There is a spider in my cup at the studio, it’s been there at least an hour. How am I supposed to drink? Is this a sign of luck? So many questions.

According to Mint, the web stats application I use, the most popular search term that brings people to my site, following various right and wrong spellings of my name, is “Vulva”. Considering there is only 1 mention of Vulvas on my site - the above intervention titled “Auto Sex Change Operations” for which I placed “Vulva” stickers on hundreds of parked Volvos in New York City years ago, I can only conclude that people are searching far and wide to expose the vulvas.

The Tribeca Film Festival’s screening 2 nights ago of Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg was delightful - particularly enhanced by his own live narration in Winnipeg twang, and paired with Isabella Rosellini’s hilariously funny Green Porno micro-shorts describing the bizarre sexual practices of common bugs. She plays the costumed male of each species as well as various hermaphrodites, and is subjected to all manner of physical trauma. The low tech effects are enchanting. Beckley and I agreed that these should be shown to kids, and also would work well in a gallery installation. Rick Gilbert, Green Porno’s producer who I recognized from somewhere (Winnipeg, it turns out), told me they have been trying various configurations as they tour the work. Stay tuned for her second series featuring sea creatures!

Maddin’s signature blurry style of a bygone era in endless snow grace this documentary/travelogue of our shared prairie home town. Its highlights include a hockey match between historical hockey greats amidst the wrecking ball demolition of their beloved arena; a reenactment of Maddin’s childhood living room complete with dead father exhumed like a mound of dirt beneath the carpet; a steamy coming-of age in arena locker rooms and the subterranean levels of a public pool; and Golden Boy pageantry in the otherwise dull and fading Paddlewheel family restaurant.

My favourite line references the newly erected MTS building looking “like a zombie in a cheap new suit” where Canada’s iconic Eaton’s department store once proudly stood. I’ve been away from home for a long long time - thanks for the memories, however self-deprecating.

I finally saw the Whitney Biennial last weekend - between traveling madly and pneumonia, who had time? According to the Whitney’s website, The Biennial “characterizes the state of American art today”: some of the artists are repeat inclusions, some don’t live in The U.S., and the show is void of new media work. Hmmm.

The only work on a computer that I noticed used an ibook to display a slide show about a character and the text of a book. The computer was a strange choice and decidedly irrelevant.

There are a few good works. Conceptual artist Walead Beshty’s shatterproof glass boxes made to fit into Fed Ex boxes and sent are fascinating, especially those that had shattered, their shards precariously hanging. Beshty’s low brow investigative travel photos subjected to Xray damage are smart too.

Phoebe Washburn’s self-sufficient Gatorade golf ball flower factory-slash-ecosystem is weird and compelling. Mike Smith’s photos of himself in Sears studio portraits with his students are characteristically ridiculous. Stephen Prina’s installation of recorded singing, dirty carpet, weird pink light, and home decorating tile is nauseating and addicting. I had the sense that I might be lulled to poisonous sleep à la The Wizard of Oz’s dreamy poppy field. Mika Rottenberg’s installation Cheese, though seriously (pun intended) less humourous than her previous works in the same circular homespun style such as Tropical Breeze and Mary’s Cherries, is nevertheless visually lush and strange. Due to the farm setting and costuming of multiple young female subjects in long cotton dresses, the work is lent an accidental and tangible creepiness by the recent topical state seizure of 437 children from a Texas polygamist compound.

Otherwise the museum seems largely free of content, messy, forgettable, and almost entirely bland. I’ll take my art with much more humour, thank you.

Notes: I assumed the Whitney’s website would list work titles but I was wrong. It also lacks images of the work on display. Therefore I’ve left out titles I don’t know. I also missed the Armory installations which have completed their exhibition run.

Here’s a still from my new video, which is in progress for my show opening May 1 in Vancouver. It’s a Staring Contest, between Brad Pitt and yours truly. Brad’s performance as Death Incarnate from the film Meet Joe Black.

Horror Stories, my new show at ThreeWalls in Chicago, opened on Friday. The Sparkling, an interactive video installation, is the highlight - shown above and below. The haunted chandelier gets eerier as visitors approach, a reference to chandeliers in films like The Amityville Horror, and also non-horror films like The War of the Roses. Thanks to the wonderful artists and administrators at ThreeWalls for all their support, especially Shannon, Lucy, Elizabeth, Andy, and Liz. Also to Josh Rose and Cesar Cornejo who helped me in New York with programming and putting together the chandelier.

Also on view are:

TV = Evil which juxtaposes little girls and TVs from Poltergeist and The Ring. Playing on a TV in a room all alone, it’s creepy.

Vamp it Up, a companion piece to Horror Make-up, filmed on the Chicago elevated train. More info about this work in my Performance section. Special thanks to Beckley Roberts and Liz Hood who secretly filmed these performances, and to Elizabeth for driving me half way around town in search of fangs, size XS.

Everyone Will Suffer, an animation featuring taglines recited from popular horror films and a low-fi animated country sunset.

While in Chicago I met artist Jeriah Hildwine, a painter whose acrylic series Living Dead Girls features goth girls slaying the naked and grisly undead, in nightmarish colour. Best are the portraits of his protagonist zombie slayers, especially Zombie Hunter Elizabeth, pictured in the detail above. She seems to enjoy her role, and I like her attitude, clad in school girl plaid.