5: joshua weibley, fish leather, savory deviate delight, that soft bread

I’ve been charmed by this instagram video of curator Hans Ulrich Obrist asking various TikTok animals, Can you tell me about your unrealised projects? I myself have so many, and now that my deadlines have almost entirely dried up, I’m looking forward to taking some time to work on them. Specifically my Watermark (that’s right, Enya) collection of essays.

Otherwise: stillness, relishing this unexpectedly crisp weather. This week’s culture diary comes from my favourite ~unrealised project~ my partner Josh.

spiky boi

Whores at the end of the world. We should all be preppers. French Muslims face a cruel coronavirus shortage: burial grounds. Cambodia in the time of Covid-19. Over 70% of tested inmates in federal prisons have Covid-19. The history of caste has lessons on the danger of social distancing. Hemingway was once quarantined with his wife… and mistress. Facing Covid-19 [in Delhi]: my land of hope and despair. Higher education in the age of coronavirus. An anthropologist’s perspective on Covid-19. The pandemic will change American retail forever. No good options for migrant workers in the Gulf. The NYPL has released an album of NYC sounds. Hard times: cultural democracy and the New Deal arts programs. Smash a coronavirus piñata. You’ll feel better.

glouglou and snackchat

They like that soft bread. The poet’s table. Welcome to the beef capital of India. Drink up, calm down. How America rediscovered a cookbook from the Harlem Renaissance. This homebrewer is making water kefir in Buenos Aires. How to make a 5,000 year old energy bar. An undeserved gift. Black gold, from tank to table. Daibo dreamed of coffee. Savory deviate delight. The secret resistance behind the world’s most dangerous cheese. How a remote Nevada town became a bastion of Basque culture. Chop suey nation. New England beach pizza is not very good. Everyone should try it.

living well

A dandy’s guide to decadent self-isolation. Safe as houses. The swimming pool library. The rise of round. How much would you pay for a houseplant? The life and fiery death of the world’s largest treehouse. The invention of the bachelor pad. The designer and the don: how two interior designers took the fall for the Cali Cartel. Not in my bat’s yard. The Japanese toilet takes a bow: a personal history. The underappreciated art of furniture in game design. Jimmy Buffet does not live the Jimmy Buffet lifestyle. How to arrange flowers for an unexpected, wild-looking table. I’ll take you there.

☞\( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)☞ yeehaw

Want to do business in Pyongyang? Call North Korea’s guy in Spain. The mysterious desert towers of Uzbekistan’s lost civilization. The wonderful, trasnscendent life of an odd-nosed monkey. One man’s quest to save the music of the Holocaust. The art of turning fish into leather. She and her dog lived in a shopping center for two years. Then along came a stranger. It came from the ‘70s: the story of your grandma’s weird couch. Lizards are evolving in response to fierce hurricane seasons. Fun delivered: world’s foremost experts on whoopee cushions and silly putty tell all. The birth of a holiday. The Disneyland of Death. THIS! IS! YELLING!

this week

Momus podcast: “What’s changed and what should” with Johanna Fateman. Vibrations en Haut Atlas. Living diaspora: a reading list. Bar Laika presents: Karrabang film collective’s Day in the Life w/ q+a with Elizabeth Povinelli [May 7]

quarantine diary: joshua caleb weibley

monday

I wake up to yelling, someone throwing something at someone, and the front door of the apartment building slamming. It’s over very fast. The landlord’s friend Mikey has been staying in his apartment since being released from prison and seems to be running some kind of operation out of there. Mikey looks and talks like Joe Pesci, and has a similarly threatening, ominously unpredictable energy. The landlord is rarely home. Last week there was a more drawn out struggle in the hallway. Someone must have called the police, who arrived in three squad cars and insufficient PPE. They took one of the many people who have been coming in and out of the apartment since he moved in. We’re already sheltering in place, but I feel doubly like a hostage in my own home, unsure if I’ll walk out into some kind of confrontation. Later, when I go out to get beer, there’s a plastic orange baseball bat in the hallway.

