From Big Bend Now:

“Award winning Tejano accordionist AJ Castillo stars as the 27th annual Marfa Lights Festival concert returns to Vizcaino Park on Labor Day Weekend.

The Marfa Chamber of Commerce hosts the annual festival, and this year the chamber is planning a great event.

This year’s event is co-presented by Ballroom Marfa. The arts and culture organization is partnering with the Marfa Chamber of Commerce to help fund and organize the concert, which takes place on the future site of the Ballroom Drive-In, an ambitious project that will reestablish the 21-acre Vizcaino Park as a state-of-the-art performance venue and community gathering space.

Three-time award winner AJ Castillo is known for his unique accordion sound and style, his energetic live performances, and his extraordinary custom accordions.”

Continue reading …

Ballroom alumna Eleanor Friedberger offers another song off her forthcoming solo album.

Copies of “I’ll Never Be Happy Again”, the 7-inch she recorded here in Marfa, are still available in the Ballroom store.

From the Desert to the City: Ballroom Marfa Celebrates 10 Years

Monday, 8 April 2013
Center 548 · West 22nd St. · New York City

Ballroom Marfa’s Co-Founders, Virginia Lebermann and Fairfax Dorn, along with the Board of Trustees, kindly request that you mark your calendar and make plans to join us in New York City to commemorate ten years of presenting art, film, performance and music in West Texas and beyond. The event will feature both a live and silent auction by world-renowned artists from Ballroom’s past and future as well as musical performances throughout the evening.

CO-CHAIRS:
Co-Founders: Fairfax Dorn and Virginia Lebermann, Sue Hostetler, Matthew Day Jackson, Jenny Laird, Charles Ruger, Allison Sarofim, Anne-Cecilie Engell Speyer, Gordon VeneKlasen and Leo Villareal

CO-SPONSOR: BARCLAYS

6:30 pm Cocktail reception and silent auction
Harmonica by Norris Bennet and Boxing by Skender Halili
Performance by Tuna Nut

8:00pm Dinner with performance by Mick Barr

Live auction hosted by auctioneer Jamie Niven, Chairman Sotheby’s of The Americas

Starting March 27th, pre-bid online and preview works at www.paddle8.com/auctions/ballroommarfa

10:00pm After-party with special performance by YACHT, followed by DJ set from Saheer Umar

Download Ballroom Marfa 10 Year Benefit Invite

Continue reading …

As we have mentioned before, people get kind of worked up over the work of Jeff Mangum, in particular the albums he recorded in 1996 and 1998 with Neutral Milk Hotel. And while there is plenty of obsession over the lyrical and instrumental intricacies of Mangum’s artistic practice, such an enduring emotional resonance is surely sustained by something more elusive than structural complexity and earworm melodies.

Thus we have the essays at Find Jeff Mangum, personal accounts of “the first time you heard Neutral Milk Hotel,” stories of sadness and hope, young romance and suicide from the Arkansas suburbs, the Yakima Valley and a food blogger living in East Tennessee. All of them unfolding while In the Aeroplane over the Sea or On Avery Island plays on car stereos or bedroom speakers.

Jeff Mangum performs two shows here in Marfa this Sunday with Tall Firs at the Crowley Theater. The 7:30p show is sold out. Click here for tickets for his 10:30p performance.

The Drive-In, now available en Español thanks to Ballroom intern Cristina Garcés.

El concepto para Drive-In surgió de las discusiones sobre el futuro del programa de cine de Ballroom Marfa, entre las fundadoras Virginia Lebermann, Fairfax Dorn y Josh Siegel, comisario de cine del Museo de Arte Moderno de Nueva York. Ya se trate de películas, música o instalaciones multimedia, Ballroom Marfa es consciente de la voluntad de los artistas por realizar, y del público por participar, en eventos que se celebran al aire libre bajo el cielo del lejano oeste de Texas. Drive-In reaviva el espíritu comunitario que existe en torno a la idea original drive in en los cines, pero lejos de jugueteos nostálgicos, nos sitúa ante una re-configuración del clásico drive-in hacia una arquitectura que combina cine y auditorio al aire libre situado en un paisaje desértico. Cine de verano, proyecciones de películas, juegos acústicos, festivales de música, ópera bajo las estrellas o en el coche, serán las experiencias redefinidas por el público.

