Poet Sergey Wolf

Great Russian poet Sergey Wolf, 1934-2005. They don't make them like that anymore.

London, Oct 8th

Eduard Levé

Surfing today through French sites, looking for information about Eduard Levé books, I realized it was a year day to day that Edouard Levé, one of my favorite French artists, committed suicide. I knew he killed himself, but I didn't know when. It was exactly a year ago, October 15, 2007. I never met Levé, but I knew his work fairly well and always thought highly of him. Writer and photographer, he had a rare for the contemporary French artists, articulated philosophical vision and a sense of sardonic humor. He was, it appears, a true "artist maudit", but unlike most of contempoarry "arists maudis", Levé was good. He was really good. What a depressing coincidence that I thought about him on the anniversary of his death. It rained practically all day.

Some pictures by Eduard Levé

All photos by Eduard Levé

In the metro

Irina Volkonskii exhibit in Paris

One of the better shows I saw in the past couple of months.

In the Valley of Ellah

Paul Higgis' In the Valley of Ellah shows excellent cinematography: the camera work gets five stars. However, the final twist in this otherwise, well-structured film, remains unimpressive and lacks depth. As a result, the film doesn't deliver that dramatic and philosophic punch that it, given the themes it dwells on - war and human nature, could have delivered. It ends with benign moralizing (perhaps Higgis had joined the Democratic Party recently). The fact that US soldiers (not all of course, but many) in Iraq kill for fun and lose any "normal" human reactions, is well established. But why does it happen? What triggers that? And what does it mean for the American nation? Higgis doesn't really talk about that. However, the film brings one important point: the link between the cruelty to animals and cruelty to humans. These two go hand in hand. I give three stars out of five to this film.

Last Supper

Japanese restaurant Itsu in London where ex-agent Litvinenko had his last Japanese meal with Mario Scaramella before being poisoned by Polonium 210.

The only decent picture at 104

Opening of 104, Oct.11

Korina Dolgin on Paris

Paris, Sunday, Oct. 5

Stewardess, KLM

Minister Serguey Lavrov

My favorite Russian foreign minister and poet Serguey Lavrov, having a good time in New York.

Shooting "The UN is Decadent & Depraved"

Mark Boswell and Olga Kopenkina getting ready to do the Coney Island scene, Sept. 2008

Mak Boswell and Jason Shurte, September 16, 2008

Actress Micha Lazare, September 2008.

My friend Yuri Yarmolinsky

>Designer Yuri Yermolinsky, on his balcony in NYC.

On the beach, at Gene Thornhill's in New York

At ten I wen to the beach. The planes were going to JFK, as usual, despite the impeding doom that was about to wipe out over 1 trillion dollars off the books on Wall Street.

Secret Agents

US secret agents in front of the Hyatt Hotel, New York, 26 September 2008

While the system is collapsing...

George W. Bush at the UN, Sept.24, 2008

Master and Servants

UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon at the UN headquarters, NY, Sept. 26. Copyrights by Lee Mayr

View of Ricker's Island Prison

People who cannot keep their committements should be locked in jail!

Early Morning

Last Night

Yesterday morning

After the MoMA presentation

Mark and Susanne Boswell at the MoMA bar


After the presentation we went to the Armory to see DEMOCRACY in America where we run into Missile Dick Chicks.

For immediate release



Reading Lenin with Corporations


PRESS RELEASE:

September 11th - October 4th, 2008
Closing reception: Saturday, October 4th, 5-7 pm
Gallery hours: Thursday - Sunday, 12-6
Location: 9th Street, just east of First Avenue, street level


PS 122 Gallery is pleased to present “Reading Lenin with Corporations,” an exhibition-seminar based on an idea by Yevgeniy Fiks and produced by Yevgeniy Fiks, Kent Hansen, Olga Kopenkina, and Alexandra (Sasha) Lerman with participation of Janet Koenig, Anton Koslov, and Gregory Sholette.

“Reading Lenin with Corporations” is a reading seminar, which will meet in PS 122 Gallery once a week from September 9th to October 2nd, 2008, and it brings together artists and business/corporate employees to discuss the current state of globalization in the intersection of politics, art, and culture. At the core of the seminar will be V.I. Lenin’s text Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Each session will focus on a chapter from Lenin's book which will be discussed in the context of the modern philosophical and political debates on Imperialism.

The agenda of the organizers of the seminar is a genuine attempt to understand multiple conflicting positions on a phenomenon known as “Imperialism.” During the seminars there will be discussions about the implications and limitations of Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism, and more broadly, the effectiveness of Marxist analysis of Imperialism today. Lenin’s text will become a point of departure for a serious discussion on the global changes in structure and operations of Imperialism since the book’s release in 1917.

Although reading sessions will be closed for general public, reading sessions will be recorded on video and then screened during regular gallery hours in PS 122 Gallery.

For further information please contact:
Susan Schreiber, Gallery Director tel: 212.228.4249
Olga Kopenkina: 1-347-517-1741
Yevgeniy Fiks: 917-378-5282.

www.ps122gallery.org

The exhibition has been made possible by the generous support of the New York State Council on the Arts, Painting Space 122, Inc. and the Friends of PS122 Gallery.

Transportation:
Bus: M15 to St. Marks Place, walk one block north and half a block east on 9th Street
Train: #6 to Astor Place, walk two blocks east to First Avenue and one block north to 9th Street

Teenage Life

Teenagers being photographed in front of the crematorium at the Maidanek concentration camp in Poland.

Timur Novikov

Timur Novikov in Paris, 1993. Copyright by Anton Koslov Mayr

Real Photographer

It looks like this guy in the middle is using a real 5x4 camera to shoot a street demonstration (St. Petersburg, Russia, February). Now, that is the true spirit of photography, not some digital "anyone can do it" crap!

Random Encounter Last Sunday

If anything, a blog helps me to keep in line with my memory and fight senility. Otherwise all these images would be lost in my endless hard drives and contact sheet folders that no one ever will open.

Last sun bathing

Last Day of Summer

Driving around Miami (or was it Nice?) on the last day of summer I think that cultural bureaucrats and the shmatos business gallerists who control our lives must be destroyed en mass! Swift troika justice for all the speculators and pseudo-art connoisseurs who made fortune selling pesticides to India and cancerogenic milk powder to Africa (and Louis Vuitton bags to the entire world)!

Chanel University graduate

Thierry Marignac

Thierry Marignac, French novelist.

Adeline André fashion show in Paris

Cops in my hood

Flying over the Atlantic

Constanza

August in Wonderland

Exploited Youth

War in Georgia

Abkhazian paramilitary setting a Georgian village afire. From Russian TV. For some strange reason, Russian media presented it as "the liberation from the Georgian occupation". Talking about double standards, Russians are doing no better than their American counterparts.

Moscow by night