Part one was The Power of Art at The Drawing Center.
A series of talks and panel lead discussion.
As is usual with these types of sunny afternoon,
sitting in a dark room listening to people talk things,
only 20% is only ever really very inspiring.
My 20% came in the form of John Welchman a British Professor in Modern Art History at the University of California, San Diego.
His talk 'Power Piracy and the Bloody Flux' discussed Paul McCarthy's recent piece 'La La Land Parody Paradise'
which was exhibited at The Whitechapel Gallery, in London in January.
He weaved together the historical contextual background of a pirate's life, cultures and behavioral patterns with an investigation into McCarthy's comparable parody of the numbing and dumbing process by which the era of sea piracy has undergone in the media in recent years.
A very succint but equally compelling synopsis of an artist who is caught between a cathartic chanelling of a depressed, repressed, amoral, consumer led and hypocratical America and re-enacting time and time again the theatre of cruelty through acts of constructed hollywood synthetic debasement.
Part two took me to Carrol Street south Brooklyn Rooftop Films.
Rooftop have been screening underground films in a variety of locations around New York for the past 5 years.
There I met Mark Elijah Rosenberg the creative director of Rooftop.
We, along with a few 100 more people watched a live performance by the band 'Live Bells'.
A Tortoise esque, progressively dreamy instrumental band from Ohio.
And the film 45635.
The film was an overview of the small suburban town of Sidney, Ohio follwing the lives of 4 central figures drifting between shots of the banal and mundane, everyday life in context of boredom, financial struggle, love, growing pains and bouts of roaring laughter and exhibitionism.
After meeting the sibling duo directors Bill and Turner (and their Father Bill), all orignally from Sidney and hearing that McCarthy's pirate project was actally developed, realised and instigated in collaboration with his son Damon McCarthy.
I took a taxi home listening to Sly and The Family Stone's 'Family Affair' on my pod.
Day eight, bloods thicker than mud.
