Tonight I’m at the Holiday Inn Express in Bridgeville, PA. My grandmother lives near here and I’ve just come back from visiting her.
I spent $35.80 on gas in Ann Arbor before I left. I spent 15 something on food from the Produce Station before I left, too. I spent $1.90 and then $2.90 on coffee and coffee and dark chocolate, respectively. I saw some guys that looked like real rockers at a rest-stop in Ohio. The hole from the sleeves cut off hung so low I could see his waist. I paid $7.75 to the Ohio Turnpike and then $3.00 to the Pennsylvania Turnpike. I had dinner with my grandmother on her tab at the “village” she lives in.
I’m going to DC tomorrow, something my grandmother asked me about several times.
I want to say something about people losing their memory and ultimately losing their lives, but what can I say about it except for that a) it happens, b) it’s sad, c) it will happen to me, and d) it happens to everyone.
MARCH 28TH The next installment of the Writing and Poetics reading series is this Friday at the DAM (Detroit Artist Market):http://www.detroitartistsmarket.org/exhibitions.htm located on Woodward just south of campus… an especially awesome venue for just such an event…
Readings and performances by Anna Vitale, Marie Buck, Brad Flis, Sarah James, Thomas Park, Bill Harris and possibly some other special appearances and a good deal of jazz and poetry…..Some drinks and snacks will be provided.
We will begin around 7. Please tell friends and students. Hope to see you there.
AND THEN NEXT WEEK ON APRIL 5TH–the textsound party of the century
From an email sent over Bard’s MFA listserv from Jim Finn at RPI:
I want to pass on some information about what is happening here at RPI in Troy, New York. Iraqi-born Chicago artist Wafaa Bilal’s art show called Virtual Jihadi has been “suspended” by the university on the day before Spring Break. Below is a link to an interview with Wafaa from today just after campus security changed the codes on the arts building as well as an article in today’s Washington Post.
Terror-Themed Game Suspended
Iraqi-Born Artist Asserts Censorship After Exhibit Is Shut Down
By Robin Shulman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 8, 2008; A03
NEW YORK — In the video game that Wafaa Bilal created, his avatar is
steely-eyed and hooded, with an automatic rifle at his side, an
ammunition belt around his waist, a fuse in his hand and the mien of
a knightly suicide-bomber. He is the “Virtual Jihadi.”
The Iraqi-born, Chicago-based artist said he adapted his game from an
earlier version made by al-Qaeda’s media branch to raise questions
about Americans’ conceptions of the enemy in Iraq.
His work was briefly exhibited Thursday night at Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. The game was projected on a giant
screen so that one viewer at a time could play — until
administrators shut down the show Friday morning. The institute
needed time to review the show’s “origin, content and intent,” said
William N. Walker, a vice president.
To Bilal, who said he was arrested several times for his artwork in
Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, it was censorship.
“It’s an art show that is trying to solicit a conversation among
people,” Bilal said. “And when you shut it down, you say you don’t
have any right to say your point of view.”
The game has a tortuous history. It began as a downloadable video
game, Quest for Saddam, that was devised by a young American and
allowed the player to kill identical Iraqis in the desert while
hunting their leader. Then the Global Islamic Media Front, the media
branch of al-Qaeda, created its own version, Night of Bush Capturing,
changing the characters so that the player kills identical Americans
and ultimately President Bush.
Bilal hacked into the al-Qaeda version and created a character based
on himself: a faculty member at the Art Institute of Chicago who
loses his father and brother to the war in Iraq. The character
becomes an al-Qaeda recruit and hunts Bush.
That was enough to get the FBI involved. Someone complained to the
bureau, whose agents contacted the Art Institute’s administrators,
Kathy High, head of the arts department, said in an interview.
Paul Holstein, a spokesman for the FBI’s Albany office, would neither
confirm nor deny her account.
“Under certain circumstances, it would be appropriate for FBI agents
to attend an event open to the public for the limited purposes of
determining if there’s anything relevant to national security,” he
said. “If agents attended the event and determined there wasn’t
anything relevant to national security, they wouldn’t pursue it
further.”
Bilal said he hopes to raise questions about stereotypes of Iraqis,
and about conceptions of what creates a suicide bomber.
“I wanted to let people see how bad it feels to be labeled and
hunted,” he said.
Walker, the vice president, said in his statement that Bilal’s
lecture before the exhibit was “stimulating and thought-provoking,”
but “questions were raised regarding its legality and its consistency
with the norms and policies of the Institute.”
The controversy erupted two weeks before Thursday’s opening, when the
College Republican blog called the art department a “terrorist
safehaven.” Some students began to lobby the administration to cancel
the show.
“The message he’s putting forth marginalizes the seriousness of the
threat of Islamic terrorism,” said Ken Girardin, 23, chairman of the
College Republicans and a co-author of the blog.
The arts department, known for cutting-edge work, overwhelmingly
supported the exhibit. Faculty members said Bilal is a bridge-builder
and cited an emotional conference call he had set up for them with
Iraqi art teachers.
High, the department chairwoman, defended Bilal in an e-mail to a
critic as a “respected artist” who “does not support al-Qaeda.”
