some great webs of information regarding realtionships b/w people in the Hebrew and Xian Scripture, and some notes on why these graphics are problematic




Ice Climbing on Grain Silos, in Grand Rapids

Iraqis are shooting american helicopters out of the skys



some amazing hard geometrical abstractions by mary henry.
Language Barrier, 2003, Arcylic on Canvas

i really like these drawings of schematic diagrams interupted by chaotic inkblots (any attempt to plan in ink, will be broken by the instability of the pen, metaphorically)

two
reviews of Smokin' Aces, one of which (the first one, AO Scott for the NYT) totally doesnt understand pulp, b movies, excess, or genre work. The other one, Gleiberman, for EW, writes a brilliant hardboilded review that gives as good as it gets. (I am reminded of Domino, a brilliant peice fo pop trash, weird and goregous, and fractured, and well acted sort of kind of, which was one of the few things that overpowered me in the cinema, even though its not v. good)

A Great CDC epidemologist arrested for liking sexy washroom sex.


What, i am sure, will be the iconic photo of this election season. (ny times)

handpaitned folk graveyards in Romania, many illustrating the method of death (Danica cars an Booze seem high on the list)

bill richardson is rumoured to sexually harass women

Flag of the duke of cornwall.

I havent done the work yet, but A Course in Miracles was incredibly popular among gay men dying of AIDS in the 80s. This is a kind of crazy Sateillte(sp) Broadcast of it, undated.

"So Functional for its Purposes: Rock Hudson’s Bachelor Apartment in Pillow Talk." STUD: Architectures of Masculinity. Joel Sanders, ed. Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996. 28-41.

nashville scene poll, i got one comment in, out of about 12

Detail of Concerte Bench

Detail of Concerte Bench
Originally uploaded by PinkMoose.

Click To Go BIG

Goodbye at Pearson

Goodbye at Pearson
Originally uploaded by PinkMoose.

Louise Lawler, The Princess, Now the Queen, 2005

(its a warhol, so is she talking about the sitter, the artist, who died to make the sitter queen, who died to make the artist queen, where is LL poistioning herself in this fight of succession--and then of course the big black sqaure, both reminsecent of the black boxes that cover tits and ass on television, and the history of black and black modernism that killed painting before warhol, et al resrecuted it (sp)--ie from malevich to reinhardt (show in germany this month:black on black painting, hung with black walls) (peice lawler put together in the 80s, white on white)


Freud’s Shirt, 2001
(the mirroring, the art and decor shattering, and the ugly white veneitan blinds in the corner)

i am trying to work something out here, so the arguement will be fractured, warning!

the lawler below is titled CS #204, 1990, which is about her pattern for titles, a bit more oblique than most, but w/i the general project (titles include:

1. not there
   
2. not lizard
3. not there
4. sentimental
   
5. One Big One in an Edition of Five (Hirst in a Closet)
6. not yet titled (kusmar and muja)
7. two heads
8. white gloves
   
9. In and Out of Place (photos of warhol, in situ, at the dia, photos taken b/w 2000 and 2004)
   (all b/w 2003 and 2004)

Lawler works from 90-93 were titled:

1. Untitled (a number of works, including a 23 print silver geltain portfolio)
   
2. Is She Ours
3. Whiteness (Pier Manzoni and Other Works)
4. Photograph of Mirror
5. Every Other Picture

(i am exculding expressly political works, like b/w bush and reagon or the helms peice, but thats because i want to talk about her fotos)

i think lawler keeps coming to me for the same reasons that ruscha, warhol, koons, lynn cohen, wall, etc in that i cannot tell if they are a geniune critique of late american capitalism, or if they are seductive/reductive houseporn. (or to put it another way, the game they are playing is so complex that irony/sincerity/art/kitsch/hi/lo are no longer being argued about...)

