#the text is red to represent both my anger and the fact that the error messages are literally red (as you may well already know)

[nero-neptune]

i've never had so many "there was an error autosaving your post" and fucking "ooops! it looks like there was an error trying to upload that image" messages In A Row, annoying the hell out of me!! this goddamn new post editor never stops making me wanna punch through my goddamn laptop screen!!

[marithlizard]

Ace Attorney: Rise From the Ashes (Day Two, Trial Latter) (part 3)

Wherein I attempt to liveblog a mostly text-based videogame.  The trial continues!  Lunch is over and yet we’re still being fed indigestible statements. 

Court has recessed briefly for information-gathering. The clock says it's not even noon, but I feel like we've heard hours’ worth of (mostly untrue) testimony.

Lana has been called to the judge's chambers for reasons unknown.  Ema is realizing just how much of a, what's the polite word, “freewheeler” she's chosen to represent her sister.  But Phoenix is still flailing about when any other defense attorney in this world would have given up, so she'd best appreciate him.

It's the cowboy!  Who pointedly mentions Lana's scarf, which he saw her wearing on the day of the murder.   Since she wasn't wearing it in the photograph taken afterward, presumably the missing muffler is...in the car muffler?  Was she trying to hide something, or give Edgeworth carbon monoxide poisoning?  And just why is Marshall dropping us this helpful hint?

Court resumes with Edgeworth on the verge of some kind of conniption fit.   The judge lists off his symptoms concernedly - oh NO surely you didn't eat one of the lunchboxes, Edgeworth!  I've already been wondering how Angel Starr resisted the urge to give you food poisoning for two years, and that was before you verbally eviscerated her on the witness stand.

...Hello, who's this?

Peach suit, white hair, pink glasses and an avuncular folksy charm.  You. I don't like you.  

"Udgey?"  Is that the judge's name, or some sort of twee pig-latin nickname for Judge?  And "Wrighto" and "Worthy".  And he can get away with calling people slightly demeaning and offbeat nicknames, because apparently he's the district chief of police,  Damon Gant.  Phoenix is chastised for not recognizing him, which is probably fair.

Okay, that technique of taking away the dialogue box for several seconds while Gant cocks his head and blinks at us is quite effective.  This, we're silently being told, is a character so powerful they can interrupt the flow of the game itself. 

The judge notes that it's been "over two years" since Gant was in the courtroom.  That matches when Angel was fired.   This is all about one case, isn't it?  The case Lana and the victim worked on, the case that got Marshall demoted.

Gant has brought some false sympathy for Edgeworth and also Lana's missing scarf, which was indeed found stuffed in the car muffler.   (So the lunchlady was telling the truth about at least something.)  The scarf was wrapped around a switchblade with a tag on it. So, not a personal possession like Edgeworth's knife, but...an exhibit?  Something from storage? Like, evidence storage?

Edgeworth is justifiably upset that the police investigation didn't notice a scrap of red cloth hanging out of the car muffler inches away from the body.  Gant's initial sheepish admission that "this is embarrassing, even for us"  suddenly turns into that blinking Look again.   I feel like a trap is about to be sprung.

It's the envelope from yesterday, the one delivered by the hapless mailman!  Who told Edgeworth it wasn't related to the case, so he refused to take it.   Ouch.  It is Edgeworth's error, but there's something gleefully malicious about the way  Gant just set him up and then sucker-punched him.  There was no need for this to be a public humiliation.  In fact, it could've been discreetly sorted out before Gant got on the stand.  Or before trial started this morning.

(Why IS he on the stand? He's not a testifying witness. He just kinda...strolled in and took over. )

The judge asks Phoenix to examine the switchblade.  The knife tip is broken off and the blade and handle have bloodstains.    The tag, when I zoom in focus to max, says "S-L 9 2".   As for the envelope, it appears to be an autopsy report on Goodman, and doesn't mention the muffler or switchblade at all.  It also has a much vaguer timeframe than 5:15. 

Edgeworth tries to regain face by demanding an explanation about the missed evidence.  This is a bad, bad idea. I could've told you that even before Gant delightedly agrees  to testify.

