Newsroom

Happy Birthday Ballroom

April 8, 2013

image

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 …

Marfa Diálogos 2012 en Español

April 4, 2013

As part of our continuing Ballroom en Español project, we bring you this Spanish-language version of the 2012 Marfa Dialogues program. Stand by for more news about our plans for 2013’s Marfa Dialogues / NY.

Many thanks once again to Ballroom intern Cristina Garcés for her translation.

Ballroom Marfa, junto con el Washington Spectator, The Big Bend Sentinel, Marfa Public Radio y Marfa Book Company, se complace en anunciar la segunda bienal de Marfa Dialogues, un simposio de tres días que incluye charlas en torno al cambio climático y la sostenibilidad y en los que contaremos con la presencia de artistas, performers, escritores, científicos y empresarios – entre ellos Michael Pollan, autor de Botany of Desire and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, y Rebecca Solnit, distinguida crítica y autora de A Field Guide to Getting Lost y A Paradise Built in Hell. Otros participantes destacados serán David Buckland, Hamilton Fish, Hopkins Cynthia, Liverman Diana, John Nielsen-Gammon, Robert Potts, Rand Tom y Bonnie J. Warnock.

Marfa Dialogues 2012 comienza el viernes, 31 de agosto con la inauguración de Carbon 13, la exposición de Ballroom Marfa para el otoño 2012 que presenta trabajos recientes de artistas que proponen una respuesta creativa al cambio climático. Comisariada por David Buckland, fundador y director de Cape Farewell, en Carbon 13 intervienen ocho artistas internacionales que acompañados de científicos se han aventurado hacia algunos de los puntos de inflexión geográficos, lugares donde el calentamiento global destaca profundamente. El trabajo de estos creadores tiene como objetivo estimular un compromiso más amplio con el debate sobre el clima.

Seguir leyendo …

Anthony Elms at Marfa Book Company this Thursday

April 2, 2013

Anthony Elms

Ballroom Marfa is pleased to present a lecture by Anthony Elms at 8pm at the Marfa Book Company on April 4, 2013 at 8pm.

Anthony Elms is Associate Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, and is also the editor of WhiteWalls, an independent publisher distributed through the University of Chicago Press. Previously he worked for Performa 11 and was Assistant Director at Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois at Chicago for five years. His writings have appeared in Afterall, Art Asia Pacific, Art Papers, Artforum, Cakewalk, May Revue, Modern Painters, New Art Examiner, and Time Out Chicago, and he has also written essays for numerous catalogs and collections. He has independently curated exhibitions as well, including: Pathways to Unknown Worlds: Sun Ra, El Saturn & Chicago’s Afro-Futurist Underground, 1954-68 (with John Corbett and Terri Kapsalis); Interstellar Low Ways (with Huey Copeland); Can Bigfoot Get You a Beer? and A Unicorn Basking in the Light of Three Glowing Suns (both with Philip von Zweck). Elms has also taught visual arts seminars at the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago. He received a BFA in painting from Michigan State University and an MFA from the University of Chicago, and he continues to exhibit as an artist. His group exhibition White Petals Surround Your Yellow Heart is currently on view at the ICA Philadelphia.

Matthew Day Jackson at Museum of Fine Arts Boston

March 29, 2013

image
Matthew Day Jackson’s Sculpture For My Right Hand, from Ballroom’s Limited Editions

Longtime Ballroom supporter, alumnus and board member Matthew Day Jackson is at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston this Wednesday. He’ll be chatting with curator Jen Mergel about “his multi-faceted career, his influences, and what the future holds.” Beauty and Horror: Kissing Cousins goes down from 7-8pm on April 3. Tickets are available at the Museum of Fine Arts website.

Find Jeff Mangum

image

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, En Español

March 26, 2013

image

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

Beach House – “Wishes”

March 20, 2013

Eric Wareheim of Tim and Eric Awesome Show directs Leland Palmer through a lip-synch performance of Beach House’s “Wishes” that seems to be informed by some kind of Twin Peaks meets Friday Night Lights dream logic, chills and creep-vibes blended together.

Tickets for Beach House’s Marfa show with Holy Shit on 21 April 2013 are currently sold out. However if you are interested in attending a riveting musical performance out here on the high desert grasslands of Far West Texas, there are still tickets left for Jeff Mangum on 31 March 2013. Just sayin’ …

Magnolia Electric Company in Marfa

March 19, 2013

We were all crushed to learn of Jason Molina’s death on 16 March 2013. He was 39.

Jason and his band the Magnolia Electric Company came out to play at Ray’s Bar here in Marfa in September of 2005 on their fall tour. Some images from better days. Rest in peace …

Magnolia Electric Company poster, designed by Essen.

Magnolia Electric Company at Ray's Bar, 20 September 2005.

Magnolia Electric Company at Ray's Bar, 20 September 2005.

Magnolia Electric Company at Ray's Bar, 20 September 2005.

Magnolia Electric Company at Ray's Bar, 20 September 2005.

He was tough, he could hold his groundA three time state cross country champion, Ostrander on Friday broke her own record in the 3,200.
The prime minister added that at a time like this criticising the armed forces was unacceptable.
For doctors, it allows them to see more patients in an efficient, cost effective way.

“It cool for him to take time out and come down here and show support,” Hamlin said.
The kids never complain about it not working.
Kesler pounced on the puck after a Ryan Stanton shot had bounced off Daniel Sedin’s leg directly to him.

An Introduction to Jeff Mangum from WFMU

image

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.

This suggests

that we are not dealing very well with this problem

Smith also played in the doubles final with his brother Neil.
Vera will be laid to rest in Ridge Cemetery in Gladwin.
Really lovely young lady.
The event emphasized the role of youth in the advancement and support of human rights in Georgia and worldwide.
8, but Fajardo said the Coast Guard abandoned its efforts after 10 days.
James is often compared to Chicago Bulls’ great Michael Jordan, because in their athletic primes, their talent level was considered head and shoulders above the next best players in the game.
9 points, 3.
The result is that a subtle culture persists, and these sociological pressures may well have played a role in this tragedy.