Say "Hello" To The Meth Lab Before "Goodbye"

The opening reception for Hello Meth Lab in the Sun has come and gone, but if you haven't had a chance to see this amazing intervention, visit the lab before it says "goodbye" on August 3rd.

Ballroom Marfa's Spring 2008 exhibition is a collaboration between three early career artists, Jonah Freeman, Justin Lowe and Alexandre Singh. In an installation that literally transforms Ballroom's gallery spaces into a labyrinthine assemblage of rooms, hallways, closets and observation platforms, Hello Meth Lab in the Sun is a rumination on the theme of alchemy, uncovering of some of the sites of alchemical transformation in the modern world.

Like the dioramas of the Museum of Natural History or the period rooms of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Hello Meth Lab in the Sun creates theatrical depictions of three specific social/historical contexts: the utopian hippie commune, the clandestine meth lab, and the varied sites of modern industrial production. Each room and object is suggestive of a state of transformation or hybridization: vegetables into broth; match heads into meth; sugar cane into Mountain Dew.

Hello Meth Lab in the Sun takes up alchemy's method of homespun experimentalism, bonding unlikely ingredients and ushering in a secular mysticism. One room reads as an Upper East Side apartment converted to a lifestyle museum, with a collection of black and white society photographs documenting hermetic rituals with cacti and crystals. This is a world reminiscent of Norman Mailer's 50th birthday party and the final scene in Polanski's 1968 horror film, Rosemary's Baby.

Another room reveals itself as a laboratory cluttered with crates of cold medicine, boxes of matches, containers of cat litter and glassware for the mass production of narcotics. Here not only are materials transformed, their intended uses are subverted along with consumerism's tenets of freedom, happiness and choice. The lightly veiled intimacy between the lawful and the deviant is put on display.

The zeitgeist of 1960s counterculture is channeled by Hello Meth Lab in the Sun, although at times it's more "living dead" than a romantic flashback. The shag carpet is well worn, the furniture stained, rooms have been incinerated. Ceilings are low and the hallways are tight - these spaces are under surveillance.

The southern most room of the gallery is a tweaked out hippie kitchen, with paraphernalia that cross the cosmic forces of natural living with tech-based media. Overhead is a geodesic-dome structure, Buckminster Fuller's ideal design for making more from less. A broken refrigerator is the portal to a terrarium of hybrid objects.

Artist Bios

Jonah Freeman was born in 1975 in Santa Fe, NM and lives and works in New York City. He has exhibited widely since the late 1990s throughout the United States and internationally with photographs, video projections and installations that explore the psychology of architectural spaces. Recent solo exhibitions include The Long Goodbye (with Michael Phelan), John Connelly Presents, New York (2007); The Franklin Abraham, Galerie Edward Mitterand, Geneva, Switzerland, M Projects, Paris, France Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York and Play Gallery, Berlin, Germany (2005, 2004); and In the Public Realm: Sixteen Scenarios, Public Art Fund, Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn, NY (2002). His work has also been represented in the recent group shows: Le Centre pour l'image contemporaine, Saint gervais, Geneva, Switzerland; Grow Your Own, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2007); Busan Biennale 2006, Buan, South Korea; Intouchable (l' Id� transparence), D�nges, Centre National d'Art Contemporain - Villa Arson, Nice, France (2006); Day Labor, PS1/MOMA, New York; and Vanishing Point, The Wexner Center for the Arts, Wexner, OH (2005).

Justin Lowe was born in 1976 in Dayton, OH and lives and works in New York City. He has been exhibiting since 2000, creating installation "environments" like gallery-lounges, cluttered house interiors and - for his 2006 solo show at Oliver Kamm/5BE Gallery, New York - an intricately stocked bodega and Mister Softee truck. Lowe is also known for his collages produced in collaboration with Jonah Freeman. Select solo exhibitions include: Helter Swelter, Oliver Kamm/5BE Gallery, New York, NY (2006); Collecting Pictures in the Brain Hotel, Sculpture Center, Long Island City, NY (2005); Dwellings, Brooklyn Public library, Brooklyn, NY; Waterfall, The Wrong Gallery, New York; and Passage, PS1 Special Project Room, Long Island City, NY (2004). Selected group exhibitions include: Slow Burn, Galerie Edward Mitterand, Geneva, Switzerland; Bricks in the Hood, Oliver Kamm/5BE Gallery, New York; Studio Visit, Exit Art, New York (2006); The Pantagruel Syndrome, Museum of Contemporary Art in the Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy; Greater New York 2005, PS1, Long Island City, NY (2005); Household Psychedelics, Fia Backstrom Projects, Brooklyn, NY (2004); and The Melvins, Anton Kern Gallery, New York, NY (2003).

