some things i want to write, and their status:

1) Three essays on Thomas Kincaide (Fredrick Church, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol)
status: pitched the 2nd third to fillip and n+1

2) an essay on hiway photos, tracing the narrative from document to art and back again (not rest stops, or things on the sides or gas stations or anything like that--but actual, you know roads)
status:some research

3)that essay on horror remakes and the crisis of patriachal heterosexism
status:pitched to rue morgue, have to watch movies (amityville horror, the hills have eyes, texas chainsaw..., house of wax, dawn of the dead, the fog) can you tie this to korean/japan or is that overkill

4) solidify brokeback as a destablizing movie about rural duty and the punishment any of sexual desire
status: lots of research, writing some notes, waiting for the dvd on 3/4, ask geoff if he wants to co-write it, piggyback his academic connections, cause he thot about writing something like this on his lj

5) an essay on louise lawer and the implications of public/private space
status:some research, most likely will be a blog entry

6) two discussions of strauss
a) the difference b/w the close textual readings of derrida and strauss, irt issues of god, esp. the role of isaac
status: almost nothing
b) the problems with the obsession the kaballah, springboarding on this qoute fom anne nortons book: leo strauss and the poliitcs of american empire: Anyone who has spent time among the straussians knows their passion for puns, for partial qoutations, and allusions, made to carry an insult of simply as a form of amusement. You will have seen them count chaperts or the number of things in a list. Thgey are given, especially the lesser ones, to a facinaton with gamataria. Gamatria is a kabbalistic practive which assigns significance to numbers. The numbers may have reference to things in the natural world (one's two eyes or ten gingers, to convention (the twelve months in a year, the seven days in a week), to year, to verses in the bible, to special numbers like 3 or 9 or to the numbers of letters in the name of God (13x13 pr 139) When i first heard Struassians saying things like "there are three chapters and three parts, and three times three is nine." I felt rather as if i had heard them casting runes, or reading Tarot Cards. I asked my teacher whether people took this seiously. All too seriously it turned out. For half an hour or so he regaled me with stories of silly things people did with gamatria. He finsihed up by pulling out an article. Look at footnote 139, he told me."One hundred and thirty nine!" I said, "Why so many footnotes in a single article" HE always has at least that many" he told me"so that he can mention himself in 139..."(103-104)

serious, mystic, post literate view of the text, not being silly, comes from the obsession against anecdote and 2nd or 3rd Sources, spent so much time on words on the page...

(side note, i am a failure at my lenten promise)

a note on anne norton:
her personal narrative telescoped into larger issues of gender and race, plus telling tales out of school, and pointing out the elements of irrationality, etc would explain her dismissal by FF--i just wish that if she was going to gossip (which can be a good/nessc. thing cf Butler) she would actually do so--to much fucking respect, and not enough of the tin hat brigade (i keep thinking that Dick's total pyschotic breakdown is a more and more reasonable reaction to those in power---things ray said about setient machines, etc come to mind.


photo projects:
an edmonton alphabet, caging from evans, for the epl
a prarie home companion (domestic,still lives and landscapes richard billingham style, polaroids, 35 mm and digital prints) for foundation in la
industry (hi colour, poetic remakes of hilda belcher, digital, need to shot lots of it)
continuing the photos of light switches, tempature gages, etc (for whome?)
all of the various things that the NC Unesco residency needs

curratorial things
send 100 stags to moss street in victoria
best of flickr, amatuer night thing, for lat maybe
a show of small opulent paintings and drawings, about pure formal concerns, historically minded, outside irony or good bad painting (the anti dana shutz)

reviews
music:
josh logan(sp)
roy kaestens
that nifty swedish hurdy gurdy thing

art
that thing for fillip
something for flak
maybe that mask peice,

school
ref letters
ACT
call about disability issues

med stuff
masey
daphene
sanderman

other stuff
toronto (david)
parole
35/mo for rogers
reaply for aish
rewrite, perhaps the anarchy peice
bring back packages
talk to erik about film (shoot then edit)
the janet cardiff thing
tax info to ray

things im waiting for
prefix
spaced
the independent polaroid guild
fillip
banff
hoard magazine
edd
pitchfork
post road
snap:toronto
gallery 44
contract and cheque from robin

100 Stags
A curatorial proposal

There has been a ubiquity of the deer motif in recent culture. Not only the great taxidermied stags, but depictions of super cute fawns, or coquettish does as well. This does not connect to just one stream of ideological or aesthetic thought, but comes from all corners for all purposes, in most media and for a variety of politics and aesthetics.

