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m a g a z i n e<br />
TM<br />
volume 1 no. 4 • 2013<br />
REVOLT is:<br />
PUBLISHED BY:<br />
Public Art Squad Project<br />
PUBLISHER: Scotto Mycklebust, Artist<br />
MANAGING EDITOR: Katie Cercone<br />
CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Scotto Mycklebust<br />
ART & DESIGN: Scotto Mycklebust<br />
ART PHOTOGRAPHER: Scotto Mycklebust<br />
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: Dan Callahan,<br />
Linda DiGusta, Laurence Hoffmann, Emily<br />
Kirkpatrick, Rob Reed, Suzanne Schultz,<br />
Randee Silv, Adam Laten Wilson, Lena Vazifdar<br />
ADVERTISING CONTACT:<br />
advertise@revoltmagazine.org<br />
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REVOLT<br />
<strong>Magazine</strong> Number 4, 2013<br />
Letter from the Publisher ...<br />
For the fourth issue of <strong>Revolt</strong> <strong>Magazine</strong> we’re<br />
pleased to announce the addition of our new Theatre<br />
View section, where you’ll be able to read up on the<br />
latest approaches to art on the stage. This month’s<br />
Theatre View featured article by Adam Latten Wilson<br />
“Theatre for the Person: Two Perspectives,” explores<br />
theater as a device to promote social change. We’ve<br />
also published a review of folklorist Kay Turner’s<br />
“OTHERWISE: Queer Scholarship into Song.” Going<br />
forward, we’ll include new works from playwrights<br />
in addition to ample reviews and critical theater<br />
dialogue.<br />
<strong>Issue</strong> 4 also features a new section on Architecture,<br />
kicked off by an interview with the Danish-Czech<br />
contemporary artist-architect Therese Himmer, who<br />
details her recent public work in Russia and talks<br />
about nomadic subjectivity and the semiotics of<br />
space.<br />
For a look at today’s fashion, contributing writer<br />
Emily Kirkpatrick walks us through the ample<br />
closet of the First Lady to explain how and why the<br />
“Media’s Fetishistic Gaze” still relegates powerful<br />
IN THIS ISSUE:<br />
4 Social Activism in Fancy Tones<br />
6 The Gallery Review<br />
8 The Rose Unearthed<br />
12 Top 10 NYC Artists Now<br />
14 The Cult of the First Lady<br />
20 Westbeth Artists' Community Housing<br />
26 Fracking: Drawing the Line<br />
29 Cinema Review<br />
30 The Literary View<br />
32 Theatre View<br />
36 Architecture View<br />
39 The <strong>Revolt</strong> Takes Boston<br />
40 2 Tha Beat Y'all<br />
44 Swagilish Salomom and TheiLLUZiON<br />
women like Michelle Obama to the shallow periphery<br />
of public discourse.<br />
On the activist front, writer Linda DiGusta details<br />
the fierce and passionate dedication of a growing<br />
number of visual artists dedicated to combating<br />
Fracking.<br />
On the topic of Art and Community Lena Vazifdar<br />
reports on the Westbeth artist community housing<br />
project, which has thrived in Manhattan’s West<br />
Village since 1970.<br />
For our Gallery view section Randee Silv reviews The<br />
Jay Defeo Retrospective at the Whitney. And lastly,<br />
part of her ongoing interdisciplinary inquiry into the<br />
Spirituality of Hip Hop, REVOLT Editor Katie Cercone<br />
publishes a pair of related articles including field<br />
notes from the global Hip Hop Pedagogy movement,<br />
and a roundtable discussion with the REALEST upand-coming<br />
new age hip hop crew TheILLUZiON.<br />
What’s their code?: Love/Faith/Gratitude/Harmony.<br />
Scotto Mycklebust<br />
MISSION STATEMENT<br />
Through a diverse array of journalistic styles - investigative, academic, interview,<br />
opinion - and stunning visuals, REVOLT <strong>Magazine</strong> aims to ensure that art never loses<br />
its profundity. We urge our readers to join our mission, generating positive social<br />
change through creative production and informed cultural critique.<br />
Copyright & Permissions Info: © copyright 2011, 2012, 2013 <strong>Revolt</strong> <strong>Magazine</strong>. All Rights Reserved. For all<br />
reprints, permissions and questions, please contact 212.242.1909 or by email: info@revoltmagazine.com.<br />
2
Hôtel<br />
AMERICANO<br />
Chelsea<br />
New York<br />
518 West 27 th Street, New York NY 10001<br />
For booking<br />
hotel-americano.com 212.216.0000
THE<br />
R LIST<br />
Social Activism in fancy Tones<br />
On how celebrities engage to improve contemporary society<br />
BY LAURENCE HOFFMANN<br />
Promoting oneself is commonly accepted, if not<br />
practiced, by people in all strata of society. Individuals<br />
are more and more managing themselves as<br />
brands, a trend put in motion by social media like<br />
Facebook and Twitter, that heightens the need to<br />
make an original mark in a world over-crowded with<br />
competing information. On the business side this<br />
applies to advertisements, which effectively use<br />
celebrities to create instant familiarity through the<br />
immediate recognition of a particular celebrity’s<br />
brand.<br />
Recently self-branding has taken a new turn as<br />
more popular figures have applied their massmarket<br />
appeal to serious social issues. A cursory<br />
list of examples includes Mark Ruffalo and Yoko<br />
Ono with son Sean Lennon opposing fracking<br />
with Artists Against Fracking; Joaquin Phoenix<br />
defending the rights of people and animals together<br />
with -respectively- Amnesty International and<br />
Peta; Leonardo Di Caprio trying to prevent total<br />
degradation of the environment with Live Earth<br />
and Wildlife Conservation Society; Ziggy Marley,<br />
Lady Gaga, Linkin’ Park, BBKing and others making<br />
efforts to bring music education into disadvantaged<br />
public schools with Little Kids Rock; George Clooney<br />
is one of the United Nations Messengers Of Peace<br />
and together with Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Don<br />
Cheadle and others has founded Not On Our Watch<br />
to condemn the violations of human rights in Darfur,<br />
Burma, and Zimbabwe; Angelina Jolie is Special<br />
Envoy for the United Nations. These are just a few<br />
of the causes in which some of the most prominent<br />
American stars emerge as “social activists” and in<br />
some cases as “social entrepreneurs”.<br />
For his activities (other than being Walden Smith in<br />
Two and a Half Men and occasionally appearing on<br />
the cover of magazines with old and new flames)<br />
Ashton Kutcher can be considered a “social<br />
entrepreneur”. The business activities of his<br />
company A-Grade are geared towards improvements<br />
in contemporary society.At TechCrunch, an event<br />
that focuses on start-up companies keen to enter<br />
the field of technology development and new media<br />
held in April/May in NYC, Ashton Kutcher explained<br />
the criteria behind the investments of A-Grade and<br />
revealed his critical take on corporations.<br />
Ashton Kutcher, Guy Oseary, and Michael Arrington, TechCrunch Disrupt NYC 2013, video stills. Courtesy of Laurence Hoffmann.<br />
With his notorious sardonic language typical to an<br />
“agent provocateur”, he decries the concept of<br />
Big Brother. He warns that societies should prefer<br />
the decentralization of the security system instead<br />
of accepting that one major entity controls the<br />
masses. Ashton proposes that security should be<br />
based on the interaction among individuals. This<br />
critical approach defines an optimistic point of view<br />
on local communities built by the genuine personal<br />
relationships between people. Such conviction<br />
For his eclectic interests and activities, Ashton<br />
belongs -together with all socio-politically engaged<br />
celebrities- to that figure so much in vogue in the<br />
Renaissance, “the Renaissance Man”. In the 15th<br />
and 16th Centuries the reevaluation of the models<br />
from Antiquity took an important step. Artists<br />
and philosophers were called to court (royalty,<br />
aristocracy or new bourgeoisie) to engage into the<br />
political discourse and became spokes persons,<br />
aka ambassadors. What made them “Renaissance<br />
implies a strong criticism towards the general Men” was their versatility in various fields of culture,<br />
opinion that our western (and newly BRIC) societies science, politics and the conviction that societies<br />
are tending towards a more anonymous global could harmonically entail all these aspects. These<br />
system.<br />
societies were literally called Utopia, a term that<br />
today has taken on the connotation of “illusionary<br />
On the practical business level, Ashton focuses and unrealistic”.<br />
on financially supporting and strengthening<br />
technological platforms that enhance social sharing. This lead to an open conclusion: Is social activism<br />
And since interconnectivity is fundamentally an in all its forms a sheer idealistic endeavor or can<br />
element of mutual trust, it is especially through<br />
social media that a stronger connection between<br />
the contribution of mass mediated personae really<br />
reach the masses and help make the change?<br />
individuals can be achieved and local communities<br />
are therefore spontaneously formed.<br />
REVOLT<br />
<strong>Magazine</strong> Number 4, 2013<br />
4
THE<br />
GALLERY<br />
VIEW<br />
BY ROB REED<br />
AL HELD<br />
Alphabet Paintings<br />
Fedruary 28 - April 20, 2013<br />
Cheim & Read<br />
547 West 25th Street NY, NY<br />
Tension and play were a couple of Al Held's guiding<br />
forces in creating the Alphabet Paintings that Cheim<br />
& Read in Chelsea presents. All made between<br />
1961 and 1967, the monumentally scaled acrylics<br />
on canvas take their queue from letter forms – a<br />
technique for composing and dividing abstracted<br />
space that retains also a sense of visual familiarity<br />
that would otherwise be lost in purely minimalist<br />
works. Typography, here, offers the artist a heuristic<br />
that yields surprising results without ever slipping<br />
into alienating territory.<br />
Held used both serif and sans-serif typefaces,<br />
and in works with letters as titles, he isn't merely<br />
transposing and cropping letter forms. In "The 'I,'" for<br />
example, the white vertical bars flanking the sides<br />
are indeed the spaces created between the capital<br />
letter's top and bottom serif. The white bars are<br />
not true to form, however; they're shortened, and<br />
angled slightly more than 90 degrees, which builds<br />
compositional tension and holds the shapes in.<br />
Thus, the black and white work is strikingly modern<br />
without feeling cold.<br />
Turning to letters themselves, consider that the<br />
quintessentially modern typeface Helvetica – it's<br />
now used by Apple, American Apparel, and even the<br />
MTA subway system – was designed just four years<br />
prior to the earliest painting in this exhibition, "Ivan<br />
the Terrible," 1961. Modern is synonymous with<br />
stripping forms of ornament, and with ornament<br />
goes sentiment. But for all of Held's paring down,<br />
he packs emotion back in with intense color,<br />
compositional skewing, and, at least in the "X"<br />
paintings, thwarting of linear perspective.<br />
In the back exhibition room is "The Yellow X," 1965.<br />
The second largest piece in the exhibition, its content<br />
is true to its title. The power of the yellow hue is<br />
nearly overwhelming as it bounces off the adjacent<br />
walls and fills the room. Lost in some reproductions,<br />
however, is not only the work's scale, but the center<br />
divide where the diptych merges and creates a black<br />
sliver that slices the X rather dramatically.<br />
The Alphabet Paintings prefigure the "abstract<br />
illusionism" developed in Held's later works by<br />
tweaking recognizable shapes. Without all the<br />
overlaps, three-dimensionality, and spatial depth<br />
that dominate the latter-day paintings we more<br />
closely associate with Held, these works have an<br />
eccentric iconicity all their own.<br />
JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT<br />
February 7 - April 6, 2013<br />
Gagosian Gallery<br />
555 West 24th Street NY, NY<br />
It's nearly impossible to respond to the paintings<br />
of Jean-Michel Basquiat unencumbered by what<br />
history has made of him, or even, for that matter,<br />
what he made of himself. Yet the voracity of the<br />
artist's ego and that of the 1980s art market is<br />
essential to appreciating how the artist worked and,<br />
frankly, how much art he was able to make – roughly<br />
1000 paintings and 2000 drawings in the seven<br />
years before his death of a drug overdose at the<br />
age of 27. (Without a stream of collectors, where do<br />
3000 pieces of art go?) This inseparability of man<br />
and market can translate to an irreducibility that<br />
makes either severe criticism of his work or effusive<br />
eulogizing a bit inadequate.<br />
Gagosian Gallery's Chelsea location offers a unique<br />
opportunity to mine Basquiat's oeuvre through over<br />
50 works drawn from private and public collections.<br />
A curatorial theme isn't obvious if it's here. The<br />
exhibition rooms' large sizes, however, create ample<br />
space for incongruities to commingle without much<br />
fuss. And incongruities, disparities, and stream-ofconsciousness<br />
pastiche are what make Basquiat's<br />
art what it is.<br />
Among the metaphors Basquiat assumed for his<br />
persona is the boxer. We've all seen the black<br />
and white posters of Basquiat and Andy Warhol in<br />
boxing gloves, as if ready to spar. The boxer asserts<br />
Basquiat's aggressive rounds with the art world,<br />
and perhaps – at least in the portrait series of<br />
black boxers, including Jack Johnson, Sugar Ray<br />
Robinson, Cassius Clay, etc. – a critique of the art<br />
world's racial makeup (though this he denied).<br />
Al Held (1928 - 2005), IVAN THE TERRIBLE, 1961. Acrylic on canvas 144 x 114 inches 365.8 x 289.6 centimeters CR# He.31324<br />
Photos courtesy Cheim & Read, New York.<br />
REVOLT<br />
The "boxer series" contains some of the most<br />
inventive works, essentially bricolage, seductively<br />
<strong>Magazine</strong> Number 4, 2013 6
JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT, Untitled (Two Heads on Gold), 1982, Acrylic and oil paintstick on canvas, 80 x 125 inches, (203.2 x 317.5 cm). Photos courtesy Gagosian Gallery, New York.<br />
unusual in appearance and clever in their material<br />
combinations. "Cassius Clay," 1982, is an acrylic<br />
and oil stick on canvas; however, the stretcher is a<br />
found wood pallet which creates rounded edges on<br />
the top and bottom, lifted in the center by the pallet's<br />
vertical stringer. Half sculpture, half painting, these<br />
works have a presence that humorously undermines<br />
modern painting and how "high art" ought to look.<br />
Toward the end of his short life, Basquiat's paintings<br />
began to empty out with a haunting fatigue. "Riding<br />
with Death," 1988, is one of the most poignant. A<br />
man, red, rides the barely joined bones of a crawling<br />
skeleton, perhaps his own, in an empty bronze field.<br />
The metallic sheen gives the work a royal dignity as<br />
if the artist had unwittingly bestowed his own last<br />
rites.<br />
with prismatic projections emitted from the eyes<br />
and lips making diamonds in the painting's center.<br />
The symmetry, simplicity, and complimentary colors<br />
of dark blue and orange make the 26-inch square<br />
piece feel iconic.<br />
Geoff McFetridge's medium-sized painting "12<br />
Dots," 2013, depicts twelve individuals from a<br />
bird's eye view. Their heads, each a black circle,<br />
and bodies with limbs are choreographed in a cool<br />
palette of grays, blues and whites, punctuated by a<br />
red shirt or two. The graphic, almost mechanical,<br />
quality of the composition gives the image a slick<br />
iciness, especially since no eye contact is being<br />
made either inside or outside the painting.<br />
Ryan Schneider's "How Long Have You Known?,"<br />
2013, shares a palette similar to Oinonen's, yet it's<br />
more saturated and high-keyed. A topless woman<br />
sunbathes, only partly shaded by palm leaves,<br />
on a red-and-black striped towel with various<br />
fruits around her. As the towel and fruit appear<br />
atilt, leaning unnaturally forward, the painting's<br />
lower half feels like a Matisse still life. It's a nice<br />
effect, even if the crotch-centric composition (and<br />
exaggerated signature) is a tad heavy handed. At the<br />
same time, overstatement seems to authenticate<br />
contemporaneity these days.<br />
Fifty years ago artist-critic Fairfield Porter reviewed a<br />
MoMA exhibition "exploring recent directions in one<br />
CHICKEN OR BEEF?<br />
March 6 - April 20, 2013<br />
The Hole<br />
312 Bowery, NY, NY<br />
If you're "crossing the pond," as international<br />
travelers phrase it, the flight attendant's question<br />
at mealtime could be "Chicken or beef?" Hence the<br />
title of The Hole's mini-survey exhibition of figure<br />
paintings drawn from artists mostly in Europe<br />
and North America. There's no real premise here.<br />
The press release alludes to connecting threads,<br />
but the pleasure in the show is in the disparity of<br />
approaches to representation sustained by an<br />
evenness in quality.<br />
Several artists are widely known, such as Cecily<br />
Brown, Barnaby Furnas, and Jules de Balincourt. The<br />
latter employs a Rubin vase motif (i.e., two facing<br />
silhouettes that make, by illusion, a center vase)<br />
Xstraction: A survey of new approaches in abstraction, installation view. Photos courtesy The Hole, New York.<br />
One knockout piece is "Unopposite," 2012, by aspect of American painting: the renewed interest<br />
Canadian-based artist Anders Oinonen. Keen in the human figure." A figure painter himself, he<br />
sensibilities of abstraction and figuration arise in quickly pointed out that "[s]ince painters have<br />
equal measure in one large saddened, upwardgazing<br />
face. Painted in bright, fine-tuned pastels to represent a renewed interest in the figure on the<br />
never stopped painting the figure...it could be said<br />
strategically modified with angled planes that part of critics and the audiences rather than among<br />
function like scrims or thin white washes, the sevenfoot-tall<br />
painting appears to genuinely emote, albeit painters." I'd like to think that's still true.<br />
painters. To this extent the critics are following the<br />
in a cartoonish way – which is surprising given how<br />
rigorously abstract its composition is.
BETWEEN DESTINATIONS:<br />
THE ROSE<br />
UNEARTHED<br />
BY RANDEE SILV<br />
After circling through the 4th floor galleries at the<br />
Whitney Museum, I found myself returning to the<br />
same exact spot at Jay DeFeo: A Retrospective<br />
(February 28 - June 2, 2013). It was like being<br />
caught in a visual net as my glance slightly turned<br />
in both directions. I couldn’t move as I stood there<br />
between DeFeo’s seven foot wide hypnotic graphite<br />
on paper, The Eyes (1958), and the monumental,<br />
nearly one ton, The Rose (1958-66), nestled<br />
in the small sanctuary that the museum had<br />
designed to emulate the sunlight as it streamed<br />
into her Fillmore Street studio. DeFeo always felt<br />
that this drawing had something of a “prophetic<br />
or visionary meaning,” and it was through these<br />
eyes that her works to come would be envisioned.<br />
Her desire was that some day these two pieces<br />
would be shown together. I could almost hear them<br />
conversing. Unexpectedly, I was drawn in.<br />
Jay DeFeo was a painter among the ‘50s San<br />
Francisco scene of artists, poets and jazz<br />
musicians. After graduating from the University of<br />
California at Berkeley with a master’s degree, she<br />
was awarded a traveling fellowship that no woman<br />
had yet received. Knowing this, the art department<br />
strategically recommended her as J. DeFeo. She<br />
then spent a year and a half in Europe and North<br />
Africa before settling in Florence for 6 months.<br />
Intrigued by ordinary objects, astronomy, unspoken<br />
subjects, erasures, Italian architecture, jagged<br />
mountain peaks, Asian, African & prehistoric art,<br />
DeFeo dynamically meshes her own rhythms and<br />
forms.<br />
Dorothy Miller, the curator and director of the<br />
Museum of Modern Art, who happened to be out<br />
talent scouting, saw DeFeo’s first one-person<br />
show at the Dilexi Gallery in San Francisco. Miller<br />
visited DeFeo’s studio and was hoping to include<br />
The Rose (entitled Deathrose at that time) in the<br />
upcoming 1959 landmark exhibition, Sixteen<br />
Americans (December 16, 1959 - February 17,<br />
1960). Holding out for a showing on the West<br />
Coast, DeFeo hesitated about parting with her<br />
work still in progress. Five other pieces were<br />
chosen, and a reproduction of the unfinished<br />
Deathrose was published in the accompanying<br />
catalogue. DeFeo and her husband, Wally<br />
Hendricks, decided to turn down the plane tickets<br />
bought by MoMA for the opening. Hendricks, who<br />
was also invited to be in the exhibition, was known<br />
for his kinetic assemblages and was co-founder<br />
of The Six Gallery, an underground art gallery and<br />
hang for Beat poets.<br />
“Wally and I didn’t really realize the stature and the<br />
prestige of being included in such a show. I was<br />
really unaware of the situation. It surprises many<br />
people that we were the only people included<br />
in the show who didn’t make the effort to go<br />
back for the opening. The whole show was kind<br />
of a coming-out party, I discovered later. It was<br />
intended to be for galleries in search of new talent.<br />
I was approached by the Stable Gallery through<br />
correspondence, which I turned down.”<br />
New York Times critic, John Canaday wrote “For my<br />
money, these are the sixteen artists most slated for<br />
oblivion.” Included in the show were Jasper Johns,<br />
Robert Rauschenberg, Louise Nevelson, Ellsworth<br />
Kelly and Frank Stella.<br />
Having found herself on an unplanned journey that<br />
engulfed and obsessed her for eight years, DeFeo<br />
devoted herself intensely to painting, layering,<br />
sculpting, working and reworking Deathrose.<br />
She repeatedly applied thick coats of white oil<br />
paint, using black to minimize the yellowing and<br />
occasionally mixing in mica for sparkle, while<br />
scraping, reapplying, working with thinness and<br />
thickness, allowing paint to dry and carving into<br />
the material with a palette knife. Extending the<br />
painting’s radiating lines from a study photograph<br />
in preparation to enlarge Deathrose, she drew<br />
and painted these extensions directly onto the<br />
supporting wall around the canvas, later removing<br />
her work from its stretcher bars, gluing it to a<br />
larger unprimed canvas and placing it in her front<br />
room bay window. More pigment was intuitively<br />
placed, reformatting the center, shaping hard<br />
edged grooves into smooth ridges and crevasses<br />
highlighting the sun’s rays, emphasizing shadows,<br />
observing proportions, contours, growing thicker<br />
and heavier with each stage as unpredicted<br />
surface textures kept emerging.<br />
Deathrose was extensively photographed in its<br />
many evolving phases. Images circulated even<br />
before its completion. One landed in a 1961<br />
Art in America article, “New Talent U.S.A.” That<br />
same year, the travel magazine Holiday included<br />
Deathrose in a piece “San Francisco: The<br />
Rebels.” DeFeo was the only painter mentioned<br />
and described as “one of San Francisco’s most<br />
successful younger artists.” The photograph of<br />
DeFeo working on Deathrose as she stood on a<br />
stepladder appeared in a 1962 issue of Look.<br />
News of her mammoth sculptured painting began<br />
spreading. Different institutions were thinking<br />
about how they might acquire Deathrose, but<br />
DeFeo had no intention of donating her work.<br />
DeFeo working on what was then titled Deathrose, 1960. Photograph<br />
by Burt Glinn. © Burt Glinn/Magnum Photos.<br />
In 1965, DeFeo and Hendricks ended up being<br />
evicted from their Fillmore studio when the building<br />
was condemned and new owners doubled the rent.<br />
Deathrose measured nearly 12’ x 8’ with depths in<br />
spots deeper than eight inches and had to be cut<br />
away from the studio wall, a crate built around it,<br />
lowered by forklift to a truck below and relocated<br />
to a small room for storage at the Pasadena Art<br />
Museum.<br />
Bruce Conner, friend, filmmaker, interdisciplinary<br />
REVOLT <strong>Magazine</strong> Number 4, 2013 8
artist, “Father of MTV,” conceptual prankster and<br />
founder of the Rat Bastard Protective Association,<br />
a group of Beat and Funk artists, felt that “This<br />
final form was not ever finished, it had to take<br />
an uncontrolled event to make it stop.” Conner<br />
documented this “transplant” in his 7 minute<br />
film, The White Rose (1967) Jay DeFeo’s Painting<br />
Removed by Angelic Hosts (1967), to the sounds of<br />
Miles Davis’s Sketches of Spain.<br />
DeFeo stopped refining it three months later.<br />
Renamed from Deathrose which she thought “just<br />
a little melodramatic,” now to The White Rose,<br />
feeling “ the rose was so much an aspect of life as<br />
of death,” she eventually just went with The Rose,<br />
“the unity with both of those opposite ideas.”<br />
The Rose had its first public showing in 1969 at<br />
the Pasadena Art Museum, traveled to the San<br />
Francisco Museum of Art and was afterwards<br />
installed in the new wing at the San Francisco Art<br />
Institute, where it was bolted to a concrete wall in<br />
the McMillan Conference Room.<br />
“I had done absolutely nothing from the time I<br />
finished The Rose until 1970. I was repairing<br />
my personal life as well as my psyche after the<br />
heavy experience that the painting of The Rose<br />
was. I needed that time to restore some kind of<br />
equilibrium and gain some kind of perspective on<br />
my life’s work and get some feeling of what could<br />
naturally come after that.”<br />
With the emergence of Minimalist and Pop Art<br />
during the ‘60s, not seeing herself as part of the<br />
feminist movement and maybe being too tightly<br />
pegged as a “Beat” artist, DeFeo began feeling as<br />
if the art world had moved on and was showing<br />
little interest in her work. She bought a Hasselblad<br />
camera and immersed herself into photography.<br />
She continued to seek museum placement for<br />
The Rose. By 1972, it was showing signs of<br />
hair line cracks, nicotine grime, scratch marks,<br />
graffiti, coffee stains, loose chunks of paint, with<br />
the canvas sagging from its weight. DeFeo knew<br />
she’d have to find help to cover these now needed<br />
repairs. Conner screened his film, which had<br />
already helped to keep The Rose in the public eye,<br />
for grassroot fundraising campaigns. Events were<br />
organized. DeFeo received a $1,500 National<br />
Endowment grant. News about the The Rose<br />
resurfaced in the San Francisco press as they<br />
covered the story of DeFeo’s restoration efforts.<br />
The museum conservation team started to clean<br />
and repair The Rose, encasing it in a structure<br />
of wax, starch paste, polyvinyl acetate, packing<br />
material, mulberry tissue, cotton sheeting and<br />
plaster reinforced with chicken wire. Money ran<br />
out. A particle board wall was eventually built<br />
in front of it for student exhibitions. The Rose<br />
remained hidden for the next twenty years.<br />
As the art world “rediscovered” DeFeo, her new<br />
work began to see momentum by 1975 with a run<br />
of successful one-person shows that followed.<br />
Curatorial consultant Leah Levy joined her efforts<br />
The Rose, 1958–66, Oil with wood and mica on canvas, 128 7/8 x 92 1/4 x 11 in. (327.3 x 234.3<br />
x 27.9 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of The Jay DeFeo Trust, Berkeley, CA, and purchase with funds<br />
from the Contemporary Painting and Sculpture Committee and the Judith Rothschild Foundation 95.170, © 2012 The Jay<br />
DeFeo Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, Photograph by Ben Blackwell.<br />
to find a permanent home for The Rose. DeFeo<br />
took a teaching position at Mills College and<br />
climbed Mount Kenya, a lifelong dream.<br />
The Rose continued to remain an obscure mystery.<br />
After DeFeo’s death in 1989, The Jay DeFeo Trust<br />
was established and the search for a permanent<br />
location for The Rose continued. Would a museum<br />
take the risk of putting out money, not knowing<br />
if the painting was salvageable or not? DeFeo’s<br />
patrons and the “Friends of the Rose” were<br />
committed and determined. They felt deeply<br />
captivated and transformed by The Rose. They<br />
praised her as a true innovator. Her struggle had<br />
now become their own struggle to bring The Rose<br />
back to life.<br />
In 1992, Lisa Phillips, the Whitney Museum’s<br />
curator, contacted the estate about a possible loan<br />
of The Rose for their upcoming exhibition, Beat<br />
obviously in no condition to be shown. The estate<br />
contacted Lisa Lyons at the Lannan Foundation<br />
in Los Angeles for possible conservation support.<br />
J. Patrick Lannan had been an avid collector of<br />
DeFeo’s work and had originally wanted to buy the<br />
unfinished Deathrose, which he had nicknamed<br />
“The Endless Road.” Three small square windows<br />
were cut into the plaster covering, and, to<br />
everyone’s surprise, it hadn’t turned into “slime”<br />
or “goo” or become coated with mold. Two years<br />
later, the Lannan Foundation redirected its mission<br />
away from the acquisition of art.<br />
David Ross, director of the Whitney, told Levy,<br />
“It’s one of the greatest masterpieces of postwar<br />
American art. It had to be rescued.” The Whitney
acquired it and covered all restoration costs. Once<br />
again, The Rose was lowered through a window by<br />
crane onto a flatbed truck, taken to a warehouse<br />
for cleaning, where its air pockets were filled with<br />
epoxy mixed with chopped fiberglass. 1500 pounds<br />
heavier, it was shipped to New York City for the<br />
Beat Culture exhibition, thirty one years after its<br />
eviction from Fillmore street. The public could now<br />
experience The Rose as DeFeo had envisioned it. It<br />
was no longer an art world rumor.<br />
A color reproduction of The Rose landed on the<br />
cover of the March 1996 issue of Art in America.<br />
Bill Berkson’s article, In the Heat of The Rose,<br />
was featured. The Rose traveled to the Walker Art<br />
Center in Minneapolis, the M.H. de Young Memorial<br />
Museum in San Francisco and the Berkeley Art<br />
Museum. The Whitney Museum included The Rose<br />
in its 1999 exhibition, The American Century: Art &<br />
Culture 1900-2000, Part II and in the 2003 Beside<br />
“The Rose”: Selected Works by Jay DeFeo (October<br />
2, 2003 - February 29, 2004.)<br />
Shortly before Jay DeFeo died, she shared this with<br />
Leah Levy: “She is walking through a museum in<br />
her dream, but she is not Jay DeFeo anymore. It<br />
is in a future life, and she has been born again, as<br />
someone else. She wanders through the galleries,<br />
room after room, and comes upon The Rose -<br />
unearthed, unwrapped, repaired. A person is<br />
standing in front of it, studying it intensely. DeFeo<br />
nudges this person and says, “You know, I did<br />
that.”<br />
Courtesy the Conner Family Trust (c) Conner Family Trust.<br />
REVOLT<br />
<strong>Magazine</strong> Number 4, 2013<br />
10
TOP 10 NYC<br />
!#$%12456!@#<br />
ARTISTS NOW<br />
Andrea Bonin<br />
Born 1986 in Temple, Texas<br />
Andrea Bonin makes sculptures and assemblage using plaster, wax, clay, and found material. Having grown up in a creative<br />
household (her mother a painter and father a musician), Andrea experienced working on projects and expressing herself<br />
artistically as the norm from an early age. Her work deals with domesticity and nostalgia, and is essentially about finding<br />
reverence in the everyday. Her process is very much about experimentation, gesture and material. Right now she is working<br />
on a series of drawings that mimic patterns found in wrapping paper and newspaper advertisements. She’s interested in<br />
the notion of “holiday” and has a growing collection of ornaments, tinsel and old, faded party favors. Going forward, she’s<br />
interested in bringing some expressive and performative elements into her work relating to her former years as a dancer.<br />
www.andreabonin.com<br />
Sean Paul Gallegos<br />
Born 1976 on Earth, North America<br />
