#like half of my gifs of the year are practically from march & june

[barbeygirl]

A quick introduction to 1940’s fashion

I've been so obsessed with Band of Brothers recently and I love reading the fanfics. Here’s my contribution, for your OC's.

(soon!) Part 2. Hair, makeup etc

(soon!) 1940's lookbook (photos)

The war had a major impact on 40's fashion. There were shortages and rations, and women were entering the workforce as men went off to war, leading to a more simplistic, utilitarian style.

Rations and regulations:

In the UK, clothing was rationed from June, 1941 to March, 1949, in varying strictness. So although you still payed for clothing with money, you'd need coupons to be allowed to buy them altogether. In the US, the Regulation L-85 (1942), rationed natural fibers and restricted how clothing could be made in order to save fabric. This meant regulating the skirt length, the fullness of pants and jackets, and even banned cuffs.

Silhouette:

The early 40's silhouette had strong, boxy shoulders, but by the mid forties and as the restrictions grew more strict, the silhouette softened to save materials. A nipped-in and high waistline stayed popular for the whole decade, and a hemline below the knee was fashionable until 1947, when Dior came out with the "New Look".

Fashion:

Because restrictions and shortages, the look was simple but stylish. Showy, over the top clothing was considered unfashionable to wear in wartime Britain.

The "military style" bled into every day fashion. It was common for men, who were not on active duty, to still wear bomber jackets, trench coats and aviator glasses. It's visible on women's fashion as well, which is why some of the clothing have a sort of a uniformly look.

Popular outfits for women were square-shouldered jackets with matching A-line skirts, shirtwaist dresses, and thanks to actresses, pants were now also a stable part of women's wardrobes. The pants had wide, straight legs and high waists, and were often paired with a colorful blouse or sweater and a matching jacket.

Hand knitting in Britain was at peak popularity during the war. Women on the home front were encouraged to "knit your bit" and contribute to the war effort by knitting for the troops. The warmth of woollen items also made knitwear popular for civilians.

Working women:

Women were entering the workforce to replace men, who went off to war. This required more practical attire, such as sturdy shoes, head scarves, overalls etc.

Some jobs (such as the WAVES) felt it important to emphasize that women wouldn't become any less feminine by working or wearing a uniform. This is why makeup, nail polish and feminine hairstyles weren't just largely allowed, they were encouraged.

Actress Veronica Lake, famous of her highly imitated "Peek-a-boo" hairstyle, where her hair covers one of her eyes, encouraged women working in factories to tie their hair up into safer styles to avoid injury. In this Safety Styles video, she has her hair up in a "victory roll" style.

The New Look by Dior:

After the long war, and as life was slowly returning back to normal, there was a want of "returning to femininity" among women. At the same time, some women feared that this ultra-femininity would set back all the progress they had made working outside the home during the war.

In 1947, Christian Dior released a new collection called ”The New Look” which featured a full, calf-length skirt. After the simple lines of the utility clothing, such a dress seemed desirable by contrast. The full skirt was also controversial for how much fabric it used, since rationing in the UK wouldn't end for another two years and there were still material shortages in both UK and the US.

Despite the controversies, the New Look was hugely popular and became the predominant silhouette well into the 1950's.

A/N: To keep this short, I had to paste and delete like half of what this originally was onto part 2. Also, lmk if there's interest in men's fashion ver. of this!

Hopefully this was legible. All the ”not my first language blah blah” stuff <3

sources: (links)

Imperial War Museum National Museum of American History centralcasting.com V&A Museum (free 1940's knitting patterns!!) NationalWW2museum.org

[raplinenthusiasts]

thank you Em @strayklds (and also your other blogs that i follow) for tagging me to link my favorite/most popular posts from each month of 2022 🫂

I would love to see yours year in review if you want to share @sevencoloredstar @rkivedfiles @namsoek @sopekooks @jeongtokkie @cordiallyfuturedwight @jinstronaut @kithtaehyung @kimtaegis @everkook and also @8seokss @rumue @avizou and anyone that feels like it 💐 (no pressure of course 🥰)

i started giffing in February for Hoseok birthday, in the meantime i deleted my old blog and started new one so i'm including all 💛 I still feel like i have lots to learn but it could be worse I guess

my list under the cut 👀

February

rolling stone Hoseok - that was my second published gifset and it got 1k almost immediately... it set the bar too high for me :(

💜 Hoseok in butter performance video by 3j - my first gifs ever, I started giffing bc of this video! there was so little gifs of him in this practice AND HE KILLED IT!!! i was so mad i decided to make gifs myself and here we are

March

Jin in making film for 7fates

💜 first love Yoongi - genuinely my favourite of favourite, the best one i've ever made

April

flower Hobi

💜 cute JK

May

Tae in my flower series

💜 this flower Namjoon

June

sope being dorks

💜 the bestest look ever by anyone ever aka blonde Hoseok

July

flower boy JK

💜 spotify teaser Hoseok - the firt gif did it for me

August

💜 most popular and also my forever favourite 💜 blue side from Hobipallooza 💜

September

pink Hoseok

💜 Han doing that move in Thunderous looking like that - it was actually him and blackpink that made me come back to tumblr 🤷‍♀️

October

rapline at Busan concert - I’ve made lots of rapline gifsets but I do like this one the most

💜 bi king Jimin - i've never felt particularly close to Jimin but this photoshoot literally turned my preferences upside down

November

prince Yoongi - i've spent maybe half an hour tops on this one and it was made of the scraps that were left after Howl/Yoongi one actually - it shows how much i don't understand people reblogging my gifs i guess

💜 DNA Tae - with this one i started using tracking tags and so far it’s good and is becoming less and less nerve wrecking xd

December

Hoseok MAMA 2022 video practice - well deserved

💜 purple Jin - i was having bad moment in the middle of the december and honestly no other gifset ever made me as happy as this one when i made it <3 he looks so good in this performance and you can actually see it in my gifs! I love it very very much

and that's a wrap! if you made it this far 💛 THANK YOU 💛

[passable-talent]

ya boi is back with a new niche character played by hayden christensen for yall to enjoy.

CW: blood, wounds, cursing, piercings, tattoos, guns, fighting, deaths of unnamed characters

AJ x gn!reader - Takers (2010). the stupid hat grew on me.

dedicated as always to @haydens-moles and @iscariot-rising for being my friends and for appreciating hayden as much as I do

The story of your life, as you loved to explain it, boiled down to a little math joke. Excited five, you called it, or it’s official terminology- five factorial. Written as “5!”, hence the awful pun.

“Factorials,” you’d say, “for those that don’t remember, are a multiplication of every number up to the one that’s being discussed. As such, five factorial is five, times four, times three, times two, times one.”

Your life, your excited five, was as follows: five major scars, four tattoos, three piercings, two eyebrow slits.

“The one is usually ignored,” you’d say, “as it makes no multiplicative difference. That’s why I don’t have a ‘one’.”

