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[Jul. 4th, 2008|02:24 pm] |
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| christopher hitchens is waterboarded |
[Jul. 2nd, 2008|03:19 pm] |
at the risk of spreading around the bad cheer, i'm cross-posting a video i found on ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) atthesametime's journal of christopher hitchens being (voluntarily) waterboarded.
* the video is HERE.
* hitchens' article about the experience is HERE.
obviously, this is disturbing stuff, so consider yourself warned.
and to those of you unfamiliar with hitchens, i'd be hard-pressed to find someone with more peculiar political allegiances. the official story paints him as a "reformed" leftist turned neo-con, or a "liberal hawk," or simply a contrarian alcoholic. all these tags are at least partially true, but the full-picture is more complicated. hitchens was and remains an ardent supporter of the war in iraq, but is also sharply critical of the occupation of palestine. he speaks favorably of people like paul wolfowitz (deputy secretary of defense under rumsfeld), but also authored the trial of henry kissinger-- in which he argues that one of the key administrators of our last giant, publicly-debated foreign policy catastrophe (vietnam) should be tried internationally as a war criminal. recently, he's received a lot of press for being perhaps the most belligerent anti-theist in the public sphere-- having authored the not-so-subtly-titled god is not great: how religion poisons everything.
i'm including this long, weird bio because i think it absolves him of any clearly-define-able political opportunism going into this. sure, there's a sense of bravado to it-- and hitchens is almost certainly trying to generate publicity/controversy for himself (in fact, he's a total showboat in this department). but it's not a gesture that can be reduced to, say, a moveon.org prank or a ploy to get obama elected. in a way, the fact that he's alienated himself so deeply in the public sphere (the right AND left typically deplore him) makes him an interesting candidate for this horrible experiment.
but enough political yapping. for whatever reason, some potent evidence that waterboarding is DEEPLY fucked up has arrived on the internet. if you have the stomach to check it out, click the links above. |
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| done. |
[Jun. 16th, 2008|04:22 pm] |
Lights Out (2008, mixed media: pencil, gouache, india ink and paper collage on board), 18” by 24”
this came out a little wonkier than expected. not sure how i feel about it yet. i wanted to loosen things up a bit, so mission accomplished on that front, i guess? i think i need to scale up again. my ideas are starting to need more space to move around. detail to follow after the cut...
( Read more... ) |
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| do sumthin nice for the old man |
[Jun. 15th, 2008|04:30 pm] |
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| "landscapism" at the armoury gallery in milwaukee |
[Jun. 11th, 2008|05:41 pm] |
hi folks. sorry things have been so quiet on this here journal. part of the reason is that i've got a show coming up. it's in milwaukee-- a city i've never actually visited. do any of you guys live in or near milwaukee? if so, you should come. i'm actually gonna be out there for the opening, as part of a week-long trip to (mostly) chicago. hell, if chicago peeps want to come along, we might round up a little posse? i'm not entirely sure how to hype this thing, since it's in a city where i know literally no one. but the gallery is brand new, they're showing some really nice work, they've been super professional and accommodating with me, and they're excited enough about what i'm doing to showcase 10 of my paintings. some more details:
Landscapism @ The Armoury Gallery
June 20th - July 18th
Opening Reception Friday, June 20th 7-11pm
All artists will be in attendance
http://www.thearmourygallery.com/
The Armoury Gallery is pleased to announce Landscapism, the second exhibition for the new gallery, with an opening reception to be held Friday, June 20th, from 7-11 pm. Philadelphia artist Dan Schank, and Chicago artist Elizabeth Ann Lopez will exhibit new and old works, while recent MIAD graduates Mark Schieber and Erik Baden will collaborate on an installation for the show.
if anyone isn't totally tired of looking at them, most of my paintings can be viewed on my flickr page. as i said, ten of these will be on display, and nine are visible on flickr... it's essentially all of my work since about 2005, save broken eggs for breakfast (which was too heavy to ship) and december in the dust (which i sold, appropriately, last december).
the tenth painting is still unfinished! however, i took some in-progress shots of it today for a lecture i'll be doing later in the summer (i'm teaching a course on collage at a local university). i figured i'd post them here as well, since i often fear that the cut-and-paste aspect of what i do doesn't translate well into JPEG format...
