#Hudson Valley Exposition

[staghunters]

hey hey! 2, 8, 12, 14

hoi hoi!

2. Oldest book you own (as in the one you received earliest in your life)

This one!

I got it from my grandpa one pakjesavond (sinterklaas/the dutch boxing day) when I must've been around 8 years old? I can recommend it, though it is very much a children's book in that there is a lot of exposition that feels overdone at times. Still, it's got "fairy tales are real but a bit fucked up in this world", fairies with double agenda's, sibling love, a shapeshifter who's definitely queer in some way shape or form!!, and the main character is basically like an Indiana Jones but for fairy tale artefacts (hijinks included) on the background is this large-scale political conflict that makes it all very witcher-y.

You might know this author from Inkheart, btw! This one has also been translated into english.

8. Best cover

A tie between these two!

I got them both last year on my bday credit at the store and haven't read either of them, but they look very nice. The Bale one is a hardcover that has gold details, but just the whole composition of it all is perfect.

12. Weirdest book you own

Definitely "The making of The African Queen, or, How I went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall, and Huston and almost lost my mind" by Katherine Hepburn.

I couldn't get it anywhere physically except as an second-hand library edition from the states (shoutout to Boston Baptist College Library!) but read it beforehand on internet archive because you can borrow it there for free! It's just a personal account of making a movie, but Katherine Hepburn is hilarious. It really reads like you're sitting with her and she has to vent about this stupid flick she did but wowza. Please let the following passage convince you to check it out. The full thing is only 150~ pages long.

14. A book you love but wouldn’t really recommend to others

HEX by Thomas Olde Heuvelt! (I don't have the cover below but really like it so ordered it at work just now asjdkfhlsd)

It was review bombed big time on Goodreads. On some points I could see the validity, but there's something really cool going on in here but that either doesn't translate well cross-culture, or is in general a bit ambiguous. The climax and ending is WILD. Not in a way of "wow some crazy fucked up shit happens here", which it kinda does, but I'm talking fucked up like a Hieronymus Bosch painting, and not like SAW.

I believe Olde Heuvelt did change some things to make it more understandable for american audiences, while sticking close to what he meant in the dutch version. Putting the town in the Hudson Valley as opposed to somewhere near Nijmegen makes sense, but still doesn't cover the typical "dutch small town" feeling from the original, particularly because of how densely populated my country is, making the whole curse that confines you to your super small old town forever till you die thing a lot more frustrating when everything modern and big is within a half hour drive.

Anyways, if you'd still want a rec: A town (name might vary but it's called Black Spring in the american edition) is haunted by the figure of a 17th century witch. the gist of her curse is that anyone who stays in the town for too long or is born there will have to stay till they die, only being able to leave for short amounts of time. Over the years there's been a sort of witch-watch task-force that keeps track of the witch's movements (she otherwise doesn't really do anything). All goes well until some teen boys want to fuck around for a nice video to post online.

Bookish Asks

[maryannmccarra-fitzpatrick]

An important message from Deb Milone of the Hudson Valley Gateway Chamber of Commerce.

[slutty-sweater-vest]

I want to talk about That Trailer as an actual American who is absolutely ENAMORED with BBC Ghosts and sort of got into this fandom because of Rose McIver (a long story, but those that have known me for a long time understand this), and has been voraciously consuming anything Six Idiots for the past two months since watching Ghosts. I’m not a fan of the trailer. I’m really not. It’s a little rough and over-exposition-y, and I think everyone is a little too OTT with their acting, but I’m willing to watch past the pilot and see if it gets over its growing pains. I follow Danielle on instagram and Tiktok, and she’s just great. I’ve been following Rose since 2015. Considering MOST of these people are not extremely well known, I’m hoping they’re going for a cast that’s compatible and can forge the sort of rapport The Six have.   I’ve seen a lot of weird comments like, “Why aren’t there cowboys/California Gold Rush? Why are there Vikings? Why isn’t the Julian guy a politician? Hey, is anyone thinking of Hamilton with that Hamilton-looking guy?”  1. The US is EXTREMELY. BIG. Cowboys and California are very, very far away from New York, which is where they’ve setting the house. New York and California are 3,000 miles away from each other. It takes multiple days to drive to California from the east coast, and that’s WITH the interstate system. You didn’t just bounce around between California or Oklahoma and New York like that. 2. Vikings came and discovered the US around 1000. They didn’t stay, but they did poke around a little bit. It’s very possible that a Viking dude could have died in New York. It’s a little far south for the Vikings, but it’s close enough to make it work for Plot Reasons. New York is a big state.  3. A finance-y, dot-com Wolf of Wall Street bro just makes a lot more sense in an American adaptation. I know Bill Clinton’s scandal was in the 90s, but American politicians were very, very good at hiding their vices back then. We’re just now discovering the things they did 25-30 years later. American tabloids weren’t nearly as mean or vicious as British tabloids at the time, either. 4. That “Hamilton” outfit is a copy of one of George Washington’s uniforms. A Revolutionary War militia man would probably NOT be wearing a uniform (It’s a Thing), but putting Isaac in a costume like this shows, “Oh, hey, he definitely fought in the Revolutionary War,” and fully identifies him as The Military Guy.  Also, the Bill of Rights is the reason why Isaac HAS to be from the Revolution. We literally have a law about soldiers occupying houses.  I’m assuming that since they’re putting Woodstone Estate in New York, it’s probably supposed to be somewhere in the mid-Hudson Valley, which makes it about an hour and a half by train to NYC. It makes a lot of sense to put the ghosts there. My parents raised me mainly on British sitcoms, so the vast majority of what makes me laugh is NOT American sitcom-y stuff. I’m going in with an open mind, and I may end up liking it! We shall SEE. 

[arlingtonpark]

Kirsten Gillibrand Explained

Gillibrand, Senator from New York, is another top tier candidate.

Originally an attorney, Gillibrand chose to enter politics after befriending then First Lady Hillary Clinton during the latter’s 2000 New York Senate campaign. She was elected to the House in 2006 and was appointed to replace Clinton in the Senate after she resigned her seat to become Secretary of State.

No exposition on Gillibrand can be made without mentioning feminism. Gillibrand has shifted her stance on a number of issues throughout her career, but one area she has remained consistent on is woman’s rights. Years before the #metoo movement came along, Gillibrand was fighting for sexual assault reform.

In 2012, Gillibrand saw a documentary about sexual assault in the military, The Invisible War. Outraged and deeply moved, reforming military sexual assault policies has become her signature issue and as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee she was well positioned for this.

When fellow Democratic Senator Al Franken of Minnesota was outed as an assaulter, she was the first Member of Congress to call for his resignation. Shortly after, she went a step further: in an interview, she said that Bill Clinton should have resigned as President after the Monica Lewinsky scandal came to light.

This did not earn her much love from Clintonworld.

Gillibrand was a protégé of Hillary, now she’s repudiated her husband’s record. This was unthinkable at the time, but it shows how much the Democrats have moved on from the Clintons, who’ve dominated the party for decades.

