Several decades ago, I watched a Green Heron hunting in a half-strangled stream --dwindled to a thread at the bottom of a drainage ditch-- mere yards from a major intersection in a large city.
Wherever I had been going forgotten, I tracked that heron as it tracked fish. It knew I was there, but did not fly, so intent was it on its own errand. I crouched down among the reeds and the minor willows, and watched the heron for many minutes...five, ten, more, I did not know. So close I could see the blazing yoke of its eye, the striations of its throat plumage (it must have been an immature), the delicate fronding of the feathers on its back as it leaned forward, coppery green plumes overlapping with the rusty brown.
I have not lived in that city for many years but I visit often and have, on occasion, passed that spot. I always pause and look, hoping to catch another glimpse of a Green Heron there, furtively, professionally about its business. I never have (not there, though elsewhere), but I see always the palest tint of a shadow stalking down the little stream, and I smile and am for one long moment in the past, while simultaneously also in the past-as-I-recreate-it, the present, the present-as-I-imagine-it-for-the-future, the future, and the future-in-which-I-am-remembering-my-recollection-of-the-original-event.
That "then" is Drop-Time.
When that Green Heron walks with studious ferocity through my mind, I am in Drop-Time; that Green Heron leads me to and accompanies me in Drop-Time. A psychopomp perhaps, at the very end...but for now a guide who also escorts me back to the lands of Clock-Time.
What T.S. Eliot describes in "Burnt Norton":
"Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable."
Drop-Time: private time without intermediation, a surprise and an awakening, time hollowed out from the regular river, elongated and linked across the long stretches of the current, directly tied like a bundle of leaves (or feathers) floating and bobbing and dipping in the stream. Time that has a smell and a texture, anchors itself in a place, and is--above all--intimate, that is, not to be confused with the grand public memories constructed and commemorated in monuments, museums, what Pierre Nora dubbed "les lieux de memoire."
Drop-Time is where we go on our search for paradise, and revival, for our lost youth and our hopes for the future, the retrieval of once-dashed aspirations and the restoration of the world's first green.
Drop-Time is what Stefan Zweig seeks to inhabit-- and where he takes us-- as he calls forth life-as-it-was in the cafes of his vanished Vienna. Likewise Gregory von Rezzori looking for the Czernowitz of his birth in The Snows of Yesteryear, Kamau Brathwaite evoking Barbados and Jamaica, Rita Dove on the enchantment of the everyday ("You start out with one thing, end/ up with another, and nothing's/ like it used to be, not even the future"), Seamus Heaney disinterring memories and roped bog-men from Irish earth, Alice Oswald giving voice to the god of the river Dart. Drop-Time is the Breton childhood chiseled by Pierre-Jakez Helias in The Horse of Pride, is integral to the jazz-mystical odyssey poured forth by Nathaniel Mackey in his From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate, is at the core of meaning surrounding the Ephrussi netsuke collection traced by Edmund de Waal in The Hare with Amber Eyes.
There goes my little Green Heron, forever hunting minnows along a tiny brook.
Eliot again, more "Burnt Norton":
"Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at."
Succumb, succumb to the deception! It yields heaven.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Peering in the Mere of Mimesis
Two quotes struck the lobster and canary this week:
"As museums continue building mobile devices into more exhibits--the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston now offers multmedia tours on 750 rentable iPod Touches--staffers are debating how to incorporate the technology without turning their visitors into what some in the business call 'gallery zombies,' guests who stand inches from a masterpiece while glued to their screens. [//] London-based art collector and art adviser Lauren Prakke says digital gadgets already fill art events. 'Sometimes you think, wow, you've got some of the most incredible art in the world in the room and someone's staring at the telephone,' she says. 'I'm like, "Am I the only one looking at the art?" ' "
---Ellen Gamerman," The Art of the Tablet," The Wall Street Journal, March 9, 2012, pg. D2.
"...curators in this city...need to pay a lot more attention to exhibition design, on- and offline. [//] The performance section of the show [the Whitney Biennial] ... is a sad example. It's left without any sort of livestreaming or video documentation...Surely, if we've learned anything from Marina Abramovic's blockbuster 2010 performance The Artist is Present, it's that more online documentation, not less, draws visitors."
---Paddy Johnson, "Witless Biennial," The L Magazine, March 14-27, 2012, pg. 46.
Puts us in mind of Goethe engaging with Aristotelian aesthetics in "On Truth and Verisimilitude in Works of Art" (published in the first issue of his Propylaen in 1798). Conducting a dialogue within a fictional theater about illusion and the imitation of nature, Goethe pronounces on the value of artful deception and the de-layering of reality. Which matters more: the appearance (Schein) of truth, or truth itself? What is the "thing itself" (die Sache selbst), and how would we know it if we came upon it, as it sleeps, dines, walks and soars within a carved frame or the flicker of pixels? Art imitating nature...
...and imitating itself in auto-mimetic gazings...
...representing a representation...
...imaging images of a truth whose origin may or may not surge from the thing itself?
As Wallace Stevens has it:
"When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles."
Further readings:
Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1936).
William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930).
Stephen Halliwell, The Aesthetics of Mimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern Problems (2002).
Robert Motherwell, "The Modern Painter's World" (1944).
Erwin Panofsky, "The Problem of Style in the Visual Arts" (1915).
Barbara Maria Stafford, Good Looking: Essays on the Virtue of Images (1998).
Wallace Stevens, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" (1917).
"As museums continue building mobile devices into more exhibits--the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston now offers multmedia tours on 750 rentable iPod Touches--staffers are debating how to incorporate the technology without turning their visitors into what some in the business call 'gallery zombies,' guests who stand inches from a masterpiece while glued to their screens. [//] London-based art collector and art adviser Lauren Prakke says digital gadgets already fill art events. 'Sometimes you think, wow, you've got some of the most incredible art in the world in the room and someone's staring at the telephone,' she says. 'I'm like, "Am I the only one looking at the art?" ' "
---Ellen Gamerman," The Art of the Tablet," The Wall Street Journal, March 9, 2012, pg. D2.
"...curators in this city...need to pay a lot more attention to exhibition design, on- and offline. [//] The performance section of the show [the Whitney Biennial] ... is a sad example. It's left without any sort of livestreaming or video documentation...Surely, if we've learned anything from Marina Abramovic's blockbuster 2010 performance The Artist is Present, it's that more online documentation, not less, draws visitors."
---Paddy Johnson, "Witless Biennial," The L Magazine, March 14-27, 2012, pg. 46.
Puts us in mind of Goethe engaging with Aristotelian aesthetics in "On Truth and Verisimilitude in Works of Art" (published in the first issue of his Propylaen in 1798). Conducting a dialogue within a fictional theater about illusion and the imitation of nature, Goethe pronounces on the value of artful deception and the de-layering of reality. Which matters more: the appearance (Schein) of truth, or truth itself? What is the "thing itself" (die Sache selbst), and how would we know it if we came upon it, as it sleeps, dines, walks and soars within a carved frame or the flicker of pixels? Art imitating nature...
...and imitating itself in auto-mimetic gazings...
...representing a representation...
...imaging images of a truth whose origin may or may not surge from the thing itself?
As Wallace Stevens has it:
"When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles."
Further readings:
Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1936).
William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930).
Stephen Halliwell, The Aesthetics of Mimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern Problems (2002).
Robert Motherwell, "The Modern Painter's World" (1944).
Erwin Panofsky, "The Problem of Style in the Visual Arts" (1915).
Barbara Maria Stafford, Good Looking: Essays on the Virtue of Images (1998).
Wallace Stevens, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" (1917).
Sunday, March 4, 2012
The Founder's Tale: How Arts Entrepreneurs Will Save The Economy
"When I look back at the history of Hauser & Wirth over the past 17 years, I notice a pattern—we have almost always opened our galleries in difficult economic moments...”
-- NYC gallerist Iwan Wirth, quoted in Miriam Kreinin Souccar, "Chelsea Galleries Hold Up During Downturn; Though 25 Galleries Have Shuttered In The Past Year, At Least 10 Have Opened" (Crain's New York Business, May 22, 2009).
Unsung heroes? By nature entrepreneurial, artists-- and the curators, gallery owners, small-press publishers and editors who travel in their van-- have (disproportionately?) propelled the American economy through the Great Recession and its grouchy, spasmodic recovery. As banking, manufacturing and other traditional mainstays have blown up, the arts have adapted quickly and become a hotbed of start-ups and innovative change. In the accelerating shift within American business to individualized design and making, where work crosses disciplinary boundaries and creates wholly new product and service categories at the click of a mouse, the arts are (to paraphrase Marie Ponsot's description of Philip Lopate's poetry) the new economy's "ungovernable alchemic hope."
Here in New York City, the arts drive commerce as much they are driven by it, and they shape the very lay-out of our shared, urban space-- and they are doing so at a greater scale and speed, despite the recession that began in 2008. "Between 2003 and 2005, 94 cultural building projects were completed in the city, according to an Alliance for the Arts study on the economic impact of construction at New York's cultural nonprofits. Now there are more than 400 design, construction and equipment projects in the works at 197 nonprofit cultural organizations..." (Miriam Kreinin Souccar, "Arts Institutions In Midst Of Major Restoration Period," Crain's New York Business, February 13-19, 2012).
Examples abound: the re-openings of the Islamic (November, 2011) and American (January, 2012) arts wings at the Metropolitan, the coming move of the Whitney to the Meatpacking District (broke ground in 2011 for a new 200,000 square foot building), the Park Avenue Armory restoring its 19th-century facades (to be completed this fall) and expanding its programming, the ongoing renovations to El Museo del Barrio, the High Line promenade/outdoor artspace opened on Chelsea's far west side in 2009, the Museum for African Art opening its new 90,000 square-foot building this fall at 110th and Fifth, the Poets House moving in 2009 to its airy new 11,000 square-foot space in Battery Park City...Big Culture never sleeps in the Big Apple.
An even more impressive story is the continuing expansion of Little Culture, thousands of islets in an archipelago spreading throughout all five boroughs (and next door in Hoboken, Jersey City, Yonkers), creating a lushly fervent ecology that is the real secret to the arts' increasingly central position in a modern economy. Thousands of hard-nosed dreamers are starting new festivals, galleries and journals, competitively scrambling to create the new Bauhaus, to emulate and then transcend the workshop of Aldus Manutius or the kharkana of Ustad Mansur, to blend the atelier with the caravanserai.