For Sean Paul Gallegos being an artist is not a choice, it just is. “The beauty of being an artist at this point in time is the option<br />
to be interdisciplinary,” says an artist who 10 years ago would get schooled that he needed to focus on one medium. “Sculpture<br />
is what sells and is exciting to create, but Performance is still in my heart.” Sean currently works out of his living room. His bath<br />
tub doubles as a slop sink and his queen size bed makes for a nice cutting table or work bench at times. Currently, he’s working<br />
on “Recovering my roots and having the will to challenge what is damaging in this world.” Ultimately through his work he hopes<br />
to open eyes and hearts. He also plans to have fun working, forget about the market and create more reasons to travel.<br />
www.seanpaulgallegos.com<br />
Rebecca Goyette<br />
Born 1992 in Provincetown, Massachusetts<br />
For a long time Rebecca has been drawing, play acting, reading, and nerding out on all things related to art and sex. Her videos<br />
are a balancing act of multiple elements including sculpture, sound, image and performance. Her work relates to her “desire"<br />
to work with others and…fascination with all things tactile/sensory.” Her current body of work focuses on Lobsta Sex, using<br />
lobster mating rituals (in which female lobsters box down a mate and squirt aphrodisiac drugs out of her forehead) as a point of<br />
departure. Her greatest artistic challenge? The “thin membrane between the fantasy world I construct, inhabit and play in with<br />
others and my everyday life. Drama can erupt. Desire is complex.” Her upcoming work explores asexual love between a Blue<br />
Lobsta burlesque singer and a man who dresses in 1600’s Puritan clothing all the time shot in a seaside town in New England.<br />
www.rebogallery.com<br />
Fred Gutzeit<br />
Born 1940 in Cleveland, Ohio<br />
Fred Gutzeit’s elementary school principal told his mother that Fred should have art lessons. Years later he’s a full-fledged<br />
painter working in acrylic on canvas and watercolor on paper. Incorporating digital prints and photography into his painting is<br />
also part of his practice. Fred’s work is about finding the unexpected. Says the artist of his work, “I’d like to take your eyes for a<br />
joyride.” Since 1970, Fred has worked from his studio on the Bowery and currently his greatest challenge is pulling together the<br />
various ideas comprising the last 50 years worth of his sketchbook. He’s currently working through an idea called “SigNature,”<br />
which involves six large paintings and dozens of small watercolors and acrylic panels. He’s also planning to do an outdoor wall<br />
billboard-installation. After that he’ll continue to sort through old sketchbook ideas and work them out in permanent sculptural form.<br />
www.fredgutzeit.com<br />
Phoenix Lindsey-Hall Born 1982 in Athens, Georgia<br />
Involved from a young age with social justice and humanitarian issues, Phoenix’s work encompasses the “poetry that cannot<br />
be expressed through traditional campaign field-work or fundraising pitches.” Building her projects from research and hard<br />
numbers, her work ultimately makes a departure into “obscurity, expression and emotions.” Having worked with photography<br />
for many years, her current work is more sculptural. Themes Phoenix has engaged in her practice include queer iconography,<br />
hate crimes, war and foreclosures. Her most recent body of work, After Kempf, is an exploration of l.g.b.t hate crimes. Using<br />
mixed media - including ceramic, concrete, and found materials - Phoenix transforms everyday objects that have been used as<br />
weapons in specific hate crime cases. Phoenix is currently Artist-in-Residence at Gallery Aferro in Newark, NJ.<br />
www.phoenixlindseyhall.com<br />
REVOLT<br />
<strong>Magazine</strong> Number 4, 2013 12
Duron Jackson<br />
Born in Harlem, New York<br />
Duron Jackson has made art since a very young age and currently works in the medium of sculpture. His work is about a way of<br />
being that's widely misunderstood, and narrowly represented. His greatest artistic challenge? “Saying a lot in the most simple<br />
way.” Working out of his studio in Brooklyn, Duron showed in fours exhibitions last fall including a solo show at the Brooklyn<br />
Museum. Currently, he’s in Salvador da Bahia on a Fulbright Research Fellowship where he’s concurrently doing a residency at<br />
Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia. His plan is to “make art, eat, drink and be merry.”<br />
www.duronjackson.com/home.html<br />
Yuliya Lanina<br />
Born 1973 in Moscow, Russia<br />
When Yuliya first moved to the U.S. she planned to be a musician, but when she could not get access to musical instruments or<br />
musicians, she started drawing instead. Today she does painting, animatronic sculpture, animation and performance. Her work<br />
is about “looking at uncomfortable realities with a wink and a smile.” Having recently relocated to Austin, TX she splits her time<br />
between Austin and New York City and says “Having Internet in my studio,” is her greatest artistic challenge. After two recent<br />
solo shows in New York (Figureworks) and Cleveland (Cleveland Art Institute) she is currently working on a new animation and<br />
mechanical sculptures for her solo exhibitions at the Russian Cultural Center in Houston and W&TW in Austin . She also has a<br />
performance piece in the works.<br />
www.yuliyalanina.com<br />
Jong Oh<br />
Born 1981 in Nouadhibou, Mauritania<br />
Jong Oh is an artist working in sculpture and installation. Constantly exploring the boundaries between “something” and “nothing,”<br />
Jong’s work in a nut shell expresses “philosophical ponderings of the physical space we occupy.” He is currently looking<br />
for a wide space to make an installation of suspended wood sticks and panels. Says Jong, “I want to give the viewer a transforming<br />
spatial experience by simple compositions of lines and planes in space.” For his next series he plans to incorporate<br />
photography as a means of exploring the boundaries of interior and exterior space.<br />
www.ohjong.com<br />
Nell Painter<br />
Born 1942 in Houston, Texas<br />
Nell Painter. Photo by Bryan Thomas.<br />
Although born in Texas, Nell grew up in Oakland and considers it her hometown. After a successful career in academia, Nell<br />
turned to art and currently works in acrylic on canvas, paper, and Yupo (polypropylene paper), composing images on the<br />
computer as well as canvas. Nell’s work is about “seeing people as visual objects” and “the freedom to make visual fictions.”<br />
Nell maintains a big basement studio in the Dietze Building of the Ironbound section of Newark, New Jersey, where she is<br />
working on her current long-term project, Odalisque Atlas (about beauty, sex, and slavery). She also indulges in self-portraits<br />
and abstract drawings as purely formalist exercises. Nell recently appeared in conversation with Kara Walker at the Newark<br />
Public Library.<br />
www.nellpainter.com<br />
Tobaron Waxman<br />
Born in Toronto, Canada<br />
Benjamin Coopersmith and Tobaron<br />
Waxman, "Tashlich" (performance for<br />
photo, 2009.)<br />
Tobaron Waxman is a border crosser. Through performance, photography, video, voice and sound, he interrogates<br />
diasporic experience, contested national borders and the ways in which the State shapes gender. His work<br />
often deals with transgendered bodies, issues of consent, sexual representation, conflict and the queering of<br />
heterosexuality. Informed by his Jewish background, Tobaron’s work explores the trappings of social codes as layers<br />
and historical distortions, the authenticity of gender and embodiment as praxis. Tobaron is interested in “Place”<br />
as a dynamic tension. "The Place" being one of the names of god in Judaism, says the artist “I want the artists I’m<br />
collaborating with and the viewers to experience their citizenship of ‘The Place’ as agents of possibility.” His current<br />
work in process involves Tobaron bringing his own body back into the work as a vocalist based on a curriculum he<br />
has designed for the FTM voice derived from Western and non-Western traditions.<br />
www.tobaron.com
FASHION<br />
Today<br />
The Cult of the First Lady:<br />
The Media’s Festishistic Gaze<br />
BY EMILY KIRKPATRICK<br />
Photo courtesy of The White House.<br />
The First Lady of the United States has always<br />
been a figurehead for America, representative of<br />
the perfect wife and mother. The title of First Lady<br />
comes with no paycheck, no official responsibilities,<br />
and a life lived under almost constant media<br />
scrutiny. According to Carl Sferrazza Anthony’s<br />
REVOLT<br />
<strong>Magazine</strong> Number 4, 2013<br />
book The Role of the First Lady, “She is, first<br />
and foremost, the hostess of the White House.”<br />
Although most would, in public, vehemently<br />
disagree with that statement, the problem is<br />
that it’s still an ideological truth privately held<br />
by a majority of the population and every media<br />
outlet across America. In the past few decades,<br />
a First Lady’s position and responsibilities have<br />
evolved well beyond the realm of traditional<br />
wifely duties and fashion trendsetting. It’s<br />
now common for First Ladies to be vocal about<br />
their political opinions and pioneers on public<br />
14
initiatives aimed at fixing everyday issues faced by<br />
American citizens, ranging from the environment,<br />
to women’s rights, to illegal drugs. The American<br />
media, however, has failed to keep up with this shift<br />
in emphasis. Publications continue to focus on the<br />
superficial, banal and demeaning over the political<br />
and charitable when discussing our First Lady. The<br />
result of this discourse is a constantly backfiring<br />
attempt to limit the feminine domain and return to<br />
an era of repression, and a sexual stereotype, that<br />
no longer exists.<br />
For this reason, Michelle Obama represents<br />
a perfect storm of political and social media<br />
commentary. As a woman in the public eye, she<br />
inspires a shallow, thoughtless dialog that has<br />
surrounded the feminine sphere for far too long in<br />
this country. Due to the color of her skin, she has<br />
unwittingly unleashed this undercurrent of intense<br />
racism, hatred, and at it’s core, fear, that has been<br />
masquerading through the media under the guise<br />
of political discourse and criticism. Michelle Obama<br />
is by no means the first First Lady to receive such<br />
intense public scrutiny, especially on a physical<br />
and sartorial level. Jacqueline Kennedy Onasis<br />
continues to be remembered to this day for her<br />
contributions to fashion and style, if nothing else.<br />
But when Barack Obama was first inaugurated into<br />
office, the Michelle media frenzy hit a fever pitch<br />
which has sustained itself for the past five years and<br />
will surely remain intact well beyond the completion<br />
of his second term in office. In addition to the<br />
relatively standard trivialization of the First Lady’s<br />
appearance and activities, the comments against<br />
Michelle Obama, specifically, seem to have taken on<br />
a distinctly different tone and bitterness than they<br />
have with First Ladies of the past, such as Laura<br />
Bush or Hillary Clinton.<br />
Of course, other First Ladies have been vilified by<br />
the media and had their public lives intensely, and<br />
inappropriately, put on display. But never before has<br />
a First Lady’s allegiance to her country, the size and<br />
shape of her body, or her day-to-day decisions been<br />
so intensely analyzed and attacked as Mrs. Obama’s.<br />
The problems with the type of language the media<br />
uses when discussing any woman, but in particular<br />
Michelle, are myriad. This type of insensitive,<br />
objectifying discussion undermines the authority<br />
and respect deserving of a woman in her public and<br />
political position, as well as setting back the agenda<br />
of equality, and inviting some remarkably racist, and<br />
completely out-of-line commentary. When people in<br />
political office or on national television speak about<br />
a woman of power, such as Michelle Obama, in this<br />
type of condescending, accusatory language, it<br />
gives the rest of America permission to follow suit.<br />
The claims against Michelle Obama range from<br />
attempting to appropriate the plight of black, single<br />
motherhood into her persona, to anti-patriotism,<br />
elitist spending habits and allegiances with the<br />
Black Power Movement.<br />
As Barack Obama’s term has progressed, the articles<br />
about Michelle Obama have tended to increasingly<br />
feature style over substance. In an article for The<br />
Economist in 2009, Adrian Wooldridge wrote that<br />
most new stories about the first lady, “were almost<br />
entirely devoted to fluff.” Every fashion magazine<br />
and website in America has run at least one piece<br />
on how to attain the First Lady’s amazing wardrobe;<br />
that is if they don’t already have an entire section<br />
dedicated exclusively to her daily outfit choices.<br />
Proving Wooldrige’s point, in 2009, CNN ran a<br />
segment on “How to get Michelle Obama’s toned<br />
arms.” But, as the piece points out, not everyone is<br />
a fan of the First Lady’s muscular biceps. The article<br />
quotes Boston Herald columnist Lauren Beckham<br />
Falcone who wrote to Obama, saying, “It's February.<br />
Going sleeveless in subzero temperature is just<br />
showing off. All due respect." Clearly there was no<br />
respect intended here. Would these same journalists<br />
be ballsy enough to walk up to any shoulder-bearing<br />
stranger on the street and tell them to stop showing<br />
off and cover up? What is it about Michelle Obama’s<br />
husband’s choice in profession that makes her<br />
arms and body a permissible subject of critique on<br />
a national level?<br />
And don’t think the average American woman’s<br />
personal struggle with the First Lady’s bare arms has<br />
diminished with time! Joyce Purnick, in an article for<br />
the New York Times “Style” section in 2012, wrote,<br />
“I HAD expected to keep mum about my problem<br />
with Michelle Obama until after the election, but my<br />
frustration has gotten the better of<br />
Photo courtesy of The White House.<br />
me. I can’t contain it any longer. I refer not to her<br />
politics, but to her arms -- her bare, toned, elegant<br />
arms. Enough!” According to Purnick, the first lady<br />
has made it “unacceptable for women to appear<br />
in public with covered arms.” Because, clearly,<br />
Michelle is not only the first famous woman to ever<br />
wear sleeveless clothing, but also, a dictator of<br />
sleeve lengths for women across America. Purnick<br />
concludes her article by pointing out that Michelle<br />
will turn 49 in January, suggesting, “Could it be time<br />
for her at least to begin to ponder setting a new<br />
fashion trend? Here’s a thought. Maybe she could<br />
take a cue from her husband and, in a bipartisan<br />
gesture, adopt Ann Romney’s preference for elbowlength<br />
sleeves and red taffeta. Or not.” I think the<br />
crucial take away from that sentence is “Or not.”<br />
This quote suggests that woman of a certain age,<br />
specifically, women of a certain age and public<br />
profile, should not be able to dress as they please.<br />
They should be ashamed of their bodies and of<br />
the effect they have on American woman clearly<br />
suffering from body issues of their own. Secondly, it<br />
implies that the most politicized opinion a First Lady<br />
should have is in the realm of fashion (where she<br />
can make a “bipartisan gesture” of her own), while<br />
the heavy thinking and legislature should be left to<br />
her wiser, more powerful husband.<br />
Lucky for all the tabloids, as the buff arms stories<br />
began to grow stale, Obama was inaugurated into<br />
office for his second term, and the First Lady had<br />
some exciting new changes of her own planned.<br />
According to Joselyn Noveck, a writer for the AP,<br />
“the president started it.” She’s referring, of course,<br />
to the media’s new, unbridled obsession with<br />
Michelle Obama’s bangs. According to Noveck,<br />
media outlets around the world are completely<br />
justified in talking exclusively about a First Lady’s<br />
haircut because of a husband’s admiration for his<br />
wife. Obama’s comment was clearly intended as a<br />
joke, considering he referred to the bangs as "the<br />
most significant event of this [inaugural] weekend."<br />
Despite the transparent flippancy of his statement,<br />
this quote was repeatedly taken out of context and<br />
used to justify a whirlwind of bang commentary and<br />
speculation. The Bangs even spawned their own<br />
Twitter account, which sends out thought-provoking<br />
tweets such as, "Just got a text from Hillary Clinton's<br />
side-part.” In a 2012 piece for The Washington Post,<br />
Rahiel Tesfamariam wrote, “Since the beginning of<br />
the president's term, there's been an ever-present<br />
demand to "publicly dissect" [Michelle Obama] and<br />
examine why she dresses the way she dresses, says<br />
what she says, and behaves the way she does.” The<br />
public is not satisfied until each of her decisions has<br />
been broken down and analyzed in order to suss out<br />
and reveal her presumed secret motivations behind<br />
every act. Even down to something as simple as a<br />
choice in hairstyle is suspected to have nefarious or<br />
manipulative motives.<br />
On December 28, 2012 in an article by Cathy Horyn<br />
for The New York Times, Valerie Steele, the director<br />
and chief curator of the Museum at FIT, commented,<br />
“Oddly, fashion, which has tended to be treated<br />
with extreme suspicion in American history, has<br />
not caused political problems for her.” It seems to<br />
me that this is the case because if we can trap a<br />
powerful woman in this shallow discourse, we lessen<br />
the appearance, and thus the threat, of power and<br />
authority in her decision making. By taking the focus<br />
away from her education, her intelligence and her<br />
position of authority, and reducing it to simply what<br />
she wears every day, how muscular her arms are,<br />
and how she styles her hair, she becomes “safe.” If<br />
we reduce her to a 1950s conception of what women<br />
should be and what their pursuits should entail, she<br />
can be viewed as posing no political or intellectual<br />
threat to the overwhelmingly white male patriarchal<br />
government. And the patriarchy is most certainly<br />
intimidated by Michelle Obama, as media and<br />
political pundits prove daily with their increasingly
absurd and misogynistic claims leveled against her.<br />
But men are not the only culprits of perpetuating<br />
this type of discourse, Horyn goes on to quote a<br />
designer who, “observed, with some accuracy, ‘Her<br />
clothes are too tight.’” As though this criticism is<br />
not only of the utmost importance, but also a strike<br />
against her and an indictment of her character.<br />
Even though America has pushed Michelle Obama<br />
to embrace her role as its First Lady fashionista,<br />
she is not even permitted to find respite within this<br />
feminine stereotype. When she plays into the heavily<br />
gendered role she’s been dealt, the criticism is just<br />
as intense and focused as when she was viewed as<br />
her husband’s radical-thinking co-conspirator.<br />
The New Yorker on January 22, 2013 justified<br />
the lack of negative media attention surrounding<br />
Michelle Obama’s pricey clothing (which, in fact,<br />
there has been a substantial amount of critique on),<br />
by saying, “When her husband ran for President in<br />
2008, there were barely veiled insinuations about<br />
whether the role of First Lady was really right for<br />
her—whether she was too angry, or could really<br />
Photo courtesy of The White House.<br />
feel comfortable. (One suspects that a sense of the<br />
pressures on her may explain why she is not taken to<br />
task as much as she might be for the price of these<br />
clothes.)” So, in other words, in the face of massive<br />
amounts of criticism surrounding her aptitude to<br />
simply be married to the President of the United<br />
States, her luxurious fashion expenditures have<br />
been forgiven as an effort to fit in. Horyn’s 2012<br />
New York Times article suggested a very similar<br />
idea, saying, “It’s a funny thing: four years ago she<br />
denied conservatives the chance to vilify her as ‘an<br />
angry black woman’ by taking immense pleasure<br />
in traditional first lady pursuits, like fashion,<br />
entertaining and gardening.” In other words, the only<br />
safe place in politics for intelligent women to prove<br />
themselves as true role models and not be branded<br />
as angry, bitchy, or stubborn shrews, is to retreat<br />
into the shallow, vain realm of the traditionally<br />
feminine. These articles promote the idea that if a<br />
woman is opinionated, politicized or powerful she<br />
automatically, and unquestionably, is asking for<br />
criticism. Traits that are respected and encouraged<br />
in male political candidates, in women, become<br />
egregious trademarks of an overbearing personality<br />
that has overstepped its proper bounds and can only<br />
be tamed by relegating her authority and decision<br />
making into venal pursuits. Even the topics the First<br />
Lady endorses during her husband’s presidency<br />
are meant to be of the simplest, most ethically<br />
uncontroversial nature (although, there are a handful<br />
of First Ladies who have proved exceptions to this<br />
rule). Laura Bush, for example, promoted education,<br />
while Michelle promotes “Let’s Move,” a campaign<br />
devoted to ending childhood obesity in America and<br />
promoting healthy eating habits. However, even this<br />
meager, unquestionably positive health initiative<br />
(a step towards the demure femininity expected of<br />
Mrs. Obama), has not managed to escape the wrath<br />
of politicians and pundits claiming Mrs. Obama is<br />
trying to tell Americans how to raise and what to<br />
feed their children.<br />
Wisconsin Republican congressman Jim<br />
Sensenbrenner very publicly took the First Lady’s<br />
health initiative to task, when he was overheard<br />
at Washington’s Reagan National Airport loudly<br />
criticizing “Let’s Move,” saying, “She lectures us<br />
on eating right while she has a large posterior<br />
herself.” After causing a media sensation with<br />
his rude, insensitive, and plainly inappropriate<br />
remarks, Sensenbrenner (who is not exactly the<br />
paragon of health himself) promised to “send the<br />
first lady an apology.” It’s clear from his statement<br />
that Sensenbrenner’s problems lie not with the<br />
First Lady’s initiatives to promote healthy children,<br />
but rather with her body. This is a fundamentally<br />
misogynist issue many male Republicans seem<br />
to currently be struggling with: the belief that it is<br />
their right to objectify, comment upon and legislate<br />
the female body. The lack of backlash and public<br />
outrage against Sensenbrenner only encourages<br />
such invectives and makes it seem acceptable, even<br />
permissible, to discuss a First Lady’s posterior when<br />
describing her politics. Criticisms that were once<br />
considered taboo, particularly when discussing the<br />
first family, have suddenly been given a no-holds-bar<br />
policy under the Obama administration. It seems<br />
that white politicians and the media have made<br />
the collective decision that electing a black man<br />
into office has lifted a moratorium on the political<br />
incorrectness of full-blown, uncensored racism and<br />
sexism.<br />
Much like Sensenbrenner, in January 2012, a<br />
speaker of the Kansas House, Republican Mike<br />
O’Neal, had to apologize after forwarding an email<br />
around the House which referred to the First Lady<br />
as “Mrs. YoMama.” He claims that he forwarded<br />
the email on without reading it, simply enjoying the<br />
picture of Mrs. Obama side by side with the Grinch<br />
above the caption “Twins separated at birth?” In his<br />
mind, this seemed to excuse the racist slur found<br />
above. In a public statement, O’Neal said that he<br />
found the cartoon amusing because, “I’ve had bad<br />
hair days too.” An unacceptable response to even<br />
more unacceptable behavior. But it’s not just her<br />
physical appearance that has riled a conservative<br />
nation, but also the ease with which she’s accepted,<br />
even embraced, her role as a pop icon and a woman<br />
who wields substantial media power.<br />
The American media has turned Michelle Obama<br />
into a celebrity, a pop culture phenomenon and an<br />
arbiter of style. Yet, at every turn, as she accepts<br />
and utilizes her unique status and position to<br />
promote positive change, she is greeted with<br />
immense backlash, criticizing her for feeding into<br />
the Hollywood machine. When she was invited to<br />
pose for the cover of Vogue in 2008, her advisers<br />
were concerned that she might be seen as “a<br />
fashionista,” a status she assuredly already had<br />
and that has only grown throughout the duration of<br />
her husband’s presidency. To Michelle’s credit, she<br />
made the compelling argument in favor of posing<br />
for the cover, saying that, “there are young black<br />
women across this country, and I want them to see a<br />
black woman on the cover of Vogue.” In the end, the<br />
cover received little notoriety or criticism, unlike her<br />
2013 Oscar appearance where she announced, via<br />
satellite along with Jack Nicholson, the Oscar winner<br />
for Best Picture. The Washington Post claimed that<br />
“attendees and viewers were flabbergasted at the<br />
satellite image of the elegantly dressed, Obama.”<br />
Many accused her of indulging in the frivolities of<br />
stardom and the media criticized her for playing<br />
the role of the Hollywood starlet. An ironic jab at<br />
Michelle, considering these publications are a part<br />
of the same publicity machine that simultaneously<br />
encourage this exact type of celebrity tabloid<br />
coverage surrounding the First Lady, cataloging her<br />
outfits and purchases down to the smallest detail.<br />
The American people and media have cast Michelle<br />
Obama in the role of entertainer and then condemn<br />
her when she chooses to play along.<br />
America has created a no-win situation for the First<br />
Lady. Either she’s a political and intellectual radical<br />
and “angry black woman,” or she is a fashionista<br />
with a spending problem and an over-investment in<br />
frivolous, undignified pursuits. In the 2009 Economist<br />
piece by Wooldridge, he said, “I think if a first lady<br />
were purely decorative in the 21st century, it would<br />
actually look rather odd.” But isn’t that precisely the<br />
position the media is attempting to cast Michelle<br />
Obama in? The media, Obama’s fellow politicians,<br />
even the White House itself has attempted to paint<br />
her as this decorative, fashionable mouthpiece of<br />
“change.” Michelle, much like Hilary before her,<br />
is not the quiet, demure woman behind the man<br />
that is easily silenced or brushed aside. Both are<br />
smart, capable progressive women who seek to use<br />
their political positions as platforms to make real<br />
progress forward. When we limit our discussion of<br />
women in power to their physical appearance and<br />
choice in apparel and hairstyle, we strip them of<br />
their authority and try to re-appropriate them as flat,<br />
antiquated images of womanhood. We are in the<br />
midst of a struggle to redefine the spheres females<br />
are allowed to encompass and wield authority<br />
within, and news sources, by proliferating these<br />
REVOLT<br />
<strong>Magazine</strong> Number 4, 2013 16
conservative blogger went so far as to suggest<br />
that even if Michelle didn’t vocalize her unpatriotic<br />
sentiments, we all know she was thinking it. In a<br />
post on her right-wing, consistently inflammatory<br />
blog, Schlussel wrote: “The consensus seems to be<br />
that the First Ms. Thang is saying to hubby Barack,<br />
"All of this for a damn flag." (She said this about the<br />
Photo courtesy of The New Yorker.<br />
Photo courtesy of The White House.<br />
stereotypes, are thwarting those efforts at every<br />
turn. Further proving this point, Wooldrige highlights<br />
that the White House is “doing its best to turn<br />
the first lady into a celebrity mother-cum-clotheshorse,”<br />
emphasizing her primary role as mother and<br />
daughter above all else. According to Wooldrige, this<br />
is because, “Hilary Clinton’s determination to act as<br />
a virtual co-president back in 1993 helped to create<br />
a backlash against her husband’s administration. It<br />
also raised uncomfortable questions about power<br />
and accountability. Given America’s continued<br />
neuroses about race, an outspoken black first lady<br />
might have proved to be even more divisive than an<br />
outspoken white one.”<br />
It’s easier to sweep Michelle Obama’s identity as an<br />
intelligent, informed, politicized black female under<br />
the rug, rather than confront head-on these issues of<br />
extreme racism and sexism. In fact, the White House<br />
itself is encouraging this trivialization of her position<br />
and the backwards media stereotypes surrounding<br />
a woman’s proper role in the home. How is the rest<br />
of America meant to be respectful of the First Lady<br />
and honor her intellectual and political successes<br />
when our own government can’t see beyond her role<br />
as child and a child-bearer? The list of complaints<br />
and grievances Michelle Obama has been charged<br />
with, at this point, seems completely exhaustive and<br />
all-encompassing, fully cataloguing every physical<br />
and intellectual perceived transgression. However,<br />
the media, unsatisfied with their endless complaints<br />
thus far, has now moved well beyond the realm of<br />
facts, extending their grievances to include both her<br />
fictionalized beliefs and assumed, although unseen,<br />
behaviors.<br />
Usually news stories cease to exist when the subjects<br />
stop providing material. However, The Washington<br />
Post in a piece from September 13, 2011 proved<br />
that nothing could stop them, when they dispensed<br />
with all attempts at real journalism and based an<br />
entire article around their attempt to read Michelle<br />
Obama’s lips during a ceremony in honor of the<br />
victims of 9/11. The article stated that as police and<br />
firefighters folded the flag, “a skeptical looking Mrs.<br />
Obama leans to her husband and appears to say,<br />
‘all this just for a flag.’ She then purses her lips and<br />
shakes her head slightly as Mr. Obama nods.” This<br />
libelous and fictional account suggests that both<br />
America’s President and First Lady are complicit in<br />
both their disregard for one of our greatest national<br />
tragedies and an iconic American symbol. Typically<br />
in media attacks against a public or political figure,<br />
it’s an unspoken rule, for both litigious and credibility<br />
reasons, that publications stick to recorded audio<br />
of public gaffes. However, in a desperate attempt to<br />
discredit and shame the President and First Lady,<br />
no traditional journalistic rules or integrity seem to<br />
apply any longer. Under the Obama administration,<br />
an insinuated attack, based off an audioless clip<br />
and the accusations of random, unaccredited<br />
bloggers is foundation enough for the media to<br />
run wild with anti-American accusations. Debbie<br />
Schlussel, a radio host, political commentator and<br />
American flag -- you know the one brave men died<br />
for.) Wouldn't be surprised if that's what she said<br />
because we know she hates America and previously<br />
said she wasn't proud of our country until Obama<br />
had a chance to become Prez. Looks like that's what<br />
she said, but I can't tell for sure. I would need a deaf<br />
person or other expert lip reader to confirm. Watch<br />
and see if you agree (like I said, even if she didn't<br />
say exactly that, we know she's thinkin' it).”<br />
This isn’t even the first time it’s been suggested<br />
that Michelle, much like her husband, is thoroughly<br />
unpatriotic and un-American. During a number of his<br />
shows in February 2008, Sean Hannity repeatedly<br />
distorted passages from Michelle’s 1985 Princeton<br />
senior thesis, in which she discussed the effect of<br />
Photo courtesy of The New Yorker.