Gillibrand has written a bill to reform military sexual assault policy, the Military Justice Improvement Act. The military has its own court system and this bill would reform military court procedure to make it more like a civilian court. It got 55/100 votes in the Senate, but to pass it needed 60 votes, as virtually all legislation does in the modern Senate.

(thefilibusterisn’tabadthingdon’t@me)

The vote was largely on party lines; Republicans generally opposed it and Democrats generally supported it. There were notable exceptions though. McConnell voted for it, as did whack job Senator Rand Paul. Even the Zodiac Killer voted for it!

This record positions her well to be a foil to Trump. The sexual assault crusader against the pussy grabbing President. To say nothing of her origins in Clintonworld.

Gillibrand will likely go in hard on the #metoo movement and the women’s march. (except, you know, minus the antisemitism) Since Trump’s election, a major force in Democratic party politics have been suburban mothers and Gillibrand will be keen to harness the power of their activism. Her platform emphasizes women’s issues.

A focal point of Gillibrand’s campaign will be the FAMILY Act, a bill she has co-written with Representative Rosa DeLauro. This bill would give all workers (even part-timers and the self-employed) paid family leave from their work; 66% of their usual income for up to 12 weeks. This will be paid for with a payroll tax of 1 penny out of every $5 in wages.

Another important plank in her campaign will be addressing maternal death. Women die in childbirth in the US at unusually high rates compared to other first world countries. Reducing this death rate will be a big point of emphasis for Gillibrand.

Gillibrand’s biggest issue will be her “authenticity.” *barf*

Gillibrand represented the rural Hudson River Valley area in the House. It was a right leaning district and she voted accordingly. She was one of the least liberal Democrats in Congress.

But New York as a whole is much more liberal than the Hudson River Valley, and after becoming a Senator, Gillibrand moved left. Now she is one of the most liberal Democrats in Congress.

The attack ads write themselves.

Now, politicians often times do vote against their personal beliefs if it means voting for what their constituents want, and yeah, it’s because they don’t want to lose reelection.

Buuuut, this isn’t a bad thing.

The United States is a democracy and being a representative is a job. There’s nothing wrong with a representative voting their district instead of voting themselves. In any event, the fact remains that politicians almost always try to make good on what they championed during their campaigns.

It just goes to show you that people don’t really understand how the system works. Congresspeople are elected to represent their constituents. What they personally think isn’t really relevant.

Gillibrand can be trusted to support what she campaigns on during the primary.

I assure you, they all can.

[brokehorrorfan]

Blu-ray Review: Strait-Jacket / Berserk

1962's What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? inadvertently created the psycho-biddy subgenre (also known as hagsploitation or grande dame guignol), in which once-glamorous women - portrayed by aged stars of yesteryear - become mentally unstable characters. Mill Creek Entertainment's Psycho Biddy Blu-ray double feature pairs together two of Joan Crawford's post-Baby Jane efforts: 1964’s Strait-Jacket and 1967’s Berserk.

Strait-Jacket is a horror-thriller directed by master showman William Castle (House on Haunted Hill, 13 Ghosts). Known more for his extravagant gimmicks than his filmmaking prowess, Castle's schtick on Strait-Jacket was Crawford herself. The film aimed to cash in on the success of Baby Jane, along with the lasting impact of Psycho. Castle had already made a Psycho rip-off in 1961 with Homicidal, but for Strait-Jacket he was able to convince Psycho writer Robert Bloch to pen the screenplay.

Crawford stars as Lucy Harbin, who catches her husband (film debut of Lee Majors, The Six Million Dollar Man) cheating with another woman and snaps, killing them both with an axe. After 20 years in a mental institution, Lucy is released and reunited with her daughter, Carol (Diane Baker, Marnie), who witnessed the murder.

Lucy moves in with Carol, now an adult and living with her uncle (Leif Erickson, Invaders from Mars) and aunt (Rochelle Hudson, Rebel Without a Cause). Despite her best efforts, Lucy struggles with her reentry to society. The odd behavior she exhibits leads her loved ones to question whether she has actually been rehabilitated. A young George Kennedy (Creepshow 2) plays an ill-fated farmhand.

It's interesting, given the Bloch connection, that Strait-Jacket's plot echoes that of Psycho II, which wouldn't arrive for another two decades. With gaslighting serving as a major plot point, the film (sadly) remains socially relevant. Strait-Jacket received a solo Blu-ray edition earlier this year from Scream Factory, which boasts several new and old special features, but Mill Creek's bare-bones release is more budget friendly and includes a second film.

Berserk (also known as Circus of Blood) is directed by Jim O'Connolly (The Valley of Gwangi) and written by Herman Cohen and Aben Kandel (I Was A Teenage Werewolf). It aims to be a thriller, but the thrills are few and far between. Crawford, in her penultimate big screen appearance, stars as Monica Rivers, the ringmistress of the struggling Great Rivers Circus.

They say the show must go on, and so it does after a high-wire act gone wrong results in the death of a tightrope walker. The resultant publicity reinvigorates the show as it travels across England, packing in audiences hoping for a glimpse at another accident. Frank Hawkins (Ty Hardin, Bronco), a magnificent tightrope walker with a shady past, is conveniently there to fill the high-wire void. His death-defying act finds him blindfolded 60 feet in the air above a bed of steel blades.

After another death in the circus, it becomes apparent that a killer is on the loose, albeit with a low body count. Rivers and Hawkins are at the center of the controversy, along with the circus co-owner (Michael Gough, Batman), Rivers' daughter (Judy Geeson, 31), a Scotland Yard detective (Robert Hardy, Harry Potter), the commissioner (Geoffrey Keen, Moonraker), and various circus performers.

O'Connolly uses real circus footage for all its worth. Despite the sizable supporting cast (of largely unknown actors), you rarely see any of their acts; instead, production value is supplanted by trained lions, elephants, horses, and dogs. With a lone slasher-esque death sequence, the film is drawn out by an abundance of exposition. It feels much longer than the 96-minute runtime; it's in dire need of trim of both dialogue and circus footage. It culminates with a half-baked reveal amidst a rushed ending.

Strait-Jacket is far superior to Berserk (and both pale in comparison to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?), and Berserk doesn't embody the psycho-biddy tropes as well, but they make for an interesting double feature. In addition to the Crawford connection, both films share a contentious mother-daughter relationship; something with which the actress was infamously familiar off-camera.

Strait-Jacket / Berserk is on Blu-ray now via Mill Creek Entertainment.

[banjooxygen68-blog]

The Many Conflicting Identities of the Statue of Liberty

Courtesy of David Saddler/Flickr.

by Francesca Lidia Viano | November 5, 2018

The Statue of Liberty’s creator, the Alsatian artist Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, grew up in a world apart from the “huddled masses” who arrived in the New World, sailing toward her beacon. Born in 1834, into a rich and prestigious family in Colmar in northeastern France, his ancestors were doctors, pharmacists and bureaucrats who never felt the need to leave their homeland in search of opportunity. And yet he managed to capture something ineffable about the America he visited in 1871, which—along with its placement—has made his statue an enduring symbol.