A handful of examples chosen from among many:
*The Observatory: Founded by Pam Grossman and six colleagues in February 2009 (just a few months after the collapse of Lehman Brothers triggered the downturn!) in Gowanus, Brooklyn-- a deliciously eccentric hybrid exhibition and lecture space, a vision of what future work will look like, presenting (in its own words) "programming inspired by the 18th century notion of 'rational amusement' and is especially interested in topics residing at the interstices of art and science, history and curiosity, magic and nature."
*The Greenlight Bookstore: Rebecca Fittig and Jessica Stockton Bagnulo opened this impressively curated space in Fort Greene, Brooklyn in 2009, into the riptide of the recession--it has become one of the literary hotspots in an intensely literary city, with a readings calendar second to none (disclosure: I am a "community lender" to the Greenlight).
*The Festival of the New Black Imagination: In 2011 Rob Fields founded this groundbreaking event (reminiscent of TED, PopTech and SXSW--Fields has twice been a panelist at the latter)-- a celebration of cross-genre innovation, with a focus on alt music, digital performance and narrative. The 2012 edition is in downtown Brooklyn this September.
*571 Projects: Named after its square footage, 571 (founded in Chelsea in 2009 by Sophie Brechu-West) packs a great aesthetic punch in its small space-- a space where the art interacts with the glories of light coming over the Hudson.
*A Public Space: Brigid Hughes founded APS in Brooklyn in 2006, as "an independent magazine of art and argument, fact and fiction—was founded in 2006 to give voice to the twenty-first century." In just six years APS has become an indispensable part of the cultural landscape--it feels like APS has been with us for decades at least.
*BUREAU: A tiny storefront gallery on Henry Street in the Lower East Side, founded in 2010 by Gabrielle Giattino, BUREAU is a jewelbox of surprises: suitcase poetry, painted bones, sculptures of concrete atop medical walkers.
*Slice Magazine: Maria Gagliano and Celia Johnson founded this Brooklyn-based literary journal in 2007-- its warm-hearted, exuberant approach to the literary life is very welcome--it does "serious" without being pretentious or heavy-handed. The interviews are especially good, on par with those in the Paris Review.
*DODGE Gallery: Kristen Dodge opened on the Lower East Side in 2010, and has garnered strong reviews from the beginning. The space is gorgeous (long ago a sausage factory--such is the power of arts entrepreneurs to recycle the defunct, creating afresh). We are partial to last year's Sheila Gallagher and Lorna Williams shows.
*La Casa Azul: Aurora Anaya-Cerda started her bookstore online three years ago, and opens its physical presence in East Harlem this year.
*BronxArtSpace: In 2009 Linda Cunningham and Mitsuharu Hadeishi opened this in the South Bronx, providing a home for a thoughtful and eclectic mix of visual artists, performers, and educators.
*3rd Ward: The epicenter of the DIY arts & crafts movement, 3rd Ward was founded by Jason Goodman and Jeremy Lovitt on the border of Williamsburg and Bushwick in May, 2006-- and has grown rapidly since (it will soon open a satellite in Philadelphia). A 20,000 square-foot space, 3rd Ward is a teaching site for wood and metal arts, photography and jewelry making (disclosure: my wife teaches a class there).
*The Brooklyn Book Festival: Begun in 2006, the BBF has grown to a four-day extravaganza in downtown Brooklyn, featuring a record 260+ panelists in 2011-- it is already a fixture on the literary circuit.
*Brian Girley, Faith project, album recorded at Mercy Studio in the East Village, and released in summer 2011, with Linda Oh, Gilad Hekselman, Julian Shore, and Ross Pederson: Saxophonist Brian Girley epitomizes the courage of the entrepreneur-- as he notes in the video below, he and his wife left Florida in 2010 for NYC, with three bags and a pair of one-way tickets, no jobs, no apartment, just faith that they would make it. How Girley creates music (as he explains and demonstrates in the video here) is how much work outside of the arts will be conducted in the future--as fluid project-based collaborations, with a leader setting the frame and the goal, and self-directed teammates contributing and creating with and for.
Girley and the other founders/projectors/makers listed above are cousins of the digital technology entrepreneurs who have revived "Silicon Alley" in NYC, which has boomed in the past several years to become one of the country's leading centers for tech start-ups (think Tumblr and Foursquare, for instance):
"New York City had a break out year in 2011, riding a wave of tech enthusiasm to heights it's never seen before. Right now, New York .....is home to one company with a billion dollar valuation — Gilt Groupe — and 28 others with valuations of $100 million or over. Despite a weakening stock market, and deep fundamental problems with the economy, this time next year we expect more billion dollar companies in New York." (Business Insider, October 13, 2011).
(New York Tech Meetup started in late 2004 and today boasts over 22,000 members; its monthly meetings are thronged. Google opened a large site in 2008 in lower Chelsea, just north of the Meatpacking District; Facebook will open a major engineering center in NYC this spring.)
Not two worlds but two (or three or some other number of) continents--flanked and extended by islands, shoals and atolls-- all interconnected by accessible seas. The commercial new media are all about creativity and the arts long since embraced and then took into new directions the possibilities of digital technologies. The arts entrepreneurs (soon we will have to drop the adjective and just acknowledge that "artist" and "entrepreneur" are identical, or at least symbiotic) lead the way into the new economy.
Further reading:
Karen Rosenberg, "Rising and Regrouping on the Lower East Side" (New York Times, April 21, 2011).
Alliance for the Arts
Americans for the Arts
CPANDA--Cultural Policy & The Arts (Princeton University in partnership with the NEA)
-- NYC gallerist Iwan Wirth, quoted in Miriam Kreinin Souccar, "Chelsea Galleries Hold Up During Downturn; Though 25 Galleries Have Shuttered In The Past Year, At Least 10 Have Opened" (Crain's New York Business, May 22, 2009).
Unsung heroes? By nature entrepreneurial, artists-- and the curators, gallery owners, small-press publishers and editors who travel in their van-- have (disproportionately?) propelled the American economy through the Great Recession and its grouchy, spasmodic recovery. As banking, manufacturing and other traditional mainstays have blown up, the arts have adapted quickly and become a hotbed of start-ups and innovative change. In the accelerating shift within American business to individualized design and making, where work crosses disciplinary boundaries and creates wholly new product and service categories at the click of a mouse, the arts are (to paraphrase Marie Ponsot's description of Philip Lopate's poetry) the new economy's "ungovernable alchemic hope."
Here in New York City, the arts drive commerce as much they are driven by it, and they shape the very lay-out of our shared, urban space-- and they are doing so at a greater scale and speed, despite the recession that began in 2008. "Between 2003 and 2005, 94 cultural building projects were completed in the city, according to an Alliance for the Arts study on the economic impact of construction at New York's cultural nonprofits. Now there are more than 400 design, construction and equipment projects in the works at 197 nonprofit cultural organizations..." (Miriam Kreinin Souccar, "Arts Institutions In Midst Of Major Restoration Period," Crain's New York Business, February 13-19, 2012).
Examples abound: the re-openings of the Islamic (November, 2011) and American (January, 2012) arts wings at the Metropolitan, the coming move of the Whitney to the Meatpacking District (broke ground in 2011 for a new 200,000 square foot building), the Park Avenue Armory restoring its 19th-century facades (to be completed this fall) and expanding its programming, the ongoing renovations to El Museo del Barrio, the High Line promenade/outdoor artspace opened on Chelsea's far west side in 2009, the Museum for African Art opening its new 90,000 square-foot building this fall at 110th and Fifth, the Poets House moving in 2009 to its airy new 11,000 square-foot space in Battery Park City...Big Culture never sleeps in the Big Apple.
An even more impressive story is the continuing expansion of Little Culture, thousands of islets in an archipelago spreading throughout all five boroughs (and next door in Hoboken, Jersey City, Yonkers), creating a lushly fervent ecology that is the real secret to the arts' increasingly central position in a modern economy. Thousands of hard-nosed dreamers are starting new festivals, galleries and journals, competitively scrambling to create the new Bauhaus, to emulate and then transcend the workshop of Aldus Manutius or the kharkana of Ustad Mansur, to blend the atelier with the caravanserai.
A handful of examples chosen from among many:
*The Observatory: Founded by Pam Grossman and six colleagues in February 2009 (just a few months after the collapse of Lehman Brothers triggered the downturn!) in Gowanus, Brooklyn-- a deliciously eccentric hybrid exhibition and lecture space, a vision of what future work will look like, presenting (in its own words) "programming inspired by the 18th century notion of 'rational amusement' and is especially interested in topics residing at the interstices of art and science, history and curiosity, magic and nature."
*The Greenlight Bookstore: Rebecca Fittig and Jessica Stockton Bagnulo opened this impressively curated space in Fort Greene, Brooklyn in 2009, into the riptide of the recession--it has become one of the literary hotspots in an intensely literary city, with a readings calendar second to none (disclosure: I am a "community lender" to the Greenlight).
*The Festival of the New Black Imagination: In 2011 Rob Fields founded this groundbreaking event (reminiscent of TED, PopTech and SXSW--Fields has twice been a panelist at the latter)-- a celebration of cross-genre innovation, with a focus on alt music, digital performance and narrative. The 2012 edition is in downtown Brooklyn this September.
*571 Projects: Named after its square footage, 571 (founded in Chelsea in 2009 by Sophie Brechu-West) packs a great aesthetic punch in its small space-- a space where the art interacts with the glories of light coming over the Hudson.
*A Public Space: Brigid Hughes founded APS in Brooklyn in 2006, as "an independent magazine of art and argument, fact and fiction—was founded in 2006 to give voice to the twenty-first century." In just six years APS has become an indispensable part of the cultural landscape--it feels like APS has been with us for decades at least.
*BUREAU: A tiny storefront gallery on Henry Street in the Lower East Side, founded in 2010 by Gabrielle Giattino, BUREAU is a jewelbox of surprises: suitcase poetry, painted bones, sculptures of concrete atop medical walkers.
*Slice Magazine: Maria Gagliano and Celia Johnson founded this Brooklyn-based literary journal in 2007-- its warm-hearted, exuberant approach to the literary life is very welcome--it does "serious" without being pretentious or heavy-handed. The interviews are especially good, on par with those in the Paris Review.
*DODGE Gallery: Kristen Dodge opened on the Lower East Side in 2010, and has garnered strong reviews from the beginning. The space is gorgeous (long ago a sausage factory--such is the power of arts entrepreneurs to recycle the defunct, creating afresh). We are partial to last year's Sheila Gallagher and Lorna Williams shows.
*La Casa Azul: Aurora Anaya-Cerda started her bookstore online three years ago, and opens its physical presence in East Harlem this year.
