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houseofvans · 6 years

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ART SCHOOL | Q&A with SARA M. LYONS

Influenced by the works by the likes of designer Lisa Frank and Saturday morning cartoons, artist Sara M. Lyons’s illustrations are colorfully eye-catching, vibrant, and filled with fun! Not only ONE thing, Sara also runs an online shop filled with her awesome creations from patches, pins to an upcoming Tarot card deck she’s creating. We’re stoked to chat with Sara and learn about her process, her favorite artists to follow, and about her local art scene in this week’s Art School w/ Sara M. Lyons. Make the leap!

Photographs courtesy of the artist

Hi Sara!, Could you tell us a little about yourself ? For sure! I’m Sara M. Lyons, and I’m an artist, illustrator, muralist and product designer living and working in Orange County, CA!

When did you first get into drawing? Was it a hobby turned career or something you knew from the start that you’d eventually wanna do for a living? I’ve been drawing since before I can remember, and it’s always been something I did for fun, but I never really considered that it could be a career until I suddenly found myself in the middle of it. I didn’t start leaning into this as a living until I was in my late twenties (I’m 32 now), so I feel like I’m still learning the best ways to navigate everything.

Who were some of your early artistic influences? Art mentors? I was born in ’85, so I was surrounded by Lisa Frank and Saturday morning cartoons, and I think a lot of that spirit is present in my work. I also grew up reading Betty & Veronica obsessively, so Archie comics and the drawing style of Dan DeCarlo in particular was what I started emulating as a kid when I was teaching myself to draw. In high school that developed into an interest in indie comics, and I was really inspired by Los Bros Hernandez. I think you can really still see the influences of both of those comics in my character drawings.

You make some much fun and colorful things, for a lack of a better word, from pins to patches to just about everything? What’s some of the stuff that’s in the works now? I love making small pieces of art that are accessible and affordable, and that’s always been my thought process when designing products like pins and patches. I think I’ll always be doing stuff like that, but this year I hope to try some new things too. I’m working on a deck of Tarot cards right now (I released a Lenormand fortune telling deck in 2016), and it’s really exciting to create a bunch of highly detailed illustrations in that context - knowing that when I’m done with these 78 drawings, they won’t be just one-offs going on a wall somewhere, but that they’ll be accessible to anyone who is interested.

Do you keep a sketchbook or work your ideas as you go along? Organized, Sort of, or Complete Chaos? What’s your process for new ideas like? I’d say I exist in a constant state of Organized Chaos. My ideas, sketches, and concepts are spread all over the place - I’m usually bouncing between my planner, my journal, my phone, my sketchbook, my iPad Pro, and my desktop computer, and that’s probably the approximate order of where ideas get parsed out as well. When I’m working for a client, I move really quick, but with my personal stuff I’m a slow starter - I’m both heavy on self doubt and a perfectionist, so there’s often a LOOOOOOONG stretch of time between conception and completion of any given concept. I’m not one of those artists who can sit down and knock out two or three completed drawings in a day. Sometimes I’ll have a sketch on a Post-It in my office or an idea in a note on my phone for over a year before I even start to develop it. But once I really get going on something that I believe in, I get laser-focused.

What mediums do you love to work with? What are your essential art tools? My favorite medium right now is a huge wall - I’ve been working on murals since late 2016 and it’s so much fun and such a complete departure from my usual artistic process!

But my most comfortable, well-loved mediums are digital and plain old pen and paper. Drawing digitally, I used to work mostly in Photoshop on my desktop using an ancient Wacom tablet, but these days I spend a lot more time drawing in Procreate on my 10.5” iPad Pro (rose gold, obvi!). I know they’re not for everyone, but the iPad and Pencil have been a game changer for me creatively - I love being able to sit on the couch watching trashy reality TV while I work on fully layered digital pieces.

But still, sometimes nothing beats the classics. I pretty much exclusively use Canson Mixed Media XL sketchbooks, any size, because I like the heavy paper, spiral binding, and turquoise blue covers. I’ll draw with any old pencil - I mostly hoard and use ones I take from hotels when I’m in on trips - and Microns are my favorite drawing pens.

Who are some rad artists you think folks should definitely check out and follow? I love Jenee Larson’s super distinct style and sassy digital illustrations of petulant ladies - @bobbypinss Bianca Xunise makes the most poignant, funny, personal, emotional diary comics - @biancaxunise Ayaka Sakuranbo is a Tokyo-based artist and I’m obsessed with her whimsical paintings and incredible color palette - @ayakasakuranbo Ashley Lukashevsy makes powerful illustrations with a focus on intersectional feminism and anti-racism - @ashlukadraws Ms. Wearer based in the UK does amazing rainbow-drenched pop art - @ms_wearer Lilly Friedeberg in Dusseldorf is one of my favorite graphic designers; I love her clean, fun sensibility - @elfriede_s Yoko Honda’s work makes me want to transport myself INSIDE the beautiful world she’s created and live there forever - @yokopium

What’s a common misconception about what you do? There’s a lot more “boring office stuff” to my job than most people think. I wish I was drawing and painting and creating all day every day, but in truth I spend like half my time answering emails, fulfilling orders, taking inventory, going to the post office, keeping the online shop up to date, managing all manner of legal nonsense, staying on top of social media, hustling for new work, and so on.

What do you do to take a break from art life and just the day-to-day hustle of running a shop? Drawing is still a release for me, and my husband (@therealjoshr) is an artist too, so it’s not uncommon for us both to still want to be making stuff in our “off” time. When we’re not doing that, we like to do a lot of really grown up stuff like going to theme parks, arcades, swapmeets, and toy stores. We also like taking weekend trips, and I really love being in the desert, so we try to get out to Palm Springs and Joshua Tree as much as we can too.

What can you tell us about the art community around where you are? What’s the art scene and culture like? Orange County sometimes gets a bad rap, but I think it’s a really cool and diverse place to be a creative person. A lot of iconic art and punk rock and culture has come out of this area (just look at Vans!!)!

As an artist today in OC, I feel like there’s breathing room here - the contemporary and alternative art scenes are still growing and finding themselves here, so it doesn’t feel as high pressure as the larger LA art scene - but you’re close enough to LA to get involved in that scene, and you still have easy access to so many amazing shows and museums and events. There’s just something distinctive about Orange County that is hard to put your finger on unless you’ve kinda grown up here. I went to high school in Newport Beach; I’ve lived in Anaheim now for years - of course there are pockets everywhere where those Real Housewives stereotypes are painfully true, but that hasn’t been my overall experience in OC. I love it here and I really hope I can help the creative community here continue to develop.

What’s something you liked to see more of in art? More women in the spotlight.

What do you think you’d be doing if you weren’t an artist? Oh my god, probably working on a cruise ship or something. I didn’t go to school and I don’t really have any other marketable skills, so hopefully this works out!!

What are your FAVORITE Vans? It’s a toss up between two SK8 Hi’s - blush pink suede or baby blue faux fur. Don’t make me choose!!

What advice would you give someone thinking about art as a career? This is a super nebulous job choice, and “art as a career” in general is really subjective. Know yourself well, but don’t pinhole yourself. The scope of this creative industry is constantly shifting and changing, and things come in and out of fashion quickly. Something that’s your livelihood one year might become a nonstarter the next. If you can identify and remain true to the things that make you unique as an artist and the things people respond to in your work, the knowledge of that point of view will carry you from phase to phase.

What’s on the horizon for 2018? I’m still trying to figure that out myself! After some major plans I had for this year fell through at the last minute, I’m at kind of a blank slate phase in my career. I have a ton of different ideas and I’m trying to nurture them all to see what blossoms first! I’d really like to paint more murals this year, travel more for events, and continue to develop my more personal illustration work. Something I’m trying to keep in mind this year is that it’s OK to be small - not chasing the giant clients or the big money projects, and just doing work that fulfills me creatively and resonates with the people who care about what I do.

Follow Sara Lyons | Instagram | Website

#Art #Vans #Vansart #Vansgirls #art school #interview #creative #painter #pins #women

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borderlynn · 6 years

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1-70 I want to know it all in great detail

I see, the key to getting asks is to passive-aggressively tag your friends.

01: Do you have a good relationship with your parents?

Anyone who has ever known me in real life knows I absolutely do not. I have an alcoholic, compulsive liar for a mother and an absent father, plus some grandparents who are so convinced that they are my actual parents that they would probably kick me out if they learned I refer to them as my grandparents. Fun times.

02: Who did you last say “I love you” to?

Either my dog or yours lol. I don’t like telling people I love them. That’s something to be shown through your actions, otherwise the word loses its meaning.

03: Do you regret anything?

I don’t even know where to start with this one. I’ve regretted basically every major decision I’ve made, and I probably shouldn’t be allowed to think for myself. If I had to name a few things that I regret right now, I would say I regret spending my spring break being so bitter. I really did have a good time, but I would have enjoyed myself more if I hadn’t tried to make it about me. My other big regret at the moment is cancelling my campus residence app. I screwed myself out of a guaranteed place and now I’m stuck with a bunch of drama and uncertainty. Also, there’s a friend that I’ve had for years and there were times when I was pretty horrible to her and she stuck with me despite it. I wish I had been mature enough at the time to be the person she needed in her life, instead of causing drama.

04: Are you insecure?

Extremely. I have a lot of insecurities about my body, mostly my face and hair, but a lot of my family in underweight and it was kind of instilled in me, that to be attractive I had to be underweight, like I remember when I started high school I made it a goal to stay below 110lbs until after graduation. I was still growing so that goal was as unrealistic as it was unhealthy. I’ve struggled with disordered eating since I was like 12. Other than that I can be really insecure about asking for the things I want and need. One of my biggest fears is people seeing me as selfish.

05: What is your relationship status?

I’m a single Pringle! I was in a relationship for a few months, but I got dumped because I consistently put my friends before her, which is funny because I’m in the middle of some conflicts with friends over not talking with them enough. I’ve been on a few dates and stuff since then, but I’m in a bad place right now mental health wise, so being single is probably for the best rn.

06: How do you want to die?

This is kind of dark, but I don’t really care how I die as long as I’m in control of how it happens. If there’s a really wild and interesting story involved that would be even better.

07: What did you last eat?

I’m munching on some green chili peanuts with a crap ton of Diet Coke. I’m at home right now so I’ve been eating way more than usual.

08: Played any sports?

I used to do ballet, gymnastics, contemporary and jazz, as well as various ballroom dances. I’ve blocked most of it out and lost a lot of my flexibility, but I would love to return to ballet at some point. I miss gymnastics too, but I’m too tall for it lol.

09: Do you bite your nails?

I’ve always been weirdly prideful of my nails and the thought of biting them has always freaked me out, like my nails are my babies. Keeping them nice is a big deal to me so my chompers can stay the hell away lmao

10: When was your last physical fight?

I’ve never actually been in a physical fight. The closest encounters were last semester, when my old roommate got a concussion from a crazy person that used to live with us, and a few years ago when I let a friend slap me.

11: Do you like someone?

I’m assuming this means like like. I’m not super interested in dating right now, but there have been people that have sparked my interest recently.

12: Have you ever stayed up 48 hours?

I am smol and weak. My fragile shell of a body would actually start to disintegrate if I tried this. I’ve only made it to 24hrs once and my body like completely shut down.

13: Do you hate anyone at the moment?

I don’t like using the word hate for the same reasons I don’t like using the word love. There are people that I will not associate myself with and there are people in my life that I don’t feel any positive emotions towards, but there isn’t anyone that I could comfortably say I hate.

14: Do you miss someone?

There are a lot of people from my life a few years back that I really miss, but I have to remind myself that I was a different person then, and some bonds are meant to be broken. I also really miss a lot of the friends I have at school. I take them for granted until we’re apart and then I feel all hallow, like part of me left too and that really sucks.

15: Have any pets?

I have a Chihuahua-weiner mix. He’s super old and he doesn’t have a tail and his name is Bob. He’s great. My aunt’s dog is basically my dog too, and he’s a pit mix. His name is Chester and he is actually a giant teddy bear. My friends have a doggo too, her name is Gwen and I am her aunt. She is the most talented and amazing fluffer who deserves the world.

16: How exactly are you feeling at the moment?

I’m at that weirdly numb point right now where emotions are like a foreign concept to me. I’ve been super stressed and I have a lot of pretty serious decisions at the back of my mind that I can do nothing about at the moment. I’m super behind on my schoolwork and with all this stress, I know I can’t catch up. It’s super frustrating and there’s been a lot of drama amongst my friend group, making me feel like I can’t really trust anyone in my life right now. My age has been preventing me from doing so much recently and since my birthday is around the corner, even the people who claim to understand have been super condescending about my anger over it. There have also been a lot of deaths recently in the city where I go to school, and I’ve learned that death is a bit of a trigger for me, so that hasn’t been fun. I feel like I’m one serious breakdown from being there myself and that’s super scary.

17: Ever made out in the bathroom?

Somehow, no.

18: Are you scared of spiders?

When I was little I was really afraid of spiders and would go out of my way to have them killed. I had intense breakdowns whenever I thought a web touched me. Now, I regret having hurt innocent creatures and I think spiders are really cool. Leave the land crabs alone!

19: Would you go back in time if you were given the chance?

Yeah, knowing what I know now, I think that it would be cool to try and get myself to the point where I am now, but without a lot of the drama.

20: Where was the last place you snogged someone?

My dorm room lol.

21: What are your plans for this weekend?

I’m taking a greyhound back to my college town on Saturday, and Sunday I’m returning to my normal schedule. I’m not looking forward to that eight hour bus ride.

22: Do you want to have kids? How many?

I’m kind of a lone wolf, and I really want to travel so kinds aren’t really in the picture, at least not until I’ve gotten my doctorate. Even then I would either adopt or use a donor, and I wouldn’t have more than two.

23: Do you have piercings? How many?

Right now only my ears are pierced, but I plan on getting my septum done in May, followed by a double medusa. I also really want dimples and a brow done. Eventually I’d do my nipples and stomach as well.

24: What is/are/were your best subject(s)?

I’ve always been geared toward the liberal arts. I love all things involving art, history, and languages. I low-key have always enjoyed math too. I’m working on my bachelors in comparative cultural studies with minors in queer studies and museum studies. I want to carry that on to a masters in gender studies and a phd in Buddhist art. After that I’d like to go back to school fo economics and eventually obtain a masters in economic history.

25: Do you miss anyone from your past?

I miss people from my past when I’m unsatisfied with the people currently in my life. I have to remind myself that they aren’t around anymore for a reason and that it’s more important to work on the relationships that are relevant. Dwelling on the past does more harm than good.

26: What are you craving right now?

Some love and affection? I’m not craving anything really. I could just use some peace and quiet.

27: Have you ever broken someone’s heart?

Yes. I’ve broken an ex’s heart when I ended the relationship. I was unhappy, to the point where I cheated. This was also the point when I started to question if I was actually a lesbian. I dumped him and never told him why. I broke my friend’s heart when I led her on, but then rejected her because I was in love with someone else (who did something similar to me). I broke my aunt’s heart when I told her I felt like I don’t have a family. I broke my biological mother’s heart when I made it clear that I didn’t want her in my life. I’m pretty good at the whole hurting others thing.

28: Have you ever been cheated on?

It’s very possible, but if someone did, they never told me.

29: Have you made a boyfriend/girlfriend cry?

I can’t name a specific time, but I’m sure it’s happened.

30: What’s irritating you right now?

What isn’t irritating me right now? Oh my god.

31: Does somebody love you?

I’ve had a lot of people tell me they do, but I have a hard time feeling it most of the time.

32: What is your favourite color?

I love every color, and I don’t like making colors feel left out, so my favorite changes a lot. Right now it’s yellow, because yellow is a bright, warm, happy color. I also really like pink. The pastels of both of those are 10/10

33: Do you have trust issues?

I legit don’t even trust myself. The only person I honestly trust 100% is my aunt. I have really bad trust issues, but I also overshare a ton. My life is a cycle of sharing my life story and then panicking.

34: Who/what was your last dream about?

The other night I went to sleep while drunk and I had this wild dream where I met someone, learned his whole life story, flirted and eventually fell in love with him, came out to him, saying I’m not sexually attracted to guys (he came out as ace too so it was perf), and then he was hit by a car, causing irreparable brain damage. I woke up right after, but that dream will haunt me.

35: Who was the last person you cried in front of?

My aunt. I was updating her on my life in college, and it’s been less than ideal.

36: Do you give out second chances too easily?

I’m a huge believer of forgive but don’t forget. I used to be so bad about grudges that I would be angry even after forgetting what I was upset about. I guess I have the opposite issue here.

37: Is it easier to forgive or forget?

Forgive. Like I said above, I might forgive you, but knowing what someone did before will always leaving me searching for instances of them doing it again. Trust issues who?

38: Is this year the best year of your life?

It’s only March and I already know that it will be one of the worst years of my life. Ugh.

39: How old were you when you had your first kiss?

I think I was thirteen. I didn’t know how I felt about guys at the time and I almost puked in that poor dude’s mouth.

40: Have you ever walked outside completely naked?

I have, and it was terrifying. Midday skinny dipping wasn’t one of my greatest ideas.

51: Favourite food?

Avocado on toast with a poached egg on top, muffuletta, yellow curry, and eggs benedict are my top ones.

52: Do you believe everything happens for a reason?

Absolutely. I didn’t really believe this until my roommate’s big fight last year. So much happened in one night, that wouldn’t have happened if we had done things even a second later. It was wild, but it was like there was so much pent up negative energy that the universe needed to release, and it found a way to make that happen.

53: What is the last thing you did before you went to bed last night?

I put some food away.

54: Is cheating ever okay?

The thing about cheating is that it’s when you go out of your way to do something with someone else when you know it would hurt your current partner. It’s something that happens when you aren’t happy in your relationship, and in a lot of cases it can be a cry for help. It is hurtful and a sign that a relationship isn’t meant to be, but cheaters shouldn’t always be villainized.

55: Are you mean?

I can be, but I try not to.

56: How many people have you fist fought?

None, lol

57: Do you believe in true love?

Not really. There are so many people that we have things in common with or who exist on the same wavelength. We might find someone that makes us happy for a long while, but nothing is permanent.

58: Favourite weather?

I love hot, sunny days when you can leave windows open, wear shorts, and only drink things with ice.

59: Do you like the snow?

I lived in Alaska for over nine years before moving to the Sonoran desert. I moved to Northern Arizona for school, and when I saw snow again, it was as an adult who only saw the negative aspects of it. I hate being cold.

60: Do you wanna get married?

I don’t see myself ever being married. I would have to really love someone if I were to actually settle down and start a life with them. Right now I really only see it as something that would tie me down.

61: Is it cute when a boy/girl calls you baby?

I honestly hate baby as a pet name. It freaks me out. The only pet names I find cute are the unusual ones, like once when an ex accidentally called me cornbread.

62: What makes you happy?

Getting my nails done, binging my favorite show (Archer), travel, doggos, wandering around in stores with my music blasting so I can feel like I’m somewhere away from my problems, seeing people impressed with food I made, completing a project and being proud of my work, etc.

63: Would you change your name?

I hate my birth name, but I’m also afraid I’ve been conditioned to feel that way by my grandparents as a way to attack my bio mom. Because of that, I’ve been going by my middle name and various nicknames. Most people close to me call me Abby, but my favorite thing is to be called Lynn. I’m pretty hesitant to legally change it though.

64: Would it be hard to kiss the last person you kissed?

Yeah, the last person I kissed kinda sexually assaulted me, and I’d like to avoid that.

65: Your best friend of the opposite sex likes you, what do you do?

Reject them as nicely as possible. Dating would be bad for me right now, and I’m pretty sure I’m not sexually attracted to men.

66: Do you have a friend of the opposite sex who you can act your complete self around?

I don’t think I have a best friend, period. I don’t think I’m entirely myself around anyone through. Different people will bring out different parts of my personality.

67: Who was the last person of the opposite sex you talked to?

Not sure tbh.

68: Who’s the last person you had a deep conversation with?

My aunt. The conversation we had about my life at school was pretty emotional.

69: Do you believe in soulmates?

No, for the same reason I don’t believe in true love. Life is too impermanent for there to be someone our soul fits with perfectly. There is too much change for something to be predetermined like that.

70: Is there anyone you would die for?

Anyone who has ever been somewhat nice too me. Honestly though I would be willing to die for a lot of people. The thought of anyone else having to suffer really sucks and if I can save them from that, I would.

#long post #thanks shelbs

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collection81 · 6 years

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Interview: Elizabeth Glaessner, a painter living in Brooklyn, New York.