In the years since, Bartholdi’s statue has come to mean many things to the millions of people she has welcomed to America. For some, she is a tender mother protecting the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free”; for others, she is the guardian of the nation’s ideals—liberty and democracy—against foreign threats. For Bartholdi, too, the statue captured a variety of meanings, like the dignity and rectitude he discovered in cities such as New York, Boston, and Philadelphia alongside the wildness he relished elsewhere in the young nation.

When Bartholdi arrived at New York Harbor on June 21, 1871, he was on a quest to meet potential clients (as he put it, rich “connoisseurs”) to buy his art. His friend and patron, the liberal author Édouard de Laboulaye, admired the United States, and had suggested Bartholdi could bolster his reputation there by building a monument to celebrate Franco-American friendship during the War of Independence.

Bartholdi had an idea of what his statue would look like—her basic design was a holdover from an earlier idea he’d had for Egypt—but he needed to refine his vision, find a location, and get financial backing to get it built. To accomplish these things, he would stay in America for more than three months, traveling from Boston to San Francisco.

Bartholdi’s distinct sensibility owed much to his mother, Charlotte, who had been widowed when he was only two. Beautiful and strict, Charlotte was a skilled manager of the family’s connections and properties who made her boys learn English and music, toured with them to London and the Pyrenees, read them Cicero and Goethe, and enrolled them in the atelier of Ary Scheffer in Paris, where they learned to paint and sculpt. Scheffer, a republican, introduced Bartholdi to his political friends, but Bartholdi was no activist: He cultivated friends and clients among republican activists, monarchical nostalgics, and the powerful Napoleonic elites of the Second Empire.

As an adult, Bartholdi still often lived with (and always for) his possessive mother. When he needed a break from her, he journeyed abroad. Between 1854 and 1867, he visited Egypt twice, and travelled through Bavaria, Corsica, Florence, Naples, Rome, and Venice. Dressed in a white turban and a loose tunic, he sailed the Nile and unwrapped mummies in the desert. He mulled building a colossal statue, brandishing a torch, at the Red Sea entrance of the newly dug Suez Canal. His design looked like a female fellah, or Egyptian peasant, and was intended as an anthropomorphic lighthouse celebrating French and Egyptian gifts of civilization to the East.

By 1869, it had become clear that financing a statue in Egypt was going to be impossible, so Bartholdi decided to try to build his colossus in the United States. Charlotte objected to the idea, skeptical that, as her son put it, “the same principles” could be applicable to “two hemispheres.” The leap from the Nile to the Hudson seems unlikely, but many 19th-century European observers considered America an exotic place, notable for its “dirt, untidiness, and noise” and also for the “Oriental” look of its “multitude of flat roofs, topped by a thousand chimneys.” By 1871, Bartholdi was already drawing on such ideas to show that Egyptian monuments could, indeed, be made to suit the United States.

On board the S/S Pereire, Bartholdi approached New York with an anticipation that he had rarely felt before: ferries crossed the harbor like “colossal flies” and yachts glided “over the surface of the water … like marchionesses with their long trains.” Bartholdi grabbed his notebook and sketched a version of his statue as a sort of Venus springing from the water—a strange Venus, indeed, with her arm stretched high like a colossal mast and her tunic pulled by the wind like a sail. Later to his mother, he described Bedloe’s Island, today known as Liberty Island, in deeply religious terms. It was, he said, the virtual point of convergence of the East and Hudson Rivers, dividing New York into three parts (Manhattan, New Jersey, and Brooklyn) as if “to explain the mystery of Trinity.” He marked Bedloe’s Island with a bright red spot on his map.

Ashore, the heat was intolerable, the city almost deserted. The few businessmen Bartholdi met there gave him the cold shoulder because, as he put it, they had “little enthusiasm for anything but themselves and the almighty dollar.” His meetings in the region were disappointing, sometimes even embarrassing. New York intellectuals bored him.

Bartholdi eventually visited Long Branch, New Jersey, and the summer home of President Ulysses S. Grant. In Long Branch, Bartholdi found himself in the middle of a beach crowded with swimmers, where he was the only one wearing a French swimsuit that, he realized too late, was “too skimpy” for the occasion. Later, when the toy importer Richard Butler invited Bartholdi to his New York mansion, he held forth about “religion, high principle, and so on” for hours on end, never offering the artist anything to eat. To his mother, Bartholdi wrote that the United States reminded him of “the principles you inculcated in me”—that is, moral austerity.

That was truer in some cities than in others. Bartholdi arrived in Boston on Sunday, June 29, on a brand-new Pullman train car, to the city deserted—“not a sound to be heard, not a person to be seen.” Seemingly, the living had all gone to church. Soon, Bartholdi visited the nearby city of Plymouth, where the sculptor Charles Hammatt Billings was gathering funds to build a monument commemorating the Pilgrims, the National Monument to the Forefathers: a gigantic, elegant woman, dressed in classical attire, holding the Bible with her left hand and pointing to the sky with her right. Bartholdi did not mention this visit to his mother, perhaps because he was too proud to admit that someone else had a plan so similar to his own. In any case, Bartholdi may have borrowed from the Plymouth project, which was completed in 1889, to transform his Egyptian fellah into a book-carrying Puritan icon.

Increasingly, however, Bartholdi began to appreciate a wilder side of the country. Venturing from Niagara Falls to the Great Lakes, he arrived in Chicago, where he saw “a combination of movement” that he had not yet seen in America, “maritime, terrestrial, pedestrian, and, I could say, subterranean.” Next, he travelled to Omaha, where he saw a woman undress and remove her “mountains of fake hair” behind only a gauzy curtain. He saw an untamed landscape “plunge into valleys and gorges” in the Rocky Mountains—“diabolical, something out of a fairy tale.” In San Francisco, he marveled at the sight of Asian prostitutes waiting under dim lanterns. From his diaries and letters, it is clear that these picaresque aspects of America dramatically impressed him. He was taken with the boldness of the American character and landscape, and its brazen search for the new.

Statue of Liberty Arm, 1876, Phildadelphis Centennial Exposition. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

America, Bartholdi once observed during his travels, was “an adorable lady chewing tobacco,” a beautiful woman with poor manners or, perhaps, a pretty lass made more charming by her coarse behavior. He commented, with admiration, that the citizens of the United States were the “ultimate oseurs”—daring people, always defying common sense in the pursuit of innovation. “Sometimes they get it wrong, like all those who look for something, but among the infinite numbers of their efforts, there are always some that honor the spirit of invention.”

Bartholdi, too, was an oseur. His statue—colossal and metallic like the American technological inventions he so admired, looking like a ship sailing toward Europe, copper-red like the Rocky Mountains, carrying the revolutionary Declaration of Independence rather than the Bible—was hardly “proper.” Yes, she managed to convey the rigor and puritanism of the sculptor’s contacts in Boston and New York, those upright churchgoers who reminded him of his strict mother. For them (and for Charlotte), Bartholdi gave his statue the posture, draped tunic, and thorny crown of the early Renaissance saints or Christs he had learned to paint and sculpt in Scheffer’s atelier.

