THE SIMPSONS JUST TURNED 20!!!!!!

Portrait of Gucci Mane wearing an awesome Bart diamond necklace.

The Ooga Booga Reading Room at Swiss Institute is now open. It will up be open to the public Tuesdays through Saturdays 12-6pm, and open till 9pm on Wednesdays, for the next 2 1/2 months.

Ooga Booga says : “Everyone is welcome, tell your friends!”

Swiss Institute | 495 Broadway, 3rd Floor | NY, NY 10012 | (212) 925-2035

Document original issu du conseil des ministres de la RDA sur la nouvelle règlementation des voyages donnant lieu, quelques heures après sa lecture par Günter Schabowski, à l’effondrement du mur de Berlin. Document daté du 9 novembre 1989.

Le jeudi 9 novembre 1989, une conférence de presse est tenue par Günter Schabowski, membre du bureau politique du SED, retransmise en direct par la télévision du centre de presse de Berlin-Est, à une heure de grande écoute. À 18h57, vers la fin de la conférence, Schabowski lit de manière plutôt détachée une décision du conseil des ministres sur une nouvelle règlementation des voyages, dont il s’avère plus tard qu’elle n’était pas encore définitivement approuvée, ou, selon d’autres sources, ne devait être communiquée à la presse qu’à partir de 4h le lendemain matin, le temps d’informer les organismes concernés : Présents sur le podium à côté de Schabowski : les membres du comité central du SED : Helga Labs, Gerhard Beil et Manfred Banaschak.

Schabowski lit un projet de décision du conseil des ministres qu’on a placé devant lui : « Les voyages privés vers l’étranger peuvent être autorisés sans présentation de justificatifs — motif du voyage ou lien de famille. Les autorisations seront délivrées sans retard. Une circulaire en ce sens va être bientôt diffusée. Les départements de la police populaire responsables des visas et de l’enregistrement du domicile sont mandatés pour accorder sans délai des autorisations permanentes de voyage, sans que les conditions actuellement en vigueur n’aient à être remplies. Les voyages y compris à durée permanente peuvent se faire à tout poste frontière avec la RFA. »

Question d’un journaliste : « Quand ceci entre-t-il en vigueur ? »

Schabowski, feuilletant ses notes : « Autant que je sache — immédiatement. » (source wiki)

castillo/corrales is pleased to inaugurate its new expanded space with:


92 Videos of Torture in 4 Boxes
A solo exhibition by Joshua Mittleman
Opening Thursday 15 October 2009 6:00 – 10:00 

and

The Importance of Being Iceland
A reading by Eileen Myles
Thursday 15 October 2009 at 8:00


castillo/corrales, 65, rue Rébeval, 75019 Paris, Belleville

They have overt meaning, though they’re not the obvious one. Sure, black might have something to do with our conscience or soul, but that is not what I had in mind.  Black to me is the absence of light, and I’m very concerned with light. And so black paintings were not so much that they were black, but that they weren’t light. That’s about all I can say now. But to me, that makes it all very clear. (Laughs)       
–Wally Hedrick, 1974, speaking about ‘The Black Paintings’

In 2004, the American Civil Liberties Union initiated a series of lawsuits against the government of the United States. Using the Freedom of Information Act, an individual or group has the right to sue any federal agency to view official documents. However, the government is allowed to censor documents based on what it deems issues of national security. Following the ruling of the court in this case, the government was compelled to release an inventory of videotapes depicting the enhanced interrogation (i.e. torture) of two detainees. Prior to its release, much of the inventory was censored, and the pages made available were heavily blacked out.  The inventory confirmed the existence of 92 videotapes.  It was later revealed that all of the tapes had been destroyed by the CIA.

Joshua Mittleman, for his first exhibition at castillo/corrales, will show a series of works based on the 8-page inventory of the torture tapes, a new development in his work that looks at the politics of surveillance and government through abstract and minimal forms. Joshua Mittleman is an American artist, formerly based in Los Angeles, who recently relocated to Copenhagen, Denmark.


Eileen Myles
Reading from The Importance of Being Iceland. 2009, Semiotext(e)

The thing I’m getting to is that a poem is nature. Part of my mind, that whirligig that sits by the window and spins. Continuous. I looked the word whirligig up and indeed, it’s a turning job. But I mean your whole life becomes a turning job, not just the poem. The poem is a little piece of that. The guy falling in his chair going:
I am a tree
I am a tree
I am a tree
And I took a piece of that.
–Eileen Myles (How to Write an Avant-Garde Poem, 1999)

Eileen Myles’s collection of essays The Importance of Being Iceland, for which she received a Warhol/Creative Capital grant is just out from Semiotext(e)/MIT.  Eileen also writes novels (Chelsea Girls, Cool for You) and libretti (“Hell”) and many many poems (Sorry, Tree, Not Me). She ran St. Mark’s Poetry Project in the 80s. In 1992 she conducted an openly female write-in campaign for President. She’s a Professor Emeritus of Writing & Literature at UC San Diego. She lives in New York.