New Orleans Airlift

New Orleans Airlfit’s successful Music Box project has gone overseas on a diplomatic mission!

Music Box creator and curator Delaney Martin, Music Box Civil Engineer and sound artist Taylor Shepherd, and veteran Music Box inventor and performer Andrew Schrock are currently representing the Music Box family in The Ukraine. This project has been made possible by the American Embassy in Kiev in cooperation with the Art Arsenale Museum.

We are delighted to be investigating exciting inventions in musical architecture with our Ukrainian collaborators Ivanov Down ,and Dmytro Nikolaienko. Musical innovations will be led by Kotra conducting Zavloka, Alla Zagaykevych, v4w.enko, Ivanov Down and Dmytro Nikolaienko.

The Music Box team in Kiev is building a single house this time and filling it with Ranjit Bhatnagar’s Noise Floor and Lindsay Karty’s Electric Curtain, plus new inventions from Music Box artists Taylor Kuffner, Ben Mortimer and Ross Harmon. Swoon will be there in spirit with her wheat pastes and all of our other Music Box visual artists and sound inventors and curatorial staff will be represented through the amazing photographs of a slew of New Orleans photographers. Video footage by Tungsten Monkey of the Winter and Spring season’s at The Music Box will introduce a Ukrainian audience to our strange house music.

Visit www.dithyrambalina.com to see pictures and hear the sounds of the Music Box Outpost in Kiev!

THE MUSIC BOX

A Shantytown Sound Laboratory

Creative Director and Curator: Delaney Martin
Associate Curators: Theo Eliezer and Swoon
Musicians Curated by Quintron and Jay Pennington

The Music Box is an experiment in musical architecture. It is a New Orleans Airlift production created by artist and curator Delaney Martin in collaboration with 25 artists, including the international street art star Swoon. This interactive installation features a collection of purpose-built shacks and miniature houses, each containing an instrument or having instruments built into its structure. The wooden shacks that make up this “shanty-town” are constructed from salvaged materials reclaimed from a late-18th-century Creole cottage that collapsed on the site several years ago.

Housing a slew of unconventional and inventive instruments, The Music Box offered its visitors a blank canvas to create music in an entirely new way.  In addition to public opening hours, Quintron, the musician and local hero, conducted a series of legendary concerts at the shantytown that featured a changing roster of world-class musicians such as Mannie Fresh, Hamid Drake, James Singleton, Dicky Landry, Helen Gillet, Andrew W.K. and Jim White . The instruments of The Music Box were also put to test in recordings sessions and pop-up performances by amazing and diverse musicians including Thruston Moore, longtime Swoon collaborators Dark Dark Dark, the sample-based band Javelin, the Brooklyn pop punk duo Japanther, and noise heroes Black Dice. Quintron returned for a final Shantytown Orchestra performance on June 8th and 9th 2012.

The Music Box has closed to the public, but New Orleans Airlift, Music Box artists and Swoon are already hard at work on the next phase of our project, Dithyrambalina. We moving full speed ahead with our plans to build a permanent musical house for the city of New Orleans. We will use all the lessons we learned at The Music Box to make it the best musical house in the whole entire world!  Follow our progress at www.dithyrambalina.com

Please visit our Dithyrambalina site for more detailed information about this New Orleans Airlift project:
www.dithyrambalina.com

This program is supported by a grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, Office of Cultural Development, Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, in cooperation with the Louisiana State Arts Council. The grant is administered through the Arts Council of New Orleans. This project is also proudly supported by the Black Rock Arts Foundation. BRAF supports and promotes community, interactive art and civic participation. We also thank the Black Forest Fancies, The Historic District Landmark Commission, the Old City Building Center, The Hollygrove Market,  Architect Wayne Troyer, Miranda Lash (NOMA),  and Ben Hernandez (MOCAD) for their support.

Thank you to all our sponsors!

“Express Yourself” is the brand new collaboration between Diplo (producer of hits by Beyonce, Lil Jon, Usher and more) and local Bounce rapper Nicky Da B. It’s the perfect example of outside musical culture and New Orleans staples coming together. Jay Pennington (as Rusty Lazer), of the New Orleans Airlift, brought these artists together to record and create the video earlier this year, and Diplo is slated to return for work with more local rappers soon.