*BronxArtSpace: In 2009 Linda Cunningham and Mitsuharu Hadeishi opened this in the South Bronx, providing a home for a thoughtful and eclectic mix of visual artists, performers, and educators.
*3rd Ward: The epicenter of the DIY arts & crafts movement, 3rd Ward was founded by Jason Goodman and Jeremy Lovitt on the border of Williamsburg and Bushwick in May, 2006-- and has grown rapidly since (it will soon open a satellite in Philadelphia). A 20,000 square-foot space, 3rd Ward is a teaching site for wood and metal arts, photography and jewelry making (disclosure: my wife teaches a class there).
*The Brooklyn Book Festival: Begun in 2006, the BBF has grown to a four-day extravaganza in downtown Brooklyn, featuring a record 260+ panelists in 2011-- it is already a fixture on the literary circuit.
*Brian Girley, Faith project, album recorded at Mercy Studio in the East Village, and released in summer 2011, with Linda Oh, Gilad Hekselman, Julian Shore, and Ross Pederson: Saxophonist Brian Girley epitomizes the courage of the entrepreneur-- as he notes in the video below, he and his wife left Florida in 2010 for NYC, with three bags and a pair of one-way tickets, no jobs, no apartment, just faith that they would make it. How Girley creates music (as he explains and demonstrates in the video here) is how much work outside of the arts will be conducted in the future--as fluid project-based collaborations, with a leader setting the frame and the goal, and self-directed teammates contributing and creating with and for.
Girley and the other founders/projectors/makers listed above are cousins of the digital technology entrepreneurs who have revived "Silicon Alley" in NYC, which has boomed in the past several years to become one of the country's leading centers for tech start-ups (think Tumblr and Foursquare, for instance):
"New York City had a break out year in 2011, riding a wave of tech enthusiasm to heights it's never seen before. Right now, New York .....is home to one company with a billion dollar valuation — Gilt Groupe — and 28 others with valuations of $100 million or over. Despite a weakening stock market, and deep fundamental problems with the economy, this time next year we expect more billion dollar companies in New York." (Business Insider, October 13, 2011).
(New York Tech Meetup started in late 2004 and today boasts over 22,000 members; its monthly meetings are thronged. Google opened a large site in 2008 in lower Chelsea, just north of the Meatpacking District; Facebook will open a major engineering center in NYC this spring.)
Not two worlds but two (or three or some other number of) continents--flanked and extended by islands, shoals and atolls-- all interconnected by accessible seas. The commercial new media are all about creativity and the arts long since embraced and then took into new directions the possibilities of digital technologies. The arts entrepreneurs (soon we will have to drop the adjective and just acknowledge that "artist" and "entrepreneur" are identical, or at least symbiotic) lead the way into the new economy.
Further reading:
Karen Rosenberg, "Rising and Regrouping on the Lower East Side" (New York Times, April 21, 2011).
Alliance for the Arts
Americans for the Arts
CPANDA--Cultural Policy & The Arts (Princeton University in partnership with the NEA)
Sunday, February 26, 2012
The Flesh of the Gods, or, Pan in Cyberspace
---Carnival revelers in Lucerne, Switzerland, February 16th of this year.
So another Mardi Gras has come and gone.
---Carnival celebrants in Belgium last week.
Another Shrove Tuesday...
--Carnival in Ulm, Germany.
Another end to Fasching....
---Carnival somewhere (Venice?) in Italy last week.
As we contemplate a cybernetic future, enthralled within our digital scrim, shadow selves and avatars leading fleshless lives in a Hadoopian world of zettabyte data streams, we nevertheless continue to congregate corporeally, to celebrate mysteries that go back to our beginnings.
Carnevale both refutes and prefigures this future.
Refutes because we still crave the visceral connection of one another; we desire the pulse of music and the smell of smoke, sweat and cooked meats embracing us without an electronic intermediary. Welcome, welcome, step right up to the carny...
Prefigures because in our pageants, rites and masques we have forever been imagining ourselves transcendent and hybridized. The trail is not so long from the ships in the rituals of Isis and the mysteries of Eleusis to multi-player online role-playing games and endless self-fashionings on Facebook.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Irish Ghost Towns, Fairy Gold, and the Diaspora
John Jeremiah Sullivan writes in "My Debt to Ireland" (in this morning's New York Times Sunday Magazine) about searching for his roots, about thwarted hopes and the elegiac nature of life on the Emerald Isle.
Among other things, he comments on the great many houses half-built, never occupied, now abandoned and falling into decay across Ireland, the result of the unprecedented real estate boom during the 1990s that lasted until the global recession starting in 2008. Americans are familiar with this sort of boom-and-bust cycle, with tracts and developments that are still born, that move from blueprint directly to ghost town without ever being inhabited (all those empty streets in the exurbs of Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tampa, Houston and so on). We grimace, file law suits, and move on to some other city or state, building anew to meet the needs of our ever-growing population.
For the Irish, however, this has been a new experience; they are grappling with both the phenomenon and how best to frame it.
As Sullivan writes:
"It had been a dream, like something in a Celtic Revival play: faeries built thousands and thousands of houses in the night. In the morning everybody was poor again.
It was hard to see why the government would allow the ruination of so much open land, which is one of Ireland’s principal commodities, namely the 'unspoiled' landscape. People go to Ireland for all sorts of reasons, but they mainly go there because it’s pretty, because it’s 'not all built up.'
From the point of view of the rural Irish themselves, however, this may look very different. The greenness of Ireland is a false greenness, after all. Not that it isn’t green — the place can still make you have to pull off and swallow one of your heart pills. It’s that the greenness doesn’t mean what it seems. It doesn’t encode a pastoral past, much less a timeless vale where wee folk trip the demesne. The countryside is not supposed to look like that, to be that empty. Ireland was at one time one of the most densely populated places in Europe. In the 1830s, there were more people living there than today. What you see in the open spaces the island is famous for are hundreds and hundreds of years of Irish dying and fleeing in large numbers. Famines, wars, epidemics and a wretched postcolonial poverty drove them through the ports by the millions. It’s perhaps not so strange that such a people, experiencing their first flush of disposable income, would undergo a mania of home building and land development. Perhaps in a way, the houses were meant for returning immigrants even before they became ghost estates. They were built for the diaspora."
Among other things, he comments on the great many houses half-built, never occupied, now abandoned and falling into decay across Ireland, the result of the unprecedented real estate boom during the 1990s that lasted until the global recession starting in 2008. Americans are familiar with this sort of boom-and-bust cycle, with tracts and developments that are still born, that move from blueprint directly to ghost town without ever being inhabited (all those empty streets in the exurbs of Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tampa, Houston and so on). We grimace, file law suits, and move on to some other city or state, building anew to meet the needs of our ever-growing population.
For the Irish, however, this has been a new experience; they are grappling with both the phenomenon and how best to frame it.
As Sullivan writes:
"It had been a dream, like something in a Celtic Revival play: faeries built thousands and thousands of houses in the night. In the morning everybody was poor again.
It was hard to see why the government would allow the ruination of so much open land, which is one of Ireland’s principal commodities, namely the 'unspoiled' landscape. People go to Ireland for all sorts of reasons, but they mainly go there because it’s pretty, because it’s 'not all built up.'
From the point of view of the rural Irish themselves, however, this may look very different. The greenness of Ireland is a false greenness, after all. Not that it isn’t green — the place can still make you have to pull off and swallow one of your heart pills. It’s that the greenness doesn’t mean what it seems. It doesn’t encode a pastoral past, much less a timeless vale where wee folk trip the demesne. The countryside is not supposed to look like that, to be that empty. Ireland was at one time one of the most densely populated places in Europe. In the 1830s, there were more people living there than today. What you see in the open spaces the island is famous for are hundreds and hundreds of years of Irish dying and fleeing in large numbers. Famines, wars, epidemics and a wretched postcolonial poverty drove them through the ports by the millions. It’s perhaps not so strange that such a people, experiencing their first flush of disposable income, would undergo a mania of home building and land development. Perhaps in a way, the houses were meant for returning immigrants even before they became ghost estates. They were built for the diaspora."
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Three Alchemists: Beachy-Quick, Kornher-Stace, Taaffe
Dan Beachy-Quick...Nicole Kornher-Stace...Sonya Taaffe...
Three writers, ranging in age from 29 to 39, who have moved beyond the "emerging" stage and are now among our best. Though hardly unknowns, each deserves to be far more widely and profoundly recognized than he or she is. (I have noted the work of each in earlier entries of Lobster & Canary). Each showed early promise that she or he is now confirming and extending.
Beachy-Quick, Kornher-Stace, and Taaffe have much in common: a deep and learned appreciation for language that produces darkly glittering gems; a jackdavian inquisitiveness, omnivorous yet discerning; meta-cognitive glosses on the importance of history; and an ability to approach central mysteries with masterful subtlety and nuance. Erudite delvers through layers, finders of clues in the ores and the air.
I have no idea if they read each other's work, let alone if they know one another. I do sense a kinship in their own reading tastes. I would place them in the workshop that includes Dickinson and Moore, Montale and Rilke, in the laboratory of language occupied by Swinburne, Hopkins, Shelley and Dryden. Novalis and Droste-Huelshoff. Back to Gongora, to Ronsard. And-- in another vein--I would situate them in the amphitheater for encyclopedic musings and polymathic hybridization, where Eco demonstrates and Benjamin strolls, where the walls are inscribed with the wisdom of Goethe and of Wordsworth.
I cannot do justice to my claims in a short blog entry, so will add "write critical essay on Beachy-Quick, Kornher-Stace, Taaffe" to my dauntingly but deliciously endless list of "deliverables before I die." For those of you who want a taste of evidence a bit more substantial, here are some choice ingredients from the alembics of the three alchemists:
Taaffe's most recent effort is a chapbook, A Mayse-Bikhl (hand-bound from Papaveria Press, 2011), collecting some of her best poems of the past decade. The cover photograph is by her grandfather, Alfred Glixman, of the Czech Memorial Scrolls at Westminster Synagogue. A Mayse-Bikhl's poems all wind powerfully and tellingly from that central image, leading us through memory and the hope of the future. Here is a "Kaddish for a Dybbuk," and "Mermaids at Tashlikh." Her opening lines for "Seder Yetzirah": "Every lover's letter is a golem,/ silence stirring at the cut of a name." In "Lilim, After Dark," we see "All the demons that hide/ in the rafters of your dreams..." In "Etz Chayim," we behold The Tree as it must have been: "This tree grew in no mortal garden, ran/ its roots deep into promise and liturgy...angels burning like sunlight/ in its branches, each leaf inscribed/ name upon name of the children/ born beneath the echoes of its bitter,/ hungering fruit..."
