Lovely Daze is a collection of artists’ writings and artworks published twice a year in limited editions. The fourth issue explores the ways in which Numbers influence us as value systems such as time, distance, temperature, size, money, population, and religion.
There is an Arabian saying – Once you start counting, you can never stop. I say, spare me a moment where the clockmaker loses his fingers.
publisher/editor/designer ~ charwei tsai editors ~ kelly carmena, lesley ma, and sabrina shaffer contributors ~ vito acconci, cory arcangel, hisham bharoocha, james burke, crystal understanding, shilpa gupta, jennifer wen ma, yoko ono, cristina rodriguez, fiona ryan, max schumann, mika tajima, and joël tettamanti
cover ~ charwei tsai, étrangère,
2007 copyright ~ lovely daze, fall/winter 2007
CONTRIBUTORS
VITO ACCONCI is a Bronx-born, Brooklyn-based writer, artist, and architect. A poet of the New York School in the early and mid1960s, he moved toward performance, sound, and video work by the end of the decade. Positioning his own body as the simultaneous subject and object of the work, Acconci’s early video tapes took advantage of the medium’s self-reflexive potential in mediating his own and the viewer’s attention. Since the late ’70s, Acconci has designed architectural and installation works for public spaces.
www.acconci.com
CORY ARCANGEL is a computer artist whose work is concerned with technology’s relationship to culture and the creative process. He is also a founding member of BEIGE, a group of computer programmers and enthusiasts who recycle obsolete computers and video game systems to make art and music, and a member of RSG (Radical Software Group). Arcangel’s work has been exhibited at the American Museum of the Moving Image, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York.
www.beigerecords.com
HISHAM BHAROOCHA is an artist and musician born in Nidata, Japan and is currently based in New York. He graduated from RISD in 1998. His work has been exhibited at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2005, 2006); John Connelly Presents, New York (2006); De Vleeshal, Middelburg, Netherlands (2007), and Deste Foundation, Athens, Greece (2007). Hisham was part of the Providence based bands Lightning Bolt and Black Dice and currently formed a solo band, Soft Circle.
JAMES BURKE was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He received a degree in Conservation Biology from the College of Santa Fe. He is an amateur myrmecologist and an avid handball player. For the past two years he has been working on a project entitled The Fertile Hammock, a series of 48 drawings. Some of his most important influences include Don Hertzfeldt, Christian Marclay, and Jaromir Jagr. Between April and November 2007, James will be developing beekeeping programs in remote northern villages of Sierra Leone. He plans to spend his free time chasing the elusive tree pangolin and making drawings inspired by Dan Chaon’s short story called “Five Forgotten Instincts,” which he has read once a week for the past year.
KELLY CARMENA lives and works in New York City.
CRYSTAL UNDERSTANDING Hello! Crystal Understanding is a two-person band from Cambridge, Massachusetts. The four-song #4 for Lovely Daze is their fourth EP. Their first full-length album, Hold the Gem was released in May 2007.
www.crystalunderstanding.com
SHILPA GUPTA lives and works in Mumbai, India. She studied at Sir J.J. School of Art in Mumbai and since then has exhibited in international institutions such as Tate Modern, London, Liverpool Biennale; ZKM Center of Art and Media, Karlsruhe; Bose Pacia Gallery, New York. Upcoming exhibitions include the 2007 Lyon Biennale, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, and at Chicago Cultural Center. Gupta initiated the Aar Paar (a public art exchange project between India and Pakistan), as well as the Video Art Road Show (screenings of video art on streets in Mumbai and Delhi). She is also the recipient of the Transmediale 2004 Award in Berlin and the Leonardo Global Crossings Award in 2005.
www.flyinthe.net
JENNIFER WEN MA is currently looking for a web designer for her website. Please take a look at www.littlemeat.net and let her know if you or someone you know is interested in working on it.
