Saturday, December 29, 2007
trashion video
scatha just posted a video segment on the three Trashion shows she produced for burning man--one at the flambe lounge, one on the playa, and one at sF decom. there are interviews were scatha (miss velvet cream), anastazia (bad.unkl.sista) and lucid dawn, and then a bunch of footage from the fashion shows.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
juno
Friday, December 21, 2007
the case for kucinich
the sf bay guardian has an opinion piece about dennis kucinich this week. it has a couple really nice bits that i'd like to share.
i don't really feel called to speak up for this man most of the time--it ends up being frustrating to the point of angry tears. everyone knows he's great; no one thinks that's a good enough reason to vote for him. but yes, he's my candidate; and i'm going to re-register outside the green party for the first time ever so that i can vote for him in the primary.
Well-Put Thought the first:
Now let's be honest here and admit that those of us who get worked up about peace and justice issues are prone to complain a lot. We are ever bemoaning the influence of money in politics and the poor job the news media do in covering the real issues. But when we get to the point where a candidate is raising the important issues and we know we agree with him and we still won't vote for him, then the next time we start complaining, it may just be time to look in the mirror.
Well-Put Thought the second:
But if antiwar voters won't vote for antiwar candidates, you have to ask why those candidates should go to the trouble of running and why the big-money candidates should pay any attention to the supposed antiwar vote. [emphasis added]
the full article.
i don't really feel called to speak up for this man most of the time--it ends up being frustrating to the point of angry tears. everyone knows he's great; no one thinks that's a good enough reason to vote for him. but yes, he's my candidate; and i'm going to re-register outside the green party for the first time ever so that i can vote for him in the primary.
Well-Put Thought the first:
Now let's be honest here and admit that those of us who get worked up about peace and justice issues are prone to complain a lot. We are ever bemoaning the influence of money in politics and the poor job the news media do in covering the real issues. But when we get to the point where a candidate is raising the important issues and we know we agree with him and we still won't vote for him, then the next time we start complaining, it may just be time to look in the mirror.
Well-Put Thought the second:
But if antiwar voters won't vote for antiwar candidates, you have to ask why those candidates should go to the trouble of running and why the big-money candidates should pay any attention to the supposed antiwar vote. [emphasis added]
the full article.
stylized sculpture
tonight after work ($5 after 5pm!) i wandered over to the asian art museum to see the japanese fashion exhibit, Stylized Sculpture. the exhibit was brief, but i got one huge awesome dab of thought out of it:
For the past quarter-century, Japanese designers have made their mark on fashion with avant-garde shapes, stark color schemes, and innovative textile technologies. To anyone familiar with traditional Japanese clothing, these radical contemporary garments resonate with the aesthetics of a culture more fascinated with silhouette, surface, and cloth itself than with the delineation of the body... [emphasis added]
(check out some photographs of the collection here.)
now...i purchase clothes with UniqueAndAwesome as one of two primary factors. it's probably even the slightly more prominent factor. BUT. the other primary factor is how it works on my body. i readily admit that i generally eschew items of clothing that i don't find 'flattering' to my figure.
in the past year, working more closely than prior with a few local designers (bad.unkl.sista and miranda caroligne in particular), i've tried to be more open to wearing clothes that are artistic and beautiful without being as flattering as my idealized version of attire. it's reeeally hard for me. i want my body to look as good as it can. and in general, even the designers that strive for clothing as art are still cognizant that they need their clothes to make the subjects 'look good' from a standard perspective. (be as creative as you want, as long as your clothes adhere to some sort of accepted beautified form...)
but these pieces in the show... nothing doing.
female form? BAH.
these were clothes as Art, clothes as Cloth Sculpture; standard body accentuations be DAMNED. it was, quite honestly, unnerving. i know, for instance, that my favorite pieces were the ones that managed to stay flattering to at least *part* of the body while swooping off into the unknown in discrete sections.
in sum: i left this exhibit feeling more determined to think of my attire as art and expression with less regard to societal norms about female form.
i don't expect me to make any drastic changes in how i'm willing to array my body, but i hope that i can start incorporating pieces into my wardrobe that are interesting and beautiful but that DON'T help mold my body into the standard western template. we'll see how it goes...the dominant paradigm is known for its dominance for a reason, you know...
