The Week in Culture: June 30 - July 7

Creative Time announced it will blast a disk of Trevor Paglen's The Last Pictures project into orbit from Kazakhstan via television satellite. Paglen's 100-photo synopsis of humankind is based on five years of interviews with scientists, artists, anthropologists, and philosophers. According to the project website, "The Last Pictures will continue to slowly circle Earth until the Earth itself is no more." So that will be all that's left of us? No pressure there.

In more news from space, the Paris couture shows kicked off with the rapid prototyping Prometheuswear of Dutch newcomer, Iris Van Herpen. This sounds a little lazy, but it really needs to be seen.

Meanwhile, Earthlings took to the streets over electoral irregularities in Mexico's presidential election that may have pushed Enrique Peña Nieto into office. Study up, people, November is just one long, summer shadow away.

If elections aren't your cup of tea, the "official" portrait of Naomi Watts as Princess Diana managed to capture as much adulation as if it were, well, an official portrait of Princess Diana. Royalists are sometimes hard to understand.

Also straight from the castle, what exactly does it mean when you say, "Oh, I forgot to tell you, I found 100 new Caravaggios, and quietly wrote a 600-page book about it over the last two years?"

In case you didn't make it to CBGB's before it closed, or if you're one those ones who never really left, The CBGB Festival is shredding its way through New York with showcases, conferences, concerts and screenings. Good thing punks hate the beach.

Way uptown, but equally as cool, the oldest living Goth Girl, Stevie Nicks, twirled for her coven at the Beacon Theater on Monday.

If you're hungering for an art-specific equivalent, the best intergenerational art bash this week is Scott Hug's dense, excitable, messy and brilliant show at Andrew Edlin Gallery, B-Out. Hug tells us it's not a survey, but 117 artists are represented, ranging from the recognizable to the need-to-be-discovered.

MoMA PS1 is now accepting applications to study "The Abramović Method" with Marina Abramović in their Summer School 2012 program. According to the website, the method "trains students in achieving a clear state of mind in order to develop ideas for their own work." Sounds a smidge like obedience school.

And finally, if you're bummed you missed MoMA's exquisite corpse party and you're out of town killing time at the pool bar, you might want to check out the continuous art-dump collage project, Cloague, or, if your bangs are too long to have already seen it, Lesbians Who Look Like Justin Bieber.