WEDNESDAY 10/13
David Burnett
Mengestu reads Monday at the Seattle Central Library.
Related Content
More About
Books: Overcooked
UW professor Peter D. Ward is not a movie critic, but he curtly dismisses the eco-disaster flick The Day After Tomorrow as "terrible." Ward is an expert on climate change, and he lays out some dark future scenarios in The Flooded Earth: Our Future in a World Without Ice Caps (Basic Books, $25.95). Each chapter begins with a little sci-fi vignette speculating how we might respond to global warming and higher sea levels. (For example, Greenland becomes green and the U.S. government abandons Florida.) On the scientific side, however, Ward is firm about data and causality. In a few short centuries, the industrial revolution has provided "a recipe for human extinction." It's all about the carbon, measured in parts per million. As that figure rises, so do the seas, while the lands become ever more infertile. (Ward also blames overpopulation for our excess carbon output.) The effect is like reading The World Without Us—only, unfortunately, we're still there to suffer. Yet amid the bleakness, Ward also takes us on a research trip to Antarctica and pauses for a few practical digressions. (Drinking wine with Robert Mondavi, they speculate where the vineyards will have to relocate.) Is there a remedy? Consume less, drive less, emit less carbon, plant more trees—you've heard that before. Plus maybe a "reflective space mesh" and other untried new technologies. Otherwise, in a few more millennia, Ward foresees Seattle as "seven islands and a peninsula." Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave., 652-4255, townhallseattle.org. Free. 7:30 p.m.BRIAN MILLER
Music: Zef Manifesto
This summer, the South African trio Die Antwoord—frontman Ninja, vocalist Yo-Landi Vi$$er, and DJ Hi-Tek—released a video for the bizarre rap-rave track, "Enter the Ninja." The clip features a shirtless, tattooed Ninja ferociously spitting out his rhymes, the progeria-stricken Cape Town painter Leon Botha bopping around, an actual black-clad ninja wielding a sword, and the pixie-ish Yo-Landi mewling her vocals while undressing in a bedroom wallpapered with pictures of Ninja. At the end of the song, Ninja mutters, "This is like the coolest song I heard in my whole life." Die Antwoord—Afrikaans for "The Answer"—has had bloggers speculating for months whether they're a joke group or performance artists. Regardless, "Enter the Ninja" went viral on YouTube and, after millions of views, crashed the group's own website. Serious or not, Die Antwoord claims to represent South Africa's zef sector of society; our closest translation of zef would be "white trash." Accordingly, Die Antwoord's music is wild, vulgar, tough, and full of braggadocio. (Their debut album, $0$, drops this week.) And as further proof of their appeal, I recently saw a bottle-blonde hipster chick at Capitol Hill's Redwood with her hair cut in Yo-Landi's signature shaved bangs/half-mullet hairstyle. Music videos aren't the only things that go viral. This evening, before opening for Deadmau5 at the Paramount (see Short List), the trio will perform an exclusive in-store and sign records. Sonic Boom Records, 2209 N.W. Market St., 297-2666, sonicboomrecords.com. Free. 5:30 p.m. ERIN K. THOMPSON
THURSDAY 10/14
Visual Arts: Shoot and Point
Though it certainly contains many photos, by a dozen emerging artists, Image Transfer: Pictures in a Remix Culture isn't strictly a photography show. Scanners and Google image search are as important as cameras; and there are clacking old film projectors and slide carousels, too. The apparatus is emphasized: How images are reproduced and displayed (e.g., mounted on a sheet of plywood, then defaced; or half-hidden under a giant rock on the gallery floor). The images themselves are seldom lovely or quote-unquote memorable. Randomness is at work, as with a table full of stock photos you can arrange in any pattern you like. That aleatory method of image selection is most evident, and most engrossing, in Siebren Versteeg's room-sized slide show Untitled Film IV, which pulls random pictures from Flickr.com in a never-ending flow. You could spend all day in the room and never see the same image twice. The stills are set to the soundtrack of Chris Marker's 1962 avant-garde short La Jetée, with the same editing rhythms. It's possible to sit through each 28-minute unit and let the music and sound effects shape the chance procession of images into a story. Come back the next day, and the narrative could be different. Or the same. John Cage would approve. (Through Jan. 23.) Henry Art Gallery, 4100 15th Ave. N.E. (UW Campus), 543-2280, henryart.org. $6-$10. 11 a.m.-9 p.m.BRIAN MILLER
Photography:F-stops and Feedback
The vivid black-and-white photos of Charles Peterson are now synonymous with grunge, since he documented every important local band (Nirvana, etc.) from the very beginning of that movement in the mid-'80s. Shooting with a bright flash, he often positioned himself at the center of a swirling mosh pit, or on the stage just as a performer leaped into the fray. As a friend and confidante of many artists, he also gained access to their quiet, unguarded moments offstage. The results have been seen at SAM and EMP, collected in several books, and used as album covers. Peterson will attend tonight's reception for a permanent new installation of more than a dozen classic images—including late icons Kurt Cobain, Andrew Wood, Mia Zapata, and Layne Staley. On the lighter, living side of the musical spectrum, it's good to see the (then) youngsters of Mudhoney and Tad when they were cheerful, cynical, and poor. Nobody had any money, and getting a deal with a national label seemed like a joke. The show's title, Come Out, Come Out Tonight, is from the late poet Steven Jesse Bernstein, whose portrait is also included here. If Seattle's rock history is to be institutionalized, the Croc is a more appropriate venue than the Hard Rock. And the drinks are stronger, too. The Crocodile, 2200 Second Ave., 441-7416, thecrocodile.com. Free (21 and over). Reception: 6-9 p.m.BRIAN MILLER
