Three Upcoming Events in the North Dakota Cold

The next few weeks are going to be pretty hectic around here, but in a good way. There three events with varying degrees of publicity that I want to make know today.

1. Dan Graham’s Rock My Religion. To get us in the mood for Punk Archaeology, I am going to do an informal viewing of Dan Graham’s important 1984 video at noon on February 1st in the Working Group for Digital and New Media’s Lab (203 O’Kelly Hall). The video runs about 50 minutes and we expect some conversation afterward. Bring your lunch.

Kostis blogged about this video way back in 2009 when it was screened again at the MoCA in L.A., the Whitney in New York, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. While these screenings featured shows by Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, and the Freebies, our showing will not although I can promise an interesting group of cats will be there to talk about it. 

2. Punk Archaeology. The show is on February 2nd in Fargo at the Sidestreet Bar and Grille. The music will begin around 7 pm ish. The roundtable will probably happen around 9ish and more music and merriment will follow. The show, music, knowledge, and conversation are all free. Our plan is to stream the event live over the internets.

We’ve started to get a little positive press. Check out our little announcement in the Fargo Forum, Aaron Barth’s (our producer) interview with Bob Harris on the Mighty KFGO 790 in Fargo, and some good vibes on The Arts Partnership ARTSpulse blog. We’re waiting on the UND or NDSU home page!

3. Kyle Cassidy. It is really exciting to announce that Kyle Cassidy will be visiting North Dakota from February 8th-11th. He’ll be on campus on February 8th and give a talk at noon on February 8th in the East Asia Room of the Chester Fritz Library.

He is probably best known for his 2007 Armed America: Portraits of Gun Owners in Their Homes (Krause 2007). This past summer he released his second major book this summer: War Paint: Tattoo Culture and the Armed Forces (Schiffer 2012). I have no idea what he’ll be talking about, but I am pretty sure it’ll involve photography.

Bret Weber, Richard Rothaus, and I will be taking Kyle out west to help us continue to think about the  Bakken Oil Patch. We are slowly bringing a group of photographers together who are interested in the strange aesthetics of exploitation on display in the Bakken. This is an exciting project.

The very next weekend, I’m off to my alma mater, the University of Richmond to give a talk. I will deliver a revised version of my venerable Dream Archaeology paper. This paper began as a few hasty meditations during my time at the American School in Athens in 2007 and 2008, became my presidential lecture here at the University of North Dakota in 2009, and I’ll unveil the third version of the paper at my talk at Richmond on February 19th. I’ll have more information on this soon.

Finally, you might have heard that it’s cold here.

In one of my very few failings of Northern Plains machismo, I started my walk home last night and it was about -17 with a windchill approaching -40. I got about a kilometer into my walk and began to feel cold. My hands got cold and my feet got cold. It seemed like some discretion might be in order and I requested extraction. (Over this same time my iPhone battery dropped from 90% to 72%.)