We Do It In the Dark

Directed by Zac Yurkovic, Written by Conner Draves, Robert Fontella, Daniel Frey, Christian Krauspe and Kelly Rossi. E4 Productions (Detroit)
An ensemble piece performed entirely in the dark. The 5 scripts are all world premiers of works created specifically to be performed in the dark. These plays are all unique, funny and compelling, with the audience going through this experience just like performers. A show like you’ve never seen and never will!
$5
Fri, April 2 @ 10:00 PM
Sat, April 3 @ 9:30 PM
Thu, April 8 @ 8:30 PM
Fri, April 9 @ 8:30 PM
Sun, April 11 @ 8:00 PM

I haven’t posted in months. This tends to happen when I start a blog and I know why. I begin when its difficult to write the dissertation, then I feel guilty about spending all that time on writing that’s not on topic…once a catholic always a catholic – isnt that what they say?  THEN I get so busy that I don’t have time to blog OR feel guilty.

So much water has gone under the bridge since November 22. That was right around the time that I started to feel morbidly depressed. Then I cast off the dread with a tyrannical insistence on “enjoying the holidays.” Which I actually did this year. The desertifying of my front yard took serious time and thought, as did my preparations for the College Art Association conference in Chicago.  Check out this review of my panel… looks like I did okay, even if I was “less coherent” than my panel mate at least I wasn’t the most absurd thing of the conference (like my other panel mate)!

Following CAA, I’ve been working on a new performance which has been accepted by urbanSTEW to be part of the interactive installations during the Phoenix Fringe Festival. Everyone who visits my  blog should sign up for the performance which begins the first week of April. There will be a live component to the performance and I’ll write more about that as things develop.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, X-square is perking away – we’ll be announcing winners in mid April.
And I’ve had a birthday!

All this to say…

I’m back to the blog. Although I’m not sure what this means for my writing.

and her treatment of asparagus.

luxirare strikes again!

Found this website – maybe on Boing Boing? – that shows albatross chicks who die because their mama birds bring them plastic for dinner. This is a pretty graphic indictment of our disregard for the environment, I think. Apparently, the photos were taken on an island located 2,000 miles from any continent in the north Pacific Ocean.

From Chris Jordan’s artist statement:

Exploring around our country’s shipping ports and industrial yards, where the accumulated detritus of our consumption is exposed to view like eroded layers in the Grand Canyon, I find evidence of a slow-motion apocalypse in progress. I am appalled by these scenes, and yet also drawn into them with awe and fascination. The immense scale of our consumption can appear desolate, macabre, oddly comical and ironic, and even darkly beautiful; for me its consistent feature is a staggering complexity.

As I was writing this post, I realized Jordan was responsible for those photographs that my students were so excited about a couple years ago – ones where the image is composed of many mulitples of things to depict the excesses of our lifestyles.  

Packing Peanuts, 2009 (60×80″) Depicts 166,000 packing peanuts, equal to the number of overnight packages shipped by air in the U.S. every hour.

Call For Papers
“Feminist Landscapes”
Guest Edited by Katie Brewer Ball and Julia Steinmetz
Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory

“The cunning Painter… Limning a Land-scape, various, rich, and rare.” Sylvester, 1603.

What would it mean to create a feminist, transfeminist, or queer landscape? What are some attempts that have been made towards this project? This special issue of Women & Performance asks for a diverse invocation and interpretation of the ways in which the terms “feminism” and “landscape” can partner to create what we might simply call a “feminist landscape.” This might take the form of an aesthetic play on both the shape and our understanding of the land through feminist ideals, or read as a critique of the orientation of peoples within constrictive spaces; it might be a geographical or visual re-imagination of nation through social experimentation, or a return to a promised home.

The word “landscape” comes into use in the 17th century to describe the art of painting stretches of pastoral countryside. From the beginning the concept of “landscape” was thought in terms of aesthetic depiction, first through drawing and painting and then taking literary forms. Later it came to connote the designation of a particular vista or viewing point, and finally aesthetic intervention into the transformation of the terrain itself. As new art forms have emerged so has the set of aesthetic practices that fall under the rubric of landscape, including land art, photography, sound work, institutional critique, and performance. Today the term “landscape” has moved beyond its origins “to designate both a specific terrain and the general character of that terrain” (J.M. Coetzee). Landscape describes both the aesthetic and topographical composition of the land as well as the ways in which the land orients and is itself oriented by the bodies that move in and through its planes.

Landscapes have continually expressed and influenced aesthetic, political and social values about land, its form and function. Practices of landscape architecture, urban planning, and gardening crystallize these relations. How might we get away from an understanding of landscape as limited to the “European picturesque”? This question of perspective becomes crucial to our interrogation of landscape as a feminist project. Indeed, landscape has been defined by its production and reception from a single, fixed viewpoint. How can we reconsider landscape by encountering it from a multiplicity of perspectives, both visual and social? Expanding beyond just gender proper and into feminism’s necessary attention to race and class, this issue also attends to the ways in which bodies on a certain landscape become oriented by a complicated play that cannot take gender out of the context of race and class-based perspectives. As such, Feminist Landscape as a concept can benefit greatly from an exploration of the ways landscape is performatively produced, and of the performance of place-based social identities.
Potential contributions to this issue could emerge from the following points of interest:

*The Pastoral and the Sublime: These two landscape genres speak to the impulse to tame the land for human use, and to the equally intense desire to have amazing and terrifying encounters with the wild and raw forces of nature. What are some feminist interventions into these historically gendered and racialized genres?