The amazing video for “Express Yourself” makes use of the Airlift’s ongoing art installation,The Music Box, as a backdrop. Watch Nicky and his dancers work it out against the installation’s 24ft fence mural by Swoon along with a host of other classic New Orleans locations. As a pleasant coincidence, Swoon and Diplo attended high school in Florida together, making the choice of the Music Box as a central set piece that much more serendipitous.

Katey Red, New Orleans’ Own Queen of Bounce music traveled to Paris recently with Airlift Co-CreatorJay Pennington (aka DJ Rusty Lazer) for an end of fashion week soiree to work in collaboration with outstanding designer Rick Owens, his amazing wife Michele Lamy and promoter Piko (Black Label Paris).  Katey, Rusty and the crew, which featured dancers Corinne Loperfido and renowned jewelry designer Arielle DePinto, were dressed in Rick Owen’s 2012 collection, which had been debuted only days before.  This collaboration marks yet another milestone in the New Orleans Airlift’s ongoing efforts to expose New Orleans culture and the artists who make it to worlds beyond rap music’s usual suspects.

(L) Katey Red in Paris with DJ Rusty Lazer + friend(R) with fashion designer Rick Owens

The event was part of the Spotlight Club series hosted by Owens and Lamy at Chez Francoise (a fine dining establishment by day that is only blocks from the National Assembly and Ministry of Defense).  Gareth Pugh and a host of other designers and revelers gathered to wrap up yet another successful fashion week with an outstanding performance by the always elegant Katey Red.  Expect more in the future as artists like Big Freedia and many others make their way overseas with the help of the Airlift whenever possible.

Congratulations to Miss Katey Red!  And Jay would personally like to thank everyone in Paris who made such an adventure a staggeringly successful reality!

This fall the New Orleans Airlift will host Ivan Stepanov, a breakdancer from Siberia, for a residency.  Ivan has participated in international festivals and won numerous awards as a break dancer. His extensive dance training includes courses in South Korea and workshops with members of Rock Steady Crew and other leading US groups.  He also teaches dance and has organized and conducted programs for young people including a summer break dance camp and master classes.
During Ivan’s stay Airlift staff and friends will have the pleasure of taking him to his first second line parade and introducing him to the many rappers and dancers we work with in the New Orleans Bounce community. Both of  these New Orleans only experiences will expose Ivan to styles of music and dancing that you just won’t find anywhere else. In return Ivan will teach a series of youth breakdancing workshops (TBA).

As a representative of the Evens people, a culture of northern Siberia, Iva also performs national dances and sings the Yakut heroic epic Olonkho.  The Airlift cannot wait to introduce Ivan to our Mardi Gras Indian Tribes in New Orleans.  Ivan’s interest in contemporary hip-hop culture and his own tribal traditions is an easy fit with New Orleans where our traditions are living and breathing and informing all of our contemporary culture.

We met Ivan through ArtsLink Residencies. They offer artists and arts managers from 32 overseas countries five-week residencies at non-profit arts organizations throughout the US. The program enables artists and communities across the US to share artistic practices with artists and arts managers from abroad and engage in dialogue that advances understanding across cultures.

http://www.cecartslink.org/grants/artslink_residencies/

The New Orleans Airlift and the artist Swoon celebrate the opening of her new exhibition Thalassa with a night of music, art, food and dancing. The after party will be held on a Bywater neighborhood lot that is the future site of a permanent Swoon/Airlift collaborative installation.

Airlift Directors Delaney Martin and Jay Pennington will also be speaking about this project at the Museum with Swoon at 6pm on June 10th.

The Airlift is delighted that New Orleans Museum of Art will be introducing their friend and collaborator Swoon to a broader New Orleans audience. This party will celebrate Swoon’s unique art and her growing connection to our city and our cultural institutions.

