The gallery walls came tumbling down in the 60’s and 70’s when a generation of land artists stepped outdoors and used nature as their canvas. For Robert Smithson, the doyen of the Earthworks movement, whose “Spiral Jetty” still protrudes from the shore of the Great Salt Lake, art was meant to engage with the outside world in a way that it couldn’t when cooped up inside. “A work of art when placed in a gallery loses its charge,” he stated in that earlier era.

It’s a shame Smithson couldn’t be there for Doug Aitken’s projection of movie images on the façade of New York’s MoMA for 2007’s “Sleepwalkers.” It was a case of art finding its way outside the museum’s walls but with the added twist of actually becoming the museum’s walls. Delineations between inside and out, real world and representation, never felt so fluid.

As a multimedia innovator, Aitken has built a reputation for reimagining time and space. Few artists come better equipped to capture the kaleidoscopic fever dream we know as life in the present day. With his latest installation, “Altered Earth,” he sets about creating what’s being billed as land art for the electronic age, and in 21st Century fashion, the results are disorienting and overwhelming.

ICP’s latest tour-de-force historical exhibition is Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life, opening September 14th. The exhibit attempts to include all the important forms of visual documentation that bore witness to South Africa’s sixty years of apartheid: films, books, and photographs in all forms, from newspaper-commissioned to social documentary to photo essay.

The exhibition is of course powerful for its subject matter, and the show digs deep in its illustration of how apartheid touched every aspect of life, large and small. You see the South African Communist Party demonstrating in a large group, with arms raised defiantly and film cameras swarming the scene. Contrast this with the lone woman on a streetcorner, protesting against hangings to passing traffic. Contrast this with a pro- segregation demonstration backed with Biblical quotes. Throughout, Rise and Fall of Apartheid is valuable for the way it showcases South African photographers working in incredible times, and under incredible pressures.

The show’s deep reach is thanks to its curators, the Nigerian-born Okwui Enwezor with Johannesburg-based Rory Bester, two specialists of modern and recent-era South Africa. Rise and Fall of Apartheid runs September 14 – January 6.

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The Hell’s Kitchen Flea Market is teaming with the artsy kids of 3rd Ward for Member Made @ Hell’s Kitchen Flea Market, a one-off specialty market featuring merchandise made by New York City artisans. 3rd Ward is the DIYer’s most invaluable resource in the city, a workspace that rents equipment to photographers, woodworkers, and metallurgists, and offers studio space for artists and classes for novices. Member Made rounds up the best of 3rd Ward’s member professionals, who are independent designers and business- owners in their own right. Among the furniture, clothing, home goods, jewelry, and lighting for purchase will be Stockpile Design’s furniture made out of repurposed ammunition, Let Love Reign’s socially conscious bags, and a plethora of handmade jewelry, utensils, and clothing from around the city.

Member Made @ HKFM will be open this Saturday and Sunday from 10 – 5 at 39th St, between 9th & 10th Avenues.

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While Cannes soaked up all the attention last month, a different kind of festival was making waves in Havana. The traveling Swedish festival Music Doc is the best weathervane around for what’s new and interesting in Nordic art, across all media. Though the centerpiece of any Music Doc event is a movie or documentary about music, the organization takes pride in making the experience a multifaceted one: live bands, dance shows, and even spirited lectures can precede a screening. Many independent film festivals now travel, but few do it as dexterously as Music Doc, which juggles DJs, visual artists, and musicians from every genre between continents. Though the festival features some of Sweden’s most fascinating acts, much of the work is still under the radar anywhere else in the US—this is a rare opportunity to step inside the culture.

Music Doc began its 2012 circuit in Chile; it completes a two-night event at the Hotel Americano in New York on Wednesday. Several artists, many of them Swedes transplanted to New York, will hold a discussion on YouTube before a screening of the documentary Stocktown X South Africa. A DJ set afterwards includes one of the men featured in the film.

Strap on your bleep bloops and fire up your bloop bleeps because the O.G. electro-pioneers known as Kraftwerk are playing at New York’s Museum of Modern Art every single day for the entirety of this week, Tuesday to Tuesday. The legendary German outfit will be performing Kraftwerk – Retrospective 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8, a sonic and visual exhibit of almost their entire catalog: one album at a time, one night at a time in the Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium.

