Monday, May 19, 7:00pm
McNally Robinson Booksellers (52 Prince St. between Lafayette and Mulberry)
Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond

The title of this collection of poetry is a little boring, but the subtitle and guiding principle are exciting. Edited by Ravi Shankar, Tina Chang, and Nathalie Handal, Language for a New Century is a selection of poems from fifty-nine countries and territories in the Middle East and Asia, areas that are often over-simplified and grouped together in our politics in America. They are organized thematically, not geographically, and this results in an exciting variation. Editor Ravi Shankar and the poets Timothy Liu, Sarah Gambito and Vijay Seshadri will read from their work and discuss the role of poetry abroad.

Wednesday, May 21, 7:00pm
McNally Robinson Booksellers (52 Prince St. between Lafayette and Mulberry)
Ed Park, author of Personal Days (Random House), in conversation with his Random House editor, Julia Cheiffetz

I know I already mentioned Ed Park (founding editor of The Believer magazine and publisher of New-York Ghost) once on here, but if you missed that one, you might want to go check this one out. Park’s new novel follows a group of co-workers in an office as their company comes apart. He’ll talk with his editor Julia Cheiffetz at this event. If you’re not a New York reader, then go to the New-York Ghost’s website for a complete listing of readings.

Thursday, May 22, 7:30pm
Word (126 Franklin St. in Greenpoint)
Music Writing Event

If you’re a fan of music writing, or just music, and haven’t yet heard of or read anything from Continuum’s 33 1/3 series, which features pocket-size books by well known music writers and musicians writing about key records, then it’s high time you get on it. Thursday writers from the series Matthew Stearns (Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation), Michael Fournier (The Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime), and Amanda Petrusich (Nick Drake’s Pink Moon) will read and discuss their work. The evening will be moderated by Rolling Stone’s Jenny Eliscu.

Friday, May 23, 7:00pm — 9:00pm
KGB Bar (85 E. 4th Street between 2nd and 3rd Aves.)
Drunken Boat: Launch Party, Issue # 9

Drunken Boat is an international online journal of the arts, and Friday it will be celebrating the launch of its ninth issue, which focuses on Poetics and Mis/Translation, enquiring if poetry can still matter today. There will be a multimedia performance and reading by writers and artists Sandra Beasley, Rand Richards Cooper, Sean Thomas Dougherty, Alena Hairston, Karla Kelsey, Steve Langan, Hermine Meinhard, Terese Svoboda, Peter Yumi and Jonathan Zalben.

Evolving at fiberoptic lightspped, the Goth-Loli — or Goth-Lolita — movement in Japan is not longer just a ’style’, but an entire lifestyle, replete with outposts in other transcultural Japanese youth subcultures — punk, early American, cyber and even kimono.

Beyond even the best pages of Soichi Aoki’s Fruits — which introduced most of the world to the obsessively constructed, deeply theatrical costumes that pass for streetwear in Harajuku, Tokyo — the photographs of Masayuki Yoshinaga don’t just document the outerwear. They capture and communicate the the delicate balance of such Japanese youth subcultures — the frenzy of style, the studied poses for cameras and the surprising awkwardness when caught by Yoshinaga’s lens outside of those poses.

Partnering with TRACE magazine in celebration of our Erykah Badu and Q-Tip Art issue — free download here — the exhibition of Yoshinaga’s Goth-Loli series opens this evening in New York!

139 Norfolk Street
between Rivington and Stanton streets
New York

Celebrating 25 years of ingenious album art — the kind of design work that makes collectors fiend and eBay stocks soar — the Richard Goodall Gallery in London is opening a retrospective of Central Station, the design team that has graced tunes from Happy Mondays to the film 24 Hour Party People.

With their explosive, graphic style, Central Station not only earned spots on galleries world-wide, but also a place in the lore of Manchester’s ‘Madchester’ era for helping to define it’s fusion-heavy, indie dance-rock style.

