Art

Hillary: Just go, go, GO!

-
0

By Bruce B. Brugmann

I liked the jaunty conclusion to Maureen Dowd’s column summing up the Pennsylvania election in the Wednesday, April 23 New York Times:

“Before they devour themselves once more, perhaps the Democrats will take a cue from Dr. Seuss’s ‘Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now.’ (The writer once mischievously redid it for his friend Art Buchwald as ‘Richard M. Nixon Will You Please Go Now!’ They could sing:

“”The time has come. The time has come. The time is now. Just go…I don’t care how. You can go by foot. You can go by cow. Hillary R. Clinton, will you please go now! You can go on skates. You can go on skis…You can go in an old blue shoe.

“‘Just go, go, GO!'” B3

“Fox in the Mirror”

-
0

REVIEW When artists speak of found objects, they sometimes mean found — in a marketing plan. But Liliana Porter is different. The Argentine artist is the real thing, hopelessly devoted to convincing us that something is missing, not from her impeccable arrangements of miniatures and figurines — or the potent, often-hilarious feelings they invoke — but from our too serious attitudes toward the private parts of our lives.

Porter’s 2007 video Fox in the Mirror, presented in a show of the same name at the Hosfelt Gallery, reveals the artist to be a sculptural Gertrude Stein. Stein gave language body — undressed it, laughed at it, cried for it, and cuddled it. Porter does the same with Fox, manipuutf8g small, signature objects to Sylvia Meyer’s arresting musical score, which varies from lush tangos to symphonic yet anticlimactic movie-trailer music. "Oriental" pentatonic melodies are thrown in ironically to match Porter’s musical and military Chinese figurines.

The video begins with a series of vignettes more powerful than the following narrative sequence, which is eerily conducted by a well-dressed fox. They sparkle with sex and sadness as a white candle resembling a man and woman dancing in formal wear spins into tears, a bright yellow chick encounters an emotional storm, and a duo of Mao wristwatches move one tick forward and a lifetime of ticks back to Meyer’s electro remix of a song from The Sound of Music (1965). Sketches named after types of punctuation stimulate feelings of expectation as a turbaned musician seems about to swallow a bird alive. Javier Marias wrote that the present is a curse because "it allows us to see and appreciate almost nothing." He has a point, but the beauty of the statement outweighs the sadness of its meaning. The same could be said about Porter’s transcendent art.

LILIANA PORTER: FOX IN THE MIRROR Through May 3. Tues.–Sat., 11 a.m.–5:30 p.m. Hosfelt Gallery, 430 Clementina, SF. Free. (415) 495-5454, www.hosfeltgallery.com

Mad jags

-
0

› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER "That was just a major experience that I’ll never forget and I never, ever want to have again."

So sayeth 60 Watt Kid’s Kevin Litrow of the mind-render that occurred shortly after he moved to San Francisco from Los Angeles in 2006. "I was contacted — or I might have contacted them. I’m not really sure." He goes on to tell me of being visited one night by a "tornado" of energy that swirled fiercely through his room and knocked him "out of tune," while talking to him in his head. After his guest finally departed, Litrow says he was limping on one side. Finding no corollary for his experience among other UFO reports — "it physically didn’t look like the typically oval-shaped-face kids," he says — he discovered that, nonetheless, the experience "physically and mentally opened some doors." Can the glitch-garnished, knocked-askew psych of Litrow’s band 60 Watt Kid — captured on their intriguing self-titled Absolutely Kosher debut — be partially credited to a brain-tweaking twister from another dimension?

Alien visitations, madness, rehab, and Libya — last week I was lost on a vapor trail, looking down from a star called Planet Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder, and waltzing to a psychogenic fugue only I could hear. But now I’m found. I’m told it’s in the water. One moment you’re staring at the cover of Us Weekly, wondering how onetime pedophile’s-wet-dream Britney Spears came to be transmogrified into Our Lady of Mental Health Issues. The next you’re waking up, kicked to the curb with surgical staples where your kidney once was. The price of gas is high, but tripping — and sometimes falling — through the mind’s eye, gets you even higher. April gusts have blown in a slew of artists, spinning yarns of spirits and out-of-body travels. They lived through this. You will, too.

PROVEN GILTY Free Gold (We Are Free) is the name of Indian Jewelry’s forthcoming recorded game, so surely IJ honcho Tex Kerschen knows how to get baby some bullion. "You’ve got to go and roll the rich," says the Houston experimentalist. "You gotta catch ’em leaving restaurants and saying goodnight to their chauffeurs. Wealth liberation has come to rest in our minds as the answer, since we personally slave for oil barons." Kerschen knows: he says he spent the last year working in a refinery while Indian Jewelry took time off to regroup and record. So Free Gold is simply wishful thinking? "You get pummeled with wealth here in Houston," he explains. "They’re building continuously — literally, gilded fortresses. I’ve had to hang terrible art for terrible people. We decided we’d gild the lily ourselves."

REHABIT IT "It’s nice that people are into it," Kimya Dawson says sweetly about the chart-topping Juno soundtrack that hurled her into the consciousness of the mainstream — or at least that of National Public Radio listeners. "But I’m not really the kind of person who keeps track or cares about numbers and sales. I make music, and it’s just kind of what I have to do. It’s what I’d be doing regardless of who was listening." The Olympia, Wash., artist started crafting tunes as part of Moldy Peaches in 1994, and she’s still writing — albeit with less introspection since the birth of her daughter Panda (she just completed a children’s album). Songwriting has been an outright necessity since she drank herself into a coma and entered rehab more than nine years ago.

"I popped out of rehab, and I was depressed and on medication, and I didn’t know how to function on this planet, and I picked up a guitar, and it made me feel better," Dawson explains. The first Moldy Peaches show happened two weeks after she got out. "It’s always been mutual therapy for me and the people listening to my stuff. I always figured if I stopped doing it I might go crazy."

LIBYA LIBERATION How can a stellar Oakland combo like Heavenly States top their last heroic act as the first US rock band to play in Libya after the lifting of a 30-year travel ban? To start, they spent about a year working on a film about the experience, relying on puppet reenactments and animation, before they woke up and asked themselves, why aren’t we making music? After selling the rights to their Libya adventures (producer Jawal Nga is writing a script tentatively titled Rock the Casbah), the band has come up with their most eclectic and confident recordings to date, Delayer (Rebel Group). The group’s next act? "We got asked to play in Iran at this music festival," vocalist-guitarist Ted Nesseth tells me. "But Genevieve [Gagon] couldn’t sing in public. Then someone e-mailed to say her friend was a journalist living in a North Korean village filled with musicians, so we have to figure out a way to go there and record. There’s absolutely no way any of that crap is going to happen. I think we have a lot of touring to do supporting this album, and then we want to make another one."

SPIRITED "You know," announces Triclops! guitarist Christian Beaulieu, apropos of neither the group’s new CD, Out of Africa (Alternative Tentacles) nor what vocalist John Geek describes as their "bung load of shows," "Sonny [Kay] from GSL recently called me the ghost of Dimebag Darrell."

"It’s really kind of impossible because you were born way before he died," I venture.

"Well, I told my friend I was the ghost of Steve Vai," Beaulieu continues, "and he said, ‘Holy crap! That’s the best news I’ve heard all day: Steve Vai’s dead!’ I’m just trying to figure out how to put a handle on my Telecaster." *

INDIAN JEWELRY Thurs/24, 9:30 p.m., $8. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

KIMYA DAWSON Fri/25, 8 p.m., $20. Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF. www.ticketmaster.com

TRICLOPS! Fri/25, 6 p.m., free. Amoeba Music, 1855 Haight, SF. www.amoeba.com

HEAVENLY STATES Sat/26, 10 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

60 WATT KID Sat/26, 9 p.m., $25. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com

Les Savy life lessons

-
0

› duncan@sfbg.com

When I call Tim Harrington, he’s in a meeting. It’s 6 p.m. in New York, and for some reason, I guess because he’s Les Savy Fav’s vocalist, I assume this is some kind of band meeting or rehearsal. When I call back in an hour, he’s still in the meeting.

"Do you want me to call back tomorrow?" I ask.

"That’s OK," he says. "I have just declared my professional day over." His professional day, it turns out, ends in a meeting room at VH1 headquarters in Manhattan, not in a practice space in LSF’s native Williamsburg. In addition to doing graphic design at VH1, he’s pushing for "interactive TV-type things," like e-cards you can design online and "schedule times you want them to be on TV so you can tell your friends, ‘Tune in and see that I’m breaking up with you.’"