When they first came about in 1970, Kraftwerk was like nothing else on the radar. Their futuristic tunes incorporated vocoders and computer speech software, a far cry from the traditional guitar wielding troubadours of the time. Their practically prophetic ability to channel a world steeped in technology and expressed largely via keystrokes and split wires make them one of the most influential bands, ever. Today, their impact is felt in almost every genre, from auto-tuned love letters to Kim Kardashian by Kanye West to the always lovely bedroom dreampoppers Beach House to Kathleen Hanna’s multimedia electroclash outfit Le Tigre to sweeping synth warrior M83. In 2012, we are all the robots that Kraftwerk predicted four decades ago.

This Thursday the best in Swedish music, art, and innovation comes together in Dumbo, of all places. The Galapagos Art Space will host Sweden Under the Bridge, an intimate acoustic event with performances by Nina Persson (a Cardigans alumna) and Nathan Larson, indie favorite Fibes, Oh Fibes! and up-and-comer Sibille Attar. The concert is in conjunction with a combined exhibition of contemporary photography from Lars Turnbjörk and Ruvan Wijesooriya, a video installation by Roxy Farhat, and digital art by MOCH. Some of Sweden’s famed djs will pick up where the concert leaves off. Entrance is free and an RSVP is necessary.

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From 1973 to 2006 CBGB was the unofficial home of underground rock in New York City. The seemingly harmless acronym (which erroneously stands for Country, Bluegrass and Blues) was a symbol, the barometer of counterculture, a landmark of irreverence, and the Studio 54 of punk music. More importantly, CBGB set the tone for a new era of rock. The fabled club gave raw, untested bands like the Ramones, Misfits, Patti Smith, The Cramps, Television, Blondie and Talking Heads their start. Initially intended to feature the type of music for which it was named, CBGB became synonymous with the American punk movement and hardcore punk scene instead. Though the club sometimes moonlighted as a record store, or performance space/art gallery, the music always came first. Over the years, CBGB grew its rabidly loyal fan base, became more adept at blurring boundaries and unearthing talent, and changed the current of American punk rock as we know it.
     On October 15, 2006, CBGB shuttered its doors for good. Patti Smith, Blondie, Bad Brains, and The Dictators were among some of the last performers to grace the stage, leaving hordes of fans, journalists, and musicians with something to blog about for years to come.

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The sweep of support for Occupy Wall Street seems to grow by the day. While we at PLANET certainly commend the force of the movement, from a relatively apolitical vantage the demonstrations have also proven to be a music lover’s dream. Certainly, music’s connection to protest is long established, and OWS is no different, with the hypnotic rhythms of drum circles and impromptu performances by protesters beaming out from Zuccotti Park at all hours. Meanwhile, high-profile artists, such as Talib Kweli (left) and Tom Morello, have graced the park with their presence, expressing their allegiance to the cause and, moreover, rallying the troops with some stellar sets. On that account, we have compiled our favorite performances during the past few weeks of Wall Street’s occupation. After the jump, check out music by Morello, Amanda Palmer, Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel, and Michael Franti. Given the nature of the events, the recording quality can be inconsistent but the experience is no less inspiring.

Directed by Alex Mallis + Lily Henderson, Cinematography by Ed David, Edited by Lily Henderson + Alex Mallis

Coinciding with the release of his newest film, Carnage – screening this month at the New York Film Festival (an adaptation of Yasmina Reza’s Tony Award winning play) MoMa is holding a retrospective of Roman Polanski’s work to date. Possibly the most contentious of living filmmakers – I will steer clear of the great Polanski debate – instead, consider one of his best – Repulsion (1965).
     Opening with a claustrophobic, close-up of a glassy retina, displaying all the frenzied paranoia that’s come to be Polanski’s most persistent concern – this heavy lashed, rapid blinking eyeball belongs to Catherine Deneuve, playing the perennially glum ingénue Carole, incongruously transplanted from France into the hubbub of 1960s, swinging London.
     Meandering through the film, in a constant state of crestfallen bewilderment – Carole works by day as a manicurist, attending to an assemblage of wealthy, cranky women. Living with her long-suffering sister, she displays all the qualities of the persnickety roommate from hell – and is otherwise consumed by averting the attention of an abundance of male admirers.