“It makes me very sad,” she said.
Svetlana Mintcheva, the director of the arts program of the National
Coalition Against Censorship, said, “A video game fantasy about
terrorism is not a terrorist act.”
Several of Bilal’s other works evoke the violence of the current war.
In his piece “Domestic Terrorism” in Chicago in 2007, he confined
himself to a room in a gallery where he installed Web cameras and
allowed Internet viewers to watch him eat, sleep, drink and read –
and fire yellow paintballs at him.
On http://www.dogoriraqi.com, people can vote on whether to subject a
cute pug dog or Bilal to waterboarding, a technique that simulates
drowning.
Bilal announced Friday that he will make a copy of his work to be
shown at the Sanctuary For Independent Media in Troy starting Monday.
He will leave the other version of the piece at the Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute as he awaits its decision.
someone searched “poem + why this is happening” and found my blog according to the stats machine
if you haven’t listened to patti smith crone free money especially the part where she says “see those dollar bills go swirling ’round my head” and the head drops up and drops down and you belt it out in your car, you should fucking do that because it will blow your mind, oh baby, it would mean so much to me, oh, i know, our troubles would be gone
jae put that on a mix tape for me back in the day, i don’t think i appreciated it enough, but i do now because my eyes fill up with water I pull them out and never see the same stuff I saw, sure it’s a casual and it’s about clothes, but it’s
with work work from these folks: Joel Levise, Cathy Wagner, Magic Oneohtrix Point Never, Chris DeLaurenti, Cindy Lynn Brown, Edwin Torres, poul g. exner, Jan Hjort, Linh Dinh, Viki, Christine Hume, Leslie Scalapino, Dorothy Albertini, and Martin Johs. Moller.
Last week I brought some Jenny Holzer to class so we could think about an artist who uses words. In doing research for this session, I realized how interested I’d been in Jenny Holzer’s work, yet had never looked into her. I have this relationship with a lot of artists, poets, bands, etc. I want to know their work and have connected to it when it’s come my way, but haven’t actively sought it out. This activity is something I’m trying to cultivate more of and teaching is really a great opportunity for that.
There are many different ways Holzer has rendered her Truisms over the years: the paper versions that she photocopied and wheat-pasted all over the lower eastside, the ones that circled around staircases in LCD (liquid crystal display), and ones that were engraved in marble(?) foot stools.
What makes me happy about all of these, and something like “IT IS IN YOUR SELF-INTEREST TO FIND A WAY TO BE VERY TENDER” slid into the lines of a theater marquee, is the entrance of something else in my field of vision that points to desire and sincerity, making my average travels throughout the day not-so-average. I haven’t ever seen Holzer’s work outside of these pictures and postcards, but still the pictures of the work pass on the possibility that I could see something that I don’t expect, something that wouldn’t make sense with the rest of the space, like a bubble 20 feet in diameter floating down the street.
In 2005 I made a sign that said something like i will always love you, you’re the only one i want, i’ll love you forever and ever and put them up around Ann Arbor. I’m not getting what I wrote exactly right, but that’s basically it. I know that I felt that way about someone, so it was a great relief to put it out there in such a locked-in way, but I also really wanted people to come across something incredibly personal and sincere and have them yanked out of themselves or pushed back into themselves for a second. A friend didn’t know why I liked it so much because it seemed to reinforce social rules and expectations about romantic love and monogamy. I’m wondering why that is. Is it because it’s something that so clearly would only be made by a woman? Is that sentiment gendered? And when people read it, did they think it came from a woman and it was directed to a man?
What if a man had made Jenny Holzer’s Truisms? Ugh. Would it just seem awful and/or ridiculous? Yesterday I overheard someone say that there were Penis Monologues being performed on U of M’s campus around the same time as the Vagina Monologues and I thought “that is so ridiculous. Who needs to hear Penis Monologues?” But maybe I do. And if all they talked about was jacking off, maybe I’d get something from that. Or maybe I’m pretty locked-in to what I think about gender when it comes to people of any other gender than my own, whatever that is.
What I found this morning that continued to satisfy my desire for disrupting the landscape (in addition to Holzer and Penis Monologues is this project: things not worth keeping. Their “throwaway remarks” was a poster project commissioned by Bury’s Text Festival in 2005. (Bury looks like it’s a city near Manchester, U.K.).
(To see a picture of the poster in its live setting, go to the site. This is just the poster itself.)
I couldn’t figure out what I was looking at at first, and then to my delight I was looking at pictures of posters that were the posters. Being overtly removed from the scene, looking at a poster that’s a picture of a poster, makes room for traveling through the work. Perhaps this travel is what I like about my 20-foot wide bubble. It would travel through the streets, a neutral, genderless, utopic, all encompassing art bubble of love.
Recently there was a discussion on the Bard mfa listserv that was finally rerouted to a blog. Initially someone said “it’s Bard, we’re basically all on the same page.” And then someone said, “yeah, well, maybe, but we’re not all voting for Obama.” And then, finally, only one person, sadly, chimed in and said something about the Green party. Someone did say, “um, hello, we’re not all American” and that was refreshing.