The job isn’t what I’d expect from a manically animated frontperson, but Harrington, who attended the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design where the band formed in 1995, could give a fuck about giving people what they expect. After three long-players and an EP of dissonant, angular, twin-guitar rock with pop sensibilities and cutting, insightful lyrics — culminating in 2001’s Go Forth on bassist Syd Butler’s French Kiss label — the group took six years to release a new album, last year’s Let’s Stay Friends. The declaration of an official hiatus in 2005 led fans to believe it might be the end.

Instead they opted for restructuring: "It was really hard to explain without sort of tearing the whole thing apart and putting it back together again."

Gone are the incessant van tours; in their place are what he calls "guerilla touring": fly out, play a few select shows, and return to Brooklyn and "real life," which, for Harrington includes a wife and a son, Benji, who’s not yet two. "It’s the best way to tour," he says, "but totally unprofessional."

The outfit’s "unprofessional" attitude, coupled with Harrington’s interactive ideas, led to an online video contest for the Let’s Stay Friends track "The Equestrian," a fetishistic pony-play barnburner: "How many times did you think you could canter past my house / Before I called you to my stable for a little mouth-to-mouth?" In between shots of My Little Pony make-out sessions, the winning video — chosen by YouTube viewers — showcased a pink-haired eight-year-old named Bunny rolling around on the ground and dry-humping a stuffed horse like a prepubescent version of "Like a Virgin"–era Madonna. Was it weird having a little kid lip-synching such an overtly sexual song?

"I love that kind of complicated double energy — the tension of two things competing with each other," Harrington says. "In our live performance that happens a lot." Live, the singer runs around the stage, bearded, bald on top, a little chunky, and manically energetic — often shirtless or changing costumes during a song, perhaps into a sequined cape, while the band plays calmly around him, seemingly oblivious, all the while cranking out fierce squalls of noisy rock that are clearly the force driving the madman in their midst. "I think that people who don’t like us, don’t like us because they’re like, ‘I like one side of it or the other, but I can’t understand how they both can be happening simultaneously.’"

Harrington is not at all the picture of your typical floppy-haired waif of an indie impresario, embarrassed to be on stage and kicking the mic stand. He’s open and enthusiastic on the phone, sounding slightly out of breath, like he just remembered "one more thing" to say. He uses the word "passionate" a lot, and it’s clear that feeling is the key element in his art.

Without taking away from the rest of the group, it’s the cognitive dissonance Harrington creates with his stage presence and lyrics that make Les Savy Fav so powerful. Let’s Stay Friends opens with a track about an only partially fictional band called the Pots and Pans, "who made this noise that people couldn’t stand." Despite their audience’s protests, the unit sticks it out, realizing on some level that they know what’s good for the listeners.

Harrington doesn’t particularly care what you expect, yet he’s not simply adopting a world-weary pose. Instead he’s exhorting you to want more out of music — and out of existence. Nowhere is this idea more apparent than in the album’s final track, "The Lowest Bidder": "We’ve been bought and we’ve been sold / They try but they can’t keep hold / We burn, but we don’t turn to coal / We’re hills all filled with gas and gold / Take the trigger from the lowest bidder / Take the bargain back again." Don’t settle for less.

Listening to Let’s Stay Friends reminds me that there’s more to life than the quotidian world of work meetings, parking tickets, and paying the rent. "Music is the food of love, but reality is waiting for the bus" is a Subhumans lyric I can never seem to forget. For Harrington, reality is passion and waiting for the bus. "An area of interest for me lyrically," he explains, "is to be able to address whatever the harshest and most negative elements are in life and society and defy that, not with a pie-eyed optimism, but with a really cold-hearted optimism.

Don’t expect the world to change. Change yourself. Change your perception of it."

LES SAVY FAV

With the Dodos

Sun/27, 8 p.m., $18

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750, www.gamh.com

CC Riders

-
0

> a&eletters@sfbg.com

LIT When filmmaker Bruce Baillie founded Canyon Cinema in the early 1960s, it was a backyard bohemia to show artisanal films and drink wine with neighbors. But it quickly took root as a cooperative serving the needs of a movement of underground filmmakers. In scholar Scott MacDonald’s lovingly detailed history, Canyon Cinema: The Life and Times of an Independent Film Distributor (University of California Press, 480 pages, $29.95), Baillie’s early shambling is halcyon past, a sweet moment of spontaneous invention that then, rather surprisingly, begot a sustainable model for communal eclecticism.

Canyon wasn’t the only game in town — indeed, MacDonald describes the New York Film-Makers’ Cooperative, which preceded Canyon, as "a single instance of an idea whose time had come." But the organization’s underlying West Coast flavor, open channels of communication, and relatively clean distribution record put it at the center of an unwieldy film culture.

Drawing from a wealth of primary materials, MacDonald has woven a compelling narrative of American avant-garde cinema. One hardly needs to be aware of obscure corners of the underground to appreciate the book’s lively mix of voices. MacDonald doles out generous segments of Cinemanews, Canyon’s in-house clearinghouse for letters, critiques, advice, poems, recipes, and — in later years — extended interviews with the anointed giants of the avant-garde.

Among Canyon Cinema‘s five historical "portfolios," we get a full panorama of Canyon’s burning personalities: Baillie’s Zen road correspondences (describing pies that contain grapes and flowers); John Lennon’s zonked fan letter to Bruce Conner; Conner’s fierce riposte to Jonas Mekas’ NY Cinematheque; Saul Landau’s exposé of police pressure on a local Jean Genet screening; a photograph of the board of directors forming a naked pyramid; Stan Brakhage holding forth on etymologies; Robert Pike’s thoughtful report on how programming avant-garde cinema in peep houses could be a profitable venture; a tender letter from Will Hindle worrying over teaching filmmaking in art institutes; George Kuchar comics; and last, a precious line from Commodore Sloat: "Maybe more bits of film history next letter: Hollis Frampton and my junior high astronomy book (which he won’t admit he has and has refused to return)."

Canyon Cinema is wonderful in its particulars. It’s a pleasure to explore the depths of an organization that was emblematic of the counterculture without being beholden to it. Of course, being located in San Francisco and Sausalito, it had a pretty good view. Canyon keeper and former Pacific Film Archive programmer Edith Kramer recalls of the 1967-69 heyday that "The East Coast people were coming out; everybody wanted to come out — for the right reasons and the wrong reasons." Already in 1968, Robert Nelson writes of "the ever-growing dirge of psychedelica that in three years has gone from far-out to ad nauseam." Things dry up a bit with the intellectualization of the ’70s, though there are passionate, nothing-for-granted debates over the currents of the co-op’s milieu.

One suspects this overarching prudence is because, as filmmakers and co-op members, these people were intimately familiar with the economics of personal expression. Canyon is a romantic, idealistic group, but also a utilitarian one. Despite frequent brushes with insolvency, the amazing fact remains: "During the past 40 years, Canyon has evolved into the most dependable distributor of alternative cinema in the United States, and it has done so without betraying the fundamental principles on which it was founded."

SFIFF: Explosive stuff!

-
0

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

SFIFF The pop detritus of today is the archaeological evidence of tomorrow, to be pieced together by future generations — should there be any — who will no doubt want to know what the hell we were thinking. Their conclusions may be bizarre. But will their conjecture be any stranger than our present-tense realities?

Inventing tomorrow’s conspiracy theories today is Mock Up on Mu, the latest pseudodocumentary, sci-fi historical dig, Situationist prank, and thinly veiled fight-the-power rant by San Francisco’s collage king, Craig Baldwin. In the mode of his prior cult faves Tribulation 99 (1992), O No Coronado! (1992) and Spectres of the Spectrum (1999) — albeit with a higher percentage of new staged sequences mixed into the ingeniously assembled archival errata — it again grinds fact and fiction into a tasty genre-defying pulp. For many, Mu‘s world premiere is the most eagerly awaited event in the 51st San Francisco International Film Festival’s goody-laden schedule.