Gant says the knife is special, but that he can't say how unless a  "connection is proven between the knife and Goodman."   Um. Doesn't the very presence of the knife, deliberately concealed at the crime scene, in itself mean it's not only connected but vital to understanding what happened?  I don't think you should get to withhold that information.

Nor do I think "we were having a bad day" is an acceptable excuse for not investigating the crime scene properly.  Cops get aggressively motivated when one of their own is attacked, everybody knows that.  Or was Goodman some kind of pariah?  

...wait.  What???   What Gant's saying is so bizarre I misread it.  There was a SECOND murder, at precisely the same time (and that's an awfully precise time),  at the police department?  "Not officially linked to this case" my aunt Fanny.

And Phoenix isn't supposed to ask about it in cross-examination?  I predict that will last about five seconds, because we're going to press every one of these statements hard enough to extract olive oil.

Starting with the knife.  Both Phoenix and Edgeworth push for more, but Gant refuses.  Can I make a connection that will impress the judge?  My inventory contains a phone, a shoe...and a note found in the trunk of the car that says "6-75 12/2".    Which looks a lot like "2/21 SL-9" if you turn it upside down.

Gant is acting as though this is a circus and he's never seen a clown before, delighted at everything Phoenix and the judge say.    This conveys an impression of total contempt behind a fig leaf of friendliness that can't be questioned.  It's a passive-aggressive masterpiece.  Somewhere in the audience Himemiya Anthy is probably taking notes.

And his facade barely flickers when faced with the memo.  The knife was evidence in a case (duh).  Stolen from the evidence room...and that's it? That's all we get?

Oh, this guy is skilled.   Edgeworth quite reasonably asks why he wasn't told about this impossibly coincidental murder, and Gant promptly insinuates that he's incompetent because he didn't proactively ask.  As though a proper prosecutor would have called the department every day with a checklist of possible events.  Why, I bet you didn't even consider a Godzilla attack contingency, did you?   Tsk tsk.

Gant continues to playfully refuse to give information on this second murder (except that a suspect has been arrested).  He offers to give Phoenix one data  point of his choice: where, how or when.  Apparently this trial has turned into a game show.

We already know when, so I choose where.  And Gant makes a curious distinction.  The crime took place in the evidence room (where the knife came from), but he won't say where the corpse was found.    Was the body moved?  As they say, he is playing a game and it is called silly buggers.   I'm absolutely assuming he is behind both murders (though sadly he can't have committed both, unless something paranormal or very complicated is going on).

Phoenix points out that a knife being stolen from the evidence room and then found at crime A, precisely when crime B is committed in the evidence room, is a pretty "duh" link.  Edgeworth supports by mentioning the note.   Whoever wrote it (Goodman, the murderer, or Lana)  presumably either stole the knife or was investigating its theft.    Even the judge agrees this has to count.  Gant just does his blink thing again.

And says his men took two days to assemble that logic.  In other words, he knew. And he STILL wants to play games.  He'll talk "unofficially", but not reveal the name of the victim.  (Why is that so important?)  When pressed, he offers  another one-data-point choice.   I choose ID number which should be easy to link to a name...although apparently Gant doesn't think so.

Victim ID number: 5842189.   The judge looks expectant.  I have a horrible idea, and check the court record.

Yep. It's Goodman's ID number.

Simultaneous murders of the same victim in different locations? That's an impressive level of silly buggers, chief.  And you didn't want this to come out in the trial? If I didn't already know Lana was innocent by video-game rules, I'd know it now.

Even this doesn't faze Gant.   (I really wanted to see him look thwarted. Damnit.) 

Edgeworth keeps on asking "Why didn't I hear about this?"  even though the answer is always "Because Gant has it in for you, and you just gave him another opening to attack."   It's as though he can't quite believe what is happening.  

Yep, there's that trap-springing look again.  With the first honest expression I think we've seen on Gant's face so far!  Just for one frame,  a flicker of anger and malice. This time he claims the police department sent Edgeworth all the information in that envelope delivered by Hapless Mailman Meekins, which Edgeworth didn't look at.