(in the meantime, go see the thing. it's only here til january 6th. next thursday it's $5 from 5-9pm. and they give you an awesome supplemental booklet-thingy when you go, so you can read up on the designers later and look at the pretty pictures. neat!)
For the past quarter-century, Japanese designers have made their mark on fashion with avant-garde shapes, stark color schemes, and innovative textile technologies. To anyone familiar with traditional Japanese clothing, these radical contemporary garments resonate with the aesthetics of a culture more fascinated with silhouette, surface, and cloth itself than with the delineation of the body... [emphasis added]
(check out some photographs of the collection here.)
now...i purchase clothes with UniqueAndAwesome as one of two primary factors. it's probably even the slightly more prominent factor. BUT. the other primary factor is how it works on my body. i readily admit that i generally eschew items of clothing that i don't find 'flattering' to my figure.
in the past year, working more closely than prior with a few local designers (bad.unkl.sista and miranda caroligne in particular), i've tried to be more open to wearing clothes that are artistic and beautiful without being as flattering as my idealized version of attire. it's reeeally hard for me. i want my body to look as good as it can. and in general, even the designers that strive for clothing as art are still cognizant that they need their clothes to make the subjects 'look good' from a standard perspective. (be as creative as you want, as long as your clothes adhere to some sort of accepted beautified form...)
but these pieces in the show... nothing doing.
female form? BAH.
these were clothes as Art, clothes as Cloth Sculpture; standard body accentuations be DAMNED. it was, quite honestly, unnerving. i know, for instance, that my favorite pieces were the ones that managed to stay flattering to at least *part* of the body while swooping off into the unknown in discrete sections.
in sum: i left this exhibit feeling more determined to think of my attire as art and expression with less regard to societal norms about female form.
i don't expect me to make any drastic changes in how i'm willing to array my body, but i hope that i can start incorporating pieces into my wardrobe that are interesting and beautiful but that DON'T help mold my body into the standard western template. we'll see how it goes...the dominant paradigm is known for its dominance for a reason, you know...
(in the meantime, go see the thing. it's only here til january 6th. next thursday it's $5 from 5-9pm. and they give you an awesome supplemental booklet-thingy when you go, so you can read up on the designers later and look at the pretty pictures. neat!)
Thursday, December 20, 2007
notes from standing on line at safeway
if you haven't been to safeway since the plastic bag ban went into effect in san francisco...
-safeway clerks now ask if you want a bag (untested for amounts of groceries over 15 items).
-safeway has changed their paper bag construction to include handles (!!!).
-safeway clerks now seem trained to notice, take, and USE your cloth bag, if you have one.
-the system WORKS. the people in front of me had a bottle of honey and 3 limes. normally, the clerk would just put that stuff in a plastic bag, *maybe* not double-bag it, and hand it off. instead, he asked if they wanted a bag, the guy hemmed for a second...and then.said.NO!
*le sigh*
*coo*
side note: the decision to go to safeway to purchase foods for a food drive has slightly confused the (food)worldview i've had since 1999. did you know that $19 buys a TON of food in a conventional grocery store?!? i KNOW--CRAzy!
-safeway clerks now ask if you want a bag (untested for amounts of groceries over 15 items).
-safeway has changed their paper bag construction to include handles (!!!).
-safeway clerks now seem trained to notice, take, and USE your cloth bag, if you have one.
-the system WORKS. the people in front of me had a bottle of honey and 3 limes. normally, the clerk would just put that stuff in a plastic bag, *maybe* not double-bag it, and hand it off. instead, he asked if they wanted a bag, the guy hemmed for a second...and then.said.NO!
*le sigh*
*coo*
side note: the decision to go to safeway to purchase foods for a food drive has slightly confused the (food)worldview i've had since 1999. did you know that $19 buys a TON of food in a conventional grocery store?!? i KNOW--CRAzy!
Monday, December 17, 2007
words are still neat.
matt g just sent me a link to some awesome: http://leettiles.com/
i might actually now lurve scrabble*.
* i hate scrabble. it is a stoopid game that has nothing to do with vocabulary. if i'm going to play a word game, i want it to be all about having and/or learning awesome words, not about memorizing 2-letter combinations of letters that technically have definitions in merriam-webster and trying to use the letter 'q' as often as possible. BAH.
i might actually now lurve scrabble*.