They can be conservative indications of survivalist tendencies (hunting magazines and catalogs) or radical critiques of institutions (Amy Stein's C-Prints of natural history museums) or gender (Ann Craven paintings of does). They can be super butch (Paul Koepikin, taking photos in a Billings Montana Best Western) or hopelessly twee (the recent fawn toys made by Sanrio). They can be strange and new (the psychedelic floral intertwined with cut-outs) done by Hanna Wearing) or the end result of hundreds of years of traditions (the Irish Royal Elk emblazoned on t shirts by Squidfire) They can be lo-fi like recent rave posters done for Minnesota clubs and they can be the height of slick post-modern commerce (the video sequel to Bambi).

That's the best thing; they can be everything for anyone. In the last five years you saw men and women from dozens of countries making deeply personal or deeply whorish depictions of deer, meaning anything. It evades theory and it evades aesthetics. In my research I have found taxidermy, graphic design, stuffed animal, couture, suit jackets, t shirts, a dozen different kinds of photography, performance pieces, videos, paintings in every size imaginable, posters, flyers, prints, drawings, hand knitted, sewn, crocheted, and stuffed crafts, collage, wall paper, and various other materials (horn, silver, pewter, wood).

People like deer, and they see more and more of them when suburbs edge further into disappearing wilderness. I think the explosion of all kinds of deer motifs, in all sorts of places, in all sorts of politics, is a way of finding out what cities mean. They are amongst the best adaptors for invasion of cities, and they are cute or regal or beautiful or sublime enough that the real damage they are capable of isn't often known. I want us to start thinking about deer, what deer mean to the larger urban/suburban/rural dynamic.

I want to find 100 different examples of this deer motif, each of them symbolizing a different media, done by artists in cities, in suburbs and in rural areas. Items that have been hand made, made in small quantities, and mass-produced commercially. I want to combine high art, low art, tasteful design, and kitsch. I want to walk into that back room of Magic Pony, and be overwhelmed to the point of blunt silence, away from ironic kitsch, decorative skill, boredom or overkill. I want pictures of hunters as much as I want children's toys.

In actually getting together 100 fawn/stag/does on the walls, I hope to destabilize taste, decentralize people's patterns of cohesion and thought, and to perhaps foster new kinds of thoughts, away from the ghettos of clichéd represtentation.

the image below is A Witch Riding on a Phallus, an etching after a now-lost design by Francesco Parmigianino, 1530s,

duke is publishing next year, a book of critical essays on thomas kincaide, which means that the one im working on wrt him and church, for the book, may be easier or may be more difficult...heres some 16th century porn to make up for it

here are some images of architechture in iqualit, nunavut
eatery
airport
cathedral
research station
from the anasuchus kirscher soc.

thinking about walk the line again, i realised that johnny cash was the one performer in america that i hadnt read anything negative about--about his treatment of vivian his first wife, his makkinig up shit in his autobiographies, his messianic tenencies, his religous strangeness, and even his voice or music. this struck me as odd, and so i was somewhat releived that ian somn finally wrote the essay to do all this, while still admitting he liked the bastard...

large portions of the world have finally achieved basic ZPG The interesting thing is, that the population bomb era folks who thought this wasa good idea faile to realise any of the larger issues that this might mean, including religous, political, social, family, and personal. The return of the patriachy may be one of these, according to the neo con foreign policy kournal, but i think a more organic merging of bio/non bio famiies may be more realistic. anyways read the link, its worthwhile context

long interview b/w Butler and DElany

historical essay on pysops and porn, in wwii/korea/veitnam, from both sides, with many pictures.

ny times is reporting that female prisoners in labour have one or both legs shackled to hospital beds, against medical advice.

problems the academy might have with brokeback
a) the movie was set in the flyover
b) the presence of sexual content that is both same and opposite gendered, meant that it was difficult to process using tools that are already fairly common
c) the movie refused a standard vicitm naarratology
d )the rural folks were not enemies, the honest portyral w/o exoticism of the west,
e) i dont think that the left liberal elite understand themes like sacrifice for others, honour, the abjection of ego, and dereliction of duty.