( Read more... ) |
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[May. 11th, 2008|02:55 pm] |
...a round of applause for the ladies that introduced us to this little planet of ours... |
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| some spring-time music for the internets |
[Apr. 28th, 2008|02:48 am] |
hey folks. i made you all a cyber-mixtape.
i was gonna make one of those muxtape things, but i included too many songs. and i didn't feel like editing stuff out. so i'm uploading it as a RAR file. if you have trouble opening it, let me know. and if i screw up sharing this, please bring that to my attention as well. anyway, here's what's on it:
1. enquanto seu lobo nao vem- caetano veloso
2. smiling ladies- heron
3. darling be home soon- billie davis
4. on the beach- the paragons
5. march! for martin luther king- john fahey
6. errare humanum est- jorge ben
7. go and tell your father- the cannanes
8. patrice- simon finn
9. simply couldn't care- tracey thorn
10. children laughing- wendy and bonnie
11. por todos lados- las malas amistades
12. web weaver- hawkwind
13. fed-a-ray- lord beginner
14. mountain book- OOIOO
15. the bloodbells chime- current 93
(46.7 minutes: DOWNLOAD HERE)
i tried to keep things fairly sunny and season-specific. save maybe the current 93 song. if people are feelin' this i'll do it more often?
(the cover image comes from my favorite website of the moment, square america) |
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| happy election/earth day |
[Apr. 23rd, 2008|12:09 am] |
1. since my state held its primary today, i thought you guys might get a kick out of this awesome tv funhouse skit from SNL. it's from the beginning of the primary season, so all the original candidates (and a few who never actually ran) are parodied. laugh out loud funny-ness.
2. 
and for earth day, i thought i'd share this great new york times article about piet ouldof, a dutch garden designer who welcomes dying plant-life into his layouts. an excerpt:
For Mr. Oudolf, in fact, the real test of a well-composed garden is not how nicely it blooms but how beautifully it decomposes. “It’s not about life or death,” he said, admiring the dark, twisting lines of the fennel. “It’s about looking good.”
i've been thinking a lot lately about the various worst-case-scenarios of climate change. and i'm not sure ouldof's work does anything terribly substantial to alter them. but if we're entering an age of unprecedented ecological ruin, then i'm in favor of his shift in aesthetics. in ouldof's cyclical world, i can admire the universe's magnificent ability to reclaim human artistry. |
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| celebrity impersonators |
[Apr. 12th, 2008|02:20 am] |
sometimes i like it when things go undocumented.
i was thinking today about a cartooning class i took when i was twelve or thirteen. it was at a university downtown, where me and my friend chris would be dropped off each saturday morning. i was just old enough to comprehend the potential of a city-- the scale, the variety, the strangeness. and i got to see it through the lens of an art school. at 31, i can roll my eyes at many things about art school. but in 1989, i'd spent a decade being pelted with dodge-balls in a suburban catholic grade school... and art school looked downright utopian.
the cartooning class was a total misfit convention. and a sausage-fest, to boot. a sea of teardrop hairdos, greasy mullets and awkward hormones. everyone was trying to out-gore the next guy... blowing ink through rapidograph pens to make blood splatter.... over-rendering muscles, breasts and bulges at the expense of all else. it was lord of the flies by way of dungeons and dragons. only much more fun than either.
the teacher was a 40-ish dude named stu. stu came from a more doonesbury-esque school of comic-making, and greeted his cast of superhero-obsessed gore-hounds with great bewilderment. he expected students who wanted to be funny, and instead he found himself in front of people who actually took judge dredd seriously. stu overcame his initial disappointment by roasting us for the duration of each session. and he was funny as hell. being the youngest, smallest, and most-totally-uncontroversial suburbanite on board, i was dealt my share of his wrath. but it was a grand old time regardless.
when i try to picture stu, all i can clearly remember is that he both looked and acted like george carlin. there's a funny tension to the memory-- george carlin appears in my head, along with the sense that he doesn't belong there. too much time has passed to conjure the authentic stu. so i subconsciously replaced him with a dude from the SNL reruns i was watching around that time. my notion of celebrity is reversed-- george carlin becomes a stu impersonator, instead of the other way around.
a part of me enjoys this tension. the distance between event and memory becomes intimate, despite signaling the corrosive effect of time. if i discovered a photo of stu, my concept of him would alter substantially. something factual would emerge; something that doesn't defer to my imagination. by substituting the image of carlin, i created a new path toward the original event. documentation would break that path, and the work i put into it.
there are certain undocumented events in my life that live on through a hodge-podge of affect, consequence, romance and embellishment. my brain is an inexact instrument, assembling whatever evocations it can to keep these moments alive. i like photos albums and home videos as much as the next guy. but sometimes those foggy, half-assed brain chimeras really do the trick. |
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| new painting + plug for carl's show |
[Mar. 31st, 2008|08:08 pm] |
just finished this lil' guy...
