Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: costume, halloween, headspace, tampons, toxic shock syndrome, tss
I think it’s about time for one of those every few years whoooshy music/aesthetic changes. That are unplanned but come as a relief when they do happen. Everything is a little uneasy right now. This first image is form Halloween 1973. Today was pretty much uneventful; last night was (began) excellent. I dressed as TSS – Toxic Shock Syndrome this year. Red tights, bloodied skin, a string from the centre of my head and a billowy dress with a strange organic/carnivorous anemonic pattern that faintly resembles a gangrenous tampon. Possibly my favourite costume ever?
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Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: art, blood, costumes, feminism, halloween, judy clark, menstruation, pads, radical, sanitary products, social war, tampax, tampons, toxic shock syndrome, tss, womb, women's health
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Or perhaps molotov? It turns out there’s not so much menstral art out there in the world. This is surprising? A womb is a weapon and should perhaps be used accordingly (…and in a less essentialising manner). Why menstrual art? I’m going to be TSS – the vaguely apocalyptic Toxic Shock Syndrome (how real is it??) this year. This will be super exciting – having decided this at some early hour on Nov 1st 08 it’s now middle October again! Not supersure how, but luckily the internet has dressed up as Tampax before. The above image is from a 1973 exhibition, “Issues”, by the mysterious Judy Clark, who seems to today run some kind of art agency in Cornwall. I wish I knew more about her? These pieces are kind of intriguing, especially “Grooming” below. |
| “Menstruation“ |
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: art, chad states, gender, identity, maleness, masculinity, men at their most masculine, photography
Greg: “I feel most masculine when I am lying in bed naked.”
Men at their most masculine? There’s so much that could be said here, but artist Chad States, and then the men’s own narratives work so so well. Some of the answers are incredibly revealing (psycho-somatically and some perhaps unsafe for work). Admittedly they’re all constructions of ‘normative’ masculinity – I think that kind of makes them all the more interesting. I am unsure if the rooms were doctored by either the photographer or the subject, but what they choose to surround themselves with is fascinating too. In an interview, the artist does note that “The subjects have made specific decisions about the way they are posing. I am never catching them off-guard or unaware”, and that his only request is that they look directly at the camera”.
“I want to show that, despite stereotypes, gay men can be masculine too”
Filed under: Uncategorized
August was good/ august was overwhelming and now it’s over. In between, Left Forum, DC, Harper’s Ferry and being stranded in Virginia (replete with Confederate flags? what). Living on Tiemann and now, a lovely apartment inculcating super-domestica (and battling spidereggs, mould). I got a flute gig to fund further degeneration and/but my 3oud skills are declining along with the arabic. This year will be really good, I reckon.
{The image ps is from a Dutch film “De Stilte Rond Christine M” or ‘A Question of Silence’ – watch it, it’s heartwarmingly castration-friendly]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: aesthetics, augmented reality, book covers, calligraphy, CIA, documents from the U.S. espionage den, espionage, ettela'at, farsi, graphic design, intelligence, iPhone, iran, iranian, kashmiri, nineteen eighty bore, persian, political, posters, revolution, script, surveillance society, technocracy, typography
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I came across these killer Iranian graphics from Belog today – mostly posters and book covers, and all pretty sick. I don’t speak farsi so I can’t be sure but the one on the left seems to say something like “(her?) song incites/stirs”? Speaking of the script, I taught myself to read it when in Mumbai/Srinagar earlier this summer – it’s pretty close to Arabic, except with a few more letters and joined differently. Which works fine reading Urdu, but Kashmiri not so much – though I do have a fair amount of years before I’d need fluency for PhD research. |
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: armani, art, chanel, coffee and cigarettes, dash snow, death, dies, graffiti, heroin, hong kong, irak, mafia, mario sorrenti, muse, nyc, overdose, sacer, stephen marche, street art, ZEVS
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So Dash Snow aka Saker Irak died of an overdose recently, RIP. Some say he’s already being Basquiatised, and probably not a minute too soon. Stephen Marche fittingly points out in a fairly caustic article, “Basquiat’s hedonism fuelled his creativity, but for Snow hedonism was the creativity.” He’s already not one, but two four letter words and surely an adjective (or more fittingly, adverb) can’t be far off? Photos aside I couldn’t dig much of his art but as a person(a) he’s fascinating – for me maybe the ultimate embodiment of the downtown art scene today. |
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Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: adbusters, advertising, art, censorship, consumerism, future gutter status, hijab, hijabism, hijabizing, korinna irwin, no logo, orientalism, post-consumerism?, princess hijab, rock star with words, street art, veil, visual terrorism, zines
Who is Princess Hijab? She’s my age, yet anonymous; an “unseen character” And
since 2006, the Princess, who has begun a movement (Hijabism) based on the subverting of advertisements (Hijabizing) veils faces on billboards using a black marker pen.The black hijab encompasses every existing form of distinction. PH also operates on the Internet by creating animated gifs. She initiated the hijab_ad collective.