Scrolling through Twitter I see someone say that the IRS stimulus check website can only read text in all caps. I try this trick. It works. After a month of not knowing when or if I would receive a stimulus check, a shoddily coded website is to blame. Rahel tries as well and learns that her check has already been mailed. Knowing that this kind of data entry issue is trivial to fix, I am absolutely livid. This isn’t the last time today that I’ll be angered by petty government bureaucracy. New York cancels its Democratic primary in June, meaning that a state which would have delivered a substantial number of delegates to Bernie Sanders, and potentially influenced the campaign platform of the Democratic nominee, has simply been cancelled. [It’s later reinstated]

Over the last month, having run out of paper, I have been making moiré pattern drawings on old press releases from exhibitions I’ve seen over the years. I plunge into them today as an outlet for my frustrations and manage to finish two, which is unusual. I view drawings as receipts which, like fingerprints, primarily attest to the presence of the mark maker and the implement used. Like photography for the photographer, they prove that I was there. In this sense, drawing is evidentiary and, by drawing on press releases, I’m encoding my drawings with a further layer of metadata: whose work I’ve seen at what venue and (roughly) when. 

Today’s press releases are from a group show at Charles Moffett gallery and a solo show at Helena Anrather. The drawings are process-based and take at least 5 hours to make, which gives me ample time to reflect on the shows and generally think about things. One of the artists in the group show, Tommy Coleman, was my first college roommate. It was the best work that I’ve seen from him in the decade+ that I’ve known him. The solo was Catherine Telford Keogh, her first in New York and an extremely fun, materially inventive affair. She had technical questions for me about the space age countertop materials I use in my own work. I could imagine us collaborating some day.

While drawing, I listen to a comedy podcast about conspiracy theory communities called QAnon Anonymous. I’m often not listening very closely, so I don’t recall what episodes I actually listened to today, but I have re-listened to their episode about Temple OS multiple times now. It’s a fascinating, generous, and ultimately beautiful account of a programmer’s mental illness and his lifelong quest to develop an idiosyncratic and labyrinthine operating system that allows the user to communicate with god. Rahel makes an exceptional stirfry.

tuesday

Two more drawings today: Jennifer J. Lee at Klaus von Nichtssagend and Stephanie Hier at Y2K group. It’s even more unusual that I would complete this many two days in a row and I’m very pleased with how these four have turned out. I never know exactly how the colors I use will work together; these ones are especially vibrant. I love Jennifer’s photorealistic paintings on thick, hairy linen. I haven’t met Stephanie, but I’ve been intrigued by her work for years. I like the way she hunts for images and places them together. Her elaborate ceramic frames are gorgeous.

Before this week I had been posting a drawing a day to my Twitter and Instagram but after reaching twenty drawings, I decided to only post on Tuesdays and Thursdays leaving some surprises if I do make a book or mount an exhibition of them someday. Today I post the Charles Moffett group show. Many of the participants are thrilled to be reminded of the show including a couple of the artists in it that I’m not formally acquainted with. 

I miss the Blue Angels flying over the city but I can’t say I was trying very hard to catch a glimpse. Speaking of the government mismanaging money: the IRS site says my payment isn’t yet scheduled. Rahel cooks broccoli with Georgian spices. I didn’t expect to eat all of the heaping bowl she gives me but I make short work of it. It’s nice to eat something green.

wednesday

Only one drawing today, on the release for the collaborative duo Ficus Interfaith’s 2019 show at Interstate Projects. I’ve never met them in person, but we have communicated a little online. Their terrazzo constructions are like a more organic version of some of the more intricate frames I’ve made for my work. It would be good to talk shop with them some time.

Rahel wants wine and I want whiskey. Taking little shots with the PBRs I’ve been subsisting on reminds me of the $3 beer and shot deal at Clockwork, the LES bar I like to go to on Fridays after work. Going there one last time before quarantining on March 16th may have been a risk in retrospect, but it’s a nice thing to hold in my mind. I find myself worrying that places like that won’t reopen. I also worry that the nearby Klaus von Nichtssagend gallery will suffer. Their version of the ‘online viewing room’ model that seems to be de rigeur for galleries during this pandemic is one of the better ones I’ve seen. The presentation they have up on their site about the work and life of Irwin Kremen who died earlier this year is especially nice. 