*Critical Utopias: What would it look like to imagine a generative landscape that does not restrict but rather promotes social and cultural multiplicity, i.e. Pilot TV, Queeruption, the VanDykes, Herland and Parable of the Sower? This could include imaginary worlds, utopian spaces, experiments, future leaning imagery, the virtual, and otherwordly land interventions.

*Paradise: From the Garden of Eden to Heaven, Isle of Lesbos to Versailles, what do you imagine Paradise to look like, and what gendered, sexual and racialized valences do these mythic landscapes hold?

* Safe Spaces: Landscapes of separatism, safety, exclusion and inclusion including lesbian separatism, trans-phobia and gendered spaces, racially-restrictive deed covenants, women’s and queer temporary lands, racially-marked places of danger, lesbian tourism, taking back the night and the rural hazards to young queers epitomized by Brandon Teena and Matthew Shepard.

*Gardening: Themes of fertility and virility, colonial power and domination, domestic landscapes, intimate encounters between land and body, land art, cultivation and pleasure.

Women and Performance invites critical essays or short performance texts that examine these or other questions relevant to a critical discussion of feminst, transfeminist, and queer landscapes.

Essays should be no more than 10,000 words in length and adhere to the Chicago Manual of
Style, 15th Edition. Abstracts are welcome for review before the final deadline. Complete essays for consideration must be submitted by January 15th, 2010. Please send all work to Julia Steinmetz and Katie Brewer Ball via email (MSWord attachment) or post: brewerball@nyu.edu & steinmetz@nyu.edu. Further submission guidelines may be found at: http://www.womenandperformance.org/submission.html. Women and Performance is a peer reviewed journal published by Routledge, Taylor & Francis.

***we are also accepting visual art submissions/ artist statements***

–
Katie Brewer Ball
Performance Studies, NYU
brewerball@nyu.edu

Tenure-Track Position in Performance Studies
The Division of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies (HArCS) in the New College at Arizona State University invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Performance Studies to begin in August 2010. HArCS is interdisciplinary and committed to a critical examination of human meanings, values and experience.
The successful candidate will be expected to teach and develop courses in relevant areas and to engage in creative/collaborative performance practices. Scholarly research and/or creative activity and service to ASU
and the profession appropriate to tenure track guidelines are expected. Only candidates with a Ph.D. or M.F.A. at the time of hire and college teaching experience will be considered. Desirable qualifications include technical
expertise and potential for interdisciplinary collaboration.
HArCS is one of three divisions that comprise ASU’s New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences. It includes several degree programs: Interdisciplinary Arts and Performance; Women and Gender Studies; English; History; Integrative Studies; American Studies; Religion and Applied Ethics; Philosophy. There are two M.A. programs: Interdisciplinary Studies and Applied Ethics and the Professions. The Interdisciplinary Arts and Performance (IAP) degree program is the only one of its kind in the Southwest. IAP offers courses in: Digital Media, Music and Electronic Sound Art, Performance Studies, and Theater/Performance.
Performance Studies should be conceived in the broadest sense. A candidate’s areas of expertise may include but are not limited to those above, with scholarly and/or creative/practice performance specialization in: documentary, documentary studies, sexuality/gender studies, cross-cultural performance, performance/cultural theory, community/social performance, performance and technology, Southwest Studies, and/or other fields and
areas.
Send a letter of application, statements describing your research and/or creative program and teaching philosophy, curriculum vitae, a sample of two pieces of scholarship and/or creative activity, and three reference letters
electronically to Jamie.Howell@asu.edu (Performance Studies Search Committee, Attention: Jamie Howell, Arizona State University at the West Campus, 4701 W. Thunderbird Road, P.O. Box 37100, Phoenix, AZ 85069-7100).
All application materials should be submitted as electronic documents (CDs or DVDs of single artistic works can be mailed under separate cover).

DEADLINE for applications, including materials, is January 8, 2010.
Arizona State University is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer.

_____________________________________________

Join a vibrant campus community whose excellence is reflected in its diversity and student success. West Chester University of Pennsylvania invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Theatre and Dance and Women’s Studies to begin in Fall 2010.

Responsibilities: Applicants must have a record of successful teaching and demonstrate scholarly promise. West Chester currently offers both a major and minor in Women’s Studies with contributing faculty from a wide variety of departments across the University. The Theatre and Dance Department offers a BA in Theatre with concentrations in performance, dance, musical theatre, technical theatre, and general theatre. The teaching load is 4-4. Competitive Salary and Benefits. See: http://www.wcupa.edu/womensstudies and http://www.wcupa.edu/cvpa/indexTHD.asp.