It’s 2019 AD on the Empire of Mu — the Moon — where L. Ron Hubbard (Damon Packard) is building theme parks, selling crater-naming rights, and beaming corporate logos back to "that prison planet called Earth." Having been banished from our planet, he must dispatch "Agent C," a.k.a. Marjorie Cameron (Michelle Silva), back to the blue ball to engage in some espionage involving the seductions of both Ra-worshiping rocket scientist Jack Parsons (Kal Spelletich) and sleazy defense contractor Lockheed Martin (Stoney Burke). Realizing "Commodore" Hubbard’s purposes may be more nefarious than professed, she finds the truth is out there … way out there. It’s naked and shameless, in fact. Those hippies were right: free love will save us all.

As ever, there is a certain investigative method behind the Oakland-born Baldwin’s jigsaw madness. The real Parsons was the founder of the pre-NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and an avid occultist. He started a private boat dealership with none other than Hubbard, before Hubbard absconded with some money and Parsons’ girlfriend (whom he married). Soon thereafter, Hubbard wrote the original Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health in 1950, which in turn led to that gift to mankind we call Scientology. As for Parsons, he went on to marry painter, author, and psychic Cameron, who, like him (as well as Hubbard) was an early American devotee of Aleister Crowley and a participant in sex magick rituals.

Thus you don’t need six degrees, let alone Kevin Bacon, to connect Wernher von Braun, Kenneth Anger, and Tom Cruise. History is fun! As is Mu, with its antic use of everything from old propagandistic footage to clips spanning eras of cinematic sci-fi: Georges Melies’ 1902 Trip to the Moon, the original Flash Gordon serial and 1936’s H.G. Wells–based Things to Come, drive-in trash (it’s always cheering to see 1962’s The Brain That Wouldn’t Die), and Star Trek. The resulting fair-use frolic nonetheless reveals a serious side or three while exploring the dense and slightly demented history of military and aerospace business in sunny California.

Baldwin recently took a break from his numerous other roles — programmer at Other Cinema; teacher at SF Art Institute, California College of the Arts, and Artists Television Access — to sound off on Mu.

SFBG I hate to ask such a blunt question, but what is this movie about?

CRAIG BALDWIN My "Mu-vie" is about how utopian visions of technology and space exploration became compromised by the military in the late 20th century. And [about] how the lives of [technological and space travel] pioneers afford a rich trace of California regional history after World War II: the complex crossing of alternative tech research, personal belief systems, lifestyles, artistic practices, newly organized and newly imported religions, and spiritual institutions. Plus that era brought an explosion of the formerly marginalized sci-fi genre, of which Mu is of course the very latest iteration!

Mu is also about the cult of film, especially experimental film. I’m trying to work though a new model of historiography or storytelling that I am calling collage-narrative. It’s a humble stab at opening up a new space in film practice that is not only of interest to historians but also to aesthetes. And, my dear, I don’t have to tell you that these groups are certainly not mutually exclusive!

SFBG Your father worked for a rocket manufacturer. Has that made you more interested in Cold War and military-industrial complex themes?

CB Yes, my dad worked for Aerojet. He was born the same year as Parsons! And I was born the year Parsons died. I am his reincarnation. But the point is something like 30 percent of Californians were involved in the aerospace biz at its height.

SFBG How much real Scientology material is in Mu?

CB [The film] remains at the level of Swiftian allegory or satire, spinning off of their Genesis story and [acting as] a meta-gloss on Hubbard’s own autobiography.

SFBG I wish Unarius had become the growth religious cult of our time. They’ve certainly made better movies. But regarding yours, the real life connections between Parsons, Hubbard, Crowley, "Mother of the New Age movement" Cameron, occultism, and scientific and military work are stranger than fiction.

CB Everyone has been very influenced by the New Age, uh, belief systems. But more than anything, I identify with postwar bohemians, beats, and hippies. Those days when rocket scientists and sci-fi pulpmeisters and occult conjurers and proto-Wicca ritual carnal orgiastic pagans intermingled may be long gone — though Kenneth Anger is still around.

SFBG Mu uses a lot of excerpts from mainstream and low budget entertainment. But where does the less familiar material — educational, promotional, and so forth — come from? You must spend infinite hours looking for the perfect clip.

CB It comes from my usual source: My basement archive of 2,500 industrial films. I do spend time in there, but could hardly claim to find the perfect clip. Au contraire. I call it "availabilism" — making what I do have work for me, through editing and audio techniques, overwriting it all into an associational stew hopefully akin to the half-memory, half-fantasy, sublinguistic colloid of thought itself.

SFBG What reaction does your work get from students? They presumably grok the pop culture stuff, but do they get the political undercurrents?

CB People can be responsive to the pop-cult clips, or the regional history, or the antiwar sentiments. But methinks [Mock Up on Mu] will be a touchstone for legions of occult or subcult partisans ravenous for these almost mythic tales of the roots of alternative religions.

SFBG Sir, your Thetan level must be off the charts.

MOCK UP ON MU Mon/28, 9:15 p.m., Sundance Kabuki; April 30, 8:55 p.m., Pacific Film Archive


>SFBG goes to SFIFF 51: our deluxe guide

Peaker plan afloat

-
0

› amanda@sfbg.com

A proposal to build two natural gas–fired power plants is still floating through the city’s planning process, set for approval by the Board of Supervisors as soon as May, but no one seems truly comfortable with the deal.

"It’s not my first choice or my second choice, but it’s the choice I have," Board president Aaron Peskin told the Guardian. The choice seems to be either the city builds newer, potentially cleaner power plants — known as "peakers" because they would be used mainly during times of peak energy demand — or does nothing to shut down the super-polluting Mirant Potrero power plant.

The combination gas- and diesel-burning power plant spews a cocktail of toxins from its stack every year and draws 226 million gallons of water a day from the bay to cool its generators yet it’s mandated by the state to keep operating. The discharge flows back into the bay significantly altered, with microorganisms and fish larvae replaced by mercury, dioxins, and PCBs.

The California Independent System Operator (CAL-ISO), the state agency that oversees electricity reliability, said it would break the Mirant contract if the peakers came online. The city-owned plants would use recycled water and more up-to-date air quality controls, making for cleaner facilities at the two proposed sites — the airport and the intersection of 25th and Maryland in the Bayview.

They also would be city-operated, giving a little more leg to the local public power movement. But they still burn fossil fuel, and at a time when the climate is in crisis and natural gas prices are only rising, many say this isn’t the direction a trend-setting city like San Francisco should be heading.

"This isn’t the progressive way to go," said Sup. Chris Daly. "We need to be more forcefully installing renewables that are municipally owned."

Daly, along with supervisors Ross Mirkarimi and Michela Alioto-Pier and the city’s current power provider Pacific Gas and Electric Co., have lined up against building the peakers in what Mirkarimi calls an "unholy alliance."

PG&E, lobbying under the guise of the "Close It! Coalition," states that the peakers "further San Francisco’s reliance on fossil fuels and add to global warming." The $12 billion utility company currently gets 40 percent of its power the same way and is in the process of constructing several similar plants throughout the state. Nevertheless, the company has submitted detailed proposals to the city and state outlining demand response measures and transmission upgrades that would mitigate the need for more energy.

Mayor Gavin Newsom and City Attorney Dennis Herrera support building the peakers in order to close the Mirant plant, and Sups. Sophie Maxwell, Bevan Dufty, and Jake McGoldrick are carrying the legislation that would seal the contract with Cleveland, Ohio-based Industrial Construction Company to start the $252 million project.

That legislation points out that Mirant’s water permit is set to expire Dec. 31, and the Regional Water Quality Board has indicated it has no plans to renew it unless Mirant upgrades to best practices. This has been suggested as an alternative way to close the plant. When asked whether Cal-ISO’s reliability demands trump the Water Board’s requirements, Cal-ISO’s Gregg Fishman wrote in an e-mail, "What happens if the Potrero unit’s water permits expire? Simply put — we’re not sure."

Beyond that, a number of questions remain: Should the requirement for a full feasibility study for city contracts more than $25 million really have been waived for this project? Is it fair to put the new power plant in the neighborhood that has always endured the lion’s share of the city’s pollution? What if they were on movable barges instead? And has the city been forceful enough with CAL-ISO when it comes to planning the city’s energy future?

Alioto-Pier has introduced two resolutions addressing a couple of these issues. One calls for a straight-up feasibility study — which supporters of the peakers have waived. "The city has a policy of conducting a full fiscal analysis of capital projects over $25 million," Alioto-Pier said in a press release. "This should be no exception." Her other resolution asks for an independent analysis of the whole thing and a revised 2008 Energy Action Plan for the city.

