Arte Six

2005-06-02T03:15:00.000+08:00

BOOKS/WRITERS
Guest Author sessions
Next session: Kelley Armstrong
June 1-3, 2005

Guest Author sessions are hosted by novelist Marianne de Pierres.
Every month, settle in for a freewheeling Q & A session with some of your favorite authors.

Get valuable advice and encouragement from some of the best writers around; participating authors have generously agreed to take time away from their writing to answer questions, and share what worked for them. For free.

Need reliable writing advice? This is the place to find it. We'll save you a seat...

Welcome to the online Guest Author sessions -- just add coffee.
Class is now in session with: Kelley Armstrong: June 1-3, 2005
Go there: Torley's

Bio: Kelley Armstrong is the author of the Otherworld series, including "Bitten," "Haunted," "Stolen," and "Dime Store Magic."

Nota bene: Apart from the Guest Author sessions, Armstrong will be offline/unavailable, as she is on writing sabbatical from May 20-July 1, 2005, while she finishes book six in the series.

About the host: Marianne de Pierres is the author of the Parrish Plessis series. Her short stories have appeared in anthologies alongside works by Harlan Ellison, Gene Wolfe, Jack Williamson and Terry Dowling.

Find additional books/writers content in the next issue of "Arte Six."

2005-04-25T12:09:00.000+08:00

BOOKS/WRITERS
Writers Bloc series
“The Long March”
by Stephanie Elizondo Griest

Author’s Note: The past third of my life has been consumed by a single project: the researching, writing, and selling of my first book, “Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana.” This little essay tells the story behind the story.

Wanderlust prowls in my genes. My great-great uncle was a hobo who rode the rails; my father drummed his way around the globe with a US Navy Band.

But while I was desperate to escape my hometown in South Texas, I feared I never could -- largely because I couldn’t fathom how.

I mean, I could conceptualize buying a ticket and boarding a plane, but what would I do after it landed?

Then, my senior year in high school, a friend’s neighbor triumphantly returned home after a semester abroad and introduced me to the magical, mystical world of youth hostels, backpacks and "Lonely Planet" guides. She was only a few years older than me and -- unlike my role models -- female: if she could roam in foreign lands, surely I could, too. But which ones?

A few months later, I attended a journalism conference that featured a keynote by a rockstar CNN correspondent who’d covered the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

His stories of riots and revolution surprised me. When he finished, I ran up to the microphone and asked how I could be a foreign correspondent, just like him. He looked straight at me and said: “Learn Russian.”

So I did. Although I barely knew enough Spanish to talk to my abuelita, or grandmother, I enrolled in Russian at the University of Texas at Austin that fall and four years later jetted off to Moscow to establish my career as an overseas reporter.

Russia had other plans in store for me, however, and I ended up volunteering at a children’s shelter and falling in love with an ex-soldier.

I set out for China next, hoping to be censored and oppressed and slip political dissidents dumplings filled with subversive messages through the iron bars of their prison cells. Instead, I fought to run the Spice Girls on the entertainment page of the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party.

Those experiences gave me a deep fascination for nations that had experimented with communism in the 20th century.

Between 1996 and 2000, I visited a dozen, unrolling my sleeping bag in the Pamir Alay mountains of Kyrgyzstan and riding a pony across the Inner and Outer Mongolian steppes.

I drank café sua with Vietnamese businessmen in Ho Chi Minh City and cerveza with Cuban hip hop artists who rapped about revolution. I dated a Chinese college student who carted me around on his bicycle.

Mother Road changes each of us in profound ways. I found that as I traveled, the identities I had spent my entire college career cultivating began to peel off one by one: My vegetarianism drowned in a bowl of yak penis soup. I never felt less Chicana than I did in my mother’s homeland Mexico, where my Tex-Mex Spanish was barely intelligible to the people with whom I so badly wanted to connect.

Mother Road has also taught me a thing or two.

Hunger, for instance, was a vague concept until I saw it in a child’s eyes staring me down as I nibbled on a pork dumpling in Burma. I didn’t know desperation until I tripped over it in a crowded bakery, where comrades stole groceries out of one another’s shopping bags.

I found valor among the coffee farmers of Colombia who refused to cave in to guerillas’ demands to turn their crops into cocaine fields. And I experienced true forgiveness from the Vietnamese who so readily welcomed me, a traveler from former enemy turf.

Traveling built within me a foundation that allows me to stroll the world's passageways with confidence. It taught me the difference between being alone and being lonely, and made me ever selective of my company. In fact, Mother Road turned me into such a self-sustained, self-contained unit, I’m expecting to self-pollinate any day now.

I also came to understand the momentousness of the Mexican culture I left behind. All of those former Soviets who risked the gulag to distribute underground samizdat printed in their native language and Tibetans who braved sanctions by continuing to prostrate themselves before their gods had risked so much to maintain their culture.

I, meanwhile, had abandoned mine. They made me question why -- and, moreover, resolve to change it. My future travels will be to Spanish-speaking nations so that I can try to regain all that has been lost in my family’s migration to the United States.

Shown above: “Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana.”

However arduous my journey around the bloc, though, it paled in comparison to my navigation of the rocky road of publishing.

I officially began writing my book about my travels on January 8, 1999, in Austin, Texas -- three days after getting dumped by the love of my life (whom I'd moved back to America to be with!).

I was 24 years old, had zero contacts in the publishing industry, and hadn't a clue as to what I was getting myself into.

I did, however, have a lot of discipline, and soon adopted a writing schedule of 7 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. on weekdays, an hour or two of editing weekday evenings, and a four or five-hour block of writing on weekends.

By the time my contract with the Associated Press and apartment lease were up that August, I had completed several dozen travel vignettes and queried my first two rounds of agents.

All ten rejected me, but one gave me invaluable advice: narrow the terrain of the book so that it focused only on communist/post-communist nations, rather than everywhere I'd ever been. My first draft -- tentatively titled “Ramble On” -- had included some 20 countries.

So, I decided to give myself one calendar year to complete the book while living rent and utilities-free with my parents in Corpus Christi.

It was a tough year: having neither a car nor a "day job," I essentially locked myself into a very small bedroom and wrote, researched, and edited between 8 and 12 hours a day.

Yet it proved immensely productive: I completed a 450-page travelogue of 12 Communist nations called “Seeing Red,” wrote five versions of a book proposal, flew out to New York to meet with agents (and signed with a wonderful one), and read every book and Web site on publishing that I could find.

In June 2000, my agent sent the book proposal to 18 publishers. My parents and I took a roadtrip to Mexico and lit velas at every church we passed along the way.

By August, however, every last publisher had rejected it. The day I received my rejection letters in a thick manila envelope, I drank an entire bottle of wine and cried. Had I just wasted a whole year of my life?

Crushed, I did the best thing an aspiring travel writer could in such a situation: hit the road again.

Between August 2000 - May 2001, I drove some 45,000 miles across the nation in a beat-up Honda, documenting U.S. history for a Web site for K-12 students as a national correspondent for “The Odyssey.”

I took “Seeing Red” along for the ride and had the strange but wonderful experience of listening to my colleagues read it as we drove down the highways and byways of America. I also thought a great deal about why the proposal didn't sell, and how I could write one that would.

After that adventure ended, I spent three months performing major reconstructive surgery on my 103-page book proposal so that it read more like a memoir than a travelogue.

Then I moved to New York City with the vow that I would give myself one year to sell it -- or else, I'd go to Kinko's, crank out a bunch of copies to sell to family and friends, and move on.

Amazingly, Villard/Random House bought it in April 2002. My advance, however, was the equivalent of four months’ room and board -- and I still had a full year’s worth of work ahead of me.

And so, at age 27, after having successfully avoided it since high school, I buckled down and got a “day job” as the spokeswoman for a think tank on artistic and intellectual freedom and the founder/director of an anti-censorship youth activist organization.

I generally wrote between 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. to midnight on weekdays and logged in at least 15 hours on the weekend.

I also did a two-week residency at the beautiful Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, Illinois, where I wrote and edited 12 hours a day.

The book was christened “Around the Bloc” soon after I handed it in on May 1, 2003. It was published on March 9, 2004.

The first time I held my book in my hands, I literally dropped to my knees and cried.

Later that night, after consuming copious amounts of Soviet champagne on Brighton Beach with a friend, I experienced the most blissful inner peace of my life.

All in all, my publishing saga included nine versions of the book proposal, four complete manuscript rewrites, 33 agents and 31 publishers queried, and countless edits, revisions, split ends and nervous breakdowns over a four-year period.

I lost two good friends, most of my savings, and any concept of "free time" in the process. Through the madness, I learned a few lessons about book writing that I’d like to impart:

Deeply reflect upon your reasons for wanting to do this to yourself. Fame and fortune simply cannot be part of the equation -- and frankly, neither can publication. Those rewards are just not worth the struggle.

Rather, you must believe in the story you have to tell, and be fully convinced that it will change the perceptions and perspectives of others. Those are the only goals that can justify the immense amount of work involved in this grueling process.

If you decide to go for it, build a community. If you don’t know any writers, go to conferences or join a group and befriend some. Seek out mentors.

Whenever you read a wonderful book or article, send its author a note and, if they live close by, an invitation for coffee. Sell yourself and your ideas to editors, agents and publishers.

Follow up on every lead and jump on every opportunity. Always write heartfelt thank you letters to those who help you along the way.

Learn from your mistakes, revel in your successes, and above all -- enjoy the journey. You are a thinker, a storyteller, an artist, a writer: OWN IT!

And watch out for the Bloc Party nearest you. I performed excerpts of “Around the Bloc” in 25 cities in 2004 and many more are in store for this year. Please visit my online home at Around The Bloc, and I’ll see you on the road!

© Stephanie Elizondo Griest. Used with permission.
Shown/header image: Stephanie Elizondo Griest; Photo: Viktoriya Drukker

Bio: Stephanie Elizondo Griest has belly danced with Cuban rumba queens, polished Chinese propaganda, and mingled with the Russian mafiya. These and other adventures are the subject of her critically-acclaimed memoir “Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana.” (Villard/Random House, 2004).

Official site: Stephanie Elizondo Griest

About: The Writers Bloc series is an ongoing column featuring practical advice for writers. Nope, not a support group. Not until someone busts out the tequila, anyway...

Find additional books/writers content, in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

2005-04-24T05:29:00.000+08:00

BOOKS/WRITERS
Guest Author sessions
Next session: Richard Harland
May 4-9, 2005

Guest Author sessions are hosted by novelist Marianne de Pierres.
Every month, settle in for a freewheeling Q & A session with some of your favorite authors.

Get valuable advice and encouragement from some of the best writers around; participating authors have generously agreed to take time away from their writing to answer questions, and share what worked for them. For free.

Need reliable writing advice? This is the place to find it. We'll save you a seat...

Welcome to the online Guest Author sessions -- just add coffee.
Class is now in session with: Richard Harland: May 4-9, 2005
Go there: Torley's

Bio: Richard Harland is the author of the Ferren Trilogy ( "Ferren and the Angel," "Ferren and the White Doctor," "Ferren and the Invasion of Heaven"), the Eddon and Vail Series ("The Dark Edge," "Hidden From View"), and short fiction, including "The Bath" and "The Little Yellow Pill."

He recently won Australia's highest speculative fiction award, a Golden Aurealis, for his novel, "The Black Crusade."

About the host: Marianne de Pierres is the author of the Parrish Plessis series. Her short stories have appeared in anthologies alongside works by Harlan Ellison, Gene Wolfe, Jack Williamson and Terry Dowling.

Find additional books/writers content in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

Related Info: Guest Author sessions
DEC. 2004 Guest Author Margo Lanagan won an Aurealis for her otherworldly book of short stories, "Black Juice.")

2005-04-02T02:48:00.000+08:00

THEATRE/Athens (GR)
“Antigone: Worshipping the Dead”
Through April 19th

"So for me to meet this doom is trifling grief; but if I had
suffered my mother's son to lie in death an unburied corpse,
that would have grieved me; for this, I am not grieved."

Antigone, the daughter of Oedipus, king of Thebes in Greek legend, is the heroine of one of Sophocles' most powerful dramas.

According to legend, when Oedipus blinded himself, Antigone shared her father's exile near Athens.

After his death, she returned to Thebes and attempted, with her sister Ismene, to reconcile their quarrelling brothers Eteocles and Polynices.

Both brothers were killed in battle, but their uncle Creon, now king, forbade the burial of Polynices because he had betrayed Thebes.

When Antigone defied the edict of her uncle and secretly buried her brother, she was executed.

Shown above: Burial scene, "Antigone: Worshipping the Dead"

Sophocles used the plot and characters of this legend in his tragedy, “Antigone” (440 BC).

The plot revolves around Antigone's loyalty to her brother and her defiance of Creon's edict in order to obey a higher law of devotion.

As the play opens, her two brothers, Polynices and Eteocles, have both died as the result of Polynices' rebellion against Eteocles, the successor king of Thebes.

Creon, the new king, forbids Polynices' corpse to be buried. Out of respect to the dead, Antigone performs funeral rites despite the ban and is sentenced by Creon to be buried alive.

The play has often been interpreted as a justification for civil disobedience, and as a vindication of acts driven by the unwritten laws of conscience.

Related links:
Historical context: Antigone
Read the play: "Antigone"

Find it: Chytirio Theatre
44 Iera Odos (Keramikos)
Athens, Greece
Get info: +30-210-3412313, 3412822

Find out about dance/theatre events in other cities, in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

2005-03-31T12:21:00.000+08:00

MUSIC/Disc Series
Magdalen Hsu-Li, “Smashing the Ceiling”

My upcoming album is called “Smashing the Ceiling.” When I was writing the songs on this album, I felt I was experiencing a kind of quantum leap or personal gestalt.

There were so many breakthroughs that happened to me personally, emotionally, musically and spiritually.

"Smashing the Ceiling" was an incredible album to make. The songs felt completely inspired as I was writing them, as if I were a just a channel and they were coming from some higher source.

When I wrote the songs, I was trying to break through many personal ceilings in myself, things that most people would not know about unless they were exceptionally close to me. Later, as the album progressed, I began to feel pretty smashed up, myself.

This album has been the hardest thing I have ever made. It has been a rough time for me. I admit I'm glad to be moving into the performing end of things again.

What helps me create: Dreaming, sleeping. A lot of my best ideas come when I am awakened at 5am. I like to think it’s a time I can truly tap into the collective unconscious.

Sometimes it takes half an hour to complete a new song, sometimes months or years; in general, I like to try to wrap things up on a song within about a day or two.

SONGWRITERS: BORN OR CREATED?

Well, my first song ever was a nine-stanza adaptation of my own lyrics, and a schoolmate’s lyrics to the tune "Old Susannah". It was about a turkey that got botulism.

"Oh dear turkey
Oh why'd you have to die
Oh why'd this sickness come to you
I think I'm gonna cry"

We got a standing ovation from the class. I think I was like nine years old.

So, maybe songwriters are born. But what you do with your artistic inclination is up to you.

REFLECTIONS OF REAL LIFE

Fiction is the work of artists. Real life is something a lot of artists are really bad at! So, they create lives of fiction. But I try to keep all my songs based in personal experience or personal feeling. Songs are better if they’re connected to something real.

Personal favorites: Probably “Redefinition” or “Mary Magdalene,” because I have changed myself so many times in my life, and certainly I have lived out the stigma of the virgin/whore, the bad girl -- what woman hasn't? Mary Magdalene is getting a makeover nowadays, thanks to the book "The Da Vinci Code".

SMASHING THE CEILING

It's hard to say [what’s different about this new album, compared to "Fire" and "Evolution." It might be better if other people listen to it and decide that for themselves. I can say that the drummer is different for this album, and also that I think this is a much more inspired album than the last.

"I think [Mary Magdalene] is one of the most iconic, provocative, loved, hated, and mysterious women in history...I felt it was time to help redefine her story in a more positive light."
Photo: Karen Moskowitz

The songwriting is better; more universal and concise. The songs are shorter. I do think the politics are more deeply embedded; more hidden -- but still they are there to see, if you look deeper.

[Also], the personal takes precedence over the political in this album. I was writing where I was in my life, so it's an accurate portrayal, with hopes that the personal becomes universal.

PERFORMING ART: WHAT MATTERS TO ME

Depth and connection, giving to an audience of listeners, sometimes catharsis for myself. Writing songs is my way of giving to others.

Many performers are kind of broken people already; they would not have gotten into performing unless something was already lacking in themselves.

Maybe they are incapable of normal expressions of intimacy. Their art becomes their primary way of expressing intimacy of giving and receiving love, of being accepted by others.

Nothing gives me greater satisfaction than hearing someone say: "Your song meant so much to me because of _________," or "Your lyrics echoed my feelings, it really sounded like you were speaking for me and what I've been going through."

COMPASSION VS. COURAGE

I think they are equally important. We need more compassion in this world -- which, to me, equals understanding or putting yourself in someone else's shoes. We would have less wars if we had this.

On the other hand -- we need to be courageous, which, to me, equals righteous conviction. You must have an enormous amount of righteous conviction to be an artist, to be a human being, or how else can your ego take it?

It's pretty hard just being a human being, on an emotional level. We get all banged up and are expected to be perfect on top of that.

MUSIC, THE EXPERIENCE

Music just kicks ass over other art forms! The only other one that comes close is film, in regard to creating a large emotional connection to people.

I think that seeking a deeper connection to others is a theme that predominates in my music, also striving for spiritual or social consciousness. I also strive to create magic through my music.

I would like to think I write from all the different places I’ve lived: the Southeast, the Northeast, and the West Coast, that my music is a true amalgamation of country, folk, pop rock, jazz, even punk.

LIVING IN THE WORLD

Things that piss me off: People who are spiritually lazy; people who are hypocrites; people who think they are better than other people and go out of their way to make others feel bad just so they can feel better about themselves; egomaniacs, dishonest people who bend the rules and the truth so that they can serve themselves.

There is an incredible lack of integrity in most people, I find. Most of all, I really dislike people who project their own character flaws onto other people so that they don't have to look at themselves.

"I like the idea that music is a multi-dimensional medium. You can create soundscapes, much like a landscape in a painting..."
Photo: Karen Moskowitz

What I’d like to see change in the world: That all people would really try to self-examine and look at their own behavior to discover what it is that makes them think and act the way they do. And practice self-restraint and diplomacy.

I really think that we would have no wars if people just could look at themselves objectively and say: “I need to work on myself and make myself a better person every single day and be relentless with myself in terms of my own growth.”

CREATING VS. PERFORMING

I think performing is more difficult for me, because I am actually a really very shy person. Most of my friends would scoff at this, but it’s true.

INSIDE TRACKS

“Mary Magdalene”

She always looked a little
Deeper into things
She could find a heaven
In the hell that life can bring

Took a long walk down that
Lonely road to find herself again
Went a little crazy
From the places that she’d been

Well, I don’t know where she’s goin’
But I do know where she’s been...she’s
Comin’ on the scene
Just like Mary Magdalene

She had compassion
She was fearless and bold
A fallen angel
With a heart of gold

She had a faith
That no religion can give
A wisdom far beyond
The years that she’d lived

And I don’t know where she’s goin’
But I do know where she’s been...she’s
Comin’ on the scene
Just like Mary Magdalene

Several people have asked why I chose to write a song about one of the most controversial figures in biblical history.

“Mary Magdalene” is both an autobiographical song about my life, as well as a blend of various biblical mythologies about Mary Magdalene.

I think she is one of the most iconic, provocative, loved, hated, and mysterious women in history. Yet her story has been misinterpreted through the centuries, so I felt it was time to help redefine her story in a more positive light.

“Northern Light”

I come from inside a mountain
A mountain made of stone
From a river full of blood
With the truth the world has known…

What would you say
If this world was at an end
What would you do
If these hurts we could not mend

Where would you go
At the end of it all?

I’d wanna be with you
In the northern light...

An early morning song. I woke up hearing the chords progression in my head and stumbled naked to the piano (freezing) and got the basic song form down on tape.

It came out very quickly, and I was inspired by the fact that the song has a dimensional space in it that is very large and vast, like looking out a huge expanse of mountain and sky.

I like the idea that music is a multi-dimensional medium. You can create soundscapes, much like a landscape in a painting, and people can feel or visualize what you are seeing in your own mind.

This song comes from many strange places, some personal and others ethereal. I could feel a vaguely Canadian type of energy around its creation, also the Iraqi desert and the center of the war activity played a role in this song, too.

Maybe the northern lights are actually a dimensional doorway and when we see the lights maybe we are actually seeing a glimpse of what is on the other side of that doorway. I’d like to console myself that if we continue down our warmongering path, maybe I will move to Canada. Or another dimension.

“Take Me There”

There’s a place in greyspace
Where my soul was made
And when my time comes
May I be safely laid there

I was just playing around on my guitar not attempting to write anything, when the verse popped out and I really liked it...then the lyrics came out and after staring bewilderedly at them for a minute, I began to understand and remember what they were about.

I once had this amazing acupuncture treatment where when the needles were left in for a while, whereupon I went to a very strange grey space that I could see in my mind’s eye.

There was nothing there and there was everything there. I knew nothing and yet I knew everything; all the secrets and knowledge of understanding music were revealed to me and I knew that I carried them inside of me, that I had always carried them inside me.

I cried when I came out of the treatment and asked: “How did I forget?” My acupuncturist said: “You didn’t forget. You still have all that knowledge inside you. You just need to re-learn it again.”

Really, that's part of what this song is about. But it’s also about the awakening of passion in oneself, and going back to the place of your original nature; where you are just you, and where wholeness exists.

“Sweet Hereafter”

I get through each day
But these scars will never fade
It’s been years since you left
This crazy world, my love
And all of my heavens have
Crumbled to dust

I saw the words “sweet hereafter,” rolled the words around on my tongue a few times and liked the way they sounded. I thought “there’s a song in those words.”

Then, a month or so later, I awoke at 5am to music in my head. I stumbled naked to the piano and, in the dark, recorded what I heard in my head.

As I wrote the song, I began imagining a morbid fantasy about what my life would be like if I lost someone I loved who was very dear to me.

I cried a great deal while writing the song; while tracking it in the studio, I cried a lot, too. Imagination can make you crazy. Or maybe you’re just feeling what others around you are feeling, and it just comes through you and you are just this vessel for it.

“Change The World”

There’s no one else
Has all the magic that you have inside
Or knows the way
To share the gift that only you provide
If you wanna change the world
Then you gotta change yourself

And though you may feel
That everything you do is small
You can’t deny the ripple
That you send through it all

I first heard the melody and lyrics for the chorus of this song while I was driving in my car. Often, song ideas come to me when I am traveling or in a moving vehicle -- sometimes traveling helps your mind hitch a ride on to the universal highway.

I think that the song has a few meanings for me. One is that I have changed myself so many times in my life that I know it’s possible to do things like that. I’m not talking about little changes, but about big 360-degree turnarounds.

Also, I know what it is to feel very small and insignificant (which is most of the time), and then to run into someone I met like eight years ago who tells me they chose to walk down a particular path in their life because of a conversation we had, instead of taking another path.

QUICK HITS

Reads: Re-reading “Northanger Abbey” by Jane Austen

Downtime: Painting, hanging out with my friends, political and social activist work, running, walking, swimming, hangin’ with my honey.

The biggest myth about being a creative: That we live these incredibly romantic lives on the road, that the road is romantic. In truth, traveling in the U.S. can be an endless chain of hotels, stripmalls and Walmarts. The performances are fun, varied and exciting, but the traveling hardly varies from city to city in regards to what you see, visually.

If I wasn’t a singer/composer, I would definitely be: A trapeze artist!

Shown/header image: Magdalen Hsu-Li; Photo: Karen Moskowitz

Bio: Growing up in rural backwater Virginia, singer-songwriter and painter Magdalen Hsu-Li began playing classical piano at age eight, and started writing music at an early age.

Says Hsu-Li, "You just couldn't stop the songs from coming. I was also painting, and at the time it seemed (to everyone) that was my stronger gift. But music was always the way for me to get in touch with the deepest parts of my emotional myself and confront my inner fears."

Early on, Hsu-Li focused intensely on painting, graduating with a degree in fine art from Rhode Island School of Design, and set her sights toward an art career in New York City.

Soon after graduating, she had a vivid dream that abruptly changed the direction of her life. "I dreamt I was a musician living in Seattle, and I felt utterly compelled to follow its message." She followed her instincts and moved to Seattle to study voice and classical and jazz piano at Cornish College of the Arts.

Hsu-Li writes songs that visually portray what she sees with her painter's eye, addressing universal themes about love, loss, and relationships; identity, spirituality, and the search for consciousness. "I write completely from the heart," she says. "But I also write from the places I'm from (the Southeast, Northeast, and West Coast), and from my heritage."

Hsu-Li has sold over 8,000 records through her own independent label and formed a dedicated grassroots following through constant touring.

Her previous release, "Fire," was named one of the Best Top 12 DIY albums of 2002 by "Performing Songwriter." Hsu-Li holds a BFA in Painting from Rhode Island School of Design and has been awarded the Oxbow Fellowship, Talbot Rantoul Scholarship and Florence Leif Scholarship for Excellence In Painting.

Read additional music content, in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

2005-03-26T12:02:00.000+08:00

LIVES
Shinichi Momo Koga, artistic director, inkBoat

What most inspires me to create new works: Dissatisfaction. If I'm just happy about something, I'll usually just dance in that moment.

But what gets me into a studio to spend time and life laboring over? Something is broken and I want to spend the time understanding broken. How to turn broken into beautiful. Like a junk collector, finding the beauty in what people have thrown away, making something new of it.

If I go into nature, that is inspiring to me, it elevates me and gives me the strength to continue with the life struggle, but I do not put the woods on the stage. The woods make better woods than I can. No competition there.

NEW WORK: "AME TO AME/CANDY AND RAIN"

The meaning of "Ame to Ame" is "Candy and Rain." The title came first, like brainstorming on the seed that will create the work. The seed came first.

It's a play on words, in that the same sound (in the Japanese language), depending on the Kanji, will have a different meaning. So, the title is connected with desire and pain, two of our great engines for moving in this life.

But what is candy and what is rain?

Shown above: "Ame to Ame"
Photo: Beth Martin

If you take the rain as tears and the candy as the thing of desire, then a small circle is created. We want, can't have, then we cry.

While we cry, we cement our desire for the thing and then the spiral goes on and on down to some lower depth we don't even want to talk about.

But there's always singing in the rain.

I read things in my own way, but I expect that the audience, coming with filters different from mine, will see it differently.

BUTOH 101

Butoh is hard to explain. But the Japanese cultural references, the line between the grotesque and the beautiful -- these are certainly part of my vocabulary.

I take what is necessary for the moment. Well, sometimes I fall on habit. But I try to keep the form alive by constantly re-working it.

Shown above: "On the Boards"
Photo: Eric Koziol

Some people or companies are "classics" in the Butoh world. They have found their way and they keep working it.

Me, I keep getting lost and getting interested in cobblestones (or substitute any small detail which might come across the way of walking).

That's just how I am. For good or ill, I keep my hands in many pies.

COMPLETION: UNEXPECTED ELEMENTS

Most unexpected is how I am going to talk about a work when you put me on the spot. Maybe I'll talk about how the breakfast I ate changed the dance that day, or maybe about a passage from a book I read that keeps resurfacing in my mind. Or process. In the work itself, the surprise is going to really depend on each person.

Completing a work can take anywhere from 10 seconds to 10 years, depending on numerous conditions.

On average, a work that will show in the theatre will take between two to three months to be realized. I've created entire shows within a few days, but these are usually some kind of experiment.

If I stare at the ceiling long enough, something is bound to creep into my brain.

LIFE AS ART

I typically take from childhood events when I'm conceptualizing. But when the moments are coming, it could be anything, from how I drink my orange juice to waiting at the bus stop.

Real life usually has a stronger punch. But there are always exceptions.

The most [powerful] thing anyone ever has said to me was: "I love you."

Many small flashes went across my brain, small revelations others have shared with me, but none of them can hit me like that most overused phrase, spoken by the right person at the right time.

THEMES

Some of the themes that occur over and over in my work: Going back to childhood dreams, life emerging from death, looking for love, and strange crawling insects.

COLLABORATION

This is my constant. I've been working with different disciplines since the first day of thinking "I am an artist." They all feed me incredibly well and I'm growing fatter and fatter from the experience.

DANCE/LIFE

Like love, death and taxes, [dance is necessary]. Can't actually eliminate it.

So, we’re talking about what gets put up on stage? I've never been to Spain, but of course I hear the stories about how the dance is a major part of existence... more, anyway, than in the USA.

But people go dancing in clubs for what? Are they trying to express something?

Usually, they just want to remember that they are alive and have a good time. Or they're on the make. Then we come back to that whole desire and tears spiral.

Shown above: "Black Map"
Photo: Beth Martin

The most important thing a creative person needs, apart from funding or daily necessities: A life. If a "creative" only has some techniques, then it's totally boring.

What life experience has come to someone, and how is that digested and coming out again?

DIFFICULT WORKS

The hardest was the solo, "Tasting an Ocean." Just being by myself, making a solo, was more difficult than assembling a dozen people for a show. I had no mirror. It was totally disturbing. The only things that ever come easy are improvisations.

SPEAKING WITHOUT WORDS

On what’s more most important: technical proficiency or emotional resonance: Emotional resonance. The rest is just architecture.

Shown above: "Ame to Ame"
Photo: Beth Martin

On whether dance/body movement is a language:
Ever been punched? Ever been kissed? More direct than words, I'd say.

DANCERS: BORN OR CREATED?

Both. A more finely-tuned dancer or choreographer is created through discipline.

LIFE, THE PUZZLE

Something that genuinely puzzles me: Good question. Yes, plenty, but I can't come to one single thing at the moment. I mean, life puzzles me.

Nothing frustrates me like myself. The world could be hell outside, but in the end, how do I deal with it? When I come short of my own self-expectation, then bingo: frustration.

On whether writer’s block exists: Absolutely. Go back to "frustration."

UNDER THE INFLUENCE

In music, I’m most influenced these days by traditional musicians -- really old style shamisen or shakuhachi or tabla or and or and or...

And then there are people I work with, like "Sleepytime Gorilla Museum" or "Faun Fables" or Sheila or Carla or Nils doing independent stuff. And I've never disliked a Tom Waits record.

Shown above:"Onion"

Recently I've been reading things like Anne Carson or Murakami or Gurjieff. But there's so much good stuff out there, it's hard to say who’s my favorite.

I saw the film "The Cost of Living" by DV8 recently. I was totally jealous. It was great.

IN PASSING...

The most interesting stranger I’ve ever met: Mase Shooichi. I met then spent some days with him in Kyoto, forming what seemed like a strong friendship.

Then one day he cut all ties and disappeared. Now a stranger again. Hopefully to meet again. He inspired me to make “Black Map” (to be performed in SF in May; a 30-minute version, anyway).

QUICK HITS

Reads: Just finished "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" by Murakami and just opened "A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters" by Julian Barnes.

Discs: Right this second, I'm listening to the song "Viel Glück Im Privatleben!" by Zak May and Shiva. Russians living in Berlin.

Downtime: Photography. Playing shakuhachi (badly).

On the biggest myth about being a creative: The biggest myth is "How wonderful it is that you get to express yourself!"

If I wasn’t a dancer/choreographer, I would definitely be: "Farmer" is next on my list. Been a photographer, cook, multimedia producer (or slave may be a better term) and coffee maker.

What I wish someone had told me when I first started out: Get real.

Favorite quote: "Am I shoveling sand to live, or living to shovel sand?" by Kobo Abe. So, what's the point of our struggles, anyway?

Interesting fact that nobody knows about me yet: Interesting? What would someone be interested in, exactly? The more hidden, the more interesting. Best is whatever I've kept hidden from myself. Hmmm, have to get back to you on that...

Life is:
Life is life is life is life is life.

Artist bio: Shinichi Momo Koga (Artistic Director/Performer, inkBoat). Originally a photographer, filmmaker and theater actor and director, Koga became primarily known as a Butoh dancer after 1991 when he began dancing under Hiroko and Koichi Tamano (primary dancers in Tatsumi Hijikata’s company). In 1994, he created the group Uro Teatr Koku with Alenka Mullin Koga. This group became inkBoat in 1998.

Koga's productions, both solo and ensemble, have been experienced since 1988 throughout the U.S., Europe and Japan.

Restructuring dance, theater and cinema forms, he extracts the vital essence of each to create a sharper reality. As a teacher, performer, and director, Koga inhabits the shadow self and swims the collision between modern life and primal being. He challenges himself and others to attain balances between chaos and serenity, to be a raging storm in blue skies and a breath of calm in the midst of turbulence.

Koga collaborates consistently with diverse performance artists such as Yumiko Yoshioka and TEN PEN CHii (Germany: 1996-2001), Do Theatre (Russia: 1997-present), Shadowlight Theatre (USA: 1993-1997) and the group adapt in Berlin (co-founded by Koga in 2001) with Minako Seki, Sten Rudstøm, Yuko Kaseki and Yael Karavan).