Kornher-Stace's novel Desideria (Prime Books, 2008) opens with one of the most eloquently and powerfully enigmatic scenes I have read in many years. An unnamed young woman, dressed in finery, shatters a mirror and sets her room and herself on fire: "At first she does not know just how or why the lamp is in her hand, its glass and brass and fern-curled fire..." She looks out her window at an unnamed city, smells it: "woodsmoke, lampblack and filth, scorched ginger, rotting quays, snow-sogged broadsides, hothouse violets on the far bank of the river." She plunges from the fiery tower ("burning like a plummeting angel"), dashing herself on the street below, to the cries of the gathering crowd. She is taken for dead. She clutches a book. She is, in fact, alive, but mute (her lips have been sewn shut) and unconscious. "But the looters lean in and discern an auburn book. Like saints' hearts, it has not burnt." She is taken to a nunnery for succour.
Tupelo Press published Circle's Apprentice by Beachy-Quick in 2011. He is openly engaging here with Emerson and Hoelderlin (as he was with Melville in A Whaler's Dictionary). The poems in this collection are dense, cryptic, intelligent, delivered in odd (but not artificial) language, full of what he calls "little riddles in the ruins," with "a small god chanting in the synapses." The work loops, aphoristic lines that return to their beginnings, elusive threads in the old maze. From "Poem": "Comet tails/ Darkly flowing back as the horse leaps/ Forward, straining against the catafalque...Vague/ Repetitions haunt the circumference." From "Catalog": "Glowing with stories they have no mouth to tell...Every poem contains a blessing it keeps hidden." From the first of five poems each titled "Tomb Figurine": "My eye was a little sun__working/ In reverse."
Three writers, ranging in age from 29 to 39, who have moved beyond the "emerging" stage and are now among our best. Though hardly unknowns, each deserves to be far more widely and profoundly recognized than he or she is. (I have noted the work of each in earlier entries of Lobster & Canary). Each showed early promise that she or he is now confirming and extending.
Beachy-Quick, Kornher-Stace, and Taaffe have much in common: a deep and learned appreciation for language that produces darkly glittering gems; a jackdavian inquisitiveness, omnivorous yet discerning; meta-cognitive glosses on the importance of history; and an ability to approach central mysteries with masterful subtlety and nuance. Erudite delvers through layers, finders of clues in the ores and the air.
I have no idea if they read each other's work, let alone if they know one another. I do sense a kinship in their own reading tastes. I would place them in the workshop that includes Dickinson and Moore, Montale and Rilke, in the laboratory of language occupied by Swinburne, Hopkins, Shelley and Dryden. Novalis and Droste-Huelshoff. Back to Gongora, to Ronsard. And-- in another vein--I would situate them in the amphitheater for encyclopedic musings and polymathic hybridization, where Eco demonstrates and Benjamin strolls, where the walls are inscribed with the wisdom of Goethe and of Wordsworth.
I cannot do justice to my claims in a short blog entry, so will add "write critical essay on Beachy-Quick, Kornher-Stace, Taaffe" to my dauntingly but deliciously endless list of "deliverables before I die." For those of you who want a taste of evidence a bit more substantial, here are some choice ingredients from the alembics of the three alchemists:
Taaffe's most recent effort is a chapbook, A Mayse-Bikhl (hand-bound from Papaveria Press, 2011), collecting some of her best poems of the past decade. The cover photograph is by her grandfather, Alfred Glixman, of the Czech Memorial Scrolls at Westminster Synagogue. A Mayse-Bikhl's poems all wind powerfully and tellingly from that central image, leading us through memory and the hope of the future. Here is a "Kaddish for a Dybbuk," and "Mermaids at Tashlikh." Her opening lines for "Seder Yetzirah": "Every lover's letter is a golem,/ silence stirring at the cut of a name." In "Lilim, After Dark," we see "All the demons that hide/ in the rafters of your dreams..." In "Etz Chayim," we behold The Tree as it must have been: "This tree grew in no mortal garden, ran/ its roots deep into promise and liturgy...angels burning like sunlight/ in its branches, each leaf inscribed/ name upon name of the children/ born beneath the echoes of its bitter,/ hungering fruit..."
Kornher-Stace's novel Desideria (Prime Books, 2008) opens with one of the most eloquently and powerfully enigmatic scenes I have read in many years. An unnamed young woman, dressed in finery, shatters a mirror and sets her room and herself on fire: "At first she does not know just how or why the lamp is in her hand, its glass and brass and fern-curled fire..." She looks out her window at an unnamed city, smells it: "woodsmoke, lampblack and filth, scorched ginger, rotting quays, snow-sogged broadsides, hothouse violets on the far bank of the river." She plunges from the fiery tower ("burning like a plummeting angel"), dashing herself on the street below, to the cries of the gathering crowd. She is taken for dead. She clutches a book. She is, in fact, alive, but mute (her lips have been sewn shut) and unconscious. "But the looters lean in and discern an auburn book. Like saints' hearts, it has not burnt." She is taken to a nunnery for succour.
Tupelo Press published Circle's Apprentice by Beachy-Quick in 2011. He is openly engaging here with Emerson and Hoelderlin (as he was with Melville in A Whaler's Dictionary). The poems in this collection are dense, cryptic, intelligent, delivered in odd (but not artificial) language, full of what he calls "little riddles in the ruins," with "a small god chanting in the synapses." The work loops, aphoristic lines that return to their beginnings, elusive threads in the old maze. From "Poem": "Comet tails/ Darkly flowing back as the horse leaps/ Forward, straining against the catafalque...Vague/ Repetitions haunt the circumference." From "Catalog": "Glowing with stories they have no mouth to tell...Every poem contains a blessing it keeps hidden." From the first of five poems each titled "Tomb Figurine": "My eye was a little sun__working/ In reverse."
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Word and Image: The Hobbit
A passage in The Hobbit that I have been musing over, the one describing Bilbo's reaction at first seeing Smaug slumbering atop the treasure-hoard within the Lonely Mountain:
"To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all. There are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful. Bilbo had heard tell and sing of dragon-hoards before, but the splendour, the lust, the glory of such treasure had never yet come home to him. His heart was filled and pierced with enchantment..." (pg. 206).
First and last, words-- language-- create and carry the tale in Tolkien's work. Tolkien the philologist was very clear on that, always and fiercely siding with "Lang" in what he saw as an endless contest with "Lit."
My own enthrallment with Tolkien's world began with and continues to be sustained by his use of Language (meaning more than just his creation of languages for the inhabitants of Middle-Earth and beyond, though that was surely among his most lasting and innovative achievements).
Which is why I find myself re-reading The Hobbit, The LOTR, The Silmarillion, "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil" in the wake of the Peter Jackson LOTR movies -- and in preparation for Jackson's first Hobbit film later this year. I love the LOTR movies, having watched them many times--they are brilliant cinematic conceptions.
Which is precisely why my affection and admiration for the movies is tinged with uneasy melancholy, akin perhaps to what Galadriel and Elrond-- and the other High Elves who linger in Middle-Earth-- feel, that is, a sense of something valuable overlaid, buried, lost when a new regime takes over.
The images Jackson and his team created on film are so powerful that I must now struggle to regain my own, the images I created directly and through many readings over many years from Tolkien's un-intermediated language. Now however when I read them on the page, Galadriel for me looks and sounds much like Cate Blanchett, Aragorn like Viggo Mortensen, Gandalf like Ian McKellen, Frodo and Sam like Elijah Wood and Sean Astin...all of whom are so exactly perfect in those roles that they threaten to erase my own, long-preexisting versions, and to monopolize forever the characters they play.
More fundamentally, the medium of film inherently privileges given and monolithic image over the multi-valenced, individualized and organic word. Hence the logic of the extended battle scenes in the films, to take that one example.
But at its core, Tolkien's work is about language as a living force speaking through the individuals who wear the words, the grammar, the syntax for our brief time, before we hand those clothes (sometimes a little worse for wear and in need of repair, sometimes refurbished, with new pockets and buttons) over to the next generation.
So, while I will be among the first to see The Hobbit movies when they are released, I am also keen to reclaim and nurture for myself the elements of Middle-Earth that no film can capture (I know Jackson & Co. are far too wise to believe their movies can do so; I am sure they agree that we judge a fish by how well it breathes underwater, and do not compare it to a bird that flies through the air).
I want to be on my own, left to my own courage and devices, as Bilbo was when he crept down that long, dark passage into the belly of the mountain...when he first crept into the dragon's lair, with its "worm-stench" and the ruddy glare of Smaug's banked fires illuminating the acres of stolen gold and glittering jewels...
...to share then Bilbo's "staggerment" in a place where our modern words fall short of describing the Essence of Things as they were in the World That Was, where film is but a sketch of the surface, below which lurk wild and wonderful things.
"To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all. There are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful. Bilbo had heard tell and sing of dragon-hoards before, but the splendour, the lust, the glory of such treasure had never yet come home to him. His heart was filled and pierced with enchantment..." (pg. 206).
First and last, words-- language-- create and carry the tale in Tolkien's work. Tolkien the philologist was very clear on that, always and fiercely siding with "Lang" in what he saw as an endless contest with "Lit."
My own enthrallment with Tolkien's world began with and continues to be sustained by his use of Language (meaning more than just his creation of languages for the inhabitants of Middle-Earth and beyond, though that was surely among his most lasting and innovative achievements).
Which is why I find myself re-reading The Hobbit, The LOTR, The Silmarillion, "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil" in the wake of the Peter Jackson LOTR movies -- and in preparation for Jackson's first Hobbit film later this year. I love the LOTR movies, having watched them many times--they are brilliant cinematic conceptions.
Which is precisely why my affection and admiration for the movies is tinged with uneasy melancholy, akin perhaps to what Galadriel and Elrond-- and the other High Elves who linger in Middle-Earth-- feel, that is, a sense of something valuable overlaid, buried, lost when a new regime takes over.
The images Jackson and his team created on film are so powerful that I must now struggle to regain my own, the images I created directly and through many readings over many years from Tolkien's un-intermediated language. Now however when I read them on the page, Galadriel for me looks and sounds much like Cate Blanchett, Aragorn like Viggo Mortensen, Gandalf like Ian McKellen, Frodo and Sam like Elijah Wood and Sean Astin...all of whom are so exactly perfect in those roles that they threaten to erase my own, long-preexisting versions, and to monopolize forever the characters they play.
