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Fuck self-doubt. I despise it. I hold it in contempt, along with the hell-spawned ooze-pit of Resistance from which it crawled. I will never back off. I will never give the work anything less than 100%. If I go down in flames, so be it. I’ll be back.
Email tagged Steven Pressfield, Your Daily Insight Iannis Xenakis' Persephassa performed on Central Park Lake for MMNY 2010
New York is an exceptionally musical place every day of the year, but there's one day when it gets really musical. That's because of Make Music New York, an annual festival that takes place on the first day of summer and features hundreds upon hundreds of free concerts throughout the city.
This year Make Music New York is happening on June 21 from 10am to 10pm, and if you're musically inclined or interested in hosting a performance, you have until April 21 to register and finalize your own event. The folks at MMNY can help you coordinate your concert with others in your neighborhood, secure the necessary permits and promote it through Time Out New York, Metro New York and WNYC.
Past MMNY highlights include an amazing rowboat-based performance of Iannis Xenakis' Persephassa on Central Park Lake (check out the video clip above) and Punk Island, in which dozens of punk bands invaded Governors Island. Of course your event doesn't need to take place on an island or body of water. It could be anything from a "acoustic sidewalk setup to a full-scale amplified block party." For the last two years the festival has featured over 1,000 concerts, so sign up, tune up and hit the streets.
-- John Ruscher
Email tagged Call for Entries, Make Music New York, Musicians, Open Call, music 
Processional Art Workshop's "Bibliobats"
This year's PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature, which runs from April 30 through May 6, features an amazing array of participants, including Salman Rushdie, Colson Whitehead, Margaret Atwood, Laurie Anderson and the Kronos Quartet. And guess what? You can join them.
The internationally acclaimed Processional Art Workshop, whose work you might have seen in the annual Village Halloween Parade, and the PEN American Center, the nonprofit organization that presents the annual literary festival, are looking for volunteers to help craft huge "bibliomorphic" puppets and other literature-inspired props. These "bibliomorphic" creations will be featured in the Parade of Illuminations, the festival's opening celebration at the High Line on April 30, as well as in ongoing performance throughout the week.
Want in? From April 21 through May 2 artists Alex Kahn and Sophia Michahelles will be leading workshops where volunteers can help "translate the sensual anatomy of bindings, folios, paper and print into bibliomorphic puppets and performing objects." All you have to do is fill out the volunteer form. No experience is necessary, and kids ages 10+ can help out as well if accompanied by an adult.
Below is the full schedule of workshops, which all take place at the Westbeth Center for the Arts. We can't wait to see the amazing puppets that you help create:
-- John Ruscher
Email tagged Art, Craft, Maker, PEN American Center, PEN World Voices Festival, Volunteers, literary, puppets 
Everywhere in the modern world there is neglect, the need to be recognized, which is not satisfied. Art is a way of recognizing oneself, which is why it will always be modern.
Email tagged Louise Bourgeois, Your Daily Insight "I'm happy to tell anybody anything that I know," guitar maker Ted Beringer once said. "Most of what I know I got by experience...and a lot of mistakes. I'm willing to help. There should be more of that in this world. Then we wouldn't be in the shape we're in."
That's the kind of positive, collaborative spirit that we gets our motors runnin' at 3rd Ward, so naturally we love virtually everything about the Beringer Guitar Museum. Though Beringer passed away in 2006, his grandson James Bolenbaugh wants to continue sharing his legacy through an online interactive museum showcasing his instruments and the stories behind them. Bolenbaugh has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for hosting and maintaining the online museum for the next ten years, and in exchange for a pledge you can score everything from early beta testing access to the museum to a solid gold guitar pick with your name engraved on it.
Here's Bolenbaugh on what sparked his grandfather's five decades of instrument making:
My grandfather, Ted Beringer, got the idea to build his first guitar in 1950 at the Hilltop Night Club in Billings MT, where he saw a man playing a new design of guitar from Fender called the Stratocaster. He asked to see it, and upon inspection said, "I could build one of these." I imagine his interest was peaked because the instrument was an electric guitar, and his business was Ted's Electric, an electric motor and power tool repair shop.
Beringer went on to build many more guitars and other stringed instruments, never using the same design twice. A few of his creations are below. Check out more on Facebook and help make the Beringer Guitar Museum a reality.
Meanwhile, any 3rd Ward members who want their campaigns featured on our official Kickstarter page, shoot us an email at: partners[at]3rdward.com
-- John Ruscher
Jenny Q. Chai
Earlier this year we told you about the new Ear to Mind website created by 3rd Ward Web Design teacher David Karlins, and this Thursday, April 19 the NYC music organization will present the Carnegie Hall concert that inspired that new online destination.
