at The Collapsable Hole 146 Metropolitan Ave Brooklyn, NY 11211 718-388-2251
January 8-10 (Sat-Mon) @ 8pm January 12-15 (Wed-Sat) @ 8pm January 17 (Mon) Benefit Show @ 7:30pm
Tickets: $20, $15 students/seniors Reservations: radiohole@gmail.com or 718-388-2251
Whatever, Heaven Allows is by Radiohole with Eric Dyer, Erin Douglass, Maggie Hoffman, Joseph Silovsky and Mark Jaynes film & video by: Aaron Harrow & Radiohole
"Whatever, Heaven Allows is Radiohole's monster mash-up of Douglas Sirk's 1955 box office smash "All that Heaven Allows" (staring Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman), and John Milton's hit 1667 poem "Paradise Lost" featuring history's most famous fallen hero, Satan.
GET AN AD IN THE SHOW Purchase an AD or SHOUT-OUT that runs during Whatever, Heaven Allows
COME TO THE BENEFIT SHOW and/or PARTY MONDAY, JANUARY 17th Hosted by: The Amazing RUSSELLO and special guests Richard Maxwell and the NYC Players Band with Scott Shepherd on Ukulele!
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Whatever, Heaven Allows (WHA!?) was commissioned by and performed at The Walker Art Center, The Andy Warhol Museum and PS122. It was also made possible with a matching grant from the National Performance Network's Creation Fund, the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affiars
Whatever, Heaven Allows is presented in association with Performance Space 122 as part of COIL - an annual winter festival of contemporary performance featuring hits from the past, present and future seasons of Performance Space 122. www.ps122.org.
David Wojnarowicz (1954-1992) was apainter, writer, filmmaker and performance artist who died of AIDS-related complicationsin 1992at 37. In 1990 he won an important lawsuit against conservative Christian Donald Wildmon's American Family Association, who'd appropriated some of his work for one its tracts. The judgment read, in part,
[David Wojnarowicz] earns his living by selling his art works, many of which are assertedly directed at bringing attention to the devastation wrought upon the homosexual community by the AIDS epidemic. Plaintiff attempts through his work to expose what he views as the failure of the United States government and public to confront the AIDS epidemic in any meaningful way. To this end, plaintiff's art at times incorporates sexually explicit images for the avowed purpose of shaping community attitudes towards sexuality. As a result, his works have been the subject of controversy and public debate concerning government funding of non-traditional art.
[...] On or about April 12, 1990, the AFA and Wildmon published and distributed throughout the United States, including the Southern District of New York, the AFA pamphlet (the "pamphlet") in an effort to stop public funding by the NEA of art works such as plaintiff's. The pamphlet was mailed to 523 members of Congress, 3,230 Christian leaders, 947 Christian radio stations and 1,578 newspapers, at least twenty-eight of which were located in this district. Without plaintiff's authorization, Wildmon photographically copied fourteen fragments of plaintiff's works which he believed most offensive to the public and reproduced these fragments in the AFA pamphlet. These fourteen images, with three exceptions, explicitly depict sexual acts. The other three images portray Christ with a hypodermic needle inserted in his arm, and two ambiguous scenes which plaintiff represents as respectively depicting an African purification ritual and two men dancing together.
Wildmon wrote the text of the pamphlet, which is entitled "Your Tax Dollars Helped Pay For These `Works of Art.'" It states in the introductory sentence that "the photographs appearing on this sheet were part of the David Wajnarowicz [sic] 'Tongues of Flame' exhibit catalog." The envelope in which the AFA pamphlet was mailed states that the "[p]hotos enclosed in this envelope were taken from the catalog of the `Tongues of Flame' exhibit" and is marked "Caution — Contains Extremely Offensive Material."
Wojnarowicz only received a dollar when he won the suit, but he succeeded in preventing Wildmon from distributing altered images of his artwork for his hate campaign--and won a rare victory in the early years of the culture wars.
Untitled (1990), David Wojnarowicz (in collaboration with Phil Zwickler and Rosa von Praunheim) still from the film "Silence = Death"
Eighteen years after his death Wojnarowicz's art is still disturbing Christian conservatives, who are still arguing that taxpayer money should not support it, only this time he isn't winning... His video Fire in My Belly (1987) appeared in the National Portrait Gallery show Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture until it was removed on November 30th. It had been on display since the show opened a month earlier but objections to an image of ants crawling on a plastic crucifix in it's first few seconds led by Catholic League President William Donohue, who called the video "vile... hate speech," impelled the Smithsonian to remove it from display. The office of Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), the presumptive incoming speaker of the House also issued a statement that read, "American families have a right to expect better from recipients of taxpayer funds in a tough economy. While the amount of money involved may be small, it's symbolic of the arrogance Washington routinely applies to thousands of spending decisions involving Americans' hard-earned money." (As part of the Smithsonian the National Gallery receives public funds.) These are shockingly similar to the attacks Wojnarowicz withstood when he was alive and using his art to shock an apathetic public into acknowledging the human cost of the AIDS crisis that ultimately ended his life. The fact that they are still being made is not that shocking considering the enormous percentage of loud, stupid D-bags swarming all over public life in this country like ants on a dropped popsicle. What is shocking is that they still work.