Hang on.  That's not even true.  We have that envelope in the court record, and...*scrolls up*...it's an autopsy report on Goodman.   It doesn't say which.  Even if Edgeworth had read it, he would have had no reason to think there was a second crime and victim.   Moreover,  Gant already raked him over the coals for not reading it,  in this same trial session!   No...as the trap unfolds,  Gant seems to be claiming this is an entirely different envelope also delivered by Meekins(?)  It doesn't make sense.

But truth isn't going to matter here.  This is a career-destroying maneuver, and it's uncomfortable to watch.  Edgeworth is helpless under the crushing accusations,  protesting vainly that Gant could have submitted all this evidence  when the trial started.   Well, yes, that's what anyone but your enemy would have done...    The flicker of malice is back as Gant rubs it all in with a technicality about evidence law.

(Ah, this detail might be relevant:  Edgeworth  apparently submitted a list of evidence to be used in the trial, which of course did not include things he didn't know existed.    That flies in the face of all Phoenix Wright games past and present, in which new evidence is produced about every five minutes during trial, this one included.)

This morning's Public Career Assassination, I mean trial,  comes to an end with Gant mentioning the rumors about Edgeworth, and even using his own brief status as a defendant against him.  Edgeworth can do nothing but formally grovel.  He begs for one more day of trial to investigate all this new information.   The judge grants it,of course, but joins in condemning him.

I don't know why Gant wants to get rid of Edgeworth, but it's obvious the plan is to fire him after tomorrow's trial no matter what happens.   The only way to save Edgeworth (and oh yeah, our actual client who's barely been mentioned lately) is to bring Gant down.  I am on board with this.  He's a mean lying stinkyhead and he's smug about it.   Get him, Phoenix!

(Rereading my notes from last time,  I'm remembering the moment when Angel Starr told Edgeworth "I might be able to save you".  Did she know this was coming down? )

[gobigorgohome2016]

Can You Have Too Much Fire?

In high school I had this awesome shirt that was meant to represent your zodiac element.  The shirt was red, spelled out “fire,” and listed all the traits of a fire sign:  passionate, larger than life personality, enthusiastic, quick temper, over achiever, direct, stubborn, attention seeking, etc.  For 16 year old me, IT WAS LIKE SOMEONE PUT MY ENTIRE LIFE ON A T-SHIRT. Mind blown.  

My favorite quote as a high school runner was, “if the fire is hot enough, it will burn anything.”  Later, I became really annoyed when I heard this quote used more often to describe metabolism, but to me, it meant that if you want something badly enough, you can make it happen on sheer willpower alone. [as a Speedway resident, I can no longer say willpower without thinking about the IndyCar driver, Will Power.  Sigh.]

As I’ve figured out since high school, my best trait is also, by far, my worst.  If there is anything I have learned these past couple weeks of 2018 is that if I was lacking fire in the fall, I have more than made up for that deficit now.  

When I sat down in December to look at the year ahead, there were some changes that I wanted to make. I love New Year’s resolutions.  I also love rules (ironic, yes?).  I’ve always been jealous of people who stick to things that make the planning side of their lives easier.  My friend does “Meatball Monday,” “Wok Wednesday,” “Soup Sunday,” etc.  How fun is that?  So, my resolutions have been thinly veiled by similar rules:

Makeup Monday (don’t let makeup go to waste, so use an item in my makeup drawer that gets the least amount of love)

Timer Tuesday: Instant Pot day.  The Instant Pot is an amazing  - yet slightly intimidating – machine.  Every Tuesday I make a different recipe from the cookbook that was included with the IP so that I can better learn how to use it.

Wakeup Wednesday:  I run with a friend on Wednesday mornings which means I get up at 5:30 AM.  We haven’t run together in FOREVER ( ☹ ) but I really like the routine so I wake up at 5:30 or 6:00 on Wednesdays, get my run out of the way, and then nap.  

Tulsi Thursday:  Tulsi tea is great for recovery, and I usually do my last hard workout of the week on Thursdays.  Tusli Thursday is just a reminder to be more mindful in my recovery.

Refresh Friday:  I hate being wasteful, especially with food, so on Fridays I use the oldest ingredients in my refrigerator / pantry.

Self-Care Saturday: self-explanatory

Seafood Sunday:  also self-explanatory (and cheating.  Dave and I have done seafood on Sunday for years).

