Saturday, November 29, 2008
IKEA products make you gay
Tony Grew wrote an interesting article about IKEA's new catalogue in Poland and some local reactions. You never know when the catalogue is printed in your country and how people will react on it. But Poland is ridiculous at this point. I am boycotting any Polish products because of their boycott and I think I will buy some IKEA items next week even if i don't need any but just to piss off the Catholic church:
Catholics in Poland are boycotting IKEA because its catalogue features pictures of same-sex couples. National newspapers and news websites have covered the story and the concerns of some religious people that the Swedish company is "trampling" on Christian concepts of family.
"I would not like to cease doing shopping in IKEA but if the firm does not stop promoting homosexual relationships, I will, unfortunately, feel compelled to do so and I will notify about it all the people I know so that they do the same," one Catholic woman wrote.
IKEA has defended its advertising and has refused to respond to the boycott.
"Homosexuality is one of the essential elements of living in contemporary society," said IKEA spokesperson Karolina Horoszczak.
The boycott is being led by Fronda.pl website: "Treating single-sex relationships on a par with married couples is impermissible," said Grzegorz Górny, the editor-in-chief of Fronda.
"IKEA's publication is a promotion of a particular style of living, which does not deserve public propagation. This is connected with the strategy of accustoming people to homosexual relationships and then of legalising such relationships. This is done to establish their picture in society as equal and then to legalise them."
This is nothing new, IKEA had this sort of problems in US already: In 2007 the American Family Association (AFA) accused the Swedish furniture retailer of trying to force a liberal, "homosexuality-affirming" world view on US consumers through advertising. The association, who claim to promote "traditional family values," said IKEA routinely promote gay lifestyles.
The ad showed a gay male couple playing on the floor with their young daughter. As they lean back against their IKEA sofa, a voiceover says: "Why shouldn't sofas come in flavours, like families?"
Some Polish politicians are among the most homophobic in Europe.
A gay parent who is in a sexual relationship should have their children taken from them, according to a member of the governing Civil Platform party.
Stefan Niesiolowski, who is a deputy Speaker of the Polish parliament, told a TV audience in June that same-sex families are abnormal and described lesbian couples with children as a "serious pathology."
Former Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski and his twin brother, Lech Kaczynski, the current President, caused controversy within the LGBT community for their anti-gay stance.
The pair banned several gay pride marches in the country and on a state visit to Ireland at the beginning of this year Lech Kaczynski said that the promotion of homosexuality would lead to the eventual destruction of the human race.
Poland was widely mocked last year when it was revealed that Ewa Sowinska, a government-appointed children rights watchdog, said she would ask psychologists to advise if the Teletubbies' camp antics could affect children.
"I noticed [Tinky Winky] has a lady's purse, but I didn't realise he's a boy," she said. "At first I thought the purse would be a burden for this Teletubby. . . Later I learned that this may have a homosexual undertone."
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Banksy's Pet Store and Charcoal Grill in New York
Banksy: "New Yorkers dont care about art, they care about pets. So Im exhibiting them instead. I wanted to make art that questioned our relationship with animals and the ethics and sustainability of factory farming, but it ended up as chicken nuggets singing. I took all the money I made exploiting an animal in my last show and used it to fund a new show about the exploitation of animals. If its art and you can see it from the street, I guess it could still be considered street art."
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Two Romanian performances in Budapest
I went last week to two shows from a shabby theatre from Bucharest that i would never think of attending in a local situation. But my subject re-position, on the margins of Romanian culture, made me curious about what these awful Romanians with their horrible theatre culture have to say. Last week i had a great feeling: to be detached from a culture that is stuck in pre-1968 epistemology that is, first of all, vomited on stage.
