Above photo, production still shot on location in Marfa, TX, February 2014 Courtesy of Alex Waterman and Peter Szollosi

Waterman, the director of Vidas Perfectas, a co-production with Ballroom Marfa and the El Paso Opera, recently shared this letter via email with friends and supporters after Robert Ashley’s passing on March 3. The subject was “Celebrating Robert Ashley’s Life and Work”:

Dear Friends and Supporters,

On February 21, 2014, we launched a 30-day Kickstarter campaign to raise enough money to compensate the extraordinary talent and to cover the costs of all the technical equipment we need to stage 3 Operas by Robert Ashley at the Whitney Biennial.

On March 3, 2014, our friend, inspiration, and the composer of these incredible operas, Robert Ashley, passed away.

As we grieve and come to accept the new reality of these productions without Bob, we still face the daunting and awkward task of fundraising.

What’s clear to us is that these operas need to be staged. Bob would not have wanted a memorial concert. What he would want is for his work to be appreciated and performed with love and care, with a thoughtfulness that comes from spending days, months, years… working together and sharing these stories.

At the Whitney Biennial, we don’t want to grieve, we want to celebrate. Bob’s work has always been grounded in an every day life, even when the music veers to the cosmic. His operas are about the people he knew, the stories shared, the books read, the questions asked, the revelations unveiled. By staging his work, we celebrate a mind keen to the nuances of conversation and thought, and a life lived fully.

As difficult as it is to ask under these circumstances, we do need your help. We want these operas to be staged with the best possible sound, lighting, video, and sets, in order to honor Robert Ashley and his work. 12 days remain to raise nearly $35,000. My gratitude goes to those who have already donated. If we don’t reach our goal, we lose it all.

Photo: Rita Weigart

Elmgreen & Dragset’s Prada Marfa installation has provoked a number of reactions since it was constructed in 2005. Most responses take the form of playful snapshots while some would-be art critics register their thoughts in spent shell casings and graffiti. This is Far West Texas, and we would expect nothing less.

Public art like Prada Marfa encourages engagement. Ballroom Marfa and Art Production Fund have taken the steps necessary to keep this public forum alive, whether that means passing around another photo of someone imitating Beyoncé’s leap, painting over a few months of accumulated graffiti or patching up the bullet holes in the windows.

Photo: Rita Weigart

The most recent vandalism of the public Prada Marfa site is different. The large scale defacement of the structure overwhelms this forum and shuts down the dialogue. A site previously recognized as an example of sustainable earth architecture is now coated in toxic paint while the insulation foam garbage left behind by the defacer(s) blows across the highway and into the landscape. Spring breakers still stop to see the installation, but now there are Jeff Davis County deputies on scene as well.

No decisions have been made other than that Ballroom Marfa and Art Production Fund will restore Prada Marfa, and it will remain a public site. We’re close to resolving the widely publicized issues with the Texas Department of Transportation, and we expect Prada Marfa will be around for years to come. It will surely continue to inspire a wide range of commentary; we just hope that a single point of view — one comprised of blue paint, industrial adhesive and insulation foam — will not override and destroy this exchange of ideas.

For more on Prada Marfa, please see our Prada Marfa Explainer.

To support Ballroom Marfa and public art projects like Prada Marfa, visit our membership page.

Images from the March 1, 2014 Ballroom Marfa’s Sound Speed Marker opening weekend concert by Grupo de la Paz and the Tish Hinojosa Band at Marfa’s USO Building. All photos by Alex Marks.

Images from the March 28, 2014 Sound Speed Marker opening reception at Ballroom Marfa. All photos by Alex Marks.

All images courtesy of Brice Beasley and Under Pressure Screenprinting in Austin, TX.

We just received our first look at the fantastic posters designed by Brice Beasley and printed by Under Pressure in Austin for our upcoming concert with the great Tish Hinojosa Band. The (FREE!!!) event will take place during the opening weekend for Hubbard/Birchler’s Sound Speed Marker, on March 1st at 8pm at Marfa’s USO Building.

Until then, keep your eyes peeled for these babies around town and get excited!

