brooklyn – IT IN Place

Ellis Makes the Unseen Personal, Public

alex — Tue, 11 Nov 2014 16:53:34 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

From a month of Thursdays and burthsday and 9111

Filter Feeder

alex — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 13:19:13 +0000

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Been managing so much info from the gopro and sony that is very difficult to color compress without making duplicate files and filling up my strainting hard drive…. so long story short, I thought I’d try some of Vimeo’s new “instagramstyle” filters for video. THere are a lot of options and I am lazy, but I like the saturation and contrast on this filter. What say you, dear reader?

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Scholar Athlete

alex — Sun, 09 Mar 2014 16:27:10 +0000

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Running around brooklyn shooting things and sitting around brooklyn watching things

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Remember of the Wedding

alex — Mon, 30 Dec 2013 17:10:04 +0000

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A good wedding is a good time for all. Thanks A and M

Leaving

alex — Thu, 07 Nov 2013 19:00:22 +0000

Free Botanic Garden Tuesday happened also to be great weather and peak leaves in the park day. I’m glad I caught the fireworks before it all fades to a steel grey winter.

Taxi BQE

alex — Mon, 21 Oct 2013 15:24:29 +0000

I was coming home in the taxi when I called you and you were already home and getting ready for bed and so I hung up and asked the cab driver where he was from originally and he said, “Egypt” and so we spoke of pyramids, and the Old Testament, and Islam, and Israel and Palestine and terrorism and when we’d exhausted all that we spoke of dogs. He said his pit bull was having a bad allergic reaction to something in the Autumn air, or ground. His skin was all inflamed and the dog took to licking its paws to try and stop the itch. The dog’s paws were now a bloody mess and he’d scratched his belly raw in great spasms of back leg sharp claw digging. They had to put the dog’s head in a huge plastic cone.

“Space Dog,” I said

“Yes, like a space dog, exactly.”

It was nice to agree on something and we whisked through the Brooklyn night home to where I pet the dogs and checked their paws just to be on the safe side.

Your Reflection

alex — Sun, 05 May 2013 00:24:40 +0000

Last night at Frost…. everyone I could get at Zebediah Keneally’s show

Without Memory

alex — Fri, 03 May 2013 06:19:13 +0000

Brooklyn rising up in ocean purple fiction, crossing detail.
The Waitress smiling, hopping, hoping sangria slice.
Step branching around when spoken needles speak cannibal –
Entranced by Princess and a pea.
Flocking scribbles running wishbone assembly.
Light Hanging on drop gas.
Steeple steeple shinning, houses ghost story.
Brick and maple divinity lost glasses.
Signs, paintings, trophies spinning softly tulips.
Tiger running out minimal mash up detour.
Orange star dragon mountains –
Refined big bananas bloom pink fur phone reflection.
Wash hair enclosed chess horse zebra.
Zuzu’s Petals, missing lock sprung cat.
Stuffed school sport trees willing into existence perfect living guns and butter –
Reminds distressed turkey turning bananas.
Inflates power lit large.
Piped pitched paper bag lion remembers saying nothing and hoops the fix.
Spiral seeking one thousand parapets.
Ulysees granted sirens.
Bather hunted haunted rising setting rising out of piled out blue.
Held onto patiently – meeting wiggers becoming without memory

ALoan

alex — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 01:55:55 +0000

rough and raw footage…. thought of doing a street live read poem. Magical thinking, mixed with realistic practice.

Easter Monday

alex — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 02:33:08 +0000

Just the stuff left on the flip from the long winter of working on the Chain video for Donald Johnson. Will puplish that soon.

REDad

alex — Sat, 22 May 2010 00:41:27 +0000

Ashen

alex — Thu, 20 May 2010 03:38:58 +0000

some more cards

Chuck

alex — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 02:00:49 +0000

Thoughts on street art and thoughts on my street, etc. from right before I left for Cali.