Airlift artists Taylor Shepherd and Christian Repaal join Swoon in Los Angeles to build her installation for MOCA’s much anticipated Art in the Streets exhibition. This was an amazing opportunity to work in a major museum alongside Swoon, as well as a who’s who of internationally celebrated street artists including Mr. Cartoon, Banksy, and Barry McGee,

Shepherd and Repaal met Swoon on an Airlift project in New Orleans and a great working relationship was born of their collaboration. The Airlift is delighted to have facilitated this opportunity for these New Orleans artists.

TABLEAU VIVANT: A WANDERING RETROSPECTIVE

Anna Barham /// Winnie Cott /// The Hal an Tow /// Bruce McLean / Nice Style: The World’s First Pose Band /// Mistick Krewe of Comus /// The New Orleans Society for Tableau Vivant /// Pablo Picasso / Erik Satie / Léonide Massine /// Audrey Reynolds /// Tai Shani

Presented as part of Prospect 1.5 New Orleans

6th November 2010 Julia Street 6-9pm
13th November 2010 St. Claude Arts District 6-9pm

Tableau Vivant: A Wandering Retrospective presents a selection of historictableaux vivants alongside specially conceived tableaux by Tai Shani (UK), Audrey Reynolds (UK), Winnie Cott (FR), Anna Barham (UK) and The New Orleans Society for Tableau Vivant.

The show takes place on a flat bed truck that will proceed slowly up Julia St., making stops between the river and St. Charles Avenue. At each stop, a different tableau vivant will be performed. The show will be repeated the following weekend in the St. Claude Arts District.

Tableau Vivant translates literally as “living picture”: a group or individual in a carefully arranged pose that is held for a period of time. It frequently includes elaborate sets, costumes, props and sometimes music. Performed variously as a parlour game, carnival attraction, pageant, pedagogic tool or propaganda image, tableaux vivants usually illustrate popular mythologies, famous paintings, classical, archetypal or historic events, and are most often performed within the context of informal social gatherings. They are a way of stepping into the role of an historic figure, enhancing self-image or manipulating public identity; of bringing to life significant scenes in a subjective context, or revisiting a snapshot of the past and re-committing it to memory.

As well as having a strong relationship to the still image, the tableaux vivant is a living thing perpetually situated in a morphological state between statue and movement. The impossibility of holding a certain pose for a long stretch of time means that the tableau vivant can never embody the stillness to which it apparently aspires – rather, is time stretched and slowed. Presenting this group exhibition as a series of live tableaux exposes its unstable state, and within this, it’s numerous ends.

Locating the project in New Orleans, a city ingrained with the composite histories of popular performance traditions, Tableau Vivant: A Wandering Retrospective also considers the history of tableau vivant within the frame of popular folk performance. Tableau Vivant: A Wandering Retrospective inhabits a space between the histories of high art and popular entertainment: illuminating the nature of the tableaux but also suggesting an alternative history for contemporary visual art performance.

Tableau Vivant: A Wandering Retrospective is curated by Rosie Cooper (UK), conceived and produced by New Orleans Airlift Creative Director, Delaney Martin, and realized by The New Orleans Society for Tableau Vivant www.notableauvivant.com

FURTHER INFORMATION:

The Route:

Each stop on the route for both weekends will be pre-scheduled. Further details, including a map and times, can be found on the Tableau Vivant Society website www.notableauvivant.com

A small souvenir publication will be available to the audience on the route. It will include special contributions from Rose English, Mel Brimfield, Aura Satz, Sally O’Reilly and Henri Schindler.

About the Society:

The New Orleans Tableau Vivant Society’s membership includes a variety of New Orleans based artists from cross-disciplinary backgrounds that include theatre, dance and visual arts. Founded in early 2010 by artist Delaney Martin, the mission of the Society is to reinvigorate the theatrical trope of “living pictures”. Tableau Vivant: A Wandering Retrospective is the Society’s inaugural presentation.

For more information on the Society, including future projects, please consult their website.

Musical Architecture for New Orleans

www.dithyrambalina.com

This model represents DITHYRAMBALINA, a landmark, interactive, public sculpture by the artist Swoon in collaboration with New Orleans Airlift. Swoon’s design is inspired by local architecture and New Orleans musical heritage. To that end, the building itself will become a musical instrument.

