Can you listen to ear torturer/noise master Glenn Branca’s auditory assault “Symphony no. 13 (Hallucination City) for 100 Guitars” without macabrely dwelling on the horrors of 9/11 and, well, everything that came after? I know I couldn’t when attending the experimental symphony on a whim last Friday at Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall. The concert, … Continue reading
I haven’t curated an exhibition since 2019. It’s not for lack of trying. I was months into a show about nightlife with Fotografiska before they picked up their museum and left the city. More recently, I submitted a proposal for a trash aesthetic exhibition, an idea that made me so excited I buzzed my way … Continue reading
The biggest surprise in Gianluca Cameron’s full-blown foam-mouthed wacko novel You Know It’s Black, a book stuffed to the brim with unexpected and inexplicable brain-wringing stunners, may be the presence of filmmaker, actor, musician, unsimulated sex scene producer/anti-porn neuter, Trump supporter, and Roger Stone-rivaling Nixon fanatic Vincent Gallo. Gallo appears as the fittingly phobic one-night-stand … Continue reading
Throughout my years of writing about art, I’ve, of course, encountered many, many terrible press releases, filled with impenetrable jargon, effusive yet meaningless artspeak, and so much liminality, relationality, materiality, and space. I’ve rolled my eyes. I’ve sighed. I’ve cackled. Yet, it wasn’t until recently, with the overwhelming AI sloppification of NYC art galleries’ written … Continue reading
I cried in disbelief listening to Madonna’s “I Feel So Free.” Not at first. When I initially sampled the rip of the old-school radio (yes, radio!) premiere of the first track from her upcoming album Confessions II, “I Feel So Free” came off to me as generic gay bar fare, perfect for a Hell’s Kitchen … Continue reading
I’m not often impressed by visual art, or at least institutionally accepted artsy-fartsy art, that engages with artificial intelligence. Most AI-related art fails to outshine or even match the wackadoo aesthetics of naïve AI slop produced by the Internet, whether heartfelt Charlie Kirk memorials showing the Turning Point guru paling around with Abraham Lincoln and … Continue reading
An idiotic U.S. president launches a disastrous, poorly considered, escalating war in the Middle East that neocon sickos have been dreaming about since 1996’s Clean Break memo got Bibi Netanyahu all hot and bothered for Greater Israel. The United States’ hubris, short-sighted stupidity, and limitless taste for con artistry plunge the entire globe into economic … Continue reading
Can receiving the stigmata be a sex act? It is surely intimate and sensual, not to mention penetrative. This is a question that I’ve been musing on ever since fixating on Giovanni di Paolo’s shimmering, submissive 15th-century panel painting, Saint Catherine of Siena Receiving the Stigmata, on view in the Met Cloister’s heroically horny and … Continue reading
A black screen, a void, then the calming sounds of ocean waves. Keith Richards’s guitar punctures the roiling relaxation, as sea-green ocean waves brighten the screen. Merry Clayton woos over the opening riff of The Rolling Stones’ Vietnam-era anthem, “Gimme Shelter,” as a drone shot flits over a sandy beach and a pool deck with … Continue reading
I love fan fiction. While I never wrote it as a confused teen (No, I’m not covering up a secret, long-dormant account on Fanfiction.net. I’ve never been good at fiction), I love it nonetheless. Fan fiction is an art form born out of obsession, raging hormones, and pent-up wayward desire projected through favorite fictional characters … Continue reading