Monday, June 04, 2007
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Some Thoughts on the Aesthetics of Dead Babies
Yesterday, 2 am or so, and two friends of mine both artists, were gathered around the computer, watching kitsch videos on you tube. A perfect postmodern evening of fan created entertainment. Rosie and Elizabeth destroying each other, Martha Stewart consuming Lindsay Lohan like Grendel redone by Donna Karan, that Atlanta woman who likes to talk about her vagina, the bitch please queen, etc. I thought I was moving from camp atrocity to camp atrocity, so I moved in for the killer, one of two videos made for John Michael Cameron’s Alyssa Lies.
These videos, features images culled of childhood abuse, from crim. manuals, records of abuse, illustrations, just a general grasp and insert job made easier by google image search. Like God’s Will by Martina McBride or that Tim McGraw story about angels protecting orphaned children, I find Cameron’s song really funny. There is a magnificent and obvious heart pulling that is so lurid that it comes kitsch. The death of Alyssa, even the abuse of Alyssa does not remind me of how awful innocent children are, but of how much I don’t really like kids and how sentiment can be used to sell records. I am reminded of how people would gather on the docks of New York, begging for any news about Little Nell, and how still in England Wilde cut through Dickens moralizing with: “One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.” Like in the Victorian populist fiction that it sprung from, kids die with an alarming regularity in country music. I keep thinking about songs about he deaths of children in the last 20 years are continuing a tradition that lost its usefulness. Like those pretty blonde kids that show up dead every few months on the cover of the tabloids, that are written about with an almost religious devotion.
The thing is, in the Victorian era, kids actually died, often before infancy. They did so in certain regions where country music was popular well into the second half of the 20th century. We can make fun of musicians who wrote and performed about death with such goopy melodrama, or we can give them a pass, because the songs are sad. They move us. I keep thinking about Dolly, because she manages the severity of the dead kid genre with the slick production of pop. She manages to make her songs, well legitimately earnest. This should be reason for some kind of camp reclaiming, and there has been an attempt or two. Like the punk band the Goblins, whose EP Songs of Child Abuse and Mortality made Famous by Dolly Patron anthologizes and recasts the best of them, as examples of populist theater that should be mocked: "Down From Dover," "I Get Lonesome By Myself," "Bloody Bones," "Malana," "Jeannie's Afraid Of The Dark," "Me And Little Andy," "The Party," "Letter To Heaven.” Listening to the EP, I keep being reminded of the Sex Pistols remake of My Way. The sneer was a fuck you to the fat corpse of Frank Sinatra and his weepy self-reliance, but it were also a reclaiming, a punk colonizing of rotary lunches and martinis at 5.
The songs they covered were the most mawkish. They had child singsong choruses, ghosts, the uncanny, elements of folk legends, but also of the countrypolitian sound, of Nashville and television, it does something else. The Goblins do the most damage to Down From Dover, with its plain speaking; quotidian details and childe ballad narrative form were interrupted with hesitancies, quietness, lacunae and discussions of weather. Alyssa Lies has some similarities, but it is told in third instead of first, it names the child victim, and the details of the death are left unspoken. Dolly tells every detail of every death in those songs, she sings like she has had people die in front of her, and like she grew up with it. Reading Eric Wesibands essay on the song from Gruel Marcus’ book on balladry: …”a list of folk songs the siblings absorbed growing up…Barbry Allen, Eastbound Train, The Letter Edged in Black, Two Little Babes, Little Bessie, Letter to Heaven and Little Son Hugh”. He goes on to talk about how Little Man Hugh was a storysong about gypsies or Jews coming to kidnap and kill a child. It becomes the myth of explaining the unfairness of God by scapegoating the other.
I think, that the dead child stories that are sung in traditional ballads, are used to explain death. Those fan videos of the child abuse pictures and stats, could be considered in the same tradition, except the mystery comes through with Dolly, the death becomes an example of the cruelty of everyday life. There is no thought that by singing the song, Dolly would prevent anything from happening. There is an idea in Alyssa dies so others don’t have to. She becomes this weird redemptive force, like how the suffering of Will in Gods Will provides a way to cohere and save a usual heterosexual family. I think this might be why I am moved, though I recognize the instinct of the Goblins, when listening to Dolly, and sometimes I find the death of children hysterical, I think the more hard-handed the approach, the more I find it more ripe for that postmodern youtube rib kicking.
