"Fall Out Shelter" Maya Jeffereis Gives An Artist Talk and Facilitates Hypothetical Dooms-Day Scenarios at Overnight Projects In Burlington, Vermont

New York based Maya Jeffereis invites participants to engage in a conversation about politics of identity and morality by participating in a military training exercise. The exercise is taken from a US military training document to test officers’ values and decision-making processes. In a hypothetical end of the world scenario, ten people of diverse backgrounds occupy a fall-out shelter. However, the shelter can guarantee survival for only six people. Participants must decide which four are to be excluded from the group in order that the remaining six may live to rebuild society. In this exercise, participants must argue in favor of and against each of the occupants until the group reaches a full consensus. "Fall Out Shelter" will be held at Overnight Projects on January 16, 2016 in Burlington, Vermont. 

"Looking Back" The 10th White Columns Annual, Selected by Matthew Higgs

White Columns present “Looking Back”, the tenth installment of the White Columns Annual. For the past decade the exhibition has been a fixture on White Columns’ calendar. Each year, an individual or a collaborative team (e.g. an artist, a curator, a writer, etc.) is invited to organize an exhibition based on their personal experiences with art in New York during the previous year. For the tenth ‘Annual’ exhibition – coinciding with his tenth year as White Columns’ Director - Matthew Higgs has made this year’s selection. (Higgs also selected the inaugural Annual in 2006.) Looking Back will be on view until February 20, 2016 at White Columns, 320 West 13th Street, New York. photographs by Tenlie Mourning

Hanging Out With Bowie: Terry McGovern Remembers A Night Out With the Thin White Duke

John Carter was a record promoter in San Francisco. I was a DJ on KSFO. I was doing something typically silly on my show. Boom-chuck-chuck. It takes two people, taking turns w/the syllables in waltz time. You say boom, I say chuck, you say chuck…and so on until someone messes up. The door to my studio opened while I was playing this nonsense game on the air with a caller. I saw John and we exchanged a smile. And then I saw who he was with. "David wants to play this game w/you." I almost fell off my chair. It was David Bowie, in town to promote his latest album. Bowie sat down and we began to play. I think he wiped me out in no time. After the show, David, John and I went to the Boarding House, the very hip venue on Bush Street. John had to take off, so I sat there for over an hour watching the show with David Bowie. It was surreal. Just two guys, taking in a show, knocking back a couple of drinks, checking out the scene. I was struck by how polite he was, warm and sincerely interested in everything going on around us. At one point, the light hit his face and, yep, there they were. That one blue eye, and one green eye. He caught me looking at him and smiled. "Odd, aren't they?" he said. We laughed. Bowie was on his way to Japan…by ship. He said he was terrified of flying, so he planned on taking a cruise ship from San Francisco to Tokyo. I remember thinking how cool that was to turn a morbid fear into a leisurely, sophisticated sea voyage. I can't recall much else. The show ended. (Sadly I have no idea who was on stage.) We said our farewells and he thanked me for playing his music on the radio. We parted. This morning, I woke up to the news that he was gone. The Thin White Duke with those extraordinary eyes. I had his company for an hour or so one night a long time ago. I'll never forget him. I'll never stop listening to him. And I'll play boom-chuck-chuck with anyone who'd like to.

Text by Terry McGovern. A San Francisco media fixture for decades, McGovern is well known on radio, TV, commercials, animation, feature films, theatre, and video games. You may remember him uttering those immortal words “These are not the droids we’re looking for” in Star Wars, A New Hope. He has also appeared in films such as American Graffiti and Mrs. Doubtfire. 

When A Hero Dies: Read Musician Lorde's Touching Tribute To The Late David Bowie →

When a hero dies, everyone wants a quote. I woke up this morning with a tender head from tears and that big red cup of Japanese whiskey, gulped last night just after the news came. People were already asking me what I thought. It feels kind of garish to talk about oneself at a time like this, when the thing that has happened is so distinctly world-sized. But everything I’ve read or seen since the news has been deeply intrinsic in tone, almost selfish, like therapy. That’s who he was to all of us. He was a piece of bright pleated silk we could stretch out or fold up small inside ourselves when we needed to. Click here to read more. 

A Glimpse Into the First Issue of The Feros Review, An Erotic Notebook From France

Sometimes sensual, sometimes sexual, Feros a call to awake the senses. Firmly rooted in this time, the erotic review explores an obsessive look aesthetic and contemporary fascinations for impulses living being. The publication stands out as the need to reveal the principles of a contemporary eros which seeks and is constantly renewing itself, without manipulating representations. In each issue, art and literature intersect, align and interact freely. Wild beauty and sought: Feros. The first issue includes contributions from Julian Feeld, Apollonia Saintclair, Mirka Lugosi and more. You can purchase the first issue of Feros in a standard edition and limited edition here. 