the Black Power Movement on the attitudes of black<br />
Princeton students during the 70s. Hannity claimed<br />
that she herself held, “the belief that blacks must<br />
join in solidarity to combat a white oppressor.”<br />
Failing to note that the First Lady’s thesis goes on<br />
to say, “One can contrast the mood of the campus<br />
years ago and the level of attachment to Blacks to<br />
that of the present mood on the campus [in 1985]<br />
which is more pro-integrationist.” Hannity posed<br />
a rhetorical question on his program, saying, “She<br />
talked about why African-Americans joined together<br />
at Princeton. Is race going to now be an issue for<br />
them?" The irony of Hannity’s statement is that he<br />
fails to see that it is precisely this type of discourse,<br />
which programs such as his proliferate, that makes<br />
race a serious issue for this presidency every single<br />
day. Not because the Obamas are attempting to<br />
push some radical Black Panther agenda, but<br />
because they are never permitted to forget about<br />
the color of their skin. Much of the right-wing<br />
media’s criticism focuses around the issues of race;<br />
whether they believe the Obama’s to be pandering<br />
to minorities, plotting some sort of black American<br />
revolution, accusing Obama of manipulating the<br />
public with his “coolness” (read: blackness), or<br />
accusing him of lying about his Kenyan origins.<br />
Hannity couldn’t even muster support for his<br />
conspiracy theories amongst his guests, including<br />
Tennessee Republican Congressman Harold Ford<br />
Jr. who replied to Hannity’s line of anti-patriotic<br />
questioning by saying, “If we're looking back to how<br />
spouses of presidential candidates, when they were<br />
students in elementary and junior high and middle<br />
and high school and even college, to determine<br />
whether or not their husband or their spouse<br />
is fit to be president, I think we've sunk to a new<br />
low. Michelle Obama is a model for what anybody<br />
would want their daughter to be. She's smart. Not<br />
only a -- wonderfully capable and accomplished<br />
academically, but she's an incredible mom.”<br />
But, clearly, Michelle Obama was not always viewed<br />
as an ideal role model and mother, certainly by<br />
some of her husband’s right-wing constituents, but,<br />
also, surprisingly, by some left-leaning publications.<br />
During his first presidential campaign, The New<br />
Yorker published a cartoon on their cover portraying<br />
Mrs. Obama with an afro and machine gun giving<br />
Barack a “terrorist fist jab,” implying the radical,<br />
revolutionary Obamas had infiltrated the White<br />
House. However, The New Yorker cover for the<br />
March 16, 2009 issue, a mere year later, shows how<br />
quickly Michelle’s public persona was manipulated<br />
and transformed by the media and spun by the<br />
White House. The 2009 cover shows her walking<br />
the runway in three different stylish outfits. This is<br />
the perfect illustrative example of both the media’s<br />
attempt to mollify or domesticate the image of the<br />
First Lady and the larger dichotomy at hand, which<br />
women in politics must face every day. Either she is<br />
her husband’s co-conspirator, plotting some grand,<br />
black radical takeover of America, or she is the<br />
consummate fashion plate who can’t be bothered<br />
with America’s poor and disenfranchised. As a<br />
woman in the American political limelight, you’re<br />
afforded two possible identities, either that of an<br />
intelligent, shrewd harpie or a vain, thoughtless<br />
socialite. Women’s identities can be condensed<br />
down to these rudimentary understandings, unlike<br />
their male counterparts who are permitted to be as<br />
complex, diverse, and often contradictory as they<br />
like.<br />
Michelle Obama doesn’t fit America’s racial<br />
stereotype of what a black woman should be, so<br />
she’s degraded and insulted and marginalized by<br />
the media until they can find a way to make her fit<br />
into their preconceived notions. We’ve created a<br />
culture surrounding the White House where it’s not<br />
only permissible to say any passing racist or sexist<br />
remark that comes to mind, but it’s all right to gossipmonger,<br />
speculate and fabricate whatever story or<br />
quote is needed in order to support the argument<br />
against a black President and First Lady who were<br />
democratically elected into office. One can’t imagine<br />
these types of lewd and divisive statements being<br />
made about any former president, let alone their<br />
wives. America may have elected their first black<br />
President into office, but we still have an incredibly<br />
long road towards equality, of all kinds, ahead of us.<br />
REVOLT<br />
<strong>Magazine</strong> Number 4, 2013 18
Gregory Hilton, Marie-Antoinette, 2012
Westbeth Artists' Housing, New York, A205 North Elevation. Arctitectural drawing courtesy of Eileen Marie Lynch Interiors.<br />
WESTBETH<br />
ARTISTS HOUSING<br />
COMMUNITY<br />
BY LENA VAZIFDAR<br />
Westbeth Home to the Arts<br />
Nearly every corner and hallway of Jon D’Orazio’s<br />
studio is stacked with paintings. A series of largescale<br />
iridescent circles on canvas in bright, almost<br />
neon, color schemes are laid on top of each other<br />
in rows and his walls are adorned with abstract<br />
works he painted himself. The space, enclosed<br />
in canvases, gives way to just enough room for a<br />
couch and a coffee table. Jon has lived within the<br />
walls of Manhattan’s Westbeth Home to the Arts<br />
since its opening in 1970.<br />
When it opened its doors nearly 43 years ago<br />
as affordable housing for artists, the area of<br />
Manhattan’s West Village on Bethune and<br />
Washington streets was desolate. Now, posh<br />
mothers and fathers with strollers take long<br />
walks through its tree-lined boulevards. Designer<br />
boutiques and coffee shops selling $5 lattes, pop<br />
up one after the other next to quaint wine bars.<br />
It’s easily one of the most coveted and expensive<br />
areas of Manhattan to reside and Jon has been<br />
there observing its transformation; watching it<br />
go from one phase to the next slowly gentrifying<br />
on every street corner over decades. When Jon<br />
moved in, as a fresh-faced twenty something,<br />
the Westside highway’s piers, which now boast<br />
manicured lawns and bike trails, were just pier<br />
after pier with miles of corrugated metal.<br />
REVOLT<br />
<strong>Magazine</strong> Number 4, 2013<br />
“It was basically still a dead zone,” said Jon. “The<br />
meat market was active just north of here and it<br />
was scary. You didn’t want to walk around at night.<br />
Washington street, which is really active now,<br />
didn’t have any streetlights, and at night it was just<br />
darkness.”<br />
The meat market Jon speaks of is now the Meat<br />
Packing District, a glitzy area for stiletto wearing<br />
Manhattanites ready for champagne sipping at The<br />
Standard Hotel or The Gansevoort and shopping at<br />
Alexander McQueen and Diane Von Furstenberg.<br />
The Highline, Manhattan’s architectural gem and<br />
over ground park now intersects the area which<br />
was once just meat factories and barren concrete.<br />
There’s hardly a remnant of what it once was.<br />
Westbeth’s building takes up the entire city block.<br />
It used to be home to Bell Laboratories before<br />
it was purchased to become affordable housing<br />
for artists. Bell laboratories was the historic site<br />
where the first talking movie and TV broadcast<br />
was produced. With funding spearheaded by Joan<br />
Davidson of the J.M. Kaplan Foundation and Roger<br />
Stevens of the National Endowment of the Arts,<br />
Westbeth was born.<br />
Richard Meier was commissioned to renovate the<br />
former Bell Laboratories in 1967, before he was<br />
the Richard Meier that many know as the architect<br />
behind large scale modern beauties like the Getty<br />
Center in Los Angeles and the Barcelona Museum<br />
of Contemporary Art. He went on to win the Pritzker<br />
Prize in 1984, which is one of the highest honors<br />
in the field. Meier said in an interview with the<br />
Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation<br />
that the idea of the live/work space was highly<br />
unsual at the time of Westbeth’s creation. New<br />
York City building code did not permit working<br />
and living in the same space and so they had to<br />
change the zoning in order to create something<br />
that never existed before. The building code also<br />
had to be changed to allow for working and living in<br />
the same space.<br />
Architect Richard Kaplan was a friend of Meier’s<br />
and asked him to go with him to meet his father,<br />
Jack Kaplan, as well as Roger Stevens, who was<br />
head of the National Endowment of the Arts.<br />
They walked through the buildings of the Bell<br />
laboratories together to talk about ideas for the<br />
site. Meier quickly became the man behind the<br />
creation and it now stands as a testament to<br />
his early work as well as a historic monument in<br />
New York City. Westbeth was recently put under<br />
consideration to become a landmark under NYC<br />
Landmark laws and it has already been nominated<br />
to the State Registrar of Historic Places and to the<br />
National Registrar of historic Places.<br />
Joan Davidson was also a major player in the<br />
creation of Westbeth. Her father Jack Kaplan<br />
turned the project over to her and it was<br />
20
subsequently her job to plan, organize and run<br />
the project during its beginnings with the help of<br />
developer Dixon Bain.<br />
Now, there are 384-live work spaces filled with<br />
artists from every disciple. There are painters<br />
like Jon and there are writers, playwrights, poets<br />
and sculptors. At one time, photographer Diane<br />
Arbus—known for her black and white photographs<br />
of marginal individuals such as dwarfs, giants and<br />
circus folk—lived there. She committed suicide in<br />
1971 after only a year of residence.<br />
Westbeth’s popularity among artists has been so<br />
high that they closed their residential waiting list<br />
in 2007. Those already on it are looking at a 10-15<br />
year wait to get through. Many artists, who move in,<br />
never move on it seems, leaving less and less room<br />
for younger artists to come in. Jon stays because<br />
he can afford to live in Manhattan in one of its<br />
most coveted areas, not an easy feat for most.<br />
“Today artists can’t afford to live in New York,” said<br />
Jon. “I stay here because I can afford it.”<br />
Steve Neil, the chief executive of Westbeth Corp,<br />
the company that owns Westbeth, said that rent<br />
ranges currently run from $750 -1600 a month<br />
depending on the apartment size. For $750 a<br />
month, artists can live in a studio or a one bedroom<br />
which runs a little more than 400 sq feet—a price<br />
unheard of for nearly anywhere in Manhattan; even<br />
in other, seemingly cheaper boroughs like Brooklyn<br />
and far out in Queens or The Bronx. In the same<br />
neighborhood a studio can easily go for $3,000<br />
a month and that’s on the “reasonable” side of<br />
things.<br />
There’s also units with multiple bedrooms for<br />
families and couples and 77 units reserved for<br />
those under the federal section 8 program. Under<br />
the program, residents pay 30 percent of their<br />
household income and the federal government<br />
makes up for the rest.<br />
To even be considered to live at Westbeth there are<br />
both financial and personal criteria that one must<br />
pass. A family of four would have to be making<br />
between $65,000-75,000 a year, said Steve, and<br />
they have to prove they are working as an artist full<br />
time.<br />
The waiting process is a difficult one and the<br />
turnover isn’t high with residents like Jon and his<br />
counterparts deciding to stay put long-term. Painter<br />
Joan Roberts Garcia has been living in the building<br />
since 2000 and was on the wait list for eight years<br />
before being accepted to Westbeth. She came via<br />
New Mexico with two children in tow.<br />
“It was really tough because for those 8 years I<br />
had to prove that we of a family of 3 were living<br />
off less than $40,000 a year,” said Joan. “And in<br />
Manhattan that is extremely difficult.”<br />
Now Joan lives in a light-filled three-bedroom<br />
apartment with her very own studio not far from<br />
Jon’s abode.<br />
“I have been very fortunate, I’ve only been without<br />
a studio for about 5 months in the last 30 years,”<br />
said Joan. “I feel very fortunate to be here. I am<br />
more and more grateful.<br />
”Even though she has lived at Westbeth for 13<br />
years she says she still feels like a newcomer.<br />
Many who started in its early days, have myriad<br />
stories to tell about the landscape of change<br />
they’ve seen over the years.<br />
Filmmaker Edith Stephen is a veteran of the<br />
community and has lived at Westbeth for 40 years.<br />
Her documentary Split Scream documents the<br />
bohemian life she has seen living inside the artist<br />
residence.<br />
“My experience at Westbeth has been an exciting<br />
experience, very much like the world. At the time<br />
we came in, Greenwich Village was flourishing,”<br />
she said. “We had a real bohemian life …But<br />
since then, the world has changed. We have lost<br />
Greenwich Village, since it has been gentrified.”<br />
Edith expresses the changes she has seen in its<br />
residents and how the sense of community has<br />
decreased. She laments that its bygone era might<br />
have been its heyday.<br />
“When I opened up my door years ago, the hallway<br />
was filled with people, arguing, discussing, and<br />
talking as a community,” she said. “Today when<br />
I open my door, there’s nobody in the hallway.<br />
People have their doors closed and there are hardly<br />
any names on the doors. And if you email them,<br />
you’ll find that their email consists of numbers,<br />
letters, and no names.<br />
“In its recent history, Westbeth has opened its<br />
doors with art exhibits in its in-house gallery as well<br />
as music and dance festivals and concerts.<br />
“In the last decade Westbeth has developed more<br />
and more as an artists community and also is<br />
offering a lot to the larger New York City community<br />
in exhibitions, music and dance festivals and<br />
concerts. I envision that Westbeth will continue to<br />
grow as a viable arts community.” said resident<br />
Francia Tobacman Smith.<br />
Francia is a painter and Linoleum Reduction<br />
Printmaker who has been a long time resident<br />
along with her husband, musician Bruce Smith.<br />
She believes the best part about living at Westbeth<br />
is living within a community with other artists that<br />
understand each other.<br />
“The special part of being at Westbeth is that<br />
you never feel odd or strange about being an<br />
artist having your values, ” she said. “Other artists<br />
understand that at times, you have had to make<br />
sacrifices for being a working artist and what that<br />
means in your life.<br />
”Over its forty-year existence, the area has changed<br />
drastically, but Westbeth has maintained its artistic<br />
and bohemian spirit and remains a vessel in<br />
time. One can almost envision the hallways where<br />
Diane Arbus once walked. Some of the residents<br />
remember her. They’ve lived through it all. It always<br />
has been a place solely for artists, and is still to<br />
this day, the world’s biggest artist residence. That<br />
ideology has never changed, even as the tenants<br />
have. Edith adds, “The most interesting thing about<br />
Westbeth is the experience of living a bohemian<br />
life, with kindred spirits.”<br />
Westbeth Artists' Housing, New York, 1st Floor Plan A1. Architectural drawing courtesy of Eileen Marie Lynch Interiors.
Westbeth<br />
PHOTOS BY SCOTTO MYCKLEBUST<br />
Westbeth Artists' Housing, New York, 55 Bethune St. entrance, Westbeth Gallery, <strong>Revolt</strong> <strong>Magazine</strong> interviews long time Westbeth's resident artist Jon D'Orazio, Exterior street veiw of Westbeth,<br />
Bank St., Pages of Westbeth News magazine published in April 1970 with list of the first resident artists, partial list; painters, photographers and playwrights.<br />
REVOLT<br />
<strong>Magazine</strong> Number 4, 2013
Artists' Housing<br />
Westbeth Artists' Housing resident's hallway, Westbeth artist writer Helen Duberstein in her library, Richard Meier's Westbeth interior courtyard, <strong>Revolt</strong> <strong>Magazine</strong> contributing writer Lena Vazifdar<br />
interviews Westbeth artist Joan Robert Garcia in her Westbeth studio, Interior view of an artist's residents, Westbeth building exterior logo signage.