Upcoming tour dates: "Ame to Ame" at Dock 11, Berlin (Kastanienallee 79, Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg, Tel: 030-448-12-22) on March 10 - 13, 15 – 19, and "Black Map" at Dance Mission on May 26, 28, 29 as part of the SF International Arts Festival.

Visit official site: inkBoat

Read interviews with other creative artists, in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

2005-03-26T11:42:00.000+08:00

BOOKS/WRITERS
The Agent series
Featured columnist: Jenny Bent
“First Year Out: On the Shelves”

Getting published for the first times is at turns exhilarating, frightening, exciting, nerve-wracking, and sometimes extremely disappointing.

Remember the old saying, "be careful what you wish for?" Having your book published offers much potential for happiness, but also carries the possibility of a fair amount of disappointment.

There can be nothing so exciting for a writer as holding your finished book in your hands for the first time. And while there is no way to comprehend the experience of being published before the actual event, it can helpful to know a little bit about what you're getting into as soon as you get that momentous call from your agent: "We have an offer!"

The following questions and answers are my attempt to prepare you for the joys and the sorrows of being published.

Hopefully, forewarned will become forearmed, and you'll be able to better enjoy the experience if you're prepared for some of the potential pitfalls. Reasonable expectations are the key to being happily published for the first time.

Q: I went to my neighborhood bookstore today and they didn't have my book. Isn't that the publisher's fault?

A: Remember that the publisher ultimately has no control over who does or does not choose to stock your book.

Their sales rep has pitched your book, but if the store chooses not to order it, there isn't really anything they can do.

If you find a store that doesn't carry your book, don't call your editor. Instead, ask to meet the store's manager.

Tell him or her that you are a local author and show him a copy of your book or a flyer that you have made up with reviews, etc.

Ask him or her politely to consider carrying it. Then, if you want to be really cunning, have one or two of your friends go in the next day and ask for it. Chances are, they will reconsider their decision.

Also, keep in mind that the publisher doesn't control how many copies of your book a bookstore will order.

If you see only one or two of your books on the shelf, keep in mind that this isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's far better to have the bookstore sell out and re-order more books, than to have too many and have to send them back.

No matter how many books the store is carrying, remember to offer to sign stock. Hopefully, this will get you more prominent placement in the store, if you don't have it already.

Q: Why hasn't the publisher released a paperback edition of my book?

A: It means that either they tried to sell paperback rights to another house and no one wanted to buy them, or that hardcover sales have been too low to justify the publisher printing their own paperback edition.

Another possible reason is that sometimes if a hardcover book is selling phenomenally well, the publisher waits longer than is traditional (usually about a year) to release the paperback.

The idea is if readers are still willing to pay $23.95 for your book, why give them the opportunity to get it at a much lower price?

Bio: Jenny Bent has ten years of experience working in the publishing industry. She is currently a literary agent with the firm of Trident Media Group, LLC in New York City. Prior to becoming an agent, she worked at "Rolling Stone." She was also an editor at Cader Books, where she was responsible for books on pop culture.

NB: Lit agent Jenny Bent is providing this information as a courtesy to readers. She is not accepting new work. Unsolicited materials will not be read or returned.

About this series: The Agent is an ongoing series of columns or Q/A sessions with literary agents, providing practical advice for writers.

Find additional books/writers content, in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

2005-03-22T12:17:00.000+08:00

ART/Woodstock
“Foreign Affair”
Through March 27th

“When I consider...the small space I occupy, which I see swallowed up in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I know nothing and which know nothing of me, I take fright and am amazed to see myself here, rather than there: there is no reason for me to be here rather than there; now, rather than then. Who put me here?”
- Pascal, “Pensées”

What motivates us to leave home is as diverse as what we encounter along the journey, but dreams of far away lands can often begin with a photograph. The relationship between photography and travel goes as far back as their inceptions.

Expeditions to visually record the far corners of the earth were planned as soon as the development of photography was announced.

Photographers such as Francis Frith, William Henry Jackson, and Timothy H. O’Sullivan (who had a darkroom on a boat) showed us the earliest ‘real’ images of the then unseen and undiscovered wonders of the world.

Soon followed two firsts which simultaneously opened the world to us further. In the 1880s, while George Eastman invented roll film and the box camera, the combustion engine was ignited, rendering photography and global travel accessible to middle class and working class families.

Seeing and portraying the world firsthand was no longer reserved for the privileged elite. Tourists were photographing the great pyramids as early as 1890.

Today, photographs continue to fuel the tourism industry, but photography and travel have the ability to lead us far beyond glossy brochures.

Departing from the tourist snapshot used to evidence “being there” or to consume place, the artists assembled in “Foreign Affair” focus the camera on the experience of the foreign, exploring our multifaceted relationships to travel, exploration, and dislocation.

From expectations of the new to the confrontation of realities, from the rapture of release in a new environment to the anxiety of estrangement, the work presents a dialogue about transience, elation, loss, and discovery in a world where boundaries are ever shifting.

Shown above: "Girl in the Bus" (1996)
Traveller series I
Cibachrome
Courtesy: White Cube
Tom Hunter

Many travel seeking beauty with the innocence and optimism that there is a better place beyond the one they call home, where a release from the rhythms of our daily routine will allow our problems to melt away.

One glance at that photograph of a swaying palm tree on a beach is all one may need to get packing, but rarely do our actual experiences meet the expectations which a carefully composed, distilled photograph can inspire.

Scott Whittle’s colorful images of sightseers in unfamiliar landscapes mine the gap between our fantasy of exotic travel and its less-than-ideal reality.

We see the sites but also the obligatory omni-present vacationers who have become part of the view.

What is refreshing about Whittle’s images is that in fully encompassing the tourist into their temporal destinies, we move beyond the package tourist mentality and see people interacting with the sublime landscapes that envelop them.

How do we process and understand a new place where the fixed boundaries of the familiar collapse? Language, food, colors, and sounds become unknown fragments overwhelming the senses, while our mind valiantly attempts to create cohesive connections.

Shown above: Untitled, "Travel Diaries" (2001-2002)
Chromogenic, B/W prints
Fred Cray
Courtesy: Janet Borden, Inc.

Fred Cray’s dense travel diary montages evoke a virtual experience of the dizzying layers that can disorient the traveler upon arrival in a new place.

With no memories or previous landmarks, one may find this exhilarating, terrifying, or both.

Shown above: "Red" (2002)
13x17x6"
Mixed media (photograph with embedded stitches, top, yellow thread, red silk)
Priya Kambli

In contrast to the dislocating feeling of estrangement in Cray's work, Priya Kambli’s “Suitcase” series inverts displacement by carrying the idea of home abroad.

Inspired by the experience of cramming her belongings into one suitcase when she emigrated to the U.S. from India in 1993, Kambli’s suitcases remind us of the self we carry within no matter the geographic location and the memories we allow to escort us as loyal companions through transformation.

Brent Phelp’s sweeping landscapes paired with original writings from Lewis and Clark’s journal literally carries the viewer on a fascinating historical voyage, to a time when the world was still “new” and yet to be explored.

In this remake, the images inform our understanding of history and move us into the mindset of explorers seeing these sights for the first time.

Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz’s collaborative images of snowglobes containing figures in transit. In this series of photographs, Martin and Muñoz subvert the cheerful conventions of the snowglobe with dark ruminations.

The typical snowglobe winter wonderlands are supplanted by desolate and sometimes sinister snowscapes. Forests of dead trees are traversed by solitary figures laden with suitcases.

Shown above: "Traveler XXXIII" (2003)
C-print on plexiglass
Paloma Muñoz, Walter Martin
Courtesy P.P.O.W., NYC.

The characters seem dressed for a more civilized sort of commute, their business attire ill suited for wading through deep snow and biting cold. It seems as if they were collectively caught off guard by some series of events and forced from their familiar habitat into a harsh and premature exile.

Ultimately it is left to the viewer to speculate about possible narratives. These scenes encased in glass and water each represent an attempt to in some way encapsulate, isolate, and illuminate a certain form of human dread associated with the unexpected and the obvious but often ignored inevitabilities of mortality.

In a sense, the figures in the globes become stand-ins for us; their nomadic isolation a metaphor for our own sense of unknown origins and unknowable destinations.

Departing from the idea of the destination altogether, the artists have framed the journey itself: solitary commuters, wanderers, and the lost attempt to find their way amidst the anxious territory of the unknown and the uncertainty of what lies ahead.

Shown above: "Detail 3," from "The Navigation Project" (1996-2005)
Archival inkjet print
20x20 inches
Vicki Ragan

In Vicki Ragan's "The Navigation Project," the artist explores travel, the study of space, and the methods man uses to find his way, both physically and spiritually.

Shown above: "Woman Reading a Possession Order" (1997)
Life and Death in Hackney series
Cibachrome
Courtesy: White Cube
Tom Hunter

Tom Hunter’s "Traveller" series was created over a two-year jaunt through Europe in a double-decker bus. His detailed portraits of the domestic environments of a contemporary nomadic group express his concern with the political issues surrounding the rights of squatters, ravers, travellers and other people and communities viewed as outsiders.

Not rooted by the geographical and cultural conventions of traditional community, these modern-day gypsies are viewed as ‘others’ based on their lifestyle choices and priorities that keep them on the move.

In comparison, Soon-Mi Yoo’s video, “Isahn,” brings to light the extreme challenges faced by people and cultures forced into exile due to political unrest and conflict.

Exploring issues of loss and alienation, Yoo recreates the experience of displaced North Koreans looking through tourist stereoscopes near the North/South Korean borders as they view images of a country they can no longer return home to.

Crossing borders to make a new beginning, they must negotiate a conflicting state of non-belonging and learn to assimilate the new and simultaneously preserve their uprooted culture while coping with the pain of separation.

Finally, what has often propelled us forward into uncharted terrain is the quest for knowledge and the idea that enlightenment could be within our reach. Vicki Ragan’s iconic imagery of astronomical charts, moonscapes, and explorers awakens longing, wanderlust, and the elation of discovery.

A transient position affords us a unique perspective and can expand our understanding of how we know the world. The artists in “Foreign Affair” reveal that photography and travel share the ability to shift the frontiers of perception, empowering us to see beyond the confines of the world as we know it.

“Should the chosen guide be nothing more
than a wandering cloud, I cannot lose my way.”
– Wordsworth

(Via exhibit curator Kate Menconeri, 2005)

Stories: Artist commentaries on the works in “Foreign Affair”

“Isahn”/Soon-Mi Yoon: In October 5, 2001, I heard TV news that Mr. Chung, an 82-year-old man originally from North Korea, killed himself after failing to get into the lottery to take part in the family reunion and meet with his family in North Korea.

The split screen in “Isahn” is from the stereoscopes at Imjingak, which is located 30 kilometers from Seoul and borders North Korea.

Tourists and displaced North Koreans can go and drop a few coins in the stereoscopes to look at the government sanctioned photographs of North Korea.

The images from the stereoscopes are mixed with contemporary footage (shot in 1999) of Burmese refugee camps around Mae Sot, Thailand, in which inhabitants are forced to relocate to yet another anonymous site.

For those who are not allowed to go back home, the sights of exile are just ersatz landscapes. Sometimes they may offer consolation. Often times they work as hindrance. Many would say, “When I close my eyes, I can still see my hometown so vividly”.

“Travel Diaries”/Fred Cray: This work is about literal and metaphorical travel, simultaneity and the accumulation of meanings. Controlled chance is an element in gathering the images, but in this series I use a much higher percent of what I photographed than in any other work I do.

The work reflects the difficulty of thinking and of accumulating thoughts to form a coherent whole. Most of all, the work is about looking and seeing in a visually loaded world.

“Red”/Priya Kambli: My work has constantly dealt with issues of journey and memory. I integrate traditional photography with digital media as well as elements of mixed media and installation.

In an essay of [my] work, one critic notes that "The particulars of (these pieces) are all simply props on a stage where our own memories must take on the role of actors. We are asked to imagine first the millions who set forth in this world leaving their homes and their families or bearing them with them. But we are moved by stages to consider our own losses, the bridges we have crossed, and the ones we burned behind us as we went."

When I moved to America in 1993, I crammed 18 years of my life into one suitcase. It weighed approximately 45 kg. It wasn't until recently that I started thinking about the objects I chose to bring and their selection process.

The objects were chosen for their magnetic ability of attracting and repelling memories.

The status of these chosen objects increased substantially to the level of sacred relics for having being touched or given by a loved one, etc. These souvenirs contain within them the ability to vividly conjure memories of the past.

Distilling ones life to fit the finite parameters of a suitcase meant editing -- the inevitability of certain memories being discarded while others attain a new significance.

It further implied simplification of ones past, untangling the chaotic web so that a clear succinct pattern emerged.

In the “Suitcases” series, I am interested in juxtaposing snippets of information that interact with each other to convey an open ended narration.

The essence of the “Suitcases” series is the dialogue created by pairing of fragments. The items contained within the suitcases are sticky with associations and often pertain to travel. Each suitcase deals with a separate theme and corresponds to a specific hue.

Color is the origin of each piece, giving each suitcase its individual personality and focus by dictating the objects it contains and their relationships. Even though the suitcases are self-contained and conceived to function independently, they all share many physical and conceptual characteristics.

"Traveller" series/Tom Hunter: The series was taken over a two-year period, in which time I was living and traveling in a double decker bus I had bought with a friend. We traveled in Europe from Portugal to the Czech Republic.

At this time, there was an underground techno sound system movement traveling in Europe putting on free parties and festivals. The underground dance culture, which started in the UK in the late eighties, following on from the US house music scene, became threatening to the British establishment, as nearly all the music events raves were held outside the established club culture.

Finally, the British government decided to outlaw such events, however small, and the lifestyles of groups of squatters and travelers. Once the law came into effect in 1994, large groups of travellers moved to Europe to continue their lifestyle and promote their culture.

The pictures I took during this period are of my friends and fellow travelers, in different parts of Europe as they traveled between festivals and raves.

The spaces are their homes, vehicles recycled into new traveling homes, old lorries, buses, and coaches. They were meant to be an antidote to the very negative images that were being published by the press, which were nearly always in black and white and very grainy, making the subjects into victims of society or criminals and other than the viewer.

My pictures are very colorful and try to show the humanity and the dignity of the subjects. By working with a large format camera and tripod, my subjects become collaborators in the artistic process. They had a say in the way they were viewed by the outside world, hopefully changing the way they are perceived in society.

"The Navigation Project"/Vicki Ragan: These images are photo collages assembled from maps, charts, NASA images, details of historic aircraft, and silhouettes of human figures.

Travel, the study of space, and the methods man uses to find his way, both physically and spiritually, are among the themes explored.

Although the images in this exhibition are printed digitally, they were created the old-fashioned way, with a pair of scissors. The figures were cut out of bits of map, placed on another image, and re-photographed. Each final image is derived from a single black-and-white negative.

Shown/header image: Detail, “Isahn” (2004)
Single channel video DVD
16min30sec
Soon-Mi Yoon

Find it: The Center for Photography at Woodstock
59 Tinker Street
Woodstock, NY 12498
Get info: (845) 679-9957

Find art events in other cities, in the FEB/MAR 2005 of "Arte Six."

2005-03-21T12:00:00.000+08:00

ART/NYC
“Body Proxy”
+ “Echoplex”
Through March 26th

A motorcycle’s revving engine roars like an animal, louder and louder as visitors approach.

A year’s worth of disposable contact lenses worn by one person suggest an archive of what was seen during the year.

A comfortable sofa, saturated with pheromones. The hair of the artist, in a single, knotted strand over 100 km long, wound around a Teflon spool...

The body, central to the work of Norma Jeane, is represented by proxy: never present but always hinted at. Norma Jeane’s work proposes a reading of the body as an entity becoming abstract.

“Body Proxy” reveals the power, energy and will of the body. As its title indicates, the exhibition presents works that stand in as authorized representatives for the body. However, there are no bodies to be seen in the exhibition except those of the visitors.

Shown above: “Potlach 10.1/I Am That Which Must Ever Surpass Itself” (2003/2005)
Hair, Teflon, 13.5 x 6 cm
Norma Jeane

The visitor is central to the activation of the main work in the show, “RPM,” which consists of a grey Yamaha YZF-R1, 998 cc, linked to high-tech sensors. The powerful engine remains off, but as visitors approach, the motorcycle revs, roaring like an animal, in a deafening noise.

Only when the viewer withdraws does the motorbike return to a lower gear, and off again, while powerful fans try to cool it down. Waste of energy, excess, and the erotic pair of repulsion and attraction form essential elements in this work.

The Swiss Institute will also house “Echoplex,” special project by Mika Tajima: a site-specific installation merging sculpture, sound and architectural space.

The work is composed of reflective plexi, laser-cut with repeating patterns, and installed in modular panels around a rough perimeter of the library so as to create a destabilizing environment; one where sound, sight and architecture interchange.

Tajima invites the viewer to interact with reflections and reverberations comprised of a two-dimensional minimalist pattern and simple serialist sounds.

The mirrored space propagates the pattern, which becomes dense, repetitive and then broken, layered, and degrades like an echo. The reflective surfaces begin to shatter the images and break down perception.

Ultimately, the viewer may see an echo or hear a reflection: the diverse products of sound and vision traded freely.

The title of the work "Echoplex" comes from the name of an analog effect box for music, which delays, echoes and loops sounds.

In order to achieve a similar kind of effect in her installation, combining loops of both sound and space, Tajima researched Robert Smithson’s work focusing on his use of mirrors and Dan Graham’s insights on the integration of sound and architecture.

Tajima is interested in perverting the tropes of pure minimalism to create works that allow her audience to slip between comfort and discomfort, harmony and discord. Tajima works and lives in Brooklyn, New York. She is a central member of the New Humans, who will be playing during the inaugural events at the new Walker Art Center. This is her first solo project in New York.

Shown/header image: "Echoplex" installation
Mika Tajima

Find it: The Swiss Institute
495 Broadway
3rd Floor
New York NY 10012
Get there: N/R to Prince St./6 to Spring St.
Get info: (212) 925-2035

Find out about art events in other cities, in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

2005-03-21T11:58:00.000+08:00

ART/NYC
“In Word Only” (Basquiat retrospective)
Feb. 15-Mar. 26

The “In Word Only” exhibition of the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat presents paintings, drawings, and notebooks that feature only Basquiat’s written words.

The artist was well known for large, colorful works dense with gesture, collage, figures, symbols and words, but this exhibition will be the first to exclusively feature Basquiat’s unique and significant use of language.

The exhibition includes works from the artist’s entire career, dating from 1979 to 1988 (the year of his death).

For Jean-Michel Basquiat, the meaning of a word was not necessarily relevant to its usage; he employed words as abstract objects that can be seen as configurations of straight and curved lines that come together to form a visual pattern.

The artist also employed words and phrases that are loaded with meaning and reference, in particular those words related to racism, black history, and black musicians and athletes.

Basquiat’s word paintings and drawings often appear to be a secret, coded language that the artist devised and left for the viewer to attempt to decipher.

He readily acknowledged his manipulation of words, stating: “I cross out words so you will see them more; the fact that they are obscured makes you want to read them.”

However, Basquiat’s casual, random manner is deceptive, because on closer inspection his choice of words often coalesce into intelligent, meaningful, and cohesive thoughts and subjects.

The majority of the works in “In Word Only” have never been exhibited or published. The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat has generously lent a number of important paintings and drawings, in addition to several of the artist’s private notebooks.

Basquiat continually wrote and drew in notebooks, and used them as a laboratory for experimentation and personal expression. These rare notebooks offer a rare and fascinating insight into Basquiat’s aesthetic and creative process. Additional works have been borrowed from private collections in the United States and Europe.

“In Word Only” coincides with two major retrospective exhibitions of Basquiat’s work at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, March 11-June 5, 2005; and the Museo d’Arte Moderna, Lugano, Switzerland, March 19-June 19, 2005.

Find it: Cheim & Read
427 West 25th St.
New York, NY 10001
Get info: (212) 242-7727

Find out about art events in other cities, in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

Related booklist: "Jean Michel Basquiat," "Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art," "Widow Basquiat," "Basquiat"; On film: "Downtown 81," "Basquiat".

2005-03-21T11:44:00.000+08:00

DANCE/Insight
Cherie Carson, “Trikona”

My love of movement is my inspiration to create performance works. I'm also inspired by the act of creation itself.

Sharing my ideas through my art and how that reaches people in a new ways is powerfully exciting to me.

To me, dance is any gesture made with intent and style. I look to connect gestures in a meaningful way taking dance beyond the original impulse.

BEHIND THE SCENES

I get a germ of an idea that I want to explore. I may spend months tossing around thoughts, interviewing people, researching my topic, and developing movements that capture the kernels of truth that I see.

Then I pick a physical place and design costumes and props to breathe life into what will finally develop into a finished performance piece.

Often, I find that the best place to fully realize a performance work is in a non-traditional space, such as a planetarium, a banyan tree, a reflection pool, sculpture gardens, a lake, or a warehouse.

Shown above: Rehearsals, "Trikona"

At other times, the energy of a space attracts me and a dance is born out of my partnership with the nature or architecture of the space.

The creation of a new work can vary from three rehearsals to three years. I created a wonderful duet, “Pregnant Pause,” in three rehearsals. The ideas and choreography just poured out.

On the other hand, “Water Dreams” took over three years from start to finish. It was a multimedia site-specific work created in phases.

For instance, the first phase was to create underwater choreography for video, edit the footage into a 25-minute piece, then go back into rehearsals to create the site-specific performance that incorporated the video.

My newest aerial work, “Trikona,” is taking about three months to complete.

ON PAPER

I often improvise to the idea using everything but the music. I sometimes write to release the images and do research to gain greater depth.

DANCERS: BORN OR CREATED?

Both. One can be born creative, but it takes perseverance, time and work to grow into one’s art form.

PIECES OF ME

Several works have been created from my life. All of my works contain pieces of me, whether in abstract form or from a real-life experience.

As I see it, there is a thin line between fiction and real life, because we create our own reality. What is more important is that the story we tell through our art transcends its specific details and enables the audience to relate in a meaningful way.

LIFE LESSONS

The most [powerful] thing anyone ever said to me was: That everything has consciousness. Nothing in my upbringing had ever taught me that, and when I looked at my surroundings, I had a very different sensation and could no longer kill bugs.

SITE-SPECIFIC WORKS 101

Site-specific works are events/performances created for a particular place, and are only considered unusual because western art has confined the creative experience to even more specific places, such as theaters, galleries and museums.

Site-specific work brings art out into public places, where the experience is unexpected. Art can be, and is, anywhere and everywhere.

NEW WORK: "TRIKONA"

"Trikona" is a new dance piece to be performed by three dancers suspended on three ropes. It is based on the structure of a yantra, which is a geometric design composed of basic primal shapes. These shapes are psychological symbols corresponding to inner states of human consciousness.

At the basis of yantra operation is something called "shape energy" or "form energy." The idea is that every shape emits a very specific frequency and energy pattern.

Shown above: Rehearsals, "Trikona"

A yantra represents a particular configuration whose power increases in proportion to the abstraction and precision of the diagram. A yantra gradually grows away from its center, in stages, until its expansion is complete.

The structure of "Trikona" will be based on triangles and circles. This new work as an aerial dance that bridges body and spirit, creating a sense of expansion and freedom. (Premiere at 1PM, Feb. 13th, at Motivity Center, 8th and Dwight Way, Berkeley, CA, as part of a benefit for the National Cervical Cancer Coalition).

I am using this architecture of enlightenment as the basis for "Trikona," combining dance with the aerial apparatus (dynamic rope) and yoga movements and mudras.

I'm interested in pushing the limits of taking yoga/meditation into a moving performance in the air.

The Sanskrit word 'yantra' derives from the root 'yam' meaning to sustain, or hold.

I'm interested in the visual aspect of moving these elementary shapes in a direct and bold way in order to represent the sustainment of enlightenment. Something as small as a miniature can create a sense of expansiveness.

"Trikona" is an aerial dance that establishes and then follows a focal point that is a window into the absolute.

I see it as an expression of life continuing and unceasing, and also as the essence of artistic creation.

THEMES

Consciously or unconsciously, strong women are often present in my work.

ROADBLOCKS

I don’t consider what I get as a creative block, more like losing the thread. I drive. I take a shower. I leave it alone for a couple of weeks.

INFLUENCES

Visual artists, DV8 Company, journaling.

EMOTION VS. TECHNIQUE

Both are necessary, but in choosing one --emotional resonance wins, hands down! I need to see a dancer integrate the experience, not have a veneer of emotion covering technique.

Do I consider dance to be a language, also?: YES.

QUICK HITS

Reads: "The Architecture and Design of Man and Woman"

Downtime: I love teaching yoga and meditation. I am starting a new corporation, the International Wholistic Institute, to support healing and awareness through several diverse programs.

If I wasn't a dancer/choreographer, I'd definitely be: A yoga teacher. I’ve been teaching yoga for 12 years and find it has changed my approach to dance and choreography. I am much more centered and balanced.

What I wish someone had told me when I first started out: Success is meaningful when it comes from within.

Favorite quote: From Soen Nakagawa Roshi: "When one is climbing Mount Fuji, one has no view of it." -- it keeps me focused.

Artist bio: Originally from Texas, Cherie Carson currently resides in Oakland, CA. She has choreographed performances in a planetarium, on stilts, on roller blades, in sculpture gardens, swimming pools and on a bungee cord hanging from a banyan tree.

Her work has been presented throughout the U.S. and twice on the PBS mini series "Razor’s Edge Cafe." Carson has choreographed works for Room to Move Dance, Several Dancers Core, Moving in the Spirit Dance, and Dance Force.

Her underwater dance video, “Water Dreams,” was a finalist for the Robert Bennett Award at the American Film and Video Festival in LA. She is currently on staff with the International Wholistic Institute.

Visit official site: Cherie Carson

Read additional dance/theatre content, in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six." [Orig. "Arte Six" post date: Feb. 7]

2005-03-20T11:38:00.000+08:00

LIFE
Naked brunch

A group of nicely-dressed diners arrived at a NYC restaurant on a cold February night and stripped off their coats, hats, gloves and scarves.

Then they kept on going. Skirts, shirts, pants, underwear and stockings all ended up stashed in bags by the bar as the dinner party got naked for their monthly "Clothing Optional Dinner."

"It's exciting to be in a restaurant nude," said George Keyes, a retired English teacher. Nude yes, but not unadorned. Keyes, a lifelong nudist, wore a necklace, earrings, and white sneakers.

The dinner was started by a group of New York nudists who wanted something a bit more posh than wilderness getaways and beach resorts.
[Source: Reuters]

LIFE
Strip club art

Meanwhile, back in Idaho...

A strip club in Boise, Idaho has found an artful way to prance past a city law that prohibits full nudity. On what it calls Art Club Nights, the Erotic City strip club charges customers $15 -- for a sketch pad and pencil.

In 2001 the Boise City Council passed an ordinance banning total nudity in public unless it had "serious artistic merit" -- an exemption meant to apply to plays, dance performances and art classes.

Erotic City owner Chris Teague said he got the idea when a customer asked if he could get in for free to sketch the dancers.

Realizing that "art classes" were exempt from the law, Teague decided to bill Mondays and Tuesdays as art nights. "We have a lot of people drawing some very good pictures," he says. Er, yes, but is it art?
[Source: Reuters]

NB: The header image is from an upcoming exhibit by Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Gagosian Gallery, London. But the question still stands...

Shown/header image: "Hannah," (2004)
Fuji Crystal Archive print mounted on Dibond
60 x 39-13/16 ins.
Ed. of 8
Philip-Lorca diCorcia

Read more real-life odd news, in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

2005-03-17T14:43:00.000+08:00

ART/LA
“Beauty in the Breakdown”
Through March 19th

“Beauty in the Breakdown” is the debut Los Angeles solo exhibit by Chicago-based artist Laura Mosquera.

Laura Mosquera’s work is grounded in contemporary human experiences and reflections of everyday life. Her work explores the representation of reality and the perception of what is real and its construction using non-linear narrative.

Her tableaus are cinematic depictions of seemingly inconsequential moments describing everyday narratives. While there is no linear narrative, there is enough information to suggest a mood to the viewer.

Mosquera’s drawings and paintings are constructed with the use of snapshots. The figures are never posed, but rather captured in a moment, unaware of being documented. Mosquera’s paintings are similar to movie stills, shots of a moment in time, captured in a single frame.

In general, the story Mosquera tells is one of a sense of loss, of something missing. There is also a sense of longing and searching for this intangible, whether its name is yet known, or whether it remains elusive.

Each piece in “Beauty in the Breakdown” evokes nostalgia, and reflections on the emotional worlds we live on the interior.

Mosquera's work reflects the unusual view that true nostalgia is nostalgia for the present, not the past; her work is imbued with a melancholic awareness that it is always the present, not the past, which is in the process of coming apart.

Shown/header image: “Just One Moment Can Change Everything” (2005)
Latex and acrylic on canvas
54 x 84 in.
Laura Mosquera

Find it: sixspace
549 West 23rd St.
Los Angeles, CA 90007
Get info: (213) 765-0248

Find out about art events in other cities, in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

2005-03-17T12:51:00.000+08:00

FILM/Festivals/London
Constellation Change Festival
Mar. 16 – Mar. 19

One of the premiere multi-venue festivals for dance on film, the Constellation Change Festival was launched in 1998 to celebrate the Carol Straker Dance Company's 10th anniversary.

A short film, "Constellation Change," was made to celebrate the dance company's work. The first film highlighted the stars and repertoire of the company. The film won Best Documentary at the Du Pre Awards in France.

From that simple beginning, “Constellation Change” has developed into an international festival, with over 800 film submissions from 47 countries in the last four years.

Visiting filmmakers this year include Cynthia Newport (Director, “Dance Cuba: Dreams of Flight”), Albertina Pisano(Director, “Bailaores”) and John Albanis(Director, “Distemper”).

Highlights:

“Dance Cuba: Dreams of Flight” (105 mins.)
Focusing on a historic collaboration between dance companies from Cuba and America, “Dance Cuba: Dreams of Flight” intertwines several personal stories to capture the beauty of dance and the love of family, both being deeply affected by political environment.

Septime Webre, Artistic Director of the Washington Ballet, brings his dance company to Cuba for the first American performance there in 40 years. The son of a Cuba-born mother, Webre takes time to find the remnants of his parents’ lives on the island.

The rich history of Cuban dance is also revealed through the stories of Alicia Alonso, and dancer Carlos Acosta, who grew up in one of the poorest areas of Havana. Today, Acosta is a world-renowned dancer frequently compared to Baryshnikov, and a principal dancer at the Royal Ballet.

The 82-year-old Alicia Alonso is a founder and Director General of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba. She became a superstar with the American Ballet Theater in New York, only to lose her eyesight. Despite her blindness, Alonso defied her doctors and continued to dance.

After the Revolution, Castro welcomed Alonso and then-husband Fernando and financed their ballet company. For decades, Alonso’s will and personality have held the Ballet Nacional together, but not without conflict. Today, many of Alonso's best dancers still make the difficult decision to leave Cuba.

Director Cynthia Newport teams with documentarian Barbara Kopple to present a filmic ballet of exile and return, loss and redemption, tradition and innovation. World premiere.

Shown above: "Bailaores"

“Bailaores” (30 mins.)
Documentary about four contemporary artists (Rafaela Carrasco, Israel Galvan, Andres Marin and Belen Maya), each trying to expand the boundaries of traditional flamenco.

The filmmaker follows this young generation of flamenco artists who are radically innovating the art form.

The film mixes interviews and performances, exploring the influences and evolutions which inform each artist's aesthetics, and the obstacles they face in changing an art form which is linked inextricable to a complex cultural system. The film shows how their quest is often misunderstood and attacked by traditionalists as a dangerous heresy.

The four protagonists share a common, compelling necessity to find a personal language for flamenco dance, one which draws inspiration from different art forms, such as contemporary dance, Butoh and Katakhali.

Filmmaker: Albertina Pisano was born in 1976. She holds a honor degree in philosophy and film at Milan University. She has filmed several cultural programs for RAI, and studied flamenco dance in Madrid and Sevilla. This is her first documentary.

“For a Tango” (5 mins.)
Fleeing from WWI, a massive influx of immigrants arrived in Buenos Aires. There were seven men to every one woman. The tango, with bravado and skill, illuminated lost dreams, new hopes, and captured in tangible form the longing to remember -- and to forget.

Filmmaker: Gabriele Zucchelli was born 1972 in Pavia, Italy, and worked as an animator in Milan. In 1994 he moved to London where he worked on TV specials and musical featurettes with Paul McCartney. “For A Tango” is his first short film.

“Anything But Love” (99 mins.)
“Anything But Love” celebrates the style and sensibility of 1950s Technicolor musicals. It tells a contemporary love story about young woman choosing between the life she wants and the dreams she can’t live without.

The film stars Isabel Rose as Billie Golden, a woman infatuated with the glamor of an era long past. Dressed to the nines in the look of Hepburn and Hayworth, Billie envisions herself singing in plush nightclubs amidst velvet curtains and the sparkle of champagne.

