daily "missed connection" chicago

Someday maybe we'll be grownups - m4w - 7 (Hyde Park)

"And then you'll say 'ugh gross!' and dump your dannon yogurt on me for trotting around after you. Which still beats not saying or doing anything and letting me get increasingly wierd. Until then i'll enjoy sharing capri suns with you."

I like things that make noise

http://svt.se/hogafflahage/hogafflaHage_site/Kor/hestekor.html

things are better now

in the back of an Albany Park hair dressers shop...

wallpaper in my mom's house growing up

How big is Will?

http://www.wimp.com/powerfulkid/

technology pics

just a passing thought... something for me to work on

Watch your thoughts; they become words.

Watch your words; they become actions.

Watch your actions; they become habits.

Watch your habits; they become character.

Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.

-- Frank Outlaw

Lioness (part 3) by Independent Lens

A little late for Veterans Day I know, but still completely necessary.

sadness

Jenny Holzer

This was the first Jenny Holzer exhibit I've ever seen.

I was really disturbed by what I saw and read, but also grateful that she decided to present this information to the public.

This is word for word what I wrote in my notes.

(summary)
contradictory voices, opinions, attitudes that shape society.
abuse of power
assumptions


sculpture, electronic signs, projections, texts from US gov't documents

bureaucratic and repetitive
the patterns of the censorship bars
"charged" - another classmate
thoughtful ways of composing large amounts of information, composing time, composing space
"sensitive but unclassified"
text fonts all recognizable, grilled into our minds

jumping from text to text, making your own dialogue
paper canvas
gruesome details
formatting of standardized data/info

"belligerents" used to describe opposing side
"BOTTOM LINE. We are American soldiers, heirs of a long tradition of staying on the high ground. We need to stay there."
8/12/03
WOW!

(bright flashing column with streams of text, looks like Las Vegas)
moaning
regret
soul
knowledge
crackpots
mother
destiny
attitude
eye
murder
better man
mark of genius
clinging
stripped down
dignity
investigation
pointless lives
victims
families
duty
submission
freedom
fate
damned
no god
complacency
elite
force
sacred

-text as a wheel, spinning, continuous, reverse waterfall
layered text, threads, rhythm

my letter

I found this letter to myself incredibly useful. I was blown away by how intimate I made this letter to myself and I will admit it is a little difficult posting it, but I feel it is a part of the story now. I feel like I'm always so dramatic, but at the same time, this is exactly how I felt, and how I still feel. Underneath it all I need reassurance from myself, and that is exactly what I ended up writing to myself all those weeks ago.

Dearest Kelly,

Now that you have started your journey here at SAIC and more specifically in this performance class, I hope that you continue to open your mind and your body up to whatever this throws at you. I hope you perform a voice piece, combined with makeup and staging. I hope you record your own audio piece on your software and use it. I hope you turn your body into a living photograph - a living piece of time. I hope you do physical work and use your body without fear or embarrassment. I hope you write something beautiful. I hope you overcome your vices and use your compulsions as stepping stones into your own mind. I hope you have become more aware of your body and all you ask of it in a day - and take care of it well enough to feel healthy and beautiful inside and out. I love you, I forgive you, I think you are a powerful woman.

