We’re sooooooooooooooooooooooooo excited to announce that singer-songwriter Eleanor Friedberger — she of Fiery Furnaces fame — is coming out to Marfa for a weeklong residency this March, culminating in a special performance on March 24, 2012. While she’s here, Eleanor will record a limited edition 7” for us (Grouper did the inaugural one for us last year). Read more about the show here — and check out Eleanor’s song “Inn of the Seventh Ray” off her first solo record, Last Summer, which was released last July — the part around 3:04 is so good.

Friend and Arthur alum Dan Chamberlin just told us about the new Grouper cover of (legendary Pacific NW punk band) Dead Moon’s “Demona,” taken from an exclusive 7″ that comes free with the new issue of YETI Magazine. Liz did a residency with us back in May of 2010, where she played an amazing show and recorded two tracks for our very first Ballroom 7″ (which sold out overnight). She also just scored Weston Currie’s new movie, The Perception of Moving Targets, which was featured at Sundance this year. And she has a new collaboration with Tiny Vipers — under the name Mirrorring — coming out March 19 via Kranky.

Total hero.

Check out both Grouper’s and Dead Moon’s versions below, and head over to Yeti to get more info about the 7″. –NICKI

Download: Grouper “Demona” (Dead Moon cover)

You wrap your colors over my eyes

Still from Kevin Jerome Everson’s CINNAMON

This Saturday, we’re hosting the next installment of the AutoBody Film Program at the Crowley Theater in Marfa. This time, we’re showing three short films — Matthew Barney’s Hoist, Claude Lelouch’s C’était un Rendezvous, and Kevin Jerome Everson‘s The Prichard — followed by Everson’s feature Cinnamon. The grouping of films continues to probe an extended metaphor built around a pun on autoeroticism.

I’m especially excited to see the films by Everson, who recently had a solo show at the Whitney, “More Than That: Films by Kevin Jerome Everson” (which got a great review in the Times). Cinnamon (2006) is set in the world of African-American drag racing, an experimental film about the consistent routine of a young bank teller (Erin) and a mechanic (John) as they prepare for a race.

Here’s Everson discussing Cinnamon and his work in “Notes from the Avant Gutter: Kevin Jerome Everson on Art, Work, the Beauty of Everyday Routine and Getting it DONE” from 2006:

Over the past ten years I have completed two feature films (Spicebush, 2005 and Cinnamon, Sundance 2006) and over twenty-five short 16mm, 35mm and digital films about the working class culture of Black Americans and other people of African descent. My films focus on conditions, tasks, gestures, and materials in these communities. The films focus on the relentlessness of every day life, as well as its beauty — and have a naturalistic, almost documentary-like texture.

Discuss some of your choices with respect to the characters in Cinnamon.

One of the main reasons why I decided to make a film that included a racecar driver and a bank employee is because the people engaged in these careersare often asked if the worst case scenario has ever happened: “Has the bank ever been robbed?” Or “Have you ever crashed?” The other reason is that my mother is a retired bank teller and my father is a retired mechanic. My father drove and repaired stock cars in the 1960s. I have always portrayed individual’s careers or crafts as if they were engaged in an artistic endeavor. I respond to people of African descent who are experts in their respective fields. This allows me to find formal as well as social meaning in the task. These crafts
or careers sometimes arrive from what I am personally invested in; the characters of the bank teller, mechanic and racecar driver are homage to my
parents.

I love this part: “My films focus on conditions, tasks, gestures, and materials in these communities. The films focus on the relentlessness of every day life, as well as its beauty.” Read more of the interview here (be sure to scroll down).

Our director of development, JD DiFabbio, with Regine Basha at the opening for The Marfa Sessions in 2008 (and you can see artist Nina Katchadourian in the background, she of Marfa Jingles fame)

We’re so excited to hear that Regine Basha, who co-curated our 2008 visual arts exhibition, The Marfa Sessions, has been selected as the new executive director of Artpace (after a year-long search!). Basha is a curator and writer who has worked nationally and internationally for nearly 20 years, including a five-year stint in Austin as adjunct curator and consultant for Arthouse at the Jones Center (during which she also cofounded fluentcollab.org). Congratulations to Regine — and we’re so happy to have her back in Texas!

