September 27, 2006

Cuts to regional museums.

Philistines.

September 13, 2006

Things are a'brewin

at work. Talk of doing two plays this year: No Exit and possibly The Trojan Women. Good parts, excellent parts, for women with presence, good lungs, and short hair.

And both plays are so upbeat. I will need a prescription if I am to take part. As Hecuba says, "evil vies with evil in the struggle to be first."

The jury is out on whether or not the Jinker Boy could lie still on a shield.

Update (14/9/06): JB says yes he could lie still as long as he can keep his eyes open because he doesn't like to close his eyes but he can lie very very still with his eyes open like this, look [sprawls on bed with eyes, oddly, closed]. So now I will be practicing "play dead!" with my kid. Well, why not? My dog refuses to do it.

August 8, 2006

Paintings of detritus

Catherine Murphy, "Scratches" (2004), graphite on paper

Followed this link to Elena Molinari's beautiful realist paintings of crushed pop cans from RaShOmoN and was reminded of Glenn Priestley's series of discarded black shoes, which I noted some time ago.

Not quite the same as "Trash Art" or "Garbage Art," which use discarded materials to create art. These artists paint or draw more traditional pieces which take trash, or garbage, as their subjects:

Valeri Larko's paintings explore the detritus of the industrial wasteland.

Jessalyn Haggenjos paints recycled bottles.

Trash: What We Value and What We Throw Away: a group show that just ended in NYC.

See also Idelle Weber's Cooper Union Trash (1974)

Susan Metrican paints litter, and people cleaning up litter (which is not the same as revelling in litter, but still … )

It's the Zeitgeist, baby!

Are these objects "beautiful"? They become beautiful, arguably. And paying attention to them — to their rich materiality — is one way of witnessing what is happening to the world.

Or maybe just coming to terms with it.

April 26, 2006

Children's theatre

The Jinker Boy and I went on a double date yesterday with his friend E. and E.'s mum, C., to see a performance of a piece of musical theatre based on a popular children's series. The children seemed to enjoy it; they were asked to participate throughout and the little girl behind us yelled hellos to the various characters for the full hour and a half. Our two boys enjoyed it as well, though at five they were too cool to dance in the aisles.

The problem was that C. and I could barely stand it. First and foremost, the main actress, a woman of at least thirty, was playing a little girl. It was bad enough that she was jumping around, arms overhead, with her unbound B-cups bouncing. (Petty-minded and crass of me I suppose, but it was disconcerting. Whatever happened to the time-honoured tradition of binding ones breasts for such occasions?) Not only that, but her voice: she was channelling Bernadette Peters channelling Barney.

Second complaint: apart from the aforementioned, every, and I mean every sound was canned. There were various characters in big fluffy animal costumes, but they were lip syncing. Or they would have been, had they had lips. The talking, singing trees were not even afforded the dignity of having a silent person inside; they were just empty props (and don't get me going on how one of the tree-characters was doing Elvis. Yeah, kids love Elvis. And such sly and topical humour for the parents). The set was minimal, the plot was uninspired, and a good chunk of the songs — the singable ones — were not original.

Television shows and movies cannot get away with this nonsense or they would have few repeat viewers, but a theatrical piece has been and gone before one can even write a crabby blog post.

All that aside, kids were, as I said, dancing in the aisles. But does that mean that we cannot aspire to more for them? If they find warmed-over schlock appealing, think how magical a really good production would be.

February 21, 2006

Recycle, reuse

Julie Arkell, Penguin Tree. Look closely; there are little logos from Penguin Books on the tree.

Over at the wonderfully named art for housewives, cynthia has posted, oh, a million or so links to various objets made with recycled paper, including a giant paper outdoor sculpture in Pennsylvania (doesn't it rain there?), a fair trade tote made of newspapers, and the work of UK folk artist Julie Arkell. As someone who feels weighed down and controlled by all the objects in my life, I find these sorts of projects — projects which seek to diminish rather than add to our collective detritus — crack open the window a little.

February 20, 2006

There oughta be a law.

Read it and weep: William Blake's illustrations for Robert Blair's "The Grave" — "the most important Blake discovery in a century" — to be broken apart and auctioned separately in order to maximize profit for the group of Philistines investors which owns them.

Really, there ought to be a law governing the destruction of single objects — i.e. books — or coherent collections that are deemed of sufficient worth or interest.

Death's Door. An engraving by Blake, rejected by publisher Robert H. Cromek. Luigi Schiavonetti did the engravings for the published project. (Here is his "Death's Door.")

December 12, 2005

You may remember

that I reviewed my performance as an audience member at a performance of Robert Moore's production of Waiting for Godot. Russ Hunt has reviewed the play itself, and it is an excellent, balanced analysis. And he addresses the central question of why the play is so difficult to watch, yet why we must watch it.

I have been thinking some more about the issue of gender and Godot (and Beckett in general, I suppose). Others are ahead of me: Beckett's estate unsuccessfully tried to block an all-female production in 1991 on the grounds that "the play was about male characters and would be deformed by an all-female cast" (deformed??). The compromise reached: a letter of protest was read before each performance (which could only have made the production all the more interesting).

There was a college production in 2001 that used two casts, one male and one female. The same year, David Legore directed an all-female college production which enabled him, he writed, to discover "the universality in Beckett’s voice" (programme [PDF]). A quick Google will bring up a plethora of similar productions. In China there were all-women productions in the 90s, one in which Gogo and Didi are waiting in a bar. Susan Sontag's controversial 1993 production in Sarajevo played with gender, with three pairs of Didis and Gogos: one female, one male, and one mixed (interview).

Interestingly, the Didi/Gogo relationship may have been based, to some extent, on time Beckett and his wife Suzanne spent running from the Nazis, sleeping in ditches, and bickering as they waited to meet up with unknown contacts in the French resistence. There is that modernist impulse to remove the historicity, I suppose. I wonder how Suzanne felt?

Question: how far should women in the audience go — how far can we go — in identifying men as the default sex?

Further question: how did these all-female productions finesse Didi's prostate trouble?

November 30, 2005

Laughing at Godot: a pointless post

Robert Moore, a colleague in my dept., just directed an excellent production of Waiting for Godot. Last year it was Endgame. I don't know. These would not be my choices. So few ... well, women. So little ... well, purpose. But that being said, this was another wonderful production. Chris Stacey and Scott Shannon play so well off each other. Andrew Jones as Lucky was astonishing. Literally. Tom Goud, who performed with me last year in Mortal Remains, played Pozzo, and by god he was wonderful. What a voice. He chewed up the words, mouthed them 'til they were empty, and spat them out.

Now if only we could convince him to keep the shaved head. So butch.

I hesitate to bring up a side issue of interest to no-one but myself, but, well, I must. Unfortunately I have acquired a reputation as a woman of easy ... laughter. I'm just a girl who can't stay mum. To be truthful, I have a belly laugh that erupts out of my mouth like an alien out of Sigorney Weaver. Not ideal in some circumstances, perhaps — my students freeze in their seats when I let loose — but this laugh makes me extremely popular as an audience member for comedies, particularly difficult comedies that make many people diffident. Not me. It's a gift, it really is. The problem is that I have become self-conscious about it. The first night of Godot, the audience was apparently quiet until far into the first act, and even when they laughed, they tried to stifle it. The next day — and the next — director and cast members commented to me how they missed me in the audience. I finally went on the third night but felt so artificial that I really ought to have taken a bow with the rest of them. If you are reading this, any of you buggers, take a hint and ixnay on the jolly comments, hey? An enormous, raucous hoot of a laugh is a delicate flower. Too much sun and it hides it's red, tear-streaked shining face in maidenly abashment. Too much attention and it shrinks, its shrieks and snorts to be heard no more. It needs to be nurtured, but obliquely, discretely, from outside spitting distance. If you respect and care for it, it will be grateful and ever at your beck and call for every dreary modernist monolith you can name. But gently, gently, or it will wither and fade, its gaudy blooms too fragile for the hurly burly of public exhibition.

Think of me as a shy Sasquatch, to be lured into your uncomfortable high-school auditoriums by tireless stratagem. Never look on me directly, and I will oblige by howling and tearing up the seats.

July 8, 2005

London

London of the Mid-Seventeenth Century: engravings

London, ca. 1676: an interactive map

Seventeenth Century Spectacles: the ones you wear

Eighteenth Century London: images from the Museum of London

Cries of London Playing Cards, c.1754

Greenwood's Map of London 1827

Map of John Snow's London in 1859

Maps of London: lots of historical maps

A Gustave Doré Gallery: Images from London

London Characters and the Humorous Side of London Life

London : A pilgrimage, by Gustave Dore and Blanchard Jerrold, 1872

John Johnson Collection Exhibition 2001: Cries, Itinerants and Services

The Osborne Collection: The Cries of London

June 17, 2005

Two from the BBC

Katherine Frank alerts us to "a lively discussion programme on the Scriblerus Club with John Mullan and others" on BBC Radio 4, while Andrew Pink notes that on the Early Music Show on Radio 3, "Lucie Skeaping visits The George public house in Southwark to join a meeting of the Merrie Fellowes Catch Club. With the club's chairman, Patrick Johns, she traces its development" (available online until June 25).

(links from Frank and Pink on C18-L).

And good news from CBC radio.

Gawd I love public broadcasting! And on that front, horrifying news from south of the border.

May 8, 2005

Material culture

Red Children's Scrapbook

Heritage Scrapbooks: a site from the U of Alberta "documenting a variety of scrapbooks on a variety of topics throughout the last 300 years," powered by Streetprint Engine , to which I linked before. Interesting to see some of the uses to which it can be put. Not all of the pages of each scrapbook seem to have been included, however, which makes it a little less useful. But lovely, nonetheless.

The Quilt Index: "an online research and reference tool designed to provide unprecedented access to contextual information and images of quilts held in private and public collections."

(both links from Plep).

Silent Witness: "The story of a dress donated to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum by Lola Rein (via growabrain).

April 24, 2005

Ye Olde Linkes

A Variety of Ladies' Head Dresses, The New lady's magazine (1786). Click for larger image.

Ladies' headdresses at the Beinecke (via Jim Chevalier on C18-L).