Kelly

Jameson, Kim & Alex performance pics/thoughts

It always takes me a moment to process what I am seeing when watching a performance. When Jameson took to his space, the first thing I noticed was the floor, covered in an inch of dirt. The negative board was light up and casting a pure white light onto the soil, giving it an eerie horror-film-ish feeling. To me it reminded me of a graveyard - like someone digging a grave at night with flood lights on the part where they are going to dig. It was a kind of untouchable space to me. That feeling was accentuated by Jameson's motions - the way he stepped only in certain spots with care, the way he squared off the area with salt. And I knew it was salt, but I didn't read as much into the salt as I thought I would. To me the salt was more about the process of squaring off the space. I enojoyed how hard he was focusing on his footprints, and using the light of the lightboard to accentuate his movements on the lower plane. Jameson himself is very tall and lean. Since the dirt was so eye catching, especially when it was lit like that, when he stood up his upper half would almost disappear and his shoes and black/dark blue jeans is all you focused on. He seemed to have an invisible roof on his square, unlike let's say Remington's square that seemed to continue upward forever.
Kim emerged out of this plastic bag and trash can, draped in a mellow blue lighting that automatically set a certain tone to her work. It was like watching a play gone askew, or maybe some odd alternative life kept in darkness - I don't know how to describe it really. It was dark and sad and scary. She "birthed" into her space with a look of distress and confusion, only to hand cuff herself immediately and start working with this material- like it was something she had to do. Kim also used salt but under the blue light it looked nothing like it which I thoroughly enjoyed. This was a performance where I saw Kim get into a character which was also nice. I feel like its been slightly more difficult for Kim to drop her guard in this class and to see her emerge into the blue light that was covering her and take on that feeling wholly helped her performance. I may not have known what it meant - its abstraction was puzzling to me (thats not a bad thing) - but I did see a woman who kept her characters feeling in her face and body, with slow and mechanical movements.
And then there was Alex. He came into the middle of these two intense squares with an outsiders perspective, unaffected by their emotion, with this ridiculous smirk on his face. It changed the feeling of the piece immediately. Alex sat and let us "read" him for some time, just calmly sitting and watching this peculiar scene unfold and diminish. Then he took his purse and started to pull things out of that thing like Mary fuckin' Poppins. I was waiting for the huge umbrella to pop out of there or something. Anyways Alex is Alex and he has a certain voice that he uses in each performance - I don't mean his actual voice, but voice in the sense of a satirical but completely serious embodiment of an "other". I found his transformation to be comfortable to watch and for him to perform.

Baby Laugh A*Lot

And while I'm on the topic of movies as performance pieces..

Labyrinth (1986)

Wheelers

What an amazing way to transform the body into something completely non-human.
This is from Return To Oz, awesome film.

quote of the day today

"Does anyone else's water taste like a mild cheddar cheese?" - James Smith

and what are you selling exactly?

21st century women

20th century women

19th century women

90 degree turn from my performance

I'm not really sure yet what that would be. I started thinking mostly about the voice/voicelessness of the piece. Making noise with my voice but still not saying anything. Gagged - a means of degradation, a means of silencing, a taking away of the power of the voice, the power of speech, the freedom of speech, but it is also a willing act of sexual fetishes, a desire to be gagged, a desire to be controlled. I don't know if I will take a 90 degree turn so much as a 30 degree pivot. I might scrap the housewife shit and just be me - the modern woman, student, friend, cousin, sister, daughter, human, etc...
I will probably scrap the dolls, although I liked the drawing of pubic hair on such an innocent looking doll and the way that might make people cringe. A ninety degree turn in my work might be someone who speaks a lot but does not necessarily say anything, someone who lives on the surface. I think of a parrot right away, just repeating what it knows is okay to say and think, what is easy, what is daily (repetitive), what is low in conflict, not thinking or not being able to think of something deeper or more interuptive. Maybe it would be someone who is saying these "interuptive" ideas, but not knowing their meaning or influence, just saying what they are told to say with no understanding behind it.
Also, I focused so much on being a woman, with such strong feminine telling features. What is is to be a woman? Does wearing a dress mean I'm a woman? Does wearing lipstick? Does wearing whitie-tighties underneath a dress make me a man? Does using the men's room? What do men see as limiting in regards to their gender? What about being a woman angers me? -- Well several things actually, something I could go on and on about. I will save this for another post for this reason.
What if this final performance isn't done under a spotlight. I liked the spotlight for two reasons, because 1. I think all of life is a stage. Men and women live on stages everyday, with a spotlight put on them, especially in certain situations regarding social graces, social pressures. Spotlights are isolating and life is very isolating... that's vague - our cultural "rules" can be isolating. 2. It creates a distinct separation between those in the spotlight and those not - meaning the audience feels even less apart of the actual performance. Its a bubble in some ways. But how uneasy would the viewer become with a gagged, drooling woman, struggling to politely ask them to pass the salt?? What if I stripped this performance down to the bare minimum technology wise? The distance I created between the audience and myself has suddenly become of great interest to me.