looking at the sherman here, with its lighting, its enphasis, its oblique focus, the lacunae is too strong to ignore, sherman hides herself, and then photographs the after effects of that hiding, and then lawler comes along and photographs a censored, restricted view of the hiding, which was already hid...lawler had her first big show in 82, Levine had hers in 81, at the same gallery, and Sherman finished Untitled Film Stills in the late 70s, 78/79...so 4 years, and the entire genre of appritaonal art is invented (also at that gallery Richard Prince)

comparing her to levine is the art historically correct thing to do, as is comparing her to sherman...i dont like straight copies though, and ive always been kind of confused about the purpose, subtext of levines work---her project is too clear to be either sustainable or deep (though one does not have to be sustainable or deep to make tens of millions of dollars, as the continued work of john currin proves over and over again

(oddly enough the same way i feel about sherman, she had one idea, that sustained one great project (the untitled film stills, started at 23, they are a v. post adolsecent 1/4 life crisis thing, who am i, how do i negoiate a place for myself in the world, what happens with all these ideas and stuff and chaos, how do i organize a respectable library for these ideas and possiblities that are overwhelming me---and also how do i be glamourous, femmine, fuckable, and mantain my femminsit credentials, (ie whitney houston:

Im every woman
Its all in me
Anything you want done baby
I do it naturally

But Sherman is:

Im every woman
Its all in me
Anything you want done baby
I do it artifically

and then things get more and more grotesque, and less interesting, i am reminded of the Miesel photos of Palm Beach Matrons in Versace, bought and sold by Versace, that savagely mocked upper class taste, having donatella pay to have steve fuck her shit up is a much more difficult game of grabass then dressing up like those matrons for pure mockery, also sherman does clowns these days, and what more can be left said about clowns, yes they are creepy, yes they have a pyschosexual baggage, move on (i think the culture moved faster, and got richer than sherman was capable of, and she chose a career path, and a corpus of work that required incredile speed)

(that speed up slow down thing is really interesting in figuring out who to pull from the wreckage, i mean if you wanted dustbowl kitsch in an urban ny sense, in the time levine was working, you went to lange or evans cause thats all they had (why didnt she chose lange, can we talk about the femminsit credentials in that choice, did she chose evans over lange--was it a patriachy thing, or was it that evans had a better rep, was still making work late into the 70s? (making work that looked like other work being made in the 70s, making instant and disposable and all american work, and was then more accessible then lange, or was it a fuck the patriachy thing? (thinking of the recent discovery/dusting off of mike defarmer, who chose his own last name, and only took fotos for a few years, and ended up being thorougly crazy, his pictures have handsome men in khakis and white button ups, and well we can all gap that outfit so the aesthetic is the same)

i havent gotten to lawler yet, and i still wanted to talk a bit about prince (prince is the other one in that list, and his work has gotten stranger, less engaged, more misogynst, and uglier, but that misogyny seems to be attached to a culture that objectifies and hates women, and his two books women/men, are documents of the sexual under/above ground, where one goes up the stairs and one goes down the stairs, plus his work upstate is really awful, but its such a great corrective to the retreats to newengland to think about meaningful things, i like that someone is capable of making self obsessed, neurotic, mastuborty bricalouge while attempting to get back to teh land (ryan mcginleys naked but not nude, cavorting but not fucking pictures of gaggles of indie hip nudes is what hes correcting)

levine is then discounted, sherman isnt making work that is realevent, and prince has made millions on the truly weird

lawler seems the odd woman out--she doesnt really pay attention to her own identity, it is subsumed by taking photos of other peoples work, and has been off and on for 20 years, the lighting is better, the art work has changed, things have become less crowded and more minimal sometimes empty (literally, she has taken photos of empty galleries, with tags or hanging apartous still on, which amuses me) and i am not sure she is making fun of the system, if she ever was...

the work fits too well into a musuems conception of its self as a pure white temple to apollo, who can be bought off with money and taste (the jenny holzer marble benches are a way of reusing and deconstructing the material with a high camp awareness, somethnig that i think that lawler is incapable of, which i find really strange, because she kind of grew up with camp, and she has a strong, attachment to warhol)

what i think she is doing, is talking about where the money goes, not in a direct sense, not in a marc lombardi graph sense, but in a v. quiet, v. respectful, a owns b's work, or musuem a spent x for artist y---but even this is changing, she seems to be more and more concerned (she started a career in analysing hanging, and i dont think that those questions, questions of tradition and presentation are brought up enough in approaching esp foto shows) with remixing the documentary history of photographry, pointing out access points, security, what it means in terms of taste, capital, irony, tradition, history, et al to place object a in relation to object b (the famous 1984 foto of a soup tureen and a pollock is the start of this, but that photo is crowded, the colours are off, and its snap shotty, she has figured out that everyone wants to take flash fotos, to go into the stacks, and she is allowed.

