52nd City

The Weekend Starts … Now

I have a couple of bottle rockets that I did not light. I don’t have any sparklers. I’ve seen a couple of fireworks displays from afar, sparkling on the horizon. I did not go down to the Levee to see Cyndi Lauper or eat kettle corn. I have been very lame as far as celebrating Independence Day (though if my righteous indignation over Scooter Libby’s sentence were transformed into pyrotechnics, it might burn down the block). Holidays in the middle of the week always throw me—mentally, I can’t help but regress into a weekend state of mind. I stayed up late (for a school night) on Tuesday for White Thrash at White Flag, and though I have been pretty useless today, I have crayoned this stuff into my Daily Minder for the rest of the week:

Rob Player: Ten Memories in Every Pack
Maps Contemporary Art Space
225 N.Illinois St., Belleville, Ill.
July 5, 7-10 p.m.

I like Maps. It’s teeny-tiny. At the two exhibits I’ve seen here so far, most of the folks are spilled out onto the street in front of the space, smoking and socializing, but once you go into the gallery, you end up literally rubbing shoulders with other people, which is an interesting experience. And you’re sort of forced to contemplate the art on a slower timetable because the space is so small. To get there, you drive through miles of sparkly strip malls … through Swansea and Fairview Heights … to a weird little corner of old Belleville, a fairly quiet little street, and there’s this little gem. It’s an experience for sure. This month’s exhibit is an “interactive photography exhibition featuring images regarding friendship, social interaction, and the ‘rock star aesthetic.’ How does a camera affect the demeanor of the people on which it is focused? If removed from a group situation, how would a singular close friend interact with a white room, a camera, and me? These are just a few of the questions Mr. Playter posed while creating the work for his exhibition. WE WILL HAVE FREE BEER AT THIS EVENT AS PART OF THE EXHIBITION. (All ages welcome, 21 and over to drink). Also, feel free to document this event with your digital camera, we ask that you forward pics to maps_contemporary_art_space@yahoo.com . They will be placed on our blog; click on the blog to view a digital diary of images from the event. Please stay tuned for announcements of future "events" in coordination with this exhibition!”

Get Born Poetry Collective
C.A.M.P (Community Arts and Media Project)
3022A Cherokee
July 6, 8 p.m.
$2

Okay, I went to college to study poetry, and I will be the first to admit that the reason it’s tough to charge for poetry readings is that most of them are boring as hell. As heard on Literature for the Halibut earlier this summer, Get Born aim to take the must and dust out of poetry readings, keeping the rigor of traditional poetry while upping the performance aspect. I’d like to make clear right now, though, that this is NOT Slam poetry, and unlike the art show, there will NOT be free beer at this event. In fact, it’s a dry, all-ages show. They are also charging a modest fee to get in, but since you won’t hear a whisper of the clichéd Iowa Flat-style recitation, I say: right on! The show features Larva, Mathieu Paul, Joe Wetteroth, Matthew Freeman and Get Born founder, Joseph Sulier', a crew that comes with the glowing recommendation of folks I greatly respect, including Brett Underwood and Phil Gounis.

Exploring Power through Cinema: Abel Gance’s Napoleon
Saint Louis Art Museum Auditorium
July 7, 1 p.m.
$5 ($3 Members)

You probably know you can go see the Napoleon exhibit for free on Friday. You probably don’t know that for the wee sum of $5, you can go see Abel Gance’s Napoleon, (1927, 235 minutes) “arguably the most important film of the silent era,” on Saturday. When this film premiered at the Paris Opera house, it was shown on three screens and accompanied by a full orchestra. This screening will be impressive in its own way: it’s a restored 35 mm print with a new soundtrack commissioned by Francis Ford Coppola. From the IMBD description, Napoleon sounds like a beautifully excessive movie, with scenes such as the one where “the child Bonaparte keeps a pet eagle and wins a snow fight while at school in Brienne... In this sequence, the frame splits into nine subliminal images; as Napoleon watches his men entering Italy, the screen expands on each side to form a breathtaking panorama, then changes into three coordinated views.” If 235 minutes sounds like a lot, it is, but how can you tell an epic story in less than two hours? Actually, the version that showed at the Paris Opera ran four! Realizing that squiggly, low-attention-span Americans require an intermission, the museum has scheduled one, complete with complimentary sweets and coffee (hopefully with European rocket-fuel java to help with focus during the second half of the film)!