Love This Post: (k)NO(w)SE in a Book
Great piece on the power of narrative in cultivating community and Self, by my good sister friend.
Whoa it’s been awhile
I haven’t posted since my digital art class finished and I wasn’t required to anymore. That’s not to say I haven’t been out and about in the blogosphere, but here in this transitional summer (between my fake graduation and my fifth-year scholarship) knowing when and what to write has been a complex, emotional, and usually private matter. Perhaps venting to the entire world, whether or not anyone reads this, will help to put it all out on the table.
1. I have been continually freaking out about the fact that I am supposed to do an Honors Thesis this year. But then while skimming across an encyclopedia of all things pregnancy for no reason (weird, I know) and reflecting on a recent visit to Binghamton I made with my dad, where we drove by the house my mom went through 2.5 out of the 3 days of laboring me, I realized I want to research home birthing, the midwife community and where America’s at when it comes to birth and medicine. I’m starting to worry that we’re getting it skewed. As many as 1 in 3 (my dad is my source here, I have to go look it up obviously) pregnancies end in Ceasarians these days, which to me, honestly, is just alien. I know its necessary sometimes and probably saves a lot of lives, but there’s no way that 33% of women need to get cut open to have a baby. I also was thinking about being very young in the mid 1990s in Albnay and there basically being a witch-hunt against midwives that destroyed a lot of wonderful women’s livelihoods and gave a whole community of parents a bad rap for preferring home birthing methods. Things have changed, as they always do, but the public’s understanding of birth and labor and the midwife is still based on a health system that, while undergoing major changes, has been built on white men’s…er…rubber gloves.
2. My lovely boyfriend went to Indonesia and I was/am extremely excited for him, what with him living in the jungle and going scuba diving. Unfortunately, the only thing I was even slightly worried about was his sensitive skin, and sure enough he is coming home early with an itchy neck and an ear infection (hence, no more scuba diving). I know 4 weeks is still awesome, I just really hope he doesn’t only remember the “getting sick” part and end up resenting such a unique experience in a place I am far from ever being able to visit. Lucky kid. I hope he knows it ;).
3. I’ve started to notice then when I get stressed/angry, I clean vigorously. It sounds kind of fucked up but at least its productive. Yeah roomies, I cleaned the kitchen today. Even the stovetop. You’re welcome 🙂
4. I “don’t smoke cigarettes” but I made some exceptions for special events this summer, mostly Camp Bisco which was AWESOME. Un/fortunately, someone there gave me a pack of “dirty hippy” Pall Malls and I feel obligated to finish them before I stop officially. Maybe its OCD. Mostly I just felt the need to live up to the “dirty hippy” label I eagerly accepted for a free pack. Don’t judge.
5. Camp Bisco. Yessss. My favorites shows were all the shows I saw. Tops? Bassnectar, Mimosa, Big Gigantic, Beats Antique.
6. All my dreams have been ridiculous. Not always in subject matter so much as DETAILED conversations with characters as specific as: a bike gang in San Francisco who spoke in Nordic verse and had Viking names; a little girl who accidentally walked in on me trying to pee in a public restroom and laughing at all the layers of clothes I had to arrange post-urination; my car, which in waking life is on its last legs and in my San Fran dream was a FOLD-UP collapsible fully functioning auto. It was awesome until I had to run from armed terrorists lugging it up and down SF hills. Speaking of dreams, SEE INCEPTION. ‘Nuff said.
Re-Play: Selections Collage
Canvas for the Day
This is an animation of what was once our “selections: collage” project. I marked the hours of the day by the presence or absence of these items that I use intermittently throughout my day. The installation was projected on an upside down canvas bag. My experience of time does not fit regular conscious intervals of minutes or hours so much as my activities and material existence in each moment.