The fact that this happened the day before World AIDS Day is a sickening reminder of how little ground has been gained. The video, which attempts to represent the physical and emotional pain caused by AIDS, is primitive by today's standards. But the punk, DIY quality of it is a visceral reminder that it is a time capsule from 1987, when brilliant artists like David Wojnarowicz were getting sick and dying so, so young. Watch Fire in My Belly above and give it a minute. If you suspend your 21st century cynicism and let the historical context reach you, you may have a brief echo of what it was like to work in the arts then and watch helplessly as people you cared about died all around you for no reason, while the President blithely ignored the crisis.
UPDATE:
Diamanda Galás Responds to the Smithsonian’s Removal of David Wojnarowicz’s Work:
Diamanda Galás, the composer and performer of the This is the Law of the Plague (1986), which is the soundtrack to part of Wojnarowicz's Fire in My Belly responded to its removal from the Hide/Seek exhibition by the Smithsonian. She writes,
The cross is a symbol of the CRUCIFIXION, among the cruelest tortures in the world. This is the sentence of slow and horrific death in which the spinal column breaks and the organs rupture. This is the torture for the worst of outlaws – the man who protested that the sick and the poor were not allowed into the church for the crime of being perceived as UNCLEAN, rather than "pristine," and moneyed for his advocacy that the church BE a sanctuary to the sick, rather than a citadel for the rich family man, who comes to exchange invitations for tea and other such serious matters with OTHER rich family men.
David Wojnarowicz was a great artist who died a terrible death in 1992. It was one of the worst times in this country for people with AIDS. My brother, Philip-Dimitri Galas, died six years before him in 1986 of the same disease in San Diego. THERE WAS NO HOPE WHATSEOVER THEN FOR THIS DISEASE.
So what is so shocking about the truth now in 2010? Does it remind the clergy and the lawmakers of what the cross stands for: PUNISHMENT AND SAVAGE CRUELTY, and make ugly with the NICE and FRIENDLY WARM xmas spirit?
WHO in countries other than our own are dying horrific death of AIDS this Christmas? Christmas comes but once a year.
About two months ago now, overwhelmed by the experience of having his privacy invaded by his roommate, who'd live streamed footage of him having sex with another boy, Clementi-- by all accounts a sensitive, thoughtful kid and talented musician-- threw himself off of the George Washington Bridge. The circumstances around Clementi's tragic death have sparked a much-needed conversation about homophobic bullying, especially since it comes on the heels of the recent suicides of so many other gay teens. I'm glad those conversations are happening-- but I want to focus on another, broader aspect of this tragedy.
The thing that struck me, and haunts me still about Clementi's death is the casual cruelty of his roommate Dhaurun Ravi. On September 19th Ravi tweeted “Roommate asked for the room till midnight. I went into molly’s room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay.” Three days later Clementi, unable to process this violation, took his own life.
And I keep asking myself: What made Ravi think it was okay to do something like this?
What essential messages about boundaries did he not receive? How can he have reached young manhood with so little basic, human compassion?
The default explanation for his actions is homophobia, and that may be true... But I don't think it's only that. Why should we assume that Ravi wouldn't have played the same cruel prank on a straight roommate? (Although it's clear that if he had it wouldn't have had the same tragic result.) For me, the fact that Ravi felt empowered to blindly abuse Clementi with no thought of the consequences is a chilling statement about a culture that celebrates cruelty as entertainment. This question brings me squarely into Old Fart territory, but I don't care: In a cultural landscape where people attack one another physically and emotionally for sport, there are no consequences for stupid, dangerous behavior and routine cruelty is openly rewarded how can we expect kids like Dhaurun Ravi to get the message that what he did to Tyler Clementi isn't okay? The most frightening thing to me is the thought that Dhaurun Ravi isn't a monster, but just a kid acting on the premises he has learned up until now.
The tragedy is that Tyler Clementi had to die for him to understand that other people bleed when you cut them.
UPDATE: The wonderful Jo Nubian has addressed another element of this issue--the bullying that is often incited by kids who don't perform "normative" gender roles-- in a terrific post on Race-Talk called, Tolerance, Acceptance and Princesses. Jo writes, as the mom to a little girl who sleeps in her tiara, about Dyson Kiloadavis, the "Princess Boy" who likes dressing in pretty girl's clothes. The video that accompanies her essay is perhaps the anti-Jerry Springer: a healthy, well adjusted family thoughtfully discussing their relationship to a member who is acting differently from them in terms of gender expression. I dare you not to choke up when Dyson's older brother says, of his desire to dress as a princess for Halloween, "Just let him be happy." Amen.
For the first annual New York Arab & South Asian Short Video Slam (NYA & SA SVS)
Deadline: September 30, 2010
Seeking new short videos (produced 2006 or later) by South Asian and Arab directors OR videos about those regions and their diasporas by filmmakers of all backgrounds.
Videos of all genres are welcome, including conceptual and political video art. Please limit these video to 20 mins or less Total Running Time.
The 2010 NYA&SA Short Video Slam will present the best in recent short videos that increase awareness of the creative vitality and sociopolitical realities of North Africa, the Middle East, Iran, South Asia, and their diasporas. The NYA&SA Short Video Slam will take place in late October 2010 at the Alwan for the Arts Space at 16 Beaver Street in Lower Manhattan.