the other thing, is that she never (or almost never) takes a photo of something straight on, or something unwrapped (the mirror peice i listed in the 1990 section is the only one i can think of) i think by showing things wrapped, the back of things, the mechinchal codes that are used to talk about work (not cindy sherman, or the history of women in art, or apporation or femmisnt re/deconstruiction but CS 294), are attached together, and sometimes hidden. there are times, like the photos she did of some judd sculptures at christies, that mean this is just another way of making pretty pictures to sell work, but sometimes this glossy backstage pass schtick can get geniunely fucked up--like the shot she took of the grennwhich ct townhouse w. a v. expensive flavin in the front room---it was well camoflauged, placed beside another flourscent tube, well light, and impossible, the aura of the work corrupted the aura of flavin...maybe thats what im saying, i think lawler is one (the only) one to take this aura thing seriously working in foto today, that she is genuinely concerned with not how things look but how we process how things look (i mean that genuinely not process in a colelctive hippie 70s sense, but in a move a to b with ones hands)

i link dump, therefore i am

the anglican fight b/w primates has entered the wonderful world of secular real estate law, fascianting article about the whole mess. more information about the virgina case, including historical precedent, and legal citatians. much of the issue seem to surround something new to me (well it isnt really, its the base of my politics, but i didnt know it had a name for it), but present in most heriachal churches, called the principal of subsidarity. the principal states that states taht most matters should be handled by the smallest entity possible. The anarchists at the Acton insitute of religion have a really great article on it here on the catholic implications of the principal but im assuming that the anglicans have similar issues


IWW Graphic from the late 19th century

angelina jolie ignores ryan seacrest, ryan seacrest upset (one of the things i really like about jolie is her refusal to engage in the celebrity contract)


Louise Lawler, Cindy Sherman
(i wonder about this photo, if it is intended to be this discoloured/faded, if that is a concenious desecion or if its being sold damaged, or if its my computer screen?)

a variety of photos of the coration water polo team


The Austro-Hungarian Empires coat of arms (im sort of obsessed w. this)

serbia is hoping to join the EU, and though did not choose a majority party, elected candiaties who overwhemingly shared this belief.

ask bob bob being bob evans, a video dirary of what is now expected and kid of boring nostaltgic degenracy

a group of canadian and british antarctic advenrtures, go to a remote part of the contient, assuming that it would be empty, and find a giant statue of lenin placed there by a soviet ice ship crew in teh early 50s

michael wolff has a seires of photos of rooms that are 10x10 feet.

this calendar of glbt saints gave me hope at 17, and disappoints me at 26. (bad scholarship)


Jordan Shilling for Fox Bingoa judge in philly points out disrupting parades is not free speech (i am not sure if i ag ree with this, i mean it should be, the street should be a free exchange of discourse and ideas, some by whispering, some by yelling, and some by obsecene gestures)

germans vote on the 100 best fonts of all times, make excellent choices


There is a new big bio of ginsberg out, b/w that and the 50th anniversary of the howl obsecenity trials, we are getting alot of thing peices and that sort of thing. Here he is speaking in london during the early 60s, which makes an arguement for the three ideas that are becoming recieved wisdom about our friend allen:
1) he was better as a performer than a writer
2) he was better as an agent provecteour/activist/gladfly than a poet
3) he was a bit of an asshole
i wonder if the 40 years of wandering around talking but not talking, enjoying being famous and the like ruined his poetic sense, and also made us forget of the five or so masterpeices that he produced (howl, kaddish, a supermarket in california, america, wichita vortex sutra)

marimekko's new spring line is fucking gorgeous

lego minifigs rework 20th century's most famous photos

you know i think god hates self righteous assholes more than goths (link goes to truly hilarous godhatesgoths.com

fratboys are racist assholes, sun rises in the east

the new las vegas police sight, makes me wonder if they have read sin city. (if they had its much more frightening and disgusting, then if they just thot it was pretty)

gorgeous hand appliqued western accents

a great takedown of neal pollocks alternadad

"Blow The City" is collecting balloons all over the world that are designed by artists. On one night in the end of February, the orgasnizers are going to blow them all up and hang them in different locations around Ghent in Belgium. We think the effect it could have could be amazing.

