Results tagged “instituteofcontemporaryart”

Shepard Fairey's trial on 14 counts of vandalism ended today when Fairey entered into a plea agreement, Suffolk County prosecutors say. Fairey pleaded guilty to one count of vandalism from 2000 and to two counts of vandalism from 2009. As a part of the agreement, Fairey must pay $2,000 to a graffiti clean-up company and may not possess "the tools of the trade"—graffiti related materials—while in the city of Boston. Fairey's "spokesman" Jay Strell said in a press release that "Shepard is very pleased to have the Boston case behind him and return his attention to making art." The ICA, which had its opening gala for Fairey's current exhibition interrupted by his arrest, plans to have a make-up party on July 31. The pricey tickets to Obey Experiment REDUX have, like Fairey himself, sold out.

          

Coming from North Adams, western Mass.'s wilderness outpost of contemporary art, the Books delivered their thoughtful concepts to the ICA on Friday night* via a Postal Service of gentle electronica and indie (soft) rock boy vocals. Nick Zammuto and Paul de Jong also brought several closets' worth of tightly-edited found footage to match their pop musique concrète. A mood of inexplicable optimism pervaded, in the split-screen video of animals stampeding forth into an avant-garde National Geographic documentary, in the birdsong stitched together into makeshift jazz, and the virtuosic solos built from archived laughter.

Today and tomorrow, the ICA screens Pietra Brettkelly's documentary on Italian artist Vanessa Beecroft, "The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins." Beecroft, best known for her performance pieces involving multitudes of unclothed lethargic models, is the art world's equivalent of Sylvia Plath. Girls embrace her as conflicted teenagers, abandon their fascination in college, as her femininity and raw insecurity seem embarrassingly naive, but by late twenties, they revisit her work and discover its complexities. But even fans of her work will have trouble interpreting Beecroft's visit to Sudan as anything other than narcissism. The Washington Post explains, "she was interested in the plight of Darfur, though she concedes that she didn't know exactly where Darfur was, and never did get there."

Tickets and more information.

            

On Sunday, the Ditson Festival of Contemporary Music's last pair of concerts at the ICA began with two people and finished with over sixty, in a glass box on the harbor. The former were Matt Haimovitz, on cello, and Geoff Burleson, on (and in) piano. Children standing on the postmodern boardwalk outside pressed their faces against the window as Burleson hit keys with one hand and reached in with the other to pluck at the piano's viscera, as Augusta Read Thomas's "Cantos for Slava" (2008) required. When Haimovitz wasn't wringing long, doleful cries from his instrument, he too plucked, as if the cello were a tall, fat lute.

       

Friday night's installment of the Ditson Festival of Contemporary Music was all about text. Whole, grammatical sentences; comprehensible, English, (mostly) well-enunciated; no Italian arias, no liturgical Latin, no repurposed Sanskrit, neither Einstein nor beach—this is not what Bostonist has come to expect from classical music, contemporary or otherwise.

      

Firebird Ensemble, based in Somerville and outfitted like an accomplished H&M ad in black and red and sparkling knitwear, opened the Ditson Festival of Contemporary Music on Thursday night. They began with a darkly animated piece that sounded like a fit night of half-sleep in a bed of swaying strings, heckled by lonely trills of from a flute and the footsteps of a piano that approached like a serial killer. Never has sudden bongoing sounded more ominous to Bostonist's ears. (Leafing through the program after the fact, we saw that the composer, Curtis Hughes, has titled it, in lowercase, "danger garden".)

The Globe and Herald report that a man was shot dead early this morning between the ICA and Anthony's Pier 4 restaurant. The man may have been on the Provincetown II for a chartered cruise, "Outrageous in Red," with hundreds of other people that had just returned to the area. The call to police came in at 12:34 am. State and Boston police are collaborating to investigate. WCVB reports police are seeking three black males seen leaving the area in a white Toyota. Call the CrimeStoppers Tip Line at 800-494-TIPS (8477) or text 'TIP' to CRIME (27463) if you know anything about the situation.

Last Thursday, the soft light of dusk lingered in the theatre at the Institute for Contemporary Arts, where floor-to-ceiling windows let you see the Boston Harbor from two sides. Yachts, Harbor Cruisers, and sailboats passed in the distance, backgrounded by the Logan airport control tower on one side and the Custom House clock tower on the other. In the middle of the room, on an oriental rug spread across the hardwood floor, a set of five instruments sat bunched.

Feb 1 - April 27