Cooking Without Women

alex — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:53:24 +0000

My buddy Tom thought he should have a cooking show. I thought I should have dinner. So we traded.

A Frosty Wind

alex — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 07:43:32 +0000

Well 17 Frost Street has been earning it’s frigid name this week and while it would have been nice to stay curled up in bed, we opened the mics for the New Year and we will keep on doing it. Come by any Sunday after seven and sing, dance, recite, joke, draw, and giggle. I’ll be your M.C. and this fellow, Dave Scarborough will be the man on the sound and vision. We record every set and promise to post to Vimeo so you can download the big file. This is just me playing with my Flip HD… not the master shot.

Pot Luck

alex — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:38:27 +0000

Press the photo to see the play list for Sunday’s Pot Luck Open Mic. It was our biggest turn out and this time people brought food and drinks (a behavior I really want to encourage people!). Lot’s of old friends and new friends and many perfect strangers. I painted one singer, Carly Howard with ink on piece of scrap sheet rock while other people created a slew of drawings. I hung some on the wall.

Under CountryStruction

alex — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:27:15 +0000

We were Under Countrystruction for yesterday’s Open Mike. We honored Joe T. by using Posterboy’s cartoon of him from last week as the poster for this weeks event. We also let him open the show. It was a great evening again peppered by unknown talents coming out of the vapor to steal the stage. I drew a few of Joe T. myself… and everyone else too.

Close Curtain and Scene

alex — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:34:32 +0000

Cryptic Open Stage turned into a beautiful night. Video to come. Dave and Natalie Fell asleep in eachother’s arms and dreamed of Cuba by way of Alejandro’s cigar boxes and a groovy gold couch.

Crying a Lot 49 Open Mic (Cryptic)

alex — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 20:49:22 +0000

Sunday
17 Frost Street 11211
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
7pm-9pm Music, Poetry, Short Films
All sets under 15 minutes,
Bring films on DVD
info@17frost.com
718-551-4771

Clouds

alex — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 18:53:51 +0000

A Rainbow over Brooklyn

The Man Who Fell To Earth

alex — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 14:49:49 +0000

A storm system roared across Manhattan and left a strange Pernod colored sky in its wake. I ran home to try and catch the sunset. It was one of those sort of Spielberg skies where you think maybe the saucers will emerge and land on Flatbush Ave.

Trouble in Purgatory

alex — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 20:50:35 +0000

Well I’m back on the couch and or pulling vampire all nighters at the studio. This year is like last year and like the decade before that. They say the definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior and expecting different results… Guess I know some crazy people… but joy joy the cog has arisen Christ/Phoenix-like from the blood and ashes. Viva La Cog!

Shabbos

alex — Sun, 31 May 2009 13:58:11 +0000

The weekend so far. Friday through Sunday early morning and on Sunday I rest (probably not).

Memorial Daze

alex — Wed, 27 May 2009 23:26:20 +0000

Back to work after a blaze of strange daze. Glad to be back at the grind stone, but here’s some memories and memorials to the strains of The Kinks, “Days”.

Sakura Matsuri

alex — Sun, 03 May 2009 17:13:53 +0000

Well the rain put an quick mono no aware ending to the cherry blossoms out front. Now there is pink carpeting all up the street. At least I got this one snap and then Sunday I went in the rain and mud to the festival at BBG. It’s sadder in the rain and I think that makes it more Beautiful and more Japanese.

Bitter Sweet

alex — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 20:27:08 +0000

Played this mashup edit along with the original movie last night at Frost. I may play some more with it some more but right now is a sort of fluxus collage.

Bridgeart

alex — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 16:21:36 +0000

I don’t know who’s work this is, but I’ve seen it on the B.Burgh Bridge for a couple of years and it also shows up on sidewalks of Billyburgh too. I just love it.

