2008 was a fairly uneventful year here at nocategories.net. The site doesn’t get as many visitors as it used to, and so I don’t post very often, and because I don’t post often, fewer visitors come… and so it goes. All hope is not lost, though. Here’s a roundup of 2008’s most popular entries on this site. Other people liked this stuff. Maybe you’ll like it too.
There is an art exhibition in Baltimore that spans two museums.
At the Contemporary Museum, the show is Dawoud Bey: Class Pictures, a collection of color photo portraits. At the Walters Museum, the other part of the show is called Portraits Re/Examined. Both exhibitions run from December 13, 2008 until February 16, 2009.
For months now, all the talk in my neighborhood has been about the Round Robin Tour. Something like a dozen Baltimore bands have been on tour together. What’s special about it is the format of the show. The show starts, and one band plays one song. Immediately after that, another band plays another song, and so on until all the bands have played a song. Then, they do it again, and again. It’s great! For anyone who gets sick of listening to sound checks between each and every band, this is a dream come true. It’s a wonderful idea, and Baltimore is very proud to have these bands draw huge crowds nationwide – no kidding, huge crowds! The show’s almost over, but there’s one performance left, and you can download the compilation from the tour!
Please take a minute to visit my work on the Baker Artist Awards web site. As a Baltimore artist, I am eligible to win the significant Mary Sawyers Baker Prize or maybe bragging rights as Baltimore’s Choice. Either way, please follow the link and vote for me… and, if you live in Baltimore, you could also Nominate your own work! Now GO sign-up and vote to help me get my work out there!
Visit my nomination at http://www.bakerartistawards.org/nomination/view/dylan-kinnett
Des Imagistes was the first anthology of the Imagism movement. Imagism was conceived by Ezra Pound, H.D., and Richard Aldington in 1912. Finally, this very rare book has been published online, for all to read at desimagistes.com .
Today I finished reading The Basis of Criticism in the Arts by Stephen C. Pepper. I promised a friend that I would a quick overview of the four categories of art criticism that are described in the book.
Stephen C. Pepper’s “Theory of Empirical Criticism” goes something like this. Good criticism, even art criticism, is akin [...]
It isn’t every day that we get a video submission for Infinity’s Kitchen. Imagine what a surprise it was to get two videos to feature here on the website. We’ve been promising you some web features, and so without any further ado… The work of Phil Davis, video artist. Along with each video is a short description by the artist.
There’s this new, controversial anthology of nearly 4,000 poems, entitled Issue 1. It is large enough to defy the limits of traditional bookbinding, with its 3,785 pages. It defies another assumption about books, too. This anthology was compiled by editors Stephen McLaughlin, Gregory Laynor & Vladimir and Aleksandrovich Zykov, but its contents weren’t exactly “written”. An article in Poetry Magazine’s blog describes exactly how the text was compiled. Suffice it to say that the book was generated, not written.
Issue 1 features the names of several thousand people, living and dead, poets and not. With each name is a poem, or at least what looks like a poem. These texts were not written by the people whose names accompany the texts. Instead, some of the texts appear to have been algorithmically generated by a computer program named Erica T. Carter.
Roulette TV is an on-going, innovative video series which presents unique contemporary music in compelling and engaging performances given by the creators themselves.
Lately, I’ve been Learning to Write Art Criticism. Along the way, I’ve discovered some useful advice from a variety of critics at The Guardian, an English newspaper. Here’s a useful passage.
‘Don’t trust your prejudices but believe in your instincts’
Adrian Searle on art
The only rule: look, look again, and keep on looking. If you don’t like [...]