_ as you gear up for turkey gobbling, consider the lovely printed matter. The FPO Awards Book is available for pre-order now!

_our dear Nathan Rothstein sends word of his latest project, in which “people raise money for the cause they care about by selling their used clothing.” Interested? Contact them at buymyne@gmail.com

_artist Hidenori Mitsue shows who’s boss.

Doug Freeman is a multi-talented Austin hero. The former Austin Chronicle writer, and current occasional columnist, has also co-authored the essential “The Austin Chronicle Music Anthology” which was released in March (much to the Gopher Editor’s musical benefit). Beyond his musical knowledge and journalistic prowess, it has also come to our attention that the one Doug Freeman is also a Tech Startup savant, world traveler and consumer of the best dive fare this city has to offer.

It should then be not at all [...]]]>

Doug Freeman is a multi-talented Austin hero. The former Austin Chronicle writer, and current occasional columnist, has also co-authored the essential “The Austin Chronicle Music Anthology” which was released in March (much to the Gopher Editor’s musical benefit). Beyond his musical knowledge and journalistic prowess, it has also come to our attention that the one Doug Freeman is also a Tech Startup savant, world traveler and consumer of the best dive fare this city has to offer.

It should then be not at all surprising that we tripped all over ourselves when he agreed to choose a setlist to celebrate Volume 2. And he did not disappoint: the tunes have enjoyed a prominent spot in our rotation ever since.

And lest we gush too much about Doug, we leave you to judge for yourself. But not before adding one last, very important thing: he is also the nicest dude you’ll ever meet. We heart D.F.

The playlist:

01. Triveni – Rodrigo y Gabriela
02. Just Like Heaven – Kat Edmonson
03. Tonight The Streets Are Ours – Richard Hawley
04. Comeback Kid [ That's My Dog ] – Brett Dennen
05. Pickin’ Up the Pieces – Fritz & the Tantrums
06. 100 Yard Dash – Raphael Saadiq
07. Detroit – The Bright Light Social Hour
08. Up Up Up – Givers
09. Take on Me [ A-ha ] – A. C. Newman
10. Words of Love [ Buddy Holly ] – Jessica lee Mayfield
11. You Can’t Buy a Gun – Holly Golighty
12. Cello Song – The Books feat. José González
13. Don’t Let Me Down – M. Ward

And the music:

Photo Credits: Max Marshall!

Photo Credit: Max Marshall

Anyways.

Desirée’s set is a change of pace from R-Berry’s beautiful playlist, and may coax some ill-advised moves out of the less graceful citizens of the world. But enough about us. Desirée ‘with an [...]]]>

Photo Credit: Max Marshall

Anyways.

Desirée’s set is a change of pace from R-Berry’s beautiful playlist, and may coax some ill-advised moves out of the less graceful citizens of the world. But enough about us. Desirée ‘with an accent’ is a Venezuelan entrepreneurial soul. From a very early age, she was exposed to different cultures and cities around the world. These experiences helped her grow and shaped her as someone who always maintains an open mind and consistently seeks new opportunities. Presently, she works at one of the most creative ad agencies in Austin as a translator, copy editor and, since 2010, a successful event planner. Always innovating and coming up with new ideas, she of course has more than a few projects in mind, but her most current creative undertaking is Shoe-Gaze, a website dedicated to music and personal style that she and partner Rohin Bhalla developed. “Heavens, how?” you ask? The idea for the site was born while the two were standing in line during SXSW. Shoe-Gaze was launched in 2011 and is quickly gaining popularity as an international collection of street fashion that creates a new path for discovering music.

And now, la música.

1. Any Which Way – Scissor Sisters
2. Round Clocks – Pollyester
3. Going Out Again – Electrelane
4. The Bay – Metronomy
5. Into The Valley (feat. Karl Dixon) – Classixx
6. Never Heal Myself – Cults
7. 16th and Valencia Roxy Music – Devendra Banhart
8. I Walk Alone – Music Go Music
9. Glass Deers – Braids
10. Bury Us Alive – Startfucker
11. Escapee – Architecture In Helsinki

Download the entire playlist for more portable fun.

July in Texas is… hot. The temperature climbed up quickly in May and has been inching ever closer to skin-evaporating heights of the sun. But thankfully there is reprieve indoors, sticking our heads in the melting freezer and listening to the four sets (okay, okay, playlists) that our dear friends from all around Austin made for the launch party of the second volume of the Gopher!

And the love we got from these awesomely attuned folks, well, it’s just something that needs to [...]]]>

July in Texas is… hot. The temperature climbed up quickly in May and has been inching ever closer to skin-evaporating heights of the sun. But thankfully there is reprieve indoors, sticking our heads in the melting freezer and listening to the four sets (okay, okay, playlists) that our dear friends from all around Austin made for the launch party of the second volume of the Gopher!

And the love we got from these awesomely attuned folks, well, it’s just something that needs to be shared. Y’know?  So here’s what’s what. Every Monday, for the next four weeks, we will publish one of the setlists that each of the masters of the music chose for the release, in whe order in which they played at the event. Best of all, you can get to know these excellent folks and their excellent projects, and even download the set so you can listen to it as obsessively as we are.

Without further ado, we kick things off with the inimitable Ron Berry*, who is the founder and Artistic Director for the annual Fusebox Festival — a ten-day hybrid arts festival presenting genre-defying artists from all over the world, with a focus on the live event. Originally from Houston, Ron has called Austin home for the past fifteen years.

Image shamelessly borrowed from Tribeza.com, credit: Lauren Smith Ford

Ron is a maker of dreams and everything we hope to become when we grow up. In this year’s Fusebox Festival, Ron and the F.F. team took over an abandoned power plant as their late night venue, filling it to the brim with programs of sheer amazingness. There was a broadcast staring contest. There were a hundred violinists. An exquisite corpse artwork room. Pecha Kucha night. Seriously, man.

