Shirin Neshat, Shahrnush Parsipur: Women Without Men

We went to a screening of Shirin Neshat's Women Without Men at the CUNY Graduate Center last night. After the film Neshat discussed her adaptation with Shahrnush Parsipur, the author of the original book. When it was first published in 1990, Parsipur was arrested and imprisoned for writing about Iranian women in a non-traditional way. It's a magic realist novella, and the film is almost more an extended piece of video art—incredibly beautiful and effective ways of dealing with difficult political issues. You can stream the entire film for four dollars. It's really worth watching. Keep it in mind for your next movie night!

Bread and Bacon

I don't 'cook' so much as 'heat up' these days—my current kitchen leaves much to be desired and I always feel painfully short on both time and money. Also, my landlord/roomate is a vegitarian and doesn't want meat cooked in the house. But I recently had the opportunity to house sit at a beautiful place in Hell's Kitchen so I decided to celebrate my birthday a week early and have a dinner party. In one of our classes we'd just finished reading The Banquet Years, which is a history of Avant Garde poets/artists/composers in Paris, so I thought I'd run with the French banquet theme and make some beef bourguignon (which basically consists of fat and wine—never quite grasped that before making it myself, but this explains why it is one of the tastiest foods ever created.) This all gave me a reason to visit some of the amazing little Italian food shops in my area.

First off, G. Esposito’s & Sons Jersey Pork Store for the bacon and beef. It's almost 100 years old and obviously a local hangout. While I was waiting for them to trim and cube my beef (yay!) I had time to take loads of pictures, and I couldn't help but overhear quite a lot of the conversation, part of which, no exaggeration, went like this (w/ heavy brooklyn accent—think Staying Alive): "You don't know. You don't even know how long he wouldn't talk to me for. He was so mad. But I was like, 'Dad, you have a son called Frank. You have two grandsons called Frank. How many Franks do you need??'' —on the fact that he didn't name his son after his father.

Just in case you forgot what you were eating...

This one will haunt your nightmares to punish you for your carnivorous ways...

Then, Caputo Bakery—which is 108 years old—to get an epic loaf of bread for mopping up fat and wine. The lady behind the counter took the time, unsolicited and in a motherly way, to tell me how to get the ink from a recently exploded pen off my fingers. Service and then some!

That gap there was where my loaf was :)

And finally, F. Monteleone Bakery and Cafe, who make anything you can imagine out of marzipan. I went in for an espresso and cannoli, but couldn't resist some little choux pastry swans. They seemed so French and banquet-y.

This one small shopping trip made me feel so much more connected to the people and the history of the area I'm living in right now. If only a girl could live off of bacon and choux pastry...

I'll post pictures from the dinner itself soon. 

Disorientation.

William Turner, Approach to Venice, 1843

I'm working on so many things at once right now, it's awfully confusing. The inside of my head looks something like this:

"Furthermore, this separation in space will facilitate the independent action of each performer, who, not constrained by the performance of a part which has been extracted from a score, has turned his mind in a direction of no matter what eventuality. There is the possibility when people are crowded together that they will act like sheep rather than nobly. That is why separation in space is spoken of as facilitating independent action on the part of each performer." -Cage / "The so-called video image is actually a shimmering energy pattern of electrons vibrating in time. The fabric of the image needs to be in a constant state of motion in order to exist, a modern embodiment of Buddha’s dictum that “all existence is change.” The electronic image is not fixed to any material base and, like our DNA, it has become a code that can circulate freely to any container that will hold it, defying death as it travels at the speed of light." -Viola / "If we consider the works in their untouched actuality and do not deceive ourselves, the result is that the works are naturally present as are things. The picture hangs on the wall like a rifle or a hat. A painting, e.g, the one by Van Gogh that represents a pair of peasant shoes, travels from one exhibition to another. Works of art are shipped  like coal from the Ruhr and logs from the Black Forest. During the First World War Holderlin's hymns were packed in the soldier's knapsack together with the cleaning gear. Beethoven's quartets lie in the storerooms of the publishing houses like potatoes in a cellar." -Heidegger / How paintings smell: William Turner, Approach to Venice, 1843—Spices, unbathed faces, bolts of fog-damp wool, bundles of dew-soaked peacock tails, fish guts, indefinite wafts of hot and elaborate pastry. -Me


Which of course all leads to procrastination, like this.

My Morning in Obssesive Detail

This morning I got a coffee, studied at the library for a bit, and then went to class. Not particularly exciting, but it was an absolutely gorgeous day and the city was looking especially good, which prompted me to pull out the camera. The sudden flood of vitamin D seems to have affected my shutter finger... so you can now visually retrace my morning in granular detail....

My Very First Painting

ever/since I took highschool art.

It was meant to be grisaille. Oh well. (It doesn't take much other-coloured paint to make black and white not grey!)