale installation composed of recycled fabric that has overtaken the front room of Monkey Town:

If you are in the neighborhood, please come by to check it out - this is by far the largest work that I've ever commissioned, and we're kinda excited about it!

Porn Week recap

Sam Zimmerman — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 09:13:00 +0000

A quick smattering of the reviews, previews, photos and chats about Monkey Town's 3rd Annual Porn Week:

in Adult Video News

in The Reeler

consumating.com

on flickr

in Flavorpill

gridskipper.com

Vena Virago came to the debut of her mega-mashup with Margie Schnibbe and posted this video clip to her site:
venavirago.com

Many thanks to Margie, David Burns, Bruce Yonemoto, and all of the participating artists. Special thanks to Adam Kendall and Motomichi Nakamura who made animation pieces especially for this event. And also to the audiences who came to see this material in a public space - you rock!

If you missed your chance to see Bacchanale or the Margie Schnibbe-Vena Virago mashup, there are two encore screenings on January 24th and 26th, at 7:30 and 10:00 respectively.

3rd Annual Porn Week

Sam Zimmerman — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 05:37:00 +0000

I'm about to leave the country for three weeks and I'm cramming to finish the third installment of Monkey Town's Porn Week. The challenge is to rekindle that moment before the VCR in the early 70s when going to a theater to see sexually explicit fare was a socialially acceptable and even refined experience. If you haven't tried it, this is your big chance (we supply the futons and libations).

This year, in the spirit of biting off more than you can chew, we're attempting three separate programs wherein artists from the 60s to the present exploring their ickiest, stickiest urges in unflinchingly explicit detail. Below are some of the details.

--------------

ARTSLUT VIDEOS: 1975 to 2006
The ARTSLUT program is a rare collection of vintage homemade fetish videos curated by David Burns and Bruce Yonemoto featuring 21 Los Angeles-based artists. For this screening, Monkey Town has selected complementary pieces from our favorite video artists for a bi-coastal sexplicit summit.

Featured kinks: bananas, body paint, body builders, body hair, action figures, anuses, enemas, ejaculate, polaroids, socks, feet, dogs and roaches.

--------------

Monkeytown Mashup: Margie Schnibbe + Vena Virago
Monkey Town presents a 4-screen megamix of works by two directors on the razors edge of art and commerce. Margie Schnibbe is a NYC artist and former Disco 2000 club kid transplanted to L.A., working in paint, sculpture, video, and comic illustration. Vena Virago is "in the biz", part of the new Alt Porn wave. They happen to be the same person.

This (very explicit) program turns porn films inside-out, simultaneously revealing front and back of camera, makeup on and off, the art before the action. Featuring Silverlake scenesters, porn star pets, bondage bunnies, op-art, 'zines and behind-the-scenes.

2-channel immersion curated and edited by Sam Zimmerman.

Includes new animations by Adam Kendall, Motomichi Nakamura and Sam Zimmerman based on original designs by Margie Schnibbe and Tom Bliss.

Pornstar Pets appears courtesy of Brink Film and Music Video Distributors.

Silverlake Scenesters appears courtesy of VCA/Hustler/LFP Video.

Eastside Story appears courtesy of Vivid Alt.

--------------

Bacchanale
Bacchanale is a "lost" adult arthouse film from 1970, released towards the end of the grindhouse era and at the dawn of XXX.

The (surprisingly enlightened) sex in this film is overwhelmed by a script chock full of low-budget surrealistic pretensions. This creative tact was originally designed to provide enough of a veneer of artistic merit to keep the censorship boards at bay. With the passage of time, it now can be seen as a piece in full dialog with the cinematic trends of the day, maybe a grimy Seventh Seal, a gutter-dwelling Satiricon or outsider artist Rosemary's Baby. Too kind? You be the judge. Shot in several (but not all) colors, and concerning fashion, dreams, death, discos, calliopes, spiral staircases, water, war, hell, and, of course, sex.

For this screening, Monkey Town has taken the liberty of inviting 50 audio artists to reinterpret the film (which is currently out of commercial release). The resulting experience is an era-bending megamix of illicit thrills.

Directed by John and Lem Amero, starring Uta Erickson, inserts by Harry Reems and Tina Russell.

New audio curated by Sam Zimmerman, Nick Hallett, Christy Karakas and Montgomery Knott. Additional film edits by Sam Zimmerman.

Can art love sports?

Sam Zimmerman — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 23:10:00 +0000

Who is making art about sports? Does this ever happen? Do artists keep nursing that high school chip on the shoulder? It's such an oil and water subject, I just dare you to name three newish art pieces you've seen about about sports.

OK, I've seen one recently: Brock Enright and Ivan Hürzeler’s "Forest", a jockart Midsummer Nights Dream produced by Cynthia Broan. It's rad, but it's very much about the social thing - how arty jocks play, how they drink, how they fight, how they mate, etc. - and not fully about sport itself.

Poking around on Google a bit I see sports-themed art falling into a few buckets:

1. Sports used to make disaffected political points. I think the theory is: I'm an artist, politics alienates me, sports alienates me, sports imagery describes my alienation from politcs.

2. Sports as ironic sexuality. Lots of wrestling work here.

3. Sports as color and motion studies. Heavy on auto sports and stadium crowds.

So where's the art about teamwork? reaching your personal apex? destroying your opponent? worshiping demigods among us? Here's a guy on flickr wrestling with these very thorny issues.

So to move the ball forward (ahem) on this topic, Zack Davis and I are putting together a program of video art about sports which will show at Monkeytown on September 30. Who's got pieces?