Sharon posts a multitude of links on crime. She writes, "Has to come around sooner or later in an election campaign." Indeed. She has also scored a copy of Hanging not punishment enough (1701) and plans to make it available. Please do!

The Gutenberg Bible held at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin is available on CD-ROM. G. Zombie has one. Here it is online. There are a number of other copies online: two at the British Library, which one can compare; the Göttingen Gutenberg Bible (ca. 1454); and the Keio Gutenberg Bible. Bible links from the University of Calgary. See also The Oliver Cromwell Website and The Goodspeed New Testament Manuscript Collection (both via Plep).

Libraries as fingerprints at Historiological Notes.

The fantastic architectural drawings of Achilles G. Rizzoli (1896-1981) at Giornale Nuovo.

The Opium Wars (via Plep).

Britain's 18th-c canal system being restored (via Metafilter).

Click for larger image.

April 19, 2005

Online resources

DNA of Literature Project. The Paris Review is posting their interviews with authors, by decade. They are up to the 1970s, with the 80s due in June (via Maud, who posts highlights of the Joan Didion interview).

The Borgesian Cyclopaedia: "Being a Virtual Reference to the World of Jorge Luis Borges" (via Plep).

The Epic of Gilgamesh and Reading in the Islamic World (both via Mark Woods).

Publishers' Bindings Online, 1815 - 1930: "a digital collection of decorative bookbindings that strengthens a growing interest in this 'common' object - the book." Feast your eyes (via Bibi).

The Encyclopedia of Television "includes more than 1,000 original essays from more than 250 contributors and examines specific programs and people, historic moments and trends, major policy disputes and such topics as violence, tabloid television and the quiz show scandal. It also includes histories of major television networks as well as broadcasting systems around the world and is complemented by resource materials, photos and bibliographical information" (via Exclamation Mark).

Nest, that very funky shelter magazine "where high-style London and Paris interiors meet igloos and prison cells on equal terms," ceased publication last year but has plans to digitally archive its entire fabulous run (via things magazine, though one might be forgiven for missing it within a truly phenomenal link dump).

April 16, 2005

Would-be Dada doll

made from recycled materials:

Monte was about to propose. He had read somewhere that a single rose was more romantic than a large bouquet, but standing here, ready to ring the doorbell, he felt ill- equipped...

(link from BoingBoing).

April 14, 2005

Aquaman, we hardly knew you

Hand-knit superhero costumes (via BoingBoing). You know, I thought these looked familiar; turns out I linked to them almost a year ago. And that link was also from BoingBoing. Guess too much stuff goes through there for them to keep track. Anyway, these are so melancholy looking, they're worth a second look.

My mother describes the knitted swimsuits she used to wear as a girl. Something like this, I wonder, but with a cap?

April 11, 2005

Down and out

Lost America (via Life in the Present).

Urban Britain and ispy graffiti gallery (via Rashomon).

April 5, 2005

Poems from prose

Click for larger view.

This will be old news to some, but I have just discovered it: A Humument (link from compton crop circle): artist Tom Phillips makes — or samples, or "plunders" — poetry from a copy of W.H. Mallock's three-decker A Human Document (1892). Each and every one of 370 pages. Fascinating and beautiful, though it looks as though at least one book was harmed (Ray Davis tells us why we shouldn't cry). And here are a selection of critical essays and commentaries on the work, and the Tom Phillips website. Some quick history. Why Mallock? And you can buy it, for US$395 plus.

Ray Davis has made available Maddock's apparently better known The New Republic: according to Davis, "the work of a clever and vindictive student, a vicious mimic with little experience of life outside home or school." If I link it, that surely doesn't mean I actually have to read it, does it? I'd rather bask in Phillips's work:

Click for larger view.

[NB. They're not all yellow. I just like yellow.]

March 30, 2005

Artful links

Click for larger image

Charles Benefiel's Outsider Art (via Rashomon).

Strangedolls.net. What it says (via Metafilter).

Unorthodox art condemned in Moscow "A Moscow court has found the organisers of an art exhibition guilty of inciting religious hatred" for exhibits such as "a Coca-Cola logo with Jesus' face shown next to it, with the words: 'This is my blood'" (via Cronaca).

Street Art Zen.

Phil Shaw's book art (via CatalogueAnnie). Inspiring.

Stupid Comic Covers. And yeah, some of these are really ... stupid (via Bibi).

March 17, 2005

Fun with words

Three ways to recycle those letters (and they do pile up):

Visit the Web of Letters (via Mirabilis),
spell words in letters made of book-covers (Warning! Resource-intensive. Via BoingBoing), or
spell with flickr photos (original source mislaid).

March 16, 2005

Nice stuff to look at

Das Reich der Liebe ("The Kingdom of Love") by Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf (Leipzig, 1777). Click for larger image.

Cartographical Curiosities, Map Collection, Yale University Library (via Mark Woods).

Woodcuts from Sebastian Brant’s 1494 book Das Narrenschiff ("The Ship of Fools") at Giornale Nuovo.

Katja posts on cowboy culture in East Germany.

Marja-Leena Rathje posts some beautiful prints by artist Bonnie Jorden.

The Art of James Bond (via Life in the Present).

February 27, 2005

Beautiful junk

Chris Jordan, Circuit boards, Atlanta 2004

Artist John Taylor's ships made from found objects.

Chris Jordan's photographs: Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption. And Flickr: The Urban Decay Pool (links from wood s lot). From Jordan:

Our consumerism hold an anesthetizing kind of mob mentality; collectively we are committing a vast and unsustainable act of taking, but we each are anonymous and no one is in charge or accountable for the consequences… So perhaps my photographs can serve as portals to a kind of cultural self-reflection. It may not be the most comfortable terrain, but I have heard it said that in risking self-awareness, at least we know we are awake.

Elephant Dung Paper and Paper-Products and Kangaroo Dung Used to Make Paper. Okay, so maybe those two aren't, strictly speaking, "beautiful" ...

Bags Made from Strange Materials. Okay, but felt-tip markers? Skateboards? (from TreeHugger).

February 16, 2005

Asylum art

Untitled, c.1940, Ink on card, by Madge Gill. Henry Boxer Gallery

Boing Boing points towards an article about Outsider Art in France which is, as it turns out, also about Outsider Art in Britain. Or perhaps that would be "insider art," as one of the collections discussed is held at the Royal Bethlam Hospital. Yes, Bedlam. And apparently there are hundreds of pieces of art by inmates, the vast majority of which have never been displayed.

January 29, 2005

Public/private

Everyone has seen the photos of stricken Americans at sorryeverybody.com (and there is a book out), as well as the responses at apologiesaccepted.com (my favourite is "It's okay. We're sorry for Arnold. — Austria"). Here is something more therapeutic, more anonymous: people draw or write their secrets on a postcard as part of a group art project originally mounted in a gallery, now online. Some of these are very affecting, in a cryptic, jesus-I-hope-they-don't-mean-what-I-think-they-do sort of way: "I love one of my children." "I liked myself better as a boy" (link from Liliputian Lilith, who links to me in the same post. Just so you know). It seems that the project is ongoing, so get out those 4×6 cards.

This reminds me of an episode of Northern Exposure, possibly the only one I ever saw, in which one of the characters writes down her regrets, past actions she can't let go of, etc. etc., makes them into little boats, and sets them adrift on a river. It has stuck in my memory. Though I always wondered whether or not anyone found the papers while they were out fishing.

If you try this, use soluable ink.

Writing has often been cathartic for me. Which is why I should do it more, I suppose. Though it is also a wee bit cathartic to read other people's secrets, and not just the ones that hit close to home.

January 28, 2005

The performing arts

Garrick as Richard III [inside a gourd??]

Bibi points towards a guided tour of music halls, part of a larger site about performance in the U.K. called PeoplePlay UK: Theatre History Online. Nice pages on Restoration and c18th theatre: lots of graphics and goodies.

Too much of a yawn? Perhaps you'd like to check out buffology: "Every Buffy character, episode, cast member, writer and director and every word of every show, in a searchable database" (via BoingBoing).

WWW Virtual Library: Theatre and Drama.

Theatre History on the Web.

International Theatre Resources from Artslynx.

Kabuki for Everyone.

Ford's Theatre.

Thai Elephant Orchestra (from Mirabilis).

January 24, 2005

Representations

From the Bottom Up: popular reading and writing in the Michael Zinman Collection of early American imprints (via Bostonia). A lot of these items are reprints of, or are very like, texts printed in the U.K.

At the same site, another exhibit: Picturing Women explores how women are figured, fashioned, turned into portraits, and told about in words and pictorial narrative.

Hildegard von Bingen

Slide show of her art on this attractive site (link from Catalogue Blog).

Bonus links:

Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) - A discography. And another.
Patron Saints Index: Blessed Hildegard von Bingen.
Hildegard von Bingen lyrics in latin and english.
Hildegard of Bingen: Symphony of the Harmony of Heaven.
Abtei St. Hildegard.
Hildegard.org.
Hildegard von Bingen's healing chants.
Hildegard of Bingen: "a blazing mind longing to soar above the clouds."

And, a migraine tidbit:

According to this site:

It is now generally agreed that Hildegard suffered from migraine, and that her visions were a result of this condition. The way she describes her visions, the precursors, to visions, to debilitating aftereffects, point to classic symptoms of migraine sufferers. Although a number of visual hallucinations may occur, the more common ones described are the "scotomata" which often follow perceptions of phosphenes in the visual field. Scintillating scotomata are also associated with areas of total blindness in the visual field, something Hildegard might have been describing when she spoke of points of intense light, and also the "extinguished stars." Migraine attacks are usually followed by sickness, paralysis, blindness-all reported by Hildegard, and when they pass, by a period of rebound and feeling better than before, a euphoria also described by her. Also, writes Oliver Sachs

Among the strangest and most intense symptoms of migraine aura, and the most difficult of description and analysis, are the occurrences of feelings of sudden familiarity and certitude... or its opposite. Such states are experienced, momentarily and occasionally, by everyone; their occurrence in migraine auras is marked by their overwhelming intensity and relatively long duration.

It is a tribute to the remarkable spirit and the intellectual powers of this woman that she was able to turn a debilitating illness into the word of god, and create so much with it.

