Do black leather pants qualify as a tax deduction for rock stars?

Loren's long awaited legal music database has finally arrived!here is the official video:[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uht1lm-oApE]and here is the official press release:

From writing-off leather pants to copyright disputes: New database chronicles legal side of music industry

School of Law's Center for Empirical Research in the Law and a recent law alum launch thediscography.org

By Jessica Martin

Do black leather pants qualify as a tax deduction for rock stars?Fans, musicians, journalists, researchers and anyone else interested in music can see how the courts dealt with this question and nearly any other legal issue involving the music industry at The Discography: Legal Encyclopedia of Popular Music accessible through thediscography.org.The site was created by Loren Wells, JD, musician and recent graduate of the Washington University in St. Louis School of Law and is supported by the Center for Empirical Research in the Law (CERL) at the School of Law.The site’s database — the most elaborate of its kind — covers 2,400 court opinions spanning nearly 200 years of the music industry.The opinions, ranging from copyrights and contracts to taxes, torts and more, are fully summarized and searchable by a number of variables such as artist, location, timeframe issue and more.“You can see nearly all of U.S. law through the cases and while the cases are educational, they’re also immensely entertaining,” Wells says.“The Discography is for anyone who legitimately wants a balanced perspective of the music industry and an appreciation for the people who make it happen.”

Wells started in the music industry with small rock shows and then moved onto playing the House of Blues and record label showcases. He strayed from the stage briefly to attend law school.

Thediscography.org also features a blog that highlights interesting cases, artwork by Wells and a news section on current legal events in the music industry.CERL provides the technical platform to deliver Wells’ database to anyone who would like to access it.“We took an uncut gem and presented it in a defined form,” says Andrew D. Martin, PhD, CERL director and professor of law.“The Discography is exciting because it’s an extraordinary collection of information that did not previously exist.Martin says the project is being driven by a “very passionate student” and is a departure from the staid, faculty projects that CERL normally supports.“The value of the database is immense,” says Martin, who is also professor and chair of the Department of Political Science in Arts & Sciences. “Through the lens of music cases we’re able to understand a great deal of American law.”CERL’s research technologist Troy DeArmitt says “Wells put a lot of energy and knowledge into constructing this body of information.“It would be criminal if this information was not accessible to the world,” DeArmitt says.Editor's Note: Loren Wells, Andrew Martin and Troy DeArmitt are available for live or taped interviews using Washington University's free VYVX or ISDN lines. Please contact Jessica Martin at (314) 935-5251 or [email protected] for assistance.

el es frida kahlo at the gallery

el es frida kahlo is currently on view in the New Media Room at the Bruno David Gallery in St. Louis, MO.

el es frida kahlo, 2007-present

Frida Kahlo played with the identity that she wanted to project and the identity that was placed on her by others. Kahlo used her clothing, political affiliations, sexual escapades, and personal traumas, to create a character that informed her body of work. She inscribed her identity, painting her image over and over, constructing a mythology around her persona.

In el es frida kahlo I confront the ambivalence I experience as a result of my simultaneous obsession with Frida Kahlo and weariness towards her commodification. Viewed from a tiny pinhole, dressed as Kahlo, I stand before a reproduction of one of her self portraits. With a mixture of rage, anxiety, and complete fear, I chant “el es Frida Kahlo, ella es Frida Kahlo, el es Frida Kahlo, yo soy, yo soy, yo soy Frida Kahlo,” he is Frida Kahlo, she is Frida Kahlo, I am, I am, I am Frida Kahlo. As I yell, the painting behind me begins to fall. I violently tear down my braids and smudge off my makeup while continuing to scream “I am Frida Kahlo, I am Frida Kahlo, yo soy Frida Kahlo!”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BJmaYn5IIE]

el es frida kahlo at the Bruno David Gallery (video filmed and edited by Felicia Chen)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlMPoFXRT18]

el es frida kahlo YouTube video

FREE el es frida kahlo animated gif avaliable on MayaEscobar.com

link to translation of recent review by David Sperber in Ma’arav Israeli Arts and Culture Magazine:

Frida Kahlo at the synagogue: Maya Escobar and the young Jewish-American Creation

free el es frida kahlo animated gif

el es frida kahlo will be on view at the Bruno David Gallery in St. Louis, MO from 1/22-3/6. In conjunction with the exhibition, I am offering a FREE embeddable animated el es frida kahlo gif on mayaescobar.com.

a guest post by seenoga

a guest post by seeNoga.