Heads Up, 2008 (16" by 20": watercolor, gouache, conte crayon, cut paper collage on board)
( a detail, some more stuff... ) |
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| i can no longer resist posting about politics |
[Mar. 28th, 2008|06:29 pm] |
(this entire post is kind of a re-tread of a conversation in olamina's comment threads...) the optimistic narrative of the 2008 election, i suppose, has been about "moving past" race and gender. the official dialogue has been an awkward attempt at cultural invisibility, with the clinton and obama campaigns both trying to appear as un-controversial as possible. personally, i've felt deeply out of sync with all this superficial good cheer (don't look so shocked). in the awkward scramble to make what is, indeed, a historical election as un-threatening as possible, both clinton and obama have (almost dialectically) created a counter-narrative of american xenophobia itself.
sad to say, my own preference for obama began with a sour, pragmatic assessment-- barack is great at making his "blackness" seem unthreatening, and hillary is incapable of doing the same with her gender. that said-- after 8 years of george dubya-- i'd personally like nothing better than an angry, unapologetic black OR female president. if it were up to me, i'd elect angela davis. but as the current hateful baloney about reverend wright makes painfully clear, if either dem finds their way to the white house, it'll be a delicate game of eggshell-walking that gets them there.
i think the reverend wright scandal-- or something like it-- was inevitable, regardless of who gets the nomination. if hillary was ahead in delegates, we'd undoubtedly be learning who bubba's been screwing for the past eight years... and looking for subsequent signs of botox upon hillary's poor, overanalyzed face. on a brighter note, i think it's good that this story broke now-- prior to the nomination; prior to the republican smear machine kicking into full gear.
what i didn't expect from this careful climate was obama's "race speech." here it is, in full, for those of you who live under rocks:
cynical as i may be, i'm kinda with the majority on this one. it's an important speech-- undoubtedly the best thing in a presidential campaign during my lifetime. there's a few sour notes, but-- at its best-- it reminds me of james baldwin's the fire next time. in baldwin's assessment (as well as obama's), racism not only subjugates those of color, it also eats away at the heart of the racist. take 40 minutes and hear him out. it's honestly well worth it.
( more analysis... ) |
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[Mar. 23rd, 2008|11:21 am] |
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| ten good things (after considerable delay) |
[Mar. 8th, 2008|09:26 pm] |
it's been a fairly dismal few weeks, folks. haven't been able to muster the energy to put one of these together for a while. i'd like to get back into the habit though. hopefully the SHEER LENGTH of this will help compensate...
10. 
as my obsession with caribbean music grows, my interests are splintering off in two directions-- super upbeat, happy stuff (desmond dekker, prince buster, most calypso... albeit not lyrically) and moody, ethereal stuff. regarding the latter, i've become increasingly enamored with nyahbinghi music.
labeling "nyahbinghi" a genre isn't entirely accurate. more specifically, the term refers to a particular type of chant performed by rastafarians, with its roots in african history. at its most elemental, nyabinghi chants require three specialized drums and human voices. but in jamaica, the practice was later combined with reggae music, most notably (and initially) by count ossie and the mystic revelation of rastafari. it's ossie's music-- and that of those that followed him-- that interests me most.
the nyabinghi sound is often slower and more percussive than most typical reggae. like a lot of my favorite jamaican music, it's usually melodic-- but the melodies have a distinctly hypnotic quality. rastafarianism isn't a practice i can claim any personal investment in (which i'm sure comes as a big shock), but it's tough to listen to things of this sort without an awareness of a spiritual dimension. it's meditative and contemplative. and a lot of it is deceptively simple.
my favorite album in this style (thus far) is fittingly titled nyahbinghi, by ras michael and the sons of negus. the album takes the atmosphere of count ossie's early music and applies it to bare-bones pop/folk structures. the results are gorgeous. here's an mp3 of ras michael re-working a song you'll find familiar:
ras michael and the sons of negus, "rise jah jah children," mp3
and here's a clip of ras michael performing:
( nine more... ) |
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| personal quirks |
[Feb. 28th, 2008|11:40 am] |
(btw, a new ten good things is in the works... looming job applications just keep me from devoting any time to it...)
anyway, tagged by biblionerd_girl...
a) List seven habits/quirks/facts about yourself
b) Tag seven people to do the same
c) Do not tag the person who tagged you or say that you tag "whoever wants to do it."
