Fashioning the Body: Versions of the Citizen, the Self, and the Subject

Corpus

“Reclaiming a Toxic Legacy” Orion, October

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/460

(Trying to stay rooted in materiality and material applications of theory, I’ve been reading magazines and articles in Orion, The Nation, Democracy Now, Ms. And Hold Everything Dear: Dispatches on Survival and Resistance, a newly released book by John Berger.)

 This article is about a bioremediation art project in a Pennsylvania town, left to rot in abject poverty and poisoned land by the coal industry that employed it for a century. Until this past year or so, there was no longer any town government, no parks, few jobs, and acid drainage poured from abandoned mine into the local water source. With the help of a few very dedicated designers, engineers, artists, and state employees, a hybrid bioremediation art project/ sculpture, of unprecedented scale, born of progressive social theory and conceptual art, was hatched and raised up over 10 years in the community. With tractors and backhoes as sculptural tools, this site was reshaped into a bicycle greenway (Ghost Town Rail Trail, which today attracts seventy-five thousand bicyclists a year), with limestone water filtration instead of toxic lime neutralization, and 1000 trees that are a sort of “’litmus garden,’ where the fall color of the trees would reflect the color of the acidic water as it turned from a reddish-orange, to yellow, to silver green.” Near the six key-stone shaped ponds, there is “a mosaic that illustrates what these thirty-five acres looked like at the height of the coal boom. The nine-by-fifteen-foot mosaic is modeled on a 1928 Sanborn Insurance map. It depicts with a line of brown and black tiles the coke ovens whose foundations are still visible in the wetland area beyond the mosaic.”

See below for "The Editioned Body: A Study of the Portrait in Print" PDF file

check the linksssss

Here are two videos I have found. The first is Alexander McQueen's 07 fashion show in which Kate Moss is a hololgram. It is beautiful and amazing and scary all at once. She is a body of light, literally.

 http://youtube.com/watch?v=GQT0vcw7xZM

The second is a bmw commercial featuring the art works of Theo Jensen. His sculptures are wind powered machines and they look like creatures walking on the beach.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=jUsCQoDCXoY

Gestus/ "Manwatching"

I found this clip in 1976 edition of Playboy magazine. My housemate Jeremiah bought a whole box of old girly mags from a yardsale for $10 and they've taken up residence in our kitchen. This entire room, consequently as become plastered with collages we make together, mostly cutting out and messing with bizarre advertisements selling super-sexualized gendered identities and lots of centerfold women's statements like "I'm not a feminist. I like a big strong man to light my cigarettes." I've spent a lot of time this quarter leafing through these magazines and thinking about the discourse they circulate, and the construction of women as sex objects and men as subjects. Surprisingly the Playboys from the late 60's have a lot of great articles about police brutality, arguments against the Vietnam war, interviews with radical artists like Dylan who cry out against labeling and objectifying (as someone who resists fixed identity)- but the magazine’s treatment of the issue of women's liberation and feminism are reactionary. I could go into a lot more analysis about the difference between Playboy and Hustler's  depiction of bodies and bodily functions- a short explanation is that Hustler seems not to be preoccupied with maintaining social boundaries as regards to the body and bodily control. It goes straight for the shock value of not only talking about, but graphically depicting male and female genitalia, naked women eating shit (I'm serious), and advocating for violent action against feminists and feminist scholars. Dispensing with what Mauss calls polite "social ideosynchracies," Hustler is perhaps in some way excising social worries; concerns that the body will rebel and resist "retarding mechanisms" that inhibit disorderly movements. “…bodily control is an expression of social control - abandonment of bodily control in ritual responds to the requirements of a social experience which his being expressed.”

IT IS BETTER TO HAVE LOVED AND LOST THAN TO HAVE NEVER LOVED AT ALL...