Swoon’s local collaborators are mechanical artists who will build musical devices into the structure of the building that engage its resonance and form. Levers, pulleys, buttons and pedals will allow visitors to “play” the house.

Swoon is a celebrated street and installation artist. She is known for a series of intricate handmade boats that have floated the Mississippi, the Hudson River and most recently the Adriatic Sea and the canals of Venice, Italy during the 2009 Biennale. As with these floating crafts, the focus for our musical house is on salvaged materials, artistic and community collaboration, functional environments and interaction that involves sound and performance.

Swoon, her collaborators and the New Orleans Airlift need your support to fully realize the Dithyrambalina. A series of Swoon prints mounted on found wood are available for sale with proceeds going towards the project. Please write to us at info@neworleansairlift with sales enquires or to find out how else you can help! Or visit www.dihtyrambalina.com

The New Orleans Airlift would like to thank the following individuals and institutions for their ongoing support: Wayne Troyer Architects, Miranda Lash, Contemporary Curator, NOMA, The Old City Building Center, Tulane University, The New Orleans Arts Council, The Louisianan decentralized Fund and the Black Rock Arts Foundation.

An after party for Prospect 1.5 St. Claude Openings! This multi-media spectacle will

highlight the activities of the New Orleans Airlift including their upcoming collaboration with the international art star Swoon!

Expect a showing of Swoon’s iconic wheat pastes. Swoon will also unveil an 12ft model of an interactive installation/dwelling she is building with local mechanical artists Taylor Lee Shepherd, Jayme Kalal, Patrick Murray-Nellis and James K. This “house” will become a musical instrument to be played by visitors!

The New Orleans Society for Tableau Vivant will present their Grand Finale Tableau which features otherworldly flora and fauna, fire, and the fall of Rome.

Musical entertainment will be provided by local Bounce Music legend and Airlift

artist Big Freedia (who’s event decoration company will provide the atmosphere) and her DJ Rusty Lazer. The Airlift also brings you MC Sweet Tea (aka Tiana Hux) and CHRISTEENE (aka Paul Soileau), both former New Orleans residents,will be traveling from Austin to perform their outlandish musical and dance spectacles.

August 28th, Long Island City, NY

Rising Bounce superstar Big Freedia and the Airlift’s own D.J. Rusty Lazer continue to bring it to the people!  They will perform live at MOMA’s P.S.1 for the museum’s Warm Up series.

Big Freedia / New Orleans Sissy Bounce, New Orleans (live)

DJ Rusty Lazer / New Orleans (DJ set)

DJ Rashad / Juke Trax/Movel Trax/Ghettophiles, Chicago (DJ set)

GHE20 GOTHIK DJs Venus X and Brenmar / Brooklyn, New York (DJ set)

Traxx (DJ set, Nation Records, Chicago)

Over the past two years Big Freedia and Rusty Lazer (who’s secretly Jay Pennington, an organizer of the Airlift Project) have spent considerable time and effort to help Bounce Music reach beyond the streets of New Orleans.  Since the first Airlift collaboration involving NY Producer Dre Skull, XLR8R Magazine, Big Freedia, Sissy Nobby, Katey Red and Gotty Boi Chris, Rusty has worked as a kind of Bounce ambassador, taking performers to Austin, New York, Miami and more. Likewise, Freedia has acted as both a performer and an organizer in her own right, by assisting with logistical and talent related issues and providing the stability necessary to help a talented community take steps in new directions.  The rewarding work the Airlift has done with these performers is coming to beautiful fruition in an exhaustive article published in the New York Times Magazine this week.  The Airlift is very excited to have fostered such an amazing collaborative effort and proud of all the performers for their talent and hard work!  Please check out the article here and feel free to peruse past projects involving these amazing musicians here.  Watch out for more to come and congratulations to all involved!

The New Orleans Airlift has been invited to participate in the TRAJECTOR ART FAIR during Art Brussels, April 23- 25 2010!

The Airlift will be presenting a film program that documents the unlikely phenomenon of Sissy Bounce.  Sissy bounce is the gay/transgendered off shoot of Bounce, New Orleans home grown hip hop.