(do this if you feel like doing it)
1. i'm not a tech-y type in any way. i'm miserable with tools, instruction manuals and most crafts. even with painting and drawing, my mentality is always "whatever gets the job done." there's a part of me that would be perfectly happy to just pick up a ballpoint pen and a pad of paper and be done with it. when people start talking about glazes and sable brushes and shit like that, my brain turns off. i kinda dislike this about myself sometimes.
2. as we speak, i've had fifteen separate roommates throughout my life, and i've gotten along with all of them. in fact, barring about 5 or 6, most of them have either been close friends or people who became close friends. the weird thing is that i'm not a good roommate! i'm a complete slob, i'm bad with paying bills on time, my cat is a pain in the ass and i'm often up until the wee hours of morning.
3. i've done something similar to this before.
4. sometimes i genuinely think i could live in the desert. not forever, but maybe for about 6 months or so. i used to love trekking out to joshua tree national park when i lived in san diego, and sometimes i'll suddenly get a MAJOR urge to be out that way again. i'm a lot more outdoorsy than people seem to think i am.
5. my father's side of my family has its roots in the coal-mining industry of upstate pennsylvania. some of my relatives were believed to have been members of the molly maguires, a secret society of radical irish miners responsible for numerous acts of insurrection in the late 19th century. one of my uncles actually found a series of secret documents when he decided to drywall his basement about ten years back. some of my relatives even claim we are directly related to "black" jack kehoe, the group leader portrayed by sean connery in the film about them. my dad thinks that's bullshit though.
6. i think the way my brain works and the way the internet works are kinda similar. i learn through names, links, analogies and allegiances. if i'm interested in something, and people give me a list of things to look up inspired by it, it usually makes me happy. i have trouble considering things in isolation, and separating my own internal commentary from what i absorb. i'm often overwhelmed by the amount of things out there to learn about, and sometimes it's kinda crippling, creatively.
7. i feel a lot more comfortable socially right now than i have in years. but i still don't get out much. |
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| youtube is my valentine |
[Feb. 14th, 2008|08:16 pm] |
hi, i'm still here. everyone should take a look at hannah's awesome bollywood-themed youtube meme, in which i was "tagged." i'm not ordering anyone to do this, but "5 youtube music videos" seems to be the theme, if you wanna give it a shot. i figured i'd do mine for valentine's day (with no particular sweetheart in mind, dearest peanut-gallery)...
1. first up is a supremes song that i've recently decided is one of the great pop songs ever. the trick is to erase all associations with phil collins, and experience it anew. it also offers advice that i should personally consider, since i have a tendency to play the "fool who rushes in" in these circumstances. most of my choices are little bits of pop-philosophy, i guess. i like the idea of love-song-as-folk-wisdom. (unrelated: there's something a little scary about diana ross)...
2. i must confess that i've been won-over by the youtube celebrity phenomenon of fancy nancy. nancy is a hybrid of pee wee herman, homestarrunner.com and a less-emo miranda july. i like that she puts an aggressively "girly" spin on that weird adult swim-style non-sequitor humor that always irritates me-- and is a total BRO-FEST, 95% of the time. after 2 or 3 videos, nancy started getting my nerves, but by the 5th or 6th, she started getting my nerves so much that it became endearing again? maybe i just like hipster girls in giant red glasses?
3. here's a gal costa clip from her heyday. the stage set kinda reminds me of henri rousseau a bit. i <3 youtube...
4. i forgot that unrest had real-deal videos back in the day. it makes sense though... the first and only time i saw them was on the lollapalooza "second stage", hahaha... anyway, mark robinson apparently directed this video. but instead of him singing it, there's some dude who looks like a cross between scarlet johannsson and spicoli from fast times at ridgemont high. are there still cute, simple indie bands out there that don't fuck up their charms by being overbearingly "twee" about them? the older i get, the more i enjoy revisiting this no-frills breed of indie-pop from the early nineties. i downloaded a tsunami record the other night!
5. finally, here's a clip from neil young's super-underrated mtv unplugged appearance... this revisionist take on "like a hurricane" is my favorite recording of the song. i like the way form and content overlap. there's something really fragile about neil's love-ballad voice, and it collides nicely with the natural disaster imagery. the haunted house organ is creepy enough to prevent things from becoming "precious" as well. finally, i like the contrast between this sweet performance and neil's SUPER scruffy attire. he looks like a homeless man at a casting call for a dolph lundgren movie. but his voice is pure sugar.
and love is "like a hurricane," isn't it? c'mon, you know it's true... <3 <3 <3, internets...