Wade Thompson and Jack Whitman of Son & Sons

We finally met Son & Sons, the brand design firm that created the (incredible) posters for the Mick Barr and Mariachi Las Alteñas performances back in September (really amazingly designed: the created as a diptych: see them here). They’re in town to work with us on the Drive-in, and it’s been a blast having them (check out photos from their trip here). Welcome to Marfa, Jack and Wade! We shall haunt your dreams forever.

Last minute notice: The new marble sculpture exhibition at Sperone Westwater in New York opens tonight, 12 January, with an opening reception from 6-8pm. The show features marble sculpture from 350 B.C. to the present day (or as the press release says, “from 350 B.C. to last week”), and features new work from sculptor Barry X Ball (who was in our 2007 show, Every Revolution Is a Roll of the Dice). New Yorkers, you only have 1.5 hours to get to the celebration! (The show runs through 25 February, so there’s still time if you don’t make it.)

Cass McCombs performing his latest single, “Bradley Manning,” on Democracy Now!

First, Cass McCombs is returning to Marfa tomorrow night, and all Marfans, and all visitors in town, must attend. We’re huge fans of Cass, and we were lucky enough to have him play here last July. Presented by our great friends at Marfa Book Company, the show starts at 9 pm at Padre’s.

Second, our favorite art photographer, Fredrik Nilsen, who’s taken the photos for all of our recent visual arts exhibitions, happens to also be a member of the LA art and music collective, The Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS). This Saturday, The Box kicks off their new exhibition, Beneath the Valley of the Lowest Form of Music: The Los Angeles Free Music Society ‘1972-2012,’ which presents a history of the collective, with nearly 40 years of LAFMS artwork, self-made musical instruments, recordings, ephemera, film/video, and installations. Opening reception this Saturday, from 6-9 pm, in the Box’s new space at 805 Traction Avenue in Los Angeles.

Don’t miss the opening celebration for Blind Cut, a group exhibition curated by Vera Neykov and Ballroom alum Jonah Freeman (who so incredibly transformed Ballroom’s gallery spaces for Hello Meth Lab in the Sun in 2008). The exhibition opens Thursday, January 19th, 2012 from 6-8 PM at Marlborough Chelsea, 545 West 25th Street. The works included address notions surrounding the themes of fiction and deception, and poses questions regarding identity, authorship, originality and reality. The practices and methodologies range from: depictions of fictional places, imagined personas, inaccurate histories, invented language, urban utopias and complex, unrevealed material gestures. Don’t miss this — it has a short run, closing on 18 February 2012.

Installation view of Mika Tajima’s “The Architect’s Garden” series at Visual Arts Center, Austin, Texas (2011)

Just got word that Ballroom alum Mika Tajima, who was in our 2007 exhibition Every Revolution Is a Roll of the Dice, has two upcoming exhibitions — Abstract Possible at Tensta Konsthall in Stockholm and a group show, , at Massimo de Carlo in Milan. Abstract Possible, curated by Maria Lind, runs from 12 January 2012 through 22 April 2012, and deals with abstraction and contemporary art, while , curated by Elena Tavecchia, is a group exhibition of young artists who live and work in New York, opening 25 January in Milan. If you find yourself in Sweden or Italy, be sure to stop by!

(Also of note: this video of Mika Tajima in conversation with Richard Linklater from 2011, courtesy of Blantom Museum of Art.)

p.s. Fascinating new series in the New York Times about “the real artists of Marfa.” First installment out today, featuring Foundation for Jammable Resources, our favorite local hair-scorching instrumental band. More profiles to come, including Ballroom’s own associate curator, Erin Kimmel, plus musician Ross Cashiola, who’s played twice at Ballroom.

Marfa courthouse, photo by Jaime

Our coworker JD found this great photo blog, which features a lovely post about Marfa, and some especially nice shots of the courthouse, Thunderbird Hotel, the Paisano, and Marfa Book Company (who, by the way, is bringing Cass McCombs back to Marfa, this Friday at Padre’s, utterly missable, do not miss it).