For several years, Cal-ISO has said Mirant could stop operating if San Francisco can provide an alternate "firm" power source in its Energy Action Plan. In 2004, San Francisco’s Public Utilities Commission proffered the peakers, and that became the city’s power plan before adopting the CCA (community choice aggregation) plan for the city to develop an energy portfolio of at least 51 percent renewables.

Though the SFPUC has continuously asked Cal-ISO if the 2004 Action Plan is still the way to go now that the Trans Bay Cable and other line improvements have come into play, Josh Arce, a lawyer for Brightline Defense, which sued to stop the peaker plan, says they’ve been framing the question all wrong: "The PUC has essentially been saying, ‘Does the Action Plan include all four combustion turbines?’ And Cal-ISO has said, ‘Yes, it includes all four.’ Instead, the PUC needs to come up with a new Action Plan and give it to Cal-ISO and say we’re doing this instead."

Alioto-Pier’s resolution, if passed, could prompt a fresh response from Cal-ISO about what the city really needs — one, two, or three peakers, or maybe none at all. Maxwell’s resolution includes a caveat that the city must determine if needs could be met by building smaller plants with fewer than the four turbines currently proposed.

Peskin, who chairs the city’s Government Audit and Oversight Committee and will hear both Alioto-Pier resolutions on May 5, as well as the Maxwell plan to move to build the peakers, told us, "This is one of the toughest decisions that’s been before me in the eight years that I’ve been on the Board of Supervisors."

No one, it seems, really wants to build two fossil fuel–burning power plants on San Francisco soil. But what if they weren’t on our soil? What if they were floating on barges?

Another resolution pending in the Land Use Committee, brought by Mirkarimi, proposes putting the two power plants on barges, which could be moored alongside the city when needed and dispatched elsewhere when they’re not. What if, a few years from now, citizens are able to cut down their power needs, CCA brings more renewables online, and the city finds it no longer needs the 200 megawatts generated by natural gas power plants?

Proponents say it’s an option worth considering if the city really intends to eventually close the plants. Dismantling a facility if the city decides to sell leaches away 20 to 30 percent of its overall cost. But if it’s on a barge, the natural gas, electricity, and mooring lines are simply cast off. A barge would be steadier in an earthquake and continue to float if the sea level rises — a climate change scenario that could swamp both current bayside power plant sites. Barges also can be dispatched to emergencies, leased down the river to other cities in the Bay Area, or sold for a profit. They’ve been in use around the world since the 1940s and have been called a more regional approach to energy planning.

"It’s 145 MW of portable energy," said Rick Galbreath, Mirkarimi’s aide. "You can pull it up, plug it in, and you’re on the grid. It’s really a dynamic solution."

Paul Fenn, the brain behind the city’s CCA plan, points out that if CAL-ISO still insists the peakers are needed now but not in the future, a power barge is the kind of flexible solution that could pay off in the long run. "It’s making a temporary measure for an urgent situation," he said, adding that such a temporary solution should reflect the city’s long-term goals. "If the city is planning to replace them with renewables, it’s important to get the city to make that commitment. This is one of those strategic decisions that’s going to impact the future."

The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission generally opposes building anything in the bay if it can be built on land first. "The proponents would have to do an analysis and convince our commission that this is really a good idea for the region," said Will Travis, a BCDC spokesperson.

But Dave Nickerson, owner of Houston-based Power Barge Corporation, said he’s looked at the city’s peaker plans and thinks it would cost about $100 million to build a three-CT barge. "We would probably build the plant here and ship it up," he said, pointing out that the city’s turbines are already in storage down in Texas and it’s cheaper to build it in a shipyard. To claims of environmental degradation, he says, "It would have the environmental footprint of a state of the art land-based plant."

He also pointed out that there’s a scarcity of these particular turbines now, which are worth about $1 million more every year. This year it’s around $16.5 million apiece, with $18 million as the projected 2008 price.

Emma Lierley contributed to this story.

Found objects

-
0

REVIEW When artists speak of found objects, they sometimes mean found — in a marketing plan. But Liliana Porter is different. The Argentine artist is the real thing, hopelessly devoted to convincing us that something is missing, not from her impeccable arrangements of miniatures and figurines — or the potent, often-hilarious feelings they invoke — but from our too serious attitudes toward the private parts of our lives.

Porter’s 2007 video Fox in the Mirror, presented in a show of the same name at the Hosfelt Gallery, reveals the artist to be a sculptural Gertrude Stein. Stein gave language body — undressed it, laughed at it, cried for it, and cuddled it. Porter does the same with Fox, manipuutf8g small, signature objects to Sylvia Meyer’s arresting musical score, which varies from lush tangos to symphonic yet anticlimactic movie-trailer music. "Oriental" pentatonic melodies are thrown in ironically to match Porter’s musical and military Chinese figurines.

The video begins with a series of vignettes more powerful than the following narrative sequence, which is eerily conducted by a well-dressed fox. They sparkle with sex and sadness as a white candle resembling a man and woman dancing in formal wear spins into tears, a bright yellow chick encounters an emotional storm, and a duo of Mao wristwatches move one tick forward and a lifetime of ticks back to Meyer’s electro remix of a song from The Sound of Music (1965). Sketches named after types of punctuation stimulate feelings of expectation as a turbaned musician seems about to swallow a bird alive. Javier Marias wrote that the present is a curse because "it allows us to see and appreciate almost nothing." He has a point, but the beauty of the statement outweighs the sadness of its meaning. The same could be said about Porter’s transcendent art.

LILIANA PORTER: FOX IN THE MIRROR Through May 3. Tues.–Sat., 11 a.m.–5:30 p.m. Hosfelt Gallery, 430 Clementina, SF. Free. (415) 495-5454, www.hosfeltgallery.com

8 spots for outdoor dining

-
0

San Francisco and dining al fresco aren’t necessarily allies. But they’re not exactly enemies. We do have those gorgeous sunny spring days and plenty of places to enjoy them while we drink and dine. If you’ve been heartbroken over the closed kitchen at Zeitgeist, or if the rooftop deck at Medjool feels more like a frat party gone wrong than an afternoon social gathering, you can rest assured there are even places outside of the Mission that serve food and cocktails outside. So hop on your Yamaha, Bianchi, or Muni and check out some of these fabulous places to catch some sun with your buzz. Keep in mind these spots are best for brunch and lunch. And bring a hoodie in case the sun subsides — San Francisco fog is about as forgiving as a hangover.

PIER 23 CAFE


Check out views of the Bay Bridge and Coit Tower from this waterfront café with surfboard decor. Rain or shine, this dive gets packed with beer guzzlers and sunbathers. Enjoy buckets of Pacificos and top-shelf margaritas alongside pub grub like burgers, nachos, and the best fish tacos in town, until your vision’s blurred and skin is blistered. Then enjoy the live music on warmer nights and heat lamps on cooler ones.

The Embarcadero, SF. (415) 362-5125, www.pier23cafe.com

CAFÉ FLORE


The faint of heart need not attempt Café Flore — sharking a table here takes more nerve than buying booze underage. But there’s a reason to steel one’s resolve: this Castro hotspot, voted Best Café in our 2004 Readers’ Poll, is ideal for any occasion, be it brunch, coffee, or an afternoon brew. With breakfast served daily until 3 p.m. and a full bar, there’s no better spot for sun-drenched boozing and cruising.

2298 Market, SF. (415) 621-8579, www.caféflore.com

LA NOTE


The garden patio at La Note is worth the wait — and wait you will, because they don’t take reservations for weekend brunch. Grab a java beforehand to stave off caffeine withdrawal as you watch other patrons enjoy their succulent crème fraîche pancakes. And don’t worry, you’ll get your turn. Complete with blue-and-white checkered tablecloths, this is the perfect spot for brunch bliss or an afternoon assiette de charcuterie.

2377 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 843-1535, www.lanoterestaurant.com

PARK CHALET


If bike rides through Golden Gate Park leave you craving a wet one to quench your thirst, this spot — located behind the oceanfront Beach Chalet and just steps from Queen Wilhelmina’s Windmill — offers the perfect spot to rest on your laurels and soak up some sun. Choose from an extensive list of beers from the onsite brewery, and when the fog rolls in, head inside to cozy up to the stone fireplace in the glass-ceilinged dining room. On weekends you can nurse a hangover and get a head start on your day’s drinking with crab benedict and a Bloody Mary.

