Over breakfast I mentioned these two news items today, and James suggested the connection.

Jack Levine, Welcome Home, 1946, via his obituary in the New York Times

It shows an armchair general being honored at an expensive restaurant, a wad of food in one cheek. On his right sits a bored socialite. Two decrepit businessmen in tuxedos make up the rest of the party. The central figure, Mr. Levine said, was “the big slob who is vice president of the Second National Bank and the president of the Chamber of Commerce, only now he’s been in the Army.”

When “Welcome Home” was included in an exhibition of American culture in Moscow in 1959, the chairman of the House Committee on Un-American Activities mounted a campaign to have it removed. President Dwight D. Eisenhower said, “It looks more like a lampoon than art, as far as I am concerned,” but refused to intervene.

The uproar made Mr. Levine a star. He later told an interviewer, “You get denounced by the president of the United States, you’ve hit the top.”

Fired Afghanistan Commander Named to JetBlue Board

Retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was fired by President Barack Obama after making insulting comments about top administration officials, was named Tuesday to the JetBlue Airways Corp. board of directors.

Bohemias. Alternative subcultures. They were a crucial aspect of industrial civilization in the previous two centuries. They were where industrial civilization went to dream. A sort of unconscious R&D, exploring alternate societal strategies. Each one would have a dress code, characteristic forms of artistic expression, a substance or substances of choice, and a set of sexual values at odds with those of the culture at large. And they did, frequently, have locales with which they became associated. But they became extinct.

…

We started picking them before they could ripen. A certain crucial growing period was lost, as marketing evolved and the mechanisms of recommodification became quicker, more rapacious. Authentic subcultures required backwaters, and time, and there are no more backwaters.

— from All Tomorrow’s Parties, 1999

James and I went to the Irish Hunger Memorial today to see an excerpt of The Voyage of Garbhglas by Christopher Williams courtesy of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

The video above is a short segment of the 30-minute performance. I’ve also added one photo, and you can see more in my flickr set.

Never miss a chance to see this choreographer’s work. His 3-hour work The Golden Legend at Dance Theater Workshop was funny, moving, and brilliant.

Details:

Irish Hunger Memorial in Battery Park City, 290 Vesey Street at North End Avenue

Monday, August 2, 2010, 12:30–1PM
Tuesday, August 3, 2010, 12:30–1PM
Wednesday, August 4, 2010, 12:30–1PM
Thursday, August 5, 2010, 12:30–1PM

Our friend Susan C. Dessel recently finished a residency at the ACSL (Art and Culture Studies Laboratory) in Yerevan, Armenia. While there she spotted this arch which made her think of our site ArtCat. Visit her blog for her adventures in Armenia.

There will be a great opportunity to get some book bargains and benefit New Alternatives for LGBT Homeless Youth, a group I heartily endorse. It was founded by activist Kate Barnhart, whom James and I met long ago via ACT UP when she was a teenage activist.

Huge Book Sale on July 10
At LGBT Community Center on West 13th Street
Will Benefit Homeless LGBT Youth

“Buy a book, save a young life” fundraiser
Offers ten thousand new volumes on sale
For $10 per shopping bag

NEW YORK, NY, June 28, 2010 – A huge sale of more than ten thousand new and used books will take place in the West Village on July 10, with the proceeds going to charity. The event, called “Buy a Book, Save a Young Life,” will take place on Saturday, July 10 from Noon-6pm at the LGBT Community Center on 13th Street.

The books on sale encompass every subject and genre, including children’s, art, classic and modern literature, as well as collectables and rarities. These books were donated by veteran bookseller Robert Warren, who recently closed his landmark New York bookstore, Skyline Books. Admission is free to this event, and people can fill a shopping bag full of books and pay $10 per bag.

All proceeds of the “Buy a Book, Save a Young Life” sale will benefit New Alternatives, the East Village program based at Middle Collegiate Church. New Alternatives provides desperately needed services to LGBT homeless youth, including hot meals, emergency housing referrals, case management, and life skills training.