Fine Art

alex — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 08:31:54 +0000

Saw an old man posing in a second story window facing out on Flatbush Avenue. He reminded me of a naked Walt Whitman. Set up my small painting studio at frost and on my wander over bridges to shoot Manhattan, I saw this bit of street art which made me drop my pack and pull out the still camera. I think its on Kent by the water in Williamsburgh.

Back Seat Back Light

alex — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 20:15:35 +0000

Driving back from Jersey Around Midnight.

Neo Con Opening

alex — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 22:28:09 +0000

Some documentation of the Neo Con show at 17 Frost Street. We went to the opening last night and later had sushi where I drew on a napkin and had a delicious meal. Press the image to see it bigger

West Gorgeous

alex — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 12:37:20 +0000

First day off and what a day it was folks. I went off with my rabbi to walk in snow flurries through Greenwood Cemetery and find tacos in Sunset Park. From there to the gym and back to the machine to download new audio mixes and then Chelsea to see one show by a College friend, one show by an Allan Stone Gallery friend, and one show by a Cousin… and for once I loved them all and mostly Leon Kossof who I know not and am related to not, but he feels like blood, or at least oil.
So the Posterboy, Aakash Nihalani, Ellis Gallagher opening is tonight at 17 Frost Street Space. You should come… or drop by some time.

Last Bite Reminder

alex — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:20:33 +0000

Last Bite
Closing party for Alex Itin: FROST BITE
Friday March 13th
17 Frost Street
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
(between Union and Lorimer)
Featuring performances by:
The Royal Wylds, Afro Mantra, and Sineparade

7:00- 10:30 p.m.

Brooklyn Warming

alex — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 13:28:20 +0000

I came upon this little landscape while walking under the BQE during the recent blizzard. I suppose the salt on the higway melted the snow and it dripped down and refroze here. It reminded me of the Alps and now reminds me of last week when it snowed in this week where it is spring-like warm.

Take This Waltz

alex — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 18:20:03 +0000

I attempted to flatten some of the creases and folds in an old canvas I grabbed out of storage. The best I could come up with was to soak the whole thing from the back and try to soften the aging acrylic paints. I danced a bit of a jig on it to help the process along and what’s funny is that you end up meeting a lot of people when you are canvas dancing on the sidewalk. They come by with their dogs. I met lots of neighbors and strangers and this is what I’ve learned: People tend to talk about their dogs more than themselves. One guy didn’t have his dog with him so he showed me photos on his cell phone. I didn’t tell them, but they just kept reminding me of my own dog and so I danced to her end if not the end of love.

Wyld Bites

alex — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 14:43:32 +0000

In what feels like a flow of collaborative energy, I spent yesterday editing some footage shot by Dave Scarborough from my opening party of The Royal Wylds playing 17 Frost Street. I quite enjoy how the talking head sometimes seems to synch with Will Croxton’s vocals. A great software program would be to take the thousand head man and build a audio sensitive logarithm that could fit the face to certain key vowel and consonant sounds in speech so that the head would be like a giant Wizard of Oz and would synch up behind the singer, or comic, or performer, or whatever. Oh if I knew anything about computers I’d do it. But even in this ambient accidental method, it’s a pretty funny trick. Later that afternoon I played with some of Akaash’s tapes on the floor: letting them and the tiles dictate some abstract gestures, etc. I’m hoping he’ll swing by and work into it. Ironing out details on the closing party. More on that later.