A couple of side notes:
I wonder if the kitsch that surrounds the anti abortion movement in the states: the tiny fetuses, the lapel pins of baby feet, performances like Lil' Markie (the creepy kid singing the lines “why did you kill me mommy”, a perennial favourite of the hyper aware, hyper ironic WFMU), are a way of attaching that Victorian sentiment to a political energy. I also wonder if one of the reasons why we have fewer mothers and less children dying is the expediency and safety of abortion. I wonder if the recent spate of Children’s trauma songs is about that.
If you want to see a really good example of spaces and lacunae in song that is used to talk about grief, McGraw’s Red Rag Top is fairly close to the methodology used by Dolly.
I wonder if this personal as well. My mother lost several children, and cannot listen to songs or read books that deal with violence towards Children. I find my instinct to mock songs about Divorce, even at the glurgy height (i.e. Dottie Smiths “Mommy, Can I still Call him Daddy”) much lessened, most likely because I am a child of a single mother.
Yesterday, 2 am or so, and two friends of mine both artists, were gathered around the computer, watching kitsch videos on you tube. A perfect postmodern evening of fan created entertainment. Rosie and Elizabeth destroying each other, Martha Stewart consuming Lindsay Lohan like Grendel redone by Donna Karan, that Atlanta woman who likes to talk about her vagina, the bitch please queen, etc. I thought I was moving from camp atrocity to camp atrocity, so I moved in for the killer, one of two videos made for John Michael Cameron’s Alyssa Lies.
These videos, features images culled of childhood abuse, from crim. manuals, records of abuse, illustrations, just a general grasp and insert job made easier by google image search. Like God’s Will by Martina McBride or that Tim McGraw story about angels protecting orphaned children, I find Cameron’s song really funny. There is a magnificent and obvious heart pulling that is so lurid that it comes kitsch. The death of Alyssa, even the abuse of Alyssa does not remind me of how awful innocent children are, but of how much I don’t really like kids and how sentiment can be used to sell records. I am reminded of how people would gather on the docks of New York, begging for any news about Little Nell, and how still in England Wilde cut through Dickens moralizing with: “One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.” Like in the Victorian populist fiction that it sprung from, kids die with an alarming regularity in country music. I keep thinking about songs about he deaths of children in the last 20 years are continuing a tradition that lost its usefulness. Like those pretty blonde kids that show up dead every few months on the cover of the tabloids, that are written about with an almost religious devotion.
The thing is, in the Victorian era, kids actually died, often before infancy. They did so in certain regions where country music was popular well into the second half of the 20th century. We can make fun of musicians who wrote and performed about death with such goopy melodrama, or we can give them a pass, because the songs are sad. They move us. I keep thinking about Dolly, because she manages the severity of the dead kid genre with the slick production of pop. She manages to make her songs, well legitimately earnest. This should be reason for some kind of camp reclaiming, and there has been an attempt or two. Like the punk band the Goblins, whose EP Songs of Child Abuse and Mortality made Famous by Dolly Patron anthologizes and recasts the best of them, as examples of populist theater that should be mocked: "Down From Dover," "I Get Lonesome By Myself," "Bloody Bones," "Malana," "Jeannie's Afraid Of The Dark," "Me And Little Andy," "The Party," "Letter To Heaven.” Listening to the EP, I keep being reminded of the Sex Pistols remake of My Way. The sneer was a fuck you to the fat corpse of Frank Sinatra and his weepy self-reliance, but it were also a reclaiming, a punk colonizing of rotary lunches and martinis at 5.
The songs they covered were the most mawkish. They had child singsong choruses, ghosts, the uncanny, elements of folk legends, but also of the countrypolitian sound, of Nashville and television, it does something else. The Goblins do the most damage to Down From Dover, with its plain speaking; quotidian details and childe ballad narrative form were interrupted with hesitancies, quietness, lacunae and discussions of weather. Alyssa Lies has some similarities, but it is told in third instead of first, it names the child victim, and the details of the death are left unspoken. Dolly tells every detail of every death in those songs, she sings like she has had people die in front of her, and like she grew up with it. Reading Eric Wesibands essay on the song from Gruel Marcus’ book on balladry: …”a list of folk songs the siblings absorbed growing up…Barbry Allen, Eastbound Train, The Letter Edged in Black, Two Little Babes, Little Bessie, Letter to Heaven and Little Son Hugh”. He goes on to talk about how Little Man Hugh was a storysong about gypsies or Jews coming to kidnap and kill a child. It becomes the myth of explaining the unfairness of God by scapegoating the other.