Requirements: We seek candidates with expertise in teaching about women and gender and a commitment to developing our thriving Theatre and Dance program, along with our growing program in Women’s and Gender Studies. Applicants should be prepared to teach introductory women’s and gender studies courses and undergraduate courses in feminist theories, as well as courses in performance studies, dance studies, or theatre and dance courses related to race, gender, and sexuality studies. The ideal candidate will have interdisciplinary training and will have the opportunity to develop interdisciplinary courses in theatre or dance. Field of specialization is open. A terminal degree (PhD preferred) in Theatre, Dance, Interdisciplinary Studies, Performance Studies, Women’s Studies and/or Gender Studies, with a record of contributions in Theatre or Dance and Women’s and/or Gender Studies, is required by May 2010. In order to be considered a finalist, applicants must successfully complete an on-campus interview, which includes both a teaching demonstration and a scholarly presentation.

To Apply: Please send a letter of interest, CV, official graduate transcripts, 3 or more letters of reference, a statement of teaching philosophy explaining commitment to feminist pedagogy, and two sample syllabi to Dr. Jen Bacon, Director of Women’s Studies, West Chester University, West Chester PA 19383. Review of applications begins December 1, 2009, and continues until position is filled.

West Chester University, a member of the Pennsylvania State system of Higher Education, continues to build a culturally diverse, broadly trained faculty capable of fostering an inclusive environment. West Chester, located 25 miles west of Philadelphia, is convenient to major cultural and commercial institutions, recreational activities, and is within driving distance of Wilmington, DE, NYC, and Washington, DC. Developing and sustaining a diverse faculty and staff advances WCU’s educational mission and strategic Plan for Excellence. The University is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer encouraging diversity. Women and persons of color are particularly encouraged to apply. All offers of employment are subject to and contingent upon satisfactory completion of all pre-employment criminal background and consumer reporting checks.

Application Information
Postal Address:
Dr. Jen Bacon, Director of Women’s StudiesWest Chester UniversityMain HallWest Chester, PA 19383

From Frieze Magazine: “Vaginal Davis is the key proponent of the disruptive performance aesthetic known as terrorist drag. Disrupting the cultural assimilation of gay-oriented and corporate-friendly drag, she positions herself at an uncomfortable tangent to the conservative politics of gay culture, mining its contradictory impulses to interrupt the entrenchment of its assimilatory strategies.”

I wasn’t so sure about her most recent paintings, frankly. They seemed too bucolic. I was concerned that these images would loose the very thing that I like about Carrie’s work: the tension between stark graphic elements and the realism of her near-scientific renderings of flora and fauna. Not to worry… There’s plenty of tension conveyed through symbolism.

This is the image that’s been circulated a lot in the publicity for her series of works that directly cite some 1950’s education images she found in Paris. I would really like to know more about the original images, Carrie said some of the pictures were of the French colonies… there’s a bigger story here.  Carrie blew up the original images  and printed them on water color paper. She then modified the pictures to make various comments about contemporary environmental conditions and concerns. In this image (Be Realistic Demand the Impossible) you can see that she’s added a recycling bin, some solar panels to the roof of the cottage and modified the train to look like the Metro Light Rail. She also added a pig, to point toward the swine flu pandemic and a bicycle-powered washing machine. Cool!

My favorite in the series was Do You Have a Minute to Save the Planet? It bellows the often discordant relationship between activism and environmentalism that expresses itself at the site of consumerism – Carrie said she was thinking of the people outside Whole Foods who ask for your money or a signature.  But it also calls to mind a recent Honda advertisement in which a very hip fellow wearing a ” save the earth” tee shirt climbs out of a 1970s Civic, morphs according to the prevailing fashion trends across the past four decades and reenters his aught-modeled Civic looking ever so trendy. Back to the painting: I simply love the monumentality of the figure, it tells us everything we need to know.

She also talked a bit about a group of work hung on the opposite wall of the gallery including a stratified wall painting of  onomatopoeia for various bird calls laid over color-saturated river rock and a slew of trash arranged on the floor under the painting. These objects look like tumbled rocks, smooth on the edges by the water and sand. Look a little more closely and you can see they are pieces of styrofoam coolers and plastic debris. The material of these man-made and naturally formed objects resonate with the flatly colored rocks in each of her paintings that serve as perches for her bird studies. This Belted Kingfisher, for example, sits on a cluster of rather unlikely-hued flotsam that’s raises off the surface of the page.There’s the tension: bold and flatly colored graphic forms, enter the third dimension while the hyper-natural bird lies on the surface of the paper, its feathers as soft as the tooth of the page.

oooooh, good stuff.

I just read in Artforum that an estimated 2,000 works by the inestimable Brazilian artist Helio Oiticica (1937-80) went up in flames. This is really so sad…  Oiticica was primarily preoccupied with color who’s work as a Brazilian Modernism often articulated a provocative response to formalism. His commentary on universal form was shaped through 3-dimensional paintings, intended to be seen from the inside out by the observer.

I love, in particular, his Parangoles which he made and performed from 1964 – 79. In these works, the canvas came off the wall and the stretchers completely and the observer inhabited the ‘painting’ which was intended to be danced to the rhythm of the samba. He was an active participant with a samba school in Mangueira, one of the favelas of Rio de Janeiro.  Lygia Clark, another Informale artist of the time and seen in this image, and pop music stars danced the parangoles alongside anonymous citizens in a radical demonstration of populism: a brave political posture.