"real" becomes less so when filmed, deciding what to depict and what not to, is impt--and capote played into the sterotypes. i really did think that capote (the man, and how psh played the man) was a minstrel act and the whole line about him being pyschopathic because killing the boy he wanted to fuck made a better story, fit into that whole peter lorre noir genre, and was an easy role and him winning set things back

(a similar problem i had with his roles in flawless, and boogie nights amongst others)

i remember being in this thrift store in toronto, last time i was there, and johnny was playing, tiny place, 5 people in the store, 2 employees, every fucker in the room started to sing when ring of fire was playing...and i was just reading rednecks and bluenecks, the political book on country music that was out last year, and there was this line about how both neo stalinists and john birchers both thot he was on their side politically. and all that charisma, that bone deep leading by example, i could think of a thousand other examples, and none of it comes thru in walk the line

Tim Barber, From Tiny Vices:

Contributing Artists Include:

Lesley Arfin, Patryce Bak, Tim Barber, Jordon Bennett, Boogie, Ali Bosworth, Kenneth Cappello, Dan Colen, Scott Conarroe, Michelle Cortez, Mark Delong, Vincent Dermody, Chris Dorland, Anthony Easton, Shane Ehman, Louise Enhorning, James Erdeg, Diego Fernandez, Leo Fitzpatrick, Ryan Foerster, Alessandro Formenti, Jason Frank Rotherberg, William Galindo, Philippe Gerlach, Kava Gorna, Jeffro Halladay, Bala Heller, Eleonore Hendrix, Jerry Hsu, Gordon Hull, Sanya Kantarovsky, Ryan Kearney, Thatcher Keats, James Kendi, Richard Kern, Una Knox, Tuomas Korpijaakko, Jessie Kotler, Kim Krans, Gregory Krum, Gary LaChance, Jeff Ladouceur, Fabien Laurent Foureault, Leigh Ledare, Jason Lee, Scott Lenhardt, Gina Liberto, Jimmy Limit, Andrea Longacre White, Glynnis McDaris, Ryan McGinley, Jamie James Medina, Alex Morrison, Jason Nocito, Patrick O'Dell, OODA Group, Christian Patterson, Jaret Penner, Brad Phillips, Ben Pier, Brett Pittman, Caitlin Teal Price, Bobby Puleo, Max Ryazansky, Aurel Schmidt, Robin Schwartz, Jeremy Shaw, Asha Shechter, Dan Siney, Thomas Stavnes, Jane Stockdale, Peter Sutherland, Jamie Taete, Ah Kee Thiang, Jonathan Thiang, Lucas Thorpe, Kon Trubkovich, Yu Ukai, Brian Ulrich, David Uzzardi, Jaimie Warren, Martynka Wawrzyniak, Jason Wurm.


The show will also be featured in the Spencer Brownstone Gallery booth at the Armory Show: March 9th - 13th. Piers 90 & 92, New York, NY.

Emphasis Mine

i really like this photo, i took it:

alright, questions about the 70s in country music

how long did the outlaw movement last, from when to when
who were t he outlaws
how long did the countrypolitan movement last, from when to when
who were the countrypolitian

how large, in terms of sales were outlaw
how large in terms of sales were countrypolitan
how large in terms of radio play were outlaw
how large in terms of radio play were countrypolitan
ditto for concert revenue, and media concentration

how much of a cross over (songwriters, perormers, etc) were between various kinds of country music,

how does the folk revival impact these numbers irt the hippie qoutient.

why, amongst certain cultural critics, has the outlaw movement become such a peice of nostalgia.
is there an equal amount of nostalgia amongst current nashville perfomers (ie Paisley or Keith) (Rednecks and Bluenecks hints at the Keith connections, but rarely mentions Paisley, who I think may be a key to this)

how legitmate is the idea that outlaw country worked in musical and geographic oppostion to music row (ie Austin vs Nashville)

how does Johnny Cash fit into all of this?

What about Bakersfield.

rare volume, of grims fairy tales, illustrated by 38 david hockney photos--like his work from the rakes progress opera, done about the same time, they have a sketchy construction, trying to appear more messy and more raw then he thinks he is, but some of them have an elegant, formal innovation, and a darkness that grimm has but hockney sure has hell doesnt scanned here the work for rapunzel, and the illustration of the woman caught in the fish are my favourite.

full text of the SoDak Abortion descion, what did emerson say, consistency is the hobgoblins of little minds...well it applies here.