As you doggedly pursue, chase, and snap at the heels of your Self, you do so knowing there is no chance you will ever catch up. For each of us, throughout our individual lives, we will be ever distant from knowing our own selves. When a person pursues his or her Self in an aggressive, determined way, the resulting hyperactive sensibility allows for a greater adaptability and sensitivity. This flexibility can be useful in contemporary human life, but only to a certain extent.  It is also due to the fast-paced nature of today’s engineered environments, that there is a strong tendency (especially among young people) to go to extreme lengths in order to sustain within their own lives the hyperactivity and intensity they witness in popular culture and media. Consider the called-for constant reachability via cell-phones and laptops, as well as many other forms of expedition in our ‘lived-in’ world. These accommodations range from aerodynamics to ATMs. As many workers in today’s professional world simultaneously lament and extol their parasitic relationships with a Blackberry or other such Pocket God, I, too, have at many times felt chained to my laptop (i.e. the Internet), fearing I would miss something absolutely critical. Unfortunately, the fact that missing anything important has not happened for the most part, hardly affects the worry and anxiety that it might happen.Yet still, it seems, this once motivating anxiety is becoming a repressed urge, one which is less and less a bother, the more my environment becomes one seamless, semi-omniscient “news” feed. On the evening of President Barack Obama’s Address to the Nation, Maya Escobar recorded “Obama Tweet: How a New Generation Gets Their Information.” In this video Escobar documented a particular event, an important cultural event, one which incidentally brought the use of Twitter to the fore in popular culture.[youtube= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=359HwupsY1s]

Obama Tweet: How a New Generation Gets Their Information, 2008

I was with Escobar on this evening and was struck by the depth of her interaction with the digital realm. She was sitting in front of a T.V. broadcast of the speech, while she was also further mediating that media via her computer, on which she was following Twitter and CNN.com’s coverage of the event. Beyond all that, Escobar was creating her own real-time, indexical document of the event on television along with CNN and Twitter as instantaneous forms of annotations to the President's speech. Escobar was watching, sitting one more stage removed, behind the lens of a video camera. Because of the way in which she layered the television screen the computer screen and then the interface of any viewer's monitor, Escobar has effortlessly choreographed a multi-layered, engagement with the very most current of events. However, though I may have somewhat qualified and rationalized instant-communication tools, I still believe there must be a deliberate effort to complement those socially-prescribed media with other, independent forms of digital exchanges. While I do believe in the great social potential of our rapidly advancing communications media, my work seeks to push and pull on parts of these evolving global ‘informachines,’ in an effort to challenge the omnipresence of commercial media.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0ZvYQOp89I]

Look Out, 2008

That sort of layering of non-dimensional spaces is unique to the contemporary world, with the inception of digital technologies, and this collage-like aesthetic is of great interest to the work of Maya Escobar, as much as it is to my own. Although, unlike the deceptively referential works of my counter-part, in many of my works, I use and refer to popular media sources and specific Internet sites indirectly and rarely with any superficial visibility. It is with great deliberation and much hypothesizing that I curate my works in the manner in which I do. I intend my works to avoid specificity and leave wide-open their readings to a much more self-guided analysis by viewers. In the piece “Look Out,” the projected video came directly from YouTube. I simply cut off the last second of the original video, thus shortening it to 17 seconds. I then prepared it as a video-loop for its installation underneath a staircase at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. Because of its placement, where it fills a theretofore, unaddressed space, it is as though the rolling image is part of the museum structure itself. The particular clip, which I chose after viewing dozens of similarly tagged videos (‘storm,’ ‘tree,’ ‘willow,’ and ‘weeping’), was selected for very specific compositional reasons; reasons which are the very same principles of design taught to anyone working in commercial design or the visual arts: complimentary colors, rule of thirds, dynamic composition and varied textures, to name a few. Because of my focused selection process, this video, although created for very different (and unknown) reasons, still fits very well into the installation space as a deliberately designed, and potentially permanent use of what is otherwise a neglected space. The video became part of the stairwell. By existing within a predetermined, architectural frame, it became part of the space, as opposed to sitting on the surface as a painting does.  This projection did not exist in the way that many (most) installations do: as obvious alterations or obtrusive interjections into a space. This work asserts itself as a physical part of the space, as the projector beams through from behind the scrim in the stairwell. It also assumes a living presence, as it reiterates itself, by many reflections and refractions, split and scattered, bouncing around the main hall of the museum. The video functioned as a decorative element but also an illusory window to an outside world, whereas, the space without that piece is simply a pane of glass that looks into the shadowy crotch of a stairwell.  I do not mean every square inch should be taken up for some sort of visual activity or illusionary window. Simply, this work proposes how our constructed spaces, in this case a venue for art viewing, might be reinterpreted. Insofar as, a corner can conceivably become a window, as illusory and impermanent as my particular interpretation may be.

