ARCHIVE - christine's blog

ARCHIVE - Some Images / Research V & VI

2008-01-17T13:34:39-08:00

I have been spending some time with the truly extraordinary textile artist Anni Albers. I have two new images banks of Anni Albers' work from the catalog of a 1999 Guggenheim exhibition and a 1985 Smithsonian exhibit. These are all scans, mostly color, directly from the books so they don't have my usual scribbled commentary.

Here are the ideas I was thinking about...

1. Light -- the way light reflects off of things that are thought of as flat like fabric or paper

2. Texture -- two dimensional representations of textured surfaces (like knotted-looking fabric or woven art), this is basically about light too

3. Metallics -- again an interest in light reflection, also hidden or subtle use of metallics (like metallic thread)

4. Tests/experiments (the art of art research) -- much of Anni Albers' work was about performing studies to allow herself to experiment and gather ideas, such as laying out bits of twisted paper in patterns to explore the possibilities of woven patterns

5. Color -- most of my tearsheet work/research has been with b&w xeroxes so I'm now starting to think about color, particularly the use of bold(er) colors that don't overwhelm

ARCHIVE - Some Images / Research III & IV

2008-01-06T23:07:48-08:00

I'm adding to the mess (of ideas and images and images that represent ideas)! Soon there will be a huge tearsheet throwdown involving
a. all of my tearsheets
b. tape
c. markers
d. a wall to be covered with all of the tearsheets
e. a boombox and a lot of pacing

but in the meantime...
1. Some images from the Graphis DesignAnnual2005.
2. Some images from the book Specials by Booth-Clibborn (publisher of art/graphic design titles).

There's one or two image banks still in the works
and
who keeps listening to Piece of Me?

ARCHIVE - Some Images / Research II

2007-12-07T19:42:37-08:00

More images and things that I've been looking at. This time it's a little bit of a mishmash from the Communication Arts Photography Annual, some stragglers from the Design Annual, and a few other items.

ARCHIVE - Winter 08 Project Proposal

2007-12-06T13:01:17-08:00

Here is my project proposal as a PDF.

ARCHIVE - Some Images / Research

2007-12-05T23:21:22-08:00

To prepare my brain for the task of making the class site, I spent the afternoon with the Communication Arts Design Annual. Here is a PDF of some of the images and pages that caught my eye for various reasons.

[Now for some rambling prater: The PDF has scans of xeroxes so this has me thinking about what I keep calling "resampling" or the process that images or objects go through to get from one point to another. For instance, I found a picture of chocolate bars (yes, chocolate bars) with really cool packaging. Each candy bar had to go through all kinds of production/preparation to come into being and then a whole team of photographers and stylists took a picture of those items. That image then went through a bunch of digitally processed versions before coming to final, non-digital hardcopy when the magazine was printed. From there, I found an issue of the magazine somewhere out in the world and I made copies of the chocolate bar and other pictures and later ended up scanning the xeroxes so that people could have a way of looking at what I was looking at. It's these things, these chocolate bars (or whatever other objects) in all of these permutations...]

ARCHIVE - Gilroy

2007-12-05T01:59:33-08:00

"Epidermalized power violated the human body in its symmetrical, intersubjective, social humanity, in its species being, in its fragile relationship to other fragile bodies and in its connection to the redemptive potential inherent in its own wholesome or perhaps its suffering corporeality..."

Dear Paul Gilroy,

I apologize for not talking about your writing in seminar. I regret it deeply.

Sincerely,
CL

ARCHIVE - Of A Technological Literature

2007-12-02T00:11:40-08:00

"In an old part of the city like this, time collapses the picture... Here I am, tightrope walking the twenty-first century, slim as a year..."

A few weeks ago in cyborg week 1, we talked about how technology is changing the way books are written. There are all of these teen books that have adopted the format of chatting and/or texting as a way to tell stories. But way back when, in 2000, a book came out called The PowerBook by Jeanette Winterson. I have a long running love/hate thing for J.W.'s writing but I won't get into that. Of note about The PowerBook (besides the title being an allusion to a laptop) are these two things...