After a series of setbacks, she runs into heartthrob Greg, who sweeps her off her feet. But when she meets a jaded pianist, Elliot, she finds herself caught between competing dreams, a dilemma only Eartha Kitt can solve.

“Anything But Love” pays homage to movies shot in Technicolor, featuring outrageous scenes where everyone and the waiter break into a new dance number. For fans of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”, “Pillow Talk” or “Funny Face.”

“Distemper” (5 mins.)
Based on Decidedly Jazz DanceWorks' staged performance, “Velvet,” “Distemper” deals with the nightmare of suffocation.

“Dance to This” (5 mins.)
“Dance to This” is a ballet film that features the innovative choreography of Sabrina Christine Matthews, as set to composer Douglas Schmidt's modern classical soundtrack. This is the story of a toy ballerina's dream of becoming real, and features Mathews in a variety of urban landscapes, the Rocky Mountains, and the Alberta Badlands. A moving meditation on the power and beauty of dance. Nominated for an AMPIA award.

Shown above: "Distemper"

“Together” (8.5 mins.)
A silent man enters a house and is confronted by memories from the past. Through a series of dance routines, we watch a couple’s relationship at different moments.

As the man is drawn through the house, he draws closer to the present and the couple's final confrontation. “Together” is a film about the things we leave behind.

“Gold” (10 mins.)
“Gold” is a short experimental dance film exploring the impressive skills and playful competition of two gymnasts at their local gym. The film evokes the solitary pursuit of physical power, exploring the strength of will it takes to win.

“B-Girl” (15 mins.)
“B-Girl” is a story of hip-hop, of what it means to be a breaker. Angel is a b-girl struggling in the six-step, a fundamental move.

Her coach, Carlos, and her all-male crew doubt her skill when she can’t even support herself through the most basic steps. With a huge competition coming up, Angel has to prove her place among them. She stays to practice late at night, building her strength.

Through pushing herself, and trusting herself, she finds a new power and style all her own. She doesn’t just succeed; she blows the room away...

“Silent Collisions” (26 mins.)
“Silent Collisions,” the new work created by Frederic Flamand with his company Charleroi/Danses - Plan K.

Inspired by Calvino's “Invisible Cities,” and created with the complicity of California architect Thom Mayne, choreography,and architecture are blended into a work about the tension between the lingering traces of common memory and the virtuality of a post-urban era which has yet to be discovered.

“Crutchmaster”(15 mins.)
Bill Shannon, better known by his B-boy moniker “CrutchMaster,” has a career that defies all categories. CrutchMaster's mix stems from philosophy as well as physical necessity as he lives with a degenerative hip condition.

Shannon considers himself to be a performance artist rather than a dancer, and defines his work as rooted in street culture but informed by the fine arts.

He has developed a version or skateboarding and hip-hop that incorporates his crutches, creating a floating style where weight is shared rhythmically across four points.

The 5th Constellation Change will take place in various venues in central London. Fest central is Curzon Soho.

Shown/header image (clockwise, beginning at top right): "Distemper"; "Dance to This"; "Together"; "Bailaores"; "For a Tango"; "Bailaores")

Find it/Festival venues:

Curzon Soho
93-107 Shaftesbury Avenue
London W1D 5DY
Get info: 020 7734 2255

National Film Theatre
Belvedere Road
South Bank
London SE1 8XT
Get info: 020 7928 3232

Rio Cinema
107 Kingsland High Street
London E8
(corner John Campbell Rd)
Get info: 020-7241-9410

Find out about other film festivals worldwide, in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

2005-03-17T12:10:00.000+08:00

SCI/TECH
21st century linguistics

Educators rail against the increased use of 'txt' shorthand by children in their school work, but the advent of new language styles and forms engendered by the Internet and related communication developments such as SMS messaging, should be welcomed, says language expert David Crystal, Honorary Professor of Linguistics at the University of Wales, Bangor.

Speaking at the Annual Conference of the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science), Crystal asserted that our current time period is the greatest opportunity for the development of the English language since the advent of the printing press in the Middle Ages.

The variety of applications of new technology leads to new stylistic forms and increases the expressive range of a language, especially at the informal end of the spectrum.

Changes in communication technology are invariably accompanied by concerns about language, explains Crystal. In this instance, because people notice a growth of informality in language use, their concerns center around whether this will cause a general deterioration in the quality of the language.

"The prophets of doom emerge every time a new technology influences language, of course -- they gathered when printing was introduced, in the 15th century, as well as when the telephone was introduced in the 19th, and when broadcasting came along in the 20th; and they gathered again when it was noticed that Internet writing broke several of the rules of formal standard English, in such areas as punctuation, capitalization, and spelling," he says. "All that has happened, in fact, is that the language's resources for the expression of informality in writing have hugely increased -- something which has not been seen in English since the Middle Ages, and which was largely lost when Standard English came to be established in the 18th century. Rather than condemning it, therefore, we should be exulting in the fact that the Internet is allowing us to once more explore the power of the written language in a creative way.”

Technology also bears gifts also for linguistics scholarship -- according to Crystal, it is a new opportunity for academic study, who suggests the possible academic study of “Internet Linguistics.”

From his own early assessments, Crystal concludes that a surprisingly small number of new words have been spawned, while 'txt'ing, blogging and other forms have given radical opportunities to develop new stylistic rules.

He believes that the new forms of interaction seen in Internet exchanges are far more important than changes in traditional vocabulary, grammar or spelling.

Get more info: University of Wales – Bangor
+44-124-838-3298

Find additional sci/tech stories, in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

2005-03-17T11:49:00.000+08:00

ART/Brooklyn
“Lost in Queens”
Feb. 18-Mar. 21

Plus Ultra Gallery presents: “Lost in Queens: A Natural History Museum in Seven Parts,” a solo exhibition by artist/architect Brian Walker.

As an experiment in extreme artistic constraint, Walker presents seven architectural drawings of 13 proposed Natural History Museum buildings located throughout the borough of Queens.

Each proposal is located on one of the highly improbable, oddly shaped and sometimes all but inaccessible lots actually purchased by Gordon Matta-Clark for his 1974 project “Fake Estates.”

Walker traveled to each of these locations in a self-imposed ritualistic process, including eating the same breakfast in a neighborhood diner after each visit.

He thoroughly documented the lots, researched the City’s zoning regulations, and then designed a building for actual natural history collections of various animals, including bees, passenger pigeons, dodo birds, ants and a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

His designs include display spaces, storage facilities, a theater, a café, and a research laboratory throughout the seven buildings. Walker’s results are as fantastic as they are humorous and inspiring.

Find it: Plus Ultra
235 South 1st St.
Brooklyn, NY 11211
Get info: (718) 387-3844

Find out about other art events worldwide, in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

2005-03-17T06:09:00.000+08:00

NYC/KGB Bar/Reading
Mar. 16, 7pm

The Fantastic Fiction series, curated by Ellen Datlow and Gavin J. Grant, is on the third Wednesday of every month at 7pm at KGB. Come early.

Reading:

Robert F. Wexler, "Circus of the Grand Design"
The debut full-length novel from the author of "In Springdale Town." Featuring otherworldly circus entertainment: elephants, acrobats, jugglers, and a mysterious mechanical horse.

Also reading: Paul Witcover, "Tumbling After"
The long-awaited second novel by Paul Witcover, “Tumbling After” is a provocative work of imagination – part coming-of-age story, part contemporary fairy tale, part technological nightmare, and a dark vision of dystopia.

The author of "Waking Beauty," Paul Witcover has also written a biography of Zora Neale Hurston and numerous short stories. He is the co-creator, with Elizabeth Hand, of the cult comic book series “Anima” and has served as the curator of the New York Review of Science Fiction reading series.

Find it: 85 East 4th Street (just off 2nd Ave)
New York, NY 10003
Get info: (212) 505-3360

Find additional books/writers content in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

2005-03-13T13:26:00.000+08:00

DANCE/Paris
“Wuthering Heights”
Through March 15th

Calling all closet romantics...

Emily Brontë published "Wuthering Heights" in 1847, just before her death at the age of 30. Choreographer Kader Belarbi transforms Brontë’s gloomy novel of love, vengeance and untimely demise into a passionately rendered ballet based on one of the darkest love stories ever told.

Belarbi’s choreography explores the dualities inherent in Brontë’s masterpiece: darkness/light, love/hate and freedom/possession. Fierce, passionate and otherwordly. And there are the moors, besides.

Shown/header image: Marie-Agnes Gillot (Catherine), Nicolas Le Riche (Heathcliff).
Photo: Icare/Ballet de l'Opéra National de Paris

Find it: Opéra National de Paris
Palais Garnier
120 Rue du Lyon/Place de L’Opera
Paris, France
Get there: Metro: Opera (lines 3,7,8)
Get info: + 33 (1) 40 01 80 54

Find out about dance events in other cities, in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

Shown above: Laetitia Pujol (Catherine), Céline Talon (Nelly). Pujol originated the role of Catherine in the initial production of Belarbi's "Wuthering Heights."
Photo: Icare/Ballet de l'Opéra National de Paris

RELATED EXTRAS: Excerpts, "Wuthering Heights" (1847) by Emily Brontë

I was superstitious about dreams then, and am still; and Catherine had an unusual gloom in her aspect, that made me dread something from which I might shape a prophecy, and foresee a fearful catastrophe.

She was vexed, but she did not proceed. Apparently taking up another subject, she recommenced in a short time.

“If I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be extremely miserable.”

“Because you are not fit to go there,” I answered. “All sinners would be miserable in heaven.”

“But it is not for that. I dreamt once that I was there.”

“I tell you I won’t hearken to your dreams, Miss Catherine! I’ll go to bed,” I interrupted again.

She laughed, and held me down; for I made a motion to leave my chair.

“This is nothing,” cried she: “I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy. That will do to explain my secret, as well as the other. I’ve no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven, and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn’t have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton’s is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.”

Ere this speech ended I became sensible of Heathcliff’s presence. Having noticed a slight movement, I turned my head, and saw him rise from the bench, and steal out noiselessly.

He had listened till he heard Catherine say it would degrade her to marry him, and then he stayed to hear no further. My companion, sitting on the ground, was prevented by the back of the settle from remarking his presence or departure; but I started, and bade her hush!

“Why?” she asked, gazing nervously round.

“Joseph is here,” I answered, catching opportunely the roll of his cartwheels up the road; “and Heathcliff will come in with him. I’m not sure whether he were not at the door this moment.”

“Oh, he couldn’t overhear me at the door!” said she. “Give me Hareton, while you get the supper, and when it is ready ask me to sup with you. I want to cheat my uncomfortable conscience, and be convinced that Heathcliff has no notion of these things. He has not, has he? He does not know what being in love is!”

“I see no reason that he should not know, as well as you,” I returned; “and if you are his choice, he’ll be the most unfortunate creature that ever was born! As soon as you become Mrs. Linton, he loses friend, and love, and all! Have you considered how you’ll bear the separation, and how he’ll bear to be quite deserted in the world? Because, Miss Catherine - “

“He quite deserted! We separated!” she exclaimed, with an accent of indignation. “Who is to separate us, pray? They'll meet the fate of Milo! Not as long as I live, Ellen: for no mortal creature. Every Linton on the face of the earth might melt into nothing before I could consent to forsake Heathcliff...Nelly, I see now you think me a selfish wretch; but did it never strike you that if Heathcliff and I married, we should be beggars? Whereas, if I marry Linton I can aid Heathcliff to rise, and place him out of my brother's power.”

“With your husband's money, Miss Catherine?” I asked. “You'll find him not so pliable as you calculate upon: and, though I'm hardly a judge, I think that's the worst motive you've given yet for being the wife of young Linton.”

“It is not,” retorted she; “it is the best!... My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being...”
--
He was there - at least, a few yards further in the park; leant against an old ash-tree, his hat off, and his hair soaked with the dew that had gathered on the budded branches, and fell pattering round him.

He had been standing a long time in that position, for I saw a pair of ousels passing and repassing scarcely three feet from him, busy in building their nest, and regarding his proximity no more than that of a piece of timber.

They flew off at my approach, and he raised his eyes and spoke: “She's dead!” he said; “I've not waited for you to learn that. Put your handkerchief away - don't snivel before me. Damn you all! She wants none of your tears!”

I was weeping as much for him as her: we do sometimes pity creatures that have none of the feeling either for themselves or others. When I first looked into his face, I perceived that he had got intelligence of the catastrophe; and a foolish notion struck me that his heart was quelled and he prayed, because his lips moved and his gaze was bent on the ground.

“Yes, she's dead!” I answered, checking my sobs and drying my cheeks. “Gone to heaven, I hope; where we may, every one, join her, if we take due warning and leave our evil ways to follow good!”

“Did she take due warning, then?” asked Heathcliff, attempting a sneer. “Did she die like a saint? Come, give me a true history of the event. How did - ?”

He endeavored to pronounce the name, but could not manage it; and compressing his mouth he held a silent combat with his inward agony, defying, meanwhile, my sympathy with an unflinching, ferocious stare.

“How did she die?” he resumed, at last - fain, notwithstanding his hardihood, to have a support behind him; for, after the struggle, he trembled, in spite of himself, to his very finger-ends.

“Poor wretch!” I thought; “you have a heart and nerves the same as your brother men! Why should you be anxious to conceal them? Your pride cannot blind God! You tempt him to wring them, till he forces a cry of humiliation.”

“Quietly as a lamb!” I answered, aloud. “She drew a sigh, and stretched herself, like a child reviving, and sinking again to sleep; and five minutes after I felt one little pulse at her heart, and nothing more!”

“And - did she ever mention me?” he asked, hesitating, as if he dreaded the answer to his question would introduce details that he could not bear to hear.

“Her senses never returned: she recognized nobody from the time you left her,” I said. “She lies with a sweet smile on her face; and her latest ideas wandered back to pleasant early days. Her life closed in a gentle dream - may she wake as kindly in the other world!”

“May she wake in torment!” he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. “Why, she's a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there - not in heaven - not perished - where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer - I repeat it till my tongue stiffens - Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you - haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”

He dashed his head against the knotted trunk; and, lifting up his eyes, howled, not like a man, but like a savage beast being goaded to death with knives and spears. I observed several splashes of blood about the bark of the tree, and his hand and forehead were both stained; probably the scene I witnessed was a repetition of others acted during the night.

It hardly moved my compassion – it appalled me: still, I felt reluctant to quit him so. But the moment he recollected himself enough to notice me watching, he thundered a command for me to go, and I obeyed. He was beyond my skill to quiet or console.

Shown above: Gloom on the moors, in "Wuthering Heights" (l. to r.) Laurence Olivier, 1939; Timothy Dalton and Anna Calder-Marshall, 1970; Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche, 1992

Related booklist: "Wuthering Heights," "The Birth of Wuthering Heights: Emily Bronte at Work"; On film: "Wuthering Heights" (1992), "Brontë Country," "Wuthering Heights" (1939), "Wuthering Heights" (1970)

2005-03-10T20:16:00.000+08:00

ART/Amsterdam
“On Patrol”
Through March 20th

“On Patrol” examines the many different systems that police our society, from traditional investigatory techniques to the unofficial practice of gathering and classifying personal data, that have become a form of social control.

In “On Patrol,” exhibition artists, responding to societal trends, show how their work fits into the framework of a surveillance society.

Participating artists: Marc Bijl, Sophie Calle, Ergin Cavusoglu, Paul Chan, Claudia Cristovao, Harun Farocki, Robin van't Haar, Nicoline van Harskamp, Janice Kerbel, Jill Magid, Yucef Merhi, Julia Scher and socialfiction.org.

The artists invited for the exhibition “On Patrol” explore various aspects of (in)security: they play with the observations of other people, manipulate techniques of espionage, hack, break codes and appropriate methods of power. They reveal the fear of insecurity, as well as worries about an excess of security.

In “Evidence Locker” (2004) Jill Magid deploys the local police force and the 242 security cameras stationed in the center of Liverpool to allow herself to be observed. From the resulting video material, she creates a film in which we can follow her closely. She also chronicled her stay in Liverpool in an exhibition diary.

Nicoline van Harskamp's new project shows how passers-by change their reactions to gatherings of teens in temporary uniforms, who look more like guards than young rebels.

Ergin Cavusoglu's video installation, “Entanglement” (2003) makes everything and everyone suspect, evoking an oppressive feeling of potentially threatening danger, turning man into a frightened animal through the sound of invisible, hovering helicopters and roving searchlights.

”On Patrol” is a response on the ongoing debate about security measures and the new cultural offensive being waged by various governments.

Critical and artistic confrontations about policing and surveillance are deployed in order to make viewers ask themselves: what is acceptable in the name of security? When is our individual freedom so much at stake that a boundary has to be transgressed -- and whose interests are being served by capitalizing on or fuelling fear?

Find it: De Appel
Nieuwe Spiegelstraat 10
Amersterdam, NL
Get info: 31-20-6255-651

Find out about art events in other cities, in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

2005-03-09T14:24:00.000+08:00

FILM/Festivals/Brussels
Brussels International Festival of Fantastic Film
March 11-26

Something wicked this way comes -- the Brussels International Festival of Fantastic Film.

The nearly month-long festival is a mecca for fans of the dark, odd and unusual, and there’s a film line-up to suit every palate: sci-fi, anime, psychological thriller, campy horror, and films which can only be classified as indefinable.

This year, the festival features feature-length and short films, but adds an anime series (Mar. 19, 20), and a few more offbeat touches, like the Body Painting (Mar. 12) contest, and the Vampire Ball (Mar. 26. At midnight. Of course.)

Then there are the random art exhibits. This year features works by Jean-Paul Baibay, who grew up seemingly keyed into a universe of virtual realities which seemed more attractive to him than daily life. His childhood friends were the mildly deranged geniuses of the Belgian comic-strip such as the Count of Champignacc, Doctor Septimus and Professor Sunflower.

Lastly, the festival organizers have thoughtfully invited theatre acts La Compagnie Tultétar, Magic Land Theatre, Lionel Lê “Akuma” and Kuriakin’s Freaks Show to distract folks when it gets too boring waiting on queue to snatch tickets for sold-out screenings.

Highlights: Feature Films

“Abnormal Beauty”
Jiney relates to the world through her photography. Her work is met with admiration and acclaim, which leaves her cold and indifferent.

One day, she witnesses a fatal car crash and, torn between revulsion and fascination, snaps a shot of a dead pedestrian.

This morbid shot awakens latent emotion and excitement inside Jiney. She becomes increasingly obsessed with death, snapping shots of suicides and hiring butchers to slaughter animals on camera. When her fixation threatens to overwhelm her, she withdraws, trying to extinguish her obsession.

All seems well until someone anonymously leaves a package of photographs and a video for Jiney -- photos and film that appear to be an actual killing planned and caught on camera especially for her.

The Pang brothers (“The Eye,” “The Tesseract”) are at it again. “Abnormal Beauty” is a chilling tale of extreme obsession, full of gorgeous and disturbing images, edited with punch and style.

“Appleseed”
The year is 2131 and Deunan Knute, a hi-tech fighting machine, roams the scorched earth of a planet ravaged by war. With her communication lines severed, she’s unaware that the fighting ended long ago, until she’s ambushed by former lover Briareos. Nearly killed in battle, Briareos has been reconstructed as a cyborg.

He needs her help, but his mission is a mystery. He travels with her to the gleaming metropolis of Olympus, where he now lives with the servile Hitomi. Beneath the apparent calm surface of Olympus, Deunan discovers something disturbing about Hitomi and the denizens of the city.

Conspiracy is rife, powerful forces are preparing for battle, and Deunan is the only one who can stop the coming Armageddon.

Based on the popular manga by Masamune Shirow, whose work has been adapted by Mamoru Oshii (“Ghost in the Shell”, “Innocence”), “Appleseed” is an high-impact dose of cyberpunk anime.

“Arahan”
Sang Hwan is a bumbling cop who gets beaten up regularly by the local gangsters. One day, he finds himself on the wrong end of a showdown between a bag snatcher and a seemingly superhuman convenience store clerk.

Eui-jun, the gorgeous register jockey in question, knocks Sang Hwan out flat. When he wakes up, he's covered in thousands of acupuncture needles and surrounded by five doddering old people who keep talking about his incredible ch'i. This mystical force, when unlocked, can turn a normal human into a superhuman.

They call themselves the Seven Masters, and they've got a major crisis on their hands. Heung Un, the Master of Absolute Evil, has freed himself from the prison in which the Seven Masters had sealed him in and the inept Sang Hwan is the only one who can prevent Heung Un from plunging the world into chaos.

With “Arahan,” director Seung-wan Ryoo crafts a stylish, funny and spectacular urban martial arts fantasy.

“Les Revenants”
It’s the middle of the day in a small provincial French city. An army of the living dead pour out of the municipal cemetery and invade the town center. They look no more fearsome than a stream of middle class Sunday strollers dressed in casual sweaters.

All over the world, millions of the recently deceased have risen from their graves. The city council is soon freaking out over the enormous logistical problems of providing shelter for these returnees from beyond. And as for their families, well, there are some macabre homecomings in the offing.

“Les Revenants” is not your average zombie film. Terror, gore and F/X are replaced by existential consideration.

What if the dead really rose from their graves to cohabit with the living? Director Robin Campillo directs a thoughtful drama with considerable visual flair and subtle camerawork. By confronting his characters with their deadly beloved, Campillo forces us to come to terms with our own failings as living human beings.

“Alive”
In an act of revenge, Tenshu Yashiro brutally murders the men responsible for his girlfriend Misako’s rape. He is sentenced to death, but after a failed execution, Tenshu gets another chance.

He awakens to find himself in a sealed room with another “lucky” survivor, the psychopathic Gondoh. The two men are now part of a secret government experiment.

A team of scientists watches via camera as a power struggle unfolds between the prisoners and The Displacer, a parasite that eats away at its host’s soul until nothing remains but a machine of flesh bent on destruction.

”Alive” marks the return of Japan’s action cinema maestro, Ryuhei Kitamura. He has traded the horror of the undead for an inventive science fiction setting that builds to a shattering finish.

“Blood Red/Rojo Sangre”
Once-famous actor Pablo Thevenet is having a hard time finding work. He endures humiliating casting sessions by young directors who’ve never heard of him and by veterans who’ve forgotten him.

Then his luck turns.Wealthy and eccentric Mr. Reficul engages him to play a living statue in front of his fashionable night club. The job doesn’t amount to much, but it pays well. So well, in fact, that Pablo now has the freedom to start eliminating the empty-headed good-for-nothings who've stolen his place in the limelight.

Impersonating the most infamous human monsters like Gilles de Rais and Jack the Ripper, Pablo starts thinning out the ranks of the unjustly famous. Strangely, he seems to be getting away with it, as if an unknown benefactor is watching over him...

Debut director Christian Molina treats us to a ghastly variation on Goethe’s “Faust.” He has given his slow paced and atmospheric horror film a unique look with ingenious camerawork, creative transitions between the scenes and very effective F/X. Cult actor-director Paul Naschy (“Night of the Werewolf”) is brilliant as the narcissistic and deluded Pablo Thevenet.

“Hotel”
Irene is hired as a receptionist in an isolated, virtually inaccessible hotel in the Austrian Alps. The humorless proprietor is fanatically obsessed with cleanliness and order. The other employees are equally odd, remote and strangely reticent.

Irene is replacing Eva, a girl who has disappeared without a trace. Irene slowly learns that the area has a reputation as a place where people go missing. At night, the surrounding woods call out to her, issuing an invitation to enter a deserted grove...Note to Irene: Run. Like. Hell.

“Hotel,” the second feature by Austrian director Jessica Hausner (“Lovely Rita”) is a disturbing, psychological chiller reminiscent of the work of Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock and even the Brothers Grimm. Hausner combines supernatural elements from fairy tales and German mythology in this atmospheric, otherworldly tale. The superb cinematography is complemented by an effective sound design that animates the hotel with an eerie, breathing presence.

“Kamikaze Girls”
Lonely dreamer Momoko finds herself stuck in the paddy fields of rural Ibaraki prefecture when her petty criminal of a father has to skip town after his latest scam goes wrong. She yearns to escape back into the opulent world of the 18th century court of Versailles.

Unlikely salvation arrives in the form of foul-mouthed Ichiko, a member of the notorious girls-only biker pack, The Ponytails. Asses are kicked and garments embroidered as the two outsiders strike up an unusual friendship that will transform their lives.

“The nail that sticks out, gets hammered down,” as a Japanese saying goes. Anything but true for Momoko and Ichiko, played by Kyoko Fukada and Anna Tsuchiya, in the loopy pop-cultural extravaganza that is “Kamikaze Girls.”

With vibrant colors, infectious humor and sharp editing, director Tetsuya Nakashima recreates the bubblegum world of the “shojo manga,” or girl’s comic strip. Think “Amélie” remade by Takashi Miike and Quentin Tarantino.

“Nina”
“Nina” is an contemporary retelling of Dostoevsky’s "Crime and Punishment," set in the concrete jungle of São Paolo.

Nina is a struggling comic artist, who rents a room from Eulalia. When Nina loses her job and falls behind on the rent, Eulalia begins a sadistic power game with the young artist, including labeling every piece of food in the freezer.

Nina scrambles for money, selling her underwear to a sexual pervert and stealing the wallet of a blind one-night stand. Under the relentless pressure, Nina withdraws into her art, and her destructive impulses can no longer be stopped; she plunges into a violent fantasy world of her own devising.

“Nina,” the feature film debut of director Heitor Dhalia, is a refreshing piece of modern Brazilian cinema. Nina’s downhill ride into a nightmarish universe is filled with both comic absurdity and horror, portrayed with style and originality by Dhalia. Manga-like cartoon pop-ups, gloomy production design and a pulsating techno soundtrack complete this chilling tale of contemporary urban isolation.

“The Promise/La Promesa”
A dead marriage and an irrational attachment to religion constitute the tormented life of Gregoria. Nevertheless, a chance encounter with a man who has narrowly escaped death offers her a way out. His words, filled with hope, give her the courage to change her destiny.

After a last violent encounter with her husband, Gregoria flees to northern Spain and assumes a new identity. Now called Celia, she works as a nanny to the only son of a rich family. Rumors about the house and inexplicable appearances gradually invade Celia’s world.

Tormented by ghosts and her own paranoia, she resolves to protect the boy. What she doesn’t realize it that the true danger doesn’t lie in those around here, but in herself. Carmen Maura (“Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown”) gives a powerful performance as a woman falling prey to her religious psychosis.

“The Vanity Serum/Il Siero Della Vanita”
When a number of TV personalities start to disappear, Inspector Lucia Allasco takes on the case, along with her colleague Franco Berardi. As the investigation progresses, the officers suspect there’s a connection between the disappearances and powerful TV talk show host, Sonia Norton.

As they dig deeper into the case, Allasco and Berardi dredge up a world where appearance is more important than life itself, and even the meekest person can become a ruthless killer.

Director Alex Infascelli runs the risk of becoming a BIFFF regular. After surprising audiences with original serial killer flick “Almost Blue” in 2002, he now presents a blood-soaked attack on that monumental temple of bad taste, vulgarity and sensationalism; talk show television. “The Vanity Serum” is based on a novel by Niccolo Ammaniti.

“Audition”
Video company executive Shigeharu Aoyama, who lost his wife seven years earlier, is trying to find a replacement.

A colleague suggests that they fake auditions for the female lead in a non-existent film, which will allow them to pick out potential brides from the actresses who answer their ad.

Only one candidate stands out; Asami, a 24-year old former ballerina who only wears white. Her docility and air of subservience are exactly the qualities Aoyama finds attractive in a woman, and it seems like a match made in heaven.

At first, he can’t believe his luck in finding this soft-voiced beauty. Then he notices weird scars on her legs and starts hearing strange stories about people who have met Asami, then disappeared. His perfect plan starts to unravel, as Asami’s hidden rage begins to reveal itself.

The central theme of the movie is the deleterious effect on women of male sexual attitudes and assumptions. ”Audition” is a powerful and graphic horror film, made even more disturbing by the haunting beauty of its images.

“Trauma”
Ben wakes up from a coma to discover that his wife, Elisa, died in the same accident that nearly killed him.

He tries to rebuild his life by getting a new job and moving to a new apartment, where he befriends his attractive neighbor, Charlotte.

But his mind starts playing tricks on him. Someone is moving things around in his apartment and methodically destroying his possessions. Then he suddenly begins to see his dead wife everywhere.

Fearing that he’s going crazy, he visits a childhood therapist. Charlotte, however, takes him to see a psychic, who tells him that she senses his wife is still alive.

Then the police pay him a visit. They tell him that he’s under investigation – for murder.

Director Mark Evans (“Resurrection Man”) delivers a gripping, psychological thriller with Hitchcockian twists. Elliptical editing and menacing sound design is deployed to create an angst-written canvas, as we watch the main character treading a razor-thin line between grief and self-delusion.

“Spider Forest”
Min loses his wife in a plane crash, a tragedy he foresaw in a dream shortly before it occurred. Tormented by grief and unable to forget his beloved, Min trudges through his existence with no apparent will to live.

He leaves his job at a TV station, and loses entire days drowning his misery in alcoholic binges. Then he meets Soo-young, an anchorwoman who lost her father in the same terrible accident that killed Min’s wife. Over time, the memory of the tragic crash is slowly replaced by the desire to start a new life with Soo-young.

Then Min starts receiving mysterious phone calls that lead him to a remote cottage hidden in an ancient forest -- a cottage Soo-young appears to know very well.

After his feature debut, “Flower Island”, in 2001, director Il-gon Song creates an engaging psychological mystery thriller, with “Spider Forest.”

The movie was inspired by a folk legend that warns of forgotten spirits that are turned into spiders and trapped in a forest until they are once more remembered by the living.

Song defies genre boundaries, as the film moves between detective story, supernatural thriller and subtle psychological drama, luring the audience into a deftly constructed web of eerie storytelling.

Highlights: Short Films

“Love Story in B-minor”
Film noir is not always film noir.

“La Peau du Loup/Skin of the Wolf”
Little Red Riding Hood is actually called Virginie, who has to think quick, as she’s pursued by Italian werewolves.

“Hell Bent for Whiskey”
Chicago, 1928. Gang wars, prohibition and some very deadly whiskey.

“The Strange Portrait of the Glass Lady”/Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani
The last moments of a woman, seen through a shard of glass.

Find it: Rue de la Comtesse de Flandre, 8
Gravin van Vlaanderenstraat, 8
B-1020 Brussels - Belgium
Get info: + 32 [0] 2-201-17-13

Shown/header image: "Nina"

Find film festivals in other cities, in the FEB/MAR issue of "Arte Six."

2005-03-06T10:42:00.000+08:00

LIFE
One crime, 19 suspects

The sign said it all: "Wecota, Pop. 19. We're all here because we're not all there."

That is, until earlier this month, when somebody stole the sign that had been bolted to a wooden fence on the west side of the Faulk County South Dakota village since September.

One crime, 19 suspects. What to do?

Nothing, this time around. It turns out that Wecota resident Dave Griffith, who came up with the idea for the sign, has some insight into human nature. He’d ordered two signs at the same time -- just in case something happened to the first one.

[Source: Canadian Press]

Read more real-life odd news, in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

2005-03-06T10:29:00.000+08:00

SCI/TECH
Experimental research
Walking the ‘bot2: Baby robots

Three independent research teams, including one from MIT, have built walking robots that mimic humans in terms of their gait, energy-efficiency, and control.

The MIT robot also demonstrates a new learning system that allows the robot to continually adapt to the terrain as it walks.

The work, to be described in the Feb. 18 issue of the journal “Science,” could change the way humanoid robots are designed and controlled and has potential applications for robotic prostheses. It could also aid scientists' understanding of the human motor system.

Developed at MIT, Cornell, and Holland's Delft University of Technology, the three robots are all based on the same principle: they are an extension of several years of research into "passive-dynamic walkers" that walk down a shallow slope without any motors. Passive-dynamic walkers were inspired by walking toys that have been around since the 1800s.

Toddler

Control programs in the Cornell and Delft robots are extremely simple, because a large portion of the control problem is solved in the mechanical design.

The MIT robot uses a learning program that exploits this design, allowing the robot to teach itself to walk in less than 20 minutes, or about 600 steps.

Dubbed "Toddler" because it learns to walk and because it toddles when it does so, the robot "is one of the first walking robots to use a learning program, and it is the first to learn to walk without any prior information built into the controller," said Russ Tedrake, a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.

Among other things, the learning program allows the robot to navigate efficiently over a variety of walking surfaces, and may eventually allow robots to navigate very rough terrain. That's because the program works so quickly that Toddler is able to continuously adapt to the terrain as it walks.

Energy-efficiency

The three robots are quite energy-efficient. Cornell's "seems to be at least 10 times more efficient than anybody else's," said Ruina.

Rough calculations suggest that it approaches human efficiency, consuming an amount of energy per unit weight and distance comparable to a human walker. The MIT and Delft robots, though not built deliberately to be energy-efficient, still use much less energy than, say, their famous cousin, Honda's Asimo.