Art &<br />
Politics:Fracking<br />
Drawingtheline<br />
BY LINDA DIGUSTA<br />
Alice Zinnes is a force of nature. An environmental<br />
activist in the movement to halt the use of the<br />
controversial natural gas extraction process<br />
called hydraulic fracturing (often referred to as<br />
“fracking”), for the past few years she has worked<br />
at least 30 hours each week on activities related<br />
to her cause. Her dedication would be remarkable<br />
even if she had not already devoted herself to<br />
another demanding calling – art.<br />
A lifelong environmentalist -- “At least since second<br />
grade when a NYC drought was so upsetting to me<br />
that I would turn off the running water while my<br />
mom washed the dishes.” -- in high school Zinnes<br />
headed the Ecology Club, which started a recycling<br />
program in the community. She applied to college<br />
intending to major in environmental science, but<br />
while in school, she fell in love with painting.<br />
Now an artist and teacher at Pratt Institute, Alice<br />
became aware of hydraulic fracturing when drilling<br />
was proposed near her Pennsylvania home in the<br />
Upper Delaware River Basin. “At first,” she said,<br />
“I couldn't believe they would frack the Delaware<br />
River, since it supplies drinking water to 16 million<br />
people.”<br />
Viewing Josh Fox’s documentary “Gasland” raised<br />
her awareness, and her involvement deepened<br />
when she organized an art benefit for Damascus<br />
Citizens for Sustainability, the grassroots<br />
organization that Gasland is dedicated to and<br />
one of the first on the East Coast to publicize the<br />
dangers of fracking. She recalls, “I then created<br />
what I thought would be a small email list for<br />
residents of the Upper Delaware, as a way to<br />
quickly disseminate information, but through<br />
word-of-mouth, this list pretty quickly went viral,<br />
connecting people from upstate NY to Louisiana, to<br />
Texas and Ohio.”<br />
“As I became relied upon by others, I simply<br />
accepted my new responsibilities,” said Zinnes,<br />
who sends multiple emails almost daily to the<br />
group. “Some of these people I actually see, while<br />
others live all over the country... I've been surprised<br />
at the powerful community we have become. I feel<br />
we are like soldiers in a platoon: loyal, supportive,<br />
understanding, and dependent on each other for<br />
our very survival.”<br />
REVOLT<br />
<strong>Magazine</strong> Number 4, 2013<br />
Behind every issue confronting us as citizens,<br />
there are people working hard to raise awareness<br />
and support for their causes. In the case of the<br />
groundswell against the practice of hydraulic<br />
fracturing, the vanguard includes names we<br />
all already know, like Yoko Ono, Mark Ruffalo,<br />
and “Gasland” filmmaker Fox, who garnered an<br />
Academy Award nomination for best documentary<br />
feature.<br />
Also on the front lines are those most directly<br />
impacted by the drilling, working constantly to<br />
get the word out in the hope that others will learn<br />
more and take a stand when they realize that<br />
fracking, in the long run, affects everyone. “Getting<br />
involved is an ongoing journey with numerous<br />
conversations, reading about environmental and<br />
health issues, studying reports about geology<br />
and financial aspects, and getting to know an<br />
impressive, knowledgeable community of people<br />
who are working to protect rights for a clean<br />
planet,” said another anti-fracking artist/organizer,<br />
Ruth Hardinger. “The first event I organized was a<br />
talk upstate in January 2010. Wes Gillingham from<br />
Catskill Mountainkeeper drove through a blizzard to<br />
speak about the impacts of fracking.”<br />
To bring awareness to a wider audience and<br />
mobilize more artists, Zinnes, Hardinger, and artist<br />
Peggy Cyphers curated the 2010-2011 exhibition<br />
“Fracking: Art & Activism Against the Drill” at Exit<br />
Art in Manhattan. Working with the Exit Art staff,<br />
they put together a group exhibition featuring work<br />
addressing the issue by 60 artists. The program<br />
also included a talk with a panel of leading figures<br />
in the movement, attended by over 300 people in<br />
spite of another blizzard. Many attendees of the<br />
event went on to become important players in the<br />
“fractivist” movement.<br />
“Fracking became an important issue for me about<br />
7 years ago, when I was traveling in Peru, and<br />
learned about mineral rights and the government's<br />
claim to any resources immediately below the<br />
surface of the earth,” said Christy Rupp, an artist<br />
who participated in both the show and the panel.<br />
“Even if it was just a few inches under a farmer's<br />
field, if oil or gas or rare earth metals were<br />
discovered, the rights to extract are owned by the<br />
government.”<br />
Noticing a parallel threat to communities here,<br />
Rupp, as she describes below, explored the issue<br />
further:<br />
“Wishing to connect the dots, I started to learn<br />
more about the 30 year ongoing oil spill in the<br />
Ecuadorean Amazon, in which since the 70's<br />
Texaco, and then Chevron were dumping formation<br />
water the (waste product from oil drilling) directly<br />
into shallow surface ponds, which then would leach<br />
out … entering people's farmland, their homes,<br />
their wells. The government of Ecuador's response<br />
was to cater to the oil companies lethal habits,<br />
giving them more lucrative drilling contracts in the<br />
Amazon region, and using the waste to spread<br />
on roads to keep down the dust created by the<br />
heavy traffic needed to support drilling. People<br />
in that region suffer birth defects, cancers and<br />
miscarriages at a rate far higher than normal. The<br />
government wants to either ignore the problem or<br />
just condemn the area and force people to leave,<br />
the problem can't be cleaned up with money.”<br />
After visiting areas of West Virginia devastated by<br />
coal mining, Rupp is hoping to bring the message<br />
home before it is too late. “Fracking,” she explains,<br />
“Like Tar Sands, oil drilling and coal, takes the<br />
land people have used historically for sustenance<br />
and sacrifices entire regions.” As she sees it, the<br />
practice generates massive profits for a very few<br />
individuals at the expense of many, and “We are<br />
witness to a land grab, or a transferring of wealth,<br />
similar to the banking crisis, the looting of the Post<br />
Office, or the desire to privatize social security.”<br />
Peggy Cyphers, another life-long activist, is also<br />
intent on drawing the line on hydraulic fracturing,<br />
at least where she lives. “The anti-fracking<br />
movement has been taking on big money and<br />
big business, and many networks of grassroots<br />
activists are fighting back…My sister Jane Cyphers<br />
and her husband Joe Levine are founding members<br />
of Damascus Citizens for Sustainability and got<br />
me involved,” she said. “The best part of New<br />
York State is that we have the watershed, so the<br />
discussion is huge and in a way it keeps us safe.<br />
Not so for Pennsylvania and Ohio, that's a done<br />
deal as every landowner is selling out.”<br />
A ceramic artist and creator of the aptly named<br />
Earthgirl Pottery, Jill Wiener is a Calicoon, NY<br />
26
Christy Rupp, Flood Plane - Food Plan, detail, cut paper collage, 2010 16 X 24". Photo courtesy of the artist.<br />
resident who also hopes her state is a tougher<br />
target for the gas industry. “I got involved in the<br />
anti-fracking movement in 2008 when I first heard<br />
about it from a friend another potter, in our local<br />
supermarket,” said Jill. “I immediately thought,<br />
what a harebrained scheme, and that we -- New<br />
York -- were much too smart to fall for this.”<br />
Despite their energy and dedication these activists<br />
seem to be standing against Goliath. Volunteers<br />
from all walks of life, they speak and stand against<br />
the pricey PR machines of mega-corporations who,<br />
touting jobs and US sourced energy, play to the<br />
public’s hopes and fears in this age of uncertainty.<br />
Additionally, since CO2 emissions burning natural<br />
gas to generate electricity are about one half of<br />
what is produced when coal is used, gas can be<br />
seen as a solution to reduce environmental impact<br />
while solar and wind power are developed for<br />
widespread use. 1<br />
Why all the concern? The projected environmental<br />
ameliorations from extended gas drilling described<br />
above depend on price and profit considerations<br />
for the industry to be interested in making them<br />
a reality. Its willingness to voluntarily invest these<br />
profits in maintaining high standards is also<br />
necessary -- without it the potential collateral<br />
damage is far worse than that caused by coal. In<br />
other words, we would all need to trust the energy<br />
corporations to do the right thing.<br />
Already, there has been considerable consternation<br />
expressed by the scientific and local communities<br />
about the lack of disclosure by the industry of<br />
just what chemicals are being used. The refusal<br />
of those in control, including government and the<br />
courts, to allow Americans to determine whether or<br />
not the substances they are being exposed to are<br />
acceptable for them is most notoriously exemplified<br />
by the 2005 exemption for these corporations<br />
from the Safe Drinking Water Act, dubbed the<br />
“Halliburton Loophole.” 2<br />
Still another consideration is the toxic health<br />
hazard posed by radon gas, which is produced<br />
when natural gas is consumed. Radon, present in<br />
very high amounts in the Marcellus Sale deposits<br />
that the industry has slated for hydraulic fracturing,<br />
is carcinogenic and remains where the gas is burnt<br />
as fuel, degrading first into polonium, then lead.<br />
As communities experience effects of the<br />
practice, consequences such as tainted<br />
drinking water, illness in humans and animals,<br />
harassment of residents by drilling operation<br />
employees, radioactivity, and increased seismicity<br />
(earthquakes) have been reported. Potential<br />
environmental benefits are offset not only by<br />
present damage to the ecosystem from the drilling<br />
itself and the expansion of road traffic and water<br />
use that it demands, but also by the likelihood that<br />
a profitable boom in gas to fill today’s needs will<br />
only serve to delay investment in moving towards<br />
the truly carbon-free options that are essential to<br />
the health of the planet in the longer term.<br />
Where one might expect government regulators<br />
to intervene and demand that there is sound<br />
science behind the claims in favor of fracking<br />
andincreased use of natural gas, grassroots<br />
activists are picking up the slack. Ruth Hardinger<br />
and her friend Becca Smith decided to raise funds<br />
for a pipeline emission study in New York City.<br />
“Two reports on this study were just released to<br />
the press. These highly important studies, using<br />
the most advanced technology, present empirical<br />
evidence that current steps of continuing and<br />
increasing natural gas use would only accelerate<br />
climate change,” Ruth said. “In other words, if<br />
the US spends close to 1 trillion dollars in the<br />
development of natural gas as planned, the effects<br />
of climate change will only be accelerated.”<br />
While everyone involved in the movement has<br />
signed and distributed a seemingly endless stream<br />
of letters and petitions to governors, mayors, and<br />
agencies, one artist -- Jill Wiener -- took it upon<br />
herself to take the fight to the next level, running<br />
unsuccessfully for town council on the Democratic<br />
and Rural Heritage Party lines in 2011. In an<br />
interview at the time, she explained “I live in the<br />
country on 60 acres with a beautiful spring-fed<br />
pond. I’m a potter. I grow chemical-free flowers.<br />
I depend on my clean water for everything. It<br />
[fracking] is not proven to be safe, and I’d never<br />
inflict this on the land I call home or on my<br />
neighbors or community. We have people running<br />
for office all over the shale. [the Marcellus Shale<br />
is the geological formation rich in natural gas] I’m<br />
running for town council because my councilman<br />
supports it. I didn’t want to do this—I wanted to sit<br />
in my barn and make pots.” 3
Christy Rupp, Cut & Run, detail, cut paper collage, 2010 16 X 24". Photo courtesy of the artist.<br />
Wiener’s last comment brings us back to the fact<br />
that the tireless activists featured in this article<br />
are all artists, and the time and energy they<br />
expend to fight fracking has to have an impact on<br />
their creativity and careers. “In fact, my activism<br />
interferes with my getting much studio time,” Jill,<br />
who works with the all-volunteer organization<br />
Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy, said. “I do try to<br />
make sure that when I am in the studio I leave<br />
the fracking at the door, but really just outside the<br />
door. I try to not have the two intersect. My art is<br />
happy, fracking, not so much.”<br />
“For a few years I spent 5-6 hours per day on<br />
fracking-related activities, and slept almost not at<br />
all...I painted very little,” said Alice Zinnes. “The<br />
summer when the grandfathered test wells were<br />
drilled near my home, I was at the drill site a few<br />
times a day, photographing activities, etc. I'm<br />
now trying to become a painter again… My whole<br />
exhibition career has been put on hold -- except<br />
that I've shown a few times in fracking-related<br />
shows. But since my own work really isn't political,<br />
going the avenue of exhibiting in environmentallygeared<br />
shows isn't an option for me.”<br />
Ruth Hardinger’s creative experience is different.<br />
“My work is essentially in abstraction and process<br />
has always been sourced by a reference to<br />
something I found important,” she says. In recent<br />
years, she has created a series titled “Normal<br />
Faults and Pathways,” inspired by geological<br />
studies of the migration of the fluids used in<br />
hydraulic fracturing, triggered by the underground<br />
detonation of explosives. The works consist of<br />
parts that disconnect and reconnect. Despite this,<br />
her involvement still takes its toll, in her words:<br />
“The kind of time I put into this is holding me back<br />
from other aspects of my life that are precious to<br />
me: my family and my art, my business work and<br />
ability to relax, exercise, play. I have lost income<br />
because of the time this takes.”<br />
Has it been worth it? Alice weighed in on the<br />
upside, too: “Though my involvement with fracking<br />
has taken hours – sometimes whole days – away<br />
from my studio, in many ways, I feel it has brought<br />
a greater depth to my painting, and my life in<br />
general. I have met some truly wonderful people<br />
in this movement, and feel empowered by the<br />
passions we all share -- in the end I would not<br />
choose to have done my last few years differently.”<br />
REVOLT<br />
<strong>Magazine</strong> Number 4, 2013<br />
In terms of consequences dealt out by those with<br />
opposing interests and views on fracking, Zinnes<br />
told us she has reason to believe that she, along<br />
with other activists including actor Mark Ruffalo,<br />
were placed on a watch list by Pennsylvania<br />
Homeland Security. “Just about everyone involved<br />
in the anti-fracking movement was on it,” she said.<br />
“I'm being followed by the gas industry on Twitter,<br />
which is creepy. Josh Fox's trailer was burned down<br />
while he was out of town… All the local government<br />
officials have signed leases, so no one would<br />
investigate this incident very far.”<br />
“I’ve had some intense conversations with ‘profrackers’<br />
and we probably won’t be their close<br />
friends!” says Ruth Hardinger. “Nobody has<br />
threatened me. I’ve heard of that in other states…<br />
there are some totally horrific events, for example<br />
in Dimock, PA, where those whose water was<br />
contaminated could not receive water buffalos<br />
because other pro-frackers in the town opposed<br />
their receiving clean water.”<br />
There is some reason for the anti-fracking forces<br />
to be hopeful, such as delays in green-lighting<br />
the process, at least for the time being. In March,<br />
Pennsylvania Representative Matthew Cartwright<br />
(D) introduced legislation to remove oil and gas<br />
industry exemptions from the federal Clean Air<br />
Act and the Clean Water Act, which, if passed,<br />
will include closing the “Halliburton Loophole.” 4<br />
Even filmmaker Josh Fox has stayed the course in<br />
the wake of Oscar notoriety, and “Gasland II” was<br />
released at this Spring’s Tribeca Film Festival.<br />
For Peggy Cyphers, her dual commitments to<br />
art and nature will collaborate this year. “I am<br />
heading out to the Prairie in Iowa, to Grin City<br />
Collective Residency, and will be working on a<br />
new piece about the preservation of our last 1%<br />
of magnificent Prairie,” she told us. This year’s<br />
projects also include a site-specific installation on<br />
the Calvert Cliffs of the Chesapeake Bay, using<br />
washed-up artifacts to create bird habitats to hang<br />
from the cliffs. Cyphers looks forward to working<br />
out of doors and, as she likes to say, “Responding<br />
to the call of our amazingly beautiful Planet!"<br />
Christy Rupp sees lessons to be learned. “As<br />
a nation, we don't need the cheap energy, we<br />
need a plan for the future. That best use plan is<br />
agriculture, and small business, not the evacuation<br />
of rural areas that are vulnerable to lax zoning<br />
laws,” she told us. “We need to cut the addiction<br />
to cheap fuel which only makes us crave more. We<br />
need a plan for renewable energy that works locally<br />
as well as globally.”<br />
“My hope is that the world will get off fossil fuels<br />
before all life is completely wiped out. My fears<br />
are that we will not make necessary changes in<br />
time,” Alice Zinnes told us. “I'm now spending my<br />
time equally against fracking and for sustainable<br />
solutions… Partly, fracking is so depressing that<br />
I need something else to bring me back up, and<br />
partly I realize I need answers to this horrendous<br />
problem... I am afraid we will have famine, storms,<br />
droughts, war and revolutions globally and<br />
nationally. Right now I'm wondering whether I'll<br />
live my natural life span, and I doubt it. I'm afraid<br />
today's kids will not.”<br />
Ruth Hardinger hopes that “My work will contribute<br />
to halting this insane technology for cities, states<br />
and at the federal levels, to changing perspectives,<br />
so as not use this energy which is destroying<br />
and will destroy so, so much.” Keeping the<br />
dialogue going while building bridges to the art<br />
community, in collaboration with Sideshow Gallery<br />
in Williamsburg, she is presenting and moderating<br />
the panel series “Culture Trashes Nature,” in<br />
which experts, activists and artists -- guests have<br />
included artists Aviva Rahmani and Lillian Ball,<br />
writer Jonathan Goodman and scientist Frank<br />
Gallagher--come together to discuss how the way<br />
we live impacts the environment, as well as what<br />
can and is being done to counteract the damage<br />
and prevent future harm to the world we all share.<br />
1. “Fracking’s Future,” Michael B. McElroy and Xi Lu, Harvard<br />
<strong>Magazine</strong>, January-February 2013 http://harvardmagazine.<br />
com/2013/01/frackings-future<br />
2. “Fracking Halliburton,” Kate Sheppard, Mother Jones/Blue<br />
Marble, November 10, 2010 http://www.motherjones.com/<br />
blue-marble/2010/11/halliburton-fracking-epa<br />
3. “Fracked to Pieces,” Melinda Tuhus, E – The Environmental<br />
<strong>Magazine</strong>, November 1, 2011 http://www.emagazine.com/<br />
magazine/fracked-to-pieces<br />
4. “Federal Legislation Aims to Close ‘Fracking Loopholes,’”<br />
Susan Phillips, State Impact Pennsylvania, March 14, 2014<br />
http://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2013/03/14/<br />
federal-legislation-aims-to-close-fracking-loopholes<br />
28
THE<br />
CINEMA<br />
VIEW<br />
LOST IN WHEAT: Terrence Malick's<br />
To The Wonder<br />
BY DAN CALLAHAN<br />
Video still, Terrence Malick's To The Wonder.<br />
For both audiences and critics, Terrence<br />
Malick has increasingly become a<br />
point of controversy and contention.<br />
“Badlands” (1973), his feature debut,<br />
was acclaimed by most as an instant<br />
classic about criminal love and<br />
sociopathy, but his follow-up, “Days<br />
of Heaven” (1978), was met with a more mixed<br />
response. Some thought that that movie leaned far<br />
too heavily on the merely pictorial beauty of Néstor<br />
Almendros’s cinematography.<br />
Malick withdrew from filmmaking for twenty<br />
years, a leave of absence that has yet to be<br />
fully explained. His comeback, “The Thin Red<br />
Line” (1998), was met with both respect and<br />
bewilderment due to its consistent staring at grass<br />
waving in the wind, a visual pre-occupation that<br />
came at the expense of the people on screen. We<br />
only had to wait seven years for Malick’s next film,<br />
“The New World” (2005), and that movie was the<br />
site of an epic online battle between two critical<br />
heavyweights: Matt Zoller Seitz, who defended the<br />
movie as if it were a girl he was passionately in love<br />
with, and Dave Kehr, who dismissed it with clinical<br />
and well-earned authority.<br />
Six years passed before Malick’s “The Tree of Life”<br />
(2011). This has been one of the most divisive<br />
of modern movies, championed by a small group<br />
of supporters as a masterpiece on childhood<br />
and grief but rejected in furious terms by Kehr, J.<br />
Hoberman, Jonathan Rosenbaum and many other<br />
of our finest film critics. “The Tree of Life” has been<br />
taken apart limb from limb by Kehr and Hoberman,<br />
both of whom expressed outright loathing for the<br />
film’s flowing editing style, which Kehr judged the<br />
result of a director who had shot miles of footage<br />
and who could not be bothered to make firmer<br />
decisions about structure and visual composition.<br />
Many of these critics (not to mention generally<br />
confused audience members), looked askance at<br />
the film’s religious and spiritual yearning, which<br />
was often categorized as lightweight New Age<br />
malarkey.<br />
“The Tree of Life” is the greatest American film I<br />
have seen since David Lynch’s “Mulholland Dr.” in<br />
2001. And so it is with a heavy heart that I must<br />
now turn to Malick’s new film, “To The Wonder,”<br />
a movie released practically right after “The Tree<br />
of Life” if we are to compare his work rate to what<br />
it has usually been in the past. Most alarmingly,<br />
IMDb lists a further three films Malick has shot,<br />
all in post-production! What is going on here? Why<br />
is Malick suddenly so inspired to work and shoot<br />
at such a rate? Since he does no interviews or<br />
publicity, only rumor and hearsay can supply any<br />
motive for this surge of creative energy. It might be<br />
up to a later biographer to figure out just what goes<br />
on with Malick, and this is sure to be a difficult<br />
job, even if “The Tree of Life” seems like one of the<br />
most autobiographical of films.<br />
“To The Wonder,” alas, seems to me guilty of every<br />
one of the faults Malick’s critics decried in “The<br />
Tree of Life” and his past work, and a lot more<br />
besides. It plays, in fact, like a parody of a Malick<br />
film, all quivering wheat and whispery voice-over<br />
and vague reaching for enlightenment. The film<br />
centers on Marina (Olga Kurylenko), a Ukrainian<br />
woman who moves to Oklahoma to continue her<br />
love affair with Neil (Ben Affleck), a man involved<br />
in some kind of environmental chicanery. Nestled<br />
within the movie is another storyline about how<br />
Neil takes up with a childhood friend, Jane (Rachel<br />
McAdams), and has an affair with her.<br />
Marina and Jane might as well be the same<br />
woman as far as Malick’s camera is concerned.<br />
Kurylenko looks and behaves like a fashion<br />
model, and there are interminable shots of her<br />
ecstatically throwing her arms around various<br />
exteriors and interiors, until we get the sense that<br />
Kurylenko hasn’t the foggiest notion what she is<br />
supposed to be portraying. She’s just trying to<br />
move in an interesting way for her director, who<br />
seems entranced with her, but that entrancement<br />
is a dead end. Malick views All-American blond<br />
McAdams in exactly the same way, asking her to<br />
roll around in the dirt, roll around in the grass and<br />
be at one, presumably, with nature. Affleck is much<br />
like Richard Gere in "Days of Heaven", a smarmy<br />
model who also seems to have no idea what he’s<br />
supposed to be doing. On the edges of the story<br />
are people who do not look like movie stars, many<br />
of whom are afflicted with impairments or diseases<br />
of some kind, and Malick’s brief fetishization of<br />
their difference in contrast to his tediously pretty<br />
lead actors is borderline offensive.<br />
The case for and against Terrence Malick is far<br />
from finished. Maybe one of his next three films<br />
will be another “Badlands” or “Tree of Life.” But<br />
this new work, which might be dubbed “To The<br />
Blunder,” seems to underline the value for him of<br />
taking his time.
THE<br />
LITERARY<br />
VIEW<br />
Skyscraper Blues:<br />
Federico Garcia Lorca's Poet in New York<br />
BY DAN CALLAHAN<br />
Photos courtesy of Farrar, Straus and Giroux<br />
House of Bernarda Alba” and “Blood Wedding,” the<br />
Spanish writer Federico Garcia Lorca first came to<br />
prominence as a poet. His poetry collection “Gypsy<br />
Ballads,” published in 1928, was warmly received<br />
both in Spain and abroad, but Lorca bridled against<br />
being typecast. “The gypsies are a theme,” he<br />
wrote. “And nothing more. I could just as well be a<br />
poet of sewing needles or hydraulic landscapes.” In<br />
June of 1929, Lorca sailed for America, where he<br />
would stay in New York as a student at Columbia<br />
University. During his New York visit, he visited<br />
Harlem, saw the Stock Market crash, and wrote a<br />
book of poems, “Poet in New York,” which would<br />
the verse about Wall Street, where such negativity<br />
might be expected. His poem about a visit to<br />
Coney Island is called “Landscape of a Vomiting<br />
Multitude.” This is what he sees in a poem called<br />
“Dawn”:<br />
Dawn in New York has<br />
four columns of mire<br />
and a hurricane of black pigeons<br />
splashing in the putrid waters<br />
Dawn in New York groans<br />
On enormous fire escapes<br />
searching between the angles<br />
for spikenards of drafted anguish<br />
his rather strange and conflicted “Ode to Walt<br />
Whitman,” which is less of an ode to Whitman and<br />
more of an anguished plea for some kind of selfunderstanding.<br />
Many of the drawings by Lorca that preface some<br />
of these poems are delightful, but a lecture he<br />
gave on his New York stay, which is included here,<br />
feels almost comically at odds with the much<br />
more cheery version of his trip that he gives to his<br />
Lorca, who was homosexual, was very close to<br />
Salvador Dali, so intensely involved, in fact, that<br />
Dali finally had to distance himself from the older<br />
poet’s ardor. Luis Buñuel took a dim view of Lorca,<br />
and Lorca himself felt that Buñuel’s joint film with<br />
Dali, “Un Chien Andalou” (1928), was an attack on<br />
his person. “Buñuel has made a little shit of a film<br />
called ‘An Andalusian Dog,’ and the ‘Andalusian<br />
dog’ is me,” Lorca told his friend Ángel del Río. The<br />
influence of Dali’s surrealism on Lorca’s poetry in<br />
“Poet in New York” is clear, and the results can be<br />
felicitous. These poems are filled with unexpected<br />
combinations of descriptive words and images:<br />
only be published after his murder in 1936 at the<br />
hands of a Nationalist militia in Spain.<br />
“Poet in New York” was first put out in 1939 and<br />
1940 in Britain and the US. It has seen several<br />
translations since, and now this very handsome<br />
new bilingual edition from Farrar, Straus and<br />
Giroux that also includes some newly translated<br />
letters that Lorca wrote to his family. “Poet in New<br />
York” has not always had a positive press. It was<br />
thought anti-American by some when it was first<br />
published, and it remains a very thorny, almost<br />
wholly ambivalent work. Many of the poems do<br />
look at Manhattan in a negative way, and not just<br />
If it isn’t the birds<br />
covered with ash<br />
if it isn’t the sobbing that strikes the windows of<br />
the wedding<br />
it is the delicate creatures of the air<br />
that spill fresh blood in the inextinguishable<br />
darkness<br />
I love the combination of “inextinguishable” with<br />
“darkness,” and I love when Lorca references<br />
the “blue horse of my insanity.” So many of these<br />
images have a dreamlike rightness to them. That<br />
isn’t always the case when he tries to make a<br />
naïve but heartfelt plea for African Americans<br />
in “Standards and Paradise of the Blacks,” or<br />
mother in his letters home. Lorca was an artist who<br />
was always being violently torn between thoughts,<br />
emotions and positions, and this violence<br />
sometimes resulted in the hand-in-glove beauty<br />
of some of his poems and his great plays and<br />
sometimes led to some of the work in this book,<br />
which is a bit like hearing someone hit a piano hard<br />
to make a lot of discordant sound. “I badly want<br />
to communicate with you,” Lorca says in his New<br />
York lecture. “Not to give you honey (I have none)<br />
but sand or hemlock or salt water. Hand-to-hand<br />
fighting, and it does not matter if I am defeated.”<br />
REVOLT<br />
<strong>Magazine</strong> Number 4, 2013<br />
30
THE<br />
LITERARY<br />
VIEW<br />
Cherchez la femme:<br />
James Salter's All That Is<br />
BY DAN CALLAHAN<br />
Very few living American writers can be said to<br />
have been influenced by Ernest Hemingway, but 87<br />
year-old James Salter wears that laconic style like a<br />
badge of honor. Compared to contemporaries like<br />
John Updike, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer or Philip<br />
Roth, he has written comparatively few novels and<br />
has not yet won a wide readership. Salter’s two<br />
masterpieces, “A Sport and a Pastime” (1967) and<br />
“Light Years” (1975), met with little understanding<br />
when they were first published, but they will surely<br />
survive long after more lauded novels of that time<br />
have faded away. Every sentence in Salter’s work is<br />
a discrete and burnished object, lovingly screwed<br />
into place for maximum impact yet also cryptic and<br />
elusive. His oblique way of writing, which he has<br />
perfected over many years practice, has allowed<br />
him to create some of the most evocative literary<br />
sex scenes of all time.<br />
Salter’s new novel, “All That Is,” is studded with<br />
sex scenes, lofty descriptions that exalt sex as a<br />
be-all and endall<br />
of life, and<br />
this attitude<br />
is not without<br />
its disturbing<br />
implications.<br />
His narrative<br />
voice is a mix<br />
of tough guy<br />
and dandy,<br />
man’s man and<br />
unrepentant<br />
hedonist; he’s<br />
like a tour guide<br />
of pleasure,<br />
letting his<br />
loose narrative wander into minutely considered<br />
digressions on favored writers, succulent meals<br />
or the very fine cut of a suit. Salter’s cloudiness<br />
mirrors that of his novel’s protagonist, Philip<br />
Bowman, a literary man, a man of the world and a<br />
gentleman of publishing who learns notably little<br />
throughout his long life.<br />
The book opens with a foreboding chapter which<br />
briefly details Bowman’s experience in the navy<br />
during World War II, twelve pages that take in<br />
memories of some of his crewmates and a girl<br />
from this war period, Vicky Hollins, who sounds<br />
like a Howard Hawks heroine: “Vicky Hollins in<br />
her silk dress, the glances clinging to her as she<br />
passed. In heels she wasn’t that short. She liked<br />
to call herself by her last name. It’s Hollins, she<br />
would announce on the phone.” Just four short<br />
sentences, and you can see and hear Vicky Hollins,<br />
this 1940s dream girl; though she is never seen or<br />
heard of again in the novel, she is its talisman, its<br />
goal, the woman that Philip Bowman will look for all<br />
his life. Moving from the beauty of women, Salter<br />
sketches the enormous brutality of war in a single<br />
paragraph, describing what happens to the men on<br />
a sinking ship as most of them get sucked into a<br />
whirlpool and drown. In the clear-eyed yet stunned<br />
way that Salter tells it, even this nightmarish scene<br />
has a kind of remembered grandeur.<br />
“All That Is” goes on to describe Bowman’s<br />
encounters with women throughout his life. He<br />
falls in love with the upper class blond Vivian and<br />
imagines a life with her: “He saw himself tumbled<br />
with her among the bedclothes and fragrance<br />
of married life, the meals and holidays of it, the<br />
shared rooms, the glimpses of her half-dressed,<br />
her blondness, the pale hair where her legs met,<br />
the sexual riches that would be there forever.” The<br />
adolescent-minded Bowman, however, does not<br />
realize that Vivian is a limited girl who is totally<br />
unsuitable to the life he wants her to lead in New<br />
York—she leaves him after a time and he can’t<br />
understand why.<br />
Bowman then goes on to several affairs, usually<br />
with married women, and Salter describes with<br />
relish the enraptured beginnings of these affairs as<br />
well as the amours of Bowman’s colleague Eddins.<br />
The imagery this writer uses to describe the sex his<br />
people have is sometimes so sumptuously apt that<br />
it doesn’t make you horny so much as it makes<br />
you want to stand up and applaud him. Here is<br />
how Salter describes Eddins being fellated by his<br />
future wife Dena: “It was like a boot just slipped<br />
onto a full calf and she went on doing it, gaining<br />
assurance, her mouth making only a faint sound.”<br />
And then later on: “Her buttocks were glorious, it<br />
was like being in a bakery, and when she cried out<br />
it was like a dying woman, one that had crawled to<br />
a shrine.” Here is Salter’s description of Bowman<br />
with his juicy English lover Enid Armour: “He<br />
gathered and went in slowly, sinking like a ship, a<br />
little cry escaping her, the cry of a hare, as it went<br />
to the hilt.” That phrase “sinking like a ship” reads<br />
ominously after the actual ship sinking in the first<br />
chapter—though the experience of World War II<br />
is sketched in only a few pages at the beginning<br />
of this book, it seems to drive all of the behavior<br />
of the men here who had served and somehow<br />
come through, which serves as another link to<br />
Hemingway’s work.<br />
“All That Is” is tricky to read when it comes to how<br />
it portrays its women. It’s hard to tell, sometimes,<br />
if they are being seen only from Bowman’s point<br />
of view or if they represent how Salter himself<br />
sees them. The female characters in this book are<br />
looked on as enigmatic sexual baubles, lovely to<br />
physically possess while they are still attractive<br />
but sadly on the shelf as they age (the fate of an<br />
older Enid Armour after she loses her looks is laid<br />
out in a chilling page and a half set in a restaurant<br />
where she drinks too much and makes a fool of<br />
herself). The women in “All That Is” have no life of<br />
their own unrelated to men, and you can say that<br />
that is Bowman’s problem but it is also a problem<br />
in the book itself. Salter sees so many things so<br />
clearly, from a distance, but he is too buttoned-up<br />
and traditional to try to imagine anything from deep<br />
inside a woman’s point of view.<br />
“All That Is” is a novel filled to brimming with<br />
piercing little vignettes of isolated people, both<br />
men and women, and it is Salter’s rare talent that<br />
he only needs a line or two, sometimes, to make a<br />
person come to life with dawning clarity. If there is<br />
any writer he resembles, finally, it is not Hemingway<br />
or the macho cohort that came after him but<br />
Isak Dinesen, a woman who made an art out of<br />
nostalgia. Like her, Salter sees everything through<br />
a glass darkly, and what he shows us is troubling<br />
but mouthwateringly sensual and essential.