But about the two shows and their complete opposition:
One was made without a director, specially fit for 2 old actors unable to move and get out of their emplois. The rest of the actors on stage were simply there, no acting involved, always ready to give a line or to create a situation for their two decrepit stars in order to produce the big joke that everyone in the audience was crazy about. Disgusting shite. The worst part besides the first-year acting school cliches was their usage of a famous Russian play that brings public for sure. One of my all time favourite plays with so many insights and dark complicated parts was transformed into a cheap slapstick comedy with no characters whatsoever, just 2 dead actors on stage, and dead in a Peter Brook way.
The situation changed for the next show: a Hungarian play staged by a Hungarian hysteric male director with a strong creative standpoint. Same company, that he was telling me about after the play: "Isn't it amazing that i manage to do it here?" The performance was a mise-en-scene in the most sincere way: in a Butlerian way, Bocsardi shows the fake of heterosexual matrix, nothing more than an act played by some actors who don't know what they act but they have to play for an audience with patriarchal expectations. Impossibility of representation, relation spectator-performer, end of narration, dilating the performing body, the character as abjection and many more ideas are explored in this small show. One of the best directors that I've seen for last years.
I wanted to read some reviews after the show and it was oh so predictable: Romanian critics crushed the show in their specific style, their Christian rightist instincts never lie. And they are true in pushing this show on the margins: it is definitely dangerous for their theatrical milieu. the most apprecieted part was the moment when the Actress has a long monologue on showing her love and affection for the Actor, the place where the matrix is shown just in order to be deconstructed and proven empty later. The critics got only this moment of expressing "noble feelings" in an old acting school way and that's everything they enjoyed in the show. That was for me the moment where I felt the tension in a special way: they started well they can't ended in this patriarchal manner. I was hoping that the show will go on. And it did. Just in order to show that it is just acting, that they can fool you, that there is nothing behind, the stage is empty, no essentialist oppressions are hidden there and are just shown, acted out, put on display, not lived. And the last scene worked perfect in this sense: the dead characters were all the time on stage in their coffins, they are killed once more by the actor, in a gesture that proves their emptiness, a lack of flesh, a lack of corporeality, just full body masks.
Damn right: Death to the characters!
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Art is not for kids. Only in Australia so far
If you were not shocked by the kiddy porn depicted by the image above I am sure you can be shocked by what is going on in Australia right now.
Alison Croggon, a writer from Australia covers the case of the photographer Bill Henson. He provoked a huge controversy when he had an exhibition with some nude images of a 13-year-old girl. His work were confiscated by the Australian police and the debates were similar to the famous Romanian pink pony case. Even if, as in the Romanian case, New South Wales Department of Public Prosecutions recommended that no charges should be made and the Office of Film and Literature Classification declared the images "mild and justified" and gave them a PG rating some fucked effects are coming out now.
So, the Australian story continues: the Labor Party proposes some new laws in reaction to the case, with a generous purpose of protecting the kids from being indecently represented in the arts. It is not only about photographs but about the depiction of those under 18 in any medium – painting, performance, literature and so on. I hope Eastern European politicians won't get inspired and forbid all plastic toys, crosses, violent scenes and other evil ingredients in art. But seriously, the image of the child is used once more for other political purposes than protecting someone: control, surveillance and total censorship.
Jeanne is back
Jeanne is in Germany now and she has a blog. Check it out here. I always liked her style of writing and now she is here with some fresh and captivating stuff. I hope she won't get bored too quick...
There is also a post about Jehanne Complex, a post that is full of memories for me. It was really amazing to work on this performance, to construct it step by step, to talk a lot, rehearse and drink coffees together for hours and hours. And I really miss that type of chemistry. The post goes like this:
"Retrospective Thoughts on Jehanne Complex
2 November 2008
The repeated rehearsing of something does not lead to lack of catharsis with each performance. This I learned clearly. The throwing of everything up and down again. Giving. Self-obsession or self–entrenchment again and again. But, it is also investment FOR people, as well as a self-congratulations. (Initial inspiration and motives, in the end, are perhaps not so important.)
