Curation # 1 - Sebastian Pardo b. 1984

Growing up I wasn't really into film, or even the arts all that much.

I would draw Ninja Turtles, and some Anime stuff my friends and I were into, but I was relatively unaware of the film world, or music. I would listen to stray Beatles and Doors cassettes, which eventually led to a solid education in late 60's early 70's rock/pop music.

Film wise, repeating viewings of the Star Wars trilogy pretty much occupied my TV time.

But throughout my life the thing I spent the most time, patiently doing was designing sports uniforms. Mostly Soccer uniforms, and cleats. (For me, it was about maintaing the identity of both the team, and the company who made the uniform that was the most creatively stimulating. Which I believe is from the same part of my brain that loves cover songs, and film remakes.)

By 1998 Soccer had pretty much taken over my life, mostly as a diversion from the awkward and scary social reordering of middle school.

For me France 1998 was the formative sports event. I knew every player, every game, and more importantly every uniform, and what company each big player wore. I remember Zidane as one of my first real sports heros. (Which made his fall from grace in the 2006 World Cup all that much more painful.)(For the record I still wanted Brazil to win the cup.)

However I would say the very first thing that made inroads towards "the arts" was ... Beck's 1996 music video "Where It's At". (Youtube won't let me embed.) I remember in the mornings before school I would lay in bed too tired to get up, and not late enough that I had too, and watch music videos on MTV. This video was really the first time I was really excited, I memorized it along with the rest of "Odelay". It tapped into the growing revival of 60's and 70's aesthetics, (which surprisingly is still going strong) and just hit me, its combination of humor, references to things over my head, and just sounds stuck with me.

(Fond Memories: Fugees - Killing me Softly (1996) To this day is still what movie theaters in movies look like to me for some reason.)

A couple months ago NPR did a "Sound of a Generation" where they hosted a round table discussion attempting to figure out the sound of our generation, in the intro to the podcast/broadcast were the opening notes of "Where It's At"... and I got chills, and even tears in my eyes a little, it was that strong reaction that led me to choose. Beck's Where It's At. (First video to play on MTV2 on August 1, 1996.)

Runners Up:

Strokes - Last Nite (I already wrote about this.)

Hives - Hate to Say But I Told You So

Buffalo' 66 (Probably the biggest influence on me film wise.)

The Royal Tenembaums (Blew me away, but has since become an almost derogatory reference.)

All pretty standard choices... no deep cuts... I'm a nerd.. but I have to be honest.. this is what did it.

Curration Series # 1 - Christopher Richmond b. 1986

two submissions:

our generation has if nothing else been conceived by curation. with the internet as a tool, ninety-nine percent of all we can readily take credit for is our unquenchable desire and talent for sorting information, as it is now nothing but readily available. for this reason my two submission are curation... the first being some-what obvious, the second, a more focused attention of art curation. the first goes without explanation, so i wont, as it has been explored, critiqued, and questioned to the likes that i wish to add no more banter to the jungle. the second, however, i will go to lengths to discuss in hopes that i will inspire one or two young minds to maybe take a gander.

1) (the obvious) www.wikipedia.org

2) Formless: A User's Guide by Yves-Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss

discussion: Formless: A User’s Guide, by Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss, maps out a third area beyond form and thematic content to interpret modernistic visual arts. As originally suggested by the 20^th Century French philosopher, Georges Bataille, this volume focuses on a third term, “formless,” defined by Bataille himself as a “job.” Conceived as a book to accompany a 1996 exhibition at the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris, rather than a traditional exhibition catalogue, Formless: A User’s Guide is arranged alphabetically as a dictionary composed of their definitions of “formless” and divided into sections that serve to delineate these concepts rather than the works’ artistic mastery and meanings. In constructing this arbitrary alphabetical arrangement of essays in dictionary form, Bois and Krauss discourage the reader’s comforting tendency to form a coherent linear narrative organization. Re-contextualizing the writings of Bataille and others, Bois and Krauss explore and revise the condition of the modernist art object and its historical trajectory into contemporary art.

