What do you do when your viola recital gets interrupted by someone in the audience getting a call on their cellphone?
Improvise.
posted by scalefree
on Jan 24, 2012 -
26 comments
We Will Survive Capitalism! flash mob with
US Uncut [previously] and the
Brass Liberation Orchestra
Previous BLO flash mobs include Bad Hotel [previously], Operation Hey Mackey [previously], and "PAY UP!" (demanding Bank of America pay their taxes). Speaking of BofA, in San Francisco on Thursday activists turned every Bank of America ATM in the city into an Automated Truth Machine, using special non-adhesive stickers designed to look exactly like BoA’s ATM interface. But instead of checking and savings accounts, these new menus offered a list of everything BoA customers’ money is being used for, including investment in coal-fired power plants, foreclosure on Americans’ homes, bankrolling of climate change, and paying for fat executive bonuses. [more inside]
posted by finite
on Jan 15, 2012 -
42 comments
“On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world” — Jack Welch, 2009. As GE’s CEO in the 80s, however, Welch championed corporate focus on shareholder returns. “Converts to the creed”, the Economist
summarizes, “had little time for other ‘stakeholders’: customers, employees, suppliers, society at large and so forth.” What went wrong? Steve Denning
describes how such a stance is counterproductive, creates turmoil in capitalism and fosters an environment in which “CEOs and their top managers have massive incentives to focus most of their attentions on the expectations market, rather than the real job of running the company producing real products and services.”
posted by the mad poster!
on Dec 27, 2011 -
38 comments
"Things didn’t happen as I imagined. On the one hand, with the situation in Tehran, I expected the police to arrest me. I also thought that the resulting dress wouldn’t be aesthetically pleasing to the eye. But it turned out to be more homogenous than I envisaged. Most of the passengers wanted to communicate with me and participate in the project. And I enjoyed this attention and collaboration. The point wasn’t their understanding of the project. I didn’t want anything to be imposed on the audience or participants. I wanted ordinary people to encounter their own personalities without any preconceptions about contemporary art. More than anything, I wanted something to emerge that is shared — between me and everyday metro passengers."
The story of fashion student Shirin Abedinirad who conceived and carried out an unusual (and unusually bold) performance art experiment by asking Tehran metro passengers to donate their rubbish to pin on her dress.
[more inside]
posted by taz
on Nov 16, 2011 -
10 comments
Christine Sun Kim is a performance artist working in the realm of sound. She makes beautiful messes. She's also deaf. Todd Selby is a photographer. He's
made a film about her.
[more inside]
posted by artof.mulata
on Nov 12, 2011 -
8 comments
What is the only professional, modern dance company to grow directly out of a college modern dance class? ... What is the only professional modern dance company directed by not a singular choreographer, but rather a group collaboration, using improvisational techniques? The answer to... those questions is the world famous dance company, Pilobolus. (links nsfw - previously) [more inside]
posted by Trurl
on Oct 23, 2011 -
8 comments
Before there were yuppies, there were uppies—the term Up With People members use to refer to themselves. Most Americans over the age of 35 are vaguely familiar with Up With People, as its cast members have sung to more than 20 million people worldwide, and at the height of the ensemble’s fame it provided the halftime entertainment at four Super Bowls (1976, 1980, ’82, ’86). But many are unaware of the group’s cultish utopian ideology, its political connectedness, and how it was funded by corporate America, part of a deliberate propaganda effort to discredit liberal counterculture in the 1960s and ’70s. In the documentary Smile ’Til It Hurts: The Up With People Story (Storey Vision), writer-director-producer Lee Storey provides a thorough, balanced look at the organization’s history, demonstrating “what can happen when ideology, money and groupthink converge to co-opt youthful idealism.” [more inside]
posted by Trurl
on Aug 14, 2011 -
93 comments
"Punk-artist-anthropologist Cameron Jamie has made three documentaries on violence; I’ve read about them all and seen
just this one." The author speaks of "Kranky Klaus," LA-born artist Jamie's peek into the Austrian folkloric character
Krampus, a sort of photo-negative of Santa Claus who comes on Christmas to punish bad children.
