ExxonMobil: Vivoleum is made of People

The Yes Men have presented ExxonMobil's (XOM) new plan to deal with the impending energy crisis at a development conference in Calgary: Vivoleum. By converting human remains of the victims of climate change into fuel, the survivors could live comfortably for years to come. From Pete Sands:
http://www.bittertonic.com/bitter-irene/442/exxon-will-burn-people-for-fuel

McCAW/BUDSBERG at The Soap Factory

Shana McCaw and Brent Budsberg working on the BROKEN DOWN installation in their Milwaukee studio.

McCAW/BUDSBERG COLLABORATIONS
present
BROKEN DOWN
at The Soap Factory, Minneapolis, MN
Opening: June 30, 2007 at 7:00PM

Using theatrical lighting, carefully choreographed fog machines, LEDs and 1:32 scale models, "Broken Down" transforms the decaying boiler room of the Soap Factory into a murky industrial landscape. The focal point of the installation is a small-scale semi truck stopped in the middle of a bridge spanning the space. Viewed from only two portals into the space, "Broken Down" creates an unsettling vignette, set against the hulking silhouettes of defunct industry.

More like, Too Bad about Phil Leotardo

Though I personally found the choice of Journey's Don't Stop Believin' enthralling, and the cut to black inevitable, pragmatic and pregnant with the narrative that Tony Soprano survives, but as a paranoid adrenaliniac, our colleague, Mike Newman differs. He was quoted via his blog, zigzigger on Slate earlier this month about the HBO series finale. Nice work.

At Zigzigger, media studies professor Michael Z. Newman is among the let down, writing it was "[a]n end but hardly an ending. Not artful but arty, and totally unlike the classic novels to which snooty critics would so often compare the show. The show's comedy is typically darker than black, but now it's at our expense."

Memory Palaces

Memory Palaces
an installation of digital prints on found paper
new work by Lane Hall

Exhibition runs June 10 - July 29
Opening Reception on Friday, June 15, 5-7pm

Memory Palaces is a convergence of Homer, Joyce, and Google, along with decades of personal journal entries that artist/writer Lane Hall has mined with the intention of telling stories about memory and forgetting. Memory Palaces interconnects cognitive theory and historically derived memory models. Senility, narcotics, psychotropic drugs and the spirit-world are invoked as meditations upon oblivion, while writing itself is posed as a means for fixing memory to imperfect maps.

The Memory Palace is a mnemonic model which consists of interconnected rooms subtitled Lotus Eaters, Telemachiad, From A Moon With No Planets, Lost Wax, Ars Narcotica, and A Snake Men Fear To Touch.

Queer Zine Art Show

From Milo Miller:
The Queer Zine Archive Project (QZAP) in conjunction with the Milwaukee LGBT Film Festival and Rhizome Space celebrates QZAP's third year with a film screening and Queer Zine Art Show on Friday, June 22nd in Milwaukee, WI. The 7pm film screening at Woodland Pattern Book Center (720 E Locust St) features queer zine pioneer Bruce La Bruce's "No Skin off My Ass" (16mm on DVD, b&w/sound, 73 min., 1991). Tickets are $2. This seminal and sweet queer punk romance features a Karen Carpenter-loving gay hairdresser who falls helplessly in love with a stray skinhead who he invites into his home. Kicking off after the screening at 8:30pm, the gallery show at Rhizome Space (3172 Bremen St) lifts art from the pages of phenomenal queer zines by artists Miss Schnookum, Lane McKiernan, Cookie Tuff, Sina Shamsavari, Rachael House, Larry Bob, and more.

Excellent Political Art: RUNNING THE NUMBERS

AN AMERICAN SELF-PORTRAIT (2006-2007)
Cell Phones, 2007
60x100"

Depicts 426,000 cell phones, equal to the number of cell phones retired in the US every day. Detail at actual size:

From Nicolas Lampert:
Nicole Schulman sent out this email recommending a show by Chris Jordan-pretty amazing digital images about consumption in the US-the series will be exhibited at the Von Lintel Gallery in New York from June 14th to the end of July.