The CJM Blog

Image courtesy of the writer. As a prompt for an entry on The CJM's blog, your writer was asked to consider what makes a good movie. My usual short answer to this question is that a good, nay, a GREAT movie, allows multiple ways in. If a movie's creative team is firing on all cylinders, if the movie delivers on story, performances, design, mood, music, then you've got a classic on your hands. But even a movie that falters in one of these departments can be elevated by its other elements. Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain (screening Thursday at The CJM as part of the CLEAT: Cinematic Lo-fi Experiments in Art and Technology) was intended to be Aronofsky's grandest, most ambitious work yet, telling the story of lovers whose relationship spans three time periods. But the movie wound up compromised by a halved budget (from $70 million to $35) that demanded radical changes to the scope and the story. With months to make a movie that had been years in the making, t...

Installation view of NEAT: New Experiments in Art and Technology . Photo by Johnna Arnold. Judaism, as it is practiced today, is not a strict biblical religion; it is a rabbinic one. That is because the Hebrew Bible is not considered a literal source to be taken on face value, but a starting point, from which flows centuries of debate among rabbis and other Jewish thinkers, leading to an evolution of understanding. Rather, it is a starting point, from which flows centuries of debate among rabbis and other Jewish thinkers that leads to the evolution of understanding. Science, too, is very much about process. Perhaps that's how science and religion can be reconciled—not as two realms that are in conflict …, but as things you do. Science is about creating hypotheses and testing data against these theories. Judaism is about how we act to improve this world, here and now. And these processes can easily go hand in hand. [1] In short, for Judaism there is no essential conflict ...

T he screening series CLEAT (Cinematic Lo-fi Experiments in Art and Technology) is intended as both a cheeky riff on The CJM's NEAT:   New Experiments in Art and Technology exhibition and an expansion on some of its themes. Like NEAT , CLEAT features work by artists from three different eras, all bringing an active, creative approach to extant special effects technologies to bear on the stories they tell. Stills from The Bat Whispers. Screening on October 29 for CLEAT. Coming at us from 1930, Roland West's fantastic mystery The Bat Whispers (October 29) throws its handmade aspect right into our faces. Its very first shot pans down from a miniaturized clocktower to the busy street below, smash cutting from a tabletop set representing street-level to an actual street, populated with actors and moving vehicles. Even a 1930, post-Melies audience likely saw through the illusion, but it registers as a powerful statement of intent, and we can't help but sign on...

Installation view of  You Know I'm No Good . Photo by Johnna Arnold. Artist Jennie Ottinger recently gave a short gallery chat on her installation  Mouth to Mouth: Pieces from an Animation about Cultural Appropriation —f eatured in The Contemporary Jewish Museum's current exhibition  You Know I'm No Good.  Responding to Amy Winehouse's legacy and music, Ottinger's multi-faceted installation addresses the icon's cultural appropriation of the legacy of female musicians, specifically African American singers.  _________________________________________________________________________________ Jennie Ottinger (JO): As I got the topic, I really didn’t know much about Amy Winehouse—I had been aware of the hits and her personal story, but I didn’t really listen to her music. So I just started Googling, and I came across an article by  Daphne A. Brooks — an African American Studies professor at Yale — about Amy Winehouse and cultural appropriation. It was in ...

The Bureau of Suspended Objects in Jenny Odell's studio at Recology.  Recently, The Contemporary Jewish Museum (CJM) made the trek out to the San Francisco dump (for art’s sake of course). At the  Recology Artist in Residence (AiR) Program , we chatted with artist, archivist, and internet (and now dump) miner  Jenny Odell  about her AiR project— The Bureau of Suspended Objects , the line between utility and trash, and how this experience might influence future projects.  And, in case you’re left wondering what’s next for Odell, she's participating in The CJM's ongoing installation series,   In That Case:  Havruta  in Contemporary Art , collaborating with window dresser Philip Buscemi. _________________________________________________________________________________ The ar(t)chivist's desk. Stephanie Smith (SS):   Tell us about the Recology Artist in Residence Program and the project you’re currently working on. Jenny Od...