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Fri 1/20: SMFA Library Sounds Series & Boston Hassle Present… Crank Sturgeon, Victoria Shen and Cleo Miao @SMFA 7pm $5-$10
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Open Volunteer Positions:
Fri 1/20 - Sat 2/18: SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF A HAPPY MAN: THE FILMS OF JONAS MEKAS at the Harvard Film Archive
We are very excited to collaborate with SMFA for a few shows this year, bringing together the most wild artists we can find to do their thing in the incredible space that is the SMFA Library. For the first of 2017 we got former Mainer, current Western Mass-er, CRANK STURGEON raising the performance art bar and then doing aural acrobatics from it. One of the most engaging performers in the region, he’s known for crankin’ up the absurdity until it’s all too real… usually tackling global concepts while wearing some sort of elaborate handmade costume. He will be joined by area renaissance-person Victoria Shen who will likely be agitating the astral plane with her own hand made synths and electronic noise toys. At-large as she is, Shen plays solo, with her batterie-buoyed duo TRIM, with other various players, and even puts together shows herself. Finally, kicking off the evening we have SMFA’s own Cleo Miao. As an active member of the DIY music scene in Allston, Miao, a native of China, has her ears as wide open as her mind.. not sure what exactly she’ll do, but she recently made a thumb piano out of a cactus so we invited her to join the party. Come get weird and enjoy this fine space and the community that has opened its doors to you. ALL AGES. --Sam Potrykus
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Few aspects of contemporary Art Attack Managing Editor, reality inspire Art Writers more anxiety and dread than the It’s a new year, with meaningful exsurveillance state, hibitions, artist talks, workshops, comwhose indetectmunity gatherings, and performances able, inescapable, lurking around the corner. I personally am ever-compounding on the edge of my seat with the expectation eye colonizes our of seeing our creative communities build new bonds and extend putatively ideas and space with astonishing energy and kindness. However personal with this expectation also comes a call to writers to make sure that space and time the efforts of the individual maker do not go unrecognized, but by recording and are linked to a larger dialogue and made accessible to a more reporting them to diverse audience. This kind of support is so incredibly importgovernment, industry, or to whomevant, and all too often is lacking in our local coverage. The er or whatever receives or thieves its feed. Hassle is committed and we should be committed: Our For decades, the now 93-year-old Jonas all-volunteer team works tirelessly to foster a platform Mekas has offered a camera-positive inversion for creative voices and we need your help to do of this nightmare scenario, in which the gaze is always perso. We are currently seeking both contributing sonal and the process of grazing and collecting images serves writers as well as a managing editor for all poiesis rather than power. A legendary figure whose influence looms art-related web content. In these roles you large over every aspect of the last half-century of American avant-garde will have the opportunity to support your filmmaking, Mekas’ own work is predicated upon productive contradiccommunity and develop your critical and tions, most saliently that between the cinematic panopticon of his ever-rolling journalistic skills. The position of mancamera—whether 8mm, 16mm, or, eventually, digital—and the delicately lyrical, aging editor would additionally build light-suffused, eminently breathable quality of his so-called film-diaries. Mekas’ films may seem to go on forever, yet they are miniaturist and momentific, never experience in team management and totalizing and brutal. Though some of his films feature an impressive array of his editorial vision. This platform is yours! We can’t wait to see what you do with it! bohemian acquaintances, from Warhol and Maciunas to Yoko Ono, they bear no resemblance to “documentary” in the sense we’re used to; these are passing Please email volunteer@brain-arts.org or visit bostonhassle.com/volunteer if scenes as seen by a passing self. While his self may be passing, it is not past: Mekas himself will be on hand for a couple of the HFA’s screenings, and his films you are interested. --Maggie Jensen are built to outlast the collapse of our age’s shabby panopticons. --Matthew Martens
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a bostonh uary2017 Let’s face it y’all, 2016 was rough for many of us. At some point this /moc-jan past year I definitely felt the haunting call of, “What the hell am I Our cities are amalgamations of opportunity, crowded with freeing kinetic energy. In the words of Jane Jacobs, “Cities have doing with my life? And why?” It’s easy to slide into dread and hopethe capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.” However, in lessness when so much of societal dysfunction seems out of our Boston and in cities all around the country, costs of living have become impossibly high with everyone from artists to working hands. For artists, whose passions aren’t usually seen as productive families to immigrants nervously treading water, hoping they can make it work. in capitalist society, the desire to continue our work can feel self-in For artists, DIY spaces are the resultant laboratories of carefree and untroubled collaboration. They exist as informal dulgent. You may ask yourself: Am I really gonna buy another guitar gathering places in an oftentimes overregulated cultural milieu. They are the liminal in-between places vital for hosting perforfx pedal when some people can’t even afford to eat? Cool, lemme mances and gatherings when there is a lack of affordable options. In the wake of the Oakland Ghost Ship fire, city governments spend another 3 hours on this handmade fanny pack when I could are entering lockdown, shuttering spaces, becoming more reactionary, and focusing on closing spaces rather than safety, which be volunteering at Planned Parenthood. Etc, etc, etc. is short-term thinking at best. Clearly, artists need access to safe, reliable spaces to work and perform. Your fear, your uncertainty, and your insecurity during this time are At the Hassle, we are striving to address this need. We hope that policymakers will consider the detrimen- all valid. Going forward, political activism and mindfulness must tal effects that unaffordability and a lack of safe, alternative cultural spaces have on everyone before become part of our day-to-day existence. But our work derives its simply closing the spaces where so much of Boston’s creative energy is generated. power in the intersection between cultural and political activism. Culture creation is not just something we do for fun or because we places You Can Hang: feel bored. It is the social fabric that brings us together so we can understand the world together. If we can bring our political mind52 Brattle St fulness with us into our cultural activism, that creates meaningful Harvard Sq. impact. A National Endowment for the Arts report this year recognized the critical role artists play “as community leaders, giving I used to think L.A. Burdick was a French chocolate shop, and mispronounced it with an affected French accent for years (Le shape to community identity and voice to community concerns and Burdeek) until my French friend corrected me. It’s not French, but it is a delicious place to bring a date to warm up on a cold aspirations.” (http://creativz.us) And we recognize that too. Here at January afternoon or to pick up a gift for someone who enjoys extremely expensive chocolate. While the chocolate is a bit the Hassle we encourage you not to give up on whatever weirdo pricey, the shop truly excels at drinks and cakes, and after one sip of their dark, creamy hot chocolate, you’ll know that a Dunkin’ passion has chosen you. However, we also encourage you to not just will never again suffice. The only hazard of this perfect cafe is the film that inevitably accrues on your upper lip, but a chocolate wish good riddance upon 2016 and try to forget that it happened. moustache is a small price to pay for the pleasure of drinking warm, thick chocolate from a heavy porcelain mug. Collective change takes collective action. Complacency is not the The Harvard Square outpost feels like a Viennese cafe, and if you can find a spot on a cold day, it is an excellent spot to hiberanswer. Wishing an active and passionate 2017 to you all. nate with some Zuger Kirsch and a copy of the Compass (or whatever). The Back Bay shop is usually less crowded, but no less --Emma Leavitt charming, and though I find myself there less often, I’ve been known to stop in before catching a concert from the Trinity Choir, which feels about as old-world as it gets. It’s January, folks—let your sugar high mitigate the effects of seasonal depression.
L.A. BURdick
--Jennie Rose Halperin
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