I have started a new blog category, "migraines," in honour of Hildegard.

January 17, 2005

Minimal posting

Mussolini, eat your heart out! (Click for larger image)

It was a snow day today, which means that I got much less done than if I'd gone in to the office, what with the Jinker Boy and all. He is climbing on my back as we speak.

Here is an interesting site I saw on Plep: The Iconography of Paradise Lost. Doré, Blake, and many others. I particularly liked the illustrations of John Martin (1789-1854), of whom I hadn't heard. I am in the middle of teaching Coleridge's "Rime" and am showing my students Doré's illustrations of the poem — with presentation software, eh? — and it's interesting to compare his work on the two different texts. I had thought, with Coleridge, that he had used too much Christian iconography for what is a pretty pantheistic poem — lots of angels, bright lights, etc. etc. — and here they are again where they more properly belong.

Also showing my class Willy Pogány's (1882-1955) illustrations of "Rime." Very fin de siècle.

January 15, 2005

Blog about quilts. And robots.

And then off to bed.

Quilts, Counterpanes & Throws. Check out the 18thc quilts (via Plep).

Robot quilts by Kathy Weaver (via BoingBoing).

Robot Gallery: "This exhibit room features photographs of toy robots
and other images of robots from ephemeral sources."

January 12, 2005

Something old

The Scrap Album: Victorian Greeting Cards, Valentines, and Scraps (via Plep).

Check for the History Carnival tomorrow.

There is a thread at C18-L about monstrous births.

Watercolours of Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605) (featured at Giornale Nuovo).

Misteraitch has started a new weblog at which he is reproducing the essays of Isaac D’Israeli from his Curiosities of Literature, a wide-ranging work full of excellent advice, such as the following:

AMONG the Jesuits it was a standing rule of the order, that after an application to study for two hours, the mind of the student should be unbent by some relaxation, however trifling.

He also warns,

THE literary treasures of antiquity have suffered from the malice of men, as well as that of time. It is remarkable that conquerors, in the moment of victory, or in the unsparing devastation of their rage, have not been satisfied with destroying men, but have even carried their vengeance to books.

Though Misteraitch has rescued him from such a fate.

This is quite an inspiring project. I wonder if I have anything that is otherwise unavailable; one or two things, I think. Think how much we could add to the common pool if we all followed Misteraitch's lead.

January 2, 2005

Places to go

For you, not me:

The latest Early Modern Carnival is up at Claire's: Part I and Part II.

Beautiful works by Max Ernst at Giornale Nuovo.

Rich and wonderful antique tiles and exhibition: John DePol: Artist and Engraver (links from Life In The Present).

4,000 years of women in science (via Plep).

And oh my god, except for the goatee, this is me (via Boing Boing).

December 5, 2004

Art below stairs

Claire points towards the webpage for a show, now closed, called Below Stairs: 400 Years of Servants' Portraits, and Sharon, in the comments, recommends Erddig Hall, "famous for its portraits of the servants of the house from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. (There is also a book, The Servants' Hall. Lots of pictures.)," while Natalie writes about Gwen John, sister of Augustus, one of whose earliest oils was of her cleaning woman, Mrs. Atkinson.

[The painting is "Heads of Six of Hogarth's Servants" by William Hogarth, c 1750-5, part of the Below Stairs exhibit. I've always liked this painting: the range of ages and faces, particularly the young boy at the top; the woman in the bottom right, the only one looking at the viewer; the old man, looking away from everyone else.]

November 27, 2004

Well I'm back

An interesting evening: a reading and the ballet. I generally have to work hard to convince myself to go out again once I am home, and after a long week it was difficult to go back into the cold and leave a warm house, a pre-schooler getting ready for his bath, and a soft bed. But I did, and am glad.

Beth Powning reads well. I haven't read The Hatbox Letters but from the two excerpts I heard, it is, at least in part, an intensely nuanced exploration of loss and loneliness. In other words, although I recognize the artistry, I doubt I will read it any time soon.

There is an interesting congruence between Powning's novel —

When Kate Harding, recently widowed, receives nine antique hatboxes — family letters, diaries, and memorabilia — from Hartford, Connecticut, she finds herself drawn back to the childhood summers she spent in Shepton, her grandparents’ Connecticut house.

and the ballet, Les Portes Tournantes, in which there are also documents from the past in the form of "a mysterious black book."

It appears that this evening was my time for dabbling: first a reading from a book I likely won't read, and then the first ballet I've seen in well over a decade. The first Act failed to draw me in, though the second did, despite my reservations about the narrative as some sort of wish-fulfilment story for children of divorced parents, and my discomfort with the theme of two mothers who leave their children. Boy children. (Wonder what my little sprout is doing? Is he upset that I went out? Why am I here watching a narrative about abandonment since to do so required me to temporarily abandon my son? And of course, when I got home I found that he had had a fine evening with his father, played for ages, and went easily to sleep. So.)

One thing I found interesting about the performance was the consistent focus on other forms of artistic production: one character is a painter, and paintings are a significant part of the set. Another is a musician; a "string quartet" dances their performance with their instruments. The artist's mother, danced by the magnificent Evelina Sushko, was a pianist who accompanied silent films in Cambellton, N.B. Textual documents — the mother's unmailed letters — are central. And of course the ballet itself is based upon Jacques Savoie's 1985 novel.

But much of this is still dabbling. The fact of the matter is that I could not bring myself to care very much for any of these characters, Powning's or the dancers' (with the exception of Sushko's solo in which she gives up her infant son. Yeah, there's a theme here). I was irritated with Powning's widowed Kate; she seemed so solipsistic, so bogged down — or even luxuriating in — in the minutia of her existence. (Big caveat: yes I know I only heard two small sections.) Jaded? Cold? Tired? Insensitive? Overwhelmed? In denial??? You be the judge.

Turned on the ignition in the car afterward and was blasted with some screaming metal on the campus radio, flipped to the "Golden Oldies" station but it was even more maudlin than usual, so settled on the CBC. And caught the tail end of the last in this year's Massey Lecture series, A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright:

Each time history repeats itself, so it's said, the price goes up. The twentieth century was a time of runaway growth in human population, consumption, and technology, placing a colossal load on all natural systems, especially earth, air, and water — the very elements of life.

The most urgent questions of the twenty-first century are: where will this growth lead? can it be consolidated or sustained? and what kind of world is our present bequeathing to our future?

In A Short History of Progress Ronald Wright argues that our modern predicament is as old as civilization, a 10,000-year experiment we have participated in but seldom controlled. Only by understanding the patterns of triumph and disaster that humanity has repeated around the world since the Stone Age can we recognize the experiment's inherent dangers, and, with luck and wisdom, shape its outcome.

Finally, some perspective. There will be no readings, no ballet, after the apocalypse. But on the plus side: no critics, either.

Globe and Mail review of the ballet.
Part one of the Massey Lectures is available on audio.
A Short History of Progress available from Anansi Press.
Interview with Ronald Wright. And another.
Wright's novels, A Scientific Romance and Henderson's Spear.
Civilization is a Pyramid Scheme: The Maya's ruined temples reveal a frightening message for us all, says archaeologist Ronald Wright (originally published in the Globe & Mail 08/05/2000).

November 26, 2004

Culture culture

Joe is home (the flights there and back were both uneventful), and I am off for an evening of highbrow fun. First, Beth Powning is reading at UNBSJ from her novel The Hatbox Letters as part of the Lorenzo Reading Series. But that is only the beginning: one of my colleagues in French was wandering the halls with a clutch of tickets to the ballet — Les Portes Tournantes (The Revolving Doors), presented by the Atlantic Ballet Theatre of Canada — at our Imperial Theatre (here are cool 360° tours):

A mysterious black book, a beautiful young pianist from the silent-screen era, and the reclusive universe of an artist. A young boy, haunted by a jazz melody from the past, sets the lives of three generations in motion as the ballet moves between modern-day Montreal, rural New Brunswick of the 1930’s, and New York City in the jazz age.

Based on the award winning novel by Jacques Savoie.

The award-winning French novel. Luckily dance is a universal language, eh?
 

November 21, 2004

Final bow

Our last night went really well. I am feeling exhausted and contented. We made something good. Or three good things, I suppose (though I only had a hand in two of them). A huge backlog of marking, a preschooler who wants his due, and a rough work-week ahead, and no doubt that will all start to worry me tomorrow. But tonight I'll sleep well.

November 20, 2004

Mama doesn't know I'm a thespian

Day two of our plays. The usual pattern of a three night run seems to be a heady opening, a flat second performance, and a rally on the third night. With three short, separate plays, however, all bets are off. Last night I felt unhappy with Mortal Remains but satisfied with Trifles. Tonight MR felt much better but Trifles seemed to drag, we all felt so. We have one more night to get it right.

That being said, the responses from the audiences have been positive and generous. Still, you know when you are flying and when you are just taking up space. Why does anyone act? Sometimes the rewards seem disproportionately few, compared with other pleasures. Even a moderately good meal can be satisfying, and a moderate little orgasm is quite nice, thanks, but a moderately successful performance leaves me kicking the wall.

Well, I guess it's clear what I should have been doing these past several evenings. And only part of it involves a fork.

But that's not entirely fair. It's not simply the joy of that elusive transparent, conscious-during-every-moment performance, wonderful though that is. Or so I've heard. It's also the floating and ever-changing community of the cast and crew. That has been, as always, a solid pleasure. (Yes, Frank, if you are reading this, I'm talking to you, you old curmudgeon.)

But that's not fair, either. There are those moments, scattered though they can be, when the stars align and you find yourself really meaning the words or gestures, when you find yourself really listening and reacting. Even last night there was at least one part, a very emotional bit, difficult to play genuinely yet not overplay, that I don't think has ever been better. So.

November 18, 2004

Playing dress-up

Leastways, that's what I told the Jinker Boy.

"Just pulling out a stitch or two."

Posting

may be infrequent; our plays are opening tonight for a three-night run.

Overture, dim the lights!
This is it, the night of nights!
No more rehearsing or nursing a part;
We know every part by heart.

Overture, dim the lights!
This is it, we'll hit the heights.
And oh what heights we'll hit!
On with the show, this is it!¹

(When I was a kid I used to think it was "no more rehearsing or cursing our parts.") Anyone in the area, come on down.