Listen in, then take it with you!

1) Texas -  Scout Niblett
2) Feet & Hands -  Fannypack
3) Tumbling Dice -  The Rolling Stones
4) Sunsesame -  Caribou
5) I’m Getting Back Into Getting Back Into You – Silver Jews
6) I’m 9 Today -  Mum
7) Bizness – Tune-Yards
8) Stanley vs. Hannah – Alamo Race Track
9) Still Sound – Toro y Moi
10) You Gotta Know -  Fannypack
11) Living Things – Komeda
12) Real Live Flesh – Tune-Yards

*not to be confused with the other Ron Berry

_Amilcar sent word about this VBS vid shot in Caracas, which is the perfect way to kick off the weekend.

_tumblr Tuesday time: Non-Clickable Item is a visual goodie bag

_school may just be too cool for you, thanks to some magicking by Dietwee for Hogeschool Utrecht

Set for the Outside

Zarouhie was in town on an artistic mission back when there was still a need for sweaters. We met her at a the dusty bar that we favor, immediately impressed by two things: she was immune to the chilli evening, and her order of battered and deep fried chicken gizzards. Upon reviewing the artist’s multi-medium work, this gizzard-eating-sweaterless adventurousness came back to me as a perfect lens through which to examine it. For Abdalian, neither medium nor message seem [...]]]>

Set for the Outside

Zarouhie was in town on an artistic mission back when there was still a need for sweaters. We met her at a the dusty bar that we favor, immediately impressed by two things: she was immune to the chilli evening, and her order of battered and deep fried chicken gizzards. Upon reviewing the artist’s multi-medium work, this gizzard-eating-sweaterless adventurousness came back to me as a perfect lens through which to examine it. For Abdalian, neither medium nor message seem to ground the work, which seems guided, rather, by a deep and pervasive curiosity. The artist’s creations are, in a sense, formulated in response to spaces, experiences and topics that catch her attention. The results vary from case to case, but they are united by the kind of considered responses that one would expect from a debater. Zarouhie let us grill her with questions about breakfasts, catastrophes and materials.

Tell us a little bit about yourself: Where are you from? What do you do? What is your favorite word? What did you have for breakfast?

I grew up in New Orleans but have lived in Oakland for the past few years. I make studio works, which right now include drawings, sculpture, and projections, and I do site-specific installations. I don’t have a favorite word. Breakfast is almost always three cups of coffee and toast.

Drift (Video Still)

How would you describe your work to someone unable to experience it?

My work moves between media and is not materially defined. Site-specific pieces take characteristics or materials preexisting at a site and alter them as a way of prompting a reviewing. Materials used, however, are quotidian and the alterations are quiet.   The focus of the work, however, bridges the media and stems from my interest in limits – of a system, an archive, a material, etc. Works may directly engage the limits of a particular medium such as a projector or of a device such as a digital camera; or works may describe or point to structural or perceptual limits.

When did you begin officially begin making art? For what reason?

I’m not sure I feel that there is anything very official about what I do. I decided very early on that I wanted to be an artist and have always had a relationship to materials. What I have meant by being an artist has changed over time, but the reason I continue to make work is that I am intensely challenged by the process.

Set for the Outside

Your work sometimes seems to reference mathematics or engineering. Do these topics interest you?

They do. In some of the work, I appropriate ideas from an empirical system and use them for non-empirical purposes, for the making of artwork. Often I use an idea from math or engineering and situate it in a different context. This may be referenced simply through the appropriation of terminology for the work’s title (i.e., Shock Response Spectra, 2009) or may be more explicit in the realizing and presentation of the work (i.e., Flutter, 2010). In general, I think that by borrowing from empirical disciplines, artists may broach the political by staging disruptions to these systems, to the prescribed “knowable”, through an examination of their premises. Rather than using the terms of the borrowed discipline, I hope to critique those terms and/or identify their histories.

Your work has been described as largely concerned with landscape. You’ve also moved cities a few times, once from New Orleans, your hometown, because of Hurricane Katrina. Does your location (be it New Orleans, San Francisco, or wherever you happen to be working on something) affect the work? Does it affect you?

When working on pieces for installation, I am influenced both by the location of the project and also and importantly by my particular experience of New Orleans and of catastrophe relative to that site. My site-specific works have focused on disintegrity or vulnerabilities of sites.

Rift (detail)

What is your relationship with New Orleans like today?

I visit home a few times a year and my family is still there. Being in a place that is quite literally sinking is grounding for me. I also make a lot of “sketches” and find these visits generative.

You work in a variety of media – drawing, painting, video, installation – which medium are you most comfortable with? Which, if any, do you find yourself drawn to these days?

This movement between media is consistent to my practice and informs my approach to the materials I choose. I broach the problems of one medium in another – the experience of a painting in space and time has informed my approach to projection; looking at the problems of video including sequence and montage informed my approach to a series of drawings. I reconsider the aims of a project that is materials-contingent in another medium. In other words, I change the focus by shifting materials. I don’t really have a general preference but choose materials when they make sense for the project or idea.

Drift (Video Still)

What are you working on right now?

Right now, I’m spending some time playing with materials in my studio as I develop ideas for a couple of site-specific installations, including a piece for the Istanbul Biennial. I just finished a text and stroboscopic light piece for Altman Siegel, a San Francisco gallery. I am also working on a video piece that takes as a starting point footage I have collected of the Gulf Coast.

If you weren’t answering this interview, you would probably be…

Working in my studio, of course!