Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 1980s, 80s, alaa edris, alia al shamsi, alia lootah, archive80, art, ‹‹ فن فن فن فن ››, bastakiya, consumerism, dar ibn haytham, dihn 3oud, dubai, eighties, esra özyürek, exhibition, friday, khaleeji art, khawla al marri, leila al marashi, nostalgia, perfume, rebecca black, sail magazine, schadenfraade, shani, sugar vintage, thamaneenat, uae, zero boys
 “Dihn 3oud no. 5″ by Leila Al Marashi |
 Back in Dubai, then. Back in my childhood bedroom, after a somewhat unceremonious ejection from Brooklyn. Back among the scorching heat and bougainvillea and saffron tea and—what a blessed luxury—24/7 AC. Back to being surrounded by canvasses filled with teenage angst that seem doubly more baleful when turned to face the wall. Unlike 7-8 years ago, I’m no longer surrounded by construction sites, with scrap materials free for the scrounging. Wouldn’t mind being back in the cradle of A-Level art—all free time and freer materials—either, for that matter. |
One personal emergency upon arrival later, the dust is finally beginning to settle. Around the world, the present still looks pretty dire. Japan, Syria, and karmic punchlines from the Arab Spring; not to mention the the jobless recovery that sees McDonalds turn away nearly a million applicants for (mostly) part-time minimum wage jobs. And to adopt the Coming Insurrection‘s painfully cogent phrase, “Le futur n’a pas d’avenir”. What a month—a spot of nostalgic indulgence feels about right.
So let’s go back even further, then. I can never really settle on a decade to fetishise above all, but the 1980s comes pretty close. The ‘al thamaneenat’ in the title, for the Zero Boys fans among you, does translate as ‘the eighties’. It’s also the title of a pretty great project celebrating growing up in 1980s UAE. (more…)
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: art, berlin, christian marclay, clocks, corrine vionnet, dubai, headspace, lcd soundsystem, new york, paula cooper gallery, photo opportunities, photography, tourism, traces
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Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: art, ☭☭☭, ⚑, channel 33, dubai, egypt, egyptian revolution, February 11th, january 25, political graphics, posters, solidarity
 - Caesar Diablo |
 - Nick Bygon |
| So this site tells me that Mubarak’s finally gone. A nice day in history: Feb 11th saw the beginning of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and Nelson Mandela’s 1990 release from prison. Shades of Dubai’s now defunct Channel 33, which used to have a daily 15 minute “Today, in history!” programme. I remember watching it at 19:00 every night for about a year, right before my mother sat down to The Bold and the Beautiful. The one with the stripes and bolt of pink satin in the sax-y opening credits. |  |
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: art, biking, cars, denver, dirt, dirty cars, dust, led, safety, scott wade, semiotics, signals, texas, traffic
Cars: Dirty, polluting, dangerous, unnecessary etc. Biking in the city can be faintly traumatic, with a near miss on the traffic heavy portion of Jay Street by the bridge today. Texan Scott Wade, can’t resist drawing on said dirty cars, except with images a little more complex than your usual smiley faces. The ‘dirt’, locally known as caliche, is a mix of limestone dust, gravel and clay.
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Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: art, books, dollar bills, future gutter status, hypertextuality, language, money, paper sculpture, stephen doyle, visapocalypse
Words and money and money for words. I’m rather impressed by The New Inquiry, where my roomate’s an editor. I’d love to do something similar, though more visual-critical and grounded in the screen/image—along the lines of this blog (if anyone’s interested?). And/or actually under my name, now that I’m looking to cover at least a third of living through freelancing? (Or: hire/publish me! Please!).
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Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: alberto seveso, art, drc, headspace, ink, prospect heights, summer
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One day they will be written?. Several months post thesis, I think I’m coming round to capital letters again. Verso means battling British spellings and learning how to use a supercomma aged 22. Other things happened: I graduated, moved to Prospect Heights, acquired a bike, a clearance gold tapestry curtain and many scented candles. It’s been so long since I last updated this, and already my internal monologue and headspace has changed. Slower, more vivid, a little more languorous – not unlike Philip Larkin, where “Here, silence stands like heat“. (more…)
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: (cha)osmosis, anarchism, anthro, art, ⚑, blackening theory, blendie, brian dettmer, castration anxiety, future gutter status, kelly dobson, language, machine therapy, magic, parapraxis, phase vicoder, synaesthesia, technomagical anarchism, thesis, voice activation
| this is incredibly sick. a 1950s blender modded to recognise a human speaking its language? whirrrr. imagine if this was around in the 1950s? shit would get so feral. or, an orchestra of these with black metal’s finest to multiply the castation anxiety please (this looks way more appealing than it should?) it’s by kelly dobson, who “From the age of four was doing odd jobs such as smashing windows and hauling machine parts from one area of the yard to another. She had machine friends… She is developing a method of personal, societal, and psychoanalytical engagement termed Machine Therapy. (which) is tangentially about the parapraxis of machine design — what machines do and mean for people other than what we consciously designed them to do and be used for“. |
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Blendie the voice-activated blender!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: art, feminism, halloween, costumes, tss, womb, blood, menstruation, radical, women's health, toxic shock syndrome, tampons, tampax, pads, sanitary products, judy clark, social war
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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 | 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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a bag of blow, and some love to go