The Addictions

alex — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 17:09:40 +0000

So I’m back. The better half is back and sleeping has become less an act of rolling around in lonesome sheets till sunrise and more like, you know, sleeping. The screening is done and I was happy with the narrative arc of the pieces together as a group. I feel like I’ve been composing about a half hour stream of consciousness narrative over the last two, or three years in video. I have composed it all out of sequence and semi unconsciously and every time I do a screening (which is more and more frequent) I try to take the opportunity to chip away the extraneous bits and get to the core themes and images. I get closer and my present feeling is that I will have to overlap and edit the present sequence into a more coherent and shorter whole… Or Mash it up into a two channel diptych which worked beautifully at Monkeytown several months ago. Speaking of Mash ups, My favorite part of the weekend was hearing David Scarborough play some of his songs. He has appeared in cameo on several of the Frost Vlog videos helping me hang the big paintings, etc. I knew he sang, but it’s always nice when someone exceeds your expectations. At some point I did some timelapses of him playing (and his wife watching the whole set, sitting at his feet in what has to be the most romantic tableau I’ve seen in months). After we got the video equipment set up on Saturday night and after we’d had a few beers, I shot a video of him on my little flip cam singing in front of my animations. It was strange how the song and the pictures seemed to collide in happy tragedies.

Over ThinKing

alex — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 15:54:52 +0000

I’m trying not to do that, but I am trying to simplify what’s on the wall at Frost Street and what I’ll be showing for the screening. It is exhibition as subtractive process… throw it all on the wall and then figure out what you don’t need.

Ha Ha Facade You Are

alex — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 00:10:01 +0000

Went walking around Chelsea Galleries yesterday. A very poor day for art. Some nice late Louise Nevelson’s at Pace and an interesting show on Manzoni at Gagosian. They included a great deal of pieces by Manzoni’s contemporaries as a way of contextualizing his career. However, most everyone else came off better than the show’s subject. The show is worth a look and there is a lot of great work there, but mostly it’s not by Manzoni (though there were a few pieces of his that I liked quite a bit). Not much else worth mentioning.

Flutter of Spring

alex — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:31:29 +0000

It was impossibly warm yesterday and I ran to the studio and all of Brooklyn was alive and thrumming and I finally spotted the pigeon coop that houses the birds I’ve been noticing for a couple of years spiraling over Williamsburg. Up on the roof there was the exact guy you would want tending the pigeons, which is to say he looked like a retired boxer. His big mug peered over the roof looking at the traffic and the guys drinking beer at the bodega and I gave a him a wave way up there and he waved back.

Aakash Nihalani: Available Space

alex — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 20:00:36 +0000

I went Aakash Nihalani’s opening on Atlantic Ave. Saturday. He got hired by the real estate company to install some work in an otherwise empty piece of new retail space. This month I am beginning to see the economy and it looks like an ugly paper Space Available sign taped to an empty store window. Of course when you have nothing, you’ve go nothing to loose and so it is important for artists to see this as an opportunity not just a precipitous drop in the art market (which was all but ignoring me anyways). A depressed city/country/world might make an excellently vast museum. The void should be filled with creativity. I like the little baby in the cube as it speaks to my Kubrick Space Odyssey obsession and what is a child, but a sort of empty vessel ready to be filled with life and knowledge and culture, etc.

Humpty Dumpty

alex — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:19:34 +0000

Fridge Doors going up to form The Endless Last Supper… two left to finish in the puzzle… Something like Stone Hendge and I hung a large crowd and lost my balance on the irregular floor and had a great fall. It was like something out of a silent movie, or a cartoon. It felt like I hung in the air for a minute… disbelieving in gravity. Video Coming

Frost Bite That Chicken

alex — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 05:03:19 +0000

Here is the updates from Friday’s Frost Space time lapses mixed with a Mingus song by way of Dylan’s old satellite radio show. Eat that chicken yes! Also some motion graphics made by a student of Golan Levin. The Eater is eating all sorts of heads I made over the years that they got off Flickr. I find this one thematically appropriate to the the first course of Frost Street… Food from the fridge… or whatever it is: Revenge Served Cold? Also a dead white pigeon I saw under the BQE on the way to the studio. Looked like an angel, or a Nationalist Seal….

