V. \/ V
Personalities
Artist Tauba Auerbach, “Auerglass Organ” (2022)
That guy is a legend
"Call all the barmaids Beatrice and all the boys Benedick; I’m weary of staring in these mirrors of the human condition. What shall it profit a man if he gain his own soul but lose the world? Or, worse, what if you gain the world and lose only your car keys?"
"Why are the fairest always the saddest, with barmaids named Beatrix, or midgets in pubs?"
In the 2012 time travel movie "Looper," the main character Joe (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a convincing facial prosthetic) sacrifices himself to change the future. He aims to prevent his older self (Bruce Willis) from killing a child named Cid who is destined to become future villain with unique telekinetic powers— known as The Rainmaker. In the final scene, Cid is grazed by a bullet, but younger Joe’s shoots himself to make older Joe disappear from the timeline— offering the possibility of a different timeline and future outcome for the boy. 🎥
In 1893, Ingersoll Lockwood wrote “Baron Trump's Marvellous Underground Journey”, a tale about young Baron Trump's quest to find a "world within a world." Lockwood’s second book, published in 1896, was titled “1900, Or The Last President.” 🎥
Also in “Looper”, Young Joe/JGL carves a message into his own arm, which appears as a scar on the arm of his future self, Old Joe/Bruce. To communicate a meeting location across time, he carves the name "Beatrix," who was the waitress at a roadside café he often frequented. This choice of name is likely a reference to a line from Thomas Pynchon's book “V.”, which mentions "barmaids named Beatrix" as being the "fairest and saddest." 🎥
In Thomas Pynchon’s novel “Inherent Vice” (and Paul Thomas Anderson’s film adaptation), there’s a subplot involving the improbable collaboration between the Aryan Brotherhood (a white nationalist group) and the Black Guerrilla Family (BGF, a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary black power organization). These prison gangs, typically on polarized opposite sides of racial/ideological lines, find common ground within the labyrinthine and absurd conspiracy driving the novel’s plot, reflecting the surreal nature of 1960s counterculture where biker movies were an important trope about individual freedom.
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Fast forward to 2024, TikTok is lit up with videos of Hells Angels and Outlaws riding to Aurora, Colorado, to confront Venezuelan prison gangs that have taken over neighborhoods (stay tuned). Similar videos are surfacing of Chicago street gangs warning these same Venezuelans about moving into CHI under the same sanctuary city laws as Colorado. 🎥
One iconic 1960s biker movie about rival gangs forming an unholy alliance against a common threat is “The Glory Stompers” (1967). In this film, two rival biker gangs—the Glory Stompers, led by Chino, and the Black Souls, led by Darryl—start off at odds. But when law enforcement becomes the shared enemy (plot-twist, 2024 is the lawless opposite), the gangs grudgingly unite to face the larger threat.
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I always liked this one https://youtu.be/CnuRfPjYXc0?si=BkE_LbzreMEMi5D0
For those of you into "distant" history (2007 🤣), Van Neistat has been a long-time collaborator with artist Tom Sachs, often documenting Sachs' projects with a low-tech aesthetic and a meticulous approach to storytelling. Together, they've created numerous video pieces (filled with references to Stanley Kubrick).
I actually worked on the 2007 Tom Sachs Space Program exhibition with Van and Tom’s then studio manager artist Jeremy Shockley (now a well-known artist himself), where we built a full-scale replica of the Lunar Lander in the main gallery of Gagosian Gallery LA in the heart of Beverly Hills. It was a total cowboy operation with extremely long hours. I was even one of the actors in the film, so I can say I "helped fake a moon landing." 🤣 Buzz Aldrin attended the opening night dinner and was extremely surly and argumentative with Tom (which makes more sense years after).
I also once gave Tom Hanks and his son a tour of the sculpture during the exhibition (Hanks having starred in Apollo 13).
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Worked with Van on a Tom Sachs sculpture project in 2007. He’s a real one 🫡
The cover art for the Bitcoin Magazine “Privacy Issue” is loosely inspired by a famous book cover of Franz Kafka's “The Trial”— a novel about a man arrested without knowing his crime, oppressive bureaucracy, unchecked surveillance, and the erosion of autonomy. If you get the mag, I highly recommend Alex Fulton's mind-bending article, "Give Me Time."
Artist Mark Lombardi (1951-2000). His interlock drawings are detailed visual representations that map out complex networks of financial transactions, political connections, and power structures. In his work related to the Iran-Contra affair, Lombardi illustrated how shell companies and banks were used to covertly move money and facilitate arms sales, revealing the intricate web of relationships between government officials, private entities, and financial institutions involved in the scandal. His drawings highlight the secretive mechanisms and financial maneuvers that enabled illegal activities and the circumvention of oversight.
His “interlock” drawings, which resemble flowcharts or diagrams, are influenced by methods typically used in forensic accounting and legal professions to track connections and transactions, and has often been referred to as conceptual or “investigative art”.
Mark Lombardi died on March 22, 2000, at the age of 48 (weeks before his first major museum exhibition and six months before 9/11). He was found hanging from a beam in his studio in Brooklyn, NY, and his death was officially ruled a suicide. However, due to the nature of his work—which involved exposing connections between powerful figures, corporations, and illicit activities— there has long been speculation that he was murdered. His drawings were studio by the FBI after 9/11 and several thousand of his index cards used to document is research were confiscated. Much of his archive is now held by New York museums, including MoMA and the Whitney.
https://www.moma.org/artists/22980
By chance, I happened to see his first museum inclusion at the "Greater New York" show at PS1 in 2000 while visiting NY. At the time, I was unfamiliar with his career or that he had just died. Later, one of his large drawings was included in a 2014 exhibition at a gallery where I worked in LA. The book “Global Networks” about his artwork, is a rare find, and remarkable.
Artist Mark Lombardi (1951-2000). His interlock drawings are detailed visual representations that map out complex networks of financial transactions, political connections, and power structures. In his work related to the Iran-Contra affair, Lombardi illustrated how shell companies and banks were used to covertly move money and facilitate arms sales, revealing the intricate web of relationships between government officials, private entities, and financial institutions involved in the scandal. His drawings highlight the secretive mechanisms and financial maneuvers that enabled illegal activities and the circumvention of oversight.
His “interlock” drawings, which resemble flowcharts or diagrams, are influenced by methods typically used in forensic accounting and legal professions to track connections and transactions, and has often been referred to as conceptual or “investigative art”.
Mark Lombardi died on March 22, 2000, at the age of 48 (weeks before his first major museum exhibition and six months before 9/11). He was found hanging from a beam in his studio in Brooklyn, NY, and his death was officially ruled a suicide. However, due to the nature of his work—which involved exposing connections between powerful figures, corporations, and illicit activities— there has long been speculation that he was murdered. His drawings were studio by the FBI after 9/11 and several thousand of his index cards used to document is research were confiscated. Much of his archive is now held by New York museums, including MoMA and the Whitney.
https://www.moma.org/artists/22980
Vietnam helmet graffiti (‘68-69)
nostr:npub13a9prrjj2u730svh79rqhedpd6u5ydstdla8gv2mlnkna7tz4pgsyzf2f7 nostr:npub1nw5vdz8sj89y3h3tp7dunx8rhsm2qzfpf8ujq9m8mfvjsjth0uwqs9n2gn dis you?!
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For me it the nostr:npub1r0jhefpy79xfgw9apnqv4p7eu0zq2g4eq4s7hytxw6uvrqv4rk6spm69ek alts shot 🤣