¹ Mack David & Jerry Livingstone (1961)

November 16, 2004

Alix Olsen

Folk poet and so much more.

Visit her site.

Critics write: "Slam superstar Alix Olsen gives voice to the voiceless," and "She will make you laugh your head off and then cry your eyes out in the space of five minutes."

November 22, 2004
Ganong Hall Lecture Theatre, UNBSJ
Doors open 4:45pm
Show 5pm
Free Admission

Presented by the Faculty of Arts, the Gender Studies Programme, and the Women's Resource Centre

Update (19/11/04): Alix Olsen's Canadian dates have been cancelled; no word yet on rebooking. Too bad; it looked to be a good show.

Hogarth

The Jones Family Conversation Piece by Hogarth, held at the National Museum & Gallery Cardiff. Long-lost ancestors, no doubt.

The Rake posted, a few days back, on William Hogarth (1697-1764), and pointed towards the very useful page about Hogarth on Artcyclopedia, a comphrehensive site that links to online resources on particular artists: "Great art online, from over 8,000 famous painters, sculptors and photographers, at art museum sites & image archives worldwide."

Bonus links:

A previous post on print culture and Hogarth.
William Hogarth's Realm, Or, an XVIII Century Artist's Magazine: nice setup, like a period newspaper.
The Site for Research on William Hogarth
HOGARTH: "Helpful Online Gateway to Art History"

November 14, 2004

You would think

after my recent chagrined post, that I wouldn't link to Boing Boing for a while. But here is a link to a marvelous piece:

An artist created a small animation of a robot walking, then rendered each frame as a stencil. Then s/he went around town and sprayed the stencil on walls, lamp-posts, etc, and photographed each one. When all the photos are played back in sequence, it creates the animation, but with a wildly flickering background of cityscapes that is absolutely wonderful to behold.

How could I not link to it? It has everything: a robot striding through an apocalyptic cityscape to a background of suitably ponderous music. Actually, I don't think it's meant to be a robot; it's too relaxed, too organic. Some kind of Hellboy creature. Though it seems to be based on some sort of padded athlete — a soccer goalie? (The site is in Latvian, Bablefish doesn't do Latvian, and the translator I found wouldn't translate any of the nouns for some reason.) Anyway, I am at clear risk of getting mixed up in questions of intentionality by going down this road. So, a Hellboyish creature it is.

Well there goes any credibility I had.

November 6, 2004

And here's a parting shot

from Giornale Nuovo which brings to mind the U.S. election. And not just because most everything brings to mind the U.S. election these past couple of days (I worked it into a lecture on Pilgrim's Progress yesterday. Which I suppose is not really that much of a stretch).

October 22, 2004

An evening of one-act plays

October 17, 2004

An evening of one-act plays

In a month, I will be performing in two of three one-act plays directed by Robert Moore, my colleague at UNBSJ. One of the plays is his own Mortal Remains, a play for two people, an older man (colleague Tom Goud) and a middle-aged woman (I know, I'll have to paint on wrinkles), who meet on a park bench. It's a lovely play. One of the things I like best about my character, Gladyce, is the way she manages to express a lot even though she speaks almost entirely in clichés. Bob wrote it quite some time ago and I don't know that his younger self was altogether sympathetic to this older, somewhat conventional character. I think though that his feel for dialogue helped to create something true in her, perhaps even in spite of that younger self, and I hope I can communicate that.

The second play I don't know much about; it is by another colleague, Don Dessurud, for two women, a mother and a daughter.

The third is Susan Glaspell's (1882-1948) Trifles (1916), as it turns out an old standby in American lit. classes, though I only read it for the first time last spring. Glaspell played Mrs. Hale, the part I am playing, in the first production. I love Mrs. Hale. I'm planning to play her big and solid, maybe not as empathetic as she could be, but once engaged, like a bulldog.

Trifles in RealAudio.
"A Jury of Her Peers" (1917), a short story based on the play
Links to other writings
The Susan Glaspell Society
Biography of Glaspell
Webster's

Update (23/10/04): Don's play is called Nutmeg Harmony. Here is the poster.

October 13, 2004

Our house

I have been meaning to write about our house for awhile now; I dipped my toes in once, but never wrote the full post. I was prompted today by a recent post in Boing Boing about a forthcoming documentary, Leisurama, about the Raymond Loewy Leisurama prototype home from the late 1950s.

After following another Boing Boing link, I subscribed to Atomic Ranch some months back, and have happily devoured three issues. Unlike every other decorating mag it focuses exclusively on houses the same vintage as ours; it's such a treat not to have to wade through endless Rococo apartments, Victoriana, and country kitchens to get to the one (if I'm lucky) piece that might be of some practical use. But of course, a magazine with such a clear focus also has a clear aesthetic, a clear ... well not really an ideology, per se, but at least, a fetish.

Yes mid-century stuff is very desirable, very saleable — though luckily for us, not here — but many people's appreciation goes far beyond modernist aesthetics or even being in step. Part of it is nostalgia: these were the houses some of us grew up in, or wished we did. (The mother of a friend of ours, upon first visiting our house, said, "This is just like the homes in the magazines when I was first married. This is what a house was supposed to look like.") But it does seem somewhat perverse to feel nostalgia for such a conflicted period, even the fun part: one friend said ours was a "Dean Martin pad," and we were pleased until we pictured Dino stretched out on top of the (hypothetical) wet bar. (Now Rock Hudson's bachelor pad in Pillow Talk is another story: bring on the remote-controlled make-out music!).

Bonus links:

TV lamps worth megabucks

Cooper–Hewitt National Design Museum

The Literature & Culture of the American 1950s: a great-looking course with lots of links to texts

All Things Atomic: "the golden age of homeland security"

The Diefenbunker (link from The Shatnerian)

The Los Angeles Conservancy Modern Committee: amazing links, from the Museum of Neon Art (MONA) to a stationwaggoners email list

The Recent Past Preservation Network

University of Nevada—Las Vegas Library: Dean Martin Display

Dino's Lodge: "A 100-proof tribute to King Leer... baby! brought to you by the Sammy Mazola Jr. Foundation for the Arts"

Rat Pack Impersonators

Groceteria.com: "a site about supermarket history and architecture, roughly covering the period from the 1920s to the 1970s."

1950s wallpaper at the Smithsonian

Monsanto House of the Future: "Conclude your tour in the sleek living room, with its giant, non-operational, wall-mounted television screen"

Font Diner: "premium quality retro fonts"

idreamofjeannie.com

Bachelor Pad Burritos

Mt. Bachelor Pad dog bed

October 4, 2004

For the one who has everything

Beautiful fish, made of hubcaps. Truly. (from Plep).

October 3, 2004

Wierd SF

Still working on grant proposal, and trying to put together what I'm going to say about The Man of Feeling tomorrow, but what the hey:

Where's my atomic-powered car? (from Plep).

"If all stories were written like science fiction stories" by Mark Rosenfelder (via FutureTense).

Did you ... or are you just 'special'? (from Shatnerian).

Team America: World Police: according to Boing Boing, " it may be the single best crappy movie you'll see all year."

Elmo art (via web zen).

September 14, 2004

Cities

Under Paris: a cinema in the catacombs.

The Face of Tomorrow: "a series of photographs that addresses the issues of globalization and identity" (both via the inestimable Mirabilis).

September 6, 2004

Since the Jinker Boy

had a meltdown last night and I felt clumsy and useless, some links about things maternal and child-like:

The Ideals of Motherhood - Aesthetics of Form and Function in Hindu art (from Plep).

Philobiblon on older mothers in the 19thc, and women-friendly gnosticism.

Magic Pencil: contemporary children's book illustration at the British Library (from Plep).

And, another Alice link: The Background and History of Alice in Wonderland (also from Plep, who is going on holiday so go over and read your fill now).

August 27, 2004

Who, me morbid?

My Blair Witch photo of the cemetary at Bury St. Edmunds (July 2004). Click image for larger view.

Afterlife: the four seasons in Streatham Cemetery: lovely in a the opening of Six Feet Under sort of way (from web zen).

Thanatos.net: death mask gallery (from web zen).

The Body Revealed: Renaissance and Baroque Anatomical Illustration (from Plep).

Obituary Central (from Plep).

Cemetery art and photography (from Plep).

Death and Dying, part of the Victorian Dictionary (from Plep).

William Corder's death mask, the Moyses Hall Museum, Bury St. Edmunds

SF stuff

Scientists choose their favourite sf authors (from Maud).

Matthew Cheney strongly recommends Light by M. John Harrison.

Tara and Willow together 4ever (from ms.musings).

Jill gets annoyed with fembots.

Very creepy; very beautiful. And as Maud would say, categorization is a conundrum. (from Boing Boing).

Go ask Alice

Lauren's Alice in Wonderland Page: collection of illustrations (from Bookninja [08/23/04]).

Dakota Fanning might be in new Alice film from Spielberg (from Stephany at Maud's).

Alice is big in Japan.

Alice for sale.

The Lewis Carroll Society.

Lewis Carroll Academic Information.

More Alice links.

Pop-up Alice.

Flash Alice (from Boing Boing).

Alice in Wonderland Theme Park.

Alice photo-montage.

Alice In Wonderland and the Shroud of Turin.

Go to Wonderland yourself or send a loved one.

And what would life be without Quizilla? Which Alice in Wonderland Character are you? (link from Sharon. Who is of course also the Chesire Cat.)

[I misplaced a link to a site featuring wierd and creepy photos of a Japanese Alice and her cohorts in a stiff, formal garden setting; it was linked recently on someone's blog. I'd love for anyone who recalls it to leave a comment. Even if the comment begins, "That what 'Add Bookmark' is for, bubblebrain!"]

Update (30/8/04): Thanks to Vernica for the elusive creepy Alice link: Alice in Wonderland staged by Japanese cosplayers (link from Boing Boing). And check out her The Playful Antiquarian for more examples of "Carroll-mania."

Illustrations

Seeing Is Believing: 700 years of scientific and medical illustration: an exhibition from the New York Public Library (2000). Nice site which allows you to look at some of the illustrations in detail (from Mirabilis).

Drolleries and two posts about Andrea Mantegnaat Giornale Nuovo.