In August, 2009, you got your ‘one’. Its a doozy. But we’re not there yet.

~~~

Five major scars.

December 25, 1983. It’s your first Christmas. Your parents think you’re just being a cranky infant, but something way more serious is going on- they find out the next day that you’ve got RSV, a respiratory virus that’s especially dangerous for infants. You spend the next three years periodically using a ventilator whenever the coughing acts up. You don’t remember much of it, other than the vaguely crayon-looking piece of the machine, but you can’t forget that it happened, due to the pretty white scar over the bridge of your nose. It’s not such a gnarly wound as it is a reminder- not of the ventilator that wore through your skin thanks to frequent use, but of the virus that almost took your life only a few months after it had begun.

July 28, 1993. You’re seven years old, staying at your grandmother’s house with your cousin, who’s six months older than you. You’re playing cops and robbers- he’s the cop. The forest streaks by as you run the length of the property, slightly faster than him, but he catches you and throws you down. You land on your back on a jagged rock, not only painfully impacting your spine but digging deeply into your muscles beside it. It was the first hospital visit you remember, and the dark, long scar halfway between your tailbone and your shoulders reminds you never to fall without controlling it.

January 15, 1998. You’re in sophomore year of high school, and not the most popular. You like to play by the rules, and some asshole junior decides that he doesn’t like the way you won’t let him cheat off of your trigonometry homework, and decides that a knife is the best way to settle the problem. Those homework answers weren’t worth the long white line over all four of the knuckles of your left hand, but it is a pretty little reminder that lowlifes do what they want. And law enforcement, or whatever your school called the ‘anti-bullying league’, does jack shit about it.

October 30, 2002. You’re almost done with your certification to become a cop- thank god. You couldn’t stand the people who were to become your graduate class. They were so ready to become cops just to bully people, just to get to weild an iron fist and hide their bloodlust behind the law. Not you- you’re here to do some real good. That’s what they don’t like about you. And that’s why Fred Young splits open your cheek when just he’s supposed to be practicing his sparring. It’s an ugly scar, needed six stitches, but it’s a reminder that even the cops aren’t always the good guys.

May 14, 2004. You’re a new cop, working under detective Wells. There’s a robbery of a jewelry store a few blocks from where you’re patrolling, and as you’re making your way to the scene, a man in a fedora runs smack into you, taking you both to the ground. Broken glass digs into your shoulder, but he apologizes, and his blue eyes look so genuine. He’s afraid. You’d not realize until a month later that he wasn’t a scared bystander, but in fact one of the thieves. The fifth of your scars matches your first meeting with AJ- who would, by the end of the summer, become one of the most important people in your life.

~~~

Four tattoos.

August 4, 1999- Left wrist, inside knob of the bone. The little symbol had represented something to you when you were sixteen, but it had long lost whatever meaning you’d given it. Now, it was just a pattern to pass your thumb over whenever you got restless.

February 16, 2002- The cap of the right shoulder. It was your bunk number, from when you were training to be a cop. Nothing extravagant, but it was supposed to represent the beginning of the rest of your life- it was supposed to represent your calling.

June 1, 2004- Left arm, the outside of the forearm. Bleeding from your first tattoo was a new one, the largest one on your body. It was geometrical and high contrast, black lines loosely following your veins up toward your elbow, as though that left hand was bringing darkness into your body. It did- you shot with your left hand.

July 17, 2004- Right collarbone. A single, circular monogram, made up of six letters.

T A K E R S.

~~~

Three piercings.

April 7, 1989. Your father took you to get your ears pierced, but insisted upon arrival that it was too expensive to get both done, so you only got your left. The assymetrical style would have to grow on you- at six years old, you hated it.

May 19, 2003. You couldn’t have piercings at the academy, they were unprofessional, they were dangerous. So the night of graduation, you went out and got a hole punched into your nostril- the pain made tears well up, but more than anything, it was the satisfaction of giving a pretty little ‘fuck you’ to your superiors, who you’d never see again.

July 18, 2006. AJ takes you to a fancy beauty salon for an eyebrow bar after hearing maybe once that you’d wanted another piercing. You knew you were in love with him- who else in your life had ever paid such close attention to you?

~~~

Two eyebrow slits.

June 23, 2004. You leave the police force. You tell Wells that it’s because you’re pissed you can’t find the guys that robbed the jewelry store, but that’s not even close to the truth. You’ve found them- hell, you got a good look at one of them on the very day of the robbery. But you’ve done the looking, and didn’t have the heart to bring them in. They had families. They donated ten percent of every heist to a charity. They did more for the community than the police you worked for, and they did it clean- they didn’t hurt anybody, if they didn’t have to. They did what you’d hoped to do, when you joined the force. What you’d never gotten to do. Eyebrow slits were considered extremely unprofessional, so the moment you were free of your two week notice, you split open your right eyebrow. It would give a good balance to the bar piercing you hoped to put through your left someday.

