karaj

an excerpt from carolee schneemann’s “interior scroll,” 1975.

1975! some things really stand the test of time, if you know what i mean.

this is not unrelated to my earlier post.

(johncagecale:)

I met a happy man
A Structuralist filmmaker
—But don’t call me that
It’s something else I do-
He said we are fond of you
You are charming
But don’t ask us to look
At your films
We cannot look at:
the personal clutter
the persistence of feeling
the hand-touch sensibility
the diaristic indulgent
the painterly mess

the dense gestalt 

so, over at 90swoman, i got gwen-stefani-style mad about some casually sexist stuff that some guys have said on tumblr about miss world, the real 90s, and a particularly female brand of 90s nostalgia.

now im drinking a $3 beer! (so jane magazine.) ditmas park is great, you guys.

the reason i dont go to museums and galleries as much as i should is because A. i am in school full-time and working 3/4 time and hence legitimately overscheduled or B. i am not busy at all but i feel like i should be doing something more “productive” (ie. something compensated monetarily?). i need to learn that this latter reason is bullshit and that going to school makes seeing art Officially My Job. the shows i know i want to see this summer are:

carolee schneemann: within and beyond the premises at samuel dorsky museum of art at suny new paltz, february 6-july 25

because she did “interior scroll” (above), come on. maybe while we are in woodstock? please?

off the wall part one: thirty performative actions at the whitney, july 1-september 19

“The exhibition also includes a number of works that reveal the underlying theatricality of the performative action and the ways in which artists stage the self in images that question conventions of identity, gender, and the body.”

yoko, carolee, hannah. omg, all my favorites. cant wait.

andy warhol: the last decade at the bk museum, june 18-september 12

POST-SOLANAS. important.

kiki smith: sojourn at elizabeth sackler at the bk museum, february 12-september 12

i dont really know enough about her.

wish you were here 9 at a.i.r gallery, june 28-july 18

postcard-size feminist art. less crucial, but i am into a.i.r artists even though i never go to the gallery and am pretty psyched that their archives are housed at fales. 

lili picard and counterculture new york at grey art gallery, april 20-july 10 

JUST CLICK ON THE LINK AND LOOK AT HER. also: she made hats. also: “An early practitioner of sociopolitical happenings and performance art, Picard was several decades older than other groundbreaking female performance artists. At age 65 she performed publicly for the first time at Café au Go Go. She frequented Andy Warhol’s Factory and the Judson Church alternative space in innovative performance art programs produced by Jon Hendricks, and she participated in the nascent performance scene through artist Charlotte Moorman’s annual Avant Garde Festivals.” pre-feminist artists are so intriguing!

this is the subject of the best email i got in my inbox yesterday. partly because the “school thing” refers to a story i am writing for the new york post. um, yeah. writing for the post allows me to fund my radical feminist education, which consists of writing 20 page papers about things most people dont care about, like consciousness-raising. that particular paper has a pretty extensive bibliography that lists articles and books with names like “liberation therapeutics: from moral renewal to consciousness-raising,” “free space: a perspective on the small group in womens liberation,” and, my favorite, “the erotics of talk.”

“i am so proud of myself for realizing that you were exactly the person to ask about CR!!!” liza responded after i sent it to her.

indeed.

last year, i told my MA class, with a straight face, that my scholarly interests included “talk” and i once felt like i had mentioned CR in so many NYT articles that i imposed a moratorium on myself.

i love this photo of the redstockings doing CR by mary ellen mark. please note the sign in the background that says “bitch sisters bitch.”

i, personally, rarely need encouragement.

(poesies)

I couldn’t do it again,
I can hardly bear to look at it —

in the garden, in light rain
the young couple planting
a row of peas, as though
no one has ever done this before,
the great difficulties have never as yet
been faced and solved —

They cannot see themselves,
in fresh dirt, starting up
without perspective,
the hills behind them pale green, clouded with flowers —

She wants to stop;
he wants to get to the end,
to stay with the thing —

Look at her, touching his cheek
to make a truce, her fingers
cool with spring rain;
in thin grass, bursts of purple crocus —

even here, at the beginning of love,
her hand leaving his face makes
an image of departure

and they think
they are free to overlook
this sadness.

when i was maybe 11 this young couple got to my parents garage sale early and spent a really long time debating whether or not to buy a too-expensive couch they loved. undecided, they left. when they returned hours later, effusive, convinced it was their dream couch, we had already sold it to someone else. somehow, i found this devastating. i locked myself in my room and cried for a long time.  

that story makes me feel a little bit like this poem. its one of those poems i sometimes randomly think about.

“I love Buffalo for one plain and simple reason: the people.”

“Every time I meet an expatriate or a Buffalonian on vacation, I feel as though I just had an encounter with a long-lost cousin.”

“One day I plan on getting married and starting a family, and I intend to do it in Buffalo, where I can give my children the same gifts my parents gave me…All I have to do is find a guy I can convince to move to Buffalo with me. I’m going to look for someone from Jersey or Staten Island.”

this story is so familiar, so frightening, so provincial. seriously, i dont care if i ever eat another chicken wing or watch another bills game for the rest of my life. nyc 4-eva.

okay, so i havent worn jeans in a year, at least, if not longer. maybe for me it could be like an american apparel skirt that i dont have to keep pulling down. but my point is that i would read anything that joon writes, even if it wasnt called “the pleasures and functionality of forgetting.” but, luckily, it is! i love that he is taking on barthes’ a lovers discourse, which i just loaned marisa, and which i have mentioned in various other posts, because it is the best book ever. well, not ever. the best book i read last summer not by a feminist? that is pretty high praise.