August 23, 2004

Origami

Torill at thinking with my fingers (in more ways than one, as it turns out) points towards a slashdot post with various origami links. See in particular a most amazing dragon, and Joseph Wu's site, to which I have linked before.

August 21, 2004

Japanese children's art

Boing Boing links to Japanese children's books from 1920s: beautiful, modern paintings, stylish and haunting. Xeni Jardin comments thoughtfully about the experience of looking at this site, aware of the historical events through which the children who originally read these books lived. Yes. And more generally, looking at someone's else nostalgia is an odd, poignant thing in itself.

August 16, 2004

Dangerous Liaisons

There is currently an interesting conversation on the C18 listserv about Dangerous Liaisons: Fashion and Furniture in the 18th Century at the Met. The show is apparently a series of tableaux, some of which, like the one above, are generating discussion (i.e. Just exactly how does a lady sit with a harp?).

July 25, 2004

Women on the go

Made a quick visit to the National Portrait Gallery yesterday (and did you know that there is also one in the U.S.? Most confusing for googlers) and saw Off the Beaten Track: Three Centuries of Women Travellers. Aphra Behn and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu were featured, but I didn't buy the book because the exhibition was skewed towards the 19th and 20th centuries. While interesting, not my patch.

Had upscale Italian last night. That brings the tally of London meals to one Chinese, one Portuguese, one Thai, one Indian, and one Italian. Had English cooking elsewhere, mind — mainly at the conference, and with my relatives — though I did have an excellent Indian meal in Bury St. Edmunds.

This will probably be my last entry for a few days; am flying back to NYC this afternoon and will no doubt be prevented from having any keyboard time by the Jinker Boy. And quite rightly.

And, am about to eat my last pain chocolat and drink my last latte for awhile; back to low carbs. And not a moment too soon.

Yesterday's conversation with a just-woken Jinker Boy:

Me: Good morning, sweetie!
JB: Mummy.
Me: Did you have a nice sleep?
JB: [beat] Yiss.
Me: Mummy's coming home tomorrow!
JB: Why?

July 18, 2004

The British Museum

Went to the British Museum today; the last time I was there I worked in the Reading Room but only visited one exhibit, of early books. Today I spent a good few hours and saw three exhibits:

Living and dying, an exhibition that "looks at how people around the world deal with the tough realities of life, averting or confronting trouble, sorrow, need and sickness" (online tour). Not as drippy as they make it sound. The bulk of the exhibit consists of artifacts from different cultures. Cradle to Grave, an installation piece, was very cool. And moving:

Cradle to Grave explores our approach to health in Britain today. The piece incorporates a lifetime supply of prescribed drugs knitted into two lengths of fabric, illustrating the medical stories of one woman and one man.

Each length contains over 14,000 drugs, the estimated average prescribed to every person in Britain in their lifetime. This does not include pills we might buy over the counter, which would require about 40,000 pills each.

Sobering to see all those tiny pills laid out in neat rows, covering so much space.

I also saw Matisse to Freud: A Critic's Choice, Alexander Walker's bequest of his fabulous collection of more than 200 twentieth-century prints and drawings, including Jim Dine's "Five Paintbrushes (Sixth State)" (1973), which I particularly liked:

Finally, I saw Enlightenment,¹ "a rich new exhibition using thousands of objects from the Museum's collection to show how people understood their world in the Age of Enlightenment" (online tour). The focus here is on eighteenth-century approaches to various developing branches of science. The exhibits are displayed much as they might have been at the time, in various glass-topped cases, and the refurbished King's Library is the perfect setting for showcasing an approach to artifacts rather than the artifacts themselves. An interestingly self-conscious move, as the British Museum was itself founded in 1753.

Before I left I popped my head in the former Reading Room where I spent many contented hours doing dissertation research, but was unable to stay. Of course the new library site was needed and I was relieved to hear that the BM was going to maintain the Reading Room, but in fact it is not the Reading Room any more; even though it is the actual physical space, apparently unchanged, it has become a model gesturing to its own past, no different from any other exhibit despite its much-touted function as information hub for the museum. When I was there last it was a working library; the only people there were librarians or readers. Now it is filled with the same crowds who stand in front of all the other displays. The Great Court, in which the Reading Room is centred, is grand and airy, a beautiful space. But still, I am sad.

¹ Beware the pulsing icons.

June 22, 2004

Le Malade imaginaire

I'm very excited; we have tickets to the Comédie-Français production of Le Malade imaginaire (1673) this coming Friday at the Imperial Theatre here in Saint John, the only Canadian stop in a three-city North American tour (It was just in Brooklyn and Chicago). We are extremely fortunate to have two performances here; as David Finkle points out in his review of the NYC production,

The Comédie-Française troupe has been on view locally only four times in the past 25 years, so we haven't had much opportunity to consider the challenges facing a venerable institution that was founded in 1680 and is dedicated to preserving classical French plays.

Finkle goes on, in this moderatre review, to describe how the troupe, "many of whom join the 65-member outfit for life, walk the fine line between curating and creating."

Other reviews of the NYC performance were not even so kind, but just as I was getting nervous, I found Hedy Weiss's review of last Thursday's performance in Chicago:

[W]atching the company's sharp, graceful, exquisitely designed and altogether precisionist production of The Imaginary Invalid — which opened in a brief touring engagement Thursday night as part of the World's Stage program of the Chicago Shakespeare Theater — you may quickly come to sense that Moliere remains the most radical and modern of all these playwrights, and that he may even be considered the first feverishly "feminist" playwright....

Director Claude Stratz's meticulously choreographed staging is visible in the actors' responses and body language, which detonate as if set to the beats of a metronome. And the massive government subsidies that support the Comedie-Francaise are apparent in the ravishing set (a grand architectural backdrop, with pop-out windows and gorgeously draped curtains) and costumes that are a mix of earth tones and lush creams. Chicago Shakespeare's stage has been transformed from a deep thrust to a proscenium for this production, making the action a bit more distant than usual. But the formal beauties of this production — even the sweep of muslin curtains — is rich in drama.

Think of me on Friday, fluttering my fan and making little moues.

Links:

Site-Molière: bilingual site; lots of resources; e-texts of plays.
Gideon Lester introduces the play
The play (en français).
Beautiful stage designs of Richard Finkelstein for another production.

Poster from American Repertory Theatre production (1999):

June 19, 2004

Paper cuts

The wierd and wonderful web zen has a page of links to paper crafts. Notable are Ida Pearle's collages, the paper games arcade from way of the rodent, box-bots (see above), and what Bradford Hansen-Smith does with paper plates.

And if you are interested in origami, be sure to see Hojyo Takashi's Contemporary Origami; his human figures are rounded and graceful, while some of his animals shade into geometric abstractions. Wonderful stuff.

June 16, 2004

Sue Coe and Dan Jones

[click graphic for larger view]

wood s lot recently linked to Sue Coe's new piece, "Triumph of Fundamentalism," part of her show at Galerie St. Etienne. (A show, I now realize, I could actually catch next month). Wood also links to BULLY! Master of the Global Merry-go-round, Coe's new book, at Graphic Witness.

I have been a fan for years now, and in fact have an etching of hers hanging in the living room: "The Last Dance" (1985). Joe and I bought it years ago with the encouragement of our friend Daniel Jones and his wife, after all having seen Coe's show at the PArtisan Gallery in Toronto. They bought "Charlie Parker Going to Wash Dishes" (1984; no picture available). Dan was enthusiastic about Coe and proud to have a piece by her, particularly one that featured the iconic Parker. The last time I saw it, it was hanging on an otherwise bare wall in the apartment Dan had lived in for many years. A few of us were cleaning it up and boxing things, some weeks after his suicide. I can never look at "The Last Dance" just for its own sake, any more.

June 12, 2004

c18th collections

The Wallace Collection of 17th and 18th-century art promises to "delight, amaze and bemuse" (via The Little Professor).

The Assembly Rooms and Museum of Costume, Bath.

The Geffrye Museum, London: the English domestic interior from 1600 to the present day.

Enlightenment, a new gallery at the British Museum.

The Grand Tour: Landscape & Veduta Paintings Venice & Rome in the 18th Century.

Ca' Rezzonico: Museum of the 18th Century, Venice.

Pretty Prints, Clever Cottons: 18th Century Fabrics.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art: 18th century textiles.

18th Century Architecture.

And, in case you thought it was all tea and country walks:

Women's Lives in the British Civil Wars (via new group blog, 17th century).

The Diary of Martha Ballard, a late eighteenth-century midwife and healer in Massachusetts (via 17th century).

An 18th Century Cipher Device Exhibit.

The Olive Branch Petition.

An Early Information Society: News and Media in Eighteenth-century Paris. According to 17th century,

This is the first electronic article to be published by the American Historical Review, this is an 'enhanced' version of a presidential address in the print journal, by Robert Darnton, the distinguished cultural historian. As well as the text, it has maps and (translated) police reports corresponding to the places shown, images, songs (texts and translations, as well as performances), an online discussion, and a 'bonus' essay by Darnton.

And the everpopular The Proceedings of the Old Bailey London 1674 to 1834 (I'm sure I linked to them before, but the more links the better, I always say).

June 11, 2004

c18th

Count the phallic symbols!¹

"In about 1622, an album of etchings by the French graphic artist Jacques Callot (1592-1635) was published, under the title Balli di Sfessania_…" So begins the latest post at Giornale Nuovo. And — bonus! — a link to Spectacles du Grand Siècle ([_en français]).

Or are you strictly an anglophone? Then you may be interested in the Britannica First Edition Replica Set, wherein can be found "the sum total of human knowledge in 1768" for $195 (US) (via Stephany Aulenback).

My own modest contribution to an encyclopedia has just wafted out over the ether. Yes, my entry on Eliza Haywood is finally out of my hair, and yours. Oh, I love crossing things off the list!

¹ Winner receives two pounds of saltpetre.

Linked links

Three book links:

Altered Books: the site of the International Society of Altered Book Artists (via moleskinerie).

Pop-up and Movable Books, part of the University of Delaware Library's "world of the child" collection (via Plep).

Fancy limited edition of Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver , list price $ 200.00. But as they say at the Literary Salon, while it's tempting, think of all the not-so-fancy books you could buy with that money!