Send your balloons (and a bit about yourself and where you are from) to:

blow the city
kammerstraat 19
9000 GENT
BELGIUM

i have no comment


Casual Rascism on British Reality Shows, Part 1


Casual Rascim on British Reality Shows, Part 2.

the suse of lighting and colour, in these images of BDSM/Sex Clubs in new york and paris, add to the decadence, and the sort of mythological weight i think the photographer is trying for, it looks liek one is wandering thru the dark, looking for the comforts of flesh...(i remember patient zero, being shot in a bath house and thinking to myself, bath houses arent that well lit at all) (or reading catherine m and beleiving her, because she wrote about how blurry, dark, and difficult to seee her expereinces are) (also think of gueer sm clubs being called things like the tombs or the catacombs)

dave thomson on brad pitt


Jane Russell in Outlaw (apparently she has found jesus, i hope she doesnt reject work like this)


There is something in this story, about rural responsiblity, the preservation of lost culture, the agrian need for community strength, and hard work--cockles warmed


GLenn Gould playing Webern. (how he played bach, was much closer to the twelve tone serailists, and how he played the twelve tone serialists was so close to bach)


A Moose gets airlifted from utah to colarado, with fantastic pictures)

excellent thread of iraq war pictures, from scott seward

fosdick against fundamentalist xianity--written in 1922, nessc. reading 85 years later.

its good that bishops who worked for stool pigeons in eastern europe, i wonder what will happen if china ever democratizes, with the two catholic churches there?

the gates foundation invests its charitable funds in companies that cqause more misery for the people they are trying to help--the la times should a win a pultizer for following the money.

The Lords Gym in Clermont Fla. (YMCA was founded on this sort of shit)

one of Dan WinterS Camera Obscura peices. The ebst ones are the v. modern subjects in 19th Century code for the usual reasons (ie the shoes over the telephone lines, but also the diagonals in the circle work well) rest here

anyone who thinks that the ECLA is the great progressive hope, should look at the case of Rev Bradley Schemling

Alexander Mcqueen makes me want to be Thin and Rich:




several four h workers, between the ages of 9-19, from Denver, apparently have done weird things to sheep, in order to win their contests.

also a cumbaria lakes sheep ring tone

why hilary can win (both hilary and obama ended up in US this week, but Obama wins, becuase he got a shirtless w. child, sexy dad shot, in the fornt section of paparazzi shots.

adn george richardson has a world record for shaking hands (it says soemthing that he cares enough abuot this stat, that he hired someone with a clickr to follow him, and record it)

things to follow up from toronto

1) doug liss/mocca for deer show
2) deer show peices from magic pony, edward o day, and stephen bulger
3) write about supermarket peicee
4) claudia, banff, money
5) nscad stuff
6) stuff with andrew harwood
7) talk to the architechtual bookstore about detail show
8) chris at beguiling about queer responses to batman
9) find gay comix no. 8
10) ann dean for amg saints thing

things to do next week in edmonton
1) hulberts
2) big bottle of gin for ashley
3) edit and send iraq
4) collate, and research batman

some projects on excorcism

find those missionary cards, draw the amg guides on them
buy some saints cards, draw the amg guides on them
do a video peice where you take yr clothes off while reading esp for youth
dub someone reading kimball and benedict on homosexuality over hygenine videos or porn
cut a christ in america print, and a last supper print, into twelve peices each, assemble together
take photos of refinery row, or something similar, print text of little factory sermon over it.
put tithing slips into offering envelopes, place on table at front
photos from general conference and televised easter/xmas mass

others?

lots to tell about to:

10) andrew harwood wants to show some fotos
11) dinner at lolita's lust: david, d, dimitri, rachel, laura, colleen, ray, pat. had a really nice australian pinot grigio, that was really cidery, then foie gras with carmelised pears, a champagane and chambord cocktail, mahi mahi, taylor haywood 17 year old port, lemon tarts. excellent. fuck up wiht tommy krow
12) most of the queen west art crawl was kind of useless, but got work that might function for the deer show at magic pony, edward o day, and stepehen bulger, meaning to write a bit more about what i saw at bulger, big opening at paul petro on friday.
13) got batman research done and promptly lost it, why i need to transcribe notes at all times and all places, will re do again on friday morning.
14) steve reinke showing, anthology of american folk music, my rectum is not a grave, a peice on sontag, and a few others, a little over an hour, most of it i didnt get, and was bored, but maybe 10 minutes of treanscendece, a little segment where his elementray school was next to a graveyard, a peice in an elevator, featuring handsome men and the grave, an anthology of porno postcards, some fantastic abstract animation, but mostly outside my ken, i dont really have thew grammar of film immediately at my hand, hung out with eric, awkard and quiet
15) making art with rachel tomorrow
16) both andrew harwood and ann dean thot mocca was a perfect place for the deer show, and so i will call them when i get home.
17) did a dissemnneation peice with polaroids, around yonge/eglington and glencairn, one of the photos at glencairn was on the floor the day after i did the performance, and ray picked it up, took one look at it, said, yep thats anthony...couldnt afford to do the koons/dekoonsing double poster print ive been thinking of, will cost me about 100 bucks.
18) want a 9 volume xian living set in thick black leather for 27 bucks, cant ship it home.

17 things about toronto

1) met with colleen in the forrest hill region, one of the things i miss most about TO, is the architechtual diversity, the density of visual signifers, in this neighbourhood, we went thru 150 years of buildings, w/i a block (ie gothic revival, art noveou(sp), deco, classic boxed modernism small scale, classic boxed modernism tower scale, postmodern qouation, etc etc)
2) favourite buildings there, several brick townhouses, cubist in their use of small to large rectangles, a cement and glass box of a cibc, some amazing dual tone mid 50s highrises, in creams, blondes, and turqoises, and grace church on the hill, from 1867, a perfect example of gothic revival, thick oak beams, hand carved statues, wonderful stained glass, but a couple of things that made it stand out, it had some contemparary work, including a first nation tapestry, and a peice called by her own radiant light, based on a work by milton, created by Catherine Widgery, it was a clean, precise inclusion of matriachal mytsticism, in a patrichal instution. Crowning a small entrance door, it contained 12 steel moons, polished or unpolished according to their cycles (so a half moon was half polished), and a miasama of clouds, for its subtlety, it moved me. also, the side chapel, was an intense excerise in geometrical rigour, a slightly rectangluar off building, with very low cellning looking tudor or palladian, painted somewhere b/w wedgewood and cerulean, with the wooden accents a creamed white with elobrately embroidered altar cloths, in corresponding tones
3) found a tight little deco apartment, fourth floor walk up, 1150, could be a bedroom for two.
4) shopped millionare mile, saw a perfectly constructed, jonquil yellow day dress in unwashed silk, looked v. edie, at prada.
5) lunch at jamie kennedy/gardner, venison ossu bucco, niagra region pinot noir, sorbet (plum and sparkling apple for desert, the sparkling apple was a delight, with the tart buzz coming a little after, so there was almost a narrative, the osso bucco was on a bed of potatos the texture of cream of wheat, with 6 ideal tiny brussell sprouts, bread before the meal came with a remixed baba ganoush...brilliant dinner. It was all Coll's doing though, my xmas/bday gift
6) gardner was a mess, not really worth the 6 bucks (or 12 for Col), with some items mislabelled, or not labelled at all, a staff that had no idea what it was doing, the chinese and japanese collections shut down, and no islamic work...the terra cotta manquettes for the battle of britian monument looked like unironic, pure minded rosenquenuists as sculpture, the one ken price was magnaficent, with a wry, drooped shape, and a bright mottled surface, but it was limited by the wall, and they had no idea what they had, i asked about price, no clue (also a medicore woodruff)--some highlights, english hunting plates, a rabbit serving dish in the shape of a rabbit, some inredibly high german/baroque clocks, and some great cermonial meso american ritual ware...
7) went to yorkville, felt fat.
8) a fantastic katz ethcing/h20tint of ava, from 1987, this mirrored shades, red lips, crisp white shirt, im too hot to fuck, formal excercise in female power, might be an ava, stared at it for 30 minutes, just a fantastic formal work, i keep thinking of how powerful i find katz now, there is something so happy about going from hating an artist, to finding an entrance (his landscapes for me), to using that entrance as a fulcurm to getting his ouerve (connect the dots: katz, avery, porter, dove)
9) also saw: a brilliant ethcing by kelly, of a black cube, on a white filed, one of the cubes sides being brilliant yellow, some great 3rd gen cape dorset stuff, including a cute little muskox, a farfard cowboy, a picasso etching of rimbaud i didnt hate, and some other work...(five or six etchings, am i seeing a theme?)
9) worried about ayllson/banff