March 4, 2007. You’re cleaning up your slit when AJ walks into the room and stands behind you so that you can see him through the mirror. You keep your eyes on the trimmer you’re so delicately running over your skin, but when he opens up a little felt box with a pretty ring inside, you whirl around with such panic that you make the slit approximately half an inch wider than it should’ve been. Lilli helped you fill in the gap for the engagement photos, but you decided to keep a second slit on the other end of the unfortunate shave- a little reminder of the evening in which he proposed to you.

~~~

“The one is usually ignored,” you’d say, “as it makes no multiplicative difference. That’s why I don’t have a ‘one’.”

On August 27, 2009, you got your ‘one’.

You’d been out of the game for two years, choosing not to take a cut of the winnings. You’d advise, you’d plan, you’d set up, but you did not want to be on site when the heist went down. The boys had it taken care of, and you butted heads with Jesse far too often for anyone’s comfort.

You especially couldn’t work on this project, thanks to a little fucker named Ghost- he didn’t trust you, as a member of the Takers he’d never met, and you didn’t trust him, as a criminal you’d never grown to respect.

You knew that most of them didn’t trust Ghost either, but everything he brought forward checked out- AJ must’ve mumbled the plan thirty times in his sleep in the five days from its suggestion to its fruition. There were no holes. Knowing Gordon and John, they had some ‘insurance’ for Ghost, anyway. In case it went wrong.

Still, you stayed at the Hotel Roosevelt through it all. You were their sitter, keeping the hotel room warm and ready for their arrival. They arrived back one by one- and like usual, AJ got there first. He, Gordon, and John were usually the first to get out, but he always made it back to the room first, because that way he could get some time with you. That way, he could have a private reunion, fresh off of a job.

“Hey, baby,” he said as he closed the door, and you waited for him to turn his eyes to you before you gave him a smile. He threw down his bag onto one of the chairs, and it landed with a heavy thump, but you’d long grown used to the sound of the score. However much he pulled, good for him. You were just happy to slip your arms around his neck and feel him kiss the scar on your cheekbone before sliding his lips to yours.

He always kissed different right after a job- before the boys had all gotten back, before the total was counted. He had a confidence to his movement, but there was fear, insecurity, just a tinge. He wasn’t just a taker, he was a man, who had worries and risks just like every other man.

You were out of the game for a few reasons. They had it taken care of. You butted heads with Jesse. You didn’t trust Ghost. But you knew that you were AJ’s biggest fear- you knew that if you got hurt on a job, he’d never forgive himself.

So he kissed you, he held you close, he reminded himself that you were here, you were fine. His long fingers seems to take up half your back, and his hair was already in his face, as though you’d tugged it there yourself.

With just one more pass of your lips over his, you pulled away.

“How’d it go?” You asked with a soft voice, rolling your first finger through the curls at the back of his neck.

“Could’ve gone better,” he said with a chuckle, “but we got it done.” You heard a knock at the door, and Gordon was the next arrival- then John, then Jake, then Ghost. Jesse came last, and with him, a whole host of new problems.

A bullet splintered the door and caught AJ somewhere under the ribcage. Everyone hit the floor, diving behind couches, and you popped your head up long enough to see AJ launch over the kitchen island. The room shattered into gunfire and feathers from expensive pillows, glass shards littering the ground like raindrops. It all moved so fast, and the air exploded into noise. You could barely track AJ through it all, he was so far away, all the way across the room. And you wanted to keep your eye straight down the barrel of your gun.

“AJ!” Jesse called from beside you, hidden behind a brown leather couch, “You okay?” You looked around the side of it, and saw him ten feet from you, the longest ten feet of your life, behind the kitchen island. He was struggling, on his hands and knees.

“Get up,” you snarled, knowing he’d already taken a hit.

“Out the back!” John ordered from the doorway behind you, and you started to realize the moment, the dangerous, heavy moment. AJ was all the way across the room- he couldn’t cross it. Not with these mobsters holding ground.

“Let’s go!” Gordon shouted, and your eyes connected with AJ’s. He saw the same thing you did.

“Go,” he said, voice calm, and it cut through the chaos of the room, cut through every hardened lesson ever pounded into you, cut through every wall you’d ever built around you, around your heart. “I’m coming.”

AJ was a good liar. But he couldn’t lie to you.

“No,” you growled through gritted teeth, and you made a rash decision.

You’d always been good at gymnastics. You had strong control over the movement of your body, and had, ever since you’d learned from your cousin throwing you down onto that stone that split open your back. You could move and slink and roll and dive in ways that would keep you not only from falling, but even from being noticed.

Using the chaos as your cover, you did a tight diving roll across the room to him, slipping between shelters unscathed. This brought you just a bit closer to the mobsters, but further from the back door exit that Gordon had been trying to guide you toward. You’d chose AJ over your safety any day- the surprise and the fear in his eyes said that he wished you wouldn’t.

Making sure you had enough ammo, you considered your final move- this didn’t end until these mobsters did. There were five of them left, after all this commotion: four in the room, one in the hall. You couldn’t take all five, not with their guns being so much more than yours, but you could take out a few. You could shift attention, you could buy time.

And hopefully, you could stay breathing, too. That’d be nice.

“Stay down,” you hissed, leaving AJ behind the island where he’d be forgotten about, or assumed dead. Then, you rounded the corner and rolled to the feet of the closest mobster. As you came out of the roll you caught his legs in yours, wrenching them from under him and taking him to the ground with one of the first moves you’d learned in basic training. He hit the wall hard, and was unconscious by the time he landed- the same could not be said for his friends.

From your right, you could see Gordon, still firing, still hopeful for your and AJ’s escape. Your shoulders were above the couch, so you knew he saw as you turned your weapon to the second mobster before he could turn to you, and stopped his heart.

Your commotion had caught the attention of the other three who still remained. You whirled around and raised your gun to one of them, but they managed it first.

Gordon had to swallow back his horror as he saw a bullet enter the front of your side profile, and blood explode from the back. He took out the mobster who still had his attention on you- but your shoulders smacked to the ground outside of his view, and he closed the door.

Luckily, their aim was spotty. You now had a useless left arm, but you were still breathing. Not that you’d let the one remaining mobster notice that.

You and AJ played dead, only a few feet from each other, but the kitchen island becoming a thicker wall than any you’d ever been split by. As you stared blankly at the ceiling, taking shallow breaths hidden by the folds of your shirt, you hoped he didn’t think you were dead. You hoped he wasn’t bleeding out.

After what felt like agonizingly long minutes, the shooting finally stopped, and the door opened again. Gordon was the first to enter the room, and rounded the couch to you, grief in his eyes, expecting the worst.

But you could give him a smile.

“Surprise,” you groaned, and he lit up in relief, helping you sit up with your good arm.

“Look at you, playing dirty,” he said with a laugh, “I thought you were gone for sure.”

“AJ,” you heard Jake say from across the room, and finally AJ could sit up from where you’d forced him down. The two of you had both bled straight through your shirts, but there wasn’t any time for sweet reunions- everyone had to get out, and fast.

AJ left his car wherever it was. John gave the two of you a ride to the airstrip where Gordon was going to disappear for a while, and on the way you and AJ attempted to give each other first aid until the personnel on the plane could take care of it.

Eventually, you leaned against his left, and he against your right, your wounds still stinging and sticky with blood, but manageable, for as long as they needed to be.

The night didn’t get any easier, but that didn’t matter- you were home free, they’d managed the job, and Ghost was out of the picture, and neither of you were going to die.

And someday, when you felt brave enough to recount your near-death, near-loss, near-jailed experience, you’d say:

Five major scars, four tattoos, three piercings, two eyebrow slits. And one gun shot wound.

-🦌 Roe

[dpinoycosmonaut]

THE DIFFICULTIES OF RAFA’S 22nd GRAND SLAM TITLE

by Bert A. Ramirez / June 8, 2022

Rafael Nadal raises his 14th La Coupe des Mousquetaires after winning yet another French Open title.  (Photo from Pete Kiehart of The New York Times)

