Flying Fish Publishing

this is a test

it is only a test

posted by M @ 8:46 PM 42 Comments

this is a test of the feed buddy

posted by M @ 8:45 PM 0 Comments

OblaDa

He is like a glass elephant with his tusks torn off, all rattled. That's what happens to you when you live by the track I guess, all those stares creeping over the scoreboard amplified by the flashing lights, eventually you feel like the hooker that got too old and razzled to hook and so she just pretends in the mirror with nothing on but tattered pumps and a swatch.

I didn't save it. I was supposed to, my birth was for one reason. I fucked it all up -- totally.

"Comin to empty the tank" "It's about fucking time, the county inspectors been on my ass, you could smell the yard from the gas station, stronger than the petrol."

Adam just sat in the corner, wearing black and thinking about hair dye. Why couldn't anyone see him. The dog sniffed his crotch, and then licked it's own ass. All he wanted was some fucking attention, some fucking cake for crying out loud.

Adam has been saving his old brine jars for fifteen year. screwing em into his basement ceiling, whole place smells like pickled eggs, ya gotto duck down and still your back scrapes up against them, feels like their pullin your skin off, wont let go.

No one goes down there anyway. "It's your room, your own place to 'hang out' away from the smell of gasoline" Adam heard his fathers voice telling him to get the hell downstairs. It's was only an experiment; he'd done many of them.

If there was an excuse I would understand. Maybe if he was a junkie or popped them pills stayed up all night like that Daniel's boy down on PineLake, or if he spent all his time down at that track. You know what he made in shop class that last time?

Adam tried to get through, provoke some interaction, but nothing. Fear was all they had for him. He didn't save his sister, he didn't wasn't saving the marriage. He was sucking and he couldn't change it. Late at night he listened to the trains rolling along; sometimes he'd watch them, never running along. Many ends crossed his mind, but they were too involved. Adam was a lazy boy and his situation made him immobile.

"Adam, get your fucking ass up here and take out that trash, it smells like shit, find something to eat in there this time, let me have a my dinner without seeing your face for a change. and hose down that waste basket, its got them maggots crawling all over it."

The tasks weren't the problem, they were almost comforting, prideful. Lame at the same time he wanted to be momma's boy and such. Adam thought about where his father might be and wondered why his mother cursed so much these days.

"just about done here, your gonna need yourself a new septic tank soon, that one you got out there just about rusting through now, gonna have a big mess on your hands come thanksgivin. I hope you got some cash around cus I don't take no checks, they stopped cashin them down at Charlies last week."

Adam knew exactly what the conversation meant. He walked upstairs to his room just in time not to hear his mother say "you know I can pay you..."


An Eddie and The Faciliator Joint

posted by M @ 11:57 PM 1 Comments

DocTrot 21

I know by now not to worry about that shipment cause it ain't comin in. I'm thinking, maybe, mondie er (pause) tusedie. Yeah not today though. (Long pause) gonna rain today. I can smell it.

Who the fuck wrapped this box? Get Applbaum over here, he fucked it up again, how many times do I have to tell that cocksucker not to throw the packages.

Ain't really today's shipment I'm worried about. They got this new guy, Short. He's not to bright but cute. (Lights a cigarette and takes a long drag. She leaves it hanging out of her mouth.) I ain't gonna say anything cause he's cute.

Hey Short, take this thing down to storage, it's full of index cards, no wonder it's so fucking heavy.

Talkin sure ain't his thing. I asked him if they give him a hard time, cause you know that other fella hated anyone with more hair than he's got. Shoot, he started hecklin Jimmy the other day cause of his long hair. Anyway that new fella, the real cute one, I asked him if he knew if that one bald fella got fired; you know cause I was trying ta make friendly conversation so he'd stay longer. He just looked at me and handed me the signing paper. Alright's I said.

Hey, you know that new guy Sanders? They canned him. Buddy walked in on him jerkin off in the the bathroom. Turns out he's been stuffing wad loads wrapped in sandwich bags into the shipments, tying them up in rubber bands so they come undone when you open them, sick fucker got off on it.

