R.E.M. announced late yesterday that it is officially splitting up after a three-decade run as one the seminal bands in modern American music. The news of this break is sure to throw their fans into an intense memory whirlpool. I guarantee iTunes is experiencing a heavy influx of shoppers while recollections of R.E.M.’s vast oeuvre are strong today.

The official statement, released via the band’s site, reads: “”To our Fans and Friends: As R.E.M., and as lifelong friends and co-conspirators, we have decided to call it a day as a band. We walk away with a great sense of gratitude, of finality, and of astonishment at all we have accomplished. To anyone who ever felt touched by our music, our deepest thanks for listening.”

As a massive fan, a million thoughts rush to the surface. I’ll share some of them with you (please feel free to comment with your own experiences):

- The first time I saw the Losing My Religion video…
- The collaborations: Musical – Patti Smith, Kate Pierson (of the B-52s), KRS-One, Thurston Moore and Q-Tip, among many others; and artistically: Albert Maysles, James Franco, Sophie Calle and Sam Taylor Wood – the list goes on and on.
- Playing out our own version of Nightswimming at summer camp in 1993.
- Finally relating to my parents on a current, chart-topping band.
- So much time spent with the liner notes to every single album. Remember liner notes? Remember the way a cassette smelled when you ripped the cellophane off?
- The profound impact on and support given by Stipe to Kurt Cobain.
- Memorizing the lyrics to You Are The Everything, which I still remember:
“Sometimes I feel like I can’t even sing
I’m very scared for this world
I’m very scared for me
Eviscerate your memory
Here’s a scene
You’re in the back seat laying down
The windows wrap around to the sound
of the travel and the engine
All you hear is time stand still in travel
and feel such peace and absolute stillness
still that doesn’t end
But slowly drifts into sleep
The stars are the greatest thing you’ve ever seen
And they’re there for you
For you alone you are the everything”

Out on newsstands this week is the new issue of Dossier, which includes an interview I did with Stipe. Our conversation focused primarily on his artwork. Below are a selection of images Stipe chose to accompany the piece.

Corner shot from Andrea Rosen bathroom, NYC

Hermetic JFK, sculpture by Michael Stipe

Pyrite image, faxed and shittily scanned

From Stipe’s Corner series

Entering the Milk Gallery exhibition Illumination: Who Are Poets by Steven Sebring, one is greeted by large canvases simply tilted against the walls, showcasing pixelated portraits of top artists, musicians, and, ultimately, poets. At close range, the images appear to be beautiful colors stacked upon one another. Further away, they transform into portraits of Philip Glass or Michael Stipe.

With black-and-white images taped on either side of the focal-point paintings, the viewer is able to compare the clarity of a monochrome image with the more vibrant pieces. Furthermore, smaller imagery is transposed next to the portraits to highlight some of the most meaningful tools belonging to the specific subject. For instance, multiple photos of Patti Smith’s mouth suggest that is was not only her most notorious instrument but also her most controversial artistic catalyst.

A commentary on the digital age and the diminishing breed known as the poet, Steven focuses on influential subjects who are both accessible and completely indecipherable. Patti, on-site for the opening, exemplified this fluidity and bestowed the event with a performance-art dynamic by delivering both a spoken-word piece and a song. Later, speaking to Steven, I was able to learn more about the inspiration for his first solo show and what’s next for this ever-evolving artist.

Liz Doupnik: How did you go about choosing your subjects?

Steven Sebring: I was hired by magazines to photograph [the subjects] before the year 2000. I was manipulating these images years ago and they just sat on hard drives and then I decided to pull them back out and to call the show Illumination: Who are Poets, because I believe they all are poets.

Liz: By naming all these artists and musicians as poets, are you trying to bring the spotlight back to the poet?

Steven: I’ve always thought they were poets and that poets are a dying breed. So many young people don’t even know who Neil Young is.

Liz: Expand on the statement that poets are distorted from close range and become clearer from afar.

Steven: It seemed like these people are totally untouchable and you have to recognize them from afar to understand them. There’s something about that that’s very poetic within itself. The whole story of the black and white, which is another way to look at artists, was more of a study.

Liz: How do you think technology is affecting young artists today?

Click “Read More” for additional images and text.

Steven: It’s just a different world today. Unfortunately, it can create a lot of bad stuff too. Things can get convoluted. Sometimes it’s about how you can fuck it up instead of using it normally. I think technology is good and it needs to be embraced. I think it must be so difficult to be a new photographer today because anyone can do it. I think it’s ultimately taking it, using it and making it yours.