Okay, what does this have to do with fire?  Not much. Other than to point out that I am a rule following fanatic at times.  

My other focus for the new year was running.  I know that I am not fit right now, and I want to do everything in my power to achieve my goals in May.  The number one thing I have been lacking since April is consistency, which hasn’t exactly been in my control.  As I was looking over the upcoming months, I made notes of how many miles I would like hit each week, how that would stack up against previous years, etc.

Fatal Error.

Two and a half weeks ago, I was out for a long run (18 miles, longest in quite a few months) and my hamstring tightened up towards the end, probably due to the ice and snow. Whatever, not a big deal.  Well, it turned out to be a decent-sized deal that left me cross training (so glad I found a trainer recently, and have Netflix again!).  Last week I only ran a total of 22 miles and had to cross train the rest of what was supposed to be a 75 mile week.  

My first instinct was panic. In fact, my coach received a ton of panicky texts from me.  I’m FINALLY getting my mileage back to where I want, and something dumb happens.  My second instinct was anger.  Why is my body failing me???? (It turns out I wasn’t alone.  Rebecca ran 10 of those miles with me and had the exact same hamstring trouble, so I felt better that my body wasn’t simply rejecting running).  

A month or two ago I wrote a post about all the things that people assumed about me when I was taking time off post-anemia, and how they wrong.  No, I wasn’t mad that I couldn’t run.  No, I wasn’t struggling not to run, etc.  Well, all of that bit me in the ass this week.  I was cranky, rage-y, and jealous of everyone out running.  I was crosstraining like crazy (something I rarely do).  I was irrationally mad at every person who posted a PR at the many fast races that happened over the weekend.  I drove myself crazy.

On the one hand, the return of this fire is such a good sign.  I’m ready to compete again.   I have the motivation to once more push my body to its limits before giving it a short reprieve and asking it to heal all the damage sustained during the winter and spring and perform its very best on race day.

But, that fire is a double edged sword.  Fire also menas a return of  my overly competitiveness, and making a conscious effort every day to remind myself to calm the fuck down.  

I was reading an interesting/terrifying article a few months back about psychopathic children. Psychopathic traits are genetic, and part of the reason they have not been removed from the gene pool via natural selection is that they can be good in small doses.  For instance, a surgeon needs to be cold and unfeeling when performing surgery.  Sometimes, however, a kid doesn’t win the genetic lottery and winds up more Jeffrey Dahmer than Doogie Howser (fun fact #37 of this post, my house in Milwaukee was only a couple blocks from where Jeffrey Dahmer committed his crimes).  

I often wonder if my innate fire is half psychopathic.  I forget sometimes that not everyone quits their career path to follow big dreams that have no guaranteed payout and 100% chance of pain, both emotional and physical.  It’s not even a question 48 weeks out of the year whether I want to have another beer or go to bed; whether I want to run every day or procrastinate until the end of eternity; whether or not I will eat my kale; whether or not I will train hard for a goal I want to accomplish years from now.  The fact that I have zero real obligations everyday and still train full time is nothing short of a miracle.  I have never been able to focus on anything the way that I have been able to focus on running.  

So, that usually means I need to come up with creative ways to redirect the flames.  Sometimes that means journaling my frustrations or writing in my blog.  Sometimes it means coming face to face with how out of shape I am and focusing the fire towards making better choices.  Sometimes when I’m trying to take a nap I stew over the things I have not yet accomplished, the things that I thought I would have achieved by now.  In this moment I think to myself, “yes.  There is such thing as too much fire.”  But, then I remind myself (usually in list form) that there are things I can control, and things I cannot.  If there is anything I have learned, it is that perseverance trumps just about everything else in running.  

I’ve already fallen off the consistency measure that I was hoping for in January with my low mileage week last week and cautious build this week.  I’m forcing myself to embrace flexibility, which means I’m becoming well acquainted with my bike in the basement.  My hamstring is feeling good again and I’m feeling a little bit silly that a couple days off had me plotting the changes I would have to make to my racing season.  I’ve relegated myself to the treadmill just to make sure I don’t strain my hammy with the snow and ice that is currently on the ground, just to be safe.  I’m hoping for an outdoor run on Friday.  If anything, the coals have been stoked because let’s be real:  there is nothing like a little setback to remind you just how hot your fire burns.