In 2007, The Tate had a retrospective of Oiticica’s work. This is an installation shot of the Parangoles as they hung in the gallery. Equally elegant on the wall, the works still suggested the movement that was part and parcel of their construction.

This is a real loss…

Fire Destroys Nearly 2,000 Hélio Oiticica Works

10.19.09

O Globo’s Eduardo Fradkin reports that nearly two thousand works by Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica (1937–1980) were destroyed Friday in a fire at the house of his brother, César Oiticica, in Rio de Janeiro. Hélio Oiticica’s brothers were responsible for the artist’s estate, the Projecto Helio Oiticica; César Oiticica estimates that 90 percent of the collection was lost. The works were being temporarily housed at César Oiticica’s home because of a dispute between the Oiticica family and the Centro Municipal de Arte Hélio Oiticica over unpaid fees for the lending of the works to a retrospective that opened in April 2009.

In 2007, Tate Modern and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston staged major exhibitions of Oiticica’s work. The fire also destroyed all the pictures and film negatives in the house made by José Oiticica, Helio and César’s father and an important Brazilian photographer.

X-square is an annual project commission for student teams to conceptualize, design and build a structure that activates the big empty red brick space in the Neeb Plaza courtyard. Through student team development, the public presentation of juried proposals and faculty engagement, X-square can function as a meeting of the minds and talents residing in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. X-square turns the studio inside out and, at its best, will serve as a laboratory to generate models of meaningful urban gathering spaces.

The project entails a student competition, much like a public art commission, for the development of a small, brick courtyard on campus. Teams of (at least) 3 students from different schools in the newly founded institute will prepare proposals to develop the space according to 10 program parameters.

1. Each proposal should develop an integrated strategy that brings together subject matter expertise among the arts and design.

2. Each qualifying team must have a minimum of one student from both SoA and SALA plus one student from one of the other five schools in the Herberger Institute ( AME, Dance, Theater and Film, Music, SDI). Teams are not limited to these three upperdivision and/or graduate students, other student expertise from the greater University is encouraged. Each team must have a faculty advisor from one of the seven schools In the Herberger Institute.

3. Entries should propose an environment that encourages occupation/use/program of the space by students faculty and staff across the Herberger Institute as well as the greater ASU community.

4. Issues of climate, context, and accessibility must be considered.

5. Interventions are limited to the brick area only, with the exception of an accessibility ramp that meets the ADA minimum slope of 1‟:12‟ to the brick area.

6. The brick surface can be covered, but cannot be damaged or modified in any way. Structures must be designed so that NO ground penetrations are needed for footings or supports.

7. Proposals should employ sustainable materials and methods of construction and incorporate necessary infrastructures, such as electric power and water into the design of the scheme. NO POWER OR WATER WILL BE PROVIDED FROM THE CAMPUS.

8. The life of the intervention will be nine (9) months and must be designed to be dismantled and recycled with limited waste.

9. All design, fabrication, installation and dismantling will be the responsibility of the student team.

10. Teams must have FUN !

The project is a year long endeavor with the following timeline:

1. Student teams are due for approval immediately following Thanksgiving holiday break. Once the teams are approved…
2. Proposals due at the beginning of next semester when mock ups of the finished installation will be on display for public comment and consideration.
3. A jury will decide the winning team which will go into development in the Spring 2010 semester and…
4. Installation of the winning team’s project will happen during the summer of 2010.
5. The installation will remain on the site until the end of the 2010/11 academic year.

There are terrific possibilities for internships, independent study and other professional development. The best part, I think, is that X-square aims to mix it up between architecture, art, performance, film. It will be a very productive adventure. We had a launch party this past Wednesday (10/14) and there were over 150 students and faculty there, mostly from the School of Art and the School of Architecture + Landscape Architecture. It was fun.

As things develop, I’ll be posting info to Cranky Femme so that I have a permanent (if virtual) record of this project.

I was so happy that she showed a little video of her earlier work – its the most interesting to me. She began her talk by showing a clip of her in a staring contest with Brad Pitt. It’s great. She ‘virtually hijacks’ film clips by inserting herself into scenes with famous actors. One of the qualities of this work that’s curious to me is how her image is clearly not of the scene. You can detect the outline around her figure, the lighting is a bit off. It lends a very campy aesthetic that points a finger (and giggles) at the stardom she’s riffing on. This work also invites a conversation about star crushes, fandom and, of course, celebrity.

During her time in Tempe she’s going to be doing a few different projects. One is a series of workshops on becoming a zombie (or vampire). She’ll also be giving workshops on how to apply the make up and costumes necessary to achieve the living dead look. Then these participants will be part of a video shoot in the desert. The idea behind the film will be a clash of the undead, with no particular motivation for (or resolution of) the conflict. She’s looking for people who want to be involved in the project. If I had the time, I’d do it for sure! Contact ASU Art Museum if you want to get involved.