Trajector Art Fair is an initiative by Hotel Bloom! and Centrifugal Projects that will take place from 23 April until 25 April 2010, coinciding with Art Brussels. Trajector Art Fair is an initiative that follows on from Projector Art Fair, presented by MAMA,  that took place, to great critical and public approval in Rotterdam in 2008.Centrifugal’s Ken Pratt, one of the key developers of the original concept, has worked with Hotel Bloom! to realise a new manifestation.

Building on the success of the Projector Art Fair , Trajector takes the core concept on the road for 2010. It will take place in Brussels, in April 2010 coinciding and collaborating with Art Brussels.

In Brussels –as in Rotterdam- the focus is not on the commercial gallery sector, but on the project spaces, artists’ initiatives and independent curatorial projects that provide important platforms and experimentation grounds for emerging contemporary artists in the international arena. In part a celebration and playful game with the role of non-profit organisations, project spaces and independent curators within the art commerce systems, Trajector takes the original concept and re-realises it as a hotel art fair in Brussels’ most recent boutique hotel. Tongue-in-cheek, critique or hardcore commercial? That’s largely up to the participants to determine.

Trajector Art Fair will transform Hotel Bloom! into a vibrant ‘boutique hotel art fair’ with eighteen rooms and a wide range of conference rooms and public spaces providing a platform for a range of international art spaces and curators to present some of the best emerging contemporary art to a Brussels audience.

NEW ORLEANS BLOCK PARTY!

The New Orleans Airlift, in association with Nolabounce.com, The Bounce Spot, Where They At?, Bounce Fest, and Crossfaded Bacon.com, is bringing the ultimate retrospective Bounce Showcase to the South by SouthWest Music festival.

Partners n’ Crime, DJ Jubilee, Katey red, Big Freedia, Miss Tee, Magnolia shorty, Vockah Redu,  and DJ’s Lefty Parker and Rusty Lazer, will be on hand to show Austin where its at in New Orleans.

Stay tuned to Rustylazer.com for additional shows by individual artists and check out the March 18th Louisiana Economic Development Fund showcase featuring New Orleans music including several bounce artists!

Read the rest of this entry »

Lady Aiko makes a Big Freedia stencil!  Get your limited edition tee-shirt for only $15!  Write to us if you want one!

AIKO NAKAGAWA aka AIKO from Tokyo, JAPAN recently met New Orleans Bounce sensation BIG FREEDIA and the New Orleans Airlift at a performance for Dietch Projects during Miami Basel 2009.

MUTUAL ADMIRATION = COLLABORATION

Aiko currently resides in New York. Floral designs, girl cartoons and street pop culture images are all incorporated on Lady Aiko’s mixed media works. She utilizes both stencil, spraypaint and silkscreen print techniques to create her vibrant large-scale works which often transform “cupcake” images to playfully portray feminine sexuality and beauty. Being an immigrant from Japan, Aiko has herself been discovering Americana-type pop imagery and recreating it in an innovative way. She has recently shown her works, Love Monster Exhibition at the Joshua Liner Gallery in New York, Apocalypse Wow at MACRO Future in Rome,  The Wynwood Walls at the Deitch Project in Miami, and Animamix Biennale at Shanghai MoCA as well as major galleries and museums in US, Europe and Asia.

The Society for Decoration and Sacrifice Presents: Zradab, A “Legend” Unearthered

Curator Delaney Martin, in association with Barrister’s Gallery of New Orleans, assembles 20 artists from London, NY,and New Orleans to create one mega-installation featuring four nights of performance within the installation.

Artists: Delaney Martin (NOLA), Taylor Lee Shepherd (NOLA), Andrew Zeigler (NOLA), Luke Brennan (London), Kim and Scott Pterodactyl(NOLA), Jennifer Odem(NOLA), Myrtle Von Damitz III (NOLA), Luke Barber- Smith (NY), Rachel David (NOLA), Eric Smith (NOLA), CaronGeary (London), Frank Deleon-Jones (NY), Arielle De Pinto (NY), Randi Mates (NY), Ben Wolf (NY),Melissa Stryker (NOLA) Joy Patterson (NOLA) Nina Nichols (NOLA)and Jeffery Cook (NOLA)

Airlift jetsets New Orleans artists work to London in Today is Borings’ popular monthly film night.