LESLEY MA is thankful for the things she learned this summer: the stimulation of solitude, the sensation of figs, French (reprise), pesto, hummus, new friendships, simple pleasures, and generosity.
www.tastingsalon.com
YOKO ONO is an artist working and living in New York. She earned a degree in philosophy from Tokyo’s Gakushuin University and in music at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Ono has embraced a wide range of media, defying traditional boundaries and creating new forms of artistic expression including language works, such as instruction pieces and scores, film and video, music, and performance art. Her most recent albums include: Yes, I am a Witch, and Open Your Box.
CRISTINA RODRIGUEZ is a Colombian artist and designer recently relocated to Miami after spending two years in New York. She received a BFA in Industrial Design from the Rhode Island School of Design and Fashion Design at Parsons the New School for Design. She is currently focusing on developing her drawings.
www.crwork.net
FIONA RYAN is currently living in New York. She plans on making a lot of candy in the near future and hopes to find herself off the grid after that. She is excited by what she has found on the floor in foreign open-air markets and she was once paralyzed by a sea urchin. Few things frighten her more than the loss of survival and humor.
www.papabubble.com
SABRINA SHAFFER is overjoyed to be back in the city with friends, preparing for her initiation into The KDU, and eagerly awaiting Charwei’s return to New York.
www.otabo.com
www.christopherbevans.com
www.svsv.net
www.thekdu.com
MAX SCHUMANN is an art worker who lives and works in New York City. He has been working at Printed Matter since 1989 where he is Associate Director. Schumann is currently represented by Taxter and Spengemann.
MIKA TAJIMA was born in 1975 in Los Angeles, California, and currently lives and works in New York. Mika received her dual B.A. degree in Fine Art and East Asian Studies at Bryn Mawr College in 1997. She later attended Columbia University School of the Arts and received her MFA 2003. Since then she has been exhibiting widely at institutions such as Swiss Institute Contemporary Art (New York, NY), United Bamboo (Tokyo, Japan), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (Madrid, Spain), Rhode Island School of Design Museum (Providence, RI), Astrup Fearnley Museet (Oslo, Norway), PS1 Contemporary Art Center (LIC, NY), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, MN), among many others.
www.mikatajima.com
JOËL TETTAMANTI is a Swiss photographer, a traveler and an observer. He travels to places as far away and remote as Greenland and Lesotho or high up into the mountains. He is the one who sees, what others will only realize once his images appear on magazine pages or gallery walls.
www.tettamanti.ch
CHARWEI TSAI misses the East Village, her dear NYC friends and Colombian lindas. But all the traveling helps to tame the artist’s ego and brings new curiosities such as mushroom hunting and chicken slaughtering. Another humbling event is that due to her family’s lack of creativity, their one-year-old puppy’s name is still “Go-go,” which means “doggie” in Mandarin. She hopes not to forget how to ride the pink bike when she returns to strolling in Thompkin’s Square in the fall!
www.charwei.com
~ special thanks to grandma, mom, dad, sis, keisuke, godmother, lots of aunts&uncles&cousins. sabrina, lesley, kelly, grigoris, tina, sarah, ama, angelita, ana calle, cristina, maria, catalina, barbie, bebe, irene, ronnie+duke+jason+eugene+ryan+gang, fabrizio, yulin jie, jc, mingwei, su-mei, jean-lou, kelly ma, shilpa, aude, andy, yoko, vito, ned, studio, cory, joël, jason, chris liu, yonatan, alex, shunyi, nigel, adam, danny, leif, pat, nat, max, hisham, naoto, linda, vicson, rene, aa, max, julian, justin, rachel, james, fiona, cat, dunbar, aaron, sunny, crystal understanding, printed matter, mika + howie, dimitrios, bettina, victoria, jenn+richard, johanna, xin zhen, amy, ekovaruhuset, cai+studio, taipei lai lai sheraton, doggie, and of course, most of all, and again, all the lovely contributors!