Seguir leyendo …

It’s understandable, given the reputation that Jeff Mangum has won based on a relatively small number of cryptic recordings, that commentary on his output runs toward the obsessive. From Slate declaring him to be “The Salinger of Indie Rock” in 2008, to Kim Cooper’s book-length discussion of the impact of Neutral Milk Hotel’s lauded 1998 album, In the Aeroplane Sea.

As we prepare for Mangum’s two (!) shows at The Crowley Theater on 31 March 2013, we would also like to suggest that you direct the internet-connected audio device of your choice to his run of broadcasts on Jersey City’s legendary freeform radio station, WFMU.

In 2002 Mangum took to the airwaves for nine fried shows collaging together snippets of in-studio dialogue from the Beach Boys, poetry by James Wright, field recordings of cheetahs, the sound of “ritual mouth organs” as well as music from Robert Wyatt, Ornette Coleman and John Fahey — and that’s just the first installment.

Mangum is a practiced field recordist and sound collage artist — his discography includes a collection of field recordings from a of Bulgarian festival in 2001 — and it shows in these ecstatic, transformative programs, all of which are currently available for streaming at WFMU.

And though he understandably declined to interrupt these whirling sonic kaleidoscopes by back-announcing his selections, the Mangum fan community has risen to the occasion: Annotations for all nine shows are available over at the Neutral Milk Hotel website, complete with links to more information for many of the esoteric sound bites heard across these hours of music.

It’s not so much a demonstration of what Mangum’s music sounds like, as an exploded guidebook to where it comes from. And an excellent way to GET PUMPED for Mangum’s two performances here in Marfa at the end of March. The early show is sold out, but there are still tickets available for the 10:30pm performance.

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Richard Telles presents an exhibition of new work by Ballroom alum Dan Finsel, his first solo exhibition with the Los Angeles gallery.

“E-THAY INWARD-YAY OURNEY-JAY”

MARCH 16 – APRIL 20, 2013

Opening reception: Saturday, March 16th, from 5 to 7pm

From the press release [PDF]:

The installation features mandala paintings, large-scale photographs on which paint was applied, and three table-like sculptures, among other works, all of whose details feature a vocabulary of symbols intertwined by Finsel’s internal logic. He developed this symbology while performing the exercises described in the book The Inward Journey / Art as Therapy for You by Margaret Frings Keyes (1974), which was found in his parents’ book collection. Finsel’s new body of work departs from his last in surface content but continues to employ an interpretation of method acting techniques to inhabit hidden aspects of himself. In doing so, he undergoes almost “extreme” subjective altering processes. By displacing his current self, he grafts “logically” determined psychological attributes/motives—depending on the reference material—to his thinking. Thus by determining the psychology of a subject “who would create this work”, Finsel sees not only the elements of his performance as furthering an intended motive of meta-narrative and authorial play, but allows, in retrospect, for access to recesses of self that until now were previously unknown.

Keep reading at Richard Telles Fine Art.

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Ballroom Marfa Drive-In and Vizcaino Park Master Plan

In last week’s edition of our local paper, the Big Bend Sentinel, Fort Davis-based columnist and historian Lonn Taylor asked questions about the ongoing Ballroom Marfa Drive-In project, shedding light on the history of drive-in movie theaters in the process.

“The popularity of drive-ins was a function of the baby boom that followed World War II, when many young families had noisy children,” he writes. “Drive-in owners added playgrounds for the children and concession stands, some of them serving full meals, for adults. Even Marfa, with a population of 3,600, had a drive-in, which opened in 1953 just west of the cemetery and closed six years later.”

He goes on to wonder about the lessons learned from other developers who have tried to launch projects in our Far West Texas town, specifically the failure of the Brite family to establish a Disciples of Christ community in the World War II-era, an exercise that included enticing believers with the work of architect Leighton Green Knipe, who, as Taylor writes, “gave them a magnificent building whose sanctuary will seat five hundred people.” A building which, after the thriving congregation failed to materialize, “now stands empty on the west side of the courthouse square.”

Taylor also considers the more well-known story of Donald Judd’s arrival in the early ’70s and the 40 years in between that turned, in Taylor’s words, “a drought-blighted cattle town into an international art center.”