Before this visit, Elizabeth and I did not know each other but I had admired her paintings for years. I first encountered them in 2014 at PPOW, her NY gallery. Her work exists between abstraction and representation with dark human moments lurking within painted worlds.

It was important to me that the first studio visit in this series be with someone I didn’t already know but whose work interests me, partially because it functions in a realm outside of my own practice. I didn’t want to feel any personal familiarity with her work, or the comfort that comes with an inherent knowledge of that person or their process. This allowed me to be an open and inquisitive visitor.

I asked her a series of questions that address her studio practice and the associated struggles. We talked for about an hour about personal doubt, coping mechanisms, and book clubs.

The following conversations is excerpted from an interview on October 15, 2016 in Brooklyn, New York.

Where did you grow up?

I was born in Palo Alto, California and then moved with my family to New Orleans and then to Houston, Texas. I spent most of my time in Houston. Texas is another world; the landscape is wild. I’ve been in New York since 2007 so I do miss the wide open spaces. Driving across Texas is amazing, you can see and feel the landscape transform from a sticky swamp to a desert.

Houston also has a great art community. My mom is a painter, she taught at the Glassell School of Art, which is part of the MFAH (Museum of Fine Arts Houston). It offers classes like the Corcoran, but there’s no degree program. They also run a highly respected residency program called the Core program.

When I was in High school, I was on the Teen Council at the Contemporary Art Museum in Houston and one of the things we did was visit the Core artist studios. Trenton Doyle Hancock was a resident at the time, so we got to visit him there. That was a pivotal experience for me, everything in that space felt very alive and unreal in the best way and you could see that he was living his work. He was totally committed to what he was doing.

What is the driving force behind your work?

I feel like I couldn’t not do it. Growing up, it was the one thing I could always get lost in. I really enjoy the act of painting; I love that part as much as I love thinking about the ideas or the narrative.

When I am making, the small pieces especially, I reference things that I’m reading or experiencing now but then also combine that with things that have stuck with me from my past. So it feels like a natural way to reflect on the present and the past. I develop a lot of the stories in an intuitive way. With the pure act of painting the most exciting thing for me is trying something new and then being surprised with what happens. That allows for some of the content to be dictated by the process.

What is your biggest struggle in the studio?

Right now it is the size of my working space. If I had more space, I might be doing more of the larger paintings at the same time. I like to work on a lot of pieces simultaneously. Sometimes there is a positive thing in not being able to though, it forces me to put things away, which stops me from overworking them.

Put the following terms in order of importance to your studio practice:

Form, Concept, Process

I feel like they all inform each other. I have been thinking a lot about what I want the paintings to say but they aren’t extraordinarily specific. I am not totally interested in having an idea and then making a painting to show that idea. I start with vague ideas, I’ll think about a specific mood or particular landscape or color, then I start thinking about the narrative. I ask myself if it will be a dangerous painting or a lighter painting. They’re still open for people to experience them in their own way.

Was there ever a time when you felt like you couldn’t keep making work? If so, what helped you to keep going?

Yeah, there have been times when I question everything: the type of work I’m making, is the work important, etc. I’ve also had stretches where I fail a lot and I just keep making bad paintings. I make a ton of small pieces that no one sees. I was working on a huge piece earlier this summer, it’s a great example of a failure that took forever. It was haunting me. I would come in the studio and work on it every day and at a certain point I had to take it down, roll it up, and start new pieces.

This was my first large piece on canvas in a long time, and there was a lot of experimentation at the same time. I like to work fast and get it out and move on, but I got really stuck on this one. Sometimes I felt I had gone backwards that day, I would go home and obsess.

I take pictures in the studio and I would go home and look at the photos over and over again. I think a lot of it was figuring out how the materials I am used to working with on paper or panel worked on the canvas. I love working on paper, it is an amazing surface. Even though it takes a long time to prepare, it didn’t feel as daunting as painting on canvas.

I love the way wet media works on paper too, so when I was working on panel, that felt like the closest thing to the smooth surface of hot press paper. Canvas is more flexible, so when I wanted to bring some of the moments that occur in my other work into the large piece, it was a struggle. I learned that sometimes I’ll build up too much and then the piece dies. I just have to approach it differently. I put it away and work on something else, that’s how I deal with it.

Do you have any routines, rituals, or coping mechanisms that you use regularly in your studio practice?

If I am frustrated with a big piece, I will just sit on the floor and work on small pieces on paper. That feels like, comfortable, play time. I think that kind of stuff impacts my work a lot. Sitting on the floor I am immediately reminded of childhood, which can be very freeing. I also have a big table at my apartment, and sometimes do small pieces there, which is a totally different environment. It’s nice to go back and forth.

My studio mate and I usually listen to music and podcasts (though when I’m by myself it’s always music, I can’t really focus on anything else while I’m working). Every once in a while I’ll be listening to a weird station on Spotify and turn it off and realize that the music was putting me in a weird mood.

If I’m really focused, it all becomes white noise so I don’t immediately realize how it is affecting me. I like listening to This American Life outside of the studio, and recently I had it on while painting. This episode that was so fucked up, I had to turn it off and listen to it later. It was too intense.

Do you have any hobbies or interests outside of your studio practice that help keep you sane?

I run. I have been running forever, I used to run track in high school and my first year of college but it became too much with practices. I don’t do incredibly long distances but I need to do it or I become a terrible person to be around. Because I work a lot on the floor I have been noticing I’m getting back aches and pain, so I think it’s important to be physical. I’m also in a book club/crit group with some amazing artists and writers.

A friend of mine, Jessica Stoller, who went to Cranbrook started this womens crit group with a few of the other members while she was there and a lot of them ended up in New York. They’ve kept it up here and it keeps growing. We go to one person’s studio one day and then do the book club another day. We’ve read one of the Elena Ferrante books, a scandalous book called Tampa and just finished Americanah, which is probably my favorite book so far. The author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, is an incredible writer.

We, as artists, are doing so many different things. We have our home life, our studio practice, day jobs, etc. and I think that if I don’t make borders or boundaries I will just feel completely overwhelmed. So my day job is completely separated from my studio practice. But home life/studio life is a gray area for me. I have not yet learned how to not let my art affect my mood outside of the studio.

Is there anything you would like to promote? Upcoming exhibitions, projects, passions?

I just had several small works on paper up in a group show at P.P.O.W. curated by Anneliis Beadnell. I’ll have a couple of pieces in some group shows coming up. One at SVA curated by Peter Hristoff and another in Chinatown. I’ll send out an email and post something on Instagram when it gets closer to the dates.

http://www.bmoreart.com/2016/10/inertia-elizabeth-glaessner.html

https://www.instagram.com/eglaessn/

#Elizabeth Glaessner #art #painting #peinture

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t--o--f--u-blog · 5 years

Text

☼☼☼☼☼ also think tank a white lecturer using the n-word when quoting literature in a lecture? I think she used it once outside of quotation as well certainly not meant in a disrespectful way, just seems unnecessary

☐☐☐☐☐ better have a justification at least but if you just use it out of the blue it always seems like some attempt at provocation 'i can say this because my interests are purely academic'

☼☼☼☼☼ mmmmm we're reading uncle tom's cabin, so it's hard to avoid

☐☐☐☐☐ should only be quoted verbatim if absolutely necessary, if there's no alternative I think

☼☼☼☼☼ yeah seems like she could have avoided it pretty easily

☐☐☐☐☐ if she's making no acknowledgement of the word's relationship to her privilege, that's rly not good

☼☼☼☼☼ yeah she's older so there might just be an outdated perspective there 'I'm just quoting the text, it was anti-slavery so I'm fine' sort of mentality maybe?

☐☐☐☐☐ still she would know about the contemporary attitude to the word and she should at least mention that! ugh like it doesn't sound malicious or super super racist, but eh

☼☼☼☼☼ Yeah I feel iffffy about it

☐☐☐☐☐ should mention it!

☼☼☼☼☼ Trying to work out if I should send email and if so how to word it

☐☐☐☐☐ mm

☍☍☍☍☍ be interesting to actually properly discuss it

☐☐☐☐☐ yep

☍☍☍☍☍ heck I’d be interested to know more of a history of the word basically teach properly why its offensive

☼☼☼☼☼ Yeah, I might bring it up in the tutorial different teacher, but maybe good discussion

☐☐☐☐☐ mm that seems appropriate i'd love to hear how that goes

☍☍☍☍☍ uhhh there was someone who used it at Bar Oussou the host reallllly should’ve said something and I normally would but just too tired for confrontation

☼☼☼☼☼ Yeah ☐☐☐☐☐ was telling me Sounded very cringe

☐☐☐☐☐ v unfortunate most disappointed in yhe host tbh

☐☐☐☐☐ he maybe had a old-worldy attitude to it and didn't mind or was too cowardly lol which do u think?

☍☍☍☍☍ I think he thought it was in the context of the poem she didn’t use it to degrade someone directly, but the word itself is degrading

☐☐☐☐☐ ugh but the poem is in the context of fuckin oussou yep ppl need to have a think before using words

☍☍☍☍☍ I just think its great to have a stage to do emotional work, but it can cross a line into normalising shitty white behaviour

☐☐☐☐☐ mm

☍☍☍☍☍ I went to a coloured school so I can’t b racist wah wah wah

☐☐☐☐☐ and you have to consider your audience if your rant is dehumanising or brushes aside/causes suffering u gotta reconsider felt pretty ashamed on behalf of bartender/various black audience members not saying that dumb white shit would be acceptable with a different audience, but her obliviousness was kinda astounding

☼☼☼☼☼ wow yeah cringefest

☍☍☍☍☍ lol spoken word scene as a whole can b so lame haha rings true to why I/we left

☐☐☐☐☐ mm so macho! that's what I liked about talkbox some sensitivity there, gentleness

☍☍☍☍☍ still, I just wish people read more lok *lol

☐☐☐☐☐ yep I wish I read more

☍☍☍☍☍ like the stylistic range is generally pretty lame

☐☐☐☐☐ I guess that's why anyone reads mmm

☍☍☍☍☍ I wish I read more too

☐☐☐☐☐ hahahaha

☼☼☼☼☼ :')

☍☍☍☍☍ don’t mean to shit on everyon, I just think the scene as a whole and the conception of poetry is lacklustre - it doesn’t seem like the time for poetry, sometimes

☐☐☐☐☐ mm

☍☍☍☍☍ ppl too distracted by netflix uwu sounds like phones but too much

☐☐☐☐☐ doesn't seem like the time for art, sometimes! hahhh

☍☍☍☍☍ its definitely a time for music

☼☼☼☼☼ I think there's a place for poetry It's just raps and memes

☍☍☍☍☍ yeh but I play dat long game there might not b a place now but I’mma fkn make one whether you like it or not lol

☼☼☼☼☼ Oh yeah fair go 4 it

☐☐☐☐☐ loll

☍☍☍☍☍ I just mean that I think 'poetry' has evolved into other forms, and now the traditional form is struggling to find a place I mean does anyone pay attention to Victorian satirical cartoons? I don’t I think it’s also tho that the low brow is more apparent in the moment, the high brow more apparent from a distance the shit sinks, basically

☼☼☼☼☼ elaborate?

☍☍☍☍☍ time brings forward higher brow material while a lot of lower brow stuff falls back or like there’s an art for getting through your days, and there’s an art for elaborate long form spiritual liberation

☼☼☼☼☼ so u don't mind about a lack of audience now if your work has staying power?

☍☍☍☍☍ different works have different digestion time and yes that is what I’m saying

☼☼☼☼☼ hmmmmmmm

☍☍☍☍☍ hmmmmmmmm?

☐☐☐☐☐ personally I don't know whether I'm prioritising the reception of my work or its value to me right now i feel poetry/art in general are useful tools for thinking about the world useful philosophical tools i guess and idk whether i'm learning for the sake of my own knowledge/making 'better' art or learning so what I put out into the world is better received I suppose the two aren't mutually exclusive but yeah - feeling fairly indifferent to the idea of creating work that will persist right now part of me feels more comfortable with being lost forever lol or at least that I should become comfortable with that, bc that is what will happen inevitably

☍☍☍☍☍ I just think in this atmosphere of complete denial of the arts as an important component of society, as well as the stigmatisation of ritual and other mystical practices that used to house what we now might describe as an artist, its important that we follow our intuition rather than give in to a system that routinely prevents us having access to basic resources like I want to be there for whoever is there when this period comes to end and those peoples are looking for anything to rudder them, whether or not I’m alive

☐☐☐☐☐ you want to add to the cultural record?

☍☍☍☍☍ I want provide a map for future generations is how I would put it

☐☐☐☐☐ mm how do you feel one can ensure the persistence of their own work? or are you just hoping it'll be around for others I suppose whether or not anything lasts is out of ur control past a certain point

☍☍☍☍☍ for one I make an effort to give away a lot of work

☐☐☐☐☐ mm

☍☍☍☍☍ I also store it all and make sure that that stockpile is kept w care but I also think there’s something to be said that I try and operate within many pre-existing canons I also it’s important to use the more meme-y, short stay work to bring attention to the slower works yeah, re: canons, like tanka and before that wakka as poetic forms stem back as far as a thousand years - perhaps more by putting myself in conversation with the ancients... idk it feels a bit like entering a cultural refrigerator haha

☐☐☐☐☐ mm

☍☍☍☍☍ sometimes I find it better to see my individual works as modules that make up a whole more prescient than its parts (Morton lolz) soo... maybe my work won’t carry the same weight until I finish, so to speak who knowsss but this how I think about it lol

☐☐☐☐☐ best to try and contribute something I spose rather than do nothing w ur resources

☍☍☍☍☍ I’m weird with this shit u don’t have to be

☐☐☐☐☐ mm it seems fairly simple to me and not that weird

☍☍☍☍☍ not everyone should spend their life tending their gravestone it’s a job for a particular type of person, and I am it

☐☐☐☐☐ but in a sense everyone does anyway everyone does things with the future in mind or without it in mind I suppose

☐☐☐☐☐ and i guess that influences what you leave when you die eheh, whether you do it consciously or unconsciously

☍☍☍☍☍ I just am particularly stubborn that I have something to offer - I think its partially a result of being denied that a lot in school, I found other ways to have social bonds that were more... non linear bonds with past peoples, and inadvertently bonds with future people

☐☐☐☐☐ mm

☍☍☍☍☍ I find it frustrating that its seen as arrogant to suggest your work should be read after you die - if anything its remarkably humble as I'm acknowledging that I will never properly see the fruits of my labour it's a ridiculously isolating position to find oneself in, where your best friends - books, music, content - have no form of human intimacy with you and completely defy all survivalistic, lizard-brain humanity plus you're just on a total different dimension from most people you meet

☐☐☐☐☐ mm you're in a very specific position here

☍☍☍☍☍ lol goodluck catching up ☼☼☼☼☼

☼☼☼☼☼ unrelated btw

(☼☼☼☼☼ posts a meme in chat)

☍☍☍☍☍ see y'all @ da rally (in reference to the meme)

☐☐☐☐☐ where and when is this? oh oops thought you meant a real one

☼☼☼☼☼ hahaha

☍☍☍☍☍ xD

☼☼☼☼☼ structurally is the meme ok ? took the photo the other day, and just added the text.

☍☍☍☍☍ yes are u going to weigh in on the conversation tho lol

☼☼☼☼☼ nah not really

☍☍☍☍☍ meme fine

☼☼☼☼☼ I have so little to add

☍☍☍☍☍ well hm why make memes? why not write novel? do memes have staying power?

☐☐☐☐☐ it's a question of what timescale is important to you at any given time maybe

☍☍☍☍☍ oh absolutely - not trying to infer a hierarchy here, I just think there are different approaches for different problems

☐☐☐☐☐ sometimes I'll say something to someone so they'll remember it for tomorrow, sometimes I'll say something to someone and hope they'll remember forever lol mm I don't think I care about staying power that much

☐☐☐☐☐ memes have such a short lifetime, they're like cultural mayflies haha

☼☼☼☼☼ Yeah defs

☍☍☍☍☍ why tho lol

☼☼☼☼☼ Because the art itself can date while still inspiring change

☍☍☍☍☍ yeah so using it pragmatically like a single use tissue

☼☼☼☼☼ If you create something short lived, it (with the help of other artists producing similar work) is able to push art and society in a specific direction The butterfly effect I guess

☍☍☍☍☍ it's true that you have more effect in the current conversation

☐☐☐☐☐ mm

☍☍☍☍☍ but that conversation draws intensively on a language formed by the ancients so the two are dependent on each other, a back and forth

☐☐☐☐☐ and that's dependent on their work's longevity?

☍☍☍☍☍ not following ur question

��☐☐☐☐ not following your point haha hmm

☼☼☼☼☼ so you're suggesting a works longevity is crucial in that it helps reinforce and update the ancient language in which short term work of the future will be influenced by?

☐☐☐☐☐ mm also - what if of all the work you make, it's only a meme that survives the passage of time?

☍☍☍☍☍ basically... like you're just reiterating points that have been made more in depth in 'higher' brow culture - that's definitely how I feel when writing raps

☐☐☐☐☐ like Roman graffiti surviving on the walls or whatever

☍☍☍☍☍ did you a hear copy of the I Ching, the Chinese numerology classic more than a thousand years old, was found in the 70s and had a heap more sections and a different order? effectively completely changing the understanding of the I Ching gotta get those nice lead storage chambers ayyyyy ahahaha it was found buried in a coffin, obvs haha

☐☐☐☐☐ mm

☍☍☍☍☍ a lot of Chinese philosophers only exist in so much as someone else described them

☼☼☼☼☼ But what does that changing of contexts of that piece actually mean for us? Is updated Ching from the coffin helping us in any way?

☍☍☍☍☍ I think for me finding the I Ching and looking over it is like a person in a thousand years finding a functional iPhone it gives great insight into human impulses regardless of time and offers a way of writing the past a new, which in turn presents a new future (thinking of the cowboy article you sent me) reconceptualizing the past IS the future look at 'Make America Great Again' or calls to restore the caliphate both are founded on histories that have more to do with our current state than the actual happenings of the past

☼☼☼☼☼ I do see where you're coming from I like the idea that it's important to preserve our work for understand the past better And I hope that someone in the future will have a clearer understanding of our time through your well preserved works But what fucking future is it

☍☍☍☍☍ haha but like looking back we see people been asking that for a veeery long time I get it seems on a new scale but we're on a new scale too

☼☼☼☼☼ It does seem that yes Also if we do survive and keep on teching on

☍☍☍☍☍ I'm for an integration of the human/natural binary where we properly acknowledge our mutual codependency, the earth and humanity that is

☼☼☼☼☼ Are we even going to be translatable? Is the functioning iPhone found by the future person going to even be able to be translated? Or will it be meaningless because everyone is already part of the grid

☍☍☍☍☍ where artificially effecting the climate for the benefit of 'nature' isn't seen as strange but completely akin to Aboriginal burn back practices

☐☐☐☐☐ i guess it's productive to hope that it will be translatable

☍☍☍☍☍ we've always interfered in the running of nature

☐☐☐☐☐ mm

☍☍☍☍☍ ehhh idk we translated fucking hieroglyphics

☼☼☼☼☼ Or future tech can look into the past and someone is watching our lives as we type this now, constantly being understood through our context in a way we can't comprehend through our recording processes shrugs

☍☍☍☍☍ I mean yeah, imagine if the internet was even vaguely archived

☼☼☼☼☼ You probably have a better understanding of how the future will pan out than I do tho

☍☍☍☍☍ even if 0.1 % was kept, it would be a massive resource

☼☼☼☼☼ No sass intended there, I'm sincere

☍☍☍☍☍ lol idk I just try to see a bigger picture and it keeps me calm remember me old saying? we survived the plague and nukes lol

☼☼☼☼☼ I just don't see the issue with creating short term work, especially if it is preserved

☍☍☍☍☍ oh neither do I

☼☼☼☼☼ Like a meme may have more impact than a novel rn

☐☐☐☐☐ well it could be argued that we're yet to survive nukes but I see your point impact on various timescales

☼☼☼☼☼ I've heard the plague make be thinking of making a comeback too haha

☐☐☐☐☐ mm

☍☍☍☍☍ oh duh peasantry is fully hip rn

☐☐☐☐☐ but like

☍☍☍☍☍ bring back the boils, they look great with my Balenciaga sneakers

☐☐☐☐☐ lol bubonic chic

☼☼☼☼☼ Pretty close to heroin chic tbh haha

☍☍☍☍☍ not jking that was tb

☐☐☐☐☐ but like, I don't find a huge amount of solace in the fact that we survived the plague

☍☍☍☍☍ "The Victorians romanticized the disease and the effects it caused in the gradual build to death. For decades, many beauty standards emulated or highlighted these effects. And as scientists gained greater understanding of the disease and how it was spread, the disease continued to keep its hold on fashion. and the severity of the corsets was known to harm the lungs in such a way that would increase the likelihood of transmission LOOOL

☐☐☐☐☐ mm Balenciaga look out idk it's a question of what capacity we survive in

☼☼☼☼☼ lollllll

☐☐☐☐☐ quite depressing to think about

☍☍☍☍☍ eating disorders have a pretense

☐☐☐☐☐ what if ecocide leaves a few insular eco fascist regimes who gradually diminish over centuries always engaged in pointless wars of attrition with one another lol

☍☍☍☍☍ I mean you could probably say the same thing of colonial regimes now

☐☐☐☐☐ just because we can survive, doesn't mean my outlook should b at all rosy :((

☍☍☍☍☍ point is its a big ol' world that has plenty of room for pain AND love any future pain you think is imminent probably already is happening, and nonetheless breakfast tasted good this morning

☼☼☼☼☼ 'The hipster middle class would dress with raggedy beards and large jackets and refuse to use deodorant, perhaps to reflect the look of people suffering from homelessness at the time. It is suspected that this made them less likely to be hired, and therefore more likely to become homeless themselves.' ☍☍☍☍☍ ahahaha

☐☐☐☐☐ mm that's true hahhh

☼☼☼☼☼ Planning on making this into a full essay. Might not be popular now, but I think it has staying power? Soz for shitposting haha

☍☍☍☍☍ I was talking with ☲☲☲☲☲ a while back, and something struck me - she said, "I never thought this age would have its own fleet of particular medical conditions." (or something like that lol, translated via my nerd brain)

☼☼☼☼☼ Yeah that didn't quite sound like her But that sentiment is great

☍☍☍☍☍ 'fleet'

☼☼☼☼☼ In that ofc there is, but also wow yeah ofc!