thinking about cory doctorow, and his short story when sysadmins ruled the universe, about the end of the world, he writes with great mystical tenderness about server farms, and is incapable of writing about flesh, thinking about that in relation to the washing machine in someone leaves town, someone comes to town, or the subtext in the disneyland story or craphound, he seems to have found (or devolped) an estachology(sp) that works w/o incarnation, that is oppostional to the western tradition of incarnation (excarnation?)
here is a link to the story, as published in rake magazine.

speaking of the incaration, had lunch with rev joe walker (blog here, who used to be the cleric for the anglcians at the u of a, but is now doing parish work at st thomas' in laurier heights. v. kind, v, bright man, with all the right questions, and a gentle, socratic style, talked for 90 minutes about all the usual jesus shit, but he wouldn't let it rest on cliches, and talked about patience, time, etc (also the incarnation, miracles, cherrypicking scripture, joy, family historys, work/life balance, parables, politics, et al.) continuing i think...

There is an island of plastic waste in the middle of the atlantic, the size of texas


Helmut Smits, The Real Thing, Installation, 2006. It turns Coke into Potable Water.

Todd Heisler pulitizer prize winning photog from Denver, does this fantastic, multilayered reportage...his photos of teh army work the tension b/w the formal cermony of home and trainging, against the chaoticness of battlefield. (he also knows how to move an eye around a frame, its not only army fotos, shots of a man lusting after a PETA protestor, who might as well come from gor, an almsot archtypally anglo foto of sheep fording a stream, from colorado, cowboys watching fighter plans thats a masterpeice of diagonal compostion, etc.

Al Wolfson does tiny minatures of filthy urban street scenes, the detail is astonishing. This one is my favourite:

Ultra minimal, black and grey Glass Works by Mike Davis:



They are all blown, then coldworked, then etched. From the Beaver Gallery in Melbourne

dozens of firtly fishing comics, by the children of god in the mid 70s, mostly in spain. (founded in the US, the Children of God where the only christian NRM who became v. popular in Europe, extending its influence for decades after it had died in the states, ive never been able to figure out why) (flirty fishing is where an attractive girl fucks someone as an evangelical tool.)

Germaine Greer has several fascinating things to say about Denuve, esp a young Denuve, comparing her unfavourably to Bacall: here i think that Denuves complexity, and length of service is being avoided here, and i think assuming that Belle du Jour is the only movie that she made is also false (i also think that Belle Du Jour is the exact movie that Greer would both not understand and find offensive, its also really fucking hot)

first female beefeater in the UK

Lennon in the late 70s, just after his lost weekend, found jesus via oral roberts. the story gets weider.

if rachels work were less dangerous, then it would look like piccini, supercute, really creppy drawings and sculptures, including vespas that look like giraffes looking over fiberglass children


Documents released Tuesday by the FBI offered new details about the harsh interrogation practices used by military officials and contractors when questioning so-called enemy combatants.(at Gitmo)
The reports describe a female guard who detainees said handled their genitals and wiped menstrual blood on their face. Another interrogator reportedly bragged to an FBI agent about dressing as a Catholic priest and "baptizing" a prisoner.
found here

ontario allows for more than two parents on a birth certificate

Lucienne and Robin Day, Cabnient, 1950.

