pollock

its Jackson Pollock's birthday, according to google. i thought i would take this opportunity to write about Who the #$&% is Jackson Pollock?.

A pretty entertaining film, and for anyone who enjoys art, worth watching. There's quite a cast of interesting characters. What i found especially interesting was the tension between science and artistic knowledge.

(note that this picture is upside down, based on the way the painting is displayed in the film)

SPOILER (sort of)

I also was pretty convinced throughout the whole thing that this was not a Pollock. It just didn't look like a Pollock to me (as echoed by a number of "experts" in the film). It didn't have the rhythm, the intricacy, the organic feeling. But in the end, science proved(?) me wrong. But here's the real question. This was likely a painting Pollock discarded. And perhaps this is a stretch, but if he discarded it because he didn't like it, it wasn't up to his standards, he couldn't stand behind it, he wasn't proud of it, etc....is it still a Pollock? Is something a Pollock just because his hand touched it? Or is it a Pollock only when he declared it his finished work of art ready for the public to see?

And secondarily, if something is good enough to argue over whether its a Pollock or not, why does the value increase so significantly if it is proven to be true? I guess this is a matter of use value vs. exchange value here. Use value doesn't change (and really, do paintings have much use value at all?). But fetishization & commodification make that exchange value skyrocket. So I guess this leads me to believe that for the art world, it is his, just because it was made by his hand. But I'm not sure I personally agree with this logic. Maybe its just the Marxist in me.

and just for fun, here's my favorite Pollock, which can be found at the art institute chicago. Greyed Rainbow, 1953. I'm still convinced I can dance to its rhythm.

althusser

i'm not sure i really ever totally understood althusser's assertion that ideology is ahistorical until last night at happy hour. i scoffed at the idea that obama is "post-ideological."

el luchador

mamaH called tonight to tell me about an interview with aronofsky on npr about "The Wrestler." I especially liked what he had to say about use of the body as art, but he strayed away from questioning about a fascination with pain, unfortunately.

and this is just awesome!

viva la bolivia nueva!

so the constitutional referendum passed. here's a short write up (en espanol). basically evo says this will end the colonial legacy as well as neoliberalism in bolivia. i'm not sure i totally buy that, but its a step forward.

and i finally (better late than never) found a good english language explanation of the new constitution. though schultz claims he's no expert, his perspective is far more complete and insightful than mine. and in case you're interested, the jesus commercial he mentions can be found below:

dia de la constitution

today's the big day. the one we've been waiting for. the bolivian constitutional vote (you mean you haven't been on the edge of your seat for months over this?). All the "experts" seem to think it will pass. Which I suppose is a good thing, but I worry that this will just lead to further violence.

Today, reuters uk has finally layed out exactly what these changes are. Pretty much since last march I've been looking for some English language coverage of what exactly the changes are. They've been hard to come by. And I've been avoiding the Spanish language coverage partially because i'm lazy, and partially because Bolivian newspapers are notoriously biased (see Daniel Goldstein & Fatimah Willaims Castro, 2006 Creative Violence: How Marginal People Make News in Bolivia. Journal of Latin American Anthropology 11(2):380-407, or my own paper on the portrayal of indigenous women in Los Tiempos--but its unpublished, so I guess its a bit hard to come by...). For example, this radio transcript from a station in Santa Cruz is pretty horrific (here's the translated version). However, as of Thursday (Evo's 3 year anniversary), the Bolivian state now has its own newspaper. While certainly this might counter the views presented by primarily white/mestizo-owned private papers, I wonder how unbiased a state newspaper might be (for once, the socialist in me might be overtaken by the liberatarian?). I guess I just often see state-run media as less than open. But then again, things can't get much worse, so another perspective at least provides some choice.

I also must recommend this post from inka cola news, outlining some of the evo scare tactics used in foreign press and contesting the notion of "the two bolivias" (which I myself am guilty of perpetuating--see my paper on the Bolivian constitution as symbol of the imagined community--again unpublished. i just love self-promotion today). Plus, there's a pretty awesome photo accompanying it.

la lucha politico y fisico

i have been contemplating whether to write anything here about (sort of) seeing the first half-non-white (not to diminish this vast step forward) president's swearing in. in fact, last night in a somewhat sleep deprived stupor i even typed out a long blog that i had concocted in my head in a total sleep deprived stupor the night before. it somehow connected anti-pacifism, anarchism, the bolivian water war, marx quotes, and obama emblazoned toasters. and while that might sound amazing, i assure you that after reading it again this morning, you are lucky i never posted it.

writing about politics has never been my strong point. i tend to get carried away and take metaphors to irrational lengths and such. and while i wish to not publicize my own crafty ways of doing this, my old friend entropy posted this in a facebook note on the inauguration, and i just couldn't help but re-post.

* Along those same lines, it was not unlike watching live professional wrestling. The biggest heel heat came for President Bush and Joe Lieberman respectively, while the biggest face pops were for Almost President Obama, Bill & Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Ted Kennedy, Colin Powell, Al Gore, Jay-Z and Diddy, and me screaming enthusiastically for Walter Mondale respectively.*

the funny thing is, in an attempt to keep my nose from getting frostbite on tuesday, i was trying to think warm thoughts. one of which happened to be....i wonder how long before barak starts referring to his homeland security measures as "the people's elbow."

(for more on electoral politics and wrestling, see this earlier post)

el arte y sociologica

i have stumbled upon my new favorite image-related internet site. though time will tell how it might compare to strange maps or information aesthetics, or even the amazing, incredible, inspiring share some candy....sociological images combines my two loves (if one is willing to overlook the inadequacies of sociology as compared to anthropology).

my favorite post (so far...i've only gone through a few) is the second half of stereotypes of nationalities. I guess i'm just a sucker for that simple, graphic kind of art.

more tacos

in a strange twist of fate, paul brooks shows up as my #1 "people you may know" on facebook today.

weird.

tacos tacos, everywhere, tacos

whoa. paul brooks is famous. and if the pantagraph isn't proof, perhaps cnn is:

Watch CBS Videos Online

of course, you can rely on national media all you want, but the real story is at fuw.

colombia

the u.s. just declassified documents which confirm the government knew about para-military activities in colombia as early as 1990. this "war on drugs" is so funny. except not funny at all.

bigotes de nuevo

so, back in november of 2006, the r___ helped make a startling discovery. while watching a commercial for the pursuit of happyness i mentioned how good will smith looked with a 'stache. this was the third time in a week i mentioned someone looking good with similar facial hair. he declared, "nell, you have a mustache fetish."

the next day i began my new job at the latina institute, and ended up at the table across from hector. the only man among the 13 of us (including the board), sporting his amazing mustache. i couldn't keep from chuckling under my breath.

well, 2 years later, i'm contemplating attempting to shake my thing for staches. they're just getting too big. even the nyt is paying attention. more movies and indie bands have followed, along with general public personalities. i'm at a loss. it feels so deeply ingrained, but i hate being subject to such fads. what's a girl to do?

el restarante

the top 5 most interesting dishes offered at Heyworth Restaurant

5. Butt Steak
4. Beef Roll
3. the Belt Buster
2. Fiddle Faddle Club
1. Wing Ditties ("music for your taste buds")

gender, language, epicene pronouns, etc.

one small step forward.

el fin del ano

2008 was a good year. It had its minor frustrations, but no major complaints. And countless amazing moments, but inspired by kj, who was inspired by sherm, here’s a list of the top fifteen 24 hour periods of 2008 (in chronological order)

1. The last day in Tobago

2. The Warden, the Widowmaker, and the Overfiend converge in New York

3. Public Nudity at the Green Lantern

4. Scammellot (May edition)

5. Stroh Day

6. Kickapoo camping

7. A massive night

8. Gordo’s wedding

9. Scammelltoberfest!!!

10. A wedding in Milwaukee

11. Northwestern Reunion

12. Drag Races on my Birthday

13. November 5 at the White House

14. Thanksgiving Weekend

15. Dancing at the Marx Cafe

obligatory heyworth bar blog

[i originally started writing this as the power went out in heytown on dec. 27. sorry for the delay but amaren is really to blame]

it seems that every time i'm home i find myself at one (or more) of the three local establishments dedicated to alcohol consumption. and usually, something significant happens, about which I want to report. Things like crying over CT. sophomore homecoming dates becoming plumbers. jody singing while doing a shot. spartacus. my girlfriend from nap town. getting invited to house parties by 9th graders. the list goes on.....

but three things of significance happened last night at C2. first, i saw the necessary. it was not the first time i'd seen him at the circle. in fact, the very first time i went there on a thursday night with the butter cow crew he was there. the night it all began...but last night, the conversation was a bit more intense. he was one of the first people i saw after walking in with lou and mamaH. he said not much is new, except... & held up his left hand to display a wedding band. and then he very directly looked at my left hand. it was strange. i know plenty of married or engaged people. i know r___ & r____'s elaborate code system for communicating the presence or absence of a ring. but i've never felt so scoped out before. not to say that his scoping was due to romantic interest, but i guess i've never felt subject to such curiosity, presumably because i've always felt so far from the marriage stage. so i lifted my empty hand and said "nope" to which he responded with a slicing off the head motion, and said "don't do it." maybe i'm making too much of this, and by no means do i think this really means he is unhappy, but its very strange to be told by the man you went on your very first date ever with that marriage is a bad idea.

now, however much i'm blowing necessary's comments out of proportion, this is the type of thing i expect to happen when i make my rounds at the heyworth bars. i have bizarre conversations about children, marriage, jobs, school, and mostly the past with people i marginally knew in high school. but the second noteworthy event was entirely unexpected. i was standing by the flocked christmas tree with mamaH, and lou had gone to the bathroom (in which, taped to the mirror, is an utterly ignored sign that says "no smoking comrade" just below a newspaper article explaining the unconstitutionality of the illinois smoking ban). mid-conversation, i felt a swift and strong slap to the ass. i expected lou to be returning from the bathroom. but i looked around and she wasn't there. i searched behind me for b.s. or some other character i've known for 20 years that might feel such entitlement, but mostly just saw a bunch of kids about 6 years younger than me playing pool.

Then I saw markH. I didn’t know him well. His sister was on my high school basketball team. I believe we went to the same church as children. I once bought a pair of jeans were likely his from his family’s garage sale. But I wouldn’t say any of these connections might give one reason for thinking they have any business slapping my ass. Well, upon realizing through his drunkenness what he had just done, his face turned a bright rosy shade. He apologized. And I, being in a jovial mood didn’t yell, but laughed and eventually excused him. This of course, was the wrong move. I’m not sure any logic was functioning in his brain at the time, so perhaps my excusing was unrelated, but at this point, he started putting his hand on my waist and asking my age. When he discovered I was a mere 5 years younger than him (as opposed to one of his former girlfriends, who was 8 years younger), he pressed on. He paused to say “that’s kind of young” at which point I thought to myself- Oh, honey, if only you knew…but I kept quiet. The conversation finally ended with him attempting to get me to kiss him with the convincing line “come on, why not?” He walked away and rejoined his friends.

Later, Dana, who I had seen earlier with the elder Fox at H3, came over to say hello. We had lovely conversations about her sisters’ children, connie, and the Arkansas connection. The conversation was nothing extraordinary. But an hour after leaving the bar, I got a text from BS saying he ran into Dana at a gas station and she told him I was in town. The night before, I ran into little Mr. Burns at the AL and he texted his sister to tell her I was around. Last summer, BS’s brother saw me at the GLT summer concert and without my knowledge BS was informed. It sort of feels like being stalked. Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise me, and in a way its comforting, but you just can’t go anywhere in this town and get away with it. Word travels fast. My face is too familiar. This is not the place to hide out if I ever need to be anonymous. But on the other hand, it sort of feels like walking into the Cheers bar.

el fin

there's something about finals that heightens the senses.

maybe its that there is a sense of time that Fabian never accounted for. that sense that everything is about to end. The world, at least in its current state, will cease to exist after the next week. the clock is ticking and the sand is running out. nothing matters beyond next thursday. everything is urgent.

I spend all day in climate controlled environments, florescent lighting, the hum of the heater, the clicking of the keyboard. The copy machine blinds me. It is dark when I arrive and dark when I leave. The only light I see is the brief walk outside to the library.My bed is just a pitstop. I shed clothing leave it on the floor and find something new in the morning, just to repeat the cycle, leaving a mounting pile of discarded apparel next to the bed. My life is in disarray.

i carry books home just to set them down, pick them up 7 hours later and carry them back here. For all intents and purposes I live at this desk.

My sustenance comes from the convenient store downstairs, the free bread from some random event nearby, oatmeal that’s been sitting on the shelf for over a year and tea that we bought last spring for a department event. I have not eaten a meal at home in a week. Cookies, canned soup, an occasional bag of jellie beans.

Its as if everything is about to end. And suddenly everything must be solved now. This paper, which should be the pinnacle of my academic career thus far must be concluded. Anything I am passionate about cannot wait. I cannot be patient, I cannot take a deep breath and think about it. i cannot breathe except to write more. the feeling of time constraint makes it feel like something has to be secured before it all ends. it makes temptation scandal and excitement explosive.

But even in acknowledging it, I cannot fix it. I cannot slow it down. I cannot stop the keyboard clicking in my head, that blurs into the ticking of the clock and the heater’s rhythmic buzz, and the flipping pages, and beating hearts and churning stomachs and blowing wind, and my cell phone alarm buzzing and the coffee maker percolating and scanner screeching and I just can’t wait for it all to stop.

But when it does, as always, it will be a little too quiet. A little too lonely.

genero de nuevo

yes, once again, i have a comment about that whole gender debate i can't get over.

but i was reading david harvey's The Body as an Accumulation Strategy (1998 Environment and Planning 16:401-421), which I fall more in love with every time I read, and came across a sentence I thought appropriate.

But first, to contextualize: Basically Harvey is saying that the body is not "finished" but is malleable in certain ways, both by external and internal forces. Following from this, the body has a dialectical relationship with the processes that "produce, sustain, bound, and ultimately dissolve it" (402). Basically, similar to the way Butler conceives of the body (as not existing outside of discourse) Harvey is saying the body is very connected to the socio-political formations in which it is embedded.

And then the kicker

"And the representational practices that operate in society likewise shape the body, making any challenge to dominant systems of representation, as, for example, by feminists and queer theorists in recent years, a direct challenge to bodily practices" (403).

ok, back to writing. just can't get enough of the cholas...

prop 8

its late, i'm tired and stressed, and i have a full week of nonstop work ahead of me.

but this is just too good not to share.

dia de SIDA

today is world AIDs day.

and i have a number of disjointed thoughts on the matter.

1. i have never been tested for HIV. i always think i should do this. my excuse is that everytime i go for a checkup, most of the other tests are free. things like chlamydia, herpes, syphilis, etc? all covered. hiv, not so much. this just seems ridiculous now that i think about it. not ridiculous enough to be an appropriate excuse, i admit, but still. bizarre and counter-intuitive.

2. facebook tells me i should buy a cup of starbucks coffee today and they will donate a portion of profits to the global fund. and as lovely as this might seem, i have a real problem with the notion that the way to fix the world is to buy more. perhaps that $2 spent on overpriced coffee (even if it is free trade) should be directly donated to the global fund. its all so very sickeningly neoliberal. why is the technical solution to the problem always consumerism? why isn't the emphasis on education? or volunteering? because that would cause rethinking of cliches, and that's risking too much (to paraphrase tom robbins). instead we'd rather go about our daily lives changing very little, merely giving the appearance of caring through our commodified lifestyles. we've now fetishized caring about the world. i'm certainly guilty of it too, but i'm trying to be more conscious of it.

3. sure, i think world AIDs day is a great idea, but what about local AIDs day? I live in a city where 5% of residents are thought to have HIV. Not that we should not be concerned about "Africa" (as long as we can do it in a way that doesn't reek of paternalism), but maybe at some point we need to focus closer to home. Start questioning the ways in which HIV is closely connected to systemic inequalities here in our own neighborhoods. Start looking at the ways we reproduce the conditions that foster such high rates of HIV daily. Once we get that figured out, then its time to move on to the rest of the world.

So, in essence, my feelings on world AIDs day are crazy-isolationist, anti-capitalist, and hypocritical. what's new?

thanksgiving

As much as I like to think of myself as an optimist, I often focus on the bad more than the good. Earlier today I thought about writing something about all the things I’m thankful for, but I never really got around to it. And then I went off to thanksgiving festivities and didn’t give it a second thought.

Though I had quite a good time, I came home to my empty apartment, and couldn’t help but feel a little sad. It reminded me a little of thanksgiving 2003, walking home from work through grand central station the day before thanksgiving. Watching everyone rush off to their trains to see parents, siblings, cousins, grandparents, and family pets. Everyone in a good mood. Everyone with somewhere to go. And I just had to catch the 6 train downtown. Back to an empty apartment. At least this time I have windows in my bedroom.

And maybe its just that I tend to overanalyze everything. Or that I draw too many associations between tonight’s events and things that happened 5 years ago. But I was feeling pretty gloomy by the time I put my raw lasagna leftovers in the fridge.

But strangely, from the oddest of places, I was given hope. I ended up talking to tex, and despite all the complications and hurt feelings of the past, he was insightful, encouraging, and probably most importantly rational.

I am so very thankful for so very many things in my life, but at this moment, this is the one I want to write about. I have so many amazing friends that seem to pop up in the right time and place (even if via phone or email). I feel so lucky to have somehow happened upon people who really care about me. Who somehow see the best in me even when I’ve given them every opportunity to see the worst. And even though many of the situations we’ve found ourselves in over the years haven’t turned out quite as planned, I value them all so deeply. And their love manifests itself in many ways. Chocolate or cds randomly arriving in the mail. Love advice from once-scorned lovers. Text messages recounting random grocery store shelves or inside jokes about fishnets. Macabre postcards. I often ponder how much these people mean to me, and but its always nice to know I mean something to them too.

ok, enough with the mushiness already...