Hypermedia: Virtual Parody
Check out my parody of the website for the popular women’s brand Victoria’s Secret:
http://www.rochester.edu/College/AAH/projects/sa151/jballera/Parody/victorssecret.html
Made with Adobe Photoshop and Dreamweaver
net.art Part Deux: Gender 5
Porn
series of 25 two sided printed posters, 29,1 x 42 cm each
2004-2005
From Anetta Mona Chisa & Lucia Tkacova ( http://www.chitka.info/)
The series of posters imitate popular set ups and atmospheres of pornography but are missing the “scopophilic” element. I had to look this up, but scopophilia basically refers to the predominantly male gaze that dominates Hollywood films and, in this case, pornographic media. Here, the men are missing, and so is lesbian sex (a porn theme that seems feminist but is often concluded in male pleasure). Rather, heterosexual positions (where you might expect a penis) are acted out by fully dressed females. The eroticism of the set-up remains with out any of the male-stimulating penetration or even fetishist nudity.
“The photoseries entitled "Porn" play with the functional edges of pornographic image by simulating the architecture and typical atmosphere of porn pictures. It represents an interweaving of erotic pleasure with porn material and undermines the scopophilic nature of the image and its mechanisms of seduction. "
net.art Part Deux: Gender 4 (and my favorite)
Go to http://www.genderartnet.eu/emerge/#info to view an interactive map of artists, projects and networks in contemporary Europe; they are treating subjects that range from migrations, passion, and sexuality to identity, maternity, and “queerness”. The map forms images something like this:
You can click on small dots (or other symbols for projects and networks) to see an artist’s description and link to their work.
“GenderArtNet is an experimental mapping project exploring the interrelation of gender, ethnicity, race, class and sexualities in contemporary Europe…By organising this information in a map, we work to provide contexts, connections, and relations between artists, artworks and networks and between geopolitics and artistic practice. Our starting point is a relational understanding of feminism as a critical, multilayered practice that considers the interrelatedness of various forms of social, political and cultural hierarchies and exclusions along the lines of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, bodily ability, race, class and geopolitical location.” ~GenderArtNet Team
net.art Part Deux: Gender 3
From “Linux Virgin” by Klara Hobza (aka Mistress Koyo and Karla Grundick).
Launched in 2005, this project was a mockery of modern-day porn. The “erotic and informative” episodes featured a linux groupie schoolgirl who wants to learn how to build a linux-running computer. She is taught, sexily, by cyper punk and linux expert Mistress Koyo.
http://www.rhizome.org/art/exhibition/cyborg/work-linux.html
Found in a collection by Marina Gržini. (http://www.rhizome.org/art/exhibition/cyborg/index.html)
net.art Part Deux: Gender 2
(Sign reads: “The Birth of Feminism”) Excerpt from !Women Art Revolution, a film by Lynn Hershman Leeson, Sarah Peter, Kyle Stephan, and others. See the trailer and clips at http://womenartrevolution.com/index.php.
There is also a Youtube Channel (called !War) completely dedicated to this project (http://www.youtube.com/user/WomenArtRevolution)
“For over forty years, Director Lynn Hershman Leeson has collected hundreds of hours of interviews with visionary artists, historians, curators and critics who shaped the beliefs and values of the Feminist Art Movement and reveal previously undocumented strategies used to politicize female artists and integrate women into art structures...”
The film covers all types of artists and has a major online presence. It will be completed for viewing in Fall 2010.
Leeson herself is an award-winning interactive media artist and the Chair of the Film Department at the San Francisco Art Institute and Emeritus Professor at the University of California.
net.art Part Deux: Gender 1
-A lipsticked cyborg “part human, part machine” from Lynn Hershman Leeson’s “Tillie, the Telerobotic Doll”; lynnhershman.com/tillie
This cyborg is sexily pinkified with some shiny lipstick. Leeson’s “dolls” have eyes that are cameras through which you can navigate their inner world. Most of Tillie’s cache is images of women (or their reflections), in glamorous eye and lip make up, labeled as cyborgs who “eat what they see and become what they eat”.
Hypermedia: Virtual Self-Portrait
http://www.rochester.edu/College/AAH/projects/sa151/jballera/mysolarsystem.html
After our class critique, I made some minor changes and added extra links. Repeated links were also substituted for new, still-relevant ones. Instead of including image maps on my own page, and connecting them via anchor, I decided that they would be more fluid with the rest of the website by presenting them as separate browser windows. I also embedded a music video rather than linking to it, sharpened up my rollovers, and streamlined my effects/behaviors within image maps so that they were smoother. Additional instructions were added to my About page. Check it out!
Nylassej 