☐☐☐☐☐ mmm hahh these conversations should be recorded so we can all think about em without scrolling up endlessly

☼☼☼☼☼ I do like the idea of people reading these works in the future tho

☐☐☐☐☐ and also so that they can be preserved for 10,000+ years of course

☼☼☼☼☼ In the same way we read the letters sent between dead artists now

☐☐☐☐☐ mm very true

☍☍☍☍☍ mmm

☐☐☐☐☐ messenger is not a particularly stable storage medium and also is more vulnerable to third party scrutiny although the fact we're reading artists letters now means that medium is also pretty fucking vulnerable to scrutiny lol

☍☍☍☍☍ I fucking found the word! (sorry was searching for it so hard) Neurasthenia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurasthenia

☼☼☼☼☼ Americanitis lol

☍☍☍☍☍ uhh the page doesn't rly talk about this, but its like a condition of over-working effectively, and people would try and get prescribed the pills to treat it as a way of signalling they were a dedicated worker its total hokey

☐☐☐☐☐ wow yeah you mentioned this a while back

☼☼☼☼☼ oh I've heard a similar thing in Japan were workers will pretend to fall asleep at their desks to show how hard they're working No idea the trust behind it tho

☍☍☍☍☍ to this day, "In Japan, shinkei-suijaku is treated with Morita therapy involving mandatory rest and isolation, followed by progressively more difficult work, and a resumption of a previous social role. The diagnosis is sometimes used as a disguise for serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and mood disorders." a dignified mental illness uwu none of that lower class shit I'm a classy fuck with money, I don't get the same mental conditions as the poor lolol reminds me of now: I don't have shitty parents, I just have adhd (not to deligitimise all uses of adhd, just over diagnosed)

☼☼☼☼☼ mmmmm i feel u yes this has been a wild ride

☍☍☍☍☍ yes I’m leaving to get late lunch uwu have a good day in this cosmic spider web lololol

☼☼☼☼☼ :')

☍☍☍☍☍ Like the burning of this charcoal fire, our years too will soon expire Kobayashi Issa listening to Krista Tippet talk with Maria Popova, this particular phrase resonated with our conversation: we live in a world where disruption over-fetishised; we need cultural stewardship to help along new waves of disruption

☼☼☼☼☼ How would u define cultural stewardship in a practical sense?

☍☍☍☍☍ caring for the legacy of those past as a means of refreshing their insight for a new age a very straightforward example would b the importance of new translations, in this regard - as our understanding and depth of connection to Japanese society has deepened, so too have our translations dusting off the books so to speak in some sense I see that in our music too or reappropriating to a new context

☼☼☼☼☼ Well remasters are a time terry literal example Fuck

☍☍☍☍☍ time terry

☼☼☼☼☼ Pretty* not time terry lol

☼☼☼☼☼ lime berry yeah exactly

☼☼☼☼☼ Slime Jerry

☍☍☍☍☍ I mean rereleasing is an obvs example mhm but more abstract examples are how I’ve exported into both your brains Bridle/Steyerl/Haraway via conversation and art lolol I’m helping it move from one place to another same w Zappa lol

☐☐☐☐☐ also - looking after artist friends being generous I feel these are acts of pre-emptive cultural stewardship

☍☍☍☍☍ haha yeah definitely different time scales it could function on

☐☐☐☐☐ looking after and maintain communities

☍☍☍☍☍ hosting open mics lol helping teach ppl poetry lollll

☐☐☐☐☐ not allowing hate speech to creep into open mics lol

☼☼☼☼☼ Truuuuu Or anywhere for that matter

☐☐☐☐☐ not becoming so dusty that you actually have a detrimental impact on cultural progression

☍☍☍☍☍ I think religions only exist in so far as they have active practitioners

☐☐☐☐☐ mm

☼☼☼☼☼ Tru

☍☍☍☍☍ I think my sense is, in religion, this same argument plays out with orthodoxy versus mysticism Maintenance of buildings is in there too for religion People being assigned paid positions as the keepers and givers of religious knowledge oh yeah thinking a lot here of Shanzai, ☐☐☐☐☐, and the idea of an object as a lived practice

☐☐☐☐☐ when home I'm gonna do my best to archive this conversation mmm

☍☍☍☍☍ you’re going to steward our conversation bout stewardship ...

☐☐☐☐☐ this is all going in

☍☍☍☍☍ ...the tv where I am says “The comedian getting behind ‘Know Thy Nuts’” and there are big walnuts on the screen

☐☐☐☐☐ ???????

☍☍☍☍☍ “I didn’t realise chemotherapy would be such great comedic material!”

☐☐☐☐☐ ¿¿¿¿¿¿

☼☼☼☼☼ Huhhhh

☍☍☍☍☍ lol highly recommend https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/on-being-with-krista-tippett/id150892556?mt=2&i=1000429408054https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/on-being-with-krista-tippett/id150892556?mt=2&i=1000429408054

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boricuareads · 7 years

Photo

[Image description: graphic titled “Adriana Reviews...” followed by four books with their titles, authors, and release date (discussed below), superimposed over a gradient mosaic of pinks and purples]

Hi, everyone! I’ve been busy moving and with personal family business, but in between I’ve been reading, so this post is intended as a review-dump of all the books I read during that time. That’s right, I’m not talking about just one book reviewed, I’m talking about FOUR books being reviewed. In ONE post! Hold on to your reading devices, ‘cause it’s about to go down… (Spoilers and Long Post Ahead!!!)

I’ll start with the one I read during my finals week (I know, procrastination got the best of me):

Future Leaders of Nowhere by Emily O’Beirne (March 14th, 2017)

Set in Australia, we follow along as Finn and Willa end up at a camp for “Future Leaders” thanks to their performance in their respective schools. Pitted against each other as captains of their respective teams, these teenage girls must find common ground in order to survive the wrath of an entitled straight white boy who’s drunk with power (or a semblance of power).

I really liked the plot and characters of this book! At first I was apprehensive about the thematic and was sort of confused about what the camp entailed, as well as the fact that a month-long camp where they basically mixed a roleplay “Settlers of Catan” with scavenger hunts didn’t seem like something I would be interested in. However, it was the characters which drew me in. I loved Finn and Willa, both separately and together. Finn was a silent-but-deadly kind of leader that left me doing chinhands because DAMN I love girls who don’t take any shit. The same went for Willa, since I kept repeating “I wanna be like you when I grow up” as I saw her take charge of her Amazonian group of girls. Their relationship was organic; gotta love that friends-to-lovers trope. I adored their tenderness, how genuine their respect for each other was, and how realistic these aspects were because these were teen girls! Willa and Finn were insecure, they had family and identity issues, and yet they still managed to be there for each other. Of course, they had issues, but that’s a part of teenage angst and author-made drama.

The author was also able to include so much representation that made me so giddy! On the page, Finn was bisexual (I loved her explanation in Ch. 63: “Listen, I’m perfectly happy to help you out with difficult concepts. Like that time that I explained anaerobic respiration to you, but I do not have the time or the energy to explain really basic stuff. Especially when the meaning is in the actual word. Bisexuality. Hear that? Bi.” Even though that definition is very binary, it was important to see that word written out), Willa was gay and of mixed Indian descent, and there was a whole cast of side-characters with varied identities.

With all that said, I also had issues with some parts of the book. The characterization of Willa was at times inconsistent, and there was an islamophobic act depicted (a character tried to take off a Muslim girl’s hijab) that wasn’t really dealt with beyond the anger of some characters and it ended up seemingly brushed aside by the MC. The shifting POV worked most of the time, but there were times where the POV of that character didn’t feel all that necessary.

All in all, the book reminded me of the styles of E. Lockhart and Becky Albertalli. It was a fun, breezy read if you’re a fan of teenage hijinks at a sleepaway camp. Thanks to the publisher for allowing me access to review this book through NetGalley.

Rating: 3/5 Stars

Goodreads // Amazon

After reading that last book, I read Joyride during the flight home, which made it easy for me to delve into its world…

Joyride Vol. 1 by Jackson Lanzing and Colin Kelly (September 21st, 2016)

Joyride was a fascinating read for me. I don’t usually read graphic novels (probably because I’m incredibly picky about them and devour them so fast), but Joyride was just fun to devour. The writing kept me engaged and I genuinely was interested in the development of the characters and their adventures in space. I’m a fan of science-fiction and space adventures, especially when the team is comprised of found-families in the face of adversity.

Though they kept me engaged for the duration of my flight, I felt they were forgettable characters for some reason. I loved them, but I felt like they weren’t developed enough. Perhaps in Vol. 2 there was more character development, but in this installment it was difficult to discern between characterizations and that got in the way of the storytelling. In the future, I would like to see the relationships between the female characters explored some more as well as the dynamics with the brothers. The book left me with so many questions, mostly centered around the plot and its characters: what type of government were they under at the base? Was the alien sidekick necessary to the plot besides to make snide and unhelpful comments? Was Catrin gay? Is there going to be a love triangle around Uma? If so, I would read the next installment.

In terms of the art, I felt like the colors were vibrant and it appeared neat. I’m not that knowledgeable of art and drawing, I find myself lacking in that department, but I really liked them because they kept drawing me in; it was the type of aesthetic I like in my science fiction media. I did find the depictions of the characters inconsistent at times as well, but I didn’t really mind that.

In any case, on a scale from 0 to 5, where 0 is Jupiter Ascending-ridiculous and 5 is Star Wars: The Force Awakens- glorious, Joyride falls in a solid 3 level sff (so, maybe like a Star Trek Beyond). Thanks to BOOM! Studios for allowing me to read this through NetGalley.

Rating: 3/5 Stars

Goodreads // Amazon

After reading this graphic novel, I knew I wanted to delve into a more light-hearted, highly anticipated read…

Always and Forever, Lara Jean by Jenny Han (Release date: May 2nd, 2017)

I want to start by giving thanks to our lord and savior Jenny Han for being so generous as to give us meek readers a third and final look into Lara Jean Song-Covey’s life. Her writing is always full of life and colors. I have to say that when I read, I become a very mentally-visual person, so when I tell you that a book and its words remind me of certain colors, it’s good. Always and Forever reminded me of a muted blue, the blue of melancholy, of looking back through old pictures, of taking the last step out of your high school. It is a blue that looks at the future and says it’s okay to not have your shit together as long as you have people around you supporting you and cheering you on to your next great adventure.

Always and Forever was the best goodbye to Lara Jean I could’ve hoped for. It was full of twists and drama and it was so realistic I had to check if the story wasn’t actually about me. I could relate to Lara Jean’s anxiety around college and the process of getting accepted or denied to the universities you love. When I was going through that process, my dream schools were University of Wisconsin-Madison and Penn State, and though I got accepted, I had to go through the heartbreak of declining their offers because it was too much money. I felt Lara Jean’s disappointment as if I had declined those offers right then and not four years ago.

I also felt Lara Jean’s uncertainty around the relationships you keep or give up on after high school. There are some that are forever, like your family. Her family, as always, showed up for her time and time again, and their love for her shone through in this book. I loved Kitty so much, especially with her feelings towards her second older sister leaving their house. On the other hand, Lara Jean felt conflicted over her relationship with her boyfriend, Peter. Though I graduated without a significant other (much like Lara’s mother advised them to do), I found myself a tad angry at Peter and even Lara. I don’t know why I kept finding it selfish for them to want to go to the same university and just keep doing what they’re doing because it works instead of challenging themselves. Maybe it was the cynic in me talking over the idealistic voice that permeates Young Adult Contemporary Romance, but by the end of the book I was glad to squish that so-called voice of reason; who needs that when you could be salivating over Lara Jean’s wardrobe/cooking/everything. I had one question, which I may have missed over the course of the series, but I needed to know what was Lara Jean’s major, as that may have been key to her characterization.

In the end, I was glad for Jenny Han’s basically coming full-circle with this book. This novel was the best tight, pretty bow this series needed.

Rating: 4/5 Stars

Goodreads // Amazon

Last but not least, a monster of a book that took me an entire week to get through while tending to my dad at the hospital…

Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust (Release date: September 5th, 2017)

First off, I want to declare that I was dubious about this book. I first heard of it through a friend, who sent me an article that dubbed it as “a feminist retelling of Snow White”. I’m always cringing when someone calls a book a feminist-anything, but I was willing to give it a try. When i saw that NetGalley had it in advance, I requested it, not really thinking I’d get approved. To my surprise, my inbox was telling me that Flatiron Books had approved my request and I was really excited (thanks Flatiron Books!). I delved into Bashardoust’s world without much background besides the fact that it was supposed to be feminist and a retelling of Snow White (which I may or may not have forgotten when I started reading it because I was tired).

I think it was essential for me to dive into this one without reading what it was about, because it led to me wanting to process everything written at face value. Girls Made of Snow and Glass was a magical tale of putting oneself first, as the opposite would allow for men’s greed and ignorance to burrow itself into women’s lives.

In this tale, the patriarchal notions of duty to a man in a position of authority and notions of how a woman should exist in public and private spheres are challenged by the main characters: Mina and Lynet. Lynet was a normal fifteen-year old girl in a fictional royal family; she wishes to be more than what she was born into, wanted to run away from her circumstances and, above all, be herself. This sounds pretty cliché, except for the fact that it’s GAY! Yes, you read right, G A Y. I won’t go into details, but it’s a very nuanced and mellow pairing that felt like ocean waves on a stroll by the beach. On the other hand, Mina was set up to be the wicked stepmother, except the narrative framed her more as a woman who’d been forced to assimilate into a patriarchal monarchy that didn’t appreciate her prowess as a tactician and desire to help those in need. Mina’s circumstances were constricted by her father’s ambition and her own intellect, which in itself is deemed as valuable by the author but not by people surrounding her, much as is the case with many powerful and influential women.

I really liked the characterization work the author put into the story, each character was fleshed out and I wanted to know more about each of them. I did think the author maintained the races of the characters vague, which was a problem for me, since it’s being marketed as a feminist fantasy book and there’s not a lot of visible racial representation. The plot I felt was slightly predictable, but I was delighted by the way the author threaded these characters reacting to each other. I felt the reveals came too early, that the reader was just given the characters’ secrets readily, rather than it being a slow reveal. I liked the author’s writing, I think it was really nice and had a beautiful poetic flow.

Girls Made of Snow and Glass was a wonderful read about the influence women have and, in summary, to never underestimate the power that their words and actions hold. At its center, it’s a story about two women coming together from two very different points in their lives and learning from and loving one another. Bashardoust’s story was intricate and a bit of what we needed in the realm of fantasy.

Rating: 4/5 stars

Goodreads // Amazon

#mine #future leaders of nowhere #girls made of snow and glass #joyride #always and forever lara jean #adriana reviews #adriana recs #long post

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whore---ible · 6 years

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hella bored once again. jk i just really like quizzes.

1: when you have cereal, do you have more milk than cereal or more cereal than milk? 50/50 2: do you like the feeling of cold air on your cheeks on a wintery day? i hate the cold and i hate wind 3: what random objects do you use to bookmark your books? tissue hahaha 4: how do you take your coffee/tea? i like mocchacino or a latte 5: are you self-conscious of your smile? yes? 6: do you keep plants? no i’m not good for their health but i would like to 7: do you name your plants? no i just told you i’m a murderer -_- 8: what artistic medium do you use to express your feelings? i write 9: do you like singing/humming to yourself? yea 10: do you sleep on your back, side, or stomach? whatever i feel like doing 11: what’s an inner joke you have with your friends? im so white im translucent 12: what’s your favorite planet? the little prince’s planet 13: what’s something that made you smile today? my mom was being funny earlier. i rarely see her like that. 14: if you were to live with your best friend in an old flat in a big city, what would it look like? white, minimalistic but super artistic at the same time. 15: go google a weird space fact and tell us what it is! no 16: what’s your favorite pasta dish? alfredo/mushroom 17: what color do you really want to dye your hair? i like my white hair rn but i miss my pink hair 18: tell us about something dumb/funny you did that has since gone down in history between you and your friends and is always brought up. i did twerk on a car that was at a red light in the street juste beside a bar. everybody was looking at me….. i was so drunk i puked just after that lil dance. 19: do you keep a journal? what do you write/draw/ in it? i rarely write in it but i write who i had sex with and who i love and things like that so i’ll be able to stalk them when i’m older 20: what’s your favorite eye color? green 21: talk about your favorite bag, the one that’s been to hell and back with you and that you love to pieces. my little black leather backpack. 22: are you a morning person? not at all 23: what’s your favorite thing to do on lazy days where you have 0 obligations? netflix and chill 24: is there someone out there you would trust with every single one of your secrets? nop 25: what’s the weirdest place you’ve ever broken into? an “haunted” hospital 26: what are the shoes you’ve had for forever and wear with every single outfit? my high top white vans 27: what’s your favorite bubblegum flavor? mint 28: sunrise or sunset? sunset, but watching the sunrise is always funnier bc i guess im drunk with my friends somewhere cool 29: what’s something really cute that one of your friends does and is totally endearing? i dont know man. i think they are all super cute when they laugh. 30: think of it: have you ever been truly scared? yes, in bali, its too long to explain but i thought i would die or get kidnapped or whatever 31: what is your opinion of socks? do you like wearing weird socks? do you sleep with socks? do you confine yourself to white sock hell? really, just talk about socks. i dont really care. i mostly wear black socks. i would like to have some cooler socks but i cant find them anywhere. i dont know where to buy fuxking socks man. 32: tell us a story of something that happened to you after 3AM when you were with friends. im always with friends after 3AM come on 33: what’s your fave pastry? croissant 34: tell us about the stuffed animal you kept as a kid. what is it called? what does it look like? do you still keep it? dont remember 35: do you like stationary and pretty pens and so on? do you use them often? 36: which band’s sound would fit your mood right now? i’m into massive attack these days 37: do you like keeping your room messy or clean? i like it clean but im a mess 38: tell us about your pet peeves! my pets are boring af 39: what color do you wear the most? black and grey 40: think of a piece of jewelry you own: what’s it’s story? does it have any meaning to you? im slways always always wearing 4 rings. two that i bought when i was leaving for bali, one i bought in cuba i think and one i received as a gift after i had a threesome bc the girl didnt want me to forget her 41: what’s the last book you remember really, really loving? charlotte before christ 42: do you have a favorite coffee shop? describe it! cafellini, my friend owns it 43: who was the last person you gazed at the stars with? i cant remember 44: when was the last time you remember feeling completely serene and at peace with everything? dont know. its rare. 45: do you trust your instincts a lot? yasssss 46: tell us the worst pun you can think of. huh 47: what food do you think should be banned from the universe? why the fuck would i ban any food i love food 48: what was your biggest fear as a kid? is it the same today? being kidnapped. and yes it is. 49: do you like buying CDs and records? what was the last one you bought? not really. the last one was from de band “scyzzors” 50: what’s an odd thing you collect? all my bracelet from differents event i go 51: think of a person. what song do you associate with them? les sentiments humains - pierre lapointe 52: what are your favorite memes of the year so far? …. 53: have you ever watched the rocky horror picture show? heathers? beetlejuice? pulp fiction? what do you think of them? those are some cool classic movies 54: who’s the last person you saw with a true look of sadness on their face? cath 55: what’s the most dramatic thing you’ve ever done to prove a point? i kissed someone to make sure i could still be attract by men 56: what are some things you find endearing in people? big smile, kindness, honesty 57: go listen to bohemian rhapsody. how did it make you feel? did you dramatically reenact the lyrics? won’T do that 58: who’s the wine mom and who’s the vodka aunt in your group of friends? why? i think we’re all wine moms lol

