Thursday, February 14, 2002
SHOWstudio_� The opening theme of this fantastic site is a duet by Marianne Faithfull and Evan Dando, singing my favorite 'Stones' song ever; 'Backstreet Girl'. SHOWstudio_ is a pioneering fashion multimedia workshop conceived by Nick Knight and my personal idol, Peter Saville, that invites creatives from fashion, design, the visual arts, film<, music and new technology to collaborate and make new work for its online group show. It also offers practitioners and viewers a critical forum in which to explore the image-making process in experimental and challenging ways. Crucially, none of the site's projects are initiated to market a specific product. This affords contributors a freedom that is rare in media: to reflect and shape external cultural forms without commercial constraints. Chock full of great stuff but highlights include:

Pagan Poetry
Bjork/Nick Knight/Insert Silence/
Paul Barnes
Exclusive uncensored version of Bjork's video, Pagan Poetry directed by Nick Knight, featuring a magical reactive graphic interpretation and downloadable typeface that was designed for the single sleeve. There is also a spellbinding sound and image project generated from Nick Knight's and Alexander McQueen's installation for La Beaut� in Avignon also featuring a Bjork soundtrack. Texts, Image Download, Movie, Documentary/Interactive.

J'adore
Nick Knight/Andrew Mufti
White Trash, Trailer Trash, Jerry Springer, a 1957' Cadillac, Gummo, Angela Lindvall and tons upon tons of spray paint. Put them in a blender and what do you get? A film perhaps? Yes I think so, interactive? no, but a good film anyway!

House
David Chipperfield/GMJ
During the year and a half it took to build this David Chipperfield designed house, three photographs were taken from exactly the same place everyday. GMJ has animated the images into an online documentary-an architectural soap opera- of the construction process. Interactive + text.
8:31 PM :

Wednesday, February 13, 2002
You must have been Mr. Olympian with all that amplitude, how come you always load your Pentax when I am in the nude? We are to have a birthday party and you can wear your birthday clothes then we can hit the floor and go explore those Popsicle toes. You've got the nicest north of America this sailor ever saw, I like to feel your warm Brazil and touch your Panama but Tierra del Fuegos are nearly always froze. We've got to seesaw until we un-thaw those Popsicle toes...(M.Franks)/Happy Lupercalia ala Juno Februata or St. Valentine's Day. Need any Love Potion Number 9?
10:18 PM :

Tuesday, February 12, 2002
Fat Tuesday indulgence. Escaping from campus, walking up the hill to where the homestyle ethnic bakeries are located. A giant steaming cup of coffee to have with my Paczki, that deliciously overfilled traditional Polish donut, made from the finest ingredients and covered with powdered sugar and glaze. I chose raspberry filled but the lekvar are also very tasty.

Controversial author Caleb Car on NPR's The Diane Rehm show this afternoon. Thought provoking.
7:37 PM :

Sunday, February 10, 2002
February 12, 2002. It is the first day in the Year of the Horse. It is Year 4699 by Chinese calendar. Legend has it that in ancient times, Buddha asked all the animals to meet him on Chinese New Year. Twelve came, and Buddha named a year after each one. He announced that the people born in each animal's year would have some of that animal's personality. The horse is considered the great worker of the Chinese zodiac. People born in a Horse Year are believed to be strong-willed and independent. 2002 is the year of the black horse, may good fortune find your door, the star of happiness shine brightly above you and may all things happen according to your heart and to your benefit.

'The Canadian Surrealist Jean Beno�t gave his infamous Marquis de Sade performance on that occasion. Mr. Beno�t, his body painted black with a red star on his chest, an allusion to Sade's coat of arms, wore an extravagant homemade costume. Before an invited audience of 200 at the Paris apartment of the poet Joyce Mansour, he carried a big phallus and crutches while Breton read the Marquis's last will and testament. Mr. Ben�it's wife slowly stripped her husband; he tossed aside his crutches (he said they symbolized mankind's spiritual slavery, in case that wasn't obvious). Then, so the story goes, he branded himself on the chest with "Sade." Roberto Matta, one of the many Surrealists excommunicated over the years by Breton and his obedient cardinals, was so moved by Mr. Beno�t's act that he grabbed the iron and branded himself too, after which Breton apparently had no choice but to reinstate him to the fold.'... An Erotic Revolution The Surrealism show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Some thoughts on blogging, where now becomes then in 5 seconds or less. What counts most is the potential for communicating ideas about life experiences? This concept can sometimes be deceptive or categorized as dis-information, the inclusion of links help to focus the readers/viewers attention on an authors train of thought, or a collective train of thought. The unfolding of this chain, immediately acknowledges the primacy of an idea across a spectrum. What it does lack, is intimacy, typed words on a screen, void of the authors handwriting, and aimed at a public abstract audience. This public display is not sinister, the fact that you are reading is proof that this encounter was meant to be. Someone has left a message for you, you may already be a winner, this is your courtesy call of sorts. It isn't the mere influence that is frightening, it's the failure of individuals to give voice to the thoughts and emotions that are bottled up inside for fear of self-exposure. Then again, perhaps it is the bottled up part that is the most interesting. Not that I'm attaching any talismanic importance to this, but words and items are snapshots and repositories of memory, evidence of now becoming then.

Now Becoming Then...
When I say 'This is now' it becomes then
There is no now, it appears to us as a moment
but the moment itself is an illusion,
it is and isn't. And this illusion is a series
of about-to-bes and has-beens, that put together
seem an event, it is a construction, an invention
of our minds. Its familiarity makes it invisible
Our lives are real dreams that have been
just one moment, all at once, now. ~~Duane Michals.

Heightened awareness of time, and an acknowledgment of mortality, should serve not to drag people down into an endlessly replayed reenactment of the turning points in their lives nor into self-pity about growing old, but on the contrary, to intensify the pleasure of the hear and now, This is not a call for the vacuous, living for the moment hedonism, Remembering is not only essential to understanding the person one as become, through the accumulation of experience, but is also a means of developing a perspective of one's place within a larger scheme of things and of empathizing with the experiences of others~~ Marco Livingstone on photographer Duane Michals' 'Now Becoming Then'.
11:31 AM :