some things to share...

in case you haven't noticed, things have been somewhat crazy here with activity for the past few months or so, and now i've got another week before all should calm down. this afternoon i was trying to deal with an incredibly messy desktop and found some image files that have been hanging around like little magnets of attraction... so i figured i'd post them (and since they are all without reference to where i got them, if i cribbed them from your blog please forgive the lack of credit).

i hope they will suffice for the week, and perhaps by next week airforms will become a bit more active again...

this 7" record sleeve is one of my all time favorites, and the only thing here that i own. unfortunately the music isn't too exciting (sounding a bit like the theme to the early 70's tv show the dating game), but the image of the band standing upon a giant floating upside down starfish kills me.

this is an image of agnes martin's last drawing, sent to me by michael ned holte, whom i will be collaborating with on a public talk on october 7th at 8 pm in conjunction with my exhibition at the pomona college museum of art. (and i do wish i owned this drawing, very much...)

this is a still image from gary beydler's hand held day. one of my absolute favorite films i've seen in a long time. the ucla film and television recently showed some 60's and 70's experimental films that had been recently restored, and beydler's film was a revelation. it's a deceptively simple work, made by shooting still frames over a single day of beydler's hand holding a mirror reflecting the opposite view. over the 6 minutes of the film, the images move from dusk to dawn, and it is incredible beautiful. there is a wonderful contrast in the light movement, the slight jittery finger tips and mirror movement stutters. it also reminded me of some of dennis oppenheim's films using his hands, as well as a kind of secret companion to early land art and earthworks.

a 1940's linen postcard of a bandstand looking like a rainbow with eyes.

one of the best record labels i've seen, from a mexican 45, probably 1970's, certainly influenced by rat fink, weird-ohs, nutty mads, etc.

a small cardboard and paint sculpture by lygia clark... no words necessary...

a 1971 japanese woodblock print by joichi hoshi called snowball. it is one of a series of prints all related to the snowball motif, but this is by far the nicest, particularly because it looks so much like an audio speaker...

when samy elhar ibi becomes sliman el magribi becomes samy elmaghribi...

one of the craziest and most confusing transactions i've ever had on ebay involved some 7" records of Moroccan Sephardic music purchased from a guy in new york about a year ago. i initially won 5 records, and when they arrived the covers and the records didn't match. so i went back onto ebay to see images of the discs he hadn't sold, mined the photos of all the auctions for clues, and ended up buying 5 more, thinking i could match the 10 records to the 10 covers; but that didn't work for various reasons...

as i started to try to put right covers with right records i realized the dealer wasn't as stupid as i originally thought. as you can see from the three covers above, a single artist such as samy elmaghribi has not only at least three spellings of his name, but also three different record labels - zakiphon, samyphone, and eliephon (i also had some records on "pianophon" and "brotherphone"). i figured i could at least match the record labels to the right covers, but in most cases the index numbers did not match up. also, since some of the discs were pressed in Israel and some in France, the titles, etc. are sometimes in one language on the cover and another on the disc label. sure, with french i can at least match similar words, but with hebrew it's more like trying to find matching ink blots... my favorite, of course, is the cover at the top, where someone took a marker and changed the artist's name, and spelled it differently than on any of the discs or covers in the lot...

fortunately, not only are most of the covers graphic gems, but the recordings are absolutely stellar. the two standout artists are albert suissa (whom i will try to do a post on later) and samy or sliman, el magribi or elmaghribi... who i'm posting a few tracks from here.

from a bit of web snooping it seems these are moroccan artists singing sephardic songs, which were sold in france and israel, but the web was not much help either, so i would suggest simply enjoying the music and if anyone wants to shed some light on these artists, please feel free to drop me a note or add to the comments. i believe samy/sliman was pretty popular as there seem to be a number of cd compilations available.

click here to listen to chraa alah ya lahbab

click here to listen to el mra elqebiha