The Bookcase Project

Apu Not Forgotten- On "The World of Apu"- briefly

2011-09-03T20:19:00.004-04:00

With friends visiting from out of town and planning upcoming events, I forgot about Satyajit Ray's film "The World of Apu". The film is short and doesn't use the score to manipulate tears from the audience. It is a seamless fusion of word and image. A love story about a starving artist and fate. When I see corny trailers for contemporary films marketing obtuse love stories, they make me cringe. I see denial being peddled like crack during a depression. The movie begins with Apu having to drop out of school because he can't afford tuition. He's not too disappointed because he's confident that he'll become a successful novelist. A good friend invites him to his cousin's wedding to enjoy some food, drink, and have a good time in the country. When Apu arrives, the bride's mother is enamored by him. Thinking it odd, she dismisses it attributing it to Apu's good looks. The marriage is arranged. Nobody's met the groom who apparently comes from a good family. When he arrives, he is unstable and noticeably mentally ill. Whether out of desperation to marry off his daughter, the father insists that the groom's condition is due to traveling a long distance. If the girl isn't married as planned, she'll be forever disgraced. Someone has got to marry her. Apu being the eligible bachelor and not related, is the prime candidate and chooses to help save the girl's honor. They go back to Calcutta to his small roof top room and fall in love with time. It's amazing how when done by an amazing director/storyteller like Satyajit Ray, this obvious set up is beautiful and resonant. No, I don't want some one to do the Hollywood version or Euro-minimal deconstruction of Ray's film. It's perfect as it is. Yes, there is tragedy. Heaps of it. It's what makes it perfect and none of it is drab. Not one bit.

I tried reading Armes again after the film. And found “Third World Filmmaking and the West” drier than before. When I compare it to Robert Stam and Ella Shoat's “Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media”. Armes' book misses the Chutzpah.

The next book on the shelf is "Assassins", by Stephen Sondheim.....

More Soon

charulata

2011-07-29T23:09:00.006-04:00

I'm a sucker for female protagonists. When I got an email alerting me that "Charulata" or "The Lonely Wife" was waiting for me at the library, I ditched "The World of Apu". Charulata is based on the novela by Rabindranath Tagore, "Nastanirh" (The broken Nest). It is such a beautiful film and I wish Armes had gone into better detail about just how wonderful it was. In his chapter about Ray, Armes like many film writers, gives a general synopsis of the film. He summarizes the story line and very quickly goes on to the next film as if trying to finish a term paper. He doesn't go into detail about the lighting for example which is one of the key elements that distinguishes Ray's filmmaking from others of this time (1964). It's high key and frames the characters so gently allowing for their actions to replace dialouge- of which there is little. Charulata's story is a classic woman's tale. It is also a pleasure to see a woman of color lead in a complex position, which ironically we see less of in the 21 century. She's smart and talented and married to a well-off intellectual. Without the need to work, she stays home and is so bored she relies on opera glasses for entertainment, using them to look out the window and even her husband. Ray frames the camera around the glasses illustrating Charulata's distance to her community, husband and general 19th century role of wife. It's a tragic love story heavily focused on how ill equipped Indian and Western societies are to supporting strong female role models. The film's story hits home. As an artist at home with 2 kids looking at oatmeal splattered on the wall, life borders between being an adventure and subdued.

Almost done with Roy Armes. He's not a colorful writer.

More soon.

Apu

2011-07-27T14:50:00.004-04:00

This weekend I attended a great workshop at El Museo del Barrio. I was invited to participate in a Creative Capital Professional development workshop. During it I got into a conversation about culture background with a fellow attendee. As part of marketing, we're suppose to look into all avenues one of them being cultural background. My conversation was about how as second generation Americans we felt on the margins between our parents' cultural connection and the one we were born into. Education has tons to do with it. It is where all the propaganda, ideals, and beliefs begin to take shape. How does it affect how we make art? Moving along to "Third World Film Making and the West", I've found my way to the directors' chapters. First one up is- Satyajit Ray. Armes begins the chapter with a bit about his life going into some detail on Ray educational background. Ray was always made conscious of his bordering two cultures. From his stories to his camera work, the Hindu and the British merged through critic commentary. For Ray, it was just how he worked and saw the picture. I just got one of his most famous "The World of Apu". The version form the NYPL is dubbed, but on dvd with special features (bonus!) At 110 mins., I will watch it while the kids are napping. It's safe to say that Tinkerbell the Movie has nothing on this.

