This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Your “Electronic Heroin”

Is there ever an off night at Spectacle? No.
Tonight, they’re screening the 1976 film “The Grim Reaper,” one in a series of grindhouse gore films by Nashville-based evangelical Christian Ron Ormond. Where do they find this stuff??
This is followed by “Woman in Revolt!” at 10 PM, featuring transgender icons Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis, and Holly Woodlawn playing militant feminists who turn against each other.

It’s been 100 years since the beginning of World War I, so MoMA has put together a show of materials of that war’s representation in film—promising “rare gems” among the familiar. If it’s anything like this year’s fantastic show of Civil War photography at the Met, then it’ll be a must-see. The show opens tonight and only runs through September 21.

Every Monday this late summer, e-flux has been hosting escape after escapade to fill your mind and soul with the productivity of failure—after all, each week is organized by the Agency of Unrealized Projects (AUP).

This go around, the theme is “APP LAWS.” Audience participation will be expected in BFAMFAPhD‘s Census Report, an online report on the impact of debt on creatives, as well as a musical-sculptural piece by Tamar Ettun & The Moving Company—Tyler Patterson, Tina Wang, Lyndsey Eugene, Maia Karo, Adrian Galvin, and Lisa Park. From the PR: “Movers will manipulate sculptures with movement and sound, inviting the audience to participate in the performance and writing of the piece.”

“What is the responsibility of each of us, in the context of a potential genocide?” that was Amin Husain in our interview last week about the cancelled pro-Palestine workshop “10 Days, 10 Ideas.” We are glad to see that the conversation won’t be ending there. Whitebox Art Center (currently hosting a show by Palestinian artist Khaled Jarrar) will be livestreaming a panel discussion with two of the workshop’s organizers Joseph Audeh and Myriam Vanneschi, along with Israeli filmmaker Ariella Azoulay, contemporary art scholar Judith Rodenbeck, and Alex Shams, co-editor of the blog Ajam Media Collective. This discussion just so happens to take place against the backdrop of the New Museum’s first major survey of art from the Arab world. We wonder whether the museum will get involved.

“Web addiction” or “Electronic heroin”: This is what spending more than 6 hours a day online for non-work related reasons is called in China. This documentary follows these “addicts,” mostly teenage boys, as they are forced to go into government-affiliated rehabilitation clinics. And the camps themselves are a weird mix of prison, drug clinic, and psych ward. Overall, this is pretty little known and fascinating phenomenon, and it just goes to show how seriously the Chinese government takes things that we find fairly benign.

Come Friday, August 8, Jeff Bailey will officially become one of the many galleries leaving Chelsea. After eleven years,they’ve opened a second space in Hudson, New York and will be moving their operations there full-time. This bodes well for more NADA Hudson events (we hopewe hope).

Celebrate them, and the end of an era for their last Chelsea exhibition, “Contrapposto & Other Stories”, curated by Katia Rosenthal, which will remain on view through Friday, August 8. Artists include Christopher Hanrahan, Dean Levin, Amy Pleasant, Ruby Sky Stiler, George Woodman.

Female celebrities stumbling in gold flapper dresses is the subject of this glitz and branding fuckfest/culture-jam by Kayode Ojo (disclaimer: AFC friend). We just think “A metallic burst that triggers a fury of flashes” (from the press release) is a really great way to describe Lindsay Lohan falling down in a lobby. We’re excited.

Speaking of Hudson, New York, here’s another reason to go there: a screening of the never-aired 1968 TV special “The Rolling Stones’ Rock and Roll Circus.” The film was withheld for twenty years after it was filmed. According to wikipedia rumor, this has to do with the fact that the Stones were clearly exhausted during filming and gave a subpar performance, which was clearly upstaged by The Who. Interesting…

Anyway, the screening is a part of a rare book signing and reading by director Michael Lindsay-Hogg from his memoir “Luck and Circumstance”. In addition to the “Rock and Roll Circus” Lindsay-Hogg brought you The Normal Heart, The Beatles’ Let It Be, and Brideshead Revisited. He’s also the rumored son of Orson Welles. There is a strong resemblance.

Another gem at Spectacle. This one follows a young writer who unearths a massive Mormon conspiracy involving aliens. Apparently director Trent Harris said of this one “Just because I made it up doesn’t mean it isn’t true!” Mormonism actually coming from outer-space? We believe it.

Mayor de Blasio listens. That’s to be determined, because he’s not actually scheduled to be at this event.

This is, however, an opportunity for artists to hear from representatives from El Puente and Art Gowanus about how artists can get involved in local organizing (namely, how to stay in New York). Let’s pack this place.

Stuck in the city on a summer Saturday? Might as well take a daytime trip to the Cloisters, a place we know only as a far-off vista off the highway. On Saturday, you can learn about the famed Christian pilgrimage route El Camino, while perusing the Met’s museum of 12th-15th century European architecture.

Perhaps you see it as progress or perhaps you see it as the beginning sequence in an Isaac Asimov novel, but some machines can learn from our activities and we can learn from theirs. Two artists, Bill Miller and Daniel Temkin, deal here with this fact. Expect a ton of interactive art, coding, and a camera that takes selfies infinitely.