The concert is a solo recital by acclaimed pianist and Jenny Q Chai, who will perform the world premiers of "Parallel Lines," a piece by composer and Ear to Mind co-director Inhyun Kim, and "Current," by Taiwanese composer Ashley Fu-Tsun Wang. The program also includes the US premier of "Innige Cavatina" by Italy's Marco Stroppa, as well as works by Debussy, Ligeti, Messiaen, Kurtág and Schumann. With the concert's diverse selection of works, Chai presents a broad musical survey. "I feel a sense of contentment programming creative concerts, mixing and matching old and new works, so as to highlight what is most special in each piece," she says. "After all, nothing comes from nothing, and new music is very much connected to that which came before."
For more information check out Page4Music's podcast interview with Chai, Kim and Ear to Mind board member Ruyi Lu.
The concert starts at 7:30pm this Thursday at Zankel Hall, which happens to be both Carnegie Hall's oldest and newest performance space. The hall, which New York magazine says "feels like a sacred underworld swathed in sea glass and forest green," hosted Carnegie Hall's very first concert, a 1891 piano recital, before splitting off to become a theater then cinema during the 20th century. It was revamped and reunited with the world-renowned music venue in 2003. Grab tickets for Ear to Mind's concert here.
-- John Ruscher
Email tagged Carnegie Hall, David Karlins, Ear to Mind, Essential Event, Events, Performance, music 
There is not narcissism and non-narcissism; there are narcissisms that are more or less comprehensive, generous, open, extended. What is called non-narcissism is in general but the economy of a much more welcoming, hospitable narcissism, one that is much more open to the experience of the other as other. I believe that without a movement of narcissistic reappropriation, the relation to the other would be absolutedly destroyed, it would be destroyed in advance. The relation to the other--even if it remains asymmetrical, open, without possible reappropriation--must trace a movement of reappropriation in the image of oneself for love to be possible, for example. Love is narcissistic. Beyond that, there are little narcissisms, there are big narcissisms, and there is death in the end, which is the limit. Even in the experience--if there is one, of death, narcissism does not absolutely abdicate its power.
Email tagged Jacques Derrida, Your Daily Insight 
For the past three years the Hearst Corporation has held the 8x10 Photography Biennial, "a competition to recognize and showcase the professional work of talented young photographers." It's an incredible opportunity for emerging photographers to get their work seen by an important audience. Every year approximately 100 photographs by 8 winners are shown in the atrium of the Hearst Tower in the Alexey Brodovitch Gallery and Hearst Gallery.
Last year's winners ran the gamut from portraiture, photojournalism, architectural, digital manipulation and landscape. We particularly like Rena Effendi's series of Georgian refugees (shown above and below) -- we feel like they'd fit right in amongst Magnum's school of photojournalism.
Judges this year include ELLE’s Roberta Myers, Town & Country’s Alexandra Kotur, Gallerists James Danzinger, Yancey Richardson and Yossi Milo, collector John Demsey and photographers Matthew Pillsbury and Timothy White. Submissions are open for photographers aged 18 - 35 until August 1, 2012. The winners will be announced in January 2013 and the exhibition will run through May 2013. In the meantime, peruse some of our Photography classes. Who knows? You just might be able to make that August deadline.
Email tagged 8x10, Biennial, Hearst, photography 
I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center.
Email tagged Kurt Vonnegut, Your Daily Insight 
Sagmeister at work "I am usually rather bored with definitions. Happiness, however, is such a big subject that it might be worth a try to pin it down."
Renowned designer Stefan Sagmeister has spent the last year working hard at being happy (and filming his attempts.) What's emerged is The Happy Film, a documentary about Sagmeister's three-pronged approach to finding the path to true happiness via meditation, cognitive behavioral therapy and prescription drugs. Through experiments and explorations “from the sublime to the ridiculous” loosely based on his pivotal book “Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far,” Sagmeister tests “once and for all if it’s possible for a person to have a meaningful impact on their own happiness.”
Now he's taking his show on the road with "The Happy Show," at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, running now through August 12, 2012. The exhibition, which spans the entire second floor gallery and ramp, includes a 12-minute sneak peak of the documentary as well as work from his 10-year investigation into the relationship between typography and happiness.
"To contextualize the maxims that appear throughout the exhibition, Sagmeister has gathered the social data of Harvard psychologists Daniel Gilbert and Steven Pinker, psychologist Jonathan Haidt, anthropologist Donald Symons, and several prominent historians."
Check out a quick preview of the the film's opening titles followed by glimpses of the show invitations being laser-cut from bologna (!!!)
Meanwhile: Want to see if design does in fact make you happier, enroll in one of 3rd Ward's many Design classes to find out.