More soon

jackel hot hot

2011-07-09T07:48:00.000-04:00

Last we met I had just gotten the film "the jackel of chochtel”. It was incredible. The filmmaking was far beyond it`s time. Sadly it seemed to diasappear into the obscurity of world cinema instead
of simply being regarded as a truly great piece of filmmaking. The film is about a man convicted for the murder of a woman and her five children.
While living in rural Chile, the two find each other. He was a wandering hobo and The woman recently evicted from her house after the death of her husband a farm hand on the land.
After a night of drinking, the two argue and ignited by something the woman said, the jackel strikes her eventaully killing her. He then goes on to kill the children all under the age of 8.
The film mixes real footage with fiction seemlessly bringing to question poverty, captialism, and lack of education as the leading factors to crime in modern society.
"Dead man walking" has nothing over this film. I was tempted to rent it but got discouraged at the thought of the over use of close ups in US films. That's one of the things I noticed most in The Jackel.
In order to include the complicity of legislation and society, the camera makeas a point to focus on the enviornment. We tend to blame the individual. This isn't new news and it's such aan important
role in how we aim to reshape the world if we ever get the chance. Seems hopeless. Part of the sucess of the jackel is it's honesty regarding the possible fact that it all will never get
the chance to reform. The story builds hope while thee jacakel iaas in prison and rehabilitated. He learns to read, write, gets counciling,
and time to reflect. Even when the brutal murder occured there was a moment where the realization hit and regret filled the moment.
The true tragedy after the deaths is the execution of the jackel and the perpetual penial system. It's not surprising the film was made in 1970 while Allende was president. It was a great moment in history
because something else was possible. Now before I get accused of being a commie freak I'm for a different progressive, intelligent, fair, humane, healthy, relational difference in our political, governmental,
and religious insatitutions. I wake hopeless most of the time if I've got to be honest. the jackel reminds me that there was a moment when
Cahnge became real let's hope Allende's history isn't repeated.

jackal in, art in

2011-05-22T19:08:00.000-04:00

I'm just getting back from an art event meeting. It's for a big exhibition I'm a part of for El Museo del Barrio's S-Files 2011. We meet at Socrates Park in Queens. Very exciting. Yesterday I had another meeting after work for another exciting project funded by the Puffin Foundation at Brook Park in the South Bronx (more on my website). For both spaces I will be doing my "Illegal Death" piece. meetings are great. Talking to adults is great. The weather has been pretty melancholy though adding a bit more stress to my already stressful life. My husband is super taking care of the kids while I go to work. I feel bad at times because he hasn't gotten a break this weekend- neither of us have breaks actually. We work and watch the kids. That's pretty much it. Add my parents to the mix- and home- and it becomes a festival for shattered nerves. What we do for art. Makes emails from the NYPL so incredibly remarkable, as if I were meeting a lover.

I decided that in order to continue reading Armes book, I was going to need to watch some films referenced. So one is in and I'm updating my blog. More soon after I watch:

El chacal de Nahueltoro
The Jackal of Nauhultoro
Dir Miguel Littin (b.1942) Chile

Need to watch films to make more sense

2011-05-16T22:26:00.003-04:00

Third World Film Making and the West by Roy Armes, is one of those books I wish I had read while doing my thesis in graduate school. The film references are amazing. Sadly though, I haven't heard of most the directors/filmmakers Armes writes about. The further I read the more I realize that I must see these films in order to make the reading more worth while and get a proper education in film as Armes intends his book to provide. I will now go to the New York Public Library and see what I find. I will post after watching a film.

Fight, fight, fight

2011-02-15T16:04:00.006-05:00

15 years ago people were pegging digital tools as having the potential to change established systems and the dominant culture's influence in general. Until 2008, I didn't think it would happen. Obama's election was exactly what we had been hoping for when we first ran out to buy our first laptops in the late 90' hooking up our almost 256mb system to our phone lines and using the Internet. But the big revolution never came. Information wasn't changing our life styles or choices. We were too hypnotized by the glitz and overwhelmed by the plans we soon had to purchase to have the Internet. Storm clouds cleared when we elected President Obama and we were hopeful- then, we were not. In the last few months we have seen two governments toppled on the strength of Twitter, blogs, flicker, etc. People in Tunisia and Egypt shook things up and succeeded. Will things go array as they have here with conservative hew-haws holding on tight at all costs? Who would have thought that we would have lost the Net Neutrality War? The working class is still struggling everywhere and there are still starving artists. My Korean colleague died at the end of January because she starved to death. She was an amazing filmmaker and screenwriter who only had enough to pay the rent. Her thyroid condition made things much worse helping to sign her death sentence. To be honest, I would expect something like that happening here in the US. Our system of having artists help themselves seems to have spread.

In the latest essay I read from Digital Dialectic, “ 'We Could Be Better Ancestors Than This': Ethics and First Principles for Art of the Digital Age” by Bob Stein- the main point is to make tools accessible for everyone to make art, live, function because it is just unethical not to. Stein is a publisher and was part of the Voyager company who developed “Who Built America” a disc by the American Social History Project. Apple refused to distribute it with an educational bundle for schools when Voyager refused to edit the sections about abortion and gays (for Trekkies out there: can you see images of Captain Janewood refusing to comply?). The matter was resolved and Apple continued distributing it. I haven't looked up where Stein is now, but I don't think he is advising the president's people.

