Teh Sexist

I cannot remember the last time I read fiction written by a woman. The last novels I bought were by Witold Gombrowicz: Pornografia, Kosmos, and Trans-Atlantyk, as well as another copy of Ferdydurke to replace the one I loaned out. Polish mid-century adolescence-obsessed Modernism is very much boy
lit and has made me aware that I need to pick up some contemporary women authors: any pics? Don't say JCO—I'm not a fan.

West Coasting

Flying out to San Francisco, my first trip there (!), to speak on a panel with Stanford Proust scholar Joshua Landy and Molly Springfield about Springfield's Translation project. That work opens at Steven Wolf Fine Arts on Friday. Kenneth Baker wrote a preview for the show here, and Springfield herself prefaced the project in the pages of NY Arts in December 2007.

I'll also write up a few other things and eat about 400 tacos with Tanner and Matty. Back soon.

2009 Sondheim Prize Semi-Finalists

A little bird sent along the names of the semi-finalists for the $25,000 Sondheim Prize:

Seth Adelsberger, Baltimore, MD

Alzaruba, Baltimore, MD

BDC (Baltimore Development Cooperative), Baltimore, MD

Lisa Blas, Washington, DC

Rachel Bone, Baltimore, MD

Jessica Braiterman, Beltsville, MD

Travis Childers, Fairfax, VA

Mary Coble, Washington, DC

R.L. Croft, Manassas, VA

Alyssa Dennis, Baltimore, MD

Liz Ensz, Baltimore, MD

Leslie Furlong, Baltimore, MD

Ryan Hackett, Kensington, MD

Christian Herr, Lancaster, PA

Jason Horowitz, Arlington, VA

Jessie Lehson, Baltimore, MD

Kim Manfredi, Baltimore, MD

Katherine Mann, Baltimore, MD

Baby Martinez, Washington, DC

Sebastian Martorana, Baltimore, MD

Lisa Moren, Baltimore, MD

Ellen Nielsen, Baltimore, MD

Louie Palu, Washington, DC

Molly Springfield, Washington, DC

TwoCan Collective, Baltimore, MD

Karen Yasinsky, Baltimore, MD

A Complaint Department for some

Here is that piece arguing for a Department of Culture that I mentioned. I outlined this case to Julian Sanchez last week at the Velvet Lounge and he scoffed mightily. (But of course he would.) Maybe you will find something to it.

Fire in RMB City

As you might have read, fireworks set off by employees of Chinese state broadcaster CCTV destroyed sparked a fire that destroyed the adjacent, Rem Koolhaas–designed Mandarin Oriental Hotel. Hotel statement here, report here.

Following the fire, Chinese authorities decreed that no photos or video of the fire be posted to the Internet. A decree that people pretty plainly ignored. There are even kind-of terrible macros that use the fire.

Doesn't the official versus the popular response mirror the distance between the destroyed building (hyperstylized contemporary Western architecture) and the fire's cause (traditional holiday Chinese fireworks display)? There is a play between modern and antiquated in both fire and response that to my mind captures the state of China today. That subtext was the subject of a piece by Cai Fei that I liked when I saw it in Dallas.

Cao Fei, RMB City, 2007.

With sincere regrets to the family of the firefighter who died in the blaze; a minor aesthetic observation in the face of a tragedy is only that, and not the point to take away.

Department of Culture/The Okie-From-Muskogee Stimulus Amendment

Ed Ruscha, Public Stoning, 2007.

In the Guardian this week I'll be outlining my case for a U.S. Department of Culture, focusing on putting the purse for public arts funding in a place where conservatives can't get to it. You'd be much more likely to see Congress pass a cultural jobs bill, for example, if you had significant input on the the stimulative aspects of cultural spending from the Cabinet.

You might also find Sen. Tom Coburn, for example, less able to pass an amendment saying that stimulus funds should not go to any casino or "casino or other gambling establishment, aquarium, zoo, golf course, swimming pool, stadium, community park, museum, theater, art center, and highway beautification project." You see the trick: His amendment tacks a poison pill (gambling) onto positive targets for stimulus funds that bear no relation to casinos.

(How positive? Quite positive, says Ben Adler: "Every year nonprofit arts organizations generate $166.2 billion in economic activity, support 5.7 million jobs, and send almost $30 billion back to government.")

Of course, you might also find Sen. Coburn less able to pass such an amendment if Congress understood how infrastructure spending works. Stimulus spending was hardly going to fund casinos in the first place. Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman had suggested the possibility of using stimulus funds to build a $50 million museum on mobs and gangsters—which set off conservatives, although I don't understand why. Coburn conflates this suggestion—nevermind that mob-museum funds were never written into the stimulus bill—with funding a casino.

A representative in the office of Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) explained over the telephone that upstate New York state tribes, for example, would like to use stimulus funds to build a new casino. But because the stimulus bill is an appropriations bill, it can't authorize a casino, which requires approval from the Department of the Interior. In theory infrastructure spending might be used, say, to retrofit a casino—but in that case it is a different kind of infrastructure spending, isn't it?

And that is the sort of work that a Department of Culture could help: working, say, with the U.S. Green Building Council to advise the Department of Energy. Further I would like to know which of the notorious projects on Sen. Coburn's list—"aquarium, zoo, golf course, swimming pool, stadium, community park, museum, theater, art center, and highway beautification project"—represents the best option in terms of (economic and cultural) stimulation.

Now, I suspect that this zero-gravity chair to which Sen. Coburn darkly alludes is some kind of nefarious imported Finnish construct. Again, you'd want to see a Department of Culture collaborating with the Department of Defense to stop this menace.