THEATREVIEW<br />
Theatre for the Person:<br />
BY ADAM LATEN WILLSON<br />
Two Perspectives<br />
Special Thanks to Reka Polonyi and Adam Belvo<br />
I have always seen theatre as a ne plus ultra of<br />
the arts – by melding together literary, visual,<br />
locomotive, and phonetic elements, it serves as a<br />
vanguard for all of the disparate forms of artistic<br />
expression. But until 2009, my relationship with<br />
theatre had only been in the abstract. I had rarely<br />
ever performed and when I had, it was more for the<br />
sheer devil-may-care fun of it.<br />
In 2009, I became an official member of Aztec<br />
Economy (www.newyorkisdead.net), a Brooklynbased<br />
underground theatre company that<br />
specializes in lyrical studies of human psychology<br />
and crisis. Since then, having contributed to over<br />
15 productions in varying capacities, I have grown<br />
to think of theatre as a serious and evocative art<br />
form, and have acquired firmer ideas about what<br />
theatre is capable of. Aztec’s plays are abnormal:<br />
some of them more like poems or dramatic<br />
experiments, almost always unconventionally<br />
staged and feverishly scripted. We have performed<br />
in a variety of unexpected venues – once on the<br />
deck of a docked steamship, another time in the<br />
attic of a New Orleans karate dojo. We have toured<br />
frequently, participated in prestigious festivals<br />
such as the Ice Factory, but also produced small<br />
Brooklyn events in backyards. In a word, we<br />
are always on the lookout for new and gripping<br />
challenges for ourselves and for our audiences,<br />
and we attach ourselves to each project with<br />
unflagging adrenaline and dedication.<br />
Truth be told, however, because I have mostly<br />
collaborated with this one group, my understanding<br />
of the possibilities of theatre is still very limited.<br />
Recently, I had the fortune of meeting Reka<br />
Polonyi, a highly spirited social theatre practitioner<br />
who has traveled the world engaging immigrant<br />
and refugee communities in devised theatre<br />
workshops. In 2004, she studied Drama and<br />
Theatre Arts in Scotland. Afterward, she made the<br />
rounds, traveling and working in Cuba, Ecuador,<br />
Argentina, Brazil, and finally in Hungary, where<br />
she worked with a community of Roma gypsy<br />
performers. It was this experience that inspired<br />
her to pursue a Masters degree in social theatre<br />
at the Central School of Speech and Drama in<br />
London. In 2011, she was commissioned by the<br />
UN Refugee Agency and the Ecuadorian National<br />
Ministry of Public Health to lead a workshop on the<br />
Ecuador / Columbia border that addressed sexual<br />
health concerns for adolescents. This workshop<br />
later became Chancho al Horno, an award-winning<br />
collective led by Javier Perugachi that is currently<br />
seeking UNESCO funding to broaden their scope.<br />
In 2012, after moving to New York, Reka helped<br />
found Frontierra, a community-based theatre<br />
company in Corona, Queens that focuses on<br />
immigrant rights awareness and mobilization (www.<br />
frontierra.org). Reka’s devisement process borrows<br />
Photo courtesy of Frontierra Theatre Group.<br />
from Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed.<br />
Founded in the 1960s and inspired in part by<br />
Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, TO’s<br />
methodology provides a new way of looking at and<br />
working with theatre as a device to promote social<br />
and political change by opening up a free dialogue<br />
between performers and audience.<br />
A few weeks ago, I conducted an interview with<br />
Reka about her involvement with theatre, her<br />
process of theatre devisement, and her general<br />
ideas about the craft. Then, Adam Belvo, a fellow<br />
member of Aztec Economy, interviewed me<br />
about my thoughts on theatre. What follows is an<br />
alternation between our two perspectives. It was a<br />
great pleasure sitting down with Reka and hearing<br />
her ideas, as well as further codifying my own ideas<br />
about the dramatic arts.<br />
What is your rehearsal process like?<br />
Reka: I’ve had a few participants who had never<br />
heard of the word ‘theatre.’ So the first thing that<br />
we do is usually gauge the energy of the group,<br />
whether they are ready to get up on their feet yet,<br />
what’s it like in the room…<br />
Just like in any other practice,<br />
we start with a warm-up. But<br />
depending on the energy of the<br />
group, it could be something<br />
like sitting in a circle, but we<br />
each do a movement, and then<br />
we build on that. So then OK,<br />
now we’re ready to stand up.<br />
So let’s do the name thing,<br />
then let’s each do a movement,<br />
and then we all repeat it. If that<br />
goes okay, then the next step.<br />
But every time we take a little<br />
bit more risk…At the beginning,<br />
we do a lot of games focused<br />
on trust and confidence, and<br />
working together as a group,<br />
making images together…<br />
With image work, we get in<br />
a small group and form an<br />
image of something with our bodies, whether it’s a<br />
crane or a bridge – something simple. But then it<br />
becomes slightly more interesting. Like a machine<br />
– a washing machine or a coffee machine. This is<br />
also a Boalian thing, a Theatre-of-the-Oppressedbased<br />
game. First you make your machine real<br />
simple, like a little mechanical bicycle. Then each<br />
one adds on to the last person, so that you have<br />
one big machine. And as the facilitator, you can<br />
slow it down, you could speed it up, or say ‘Oh now<br />
this part’s broken.’ Then slowly, you come to a<br />
stop. ‘OK, next we’re going to do another machine,<br />
but a machine of love.’…Usually, we talk about it<br />
afterward: ‘So why is the machine of love like that?<br />
REVOLT<br />
<strong>Magazine</strong> Number 4, 2013 32
Why is that person over there? How is it connected,<br />
how is it not connected?’ Most games have a sort<br />
of debriefing. It’s a little session when we’re all<br />
still in a circle and we’ve just finished it, and we<br />
ask, ‘How did that feel? Why?’ And then, ‘Next!’ So<br />
we’re building on thematic structure.<br />
How would you define theatre?<br />
Adam Willson: Theatre is not life. But it’s sort of<br />
like a mirror. In the sense that we look in a mirror,<br />
and we see a really essential part of our being in<br />
the mirror, even though it’s not real...So, maybe an<br />
interesting side-question is what is the difference<br />
between theatre and film. I think the main<br />
difference is that film has a much greater capacity<br />
to plumb the psychological…It’s really about<br />
perspective and playing with this perspective to<br />
get into the inner world. The depth of psychological<br />
attention in theatre is not so deep as with film.<br />
I think at the same time, there’s something<br />
immediately dynamic and important about theatre<br />
that you can’t get in film. And I think part of the<br />
theatre experience is that at the same time as<br />
getting involved and immersed in the plot or activity<br />
onstage, you always have this subliminal sense like<br />
‘I’m watching a play’ or ‘this isn’t real life.’ What’s<br />
interesting about theatre, and you can’t really do<br />
it with film, is this sort of discrepancy. And I think<br />
as an audience member watching a performance<br />
– if it’s a good performance or a challenging<br />
performance – it should be an experience of<br />
continually wrestling back and forth between these<br />
two perspectives. It’s like ‘No, this isn’t real life. I’m<br />
not totally immersed in this. I’m actually sitting in<br />
a chair.’ Wrestling with that and also with ‘yes I’m<br />
totally in this story.’<br />
How does community-based devisement<br />
engage the performers and audience?<br />
Reka: So for example it could be forum theatre,<br />
which I do a lot of as well, and that’s also based<br />
on the Theatre of the Oppressed. Forum theatre<br />
takes a long time, but we eventually get to that<br />
point where we have a beginning, middle, end –<br />
we have a climactic point…What happens is once<br />
the audience has watched the first round, the<br />
facilitators come in (in Theatre of the Oppressed,<br />
they call them Jokers) and act as communicators<br />
between the audience and the actors. Except<br />
in this case, the spectators become the ‘spectactors.’<br />
That’s the terminology for it. We take one<br />
of the major elements or themes that we were<br />
tackling in that play, and we say, ‘Raise your hand<br />
if you’ve ever identified with that or felt that.’<br />
People raise their hands, and then we ask them:<br />
‘If you were Maria or if you were Peter, or another<br />
character, what would you have done?’ Some of<br />
them are not quite sure how to process it, but<br />
they might say, ‘I would’ve told my boss to fuck<br />
off.’ Okay come on over and try it. The actors who<br />
were there continue, but they have to improvise<br />
at this point, right? Then, we clap the audience<br />
member that did that and say, ‘What changed?<br />
Has anything changed?’ So basically, it brings up<br />
a dialogue….‘Can you do that in reality? Can you<br />
tell your boss to fuck off? Can you ask for more<br />
pay?’…So the important pieces are there, but a<br />
play often ends with an ending that is realistic but<br />
not idealistic. So we’re asking a question. We don’t<br />
have an answer to what somebody could’ve done.<br />
We’re asking the audience to help us figure it out…<br />
What we’re hoping is that those solutions that were<br />
figured out we’re all going to take home and then<br />
practice them in real life. Theatre’s just a game.<br />
Photo courtesy of Frontierra Theatre Group.<br />
You can stand up to your boss in theatre, because<br />
it’s fun and ok, and nothing happens, but the point<br />
is to see if we perform these possible solutions<br />
outside.<br />
What is the sort of theatre you would like to<br />
see?<br />
Adam Willson: I’m a big fan of street theatre. I<br />
think a lot of the time it ends up not really being<br />
done the way I would like to see it. What I was<br />
talking about before how when you’re sitting in a<br />
theatre and you’re constantly wrestling with this<br />
‘am I a spectator?’ or ‘am I in the story?’ – I think<br />
the best way to specifically elicit that from an<br />
audience is to have them continually questioning<br />
their role in the situation. The sort of theatre that<br />
I would love to see is the sort of street theatre<br />
that at all times the audience is never quite sure<br />
what they’re seeing- whether it’s a play or it’s a<br />
happening, or it’s just two drunk bums spouting off<br />
nonsense, you know – and working it so that there<br />
may be points of revelation, where the audience<br />
realizes, ‘Ok, I can sort of see what’s going on<br />
now,’ and then continually work with that and try to<br />
turn that over. I would like to see more theatre on<br />
the subways, but not theatre on the subways<br />
like, ‘Hey guys, we’re going to do a play for you, like<br />
we’ve got our costumes on, we’re going to read<br />
some Shakespeare.’ Because I feel that’s a little<br />
too us-and-them, where it’s like ‘You guys are just<br />
commuters coming home from a long day of work,<br />
and we’re going to perform to you, and we’re not<br />
together in this.’ I would like to see the type theatre<br />
that we see on the subway every fucking day,<br />
performed unintentionally.<br />
What is the world climate like for social<br />
theatre?<br />
Reka: The US is very resistant. It’s hard for me to<br />
judge, because I’m very new to the US. I’ve only<br />
been here for two years. But I’ve heard that it’s<br />
very underrepresented, that it’s still at its startup<br />
stage. There are for instance in New York two<br />
masters degrees in social theatre – but one is a 5<br />
year program and one is only a two year program –<br />
at CUNY and NYU. NYU is more focused on theatre<br />
and education, so it’s more institutionalized, more<br />
in a school setting. When I say ‘social theatre’,<br />
for one, it’s like ‘Oh, what is that?’ But also, it’s<br />
like ‘Oh, you mean a teaching artist.’ It’s hard to<br />
explain that no, it’s not that. With the UK, you can<br />
say that it’s like the motherland of many social<br />
theatre companies. It’s very well-funded there, it’s<br />
very well-recognized, and usually you don’t really<br />
have to explain what it is. Practitioners such as my<br />
self get hired by various companies, non-profits, or<br />
NGOs working on certain issues and needing that<br />
branch of the work. I think that’s really important,<br />
because within the educational structure, it’s very<br />
limited: you have theatre, but you don’t really have<br />
the social theatre branch in the US.<br />
What do you think of political theatre?<br />
Adam Willson: I’m pretty skeptical of an<br />
intermingling between any one of the arts and<br />
politics. Obviously the arts have their roots and<br />
orientation and motivation in building a community,<br />
especially theatre. And so that’s political in the<br />
Aristotelian sense of political. At the same time, I<br />
think what people mean by political theatre – it’s<br />
basically using theatre to express a non-artistic<br />
platform. It can be more or less explicit. When it’s<br />
very explicit – it’s like the same thing where you<br />
go to a play and the whole play, the characters are<br />
shouting. After a certain moment, the audience<br />
is going to stop paying attention. I think the same<br />
thing happens when theatre is too sermonizing. I<br />
think the most effective theatre educates you in<br />
something that you weren’t aware of before, but<br />
it does it in a disguised way. So, it’s not preaching
to you, telling you, ‘This is how you should read<br />
this,’ or ‘This is what this is about.’ But through<br />
various disguising and transformative elements,<br />
it can impart these political messages or any sort<br />
of message. Art should never hammer things over<br />
people’s heads. If that’s happening, then that’s<br />
a problem…A lot of political theatre veers in and<br />
out of this aggressive performance art that has<br />
on the tip of its tongue, ‘This is the dogma’ or<br />
‘This is the dictum.’ I don’t think that really honors<br />
the nature of what theatre is. Basically how I<br />
feel with the arts is this: ‘Take an art. Figure out<br />
what that art’s good at. And once you’ve figured<br />
out what that art is good at, then you can blend<br />
it with another element.’ That’s my feeling about<br />
multimedia theatre as well. That’s my feeling about<br />
circus theatre, for example. That’s my feeling about<br />
political theatre.<br />
How do you reconcile the personal dialogueoriented<br />
method of social theatre with the<br />
political initiative of your programs?<br />
Reka: When I was trained in social theatre for my<br />
Masters degree, there was a whole class there<br />
on the ethical dilemmas of taking funding from<br />
various organizations. Obviously the aim of social<br />
theatre is not to take a political vocabulary and<br />
set of ideas and push that forward. So it becomes<br />
problematic when you get funded by a certain<br />
funding body. But it’s really a case-by-case thing. In<br />
many cases it’s about taking the money and doing<br />
the work, but kind of negotiating some way around<br />
their demands. I was very lucky in the sense that<br />
the UN pretty much gave me full reign. They said<br />
it needed to be around the theme of sexual health<br />
because of their funding. So I tried while we were<br />
devising themes to bring up some sexual health<br />
questions – not even criteria, but questions – to<br />
see how the group reacted. But they were actually<br />
a lot more concerned with gender roles, which<br />
could relate. And that’s what I mean by negotiating.<br />
It can relate, but it’s not only about sexual health.<br />
I have a fiscally sponsored organization called<br />
Fronteirra. And the funding that we’re looking for,<br />
what I’m looking for is really around immigration<br />
issues. So, it’s really about informative projects<br />
around the immigration reform that’s happening<br />
right now, about strengthening the immigrant<br />
community…So, there’s already that focus. But<br />
then afterwards, what the issue is, what themes<br />
they want to discuss are up to group<br />
What is your take on social theatre?<br />
Adam Willson: In general, social theatre is<br />
basically using theatre to build community<br />
mobilization. The idea is to get together a group<br />
and have them focus on their story, whatever that<br />
story is. And I like the premise of it. But I think<br />
it’s maybe a little too utilitarian for me. It seems<br />
the goal is to use theatre as a way to implement<br />
education. And I think a strong element in theatre<br />
is education, but not the only element. Also, I’m a<br />
little skeptical of democracy. I’m skeptical because<br />
REVOLT<br />
I believe that once you get so many voices in a<br />
room, first of all it’s going to be hard to come to<br />
some sort of consensus. But also I think there’s<br />
this idea that when you allow so many voices –<br />
and basically in a certain sense, you’re trying to<br />
take the average voice of the group – what ends<br />
up happening is you lose sight of the best and<br />
the worst…And I’m worried that democracy in the<br />
arts or otherwise tends to facilitate mediocrity. If<br />
you’re only focusing on community devisement, I<br />
think you’re losing sight of the possibility of actually<br />
creating a masterpiece. I think a masterpiece could<br />
come out of that sort of methodology. But at the<br />
Photo courtesy of Frontierra Theatre Group.<br />
same time, I can see how quite often it doesn’t…I<br />
very much appreciate that social theatre is being<br />
done. And I appreciate that there are governing<br />
bodies or NGOs or whatever who are funding these<br />
projects. But at the same time, by basically taking<br />
these sequestered groups or differentiated groups<br />
and working with them on particular issues, with<br />
a specific goal in mind, for a specific time, I think<br />
it could end up cramping these groups’ abilities to<br />
actually express themselves in a free way. Theatre<br />
is a serious business. All art is a serious business,<br />
and I think a lot of people who don’t do art don’t<br />
realize how serious it is. If you want to do good<br />
stuff artistically, it takes a lot of fucking work, and<br />
it takes a lot of fucking focus…Without the proper<br />
preparation and training, I’m worried that these<br />
workshops might prevent people from really seeing<br />
what theatre is about. But that may not be the<br />
worst thing in the world. After all, it’s getting them<br />
out and performing. So, I can’t knock it too much.<br />
I’m just talking about my concerns.<br />
How would you characterize the difference<br />
between social theatre and conventional<br />
theatre?<br />
Reka: Over the weekend, I watched Farrah Crane’s<br />
play called ‘Night.’ It takes place in Lebanon in<br />
wartime. It’s a very strong piece and very well<br />
written. It was performed by lovely actresses but<br />
who, as far I know, have had no experience of<br />
war. And they’re performing for people who, just<br />
like them, have generally had no experience of<br />
war. That doesn’t mean it was less interesting.<br />
But in my head, as a social theatre practitioner,<br />
it’s like what’s the point? I mean it’s interesting,<br />
but it’s something that’s not legitimate – it loses<br />
something. I feel like we’re taking advantage of<br />
a dramatic situation, and it’s like ‘Oh, something<br />
terrible is happening over there, and let’s make a<br />
piece about it.’ And we feel bad about something<br />
we have nothing to do with and have never<br />
experienced and don’t know about…<br />
But I don’t have some of the experiences of the<br />
groups I’m working with, and that’s a conflict too.<br />
The way I was introduced to theatre was also as a<br />
bystander…But at the same time, it got me where<br />
I am…So it’s an ethical wheel. For me and a lot of<br />
the colleagues of mine, I came from a middle-class<br />
background. I have had no traumatic experiences.<br />
So, I come into this field like ‘Yes! Change! It’s<br />
good!’ Because I have the privilege of being able to<br />
think for myself. My hands are not tied.<br />
I remember a specific incident where I was faced<br />
with this veil I have over my head. I was working<br />
with a homeless group, co-facilitating. We were<br />
doing a forum piece in a homeless shelter. There<br />
was this piece about a recovering alcoholic. There’s<br />
this recovering alcoholic who’s 9 months sober<br />
in the beginning. She’s doing great. She wants to<br />
give back to society. She works with refugees as a<br />
volunteer. But then there’s this one refugee whose<br />
case gets worse and worse, and this individual<br />
can’t help. So she starts drinking and drinking and<br />
drinking. By the end of the piece she’s so drunk, on<br />
the floor, and this refugee friend comes knocking<br />
on the door and says, ‘I have nowhere to go. Can I<br />
stay here?’ And the character says ‘Ah! Sorry, no!<br />
Just go! I can’t help you’<br />
Then we asked the audience, ‘Is there any point in<br />
the play where you would’ve said or done anything<br />
different?’ One person said, ‘Yeah. It’s the last<br />
thing, I’d change something right there.’…So, the<br />
spectator comes up and replaces the character of<br />
the recovering alcoholic. The refugee friend knocks<br />
on the door, it opens, and the guy says ‘yeah come<br />
on in, come on in.’ They both sit down on the<br />
bench for 30 seconds completely silent, and then<br />
the guy who intervened, he takes this big bottle of<br />
whiskey and asks, ‘do you want some?’ And the<br />
actor shrugs and says, ‘Yeah.’ That’s it. And they<br />
just drink on this bench for 30 seconds. Everyone<br />
claps, and we ask, ‘so what was that all about? Did<br />
that change anything?’ The guy who intervened<br />
said, ‘Yeah, totally. I mean I’m in the shit. She’s<br />
in the shit. Might as well be in the shit together.’<br />
For me it was a great shock…It’s a beautiful idea<br />
that I would not have thought of, because I’m with<br />
this sort of background. I was brought up with the<br />
opportunity to make a difference. My parents were<br />
fighters. So I had a very active kind of upbringing…<br />
where you can’t just take something for granted –<br />
no, you have to move forward. And that’s a luxury.<br />
It really is. But sometimes it’s about being rooted<br />
in the present, and taking the moment for what it<br />
is. Work on the now. I’m still learning constantly.<br />
I have a lot to learn about conventional theatre as<br />
well.<br />
<strong>Magazine</strong> Number 4, 2013 34
THEATREVIEW<br />
Kay Turner's OTHERWISE: QUEER SCHOLARSHIP<br />
BY KATIE CERCONE INTO SONG<br />
A<br />
production conceived and directed by<br />
Kay Turner, Otherwise: Queer Scholarship<br />
Into Song, ran at the Dixon Place on<br />
the lower east side the first week of April.<br />
Intellectually dense, witty, filled with unexpected<br />
high notes and badass funky flows, Kay Turner’s<br />
full-length evening academic post-punk sing-alongsong<br />
excursion had me tipping my hat. Not only<br />
did Turner succeed in making heavy reading sexy<br />
– herself and nearly all female cohort of colleagues<br />
draped in animal print, shimmery lame et all (with<br />
sensible shoes) – I also just want to rhetorically applaud<br />
Turner for banging the mic stand on the floor<br />
ceremoniously throughout the final number.<br />
Inspired by the likes of 10 “Professors of Pleasure”<br />
who have all published new works of queer scholarship<br />
within the past year, Turner hired equal number<br />
of musicians and in some cases performing<br />
artists to “translate” the works into musical scores<br />
for the live performance. Each segment featured<br />
an introduction by the professorial author followed<br />
by the musical interpretation. When not serving as<br />
MC, Turner sang with Gretchen Phillips (known together<br />
as the proto-riot grrl punk and funk lesbian<br />
rock band “Girls in the Nose”) and ended the show<br />
with a musical approximation of her latest publication<br />
Transgressive Tales: Queering the Grimms.<br />
“I want you to go home humming an academic<br />
tome,” said Turner, who had guests singing outloud<br />
academic buzzies<br />
linear time-keeping from within the plush gold confines<br />
of a stage prop Turner called her “Great Chain<br />
of Queer Being.”<br />
Things turned dangerous when Lisa Duggan introduced<br />
her new book Sapphic Slashers. Based<br />
on the 1892 case of a Tennessee woman who<br />
slashed the throat of her female lover and killed<br />
her, the book anchors its narrative in an act largely<br />
motivated by the “inconceivability” of femalefemale<br />
public union in the 19th century southern<br />
United States. According to Duggan’s book, this<br />
incident marks the emergence of the “Lesbian” in<br />
American mass culture and caused distortions that<br />
still haunt American female homosexual mythology<br />
today. Inspired by the book, the evening’s musical<br />
interpretation by Turner with Viva DeConcini and<br />
Mary Feaster weighs “expert” (male) testimony<br />
peddled to the public imagination at that time – ie<br />
“Girl slays girl! Victim of Erotomania! Feast of Sensation!”<br />
- against the truth of women who committed<br />
crimes because they were not permitted to love<br />
one another.<br />
Kay Turner singing “I Prefer My Meanings” with lyrics arranged from Tavia Nyong’o’s forthcoming Little Monsters: A Queer<br />
Bestiary. Photo: Dixie Sheridan.<br />
I can’t believe I’m saying this but, thank god for<br />
booze! Without New Yorker’s dangerously consistent<br />
marriage of spirits and the social, we might<br />
not have radical performing arts laboratories such<br />
as the Dixon Place on the island at all. Started<br />
as a salon in Paris in 1985, Artistic Director Ellie<br />
Covan imported DP to her East Village living room a<br />
year later and maintains its state-of-the-art facility<br />
to this day in part due to the sale of pre and post<br />
show bevs. Not that I generally partake. On the record<br />
I arrived adrenaline drunk on single origin hot<br />
chocolate, giddy and wired enough to take copious<br />
notes throughout the evening.<br />
like “Queer Bestiary” and “collective temporal distortion.”<br />
OTHERWISE was a brave, canon-breaking,<br />
raw and juicy rampage for, through and between<br />
the energetics of queerness.<br />
José “Cuban Missile Crisis” Muñoz started off the<br />
night with Cruising Utopia, a book which explores<br />
intersections between queer futurity and “the Utopian<br />
Kernel of art.” Temporality, particularly as a<br />
site of future-possibility, was a common thread running<br />
throughout the evening. In Carolyn Dinshaw’s<br />
introduction to her book How Soon is Now?: Medieval<br />
Texts, Amateur Readers, and the Queerness<br />
of Time, Dinshaw discussed the “mystical divine<br />
now and the collapse of time” in pre-modern nonsequential<br />
Medieval texts. With Medieval Barbie<br />
as her boxed-in sidekick, Dinshaw boldly collapsed<br />
Before the conclusion of the evening we had heard<br />
from several more scholars and musicians including<br />
Dr. Ann Cvetkovich who’s work on depression<br />
as a public feeling was interpreted by a yellow<br />
jump-suited Dynasty Handbag. An emerging icon<br />
of queer performance, Dynasty has been hailed<br />
a “crackpot genius” by the Village Voice and a<br />
“dislocating mess, in a good way…” by Time Out.<br />
For her interpretation of “Dr. Ann’s” work she<br />
presented an exhilaratingly absurd laptop accompanied<br />
vignette about a nun trapped in the prison<br />
cell of her imagination (lots of tongue wagging and<br />
teased hair). And if all that wasn’t hitting the jugular<br />
of this queer era we live in, we also heard from<br />
“Witch Brew Two,” a New Jersey based “crone” rap<br />
duo with yin-yang duds and an old school Casio<br />
keyboard followed by the lovely Maxine Henryson,<br />
a photographer who’s work portraying the Divine<br />
Feminine of Contemporary India was presented<br />
Kirtan-style by Masi Asare and Chris Williams.<br />
If you missed the show, and wasn’t converted by<br />
the sassy review in the Times (Queer Theory May<br />
Not Have a Beat, but Academicians Can Still Dance<br />
to It) (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/06/books/<br />
otherwise-queer-scholarship-into-song-at-dixon-place.html?_<br />
r=0) you can still read the books, that is - flashy<br />
clothing, intoxication, violence, and witchy babes<br />
(optional).