The numbers in the finals could be misleading.  Rafael Nadal, after all, blitzed Norwegian rival Casper Ruud in the second-most lopsided of his 14 championship victories in the French Open, one of seven finals in Paris that he won in straight sets and one of three where he scored a bagel. 

Nadal’s 6-3, 6-3, 6-0 victory over the 23-year-old Ruud almost a week ago is dwarfed only in lopsidedness by the Spanish superstar’s 6-1, 6-3, 6-0 romp over, almost incredulously, Roger Federer in the 2008 finals at Roland Garros, and is tied with his own 6-2, 6-3, 6-1 rout of Stan Wawrinka in the 2017 finals in terms of number of games given up.

But if one gets the impression that this is one of the easiest French Open titles, much less most trouble-free championships among the record-extending 22 Grand Slam titles Rafa has won, he is mistaken

This is because Nadal, just like he did at the Australian Open earlier in January this year, had to overcome numerous problems and what, at times, looked like insurmountable hurdles before coming out triumphant in the end.

First, after that dream-like victory in Melbourne where he wasn’t even certain of participating just a few weeks before the year’s first Grand Slam event, Nadal, just as he looked as good as new with 20 straight victories and three titles in as many tournaments punctuated by that Australian Open championship, suddenly suffered another injury: a stress fracture in his ribs in the semifinal of the BNP Paribas Open in March that he won against young compatriot Carlos Alcaraz, which partly contributed to his loss in the finals to American Taylor Fritz.  That painful injury that made it hard for him to breathe forced Rafa to take a six-week break and miss most of the clay-court season before returning for the Madrid Open just before the end of April with hardly any practice.

He was beaten by Alcaraz in the quarterfinals of that tournament and, in the last event that he tried to use as tuneup before the French Open, the Italian Open in Rome, he was also beaten by Denis Shapovalov of Canada in the round of 16, and that’s where he suffered a recurrence of the left foot injury that sidelined him for the last half of 2021, the degenerative bone disease called Mueller-Weiss syndrome.

It was not surprising that going into the French Open, Nadal did not have the preparation, much less the health that he needed to perhaps be considered as even among the favorites at Roland Garros.  He wasn’t only lacking in practice and competition, as it were, because of the health issues he suddenly had to deal with once more seemingly without respite but also in the requisite confidence that’s essential in any top-level sports competition for one to be at his best.  Nadal, in fact, had to bring with him for the first time in Paris his long-time physician, Dr. Angel Ruiz Cotorro, to help manage his painful foot.

Cotorro had to inject Rafa’s left foot with a pain killer to enable him to play through the two weeks at Roland Garros, doing it daily 20 minutes before Nadal went on the court and keeping it numb for seven to eight hours.  “We played with no feeling in the foot, with a (pain-killing) injection on the nerve.  The foot was asleep, and that’s why I was able to play,” Nadal explained of the process he had to go through after his historic victory.  “They blocked the sensory nerves at a distance…  That was the only way to give myself a chance here.  So I did it.  And I can't be happier and I can't thank enough my doctor for all the things he did during all my tennis career, helping me in every tough moment.”

Besides his physical problems, what compounded matters for Nadal was his having been grouped in a loaded bracket, with the top half of his draw including six of the top 10 seeds that included himself, top-seeded defending champion Novak Djokovic, third-seeded Alexander Zverev, sixth-seeded Carlos Alcaraz, No. 9 Felix Auger-Aliassime and No. 10 Cameron Norrie.  This virtual group of death projected him to face Djokovic in the quarterfinals, which, under normal circumstances, was already a daunting task.�� But Nadal not only beat Djokovic in a four-hour, 11-minute classic but also Auger-Aliassime just before that in the round of 16 in a five-set, four-hour, 21-minute marathon before hitting upon some good fortune of sorts when Zverev had to retire near the end of the second set in the semifinals against him after badly twisting and tearing the ligaments in his right ankle.

Still, Nadal had to defeat four of the top nine seeds in order to take his 14th Roland Garros title – No. 9 Auger-Aliassime, No. 1 Djokovic, No. 3 Zverev and No. 8 Ruud – the first man to do so in a major event since Roger Federer did it in his run to the Australian Open title in 2017.

Then, there were the heavy conditions at night that Nadal was forced to play under especially during his quarterfinals against Djokovic, prompting even Rafa’s coach, Carlos Moya, to criticize the tournament organizers for not giving Nadal enough “credit,” if not respect.  “I wouldn’t say disrespect,” Moya said before Rafa beat Djokovic.  “He has won the tournament 13 times, if he has a request, you should listen to him.  He is part of the history of Roland Garros.”  But as Toni Nadal himself said, it’s all about money as more TV money is earned by the organizers with the night-session matches, negating whatever advantage Nadal has during daytime matches.  Almost everybody knows that Nadal plays better under the sun and in broad daylight, in contrast to a closed-roofed stadium, as he did against Aliassime and Zverev, as the ball bounces higher and the spin increases unlike in the latter conditions where the surface tends to become slower and his weapons are thus minimized.

“The conditions have been the slower conditions I played since long time ago here, because have been very humid this afternoon and if we had big humidity with indoor, the ball was super big and difficult to create a spin on the ball,” Nadal himself said after that abbreviated semis match against Zverev, which still lasted three hours and 13 minutes.  “So I think the conditions were not the ideal (one) for me this afternoon or the way that I like to play normally here.  That’s why I was not able to create the damage that I wanted over him, no?... But honestly under these conditions – well, when Sascha is playing well in any conditions, he’s an amazing player.  Under these conditions, even was more difficult for me to put him away from the court, no?  Because probably with these heavy conditions, he felt that my ball is not creating the impact that (it) normally creates against his forehand or against his backhand.  For example, when I hit the forehand down the line or when I hit my forehand in and out for against his forehand, I mean, my ball was not bouncing as usual here, no?  So he was able to recover well from that position.  The same thing happens when I hit my ball against his backhand, that his backhand is probably the best of the tour today.  So with (such) conditions, I was not able to push him back.  He was able to hit a clean ball all the time, so (I) was surviving, a lot of surviving moments during that match.”

But Nadal was able to survive that handicap, as he did the in-game situations that presented themselves to him along the way and made it harder for him to annex this year’s title than it did during his other victories here, like in 2020 when he won his 13th La Coupe des Mousquetaires without even losing a single set.  Against Auger-Aliassime, who’s now coached by his Uncle Toni, he had to survive a five-setter that ensued after the 21-year-old Canadian won the fourth set, only the third player to extend him to the limits at Roland Garros after Djokovic in the 2013 semifinals and John Isner in the first round in 2011.  But Nadal proved equal to the challenge, as he has so many times at the red-clay courts in Paris.  While leading 4-3 in the deciding set, he hit his trademark forehand for a winner down the line to set up two break points.  He got the break on the second by chasing an Auger-Aliassime shot for a backhand winner before serving out the match by scoring the last four points of the ninth game to set up a quarterfinal match against Djokovic, as expected.

He then staged another classic Rafa show against his Serbian rival with an improbable fourth-set comeback that enabled him to clinch the match, which actually gave him his 23rd career win over a world No. 1.  Down 0-3, 1-4 and 2-5 after having been broken early, he never flinched and gave up despite what looked like a certain Djokovic set win that would have forced a fifth and deciding set.  He held for 3-5, then broke Djokovic in the next game before holding and eventually setting up a tiebreak.  Then, after seeing the Serbian score three straight points in the tiebreak to narrow his 6-1 bulge to just 6-4, Nadal came up with the workmanlike shot that closed it out, a backhand that he set up by forcing Djokovic to go to the opposite corner with a deep shot that made it impossible for the latter to recover for that backhand return of his.

Before Zverev’s fateful retirement in the semifinals, Nadal also had to come from the depths to even take the lead as Zverev raced to a 3-1 lead in the first set.  But Rafa broke back to eventually take a 5-4 lead and once the set turned into a tiebreak, it was Nadal’s legendary toughness under adversity that again broke through as Zverev led at four set points at 6-2 after scoring five straight points to overcome an early 2-1 Nadal lead.  As he has often shown in his legendary career, however, the Spaniard would not be disheartened by four set points as he faced in this case.  Slowly and patiently, Nadal tried to stave off Zverev’s huge advantage, working relentlessly to score five straight points of his own and unbelievably grab a 7-6 edge, finally closing it out at 10-8 with a spectacular passing forehand that whizzed past his German rival’s reach.

