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Watch Some LA Underground Heavies Premiere a New Music Video Shot By Richard Kern

(Flyer via Collapsing Scenery)

The electro post-rock band Collapsing Scenery has been hailed as “the voice of LA’s new underground,” so it only makes sense that their tripped-out, abstract videos are essential to their music. Cool, but doesn’t every synth-dominated band these days sorta need visuals to make what is by and large a cold-blooded genre cluster feel even remotely emotive? And what’s so special about swiping a bunch of “found footage” from YouTube, throwing on a glitchy distortion filter, and calling it a “short film”? If you answered “yes” and “nothing,” in that order, then you’re exactly right– only, not about Collapsing Scenery.

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Richard Kern Revisits New York Girls, Feels ‘a Little Pervy Now’

Amy With Cigarette, 1993 photo by Richard Kern (Courtesy of the Artist and Marlborough Broome Street, NY)

Amy With Cigarette, 1993 photo by Richard Kern (Courtesy of the Artist and Marlborough Broome Street, NY)

To honor the 20th anniversary of New York Girls and the re-release of Richard Kern‘s first book, the East Village photographer and Cinema of Transgression filmmaker is running two concurrent gallery shows– one is in Chelsea and the second opens tonight at Marlborough Broome on the Lower East Side. I stopped by the gallery yesterday to check out the photos and speak with Kern.

“It was so long ago, almost seems like somebody else did it,” he laughed. “It was definitely a different time period.” When I arrived, I found Kern sitting quietly at the front desk. I was late but, as he explained later, I’d given him a chance to catch up on Instagram.

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Richard Kern’s New Book, Exhibit Is a ’90s Grunge Version of a Barbershop Lookbook

unnamedYou know those cheeseball lookbooks you see at places like Supercuts, that show you how you’d look with a bowl cut? Well, none other other than photographer Richard Kern, the thinking man’s Terry Richardson, has teamed up with an uber-hip Williamsburg hair salon to make a grunge- and porn-inspired version of them.
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Feature, Inc. Closes After Hudson’s Death, But His Legacy Lives On

LetsgoletgoeviteFeature, Inc. has left its home on Allen Street, according to an announcement from the family of its beloved late owner, Hudson. The gallery opened in Chicago in 1984 and bounced around in New York City before settling into its Allen Street location in 2009. It was among the first to exhibit the art of Takashi Murakami, Raymond Pettibon, Richard Kern, and many others. In an obit penned shortly after Hudson’s death in February, Jerry Saltz called him “one of the last of his kind, and among the smartest, wittiest, and most visionary gallerists I’ve ever known.”
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Watch Cat Marnell and Richard Kern Talk Girls, Drugs, and Girls on Drugs

Last night two East Village iconoclasts rolled into the Newsroom, and it was major. We paired writer Cat Marnell with photographer Richard Kern for a conversation moderated by novelist Porochista Khakpour, whose third novel, it turns out, includes a character based on Marnell. Watch the hour-long blow-by-blow above, or check out the highlights below.
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Sunday: Join Us For an Evening With Cat Marnell and Richard Kern

marnellkern

Before the B+B Newsroom launched, we promised you cats — and on our pop-up’s final night tomorrow, Sunday, we’re giving you Cat. That’s right: Cat Marnell. And because one East Village firebrand deserves another, we’re pairing her with photographer Richard Kern for what’s sure to be a lively discussion about pushing boundaries and pushing buttons.
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Richard Kern Says Fellow Nudie Photog Terry Richardson Was ‘Asking For It’

Screen Shot 2013-07-24 at 4.05.36 PMPhilip Glass isn’t the only East Village fixture with new work out. Novelist Porochista Khakpour, a onetime East Villager herself, sits down with Richard Kern, who still keeps an apartment in the nabe, to talk about his new book and Thurston Moore-soundtracked DVD, Shot By Kern. The conversation (interspersed with Kern’s NSFW photos) clears up the myth that “Alphabet City girls” come to his door at all hours asking to model naked, and touches on Kern’s current case of photographer’s block (“if it’s just pretty girls, I don’t even know what a shot is anymore”).
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