But then Bartholdi added a ruder twist to the statue’s pious look. Rather than making her appearance graceful, like that of the pure and devout figure standing at the center of Billing’s Monument to the Forefathers, Bartholdi sculpted a frown on his statue’s face, emphasized her masculine features, and wrapped her in a red copper mantle (long since weathered to green), which was meant to evoke the “devilish” landscapes that seduced Bartholdi in the West. The statue is, indeed, Eastern and Western, feminine and masculine, pious and devilish, adorable and rough, motherly yet ready for war. She may be promising vengeance in the name of the downtrodden, or she could be a sentinel holding the line.

But who knows? Perhaps, jaws tense and face straight, she may just be chewing tobacco.

Source: http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2018/11/05/many-conflicting-identities-statue-liberty/ideas/essay/

[quailhogs]

27 Messages

Tribus, New York, 2049.

The Village of Tribus was constructed on the ruins of the fairgrounds originally intended for the 1887 Hudson Valley Exposition; a World’s Fair in Upstate New York.  The exposition had been cancelled because one of the major investors had disappeared from society, likely to escape being charged for murdering a bunch of people (but we have already heard that story numerous times.)

Because it was intended more as a tourist attraction than a village, Tribus had only one access road, which cut through the center park and ended at the estate of Phillip’s father.  Transit was closed for maintenance, and the cost for being driven 1,000 feet uphill was surprisingly expensive.  Phillip was expected by his father to arrive in Tribus by 4:00 am; however, his father was not answering his phone.  In short, Phillip needed to walk all the way across Tribus, uphill, with the added inconvenience of possibly being shot at again.

Exhausted and furious from climbing Tribus’ endless array of stairs, Phillip was ready to eviscerate his father by the time he reached the front door of the estate.  He rang the doorbell impatiently, about thirty-three times, before being greeted by nobody.  Phillip sat there for five minutes before realizing that his father left the door unlocked.  This was a surprise.  Phillip could never fathom his father not locking a door, especially if the old man had numerous assailants trying to kill him on a regular basis.

As soon as Phillip stepped through the door, he could sense his phone vibrating in his coat pocket.  He made his way toward the stairs and examined the screen.  “Twenty-six unread messages.  Oh boy...”

Unread Message 1: May 29, 2049, 7:32 pm.  Dad: “Son, answer your fucking phone!  I called you 11 times and you are not available. Respond to this text immediately.”

Unread Message 2: May 29, 2049, 9:30 pm.  Dad: “Does it really take you two hours to jerk off?  Answer your phone!  I have sensitive information that I do not wish to text you.  Just call me whenever possible.”

Unread Message 3: June 2, 2049, 1:47 pm.  Unknown Caller: “ᦓᝥ♺ℱഞζᶮ”

Unread Message 4: June 2, 2049, 1:48 pm. Unknown Caller: “ᲯᏉؘ‹၁̄ͨKillᣱᲑҍúు”

Unread Message 5: June 2, 2049, 1:48 pm.  Unknown Caller: “‹၁̄ͨᣱᲑKill yourҍúు൵fatherଃ⅚╾‗”

Unread Message 6: June 5, 2049, 11:05 am.  Dad: “Listen, you scrawny little shit!!! I’m not going to ask you again!  Call me right goddamn now!  ”

Unread Message 7: June 5, 2049, 11:09 am.  Dad: “Holy shit!  How difficult is it to touch a screen and hit call?  You don’t even need to talk to me.  I just want to know that you are alive!”

Unread Message 8: June 7, 2049, 1:02 pm.  Dad: “Hey shit bird, you said that you were coming here on the 10th?  I hope you purchased your train tickets beforehand.  They are really expensive now.”

Unread Message 9: June 8, 2049, 9:23 am.  Dad: “Son, I hope you are getting my texts.  I have yet to hear a response from you!”

Unread Message 10: June 8, 2049, 5:50 pm.  Unknown Caller: “൵ଃ⅚╾‗⍁ᐧᇭ”

Unread Message 11: June 8, 2049, 5:51 pm.  Unknown Caller: “᧫ᶜ௉ᐬhelloަ”

Unread Message 12: June 9, 2049, 2:02 pm.  Dad: “Okay, if I call you Phillip, will you answer?  The great Phillip Branson!  Grace me with your attention, you ungrateful shit!!!”

Unread Message 13: June 9, 2049, 2:02 pm.  Dad: “Sorry, I meant ‘Phillip BradsᣱᲑ൵ଃ”

Unread Message 14: June 9, 2049, 2:30 pm.  Dad: “Will you fuck a bear?”

Unread Message 15: June 9, 2049, 2:30 pm.  Dad: “Stupid auto-correct.  I can’t believe they still use that dysfunctional shit on these archaic phones.  I meant to ask you if you would “fucking answer?”  But, while we are on the topic, go fuck a bear!”

Unread Message 16: June 10, 2049, 1:03 am.  Unknown Caller: “⌾Smoɯपther himṠᆄᆽᎈ inԣ hisᘳ໪sleep”

Unread Message 17: June 10, 2049, 1:04 am.  Unknown Caller: “Ẑʻᗒя֐KILL HIM”

Unread Message 18: June 10, 2049, 1:05 am.  Unknown Caller: “There is something you mustᣱᲑҍúు൵ଃ”

Unread Message 19: June 10, 2049, 2:01 am.  Dad: “Alright, seriously son, you are 37 years old now and you are still giving me the silent treatment?  Grow the fuck up, kid. I have been confined to my chair for the past week with a migraine, fractured ribs, and blood inexplicably oozing from my eyes and mouth.  Have you ever had your head crushed in, because I imagine this is what it feels like. Meanwhile, you have some petty vendetta against me, which I am unable to comprehend your reasoning behind.  I am out of patience for this shit.  For all we know, I might have a brain tumor, but you don’t care!  You are just a selfish little bitch, refusing to communicate with your only remaining parent. Unlike you, I spoke to my father. I even told him to “go to hell” while he was on his death bed.  Don’t you want that opportunity? “

Unread Message 20: June 10, 2049, 2:02 am.  Dad: “I’m sorry.  I immediately regret sending you that message.  That was horrible௉ᐬަ๲௺ፐ.”

Unread Message 21: June 10, 2049, 3:03 am.  Unknown Caller: “ަ໪I need to Ẑʻᗒя֐ు൵ tell you something໪ᆄ”

Unread Message 22: June 10, 2049, 3:03 am.  Unknown Caller: “ҍúుя֐It’s important”

Unread Message 23: June 10, 2049, 4:01 am.  Dad: “Alright, this is actually important since I know you are going to be here in a few hours.  I will not be home.  My house is evil.  Please meet me at the old Jacobs Residence, located at ๲௺❵ݗ”

Unread Message 24: June 10, 2049, 4:02 am.  Dad: “I’m sorry, the reception in this house is ass.  Once again, I am located at ♺ᣱᲑℱഞζᶮ.”