Alexandre Singh is a British artist, born in Bordeaux, France in 1980 and currently based in London and New York City. His installations are recognizable by their combined structures of building materials and consumer items, accompanied by circuitous narratives and elements of performance. Singh's first solo show was held in 2007 at White Columns, New York, NY, entitled The Marque of the Third Stripe; in 2008 he will have additional solo exhibitions at Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Monitor Gallery, Rome, Italy; and at the Museu da Electrcidade, Lisbon, Portugal in collaboration with Rita Sobral Campos for UNCLEHEAD. Singh will be represented in the upcoming group exhibitions: Living to tell the Tale at the Royal College of Art, London; Art Cannot be Untaught, La Rada, Locarno, Switzerland; and A New High in Getting Low II, John Connelly Presents, New York, NY. Selected past exhibitions include The First Antechamber, Projects Arts Center, Dublin, Ireland; The Singer Sucks, but the Band… Finding Good in an Otherwise Dismal World, Sunday, New York, NY; East International 17, Norwich Gallery, Norwich, UK (2007); Alexandre Singh and Goody B Wiseman, Second Gallery, Boston, MA; Slow Burn, Galerie Edward Mitterand, Geneva, Switzerland (2006); Open Walls, White Columns, New York, NY; If You're Felling Sinister, Alona Kagan, NY (2005); Romantic Detachment, PS1 MoMA, Quens, NY and New American Talent 19, Arthouse at the Jones Center, Austin, TX.

Thunderbird Lounge: New Photos by Marie Ely

Border Wall Info : ReViva Collective

May 1st from 5 to 8 PM the ReViva Collective will be hosting information tables at the Caboose Park at 5th and Holland, as well as at the SRSU campus in Alpine concerning the US/Mexico Border Wall as part of a national day of action regarding immigration issues. There will be printed information available and open dialog for people interested in addressing or learning more about the wall or other border issues.

MPR Fund Drive, Martin Guitar Giveaway

Help support public radio and be one of the founding members of KRTS. From the fine folks at MPR, we get news that 300 members just renewed and that the popular contest for the Martin guitar will go until Friday:

Many Thanks!

If you're one of the more than 300 who joined or renewed your membership this past week - THANK YOU. We're glad to include you as one of the founding members of Marfa Public Radio.

Our "first" Fund Drive will never happen again - but if you haven't given yet, there is still time. Our phone volunteers have gone home, but you still can be part of the "first" family of KRTS with an online donation through Friday (April 18). The drawing for the Martin Cowboy Guitar will be held on Friday at High Noon. New entries will be accepted until then, and any donating member is automatically entered. We've had a great time this past week, with on-air specials, concerts, and surprises at every turn. We've heard from every corner of Far West Texas - and beyond: both new voices and old friends.

There is a "first" time for everything, and KRTS is proud to serve you as the "first" public broadcaster in the region.

Many thanks,

Tom Michael

Marfa Film Festival Starts May 1

The Marfa Film Festival will be held May 1-5, 2008, screening 30 hours of features, shorts and experimental works.

Marfa is a small town alone on a high plateau, a place defined by a history of separation, where life proceeds at its own distinct pace as a harmony of antithesis: cowboy culture and high-art. Designed as a gasp of fresh air, Marfa Film Festival is a retreat far away from the chaotic and competitive environments found on the festival circuit. It's a get-a-way that is truly WAY out there. For five magical days we will screen films that transcend time with indelible images and engaging storytelling, reminding us that the art of cinema can change our lives and renew the world.

Because Marfa's wide-open plain, distant mountains and incomparably starry sky are part of the draw, Marfa Film Festival will have outdoor screenings during the festival. Indoor screenings will be anchored at the state-of-the-art Goode-Crowley theater. Festival headquarters will be at the famous Paisano Hotel (where James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor lived during the filming of "Giant").

Ballroom: film.text.performance.film

In December 2007 Ballroom Marfa launched film.text.performance.film, a two-part program pairing seeminly disparate areas of contemporary cinematic practice and bringing together a diverse roster of artists with established international reputations rooted in either filmic performance or visual text. Live cinema as experienced in December gives way to the projected word in April with Part II: text. Normally consumed as a solitary, interior experience, words will be amplified and magnified for contemplation by a theater audience.

In 1921 Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand collaborated on the short film Manhatta, which intercuts images of Manhattan with lines lifted from a Walt Whitman poem. The goal was not to tell a story, but to create a new cine-poetry of text and image. From this early instance, poetic cinema has evolved over epochal rifts and mergers, from Surrealism and the advent of sound in movies, through Structuralism and Postmodernism. Contemporary artists interested in the intersection of text and image, whether they take the digital road or detour around it, are defining what this tradition looks and sounds like in a time when information saturation, not to mention distortion, challenges the very meaning of word and image.

