Tim Campbell

Tonight (2/27) at the Fridge, 9pm.

Featuring Marshall Allen, leader of the Sun Ra Arkestra
w/ Ed Ricart (Matta Gawa- guitar)
Jerry Busher (All Scars, Fugazi- drums)
Ashish Vyas (gogogo airheart, Thievery Corporation- bass)
Tim Harding (Hotel X, New Loft- guitar, reeds)
Jimmy Ghaphery (Hotel X, New Loft- reeds)
Sam Byrd (Hotel X, New Loft- drums)

(The Return of) Synapse 4
ed. Olchar E. Lindsann
mOnocle-Lash Anti-Press

"At VERY long last, the next (and practically resurrected) issue of Synapse. Packed with over 200 contributions from nearly 60 people from the Post-Neo/avant garde/Neoist/Fluxus/VisPo/Eternal Networks. Hope it's been worth the wait!

Featuring Blaster Al Ackerman, Reed Altemus, Archibald, Aaron Andrews, Mr. Hugo Ball-Rat, The Bar-Bar Baron, Cathy Mehrl Bennett, John M. Bennett, Tsubasa Berg, Matt Berning, Megan Blafas, Tomislav V. Butkovic, Tim Campbell, Bradley Chriss, Robert Chrysler, Ralph Eaton, David Beris Edwards, Karen Eliot, Imogene Engine, E.A. Eralande, Kathy Ernst, Illsa Frankenstein, Warren Fry, Peter Ganick, Germseed, Mark Greenwood, bela b Grimm, Haddock, dadaDavid Hartke, Scott Helmes, Aaron Howard, Geof Huth, Oriana James-Joyce Potato Salad, The Oromancer, Jessy Kendall, Jeoff Knos, Jim Leftwich, Angee Lennard, Edward Lense, Olchar E. Lindsann, Scott MacLeod, J.S. Murnet, Shiela E. Murphy, J.D. Nelson, Chadwick Niral-Nelson, Jürgen Olbrich, Amy Oliver, Michael Peters, Lena Samol, Kyle Sanchiz, Mete Sarabi, Hannah Silva, T.P. Slinty, SPART Action, Thomas L. Taylor, Thompson, Andrew Topel, Vector, and Eleanor Francis Waterfowl."

Photo documentation from the 2010 Roanoke Marginal Arts Festival, courtesy of Jim Leftwich's flickr site.

DC has been treated to a Whitney Biennial import this summer- Walead Beshty's solo show has been on view since late April and runs through 13 September.  

Beshty's work, according to the wordy pamphlet provided by the Hirshhorn, performs deconstructive tricks (because showy tricks is what they are- there is no utilitarian deconstruction, or *gasp* playful explorative deconstruction going on in the work).
This large pamphlet reads like a semi-interesting history of the photogram or a wiki-treatise on the philosophical woes of the camera and its inherited renaissance agendas.  Your kids might like it- it's glossy, colorful, and makes for a fancy paper airplane.  
The work in the gallery inspires a quick walkthrough.  You might get more by downloading the pamphlet from the Hirshhorn's website or Googling Beshty's name.  You'll get the ideas, if you bother.  

The most interesting dilemma here is the Hirshhorn's endorsement and showcasing of Beshty...the sprawling museum, which has some fantastic work in storage, needs to make better use of its space.  Unfortunately, this show is reminiscent of the recent Amy Sillman exhibition.  Bad exhibitions might be habit-forming; DC doesn't need another show of colored, geometric contemporary abstraction that reminds us of colorfield painting.  Such ideas may or may not appeal to Beshty himself- my point is that this is the fate of his show.  Like Sillman's exhibition, Beshty's inspires as much excitement as a can of Pepsi One.  DC has more to offer, and nobody needs to be bored.  Showcasing work like this encourages a generation of 'questioning' artists who (even now) claim to pitch hard challenges to modernist ideology.  Now, I have no problem with the attitude in general, but let's please do something with it.  In this case, as in most others, the artwork poses no challenges to the establishment; it is art for museums.  Palatable, well-read, clever, commercial- yes.  And perhaps a different or more varied hanging of Beshty's work would prove to be more interesting and nuanced.  But the work breaks no boundaries, and a mild retinal buzz and a retreading of standard ideas is what lingers.  The artworld remains closed-off, the work is short-sighted, and the museum props it up.   

What is obvious to me, although probably very hard for a reader to stomach, is that most artists and advocates of art activism don't recognise in themselves, as they sit through an evening of talks on political art, their inner teenager lapping up discussion as though it was a 'Rage Against the Machine' record and they were sixteen again.  To put it less metaphorically: People do not recognise that these cultural events which act as platforms for social change, actually hamper change by providing an outlet for peoples' aggression to be spent on intellectual wrangling.  People, in their fervour for social change, have replaced direct social action with unending and varied discussion about the nature of social change.

-SPART Action Group, Northern Ireland.  Printed in USA by mOnocle-Lash anti-press