I have to say I’m surprised by the assumptions that a) everyone on the list even votes or gives a shit about voting and 2) that if you do vote, you want to vote for 1 of 2 parties.
I have a friend who’s an anarchist who hadn’t voted for the past 20 or 30 years. But when Bush was up for reelection she voted. She couldn’t NOT vote, was her feeling. This was the feeling of many people. This is also the reason many people feel like they can’t vote outside of the 2 party system.
This year I actually feel like something could change. I don’t feel like I don’t “give a shit” about voting, which was certainly something I felt in the past. I also am not interested in participating in something that seems so rigged, full of meaningless language, ie CHANGE. But I am inspired that there’s a woman and a person of color running. What does this mean?
Identity politics. I’m thoroughly convinced we are not through with identity politics, but they certainly don’t stand up by themselves in a sufficient way. They don’t mean nothing and they don’t mean everything.
I find it almost impossible to identify with Hillary Clinton as a woman. Maybe I should have seen her cry. I’m a woman and I cry a lot. What do the women I know have in common with Hillary Clinton? Most of them? Jack squat!!! She looks like women I despise because of the amount of money she has. (I say this knowing it’s problematic). Is it easier for me to see (or think I see) Clinton’s class than Obama’s? Do I have a sense that Hillary Clinton is more bourgeois than Obama? Or, to ask it differently, do I think Obama is more working-class than Clinton because he’s black? And how do I unpack that?
One clearly cannot just listen to the issues and not pay attention to the markers that everyone is plugged into as meaning-bearing and meaning-making.
A part of me would like to write in Eileen Myles who ran in 1992. What she represents to me is not less complicated, but I trust it more. I don’t trust people who can make it into the debates. Will whoever makes into the White House really try to put him/herself into my shoes?
In order to be a good (better) teacher, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about what my students need, not what I think they should have. What’s it like to be 19, taking an intro to creative writing class, right now, here? It’s fucking hard, but not impossible to imagine. Perhaps one implication of believing that voting is a fucking circus is that no one could ever imagine or know what my life is like or give a rat’s ass. I don’t think that’s true. But, would they ever make it far? Or is there something in place to prevent BIG CHANGE? Is the answer to that VOTE?
Snoop Doggy Dogg, or I guess it’s just Snoop Dogg, has this music video out for his song sensual seduction. I came across it somehow, watching cable at my parents or clicking away on the internet, and for two days now I’ve meant to go to You Tube and watch the whole thing. I’d heard the song on the radio a bunch, but it didn’t strike me. When I saw clips of the music video though, I was like woah. This kickback to the late 70s/early 80s.
The beginning is right out of a Prince music video, and, in fact, it’s almost Prince impersonation. The fluffy scarf under his collar, the poofy-do on top, & the monochromatic suit. Even though he’s not playing a guitar, his portable keyboard hanging from his neck immediately reminds me of Prince’s elaborate guitar necks that are more than simply just necks.
Snoop is also tipping his hat a little to Michael Jackson here. Finger snapping one hand wearing one silver glove.
I’ve seen MJ’s silver glove at the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. I think. Or was it his hat that I saw?
Granted there’s other stuff going on inthe sensual seduction video that doesn’t nod to MJ or Prince, and I mostly feel like Snoop is a gross, sexist pig. But is that mostly mostly?
This is always the conflict I have with popular hip-hop and R&B. (I don’t have conflicts with popular alternative music because I cannot even listen to that crap. Nothing redeemable there). There’s often something transgressive about R&B/hip-hops representations of sexuality as fluid & diplomatic, yet it reaffirms the same old reprehensible power relations.
This is true for Prince, too. He even goes so far to make sure we know he’s not gay in Uptown. Thanks, Prince. Glad to know you’re in the clear. Phew.
part of the lyrics to Uptown:
She saw me walking down the streets
Of your fine city
It kinda turned me on when she looked at me
And said, “C’mere”
Now I don’t usually talk to strangers
But she looked so pretty
What can I lose,
If I, uh, just give her a little ear?
“What’s up little girl?”
“I ain’t got time to play.”
Baby didn’t say too much
She said, “Are you gay?”
Kinda took me by suprise
I didn’t know what to do
I just looked her in her eyes
And I said, “No, are u?”
Said to myself, said
“She’s just a crazy, crazy, crazy
Little mixed up dame.
She’s just a victim of society
And all it’s games.”
Begin the story with a man; curtail The matter of his hair and hands and eyes. The simple character will be enough For bearing out the name–pass by the flesh, Since this is but a tale and therefore clean Of the decay that dresses up the soul.
Nothing here, she says, but a tale and the character of a man. She is vicious.
She didn’t put that mic in her mouth. It actually came out. All of us there weren’t alone in the room, but perhaps we knew that anyway. Recommended prop/ instrument: vacuum cleaner. This would accent both suitcase, ironing board, striped socks, jogging pants, and small square of carpet. Who needs to be out of the picture? Young man taking pictures. He thought there was no stage and there was a stage but he thought there wasn’t. She made a box of machines to live in. He storms through it. Fist in the fucking air, riot punk stomp ground? Subterranean eco-music. (On Viki’s performance at MOCAD 1/4/0