Milk pools, beer guzzling, tomato throwing, blood curdling screams

The 10.24.08 performance of Kathleen, Alyssa, Maegan, and Lauren: Its was interesting seeing four different performances come together like that. I feel like some overshadowed others - Lauren and Maegan were absolutely captivating both in their own right. Kathleen was mostly on her own. She was in her square as a character with a problem, existing in her own character's mind and space. Her text and the idea behind it was fairly straight forward not leaving too much room for alternative interpretation. She was prepared and had a clear objective for what she wanted to portray. I felt her nervousness a little, which happens when you go first and everyone watches you for five minutes. I was happy she didn't rush into it, remained calm, didn't parody, and let the audience soak in what she felt her pace was. I believe Maegan came in next. She has a very interesting energy to her on stage - very centered, focused, projecting the inner emotion of the idea she wishes to present. On this day Maegan seemed turmoiled, in deep thought. She was silent at first, interacting with the audience through her eyes and a single picture. Her performance was happening with or without an audience present. She seemed to be putting herself in her own private hell right before our eyes - every woman's nightmare... to be tied up, duck taped, shoved in a small space left to fend for yourself. And yet she ended up freeing herself eventually, not entirely but she did break some of the ducktape. There was struggle, fear - terror, lonliness, inner strength. Maegans screaming cut through the room with such a heavy strike it became upsetting to hear. Not in the way that it was annoying or anything, but in the sense that you wanted to help her - that it was hard to tolerate hearing such distress. Alyssa came in next and I'm still not sure what I think about her fifteen minutes. When she had such powerful imagery going on around her, the performance was kind of lost. She danced and sang in the same spot for a while, wearing a throwback 80's velvet black dress... the kind that would have been highly desired back in the day. She sang and danced to a Paula Abdul song that I kind of grew up with - Straight Up Now Tell Me. It was reminiscent of an earlier time, but one in which she would have been very very young, not old enough for a prom or homecoming. The tomatoes were placed in a plastic grocery bag, left on the floor. She didn't address them right away, just left them in the bag until she left it was time to use them. Then this sort of breaking of the fourth wall happened and she antagonized the audience for a while. We all took a tomato. This is where her audience got very confused. We didn't know why the tomatoes were there or what purpose they served in relation to her dancing, her song, her dress. A couple audience members ended up throwing the tomatoes back at her which is what I think she wanted. Also Alyssa started coughing, like a deeply sick cough, almost as to show her character was sick or weak or something else was going on - that the song and dance was a cover up to a not so pretty life. But then, again, why the tomatoes? Lauren's performance was, I thought, pretty damn interesting. Milk in and of itself is a great visual. Her steely reserve during the whole performance was intimidating. She wanted to bathe in a fucking pool of milk and thats what she did. The glasses on the floor acted almost as an offering to the audience, but then filled with milk coming off her own body - it was deeply personal. That kind of imagery, milk being offered to you with freshly baked food (sustainance) but the milk is literally poored off her body - she transports it, tries her best to fill your cup with milk - which is a delicacy in many places of the world, she gives to you over and over. It was intimate - so much so that many people were offended by the act of offering something that had touched someone else's body. Don't get me wrong, I don't think I could have downed any milk myself - but its just the thought behind it - what you take away from it, how others react. Also the milk was not milk anymore the second she stepped into it - nay - the second you saw it was in the kiddie pool. That pool looked like a baptismal.