More fundamentally, the medium of film inherently privileges given and monolithic image over the multi-valenced, individualized and organic word. Hence the logic of the extended battle scenes in the films, to take that one example.
But at its core, Tolkien's work is about language as a living force speaking through the individuals who wear the words, the grammar, the syntax for our brief time, before we hand those clothes (sometimes a little worse for wear and in need of repair, sometimes refurbished, with new pockets and buttons) over to the next generation.
So, while I will be among the first to see The Hobbit movies when they are released, I am also keen to reclaim and nurture for myself the elements of Middle-Earth that no film can capture (I know Jackson & Co. are far too wise to believe their movies can do so; I am sure they agree that we judge a fish by how well it breathes underwater, and do not compare it to a bird that flies through the air).
I want to be on my own, left to my own courage and devices, as Bilbo was when he crept down that long, dark passage into the belly of the mountain...when he first crept into the dragon's lair, with its "worm-stench" and the ruddy glare of Smaug's banked fires illuminating the acres of stolen gold and glittering jewels...
...to share then Bilbo's "staggerment" in a place where our modern words fall short of describing the Essence of Things as they were in the World That Was, where film is but a sketch of the surface, below which lurk wild and wonderful things.
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Seven Songs To Celebrate The Full Moon On Monday
The lobster and the canary share with you seven new (or at least new-ish) songs that we find ourselves listening to frequently at the moment-- songs that help bring us to a vibrant yet contemplative place when we need such a refuge or niche. Enjoy.
---Regina Carter, "Artistya" (2010).
---Marcus Miller and Alex Han, "Claptrap" (2010).
--- Karsh Kale, with Gaurav Raina (from Midival Punditz) and others, "Milan" (live, 2006).
---Yoshida Brothers, "Rising" (2008)
---Thomas Pridgen, drum solo (2008)
---Medeski, Scofield, Martin & Wood, "A Go Go" (2007)
---Anoushka Shankar, with Javier Limon and Sandra Carrasco, "Inside Me" (2011)
---Regina Carter, "Artistya" (2010).
---Marcus Miller and Alex Han, "Claptrap" (2010).
--- Karsh Kale, with Gaurav Raina (from Midival Punditz) and others, "Milan" (live, 2006).
---Yoshida Brothers, "Rising" (2008)
---Thomas Pridgen, drum solo (2008)
---Medeski, Scofield, Martin & Wood, "A Go Go" (2007)
---Anoushka Shankar, with Javier Limon and Sandra Carrasco, "Inside Me" (2011)
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Remembering Helen Frankenthaler
Lobster & Canary welcomes the new year by celebrating the work of Helen Frankenthaler, who died December 27th at age 83. For an especially insightful obituary, click here for Lance Esplund's "Frankenthaler Bridged Genres, Created Worlds of Burning Color"; and click here for the write-up, with slide show, in the New York Times.
May her visionary use of color and her inspired wanderings with form continue to nurture our spirits in the new year.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Melora Griffis at 571 Projects
--Melora Griffis, empty room (2010; acrylic, gouache, pastel on paper).
--Griffis, blue sun (2010; acrylic, gouache, pastel on paper).
In mid-November, the Lobster & Canary made our first visit to 571 Projects, a beautiful small art gallery in NYC's Chelsea founded by Sophie Brechu-West two years ago ("571" refers to the gallery's square footage). We were rewarded with a gem of a show: wings and murmurs, paintings by New York artist Melora Griffis.
Griffis's work has great narrative power, stories emerging from depths below the carefully muted surfaces, and spurred by the enigmatic shapes and figures (many half-rendered, or veiled) the painter places on the canvas. The overall effects are of restraint and solemnity, possibly remonstrance and mourning, overlaid with spectral uncertainty and a sense of things perceived rather than formally witnessed (fittingly, one of Griffis's paintings is titled unsichtbar, which is German for "invisible, unseen, hidden"). Griffis works small wonders with her chalky/milky backgrounds supporting flares of subtle, slightly slurred color. She calls to mind Pousette-Dart's mostly white paintings, the pale mysterious abstractions of Adele Sypesteyn, the finely calibrated gestures on corrugated white done by Saul Fletcher. Her eerie personages recall those of Ensor, and --while her style differs often substantially from each of the following--the tone is similar to those suffusing Marsden Hartley, Johns, Bonnard, Rauschenberg, Gorky, Tamayo, and O'Keefe.
--Griffis, schlossgespenst (2010; oil on linen)
571 Projects is an arts space to watch, a welcome newcomer to the Chelsea scene. The warmly dynamic Brechu-West has a sharp eye, and a strong sense of how the space interacts with and supports the artwork, how the space becomes a part of the overall aesthetic experience. She chose the locale for-- among other things-- its large windows with their unobstructed views of Chelsea Piers, so that the rays of the afternoon sun and of the sunset play a role in how viewers see the art.
Brechu-West is also willing to cross disciplinary boundaries. As an example of the latter drive, 571 Projects hosted a talk last week by Griffis along with three poets-- Betty Harmon, Alystyre Julian, and Shelly Stenhouse--reading poetry inspired by Griffis's displayed work. Alas, the Lobster & Canary could not attend the event, but we love the concept and look forward to more such salons at 571 Projects.
Visit 571 Projects. For more information, click here.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
The Freedom Maze, by Delia Sherman
Lobster & Canary was at the November 22nd book launch party at The Center for Fiction (NYC) for Delia Sherman's The Freedom Maze (published by Small Beer Press's Big Mouth House imprint).
We have not yet finished the book, but it promises to be one of the best for 2011. (Don't just take our word on that: Kirkus Reviews has already selected The Freedom Maze as a best children's book of the year, and strongly positive advance reviews are in from--among others-- Alaya Dawn Johnson, Gregory Maguire, Cory Doctorow, Holly Black, N.K. Jemisin, Jane Yolen, Nisi Shawl and Terri Windling).
It's a time-travel story with some great twists. It provides us with a set of powerful lenses through which to explore, imagine and think about race and gender-- in the antebellum South and as that period continues to impact the present day.
Here's the synopsis Small Beer supplies (you can download the first chapter at the Small Beer site by clicking here):
"Set against the burgeoning Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, and then just before the outbreak of the Civil War, The Freedom Maze explores both political and personal liberation, and how the two intertwine.
In 1960, thirteen-year-old Sophie isn’t happy about spending summer at her grandmother’s old house in the Bayou. But the house has a maze Sophie can’t resist exploring once she finds it has a secretive and playful inhabitant.
When Sophie, bored and lonely, makes an impulsive wish inspired by her reading, hoping for a fantasy adventure of her own, she slips one hundred years into the past, to the year 1860. On her arrival she makes her way, bedraggled and tanned, to what will one day be her grandmother’s house, where she is at once mistaken for a slave."
You can read more about Delia at her site by clicking here.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Shahzia Sikander & Du Yun at Sikkema Jenkins
Shahzia Sikander's current show at Sikkema, Jenkins (in NYC's Chelsea) includes a 10-minute animated video projected on a large wall, entitled Last Post, with accompanying music by Du Yun.
The animation is kaleidoscopic, constantly changing, with forms collapsing and fragmenting, colors shifting, ghostly calligraphy floating in the background. The main character is an English East India Company officer, at first stolidly implanted within the world of a Mughal miniature painting, then balancing precariously and ultimately dissolving. Jewel-like shapes detach themselves, become floating corpuscles--to our eye the opium derived from the poppy and shipped from India to China in the 19th century.
The music is perfectly suited to the images; one is lured into the viewing room-- which is separate from the large, open main gallery-- by the deep, melancholy themes. Together, moving images & flowing music, tell a story of transcultural exchange, of disparities in power and unbalanced power, of decay and renewal.
Above all, Sikander (trained at the National College of Arts, Lahore before moving to RISD, and living now in NYC) and Yun (trained at the Shanghai Conservatory before moving to Oberlin and Harvard, and living now in NYC) are superb at re-contextualizing traditional forms and at mixing different genres without resorting to pastiche or the lowest common denominator. In this, they remind Lobster & Canary of Yinka Shonibare and of Kehinde Wiley, artists who are in the vanguard of our emerging globalized world, knitting us together while retaining the granular, organic individuality of each of us and the authenticity of our constituent local cultures.
As Sikander puts it in an artist statement on the Sikkema, Jenkins site:
"I find the terminology and the referencing of work in terms of an east and west paradigm, simplistic and dated. It robs the work of all nuances in meaning. In fact these days the world is small and one should really consider work in terms of some sort of global context of ideas. Work I believe should stand on its own, irrespective of geography."
For more Sikander, click here and click here (a filmed conversation between Sikander and MoMA director Glenn Lowry).
For more Du Yun, click here (scroll far down on the right-hand side to check out her list of influences!).
The animation is kaleidoscopic, constantly changing, with forms collapsing and fragmenting, colors shifting, ghostly calligraphy floating in the background. The main character is an English East India Company officer, at first stolidly implanted within the world of a Mughal miniature painting, then balancing precariously and ultimately dissolving. Jewel-like shapes detach themselves, become floating corpuscles--to our eye the opium derived from the poppy and shipped from India to China in the 19th century.
The music is perfectly suited to the images; one is lured into the viewing room-- which is separate from the large, open main gallery-- by the deep, melancholy themes. Together, moving images & flowing music, tell a story of transcultural exchange, of disparities in power and unbalanced power, of decay and renewal.
Above all, Sikander (trained at the National College of Arts, Lahore before moving to RISD, and living now in NYC) and Yun (trained at the Shanghai Conservatory before moving to Oberlin and Harvard, and living now in NYC) are superb at re-contextualizing traditional forms and at mixing different genres without resorting to pastiche or the lowest common denominator. In this, they remind Lobster & Canary of Yinka Shonibare and of Kehinde Wiley, artists who are in the vanguard of our emerging globalized world, knitting us together while retaining the granular, organic individuality of each of us and the authenticity of our constituent local cultures.
As Sikander puts it in an artist statement on the Sikkema, Jenkins site:
"I find the terminology and the referencing of work in terms of an east and west paradigm, simplistic and dated. It robs the work of all nuances in meaning. In fact these days the world is small and one should really consider work in terms of some sort of global context of ideas. Work I believe should stand on its own, irrespective of geography."
For more Sikander, click here and click here (a filmed conversation between Sikander and MoMA director Glenn Lowry).
For more Du Yun, click here (scroll far down on the right-hand side to check out her list of influences!).