Against Ruud, of course, he also overcame the lone tight spot that he found himself in after being broken early in the second set, losing his serve at love with a double fault as he struggled with his serve to fall behind at 3-1.  But what followed next was something that gave the world another glimpse of why Nadal may be the toughest and most indomitable rival on the tennis court, and, quite possibly, the greatest of all time, injuries and all.  At 30-30 and Ruud serving for a 4-1 advantage, Rafa pounced on a forehand error by his young rival, who used to train at his academy just four years before, and then broke him on the next point.  That started something seldom seen in all of tennis especially on the professional tour – a virtual avalanche where one player never allows his opponent to win another game.  That break, which put Rafa back on serve at 3-2, started a string of 11 consecutive games won by Rafa as he clinched the second set and scored a bagel in the third, a repeat of the 2020 French Open finals where he did the same to Djokovic in the opening set in spectacular fashion before holding his arch-rival off in the third and clinching set.

When the Spaniard finished off the victory with a backhand down-the-line winner, Ruud – and the whole world – knew this guy belongs up there in rarefied air in terms of the ability to produce in clutch situations and overcome adversity.

With his latest Grand Slam victory in Paris, Nadal has thus won again 17 years after first accomplishing the feat as a long-haired and sleeveless-shirted 19-year-old wiz kid back in 2005, a stretch that’s long enough to have seen contemporaries like Juan Martin del Potro, Tomas Berdych, David Ferrer, Maria Sharapova and now, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, retire even at a relatively young age.

Rafa is shown with his 14 French Open titles.  (Photos from STF, Agence France Presse and Getty Images)

“For me, (to) have this trophy next to me again means everything, no?” Rafa said after his landmark feat, which put him two slams ahead of both Djokovic and Federer.  “So, yeah, have been emotional victories, without a doubt, unexpected in some way.  Yeah, very happy, no?  Have been a great two weeks, honestly, no?

“I for sure never believed I would be here at 36 being competitive again, playing in the most important court of my career one more time in the final.  It means a lot to me, means everything.  It just means a lot of energy to try to keep going.”

But though Nadal expressed his desire to play at Wimbledon later this month, he said there’s no guarantee he can do so as he doesn’t intend to go through the pain-killing injections or play again with a numb foot.  After having gone back to Barcelona earlier this week, he underwent a procedure known as radio frequency ablation, in which radio waves were sent through a hollow needle inserted into the nerves in his left foot that are causing his constant pain.  If the procedure works, which is not guaranteed, the heat from the radio waves could prevent the nerves from sending pain signals to his brain.

“If that works, I’m gonna keep going,” Rafa said before the procedure.  “If that does not work, then it’s gonna be another story.  And then I’m gonna answer to myself, I’m gonna ask myself about if I am ready to do a major thing without being sure that the things are going the proper way, for example.  A major surgery that don’t guarantee me to be able to be competitive again and it’s gonna take a long time to be back.”  That of course has been seen in the case of Federer, who at 40 is still recovering from another knee surgery he underwent several months back. 

For Rafa, however, what he just did was another milestone that he keeps notching.  He has not only won another French Open in a way that may not be as spectacular as he did in the past but he has also demonstrated an unmatched greatness in overcoming the odds while doing it, in the process winning the year’s first two slams for the first time in his career despite all the hurdles he had to surpass.

At this point, he’ll go down as one of the toughest competitors ever seen in any sport and has now secured a lofty place there among the immortals whose names will always be remembered and revered, regardless of whether he can still add to those 22 Grand Slam titles or not.  As Joel Drucker said in tennis.com, “At Roland Garros, once again, here is Nadal, like no one in tennis history, simply and powerfully occupying an eternal presence.”  An eternal presence, indeed, in sporting history.

Rafa’s team and family, which includes his parents and wife Mery as well as coach Carlos Moya, celebrate his latest victory.  (Photo from Eurosport)

[your-dietician]

‘No one had any idea how bad this could be’: Local health care workers’ reflections on COVID-19

New Post has been published on https://tattlepress.com/health/no-one-had-any-idea-how-bad-this-could-be-local-health-care-workers-reflections-on-covid-19/

‘No one had any idea how bad this could be’: Local health care workers’ reflections on COVID-19

Dr. Zack Mueller goes over rounds Thursday with Rachel Vendenhuevel, RN, at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston. Mueller is a hospitalist, who has spent much of the past year caring for COVID patients. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal Buy this Photo

LEWISTON — More than one year and three months ago, a Navy reservist in her 50s who recently returned from Italy was tested for COVID-19 at Central Maine Medical Center’s emergency department. Two days later, on March 12, 2020, state health officials confirmed the Auburn woman was Maine’s first presumptive case of COVID-19.

Since then, as of Friday, 68,924 Mainers tested positive for the viral disease and 858 died from complications.

Maine appears to be at a turning point in the pandemic: Maine’s civil state of emergency, which Gov. Janet Mills first declared on March 15, 2020, is set to expire at the end of this month; more than 57% of all Maine residents are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and the seven-day rolling average of new daily cases is 27, the lowest it’s been since September 2020.

But when a second surge of new cases and hospitalizations erupted across the state in March and April, providers at Lewiston’s two hospitals found themselves caring for more COVID-19 patients than ever before, breaking records set by the previous surge in late winter and adding unusual stress to staff already exhausted from a year fighting COVID-19.

That period, and the overall pandemic, will not be soon forgotten by six of those providers the Sun Journal spoke to recently. Despite life slowly returning to normal for many people, the health care workers — critical care nurses Kate Dube, Suzi Morin and Suzanne Wilson, and hospitalist Dr. Zachary Mueller at CMMC, and emergency department directors Dr. Carl Ramsay and registered nurse Heather Nadeau at St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center — say the fight isn’t over.

‘NO ONE HAD ANY IDEA HOW BAD THIS COULD BE’

Morin, 29, a nurse leader in CMMC’s intensive care unit, can trace the development of the pandemic — from the first cases in Wuhan, China, to the disease’s arrival in the United States — through the weekly lectures of her graduate school epidemiology course.

First it was “Oh, it’s just something going on in China,” and then it was “This can’t last very long,” Morin said.

“No one had any idea how bad this could be,” she said.

Dube, 26, recalls walking out of CMMC following a job interview for the position she now holds as a nurse in the intensive care unit, and a notification popped up on her cellphone screen that said COVID-19 had arrived in Maine, to the very hospital she had just exited.

“I was like, ‘Oh, I signed up at the right time,’” said Dube, who previously worked in the orthopedic department.

Around the same time, Morin’s younger sister tested positive for COVID-19.

“It’s kind of very strange thinking about it from that perspective of she was one of the first cases of COVID in this country. And now here we are and it’s, you know, almost everyone that we know has been impacted in some way or another with COVID,” Morin said.

11:30 P.M., 28 DEGREES: ST. MARY’S DIAGNOSES ITS FIRST COVID-19 PATIENT

Dr. Carl Ramsay, Emergency Department medical director, and Heather Nadeau, Emergency Department nursing director, stand in a patient room at St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center in Lewiston. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal Buy this Photo

Ramsay, 68, joined St. Mary’s as the Emergency Department medical director in December 2020. Prior to that, he had a 30-plus-year career practicing emergency medicine in New York City. He cared for HIV/AIDS patients in the 1980s in Harlem and the Bronx, an experience Ramsay described as “devastating” for those on the front lines.

Ramsay said watching the initial COVID-19 outbreak in China in late 2020 and its eventual spread to other parts of the globe was for him like watching SARS and H1N1 make their way to the U.S. in the 2000s. He treated patients during both of those outbreaks in New York, too.