I naturally side with Stein on: keeping the system fair and changing the dominant culture's control over it, getting digital corporations to re-evaluate in bigger terms not just from the cash, Id and ego perspective, and to fight fight fight for what will make the world a better place from all aspects (spiritual, mental, and emotional).

Go get Linux!

Almost struck out, but along came a Russian

2011-01-30T20:59:00.003-05:00

Thank heavens that Lev Manovich wrote an essay in this book (“What is Digital Cinema?"). If he hadn't I think I would have used the first of three strikes. The Digital Dialectic isn't a horrible book, I just feel that some of the writing isn't very seductive. I totally avoided the book for a few weeks. After a great start with discovering Buffalo Heads through the dedication, I found the first essay to be dull. Trying to alleviate the situation I jumped around but dozed off. Manovich was manna from heaven! He is so specific in his writing and gets to the point. His thesis pretty much is that digital cinema is a beautiful bigamous marriage between the photograph, painting and collage. His describing the loop as a function comparable to photography's capturing the decisive moment felt as if my brain had gotten a dusting. His essay seemed to be his book in a nutshell, and I wonder which came first.

I don't think I will read the entire book cover to cover. I've decided to select some essays instead. My next book is more theory so I may do this again instead of using a strike. The next essay will be on ethics and the digital world. Let's see how it goes.

More soon

Was I writing a blog or something?

2010-12-29T23:01:00.004-05:00

Well I got sucked up into a vortex of holidays and grant submissions. I've managed to crawl to my bookcase and get the next book. It is another theory book. TO be honest, I wish I could switch it up for a fiction, but the inner nun in me has got me by the head with gun to stick with the plan. I must read what's there in the order that it appears in. sigh.

So, it's The Digital Dialectic: New Essays on New Media edited by Peter Lunefeld. 1999 MIT Press.

When I see the dates on the New Media books I've been reading, I feel like Sam Tyler the lead character in the British TV series "Life on Mars". Seeing 1999, and the thought process that went along with the compiling of the book makes me assume that I already know everything that is about to be discussed in the essays. Rather arrogant. Why? It doesn't seem as if anything in the New Media field has advanced so much. If anything it seems to have reached a plateau. in terms of new projects, challenging ideas, ground breaking innovation....If anyone out there (hello, crickets) has suggestions send links please.

Lunefeld opens the book with a dedication, " To Gerald O'Grady for what he built". I found some exciting information:

Gerald O'Grady was a visionary it seems. A champion for the arts and the fusion of technology with it. His work on archiving the work of the Civil Rights era is incredible, and he received some impressive awards in support of it. How does it happen that a name like this passes along like a blur in our history when it should be a household name? In photos he looks like a Detroit car/ad man. Never would have pinned him for an art revolutionary. As I google here and there I can't help but want to go into one of my rants about how removed our society is from seeking solidarity with the arts. by this I mean making it possible for everyone to have the opportunity to work and explore without the stresses of living, surviving, and diving into life in 21Century NYC (or other urban trench).

For more on O'Grady read below. It looks like a new edition to the case. Also provides reason to get moving on the shelf.
Buffalo Heads: Media Study, Media Practice, Media Pioneers, 1973-1990
Woody Vasulka and Peter Weibel (Eds.)
Paper / November 2008
Images and texts document the legendary Department of Media Study at SUNY Buffalo when it set the world standard; a history of the program and examples of work by "Buffalo heads" James Blue, Tony Conrad, Hollis Frampton, Gerald O'Grady, Paul Sharits, Steina, Woody Vasulka, and Peter Weibel.

More soon.....

and yet more theory to read

2010-11-12T20:33:00.005-05:00

It has taken me forever, but I'm done with Lev. It is certainly a must read for all artists practicing today regardless if they use digital media to produce their work or not. The rise of digital media has truly changed how we relate to visual information largely because I think our relationship to sensory experiences in the everyday has changed. We have the ability to have entire control over creating a virtual world, simulating any situation we want, to whatever degree of perfection we care to have. As a result, the demand for artists to match this has tripled and our audiences have grown more fastidious. Perhaps this is why there are an overwhelming number of design programs on TV. The public seems to crave pleasingly aesthetic environments and programs give them accessible tools. Maybe all this simulation has led to a want for more real experiences. more performances. Forget Marina Abramovic. She's been around for a while, yet it is now that her work and the work of many other performance artists is in demand. Is it because she's met the required 30+ year career deadline? Or is it because the zeitgeist wants to experience the palpable again.

The next book is more digital theory. I don't think it will match Lev Manovich. He's an incredible writer and thinker. I will drudge. I don't know when the first fiction is coming up. I will have to look at the list again. I have a theory I will move faster through fiction....

copyright AliciaGrullon 2010

hard times. no time?