1000 Great Highway, SF. (415) 386-8439, www.beachchalet.com

CAFÉ CLAUDE


Located in a secluded alley between Union Square and the Financial District, Café Claude is a scrumptious substitute to the crowded Belden Lane. This quaint sidewalk café is reminiscent of Parisian bistros, and is therefore the perfect spot to nosh on a Niçoise salad and sip Sancerre. Plus there’s jazz on weekends.

7 Claude, SF. (415) 392-3505, www.cafeclaude.com

EL RIO


For those days in deep summer when everywhere but the Mission District is covered in heavy fog, there’s no reason to look farther than El Rio for a bit of sunny respite. Its multilevel back deck, barbeques, margaritas, and live salsa bands draw a mostly gay male crowd on Sundays, but you can get down with the ladies every fourth Saturday of the month, when the line to get in snakes down the block.

3158 Mission, SF. (415) 282-3325, www.elriosf.com

SAM’S ANCHOR CAFE


If the summer fog has taken even the Mission captive, escape to Sam’s via the Tiburon ferry. From here, you can sip margaritas on the waterfront deck while viewing the cloud-engulfed city. Snack on fried calamari or head inside post-sunset for fine dining and seafood.

27 Main, Tiburon. (415) 435-4527, www.samscafe.com

PILSNER INN


The Pilsner doesn’t serve food, but its state-of-the-art cooling system, which keeps draft beers chilled to 31 degrees, makes this Park Chow neighbor a Castro gem for gay and straight clientele. Expect to throw back a few on the garden patio with cleated patrons just back from the fields, because Pilsner Inn supports a handful of sports teams, including softball, soccer, bowling, and pool.

225 Church, SF. (415) 621-7058, www.pilsnerinn.com *

More green reasons, post-Earth Day

-
0

Michael Kang photo.jpg
Michael Kang of the String Cheese Incident is in at the Digital Be-In.

The sun may have set on Earth Day, but that doesn’t mean the musically oriented eco-celebrations can’t continue. Here are a few more events:

DIGITAL BE-IN 16: ECOCITY
An Ecocity theme and speakers, exhbiits, installations, an eco-fashion show – and live music by Michael Kang (String Cheese Incident), Waterjuice (Vaporvent), Lumin with Irina Mikhailova, Yossi Fine (Ex-centric Sound System), Diana Rosa, and MC Yogi, and DJs Rhythmystic (Rhythm Society), Alex Theory (Mystic Vibration), Irina Mikhailova (Cyberset), Neptune (Beat Church), Dov (Cyberset, Muti Music), Goz (Cyberset), Omer (Harbin), Timonkey (Muti Music), and David Shamanik (Rhythm Society). Fri/25, 7 p.m.- 4 a.m., $20-$25. Temple, 540 Howard, SF. (415) 750-0971.

CARNAVAL SAN FRANCISCO’S ECO-GREEN FESTIVAL
Zona Verde is the theme of this green fete – which organizers are claiming as the largest outdoor green event in the city. Tribal DJs will be force along with sacred healing ceremonies, art installations, and natural home and alternative energy vendors. May 24-25. time to be announced. Harrison and Treat at 17th St., SF.

HARMONY FESTIVAL
Alongside eco-awareness booths and holistic health product peddlers are performances by Angelique Kidjo, Paula Cole, Mickey Hart Band with Steve Kimock and George Porter, George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic, Arrested Development, Jackie Greene, Charlie Musselwhite, Mike Stern Band with Victor Wooten and Friends, the Devil Makes Three, and the Amazing Techno-Tribal Community Dance. June 6, 2-10 p.m.; June 7, 10 a.m.-10 p.m.; June 8, 10 a.m.-9 p.m. with after-hours shows from 10 p.m.-2 a.m.; $25-$139. Sonoma County Fairgrounds, 1350 Bennett Valley Road, Santa Rosa.

You’ll go blind doing that

-
0

> a&eletters@sfbg.com

ISBN REAL Nobody knows better than writers that there’s nothing inherently special or ennobling about reading a book. Fiction abounds with infatuated references to studious ritual, yet there’s also no shortage of passages that portray reading as a distraction, or an ingredient in a tedious bourgeoisie mating dance. The Great Gatsby (1925) may stroke the ego with its halfwits who treat books as props, but Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence (1919) and Edmund Wilson’s Memoirs of Hecate County (1946) get straight to the point and portray reading as a fool’s pastime.

It still brings me down a bit when I think of that blip of a minor character in Wilson’s book martyred to this belief: a sort of intellectual Margaret Dumont. Here was a woman who undoubtedly read millions of words — and good ones — and all it got her was the position of deluded gadfly.

Meta-masochism is hardly required to appreciate the point that books ain’t all that. There are plenty of sad reminders in the three-dimensional world, like an acquaintance of mine during college who sported on his backpack a button with the mating call "I STILL READ BOOKS." Clearly we had an enlightened soul on our hands, one with an intellect of such dexterity, no less, that he somehow pulled off the Orphean mental journey necessary to think Pay It Forward was a high-quality movie. The world is so full of bookworm poseurs and onanists it’s hard not to question one’s own motives for curling up by the fire.

Mikita Brottman’s new book, The Solitary Vice: Against Reading (Counterpoint, 224 pages, $14.95) takes a crack at this question on our behalf, attempting a scholarly treatise against the assumption that reading, in and of itself, makes you a better person. Brottman, a language and literature professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art, wonders if perhaps our faith in the alchemical power of the practice "draws its power from a toxic brew of magical thinking, narcissism, and nostalgia."

Them’s fightin’ words. Unfortunately, Brottman’s punches don’t land nearly as often as they should. It would be hard to find the academic who could give the hyper-literate life a sound thrashing. But to maintain a modicum of fidelity to one’s thesis, not to mention one’s doubly barbed title, seems a modest expectation. The articulate introduction of Brottman’s book, sprinkled with aperitif-caliber evidence, lugs behind it 200-plus pages of disposable items from the trove of idiosyncrasies that is modern readership. Equal parts trivia, anecdotal digression, and halfhearted cautionary tale about the perils of culture-sanctioned solipsism, the result is not easily distinguishable from a valentine to reading.

I picked up Solitary Vice expecting to intermittently yell, "Preach it!" and have my opinions about literary fetishism fortified with case studies and garnished with academic authority. I don’t buy the spiritual democratization argument put forth in books such as Mark Edmundson’s 2004 Why Read? (Bloomsbury USA, 160 pages, $12.95). A book’s availability is the democratizing factor, not its contents. It seems wise that we’re introduced in our dumb-ass youth to the many types of intellectual life ripe for the plucking if we ever become so inclined. What’s not wise is assuming that students shouldn’t shuck those disciplines they find obnoxious immediately upon leaving school — that the best examples of literature aren’t at their core well-executed indulgences of an impractical enthusiasm. My reading life has helped the world only inasmuch as the world has to put up with a much less cranky person.

I will not fault you, Mikita Brottman, if you humbly disagree.

Gray Area Gallery 2.0

-
0

By Vanessa Carr

cents.jpg
Aaron Koblin’s Ten Thousand Cents

It’s hard to believe that San Francisco, the very birthplace of Web 2.0, has lacked a gallery space dedicated to new interactive media arts – until now.

Tomorrow, Gray Area Gallery, whose space closed last year, celebrates the launch of what is, in effect, its 2.0 rebirth – Gray Area Beacon (GAB) – which claims to be the first San Francisco gallery space to focus exclusively on the intersection of art and technology.

“This is the moment in time for the Bay Area to celebrate and appreciate technology-based art,” said GAB co-founder Josette Melchor. “[GAB] is trying to provide a home for exhibits, ideas, and interaction.”

GAB’s launch party on Tuesday, 4/22, coincides with the first day of the Web 2.0 Expo and features four pieces by local artist Aaron Koblin in his first ever San Francisco show.

Aaron Koblin - New York Talk Exchange.jpg
Aaron Kiblin’s New York Talk Exchange

Recently featured in Wired Magazine and the New York MoMA, Koblin’s work creates visualizations of large datasets and human systems that explore some very Web 2.0 themes:digital labor marketplaces, online collaborations, and global communications.

“I thought [Koblin] was perfect because of [his] Sheep Market and Ten Thousand Cents pieces,” Melchor told the Guardian. “He’s used online means to get people to collaborate to create a large scale installation.”

Koblin’s Sheep Market features 10,000 sheep drawn by online “workers” from around world, each of whom were paid two cents to draw “a sheep facing left” using the Amazon Mechanical Turk marketplace.

