THIS LONG CENTURY

— Here’s some photos of The Clean Diaries. From about 1980 to 82 we kept a diary of our activities. Mainly comments on gigs we had performed, and basically anything that came by our way including press clippings, etc, etc…

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David Kilgour was born in Dunedin, New Zealand. He is a guitarist, singer and songwriter, best-known for co-founding The Clean in 1978, with brother Hamish Kilgour. He also has seven solo albums under his belt, the most recent being LEFT BY SOFT.

www.davidkilgour.com

I took the opportunity to make a manual for shooting. These are the first few pages. As I work, new entries are added.

Click image to see inside.
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Laida Lertxundi makes films with non-actors, landscapes and sounds. Her work has been selected for the 2012 Whitney Biennial, MoMA, LACMA, the Viennale, VIEWS FROM THE AVANT GARDE at the New York Film Festival, and the Rotterdam International Film Festival. She received the Tom Berman Award for Most Promising Filmmaker at the 48th Ann Arbor Film Festival and was named as one of the “25 Filmmakers for the 21st Century” in Film Comment’s Avant-Garde Poll. She is a film and video curator in the U.S. and Spain, and teaches film at the University of California San Diego.

www.laidalertxundi.com

— I wrote this song in one afternoon, following a morning of intensive dental surgery. Oddly enough, this allowed me to concentrate better. Recording it was another matter. In some sense, it involved re-thinking the song itself – which is still a work in progress. I did this version with Aura Rosenberg (keyboards) and Frank Lutz (guitar). Frank and I worked out the arrangement together. Then he recorded it and I did the mix.

John Miller is an artist, writer, musician based in New York and Berlin. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1954. His work has been exhibited at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, the Kunstalle Zurich and the Musée d’art moderne et Contemporain (MAMCO) in Geneva, among others. His publications include THE PRICE CLUB (SELECTED WRITINGS, 1977-1998) and THE RUIN OF EXCHANGE, both part of the Positions series by JRP Ringier and Les Presses du Réel. He teaches in Barnard College’s Art History Department as a Professor of Professional Practice.

www.lownoon.com

— I made these collages over the last few days prompted by the invitation to contribute to This Long Century and it’s impending deadline. I live in upstate New York and my junk mail consists primarily of catalogues selling everything from fascinating farm equipment to creepy rightwing infected gift selections. There are of course many gardening catalogues, such as the bleak but well meaning Spray n’ Grow.

I had thrown a selection into a box as ‘possibly useful’ and last week I finally upended it looking for ‘a palette’ and surprisingly—or not—I ended up narrowing that down to just two: J.Crew and Consolidated Plastics Commercial Matting. For a while Dutch Bulbs was in the mix, but the giddy array of tulips proved too loaded with colorful suggestion. I chose instead to work with the already limited visual co-ordinates of J.Crew for men, and commercial matting. The print quality of their respective reproductions sat well together, which helped, because this was going to be a scalpel knife and glue stick project, no photoshop—I don’t know how, plus I enjoy the tactile jigsaw puzzle pleasure of handling the actual bits and moving them around until they fit right.

I then scanned them inexpertly on my HP All-in-One, so the quality’s not great but there’s always the original, albeit here on my desk! The images all feature the same guy, as it happens. He was ‘someone’—one of those guest models from the real world—but I’m sorry, I didn’t make a note of who, and the rest of the catalogue is now binned. Once complete, I realized that I had ended up doing just what I do in painting, which is to take a figure (usually one of my own invention) and make it pop or flatten in accordance with some kind of invisible ley lines of desire—though not for the figure represented, but for the creative process itself.

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Nicola Tyson is a British artist who has been based in New York for many years. She is primarily a painter, although she has worked with photography, film and lately the written word and sculpture. The Fall of 2012 sees the publication of her satirical and autobiographical LETTERS TO ARTISTS AND SOME OTHER MEN, and an exhibition of photographs at White Columns in New York—her archive of London club photos from the late ‘70s. She is represented in New York by Friedrich Petzel Gallery, and in London by Sadie Coles HQ.

www.petzel.com
www.sadiecoles.com

When I’m asked to comment on or to somehow make a definitive statement positioning myself relative to my Art………..there is a statement by P.L. Dunbar that expresses “where I’m at” much better than I can…

When de Co’n Pone’s Hot
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Dey is times in life when Nature
   Seems to slip a cog an’ go,
Jes’ a-rattlin’ down creation,
   Lak an ocean’s overflow;
When de worl’ jes’ stahts a-spinnin’
   Lak a picaninny’s top,
An’ yo’ cup o’ joy is brimmin’
   ‘Twell it seems about to slop,
An’ you feel jes’ lak a racah,
   Dat is trainin’ fu’ to trot—
When yo’ mammy says de blessin’
   An’ de co’n pone’s hot.

When you set down at de table,
   Kin’ o’ weary lak an’ sad,
An’ you ‘se jes’ a little tiahed
   An’ purhaps a little mad;
How yo’ gloom tu’ns into gladness,
   How yo’ joy drives out de doubt
When de oven do’ is opened,
   An’ de smell comes po’in’ out;
Why, de ‘lectric light o’ Heaven
   Seems to settle on de spot,
When yo’ mammy says de blessin’
   An’ de co’n pone’s hot.

When de cabbage pot is steamin’
   An’ de bacon good an’ fat,
When de chittlins is a-sputter’n’
   So’s to show you whah dey’s at;
Tek away yo’ sody biscuit,
   Tek away yo’ cake an’ pie,
Fu’ de glory time is comin’,
   An’ it’s ‘proachin’ mighty nigh,
An’ you want to jump an’ hollah,
   Dough you know you’d bettah not,
When yo’ mammy says de blessin’
   An’ de co’n pone’s hot.

I have hyeahd a’ lots o’ sermons,
   An’ I’ve hyeahd o’ lots o’ prayers,
An I’ve listened to some singin’
   Dat has tuck me up de stairs
Of de Glory-Lan’ an’ set me
   Jes’ below de Mastah’s th’one,
An’ have lef’ my hea’t a-singin’
   In a happy aftah tone;
But dem wu’ds so sweetly murmured
   Seem to tech de softes’ spot,
When my mammy says de blessin’,
   An’ de co’n pone’s hot.

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Ed Bereal was born in 1937 in Riverside, California. While still a student at Chouinard Art Institute, his work was included in the controversial 1961 exhibition War Babies at Henry Hopkins’s Huysman Gallery. Bereal’s assemblages challenge the viewer, directly addressing identity politics and racial stereotypes prevalent in the U.S. in the 1960s and beyond. These works also engage with uncomfortable and complex moments in global history, such as Nazi-era Germany. Bereal has been a mentor to several generations of artists and has taught at universities throughout the United States.