2010-10-16T08:02:00.000-04:00

This is the most difficult project I've ever undertaken.
Sitting for 8 hours with a wet paper mask seems much easier
Have I lost my ability to read? Sitting on focusing on the pages is a chore.
I wonder if this has to do with the growing reliance on the screen.
We seem programmed if not brainwashed into looking at any screen for hours.
Have we fooled ourselves into thinking that just because we're researching or doing email that we're actively using our cognitive skills?
I think at times I think a bit then my brain wants to move on to the next topic faster than before.
I grab my mouse and hurry to the next site or link and remain there for a breath or 2.
To be honest, I donty like the Kindle (screen book) very much. A part of resists the idea of reading a book from a machine.
Or am I too proud to admit I need the screen. I've recently watched "Ran" Kirasawa's film twice without thinking that I was looking at a scrren too much.
I'm on the subway next stop I go underground. More soon.

post from crate battery low

2010-09-25T18:46:00.000-04:00

I've masked my face while inside. My battery is running out and soon enough the top of the crate will open. I hear voices some familiar others not. It's getting hot. Soon enough. Soon.

live art, right now

2010-09-25T18:41:00.000-04:00

So I'm in the crate re-enacting herny box brown's escape from 19th C plantation. He shipped himself by post to Philadelphia. I chose to take my phone with me and twitter, FB, blog while inside. How different would brown's journey had been had he had this technology. Twittering as he stopped at locations or riding on a cargo train knowing that as each day went he'd be closer to being free. And we'd be keep up to date, by the mintue reporting of an astonshing event

Live art, Live stream

2010-09-24T23:21:00.003-04:00

My piece, "Illegal Art" streaming live from Soapbox Gallery 9/25 btwn 6:00 & 7:30 pm EST http://www.ventatsoapbox.com/live-feed.html

Manovich has been sitting in the bathroom for a few days now. The book stares at me when I go in to relieve myself or just get a quick mommy break. I've been getting these pains of guilt too ever since I walked into the bathroom with a Maire Claire magazine that I was force(well, just a little) to accept a free subscription of after purchasing a pair of shoes and dress at my local consignment store. Anyway, I read this article about women and technology. Apparently, many women are well below keeping up with their tech saaviness when compared to men. Rather than trying to figure out a solution ourselves, we will call a male colleague, IT guy, spouse, partner, friend whoever to fix whatever computer issue is plaguing our happiness at the moment. I'm having a hard time believing it. Say it ain't true Jo! I guess I'm having this reaction because so many of Manovich's examples are from women artists hacking away at new media projects. Was this just part of the craze during the late 90's? I mean, hey, the MOMA is still slow in catching up. Or are women just being overlooked, discouraged, etc from truly getting their hands dirty with technology. Maybe it's the Russian in Manovich that actively sought out women artists as examples. I found out recently that a good 45% to 50% of work shown in Russian museums are by women. MOMA still hasn't caught up and I'm a member.

"A Draft"- a piece of hyperlinks

2010-09-21T22:31:00.007-04:00

Inspired by Manovich's rant on hyperlinks and my psychedelic visions of hyperlinks thereafter, I created this small piece consisting of links making up "The Gettysburg Address". I used this piece in the documentation of my last project "Illegal Art" for Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts. The speech has so much relevance today it makes me sick. Link to piece below:

A Draft

Hypermedia, Hyperlinks, Manovich

2010-08-31T21:47:00.005-04:00

Some good friends were over this past weekend and we got on the topic of motherhood. Basically, most mothers forget about themselves. I know I have. At times, there isn't a minute during the day to put on a clean shirt. I find I'm most comfortable in a pair of baggy and would love to think about myself for an hour while indulging in a manicure/pedicure. Something has re-programmed in me to not think of me the individual but as me the group member.

I also don't think about what a hyperlink is anymore, I actually just look for them automatically when reading an online article, Tweeting, etc. It is interesting how Manovich asks how to analyze what a hypermedia link is. For me, it became mildly trippy experience. For instance, I don't think of hyperlinks at all in relation to Hypermedia and how hypermedia is “a network of information containing nodes interconnected to be relational links”. Nor have I considered hyperlinks to be independent from the contents in a document, separating themselves from all other elements and keeping their identity from blending in. (Manovich, p.41) Now looking at a page I see these hyperlinks reluctantly agreeing to be on the page free agents on loan almost. It wouldn't surprise me if we'd need to pay patent or royalties even for using them. New Media it seems reflects our individualistic society, our longing to be unique. Everything is customized to make us feel as if it were so. We receive recommendations from Amazon, Google, etc. based on information we've typed in and reconfigured through a game of what will most likely be perfect for us. It is easy to get lost behind the computer, on the Internet looking through our particular reading list, followings, and friends. We get into a zone: It is our time.