I’ve been a police officer, a Little League coach, a Boy Scout leader and have volunteered for many, many local organizationsIf you not read books 1 and 2, you probably want to get caught up before reading this next part of the series. “It did get out of hand because the homeowner said, if you ever do this again I will shoot you,” Bagshaw says. Emergency officials are now trying to sift through the charred seniors’ home, but a thick coating of ice has formed on the site in bitterly cold temperatures. “I think that what I did throughout last season was adjust goals and set new goals that would be based on the tournaments I was getting into, and I think that that just needs to continue. Marwan, who is 24, is pursuing his master’s in mechanical engineering,

Philip Guston, San Clemente, 1975. To commemorate its closing on February 2nd, we’re presenting this series of essays about the artists featured in Comic Future. Previously we looked at Walead Beshty and Arturo Herrera. In this final essay, Adam Helms offers an overview of the exhibition as a whole. Helms is a New York-based artist whose work was part of the Ballroom Marfa exhibitions You Are Here (2005) and Every Revolution is a Roll of the Dice (2007). Comic Future will travel to the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio where it will be on view from May 17 through August 3, 2014. ——————————————– The Comic Presence After walking through the exhibition Comic Future, one work of art kept surfacing in my mind: Philip Guston’s San Clemente (1975), the grotesque lumbering caricature of Richard Nixon (fig. 1). In Guston’s later years, this single work (which metastasized into a painting from his drawing series From The Phlebitis Series (1975)) served as Guston’s vehicle for a gesture towards political satire, yet remained in keeping with his quasi-figurative language as a painter. Guston moved from his early years in the ’30s as a social realist into Abstract Expressionism; then finally to a mode of painting and draughtsmanship that incorporated personal narratives and symbols from within a cartoon or ‘comic’ figuration. The only painting of its kind in Guston’s oeuvre, San Clemente suggests that perhaps Guston had doubts about this particular piece. (1) Rather than the ambiguous identities of his Klansmen­ — or the heads, eyes and feet of his reoccurring figure subjects — this particular piece dealt with direct representation, Guston’s own anger and the politics of the time in which it was painted. San Clemente serves as Guston’s attempt to balance a work as both a history painting and a statement of political satire. In many ways, this Nixon cartoon caricature bridges the gap between Guston’s early social realist concerns — and politics — and the freedom he strove for as a painter breaking new ground rebelling in his departure from abstraction. For Guston’s intentions it straddles the issues of painting as much as it does political cartooning. Guston elevates the political and a mass cultural icon to the level of the sublime. It would be perhaps a form of alliteration to suggest that all of the artists in Comic Future directly reflect the bifurcation of Guston’s piece or intentions, but the spirit of San Clemente echoes throughout the exhibition. Beyond simply a selection of artists that deal with themes of ‘comic abstraction’ or even particular cultural references, Comic Future posits a multitude of questions surrounding political representation, archetypes and visual language, beauty and the grotesque and ultimately: painting and the materiality of objects through the prism of a ‘comical’ gesture. All of the artists represented here look to an appropriated and symbolic language to speak to the time and culture in which they find themselves and in which the works become a reflection or response. Though the intentions of individual artists may vary, the allure and levity of a visual comic language becomes a satirical and subversive conceptual strategy. Works on paper by Sigmar Polke, created between 1964-1969, All works courtesy of Michael Werner Gallery, New York and London, Photography © Fredrik Nilsen The grouping of Sigmar Polke’s 13 works on paper (1964-69), involves an abject and almost proletariat language of comic-like capitalist imagery. This period of Polke’s work was generated during the postwar years of reconstruction in Germany and “apart from their self-critical questionings of Polke’s identity, parodied a taste for the trivial fueled by the banalities of everyday German life in postwar years and ensuing “economic miracle” (2). Polke together with Gerhard Richter saw their work at this time as “Capitalist Realism”. Influenced as a reaction to American Pop, Polke’s works indicate an almost investigative approach towards what he and his colleagues at the time saw as the “authentic cultural phenomenon” of Pop in the imagery of both the mass media and economic system of the West towards an art making moving from the structures of the conventional art of the time (3). In these works Polke remains ensconced between the camp of a Dadaist-like subversion of consumerist imagery and an embracing the visual apparatus of a mass culture that he would help to elevate to ‘high art’.