Another project she’s working is to transform riders of the Light Rail system into zombies or ghosts for Day of the Dead. The transformation will occur on the train, with participants applying make up and then disembarking after they are changed. She did this work in New York (2006) and I laughed out loud when I saw the video (which is available on her website). The obvious differences between the L train and the Light Rail are going to make trouble for McDonald, I think.

Here’s the actual call for zombies that McDonald issued:

WANTED: Artist Jillian Mcdonald seeks actors and makeup artists for vampire and zombie video – no experience necessary!

Jillian Mcdonald, Social Studies artist-in-residence at ASU Art Museum seeks participants in a video installation for her November exhibit at ASU. Interested parties will attend an information session and audition on Oct. 15th at 11 a.m.; attend a rehearsal on Oct. 22nd starting at 11 a.m.; and be videotaped together on the afternoon of Oct. 31st in the desert. The information session, audition and rehearsal will be held in the project’s gallery at ASU Art Museum. No acting experience or knowledge of vampires and zombies necessary, however feel free to do some research online. There is no cost to be a participant in the project!

Zombies may also, if interested, participate in a further performance on the Light Rail on The Day of the Dead, Nov. 2nd. Watch for more information on this coming soon. Contact Jillian Mcdonald, info below, to receive notifications.

Also seeking enthusiastic makeup artists – with or without experience. Makeup artists will come to an information meeting on Oct. 15th at 2 p.m., and a workshop Oct. 16th or 23rd at a to be determined time. These meetings will also be held in the project’s gallery in ASU Art Museum. Makeup for the video will be done at the museum on the late morning of Oct. 31st. There is no cost to participate, makeup will be provided.

Please sign up with Jillian directly if you are interested in participating in the project at 917.443.8107 or jmcdonald@jillianmcdonald.net – she will also answer any questions or concerns. Interested parties who cannot make the scheduled dates, please inquire about alternative times.

Take advantage of opportunities to meet the artist at the ASU Art Museum open class session on Tues., Oct. 13th at 6:30 p.m.

Amazing.

Larger than life-sized and presented on a low platform, the suits towered over me. My nephew was a little taken aback (he’s 3 years old) but once he warmed up to them, discovered the smallest details, he loosened up a bit.

Having the niece and nephew in tow was an interesting way to see Cave’s installation. Mary Faith was totally enrapt by the suits covered in birds and the furry suits too.

The particularities of the soundsuits suggests that a person could choose a favorite. Think again. Just when I thought the “green furry” suit, sitting atop a wooly polar bear, I turned around to see a suit topped by an abacus mask.

The soundsuits will be performed on the evening of November 4, a Wednesday. Unfortunately, I’m teaching the Art and War class on the other side of town and just can’t seem to make a connection between the suits and ‘war’ so I can’t compel my students to go to the performance. Also, I’m canceling class next week so I can oversee the X-square launch, so canceling again just won’t do.

I called and got permission to sit in on the dress/tech rehearsal the previous night. I also plan to interview Susan Skrzycki who’ll be dancing in one of the suits. Can’t wait!

The faculty who’s leaving is beloved by students, so they are really enormous shoes to step into… and taking over a class when it’s already in full swing is not all a bowl of cherries – I know. I’ll be sticking pretty closely to Richard’s syllabus as it stands, adding my own content along the way as it occurs to me.

Just as I was adjusting to not teaching this year, along comes this great opportunity –
I ♥ the West campus!

The New York Times conducted a study about what people read on the train. The results are really interesting. How wonderful that “Atlas Shrugged” and “War and Peace” are on the list of books! Another article and slide show are enough to make me very home-sick for a grimy subway car.

This is a great little video that I saw on Boing Boing this morning. Very funny, indeed!

Helga Steppan has an interesting recent project… “See Through All My Things.” The Swedish artist chromatically organized her belongings then photographed them. The large (30×36) C-prints invite me to think of the orders I aspire to hold in my life, the colors that predominate in my belongings and the moods inspired by the palette of ownership. How lovely. I’m particularly smitten by the image of her white collection…

This reminds me of a project I helped develop for teaching art to high school students “Bring Back A Week.” We asked students to collect evidence of time passing by gathering materials they encounter on a daily basis and then shaping that flotsam into a piece of art. Members of the initial BBAW team have moved on to use the concept in teaching art in places as diverse as the university classroom, the community church and a local prison.  I suppose the reason this work resonates with BBAW in two ways. The act of collecting, chronicling, purposefully amassing requires the same sorts of gestures, discernments and attention. Also, both projects wring every day life into work that evokes memory, mood and narrative that ultimately weaves a story about domestic mundanity.

the blog says “killer clothes + fine cuisine” but i’d add: food stylist, photographer, designer, artist. this is a pic of some potato chips she made, baked and the details of how to do it.  don’t miss the archives where i found this AWESOME project for crab salad in avocado. and the bento boxes on the splash page are so great…

li, are you reading?
make me lunch!