Similarly, Ten Thousand Cents, Koblin’s collaboration with artist Takashi Kawashima, is a digital representation of a one-hundred dollar bill made up of one thousand tiny squares reproduced by anonymous online laborers who worked without knowledge of the overall picture. Each worker was paid one penny for his or her work, which amounted to $100 in total.

Billy Jam hits the Whitney Biennial

-
0

AmericanLife flier sml.bmp

Contributing writer and WFMU DJ Billy Jam may boast a mean Irish accent, but he’s all about stateside hip-hop. Hence, the name, I’m guessing, of his event at the Whitney Biennial Saturday, April 19. If you happen to be in the hood – or even if you just wanna listen in via Neighborhood Public Radio’s live stream – check it out: Jam will be helming the turntables along with Demerock Wallnuts from 2-6 p.m., at the Whitney Museum, 941 Madison, NYC. He promises a live jam session with DJ Alf cutting and scratching, as well as freestyle drums, keyboards, and guitar – and spoken word. Oh, yes, and there will be plenty of art – graffiti or otherwise, from both coasts – to see.

The seeds of health

-
0

› culture@sfbg.com

One warm winter day at Ruus Elementary in south Hayward, Chef Tiffany sweeps a roomful of second-graders into their only cooking class of the year. Before long, they’re shouting out the names of body parts that benefit from fresh veggies: "Eyes!" "Teeth!" "Heart!" And even if Swiss chard elicits a wary silence, the kids already know spinach from bok choy, and Chef Tiffany, known to adults as Tiffany Chenoweth, smoothly transitions from her talking points about leafy greens into the hands-on section of the class (after delivering a squirt of antibacterial gel onto the palms of each child). Meanwhile, out past the bustling blacktop, garden instructor Rachel Harris walks an ethnically diverse group of third graders through the concept of soil enrichment. They reluctantly tear down a lush patch of fava beans that reaches over their heads, pretending to pull nitrogen out of the air (hands up!) and deposit it into the soil to benefit spring crops (hands down!). This is school garden time.

If there’s a downside to teaching children how to nurture a green, nutritious school garden, it’s hard to fathom. The list of touted benefits is lengthy: students reap fresh air and physical exercise, hands-on participation, awareness of the natural environment, so called "school bonding," and an unprecedented taste for raw spinach. For school faculty, there are welcome breaks in the classroom regimen, an engaging outlet for unruly pupils, and a bridge to involvement with volunteers in the community. And parents get to share skills and experience, from farm expertise to carpentry, that once felt irrelevant to an academic setting.

But in an educational realm where standards reign supreme, the benefits of gardens can be tough to quantify. In promotional literature, the Network for a Healthy California, a funder of Hayward Unified School District’s program, stresses connections that reflect common sense, like the idea that making fresh vegetables readily accessible to low-income families will reduce the growing rate of obesity. But the future of garden instruction in the long term, when inroads against sprawling ills like obesity might become broadly measurable, is unpredictable when grants and appropriations change from year to year. Even in the Bay Area, where strawberry patches and kale flourish beside asphalt schoolyards, garden educators continually scramble to afford basic supplies, sometimes spending more time cultivating donors than mulching vegetables.

That’s how it often feels to Miriam Feiner, program director for the Willie Brown Jr. Academy Garden. "We’re pretty much our own two-person nonprofit," Feiner says of herself and assistant Joti Levy at an Arbor Day work party on March 8, where dozens of native seedlings — coffeeberry, sticky monkey flower, and other species attractive to bees — awaited planting on a weedy slope.

The duo’s fundraising efforts have been rewarded with sizable grants from SF Environment’s Environmental Justice Grant Program and Alec Shaw of the Shaw Fund, as well as partnerships with San Francisco Beautiful and Friends of the Urban Forest.

Even more rewarding though, Feiner says, weekly garden-based classes at Willie Brown have students literally begging for kale. But she concedes that ultimately the current model, which is based on constant fundraising, is "not sustainable."

Difficulties in funding aside, people like Abby Jaramillo, the youthful director of San Francisco nonprofit Urban Sprouts, will gladly explain why it’s important to find a way to sustain such programs. When Jaramillo and her team took over the Excelsior Garden, shared by the June Jordan School for Equity and Excelsior Middle School, she said she was "up to her armpits in fennel."

But the overgrown herbs weren’t the only sign of disrepair. "It was a struggling middle school desperately in need of something that would make the students have a stake," she said. Describing the community’s "food environment," a term of art in nutrition education, she listed liquor store fare and junk food as the most prevalent options. Five years and six new school gardens later, Jaramillo thinks school administrators and teachers are genuinely on board with Urban Sprouts, whose mission is to serve low-income youth in San Francisco. "When the kids come outside; they are leaders, teaching each other how to plant," she says. "We need to make the garden a core, that will remain here and make a difference."

Whether that happens depends on whether garden education becomes institutionalized, not just a supplemental benefit reliant on the assiduousness of leaders like Jaramillo and Feiner. "My dream," Jaramillo says, "is that it would be like gym." That is to say, an expected feature of the precollege landscape. I asked her if there were models for this kind of integration. She, and everyone else I spoke with, pointed to the Edible Schoolyard, the celebrated collaboration between local-food pioneer Alice Waters and Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley. At the Schoolyard, a beneficiary of the Chez Panisse foundation, the perpetual cycle of seasons meshes with the academic year as rising eighth graders ceremonially plant corn for incoming sixth graders to harvest in the fall, suggesting a garden practice that is truly rooted in the school experience.

According to the San Francisco Unified School District, out of 104 K-12 school sites in the city, 36 maintain "green schoolyards," with 45 new gardens planned over the next four years. Statewide, $10.8 million from Sacramento was awarded in the form of California Instructional School Garden Program grants in October. It’s not nearly enough to fulfill the California Department of Education’s stated goal of "a garden in every school." But as Jordan students prepare to sow enough lettuce to provide the entire school with a lunch salad for one day, Jaramillo is hopeful that showing even a small percentage of kids where food comes from will have a lasting effect, with lessons about healthy eating rippling out through them to their families and into the community.

With the infrastructure of garden education still in its founding stages, assessing its efficacy poses a conundrum. The kind of life-changing transformations that green schoolyard proponents hope for might not be apparent in the short term, while slashed budgets threaten to endanger the longevity of even the most lovingly planted plots. Still, educators like Harris aren’t daunted by the relative nonstandardization of their field. She’s seen the results first-hand — like the student at a Hayward school barbecue who traded a Butterfinger for a second helping of grilled zucchini. After our interview, as Harris left the grocery store where she’ll teach her class to distinguish between processed and fresh food, a Ruus student in pigtails greeted her excitedly. "Miss Rachel!" she cried, throwing her head back with a wide grin. "I like garden!"

You’ll go blind doing that

-
0

> a&eletters@sfbg.com

ISBN REAL Nobody knows better than writers that there’s nothing inherently special or ennobling about reading a book. Fiction abounds with infatuated references to studious ritual, yet there’s also no shortage of passages that portray reading as a distraction, or an ingredient in a tedious bourgeoisie mating dance. The Great Gatsby (1925) may stroke the ego with its halfwits who treat books as props, but Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence (1919) and Edmund Wilson’s Memoirs of Hecate County (1946) get straight to the point and portray reading as a fool’s pastime.

It still brings me down a bit when I think of that blip of a minor character in Wilson’s book martyred to this belief: a sort of intellectual Margaret Dumont. Here was a woman who undoubtedly read millions of words — and good ones — and all it got her was the position of deluded gadfly.

Meta-masochism is hardly required to appreciate the point that books ain’t all that. There are plenty of sad reminders in the three-dimensional world, like an acquaintance of mine during college who sported on his backpack a button with the mating call "I STILL READ BOOKS." Clearly we had an enlightened soul on our hands, one with an intellect of such dexterity, no less, that he somehow pulled off the Orphean mental journey necessary to think Pay It Forward was a high-quality movie. The world is so full of bookworm poseurs and onanists it’s hard not to question one’s own motives for curling up by the fire.

Mikita Brottman’s new book, The Solitary Vice: Against Reading (Counterpoint, 224 pages, $14.95) takes a crack at this question on our behalf, attempting a scholarly treatise against the assumption that reading, in and of itself, makes you a better person. Brottman, a language and literature professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art, wonders if perhaps our faith in the alchemical power of the practice "draws its power from a toxic brew of magical thinking, narcissism, and nostalgia."