Check out the show here, which opens today, and get more info on Central Station here.

Urban art and activism meet global humanitarianism as Limbo Fine Art Gallery hosts The Love Movement (TLM) and other prominent street/surf artists in a show entitled The World at Large / / Love Without Borders to benefit the International Humanity Foundation (IHF).

The Love Movement’s works combine political messages angled to wake up one’s conscience with a philosophy of “love is the way”. And they actually get down to do the hard work of producing art for humanitarian projects and raising funds through art shows and T-shirt sales to purchase school supplies and to build a community well in a village in Benin, Africa.

This time, TLM has joined forces with IHF for the education and empowerment of kids abroad, demonstrating that art combined with social consciousness has limitless possibilities. The World at Large /// Love Without Borders will showcase an amazing lineup of internationally-shown artists: Michael De Feo, Wolfgang Bloch, Alex Knost, Tyler Warren, Ben Brough – 33, Andrew Sarnecki - Hippytree, Hovin Wang, Paul Lefevre – Polish, Micke Tong, Thundercut, Abe Lincoln Jr., eight-year-old Reece V., Meredith Ambruso, Guy Quezada, Jon Ho, Karen Jones, TLM, as well as TRACE’s own Lichiban (yours truly) and Jelsen Jargon, who recently shined on our blog.

The opening reception of The World at Large / / Love Without Borders is Saturday, May 17, 2008, from 7pm to 12am at Limbo Fine Art Gallery, 1432 University Avenue, San Diego. All proceeds to benefit IHF. The show runs from May 10 to June 1, and is open to the public on Saturdays and Sundays. Interested parties can contact Limbo at 619.316.2239 to arrange a private viewing.

For more information, please visit this, this or this!

‘Malibu cruising music’ is one of the best descriptions of Cali’s latest Hip Hop sensation Shwayze. Shwayze brings a new feel to West Coast Rap, with his indie/alternative vibe and laid back lyrics. Accompanied by the vocals and acoustic guitar of Whitestarr front man Cisco Adler, Shwayze brings a chill “summertime in the life of a stoner” edge to a sound that could be reminiscent of Gym Class Heroes.

The self-proclaimed “only Black kid in Malibu” uses his self-titled debut album to discuss the good life in his hometown, which proves to be a nonstop party. Filled with hot girls, dope lyrics and an acoustic guitar, Shwayze gets the point across that he’s in it to have fun.

Shwayze first met up with Cisco during a Whitestarr performance in ’05 at Malibu Inn. He jumped on stage and started freestyling while Alex Orbison played drums in the background, and since then he and Cisco have been working together to produce something fresh for the Hip Hop scene. Shwayze gained much attention with his live performances and will be appearing in this summer’s Warped Tour, which kicks off on June 20th in Pomona, California.

In the meantime, catch Shwayze tonight at Crash Mansion in L.A.

For more information check him out here.

For two days in New York every year, Tokion magazine pulls its global strings to pack the Cooper Union Art and Science college with some of the top creative talent from the world over. For anyone who keeps up with the current masterminds of culture and the Who’s Who of art, design, curating, architecture and film, this year’s roster of presenters will cause no less salivation that previous years. Check out the partial list below:

Harmony Korine (Gummo, Julien Donkey-Boy, Mister Lonely, Kids); Kathy Grayson (Deitch Projects); Klaus Biesenbach (MoMA/P.S.1); Shamim M. Momin (Whitney Museum of American Art); Thomas Duncan (Gagosian Gallery); Massimiliano Gioni (New Museum of Contemporary Art); José Friere (Owner of New York’s Team Gallery); Lizzi Bougatsos of Gang Gang Dance; Nate Lowman; Gardar Eide Einarsson; Hanna Liden; Gary Panter; C.F.; and Lucky Dragons.

Salivate a bit more while thumbing through the rest of the line up and grabbing a ticket here — the event sells out every year, so grab soon!