So, I told her about the first time I saw a Rothko color field painting. It was Untitled #10 (1950) and I had spent about two months, just prior to my visit to MoMA, writing a paper about it. I arrived to the gallery, it was very quiet, like a church, and there was no bench for sitting so I sat on the floor. I wanted to sit in front of the painting because I thought something was supposed to happen. I wanted the painting to fill my field of vision, just like Rothko wanted it to do; I wanted to experience the transcendence. But all that happened was that the guard instructed me to stand up. I told the student that it was important for me to see the painting, but mostly because nothing happened. I remember the moment because I broke the rules.

More than 15 years later, I think I probably remember it because it was embedded in an entire range of events that culminated in the failure of the swoon… the world trade center had just been bombed (for the first time) and the city was in an uproar, I was visiting my sister and we saw Flav O Flav on the street, I was recovering from some minor surgery and aware of my mortality in a new way because of it.

maybe one of the redeeming qualities of the film could be how it, in itself, represents an interesting hybridity… mixing ‘the office’ with ‘leathal weapon,’ ‘transformers,’ ’saving private ryan,’ and so many more… i liked the gymnastics of skipping from one genre to another, one resonance to the next (although not all of them were intended, i’m sure). perhaps it was a way to distract myself from the really dismal politics of the plot, trite characters, lame dialog and gaping wholes in the plot. i was, at times, laughing out loud… although no one else found the humor.

grumble… moan

After a grueling description of how they had to move his stomach up to his throat… (i was trying to eat a bagel with cream cheese) and how he couldn’t eat much food and then, when he did, it didn’t stay in him very long… (as i tried to get into my lovely zucchini soup) Lynn proceeded to tell how he died, before her very eyes. They were in the hospital room and he had the ‘1/4 eyes’ where his eyes were only open a 1/4 of the way (the nurse said this was a sign he was close to death). He was very nervous and going on and on about how he needed to divide his things, aside from those eyes, he seemed perfectly fine. Then, “he took a cough” and expired on the spot. “he just took a cough and that was it” Lynn says, tearing up at the thought of her brother’s death. It was so sad, I was practically in tears myself. “Lynn,” I said, “it’s okay” as she tried to apologize for getting teary in front of everyone. “That sounds really awful,” I said.

That’s when she turned to me and said… “you know its just that you remind me so much of him… and I always think of him when I see you or hear about your crazy projects.” Sally, at the table, started laughing as I was aghast…

“But Lynn, I have had health insurance and a steady job since I was 18!” Sally’s bustin up even more at this and Lynn tried to recover…

“But, you know, you remind me of my brother so much. The way you do things that make me say ‘What the hell are you Thinking?!?’ you know?”

I’m always presenting problems for Lynn… what’s a queer girl going to do with a gal from east Texas? I suppose I should take up the guitar.

In only a couple weeks I’ll be wearing sweaters and jeans, I simply cannot wait.

Cooler weather means more opportunities to be social, too. So a relief from the oppressive heat and the solitude it inspires. Dinner parties on the patio, more frequent walks in the park, coffee on the outside: welcome changes in the fall ’round these parts.

The last quarter of the year also brings the relief of having to be in the gym. Walking/running on a treadmill is not nearly as much fun as doing it outside, where you can breath fresher (not re-circualted) air, feel the wind on your skin and stumble on the irregularities of the pavement.

Oh, I can’t wait.

Of course, it never gets quite cool enough for me to wear my fabulous fur hat or swiss army coat. But my trip to Chicago should satisfy my jones for the cold weather this February. brrrr.

UPDATE: it seems i’ve spoken too soon – temps are on the rise again, expecting a week of 103-107. dare i say i jinxed it?

maybe with a top nav… and integrating the blog as a link, condensing the menu choices, jazzing up the splash page. lots to think about … simply more jazzy. huh.

Made this soup last night
- super fresh and delish Substituted some shallots for the onion and garlic, went with a white potato instead of russet and use mixed baby squash instead of zucchini. (So maybe I didn’t make this soup afterall!)

Zucchini and Rosemary Soup
Bon Appétit | June 1995
The Inn at Perry Cabin, St. Michaels MD
From the Inn at Perry Cabin, St. Michaels, Maryland
Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.
Yield: Serves 8

2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) butter
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, sliced
2 teaspoons minced fresh rosemary
6 cups chicken stock or canned low-salt broth
1 russet potato, peeled, sliced
3 medium zucchini, thinly sliced

1 zucchini, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
Croutons
Chopped green onions

Melt butter with oil in heavy large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onion; sauté until translucent, about 5 minutes. Mix in garlic and rosemary. Add stock and potato; bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer 10 minutes. Add sliced zucchini; simmer until tender about 15 minutes. Working in batches, puree in blender. Season with salt and pepper. Cook cubed zucchini in saucepan of boiling salted water for 30 seconds. Drain. Rewarm soup over medium heat. Ladle into bowls. Top with zucchini and croutons. Sprinkle with green onions.

Allan Kaprow (center, with beard) and participants in his “Yard” (1967), at the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York.

This month and next, two of my favorite artists (both featured in the dissertation) will be re-inventing Allan Kaprow’s Yard in NYC: William PopeL and Sharon Hayes. The NYT says a bit about their efforts.

