Theater of Cruelty to Myself
The French artist Orlan works in various mediums and has been prolific and provocative for years. Her most notorious work uses her body and surgery as an expression of art.
“I am the first,” Orlan claims, “to divert plastic surgery from its aim of improvement and rejuvenation.”
These are called “operation-performances.”
She took a digitized version of the “idealized feminine” face (her source material: Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, Botticelli’s Venus, Francois Pascal Simon Gerard’s Psyche, Gustav Moreau’s Europa) and then surgically altered her own face to create this image.
Nine plastic surgeries. She considers her works “sacrificial.” These performances were painful and potentially fatal.
Orlan’s website.
A new essay from Unzipping of Images…Orlan’s Operative: Provocation, Performance, Personhood
Schadenfreude Freakout Party!
Considering that I don’t have cable or broadcast television in my home, and that the entirety of my TV-watching consists of hulu’d Simpsons, South Park and Daily Show episodes (plus of course the biannual celebration of Let’s Netflix A Whole Series of Something, Probably West Wing Again), I’ve been surprised and delighted at my own sustained interest in the NBC-inspired Late Night Free For All. I have been watching the YouTube’d clips with enormous enthusiasm and rapt attention. Here, David Letterman–who seems to be the true winner in Leno V. O’Brien, and in any case is the horse I’d back over any and all of the rest of them–sort of takes us through the “controversy”‘s major movements. But don’t just take his word for it. Bother yourself to get over to this Gawker post that catalogues all the major snarking and bitchery from all of the Late Night shows, including the weird episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! in which JK impersonates Leno for the entire duration of the episode.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A98_-EeXS_I&
SURFING FOR WRITERS
riding giants
So last night while I was under hypnosis, my hypnotherapist, who is also a friend from school, was trying to return me to the memory of being in a mental & physical place where I could write with intense focus and without distractions. And something fairly strange happened.
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Boooring
I’ve been to a lot of readings. Most of them are incredibly boring.
I’ve also been to some shows. Whereas the bands aren’t always good, I’d rarely categorize them as “boring.”
I’ve also been to some art openings. Sure, there are usually obnoxiously pretentious people there, but again, not “boring.”
So what makes going to readings boring? The way I see it, almost anything can make a reading be a complete failure: you could be a bad reader (read too fast, too slow, too soft, too loud, etc.); you could be reading a bad reading piece (because let’s be honest: not everything written sounds good out loud); the room could be unamenable (too loud, too quiet, too bright, etc. etc.); the list could go on.
But what makes a good reading? What makes a reading NOT boring?
I’ve got some readings coming up over the next few months, and I’d prefer not to be a boring reader.
Also, when you go to readings, what is it that you want to hear? Would you rather hear something published, something forthcoming, or something brand spanking new?
Workshop of Horrors
Crazy is OK. Who hasn’t awoken on the kitchen floor, naked? And hanging out with/knowing/dating Crazy can be fun, or funny. Loud-Talker, Close-Talker, Person-Who-Eats-Only-Boiled Potatoes, every mélange and mishmash of personality—it’s cool.
But English departments have small rooms. And they seem to stuff workshops in the tiniest, the concrete walls, flickering fluorescent hum, chalkboard with that awful stuff, chalk. Like a bonfire, Crazy is Ok with a bit of open space, but in a small, closed room, the romance of the cracking heat tends to burn.
Did I mention the semester begins today?
What is your workshop horror story? I’ll flavor the pot with my top 3.
1.) Student of mine who brought a coffee mug of vodka and OJ to class every meeting (no big problem [maybe–he did get a bit sloppy/vociferous at times, and I had to tell him more than once that the phrase “words-of-ass” is never appropriate or helpful feedback] except for when the woman next to him narked).
2.) Student of mine who wrote intricate, detailed, very specific story about killing every member of the class in intricate, detailed, very specific ways. In a recent post-911 environ of paranoia, this incident ended up involving the ABI (Alabama state FBI) and two undercover cops who pretended they were college students.
3.) Fellow student (this in grad school) who leaped up and screamed into all our faces (causing crying and/or additional screaming) because the instructor insulted Richard Nixon. Was I frightened? Indeed.
You?
Above All, We Believe in Magic: A Week in Review
Monsieur Ponge avec une cigarette
My week, but maybe you’ll relate.
Assigning Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics is really the best thing you can do for anybody.
“Fox and Whale, Priest and Angel,” by Russell Banks is travel writing, but it’s also about vision. So is nearly every travel piece I love. They all find the spark in a landscape and look into it and worship it—especially if the spark has been induced by altitude sickness (Banks) or nostalgia and maybe mushrooms (Jason Wilson, “Whistling at the Northern Lights”).
I learned this week that CK Williams does a better job of translating Francis Ponge than the translations I’m reading in Models of the Universe when a student brought me Francis Ponge: Selected Poems. That Ponge is masterful at conflating disparate objects. That you can make opening a door sexy if you’re Francis Ponge. I learned the definition of peduncle from the not-so-good translation of Ponge’s poem, “The Candle.” I learned that Ponge wasn’t interested in titles so much. And that maybe I’m having a love affair with the prose poem.
I read and discussed poems from Kathleen Ossip’s The Search Engine with a very cool student. I learned that the only thing more depressing than a Plath poem, is a cento of lines by Plath and Sexton. I remembered how much I love Plath. Thanks, Ms. Ossip. And thanks for these lines, among others:
I’m eating bread and water
alone, naked as the day
I was born. Hey, Ma,
I say, though she’s not
around, you won’t believe this.
Physicists say that in
addition to a yes and a
no, the universe contains a maybe.
Off in the distance, under the stars,
she moves like a platypus,
neither here nor there.
I read In The Year of Long Division by Dawn Raffel because Alec Niedenthal told me to. He and I will argue about this book soon enough. I’ll report back. But I learned that I like my dialogue to say something. And I remembered how important titles are.
Other very important things I learned this week: I love copyediting; I want a pet crow; I can’t stop thinking about the first season of Friday Night Lights; and I’m pretty sure I believe in magic.
I learned a new word this morning
in⋅stau⋅ra⋅tion
[in-staw-rey-shuhn] –noun
1.
renewal; restoration; renovation; repair.
2.
Obsolete. an act of instituting something; establishment.
Origin:
1595–1605; < L instaurātiōn- (s. of instaurātiō) a renewing, repeating.
Related forms:
in⋅stau⋅ra⋅tor [in-staw-rey-ter] , noun
+
…Thanks (yet again), Harold Bloom!
Odd Books for Sally
Stephanie Barton, managing director of Penguin Children’s Books, says publishers in 2010 will go with “very traditional, no-risk purchases.”
(Does this mean no more, “Joined at Birth: The Lives of Conjoined Twins”?)
Oh come now, I don’t believe you, Steph. Somewhere sits a sneaky MSS, as in smart, as in subversive, as in prepping the soil to grow not turnips, but psychotomimetic unicycles.
Alt books for kids? Weird books, strange books, honest books–books you read as a child (or to your child) and then went, “What the fuck?”
“After a fall from an experimental aircraft, Cris Molina is stricken with an unusual brain malfunction: He sees everything wrong (shoes look like books and a shirt looks like a fifth century Ming vase).”
Or, for your 12 year old…who may or may not be Doing It.
“Okay,” said Jonathan. “The choice is this. You either have to shag Jenny Gibson—or else that homeless woman who begs spare change outside Cramner’s bakers.”
Your selections?
REASONS YOU SHOULD NOT DATE WRITERS (IF YOU ARE A WRITER)
not a writer
1. Writing is not mysterious to them, so they will not romanticize, mythologize, or idealize what you do.
An Open Letter to Carl’s Jr. from Mark Baumer
[Mark Baumer, of the Brown MFA Blog sends word of his current project, a consummation with the Carl Jr’s of the US. He also recently wrote to Chic-fil-A and got a response. He’s a slut. — BB]
Dear Carl’s Jr.,
There are a little more than 1,000 Carl’s Jr. restaurants in the United States. I would like to visit each one this summer. Please give me one-thousand free meals to Carl’s Jr. If you do I will only eat Carl’s Jr. this summer. You know how sometimes old people talk about the ‘summer of love’? Someday, when I grow old, I would like to talk about ‘summer of carl’.
I have a friend. His name is ‘Karl’. I think I will ask him to change his name to ‘Carl’ if you give me one-thousand free meals to Carl’s Jr.
If you don’t give me one-thousand free meals to Carl’s Jr. I think I will kill a Chinaman. I just read this Hemingway book, To Have and Have Not, and a guy named Johnson stiffs this fisherman named Harry Morgan $800 and Harry doesn’t have any money so he kills a Chinaman. If you don’t give me one-thousand free meals to Carl’s Jr. I will be hungry and I will kill a Chinaman and eat him.
I’m looking at the Carl’s Jr. Wikipedia page. There is a picture of the Carl’s Jr. in Rancho Cordova, California. That sounds like a cool place. I’m glad you put a Carl’s Jr. in that town. I look forward to eating at Carl’s Jr. in Rancho Cordova.
The other day I was reading this book by James Baldwin about a black man who is in jail. It made me pause. I started thinking, “If Carl’s Jr. can afford to give me one-thousand free meals then they can afford to give some black man who just out of jail one-thousand free meals.” I think you should give me and a black man who just got out of jail one-thousand free meals each. The two of us will then drive around and eat at every Carl’s Jr. in the United States this summer. I will write a book about the experience. It will probably be a #1 best seller. Tyler Perry will buy the movie rights. The book will be called Summer of Carl. I think the black man will be named Carl. Tyler Perry will probably change the name of the book when he turns it into a movie. Maybe he will call it: Angry Black Woman Mouthing Carls.
Anyway, I think this is a good business proposal. I want to win a million dollars. Give it to me.
Sincerely,
Mark