59: what’s your favorite myth? that people get wild when its full moon

60: do you like poetry? what are some of your faves? yea i like contemporary poets 61: what’s the stupidest gift you’ve ever given? the stupidest one you’ve ever received? i gave nothing for my mom'd last birthday bc i was in bali... that was stupid. i received an unmbrella last christmas. i never use fucking umbrellas. 62: do you drink juice in the morning? which kind? nop. just water and coffee. 63: are you fussy about your books and music? do you keep them meticulously organized or kinda leave them be? im fussy about my book, not my music. 64: what color is the sky where you are right now? grey 65: is there anyone you haven’t seen in a long time who you’d love to hang out with? sure 66: what would your ideal flower crown look like? super simple. a crown in delicate wood with some pink and white orchids. 67: how do gloomy days where the sky is dark and the world is misty make you feel? i'm a little bit scared but i find it beautiful. 68: what’s winter like where you live? fucking cold. too much snow. 69: what are your favorite board games? i would say destiny wheel. but i prefer cards. 70: have you ever used a ouija board? yes 71: what’s your favorite kind of tea? green tea 72: are you a person who needs to note everything down or else you’ll forget it? yesss 73: what are some of your worst habits? im a mess 74: describe a good friend of yours without using their name or gendered pronouns. ughhh 75: tell us about your pets! theyre fucking cute but soooo boring. im allergic to them tho so maybe thats why i found them so boring lol. 76: is there anything you should be doing right now but aren’t? hmmmm nop 77: pink or yellow lemonade? yellow 78: are you in the minion hateclub or fanclub? h8club 79: what’s one of the cutest things someone has ever done for you? i dont know man people do cute things all the time you just have to open ur eyes 80: what color are your bedroom walls? did you choose that color? if so, why? yea three walls are white and one is black. it makes the room look bigger. 81: describe one of your friend’s eyes using the most abstract imagery you can think of. uasjdbskfd 82: are/were you good in school? yea 83: what’s some of your favorite album art? 84: are you planning on getting tattoos? which ones? nan i think i have enough for now 85: do you read comics? what are your faves? nop 86: do you like concept albums? which ones? 87: what are some movies you think everyone should watch at least once in their lives? hmmmm café de flore 88: are there any artistic movements you particularly enjoy? i dont know 89: are you close to your parents? i dont talk to my father and i have a difficult relationship w my mom 90: talk about your one of you favorite cities. i loooooove montreal, especially in the summer 91: where do you plan on traveling this year? maybe ill return to bali 92: are you a person who drowns their pasta in cheese or a person who barely sprinkles a pinch? i’m drowning in cheese 93: what’s the hairstyle you wear the most? almost my natural hair, they have waves 94: who was the last person you know to have a birthday? me 95: what are your plans for this weekend? i’ll get drunk for sure bc it’s my weekends birthday 96: do you install your computer updates really quickly or do you procrastinate on them a lot? i procrastinate, there are tooooo many 97: myer briggs type, zodiac sign, and hogwarts house? zodiac 98: when’s the last time you went hiking? did you enjoy it? this autumn, and yea it was cool 99: list some songs that resonate to your soul whenever you hear them. i have a lot of those 100: if you were presented with two buttons, one that allows you to go 5 years into the past, the other 5 years into the future, which one would you press? why? 5 years in the past so i would do things differently

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syafiatudina · 6 years

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What to Unlearn from Art Organization (2018)

Essay for Annette Krauss’s work in Shapes of Knowledge exhibition publication for Monash University Museum of Art

Part 1: The Double Binds of Cleaning, from Collective Empowerment to a Form of Mobilised Labour

I would like to start this text by recalling a conversation that I had with friends and colleagues – including Antariksa, Brigitta Isabella and Ferdiansyah Thajib (KUNCI, Yogyakarta), Binna Choi (Casco Art Institute, Utrecht) and Emily Pethick (then director of The Showroom, London) – at a public event in January 2015 at KUNCI’s office. The conversation was transcribed into a text entitled ‘Toilet Tissue and Other Formless Organisational Matters’. In this conversation, we were talking about the organisational practices of different institutions and their relations to common struggles, such as the fights against capitalism, patriarchy, normativeness and inequality, or the struggle for commons. As goofy as the title might seem, it came from my complaint about how often I had to buy toilet paper for the KUNCI office and how I wish I could have done more ‘productive’ work instead of buying toilet paper.

This event was announced publicly with the title ‘Curating Organisations (Without) Form’. For the announcement, we used an image of the Casco team emptying few buckets of dirty water in front of Casco office, as part of a collective exercise which the Casco team did with Annette Krauss as part of the project Site for Unlearning (Art Organisation). Later I would learn that this collective cleaning exercise is aiming to unlearn organisational practices, so that participants can see how reproductive labour is undervalued and the inequalities in the division of labour – including how reproductive labour is always the last priority in an institutional setting.

However, when I first saw this image my memory turned to my elementary school days. I went to an elementary public school in West Java, Indonesia. The total number of students, from first to sixth grade, was five hundred, yet the school had only nine classes, so we had to take turns in using the classroom by splitting the school into morning and afternoon classes. The morning classes were for first, second, and sixth graders, while the afternoon classes were for third, fourth, and fifth graders. It was the responsibility for the morning classes, especially the sixth graders, to clean the classrooms before school started. The teacher would always remind us that it was our duty as students to take care of the school, as much as we would take care our own houses. It was our shared responsibility to take care our house: the school. Another reason was that because the school could only employ one person as the school caretaker, we should help him as well.

In my assigned day to clean, I would come to the school early with two of my friends. We would clean our class before the lessons started. Sometimes I brought cleaning products from home to clean the class. After mopping the floor, we would throw the remaining dirty water in front of our classroom. The reason was because my school had an odd plumbing system. The school building was in a shape of a square with classrooms facing of each other, a garden in the centre and a gutter surrounding it. The dirty water from class-cleaning sessions would be disposed of in the gutter. Since the gutter was located in the centre of the building, everyone could see when someone had disposed of the dirty water.

Ever since I graduated from this elementary school, I have never done any cleaning task in school. I continued my study from middle to high school in a private Catholic education institution. This school was more expensive than my elementary school, and employed more than twenty workers to clean around thirty classes. The student’s task was only to study and to be polite with the school workers.

The maintenance of the school is the job of the workers, not the students. Without being aware of it, at that moment I entered an institutional setting where the division of labour was firmly implemented. Work is not only a definition of what we have done but becomes how we identify ourselves and each other. The social identification based on work even goes further – to spatial arrangements. The students could be easily seen everywhere around the school buildings, while the cleaners had their own areas. The cleaners tried to make themselves invisible. No one saw the cleaners while they were emptying the buckets of dirty water. Cleaning is work that is kept out of public eye.

Cleaning is part of the unlearning exercise which was developed by Annette Krauss and the team at Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, a mid-scale contemporary art organisation in Utrecht, The Netherlands, for the project Site for Unlearning (Art Organisation). The project comes from the shared pursuit to unlearn institutional habits through an investigation into the schemes of productivity that drive art organisations.

As part of the exercise, every Monday the Casco team members clean the office together. From their reflection upon this exercise, the team felt the power of cleaning together as collective effort. It was important to do cleaning together, instead of delegating this labour to interns or outsourced labourers, as a way to study reproductive labour in an art institution setting.

In comparison, in my elementary school experience, cleaning was framed as part of the student responsibility partly because the school decided to employ only one person as the cleaner for the whole building. The student’s collective effort was mobilised and used by the school to avoid spending funds on an additional cleaner’s salary. To clean the school together was also framed as an exercise of gotong royong, a form of mobilising labour through discourse and collective work. Gotong royong, which can be translated as ‘mutual assistance’, was and still is being promoted as part of Indonesia’s identity. It takes many forms, from collective kitchens to self-organised processes of building houses, although, as anthropologist John R. Bowen has mentioned, in certain forms of gotong royong, the mutual assistance of members of the community can start to feel like unpaid labour. For example, the repairing of a drainage system in a neighbourhood could appear as ‘assistance’ but begins to resemble corvée when it is commandeered by a local official for the construction of a district road.

A few years ago, on a main road in Jogja, I saw a public-service billboard announcing: ‘Mari gotong royong membayar pajak untuk Indonesia’ (‘Let’s gotong royong in paying tax for Indonesia’). There is no mutual assistance in paying tax. The message was to bring people together to pay tax without using commanding words.

In Site for Unlearning (Art Organisation) the cleaning exercise is a form of study about how collectively we can empower each other by doing reproductive labour together. The definition of study that I would like to emphasise is an important concept in this project – study as something we do with others in order to escape while finding commonalities. Collective cleaning as study means that it is being done together as the participants look for connections with each other while taking refuge from the measuring of productivity in the workplace. This conception of study has resonance with what Stefano Harney and Fred Moten (2013) describe as ‘fugitive planning’– study as something you do with others while being fugitive from the dominant values.

Meanwhile, collective cleaning, along with other forms of communal reproductive work, can serve the purpose that it resists and become a means for control instead of empowerment. This is what happened with gotong royong in the Indonesian context. The mobilisation of gotong royong or any form of mutual assistance has become part of the way governing bodies establish harmony within the society to enable the power and control of the state.

Harmony and governance have a specific entanglement in the Indonesia context, related to the writings of early nationalist thinkers of Javanese cultural background. An Indonesia nationalist thinker, Soetomo (1888–1938), for example, wrote about the ‘gamelan society’, in which

… rakyat beruntung jika mereka bekerja sama secara serasi dalam memainkan gamelan, di mana bukan hanya mereka yang bersangkutan yang mesti tahu bagaimana memainkan dan menjadi mahir dalam suatu alat musik, mereka juga mesti manut (mengikuti) peraturan-peraturan dan menaati hukum.

… the society is fortunate if they work together in harmony in playing gamelan, when those who hold the instrument also know how to play it and become good at it, yet they also need to obey the rules and law.

This is one of the double-binds in collective reproductive work. While it offers a form of being and doing together that has been undervalued by the dominant capitalist logic through attribution of work according to gender, race, class, physical abilities and more, collectivity in all forms of work, both productive and reproductive, can also be mobilised and utilised to enable control by a specific group in power: state, employers or others. The double-bind could and will never be resolved, since we are living in a multiple condition full of contradictions. Yet what we can do is play the double-bind by composing different modes of governing ourselves that remain critical about what is considered ‘work’.

Part 2: New Modes of Governing Ourselves

I am part of KUNCI, as a member. Oftentimes I introduce myself as someone who works in KUNCI, although I do not define KUNCI as merely my workplace. It is also something else.

KUNCI was established in 1999, a year after the end of New Order era in Indonesia (the Soeharto era). Nuraini Juliastuti and Antariksa co-founded KUNCI in the spirit of producing critical knowledge through different platforms and activities. Both of them were involved in the student and civic movements which had succeeded in overthrowing Soeharto from his thirty-two years of dictatorship in 1998.

After 1998, other ‘alternative spaces’ emerged alongside with KUNCI, including ruangrupa (Jakarta, 2000), Forum Lenteng (Jakarta, 2003), Ruang MES 56 (Jogjakarta, 2002). ‘Alternative space’ is a particularly well-known phrase within the environment of art and cultural organisations in Jakarta, Bandung, and Yogyakarta. Alternative spaces have been playing key roles in different cultural practices. Now, citizen initiatives in the cultural field suggested by ‘alternative space’ also flourish in other locations such as Surabaya, Jatiwangi, Aceh and Makassar, using new methodologies for cultural activities based on the communities in which they are located.

None of these spaces started in a formal institutional setting such as an office, museum, or gallery, but rather in home settings – either a shared house or a member’s house. KUNCI, including the library, moved from one member’s dormitory room to the living room of another member, to a publisher’s garage, to a shared house with Ruang MES 56, until finally it was able to rent a house in 2011.

When I started to come to KUNCI regularly, I didn’t consider it as part of my work. I was a volunteer for the library. My task was to open and close the library according to its public hours. There was no payment for my work. My ‘salary’ was to use the internet freely. As I was (and still am) an avid internet browser, this ‘salary’ was decent enough. After hanging around for some time, I started to come to the KUNCI library more often, even outside its public hours. I read, discussed, ate, cooked, and sometimes also slept in the library. KUNCI was slowly becoming my second home. Later on, my relationship with KUNCI was formalised when I received my first salary in 2010. Since then I have been working at KUNCI, yet I feel also at home there.

Ade Darmawan, co-founder of ruangrupa, has mentioned the domesticity of alternative spaces in Indonesia because of their house settings and the friendship networks. Although in early 2000 many art and other organisations started registering themselves legally and used the prescribed organisational structures – director, manager, accountant and board as required by the government to enable them to receive financial support from international funding agencies – within these formal bodies, the spirit of friendship and informality still exists.

KUNCI is still in a state in between. It was started as circle of friends. Then as we expanded our activities and they became larger and longer, we also got grants and funding that required us to be more formally accountable. So then we employed a director, a program manager, a finance person, and so on. But with this division of work, we also became more professionalised, with more specified functions for each person, so they do only the work that is assigned to them. The caring of the space became work for the cleaner, librarian and intern. Then, in 2013, we decided to get rid of the formal structure and make (almost) everyone a member of KUNCI. So today everyone is a co-director and everyone is a member. And it’s still a challenge to practice this form. Today we consist of nine members.

In the shared spirit of Site of Unlearning, by constantly challenging the way we work in our organisation we are trying to be more aware of the work of knowledge production and the kind of work that enables this knowledge production to take place. The kind of work which involves cleaning, buying toilet paper, listening to complaints, giving encouraging words. It is a work which serve life, not commodity production. It is a reproductive work, which also a terrain for political struggle. As activist and scholar Silvia Federici wrote, ‘On the positive side, the discovery of reproductive work has made it possible to understand that capitalist production relies on the production of a particular type of worker, and therefore a particular type of family, sexuality, procreation, and thus to redefine the private sphere as a sphere of relations of production and a terrain of anti-capitalist struggle.’

By trying not to outsource this reproductive work to other women, interns and assistants, and by dividing the responsibilities equally among members (or friends), we become aware that we are indebted to each other for the work we’ve done. Defining (alternative) ways of organising and of becoming institutionalised is an important cultural project, which can serve as a site for knowledge production that is grounded in the political struggle.

Part 3: Exercising as the Refusal to Work

Annette Krauss and the team at Casco have been developing different exercises in order to unlearn institutional habits. Cleaning is only one part of the whole set of exercises. The other exercises are related to meeting, reading, care network, property, wage and well-being, authorship, time, passions and obstacles.

The ‘unlearning exercises’ take various amounts of time. For example, the ‘Off-Balancing Chairs’ exercise lasts according to how long the meeting participants can hold their positions in a set of wobbly chairs to unlearn meeting habits. The ‘Time Diary’ exercise requires everyone to record their day for a limited period of time – from a few days to weeks. Besides doing these exercises, the participants also need to work as usual, from replying to emails, writing and editing, to organising events. I wonder if doing these exercises adds more work to the already existing work for the team at Casco. Why would they do all of these exercises? Would it be more useful for team at Casco to spend time in writing text about reproductive works rather than cleaning?

I would argue that the strength of these exercises lies on how they successfully suspend the team members at Casco from their ‘real’ work. It creates ruptures in organisational work and this relates to the struggle against work. It is also a form of escaping while finding different connections. As feminist scholar Kathi Weeks puts it, the problem with work is that it dominates our lives and it shapes the way we connect with each other. Work become the source of our social identification, both in and out of workplace. We even introduce ourselves by name and profession.

The Site for Unlearning (Art Organization) is a space to identify the self and each other outside of work categories within an institutional setting. We are not valuing each other based on what the other is being paid to do, but on what is possibly coming out of our different forms of togetherness. It is a form of alternative world-building through collective practices, one exercise at a time.

References

Open Engagement, In Conversation: Pittsburgh 2015 – Place and Revolution, http://openengagement.info/curating-organisations-without-form/.

John R. Bowen, ‘On the Political Construction of Tradition: Gotong Royong in Indonesia,’ The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 45, no. 3, May 1986, p.548.

Savitri Prastiti Scherer, Keselarasan dan Kejanggalan, translation from ‘Harmony and Dissonance; Early Nationalist Thought in Java’, MA thesis, Cornell University, 1975, Sinar Harapan, Jakarta, 1985, p.241.

Silvia Federici, ‘The reproduction of labour-power in the global economy, Marxist theory and the unfinished feminist revolution’, 2009, paper for seminar The Crisis of Social Reproduction and Feminist Struggle, https://caringlabor.wordpress.com/2010/10/25/silvia-federici-the-reproduction-of-labour-power-in-the-global-economy-marxist-theory-and-the-unfinished-feminist-revolution/.

Kathi Weeks, The Problem with Works: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries, Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2011.

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traversetheatre · 6 years

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10 Questions with designer Ana Inés Jabares-Pita

Ana Inés Jabares-Pita is a stage designer. Her work crosses a range of genres from opera, dance and theatre to installations, concerts and film. During #TravFest18 Ana designed What Girls Are Made Of by Cora Bissett. We caught up with her to find out about the process.

Cora Bissett in What Girls Are Made Of. Image Sid Scott

1. To start things off, can you introduce yourself, what you do and what inspired you to follow a career in theatre design?

Hello, my name is Ana Inés Jabares-Pita and I am a stage and costume designer born in Spain. I have been always been interested in art and music. Actually, the story of how all the pieces came together for becoming a stage designer is quite long. Too many pieces! I used to sing in an opera choir in Spain and used to love being backstage with the make-up, costumes and all of the thrill that came with it. After that, I went to study abroad in Italy for a year and took a scenography class. Some more things happened along the way until I realised that theatre design was what I wanted to do. I wanted to help make stories come alive.

2. What did your route into designing look like? Did you study theatre design and how did you get to where you are today?

It looks like a big spider net!

I studied Fine Arts and Opera Singing, and I didn’t have a clue that being a set and costume designer could be a job until I finished my five year degree!

For the last year of my degree, I went on an Erasmus exchange to Palermo, Italy and I had to choose similar subjects to the compulsory ones in Spain. So I swapped out technical drawing for set design. People in their last year had the opportunity to work on a professional show but because it was my first year studying that subject and I was on Erasmus they didn’t initially allow me to be a part it. My Italian back then was very poor so I couldn’t really defend myself. The only thing I could do was draw. So I found out when the 5th year students were presenting their concepts for the show and I started to draw.

The presentation day came, and even though I wasn’t invited, I went and showed my costume drawings for Le Carnaval des Animaux by Camille Saint Saen. They selected my concept, that meant that in a month I had to learn how to make 27 costumes, almost by myself, how to work in a team, how to position an orchestra on stage… and many other things. I was working 14 hours a day... that was my life during while all my friends were partying, but I didn’t care I was so excited! The opening day of the show arrived and I stayed backstage looking at the audience (who were children). I spent the show looking at their little faces of excitement each time a new animal appeared.

After that day it was clear to me what I wanted to do with my life. After that I moved to London to do a Masters at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in Scenography. Both the city and my colleagues opened my mind…and that is me now.

3. How do you approach the process of designing a new play - is it different from working on a piece that audiences will be familiar with?

The process depends mainly on the people I work with than the piece itself. The responsibility of designing a new piece is that you are giving the visuals to something that is being done for the first time. The challenge of designing a Shakespeare is that a lot of amazing people have already tried amazing things...so the bar is set very high. Actually, at the moment I am designing Twelfth Night for The Lyceum at the same time as What Girls are Made Of.

