Engineer's Daughter

little lord fauntleroy

Herzog & de Meuron, Miami.  September 17, 2010.

the shape of a pocket

Margaret Tait

Anne Colvin

Through March 16 - The Shape of a Pocket: Anne Colvin and Margaret Tait at the Mills College Art Museum. This is a true gem of an exhibition, and for me it was a chance to discover work by two women who were unfamiliar to me before the show.  15 years past her death Tait is a revelation as a filmmaker and a poet (do not miss the chance to hear recordings of her reading her own poetry in the side room), and Colvin's films and sculptures converse beautifully with Tait's work in their references to the landscape of both artists' native Scotland, pageantry and procession, nature, the sea, lives observed.  Mills College Art Museum Director Stephanie Hanor writes in the exhibition guide:

Tait's watchful eye is consumed with small but meaningful details, whether it be a close-up of her mother's wrinkled hands removing the wrapping from a piece of candy in Portrait of Ga or the synchronized movement of people's legs as they march to work in Where I Am Is Here, her impressionistic exploration of everyday Edinburgh.  Colvin's work utilizes a similar strategy of capturing small gestures and movements that are at once intimate and monumental.

In fact I myself am rather obsessed with that candy-unwrapping scene in Portrait of Ga, a lyrical four-minute masterpiece about Tait's mother, and there are many other gorgeous, meditative moments in the show.  Go spend some time with these women.

See also:

• Mills College Art Museum
• Margaret Tait
• Anne Colvin

show 296

playlist

never capture what you can't control

 

Gabriela Cowperthwaite's powerful documentary Blackfish is not a movie that seeks to remain neutral.  It has a clear agenda: to make the audience take a long, hard look at amusement parks like SeaWorld that keep orcas in captivity, especially after there have been several incidents where people have lost their lives.  Even without the very real human tragedy no one in their right mind could argue that it's right to keep these animals in glorified bathtubs simply for our amusement or for some poorly-constructed attempt at "education."  When I was a little girl I was definitely inspired by the wonder of seeing sea creatures close up, so much so that for years I wanted to become a marine biologist, but the more I learned about the animals themselves the more uncomfortable I got with the idea of keeping killer whales and such for their performance value.  So I am absolutely the choir the movie is preaching to, but I still found it an extremely compelling piece of filmmaking.  With few exceptions the former trainers interviewed for the film, even though they loved their jobs and adored the animals, advocate for closing the parks and transitioning the whales back into the wild where possible.  I agree passionately with the thought that we will look back on the time of SeaWorld and places like it that run on greed as a time of great barbarism.  Support organizations such as the Marine Mammal Center instead, where the welfare of the animals is the #1 concern.

i am the psychic wars

Aktor I Am the Psychic Wars b/w Buried By the Sea (Full Contact / Ektro)

It delights me that when you put a couple of the dudes from Circle together with metal musician Chris "Professor" Black you get something this wonderfully cheesy, firmly in the realm of Blue Oyster Cult and the like.  I'm such a huge Circle fan it just makes me laugh, and if I listen carefully I can hear that slight twist of their subversive weirdness.  And I gotta love all the hot synthesizer action going on too.  Such metal.

vituperate

Església de Sant Felip Neri, Barcelona.  November 27, 2009.

go see this

Carrie Hott at Southern Exposure

Through March 8 - White Hot Lamp Black at Southern Exposure.  Light and shadow, reflections and refractions all come into play in this superb group show featuring work by Carrie Hott, Hillary Wiedemann, Dario Robleto, and Jeremiah Barber.  Robleto displays two series of concert photos, but instead of representations of the performers we see just the stage lights that illuminated the likes of Johnny Cash and Sun Ra.  Robleto's found images in some instances could be mistaken for nebulae, and Wiedemann similarly references the cosmic with her interest in capturing the sun in ways that slightly displace it from how we usually see it, both in her video of sunlight reflected in a telescopic lens and in her prints of the sun as viewed from Mars.  Hott's dual installations of glass lamp parts cast evocative shadows on the gallery walls, while her video Part One: To Cover pairs a fascinating voiceover about topics such as blackouts, curfew, and whale falls with the sculptural forms of lighting fixtures and night footage of a flashlight's beam.  Finally the show includes video documentation of a live piece Barber enacted with Ingrid Rojas Contreras, performed as they lay on their sides facing each other, half-submerged and shivering in water.  It's not every day an exhibition gives you the opportunity to peek into several diverse universes like this one does.

 

Merce Cunningham and John Cage by Peter Hujar at Fraenkel Gallery

Through March 8 - Peter Hujar: Love & Lust and Nan Goldin: Nine Self-Portraits at Fraenkel Gallery.  Goldin is one my goddesses, and her self-portraits reverberate with the kind of honesty and courage that kicks the ass of any contemporary selfie.  Hujar's photos are also insanely beautiful, full of NSFW sex and tenderness too.  The images of David Wojnarowicz are devastating in particular, as it was impossible for me not to flash forward in my head to Wojnarowicz's own famous image of Hujar on his deathbed.

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but i have infinite tenderness for you

 

OK let's just get this out of the way: yes the sex in Blue Is the Warmest Color is explicit, hot, vaguely ridiculous, and (quite honestly) not entirely necessary.  It's also a terribly minute part of Abdellatif Kechiche's three-hour masterpiece which so perfectly captures all of the emotional intensity and the potentially destructive power of first love.  The viewer quietly roots for the teenager Adèle Exarchopoulos plays as she starts to figure out she might actually be more into girls than guys, and her first kiss with Léa Seydoux's Emma is simply breathtaking.  The visuals are gorgeous throughout, shot with a kind of sensuous nonchalance, and I remained glued to the screen from start to finish.  Full disclosure: I also spent the last half hour of the film bawling my damn eyes out.  So many feelings.

washed against the rocks

Prurient Washed Against the Rocks (Handmade Birds)

Dominick Fernow has a number of musical irons in the fire (to name just a few: Vatican Shadow, Christian Cosmos, Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement) but Prurient is his original project and my personal favorite.  This 7" with its geometric, minimalist artwork might disappoint those who long for the harsh noise of early Prurient, but I love what Fernow is doing here with some dark ambient drift and swirling synths.  Get a taste here.