We should really change the company we buy scones from anyway, their all willy nilly with their recipes, one day it's got icing on it, the next it's dry. Sometimes I wonder if they really should be sellin' scones and get down to the real breakfast of champions, cinnamon muffins.

Hey, where the fuck is short? that crookedeyed girl came by again today? You know, for being all off in the face, I would still put in in her, she's got a hell of an ass, looks like them cinnamon muffins your mama makes. Steamin hot just wanna take a big ol bite.

Wannna hear somethin? Cheryl comes in the other day real down, you know like somethin was botherin her, then she gets this phone call. Then she says she "forgets" to sign one of her invoices and high tails it to the shippin shop place fore anyone's the wiser. She came back whistlen and tootn her horn all day. Her breath smelled like warm icing and you know her hair was put up in a ponytail. I wonder if it's that short cute guy? He don't seem to mind much.

There's a staff meating on Tuesday, apperently they switched over to cinnamon muffins, someone in management took a dive on that. I liked them scones, usually I don't like the scones, too dry, these ones we had with the icing really hit the spot if you washed them down with some bourbon. Make sure to tell Short, the boys having been givin him a real hard time bout that crooked eyed girl, he's in the hot seat.


Eddie and the Facilitator

posted by M @ 11:04 PM 0 Comments

Story just writen by a buddy in Thailand, This one is excelent

Taking A Stand

Shahazda Gofran



I was walking back and forth in the hallway of Mahidol University, scratching my skull, my thoughts swirling,

