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Howling at the Pyramid Club

Legendary Lydia Lunch, confrontationalist post-punk no-wave singer, spoken word artist, poet, writer, photographer, and actress, has never been one to hide the madness — that’s putting it mildly. Broadcasting her inner angst has always been her style as well as her gritty charm. A Lunch quote: “I’m a very sympathetic person, but that doesn’t always come across in my work because I’m too busy being mad at everything.” So it made perfect sense that she was hosting a spoken word event called Don’t Hide the Madness at the Pyramid Club on Thursday, May 30th.

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Getting Punked: Protesting the Met’s Decadent Appropriation

The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art has forgotten that clothes and fashion are not art. When you go to see the PUNK: Chaos to Couture exhibit, which opened on May 9 and runs until August 14, you may think you stumbled instead into a luxury couturier’s boutique. The outré fashions are fabulous and gorgeously displayed and there’s some badass soundtrack music by Jayne County, Suicide, and the Sex Pistols, but you can’t try on any of the clothing and in the end, you are only permitted to buy over-priced T-shirts in the gift shop. Dude, I see the couture, but where the hell is the CHAOS?

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Are You or Aren’t You An Opera? A Conversation with Joseph Keckler

Have you ever met a Minotaur, believed you could draw with your voice, try to cut out your voice box, spoken to demons on the phone, or taken a few too many shrooms? Perhaps not, but you can experience all of the above at I am an Opera, a satirical one-person musical show written, composed, and performed by Joseph Keckler, who was awarded a month-long residency that premiered at Dixon Place on New York City’s Lower East Side for the month of April.

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The Hole Truth

Some people say a hole is a hole is a hole, and we all have holes. But then, if you go see The Hole Truth at Envoy Enterprises, the gallery’s first solo show with Brian Kenny, you might possibly see the hole truth and nothing but the truth as well as some bullet holes used for target practice.

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The Curator Is Present

No, the artist was not present at Film Forum for a screening of her documentary, The Artist Is Present, a couple of weeks ago. The artist is Marina Abramović, and though she wasn’t there — neither was the director of the film, Matthew Akers — I kept expecting her glamorous self to storm in as a last-minute surprise. But who was there was the reason I showed up for the screening: Mr. Klaus Biesenbach, chief curator at large of the Museum of Modern Art and director of MoMA PS1.

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Meet the Artist Who Can Actually Say, “My Baby Is a Work of Art”

There I was, sitting in a rocking chair at the Microscope Gallery in Bushwick but I felt like I was visiting a friend in her own home and we were just sitting around bullshitting. No, it wasn’t one of those snobby holier-than-thou art shacks in Manhattan. It was Marni Kotak’s show, The Birth of Baby X and the rocking chair had belonged to the artist’s mother.