Boredoms in NYC July 2, 2006

Sam Zimmerman — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 15:23:00 +0000

Went to see the Boredoms at Webster Hall last night. I saw many many shows in this venue back in the 80s when it was The Ritz. Boy have they crapped up the décor. Blech! But the sound is still fantastic, and the stage is huge, so it’s still a great room to see a show.

I last saw the Boredoms in 1994 at Threadwaxing Space, and their style then was full-bore Dada Punk. Nothing to latch on to, starting up great riffs only to drop them two or three bars later. Really great vision artistically, but very frustrating to the audience who really wanted to throw down.

Fast forward to 2006 and they’ve grown into a sound 180 degrees away from that. Now it’s long mesmerizing percussion grooves, almost as if they’ve gone hippie in their mature years. And who could blame them?

Rehearsed Reverse (tardy)

Sam Zimmerman — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 00:32:00 +0000

On Saturday, April 22 (two months ago!) our friend Claude Wampler premiered "Rehearsed Reverse" at Monkey Town. This video/performance piece was created specically for Monkey Town's back dining room in collaboration with the chef, Coleman Lee Foster. The menu is:

garlic flan
with red wine tamarind

garam masala tomato soup
with coconut cream and curried popcorn

papadam crusted tofu
with lime pickle spinach

cucumber fruit salad
with peach vinegar

The menu is served in this reverse order (dessert first, salad last), which is further complicated by an inverted flavor spectrum (savory dessert, sweet salad). The courses also correspond to the movie which is a literal document of the creation of each dish - in reverse time. So you are presented with a dish as soon as it appears, in complete form, on screen. Then as you consume it, it is unmade in the movie. The entire affair is counched in the narrative and musical numbers of a Bollywood chestnut, which runs the emotional gamut from light slapstick comedy to romantic pap to violent tragedy. The entire universe delivered in one efficient sitting.

The program is slated to return to Monkey Town for a long run in September:
http://www.monkeytownhq.com/
Super recommended.

BSPEK

Sam Zimmerman — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 21:45:00 +0000

Just bought a canvas by BSPEK:

BSPEK on Flickr

BSPEK on RobotsWillKill

BSPEK on Streetsy

Really interesting that there is so much online libraries of street art...

Scope New York, 3/11/06

Sam Zimmerman — Sun, 12 Mar 2006 15:04:00 +0000

This show is the real deal and you get the feeling that everyone is invested in making it fun. Ran in to a number of peeps, friends of friends, including...

Oliver and Alexis from Collective Eye who are releasing video art collections on DVD (they put out the first Lovid DVD). We rapped about the huge disparity in the valuation of video artwork: On one end you have galleries selling limited edition pieces for many thousands of dollars, taking them out of "circulation" and requiring artists to police who has access to their work to prop up the valuation. On the other hand, you have people like Collective Eye releasing album-like collections on DVD, boiling down to a couple bucks per piece to the buyer. I can't think of an art form that has ever had such conflicting models of value (anyone have ideas on this?).

Here's what I dug at the show:

Wendy Cooper Galley has a fantastic video called "Politics of the Self" by Aline Bouvy and John Gillis. Really hoping to show this at Monkeytown soon! These two artists are working in a wide variety of media and styles, really interesting from what I've seen so far.

Matt Zalla at Jack The Pelican Presents showed me cool videos by Tim Folland and Nell Stewart. Looking foward to seeing more work from their collection!

In the area curated by Rhizome.org I was checking out some photo prints that turned out to be by my friend disneyNASAborg which was a fun hookup. I had not seen any dNASAb work for three years and he's got a good thing going on.

If you go to the show, wear comfy shoes...

DiVA: Digital & Video Art Fair - New York 3/10/06

Sam Zimmerman — Sun, 12 Mar 2006 01:21:00 +0000

This is the mega art fair weekend in NYC as everyone gloms on to the Armory show like barnacles on a whale. Went to check out DiVA for the first time on Friday night. The premise for this show is a bit odd . A couple dozen galleries are working to establish a collector-level valuation for video artworks, so they get together and rent out two floors of a hotel. To see the work, you duck in and out of bedrooms, with pieces projected over the beds, stuck in the shower stalls, etc. Every room has a different lived-in smell, and the whole scene struck me a a bit cramped and seedy.

Anyhow, here's what I liked:

video piece and prints by Alexander Reyna
Pablo's Birthday

video installation by Jongbum Choi
Walsh Gallery

lightboxes by Janieta Eyre
Christopher Cutts Gallery

ten years old

Sam Zimmerman — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 22:30:00 +0000

So I've had this site for ten years now. When I first put it up in the Netscapre 2.0 era, it was my crackpot idea of a band site. I thought that by tying the site contents to a wide swath of marginal, seedy and obsessive topics - moonshining, action figure collecting, cockfighting, vaginal fisting, meat cookbook anthropology - the site would pop up in searches like a weird piece of candy that would draw in oddball closet types who might get in to the stuff I was doing with music and so forth. The band is long defunct, but in retrospect the site is probably the most successful result of the whole project judging by the links and strange attention: Fox News contacted me to get a scoop on the cockfighting underground in NYC, collectors sent me bids on imaginary toys, the US Navy sent me a cease and desist threat, etc. etc. But I never really got a response on the face value of the content itself, which I still think is pretty hilarious.

Anyhow, I decided this week to noodle around with this blog server and converted my site over to a blog so maybe I'll back in the habit of using this real estate. I just moved back to NYC a couple months ago and maybe will have some projects worth reporting on this year. In the meantime, check out the haps at Monkeytown. cheers!