There’s some debate over whether she is a hijabi or even a Muslim. Or even a woman (take that as loosely as you will). I kind of like that it’s ambiguous
and that you don’t necessarily need to subscribe to certain identities to dislike the oversexualisation of women’s bodies, and especially the creepily prepubescent
(hello, Tom Ford! though I do think those ads are kind of unintentionally brilliant in their hyper-plasticity, kind of like lucy and bart). Princess Hijab, anyway, sees her work as a kind of culturally specific Adbusters-ish response – except for the part where you consume to cut down comsumption. She tells Menasset that
“I created PH to be connected. I wanted to mix elements from different extractions and cultures, starting from my initial subject: the veiled woman. I believe it’s the reason why PH had such an impact. She never let herself be defined by religion nor gender. It was really crucial for me,: she said”.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: animation, anti-feminista, art, blu, BR1, exoticisation, fetishisation, hijab, italy, muslim, muto, orientalism, patriarchy, stopmotion, street art, the other, turin, veil, wall, women
I can’t decide if these pieces – by BR1 in Turin, Italy – are really rad, or just another rehashing of orientalist tripe in street art form? The artist deals with
“the representation of Muslim women and their social condition… I would like to make people know that there is nothing strange with this particular subject: Muslim women are equal if compared to Western women. My Muslim women are represented in daily life situations: they are mothers, grandmothers and daughters, smoking, taking pictures and smiling. My message is: pointing out that Muslim women have the same needs and necessities of the majority of Western women. Certainly, the only exception is the veil. The veil changes in different countries, and here comes the sociological aspect of my work: I am very careful in rendering the different types of veil, the Maghrebi veil, the Afghani burga and the Iranian chador.
Great to see Muslim women are equally capable of living up to the patriarchal ideals of womanhood, then. Replete with the same universal needs and necessities – childcare, raising families, taking pictures and smiling? Nevermind seeing any Muslim men (not exotic or fetishisable enough? too dangerous?), it would have been nice to see hijabis in other situations outside the traditionally feminised. Like perhaps working, or, I don’t know, holding AK-47s? Then again, his Western women probably wouldn’t be able to do these either. It’s interesting that he notes that “the veil changes in different countries”, and looks to carefully depict several variants. And also that the veil remains a constant – would an unveilled woman not be Muslim/Otherable enough I wonder?
neo-orientalism as a social tool! and princess hijab
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: access, ali shah, bourgeois public sphere, carpet weaving, carpets, classism, danah boyd, india, intellectual property, internet, kashmir, labour, property is theft, proudhon, public art, social media, srinagar, street art
To be honest, I really just wanted to recycle Critical Culture’s amazing take on Proudhon, in which ze ” wanted the back of my iPod to read, “intellectual property is theft” (Proudhorn [sic], motherfucker!), but Apple denied my request”. That got me thinking again about intellectual property though – like the fact I thought about just snatching that rather delectable phrase, but wouldn’t have felt right doing so, and so linked to the blog. Does the same thing apply then, with the internet as with academia? You’d think that on the internet, intentions are rather more mercenery, with the whole maximising traffic/linkbacks/ad revenue bit. But then doesn’t the same happen in academia with citations, and a scholar even being judged by how often and widely their works are cited? I suspect it all plays back on itself in social media (I’m thinking of LinkedIn, but there’s probably scores more that are more industry specific)?
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Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: asrar mushtaq, conflict, gaza strip, india, kashmir, maisuma, palestine, shopian, srinagar, srinagar burns
Kashmir’s considered the most militarised zone on the planet, with a general ratio of 6/7 soldiers to every civillian. Brutality, atrocities and clashes ensue, with the standard being stone throwing, fires and gun battles, yet unlike its counterpart intifadas in Palestine, this insurgency has been going strong without pause for over 20 years. There’s actually a lot of parallels between Kashmir and Palestine, with the military occupations (in this case, India, Pakistan and China), checkpoints and independence movements being only the beginning. Replete with the same “liberate..into a state? what.” dilemmas, further exacerbated with my being half Kashmiri and fairly confused to boot. The picture above (from Reuters) is from Maisuma, an area in the inner city also dubbed “Gaza Mitty” by locals – ie, ‘the Gaza Strip’. Here’s a couple of poses and surreptitious shots from the boys in brown-camo from slightly more peaceful days (minus checkpoint shots which proved near impossible).