I think, that the dead child stories that are sung in traditional ballads, are used to explain death. Those fan videos of the child abuse pictures and stats, could be considered in the same tradition, except the mystery comes through with Dolly, the death becomes an example of the cruelty of everyday life. There is no thought that by singing the song, Dolly would prevent anything from happening. There is an idea in Alyssa dies so others don’t have to. She becomes this weird redemptive force, like how the suffering of Will in Gods Will provides a way to cohere and save a usual heterosexual family. I think this might be why I am moved, though I recognize the instinct of the Goblins, when listening to Dolly, and sometimes I find the death of children hysterical, I think the more hard-handed the approach, the more I find it more ripe for that postmodern youtube rib kicking.
A couple of side notes:
I wonder if the kitsch that surrounds the anti abortion movement in the states: the tiny fetuses, the lapel pins of baby feet, performances like Lil' Markie (the creepy kid singing the lines “why did you kill me mommy”, a perennial favourite of the hyper aware, hyper ironic WFMU), are a way of attaching that Victorian sentiment to a political energy. I also wonder if one of the reasons why we have fewer mothers and less children dying is the expediency and safety of abortion. I wonder if the recent spate of Children’s trauma songs is about that.
If you want to see a really good example of spaces and lacunae in song that is used to talk about grief, McGraw’s Red Rag Top is fairly close to the methodology used by Dolly.
I wonder if this personal as well. My mother lost several children, and cannot listen to songs or read books that deal with violence towards Children. I find my instinct to mock songs about Divorce, even at the glurgy height (i.e. Dottie Smiths “Mommy, Can I still Call him Daddy”) much lessened, most likely because I am a child of a single mother.
Saturday, June 02, 2007
# john and i wrote out an agreement for the apartment, from may 1st to august 1st
# i am paying john
# we notified the land lord about this verbally, ca May 24th
# i have been paying rent to john, directly
# it is a two bedroom basement suite, the other room is empty, but the cheques are still being offered.
# my share of the rent is 465.
# i got a phone call at around 1:00 pm on June 2.
# the landlord informed me he had advertised the suite for rent, that my lease was not valid, that if i wanted to rent the place, i would have to find first and last by the 30th of June, that he was raising my rent to 500 dollars a month, that he did not need to inform of any of this in writing, and that people would be coming to see the apartment in the next three weeks, but not when and who will be here, and what my obligations to those people are.
# i am unsure of my status as a renter.
# i owe t he landlord 24 dollars for two months of improved cable, and yet to pay Junes Rent, but John and I have arranged a time for that payment to be made.
# the suite is in abysmal condition, with insects found, celling tiles absent, mould in the bathroom, problems with the bathtub cladding, windows leaking, smoke alarms not connected, and other problems.
# i am paying john
# we notified the land lord about this verbally, ca May 24th
# i have been paying rent to john, directly
# it is a two bedroom basement suite, the other room is empty, but the cheques are still being offered.
# my share of the rent is 465.
# i got a phone call at around 1:00 pm on June 2.
# the landlord informed me he had advertised the suite for rent, that my lease was not valid, that if i wanted to rent the place, i would have to find first and last by the 30th of June, that he was raising my rent to 500 dollars a month, that he did not need to inform of any of this in writing, and that people would be coming to see the apartment in the next three weeks, but not when and who will be here, and what my obligations to those people are.
# i am unsure of my status as a renter.
# i owe t he landlord 24 dollars for two months of improved cable, and yet to pay Junes Rent, but John and I have arranged a time for that payment to be made.
# the suite is in abysmal condition, with insects found, celling tiles absent, mould in the bathroom, problems with the bathtub cladding, windows leaking, smoke alarms not connected, and other problems.