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| another new painting |
[Jan. 8th, 2008|09:42 pm] |
ok, i've been working on this one since-- YIKES!-- april of last year. not steadily, i suppose. it went through a lot of transitions. in fact, the two "studies" at the bottom of this post have literally been cut/pasted into its composition. if you compare the studies to the final image, you might get a clearer idea of my weird process than you would from JPEGS (i.e. how everything is painted on paper, cut with an exacto blade, and then re-assembled, one piece on top of another, in the final image). anyway, without further adieu...
Broken Eggs For Breakfast, 2007 (mixed media: pencil, gouache and paper collage on board) 36" by 36"
( some details to follow... ) |
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| happy new year folks! (check me out bloggin like three days in a row) |
[Dec. 31st, 2007|07:01 pm] |
(picture stolen from the amazing square america website.)
well, as resolutions go, i DID manage to knock it off with all the dumb smoking i was doing this time last year. and i guess i made art in waves of inspiration and complacency. hopefully '08 will yield more of the former. i don't work retail anymore, but i do still need a steady job-- so that's a mix of good and bad, i guess.
this year my resolutions are pretty simple: read more, write more, make more art, get an adult job that i can either throw myself into or ignore entirely at the end of each shift, be friendlier, be more unapologetic about being myself (which is working out for me more and more, i must say), start conversations at random and generally get out of the house more often.
it's 7pm and i'm still hungover from last night, but i'm excited about going out anyway.
i hope everybody's peachy! |
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| new painting; general debauchery |
[Dec. 29th, 2007|09:31 pm] |
as a little challenge to myself, i decided to whip up an entire painting in two sessions. just a little guy. it was a worthwhile little experiment, i guess. it's certainly not the nicest thing i've ever made, but whatever...
december in the dust, 2007 (16" by 20": india ink, gouache, cut paper collage on board)
and a detail, as usual...
in other news, the holiday season has been surprisingly fun. i've seen a variety of good people-- some of which haven't been around in weeks... months... years... and in one case, many years. i'm fortunate enough to have maintained friendships throughout my life-- ranging back to elementary school, even. sometimes i'm not great at keeping up with all of them, but over the past few weeks my crew's been formin' like voltron...
ALSO: about two weeks back, my extended family went off on our second annual holiday trip to the poconos. the level of squalor that occurs during these trips is really quite impressive. my dad's side of the family is in a nice grey area right now-- we're all adults (my sister katie is the youngest at 23), but none of us have children yet. so we scream and holler and carry on without worrying about impressionable young minds, bedtimes, standards of decency, etc. and for a bunch of old-heads, this crew drinks like they're celebrating their 21st birthday with keith richards. take a look at the following picture, & keep in mind that those are my RELATIVES falling all around me... the pic was taken just after an ill-fated attempt at a "human pyramid"...
god bless us, everyone! |
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| spacing out with kiyoshi kurosawa |
[Dec. 28th, 2007|01:59 am] |
i've just finished kiyoshi kurosawa's new film, retribution, and i wanted to jot down a few thoughts about it. i've written about k. kurosawa before-- highlighting his peculiar take on identity, and his rather contemplative approach to nihilism and entropy. the same conclusions apply to retribution-- which is in many ways a re-tread of themes explored in 1997's cure-- but i think i can further specify what i find so effective.
retribution begins with kurosawa-favorite koji yakusho on the trail of a serial killer, and encountering a supernatural young woman in the wake of each crime. her presence triggers a certain amnesia within him, causing him to think he may be personally guilty of the crimes he's investigating. however, the facts don't align to his theory. the more guilty he feels, the better he becomes at finding the real murderers. his desire for personal incrimination is (ironically) thwarted by professional ingenuity.
kurosawa's films cultivate a desire for time and its mechanisms (history, memory, evidence, context). the detective fits perfectly into his sensibility. in many ways, he's a built-in spectator. as yakusho's investigation becomes more and more futile, his thirst for meaning mirrors my own. like myself, i find that yakusho is never really threatened in a horror-movie sense. he evades the dichotomy of death and survival, and my desire for either goes unfulfilled. i feel no lust for gore, vengeance or "justice"-- i'm more interested in a past or a future.
but retribution rejects my notion of time entirely, and offers space in its place. kurosawa creates an immense "non-environment"-- a terrarium of office cubicles, industrial ruins and garbage heaps. a labyrinth of flickering banalities that hints quietly, but explains nothing. a static space where solutions erode instead of bodies. yakusho is land-locked to an ever-expanding landscape of the present, and i'm shackled beside him to the bitter end.
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