Alwan for the Arts & 3rd i NY have been co-presenting monthly film screenings and a combined film festival for over 3 years. These started at the now defunct Two Boots Pioneer Theater, where due to low costs and a basement venue for pizza and beer receptions after the screening, we were able to create a lively space for filmmakers and film enthusiasts to interact. While we have continued our monthly series and for two years our festival at the Tribeca Cinemas, the space does not accommodate these informal post-screening discussions and is more conducive to showing feature films from abroad than local independent and experimental work. We'd like to once again play a greater role as a showcase for aesthetically, politically, theoretically and/or technically innovative work as well serve as a meeting place filmmakers and film aficionados.
As a participating filmmaker you will benefit from the deep level of engagement provided by the audience members that Alwan & 3rd i NY has cultivated over the last few years of intense programming, who are more knowledgeable than general audiences about the history, languages, and cultures of the North African, Middle Eastern, and South and Central Asian regions. They enjoy healthy debate and cross-cultural learning. They are diverse in their ages, incomes, and professional backgrounds. They often come to many screenings or cultural events per year, and appreciate the opportunity to engage with artists, writers, thinkers, and cultural producers. Alwan's loft space's open layout makes it easy to quickly convert it from screening to social gathering, and it is close to numerous trains.
To submit please include:
1) DVD or VHS (NTSC or PAL) preview copy 2) Synopsis, running time, year, country and year of production 3) Director bio, cast/crew list 4) Screening history, Awards 5) All possible screening formats available 6) Contact email, phone #, website if available 7) If above info provided on CD, please also include film stills at 300 dpi as tiff or jpeg as part of the EPK
MAIL TO:
Video Slam Submissions ATTN: Melissa Forstrom Alwan for the Arts 16 Beaver Street, 4th Floor New York NY 10004
Tel.: 646.732.3261
Materials will be returned if prepaid from USA, self addressed envelope is provided. If selected, you will be notified by October 30, 2010.
For questions or to submit electronically email: info@alwanforthearts.org
The Sternberg Project, a site-specific dance film by Zena Bibler of the Dance Film Lab, is a crowd-sourced, multi-media, videodance time capsule of July in Sternberg Park and its surrounding area composed of short videos made on anything from HD camcorders to cell phone cameras.
The final Moviehouse screening of the summer is a screening of The Sternberg Project as well as original work by Itziar Barrios called (Ballad of) Knowville and a live performance.
Shot in abandoned industrial locations in New York City, (Ballad of) Knowville attempts to explain our present world through the murder ballad aesthetic. This aesthetic is a sub-genre of the traditional ballad form (often an American version of an older European ballad), that relays details and often consequences of crimes of passion but with the elements of supernatural retribution removed. In this video piece, the murder ballad is an entry point into a world that conjures tension, intrigue, and mystery and where death is decorative, lyrical, and aestheticized. (Ballad of) Knowville teeters on the edge of a dream-state, repeatedly falling into dance-induced lyricism only to abruptly regain the stark reality of self-awareness.
Details: Monday, August 23rd, 8pm Sternberg Park, Williamsburg, Brooklyn (Lorimer + Boerum Streets) Event is FREE! (So bring your friends)
Zena Bibler is a Brooklyn-based dancer, choreographer, and experimental filmmaker. Her latest projects include The Union Square Experiments, an expanding set of site-specific, geo-tagged, Google-Mapped, public dance performances with Katie Schetlick and Ashley Hannan and Little Dances Everywhere, a series of short, site-specific dance films that function like postcards from particular moments and situations.
Conceived and directed by Zena Bibler in collaboration with Katie Schetlick, Ashley Hannan, Faye Min Lim, Ashley Murray, Jacob Liberman, Malinda Crump, Rishauna Zumberg, Ariel Lembeck, Elaine Carberry, Zavé Martohardjono, Ullani Atkins, Sofia Feria, Jennifer Ruiz, Nico Demus, Peter Roushakes, Trevion Tillman, DJ Tillman, Zanaya Tillman, Davonaisha Tillman, Mia-Lee Betances, Kassandra Matos, Jacqueline Betances, Rian Rooney, Michelle Castañeda, Chris Tabron, Chris Henderson, Clay Franklin, Alice Cox, Gabriel Roldos, and Hannah Krafcik.
For more information visit http://www.brilliantp.com/moviehouse/
Luis Jacob, Without Persons (2006) by David Frankovich
Luis Jacob: Without Persons
Art in General is pleased to present Without Persons, an exhibition of new and recent works by Toronto-based artist Luis Jacob, curated by Andria Hickey. The exhibition includes video, painting, and a new work from the artist’s Album series that will be on view from September 16 – November 13, 2010. Receiving increasingly wider recognition, Jacob’s work was first exhibited at Art in General as part of the group exhibition Explosion LTTR: Practice More Failure, in 2004. More recently, Jacob’s work has been included in Documenta 12 and has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at the Städtisches Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach; Kunstverein, Hamburg; and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.
Over the past decade, Jacob’s diverse practice has addressed issues of social interaction and the subjectivity of aesthetic experience. Working in video, installation, sculpture and photography, as well as actions in the public sphere, Jacob’s work is often derived from research on a wide variety of subjects. In bringing together unlikely referents, Jacob invites a collision of meaning systems that destabilize our conventions of viewing and open up possibilities for participation and the creation of knowledge.
In the artist’s words, “what is essential for our experience of art—what is foundational—is the experience of non-intelligibility, a kind of dislocation. Aesthetic experience for us today is first of all an encounter with otherness, with strangeness: but an otherness that, crucially, is there demanding appropriation, intelligibility. What is so constructive about aesthetic experience is that it requires a creative act on the part of the viewer, an act of synthesis that is original through and through.”