What Girls Are Made Of. Image Sid Scott

4. What are the stages in developing a design from initial idea through to the build?

They might vary depending on the show and the team, but generally: - First is meeting the director, making sure we both get to know how each other thinks. This is what I call "mind reading or telepathy" phase. - Then I sync brains with the director and discuss concept ideas through sharing films, music, images, books, exhibitions…anythign and everything really! - Then I go to the studio and start drawing... - Then I share these ideas with the director and introduce the concept to the wider team. - During rehearsals, things keep changing, mainly to do with props and costumes while the bigger pieces of set get built.

5. Where do you take your inspiration from and does that sometimes come from out with the theatre world?

Most of my inspiration comes from outside the theatre world from tv series, films, music, exhibitions, games, playgrounds and experiences that have nothing to do with theatre.

6. What has been the most unusual project you’ve worked on and why?

It was a piece called Incholm Island. It was a site-specific project mixed with video games. We needed to fill the Island with installations that referred to the video game and get there by boat. We only had 3 hours to set up, so everything needed to be very well prepared from early on. It was a lot more complex that it sounds, but It was an amazing experiment. Since then I’ve become very interested in how video games, augmented reality and other technologies can be brought to theatre.

Simon Donaldson in What Girls Are Made Of. Image Sid Scott

7. What advice would you give emerging theatre designers in theatre today? Be true to your self, I know cliche! But it is true, do not try to be liked by someone you don’t, that relationship is never going to work. Be open-minded. Make sure you take care of yourself, and you know where your limits are. It’s ok to stop to have proper lunch breaks. Take one day off a week at least and make sure you book holidays or days off in advance - they are the best thing to help you keep being creative. If you're working all the time, where do you get your inspiration from?

8. Can you give us an idea of what the set will look like for What Girls Are Made Of? Where did you draw your inspiration from? Do not thing about it as a set, think about it as a stage for a concert! What I've really enjoyed about this process is having the chance to design a stage for a concert. My inspiration came from Darlingheart’s SMARTHEAD music video from the 90s, also from other indie bands as well as some contemporary bands. I've also researched different lighting installations as lighting is such a big part of concerts. It has been great having Lizzie Powell as a collaborator, she is a lighting magician!

The What Girls Are Made Of cast and creative team.

9. What are the challenges of designing a play for the festival environment?

The set needs to support the show and show it in its best light and at the same time, it needs to be put together and dismantled in 20 minutes - which is almost like an amazing piece of theatrical choreography in itself! Plus you are sharing the space with a lot more shows, so the lighting has also restrictions because you are sharing the lighting bars with all the rest of the shows. It’s a brilliant challenge!

10. What is the most satisfying part of being a theatre designer and what advice would you give to any budding theatre designers out there?

You need to truly love it because is tough work, but being able to put together stories that need to be told for the world to see is pretty amazing. In a joined effort from a big team, we make a few hours of magic and transport the audience somewhere magical.

Cora Bissett in What Girls Are Made Of. Image Sid Scott

Find out more about What Girls Are Made Of here.

#What Girls Are Made Of #Ana Inés Jabares-Pita #10 Questions #Designer

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softctts · 6 years

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“We Love You, But You Can’t Deliver.”

Understanding one’s problem areas, unfortunately, doesn't count as an apology.

It was a boring Sunday night. I just left the Kendall Square Cinema after seeing the film, Disobedience. I wasn’t dying to see it, but a movie was one way to avoid something else on my plate: production planning for a music video that I’m trying to shoot for my friend. Instead of being upfront about how I’ve been creatively bankrupt since we’ve talked about it in late March, I’ve hemmed and hawed along thinking an idea will hit me eventually. Throughout the train ride home, I felt the guilt of procrastination creep up on me. It reached a tipping point by the time I got to the final stop, that I was once again fucking around, wasting time, and going nowhere. On top of all of this, I’m fucking my friend over with my inability to act. Then the existential questions followed: “What am I doing? Where is my “career” heading? Do I really have the audacity to call myself an artist? Why can’t I show up to the things that I said I want to do? Do I really want to do this?” These questions reverberated in my head as I walked through Forest Hills late at night. Another project that I started has stopped in its tracks. Because of me, just being me.

It’s been a weird year and a half. My professional and creative growth has ground to a halt and I’m understanding why. I just… suck. Not just morally, but also in a functional sense. The same way France sucks at maintaining a balanced economy for its working class. I talk about the things I want to do, but I’m constantly getting stuck and I can’t follow through.

This is what I do, I make things. But If I can’t do that, then who the fuck am I?

It’s hit me how much stock I’ve put into trying to be (and look like) an artist, but everything I do turns to shit. But as it turns out, when you wake up every day and mutter “you fuckin’ suck” before you brush your teeth, it becomes fact. Now in my mid-20s, my friends and contemporaries are living their best lives, but I have the audacity to wonder why nothing is happening.

I’ve had this image of myself that I’ve been reinforcing for many years now: I’m a filmmaker, writer, photographer, a creative thinker; I’m an artist. But I’ve never had the discipline or the mental fortitude to stay consistent with who I’ve been selling myself as. I stupidly thought that I would “change” out of nowhere.

Between late 2016 and this year, I’ve just been in this in-between space of starting and stopping things that have buzzed around my head. The more I get to the root of the issue (looking back at grade school, college, messed up internal reward systems…) I learned there was no sudden “point” when things went south, it’s always been this way. In what’s supposed to be my prime years, my eyes opened to how much I can’t properly execute anything. This explains my friends looking at me like a clown when I talk about projects I’m working on or I want to do. Why believe the pathetic guy who struggles to show up to his own work? The person who, unbeknownst their well-meaning words, can’t put their money where their mouth is? I cringe thinking back to the past conversations that involved “this cool idea I had” or “this script I’ve been tinkering with”. Only to return a month later when someone asks me “what’s new?” and I have nothing to say. “Really? What about that thing you told me about a while back?”

It’s been a slow burn.

Honing your creativity and making art is akin to working out: to see results, it needs to be a daily practice. When you fail to show up consistently, you're no longer reinforcing the gains you've made. You fucked up if you’re looking at something you made and repeatedly say “that could’ve been better…” But you’re failing yourself if that happens on every single project, for every single take, without a redeemable moment. Every chance I had at-bat over the year was a swing that was weaker and mediocre than the last. I had the opportunity to be the cinematographer for my friend’s music video in late March (“cinematographer” is a generous title for someone who was just holding a camera). I was rusty as fuck. Every second on set was me reacting instead of anticipating the next three steps ahead. My camera work was sloppy and the lighting was incompetent. I had a hard time communicating simple instructions like telling the talent where to stand or how to enter the frame. It might’ve been anxiety or the fact that I tried to give quick instructions without taking too much time, but I ended up sounding like that Fred Armisen character “Peter” from Portlandia. Luckily for the band, the project had a talented editor to make clever use of my mediocre work. It’s already out now. But in the meantime, am I happy with the result? As of this post, I haven’t seen it yet. I rarely watch my stuff. I think this is a defense mechanism to postpone disappointment. I’ll probably watch it in the future, find the problem areas, and if I’m smart enough I’ll take note of it for the next project.

My friend and I once joked that I’m often treated like a Make-A-Wish kid who got the opportunity to be a “filmmaker” for a day. But would you trust a sick 15-year-old with a $4 million budget? I’m grateful for some of my friends who decided I was still worth working with. But in reality, I’m nothing more than a tool in their eyes. My reputation as a maker is in the gutter (it might’ve always been that way), so there's no reason for anyone to trust me with any important decision. With my track record, I don’t blame them for not taking me seriously. Shit, if I was in their shoes I definitely wouldn’t, either.

The truth is sometimes like a soft pat on the face.

I’m not much use to anyone at the moment, let alone myself. The only recent thing I can claim is my participation in the #100DayProject on Instagram with CreativeMornings-Boston. I took 1 photograph over the span of 100 days… That was how I decided to start showing up. It’s art, I guess (or not, if we’re being honest). As far as growth goes, those are my new baby steps. It’s regaining the muscles I let atrophy over the months. On the plus side, I had a box to check off when I woke up in the morning. The music video my friend needed is on hiatus and I’m still, more-or-less, conceptually bankrupt (If you're reading this D, I'm sorry for keeping you in the dark). After unrealized concepts, “yes’ing” ideas that spark no enthusiasm, and gigs that ended with mediocre results, I need to check myself. My ability to provide value to others is flawed. How much of my friends time am I going to blow away on a project that becomes shit or lays waste on my Vimeo page?

It’s easier now to face that I have things I want to do, but I don’t have the ability to deliver on it at the moment. In fact, it’s much better being transparent that I’m meandering instead of putting on a front. Is it pathetic? Sure. But if we’re in the business of “being real”, why bother putting a nice face on pathos? As much as it blows, I’m in a slightly better place now that I’m confronting the massive gap between who/where I am currently (versus where I want to go and who I want to become). In the meantime, all I can do now is look backward (but mainly, inward) to assess all that went wrong. From college, high-middle school, and the time I was taking media art programs and I undeservedly felt like “hot shit” because I was "making movies" at a museum. The person I was then led to who I am today. As I look back to better understand how I got here, there isn’t a whole lot to respect.

#filmmaking #film production #art #fine art #music video #incompetence #being a tool #you suck #making movies #negligence #unreliable

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dancemotionusa · 6 years

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Meet the Artists: Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company (RWDC)

Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company embraces the task of international diplomacy through dance and cultural exchange in Mongolia and South Korea.

Meet the Artist: William Peterson

Hometown: Ogden, Utah

Education: Weber State University: Bachelor of Arts – design/tech emphasis (lighting design and stage management)

Hobbies or interests: Trail running, hiking, guitar, music, theatre, photography, and traveling

Favorite representation of dance in a music video/web video: The “Where the Hell is Matt?” videos are my favorite. The dancing itself isn’t so remarkable, but the way his silly dance brings people together to express themselves and their culture is beautiful.

Your roles and responsibilities in the dance world: Technical director, lighting designer, ardent, and unfailing supporter of my colleagues in dance

Major influences: Czech folk dance, American East Coast Swing, Newsies, and Broadway

What is most compelling about American dance to you? Or what is most challenging to you about American dance? As someone who is relatively new to the dance world, the most challenging aspect of American dance for me is the wide range of styles, forms, and techniques that I am still learning. I am compelled by the freedom of expression allowed in modern American dance, however, and look forward to learning more.

What are the largest rewards of working on a performance? What are the largest difficulties? Inspiring others to find comfort in their own bodies is, for me, the largest reward of dance and dance education. Dance is inherently live performance and nothing is perfect – things go wrong and people make mistakes. The way you respond to these mistakes will be remembered far longer than the actual mistake, and is a strong marker of professionalism. The difficulty comes in maintaining a good perspective and dealing with the challenges that arise under often very stressful circumstances.

When did you choose to work in dance? (Or when did it choose you?) Dance first chose me as an 18-year-old crew person for a venue in Ogden, Utah. Among my many responsibilities, local dance companies would come in and hold their spring concerts, and it was my job to light them. While it was often simple lighting, I responded to the freedom of expression dance offers from a design standpoint and looked for more opportunities to design dance. It wasn’t until October of 2017 when I was the sole technical director (TD), lighting designer (LD), and stage manager (SM) for a dance concert with BRINE (a Salt Lake City company) that I decided I wanted to pursue more dance opportunities. I switched my focus from theatre to dance, and a few months later I was hired as the TD/SM for Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company. I’m home now.

How would you explain your work to a 10-year-old? What would your 10-year-old self-think if you explained your work to him/her today? 10-year-old me wanted to be a professional soccer player, so he would be so disappointed in my lack of soccer skills today! But I know him pretty well, and I believe he would think it’s amazing that I get paid to do what I do – make art and beautiful memories.

What are you looking forward to experiencing during the upcoming residencies? I am looking forward to getting to know the customs and culture of the people on an individual and small-group basis, and understanding more about why people are the way we are. You can research historical events to understand how a country came to be, but in order to understand people and how the events have shaped their lives, you need to talk with them and have shared experiences. I am looking forward to the multitude of workshops, exchanges, and shared experiences we’ll have with the Mongolian and Korean people.

What’s one thing you’re nervous about with these international residencies? I’m nervous that I won’t be able to accurately share my personality and humor with those whom I work with because of the language barrier, and vice versa. Shared experiences can transcend language, but the intricacies of oral communication suffer when there is not clear understanding. Having lived in a foreign country for two years, I know firsthand the initial frustration at the inability to orally communicate, and I’ve recognized that same frustration in the faces of others who have been trying to communicate with me.

Meet the Artist: Bashaun Williams

Hometown: Lubbock, Texas. Currently in Salt Lake City, Utah. Most of my family live on the East Coast, in Washington, DC and New York.

Education: BFA from the University of Utah...GO UTES!!!

Hobbies or interests: I love basketball and watching most other sports. I love watching movies and cooking!

Favorite representation of dance in a music video/web video: My favorite representation of dance on the internet is a video of a dance troupe called The Brotherhood. The video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnb4xvExv4E or by searching Brotherhood VIBE XXI 2016 on YouTube.

Your roles and responsibilities in the dance world:My Roles in the dance world include but are not limited to: teacher, artist, role model, performer.

Major influences: My major influences include Amar Ramasar, Yvonne Racz-Key, Bill T. Jones, Alvin Ailey, Carlos Acosta, and Daniel Catanach.

Your definition of dance: For me, dance is life. It started out as a hobby, but quickly morphed into a career for me. Dance is an opportunity to be many people but simultaneously be myself. Dance is an outlet for me to channel all the feelings that I cannot express verbally. Dance is a medium. Dance is a way for me to stay physically and mentally healthy. Dance is vital to my existence.

What is most compelling about American dance to you? I would have to say that the most compelling thing to me about American dance is the transformation. Dance is forever ambiguous and morphing every day. Things that inspire us will always be there but we continue to add to the list. I have not been dancing for very long but I have had the opportunity to witness concert and stage dance become more influenced by American hip-hop and pop culture as time continues. That's just one example.

When did you choose to work in dance? (Or when did it choose you?) Dance chose me when I was 16. I was the captain of my high school basketball team and needed a way to gain extra agility and strength. Dance has been known for centuries to be the workout of warriors, so I figured I could learn a few things and at the same time scratch my itch for wanting to perform constantly.

What are you looking forward to experiencing during the upcoming residencies? I look forward to experiencing new customs and new food! I also look forward to teaching some of our games and ways of moving to new friends.

What’s one thing you’re nervous about with these international residencies? The thing that makes me the most nervous is lack of understanding. As Americans, we tend to be spoon-fed. We expect other places to know English and to understand us. We don't harp upon the importance of learning multiple languages, and I feel that will become a barrier in many situations whether that be teaching or even ordering food. I hope that dance can be our language and help us communicate.

What do you want people to know about you and your relationship to America? Being a black man in America, my relationship and that of my ancestors have always been somewhat strange. I want people to know that I am proud of my culture and my ancestors’ histories in America because it is something that many have tried to keep us from learning and understanding. America is not what I thought it was or even what I was taught by my school teachers while growing up. The older I get, the more I see and feel the truths about our country. I am not scared to confront them and I am proud to be in a position to do so.

What is your most memorable moment as an artist, thus far? My most memorable moment as an artist was during a show when I broke my nose! I was hit so hard that I thought I was going to pass out on stage. Luckily my next move was to collapse to the ground so I was able to play it off. When I realized I was still awake, I had to continue with the show even though my nose was gushing blood onto my costume and the costumes of others. No one even saw that I was bleeding because all of the blood blended into my beard. I went straight to urgent care when the curtain closed.

Meet the Artist: Dan Mont-Eton

Hometown: I was born in Parker, Colorado and currently live in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah. My mother grew up around the world but is originally from Louisiana and my father is from California.

Education: In 2012 I received my Bachelor of Fine Art degree from the University of Utah within the Modern Dance department.

Hobbies or interests: I have so many hobbies and interests but I'll limit them to my top three! I'm an avid video gamer and grew up playing the “Final Fantasy” series. Just 3 years ago I built my own personal computer to enhance my gaming life. I also paint! I work mainly with oil paints and like to focus on portraits, movement, and deeper concepts related to relationships and time. Finally, I am a geek for photography. I am self-taught and often find myself recreating themes that interest me in fine art.

Favorite representation of dance in a music video/web video: I really enjoy Missy Elliot's use of movement in her videos. Some of her latest work uses contemporary concepts while fusing hip-hop elements that create a very different dance for camera feel.

Your roles and responsibilities in the dance world:

Archivist - My body is a living library to many of the works and histories that have come before me. It is my responsibility that the lineage of my movement training remain clear and alive to the world.

Creator - It is my role as an artist to constantly redefine the world around me. Without losing my role as an archivist, I create new work based on or in rebuttal of the previous history.

Teacher - It is my duty to make sure that our history of dance and humanity is passed onto the following generation. It is my responsibility that my students have everything they need in order to surpass me. If I were to be selfish with my knowledge the world would never progress.

Major influences: I am influenced by everything around me. I am deeply affected by my emotions and how they relate to the world so whenever I am dancing or creating, it is coming from a very personal place. My relationships with my peers, the audience, and the people that have helped me get to where I am now are forever on my mind when I am dancing.

Your definition of dance: Dance is human. It is the universal language that transcends vocabulary and speech; it allows connections to be made through an infinite path of movement and form. It is individual and also universal because it can exist in the way we walk or in the way we blink.

What is most compelling thing about American dance to you? The most compelling thing about American dance to me is the fact that it is current, it is inclusive, and it is not just for America...it is for the world! American dance to me allows any body, any heritage, and any person to access it. It was created in rebellion to the classics and thus revolutionized the dance world. It is constantly reinventing itself while allowing dancers and choreographers to excel in their technique and artistry.

When did you choose to work in dance? (Or when did it choose you?) Dance actually found me on the fields of recess in 4th grade. While doing very bad cartwheels and turns with friends, they began teasing me and saying I should come to their dance class that night. I did not understand that they were making fun of me so I saw it as a true invitation. That night, I showed up and they ask with utter dismay and disapproval, "What are you doing here, in our jazz class?" I told them, "I'm here to dance!" And since then, I have never missed a single class unless I was sick or injured.

What are you looking forward to experiencing during the upcoming residencies? I'm looking forward to fully experiencing an immersion in both cultures and truly trying to attain the idea behind an "exchange". Yes, we are there to do so much but how can I allow myself to be changed as well? I want to stay open and present in every waking moment we are in Mongolia and South Korea.

When you were told you'd be traveling to South Korea and Mongolia, what was the first thing you researched or wanted to know? The first thing I wanted to know when I found out we would be traveling to South Korea and Mongolia was what the geography and landscapes of the countries looked like! I grew up wanting to visit Asia my whole life so to be traveling there in my twenties I feel very honored and excited. I'll be taking plenty of photos!

You have superpowers! How would some of your powers help make the world a better place? My superpower would be the power of empathy! I would instantly be able to connect to someone emotionally and feel what they are going through. In a way I’d be able to "walk a mile in their shoes". This power would have a hidden effect that allows others to receive the power until we are all connected and are able to see each other through each other's eyes. Basically, the superpower would help create a hyper connected world that no longer assumes or fails to see things from different perspectives.

Meet the Artist: Mary Lyn Graves

Hometown: I was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. My family has lived all over the state for at least five generations so I am in the truest sense, an Oklahoman. We even have a ranch! I’ve lived in Salt Lake City, Utah for the past six years though. The plains may be in my blood, but I’ve grown to love the mountains.

Education: I went to college at the University of Oklahoma, where I received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in dance (ballet performance). I also attended the Tulsa Ballet Center for Dance Education and studied at summer dance intensives in Chicago, New York, Washington, DC, Ohio, and Texas.

Hobbies or interests: I have always loved reading. I usually have at least one book with me wherever I go. Currently I’m rereading the His Dark Materials trilogy and I’ve already started a list of the books I want to bring with me to South Korea and Mongolia… I also love to cook, especially old recipes from my family, and write dance criticism for a local Salt Lake dance journal whenever I can. I also collect post cards and am looking forward to adding some new gems to my collection!

Favorite representation of dance in a music video/web video: When I was sixteen, I came across a video of Tanztheater Wuppertal performing Pina Bausch’s Rite of Spring during a late night YouTube wormhole and it showed me a kind of dance I had never seen before. I remember feeling intrigued and excited and shocked, in a way. I think that was the first time I really saw contemporary dance. Not exactly a web or music video but it is one that is important to me and that I wish every one would watch. The other video that came to mind is “Work It” by Missy Elliott. It’s on the opposite side of the spectrum, but I could watch that music video (really any of Missy Elliott’s videos…) over and over.