Unread Message 25: June 10, 2049, 4:03 am.  Dad: “Third time’s a charm… ᣱᲑᣱᲑҍúు”

Unread Message 26: Five minutes ago.  Unknown Caller: “ഞᣱᲑᲑGo๲௺downstairs”

Phillip’s phone went off again.

Unread Message 27: One minute ago.  Unknown Caller: “Go into the basement.”

Phillip put his phone back into his pocket, now even more unsettled than before.  Downstairs?  Into the basement? Phillip did not even know his way around this abomination of a house.  Phillip also did not know who was sending him these messages.  For all he knew, it could be more assassins.

[twelvebyseventyfive]

New York State Wines (1) Introduction, and the Finger Lakes

In August, I travelled to New York State, to take a good look at the wines being made here. Of chief interest were wines from the Finger Lakes and Long Island, the two most significant regions in the state. They’re geographically quite far apart, but they have one thing in common: proximity to water moderates the hot summers and cold winters so it’s possible to grow interesting wine grapes here. In this series of articles, I’ll tell you about the producers I visited, report on my favourite wines, and try to argue why these regions, little heard of outside of the USA, deserve more attention.

Some history

The Eastern United States has a long history of growing grapes for wine. The English made a permanent settlement here in 1607, and by 1609 they had made 20 gallons of wine from grapes found growing in the wild. Vitis vinifera, the Eurasian grape, arrived from Europe in 1619, but repeated early efforts to make wine from these vines were doomed to failure because of the presence of downy and powdery mildew, and, of course, phylloxera. And the wine made from grapes found growing wild wasn’t all that good: they have small bunches with small berries, and the resulting wine is quite low in alcohol and very high in acidity, although it does have good colour.

The first commercial winery in the USA was in Spring Mill in Philadelphia, established in 1786. They made wine from Alexandra, which is what is known as a chance hybrid. The hybrid grapes, resulting from a cross of native varieties with each other, or with Vitis vinifera, produced much more acceptable wines than simply picking wild-grown grapes. To a classic European palate, these wines were a little unusual, but they were to all intents and purposes wine, and there was a market for them. To this day, the various iterations of hybrids, with their disease resistance and cold tolerance, remain important for New York State wine, although since the 1950s some success has been achieved with Vitis vinifera, particularly in the more privileged sites, such as near water bodies where winter lows are moderated.

Riesling, the star of the Finger Lakes

Alexandra was the first hybrid variety to be planted. This was followed by another chance hybrid, Catawba, in 1802. By the late 1850s this variety was responsible for a third of the USA’s wine. Isabella (1816), Delaware (1849) and Concord (1853) were other important hybrids. In the second half of that century, the largest wine-producing states were New York, Ohio, Missouri and New Jersey.

Niagara, a hybrid

So if the Eastern United States – and in particular the Finger Lakes – was such a big deal, what happened to change things? After the repeal of prohibition, all the states had a chance to create their own liquor laws. It turns out that California enacted very liberal and enlightened laws, and they also had a relatively trouble free climate as far as wine was concerned. And, in addition, they also had the marketing genius of the likes of Robert Mondavi who really put the state on the map. So California soared ahead, and New York State was left doing its own thing, quite content to service the local market with no ambitions to change the world.

New York State has five main wine regions. First we have the Finger Lakes and then Long Island, the two regions this series will focus on. Then there is the Hudson River Valley, which covers a large area but which has relatively few vineyards. Lake Eyrie is on the south shore of the eponymous lake, and is a large region of some 30 000 acres of vineyards. But most of these grapes are Concord, used to make grape juice, although there are 23 wineries operating in the region. Then there is the Niagara Escarpment, which is an extension of the Canadian Niagara region, although less developed. The proximity of Lake Ontario provides the climate-moderating effect here. A sixth AVA region is the Champlain Valley, bordering Vermont, but this is really tiny.

  Finger Lakes

The largest wine region in New York State is the Finger Lakes, up-state not far from the Canadian border. To understand the Finger Lakes wine region, you have to understand its history. For most of its life, this wine region has been all about supplying local demand. It has a climate that is challenging for viticulture, but which, in concert with its soils, is capable of producing some really smart wines. But serious, high quality wine hasn’t typically been what the local market has wanted.

Finger Lakes from the Air

Finger Lakes is in New York State. But it’s actually quite a schlep from New York City – it’s closer to Toronto, about a six-hour drive upstate or a similarly long train ride from New York, or more conveniently, a flight from Newark into Rochester, which is how we got there.

The climate here consists of very cold winters, and relatively short summers. But once summer gets going, it can be hot and humid. And there will definitely be some growing season rainfall. The key factor here for viticulture is the presence of the lakes after which the region is named. These provide a moderating effect, stopping it getting too cold in the winter, and then cooling things down in the summer. Then, at the end of the season, they act like radiators helping the vines finish their job of ripening the grapes. The lakes are only 12 000 years old, formed when the last glaciation event. These were fjords of the Ontario lake at one time.

The key viticultural challenges are winter lows, which can kill vines, and then the disease pressure that comes from the humid summers. It was for this reason that the focus here was traditionally on hybrid grape varieties which are cold tolerant and disease resistant. The hybrids are still grown here and currently represent about 35% of the vineyard area.

Three waves of hybrids

A native vine showing the small bunches of small grapes

Hybrids are actually quite interesting, and they can be split into three waves. First, we have the original crosses and the native American varieties. These are the likes of Concord, Catawba, Delaware and Isabella, many of which were chance crossings. Then we have the 2nd generation: the French-American hybrids, produced to combat phylloxera. The roll call of these includes Rougeon, Marechal Foch and Seyval Blanc. Then we have the 3rd generation, produced in the latter part of the 20th century at Universities such as Cornell, Minnesota and Michigan: this would include Cayuga, Vinoles and Traminette. The newer crosses taste less hybridy, and yet still retain cold hardiness and disease resistance.

One important character in the history of Finger Lakes is Philip Wagner, who was a journalist with an interest in winemaking. Wagner moved to London in the 1930s for work, and there discovered reference to the French hybrids, known as hybrids producteurs directes (HPDs). On his return to the USA he found that many were already in vine collections in the USA, and so he began a nursery, and ended up championing their use in the state. These new hybrids made some very nice wines.

After prohibition, four large companies emerged who came to dominate the Finger Lakes, and the wine production of New York State.

The four pioneering companies

The first is Pleasant Valley Wine Company, founded in Hammondsport in 1860. By 1865 they were producing 20 000 bottles of ‘Champagne’, labelled as Great Western Champagne. This won a gold medal at the Vienna Exposition in 1873. In 1961 Pleasant Valley was sold to the second major company, Taylor Wine Company. This was established in 1880 when a cooper, Walter Taylor, moved to Hammondsport and then ended up making wine. Taylor was sold to Coca Cola in 1977. The third was Urbana Wine Company, which was founded in 1865 and traded as Gold Seal Vineyards. By 1870 they were making 120 000 bottles of Champagne and 50 000 bottles of still wine. Notably, Urbana hired Charles Fournier, the young cellar master of Veuve Clicquot, in 1934. Urbana was sold to Segram in 1979. The fourth of these companies was Widmer Wine Cellars, which started in 1888 on Canandaigua Lake.

