Engineer's Daughter

the week that was

Things worth sharing:

1. Helen Thorpe spends a year in a Denver classroom with students learning English as a second language in her remarkable book The Newcomers: Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in America, and she paints a vivid picture of the United States I still believe in, where we welcome and support the weary.
2. Rose B. Simpson's sculptures are already magical as individual pieces and only grow more powerful in the pairings and groupings in her current show at Jessica Silverman.
3. Speaking of pairings, Drew Heitzler finishes up his year curating two-person shows at slash with a fascinating juxtaposition of Kota Ezawa's Merzbau wallpaper with a capsule of irradiated seeds Sean Raspet will plant in Michigan. Forests of the past, forests to be.
4. Kimberley Acebo Arteche uses technology to beautiful effect to explore her Filipina heritage in the curved body of a pixel, currently on display at Incline Gallery.
5. Craving tea leaf salad or paratha whilst in Noe Valley? Inle Burmese will sort you out, deliciously.
6. Anything at the Recombinant Festival is always worth checking out, and this year they outdid themselves by bringing in Morton Subotnick for a live performance of "Silver Apples of the Moon" with accompanying visuals by Lillevan. I tuned in, I blissed out.
7. Julien Faraut's film John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection is more New Wave punk poem than strict documentary, but any movie that bookends its soundtrack with Sonic Youth and Black Flag is going to be all right by me.
8. I've also been enjoying a surreal journey through the animations of Suzan Pitt thanks to the Criterion Channel. See also this essay about her work by Haden Guest.
9. Stephanie Syjuco gave a great lecture at Mills Wednesday evening on the politics of imaging and representation, and how she's been addressing said topics in her work. Always always love hearing what she's up to.

the week that was

Things worth sharing:

1. Anyone who has read King Leopold's Ghost knows that Adam Hochschild excels at making even the most difficult and tragic events of history eminently readable, and his superb essay collection Lessons from a Dark Time illuminates some dark corners indeed but covers some hopeful subjects as well. Related, from The New Yorker: When America Tried to Deport Its Radicals.
2. For the collaborative show How To Fall In Love In A Brothel by Sunhui Chang, Ellen Sebastian Chang, and Maya Gurantz currently on display at Catharine Clark, the viewer is invited to engage with the exhibition at the level of intimacy that feels right to you. Watch a video in the media room, poke a hole in the shoji screens that form the central gallery installation, or schedule an "intimacy hour" to spend time inside said installation.
3. Guerrero Gallery is filled to bursting right now with art from three very exciting local artists: photography from Marcela Pardoa Ariza, paintings and installations from Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo, and paintings and sculptural work from Troy Chew.
4. Saturday evening I was at ODC for Signals from the West, a breathtaking amalgam of dance, video and performance art, sound, and more, envisioned by curators Claudia La Rocco, Hope Mohr, and Julie Potter. From their program intro: "Signals from the West is a multi-disciplinary conversation within the international celebration of the Merce Cunningham centennial. We invited ten Bay Area artists from the visual, literary, and performing arts to be in workshop with each other and with the choreographers and former Cunningham dancers Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener: an experiment for everyone." More experiments like this please!
5. Meanwhile back in Oakland, more excellent curation last weekend in the form of the film program Unruly Alliances organized by Amanda Nudelman and Rosa Tyhurst at Royal NoneSuch. I caught a screening Sunday afternoon that featured work by Patrick Staff, Connie Zheng, and Yetunde Olagbaju, and the group discussion afterward with Zheng and Olagbaju gave me much food for thought. Much love and restful energizing thoughts to Royal NoneSuch too as they close for a year-long sabbatical.
6. High Life (aka Robert Pattinson in Space) is not without its flaws, but personally I love it when Claire Denis fucks with my head. Other positives include solid black hole science, a spaceship designed by Olafur Eliasson, and a Tindersticks soundtrack.
7. I also did a rewatch of Clio Barnard's fascinating 2010 film The Arbor, in which actors lip-sync to interviews with friends and family of playwright Andrea Dunbar alongside newsreel footage and stagings of Dunbar's work.
8. And if you can squeeze a play into your busy schedule today or tomorrow, I highly highly recommend Nassim at Magic. Just don't read too much about it ahead of time, all of the fun is in the discovery.