1. The story simultaneously happens at different points in history, the recent past, and shifting versions of the present because it's being crafted by the narrator who is something of an online story conjurer. J.W. uses technology as the premise for condensing then stretching and pulling at time/space/history.

2. The book is structured to be like a computer menu, that is, many of the chapters are named after computer actions such as "SAVE," "QUIT," or "VIEW AS ICON." Each chapter also has its own neat, clean little icon with which it is introduced. The mountain icon for the chapter "SPECIAL" is an outline of a triangle divided by a scalloped line to indicate a cap of snow. One of my favorite chapters "Spitalfields" has for its icon three wavy lines with a weird flame-shape growing out of it!

ARCHIVE - A Short Story For Your Enjoyment

2007-11-30T21:55:53-08:00

"Forgiveness" by Rebecca Brown
from The Terrible Girls

Apparently, we didn't do enough reading this quarter because I feel the need to offer up some short fiction, "Forgiveness," for everybody to read in delight and terror. Those with a weak stomach might want to avoid this story, but it's incredibly concise and beautiful. All quarter long, I've been thinking about The Terrible Girls because several of the stories are these lovely, grim lenses into the roles of bodies and power.

Included in this very short piece are wonderful sentences like:

"Things I once took for granted became significant. Cutting a steak with a knife and fork, or buttoning my fly, untying a knot around a bag, adding milk while stirring."

ARCHIVE - A Case of Britney Spears & Cheetos BP Script

2007-11-30T19:48:19-08:00

This is my portion of the script for the presentation A Case of Britney Spears & Cheetos.

The slideshow is also available upon request.

ARCHIVE - Thoughts from "Latino Dolls"

2007-11-29T13:03:22-08:00

Thoughts, Connections, Questions from Reading "Latino Dolls"

This is an ode… An ode to Chelsea where the light is bright grey-white by day and amber-colored at night. An ode to all the Barbie dolls I played with two summers ago. And an ode to the animator/filmmaker dearest to me.

1. What is a gay toy store?
In the beginning pages of “Latino Dolls” I really wasn't sure what would constitute a gay toy store. Does Quiroga mean a sex shop? No? Does he mean something like Toys R Us except somehow more gay? No? It suddenly occurred to me that I knew exactly what was being described because I used to live in Chelsea (the sort of lower westside in Manhattan) which is the floral/photo/fashion part of town and not unrelatedly the rich, gay, white, male capital of the east coast. I could never find anything I wanted to buy in Chelsea. Every other store seemed to be a snobby, overpriced little den selling semi-whimsical printed tank tops, t-shirts, notecards, and endless snarky, queeny, brightly colored knickknacks. Here I am, three years later realizing that half my neighborhood was and is composed of gay toy stores. My limited (read: not important) gay consumer dollars go to buying all of those impossible-to-find-new Sarah Schulman books. Now… does that make me a less evolved consumer?

2. Would somebody save up (their money) to buy a gay doll?
Yes! Fortunately and unfortunately. The 2000 $50 price of a Billy or Carlos doll was rather prohibitive, but not so much so that a few sacrifices wouldn't be made for a trendy, joyful, way to recreate a piece of childhood. This makes me think of the character David in Sarah Schulman's Rat Bohemia (which is the book of my life, my favorite book). David's childhood is marked by rather cruel parental enforcement of gender normativity -- no skipping, no singing, no giggling, no limp-wristed gestures. He's the type of kid always getting a football instead of the Barbie doll he might really want. In my mind that kind of childhood supersedes, overwhelms even a very clear understanding of the marketing schemes behind something like the Billy doll. You're buying something you couldn't have in childhood. You're trying to find a way to rename, reclaim, recapture something not possible in the past. It's awful, but how do you separate those feelings? (It's not possible to be completely separate from culture.) Working on gay guilt and pain is the best (worst) marketing plan ever.