Arturo Herrera’s 88 DIA (1998), photo by Lesley Brown.

To commemorate the closing of Comic Future on February 2nd, we are presenting a series of essays and readings about some of the artists and their work represented in the show. Previously, we featured Walead Beshty, and his 2012 work, Unmasking. In this post, Ballroom’s Gallery Manager, Rebecca McGivney, discusses Arturo Herrera’s works in the show, including 88 DIA, which was commissioned specifically for Ballroom Marfa.

Comic Future will travel to the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio where it will be on view from May 17 through August 3, 2014.

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On the surface, Arturo Herrera’s two works in Comic Future, 88 DIA (1998) and Untitled (2001), look quite different. 88 DIA is a large colorful mural composed of a number of images. Though they at first appear somewhat abstract, the images quickly come into focus. A large potted plant topped by a red, spiky flower sits against a bright blue background. In the foreground, three cartoon birds fly above the figure of a girl. Although her head is hidden (or has been removed), she seems familiar.

Untitled also transforms the longer one focuses on it. At first it appears to be a large, black and white squiggle, somewhat reminiscent of a Jackson Pollock drip painting. It quickly becomes apparent that the entire drawing is composed of various recognizable shapes — namely some of the same shapes seen in 88 DIA. This is because both works use the same source material: Walt Disney’s 1937 classic, Snow White.

It is impressive that Herrera is able to disguise, even momentarily, such iconic images; but what is even more interesting is why he uses them at all. It is nothing new for an artist to take a familiar image and place it in a work of art; often, when one does so it is to critique and criticize what that image represents. As Roland Barthes notes in Mythologies: “the idols of consumer culture, car, refrigerator or screen goddess, have a totemic power in the modern age.” (Translated in S. Greeves, “The Language of the Wall”(MA Diss., the Courtauld Institute of Art, 1995), 29.) The most direct and effective way to break that power is by changing and subverting it. (see Sergei Chakhotin’s The Rape of the Masses: The Psychology of Totalitarian Political Propaganda, 1940)

Herrera, however, does not use these images expressly for the purpose of negation. Rather, they relate to his interest in modernism and its ideal of universality. In addition to Herrera’s various aesthetic references to modernism (his use of collage techniques and found material, as well as allusions to various artistic movements including surrealism, cubism, abstract expressionism, pop-art, and the affichistes, to name a few), the artist confirms that he is strongly attracted to the conceptual ideas behind modernism, particularly the belief that art is universal. As he explains in an interview: “Modernism’s boundless optimism and idealism created exciting visual realities. Some of these propositions failed or are no longer valid…. The key is to have a critical dialogue with this legacy.” Thus, while Herrera is attracted to these ideals, he differs in how he accomplishes them. While the modern artist hoped to create a work that could instantaneously convey its meaning through abstraction, Herrera uses the figurative and familiar to establish a “connection” and give the viewer something of which to grab hold: Snow White.

It is important to note that when Disney was first founded, the company’s work was seen as extremely modern. So much so that Sergei Eisenstein once declared Disney’s animations to be “the greatest contribution of the American people to art.” Walt Disney also shared in the modernist’s ideal of creating a universal art by appealing to our shared childhood. As he explained while defending his fantastical stories and imagery: “Everybody in the world was once a child. We grow up. Our personalities change, but in every one of us something remains of our childhood…. It just seems that if your picture hits that spot with one person, it’s going to hit that spot in almost everybody.” Herrera uses the same technique to entice the viewer into his work, the difference is that once one enters, Herrera, unlike Disney, no longer guides you. As he notes: “My work actually tries to discourage a specific message. It tries to free a place up, to clarify through ambiguity….You read the image very easily, but in the end, you are on your own.”

For more information on Herrera and his process, be sure to read his terrific conversation with Josiah McElheny from 2005 in Bomb. An excerpt:

The challenge is, how can an image so recognizable, like a dwarf, or a cartoon character’s foot or nose, or the red and blue specific to Snow White’s dress, have another meaning that I impose onto it? Is it possible? Can I make something so clear ambiguous? Can I uproot it? In which ways is the baggage that we bring to the new image relevant to the vivid recollections within our cultural context? I am attracted to juxtaposing invented images and readymade images without establishing explicit relations between elements.