Your roles and responsibilities in the dance world: Dancer, teacher, advocate, audience member

Major influences: By far my most major influences are the people with whom I have worked, those who have taught me and guided me in the dance world: Cheyla Clawson, Melanie Nasser-Jean Richard, Mary Margaret Holt, Joan Woodbury, Shirley Ririe, Gigi Arrington, and especially Daniel Charon, Ririe-Woodbury’s current artistic director. They have shaped who I am as a performer and teacher in profound ways for which I am eternally grateful.

Your definition of dance: An expressive and communicative physical experience that engages someone intellectually and emotionally as a way to foster connection

What is most compelling about American dance to you? Or what is most challenging to you about American dance? I read once that American dance approaches space in a different way than other dance cultures. We see space as boundless and expansive, echoing America’s relationship with our Western frontier and its wide open skies. I love this idea, that American dance looks at a theater and sees a place of endless possibility. While there are obvious physical ways this manifests, I’m most intrigued by intellectual and empathetic ways the theater can be a place of expansion. American dance has the potential to foster profound understanding and growth, to provide a space that gives weight to many points of view, a space where physical experiences can be amplified and expressed without limits.

When did you choose to work in dance? (Or when did it choose you?) Like so many dancers, I first fell in love with dance when I saw The Nutcracker as a child. My mom and grandmother took me to see the ballet when I was two. I was a very fidgety child and was not the best at concentrating but I sat through the entire ballet completely enraptured. I spent the next half year dancing everywhere and bothering my mom nonstop about taking dance classes. She finally relented, taking me to a local studio to enroll. I walked into the studio, hiked my leg up onto a little table and told the teacher, “Hi! I’m Mary Lyn Graves and I’m here to become a ballerina!” I’ve been constantly dancing since then. While I didn’t end up being a ballerina, I think that three-year-old me knew without a doubt that she was meant to be a dancer.

When you were told you’d be traveling to South Korea and Mongolia, what was the first thing you researched or wanted to know? One of the most fun things about living in Salt Lake City is that the Sundance Film Festival happens in nearby Park City every year. At the 2016 festival, a few of my friends saw The Eagle Huntress and loved it. The film is about a young Kazakh girl in Mongolia who wants to follow in the footsteps of her father and grandfather to become the first female eagle hunter. When Ririe-Woodbury found out we are going to Mongolia, I immediately wanted to see the movie. The Ririe-Woodbury dancers were lucky enough to sneak into a showing of The Eagle Huntress recently and it made me even more excited for the incredible Mongolian landscapes we’ll hopefully get to see. It is a truly beautiful country and I cannot wait to experience it firsthand!

What are you looking forward to experiencing during the upcoming residencies? I started to answer this question and ended up writing a very long list! But I think what I am absolutely most excited for the chance to learn from South Korean and Mongolian dancers. Dance relies on community and person to person exchange so heavily; you can’t really write dance down and videos only communicate so much. I can’t wait to be the student.

What’s one thing you’re nervous about with these international residencies? We’re going to be in South Korea and Mongolia for nearly four and a half weeks. I’ve traveled a lot but never for more than a couple of weeks. My apartment makes me feel grounded and calm so I’m nervous about being away from it for that long. I also know if I’m going to learn and experience so many breathtaking things while traveling that I’m excited to find new ways of feeling at home. Plus, I’ll have some pictures of my favorite people and a really comfy robe to keep a little bit of the United States with me.

Meet the Artist: Megan McCarthy

Hometown: Portland, Oregon,

Education: Bachelor of Fine Arts in dance from California Institute of the Arts

Hobbies or interests: Video games, yoga, my pets, Netflix, and debating for the sake of it

Favorite representation of dance in a music video/web video: “Blush” by Wim Vandekeybus is beautiful, and serious. I love pop music video dancing of all genre, especially any Missy Elliott video.

Your roles and responsibilities in the dance world: Collaborator, interpreter, problem-solver, artist

Major influences: All of the teachers that have guided me over the years, and all of my peers I have been fortunate to learn from and with

Your definition of dance: An individual and collective/collaborative investment in exploring all the ways a body can communicate. Freedom through expression!

What is most compelling about American dance to you? The most compelling thing about American dance to me is the intricate web of influences and dance lineage. American collegiate dancers are getting trained in such a diverse way. It's amazing to think about who taught/collaborated/worked with who, and how connected we all are in one way or another.

When did you choose to work in dance? (Or when did it choose you?) I have always loved to dance and wiggle around since I was little. I started to get serious about my technical training when I was a teenager, and began to value dance as an art form and look at it critically when I was a young adult. Once I made the decision to pursue dance in college, I was pretty set on working in dance in one way or another.

How would you explain your work to a 10-year-old? What would your 10-year-old self-think if you explained your work to him/her today? I would say that I practice all day so I don’t mess up during the dance show and teach kids how to dance at school. My 10-year-old self would be very into it, since 10-year-old me lived for Nutcracker season and would love to practice dance moves all day.

When you were told you’d be traveling to South Korea and Mongolia, what was the first thing you researched or wanted to know? I wanted to know what the weather was like in South Korea, and how I might be able to attend a Mongolian throat singing concert when I am there!

What are you looking forward to experiencing during the upcoming residencies? I look forward to shifting my own perspective, and being able to share dance with people I would never have the pleasure of meeting otherwise.

Meet the Artist: Melissa Younker

Hometown: Fullerton, California

Education: Bachelor of Fine Arts, California State University, Long Beach

Hobbies or interests: I enjoy sewing, baking, and pretty much pretending I know how to make things. Creating from nothing is so rewarding. I love crafts and humbly believe my madeleines are divine. I have a collection of vinyl records that I cherish deeply and love setting moods with.

Favorite representation of dance in a music video/web video: I remember discovering the work of director Mimi Cave when I stumbled across “Lello” (https://vimeo.com/11416150) on a Vimeo rabbit hole. I have continued to be inspired by the variety of collaborations and use of movement in their work.

Your roles and responsibilities in the dance world: Stay curious. Never forget where I came from. Care for the work. Share.

Major influences: Non-dancer dancers

Your definition of dance: Dance is presence.

What is most compelling about American dance to you? The history of American dance is a beautifully weaved and intriguing timeline of clash and evolution. I find the places where lines blur fascinating and important to what we see as American dance.

How would you explain your work to a 10-year-old? So, I get barefoot for 8 hours every day and do a serious amount of dancing.

When you were told you’d be traveling to South Korea and Mongolia, what was the first thing you researched or wanted to know? The first thing I googled was what the weather will be like in May. I desperately hope to catch the cherry blossoms in all their glory while in South Korea.

What are you looking forward to experiencing during the upcoming residencies? I’m eager about sharing customs and culture. I really hope to experience traditional dance forms in countries of residence. Also, I have an image of us in a yurt eating traditional dishes of the Mongolian nomads. (This might not actually happen but I dream of it.)

What’s one thing you’re nervous about with these international residencies? Honestly, I’m really excited about all the little nervous things that are going to happen while there: the unknown experiences that await us. I believe we will likely have moments of great improvising and what better people to do it with than those of Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company.

Meet the Artist: Yebel Gallegos

Hometown: I was born in El Paso, Texas, and have moved around for a bit after high school and college. I now reside in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Education: I received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in dance from the University of Texas at Austin.

Hobbies or interests: I am a big movie goer; I enjoy all types of genres, but particularly foreign independent films. I also love being outdoors, especially in the summer, I like playing frisbee in the park, reading, and going on long hikes up in the mountains.

Favorite representation of dance in a music video/web video: I’ll have to go with a classic but still very relevant choreographic work I can never get enough of; Anne Teresa de Keersemaeker’s, Rosas danst Rosas.

Your roles and responsibilities in the dance world:

- To be vulnerable

-To provoke thought and emotion

-To promote and carry forward dance as a valuable art form

-To understand and rediscover the world through others’ perspectives.

Major influences: There are so many people, moments, and things that have had a truly remarkable influence on my career but mainly on my person. Joan Woodbury and Shirley Ririe are definitely two of those people. In the past five years I’ve had the pleasure of witnessing their magic up close and have tried to absorb as much knowledge and wisdom as I can from them. They paved the way for modern dance in the state of Utah and continue to this day to have a strong presence in the studio and the community.

Your definition of dance: Dance is a language that exists symbiotically between the physical and spiritual world. It is energy that emerges and flows within our bodies and has the ability to sense and connect externally.

What is most compelling about American dance to you? Or what is most challenging to you about American dance? I love that there is a strong history and lineage in American dance, one that can allow me to trace my “family tree”, as far back as the early days of Isadora Duncan. In my opinion, I have found that American dance can be aesthetically beautiful, intelligently structured, and magnificently produced. In my experience though, I have only been viscerally moved by American dance a small number of times. I compare it to the ample amounts of times where I have felt deeply moved and inspired by various dance companies from Europe, Mexico, and South America.

When did you choose to work in dance? (Or when did it choose you?) I always thought that dance was something I would continuously do as a hobby. I originally wanted to get into nursing school and become a nurse, but after not having a dance class for a year I realized how important it actually was to me. Being part of a Latin culture, where one grows up connecting and socializing through dance, made it impossible for me to leave it. I switched majors and decided to pursue it professionally.

When you were told you’d be traveling to South Korea and Mongolia, what was the first thing you researched or wanted to know? I immediately got very excited, downloaded a couple of language apps and attempted to learn some Korean words and phrases. Needless to say it became very difficult very quickly. I’ve always had a strong passion for language and am fascinated by people that can speak 3+ languages. Having the facility to communicate, experience, and engage with other worlds and cultures in their own language is one of my biggest dreams. I find that it shows a sign of respect and acknowledgement to their place on this earth, #exchangeourworld…

What are you looking forward to experiencing during the upcoming residencies? People to people connection is the best way I can answer this question. I am excited to share my experience as a dance artist, but I believe that what is essentially important in this type of work, is the connection, community, and bridges one can build with the rest of the world (putting aside what may be some cultural differences and finding what truly connects us as human beings while sharing it with each other through the magic of dance).

What do you feel is your responsibility as a DMUSA participant? What do you think of using dance as a form of diplomacy? I believe that using dance as a form of diplomacy is an incredibly beautiful way of connecting with the world. Using art as a common ground and discovering how wonderfully different it can be, can show us how uniquely similar we truly are. This is an unbelievable adventure I am about to partake in and I am aware that my participation in it inherently has many responsibilities. Representing myself well, not only as a United States citizen, but also as Yebel Gallegos, is one of my main duties. Letting my guard down, allowing myself to be vulnerable, and being receptive will grant me with the opportunity to have the best experience possible.

#ririewoodbury #dmusa #exchangeourworld #mongolia #southkorea #korea #east asia

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amtushinfosolutionspage · 6 years

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Meet the Defensive Genius Behind the Rockets’ Championship Push

Leaned up against the crook of a Barclays Center hallway, a few steps to the right of a loud visitors locker room that boils with the confidence of an auspicious contender, Houston Rockets associate head coach Jeff Bzdelik is describing how unfamiliar he is with the concept of an off day. “There is no off day,” he says, graciously. “Preparation breeds confidence.” The platitudes mirror the man speaking them: honest, direct, and a significant reason why Houston is a sudden favorite to win the NBA championship.

It’s early February, and the Rockets are a lawnmower. A few hours from now they’ll slash through the Nets, then win 25 of their next 27 games. Nobody in the building knows how good they can be, but shades of the night still felt like a pitstop on their way to immortality.

Bzdelik’s job is to interrupt the NBA’s current era of unforgiving offensive dominance. With the advent of high-volume three-pointers, super teams, and seven-footers who don’t have discernible limitations anywhere on the floor, there’s never been a more difficult time to succeed at what Houston has hired Bzdelik to do. Luckily for the Rockets, there isn’t a single coach better prepared for the challenge.

In over a dozen interviews with coaches, players, and basketball executives who have worked with Bzdelik, the portrait of a hyper-driven and tactically adept coach who has stockpiled inestable reams of information over the course of an astounding career emerges.

“I can’t think of a man in the NBA that has more experience, more knowledge, more wisdom about how to defend in the contemporary game today, than Jeff,” Pat Riley tells me.

Wearing charcoal slacks and a pillowy white button-down, Bzdelik speaks cautiously with a polite midwestern accent. A size 40, he still rotates through the same dozen suits that were supplied over 15 years ago by Homer Reed, a men’s clothing store in Denver, back when he was head coach of the Nuggets. A neat gray crew cut sits over his pensive, angular face. (Bzdelik’s sideline stoicism can make for an easy contrast with Rockets head coach Mike D’Antoni, whose two most prominent in-game emotions are relaxed and erupting.)

There’s a familiar amiability when he introduces himself, almost like you’re shaking hands with Mister Rogers. Bzdelik is not even six feet tall, with unassuming gravitas and a sincere dedication to making sure everything that comes out of his mouth is understood. Many sentences end with a simple question: “Does that make sense?”

Three months after that night in Brooklyn, the Rockets head into the playoffs as the best team in the league. Their franchise player, James Harden, is a standalone MVP favorite; their 32-year-old point guard, Chris Paul, is widely accepted as the premier floor general of his generation; their head coach, D’Antoni, is responsible for an offensive philosophy that’s arguably the most influential concept in recent NBA history; and the rest of their roster—P.J. Tucker, Trevor Ariza, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, Clint Capela, Eric Gordon, and so on—was patched together by Daryl Morey, one of the most innovative general managers in professional sports.

All those factors are enough to think the Rockets can win it all for the first time in 23 years. But even after they’re accounted for—victory indeed has a hundred fathers—it’s the team’s sudden willingness to accept how much effort and precision is required on defense that’s been most critical to Houston’s success.

This is thanks to Bzdelik, who was hired before the 2015-16 season to oversee said defense. The Rockets couldn’t be what they are without him. At 65 years old, he still swims through basketball minutia, consuming at least four games’ worth of film each night in order to unveil opposing player tendencies, strengths, and weaknesses. Special situations, such as what action an opponent likes to run with a low shot clock late in a close game, are carefully examined. “I try to be as detailed as possible,” he says. “It’s just the way I’m wired.”

The Rockets jumped from 21st to 16th in defensive rating during Bzdelik’s first season, but that’s still not enough to survive four playoff rounds, regardless of how much talent and concentration is on the offensive side. This year, though, they finished sixth, and elevated into the top three after All-Star Weekend. Houston made an even more drastic jump on the glass: Before Bzdelik was hired, the Rockets were dead last in defensive rebound rate. Two years into his tenure, they’re up to third. (Bzdelik believes Houston could be even better in just about every defensive category, if its overwhelming talent on the other end didn’t always afford them such a massive cushion.)

Television cameras will sometimes catch Bzdelik on Houston’s bench, chin in hand, elbow resting on the black Spalding notepad that lives on his lap, staring at the action as if he’s anguished by a work of art. This is the most scrupulous person in his profession, a true believer that any particular, even in its most granular form, is the difference between poor and average, average and good, good and great. He isn’t a psychotic perfectionist or someone who stows a sleeping bag in the corner of his office closet, but it’d be easier to teach a squirrel how to speak Italian than to catch Bzdelik cutting corners.

The basketball world is inhabited by thousands of people who dedicate their lives to a game that promises nothing but instability, stress, and heartbreak. Bzdelik’s resume looks particularly exhausting the first time you take it in. Since 1978, he’s held six jobs as an assistant coach, five as a head coach, and spent over a decade as one of the NBA’s most revered scouts.

He’s worked in film rooms, edited tape, and enjoyed several priceless opportunities to learn from some of the sport’s most lionized characters. He ripened under Riley, an iconic autocrat whose players turned every possession into a three-alarm fire. Before that, a pathological need to outwork everyone around him was the only advantage he had to get where he is.

Through it all Bzdelik has soaked up as much basketball, from as many vantage points, as anyone on the planet. This spring, it all culminates with him as the mastermind behind a distinct defensive scheme that could very well be enough to gift the Rockets with the one thing they so badly desire.

Bzdelik’s path is as improbable as it is sinuous. At a young age, he thought life as a high-school coach who spent his days as a gym teacher would be plenty, but the clash between his humble persona and a disciplined drive for betterment helped intensify the varied level of ambition that lives in us all. People who dive as deep as Bzdelik don’t do so to settle.

“I think his style is what I liked,” Hall of Fame center Wes Unseld, who offered Bzdelik his first NBA job, tells me. “He’s gonna outwork you. That’s always worked with me. I think you can outwork people.”

Bzdelik was born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago. His father was a graphic designer who served as a fighter pilot in World War II, while his mother stayed home to take care of their three sons. Jeff was the oldest, a typically restless baby boomer who scrambled outside in his free time with children around the neighborhood. In the winter, they’d wait for packed snow and ice to cover the street so they could play hockey without any skates. When the sun shined they opted for three-on-three baseball, where hits to the opposite field didn’t count.

But basketball was always his favorite. Bzdelik played at Prospect High School, and worked at Chicago Stadium as a ball boy for the Loyola Ramblers. While Bzdelik mopped floors and rebounded for players at halftime, he kept one eye glued to various legends who stalked the sideline. Adolph Rupp, John Wooden, Al McGuire. Everything about them intrigued him.

After high school, Bzdelik was drafted into the Army right when the United States started to pull troops out of Vietnam. He spent four months in Advanced Individual Training, was placed in the reserves, and served in the National Guard for the next six years. During that time, Bzdelik also received a tuition waiver to play basketball at the University of Illinois-Chicago, where he studied psychology and physical education. He met and married his wife, Nina, who was on a volleyball scholarship, in 1975.

Shortly after he graduated, Bzdelik placed a call to Duke University and asked if he could work their basketball camp. There he met Eddie Biedenbach, who offered him a job as an assistant coach at Davidson College. In his second year, Bzdelik helped recruit two top-20 players from Chicago’s suburban league, which caught the attention of nearby Northwestern. “They called me up out of the clear blue sky,” he says. After two seasons at Davidson, he was back in his home state.

He spent six seasons as an assistant with Northwestern, and when the school’s assistant athletic director took a job at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, overseeing an inferior basketball program that was about to jump from Division II to Division I, he asked Bzdelik to be his head coach. “They had only won 11 games in two years at the Division II level, and they were like 6-22, 5-23, something like that,” Bzdelik remembers.

If there’s any one pivotal moment throughout this journey that stands out above the rest, what happened next is it.

Every season, UMBC gave Baltimore children free tickets to watch the team. Connie Unseld, Wes’s wife, owned a school in Southwest Baltimore and attended a game during Bzdelik’s first year. She walked away impressed.

“She fancies herself as an aficionado of basketball,” Unseld says. A year later, he went to see UMBC for himself, and left with the same opinion as his wife. Soon after, Unseld was asked to coach the Bullets. He immediately called Bzdelik and offered a seat on Washington’s bench. Coaches who go 25-31 in two seasons at a relatively unknown college program don’t pole vault into the NBA, but all Unseld saw was someone who could make his own life easier.

“[Some coaches] don’t want to put in the hours to accomplish what we need to accomplish,” he tells me. “And Jeff wasn’t like that. He was willing to work.”

The circumstances that led to Bzdelik’s first NBA job make it feel like destiny: He was hired by a local legend who didn’t worry about job security or perception. Had someone other than Unseld been in charge of the team, it’s unlikely Bzdelik would’ve even been granted an interview, let alone the job. And once in Washington, Bzdelik found himself fulfilling duties that were fundamentally the same as Unseld’s. He ran practices and had valued input on various decisions. The responsibility was enormous.

Even though Unseld never second-guessed hiring someone who had zero experience in the pros, he did wonder if professional players would treat Bzdelik like a substitute teacher. This wasn’t a former NBA player or household name from a prestigious program. But any and all concern evaporated overnight.

“He didn’t care if you were an NBA star. He would tell you what you needed to hear,” Unseld says. “It was unusual for anybody. It was unusual for me, because sometimes you treat stars different than you treat everybody else. I don’t think Jeff did that.”

After Unseld resigned six seasons later, Bzdelik was hired in 1994 as a full-time advanced scout by the New York Knicks. It was Riley’s final year with the organization. When the ten-time NBA champion left to coach the Miami Heat, he wasn’t allowed to take any Knick employees with him. But Bzdelik was only on a one-year contract, so Riley brought him down to South Florida after it expired in August.