The artist’s first solo exhibition in the U.S., Luis Jacob: Without Persons features a series of works that explore absence and authenticity in terms of pictorial representation, the legacy of modern art, and the self and others. These works call on the viewer to consider what may lie beneath the surface of the “empty picture,” and what new forms of real and unconscious knowledge may lay dormant in such minimal propositions.
The central installation, “Without Persons,” for which the exhibition is titled, is an immersive multimedia work that features two computer-generated voices, one male and one female, that talk about “being-in-the-city” and “being-with-others.” The adjacent images project an amorphous, plasma-like liquid, with abstract but seemingly bodily movement, as if animated by the artificial voices. As the liquid finds new forms in formlessness, the voices invite the viewer to consider the discord of the alien world without persons, and the coming to consciousness of an infant who knows no persons.
Jacob’s engagement with abstraction is also reflected in the exhibition through a series of paintings the artist made in response to an early suite of Mark Rothko paintings. Considering notions of authenticity and appropriation, Jacob reconstituted the original works using a staining technique on raw canvas for one series, and a vivid tie-dye technique, with two “eye holes” in the accompanying series of paintings.
Likewise, Jacob’s Album IX, newly created for this exhibition, intuitively reconstructs an uncanny narrative of recent art history. Album IX consists of dozens of images culled from a variety of books, magazines, and other publications. These images are montaged together in plastic-laminate panels, and hung sequentially in the gallery in the form of an “image bank”. Through processes of visual association, the images of Album IX compose a poetic narrative around various themes: reductivism in painting and the modernist tradition of creative rupture; base materialism and the aesthetic sublime; embodiment and the monochrome. Using imagery excised from published sources, Album IX becomes an invitation to construct associative narratives about artistic experience by means of the visual material that surrounds us in the expanded cultural environment. In the fall of 2010, Album IX will be published as an artist book by A Prior (Ghent, Belgium).
About the Artist
Luis Jacob’s work has been presented in numerous international group exhibitions including Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010); Animism, Extra City Kunsthal Antwerp; Kunsthalle Bern (2010); Dance with Camera, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia and the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston (2009-2010); If We Can’t Get It Together, The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto, Canada (2008); The Order of Things, Museum voor Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerp (2008); and Documenta 12, Kassel (2007). His solo exhibitions include the Städtisches Museum Abteiberg of Mönchengladbach (2009), the Hamburg Kunstverein (2008); Platform Seoul, PKM Gallery, Seoul (2008); the Musée d’art de Joliette, Quebec (2008); the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery of the University of British Columbia (2007), and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2005). In June 2010, Jacob presented the first of a three-part touring mid-career survey exhibition, Luis Jacob Tableaux: Pictures at an Exhibition, at the Darling Foundry in Montréal; the exhibition will travel to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Toronto and to Vancouver. Jacob lives and works in Toronto.
Art in General 79 Walker Street New York NY 10013 212 219 0473 tel 212 219 0511 fax info@artingeneral.org
Darcy Lange, from Study of Three Birmingham Schools, UK, 1976. Courtesy Darcy Lange Estate and Govett-Brewster Art Gallery.
Date: January 7, 2010, 7–9 pm Location: Cabinet, 300 Nevins Street, Brooklyn, NY FREE; no RSVP necessary
Jeff Dolven and Simon Critchley will host a discussion on the relationship between pedagogy and art by showing segments of videos from Cabinet’s current exhibition of work by New Zealand artist Darcy Lange (1946–2005). In the 1970s, Lange took his video camera into schools in Birmingham and Oxfordshire to record the daily business of the classroom, and then put teachers and students on camera again as they watched the record he had made. The result is a penetrating and sometimes uncomfortable study—across a wide range of schools and social classes—of the strange combination of ordinariness and performance that occurs in every classroom. The panel will consider pedagogy as a work of art, and look beyond Lange’s work to the surge of interest in didacticism as a mode and motive for contemporary artists.
ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS Simon Critchley is a philosopher who teaches at the New School. His books include The Book of Dead Philosophers (Granta, 2008) and Infinitely Demanding (Verso, 2007) Jeff Dolven teaches English at Princeton University, and is the author of Scenes of Instruction (Chicago, 2007). With D. Graham Burnett, he organizes the series Poetry Lab at Cabinet.
The exhibition “Darcy Lange: Work Studies in Schools,” curated by Mercedes Vicente, draws from a series of videos by New Zealand artist Darcy Lange (1946–2005) which examine the processes of teaching and learning. In 1976, Lange videotaped a number of classrooms at three schools in the English city of Birmingham, carefully choosing institutions that would represent different social classes. Focusing on the teaching of art, history, and science, Lange first filmed each class in action. Afterwards, he would watch the tapes with the teachers and then the students, each time recording their reactions. The following year, Lange continued the project, this time in four Oxfordshire schools. Lange saw his tapes as material for “research,” an “educational process” in which the reactions of his subjects to the footage were just as important as the original films.
About Darcy Lange A graduate of Elam School of Fine Arts in Auckland, New Zealand and the Royal College of Art in London, Darcy Lange (1946–2005) established a career in the late 1960s as a sculptor with large, hard-edge abstract works but soon turned to photography, film, and video. In 1972, he began videotaping and filming under the general theme of “people at work” in English factories, mines, and schools and continued documenting workers’ lives after returning to New Zealand. In the late 1970s, Lange joined Maori activists’ struggles to establish land rights during what became known as the Maori Renaissance when bicultural policies in New Zealand fully came into place, and developed his ambitious Maori Land Project (1977–1981). Beginning in the 1980s, Lange became increasingly involved in the study of music, especially flamenco, and created several multimedia performances involving music, poetry, and art. He died in Auckland in 2005.