Friday, June 01, 2007
Thursday, May 31, 2007
odd day, long meeting, awkard as hell, its the queer thnig, and i just feel like im fucking up, constantly, i just dont get the structure, etc
and then verge of nervous breakdown, got lost, et al, but saw a good 90 minutes of aarons show, which was excelent, then drinks and stuff with him and his pals.
i noticed this at the bbq last sunday, and then today with aaron, in that it was abutting the queer thing...i think one of the reasons why im xian or why i feel comfortable w xians, is that they are sue to or kindly benevolent towarsd other peoples fuck ups. they are good at handling the fuck ups. & im a fuck up
and then verge of nervous breakdown, got lost, et al, but saw a good 90 minutes of aarons show, which was excelent, then drinks and stuff with him and his pals.
i noticed this at the bbq last sunday, and then today with aaron, in that it was abutting the queer thing...i think one of the reasons why im xian or why i feel comfortable w xians, is that they are sue to or kindly benevolent towarsd other peoples fuck ups. they are good at handling the fuck ups. & im a fuck up
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
some news
1) show at remedy from aug 1st to sept 1st. will be colourfield, and maybe texture work.
2) no show at axis, my work is too small.
3) sent edmonton modernist show to milner, tiny thing, 10 images and 6 pages of paper, i dont know if it will work or not, the artist statement manages to be both polemic and dense, so im not optomistic.
1) show at remedy from aug 1st to sept 1st. will be colourfield, and maybe texture work.
2) no show at axis, my work is too small.
3) sent edmonton modernist show to milner, tiny thing, 10 images and 6 pages of paper, i dont know if it will work or not, the artist statement manages to be both polemic and dense, so im not optomistic.
from AS Byatts 2000 Heywood Lecture at the National Portrait Gallery, qouting Hermione Lee:
Virginia made Vita pose as a voluptous Lely for the photographer Lenare ("I was miserable, draped in an inadequate bit of pink satin with all my clothes slipping off, but V was delighthed and kept diving under the black cloth of the camera to peep at the effect")...Vita was made to sit inside a huge frame when they took endless photographs...
(19)
Byatt goes on to mention that one of the peices of research she did for Orlanda, was visit Vita Sackville West at the ancestral Sackville home, Knole in Kent, and saw the portrait hall. She then took photos of Sackville not only as a Lely, but as her realtivies, both male and female. Then Orlando amongst other things becomes a pyschic reclaiming of materlineal lines, and a historgraphy of family aesthetics...
This is a list of possible connections, from a woolf seminar at the U of Utah (?!?)
Page numbers are to the Harcourt Brace edition.
Orlando as a Boy ( frontispiece)- Hon. Edward Sackville (son of 4th earl)
The Russian Princess as a Child (54)—Angelica Bell (photo by Vanessa Bell)
The Archduchess Harriet (114)—Mary, 4th countess of Sackville (Tudor period)
Orlando as Ambassador (126)— ???
Orlando on her return to England (158)-- Vita Sackville-West (photo taken for the novel by the photographer Lenare, meant to resemble Lely paintings)
Orlando about the year 1840 (246) Vita Sackville-West (photo taken for the novel, by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant)
Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmerdine, Esquire (262)—painting of an unidentified man (~1820) bought by Vita and now hanging at Sissinghurst
Orlando at the present time (318)—Vita Sackville-West (snapshop taken by Leonard Woolf at Vita’s home near Knole, Long Barn)
Virginia made Vita pose as a voluptous Lely for the photographer Lenare ("I was miserable, draped in an inadequate bit of pink satin with all my clothes slipping off, but V was delighthed and kept diving under the black cloth of the camera to peep at the effect")...Vita was made to sit inside a huge frame when they took endless photographs...
(19)
Byatt goes on to mention that one of the peices of research she did for Orlanda, was visit Vita Sackville West at the ancestral Sackville home, Knole in Kent, and saw the portrait hall. She then took photos of Sackville not only as a Lely, but as her realtivies, both male and female. Then Orlando amongst other things becomes a pyschic reclaiming of materlineal lines, and a historgraphy of family aesthetics...
This is a list of possible connections, from a woolf seminar at the U of Utah (?!?)
Page numbers are to the Harcourt Brace edition.
Orlando as a Boy ( frontispiece)- Hon. Edward Sackville (son of 4th earl)
The Russian Princess as a Child (54)—Angelica Bell (photo by Vanessa Bell)
The Archduchess Harriet (114)—Mary, 4th countess of Sackville (Tudor period)
Orlando as Ambassador (126)— ???