Bataille describes the formless as subversive of the traditional duality of form and content. While Bois and Krauss do not define the formless, they do characterize it as horizontal, base materialism, pulse, and entropy, and these terms are defined. The horizontal refers more to a bringing down, both literally and figuratively, than a distinct spatial configuration. Bois and Krauss site Jackson Pollock's drip paintings created on a floor rather than vertically on an easel to exemplify this idea of the horizontal.

To counter idealism, Bois and Krauss introduce what Bataille calls base materialism. According to Bois and Krauss, the notion of informe describes the workings of base materialism. The informe is not a concept and it does not describe a quality. Instead, it is pure destructive action—what confuses the world of meaning and form and its clear-cut differences.

Pulse alludes to the shaking up of a unified visual field. According to Krauss, the various optical theories that fed into the single-minded focus on visual form in modernist art appealed to a notion of the eye as a purely abstract organ, cut off from the bodily pulses to which it is connected. Pulse challenges this relationship that attempts to exclude everything but the axis between the eye and framed forms mounted vertically on the wall.

Entropy signifies the degradation of energy and wearing down of hierarchy and order. Here, Bois and Krauss continue to challenge the ideological effects of Clement Greenberg and Greenbergian narratives of high modernism. Determined to destabilize the constructed and disputable nature of a vast and extremely diverse assortment of historical moments, artworks, and theoretical voices, Bois and Krauss attack the separation and hierarchization of artistic media in this text. Challenging the viewer’s expectations of the experience of coherent, bounded, and unified form that can be organized as distinct media or in terms of a stylistic scheme, the authors explore the act of the viewer on the art object. Through this process, the authors contest the perception of work by revered figures within the modernist, Greenbergian pantheon and discourage the ability to evaluate artists by media. Instead, they discuss how the horizontal, base materialism, pulse, and entropy create a desublimatory act—a contemplative act between the beholder and the art object as an extension of the physical senses. In her concluding essay, Krauss states that, "the formless has its own legacy to fulfill, its own destiny—which is partly that of liberating our thinking."

Curation # 1 - JC Del Barco II b.1986

I am going to submit Saddle Creek Records, Specifically The Faint, Bright Eyes, and Cursive.

I know that most hipsters, animal collective, grizzly bear, neo-indie people aren't too keen on these bands, but I believe that Saddle Creek was a big step for our generation of indie music during our junior high and high school years.

Between 1998-2001, Cursive released Domestica and Burst and Bloom, Bright Eyes released Letting Off the Happiness, Every Day and Every Night, and the highly acclaimed Fevers and Mirrors, and The Faint released Blank Wave Arcade and Danse Macabre.

These are all awesome albums that bring me back to my teen angst when I first got my hands on that pack of cigarettes and started to taste the anxiety of being a young girl crazy male who just wanted to play the guitar all day. You know that feeling of teen angst, right? The feeling where even though you are only 14 or 15, you feel like it's already too late to live?

I felt like these bands knew everything I was feeling and digging, and sang it to me just the way I wanted to hear it.

Cursive was a great way to get into unique aggressive indie rock with a dissonant punk tones. They are still the only band I will go to shows and straight into the pit to get roudy and sweaty.

The Faint was a good way for the guitar loving crowd to learn about digital music, which I think paved the way for guys like Phoenix, Justice, etc. to make it so big with the indie crews. They were a great stepping stone that taught boys to wear eyeliner and play with their microkorgs.

Bright Eyes... well... the folk voice of our generation in my opinion. Bright Eyes strikes a very intimate chord with me, I'm sure many of you fans understand the sentiment in your own way. I guess I can say Conor Oberst is directly responsible for a big chapter of my life that I look back on fondly.