"What if I have no job." I looked outside at the wooden cafeteria where the co-teachers had gathered around for a strike. Some of them were sitting at benches in the cafeteria and some were standing. They were wearing colorful ties and holding briefcases waiting to get paid.
I could not lose my job. When I left Bangladesh my father came to the airport to see me off and said, "Whatever happens, cling to Thailand and don't even think of coming back." Getting another job would be even more difficult. Employers from my previous interviews often frowned at my dark skin.
Inside the classroom, my students were waiting. I pulled out my cell phone and called up Elena. "I don't know what to do. Should I join the strike or continue teaching?"
She said, "There are times in our lives when we need to take a stand. Remember, whatever decisions you take, you have to live with it." Her voice was confident like a young leader who was bringing about a revolution.
It all began one summer afternoon when the director of the university Dr. Menaphan broke his promise to pay our salary on the 28th of October. He was a short and stocky man who wore thick black suit even on the hottest summer days. His irises were pink. His cheeks were spotted with pimples. He had two bodyguards with guns who wore red jackets and sunglasses all the time. They never smiled.
It had been six months when Dr. Menaphan was summoned by the teacher's union. He came rushing in his white jeep emerging out of the dusty haze of the school's front yard and halted the jeep with a hard break. We stood behind a glass framed window of his huge office and watched everything inside-out; the staff was working. The typing and electronic photocopy machine made the only sound. The jeep's tinted windshield was reflecting the dazzling sun that accentuated Menapan's authority. He was approaching the office briskly, where we were waiting to confront him.
I stood behind the teachers and could not be seen from the front. It would be safe, I thought. Dr. Menaphan came in the front and glanced at us. He immediately divided the crowd making a path toward his chamber in the corner of the office, walked inside slamming the door behind him.
Peter went inside Mehaphan's chamber. He was the shortest guy in the union. He liked to take control of any situation. He had black hair and broad forehead. He would tuck his shirt in every context even when he was cooking on weekend at home.
We could see the oval shaped table inside Menaphan's office through the transparent window. Outside, we preserved impeccable silence to hear what was going to happen. Staring at Menaphan's eyes Peter said, "we waited so long for you to pay us, but you did not. We need our money now and if we don't get paid by today, we will not teach." Dr. Menaphan stood up immediately from his chair and pounded a heavy fist on the table and said, "Get out of my office." and pointed to the door.
The office fell into complete silence as though it was a funeral. The accountant Jane looked at me and cast her eyes at the computer. Peter came out of the chamber slowly and directed us to go outside like a calm rally of ants. Everybody was marching toward the cafeteria of the school. But I snuck out of the rally. I said to one of my co-workers that I was going to the restroom, but I went to the classroom instead.
Stepping inside the classroom, I glanced across the white shirts and thin blue ties of the students. Some of them who were sitting in the front row smiled at me. Some in the middle and back rows were talking to each other and the rest were fondling their cell phones and whispers in Thai. There was a saying in Thailand that the Thais have 14 different smiles. Their tranquil black and baby looking eyes with the smile can relive the anxieties for a moment.
One student was eating chocolate vanilla ice-cream as she came to me, "Ajarn, are you going to teach us today?"
I nodded and put my bag down. I started to write something on the board, but I could not think straight. Dr. Menaphon's heavy fist remained locked in my mind and kept rewinding again and again.
If I get fired ……… Should I join the
strike….or should not…..i tapped outside the classroom ignoring the students and rang up my friend Elena for her advice.
* * * *
We desperately needed our money back. We had indebted to angry landlords, "How long will I have to wait for the rent." my landlord said to me yesterday, our cloths stacked and pilled at the laundry store near the corner of soi 19; everyday, out in the heat of the sun, my sweaty shirt stunk, eluded me from the luxury of life, soon the municipality would cut our electric and water supplies, I stayed at home during the weekend and having dinner at a
fancy restaurant was a fantasy. "I was never late to my class. Then, why do I have to wait for my salary." I thought many times.
I shared the apartment with Peter. He was an American dead beat dad, taught ESL at Mahidol. I went to his room and knocked softly at his door. It was 12:00 at night I knew he must have
been reading books. He opened the door, "Oh Mr. Ae, come in." As we went on and on talking about the strike, he said to me, "You young people don't understand doing the right thing." He paused with a sigh. Looking at my eyes steadily, he said, "Old age is regret and guilt. But if you do the right things when you were young, even if you failed to achieve what you wanted, you can still say: I did the right thing. I was not afraid. Listen Ae, We gottaa get Menaphan out of the university."
