Not sure how many people were registered officially for the first four days of SXSW 2024 (SouthBy ’24), but there were more than 75,000 from 100 countries in 2023. Those are mainly the techies. Add in the film and music festival attendance throughout the week, and the number doubles. There were somewhere in the range of 1,500 acts scheduled, not counting the unofficial ones rippling across music venues throughout the city.
In other words, Austin was hopping.
We are among the fringe attendees who avail themselves of a couple of the many free or low-cost events not requiring badges. Some snapshots from those, several at The Saxon Pub, are found below, along with a snippet of Bottlecap Mountain’s new “I’ve Got Something for You.”
The work of the artist dubbed “Daddy-O” is so steeped in Texas culture and iconography – the old and the new, rural and urban, classy and cheesy – that “40 Years of Blood, Sweat and Beers” seems to encompass everything in the whole damn state…. (it) exudes Texas-osity, the way one oozes beery sweat after a three-night bender in Terlingua.
Robert Faires’ description of a 2009 “retrospectacle” of the work of Bob “Daddy-O” Wade at the former South Austin Museum of Popular Culture on South Lamar, Austin Chronicle
It’s hard to miss the parking lot when driving down South Lamar, and the museum sign beckoned us to explore. But, alas, the South Austin Museum of Popular Culture, founded in 2004, no longer calls 1516 South Lamar home. Hemmed in from expansion by its neighbor Planet K, in 2019 SouthPop packed up, moved the contents of its interior collection and reopened behind Threadgill’s Old No. 1 on North Lamar as the Austin Museum of Popular Culture.
But, an even bigger alas. The pandemic raised its ugly head and tolled the bell on Threadgill’s, an iconic Austin institution for almost 40 years. So the Austin Museum of Popular Culture is now homeless.
Rats: They exist without permission. They live in quiet desperation amongst the filth. And yet they are capable of bringing entire civilizations to their knees. If you are dirty, insignificant and unloved, then rats are the ultimate role model. They have no respect for society, and they have sex 50 times a day.
Banksy
The mysterious hooded lord of all street art. The man billed as bucking against anyone charging a buck, well in this case a euro, to view his art.
We saw an exhibition in Bologna a few years ago with Banksy in its title that had very little to do with the artist – a 13-Euro price tag.
But this “unauthorized” exhibition at La Termica in Malaga – “Banksy: The Art of Protest” – seemed so much less commercial. A pure tribute.
Showing Banksy is somewhat risky. In Brussels in 2018, an entire exhibition was seized by the court. Pressed for comment, Banksy released a statement about the exhibition that Urenna Ukiwe quoted in an article in The Guardian:
Hmm. Not sure I’m the best person to complain about people putting up pictures without getting permission.
And the repurposed setting has such an un-aristocratic history. Before its recasting as a contemporary art center, La Termica’s institutional rooms functioned as an orphanage and then a sanitorium.
“Welcome to Hell” from an unauthorized exhibit of Banksy’s protest art in Malaga, Spain
In 2015, Banksy launched a month-long pop-up on the Bristol seaside entitled “Dismaland,” “a family theme park unsuitable for small children.” It might be gone, but don’t dismay.
The flaw in this late-delivered “postcard” is that the Malaga exhibit closed this week. The good news is a cd coincidentally was released at the same time in Austin, Texas.
Postcards from Barton Springs 