Music Between Galleries

alex — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 15:41:23 +0000

Music Between Galleries. from Alex Itin on Vimeo.
A remix of yesterday’s post… this focusing on live music I caught while running around to lots of art last week. The original video description: Ran around to see lots of art this week… Manhattan on Thursday, Bushwick on Saturday, Bburgh on Sunday, but I tried to take a second to smell the music. The piano is from a screening at Bushnik space, where someone installed a sodium vapor lamp that takes a few minutes to warm up and then blinds the room. They showed a couple of my vids and a bunch of other great stuff. The guitarist I saw at the Metropolitan stop. And here is the sort of Mystery Science version of Eat A Bug and me at Coney.

Visiting

alex — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 20:53:00 +0000

While the blog was down, Justin Ho visited from Minnesota and I showed him around New York on a couple of long photo Safaris. Here are a couple of vids we made together. Two years ago we collaborated at a distance on this short film:

die Alpen Lumen from eat a bug on Vimeo.

When I Paint Over My Masterpiece

alex — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 23:29:54 +0000

Took down the Reading Room show on Tuesday. It was the end of something and I carried the whole show in two hands like a Salesman with Samples and got home to see the beginning of something else. Death of a Salesman, Birth of a Nation, etc.

Ghosts

alex — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 16:05:22 +0000

There was supposed to be a closing party for reading room last night, but turn out was slim and I got stuck in the beauty that is Park Slope on Halloween. It’s the one Holiday we can all agree on. God bless the dead, etc. We went as an unfinished painting.

Closing

alex — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 17:59:12 +0000

Just a reminder about tomorrow’s closing party. I’ll probably give out candy to the kids and then run over there at sunset.

The End is Nigh

alex — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:13:30 +0000

This is the last week of my show “Reading Room” at USSA. You can make an appointment and visit all week, or we’ll be having a closing party Friday, Oct. 31st: Halloween, from 6-9… Stop by before haunting the rest of the night.

Here’s a little time lapse and some stills from last friday when some friends stopped by for a visit. Sound track is the Rev. Al Green talking and rehearsing. I made this post on a sunday… and for me…Al Green is a church I can get along with.

Walking Home

alex — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 17:33:47 +0000

Went on a epic walk home from 34th street. The whole city lit up electric as the sun set and CMJ is in town so all down Bowery I saw the guitar carrying hipsters and rock and roll chicks with leather and lipstick and cigarettes dangling on line to get into this or that party and hear these and those bands. None of that could be as good as the view from the bridge. Glorious.

Other Green Worlds

alex — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:04:16 +0000

When I came back from Paris in 1998, I brought with me a stack of drawings and paintings and two gifts for Sylvie; an antique green glass fishing net float and and an antique green boule ball. I told her they were new green worlds, but of course they were also a joke about potency and my balls. She said to me, “You go to Paris and bring me back green balls? Why couldn’t you have gotten me a hand bag?” It’s just like a woman. You offer her a metaphor for your manhood and she demands a metaphor for the womb. You can’t win. But it’s fall again and the Osage oranges are falling in the park. I saw them yesterday on a long run, but everything had been smashed by a mower, or malevolent children. I ran back this afternoon on way to the vet for more dog drugs. I could only find two and it put me in mind of Paris.

Frost Free

alex — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 13:04:05 +0000

third version of this vid,but new replacements and the openings, etc.

First Frost

alex — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 00:58:28 +0000

The folks at 17 Frost Street were kind enough to give me some space to start knocking out drawings in The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince as it’s actually in French) while Aakash Nihalani installed his tape show and the band rehearsed. It was a nice way to start this new projet which I am imagining as a sort of modular, multi platform, multimedia memoir of my time at the turn of the century in Paris…

Though I hope it will be open enough to use as part of my ongoing blogging/vlogging experiment, the end result should be a fairly focused narrative electronic book.

I learned recently that they found St-Exupery’s downed plane in the sea. Not only this, but the German who shot him down came forward to own the kill. The irony was that Exupery was the Nazi pilot’s hero and had inspired him to fly in the first place. He had carried with him the fear and dread for all these years that he had shot down the writer/aviator and when they found the plane he knew from his flight log that it was his mission and his gun. Small world indeed.