The Internet and revolution of interactivity was meant to give us more freedom. That's how it was billed. With the shift from constants to variables Manovich mentions came “choice” and “freedom” restructuring live assistance to menus of options and automated machines. This drive towards choice has led to many having no choice in the reconfiguration of their jobs. Makes me think of Jason Reitman film Up in the Air and the plot by the junior exec to have people fired over a web cam- easy, cost effective, and clean.

Our world today seems to be calling for a group consciousness, one that has to be fully aware of what is occurring around us. Social networking sites have really played a part in combining our post-modern tools and attitude with the constant to collaborate for greater good. Yet, I know one a many people who dislike it when their Friend on Facebook puts up a cause he wants to get everyone fired up about. Is it because our “me” time is being interrupted?

Where does art stand in all of this? I'm up to the part where I re-think what I'm seeing on screen as data.....

Manovich from my phone

2010-08-18T21:09:00.000-04:00

At the moment I'm in my bathroom sitting on the toilet lid typing this from my phone.
To be honest, I hate writing long emails from my phone and doing a blog entry, the tinest
type ever is like beading- tediuous! At the moment my husband is reprogramming his
computer. He's updating his linux based laptop with a Ubuntu inspired platform. I use his computer for the internet
because my Flintstone-computer runs much slower when I've had the internet running. Recently,
I've been thinking about changing to Linux yet I feel that my ties with the art world,
staunchly Mac,and the rest of PC land would banish me to weirdo-ville. Manovich,
writing this book in 1998, reflects on the "rapid transformation of culture into e-cluture".
He drifts, as it were, to picture what it would be like in the year 2005 with 4 periods,
allowing our minds to picture totally computerized organization. Well, it's 2010 and 2005,
as you know happened, and it goes without saying that "Computers have become universal culture
carriers, demanding us to rethink" every aspect of how we communicate and organize. Just a second
ago, I picked up a menu my daughter let on the bathroom door. I glanced at it and there were two
familiar symbols for Facebook and Twitter. I could follow Giovanni's Restaurant on twitter and FB.
After scoffing at the idea, I realize that it's a good way to pick up buisness, maybe make you think
about calling for a delievery because they've posted their specials. Sounds like an episode of MAD MEN
Where an ad man, manipulates your wanting something you were perfectly happy without.
Are computers the same manipulated object, pushed on us by a very good dealer wanting to score? Mobile
Phones are quickly filling in the role. I can't imagine my life without it.
Here I am posting for my toilet,making it happen
Manovich probably knew this was going to occur back in '98.

The Language of New Media by Lev Manovich

2010-08-17T22:45:00.015-04:00

The Language of New Media by Lev Manovich MIT Press, 2001

Well, I've just had an opening to a great group show at the Maccorone Gallery. It is the culminating event to an artist residency program with Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts. I've got more time on my hands, but after every opening there is the need to jump to the next thing, continue the great feeling of getting work out there. I don't think I could have done everything in preparation without my husband being laid off (depressingly ironic, non?) and the help of family.

Just started Manovich's book today. I remember coming across this book while in graduate school. It happened quite simply: Amazon recommended it to me based on my previous purchases. The description looked appealing and when I read some of the first chapter provided by amazon, I decided to get it. I read most of it. Then, recommended it to some of my classmates, who then recommended it to be on our next reading list for graduate seminar class. Reading the forward by Mark Tribe, founder of Rhizome.org, I can't help but leap back in time to the late 90's when the art world was a blaze with excitement over the software technology explosion. I've re-read the following sentence a few times: “The Internet is particularly ripe with the potential to enable new kinds of collaborative production, democratic distribution, and participatory experience”. (p, xi) I still have the knawing feeling of wanting a poof to happen. Some of the most exciting internet based art that quickly comes to mind are: Critical Art Ensemble and The Atlas Group. Yet by and large, I feel a lag in production. Could it be that the buzz is over and our financial crisis has prevented funding and support?

Tribe points out that one of the things that impressed him about Manovich's perspective on the computer technology boom was his cold-shower reality check, that the internet, computer, and its networks were being blindly embraced with the promise of Utopian dreams. Perhaps it was because Manovich a self-proclaimed, “post-communist subject”, having experienced the affects of a disappointing new world order, he saw through the RGB-colored glasses. Well, I we've experienced let downs the past 45 years. For the past few weeks, there has been a lot of commotion (rightly slow) regarding the formation of the 4^th Reich: The Goolge/Verizon empire. That's a far cry from an open internet where fairness and equality are king. With a share going for about $600 and change, money turns the best of us into Faustus. Our, zeal for “techno-utopianiasm and new libertarian politics popularized by Wired magazine” (p, x) has been replaced by good old fashioned Ayn Rand style economic Darwinism. Take a look at the huge investment to buy Adobe products and the like, and you're in for a massive stroke (especially if you need to change platforms because your computer is pre-historic. Alright, I'm venting). While in the rest of the world open source software is a reputable option, we scoff at the idea to the point where open source has become associated with evil hackers.