Orlando on her return to England (158)-- Vita Sackville-West (photo taken for the novel by the photographer Lenare, meant to resemble Lely paintings)
Orlando about the year 1840 (246) Vita Sackville-West (photo taken for the novel, by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant)
Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmerdine, Esquire (262)—painting of an unidentified man (~1820) bought by Vita and now hanging at Sissinghurst
Orlando at the present time (318)—Vita Sackville-West (snapshop taken by Leonard Woolf at Vita’s home near Knole, Long Barn)
speaking of localizing and the new topographers mark brautigam's work on wisconsin is isolated, rural, witty, brilliantly composed, deep, and has a kind of severity that is often lacking in similar work. he is a master of colour, but not the geewhizflashbang colour one expects , dark woods, bright snow, grey skies, he also manages to pack an enormous amount of visual information into relativley small peices, w/o making the work seem crowded or chaotic. hes really really good.
leslie arwins poetic and accurate drawings of anatomy, on t shirts.
this sextoy is called the pussy foot, it looks like a wesselman remake of a medeival saints relic. i saved you the one where a dildo penterates it.
reading mike davis on los angeles is like reading a father in sorrow over the missed opputurnities of his children, he esp. spens much time talking about the cooruption and incompetence that leads to the complete lack of a public transport system. here is a conceptual map of a perfect LA subway, if they had the balls to do it.
Parker Posey as a Nun.
footage of blondie and lilly allen singing heart of glass on the today show.
a blog of screws
everytime i read about the 75 yr old cohen, im a little charmed, a little seduced, and hapy that hes happy.
chavez shut down a tv station which disagreed w. him, what is left unwritten about esp in the states, is that this station has ben working (or had been working) on supporting a violent coup against chavez, the link says the coup has been recent, the problem with the whole thing, is that chavez is deeply paranoid, and the states have a tendency towards givnig money to far right orgs that do this sort of thing...i dont think that we will eevr get a full story on venezula
matthew ygelsiss writing for the atlantic, blogs a couple of positive ppghs about Richardsons eco and transportation policies.
this 1962 article about copyright, music, and public performance as related to jukeboxes, comes v. close to making the same arguements as hymn makers did in the 19th century, and digital pirates make now.
mary weiss our lady of the shangri las, has a myspace page, she and her music sound much better then some of the other garage rock dinasours.
Wallace Shawn playing a priest, in a frighening and manic rant against lust, in a movie i have never heard of (the performance is masterful though)
flickr set of the new 7m creationist musuem in kansas. the national center for science educators says what you expect them to say about the new musuem.(800 scientists in the three surrounding states have signed a petetion against the musuem, it might have worked better if they got 800 theologians, but most liekly not)
radical new economics i cannot make heads or tails of it, someone help?
pride parade in moscow and more foreign activists and journalists attacked.
speaking of queer in unqueer spaces, isreal has put together a new campign for gay travellers, the orthodox rabbis arent happy about it, here are two images:
Bobby Gentry Sings Fancy, on television, wearing a bright and skin tight red catsuit.
bill moyers interviews gary winnogrand, from 1982, just before he died (and a point in his life where gwynne dryer writes, he took too many images, shoot too much, dqyers book ends with teh digial era, doesnt write about the impliactions of a basically never ending supply of images, and what it means to craft narative, to edit, crop, cut, etc , when teh physical act of making prints disappears, winnogrand made about 2500 photos in the last year(s) of his life, and i make that in about 7 months, i took 265 yesterday) (the interview made me kep wondering, when he talks about the kind of artless framing, and subject oriented movement, and the taxonomizing he does in an esatz kind of way, makes me think that he would have been one of the few people who could have made the transition b/w film and digital w/o any problem) (like baltz, shore, they didnt know how to just shoot, so they had their two books each, and then fell apart, got to teaching, imparted the aesthetic, and teh vision to a new era of students, that aesthetic became localised and intensfied, also, i wonder, considering how eggleston both shoots and prints, why he hasnt moved to digital formatting yet?
orhan parmuk is doing a graphic novel.
This viral by Hilary is awkard, faux populist, and realy doesnt understand whats happening here.
Calum Best, has an orgy, does coke.
this sextoy is called the pussy foot, it looks like a wesselman remake of a medeival saints relic. i saved you the one where a dildo penterates it.
reading mike davis on los angeles is like reading a father in sorrow over the missed opputurnities of his children, he esp. spens much time talking about the cooruption and incompetence that leads to the complete lack of a public transport system. here is a conceptual map of a perfect LA subway, if they had the balls to do it.