[more inside]
posted by Astro Zombie
on Jun 18, 2011 -
12 comments
People, Let Me Get This Off My Chest is a 65 minute compilation of stage banter by Paul Stanley of KISS.
Paul repeatedly reminds the Army that they’re getting their money’s worth... , that the next tune is the first time they’ve played it on tour, that he was talking backstage to someone... about what kind of alcohol that people in the area like to drink, that they’re just getting started, and that he’s got an “uzi of ooze” in his pants.
posted by Trurl
on Jun 4, 2011 -
69 comments
Walking Home: stories from the desert to the Great Lakes. Laura Milkins is walking home. Home is Grand Rapids, Michigan. Laura lives in Tucson, Arizona. That's 2,000 miles (3,219 km), or about 4,473,976 steps. Right now she's in the shoulder of the road somewhere around Holbrook, Arizona. She has a pack on her back, a
webcam streaming 24 hours strapped to a sun visor on her head, and hopefully, a place to stay tonight. You can follow her every step of the way, by watching live video broadcast from her hat.
Or
walk with her.
[more inside]
posted by Tufa
on May 25, 2011 -
26 comments
"We are Nirvana The Band , the live musical that will never play the same show twice. To not let us play on your stage would be a terrible mistake. We are Nirvana The Band. For now; forever; for better; for worse. Four -- times four -- is sixteen."
posted by JohnMarston
on Oct 1, 2010 -
17 comments
French website Le Cargo has a long-running series of live performance videos by alternative musicians,
all of which can be watched on their YouTube channel. Here are a few that I liked:
Erin McKeown - Put the Fun Back in the Funeral,
Kings of Convenience - Mrs. Cold,
Soltero - I'll Be a Writer,
The Concretes - Military Madness,
My Brightest Diamond - Be My Husband,
Jose Gonzalez - The Nest,
Jaymay - Lonely Men Build Lonely Cities,
Vic Chestnutt - Supernatural,
Metric - Gimme Sympathy,
Françoiz Breut - Les jeunes pousses,
Bowerbirds - Moonshiner,
Joseph Arthur - A Smile That Explodes,
Lambchop - You're a Big Girl Now,
Alela Diane - The Rifle,
Ane Brun - The Puzzle,
Matt Elliott - Broken Bones and
Fredo Viola - Sad Song. There are roughly 600 more videos.
posted by Kattullus
on May 13, 2010 -
6 comments
Claudio Montuori is an Italian, one-man band, street performer. He plays Kalimba, an accordeon, a nacchere, various found objects, and a bevy of other instruments. And he whistles and sings. See also,
Amibuz.
[more inside]
posted by Toekneesan
on Mar 28, 2010 -
13 comments
A
digital clock made of wood and operated by 70 workers for one continuous 24-hour period.
"Even though the workers are trying hard to construct every single minute, they are constantly on the verge of failing."
posted by freshwater_pr0n
on Dec 27, 2009 -
35 comments
My Beat Club has a whole ton of classic rock perfomance videos, mostly from old German TV shows
Musikladen and
Beat Club. Among the videos on offer are
Small Faces' Tin Soldier,
Chuck Berry's School Days,
Ike & Tina Turner's River Deep, Mountain High,
The Who's My Generation,
Country Joe McDonald's I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag,
The Everly Brothers' All I Have to Do is Dream,
The Ramones' Sheena is a Punk Rocker,
Mungo Jerry's In the Summertime,
T. Rex's 20th Century Boy,
New York Dolls' Looking for a Kiss,
The Byrds' So You Want to Be a Rock n' Roll Star,
Thin Lizzy's Whiskey in the Jar,
Slade's We'll Bring the House Down,
The Jimi Hendrix Experience's Purple Haze and so much, much more!
posted by Kattullus
on Jul 29, 2009 -
30 comments