Then he went to his little bookshelf near by the wall and looked for a book. He came close to me with a book that had no title on the cover page. Holding the book he said, "I know what they mean. It has been fifty years that I have taken it everywhere I moved." He dropped it on the table. It had hard binding. On the spine, in bold faced letters "THE BIBLE" that hadn't faded yet, but it had wrinkles and scratches all over it. The papers were curved and dusty. The weight was as heavy as a rock. I brought the Bible close to my nose; I tried to guess its age. As I put the book on the table with a sigh, Peter said, "There is a reason for everything. God has sent us here and we must get Menaphan out."
Let me tell you some other teachers who were part of the story in some way. Paul. He was from UK. He was pretty popular to his female students. His voice was too soft and he was known chocolate. He was young obviously. The youngest of all. He would not wear the same tie again in the same week. He said to me at a teacher's meting when I was not being convinced to go on strike with them, "Ajarn Ae, we are fighting for a principle here. We can't let the guy
exploiting us." Paused. "Come on man! Do you think Menaphan cares for you or the students?" before Paul finished, from my back I head another voice came, "Menaphan knows only how to make more money." I turned, it was Michael who was from Germany. He taught business communication. His got a Thai girlfriend who was everything to him. Michael had failed many times to his girlfriend to keep his promise to buy a house. There were planning to get married soon and he would never wear a tie at work even if it was a policy of Mahidol.
Robin was from Canada. She worked in British airways for twenty-eight years and teaching was hardly a profession to her. She wanted to keep herself busy with doing something. Thought she never missed any of her airline business classes. The students loved her because she took the time to explain concepts in the corner of the library late in the evening. She was always on time. She would say to her students, "You must be on time, if you want to work in airline industry."
She had a baby and old mother.
Her mother had a bad blood disease that needed blood changing every forth month. There was no cure for the disease. It required 10,000 Bath worth medicine each week. Now it'd been three weeks that Robin had been lying to her old mother, "The drug store had ran out of the medicine and the medicine had been ordered from Switzerland."
* * * * *
When I finished talking to Elena, I grabbed my cell phone and squeezed it in my palm and walked out of the hallway to the cafeteria. I looked at my fancy shoes that had gone through muddy and dusty gravel that I bought from MBK a few days ago. As I reached the cafeteria, I pulled out a chair and sat. Looking at the teachers I said softly, "That's it man, we are all gonna be fired today." I grabbed the handle of the chair tight and my Knuckles whitened.
I felt a sharp pinch and noticed the ruff edges of the chair had sliced my elbow like a razor blade. But I clinched my teeth and turned and looked around the teachers. Everybody was looking at me with suspicions and did not pay attention and went back to their discussion.
"We are doing the right thing." said peter looking at the teachers. We should have done it
last month, Michael said from the other side of the table. Paul said to me, "Ae, what are you doing hear? Go and teach the students!!. You don't have to do this with us." I felt a heavy rejection settled around me and I do not belong here. Peter was sitting by me. He looked at me quietly as though he was observing an animal first time in life. While everybody was talking about their grievance, Michael asked me, "Coffee or tea?" I took the coffee cup from him and sipped. It was bitter as black beer and I wanted to throw up. There was no sugar in it. The hot sun created an aching sensation in my head. I looked at Michael and saw him smoking. "Hey I didn't know you smoke." I said out loud with a surprising voice to get his attention from the discussion. "I do when I am stressed." He said as he was listening to Robin. Michael's fingers were shaky and the cigarette felt on the gravel and she took it up and started to smoke it again. Robin was talking about a strike in the late
80s when British Airways had loss of $500,000,000 and gave most of the demands that the labor union had.
Meanwhile, the academic director Nook came to negotiate a deal. Nook was chubby. He tucked his blue shirt in, but his stomach came out over the belt. He was out of breath once in a while. He had to take a breath twice in the middle of a sentence. He barely said, "Please go and teach. We will
manage to pay your money by the end of next week." Paul said almost immediately, as he lifted his right arm, "Why can't you pay us now?" "Listen, go and tell your boss to pay us now. We are not going to teach until we are paid." Said peter.
Nook walked back to the office to talk to Menaphan. I was looking at my watch and wished the time
had freezed until the dispute was over. I looked at my watch again and again. It was 12:20 already. The students had waited for 20 minutes. And if Dr. Menaphan found out that I did not teach and joined the strike, I knew for sure that I would be fired. Then I won't have a house to live and food to survive and visa to stay in Thailand. "No, I can't do that." I thought.
I said to peter whispering in his ear, "I gotta go to the restroom."
Pretending it was argent. I walked out of the cafeteria and reached the classroom. But the class was empty. I went to the table and pulled my chair, sat and put both my hands on my head and run my fingers through my hair. I felt a drop of sweat trickled down in my back. After awhile, I pull myself up and walked back to my office. I could not care much now. Whatever happens, it's already too much for a day.
It was four. I was preparing to get back home. Putting my flash drive and books in the bag. My phone rang. It was Paul.