While there, Bzdelik’s primary function as an advanced scout was to compose gameplans for every one of Miami’s opponents. He worked closely with Stan Van Gundy, who, after having just been fired by the University of Wisconsin, broke into the league as Riley’s assistant the same year Bzdelik moved down from New York.

“I knew nothing about the NBA,” Van Gundy, now head coach of the Detroit Pistons, tells me. “You always got these statements, ‘it’s like what so and so used to run with some other team,’ and I would be lost at that point. But Jeff had such great knowledge of the league and his attention to detail is as good as anyone I’ve ever been around. You knew what you were getting was exactly the way some teams ran their sets. The spacing was exact. He didn’t just put a guy on the wing. Was he at the break in the arc or was he free-throw line extended? When you were getting stuff from him, you knew you were getting it probably even better than I was getting off the film myself, to be quite honest. He was that good.”

In 1998, NBA general managers recognized Bzdelik as the NBA’s very best advanced scout, an invaluable resource who was known and respected for not only outworking everyone else in his field, but doing so while staying supremely organized. In an interview with Sports Illustrated, he recalls watching 17 games in 17 cities in 17 nights. “Guys will say to me, ‘Why are you here again?'” Bzdelik said. “But I almost always come away with a little something the 16th time I see a team. No matter how much film you watch, it’s not the same as being there.”

One hotel room bled into the other, but the experience allowed Bzdelik to exchange and learn different ideas and concepts with colleagues who worked for other teams, molding critical information that Riley and his staff depended on. His reports were rich yet digestible. No element was too trivial.

“I was just always impressed with his scouting reports,” Riley says. “He had all the right calls. We knew what the other team was gonna run.”

In another universe, Bzdelik might still be in South Beach. But at the time, Riley’s full-time coaching staff was moored. There wasn’t any room for Bzdelik to climb the ladder and take a permanent seat on the bench. After six seasons in Miami, he aspired for more.

“There comes a point in time where you want to see if you can go out on your own and run with the big boys,” Bzdelik says. “Could I have stayed in Miami for the rest of my career and continued to do what I was doing? Yes, probably. But at the same time I wanted to experience other challenges as a competitor.”

In 2001, Bzdelik took a job as an Eastern Conference scout for the Nuggets. He went from one of basketball’s most disciplined, competent environments to a field of rakes. Over the previous 12 years, Denver had the third-lowest winning percentage in the league, endured a player mutiny (you read that correctly), and eight changes at head coach—including two separate stints by Dan Issel, the second ending after he was filmed telling a fan to “go drink another beer, you Mexican piece of shit.” That happened in December 2001, a few months after Bzdelik joined. A titanic rebuild was imminent.

Marc J. Spears, a reporter for ESPN’s The Undefeated who covered the Nuggets for The Denver Post from 1999 to 2007, remembers seeing a poll that asked fans to vote for their favorite Nugget. The winner was Rocky, the team’s mountain lion mascot. “They were a pretty laughable team,” Spears says.

After the 2001-02 season, the Chicago Bulls nearly lured Bzdelik away by offering a spot on their bench, but Denver—still without a permanent head coach—promoted him to assistant coach and then presented an opportunity to lead their Summer League team. Bzdelik accepted, and the Nuggets went 6-0.

“He was really one of the hardest working guys I’ve ever met. A great teacher,” says NBA executive vice-president of basketball operations Kiki Vandeweghe, who was Denver’s general manager at the time. “So all those things came out as we were really focused in one direction, and he really opened our eyes. That was really the genesis of him becoming the head coach.”

Vandeweghe had originally wanted to hire a known commodity for the Nuggets’ open head coach spot—someone who could stabilize the situation. But Denver, understandably, wasn’t viewed as a desirable destination by that type of candidate. So before the start of the 2002-03 season, the team turned to Bzdelik.

By that point, Bzdelik’s name was still virtually unknown to a vast majority of NBA fans. He inherited a 27-win team that just lost two of its three leading scorers, and won 17 games in his first year. Denver landed the third overall pick in the 2003 draft, and selected Carmelo Anthony. Expectations around the league remained exceptionally low, though, as Bzdelik’s instinctive aim was still to instill beneficial habits in his young roster.

Once again, his only option was to work harder than everybody else. The promise of another day didn’t exist, but the same methodology from his time at UMBC and Miami were ramped up to another level. His cast-iron consistency left no room for impulsiveness or public frustration—there was too much work to do.

“He will break down a defensive drill like I’ve never seen before,” Bzdelik’s then assistant coach Scott Brooks tells me. “Where your left hand [goes], where your right hand, where your left foot, where your right foot, where your chest, what you’re thinking of. He has it down to every minute detail and he’s really great with technique and being able to explain. He’s one of the best I’ve ever been around.”

Bzdelik lapped up the constant grind of an 82-game season and behaved the same way, win or lose. It’s a leadership style appreciated by those who worked for and with him, even if, at the time, it didn’t afford the most accommodating lifestyle.

“We would get in at 2:30, 3 o’clock in the morning and he would say, ‘OK guys, let’s get some sleep,’” Brooks recalls. “‘Let’s sleep in and meet at 7:30, instead of 7:00.’ The assistants would look at each other like ‘Is this guy nuts? We get in at 2:30 and he’s gonna give us an extra half-hour of sleep?’”

Now head coach of the Washington Wizards, Brooks laughs. “To start my career under him, it really gave me an incredible foundation. I always draw back to that year and a half, two years I was with him.”

With a slight talent upgrade (most notably from Anthony, who led the team in scoring) and Bzdelik’s principles starting to establish solid ground for everyone to walk on, Denver won 43 games and made the playoffs in his second year. As far as single-season turnarounds go, it was unbelievable. “For us to make the playoffs that first year with Carmelo, I think that was worthy of Coach of the Year,” Brooks tells me. “Unfortunately he did not get it.”

The Nuggets finished with a top-ten offense, spearheaded by the league’s most effective transition attack and a defense that limited three-point attempts and forced a ton of turnovers, per CTG. In other words, they had a smart, reputable identity. “We played hard enough to play with anybody,” Vandeweghe tells me.

Denver was officially an intriguing team with a budding superstar, and the 180 sparked by Bzdelik had the same coaches who weren’t interested 12 months before circling like vultures. “I’m sure there were people campaigning behind the scenes to take the job or want the job,” Spears says.

Bzdelik’s mantra at the time: stay two steps ahead of the posse. It reminded him to double down on his principles, especially when the odds were stacked high enough to make his margin for error razor thin. “I asked myself, am I part of the transition or part of the future?’” he said at the time. “The flip side is when does a guy like me get a chance?”

Despite shepherding one of the most impressive reversals in league history, Bzdelik was fired 28 games into his third season. Denver was 13-15 at the time. One month later, they hired George Karl and, after failing to make the playoffs for seven straight seasons prior to Bzdelik’s turnaround, went on to qualify for the postseason ten years in a row.

“I mean it to this day, and I’ve told [Nuggets owner] Mr. Kroenke this, and I told Kiki this, and I told the players that played under me,” Bzdelik says. “I’m grateful for the opportunity and I’m very appreciative for the support and efforts people gave me. And I leave it at that, because bitterness and negativity does no one any good. You do the best you can and if one door closes just knock on other doors and most often another will open up for you.”

Shortly after he lost that position, Bzdelik’s daughter, Courtney, was diagnosed with a brain tumor that she’s since fully recovered from. Uprooting his family wasn’t an option, so he accepted a position as head coach at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, where he spent the next two years. In his first season, they qualified for the NCAA tournament for the second time since 1963. The instant success led to several different offers, including one from the University of Colorado, where Bzdelik’s son, Brett, had just enrolled as a freshman.

Bzdelik spent three seasons in Boulder. When his daughter enrolled at Wake Forest University, he received a call from their athletic director offering him a job, with a contract he couldn’t refuse. Four years later, Bzdelik resigned, ready to get back into the NBA.

After the Memphis Grizzlies won 50 games in 2014, then head coach Dave Joerger picked up the phone when he saw Bzdelik was available. “We had a couple conversations and I was looking for someone to really specialize in on the defense for me,” Joerger, who’s now head coach of the Sacramento Kings, says. Despite his ten-year absence from the NBA, Bzdelik got the job.

Make no mistake, the league’s stylistic trends and talent pool can transform dramatically in a decade. From Bzdelik’s first season in Denver to his first in Memphis, the infusion of analytics into on-court decision-making turned NBA basketball into a faster, more perimeter-oriented game. According to Basketball-Reference, the league’s average three-point rate jumped from 18.7 to 26.8. It’s no coincidence that 2014-15 season was Steph Curry’s first MVP campaign. Offense was wildfire and defense was an increasingly thorny chore.

But basketball is basketball and hard work is hard work. After Bzdelik accepted the position, Dallas Mavericks head coach Rick Carlisle told him to view that time away as a huge advantage. In a league that’s getting younger and younger, Bzdelik spent ten years recruiting, communicating, and coaching players he otherwise might struggle to understand. “You’ve gotta be who you are but you also have to adjust to this new generation and respect them,” he says. “Does that make sense?”

With his imprint on their defense, only two teams were more stout than the Grizzlies during Bzdelik’s first season back. Only two teams allowed a lower percentage of shots at the rim, as well. “I love how focused he is,” Joerger tells me. “Extremely hard worker.” When Memphis fired Joerger after an injury-plagued 2015-16 season, he immediately tried to persuade Bzdelik to join him in Sacramento. “I chased him hard, and as close as we are it just didn’t work out for one reason or another,” he says.

A job with the Kings never materialized because D’Antoni was on the other line, offering an associate head coach position in which Bzdelik could oversee the entire defense of a team that already had their eyes on a title. For the first time in his career, Bzdelik was more than an anonymous workaholic who found himself in the right place at the right time. He was the leading candidate for one of the most coveted jobs in the league. The opportunity was too perfect to pass up.

Bzdelik was brought in to manage Houston’s defense and, at the very least, position it on a path towards baseline competence. But installing effective principles that can be carried out overnight, every night, is almost impossible when players head into the season believing they were targeted for their work on the other end.

With D’Antoni’s ingenuity and Harden’s transcendent skill-set ultimately running the show, Houston’s front office treated the offensive side of the ball as a priority. They inked players with defensive shortcomings (Ryan Anderson and Eric Gordon) to long-term deals while acquiring a bucket-getter (Lou Williams) at the trade deadline. It wasn’t the wrong way to build a very good team, but legitimate championship aspirations would still be out of reach.

The Rockets survived November with the fourth-worst defense in the league, then came out of March ranking 20th in defensive rating. Not all was atrocious—Houston ultimately finished with the NBA’s third-highest net rating, second-best offense, and won a playoff series!—but their defense was generally helter-skelter. Late in the season, Bzdelik realized how powerful a switch-everything strategy could be, especially against modern offenses. This wasn’t a fresh idea, but in order to get where they wanted to go, it felt necessary.

After they were eliminated by the San Antonio Spurs in six games, Houston entered the offseason targeting superstar talent and defensive versatility. Both boxes were checked by trading for Paul, and then signing Tucker and Mbah a Moute—two quintessential two-way additions—balanced out a roster that felt complete. It took training camp and about the first 20 games of this year’s regular season for Houston to realize just how audacious they wanted to get with the switch-everything strategy.

“We switch more than any team in the league,” Bzdelik says. “We switch to deny, switch to force a turnover, switch to take away a three, switch off the ball.” But, he adds, “it’s important to note that players can’t be bombarded with information to the point where there’s paralysis by analysis.”

Other defenses have popularized this strategy, most notably Houston’s main adversary, the Golden State Warriors, and almost every team understands that, at the very least, it’s an imperative “break in case of emergency” machination in today’s league. But the Rockets have steered into the madness with unprecedented aggression. Switching is their DNA, and to do it as often as they do is bold even with an ideal workforce, but Bzdelik’s rationale makes every other alternative sound foolish.

“In today’s game you almost have to switch because teams are so intelligent with their ball movement. You have the court spaced with three-point shooters, a big rolling to the rim, and a handler like Westbrook or Lillard, for example, flying off a ball screen,” he says. “There’s too many moving parts.”

Deploying this policy with any collection of like-sized players sounds obvious and easy because, relatively speaking, it would be. But Capela, Paul, Gordon, and Harden are not wings who can guard all five positions, and even with a roster as fluid as Houston’s, there will always be offenses that go out of their way to attack weak spots and force mismatches. Complications typically occur away from the ball, but that’s precisely where Houston turns the volume up to 11, proactively swapping assignments well before the opponent can benefit from an ostensible advantage.

The intention isn’t solely to create one-on-one situations and force isolation basketball, but rather have all five defenders ask important questions on every possession. “Say there’s a player who’s really good going left. Can we shade him right? But then who are the guys that we can take another step off to help?” Bzdelik says. “How can we do so in a way that we shrink the court so we’re forcing him into help as well? How do we play off the ball to make sure we have a low man, but the other weak-side defender is playing two off the ball? How does he position himself?”

Again, this isn’t original, but the Rockets’ aim is to have answers while players are constantly changing who their man is. In other words, everybody needs to know everything. The result, whenever they lock in, is a defense that feels like it has two extra bodies on the floor. Only four teams averaged more deflections per 48 minutes than the Rockets this season; they tied for 12th last season. According to Synergy Sports, the Rockets also jumped from 28th to sixth defending isolation plays, and 18th to second defending dribble handoffs.

When Paul switches onto a big man, hugs him for two steps, then quickly fades towards the weak side as a more appropriate teammate—say, Tucker—tags in to assume Paul’s responsibility, they look as flexible as anyone. “That’s taking it to another level,” Bzdelik says. Houston reorganizes on the fly in a way that feels like they’re getting away with something. It’s a transparent magic show.

Watch below as Paul switches onto Karl-Anthony Towns behind the three-point line, but then Tucker comes in before the Minnesota Timberwolves can weaponize their All-Star center in the post. Plenty of teams do this. None have as many players who treat it as second nature.

Adaptability across the board is important—sturdy guards who battle in the post, big men who can be nimble far away from the rim, wings who move their feet and keep their arms spread—but unlocking any group’s collective strength can’t be done without the right scheme. Bzdelik didn’t identify that scheme, teach it in training camp, and then sit back and expect everybody to harness the concept for 82 games. Every day he harps on habits. Every day he cross-examines players to make sure they grasp their place in a game plan that’s tailored to whoever’s up next on the schedule.

“He’s kind of the guy that, whether you like it or not, is gonna challenge you every day. He wants perfection from us,” Anderson tells me. “Obviously we have so many different weapons who can score in so many different ways, but we need him here to really get on us about the part of our game that doesn’t come easiest.”

Sometimes their own offense can be the defense’s worst enemy. Houston not only leads the league in three-point rate (the percentage of their total field-goal attempts launched from beyond the arc), but the difference between them and the second-highest team was the same gap between the second-highest team and the 20th-highest team. The Rockets also attempt the deepest, quickest threes in the NBA, with a league-high 9.8 percent of their shots coming with between 22 and 18 seconds on the shot clock. This makes communication and effort when getting back in transition as integral as execution in a half-court setting.

“Our defense is challenged in a way that’s unlike most teams,” Bzdelik says. No transition defense was worse than Houston’s the season before he was hired, and even though they’ve made strides over the past two years—going from 30th to 21st is not nothing—getting back is still an area that needs to improve.

And therein lies Bzdelik’s worth. He’s not just able to identify a flaw, but knows how to dig into it with a sheer relentlessness that can only be deployed by someone who understands and accepts that their work is never truly finished.

With several head coach positions opening up over the next few weeks, Bzdelik’s name should emerge as a worthy candidate. That’s what happens to associate head coaches who’ve made notable contributions for a championship contenders. “Next time we work together it’d probably be me assisting him,” Joerger says. “I’d take a bullet for that guy.”

It’s easy to look across the league and imagine how he can help promising teams that are painfully inconsistent on the defensive end. The Milwaukee Bucks are a perfect example, with a young, long, and athletic core that was essentially constructed to execute the same switch-everything formula enjoyed in Houston. Picture Giannis Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton, and all the twitchy tentacles on that roster making the most of their nightly physical advantages.

“I think Jeff would be a success wherever he goes. I have to obviously be a little careful, being in the league office saying that, but I think he would be a success at whatever he did,” Vandeweghe says. “I would imagine the offers will come.”

But grass isn’t always greener on the other side. “He’s in a good situation right now where he’s at,” Riley says. Houston just won 65 regular-season games, eight more than any team in franchise history. They have the second oldest roster in the league, but are young enough in key areas, with an attractive culture and one of the world’s three best players under contract through his prime.

Their front office has proven over and over again how much they equate stagnancy with death, and with free agency questions looming over integral players like Paul, Mbah a Moute, Capela, and Trevor Ariza, Morey has more than earned the benefit of the doubt when it comes to finding sensical pieces.

As that relates to Bzdelik’s next move, so much may hinge on whether the Rockets actually win a title. A rising tide lifts all boats, and the architect of a defense that just took home the the Larry O’Brien trophy is always and forever in demand. Staying put and trying to win two in a row is a challenge unto itself, but it’s not the same as having final say over your own team.

When I ask him if he wants that opportunity again, Bzdelik grins for a moment, as if I want to know the capital of Colorado. “Yeah, obviously yes. But I don’t think about it. I’ve been coaching 42 years, and I never got a job that I applied for. So if it happens, great. If it doesn’t, I am in a great, great situation and I’m very blessed.”

No matter where he works next year and in every season that follows, Bzdelik will be prepared, beyond competent, and, of course, happy to outwork everybody else.

Meet the Defensive Genius Behind the Rockets’ Championship Push syndicated from https://australiahoverboards.wordpress.com

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vdbstore-blog · 7 years

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Sanele Junior Xaba: ‘I take pride in my albinism’ | Fashion

Sanele Junior Xaba makes photographers and stylists get a little carried away. This year alone the South African model has posed naked save for a swarm of butterflies on the cover of Polish design magazine Label and worn feathered angel wings and a loincloth for Dutch art photographer Gemmy Woud-Binnendijk in a depiction of the myth of Cupid and Psyche. Viewed more than 25m times on YouTube alone, the jawdropping pièce de résistance in Sanele’s portfolio is the ad for sportswear brand Adidas Originals in which shirtless Sanele stands in for the wind god Zephyr in a dystopian reworking of Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus. Here, he writhes on a set strewn with broken computers to a cover of Sinatra’s My Way as Venus takes a selfie inside a giant satellite dish.

It’s all gorgeous, captivating work, and Sanele isn’t complaining one bit, but I wonder whether he might sometimes like to be asked just to stand next to an attractive young woman at a bus stop, or mope handsomely on a staircase. You know, standard male model gigs like those performed by his contemporaries at Boss Models in Cape Town. Jobs where you turn up and pull on a beanie and some jeans, rather than don a ceremonial wreath and pour a carton of milk down your front.

“People have said things to me like: ‘Oh, but you don’t look like the Heineken- drinking guy,’” he says. Today he’s dressed in his favourite black fedora (“I love a hat”), black skinny jeans and black Dr Martens. “But I do drink Heineken,” he continues, “so maybe they need to get out there and look at who’s actually drinking that stuff.”

‘I was an undercover black’: Xaba wears T-shirt, £230, and herringbone trousers, £450, both Stella McCartney (harrods.com). Photograph: Daniel Benson for the Observer

I can’t fault his logic. But if we’re honest, the reason image-makers seem to go a bit high concept at the prospect of Sanele is because, apart from all the standard-issue stuff – runway-ready 6ft stature, muscular torso, exquisite face furniture – he has what several photographers I speak to refer to obliquely as “a very special aesthetic”. In other words, Sanele has albinism, a genetic condition that results in the absence of pigment in his eyes, hair and skin. This does not make him “albino” or “an albino”, a term that’s unhelpful because, as Sanele puts it: “It implies that we’re a species, or a race apart.” In fact, people of all races can be affected by albinism. Still, the condition seems to be most prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the UN Human Rights Council is implementing a five-year regional action plan to counter the astonishing discrimination and persecution that continues to exist.

I realise that it sounds a bit Zoolander, but I want to play my part to promote diversity in the fashion the industry

In his professional life, Sanele has encountered tokenism from image-makers of all stripes. “I’ve had situations where casting directors have said: ‘No thanks, we’ve worked with Shaun Ross already” – Shaun Ross being an American model with albinism, who has appeared in music videos for Lana Del Rey and Beyoncé. Does that make him angry, I ask? “Well, it makes me want to say, ‘How many white models have you used this week?’ They’re not all considered to be the same person.” Still, he’s known for being patient and polite: “I realise it sounds a bit Zoolander, but I want to play my part to promote diversity in the industry. The commercial end of fashion is crucial as it dictates what’s cool, and the idea of cool is changing drastically. It feels more inclusive, but it can still do a whole lot better.”