Someone I know who is a horrible reality TV junkie almost had me convinced to watch the show "The Amazing Race" because two of the contestants are a lesbian couple. I know that that show is horrible, that reality TV is what killed TV that I loved (like major network TV movies), and that despite having gay characters/contestants this show could not possibly say anything to me. And yet I was really excited about watching this show. There's a longing for working through or seeing your queerness in the world that sometimes manifests itself into buying things or watching shows that have a complicated, troubling consumer linkage. Consumerism -- it’s in that nasty entanglement with activism or pride or identity or something…

3. What could a gay doll look like?
The gay doll is very much for the gay male consumer. There's just so much more earning power and expendable income, therefore so much more of the likelihood for something like a doll for gay men. I'm pretty sure people would not latch onto a lesbian doll in the same way as with a Billy doll or Earring Magic Ken. I guess my question then is what would a lesbian doll look like? Would it resemble that "famous" librarian and her action figure/doll that is spoken of by librarian-aspiring folks? I think a lesbian doll is much more likely to be an individually crafted alteration of an existing doll, such as the SM Barbies found in Barbie’s Queer Accessories and also Barbie Nation. Another image I have of what a lesbian doll could look like is the doll made (by an Evergreen student in the 90s) to resemble my best friend's mother (who taught at Evergreen until somewhat recently). Apparently, it's possible for a "regular" Barbie to be converted (or I'd like to think naturally age) into a spiky grey haired, glasses-wearing, notebook-carrying lesbian filmmaker. Now that's magic!

And In brief...

4. Queer marketing has me thinking about Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America, once more, by my BFF Sarah Schulman. This book is important, brilliant, and deeply under read.

5. The Femme Book, which I will never stop writing or talking about, has the great piece "Passing Loqueria" which features ideas about boundaries (a very important theme for our cyborg weeks) around Latin race/nationality and queer sexuality. I will hopefully have that scanned and available for anyone who wants to read it.

6. Why does “Latino Dolls” not mention Earring Magic Ken? Just one sentence would have been sufficient. Maybe this topic is overdone, but I still love that Mattel accidentally created and sold a very gay doll that they had to pretend was not gay by claiming it was designed for girl children who love earrings and other ring-shaped things.

7. And to close, here is a link for the book Barbie's Queer Accessories by Erica Rand, which I am still in the middle of reading.

ARCHIVE - Final Beauty Parlor This Friday!!

2007-11-28T18:47:31-08:00

Are you doing a Beauty Parlor presentation this Friday?? There will be 4, yes FOUR, groups presenting this week, including mine, so let's do what we can to make sure things run smoothly. Please let me know in advance (by responding to my e-mail) what you need to have happen in your presentation, that is...

1. Will you be playing music?

2. Will you be playing a movie clip? In what format (youtube, DVD, VHS, etc)?

3. Are you showing still pictures? If so, please have them prepared in some way by putting them together in a powerpoint or quicktime slideshow!!

4. And finally, do you need to hook up a laptop? If you are bringing a Mac, do you have the ADAPTOR to connect it to the projector?? If you're afraid that your computer is too old or buggy to work with the projector please handle that in advance and locate (borrow) a suitable computer.

It's the last week of Beauty Parlor!! Astounding!

Thanks!
christine

ARCHIVE - Rubric / Questions

2007-11-28T12:24:42-08:00

This is my Exam Design Assignment. It is now double-spaced, properly enumerated, and in PDF format.

ARCHIVE - I Wrote About Granny Flats / Cyborgraphia

2007-11-26T21:31:38-08:00

[I also have all of this as a PDF.]

I. Writing Around Hannah Hoch’s The Beautiful Girl

(When viewed upside down, I see this extra thing I didn’t see before. At the very top is the high wall and receding tracks of an above ground train stop.)

The beautiful girl is a machine. She does not Talk or See or Think. She won’t have a face unless it is only a fragment of one with a single looming expressionless eye. The beautiful girl is German. She is white. Why do we love Germany for its beautiful uniforms, cars, and designs? Why do we sometimes love these things so much as to forget what certain ideas about cleanliness and industry have done to bodies – what it has done to girls?