Films showcased include:

-Ground breaking Trouble the Water (2008) Carl Deal & Tia Lessing

-Helen Hill animations, Blinded By Seeing by Michael Mortell, the award winning Glory at Sea by Benh

Zeitlin, New Orleans Bounce documentary Ya Heard Me, and Les Blanks’ New Orleans’ Classic Always For Pleasure (1976) amongst others.

Sissy Bounce Heroes SISSY NOBBY & BIG FREEDIA Take a Bite Outta The Big Apple!

LIVE!! with special guest Bounce DJ RUSTY LAZER…and…SPANK ROCK! MALUCA! DRE SKULL! OMG MICHELLE! ROXY COTTONTAIL! DJ DIRTY FINGER! NINJASONIK! OJAY MORGAN of House of Ladosha!

New Orleans “Bounce” music rulers Big Freedia and Sissy Nobby jetsetted to New York for a special week of shows from September 19-23.  Bounce Music is an original New Orleans form of rap that’s been dominating radio and street culture in New Orleans for over 15 years.  Its queer counterpart, Sissy Bounce, has taken the city by storm, with tracks like Sissy Nobby’s dut-wrenching “Consequences” soaring to the number one spot on local radio.  With over 10 MILLION plays on Sissy Nobby’s Myspace page, she’s probably the most famous rapper (queer or not!) you’ve NEVER heard of!

But it’s really all about the dancing. . .

Check out footage from the epic September 22 show as well as a priceless interview

with Big Freedia the Queen Diva herself!

SISSY NOBBY – www.myspace.com/sissynobbyy

BIG FREEDIA – www.myspace.com/bigfreedia

DJ Rusty Lazer – www.myspace.com/rustylazer & www.rustylazer.com

NEW ORLEANS ART SHOW AND LIVE PERFORMANCE

Up and coming New Orleans visual artists will exhibit at the Bereznitzky Gallery’s Summer party. This exhibition of light weight works including drawings, photos,  paintings and small sculptures will be accompanied by live performance from New Orleans musicians, clowns, and performance artists including one man band Ratty Scurvics’ Singularity, the singing sensation Meschiya Lake, and DJ Rusty Lazer who will bring the sound of New Orleans street music to Berlin for this one night only summer party.

FRUHPERLEN INS KARMANOIA

Isarstr./Ecke Boddinstr. , Neukolln

4pm till midnight

Airlift performers Meschiya Lake and Ratty Scruvics’ Singularity join their friends on the Karmnoia stage for the celebrated Fete De La Musique Festival, an out door event that has stages all around the city of Berlin. The Karmanoia stage also features frequent Airlift collborators Les Haverflocken Swingers, The Cowboy Killers and Captain Shebang and calls itself the stage for Eighties Queer Gypsy HotJazz.  Come and find out what that is all about!

More info at www.fetedelamusique.de

Celebrating 10 years of Katey Red, Planarian Productions and New Orleans Airlift bring you live Performances by Katey Red, Big Freedia, and Sissy Nobby, featuring DJs Rusty Lazer and D Lefty Parker.

Forget about your valentine and come dance your heart out at One Eyed Jacks!

SWOON and The New Orleans Airlift Collaborate to Raise Money to Help Traveling Artists!

A joint benefit to assist SWOON and the New Orleans Airlift will take place the Antenna Gallery in New Orleans’ Bywater Neighborhood on February 18.  Antenna has generously donated their space for a silent auction featuring screenprints by SWOON among many others.  Musical acts Dark, Dark, Dark (New York), Church Rag (New Orleans), and Ratty Scurvics will accompany the auction, and a dance party featuring the Airlift’s own Rusty Lazer will follow.