George Baker (UCLA, Art History) describes a recent “undeniable anti-theoretical turn” which relies on the lack of commonality in theoretical veins which he rightly claims to be an opportunity and not a hinderance. Theory, he says, is “a flexible mode of philosophical thinking, a thought that reaches outside the limits and boundaries of accepted fields and methods, hybridizing them, then inventing new categories and new modes.” … I couldn’t agree more. This sentiment that what theory is, or how theory does, seems to imbue the thoughts of several of the writers, keeping them in the question instead of the answer.

Isabelle Graw (Hochschule Fur Bilden de Kunste) rightly points out that any “art worth talking about…possesses an intellectual dimension.” Indeed. And she goes on to tell of the need for artists to be critically fluent in today’s market.

Ronald Jones (Konstfack, Stockholm) addressed the ‘post-critical alternative’ to critical theory currently popular at various academic sites of art. He also called for a greater rigor and less opinion in the field (here! here!). He referred to a fascinating NYT OpEd piece that lays out some astoundingly clear evidence for the need to re-imagine the university. This call, itself, seems to have reach a trope status, though. Abolish tenure…yes. Don’t exploit grad students and adjuncts…yes. Collaborate across disciplines…yes.

Michael Archer (Goldsmith, London) made me laugh out loud when he said that the multiplicity of nomenclature for the intersections of theory/critique/art/history in the institution was “symptomatic of either a lack of clarity about what’s needed, or a belief in the desirability of openness in fine art education.” He also rightly noted that “art history” was probably the worst possible name for such junctures because it casts the contemporary as the latest in a long line… blah blah blah. I simply fell off my chair in hysterics when I read his critique of how fashionable theory is insufferable: “Merely replacing Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Jean-Francois Lyotard with Alain Badiou, Jacques Ranciere and Slavoj Zizek is a tedious game.” And then he holds Dave Hickey’s feet to the fire! I think I like Mr. Archer.

Yesterday, a young woman got on the train at Roosevelt station. She had a pierced septum, I really like how it looked. She also had a mess of dreads on her head, blonde dreadlocks.  After she hung up her cruiser, she took a seat in front of me. The overwhelming smell of patchouli oil and clove cigarette smoke wafted up from her as she plunked down into the seat.  She seemed oblivious to the fact that her dreads were spilling out over the back of her seat, into the space above my knees. She had a filterless clove cigarette tucked between a couple of her dreads and I was amazed that a) it wasn’t broken and b) it didn’t fall out. As we made our way downtown, I noticed that she also had a few ants crawling around in her hair. I wonder if she knew they were there and invited insects to live on her body because she didn’t believe in killing live things… or if she would freak out to know that her hair was host to the critter. Either way: it made my skin crawl.

At the time, I was preparing for a sort of dangerous performance that I (wisely) abandoned. The plan was to go to Maricopa County and get myself arrested and, while I was to be at the intake of the county jail, have a network of people on the internet grab screen shots from the deplorable live cam that Sherrif Joe Arpaio had situated there. I remember talking to my sister (the family attorney) who said “do you really want to have an arrest on your record, just to make some art?” I suppose my convictions have limits.

Here’s the trailer to the film about WLIP:

Who is the 1970’s artist who posed for several self-portraits with small gum vulvae affixed to her body?

And, I’m sure you all knew the answer was Hannah Wilke. In her 1974 SOS: Starification Object Series she issued a critique of the sexualized female artist as seen by the male dominated art systems (all white, of course). For the series, she molded gum into small vulva-like shapes and applied them to the surface of her nude body. These forms eventually migrated to the wall crafted from gum, kneaded erasers and cut latex. Unfortunately, Wilke’s body succumbed to the vagaries of cancer, which she famously documented in her 1992-93 work Intra Venus.

Amelia Jones offers an interesting (if dense) analysis of Wilke’s work in (and S.O.S. is on the cover of) her oft-sited Body Art.

And how do they get those cameras to stay on the turtle, anyway? …maybe with a strap around its shell? There’s a performance in here, somewhere.

UPDATE: unfortunately, there’s only one video still on-line. I’m not sure what happened, but have written to the folks to see if we can expect them back. In the meantime, I’ve removed all the links…

To time
To time past
To the clock
To the watched clock
To the minute hand, hour hand
To the second hand
Against the clock
Against the punch clock
To the heartbeat
To ducking out of time
To running out of time
To marking time
to making time
To time remade
To time remains
To time future
To what art can do
To what it – art – can’t do
To shelter,
Against bars
To walking
To rain
To sleep
To the task
To the rule
To doubt and clarity
To the daydream
To marks on the wall
To art
In its great  strength and its speaking silence
In its persistence
Its visible invisible
In its wit, in its fun, in its blankness
and in its deep articulation
to possibility
to the minimal
in face of capital
in face of commodity
against or in face of the wholesale capitalisation of time
to invention
to touch, no touch and privacy and none
to conversation
to the unsaid, unspoken, unspeakable
to the strength of the solitary
to the little yes and the big no
to the traces that are vanished and the traces that remain
to the ghosts of an actions made in the past but still moving in the present
to the past again
to the future, again
To the now
Which is here
To life and art
To life as art
To art
To go in life
To walk right out of life
To  walk out of what some call life
To survive
to the future, again
To the now
Which is here
And now
To Tehching.