Them’s fightin’ words. Unfortunately, Brottman’s punches don’t land nearly as often as they should. It would be hard to find the academic who could give the hyper-literate life a sound thrashing. But to maintain a modicum of fidelity to one’s thesis, not to mention one’s doubly barbed title, seems a modest expectation. The articulate introduction of Brottman’s book, sprinkled with aperitif-caliber evidence, lugs behind it 200-plus pages of disposable items from the trove of idiosyncrasies that is modern readership. Equal parts trivia, anecdotal digression, and halfhearted cautionary tale about the perils of culture-sanctioned solipsism, the result is not easily distinguishable from a valentine to reading.

I picked up Solitary Vice expecting to intermittently yell, "Preach it!" and have my opinions about literary fetishism fortified with case studies and garnished with academic authority. I don’t buy the spiritual democratization argument put forth in books such as Mark Edmundson’s 2004 Why Read? (Bloomsbury USA, 160 pages, $12.95). A book’s availability is the democratizing factor, not its contents. It seems wise that we’re introduced in our dumb-ass youth to the many types of intellectual life ripe for the plucking if we ever become so inclined. What’s not wise is assuming that students shouldn’t shuck those disciplines they find obnoxious immediately upon leaving school — that the best examples of literature aren’t at their core well-executed indulgences of an impractical enthusiasm. My reading life has helped the world only inasmuch as the world has to put up with a much less cranky person.

I will not fault you, Mikita Brottman, if you humbly disagree. *

Watch what she makes

-
0

> a&eletters@sfbg.com

Feminist art has reemerged in the past few years as the focus of major exhibitions including "WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution" at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and "Global Feminisms" at the Brooklyn Museum, which coincided with the unveiling of the museum’s permanent home for Judy Chicago’s iconic The Dinner Party (1974–79). On one hand, it’s inspiring to see such work resurface, especially at this political moment, when it becomes increasingly important to recall dissident factions in our country’s history. On the other hand, exhibitions such as "WACK!" can feel like regurgitations of the same old feminist art show with the same discourse, participants, and audience. It’s not enough to dust off these works and lump them under the vague and often misunderstood descriptor "feminist." To engage today’s audiences, it’s necessary to pull apart the threads, identifying what was and is at stake for these artists.

"The Way That We Rhyme: Women, Art & Politics," curated by Berin Golonu and on view at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, unites a new generation of women artists who honor their feminist predecessors while embracing new and more sly and subversive tactics. I increasingly hear women of my generation and younger vehemently disavow feminism, despite the current curatorial interest, as if there’s a stigma attached to the word. But "Way" takes feminist art out of the past and into the present.

In The Counterfeit Crochet Project (Critique of a Political Economy), Stephanie Syjuco takes aim at the luxury goods industry: the beautiful and coveted couture accoutrements that promise to make women equally beautiful and coveted, for a price. Seeking to reconcile the desire to possess such items with not wanting to invest in multinational corporations or sweatshops, Syjuco posted instructions on her Web site on how to crochet one’s own Fendi or Prada bag. Many women heeded the instructions, and their finished products are on display. The project also alludes to crochet as a traditionally devalued variety of "women’s craft." Similar knitted works appear throughout "Way," such as Lisa Anne Auerbach’s 2007 wool sweater and skirt sets, inscribed with political slogans.

Aleksandra Mir captures an unprecedented landmark in First Woman on the Moon, a 1999 video work that might be described as a "small step for a woman, a giant leap for the history of womankind." Playing off some people’s belief that Neil Armstrong’s moon landing was a hoax, Mir creates her own version of the event, wielding her camera — the instrument of news media — to insert women into history. After all, if Armstrong’s landing was — at the very least — plausible, then so is this landing. Filmed on a Dutch beach, Mir doesn’t try too hard to make the setting look authentic; in her version, the moon landing is less a colonization of outer space and more a celebration of life on Earth.

In a more somber piece, Portrait of Silvia-Elena, street artist SWOON and documentarian Tennessee Jane Watson collaborate to bring visibility to the horrifically high numbers of young women disappearing and turning up dead in Juárez, Mexico, and throughout the Americas. Some 400 women’s bodies have been recovered in Juarez, and an additional 1,000 are still recorded missing; in Guatemala, 2,000 women have been murdered. At the entrance to the installation — made to look like a dilapidated brick wall — is SWOON’s beautiful, angelic relief-print portrait of a 15-year-old victim in her quinceañera dress. The installation is also made up of photos of missing girls, as they are found plastered in Juarez, and an audiotrack of Watson’s interviews with the mothers of the disappeared.

One of the more challenging works is Beg for Your Life (2006) by Laurel Nakadate. A video artist accustomed to being looked at by men, Nakadate collapses her experience as subject and object, placing herself in front of her own camera to enact scenes with various older men — all strangers whose gaze she met on the street. In one scene, Nakadate’s back is to the camera as she seductively poses for her admirer. The man thinks he is in the subject seat, dictating his fantasies to the object of his desire, but really the camera is on him. Nakadate scores the video with 1980s pop songs, yet the content is not always amusing: some of the men’s fantasies are violent, and you wonder if the artist didn’t put herself at real risk.

The interplay between female and male subjects and objects in Nakadate’s work brings to mind one thing I might add to "Way": male artists. While I understand the rationale for creating a dedicated space for women’s art, I think in some ways it only further marginalizes women. Let’s integrate women’s political art into the larger context and invite men to participate, reminding them that feminism is — and has always been — about men too.

THE WAY THAT WE RHYME: WOMEN, ART & POLITICS

Through June 29

Tues.–Wed., Fri.–Sun., noon–5 p.m.; Thurs., noon–8 p.m.

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

$6, $3 seniors, students, and youths; free for members (free first Tues.)

(415) 978-ARTS

www.ybca.org

CubaCaribe Festival

-
0

PREVIEW The CubaCaribe Festival, now in its fourth incarnation, is a three-week celebration of the African diaspora, as manifested in this country, Brazil, Cuba, and Haiti. (Conceivably, as we continue to learn how widespread and diverse African influences are, the festival might well grow to include dance and music from Peru.) Like many other culturally based dance forms, these diverse African influences of the diaspora grow from pockets that develop around specific newcomers to the fertile Bay Area, who bring the seeds of knowledge with them. Observe this year’s festival performers: Tânia Santiago was born in the Bahia region of Brazil; two members of Nsamina Kongo come from the Republic of Congo; and Luis Napoles, Ramón Ramos Alayo, and Danis "La Mora" Pérez Prades hail from Cuba. Others, such as Portsha Jefferson and Michelle Martin, are American, but their affinities have led them to the sources of their art; Jefferson has lived and worked in Haiti, and Martin in Nigeria, Cuba, and Haiti. Of particular interest is guest artist Pérez Prades’s New York–based Oyu Oro ensemble and CubaCaribe founder Ramos and his Alayo Dance Company. An excellent dancer with Robert Moses’s Kin, among others, Ramos brings a personal, decidedly contemporary perspective to his choreography. Last year’s Three Threes was a thoughtfully built homage to Cuba’s modern dance pioneer Narciso Medina and a smart, excellently danced roundup of Cuban social dance.

CUBACARIBE FESTIVAL Fri/18–Sat/19, April 24–26, and May 1–3, 8 p.m.; April 20 and May 4, 2, and 7 p.m. Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St., SF. $18–$22. (415) 273-4633, www.cubacaribe.org, www.brownpapertickets.com

“Propagations”

-
0

REVIEW Paul Hayes’ gorgeous folded-paper-and-wire sculpture Cultivated Momentum hangs from Johansson Projects’ ceiling like the canopy of an origami kelp forest. Light dapples through its dense clusters of folded, white paper forms, as black coils of wire slither in curved formation, evoking a school of eels. Organic associations aside, Hayes’ abstract ecosystem has developed with help from a guiding force, as the first part of the work’s title suggests. Granted, all the art on display in this mixed-bag group show was created by someone. But the tensions many of the pieces evince seem to be an issue of how far each artist lets their forms proliferate or images mutate before throwing in the towel.