Segue into SF links:

China Miéville's next novel, Iron Council, due out July 27, takes us, according to the editors, "back to the decadent squalor of New Crobuzon—this time, decades later." (Thanks to The Agony Column). Miéville is also one of the authors represented in the anthology Cities: The Very Best of Fantasy Comes to Town, out this past April.

The Academic Buffy Bibliography (via wood s lot).

Segue into dead languages:

"Yoda speaks like Anglo-Saxon" (courtesy of Mirabilis).

Blogging in Latin (via Household Opera).

(Clever how I did that, wasn't it?)

June 4, 2004

Bighappyfunhouse.com

"Accidental art. Found photographs. Via Chicago." Thanks to Household Opera (and, good luck with the move).

June 3, 2004

Poaching

culture, poaching links...

Hand knit superhero costumes that look like grandpa's longjohns, embroidery samplers featuring comic book vignettes, beaded trading cards: it's all here (via Boing Boing).

The Heinz Nixdorf Museum: "From cuneiform to computers." Think stone tablets and computers that fill whole rooms (via Boing Boing. Who have the resources). On a related note, Liz Lawley contemplates adding to the landfill.

Elizabeth Gaskell's home open to tourists (from MoorishGirl). I've been to Chawton and Dylan Thomas's boathouse, have walked through Bloomsbury, and will be going to Haworth in July as part of a conference. Now to get up to Manchester ...

More on gendering robots, from the new, refurbished ms.musings.

Also from msmusings: WisCon, and seven women sf writers talk about rewriting a masculine tradition. This from Patricia Wrede: "Size does matter."

Perhaps I have misjudged Eliot all these years (from Rake's Progress).

The Shatnerian keeps up with his home town.

Vintage tobacco ads (and related products such as "Slug-a-Bug insect killer for use around children, food, pets!") and before and after trade card ephemera (from Beautiful Stuff [and here]).

"Corpi, Murakami, and Contemporary Hardboiled Fiction" by Cathy Stebly, about using hard-boiled fiction to examine the past (from wood s lot).

"Studies in Narrative: Science Fiction and Fantasy": twenty lectures that overview both genres, available as MP3 downloads from The University of Minnesota (from Beautiful Stuff).

Index to the biographies and writings of members of the Frankfurt School and The Charles Booth Online Archive (both from Plep).

June 1, 2004

Law & Order art

with a major focus on Lenny, may he enjoy his retirement:

(from Boing Boing).

Interesting which television shows get poached, and in what ways. Though as well as this highbrow stuff, there is plenty of more standard Law & Order fanfic out there (you're all of legal age, right?):

Prosecutorial Discretion
Exculpatory Evidence!
Law & Order slash fanfic
FemFic.org: Law & Order
Law & Order Slash Links
The Law & Order: SVU Femslash Site Index

May 27, 2004

More on Gillray

Giornale Nuovo continues the story of 18thc satirist James Gillray, begun here. A wonderful post with the combination of narrative and visuals that the Giornale does so well.

(See my earlier post for a sample drawing and some other links).

May 26, 2004

Some links

Feministing has a post about Cindy Sherman, Photographer extraordinaire, and links to some other feminist artists (Yay Guerrilla Girls!).

The Ex-Classics Web Site takes on the needful task of reproducing texts formerly influential, now out of print, such as the Newgate Calendar with its tales of crime and depravity.

Million Book Project (via Maud).

Two very funny links from Boing Boing: Donald and Mickey insinuated into various canonical works of art, and famous nudes with clothing on.

This is doing the rounds. Reminds me of those little videos of Dave Pogue on the Macworld CDs. Do those guys go to some speech school somewhere?

Common Errors in English and How to Recognize Plagiarism (both via Palimpsest).

The Power of Woe, The Power of Life. Images of women in prints from the Renaissance to the present (from Plep).

Amnesty International’s annual report for 2004 now out (via Crooked Timber):

Around the world, more than a billion people's lives were ruined by extreme poverty and social injustice while governments continued to spend freely on arms.

May 25, 2004

Urban decay as art

Attaboy.ca has an interesting post, which begins

For my money, urban decay is difficult to beat as a subject for photography. Japanese photographer Saiga Yuji proves it with a rousing series on Gunkanjima, a mostly artificial island that briefly held a coal-mining community off the coast of Japan.

Other links:

Modern Ruins photographic essays
abandoned-places.com
Exploring the Twin Cities
Forgotten Detroit
Forgotten NY
Industrial Archaeology in California
Infiltration: the zine about going places you're not supposed to go. Check out the story about the abandoned Stelco site. Makes me feel nostalgic for my years in Hamilton.
Lost America: the abandoned roadside west.
Modern Ruins by Phillip Buehler.
The Places I shouldn't Be Page
Sonic Atrophy
Urban Speleology: list 'o links
Urban Speleology: also links
Ruins and Urban Exploration: more links
More links
The Urban Exploration Ring: there's an army out there!

May 24, 2004

James Gillray

Giornale Nuovo has an informative post about James Gillray (1756-1815), caricaturist. And, more is promised.

Some other links:
William Hogarth
William Hogarth and 18th-Century Print Culture
Jack Lynch's Eighteenth-Century Resources — Art
University of Wales, Lampeter Hogarth Archive, and, to round things off,
A Speedy 18th Century Corset

May 15, 2004

Fascinating but annoying

Add to Origami links: Carnegie Mellon student develops origami folding robot. Via Slashdot.

May 14, 2004

Creepy, yet ... lovely

(from flickr.com, via Caterina.net. Click image for bigger picture).

May 13, 2004

Book news

The Diamond Sutra, "the earliest printed book to bear a date," is on display at the British Library. Go to the exhibition site and explore the scroll via Shockwave (via That Rabbit Girl).

Library of Alexandria discovered: "the world's first major seat of learning" (via Household Opera).

Sow's ear from a silk purse department: clutch purses made from recycled books (via Maud).

The Strand independent bookstore in Manhattan goes from "8 miles of books" to "16 miles of books" (also from Maud).

May 12, 2004

Can you stack 'em?

Pericat points towards — but only to mock! — a new design idea from Berlin called the Loftcube. But I kinda like 'em. Coming soon to a story near you.

May 11, 2004

Collectzione

From the beautifully named to drown a rose: a found type gallery and a vintage homemade tapecover gallery.

May 9, 2004

Don't they know how it ends?

Mirabilis points towards a company that sells bedding emblazoned with the entire text of Romeo and Juliet.

April 28, 2004

Recycled art

Elise blogs about her new piece by Jean Shin. Shin is an artist who makes sculptures from throwaway items like rolodex cards, discarded shoes, and used lottery tickets. Here is more info.

More (10:50): Was thinking about why I like this image, apart from a general interest in recycled art, and I think it is because the strips of shoe leather are so clean; they look fresh and even damp, like seaweed. They have left behind all associations with dusty, cracked, dry leather fit for the dustbin, and become something else completely.

Compare with Glenn Priestley's charcoal drawing, "Black Shoes" (detail):

April 25, 2004

Politics and art and sf

Against his better judgement, Kip Manley weighs in on the politics and art debate with a post subtitled "Why I Don't Trust Aesthetes." He includes a link to a horrifying story about an interview Donna Minkowitz did with Orson Scott Card, and makes some excellent points about choosing whether or not to read sf, specifically, on political grounds:

... science fiction is largely a fiction of setting: the bulk of the iceberg that’s unseen, underwater, is the act of world-building, and in that act, politics is paramount. (One is building a polis, after all.) (Oh, hey, look! World-building again!) —Therefore, it’s all-too-appropriate to keep in mind an author’s politics when considering their science fiction: an author who, say, considers homosexuality to be an aberration, is un- (or perhaps less) likely to build a world that would appeal to a reader who does not. There’s an assumption clash: one of his fundamental, foundational bedrocks is abhorrent to me, and vice-versa.

... I’ll allow as how there’s frequently large gaps in the jerry-rigged polis left as exercises for the reader: one can hardly describe every kitchen sink, after all; one must make assumptions, and count on the reader doing likewise (which among other reasons is why fan fiction [and slash fiction] is so popular in science fiction). But that’s precisely why when those assumptions suddenly clash, it’s unsettling, even violently dissonant ...

(And he goes on to quote one of my favourite writers. Read the whole post.)

Of course some sf writers reproduce the here and now in the if and when, while some mainstream writers create a strange new world in the suburbs. But Kip is correct; the particular characteristics of sf add a twist to the whole question. If I list the writers whose heads I don't mind living in for extended periods, they are often fellow travellers of one stripe or another, because in sf they are the ones asking some of the "what ifs?" that I interest me as well, even if, as is often the case, I didn't realize it before picking up the book.

Let's go back to Matthew Cheney's post of ten days ago, in which he argues not only that there are aspects of sf which make the politics of the author particularly significant, but that sf, broadly defined, is the main locus of political imaginings in literature:

It seems to me that books such as The Grapes of Wrath are anomalies in the history of fiction, and that the majority of political art — political art that lasts more than a few weeks, that is — has utilized imagination and fantasy to explore truths which lie beneath the surface of the morning paper's headlines.

Which opens the door to a discussion of definition of the genre. Another discussion; not this one.

April 21, 2004

Beckett's Endgame

A brief brag: Robert Moore, a colleague of mine, recently mounted a production of Beckett's Endgame (here's a review), and my introductory students did a webpage about the production, of which I am very proud.

Origamido

Print-on-demand chiyogami.¹ (From the paper doll chronicles, a very cool site, via That Rabbit Girl)

Josesph Wu Origami, an attractive commercial page with photos of Wu's innovative projects, resources, and more.

Hatori Koshiro's sleek site with animated folding instructions and good links.

The Geometry Junkyard's origami page: lots of interesting links and a photograph of Jeannine Mosely, who is building a fractal cube out of 66048 business cards.

Godzilla, Mothra, and more.

A plug for the Japanese Paper Place in Toronto. I've had many happy trips there, and their mail-order service is great too.

The Japan Origami Academic Society, the British Origami Society, and Origami USA. (No national organization in Canada, but several regional groups.)

A fascinating subgenre, origami with paper money.