Parker Posey as a Nun.
footage of blondie and lilly allen singing heart of glass on the today show.
a blog of screws
everytime i read about the 75 yr old cohen, im a little charmed, a little seduced, and hapy that hes happy.
chavez shut down a tv station which disagreed w. him, what is left unwritten about esp in the states, is that this station has ben working (or had been working) on supporting a violent coup against chavez, the link says the coup has been recent, the problem with the whole thing, is that chavez is deeply paranoid, and the states have a tendency towards givnig money to far right orgs that do this sort of thing...i dont think that we will eevr get a full story on venezula
matthew ygelsiss writing for the atlantic, blogs a couple of positive ppghs about Richardsons eco and transportation policies.
this 1962 article about copyright, music, and public performance as related to jukeboxes, comes v. close to making the same arguements as hymn makers did in the 19th century, and digital pirates make now.
mary weiss our lady of the shangri las, has a myspace page, she and her music sound much better then some of the other garage rock dinasours.
Wallace Shawn playing a priest, in a frighening and manic rant against lust, in a movie i have never heard of (the performance is masterful though)
flickr set of the new 7m creationist musuem in kansas. the national center for science educators says what you expect them to say about the new musuem.(800 scientists in the three surrounding states have signed a petetion against the musuem, it might have worked better if they got 800 theologians, but most liekly not)
radical new economics i cannot make heads or tails of it, someone help?
pride parade in moscow and more foreign activists and journalists attacked.
speaking of queer in unqueer spaces, isreal has put together a new campign for gay travellers, the orthodox rabbis arent happy about it, here are two images:
Bobby Gentry Sings Fancy, on television, wearing a bright and skin tight red catsuit.
bill moyers interviews gary winnogrand, from 1982, just before he died (and a point in his life where gwynne dryer writes, he took too many images, shoot too much, dqyers book ends with teh digial era, doesnt write about the impliactions of a basically never ending supply of images, and what it means to craft narative, to edit, crop, cut, etc , when teh physical act of making prints disappears, winnogrand made about 2500 photos in the last year(s) of his life, and i make that in about 7 months, i took 265 yesterday) (the interview made me kep wondering, when he talks about the kind of artless framing, and subject oriented movement, and the taxonomizing he does in an esatz kind of way, makes me think that he would have been one of the few people who could have made the transition b/w film and digital w/o any problem) (like baltz, shore, they didnt know how to just shoot, so they had their two books each, and then fell apart, got to teaching, imparted the aesthetic, and teh vision to a new era of students, that aesthetic became localised and intensfied, also, i wonder, considering how eggleston both shoots and prints, why he hasnt moved to digital formatting yet?
orhan parmuk is doing a graphic novel.
This viral by Hilary is awkard, faux populist, and realy doesnt understand whats happening here.
Calum Best, has an orgy, does coke.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Saturday, May 26, 2007
victoria renard is one of those newish pin up photogs, who work the line b/w the erotic and grotesque.
500 Years of Female Portariture
these 9 photos of statsi buildings by the fuchs look awfully like lynn cohen.
9 Minute Trailer of the late Welles film F is For Fake
via Jess Nevins
a bar that lites up yr tits like the vegas strip.
fascianting discussion of how mental illness and resillance is related to issues of narrative construction and self identity.
some days i wonder why jodie marsh bothers w. clothes.
more arab linguists fired under dont ask dont tell.
some controversy about this, but i am excited about the make up which seems more grotesque and pyschotic then previous examples, esp nicholson, and has an immediate visual impact, plus its heath ledger, who has a pyschality that is fun to watch.
la times article that follows the money spent by congo dandies, answering questions like how do they afford dolce and gabbana on 30 cents a day.
unicef report on children in iraq.
post secret founder starts a new post card project, on a v. slow timeline (6 months), the best thing i think about post secret, is how it reworks tangible paper in a digital age, this project about the speed of information virals, attaches to that.