A Winter Weekend In Joshua Tree, California

The air in Joshua Tree is sweet, thin and immaculate. It is high desert air at its finest. It is a forsaken landscape. The Joshua trees that line the horizon and the desert seem like lost souls trapped in a spinning chokehold, moving so fast that everything is brilliantly still and hopeful. Despite its alienness and despite its strangeness, it is a beautiful landscape full of boulders and small shacks and homesteads. In the summer, it is too hot to live here, so many people move North or somewhere more forgiving. When you wake up in Joshua Tree, you want to walk for miles until you are an invisible stranger. At night, have a shot of whiskey at Pappy + Harriet’s and in the morning eat at La Copine in Flamingo Heights - make sure to order the beignets, which are splattered devilishly with cinnamon-coffee sugar. Just two hours away from Los Angeles, Joshua Tree is a strange and beautiful oasis. text and photography by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Masami Teraoka’s Apocalyptic Theater/The Pope, Putin, Peach Boy and Pussy Riot Galore at Catherine Clark Gallery In San Francisco

Catharine Clark Gallery presents Masami Teraoka’s Apocalyptic Theater/Pussy Riot, The Pope, Putin, and Peach Boy, a solo exhibition of new and selected work by Masami Teraoka. The exhibit features four large triptych paintings more than a decade in the making, in which Teraoka continues his brazen portrayals of abusive power. While shocking and lurid, the exhibit (titled after the villains and heroes in the artist’s theatrical renderings) is also sardonic and impishly humorous: power changes hands, traditional roles reverse, and fates are reimagined. Mirroring the triptych construction of his paintings, Teraoka’s tableaus literally and figuratively open the secretive and dark underworlds of institutional power to Teraoka’s singular brand of unabashed truthtelling, searing criticism, and playful ridicule. The exhibition will be on view until February 20, 2016 at Catharine Clark Gallery, 248 Utah Street, San Francisco. Photographs by Bradley Golden

R.I.P. Legendary Musician and Artist David Bowie Is Dead At 69

Sad day indeed, the words come in fits and starts, David Bowie's music was and is and has been the soundtrack to many of our lives. He was 69. He died peacefully. He will be eternal. His most recent album Blackstar was released on his birthday on January 8th. From the official statement: "David Bowie died peacefully today surrounded by his family after a courageous 18 month battle with cancer. While many of you will share in this loss, we ask that you respect the family’s privacy during their time of grief." photograph by Gijsbert Hanekroot

Punk In Translation Private View @ The Horse Hospital in London

Japanese leather initiative Leather Japan has collaborated with avant-garde brand Blackmeans to create the exhibition Punk in Translation. Produced by Harris Elliott – co-creator of the widely acclaimed Return of the Rudeboy, Punk in Translation features work from Japanese documentary photographers Yusuke Yamatani, Tatsuo Suzuki and Naoya Matsumoto. Their images document the raw community of Japanese punks, following the underground music scene;; diversified sounds, ‘live houses’, discreet characterless buildings, and Tokyo’s loyal punk youth. Punk in Translation showcases the scene’s style and attitude in its rebellious form unique to Tokyo’s surroundings, highlighting the radical Japanese interpretation of punk. The unmistakable style has been integrated with traditional Japanese festival culture, incorporating sensitivity towards detail, a natural characteristic of the Japanese. Held at The Horse Hospital, the exhibition highlights the lifestyle and culture of how the UK punk fashion and music scene has influenced, and informed a new breed of subculture. Punk In Translation will be on view until January 11, 2016 at The Horse Hospital, Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London. photographs by Flo Kohl

For The Love Of Gore: Read Our Conversation With Teenage Filmmaker Kansas Bowling On Her New Prehistoric Slasher Film That Is Being Released Today →

We met up with Kansas Bowling, the young, bright-eyed filmmaker who is about to release her first film – a “prehistoric slasher film” called B.C. Butcher – at Canter’s Deli in Los Angeles. It was the perfect setting for a late night nosh and chat about filmmaking; a not so unusual conversation among the famed booths of the Jewish deli where Bowling’s boyfriend, the iconic DJ and “Mayor of the Sunset Strip” Rodney Bingenheimer, has his own table. And it was at that table where we talked with Kansas about her upbringing in Los Angeles, her early fascination with low-grade horror films and B.C. Butcher, her first feature, which stars the likes of Kato Kaelin and Bingenheimer himself. Click here to read more. 

Molly Soda "From my Bedroom to Yours" @ Annka Kultys Gallery In London

Annka Kultys Gallery presents From My Bedroom to Yours, Molly Soda’s first solo exhibition outside her native United States. The show features twenty recent works by the Detroit-based digital artist realised across a variety of digital platforms, including videos, gifs and NewHive. Born in 1989 and currently 26, Soda explains her work is about girls and for girls in their bedrooms, and takes the private behaviors inherent to those spaces and makes them public, reflecting how that process changes the way in which those behaviors are seen and contextualized. As a result, her images are raw, rejecting conventional beauty norms, whilst still maintaining a tween-Tumblr aesthetic and employing kitsch elements and lowbrow internet culture. From My Bedroom to Yours will be on view until January 16, 2016 at Annka Kultys Gallery, 472 Hackney Road, Unit 3, 1st Floor, London

Nobuyoshi Araki "Love On The Left Eye" @ Little Big Man Gallery In Los Angeles

Little Big Man Gallery presents “Love on the Left Eye,” a solo exhibition of works by Nobuyoshi Araki. The prints included in this exhibit have been selected from the photographer’s most recent work. The title of this exhibition refers to Ed van der Elsken’s 1956 photobook “Love on the Left Bank.” When Araki was around twenty years old, he saw “Love on the Left Bank,” and took some photographs of women in poses inspired by this book; “Love on the Left Eye” could also be seen as an homage to van der Elsken. After a recent stroke that left him mostly blind in his right eye, he has decided to black out the right side of his photographs so that the viewer can see what he sees. Love On The Left Eye will be on view until February 16, 2015 at Little Big Man Gallery, 1427 East 4th Street in Los Angeles