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Berman, Delany, Hairston, Hernandez, Johnson & Kushner at The Center for Fiction (NYC): Celebrating Le Guin
Last month The Center for Fiction in midtown Manhattan presented a reading series as part of the NEA's Big Read (in partnership with Arts Midwest) celebrating Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea. (The Center is an elegant haven for books and book-lovers in the midst of Manhattan's roar and hustle, reminding Lobster & Canary of the wizard's school on the island of Roke in Le Guin's Earthsea; visit the Center, support the Center.) Click here and here for information on the entire series. Lobster & Canary was in the audience October 24th for one of the panels: "Outsiders In/Of Science Fiction and the Fantastic," moderated by Ellen Kushner, and featuring Steve Berman, Samuel R. Delany, Andrea Hairston, Carlos Hernandez, and Alaya Dawn Johnson.
The panel was everything such an event should be, i.e., a warm, smart and authentic conversation both among the panelists and with audience members, deftly moderated; a lively give-&-take, laced with inclusive humor.
Kushner launched the discussion by asking whether speculative fiction is inherently an "outsider genre." Lobster & Canary is happy to report that we could not discern a clear consensus among the many and quickening responses (what a dull panel it would have been had a consensus emerged). The garden simply has too many blooms--as Le Guin notes in her essay collection, Cheek by Jowl (referenced by Hairston on the panel), fantasy is necessarily about "reinventing the world of intense, unreproducible, local knowledge" as a way to deny or refute simplistic conclusions, false unanimity and soul-flattening homogenization.
Or perhaps there was agreement that spec fic is intrinsically outsider art but the panel was eager to move on to two other (related) questions:
* Is spec fic friendly to writers other than straight white males (corollary: friendlier than other genres)?
* Is the boundary between speculative fiction and other forms of fiction (what Delany called here "Big Lit") clear, hierarchical and fenced?
Not surprisingly, opinions varied on both themes. Responses were thoughtful and nuanced inside their "yes but..." and "maybe, sometimes" wrappers. Le Guin was the stalking horse throughout, The Left Hand of Darkness and The Lathe of Heaven referred to as much as or more than The Wizard of Earthsea, the critical essayist of "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" and The Wave in the Mind as honored as the novelist.
A few flowers from the garden:
Berman suggested that the speculative elements in a story are akin to the tools a carpenter uses, that speculation is not present merely as either ornamentation or an end in itself, but as a means to address deeper societal issues.
Hairston spoke of spec fic as writing in the subjunctive, the "what might be." She interleaved that concept with the drive to identify and then recover what we have lost, the right and need to imagine worlds when "the film stock has dissolved" in ours. She also reminded us that, even with super powers, there is no guarantee that one will be able to change the world-- spec fic is not simple escapism or wish fulfillment.
Johnson emphasized the playful use of spec fic to "twist the world," to see what the twisting reveals about how we live today, and how we might live otherwise now or in the future.
Johnson also highlighted (citing David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas as an example) that the boundaries between speculative fiction and the other kind appear to be getting more porous, as genre fiction experiments with literary techniques and mainstream fiction adopts speculative tropes.
Delany took a less sanguine view, arguing that the border is very real and patrolled by power brokers who only now and then allow, say, a Vonnegut up and through. He used Sturgeon as the counter-example of a great writer who has gone unheralded by "Big Lit."
Hernandez turned the map inside out, leaving the border police ineffectively guarding checkpoints that no longer matter, by saying all fiction is speculative--it is just that self-proclaimed spec fic writers are more honest about what they are up to.
The fact that The Center for Fiction hosted the Le Guin series suggests that the borders may be fairly open, or at least that visas are no longer necessary. (But see the P.S. to this entry). The panel discussed Nabokov, Flaubert and Morrison along side Russ, Disch, and of course Le Guin.
Lobster & Canary regrets only that we were unable to attend the other panels and readings in the series!
P.S. Then again, perhaps Delany is right to be skeptical of claims about genuine understanding and rapprochement between Spec Lit and Big Lit. Four days after this panel, Glen Duncan opened his review of Colson Whitehead's Zone One in The New York Times Book Review this way: "A literary novelist writing a genre novel is like an intellectual dating a porn star. It invites forgivable prurience: What is that relationship like? Granted the intellectual’s hit hanky-panky pay dirt, but what’s in it for the porn star? Conversation? Ideas? Deconstruction?" *Sigh*
The panel was everything such an event should be, i.e., a warm, smart and authentic conversation both among the panelists and with audience members, deftly moderated; a lively give-&-take, laced with inclusive humor.
Kushner launched the discussion by asking whether speculative fiction is inherently an "outsider genre." Lobster & Canary is happy to report that we could not discern a clear consensus among the many and quickening responses (what a dull panel it would have been had a consensus emerged). The garden simply has too many blooms--as Le Guin notes in her essay collection, Cheek by Jowl (referenced by Hairston on the panel), fantasy is necessarily about "reinventing the world of intense, unreproducible, local knowledge" as a way to deny or refute simplistic conclusions, false unanimity and soul-flattening homogenization.
Or perhaps there was agreement that spec fic is intrinsically outsider art but the panel was eager to move on to two other (related) questions:
* Is spec fic friendly to writers other than straight white males (corollary: friendlier than other genres)?
* Is the boundary between speculative fiction and other forms of fiction (what Delany called here "Big Lit") clear, hierarchical and fenced?
Not surprisingly, opinions varied on both themes. Responses were thoughtful and nuanced inside their "yes but..." and "maybe, sometimes" wrappers. Le Guin was the stalking horse throughout, The Left Hand of Darkness and The Lathe of Heaven referred to as much as or more than The Wizard of Earthsea, the critical essayist of "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" and The Wave in the Mind as honored as the novelist.
A few flowers from the garden:
Berman suggested that the speculative elements in a story are akin to the tools a carpenter uses, that speculation is not present merely as either ornamentation or an end in itself, but as a means to address deeper societal issues.
Hairston spoke of spec fic as writing in the subjunctive, the "what might be." She interleaved that concept with the drive to identify and then recover what we have lost, the right and need to imagine worlds when "the film stock has dissolved" in ours. She also reminded us that, even with super powers, there is no guarantee that one will be able to change the world-- spec fic is not simple escapism or wish fulfillment.
Johnson emphasized the playful use of spec fic to "twist the world," to see what the twisting reveals about how we live today, and how we might live otherwise now or in the future.
Johnson also highlighted (citing David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas as an example) that the boundaries between speculative fiction and the other kind appear to be getting more porous, as genre fiction experiments with literary techniques and mainstream fiction adopts speculative tropes.
Delany took a less sanguine view, arguing that the border is very real and patrolled by power brokers who only now and then allow, say, a Vonnegut up and through. He used Sturgeon as the counter-example of a great writer who has gone unheralded by "Big Lit."
Hernandez turned the map inside out, leaving the border police ineffectively guarding checkpoints that no longer matter, by saying all fiction is speculative--it is just that self-proclaimed spec fic writers are more honest about what they are up to.
The fact that The Center for Fiction hosted the Le Guin series suggests that the borders may be fairly open, or at least that visas are no longer necessary. (But see the P.S. to this entry). The panel discussed Nabokov, Flaubert and Morrison along side Russ, Disch, and of course Le Guin.
Lobster & Canary regrets only that we were unable to attend the other panels and readings in the series!
P.S. Then again, perhaps Delany is right to be skeptical of claims about genuine understanding and rapprochement between Spec Lit and Big Lit. Four days after this panel, Glen Duncan opened his review of Colson Whitehead's Zone One in The New York Times Book Review this way: "A literary novelist writing a genre novel is like an intellectual dating a porn star. It invites forgivable prurience: What is that relationship like? Granted the intellectual’s hit hanky-panky pay dirt, but what’s in it for the porn star? Conversation? Ideas? Deconstruction?" *Sigh*
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Toronto SpecFic Colloquium: Modern Mythologies
The Lobster and Canary hugely enjoyed participating in the Toronto SpecFic Colloquium on October 15th. Toronto has deep roots in speculative fiction and a robust specfic scene (it is no surprise that Toronto will host next year's World Fantasy Convention)--all of which were on display at the Colloquium.
Sandra Kasturi and Helen Marshall of Chizine Publications did a superb job organizing the event (full disclosure: CZP publishes my work, but truly I would say this even if I were published elsewhere). Other sponsors included Toronto's leading comix/ graphic novels store, The Beguiling, and Toronto's specialty science fiction/ fantasy/ horror bookstore Bakka Phoenix, plus the specfic magazine Ideomancer and poetry small press Kelp Queen.
For details, click here. A short summary:
Guest of honor Mike Carey -- author of the Felix Castor novels, of X-Men, Hellblazer, Lucifer, the graphic novelization of Gaiman's Neverwhere, and many other good thing--delivered an elegant, thought-provoking, very well received keynote address entitled " 'Speak of the Dazzling Wings': Myth, Language, and Modern Fantasy," on how metaphor works for and sometimes against intended meaning in fiction generally. I cannot do justice to the address here--I urge Mike to get it published, so that our wider community can read and comment. Delivered with humor and without presumption, Mike's lecture spanned evolutionary biology (touching on Brian Boyd's On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition & Fiction), T.S. Eliot, hard-boiled detective novels, comic books, Owen Barfield (perhaps the least-remembered Inkling, whose Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning from 1928 is steadily gaining more notice and adherents), and much, much more. Mike's central concepts derived from and played with the work of Wallace Stevens ("Speak of the Dazzling Wings" is the last line in the Stevens poem "Some Friends From Pascagoula").
Mike's performance was all the more impressive, since he must have been fairly massively jet-lagged: he and his wife Linda (who is herself an accomplished fantasy author, writing as A.J. Lake) had just stepped off the plane from London!
The Colloquium also featured (in no particular order): Hugo Award-winner Peter Watts demonstrating that none of us has free will and that there is no such thing as "reality" (one of those talks that reminds us of an intricate machine whose purpose is not fully understood, that may even be slightly sinister, yet lures us in for closer inspection-- against our will); Daniel Heath Justice providing an excellent overview of Native American specfic and scholarship on the same (I look forward to hearing more from and about Daniel, and likewise more about the many authors and scholars he summarized); a lively exchange on how writers use and re-use classical mythological themes, complete with readings from Shakespeare, Tennyson and Homer, between Lesley Livingston and Caitlin Sweet; a very interactive session on utopias and activism with Emily Pohl-Weary; and an insightful, spirited roundtable with booksellers and publishers on the state of the specfic field in commercial/market terms.