the week that was

Things worth sharing:

1. If you haven't already read Jan Morris's "travel" book Hav boy are you in for a mind-bending treat, and I also highly recommend Conundrum, her account of her transition, originally published in 1974(!).
2. Taro Hattori worked with a whole host of collaborators for his current show at Kala, Exinclusivity - Space of Inclusion, creating an immersive experience in the gallery that makes (literal) space for stories of migration.
3. Meanwhile Creative Growth also has a spectacular show in its gallery right now, Meeting Places: Mangkaja and Creative Growth, that juxtaposes Creative Growth artists with Aboriginal artists from Western Australia. Their upcoming Holiday Studio Sale is always a must-shop as well.
4. OMCA is running a series of community conversations as part of its 50th anniversary celebrations, and the first one on Saturday afternoon featured inspiring thoughts from local heroes musician/activist/filmmaker Boots Riley, animator Rosana Sullivan, and CAAMFest's Stephen Gong. Related: Sullivan's short film "Kitbull" is one of the best animated works I've ever seen, and I'm not just saying that because it features a black cat.
5. Christian Petzold creates a world unfamiliar and at the same time way too familiar in Transit, a film based a 1942 novel by Anna Seghers but set in present-day France. Also: read Seghers's extraordinary novel The Seventh Cross, which captures how terrifying it must have been to live in Nazi Germany.
6. Oakland's own CTRL+SHFT Collective once again shows the work that needs to be seen in their current group exhibition Black and brown bodies will forever dream & exist, featuring art by Sequoya Akosua Lee, Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo, Samantha Maria Xochitl Espinoza and Malaya Tuyay.
7. After another week of "planned" Bay Area blackouts it was restorative to visit Headlands on Sunday afternoon for the close of the 2019 season, and to see beautiful work by Anna Fitch & Banker White and Kelly Akashi. Already looking forward to 2020.
8. Ana Lily Amanpour's stylish 2014 debut film A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night was shot in black-and-white in Bakersfield but all of the characters speak Persian, including the titular character who also happens to be a chador-wearing skateboard-riding vampire. Absolutely perfect for the end of spooky season.
9. Happiness on a cold SF night is a hot pizza pie from Square Pie Guys in SOMA. Save some room for the monkey bread for dessert too.

the week that was

Things worth sharing:

1. While not as assured as Stoner (and featuring a truly unsympathetic protagonist) John Williams's first novel Nothing but the Night is an excellent example at how deftly Williams was able to write about the human psyche.
2. I spent four glorious nights at SFJAZZ last weekend reveling in music by a wide variety of artists there to celebrate ECM's 50th anniversary: Tigran Hamasyan, Wadada Leo Smith, Avishai Cohen, Vijay Iyer, and Egberto Gismonti. Here's to another 50 years of amazing music!
3. Trust me when I say The Mustang is infinitely less cheesy than the trailer would imply and is in fact an incredibly beautiful film by French director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre with important things to say about incarceration and restorative justice and the human-animal bond. I cried a lot and then immediately donated to an inmate wild horse program. Also: prison abolition now.
4. I can't believe it took me this long to see Julie Taymor's Frida but what a great film, especially considering the circumstances Taymor and Salma Hayek were faced with while making it. The Mexico City locations! The Brothers Quay animations! Tina Modotti! Baby Diego Luna! Frida's art!
5. Tove Jansson dancing with her cat.

the week that was

Things worth sharing:

1. Peter Brannen's fascinating book The Ends of the World gave me new appreciation for the work of modern geologists, what we're still learning about Earth's previous mass extinctions, and what said extinctions can teach us about the harm we're currently inflicting on our home planet. Come for the science, stay for the hilarious footnotes.
2. The current exhibition of portraits at the SFAC Gallery The Continuous Thread: Celebrating our Interwoven Histories, Identities and Contributions is incredibly moving, and it's just one component of the citywide American Indian Initiative. Check out the full schedule of events here.
3. Matt Borruso's show You Live at my fave local gallery Et al. just got extended to October 26, highly recommend carving out some time to experience the succession of images he has woven together for this video installation. I had to hightail it when the snake section started, but you are probably not as phobic as I am.
4. I felt lucky to catch HUSH-HUSH at the Berkeley Art Museum Saturday evening in a performance piece called Crummy Sheets in which a trio of artists used a real bed as a platform to explore sleep, dreams, and the concept of home. From their website: "HUSH-HUSH provides a space to blur genres, take risks, and be strange."
5. More Terry Fox! The Lab has videos, sound pieces, one of his pendulums, and a slideshow documenting his performances. Go check it out.
6. Movies worth revisiting: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's 2006 heartbreaker The Lives of Others, and Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's 2007 adaptation of Satrapi's gorgeous graphic novel Persepolis.
7. And my local biz rec for the week: Voodoo Love is an authentic slice of New Orleans on a sunny corner in SOMA. They take excellent care of the vegetarians and vegans too.

the week that was

Things worth sharing:

1. I took a lovely mini road trip to Pescadero last week: Stayed at the Pescadero Creek Inn, had a picnic lunch at Arcangeli Grocery, poked around the Pigeon Point Light Station, dined at Duarte's, coffeed up at Downtown Local, visited the goats at Harley Farms. The perfect fall getaway.
2. The book I took along with me was a slim volume of Vasko Popa's potent poems, translated from the Serbo-Croatian by Charles Simic. It's hard to beat sitting in the sun by the sea and reading poetry rich with folkloric and surrealist imagery.
3. Terry Fox: Resonance is a major retrospective of the artist's work, curated by Dena Beard and Constance Lewallen, taking place right now across multiple venues around the Bay Area. It all kicked off last Friday at Grace Cathedral with Fox's 1977 piece The Labyrinth Scored for the Purrs of 11 Different Cats, and visitors were indeed invited to walk the labyrinth while the kitties rumbled away. I found a spot on the outskirts and just sank into the sound.
4. I also recommend the group show currently at the Mills College Art Museum, In Plain Sight, curated by Daniel Nevers and featuring work by Weston Teruya, Dario Robleto, castaneda/reiman, and Kathryn Andrews. The artists in the show encourage you to question your own perceptions and look more closely, mainly through objects constructed from a whole variety of materials.
5. I was chilled to the bone watching Alison Klayman's 2019 documentary The Brink, in which she closely follows (and interacts with) Steve Bannon in the time after he leaves the White House. That man is clearly evil embodied, as he stokes hate amongst Americans and meets with far-right leaders in Europe, but you also see the innate charm that makes him so dangerous.
6. Meanwhile thanks to the Criterion Channel I spent a wild week with the films of Lina Wertmüller, the first woman nominated for a Best Director Oscar. Honestly they contain way too much coercive sex/outright rape for me, but are still well worth a look if only to watch stellar actors (and regulars in her films) Mariangela Melato and Giancarlo Giannini do their thing. I'm not the first person to notice that the excellent fights in her films are actually better than the sex.
7. Photographer Jonathan Calm was at CCA Wednesday evening to give the Larry Sultan Photography Award lecture (he's also currently a resident at Headlands), and I'm fascinated by his ongoing project in which he is documenting the current state of sites listed in the Green Book. It's an epic undertaking, and as a black man traveling through the America of today he's finding all sorts of resonances with the past.
8. And a quick plug for two great new local businesses: Darling Electric Salon, where my stylist (and good friend) Lindsay will expertly minister to your coif, and Mela Bistro, where you should order the vegetarian platter.