In the case of Tadashi Moriyama’s hypnotic acrylic, gouache, and ink paintings, the sprawling cityscapes — composed entirely of the same rudimentary, cube-shaped buildings — are at first bounded only by implied coastlines: witness Tsuji no Shokudoh (Restaurant at the Intersection, 2007) and Moonset (2006). But with the other canvases the buildings reach such a critical mass that their density forms abstract patterns, as in the cellular formations of Mass Spectrum or, as in the case of Accelerating Vortex (2007), it seems to cause implosion. The show’s more figurative pieces pack less of a visual punch, perhaps because their imagery is more concrete — suggestive of a narrative already in progress — rather than evocative. Both Kiersten Essenpreis’ Blood and Crypts, which transplants Henry Darger’s Vivian Girls, along with some boys, in a snowy forest with bison, giant fish, and elephants, and Alexis Amann’s Girls Make the World, in which two women vomit up fish and streams of colored effluvia, leave me wanting to hear the rest of the story. In contrast, Hayes’ and Moriyama’s pieces almost emit an undertow, and after several minutes of gazing at their proliferating forms you have become embedded.

PROPAGATIONS Through May 2. Thurs.–Sat., noon–6 p.m., and by appointment. Reception May 2, 5–9 p.m. Johansson Projects, 2300 Telegraph, Oakl. (510) 444-9140, johanssonprojects.com

Chain, chain, chain…

-
0

According to intern Ailene Sankur, sometimes a girl just needs a subpar, average meal at a crappy chain restaurant.

chili's.jpg

I have a confession to make: sometimes, I need to go to a chain restaurant. I know, I know, I live in a gourmand’s paradise. And yes, I love to support family-owned small Indian, Turkish, and Mexican joints. I hate corporations, hate cheesiness, hate tchotchkes and flair. But sometimes, I just need to go into my happy suburban place. The place that takes me back to the Target, Ross, and TJ Maxx stores of my youth, with their big, wide, unmonitored parking lots where I could probably leave my car for weeks unnoticed.
Yes, the food is subpar, but it’s consistent in its average-ness. And sometimes, you want to step away from all the culinary razzle-dazzle and just eat something blah in a place where the “kooky, original” décor is the same as it is in your fave chain back home for a Twilight-zone eerie, but strangely soothing effect. Talk about Walter Benjamin’s theories of “art in the age of mechanical production” in a ginormous booth—another wonderful thing about chains…no more tiny wood tables crammed next to a loud kitchen—decorated in southwestern tiles and a big sign that says “Chili cook-off.”

So, if you’re like me and sometimes you just want to eat an homage to your Stepford childhood, here’s a list of chain restaurants close to the city:

Chevron spinning out

-
0

toxico_oilpit.jpg
Yuck. Ecuadorian oil pit. All cleaned up, you say? Photo courtesy of Amazon Watch

As if publicly disputing the credibility of the Goldman Prize weren’t enough, Chevron has gone into serious corporate spin cycle, taking out a full page ad in today’s Chron and penning a guest editorial claiming they’re not to blame for 18 billion gallons of toxic waste dumped in unlined pits in the Amazon rainforest. The repeated cry of Charles A. James, Chevron’s vp and general counsel: It’s not us, it’s the government. Chevron, the parent company of Texaco, which began pumping Ecuadorian oil back in 1964, says noone cared about the environment back then, they’ve cleaned up their mess anyway, and anything left over is the fault of Ecuador’s national oil company, PetroEcuador.

Lawyer Pablo Fajardo and activist Luis Yanza, two natives of Lago Agrio, Ecuador – a small village in the heart of the spoils — were just awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize, what our congresswoman Nancy Pelosi called “on par with the Nobel Peace Prize.” Fajardo put himself through law school to take the lead in a suit against Chevron, claiming the company’s responsible for destroying soil, water, and natural resources. Lago Agrians suffer significantly elevated incidences of cancer, disease, and death.

Chevron, which ignored Fajardo at last year’s board meeting, now has Sam Singer handling spin. Singer’s other recent clients: the SF Zoo, post-tiger attack, and Don Fisher’s Presidio art museum. They also have William Haynes on the case. Why does that name sound so familiar? Yes, a la Kevin Ryan, we have another Bush Administration fall guy washing ashore in the Bay Area.

Reading through Chevron’s website on the lawsuit and taking in the pretty green pictures, it seems like there isn’t a thing wrong with this Amazonian rainforest. Everything’s been cleaned up, and if the indigenous people who live there are getting sick, it’s because they shit where they eat.

But MoFilms, an Oakland-based documentary company, shot footage of the region that shows someone has been wrecking environmental hell down there. Their film, Justicia Now, is screening this Thursday at the Roxie, 8 pm, 3117 16th St. San Francisco. The filmmakers will be on hand to answer questions about the issue and the movie, which they also distribute for free on their website.

From bar to book: Life Long Press turns backroom literary readings into published work

-
1

By Ailene Sankur

backroomlivecovera.jpg

Valyntina Grenier is no stranger to poetry. By her undergrad senior year at U.C. Berkeley, she had already put together two chapbooks and now she’s in the second year of an M.F.A. in Poetry at St. Mary’s College of California.

She is also no stranger to bars: she works as a bartender at Lanesplitter () in Oakland. And it was her friendship with two other East Bay bartenders on which she built her Back Room Live (www.lifelongpress.blogspot.com) reading series. Most people go to bars to have mindless fun, relax, get wasted; Valyntina used them as a vehicle for “…a polyphony of voices, united by the desire to make art, enjoy language, and drink a pint or two.”

First, Sheila from the wonderful Hotsy Totsy Club in Albany let Valyntina read the poetry from her first chapbook. (Incidentally, the Hotsy Totsy Club, in a not particularly trendy East Bay neighborhood, wins the dive bar competition against San Francisco anyday.) The readings were well-received by the bar crowd. After those experiences, she toyed with the idea of doing another reading series at a bar. After befriending Tony, the bartender at McNally’s Irish Pub in Oakland, she asked if she could do a reading series there. He agreed, and after it proved successful Back Room Live became a monthly event—on the last Saturday of each month.

Valyntina, now in her M.F.A. program, decided to bring together others from the creative writing masters program — both students and faculty — as well as other Bay Area poets and authors.

Literary readings have long been thought of as the property of dim bookstores, mousy clerks shakily whispering introductions to authors, bad wine, and an intellectual elitist. With the Back Room Live series,Valyntina wanted to get away from that. She says, “My initial impetus was the sense that if you’re not in academia, and even sometimes if you are, you can feel left out of literary events. So I thought by bringing it to the bar, people would be engaged in it. Really just to broaden the community, get different genres of writers together and people together who wouldn’t necessarily go to hear writers…”

The reading series became so popular Valyntina decided to publish a Back Room Live Reading Series magazine, sold online and at Diesel Books, Book Zoo, and Pegasus (all in Oakland). The magazine is published through Valyntina’s other venture: Life Long Press Publishing.

lifelonga.jpg

Buggin’ in the Attic with DJ Primo

-
0

Justin Juul caught up with DJ Primo , of Attic, Ferrari, West Add Radio, Knockout, and Mods vs. Rockers fame – and lived to tell the tale.

Primo1a.jpg

I met Primo a couple of years ago when we were both waiting tables at a small restaurant near The Castro. I resented the job because I knew that every hour I spent working meant an equal amount of time away from writing. As a result, I really sucked. I was always late and cranky and tired and I had a really hard time being nice to customers. Primo seemed to be going through the same stuff. He tried to act happy, but he couldn’t hide his fatigue or general loathing for the work, and it was obvious he’d rather be spinning records or sleeping. It was no surprise, then, that neither of us lasted more than three months.

pinktongue.jpg

I forgot about the dude for a while until I noticed him spinning records at The Attic on 24th and Mission one night. Then I started bumping into him everywhere I went. The last time it happened, we sat in the park for an hour and talked about obscure soul music, the mod scene, graffiti, and hard times. Check it out.

Primo: Whatcha reading there?

SFBG: Oh it’s the new Juxtapoz, I think I stole it from the gym last week. Pretty cool shit in here, sometimes.

Primo: Yeah, the dude who did the cover, Parra, I like his stuff. It’s like French Old School, graffiti-based stuff, taken from weird pop and mod art, with this strange New York influence. It kinda reminds me of this writer named REES. Just like hand drawn letters with this weird, like, metaphysical, “fuck-you,” Daffy Duckness to them.

juxtapoza.jpg

1...171172173...206Page 172 of 206

48hills.org is the official publication of the non-profit San Francisco Progressive Media Center.
Contact us: info@48hills.org