*NOESCO is seeNoga and maya escobar

Berlin's Eruv Video

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGjJhIFUNGA][youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CycyYiY933A][youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCM4rrhbj5U]click here to visit website

Berlin's Eruv at the 2009 Conney Conference on Jewish Art

I will be presenting Berlin's Eruv at the 2009 Conney Conference: Performing Histories, Inscribing Jewishness at University of Wisconsin Madison.Berlin’s Eruv is a conceptual project that addresses the assumed non-presence of Jews in Germany. Berlin does not actually have an eruv. There is however, an active Jewish community, one that is frequently overshadowed by the city's prominent monuments and memorials commemorating Jewish life (death). Berlin's Eruv weaves together voices from Berlin's Jewish community in an attempt to construct a metaphorical eruv representative of a living Jewish Community. Just as the eruv exists in the minds of the people who abide by it, Berlin’s Eruv manifests itself through the conversations surrounding the idea of the piece.*****I will be showing Berlin's Eruv at 2009 MFA Thesis Exhibition, opening May 8th at the Kemper Art Museum.

Appropriating and Recontextualizing Google Image Search Results

Part 1 of an article I wrote for jewishinstlouis.orgEvery art student learns about the fair use principle, granting us permission to use any image in our artwork as long as we transform it so that it conveys new meaning.  But beyond that all-encompassing definition, we don’t know what transgressions, if any, we are actually committing.Recently in the news is the preemptive lawsuit artist Shepard Fairey filed against the Associated Press. According to Fairey the AP threatened to sue him unless he pays royalties for the image that he used as source material for his now famous campaign poster of Barack Obama. Fairey argues that he is protected by the fair use principle. He claims that his intention was not to reproduce any particular image,  but instead was to capture a specific gaze representative of the ideas of hope and change.In an interview on NPR, Fairey declared he was going forward with this suit on behalf of all artists, the thousands of artists that created their own campaign images in the same grassroots manner, pulling images from the web in support of the message of hope, change and a new administration in Washington.

screen shot of: first page of google image search results for "Barack Obama"

I am fascinated by Fairey’s implication that the process of appropriating and re-contextualizing Google image search results might be considered a grassroots action. As an artist, I frequently use images that that I find on Google. Like Fairey suggested, my motivation for using these images is to highlight the search itself, not the derivative image.Perhaps then, these cyber Robin Hoodian actions—using and transforming Google image search results—are capable of changing the structures that control the dissemination of information. After all, the order that information appears in Google searches is determined by the amount of people searching any given topic. And as a result of the Fairey’s appropriation, his campaign poster may be forever linked to Obama’s presidency.

email from President Obama

Obama’s popularity can be credited to his skillfully constructed presidential campaign that effortlessly linked his name to hope.  I was quick to jump onto Obama’s online campaign message of hope.   Like many others, I subscribed to his twitter, facebook, and YouTube pages. I now get weekly emails from him and I even have a blog on his site…

Negotiating Diaspora Identities Through New Media

Join PhD Anthropology Candidate Eric Repice and MFA Candidate Maya Escobar in a brown bag lunch discussion concerning transnational, transcultural, and hybrid negotiations of identity through new media.How do these discussions vary between our fields?Eric Repicefor more information on Eric Repice visit http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~esrepice/homefor more information on Maya Escobar visit http://mayaescobar.com[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3li_mT--f-A][youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-GDmDcSH4g][youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whLYM9o946w][youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz2fhmRzCOA][youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14bv0-dzMIc][youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNAxEUEE43Y]

Georgia Kotretsos

Athens based artist, Georgia Kotretsos is the editor-in-chief of Boot Print, a contemporary art publication published by Boots Gallery. For the next two weeks Georgia will be the guest blogger on Art 21.check her out....

excerpt from her first post

[I] condemn all forms of violence and vandalism and I have been firm on this since the very beginning. Yet in a cloud of ambiguity the media, a political party and many civilians justified the mayhem and fed its appetite. A state of simmering pandemonium stamped this holiday season and with no further delay, a bloody dialogue was set in motion in the early hours of January 5th, 2009. Thirty Kalashnikov shots were fired towards three policemen who were guarding the Ministry of Culture. The gunmen sealed the attack with a grenade. A 21 year-old policeman was wounded and still remains in critical condition.