Exhibition Dates: December 4, 2009–January 16, 2010 Location: Cabinet, 300 Nevins Street, Brooklyn, NY Gallery hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 12–6 pm, and by appointment (closed December 23–January 2) Curated by Mercedes Vicente
So I have a website now. It features my artwork and information about my scholarship and teaching. If you aren't too busy maybe you could take a look. I'm just saying.
Chic Point. Fashion for Israeli Checkpoints. Sharif Waked (2003) Video DVD (7 Min.)
Art Opening: Contemporary Artists from Palestine Tuesday, July 7, 2009 6:00 pm at Postmasters Gallery
Opening: July 7, 2009, 6-8pm. Show runs July 7 - Aug 8, 2009, Tuesdays through Saturdays, 11am-6pm
Postmasters Gallery 459 West 19th Street Between 9th and 10th Aves New York, NY 10011 (212) 727-3323 http://www.postmastersart.com/
“The Thousand and One Nights” brings together photographs, video, and paintings by six contemporary artists from Palestine whose work explores the political and social dimensions of time. While the works reflect the conditions of conflict and occupation, they are not entirely defined by those.
The works in this exhibition are inherently political, but their messages are coded and delivered with deliberate subtlety that demands the focused attention of viewers. Some explore conflicts that are timeless. Shadi Habib Allah’s animation, On-going Tale depicts the age-old conflict between man and beast that never reaches resolution. Sharif Waked’s Jericho First draws on imagery from the 8th century (CE), reflecting persistent visual symbols of power that extend through human history.
Other artists explore their relationships to older generations. In his Pères series, Taysir Batniji photographs portraits of family patriarchs that hang prominently in Gaza shops. The images are displayed honorifically, but Batniji’s photos highlight the power dynamics implied within them. Jumana Manna’s work, Familiar exemplifies a different relationship to her elders, whereby in photograph and video, the artist (an adult in her early twenties) is breastfed by her mother, depicting an image at once nurturing and discomforting.
The Artists:
Taysir Batniji (born Gaza, now Paris) Hanna Farah-Kufer Bir’im (born Algish, now Tel Aviv, Jaffa, and Kufer Birim) Shadi Habib Allah (born Jerusalem, now New York City) Shuruq Harb (Ramallah) Jumana Manna (Oslo) Sharif Waked (born Nazareth, now Haifa)
Cinereach Seeking Young Filmmakers for $5,000 Fellowship:
Cinereach, a not-for-profit dedicated to supporting and producing artful films that depict underrepresented perspectives, cross cultural boundaries, and promote dialogue, is currently seeking applicants for its annual Reach Film Fellowship. The prestigious six-month program supports young filmmakers with grants, resources, and industry mentors who help guide their short films through all stages of production. Applications and guidelines can be found at http://www.reachfilmfellowship.com/. Four winning applicants will be awarded $5,000 and be mentored by an established filmmaker. Fellows also receive production support from sponsors, workshops, career coaching, and industry exposure. Industry judges will award an additional $5,000 to the most outstanding film of the four, which will also screen at Cinereach’s annual Reach Out event in the spring. The fellowship is open to filmmakers who completed film studies programs in 2008 or 2009. This year, self-taught filmmakers may also apply, but are advised to discuss their eligibility with Cinereach staff before submitting an application. Applicants must also be able to reside in the New York Tri-State area from August through April of 2009/2010 to meet the Fellowship requirements. Cinereach also has a large granting program for emerging and established filmmakers. There are two letter of inquiry deadlines annually for this program, June 1 and December 1. Grants range from $5,000 - $50,000 for features and documentary films in all stages of production (www.cinereach.org/grants/).
This is the video for a new song by Lebanese pop singer and video director Jad Shwery, which seems to be marketed toward the West, with lyrics like: "We're not what you see/ On CNN or on the BBC/Take a look at us/...We've got sexy girls/Arab beauty that will rock your world" And images of shiny, waxed, botoxed and surgeried girls and boys twisting and writhing around. So, pretty much like a Christina Aguilera video from 5-6 years ago. But the ethnic and racial politics on display here are causing a fuss, with Arabs taking offense either on religious or progressive political grounds (or both, since they aren't necessarily mutually exclusive). The objections, that the video is blatantly sexist and hyper sexualized, consumer-driven, Westernized and not representative of all Arabs, are not wrong. But I have a more complicated reaction to this song and video, that I'd like to unpack.
1) This is a song by a Lebanese Pop singer and Lebanon IS westernized. Some of that is due to colonization by the French but Lebanon has a loooong pre-colonial history as a cosmopolitan center since the ancient world. In our contemporary moment, Beirut has been reduced to rubble by US and Israeli imperialism twice, so its Western image is tied to the struggle for a free Palestine, but the image of Lebanon as an international (and therefore more secular, with all of the stuff that goes along with that) place persists in the Arab world. Many Lebanese pop singers are famous throughout the Arab world for portraying a more Westernized version of sex and beauty and they are paradoxically disapproved of and celebrated for it.