And, of course, the power of the gathering includes the many conversations struck up by and among participants. For instance, we were delighted to meet Diana Kolpak, whose just-released collaboration with photographer Kathleen Finlay, entitled Starfall, certainly intrigues.
The 2012 edition of the Toronto SpecFic Colloquium-- with World Fantasy Award winner Robert Shearman as GoH-- will be October 20th. Go get your tickets now.
Sandra Kasturi and Helen Marshall of Chizine Publications did a superb job organizing the event (full disclosure: CZP publishes my work, but truly I would say this even if I were published elsewhere). Other sponsors included Toronto's leading comix/ graphic novels store, The Beguiling, and Toronto's specialty science fiction/ fantasy/ horror bookstore Bakka Phoenix, plus the specfic magazine Ideomancer and poetry small press Kelp Queen.
For details, click here. A short summary:
Guest of honor Mike Carey -- author of the Felix Castor novels, of X-Men, Hellblazer, Lucifer, the graphic novelization of Gaiman's Neverwhere, and many other good thing--delivered an elegant, thought-provoking, very well received keynote address entitled " 'Speak of the Dazzling Wings': Myth, Language, and Modern Fantasy," on how metaphor works for and sometimes against intended meaning in fiction generally. I cannot do justice to the address here--I urge Mike to get it published, so that our wider community can read and comment. Delivered with humor and without presumption, Mike's lecture spanned evolutionary biology (touching on Brian Boyd's On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition & Fiction), T.S. Eliot, hard-boiled detective novels, comic books, Owen Barfield (perhaps the least-remembered Inkling, whose Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning from 1928 is steadily gaining more notice and adherents), and much, much more. Mike's central concepts derived from and played with the work of Wallace Stevens ("Speak of the Dazzling Wings" is the last line in the Stevens poem "Some Friends From Pascagoula").
Mike's performance was all the more impressive, since he must have been fairly massively jet-lagged: he and his wife Linda (who is herself an accomplished fantasy author, writing as A.J. Lake) had just stepped off the plane from London!
The Colloquium also featured (in no particular order): Hugo Award-winner Peter Watts demonstrating that none of us has free will and that there is no such thing as "reality" (one of those talks that reminds us of an intricate machine whose purpose is not fully understood, that may even be slightly sinister, yet lures us in for closer inspection-- against our will); Daniel Heath Justice providing an excellent overview of Native American specfic and scholarship on the same (I look forward to hearing more from and about Daniel, and likewise more about the many authors and scholars he summarized); a lively exchange on how writers use and re-use classical mythological themes, complete with readings from Shakespeare, Tennyson and Homer, between Lesley Livingston and Caitlin Sweet; a very interactive session on utopias and activism with Emily Pohl-Weary; and an insightful, spirited roundtable with booksellers and publishers on the state of the specfic field in commercial/market terms.
And, of course, the power of the gathering includes the many conversations struck up by and among participants. For instance, we were delighted to meet Diana Kolpak, whose just-released collaboration with photographer Kathleen Finlay, entitled Starfall, certainly intrigues.
The 2012 edition of the Toronto SpecFic Colloquium-- with World Fantasy Award winner Robert Shearman as GoH-- will be October 20th. Go get your tickets now.
Monday, October 10, 2011
Bureau and Thierry Goldberg on the Lower East Side; Mary Tompkins Lewis on Chardin
Many of Lobster & Canary's favorite art galleries are in NYC's Chelsea, but we're excited by the blossoming of interesting new (or renewed) places on the Lower East Side. Two weeks ago (Sept. 25th entry) we looked at one of those-- the DODGEGallery--and today we will feature two more, both of which nestle in the midst of bustling neighborhoods, cheek by jowl with playgrounds, nondescript apartment buildings, houses of worship, laundromats, barber shops, bodegas and bars: Bureau, and the Thierry Goldberg Gallery.
Bureau is a tiny but well-curated space on Henry Street, currently showing Painted Bones--some reliquaries by Tom Holmes. Click here for more.
[untitled Program (feathers red yellow green blk), 2011]
Thierry Goldberg's space is on Norfolk Street, hard by the ramp to the Williamsburg Bridge. Equally crisp and inviting, the gallery is currently featuring various of its house artists (click here for more). We were especially taken by Marianne Vitale's Model for Torpedo (2011):
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Mary Tompkins Lewis, a professor of art history at Trinity College (Hartford, CT), is one of our most astute commentators on painting. In her occasional essays for The Wall Street Journal, she returns our gaze to iconic images from the Western tradition, and never fails to uncover a theme or element that we might have missed in earlier visitations-- she finds something new to say about that which we believed we knew intimately.
Her most recent essay, "A Monumental Moment" (WSJ, Oct. 8th-9th, 2011) is a good example of Lewis at her best, as she unpicks the meaning of Chardin's paradigmatic still life The Ray (1728).
Lewis on The Ray:
"We hardly notice, however, Chardin's studious balance of opposites—the crafted, manmade objects squared off against those of nature; one side carefully orchestrated, the other casually strewn—because our gaze is so riveted by the ghastly specter of the gutted ray fish that hangs from a meat hook on the wall. Butchered cartilage and bloodied entrails spill forth from its luminous, silvery flesh. A hideous, half-human "face" seems to grimace in our direction; drops of moisture glimmer on its sparkling but slimy surface. The painting, closer to 17th-century Spanish scenes of disemboweled martyrs than to the decorous tradition from which it emerged, rejects both the menial stature of still life (and by extension that of its artists) and its subject of conventional beauty to celebrate the painter's virtuoso touch."
Bureau is a tiny but well-curated space on Henry Street, currently showing Painted Bones--some reliquaries by Tom Holmes. Click here for more.
Thierry Goldberg's space is on Norfolk Street, hard by the ramp to the Williamsburg Bridge. Equally crisp and inviting, the gallery is currently featuring various of its house artists (click here for more). We were especially taken by Marianne Vitale's Model for Torpedo (2011):
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Mary Tompkins Lewis, a professor of art history at Trinity College (Hartford, CT), is one of our most astute commentators on painting. In her occasional essays for The Wall Street Journal, she returns our gaze to iconic images from the Western tradition, and never fails to uncover a theme or element that we might have missed in earlier visitations-- she finds something new to say about that which we believed we knew intimately.
Her most recent essay, "A Monumental Moment" (WSJ, Oct. 8th-9th, 2011) is a good example of Lewis at her best, as she unpicks the meaning of Chardin's paradigmatic still life The Ray (1728).
Lewis on The Ray:
"We hardly notice, however, Chardin's studious balance of opposites—the crafted, manmade objects squared off against those of nature; one side carefully orchestrated, the other casually strewn—because our gaze is so riveted by the ghastly specter of the gutted ray fish that hangs from a meat hook on the wall. Butchered cartilage and bloodied entrails spill forth from its luminous, silvery flesh. A hideous, half-human "face" seems to grimace in our direction; drops of moisture glimmer on its sparkling but slimy surface. The painting, closer to 17th-century Spanish scenes of disemboweled martyrs than to the decorous tradition from which it emerged, rejects both the menial stature of still life (and by extension that of its artists) and its subject of conventional beauty to celebrate the painter's virtuoso touch."
Sunday, October 2, 2011
The Spectral Beauty of Decay at Temple Court in Lower Manhattan
Yesterday, as the sun set and rain fell intermittently, the lobster and the canary had a rare treat:
We got to visit the interior of the recently rediscovered Temple Court at 5 Beekman Street in lower Manhattan, just off Broadway by City Hall and across from the Woolworth Building-- a few blocks from the World Trade Center site. (A friend of ours is a wedding photographer who got permission to do a shoot yesterday in the now-famed building-- we tagged along).
Temple Court: a spectacularly gorgeous interior, now decayed after decades of abandonment, soon to be restored (plans are afoot to rehab the building as a luxury hotel). An oddity of life: beauty and romance hidden in plain sight. The lobster works very close to 5 Beekman, has walked past the building hundreds of times, and never paid it much mind. Until last year, no one paid the dilapidated hulk any attention, when suddenly a scene scout for films stumbled upon it. Click here for details, and for many pictures.
Built in 1881-1883 as one of the first nine-story buildings that marched up from Bowling Green (as NYC's commercial expansion drove the need for office space beyond the narrow confines of Wall Street and its immediate environs), 5 Beekman had 212 suites housing law firms, advertising and insurance companies. Above all, it had a glass-roofed central atrium, ornate iron grill work (some in the form of dragons), fireplaces, trapdoors for the hauling of safes, terra cotta and brick, colorful tiles on the floors.
The building began to shutter in the 1940s, and apparently wound down almost completely over the next decade. Today the interior is a ghostly, gaping place, with the names of long gone (indeed, long defunct) tenants etched palely on dusty glass. The walls are blotched and shadowed, the rooms empty except for echoes, the floors stippled with vague piles of refuse, oblique shards of light filter in from the panes far above.
Think of the Bradbury Building in Blade Runner.
Think of the decayed surfaces Rosamund Purcell captures in her photographs.
Here are photographs the lobster & canary took yesterday, to give you a sense of the layered mystery of Manhattan's Temple Court:
We got to visit the interior of the recently rediscovered Temple Court at 5 Beekman Street in lower Manhattan, just off Broadway by City Hall and across from the Woolworth Building-- a few blocks from the World Trade Center site. (A friend of ours is a wedding photographer who got permission to do a shoot yesterday in the now-famed building-- we tagged along).
Temple Court: a spectacularly gorgeous interior, now decayed after decades of abandonment, soon to be restored (plans are afoot to rehab the building as a luxury hotel). An oddity of life: beauty and romance hidden in plain sight. The lobster works very close to 5 Beekman, has walked past the building hundreds of times, and never paid it much mind. Until last year, no one paid the dilapidated hulk any attention, when suddenly a scene scout for films stumbled upon it. Click here for details, and for many pictures.
Built in 1881-1883 as one of the first nine-story buildings that marched up from Bowling Green (as NYC's commercial expansion drove the need for office space beyond the narrow confines of Wall Street and its immediate environs), 5 Beekman had 212 suites housing law firms, advertising and insurance companies. Above all, it had a glass-roofed central atrium, ornate iron grill work (some in the form of dragons), fireplaces, trapdoors for the hauling of safes, terra cotta and brick, colorful tiles on the floors.
The building began to shutter in the 1940s, and apparently wound down almost completely over the next decade. Today the interior is a ghostly, gaping place, with the names of long gone (indeed, long defunct) tenants etched palely on dusty glass. The walls are blotched and shadowed, the rooms empty except for echoes, the floors stippled with vague piles of refuse, oblique shards of light filter in from the panes far above.