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Life After Art: William Powhida’s Futures Market

Installation view of William Powhida’s “After the Contemporary” at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art (all images via williampowhida.com)

RIDGEFIELD, Connecticut — I can tell you the moment when, in mid-March 2016, Donald Trump’s presidential campaign stopped being funny, and I can tell you the moment when, after spending more than two hours with the show, William Powhida: After the Contemporary stopped being funny.

It was when I reached the placard at the warren-like installation’s dead end, and read the following passage:

The permanent relocation of both Art Basel’s Miami Beach edition and the general population of Miami Beach following the devastating flooding of Hurricane Hillary in 2023 served to wind down the Contemporary period. Art Basel ushered in the Alt-Contemporary with the announcement of its ambitious plans for a private, Ultra-only fair in Thieland, a micronation established by legendary ArtsTech guru Peter Thiel in 2025.

I should hit pause for a moment and explain that Powhida’s exhibition, which takes up half of the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum’s second floor, is a meta-besotted extravaganza of image and text, mostly text, purporting to take place in the year 2050.

Installation view of William Powhida’s “After the Contemporary” at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art

Filled with futuristic arcana and art world in-jokes (including one aimed at the editor-in-chief of this publication), it takes the form of a survey tracing a quarter-century of contemporary art history, using Powhida’s benighted career arc and the rise of Grevsky™ — the corporate art-generating entity he co-founded with the collector Seth Stolbun in 2016 — as its touchstones.

To unpack the above-quoted text: the “Contemporary period” is a time more or less synonymous with Modernism, in which artists maintained their ”historic position as avant-garde, iconoclastic figures who rejected the status quo and the dominant values of society.”

These values, however, had been “slowly compromised by the increasing professionalization of the visual arts after World War II,” which tempted artists with “the possibility of joining the middle class through sales and teaching.” (All quotations are from the exhibition’s placards.)

By 2050, however, the Contemporary has been replaced by the “Alt-Contemporary” (hence the exhibition-within-the-exhibition’s title, After the Contemporary: Contemporary Art 2000-2025) — an era forecast by The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World, a show that opened at the Museum of Modern Art in December 2014.

The Forever Now was a turning point, codifying a cultural paradigm in which “artists were no longer bound by time or innovation and could borrow from any period of art to produce paintings” — a “winnowing of style” from the personal and political to the corporate and homogenous, which was viewed not as “an aberration or error of judgment” but “a triumph of the erudite sensibility of the Ultra collector, whose tastes and desire for apolitical content had already begun to directly influence the production of culture.”

Eventually, the class of super-rich patrons (known as Hereditary Ultra High Net Worth Collectors, or Ultras — which is also a term used by the speculative fiction writer Alastair Reynolds to designate “a post-human race of technologically advanced immortals”) began to demand “the luxury of art” while rejecting “the burden of supporting artists.”

This is the niche that Grevsky™, the corporation formed by Powhida and Stolbun, sought to fill by ordering works from anonymous artist subcontractors and marketing them solely under the Grevsky brand, which ultimately absorbed Powhida’s creative rights as well, triggering a lawsuit, near-bankruptcy, divorce, and exile in a borrowed shack in Costa Rica, where he spends his golden years painting pathetic pictures of clowns and donkeys.

Installation view of William Powhida’s “After the Contemporary” at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art

This synopsis barely skims the surface of a multilayered, impudent, lacerating exhibition that pricks pretense and self-delusion on every level, from mega-rich collectors fancying themselves pillars of civilization to politically committed artists rationalizing their aspirations to the high-end gallery system. (Subplots include the oligarchical “Great Restoration of a natural social order that did not include a middle class”; the suppression of social justice movements; efforts at worldwide depopulation; extreme climate events; the defunding of the NEA; the 2024 merger of Gagosian and Zwirner; and the development of derivative algorithms to perpetuate the careers of deceased art stars.)