Both shootings took place in Exarchia, in downtown Athens. When asked about January 5th, a middle-age female resident of the area said with confidence to a news reporter “I heard Kalashnikov shots been fired.” Who can distinguish the type of a gun by its shots in the middle of the night in Athens? The death of the student has sparked the worst riots for decades, which escalated to be a sociopolitical vendetta. Is this a society of an eye for an eye?

Why is this all happening? For way too many reasons that go too far back, but most importantly because the Greek gluttonous government in power since 2004 is digging a hole and inviting us all to jump in.  For the last 18 months, new scandals make weekly headlines, there isn’t even enough time to react in between – the lethal combination of a corrupted government and a lethargic Prime Minister, Kostas Karamanlis, is what we’re left with at a time of severe economic stagnation, a chronic lack of meritocracy, an endless list of social injustices and continuous brutality towards protestors, which in this case were often teenagers, by the state.

How could I ever link this intro to the art postings I’ll upload from Athens for you in the following days? Maybe I can’t and maybe I shouldn’t and for that I have to say this now.

Art may echo this page of Greek contemporary history, but I’m not convinced it’s entirely necessary unless we’re willing to individually evaluate the role of art within the contemporary Greek society and further admit openly the kind of voice it has for each one of us, and then get on with our day.  There is life after art and if artists are willing to react, or make a stand, they are not obliged to call it art – an artist is also a citizen.  If anybody finds comfort in turning this into some careerist driven niche, I’ll personally stay away. An open dialogue that’s not addressed exclusively to the intellectual elite can be an initial answer to our racing thoughts[...]

Washington University in St. Louis MFA Open Studios

Washington University Graduate Open Studios and Art Sale Saturday, December 13th, 2008 Open Studios: 4-9 p.m. Lewis Center725 Kingsland_____________________________________________________________________Washington University MFA students are pleased to announce our Fall 2008 Open Studios and Art Sale, featuring work by more than 40 innovative young artists working in painting, printmaking, photography, sculpture, combined media, installation and video.From 4-9 our studios will be open to the public and artists will be present to answer questions and interact with visitors. This event presents a unique opportunity to experience the work of emerging artists outside the traditional gallery setting.  The event will be accompanied by an art sale from 4-9:00 pm.The art sale will take place on the third floor of the MFA Building and will feature original works by MFA students.  Payments may be made in cash, or by check with ID only. Proceeds will benefit the Washington MFA Student Organization and will be put towards the growth and development of the MFA program as well as to the individual artist.The Graduate Program has been flourishing at Washington University.  Housed in the distinctive Lewis Center in the heart of University City, MFA students and faculty interact in a collaborative, organic setting, creating a program that is always evolving and pushing the boundaries of contemporary artistic practice.  Please join us for this unique event.