Liz: What’s next?

Steven: Patti [Smith] and I are going to work on another show, using 360-degree photography. We’re using technology, but using it my way. I’m beginning to think about collaborating with other artists, maybe even an architect. This could also be more of a performance-art piece. It could be artists, it could be dancers…it could be anything.

With [Illusions], Patti and I were talking about how it could get much bigger, doing people like Lou Reed and Eminem. It’s a growing show. I don’t think it’s done. I’m sure when I go into the gallery, I’ll do something new to it and then I’ll walk away. I think that’s the way installations are; they are a process and about trying new things.

Illumination: Who Are Poets runs through April 17th at Milk Gallery: 450 West 15th Street, New York.

I first met Rain Phoenix in the early 90’s on the set of Even Cowgirls Get The Blues in central Oregon – at the time I had been listening to a bootleg tape of her first band Aleka’s Attic. Although that bootleg tape is worn out and my boom box is no longer, I hold that tape in high regard and vividly remember the songs Too Many Colors and Across The Way.

Present day, Rain lives in Los Angeles and fronts the band Papercranes, which she formed in 2003. Papercranes recently released their sophomore album on Manimal Vinyl entitled Let’s Make Babies In The Woods. After attending their record release party at The Stone Harvard Bar in Hollywood, I found myself inspired to approach her about an interview for Dossier.

Our interview was conducted through email and I met up with Rain on a warm winter day at Wattles Mansion in Hollywood to take some photos. Rain arrived wearing a Some Odd Rubies dress (designed by her sister Summer) and combat boots. In person Rain is slight, with jewel tone eyes, a bewitching gaze and hasn’t aged a day since I met her in our teens.

What I most admire about Papercranes, as well as Aleka’s Attic, is that both bands transcend a specific era, there is an innate quality that is very personal and as a listener it seems like one is privy to an almost secret ceremony of sorts – maybe in the wood, an attic or someone’s living room.

Natascha: If Papercranes were to perform covers, which songs would you cover?

Rain: We have and do perform covers. Here are some we have performed at recent shows: Pale Blue Eyes (VU), Needle in the Camel’s Eye (Brian Eno), Virginia Plain (Roxy Music), Children of the Revolution (TREX)

Natascha: In terms of women in music and rock, who has been inspirational to you?

Rain: Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson, Kate Bush, Kristin Hersch, Elizabeth Fraser, PJ Harvey, Bjork.

Natascha: How did the title of your album come about?

Rain: This guy once said it to me.

Natascha: What are some of your favorite places in Los Angeles?

Rain: The tunnel near the Observatory, Ameoba Records…

Natascha: Are there any performers whose stage presence you are inspired by and/or feel a kinship to?

Rain: Karen O, Trixie Whitley, Jen Turner, Michael Stipe.

Natascha: How was performing in Paris? It seems like the French would accept you with open arms…What were some of your favorite places in the city?

Rain: Gift Horse Project played there. What a great city. For that show we had Joe Sumner, Chris Stills and an amazing French artist You & You. I don’t really have a favorite place. Exploring the city walking was my favorite thing to do.

Natascha: What are you reading now?

Rain: I just finished Just Kids by Patti Smith. Amazing. I couldn’t help but to suggest to everyone I said hello to.

Natascha: Who are your artistic influences?

Rain: The weather, rocks and streams, lovers, haters and originators.

Natascha: I’ve noticed you collaborate with many musicians, (with Papercranes, as well as with your non-profit project The Gift Horse Project), does the idea of collaborating with many musicians have a similar feeling to working on a film?

Rain: Yeah, I think there is a correlation between film and bands (that rotate). You get so close for short periods of time and then have to part ways. Though in both cases, if the connection is real there is bound to be a time when you will work together again.

Natascha: What is your favorite song or band at the moment?

Rain: Talking Heads, Talking Heads, Talking Heads!
Talking Heads Born Under Punches (the heat goes on)

Natascha: I recently read that the recording sessions for the new album were an exercise in ‘stream of consciousness’ writing – how did this idea come about to record in this manner?

Rain: I almost always approach writing for Papercranes in an ‘off the cuff ‘ or ‘stream of consciousness’ way. This record is different, in that the whole band also approached it this way. We thought it would be a good challenge to apply this exercise to all the songs. We approached this as our ‘experimental’ record.

Natascha: Do you feel like you are able to be present when you’re performing?

Rain: I am totally present. I am completely lost.

Natascha: What does the Gift Horse Project have in store for 2011?