Soon after arriving, and before he even knew his way around the hospital, Ramsay — and soon Nadeau, who came to St. Mary’s a month after Ramsay as Emergency Department nurse director — began looking for additional space for a potential surge in patients.

“January’s when we really started to focus on what our steps would be as an emergency department,” Nadeau said.

Still, “I think as a nurse starting in a small community hospital, you never think it’s going to come to you,” she said.

Nadeau and Ramsay immediately recalled the time and date where things changed: March 15, 2020, a Sunday afternoon.

“You could feel it,” Nadeau said. They began directing less sick patients to stay outside of the emergency room, in their cars or in the ED parking lot where doctors and nurses would check on them. Ramsay said it must have been about 28 degrees out.

“Our first diagnosed COVID patient was actually a parking lot patient in a car at 11:30 at night. And then that next morning, we have a tent. And we saw 55 extra people the next few days, beyond who came into the ED,” he said.

Though they had prepared for this moment, Nadeau still said it was “nerve-racking,” especially being in a leadership position where she’s not only caring for the well-being of her patients, but of her staff.

“As a leader, you’re trying to lead a team through the unknown and they’re looking to you for answers to questions that they have. … And so you’re trying to help them navigate their own fears when you have your own, with no answers,” Nadeau said.

‘WHICH ONE ARE YOU?’

The arrival of COVID-19 and the deadly unknowns it brought with it, quickly changed life for the health care providers.

Morin told her husband to hold the dogs back when she walked in the front door because she didn’t want them to touch her until she showered. Wilson, 56, stripped at the door of her and her husband’s home out in the country and immediately got in the shower. Mueller, 37, and Dube threw their scrubs into the washing machine as soon as they got in their homes. Though they’re vaccinated now and feel a little more at ease, most of these habits have stuck.

Critical care nurse Kate Dube tidies up an empty room June 16 at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston. She transferred from orthopedics to the ICU at CMMC just as the pandemic was hitting Maine. “I was like, ‘Oh, I signed up at the right time,’” Dube said. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal Buy this Photo

“Cognitive load is kind of the word that comes to my mind,” said Mueller, a doctor of osteopathic medicine and assistant chief of adult hospital medicine at CMMC.

“It’s just an extra thing that you always have to be thinking about, an extra step in your life. It’s an extra, you know, 20, 30 minutes between getting home and actually being home and spending time with my kids,” he said.

Dube said she now knows it is unlikely the virus will spread from her clothes to other people, but getting out of them when she gets home is for “peace of mind.” At the beginning of the pandemic, she said, she didn’t even want to get into her car after a shift in the ICU she was so concerned about bringing something home.

Wilson has spent half of her career working in the ICU, but said this is the first time she’s ever been faced with a disease where it seems that no matter how hard everyone works, sometimes it’s not enough.

“In my mind, I’m thinking, ‘Which one are you? Which one are you going to be? Are you going to be the one who dies?’” Wilson said.

“We’ve had some really sick patients (before COVID-19), but many of them do survive. No, I assume they’re all going to live because we’re fighting like crazy to make them,” she said when asked if she ever had that experience pre-COVID.

“But with COVID, it’s like, you know, it didn’t – we did everything. And they would still die,” Wilson said. She doesn’t think she’ll ever shake that.

Morin agreed: “A lot of times it felt like it didn’t matter what we did.”

For all his experience treating patients during the AIDS epidemic and the SARS and H1N1 outbreaks, Ramsay said those diseases don’t compare to COVID-19 in a clinical setting.

“It’s not even close. It’s that much worse. (It’s) totally more unpredictable,” Ramsay said. “It’s ability to be unpredictable for so many populations and patient types and its ability to kill, or make people really sick, it’s a different ballgame.”

He and Nadeau agreed that rapid testing was a “game changer” for clinicians and their ability to quickly isolate the patients with COVID-19.

There was greater uncertainty at the beginning of the pandemic, when rapid testing was not readily available and it was taking days for labs to provide results.

“These tests were taking days to come back and I just remember going in that room for the first time,” Dube said of a positive COVID-19 patient’s room. “It felt like you were in this room with this big ominous black smoke that was gonna come at you and you didn’t know how bad it was going to be.”

“And I just didn’t want to go near my friends. I didn’t want to go near my family. And I didn’t want to walk near anybody,” she said.

Since then, the medicine and clinical protocols have vastly improved. The COVID-19 vaccines have been pivotal for the caregivers’ own sense of safety — and a sign that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.

On Thursday, Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Nirav Shah said in a Tweet that of the 31 individuals hospitalized with COVID-19, 29 – 94% –were not fully vaccinated.

“People just feel different when they’re fully vaccinated,” Ramsay said. “They just do, (but) it doesn’t mean you let your guard down.”

SPRING SURGE WAS A ‘WEIRD TWILIGHT ZONE’ FOR CMMC NURSES

Most of Maine and its hospitals saw the worst surge in new daily COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations last fall, but Androscoggin County was hit hardest by the spike in cases this past spring. CMMC saw record numbers of COVID-19 patients, many or most of them requiring critical care.

“It felt so weird,” Dube said. “You come to work and things were the worst they had been ever in our career for COVID. But if you talk to somebody walking down the street or going to the grocery store or whatever,” and if they were not personally affected by the recent outbreaks “they’re like ‘Yeah, this is the best COVID has been.’”

At the height of the surge on April 20, Androscoggin County’s seven-day rolling average of new daily COVID-19 cases was 90.4. During the winter surge, the seven-day rolling average peaked on Jan. 15 at 73.7.

On that same day in April when cases peaked, providers at CMMC were caring for on average 18 confirmed COVID-19 patients over the past seven days, according to data provided by the hospital, a number that does not include patients with suspected cases that had yet to be confirmed via testing.

“At that point, everyone’s fed up and done with this pandemic, like it’s done. We’re all vaccinated, we’re fine,” Morin said. It was if everyone around her was saying, “I don’t know what you guys are moaning about.”

Morin said her family had a hard time understanding why she didn’t want to visit with them.

“All I’m thinking is like ‘You do not know how bad it is right now,’” she said.

Patients across the state were also trending younger and sicker. More patients needed higher amounts of supplemental oxygen, required a ventilator, required dialysis and other complications and many were in their 50s or younger, the three ICU nurses said.

TRAUMA AND JOY

“The PTSD is definitely real,” Morin said of the feelings of post-traumatic stress disorder that front line workers have experienced. It comes out in weird ways for her. Recently, she said she got “irrationally angry” at her husband because his friend’s wife did not want to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

“I knew it was irrational,” she said. “But there I am, like sitting on our basement floor, crying over it.”

Suzi Morin plays with her German shepherds June 18 at her home in Lewiston. Morin, who is an ICU nurse at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston, said she was grateful for the emotional support provided by her dogs during the worst of the pandemic. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal Buy this Photo

Dube and Mueller both said they haven’t really begun to unravel the impact that the past 15 months have had on them personally.

Dube said she’s constantly waiting for something bad to happen “and hoping that it’s not.” Morin was often preoccupied with the thought that if something happened to her family in Florida, she wouldn’t be able to get to them.

Wilson said she had “devastating family losses” and wasn’t able to be with her family in the South, where she’s from.

“It was a rough year (in) many, many, many ways,” she said.

Mueller suspects working through the effects of the pandemic will take a long time, while also “sort of living the ramifications of it for a long time.”

Ramsay called emergency physicians such as himself “pros” at distancing themselves from the situation at hand so they can focus on the medicine.

“I’m a pro at being a dissociative, put it in a box,” he said. “I haven’t personally caught up with those emotions yet.”

All six have found some silver linings amid an exhausting and traumatic year and a half.

“It’s weird considering everything, but I still feel hopeful,” Dube said.