Proceeds will be donated to assist the Airlift in its upcoming visit to Berlin, as well as SWOON’s Swimming Cities of Serenissma - a flotilla of three intricately hand crafted vessels that will navigate the Adriatic Sea from Koper, Slovenia to Venice, Italy in May, 2009.  The boats are descendants of the flotillas Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea (Hudson River, 2008) and the Miss Rockaway Armada (Mississippi River, 2005 and 2006).

Join us, get some new art for your shack, and help artists do what they do best in places they’ve only dreamed of!

The Engine Collision Festival (ECF)  is an intimate, 11 day celebration of fringe artists from all over the world.  Beginning February 28, 2009 in Los Angeles, this eclectic program of Cinema, performance and Multimedia dynamically presents – the current state of ‘Genre’, the influence of past, and the vision of future.  Privileged to be involved, the New Orleans Airlift will screen short films feature a live performance by Scary Toesies, closing with DJ Rusty Lazer’s Bounce afterparty!

Among Engine Collision Fest headliners:

David Lynch will be screening a selection of unavailable short works.

Slamdance Film fest has put together a night of their 2009 winners.

Extreme films from the Parisian underground, headlining rare work from Gaspard Noe (Irreversible / I stand Alone).

A free week long program of multi-disciplined arts, this festival of guilt discusses the concept of art as a luxury good proving that from outsider art to conceptual art, all creative practice has a value invested that often exceeds its perceived commercial value.

New Orleans Airlift artist’s Scary Toesies and Delaney Martin exhibit films in Luxury Goods, with DJ Rusty Lazer livening up the January 28 London opening of with a Bounce set straight from his bedroom in New Orleans (while eating fried chicken from Captain Sals)!

Curator/Artist Myrtle Von Damitz‘s critically acclaimed show “Antiabecedarians”, featuring 32 artists from New Orleans’ past, present and future opened this month at Barrister’s Gallery.  Starting with a packed opening and all-night dance party in the balmy January night, Antiabecedarians has transitioned to a successful running show that has seen works sell to visiting collectors from New York and beyond and will be tentatively traveling this summer in conjunction with the New Orleans Airlift’s visit to Berlin for the Berlin Lacht performance festival.  The show runs through the first week of February, don’t miss your chance to stop by and meet Myrtle to catch up with this long-running gallery’s ongoing events!

New Orleans NOW

Jay Pennington & Delaney Martin expose what life’s like under the radar in New Orleans, offering a portfolio of New Orleans artists photographed by their friends.

PLUS: Quintron talks to Nels Cline

(Sold nationwide at Borders and import magazine shops.)

October 30th – Nov 5th 2009

Deitch Projects’ Artist SWOON Dresses Up The Ninth Ward For The New Orleans Airlift!

Internationally known artist Swoon visited The New Orleans Airlift for a week of costumes and wheatpasting.  In addition to leaving her mark on our future offices, she traveled around town and into the Lower Ninth Ward to bring her particular kind of people-centered beauty to neglected buildings and houses.

Doug McCash, Arts writer for the New Orleans Times Picayune, covered it from his perspective on his widely-read blog. following a controversial discussion of the work of Banksy, a London based graffiti writer cum fine artist who left his (very politically astute) mark on the city. Doug’s provocative work has become the center of debate in New Orleans – as citizens weigh the merits of graffiti versus architectural blight.

Watch Doug’s video of Swoon’s work here…

Sweet Nothings & Hurray For The Riff Raff export their unique sound to Berlin and tour through Europe, exhibited their skills on the streets and at night clubs from July through August 2008.

DreSkull w/ Gotty Boi Chris & Big Freedia

http://www.myspace.com/dreskull

http://www.myspace.com/gottyboichris2

http://www.myspace.com/bigfreedia

Collaborative Recordings with Bounce Artists to be released in Early 2009.

February 2008 brings a collaborative performance with Krewe Du Poux in New Orleans.

Les Haferflocken Swingers set the city ablaze with two weeks of performances at Night Clubs, Radio Stations and on the streets of New Orleans in February 2008.

The New Orleans Airlift exports Too Dumb to Die with DJ Rusty Lazer to China and Japan , spreading early Jazz Performance and Traditional New Orleans DJ Sets from August through September 2007.