How do they move? The Cornell robot supplies power to the ankles to push off. When the forward foot hits the ground, a simple microchip controller tells the rear foot to push off. During the forward swing of each leg, a small motor stretches a spring, which is finally released to provide the push.

The Delft robot uses a pneumatic push at the hip, and the MIT robot uses electric motors that directly move the ankle. All three robots have arms synchronized to swing with the opposite leg for balance.

The robot work was done primarily to study the biomechanics and control of human locomotion, but it could have applications in practical robotics.

Get info: MIT, (617) 258-5402

Find additional sci/tech content, in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

2005-03-06T10:26:00.000+08:00

SCI/TECH
Experimental research
Walking the ‘bot

Robots that walk like human beings are common in science fiction but not so easy to make in real life.

The most famous current example, the Honda Asimo, moves smoothly but on large, flat feet. And compared with a person, it consumes much more energy.

But researchers at Cornell University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Holland's Delft University of Technology have built robots that seem to more closely mimic the human gait -- and the Cornell robot matches human efficiency. The researchers' inspiration: simple walking toys that fascinated children in the 19th century.

"Already our robot seems to be at least 10 times more efficient than anybody else's," says Andy Ruina, Cornell professor of theoretical and applied mechanics.

The Cornell robot consumes an amount of energy per unit weight and distance comparable to a human walker.

In contrast, they estimate that the Honda Asimo uses at least 10 times as much energy as a human.

The MIT and Delft robots, though not built deliberately to be energy-efficient, also use much less energy than the Asimo.

More important, the researchers say, is that their robots provide a more realistic model of how humans walk.

Ruina, his former student Steven Collins, MIT postdoctoral researcher Russ Tedrake and Delft postdoctoral researcher Martijn Wisse describe their new robots in the latest issue of the journal “Science” (Feb. 18, 2005).

They present a briefing on their work on Feb .17, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C.

Cornell's robot equals human efficiency, Ruina explains, because it uses energy only to push off, while other robots needlessly use energy to absorb work, for example in moving the limbs forward more slowly than they would naturally swing under gravity power. "In other robots the motors are fighting themselves," he says.

Researchers at each of the three universities have built walking robots, differing slightly but based on the same principle. They are an extension of several years of research into "passive-dynamic walkers" that walk down a shallow slope, very much like simple walking toys that have been around since the 1800s and developed more scientifically starting in 1988.

These downhill walkers were developed further in Ruina's lab, leading to a two-legged version with articulated knees built by Wisse during a visit to Cornell.

Collins further refined that and then built the first Cornell powered model, while Wisse returned to Delft and developed other unpowered and powered robots.

For the robots being described in “Science,” the researchers at all three institutions have simply substituted small motors for gravity power.

Ruina says the research followed the example of the Wright Brothers, who carefully researched gliders, then simply added a motor to achieve powered flight.

The robot work was done primarily to study the biomechanics of human locomotion, but it could have applications in practical robotics.

Collins, now at the University of Michigan, already is applying some of what he has learned to the design of a powered prosthetic foot for amputees. "It's not exactly the same thing, but certainly the mode of thought comes from thinking about robots," he says.

Information gained from studying walking robots should be of use to the rehabilitation community, he adds. The researchers note in their “Science” paper that gravity-powered walkers have been considered irrelevant to human walking by some because humans don't always walk downhill, but that these new machines demonstrate that there is nothing special about gravity as a power source.

Gravity-powered walking toys work by swaying from side to side, allowing first one foot and then the other to swing forward. Human beings minimize the swaying and bend their knees to allow the moving foot to clear the ground, and two of the three new robots do the same. All three robots have arms synchronized to swing with the opposite leg for balance.

The Cornell robot supplies power to the ankles to push off. When the forward foot hits the ground, a simple microchip controller tells the rear foot to push off. During the forward swing of each leg a small motor stretches a spring, which is finally released to provide the push.

The Delft robot uses a pneumatic push at the hip, and the MIT robot uses electric motors that directly move the ankle.

Control programs in the Cornell and Delft robots are extremely simple, while the MIT robot uses a learning program that allows the robot to teach itself to walk, which it can do in about 600 steps.

The fact these robots can walk with a humanlike gait with very simple control programs "suggests that steady-state human walking might require only simple control as well," the researchers say in their paper. "The success of human mimicry demonstrated here...strongly suggests an intimate relationship between body architecture and control in human walking."

Related info: Andy Ruina's research page
Get more info: Cornell University, (607) 255-7164

Read more sci/tech news in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

2005-03-06T07:24:00.000+08:00

ART/London
“Lies”
Through March 12th

”Lies” is a minimal but powerful video installation. There is only one element shown against the sky's background -- a flag -- but there are many different meanings associated with this thin strip of fabric.

In the video, Cagol elaborates on the symbology of the Stars and Stripes in particular; the flag stirred by the wind becomes something menacing, or the exact opposite -- it takes on the aspect of a butterfly and of a heart, its message continuously transformed. The extreme, continuous and complex mutability of the image symbolizes the unstable political situation of the world we live in.

The video is 25 minutes long, composed of fragments of random length, between ten seconds and five minutes. There are five seconds of black between each fragment, but the sequence doesn’t follow a clear narrative progression; the fragments are always different; the background of the sky, the distance of the flag from the viewer, the light patterns, effect of the wind, are all different.

The end is sudden, and always the same – the image blurs, develops through a zoom effect, and finally invades the entire screen.

The soundtrack was created using found audio recording the sounds of traffic on New York City streets, slowed down and altered by reverb.

Stefano Cagol comments on his work: ”The continuous aesthetic mutability of a flag -- in this case the American one -- moved by the wind make me think about the changeability, the insecurity of ideals, of promises, of truth that all seem wrong, that all seem to be ‘Lies’. It makes me think how harshly a man can fight and die for the simple name of one flag. At this moment, I think in particular about the States, they try by any means to convince the world that their projects of war are only for truth and for peace.”

This exhibition is the first step of a public art project about the symbolic meaning of flags, which will run through other cities with the collaboration of international art spaces in Tokyo and New York.

Find it: Platform
3 Wilkes Street
London, UK
Get info: +44 (0)207-375-2973

Find out about art events in other cities, in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

2005-03-03T07:04:00.000+08:00

FILM/Festivals/Belgrade
Belgrade International Film Festival
Feb. 25- Mar. 6

About seventy films will be screen during the ten days of the Belgrade International Film Festival. The program includes several sections: The Lighthouse, for works by new directors; X-Files, a look at erotica and its role in modern art film, and Facts and Puzzles, a program of documentary film.

Also on the program, Objection of the Conscience, featuring intriguing works examining ethical dilemmas; Spiritual Territories, consisting of films by regional authors and new films from Scandinavia, and Slavic Package, featuring new films from the Balkans. A separate program, Roads, will feature films by contemporary director Abbas Kiarostami.

Highlights:

“Awakening From the Dead/Buđenje iz mrtvih”/ Dir. Miloš Radivojević
The story takes place in Belgrade and a provincial town in Serbia,
at the beginning of the U.S. bombing at the end of March, 1999.

Miki, who died at 40 as a disappointed senior lecturer in an art department, unrealized writer, discouraged Democrat and fired columnist, walks out of his own grave and re-enters his own life.

He visits his family, his old, terminally ill father, his friends and the one woman he always loved; the surreal contacts and conversations he has with them release them -- and him -- from illusions about the life he lived.

The things he failed to do during his lifetime, he is trying to do "during his death time". He takes care of that job quickly, clumsily, and stained with ink and blood, but with the conscience of a human being who, after the whole life of hesitation, irresolution and doubt, has decided to take action. Then he returns to his own comfortable, quiet, safe grave to spend his remaining time waiting until the end of an unjust and evil world.

“South by Southeast”
Sonya, once a popular Serbian actress who has settled in Slovenia, is on a short visit to Belgrade. She enters a police station in near-hysteria, claiming that her daughter Sofia has been kidnapped.

Then Sonya herself vanishes. Inspector Despotovic, assigned to the case, finally tracks Sonya down.

Now she claims that she made everything up, that she never had a child and therefore there was no kidnapping. Secret Service men approach Despotovic, and tell him that the story about the kidnapping is true, but that that is highly classified information -- the father of the child is the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The Minister claims that the Secret Service has made everything up, in an attempt compromise him politically. Despotovic is puzzled. Who is lying? Who is telling the truth? Who is crazy? And who is about to die?

“2046”
He was a writer. He thought he was writing about the future, but he was actually writing about the past. In his new novel, every once in a while, a mysterious train leaves for 2046.

Everyone who goes there has the same intention: to recapture lost memories. It was said that in 2046, nothing ever changed. Nobody knew for sure if it was true, because nobody who went there had ever come back -- except for him.

In "2046," a writer (Tony Leung) is working on a book about a train that travels to the year 2046. He thinks he’s writing a science fiction novel, but as time passes, he begins to realize that it’s actually an autobiographical story.

A loosely-related sequel to “In the Mood for Love,” the film took nearly four years to produce, and shares something of the same style, including a lush visual palette of muted color and a characteristic melancholy. Although "2046" has many similarities to its predecessor, "In the Mood for Love," it’s more a variation on a theme, rather than an actual sequel.

"2046" takes the viewer on disorienting leaps in time between the present, past and future. The story is about memories of lost love; memories that crowd the head of one man, in a understated, affecting performance by Tony Leung, as the writer Chow Mo-wan.

Chow Mo-wan is a writer who has casual affairs with different women. The women always stay in hotel room 2046; he takes the room next door. In the novel he is writing, a train leaves at sporadic intervals to travel to the year 2046.

All the passengers have the same desire: to recapture lost memories. No one ever comes back. The writer is seemingly stuck in his past, fixated on an impossible love affair he had with a woman called Li-chun. His affairs are a desperate attempt either to forget her, or to reinvent the memory of her -- even the main character in his novel is like her. But when he, too, catches a train to 2046...

"2046" is a surreal visualization of desire and the inability to surrender to anyone but oneself; a dazzling, melancholy film about the inconstancy of memory, love and fate.

In the end, the film's message seems to support Chow's assertion that "it's no good meeting the right person either too soon or too late."

Shown/header image: "2046"

Find it: Sava Center
Majke Jevrosime 20
11000 Belgrade
Get info: (011) 33-46–946

Find film festivals in other cities, in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

2005-03-02T15:23:00.000+08:00

ART/London
”Falsifikacija”
Through March 6th

IBID Projects presents Milena Dragicevic’s second solo show. The “Falsifikacija/Falsification” exhibit is a complex visual and psychological riddle, illustrating the mysterious process of creative thought in a tangible form.

The human figures depicted are not portraits of specific people, but actors absorbed in introspective but active anticipation of some magical event of their own creation; their gaze is withdrawn and secretive, yet the same gaze captures the viewer and draws them into the ritual of creative reflection, directed outward and inward simultaneously.

Shown above: "Falsifikacija #2," (2005)
Oil on linen
152,5 x 137 cm/60 x 54 inches
Milena Dragicevic

In this new series of paintings, the artist constructs a paradoxical world which is inaccessible yet within reach; concealing, yet full of revelations; dynamic and still, abstract and figurative, both contemporary and intentionally anachronistic.

The paintings accentuate moments of transformation -- the viewer’s gaze activates and ‘unlocks’ the artwork, while the border between the representational realm and the spectator’s reality collapses.

Shown above: "Foma," (2005)
Oil on linen
97 x 71 cm/38 x 28 inches
Milena Dragicevic

Is art merely falsification of reality? Is it a more subtle, but genuine reflection of reality? Or is art actually reality itself, as individual thought forever alters our perception of the world? These are some of the thoughtful questions Dragicevic raises for discussion, in “Falsifikacija/Falsification.”

The notion of ‘falsification’ belongs most comfortably to the discourses of theology and philosophy of science, yet Dragicevic’s paintings suggest that it is particularly relevant to the opaque powers of art -- acts of representation and naming, the seduction of images and doubt about the singularity of truth.

Artist bio: Milena Dragicevic lives and works in London. She has recently exhibited in Martin Janda Gallery, Vienna, I-20 Gallery, New York, Man in the Holocene, London and The Yugoslav Biennial of Young Artists in Vrsac. Her work is represented in Arts Council of England Collection, London and MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art), Los Angeles as well as numerous private collections in Europe and the United States.

Gallery hours: Thur-Sun 12-6pm or by appt.

Shown/Header image: "There is no gardener, and he is invisible," (2005)
Oil on linen
214 x 183 cm/84 x 72 inches
Milena Dragicevic

Find it: IBID Projects
210 Cambridge Heath Road
Unit 4
London E29NQ, UK
Get info: +44 (0) 208-983-4355

Concurrent exhibit:
Find it: IBID Projects
Sv. Stepono g. 18
Vilnius 1 LT-01138 Lithuania
Get info: +37 05-233-5395

Find out about other art exhibits worldwide, in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

2005-03-02T15:10:00.001+08:00

SCI/TECH
Experimental research
A sixth sense for danger

While some scientists discount the existence of a sixth sense for danger, new research from Washington University in St. Louis has identified a brain region that clearly acts as an early warning system -- one that monitors environmental cues, weighs possible consequences and helps us adjust our behavior to avoid dangerous situations.

"Our brains are better at picking up subtle warning signs than we previously thought," said Joshua Brown, Ph.D., a research associate in psychology in
the Arts and Sciences department of Washington University, and co-author of a study on these findings in the Feb. 18 issue of the journal “Science.”

The findings offer scientific evidence for a new way of conceptualizing the complex executive control processes taking place in and around the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a brain area located near the top of the frontal lobes and along the walls that divide the left and right hemispheres.

"In the past, we found activity in the ACC when people had to make a difficult decision among mutually exclusive options, or after they made a mistake," Brown said. "But now we find that this brain region can actually learn to recognize when you might make a mistake, even before a difficult decision has to be made. So the ACC appears to act as an early warning system -- it learns to warn us in advance when our behavior might lead to a negative outcome.”

Implications for mental illness

The ACC has been the focus of intensive scientific research in recent years because it plays a critical role in the brain's processing of especially complex
and challenging cognitive tasks. Abnormalities in the region are associated
with a host of mental problems, including schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

"Our results suggest how impairment of the ACC mechanisms in schizophrenia can lead to breakdowns in the early warning system, so that the brain fails to pre-empt or control inappropriate behavior," Brown said. "On the other hand, in individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder, the ACC might warn of an impending problem even when no problem is imminent."

"Interestingly, we also found evidence that the same neurotransmitter involved in drug addiction and Parkinson's disease, namely dopamine, seems to play a key role in training the ACC to recognize when to send the early warning signal," he added.

Known to be an important component of the brain's control system, the ACC
is believed to help mediate between fact-based reasoning and emotional responses, such as love, fear or anticipation.

"For a long time we've been interested in how the brain figures out how to integrate cognitive information about the world with our emotions, how we feel about something," Brown said. "For many reasons, people think the ACC might be the brain structure responsible for converging these different signals. It seems to be an area that's involved in deciding what information gets prioritized in the decision-making process.”

New paradigm for brain's "whoops center"

Recent studies have documented spikes of activity in the ACC just as people realize that they've made a mistake of some kind, a sensation some describe as the "whoops" moment.

Theories based on these findings suggest that the primary role of the ACC is to help detect and subsequently correct mistakes or, alternatively, to detect the state of high-conflict that often accompanies mistakes".

Brown's study, co-authored with Todd Braver, Ph.D., an associate professor
of psychology in Arts and Sciences at the same university, offers compelling evidence that the ACC is better understood as a pre-emptive early warning system, one that is actively working to help us anticipate the potential for mistakes and thus avoid them altogether.

"We started with the premise that perhaps the cingulate was not responding to the detection of an error or state of conflict, but maybe instead what the cingulate is detecting is the likelihood of making an error," Brown said. "We wanted to see if the cingulate would become more active even in situations where no conflict is presented and no errors are made, but the potential for error is still higher than normal.”

To test their hypothesis, Brown and Braver developed an experiment requiring healthy young people to respond to a series of cues on a computer screen.

Participants were presented with either a white or a blue dash, which soon changed into a small arrow pointing either right or left.

They were instructed to quickly push one of two buttons depending on the arrow's direction. To simulate conflict, researchers occasionally slipped in a larger second arrow that required participants to change gears and push the opposite button.

"The idea is that at some point you have these competing tendencies – to push the right or left button -- and both are active in brain at same time, which creates conflict," explains Brown. "Some theories suggest that whenever you see these two arrows, then that drives this state of conflict and it's the state of conflict that is being detected by the cingulate."

By increasing the delay before presentation of the larger second arrow, researchers raised the odds that an individual would reach "the point of no return" and thus be unable to change gears in time to avoid pushing the wrong button.

They then adjusted the delay time over many trials so that each participant eventually exhibited error rates of about 50 percent when provided with an initial blue priming dash, compared with error rates of only 4 percent when presented with a white priming dash.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers captured images of brain activity at 2.5-second intervals throughout the experiment.

"We didn't tell them that the white or blue cue offered any clue about their likelihood of making an error on any particular trial, but by the end of the
session, some of them had begun to figure it out, at least on a subconscious level," Brown said.

Even among those who remained relatively unaware of the blue cue's significance, researchers found that simply showing the blue color was eventually enough to spark increased activity in the cingulate, and that this effect strengthened over time as the subject became more familiar with the task.

Thus, brain imaging confirmed that the ACC had "learned" the significance
of the blue cue, and had begun, at least subconsciously, to adjust behaviors accordingly, the study found.

"It appears that this area of the brain is somehow figuring out things without you necessarily having to be consciously aware of it," Brown said. "It makes sense that this mechanism exists because there are plenty of situations in our everyday lives that require the brain to monitor subtle changes in our environment and adjust our behavior, even in cases where we may not be necessarily aware of the conditions that prompted the adjustment. In some cases, the brain's ability to monitor subtle environmental changes and make adjustments may actually be even more robust if it takes place on a subconscious level."

Shown/Header image: A new theory suggests that the anterior cingulate cortex, described by some scientists as part of the brain's "whoops center," may actually function as an early warning system -- one that works at a subconscious level to help us recognize and avoid high-risk situations.

Shown/Header image: Researchers provided study participants with a series of blue or white cues and asked them to push one button or another depending on the direction of arrows. Brain imaging suggested that an area of the brain had "learned" to recognize that blue cues indicated a greater potential for error, thus providing an early warning signal that the ongoing behavior might result in negative consequences. Image credit(s): Joshua Brown, WUSTL

Get more info: Washington University, (314) 935-6375

Read additional sci-tech stories in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

2005-03-02T14:52:00.001+08:00

ART/NYC“Women on the Verge”
Through March 12th

In “Women on the Verge,” artists examine the darker side of human emotion with wit, introspection, and verve. The artists utilize a wide array of media and techniques to explore the tension between the organic and the artificial chaos of our world.

The exhibition features the work of nine international women artists: Maggie Cardelus, Jennifer Coates, Kim Fisher, Servane Hottinger, Elizabeth Huey, Lori Nix, Mary Redmond, Eva Rothschild, and Clare Woods.

Clare Woods, Jennifer Coates and Eva Rothschild examine our fear of the unknown using semi-abstract imagery.

Shown above: “Cerebral Emergency” (2004)
Acrylic and oil on wood panel
96 x 48 ins.
Elizabeth Huey

Maggie Cardelus uses photo cut-outs and paper to create massive wall hangings which draw upon her associations of memory and family. Her labor-intensive sculptures are remarkable constructions; conceptually and aesthetically they draw the viewer with their organic edgy intimacy. Cardelus lives and works in Italy and has been widely exhibited in Europe.

Kim Fisher and Mary Redmond employ an abstract aesthetic with a contemporary sensibility to create innovative works of art. Fisher creates paintings which have a unique sculptural quality. Redmond manipulates found objects to the brink of fragility, fashioning a dark, absurdist aesthetic using fabric, metal, and wood. Redmond lives and works in Glasgow. Her work is currently included in an exhibition the ICA, Palm Beach, Fl.

Shown above: “Junkyard” (2003)
Chromogenic print
48 x 80 ins.
Lori Nix

Elizabeth Huey and Servane Hottinger utilize the human figure in their paintings to explore the darker side of human emotions, while Lori Nix subverts our expectations of seeing by photographing minutely constructed dioramas, which have an eerie, otherworldly quality.

Using humor and pathos with equal aplomb, the nine artists featured in Women on the Verge toy with the tension between the real and the imagined with remarkable ingenuity and skill.

Shown/Header image: “Chain Garden” (2000)
Enamel on MDF
72 x 50 x 2 ins.
Clare Woods

Find it: Alona Kagan Gallery
540 West 29th St.
New York, NY 10001
Get info: (212) 560-0670

Find out about other art exhibits worldwide, in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

2005-03-02T13:55:00.000+08:00

ART/NYC
“Dating Data”
Through March 5th

“Information is a lover that doesn’t speak our language, a lover we visit every day with no hope to touch, explain or understand.” (Witold Gombrowicz)

“Reality cannot be avoided,” argues curator Josée Bienvenu in “Dating Data,”an exhibition of works on paper by 18 artists. Reality cannot be avoided, but watching an infinite sequence of simultaneous, precise and live news reports is not enough to understand the difference between live broadcasting and death, between business and democracy.

The artists included in “Dating Data” address our ambivalent fascination with information culture. They manipulate and process various kinds of data to produce works that confirm that we are condemned to know more and understand less.

Beth Campbell makes art out of the way we think. In her “My Potential Future Based on Present Circumstances” series of drawings, she connects autobiographical events, thinks them through, mines the data of her thoughts and presents the potential outcomes of personal events through parallel chains of circumstance.

Mark Lombardi’s monumental flowchart drawings trace the circuitous yet intersecting flows of legal and illicit capital, revealing the links between clandestine plots and the rogue beauty of global corruption.

Devising his own conspiracy theories, David Opdyke invokes well-known symbols, such as the American flag and corporate logos, using them as quasi-magical emblems of largely unlocatable sources of power.

Danica Phelps’s “generation drawings” document every financial transaction in her life. Nicolas Rule’s genealogical charts tracks the major bloodlines of current American horse champions, with particular attention given to inbreeding.

Ingrid Calame traces the contours of stains she finds on the streets of New York and Los Angeles, left behind after the transactions of daily life are finished.
In “Tide Drawings,” Jill Baroff meticulously registers the repercussions of waves and turns them into micrographs. Tim Bavington’s stripe drawings are color visualizations of music's passage through time.

Type A, the collaborative team of Adam Ames and Andrew Bordwin produces works that explore the phenomenon of male competitiveness and needless aggression. In “Push,” they take turns standing and shoving each other. The pusher’s steps and the pushee’s landing are outlined and systematically numbered in sequence.

The artists in “Dating Data” have also set up various processes of recording, fragmenting and obliterating information. Stefana McClure and Fidel Sclavo condense text and typeface to the point of near illegibility. Jacob El Hanani’s drawings, based on the phone book, also display inaccessible data.

Elena del Rivero’s “Letter from the Bride” is made up entirely of clothing labels where the word “medium” is repeated throughout the page. Tom Friedman’s “Secrets” is a letter made of infinitesimal words -- things barely heard or said and totally impossible to read. “Down” is an alphabetized list of words with negative connotations taken from the dictionary.

Rutherford Chang cuts out every word in a copy of the “New York Times” and rearranges them in alphabetical order, turning daily news into abstraction. Finally, John Sparagana "distresses" photo spreads he finds in fashion magazines, rolling and creasing them until the once-glossy pages become so thin that the selected image evaporates.

Shown/Header image: "My Potential Future Based on Present Circumstances (1/12/05)" (2005)
Ink on paper, 50 x 38.5 inches (detail)
Beth Campbell

Find it: Josée Bienvenu Gallery
529 West 20th Street (between 10th & 11th Avenues)
New York NY 10011
Get there: 1/2/3/9 to 23rd St.
Get info: (212) 206-0297

Find art events in other cities, in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

2005-03-02T13:12:00.000+08:00

FILM/Festivals/Vienna
Tricky Women
Mar. 3-6

Hello, Vienna...here comes Tricky Women 2005, the third edition of Europe’s first and only animation film festival devoted exclusively to female animators.

This year, audiences can expect four days packed with films -- 111 films, to be exact. The schedule this year once again offers up fresh ideas from the diverse world of animated entertainment -- from biting satire to odd cult films, experimental computer design to sophisticated plasticine animation.

The growing number and quality of the entries from more than 20 countries provide a variety of film animation in terms of content as well as technique, creating a stimulating forum for discussion.

In addition to the international program, Tricky Women 2005 also features a retrospective of work by Maria Lassnig, the “grande dame” of Austrian animated film, and lectures by Ruth Lingford (“Animating the Unconscious”), Gabriele Jutz (“Scratchy Women”) and Brigitte Vasicek (“meatspace – virtual reality job agency”).

Highlights

“Pocedi Trymion/Heavy Pockets”
Sarah Cox, GB 2004
35mm, 5´58´´
A film about a girl who becomes immune to the effect of gravity.

“Accordéon/Accordion”
Michèle Cournoyer, CA 2004
35mm, 6´13´´
A powerful and at times disquieting piece steeped in black humor.

“Der Küssdieb/The Kiss Thief”
Elena Madrid, CH 2004
Beta-SP, 5´50´´
A man without a mouth is in love with his neighbor. He decides to steal a mouth so that he can kiss her.

“SW-NÖ 04”
Barbara Musil, Karo Szmit, A 2004
DVD, 10´30´´
A walk through the village of Reinsberg in Lower Austria – frozen snapshots come to life after the introduction of a space/time axis.

“City Paradise”
Gaëlle Denis, GB 2004
Beta SP, 6´
When Tomoko arrives in London, she has no idea that she'll soon discover a mysterious secret hidden beneath the city.

“even odd even”
Barbara Doser, A 2004
Beta-SP, 7´30´´
You might not be able to believe your eyes. A film that reveals what seems to be hidden.

“Liebeskampf”
Adele Raczkövi, A 2004
Beta-SP, 1´20´´
A funny and macabre depiction of the struggle for existence.

“The Grass in the Strange World”
Kyeong-ah Kim, KP 2004
Mini DV, 11´02´´
The people living in a black star are tired of their boring and meaningless lives, and take a little trip...

“No Trespassing”
Alexandra Regel, Eva Grün, A 2003
Mini DV, 8´20´´
A woman’s shadow trespasses the limits she has set for it. Now she’s had enough and tries to get rid of it.

“Gone with the wind oder eine Ameise wie du und ich/
Gone with the wind or an ant like you and me”
Charlotte Wetzel, D 2004
35mm, 3´20´´
The exciting journey of an ant through the interior of a car, up to the roof, where it experiences the greatest -- and shortest -- moment of its life.

“Cage of Flame”
Kayla Parker, GB 1992
16 mm, 10´
A film based on the artist’s dreams.

“How Mermaids Breed”
Joan Ashworth, 2002
DVD, 10’
This film answers the question of how mermaids breed.

“Novelty”
Leigh Hodgkinson, 2001
Beta SP, 6’
Jessica remembers time spent in a colorful world with her two imaginary friends.

“Three Ways To Go”
Sarah Cox, 1998
Beta SP, 6’
A trinity of dying: drawing, live action and stop-motion conspire to probe the mystery of the final moments.

“Fire”
Jenny Bowers, GB 1999
1’
If your house was burning down and you could rescue one thing, what would it be?

“Rien”
Kunyi Chen, 1998
Beta SP, 2’25’’
Learning the word “rien”.

Shown/header image (top to bottom): "Cage of Flame," "The Kiss Thief," "even odd even"

Find it: Top Kino
Rahlgasse, 1
1060 Vienna, Austria
Get info: +43 (0)1 990 46 63

Find out about other film festivals worldwide, in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

2005-03-02T07:00:00.000+08:00

DANCE/Miami
“Suite 305”
February 26-27, March 5-6, 2005

Open the door to “Suite 305,” the latest work by Dance Now! Ensemble. The evening of dance peers into the goings-on in Suite 305, in an unnamed hotel.

“Suite 305” captures moments in the lives of many of its past guests. The hotel's occupants range from a wedding couple to a single woman to two lovers fresh out of a one-night stand.

The closing piece, “Waiting for Jeanne,” was inspired by the experience of waiting for the slew of hurricanes that swept through Florida last fall.

Find it: Byron Carlyle Theater
500 71st St.
Miami Beach, FL
Get info: (305) 867-4194

Find additional dance content, in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

2005-03-02T06:38:00.000+08:00

MUSIC/Miami
Subtropics Experimental Sound Arts Festival
Feb. 24 – Mar. 5

Subtropics 17 Experimental Music and Sound Arts Festival launches its ten-day festival on Thursday, February 24, with a performance by the West Coast new music group E.A.R. Unit.

E.A.R. Unit combines acoustic and computer-generated sounds with video components. Consisting of winds, strings, percussion, piano and computer, E.A.R. Unit performs eclectic selections, ranging from austere minimalist works to lighter, more humorous pieces, and others with political content.

E.A.R. Unit will perform a series of works, including Amy Knoles’ autobiographical music/video work, “Squint,” exploring the phenomenon of squinting your eyes while stuck in traffic in order to alter your environment, while absorbing the ensuing audio collage of myriad car radios. Yes, really.

Highlights: Festival Schedule

February 24, 2005 [7pm-9pm] Opening Reception
“Sounds in Space: Works from the Diapason Archive”
Twelve unique sound works, scheduled by a computer to play installations at random intervals. “Sounds in Space” features the work of Tom Hamilton, Doug Henderson, Leif Inge, Tetsu Inoue, Stephen Vitiello and Amnon Wolman.

Tom Hamilton’s “London Fix,” a sound installation featuring music that changes with the price of gold, is featured on opening night, with special performances by street theater troupe “Urban Disturbance.”

Friday, February 25, 2005 [9pm]
Makihara/Meneses: Electro-Acoustic Percussion Duo
Makihara/Meneses is the duo project of percussionist Toshi Makihara and marimbist Jim Meneses. Makihara/Meneses present dynamic and original electro-acoustic percussion soundscapes, using a variety of conventional and home-made percussion instruments, discovered and invented sound media and digital sampling systems.

February 26, 2005 [7pm]
“Mathematics of Resonant Bodies”
From his home in Alaska, John Luther Adams has created a unique musical world, reflecting the “choirs of inner voices” in natural noises. His music is grounded in wilderness landscapes and indigenous cultures, and in natural phenomena from the songs of birds to elemental noise. His music includes works for orchestra, small ensembles, percussion and electronic media.

Saturday, February 26, 2005 [9pm]
jamJam Strawberry
Featuring Sony Mao, Sawako Kato, Dino Felipe and Otto Von Schirach
Web-based band, jamJam Strawberry a.k.a. The Strawberries, is an online, computer band which improvises, layer by layer, from server to server, on the world wide web.

The first notes were 'sounded' with an .aiff file placed in the "sonymao" drop box on the Microsound list's hotline-client server, intercepted by Sawako Kato in Tokyo, passed back to Miami’s Sony Mao, then to the "sonny browsers" uploads folder on a kdx-client server, picked up by Øivind Idsø in Oslo, Norway, and then swiftly routed back to Sony Mao.

For their in-the-flesh world premiere, the Strawberries are Sawako, a.k.a. Tokyo Digital Mutation Girl, and Beta Bodega Coalition's agent of chaos, Sony Mao. They are supported by solo performances from Miami's prince of computer cabaret, Dino Felipe, and, fresh from a North American tour with industrial band Skinny Puppy, Otto Von Schirach.

Wednesday, March 2, 2005 [7pm]
“Body Over Water”
Body Over Water is a new work by Maria Jose Arjona inspired by the passage of time. “When I think about water, generally, I think of life. Life as a fluid element that changes in stages generating a rhythm and multiplying itself endlessly over time,” says Arjona, who has been working in performance and installation since 1997. Arjona has participated in solo and group shows in Bogota, Miami, and New York City.

Thursday, March 3, 2005 [7-11pm]
“Transfers”
Digital media artist Matt Roberts, a member of DeLand’s duo DropBox,
has taken a day job – driving a taxi. Sort of.

Roberts offers no ordinary cab ride.Customers create their own unique multi-media works by directing Roberts to their destination of choice. As the taxi travels, the passenger experiences a real-time manipulation of live video and audio.

Utilizing GPS technology coupled with custom real-time audio/visual manipulation software, Roberts enhances the mundane experience of a cab ride by marrying its own locomotion with the passing visual environment. Pick ups in and around South Beach.

Thursday, March 3, 2005 [7pm]
“Shared Frequencies”
“Shared Frequencies” is a mobile electro-acoustic studio producing a fluctuating changing sound installation culled from acoustic transmissions and environmental sounds, modulated by sound artist Kabir Carter.

Carter's work zeroes in on the confluence of speech, urban environmental noise, acoustic feedback, analog sound synthesis, transmissive acoustics, specialized microphone technologies, tone sequences, and other sound events germane to General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) and Family Radio Service. His compositions, live performances, and sound installations have been presented at PS122 and d.u.m.b.o. arts center.

Thursday, March 3, 2005 [9pm]
Subtropics Videos: Selections from the Festival for Art on Film
A varied program of video works by national and international artists. Kristen Baumliér’s “Antenna” is a three-minute work investigating the nature of communication technology.