The four nurses — the ICU nurses from CMMC and Nadeau from St. Mary’s — said the teamwork and bond they had with their co-workers was special.

Emergency Department nurses are “a lot like family, but that really shined through this,” Nadeau said.

Morin said without her fellow nurses, “I feel like I would not have made it through.”

Mueller said he was “excited” to practice medicine throughout the pandemic.

“Everyone was scared, but at least we could kind of channel that into doing our job at the hospital,” he said. “In a way that was actually relieving.  … I felt like I had a chance to actually act on what everyone else, everybody was scared of.”

There were other moments of joy: Morin got married in October “in a mask.” Exercising with her husband and playing with her dogs have also been a huge help.

Wilson rediscovered the “Harry Potter” series. Dube got a puppy after her dog passed away earlier this year. Mueller said he’s especially thankful for his and his loved ones’ health.

Ramsay thinks the “biggest silver lining is yet to come.”

“I think there’s going to be this joy that just percolates,” he said.

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Saturday 25th of February Doors open at 5.30pm 6 - 9pm

Dark Water: The Dead of Night

Laurie Anderson Anna Bunting-Branch Valie Export Rebecca Jagoe Sam Keogh Maria Lassnig Lynn Hershman-Leeson Lawrence Lek Rashaad Newsome Tai Shani Marianna Simnett Zadie Xa Special print by Allison Katz

Programmed by Tai Shani & A---Z (Anne Duffau)

At the point of 'Heat Death of the Universe' or maximum Entropy / A realised cyborgian myth / A Subliminal intervention between Here and Nowhere (Tai Shani, The Vampyre, 2016)

Tai Shani & A---Z (Anne Duffau) presents an evening of performances and screenings around Sci Fi / technology / the future bodies at CGP London, Dilston Grove.

An evening of performances and screening exploring and extending a research around amorphous living through technology & the inner space.

In associate with LUX, Daata Editions, sixpackfilm and the Royal College of Art, School of Fine Art

SOLD OUT

Please note that seated places will be limited so arrive early - a 15/20 min interval will take place after the first hour - the total duration of the evening will be 3 hours.

v Laurie Anderson

O Superman, 1982, 8min28

v Anna Bunting-Branch

The Linguists, 2017, 8min04

v Valie Export

Self-Portrait with Head, 1966-1967, 1min

v Rebecca Jagoe

The Apotropaion (Reptilian Coiffure),15-20 min

v Sam Keogh

Predator Versace Bleached, performance, 25min

v Maria Lassnig

Shapes, 10min 1972

v Lynn Hershman-Leeson

Seduction of a Cyborg, 1994, 8min

Lawrence Lek Shiva's Way (Seoul 2072),12m02

v Rashaad Newsome

Put Some Respect On My Name, 2016, 1min13 courtesy the artist and Daata Editions

v Tai Shani

DARK CONTINENT: PHANTASMAGOREGASM, 2016, 25min

v Marianna Simnett

The Needle and the Larynx, 2016, 15min17

v Zadie Xa

Mood Rings, Crystals and Opal Coloured Stones, 2016, 10min (Special Edit)

v Special print by Allison Katz

One of the most admired and acclaimed experimental-performance artists in the United States of America, Laurie Anderson is a free-spirited, creative genius, whose work intrigues and mesmerizes audiences across the globe. From performing a symphony of car horns to performing on the violin wearing frozen skates, Anderson has the capability to add that rare edge to all her performances. In a career spanning over four decades, she has managed to create art using a variety of media, be it sculpture, spoken-word songs, films or projected imaginary. She has showcased her work across various prestigious museums across the world and has released seven albums under the Warner Bros label. Popularly referred to as the ‘godmother of the New York art scene’, Anderson’s innovative performances reveal immense creative energy, when compared to contemporary artist and musicians. She is fiercely unpredictable on stage and carefully mixes her experimental compositions with pop-synthesizing beats. Some of her well-known works include ‘Duets On Ice’, ‘O Superman’, ‘Home of the Brave’, ‘Homeland’, ‘The Waters Reglitterized’ and ‘Big Science’. www.laurieanderson.com

Anna Bunting-Branch (born 1987, Cambridge) is an artist and researcher based in London. Recent solo presentations include The Labours of Barren House, Jerwood Visual Arts, London (2017); W.I.T.C.H. (“Women Inspired To Commit Herstory and other tales…”), Hardwick Gallery, Cheltenham (2015); Mizora – A World of Women, Passatge Studio, Barcelona (2014). Selected group exhibitions and events include Witchy Methodologies, ICA, London (2017); Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2016, The Bluecoat, Liverpool / ICA, London (2016); Art Show, WisCon 40, Madison (2016); Everything Else, Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision, Wellington (2016); Primary Care, Julius Caesar, Chicago (2015); Wendel! Open Your Door, CGP, London (2013); Performance Compost, KIASMA Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki (2012). Anna Bunting-Branch is currently undertaking a practice-related PhD at Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, supported by the London Arts & Humanities Partnership / AHRC. Her research explores science fiction as a methodology to re-vision feminist practice and its histories. www.annabuntingbranch.com

Valie Export, Prof. Dr. h.c.media and performance artist, filmmaker born in Linz, lives and works in Vienna Export’s artistic work comprises: video environments, digital photography, installation, body performances, feature films, experimental films, documentaries, Expanded Cinema, conceptual photography, body-material interactions, Persona Performances, laser installations, objects, sculptures, texts on contemporary art history and feminism. Valie Export is one of the most important pioneers on conceptual media art, performance and film. Export took part at the documenta 12 2007, and documenta 6, 1977, in Kassel 1985 nomination of EXPORT's feature film Die Praxis der Liebe, screenplay and direction, for the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival Since 1975 curatorial projects, international symposiums, exhibitions and film programmes Her works are in international collections like Centro Pompidou, Paris, Tate Modern, London, Reine Sophia, Madrid, MOMA, New York, MOCA, Los Angeles ect. Since 1968 participation in international exhibitions, for example: Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Institute of Contemporary Art, London; Venice Biennale, Venezia; documenta, Kassel; MoCA, Los Angeles; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; MUMOK, Vienna; Generali Foundation, Vienna; P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai; Palais des Beaux-Arts, Bruxelles; Tate Modern, London; Metropolitan Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea; Metropolitan Museum, New York; ars electronica, Linz/Austria. http://www.valieexport.at

Rebecca Jagoe presents a body of work that is a body itself, an unruly body refusing to be consumed. Working across text, performance and sculpture, her practice addresses the aspiring self and notions of self-fashioning that might negate embodiment. Recent shows include A glass is half empty of everything but simple passage, at Seventeen Gallery; Unveiling (You embrace me, as I am) at Jupiter Woods (2016), OpenProcess 3: This Just Blows My Hair Back!, at Space Studios, The White Building (2016) and The Kiss at Blyth Gallery (2016). A commissioning editor at E.R.O.S., her text-based work has been published by E.R.O.S. Journal, Rice + Toye, Paper Journal and It’s Nice That Printed Pages. www.rebeccajagoe.com

Sam Keogh, born 1985, currently in residence at the Rijksakadmie, Amsterdam. 
Education: MFA Fine Art, Goldsmiths College, London, 2011 - 2014; BA Fine Art Painting, NCAD,Dublin, Graduated 2009. Solo Exhibitions include Eurocopter EC135, Dortmunder Kunstverein, Germany, June 2016; Four Fold, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, May 2015; Mop, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, September 2013; Terrestris, Project Arts Centre, Dublin, July 2012 Recent group exhibitions include Rijksakademie OPEN 2016, Amsterdam, November 2016; ECTOPLASM, curated by Padraic E Moore, 1646, Den Haag, October 2016; Lost & Found, curated by Geo Wyeth, Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam, September 2016; Riddle of the Burial Grounds, curated by Tessa Giblin, Extra City, Antwerp, March 2016; 2116, curated by Chris Clarke and Caitlín Doherty, Glucksman Gallery, Cork, Ireland and the Broad Museum, Michigan, USA, March 2016; The Bandits Live Comfortably in the Ruins. curated by Sean Lynch, Flat Time House, London, March 2016;‘Something to be Scared of’ A.M. London, March 2015;  Hall of Half Life, curated by Tessa Giblin, Graz Museum, Graz, Austria, September 2015;  30 Years the Future, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, December 2014; Dukkha, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, August 2014; LOCOMOTION, Store, London, May 2014; The Line of Beauty, curated by Rachel Thomas, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, July 2013; How to Read World Literature, The Public School, NYC, July 2013 www.samkeogh.net

