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 | 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: art, baa baa black sheep, beacon, beirut, commuication, genou choueiri, jean-luc cornec, jim darling, junk, nursery rhymes, potatoes, recycling, street art, telephonic sheep, trash
Yeah, amazing. There’s something really satisfiying about painting or drawing onto convex surfaces like balloons (or for A levels, surgical gloves), or even just looking at the back of a spoon. Lebanese artist Ginou Chouei, who lives and works in beirut, does just this with her series of potato portraits. I wish I wasn’t reminded of those Mr Potato Head ‘pets’ that you would water and watch their herby hair grow. Of her potatoes she says:
I chose the potato to portray the human face due to it’s many striking parallels. Not only is their skin porous like ours but they also come in different colors, shapes and sizes. Potato heads grow, sprout, age, then decay… but they refuse to go without a trace.
Like humans, they come in various forms, from family friends above, to even the esteemed George Bush(el?). They are covered in eyes too – might be interesting to do a surveillance society version? I can’t quite tell how she’s done them either – painting would make sense, but it almost seems like some kind of photo transfer.
more: papas and trash dudes
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: anarchism, anti-civillization, art, deterritorialization, education, john zerzan, new school, occupation
Today’s territory is the product of many centuries of police operations. People have been pushed out of their fields, then their streets, then their neighborhoods, and finally from the hallways of their buildings, their universities, in the demented hope of containing all life between the four sweating walls of privacy. The territorial question isn’t the same for us as it is for the state. For us it’s not about possessing territory. Rather, it’s a matter of increasing the density of the communes, of circulation, and of solidarities to the point that the territory becomes unreadable, opaque to all authority. We don’t want to occupy the territory, we want to be the territory.
This response to a New School investigation makes me giggle a fair bit. A looming (albeit last) deadline and the need to pack my life up into approximately 5 cardboard boxes (one still lies unpacked from this time last year) does not make me giggle so much. As (de)territorialisation goes, I’m trying to work through the magicalities of war, as mediated through art. This is not going well, and the only way out seems to be some kind of mobilisation of Zerzanic all-art-as-artifice? And expanding the war-machine-as-semantic to include all semiotics/representation? I am reading a lot more anti-civ stuff than I perhaps like these days – almost to the point of wondering how far i could get sucked in with someone more ‘moderate’ ? (And a far better writer, please – unless he’s trying to take down language in his own awkward butchery?). John Zerzan also looks frighteningly like a dentist I once had (who was a racecar driver in his free time); this too is disconcerting.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: art, cotton candy, dallas/fort worth, dead time, esther watson, garbage, iceland, par and weace, texas, the future, ufos
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Esther Pearl Watson’s work is pretty and makes me happy, or rather, momentarily peaceful which is maybe the same thing. And makes me want to write in shorter, crayola friendly sentences. She could be a list of words for an aesthetic that’s a little out of reach, maybe because it’s in her remembered Texas past. Or maybe because it’s hovering in soft pink in the sky, like an extraterrestrial version of the chewing gum sculptures. I am not very good at short sentences. But reimagine your standard chalky woodcuts and bikes and whole worlds and roofs and probably gnarled trees with cactuslike flowers (bright and bloomy not prickly, that is), or maybe cannibalistic orchids and hearts and fists and revolutionary love and rage and etc. (There’s something a bit off about that though. Maybe it’s the overly exotic flowers or the absence of lined faced dignity (I think we are post and not humanity here though, because it still holds rusting industrial corsets?) |
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: advertising, art, brand recognition, chanel, consumerism, corporate imperialism, culture jamming, globalisation, graveyard, idol worship, intervention, just seeds, laura keeble, logos, macdeath, macdonalds, nike, public art, sculpture, street art, tombstones, traces, ZEVS
Another globalisation is possible? Probably not. This however is North Road Cemetary, in Southend, England, and it just might be where the phenomenon goes to die. Or rather three of its MNC markers – Macdonalds, Nike, and perhaps unusually, Chanel. The artist in question, Laura Keeble, based the project on “theory of magical thinking, looking at belief systems and idol worship”. She says that it plays with the viewers perception, hopefully creating a pause for thought. I can certainly think of people who indeed positively worship at the altar of the now iconic interlinked Cs, but Macdonalds? It’s nice that it can be read in so many ways though.
| When I see it I for example tend to immedately think of corporate imperialism and globalisation, as opposed to maybe aspirational-luxe goods. The markers are at the same time a jolting reminder of just how far brand recognition has permeated into our collective cultural consciousness. These symbols are obviously among the most recognisable, but you’d probably be surprised as to just how many others you recognise – take the corporate logo-d flag, for example. |  |
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: fashion, art, irena ionesco, eva ionesco, john berger, sensuous marxism, private property, oil paintings, diana bobar
I’m kind of blown away by these photos from French-Romanian photographer Irena Ionesco. That is to say, she was born in Paris, to Romanian immigrants, and spent her childhood in Constanta, Romania. Born in 1935, she’s most famous for her erotic nudes, as well as super ostentatious hyperdecadence in general. And, controversially, using her young daughter Eva in some of her (very eroticised) nudes – something that’s more than a little creepy even in today’s mass media fetishisation of childlike hairlessness. I’m reminded of John Berger’s book, ‘Ways of Seeing’, in which he partly discusses the differences between nakedness and nudity. I can’t find scans online, but this seems to be a fairly famous quote –
“Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display. The nude is condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress.”
