#mfa michael

[liminalmemories21]

hi!!! i’m absolutely in love with your knave-verse series, and i fall more in love every time i reread it. i just recently moved to boston (hence the anon ask), and some of the first things i did were visit both the gardner museum and the mfa and they’re incredible!! the mfa is beautiful and i love the variety of their artworks (and their rotating exhibits! i went just in time to catch the end of the japanese graphic design exhibit and i loved it!), but the gardner is a masterpiece. i love how much it feels like the personal collection it is and i love the almost-clutter of some of the rooms and i love the atmosphere of the whole place. i also got to see their summer rotating exhibit, which was on christopher street: transgender portraits, and i cried in the exhibit hall.

ANYWAY. what i actually wanted to talk about is. not any of that.

i just started reading michael finkel’s the art thief, about stéphane breitwieser, and i’m so curious as to what knave-verse tk thinks of him. there’s a couple passages in particular that have caught my eye as things i think tk would have an opinion on, and i’m only on chapter 3:

A violent, late-night heist is an insult to Breitwieser’s notion that stealing artwork should be a daytime affair of refined stealth in which no one so much as senses fear.

Breitwieser’s sole motivation for stealing, he insists, is to surround himself with beauty, to gorge on it. Very few art thieves have ever cited aesthetics as an incentive, but Breitwieser has emphasized this repeatedly…He takes only works that stir him emotionally, and seldom the most valuable piece in a place. He feels no remorse when he steals because museums, in his deviant view, are really just prisons for art. They’re often crowded and noisy, with limited visiting hours and uncomfortable seats, offering no calm place to reflect or recline.

Instead of an art thief, Breitwieser prefers to be thought of as an art collector with an unorthodox acquisition style. Or, if you will, he’d like to be called an art liberator.

the second quote in particular, especially the comment about museums being prisons, feels like something tk would have thoughts about, considering both his own unique code of thievery ethics and the fact that he now works in a museum himself, but all three of those quotes got my attention when i read them. finkel does mention that breitwieser “despised” the gardner theft because the thieves, in a way, destroyed the paintings by cutting them out of their frames instead of removing them neatly, which i do think tk would agree with him on, but we already know how tk feels about the gardner theft so that’s not surprising.

i’ve always loved museums, but i didn’t have any real appreciation for art for a long time. i started building that appreciation before i read your knave-verse, but the way that tk talks about art makes me look at things in a completely different way. you’ve also introduced me to so many artists i didn’t know anything about before! i’m still partial to sargent, but i’ve definitely expanded my horizons a lot in the last year or two and it’s incredible!! thank you so much for writing this series!! so seriously it has changed me and the way i look at art and the world and i keep coming back to it over and over again because i love it so much

oh, holy shit, this is amazing. Thank you so much.

I have so many things to say.

1 - Yes! Yes! the Gardner is astonishing, I love it so much. One of my favorite museums in the world. I'm so glad you went and loved it too.

2 - If you have access to a car - Newport, RI is a good day trip from Boston (the Breakers alone is worth the trip) - and the American Illustration Museum there has a huge collection of Leyendeckers. I need to go back. I need more time not devoted to being at work.

3 - I have not read The Art Thief, but it's on my list now, it sounds fascinating.

I think TK would appreciate the style and elan of refined stealth - that is extremely his vibe. (the fact that they cut the Gardner paintings out of their frames is physically painful to think about - although who pulled off the Gardner theft is one of my first questions in the afterlife).

But, TK would vehemently disagree with Breitwieser's characterization of museums as prisons of art. Look, there are lots of ethical concerns about museums - but they also have the potential to show people things they would never have the chance to see. Art isn't/shouldn't be locked away where only the privileged few can see it - it belongs to everyone.

4 - TK's taste in art is extremely my taste in art (shocking, right?) - but writing this has made me research a lot of art I would never otherwise have seen (especially in Austin - I now really want to go to Austin for the art, also google is 90% convinced I'm moving there).

And just, in conclusion - thank you so much for taking the time to say this, because it means a lot that something that started because I'd been watching White Collar and Lonestar and had a weird 'huh, what if?' moment, turned into something that has actually impacted the way you look at art, and the way that you feel like it can belong to you. That's amazing. I am so floored - in a good way - by that. Thank you.

[fromtenthousandfeet]

Documentaries!

Michael D. Ratner, friend of Scooter Braun, made Jungkook’s new documentary about Golden. Here’s his bio from imdb.com:

Michael D. Ratner is the founder and CEO of OBB Media, a vertically integrated content studio that is defining how a new generation of viewers consumes programming. At 26, Ratner launched OBB Media in 2016 and has led the company through explosive growth alongside co-founder and COO Scott Ratner. Michael most recently was named to the Goldman Sachs Top 100 Most Exceptional Entrepreneurs of 2023, and has previously been recognized as one of Variety's New Leader Creatives and a member of Forbes 30 Under 30.

Michael D. Ratner oversees all five verticals of OBB Media, including the recently launched OBB Studios. As the lead creative on OBB's marquee projects, Ratner has created, directed and produced many critically and commercially successful films & TV shows, receiving a Grammy nomination for Justin Bieber: Our World; amassing over 1.5 billion views with Kevin Hart's Cold As Balls; fostering dialogue around mental health awareness with Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil; and pairing content with commerce in Hailey Bieber's Who's In My Bathroom?. Most recently, Ratner produced the Netflix Original, Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa.

Additionally, Ratner is an entrepreneur and investor behind some of the fastest growing companies in the entertainment and consumer sectors, including Hailey Bieber's rhode skin. He has transformed how talent builds and grows their businesses, most recently partnering with Bieber to launch her beauty brand. Ratner is the founding partner of rhode skin, which has become an industry powerhouse, crossing the eight-figure revenue mark in its first eleven days of sales, accumulating over 1 million waitlist sign-ups, and recently expanding internationally. Ratner is the chairman of Myron Arthur Holdings, which focuses on investing in and advising media, entertainment and consumer brands. Ratner received his BA from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MFA from NYU Tisch.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Anonymous

And here’s the bio for what made Jimin’s FACE documentary:

A Samsung phone + a mini tripod 😂

[lboogie1906]

Jonathan Michael Majors (September 7, 1989) is an actor. After graduating from Yale University with an MFA in acting, Majors rose to prominence for starring in the independent feature film The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019) for which he received an Independent Spirit Award nomination. In 2020 he gained notice for starring in Lovecraft Country, for which he received a nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award.