Hope in the STL POST

Article from the ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

'Hope' springs anew for Washington University grad students

November 19, 2008 -- Carianne Noga, a graduate student of art at Washington University, ties tags of hope onto a sculpture outside the University City Post-Office. Noga and fellow student Maya Escobar started soliciting people's hopes to place on the sculpture. (Christian Gooden/P-D)By Margaret GillermanST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH11/29/2008UNIVERSITY CITY — Georgia O'Keeffe found inspiration in the light and shapes of New Mexico. Mary Cassatt found hers in mothers and children. Maya Escobar and Carianne Noga, two graduate students at Washington University's Sam Fox School of Art and Design, found inspiration for their latest project from the long lines on Election Day at a Ben and Jerry's ice cream shop in the Loop.There, on the sidewalk outside the shop, which was giving away scoops of ice cream to voters, the two women felt excitement and hope among voters. They said they found that same feeling across the street in the long line of voters waiting to vote at the Loop polling place."We wanted to continue that moment and not let it peak out," Noga said.Before the polls closed, they had begun to create their "I hope…" project.They first staked out a site: outside the University City Post Office at 561 Kingsland Avenue.They then provided people with bright red tags and paint markers for them to write down their hopes for a better future.The tags then are affixed to a permanent lattice wood sculpture already on site outside the Post Office."As difficult as it can be sometimes to voice our wishes and dreams, it can be strengthening," the artists say in explaining their mission. "We can be reminded of the rest of the world outside our own immediate concerns. In this period of great change and near infinite possibilities, it is time for us to voice our hopes."While the project is for all people, Escobar said it holds special meaning for young people."This is our moment to make a difference for our communities," Escobar said. "We need to be aware — of our national situation, of the economy."Many of the hopes expressed — most recorded anonymously — so far are noble and universal: "I hope for world peace" and "My hope is that hate is no longer."Some of the hopes are personal. "I hope to not fear death," wrote one.Others have a distinctly political bent: "I hope we get out of Iraq and don't go to war with Iran." And some are just fun, like the person hoping for "chocolate cake for dessert ..."A University City police officer named Hope — Reginald Hope — shared with them his own hope: for safety for police officers. A fellow officer was killed while on duty near the Loop last month.Washington University Chancellor Mark Wrighton gave his hope and "wishes for better health and greater prosperity for all."The artists also are encouraging people to submit their hopes online at togetherwehope.com.The existing sculpture outside the post office was designed in 2005 by an undergraduate architectural design studio taught by Carl Safe in the Washington University School of Architecture. University City resident Ethel Sherman had asked Safe to help create a sculpture in memory of her husband William Sherman, a Washington University biochemist who died about five years ago."It's strong like Bill and peaceful and quiet," she said. Sherman said she's thrilled about adding "I hope..." to it."This is an exciting time of change and hope," said Sherman, a retired psychologist and teacher who worked for 10 years at the Loop's Craft Alliance.The artists, both 24, come from family traditions of public service and political idealism."I grew up under the table of political meetings," says Escobar, remembering her childhood in Chicago. "My friends and I formed our first political organization when we were 11 — Students Against Child Oppression — on behalf of children in sweatshops in Mexico."Her mother is a school nurse, and her father, an educator, hosts a radio show in Chicago called "Si, Se Puede," which means "Yes, We Can." The program has been around since 1996.Noga grew up in the Washington, D.C., area and in Georgia. Her father is a psychiatrist at a state hospital, and her mother is a library director.Both artists are second-year graduate students in the two-year master's of fine arts program.The project will remain up through January. Later, the tags can be relocated to other sites and the online site will remain.University City has embraced the "I hope ..." project, according to city manager Julie Feier."It's an inspiring project," she said.

[email protected] | 314-725-6758

together we hope

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcwPoFPdeVM]The polling lines were LONG in STL, I waited over 4 hrs to vote!  But it was well worth it, I have never been more proud to be an american and to take part in such an important moment in history.The night of the elections, Carianne and I initiated our project together we hope with the help of our friend Becky Potts.  We passed out red tyvek tags and asked people to write down their hopes for the future. We tried to encourage them to go beyond "I hope Obama wins" or I hope McCain wins".People wrote things ranging from "I hope I get good grades" to "I hope that we end the war in Iraq and do not go to war win Iran."Check out this website we created where you can submit your hopes online. We will make a tag for each hope submitted...

Gina Grafos

beauty, brains, talent, wit... she has got it all.my girl Gina Grafos will be featured on the front cover of zeek magazine's april additon.be sure to check her out.

Birth. Soul. Spirit. Death. All cycles of life are overlapped in Gina Grafos' life and in work. Raised in a Jewish, evangelical Christian, Greek Orthodox family, Grafos' perception of belief was left quite askew. Her work now deals with the beliefs of others, with a preference for representations of faith whether relgious or philosophical.

abidin travels

(above)Willie Cole, The Difference between Black and White,2005-6. Shoes, wood, metal, screws, and staples, 85 x 16". 

ST. LOUIS, MO - War and disaster have profoundly shaped the opening years of the 21st century. In the United States and abroad, acts of violence and terrorism as well as natural catastrophes have resulted in large-scale destruction and displacement affecting the lives of millions. In February, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis will present On the Margins, an exhibition exploring the impact of war and disaster through the work of a diverse range of contemporary artists. Curated by Carmon Colangelo — a nationally known printmaker as well as dean of the university's Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts — the exhibition will showcase more than a dozen works, ranging from prints and photographs to video and large-scale installations, by ten artists from around the world. Several installations play against traditional approaches to war memorial. For example, Fallen (2004-ongoing), by the American artist Jane Hammond, comprises a large field of brightly colored leaves, each bearing the name of a soldier killed in Iraq. Similarly elegiac is Metal Jacket (1992/2001), by South Korea's Do-Ho Suh, which consists of 3000 dog tags stitched to the liner of a U.S. military jacket. Abidin Travels: Welcome to Baghdad (2006), an interactive video installation by the Iraqi expatriate Adel Abidin, allows viewers to become virtual tourists amidst the wreckage of his native Baghdad.

In conjunction with the exhibition MFA candidates Carianne Noga, Dan Solberg, Erica Millspaugh and I assumed the role of travel agents assisting museum visitors in arranging their virtual flight Baghdad aboard a B52.