Anyways the opening of Aakash’s show is thursday:

17 Frost and Bose Pacia Present: Aakash Nihalani
Thursday, October 9, 2008
7 – 10 pm

Located in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood, 17 Frost, an auxiliary venue of Bose Pacia New York, will now begin hosting performance and studio arts projects. We are excited to announce the inaugural event on Thursday, October 9. Please join us as we host New York based street artist, Aakash Nihalani, who will present his impromptu and ephemeral tape installations.

Bose Pacia
508 West 26th St, 11th FL
New York, NY 10001
T: 212.989.7074
F: 212.989.6982
mail@bosepacia.com
bosepacia.com

The music here is The Replacements: Can’t Hardly Wait

Fluxed Up

alex — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:21:35 +0000

Fluxed Up from MariaNYC on Vimeo.
Wonderful documentation of my USSA show by Maria Niro with some real live fluxus (well recorded and found on Ubu Web) music and poetry: Poem Whispered History of Art / Robert Fillou
Overlaid on Symphony Natura/ Henning Christiansen.
Followed by Ground Swell solo sax by Colin Stetson

The Week in Pictures

alex — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 16:11:22 +0000

A new painting I started and just various stuff from the camera this week – Monkeytown third year anniversary party, a film crew on the block, frost street space, the dog….

Roughrost

alex — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 19:17:18 +0000

Monday I went to see my old friend Javier rehearse with SINEPARADE in a new space, tucked away in a little hidden corner of Williamsburg. I did some timelapses of the band and Aakash Nihalani making a mural out of tape. Plus there’s some footage that MariaNYC shot at my installation last week and a garbage truck full of tomatoes, and the music here is an old song Javier made for an e-book of mine: Morococo, and then on the way to the L train we passed a parade of cop cars: 20 fucking cop cars. A good Monday.

Paperback

alex — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 03:55:42 +0000

Today’s fun and yesterdays too.

Hanging Myself

alex — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 03:52:25 +0000

Not funny really in this time of Infinite Jests, but maybe it is really exactly how I feel. I mean in the sense of eternal return, or Metampsychosis, or however you spell it and whatever Joyce was talking about…. I’m hanging the show. I feel like a worker… in the Marxist sense of that word: working on the ladders with the back into it. I mean to say that hanging a book is a physical act. I’ve been training for it like a boxer at the gym.. but my fucking thumbs are still weak for the push pins and the map pins and the pins and needles and needles and pins…..feel like a carpenter… feel like Christ crucified… stigmata on my thumb. LOL. music here is some odd Brian Wilson post Smile mid mad period song. Fucking lovely and perfect fit for my raw time lapse. More to come…

Sight, Sound and Fury

alex — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 21:41:47 +0000

A collaborative souvenir of my last show at Monkeytown made mostly by MariaNYC with some shots of mine and the voice over. A strange sad tale told by an idiot.

Reading Room

alex — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:20:54 +0000

Friends,

I will be filling four walls with a floor to ceiling installation of images extruded over the last several years for the Art Blog: IT IN Place:
http://www.futureofthebook.org/itinplace/

The work will include drawings and collage made over the pages of Fluxus, Time Life Collectibles, and Ulysees. A selection of animations and experimental videos will be projected into the grid of pages.

The Opening is Friday September 26th from 6:00 to 11:00 at USSA Fine Arts which is located in Willamsburgh Brooklyn, right along the Williamsburgh Bridge, between Bedford and Berry Avenues:
109 South 5th Street #204
Brooklyn, NY
718 305 1676

There will be live music and refreshments. I hope to see you there. The installation will be up for about a month. Please forward the invite to anyone you think might be interested.

thanx,

alex

The Book of Meat

alex — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 21:28:38 +0000

Meet me at the Met.