Back at the derby: spray-painted, crumpled automotive beasts tumble against one another.  The air is filled with terrific absurdity.  These vehicular masochists have planned these clashes.  They have intended it, and yet not intended it – very much like an artist’s relationship to the work of art s/he creates.

I learned three things at the demo derby:

• Embrace the ugly
• Push through anything crippling
• Take things that are hard by nature and try to soften them

Some of these concepts underlie the abstract form of movement called Butoh, made with slow-mo gestures, prolonged facial expressions and the baring of the unconscious.  The dancer Oguri returns to the IMA November 7 with another Butoh-inspired performance, this one an interpretation of the literary experiments of American author William Faulkner (The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom!).  Fear no art: what appears incomprehensible and senseless at first actually might actually reflect the order of the universe.

More on the November 7 event as it nears.  Until then, keep smashing, clashing, and seeking truth.

This couch is the sadness of a party that’s over, or some desire that’s run its course.  It also highlights the contrast between the soft comfort of furniture, versus the mean streets and the unforgiving elements (i.e., torrential rains this week).  The couch’s presence here puts us in a strange netherland that’s half Martha Stewart, half feral.  There’s something innocent about it too.  Do you think the couch seems ready to face the big bad world, perhaps for the first time?

I don’t think an artist arranged this incongruent scene – but this weekend some will be.  The Indy art group Primary Colours is staging Installation Nation, from 6 – 11 pm tomorrow and Sunday, on the vacant lot at the corner of College and Michigan Avenues (admission $5).

Thirteen artists, including Brian Priest and Lori Miles, were given old shipping containers.  Whole worlds may be created within and around these containers.  Buzz is that there’s a “ride” involved.  And of course, the best art experiences involve being taken for a ride of some sort.

…then the ride comes to an end, weeds choke the vehicle, and birds nest in the glove box.

Here’s a snippet of a poem of mine on this general topic:

In the field, abandoned, antique
gasoline pumps and refrigerators
rust beneath a bath of foliage,
vines and veins,
cooled in a green strangle.

Here’s to all the old school buses rusting away in yards across America.  See you at Installation Nation.

They didn’t design the accompanying clouds you see here, but what if they could have?

by Theater of Inclusion

Fellow IMA blogger Ed Bachta recently told me about a new film called Owning the Weather.  Premiering last week at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, the film tells the story of weather modification science.  The film features “seeders,” scientists who inject clouds with substances that hasten condensation, thereby making rain.  The doc also gives voice to philosophers on both sides of the debate about whether weather interventions are a handy solution to the global warming blues…or a sacrilegious crossing of the line between human and god.We can’t help but ask how long it will take some meteorologically-inclined contemporary artist to whip up a blizzard at the next Venice Biennale.  It could happen…

How about designer plants and animals?  It’s being done.  As physicist Freeman Dyson writes, every orchid, rose and lizard is the work of a skilled breeder.  The designers whose work is on view in the IMA’s current European Design: Shaping the New Century exhibition offer mind-blowing conceptions of chairs, lamps, etc.  Future design exhibitions may include the latest microbe, engineered to feed on plastic: an innovative design solution to the problem of reducing that gargantuan mass of trash floating in the Pacific Ocean.

Or, Dyson notes, Open Source biology may allow artists (or even third graders) to design their own genomes.  This is the premise of video games like Spore (whose designer we’ve been trying to invite to the IMA to give a talk).

As designer Bruce Mau asked in the exhibition Massive Change: “Now that we can do anything, what will we do?”

For now, I am going to keep it simple and join the international Cloud Appreciation Society.  I’m no sculptor but know how to savor a fine cumulonimbus, authored by no one that I know of.

a) label after label of well-behaved information; or

b) a blast of curiosity that renews your capacity for awe at the world’s wonders.

If you chose “b,” get thee to the Museum of Jurassic Technology. This humble but noble institution in Culver City, California is dedicated to “the incongruity born of the overzealous spirit in the face of unfathomable phenomena.”

Pictured below is one of the museum’s many specimens: a micromosaic made from the individual scales of butterfly wings, by one Henry Dalton (1829-1911).

At Museum of Jurassic Technology

As a visitor to the Museum of Jurassic Technology, my companion and I were invited to ponder a mini model of the moon’s surface, the cross-cultural meanings of stringed cat’s cradles, and a logic alphabet, an aesthetically pleasing method of truth geometrics developed by Dr. Shea Zellweger.

While musing on a poignant array of painted portraits of heroic Russian space dogs, a borzoi trotted by, luring us into a parlor where a mysterious brunette offered us a beverage from a vintage silver tea pot. I felt I had fallen down a particularly wonderful rabbit hole. Another dog rested at my feet in a diminutive theater with a star-studded ceiling where a short film about a fraternity of astronomers played.

Another gallery, dedicated to artworks smaller than the eye of a needle, smelled of rotting cabbage. The scent did not deter our curiosity about the life and work of Hagop Sandaldjian, the man responsible for these tiny 3-D renderings, including one of the Disney character, Goofy.