He has since portrayed Nat Love in the western The Harder They Fall (2021), Jesse L. Brown in Devotion (2022), and a boxer in Creed III (2023). Since 2021, he has appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as different versions of the character Kang the Conqueror.

He was born in Santa Barbara County, California, and spent his early years living with his mother, who is a pastor, his older sister, and younger brother on the Vandenberg military base, as his father was in the Air Force.

He secured his first onscreen role in When We Rise while still a student at Yale. He appeared in his first feature film role as Corporal Henry Woodson in Hostiles. More roles followed, in White Boy Rick and Out of Blue. He appeared in three other 2019 film releases: Captive State, Gully, and Jungleland.

In 2020, he starred in Da 5 Bloods. He debuted in Loki as “He Who Remains”. In 2021, he starred as the lead actor in The Harder They Fall. In 2023, he starred in Magazine Dreams and co-starred in Creed III. He portrayed Kang the Conqueror and several other variants of the character in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. He is set to appear in Loki season 2, Avengers: The Kang Dyn, and Avengers: Secret Wars. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[bookgeekgrrl]

My media this week (22-28 Sep 2024)

📚 STUFF I READ 📚

🥰 Before Midnight (Nero Wolfe #25) (Rex Stout, author; Michael Prichard, narrator)

🥰 The Golden Age of Murder (Martin Edwards, author; Leighton Pugh, narrator) - in-depth look at The Detection Club members during the 'Golden Age of Detective Fiction' (between the world wars)

😍 Pizza-verse series (Closer) - 65K, Suits AU where "in an alternate universe, Harvey's still the best closer in New York but Mike's not a runner for Trevor: he's a pizza deliveryman, Harvey's favorite pizza deliveryman. And Harvey's discovery that Mike's more than he lets on will change everyone's lives… told and retold through Mike, Donna, and Harvey's point of view, with new scenes and reactions each time." - absolute banger series, love it so much

💖💖 +170K of shorter fic so shout out to these I really loved 💖💖

Only the Good Die Young (ZenaidaMacroura) - MCU: shrunkyclunks, 23K - excellent shrunkyclunks with EMT!Bucky/Cap!Steve who are both absolute awkward disasters

t'aimer sur les bords du lac (burning_brighter) - MCU: Stucky, 17K - a really good post-EG AU cabin fic where they finally get their shit together

Breathtaking and Absolute (alocalband) - Check Please!: NurseyDex, 3K - truly lovely getting together fic

📺 STUFF I WATCHED 📺

In Deep: Life at the Bottom of the Ocean With Dr. Sarah McAnulty - Session 2

Dr. Odyssey - s1, e1

Handsome - Pretty Little Episode #6

Monét's Slumber Party - s1, e6

Handsome - Hannah Berner asks about inner voices

Dirty Laundry - s4, e4

Adventuring Academy - "Edit While They're Killing It (with Zac Oyama)" (s5, e4)

D20: A Starstruck Odyssey - s12, e14-18

D20: Adventuring Party - s8, e14-18

🎧 PODCASTS 🎧

Normal Gossip - Romancing the Stoned with Jenée Desmond-Harris

How To Do Everything - Haircuts in Space, Tutus, and the Nasal Ranger

NPR's Book of the Day - In 'Who's That Girl?' Eve reflects on her time in a male-dominated hip-hop industry

Short Wave - Solving The EV Battery Recycling Puzzle

Pop Culture Happy Hour - Demi Moore's Film The Substance

⭐ The Sporkful - The Inside Story Of How Taco Bell Created The Big Cheez-It

Code Switch - Ask Code Switch: Do bike lanes cause gentrification?

Normal Gossip - MFAs and Other Mistakes with Brittany Luse

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - Small Town, Big Story: The Giant Omelet of Abbeville, LA

Re: Dracula - September 24: Asleep or Awake, Mad or Sane

Short Wave - Harnessing The Ghost Particles Blasting Through You

Dinner’s on Me - Mena Suvari

If Books Could Kill - Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

Death, Sex & Money - Bob the Drag Queen says Polyamory is Expensive

⭐ 99% Invisible - Cue the Sun!

It's Been a Minute - The SMACKDOWN: Serena Williams vs. Muhammad Ali vs. Trina

Short Wave - The Reality Of OCD

Code Switch - Latinos are moving to the far right. Paola Ramos thinks she knows why

NPR's Book of the Day - In the new book 'Want,' Gillian Anderson collects other women's sexual fantasies

Vibe Check - I Have A Dream

⭐ Decoder Ring - Calling Dick Tracy! It’s Warren Beatty Again

Re: Dracula - September 25: Bloofer Lady

Twenty Thousand Hertz+ - "blah, blah, blah…"

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - Small Town, Big Story: The Pennsic Wars of Slippery Rock, PA

Ologies - Modern Toichographology (MURALS & STREET ART) with Conrad Benner

Consider This - Meet the man in charge of prosecuting war crimes

Re: Dracula - September 27: This Great Un-Dead

It's Been a Minute - An identity crisis at the heart of the election; plus, disrupting biracial fantasies

Smart Podcast, Trashy Books - 634. Climbing Mt. Fuji with Courtney Milan

Endless Thread - Defrauding Big Tech

ICYMI - ICYMI Plus: Why Are People Turning On Chappell Roan?

Re: Dracula - September 28: Some Rational Explanation

Overinvested - Ep. 306: English Teacher

The Allusionist - Tranquillusionist: Ex-Constellations

Hit Parade - The Bridge: Got My Back Against the Record Machine

Who Killed the Video Star: The Story of MTV - ep 1-3

🎶 MUSIC 🎶

Easy Mornings: Hindi

Good Vibes Only

Feel Good Mix #1

Feel Good Mix #2

Weird Tales of The Ramones (1976 - 1996) [Ramones] {2005}

[grandhotelabyss]

That “Language and Leonard Michaels” article which you mentioned recently on Substack got me thinking about precision in writing. I tend to agree with Duffy’s qualms about MFA writing (he calls it illiterate), but he also seems to be missing the point somewhat when he starts breaking down some sentences written by Anthony Doerr. His criticism is that Doerr’s language is bad because of its imprecision: his metaphors are tangled, and he often mistakes the actual meaning of words. Would the solution to this be a “return” to a Flaubertian search of the mot juste? Or maybe imprecision is not the real issue? Woolf’s metaphors are also imprecise, Lawrence is repetitive and circumlocutory, Lispector had “bad” grammar. How valuable is precision, the mot juste, and a good use of grammar? Isn't it misguided to judge a novel "line by line", as if it were a poem? I think the MFA illiteracy is more architectural and imaginative than grammatical! Which is why I can't find the middlebrow XXth century fiction Duffy praises in his article any better than Doerr.

Sorry for the long ask, I'd like to hear some of your thoughts on this.

I don't think precision is the question exactly. Doerr is bad, and bad in a characteristic way, because he is trying to amass a hyper-specificity in description that collapses under its own weight of ponderous pseudo-originality. He descends from Flaubert's fetish for the detail observed as if anew. I agree you can't dismiss a novel by plucking bad sentences. But that was the first sentence! If the writing is unobtrusively bad, as with Somerset Maugham's clichés (speaking of midcentury middlebrow), that can be forgiven; obtrusive badness, self-impressed badness, writing that seems to smirk at its own profundity, is something else. It's the smug tone of this brand of literary fiction that offends, and I do prefer something like the pseudo-Biblical style of a Steinbeck as somehow more naively sincere, if we're still talking middlebrow. Ironically, though, a reader kindly sent me a characteristic Michaels story for inspection, and I also found its assay of the high style totally overblown, similar to some Harold Brodkey stories I've read: epigoni trying to do Saul Bellow, who beautifully twisted grammar, and failing. Bellow, Woolf, Lawrence had energy, which is more important than precision or good grammar, and what it precisely expressed was their vision, their way of seeing the world. This can't be imitated. It's hard to convey why a style succeeds or fails in any given writer's hands. I wouldn't write a rulebook because great writers will break the rules. Bad ones will break them too, but they'll still be bad. There is an X factor, a je ne sais quoi, a "point of madness," or whatever in great writing that exceeds what can be taught, explained, or legislated. But you know when it's not there.

[aliveafterparadise]

About The Project: "Still Alive, After Paradise"

I have a project to propose for the apocalypse. It's called, "Still Alive, After Paradise."

The premise is very simple: Lucifer, the son of God, and Michael, the great daemon of the Inferno, team up to take down God Himself, Elohim Most High. It's a very long run but the scales are about to tip.

Can God survive? Or is the 7th reign of the angels about to begin?

What I'm Doing to Make this Project a Reality:

I'm writing a book series called "Still Alive, After Paradise" that follows the long arc of Helel (Lucifer) and Mikha'el (Michael), with the intent of making an adult queer erotic series where the couple is already together and fully intends to/does win

Working with artist-friends to create the blueprint for the character apperances

Mapping the potential to enhance the experience with an adult visual novel game, giving players the chance to play with relationships and characters

What I'm looking for to Make this a Success:

Interested 'Bible fanfic' community members who enjoy angelology, the occult, and queer erotica

Social and financial support to complete the book and find an agent and/or self-publish (though I will be sharing parts of it to build the hype up)

To start a new fandom with hot, Castlevania-style characters who just want chaos all the time (especially Lucifer and Michael)

And, Who the Hell am I?

I'm a queer Black artist in the Western US that puts on community events and helps with theater management. I have a shiny, overpriced MFA and have been writing on places like FF.net and here since 2008.

I have everything up with a limited preview on my website here, Alive After Paradise. While I will do the bulk of sharing there, I will periodically post to here and Archive of Our Own under the #supernatural tag the more erotic parts as we make progress :).

Thanks for taking an interest. I can't wait to share more soon.

[finishinglinepress]

NEW FROM FINISHING LINE PRESS: Confessional by Fletch Fletcher

On SALE now! Pre-order Price Guarantee: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/confessional-by-fletch-fletcher/

CONFESSIONAL is a sequence of #poems pulling at the raw emotions, the regrets and mistakes, the parts of ourselves we rather leave buried. Dig them up and question the ties of family, religion, tradition, love, your own mind, and how much of you is your choice or the choice of others. Steer clear of 835, as there must be parts of each of us, some hurts or joys or secrets, that must be kept to ourselves.

Fletch Fletcher is a poet, a science teacher, a brother, and a bunch of other random things that may or may not help you understand him. He was lucky enough to work with and learn from amazing poets while getting an MFA in Poetry at Drew University. Fletcher’s first collection, Existing Science (2021), was published by Assure Press.

PRAISE FOR Confessional by Fletch Fletcher

“We are creatures of secrets,” Fletch Fletcher writes, each page of this book a “space of white / that is my confessional.” These self-interrogations of one who laments a father’s absence, “the impotence of prayer,” and the loneliness of the outsider, who imagines “the sound the sky made / when it first saw the ocean fill itself” and “dawn through ruffled eggshell drapes,” are informed by both a Beat sensibility and the turbulent romanticism of Goethe. Fletcher leans toward affirmation, remembering “untilled plains, / clean and free / of headstones” while recognizing that “confession and storytelling are both true / to the soul if not always / to the tongue.” Confessional is a disturbingly raw and profoundly tender sequence.

–Michael Waters, author of Caw

In the vital candor of Confessional, Fletch Fletcher unmasks the heart nearly deadened by myths of masculinity, measures the weight of blood, lays bare depression’s loneliness, and reveals how the self can be an ocean that fills itself, that inhales primal fear and shame and then push[es] a breath to a gale // into other lungs. Indeed, these are poems whose witness transforms the breath; read them with a pen in hand. Fletcher exhumes truth from the saltwater-soaked soil of buried knowing and asks himself, and us: Do you remember how you felt / when your skin was open sky, / untilled plains, / clean and free / of headstones? I cannot wait for you to read this book.

–Darla Himeles, author of Cleave

Fletch Fletcher has utilized an intimate and soul shattering vehicle, the confessional, to transform the raw energy of life lived into poetry. “…it must be true first that confession is an energy before you / can understand how laws work…so I marked and measured and buried mine / let them seep slowly.” You are holding the book of a poet who feels to the very depths of his being; a poet who does the shadow work of digging and surfacing to write poetry that is ecstatic in its seeing.

–Roberto Carlos Garcia, author of What Can I Tell You? Selected Poems(Flowersong Press)

Please share/repost #flpauthor #preorder #AwesomeCoverArt #read #poems #literature #poetry

[degenderates]

y’all have to understand that i am not normal about white angel by michael cunningham. i’ve read it many times, twice now for different writing classes. which is my major. i live in the town where michael cunningham got his writing mfa. i was drawn to this town because of the university’s mfa program. the white angel statue in the story is inspired by a statue in a cemetery i frequent. i read that story and think of supernatural, not just tangentially, but for real. supernatural consumes my life. i go to the cemetery and i think of white angel. i go to the cemetery and think of superna

[tigerstrikesasteroidnetwork]

NY / &&&2

&&&2 January 6, 2024 – February 18, 2024  Opening Reception: Jan 6, Saturday 6-8PM  A talk with the artists will be scheduled in February

Tiger Strikes Asteroid New York is pleased to present &&&2, a bi-coastal exhibition that serves as both a survey and sequel to the collaborations of Ethan Greenbaum, David Kennedy Cutler and Sara Greenberger Rafferty.

Ten years ago, the artists initiated a series of meetings to talk about materials and techniques, based on their mutual interest in using photographic imagery to destabilize traditional art categories like painting, printmaking and sculpture.

The meetings resulted in an artist’s book titled &&&, in which the three artists imagined themselves as a fictional industrial supply firm. For Greenberger & Greenbaum & Cutler &, the fictional company had a veneer of prestige. For these capitalist outsiders, a corporate symbol of joint commercial enterprise was almost tantamount to success.

The book was released at Printed Matter’s NY Art Book Fair in 2013 in both a mass market paperback and a boxed, limited special edition print series based on swatch sample catalogs. The intention of the project was lost on nearly everyone, but a few key people became aware of the artists’ positioning themselves as a small movement.  This included the photography curator Dan Leers, who organized a show and catalog of their work, Beyond The Surface: Image as Object, at the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center in 2014. 

To commemorate the 10th anniversary of &&&, Sun You has invited Greenberger & Greenbaum & Cutler to mount an exhibition at TSA in Brooklyn, NY. There will also be a simultaneous version of the show at Ditch Projects in Springfield, OR.  The exhibitions at both artist-run spaces feature a backdrop that wraps the gallery with deconstructed pages from the original &&& book, over which the artists have installed works from 2013 and 2023.  The original book is also exhibited, as well as a new portfolio of prints (&&&2) to celebrate ten fruitful years of collaboration, hand wringing and friendship 

Ethan Greenbaum is a New York based artist. Selected exhibition venues include KANSAS, New York; Derek Eller Gallery, New York; Hauser and Wirth, New York; Marlborough Chelsea, New York, Higher Pictures, New York; New York; Marianne Boesky, New York, Circus Gallery, Los Angeles; Steve Turner, Los Angeles; The Suburban, Chicago; Michael Jon & Alan, Miami, The Aldrich Museum, Connecticut; Socrates Sculpture Park; Long Island City and Stems Gallery, Brussels. Recent projects include a solo presentation with Lyles & King and solo exhibitions at Galerie Pact, Paris and Super Dakota, Brussels.

His work has been discussed in The New York Times, Modern Painters, Artforum, BOMB Magazine, ArtReview and Interview Magazine, among others. Ethan is a co-founder and editor of thehighlights.org and his writings have appeared in the Brooklyn Rail, Wax Magazine, BOMB, Paper Monument and others. He has also curated and co-curated multiple exhibitions at venues including The Suburban, Chicago; Lyles & King, New York and Super Dakota, Brussels. Greenbaum is the recipient of the Queens Art Fund New Work Grant, the Silver Art Residency, The Keyholder Residency at the Lower East Side Printshop, Dieu Donne’s Workspace Residency, LMCC’s Workspace Program, The Robert Blackburn SIP Fellowship, The Socrates EAF Fellowship, The Edward Albee Foundation Residency and The Barry Schactman Painting Prize. He received an MFA in Painting from Yale School of Art.

David Kennedy Cutler is an artist, writer and performer who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Cutler received his BFA from The Rhode Island School of Design in 2001. He has had solo exhibitions at Derek Eller Gallery, New York; Halsey McKay Gallery, East Hampton; Essex Flowers, New York; The Centre for Contemporary Art, Tallinn, Estonia and Nice & Fit, Berlin, Germany. Cutler has performed in various spaces in New York including Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, Essex Flowers, Printed Matter, Halsey McKay, Derek Eller Gallery, and Flag Art Foundation, and internationally at the Center for Contemporary Arts Estonia, among others. His works are included in the permanent collections of the Wellin Museum at Hamilton College and The RISD Museum, and his artist’s books are included in the libraries of the Whitney Museum and the Brooklyn Museum. He has been reviewed and featured in The New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, The New Yorker and Modern Painter, among others. Cutler is represented by Derek Eller Gallery, NY and Halsey McKay Gallery, East Hampton. 

Sara Greenberger Rafferty produces image-based works in paper, plastic, glass, metal, fabric, and video. Her work is driven by an ongoing examination of contemporary and mid-20th century visual culture and considers the ever-changing implications for photographic images in the digital era. She’s also into comedy. 

Ditch Projects is a nonprofit artist-founded, artist-run studio, exhibition, and performance space providing contemporary art experiences in Springfield, Oregon. As a collective of artists and professionals committed to exhibiting experimental artists from diverse backgrounds, Ditch Projects provides opportunities for cultural exchange between experimental contemporary art and our local community, acting as an integral voice within contemporary art discourse in the Pacific Northwest. Since its founding in 2008, Ditch Projects has featured over 145 exhibitions and 275 artists. Growing organically out of the concerns of its artist members, Ditch provides contemporary visual arts practitioners with an opportunity to test out new ideas, processes, and approaches they might not otherwise attempt in a comparable urban center. Over the past decade, the primary focus of the artist collective has been on the production and presentation of new works by regional, national and international artists, with a consistent 10-12 solo, two-person or group exhibitions per season. Past exhibiting artists have included internationally renowned practitioners such as Amy Yao, Diana Thater, Scott Reeder, Laura Owens, Jessica Jackson Hutchinsons, and Vito Acconci, along with regionally acclaimed artists such as Ralph Pugay, Amy Bernstein, Lisa Radon, Tannaz Farsi, James Lavadour, and Kristen Kennedy. Exhibitions at Ditch Projects have been reviewed in Art Forum, Frieze, Art in America, and the New York Times. Ditch Projects has received grants from the Andy Warhol Foundation, The Miller Foundation, the Ford Family Foundation, the Oregon Arts Commision, the Oregon Cultural Trust, Oregon Community Foundation, and the WLS Spencer Foundation.

[rachelspoetrycorner]

Atlas (2005) by Kay Ryan

In Episode 151, Rachel brings a poet who's somewhat of an outsider.

Rachel: So, Kay Ryan's got the accolades, for sure. But she is not somebody with an MFA or a PhD. She also is not particularly active in the poetry community. She's said that she does not typically read poetry because, quote: “Like eucalyptus trees, they poison the soil beneath them so nothing else can grow there.” [laughs]

Griffin: [laughs] Wow. Hey, you weren't fucking kidding.

I had always thought that you could either be incredibly specific in your writing (with the consequence of limiting or making virtually impossible open and varied interpretations), or you could be sneaky and vague (resulting in an infinite amount of possible interpretations). But Kay Ryan said: No. Just like Atlas, I can hold both at the same time and pull it off. And she was right.

If you’d like to hear more, you can do so here: Michaels Soul Connections, from 27:40 - 32:49

[fashionbooksmilano]

Fabric of a Nation

American Quilt Stories

MFA Publications, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 2021, 239 pages, 25 x27cm,

120 color illustrations, ISBN  978-0878468768

euro 60,00

email if you want to buy :booksinprogressmilano@yahoo.it

Made by Americans of European, African, Native and Hispanic heritage, these quilts and bedcovers range from family heirlooms to acts of political protest, each with its own story to tell

A mother stitches a few lines of prayer into a bedcover for her son serving in the Union army during the Civil War. A formerly enslaved African American woman creates a quilt populated by Biblical figures alongside celestial events. A quilted Lady Liberty, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln mark the resignation of Richard Nixon. These are just a few of the diverse and sometimes hidden stories of the American experience told by quilts and bedcovers from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Spanning more than 400 years, the 58 works of textile art in this book express the personal narratives of their makers and owners and connect to broader stories of global trade, immigration, industry, marginalization, and territorial and cultural expansion. Artists include: Faith Ringgold, Sanford Biggers, Irene Williams, Bisa Butler, Harry Tyler, Harriet Powers, Marie D. Webster, Marguerite Zorach, Dorothy Phillips Haagensen, Rachel Cary George, Florence Peto, Creola Pettway, Susan Hoffman, Molly Upton, Nancy Crasco, Agusta Agustsson, Edward Larson, Michael James, Virginia Jacobs and Carla Hemlock.

01/01/23

orders to:     booksinprogressmilano@yahoo.it

ordini a:        booksinprogressmilano@yahoo.it

twitter:         @fashionbooksmi

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[lboogie1906]

Keegan-Michael Key (born March 22, 1971) is an actor, comedian, screenwriter, and producer. He co-created and co-starred alongside Jordan Peele in Key & Peele (2012–2015) and co-starred in Playing House (2014–2017). He spent six seasons as a cast member on Mad TV (2004–2009) and has made guest appearances on the US version of Whose Line is it Anyway? He appeared alongside Peele in the first season of Fargo in 2014 and had a recurring role in Parks and Recreation from 2013 to 2015. He hosted the US version of The Planet's Funniest Animals on Animal Planet (2005–2008), and hosted Game On! He has had supporting roles in several films, including Horrible Bosses 2 (2014), Pitch Perfect 2 (2015), Don't Think Twice (2016) and Dolemite Is My Name (2019). He has provided voice work for The Lego Movie (2014), the Hotel Transylvania franchise (2015–2022), Storks, The Angry Birds Movie (both 2016), The Star (2017), The Lion King remake and Toy Story 4 (both 2019), and Pinocchio remake (2022). Also in 2015, he appeared at the White House Correspondents' Dinner as the Key & Peele character Luther, President Barack Obama's anger translator. Key and Peele produced and starred in Keanu. In 2017, he made his Broadway debut in Meteor Shower. He appeared in The Prom (2020) and Schmigadoon! (2021). He was born in Southfield, Michigan, the son of Leroy McDuffie and Carrie Herr. He was adopted at a young age by a couple from Detroit, Michael Key, and Patricia Walsh. His brother was comic book writer Dwayne McDuffie. He attended the University of Detroit Mercy, earning a BFA in Theater, followed by an MFA in Theater at Pennsylvania State University. While at the University of Detroit Mercy, he was a brother of Phi Kappa Theta. He was married to actress and dialect coach Cynthia Blaise (1998-2017). He married producer and director Elisa Pugliese (2018). #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence https://www.instagram.com/p/CqFtmZSrkq8/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[itsawritblr]

Re: Beetlejuice 2

I agree. I think it's going to be very much not good. Not everything needs a sequel, and this is one of those things. I feel Warner Brothers is banking on nostalgia to put butts in seats at the expense of something good. The fact that Seth Grahame-Smith's who wrote one script in 2011 that was rejected, saying this about it in 2021: "It’s funny, when I had met with Tim about it last, and we’re talking about five years ago at this point, the reason that it’s so hard to get going is because so many people love it and because there are 10 million ways to get that sequel wrong and four ways to get it right. It’s such a very fine needle to thread that I certainly like, didn’t get it there, on the script side. I didn’t thread the needle. There are things that were cool and some interesting ideas. I’ve certainly emotionally moved on from it and just said, 'If it happens someday, it happens.' Yeah. Michael Keaton is just as relevant as ever and, and Tim Burton is just as relevant as ever, but you have to have both of those people excited about something to do it. I couldn’t get it there personally, as a writer, but maybe somebody else can."

But he's credited as the screenwriter for the sequel? To me that does not bode well. Keaton's old. Maybe they'll de-age him with CGI. Burton hasn't done anything original (with the exception of two things: Corpse Bride and the remake of Frankenweenie) since 1994's Ed Wood; everything since then as been based on books or other source material. All in all, I won't be seeing this in the theater unless it really blows people out of the water. I think it will do okay opening weekend, but after that it'll fade away +/- be another example of "Hollywood is out of ideas".

Grahame-Smith's publisher, Hachette, sued him for half the advance for a manuscript he gave them because, in essence, it was so bad it didn't live up to the quality they expected.

Imagine your writing being so shitty that your own publisher sues your ass?

So I do not have any confidence in his ability to produce anything near the quality of the original, even working with other screenwriters.

That quote is great. Thanks for posting it, I've never seen it before.

I agree with you completely on both Keaton and Burton. And I also won't see it in theaters unless the reviewers are glowing.

But then, I've seen a movies with enthusiastic reviews and hated them.

Hollywood could walk into any decent-sized library and find material to adapt, if Hollywood knew what a library was. As for screenwriters with original ideas, my impression is young writers -- and I can speak for those I've met who have MFAs -- are taught how to write in very specific, pre-programmed formulas that are "popular." Screenwriters never seem to study classic movies made before 2000; never heard of "Sunset Boulevard" or "The Third Man." I tried to get a young screenwriter to watch "A Man for All Seasons," and he said it was too long and boring.

Anyway, I'm ranting now.

Thank you for the Ask and your reply, anon.

[coccyodynia]

things:

i went home the other weekend and didn’t steal any pills, as much as i thought about it, so thats kind of cool i guess

i got a very fun and cool tattoo yesterday, its a woman swinging an axe with that line i wrote a few years ago - “i swing and i dont miss”

i am seeing a The Plot In You tonight with justin

we’re planning on hanging out before the show too but the weather is gonna be shitty so who knows, he’ll probably flake out at this point

we’re also planning on going to chicago in a month but im concerned i wont be able to afford it idk. i just stashed away $250 for it but i wouldn’t be surprised if i had to dip into that before then

we’re on okay terms right now. its been a huge rollercoaster as usual but he still wants to keep me around in some type of way i guess bc he’ll respond or say shit like ‘i’m always here for you’

ive been dissociating a lot still but im practicing the skills to get a handle on it

ive officially stopped caring about anything at my job, i just dont give a fuck at all anymore

if i start caring again it will probably kill me, at least considering the rate we were going before 

i had a friend OD twice in the last week or so and im literally just bracing myself to lose another person to fent

its been almost a year without michael now and im still really heartbroken about

i can tell ive started letting my apartment/kitchen get bad again and it’s upsetting me but i feel paralyzed about it

one of my best friends is having a really tough time too and we keep messaging each other little check-ins even though neither of us have the capacity to really support or help the other person in any meaningful way

ive just been way too tapped out lately, and it has been affecting my health for quite awhile

my weight seems to be stable now or at least kinda, i lost 50 lbs and last week for the first time in awhile it didn’t go down when i got on the scale

my parents and grandma all made comments about how they can tell ive lost a lot of weight since i saw them last (6 weeks or so ago?)

my mom has been telling me “youre not eating enough calories” which i think gave me whiplash considering up until now my entire life shes been insistent that i eat too much

my financial situation is really about to get fucked up since im not teaching this summer, so i will lose that income for a few months ($800/month)

im pretty nervous they wont ask me back to teach in the fall bc the head of the department doesnt really like me

i got great evaluations from my students tho! at the end of the semester, two of my students asked if i would be comfortable with giving them a hug and i got emotional

i helped one of my students get into their first gallery show in NY and im just so fucking proud and excited for them

another student had made me a little embroidered camera patch for my bag 

im still very much thinking about applying to graduate/phd programs in the fall

there’s about 5 programs im interested in, but none of them are local so i’d have to move pretty far if i were accepted

im going to re-apply to university of denver for the MA emergent digital practices program

i applied to there in 2021 and was accepted but i wasn’t offered enough financial aid since i applied after the priority deadline so i’ll try it this fall and see what happens

im still dreaming about going to Brown for their digital writing/cross-disciplinary writing and art MFA but it's such a pipe dream

i also found a fascinating phd program at duke but they're not accepting applications this year?

i want to write and photograph more but by the end of the day i am so incredibly burnt out that it seems more like a chore than an outlet

i really wish there was a way for me to just quit my job and take some time off before going into another job

anyway therapy is back to once a week and sometimes 2x a week just depending on how well i handle things

my mom is still being the worst person ive ever met and im really trying to disconnect from her/the family as much as i can

she just spent $500 on a plane ticket so she can go spend a week with the guy she was engaged to in college

she sucks so much and i hate her 

anyway that’s all

[musicforspaandearthquake]

Eno/ MFA chapter

My interest in ambient has a number of different sources. For one, I'm interested in ambient musi. My interest in ambient music stretches back to listening to Stars of the Lid and Boards of Canada in my bedroom as a teenager. Back when I had an itunes, which recorded the playcount of every song in my library, my number one most played song was Brian Eno's Music For Airports. I had listened to MFA more than I had listened to any other single song. Given that MFA runs to nearly 20 minutes, this meant that I had spent a great deal more time listening to MFA than I had any other song by a large order of magnitude. Somehow, despite hundreds of listens, I never really tired of it. MFA never took on that nauseating feeling one associates with a song one has heard on the radio 4 times in a single day. Nor did I grow completely indifferent and insensate to it, as I have the dozens of songs one can't go through life without hearing over and over (most hits by Michael Jackson for example). Somehow, MFA remained alive to me, reminded me of a place I could reliably retreat in a number of different circumstances. It was more like a room I could go in or a filter I could overlay onto reality than it was a piece of music. This filter was cool and glassy, perhaps bluish--there was something which faintly tugged at the emotions, but always softly, never yanking.

There was also nothing else quite like it. Much music held a narrative quality, intentionally played with my emotions or manipulated them or guided them to varied and specific places. There were a few factors which made MFA unique:

It's length. At nearly 20 minutes, MFA 1/1 simply endured longer than most other songs, even many other ambient songs. This length served a few different purposes. In a sense, the song served to hold a place for a certain amount of time--it promised not to change suddenly, to remain. Knowing that the song would not change for at least 20 minutes let's some part of the mind--which is forever scanning the environment for subtle changes--relax. For at least 20 minutes, one need not attend to what song is playing, need not ask oneself whether it suffices for working, relaxing, or focusing. The 20 minute length lets some part of the mind turn off and relax.

Plenty of songs are 20 minutes or longer, but few of them are as calm, static, predictable, or unchanging as MFA. That is, most songs, even 20 minute songs, aim to entertain, to dynamically change and shift, to narrate, to surprise, to employ tempo shifts, instrumental shifts, mood shifts, key changes, volume changes. MFA, on the other hand, is insistent, uncompromising, in its aim to become a kind of "wallpaper." This isn't to say that it isn't dynamic--only that it doesn't seek to distract, narrate, entertain. Instead it aims to provide space. Specifically, it aims to provide a space of "calm and a place to think."

MFA does this in a few ways. For one, is is most ambient music, there are no drums in the piece. This allows the music to float free of any regimented, measured out, or gridded sense of time. Whereas music with a consistent drum beat might correspond with other time measures and remind us of the seconds, minutes, hours, and years, that are regularly marching by, music with no drums takes us one step closer to a more free-form sense of time, with no specific reference point, allowing the music to "float" or "drift" by like a cloud, water, or air. Within it, and without the temporal reference points, a new sense of time might take hold, a feeling closer to timelessness, or the time of sleep, reverie, or creativity.

Related to this, and perhaps just as important, ambient music rarely has lyrics, or singing, or the presence of a human voice. In the same way a beat might create a sense of scale by marking a specific relationship to time, the insertion of a human voice into the landscape of the song might create a sense of undesired scale, specifically with reference to the human. If ambient music like MFA is a room or landscape to drift and wander around in, then it is usually one imaginatively free of other people. It might be sometimes beautifl, but it is also depopulated. This might be the reason why much of ambient music is tinged with a kind of sadness. The wanderer through the ambient landscape is always alone; they might glimpse beautiful vistas, but they have to one to share them with. The attendant sadness is the sadness of seeing something beautiful alone--a desert sunset unshared with anyone else, a moon out of a bedroom window--or the sadness of traveling alone. Ambient landscapes share this with dreams in that the dreamer might see fantastic sights, and wander through phantasmal landscapes, but always does so alone.

But aside from the basic lack of drums and voice, the music of MFA does pointed work to "provide a place to think" and to "become wallpaper." For one the music employs soft calm elements such as synthesizer, piano, some bell like tones, and little else...

A few things remain fascinating to me about MFA 1/1. For one, I find the way it straddles the line between music and sound, progress and stasis, narrative and freeze-frame, endless fascinating. Is it a song or not? The ascending piano notes, the bells and chimes, endlessly ascend and float back down, like leaves in wind, and there is something undeniably melodic about the pattern. At the same time, the simplicity of the pattern and its repetition over 18 minutes turns it into something more like an image, frozen in in loop, than a song, which narratively progresses through time. The song somehow embodies both progress and stasis, and sets up an interplay between them that even after hundreds of listens I still haven't parsed.

Second, I remain fascinated by MFA's status within the genre of ambient music. Though there are many precursos to the founding of ambient music as a genre, such as Satie, John Cage, Eno is widely credited as coining the term ambient music in the liner notes to MFA. And just as I've listened to MFA hundres of times but continue to feel something regularly eludes me each time I listen, Eno's MFA liner notes remain at once over-cited, and at the same time under-excavated. I feel the text is more interesting, subtle, and elusive than it is frequently given credit for. Nearly any contemporary study of not only ambient music, but ambient as a concept or theory in the arts and humanities and beyond usually pays homage to Eno's reinvigorating of the term in his MFA liner notes. Most commonly, such texts call Eno's decree that ambient be "as ignorable as it is interesting." However there is much more in the text, and the addendum some years later, which both expands, complicates, and makes more elusive what precisely Eno's intentions might have been in defining the genre known as ambient music.

For one, it seems notable that Eno frames ambient music in direct and explicit response to muzak, braiding the history of muzak into that of ambient, perhaps even as its foundation. From some angles, ambient music might be thought of simply as a mutation of muzak.

*

Whereas muzak aims to "blanket" an environment, and to cover it up with a uniform sonic and affective environment, ambient music might take into account a particular place or situation and to accentuate and acomodate its environment instead of blanketing it. This accomodation might be affective as much as it is anything else. In the case of MFA, Eno aimed to create a music which did not blanket the anxieties he associated with flying, blast them out or drown them with cheerful canned music, but instead aimed to calmly acknowledge the possibility of disaster on the flight, which in short, "did not pretend you might not die."

I find such a line striking in a manifesto for a genre which is more often associated with drifting off, dreamscapes, New Age tropes, and boringness. It is perhaps under-appreciated that the founding piece of ambient music was meant to accomodate feelings of "ambivalent calm" towards the prospect of a flaming aerial death, was meant to help someone to think, "actually it's not that big a deal if I die." Such cues from Eno position ambient music--at least as Eno conceived it--as kind of memento mori, a perpetual reminder that one is going to die, possibly violently and possibly soon. Seen in this light, the regular bell-like charms that sound softly throughout MFA start to sound like gentle reminders to come back, to surface, not unlike the bells which sometimes start or stop a meditation session.

Perhaps all genres of music (with the possible exception of pop music) at some point or another address themselves towards the prospect of death, and thereby propose certain attitudes towards it. Death metal, for example, might be seen as making a kind of dark and campy theatre out of death's insignia. Certain modes of classical music might likewise make a kind of noble drama out of the twists and turns of an individual life. Rap music and country music are bristling with tales and stories of death that range from lurid to sentimental, violent, cartoonish, allegorical, brutal. Eno's MFA, by contrast, slyly proposes what might be seen as a somewhat radical stance towards the prospect of one's own death: an acceptance and calm, which at the same time doesn't try to discount or suppress potentially contradictory feelings such as terror, anxiety, depression, or sadness. Or to reverse the order of things, MFA welcomes and acknowledges the vortex of fear and swirling emotions a person might have at the prospect of their own death by plane crash, but then makes a secondary move towards an attempt at accepting, even blessing, just such feelings, and just such a prospect. In this, MFA might aid what philosopher and writer Alain de Boton calls consolation: a sense of somewhat sad cameraderie that becomes available to those who collectively accept that things are ultimately doomed.

This good faith attempt to acknowledge and work with the environmental, sonic, and affective realities of a given place (even places like airports which are anxiety-inducing and potentially death-ridden) are what distinguish Eno's conception of ambient music from its predecessor, muzak, which aims to cancel out, suppress, and drown just such environmental realities. Indeed, entire aesthetic and philosophical systems might be built up on either side of the fault line which separates ambient music (as Eno defines it) from muzak (as it defines itself). On the one hand: art, music, and literature which directs the attention outward to an immediate sense environment, which acknowledges, attunes with, and celebrates specific places; on the other: works which ignore, blanket or actively cancel out the sensory cues of a specific place environment, and instead attempt to clap one's attention entirely within another reality.

*

In his hope that ambient might induce as sense of ambivalent calm around the prospect of death, Eno's MFA joins with works across other media which likewise address themselves towards the prospect of death while at the same time suggesting potential attitudes towards that prospect.

Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle series, for example, opens with an extended reflection on death, and the way contemporary society regularly hides the dead, covers them, whisks them away.

[longlistshort]

VSF gallery is currently showing The Harrisons’ Survival Piece #1: Air, Earth, Water, Interface: Annual Hog Pasture Mix, 1970-1971, part of The Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: Art & Science Collide.

On Thursday, 10/17, a local pig will enter the grow box to turn over the pasture in an iteration of the 2012 performance that took place at The Geffen Contemporary at MoCA.

From the gallery-

The first in their visionary series of Survival Pieces, “Hog Pasture,” as it is known by Harrison’s fans, emerged from a direct dialog with the most visionary and boundary pushing artists of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. The impact of the Earth Day movement and the nascent cultural awareness that human beings were rapidly depleting the planet’s natural resources ignited a deep and sincere conversation within the art world about the stakes of art-making in the post-war, post-1968 world.

While later survival pieces highlighted a culminating harvest feast, Survival Piece #1 is focused on growth. The rectangular form of the raised planter bed and the grid of grow lights above echo sculptural innovations by artists like Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, and Richard Morris;  however, Newton Harrison had by this time decided that a sculpture or a painting was not enough. His artwork needed to not only have a moral purpose, it needed to strive to restore the earth and protect the abundant future of humans on our planet.

In 1971, shortly after their first foray into ecological art, Making Earth (which VSF exhibited earlier this year at Frieze LA and is now in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art) Newton and Helen heard from David Antin that Virginia Gunter at the MFA Boston was curating a show titled Earth, Air, Fire, and Water: Elements of Art and wanted to include their work alongside contemporaries including Robert Smithson, Michael Heizer, Hans Haacke, and others. Exploring ideas of growth and change, Gunter’s vision for the exhibition was meant to challenge conservative, formalist, Greenbergian ideas about art as well as expectations of the museum as an institution that primarily collected unchanging pictures and objects that somehow articulated the best ideas and techniques of the time in which they were made.

Interested in building on his use of artificial lights, Newton decided that he should actually grow something. He commissioned one of his painting students to look through seed catalogs to find a mixture that was “totally singular,” eventually landing on R.H. Shumway Seedsman’s Annual Hog Pasture Mix. In Boston, a large raised planter bed was built in a basement gallery of the museum, agricultural grow lights were installed in a parallel grid from the ceiling, a potent mix of manure, compost, worm castings, and other rich grow media were added to the planter bed, the seed mix was added, and a small pasture grew there with alarming speed. While Gunter wouldn’t allow a hog to come and graze the original hog pasture, subsequent exhibitions of the work, including Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974 curated by Miwon Kwon and Phillip Kaiser at MoCA in 2012, have brought the work to its natural conclusion and invited a pig in to enjoy the rich, velvety mix of legumes and grasses. Similarly, VSF has invited a hog to harvest the indoor meadow during the exhibition’s closing ceremony on October 17, 2024. The remaining pasture, earthworms, and soil mix will be gifted to visitors. We hope that you will join us while our porcine guest enjoys the first survival piece feast envisioned by Helen and Newton Harrison.