* i hate scrabble. it is a stoopid game that has nothing to do with vocabulary. if i'm going to play a word game, i want it to be all about having and/or learning awesome words, not about memorizing 2-letter combinations of letters that technically have definitions in merriam-webster and trying to use the letter 'q' as often as possible. BAH.
Monday, December 10, 2007
the people who've suggested that you go visit sfmoma before february are correct.
there's a really great exhibit as sfmoma right now. the entire 5th floor is taken up by a variety of installations, sculptures, photographs, and other art by a man named olafur eliasson. i was told several times, in no uncertain terms, that this is a must-see show, and i now wish to add my voice to the enthusiastic throng.
the exhibit was beautiful, fun, and intriguing. a couple of the interactive pieces were particularly fantastic, but i also spent a *really* long time with some of the photography.
another highlight of the visit was a 4-minute perusal of the sfmoma website's interactive feature on eliasson. specifically, one page includes a very short video of the artist talking about 'seeing yourself seeing' (click on that title on the main page to go see the video). he talks about viewer interaction with his pieces, about what he wants to encourage by presenting art to the public, about perspective, about awareness of one's viewership.
it could be argued that little in his exhibit or in his online speech should be particularly newsworthy for people who've spent a lot of time at burning man or thinking about art as a participatory experience. but i very much enjoyed seeing such a collection at a mainstream museum, and hearing about the artist's stance on interactivity in such a direct manner.
also, it feels to me that a lot of the 'interactive' art i experience now is created with interactivity as an assumption when it's being designed, or even with interactivity as the *point* of the piece, rather than as an aspect to be included. eliasson's work felt like presentations that had been devised first and foremost as art, and interactivity was incorporated without the loss of any beauty or artistic significance. heh...maybe all i mean is that it was really well-done ;)
[side note: my context for viewing this show includes a lot of discussion and processing in the past month about self-observation, distance from emotion, awareness of my own decision-making and analytical processes, and miscellaneous other meta-thinking/meta-emoting.
included in these discussions was a several-hour conversation about the How and Why and Who of artistic creativity--what determines who is good and/or successful at what types of creative expression? and are there categories of art that are particular to certain types of people? what types of art are proactive vs reactive? premeditated vs spontaneous? are there forms of art that don't require any learning and/or tools? post to come on all the art thinkings, i hope. in the meantime, i'm just quite delighted to have timed my ponderings and sfmoma visitation so appropriately :) happy arting!]
the exhibit was beautiful, fun, and intriguing. a couple of the interactive pieces were particularly fantastic, but i also spent a *really* long time with some of the photography.
another highlight of the visit was a 4-minute perusal of the sfmoma website's interactive feature on eliasson. specifically, one page includes a very short video of the artist talking about 'seeing yourself seeing' (click on that title on the main page to go see the video). he talks about viewer interaction with his pieces, about what he wants to encourage by presenting art to the public, about perspective, about awareness of one's viewership.
it could be argued that little in his exhibit or in his online speech should be particularly newsworthy for people who've spent a lot of time at burning man or thinking about art as a participatory experience. but i very much enjoyed seeing such a collection at a mainstream museum, and hearing about the artist's stance on interactivity in such a direct manner.
also, it feels to me that a lot of the 'interactive' art i experience now is created with interactivity as an assumption when it's being designed, or even with interactivity as the *point* of the piece, rather than as an aspect to be included. eliasson's work felt like presentations that had been devised first and foremost as art, and interactivity was incorporated without the loss of any beauty or artistic significance. heh...maybe all i mean is that it was really well-done ;)
[side note: my context for viewing this show includes a lot of discussion and processing in the past month about self-observation, distance from emotion, awareness of my own decision-making and analytical processes, and miscellaneous other meta-thinking/meta-emoting.
included in these discussions was a several-hour conversation about the How and Why and Who of artistic creativity--what determines who is good and/or successful at what types of creative expression? and are there categories of art that are particular to certain types of people? what types of art are proactive vs reactive? premeditated vs spontaneous? are there forms of art that don't require any learning and/or tools? post to come on all the art thinkings, i hope. in the meantime, i'm just quite delighted to have timed my ponderings and sfmoma visitation so appropriately :) happy arting!]
