What art does

Convincing people to make time to come out to a contemporary art exhibition has a couple of tracts:

• This artist is significant.
• This is a rare opportunity to see this artist’s work.
• This artist influences other artists.

These “one-liners” fit easily into ad copy, Twitter, press release headlines, and elevator speeches. The problem is, that they don’t speak to an audience that, normally, doesn’t make time to culture themselves beyond a new film or the new restaurant in their city.

There’s an argument for challenging, segmented, explanatory bits. Not: “this is why you should care,” instead: “this is what this art does.”

(found here, via this)

Saturday at Comfest, 2009

Highlights for Saturday; the crescendo of Comfest. Click on the image for full size. Details and links to the bands after the jump.

Friday at Comfest, 2009

These are my highlights for Friday. Click on the image for full size (uh, “that’s what she said”). Details and links to the bands after the jump.

John Lennon Animation

Originally published: July 8, 2008.

In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon’s every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries the terrifyingly genius pen work of James Braithwaite with masterful digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon’s boundless wit, and timeless message.