First scene: “My name is Jeanne, and I’ve just eaten a hamburger.” Black men’s suit, tie, shoes and skull cap with white button-down shirt. I carry a Burger King meal bag containing a whopper, French fries, a coke and a Heinz ketchup bottle. I walk around the stage, staring at the audience suspiciously, after closing the white curtains making up the stage’s backdrop. Meditative, Middle-Eastern-sounding music comes on and I remove my shoes and meditate. After I can relax and control my breathing, I emerge from my meditation and begin to unpack the meal bag. I spread a lot of ketchup over the whopper, set out the French fries and coke, and begin to eat. I always ate three big bites of the burger (it affected my digestion).
Second scene: Microphone “Close to the town where I was born, there is a tree known as the ladies’ tree. It’s a great beech tree, centuries old. In the shade of its branches, there is a spring. In the month of Mary, children decorate the branches of the ladies’ tree with garlands. They sit beside the spring and eat together. I did that with my friends, but I never saw or heard tell of dwarfs or any other creatures of the devil… God’s voices haunt me. They never do leave me in peace. They are constantly encouragin’ and pushin’ me.” The microphone has ghosts that trick me. I speak into one and the other one produces sound. My voice is manipulated and distorted…a sort of comedy.
Third scene: Shaving The legs, like a girl, then the face, like a boy. Jehanne was sexually ambiguous with no period bleeding and breasts, and a mission from “God”. I contemplatively shave one calf in silence…getting some shaving cream on my chin, I begin to rub it along my jaw. Gospel song of “Run on for a long, long time…” I felt like a hero preparing for battle. Like Jehanne before leading an army. But then, my tormentors arrive…"
Brecht – The Hardcore Machine at MU Theatre Budapest
A few words about Dunapart and the performing arts platform: a huge personal disappointment. An awful crowd, snobbish fancy dressed theatre goers and critics, talking some disgusting French, probably just for the beautiful intonations, claiming the last pantheon of being bourgeois: the experimental theatre.
I went to see one show that was so promising: Brecht the Hardcore Machine from Andras Urban Company, based on Brecht’s Buckow Elegies. It had its premiere last year in
And more they say: “Labour. Starvation. Sex. Power. Fun. Class struggle is not dead.” Not to mention the goody goody focus on the body of actors, very third theatre style. Very Barbaesque. Very exciting. The first feeling that something is fishy about this show was when I entered the small MU and I saw an awful exhibition a la bible belt post-feminism with pop art playmates spreading messages like “Dworkin and Queer are Dead”. Nothing to do with the show one might say. Not really I say. A show for me cannot exist outside the space of the performance, the artists’ usage of spectators with their breaths, their bodies, their nicely combed hair and their greedy eyes. And this public was just horrible. Together with the unfit space of MU for such a show.
Continuing with the show: beautiful ideas, generous attempts, ingenious solutions, hard working actors but a limited vision, a shitty director shitting his pants, not leaving the actors think with their bodies and dilate them just for the sake of some shitty fixed images, weak scenes and a personal gratification. And no hysterical creativity here. Trying to tell a retro-political revue they ended up with the most horrible clichés that made me feel embarrassed. But on the other hand, the commodification of Brecht is not new-fangled and it doesn’t have to be subtle all the time. Maybe the good news is that Brecht sells and is sold again and these guys proved it once again. Because as good ol’ Brecht said “What is theatre if not a night of good entertainment?”
Like Arpad Schilling after this bitter taste performance, I ended up dreaming of a theatre made in the forest where no one dares to come. Or like Tadeusz Kantor to secretly dream of all artists dropping dead.
Monday, November 17, 2008
again about organs
But they surprise the subversion by stupidity of this ad: the phantasy in front of their eyes is a phantasy of death, a deadly person who is not a perfect whole body, she is made of organs that are not so healthy after all. Her organs eat other organs in a mayhem-organ-orgy. And she depends on the generosity of some anonymous donors that gets only one image coming from The Realm of the Senses: the teenager pornconsumer dreaming about his jerking off organ being cut off and put inside her. The monstruous woman, aparently pop culturally appealing but hiding a vagina dentata, strikes again. Where are the good-old pin-up gals from the 50s?
Post-election American attitudes
From California to Maine, police have documented a range of alleged crimes, from vandalism and vague threats to at least one physical attack. Insults and taunts have been delivered by adults, college students and second-graders.
There have been "hundreds" of incidents since the election, many more than usual, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate crimes.
One was in Snellville, Ga., where Denene Millner said a boy on the school bus told her 9-year-old daughter the day after the election: "I hope Obama gets assassinated." That night, someone trashed her sister-in-law's front lawn, mangled the Obama lawn signs, and left two pizza boxes filled with human feces outside the front door, Millner said.
Potok, who is white, said he believes there is "a large subset of white people in this country who feel that they are losing everything they know, that the country their forefathers built has somehow been stolen from them."
Grant Griffin, a 46-year-old white Georgia native, expressed similar sentiments: "I believe our nation is ruined and has been for several decades and the election of Obama is merely the culmination of the change.
"If you had real change it would involve all the members of (Obama's) church being deported," he said.
A black president is "the most profound change in the field of race this country has experienced since the Civil War," said William Ferris, senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina. "It's shaking the foundations on which the country has existed for centuries."
"Someone once said racism is like cancer," Ferris said. "It's never totally wiped out, it's in remission." If so, America's remission lasted until the morning of Nov. 5.
The day after the vote hailed as a sign of a nation changed, black high school student Barbara Tyler of Marietta, Ga., said she heard hateful Obama comments from white students, and that teachers cut off discussion about Obama's victory.
Four North Carolina State University students admitted writing anti-Obama comments in a tunnel designated for free speech expression, including one that said: "Let's shoot that (N-word) in the head." Obama has received more threats than any other president-elect, authorities say.
At Standish, Maine, a sign inside the Oak Hill General Store read: "Osama Obama Shotgun Pool." Customers could sign up to bet $1 on a date when Obama would be killed. "Stabbing, shooting, roadside bombs, they all count," the sign said. At the bottom of the marker board was written "Let's hope someone wins."
Racist graffiti was found in places including New York's Long Island, where two dozen cars were spray-painted; Kilgore, Texas, where the local high school and skate park were defaced; and the Los Angeles area, where swastikas, racial slurs and "Go Back To Africa" were spray painted on sidewalks, houses and cars.
Second- and third-grade students on a school bus in Rexburg, Idaho, chanted "assassinate Obama," a district official said.
University of Alabama professor Marsha L. Houston said a poster of the Obama family was ripped off her office door. A replacement poster was defaced with a death threat and a racial slur. "It seems the election brought the racist rats out of the woodwork," Houston said.
Black figures were hanged by nooses from trees on Mount Desert Island, Maine, the Bangor Daily News reported. The president of Baylor University in Waco, Texas said a rope found hanging from a campus tree was apparently an abandoned swing and not a noose.
Crosses were burned in yards of Obama supporters in Hardwick, N.J., and Apolacan Township, Pa.
A black teenager in New York City said he was attacked with a bat on election night by four white men who shouted 'Obama.'
In the Pittsburgh suburb of Forest Hills, a black man said he found a note with a racial slur on his car windshield, saying "now that you voted for Obama, just watch out for your house."
"The principle is very simple," said BJ Gallagher, a sociologist and co-author of the diversity book "A Peacock in the Land of Penguins." "If I can't hurt the person I'm angry at, then I'll vent my anger on a substitute, i.e., someone of the same race."
"We saw the same thing happen after the 9-11 attacks, as a wave of anti-Muslim violence swept the country. We saw it happen after the Rodney King verdict, when Los Angeles blacks erupted in rage at the injustice perpetrated by 'the white man."'