Our romance began three years ago at the Lloyd Center mall in Portland. It was rather unexpected but who is ever prepared for that whirlwind love at first sight kind of relationship? His sleek exterior is what first drew my attention to him but his affordability was what really sealed the deal. We had a great time getting to know each other. Learning each others likes and dislikes brought us closer everyday. We spent endless hours together making memories via txt and pics. Pretty soon we were inseparable. I depended on Samsung for my connection to the world and from me all that was needed was a quick battery charge. Sadly two months ago we were separated and I haven't heard from Samsung since. Although I do miss the way that sleek exterior graced the palm of my hand I wouldn't give up the time we had together for anything.

Cyborgaphia, 11/6/07

Freewrite on Hannah Höch’s "The Beautiful Girl"

The body is a collage of various parts and particles, productions and prosthetics. It is not pure or seamless or constant or itself. The collage holds time in its hand and has a large hairdo that its face is hiding behind, its head in the forefront is a light bulb, an idea. The boxer is peering inside through the window of a car’s tire and BMW logos are floating around that fill up the empty space, and they are the cogs that make everything run when cranked into action. Her body is precariously balanced. The body and mind are vehicular.

Upside down: Cog-nitive dissonance. It looks like the underneath of a car. The clock is a yo-yo. The foot is the exhaust pipe.

Thanks to my Prosthesis

Putie,

Thank you for being a part of my life. You help me find the answers to my questions in life. You have made my repository of knowledge the whole World Wide Web, I owe my virtual omniscience to you. You enable me to communicate and purchase items telepathically, and you are my personal portal for all imaginable tourisms. You give me extra brain space to store my ideas, and you are so kind to me. You are one of the parts that I love most about myself. I know that you won’t be with me forever and I hope that I don’t take you too much for granted. I just want you to know how much I appreciate you.

Photos! Theory, history, practice of portraits, etc. 

I love watching South Park late on weeknights, and since we have discussed Brechtian theory, I have noticed how much South Park emulates the ideals of Brecht’s epic theatre. This especially hit home for me in an episode in which God is portrayed as a monster with fur and a hippo face with a snake tongue and a lion's tale. It pretty much got across the idea that our Occidental depictions of the abstract theory of God are ridiculous. For hundred of years God has been visualized as an aging old man with a white beard. Isn’t it just as silly to depict God as a man virtually on his deathbed as it is to make him into a strange, humorous monster? Without saying a word about the choice of depiction, a social subject was addressed by the animators. It is not just this one particular epidode; the creators of South Park seem to use Brechtian theory in many, if not all episodes.

I decided to research this online and see if I am the only person who feels this way. In doing so, I found that I am not alone. If you are interested, check out this website:

< http://storymind.com/dramatica/armando/17.htm>

I think it is awesome that Brecht is alive and well within entertainment!

Manipulating “The Eye” 

 

This exercise has given me a fresh perspective on analyzing writing and literature. I circled every 7 words, skip one, circled the next word, and then skip 6 and circled the seventh word again. This pattern of 7 and 2 helped to exhibit the underlying text of “The Eye.” The words I circled most had violent or horrifying connotations such as remove, straining, sickliness, dying, condemn, paralysis, and abuse. If the words did not have these connotations, they were words pertaining to health, beauty, and art.  This article is about the care and hygiene of the eyes. However, by circling certain words in a pattern, it became clear that this piece has more to do with beautiful and artistic presentation of the human eye and the awful things that occur when one does not follow the article’s rules of etiquette.   

It was also fascinating to see the phrases made by the circled words. Examples include “expedients dying be the use of many,” “eye face it is to Deity visions catch light in human,” and “thus practice near should carefully there often Modern reject good short-sighted to be precisely these only trial the art.”    These phrases speak of methods that desire universal use, of the face being a reflection of god, and of how people should reject their shortsightedness, and how people should judge art in an open minded fashion. At least that is how I interpreted these pieced together phrases. If my findings are in anyway accurate, they reflect the theme of the paper.