ARCHITECTURE<br />
VIEW<br />
On Being Post-Sequin<br />
An Interview with Theresa Himmer<br />
BY KATIE CERCONE<br />
Theresa Himmer is a contemporary artist<br />
working primarily with urban installation, video<br />
and sound that splits her time between New York<br />
City and Reykjavik, Iceland. A recent graduate of<br />
the Whitney Independent Study program, Himmer<br />
was included in the Young Artist’s Biennial,<br />
Bucharest in 2012 and has produced extensive<br />
public art projects in Iceland, Mexico and Russia.<br />
Trained formerly as an architect and still very much<br />
informed by the discipline, her work deals with<br />
urban landscape related to diasporic experience<br />
and intersubjectivity, the dynamics of spatial<br />
perception and architecture as a semiotic structure.<br />
You may have seen (and heard) her work<br />
in the elevator of Art in General last spring. For All<br />
State, a 6-hour long site-specific sound installation<br />
she produced for Art in General which is currently<br />
installed at Reykjavik Art Museum, Himmer<br />
scavenged sounds from the given milieu of the<br />
elevator. Utilizing “the crisp bell that marks the<br />
passing of floors, the squeak it makes passing 2nd<br />
and 3rd, the hidden emergency phone’s empty<br />
duut, bellowing doors opening and closing and the<br />
sharp click of the mechanical switchboard in the<br />
engine room on the roof,” Himmer investigated<br />
each sample for its parametric variations in rhythm,<br />
spatio-temporal reverb, tonality and inversion.<br />
As a final score replayed for visitors to the site as<br />
they rode the elevator, All State was a sound wall<br />
weaving an inexhaustible system of variations<br />
layered over the daily noise of the elevator’s utility.<br />
Interested in the border territory suturing<br />
the constructed space of the social with the<br />
veiled reality of the psyche, often her structures<br />
and audiovisual projects are a unique expression<br />
of a type of institutional limbo. In an interview<br />
with <strong>Revolt</strong>, Himmer talks about her recent<br />
installation in Russia, queer and feminist readings<br />
of her practice, her current video project and<br />
why she’s content to see the last sequins of her<br />
Mountain Series in Iceland thrown to the wind.<br />
KC: I’m interested in the interdisciplinary nature<br />
of your work, when did you make the transition<br />
from architecture to art and what was that like?<br />
TH: I trained as an architect and received a<br />
professional degree from an architectural school<br />
in Denmark. Initially when I applied I wasn’t<br />
interested in becoming a “real” architect, I wanted<br />
to go into the set design department. It turned out<br />
REVOLT<br />
<strong>Magazine</strong> Number 4, 2013<br />
that department wasn’t great and I ended up in a<br />
very experimental department that was teaching<br />
architecture in a way that was very open. Somewhat<br />
Bauhaus based, the program was very wide in its<br />
approach to talking about what architecture is or can<br />
be. My thesis was an urban public space landscape<br />
project on the roundabout where the Holland tunnel<br />
exits in Tribeca. I made a park around a grazing field<br />
for the police horses who have their stable around<br />
the corner. That program was my initial training and<br />
then I did practice as an architect for several years.<br />
I learned all the hard-core architectural disciplines<br />
from the initial conceptual phase all the way to<br />
building and detailing practicing with two really<br />
good studios, one in Denmark and one in Iceland.<br />
Of course the practice of architecture proper is<br />
quite different than practicing as an artist, although<br />
I never really feel that I left architecture to go into<br />
art. My artistic practice is coming through and out<br />
of architecture and it is still very much dealing with<br />
architectural disciplines – aspects of place, the<br />
relationship to a context, and the ability to read<br />
a context and insert oneself into that in a special<br />
way. In terms of formal studies there was a point<br />
of transition when I decided to study Fine Arts. My<br />
practice exists in an overlapping space between art<br />
and architecture. Exploring that space from within<br />
an art context during a 2 year MFA program at SVA, I<br />
began to think about the dynamics of spectatorship<br />
and the optic dynamics that are tied to creative<br />
practice in general. After that I spent one year at<br />
the Whitney Independent Study Program which<br />
became a kind of unifying process where I was able<br />
to combine the two sides with a more theoretical<br />
foundation. SVA was quite unstructured in an<br />
academic sense. As a community it was amazing<br />
and as a program it was open enough that anyone<br />
could make of it what they wanted, depending<br />
who you end up studying with and in what groups.<br />
Meanwhile, as you know there wasn’t a lot of theory.<br />
Getting that theoretical and critical foundation<br />
from the Whitney Program was a big step for me,<br />
Double Vision (2012) installation view. Public art project in the city of Perm, Russia. Photo courtesy of the artist.<br />
and then integrating that with my prior knowledge.<br />
KC: Can you explain some of the differences you’ve<br />
noticed in terms of rules and regulations governing<br />
work with structures/public space/buildings in<br />
Europe and the U.S.? Is one more open to a hybrid<br />
and innovative approach to spatial configurations?<br />
TH: I actually haven’t done any public art projects in<br />
the States yet but I have done quite a few in Iceland<br />
which has a Scandinavian kind of logic to the way<br />
things are regulated and I recently finished one<br />
project in Russia. In Iceland it’s very free and easy<br />
to do projects like that. For my first installation in<br />
Reykjavík we didn’t even ask for permissions from<br />
36
On Being Post-Sequin<br />
continued...<br />
the city. Because it was part of a public art festival<br />
they kind of backed me with verbal support and<br />
positive vibes. I did get permission from the three<br />
people that owned the house that I was working<br />
with. For me that was really important as it was<br />
private property and it was someone’s home. I<br />
was very respectful of that but I didn’t even think<br />
about applying to the city. I don’t know if it would be<br />
possible now but at that time it was. As a contrast<br />
for my recent project in Russia I was invited by a<br />
public art fund under a newly established art<br />
museum in Perm. The Museum functioned also as<br />
a producer so I didn’t even come near any of the<br />
regulation and permission problems but I think it’s<br />
a completely unimaginable bureaucracy. So I’m not<br />
actually sure where the United States falls in that<br />
spectrum, but I imagine it’s somewhere in between.<br />
for granted? Why do we take this system for<br />
granted? There could be a million other variations.<br />
TH: Yes, I think that was also embedded in your<br />
question. I am interested in creating these kind of<br />
in-between zones where energy stands still between<br />
values associated with something being beautiful.<br />
Something that I thought a lot about in connection<br />
with the Russian commission were these Hal Foster<br />
and Miwon Kwon aspects. All these ideas of the<br />
itinerant artist and the artist who comes to a site<br />
KC: What is your process when you work on some of<br />
these large-scale site-specific outdoor projects? How<br />
much time do you spend at the site and how much in<br />
the studio? Do you consider your work post-studio?<br />
TH: My process is very much informed by coming<br />
out of architecture. It’s very much research based<br />
and conceptually based in the sense that there’s a<br />
research phase where the conceptual boundaries<br />
of the project are laid out. This goes for all the<br />
projects that I’m involved in whether video, sound,<br />
photography or urban installation. There’s a<br />
development phase and then there’s a production<br />
phase. Usually most of the project is in place before<br />
it comes to production. I would say to the poststudio<br />
question – yes - at this point because I’m<br />
traveling in between places my practice is in a way<br />
tied to my laptop. At least the development phases<br />
of the project before they become physical, if they<br />
even do. For example the video project I’m working<br />
on now is actually not site-specific in that sense. It’s<br />
a project that I started while I was at the Whitney<br />
Program doing research and making some initial<br />
studies relating to it. I recently returned from a trip<br />
to the Czech Republic where I was shooting for ten<br />
days at two different locations. That’s sort of typical,<br />
mapping out gathered material and then editing.<br />
KC: I’ve noticed in your work you often set up a<br />
situation in which one might begin to interpret and<br />
even challenge relationships between “structure”<br />
and “institution,” opening up a space where we<br />
can begin to imagine the boundaries between<br />
these entities as porous and fluid. Can you talk<br />
about these notions in relationship to your work?<br />
TH: It is definitely a theme that’s reoccurring in my<br />
work also in the sound installation that I did at Art<br />
in General. That was in a way operating on a similar<br />
level only in audio instead of video. My project Double<br />
Vision in Russia also operates similarly but on the<br />
level of urban space. That project is about questioning<br />
the signifiers of that type of space. It’s taking<br />
architecture and making it a sign and simultaneously<br />
addressing what our vision is being directed at<br />
through corporate promises and advertising.<br />
KC: It’s almost like you’re making this figment<br />
that’s related to the structure but it’s almost<br />
an imaginary space, as if a parallel universe<br />
where we question, why do we take this structure<br />
Parallel Memories (2013), video still. Photo courtesy of the artist.<br />
two poles and there’s a gap in which we can see the<br />
surroundings critically or from a new perspective.<br />
It’s then we explore exactly what is being taken for<br />
granted. By flipping the relationship upside down<br />
we see what goes usually unnoticed. For the project<br />
in Russia I was working with this really everyday<br />
space, this ordinary piece of facade that suddenly<br />
by reframing and reconfiguring that in relationship<br />
to the site, an opening was created. It allowed for<br />
a critical reading of that site in its cultural context.<br />
KC: Is there anything else you want to say<br />
about the piece in Russia in particular?<br />
TH: I can talk briefly about the background<br />
because it’s typical for the way I work. I was given<br />
an old department store as a site to work with. It<br />
was built around the mid 70s during the Soviet<br />
Union era and is a known typology. They were<br />
all over the Soviet Union. It is a white rendered<br />
modernist structure, and there were these bright<br />
yellow McDonalds M’s. It’s an angled building so<br />
they were on all sides visible from every corner. A<br />
McDonalds had just opened on the ground floor. On<br />
the roof were Cyrillic neon letters that spelled the<br />
store name from back when the building was built.<br />
That transition became the starting point of the<br />
project. It became about these two types of signs:<br />
the neon signs and the golden M’s. I read the<br />
building as a type of semiotic structure; if the neon<br />
signs point back to the 70s when the building was<br />
made as a manifestation of Soviet Era ideals, then<br />
the golden M’s point toward an abstract promise<br />
of a global corporate future. There’s kind of two<br />
directions and I wanted to insert myself within that<br />
conversation and make a third type of sign which<br />
just points directly to that which is near and present<br />
both in space and in time. I wanted to direct the gaze<br />
simply to that which is close as a potential space<br />
or quality, beyond what we think of as the surface<br />
and is supposed to do something site specific and<br />
clever. Coming to the city by the Ural Mountains,<br />
it’s such a complex context. It’s a really dynamic<br />
city with a heavy history. The public art program<br />
is amazing and they’re doing really amazing and<br />
important projects. Meanwhile the whole idea is<br />
based on an artist being invited into a situation in<br />
which they’re validating an urban renewal project<br />
on a larger scale. Initially I was really hesitant to do<br />
anything visual because visually, any urban square<br />
or open space is super charged with the memories<br />
either of the 2nd world war or the Soviet Era. There’s<br />
a real danger of making something superficial, and<br />
how can you possibly know? I wanted to steer away<br />
from that so I initially proposed to make an audio<br />
installation. They liked it and said they hoped we<br />
could make that too at some point (perhaps just a<br />
polite rejection) but meanwhile said to me, “We just<br />
think that our city looks not so good, we just want<br />
something with sequins.” I’m thinking - oh my god -<br />
really, okay, I can really understand that utterance.<br />
In a way it makes total sense. That became part of<br />
the framework, their wish for something beautiful,<br />
for something pretty. It’s also about cultural<br />
context in relationship to a material. Making huge<br />
installations out of sequins in Iceland where you<br />
can meet the President in a grocery store, it’s kind<br />
of a cliché but it’s not far from truth… Iceland is set<br />
within a Scandinavian social democratic landscape.<br />
The sequin material is all about glitz and lure, it’s<br />
used for signs and the sequins are morphologically<br />
an interpretation of coins. Displacing that material<br />
from Scandinavia into a contemporary Russian<br />
context totally changes the meaning, there anything<br />
glitzy and glamorous can’t help but allude to<br />
nouveau riche culture. All these aspects were what<br />
in the end manifested itself in the actual project.<br />
KC: I’m personally excited about the Eileen Gray<br />
retrospective at Centre Pompidou in Paris. I find it<br />
interesting that many feminists have named her<br />
as a sort of early Sapphic “non-heroic” modernist<br />
figure, calling her buildings and furniture sites
of “performative queerness.” Do you see any<br />
relationship between your work and hers? How<br />
do you situate yourself as a female architect/<br />
artist in relationship to the larger structures<br />
and institutions in which your work intervenes?<br />
aesthetic that you’re working with in a different context<br />
too, you weren’t trying to build the next Guggenheim.<br />
in Iceland for almost 5 years before moving to New<br />
York. Now I am working between these two places.<br />
There’s something about the dynamics of changing<br />
TH: I don’t really know that I relate to her, although<br />
she’s someone that I respect immensely. I know<br />
little of her relationship with Le Corbusier but<br />
there’s definitely a whole issue around the female<br />
architect. The contemporary landscape of superstar<br />
architects is predominantly male. But then again<br />
that might not be the most interesting place to<br />
be. I recently heard an interview with a Danish<br />
modernist architect Knud Holscher. He spent a big<br />
part of his career doing public projects and some<br />
product design for example toilet seats of which he<br />
spoke with dignity and pride. When he was asked<br />
which project he would have loved to do during his<br />
career, he answered that he had always wanted<br />
to design public housing. That I respect deeply.<br />
Much of the contemporary architecture we see in<br />
glossy magazines is so much about ego and capital.<br />
Obviously there are amazing female architects and<br />
practitioners, but in the dominant media, they tend<br />
to still stand in the background. Perhaps except Zaha<br />
Hadid and Kazuyo Sejima. When I tell people that I am<br />
also trained as an architect, often I am met with “Oh<br />
so do you do interiors?” as if it is difficult to imagine<br />
a woman being a building designer and easier to<br />
connect her to the realm of the (domestic) interior.<br />
I think it’s super problematic that there’s these<br />
gendered relationships in practices, but I don’t know<br />
that my work relates to this whole aspect directly. I<br />
think that in certain ways a queer / feminist reading<br />
of some of my work has occurred mostly in terms of<br />
the three installations in Iceland. One reading has<br />
been that it’s a feminist gesture or insertion of a<br />
feminine presence in urban space. Someone has<br />
also made a queer drag reading, saying it was like<br />
a building in drag. I think that’s super interesting<br />
and I really enjoy these readings and how they can<br />
expand the project. I’m interested in thinking along<br />
the lines of - is the project within the boundary of<br />
this physical object or does the boundary extend<br />
to where the readings start and end? Meanwhile<br />
these ideas are not something that, at least on<br />
a conscious level, I have charged the work with.<br />
KC: What stands out to me about your work<br />
is that you marry what I’d term a hard-edged<br />
European conceptualism with healthy doses<br />
of imagination and whimsy, where does this<br />
come from? What artists are you looking at?<br />
TH: This is a really old school and male reference<br />
but I’m definitely looking at Dan Graham and Gordon<br />
Matta-Clark. Obviously if you come out of architecture<br />
then it’s really hard to not look at Matta-Clark with<br />
great respect. I think his work is really about taking<br />
architecture out of the boundaries of functionality and<br />
all these kind of modernist tropes that architecture<br />
proper has to deal with. More viewing architecture<br />
as a kind of semiotic system, which is very much<br />
at the basis of my practice. Others I look to with<br />
admiration are for example Matthew Buckingham,<br />
Chantal Ackerman and Rachel Whiteread.<br />
KC: One thing that you said earlier was that you<br />
originally wanted to do set design which puts the<br />
REVOLT<br />
<strong>Magazine</strong> Number 4, 2013<br />
Parallel Memories (2013), installation view, "There's No Place LIke Home", Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster, Germany.<br />
Photo credit T. Arendt.<br />
TH: I think that’s interesting in terms of the relationship<br />
between art and architecture. My relationship to<br />
temporality is very different, a different relationship<br />
to monumental permanence. The whole process<br />
of drawing an architectural work and then building<br />
it is an incredibly long process. I’m interested in a<br />
kind of temporariness. The first of the installations<br />
in Reykjavík has lasted now since 2006. In the wake<br />
of the last winter, the hurricane recently on the east<br />
coast came by Iceland as well, the very last sequins<br />
blew off two of the pieces. Now they’re these naked<br />
structures left in the urban space, which sparked<br />
a whole consideration about what to do with them<br />
and could they be restored. After a long process I<br />
have decided to take them down. It seems like a<br />
very right and natural thing to do because they were<br />
so much born out of a certain moment in Icelandic<br />
time, the years leading up to and following the big<br />
global economic crash that was specifically violent<br />
in Iceland and the several years of excess that led up<br />
to it. Also the sort of commodification of everything<br />
that could be commodified in nature, which was<br />
what these projects were about. Because they’re<br />
so specific to this moment in a sort of a geographic<br />
time of Iceland as a culture and also a specific<br />
time in my personal development it just feels that<br />
it’s right to take them down. Even the material has<br />
a natural time. So, great that the last sequins are<br />
gone, it’s fine. Not everything has to last forever.<br />
KC: I understand you’re quite the nomad<br />
these days. What is your relationship to<br />
notions of the local, homeplace, nation and<br />
territory and how do these shape your work?<br />
TH: These aspects of place and belonging and relating<br />
to a place are really at the basis of my practice. I<br />
have very strong relationships to 4 very different<br />
places, of course they are all western cultures so<br />
they are not so radically different but each has its<br />
own specific logic. I’m half Czech and half Danish<br />
so I have very special relationships to both these<br />
places. I grew up going back and forth over the iron<br />
curtain traveling to Czechoslovakia as it was called<br />
formerly and Denmark where I’m born. Then I lived<br />
place and changing the situation from being inside<br />
and part of a situation to looking at the same place<br />
from the outside, which I think opens a possibility<br />
for a more a critical distance. I just finished a<br />
new video work called Parallel Memories, that is<br />
partially about that. It’s about returning to the site<br />
of an inherited trauma, tracing the structures of<br />
real places with the psychological structures of the<br />
memory of a place. This is a project that I started at<br />
the Whitney Program and it is currently on view at<br />
a group exhibition in Germany at the Westfälischer<br />
Kunstverein. The exhibition is actually called<br />
“There’s No Place like Home.” When I was doing the<br />
project in Russia I accidentally met a Russian guy<br />
around my age who had grown up in Czechoslovakia<br />
as the son of a Russian soldier who was part of<br />
the occupying forces. My history is informed by my<br />
mother immigrating to Denmark in 1968 before<br />
the borders closed. There was something about<br />
the tension between these two subject positions<br />
– this became the framework of the project. They<br />
seemed as if they couldn’t be further apart but at<br />
the same time these two stories overlap within a<br />
kind of common space of childhood and a common<br />
experience of a geographic and cultural place<br />
embedded in a specific time. The video is becoming<br />
quite structural in that sense. I’m filming through<br />
an architectural maquette and trying to see if the<br />
structure of shared space and memory is aligned<br />
with or just framing the reality of now. - So there’s<br />
always both an exterior and an interior, - always<br />
this kind of parallactic dynamics of spectatorship.<br />
KC: Is he a subject in the video?<br />
TH: There’s not a dialogue but there’s a voiceover<br />
which is two voices, his voice and mine. The video<br />
is a documentation of me going back to some of<br />
the places I remember myself and also retracing<br />
some of the places that he is talking about. There<br />
are sites that I have never been to within this<br />
former Russian base that is outside of Prague. I<br />
tried to put myself into another subject position.<br />
There’s a blending of the boundaries of subjectivity.<br />
38
REVOLT<br />
takes<br />
BOSTON<br />
artSEEN<br />
COLUMN<br />
Deadbeat<br />
BY SUZANNE SCHULTZ<br />
<strong>Revolt</strong> took Boston to see what the city had to<br />
offer .<br />
ALERNATIVE ART SPACE, (450 Harrison<br />
Avenue, 3rd floor), is presenting a group<br />
show COLOR, with artists Gloria Bernstein, Amy<br />
Kaufman, Randi Siu, Garry Harley and Fernando<br />
De Olivera 6-9 p.m. 1st Friday.<br />
Gallery 601, (433 Harrison, Loft 306),<br />
Photographer Cariappa Annaiah will be<br />
presenting his eclectic body of work July 7th,<br />
6-8 p.m.<br />
The Liberty Hotel, (Charles Street),<br />
presenting Gloria Bernstein July 9th, 6-8 p.m. in<br />
the main salon<br />
Axelle Gallery, (91 Newbury Street),<br />
presenting the work of Eric Roux-Fontaine<br />
September 21-October 20. Opening reception<br />
September 21th, 6-8 p.m.<br />
All Asia, (334 Mass Ave Cambridge),<br />
Grateful Dead night with Crazy Fingers and<br />
Deadbeat, June 28th, 7-1 a.m.<br />
WALLYS, (427 Mass Avenue), every<br />
Thursday night is Latin Jazz night!<br />
Check out the Art & Music programming<br />
on BNN TV. Live stream BNN TV.org watch<br />
what’s happening now. Monday nights 6 -7 p.m.<br />
July 8th, Erin McNeil<br />
July 29th, Paula Tognarelli from the Griffin<br />
Photography Museum<br />
For more listings go to www.itsallaboutarts.com<br />
Suzanne Schultz is founder/CEO of Canvas Fine<br />
arts in Boston, and co-host of BNN TV's ITS ALL<br />
ABOUT ARTS Show, suzanne@canvasfinearts.com<br />
Photo courtsey of Deadbeat.<br />
BY DAN FORDE<br />
Deadbeat, a Grateful Dead cover<br />
band from Boston, keeps tradition<br />
alive with their own interpretations<br />
of Jerry Garcia and the Dead's most<br />
popular work. Merging each decade,<br />
style and reincarnation of the Grateful Dead's<br />
music with their own thirst for fun, Deadbeat has<br />
been fortunate to find a combination of members<br />
each bringing their own dynamic of the Dead<br />
to the band. Since the band originated in 2005<br />
with drummer Joe Pulitano's answer to another<br />
Craigslist post, after several dead-ends trying to<br />
find the right musicians, Joe met two guitarists<br />
Brian Stormwind and Gary Barth who were seeking<br />
out a new drummer. Deadbeat has grown to<br />
absorb an amazing albeit somewhat motley group<br />
of musicians. One of the most recent additions<br />
to Deadbeat includes singer Jen Markard,<br />
former member of New York's own most popular,<br />
decades-strong Grateful Dead cover band, the<br />
Zen Tricksters. Other members include bassist<br />
Mike Bailey, and keyboardist Rich Cesarini. While<br />
most of the members are full-time professional<br />
musicians and music teachers, it's somewhat<br />
surprising to hear that perhaps the biggest hippy<br />
of the bunch is also the president and founder of a<br />
national insurance marketing company. Deadbeat<br />
comments on the wide appeal of the Grateful Dead<br />
"It's not just aging hippies re-living Woodstock...<br />
although there are a few of those too. There is<br />
an incredible number of young fans following<br />
the Dead's music." Whether reliving the past, or<br />
discovering the past and keeping it alive for the<br />
future, those who have gone to see Deadbeat<br />
perform notice most of all that this group of six are<br />
not, will not, and have never been tired of bringing<br />
us the best of the Dead.<br />
But not just the Grateful Dead. Following in Jerry's<br />
footsteps, Deadbeat includes plenty of other<br />
covers in their set-lists similar to those the Dead<br />
themselves may have played, from old-school R&B<br />
and Motown, to Bob Dylan and Jimmy Cliff. Simply<br />
said, Deadbeat has lots of fun playing the more<br />
dance-able side of the Dead's repetoire, and while<br />
they're playing, its fairly obvious there is nothing<br />
they would rather be doing.
2 Tha Beat Y’all When<br />
Hip Hop<br />
Pedagogy<br />
Goes BOOM!<br />
BY KATIE CERCONE<br />
Left to right: 1 BoomBoxBoy, New York City, 2012, photo courtesy of Melanie Mosier (pictured), 2 BoomBoxBoy, New York City, 2013, photo credit: Vito Fun, 3 BoomBoxBoy, New York City, 2013,<br />
photo credit: Brandon Stanton, 4 BoomBoxBoy, New York City, 2012, photo credit: Pascale M. Duthel.<br />
BoomBoxBoy and I were on the 2 train<br />
headed back from the Schomburg Center for<br />
Research in Black Culture. Over the course of<br />
the evening’s program Higher Learning: Using<br />
Hip Hop to Transform Schools and Communities 1<br />
(moderated by Hip Hop Scholar in residence<br />
Martha Diaz) I had wrenched out my wrist taking<br />
copious notes. BoomBoxBoy had lugged in his box<br />
midway through the evening wearing a zazzle brite<br />
black and magenta sweater and slept through<br />
a good third of the dialogue. When I asked him<br />
to talk about his BoomBoxBoy project for my Hip<br />
Hop Pedagogy article on the way home he said<br />
chuckling,<br />
“Hip hop pet a dawggy?”<br />
I’m not sure if he knew what I actually said<br />
or what pedagogy meant 2 exactly or not, or if that<br />
even matters. His rhetorical manipulation of my<br />
words - slyly signifying on my white privilege as he,<br />
a black man, *cutely* dismissed my intellectual<br />
jargoneering – well, that’s hip hop. As the poet<br />
Audre Lorde said, you don’t dismantle the master’s<br />
house using the master’s tools. Hip Hop is an<br />
African Diasporic artistry rooted partially in the<br />
musical lineages of the transatlantic slave trade,<br />
where slave songs talked about killing the master<br />
in coded language and used the drum beat to<br />
organize massive rebellions. During slavery reading<br />
could get you whipped and killed 3 .<br />
Numerous scholars have talked about how<br />
dance and the expressive use of the voice are a<br />
critique of the very idea of ownership. Today, we<br />
see and feel the widespread ramifications of our<br />
founding father’s strategic xenophobia in ways<br />
covert and unequivocal. We see the ultimate<br />
worship of the black male, or what many have<br />
termed ‘black male posturing,’ in Hip Hop and<br />
professional sports at the same time we see<br />
systematic societal neglect for the livelihood of<br />
black and latino youth en mass.<br />
As BoomBoxBoy (real name Prince Harvey)<br />
and his performative pet-a-dawggy can attest,<br />
Hip Hop as we progressive folk want to know it<br />
is alive and well. I’m here to extrapolate on the<br />
REVOLT<br />
BoomBoxBoy project as well as report just a few<br />
of the reasons Hip Hop is still meaningful, radical,<br />
and relevant in the New York City community and<br />
throughout the globe.<br />
For one, hip hop is boosting literacy rates<br />
across the country. According to Martha Diaz, who<br />
founded the Hip-Hop Education Center at NYU's<br />
Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and<br />
Human Development, there is over 300 hip hop<br />
education courses and after school programs in<br />
the United States.Under the direction of Diaz, the<br />
Hip-Hop Education Center is developing a Teaching<br />
Certificate in collaboration with the New York<br />
University's Metro Center and Teachers College,<br />
Institute for Urban and Minority Education. They<br />
also have a Hip Hop Education guidebook you can<br />
download directly from their site. Afrika Bambaataa<br />
recently became the current Hip Hop Scholar in<br />
Residence at Cornel University. Jorge "PopMaster<br />
Fabel" Pabon, one of the earliest b-boys<br />
(“breakdancer” is not actually the correct terms<br />
says Pabon 4 ) teaches a cipher-style hip hop dance<br />
class and a hip hop history course at NYU. Today,<br />
Hip Hop is being disseminated in a manner which<br />
creates a generative space and leads youth toward<br />
the embrace of emancipatory knowledge.<br />
Although the formulaic raunch of<br />
commercial rap may reign supreme in the public<br />
eye, there remains the fact that throughout<br />
the world thousands of individuals are working<br />
collectively to go beyond beats and rhymes and<br />
expose the exponential social-emotional uplift that<br />
hip hop does.<br />
Scholars such as Dr. Ernest Morrell are<br />
highlighting the need for culturally appropriate<br />
curricula in the schools and articulating how hip<br />
hop can revolutionize education in America. As<br />
he addressed during the Schomburg panel, a<br />
key issue precipitating the 50% high school drop<br />
out rate for black males in this country is the<br />
fact that our schools still run on a Eurocentric<br />
model developed during the industrial revolution.<br />
Harkening back to the days when the education<br />
of slaves was made illegal in the United States,<br />
today black male youth have “wounded academic<br />
selves.” Bringing hip hop into schools is providing<br />
a space in the classroom setting in which they feel<br />
successful and motivated. Maintains Morrell, black<br />
male youth in particular are “logically disinvested<br />
from their institutions – it’s not pathological. The<br />
school system is abusive to young black males.”<br />
He sites the rhetorical power of language in hip<br />
hop and hip hop praxis - namely how hip hop<br />
has been at the forefront of every youth social<br />
justice movement globally for over 30 years - as<br />
living proof of how 4 decades after DJ Kool Herc<br />
inaugurated the first wave of hip hop the culture is<br />
still SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER.<br />
Let’s not forget that beyond the culturally<br />
circumscribed Eurocentric model is the ancient<br />
African Diasporic wisdom from which hip hop<br />
sprung - Gulla abusive poems, Yoruba song<br />
contests, African American language rituals such<br />
as the dozens 5 , toasting, boasting and bragging. In<br />
societies of West Africa, a social outcast and pariah<br />
known as the “griot” is the cultural praise singer<br />
and oral historian. Explains Greg Tate, within the<br />
“wisdom of African cosmologies, these messengers<br />
are guaranteed freedom of speech in exchange<br />
for a marginality that extends to the grave.” 6 Fast<br />
forward to the supposedly caste-free democratic<br />
republic we call America, what will it take to upend<br />
the simultaneous worship and denigration of the<br />
rapper-contemporary-griot?<br />
Another Schomburg panelist and Hip Hop<br />
Educator, Dr. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, explained how<br />
hip hop is the core expression of black and latino<br />
males, “it is their fundamental language.” She is<br />
responsible for beyondthebricksproject.com, a<br />
grassroots community engagement media initiative<br />
promoting community based solutions to increase<br />
educational and social outcomes for school age<br />
black males. Another organization, called the<br />
Posse Foundation, has adopted the hip hop ethos<br />
of the “crew” aka “posse” to send promising<br />
high school students in groups of ten to college.<br />
Providing full scholarships to a 4-year school<br />
the Posse Foundation places teens from diverse<br />
backgrounds in supportive, multicultural peers<br />
groups. The organization’s founder Dr. Deborah<br />
Bial was recently awarded a MacArthur genius<br />
grant.<br />
<strong>Magazine</strong> Number 4, 2013 40
Another key player in Hip Hop praxis, Jen<br />
Johnson, founded the Hip Hop Debate Institute at<br />
the Institute for Minority Education at Columbia<br />
Teacher’s College. Based on her contentions that<br />
the alienating white male-centric nature of schools<br />
has largely shaped the debate community, Johnson<br />
founded the Hip Hop Debate Institute to create a<br />
platform for students from diverse backgrounds<br />
to embrace debate as an empowering activity and<br />
political toolkit. Johnson explained how the majority<br />
of men and women in congress have a debate<br />
background, which means that in America “debate<br />
is a pipeline to power” that black and latino youth<br />
may not always be granted easy access to within<br />
the traditional school setting. Encouraging her<br />
students to navigate multiple ways of speaking and<br />
being, scholars at the Hip Hop Debate Institute<br />
become proactive and multilingual performative<br />
pedagogues.<br />
As we see scores of educators like Diaz,<br />
Morrell, Sealey-Ruiz and Johnson aggressively<br />
adopting hip hop to teach an array of subjects<br />
including math, science, art, debate, and even<br />
healthy eating habits (Hip Hop H.E.A.L.S.), 7 (http://<br />
www.hiphopheals.com/#home) is there a danger of<br />
the genre becoming ‘pimped’ by yet another<br />
foreign entity? As one Schomburg audience<br />
member pointed out, the nature of hip hop is that<br />
everyone participates. This means that for hip hop<br />
educators, letting the students teach them about<br />
the authenticity of the culture they participate in is<br />
crucial.<br />
And what about the rappers? And the<br />
market? And the pressure to conform to the<br />
ghettocentric models that sell records? As Darlene<br />
Vinicky contends, “a mass-produced culture of<br />
consumption and violence only speaks for and<br />
to a capitalist agenda.” 8 Concerning mainstream<br />
rap, theorist Murray Forman has argued that “the<br />
ghetto” is now the “symbolic center that anchors<br />
the narrative image portrayed.” With a “gangsta<br />
ethos saturating much of its texts,” the current<br />
ghettocentricity of hip hop and black culture in<br />
general “has continually threatened to override<br />
other possible images of lived cultural space<br />
among the hip hop generation.” 9 Interestingly<br />
enough, as the thorough research comprising his<br />
case study concludes, rap’s rogue shift toward<br />
gangsta chic coincides with a period of rapid<br />
commercial growth from 1987-88.<br />
Which is not to say that all gangsta rap<br />
is bad, or mere minstrelsy. As Forman contends,<br />
the practice of identifying Hip Hop’s locus as the<br />
ghetto - as real, imaginary, symbolic and mythic<br />
as this space may be in music - also invigorates a<br />
powerful global counter-discourse or what Nancy<br />
Fraser terms a “‘subaltern counter-public.” 10<br />
Critics such as Davarian L. Baldwin have likewise<br />
articulated how the rise of gangsta rap in the<br />
West Coast single-handedly dismantled New<br />
York City’s monopoly on hip hop and re-opened a<br />
discourse that had become increasingly shaped<br />
by the middle-class-oriented “politically correct<br />
disciplining of black bodies.” According to Baldwin,<br />
gangsta rap broke the spell of orthodox Black<br />
Nationalism which “obscures the daily battles<br />
poor black folk have to wage in contemporary<br />
America.” 11 If Hip Hop is at the heart about<br />
politicizing youth toward a critique of state and<br />
corporate hegemony in an unorthodox manner,<br />
it’s important that we see past false dichotomies<br />
segmenting “conscious” and “unconscious” lyrics<br />
and rappers. Clearly, rappers of all stripes manifest<br />
willful spaces of praxis. What will it take to move<br />
rap’s positive content from margin to center?<br />
In Tanzania, East Africa, for instance, where<br />
swearing is considered unacceptable in public,<br />
leaders of the local hip hop scene, many youth<br />
themselves, act as gatekeepers of rap’s lyrics. Rap<br />
songs must be about important social issues and<br />
avoid the topics of drugs and sex 12 .<br />
The Tanzanian system recalls the recent<br />
vilification of southern rapper Rick Ross whose<br />
rhyme: "Put molly all in her champagne, she ain’t<br />
even know it / I took her home and I enjoyed dat,<br />
she ain’t even know it.” (Rocko, U.O.E.N.O.) clearly<br />
brags about date rape. In the last few days of<br />
women’s history month, Ross became the target<br />
of a media firestorm that almost sunk his entire<br />
career and caused Reebok to pull the plug on his<br />
lucrative endorsement contract (nobody bothered<br />
to mention how Ross also says “I’d die for deez<br />
Reeboks, U.O.E.N.O.” – making him a rapist and<br />
a pawn of corporate America). Although Ross may<br />
not be any more explicit than the majority of crunk/<br />
trap/gangsta rappers out there, his slip indicates<br />
an increased sense of dialogue around artist<br />
accountability in rap made possible largely through<br />
social media. As Jamilah Lemieux writes in Ebony,<br />
Ross’s ratchet rhyme presented “an important<br />
teachable moment for young men, boys and even<br />
some full-grown adults who don’t understand<br />
consent.” 13<br />
Interestingly, periods of enhanced attention<br />
paid to issues of racial equality and the successful<br />
building of multiracial alliances within American<br />
history often coincide with economic depression<br />
such as the increased sensitivity amongst whites<br />
for racial issues in the massive hunger marches<br />
that occurred following the great depression in<br />
1930. 14 In the wake of the recent market collapse,<br />
scores of young people who feel that they are<br />
being ‘skipped over’ by the job market are looking<br />
to rappers as inspirational figures. As Jay Z says<br />
it, “[hip hop] brought the suburbs to the hood.” 15<br />
When I think of racial justice oriented entities such<br />
as the Black Panthers more than leather jackets<br />
and raised fists comes to mind. What comes to<br />
mind immediately rather is the $200 I get in credit<br />
each month I can spend on food because I make<br />
less money than it costs to breath here in New York<br />
City. The Food Stamp program was created by the<br />
American government when they noticed that the<br />
Black Panthers were gaining an inordinate amount<br />
of attention and support simply by offering free<br />
breakfast to inner city children.<br />
In “What is the Current Direction of Hip-<br />
Hop?” 16 a webisode hosted by Dr. Marc Lamont<br />
Hill, hip hop academic Dr. Tricia Rose alongside<br />
emcee Jasiri x and Pharoahe Monch discuss hip<br />
hop’s radical future potential. Says Jasiri X, “We’re<br />
at the best of times and the worst of times. On<br />
one hand you have a hip hop industry that has<br />
been completely corporatized and pushing some<br />
of the most soulless pop music that we’ve ever<br />
heard and on the other hand you have technology<br />
that’s allowed artists like myself to come with a<br />
grassroots perspective, to connect directly to their<br />
audience and get a positive message out.”<br />
For many, technology seems to epitomize<br />
what is both most wrong and most righteous with<br />
regard to today’s rap. While folks like Darlene<br />
Vinicky are pinpointing technology (the internet,<br />
iPods and transnational corporations to be exact)<br />
as the reason hip hop has shifted from a collective,<br />
physical and participatory event into a spectacular<br />
and problematic space that ultimately “lulls us<br />
into complacency and isolation,” 17 the truth is, hip<br />
hop was born of technology. Without repurposed<br />
electronics and the creative appropriation of prerecorded<br />
albums and sounds, there would be no<br />
hip hop. When hip hop went global, it was largely<br />
due to the internet and MTV.<br />
Personally, I like to situate the internet<br />
as a collective type of isolation, a collective postconscious<br />
or super-conscious if you will. And in<br />
the defense of the internet, I’d say that the rapid<br />
dissemination of all dis supafly bangin sh*t we<br />
call hip hop does lead to the formation of real<br />
allegiances and coalitions. It might also be the<br />
case that while American rap is lost in some gilded<br />
cage of a pimp-hoe minefield the rest of the world<br />
has picked up where the real hip hop left off. Says<br />
Jasiri X, “Overseas a lot of times the culture of hip<br />
hop is more respected…and even the revolutionary<br />
aspects of hip hop. You have hip hop artists really<br />
responsible for creating the soundtrack that set<br />
off the Arab Spring and some other movements<br />
around the world.”<br />
According to Bocafloja, an artist largely<br />
responsible for politicizing rap in Mexico, the<br />
gestation point of the global hip hop movement<br />
was a festival that began in Cuba in the early<br />
nineties. Bringing people of color from around the<br />
world together to organize around hip hop as a<br />
social justice platform, Bocafloja says that it was<br />
these festivals, which by their third year were being<br />
funded by Fidel Castro, that cemented important<br />
cross-cultural allegiances still in existence amongst<br />
today’s global raptivist network. 18<br />
There tends to be a sentiment among the<br />
academy that the revolution is always happening<br />
“over there,” which ignores the myriad grassroots<br />
movements here in the States and underestimates<br />
exactly how and why the sheer power of the<br />
American entertainment industry has carried<br />
the torch of hip hop to lands near and far. Either<br />
way let’s face it – hip hop is American. It was and<br />
will always be about enterprise: black jobs, black<br />
owned companies, black commerce. It’s the first<br />
black musical genre to broadly take the power back<br />
from the whitey parent companies. Which doesn’t<br />
excuse the parading of substance abuse as leisure<br />
or violence against women as the norm in rap.<br />
And by identifying hip hop as a black power thang<br />
I also don’t mean to steamroll the multicultural<br />
beginnings of hip hop, particularly it’s early<br />
Nuyorican, Caribbean and Latino influence and<br />
innovators.<br />
Bracketed by three males on Lamont<br />
Hill’s series is Tricia Rose, who basically wrote<br />
the bible of hip hop academia Black Noise. For<br />
Rose, the power of hip hop pedagogy, and black<br />
music in general, is the oral history which speaks<br />
to an African Diasporic experience not recounted<br />
in mainstream narratives. Word up, the pimp-ho<br />
sh*t is about as transgressive as free pancakes at<br />
iHop. As Beth Coleman has hashed out, the pimp<br />
is an age-old figure whose black male iconographic<br />
celebrity in the United States trajectory descends<br />
from the American slave economy: “The male<br />
African got wise, ‘What does he do to you when<br />
you are with him?’ ‘He makes me have sex and<br />
offers gifts like pork chops.’ Being that he was<br />
in a precarious situation, being that we were in<br />
a negative disposition the African at the time<br />
who was a slave, he said, ‘Alright, what you do is<br />
ask him for two pork chops’…and the system of<br />
manipulation began for survival.” 19<br />
Says Rose regarding the most problematic<br />
elements of hip hop’s current commercial<br />
mainstream, “I think we have lost a long historical<br />
value of black music speaking not just to politics<br />
but to the black condition, to what it means to be<br />
African American or part of the black diaspora<br />
that really has been reduced to the kind of BLING<br />
BLING, what I call the hip hop trinity: the gangstapimp-ho<br />
trinity has produced the most money ever<br />
and it continues to drive youth interests. I think<br />
until we unlock that it’s going to be a hard way.”<br />
Rose’s point is really important. I for<br />
one can attest to the fact that as much as I am<br />
seduced by scholarship mythologizing the guerillastyle<br />
collective street renaissance that was early
hip hop, I’m equally seduced by the mainstream<br />
bump and grind core. Like the free pancakes, some<br />
days that sh*t just tastes so good. Call me the<br />
quintessential white hipster binging on black cool.<br />
As far as I’m concerned, without blackness, I have<br />
no culture to speak of.<br />
From an essay called “Color Notes”<br />
published by William Houghton in 1927, the white<br />
male writer concedes to how freed slaves have in<br />
effect conquered their former masters, “We talk his<br />
dialect, we sing his songs, we dance his dances…<br />
his tempo, jazz is the universal rhythm. Whenever<br />
we relax we fall under his spell; it is only in our tight<br />
working moments we are free of it.” 20<br />
This is certainly not to say that music<br />
erased racism in America, where during the time<br />
of this publication lynching still happened and<br />
segregation was still enforced. In many ways<br />
Houghton’s writing only serves to emphasize the<br />
projection and exotic/erotic tropes characterizing<br />
whites views of black expression.<br />
The subjective Modernity to which<br />
one’s humanity (subtext “white” humanity and<br />
“black” subalternity) lays claim to food, shelter<br />
and a means of survival is always comprised of<br />
whiteness constructed through investments in<br />
black culture. 21 All of us by whatever approximated<br />
privileges pass as white enough or straight<br />
enough to be marked a “citizen” of the republic<br />
are implicated in a violent and oppressive neocolonial<br />
frame in which race is cast as, in the words<br />
of Achille Mbembe, the “nocturnal side of the<br />
Republic.” 22<br />
In terms of my allegiances to hip hop I<br />
may have entered by way of the typical salacious<br />
sedation but what I’ve ultimately gotten out of hip<br />
hop is much closer to a type of embodied faith and<br />
burgeoning sense of global citizenship. Which is<br />
where BoomBoxBoy, REVOLT <strong>Magazine</strong>’s posterboy<br />
of Hip Hop pet-a-dawgy in the flesh, factors into the<br />
equation. Like hip hop’s founding fathers DJ Kool<br />
Herc, Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa,<br />
Prince Harvey is of West Indian decent having<br />
grown up in LA, Dominica and New York City. I’m<br />
largely interested in his work because I think he’s<br />
usurping the sheer sex appeal of the hip hop<br />
aesthetic to interestingly promising socio-political<br />
ends.<br />
BoomBoxBoy, influenced by the character<br />
Radio Raheem in Spike Lee’s 1989 film Do The<br />
Right Thing, is a performance work by the artist<br />
Prince Harvey exploring ownership, community, and<br />
socially appropriate modes of being with respect<br />
to race, class and gender. Incorporating personal<br />
narrative, anecdote and hip hop a cappella –<br />
BoomBoxBoy’s call and response approach to<br />
rapping and beat making urges the audience to<br />
take a participatory stance embellishing the music<br />
by clapping and speaking along in rhythm.<br />
On BoomBoomBox boy’s turf, I’m clapping<br />
along, I’m a participant. I may be initially roped<br />
in by the eye candy of his hypermasculine<br />
*bling*bling” semi-nudity (which as far as I’m<br />
concerned is drag for Prince Harvey, who when he’s<br />
not strong-arming a boombox in his underwear is<br />
as likely to be seen in a skirt or a glittery sweater)<br />
but I’m ultimately solicited as a participant. I’m<br />
also schooled. When BoomBoxBoy gathers his<br />
audience he not only hoots and hollers, he talks<br />
about being a black male, having a gender and<br />
sexual identity, and the importance of community<br />
and dialogue.<br />
Prince Harvey, who grew up in a female<br />
dominated household and loves to surround<br />
himself with a crew of fierce, sex-positive womenloving<br />
women, is amongst a cadre of young artists<br />
determined to queer the dialogue of Hip Hop and<br />
effectively derail its associations with misogyny<br />
and unrestricted male privilege. Another artist I’d<br />
connect him to here is Cakes da Killa. Cakes is the<br />
type of artist that covers Frank Ocean's "Thinkin<br />
Bout You,” with his own lyrics, which go "I've been<br />
thinking bout dick/ na na na na," commenting on<br />
the recent public discussions concerning Ocean’s<br />
sexuality and how hip hop is finally “Gay” in the<br />
media because an R&B singer that dates women<br />
once crushed on a dude.<br />
Pitchfork is calling Cakes the new Lil Kim<br />
figure, “A raunchy-ass bitch who absolutely owns<br />
being a raunchy-ass bitch.” 23 It’s not raptivism or<br />
anything, but it does offer a bit of a silver lining<br />
in terms of re-thinking the hetero-family unit as<br />
the universal index of health and wellness. It’s<br />
also interesting to note that when rap albums<br />
get “cleaned” up for big retailers like Kmart<br />
and Walmart the music companies only delete<br />
drug references and profanity. Misogyny and<br />
homophobia, however, remain clear as a bell<br />
and likewise par for the tween course. 24 In terms<br />
of Cakes work, it certainly begs the question of<br />
why there are so few female MCs following in the<br />
footsteps of the great female MCs. Is the drag male<br />
the new female rapper par excellence?<br />
The recent cover of the Village Voice<br />
featuring “Flowmosexual Gender Ninja” of “Warrior<br />
Rap” Mykki Blanco seems to suggest YES. Played<br />
by a young man, Mykki Blanco is the female rap<br />
alias of Michael Quattlebaum Jr., age 27, who<br />
states that riot-grrrl was his primary musical<br />
influence as a youth (before hip hop, when punk’s<br />
homophobia turned him off). 25<br />
What’s interesting about the BoomBoxBoy<br />
project is that he takes a more nuanced approach<br />
to his gender-nomadism. In some of his videos<br />
online he has recorded instances of harassment he<br />
experienced during his performances from groups<br />
of young women, homophobic men and police<br />
officers. He’s had to learn the hard way that taking<br />
your clothes off and asking for money in Times<br />
Square in the footsteps of the Naked Cowboy and<br />
500 or so life-size Tickle Me Elmos is a lot different<br />
than traipsing around Baltimore, where he was<br />
nearly arrested for obscenity related allegations.<br />
And to make things clear, BoomBoxBoy is asking<br />
for money. The project began as a way for Prince<br />
Harvey the artist to raise money to produce his first<br />
hip hop album: BOOM. According to Harvey, BOOM<br />
will be the first official full-length hip hop a cappella<br />
album. “The project started as a way of getting<br />
exposure and funding to black artists creating<br />
culturally relevant work,” says Harvey, “but you<br />
don’t have to say that if you don’t want to, it brings<br />
me great pleasure when people think I'm just a<br />
nigga.”<br />
Say what?! That’s another interesting<br />
development within hip hop these days, the<br />
turn from “nigger” to “nigga.” Although largely<br />
misunderstood, the nigga turn is a profound<br />
utterance indicating the sheer importance hip hop<br />
places on authenticity. In his seminal essay “On<br />
the Question of Nigga Authenticity” R.A.T. Judy<br />
says: “Understanding the movement from nigger<br />
to nigga means recalling the historical systematic<br />
employment of nigger as exchange value…nigga<br />
is that which emerges from the demise of human<br />
capital…the nigga is unemployed, null and void,<br />
walking around…a nigga who understands that all<br />
possibility converts from capital, and capital does<br />
not derive from work.”<br />
Judy’s argument is one that seems<br />
to address a number of timely concerns for a<br />
generation undergoing huge shifts within the<br />
economic sector and the general “niggafication”<br />
of white suburban America. Conversely, one could<br />
almost argue for an artist like Prince Harvey, and<br />
his Facebook page will certainly attest to this, the<br />
BoomBoxBoy project is equal parts Radio Raheem<br />
and Rappin’ Rockin Barbie (Mattel© circa 1992).<br />
Ultimately what came of Prince Harvey’s<br />
humble quest to get paper and produce a full<br />
length album is a larger than life pet-a-dawggy<br />
with a hyperreal appeal straddling the street and<br />
the virtual sphere. BoomBoxBoy’s stage extends<br />
to Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and Soundcloud,<br />
where I have been, solipsistically at times, frankly,<br />
pretending I’m him, and watching his hilarious<br />
posturing and community building unfold. If<br />
you haven’t had the pleasure of encountering<br />
BoomBoxBoy on his trek through the five boroughs,<br />
you soon will.<br />
1 “Higher Learning: Using Hip Hop to Transform Schools and<br />
Communities,”<br />
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Nov. 27,<br />
2012<br />
Panel Moderator: Martha Diaz<br />
2 Ped·a·go·gy [ped-uh-goh-jee] n. The function or work of a<br />
teacher; teaching. The art or science of teaching; education;<br />
instructional methods.<br />
3 David Pleasant, “Rhythms of Resistance,” Schomburg Center<br />
for Research in Black Culture, December 14, 2012<br />
4 Jorge Pabon, “Fashion Moda: A Legacy of Community and<br />
Creativity in the South Bronx” panel at the Bronx Documentary<br />
Center, February 16th, 2013<br />
5 David Toop, The Rap Attack: African Jive to New York Hip<br />
Hop, South End Press, 1985<br />
6 Greg Tate, Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary<br />
America an Eye Opening look at Race, Politics, Literature and<br />
Music, Simon and Schuster, 1992, pg. 232-233<br />
7 Hip Hop H.E.A.L.S. is an initiative in NYC Public schools using<br />
rap and hip hop culture to explore healthy eating options for<br />
youth. Guest artists include hip hop legends Doug E. Fresh and<br />
the Cold Crush Bros among others.<br />
8 Darlene Vinicky, “(Progressive) Hip Hop Cartography” in Wish<br />
to Live: The Hip Hop Feminism Pedagogy Reader Ruth Nicole<br />
Brown + Chamara Jewel Kwakye, (eds.) Peter Lang, 2012,<br />
pg. 29<br />
9 Murray Forman, The ‘Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and<br />
Place in Rap and Hip Hop Wesleyan University Press, 2002,<br />
pg. 59-61, 191<br />
10 Murray Forman, ibid, pg. 198<br />
11 Davarian L. Baldwin, That’s The Joint!: The Hip Hop Studies<br />
Reader, Murray Foreman and Mark Anthony Neal, Eds. 2012,<br />
pg. 235<br />
12 Alex Perullo, “Hooligans and Heroes: Youth Identity and Hip<br />
Hop in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania,” That’s The Joint! ibid, pg.<br />
331<br />
13 http://www.ebony.com/entertainment-culture/rick-rossthinks-rape-is-a-punchline-999#ixzz2PF1RpoKS<br />
14 Angela Y. Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism New<br />
York: Random House, 1998, pg. 190<br />
15 Jay Z quoted by Todd Boyd, “Intergenerational Culture Wars:<br />
Civil Rights v. Hip Hop” Todd Boyd and Yusuf Nuruddin, That’s<br />
The Joint! ibid, pg. 444<br />
16 “What is the Current Direction of Hip-Hop?” Published Dec<br />
31, 2012 on YOUTUBE by 1HoodMedia, "Our World with Black<br />
Enterprise" hosted by Dr. Marc Lamont Hill with Pharoahe<br />
Monch, Dr. Tricia Rose and Jasiri X<br />
17 Darlene Vinicky, ibid, pg. 29<br />
18 Bocafloja, “Global Hip Hop Movement” Panel at the<br />
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, April 16,<br />
2013, Panel Moderator: Martha Diaz<br />
19 Beth Coleman, “Pimp Notes on Autonomy” in Everything<br />
But the Burden: What White People Are Taking From Black<br />
Culture Edited by Greg Tate, Harlem Moon, 2003<br />
20 William Houghton cited in Jayna Brown, Babylon Girls:<br />
Black Women Performers and the Shaping of the Modern,<br />
Duke University Press, 2008, pg. 218<br />
21 Jayna Brown, Babylon Girls: Black Women Performers and<br />
the Shaping of the Modern Duke University Press, 2008,<br />
pg. 17<br />
22 Achille Mbembe cited in Richard Iton, In Search of the<br />
Black Fantastic: Politics & Popular Culture in the Post-Civil<br />
Rights Era Oxford University Press, 2008, pg. 134<br />
23 Miles Raymer, “Cakes da Killa: The Eulogy,” Pitchfork,<br />
February 7, 2013<br />
24 Gilbert B. Rodman, “Race…And Other Four-Letter Words” in<br />
That’s the Joint: The Hip Hop Studies Reader Murray Forman<br />
and Mark Anthony Neal, eds. 2012, pg. 193<br />
25 Jenna Sauers, “FLOWMOSEXUAL: The Making of Mykki<br />
Blanco” The Village Voice, April 10-16, 2013, pg. 8<br />
REVOLT <strong>Magazine</strong> Number 4, 2013 42
Matt Craven, DOTS, mixed media on found paper, 2012
SWAGILISH Salomon<br />
and THEillUZiON<br />
BY KATIE CERCONE<br />
When I asked Salamon Faye of the<br />
illUZiON if I could interview him<br />
about the syncretism of the spiritual<br />
and the political in hip hop, I didn’t<br />
know that I’d end up having to take a look at<br />
myself. Like always, I was in hot pursuit of some<br />
magical-liturgical projection amalgamating hip hop<br />
scholarship, rap glitterati boundary transgression<br />
in the spectacular and my own perceived lack. I<br />
thought if I tapped my heels together three times<br />
and dove into a sea of rappers, I’d find GAWD.<br />
And then I did, both inside myself, and mirrored<br />
back in the illUZiON’s hand symbol, or mudra,<br />
“the code” Salomon says. It translates to LOVE<br />
FAITH AND GRATITUDE. Interestingly, it’s the<br />
exact same symbol we make with both hands<br />
outstretched during the Kundalini sacred prayer<br />
Japji, which causes a profound experience with<br />
your own Soul bringing tremendous personal<br />
balancing and connection with the Infinite. It is<br />
about understanding the Wizdom of God. A few<br />
dayz following my request to Faye, I was whisked<br />
away to the mountains (yo we was flyin’) by Joshua<br />
aka Insane the Rebel aka Enasni Leber (sh*t is<br />
backwards yo!), half of THEillUZiON, for a group<br />
interview with a few more of the Bushwick-based<br />
Apostrophe Collective. Joining us was the visual<br />
artist Ryan “Bock Haus” Bock, who’s currently<br />
collaborating on a video with Salomon titled<br />
“Quest.” Looking out over a majestic green valley<br />
from an ivy draped castle filled with beautiful<br />
women (roaming in the yard was the illustrious<br />
singer Elira Roe) and psychic dogs (all dogs are<br />
psychic), we got down to bizzness and talked about<br />
where we all comin from and why we all artists. Call<br />
it a Transcendental Summit; you could say we held<br />
Spiritual Court.<br />
KC: How did you come up with the name illUZiON?<br />
SF: For me the name THEillUZiON was to represent<br />
how we were gonna try to lure people in with what<br />
they were accepting at the time but once they’re<br />
like “oooh this is cool” SMACK you with the truth!!<br />
EL: We live in a world of illusions and we are the<br />
product of various illusions – we identify by that.<br />
KC: Does it relate to the Hindu concept of maya,<br />
translated to illusion, veil and simply “not that?”<br />
Maya means that the universal truth cannot be<br />
translated to a simple concept the ordinary mind<br />
can manipulate. We use the word “maya” to keep<br />
the mind from attaching to incomplete reality, any<br />
thoughts?<br />
REVOLT<br />
Quest, video still, 2013, collaboration between Salomon Faye and Ryan Bock.<br />
SF: It is a truth that I’m trying to convey but I try to<br />
be it more than to speak it. It’s hard to really speak<br />
about that using words without things getting lost<br />
in translation. The way I try to promote it is really<br />
trying to demonstrate how I practice self-mastery<br />
and how I apply that truth in my life.<br />
KC: Your song Fools Gold – I read the title and<br />
lyrics as a metaphor and commentary on the<br />
American Dream – can you explain more the song’s<br />
message?<br />
SF: We’re pointing out the false values that people<br />
have. We’re not just simply trying to rhyme and<br />
show our rhyming ability - we can do that - so like<br />
we’re just trying to make points and that song ac<br />
curately interpreted is a point made.<br />
EL: It’s a where we come from kind of song. We<br />
come from the fool’s gold. When you grow up in the<br />
hood you see these false fantasies that everybody<br />
has to escape the reality. The poverty, the broken<br />
apartments, that’s all it is in the hood, yet they<br />
think everything’s cool, they spend a lot of money<br />
on clothes, grow weed, bottles – and it’s just a<br />
false fantasy. That’s the illusion that people want to<br />
live and that’s what we came from, you know? And<br />
we’re getting out of it. Salomon says “slept on the A<br />
train woke up on my A game,” that was our life then<br />
and now we’ve broken away from the fools gold.<br />
SF: Wanna try a little fools gold, if you wanna vibe with<br />
the rebel God tribe put a hand up… it’s not like that<br />
reality is far from us too. For us to be able to identify<br />
the illusion we once had to be consumed by it.<br />
EL: There’s a choice. A hustler makes a sacrifice a<br />
good book or a paradise - you choose your reality.<br />
Some people say they need to sell drugs to survive<br />
– at the end of the day you do what you want to do,<br />
right? You can live the illusion – or you can make<br />
your own reality.<br />
KC: I feel ya. Some critics have described this track<br />
as “true school” and “revivalist,” can you trace<br />
THEillUZiON back to the golden age of hip hop<br />
in the South Bronx of the 80s and 90s? What is<br />
the true school and is there a particular hip hop<br />
lineage that you follow?<br />
EL: As for influences my pops used to breakdance<br />
and do graffiti. I grew up in the Bronx in the 90s so<br />
that’s hip hop to me. When I started listening to<br />
hip hop 50 cent was out, Dipset was out, all these<br />
people they were doin their thing. I always listen to<br />
90s stuff, 80s stuff.. cause that was my thing but<br />
honestly I don’t know everybody gets influenced I<br />
listen to jazz I listen to Rock n’ Roll… I’m Dominican<br />
and Ecuadorian so Spanish music is a big influence<br />
in my life.<br />
SF: I get influenced by what I like, shit I don’t like.<br />
What I don’t like might make me make a certain<br />
decision or approach something a different way.<br />
There’s a point where Wayne was an influence to<br />
me but DUDE! The music I make is nothing like<br />
him tho I can’t deny that influence that he had at<br />
a certain point in my development so I would just<br />
say life experiences, what happens to come my<br />
way naturally. Me and Rebel we haven’t been really<br />
trying to replicate a golden age or a golden era.<br />
<strong>Magazine</strong> Number 4, 2013 44
RB: I think it’s very natural. Until very recently hip<br />
hop as a whole has been very stagnant it’s been<br />
in this bit of a drought I feel like and until just<br />
recently, younger artists are emerging and without<br />
even really meaning to are sort of bringing back<br />
this early 90s golden age of hip hop sound. The<br />
way that I see it is that it’s not even a conscious<br />
situation but it’s also very natural it’s like this wave<br />
– they go up, they go down.<br />
EL: WORD – yea a lot of people are like “I want to<br />
rap like the nineties I love the nineties, nineties this<br />
nineties that - ”<br />
SF: It’s not even about that.<br />
EL: I can’t tell you I make nineties music. I listen<br />
to Led Zeppelin, I listen to Anthony Santos I listen<br />
to Tribe Called Quest I listen to Lil Wayne I listen to<br />
Kanye College Graduate.<br />
SF: I listen to Chance the Rapper<br />
EL: I listen to Jay Z good music era y’all gonna -<br />
SF: Open Letter, all my niggers like 3 Hunna<br />
EL: I listen to GBE - you know!<br />
SF: Pretty Flocka<br />
EL: And some cats be like that’s not real hip hop<br />
SF: What you talkin bout! What is real hip hop?<br />
EL: I just like music I like all types of stuff.<br />
EL: Yo there was wack rappers in the 90s. There<br />
was a stagnant era in the 90s you know you had<br />
Biggie and Tupac but you also had Too $hort. You<br />
had all these other people that were sayin some<br />
bullshit too. Even Biggie, Biggie wasn’t sayin much<br />
of anything positive. You had Tribe Called Quest. On<br />
the west coast you had people rappin slow on the<br />
east coast you had people rappin fast down south<br />
you had people rappin, say com’on what’s real hip<br />
hop? People in New York are gonna say rap from<br />
New York in the 90s is real hip hop people in the<br />
south are like that shit is wack!<br />
past 30 years. Do you feel part of a cohesive Hip<br />
Hop Nation that is - as Afrika Bambaataa would say<br />
- “speaking truth to power?"<br />
SF: People can call it what they want. I’m not really<br />
for being against or rejecting another thing, I try to<br />
either understand it or overlook it. As far as being<br />
a part of a cohesive hip hop nation I’ll say hip hop<br />
is cool right now, very diverse, it’s a platform where<br />
everybody can be themselves. I just play my part in<br />
that.<br />
KC: Where do you situate yourself and the<br />
iLLUZION crew in relationship to the global hip<br />
hop diaspora? Can you talk about the evocation of<br />
style and guts in hip hop as a type of transnational,<br />
spiritual swag politicizing youth and raising<br />
consciousness worldwide?<br />
SF: Through hip hop? Yeah I mean that’s great. I’m<br />
working with a few artists right now in other countries.<br />
I think it’s dope to expand the connection - the<br />
consciousness - and everybody’s working together.<br />
As far as politics I don’t really include much of that in<br />
my hip hop. My music is all my artistic expression of<br />
truth. I don’t look to attack or limit the expression of<br />
the government or whatever might be behind it. That’s<br />
being spoken about by others. I stick to my task, which<br />
is just being the light.<br />
Somebody spiritual they’ll call it that, somebody<br />
not spiritual they’ll say “in the zone” or something<br />
but it’s this trance state where something does<br />
come over you, or go in through you. It happens to<br />
me all the time freestylin’ there’s a certain zone<br />
of comfort where the message and the words just<br />
seem to come out almost as if I’m watching it<br />
happen. It is a state of mind, a form of meditation.<br />
I’m sure it’s like the same vibe or frequency that<br />
people are getting into in African dance or it’s<br />
whatever some people call it. Sometimes I say it’s<br />
the vein, like getting in the vein – it's God flowing<br />
through you. It’s being able to let go of everything<br />
and just move – woosh! As far as lyrics and the<br />
creation process of the art and unraveling truth, it’s<br />
funny to watch. Writing or making something with<br />
such concentrated thought or energy, feeling that<br />
you’re creating that world manifesting from inside<br />
to out. I understand myself more going over the<br />
things I come up with because it’s more than me,<br />
when things are at their best. Because you<br />
know when you’re like looking for some inspiration<br />
or thoughts you’re digging, you’re digging from<br />
options, things from right there to pick from and<br />
then when you stop digging it’s just coming. It’s a<br />
spiritual experience - this is life - it’s always there<br />
that vibe it’s just if you’re present to it. God is<br />
always PRESENT<br />
KC: And how is illUZiON pushing the borders of the<br />
genre and carving out a new space in today’s hip<br />
hop?<br />
EL: It’s authentic, and we don’t even try. If I were to<br />
try I could make some 90s shit I could make some<br />
west coast shit I could make something trill. I could<br />
make some trap shit, I could make a trap album,<br />
what? Trap Supastar! But I don’t try to make “some<br />
shit” I Just do what im inspired to.<br />
SF: I don’t even like being narrowed in to only<br />
being looked at as a hip hop artist. A lot of rappers<br />
put themselves in that box and limit themselves.<br />
They become album after album, mix tape after<br />
mix tape, uh-uh son, niggas want to write plays!<br />
This is where we at right now, the foundation of<br />
where we started. We started out rapping well, we<br />
started applying thoughtful things about life to our<br />
ability to rhyme and now we gotta push it further.<br />
Rap is too easy now it’s not just about rapping or<br />
rhyming a word. So we not tryin to carve hip hop.<br />
Hip hop is what it is and we a part of it because<br />
we’re artists that emcee and we’re doing our best<br />
to become better artists and have that be a part<br />
of the influence and the identity of our culture,<br />
nauuughmean??<br />
KC: The Hip Hop Nation has been called a ‘couterrepublic’<br />
within the United States, it’s also been<br />
said that hip hop has been at the forefront of every<br />
youth social justice movement worldwide for the<br />
Salomon Faye, photo credit Dakota Blue Harper.<br />
KC: You do put messages in your work and that’s<br />
political, you just don’t talk about politics is what<br />
you’re saying?<br />
SF: Yeah<br />
KC: I like to think about hip hop in terms of earth<br />
and sky awareness. The drum beat is about our<br />
roots, breakdancing draws energy up from the<br />
earth through the feet. Hip Hop also links back to<br />
the practice of “possession dance” in Africa where<br />
to dance is to literally transcending human form<br />
and becoming one with source. I like to think of<br />
rappers, particularly the freestyle or the flow as a<br />
type of cosmic verbal divination. Salomon I noticed<br />
you dropping some pretty nu age bars, talking<br />
about the sun god, the sky, the third eye and<br />
rapping as your “divine purpose” or as you called it<br />
before “unraveling truth” – can you say more?<br />
SF: It’s about being so wrapped up in something<br />
you love that the force - that will power- it drives<br />
through you to where it is a spiritual experience.<br />
EL: You got to get lost in it, right? Even the first time<br />
I write a song you know you got everything you want<br />
to say and even at that you know I find out months<br />
later the shit that I wrote made so much sense…<br />
that shit just came out and now I listen and I’m like<br />
that shit so dope. You got to sing “If you wanna vibe<br />
with the rebel God Tribe” like 5,000 times and you<br />
almost forget what the song is about… I may have<br />
not even gotten it while creating it.<br />
SF: The message is not just hidden in the result<br />
but also the creation process. Yo, that shit is God’s<br />
language to me, art is just an analogy to be able<br />
to bring together how this higher consciousness<br />
that some people call universe, higher force, I call<br />
God - this is how it communicates - within and<br />
through, outside, around, what is. What isn’t. We<br />
understand what it is whenever we come to that<br />
point of understanding.<br />
KC: I’m interested in the significance of the party in<br />
hip hop and in your video. There is this apocalyptic
narrative, like party at the end of the world,<br />
warning: Fool’s Gold! You’re confronting the pitfalls<br />
of the American Dream/illUZiON when your lyrics<br />
go “money hoes and clothes everything that’s trite”<br />
– but it’s also just a party scene. Hip Hop started<br />
as a bloc party in the Bronx with DJ Kool Herc and<br />
the b-boys, the cops tried to break it up, but hip<br />
hop kept going, and much of the music is<br />
for what I put out and how it’s received. Being able<br />
to find that balance, that sweet spot where the<br />
fun is taking up the same space as the message.<br />
That’s the conflict an artist that has something<br />
to say should have. How can people enjoy this<br />
and how can I still express these points without<br />
preaching, without it being like a fuckin lecture or<br />
something. That’s the conflict I have with<br />
what they want to do, we shouldn’t look to hip hop<br />
right now to be a savior because hip hop’s not<br />
saving anything even if it is positive! It has potential<br />
too and anything has potential too so if you wanna<br />
do something that helps the planet - do it. If Hip<br />
Hop is influencing strong and positive decisions<br />
then wonderful. Something I want to do as an<br />
individual is express what I’m learning and how<br />
I’m growing to help people. I do that NOT through<br />
hip hop, no, just through music. Yo hip hop is very<br />
limited right now. The state of mind in hip hop is<br />
very limited. I like to say things that make people<br />
question what they might value and not value<br />
within society. I just influence a curiosity for life cuz<br />
I’m curious I’m seekin I’m just putting out what I<br />
see fit and I’m not wasting words anymore when it<br />
comes to writing a song.<br />
KC: So there’s your message, the party is the<br />
vehicle, and lastly – yo you guys have a lot of<br />
swag. You have a lot of attitude and confidence, it<br />
only multiplies when you are together, it’s almost<br />
performative. I mean for instance like Tupac, a lot<br />
of people don’t know this but he actually attended<br />
acting school when he was comin up in LA. What is<br />
that? Can you talk about that? How is that part of<br />
what you are doing, is it a tool?<br />
Salomon Faye and Enasni Leber of THEillUZiON, photo credit Dakota Blue Harper.<br />
still oriented around the party meme. In what ways<br />
is engaging the collective more important than the<br />
message, and how can we conceive of the party<br />
environment as a generative, joyful and political<br />
space?<br />
EL: One thing I learned about in NYC is that when it<br />
comes to a party, they are always sort of political.<br />
It’s always political, it’s always everybody in NYC is<br />
selling everything and that’s everywhere. Being at<br />
our gallery Apostrophe we’re used to parties every<br />
week and usually the same people come every<br />
week, every week, and it’s like a ritual - yo - it’s like<br />
church. You get to play a game of life every week.<br />
You go to this party and you play life different every<br />
week. Next week you come and you a boss. Next<br />
week you comin and you ain’t doin much. People<br />
want to pop bottles, they want to trip, they want to<br />
pop a molly, they want to do all of that, they want to<br />
be the man, what? Damn! Bag some bitches! It’s a<br />
fantasy. It’s just not real life. That’s where the fool’s<br />
gold comes into play, that’s why it’s in the video,<br />
naturally, it all comes together.<br />
SF: Catch it Bock Haus<br />
RB: That’s also part of the illusion. Partying is<br />
such a desirable thing, everyone wants to party,<br />
it’s kind of the nature of humanity as a whole.<br />
They want to have fun but I think it’s important to<br />
inject something into that. It can’t just be all about<br />
partying it has to have more meaning than that.<br />
That’s what I get from the illUZiON. If you look at<br />
that video superficially you think oh it’s a party<br />
they’re having a good time da da da but then if you<br />
really pay attention to the words and what is being<br />
said than that is where the political aspect of it<br />
comes in.<br />
SF: straight up! I think it’s for us as artists about<br />
being conscious of what we’re putting out and me<br />
speaking personally I feel a sense of responsibility<br />
everything I create because I’m speaking with<br />
purpose and I want to be heard so I got to think<br />
about my listeners and I know people wanna have<br />
fun. They’re out smoking and drinkin and tryna<br />
have a good time but at the same time let’s create<br />
something out of this wonderful moment. Let’s<br />
grow from it, let’s become stronger.<br />
RB: The party is not the focus it’s just the vehicle<br />
that you put it in.<br />
KC: Many people have situated rappers within<br />
terms of the West African Griotic tradition, a Griot<br />
being a praise singer of a socially<br />
marginal position with biting wit and political<br />
commentary. He is the repository of the oral<br />
tradition of the culture and he pays for his freedom<br />
by a marginalization that follows him to the grave,<br />
literally, he’s not permitted to be buried with the<br />
regular folk of society. In the United States we<br />
have the race issue, and often hip hop is seen<br />
as a type of insurrectionary knowledge about<br />
the true state of things that has pushed its way<br />
through music when, barred from other outlets<br />
such as mainstream News. Like Salomon when<br />
you say “Last time I met a whore, met her with a<br />
metaphor…” you’re making a social commentary<br />
in a multiplicity of ways. Do you relate to the<br />
role of the contemporary griot and do you feel a<br />
responsibility when you rhyme to speak of and for<br />
the unseen and unheard in our society?<br />
SF: Aight, ok one right now I wouldn’t say hip hop<br />
is being used to improve society, it’s just not. It<br />
was at a time but right now I don’t even know what<br />
hip hop is, but it’s cool. I identify as just being an<br />
artist in general and an aspect of my expression is<br />
hip hop so WORD. With that said I feel responsible<br />
for how and what I say and how I come off as<br />
an emcee, as a part of hip hop. However, I don’t<br />
feel responsible for or think hip hop should be<br />
responsible for socially anything. People can do<br />
SF: I feel like it’s a developed confidence. I<br />
wouldn’t have always been able to express myself<br />
like this in an interview, in front of a camera, on a<br />
microphone, in a performance. This is natural but<br />
this is over time. I remember when I was scared<br />
to rap in front of people, but I was different in my<br />
room or in front of someone I’m close to. Now it’s<br />
me naturally feeling close to everybody and being<br />
at a level so comfortable with myself and aware of<br />
myself and comfortable with who I am that this is<br />
just what happens.<br />
EL: Yea yo, what you see is what you get. I mean yo<br />
like you develop habits and these habits become<br />
your character and you need different characters<br />
for different things. I’m me right now, I’m chillin, I’m<br />
cool. If I need to be on point I’ll be on point. I might<br />
go up to someone else and just be Joshua. It’s like<br />
whatever.<br />
SF: That’s where I feel like the art of personality<br />
comes into existence. This is just our personality yo<br />
and that has a big part to do with God.<br />
EL: We pray a lot, we meditate a lot.<br />
SF: We get lost<br />
EL: We read a lot<br />
KC: What do you read?<br />
RB: Ancient Scrolls<br />
EL: Fiction too, I like being creative and I like<br />
creative books, man I just read -<br />
SF: I didn’t like fiction until I read Clockwork<br />
Orange. Aight, boom! Conversations with God.<br />
DAMN Bro. I’ve been like unraveling this truth, you<br />
know like moving the clouds out of the way and the<br />
sunlight has been allowing me to see.<br />
KC: Afrika Bambaataa calls the 5th element of Hip<br />
Hop “Knowledge of self in the community” Does<br />
this resonate with you? What is the significance of<br />
the posse mentality to your work?<br />
SF: Posse mentality?<br />
REVOLT <strong>Magazine</strong> Number 4, 2013 46
KC: The Apostrophe collective, working with other<br />
people. So you’re clearly not totally down with<br />
this sort of mainstream commercial leviathan hip<br />
hop has become these days, so to speak. And yet<br />
many others still uphold this notion of a codified<br />
movement that is hip hop in the historical sense<br />
with certain rules and codes. A big element of<br />
this is community, what is the significance of<br />
community in your life and work?<br />
SF: My community is important, communication<br />
is important, knowing and making an effort to<br />
be in harmony with the people around you. I’m<br />
with the community, that’s why you see me as a<br />
collective or a posse. There’s a vibe. It’s important<br />
to have like minded people around who you are<br />
learning from who are learning from you and who<br />
are adding to the cause ready to be artistic, ready<br />
to do something positive, passionate, trying to<br />
grow. It’s important to be able to maintain good<br />
relationships, it’s a part of growing, it’s a part of<br />
being able to hold something together. It’s just<br />
natural, if that’s hip hop than great. I feel like I<br />
been a part of hip hop before I realized this life of<br />
being an artist. A lot of things I just grew up doing<br />
naturally and now I’m starting to be more aware of<br />
how what I picked up naturally back then are the<br />
cornerstones holding this thing together.<br />
KC: Ryan – so in terms of your studio work that’s<br />
flowing into the collaboration with Salomon, I was<br />
interested in the mask concept because like music<br />
there’s this idea that in many cultures the mask<br />
is what channels the spirit, linking both art and<br />
hip hop back to a type of urban or contemporary<br />
Shamanism.<br />
RB: Shamans are still in all different cultures,<br />
Asia, Africa – Witch doctors would wear masks<br />
that were uglier than diseases that they were<br />
trying to expel trying to scare the sickness away<br />
or something like that it’s like an ancient way of<br />
handling things. I don’t know if I would use the<br />
word spiritual. I just have very particular visions of<br />
what I see translating into what I make. The trance<br />
occurs when I’m making something. I get into this<br />
rhythm or this zone where what’s happening is very<br />
natural and very intuitive. I’m not always aware of<br />
what I’m making until it’s finished. It’s spiritual but<br />
it’s almost so natural to me I don’t like to label it<br />
as something along those lines, and it’s difficult<br />
because the word shaman has so much baggage<br />
that comes with it. I’ve always been drawn to<br />
things that shamans use like masks. Once I started<br />
learning about these things I started to realize this<br />
is really sort of what I’m channeling in a way, it<br />
became the most appropriate label for my process.<br />
KC: How does that relate to the bashful bags I’ve<br />
seen in your work and on the Apostrophe crew? Is<br />
that related to the mask concept – it seems to me<br />
like it’s this very pop and very accessible way of<br />
expressing it.<br />
RB: It is very accessible, the bags are to me like<br />
more fun, you know what I mean? It doesn’t have<br />
to be really serious.<br />
KC: How did you come to do this collaboration with<br />
Salomon? What is “Quest” about?<br />
RB: To me it’s very much like realizing your own<br />
individual path, your own individual journey.<br />
Everyone experiences it differently. Instead of<br />
forcing a lifestyle on people it’s more of just a call<br />
to question what’s true to you.<br />
SF: Following the vibe of what is feeling right.<br />
Walking where your intuition or your instinct or vibe<br />
takes you - that’s the quest. Ryan said it best, the<br />
key word “realization” of someone’s path. That’s<br />
what it really is, realizing your being. The whole<br />
Bashful Bags, Ryan Bock, at Apostrophe Gallery in Bushwick.<br />
quest is about not being afraid to step into that<br />
realm of uncertainty, of questions. Walk through<br />
the fire or you’ll be tossed in the flames because<br />
you have to do it anyway. We’re already in it. The<br />
question is are you going to walk through it or<br />
become apart of the Fire that inevitably burns us<br />
all. One way to think of this Fire is “The system.”<br />
KC: And so what is Quest? Is it a music video? Is it<br />
video art? How are you showing it I mean it looks a<br />
bit like a painting.<br />
RB: It’s a work of art. We’re calling it “motion<br />
painting.” We’re trying to have an opening for<br />
it at a gallery. It’s like two of the oldest forms<br />
of communication, painting (art) and music,<br />
combining the two and not necessarily labeling<br />
it as a music video or as video art but more of<br />
a collaborative effort to create something that’s<br />
both timeless and very original. Especially in light<br />
of what people are working on today when they<br />
make a music video. We’re not as concerned with<br />
labeling one thing or another. It's a great way to<br />
reach more people and different groups of people<br />
– people who are interested in hip hop, people who<br />
are interested in art - and just to combine forces.<br />
KC: What’s the Love flow illUZiON performed<br />
at Irving Plaza? I feel like everyone has a lot of<br />
negative things to say about hip hop and yet you<br />
see this full spectrum of ideas and experiences<br />
conveyed in the music, what is the significance of<br />
your message about love in this day in age?<br />
SF: That message – it’s about being honest with<br />
myself and being comfortable where I’m at and the<br />
impact I want to have as a musician. I want to play<br />
music so a song like that is a success to me,<br />
it’s communicating and conveying my message<br />
with clarity. On a song like that talking about Love<br />
- that’s what it is yo. It’s just really being able to be<br />
me in the best level.<br />
KC: And I feel like too what’s different about it is it’s<br />
not connected to a very specific closed narrative<br />
about love that is strictly romantic and strictly<br />
heterosexual love, this song really seems to be<br />
more open, a joyful message about love in the<br />
most expansive sense?<br />
SF: Love in the sense of community, god, respect,<br />
gratitude, honesty. This is what I communicate and<br />
this is my code. These things are part of my code<br />
Love-Faith-Gratitude.<br />
KC: Another ancient concept I’d like to connect<br />
to your work is the African idea of Nommo “the<br />
word,” believed to be life force itself (to speak is<br />
to make something come into being). As Mos Def<br />
says, “Speech is my hammer bang the world into<br />
shape now let it fall - HUH!” Based on what you’re<br />
saying it feels like you have brought a great deal<br />
of consciousness to your speech. Can you relate<br />
to this idea – that when you spit rhymes as a<br />
rapper you’re actually bringing things into being,<br />
changing the very fabric of existence through your<br />
consciousness and verbal sparring?<br />
SF: Yeah. It’s definitely true. You can utilize<br />
thoughts, speech, emotions and deeds as tools in<br />
a way that creates your reality. I’m conscious of it<br />
that’s why I speak most clearly in a song but even<br />
in everyday life I practice being aware. I don’t<br />
resonate with and I don’t acknowledge negativity. I<br />
speak with purpose and put thought into what I am<br />
creating. It’s not just as simple as every word like<br />
woosh – life! But your thoughts and emotions they<br />
create a reality. It’s what you focus on whatever<br />
you’re thinking about most of the day your thoughts<br />
your words your heart your movement if it’s all<br />
synchronized and focused on the same intention<br />
then the world is responding to it rapid like<br />
instant you’re just connected and every moment<br />
is so precious. It’s being present, God Is always<br />
present [makes illUZiON hand symbol] You see<br />
that? Smooth right? That’s a sign, you peep that?<br />
That’s Love Faith and Harmony, Gratitude - this is<br />
the code of illUZiON. You want to be down?! Get<br />
with the code!! LOVE FAITH AND GRATITUDE. Give<br />
thanks, be thankful for what you have. Are you<br />
complaining about what you don’t have? What do<br />
you have? What do you have young man?<br />
EL: Yo listen shit is not going to be handed to you<br />
for free -<br />
SF: Shit is not going to be handed to you for free<br />
nigger. I know, I know about the success we have<br />
and how this is about to be -<br />
EL: WOW we worked for this shit!<br />
SF: This ain’t luck nigger, WHAT? WHAT?
Dominique Claire models <strong>Revolt</strong> Wearable