JAMES CASEBERE IN CONVERSATION WITH HAL FOSTER
Barnes & Noble
150 East 86th St. at Lexington Ave.
Wednesday, October 26, free, 7:00
212-369-2180
www.barnesandnoble.com
www.jamescasebere.net
Born in Michigan and living in Fort Greene since the late 1990s, James Casebere has spent the last thirty years making constructed photographs, creating table-sized architectural landscapes and turning them into haunting large-scale photographs of suburbia, the American West, prisons, and eighteenth-century America. His work has now been collected in James Casebere: Works 1975-2010 (Damiani, October 31, 2011, $80), a midcareer survey of his fascinating oeuvre. Edited by Okwui Enwezor, the book includes essays by Hal Foster and Toni Morrison as well as a talk between Enwezor and Casebere. “Rocking our sense of security and danger, James Casebere probes domestic and public spaces in order to expose the porous borders between them,” Morrison writes in the foreword. “He introduces foreign elements, manipulating light and our visual expectations of the sacred and profane; the safe haven versus confinement; privacy versus secrecy; wilderness versus shelter. He estranges the familiar and warps the conventional in hospitals, church-inflected architecture, ordinary home furnishings, corridors, and prisons.” In celebration of the book’s publication, the New York Foundation of the Arts is presenting the free event “James Casebere in Conversation with Hal Foster,” October 26 at the East 86th St. Barnes & Noble, in which the photographer sits down with the noted art critic, followed by a book signing.
Screening at 92YTribeca as part of the third annual Doomsday Film Festival — which promises “Deserted streets! Blood-red skies! Total social breakdown!” — Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove is one of the grandest satires ever made, the blackest of black comedies. With the threat of nuclear annihilation looming over the United States and the Soviet Union, General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) has a meltdown, becoming obsessed with protecting the country’s “precious bodily fluids” and threatening to launch the bombs. While President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers) tries to make nice with the Soviets, General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott) gets caught up in all the military excitement, Colonel Bat Guano (Keenan Wynn) defends the Coca-Cola company, Group Captain Lionel Mandrake (Sellers) can’t get anyone to listen to him, and Major T. J. “King” Kong (Slim Pickens) prepares for the ride of his life. Based on Peter George’s novel Red Alert and written by George, Kubrick, and Terry Southern, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is hysterically funny and wickedly prescient, an absolute hoot from start to finish, featuring razor-sharp dialogue, inspired slapstick, and just enough truth to scare the hell out of you. (Be sure to watch for Peter Bull not being able to stop laughing as Sellers goes crazy in a wheelchair at the end.) The screening will be followed by a “Doomsday on the Brain” panel discussion with Joseph Le Doux, Dr. Mark Siegel, Lee Quinby, Keith Uhlich, and Mark Asch, moderated by Paul W. Morris from, of course, BOMB magazine. The Doomsday Film Festival also includes Steve De Jarnatt’s 1988 WWIII flick Miracle Mile, followed by a Q&A with star Anthony Edwards and the director; Don McKellar’s 1999 Y2K nightmare Last Night; Joseph Sargent’s classic Colossus: The Forbin Project, followed by “The Singularity Is Nigh,” a panel discussion with Maggie Jackson, Joshua Rothkopf, Jason Zinoman, Chris Bregler, and Roger Schank, moderated by Michael Byrne; Tobe Hooper’s 1985 exploitation fave Lifeforce, preceded by complimentary sexy alien zombie makeup; a collection of short films; and schlockmeister Larry Cohen’s 1976 cop drama God Told Me To, followed by a Skype Q&A with Cohen. If the end of the world is coming, this is a fine way to say goodbye.
