OPEN SPACE

………………………………. "Only dull and powerless artists defend their art by reference to sincerity" —Kazimir Malevich……………………………………..

In 2012, one of the recent rash of apocalyptic disaster films, the governments of a dying world band together and secretly build arks to brave the tempestuous seas of Mayan Armageddon. The film asks, rather feebly, who/what deserves salvation? The original list is restricted to the rich, world leaders, and the Mona Lisa. Humanists argue this is wrong, that the bellies of the arks should open to the throngs of ordinary people squirming on the docks begging entry. Cut to SFMOMA, January 17, 12:50 p.m.: a camera crew is setting up in front of a photo that artist Anne Walsh has chosen to talk about. It’s a black and white photo from SFMOMA’s collection of anonymous photos, a rather blurry shot of a group of women running towards the camera, through a tree studded grove. Even though I cannot see them very clearly, from their upswept hair, long skirts and high necked blouses I place them sometime in the early 20th century. A crowd, mostly men wearing hats, looks on. In contrast to the men’s dark suits, the whiteness of the women’s blouses and skirts makes them appear to be bathed in light, glowing with youth and excitement. Evocative, yes, but still an unremarkable photo. I’m sure that most museum visitors can think of at least one photo in their own possession that has just as much right to be hanging on that wall. There must be a zillion comparable snapshots stuffed in boxes on closet shelves or thrown in the trash at a relative’s demise. Through what accident—or miracle—did this particular picture manage to sneak into the ark of high culture?

unknown artist, untitled (women racing)

Rather than analyzing Untitled [women racing], Walsh read Eileen Myles’ “Light Warrior,” a brief memoir about Myles’ childhood conviction that she has been chosen for greatness, like her hero Joan of Arc, whom she read about in a Junior Classics comic book. (The full text of “Light Warrior” can be found online here.)

Myles: I see my existence as similar to that of a sundial’s when I simply stand, and slowly the notion of movement is suggesting itself to my consciousness and action is also appropriate in the realm of the saint, the character who begins her life in the windows of a church, in the religious air of her own imagination until history lines up with her nature, and the path becomes clear—the storms of identity erupt and implode and gather again and one of life’s soldiers realizes her whole basis for living has changed and now she is impelled forward in a new film. (more…)

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2012, Anne Walsh, anonymous photos, Billie Jean King, Eileen Myles, Raimundas Malasauskas, The Thing, Women Racing

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In the mid-90s, on the block of South Van Ness bordered by 16th and 15th streets used to be a little art gallery called Bewegung. It was the brainchild of Heather Haynes, a student at the San Francisco Art Institute. Heather lived in the back and the gallery was in the front. Heather was my best friend for a bunch of that decade, when I was young and just moved to San Francisco. I would come over to the gallery and Heather would be giving the whole space a spiritual cleanse, mopping it with a solution of like cow’s milk and blue crumbly balls of something from a Botanica in the Haight plus flower petals and when she was done she’d go in the shower and give herself a spirtual cleanse as well, dumping this great-smelling potion over her shaved head. The whole space used to be a Chinese restaurant – Heather would find animal carcasses in the backyard while gardening – but now Heather had performance and art in the windowed storefront while she and a roommate lived in stilted wooden boxes in the back, like treehouses. I was always locking myself out of my own house and sleeping at Heather’s house, in her cloud bed made of piles of down comforters and tossed with throw pillows stuffed with vetiver. If it sounds magical it’s ’cause it was. I once even saw a ghost hanging out over Heather while she slept, but that is another story.

Nobody is endorsing this particular brand of magical blue cleansing balls.

The best show I remember from Bewegung was Charles Herman-Wurmfled, the jack-of-all-trades who went on to make a bunch of movies, first Fancy’s Persuasion, a classic in which he cast Justin Bond as the mom a la’ John Waters’ choice of Divine as the matriarch in Hairspray. After that he did Kissing Jessica Stein and next, amazingingly, Legally Blonde 2, but I remember when he hung a bunch of art involving blue maribou on the walls of Bewegung and in front of it I go-go danced, topless and painted blue, wearing shitty cut-off jeans and combat boots, to the sound of Hole blasting through my Walkman, while balanced on a cinderblock. A few other ruffians were similarly Smurfed-up and stuck on a block to dance to the beat of their own Walkman, while off to the side a cellist played elegant music. It was kind of amazing.