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Dunapart
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Friday, November 7, 2008
Silent as the Grave - what is all about
Based on: Rockaby, Breath and Not I by Samuel Beckett
With: Elinor Middleton, Joseph Cauthery
Stage design and costumes: Maia Oprea and Yi-Xing Hwa
A song by Trevonic
Dramaturgy: Olga Dimitrijevic
A performance by Mihai Lucaciu
Silent as the Grave can be understood as I, they, we, you are all ghosts within this performance. There is no I to whom the speaking, performing, acting, living can be attributed. Beckett’s work calls for an innacted performance that is unnamable, resistant to subjectivity, authority and identity. What we are trying to find here is a rhythm, in order to comprehend the process of relating to spectators and to see and hear the ghosts, so-called our characters. The spectator is encouraged to find the right fillings/feelings in our show, its intensity is increased through repetitions and denials/affirmations of the shared/ experience. The gaps and static moments in our show are to be filled by spectators that are to face the minimalist construction of the characters, their signs of loneliness, their index cards as narrators and especially their bodily dis/appearance. In an Artaudian sense, these small Beckettian extreme texts have an internal music that is to be discovered by the spectator. That specific sound of a rocking chair that is approaching and holding off the spectator is one of the strongest internal musical elements to be found here. Beckettian ghosts are deprived of money, but also youth, health, fortitude and even a body, as in Not I. Protagonists dry out along with the world they inhabit, the world of a freakshow, where lonely people are exhibited by a vicious Master of Ceremonies. Even their names disappear. Whether they have lived is also uncertain. What we are left with is a special type of respiration as in Breath: the breath of ghosts. Silent as the Grave becomes a schemata of respirations. Breath remains virtual and can achieve its materiality through the dynamic process of relating the audience, by accepting intentional performative correlatives, a game that the spectator is invited to play. By putting together three of the most difficult, extreme and controversial plays by Beckett, all these parts interact and give shape to a sideshow of ghosts. The three segments are not documentary records or something that exists or existed before, but a ghostly reformulation of an already formulated reality, which brings into your world as spectator something that did not existed before the performance. You answer to the call of the freakshow ghosts. Indeterminacies of the performance, its own gaps, and its long static moments are making way for a filling; they anticipate other gaps and various meanings from an active audience. They do not tell a lot about what is actually going on, that part that you are supposed to figure out yourself, in the exquisite position of being a spectator. What you should try here is to stick to your own interpretation as spectator and to try to get away safe till the end of the show. By focusing on the details, breath becomes an animating principle that fills out the details of the internal action of our lonely ghosts, but without reaching any conclusions. Each word and action has to be discovered step by step and this quest constructs the atmosphere of the performance. There is a process of sedimentation, where you accumulate knowledge about possible ghosts and experience. Behind this waiting and distant expectation, there is an active, inner, vibratory perceptibility. Our ghosts are immobilized, their voices become stronger because of stillness and absence. Timing, rhythm and musicality of the words are giving a style of breathing, in the same time giving you time to develop and create the shape of your ghosts. Words have the effect of the Chinese water torture, they are painful to be heard and they are difficult to be shared. The dilation and compression go one by one, our characters seem detached talking or hearing about someone else, they seem very affected talking about the same persons. These sensitive delimitations are hard to grasp but they give a special rhythm to the show. The effects of these short plays are like ebb and flow. Beckett’s schematas are shaping our ghosts but their recognition depends on how you react to it, how you are capable to pick up some