BALSE NEWSLETTER 016

Charles A. Balse September 29, 2023

Two weeks, at Balse.

ClassicAsobi starting his 2023-24 season in NYC. First up, Dead Man Walking, American contemporary opera that world premiered San Francisco Opera, 2000.

Photo editing, an obsession. The curative act.

Re-arranged the lab, separating the sound room to the visual, setup a new speaker in the projection room setup - MoFi SourcePoint 10, a floor model at Common Wave Hi-fi for a discount.

Listening to a lively mix by Elli Acula, Boiler Room

Continuing with Anna Vinnitskaya.

Meanwhile, Shostakovich, and this Italian doc by Rai from ClassicAsobi.

Re-examined Daido Moriyama: the photographer who didn't look through the viewfinder

Coming back to Janine Jansen. This, Prokofiev, prescribed weekly.

Each of these nine bulls were……took up the sails….Homer’s Odyssey, to read. vain toils.

and more music:

Rod Modell - Ghost Lights Side A [AI-35]

Art Of Trance - Madagascar (Cygnus X Remix) [Platipus 1998]

Alice Neel’s work up close at Blum & Poe.

Film - After Hours (1985) Official Trailer - Griffin Dunne, Martin Scorcese Movie HD

Jean Baudrillard: The System of Objects

Adam Smith’s value exchange. This new altruism.

Ayn Rand's Genius Philosophy: How Tough Love Can Empower You - no better tool than reason. ethical egoism. … reason is the only essential tool in our disposal. Once we accept our responsibilities of our own life and happiness, we become more creative and more productive.

Mao Fujita | semifinal 2017

Tigerhead RTS.FM Berlin at OYE Records 13.11.18

Until next time, good night.

***Emma Webster: Intermission***
***September 8–November 4, 2023***
*Jeffrey Deitch, LA*

Words of Wisdom

The great artists of subsequent periods had made one discovery after another which allowed them to conjure up a convincing picture of the visible world, but none of them had seriously challenged the conviction that each object in nature has its definite fixed form and colour which must be easily recognizable in a painting. It may be said, therefore, that Manet and his followers brought about a revolution in the rendering of colours which is almost comparable with the revolution in the representation of forms brought about by the Greeks. They discovered that, if we look at nature in the open, we do not see individual objects each with its own colour but rather a bright medley of tints which blend in our eye or really in our mind. - The Story of Art, E.H. Gombrich Page 154, Zettel 148
Through art, language and therefore experience become “defamiliarized”, so we can feel and experience anew:

The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects “unfamiliar”, to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged - Victor Shklovsky

Poetry exhibits the purest form of defamiliarization. This is because in a poem, other tasks such as telling a story, or fully and exhaustively expressing an idea, never take priority. Therefore, it is in poetry that we see most clearly and powerfully, without any other ultimate distraction, how language can be made deliberately strange, how it becomes especially “a difficult, roughened, impeded language”, in order to jar us awake. - WHY POETRY - Matthew Zapruder. page 42 - 43, Zettel 149
If you think that all art should be like High Renaissance painting, or like van Gogh, Eva Hesse, or Basquiat, think again. Human beings are hardwired to crave change. The universe is expanding; so are we, and so is art. Which doesn’t mean it’s getting better, or worse, only that all art was once contemporary art, in conversation with its time. yours is, too. Every choice you make - should serve not nostalgia, but your visceral present. You are an artist of modern life. That personal, specific urgency is what finds every successful work of art. - How to be an Artist, Jerry Saltz, Page 76, Zettel 150
Cezanne had ceased to take any of the traditional methods of painting for granted. he had decided to start from scratch as if no painting had been done before him….Cezanne had chosen his motifs to study some specific problems that he wanted to solve….- The Story of Art, E.H. Gombrich, Page 543, Zettel 151
…in all the struggles and gropings there was one thing he was prepared to sacrifice if need be: the conventional ‘correctness’ of outline. He was not out to distort nature; but he did not mind very much if it became distorted in some minor detail provided this helped him to obtain the desired effect….he hardly realized that this example of indifference to ‘correct drawing’ would start a landslide in art. - The Story of Art, E.H. Gombrich, Page 544, Zettel 152

***"Pictures Girls Make": Portraitures Curated by Alison M. Gingeras***
***September 9 – October 21, 2023***
*Blum & Poe, Los Angeles*

Main Studies

APPENDIX:

ClassicAsobi recommends

This section features content recommended from the NYC based ClassicAsobi, specializing in classical music.