On the way to the liquor store I stop at a hardware store to get another box of gloves. They’re out of the blue nitrile gloves that I’m used to but the thinner, powdery latex ones they have will be just fine. Someone outside the hardware store, who Rahel would refer to as an “uncle,” recognizes that the sweatshirt I’m wearing says “Bernie” in Urdu/Farsi/Arabic. He seems pleased but I don’t know how to answer when he asks why it doesn’t say Bernie Sanders’ full name. Rahel is pleased to learn of this interaction and tells me it was an “extremely Uncle question.” Her leek and artichoke pasta is the highlight of the week’s cooking thus far. 

thursday

Today I make a drawing on the release for Katya Tepper’s exhibition at White Columns at the tail end of 2018. I went to school with Katya and it’s been amazing to watch her work develop. I’m tempted to call her a genius. Her large, unruly constructions are an unholy mishmash of paint, clay, hypodermic syringes, toilet paper rolls and all manner of other things. It reminds me of an update to the heroic abstract expressionism of New York in the 1950s, but no one here has the space or the time to work like that anymore. This is the thirtieth drawing I’ve made and I’m starting to get exhausted.

I post the drawing I made a few days ago on the release for Stephanie Hier’s show. Her reaction to it seems to be one of pleasant confusion: perplexed by the project, but not irritated by it. I do sincerely want the artists whose press releases I’m drawing on to like the drawings. Looked at another way, I’m making a kind of fan art, which is what some of the best art is: an articulation of things you like and want to see more of in the world.

On Twitter, someone derides my favorite band, The Fall, and I decide to relisten to their catalogue, album by album. Today I play Live at the Witch Trials, Dragnet, Slates, Hex Enduction Hour, and The Wonderful and Frightening World of. “Hip Priest” from Hex Enduction Hour, famous for inclusion in The Silence of the Lambs, still isn’t my favorite, but it’s hard not to hear it as an ‘important’ or ‘significant’ Fall song. It’s an extreme vocal outlier for the lead singer (and only constant member) Mark E. Smith. The quiet/loud dynamic shifts are also relative oddities in the band’s catalogue. When Smith sings “He is not appreciated” in a warbling falsetto he’s logging perhaps the most apt statement ever written about himself. It’s like the moment in a James Bond movie when someone finally says the title onscreen; at once thuddingly obvious in its inevitability, and yet thrilling in the fuller context now suddenly revealed.

Rahel is in the kitchen making a Senegalese stew that she is very excited about and listening to the “Roja” soundtrack, then 2000s Bollywood and Drexciya. The latter reminds me a little of Von Südenfed, a collaboration between the electronic duo Mouse on Mars and Mark E. Smith. When Rahel asks if I want to put something on I choose that. A little while later I learn that the legendary Africa 70 drummer Tony Allen has died so I put on a best of compilation of his work with Fela Kuti while the stew continues to cook. I turn the music off to try to eavesdrop on the landlord and Mikey arguing outside. To be honest, they’re both older men from Long Island and their raised voices could just as easily be a product of them losing their hearing. 

friday

I begin the day assembling paperwork for a NYFA emergency grant. It is exacting in its requirements, and the process is very stressful. I see that the IRS has scheduled my payment for May 6th, which is the day the NYFA application is due. I hope receiving that after struggling with the application will feel rewarding, as if I had gotten the grant. I think it will be difficult to make a compelling case that I’ve been working in art handling since 2015 even though I certainly have.

No drawings today. The process of assembling the grant information, though I probably didn’t even work on it a full hour, was enervating. I don’t feel like doing anything and I decide that’s ok. It’s perfectly fine to not be productive sometimes. Rahel leans into one of her favorite pastimes: trying to affect a Boston accent. The exuberant results (“FLUFFANUTTAHHH!”) remind me of Patrick Stewart introducing Salt-N-Pepa on SNL in the 90s. (Ed: my accent and delivery are impeccable.)

I make a trip to the co-op grocery store to pick up some things Rahel couldn’t find during her last grocery run. I pick up some steaks and hotdogs for myself. I had been trying to get better at cooking steaks before sheltering in place and I think I’ve made some strides. As I walk, I continue listening to The Fall. Today: This Nation’s Saving Grace, Room to Live and The Frenz Experiment. Room to Live in particular is wonderful to revisit. It’s looser and weirder than I remembered.

I have long been fascinated by Sierra and LucasArts adventure games and have been watching playthroughs of them on YouTube. Today I’m watching a more recent sequel to an old classic by LucasArts, the Sam & Max: Freelance Police series by Telltale Games. This is peak inactivity for me. During the day we eat packets of masala Maggi, a buttery ramen mix, and in the evening I make grilled cheese sandwiches with some gouda that we’ve had in the fridge for a long time. 

saturday

No drawings again today. Today isn’t much different from yesterday. More Sam & Max. Hotdog sandwiches. Rahel is convinced her vegan sausage, pesto hummus, arugula and radishes will be superior to my beef hotdog, cheese and Valentina hot sauce creation. She is dismayed at the outcome; I finish her uneaten sandwiches later.

