This Wednesday marks the opening of several major New York art fairs. ArtCal Zine will covering several of these, likely with daily content starting Wednesday. We're also announcing today our first international contributor, who will be writing on contemporary art in Paris for the next few months. A review of Candida Höffer's current photo exhibition at Yvon Lambert Paris will be published later this week.

Rice and Beans
Alison Knowles and Charles Curtis
7:30 Tuesday 25 March 2008
Miguel Abreu Gallery - 36 Orchard Street New York, NY

Tomorrow nigt at the Miguel Abreu Gallery, founding Fluxus member Alison Knowles will be presenting Rice and Beans, a new musical performance in collaboration with composer Charles Curtis who will be performing the piece. Alison Knowles writes:

I will do a poem titled Mantra for Jessie (some help in sleeping). It is a juxtaposition of sound and color in a literal narrative poem. In my mind it is a lullaby. I remember Simone Forti my friend in California who says her mother used to read her recipes to put her to sleep. This Mantra appears in a pamphlet put out by the Great Bear series of Something Else Press, 1979. The pamphlet is titled More by Alison Knowles.

Charles will play a score I made for him entitled Rice and Beans for Charles Curtis. He will also play a pieces by John Cage and Morton Feldman from the 1950s.

Lentils were eaten from the wild before domestication. They are the oldest bean in existence first found in the Franchthi Caves of Greece in 1,100 B.C. They appeared in the Bronze Age and then India and Ethiopia as well. Beans are the first food associated with the poor. Documents in tablet form with recipes have been discovered, but most recently in a rock crevice on cliffs off the Pacific coast what may be an ancient vestment has appeared. Its origins are completely unknown. It is made of paper melded with muslin containing red lentils, a tangle of cords and black curled marks perhaps some primitive language. Egyptians imagined it was sufficient to eat lentils to enlighten the mind and open the heart, and perhaps as well to make music!