Frank Cho illustration for the Marvel Comic the Brood, pat will explain ti better then me.
fantastic wired story and images about high scenerio, computer game inspired, meatspace occuring paintball
hundreds of punk zines in pdf format.
catholic priests in england use manga for discernment
Bishop Minns, who was given his postion by Akinola, and is part of the schismatic american churches in africa, was not invited to Lambreth this year, here is his statement which seems fairly quiet
Gene Robinson, the Gay Espicopal Bishop from New Hampshire was also not invited he seems angerier i find it interesting that the most radical and the most reactionary american bishops were not allowed into the discourse, Williams seems wanting to clip the edges of the Anglican body.
private residence, 2006, Lichenstien, not sure of the architecht
Ryszard Kapuscinski, the Polish travel writer, may have been a an angent for ths secret police, trading information for access.
an issue of anthestia and anegelisa, that mostly deals with he implicatiosn of blood and jehovash witnesses
cory doctorow in praise of fanfic
via progressive ruin
500 Years of Female Portariture
these 9 photos of statsi buildings by the fuchs look awfully like lynn cohen.
9 Minute Trailer of the late Welles film F is For Fake
via Jess Nevins
a bar that lites up yr tits like the vegas strip.
fascianting discussion of how mental illness and resillance is related to issues of narrative construction and self identity.
some days i wonder why jodie marsh bothers w. clothes.
more arab linguists fired under dont ask dont tell.
some controversy about this, but i am excited about the make up which seems more grotesque and pyschotic then previous examples, esp nicholson, and has an immediate visual impact, plus its heath ledger, who has a pyschality that is fun to watch.
la times article that follows the money spent by congo dandies, answering questions like how do they afford dolce and gabbana on 30 cents a day.
unicef report on children in iraq.
post secret founder starts a new post card project, on a v. slow timeline (6 months), the best thing i think about post secret, is how it reworks tangible paper in a digital age, this project about the speed of information virals, attaches to that.
Frank Cho illustration for the Marvel Comic the Brood, pat will explain ti better then me.
fantastic wired story and images about high scenerio, computer game inspired, meatspace occuring paintball
hundreds of punk zines in pdf format.
catholic priests in england use manga for discernment
Bishop Minns, who was given his postion by Akinola, and is part of the schismatic american churches in africa, was not invited to Lambreth this year, here is his statement which seems fairly quiet
Gene Robinson, the Gay Espicopal Bishop from New Hampshire was also not invited he seems angerier i find it interesting that the most radical and the most reactionary american bishops were not allowed into the discourse, Williams seems wanting to clip the edges of the Anglican body.
private residence, 2006, Lichenstien, not sure of the architecht
Ryszard Kapuscinski, the Polish travel writer, may have been a an angent for ths secret police, trading information for access.
an issue of anthestia and anegelisa, that mostly deals with he implicatiosn of blood and jehovash witnesses
cory doctorow in praise of fanfic
via progressive ruin
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
thinking about geoffs talking about eakins about a month ago, and lucie smiths discussion of bellows/eakins in american realism, i had a couple of thots
1) the connections b/w eakins and the photo/painting split are v. well documented, eakins photos were formally, almost classically infulenced, not cold, but v. much about the poses of greece and rome, you could see in them the plaster casts and statues that were part of the academy, no matter how intimate the work was, there were boxers and apollos, discus throwers, adn atheletes not of america, but of the ancient world. he claims whitman, but when whitman wrote:
Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore,
Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly;
Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome.
She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank,
She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window.
Which of the young men does she like the best?
Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.
Where are you off to, lady? for I see you,
You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.
Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth
bather,
The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.
The beards of the young men glisten'd with wet, it ran from their
long hair,
Little streams pass'd all over their bodies.
An unseen hand also pass'd over their bodies,
It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.
The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the
sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them,
They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending
arch,
They do not think whom they souse with spray.
Song of MY Self 11
(and of course, there are only 6 men here, and the 6 men are nude, not stripped, polite, and the women is absent, the voyuer is gone, the intimacy of the details of the male form is gone, and yet, the tenderness in which the landscape is intergrated with the boys, makes it a v. explicitly homoerotic, queer, boyloving text...he returns all of the contexts to the greek model, which might have been the scandal in phildelphia)
i always thot that the bellows 42 kids was a pardoy of eakins (well it is a parody of eakins, but i was wondering why the hell he did it), and i think i figured it out, lucie called it a snap shot, and the stripping, the half dressed, the chaotic mess of bodies, and the brackish water, suggesting urban runoff, well its a snapshot versus a formed portrait, a brownie vs a albumen...so the parody is one of eakins classical arcadia, and also his use of photography (ie new techonlogy) to remake the bodies of greece, to classicise and formalise something radically new.
bellows then is a post industrial, almsot marxist critque of eakins wealth and privelege?