"Hey Ae, good news. We got paid. You too man!"

"Oh really!" I said imitating as though it was a great victory. And I felt wired and sighed and went to the finance office. The
accountant took my signature on a piece of paper and handed me 97,500 baht. I looked at the cash and put it inside my pocket. The money did not fit my pocket. I split it up and put it in both pockets.
I came back home and put the money on the bed and looked at it. Looked and imagined how could I spend it, a digital camera and a lap top computer. And then…. Again I would find myself right where I had began.
----------------------0-------------------

posted by flyingfish @ 9:11 PM 4 Comments

Tabu, Culture, Performance Art, Webster University - St.Louis MO

Premise
When talking about his work, performance artist Stelarc refers to himself as "the body." He does so to separate his medium (body) from his conceptual functions. He sees the body as a vehicle through which he can express his ideas much like a painter uses paint mediums to create a painting on a support (be it canvas, paper...). A painting exists as a painting with or without an audience. If a painting is made and then destroyed, it had still existed as such. Unlike a painting, a performance piece uses an audience as a support, whoever that audience may be. The piece then becomes tangled with social phenomenology. Therefore, a successful performance piece demands the kind of attention that allows it to utilize systems or contemporary mythologies. In much the same way, for our purposes here, I will refer to myself at times in the 3rd person as "the artist."
Cultural Context
I was not born in the United States; I had immigrated here with my family when I was in grade school. At that point in my life, I didn't have the capacity to consciously understand culture shock, cultural identity, moral relativism, and how to deal with shifting worldviews. I would ask my parents not to speak Russian in the grocery store because their deviation from the norm had embarrassed me. Due to circumstance, my first year of confrontation with American culture had been spent in Toledo, Ohio. Besides our family, there where 3 others that had immigrated from the former U.S.S.R., and as small communities go, and this was the smallest, the families where not on speaking terms with one another. Anyway, I didn't have the opportunity to be amongst pears till my family moved to St.Louis. It wasn't till recently, that is the past 3 or 4 years, that I had begun to actually contextualize my cultural identity and replaying what impact Diaspora had on me and how cultural differences affect social response. The catalyst for these realizations was a series of sojourns to Southeast Asia and Central America where "the other" began to make sense contextually. My initial observations in the U.S. had led me to several conclusions; they may be obvious but bear with me.
The first of these was that almost all my early perceptions of American culture in Toledo where directly or indirectly rooted in media saturation. My images of body, sexuality, social propriety, proper dress, and proper food... came from television. At first, I had assumed that this was because I lacked the capacity to communicate with what seemed to be my peers. Eventually, reflection had led me to conclude that all boys and girls in this country had developed their sensibilities from the same source. Even in those rare cases where parental involvement was a major factor, generally speaking, the parents themselves where just an indirect transmitter for those mediated sensibilities. Now, culture did of course very immensely but what was generally a constant was that images where always distributed through mediated sources.
One thing in particular was intriguing; the way the body was treated. It is of course not unreasonable to assume that the image of the body had followed the path of least resistance as prescribed by the free market and in that context, it was an understandable treatment of the image, but when I considered this image objectively, its treatment had bothered me. The body was over sexualized and romantic sexuality was tabularized. The image of Greek-like, perfectly sculpted, almost naked bodies in shampoo commercials on the one hand, and overwhelming conservatism about things that in Russia and Europe, i.e. nude beaches, bath house... where completely demystified and desexualized.
When I was about thirteen, a story had broken on the news. On the east coast, a woman was arrested for photographing her 5 year old and three year old in the back yard without there clothes on. My parents had hundreds of these photographs, of both me and my sister. Every Russian family did. It was beyond the wildest dreams of anyone of us that these photographs could have been exploited by the children’s own mother. This was not the case at all, they where just innocent photographs completely misconstrued by certain members of society.
On Russian beaches, girls did not wear tops till they where ten or eleven and in many cases older. They where given the opportunity to have a childhood that lasted till that age. I have a niece of 10, when she was 7 years old; she had decided to go on a diet. She felt she was too fat, (the girl's weight was 60 lb). My initial instinct was to assume that the girl must need some attention, that she has self esteem issues; maybe a psychologist should have been called. That wasn’t the case at all, this dietary notion was popularized amongst the majority of her pears and she was just following the trend like kids everywhere do. After a little time allotted for ignoring it carefully, she stopped her diet and went back to jumping around on the trampoline, but she did of course have positive role models that refused to reward psychologically damaging behavior.
During my travels in Asia, it had been noted (admittedly generalizing) that American men where notably homophobic and obsessed with homosexuality at the same time. Many other cultures have become accustomed to far more physical contact amongst the same sex. American men will become very uncomfortable with touching other men beyond a brief handshake, with things like sharing taxis or whatever else. At the same time, many of them tend to seem like there obsessed with the process of engaging in joking with one another implicative of repressed homosexual fantasy. It seems as if those common and completely innocent gestures such as brushing up against somebody or sharing a crowded taxi seem to personify some kind of homosexual association and trigger an immediate response. Essentially, non sexual gestures are sexualized.
Motivations
As an artist it is my prerogative to evolve my observations so as to produce a body of work. Throughout my time here, my work has been very diverse. I started as a painter and through the evolution of thought and action, have turned to performance art and video as my medium. These choices had been perpetuated by an interaction with certain events and inferences in art history. The details are too extensive to go into so unfortunately the following explanation will lack a desirable breadth but I feel will communicate the general ideas.
The first of these is an event is Corbet's Origin of the World, (1866).