2) The subtext of the video and the objections to it–which is mostly invisible to a Western audience–is the tension between Lebanese Christians and Muslims. Despite being a minority, Christians ran Lebanon and Lebanese culture reflects that. And like Italy, which is also run by Catholics, there is a cultural preoccupation with sensuality, beauty (both feminine and masculine), love and temporal pleasure in Lebanese culture. And, like our neighbors on the Western side of the Mediterranean, the Lebanese also have little gift for government… preferring to drink coffee and watch girls walk down the street. I am saying this with a smile on my face, because these are my people. Israeli aggression, which has pushed Palestinian refugees across the border and led to the political ascension of Hezbollah in Lebanon, has created a shift in Lebanon wherein it is increasingly characterized by the contentious relationship of its Muslim population toward Israel. While many Maronites (like me) are sympathetic to the Palestinians and Islam in general, many blame them for ruining the country. Just to be clear: this is not an attitude I espouse, or excuse–but I do think it is an underlying factor in this silly pop song.
Jad Shwery (and I’m gonna guess everyone else in this video) are Christians. Shwery is a Maronite Catholic (like me). According to his website he attended private French Schools in Lebanon and the Sorbonne in Paris so he is presumably, like many upper middle class Lebanese Catholics, on friendlier terms with the colonial (ie Western) elements of Lebanese culture than Lebanese Muslims might be.
So, while I understand the arguments some Muslims are making against these representations, I’d argue Shwery is representing an element of his culture, for better or worse. The major flaw here is that he is totalizing that by singing "we"... when it seems pretty clear that the "we" he refernces are Arab Christians/Catholics.That makes the subtext of this song Islamophobic and Orientalist, in that it reproduces the false Good Arab/Bad Arab binary along religious lines. And that, for me, is the biggest offense on display here.
But.
There are definitely Arabs who look and act just like this in the Middle East… and the West and that doesn't necessarily break down along religious lines. My first thought when I saw this video was that it looked less like a wild Dubai consumer orgy than an Arab night at a tacky Brooklyn dance club. (I am saying that with a smile too, FYI. Brooklyn holla.)
3) The folks in the video are silly, but also ridiculously hot and that makes me happy. Maybe that is pathetic, but we are so often portrayed as ugly and crazy that part of me likes seeing this, I admit it.
4) Arab Pop music–like its European analogues (again I would refer you to the Italians)– is sooo corny. These beats are at least five years out of date. And it will take some enterprising ethno-racist about five seconds to make the Funky = bad-smelling analogy. Sigh.
Live Latinas On Stage and Screen A Night of Comedy, Performance and Video
Thursday, June 4 @ 9:30pm Joe's Pub 425 Lafayette Street Tickets: $15 in advance - $20 at the door Reservations: Joe's Pub: 212-967-7575 Nao Bustamente presents an excerpt of Silver & Gold inspired by legendary filmmaker Jack Smith, Bustamente interprets Smith's muse: 1940s Dominican movie starlet Maria Montez.
Carmelita Tropicana presents Ole!--the Sequel. A piece that will beam you up to a monastery in Seville and climaxes in the Dance of Emoticons. Directed by Ella Troyano.
Fulana, the incomparable collective of Latina artists: Lisandra Ramos, Grullon Cristina Ibarra, Andrea Thome, Marlene Ramirez-Cancio present videos including the award winning Amnezac.
featuring: Designer Imposter, KAREN JAIME, Jayson Keeling with Alison Ward and The Ruffian Arms, Rachel Mason and Mark Golamco, Ivan Monforte, and Charlie Vázquez
LIPS LIKE MY SUGAR WALLS promises an evening of world premieres by emerging artists working in New York City. As a curatorial concept "Lips Like My Sugar Walls" acknowledges the primacy of our outer layers, lips, foreskin, culo, mandala, epidermis, and labia. They propel us. We use them in so many ways. We spit, suck, sing, slurp, squirt, lick, fuck, eat, blow, flirt, and kiss. What can a post-punk, Prince-influenced mash up look, feel, sound, taste, smell like? Does it hurt, love, fear, accept? This performance showcase brings together a raw, innovative mix of New York artists. All are contemporary artists who use interdisciplinary practices to produce performative works in video, poetry, photography, and song.
The world premiere of Ivan Monforte’s short video Tres Veces reveals the artist and three other men in a racy interpretation of Paquita La Del Barrio’s ranchero song of revenge Tres veces te engañe. For the first time, Jayson Keeling collaborates on a slide show and text performance with the punk antics of Alison Ward and her rock group The Ruffian Arms. Bringing the immediacy of the edgy East Village scene, performance artists Karen Jaime and Charlie Vázquez, both dynamic writers and spoken word poets who recently performed for Hispanic PANIC! at the queer bar Nowhere, will deliver new works, including a rare appearance by Vázquez as Spittles the Clown. Designer Imposter (aka Ramdasha Bikceem), known on the queer club circuit for her fierce mix of dance music at parties like Pantyho’s, will perform new original songs. Rachel Mason and Mark Golamco, who have worked together since 2003, will play a set of their experimental, collaborative music with viola accompaniment.