(i know that bellows was a print maker, did he take photogs?)
(smith calls it an informal paraphrase, and i do notice that one of them has too little of whitmans 28 men and one has too many)
the three images im talkign about:
George Bellows, 42 Kids, 1907, oils
Eakins, The Swimming Hole, 1884, Albumen print
Eakins, Photo Study, Albumen Print, date unkown
Eakins, The Swimming Hole, ca 1884
now for some real fun,
if eakins is daugertype, and bellows is brownie, is mcginley digi?
Ryan McGinley, Untitled (Bathtub), 2005
1) the connections b/w eakins and the photo/painting split are v. well documented, eakins photos were formally, almost classically infulenced, not cold, but v. much about the poses of greece and rome, you could see in them the plaster casts and statues that were part of the academy, no matter how intimate the work was, there were boxers and apollos, discus throwers, adn atheletes not of america, but of the ancient world. he claims whitman, but when whitman wrote:
Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore,
Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly;
Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome.
She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank,
She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window.
Which of the young men does she like the best?
Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.
Where are you off to, lady? for I see you,
You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.
Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth
bather,
The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.
The beards of the young men glisten'd with wet, it ran from their
long hair,
Little streams pass'd all over their bodies.
An unseen hand also pass'd over their bodies,
It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.
The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the
sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them,
They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending
arch,
They do not think whom they souse with spray.
Song of MY Self 11
(and of course, there are only 6 men here, and the 6 men are nude, not stripped, polite, and the women is absent, the voyuer is gone, the intimacy of the details of the male form is gone, and yet, the tenderness in which the landscape is intergrated with the boys, makes it a v. explicitly homoerotic, queer, boyloving text...he returns all of the contexts to the greek model, which might have been the scandal in phildelphia)
i always thot that the bellows 42 kids was a pardoy of eakins (well it is a parody of eakins, but i was wondering why the hell he did it), and i think i figured it out, lucie called it a snap shot, and the stripping, the half dressed, the chaotic mess of bodies, and the brackish water, suggesting urban runoff, well its a snapshot versus a formed portrait, a brownie vs a albumen...so the parody is one of eakins classical arcadia, and also his use of photography (ie new techonlogy) to remake the bodies of greece, to classicise and formalise something radically new.
bellows then is a post industrial, almsot marxist critque of eakins wealth and privelege?
(i know that bellows was a print maker, did he take photogs?)
(smith calls it an informal paraphrase, and i do notice that one of them has too little of whitmans 28 men and one has too many)
the three images im talkign about:
George Bellows, 42 Kids, 1907, oils
Eakins, The Swimming Hole, 1884, Albumen print
Eakins, Photo Study, Albumen Print, date unkown
Eakins, The Swimming Hole, ca 1884
now for some real fun,
if eakins is daugertype, and bellows is brownie, is mcginley digi?
Ryan McGinley, Untitled (Bathtub), 2005
two triggers today, both related to sjsa (though diet and sleep may be factors, these seem cleary about oldtimes)
1) saw a copy of northern bush craft, a book shepred gave me, as a gift to understand the other boys, at the local bookstore. i lost my copy. i didnt want to buy this one.
2) sjsa is buying huge bus ads on at least two major bus routes, both that went by my house.
the thing is i had the usual stomach dropped out, almost puked, almost cried, seized on the bus thing, but i didnt go home, im typing this on the computer before the queer fest board meeting. so i think thats progress (i wonder if one of the things that hospital did, was straighten the signifers, made the chaos of the triggers more clear and more linear in their narrative flow, and if that is the case, then maybe thats the first step to getting it out of the way)
1) saw a copy of northern bush craft, a book shepred gave me, as a gift to understand the other boys, at the local bookstore. i lost my copy. i didnt want to buy this one.
2) sjsa is buying huge bus ads on at least two major bus routes, both that went by my house.
the thing is i had the usual stomach dropped out, almost puked, almost cried, seized on the bus thing, but i didnt go home, im typing this on the computer before the queer fest board meeting. so i think thats progress (i wonder if one of the things that hospital did, was straighten the signifers, made the chaos of the triggers more clear and more linear in their narrative flow, and if that is the case, then maybe thats the first step to getting it out of the way)
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Monday, May 21, 2007
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