Francesca N. Penzani’s “Donne, Citta' ed in Vestito Nero/Women, Cities and a Black Dress” is a trilogy of short dance videos performed by three women in three different cities wearing the same dress.

Regis Ferguson Collective from Minneapolis presents “Gesture Lesson,” which knits together disembodied gestures, digital sound and algorithmic imaging.

“Texture Mapping II” by Claudia Esslinger exposes the interaction of organisms and industry reliant on water and the ensuing ecological dangers.

Friday, March 4, 2005 [9pm]
“Sound Mess and Other Poems”
The Be Blank Consort performs “Sound Mess and Other Poems.” The works in “Sound Mess” convert the raw material of spoken signs and messages to produce a cacophony which is a new language, with its own rhythms, structures, and signifiers.

The simultaneity of texts and meanings produces a three-dimensionality of language which is ordinarily absent in writing and speaking. The members of Be Blank subvert the linearity of conventional language and offer an experience more akin to music.

Saturday, March 5, 2005 [711 pm]
Closing Concert: Subtropics Marathon
The Subtropics Marathon unites artists and sound practitioners from various disciplines. The Marathon has been a catalyst and springboard for collaborations that are subsequently recorded and produced beyond the Festival.

This year’s Marathon features the work of Rene Barge (Miami), Kabir Carter (New York), Charles Recher (Miami), Guillermo Gregorio (Argentina), John Vanderslice (Miami), Absolute Zero (Miami) and Gustavo Matamoros (Miami).

Find it: Dorsch Gallery
151 NW 24th St.
Miami, FL
Get info: (305) 981-0600

Find additional music-related content, in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

2005-03-02T06:35:00.000+08:00

ART/NYC
Feb. 18-Mar. 26
“(desi)re”

And now, a novel take on the theme of desire...

Desire simmers with passion, is ruled by obsession and driven by purpose. As George Bernard Shaw once remarked, “You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last you create what you will.” But that’s not the 'desire' referenced by this particular exhibit.

”Desi,” a Hindi word implying “of one’s own country” and used frequently to mean “of Indian origin” is employed here to express not only sensual desire, but the longing for home or cultural identity – or the redefinition of both.

Find it: Talwar Gallery
108 East 16th St.
New York, NY
Get info: (212) 673-3096

Find other art exhibitions worldwide, in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

2005-02-24T11:12:00.000+08:00

TRAVEL
Budapest for Pestistentialists

Budapest is a strange blend of ornate, picturesque architecture, and bland Soviet-era housing flats.

Sprawling on both sides of the Danube River and featuring both the rolling hills of Buda (west bank) and the organized, gridlike layout of Pest (east bank), these two very different cities united by convenience into one city offer the traveller a Viennese-style aura at half the price.

BUDA: HISTORY + SIGHTEEING

Buda is located on the west side of the Danube; the area includes Castle Hill and the bulk of Budapest's attractions.

Go there: Only metro line 2 (red) crosses the Danube to the Buda side. Moskva tér, the penultimate stop, makes a fairly convenient entry point to the Castle District from the north.

Castle Hill: Castle Hill was first settled in the thirteenth century, after a Mongol attack led Buda's citizens to seek a more easily defended neighborhood. The royal Hungarian court also decided to move, to the southern end of the hill.

By the fourteenth century, there were an estimated 8,000 residents in Buda. After a long (1541-1686) period of Turkish rule, a 75-day siege left Buda in ruins, and Austrian authorities counted a mere 300 people left.

This would not be the last heavy attack on Castle Hill: in 1849 and 1945 the Baroquified area once more came under attack. A completely surrounded German force held out here for almost a month in 1945.

The Royal Palace: Probably the most popular attraction on Castle Hill is, of course, the Royal Palace (Várpalota). Strangely, it’s never actually been occupied by the Hungarian royal family, and is more of a pseudo-historical mishmash, like the Mátyás-templom.

The first palace, in Gothic style, was built and added onto over 300 years. It was destroyed during the struggle for liberation of Buda from the Turkish occupation in 1686. In 1715, work started on a completely new, smaller Baroque palace.

Reconstruction after the various indignities suffered during rebellions of the nineteenth century finished in 1904. This reconstruction, by Miklós Ybl and Alajos Hauszmann, was undone by German troops holding out at the end of WWII. The roof caved in completely, and had to be rebuilt. Today the building houses three large museums and the National Széchényi Library.

St. Stephen (István) Cathedral: Though often called "the basilica" for short, due to its clerical rank as a basilica minor, it actually is shaped like a Greek cross, with two steeples and a dome on top.

The foremost Hungarian artists of the day designed the artworks within St Stephen's, among them Bertalan Székely, Gyula Benczúr and two men also known for their work in the Opera, Mór Than and Alajos Stróbl. The mosaics were designed in Budapest, but constructed in Venice.

A famous site on Castle Hill for students is the statue of Hussar general András Hadik, a favorite of Empress Maria Theresia. The statue was designed by György Vastagh Jr. and unveiled to the public in 1937. The general is on horseback; take a closer look at the horse's testicles. They are shiny yellow, unlike the patina on the rest of the statue. Engineering students have for years polished the horse testicles on the morning of difficult exams, supposedly for luck.

Mary Magdalene Tower: On the corner of Országház utca and Kapisztrán tér is the Mary Magdalene Tower (Mária Magdolna torony), part of a 13th-century Franciscan church used by Hungarian speakers. Under Turkish rule, this was the only church allowed to remain Christian: all others were converted into mosques.

Vienna Gate: At the northern end of Castle Hill is the Vienna Gate (Bécsi Kapu). This was the market for non-Jewish merchants in the Middle Ages, and is where all four streets that run the length of the hill converge. The Vienna Gate inspired a typical Hungarian parental retort for children who talk back: "Your mouth is as big as the Vienna Gate."

Shown above: Statue, the "twig lady"

At Úri utca 9, there is the entrance to an underground labyrinth, which stretches under Castle Hill. The caves were joined together by the Turks for military use. Today, there is a official tour that takes visitors through a section about 1.5 kilometers long. Unofficial ‘tourists’ are on their own...

Fisherman's Bastion (Halászbástya): This is the large white tower and lookout terrace complex you see hanging over the side of Castle Hill beneath the Matyas Church. It was built between 1890-1905, and is named after both the medieval fishmarket once nearby and the Guild of Fishermen who defended this section of the wall during past wars.

The seven towers represent the seven Magyar (Hungarian) tribes. Each of the chiefs has his own statue, and the steps leading down to the city are dotted with statues of mythical figures or scenes, such as St. George and the Dragon.

PEST: HISTORY + SIGHTSEEING

The east side of the Danube, covering the modern commercial core of the city (Districts V-IX).

Go there: The metro network does a pretty good job of covering the Pest side of the river, with all three lines meeting up at Deák Ferenc tér in the center of the city. The trams running along the east bank fill in a useful gap.

Buda's City Park (Városliget) is the most pleasant of districts and houses a number of interesting if low-key attractions. The area is easily accessible with the yellow subway line (nearest station M1 Hősök tere) and entry into the park, including the castle grounds, is free.

Vajdahunyad Castle (Vajdahunyad vára): Loosely modelled after a Transylvanian fortress of the same name; the building is not really a castle at all: it's a large-scale model built for Hungary's 1896 millenial celebrations.

The structure has three distinct wings, one Gothic, one Romanesque and one Baroque, making it quite a bizarre sight when seen from a distance. But sneak up closer and its magic will be revealed: a moat, and the charming grounds hemmed by trees and footpaths.

The attention to detail has been painstaking, so it's like seeing three extraordinarily pretty castles rolled into one. Located on an island in the middle of the park's lake.

Hungarian Agricultural Museum: Housed in Vajdahunyad Castle's baroque wing, this is the only part open to the public and it now houses the exhibits on rather dull topics like cattle breeding and fishing. But the cheapish entry ticket makes it worth seeing just for the architecture.

Ják Chapel (Jáki kápolna): Another creatively borrowed building, this time based on the Abbey Church of Ják in Western Transdanubia. The outstanding part of the chapel is the portal around the doorway, an amazingly ornate multilayered sculpture of geometric patterns, apostles and lions.

Shown above: View of Pest

Anonymous: Next to the chapel is the statue of Anonymous, a hooded monk representing the unknown historian who recorded the annals of the early Magyars in the time of the mighty King Béla.

He is unknown partly because the King Béla he dedicated his work to could be any of 3 or 4 during the 12 and 13th centuries. Hungarian writers still trek to the statue to touch his quill for inspiration.

Műcsarnok: An "art hall" showcasing exhibitions of modern art by Hungarian and international artists, if you're nearby it's always worth taking a look to see what's happening today. Open 10 AM to 6 PM daily except Monday, admission varies from exhibition to exhibition.

AND THEN...

That’s the good news. The bad news -- Pestiside’s yearly “The Worst of Budapest,” covering, as they note, “the nastiest places and ickiest things.”
Just so you know where to find them.

Highlights: Politics and History

Former left-wing Hungarian leader who most looks like
C3PO from “Star Wars”: Péter Medgyessy

Politician of Germano-Hungarian origin famous for converting porn fame
into political power: Cicciolina (Illona Staller)

Former right-wing Hungarian leader who most looks like
Thurston Howell III from “Gilligan's Island”: Miklós Horthy

Highlights: Sightseeing

Most humiliating way to see Budapest: The Queeny B tour bus

Saddest piece of public sculpture not officially commemorating a national catastrophe: The "twig lady" on the roof of the Hotel Liget, Dózsa György út.

First urban beautification project we would undertake if we had a free afternoon and a circular saw with a metal-cutting blade: The kiskirálylány ("little princess") statue on the Duna next to the Budapest Marriott

Least overhyped threat of foreign invasion since the collapse of the U.S.S.R.: British weekenders

Local institution allegedly dedicated to exposing the horrors of communism and fascism, but which makes both look irresistibly stylish: Central European (Soros) University's Galeria Centralis

Highlights: Good Eats

Hungarian-English double-entendre restaurant name that seemed funny until we actually ate there: Fatál ("wooden plate")

Worst place for a drink before a romantic dinner in Budapest: The borbarát borozó, next to the toilets in the Nyugati metro station underpass

Restaurant we've never gone in because it looks like it's run by the Russian mafia: Nosztalgia. Just kidding. Really.

Read the rest of the guide: “The Worst of Budapest” (WOB)

Budapest guide courtesy Wikitravel
Content from “Worst of Budapest” © Pestiside.com

Shown above/Header image: "Anonymous"(1902)
Bronze, height: 58 cm
Courtesy: Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest

Read additional travel content, in the FEB/MAR issue of "Arte Six."
This article first posted in the Dec. 2004/Jan. 2005 edition of "Arte Six."

Related booklist: "The Rough Guide to Budapest," "Embers," "Casanova in Bolzano," "Historic Coffeehouses: Vienna, Budapest, Prague," "Time Out Budapest," "Today: An Anthology of Contemporary Hungarian Literature" "Anna Edes," "Be Faithful Unto Death," "Teach Yourself Hungarian"

2005-02-15T15:18:00.000+08:00

ART/Boston“¡Dominicanazo!”
Through February 27th

In the Dominican Republic, a country in which painting has always prevailed, sculpture is seldom attempted, and performance art is often misunderstood,
this group show includes installation, sculpture, video and painting. Samson Projects presents the most provocative and stirring images from the current Dominican Republic art scene.

Artists include: Elia Alba, Tony Capellán, José García Cordero, Nicolás Dumít Estévez, Mónica Ferreras, Iliana Emilia García, Scherezade García, Pascal Meccariello and Belkis Ramírez. Through their imagery, they reflect their country's most pressing social issues: poverty, tourism and third world politics.

The exhibition decodes and debunks cultural stereotypes as the artists use diverse ways to translate their experiences in relation to their culture.

Mónica Ferreras psychoanalytical mandala paintings attempt to capture the essence of thoughts. Elia Alba's body suits comment on the ephemeral nature
of skin and its cultural labels.

The poignant sculpture by Tony Capellán, included in the Samson exhibit, uses found objects to invoke the hunger pains suffered by the country's children while Belkis Ramírez, an architect by trade, incorporates wire, fences and netting to depict the distressing position of women in this traditional macho culture.

Scherezade and Iliana Emilia García are sisters with unique voices. Scherezade works reflect her fascination with duality. Iliana Emilia's multimedia work is strongly experiential, as the viewer’s imagination dictates each encounter.

José García Cordero divides his time between studios in Santo Domingo and Paris. Cordero creates large-scale paintings that reflect both the duality of his personal experience and the historical clash between European and Caribbean culture.

(Via curator Camilo Alvarez)

The show closes on Sunday, February 27th - Dominican Independence Day. Samson Projects will hold be holding a party in the gallery at 6 PM to celebrate Dominican Independence Day.

Find it: Samson Projects
450 Harrison Avenue
Storefront 63
Boston, MA 02119
Get info: (617) 357-7177

Find art events in other cities, in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

2005-02-15T10:52:00.000+08:00

LIVES: Jennifer Reeves, filmmaker

"Creativity takes a certain audacity and insistence. It requires insisting upon the time and space and resources one needs to make work. You have to fight for it, when there are more immediate and obvious concerns competing for your attention. "

The difficulty of being a filmmaker is the problem of making it through endless challenges, doubt and dry periods, to the shorter periods of discovery and happiness at surprising oneself. For doing what seemed impossible, a little better than you thought you could.

Right now I’m feeling good, I have a few new projects I’m excited about.

But six months ago I was feeling creatively dead and I had gotten too many rejections in a row, and was too much in debt, which for the moment seemed to confirm my sense that I had nothing left to say. But that seems to be a regular part of the cycle of making time-based work, for many people.

SOMETHING LIKE THE SUN

Making films...I’m thinking it’s like a sunset on a summer night, watching a film under the stars after working seven days straight. Beautiful -- and such a relief! No, that’s too easy. Gratification is further off.

I recall this story I read in grade school: a girl in a future world is bragging about the sun. It only comes out once in five years, and she saw it somehow before the other kids (she moved from another planet?)

So when the sun is supposed to appear finally, these other kids (who only see it as a myth) tie the girl up in a closet to spite her.

So she misses this thing she found so glorious, and will have to wait another five years to see it again.

All that darkness to miss the light, because of being boastful and because of the meanness of others. When they see the light they finally understand the girl a little better, but she’s not likely to tell stories again. But she will if...

Who wrote this story? I don’t know, but it has stayed with me, like the best of films.

I can work on a film for five years, and when it’s done, the difficulty and doubt and hopes were all greater than spending another second with it. The films of mine that people seem to like the most are the ones that embarrass me.

BREAKING AND ENTERING

When I got out of college and had no commercial film connections (but a great liberal arts education and introduction to feminism and avant-garde film and no-budget filmmaking), I tried working as a PA on different semi-commercial projects and several educational ones.

I learned that I wasn’t going to be taken very seriously as a creative or technically proficient person in that environment. Or, I could see the fight was awfully huge to enter that commercial world that wasn’t particularly inviting to my sensibilities or experience of life.

I’m still not particularly good at costuming or making coffee. And hair grooming may be my worst talent.

I’m being a little sarcastic, but you know it to be true -- the movie industry is male-dominated. Or, the most highly respected positions in the film industry are male-dominated. Sometimes there’s just not a ladder to climb from the bottom.

In avant-garde film and documentary film, women have been much better represented and recognized (as directors) than in the commercial (big-money) films. Although there’s still ageism that women have to contend with.

Men’s careers in all arts are celebrated from youth to maturity. Women, well...stereotypes about fertility unfortunately are very related to how women in our culture are valued in other arenas.

Hurdles are there, but I’m feeling fortunate that I’ve been able to make this much of my own work and that people have found it exciting or interesting.

Shown: "The Time We Killed"

For about three years, I didn’t think I’d have the energy or resources or ideas to finish "The Time We Killed."

But I figured it out, found the help or patience I needed. The film has just been nominated for an Independent Spirit Award.

I’m glad now that back then I decided not to pursue production work, but to work on my craft in my own way.

I’ve developed as an artist and I’m able to communicate more complicated and complex ideas; I’ve not been driven to succumb to consumer culture.

I think it would be a much harder life to spend 14 years working six days a week for someone else and having more possessions.

MAKING IT WORK: PRODUCTION

The time schedule is irrelevant until there are people waiting and demanding you finish your film. This is one reason working with grant funding is great. A film can take the time it needs so that it reaches its potential (maybe not in "slickness," but in thoughtfulness, artistic cohesion -- beauty of a more imperfect, human kind).

But time is money. Or so it works out at the moment. So when your film takes "too long" you can feel like a jerk. Or get the rug pulled out from under you.

Personally, I think time is much more valuable than money, because you can’t buy these things (knowledge, discoveries, inventions) that can be accomplished in time/through dedicating yourself [to a project].

So, I’ve chosen to work less and get paid less, and to spend more time on making work that I haven’t made a profit on. If I had pets or kids to take care of, it would be harder to do that.

But there’s the disease of working too hard, having to produce, having to prove your worth, that happens in art-making these days.

It resembles a little too much the competitive money-making world of today’s late-capitalism. It’s not possible to be immune from the pitfalls of your own culture, but you can be mindful of it.

REEL LIFE

Sometimes my films include references to real-life incidents, but they're usually fictionalized in some way.

In my film "Chronic," a Welsh terrier runs by the main character and an inter-title says "Sparky’s alive!"

That’s in reference to my dog, who had just died. On film he will always live.

FINAL CUTS

I could never imagine one thing I’d like to change in any of my films, because honestly, as soon as a film is done, my awareness of the little mistakes begin multiplying.

I always work on my films as long as I can make them better, or until I have some worthy deadline, or until I’m not going to learn much by sticking with it anymore.

After the sound and picture are "married" on a print, and the negative has long been cut, the film is done for me. I grow with every project, so I'm happy when I don’t make the same mistakes I made in earlier films.

IF FILMS DIDN’T EXIST...

If films didn’t exist, we’d lose an important direct human language and art form, much beauty, and we’d lose a lot of brain-rot too. Some films infuriate me for the wasted resources. Yet I feel nourished by other films.

But in most cases the character of the experience is not the film by itself, but what someone communicates/shares through it. But that points to why I love experimental/avant-garde film, films that really create something unique to the film form (texture, color, visual rhythm, grain, visual poetry, etc).

These are things you cannot get in any other art form or life experience. It’s not "escape," which you can get in other ways. It’s not just entertainment or education or selling you something.

It is what it is; it's individual and personal and beautiful, and nothing can replace it. Many people live without this pleasure already (avant-garde film is not marketable, profitable or readily available), but when I discovered this world of film I felt my life was enriched and my perspective opened up.

NECESSARY THINGS

Creativity takes a certain audacity and insistence. It requires insisting upon the time and space and resources one needs to make work.

You have to fight for it, when there are more immediate and obvious concerns competing for your attention.

In creativity, openness is equally important and so is being able to admit what many people would like to deny -- awkward, painful truths about life or about how things happened. To be willing to speak out loud with shamelessness.

I "speak" best without words sometimes, so I chose the sound and image of film.

DAILY TRAUMA

I’m really furious that I’ve become so tired of being furious. I just can’t believe that people get so excited about hating and hurting other people that live or look differently.

I just cannot see the purpose it serves (except that it makes you appreciate loving, open-minded individuals). I’m also genuinely puzzled why anyone thinks George Bush is "likeable."

AROUND THE BLOCK

Yes, there is certainly such a thing as creative block, because people believe it to be so. That dreaded condition has different causes in different people.

For me, it’s about being depleted after giving too much energy to a project, and not taking in enough new experiences.

It’s about being out of shape: if my mind has been too focused on the PR and networking realms of being a filmmaker for too long, then it takes some time to shift back into a more creative mode. Creative block can also be about needing a rest (how creative I feel after a good night’s sleep!)

INFLUENCES

It’s strange how the influences I had 10-15 years ago sometimes stand out more than my recent influences (which, maybe I haven’t yet seen their impact). Bruce Baillie, Su Friedrich, Marguerite Duras, Emma Goldman, Luis Bunuel, Doris Lessing, Tsai Ming-Liang, Claude Cahun, Stan Brakahge, Cannonball Adderly, Rainer Maria Rilke and just too, too many more to mention.

IMAGE VS. SOUND

In film, images and sounds are equally important, which is why they should never be redundant, telling you the same thing. Each must be considered vital and independent, complementing each other, not echoing each other too much.

Bresson’s "Notes on the Cinematographer" is a book so concise on the relationship between image and sound, I like to recommend that book to beginning filmmakers.

Sound is often neglected or put on the back-burner in film. I myself do my sound mix as I’m editing. Because the sound is essential in feeling the rhythm of the edit. Sense of time changes for an audience member based on the sound/image relationships.

Shown: "When It Was Blue"
"If films didn’t exist, we’d lose an important direct human language and art form...It’s not just entertainment or education or selling you something. It is what it is; it's individual and personal and beautiful, and nothing can replace it."

I also don’t have musicians score the film after it is done I prefer music to be created independently, to have its own reason for being. In “The Time We Killed,” I showed images from my film (not entirely edited) to musicians I know and love (Elliott Sharp, Pitt Reeves, Zeena Parkins, Marc Ribot) and they all responded by composing beautiful, strong pieces that stand on their own.

And then I brought these compositions into the film in ways not anticipated by the musicians, often editing the montage of picture to the music, rather than the other way around. I like the driving force of a scene to oscillate between picture and sound.

SCRIPTING VS. IMPROV

I've made 12 short films and one feature (all that have shown publicly) and I have yet to complete a script before beginning to shoot a film.

I work more from outlines and note-cards and I revise the “script” after I shoot and respond to the footage by furthering the script and then shooting again.

I shoot, write, edit, shoot, write, edit, write, shoot, edit, write, write, write and then edit. (And when I say “shoot” I also mean that to include recording the sound, which is also done from the beginning and not necessarily “on film”; I record sound independently of image.)

This method has worked great for shorts; it’s a proven-effective way to make documentaries and personal or experimental films.

Yet it is an inefficient method for longer-form fiction film -- I learned this in the years-long making of my first feature length work, “The Time We Killed.”

But as long as I went “over schedule”, what resulted was something that could never have been preconceived. The film turns traditional film form on its head, and it works!

The film has done better than anyone might have expected. It just got me nominated for an Independent Spirit Award -- the “Turning Leaf” Someone to Watch Award. I don’t like to be watched (but do like my films to be watched)!

It’s both surprising and encouraging to me that despite not having yet secured distribution for the film, that it has been seen and enjoyed enough at its festival screenings to get this honor.

Shown: "The Time We Killed"

I wrote, shot, edited, directed, sound-designed and optically-printed “The Time We Killed” -- and did most of the errands and phone calls too!

During the last couple years of the production I had a handful of kind and creative souls helping me out a lot: especially my co-producer Randy Sterns and assistant editor Danielle Lombardi and all-around darling Bill Wu.

Their help makes me want work with even more people on my next film (and take on fewer jobs myself) and I think it’ll work out best to have a finer map drawn out first.

My next feature will incorporate some level of improvisation, I’m sure, but I’ll have a more complete script (than I’ve previously written) before shooting the first scene.

EYES

I’ve been reading "The New Yorker" rather ravenously these past six months, because I'm so sick of sound-bite news.

EARS

I’m in a period where I don’t listen to a lot of music because my stereo broke a few months ago and I’ve been too busy to get it fixed. And I think I feel too serious right now, anyway. The “election” results really knocked me on my ass and I don’t feel up for dancing yet.

COMING UP

Right now I’m finishing up the shooting/editing of a film and music performance that I’ll be showing in the Premieres program at the NY MoMA.

I’ve done a few of these performances in NYC, Iceland, and at the Toronto Film Festival.

This one is still unfinished, so it’ll be a brand spanking new, shiny, double-projection, 16mm film with a live original score by Skúli Sverrisson (played also with Anthony Burr and a few other musicians not confirmed at press time).

It’s called “When It Was Blue,” and though it is not referencing the recent discussions of “blue” and “red” states, it does talk about the longing for another time, paradise, when water was really blue!

And when art wasn’t so hip and ironic. Life before my dad got cancer. The film will be lush, painful beauty that you cannot hold onto, but you’ll not forget.

I’m using two projectors to superimpose images I’ve made of landscape (islands: Iceland, Manhattan, the Pyramid in Pyramid Lake, New Zealand, and Galapagos) and hand-painted film frames -- tens of thousands of colorful little light paintings.

Not to be attempted on video; if 16mm is going to die, I’m going to give it a nice farewell these next few years.

Shown/header image: Jennifer Todd Reeves/Photo: Bill Wu

Author/artist bio: Jennifer Reeves (born in Colombo, Sri Lanka) is a Brooklyn-based indie filmmaker, whose work has shown internationally (from the Berlin, Rotterdam, New York and Sundance Film festivals to the Smithsonian Museum, the Tokyo Gay and Lesbian Film Festival and the Cinemathéque Français in Paris.)

Her debut experimental-narrative feature “The Time We Killed” premiered at the Berlinale 2004 and was awarded a FIPRESCI prize (from the Federation of International Film Critics).

Reeves, as director of the film, has just been nominated for the Turning Leaf Someone to Watch Independent Spirit Award.

The film also won “Best NYC Narrative Feature” award at the Tribeca Film Festival and “Outstanding Artistic Achievement” at OutFest in L.A. Reeves is a Visiting Professor of Film at Bard College.

“The Time We Killed” is looking for distribution in the US and other countries.

Interested festivals, exhibitors and distributors can contact the producers, Jennifer Reeves and Randy Sterns, at: thetimewekilled@yahoo.com.

In Canada, the film is available from the CFMDC.

Visit official site: Jennifer Reeves

Read in-depth profiles with other creative artists, in the DEC('04)/JAN ('05) issue of "Arte Six."

RELATED EXTRAS: Additional links about Reeves

"The Time We Killed" reviewed at the Vancouver International Film Festival; Essay by Mark Peranson, Berlin Film Festival 2004;"Jump Cuts, New York independents in Berlin" by Dennis Lim

RELATED EXTRAS: Related booklist

"Projections 13: Women Filmmakers on Filmmaking", "Film Fatales: Independent Women Directors", "Women Filmmakers: Refocusing", "The St. James Women Filmmakers Encyclopedia: Women on the Other Side of the Camera", "Rebel Without a Crew", "What They Don't Teach You at Film School", "How to Shoot a Feature Film for Under $10,000 (And Not Go to Jail)", "Digital Filmmaking 101","303 Digital Filmmaking Solutions", "Producing Great Sound for Digital Video", "Nuts and Bolts Filmmaking", "Living in Oblivion"(film), "The Independent Film Producer's Survival Guide", "Shooting to Kill", "Projections 11: New York Filmmakers on Filmmaking", "Visionary Film", "The Garden in the Machine"

2005-02-13T06:45:00.000+08:00

NYC/Dance“Sly Verb”
Feb. 15-20, 2005

One of Canada's most exciting choreographers and dance companies returns with a fresh blast of intelligent and provocative dance, in Toronto Dance Theatre’s compelling New York premiere of “Sly Verb” (2003). Exploring touch, perception and boundaries, “Sly Verb” seduces with the beauty of its dancing and the force of its ideas. Phil Strong's score throbs with the pulse of life, while Scott Eunson's inventive set evokes the fragility of the body's architecture.

Photo: David Hou

Find it: The Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Avenue at 19th Street
NYC, NY 10011
Get info: (212) 868-4488

Find additional dance content in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

2005-02-06T06:46:00.000+08:00

THEATRE/NYC
“Room”
Feb. 7-12

“Room” creates a space for us all to inhabit. Wynne Greenwood and Fawn Krieger build a utopian living room out of wood, foam, cheap carpet, and video projections that envisions new ideas about community and home, identity and social communication. And just for the hell of it.

An immersive video environment during the day, the installation serves as a stage in the evening for the art punk band Tracy + the Plastics. Greenwood assumes the role of each band member, performing live as Tracy, with bandmembers Nikki and Cola present as video projections.

Find it: The Kitchen
512 West 19th St.
New York, NY
Get info: (212) 255-5793

Find additional dance content in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

2005-02-03T13:57:00.000+08:00

BOOKS/WRITERS
Writers Bloc series
Featured columnist: Jacqueline Carey
"Seven Rules: On Writing Good Fantasy"

1. Read within the genre.

It’s an old, old art form with its roots in myth, legend and fairy tale, and there’s very little new under the sun.

Whether it be a cursed ring, an enchanted sword, a lost heir or a fairy court living in Manhattan, your idea has probably been done before.

The trick lies in reinventing familiar tropes to make them feel fresh and new -- but to do that, you have to know what they are.

As with anything, you have to have a good grasp of the rules before you set about breaking them.

2. Read outside the genre.

All the fantasy writers I’ve met have been avid and eclectic readers. It’s part of what enables us to find fresh perspectives, to bring in new elements and make our work vital.

In my work, it’s obvious that the “Kushiel’s Legacy” trilogy was strongly influenced by historical fiction.

But there are other influences, too. The first third of “Kushiel’s Chosen” is structured as a mystery.

Few readers would suspect that at one point during the writing, I asked myself, “Hmm...what would Spenser do?”

What does a hard-boiled private eye have in common with a courtesan heroine with a knack for languages?

Not much on the surface, but they’re both dogged in the pursuit of information, with a tendency to ask questions that will stir things up when all else fails.

From paranormal romance to alternate history to fantasy noir, there’s a great deal of cross-pollination going on within the field these days.

The more you read, the more tools you have at your disposal. You might even create a brand-new subgenre!

3. Establish parameters and follow them.

Magic is good; magic is fun. But if magic doesn’t conform to some internal consistency, your readers will cease to willingly suspend their disbelief. What’s its source? How is it manifested? Does it take a toll? Can anyone do it? Why not?

It doesn’t matter what form magic takes or what the answers are, but you need to ask yourself whatever hard questions apply.

If you don’t, your readers will.

This applies to all aspects of world-building. If you create a system of nomenclature, follow it consistently.

In a family of three siblings, if the eldest is named R’hath, the middle is B’lal and the youngest is Jennifer, it’s going to throw the reader off.

If you’re writing fantastic comedy in the Terry Pratchett vein, that’s great. But if you’re not, then it’s probably not the effect you’re after.

Every reader who opens the pages of a fantasy book is willing to take a leap of faith and believe in the world you’ve created. That’s their gift to you. Don’t give them a reason to take it back.

4. Maintain a sense of awe.

It’s why we read fantasy, and it should be a part of why we write it, too. To escape mundane reality, to be swept away, to open a door onto another place, another time, where a world hangs in the balance and a single person’s courage may change its fate, or the Wild Hunt stalks our city streets.

Whether you’re making the strange familiar or the familiar strange, fantasy deals with powerful archetypes. They will be more powerful if you -- and your characters -- remain mindful of this.

If your mundane and prosaic heroine doesn’t have a moment of seriously freaking out when she discovers her charming new boyfriend is a vampire, the revelation will lack impact.

If, say, your Dark Lord doesn’t have characters groveling in bowel-loosening terror, he’s not all that scary, is he?

5. Keep it real.

Or, more accurately, keep it plausible. Fantasy pushes the boundaries of the believable, but it’s most effective when it’s rooted in a certain amount of reality.

Ordinary horses can’t gallop for hundreds of miles on end. Even heroes need to eat and sleep. A world can’t function without a socioeconomic structure.

And the small, visceral details that convey these things -- a lumpy pallet, an imperial profile on a coin, the aroma of spiced skewers of meat grilling in the marketplace -- serve as touchstones that anchor the reader’s belief in your world.

Pay attention to emotional and psychological details, too. If a character has lost his family in a traumatic accident, he’s going to grieve for a long, long time. Grief doesn’t pass in a chapter.

If something dreadful has happened due to a character’s folly, she’s going to carry guilt around like a millstone. You don’t have to harp on it, but don’t forget about it, either.

If the effects of a serious event don’t cause ripples throughout the story, it’s not going to resonate.

6. Do your homework.

This is what enables you to keep it real. If one of your characters is an herb-witch, study up on herbal lore.

If you’re writing a fantasy set in a desert climate, do some research! It doesn’t have to be dry and scholarly, but finding a source of information that will provide some of those anchor-point details and feed your imagination is crucial.

Older source material, which often already contains an element of the fantastic, can be excellent for this purpose.

While doing research for “Kushiel’s Avatar,” I found some wonderful journals by an 18th century British doctor traveling through Ethiopia. It’s a great way to look at the world through fresh eyes.

Don’t neglect field research. Never ridden a horse? Visit a stable that offers trail-riding. Never held a sword? Try a Renaissance fair.

You don’t have to become proficient at the things your protagonists do with ease or in their areas of expertise, but the more experience and knowledge you have to draw on, the deeper and richer your writing will be.

7. Every rule about good writing applies.

Fantasy -- good fantasy -- doesn’t get a pass. Show, don’t tell. Avoid infodumps. All the rules apply. Good writing is good writing in any genre.

Things are changing, but the perception persists in some circles that fantasy is easier to write because, “Oh, you’re just making it all up anyway.”