Liz Wendelbo is an artist who makes photographs, video, music and performance. Born in Norway, Wendelbo is a key member of the NYC minimal electronic music scene as a member of Xeno and Oaklander. Anthology Film Archives is showing a series of her short films, titled OPTICKS 1-x1v on May 23 at 7:30pm. AFA's website writes of Wendelbo, in reference to her upcoming showing there,
Born in the dark era that is the new millennium in New York, the ‘cold cinema’ of Liz Wendelbo is a return to analogue film. Originating from the NY Minimal Electronics music scene (Xeno & Oaklander), Wendelbo engages in a form of filmmaking that predicates resistance to cinema as a virtual medium. Her latest work is a series of short three-minute films entitled OPTICKS. Her films explore themes of darkness, rituals, Goth iconography, and film as a medium, with melancholy and restraint. With a fondness for obsolete technology, she uses 16mm and double-8mm as her shooting medium of choice, in both color and black-and-white.
OPTICKS is structured in a modular way: the short films are numbered one through fourteen and are interchangeable. Three sections surface overall – the abstract optical experiments of the MAXWELL TARTAN RIBBON series (a 19th-century Scottish physicist, Maxwell ‘projected’ the first color photograph using Newton’s color theory in 1861 – the image was a tartan ribbon); the dance- and movement-based Goth RITUALS series; and the ‘film-as-historical-document’ framework of World War II, industrial, and personal found footage of the EXCAVATION and COLUMNS series.
OPTICKS I – XIV 2008, 3 minutes x 14, 16mm, color/b&w, sound. Editing by Taylor Thompson; music by Sean McBride.
Saturday, May 16, 2009 at 6pm Saturday, June 6, 2009 at 11:00pm
Exhibition will remain on view from May 16 - June 6
Saturday, May 16 - Opening @ 5pm with a performance by CM*Chaos Majik and video by Raymond Salvatore Harmon
Sunday, May 17 @ 6pm - Raymond Salvatore Harmon will deliver a lecture entitled "On the Nature of Light: The Cinematic Experience as Occult Ritual"
Raymond Salvatore Harmon is a cross genre media artist, filmmaker, sound artist, and record producer whose work has defied categorization for the past decade. As a new media artist and experimental filmmaker his work pushes at the boundaries between anthropological study, philosophic discourse, and contemporary art. With a CV extending from performance based 16mm and 8mm film to video circuit-bending and analog feedback installations as well as sound and visual conceptual installations and guerrilla media actions.
As an experimental filmmaker his work is abstract, are accompanied by his own electronic compositions as well as those of his various collaborators. His recent works include full scale immersive video and sound environments, large format digital prints that are then hand manipulated and painted on, and live video performances.
Many of Harmon's films contain layered subliminal content, the source of this content is often derived from occult and mystical texts. Utilizing texts such as the Gates of Light (an early work of Hebraic mysticism, kabbalah) and Aleister Crowley's Book of Lies, Harmon's occult based films work as advanced meditative tools for use in occult rituals and the expansion of the conscious mind.
Compared to experimental film maker Stan Brakhage and the painter Mark Rothko, Harmon's use of abstract imagery is more directly influenced by the works of Harry Smith (both as a filmmaker and archivist) and Nam June Paik. Much of the philosophical discourse concerning the alchemical/mystical influences in Harmon's occult filmworks (YHVH, Tree of Knowledge/Tree of Life, Elementals) mentions the works of 17th century English author Thomas Vaughan and the anonymous 13th century English mystical text "The Cloud of Unknowing".
Hosted by Secret Project Robot @ Monster Island 210 Kent Ave (entrance on river street) Brooklyn, NY 11211
Egyptian artist Basim Magdy will present some of his recent projects in video, installation, drawing and public space that intertwine his investigations of quasi-histories, failed scientific promises, unexplored future possibilities and the simple notion of belief with absurdity, irony and subtle humor. Magdy and independent curator Regine Basha will then discuss his current show "1968: Memorial to a Rising Continent" at Newman Popiashvili Gallery. Within this context, the discussion will focus on the running thread of mythology, symbolism, and potential for narrative through science which influences Magdy's ongoing interest in the obscure space between reality and fiction and the construction and dissemination of the knowledge that fills it. During the talk, copies of a poster project the artist realized this year for Kunsthaus Baselland in Switzerland and other printed material will be available for free.
The Guardian has produced a video performance of Caryl Churchill's play Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza with actress Jennie Stoller reading all of the parts. The performance is lovely and suggests an alternate conception of the play as a monologue. Below is the complete script of the play, which Churchill has offered for free to encourage its performance.
SEVEN JEWISH CHILDREN a play for Gaza
by Caryl Churchill
No children appear in the play. The speakers are adults, the parents and if you like other relations of the children. The lines can be shared out in any way you like among those characters. The characters are different in each small scene as the time and child are different.
1
Tell her it’s a game
Tell her it’s serious
But don't frighten her
Don’t tell her they’ll kill her
Tell her it’s important to be quiet
Tell her she’ll have cake if she’s good
Tell her to curl up as if she’s in bed
But not to sing.
Tell her not to come out
Tell her not to come out even if she hears shouting
Don’t frighten her
Tell her not to come out even if she hears nothing for a long time
Tell her we’ll come and find her
Tell her we’ll be here all the time.
Tell her something about the men
Tell her they’re bad in the game
Tell her it’s a story
Tell her they’ll go away
Tell her she can make them go away if she keeps still
By magic
But not to sing.
2
Tell her this is a photograph of her grandmother, her uncles and me
Tell her her uncles died
Don’t tell her they were killed
Tell her they were killed
Don’t frighten her.
Tell her her grandmother was clever
Don’t tell her what they did
Tell her she was brave
Tell her she taught me how to make cakes
Don’t tell her what they did
Tell her something
Tell her more when she’s older.