The emergence of vinifera

It was Dr Konstantin Frank who first really pushed the cause of Vitis vinifera varieties in the Finger Lakes, and his story is a fascinating one. Born in 1899 into a wealthy ethnic German family in Ukraine, Frank became a noted agricultural engineer, eventually earning a PhD. Although his family were on the wrong side in the post-1917 revolution war, they lost their land but remained in their part of Ukraine, where Frank got a job renovating and managing a huge state-owned vineyard. He replanted it with grafted vinifera vines, and famously developed a special plough to earth over the vines for the winter – winter cold was one of the viticultural challenges here. This saved a lot of labour. Then came the second world war, and Frank and his family had to flee the Nazis, then flee the Russians (as an ethnic German things wouldn’t have ended well), and then at the end they managed to find their way to an American-occupied area. Eventually, the family resettled in New York.

As soon as he could earn enough money, Frank headed to Geneva, in the Finger Lakes, where he attempted to get a job more suited to his professional skills. The problem was that although he spoke a number of languages, English wasn’t one of them. Frustratingly for Frank, he could only find low level agricultural work, even though he’d been running a sizeable agricultural college in Ukraine. But he was fortunate to meet Charles Fournier of the Urbana Wine Company. Fournier himself had an interesting background: he came to the USA in 1934 after being headhunted from his role as winemaker with Veuve Clicquot.

The partnership between Frank and Fournier was to prove pivotal in introducing vinifera into the region, although Frank’s insistence that vinifera was the only way to go didn’t endear him to his bosses, whose company was making good money out of wines made from hybrids. Frank, who by all accounts became progressively more stubborn and difficult, left Urbana in 1962 (some accounts say he was fired, others say he had had enough) and began his own vinifera-only winery, which is now one of the leading producers in the region.

The Farm Winery Act

The most significant factor in the development of the Finger Lakes was the Farm Winery Act, passed in June 1976, and it was in response to a crisis. The large wine companies relied on a network of growers. In 1974 and 1975 there were two large harvests, and because the major companies were buying in around a quarter of their needs from California (wine, to blend in with their own), a surplus began to develop. In 1975 Widmer’s only bought part of their contracted harvest, and in in 1976 Taylor’s bought less than the full crop of their 400 growers. But the cost of a winery licence was prohibitively expensive, at $1600 a year, putting off farmers from making wine themselves. The 1976 Act changed this, and slashed the cost to just $125 a year, making it feasible for smaller operations to begin making and selling wine. There were 19 bonded wineries in New York in 1975, and this number rose to 100 in 1985, and currently sits at around 420.

The Finger Lakes is currently in flux. Previously, they have mostly relied on a direct sales model to the local market. This was fine when there were 100 wineries, but now there are 420 plus brewers and distillers, everyone is chasing the same customers. There is a need to sell more widely, and to export. If you sell direct you need a range of wines to satisfy your customers. This can result in large ranges that lack focus, and which carry product lines that tourists like (cheaper, sweeter wines from hybrids) but which have little market potential elsewhere.

There is still a market for sweet hybrid wines

So the region can be split roughly into two bands of producers. First, those with local aspirations, who make a good deal of their money from inexpensive hybrid-based wines, many of which are quite sweet. Then there are producers focusing on vinifera, making more ambitious wines with export potential. Some do a bit of both, of course. On this trip I didn’t like everything I found (it’s very rare for that to happen), but I found plenty of interesting things. The star grape is clearly Riesling, but Cabernet Franc is also strong. Chardonnay is up and down, but Blaufrankisch (which many call Lemberger, the German name) does pretty well. There’s also some interesting Gewurztraminer, and oddities like Rkatsitelli.

Producers (profiles will be added in the coming days)

Ravines

Hermann Weimer

Fulkerson

Glenora Wine Cellars

Bellangelo

Anthony Road

Fox Run

Dr Frank Vineyards

Bloomer Creek

Red Newt

Silver Thread

Nathan Kendall

Lamoreaux Landing

Swedish Hill

Boundary Breaks

Thirsty Owl

Osmote

from Jamie Goode's wine blog http://www.wineanorak.com:/wineblog/new-york/new-york-state-wines-1-introduction-and-the-finger-lakes For Fine Wine Investment opportunities check out Twelve by Seventy Five: http://www.twelve-by-seventy-five.com/

[northshoregadgets]

Best Friends Animal Society’s Strut Your Mutt Events

Taking steps to help dogs and cats in need with every step they take, pet parents and their pups in cities from coast to coast are preparing for Strut Your Mutt, a nationwide event unleashed each year by a non-profit organization that always goes the extra mile to help our pals with paws– Best Friends Animal Society.

Presented by BOBS for Dogs from Skechers, the annual amble raises awareness of the approximately 5,500 dogs and cats who face their fate in the US shelter system each day while raising funds for both Best Friends Animal Society (a nationwide animal rescue and advocacy organization on a mission to make the country no-kill by 2025) and for participating animal shelters and rescue organizations that make up the All Best Friends Network.

Would you like to take part in a walk to help donations climb to this year’s national fundraising goal of $3,000,000? You can find a Strut your Mutt event in your area and sign up, start your own fundraising page or make a monetary contribution to an existing team by visiting StrutYourMutt.org!

Strut Your Mutt Events

Arizona

Phoenix Cesar Chavez Park, Laveen Village October 21 from 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. The city known as The Valley of the Sun will celebrate the dogs and cats who are the sunshine of our lives as they raise $50,000 for area rescues.

California

Los Angeles Exposition Park October 21 from 1:30 p.m. – 6 p.m. Dog devotees and fans of felines in The City of Angeles will be in seventh heaven if they reach their lofty goal of $700,000!

San Francisco Little Marina Green September 30 from 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. Strut Your Mutt will be a golden opportunity for animal lovers living in The Golden City to raise $150,000 to help homeless Fidos and felines in the San Francisco area .

D.C. Metro

Wheaton Regional Park (in Wheaton, Maryland) October 7 from 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. Doggedly determined to help dogs and cats in the D.C. metro area, participants and their Rovers will try to raise $125,000.

Florida

Jacksonville Riverside Park September 30 from 8 a.m. – noon Fido- and feline-loving Floridians are focused on raising $145,000 for the paws cause.

Georgia

Atlanta Brook Run Park September 23 from 8 a.m. – noon Atlanta’s animal lovers will get fit with their four-legged friends as they try to raise $50,000.

Minnesota

Minneapolis Wolfe Park in St. Louis Park September 10 from 8 a.m. – noon Minnesotans will make great strides toward a better tomorrow for homeless companion animals as they strive toward a $100,000 fundraising goal.

Missouri

St. Louis Tower Grove Park September 23 from 8 a.m. – noon Animal lovers in The Show Me State will show homeless dogs and cats how much they care as they walk with their Rovers to raise $50,000.

New York

New York City Hudson River Park’s Pier 26 October 7 from 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. Dog and cat lovers in The Big Apple are making big plans to help our furry friends in need as they work toward reaching a fundraising goal of $425,000!