The painting depicts female reproductive anatomy in a realistic stile. The painting is sold to an individual who exhibits it to an all male audience, keeping it behind a curtain. The painting itself isn’t very interesting to me. The female anatomy has been used as an object of art for thousands of years and pornography has been around just as long as art; but this is the first case I discovered in my research that has blurred the lines so beautifully, Corbet a painter of prominence and prestige and the painting so obviously being put to provocative use, the ambiguity of how to place that particular painting is an important notion for me reflecting on how art relates to image and to culture.
In 1918, George Grosz walks down the Kurfuestendamm in Berlin dressed as DADA Death,

referring of course to the artistic movement. Performance Art develops over the century and evolves from a reactionary artistic notion into a canonized medium through which to express ideas. By the 60s, performance art is generally accepted as a completely valid form of artistic expression by most art historians and by the academy.
1974, Joseph Beuys visits America for the first time. He is intending to perform "I Love America and America Loves Me" in a New York gallery. His intention is to spend a five days interacting with an American.

As he steps out of the airport, he is met by an ambulance which promptly takes him to the gallery where he spends five days interacting with a coyote. After the fact, he gets in an ambulance and leaves the country. Beuys finds a way to communicate with the land and its ancestry without leaving New York. He also manages to negate any social interaction with and people who call themselves "Americans".
1997, Oleg Kulik visits America for the first time. The prominent Russian artist says "I'm afraid of America; I fear that it might turn me into an animal...That's why I turn my inevitable defeat into a gesture, into a performance." In "I Bite America America Bites Me,"

Kulik spends two weeks acting like a dog. Beuys came to America acting like a human interacting with animalistic but noble representation of America, Kulik confronts America scared, angry, naked, and animalistic.
A Social Experiment
I connected with Kulik’s work. I have been performing as a way to understand and interact since Toledo, though I didn't think of it that way at the time. I have done a great many performances with body and with confronting culture. For about three years, I have been conducting a social experiment in which I go out to a populated, neutral, public place with an unzipped fly and what appears to be scrotum like flesh hanging out. I would walk around seemingly unaware of this detail and note peoples reactions. Most people respond with awkward laughter, amused by this exposure but not wanting to offend, they swallow their emotions and try to keep a straight face. Many never notice. Many will do a double take. No one in the history of the experiment has ever told me that my fly was down, ever. Before I had decided to do the experiment, I had made the provision that, in case someone would be courteous enough to inform me of my absent-mindedness, I would zip up and never perform the experiment again, to date it has never happened.
The subject of the experiment is awkwardness itself. It has to do with confronting cultural taboos concerning the body and the awkwardness most people feel with having non rehearsed interactions with others. In 1970, Vito Acconci performed his "Proximity Piece" in which a piece of paper hung on a gallery wall. When patrons of the gallery would look at the contents, the artist would stand uncomfortably close to the patrons and would get closer and closer until he incited a reaction at which point he would describe the reaction and the time frame in writing on the piece of paper hanging on the wall. In 1969, Valie Export performed "Action Pants."
A piece in which the artist walks through the aisles of a crowded movie theater with her crotch area cut out of her pants exposing her genitals. Similarly, in a piece by Marina Abramovic and Ulay, the two stand facing each other at the entrance of a room forcing passersby to turn to one side in order to get through, having to interact directly with either a female or male body.