Tell her there were people who hated Jews
Don’t tell her
Tell her it’s over now
Tell her there are still people who hate Jews
Tell her there are people who love Jews
Don’t tell her to think Jews or not Jews
Tell her more when she’s older
Tell her how many when she’s older
Tell her it was before she was born and she’s not in danger
Don’t tell her there’s any question of danger.
Tell her we love her
Tell her dead or alive her family all love her
Tell her her grandmother would be proud of her.
3
Don’t tell her we’re going forever
Tell her she can write to her friends, tell her her friends can maybe come and visit
Tell her it’s sunny there
Tell her we’re going home
Tell her it’s the land God gave us
Don’t tell her religion
Tell her her great great great great lots of greats grandad lived there
Don’t tell her he was driven out
Tell her, of course tell her, tell her everyone was driven out and the country is waiting for us to come home
Don’t tell her she doesn’t belong here
Tell her of course she likes it here but she’ll like it there even more.
Tell her it’s an adventure
Tell her no one will tease her
Tell her she’ll have new friends
Tell her she can take her toys
Don’t tell her she can take all her toys
Tell her she’s a special girl
Tell her about Jerusalem.
4
Don’t tell her who they are
Tell her something
Tell her they’re Bedouin, they travel about
Tell her about camels in the desert and dates
Tell her they live in tents
Tell her this wasn’t their home
Don’t tell her home, not home, tell her they’re going away
Don’t tell her they don’t like her
Tell her to be careful.
Don’t tell her who used to live in this house
No but don’t tell her her great great grandfather used to live in this house
No but don’t tell her Arabs used to sleep in her bedroom.
Tell her not to be rude to them
Tell her not to be frightened
Don’t tell her she can’t play with the children
Don’t tell her she can have them in the house.
Tell her they have plenty of friends and family
Tell her for miles and miles all round they have lands of their own
Tell her again this is our promised land.
Don’t tell her they said it was a land without people
Don’t tell her I wouldn’t have come if I’d known.
Tell her maybe we can share.
Don’t tell her that.
5
Tell her we won
Tell her her brother’s a hero
Tell her how big their armies are
Tell her we turned them back
Tell her we’re fighters
Tell her we’ve got new land.
6
Don’t tell her
Don’t tell her the trouble about the swimming pool
Tell her it’s our water, we have the right
Tell her it’s not the water for their fields
Don’t tell her anything about water.
Don’t tell her about the bulldozer
Don’t tell her not to look at the bulldozer
Don’t tell her it was knocking the house down
Tell her it’s a building site
Don’t tell her anything about bulldozers.
Don’t tell her about the queues at the checkpoint
Tell her we’ll be there in no time
Don’t tell her anything she doesn’t ask
Don’t tell her the boy was shot
Don’t tell her anything.
Tell her we’re making new farms in the desert
Don’t tell her about the olive trees
Tell her we’re building new towns in the wilderness.
Don’t tell her they throw stones
Tell her they’re not much good against tanks
Don’t tell her that.
Don’t tell her they set off bombs in cafes
Tell her, tell her they set off bombs in cafes
Tell her to be careful
Don’t frighten her.
Tell her we need the wall to keep us safe
Tell her they want to drive us into the sea
Tell her they don’t
Tell her they want to drive us into the sea.
Tell her we kill far more of them
Don’t tell her that
Tell her that
Tell her we’re stronger
Tell her we’re entitled
Tell her they don’t understand anything except violence
Tell her we want peace
Tell her we’re going swimming.
7
Tell her she can’t watch the news
Tell her she can watch cartoons
Tell her she can stay up late and watch Friends.
Tell her they’re attacking with rockets
Don’t frighten her
Tell her only a few of us have been killed
Tell her the army has come to our defence
Don’t tell her her cousin refused to serve in the army.
Don’t tell her how many of them have been killed
Tell her the Hamas fighters have been killed
Tell her they’re terrorists
Tell her they’re filth
Don’t
Don’t tell her about the family of dead girls
Tell her you can’t believe what you see on television
Tell her we killed the babies by mistake
Don’t tell her anything about the army
Tell her, tell her about the army, tell her to be proud of the army. Tell her about the family of dead girls, tell her their names why not, tell her the whole world knows why shouldn’t she know? Tell her there’s dead babies, did she see babies? Tell her she’s got nothing to be ashamed of. Tell her they did it to themselves. Tell her they want their children killed to make people sorry for them, tell her I’m not sorry for them, tell her not to be sorry for them, tell her we’re the ones to be sorry for, tell her they cant talk suffering to us. Tell her we’re the iron fist now, tell her it’s the fog of war, tell her we wont stop killing them till we’re safe, tell her I laughed when I saw the dead policemen, tell her they’re animals living in rubble now, tell her I wouldn’t care if we wiped them out, the world would hate us is the only thing, tell her I don’t care if the world hates us, tell her we’re better haters, tell her we’re chosen people, tell her I look at one of their children covered in blood and what do I feel? Tell her all I feel is happy it’s not her.
I'm a performance and interdisciplinary artist and scholar. That means (among other things) I make experimental theater, performance, visual and installation art and I am interested in what performances do, aesthetically and politically.
My family moved to the United States from Lebanon at the beginning of the 20th century and the strange, hybrid identity Arab/American shapes the way I see the world. But don't be scared, I am one of the good ones.
See my work at www.josephshahadi.com
