Byrne’s drawings makes me wonder what else art is for, but to remind us that what we call “being reasonable” is too often our expedient alibi for not using our imagination.
David Byrne
Posted inFilm
David Byrne and Spike Lee Consider the Oxymoron of “American Utopia”
American Utopia, Lee’s film of the stage show, recontextualizes some of Byrne’s greatest hits as musings on modern life.
Posted inMusic
A Talking Heads Album, Forty Years Later
More Songs About Buildings and Food, a concept album about late capitalism, speaks with disarming directness to the current political moment.
Posted inArt
How a Controversial Developer Helps and Hurts Artists in the Twin Cities
Fans say Peter Remes attracts artists by illuminating the beauty of historic buildings — but critics call him a gentrifier and accuse him of jacking up the rent in buildings already used by artists.
Posted inArt
The Political, Pornographic, Experimental World of Public Access TV
At BRIC House, Public Access/Open Networks will feed your nostalgia for channel-surfing.
Posted inPerformance
David Byrne’s Avant-Color Guard
If you’ve ever been to a high school or college football game, chances are you’ve seen a color guard.
Posted inOpinion
I Don’t Care About David Byrne Anymore?
David, I received your missive in my Facebook feed. You know, the one where you pseudo-declare, “I Don’t Care About Contemporary Art Anymore?”
Posted inIn Brief
“The Artist’s Memory Is a Dangerous, Necessary Thing”
The New York Review of Books has published the writer Hilton Als’s excellent commencement speech this year at Columbia University’s School of the Arts this year.
Posted inOpinion
Against Celebrity, In Defense of New York
Moby and David Byrne are just wrong. New York may be many things to many people, but it is most certainly creative.
Posted inOpinion
How David Byrne Misread the Creatives of Our Time
When I read David Byrne’s recent Creative Time piece on how the 1% dominates the world, or strictly speaking, the art world, and more specifically, New York — the city we live in — it made me collect my experiences, thoughts, hopes, and projections and put them into a script.
Posted inOpinion
David Byrne’s Bad Advice to Columbia’s Visual Arts MFA Grads
On the second track of David Byrne’s last album with the Talking Heads, he told the story of Mr. Jones, a pyrotechnic jack-of-all trades, “everybody’s friend,” straddling the creative universe of “rock stars” and the hum-drum of “conventioneers.” But when Byrne took to the stage last week, all wire-rimmed spectacles and club collars, to deliver Columbia’s Visual Arts MFA commencement speech, it wasn’t exactly yesteryear’s “big day for Mr. Jones” for the attending graduates.
Posted inBooks
Bern Porter’s Found Poems
Nightboat Books is, according to its website, “a nonprofit publishing company dedicated to printing original books of poetry and prose, and bringing out-of-print treasures back to life.” Bern Porter’s Found Poems, a collection previously published in 1972 by Dick Higgins’ Something Else Press, is surely one of those treasures, and we are fortunate now to have easy access to such a singular text.