And he [Huston Smith] recalled the time he asked Christian mystic Thomas Merton to explain what the life of a monk was like.

"It's very nice," Merton responded.

"I'm surprised by your response," Smith said, "given what I know about the three vows."

"Oh, those," Merton said. "Poverty is a snap. Chastity more difficult, but manageable. But obedience — obedience is a bugger."

LA Times, Via Black Phoebe:MS Jen

some other notes:

14 Italian Churches claim it and:

In addition to the Holy Foreskin claimed by Rome, other claimants in history have included the Cathedral of Le Puy-en-Velay, Santiago de Compostela, the city of Antwerp, Coulombs in the diocese of Chartres, France as well as Chartres itself, and churches in Besançon, Metz, Hildesheim, Charroux, Conques, Langres, Anvers, Fécamp, Puy-en-Velay, Calcata, Santiago de Compostela, and two in Auvergne. (Wikipedia)

it is mostly mentioned in the non cannonical infancy gospel, in an alabaster jar, looking backward to the gold/frankenscene/myhr and forward to the funeral spices (and the whole the poor will always be with us thing)

they didnt take the whole foreskin off, just a portion...the tip, whatever that means

Catherine of Seinna used the foreskin as a wedding ring, to Christ, in one of her visions. (this is really why i cant jump to the proddies)

the foreskin seems to be alot easier to write about then the holy bellybutton, but that was also a relic

this essay says what i was meaning to say, in less complicated ways.

feast of the circumsicion

Reading Steinberg’s book on the sexuality of Christ in the renaissance was one of the most important things I’ve done this year--really made me reconsider the implications of the lords flesh.

This was one of the most holy days on the calendar, from the 3rd century, well past the council of Trent, and thinking about it, praying about it, one realizes why.

Doing such an earthly act on someone who was somewhere between g-d and man, meant that he became human, there is some Gnostic thought (and Augustine too!), that the removal of the foreskin, was the entrance into Christ’s bridging b/w spirit and flesh. All of this I have written about, extensively, but the foregrounding that Steinberg did, pointing out that ignoring the small delicate thing, in favor of more lofty pursuits led to modern oblivion.

There are 3 foreskins, or portions of foreskins, wandering around Europe now, one in Sicily and one in France, and this is where i would usually go into a rant, about how it didn’t matter where exactly the foreskins they were, or who’s they were. That they were worshiped, bound a community to one story, told us morals, and allowed for feasts where we need feasts, was enough. Right now, in France, forensic anthropologists are going through the ground, where Joan of Arc was buried, and they are finding everything that does not relate to her, the bones aren’t humans, or they are 800 years too new. I think that the last week of advent, then Christmas, then of course, the feast of the circumcision is an important time to do that work.

I think that work, is to move away from labyrinths of language, and into something with more clarity. This is incredibly difficult, we are in a tunnel founded on words, instead of bricks, texts made flesh. The flesh never conquers, the body never centers itself, it retreats into the library, with an inscrutable taxonomy, and madmen trying to find where things belong. The idea of Joan’s flesh is enough. The idea of Christ’s flesh is enough. Saying a word, or a series of words, means that the material reality, the empirical evidence, vanishes into metaphysics. What happens, if words are words and flesh is flesh, and the lirturgy isn’t an abracadabra that makes everything merge? In the service, we touch ourselves, and other people, but before we do that, we ritually clean ourselves. Who was that Rebbe, in that dusty place, that wiped the Christ child, made him clean, and then let others wash, before he turned god into man.

That is what is real for catholics, this seires of abstracted rituals, that turn a narrative, slowly. The cleaning with holy water, before we eat his flesh, is the cleaning before the circumcision, it is the washing of feet, the woman at the well, the meal before his death, and the water at his wounds before. I can point this out for everything we do, every word we say, has precedent and tradition. Nothing ex nihilo. What happens if we pull those traditions out, unabstract them. What happens when we refuse the same script, a scripts that been played as theater for all of our history.