Interactive, virtual origami at Oriland (also from the paper doll chronicles). And here is Interactive Origami in VRML and The Einstein Origami Game.

Online Origami, with an origami mystery: "You know how to crease, don't you?" She said, "Just put it between your thumb and forefinger and slide it along."

Fabric origami workshop, for those pesky remnants.

File under "questionable but still funny": a site that will send you an origami boulder, otherwise known as a wad of paper. Will do custom orders.

Erotic origami, more interesting for its existence at all, than for its artistry (via The Mumpsimus).

¹ A very popular type of colourful, printed paper used for origami.

April 19, 2004

Politics and art II

The conversation about politics and art continues apace. If you haven't read it, check out my previous entry and follow the links. Dan Green and Edward Champion have each posted thoughtful explorations of what it means to be an aesthete, in part in answer to my rather offhand characterization in the earlier post (think Oscar Wilde with the green carnation here). I could have been clearer: I was referring to the ultimate position on some sort of continuum rather than to individuals who consider aesthetic values paramount in all the nuanced ways in which it is possible to do so. But then I suppose I should have said that.

In a comment to the earlier post Edward Champion suggested that we are manoeuvring around a semantic difference, and I am increasingly convinced that this is, in part, true. We are all referring to "politics" at cross-purposes. I do in fact mean "by saying everyone is 'political' we mean everyone has his/her interests," as Dan Green puts it. He also writes, "If we are all 'political creatures who exist in the world,' are we not also 'sociological creatures,' 'historical creatures,' 'cultural creatures,' 'economic creatures'? Such abstractions are so cosmically extended as to be meaningless." To my mind the term "political" includes all these other ideas, but even so I don't feel that the term is meaningless. I suppose what I am really saying is that I am a materialist. That is how I look at things, at everything. That does not mean that I don't appreciate aesthetic values; it just means that I don't think they were inspired by the muses ("muses" meaning, something outside of history). This doesn't mean that I "prefer" politics over art; it means that I understand art — individual instances of it, our appreciation (or not) of those instances, as well as "art" as a concept or concepts — as arising from material conditions.

I am sympathetic to the irritation of people on the aesthetic side of this debate — if we should even put it that divisive way — when they feel that they are being patronized by the claims of the politicos that they are simply ignorant of the politics that are so manifestly there for anyone with eyes to see; sympathetic, because I myself am irritated by what seem to me to be parallel claims that my perspective is impoverished, that I am blinded by my agenda into merely exploiting artistic products for didactic purposes, that I can't even enjoy the beauty of a sunset without thinking of the pollution that is contributing to the display and cursing the multinationals that are destroying our grandchildren's birthright.

Not sure how to wind this up; clearly this is an old debate, but it rarely fails to draw us in. And as my mother used to say, usually in an (unsuccessful) attempt to end a conversation that was getting too fractious, "Well wouldn't life be boring if we all agreed?" Yes, especially as the quality of the disagreement has been particularly fine, of late.

Update (21/4/04): The discussion continues to be lively over at The Reading Experience.

Reversing vandalism

For a year, an unknown person mutilated copies of books on GLBTQ topics¹ in the San Francisco Public Library and left them with little typewritten advertisements for a Bible radio station inside. He was finally caught, but what to do with the books? Click here to see "Reversing Vandalism," an amazing collection by various artists, professional and amateur, made from the damaged books.

From Maud, via Bookninja.

"For Duf" by Dacey Hunter, courtesy of the San Francisco Public Library.
[The glass highlights the words, "What were you afraid we would learn?"]

¹ Okay, I'm being snotty, quoting this. So be it: "Though the vandal had clearly relied on the library catalog to seek out books on gay issues, he evidently did not understand the search results: Among the books destroyed were works by author Gay Talese and those concerning the Enola Gay, the famous World War II warplane..."

April 17, 2004

English Pattern Books

Plep points towards eighteenth-century English pattern books at the Met. The context is American but the books are British.

April 16, 2004

Politics and art

The discussion is spreading. Maud Newton writes, very reasonably,

I wouldn't necessarily avoid a writer's work based on his or her politics — and I wouldn't "boycott" a book or call for anyone else to do so because an author's beliefs are offensive to me personally. But absent some independent reason for believing that the book would resonate for me, I might be less likely to pick it up.¹

The comments section of my own original post has also become quite interesting.

Edward Champion agrees with Jessa Crispin that art and politics are separate. Kitabkhana is in accord; he writes that authors are not their books. Champion writes that when he tried to think of "great art" that is political,

The only immediate examples that came to my head were Elizabeth Gaskell, Arthur Miller, and Margaret Atwood. But even in these offerings, the politics is relatively subdued, more subject to a reader's individual impressions. It's a far more subtle thing for Atwood to point out the politics of gender in Cat's Eye by showing us how girls are reluctant to touch bugs in a university building, implying that 1940s society carried an unspoken stigma that an entomologist's line was verboeten to women.

Whoever said that politics could not be subtle? I think there is a straw man being set up here: when people hear the words "politics" and "art" together they think of the most heavy handed examples — Soviet "socialist realism" perhaps. I think that Mark Sarvas falls into the same trap in his thoughtful post.

I agree with Matthew Cheney here: all writing — all human endeavour — is political in one way or another. It could not be anything but, as we are all political creatures who exist in the world. The absolute disdain for politics of the aesthete is in itself a political choice. Of course, to a large extent when we are talking about artistic products, given our culture's continuing Romantic hangover, the inherent politics are not always overt or even conscious. But that does not mean that they are not there.

Rasputin at Sloganeering raises the economic question: every dollar you spend on a book in one of Card's endless series is a dollar that he in turn could be funnelling to political groups with whom you may violently disagree: " if you're a particularly sensitive sort, you can almost feel your money going Alliance for Marriage as soon as it leaves your hand." (Which doesn't preclude going the second-hand route, for the conscientious-but-curious.)

I want to be clear that I am not advocating boycotting Orson Scott Card — fat chance — or suggesting that I only read writers who share my particular brand of politics; as I commented about my earlier post, I would have precious little to read if that were the case. What I am saying is that I need reasons to read something, and if there is nothing on the plus side to weigh against a known negative, then I am unlikely to crack the cover. As I also commented earlier, life's too short. I used to finish any book I began, out of some sort of misplaced pride or sense of duty. No longer. And I'll never get all those hours back, either.

But at least I'm not a fantasy reader.

¹ Matthew Cheney responds to Maud's admission in the same post that she doesn't read much sf with a wonderful list of suggestions.

Correction (11:28pm): s1ngularity.net link currently not working; go to the main page and scroll down to April 14/04.

Update (17/4/04): Jessa Crispin has two more links on Card.

April 12, 2004

High/Low

Two links on the relationship between "literary" and "popular" culture:

Mark Haddon on the differences between genre and literary fiction, in The Guardian. Via Maud Newton. Haddon sees a place for each:

Genre fiction says: 'Forget the gas bill. Forget the office politics. Pretend you're a spy. Pretend you're a courtesan. Pretend you're the owner of a crumbling gothic mansion on this worryingly foggy promontory.' Literary fiction says: 'Bad luck. You're stuck with who you are, just as these people are stuck with who they are. But use your imagination and you'll see that even the most narrow, humdrum lives are infinite in scope if you examine them with enough care.'

Anne Applebaum sees an increase in the literary divide:

There are still a few "crossover'' writers, mostly writers of excellent popular books about American history, and one or two novelists. But my sense is that their numbers are shrinking, that there's almost no more middle ground. Popular culture now hates high culture so much that it campaigns aggressively against it. High culture now fears popular culture so much that it insulates itself deliberately from it.

Read the Washington Post article (sorry, registration required), or this freely accessible version. (From Crooked Timber via Arts and Letters Daily; Mercury News link from MoorishGirl).

Update (14/4/04): Read Matthew Cheney's post on Applebaum's piece. Cheney prefers the term "escapist" to "genre," and concludes, "Using such a taxonomy, there is no need to separate various forms of genre fiction from the stuff that just gets shelved under "fiction" in bookstores."

April 11, 2004

Ghost stations

Photo by David Sagarin. City Hall Station, NYC.

Underground History, a site devoted to abandoned stations on London's Underground. Via Boing Boing.

London's Abandoned Tube Stations. Via Plep.

Closed stations in Paris' subway.

Cincinnati's Abandoned Subway (also posted by Plep).

More from Cincinnati.

Remnants of Abandoned Stations, Tunnels, and Station Entrances found on the MBTA.

Abandoned Stations at nycsubway.org.

Abandoned Stations (NYC) by Joseph Brennan, "the city's foremost expert when it comes to these abandoned stations," according to NewYorkish.

Abandoned subway tunnel (Newark), at Satan's Laundromat.

Friends of the High Line, "a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and reuse of the High Line, an elevated rail structure on the West Side of Manhattan" (check out the photo gallery).

OldNYC.com, "a web page that explores some of the many facets of New York City's transportation infrastructure" (link from Making Light, in an excellent post about NYC which also links to Forgotten NY. Other links here, here, and here.)

Photo by Bruce Davidson. NYC Subway, 1980

The photo, above, is how I remember the subway when I first went to NYC with Joe in 1984. I kinda miss the graffiti.

April 3, 2004

Food for thought [wince!]

It's time for Books2Eat 2004, The Fifth International Edible Book Festival. At least fourteen countries are participating, with 45 separate events (two thirds of them in the U.S.). The Literary Salon seems a little embarrassed to even report it, but gamely suggests that the event might "get some of the participants thinking about the literary works as well." I think it is a populist form of book art — at times a little kitschy — but still a paean to the resonance of the book as a cultural icon. Some of the pieces celebrate the book as material object,

while others are more conceptual, or provide critical commentary:

Ancient Wisdom (detail) by Linda Aiello. Discovered 6 April 3002. Since a "book" hasn't been made in nearly 500 years, this is a monumental find. Many computer-related illnesses have transpired since the end of Solid Waste Act, 2506.

Of course, some are just dreadful puns. But that's fun too. In all cases, the artists are affirming the importance of the book, and reinforcing ideas of community and shared culture.

And some of the pieces are even low carb.

April 2, 2004

web zen

Strange and wonderful links blog. The museum zen entry links to xerox art, the "gallery of forgotten girlie magazines," and on-line museums: "collections and exhibits covering a vast array of interests and obsessions."