Oregon

Portland Sellwood Riverfront Park September 9 from 8 a.m. – noon The “City of Roses” will transform into “The City of Rovers” as pet parents and their pups take part in the walk, which hopes to raise $100,000 this year.

Texas

Austin Walter E. Long Park September 16 from 8 a.m. – noon Animal-loving Austinites can celebrate the fact that the city is consistently ranked one of the country’s top dog-friendly spots as they stroll toward their goal of raising $275,000.

Houston Stude Park October 14 from 8 a.m. – noon It’s been said that everything is bigger in Texas, and that includes the fundraising goal for Houstonians, who are dreaming big by striving toward a $450,000 goal.

Utah

Kanab Best Friends Animal Sanctuary from 10 a.m. – 1 p.m. Help homeless companion animals at the home of Best Friends Animal Sanctuary by working toward raising $50,000.

Salt Lake City Liberty Park October 14 from 8:30 a.m. – 2 p.m. Known as “The Crossroads of the West,” Salt lake City’s citizens will help dogs and cats who find themselves at a crossroads in their lives as they walk toward a fundraising goal of $50,000.

Nationwide

Can’t find a Strut Your Mutt event in your area? You won’t be in the dog house with your barking buddy, because you and your pup can still participate in Strut Your Mutt Day! Taking place everywhere on October 28, you can lace up your sneakers and promenade with your pooch through your local park, take a hike around your neighborhood or simply take your canine on a constitutional around your own home. When registering to take part in the event, you can request your contribution to be donated to Best Friends or to your favorite local animal welfare group, and in the interim leading up to Strut Your Mutt Day you can raise funds to further aid your chosen organization. Photo Credit: Best Friends Animal Society/ Facebook

[eleonorapontiggia-blog]

The Visitors

As philosopher Gordon Graham once said “Great works of art enable us understand what it is to be a human being not in the way that physiology, psychology or anthropology do, but by providing images through which our experience may be illuminated” (Graham, 2005). This is a central concept for the artist Ragnar Kjartansson and it relates particularly well with one of his greatest pieces: The Visitors.

The Visitors is a large video installation composed by nine screens in scale 1:1, each of which shows a singular musician, all friends with the artist, who is playing a different instrument: two guitars, a piano, a bass, drums, a cello, a banjo and an accordion. The “actors” are performing alone in separate rooms (including the library, the kitchen, the bedroom and the bathroom) of the 1800s majestic Rokeby mansion in the Hudson Valley, countryside of New York. The scenes are filmed with a fixed videocamera that records the harmonic movements of the musicians who look so comfortable and yet so concentrated on their job, that they never look at the camera; each of them is the only protagonist of his/her own setting, separated from the others, but, at the same time, they are all connected via headphones so that they can hear ad participate to the same melody in unison. There is a strong contrast between the presence of modern technologies and the general background which surrounded the artists: the floral patterns, the paintings and the sculptures, the run-down furniture, donate the residence a gloomy elegance and a dream-like atmosphere. The whole building looks still inhabited by the original family back in the nineteenth century and, in this sense, we can label the actors as “the visitors” and the guests of the house. Among the performers, there is also Kjartansson himself who represents the most “improbable yet charismatic front-man”, as Albert Mobilio depicts him (Mobilio, 2016) in one of his articles. The artist is playing the guitar while naked submerse in a bathtub and almost at the end of the act, he joins his friends in the “piano room” covered only by a towel, where they all celebrate with cigars and champagne while still singing a-cappella. After that, they all converge in the porch outside where the last scene is filmed: the ninth screen shows a large group of people that slowly walk towards the river across the park that surrounds the mansion; the camera is still fixed on the party that departs as the music fade.

I first saw this inspiring piece of art at the expositive space Hangar Bicocca, in Milan, in 2013, only few months after it was produced (it was filmed and recorded during one day only) and displayed for the first time. To enter the space one had to walk pass heavy curtains, just like in a theatre; the huge room was in complete darkness when suddenly the first screen lit and the image of a young woman in a pink dress and bare feet playing an accordion. After a while a second screen lit and then others joined the sequence creating a melody progressively more intense as the number of instruments increased. By the time the last screen started to operate, the entire room was fulfilled with a moving concert where the emotions intensified along with the evolution of the music. The whole experience made the audience physically and mentally engaged for a long time, as the duration of the entire film was sixty-four minutes. You could see people standing and wandering around at first and then sitting on the floor, where, thanks to the the comfortable position, the act of seeing and hearing acquired a more intense significance. The dim lighting, the long duration of the concert and the almost moanful rhythm of the music made the general atmosphere both relaxing and melancholic, but never sad, instead, there was enjoyment in the way music was arranged.

The song that accompanies the viewer throughout the performance is actually a poem written by the artist’s ex-wife, artist Asdid Gunnarsdottir, as a tragic and yet romantic farewell letter. Kjartansson then set the lyrics to music and during the video/concert there are two stanzas in particular that repeat themselves: Once again I fall into/ My feminine ways/ There are stars exploding around you,/ and there's nothing you can do…. The repetition is something very important to the artist who associated the recurrence, the boredom and the difficulties in remaining engaged with some of his works, as a metaphor of human condition trying to deal with the complexity of contemporary times. Amongst the challenges that life presents to us, there is the one concerning relationships, a topic that often recurs in Kjartansson works. It is interesting, in fact, what the artist said in an interview regarding The Visitors in particular, about the way the feeling of separation emerged in the minds of the couple: at some point, they both started producing pieces of work that somehow announced the end of their marriage. As a matter of fact, The Visitors depicts this reality in the most romantic way; the artist allows us inside his mind by sharing his feelings with us and he makes us experience empathy, we can all relate with him, somehow. Considering this particular point of view, we become “the visitors” of the artist’s soul.

Researching the story behind this art piece we can easily understand that it actually represents the conclusion of a very personal meditative journey about love, relationships and femininity. Indeed, the original title was Feminine Ways, the tile of the poem, but it sounded too direct, so eventually it was changed in The Visitors. The inspiration comes from the homonym and last album of the Swedish band ABBA: this product also tells the story of the end of their relationship and, moreover, the CD cover shows the inside of a majestic old mansion. The subject of closure and the ending of a life period, however, is processed in an optimistic way: the celebration at the end of the video proves the positiveness of the artist that looks at the future with a new awareness, instead of looking back at the past with sadness and regret.