Assembling in Marfa will be a faction of contemporary artists who are peeling the page one frame-at-a-time in an inquiry into the visual dimension of language, ranging from David Gatten's reflection on the role of documents and Michael Tracy's secret, worldly recitations to Julia Meltzer and David Thorne's digital archives where images become a fault-line between world views and hidden narratives.

Friday 11 April, Goode Crowley Theater

7:00pm
Michael Tracy (Director) and Christopher Rincon (Cinematographer & Editor)
Ultramarine (work in progress, 59 min. An allegory about aesthetic crisis finds two characters, Sculpture and Music, separated by emotional and geographic distance, the alienation of urban space. Architectural settings from Mumbai and St. Petersburg are woven into a bleak pinnacle of gripping remembrance from times of final empire, creating a universe of anxiety in which neither society's decadence, nor its burden of consumption, is sustainable. Saturday 12 April, Goode Crowley Theater

5:00pm
Julia Meltzer and David Thorne: (www.speculativearchive.org)
It's Not My Memory of It (2003, 25 min) is a documentary about secrecy, memory, and documents. Mobilizing specific historical records as memories, which flash up in moments of danger, the tape addresses the logic of the bureaucracy of secrecy.

We Will Live to See These Things, or, Five Pictures of What May Come to Pass (2007, 47 min. Competing visions of an uncertain future shot in Damascus, Syria —the chronicle of a building in downtown Damascus, a recitation anticipating the arrival of a perfect leader, an interview with a dissident intellectual, a portrait of a Qur'an school for young girls, and an imagining of the world made anew.

6:45pm
David Gatten
Download PDF: Scott MacDonald interviews David Gatten for Film Quarterly
Secret History of the Dividing Line (2002, 20 min). Paired texts as dueling histories. A journey imagined and remembered. 57 mileage markers produce an equal number of prospects.The Great Art of Knowing (2004, 37 min). Find yourself resting uneasily half way up the stairs: Something has left the body, yet the body remains: what has left is on its way Elsewhere but cannot help but look back: this look animates the worldHow To conduct a Love Affair (2007, 8 min). An unexpected letter leads to an unanticipated encounter. Have a cup of tea dear. I'll trade you a stitch from the past in return for a leaf from the future.

8:00pm
Panel discussion with moderator Christian Gerstheimer, El Paso Museum of Art

Save the Christmas Mountains, Progress

Environment Texas has been working hard on the Christmas Mountains transaction. I recieved the following update from Luke Metzker, Director.

Summary: The Christmas Mountains, a ruggedly beautiful wilderness area adjacent to Big Bend National Park, were donated to the state of Texas in 1991 “for use as and inclusion in a nature park, wildlife refuge, recreational area or similarly designated use area." However, Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson is working to sell the land to private interests.

Hi Mark,

I have some good news to report! First, last week the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission voted to approve new standards to protect the Gulf of Mexico from overfishing. They approved a cap on the amount of menhaden that may be fished from Texas waters and will look into requiring independent observers on boats to monitor the "by-catch" of ocean wildlife. [1]

Second, some progress on the Christmas Mountains. In a recent letter to the superintendent of Big Bend National Park, Commissioner Patterson wrote that he has instructed his staff to work towards a transfer of the mountains to the National Park Service. Unfortunately, the Commissioner continues to push for policies that could be deal breakers. On May 5, I will testify before a legislative committee examining the controversy. [2]

Finally, after the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) received thousands of e-mails by Environment Texas supporters, the Commissioners agreed to delay action on rules related to solar energy. The PUC is now considering changes to the rules that would be more consumer-friendly. More on this next week. [3]

Sincerely,

Luke Metzger
Environment Texas Director
http://www.environmenttexas.org/

Berman Appointed Guggenheim Fellowship

Michael P. Berman, photographer and artist, has been appointed a Guggenheim Fellowship Award, 2008. The award will support his ongoing photographic work in the Chihuahuan desert grasslands of Southern New Mexico, West Texas, and Northern Chihuahua.

Galleri Urbane, Marfa represents Mr. Berman and has frequently shown his work, most recently, 480 Plates, a stunning collection of 480 individual silver prints, each subtly toned and affixed to a 5.5" aluminum plate.

In 2007, Infinite Editions Press in Denver Colorado produced “Under a Dry Moon”, a portfolio of 100 photographs by Michael P. Berman made while working in the Gran Desierto on the Sonora-Arizona border. In 2006 two books of his Gran Desierto work were published: “Inferno”, The University of Texas Press, text by Charles Bowden and “SunShot”, University of Arizona Press, text by Bill Broyles. A third book will be published in 2009, also with Charles Bowden and The University of Texas Press, and will include Berman's work from the Chihuahuan desert grasslands.

Michael Berman’s work has been exhibited throughout the U.S. and is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Amon Carter Museum of Western Art and the Museum of New Mexico. He has received fellowships from both the Wurlitzer Foundation and the Arizona Commission of the Arts.