In the first place, there’s nothing easy about “making it all up.” And in the second place, a good fantasy requires the same level of craftsmanship that any piece of well-written work does; and perhaps even more.

There’s a double burden involved. You’re asking readers to laugh and cry and rejoice with people who don’t exist in a world that never was.

It’s not easy. But if you do it well, they will.

Bio: Jacqueline Carey is the author of the critically acclaimed “Kushiel’s Legacy,” a trilogy ("Kushiel's Dart," "Kushiel's Legacy," "Kushiel's Avatar") of historical fantasy novels concluding with "Kushiel's Avatar." Her new novel, "Banewreaker," was just released. It is the first volume of “The Sundering” duology.

An avid reader, Jacqueline began writing fiction as a hobby in high school. After receiving B.A. degrees in psychology and English literature from Lake Forest College, she took part in a work exchange program and spent six months working in a bookstore in London.

While living abroad, the desire to write professionally emerged as a driving passion. Jacqueline enjoys doing research on a wide variety of arcane topics, and an affinity for travel has take her from Finland to Egypt to date.

She currently lives in west Michigan, where she is a member of the oldest Mardi Gras krewe in the state. Although often asked by inquiring fans, she does not, in fact, have any tattoos.

Official site: Jacqueline Carey

About this series: The Writers Bloc series is an ongoing column featuring practical advice for writers. Nope, not a support group. Not until someone busts out the tequila, anyway...

Find additional books/writers content, in the DEC/JAN issue of "Arte Six."

2005-02-02T06:27:00.000+08:00

ART/LA“In the Bright Room”
Through February 12th, 2005

Somewhere between the realms of reality and imagination lies the photographic art of Mayumi Terada. Terada’s moody images suggest not a physical place, but a state of being.

Terada builds diminutive domestic sets she calls ‘dollhouses’, then photographs them. Her large monochrome pictures show a world filled with scenes and objects which are completely familiar, yet eerily devoid of human presence. Thus, a soup plate sitting on a table, an empty trash bucket, or a shower stall with water droplets still lingering on the glass door have a mysterious sense of reality.

The viewer can’t help wondering who might have just emerged from that shower, who left the bed wrinkled and tossed, whose suitcases are packed and waiting. Yet no matter how seductive these speculations, the real subject of her photographs is light -- streaming into windows and illuminating stories suggested by the imagination.

Find it: White Room Gallery
8810 Melrose Avenue
West Hollywood, CA 90069
Get info: (310) 859-2402

Find other art exhibits worldwide, in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

2005-01-31T21:54:00.000+08:00

ART/DC
"Berthe Morisot: An Impressionist and Her Circle"
Jan. 15, 2005 – May 8, 2005

Impressionism is arguably the world's most popular art movement. "Berthe Morisot: An Impressionist and Her Circle" establishes the artist as a central figure of the movement, showing her paintings, prints, watercolors, and drawings alongside those of her more recognized male colleagues: Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Claude Monet.

More than 75 works will be on display in the U.S. for the first time; they were bequeathed to the Musée Marmottan-Monet in Paris in 1997.

Berthe Morisot succeeded as a professional artist, despite society’s expectations for women from respectable upper-middle-class families, to acquire artistic training merely as a genteel hobby.

Born June 14, 1841, in Bourges, France, Berthe Morisot was the third daughter of a prominent and wealthy government official. Raised accordingly, Morisot and her sisters were provided with tutors for languages and literature and, in 1857, art lessons.

Morisot and her older sister Edma quickly developed both a passion and a high level of skill in drawing and painting.

Alongside her sister, Morisot copied masterpieces at the Louvre and painted out of doors under the direction of well-known landscape painter Camille Corot.

She first exhibited her paintings at the prestigious annual Salon in 1864, and her work was shown there regularly through 1873.

In the winter of 1868–1869, Morisot was introduced to Edouard Manet.

Manet’s reputation and aesthetic innovations were well known to Morisot, and they began a lifelong friendship. Over the course of the next five years, Manet would paint Morisot 11 times.

While Morisot learned much from Manet, she never formally studied with him. She often disagreed with his suggestions, most notably in her decision to join the Impressionist circle.

Shown above: "The Artist's Sister at a Window," (1889)
Oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
Berthe Morisot

In 1874, Edgar Degas asked Morisot to join a group of independent artists that included Degas, as well as Monet, Renoir and Camille Pissarro. They later became known as the Impressionists.

Degas and his colleagues declared that Morisot’s pictorial technique, with her loose brushstrokes, unfinished backgrounds, and light-infused color exemplified the Impressionists’ aesthetic aims.

Morisot remained faithful to the Impressionists after others abandoned the movement, participating in seven of the eight exhibitions and single-handedly organizing the final show in 1886.

Perhaps Manet’s greatest influence on her was the introduction of his brother Eugène to her family; Morisot wed Eugène Manet in December 1874 at the age of 33, well after she was established as a professional artist, and several months after her participation in the first Impressionist exhibition.

Eugène readily supported his wife’s career, never asking her to abandon her painting; despite his acceptance of her art, however, Eugène in particular and men in general appear extremely infrequently in Morisot’s paintings.

Her wide range of subjects often included portraits of her mother, sisters, and nieces, as well as of her own daughter Julie, to whom she gave birth in 1878, and who would become her favorite model and painting companion.

Morisot continued to paint and exhibit in her later years, receiving her first solo exhibition only a few weeks after her husband’s death in 1892.

Morisot died of pneumonia in 1895, leaving the majority of her works and collection to her daughter Julie, who served as Morisot’s champion by lending her works to international exhibitions until her own death in 1966.

Shown/header image:
Self Portrait, (1885)
Oil on canvas
Musée Marmottan-Monet
Berthe Morisot

Find it: NMWA/National Museum of Women in the Arts
1250 New York Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20005-3970
Get info: 1-202-783-5000, 1-800-222-7270

Find out about art exhibits in other cities, in the DEC/JAN issue of "Arte Six."

Related booklist: "Berthe Morisot" (Anne Higonnet), "Berthe Morisot: The First Lady of Impressionism", "Impressionist Quartet", "Edouard Manet: Rebel in a Frock Coat", "Berthe Morisot, the Correspondence With Her Family and Friends", "Berthe Morisot : Le Secret de la femme en noir/Berthe Morisot: The Secret of the Woman in Black" (FR), "Berthe Morisot: Impressionist", "The Women Impressionists: A Sourcebook"

2005-01-25T13:39:00.000+08:00

ART/Groningen (NL)
Diaghilev Festival
Jan. 26-30, 2005

The Diaghilev Festival brings together the work of visual artists, composers and choreographers who worked with ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1929).

On concurrent display, 230 paintings, décor and costume designs, drawings, and costumes for works commissioned by Diaghilev for the Ballets Russes.

The Diaghilev exhibition presents work by Picasso, Matisse, de Chirico, Bakst, Benois, Golovin, Serov, Vrubel, Gontcharova, and Larionov, among others.

Born to privilege, Diaghilev started working with visual artists in 1898, with the founding of arts journal “Mir Iskusstva.”

He worked with a large group of visual artists to supply material for his journal, and started presenting their work in exhibitions he organized in St. Petersburg.

Work by many of these artists will be on show, including paintings by Mikhail Vrubel, Valentin Serov, and Diaghilev’s friends Alexandre Benois, Konstantin Somov and Leon Bakst.

Diaghilev started producing ballet performances in Paris from 1909 onward; he oversaw the commissioning of new music, and the selection of talented dancers and costume designers.

Shown above: Costume design, Bacchante for "Narcisse," (1911)
Leon Bakst

He founded the Ballets Russes in 1909, featuring young dancers Anna Pavlova and Vaslav Nijinsky, both of whom later became legends in the world of ballet. Artist Leon Bakst designed the costumes and backgrounds.

The exotic and lavish costumes by Bakst, Alexander Golovin, and Valentin Serov thrilled the pampered Parisian public and the experiment was a success. The Ballets Russes later became one of the most influential ballet companies of the 20th century.

While Diaghilev gathered Western artists around him, he encouraged them to collaborate intensively with artists from other disciplines.

Composers Debussy, Ravel and de Falla collaborated with artists such as Picasso, Matisse and de Chirico, and with authors such as Jean Cocteau and Andre Gide.

The Diaghilev Festival also features film screenings, and ballet performances.
Additional highlights:

Film screening: “The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky”
January 29, 1pm
Neither a biography of the great dancer nor a dramatic rerun of the events in his life, “Diaries” is pure cinema in an experimental form. Director Paul Cox uses fragments from Nijinsky's diary as material to sketch a picture of Nijinsky’s final years, just after his last performance and before his admission into a mental institution.

Theatre performance/world premiere: “Nijinsky, A Painting”
January 25, 8:15pm
Dance, music, theatre, video, percussion, light, and paint all contribute to this theatre work, a ‘living painting’ of Vaslav Nijinsky.

Opera performance/double bill: "Mavra," "Kashchei the Immortal"
January 29, 8pm
"Mavra": One-act opera with music by Igor Stravinsky, based on a poem by Alexander Pushkin, "A Cottage in Kolomna."
"Kashchei the Immortal": After the play "Ivan Korolevich" by E.M. Petrovsky, with music by Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

Dance: Introdans, “L'Après-midi d'un Faune”
January 27,28, 8pm
Introdans choreographer Nicolas Musin presents a performance of the ballet “L'Après-midi d'un Faune.”

Shown/header image: "The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky"

Find it/venues: Too many to list; festival organizers can answer all questions about venues and programming (number below).
Get info: +31 (0)50 5270057

Find art exhibits/events in other cities, in the DEC/JAN issue of "Arte Six."

2005-01-24T10:59:00.000+08:00

SCI/TECH
Experimental research
Pass the chips

University of Alberta researchers have designed a computer chip that uses
about 100 times less energy than current state-of-the-art digital chips. The new microchip is 10 times smaller and 100 times more energy-efficient than currently
used chips

The greatly reduced energy consumption of the new technology would improve the performance of small devices with relatively low power needs.

For instance, the technology could one day eliminate the need to recharge cell phones, help introduce smaller, ultra-high-speed communications systems, and advance the use of implantable health care devices, such as drug delivery chips. Research and development is ongoing before this technology can be implemented in products.

The invention employs a new method of processing digital data, known as analog decoding, which uses extremely low levels of power to execute its detection algorithm. Research shows that no other reported chip uses a lower amount of energy consumed per decoded information bit.

Get more info: (780) 492-0442

Read more science stories in the DEC. 2004/JAN. 2005issue of "Arte Six."

2005-01-22T12:18:00.000+08:00

LIFE
Dispatches from Sweden

At 5 a.m. this morning, an apartment a mere block or so away from here just, well, blew up. We never heard a thing.

Strangely, the man who lived in the apartment had just been released from jail - he'd been there for allegedly stealing from his employer: He took rare books from the Royal Library, Sweden's answer to the Library of Congress.

Our current guest living in the spare bedroom, the crazy music producer who is a firm believer in all kinds of conspiracies, thinks the guy was done in by the people he sold the books to.

"That's what happens when you start dealing with those kind of people," the crazy music producer said.

The Swedish word for the day is sprängämne. It means explosives.
--
Who ever thought that cherries in liqueur and covered in chocolate was a good thing? Why do confectioners bother to put them in boxes of chocolate, bearing a disturbing resemblance to my idea of what eyeballs in cough syrup must be like, sitting uneaten in their gold wrappers until one day, sick of seeing them languish in a little bowl on top of the sugar canister, I am forced to eat them, one by one?

The Swedish word for the day is besserwisser. It is stolen directly from German, I have no doubt, and means know it all.
--
Someone has decided that the little statue of an adolescent girl on Karlavägen must have been cold. They've given her a coat. I have no picture, but you'll just have to take my word for it that she looks all warm and snug now. Giving statues clothes is apparently a Stockholm thing.

The Swedish words for the day are halsduk and vantar. They mean scarf and mittens.

From: “How to Learn Swedish in 1000 Difficult Lessons,” © Francis Strand

Read more offbeat real-life content, in the Dec. 2004/Jan. 2005 issue of "Arte Six."

2005-01-20T11:13:00.000+08:00

FILM/NYC
Screening, "When It Was Blue"
Jan. 21, 2005
8pm

Screening this Friday, new work by experimental filmmaker Jennifer Reeves. Reeves won the Critics' Prize at the 2004 Berlinale for her first feature, "The Time We Killed."

Her latest work, "When It Was Blue," is a world premiere film-and-music performance; a complex and dazzling fusion of multiple-projected, animated images projected onto filmed landscapes of Iceland, New Zealand, Vancouver, NYC and Pyramid Lake, Nevada. The screening will be accompanied by live music via composer Skúli Sverrisson.

Reeves comments on her new film: "It’s called 'When It Was Blue,' and though it is not referencing the recent discussions of 'blue' and 'red' states, it does talk about the longing for another time, paradise, when water was really blue. And when art wasn’t so hip and ironic. Life before my dad got cancer. The film will be lush, painful beauty that you cannot hold onto, but [which] you’ll not forget."

Find it: The Museum of Modern Art
Titus 1
11 West 53rd St.
NYC, NY
Get info:(212) 708-9400

NB: Admission is free during Target Free Friday Nights, every Friday evening, 4-8pm. Tickets for Target Free Friday Nights are not available in advance.

Read an in-depth interview with this filmmaker, in the DEC/JAN issue of "Arte Six."

2005-01-15T10:33:00.000+08:00

LIFE/Event/SF
“The Evil Garden”
5th Annual Edwardian Ball
January 22, 9pm

“The Gashlycrumb Tinies,” “The Curious Sofa,” “The Epileptic Bicycle” -– in Technicolor. Well, sort of.

Calling all Gorey fanatics, you’re invited to...well, let them tell it:

One hot and dusty afternoon in a remote desert at the turn of the century, two gentlemen and a lady sat sipping black martinis in a strange and little-known oasis known as The Pagan Lounge.

"I say," ventured the first gent, "wouldn't it be smashing to throw a ball in honor of the ghastly tales of Sir Edward Gorey?"

"Oh yes indeed!" agreed the lady emphatically. "We could all dress...Edwardian!"

"I love it!" cried the third. "Perhaps we could find an elegant yet irreverent house band to tell the stories and set them to music. Perhaps that band is...right here amongst us!"

It was true -- they looked up from their dust-stained cups to find none other than Rosin Coven carousing around the bar nearby. They were perhaps the only Pagan Lounge Ensemble skilled enough yet foolish enough to tackle such a task.

On a handshake it was agreed, then and there, that the ball would commence at Cat Club that very December.

The finest artists were assembled from throughout the land and The Edwardian Ball was born. It has now become a splendid San Francisco tradition and the rest, as they say, is history.

Appearing this year: fiendish femme fatale Jill Tracy, fresh from her run at “Welcome to the Hypnodrome,” with additional music by Rosin Coven.

Also featuring rather odd puppets and assorted curiosities from Puppets and Pie and fire-breathing antics and rude acrobatics from Vau De Vire Society.

Find it: Cat Club
1190 Folsom Street at 8th St.
San Francisco, CA
Get info: (415) 431-3332

Find more offbeat real-life events in the DEC/JAN issue of "Arte Six."

2005-01-13T13:27:00.000+08:00

MUSIC/Disc Series
"Everything Nothing"
Iuno

"Love and fear. Everything is about love and fear."

We originally fell in love with each other’s creativity, then with each other. After a year or so, we started writing songs together.

Our first album, “Everyone’s Gone,” is the result of that. Later we started working with other artists on our live shows. These are different artists from show to show. We’ve worked with authors (on the Crossing Borders festival), string players, video artists and moviemakers. Anyone that can contribute something that fits the music is welcome to join the Iuno Laboratory.

Iuno (Juno) is the Roman queen of the gods, wife and sister of Jupiter. We liked her name, and decided that if we ever had children, this would be the name if it were a girl. Since we've been way too busy to have any children, we decided to give the name to our band.

We both do a little bit of everything. Stella’s main part is the lyrics and the melodies, Steven’s main thing is the music.

We’re each others' critic and in that way we both shape what the other has come up with. For us this is a very fruitful way of working that can get very passionate. Passionate in this context means: fighting and making up. Aah...making up.

MUSING

What most inspires us to write: Anything...everything...nothing.

We mostly write at night. The atmosphere of night is more inspiring than that of daytime.

In the daytime there's too much distraction; everything’s realtime and serious, people calling, neighbors stopping by, while at night everyone sleeps, everyone’s gone and time is less of an issue.

A little intoxication, be it a smoke or a drink, can also help while writing a song. It helps to see things in a more forgiving light. It sedates the superego and gives creativity a chance. Being critical is a good thing when producing and perfecting a song, but it can be a bad thing when creating it.

"I hope the lyrics speak for themselves. 'Nothing' is about death. 'Everything' is about life. 'Precious' is about the fear to love. I guess that’s got all the major themes covered."
[Shown above: Stella Bergsma/Photo: Maartje van Caspel]

The song itself, the basic idea, is done within an evening. The finishing up usually takes a little less than a year. The actual writing of the song is the most fun part, because it’s very direct, you're still working at the source.

The completing is the most difficult part. We are both quite perfectionist, so we often listen to a song over and over again and alter it until we’re satisfied with it. When you’ve heard a song a thousand times, it can be quite hard to still maintain an objective view of it. Luckily we are each others' most severe critics.

STRANGE ATTRACTORS

Born/Created

Steven, on whether singers/composers are born or created: Born and created, I would guess. There was only one Mozart, but if his father hadn’t pushed him to be a composer since he was old enough to hold a violin, we might never have heard of him at all.

I think some occurrence in your life has to be pushing you to be an artist. Beyond that, I think the way creativity really works, or where it comes from, is way too complex for us to understand.

Stella: Nature or nurture. Chicken or egg. You can’t really tell. And frankly, I don’t really care, as long as good music is being made.

Life/Art

Steven: Most of our songs are based on feelings, convictions and philosophies, rather than actual incidents. The less specific lyrics are, the more you can put into them.

Stella: That’s true, but sometimes an incident is the inspiration for a song. “The Park” is based upon a panic attack I had in a park, and “Sculpture” is based on a very simple moment of happiness: We were sitting on our couch, looking out of our window. Outside there was a thunderstorm, on our stereo Mahler’s third symphony. The moment was pure beauty.

On what comes first, words or music: It depends. Sometimes Steven has already made music that almost naturally seems to fit to lyrics I wrote. Or the way the music sounds inspires me to write new lyrics. It’s almost organic sometimes. It’s hard to point out who does what and where what begins.

Title/Work

Steven, on which comes first, the title or the work: Usually the song suggests a title. We don’t know up front what we will be writing. When we write a song, it’s a very intuitive process. Having a title in advance would only limit what the song could become.

Stella: Coming up with the title is one of the best parts. It’s like naming a child. I especially like it, and this happens a lot, when Steven makes up the title to a song I wrote the lyrics for. I feel like he really understands me, then.

Personal/Universal

Stella: Since I wrote all the lyrics to the second album, I would say all the songs are equally personal.

On the first album it would be the song “star,” a really short song at the end of the album. It’s about my father, who died seven years ago.

Steven: Ah, the agony...! I cannot choose. I feel I would betray other songs if I chose one. That’s how personal they are.

"Art, if it’s good art, is fighting battles for mankind on the outer edges of our reality. Strangely enough, art is not considered to be that important in our society."
[Shown above: Steven de Munnik, Stella Bergsma/Photo: Maartje van Caspel]

Clarity/Resonance

Steven, on what is more important, philosophical clarity or emotional resonance: Both [are important]. I feel very strongly about philosophical clarity. My philosophy, on the other hand, is quite emotional.

Stella: Or it could just be emotional clarity and philosophical resonance.

Fiction/Real life

Steven: For me there is no difference. Fiction is the version of reality we create ourselves. But so is real life. The difference is a matter of belief, which is a matter of blind choice. I hate blind choices.

Stella: Real life is always stranger.

CLOSER

Stella, on the most insightful thing anyone ever said to her: When I cried out: “Life makes no sense,” a wise man replied: “Indeed, it doesn’t. Don’t you find that extremely comforting?”

After my initial shock I realized that he was right, and since then I always find comfort in the fact that life makes no sense. Because it gave me the answer I was always looking for. Now nothing has to have a meaning anymore. It can just be. I can just be.

Steven, on the most scary thing anyone ever said to him: “Stop smoking. It will kill you. It took me a heart attack to quit. Quit now.” That is what a man at the cigarette counter in the supermarket said to me, when I was buying cigarettes, one day.

I got paranoid, thinking this was my future-me, coming back to warn me. I almost quit.

THEMES: BASIC

Stella: Love and fear. Everything is about love and fear.

THEMES: “EVERYONE GONE”

How we chose the title: The image appealed to us. An empty room, after a party, all the people are gone, smoke is hanging in the air, the person that threw the party is sitting there, staring. Film Noir. It’s how it feels when we’re making music. It’s when we’re in a vacuum, where there are no other people.

It’s also a line from a song on the album. It’s the feeling you have when you are awake at night and everything is quiet. It’s like you are the only one there. The only one awake in the whole wide world.

THEMES: “EVERYTHING NOTHING”

We are both amazed by the fact that we are here, that we are Something instead of Nothing. That fact means everything. Hence “Everything Nothing.”

Or as Blaise Pascal said it: "What is man in nature? Nothing in relation to the infinite, all in relation to nothing, a mean between nothing and everything." ("Pensées").

MUSICAL INTENT

Stella: It would be nice if people took the time to really listen, because our music is not the easiest kind. We try to create atmosphere.

We said to each other when we first started out, that we wanted to make music as if it was the soundtrack to a thriller. And that is what we are still trying to do.

Maybe people will understand us better if they know that. I remember one time someone said to me: “I don’t really like your music. When I listen to it I get that uneasy feeling that someone else is also listening, behind my back.” I thought it was the best compliment anyone ever gave us!

Steven: I think the music should be self-sufficient and self-explanatory. Since music is more direct than language, people should either get the message, or the music just isn’t good enough.

I concede the fact that some music you have to learn to appreciate, but for me, the music we make has to appeal to your most primitive senses: Fear, sorrow, love, anger and bliss.

EXPERIENCE

The ideal situation would be that people experience the same as what we experienced while making the music. But that only happens once in a while.

During the recording of “Everything Nothing,” there was someone we only know through the Internet, that we sent newly written songs to, for an objective view on them.

The reason we valued his opinion, was the fact that he really seemed to understand our music, and still like it. He sometimes, when reviewing our music, actually came up with the exact same images we had in mind while writing it. We were amazed by that.

As for the people that appreciate our music for other reasons: bless them.

INTO THE DARK

Stella: Dark songs make me cheerful, and cheerful songs make me suicidal.

Steven: Cheerful music hurts me in a way that I can’t begin to explain. That’s why I never like to go to supermarkets. The music they play in supermarkets is brain pollution. I think cheerfulness has only one dimension: cheerfulness.

Darkness has many, much more interesting shades, from melancholy to raging anger, to all-consuming fear. Lovely. The only times I like cheerfulness in music, is when it has an edge, when it is used to reveal something darker that lies underneath it.

BASIC NECESSITIES

Stella: Yes, [I do think music is necessary in daily life.] It’s been a part of humanity ever since we could lift a stick and beat a drum.

"Under every definition of language, music is a language...it not only tells you how the composer felt at the time of writing it, it actually lets you feel it for yourself."
[Shown: Stella Bergsma/Photo: Jelle Kalkman]

Music elevates the mind and takes you to a different place. Without this kind of diversion, we would be lost, I’m afraid.

Besides being a diversion, art in general also points us to the most important thing in life, which is not survival or mere perseverance, but creativity, and becoming something we aren’t yet.

Art, if it’s good art, is fighting battles for mankind on the outer edges of our reality.

Strangely enough, art is not considered to be that important in our society.

FRUSTRATIONS

Stella: That I cannot drink and eat whatever the hell I want without gaining weight. And death. Death really pisses me off.

Steven: What really frustrates me is stupidity, the kind of stupidity that hurts other people, or kills other people, especially when combined with misplaced arrogance. Oh, and supermarket music, did I mention supermarket music?

VICE VERSO

Everything and Nothing puzzles us. Since Everything is everything how can there be Nothing?

And can Nothing actually be? Nothing is the negation of all things, which implies it should be something. And if it’s something, how can it be nothing?

Or is it just a language problem? Does the fact that nothing exists as a predicate necessitate that it actually should be something? And how can it be that we don’t know anything about this? How can it be we don’t really know anything about anything? This really eats our brain.

WRITER’S BLOCK

Ehhmm...

INFLUENCES

PJ Harvey, Portishead, Barry Adamson, David Cronenberg, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Nietschze, Toon Tellegen (maybe they knew everything), Simeon ten Holt (Canto Ostinato), Arvo Pärt, Górecki, Bukowski, Pink Floyd, Björk, Chet Baker, Nick Drake, Radiohead, Ministry, Frank Zappa, Sergio Mendez and Brasil 66, Ella Fitzgerald, to name a few.

Stella, on songs they wish they’d written: “Catherine,” by PJ Harvey. It’s a song about jealousy. It takes guts to write about such a dark feeling. And she does it beautifully. Also “Everything In Its Right Place,” by Radiohead. It’s got everything in its right place.

We're both really into movies. We like scary movies. Psychological thrillers. Lately we’ve been watching a lot of Japanese movies. The image language they use is new and original to us, since we’re used to American and European movies.

Movies are probably one of the best ways to depict the subconscious. The subconscious is probably our biggest source of inspiration. It’s so full of imagery and mystery.

WORDS AND MUSIC

Stella: Music goes straight to your heart and is a universal language. This is a cliché of course. It is true nevertheless. But personally, I love words, I adore words.

I think poetry is the highest art form there is. I cannot really explain it, but a small word like awe totally puts me in awe.

Under every definition of language, music is a language. Since music gets its meaning from our corresponding states of mind, it not only tells you how the composer felt at the time of writing it, it actually lets you feel it for yourself. In that way, it's a hyper-language.

Steven: Equally important. The words become music when you sing them. The music speaks to you in a way that words cannot.

LOST IN TRANSLATION

Stella: Singing is much more difficult for me [than writing]. I love writing a song, but singing it always frustrates me because I can always do better.

Steven: For me, performing it is always a bit tricky. People like to see a direct link between what a musician does on stage, and what they hear. And that’s not always easy when you’re working with computers. This is something I had to learn and at which I’m gradually getting better. This is also why we like to work with live musicians on stage; it adds to the live feel.

INSIDE TRACKS

Steven:

“Precious”

You seem to know everything
but you don’t know faith

To me, this has a lot of meaning, in that it unveils the arrogance of rationality. I think rationality is driven by emotions, something which the greatest philosophers often seemed to forget.

“Nothing,” for me, quite accurately describes nothing.

“You and me”

It’s in the things you say
between your words
They’re true but they’re not
It’s you but it’s not
I know it’s hard to believe
And that’s what makes it true
I’ve stopped listening to you

It’s all about the way you stare at me
I know that you see
Just don’t know who you see
I know it’s hard to believe
That’s just what makes it true
I’ve stopped looking at you

And all that I remember
is your touch
It’s strange isn’t it
It doesn’t seem that much
I know it’s hard to believe
That’s just what makes it true
I’ve forgotten all about you
© 2004 iuno

“You and me” is the coldest love song we [ever] wrote.

Stella :

“Nothing”

It’s a dark place
Only a shadow maybe
It’s a lost time
No time

I am falling
I am coming baby
It’s only nothing
It’s fine

“Everything”

Sun in water
Is liquid diamond
Wind in leaves
Is whispering peace

I can see
Everything is beautiful
but me

“Precious”

Your body that glows and your voice in my ear.
The sweet of your laughter the salt of your tear.
Our window, our music, the sounds that I hear, all that
Makes happiness scarier than fear.

I hope the lyrics speak for themselves. “Nothing” is about death. “Everything” is about life. “Precious” is about the fear to love. I guess that’s got all the major themes covered.

IN PASSING

The most interesting stranger we’ve ever met: An old, Jewish man, with an Auschwitz tattoo on his arm. We never met anyone more understanding and forgiving than him.

PAGES

Stella: I’m reading a book about a woman with a kind of dark side. The back flap said the main character was a cross between Patrick Bateman and Lolita. I thought, wow, a female psycho, that could be interesting! But in fact she talks about cannibalism so much, it's starting to bore me. And of course I always read all the magazines I can get my hands on.

Steven: I’m re-reading “The Elementary Particles” by Michel Houellebecq. It’s one of the best books I’ve read in years.

Other favorite writers of mine are Harmen Lustig and Yorgos Dalman. At the moment they are the most talented Dutch writers, in my opinion.

SOUNDS

Stella: I have an MP3 player and it really brightens up my days. I like to listen to new stuff. Outkast, Amy Winehouse, Jay Z, and The Streets are on there right now. Don’t know if they will stick though.

If I like a song, I tend to play it and sing it over and over again. Steven can get really annoyed by this. One night, when he wasn’t home, I played “Blinded by the Lights” (The Streets), which I think is an absolutely brilliant song, about a hundred times.

Steven: Stella repeating the same song over and over again. And “The Teaches of Peaches,” by Peaches. I really love that album. It’s totally under-produced, which gives it a really raw and direct sound. On top of that, Peaches is cool.

OUTSIDE MUSIC: INTERESTS

Stella: People really interest me. What they do, what they don’t do. And of course why they do or don’t.

Steven: Philosophy. Why everything is, and more to the point: what everything is. There is no answer to be found there, so it’s a great way to let your imagination run wild.

I studied philosophy, but never made it my job, because then I’d have to believe in something, I’d have to be making a point. In my philosophy there are no points to be made. In music I can make a point without being certain of anything. That’s why music will always be more satisfying to me.

QUICK HITS

Interesting fact that nobody knows about us yet:
That we’re that good.

If I wasn’t a singer/composer, I’d definitely be:
Stella: Some other creative thing. I’m not fit for anything else. As a child I always wanted to be an actress. In my fantasy I already have my Oscar acceptance speech written.

Steven: An astronaut, had I pursued my childhood ambitions. I once had a dream, in which I was standing on the surface of the moon, looking at the earth.

It was a wonderful feeling to be that far away from everything. At the same time it was also kind of scary; I didn't know how to get back. Food for psychiatrists, probably.

Life is:
Stella: Yes, it sure is.
Steven: Everything between two nothings.

Favorite quotes:
Steven: "Razors pain you; rivers are damp; acids stain you; and drugs cause cramp. Guns aren't lawful; nooses give; gas smells awful; you might as well live." (Dorothy Parker)

Stella: I love quotes. Probably cause I like words so much. I collect quotes from writers and philosophers and such, and I am totally into movie quotes.

It’s hard to pick one favorite. Different quotes are good for different occasions. I like the really bright and witty ones like the ones from Oscar Wilde and Dorothy Parker. I also like the more serious ones, like Dylan Thomas’ “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

But the one I can most subscribe to is a simple one. It’s from St. Augustine.
It says: Ama et fac quod vis; Love and do what you please.

Author/artist bio: Iuno are Stella Bergsma and Steven de Munnik, sometimes assisted on stage by the Iuno Laboratory, an ever-changing collective of musicians, VJs, and multimedia artists.

Iuno was formed in 1999. Their first album is “Everyone’s Gone,” released in 2001. Their latest album, “Everything Nothing” was released this year, on AKH Records.

Visit official site: Iuno
View lyrics: Iuno

[Shown/header image: Stella Bergsma/Photo: Maartje van Caspel]
All photo materials, music and text referenced (c) 2004, Iuno.
All rights reserved. Used with permission.

Read in-depth interviews with other creative artists, in the DEC/JAN issue of "Arte Six."

RELATED EXTRAS: Dylan Thomas
Hear Dylan Thomas read his poem, “Do not go gentle into that good night”. Courtesy of Caedmon, via The Academy of American Poets.

RELATED EXTRAS: Dorothy Parker
Hear Dorothy Parker read her poem, “Résumé”

2005-01-12T11:47:00.000+08:00

FILM/Festivals/Bologna
Future Film Festival
Jan. 19-23, 2005

Virtual actors, F/X, anime: the Future Film Festival screens films that tell stories about future worlds, developed by producers using the most cutting-edge technology around.

Screenings include mainstream, indie and experimental movies; the common denominator is the creative use of new digital technologies.

The most innovative film directors, and creative producers who deal with special effects and digital animation, are invited in Bologna from all over the world to screen their films, and to discuss the making of the most interesting digital productions.

The opening ceremony includes a screening of Japanese silent animated shorts with soundscapes by contemporary composer Ikue Mori.

Mori started her career as a percussionist collaborating with Arto Linsday. She started experimenting with digitized percussion rhythms in 1985, developing her own inventive and unusual style; she won a Distinctive Award for Prix Arts Electronics in 1999.

Shown above: "Immortel Ad Vitam"

This year’s special events also include an homage to comix artist Enki Bilal.

Three of his works are set to screen: "Bunker Palace Hotel" (1989), "Tykho Moon" (1997) and "Immortel Ad Vitam" (2004). Bilal’s works feature bi-dimensional worlds, where mythological figures and futuristic landscapes intersect.