Some friends have organized a remote movie-watching night on Saturdays and tonight is “Wet Hot American Summer”. I’m extremely excited. I haven’t seen it in years and the last time I saw it was with a group of friends who profoundly did not understand it. We “meet in the lobby” at 7:30 via Google Hangouts and then watch simultaneously at about 8. Rahel tells me I was cackling so loudly in the background that her Zoom reading group asked what was going on.

The group, which includes a prodigious food writer, likes to talk about fancy things they’ve cooked during the week. Anticipating being shamed, I make a bed of rice pilaf with mushrooms, garlic and baby bok choy for a piece of top sirloin. First I marinate it in a mixture of cooking wine, soy sauce and olive oil, then dry it off and rub spices into it. Each side of the steak gets seared two minutes in oil, then two more minutes for both sides on medium heat, melting butter over each side. Figuring out how to gauge the state of the interior seems like a fussily intuitive skill to hone but I am improving. 

The group has been choosing what to watch next based on connecting an actor from the movie we’ve just seen with another movie they’re in. Last week we watched the 1997 Romeo + Juliet; the connection to this week was Paul Rudd. We end the post-movie hangout without reaching a consensus for next week, though many movies come up that I’d like to see again including Mystery Men (Jeanene Garofolo) and The Perfect Host (David Hyde Pierce). Just before watching I did a cursory search and was amused that director David Wain based Wet Hot American Summer on his experiences at Jewish summer camps, which is interesting to me because my father worked at Jewish boys’ camps in the late 1970s-early 1980s. It was funny to watch again imagining him in the role of the camp counselors. I make some more grilled cheeses later in the night.

sunday

My friend Scott wants to Facetime with me. I wasn’t aware that Facetime requires wifi and I quickly lose signal, but we pick up again with a simple voice call. It’s good to see him (however briefly) and nice to hear about how he’s managing his production work and studio. He’s a very interesting man who thoroughly regiments his life, keeping a log of his days separated into half-hour increments. I suggest to Rahel that he might be a good candidate for one of these diaries. 

I complete one drawing on a press release for Andrew Norman Wilson’s exhibition at American Medium in 2012. The paper has a strange waxiness that resists the pens.

While drawing, I put on the latest episode of Over the Road. The podcast, which documents contemporary experiences of long haul truckers, is the most generous and disarming account of blue collar life I’ve come across. Instead of examining truckers as if they were an interesting specimen of insect a toddler has found under a rock, the podcast gives them the space to craft their own account of themselves. The genial host “Long Haul Paul” persistently keeps the mood light, but never shies away from uncomfortable truths about the industry and himself. Over the years I’ve watched many generations of Whitney ISP students instrumentalize working people’s lives to attain greater institutional footholds and it never ceases to disgust me. Over the Road offers everything that they cannot. 

The Criterion Channel has added my favorite Fassbinder film, In a Year with Thirteen Moons, and I settle in to watch it again. It gains new dimensions with every viewing and this time is no different. I’m struck by what I read as the director subverting the more poisonous philosophical threads that led his country to empower the Nazi party. He suggests his tragic protagonist Elvira is possessed not of the will to power, but the will to vulnerability, and proposes that this vulnerability is an act of defiance. The sociopathic capitalist titans of industry birthed by the German Economic Miracle of the 50s are cast as immature, smirking, euphemized heirs to fascist brutality. It’s a dark, complex piece of cinema that continues to grow with me.

I notice a version of the Alan Parsons Project song “Eye in the Sky” on a playlist my friend Ben assembled and play it in the kitchen while I clean. This inspires listening to Parsons’ hilarious Prog rock opus Tales of Mystery and Imagination, based on the works of Edgar Allen Poe. Rahel is greatly entertained by my expressive dancing to the vocodorized rendition of “The Raven.” 

featured creature:gerenuk

While you may know them as the long-necked, floppy-eared popcorn deer, my favourite thing about the gerenuk is the way they get up on their hind legs to snack:

🅽🅸🅶🅷🆃🅻🅸🅵🅴 is brought to you by rahel aima / @cnqmdi