007. Charred Reliquary
Hello friends,
For this week I've been thinking of flesh. How it can be burnt to a crisp, manufactured. I have been thinking of flesh that blushes pink, veined with blue, flesh that grows red and peeling with sunburn, bubbling into blisters. Flesh as the site of possible violent mutation. The sound of flesh, its poetic nerve endings. Flesh that can harden into mineral or soften to a pulp, meat hanging off of bone. Enjoy. //
TOUCH
Last weekend my friends and I took a trip upstate. It was a gray, sleepy kind of day just on the edge of cold weather and it was wonderful. We ate cheese, bread, and grapes. I didn't realize just how large Storm King was, but it was nice walking around, breathing non-city air, marveling at the cool sculptures, and collecting plants as we crossed the fields. I now have a dried thistle pressed into my notebook.
In that same weekend (my school had a mini 'fall break'), I went to the Carolee Schneemann exhibit at MoMa PS1. The exhibit wasn't perfect, granted, but I really enjoyed seeing some of her most famous works (such as Meat Joy, Interior Scroll, Up To and Including Her Limits) as well as her earlier paintings, collaged "life books", and sculpture-combines, which I hadn't seen or heard of before this showing. It's interesting to put Schneemann's work in the greater context of the neo-dada/pop art movement of the time and watch how she developed as an artist. While some of her more political pieces (in the vein of Second Wave Feminism), don't carry as much relevance in today's movement, it's still an important history to consider and learn about. If you've got the time to go to Long Island City, I'd recommend checking it out.
I've been searching for a red mascara for a very long time. Hours combing through mascara reviews later, I decided to pick up this red mascara from Marc Jacobs (a sale at Sephora is also responsible for this decision). It was a lot more vibrant than I expected. I can't really speak to the volumizing or lengthening qualities of this mascara because I layered on a white mascara primer from L'oreal beforehand.
LOOK
Salvador Dali's In Voluptas Mors is a creepy tableau vivant (or "living picture") and one of his more iconic optical-illusion images. Recently, I came across a series of pictures of Dali and his models actually working to construct the portrait. There were about 28 attempts to get the perfect shot over the course of 3 hours, with photographer Philippe Halsman behind the camera. It's really cool to see them arranging the models, and the girls themselves laughing and positioning themselves to get the right composition. You can check out the rest of the images here.
An artist who I've been Internet-stalking for the past 2 years or so is John Yuyi. Her specialty is temporary tattoo art and portrait photography (you've probably scrolled past some of her images on Tumblr and Instagram). I could spend all day looking at her experimental work. There's definitely something in her pieces that remind me of disembodiment in the digital age as portraits of people are re-grafted as tattoos onto another person's skin. Lovely and unsettling.
While we're on the topic of "internet artists I've been following for the past couple of years", I thought I'd also mention Noel'le Longhaul (or laughingloone on Instagram). They're a NB trans woman and a folk musician, witch, and tattoo artist. Their pieces are infused with magic, influenced by the folkier style of woodcuts. These tattoos are like landscapes, so intricately detailed. I'm reminded of something they said in an interview a while back about the relationship between tattooing and spellcasting: "For me, those practices are mutual practices of radical listening. I also think that tattooing, very simply put, is blood magic…People can choose to participate in that sensation to varying degrees…but finding a ritual as a method of marking time is something that for me feels like it holds a chance to experience a narrative of time that is different from the narratives of time that all the crap in one’s life suggests one think about things in. I also think that any time we intentionally change our bodies, we’re doing magic, and I think that doing that in a way that feels intentional and feels respectful and consensual is also the ways in which those things overlap." Check out the rest of their work here.
I've really been enjoying John Martin's 1852 painting, The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. There's something about the smears of red paint in the left corner like everything is melting into this divine apocalypse of bright yellow. I also love the composition, the way your eye rolls to the back of the painting like a retreating wave. Absolutely beautiful.
I'm not super familiar with Anish Kapoor's work (an artist whose name I hear a lot but whose work I don't really keep up with). Recently, I saw some images he's been posting of his more organic red pieces at the Lisson Gallery. These biomorphic sculptures are so rich and visceral, the way that they just hang on the wall like packs of meat. The sculpture pictured above is called Internal Objects.
LICK
Recently, I watched Adrian Piper's poetic street performance piece from 1973 titled Mythic Being. In it, Piper dresses in drag (her male alter ego) and walks down the street repeating a mantra she derived from her journals. It's great to watch her walk, muttering the mantra over and over again, and seeing the other pedestrians start to follow her as she's being filmed, crowding up trying to figure out what is happening.
I recently had to watch Barbarella (1968) for one of my classes. The movie is a campy, science fiction spectacle starring Jane Fonda, an astronaut who's searching for a missing inventor. Along the way, she encounters (and seduces) many men (including a blind angel), gets caught up in a planet's political revolution, and almost experiences death by orgasmatron (no, really). The movie is wild and silly at times, but it's not complete sci-fi garbage. Fonda's character knows pleasure and peacemaking, and there's a lot to study in the film's portrayal of female sexuality, the male gaze, and American conservative views of reproduction/sex. I'd recommend watching the movie in conjunction with Lisa Park's essay of Fonda's character. Parks considers how the socio-political climate of the time influenced the film, like the Cold War's Space Race and NASA's refusal to hire female astronauts, offering a more feminist interpretation.
