intellectual properties

Beyond Aesthetics: Occupy Art (post #12)

following up on my last #occupy post……

the Muppets have taught us so many things since 1976. and this week, they’ve taught us just how well popular Art can be used to call bullshit:

Watch: The Muppets Diss Fox News:

 Miss Piggy was more combative and political; the puppet added that the charge was “almost as laughable as accusing Fox News of being news.”

(this is a response to this)

have the Muppets always been so intense?

anyway, i love it, and this is a great segue for me to post some of that which i recently wrote for my art school application on the subject of the current state and intersection of art vs. politics in America. this is definitively the longest post i’ve ever published, but if you’re interested, read on….

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everything is its own reward

(click for full size)

–Paul Madonna. this book is unbelievably beautiful. many thx again to Vera for the gift.

Essay Question: When is art propaganda? When is it not?

Part 1.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda

Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one’s group.

And art, IMO, is any form of creation as a means of expression. Who creates without expression? And when is expression ever neutral?

Personal or political, if you share your art, isn’t it propaganda? Aren’t you hoping to change the way people think about something, even if it’s only yourself?

Do you have thoughts? I know this is wide. Answer widely.  and please excuse my lack of academic understanding.

Part 2.

Are you turned off by artists who are/seem really “political” or constantly pushing a message/cause? Sometimes? Always? Why? At what point could you consider it propaganda? (Consider, for example, the length of the spectrum from SuperBowl commercials to campaign ads. Are they really that different?)

Please answer in the comments here. This need not be overly wrought.  define art for yourself, define propaganda for yourself, and then tell me where their relative intersections lie for you, and how you feel about that/how it affects your support/how affected you are/how you are affected by any form of what you define as art.

he who seeks beauty will find it

“Fashion is the armor to survive the reality of everyday life.”

-Bill Cunningham

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Cunningham_New_York is one of the best films i’ve seen in a while. i think it’s relevant and moving whether you are into fashion or not, because it’s about humanity’s relationship to fashion more than it is about fashion.

the scene where the reporter asks him why he goes to church every sunday is somehow heartbreaking. there is more to that answer.

watch Bill Cunningham New York on Hulu for free

“if you don’t take their money, they can’t tell you what to do…
money is the cheapest thing.  freedom is the most expensive.”

movement studies

last night we went to see our (awesome!!!) friend Mary Franck’s conceptual-performance piece, Permutae.

i had so many millions of things to say while sitting in that dark theatre,  and now i barely recall all of the places my mind went.

i don’t know why i resist loving conceptual art so much.  i think it’s because i can’t actually articulate why, and so when, afterward, i say “i absolutely loved it” and someone asks “why?” i feel suddenly unprepared, embarrassed to explain.  why do bodies moving absurdly through abstract scapes to nonmelodic sounds cause my self to dissolve?  the body as vocabulary, skin as an instrument: this speaks to me.

all i know is that not long after the performance started i realized that almost my entire body was moving also, while most of the rest of the audience sat still, the man next to me fully asleep.  not only do i enjoy watching, i uncontrollably want to be doing what they are doing.

i have an artist ticket to burning man this year, from doing butoh with BadUnklSista for BRAF and such.  it makes me feel odd as i still do not describe or consider myself an artist. but i think that i might do a solo butoh piece somewhere on the playa.  i will not tell anyone when or where.

wasted, cut and dried

recent films:

Waste Land (netflix) – a documentary about art and poverty, esp recommended if you enjoyed that amazing TED talk by french artist JR on using art to “turn the world inside out” and help impoverished communities – can art change the world? or at least a small part of it? while the setting of this film is the giant landfill outside Rio in brazil, the movie doesn’t really mention or suggest anything about reducing waste or get into environmentalism. i think the movie didn’t talk much about landfills and excess because the setting speaks for itself. this movie is about using art to change people’s lives who are on the receiving end of the damages of our first world excess, and it’s pretty heartwarming and inspiring. it will likely change the way you think about the people living in these places and might also incidentally change the way you think about waste.  music by Moby.

Wristcutters: a love story (netflix) – another excellent very dark comedy, about the afterlife world of people who commit suicide. was not quite the tone that i was expecting – in a good way, and Tom Waits, as always, is an excellent character.

