Tuesday October 24, 2006
Legends of the Fall
Tomorrow night, New York ad agency Think Tank 3 will open a provocative exhibition of photographs of public representations of Saddam Hussein, taken in the days following the fall of his regime. “Saddam Mania” features photos of posters, murals, and statues taken by photojournalist Teun Voeten days after the U.S. invasion, just as those public images were being dismantled. “Saddam built himself, essentially, an imposing brand by commissioning these images and statues—to a level that requires more than taking them down to take his power away from him,” says TT3 creative director and exhibition curator Sharoz Makarechi. “The series, perhaps despite itself, demonstrates the disparity between the destruction of reminders of Saddam, and the fact that Saddam is to this day holding his own in court.” The show will be on display at the agency’s new space at 447 Hudson Street (at the corner of Morton) through November 25.
Posted by jim at 11:22 AM || Comments
Hat Spat a Marketing Ploy?
I saw Little Children this weekend, and I highly recommend it. It’s the best dark dramedy I’ve seen in years. While watching it, however, I was reminded of last spring’s infamous “hat spat” in Park Slope. As both New York magazine and Gawker detailed at the time, a PC brawl broke out on a message board for Park Slope parents when someone found a jester-style children’s hat and assumed it belonged to a boy.
As you can see from this still, a jester-style children’s hat plays a somewhat important role in Little Children. The little boy who wears it has a complicated emotional relationship with his head gear. This made me wonder if the “hat spat” wasn’t just a guerrilla marketing campaign all along, designed to lure Bobo parents into a movie that mocks their very lifestyle. Wouldn’t that be great? At the very least it would prove that it was a boy’s hat after all.
Posted by jim at 10:56 AM || Comments
Tuesday October 10, 2006
Reminder: Tonight in Park Slope
Just a last minute reminder that I’ll be reading tonight in Park Slope as part of the Brooklyn Writers Space Reading Series. Doors at 6:30, reading at 7. The rest of the details can be found here. (And thanks to Lauren at Maud’s place and the One Story Blog for mentioning it.)
Posted by jim at 09:08 AM || Comments
Friday October 06, 2006
Dirty Laundry
As I’ve mentioned before, Jerry Bruckheimer’s CSI franchise is about as cool as its spiritual ancestor Quincy when it comes to spotting hip trends. The series was way late on competitive eating and late (yet still too early) on toothing, which turned out to be a fake trend. Nevertheless, next week’s episode of CSI: NY will be based on EDOC Laundry, the fashion/ARG mash-up created by the puppet masters behind 42 Entertainment. The folks at 42 also created The Beast, I Love Bees, Cathy’s Book, and other well-known alternative reality games. (I’ve mentioned EDOC Laundry before, and I published a long interview with 42 Entertainment’s Sean Stewart earlier this year.)
EDOC’s clothes have clues embedded in their designs, and the CSI episode will apparently feature a serial killer who commits murders based on those clues—sort of like Vincent Price in Theatre of Blood. The cops will have to unravel the mystery of the shirts to solve the crime. Cue the murky, rock-and-roll flashbacks.
Posted by jim at 01:15 PM || Comments
Wednesday October 04, 2006
Elbow Room
Our clever friend Neil Goldberg has a new show opening next week at the Sara Meltzer Gallery in Chelsea. I interviewed Neil in February about “Missing the Train,” his series of photos of people missing the subway. His new show, Room Tone, will include more of those, plus other meditations on the everyday, including a video of patrons mulling their options at a salad bar, a series of photographs of truck drivers’ elbows, and a self-explanatory short titled “My Father Breathing into a Mirror.”
The show kicks off with an opening reception on Thursday, Oct. 12 and runs through Nov. 4.
Posted by jim at 06:31 AM || Comments
Tuesday October 03, 2006
The War on Tourism
During the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, locals tore down street signs in an attempt to disorient Soviet forces. Alexandra recently found a stack of discount postcards of the U.N. that seem to employ a similar strategy to discombobulate the terrorists, the tourists, or maybe just Hugo Chavez. You’ll see what I mean after the jump. Here is the front:
And here is the back:
