Sunday, September 25, 2011

More on Lorna Williams at DODGEgallery

A quick addendum to today's posting about Lorna Williams at DODGEgallery in NYC:

The gallery kindly supplied these two images of Williams pieces in the current show.

Please note that these images and the long view of the gallery in this morning's post are photographs by Carly Gaebe, courtesy of the artist and DODGEgallery.



Lorna Williams Weaves Space; Dafnis Prieto Flicks Time

[Last week's post on feminist approaches to fairy tale and myth has been formally posted to the Toronto SpecFic Colloquium blog, with all the promised album cover images: click here to see them.]


Lorna Williams is an astonishing young talent, whose current exhibition Brown Baby is on display through October 2nd at Dodge Gallery (on Rivington Street in NYC's Lower East Side). The lobster & canary visited the exhibit last week, straying into Williams's world of plaited beings, assemblages of found wood and fetal bone, pendulous chains and bits of bead, of forms both comforting and disturbing (sometimes at the same time). Williams has an eye for the sinuous shape. Most interesting to us was the recurring theme of birth and becoming...but birth at best endured (seemingly not celebrated), and what becoming unto what?

Here are some views. Click the Dodge Gallery site for more.




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The lobster & canary were thrilled to learn that last week the MacArthur Foundation named the jazz drummer Dafnis Prieto as one of their "genius grant" award winners. We caught Prieto with his group a few years ago at the Jazz Standard in NYC and still marvel at his fluid dissection of time. Here he is-- possibly at the very concert we attended (we did not take this video, but it is from one of his Jazz Standard gigs)-- playing "New Elephant." Pay special attention to the rhythm change-up at c. 3 minutes, 10 seconds.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

A Dragon of Their Own: Fairy Tale & Myth From a Feminist Perspective (With Guest Appearances by Janelle Monae, P.J. Harvey, Rachelle Ferrell, Cecile Corbel, Kate Bush, Loreena McKennitt, and Rihanna)

Happy fall to you all, from the lobster & canary in NYC.

We are presenting at the Toronto SpecFic Colloquium next month. Here is the teaser the Colloquium organizers asked us to send to the event's blog:


A Dragon of Their Own: Fairy Tale & Myth From a Feminist Perspective
(With Guest Appearances by Janelle Monae, P.J. Harvey, Rachelle Ferrell, Cecile Corbel, Kate Bush, Loreena McKennitt, and Rihanna)


By Daniel A. Rabuzzi
drabuzzi@earthlink.net
http://lobsterandcanary.blogspot.com/

Preview of a larger discussion to be held at the Toronto SpecFic Colloquium, October 15th, 2011.




“Benedick: Well, you are a rare parrot-teacher.

Beatrice: A bird of my tongue is better
than a beast of yours.”

--- Much Ado About Nothing, (Act I, scene 1: lines 138-140), William Shakespeare, c. 1600.



Fairy tales, myth, legend and other traditional story genres have long provided women (almost universally it seems, though that hypothesis needs to be tested) with subtle and subversive vehicles for self-expression.

If men controlled and commanded the power of words in the front room—consider, for instance, the etymology of “parliament”—women crafted a contrapuntal commentary in the back room. The counterpoint continues to this day in modern speculative fiction, not least in the many explicitly feminist retellings of traditional tales of the marvelous. The power and appeal of the old stories as ways for women to contest male speech or to reshape discourse altogether seem undiminished (if anything, they may be growing). Most intriguing, woman-centered fairy tale themes and motifs thrive today not only in written form but influence, often strongly, popular music and the visual arts.

Since the 1960s, feminist and/or post-modernist scholars have studied vigorously and with great insight both the original fairy tales and myths of the world and literary adaptations of the same. See work by, for instance, Ruth Bottigheimer, Maria Tatar, Steven Swann Jones, Marina Warner, Cristina Bacchilegia, Kay Stone, Vanessa Joosen, Valerie Paradiz, Jack Zipes, Daryl Cumber Dance, Donald Haase, Helen Pilinovsky, Elizabeth Wanning Harries, Lewis Seifert, Marcelle Maistre Welch. (I will include a bibliography in my full-length SpecFic Colloquium paper). Their findings have become a core part of feminist theories of reading, poetics and literature generally, and have –somewhat more tentatively—been connected to the work of scholars exploring issues of race, ethnicity, colonialism and class. Among many others, see work by Sandra Gilbert & Susan Gubar, Elaine Showalter, Patricia Meyer Spacks, Oyeronke Oyewumi, Valerie Lee, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Susan Sellers, Toi Derricotte, Sheila Rowbotham, Cheryl Wall, Margaret Ezell, Beverly Guy-Sheftall.