Manovich begins with a prologue consisting of a 22 page photo-illustrated guide “acting as a visual index to some of the book's major ideas”. (p, xiv) The late 1920's film piece Man with a Camera, by Dziga Vertov acts as the visual lead for Manoivch's book. I have seen the film and it provided a visual exploration that busted through the different possibilities of seeing reality at the time. Unlike DW Griffith's racist nightmare, Birth of a Nation, who is applauded as a visionary and for "unleashing the power of movies as a catalyst for social change", Vertov's piece merges photographic techniques of multiple imagery and storytelling into a magnetic kaleidescope. It creeps me out when Griffith's summoned. Tribe did so asking why haven't we seen the computer-game equivalent to Birth of a Nation. Well, I'd be scared to see it. Wouldn't you? Being chased by hooded klan's men? But, wait, we do see the equivalent with all the shoot-em up computer games spilling blood 1000-miles a minute. I guess I know what Tribe is getting at, but I'm much happier with Manovich bringing up Vertov instead (although there is mention of Griffith). It's clean. <>

More Lippard Plus Artists

2010-08-04T23:49:00.002-04:00

Gosh, that was a pretty long hiatus from the blog. It has been on my mind to sit and write. Life has taken over. With an upcoming exhibition and a million life things to do, my focus was everywhere but here. Writing this is centering. Reading has been confined to stints in the bathroom after the kids are asleep or after work is done. Subway reading is a luxury I treasure beyond words. All in all, I have been sloooooow.

As I promised in my last entry, I googled some artists in the book that I wanted to look up and see what they were doing now. There are some big names Lippard mentions. I stuck to the lesser known big shots.

David Chung: http://www.davidchung.com/
In the chapter called Mixing, Lippard covers some amazing artists whose work resonates loudly with current events in the US. It is almost a bit uncanny how much this chapter belongs to the here and now. Was Lippard on some sort of time machine when she wrote it and didn't realize it? I am sure that these artists are very well known by those much better versed when it comes to names. I must confess, that this was the first I heard of David Chung and I was impressed. It goes without saying that by the mere size of his canvases Chung is stationed in LA. Where else would he have the space to explore the pictorial plane with such dramatic line and gusto. His name attracted me. Having a history in Korea and returning there last year, the big boom of the Korean art world is dynamically impressive for me. There is so much ordered passion in the details of work by many Korean artists as well as in Chung's. His imagery is a symphony of graffiti and Korean motifs, northeast Asian symbols such as the crane, swooping above a tangle of monochromatic beams. His 1988 piece Seoul House” an electronic rap opera, was an early piece sited by Lippard. The video on his site is pretty good for showing the documentation of a live piece and left me wanting Chung to create more live pieces. He found a way to collaborate with ethnomusicologist Pooh Johnston and composer Charles Tobermann that mirrored the cross cultural identity the US carries within it. When so much media focus recently (albeit misinformed for the most part) on cross cultural relations, it is refreshing to see something smart, non-sensationalist, and dignified.

Larry Beck (Chnagmiut Yup'ik): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_James_Beck
I was disappointed to see this artist had passed away in 1994. The link above was the only more or less comprehensive link on him and his work I could find. He died in 1994, a few year after the publication on Mixed Blessings. He had a tremendous career working with Tom Robbins in performance collaborations with the Shazam Society (worth a good research paper if ever) and in his own rite with mighty sculpture. In his caption, he notes that he is an Eskimo but also a 20th Century American who lives in a modern city with junk yards, industrial waste, trash cans that float on the shores of ancient beaches where his ancestors found driftwood. His pieces involve using modern found objects to create masks influenced by traditional old Inuit art. They are as amusing as they are poignant. As I was reading his bio on wikipedia, I read a sentence that struck me: “He experimented with casting several small masks, based on traditional Inuit forms, in aluminum and bronze, but he was still uncomfortable with the fact that the masks represented a complete contradiction to his western art training. This and peer group pressure kept him doing abstract work.” Reading this sentience reminded me of an interview I heard on WBAI with Ellen Lupton on her new book about indie publishing companies. In her interview she mentioned that the business of publishing is based on keeping people out because there is so much money involved with publishing a new author that it is really an economic risk. Is art's aesthetic based on financial risk thus affecting our interests, judgments, and choices? Beck deserves a retrospective in a major way. But who will do it? With any luck a museum devoted to Native American Arts will do so, but what about the bigger institutions like the Guggenheim, LAMOCA, Gettysburg, etc.? Will they take the chance and re-program the aesthetic?

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: http://voices.cla.umn.edu/artistpages/chaTheresa.php
A tragic end like that of Ana Mendieta, Cha died at a point in her career where she was hitting incredible momentum. Her book “Dictee” is already on my list of to buy after I finish this project. I want to devote more time researching her work. Her work is contemporary to Mendieta. Their work both transcends from the material to the another plane that is universal. Both begin from the female and from there invest their energies into transcending limits within materials. I had heard of Cha before this book, but to be honest had not seen any of her work and only heard of her fame and tragic death. Her work is simple but deceptive in leading us to think that it's core is not complex. She had a retrospective that traveled to Spain organized by UC Berkley according to La Fundacio Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona. There is a foundation under her name with images and documentation on her work.

I think I am going to devote one more entry to Lippard. The bookcase has to move forward. I don't know if I am going to use a first strike for this book. I feel as if I'm committing heresy just thinking about doing this let alone it being a Lucy Lippard book, but the project must move forward and at this pace, I don't want my audience to forget about me. So here's a deadline I'm sticking with: August 17. The week before is going to be filled with opening exhibition jitters and work. New live art piece. Exciting!

Mixed Blessings by Lucy Lippard II

2010-07-14T22:14:00.004-04:00

There's this show on BravoTV, called Work of Art. It is another reality show where participants compete for US$100,000 and a spectacular grand prize that will explosively jump start their careers. For a period of several months, challengers are asked to produce pieces and are then judged by a notable panel of art honchos. It gets ugly, sometimes dramatic, and of course garish, luring in viewers by the promise of a good train wreak to watch. I've got the bug and when able to watch eagerly await who will be dumped next and what colorful disagreements emerge among this group of strangers forced to endure each other's presence. I've also got the bug for seeing what art work will be created next, the challenges under which these pieces are to be created and the process (although very much edited) that the artists undertake. The show began with a motley crew of artists. Some very well known in their field like Nao Bustamente, others working artists with solid track records or freshly plucked from university fine art programs. And yes, there is one “outsider” artist without formal training. Why I'm going on with this is because, the selected cast represents, to the best of its ability, diversity in the fine art world. There is/was a white gay man, an Asian man, an African American woman, a Latina woman (maybe 2, one has the last name of Santos), an African American male, a Latino male, 4 white males (including the gay man), 2 white females (maybe 3 if Santos 'fesses up). There's more diversity on this show than in your average Chelsea show. Quite frankly, this was a bit of a shock to me. The established art world is still very much upper middle class+ white male. When you go to any major museum, there are still very few white women on the walls of permanent collections or featured in major solo exhibitions. The statistics dwindle for everyone else outside the two previously mentioned groups. As I read further into Mixed Blessings (the book doesn't seem to end), I continue to discover more artists that I have never heard of. Some great work touched by the magic wands of quality such as from Kristine Stiles in the late 80's. There are moments while reading when I can't help but feel an agenda to subconsciously categorize the work into what art by non-European/third world/forth world artists should be about. Is it coming from ideas impregnated by my education where work by prominent artists of color were brought up in relation to an issue (race, immigration, post-colonialism, etc.). At the same time, I'm not really sure from who this is coming from. Blaming Lippard is easy. I rant on to myself about how she's pushing the reader to categorize by the chapter titles: 'Landing', 'Telling', 'Mixing', 'Naming'. They border on being so Carlos Castaneda in their eagerness for simplicity. Yet, stories and experience of race, immigration, colonialism, etc. are so actively present in communities of color that to deny their occurring wouldn't be honest either.

There is an image in Mixed Blessings of Carrie Mae Weems' photograph “Mirror, Mirror”, 1986. It shows a black woman looking through a frame to a veiled older woman. The caption is a take on Snow White and the Queen Witch looking into the mirror: “Looking into the mirror, the black woman asked, 'Mirror, mirror on the wall who's the finest of them all?' The Mirror says, 'Snow White, you black bitch and don't you forget it!!!'” I look around subway car interiors, at the movie posters advertising films and TV programs and the faces have changed only slightly. The everyday “human”stories they tell continue to come from the perspective of the dominant culture. Even in the super natural world of vampires, werewolves, and sorcerers other is made human when seen as suffering, humorous, or devastated. Few images involve other as just Joe from the block who is friends with X. Jennifer Lopez started out pretty smart (don't know if it was conscious or not) about her roles and how they were perceived. Her roles in “Angel Eyes” and “Out of Sight” didn't really go into what her background was. She simply was. Now when I glance at the popular films I see Jessica Alba dying her hair blond. Thank goodness, Robert Rodriguez has snatched her up as a brunette for his latest shoot 'em up bang bang Mexican revenge flick, "Machete".

PS: I think for my next entry I will google some of the names I've underlined in Mixed Blessings. Do a wee “where are they now” search and report back. I hope to be finished with Mixed Blessings. Have to make a dent on the shelf.