The perfect (Beautiful) girl will move things along. She will attach things to herself so everyone knows that she is always trying to be beautiful for someone other than herself. She makes things happen. She won’t stop working. She is industrious/industrial. She is faithful. She makes a high, clean sound. She whistles like a machine.

She is replaceable when she is done. Over. Used Up. When there are no more babies to be had, dishes to be washed, smiles to be summoned, what use is she then? What do you do with her then? Where does she go? What happens when the Beautiful Girl can’t be wound up and made to totter across a plane?

Is this why we have mountaintops?

Is this why we have attics? Is this why accessory dwelling units are called granny flats?

II. How I Didn’t Notice That I Was In Love With This Prosthesis Among Many

You were
my friend
I swung you
around my wrist
I knotted up your long grey cord
just enough
so I could swing you
around and around
without fear of loss
or a hard fall to the pavement
We walked around
Clinton Hill together
We looked at
light
and shade
We counted
the stops in between
I really liked you
Your Lumigrid is the best thing ever

But I moved
I packed you in your box
and took you on the plane
I moved again and maybe one more time
I forgot all about you

Where are our buildings?
Where is the sun that makes piercing outlines despite
thirty degree weather?
What is the thing
that taught me that I could cut
shapes out of rooftops and sky?
What is the thing
that taught me
that I could make tones and colors
happen
however I wanted?

What happened to me that I could forget the feeling
of a smooth, smooth cord
circling, spinning around
that space between
my winter gloved hand
and my rolled up sleeve?
I don't know how I forgot

III. Barbie Karaoke Makes Dreams Come True

I am a pocket-sized Barbie brand karaoke toy. I am fairly small at approximately 5 X 3 X 1 inches. It has been suggested that, due to my appearance, I am similar to or some kind of predecessor to the original iPod. My job is to provide joy and entertainment to children (or really anyone who wants to talk, sing, do stand up comedy, or be a performance artist), but I have spent much of my more recent life traveling, having made stops at various homes and thrift stores for repurchase.

I am not sure about my body because I think of myself as a map of sound. But I’ve had a lot of spare time so I’ve tried to figure it out. My brain is an electronic board somewhere inside my white plasticy shell. My mouth is a pink, flower decorated speaker, which sits like a big, low belly. The mic plugs that reside in little notches are my ears. They take in sound (information) and let me dispense it back into my surroundings. I don’t have feet or legs so it works out that I look good leaning on things or lying down. Prior to it being broken off, I had a plastic clip that was like an arm for me to hold onto my companions.

I do have my limitations. There’s only a few phrases I can exclaim on my own and only so many beats that I can beatbox. I am at my best when there’s a mic plugged in and there’s a voice, someone to share a sound with, channeling through. If toy designers had gotten it right, I would have been made in 1988 instead of 2001. I think it could have been a less technologically demanding time. Did kids want different things? I could have been the highlight of many a play date. I could have spent a summer evening clipped to a pair of white jean shorts and riding on a pink and purple bicycle with two little mics tucked into the front basket.

ARCHIVE - Movie About Barbies

2007-11-25T14:06:30-08:00

I just watched a short (53 minute) documentary by Susan Stern called Barbie Nation: An Unauthorized Tour. The film covers body issues, consumerism, queerness, identity, gender, and, what really stands out for me, the role of childhood dreams. Every Barbie-related story and articulation, introduced through interviews and the filmmaker's narration, was fascinating. Incredible!!

Here is the link to the movie at Evergreen's library which will have its copy back as soon as I return it this week.

And here is the link for it on the IMDB.

ARCHIVE - Judith Butler

2007-11-15T12:20:14-08:00

This is just a link to a picture of Judith Butler. The emphatic hand gesture reminds me of Joh Frederson from "Metropolis" and is also very Alison Bechdel-like. Most importantly, what great hair!

[click for a giant version of this]