Maria Lassnig was born in Austria in 1919, and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna during the Second World War. After visiting Paris in the 1950s, she developed an interest in different forms of abstraction, in which artists use shapes, colours, forms and gestural marks to achieve their effect. She experimented with some of these styles herself, and returned to live in Paris between 1961 and 68. With self-portraiture a lifelong obsession, early in her career she produced drawings referred to as ‘introspective experiences’, and later, coined the term ‘body awareness’. The artist depicted the parts of her body that she actually felt as she worked, instead of painting only what she could see: ‘The only true reality is my feelings, played out within the confines of my body’, as she put it. Despite what sounds initially like an introspective, unbending approach, Lassnig’s style evolved during her long career; she would also experiment with making animated films, which complemented the themes of her painting. Often reflecting external issues, her work commented on the nature of woman’s role in society, technological advances and conflict, all through the prism of self-portraiture. Together with Arnulf Rainer and Oswald Oberhuber founded informal painting in Austria; founder of the art of body painting. Lived abroad in Paris (1961-68) and New York (1968-1980). Since 1970, she created autodicdacticly according to her own drawings on a self-invented work desk (not an animation desk). 1979 DAAD scholarship to go to Berlin. 1980-90 professor of the master class for Experimental Design at the College of Applied Arts in Vienna. 1982 founded the only Austrian teaching studio for animated film. Member of the Woman Artist Filmmakers Group New York (1972-80). Österreichischer Staatspreis (Austrian state award) for painting (1988). Member of the Austria Filmmakers Cooperative. www.hauserwirth.com/artists/19/maria-lassnig/biography/ www.sixpackfilm.com/en/catalogue/filmmaker/119

Over the last five decades, artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson has received international acclaim for her art and films.  She is recognized for her innovative work investigating issues that are now recognized as key to the workings of society: the relationship between humans and technology, identity, surveillance, and the use of media as a tool of empowerment against censorship and political repression. She is considered one of the most influential media artists and has made pioneering contributions in photography, video, film, performance, installation and interactive as well as net-based media art. Her activist films on injustice within the art world and society at large have been praised worldwide. !Women Art Revolution! won first prize in the Montreal Festival for Films on Art and hailed by the Museum of Modern Art as one of the three best documentaries of 2012. www.lynnhershman.com

Lawrence Lek creates speculative worlds and site-specific simulations using software, video, installation and performance. Often based on real places, his digital environments and video game essays reflect the impact of virtual realities on our perception of the city. Contrasts between utopia and ruins, desire and loss, and fantasy and history appear throughout his work to symbolise this exchange. Recent works and exhibitions include the Nøtel, his ongoing collaboration with Kode9, Seoul MediaCity Biennial 2016 at Seoul Museum of Art, Glasgow International 2016 at Tramway, Glasgow; Secret Surface at KW Berlin; Software, Hard Problem at Cubitt Gallery, London; The Uncanny Valley at Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge; Unreal Estate at the Royal Academy of Arts, London; Performance as Process at the Delfina Foundation, London. Lek is recipient of the 2016 Jerwood/Film & Video Umbrella Award and the 2015 Dazed Emerging Artist Award. www.lawrencelek.com

Mashing together American hip-hop culture and the European heraldic tradition, Rashaad Newsome produces collages, installations, performances, videos, and songs that send-up and celebrate African-American culture. Drawing from sources high and low, he masterfully appropriates the gestures, sounds, and symbols of black culture and European heraldry (coats of arms), demonstrating the surprising similarities between them. As he explains: “A coat of arms is really a collage of objects that represent social status and economic status and status as a warrior. […] Everybody wants to be the king of hip-hop.” For his exuberant, meticulously composed collages, for example, Newsome culls images from hip-hop and luxury magazines. Like coats of arms, they represent success and opulence, hip-hop style. In his “Shade Compositions” (begun 2005), he builds musical rhythms from what he calls “ghetto gestures,” revealing the grace and humor in head-cocking, tongue-clicking, and other expressions of displeasure. American, b. 1979, New Orleans, Louisiana, based in New York, New York www.rashaadnewsome.com

‘Dark Continent Productions’ by Tai Shani is an on-going project that proposes an allegorical city of women, it is an experimental and expanded adaptation of Christine de Pizan's 1405 pioneering feminist book, ‘The Book of the City of Ladies’ within which Christine builds an allegorical city for notable women drawn from a medieval conception of history, where fact, fiction and myth are blurred. This non-hierarchical approach also determines the construction of the characters and narrative of ‘Dark Continent’. Taking Pizan's book as a point of departure to imagine an alternative history which privileges, sensation and interiority and constructs a possible post-patriarchal future. This very loose adaptation offers an ahistorical, non-linear, non-place, simultaneously internal and geographic, past and future, a city in time but not in space. This city of women is populated by composite, symbolic protagonists that embody excess and examine 'feminine' subjectivity and experience as well as the potentials of a realism defined by excess and the irrational; qualities traditionally surrounding notions of “femininity”. The project is iterated through disparate installations, films and performances that together form a mythology that conceptualises the ‘epic’ as a form test the potentials of feminist politics and ideologies, a platform to critique the current structures, norms and gender constructs, and imagine a post-patriarchal world. Shani has presented her work extensively in the UK and abroad, including Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm (2016); Serpentine Galeries (2016); Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2015); Southbank Centre, London (2014-15); Arnolfini, Bristol (2013); Matt’s Gallery, London (2012) and FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais and Loop Festival, Barcelona (2011). www.taishani.com

Marianna Simnett is an artist based in London. Her work spans video, performance, installation and drawing, with a focus on bodies and their limits. She was a winner of the Jerwood/FVU Award in 2015, and had recent solo exhibitions and screenings at Seventeen and Serpentine Galleries. Forthcoming work includes a solo show at Matt’s Gallery in September and a musical film to be produced by Film and Video Umbrella.

Through performance, video, painting and textiles, artist Zadie Xa interrogates the overlapping and conflation of cultures that inform self conceptualized identities, notions of self and her experience within the Asian diaspora. Her intricate hand sewn fabric work stitches together familiar symbols of yin-yangs, knives, lucky numbers and monolid eyes, all operating within a system of personalized semiotics. These exaggerated motifs are utilised by Xa to both combat and engage with Eurocentric perceptions of Asian identity and otherness and aspire to create new and alternative Asian identity narratives often fantastical and within the realm of the supernatural.

Zadie Xa was born in 1983 in Vancouver Canada and currently lives in London UK. She received an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art in 2014 and a BFA at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 2007. Recent exhibitions and performances include; Basic Instructions B4 Leaving, programmed by PS/Y as part of "Hysteria 2017" Cafe OTO, London UK, 3 Thousand and 30 High Priestess of Pluto, Whitechapel Gallery; Linguistic Legacies and Lunar Exploration, Serpentine Gallery; Kind of Flossy, Assembly Point Gallery; A Rose Is Without a ‘Why’. It Blooms Because It Blooms, Carl Freedman Gallery; Ride the Chaktu // First Contact, Serpentine Radio; With Institutions Like These, Averard Hotel; At Home Salon: Double Acts, Marcelle Joseph Projects (all London, 2016); Schwabinger Tor, Munich (2016); and Studio Voltaire Open 2015. Upcoming exhibitions include; Walled Gardens in an Insane Eden, curated and organized by Marcelle Joseph Projects, Sara Zanin Gallery, Rome IT, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester (both February 2017), Pumphouse Gallery (solo), programmed by PS/Y as part of "Hysteria 2017", London UK (August 2017) http://www.zadiexa.com

A- - -Z is an exploratory curatorial platform produced by Anne Duffau. Taking the formula of the alphabet, A- - -Z uses words related to the idea of Entropy as a starting point to map out and test various unstable potentials. one Letter, one experiment, twenty six times. abc-z.org

CGP London // Dilston Grove Southwest corner of Southwark Park. London SE16 2DD

Bus & Underground: Canada Water Station on the Jubilee and London Overground lines.

Dilston Grove is a 10 minute walk from Canada Water Station.

Overground: Surrey Quays Station.

Dilston Grove is a five minute walk from Surrey Quays station.

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