We’re heading to Tokyo to begin working on a project with good friends of our Matthias Wermke and Mischa Leinkauf. While we are there, we’ll be collaborating with Booklet Library to do a small release party for the current issue of Megawords at the Shibaura House.

If you are in Tokyo, please join us!

Saturday, February 25
13:00 – 17:00
www.shibaurahouse.jp/information/

Megawords is in the reading room of a great project in Cairo! Some info:

In an economic climate marked by the demise of the publishing house and book- store, artists, writers, and designers are self-producing low-budget, limited editions of experimental publications, and distributing them through their personal networks.

“In Print” begins on Sunday, February 5 at the Townhouse Galley. A room in the gallery will serve as a reading room where visitors can continue these cross-disciplinary discussions over a cup of coffee, and consult a curated selection of publications. Through these interactions and discussions, “In Print” hopes to create a platform for the further development of an independent, artist-driven publishing scene in Cairo.

Temple University Libraries’ Urban Archives and Megawords Magazine are partnering for a screening as part of the Zoe Strauss: Ten Years exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. All films are drawn from our television news collection and are loosely inspired by the work of Zoe Strauss, Megawords and the PMA itself. All footage where the gaze of the news camera puts you in touch with the rituals, traditions, places and challenges of Philadelphia and its residents over three decades. Some material has screened at previous UA screenings and some is new.

Advance tickets are free (but with a $3.50 service charge) here:

http://bit.ly/yS1RTH

You could also come to the PMA earlier to reserve a seat with no charge.

For more info and a full listing, read more.

Here is a full listing of the films:

**“Assignment: 1747 Randolph Street” (Part 1) WPVI Public Affairs- 1966 (25:00)- The first half of a sometimes challenging 1966 documentary about poverty in North Philadelphia. The documentary focuses specifically on the Ludlow neighborhood, the scene of a brutal crime a year before and eventual target for reform by civic organizations and politicians. Vivid shots of neighborhood conditions are combined with interviews with a cross section of community leaders, politicians and residents.

** “North Philadelphia Slums” KYW News- March 15, 1967 (2:24)- A camera sits in a car driving through North Philadelphia gazing at its bars and residents. Sometimes they look back, sometimes they hide their faces.

** “Chinese New Year” KYW News- 1965 (5:37)- Black and white silent footage of the performers and audience in Chinatown’s 1965 New Year celebration.

** “Ninth Street Merchants” KYW News- April 7, 1966 (5:28)- Black and white silent footage of the vendors and shoppers that made up Ninth Street in 1966.

**“Graffiti and Wall Mural” WPVI Public Affairs- 1972 (12:00)- Vintage shots of a graffiti covered El ride, artist Sam Maitin debating with South Philadelphia neighbors as he paints a mural on the Fleisher Art Memorial, and street interviews with Philadelphians about art and graffiti. A quirky, fun piece about the politics and opinions on graffiti and murals in the city.

**“Last game at Connie Mack stadium” KYW News- October 2, 1970 (8:48)- Color footage of the Phillies-Expos game morphs into footage of the confusion, chaos and detritus surrounding the last game at Connie Mack Stadium (Shibe Park). Philadelphians “celebrate” the end of the institution in their own unique way.

** “Mummers (1953) & Mummers (1966)” KYW News (5:40)- Black and white silent footage of one of Philadelphia’s most distinct celebrations. Well composed, beautiful shots of audiences and performers just south of City Hall, 13 years apart.

** “Be-In” (excerpts) KYW News- April 17, 1967 (2:30)- Black and white silent footage of now infamous Ira Einhorn’s first “Be-In” in Fairmount Park in 1967. Footage of some of the estimated 2,000 people gathered near Strawberry Mansion as they mill about and play music.

** “Hippies” KYW News- April 12, 1968 (4:37)- A news story on hippies in one of their most popular spaces to congregate in the 1960s, Rittenhouse Square. Hippies and residents alike perform for the camera and make the anchor’s job difficult as he tries to report on their future in the park.

** “Sit-In” (excerpts) KYW News- March 11, 1965 (3:00)- Students from Temple University and University of Pennsylvania stage a sit-in, inside and outside the offices of U.S. Attorney General Drew J. T. O’Keefe in the Ninth and Market federal building. They were doing so to protest the “treatment of African-Americans conducting right-to-vote demonstrations in Selma, Alabama.”