In response to my own performance...

Well, what can I say, I gave it my all. I am satisfied with the way it turned out. All week before, I was over-thinking and worrying and freaking out about how to convey the messages I wanted to. A vague idea is not enough for me when it comes to fifteen minutes on stage. In the end, fifteen minutes turned out to be much too short for the amount of information I was giving, and the way I wanted to give it to the audience. I like performing. I feel very comfortable on stage which freaks me out sometimes - what does that say about the kind of person I am? Do I pathetically crave attention? I felt the messages I created were strong and thought provoking. I do think I can work on the "less is more" concept and make sure to not overlook some actions, to give them the proper time they need to become significant to the audience. I don't want to rush the viewer through so many visual symbols that it becomes impossible for them to contemplate any of them properly. However, I don't do minimalism either. I am not good at one single repetitive motion or one single visual idea- (not that there is anything wrong with that) - I get bored with myself on stage and I think some performers are better at minimalism than others. I like loaded questions, ridiculously large and flamboyant actions... I mean why not - why would that be any different than a ridiculously small action.

I feel pretty good about the costumes I had on-- the dress which I felt was over the top, colorful, representative of oh so many cultural references to time period, political turmoil, social standard, community organization, family structure, etc.- and also the complete and utter emptiness of the black body coverings- its anonymity, its "genderless-ness", the emotion of the color black, its sense of loss and despair but also its sense of power and uneasy stillness -- yes I liked the costumes and felt they were exactly what I wanted, but I didn't like the amount of dolls I had to work with. I liked the one that I ended up hammering and taping to the wall. That one I will keep. The original idea was to look to the dolls for what I should be... what I should look like, the smile I should have, the glassiness of the eyes, the hands turned stiff and upward... but not as a child looking at the dolls - just as a person, ageless. But it did add a kind of confusion to the piece, one I'm not sure I entirely welcome. I didn't want the piece to be about "women's struggles in society throughout the years" and I didn't want it to be about the anger women feel abour their representation in the media - aka what is a sucessful woman? I wanted to play with being muzzled, being treated like an animal but not being insulted or held back by it, play with being a stereotype, being a contradiction, being bold, being voiceless through audial cues, but being voiced in action. I put the muzzle on myself, I remuzzled myself for the black outfit. My hand were free to remove it. The drool would usually be a sign of humiliation, but I wanted to drool everywhere - to show that kind of "disgusting and unlady-like" part of human nature - to drool, to salivate, to lose control of bodily functions, to be off-putting. So thats all I really have to say about my performance. I know I'm going to stick with the idea, but change it, refine it...

falling behind!! aaaaaaaahhhhh!!

David's words for my 90 second performance

David:


RELAY (N.)
c.1410, "hounds placed along a line of chase," from M.Fr. relai "reserve pack of hounds or other animals" (13c.), from O.Fr. relaier "to exchange tired animals for fresh," lit. "leave behind," from re- "back" + laier "to leave" (see delay). The etymological sense is "to leave (dogs) behind (in order to take fresh ones)." Of horses, 1659. Electromagnetic sense first recorded 1860. As a type of foot-race, it is attested from 1898. The verb is first attested c.1410
shift (n.1)
I saw this idea of “relay” in Kelly’s work. It was clear not only in the choice of song (that had to do with doves) but also in the manner in which she descended the stairwell. This action really seemed like ling down tracks and then going back to make sure each track was laid down with proper care. Very lovely to watch this delicate pattern being formed.

ADORE
c.1305, from O.Fr. aourer "to adore, worship," from L. adorare "speak to formally, beseech," in L.L. "to worship," from ad- "to" + orare "speak formally, pray"

In Kelly’s work I also got this idea of an act that was adored. It seemed that her movements were rooted deep to a story that was held very sacred and we were all very privileged to witness this ritual.

The amazing Young.

for my photography class... using my shadow as an "other"