Richard Phillips: Richard Phillips's work is currently on view in "The Contemporary face: from pablo picasso to Alex Katz" at deichtorhallen hamburg, Germany - Top ten

1 NYFD, NYPD, MAYOR GIULIANI, ET AL. When I sat down to write a Top Ten in the wake of the attacks, it was difficult even to think of how to respond. While so many have expressed their thanks to the rescue workers in the weeks following September 11, I can't help but begin by adding my own.

2 ROCKAWAY BEACH 90 On September 11 the surf at Rockaway Beach was overhead and clean. The sky, too, was perfect--until smoke began to rise over Manhattan. Cut off from all modes of transportation, surfers were in an Apocalypse Now moment, caught between trying to reach loved ones in the city and surfing the best waves of the year. Look for artist Drew Hietzler's forthcoming documentary on Beach 90--a haven for the beauty and free expression of the art of surfing right in New York City.

3 BLACK DICE The Williamsburg quartet of Hisham Bharoocha, Bjorn and Eric Copeland, and Aaron Warren has served notice: Creating the soundscape of our as-yet-unheard future, they are the source of new sonic power. At over 140 decibels, Eric's vocals lend a wailing human presence to a cacophony of electronic looping and Bjorn's guitar feedback, while Hisham's percussion and Aaron's bass wind out thundering rhythms and delicate textures. Black Dice plays live in New York this fall and is currently recording an album with the famed Detroit industrial/noise band Wolf Eyes.

4 MATTHEW BRANNON Raised on LA death rock and punk 'zine cultures, Brannon now works from New York City in both the high- and low-end production of posters, often collaborating with institutions, artists, curators, and other conceptual persuaders. A recent show curated by Liam Gillick included works modeled after horror-movie posters and inspired by such misanthropes as Throbbing Gristle, the Marquis de Sade, and Joris-Karl Huysmans. Bookmarking a pessimism born of disenfranchisement, Brannon's work functions as a spreadsheet for the economics of delusional self-importance.

5 JOHN CONNELLY PRESENTS Laboratory, studio, launchpad, and project space--J.C.P. exploits the absence of a fixed address and schedule to gain maximum flexibility in exposing up-and-coming New York artists. The November show at Connelly's Chelsea office includes a sexy nude-in-the-landscape painting by Sissel Kardel, a trucker-style "Ride On"--logo mural by Assume Vivid Astro Focus (aka Eli Sudbrack), and Kelley Walker's found computer-generated images and "cropped-from-reality" sculpture.

6 THE ACCURSED SHARE (1967) Georges Bataille's three-volume work on the necessary and willful expenditure of humanity's surplus energy has never been more radically relevant. His observations on "Sacrifices and Wars of the Aztecs" and "The Conquering Society: Islam" are particularly hard-core in our times.

7 JUTTA KOETHER Come February, Koether brings together painting, text, music, and projection in a lo-fi performance piece for the little theater series" at New York's Tonic. The work, titled "Glow Under," will involve recycled images and misplaced visual media buffered by clashing melodies that ease the digestion of her vocal poetics/theory/manifestos. Koether will also soon debut a project called "need change unseen nightlong really NY interior construction of a mediality of a painting on the l9th"--an exhibition of a series of paintings hung one at a time for a month each, beginning on the nineteenth day of each of six consecutive months. Viewings will be by invitation only.

8 IMITATION OF CHRIST Designers and social engineers Tara Subkoff and Matthew Damhave practice nothing less than a total inversion of fashion-industry standards, necessary for the evolution of clothing from what they call the "white noise of mass production and uniformality." Their recent show--during which celebrities and fashion media were herded down a runway while models of all generations (echoing I.O.C.'s reclaimed and recycled garments) photographed and took notes on those so eager to be seen-was better than any art exhibition of the year.

9 GANG GANG DANCE VOICE OF THE SPOKEN TONGUE The "calculated noise collective" comprising Liz Bougatsos (formerly of the band Actress), Brian Degraw and Tim Dewit (of Cranium), and Nathan Maddox unleashes improvisatory, near-tribal voices against an erratic and crumbling wall of clashing rhythms. The extreme aural intensity of Gang Gang Dance draws you into an experience of negation from which a humane and harmonic beauty emerges. Their first album is due out early next year.

10 RACHEL FEINSTEIN AND JOHN CURRIN With mutual love and support, these two artists, who live within blocks of ground zero, managed to pick right up in the immediate aftermath of September 11 to prepare for their November shows. The making of art, they say, has become a "dreamlike thing to share with each other." Rachel's first solo exhibition, at Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York, will include an arrangement of "couples"--sculptures inspired by the bestial beauty of the baroque. Of his show at New York's Andrea Rosen Gallery, John says only that it is governed by the idea of "more of what you need at the moment." And what do you need more of? Compassion, love, and art in NYC.