My favorite things which have nothing to do with work include an 1865 map of Iceland on the wall next to the door and a group of images hanging on my bulletin board: Barrack and Michelle dancing in February, Virginia Woolf drowning herself, a bag of nuts and bolts, Michael Jackson’s feet, a photograph of a woman who can free dive to 100 meters. There is also a walking map of campus. Below the bulletin board is a vintage orange task lamp.

To the left of my desk and in the corner of my office, is a gray filing cabinet. There’s a recycle bin in front of it and next to a floor lamp that has three directional shades. Pictures of my cute niece and nephew are stuck to the side of the file cabinet with magnets that look like pushpins. There is also a calendar of events hanging there. On top of the file cabinet is a printer that sucks, and above it is a white board that’s scrawled with notes about my current projects including an editorial calendar for the semester’s e-newsletter.

In the other corner of my office is a round table, also heaped with papers.  There are two chairs: one is empty, on the other sits my lunch bag.

This is my office.

It is impossible to understand urban rhythms without referring to the general theory, which we will call ‘rhythmanalsysis’ related particularly to these rhythms but not only these. This analysis of rhythms, in all their magnitude “from particles to galaxies”,  has a transdisciplinary character. Moreover, it gives itself as aim the least possible separation of the scientific from the poetic.

In this manner we can try to draw the portrait of an enigmatic personage wandering the streets of a large Mediterranean city, with his thoughts and emotions, his impressions and his wonder, and whom we will call the ‘rhythmanalyst’. more aware of times than of spaces, of moods than of images, of the atmosphere than of particular spectacles, he is strictly speaking neither psychologist, nor sociologist, nor anthropologist, nor economist. Yet, by turn he comes close to these disciplines and he can use all the instruments employed by the specialists. he therefore adopts in relation to these different sciences a transdisciplinary approach. He ‘keeps his ear open’, but he does not only hear words, speeches, noises and sounds for he is able to listen to a house, a street, a city, as one listens to a symphony or an opera. Of course, he seeks to find out how this music is composed, who plays it and for whom. He will avoid typifying a city by a simple subjective trait as a particular writer will characterize new York by the howling of police sirens or London by the murmur of voices and the cries of children in the squares. Attentive to time (or tempo) and therefore as much to repetitions as to differences in time, he separates by a mental act what gives itself as linked to a whole: namely, rhythms and their  associations. he not only observes human activities, but he hears (in the double meaning of the word noticing and understanding), the temporalities in which these activities take place. he can at times be closer to the physician (analyst) who examines functional troubles in terms of dysfunctions or rhythms or arrhythmia and at other times to the poet who can say:
“O people that i know
All i need is to hear the sound of their footsteps
To be able to tell forever the direction they have taken.” (Apollinaire, “Cortege’)

Rhythms cannot be analyzed when they are lived. For example, we do not grasp the relations between their rhythms whose association comprise our body: the hear, breathing, the sense, etc. We do not even grasp any of them separately except when we are suffering. To analyse a rhythm, you have to be out of it. Exteriority is necessary. And yet to grasp rhythm you must yourself have been grabbed by it, given or abandoned yourself inwardly to the time that is rhythmed. Is it not thus in dance or music? In the same way, to understand a language and its rhythm one must acknowledge a principle which appears paradoxical. One only hears the sounds and the frequencies that on produces when speaking – an reciprocally, on can produce only those that one hears. What is called a loop…

I like having these dreams; the dream thrift store reassures my faith in memory and the possibilities embedded in relics that cannot be purchased with wealth or found in new things.

In the meantime, he pulls out one box after another of vintage frames “You might like something here,” he says. Holy cow. While most of them were from the early 80’s, there was one box that held some real gems from the 50s and 60s.  That’s where I found them: black, really hefty handmade frames from Christian Lacroix, probably from the late 1960s. The bridge and the front of the stem pieces are flat and matte, while the rather large circular frame is rounded and very shiny. The frame must be 1/2 inch thick. I couldn’t put them down, so I didn’t. Instead, I pulled out my prescription and asked him to drop in some lenses.

I returned the blue frames and used the refunded money as a deposit on the new glasses. Should have them paid off before long. When I go back to put a payment on them, I’ll snap a picture and throw one up on the blog.

Again, as with Track Your Happiness, this project seems a bit privileged. Who, exactly, has the time to consider the data of one’s life? What devices and bits of code are necessary to accomplish the task? Who has the luxury of time to learn it all?

Given those reservations, I was still really interested in how Josh Klein and Hulda Emilsdottir talk about organizing their belongings according to five categories. Interested, not to know what their belongings are, but to imagine my own things archive according to such a clearly defined criteria. These are their five categories of things:

I love this thing and I use it all the time.
I love this thing because it’s got a good memory.
I love the way this thing looks and I want to keep it.
This has been useful but it’s lacking somehow.
This is useful but I don’t love it.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to unload all my belongings and move to Iceland? Its something I’ve dreamed about doing for decades, btw. I think it would be just ducky to spend my time cataloging my things, too. WhatEver would I do with all these books? And… do dogs count as things? Oh my…