He said: “In this clean and aseptic country, I have been observing how the urinals in the luxury restrooms of this hotel have acquired an entire range of rust colours through the interaction of the uric acid on the precious metals that are astounding. For this reason, I have been regularly urinating on the brass band of this pen over the past weeks to obtain the magnificent structures that you will find with your cameras and lenses. By simply looking at the band with my own eyes, I can see Dalí on the moon, or Dalí sipping coffee on the Champs Élysées. Take this magical object, work with it, and when you have an interesting result, come see me. If the result is good, we will make a film together.”

The Clash of Civilizations and Sufi Choir

Hippies + Free Jazz + Psychedelia + Youth Choir + Islam

Generated around 1969 by Bay Area Sufi Mystic “Sufi Sam” Lewis, the Sufi Choir’s album attest to an odd yet strangely comfortable mixing of cultures that should be instructive for these bellicose East meets West days. For culture warriors this charming bit of esoterica might appear as a huh?

The back side of this, their 1973 album gives shout outs to:

Northern California Youth Choir, Ether, saints, prophets, Archie Shepp, Aretha Franklin, Carl Shapiro, Asasvati, Lao-Tsu, Children, angels, jinns, Hu, ancients, Sarmad, Dylan Thomas, flowers, Hassan, Hasrat Khaja, Zoroaster, form, Pythagoras, Paul, Air, Marin, Fire, void, Vocha, La Monte Young, Parents, Otis Redding, Joan Baez, Lester Young, Mozart, The Rishis, Roshi, Rabbi Lama, Mansur, Ravi Shankar, Earth, Bob Dylan, Mount Tamalpais, Sakir Hussain, ALLAH, The Golden Gate, Yeats, Rumi, The Holy Spirit, Ali Akbar Khan, Baba Ram Dass, Miles Davis, Pete Seger, The Three Kings, The Incredible String Band, Ajari, Rocky Mountains, The Arizona Desert, The Grateful Dead, Ruth St. Denis, Moses, Orpheus, All those Known or Unknown, Cecil Taylor, Bilie Holiday ….

FUCK FOR PEACE
A History of The Fugs
Exhibition on View from June 2 – September 8, 2007

Why would you not go to this?

FUCK FOR PEACE: A History of The Fugs focuses on The Fugs as a band that was both the result and extension of Kupferberg and Sander’s creative and publishing endeavors. The exhibition will showcase records and ephemera, including posters, flyers, hand-written lyric sheets, songbooks, and fan letters as well as publications by both Kupferberg and Sanders. This is the first exhibition to focus solely on The Fugs, and certainly the first time that all this work has been presented together.

The Fugs recorded seven albums (The Village Fugs, The Fugs, It Crawled into My Hand, Honest, and Tenderness Junction, among them) for Folkways, ESP, and Reprise before playing their final gig at Hershey Park in 1969 with the Grateful Dead. The band’s activism, performances, and song titles (such as “War Kills Babies,” “Kill for Peace,” “Group Grope,” “Coca Cola Douche,” and “I Couldn’t get High”) positioned The Fugs as a seminal voice of sixties underground culture. As such they were the subject of controversy regarding their explicit song lyrics, live shows, and war protests, attracting the attention of the Justice Department and the FBI. Despite their premature demise in 1969, The Fugs regrouped in the 1980s and are still actively recording today.

At Printed Matter in NYC

The International Forum on Globalization is the organization spearheaded by Jerry Mander, author of Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television

from Erik Bluhm (Great God Pan mag/blog):

The rainbow as a symbol can represent many different concepts – creative imagination, cultural diversity, God’s promise, fleeting insubstantiality. In the gay community, it has been adopted as a political symbol, only to end up a token of kitsch.

It guy Darin Klein has curated a handsome show entitled The Rainbow Goblins that opens this Thursday in Hollywood.

“In Count Ul de Rico’s 1978 children’s book The Rainbow Goblins, the symbolism of the plight of the rainbow becomes a parable for corporate greed, ecological degradation and cultural commodification,” Klein tells us. “Inspired by this modern fairytale, where a meadow of wildflowers use their collective power to defeat the cruel plot of the eponymous goblins, this group exhibition re-imagines the rainbow as a celebration of the diversity and individuality of the artistic community and highlights the power of that voice to call for and instigate resistance.”

May 31 – July 15, 2007
Reception May 31, 6-9pm
With DJ Jeff Stallings from San Francisco
and a performance by mecca vazie andrews

Advocate Gallery
1125 N. McCadden Place
Los Angeles, Calif. 90038

Featuring the work of Adam J. Ansell, Erik Bluhm, BODEGA VENDETTA & PRVT DNCR, Nao Bustamante, Young Chung, Roy Colmer, Zackary Drucker, David Larsen, Matt Lipps, Jason Mecier, Lucas Michael, Max Miller, Amir Nikrava, Coco Peru, Terri Phillips, Aaron Plant, Steven Reigns, robbinschilds & A.L. Steiner, Christopher Russell, Ami Tallman, Jo-ey Tang, Aiyana Udessen, and Jim Winters.

Also at the Advocate Gallery, Landscapes by our friends from down San Diego way, Julia Dzwonkonski and Kye Potter.

“We’ve been painting greyscale rainbows into amateur landscape paintings for six years. We always try to paint the rainbow so that it compliments the scene and brings out the color and the life in these paintings.”

Well…last week, anyway.