We ended our mind-bending visit in the gift shop. I was drawn to a book by Benjamin Hoff called The Singing Creek Where the Willows Grow: The Mystical Nature Diary of Opal Whiteley. Whiteley was a child prodigy who published a wildly popular, poetic nature book in the 1920s. No one believed she wrote the book, and she died in an asylum at age 95.

Leaving the MJT, our minds throbbed and our hearts swelled for the quantity of people, things, and ideas that demand astonishment.

From all of us here at IMA blog head quarters, we wish you a safe and happy new year!

As a gift of sorts and to make our vows public, we’d also like to treat you to some of our resolutions. Enjoy!

Daniel resolves…To be nice. Eat Twizzlers. Play soccer. Be brilliant. To follow some advice from Ghandi: Be the change that you want to see in the world. And in the words of LL Cool J: Don’t call it a comeback, I been here for years.

Charlie resolves…For this techie to learn the difference between modern and postmodern art.

Anne resolves…To bring more film artists to the IMA and to The Toby…Wim Wenders, anyone?

Gary resolves…To get the gambling monkey off my back.  I give it 20-1 odds.

Matt resolves…To ween myself off of fast food, join a gym, and to always remember to check things in Internet Explorer before sending out a link!

Amber resolves…To live in the now! No more worrying about the future and what it holds – just live day by day and enjoy it. Also, I need to drink less soda and take my vitamins. Baby steps…

Irvin resolves (with obligatory preface)…I’m a bad, bad horticulturist so first of all – take better care of the plants I’m overwintering. Sow more seed (but no wild oats). Photograph the gardens as they develop this year.

Phil resolves… To impress Anne Laker then together continue taking over greening the world.

And if you too want to make your resolution public, leave a comment!

Until the ‘09, peace.

There are actually more than 10 reasons to visit

What, you haven’t been to the IMA’s new Tobias Theater yet? Consider this your personal invitation…along with ten good reasons to get thee to The Toby to catch a film in the next two weeks:

1. To be surprised: Little Fugitive, a black-and-white beauty made in 1953, is probably a film you’ve never heard of. Let that be a good thing. This 80-minute indie gem is about a boy who runs away to Coney Island. Think of it as Leave It To Beaver infused with art, subtlety, and cinematography to die for. Sneak away and see it at The Toby Tuesday, December 30.
2. The sound rocks: As the museum’s senior AV technician, sound hound Chris Cruz made sure the sound system in The Toby is top notch. Three refrigerator-sized speakers lurk behind the movie screen to give you blasts of aural delight.

3. Because Johnny Depp is the new Santa Claus: To cut the sugar that often accompanies the holidays, we’ve picked out two moody Depp films and are running them back-to-back as part of IMA’s One-Two Punch series. Find out which films and when.

4. To escape your mother-in-law: Had enough family time? Sneak off to The Toby for the dazzling animation of Princess Mononoke the day after Christmas, or see Clint Eastwood turn the western on its head in Unforgiven on Jan. 2.
5. To escape economic woes: According to financial and historical gurus, movie attendance surges during troubled times. What are you waiting for?
6. You can come in your PJs: I will admit you free to any Toby film if you come in your pajamas. At The Toby, you can lounge around AND fathom the images on a 15’ x 30’ screen. Netflix, schmetflix.
7. To canoodle in the balcony or the ComfySacks: We won’t stop you and your honey from holding hands up in The Toby balcony or on the massive red bean bags down near the screen.
8. Beverages are for sale: Wine or beer (for the appropriately aged) are available from the stylin’ Toby concession counter.
9. You’re independent: You could go to Kerasotes or United Artists, but seeing a film at The Toby contributes to the local economy.
10. Because you can also visit the galleries: The visual art just won’t quit at IMA. Before or after the cinema washes over you, you can be transported to Ming-dynasty China in the Power & Glory exhibition, check out the new minimalist exhibition in the Forefront gallery, or ponder the wintry landscape through the veil of Maya Lin’s Above and Below installation on the IMA’s second floor galleries.

If you’ve already been to The Toby, please leave us your impressions and testimonies below.

She covered all the points you’d expect from a sustainable food advocate: the health crimes of fast food, the shame that many urban children have no idea where their food comes from, the lack of time for experiencing food.

But then she turned to the power of tablecloths. In her work with schools gardens (a.k.a. Edible Schoolyards, the subject of her new book), she noted that children flock to a table with a tablecloth. The kids recognize a well-set table as a sign of love and care.

She also addressed olive oil, equating good oil with life quality. This is a woman who carries her own olive oil with her when she travels. Lest her connoisseurship smack of elitism, Alice assured the crowd that quality-intense food pleasures like these are available at any farmers market across the land.

But just when you think she’s a charming spokesperson for edible beauty…she roars. She told the crowd of her daughter’s admission to Yale University, and their introduction to the college president Richard Levin. Alice twisted his arm, and showed him the light, encouraging him to leverage Yale’s food buying power to develop a local food program at Yale. Seven years later, the Yale Sustainable Food Project is going strong, complete with campus garden and a café with a sustainable menu.