patterns consist only with exceptions, for african xianity, esp. the post colonial working out of sexual ethics, are being centered by Rev Nicholas Henderson, in Malwai, who is queer friendly in a western sense, genorous, and beloved of his congreation--the look on the faces of nigerian bishiops, when they realise they dont have control, has an amusing irony gaurdian story here

list of songs to download, from bluenecks and rednecks


Uncle David Macon--The Bibles True, Eleven Cent Cotton and Forty Cent Meat
Bob Miller Better-Than-Thou Hypocritical Blues
Roy Acuff--Old Age Pension Check
Gene Autry--Dont Bite the Hand Tahts Feeding You
Buchanan Brothers--Atomic Brothers
Tex Ritter--Deck of Cards
Carson Robinson I Dont Work For A Living
Hank Williams No No Joe
Little Jimmie Dickens--They Locked God Outside the Iron Curtain
Louvin Brothers--GReat Atomic Power, The Weapon of Prayer, Theres a Grave in the Wave of the Louvin Brothers
Jimmy Wakely--The Red DEck of CArds
Bobby Bare--This is for Protection of the People, Somebody Bought my Home Town,Redneck-Hippie Romance,Good Xian Soilder, Finger on the Button
Jimmy Dean--Dear Ivan
Merle Haggard--Hungry Eyes, WOrking Mans Blues, They're Tearing the Labour Camps Down
Tom T Hall--Strawberry Farms, I want to SEe the Parade, Girls in SAigon City, America the UGly,
Porter Wagoner I Dreamed I Saw America on Her Knees
Doc Williams--Freedoms Monkey
Travis Bell--Welfare Cadilliac
DAvid Allen COle--How Highs the Watergate, Martha, Fuck Anita Bryant.
Arlene Harden, Congratulations, you sure made man out of him
James Talley--Are They Gonna Make Us Outlaws Again
Tanya Tucker--I Believe the SOuth is Gonna Rse AGain
Waylon Jennings--Will the WOlf Survive
Iris Dement--Theres a Wall in Washington
Drive-by Truckers--The Presidents PEnis is Missing, Wallace, Putting People on the Moon, SAnds of Iwo Jima
Steve EArle==Xmas in Washington, F the CC
Kris Kristofferson--Aguila DEl Norte, Love of Money, Third World War
Randy Travis--Point of Light
Donovan Chapman--There is no War
Rodney Cowell--Ignorance Is the Enemy
Dave Dudley Dont MEss with US Truckers
Lester Flatt, I cant Tell the Boys from the Girls
Emmylou Harris Time in Babylon
Joe Nichols If Nobody Belived in You
Dolly PArton Welcome Home
Tom Snider Conserative Chritian TIght Wing Republican STraight White American Male

http://rufuswainwright.com/carnegiehall
What do we think of this. the first album is heartbreaking, gorgeous and difficult, a classic that has been burried because of myth

and there is something interesting, when gay culture has become more mainstream, more straight, less intresting, less spiky, less QUEER...there are writers and performers who are working as historians, for the old (coded, hidden, darkened street corner) ways, wayne kaustenbaum as a writer, john cameron mitchell as a director, etc--and rufus of course is among those.

he can be a really great performer, as well. a brillant song writer, a talented singer, a louche/outre performer...and we kind of need all of those. (But my question is--w. all this desire for the carefree 70s gay sex, found all over queer discourses in the last few years, is this uncritical nostalgia, is he playing fey cause it makes money--and the other narratives, being loved by Neil Tennant and Elton John, the meth addiction/casual sex revealtions, etc--how much of Wainwrights obsession with those hallowed days features critical distance, and does it need to?
)

but, does anyone think this is trying to hard? does anyone think this will end up as a gong show, a supenova break down of "Elizabeth Taylor" tendecies, or worse, too reverential, too banal, too obvious.

if you were in charge of Judy's catalog, is this where you would start-and if not where would you begin?

(posted from ilm, hoping to link ysi files, but that doesnt seem to be working, so if you want a copy of a live version of the judy signtature Somewhere Over the Rainbow or his song Gay Messiah, AIM, Email or leave a comment, and i can arrange.)

x tra west took the r kelly peice.

links:

an amusing essay on henry james, and his apparent testicle injury--it came thru on mefi, and two impt things were imparted
1) the dude who quit his masters cause everyone apparently was gay, and this wasnt fair (james is a frequent subject of queer theorists, and i dont think its b/c they think hes gay, but because his view of sexuality is so gossetted, so quiet, so closeted, and his biography is similar, that the tools of sexual deconstruction (ie unravlleing, noticing power differentials, gender and sex as performance, themes of veiling and unveiling, and a formal overlapping w. biography work better w. james then almost any other 20th century writer--ie how he wrote is how he lived...(and his prose is really close to other genuinely (semi) closeted writers, like gide, forrester, and the little ive read of proust)