From Herrera’s interview with Tom Friel of Bad At Sports:

Using everyday printed materials which are instantly recognizable leads the viewer directly into the image and at once a connection is established. Crashing our invented, private meanings onto a newly constructed image only adds to the impact of the original source. This undoing of linearity is attractive to me.

Finally, to see what Herrera is up to now, be sure to check out the images from his newest show, Books, at Corbett vs. Dempsey in Chicago. From a review at The Seen by Shreya Sethi:

These works come across as strong interventions into the act of reading. Using the help of stencils, Herrera haphazardly covers up the content of every page to the point of illegibility. We are forced to consider the nonrepresentational shapes foregrounded by the contents of the book, as a kind of linguistic information whose meaning we are left to determine.

Le Révélateur
with live score by Mary Lattimore & Jeff Zeigler
December 30, 2013
Crowley Theater, Marfa, Texas
Doors at 7 pm ∙ Show at 7:30 pm
Free

Listen to Marfa Public Radio’s Talk at Ten radio interview with Mary Lattimore & Jeff Zeigler, December 30, at 10 am on KRTS 93.5 FM or via their online stream.

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Celebrate the coming new year with Ballroom Marfa! For our fifth annual New Year’s film program, we’ll host a film screening of Philippe Garrel’s 1968 film Le Révélateur, with a live score by Philadelphia harpist Mary Lattimore and synth player Jeff Zeigler.

Mary Lattimore is a classically trained harpist whose collaborations have seen her working with such esteemed luminaries as Kurt Vile, Meg Baird, Thurston Moore, Ed Askew, Fursaxa, Jarvis Cocker and the Valerie Project. On her debut record, The Withdrawing Room, she found a worthy sideman in Philadelphia’s Jeff Zeigler, whose contemplative Korg echoes and holds a mood for Mary’s runs.

Zeigler has amassed quite the resume in recent years, between his space-rock outfit Arc in Round and his production work for local luminaries Kurt Vile, Purling Hiss and The War on Drugs. Zeigler’s also been expanding into the solo / collaborative experimental zone, playing solo shows with Lattimore and opening for English ambient artist Benoît Pioulard.

We talked with Lattimore about her interest in avant-garde film, her approach to improvisation and her plans for New Year’s Eve in Marfa.

How would you describe your music to new listeners?

I would describe it as sort of underwater, spacey harp through effects and delay, loops of decaying noise, droney sometimes, ethereal crushed-up diamond sounds. Jeff plays a Korg Mono/Poly synth and does cool textural stuff, plays beautiful, haunting melodica that sounds like a sad, distant train, and plays guitar, too. It’s gonna be fun. Our sets are usually all improvised, but with this one we are establishing themes and trying to be thoughtful about the changing scenes.

Why did you choose Le Révélateur for this project?

I consulted a very film-knowledgable friend. He suggested a few silent films and I checked them out and this one seemed to have some really memorable images. It’s a very strange film, very stunning, filmed in 1968.

What else can you tell us about the score you and Jeff will be performing?

It’ll be thought-out improvisation, with harp through a Line 6 looper and melodica, guitar, and synth. It’s a little over an hour long and will probably be a combination of melodic, hypnotic strings and maybe some harsh-ish noise. We want to be conscious of space, too, and also to incorporate minimal moments because the images are so affecting on their own.

Do you have any other experience doing film scores? Or with filmmaking in general?

I have done a few film projects. I was a member of this 11-person ensemble that composed an alternate score for the Czech New Wave Film Valerie and Her Week of Wonders in 2007. We traveled around with the original print of the film and performed in theaters, recorded it and Drag City put out the record. I learned a lot from the way we composed the music together. Recently, I did a soundtrack for a film that’s set in Iceland. I played on the score for the documentary Marina Abramovic – The Artist Is Present. The interaction between music and story/visuals, how they can complement each other to create a singular, memorable experience is something I really love. Jeff recently did an original live score for 2001: A Space Odyssey with our friend Dave (Nightlands) as a cool, creative project. Hopefully, our ideas will be true to the vibe of this gorgeous, weird film.

How does your background in improvisation inform this work?