[Link from Boing Boing]

March 31, 2004

I love engravings,

and so does the author of the beautiful Giornale Nuovo (link from Long story; short pier).

March 27, 2004

Just saw "FEMILIAR,"

"a feminist textile/mixed media installation" by an artist named WhiteFeather, at the Saint John Arts Centre (show ends March 29). Interesting; an old-style feminist production, including two pieces which list menstrual blood — and one, uterine blood — among the fixins. But I liked it, unregenerate second-waver as I am¹, particularly the hair pie (what it says) and the matrimonial bedsheets, a triptych of sheets with embellished slashes in the centres which reminded me of nothing so much as the series of scenes in Salmon Rushdie's Shame (1983) in which the protagonist, a doctor, is introduced to his soon-to-be wife in a series of consultations, piece by piece through a hole in a sheet.²

It is a powerful show, that reveals the earthy, organic, and binding nature of the over-determined "feminine." Anyone who is able to catch it in the next two days is encouraged to do so.

Apparently there will be further information about WhiteFeather sometime next month, on the CBC Artspots site.

¹ I hadn't really thought of myself in this way until very recently, when taking part in an exchange at feministe about whether or not Germaine Greer is a disgrace to feminism. Part of me — a small part, inside — writhes and twists and wants to say, "Come on, guys, The Female Eunuch; cut her some slack." But I digress.

² It was not a successful marriage, in case you were wondering.

March 26, 2004

Picturing women

A link via Blog Sisters: Picturing Women, a site that "explores how women are figured, fashioned, turned into portraits, and told about in words and pictorial narrative."

Cross-posted to writingwomen.

Haven't had a Barbie post in awhile

so here is a cool site, The Distorted Barbie. Paintings, thoughtful commentary, and links. Mattel tried to shut them down in 1997, but the site is still up.

The Distorted Barbie is on detritus.net, "dedicated to recycled culture."

March 25, 2004

Memory

Boing Boing links to a story about various technological "external memories," none quite as elegant as the idea of cyber-punk implants, but getting there. I was just going to note it, but then read this beautiful poem at Watermark, and the two seemed somehow to go together. Or not.

journals, notebooks, diaries, poems

laying the mind out
on a white sheet
sometimes in modest bedclothes

sometimes naked
flabby and flatulent
sometimes in a dark shroud

look at it there
pennies on the eyes
breasts nuzzling the armpits

waiting to be washed

I think that the technology will take awhile.

March 24, 2004

Darker Bury St Edmunds

Plep links to the Manor House Museum in Bury St Edmunds, home to a fine collection of interest to the student of horology (clocks, to the rest of us), as well as some stunning costumes and textiles. But Bury St Edmunds is also the site of Moyse's Hall Museum, where can be found macabre artifacts to do with the notorious Red Barn murders in 1827.

I am planning a trip this summer, and I know where I will go first.

Addendum (3/4/04): This is also categorized under the new category of "book art" because the museum holds a book bound in murderer William Corder's skin.

March 21, 2004

Passages

Two links from an interesting blog I stumbled across called consumptive.org: "art, photography, and the uncanny":

18/3/04: photographs of recycled paper. Much more exciting than it sounds. (Scroll down to bottom of page.)

27/2/04: Time lapse photography: a woman aging 69 years, smiling throughout.

Detritus

A new category.

And here are three new links:

Photos of those hokey church signs that make you wince — such as "God is at the end of your rope" — via Long story; short pier;

and two photographers' sites: Modern Ruins by Philip Buehler, and Robert Wogan's documentation of the industrial past, both via Plep.

March 20, 2004

Heart of Darkness

wood s lot links to In and Out of Focus: Images from Central Africa, 1885–1960. Students of English 1200: here is some context for our reading last week, and next week as well.

Our house is a very very very fine house

From Boing Boing: a link to a new "shelter" (why does that term irk?)¹ magazine, Atomic Ranch, dedicated to "modest postwar houses," modernist architecture and decor, "real people, real houses."² Our (very fine) house was built in 1961. We moved here from a Victorian town house three and a half years ago and have not yet effected the full transition into the twentieth century. Perhaps Atomic Ranch will goad us to finally replace that claw-footed bookcase?

¹ I suppose it is designed to include all sorts of homes, from houses to apartments to lofts to condos to cottages, but since "shelter" implies a very basic animal need, and also includes tenements, cardboard cartons, and the basement at the Sally Ann, its use by luxury magazines (including magazines for "real people, real houses") is particularly grating. I don't know what to suggest as an alternative, because I also dislike "home" in this context (see following).

² They actually use the word "home," but since the discussion is about the material, "house" seems more appropriate. "Home," as in, "you have a lovely home," has always struck me as pretentious and somehow Victorian. Presumptuous and prescriptive. Sententious. And have I said that it bothers me? Home is where the heart is; what can a casual visitor presume to know about another's home? The house, of course, is sitting there for all to see.

March 18, 2004

Drains

A short while ago I posted on blogs which focus on found or industrial objects. Further to the topic, flaschenpost comments on a recent international upsurge in the theft of manhole covers and drains. Can you imagine stealing this,

this,

or this,

only to melt them down?

[In a comment to my short list of sites, Watermark suggests Heavy Little Objects as a fascinating addition.]

March 15, 2004

Collections

I have been marking various sites for some time now, that showcase collections of found or prosaic objects. The visual equivalent of found poetry; a testament to the compulsion to collect; a determination to find beauty in the everyday; a documentation of the post-industrial landscape. The list is now just long enough to indicate some type of zeitgeist, though I'm sure I'll add to it. Sorry that I have not noted who led me to most of these:

Rob Banham: Lettering on wheelie bins
Drainspotting [check the links page for a long list of fellow travellers]
Megan Hicks: The Newton Ground Level Gallery
Itchy Robot: Found Typography
mapsproject (via long story; short pier)
Pictures of Fire Hydrants

February 26, 2004

Participatory web art

Participatory, yet random. Go to this link and help to rewrite one of those gruesome fire-and-brimstone tracts that you sometimes find in public toilets. Link from Long story; short pier.

February 17, 2004

Bar codes and SF

From jill/text: links to a page where you can make your own barcode, part of a barcode art site. Check out the Bar Code Ophra.

Some SF links: Maud Newton links to an if-I-hadn't-read-it-on-the-internet-I-would-never-have-believed-it story about complaints that Asimov's sturdy old warhorse is a porn mag.

In the same post she points to a newly-minted blog, Tenser, said the Tensor (ref. Alfred Bester; no, I haven't read it either) that focuses on "Languages and Linguistics, Japanese and Japanese Animation, Science and Science Fiction, Comedy and Comic Books."

And la gringa dishes the dirt on those annoying sf fans.

February 16, 2004

Two funny ones

from Maud Newton:

1. Freud/Jung slash,¹

and

2. Litterati: comics by George Murray.²

¹ we're all adults, right?

² now on doors of selected UNBSJ English faculty.

February 15, 2004

Improving the cityscape

This from Plep: a link to the Billboard Liberation Front. What it says. With links to other culture jammers.

February 13, 2004

And two from Plep

1. Positioning composers politically, for those who think art is "above politics." According to this, Wagner did not get such a bad rap after all.

2. "Cold Off The Presses is a growing collection of classic anarchist pamphlets and journals." I like that one of them is called Lucifer: The Light Bearer.

Valentines and cherubs

Two more from Maud Newton:

1. An on-line test of romantic literary knowledge, from The Guardian. No doubt because I am a dix–huitièmiste (the Age of Enlightenment and Reason, don't you know), my score sucked (6/10). Oh well.

2. A link to some eerie photographs by Loretta Lux. Be sure to scroll down and view the portfolio. Beautiful in themselves (and why are all these children so pensive?), and interesting because of the way they have been structured, with a somewhat classical, slightly surreal, painterliness. And for the ways in which, as Stephany Aulenback suggests in her post, they play with conventions of idealized childhood. It is this aspect of the photographs that makes them eerie, and at times uncomfortable. The boy with the ruff (Trolls 1, 2, and 3 on this page): just the barest of allusions to things unsavoury, but enough to unsettle.

And no doubt this is the parent in me speaking. I had a more jaundiced eye, once.

February 3, 2004

Gifts of web art

Jill at jill/txt has an interesting post on web art; check it out and follow the links. And here is a link to the Whitney Museum portal to net art. Here is hope for anyone worrying that the net is loosing the ethos of free exchange.

January 31, 2004

Book art

Someone sent me an invitation to a show by an artist called Doug Beube, called "Palimpsest" (in Toronto, next week, so I guess I won't be going). But if the name hadn't caught my attention, the photograph would have: an amazing sculpture called "Twisted Meanings" made by distorting a Webster's Dictionary into an almost glacial formation. I went on Google to see if I could find a digital photo of the piece. No luck, but I did find other amazing images of pieces by Beube:

“Twisted Disaster," 2002, book

“Borough (Brooklyn, New York, white and yellow page sold together),” 2002, found books/wood stands, 9 x 9 x 7”

Why is the idea of the book as compelling as the book itself? I suppose because the image of a book, or a real, but unread book, has infinite potential. It could be that book: the one you want to live in or the one that changes the way you look at where you do live. And then there is the book itself, the material object. A well made book is art, no-one can deny, but even mass-produced pocketbooks have that evocative pulpy-ink smell, that promise, when you first open them.

It may seem almost perverse to be sitting here at my keyboard fetishizing books. Certainly there is much generalized anxiety floating out there about the demise of the book/reading/culture, etc. During my last job interview (the successful one), while expounding upon "my research," I passed around a little 18thc chapbook in a cellophane slipcase. I said, as it went from hand to hand, “Go ahead, slip your finger in and touch it.” One member of the committee looked horrified, as if I had offered sexual favours to all and sundry right there against the lectern, but others chuckled and who knows? one or two fingers may have slid against that old rag paper. As long as we still have the impulse to touch (and face it, until storage media becomes more reliable for the long term), books are safe. Listen to Umberto Eco.

Here is a piece about Beube from the Brooklyn Artists Alliance, and an interview in Umbrella.

Beube is one of a number of book artists (here, here, and here).