Lastly, manga fans -- get ready for the cosplay masquerade on closing night.

Highlights:

"Back to Gaya"
And, it’s the...attack of the Keebler elves. Gaya is an imaginary world populated by very small creatures; they risk their own extinction, because Dalamite, the magic stone that enable them to survive, has been stolen.

Boo and Zino set off on a hard journey to get it back. Along the way, they find out the ghastly truth about their origins: they’re really just characters on a TV program.

"Natural City"
By the year 2080, humanity has nearly blasted itself off the planet, after a nuclear war. Cyborgs are employed as workers. Some of them, built using human DNA, start to rebel.

Future cop R is a member of the squad designed to take down rebel cyborgs. Unruly and obstinate, R clashes with top cop Noma.

Shown above: "Natural City"

R also has another problem: while tracking a female android named Rai, he falls in love with her. Unfortunately, she’s slowly dying.

R starts illegally extracting AI chips from destroyed cyborgs, selling them on the black market to earn enough money to pay off Dr. Giro, a mad scientist who’s found a way to extend Rai’s life.

Does this sound familiar? It is. "Natural City" is a Korean F/X extravaganza directly inspired by Ridley Scott’s "Blade Runner."

"Strings"
Fantasy tale told with puppets. Beautiful, unfriendly puppets. A bit like "Hamlet," as the main character, Prince Hal Tara, goes off on a quest to avenge the murder of his father, the Emperor of Hebalon, by their enemies, the Zeriths.

But does the danger lie without –- or within the barred gates of the city? An interesting, gloomy revenge tale for adults. The strings are the character’s link to life – once cut, they die.

Shown above: "Strings"

The idea for "Strings" hit writer/director Anders Rønnow Klarlund during a trans-Atlantic flight:

"I was 30,000 feet above ground...the aircraft was moving along high above the clouds and on the small screen in front of me, a commercial taking place in Prague was playing. It had marionette puppets as actors and I was amazed...how much expression they could display.

"I began to wonder how the world would appear, if I was a marionette, and I drew up a sketch of a marionette fleeing his enemy...I immediately felt the idea was very strong. An idea of a universe inhabited by marionettes with strings reaching all the way up to the sky, to a place where we are all connected -- and controlled.

"I promised myself that if I won the European Fantasy Film Award for ‘Possessed,’ my next project would be ‘Strings.’ The plane touched down and a few days later I was accepting the award."

"Strings" is a mesmerizing tale of adventure, loyalty and betrayal, bondage and liberation; love and war, destiny, courage and common humanity.

Nothing is what it seems in this land on the edge of time, where the threads of destiny are woven together by unseen hands.

Shown/header image: "Strings"

Find it: Future Film Festival
Via del Pratello 21/2
Bologna, Italy
Get info: +39 051 2960664

Find film festivals worldwide, in the DEC/JAN issue of "Arte Six."

2005-01-08T13:49:00.000+08:00

BOOKS/WRITERS
Mini-interview
Margo Lanagan, novelist

I've written both short stories and full-length novels, but my last two books have been collections of short stories because I've been working full-time while putting them together, and haven't had the kind of time I need to be able to keep a novel in my head.

THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT

If there are [restrictions involved in writing in a condensed form], I don't feel them as restrictions -- I quite like plunging into a story right up close to the climax, and creating worlds that hold together juussst long enough to get the most out of that moment of character transformation.

Also, only having time to suggest setting, rather than being obliged to construct and present a created world right down to the plumbing, means that I get all the fun of a novel but without the responsibility!

However, after a while of writing short stories, I do hunger to be working on something bigger (and I actually am, at the moment), so that I can slowly build a story with lots of different intertwining pieces that come together in a more
multi-layered way at the end.

Also, making more complex characters with proper histories, and tracking their development and changes, is rewarding.

THEMES

Themes that come up again and again: Grief, aloneness/loneliness, being surprised by the world's strangeness, finding a place for yourself in the world, finding ways to be hopeful, how families work (particularly mothers), how other kinds of groups work, how different people deal with emotional crises.

I think I only know what themes I'm exploring in retrospect -- the thematic stuff tends to happen subconsciously.

When I'm writing, I'm focusing on the strangeness of the world I'm creating, or getting to know the characters and moving them through the plot.

When I get to the end, or sometimes quite a while afterwards, I'll realize that I've written a disguised memoir, or actually been writing about motherhood when I thought the child was the main character.

This doesn't quite answer your question, though. I guess these themes are related to my daily-life preoccupations, as well as to past experiences that have left their stamp on me.

I certainly don't consciously go in thinking “It's time people paid more attention to the amount of emotional work mothers do!” -- it's not a proselytizing thing.

But most of my stories, however much I think I'm exploring new territory when I'm writing them, will end up addressing one of these themes.

The more I think about this question, the more I think it requires a certain amount of therapy to answer...

ART BLOCKS

The story "Wooden Bride" in "Black Juice" was difficult to finish, because the story was based on a dream I'd had, and I wanted to put in the happy girl-meets-boy ending that I'd had in the dream.

I created the boy several different ways, but I just couldn't get him to behave with the same calm, romantic charisma he'd had in my dream.

In the end the girl just had to get her reward from having made it to the church on time (the ceremony was more a confirmation, a sort of rite of passage, than an actual wedding) instead of finding love as well.

Of course, there have been a fair few stories that were so difficult they didn't get finished at all -- generally this is because I've imagined a character but not thought sufficiently about how that character is going to be challenged by circumstances, or I've created characters that I don't particularly want to spend much time with!

My personal favorite: This is a hard question! I think "Singing My Sister Down" is one of my favorites in "Black Juice"; and in "White Time," "The Night Lily" -- and I think I like them best because I hardly know where they come from in myself, and they can mean several different things.

They're still puzzles to me, whereas other stories in both collections are laid out flat like a map and I can see exactly what they're saying and how they work.

These two are the ones that surprised me, which probably means that I was in a very relaxed state when I wrote them, not feeling self-conscious or anxious about them.

Both stories' prose have also been pared back to the bone -- I really feel there are no wasted words with either of them, which I like. I like a nice, lean story.

ABOUT: “WHITE TIME”

"White Time" is the title of the most YA story in the book, about a girl who does a stint of work experience in a government white-time laboratory.

White time is like white noise, all times at once, and occurs in reservoirs all through the universe.

As species evolve and pass through the various phases of learning about time travel, they always pass through the stage where they get their coordinates wrong and end up floating in white time.

Humans (who have of course learned to time travel perfectly!) take on the task of moving them out of the reservoirs either on to where they wanted to go, or back to where they came from.

ABOUT: “BLACK JUICE”

Black Juice was my older son's name for Coca-Cola when he was little.

I was looking for something black, to make a companion title to “White Time.” But also, the stories in “Black Juice” were written during a fairly dire period in my life, so the title also makes sense as an indicator that the book is squeezed out of dark times.

The next collection will be called “Red Jam,” which has the same kind of innocent-appearance-disguising-ew-factor as “Black Juice.”

READING, THE EXPERIENCE

I think the stories say what I'd like them to understand better than any comment I can give about them. These stories are being marketed as young adult fiction, but I'd like parents to understand that they're not children's stories -- heck, I'd like parents to read them themselves!

As to what readers get out of them, I'd like readers to be knocked sideways. These stories are pretty intense, and lots of readers have said they can only read one in a sitting -- then they have to go away and recover for a while.

I like the idea that they make people think, that they blow people out of their normal way of reading, that you can't rush them.

COMING UP

I've nearly finished first-drafting the stories in the next collection, “Red Jam,” which is very much the same type of science fiction/fantasy/horror mix as “White Time” and “Black Juice.”

I'm also rewriting the first novel of a YA fantasy quartet, which I hope to complete the remaining three volumes of in 2005. Right now I'm taking some time off from full-time employment as a technical writer, and being a full-time fiction writer, which is just paradise -- only trying to cram three lives into one, instead of four!

Bio: Margo Lanagan has published poetry, YA novels and short stories for science fiction, fantasy and horror fans.

Her books have been Aurealis Award winners, and been shortlisted for the Ditmar Awards and the New South Wales and Queensland Premier's Literary Awards.

Her short-story collection "Black Juice" won a Victorian Premier's Literary Award, and stories from previous collection, "White Time," were selected for inclusion in several Year's Best (and in one case, half-century's best) anthologies. Lanagan lives in Sydney, Australia.

Interested in learning more about this author? Lanagan was recently a guest author at Torley’s/Parrish’s Patch. Find out more, here.

Find more books/writers content in the DEC/JAN issue of "Arte Six."

BOOKS/WRITERS
Excerpt from “Black Juice”

In "Black Juice," Lanagan delivers ten unusual stories that intrigue, shock, delight and move the reader to tears with their imaginative reach, their complexity, unpredictability, subtlety and humanity.

From: “Sweet Pippit”

We set out in the depth of night, having held ourselves still all evening. Hloorobnool was poor at stillness, being only in her fifties, but our minder was a new man; he likely thought she rocked and puffed and raised her trunk like that every sunset.

We could all have reared up and trumpeted, no doubt, without alarming that one. But our suffering was close to the surface; better to keep it packed into a tight circle than to risk rampage and shooting by letting it show.

With the man gone to his rest, Booroondoonhooroboom set to work. She used her broken tusk on the gateposts, on the weak places where the hinges had been reset after Gorrlubnu’s madness. Pieces pattered to the ground softly as impala dung.

She worked and she sang, drawing the lullaby up around us. Before long we were all swaying in our night-stances, watching Booroondoon with our ears and our foreheads as well as our eyes.

And then she had done loosening. "Gooroloomboon," she said, and Gooroloom came forward. The two of them lifted aside the chained-together gates, and there between the gateposts was a marvellous wide space.

We had not expected it, somehow -- though had we not all said, and planned, and agreed?

Ah, it is a difficult thing, the new, and none of us like it much. We swayed and regarded the open gate.

We were used at the most to circling, with an owda on our back full of tickling peeple, and our mahout on our head.

It took Booroondoon, our queen and mother, still singing very low, to move into the space, to show us that bodies such as ours could move from home into the dark beyond. And as soon as the darkness threatened to take her, to curtain her from our sight, it became not possible for any of us to stay.

And so we moved, unweighted, from the gardens; Hmoorolubnu took my tail, as if that small thing would hold her steady in this storm of freedom. Zebu choked at us behind their rails, and a goat on the stone hill lifted its head and gave brittle cry.

But our bearing is the sort that soothes others; we move with inevitability, as the stars do, as the moon swells and shrinks upon the sky.

We brushed aside the wooden entry gate as if it were a plaything to be tossed aside, and the other animals remained calm.

Gooroloom tumbled the little office-box to sticks, and our feet crushed it to dust.

Above the dark and swelling river of our rage, my delight in our badness hung briefly bright.

His name was something like Pippit. It was too short for our ears to catch, as all peeple’s names are; twig-snaps and bird-cheeps, they finish before they properly start. But his smell was a lasting thing, and his hand.

Pippit of all peeple could tell badness from goodness, as we could. He would know that this was our only choice, he who could still our feet with a word, whose slender murmuring soothed us when all other voices were pitched too high and madding, who slept among our feet and rode us without spear or switch -- whom we missed in a rage of missing, ever since he had been taken from us to somewhere in this dark out-world.

Gooroloomboon spoke through her forehead, wonderingly: "How our minds have become circle-shaped, from all our circling, squared from pacing that square! Once we were wild! But I fear I have no wildness any more, Booroondoon; maybe wildness has died in my blood and my feet can move only in circle and square. What are we to do for water and for food, mother? And how are we to know where to find our sweet Pippit? And if he be in a place that requires some badness to reach him, can we do such a thing, even in his name?"

Booroondoon, her graciousness, heard Gooroloom out. "Put away your fears," she said, even as she lullabied. "Fears are for little-hearts, or the lion-hunted. I have never been wild in my life, yet our Pippit’s track through this world is as clear as a stripe of water thrown across a dry riverbank. What you love this much, you can always find again."

And our spirits, which had been poised to sink with Gooroloom’s worry, lifted as if Booroondoon’s words were buoyant water, as if her song were breeze and we were wafted feathers.

We walked out among peeple’s houses, that were like friends standing beside the path.

With every sleeping house we passed I was more wakeful; with every step I took that was not circle-path, or earth we had trodden as many times as there are stars, something else broke open in me.

My mind seemed a great wonderland, largely unexplored, my body a vast possibility of movements, in any direction, all new.

There would be food and water, good and bad, all new -- Gooroloom would smell them, too, when she finished fretting. I wanted to lift my head and trumpet, but there was joy also in knowing I must not, in moving with my fellows through the sleeping town, making no sound but planting feet and rubbing skin and the breath of walking free.

We came to the town’s edge. Without pausing, Booroondoon continued on under the moon towards nothing, only parasol trees that cannot be eaten, only a line that had stars above it, dry shadows below.

We followed, and the town smells fell behind. Hloorobn, ahead of me, lifted her trunk. I head-bunted her rump, to keep her quiet, and she grunted low in surprise.

Then we settled to a strong pace after Booroondoon, rolling our yearning rage out onto the plain.

Excerpted from "Black Juice" (Dec. 2004, Allen and Unwin Australia)
© 2004, Margo Lanagan. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

Read more books/writers content in the DEC/JAN issue of "Arte Six."

2004-12-29T21:41:00.000+08:00

LIFE
P2P TV

Television software engineer Guido Ciburski wants to launch Cybersky, a Web service that aims to do for TV what Napster did for music.

At the end of January, Ciburski's company, TC Unterhaltungselektronic, will unveil its Cybersky TV web service, which will enable broadband users to distribute video programs free and exchange them with others.

Viewers will need a television connected to a computer set up to upload a chosen television program to the internet, where other viewers will be able to download and broadcast it on their own sets almost instantaneously.

As soon as one subscriber uploads a program on site, it becomes immediately available to other participants. So, the more subscribers, the greater the choice of programs.

The concept has alarmed Germany's established TV companies, and is likely to concern other broadcasters around the world.

Cybersky's response to charges that it will be illegally broadcasting copyrighted programs without permission is that its peer-to-peer system does not technically amount to distribution.

His company is used to going to court to defend its innovations. Six years ago, they developed a device called the TeleFairy which enabled viewers to skip TV advertising.

Germany's broadcasters sued but a five-year legal battle ended in victory for the inventors last summer.

Via: "Deutsche Welle" and Cybersky

Find additional offbeat real-life stories in the DEC/JAN issue of "Arte Six."

2004-12-29T21:31:00.000+08:00

SCI/TECH
Experimental research
New weapon in germ warfare: seaweed

A new treatment for the age-old scourge of cholera and perhaps a whole new type of antibiotic medicine may emerge from chemicals discovered in an Australian seaweed, new research results suggest.

Researchers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) have found that compounds known as furanones –- isolated from the seaweed Delisea pulchra –- can prevent the bacteria that cause cholera from switching on their disease-causing mechanisms.

It seems likely that furanones can have the same effect on many other bacteria, such as those that cause food poisoning and cystic fibrosis-related infections.

Furanones do not kill microbes but simply "jam" their ability to send signals to each other.

This means their use is far less likely to create the drug-resistance problems that plague current anti-microbial treatments.

"This is very exciting as these are the first antimicrobials of their type that have been shown to be effective," says Dr. Diane McDougald, a Senior Research Associate at the UNSW Centre for Marine Biofouling and Bio-innovation.

"The fact that furanones prevent bacterial communication means that they may be effective against a wide range of bacteria that have communication systems, such as the bacteria that cause golden Staph infections and tuberculosis," she says. "These bacteria have become resistant to many antibiotics and are becoming harder and harder to treat.

"Because furanones don't kill the bacteria, there is no selection pressure for them to develop resistance. Indeed, in a million years of evolution, no natural resistance has been developed by bacteria to these furanones in the natural environment."

The team has found that when the bacteria that cause cholera –- Vibrio cholerae –- are exposed to furanones, they cannot switch on their so-called virulence factors associated with infection and the development of the disease.

"The new experiments suggest that furanones may prevent cholera bacteria from escaping the host immune response and secreting toxins to weaken their host," says Dr McDougald.

Many bacteria rely on a signaling system known as quorum sensing to detect when enough of their own kind is present and then change their behavior and attach themselves to a surface on a host or in the environment.

The seaweed, a red algal species found at a UNSW marine research site in Sydney's Botany Bay, produces the compounds to prevent bacteria from forming biofilms on its leaves.

The discovery -- so far only established in laboratory tests -- is now being tested further in trials involving mice and tissue cultures. Publication in a scientific journal is pending.

The number of officially reported cholera cases worldwide varies between 110,000 and 200,000 cases a year, causing an average of about 5,000 deaths, but the World Health Organization believes the true number is probably significantly higher.

Infections occur as a result of contact with water and food contaminated with Vibrio cholerae, which is widely dispersed around the world in estuaries and coastal waters.

"There is an increasing number of antibiotic resistant bacteria and a decreasing number of drugs in the pipeline," Dr. McDougald says. "Thus, we need to find new approaches to treat bacterial infections. The furanone compounds are especially exciting as they do not kill the bacteria, but just stop them from expressing disease-causing traits. This means that there is no pressure on the bacteria to develop resistance."

Shown above/header image: Delisea pulchra

Visit official site: Dr. Diane McDougald
Get more info: +61-29-385-2090

Related information:

Q: What is quorum sensing?

A: Until relatively recently, scientists didn't know that bacteria could communicate with each other.

It's now clear, however, that individuals in many species can not only exchange signals with each other but also alter their behavior as a result.

They can sense, for example, how many of their own species are in their immediate vicinity and whether this is enough –- a quorum -- to act in a co-ordinated way as a group.

If so, they may then establish a foothold in an environment or launch an assault on a host.

When the bacteria that cause salmonella food poisoning, for example, reach a quorum they can switch on virulence mechanisms that release toxins to weaken their host and its immune-system defenses.

Other species use quorum sensing to build living biofilms on the insides of water pipes and on human teeth, or to attach themselves to the lining of an animal's gut, the surface of a plant or the hull of a ship.

"Many bacteria that cause infections in humans use a type of communication system that allows them to 'talk' to each other," Dr. McDougald says. "They use a chemical language that allows them to sense whether there are enough of them present to overwhelm the host immune system. Only when there is a large enough number of bacterial cells present, do they then start to exhibit virulence traits."

Q: What is cholera?
WHO cholera fact sheet

A: Cholera is an acute intestinal infection caused by Vibrio cholerae.

It has a short incubation period, from less than one day to five days, and produces an enterotoxin that causes vomiting and diarrhea that can quickly lead to severe dehydration and death without prompt treatment.

The disease is spread by contaminated water and food. Sudden large outbreaks are usually caused by a contaminated water supply.

Vibrio cholerae is often found in aquatic environments and is part of the normal flora of brackish water and marine estuaries.

It is often associated with algal blooms (plankton), which are influenced by the temperature of the water.

Human beings are also one of the reservoirs of the pathogenic form of Vibrio cholerae.

Tetracycline is the usual antibiotic of choice, but resistance to it is increasing.

In unprepared communities, case-fatality rates may be as high as 50%, particularly in cases where treatment is given too late.

Find out about other experimental research, in the DEC/JAN issue of "Arte Six."

2004-12-26T10:28:00.000+08:00

ART/London
"Faces in the Crowd"
Dec. 3, 2004 - Jan. 5, 2005

The exhibition’s title is taken from a one-image poem by Ezra Pound: "The apparition of these faces in the crowd; petals on a wet, black bough," inspired by a journey on the Paris metro in 1913.

Pound’s celebrated haiku powerfully evokes the individual immersed within the crowd, lost in a moment of stillness within the modern metropolis. "Faces in the Crowd" explores the condition of modernity through realist art.

Taking Edouard Manet as its starting point and moving through modern masters such as Max Beckmann, Umberto Boccioni, Cindy Sherman, Francis Bacon and Jeff Wall, "Faces in the Crowd" maps social and individual relationships through a history of avant garde configuration.

Artists such as Umberto Boccioni, Edvard Munch and Andy Warhol have used the figure to express sensations of speed, alienation or celebrity in modern life.

Work on show by Eve Arnold, Robert Capa and Andreas Gursky documents the epic and the everyday.

Transformations of the city through architecture and technology created public spaces of leisure and spectacle, which are explored in the works of Eugene Atget, Walter Sickert and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

The reduction of private identities to social type became the defining work of August Sander, while in more recent years Cindy Sherman has used different guises and identities to reinvent a sense of self.

The great revolutions in 20th century art tend to be associated with abstraction. Yet there is a parallel history, which is equally radical.

Manet’s vividly realist scenarios or Jeff Wall’s cinematic tableaux offer a compelling snapshot of the modern. By contrast, Edvard Munch or Francis Bacon present a tortured or exhilarated inner life. And for Alexander Rodchenko, Joseph Beuys or Chris Ofili, the figure becomes a harbinger of change: symbolic, revolutionary or transgressive.

Shown above: “The Visual Tower,” (1966)
Glass jars, wood and Tower magazine illustrations
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
Marcel Broodthaers

Structured into broadly themed sections, representations of the human figure are seen as expressions of modernity, becoming ciphers for the experience of modern life; as images of modern life, picturing both the epic and the everyday; or as agents of social change, where avant-garde realism proposes new world orders.

Other artists experiment in understanding and furthering a modern self-consciousness in the viewer. Underpinning the whole is the relationship between the individual and society.

The exhibition includes not only masterpieces of painting, but also sculpture, photography and the moving image, with each work pivotal to the story of Modernism. "Faces in the Crowd" traces the story of modernism through its defining artists.

Artists whose work is represented in this major art historical survey include Eve Arnold, Eugene Atget, Francis Bacon, Stephan Balkenhol, Rene Burri, Umberto Boccioni, Christian Boltanski, David Bomberg, Sophie Calle, Robert Capa, James Ensor, Valie Export, George Grosz, Andreas Gursky, John Heartfield, Seydou Keita, William Kentridge, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Käthe Kollwitz, Fernand Legér, Helen Levitt, Rene Magritte, Edouard Manet, Edvard Munch, Eduardo Paolozzi, Pablo Picasso, Gerhard Richter, Thomas Schütte, Cindy Sherman, Jeff Wall, Andy Warhol and Jack B. Yeats.

Shown/header image: "Maika," (1929)
Oil on canvas
Private Collection, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
Photo: Benjamin Hasenclever, München
Christian Schad

Find it: Whitechapel Art Gallery
80-82 Whitechapel High Street
London
Get there: Tube to Aldgate East
Get info: +(0)20 7522 7888

Find art events in other cities, in the DEC/JAN issue of "Arte Six."

2004-12-25T20:53:00.000+08:00

ART/London
“100 Artists See God”
Through Jan. 9

“I have too much respect for the idea of God
to make it responsible for such an absurd world.”
-- Georges Duhamel

Whether or not we believe in God, we all live in a world that is profoundly influenced by concepts of God.

This "100 Artists See God" exhibition acknowledges the prevalence of religion and spirituality in contemporary art, culture and politics and brings this controversial subject to the forefront of artistic debate.

In tackling the question of how God is perceived and represented in contemporary culture, artist-curators John Baldessari and Meg Cranston invited one hundred artists each to respond to the challenge of illustrating 'the divine' in a single artwork.

Each artist contributed a single work, which represents their translation of the infinite into the temporal.

The exhibit includes a wide range of works by several generations of artists created in various mediums -- photographs, drawings, paintings, single-channel videos and sculptures.

Shown above: Drug cabinet
Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst’s God is a cabinet filled with painkillers. Jeremy Deller submits a bumper sticker reading “God Less America.”

Eleanor Antin offers a tableau of post-eruption Pompeii, representing God as destroyer.

In contrast, there’s the "God is Love" take of Andreas Gursky’s "Love Parade," a reference to the yearly techno festival in Berlin. Although maybe that’s more like...divine hedonism, a throwback to Bacchus or the Eleusian mysteries.

Micol Hebron sees the divine present in the individual, presenting a film dedicated to herself, whereas Gerhard Richter’s "Gray" is a simple, monochromatic canvas on which every viewer can, figuratively, paint their own version of the divine.

Ed Ruscha also presents an image in gray; in his version, the shades of gray become progressively darker as they descend toward the lower part of the canvas.

Alternatively, looking upwards, the shades lighten until they are nearly pure white, suggesting light dispersing the darkness.

Leonard Nimoy submits a vision of God as the female principle, in "Shekhina." The image is part of a series from Nimoy’s Shekhina Project.

According to the Kabbalah, evil came into the world once God became separate from the "Shekhina," the deity's feminine counterpart.

The Shekhina came to symbolize the female aspect of God, also the creativity and wisdom without which no human being is complete.

Actor/director Nimoy turned to photography as a means of inquiry into the mysteries of the Shekhina. "I have imagined her as ubiquitous, watchful and often in motion..." Nimoy says in the introductory text to the book; "This work is my quest for insight, the exploration of my own spirituality..."

"100 Artists See God" deals with faith as a subject and continues the art-historical tradition of religious imagery in art, without necessarily reflecting the doctrines to which the artists subscribe.

Shown above: “Mirror #8”, (1972)
Roy Lichtenstein

The works in the exhibition do not present conventional illustrations of established creeds, rather the artists' subjective interpretations of spirituality that collectively form a reflection of the ambiguous and pervasive ways in which this subject exists in our lives.

Statements were also written by each of the participating artists, discussing their work within the context of the exhibition theme.

"100 Artists See God" is a travelling exhibition organized by Independent Curators International (ICI), New York.

Participating artists: Reverend Ethan Acres, Terry Allen, Jo Harvey Allen, Eleanor Antin, Brienne Arrington, David Askevold, Lillian Ball, Cindy Bernard, Andrea Bowers, Delia Brown, Edgar Bryan, Angela Bulloch, Chris Burden, Mary Ellen Carroll, Erin Cosgrove, Michael Craig-Martin, Jeremy Deller, Sam Durant, Jimmie Durham, Nicole Eisenman, Katharina Fritsch, Jonathan Furmanski, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Liam Gillick, James Gobel, Jack Goldstein, Scott Grieger, Andreas Gursky, James Hayward, Micol Hebron, Damien Hirst, Rebecca Horn, Darcy Huebler, Christian Jankowski, Larry Johnson, Mike Kelley, Mary Kelly, Martin Kersels, Nicholas Kersulis, Martin Kippenberger, Rachel Lachowicz, Norm Laich, Liz Larner, Louise Lawler, William Leavitt, Barry Le Va, Roy Lichtenstein, Jen Liu, Thomas Locher, Daria Martin, T. Kelly Mason, Rita McBride, Paul McCarthy, Carlos Mollura, JP Munro, Bruce Nauman, Jennifer Nelson, Eric Niebuhr, Leonard Nimoy, Albert Oehlen, Catherine Opie, Tony Oursler, Jorge Pardo, Simon Patterson, Hirsch Perlman, Luciano Perna, Renée Petropoulos, Raymond Pettibon, Paul Pfeiffer, Nicolette Pot, Richard Prince, Rob Pruitt and Jonathan Horowitz, David Reed, Victoria Reynolds, Gerhard Richter, Susan Rothenberg, Nancy Rubins, Glen Walter Rubsamen, Allen Ruppersberg, Ed Ruscha, Pauline Stella Sanchez, Kim Schoenstadt, Jim Shaw, Gary Simmons, Alexis Smith, Yutaka Sone, Thaddeus Strode, Diana Thater, Mungo Thomson, Thorvaldur Thorsteinsson (in collaboration with Helena Jonsdottir), Jeffrey Vallance, John Waters, Marnie Weber, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, Benjamin Weissman, James Welling, Eric Wesley, John Wesley, Franz West, Chris Wilder, Christopher Williams, Steven Wong, Måns Wrange (in collaboration with Igor Isaksson), Mario Ybarra, Jr.

Shown/header image: "Shekhina" (2000)
Leonard Nimoy
Photo: Leonard Nimoy Photography

Find it: Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA)
The Mall and 12 Carlton House Terrace
London
Get there: Tube to Charing Cross, Piccadilly Circus
Get info: +(0)20-7930-3647

Find art events in other cities, in the DEC/JAN issue of "Arte Six."

RELATED EXTRAS: "Shekhina"

Leonary Nimoy comments on the Shekhina Project.

2004-12-25T06:38:00.000+08:00

DANCE/NYC
“Swift”
Jan. 6-8

In “Swift,” choreographer Ros Warby depicts the multifaceted layers of female characters -- crone, child, diva, queen -- with fluid precision, fearlessness and humor. Shifting reflective panels fracture the images, or single out details of the dancer’s body.

Find it: DTW - Dance Theater Workshop
219 West 19th Street
New York NY, 10011
Get info: (212) 691-6500

Find dance/theatre events in other cities, in the DEC/JAN issue of "Arte Six."

2004-12-25T06:09:00.000+08:00

SCI/TECH
Fabric keyboards

Force-sensing fabric company Eleksen will show a fabric keyboard and joystick at the beginning of next year.

The Bluetooth-enabled keyboard is aimed at mobile phones, PDAs and laptops, while the joystick is targeted at games players on the same devices.

The keyboard is compatible with as many types of handheld devices as possible, can be reconfigured and will also act as a writing pad.

Via: unmediated.org, eleksen.com, ElectronicsWeekly.com

Find other sci/tech stories in the DEC/JAN issue of "Arte Six."

2004-12-25T06:02:00.000+08:00

SCI/TECH
Experimental research
Pass the chips

University of Alberta researchers have designed a computer chip that uses about 100 times less energy than current state-of-the-art digital chips.

The new microchip is 10 times smaller and 100 times more energy-efficient than currently used chips.

The greatly reduced energy consumption of the new technology would improve the performance of small devices with relatively low power needs.

For instance, the technology could one day eliminate the need to recharge cell phones, help introduce smaller, ultra-high-speed communications systems, and advance the use of implantable health care devices, such as drug delivery chips.

Research and development is ongoing before this technology can be implemented in products.

The invention employs a new method of processing digital data, known as analog decoding, which uses extremely low levels of power to execute its detection algorithm.

Research shows that no other reported chip uses a lower amount of energy consumed per decoded information bit.

Get more info: (780) 492-0442

Find out about other experimental technologies, in the DEC/JAN issue of "Arte Six."

2004-12-23T21:26:00.000+08:00

ART/London
“D'Sehnsucht”
Through Jan. 5

“Marco Polo imagined answering that the more one was lost in unfamiliar quarters of distant cities, the more one understood the other cities that he had crossed to arrive there...”-- Italo Calvino, “Invisible Cities”

“D'Sehnsucht” is an intimate dialogue between two artists working in London, exploring each other’s memories of their hometowns in Germany and Luxemburg.

Working in the VTO Gallery, London, artists Antonia Low and Martine Feipel communicate only through delivered letters, which are sealed and posted through a slip in the separating wall of their own isolated working spaces.

The artists translate and interpret mutual writing through drawings, sculptures, and mixed media installations. The idea is to interpret and communicate each others’ longing (Sehnsucht) in a tangible form.

Each statement on the artist’s hometown opens up another view on London in the same way that being in London transforms the objects and memories of their past. Memories become distorted and integrated with the present as the artists move through time, creating new points of view both of the past and the present.

By working only on what is communicated exclusively by the other, the artists explore the architecture of memory.

Throughout this secluded exploration of each others thoughts, the private memory of each artist will be translated into a public exhibition through digital technology.

“D’Sehnsucht” will take place on three separate platforms simultaneously: the physical gallery space, on a television platform and through an internet forum.

Two web cams record the artists working, and images will be broadcast across Europe via satellite television to the very towns they are interpreting through their work.

The artists themselves remain isolated within their workspace, unaware of what is going on beyond their space. The virtual platforms contrast with the artists intimate and traditional methods of communication, as opposed to communication via television and internet which contaminate the issues of time, place, reality, memory, private and public which are integral to the project.

Find it: VTO
96 Teesdale St.
London (UK)
Get info: +(0)207 729 5629

Find art events in other cities, in the DEC/JAN issue of "Arte Six."

2004-12-23T21:23:00.000+08:00

ART/Stuttgart
“Perpetual Canon”
Through Jan. 5

The Württembergische Kunstverein will be the first institution to present a solo show of Cornelia Parker's work in Germany, “Perpetual Canon.”

Parker's art work includes installations, sculptures, objects, slide-projections and photography.

She creates conceptual art with a specific aesthetic appeal -- her works are tinged with ironic humor, and display a critical understanding of the quicksilver quality of perception and representation.

Some of her best-known works are "Thirty Pieces of Silver" (1988/89), an installation of steamrollered silver ware and musical instruments suspended from the ceiling and "Shared Fate" (1998) -- a piece consisting of different objects that were exposed to the same fate, having been decapitated by the same guillotine as Marie Antoinette.

Lastly, there is "Cold Dark Matter" (2002), a space installation consisting of the remains of a Baptist church that was struck by lighting.

“So you're in between the shadow and the work, so you're almost inside the piece,” Parker has said of this work. “In a way the shadows are almost as a much a part of the piece as the physical objects that are creating the shadows; but your shadow gets incorporated into those on the wall, so it's almost like standing inside a still explosion.”