Whenever I improvise or whenever Jeff and I improvise together, we’re always trying to paint a picture or to inspire a mood and often there’s a narrative structure where things get stirred up in the middle and resolve themselves by the end. But I think this one should contain a lot of in-the-minute decisions and negative space that will make it hopefully a unique performance that we can only half-predict, so that’s exciting.

What other projects are you working on?

Jeff and I are working on a Lattimore/Zeigler Duo record that we’re recording at his studio, Uniform Recording in Philly. I just played on the new Sharon Van Etten record, which will be out next year. We are going to try to repeat our Le Révélateur performance in Philadelphia, too, so that’s in the works. Got some upcoming gigs with my mom, who is also a harpist, and we’ll be playing carols to spread some holiday happiness. Lots of fun stuff ahead!

Is this your first trip to Marfa? What do you know of our town?

Yes, it’s my first visit to Marfa! I don’t know much, but I have a bunch of friends who have visited and who’ve fallen in love with it, so I’m psyched. Have read about the Marfa lights and the great art. I love that I get to spend New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day in this far-away place – great way to start 2014. Jeff has been before while on tour with his band. Really looking forward to it!

What are your plans for Marfa and Far West Texas beyond your performance?

Hmm, I’m not sure. I guess to just relax, hang out, walk around. We are staying for a few extra days. I have a close friend Rachel who moved there recently. My pal Matt, who owns the excellent Harvest Records, is coming from Asheville, NC.

Ballroom Marfa 2013 from Ballroom Marfa on Vimeo.

Thank you, Ballroom Marfa supporters, for being an essential part of 2013’s thrilling programming. From Marfa Dialogues/New York to Graham Reynolds’ Marfa Triptych, DJ Camp to Comic Future, it’s been a year where we’ve paid tribute to our Far West Texas home ground while, in the words of the New York Times, “expanding our sphere of influence” internationally.

As we continue to build on the last 10 years of bringing electrifying art and culture to our remarkable high desert town — and in turn, as we share Marfa with the world — we thank you for the inspiration, collaboration and support that you’ve given us. Please enjoy this look back at all of the spectacular happenings you helped us realize this year.

Plans are underway for another year of innovative and community-minded programming, and we’re inviting you to join us in keeping Ballroom Marfa’s 2014 calendar as dynamic and accessible as possible.

It’s only with your help that we can continue to offer this wide range of art, film, music and educational events to everyone in our Far West Texas community.

As part of our ongoing feature “Who’s At Ballroom Marfa This Week?”, I had the pleasure of speaking with K. Brandt Knapp and her boyfriend, Ash Kamel. K. Brandt and Ash were visiting Marfa from New York as part of (what has to be) the greatest holiday party. They were originally drawn to the Drive-In project space, because of K. Brandt’s relationship with MOS — she studied with Hilary Sample of the company in college — but ended up exploring the rest of our Comic Future exhibition. It had been a dreary and quiet Saturday, but they helped liven up the day, telling me about their impressions of Marfa, what they had done so far in town, and what they were up to next. In turn, they allowed me to gush about my favorite places in town (including a particularly long monologue about the boots at Cobra Rock) and provide some advice on what to explore during their final hours in town.

Ballroom Marfa: Is this your first time in Marfa?
K. Brandt Knapp: It is!

BM: Where are you guys from?
KBK: New York. Harlem, New York.

BM: You’ve been around Marfa today, so what was the highlight of your day?
KBK: Highlight… hmmm. We just came from the Block, where Judd had lived, so that was really exciting.
Ash Kamel: I liked the Block.
AK: I guess everything that we’ve done we’ve had a different experience, I don’t necessarily know that I would say there was a favorite… We did the sunrise tour at Chinati and then we saw the Flavin work as well, so it’s been a big day that I still need to process. There’s a lot here to see, as you know.

BM: I totally understand. It took me a few days for everything to really hit me… but I’m still processing it all four months later.
KBK: Yeah, I know it’s a lot to go through. Especially when you’ve seen pictures for so long, my first project ever in studio was based off of the concrete blocks, those works. That’s probably 13 years ago, so I’ve seen images and that was a founding thing for me in my education so to actually go and experience it and see what was directly in relation to it, for instance, I had no idea there would be a street behind it. I just thought it would be in the middle of nowhere.