Matthew Barney and Bjork Caught on Cell Phone in NYC

Matthew Barney Schaulager Exhibition Walkthrough

Vernissage TV has published a nice video "walkthrough" of Matthew Barney's Prayer Sheet With The Wound And The Nail exhibition at Schaulager in Basel, Switzerland.

More Cremaster Screenings and Matthew Barney Live Appearance in Detroit

International Film Circuit has updated their list of upcoming US screenings of The Cremaster Cycle, which now includes dates through November. The next stop is Oklahoma City (Aug 26-29), followed by a Labor Day Weekend screening in Chicago (Sept 3-9), then Atlanta, Portland (OR), Cleveland, Washington (D.C.), Houston, Kansas City, and Pittsburgh. Our informant tells us that The Cremaster Cycle will also be screened at The Detroit Institute of Arts on Wednesdays Sept. 15, 22, and 29 and that Matthew Barney (who is currently filming a new project called Khu in Detroit) is tentatively scheduled to make a live appearance in conjunction with the film screening on September 15. We will publish more information on this appearance when we receive it.

Free Matthew Barney!

Curator and artist Dan Cameron has written an interesting essay for Art-it called "Free Matthew Barney" that argues for the importance of releasing the Cremaster Cycle on DVD.

Cameron writes, "as art histories are published, academic curricula developed and museum programs produced, an ever larger number of professionals and academics will need to see Cremaster at their leisure and on their terms, simply to evaluate it, catalog it or pass it on to the next person. This, apparently, is not to be permitted, with the result that not only have potential profits from the general distribution, licensing, and sales of Cremaster been negated into perpetuity, but those who need to view the cycle in order to evaluate it for others have largely been stymied in their efforts to do so."

Cameron goes on to contrast the limited release of Barney's films with the work of young video artist Ryan Trecartin, who creates videos that are meant to be streamed online. "There might be objects made by Trecartin for collectors to buy, but they are not essential or even terribly germane to the work itself, which is available anytime we want, on our laptops or our iPhones, for absolutely no money. Considering this open access, it seems hard to imagine finding ourselves where we were back in 2004, when Barney had his Guggenheim Museum retrospective featuring, as sculptures, the baroquely decorated display boxes in which the "limited edition" Cremaster DVDs were displayed. Resembling overpriced selections of chocolate or perfume, those display boxes symbolize the elaborate contortions of reality into which the art market twisted itself nearly 20 years ago."

The full article is here: http://www.art-it.asia/u/admin_ed_contri2/SGWcdPUyu2j7AoiDBmgC?art-it=42e6d2b0113b3901a8355a196f18673b

Matthew Barney Filming "Khu" In Detroit

Detroit-based Cremaster Fanatic Amy informed us that Matthew Barney has been working on a new project in Detroit. A bit of digging on the internet reveals that Barney is currently filming a project called Khu, a prologue to his seven-part opera Ancient Evenings [Ren, filmed in Los Angeles in 2007, is another part of the series], which is based on a novel by Norman Mailer about the stages of death according to ancient Egyptian beliefs. In Barney’s interpretation of Mailer's book, the body of a man is replaced with the remains of the Chrysler Imperial featured in Cremaster 3. Beyond the obvious connection between Detroit and Chrysler, Khu apparently includes references to the work of James Lee Byars, a Detroit-based installation/performance artist, and Harry Houdini, who's first jump was off a bridge in Detroit.
The New York Times and this web site hint that there will be a live performance related to Khu held in Detroit this fall.

Cremaster Cycle and De Lama Lamina in San Francisco

The Cremaster Cycle (and De Lama Lamina) continue their cross-country re-release tour, opening this week at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. Cremaster Fanatics will want to invest in the $24 "marathon ticket" (available August 7 and 8) to see all the films in order on a single day. Alternatively, next weekend you can pair a Cremaster film with The Cockettes or Cheech & Chong's Nice Dreams -- either could make for an interesting double-feature!