Michael McConnell, Slings 1, courtesy of the artist.

Tonight: Group opening at Jancar Jones Gallery in SF- Justin Beal, Lena Daly & Kate Owens. 6-9pm.

Artist Mark Dion presents a lecture about his work around scientific presentation and methodologies. Timken Hall at CCA, SF campus. 7-9pm. Free.

Friday, October 16th: Michael McConnell’s Slings and Arrows opens at Gallery BellJar in SF. 6-9pm. 

HYPERSPACES group opening at Park Life in SF: new works by Sean Mcfarland, Paul Wackers, David Kasprzak, Orion Shepherd, and James Sterling Pitt. 7-10pm

Cutters, an exhibition of international collage curated by James Gallagher, opens at Cinders Gallery in Brooklyn. 7-10pm

Saturday October 17th: The newly renovated El Museo del Barrio celebrates its grand reopening with free admission and a day of music and activities. 11am-9pm.

The grand opening of SF’s contemporary art space Southern Exposure in its new location, with an inaugural exhibition, Bellwether. 4-10pm

Sunday, October 18th: artist Tamar Hirschl will hold an open studio event as part of Chelsea’s High Line Open Studios event, featuring tours of more than 100 artists’ workspaces in the center of New York’s gallery district.

Monday, October 19th: The Berkeley Center for New Media and SFMOMA  presents From A to B and Back Again, a photo and video presentation by artist Candice Breitz. 160 Kroeber Hall, UC Berkeley, 7:30-9pm. Free.

Wednesday, October 21st: International curators Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Jens Hoffmann, Hou Hanru, and Dominic Willsdon participate in a panel discussion at the SF Art Institute on Global Art in the Downturn. 7:30pm. Free.

Tags: BellJar, Bellwether, Candice Breitz, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, CCA, Cinders, Cutters, David Kasprzak, Dominic Willsdon, El Museo del Barrio, From A to B and Back Again, Gallery, Global Art in the Downturn, grand opening, High Line, Hou Hanru, James Gallagher, James Sterling Pitt, Jancar Jones, Jens Hoffmann, Justin Beal, Kate Owens, lecture, Lena Daly, Mark Dion, Michael McConnell, open studios, Orion Shepherd, Park Life, Paul Wackers, Sean Mcfarland, SF MoMA, SFAI, Southern Exposure, Tamar Hirschl, UC Berkeley.

TONIGHT: San Francisco-based artist Chris Lux’s solo exhibition Give Me Some Peppermint Freedom opens at Jancar Jones Gallery. Lux’s work was accorded this week’s SFBG Pick for his “new rave sensibility.” 6-9pm, free. Through July 18th.

OMG Gallery Aferro Benefit preview, see below for additional details. 6-8pm

Saturday, June 20th: OMG Aferro Art Party Benefit. Gallery Aferro founders Evonne Davis and Emma Wilcox have been consistently supporting and producing some of the strongest emerging artists’ projects that The Totam has come across in recent years. Funds from the sale of artist-donated artworks and crafts at this inaugural benefit event will be used to cover the costs of finalizing Aferro’s status as a non-profit organization. We strongly urge tri-state residents to enjoy an entertaining evening and buy some fantastic work to support an organization promoting a thriving community of artists in and beyond the Newark area.

Everything is Terrible: The Movie premieres at The Silent Movie Theater in Los Angeles. This full-length feature by the group of friends responsible for the popular Everything is Terrible website and YouTube channel promises to be a comic videoclip mashup of weird and epic proportions. One night only. Accompanied by a screening of the 1994 softcore classic, Dinosaur Island. 10:30pm, $10. Tickets here.

Monday, June 22nd: catch Afternoon, the solo project of singer-songwriter Krista Warden at the new Williamsburg music venue Bruar Falls, with Drew Victor. Warden’s accordion, guitar, and bittersweet honky-tonk-tinged vocal sensibility has graced collaborations with fellow Brooklyn notables Drew Victor, Beastheart and Sharon van Etten. 9pm, free.

Tuesday, June 23rd: The opening of X-Initiative’s No Soul For Sale: A Festival of Independents. X has invited more than 30 international nonprofit art spaces to travel to New York City to present themselves, their programs and the artists they support. 1-9pm, RSVP here. Through June 28th.

In conjunction with No Soul For Sale, Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) will be unveiling a temporary video project space on X’s ground floor which will be open to the public, bringing new works by emerging artists into dialogue with rarely seen historical treasures from the EAI archives for the summer. Character Witness, the launch program for EAI’s project space, includes works by Kalup Linzy, Alex Bag, Michael Smith, MICA-TV, Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn, and Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson. 6pm, free. Through September 2009.

Tags: Aferro, Afternoon, Beastheart, Bruar Falls, Chris Lux, clips, Dinosaur Island, Drew Victor, EAI, emerging artists, Emma Wilcox, Everything Is Terrible, Evonne Davis, Gallery, Give Me Some Peppermint Freedom, Jancar Jones, Krista Warden, movie, Newark, No Soul for Sale, non-profit, OMG, SFBG, Sharon Van Etten, Silent Theater, summer, temporary, video, Williamsburg, X Initiative.