Think of the Bradbury Building in Blade Runner.
Think of the decayed surfaces Rosamund Purcell captures in her photographs.
Here are photographs the lobster & canary took yesterday, to give you a sense of the layered mystery of Manhattan's Temple Court:
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.
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.
***********************************************************
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.
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.
***********************************************************
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!
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.
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.
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?
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?
Sunday, August 7, 2011
With Eyes Like a Lynx: Using Computers to See The Otherwise Hidden
We love the ever-expanding use of digital tools, especially in the arts and humanities. Not only for what we learn about specific artists, aesthetics and audiences, but because using computers to analyze arts and letters helps us bridge the (artificial) divide between the Arts and the Sciences.
Bits and bytes are helping us reunite the Two Cultures of the 20th century, bringing us back to the integrated, holistic approach that existed at least until the early 19th century (yes, speaking here of Western learning and the so-called common era; Lobster & Canary is always curious to know more about how other traditions of inquiry have contemplated the issues discussed here). Echoes of the days when a Goethe focused on optics and color theory as much as poetry, when a Humphry Davy and an Erasmus Darwin expressed their chemical and biological findings in poetry, when a Shelley and his Romantic peers made technology and science the serious object of their poetry.
Back to the Lunar Society of Birmingham, and to Diderot and the Encyclopedistes in the 18th century!
Back, back to the Lincean Academy in 17th-century Rome, and the Dutch and German polymaths of that same era!
Back, back, back to Da Vinci, Alberti, and Aldus Manutius!
Two areas of computer-aided inquiry particularly intrigue us:
* Image analysis: Taking the venerable techniques of connoisseurship to new levels, computer scientists have recently put forth interesting hypotheses on image identification and artistic affinities.
For instance (chosen more or less at random from among many possible examples), here is the opening to "Image Processing for Artist Identification; Computerized Analysis of Vincent van Gogh's Brushstrokes" by C. Richard Johnson jr. et al. (IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, July 2008):
"As image data acquisition technology has advanced in the past decade, museums have
routinely begun to assemble vast digital libraries of images of their collections. The
cross-disciplinary interaction of image analysis researchers and art historians has reached a stage where technology developers can focus on image analysis tasks supportive of the art historian’s mission of painting analysis in addition to activities in image acquisition, storage, and database search. In particular, the problem of artist identification seems ripe for the use of image processing tools. In making an attribution, experts often use not only
current knowledge of the artist’s common practices, in combination with meticulous comparisons of a variety of technical data (acquired, e.g., through ultraviolet fluorescence, infrared reflectography, x-radiography, paint sampling, and/or canvas weave count ), but they also include a visual assessment of the presence of the artist’s “handwriting” in the brushwork. This suggests that mathematical analysis of a painting’s digital representation could assist the art expert in the process of attribution."
(For more, click here.)
* Textual analysis: Humanists of all stripes were among the first to see the benefits of digital tools, for everything from raw set-construction and recurrence compilation to sophisticated pattern recognition.
The journal Literary & Linguistic Computing is a good gateway. Here you find articles like these:
"Constructing readings of damaged and abraded ancient documents is a difficult, complex, and a time-consuming task. It frequently involves reference to a variety of linguistic and archaeological datasets and the integration of previous knowledge of similar documentary material. Due to the involved and lengthy reading process, it is often difficult to record and recall how the final interpretation of the document was reached and which competing hypotheses were presented, adopted, or discarded in the process of reading. This article discusses the development of the application called DUGA, which uses Decision Support System (DSS) technology to aid the day-to-day reading of damaged documents. Such an application will facilitate the process of transcribing texts by providing a framework in which scholars can record, track, and trace their progress. DUGA will include a word search facility of external resources such as the Vindolanda ink tablets through the knowledge base Web Service called APPELLO. This functionality will support the scholars through their reading process by suggesting words, which may confirm current interpretations or inspire new ones. Furthermore, DUGA will allow continuity between working sessions, and the complete documentation of the reading process, that has hitherto been implicit in published editions." [Abstract for "Towards a decision support system for reading ancient documents," by Henriette Roued-Cunliffe, in the December, 2010 issue].
"The use of corpus material and methods represents a major methodological innovation in Chinese historical linguistics. The very exciting findings uncovered in this article may be seen as the first systematic large-scale investigation of the various morpho-syntactic patterns underpinning the evolution of Chinese lexis. In this article, we have made a ground-breaking investigation into the diverse lexical modes and patterns which have emerged and developed in each major period in Chinese history, in which the generation of corpus linguistic data and the subsequent computational statistical modelling have been essential." [Abstract of "A corpus-based study of lexical periodization in historical Chinese,' by Meng Ji, in June, 2010 issue].
"This article provides quantitative evidence for a hypothesis concerning fourth-century translations of Indian Buddhist texts from Prakrit and Sanskrit into Chinese. Using a Variable Length n-Gram Feature Extraction Algorithm, principal component analysis and average linkage clustering we are able to show that 24 sutras, attributed by the tradition to different translators, were in fact translated by the same translator or group of translators. Since part of our method is based on assigning weight to n-grams, the analysis is capable of yielding distinctive features, i.e. strings of Chinese characters, that are characteristic of the translator(s). This is the first time that these techniques have successfully been applied to medieval Chinese texts. The results of this study open up a number of new directions for the lexicographic and syntactic study of early Chinese translations of Buddhist texts." [Abstract for "Quantitative evidence for a hypothesis regarding the attribution of early Buddhist translations, " by Jen-Jou Hung, Marcus Bingenheimer and Simon Wiles, in April, 2010 issue}.
For more from Literary & Linguistic Computing, click here.
Bits and bytes are helping us reunite the Two Cultures of the 20th century, bringing us back to the integrated, holistic approach that existed at least until the early 19th century (yes, speaking here of Western learning and the so-called common era; Lobster & Canary is always curious to know more about how other traditions of inquiry have contemplated the issues discussed here). Echoes of the days when a Goethe focused on optics and color theory as much as poetry, when a Humphry Davy and an Erasmus Darwin expressed their chemical and biological findings in poetry, when a Shelley and his Romantic peers made technology and science the serious object of their poetry.
Back to the Lunar Society of Birmingham, and to Diderot and the Encyclopedistes in the 18th century!
Back, back to the Lincean Academy in 17th-century Rome, and the Dutch and German polymaths of that same era!
Back, back, back to Da Vinci, Alberti, and Aldus Manutius!
Two areas of computer-aided inquiry particularly intrigue us:
* Image analysis: Taking the venerable techniques of connoisseurship to new levels, computer scientists have recently put forth interesting hypotheses on image identification and artistic affinities.
For instance (chosen more or less at random from among many possible examples), here is the opening to "Image Processing for Artist Identification; Computerized Analysis of Vincent van Gogh's Brushstrokes" by C. Richard Johnson jr. et al. (IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, July 2008):
"As image data acquisition technology has advanced in the past decade, museums have
routinely begun to assemble vast digital libraries of images of their collections. The
cross-disciplinary interaction of image analysis researchers and art historians has reached a stage where technology developers can focus on image analysis tasks supportive of the art historian’s mission of painting analysis in addition to activities in image acquisition, storage, and database search. In particular, the problem of artist identification seems ripe for the use of image processing tools. In making an attribution, experts often use not only
current knowledge of the artist’s common practices, in combination with meticulous comparisons of a variety of technical data (acquired, e.g., through ultraviolet fluorescence, infrared reflectography, x-radiography, paint sampling, and/or canvas weave count ), but they also include a visual assessment of the presence of the artist’s “handwriting” in the brushwork. This suggests that mathematical analysis of a painting’s digital representation could assist the art expert in the process of attribution."
(For more, click here.)
* Textual analysis: Humanists of all stripes were among the first to see the benefits of digital tools, for everything from raw set-construction and recurrence compilation to sophisticated pattern recognition.
The journal Literary & Linguistic Computing is a good gateway. Here you find articles like these:
"Constructing readings of damaged and abraded ancient documents is a difficult, complex, and a time-consuming task. It frequently involves reference to a variety of linguistic and archaeological datasets and the integration of previous knowledge of similar documentary material. Due to the involved and lengthy reading process, it is often difficult to record and recall how the final interpretation of the document was reached and which competing hypotheses were presented, adopted, or discarded in the process of reading. This article discusses the development of the application called DUGA, which uses Decision Support System (DSS) technology to aid the day-to-day reading of damaged documents. Such an application will facilitate the process of transcribing texts by providing a framework in which scholars can record, track, and trace their progress. DUGA will include a word search facility of external resources such as the Vindolanda ink tablets through the knowledge base Web Service called APPELLO. This functionality will support the scholars through their reading process by suggesting words, which may confirm current interpretations or inspire new ones. Furthermore, DUGA will allow continuity between working sessions, and the complete documentation of the reading process, that has hitherto been implicit in published editions." [Abstract for "Towards a decision support system for reading ancient documents," by Henriette Roued-Cunliffe, in the December, 2010 issue].
"The use of corpus material and methods represents a major methodological innovation in Chinese historical linguistics. The very exciting findings uncovered in this article may be seen as the first systematic large-scale investigation of the various morpho-syntactic patterns underpinning the evolution of Chinese lexis. In this article, we have made a ground-breaking investigation into the diverse lexical modes and patterns which have emerged and developed in each major period in Chinese history, in which the generation of corpus linguistic data and the subsequent computational statistical modelling have been essential." [Abstract of "A corpus-based study of lexical periodization in historical Chinese,' by Meng Ji, in June, 2010 issue].
"This article provides quantitative evidence for a hypothesis concerning fourth-century translations of Indian Buddhist texts from Prakrit and Sanskrit into Chinese. Using a Variable Length n-Gram Feature Extraction Algorithm, principal component analysis and average linkage clustering we are able to show that 24 sutras, attributed by the tradition to different translators, were in fact translated by the same translator or group of translators. Since part of our method is based on assigning weight to n-grams, the analysis is capable of yielding distinctive features, i.e. strings of Chinese characters, that are characteristic of the translator(s). This is the first time that these techniques have successfully been applied to medieval Chinese texts. The results of this study open up a number of new directions for the lexicographic and syntactic study of early Chinese translations of Buddhist texts." [Abstract for "Quantitative evidence for a hypothesis regarding the attribution of early Buddhist translations, " by Jen-Jou Hung, Marcus Bingenheimer and Simon Wiles, in April, 2010 issue}.
For more from Literary & Linguistic Computing, click here.
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