Over the past few decades, writers of many stripes have continued to revise and re-fashion fairy tales (and/or folkloric elements more generally) to make feminist points, in a project that goes back at least to Marie-Jeanne Lheritier de Villandon’s “Les Enchantements de l’eloquence” and Madame d’Aulnoy’s Histoire d’Hypolite in the 1690s. To name a handful from a long list:

Nalo Hopkinson, Sonya Taaffe, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, A.S. Byatt, Jane Yolen, Midori Snyder, Ursula K. Le Guin, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Tanith Lee, Angela Carter, Terri Windling, Kate Bernheimer, Theodora Goss, Joan Aiken, Virginia Hamilton, Robin McKinley, Ellen Kushner, Cat Valente, Margaret Atwood, Emma Donoghue, Erzebet YellowBoy, Nnedi Okorafor, Patricia McKillip, Malinda Lo, Theodora Goss, Bharati Mukherjee, Jeanette Winterson, Delia Sherman, Helen Oyeyemi, Gail Carson Levine, and Margo Lanagan.

Even when folklore or fairy tale do not frame or focus a modern work of fiction, themes from folkloric traditions crop up in “mainstream” works more frequently than is sometimes acknowledged. Toni Morrison’s work comes to mind, and that of Dacia Maraini, to name just two. Modern poetry is also full of fairy tale references, even that published far from the usual fantasy genre outposts.

“Imaginary gardens with real toads in them” fascinate so much that a growing number of journals and sites devote themselves to the sub-genres: The Endicott Studio for Mythic Arts (founded 1987), SurLaLune Fairy Tales (1998), Cabinet des Fees (2005), Fairy Tale Review (2005), Goblin Fruit (2006), Enchanted Conversation (2010). And then there are the anthologies, above all the Windling & Ellen Datlow series begun in 1993 with Snow White, Blood Red.

At the SpecFic Colloquium we will talk about the resurgent interest in fairy tale and myth, specfically the desire to write and read them “against the grain.” I particularly want to learn more about traditions other than the various European ones and about current literary practice that is not Eurocentric.

Most of all: I want to explore how the renewed excitement for fairy tales-- and especially the subversive elements of fairy tales (pace fans of Disney)—has spread into other popular media, in particular music. Just as women have (re)shaped the fairy tale canon on the page over the past several centuries, they appear to be doing the same in the musical realm.

Male composers have freely used motifs from fairy tales and myths to create some of the dominant pieces in the Western canon. Think of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Haydn’s The Fishwives and The World on the Moon, Mahler’s Wunderhorn sequence, Maeterlinck’s The Blue Bird and Princess Maleine, Stravinsky’s The Firebird, and—towering over them all in its attempt to produce a Gesamtkunstwerk, a myth updated to encompass and overwhelm all other works—Wagner’s Ring.

In the past few decades, female musicians have been (re)claiming those themes, reworking them into works of their own, often in opposition to the dominant male canon, sometimes (most subversive of all!) indifferent to the male perspective—creating music that is not defined or definable in terms of male categories.

Working in and around a wide variety of musical forms, and with a wide sweep of perspectives, the following artists nevertheless appear to share an underlying approach in terms of deploying fairy tale and mythic motifs in their music: Angelique Kidjo, Bjork, Missy Elliott, Grace Jones, Enya, Tori Amos, Annie Lennox, Sarah McLachlan, Rihanna, Kimberly Perry, Mediaeval Baebes, Alison Krauss, The Dixie Chicks, Anoushka Shankar, Goldfrapp. Yes, an idiosyncratic list...very far from complete...and begging to be queried and to be added to!

Surely one major impulse came from the British Neo-Folk movement of the ‘60s and ‘70s, led by Sandy Denny of Fairport Convention, Annie Haslam of Renaissance, and Maddy Prior of Steeleye Span. Stevie Nicks further propelled Faerie onto the concert stage and into popular music (and I think Diana Ross, Chaka Khan and Patti LaBelle did the same, each in her own inimitable style). Sometimes the fairy tale overlay is explicit, self-referential even, as with many of those working the (all too often twee) Celtic Twilight angle. Othertimes it is less self-conscious, and more oblique.

I will end this teaser with album cover images [Lobster says: For some reason, I am having trouble porting these into the L & C blog, so will point to the SpecFic blog when this essay is posted] to bolster my suggestion about the inroads of fairy tale into modern pop music—and to spark the conversation when we meet in Toronto in October.

See you there and then!

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Fall Arts Preview in NYC: Neely, Ventura, Holmes, and More

The fall arts season has begun here in New York City: the usual horn of plenty spilling out its wonders, far more offerings than any one of us could see!