Today, also in France, but in Germany and England as well, was the feast of fools, described in English tradition, as The World Turned Upside down (in a folksong of the same name: I dreamt there was no workhouse/no starving poor/nations never quarreled/no never was there war….and Women wore a crown”) I am not tying this together, I don’t think, just free writing here, and that’s fairly obvious, but lets try this, let us combine the two great medieval feasts. Let us not get stuck on language or power. Let us not think of narrative, and if the words work, and if the magic has happened, and start emptying workhouses, and feeding the poor.

That thin ring of tissue, that made him a man, that centered his power, that transformed something beyond the world into something relating to flesh, needs to be real. But what needs to be made more real, is that his words live.

There is something else, that rests on that foreskin that complicates matters somewhat. By that slip of the knife Christ was made a jew. He had a very specific identity, a community to grow up in, and a set of rhetorical strategies and discourses that he had to follow, when he disobeyed them, he did so in a way that was mostly transformative for the community he was ministering with. We are not christans that follow Christ, as much as we would like to be, because we are not jews of the roman occupation. We are Christians, because the bloodletting baptized us all.

The jewish law, told us, Circumcise, then the, foreskin of your heart, and do not be stubborn any longer, For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe…” I am going to violence to the text here, because I think of that and I think of the phallocentric violence that erupts. It seems so stubborn, that’s my daddy and not your daddy, that is my god and not your god. But there is good news (pun intended), who is not partial and takes no bribe. The goat, or the half an inch or penile skin, does nto matter as much, is nto as vital, as what happens with you, in that dark spot, when he takes yr heart out, when you give him it, still bleeding (think of those statues, of the holy Christ, with his heart floating free, and think of that—real, anatomical object, and how maybe, all of our hearts will look like that on the seat of judgment. He takes no bribe, he requires no flesh.

Here is Galatians 5:6 for In wait for the hope of righteousness. From in Christ Jesus neither circumcision, nor un-circumcision, counts for anything, the only thing that counts is faith working through love.” I think about that and am made aware, that more and more, I think it is acts that matter. The feeding of the poor, the liberating the poor, the seeking of justice. That idea, of no one needing to be circumcised or the metaphor of the heart being circimused reminds me also, of how universal that organ is, and how important. One cannot live without a heart, and to cut or knick it is to die, to be saved, is to have it started again (and also, oddly genderless).

Faith without works is dead, though what happens when the opposite is true? All of this requires one to be a Christian, the Greek or Jew, the cutting or not cutting, the heart metaphors, all center around accepting the category set of Christian. What can you do when none of that happens? I am reading Elaine White’s essay next year in Jerusalem, and she writes about her brother becoming a Hasid. Elaine goes to Israel, prays, talks, does dishes, argues with the Rebbe, spends a week, living her brothers life. Does nto seek to return him to her secular Jewish roots, bit find why he became so orthodox. She is almost seduced. She returns to New York, realizing how much she wants the stability and purity of that life, but her life is more complicated, she cannot give up her desire to write, to make love, to be a “freewoman”. How do I become a member of the body of Christ, which member of that body do I want to be, when that body is cutting parts off. How does Elaine live her Jewish tradition, when that tradition has done violence to her. How do I live mine? She doesn’t give us an answer. On this holy day, for me, I wonder if there is one.

Toronto Agenda
1) work on proposals, a film peice, adn some other odds and ends with rachel
2) meet with ayllson and andrew about the banff thing
3) finish one of the two performances i am in the middle of
4) drop off ed ruscha proposals
5) go to thornhill
6) birthday shit
7) see d, michael, dave, colleen, rachel, ann, et. al
8) FUCK LIKE JESUS

Other New Year Goals
1) Banff
2) Ruscha
3) Deer
4) Performance(s)
5) Deitch
6) Marie
7) Batman
8) Iraq

Goals for 2007

1) Publish 12 articles, online or in print. (work hard on completing after pitching)
2) Find 5 Shows
3) Submit artwork to 6 contests, or the like.
4) Look for Day Job
5) Go to Holden Village in July or August
6) Spend time away from Edmonton, but not nessc. in Toronto. (esp. Vancouver)
7) read strunk/white, chicago, internalize.
8) continue with the jesus goals.
9) pay martin off.
10) try to find my own place
11) boyfriend
12) work on being more calm and together
13) pitch WK book, continue on american jesus book
14) be more social.