Get Him to the Greek (netflix): another lowbrow male comedy starring a pudgy wannabe who is going for the girl/fame/cred/whatever. if you liked Forgetting Sarah Marshall and/or Superbad, you’ll probably like this. or if you just like looking at Russell Brand, which i do. these kinds of movies are funny to me, but i don’t really LIKE them. i really, really could have done without the “performances” at the end. i have to admit though that Puff Daddy really made me laugh in this one. he was the best part.

films: on the subject of alternate and/or parallel lives

“the internet is like this new human experience.  at first, everybody’s gonna like it. but there will be a fundamental change in the human condition. one day we’re all gonna wake up and realize we’re just servants.  it’s captured us.”

We Live in Public (IMDB/netflix) – are you reading this on the internet? have you not seen this movie? do you have a facebook account?  do you use a smartphone to “check in” to places and tell the world where you’re at? do you tweet about what you eat? is your life trackable online?  you should watch this movie. especially if the above applies to you and you have also been to burning man.

a biography/documentary of josh harris.  like “The Social Network“, only the crazy slightly sociopathic internet visionary is played by himself and he goes a bit crazier than Zuckerberg with his ideas about how the internet will change humanity, including creation of an underground pod community in NYC just before Y2K where everyone is on TV/broadcast to each other 24/7.  watch trailer.

.::.

Das Wilde Leben aka 8 miles high (IMDB/netflix/wikipedia) – hot german girl Uschi Obermaier joins counterculture community experiment Kommune 1 in west berlin in the late 60s, meets revolutionaries, becomes “it girl”/supermodel, hooks up with the rolling stones, travels the world all gypsylike.  the movie has great scenes and dialog but also sort of cheesy stereotypical 1960s “free love” moments. the actress who plays Uschi is unbelievably hot. fictional biography. in german with subtitles. also super relevant if you have ever been to burning man.

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Leaves of Grass (IMDB/netflix) – in which Edward Norton plays twin brothers who have diverged somewhat stereotypically into a redneck pot farmer and harvard philosophy professor and are reunited under contentious circumstances. i was skeptical (mostly because of a) fake southern accents are hard to take and b) it had a very Doc Hollywood “big shot gets stuck in small town” direction to the script), but i admit the dialogue and acting was above average, and while some moments were easy to see coming, others were totally not.  edward norton fans will LOVE this. as will intellectual potheads.

.::.

i sense a theme here in the movies i’ve watched lately.

recent books and movies: the shallow and the deep, the dark and the light

.::. seen .::.

Invictus (IMDB/netflix) : i have to say: i was sort of disappointed.  i get that the myopic focus of the film is specifically on the 1995 Rugby World Cup and how Mandela used the rugby team to unite the nation after Apartheid, but it seemed to me that the focus was a little *too* narrow.  like: south africa was WAY f*ked up at that time, and you only kind of get to see a little bit of that, glossed over. even the Mandela character as played by Morgan Freeman is a little too smooth for me to believe. but still: great story, and if you like sports films it’s probably worth watching just for the rugby scenes.

we also recently (re)watched A Serious Man (IMDB/netflix), and i can’t recommend this film enough. it’s perhaps now my favorite Coen brothers film (although i *did* really like Romance and Cigarettes…) because i just can’t stop thinking about it. the intersection of religious mysticism with quantum physics and personal karma, in a darkly humorous context?…..oh yes. fave line: “I understand the physics. I understand the dead cat.”

Scott Pilgrim vs The World: i never have been a comic book person, so i found parts of this….yawnworthy. but even so, i liked the overall direction the film took and enjoyed it’s unabashed nerdiness. nerdy comic book action + awkward romance film. michael cera. not a lot more to say there.

The Vicious Kind (netflix/IMDB). dark, dark romantic comedy, especially recommended for the uber-cynical among us.

final movie note: all you potheads/Kevin Smith fans out there need to watch Kevin Smith: Too Fat for 40.

