Wednesday, July 28, 2004

dear sadie benning,

i saw your film "it wasn't love".

"she is simultaneously viewer and creator, enacting a process that no longer has any clear boundaries of demarcation among the various levels of looking that separate the spectator from the television screen."

when i saw your film i thought it was me up there dancing to billie holiday. i thought i was telling the story.

"benning doesn't really care if she communicates or not, because she intuitively senses the paradoxes of the electronic image and the many pitfalls that her images and monologues actually enter into." solution "not linking formal experimentation with communication she is willing to risk the consequences of audiences doing their own experimentation"

but i thought you were talking to me too.

"benning's crisis of identity and her search for absolution bear a relation to the reality that her tape has constructed."

i thought we could be similar because we both grew up in wisconsin.


we each know where we are in the film but sometimes i got lost in the screen.

"benning represents that aspect of modern american culture that has produced thousands of zines"

i am doing the same thing that you did but i never knew it was the same until i saw it.

"to at least imagine a cultural and social context of community"

in my head we are good friends..

love,
x
Les poissons rouges sont d'origine chinoise. Les chinois commençaient à observer des mutations naturelles, dans les rivières vers l'an 300. Originalment, les poisson rouge etait les animaux des empereurs, mais eventuallement, ils etait trouve dans les maisons communs. A Amsterdam, vers 1728, premières reproductions en captivité de poissons rouges. C'est le début de leur pisciculture dans toute l'Europe. Etats Unis découvrirent les poissons rouge en 1852. Un homme des affairs s'appellait Fang Tang débarquait aux U.S.A, à San Francisco, pour ouvrir une boutique de thé de soie et de porcelaine. Dans ses bagages se trouvaient des poissons rouges!

Le soin quotidien de le poisson rouge est simple. Chaque jour, donnez le poisson la nouritture de poisson. La nourriture est importante pour l'équilibre du poisson rouge. Offre le quantite que le poisson peut manger en l'espace de deux minutes. Voila! C'est tout!

L'environ des poissons rouges est important. La température de l'eau doit se situer entre 20-25°C. Le pH doit s'approcher au maximum de la neutralité. Le taux de nitrites et de nitrates doivent être le plus bas possible. Tu as besion d'acheter aqua plus, un traitement pour l'eau robinet pour eliminer le chlore et les chloraimines. Si tu as plus d'un poisson, tu as besoin de un filtre et un système d’oxygénation et les poissons ne peux pas vivre dans un bocal. Bien sur, tu as besoin de nettoyer le bocal aussi.

Les etudiants sont toujour partir chez parents mais pas de problem pour les poisson rouge. Si tu te absentes pendant plus d’une journée et que personne ne vient prendre soin des poissons, placez un comprimé de nourriture suffisant pour une fin de semaine (ou une semaine) dans l’aquarium.

i'm suppose to be studying

as "early as the seventeenth century, the files of doctor Robert Napier showed nearly twice as many cases of mental disorder among his woman patients as among men. By the middle of the nineteenth century, records showed that women had become the majority of patients in public lunatic asylums ... [Later] women [were] the prime subjects of shock treatment, psychosurgery, and psychotropic drugs." During the Victorian era, clitoridectomies were performed on madwomen; although "there was no logical reason for it, other than the belief that female madness, melancholia or discontent were somehow associated with 'unnatural desires', that madness was located in the female body" As Foucault traces in Madness and Civilization, madness was seen as the threat because of the idea that it was implicit in the idea of passions, that the minds passions might be acted in the body. Thus, "madness was one of those unities in which laws were compromised, perverted, distorted -- thereby manifesting such unity as evident and established, but also as fragile and already doomed to destruction."
With the rise of modernity, industrialization, and the boom of new technologies, the idea of hysteria shifted from the belief that it was brought on by women not fulfilling their natural duty to bear children to an idea that hysteria was brought on by a surprise, jolt or shock Jean-Martin Charcot linked hysteria and modernity, he "popularized the theory that hysteria could be brought on by trauma, still rooted it in female biology, believing that although men could also suffer from hysteria, young women were more likely to be hysterics, because they were more 'impressionable', 'weaker' and subject to 'nervous attacks'." Hysteria was once again linked to the body, through skin writing. Those suffering from hysteria were thought to have a hypersensitivity in the skin. To demonstrate this condition, doctors would draw lines or patterns on the skin and then photograph it as evidence of the condition. But, "this hypersensitive skin and the practice of writing on it reinforced the idea of the hysteric's body as 'expressive'... yet what it 'expresses' are merely the whims of the doctor (they drew abstract patterns and lines or wrote the diagnosis, the patient's name, their own name, or, more unsettling still, the sign of the devil)."

Tuesday, July 27, 2004

fibres showcase


kim gordon


[Kim]To the extent that I wear skirtsand cheap nylon slipsI've gone nativeI wanted to know the exact dimension of helldoes this sound simple?Fuck you! Are you for sale?Does 'Fuck you' sound simple enough?This was the only part that turned me onbut he was candy all overcome on down to the storeyou can buy some more, and more, and more, and moreyou can buy some more, and more, and more, and moreyou can buy some more, and more, and more, and moreyou can buy some more, and more, and more, and moreI grew up in a shotgun rowsliding down the hillout front were the big machinessteel and rusty now I guessoutback was the riverand that big sign down the roadthat's where it all startedcome on down to the storeyou can buy some more, and more, and more, and morecome on down to the storeyou can buy some more, and more, and more, and morecome on down to the storeyou can buy some more, and more, and more, and moreyou can buy some more, more, more, more

Sunday, July 25, 2004

4.

when john was five years old an exhibit can to the community center called "the rise of modernism in europe and the united states". the day it opened john ran as fast as he could onhis little legs to the big white building. chloreene and ms. nettlebow dressed identically in blue navy suits with lacy frills pushing Tix in a stroller. john bought a post card of his favorite piece, "three women" by fernand leger.

fours

Monday, July 19, 2004

3.

three

once chloreene and ms. nettlebow settled into their new home, a community center was built down the road. since it was walking distance from the house, chloreene decided to open a deli in the store front to serve the newly populated area.

2.

Sunday, July 18, 2004

two

two years after the birth of john, she met ms. nettlebow. a young woman in her similar situation. as good fortune had it, chloreene's great uncle had died and left her a house. the great uncle was inclined toward another level of reality and expressed this through the design of the house. the house was uneven, with 16 different levels. at the front of the house, the great uncle built a parlor store front. soon after meeting, ms. nettlebow moved in with chloreene and john and brought her own son Tix.

Friday, July 16, 2004

one

1.

cloreene lived on a small country road lined with pine trees. around the age of 24, she gave birth to a baby. she named him john. chloreene, being a single mother, and being that she lived in a rural place where the attitude did not bend her direction, developed mechanisms for protection and defense.