Adventures in the Beetroot Field and Margaret in association with Vice Magazine bring to London town the Stag and Dagger festival.

Stag and Dagger is the first festival of its kind to be held in Shoreditch East London, a.k.a. the ‘cool’ people’s party district. Over 5,000 people will take to the boutique streets of Shoreditch to see over 100 acclaimed acts in 15 intimate venues from 6pm through to 12am (and slightly later for some bars).

The line up is exceptional with headliners including DJ A-Track, Bang Gang DJ’s and ‘Parees’ very own Fafi. From live music acts to Film screenings to Art shows , Stag and Dagger will be causing a stampede in Shoreditch — a fun-filled electric one of course!

The Stag and Dagger festival is to take place Thursday the 15th of May 2008. It will be held in Shoreditch East London starting at 6pm and going on until roughly 12am.

For more information on the festival and how to get tickets check out the website here.

Don’t Forget One ticket = access to all areas!!!

Thursday nights are great ’cause the weekend’s promises of chaotic fun and new experiences are well within reach. Paris’ Centre Pompidou offers you the latter every second Thursday of the month with the Les Jeudis projects. On those days, the Center invites art academies and schools across Europe to put on productions in a variety of disciplines: from theater to music, fashion, performance art and dance.

This week, London’s Central School of Speech and Drama will be the institution doing the honors with Urban-I-City. In the performance, actors and dancers will examine “the relation between space, architecture and the body.” May is the last month of Les Jeudis shows: I recommend that you find a way to get to Paris ASAP and start the weekend on the right foot.

Here you have it…Biz’s Halloween Beat Of The Day, from Kidrobot’s super-superb Nick Jr. show “Yo Gabba Gabba“. This clip begs the question, can you ever really get enough Biz? OK maybe if you cloned him a thousand times, then cloned each of those clones a thousand times, I’m almost positive you’d get sick of dude beat-boxing at all hours of the night eventually.But let’s be realistic; that technology is like three or four years away, so yeah, there’s your answer. And I can hear him now, that destroyer of all things, that perpetual Man-Bastard, Rufus. I can see the scenario perfectly, in the theater of my mind. Rufus shouting across the way, perched atop his birdshit-stained stoop: “Yo Kasai, it’s spring time kid! Shit is like mad primaveral right now!” Oh Rufus, I’m well aware. I know, I’m mad late on this one. But if you ask me, the Gregorian calender’s a bunch of mularkey anyway. Besides, the way I get down, every day’s Halloween, ya heard? Now I just need a bat-hat like Biz’s and I’m in like Flynn.That and plastic surgery to make me look like the Count from Sesame Street. Yeah. I’m super serial.

History will be made in Brooklyn this weekend as the New York Photo Festival opens in DUMBO — the first international-level festival of photography to be based in the U.S.

In the debut of this new annual event, four internationally respected curators present their vision of the newest and most important trends in contemporary photography:

Magnum photographer Martin Parr’s “New Typologies” highlights the use of the photographic series as an attempt to bring order to the chaos around us. The New York Times Magazine picture editor Kathy Ryan looks at sculptural and painterly qualities of recent photography in “Chisel”. Lesley A. Martin of the Aperture Foundation reflects on “the replication and reproduction of the photographic image in “The Ubiquitous Image”, focusing on how contemporary artists are using the seemingly limitless cache of disseminated images to create their own work”, and Tim Barber of tinyvices.com presents over 300 images in “Various Photographs” that showcase work from well established to unknown photographers.

In addition to the curated pavilions, the Festival features seminars, portfolio reviews, slide shows, book signings, photographic workshops, live performances and events, and a gallery row. The festival is poised to satisfy any culture cravings whether you’re a professional photographer, an amateur or an appreciator. If you’re in New York this weekend, make sure to head under the bridge and check it out.

For tix click here and for more info on the New York Photo Festival, click here.

New York Photo Festival
Thursday May 15 – Sunday May 18
10:00am – 7:00pm