10 days, suspended.

hello from the east coast. have only had a few brief moments online and to top it off, i lost my cell phone somewhere in the san francisco airport in the hustle. a welcome cut-off in many ways, but anxiety-provoking in others. 

anyhow, a friend sent me this little film of two stop-motion projects in one, and i thought this audience of artists may find it as delightful as i did:  

wolf/pig stop-motion animation

~

annette messager

i can't believe i stared at this for so long and didn't see the word 'secret.'

by the way, these sample photographs aren't posted in the chronological order of creation but rather just a happenstance as i uploaded...but upon re-looking, this juxtaposition ended up giving me another way to view them, the leitmotifs and weaves, a pacing that holds its own dimension for me intrinsic to yet separate from the content.  i am adding this post to my file of inspiration.

projections

while driving last night i saw this burger king sign -- snapped it quickly with my camera phone since i was at a traffic light. wish it came out better, actually i'm surprised it came out at all, my phone being fairly crapalicious coupled with my looming panic/awareness i was at the one short red light in all of the world and late to get somewhere. but phew, i got it. at least you can still see the sign with the burnt out B, R, and KING, leaving one word ablaze: URGE.

was this the work of some stealth kamikaze fast food employee bored on the job or better yet, who took the job for the sole purpose of unscrewing these lightbulbs in this formation? or is this artist just that artist that so frequently creates beautiful and brilliant works that awe and confound us, the artist of many names and no name at all? just saying "the" artist as if singular is questionable to me, but so it goes.

as a poet and playwright i am continuously thinking about the interface between text and image within the arts. i remember one distinct time of being stunned and affected by a site-specific text piece. it was the day i was walking near dublin's trinity college-- i walked along a cobblestone street, turned a corner and stopped short, gasped. high up on a stone wall before me was an installed strip of words in fluorescent lights: "i wouldn't give a snap of my two fingers for all their learning." being a petulant college student who contemplated dropping out on a daily basis, this was a perfect mirror of my feelings at the time. i took a photograph of it, and then decided to stay in school.

that quote, by the way, is taken from a soliloquy by james joyce: "I wouldn’t give a snap of my two fingers for all their learning why don’t they go and create something..." there were other
similar snippets of text around trinity college, too. when i have a chance to dig up the photos i'll post them here.

i love the appropriation, reappropriation, and reinterpretations of great literary works, book nerd that i am.

and then there's jenny holzer, one of my all-time favorite artists. her projections, for one thing. look at this one from the new york series! breathtaking.

also, being a student of psychology i can't help but think about film (all film) in terms of projection=projection.

that is all.


~

movement meets biography

photo from Spark*(KQED Arts)

i just saw this show last night at dance mission theatre and though the show closed last night, i want to write about it here anyway because i bet it will re-emerge again, it being AMAZING and also just a weekend run but had 5 sold-out shows with many people turned away. keep your eye out for future runs or tours to other cities if you live somewhere other than the sf bay area.

the show tells the story of lou sullivan, transgendered female-to-male activist and pioneer who has an important place in san francisco history. sean dorsey read his journals and papers archived in the SF library, and then wrote this piece as a tribute/response.

i am a huge fan of sean dorsey's choreography. before seeing his work i don't think i could truly appreciate the way that movement can tell a story. there is such tenderness in the way he translates story to words, then words to movement. ways that are utterly surprising and yet make so much sense it feels like putting on an old familiar shirt. i find him a thoughtful, thorough, gentle, and brave artist.

seeing performance (or witnessing any art, really) always makes me think, and this time was no different...i found myself thinking about more than what the piece conjured up, though. like about my own relationship with performance. and how much i don't connect to this strange phenomenon we call 'applause.' for me, it's jarring and so automatically done that there are times i question its authenticity. at this particular show the energy of the audience was apparent; they were moved, glowing with their appreciation, so that when they clapped it carried that message with it, but there are times this isn't so. i've heard people say they sometimes clap out of happiness the show is over, for example. and so this makes me wonder: am i partial to the visual arts because experiencing it is generally a quiet, introspective experience? and where is the translation of applause in the visual art world? how does an artist (who isn't famous and receiving constant reviews, etc.) receive feedback from their audience? and artists are the ultimate see-ers, so for many there must be something fulfilling about being seen, no? is true for me? i think i have a very complicated relationship to being seen, but that's another entry for another time.

there was one aspect of the sean dorsey show that didn't sit right with me and it wasn't that the device didn't work in the art (because it really did work) as much as a reminder of the way i experience the world. i am a very different storyteller, for one. and the premise of the piece was that it is hard to know a person when they are gone (aka dead), but you can get to know them, possibly even better than you ever would have alive, if you do one thing: read their diary. well, read their many diaries, which hopefully they have left behind to be read.

so, for the record (this will have to do as my living will for the moment until i can make a real one)-- i cannot and will not be understood by my diaries. hopefully i will live long enough to have time to keep them for my own reflection but then burn them before they are read by anyone else, but we can't always choose when and where we die. but either way, i don't think a person always tells the whole truth of what they are living and experiencing in the simple pages of a journal. at least, i don't. not in letters either. we are all so many layers of experiences in any given moment. so if you want to know the truth of who i was when i die, cut up my journals into tiny pieces, put them back together in a different, random order, and then maybe you will have more of a sliver of the truth of who i was. or better yet, splice them in a pile with every photograph i've ever taken, every drawing, every film, every moment i was captured on film or otherwise, perhaps also every film, song, painting, etc that has moved me, and....well, you get the idea.

~

in these times

at least i do still have my unpaid job.

Poet's Work (by Lorine Niedecker)

Grandfather
advised me:
Learn a trade

I learned
to sit at desk
and condense

No layoffs
from this
condensery

~

elation!

no need to say it, because this date, when i look back at this, will speak for itself.
now, but about the play i'm writing...(project w/ j)- too late/ too early to shift shape? how can i even capture hope, anyhow? do i want to? just like taking a break from the camera to look out with naked eye instead, maybe this barack obama moment is a time to just witness it and feel.

~

day of the dead

feeling inspired, awed, reverent.

tried my best to capture the energy of the night.

heartbreakingly sweet, a shrine for babies.

spinning baby toys hanging from the tree. here, a sippy cup a-twirl.

crossing paths with a skeleton.

scribing messages for the loved and lost.

still life, with pomegranate.

ghost on a cell phone.

color and light.

the webs we weave.

otherworld reflection

dream.

notes for later: walking through city/ then wooden path/ a lioness and family nearby / confrontation/ the rabbits/ getting dark / last scene: orphanage

~