At the Webster University Career Fair, I was performing the experiment and after completing a conversation regarding employment with Sarah Lee and leaving the career fair, I was informed that the police where called. The perspective employer had taken offense to it and not only attached a sexual connotation to the action but had perceived a full exposure, suggesting that suspension of disbelieve had created an image of the whole sexual organ instead of an abstraction, a flesh like protrusion representing a single left testicle. Since the interaction was completely void of any sexual inference and since the reaction of the individual was strong enough to call the police, it is assumed by the artist that the individual had an unexpected and improbable bias to the situation. The result was the evolution of a social experiment to a full fledged performance piece. The artist was arrested and held for a substantial amount of time without charge because the police could not decide the most appropriate charge to book the artist with.
It turns out that the artist was charged with a sex crime. My pears have observed that had this incident involved a woman exposing herself such as Valie Export, the attitude towards the action might have been a bit different. Also, had the police know or had the impression that the fleshy protrusion was not flesh but a sculptural item; they would not be able to legally charge the artist with indecent exposure, regardless, the artist was arrested do to a single complaint. The performance piece became a study of perception, social reaction, and administrative response. It became a reflection on how an image could be exactly the same but how the narrative surrounding the image could drastically affect the impact of that image. It illuminated the extreme taboos associated with non-sexualized images of the body. It reflected how the perception of an image could entice fantasy and intense guilt and fear. It brought into the focus of a mediated lenses, the importance of incidentals in administration.
Ambiguity in Documentation and Cultural Perception
Walid Raad is the artist responsible for the Atlas Group Archives. He has exhibited at the most recent Venice Biennale and Documenta 11 and is a professor at the Cooper Union. He has exhibited the notebooks of Dr. Fadl Fakhouri, prominent historian of the Lebanese Civil War. The notebooks present cutouts of cars and descriptions of their engines, axles, VIN numbers, and a plethora of other absolutely incidental details.

These cars represent car bombs detonated during the Lebanese Civil War. The honorable doctor is a fictional character but the narrative itself creates the body of the work. In Raad's video "I Think It Would Be Better If I Could Weep," a narrative is presented in which the fictional Operator #17

is assigned a surveillance camera to be mounted on his food stall pointing in the direction of the main avenue. When the sun sets, he re-directs the camera toward the ocean breaking from the extreme violence of the Lebanese War to record the sunset. This narrative transforms a seemingly cliché video of the sunsets into a subtle commentary on the Lebanese Civil War with much broader global implications involving truth and perception, narrative and mythology, humanity and violence.
Similarly, artist Chris Ofili addresses controversy itself as the subject of his Turner Prize winning painting, "The Virgin Mary."

As part of a very controversial 1996 exhibition involving the group known as the Young British Artists, Chris Ofili exhibited this painting of the Virgin Mary painted with elephant dung. The painting had become instantly controversial so much so that New York authorities had threatened to censor the work. An explained was provided that asserting that elephant dung was used as a matter of venerating the Virgin referring to several African cultures that held elephant dung in high esteem and even as a divine substance. He was of course well aware of the controversy that it would cause and by considering all these cultural and social elements, had brought the ambiguity of interpretation itself to be the subject of the work.
A Reflection
A successful Art Piece is always performed with intent, mindfulness, and a sense of the absolutely deliberate. A performance piece is subject to all those things but also, due to the nature of the medium, relies heavily on improvisation. A social experiment confronting awkwardness and body then suddenly becomes implicative of censorship and substantive perception. It may result in cultural reflection or president. It may narrate itself and paint its shadows thick in mediated reflection. It may be dismantled like "Tilted Ark." It may offend a few people, but at the end, we are all in it together, globally evolving. That evolution includes visionaries and reactionaries, artists and postal workers and clerics and the entire spectrum of human experience.
I had gone through allot of suffering and confusion in trying to find a cultural identity, now I feel as if I can firmly say that I am an American, and as such, I take upon myself the responsibility of actively participating in our collective cultural evolution, a privilege that is only allotted to me in this culture and no other. As a student of life, I will always grow in discovering vehicles of evolution that cause as little tearing as possible but for now, I am only a student.
Unfortunately, do to this action, I am also being confronted by my institution and asked to go through an administrative disciplinary process. In the end, institutional censorship represses our collective evolution. Events like this should not be me with disciplinary administrative reaction but with critical discourse. What is essential is that an open dialog within thought an action stay and open dialog, and that academic institutions that claim to perpetuate culture progress allow that to happen without threatening this dialog. We need to look at these events and talk about their implications involving narrative and cultural taboos, not burry those notions. Please, take it upon yourselves to keep this dialog open and leave me any comments, or question you may have regarding this.

Thank you for your attention and consideration.
Misha Sulpovar
Flyingfishstl@yahoo.com

posted by flyingfish @ 12:45 AM 1 Comments