Ballroom’s Director of External Affairs & Drive-In Project Manager Melissa McDonnell responded with a letter clarifying that the Drive-In project — encompassing a rehabilitation of the entire 21-acre site at Vizcaino Park — goes beyond the historical models discussed by Taylor …

“The Drive-In project also includes a master plan for Vizcaino Park, which has come out of discussions with Presidio County and community members. The master plan looks at the entire park and identifies needed improvements for existing park structures, such as the baseball field bleachers and locates new recreational spaces such as a soccer field and possibly a skate park. Other organizations such as Big Bend Soccer Association and El Cosmico have expressed interest in participating in the development of these new spaces.

“The Drive-In theater space is for all community organizations to use and program,” she continues. “While Ballroom Marfa will have programming that includes film screenings, concerts and operas, the facility will be available for local organizations to host movie screenings, high school graduations, music concerts, plays, etc.”

Further discussion and exploration of this ongoing project is encouraged from all members of our community. Vistors are welcome to stop by the Drive-In Project space at the Ballroom offices, next door to Marfa Studio Arts at 106 San Antonio. Melissa is also available for comments and questions about the Drive-In project at [email protected] or 432-729-3600. You can also find out more at the Drive-In section of the Ballroom website.

Click here for the full text of Taylor’s column. Click here for Melissa’s response, which we’ve included in full after the jump …

Many thanks to Ballroom Marfa intern Cristina Garcés for this translation

Ballroom Marfa está orgulloso de anunciar la inauguración, de New Growth, una exposición
individual del nuevo trabajo de Rashid Johnson, el 8 de mayo. En ella, Johnson combina desde
un punto de vista personal e histórico materiales de la tierra, como manteca de Karité y jabón
negro con otros objetos como pueden ser portadas de discos y libros en complejas instalaciones
que confunden la uniformidad de la identidad colectiva y la representación multicultural.
Partiendo de la pregunta, “Qué pasaría si Sun Ra, George Washington, Carver y Robert Smitth
crearan una comunidad juntos en el desierto?” New Growth’s juega entrelazando cosmología,
evasión e irrigación en una recontextualización de las líneas entre el pasado, presente y futuro
en el desierto de Marfa.

La manipulación física del biomaterial en una forma abstracta y estetizada es un concepto que
se manifiesta a través de las obras expuestas, con referencias a la constante transformación y
rehabilitación de los cuerpos, los paisajes y las identidades incrustadas en ellos. Esto se aprecia
de manera más dramática en la instalación al aire libre en la que se riega la arena bañada por el
sol del patio con manteca de karité: la terraformación de Arrakis funciona en miniatura aquí en
los pastizales del desierto del lejano West Texas.

En consonancia con los objetivos de Ballroom Marfa, New Growth, contará con un nuevo trabajo
comisariado que incluye el vídeo Samuel in Space y Shea Butter Irrigation System -ambos
producidos durante la estancia del artista en Marfa. Obras en cera, madera quemada, azulejos y
espejos así como sillas de metal, madera y alfombras completan la exposición.

Un programa de cine comisariado por Rashid Johnson, en colaboración con Josh Siegel,
comisario del MoMA, se proyectará a lo largo de la exposición. Este programa contará
con Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971) de Melvin Van Peebles, Space in the Place (1974)
de John Coney y Sun Ra y The Brother From Another Planet (1884) de John Sayles
además de una noche de cortometrajes.

Para inaugurar New Growth, Ballroom Marfa será la sede de un fin de semana de festejos,
incluyendo una noche de apertura, el 8 de marzo de 6 a 8 pm. La recepción también cuenta con
la actuación de multi-instrumentista y leyenda de la música El’Zabar Kahil y saxofonista Hamiet
Bluiett, cuyos estilos musicales van desde el avant-garde al bebop. Inmediatamente después de
la recepción de apertura tendrá lugar una cena abierta al público en el Capri. Además, el sábado
9 de marzo a las 11:30 am el artista hará una visita guiada de la exposición.

Todos los eventos son gratis y abiertos al público.

New Growth, ha sido posible gracias al apoyo de la Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual

Arts; la National Endowment for the Arts: Brown Foundation, Inc., Houston; Texas Comission
on the Arts, Meyer Levy Charitable Foundation y Hauser & Wirth Gallery que generosamente
contribuyen como socios de Ballroom Marfa.

If you need a lovely post-SXSW hang in the desert, there are a few tix left for Jeff Mangum in Marfa! www.ballroommarfa.org/item/126/

— Jack McFadden (@tigermountainbk) March 6, 2013

True for now, but not forever! Also thankfully available without the whole SXSW part.

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