TALK THE TALK

Dave Hickey

Last weekend I had the pleasure of soaking up the rays in LA with the cool, southern voice of Dave Hickey ruminating on his newly updated The Invisible Dragon at Art Catalogues at MOCA at the Pacific Design Center. On Saturday promptly at 3pm, Art Catalogues’ owner and front of house Dagny Corcoran introduced Hickey to an intimate crowd made up of die-hard fans: students; artists; and critics who all scrambled after the talk to get one of the 100 hard-backed copies on sale at the front desk (they sold out in 5 minutes). Even in LA where manners tend to err on the side of mannerly people were cutting the line to get Dave’s signature proving true that Hickey is one of the most beloved of this country's public intellectuals. His mantra from the original printing that the vernacular of beauty, in its democratic appeal, remains a potent instrument for change still rings true.
http://www.artcatalogues.com/

Musician and Poet, Richard Hell

The red eye pulled me into Kennedy just in time to get out to Brooklyn for a special evening Tuesday night at Issue Project Room where legendary contemporary music producer Hal Willner tapped some of New York’s biggest talent to take part in his BEGATS: Readings of the work of Williams S. Burroughs, Marquis De Sade and Edgar Allan Poe. Stunning in its seamless weave of some really raunchy speak spewed by Tim Robbins, Chloe Webb, John Ventimiglia, Steve Buscemi and the preeminent punk wordsmith Richard Hell who all performed pitch perfect accompanied by back-up musicians Sean Lennon and Yuka Honda orchestrated by Willner who was mixing it up with MAC downloads and old school percussion instruments. The sound was beat-jazz-punk-pop all brought to the fore by Issue’s brilliant Artistic Director, Suzanne Fiol. It fixed me right back into a New York state of mind.
http://issueprojectroom.org/