The collection of works in SHRED, the comprehensive show currently on display at Perry Rubenstein Gallery, explores an artform often maligned: collage. Carlo McCormick, the show’s curator, is not only the senior editor of PAPER magazine but also a longtime defender of New York’s downtown art scene. In this show, from simple, layered newsprint cut-outs to videos comprised of animated paper silhouettes, works by such artists as Bruce Conner, Gee Vaucher, Jack Walls, and the late scene darling Dash Snow demonstrate the powerful potential of collage as a medium even as they push it to its outermost boundaries.
     Many other artists created pieces specifically for the exhibition, including Shepard Fairey, the collective Faile, Mark Flood, Swoon, Erik Foss, Leo Fitzpatrick, and Judith Supine. The show also features video works by Martha Colburn and Tess Hughes-Freeland, and a video premiere by Malcolm Stuart and Bec Stupak.

SHRED is on display until August 27, 2010 at Perry Rubenstein Gallery in New York.

The International Documentary Association presents the 14th annual DocuWeek. Audiences in New York and Los Angeles have the opportunity to view some of this year’s best independent non-fiction short and feature length documentary films. DocuWeek takes place July 30-August 19 at New York’s IFC center and Los Angeles’ Arclight Hollywood.
     IDA is a nonprofit membership organization that supports documentary filmmakers throughout the world by promoting an increase in public awareness of documentary film form as well as expanding filmmakers’ opportunities and access to aid for production, distribution and exposure. IDA’s DocuWeek helps these select films meet Academy Award consideration by providing a week-long public theatrical exhibition in both New York and Los Angeles, the Academy’s minimum requirement for a film to be considered for an award.
     Since DocuWeek’s premiere in 1997, the showcase has qualified more than 160 short and feature films for Academy consideration, and produced seventeen Oscar nominations. This year’s lineup includes twenty-two films by filmmakers from around the world spotlighting a wide range of topics.

For a full list of films as well as showtimes in both Los Angeles and New York, visit The International Documentary Association.

The vibrant collection of objects on display now through January 10 at Why Design Now?, the Cooper-Hewitt’s National Design Triennial, answers that question quite simply. Design matters because absolutely everything in our environment, from our eating utensils to the cities we live in, is designed, and the materials and methods with which they’re produced have a powerful impact on our culture and the environment.
     Appropriately, the curators have included objects of every scale. The show includes drinking glasses with grip-like profiles to aid those with limited manual abilities, and renderings for Masdar, a new remote desert city in Abu Dhabi that will be the world’s first isolated, self-sustaining, zero-energy community.
     The exhibit projects a curious ambivalence about technology. Some of the high-tech artifacts included, like the iPod, the Kindle, and twitter, have already become seemlessly embedded in our lives. They’re advanced, but commonplace. Other high-tech objects seem to belong to a distant, Jetsons-like future. There’s a giant, rotating dish-shaped solar collector with gleaming mirrored facets, and plans for a communal electric car system that would allow city-dwellers to borrow and deposit vehicles at designated stops.

Williamsburg, Brooklyn may be practically synonymous with twenty-first century so-called hipster culture, but despite its artistic reputation the neighborhood has yet to add an independent movie house to its roster of concert venues, bars, and restaurants. The recently-opened indieScreen aims to fill this void, as well as to add something new to the plethora of local eateries with its in-house restaurant and bar.
      The 93-seat theater eschews trendy interiors for understated design. Co-owned by Marco Ursino, the founder of the Brooklyn International Film Festival, the theater hosted this year’s festival in June and will also house July’s Flick Film Fest. The eclecticism of indieScreen’s staunchly non-mainstream movie line-up is reflected in its multicultural menu: tapas, paninis, and sashimi are available in the restaurant or theater area, courtesy of restaurant owner Anna Pozzi-Popermhem.
     According to indieScreen, the space is also “available to festivals, organizations, individual artists, and curators for private screenings, concerts, power point presentations, seminars, and lectures.” A far cry from the seemingly endless stream of commercial theaters throughout the city, indieScreen provides a multipurpose venue to enliven the ever-changing cultural landscape of the neighborhood it inhabits.

indieScreen is located at 285 Kent Ave. at S. 2nd St. in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. To be invited to the theater’s opening night (date TBA), email ee@indieScreen.com.

Coinciding with the Capital Fringe Festival 2010, INTERWOVEN kicks off tonight at the Textile Museum in Washington, DC. Sponsored by the Danish Embassy and DC’s NPR affiliate, the two-night event will push the boundaries of both textile and performance art through a melding of the two.
     INTERWOVEN will feature the first-ever American appearance by designers and artists Henrik Vibskov and Andreas Emenius, whose previous work, The Fringe Project, explored the nature of physical surfaces and movement, all through fringes. The pair claimed their inspiration came after watching the film Solaris and “staring at a New Years Eve party hat”. Additionally, avant-garde fashion label threeASFOUR will perform, as will fashion designer Peggy Noland. Screenings by artists such as Hrafnhildur Arnardottir, a.k.a. SHOPLIFTER — who is perhaps most widely known for being the mind behind the cover image of Björk’s 2004 album, Medulla — will most definitely be highlights.