Book 1, Shelf 1: Lucy Lippard Mixed Blessings

2010-07-02T22:00:00.007-04:00

When I started reading Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America, I had forgotten that I requested a book from the public library: Democracy, by Group Material and the Dia Art Foundation published in 1990 the same year Mixed Blessings was. Keeping to my rules, I haven't read it. I've browsed through the table of contents and noticed some incredible writers, among them Henry Louis Gates Jr., bell hooks, and Bill Moyers. These names have put my mind in the perspective of Lucy Lippard's world during the late 1980's when presumably she starting writing Mixed Blessings. Call them post-colonial, progressive, liberal, radical or realistic, the rhetoric of the writers I just mentioned are by no mean subtle. The late 1980's marked a continuation of thought that had its roots in the 60's movements and begged for a different world order to emerge. Mixed Blessings was written at a crucial time for art, a period filled with unfinished business and final battles for equal representation, artistic expression, and total inclusion. Reminisent of 1968, something was in the air. Countless people were dying of AIDS (and still are), Nelson Mandela was freed, East and West Germany reunited, the Cold War ended, Iraq invaded Kuwait, and some listened to Madonna's Vogue. The capitalistic game was a foot and the Guerrilla Girls could afford to put advertising on the side of buses in New York City. Old world structures were dismantling and artists were reflecting it (e.g. Group Material's Democracy).The Culture Wars were waged in full swing by conservative Americans such as Jesse Helms wanting to take back “their culture” so that it reflected the ideas and beliefs of “American” people.

As I've been reading Mixed Blessings, I am overwhelmed by the amount of information that is jammed in it. It almost seems like Lippard was writing a last will and testament on the day before Warsaw's Nazi seize. Lippard's voice can sometimes be so prophetic as well as have a scared-straight quality. There have been moments though when her writing seems aggressively romantic bordering cliché: “...is not imprisoned by her cultural sources, but freed by them”1. Considering that the book is devoted to the unearthing of, “a little-known explosion of art by women and men from many different ethnic backgrounds”2, it is pretty thin (total 270 pages with notes and bibliography). Was it little-known to the publisher? I get the feeling that Lippard was influenced by the momentum of the time. She just wasn't getting on the band wagon of collaborative groups when she wrote Mixed Blessings. She wanted to be a cultural bridge between two co-existing and separate art worlds, those in and those kept out.

I visited El Museo del Barrio the other day, and seeing it's revamped space I discovered new artists that were making dynamic art throughout the 20th century. Visitors around me were amazed to discover them and their history in a silenced existence. I kept Lippard's book in focus asking myself as I walked through the space, “Has her goal to inform the public of art made by people 'of different ethnic backgrounds' been successful?” As I sat on the train reading the second chapter "Telling", I noticed the name of an artist whose work impressed me and my friend at the museum. It was a video made in 1958 which consisted of reedited news reels from WWII and the Korean War. The footage was manipulated and rearranged in such a way to magnify the absurdity of war propaganda. The piece's formality was exceptional. It was by Rafael Montaňez Ortiz. On page 94 of Mixed Blessings, is a photograph documenting a performance piece, Communion with Trees, in Italy on the property of Fluxus artist Robert Watts in 1988. I found out that Ortiz was not only “pioneering the performance art field”3, but was also the first director of el Museo. My friend pointed out that our tour guide had failed to point out Montaňez Ortiz's piece.

Lippard, Lucy Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America, New Press: New York, 1990

1. Lippard, Lucy Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America,p. 67
2. ibid, back cover
3. ibid, p. 93

The First Shelf

2010-06-15T21:55:00.000-04:00

In order of appearance Title/Last Name:

Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America/Lippard
The Language of New Media/Manovich
Victorian and Edwardian Fashion: A Photographic Survey/Gernsheim
3rd World Film Making and the West/Armes
The Development of Segregationist Thought/Newtry
Assassins/Sondheim
The Book of Folly/Sexton
The Balcony/Genet
In the Zone/Murphy & White
Metamorphisis/Kafka
The Soul of the New Machine/Kidder
The Last Days of Socrates/Plato
Urban Renewal/Bellush & Hansknedt
Leviathian/Hobbes
Apocrypha/various
The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist/Breytenbach
The Executioners Song/Mailer
Warring Women of India/various
Seven Pillars of Wisdom/Lawrence
To Discover the True Self I Must Die/Master Dae Haeong
The Disuniting of America/Schlesinger
I and Thou/Buber
The Left Hand of Darkness/Le Guin
Foucault's Pendulum/Eco
A Prayer for Owen Meany/Irving
One Hundred Years of Solitude/Marquez
Alternatives to Violence/various
The Republic of Plato/Cornford
Popular Cultures and National Identity of the Dominican Republic I/Oritz
Popular Cultures and National Identity of the Dominican Republic II/Oritz
De Anima (on the Soul)/Aristole
The Colonial Heritage of Latin America/Stein
How to be an Alien/Mikes
Paula/Allende
The Vietnam War/Young
Tekstura: Writings on Russian New Media/Efimovais & Manovich
In the Time of Butterflies/Alvarez
Freedom from Fear/Suu Kyi
Oh Pray These Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well/Angelou