How many imaginary dialogues with dead poets have you had lately? Multidisciplinary artist Félicia Atkinson recently orchestrated an experimental performance in dialogue with Francis Ponge’s “The Candle (La Bougie)” from his collection Le Parti Pris des Choses (Siding with Things) at ISSUE Project Room in Brooklyn. An incantation of sorts, Atkinson’s sonic dreamscapes are haunting … Continue reading
“It was the opposite of nihilism, it was more a case of too much care-ism,” quipped my friend as we stepped out onto Park Avenue, having just been exposed to Australian director Simon Stone’s adaptation of Yerma, based on Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca’s play of the same name, which debuted in 1934. … Continue reading
New Zealand-born, NYC-based artist Jess Johnson’s recent exhibition Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost at Jack Hanley Gallery was a maximalist installation in which analog met digital, whereby her drawings were translated into virtual reality. Filthy Dreams’s Jessica Caroline chats to Johnson about her hyper-psychedelic theme park of cyber bodies in both unison and discord: … Continue reading
Carol Rama has a few favorite colors. The one she likes best is black. And brown. And red. Black being the color that prepares one for death, sets one at ease with it. It is also the color of the wedding dress she made. It is the color of her darker side, yet also the … Continue reading
“Often, he runs his hands over the work, tempted as to whether it is flesh or ivory, not admitting it to be ivory. he kisses it and thinks his kisses are returned; and speaks to it; and holds it, and imagines that his fingers press into the limbs, and is afraid lest bruises appear from … Continue reading
As the art fair parties on Miami Beach raged on ad nauseum last week, I found myself experiencing a much more subtle level of repulsion at the new Seventeen Gallery space on the Bowery in New York, watching artist Marianna Simnett having her voice box injected with Botox in her modern parable titled The Needle … Continue reading
Our experience of bodies resides along a spectrum of envy and repulsion. René Girard observed that tragedies and comedies alike are driven by mimetic desire, a contagious wanting that drives all social relations. Girard articulated that the repression of envy is the real repression of our time. Desire for a kind of knowing and mastery … Continue reading
Here is a non-definitive list of experimental emerging composers cutting it up in New York, making departures from tradition and leading us down tainted détournements of sound. This semi-competent list is made for those of you, like me, that consider yourselves utter rookies who may have tried playing the recorder for a hot half-second in school before giving up. Continue reading