stephanie barber

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At Slate, Carl Wilson wrote brilliantly about Youtube comments and Stephanie Barber’s book, Night Moves, a transcription of the Youtube comments to Bob Seger’s song “Night Moves.” Here are the comments from that article:

Youtube aside, Bob Segar is truly one of the greats. Soulful, rockin’ and a great songwriter. One of the few who is equally believable as an all out rocker and as a tender, wistful balladeer. One of the greatest singers ever. He deserves to be mentioned in the same breath with Sam Cooke, Sinatra, Ella, Elvis and Aretha.
Coincidentally, Bob Segar was my very first real rock concert. I was 15 and I was blown away.
Side point to address the old vs new music conversation downthread: It is true that I will never experience music like I did with my 15 year old heart and all my musical memories are filtered through that 15 year old head that I lived in.
But now, I can listen to music with a knowledge and an understanding that I didn’t have then.
And I love that old stuff, but there is great new stuff too!
The Shins, Blind Pilot, Death Cab, Bob Schneider, Uncle Lucius, Black Keys, fun. and lots of others. Some will say that some of these are too derivative, but all music is derivative.
Sinatra, Thelonius Monk, Abba, Segar there are many, many more great musicians, singers, producers and songwriters in every generation.
To dismiss the current or the old as crap is the mark of a philistine who doesn’t really love music. They only love what music represents to them. Their youth,
And that applies equally to the fogies and the kids.
***

See, I always heard this on the radio as night NEWS.  I knew what the song was about. I just figured he was banging the girl working on the school newspaper with him.
***

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Mean / 5 Comments
November 27th, 2013 / 12:56 pm

DAREDEVILS

coker AStephanie Barber’s movie DAREDEVILS (2013, premiering at the NY Film Festival next Thursday) is—among the many things that it is—a feature length narrative, and in itself an act of daredevilry. It is not an experimental film—that is, it doesn’t have much in common with the “traditional experimental film”—and it is a “movie” in the sense that it contains character development, relationships, dialogue, recognizable images, movement, music, and storytelling. The traditional three-act structure, however, is rearranged, subverted, and therefore not present to comfort you, and what’s more, the story demands your participation—and a rather rigorous participation. Like all stories, this one is a mystery, and you might say the involvement of the viewer in this story is similar to the mystery in which the audience sets out to solve the mystery. If reading the clues presented here will lessen your enjoyment of the movie, you know who you are and should stop reading now. Otherwise, read on. READ MORE >

Film / 4 Comments
September 26th, 2013 / 10:16 am

Reviews

The Blazing Fireplace of Guardianship

The Blazing Fireplace of Guardianship
by Shana Moulton
Content, Winter 2012
80 pages / $10  Buy from Content or SPD

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shana Moulton’s collection of found and altered images, The Blazing Fireplace of Guardianship, is the Winter 2012 edition of the Content series (which Blake wrote about here). This is a tender and enigmatic assemblage almost entirely devoid of words, which reads like a challenging and hysterical existential essay, an empathic exploration of modern spiritualism, a cynical contextual analysis of the marketing of the new age, a personal memoir, a mockery of a certain trend towards neo-mysticism in modern art or a map through “the decadent maze of spiritual liberation.”

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3 Comments
May 4th, 2012 / 12:00 pm

Stephanie Barber works at a museum

Photo by Cara Ober


Poet and artist Stephanie Barber has installed herself in the Baltimore Museum of Art. She’s been there since June 25, and she’ll be there until August 7. And she brought along her studio.

This isn’t an endurance piece, like what Marina Abramović did so beautifully at MoMA. Stephanie, who is doing the performance/installation/video work in conjunction with the Sondheim Prize, is making videos as she normally would, but at a faster clip. She’s producing one a day. Her setup in the gallery is a sight to behold for the way it deconstructs the museum. When is the last time you’ve seen pictures from a magazine haphazardly tacked to a museum’s wall? Or the last time you watched a video with a soundtrack performed by museum patrons as they pass through? READ MORE >

Author Spotlight & Events / 7 Comments
July 7th, 2011 / 10:16 am

A Constant Froth of Expectation: Stephanie Barber Interview

The other day I “had a chance” to “sit down” with filmmaker, poet and performance artist Stephanie Barber to discuss her book, these here separated to see how they standing alone or six films by stephanie barber, which I published with PGP in 2008 then again a few months ago. As the title suggests, the collection features six movies on a DVD, packaged with the soundtracks printed in book form. The interview was a continuation of a lot of other conversations about art and life that she and I have had lately.

How did you come up with the idea to put this together? Since we’ve been talking about the origins of ideas lately, I’m wondering if this book was your idea or my idea?
I don’t know. That’s the first question? Your idea.

How did you choose the six pieces, out of all the many films you’ve made?
Um, these are the ones that have the most, uh, writerly soundtracks.

Writerly?
I don’t know, not writerly. Wordy.

What is something you want the audience to know about the book/DVD?
I can’t answer that question.

It seems to me that separating the text underscores the fact that you are working in two different languages — English and then the visual language. Which comes first?
They come together. They are conceptually one unit, one impulse, one art gesture, one art offering.

But when you’re thinking about a piece, such as–
I think about the whole thing together.

There are a lot of great videos on Youtube. Not yours though. Is that old fashioned or what’s going on there?
Um, this is a mean interview. Are you trying to be mean to me? READ MORE >

Author Spotlight / 13 Comments
April 13th, 2011 / 10:53 am

Live Giants 7 Re-Do

This Saturday at 10am EASTERN we’re going to try a Re-Do of the Mairéad Byrne Live Giants Reading. Drink coffee. Present at the reading, all in the same Rhode Island house (so no speakerphone), will be Mairéad, Stephanie Barber (cover designer) and me (publisher). We’ll read from the book and discuss our roles as author, designer, publisher. RSVP on the Facebook event thing. And the new New Pages is out with a review of Mairéad’s book by Gina Myers.

Events / Comments Off on Live Giants 7 Re-Do
September 2nd, 2010 / 7:48 am

Film Comment Lists Films/Stephanie Barber

Film Comment has posted their “Avant-Garde Poll,” listing the best films and filmmakers of the last decade. Tied for #21 (I’m noting that the first 14 on the list of 50 are all men) is Stephanie Barber, whose book and DVD, these here separated to see how they standing alone or the soundtracks of six films by stephanie barber, will be available again from Publishing Genius in June.

That’s my favorite part of the list. There’s probably more to reflect upon. For instance, this Jim Trainor movie, which is fantastic:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZE_dBxM9IE&feature=related

Author Spotlight & Film / 2 Comments
May 6th, 2010 / 4:46 pm

This is such a blog post

I forgot that when I get really tired and I’m at work it’s good to write a long blog post that doesn’t make any sense and doesn’t really say anything. READ MORE >

Behind the Scenes / 52 Comments
January 7th, 2010 / 7:03 pm

Oh My Sod! Stephanie Barber’s Lawn Poem

Last week Stephanie Barber returned to Baltimore from The Poor Farm, an arts outpost in Waupaca, WI, where she spent more than sixty hours writing a four-line poem. How long do 4-liners take you? I can usually write a pretty good one in minutes. But Stephanie Barber worked on her four lines all day, every day for a week, taking no breaks. This is what she wrote:

Its hooves were mouse and fire
And it was angry and into counting
Also it was starstruck
Like a complicated Mexican companion cat

It’s nice — lovely, really — but what took so long? Well, whereas I write with a pen, Barber composed this poem with . . . READ MORE >

Author News / 17 Comments
August 19th, 2009 / 10:36 am