Speed of Life

Crowd Awaits Obama's Speech in Berlin Remarks of Senator Barack Obama (as prepared for delivery) “A World that Stands as One” July 24th, 2008 Berlin, Germany Thank you to the citizens of Berlin and to the people of Germany. Let me thank Chancellor Merkel and Foreign Minister Steinmeier for welcoming me earlier today. Thank you Mayor Wowereit, the Berlin Senate, the police, and most of all thank you for this welcome. I come to Berlin as so many of my countrymen have come before. Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen – a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world. I know that I don’t look like the Americans who’ve previously spoken in this great city. The journey that led me here is improbable. My mother was born in the heartland of America, but my father grew up herding goats in Kenya. His father – my grandfather – was a cook, a domestic servant to the British. At the height of the Cold War, my father decided, like so m...

Full Text - Obama's Speech in Berlin: A World that Stands as One - July 24th, 2008 Barack Obama will speak in Berlin tomorrow at the Tiergarten beneath the Siegessäule . For many of us, Berlin and the towering Siegessäule bring to mind Wim Wenders' films Wings of Desire and the haunting sequel, Faraway, So Close , which opens with the angel Cassiel (Otto Sander) standing on the statue of the Angel of Victory overlooking post-Cold War Berlin. As Wim Wender's site puts it, this angel grows "ever more despondent over his fate as a mere observer of human life, rather than a vital part of it, Cassiel dreams of crossing over to the human world." Many times as the centuries pass, art that was at first created to celebrate fleeting military victories over past or imagined enemies loses its local memory and becomes part of all humanity's memories. Wim Wenders was able to shake the Siegessäule loose from the spectres of Prussian militarism and into the post-Cold War ...

by Gregg Chadwick Regina Wilson, Syaw (fish-net) , acrylic on linen 62.99" x 78.74"   "You've been looking too closely at pictures. Why don't you swap them for some long horizons?" - Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines    Recently Cassiel asked me what my richest visual memory was. It didn't take me long to answer- "Night in the Australian outback - somewhere on the way to Alice Springs from Perth on a desolate dirt road. Above the Southern Cross gleams in a lapis sky as it goes black and up ahead a fire glows in the shell of a burned out Holden automobile. Silhouetted figures flicker and bob like tongues of shadow in front of the orange glow. " "Wow", Cassiel said. "Who were they out in the middle of nowhere? But it wasn't really nowhere was it? Everywhere is somewhere." Caught in my visual reverie, I missed the profound truth my daughter expressed.  Today as I wandered through the exhibition of Australian artist Regina Wi...

Bruce Conner Burning Bright 1996, Collection SFMOMA The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has a new art blog: Open Space . The current posts on the recently deceased Bruce Conner are thought provoking. I am intrigued by the account of Conner's fervent disagreement over a proposed retrospective with then director Henry Hopkins: "Conner’s relationship with SFMOMA was notoriously troubled. As Conner recounted in 1979 (in an interview published in Damage and reprinted in Stiles and Selz, Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art), Henry Hopkins, then the museum’s director, had proposed doing a retrospective of the artist’s work to date. But they couldn’t agree on certain things. Conner wanted to take part in curating his own history, and demanded a role in the conservation of assemblages that he’d originally intended to change over time. He also wanted his show to be free – the museum wanted to charge $2 admission fee – or at least to share in a percentage of the earnings from ...

Mat Gleason , publisher of Coagula, has curated a group show in Los Angeles which opens this week. The premise was simple. Each artist was given a $2 bill in US currency and encouraged to create an artistic interaction. My approach was historical. Thomas Jefferson graces the front of the two dollar bill. On the reverse is a depiction of Jefferson and the Continental Congress presenting the Declaration of Independence. I spent part of my childhood in Charlottesville, Virginia and as a kid loved to visit Jefferson's home at Monticello as well as the Jefferson designed campus at the University of Virginia. Before moving to Virginia my family had rendezvoused with my father in Paris as he returned from the Vietnam War. Jefferson's love of Paris and his influence on the French Revolution of 1789 was presented in detail on our tours. I was entranced with this complex figure. And also perplexed. How could a lover of liberty and the author of the Declaration of Independence justify own...

Santa Monica artists Gregg Chadwick and Gerard Bourgeois will be exhibiting their artwork at the Julie Nester Gallery in Park City, Utah in the exhibition Moving Pictures . The Julie Nester Gallery, named by Salt Lake Magazine as "the best gallery in Utah", celebrates its new gallery location with a group exhibition. The inaugural show features new work from each of the gallery's 35 national artists. Gregg Chadwick The Sound of Silk (detail) 2008 Greg Marshall in the Park Record writes: "Since opening in 2004, the Julie Nester Gallery has specialized in contemporary art and represents mid-career and nationally recognized artists. 'We're focusing on bringing art that's never been seen in Utah. The size of the gallery gives art room to breathe', Nester said. The gallery departs from the mountain motif popular in many galleries in Park City. 'I would say it's a different level of sophistication. Some of the work here can be a little more di...

Rachid Taha's version of the Clash's Rock el Casbah Rachid Taha plays live in Los Angeles on July 12, 2008 as part of the free Grand Performances Series at California Plaza. The event starts at 8pm. (Rachid Taha will also play the next afternoon at Stern Grove in San Francisco) On 7/13/05 I wrote: “Unity is a universal message.” Rachid Taha Backstage at a Clash concert in the early '80's, the young French-Algerian singer Rachid Taha pressed a demo tape of his own mix of punk, rock and middle eastern music into Joe Strummer's hands. Rachid Taha didn't hear back from the Clash. But shortly after their backstage meeting, the Clash's "Rock the Casbah" made it onto vinyl. The song could have been written by Taha. “I like Joe Strummer. We have the same obsession - freedom,” says Rachid. When he heard of Strummer's recent death, Taha recorded his own version of the Clash song: "Rock el Casbah " as a tribute. Watching video clips during ...

"Did you hear the cops finally busted Madam Marie for tellin' fortunes better than they do..." "Back in the day when I was a fixture on the Asbury Park boardwalk, I'd often stop and talk to Madam Marie as she sat on her folding chair outside the Temple of Knowledge. I'd sit across from her on the metal guard rail bordering the beach, and watched as she led the day trippers into the small back room where she would unlock a few of the mysteries of their future. She always told me mine looked pretty good - she was right. The world has lost enough mystery as it is - we need our fortunetellers. We send our condolences out to her family who've carried on her tradition. Over here on E Street, we will miss her." --Bruce Springsteen More at: Madam Marie Daniel Wolff's Excellent Book: 4th of July, Asbury Park: A History of the Promised Land