Now Heather lives in Toronto, where she runs Toronto Free Gallery www.torontofreegalery.org  an art spaced dedicated to showing work that deals with social justice, cultural, urban and environmental issues. TFG is sandwiched between a tattoo parlor and a Caribbean patti take-out joint, and the owners of the take-away place did a Caribbean  patti workshop as a part of the current exhibition curated by Maiko Tanaka, Tejpa Ajji and Chris Reed. It’s that sort of true community space. The current exhibition, Toronto Free Broadcasting currently has  an open call out for instructional videos and a bunch already received are up on their site, assisting with hands-on problems like How to Break Into a Hotel Room, as well as more conceptual issues like How to Become a Hot Chick or How to Ruin a Relationship. http://torontofreebroadcasting

Emory Douglas, Hallelujah! The Might and the Power of the People is Beginning to Show, from The Black Panther Newsletter, May 29, 1971

Heather Haynes is also publishing the art, media + politics magazine Fuse, which has an awesome cover story on the art and career of Emory Douglas, the Black Panthers’ Minister of of Culture and the creator of all of the movement’s amazing graphics, an excellent mix of pre-punk folk art depicting yelling ladies and kids bearing protest signs, beaten pigs and of course Huey P. Newton with a gun. Some looks like zine art and some like  propaganda and all are so full of beautiful energy and dynamic gusto. They look like they could have been created yesterday and, in the words of the artist, “You’re talking about unemployment, decent housing, dealing with the prison industrial complex, and the disproportionate number of people of color dying in the military. All those things still exist today.”

When Sister Spit was just in Cleveland some local queers gave us the hard sell on their town and claimed it to be akin to San Francisco in the 60s or the East Village in the 80s. I don’t think this is true, but the rumors are coming in that this might be the case for Winnipeg. Writer Eileen Myles was just up there reading from her brilliant new book The Importance of Being Iceland (so brilliant it made me cry in the tour van three different times with three different emotions) and she said it’s like the coolest place ever, and an article in Fuse that talks about the scene also makes it sound like one of those beaten down cities that eventually produces some cracked-out cultural diamond. But my favorite part of the article is the bit about how someone vandalized a new and heinous luxury condo development with the tag BAYAREA! Ouch. The truth hurts. http://www.fusemagazine.org/

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Bewegung, Eileen Myles, Emory Douglas, Fuse Magazine, Heather Haynes, Toronto Free Broadcasting, Winnipeg

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Last week I went to ATA (Artists Television Access, 992 Valencia Street at 21st) to see a program of films and poetry headlined by two old friends Gary Sullivan and Nada Gordon. Gary is a poet and prose writer credited with the invention of flarf, a much talked about movement to reduce the lyric, epiphanic element of poetry and replace it with materials found by chance on the internet—google searches and the like. Nada Gordon is also a member of the Flarf Collective and has written many books of poetry and other sorts of writing. She is the youngest person to appear in the anthology of US poets theater work that David Brazil and I have been editing for Kenning Editions. The program last week was heavy on “neo-benshi,” right now the dominant nexus where poetry meets film—rather like Godzilla “meeting” Mothra, or Frankenstein “meeting” Abbott and Costello, there’s an element of the gladiatorial about it.

Nada Gordon assisted by David Brazil, in a poem for two voices

I first heard about the role of the benshi in Japanese and Korean silent cinema at a talk by Walter K. Lew during Small Press Traffic’s translation conference, must have been 2001. The benshi, Lew explained, was the man (sometimes a woman, but usually a man) who stood up in the movie theaters and translated what was happening on the screen for the benefit of local audiences. He would do all the voices in different accents and, as well, give his own color commentary. The role of “benshi” expanded and flowered as Asian audiences were exposed to puzzling, foreign Hollywood films, and these well loved figures were hired to explain even the films of their own countries. Benshis became specialized labor and sometimes well-paid, even stars in their own right. (more…)

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Alan Bernheimer, ATA, Eileen Myles, Erika Staiti, flarf, Gary Sullivan, Guy Maddin, John Cassavetes, Konrad Steiner, Midori Sawato, Nada Gordon, Neo-benshi, Rodney Koeneke, Steve Benson, Tosh Berman, Walter K. Lew

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