2) apparently in moveable feast, hemmingway told a ribald story about fitzgeralds cock--he was so worried it was too small, hemmingay brought him to the met in new york, to show the greek statues (ie butch men/small dix) fitzgerald left more dispondent then he came. how hemmingway saw fitzgeralds cock is the interesting question


Charles Ray, 2005, Ink On Paper, Untilted (smaller, more decroative, less autobio, then his usual work--at matthew marks new drawing show, most of the big guns, really ugly work, but i liked this.

lego brokeback

Melina Raissinia, is an artist, writer, craftswoman and rugmaker. Here hand made rugs have an elegant, intriguing, almost child like sense of design, with great colours, and lots of white space, a sort of handhewn geometry, that reminds me of klee--they are some of the most beautifully composed images, and they look much different then the high gloss attempts at art or the punk fuck you of locult made high, like the graff rugs i posted a few months ago (work i loved, but rassinia is much mroe complicated)

here is here site, with essays, paintings, drawings, etc

Edit: Go to the link, the images are being fussy.


genuine mid50s batman strip, the yellow is fotoshopped

First Big Drug SCandal of the Torino olympics,ends with the austrian coach in the loony bin.

fantastic bitter rant about the really quite stupid stalker laws that are infesting LA, esp, how celebs blame pappazari, instead of taking repsonsiblity w. their own idiocy. and another on Jill Caroll, the christian relief worker/hostage in Iraq. When did the LA times become the American paper of record...


Jesus Kitsch

forget that its from daily kos, apparently the GOP is back to astroturfing southern churches found here

There is also the philosophical problem. Bush has done real violence to the principle of limited government with all of his talk about how the government has to move when someone is hurting and his aim to leave no child behind. Some of his programs are, I think, easily defended on the merits. But that doesn't change the fact that as general philosophical issue, Bush has conceded that the government is there to help in a way Reagan never would have. Sure, Reagan made exceptions to his general anti-government position. Sometimes they were pragmatic, sometimes they were legitimate exceptions (conservatives aren't uniformly opposed to all government interventions), and some times his deviations were hypocritical, at least in the eyes of some. But such hypocrisy was the tribute conservatives must sometimes pay to politics. Bush has conceded much of the fundamental ground to liberals when it comes to the role of government. Now the argument about governmental problem solving is technical -- "will it work?" -- rather than principled, "is it the government's job?"
far right cassandra, Jonah Goldberg, on NRO online, found here (hes batshit but a fantastic writer)

new book of american soilders taking photos of themselves, from the gq website, so it went from print web print.

Fiction:
48 Cory Doctorow
Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town
read it cover to cover in 36 hrs--he writes well, pushes a narrative along, jumps all over the place, and a strange mix of social realism, allegorical fantasy, cyberpunk and family melodrama...i still dont know if i liked it, the urban fantasy stuff would seem to be right up danielles alley, and pat loves him, so im going to put it on the shelf until i can talk to pat and ds read it.

adbusters, they wanted to print it as a letter to the editor, didnt tell me this, and i need money/status/etc, i thot about letting it thru, but couldnt honestly give it as a clip and the access wasnt enough, so i said fuck it, push--if it goes thru awesome, and if not i can starve on my own intergity

last nights dream was shopping for nuts (peacans, walnuts, brazil nuts, peanuts, chesnuts,etc) at sobeys. been really bad, really tired, really sad, really out of it, not working hard enough

james funeral is on the fourth

in the next week i have to:
edit/rewrite s&v
rework curratorial statment
contact paul
wrangle paper from 7 artists
meet with elaine
get the 44 proposal finished and sent
and make arrangements to go to the funeral in olds, which is depressing in its own right.

i just had a dream about edmonton colleen. there was a lot before, and a lot after, but the main image was her in a bath tub, and a long time looking at her fetal like that, and then blood blossoming thru the water, and then seeing the page of her website, saying memorials.

im shaken about it

More of those amazing photos of the bellies of airplanes, flying thru the sky, by Jeffery Milstein, a couple of dozen, i like how clean they are conceptually, framed centrally, and overpowering, but i like the dirt, the little elements of decay...i like how careful the composition works against the dirt of the planes..

I still really really want to know how he does it

Steve Fietch, One Star, From New Signs in Visual California (I think) 74