Articles from Advocate and Newsweek

Ladies and gentleman, the first pregnant man! This is a fascinating firt-person account about being a pregnant transgender FTM (female to male). When Thomas Beatie and his wife decided to have kids, Thomas went off testoserone to get pregnant due to the fact that his wife was incapable of bearing the child. The image of a man with child is so stunning and captivating, and the story itself is a new take on queer identity and a new challenge for the common gender-rigid American household.




http://advocate.com/issue_story.asp?id=52664&page=1

Also, I wanted to share this article about the documentation of today's adolescent generation, and how camera phones, Myspace, Facebook, Youtube, and Livejournal have affected the intimate connections between young people. Identity over-exposure is a common trend these days, and the current youth now thrives on having their every life moment recorded for the public eye.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/123484/page/1

Deb Eskie

BREAKING the MOLD: Re-imaging Dance and Disability

In 1996, I attended a performance by AXIS Dance Company at the Boston Cyclorama. Their mission, since 1987, has been “to create and perform high quality contemporary dance that is developed through the collaboration of dancers with and without disabilities (retrieved 3/2/08). My interest in attending their “physically integrated dance” performance and, later, master-class was prior work with adults in rehabilitation for spinal chord injuries and children with disabilities in the Boston public schools…and a love of dance.

The excitement for me is in the artistry of Axis Dance Company. They are not looking to choreograph movement that matches the desires and images of dance, grace and virtuosity that an audience might expect in a dance performance. They seek movement that is expressive, authentic and thrilling to their bodies. For my work as artist educator and dance therapist, they gave me the priceless gift of possibility: they redefined the definitions of dance, disability and what it means to be in the body. They also confirmed a belief I held in the power of performance to heal and reformulate body image (dissimilar to many of the messages I was receiving at the time, both in the media and in my professional training).

Last spring, I was invited to a benefit performance by local interdisciplinary artist, Lisa Bufano, before her journey west to join Axis. Recalling the expressive image on the brochure, of this young woman with multiple amputations, I was motivated to see what AXIS was up to these days:
On the website, under “what’s new” you will be introduced to Lisa and her story, under “performances” you will find an Image Gallery and under “education” a comprehensive list of books, articles, fiction, nonfiction, resources for teachers and children, videos and websites on dance and disability. There is a link to Ways to Dance, an essay by dancer Uli Schmitz, written for the 1998 Internet Conference on Art and Disability. Upon seeing AXIS perform for the first time, he, himself disabled from polio, “…realize[d] and appreciate[d] the different qualities of their movement; the fluidity, the effortlessness and the power that can be unleashed by an electric wheelchair…this particular image of power, for example, becomes emotionally gripping because it contradicts the usual stereotypes of the helpless disabled person” (Schmitz, 1998, p.3).
Visit the website and see if you agree!
Nancy Jo

http://www.axisdance.org
http://www.axisdance.org/education_resources_articles.php for Schmitz essay and links to websites such as Disability Arts Online

The collage work of Deborah F. Lawrence

Introducing the work with Deborah F. Lawrence. This work is called Teenage American Service Tray and is Acrylic, collage and varnish on tin TV tray. In her own words, "I consider it my job to enhance a picture's original meaning as I use it to report on social, emotional, historic and current events."

Her work can be found at http://www.deedeeworks.com/ She will be conducting a workshop at Lesley University, on March 18. Contact Pricilla Harmel (pharmel at lesley dot edu) to reserve.

-sam smiley

Sita Sings the Blues

Check this out! a soon to be feature length feminist and genre bending musical feature length Flash Animation by Nina Paley. The subject is the Ramayana, an ancient Sanskrit epic which is an important part of the Hindu canon.
Check her site at http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/
or read her blog at http://blog.ninapaley.com/.
Or check a review at the Sepia Mutiny blog

-sam smiley

Emergency Broadcast Network

Emergency Broadcast Network was a performance art and video group who did work in the 1990's. Now with Youtube, their work is coming back online. You can do a search for EBN on Youtube, and find dozens of videos.

The original EBN folks met at Rhode Island School of Design. They were Joshua Pearson, Gardner Post and Brian Kane. Later on, others joined, include Greg Deocampo (founder of Company of Science and Art (CoSA). Incidentally, CoSA Effects later on turned into After Effects, a well known image processing software currently owned by Adobe.

More detailed information can be found on the group on Wikipedia and you can see samples from Telecommunication Breakdown at http://emn-usa.com/ebn

EBN's work was "culture jamming" in media culture. Culture jamming (in the words of Wikipedia's definition "...often entails transforming mass media to produce ironic or satirical commentary about itself, using the original medium's communication method." One of EBN's clear influences was Fluxus media artist Nam Jun Paik, who was culture jamming with analog television before TV had really come of age.

I could say more, but here's an intro look at EBN.
-sam smiley

A Broke Down Melody

Recently, I sat down to view the film, A Broke Down Melody, a beautiful surfing documentary recommended by a friend at home in California. A Brokedown Melody was directed in 2004 by professional surfer and filmmaker Chris Malloy and features the surfing of some of the world’s best surfers. The film's stunning imagery, and shared stories documents the journey of a group of surfers as they ride the waves of South America, Polynesia and Jamaica.

The film captures the beauty of the locations, the talent of the surfers and the power of the ocean with amazing cinematography, and underwater, in-water camera shots. Flavor is added to the scenes with the help of inspiring music from many artists including former pro surfer, Jack Johnson. Overall, I was impressed by the visual imagery and touched by the stories and experiences revealed in the film. A Brokedown Melody is an enchanting film and the perfect escape from a cold New England winter.

More information and a trailer for A Brokedown melody can be found at, http://www.abrokedownmelody.com

Enjoy the film!

Melissa Brescini

Inhabiting an Image...

I took a trip to the MassMoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art) this weekend and had the opportunity to experience the Jenny Holzer PROJECTIONS installation.  

You begin by entering the blacked-out doors of the football field-sized gallery space and are immediately greeted by the bright lights of duel-mounted projectors and the fast moving words that they cast on the floor ceiling and walls.  As you walk down the stairs into the vast area, you are next confronted  by couch sized bean bags that serve as obstacles for the images to gently wash over along with the human inhabitants.  As you recline to enjoy the extraordinary scene, you begin to notice the calm serenity of silence as you and those around you begin to explore the meaning of the text.  

While the intentions of the projected poems (View with a Grain of Sand Poems New and Collected: 1957-1997, copyright 1993, 1998 by Wislawa Szymborska) for this particular work were unclear to me at first, I began to realize that the experience would have different meaning for each person who inhabits the space.  I found this idea particularly interesting because of my participation in this course, The Power of the Image.  In this case you not only take in the image visually, but you add to it and alter it depending on how, when, and where you view it.  This exhibit not only asks you to rely on sight or sound to connect with it but encourages you to notice how your immediate environment affects your interpretation of the piece and to inhabit the image at that moment in time.  

 

To learn more about this exhibit click here: http://www.massmoca.org/event_details.php?=339

To view a webcam of this exhibit click here: http://www.massmoca.org/projections.php   

-Jennifer