There will be a special pre-sale on July 10 for dealers and collectors. For an admission fee of $25 (also going to New Alternatives), shoppers can get a jump on the crowd from 11am-Noon. Admission includes one free bag of books. Additional bags of books will be $25 each.

For hardcore bargain hunters, from 5pm to the 6pm closing, the price plummets to $1 per bag of books.

To match New Alternatives goals of promoting HIV awareness and safer-sex education, each bag of books comes with free condoms, and New Alternatives promises a fun festive atmosphere. In addition to great book bargains the event will include performances from queer and queer-friendly acts such as Circus Amok, Rude Mechanical Orchestra, and The Church Ladies for Choice. Expect music, stilt walking, juggling and a good vibe to abound.

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From Speed Bump by Dave Coverly. Thanks to Greg Allen, Tyler Green and Edward Winkleman for the heads up.

For a bit, you could see my name on Google News in the Sci/Tech section with a link to the article.

New Yorker Barry Hoggard draws a line in the sand when it comes to online privacy. In May he said farewell to 1251 Facebook friends by deleting his account of four years to protest what he calls the social network’s eroding privacy policies.

“I’m sick of keeping track of my Facebook privacy settings and what boxes I have to check to protect myself,” says Hoggard, a computer programmer. “I don’t have a lot of illusions about online privacy, but Facebook has gone too far,” he says of Facebook’s recent privacy policy changes.

I wanted to be described as programmer/entrepreneur. I need a PR team. I’m hoping more articles appear, as I was also interviewed by a Washington Post reporter after writing about canceling my Facebook account on May 7. It has now been two weeks, so I assume my profile is safely gone.

James and I went by Momenta Art yesterday to preview the raffle and auction artworks available, and there are some great pieces available this year. I’ve put up images from their site of a few of the over 150 raffle artworks. It’s one of our favorite organizations in the New York area, and we have some lovely pieces in our collection from their benefits.

Things kick off with a performance by Guy Richard Smit. Tickets are only $225. Please join me and James next Wednesday!

Did you catch the (textual) Allen Ginsberg reference near the beginning?

James and I re-watched the DVD for this tonight. Visit the composer’s site for a synopsis. We both consider him one of the great geniuses of 20th century music, and think he should be much more famous.

Delete Billboard for the 2009 New York Street Advertising Takeover by Ji Lee, image via his website

I don’t have a lot of illusions about privacy when using social media such as Flickr or Twitter, but there is a difference when a company like Facebook behaves in a really sleazy fashion.

I work on websites every day, including my own such as the art calendar ArtCat. I did not start out with one privacy policy for the calendar, and then gradually claim the right to use more and more information submitted to us. For example, I could offer a list of contemporary art galleries for sale to advertisers or artists looking for representation, but that would be wrong because it’s not what the galleries expected when they gave information to us. However, given the changes in Facebook’s privacy policy since 2005, they would consider this perfectly reasonable behavior.

In addition, with recent changes to their development platform, Facebook applications have more and more access to your private data, including applications you have not chosen to install, but your friends have. Want to share information only with friends? You’re sharing it with applications that your friends use.

And how about those neat new sharing tools introduced by Facebook? Until they corrected a bug, visiting sites that are using Open Graph allowed them to install an application to your profile without asking you. Given their privacy track record, including the recent exposure of private chats, I wouldn’t trust them to fix those holes quickly. “Instant personalization” indeed.

Related:

• The Rumpus: Conversations About the Internet #5: Anonymous Facebook Employee
• rocket.ly: Why You Should Still Quit Facebook
• ReadWriteWeb: How to Delete Facebook Applications
• Electronic Frontier Foundation: Six Things You Need to Know About Facebook Connections
• groovyPost: How to Permanently Delete your Facebook Account