.::.read.::.

the YMCA has a book-trading shelf, and i saw this book “Confessions of a Shopaholic“. now, i usually don’t read anything that might be categorized as “chick lit”, but given my currently limited cash flow i’ve been thinking a lot about my own shopaholic tendencies lately, and plus i needed something light to read on the plane (i cannot read heavy material while traveling), so i picked it up. (oh, apparently this was also made into a film in 2009.  like “Eat Pray Love” (read last year), i am sure the film is TERRIBLE.  i am talking about the book.) i am sort of embarrassed to admit how much i enjoyed this book. first: i related to the shopaholic tendencies (and yes i am aware that i often post avidly NON-CONSUMERIST items here, but indeed that is highly driven by my own consumer pitfalls and struggles and those posts are as much a reminder to myself as anyone else), and second, the career aspect.  the 2nd level story here is that this woman is doing a job she’s decent at but totally unmotivated to cultivate into a career, caring only that it provides her with a paycheck to go shopping with, until …. well i’ll leave the spoiler out.  but let’s just say i could relate. a little too much. not sure if i have any interest in reading more novels by this author or not.

i finished that while in Michigan, so to make up for reading such fluff, for the trip back i raided my mother’s collection of Kurt Vonnegut novels and chose “A Man Without a Country“.  now i am also embarrassed to admit (particularly since he is my mother’s favorite author) that i’ve never read any of Vonnegut’s novels, but after reading this quasi-memoir you can bet i will.  i was laughing before i even finished the first page, and the unapologetic treatment of such controversial and sensitive topics as the bombing of Dresden (for which he was present as a WWII soldier and based Slaughterhouse-Five on) and 9/11 is priceless. most of the book was originally published as long screeds in the alt publication In These Times, and you can read most of this novel in a less curated form on their website. warning: the satire is left-leaning to the point of falling over, but in this case i do not see that as a fault.

black swan + joan rivers

speaking of transformations into black, we did go see Black Swan last weekend.  i know a lot of my friends were waiting with breathless anticipation for Tron and went opening night, but honestly i have almost zero interest in seeing Tron (although i did hear the soundtrack kicks ass (“Daft Punk’s Best Movie Yet” haha)). not to prejudge too much but it’s just not generally a genre of film i get excited about.  but Black Swan is totally my thing and i was VERY EXCITED about it. it did not disappoint. it’s not for the faint of heart.  i will try not to let any spoilers out here and just say that the combination of gorgeously bleak cinematography, dance, costuming (Rodarte!!), paranoid characters, schizophrenia and HEARTPOUNDING ANXIETY will leave you shaken.

while amazing and quite a departure from her normal self-confident-woman roles, i’m not sure that Natalie Portman’s performance deserves any more accolades than Barbara Hershey’s, who plays the part of Scary Stage Mom a little too well. THAT was some intensity.  Mila Kunis was……Mila Kunis. no big stretch on her part as far as i could tell, not that much different than most of the other characters i’ve seen her do.

the story was decent (not saying more due to spoilers), but i loved the style of the film more than anything. if you’re not into artsy-noir, maybe Black Swan isn’t for you, and in that case you should go see Tron.

.::.

in other movie viewing reports, i also recently watched the documentary about Joan Rivers, “A Piece of Work“, and was pleasantly surprised by the whole thing.  lots of great recent history about the comedy world, but WOW – such an amazing woman.  at 75+ years old she’s working non-stop, taking red-eye flights, traveling until 3am and getting up at 6:30 to work, doing multiple events a day, and as agile mentally and physically and as anyone i know, let alone most 75 year-olds. watching her made me tired and i’m not even 35 yet.

say what you want about her face (the plastic surgery thing is of course mentioned but not a huge part of the film at all), i was utterly astounded by the amount of wit and energy this woman has – STILL.  i can’t even imagine what a dynamo she was 40 years ago. i’ve read that people age dramatically after they retire/stop working. she’s definitely proof that if you never slow down, you never grow old.

inner black

jay read my last post and asked if all my 2011 posts were going to be overly pronoid and all about expressing my inner rainbow and shit. i said: MY INNER RAINBOW IS BLACK.

on that note, twisted lamb posted this video as “How To Get Ready For A Christmas Party”, and i think that’s effing awesome:

1.1 Negredo: The Raven – Director: Jez Tozer

that is how i get ready for any party of note.