Though this one is a little less than a decade ago, this song always strikes up nostalgia in my heart

http://hypem.com/#/track/866008/Bright+Eyes+-+Something+Vague

Thank you, Omaha.

Curration Series # 1 - Monroe Dinos-Kaufman b. 1985

"I remember watching this movie for the first time, sitting in my room by myself. I had just turned 14, and I thought John Travolta was so cool it hurt me to watch."

Curration Series # 1 - Daniel Kaufman b. 1988

NAME: Daniel Kaufman
DATE OF BIRTH: January 18, 1988

VIDEO 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHfUdff8OFE - Garrison Keillor on David Letterman.

My father worked for NPR for a time, not in Lake Wobagon but in Vermont. I used to sneak into the warehouse next to the radio station, where the owner stored all the arcade games one would see at the springtime county fair. I'd listen to my father and then Garrison Keillor while playing Mario, and I'd always loose. When we drove cross-country in 2000, Keillor's voice was our guiding light. In Arkansas we hit a blinding storm and I nearly had a panic attack. The only thing that could sooth me was the Prairie Home Companion. A few years later I learned that Garrison Keillor is purportedly a famous prick. Oh well.

VIDEO 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4M5UgdJwmI - "True Stories" Part 1. Originally I saw this film to appease a girl I was in love with. Viewing the film didn't win me the girl so I cursed her and the movie. Years later I rewatched it and realized how formative it had been for me. It also seems to touch upon a fascinating part of the 90s (though it was made in '86): the beginning of the technology boom, how that effects a community, and how it effectively ended all that was the 20th century. It's a good film.

Curation # 1 - Kate Sabicer b. 1986

"This frog has a song to be sung.
This frog isn't gonna spend his life in a swamp
Catchin' flies with his tongue.
This frog may slip and stumble,
But this frog tries again.
This frog will never grumble,
But fall to rise again.
This frog is staying with it
Like a tick sticks to a dog.
I'm gonna win!
You're gonna love this frog!"
-Kermit

Jim Henson brought a world of magic into everyone's home. He approached children in a whole new way- they are people, smaller, more imaginative people. You don't talk at them, but to them. They have a gift that so many adults has squandered and forgotten that they themselves once possessed- imagination and wonder. They see it in everything around them, and everything they do. Jim set out to make the world a peaceful place, to make sure that everyone knew that they were special, just for being themselves. Everyone is different, but those differences are not bad things- they are good, and should be embraced- and in this way, we are all really the same- just one family. I can't say enough how much Jim Henson has inspired me, and taught me. All I can say, is that I want to be like him when I grow up.

"Life is meant to be fun, and joyous, and fulfilling. May each of yours be that- having each of you as a child of mine has certainly been one of the good things in my life. Know that I've always loved each of you with an eternal, bottomless love. A love that has nothing to do with each other, for I feel my love for each of you is total and all-encompassing. Please watch out for each other and love and forgive everybody. It's a good life, enjoy it."
-Jim

Irate Panda Blog announces new Curation Series

When the Prompt series began, Thomas Bailey asked if he could include a curated item in addition to his submission, and a light went off. And so the Irate Panda Blog Curation Series was born.

This week will feature submissions in response to the prompt below:

I normally find myself irked when something that is nostalgic is mistaken for something good. What I want you to share with us, is something that you look back on as both definitive of the era, and good. That doesn't require it to hold up to today necessarily, but it should be an earnest attempt to look back in our lives and pick out something that has had an impact. While it should be personal, there could also be considerations on the generational level. Much like boomer's get teary eyed talking about the Beatles on Sullivan, what is it that our generation has in our formative years that we cling to? It could also perhaps be something that you feel has shaped you either artistically or personally. (It could just be the first time you saw something and just said "yes".) The prompt is inspired by the notion that for the first time in many of our lives we can honestly refer back onto something as being "a decade ago". "The Matrix", "Fight Club" and even "Curb Your Enthusiasm" are all a decade old.