RECLAIM!

Summer in New York City is steamy and filled with tourists, which is why we escape every weekend to our country abode. The country, however, cuts us off from the art world: participation in openings, parties, dinners, and TV all must be suspended.

However, this weekend we'll be in town -- in fact, off to Brooklyn -- for Art Party 3 in which my good friend Cat Mallone and I have curated a film and video show called RECLAIM: The Visual Space in Between.

Here are the details.

RECLAIM: The Visual Space in Between
A film and video series presented as part of ART PARTY 3
Curated by Caterina Mallone and Natasha Chuk

Saturday, July 19, 2008 @ 7 PM

Supreme Trading
213 North 8th Street
Brooklyn, NY 11211
718-599-4224
www.supremetradingny.com

In keeping with the transient nature of the space at Supreme Trading, RECLAIM: The Visual Space in Between is a film and video series that encompasses wide-ranging works that depict the areas between and among memory, history, tradition, identity, and spaces of liminality and becoming.

RECLAIM explores visualizations of memory as a representation of personal or collective experiences that interact with and affect the creation or evolution of new identities, concepts, and entities. We believe memory both fosters and limits change, and this series illustrates that duality, showing the many ways we experience, recall, and appropriate memory.

We've selected works that are evocative art forms which mark our time and give it the artistic flair and personality we have come to celebrate. With an emphasis on visual language, these works RECLAIM visual memory, harnessing it literally and conceptually.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Pam Kray
Jessica Lauretti
LoVid
Karl Mendonca
Sharon Mooney
Jessica Peavy
Caroline Polachek
Bec Stupak
Olivia Wyatt

R.I.P.

Thomas Edward
December 1992 - June 23, 2008

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

As we here at Am/Mex avoid grocery store tomatoes, just in case, we learned today that the FDA is closing in on a list of farms in Florida and Mexico that may be to blame for this salmonella mess. If you are wondering what tomatoes are safe to eat, you're not alone. Here's the "safe" list, but if you trust the FDA at this point to protect the U.S. food chain then we have a piece of land next to the airport you may be interested in. Today the FDA's safety chief Dr. David Acheson told the AP:

"A tomato that made somebody sick in Vermont has come a long way. A lot of suppliers and warehouses have potentially handled that tomato. It could be anywhere on that distribution chain where all these tomatoes were together at one point.''

And there is the crux of the problem, which brings us to a still ripe memory - a panel earlier this month at The New School entitled What's For Dinner? The Rise of Food Literacy. It was a night of revelations: the room was packed, the new terminology was impressive (slow food, of course, but porkfolio?) and it occurred to us that food awareness and the local food movement is as close to activism as most people will ever get these days. Forget Obama's Unite for Change mantra for a moment, if you consider yourself a gourmand, a gourmet, or just like to eat tasty, fresh food, it's time to change the way this country grows, distributes and eats food. Edible Communities is doing just that, so check it out.

The long arrows are coming into fashion.

Last night The Times Center hosted a fabulous event organized by The Museum of the Moving Image, a conversation between Jonathan Demme and Werner Herzog and a reception that followed to celebrate the launch of the new crazy cool Moving Image Source, a website and research guide to all things film, television and digital media.

Dennis Lim walked us through the interface of the website, highlighting its features and capabilities. But, naturally, he kept his presentation brief, as he could probably feel the collective anxiety in the room building in anticipation of one of the remaining true (as Herzog describes Roger Ebert) "soldiers of cinema". The real treat last night was Werner Herzog. (The unfortunate endorsement of Roger Ebert wasn't.)

To set the stage for the Demme-Herzog interview -- about growing up in Bavaria, not Germany, never having seen a film until the age of 11, and being able to pick out the man in the room who can milk a cow, among other things -- we got a peek at Herzog's latest film, Encounters at the End of the World, which, from a brief look at it, appears to capture his (forgive me for reducing it to this uninspired-but-for-lack-of-a-better-term) quirky sensibility.

It opens next Wednesday at Film Forum.

Alphabet City

An abecedarium (or abecedary) is an inscription consisting of the letters of the alphabet, almost always listed in order. This clever sorting of letters is a fitting selection for the New York Public Library, host to the online, interactive exhibition co-produced by Lynne Sachs and Susan Agliata, Abecedarium: NYC.

This project explores the above and below ground history, geography, and culture of New York City through 26 words. The words aren't ordinary, everyday words. K is for Kermis, a festival usually held to raise money; P for Pelagic, relating to oceans or seas; N is for Nosogeography, the study of the geographical causes of diseases, and so on.

Visual and aural relationships are formed between these words and specific locations, indicated by maps, throughout New York City's five boroughs through video, animation, photography and sound.