2023-24 season opens, and ClassiAsobi will be announcing all of his firsthand notes from performances attended. Stay tuned!

Check out ClassiAsobi’s first performance attendance at the Met Opera - ***Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking***

***DANIIL TRIFONOV Carnegie Recital 2019***

***Barenboim masterclass with Alexandre Kantorow***

***Jean Sibelius - Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 43 (Orchestre de Paris, Paavo Järvi)***

***Weiss & Hasse: Lute Sonatas***
***Jadran Duncumb***

COMING UP

SABLE ELYSE SMITH

FAIR GROUNDS

SEPTEMBER 9 – OCTOBER 26, 2023
REGEN PROJECTS

STEFAN BRÜGGEMANN WHITE NOISE OPENS 15 SEPTEMBER H&W DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES

HARMONY KORINE OPENS 15 SEPTEMBER H&W DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES

William Monk, West of Nowhere, Sep 9 – Oct 21, 2023 PACE Gallery, Los Angeles

ANDY MOSES

RECENT PAINTINGS

William Turner Gallery
September 9 - November 11, 2023

THE VERSUS PROJECT IV: LAYER CAKE

09/16/2023 — 10/28/2023

Subliminal Projects

JOSÉ LERMA

September 23 - October 21, 2023 LOS ANGELES GALLERY ONE & TWO

Nino Mier Gallery

Word as Image

Norton Simon Museum

AUGUST 11, 2023 – JANUARY 8, 2024

Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living

HAMMER

OCT 1 – DEC 31, 2023

Franz West

David Zwirner LA

Opening October 26

BALSE NEWSLETTER 015

Charles A. Balse September 15, 2023

***Vanessa Beecroft: Rules of Non-Engagement***
***JEFFERY DEITCH, LA***
***September 8–October 21, 2023***

Two weeks, at Balse. To be myself.

‘any fluctuation of the mind will lead to lack of peace’, ‘as you start ignoring the desires of your mind, you will cultivate detachment.’ ‘liberating’. - Starting with headspace 8,663 minutes. Then, day 138, 30 minutes of meditating. ‘Acting objectively instead of subjectively’ ‘a mirage’

Geeked out on digital sound. fun to listen to, precise. ‘digital audio signal’. “peak to noise floor…dynamic range of a human ear is often quoted as 120 decibels…as close as you can bear it…signal to noise ratio…” and so on. You get the point. check it out.

COUCOU CHLOE — GECKO

for sure

COUCOU CHLOE - DRIFT (prod. COUCOU CHLOE)

but I don;t…sirens sounding, hawling?…

up lifting.

love icona pop - Icona Pop - Make Your Mind Up Babe

I tested the song on speaker purchased. Common Wave Hi-fi the best. Should check them out if you are in the DTLA, Boyle Heights neighborhood.

Bertrand Russel’s A History of Western Philosophy phase on audiobook.

Bertrand Russell - Message To Future Generations (1959)

Viktor Frankl on Why Idealists Are Real Realists. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

and yeah, this does it for mw. Friday Dunard - Aeternus. Artistic,

Confidence Man Euphoric House DJ Set | Pikes Ibiza | Mixmag - nicely

Anthony Linell - Illusion Self [NE93] - the hard, solid, and grainy? wall of sound, in the proper environment, that is something that we should do more. definitely up-lifting. so great. listen to this repetitive movement that is life.

moving on.

oh, back to A (very) Brief History of Bertrand Russell, …pre socratic era.

They emphasized the rational unity of things and rejected supernatural explanations, seeking natural principles at work in the world and human society. The pre-Socratics saw the world as a cosmos, an ordered arrangement that could be understood via rational inquiry. - wiki

Japanese way of "Finding purpose" . sky, life from the sky, your own trait, nature within you before you start, that you already have, core part of who you are, could be your strength or your weakness, to build a discipline, time and energy, pursuit, balance, flaws, stress, and consistency, passion, fire lit for a long time, aware. alchemize, nature, what you have to know, what you have to do, you are not perfect, embrace. a powerful thing, because of the flaws. keep sharpening your katana, the, shuku-mei. every life path, dwells within you, something that you cannot change. why, why do i have to be X, life teaches us, overcome, conquest, challenges and pain, beyond your fate. to learn, to heal yourself. you have to heal, you have to learn. transport, life that moves - that isdestiny. early parts, we cannot change. but the destiny, you can change with your will. your destiny is not your destination, but it is the journey itself. as you walk through your journey, it is constantly changing, as you take each step. choices that you are making is shaping up your destiny. always understand why you are making a decision. as a human being, one of your life purpose is to serve, to pay forward. life that serves. small as writing a letter.

life that serves

***Rose Wylie: CLOSE, not too close***
*David Zwirner, LA*
*September 8—October 14, 2023*

Rajiv Visits the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Tudors, lovely.