With this art work Kjartansson explores the line between stillness and movement, between reality and fiction through a setting based on the repetition of gestures and backgrounds in order to emphasize both visual and sonorous elements of the play. Both his parents are theatre actors and directors, therefore he grew up surrounded by arts. From the drama performance he learned the importance of the collaboration between people, as a matter of fact, Kjartansson always asks for the help of family and friends with whom he creates a comfortable and peaceful environment that emerges from his works. He set up his performances as kind of religious rituals where the key point is the discourse on human being. The Visitors offers a great example in the way that musicians interact with each other: they are concentrated on themselves and their music, but, at the same time, they need to relate with the others in order to create an harmonious melody. According to the artist himself, this represents a metaphor for the perfect society and life itself. Another central aspect of Kjartansson’s artistic production is music which he uses almost as a plastic element. He asserts that his intent is to transform music in to something visual by working on the emphasis of feelings that his pieces can provoke inside the viewer’s mind. The artist often make use of with video and sound, always looking at his past and the typical traditions of the nordic culture where he comes from. Especially the presence of guitars suggests a connection with the ancient Icelandic story-tellers that travelled from village to village carrying the adventures of mythical heroes and common people. In the same way, Kjartansson, through his instrument and his performances, recounts personal experiences that always have a more profound signification regarding the human nature. A part from the country and folk music, the artist is also interested in classical music. A great stage was the one of Bliss, where in 2011 he selected nine opera singers, each dressed in proper ancient costumes, and a full orchestra to play the last five minutes of the notable Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro, where the protagonist asks for his wife forgiveness. The tune was repeated over and over resulting the entire performance to last twelve hours. He has always been curious about music and the role of time in art. In The Visitors, Kjartansson challenges the audience patience and the ability of staying focused for a long time. He is more than aware that people could leave at any moment, but he tries to make them feel engaged by the use of soft music and the discussion of themes which everyone can easily relate to. He asks us to stop, clear our mind and experience the sensation of time passing, letting our feelings to flow.

The piece of art here analyzed, is a pure ode to beauty and harmony. It is characterized by the presence of a multitude of diverse art forms: it recalls the tradition of live concert, performance and cinema, it touches subjects such as photography, painting, architecture, music and poetry. The installation was firstly displayed at the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst of Zurich, Switzerland and then it was moved around the cities and the world. It has been displayed at the “Bicocca University” in Milan, at the “Barbican Centre” in London and then it travelled a lot around the US (it was played at the “Guggenheim” of New York, at the “Institute of Contemporary Art” in Boston and many more) and it is now presented at “The Broad” in Los Angeles. The fact that this work travelled so much makes difficult trying to assign a specific location to where it actually belongs and, in the same way, the combination of various disciplines which characterizes the piece makes difficult to understand which one we can consider the predominant. These doubts bring out some ontological questions. What is then, the real soul of this work of art? What does the presence of music mean? What does represent and what is the real purpose behind the creation of The Visitors?

First of all, it is necessary to clarify what does “ontology” mean. According to the English Oxford dictionary, the word “ontology” derives from the Greek “ontoslogia” which means “logical discourse on the nature of being”: it is “a set of concepts and categories in a subject area or domain that shows their properties and the relations between them”. Starting from this point, we can now consider the ontological aspects of art and in general and music, more specifically. The ontology of the musical work explains how music is the combination of a constructive and a reproductive phase. The melody and the lyrics pass from the composer, who writes them, to the performer, who plays them, to the audience, who listens and interprets them; they also evolve in some way through this passages. As a matter of fact, the more people are involved in this process, the more significant is the meaning that the composition acquires. Music develops together with the interpretation that musicians and the public give to it over time: if the author is present in the text as the first reader, each individual with different experiences and cultures add a little bit of him/herself to the symphony. In this sense, we can see music as a combination of more aspects: it is the notes on a pentagram as well as it is the lyrics or the melody, it is the composer as well as it is the performer and the audience. To give a more general definition we can say that music's a language, is a form of expression similar to nothing else, with a specific grammar and a personal way of communicate and transmit emotions.

In The Visitors, music represents one of the central key elements of the entire performance, if not the most important one, without which we wouldn’t fully comprehend and appreciate this majestic piece of art. Together with the melody, it is essential the aesthetic aspect which accompany the spectator throughout the exhibition. From an ontological point of view, the word “aestheticism” derives from the Greek “aisthetikos”, which means “pertaining to sense perception” and has various definitions. Oscar Wilde declared that, "Aestheticism is a search after the signs of the beautiful. It is the science of the beautiful through which men seek the correlation of the arts. It is, to speak more exactly, the search after the secret of life”, to the modern Thai thinker Yingyos Thepjumnong it is a branch of philosophy dealing with reflections on the nature of beauty, art and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty (Thepjumnong, 2011). In each case, what is constant is the reference with beauty and the research for it, which is something abstract that regards our emotions and sensations. For its nature, the human being is always in search for beautiful things and pleasurable experience. Actually, our appetite for beauty is something continuous that increases along with the need of it: the more we are surrounded by positive people, things and feelings, the more we crave for them. Individuals connects beauty with happiness and look for the object of their wellbeing in their jobs, their friends and partners, in their hobbies and in the material objects that fill their lives. When none of those things give enough pleasure, here comes art (which main intent is the representation of beauty). Art is defined in many ways, but we can agree on the fact that its basic functions are two: it is a tool used by artists to express their feelings through creativity and it is a subject that always engages its audience’s aesthetic sensibility. Sometimes, we find difficult to discover beauty even in certain works of art, but we have to keep in mind that the  gratification does not come from the things themselves, but from the way in which we relate to them. According to Aristotle, pleasure is not the experience itself, but something that goes upon it; it is the manner in which we engage with that particular object or activity, whether as artists or spectators. Furthermore, as Gordon Graham reminds us in his paper regarding The philosophy of the arts, a piece of art is such, when it cannot be related or linked to any specific practical function if not that to provoke emotions in the viewer. In this sense, The Visitors is a complete and immersive work which symbolizes perfectly the concept of art. We said before that art is a tool, a means by which people can express themselves and trying to provoke a sense of empathy in the public by sharing common feelings with it. This piece is the emblem of this idea; in fact, Kjartansson makes the audience participate to his own experience by the involvement of romantic and even sensual sensations. The choice of making use of both music and images allows the spectators to understand the profound need of the artist to reach the souls of people. If our cultures, languages, religions, habits are different from one another, images and music communicate in the same way and they have the incredible gift of being able to be understood by everyone, in spite of all the differences.  

Since the appearance of the first men on Earth, art has been a fundamental aspect of human life. Everything considered, the purposes of this discipline are numerous: it is mainly a human instinct through which individuals explore their relationship with the world, it is the expression of our imagination, in the ancient times it was a ritual and in a more recent era has been used as a form of entertainment and politics propaganda, in some occasion it is even used as a healing process. What is clear, however, is that whatever is our attitude towards it and in whatever ways we like to label it, art is the most powerful universal mean of communication and it represents the best chance humanity has to find a point of convergence amongst all the differences and prejudices.

[maryannmccarra-fitzpatrick]

Photographs taken at the 2017 Hudson Valley Exposition on Saturday 5th August.  Peekskill Riverfront Green. 

[maryannmccarra-fitzpatrick]

Hudson Valley Exposition, 5th August 2017, Peekskill Riverfront, Peekski...

[maryannmccarra-fitzpatrick]

TOMORROW!!!

[maryannmccarra-fitzpatrick]

HUDSON VALLEY EXPOSITION!!!

[maryannmccarra-fitzpatrick]

HUDSON VALLEY EXPOSITION!!!