It's so lonely around here without the cold, inviting stare of Marina Abramović, isn't it? Luckily, last week Miranda July's public art project was unveiled in Union Square, and it's pretty fun! It's titled 11 Heavy Things, and consists of 11 sculptures that encourage viewer interaction. The installation will be set up through October, and July told ArtInfo that kids will probably use them as "play equipment or something" (which is probably safer than the playground equipment currently at the park!). If you head over there to interact with the pieces, send us your photos or tag them with "Gothamist" in Flickr! more ›

Miranda July has made a splash as a filmmaker, fiction writer, artist, actress and a musician. This Saturday she's participating in the second annual Brainwave Festival at the Rubin Museum. The festival is in the third of its ten weeks where it explores how art, music and meditation affect the human mind. July will be discussing both the spontaneous and the premeditated aspects of performance in creating her film Me and You and Everyone We Know and writing the short story collection No One Belongs Here More Than You with Columbia University psychologist George Bonanno. She talked to us about what it's like wearing so many hats, how nothing in New York seems to exist by the time you actually get there and about why it's all right to avoid anything that people write about you. more ›

Just last week Jeremy Blake's body was identified after being found off the coast of New Jersey. In July he and his girlfriend committed suicide one week apart from each other, and since then stories of their lives, fears and final days have surfaced. more ›

THEATER: Breedingground Theater Company continues their three week Spring Fever Festival of work by self-producing artists. (We suggest perusing the full lineup on the company’s website, though we caution that it's quite an eyesore.) Nevertheless, one that happily caught our eye is Chess’d, about a ninja and a man in a white tux playing a game of life-sized chess. The game escalates into a no-holds-barred life-or-death struggle, which reviewer Daniel Kelly declares “hilarious from start to finish.” Another possibility is the heady Simulacra: a modern myth, which concerns “an amnesiac TV junky running a freakish temperature and channel surfing a crumbling reality on a quest to recover her identity.” (We’ve been there!) According to reviewer Mark DeFrancis, the show “takes everything from MySpace to the Greek gods and somehow manages to fuse them into a sleek, frenetic production about self-identity, materialism, and mass media.” - John Del Signore more ›

READING: We've been gushing over filmmaker, performing artist and writer, Miranda July's new book (and its accompanying website), No One Belongs Here More that You. Tonight she reads from her collection of short stories at Paula Cooper Gallery. There she is at left, typing away, and you can listen to her reading on her MySpace. more ›

This May filmmaker/musician/actress/performing artist/writer Miranda July is going to unleash her book, "No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories", upon the world. She'll have several events lined up in New York, one with her biggest fan - David Byrne. more ›

Gothamist managed to get on over to the new IFC Center this weekend to see Miranda July's excellent Me and You and Everyone We Know and decided to check out the food as well. We had heard that there was going to be an adjacent restaurant serving a gourmet take on pub fare and wanted to see if it was any good. more ›