the week that was

This and that:

1. Please approach Gaspar Noé's Climax with extreme caution because holy moly trigger warnings galore. However, I am a fan of neither Noé in particular nor horror in general and yet still found this film completely absorbing. Incredible choreography, killer soundtrack, jaw-dropping camerawork, and Noé's singular knack for using cinema to make me feel like I just dropped acid myself.
2. Hip Hop Juice Box is the type of coffee shop/juice bar that makes me feel instantly at home, and even the wifi password makes me smile. Crossing my fingers they host watch parties if the A's make the playoffs...
3. I finally watched Jane Campion's first film Sweetie this weekend and predictably loved the hell out of it, with Campion's creative vision strong right out of the gate. Dysfunction thy name is family, and Genevieve Lemon as Sweetie is indelible.
4. Days after finishing David R. Bunch's Moderan my brain is still speaking its dystopian vocabulary: warring Strongholds and arsenals of fear and new-metal people. Bunch himself said about his writing, "I'm not in this business primarily to describe or explain or entertain. I'm here to make the reader think, even if I have to bash his teeth out, break his legs, grind him up, beat him down, and totally chastise him for the terrible and tinsel and almost wholly bad world we allow."
5. September with Henry David Thoreau, an entry from September 15, 1856: "Sep. 15. Monday. Sophia says, bringing company into my sanctum, by way of apology, that I regard the dust on my furniture like the bloom on fruits, not to be swept off."
   

the week that was

This and that:

1. Alex Ross Perry and Elisabeth Moss make beautiful (rock) music together in his movie Her Smell, in which Moss stars as a musician who is equal parts genius and chaos monster. I loved all the references to '90s alt-rock (definitely stick around for the credits), and how the film firmly centers women and all the male characters kind of float around at the periphery of the action.
2. I had a lovely evening in Santa Cruz on Saturday filled with many of my favorite Santa Cruz things (veggie Mobo Sushi rolls, shopping at Sockshop and Bookshop Santa Cruz, etc) before capping it off with Santa Cruz Shakespeare's delightful production of Pride and Prejudice. Adapted from the Austen by Kate Hamill and directed by Paul Mullins, this version leans hard into physical comedy along with some well-executed anachronisms and panto influence to boot.
3. Max Boot's book The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam is a compelling biography of the man who wanted the U.S. to practice "hearts and minds" diplomacy overseas, and it also helped fill in some of the gaps in my knowledge about the run-up to the Vietnam War.
4. Thanks to the Criterion Channel I've been soaking my head in films by Athina Rachel Tsangari this week, a director associated with the Greek Weird Wave and who closely examines just how strange we humans be. Attenberg is an excellent place to start.
5. Moms and non-moms alike will find a lot to chew on in Molly Smith Metzler's play Cry It Out as it hilariously and poignantly examines the choices women have to make in this country if they want to become a parent. Just Theater's current production at Custom Made is extraordinary, directed by Molly Aaronson-Gelb and starring a trio of my favorite local actors: Martha Brigham, Lauren English, and Lauren Spencer.
6. Tickets for next Sunday's Apples & Hops Festival at the UC Botanical Garden are probably too spendy for me, but proceeds do benefit the Garden and include as many apple donuts as you can inhale.

to do list

Free Oakland UP

Holiday malaise got you down? Have I got some ideas for you!