Brian Ulrich, Circuit, Ponderosa. Image via www.notifbutwhen.com

Interesting work by artists working with photography and video opening in NYC this weekend:

TONIGHT: Brian Ulrich at Julie Saul Gallery, 6-8pm. Ulrich photographs consumer culture, from the boom of post-9/11 spending to the shuttered storefronts and interiors of recent years.

Friday, May 29th: William Lamson at Pierogi 2000, 7-9pm. Lamson documents three interventions within urban, natural and gallery contexts, including the exchange of his shoes for ones shot down from Brooklyn power lines with a bow and arrow. 

Saturday, May 30th: Leo Fitzpatrick at Fuse Gallery, 7-10pm. The snapshot quality of Fitzpatrick’s photos of “the deterioration of America at the turn of the century,” taken on a series of cross-country road trips, are an interesting complement to Ulrich’s deliberately observed images of suburban decline.

ALSO: William Kentridge closes at the SFMOMA this Sunday May 31st; last chance to catch Kentridge’s masterful films, drawings and mechanical theater works.

Tags: Brian Ulrich, Fuse, Gallery, Julie Saul, Leo Fitzpatrick, Pierogi 2000, SF MoMA, William Kentridge, William Lamson.

Trevor Paglen, Four Geostationary Satellites Above the Sierra Nevada, C-Print, 48 x 60 inches. Courtesy Bellwether.

Though the focus is on the art fairs this week, The Totam has still found plenty of concurrent happenings to provide balance to the collector frenzy that usually descends upon the west side of Manhattan:

TODAY, March 4th: The New Museum and Creative Time present It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq, a new commission by British artist Jeremy Deller. A revolving cast of participants including veterans, journalists, scholars and Iraqi nationals have been invited to take up residence in the New Museum’s gallery space with the express purpose of encouraging discussion with visitors to the Museum. Through March 22nd.

Thursday, March 5th: Armory Arts Week opens to the public at Pier 94 in New York. In addition to special projects like Kenny Scharf’s customized, donut-delivering golf-cart being mounted onsite, sister fair VOLTA NY will present curated invitational projects and a launch event for Humble Arts Foundation’s Collector’s Guide to Emerging Art Photography. Public events include tours of arts districts in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. Contemporary art fairs exhibiting during the same week include Pulse, SCOPE, Fountain, Bridge, and PooL. Through March 8th.

The discards of industry and technology found in Sergio A. Fernandez‘ photos form a unique counterpoint to Dana Gentile’s collages, which focus on modern agriculture. Opening at Kris Graves Projects, 6-9pm.

Friday, March 6th: Bay Area artist Trevor Paglen’s spacescapes and other astronomy-themed works open in New York at Bellwether Gallery, in conjunction with his SECA Award exhibit at the SF MoMA.

Saturday, March 7th: Past, Present, Future of Food at the Bushwick Library. As part of the Arts in Bushwick Festival, librarian Nate Hill and cook Gabe McMackin will engage in an open public discussion exploring how Brooklyn and Bushwick in particular went from being a rich agricultural community to the desert it is today, and talk about what people can and ARE doing to grow food locally. 1-4pm. Free.

The Yerba Buena Center for Contemporary Art’s Screening Room in San Francisco presents a double bill of films by Chinese directors, distributed by Strand Releasing: Wayward Cloud by Tsai Ming-Liang, and Help Me Eros, by Lee Kang-Sheng. 7pm. Advance tickets available, or with gallery admission.

Sunday, March 8th: The last day to catch the adaptation of Adam Mansbach’s novel Angry Black White Boy at Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco, a satire about race, Hip-Hop pop culture, identity and violence in the 21st century. 8pm, $15-25.

Monday, March 9th: As part of its recent project/exhibition, Branding Democracy, The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School presents The Rogue State- a panel lecture on fundamental (in)divisibility of sovereignty using philosophy, history, and art as a framework. 6:30-8:30pm. $8

still from The Wayward Cloud, 2005

Tags: Angry Black White Boy, Armory Show, Art Fairs, Arts Week, Bellwether, Branding Democracy, Bridge, Collectors, conversations, Creative Time, Dana Gentile, fairs, Fountain, Gallery, Guide to Emerging Art Photography, Help Me Eros, Humble Arts Foundation, Intersection for the Arts, Iraq, Jeremy Deller, Kris Graves Projects, lecture, Lee Kang-Sheng, New Museum, novel, play, Pool, Pulse, SCOPE, screening, SECA Award, Sergio A. Fernandez, SF MoMA, Strand relasing, The Rogue State, Trevor Paglen, Tsai Ming-Liang, Vera List Center, VOLTA, Wayward Cloud, Yerba Buena Center.