let’s get awesome

There’s so much to write about. Traveling to the midwest. Visiting the Miss Rockaway Armada. Playing a square dance upstate with folks from the Germantown Community Farm…but I’m sleepy and busy learning Spanish, sewing, mulling over the decision to move to Troy, NY for the next two years, and thinking about doors. Yes. Doors.

Yesterday after a nice afternoon with some friends, the light in my neighborhood was as it usually is around 6pm in the summertime: golden, shimmery, and kind of magical really. As I’m feeling particularly attached to Red Hook right now– partly because it seems like the sale of our block (to someone other than us) is imminent and partly because I may be here rather infrequently if I move to Troy– it seemed like a nice thing to ride around and take some pictures.

I took some photos of the lovely Ikea construction site. Some weeds. Some nice old buildings. And then I saw this door. The one up above. Then I thought that I should take photos of ALL the doors in my neighborhood, block by block. I don’t know how far I’ll get with it, but there’s something about the doors– beautiful ivy covered, rusty chained abandoned doors; newly constructed gawdy condo doors; and old beaten doors that still get a lot of use from the same people who’ve been using them for decades– that says a lot about the changing character of the neighborhood.

Here’s the first batch covering the two block stretch of Van Dyke Street between Otsego and Richards (it’s missing 2 doors right now…soon to come). CLICK.

Realizing the Impossible: Art Against Authority Book Tour & Multi-media Event!

Just published on AK Press, Art Against Authority (edited by Josh MacPhee & Erik Reuland) is 300 plus page collection of writing and images investigating the instersections of art and anarchism.

The authors will discuss the book and present documentation of creative art actions from around the world.

Dark Dark Dark will play their music to melt your longing heart.

Dara Greenwald will make you laugh and cry with her revolving and evolving collection of short videos.

Who we are:

Josh MacPhee is an artist, curator and activist whose work often revolves around themes of radical politics, privatization and public space. His first book was Stencil Pirates: A Global Survey of the Street Stencil (Soft Skull Press, 2004). He also organizes the Celebrate People’s History Poster Series and is part of Justseeds Visual Resistance Radical Art Cooperative.

Erik Reuland (AKA Erik Ruin) is a Minneapolis-based, Michigan-raised puppeteer, printmaker, and erratic editor of Trouble In Mind, a zine about the intersection of art, everyday life, and radical politics. He works/has worked with several art collectives, including UpsidedownCulture, Street Art Workers, Prison Poster Project, Barebones Productions, and Justseeds.

Dark Dark Dark is a group of musicians informed by the mountains, plains, seas, and cities in a tradition of exiled wanderers. City Pages of Minneapolis calls it “a gently spooky American folk with eastern European exoticism.”

Dara Greenwald makes short videos that capture the interesting and strange sides of life, subculture, and the bizarre inner workings of her brain. New site coming soon.

Tour Schedule: