girlontape: 06.11

kim does gun hill road

Kim writes: I am writing to ask you to support gun hill road, an independent film on which I was privileged to have served as Script Supervisor.

It was written and directed by the very talented Rashad Ernesto Green and stars Judy Reyes (Scrubs) and Esai Morales (La Bamba, NYPD Blue, and more) as well as a host of other excellent actors.

It opens August 5, 2011 in NY and LA.

my bank of wild grass is majestic and full of music (violette leduc)

ich bin ein new yorker

actually, i've never stopped being a new yorker...
but today i'm most especially proud to be one

funny/cry/happy

Strangely, I’m living in the most unhip location - city, neighborhood - in my adult life ever; equally strangely, I’m loving it.

Germán calls it our suburban Olympus because we’re up on a hill, from which we can see the dome of St. Peter’s floating out there in the distance. Also a bend in the river, a train station, various fields rolling away, and even an abandoned farmhouse.

Elinor Carucci says it’s hard to take a happy picture, to which I would add, it’s hard to take pictures once you’ve crossed beyond a certain threshold of unhappiness. Also when you have a day job. I love my job, but still.

I mentioned this to Germán the other day, and he said, As soon as Christian and I are done exploring Europe we’re moving to a farm in Norway, and when we do, you can come live there rent-free forever. You can just spend all your time taking pictures and playing with the dogs. And I so love it that I have a friend willing to make me such a promise,

meanwhile Laika has joined us here, reconstituting the same old borderline dysfunctional family as ever was, minus Milo, who’s still missing in Argentina, and whom we yearn for like an amputated limb: Charly commandeers Laika’s pink ball, Laika harasses the cats, the cats wish for her untimely death; and I marvel helplessly at them every day,

all of which reminds me of the Chinese 99 cent store sign on West 23rd Street, which is possibly the best New York sign ever, and which reads FUNNY/CRY/HAPPY.

j'entends rugir les plaisirs de la vie (negresses vertes)

self-portrait at ekwata, gabon 1992

While I couldn’t find my iconic negresses vertes album, for whatever reason I still remember the moment I bought it in a record store in Kenmore Square in the middle of winter in another life a zillion years ago.

My favorite track on that album, of course, is their glorious gypsy-punk-rai hymn to summer, which perfectly describes the way that I’m feeling right here right now. It goes like:

Voilà l'été, j'aperçois le soleil

Les nuages filent et le ciel s'éclaircit

J'entends rugir les plaisirs de la vie

Les filles sont belles et les dieux sont ravis

she's totally rock n roll and i love her

the one & only kate
by mario sorrenti
at danziger projects

to the rescue, here i am (bob marley)

laika as i found her in buenos aires: small, homeless, sick

laika as she is today in rome

only a test shot but i like it

girlFamily

segue l'intervista con il pittore Antonio Fumo
ph: Stefania Fumo

the mystery of interspecies love

The dog barks and barks. I go out to look for it, can’t find it. It’s trapped in some apartment nearby: the owner died, or left it there. It’s been going on all day & all night. No one cares.

The police bring a puppy to the shelter: its owner hanged herself. For hours the puppy tried & tried to jump up, trying to save her but it couldn’t.

There are terrible, terrible people in this world. Also incredibly careless, stupid people like me and it's hard to say which is worse. One way or another, the innocent always pay.

It's all true what they say: denial rage bargaining depression acceptance. They come in waves, mix & switch. It goes on & on.

Other symptoms: sleeping with the light on. Hauntings. Hate. Reading Sylvia Plath: “And the blood of love welled up in my heart with a slow pain.” Every picture I take is shit.

yes, yes, yes, yes we can

When I was getting ready to move to Italy last year, my friends' common refrain was: "Are you sure you want to come back to this vile, degrading place?"

For everyone I know was completely demoralized after two decades of corrupt, soul-crushing rule by a man I call the vampire, Nanni Moretti calls the cayman, and José Saramago dubbed the thing.

"Look," I said. "I'm in the mood to do something for my country... just call me Steffy the Vampire Slayer... by any democratic means necessary."

"We've all been there, done that," my friends answered sadly. "And we can't get rid of him. You'll see."

And yet... two weeks ago, shocking themselves, each other, and the world, for the first time in over a decade, Italian voters kicked Berlusconi's minions out of Milan, Naples and other key cities.

And that's not all. This weekend, amid a media blackout, and with the government advising people to "just go to the beach," Italians turned out massively to abolish nuclear power, keep water public, and force the cayman to attend his trial hearings.

So things are no longer looking rosy for our prime minister, who is indicted in four separate trials for fraud, corruption and having sex with an underage prostitute.

But best of all, we the people discovered the vampire has not, after all, sucked us dry of our ethical lifeblood. We found out we're still human, still green, still democratic, still hopeful, still in charge.

The rallying cry for this weekend's referendum was "Vote YES To Say NO" to the four questions on the ballot... and yes, yes, yes, yes we did.

So thank you greenpeace - thank you wwf - thank you to all the grassroots organizations: left and right and center, lay and catholic, young and old, who worked around the clock for months and months to make today possible:

source: la repubblica

kisa does the biennale

big bambú by mike and doug starn at the 54th venice biennale

kisa writes: "I ran into Mike Starn on the ferry to Arsenale and asked whether the bamboo scaffolding commonly used in Asia had inspired him. In fact he had discovered those much later, and his inspiration had come from rock climbing and the idea of chaotic interdependence.

The sculpture’s growth is intuitively engineered, based on the experience of weight and balance felt through each step of the evolutionary spiral, much like the building segments for microorganisms and macro human social structures. He considered the poles reused from the original Met Museum exhibit as ‘stem cells’ for further proliferation."

(con't on SPREAD art culture)

laika wants to kill my shoes

Laika followed me into the Chinese deli one day. I turned around in the aisle and there she was, wagging her tail: seven months old and riddled with scabies.

I put my shopping basket down on the floor, picked her up and took her to the vet. And that's how Laika came into my life. She eventually killed these shoes, and many more... but always with a million-dollar smile.

The other day this journalist asked me, "How would you describe your life in Argentina?"
"I don't know," I said. "I came, I rescued some animals, I left."

girl loves people love photos

thanks to sofia, i discovered this film about four women artists directed by christian klinger, called people*love*photos.

and so i found out that yes, there are other girls out there interested in the same things as i am: self-portraits, intimacy, other people.

"the body tells the mind what to remember"

traci matlock

christopher does london

EAST GALLERY

214 Brick Lane, LONDON, E1 6SA

EAST GALLERY is pleased to present 11:11, an exhibition curated by Infinity Bunce and featuring artistic responses from artists operating within the sphere of fine art and also within that of urban art, ranging from the bold and socio-political to the subtle and poetic.

The new video work by Berlin and London-based British artist christopher steadman will be on view for its global premiere from 17 June to 22 June 2011.

christopher steadman

’The Only Way Down is Down’

4-monitor totemic elevator video installation.

11:11 mins., 4 synchronised DVD’s, 8 synchronised audio tracks.

17 June to 22 June 2011

Private View Thur. 16 June 2011, 6 – 9pm

'The Only Way Down is Down' takes on the disparate desperations of office boredom, machine horror, sex with strangers, concentration camp badges, cultural signs and symbols, and manages to bring an elegant and almost symphonic quality to themes that might otherwise incur a sense of drudgery and despair. Steadman teases and taunts us with the hidden dynamic of what goes on behind the closed doors of an elevator when anonymous strangers are forced to share a confined space. Through the tension and repetition of the opening and closing of elevator doors, the artist's interest in isolation is manifested as he follows a virtually invisible character up and down the empty shaft of what becomes a powerful reminder of the banality and anonymity of urban modernisation.

view a 2 min excerpt documenting the 4 screens of the video installation here