INTERWOVEN: Evenings in Performance will be at the Textile Museum, 2320 S Street, NW Washington, DC on July 23 & 24, from 8 to 10 p.m.

Monday at 4:53 p.m. marked six months since a massive earthquake devastated Haiti, and the moment passed with relative media silence. In the half-year since the destruction, western media outlets have turned their eyes elsewhere while Haiti still grimly struggles to recover. Now, with the threat of hurricane season looming, the lingering effects of the disaster — 1.5 million people are living in temporary camps near Port-au-Prince, and services are reportedly unable to reach large portions of the affected population — threaten to become even worse.
     In response, Thomas Beale of Honey Space has organized an event alongside leading NGOs, artists, and grassroots organizations working in Haiti “to share their insights into what’s happening on the ground, what projects are really making a difference, and how we can support them”. Presentations and discussions about the current state, and future, of the relief effort in Haiti start at 7 p.m., to be followed by a silent auction and DJ.
     When asked what prompted the effort, Beale responded, “We organized this event to at least try to understand what life is like six months after such an apocalypse, what many are doing to help, what we can do.”
     A PICTURE OF HAITI: 6 MONTHS LATER opens tonight at 6:30 p.m. at Honey Space, 148 11th Ave. (btw 21st and 22nd), New York. RSVP for the event here.

Romina Shama is a film director and fashion photographer based in Europe. Her work boasts a distinctly soft, cinematic style as a result of her sole reliance on natural light and an analog camera. Formerly co-creative director of the now-defunct Icon Magazine, Shama has devoted herself since the magazine’s closing in 2005 exclusively to her art. Her current show is on display at Visionairs Gallery Paris through July 9.

Mayor Bloomberg proclaimed this week “Latin Alternative Week” and there’s a lot to be excited about. For eleven years and counting, artists, journalists, industry personnel, and fans have convened throughout New York City for a peek at what’s next from international stars and newcomers alike during the Latin Alternative Music Conference (LAMC). Expect performances from hip hop and rap artists like Ana Tijoux and Los Rakas (stream below); electronic artists like Nortec Collective Presents Bostich+Fussible, The Pinker Tones (stream below), El Guincho, and Toy Selectah; and rock veterans Maldita Vecindad — at venues such as Central Park Summerstage and the Bowery Ballroom. Santa Monica’s adored KCRW radio station, a media sponsor, and DJ Raul Campos will be broadcasting live sessions. Panel discussions will address topics ranging from the future of digital music to touring to the role of labels today.

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Buy this album at iTunes. To get your baile on, visit latinalternative.com for schedules, including where to find free shows.

Although I’ve lived in New York many years now, one thing that never ceases to amaze me — and that I love — is that, on any given day, you never know who you might meet. Walking down the street you might cross David Bowie. Or sitting in a café, you might look next to you and receive a smile from Natalie Portman, and then proceed to talk with her about the latest French cinema. But not only is it true you might meet a famous person, even one of your own personal giants, there are plenty of unknowns — unknown people, that is — who have crawled onto this island in one way or another to pursue a dream. New York City is an ocean of aspiration — and, as they say, a sea of flesh. Put the two together and you have the world’s greatest, scariest, and most wondrous density of striving and struggling artists…and those…who somehow make it. Walking down my street the other day I met one such dream-seeker, a young woman who I often see walking her dog but had never spoken to.
     Her name is Niia, and she moved to New York City from Needham, Massachusetts to attend the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music as a Jazz vocal major. The great part about her story is that while studying at the New School she met Wyclef Jean, who was so impressed with her voice and musical skills that he began working with her and later featured her on his 2008 single, “Sweetest Girl (Dollar Bill)”, which reached number 12 on the pop charts and took her all over the world to perform. All this I learned later, after we parted.

Fifty years ago today, Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless broke new ground and heralded the arrival of what came to be known as French New Wave Cinema. Breathless was shot in a single summer, in a style unprecedented by previous films. Godard was 29. Determined in equal parts by practical and aesthetic concerns, the film’s distinct jump cuts, long shots, and vivid visual style — combined with its exploration of existential themes through Michel, the petty, Humphrey Bogart-obsessed criminal, and his lover, Patricia, played by Jean Seberg in the role that made her famous — came to define an iconic moment in contemporary film.
     A fully restored version of the film was released last month by Optimum. While it’s hard to imagine seeing this movie for the first time, seeing it restored today reminds us of its stand-alone style and hopefully brings new admirers to what remains a revolutionary work.