True to her crusading ways, Alice didn’t leave Indy until she had dinner with IMA CEO Maxwell Anderson and several museum donors, which she took as an opportunity to inquire about the IMA’s food service, noting her disappointment with art museums that are monuments to beauty and human creativity, only to disappoint with sad cafes full of pre-packaged, soulless food. Watch the IMA Café in the coming year to see if her comments stuck…

In and among the logistics of her visit, a few of us on the public programs staff had a quiet moment with Alice. We told her we liked working with her assistant Varun, to arrange her visit (a long-term, intense process). “Varun walked into my office, with his long, long eyelashes, and I said, ‘you’re hired.’”

There it is again: Alice’s capacity for intoxication with life—the most persuasive argument you’ll ever hear for art, or food.

Did you hear Alice Waters at IMA last Tuesday? What did you think?

In Tan’s composition “Ghost Opera”, part of the first concert presented in the IMA’s newly renovated Tobias Theater this Friday, gongs talk to splashing water (yes, water); stones talk to cymbals, and the breath of a monk talks to a Chinese lute (a pipa).  It’s going to be a visually stunning, dramatically lit piece in which the musicians won’t be sitting still.

Photo courtesy of Nana Watanabe

This event is the result of a collaboration between the IMA and the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis — an excellent partnership.  IVCI is selling the tickets for the November 21 performance, entitled Virtuosos & Visions—click here to get yours.

I’m hopeful we will not need a professional crying team here in the week before The Toby opens.  In the past month has been filled with the installation of an awesome sound system, 35mm projectors, and yesterday, a movie screen.  Last week we unpacked the Comfy Sacks, massive red bags filled with recycled packing material, that will probably be the most coveted seats in The Toby when we show a film.  Ushers will likely have to break up fights over who gets to sit in the Sacks.  Ushers also get to experience Toby events for free.  [Interested?  Go here].

If you come to the concert, feel free to reply to this post with comments.

Here’s to an auspicious beginning for the IMA’s Tobias Theater…

Sottsass and the members of the collective, including young architect Michele De Lucchi, broke through the “tyranny” of modernist taste by making furniture made from leopard print plastic laminate, celluloids, neon tubes and zinc-plated sheet-metals, jazzed up with spangles, glitter, and crazy color combos. Memphis got its power from the ubiquitous cheese of consumer culture.  The old guard modernists turned their noses at the flamboyant movement; the mass media ate it up.

Then, in 1985, at the height of Memphis’ popularity and influence, Sottsass walked away, like a Super Bowl-winning quarterback who turns in his cleets when you’d least expect.  Memphis left the design world in an identity crisis.  Was modernism dead forever?  How long can one subsist on glitter, and can it feed the soul?  What to do when the avant-garde is no longer so?

Thursday, October 30, come to the IMA to hear the rest of this story, as told by Penny Sparke, professor of design history at Kingston University in London.  Sparke will spin the tale of what happened after Memphis and how European designers, no matter how fragmented, marched onward with the reinvention of industrial and product design.

Sparke’s talk is an appetizer for an exhibition opening next March to the IMA: European Design since 1985: Shaping the New Century.  Visit the IMA next spring and you will enter a fun house of chairs, lamps, teakettles and knifeblocks you never thought possible.  Stay tuned to the IMA blog over the next few months for more design chatter.

The goats had stepped aside and the rain blustered outside. Eighty diners piled into the hay-filled dining hall for a five-course extravaganza presented by Slow Food Indy. Slow Food in an international movement working to reconnect people with the pleasures of real food, sustainably produced. Money raised from the dinner was used to send several local chefs and cooking students to Terra Madre, the global gastronomic gathering in Turin, Italy.

Participating chefs stood on hay bales to present their courses. Regina Mehallick of R Bistro bestowed the heirloom tomato soup. Former Elements chef Greg Hardesty presented his Tortilla Espagnole—a quiche-like dish made from the sweet eggs of alfalfa-fed chickens and topped with Indiana sweet corn salsa. Goose the Market owner Chris Eley served lamb-stuffed-with-ground-lamb raised on the farm where we ate, along with a sweet potato mash flavored with chestnut honey, parsley, and crunchy duck cracklings—amazing.

For dessert? A rustic cake of apples, ginger and crystallized ginger with crème anglaise and pecans, prepared by Amanda Taylor of Ivy Tech Community College culinary arts program. Just when I thought the blissfest was over, here came a plate of butter cookie twists embellished with pine nuts, made by a local church lady.

It was an auspicious meal, cooked and eaten with full consciousness of the aesthetics, politics, and poetry of food.

If you’re into food at this level, don’t miss nationally-known chef and food educator Alice Waters’ visit to the IMA’s Tobias Theater Tuesday, December 2. Waters is the founder of the Chez Panisse restaurant and foundation in Berkeley, CA. She also created the Edible Schoolyard project to integrate food (and gardening) into every aspect of school curriculum. Alice is also the subject of a juicy new biography (juicy in more ways than one). Alice Waters tickets go on sale today. Watch the IMA blog for Noelle Pulliam’s interview with Alice.

If you knew your next meal were your last, what would you have? Bon appétit.