Rain: We are currently working on a gallery show for GHP. As an artist collective we want to produce some shows that involve other art forms. Not just music. That said, if the opportunity arises we are happy to play a GHP band show as well. Especially if there is an artist driven charity who need funds or awareness brought to their charity. We exclusively play when there is a way to give back to the artist community.

Natascha: How did your video for Synapses transpire?

Rain: I knew Antoine Wagner from NYC and he wanted to make the video with us. We started it there. Then we came to LA and Paul from Manimal helped us finish it.

Natascha: Are you creating a new video? If so, can you tell us about it?

Rain: We will be making a video for our song Long Way (single version) with The Masses.

Natascha: Has Papercranes considered doing a live score for film?

Rain: We would love to.

Additional thanks to Nancy Soto, Paul Beahan & Kabeer Malhotra

Poet and performance artist John Giorno is many things to many people. It depends on who you talk to. To some, he’s simply lost in translation. The author of Suicide Sutra and Thanks for Nothing is fatalistic, shockingly blunt, incendiary, controversial, and pornographic – according to his critics. His defenders claim the iconic figure in Gotham’s counterculture since the 1960’s is woefully misunderstood, instead seeing him as an innovator, a visionary, fierce, passionate, prophetic and teased with erotic charm. Our intrepid photographer, after spending a solid late summer afternoon with Giorno, came away with this impression, “He’s very sweet and kind – John radiates a certain happiness and gratitude towards the world. You can tell he is still thrilled to wake up and produce work all day –  creating art and making this his reality.” Ultimately, all characterizations may be correct, leaving us with an individual possessing a peculiar and electric mix of contradictions.

A native New Yorker, John Giorno was born in 1936. Armed with an Ivy League education (from Columbia), the former stockbroker turned poet gained his street-cred in the 1960’s underground. He began hanging out with those brash young artists who were on the cusp of immense notoriety – characters like Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham and Roy Lichtenstein. Giorno eventually ended up the protagonist in Andy Warhol’s 1963 film Sleep, which featured him sleeping for five hours. That led to another by Warhol called Handjob - we will spare you the details of this never released film. In his book You Got to Burn to Shine: New and Selected Writings (Serpent’s Tail, 1993), Giorno details his fast and furiously promiscuous youth.

He talks about his relationships with Warhol and artist Keith Haring and goes on to share how he was able to redirect his energies toward acts of humanitarianism through AIDS activism. In an effort to fight, with compassion, the devastating impact of the AIDS epidemic, Giorno launched the AIDS Treatment Project in 1984, which provides direct financial support to people with AIDS.

John Giorno has also for more than four decades been innovating through poetry. It was in 1965 that his entrepreneurial spirit collided with his passion and he launched Giorno Poetry Systems. In short a record label, GPS allowed him to experiment with the use of technology in poetry, create new venues for delivery and introduce the art form to a broader audience. GPS has a catalogue of over fifty titles – LPs and CDs of poets working with performance and music, cassettes, poetry videos and film, poem paintings and books. Some of the poets and artists who recorded or collaborated with Giorno Poetry Systems were novelist (and his sometimes spoken word performance partner) William S. Burroughs, John Ashbery, Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson, Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Mapplethorpe. Continuing to look for new opportunities, it’s said that following a phone conversation in 1968 with Burroughs, Giorno initiated the Dial-A-Poem service. It worked like this: several phone lines were connected to individual answering machines, and people could call GPS to listen to a poem offered from fragments of various live recordings by contemporary poets. As far as topics, a wealth of material was available to GPS given the times. Social, political and civil unrest, the sexual revolution and the Vietnam War stirred up at times feverish fits of public interest in the Dial-A-Poem service. And with this project, Giorno claims to have given impetus to the development of dial-for-stock market info and dial and for sports-info services that become so ubiquitous.

Although he’s firmly planted in the modern age, Giorno’s living and workspace recalls a New York of the 60’s and 70’s, when an artist could live in a huge loft on the Bowery and just create all day. He has three generously sized loft units in what was the first YMCA in New York. One is his apartment where he sleeps. Another is more like a studio for his words on canvas projects. The other, known as “the bunker”, is the apartment that he leased to Burroughs for several decades. All three units are a little dank but open and bright, with the exception of the Burroughs apartment: not much light there. Meanwhile, it would be an intriguing exercise to tag John Giorno before releasing him into the wild as his craft keeps him at a curious pace that takes him to multiple destinations. Brussels, Berlin, Paris, London are all recent stops. And there’s no indication that he plans to slow down.