One particular online publication I've been enjoying lately has been Funhouse. Their website has beautiful vibrant colors and clean, crisp design, which makes it very satisfying to scroll through. I don't have any of their print issues, but they've curated some very beautiful pieces of writing centering around the body. Check them out if you're looking for something new to read.
Lastly, I came across the British Library's Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts, their complete online database for images of their medieval and Renaissance manuscript collection. Search whatever you like, and have fun scrolling through different kinds of illustrations.
LISTEN
Criminal is one of my favorite true crime podcasts out there. If you haven't listened to it before, Criminal explores different 'crime' stories and episodes have ranged from assassinations, Native American artifact thefts, and the history of the Milk Carton Kids. Their newest episode takes a look at the highly specialized field of forensic botany, and the role it can play in the future of crime-solving as these botanists test and examine remains of plant tissue in the human stomach.
If you're a fan of all things tech-related, give Reply All a listen if you haven't already. This show goes into all things strange side of the Internet. Their two-part episode series, called Skip Tracer, follows a world-famous bounty hunter's search for a particularly elusive criminal. Don't want to give too much away, but it's definitely an adventure. Listen to it here.
A band I've been listening to a lot recently is Blue Hawaii. They've got a great mix of sweet synths, groovy pop, and throbbing electronic beats. Perfect for dancing around your room. This is the kind of music that sounds like spring even as winter approaches. Check out their EP, Tenderness, here.
I found Rina Sawayama on Instagram about a year ago. After years of releasing singles on her Soundcloud, she finally released her debut EP and it's met (more like exceeded) expectations. Her sound is reminiscent of early 2000s pop, with a cyberpunk flare, as she sings about the isolation of the Internet and finding yourself in the digital age. Give it a listen.
CLICK
I first listened to The Manhattan Project by Spencer Reece on the Poetry Foundation's Poem of the Day podcast. The original prose text is absolutely stunning. Reece is quickly becoming one of my favorite poets with his visceral poetic language that cuts right through you. Consider also reading Chrysanthemum for another sucker punch to the gut.
Another poetic prose piece that's been on my mind is Anne Carson's Fate, Federal Court, Moon. The piece follows Faisal bin Ali Jaber, whose family was accidentally killed by a US drone strike, and his awaiting judgment from the Federal Court of Appeals as he seeks some kind of apology. Carson reflects on this silence, a void left hanging open.
This is not a particularly new piece of journalism, but I recently revisited Matthew Cole's article, The Crimes of Seal Team 6, after he was interviewed by Longform. This is a great example of deep, relentless investigative reporting. Cole looks at the darker, violent culture and patterns of revenge killings that emerged within the 'heroic' group as they continued to fight in Afghanistan. Cole does a great job of going from story to story, showing how the leadership has been actively covering up so much of this behavior. An important piece to read even if military/foreign policy isn't your thing.
One particular poem I read this week was Franz Wright's The Raising of Lazarus. The piece is derived from one of Rilke's notebook fragments. Such a beautiful work. From the opening line, your breath is taken away: "Evidently this was needed. Because people need to be screamed at with proof."
Keeping with the prose-poem trend here, I'd also recommend Reina Maria Rodriguez's poem, first time. The piece describes her experience at a North American grocery store, and the complicated emotions of awe and self-awareness she wrestles with in this new space.
There's also this great essay by Kathryn Nuernberger from The Paris Review. Called The Invention of Witches, the piece traces the history of witchcraft, from its earliest associations with butterflies, the way witches have operated on the outskirts of our society, and the way we form (or others form) our identities without ever being truly understood: "I know it is an absurd exaggeration, but there are days when I feel like the rag woman with cobwebs in my hair, muttering a shuffle at the edge of town. I’m the kind of witch that means well, but I know when someone is so invented—and let’s admit it, “invented” just means “off”—when someone is so off, it’s hard for someone else to say whether they mean well or not and even if they do mean well, whether they are capable of doing well with all that meaning."
Stephanie Chou's short story, Keep Away from Things That Can Catch Fire, took me on an emotional rollercoaster. This piece is about motherhood, loss, grief, and searching for healing: "You use your elbows and push your way through the mass of people whose names you don’t know. You are mercurial. You need your hands full. You want them so full you can’t hold onto anything else. You believe in Beth’s theory of nought universes. You believebelievebelieve. You reach the apartment’s doors and heave the glass doors open." Read if you are seeking the smell of smoke and a tender, painful kind of heaviness. // It's getting colder here in the city, and I'm becoming too-aware of my body again. I'm becoming aware of easily my fingers can go numb, the strange smell of sweat I secrete from sitting in the same sweater for too long, the way I shake when I wake up in the morning, the way my toes sink into the edges of my boots and my knees stiffening like concrete when a bitter wind blows through.
That being said, it's been a good week, more good news and pieces falling into place than I had originally expected. It's important to remember that even when your body feels strange, something of a discomfort (winter has a way of doing of that), it's still your body, it is the fleshy space you occupy. Keep warm, do what brings you sweetness, rest your self, and don't forget that even when winter creeps into your bones, a warm cup of coffee can make all the difference.
Until next time,
Ellie