"Alex Katz: Gathering" at the Guggenheim, which I missed. to find future exhibition somewhere on earth in the near future.

His reductive tendencies in painting are further characterized by simplicity and heightened color, features later developed further by the pop artists. Kat’s portraits capture our eye and create a dialogue in our mind between figuration and abstraction. They take from abstract expressionism a monumental scale, stark composition, and dramatic lighting, which is flat, restrained, and minimalist. The portraits’ characteristic flat, cropped faces linked them to commercial art and contributed to the comeback of figuration.

if you ever go to Japan, you should visit Naoshima. - ChiChu Art VR Museum Cinematics

dancing. - House Non Stop

then ClassiAsobi presents this. - Lutosławski: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra - I. Dotted Quarter Note = 110 - Quarter Note = 70

then this - Violin Concerto: I., every other night, daily from Friday through Sun.

many hours spent discussing Anna Vinnitskaya and her brilliance.

but, the most listened to music lately is this - L'Orfeo, SV 318, Prologue: Ritornello – "Dal mio Permesso amato" . Printed out the lyrics, suggested by ClassicAsobi. To read this month.

certainly weird, challenging one, but freshness, yes, Koze, yes. Stylish, yes. love Róisín Murphy

now - Hudson Mohawke & Nikki Nair - Set The Roof (ft. Tayla Parx)

More Recently Hudson Mohawke jumping tunes, dancy, strange dance proper.

Wait A Minute Hudson Mohawke more bouncy, staccato

AUDREY NUNA - locket (Official Video)

the highlight film, blown away, a must see, now. thanks to that Alex Andre - Close-up (1990) Trailer | Director: Abbas Kiarostami

retrospection

バルスの世界 (world of balse)

Charles Balse

***Jenny Holzer - READY FOR YOU WHEN YOU ARE***
***JENNY HOLZER***
***Hauser & Wirth West Hollywood***
***1 SEPTEMBER – 21 OCTOBER 2023***

Words of Wisdom

While abstract paintings that appeal to our imagination call into play the brain’s top-down processing mechanism, figurative paintings that appeal to us call into play the default network of the brain. The default network, which was discovered in 2001 by Marcus Raichle (Raichle et al. 2001), consist primarily of the three brain regions: the medial temporal lobe, which is involved in memory: the posterior cingulate cortex, which is concerned with evaluating sensory information; and the medial prefrontal cortex, which is concerned with theory of mind - that is with distinguishing between another person’s mind, his or her aspirations and goals, and one’s own mind…recent studies suggest that the default network is most active during high aesthetic experience in art. (Edward Vesesel Nava Ravin, and Gabriella Starr) This intriguing finding suggests that since activation of the default network is related to our sense of self, its activation in response to art enables our perception of painting to interact with mental processes related to the self, possibly affecting them and even being incorporated into them. This line of thought is consistent with the idea that a person’s taste in art is linked to his or her sense of identity - Reductionism in Art and Brain Science page 184, Zettel 142
To be abstracted is to be at some distance from the material world. It is a form of local exaltation but also, sometime, of disorientation, even disturbance. Art at its most powerful can induce such a state, perhaps most potently. - Nancy Princenthal, New York art critique - Reductionism in Art and Brain Science page 185, Zettel 143
We are closer to attaining cheerful serenity by simplifying thoughts and figures. Simplifying the idea to achieve an expression of joy. That is our only deed. - Henri Matisse, Reductionism in Art and Brain Science page 7, Zettel 144
Some birds, insects, and fish have photoreceptors that respond to the ultraviolet light (shorter wave lengths than humans can see), and some snakes, insects; and vampire bats have receptors that can respond to infrared radiations or heat (longer wavelengths than humans can see). Certainly those animals can see spectral “colors” that we cannot and their perceptions are presumably different from ours - Reductionism in Art and Brain Science page 42, Zettel 147

Main Studies

APPENDIX:

***Derek Aylward Good Morning Sunshine***
*SHRINE, LA*
***September 8 - October 28, 2023***

ClassicAsobi recommends

COMING UP

SABLE ELYSE SMITH

FAIR GROUNDS

SEPTEMBER 9 – OCTOBER 26, 2023
REGEN PROJECTS

STEFAN BRÜGGEMANN WHITE NOISE OPENS 15 SEPTEMBER H&W DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES

HARMONY KORINE OPENS 15 SEPTEMBER H&W DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES

William Monk, West of Nowhere, Sep 9 – Oct 21, 2023 PACE Gallery, Los Angeles

ANDY MOSES

RECENT PAINTINGS

William Turner Gallery
September 9 - November 11, 2023

THE VERSUS PROJECT IV: LAYER CAKE

09/16/2023 — 10/28/2023

Subliminal Projects

JOSÉ LERMA

September 23 - October 21, 2023 LOS ANGELES GALLERY ONE & TWO

Nino Mier Gallery

Word as Image

Norton Simon Museum

AUGUST 11, 2023 – JANUARY 8, 2024

BALSE NEWSLETTER 014

Charles A. Balse September 2, 2023

Two weeks, at Balse.

A much awaited interview session with Jon Ho.listic.

Then a solid house, deep house set. Onto Moby Dick, now purchased.

Telisman techno

Birdy - Paradise Calling

Sonic Youth, Brooklyn 2011, riding.

into sora (sky), what I would call sora.

techno

Sheila Chandra with kompakt,

a proper mix.

you never used listen, now you do. confident.

i like

holiday?

more sora, clap.

and is 6am, we ain’t leavin’.

French French French French pop.

techno, with Maceo Plex with Kompakt.

Evgeny Kissin Wiener Musikverein

the techno, with Dettmann

eight years back in Berlin

Nastia, Aug 17 2023, Berlin

COUCOU CHLOE—FLIP U (PROD. BY SEGA BODEGA)

so nicely the

João Gilberto and Stan Getz - É Preciso Perdoar.

Then we went to Bach, Nosrati’s piano.

BV B 27: No. 3, Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, BWV 659 · Igor Levit

Shlomi Aber - Righ [CLR110]

バルスの世界 (world of balse)

Charles Balse

Words of Wisdom

We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest, is memory - Louise Glück, Poet, Nobel Prize winner 2020, Zettel 146
The forest is the root of all life, it is the womb that revives our biological instincts, that deepens our intelligence and increases our sensitivity as human beings - Dr. Akira Miyawaki, New York Times, Sunday 8/27/2023, Planting Tiny Forests and Yielding Big Benefits, by Cara Buckley, Zettel 145
Madonna is a cultural wrecking ball who has dared to be everything - performer, songwriter, producer, actor, director, children’s book author, muse - at a time when women were encouraged to stick to one lane. She has broken through social barriers, too, using her words and her work to confront the music industry, Hollywood, the Taliban, the Putin regime and the Vatican, to name just a few of her adversaries, over sexisum, misogyny, racism, homophobia, and hypocrisy. Because she is a woman and a popstar, critics generally dismiss her political statements as opportunistic grandstanding. But young people looking toward a future that seems closed to them see past that criticism. The novelist Sonich Kamal was introduced to Madonna’s music as a child while living in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. She said Madonna represented “pure, unadulterated, raw, sextual liberation” and hope: “hope that sexy girls did not necessarily die bad deaths, hope that sexy girls could rule the world. And do.” - The New York Times Opinion Essay, Take a Bow. Madonna - by Mary Gabriel 8/15/2023, Zettel 141
The art historian Jack Flam (2014) refers to this aspect of abstraction as “a new claim on truth”, By dismantling perspective; abstract art requires our brains to come up with a new logic of bottom-up processing. - Reductionism in Art and Brain Science, Erick Kandel page 179, Zettel 140
Thus the reason art pases such an enormous challenge to the beholder is that it teaches us to look at art - and, in a sense, at the world - in a new way. Abstract art dares our visual system to interpret an image that is fundamentally different from the kind of images our brain has evolved to reconstruct. - Reductionism in Art and Brain Science, Erick Kandel page 179, Zettel 139
Katz introduced a new reductionist concept into figurative art: his paintings have a flat background and lack of conventional perspective. In addition, he stressed pictorial values over narrative. He explained that “style and appearance are the thing that I’m more concerned about than about what something means. I’d like to have the style be the content, meaning, emptied of content.” (Strand 1984) - Reductionism in Art and Brain Science, Erick Kandel page 165, Zettel 137
Turell describes his work in the following terms: “My work has no object, no image and no focus. With no object, no image and no focus, what are you looking at? You are looking at you looking. What is important to me is to create an experience of wordless thought” - Reductionism in Art and Brain Science, Erick Kandel page 161, Zettel 135