Text by Erickson S. Blakney
Photography by Weston Wells

Last night Patti Smith rocked the house. The auction house. Sotheby’s.

The venerable ol’ East Side bidding grounds was the venue for a silent auction and cocktail benefit organized by Tools for Thought and Partners in Health to support efforts to rebuild Haiti after the disastrous earthquakes there. “This is good,” said filmmaker Everard Findlay. “The money will get to the people.”

Artists as far a field as Jeff Koons, Michael Stipe and Aurel Schmidt contributed works of art for the auction and Ms. Smith contributed a rock star performance, at the end of which, with fist raised high, she said, “This is for our brothers and sisters in Haiti. We’re with you.”

Patti Smith seems to be everywhere these days. She’s got a new book Just Kids, an upcoming tour, and just opened an exhibition of drawings, photographs and personal things: Patti Smith and Steven Sebring: Objects of Life.

There were some great faces in Chelsea’s Robert Smith Gallery during the opening night: Michael Stipe turned up to congratulate Patti, Ryan McGinley and Terry Richardson were there, even my beloved film archivist Jonas Mekas came out, and it was nice to notice the abundance of older art lovers, not only the typical gallery opening show-offs.

There was a reason why all these great people came. In the exhibition, the persona that is Patti Smith gets featured in four ways: you can find her drawings and writings; still-lifes of her iconic belongings done by Steven Sebring, a photographer, who spent a decade filming Patti and put it into a documentary Patti Smith: Dream of Life; another room is highlighting Patti Smith as a performer with grand images of stage acts and singing; and the middle of a gallery is dedicated to Robert Mapplethorpe, as seen through Patti Smith’s camera lens.

The exhibition is powerful and insightful. The pictures of Patti Smith’s belongings talk about the icon that she is: her beat boots, her guitar, a necklace, childhood dress, luggage covered in old concert stickers, a Polaroid camera, a tambourine made by Robert Mapplethorpe. The objects in towering pictures appear illuminated, translucent. Real objects lay right there on pedestals: there’s a knight’s helmet, few pictures, a typewriter, and a Jeanne d’Arc book, which seems so fitting here.

Steven Sebring documents Patti on stage as well: pictures of her performing are powerful, and the image of Patti’s face with a bandana covering her eyes is breathtaking. However, here she is as a public persona, a performer. Her drawings – raw, outlined scribblings with text, sticky tape, lines drawn on dark albumen silver prints, attached pictures, screen prints of buildings – feel like free hand sketches, private and instinctive. The drawings are recent works, some of them created in collaboration with Steven Sebring, meanwhile Patti’s pictures of Robert Mapplethorpe remember the late ’60s and ’70s and her relationship with him. This part of exhibition introduces Patti’s new book, Just Kids.

The exhibition sums up everything that makes Patti so iconic: it’s not only her music, but her free spirit, non-conformism, style, and her relationships.

Much like it’s subject, Patti Smith: Dream of Life — a documentary about the legendary poet, singer and performance artist directed by Steven Sebring, now on view at the Film Forum — does not follow an expected path. Accompanying the singer and her friends and family through ten years of tours and travels, Sebring offers us a portrait that is as much a reflection of Smith’s personal aesthetic — her heroes, treasured objects and way of expressing herself — as it is an immersion in her unique energy. Take a bath in Patti Smith.

Beginning with a meditation on some of the people who have influenced her most (Robert Mapplethorpe, Bob Dylan, William S. Burroughs, Alan Ginsberg, William Blake, her late husband Fred “Sonic” Smith), the movie ambles along, Smith sometimes narrating directly to the camera, weaving in and out from the past to the present and back again. Visually, it’s almost painfully beautiful, shot in both black and white and color, lovingly and carefully capturing the smallest details that bring Smith’s humanity into focus: her hands on a guitar, the lines on her skin, her slightly crooked teeth close up as she laughs. The film shows her to be gorgeous but never pretty, pretentious and supremely humble, dorky, innocent, tenderhearted and fierce.

Patti Smith is a person who has been touched by loss, and grown stronger. When she talks about Robert Mapplethorpe, showing off his remains with something like pride, and the joy she feels when she thinks of her late brother and husband, it’s clear that she’s been able to transform the energy of grief. This grace translates to everything she does. She is more poet than rocker, more political performance artist than just singer, a little bit shaman and a little bit provocateur. She incites people to wake up, appreciate the moment, “rise up and take the streets.”

“We all have a voice,” she says, “and we have the responsibility to use it.”