Some shows the lobster & canary have their eyes on:


--- Anne Neely, Aglow (2011)

The Neely show at Lohin Geduld in Chelsea. Judging from the gallery website, this is a series of luminous landscapes, drawing one into enchantment. (See our November 25, 2010 entry for our last review of a Lohin Geduld exhibition, the Laura Battle show).



--- Tom Holmes, untitled Program (feathers red yellow green blk) (2011)

The Holmes show at Bureau on Henry Street (Lower East Side), entitled Painted Bones-Some Reliquaries. The title alone draws us.



--- Jackie Saccoccio, Left Portrait (2011)

Saccoccio, with Andrew Gbur and Keltie Ferris, at Eleven Rivington (LES).



--- Paolo Ventura, Behind the Walls #3 (2011)

The amazing Ventura, once again at Hasted Kraeutler in Chelsea (we reviewed his last show there, Winter Stories, in January 2010). This one is called The Automaton of Venice, and we are already immersed in his miniature fantasy world...which brings to mind Benjamin's Passagenwerke, the labyrinths of Borges, the languid melancholia of Zweig, the wanderings of Sebald.



--- Sarah Walker, Masses and Forces (2010)

Walker, with fellow abstract painters Douglas Melini and Gary Petersen, at McKenzie Fine Art in Chelsea (whose shows we have described on several occasions). Explorations of geometry compressed, tangled and skewed.

Just a few leaves in a forest! Plus, of course, all the coming attractions at the museums, e.g., the Ingres show at the Morgan, the Goddess/Mother in Indian painting at the Metropolitan, the Spirals show at the Studio Museum in Harlem (the Norman Lewis paintings look particularly intriguing), and others.

Fall Arts Preview in NYC: Neely, Ventura, Holmes, and More

The fall arts season has begun here in New York City: the usual horn of plenty spilling out its wonders, far more offerings than any one of us could see!

Some shows the lobster & canary have their eyes on:


--- Anne Neely, Aglow (2011)

The Neely show at Lohin Geduld in Chelsea. Judging from the gallery website, this is a series of luminous landscapes, drawing one into enchantment. (See our November 25, 2010 entry for our last review of a Lohin Geduld exhibition, the Laura Battle show).



--- Tom Holmes, untitled Program (feathers red yellow green blk) (2011)

The Holmes show at Bureau on Henry Street (Lower East Side), entitled Painted Bones-Some Reliquaries. The title alone draws us.



--- Jackie Saccoccio, Left Portrait (2011)

Saccoccio, with Andrew Gbur and Keltie Ferris, at Eleven Rivington (LES).



--- Paolo Ventura, Behind the Walls #3 (2011)

The amazing Ventura, once again at Hasted Kraeutler in Chelsea (we reviewed his last show there, Winter Stories, in January 2010). This one is called The Automaton of Venice, and we are already immersed in his miniature fantasy world...which brings to mind Benjamin's Passagenwerke, the labyrinths of Borges, the languid melancholia of Zweig, the wanderings of Sebald.



--- Sarah Walker, Masses and Forces (2010)

Walker, with fellow abstract painters Douglas Melini and Gary Petersen, at McKenzie Fine Art in Chelsea (whose shows we have described on several occasions). Explorations of geometry compressed, tangled and skewed.

Just a few leaves in a forest! Plus, of course, all the coming attractions at the museums, e.g., the Ingres show at the Morgan, the Goddess/Mother in Indian painting at the Metropolitan, the Spirals show at the Studio Museum in Harlem (the Norman Lewis paintings look particularly intriguing), and others.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Toronto SpecFic Colloquium (Mike Carey is Keynoting)

The lobster and the canary apologize to all patient readers for the long hiatus; we were taking a rest during August, but are back now.

We are excited about the Toronto SpecFic Colloquium on October 15th (full disclosure: we are one of the guest speakers there). A newcomer to the scene-- this being its second year--the Toronto SpecFic Colloquium is set to become a "must attend" on the circuit, a great companion piece to gatherings in the Northeast/Middle Atlantic such as Readercon, Arisia, and Capclave.

As their website notes:

"The Toronto SpecFic Colloquium is a one-day event featuring a series of lectures, readings and discussions from major authors and industry professionals."

This year's keynoter is Mike Carey, the graphic novelist, whose talk is entitled "Speak of the Dazzling Wings": Myth, Language, and Modern Fantasy.

We'll be writing more about the Colloquium over the next few weeks. In the meantime, learn more by clicking here.

Better yet, why not come to Toronto and attend in person?