Sanele was due to spend this summer at the most commercial of all the fashion capitals, New York. Several agencies there had expressed interest in representing him and ordinarily – because of his proven track record in modelling – a visa would have been granted in a jiffy. Instead, Sanele’s application was declined twice in the midst of Donald Trump’s chaotic visa shake-up. “The authorities weren’t sure about my intended reasons for coming to the States,” Sanele says, neutrally. I make an unfavourable reference to the example of Slovenian-born First Lady Melania Trump, who was apparently paid for 10 modelling jobs before she received legal authorisation to work in the United States, but Sanele will not be drawn. “It’s fine, it’s OK,” he says. “I’m the kind of person who believes everything happens for a reason.”

Instead of New York, Sanele decided to go to the Netherlands, where he has family, including a great aunt who moved to Dordrecht during apartheid. Nowadays she’s what Sanele calls “a hardcore Dutchie” and she was proud to see him walk in Amsterdam Fashion Week, one of several engagements arranged at short notice by Elite Model Management Amsterdam, the agency that supported Sanele’s straightforward visa application.

Xaba wears Taplo jumper, £655, Dries Van Noten (selfridges.com); jeans, £225, Dries Van Noten (libertylondon.com); boots, £230, grenson.com. Photograph: Daniel Benson for the Observer

While appearing on a popular late-night TV talk show, Sanele met Nicky Libert, a Dutch local and fellow Elite charge who worked on a building site but shot to Instafame after being snapped by a British tourist. The two unconventional clotheshorses hit it off and a bromance began. “He’s Tweedledee and I’m Tweedledum,” says Sanele. Libert invited Sanele to come and live with his family in Almere, just outside Amsterdam, and has been introducing him to Dutch culture, one Turkish and Surinamese takeaway at a time.

I used spray tans and very dark foundation. It looked really bad, especially because I had braces and terrible acne

“There’s so much variety and diversity,” says Sanele. “It’s rich with culture from all over the world – and I thought that South Africa had a lot going on!”

Sanele was born in a township outside Durban in 1994, the year South Africa transitioned from apartheid into democracy – making him a first-edition “born free”. When he was little, strangers would assume he was a white child in the care of a black nanny. In fact, his Zulu mother, Sithembisile, is a medical technologist who took Sanele’s albinism in her stride, but left the township after an incident in which another child shouted “umhlope” (Zulu for “white man”) and threw a rock at his head. There was considerable bleeding and he still has the peanut-sized scar on his forehead. “That was when my mum decided to move to the city,” says Sanele. His father, he says, was never in the picture – “a rolling stone” with an undisclosed number of kids.

Unusually, given that racial integration was in its infancy, Sithembisile enrolled Sanele at the fee-paying, majority-white Open Air School in Durban (motto: “I can and I will”) where he was, he jokes, “an undercover black”. Although he was acutely aware of the stares that his alabaster skin and naturally ginger hair attracted when he was out in public, he says his mother’s insistence that “I shouldn’t look on my albinism as any sort of disadvantage” bolstered his self-esteem. But with puberty, it collapsed entirely. “When you hit 13 or so, you become self-conscious and you start to want to impress people,” he says. Other pupils began to taunt him about his appearance. “I could give you a whole list of names: Casper the Friendly Ghost, white pudding, milk of magnesia, Tipp-Ex, snow globe…” Sanele’s actual name means “enough” in Zulu. He is an only child.

Xaba wears striped top, £75, Raf Simons x Fred Perry (fredperry.com). Photograph: Daniel Benson for the Observer

“I went through a stage of depression during which I did lots of desperate online research on how to get melanin,” says Sanele. Predictably, his attempts to boost the pigment-creating substance came to naught, so he resorted to the cosmetics counter. “I was experimenting with spray tans and very dark foundation,” he recalls, “and it kinda looked really bad, especially because I had braces and terrible acne.” He was already taking Roaccutane, the controversial retinoid drug, to try to get his spots under control. “For four months I had this circumference of heat around my face and it was bright red, like a tomato.”

Now I’ve realised I can use my looks to raise awareness, I’ve started to take a lot more pride in my own albinism

To make matters worse, it was around this time that Sanele’s father – a perfect stranger – came back on the scene, only to tell Sanele that he was dying. “He apologised to me for everything before he passed,” recalls Sanele, before starting to giggle reflexively. When I listen to the recording later, the peals sound like nervousness bordering on panic. “I’m sure it seemed like I was heartless at the time, but I just couldn’t get emotional about it because I didn’t really know who had died and I was just too confused,” he says.

Back at school, he resolved to toughen up and confront the bullies. “I knew of another kid – not someone with albinism – who had hanged himself at the age of 10 and I just thought: ‘That’s not going to happen to me. I’m not going to let my entire student career go like this.’ I decided to beat the hell out of the next person who called me names.”

The strategy worked (“People learned not to mess with Sanele or he’s going to beat you up. That’s not the kind of person I am, but I had to grow a pair,” he says). In due course, so did the acne treatment. Sanele refers to what came next as his “blow-up season”. Buoyed by the confidence of clear skin, a promotion in the playground pecking order and his newfound athletic prowess as a championship swimmer with the body to boot, he began to socialise with a vengeance.

Xaba wears sweatshirt, £235, Yeezy, and shirt, £480, Vetements, both selfridges.com; cords, £255, Etudes (libertylondon.com). Photograph: Daniel Benson for the Observer

It was at the age of 15, while attending the Durban July horse racing, that he was approached by a model scout. “I took the card and then I thought: ‘Nah, I’m not going to do that shit,’” he recalls. The scout persisted, tracking Sanele down via Facebook and persuading him that there was money to be made. “As a teenager, scoring a buck is a big thing,” Sanele smiles. So he walked in Durban fashion week and appeared in campaigns for local designers before transferring to a more prestigious model agency in Johannesburg. “They got me catalogue work for Adidas, I did GQ magazine, and that’s when I realised that this industry could use a whole lot more diversity.”

Increasingly, he now sees his Instagram account as a means of owning the conversation, and photos are frequently accompanied by lengthy and heartfelt “believe in yourself” captions.

“At the end of the day, I know there’s an expiry date to what I do and my dream is to make my presence last a bit longer, to leave a footprint in the industry.” Among his 21,000-plus followers are teens struggling to come to terms with their own albinism. “I get messages from people saying: ‘Oh you are so brave for what you’re doing, I’m ashamed to even go outside,” he says.

Things are much worse, he notes, in the parts of Africa that GQ doesn’t typically reach. In some regions of Tanzania, for example, people with albinism live in fear of mutilation and murder because potions made from their body parts can command large sums on the black market. “There’s a whole industry run by so-called spiritual leaders,” says Sanele.

In some regions, people with albinism live in fear of mutilation and murder as potions are made from their body parts

Since he has been in Holland, he has connected with Inside The Same, a charity that campaigns for the rights of individuals with albinism. With them, he’s planning a visit to an orphanage in Tanzania for children who’ve been abandoned as the result of stigma and ignorance. In some communities, children with albinism are believed to be reincarnated ghosts of slave masters, as opposed to what they are: innocents with a genetic idiosyncrasy.

“The charity provides the kids with sunscreen and medical treatment because a lot of them have skin cancer,” says Sanele. “Now that I’ve realised I can use my looks to raise awareness and to challenge the perceptions and stereotypes about the condition, I’ve started to take a lot more pride in my own albinism.”

As I pack up my things and we say our goodbyes, Sanele tells me he would hate for his nascent activism to somehow overshadow the meticulous work done by others: “I’m glad to assist and I really want to learn,” he says. He’s flying back to Cape Town tomorrow for a wedding – a cousin from his dad’s side of the family – so I ask what he’s most missed about South Africa during his summer away. His response is a little more starry than before: “I miss the nightclubs where they give me a private table because I’m a model, and I can take my friends and drink champagne all night without having to open my wallet. It’s fun, now and again, to celebrate your youth.” Good on him, I think. But so much for Heineken.

Grooming by Jade Leggat-Smith using MAC and Elemis; production by Christopher Smith; model Sanele junior Xaba at Boss models

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nofomoartworld · 7 years

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Hyperallergic: Beverly Buchanan’s Shack Sculptures Feel at Home in Detroit

Beverly Buchanan: Low Country, at David Klein Gallery in Detroit, installation view (all photos by the author for Hyperallergic)

DETROIT — Due in part to its protracted economic siege state, for many decades, Detroit sat largely outside the realm of art world conversations. Aside from the Cass Corridor artists of the early 1970s, there has not been a major contemporary art movement to emerge from Detroit. As an outsider place, it has long been a landscape both literally and figuratively shaped by the work of “outsider” artists (this despite being home to Michigan’s only dedicated undergraduate art school, the College for Creative Studies).

Perhaps for this reason, the work of Beverly Buchanan feels like a perfectly natural fit for Detroit. A small retrospective of her shack sculptures and drawings, Beverly Buchanan: Low Country, is on view at David Klein Gallery downtown, and the aesthetics feel right at home with those of landmark Detroit artists like Olayami Dabls and Tyree Guyton, painters like Jide Aje and Gilda Snowden, and the wood constructions of artist John Egner. Buchanan’s evocative little constructions and childlike pastel drawings are alive with the same kind of color and wabi-sabi principles that inspired a whole category of practicing artists in Detroit.

Beverly Buchanan, “Room Added” (2011), foreground, and “Purple Door” (2001).

I confess, I struggle a bit with the concept of “outsider” artists — it always feels to me like a euphemism. Buchanan is not, in fact, an outsider artist; in addition to pursuing a career in medicine as far as a Master’s Degree in Public Health from Columbia University, she enrolled at the Art Students’ League in New York, where she studied painting under Norman Lewis. Eventually, she came into contact with Romare Bearden, who went on to mentor her, and she became a player within the New York art scene for several decades. But in spite of conscious and formal consideration of the art movements of her time, Buchanan’s work — especially the selection on display at David Klein Gallery — is equally in conversation with the architecture and craft aesthetics of the rural South. Just like Buchanan, Detroit’s majority African-American population can trace bloodlines back to the states below the Mason-Dixon line, and the desire to recreate and reiterate these subjects indicates ways in which the Northern Migration did less to extinguish the poetic memory of place than one might imagine — place as identity, shack as portrait.

Beverly Buchanan, “Spirit of Zora Neale Hurston 08 Neighborhood in Florida” (2008).

The sense of one-to-one identification with these structures is reinforced in works like “Studio Home” (2008), which features a small, embedded self-portrait of Buchanan gazing out at the viewer through a window in the little dimensional rectangle of patchwork foam core and acrylic paint. Much like the fragmented shards of broken mirrors that adorn the outbuildings and fixtures of Olayami Dabl’s ongoing masterwork of installation art, Iron Teaching Rocks How To Rust, Buchanan’s shacks look back at you, from windows like winking eyes, or windowless walls like blank faces — more so than through the elided features of the rare figure in her pastel landscapes.

Beverly Buchanan, “Figure in Green” (2004).

Place never really leaves you, come development or entropy, because it resides within your memory. It stands to reason that one of the painful schisms between “old” Detroit and new comes down to the very question of what the landscape reveals. For someone new to the scene, the empty fields, moldering homes, or abandoned industrial structures might (and do) look rife with potential — one can imagine worlds of possibilities. For someone who grew up on these streets, there is still the echo of a former corner store, a friend’s house, a high school, a whole neighborhood, hardly less real for being stripped from view.

Or perhaps it goes deeper than the memory of a single lifetime. Buchanan’s work speaks to me, and I have no Southern roots, no direct connection to her subject matter. Perhaps this is the power of ancestry, the way descendants of immigrants (or enslaved people brought across the Atlantic by force) might feel odd stirrings of home upon visiting the forfeited homeland of their predecessors. Buchanan’s work taps and presents places that seem to live in the same neighborhood of ur-consciousness. Both simple and astonishing in their complexity, her works manage the rare feat of accessing the universal through the incredibly unique, leaving no one on the outside.

Beverly Buchanan: Low Country, installation view

Beverly Buchanan: Low Country remains on view at David Klein Gallery (1520 Washington Boulevard, Detroit, Michigan) through July 29.

The post Beverly Buchanan’s Shack Sculptures Feel at Home in Detroit appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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craftrva-blog · 7 years

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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Ballet...

Written by: Jo Ann L. Breaux

What would seem like a typical interview for CRAFT RVA actually became an instant karmic connection. It is one of the reasons that CRAFT has been on hiatus, but I thought it appropriate to explain myself to my very supportive readers and I thought what a way to get back in the game.

Let me start by saying that dance for me is an art form and craft I've always been affected by. It is probably the only one that can stir emotional expression so deeply and sincerely. Yes, I am that person who thinks Travis Wall and Sonya Tayeh are choreography gods. So, to say the least I sort of love dance and yes I will, with reckless abandon, dance in my living room. I had no idea I would be submersed into its very world by coming to the aid of a computer challenged technicality. I'm proud to say that I hold a title here at Latin Ballet and yes, I know I'm writing a biased piece, I would like to think I am being subjective with my internal experience.

I speak horrible Spanish. I barely know my Panamanian history. I was never really exposed to that side of my culture besides the incoherent Spanish ramblings of my mother's foreign tongue or the occasional traditional Latin meal or story. I never really understood what my mom went through when she came here in the 70s. I didn't understand how disoriented she must have felt going from the lush jungle and mountains to the humid, flat Deep South. I blocked out all the times she was made fun of for her accent or called certain things for her tanned skin. I was angered how men leered at her in the grocery store, but was just a small child and unable to do anything about it. It wasn't well into my teen years I found my ethnic identity and really comprehended why mom never taught me Spanish or anything about my Panamanian background and learned I was never Latina enough, Asian enough, or white enough to be able to figure out the capacity of my genetic makeup. Which is why, this whole connection with Latin Ballet has been some kind of racial cosmic connection.

I can go on and on about Founder and Artistic Director of Latin Ballet of Virginia, Ana Ines King and her credentials and awards. It would take more room than I've got here. I'd rather concentrate on Ana as an artistic role model and as a native of Bucaramanga, Colombia. It is important to note that Ana's mother was a dancer and she was the one who taught her the art of Flamenco. Her sister. Rosana is also an accomplished dancer, Ana being the Queen of the East while her sister resides in the West, both educators and choreographers. To say this little mouse of a woman is passionate is an understatement. This woman who founded Latin Ballet of Virginia with an idea sprung from an experience her daughter, Melody had when coming to America, has worked relentlessly to implement and engage cultural understanding through dance for 20 years!

Ana's story is similar to my mother's. The likeness between them is uncanny, the way they speak, the way they explain things, and mostly the fervor of determination. Ana sees something she wants and then she makes it a reality, through sheer belief. She's fiery, she's enthusiastic, and she's bold. She does not take "no" for an answer and it is through that she knows nothing to be impossible. Ana came to America just as my mom had, simply put, she fell in love with an American, married, and came to the United States. What isn't easy to understand is the assimilation process. I was lucky, I didn't have to partake in that part because I was very young coming here from Panama, where as Melody was almost a teenager when they arrived in Virginia. Now, as I'm writing this, I discovered that when I came to Richmond, I was a pre-teen, I had been raised in Cajun country for most my life. Coming to Richmond was incredibly difficult for me. I was extremely shy and people made fun of my accent and my clothes. I was a fish out of water for sure. So, when Ana was telling the story of her daughter's experience, I was not only recalling my mother's, but also my own. Ana's daughter also lost confidence in herself, she didn't speak and she became quite depressed upon arriving here.

For any American who travels abroad, it is difficult to really delve into the language and culture of some countries you visit. We as Americans travel swiftly, usually taking in 3-5 countries in our two week vacation allowance. There's not really time to learn anything. You take a gondola ride and eat pizza in Napoli, you say "Hola" in Spain while drinking Sangria on the beach, you take some photos in front of the Eiffel Tower while eating some cheese and before you know it, you're back on American soil never having learned the language or spending a good amount of time partaking in the culture.

For Ana, if was her husband's family who gave her the hugs she needed, the warmth that comes from being Latin, to feel comfortable and accepted. For Melody, starting in a new school wasn't so easy. There are no open windows in the schools here in the States, but in places like Panama, Colombia and Costa Rica, the schools are open to nature, you can hear the birds sing, a monkey or two pass by and the sun shining it's beams inside while you are learning. It was a very different "institutional" environment here for her and for someone coming from such topographically beautiful lands, it can be a hard place to adjust. It is quite difficult to feel like you belong or that you are connected to anyone when you've been plopped into a whole different culture. Ana, although hard, was willing to let her go back to her native Colombia and finish out the rest of her school, but it was a simple demonstrative assignment of teaching her classmates Salsa and cumbias that would not only bring Melody out of her shell, but would also spark the conception for Latin Ballet. Ana would soon realize that dance could help these kids identify and feel proud of where they come from. She could teach them English through dance and help them become more confident in speaking and interacting with their American peers and so Ana, would find her mission.

Despite being 20 years established, a lot of people have different notions of what Latin Ballet does. LBV is made of three solid branches on a very colorful tree. Ana not only has implemented successful award-winning educational programming and residencies including the "Be Proud of Yourself" program and the Arts in Education Summer Camps in our Richmond, VA community, but LBV is also made up of a Professional and Junior Company which perform throughout the year, sometimes touring outside the state. If that's not enough, LBV teaches students in Flamenco, Salsa, Ballet, Hip Hop and Contemporary dance techniques four days a week for 16 week semesters. What's beautiful about what LBV does, is it creates an environment where children from different backgrounds and countries can feel confident and safe, yet also gives exposure to those kids who are not always in a gentrified group. In other words, White children are learning about Spanish and Latin language, history, culture, and folklore and they are learning it directly from the source as well as helping these students who don't know English very well, language skills they need in their new home. When you walk into an LBV studio, you see a medley of children from all different races and backgrounds. When they are dancing together, they are one. Ana is a big believer in everyone feeling good and confident about who they are. She embraces all her "children", including her adult instructors and dancers, some of whom have been with her since they were as young as 3 years old. The programs she has brought to many low-income schools and communities has brought exposure to the arts to children otherwise oblivious to this world. Sponsors of Latin Ballet contribute to scholarships given to a lot of high-risk/low-income children, giving them the ability to learn to dance and perform.

Ana and her Professional Company of dancers perform at many charitable events and it is no secret that Ana does it out of pure love. If she wasn't dancing, I think she'd be six feet in and even then, I think the soil would kick up around her. Most of LBV's productions are folklore and myth based. She takes a lot of stories from Hispanic and Latin culture and tells these stories through passionate dance theater performances. Often times, they will showcase many dance forms and she has been known to bring guest artists from Spain and elsewhere to share the stage with them. LBV has quite a spectrum of ethnic backgrounds within the Professional Company itself including Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Italian, all from different dance backgrounds and lifestyles. I think it gives the entire feel a zest not found in most dance companies. When people see an LBV show they leave invigorated and spirited. There's a lot of heart on and off stage.

When foreigners come to this country it is to seek a better life, a better opportunity. It is not only to contribute to their families who don't have the monetary means, but it is also to give to American society. Without Hispanic culture in this country, Texas may not have won their independence, more than half of the street names in America would not exist, you wouldn't know what a taco was, and a lot of white people would not be dancing Salsa at the club. What makes Latin Ballet of Virginia so special is that it is inclusive. It brings something unique to the stage and it gives back to our community by providing education through dance. I've been to Henderson High School. I have seen what dance has done for these kids. It put a huge smile on my face when they proudly show me what they've learned through our residency and yes, they were good, one teen actually choreographed her own routine. It is this type of learning that influences kids to become better people.

This weekend LBV is re-staging the production of "Nuyorican" which tells the stories of real experiences of Puerto Ricans who migrated to New York after WWII and the shaping of a culture in a foreign land where they faced discrimination and oppression. It also touches on the challenges of their offspring, born American, but caught between a cultural war of identity. It's a relevant piece, significantly in current times. Strangers in a strange land. I'm very proud to be a part of LBV. Not only do I get to be around dance, but I also get to understand where I come from more and it has become my little family, my hands flying, fast talking, Spanish speaking, vibrant familia.

For all those interested in learning dance from Latin Ballet (yes, even you adults) visit their website.

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