Powhida has been alternately called a conceptual artist and a political artist, and here he demonstrates that he is both and, it could be argued, neither. This is an exceedingly text-heavy show, to the point of self-parody, with nine eight-by-four-foot panels of sheetrock covered with narration and, in one instance, cultural and economic timelines. There are also nine pages of a Grevsky™ artist’s contract on display, and various crumpled pages apparently cut from future issues of Artforum (aka “Twenty Five Years of Impenetrable Discourse,” the title of a 2017 sculpture featuring magazines stacked floor-to-ceiling), including a wholly credible obituary of Jeff Koons (who died in 2025, according to the information on hand, in a self-driving Uber accident, an event that spurred the development of algorithmic editions for posthumously generated artworks).

And yet, the texts on the sheetrock are hand-stenciled in pencil — with full justification, no less — which defines the exhibition as a work of immense physical labor. And up and down the edges of the panels are dozens of snarky, subversive, and hilarious marginal notes, written in red and all caps, that systematically undercut the more straightforward narration of the pencil text.

And so, what, formally, is going on here? Powhida possesses some of the best drawing chops of anyone working today, yet he seems to be deliberately suppressing the visual. (The only place where his skills are fully manifested is in the small “retrospective” in the exhibition’s final room, where the introductory wall text confides, “The artist’s work remains significantly undervalued in the secondary market and would make an excellent addition to any collection.”)

Installation view of William Powhida’s “After the Contemporary” at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art

The exhibition’s dearth of imagery is compounded and contradicted by the intense, protracted labor that went into the stenciling, which, paradoxically, also delivers a potent materiality and an old-fashioned sense of touch. These placards and charts, with their bravura precision, red highlights, and subtle, silvery textures are a hundred times more alive than the blindingly boring generic works on display in the faux Grevsky™ art fair booth in the middle of the exhibition.

The booth is key to the exhibition’s refusal to distinguish between parody and reality — its collection of paintings, ceramics, and fabrics — dominated by a giant color photograph of the Trump Taj Mahal and presided over by a video simulacra of a bored gallerista — are indistinguishable from bona fide Art Basel Miami Beach tchotchkes. If this is life after art — in which the work of “iconoclastic figures who rejected the status quo and the dominant values of society” has given way to “a triumph of the […] tastes and desire for apolitical content” — then isn’t the iconoclasm of the relentless text panels the only legitimate response?

But the denial of art represented by the text panels is undermined, to my eye, by the thrum of the human activity that created them. Is this then a hint of resurrection stirring beneath the values of a collector class “who derived their wealth and status almost entirely from returns on pure and perfect capital accumulation,” as the exhibition’s introductory text tells us? Or is it the illusion of an optimist?

The maddening thing about Powhida is how closely he holds his cards to his chest. He nonchalantly presents his constructed persona, a narcissistic fraud named William Powhida (here played in a video interview by Amos Satterlee) as the author of his work, which routinely skewers the art establishment’s glitterati with assertions bordering on the libelous. His compulsion for playing fast and loose with the facts, however, always seems to be operating at the service of some higher, darker truth.

And he does so especially in After the Contemporary, which effortlessly harnesses his obsession with art world inside baseball to a righteous anger fired by political hypocrisy, exploitation, and opportunism. Here it is obvious that art, as an investment tool for “hereditary heirs […] primarily from established art-collecting families with their own private museums,” isn’t simply symbolic of the economy’s subjugation by the financial elite, but rather, in itself, an irrefutable engine of that subjugation.

Still, paradoxes abound, and the same art that is compromised, denied, and vilified throughout the exhibition retains the power of revelation. As I read the lines quoted above citing “Thieland, a micronation established by legendary ArtsTech guru Peter Thiel,” I suddenly recalled watching Donald Trump on television last March, whipping up his followers with his cock-of-the-walk strut and Mussolini chin-thrusts, sucking up their vitriol and spewing it back at them like some kind of fire-breathing ogre. Something, at that moment, seemed irretrievably broken.

A little more than a year later, the idea of a neo-feudal state dominated by an impregnable economic elite whose personal wealth exceeds that of the French Ancien Régime, or a micronation governed by a data-mining billionaire, suddenly seemed as implausible as the presidency of Donald J. Trump.

William Powhida: After the Contemporary continues at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (258 Main Street, Ridgefield, Connecticut) through September 4.

The post Life After Art: William Powhida’s Futures Market appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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