Parker’s work has been exhibited in numerous international institutions, including the Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna, Turin (2001).

Shown/header image: "Cold Dark Matter",(2002)
Cornelia Parker

Find it: Wurttembergische Kunstverein
Schlossplatz, 2
Stuttgart (DE)
Get info: 0711-22-33-70

Find art events in other cities, in the DEC/JAN issue of "Arte Six."

2004-12-23T21:18:00.000+08:00

ART/Massachusetts
“Thoughts unsaid, now forgotten...”
Through Dec. 31

Welsh artist Cerith Wyn Evans' new site-specific projects explore the complex relationships between image and word, poetry and science, divination and earthly communication, and spoken and written language.

Upon entering the gallery, the viewer is greeted by her or his own image in Wyn Evans’ signature convex mirror sculpture, “Perverse, Inverse, Reverse” (1996).

The space is shared by “The Slide Rule Man,” a MIT audio recording from the sixties of a man who traveled between the science-based schools inscribing students’ names on their slide rules. Three Asian scholar’s rocks, borrowed from Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts will be displayed in proximity to the audio piece.

These hybrids of nature and culture exist today between the realms of nature and art, continuing Wyn Evans’ investigation into the aesthetics common to both scientific and artistic vision.

The next installation component includes reversed-text neon work “Thoughts unsaid, now forgotten...” (2004).

The work faces a large plate glass window onto a well-traveled courtyard. The sharp, bright neon image reflects off the glass even in daylight, so that from the inside the reflected text will appear readable, like a caption for the view outdoors or subtitles in a film. “IMAGE (Rabbit's Moon) by Raymond Williams” (2004), a black Venetian-glass chandelier, spells out in Morse Code a text by Raymond Williams defining the word "image" from his text "Keywords - A Vocabulary of Culture and Society." A computer monitor translates the Morse Code back into the texts.

“The sky is thin as paper here...” (2004), a new slide-projection piece using a special dissolve unit, casts layers of black and white astronomical images with historical pictures of exuberant traditional celebrations from Japanese festivals.

Finally, “WMBR Radio Station” is the actual wood-paneled studio from MIT's student-run radio station. Wyn Evans has taken the original 1960’s wood-paneled broadcast studio from WMBR, MIT's radio station, and installed it in a corner of the gallery. The five elements of the station pay respect to past technologies and the time before the Internet when radio was an important tool for communication.

“WMBR Radio Station” brings together the major themes Wyn Evans explores in his work -- information, poetry, art, science, and communication.

Bio: Born in South Wales in 1958, Cerith Wyn Evans graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1984. He began his career as a video and filmmaker and worked as an assistant to filmmaker Derek Jarman. He also collaborated with choreographer Michael Clark and taught at the Architectural Association in London for six years.

In the early 1990s, Wyn Evans began making sculptures and installations. He employs a variety of media such as neon, orchids, fireworks, film, photography, and sculpture to explore his ideas on perception and conceptual limits. His work deals with the phenomenology of time, language, and perception.

Wyn Evans’ first solo exhibition as a visual artist was held at White Cube, London, in 1996, for which he created an installation entitled “Inverse, Reverse, Perverse,” consisting of a large concave mirror that inverted and radically distorted the viewer's reflection, producing a disturbing self-portrait.

Wyn Evans has exhibited extensively in Europe, including the Hayward Gallery, London, and in the United States, at venues like the Deitch Projects in New York. More recently, Evans has had solo shows at the Kunsthaus Glarus, Switzerland, and Georg Kargl, Vienna.

Shown/header image: “The sky is thin as paper here…” (2004)
Installation detail
Photo courtesy Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Cologne

Find it: MIT List Visual Arts Center(LVAC)
20 Ames Street Building E15, Atrium level
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
Get info: (617) 253-4680

Find art events in other cities, in the DEC/JAN issue of "Arte Six."

2004-12-20T13:56:00.000+08:00

TRAVEL
Art Cities: London

London is one of the world's most vibrant cities, and is pre-eminent in art and architecture. A walk around the city soon reveals its rich cultural history, from the vast collections of museums and galleries such as the National Gallery, to the impressive array of outside art such as Henry Moore's sculptures or the Egyptian obelisks on the Embankment.

Here’s our itinerary for a daytrip in London that takes you to some of its most remarkable galleries and museums. Grab your bangers and mash and get movin’:

9am: Covent Garden
Bar Porto
168 High Holborn
A great place to have breakfast and watch this colorful area wake up around
you; check out the all-day breakfast with a healthy twist at Bar Porto.

10am: Dali Universe
Across Westminster Bridge to Dali Universe, dedicated solely to the great man's life and works. Watch out for the Houses Of Parliament and Big Ben across the river from you.

12 noon: London Eye
Up the river to the London Eye, the tallest observation wheel in the world. Take a ride if you've a head for heights.

1pm: Oxo Tower
For more life in the clouds visit the Oxo Tower, for a more down to earth experience lunch in the Royal Festival Hall, home of the Hayward Gallery.

2pm: Tate Modern
Past Shakespeare's Globe Theatre to the Tate Modern. From Dali to Warhol there's art to please everyone in this huge new centre. Watch out for the huge iron spider in the entrance hall, not for the faint hearted.

4pm: Blue Print Cafe
Tea at the Blue Print Café in the Design Museum with its great views of the Thames. The exhibitions are small scale and can be visited without too much foot damage.

5pm: White Cube 2
Across Tower Bridge, past the Tower of London, Petticoat Lane and Spitalfield Markets to the White Cube 2 Gallery in Hoxton. A must for YBA fans, this is the second Cube Gallery to open.

7pm: Shoreditch
Check out The Pool, or other bars in Shoreditch, one of London's trendy areas, or the Comedy Café, for stand-up comedy, talent nights and late-night dancing at the weekends. Nearest Tube: Old Street.

City guide courtesy of Art Republicans
Shown/header image: Trafalgar Square

More sights to see in London: Charing Cross Road, Cleopatra's Needle, Kensington Roof Gardens, Old Operating Theatre Museum, Piccadilly Circus, Science Museum, Temple of Mithras, The London Eye, Tower of London, Trafalgar Square.

Also: Subterranean London

Find out about events in other cities, in the DEC/JAN issue of "Arte Six."
Original post date: "Arte Six," OCT/NOV 2004

2004-12-20T13:46:00.000+08:00

BOOKS/WRITERS
The Agent series
Featured columnist: Jenny Bent
“First Year Out”

Getting published for the first times is at turns exhilarating, frightening, exciting, nerve-wracking, and sometimes extremely disappointing. Remember the old saying, "be careful what you wish for?" Having your book published offers much potential for happiness, but also carries the possibility of a fair amount of disappointment.

There can be nothing so exciting for a writer as holding your finished book in your hands for the first time. And while there is no way to comprehend the experience of being published before the actual event, it can helpful to know a little bit about what you're getting into as soon as you get that momentous call from your agent: "We have an offer!"

The following questions and answers are my attempt to prepare you for the joys and the sorrows of being published. Hopefully, forewarned will become forearmed, and you'll be able to better enjoy the experience if you're prepared for some of the potential pitfalls. Reasonable expectations are the key to being happily published for the first time.

Q: Yahoo! My book was accepted. Now how long will it take before I can see it in the bookstore?

A: Usually nine to twelve months after they have accepted your manuscript. This may seem like a very long time, especially in this age of electronic media, but the long delay is actually in your favor. Your publisher needs time to copy edit and proof read your manuscript, and also to publicize your book.

Publishing your book quickly means that they have less time to get advance quotes and reviews, and less time to try to place articles or excerpts in magazines, which often have six month lead-times.

Q: How much editing can I expect from my editor?

A: This varies wildly from editor to editor. Your agent will try to place you with an editor who really will edit your book, but this can't always be accomplished because many editors simply don't have the time or the desire to actually edit.

If your editor isn't doing the kind of editing job you feel you need, sometimes your agent can pick up the slack, but it can also be necessary to hire an outside editor.

Additionally, if your book arrives and the editor feels it still needs an enormous amount of work, they will advise you to hire an outside editor. They're actually doing you a favor if they suggest this, because the other alternative they legally have is just to cancel your book and demand that you repay your advance.

Also, your editor does not generally line-edit or proof read your book. Your editor does what is called a substantive edit. Then, once your book has been modified according to these notes, and officially accepted, it goes to a copyeditor and then a proofreader.

At each stage you will be given the opportunity to read the changes and make necessary corrections.

Q: How much marketing and publicity can I expect from my publisher? Can we put something in the contract about this? And what is my agent's role in publicizing my book?

A: I don't know any authors -- and this includes multi-published authors with million dollar deals -- that are happy with the amount of publicity and marketing they receive from their publisher.

Please be prepared to do as much as you possibly can in terms of your own publicity and marketing. Hiring your own publicist is always a good idea, and if handled correctly, will be welcomed by your publisher.

If you look at the “New York Times” bestseller list, at least half of the writers on it will have worked or are still working with independent publicists. The big names in particular always use an outside publicist in addition to the publicity their publisher provides.

Your agent should also be able to help you with ideas, but do keep in mind that your agent is not your publicist. Publicists are highly trained individuals with different skill sets and contacts than agents. Agents sell your book, negotiate your contract, and manage your career. They do not publicize your book.

The answer to the second question, about putting a publicity and promotion budget in your contract, depends on how much clout you have as an author. The more money the publisher is paying for your book, and the more copies they expect to sell, the easier it is to get them to commit to a certain ad/promo budget.

If this is your first book, and you are receiving a reasonable advance, it will generally be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get anything about this in the contract.

Keep in mind that even if you get the publisher to commit to spend a certain amount of money, they will always reserve the right to conduct publicity and marketing campaigns in the way they think best.

Bio: Jenny Bent has ten years of experience working in the publishing industry. She is currently a literary agent with the firm of Trident Media Group, LLC in New York City. Prior to becoming an agent, she worked at "Rolling Stone". She was also an editor at Cader Books, where she was responsible for books on pop culture.

NB: Lit agent Jenny Bent is providing this information as a courtesy to readers. She is not accepting new work. Unsolicited materials will not be read or returned.

About this series: The Agent is an ongoing series of columns or Q/A sessions with literary agents, providing practical advice for writers.

Find additional books/writers content in the DEC/JAN issue of "Arte Six."
Original post date: "Arte Six," OCT/NOV 2004

2004-12-16T16:20:00.000+08:00

THEATRE/San Francisco
“Welcome to the Hypnodrome”
Extended run: Through Dec. 18
Th,Fr,Sat, 8pm

Will leading lady Jill Tracy be covered in blood? Performing a lament at a nineteenth-century reed organ?

Will she be torn apart by wolves? Seduced by a mad hypnotist? Killed in a violent train crash? Locked in a tower with iron bars? Drive a man mad? Rise from the dead? All of the above?

Bay Area theatergoers are in for a glorious shock this fall in a thrilling new chapter in San Francisco underground theater; "Welcome to the Hypnodrome" revives the suspenseful, sensational and blood-spattered Grand Guignol tradition of 1920s Paris.

Jill Tracy’s evocative music and provocative style conjures the decadent spirit of the original Grand Guignol period, and influenced producer Russell Blackwood’s selection of plays.

He painstakingly searched for Charles Mere’s 1928 “L’homme nu/The Beast” to feature Tracy at the helm of an ornate nineteenth-century reed organ, as the tortured “Countess Edwige.”

To adapt the U.S. premiere of Maurice Renard’s "L’Amant de la Morte/Lover of the Dead," Blackwood enlisted prize-winning crime novelist Eddie Muller.

"Welcome to the Hypnodrome" also incorporates shenanigans inspired by horror film impresario William Castle. Theatre-goers in special "Shock Boxes" will get an additional dose of the...unexpected.

Shown/header image: Jill Tracy
Photo: JimFerreira

Find it: The Hypnodrome
575 10th Street (at Bryant)
San Francisco, CA
Get info: (415) 248-1900

Find dance/theatre events in other cities, in the DEC/JAN issue of "Arte Six."

2004-12-16T16:10:00.000+08:00

SCI/TECH
The physics of best-sellers

UCLA physicist and complex systems theorist Didier Sornette used statistical physics and mathematics to analyze 138 books that made Amazon.com's best-seller list between 1997 and April 2004. His team's initial results are published in the "Physical Review Letters," Nov. 26.

"Complex systems can be understood, and the book market is a complex system," says Sornette. "Each buyer is not predictable, but complex networks have a degree of predictability."

A specialist in the scientific prediction of catastrophes in a wide range of complex systems, Sornette says his model for analyzing peaks and falls in book sales is similar to one he uses to understand...earthquakes.

Best-selling books typically reach their sales peaks in one of two ways. The less potent way is by what Sornette calls an "exogenous shock," which is brief and abrupt.

An illustrative example of this would be "Strong Women Stay Young" by Dr. Miriam Nelson, which peaked on the list the day after a favorable review in the Sunday "New York Times."

Sales are typically greater, however, when a book benefits from what Sornette calls an "endogenous shock," which progressively accelerates over time, and is illustrated in the book business by favorable word-of-mouth.

Such books rise slowly, but the sales results are more enduring, and the decline in sales is slower and more much gradual. An example would be "The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood," which reached the best-seller list only two years after it was published, without the benefit of a major marketing campaign. The book was popular with book clubs and inspired women to form "Ya-Ya Sisterhood" groups of their own.

A second example would be Nora Roberts' novel, "Heaven and Earth (Three Sisters Island Trilogy)," which peaked only after a slow rise and also fell slowly, which Sornette attributes to word of the book spreading among friends and family.

The slower peaks tend to generate more sales over time, Sornette says. "Word-of-mouth can spread like an epidemic."

The trajectories of many books' rankings are combinations of both kinds of peaks, Sornette says, which suggests that an effective, well-timed marketing campaign could combine with a strong network to enhance sales.

Sort of like a series of mini-earthquakes. Didn't know bookselling could get that exciting -- perhaps we should all look into that...

Get more info: (310) 206-0511
Visit official site: Didier Sornette

Read more offbeat science stories in the DEC/JAN issue of "Arte Six."

2004-12-16T16:09:00.000+08:00

ART/Stockholm
Mona Hatoum retrospective
Through Dec. 19

Artist Mona Hatoum unites in her work an interest in aesthetics with themes that are political or social in character, by focusing on subjects such as violence, oppression, and voyeurism, often in relation to the human body.

Her art is located on the border between reality and illusion, where recognizable everyday objects are distorted and transformed into unpleasant and sometimes physically dangerous objects. Rubber crutches, a carpet of pins, and electrified kitchen utensils are a few examples of Hatoum's provocative body of work.

The exhibition at Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall is the most comprehensive presentation of Hatoum's work to date. The show includes some 60 artworks, as well as a large-scale new installation made specifically for Magasin 3.

Hatoum herself has commented on the multi-faceted nature of her work as follows:

"You first experience an artwork physically. I like the work to operate on both sensual and intellectual levels. Meanings, connotations, and associations come after the initial physical experience as your imagination, intellect, psyche are fired off by what you've seen."

Artist bio: Hatoum has exhibited widely in Europe, USA, and Canada. In 1995, she was nominated for the Turner Prize and was included in the Venice Biennial. The Swedish public knows Hatoum as a IASPIS resident (2001 and 2002) and through an exhibition at Uppsala konstmuseum in the fall of 2003 that focused mainly on her video work and photography. Earlier this year, Hatoum became the first visual artist to receive Copenhagen University's Sonning Prize and this fall was awarded the Swiss Roswitha Haftmann Prize in Zurich. Hatoum lives and works in London and Berlin.

Shown/header image: "Cage-à-deux" (detail), 2002
Mild steel and painted MDF
h: 201.5 x w: 315 x d: 199.5 cm / h: 79.3 x w: 124 x d: 78.5 in
Photo: Jay Jopling/White Cube (London)
Mona Hatoum

Find it: Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall
Frihamnen, SE - 115 56 Stockholm
Sweden
Get info: +46 8-545-680-40

Find art events in other cities, in the DEC/JAN issue of "Arte Six."

2004-12-16T15:51:00.001+08:00

THEATRE/NYC
"Isabella’s Room"
Dec. 14, 16-18, 7:30pm

At the venerable age of 94, Isabella is certainly entitled to her memories and the stories they evoke. Yet unlike those of her peers, Isabella’s recollections surface not from her past, but from a camera projecting images directly into her brain, the product of experiments conducted by an adjacent research hospital.

Isabella is blind, and her memories, imposed rather than earned, are entirely synthetic.

Or are they?

As conceived by Needcompany’s Jan Lauwers, "Isabella’s Room" is a balance of text, music, and dance conjuring up a world of alternate and actual realities, purely theatrical and visually captivating.

As portrayed by Viviane De Muynck, Isabella radiates boldness and curiosity, characteristics that serve her well as she calmly surveys her visions.

Eight other performers animate a random barrage of impressions and images; we see what Isabella "sees," a place where past and present merge and reality is just a distant memory.

Lauwers comments on his work in "BAMezine":

"The set is, in fact, the objects. I just put them on tables to expose them. As I mentioned before: art is energy. The energy of each object is very present, [no matter] how small they sometimes are.

"Every object is a story, every manipulation of an object is a dance. The objects also redefine realism or mimesis on stage, since they are not copies or props.

"They destroy an illusion to create a new one...Viviane is like a ‘muse’ for me. When I develop a story and the characters I need to know who will play the part... Isabella Morandi performed by Viviane De Muynck is dynamite: a female Zorba the Greek without a boss."

Shown/header image: Viviane De Muynck, in a scene from "Isabella's Room"

Find it: BAM - Brooklyn Academy of Music
30 Lafayette Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11217
Get info: (718) 636-4100

Find dance/theatre events in other cities, in the DEC/JAN issue of "Arte Six."

2004-12-16T15:43:00.000+08:00

THEATRE/San Francisco
“Come Fly With Me Nude”
Dec. 10, 11, 15-18

“Come Fly With Me Nude” is the story of mutual muses Dom Casual and Bella Hagen, two performers on the Stage of Life who passionately believe that the importance of their art far outweighs their limitations as artists...

SFF Fringers Diane Karagienakos (Bella Hagen) and Todd Pickering (Dom Casual) deliver a comical, merciless send-up of self-obsessed artistes; they play two performance artists obsessed with the minutiae of their failures and successes.

Their overwrought letters to each other detail their progress, as they’re swept up into a "tsunami of Byronian Ferlinghettis."

In the end, they stumble into a cult following in spite of themselves and are left to ponder the ultimate hideous sacrifice -- developing a mainstream TV show with a Hollywood producer.

Inspired by Ann Margaret, “The Exorcist,” Queen and The Ice Capades, they interpret the poignant stories of their childhoods, and how their meeting in San Francisco changed their lives -- and, quite probably, the future of art -- forever. Trivia: The performance piece is based on a series of mock letters Pickering and Karagienakos wrote to amuse each other, after their meeting in Northern California in the early 90s.

Find it: EXIT Theatre
156 Eddy St. (at Mason)
San Francisco, CA
Get info: (415) 956-1737

Find dance/theatre events in other cities, in the DEC/JAN issue of "Arte Six."

2004-12-16T14:25:00.000+08:00

ART/London
“Escape from Studio Voltaire”
Through Dec. 19

Studio Voltaire presents “Escape from Studio Voltaire,” the first solo exhibition in London by Mark Hutchinson. The project consists of two integral parts: an installation in the gallery and a free booklet, “On Art and Claustrophobia.”

The scene in the gallery looks chaotic and interrupted. The space is crammed full of tables and chairs, with barely enough space to walk amongst them. The surfaces are buried under large sheets of paper, which overflow the bounds of the tables.

These papers are blueprints, diagrams and data showing how one might leave the gallery, if leaving through the official entrance/exit became impossible.

The plans of escape range from the simple and practical (climbing out the window), to the elaborate and whimsical (escaping from the roof in a hot air balloon).

The other part of the project, the booklet, contains two main essays. One is an extract from an old case history of a self-declared claustrophobic artist, by New York City-based analyst Jennifer Bird:

“The claustrophobic person is […] an amateur escape artist. He needs, in order to physically survive, to be ingenious about his exits and entrances.”
-- Adam Philips

In the second essay, artist Mark Hutchinson compares the symptoms of claustrophobia with the difficulties of being a critically and politically engaged artist.

The artist, like the claustrophobic person, can feel constricted by surrounding structures.

For both artist and claustrophobic, it is the possibility of escape, however unlikely in practice, that needs to be kept alive through a process of vigilance, ingenuity and imagination.

Find it: Studio Voltaire
1a Nelson’s Row, Clapham Common
London
Get info: +44 (0)20 7622 1294

Find art events in other cities, in the DEC/JAN issue of "Arte Six."

2004-12-16T13:54:00.000+08:00

ART/NYC
“Cute and Scary”
Through Dec. 18

Hoo, cute! But scary. But cute...but scary...

“Cute and Scary” showcases works by emerging artists raised within a milieu where comics and Japanese animation began to reveal the spooky side underneath the Hello Kitty exterior.

Artists include: Ciou, Aya Kakeda, Camille Rose Garcia and Saya Woolflak.

Shown above: Image from "The Sleepwalkers" series.
Artist: Camille Rose Garcia

Something in the work of these artists remains childlike, but a deeper look reveals a poignant dark side. An unsolved dichotomy. This ambiguity translates into works that come across as fun and disturbing, dark and light, cute and scary without really favoring one or the other, as pop culture and fluffy eroticism mingle with subterranean nightmare.

Shown above: "Suicide Princess," from the Ultraviolenceland series.
Artist: Camille Rose Garcia

Incidentally, Flux is planning their new latest trip down the scary brick road:

They’re looking for novelists who’d be willing to write in a Flux Factory art box for a whole month. Writer in a box. Now, that’s cute. But scary...

Shown/header image: Image from “Les Poupées de Ciou” series.
Artist: Ciou

Find it: Flux Factory
3838 43rd Street
Long Island City, NY
Get info: (718) 707-3362

Find art events in other cities, in the DEC/JAN issue of "Arte Six."

2004-12-16T13:39:00.001+08:00

ART/Zurich
"Facts are stupid things"
Through Dec. 18

"Facts are stupid things." This 1988 quote from former U.S. president Ronald Reagan, originally just a slip of the tongue, ironically anticipates what we accept today almost without opposition: branding and media shape our perception. Fiction is reality. Facts are stupid things...

For the exhibition "Facts are stupid things," Staub(g*fzk!) invited nine artists whose work explores the boundary between fiction and reality.

Christoph Draeger starts with, natch, a wall, in "Palestinian Teenage Riot/Wailing Wall." Three meters long and one meter high work, "Wailing Wall" stands silently on the gallery floor in front of the picture, "Palestinian Teenage Riot." The spectator's gaze wanders over "Wailing Wall," to the depiction of rioting teenagers.

However, if one changes one's position to the side of the teenagers, the grey concrete stones on the other side of the "Wailing Wall," become a symbol of the insurmountable walls -- physical and political -- in the region. In both cases, the weapons are stones.

Next to Draeger’s work hangs a large-scale drawing by Marguerite Kahrl. In complex drawings, Kahrl constructs fictional systems. Her diagrams combine new technologies and fictional landscapes, exploring subjects such as surveillance, nuclear fuel, arms production and our 21st century dependency on reliable data transmission.

Kahrl’s drawings develop slowly and in multiple layers. They allow time for reflection as one traces the detailed progression of a self-made world unfolding.

Draeger’s subtle shifts in context and Kahrls’ fictional-reality constructs are complemented by a photographic work by Mark Divo.

Divos’ large-scale photo "Adventure Humanity" is based on Théodore Géricaults painting "The Raft of the Medusa", (1818/19). Divo interprets the motif of the shipwreck as a representation of the idea of surrendering to the flood of information and to advertising slogans.

The infiltration of brands in all areas of life are the theme of the two Madonna paintings by Ivana Falconi.

Painted in oil on wood and set in pompous frames, Falconi’s Madonnas wear Adidas and Nikes. As with religion, branding requires faith. Both religion and commercial branding use symbols and cult figures, spread globally by franchising a recognizable brand, and demand unconditional surrender to opinion leaders’ particular spin on reality or value systems.

Elise Engler’s work is characterized by a strong interest in archiving and cataloguing. "Wrapped in the Flag" is a drawing in progress; Engler started working on it at the outbreak of the war on Iraq.

Engler meticulously follows the news of names and nationalities of the dead (U.S. and allies). With colored pencil she draws a silhouette of the dead; the silhouette is then filled in with the casualty’s respective flag, providing information about gender, age and nationality. Engler’s ongoing project, which already fills five 150 cm x 30 cm paper sheets, can be seen as a temporal memorial against war.

Opposite Engler’s drawings hangs a large-scale oil painting of Caroline Bachmann and Stefan Banz. Like Engler, Bachmann and Banz occupy themselves with war, in their work "As I opened fire."

The painting includes a quote from one of Roy Lichtenstein’s works ("As I opened fire, I knew why Tex hadn’t bust me / if he had / the enemy would have been warned that my ship was below them”), as well as a portrait of Anne Frank. The combination of art with historical and socio-political aspects in Bachman and Banz’s work leaves room for objective or personal interpretations.

Also an archivist of impressions of daily life, Patricia Bucher collects odd personal encounters, strange images from journals or, as in this exhibition, text fragments from pop songs.

Using highlighter on paper, Bucher draws texts like "some will have more cash than you/always take a different view" or "and if i don’t and if i do/the day has cooled, the time will too." Finally, Bucher covers her work with scotch tape, which renders her work temporarily glossy, but faded in time, like the words of pop songs you can no longer recall.

Dagmar Heppner draws logos of the big Hollywood studios such as Universal, Columbia or Paramount; super brands which create reality through fiction.

But whereas the original brands burst with vigor, Heppner’s colored pencil drawings have a feeling of vulnerability. They’re not in confrontation with the power Hollywood exerts over mass-marketed dreams, but are instead a gentler, personalized version of the logos, reclaimed and re-interpreted by the individual.

Find it: Staub(g*fzk!)
Rotwandstrasse, 39 (Holf)
Zurich (CH)
Get info: +41 (0)1-240-30-55

Find art exhibits in other cities, in the DEC/JAN issue of "Arte Six."

2004-12-15T21:56:00.000+08:00

ART/Paris
Kilometer Zero event
Dec. 15

This 15th of December, Kilometer Zero is proud to celebrate with the latest edition of the magazine.

We tell you what. After dormancy for we can't remember how long -- through the damn art squat closings, the moving and the moves, the splitting ups and downs, the broadening of horizons individually -- not one of us has sold out; none have dropped out; none have quit believing in the project.

Tonight, here in Paris, a big show is lined up for you and us to present the latest and the best of what's going on, down, and continually up in this busy, busy world of cock-eyed power, elections and consumerism.

The latest issue is diverse and beautiful -- politics, literature, art, philosophy, with half the magazine devoted to a very important look at the port city of Marseilles, one of the most representative European cities of an Arab-Western world.

In celebration, musicians, actors, film-makers, and poets amidst masks and photography are throwing a helluva party tonight.

People are flying in, jumping the TGV, swimming the channel, coming out of bookwork and woodwork to get their souls and sounds charged anew.

From Sparkle Hayter concerning the event: Vive l'Amour, Vive la Liberté, Vive le Bourbon, Vive la France and not Bush's America:

Kilometer Zero is a non-profit association and collective of artists, writers, and journalists devoted to providing a forum of ideas through a magazine, theatre, spectacles and shows, and action.

Kilometer Zero began in Paris in 2000; since then, it expands in participation and involvement throughout the world. This is our fifth magazine.

Other current events include the political pamphlet series "Pssst....America!" where 40,000 pamphlets concerning the rights of working mothers were distributed throughout the United States this past October.

We've put on shows for seven seasons, in Paris and abroad. We thank everyone for their continual participation and belief in the project -- even though it was rumored that we were dead and floating in the Seine following police brutality, over-extension, carpal-tunnel syndrome, heartache and a lack of financial means.

Fuck that. Here we are. See you on the 15th.

Place/lieu: opa
9, rue Biscornet
Metro: Bastille (derrière l'Opéra à droite, vers le canal)
Free entry/entrée gratuite
Spectacle: 21h/Shows start at 9pm

Program:

'The Waterlogs'
Bremner Duthie and the Paris Playwrights
laughing and le rire dramatique

'Paris Vampires'
Chris Mack with test screening
motion and midnight / minuit

musique sexy et al.
Velvet Nin
sound and sexiness / musique sexy

poésie
Frédéric Nevchehirlian
voice sound and rhythm / son rythme poésie

mouvement fragmentaire extra
IAT
'Fragments on the Boulevard'

photography and dream
Sebastien Merlet
rêve et photographie

mythe et création
Nevin Hayter
creation and myth

film motion sound
Rene Likata
sound and motion / motion et son

interpretation and theory
Société Réaliste
théorie et interprétation

l'appel et la voix
Robert Grimm
voice and call

Musique extra bien
Mathias
sound and soul

Fresh minty surprises
I*T
aloe menthe et douceur

En Français:

Kilometer Zero a la grande joie de vous inviter à la célébration de la
sortie du dernier numéro du magazine (5e) ce mercredi prochain 15 décembre, ici à Paris.

Ça fait un moment que l'on ne s'est pas vu, et pour bonne raison. La participation de l'un de nos fidèles le plus célèbre, M. Nicolas Sarkozy, a entamé la fin des bureaux de Kilometer Zero dans le 9e et ensuite, le 2e (il ne peut malheureusement pas assister à la fête du 15).

Nous avons dû changer d'optique pour de quêtes individuels, et al., et néanmoins, nous n'avons jamais mis à l'écart le projet de fournir à tous les croyants de 'fais ce que voudras' un forum et un moyen de s'exprimer et de battre contre les folies actuelles et consommées dans notre monde. Si l'on le célébrait?

Artistes, musiciens, activistes, comédiens et metteurs en scène seront sur scène mercredi prochain pour célébrer, pour nous montrer, et pour nous faire parler de nouveaux horizons. Cet entourage remarquable saura bien encadrer le dernier numéro: sont abordés philosophie, politique, littérature, arts plastiques, avec la moitié du numéro dédiée à un reportage artistique sur la cohabitation arabe-européenne dans la ville-mer de Marseille.

Pour la fête, fidèles viennent par avion, par TGV (trajets offerts par la SNCF, apparemment), par la nage en mer, par tous les moyens pour être présent, pour être entendu, pour assister, pour changer (et je crois qu'il y en a quelques uns qui viennent pour draguer et pour teufer, ce qui fait également changer les choses --quêtes d'Eros, de Dionysos).

Venez donc le 15 décembre. Les portes s'ouvrent à 20h. Bien sûr, il n'y a pas de paf -- l'entrée est gratuite, et nous allons également vous offrir des boissons entre 20h30 jusqu'à 21h, quand les spectacles commenceront en anglais et en français. (Je ne peux vous dire comment ça va être énorme et comment je les kiffe!) Comme je vous ai précédemment dit, venez nombreux et non-nombrilistes.

Le Kilometer Zero Project a été conçu en 2000 à Paris. Un collectif d'artistes, d'écrivains et de journalistiques ayant pour objectif d'explorer la pensée libérée de la surconsommation, nous sommes une association à but non-lucratif par la loi française de 1901.

Depuis la création, notre magazine est distribué dans 15 pays; nous avons organisé des expositions, des performances, et des soirées de spectacle engagées
et pour but fun. Pour plus d'information, venez le 15 décembre; d'ailleurs, notre site est Kilometer Zero.

Le dernier numéro du magazine explore les relations entre la communauté arabe et celle des occidentaux, avec Marseille comme visée et laboratoire sociale. Essais politiques, poésies, dessins, photographies, et nouvelles traditionnelles Algériennes et contemporaines.

Find more art events in the DEC/JAN issue of "Arte Six."

2004-12-14T01:32:00.000+08:00

NYC/KGB Bar/Reading
Dec. 15, 7pm

The Fantastic Fiction series, curated by Ellen Datlow and Gavin J. Grant, is on the third Wednesday of every month at 7pm at KGB. Come early.

Reading:

Paul LaFarge, "Haussmann, or the Distinction"
Baron Georges-Eugene Haussmann, who transformed Paris from a filthy and haphazard medieval city into the jewel of Europe, is rumored on his deathbed to have wished all his work undone.

Why? The answer lies in the story of Madeleine, a foundling from the magical old world Haussmann destroyed; of de Fonce, a "demolition man" who sold the rubble of Paris as antiques; and of a three-sided affair that reveals the moral bankruptcy of the city, a corruption hidden by the transformative work of its brilliant architect. Other books by this author: "The Artist of the Missing"

Also reading: Carol Emshwiller, "The Mount"
The Hoots own the world, but the humans want it back. Charley knows how to be a good mount, but now he's going to have to learn how to be a human being. Emshwiller is also the author of "Ledoyt."

Find it: 85 East 4th Street (just off 2nd Ave)
New York, NY 10003
Get info: (212) 505-3360

Find books/writers events in other cities, in the DEC/JAN issue of "Arte Six."