• Tucked into an unassuming strip mall in Oakland's Dimond district, Free Oakland UP is a wondrous little "shop" where every visitor is welcome to one free item. The project is the brainchild of Jocelyn Meggait, created as a social experiment, and when I visited on Friday it felt like the perfect antidote to the rampant shopping going on elsewhere in the country. Take your time selecting your free item, check out the work in the gallery area by the current artist-in-residence, and buy an artfully-potted plant to help Maggait pay the rent. Then bop across the parking lot to get a quart of lemon chiffon at local ice cream legend Loard's...and I hear that the framer and mechanic in that same lot are awesome too.
• Meanwhile, down in Uptown, Windy Chien has a beautiful show of knots and splices at Local Language called Mutations. Grab a seasonal cocktail from the in-house tasting room to enhance your viewing experience and marvel at Chien's sculptural, textural pieces, which are deceptive in their simplicity.
• Further afield but well worth the drive, the San José Museum of Art has two unique exhibitions up right now I highly recommend. The first is the group show Other Walks, Other Lines, which begins with a quote about walking from Rebecca Solnit's Wanderlust and spirals outwards from there to explore the many ways traveling by foot can be a source of inspiration, a form of protest, or a way to inadvertently court danger. The second is an epic solo exhibition on the second floor by Dinh Q. Lê entitled True Journey Is Return, and you could easily spend a couple hours exploring the varied narratives Lê has assembled about the Vietnamese experience.
• Coming up this Thursday, author Jose Antonio Vargas stops by Yerba Buena to chat with artist Jerome Reyes about the art-billboard Reyes currently has installed at the center and probably some other things besides. Alley Cat Books will also be selling copies of Vargas's Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen if you'd like to get a copy signed.
• And last but definitely not least, all this week the Recombinant Festival will be bringing extraordinary sounds and visuals to the Mission. Pick any night to attend; you cannot go wrong.

agenda 04.19.17

Art

Through April 28 - The New Situationists at Pro Arts Gallery.  Quickly, get thee to Oakland for this amazing group show that encompasses both historical aspects of the Situationist International movement (active 1957-1972) and contemporary interpretations, including a vibrant roster of activations in Ogawa Plaza, films, podcasts, performances and more.  Guy Debord would approve.

 

Theater

Through May 21 - Leni at Aurora Theatre.  Seeing two of my favorite local actors (Martha Brigham and Stacy Ross) face off against one another as dueling Leni Riefenstahls was divine pleasure, and in the intimate space upstairs at Aurora the audience is literally drawn into their dialogue.  Playwright Sarah Greenman covers an impressive amount of ground in 80 minutes, and does a great job of highlighting Riefenstahl's genius while not letting her completely off the hook either for her role in the Nazi propaganda machine.

 

Film

Marlon Brando only directed one movie in his lifetime, the mesmerizing western One-Eyed Jacks (in which he also starred).  Gorgeously shot in locations like Death Valley and Monterey, the film is an intense depiction of one man's quest for revenge, and it features wonderful and complex performances by Karl Malden and Pina Pellicer alongside Brando himself.  Bonus true fact: Brando and Pellicer and I all have the same birthday.

 

Book

Set in mid-'90s Montego Bay and with all dialogue in authentic Jamaican patois, Nicole Dennis-Benn's novel Here Comes the Sun tells the stories of a trio of women, each with her own unique struggle.  Margot has ambitions beyond her job at the local resort, and her sister Thandi is trying to decide what to do with her life after she's done with school...and bleaching her skin to achieve a different social standing.  Meanwhile Verdene must live as an outcast in her own town due to her sexuality.  I get frustrated when a book with this depth gets the standard chick-lit cover, but I encourage readers to look past it and to dive in.

 

Music

The last time I saw Phil Elverum perform as Mount Eerie was many years ago at LoBot, when a small gaggle of us stood in a circle around him and listened as he played his beautiful music.  The scene was similarly respectful at his sold-out show at the Starline Friday night where he performed the newest Mount Eerie album "A Crow Looked At Me" in its entirety, an album on which Elverum processes the recent death of his wife Geneviève Castrée from pancreatic cancer.  For me his grief connected directly to the Ghost Ship fire and other personal tragedy, and that night Oakland stood together, with Phil, and wept.

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