** “Art Museum” KYW News- September 15, 1967 (6:00)- Silent black and white footage of some of the pieces and reactions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s popular but polarizing “American Sculpture of the Sixties”. A few of the 130 pieces from 80 artists in the playful 1967 exhibition.

** “Blimp Visits City” WFIL News- November 23, 1948 (1:18)- Very short but distinct vantage of Philadelphia through a 1948 Goodyear Blimp visit to our city. The camera treats the forms of the city below as abstractions.

** “City Snow” KYW News- November 30, 1967 (1:30) – Short black and white footage of center city braving its way through a 1967 snow storm.

** “Visions of A New Day: Bodegas ‘Mom and Pop Stores’” WPVI Public Affairs- March 18, 1976 (10:00)- Visions of a New Day highlights an integral part of Philadelphia’s Puerto Rican neighborhoods, the bodega (corner store). We’re taken through the streets and inside homes and stores during interviews with bodega owners and shoppers.

** “Puerto Rican Drill Team” (excerpts) WPVI Public Affairs- 1970s (5:28) Documentary on the Puerto Rican Drill Team “Los Conquistadors” based around El Centro De Oro in North Philadelphia. The children of the drill team take over a small North Philadelphia Street when practicing their drills.

Please stop by PAFA and check out our new installation as part of the current show entitled Here. Our installation features collage and video work, and you’ll also be able to grab a copy of the latest issue of Megawords.

See more photos on our project page. Find out more about the show at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art’s website.

We’re putting together an installation for a Creative Time Project called Living as Form (more info at http://creativetime.org/programs/archive/2011/livingasform/about.htm). The show opens on September 24th at the Historic Essex Street Market in Manhattan, and it runs for 4 weeks. We’re creating a teen-aged warehouse hangout, and will be hosting events by KillScreen Magazine and the Copenhagen Game Collective, music by  “The Brutalist School” AKA Hsi-Chang Lin, more music by Georgia and a participatory dance performance organized by Joanna Quigley of Free Movement Specialists, INC.

A new issue of Megawords will also be available!

September 24–October 16

Thursday–Sunday, 12–8 PM
The historic Essex Street Market
Southeast corner of Essex and Delancey Streets 
(entrance on Delancey)
New York City
See a Google map here.

Here are some details about Megawords specific events (subject to change, so please check back for updates!)
September 24, Saturday
8pm
Show opens and live music performance by “The Brutalist School” AKA Hsi-Chang Lin

September 30, Friday
Two sessions
4:30 and 6:30pm
Kill Screen presents Copenhagen Game Collective’s Johan Sebastian Joust

October 8 , Saturday
6-8pm
Music by Justin Tripp and Brian Close of Georgia. Food by Megawords

October 14, Friday and October 15, Saturday
Three 20 minute performances each day
2pm, 4pm and 6pm
Free Movement Specialists, INC. is happy to guide you on a journey to being free. Free of all technique, all preexisting dance crazes and all worries of what you really look like when dancing in public. THIS is a judgement free zone.

NOVEMBER 17 @ PAFA – FOR YOUR PLEASURE

We’re giving a talk as part of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Art at Lunch lecture series. Join us for a discussion of the importance of independent viewpoints and collaborations when making art. Delve into the Megawords project history and the stories of our own creative processes, alternative means of communication and dissemination of ideas.

Please join us!
Wendesday, November 17, 2010
Noon to 1pm
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts
118 North Broad Street
Directions here:
www.pafa.org

www.artitu.de

Zwei Künstlerduos aus Skandinavien und Berlin bestreiten im Oktober das vorläufige Finale der Ausstellungsreihe „Super Reactive Subjects“ im Senatsreservenspeicher. Präsentiert werden zwei Projekte aus Kopenhagen und Istanbul, die – im öffentlichen Raum entstanden – zum ersten Mal als Installationen ausgestellt werden. Als Grenzgänger, nicht nur innerhalb der Stadt, sondern auch in einer beschleunigten und globalisierten Metropolengesellschaft, untersuchen die Künstler städtische und künstlerische Freiräume, materielle und gedankliche Rückzugsorte. Diese gleichen vorübergehenden Schutzräumen oder selbst erschaffenen Inseln, die ihr urbanes Umfeld hinterfragen.

Eröffnung: Sa, 16. Oktober, 19:00

Ausstellungsdauer: 17. Oktober – 6. November

Do – So, 14.00 – 20.00 und nach Vereinbarung.

Eintritt frei

“A designer is a planner with an aesthetic sense. “