of the falling pieces and put them together. Our performance comes to life during this process but its meaning is impossible to identify straightforward outside the performing space and remains virtual on paper. But exactly this possibility, this openness to meaning, can give dynamism to our show and like an ouija board for spiritism, can give voice to ghosts. By questioning different lines of forces, different perspectives on Beckettian lonely ghosts and the whole identity of an I in these three plays, the spectator sets the performance in motion and the results can be relevant only for yourself. This innacted performance gives you something and you give something back to it. As Malone, another Beckettian ghost, once said: Live or invent. The show unfolds its potential through a process of being part of the performance through invention. Through you, the spectator, this performance comes to a shape, to a form of life that is still fragile, even when the meaning can be no longer relevant. Because in theatre we are able to experience things that no longer exist and to approach things that are totally unfamiliar to us. At the end of the show, with the help of the confusing Master of Ceremonies, you can be puzzled: did you get a glimpse of her missing presence, did you understood what was going on there if something was actually going on, or better to say did you understood your reactions in the face of these three plays and your own loneliness? By negating the existence of the lonely characters on stage, you were affirming yourself as their companion for the walk, and through this symbiosis you are the only one who can affirm their existence. She is she and without you, she won’t exist, but on the other side, you won’t be real as you are now real without her, because now you can perceive and recognize your own reactions and feelings towards this boring show. And this is what it’s all about: becoming lonely with your own reactions after our show by being exposed to Beckettian forms of loneliness in an anti-Beckettian performance. Nothing more than a proposition.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
playing with organs
Monday, November 3, 2008
my artaud article in egophobia
update: footnotes are missing. and funny thing, this is a Vakulovski special, read the other post today
Free Vakulovski!
just a sample:
E atâta tristeţe în viaţa ta, aşa că o nouă zi nu poate începe altfel decât cu o nouă labă, cu care îţi întăreşti bătăturile şi bubele de pe pula ta robinet de pişat. Laba e un ritual pentru tine, nu e ceea ce pare, când copiii te văd pe stradă cu pantalonii pătaţi şi se cacă pe ei de râs, de râs de tine, că eşti un labagiu incurabil.
Te plimbi cu punga prin oraş şi nu ştii pe unde să-ţi mai verşi tristeţea de clujean futut, nebăgată în seamă de absolut nimeni, poate din când în când de câţiva huligani care râd de tine, doar râd, nici măcar nu te scuipă în gură, eşti atât de mic şi insignifiant, fix ca un căcat de câine de care toată lumea se fereşte, până când gunoierii ies dimineaţa la acţiune, îl strâng cu scârbă şi îl aruncă.
Din când în când mai încerci să socializezi, cu vânzătoarele de la chioşcuri, când îţi iei pufuleţi, dar eşti rapid pus la respect, ţi se trântesc pufuleţii în faţă şi eşti rugat să te cari în pizda mă-tii, căci mai sunt oameni în rând care nu au chef să piardă timpul cu un futut ca tine.
Te întorci acasă şi tristeţea ta metafizică începe să se transforme în furie. Că eşti un neînţeles, nimeni nu te ascultă, nu te vrea, nu te iubeşte. Aşa că mai fuţi. Mai fuţi o labă. Ca să te descarci, ca să te împlineşti. Dar tristeţea şi furia îţi sunt stopate doar parţial, simţi că mai poţi, că ăsta nu e ultimul tău cuvânt, aşa că mai bagi o labă.
Ţi se trezeşte o poftă de informare şi de cultură, aşa că deschizi compu’. Intri pe situri cu fete şi băieţi cu curul gol. Ar merge şi unele şi alţii, dacă te-ar băga în seamă, dar cum nu, chiar nu, chiar deloc, dar absolut deloc, niciodată, nicicum... mai tragi o labă.
Ţi se trezeşte spiritul civic. Intri pe Clujeanul, să te informezi, să vezi cine şi ce a mai zis, ce a comentat altul, cu cine s-a futut cineva, ce evenimente se organizează în următoarea perioadă şi cine cât de la cine a mai furat. Eşti foarte nervos şi furios. Tragi o labă. Cu alta te cruceşti.
Te enervează aştia foarte tare. Citeşti şi mori de nervi. Eşti sigur că tu eşti mai tare, mai cult, mai deştept şi mai frimos ca ăia care scriu, dar... tu n-ai noroc. Pe tine nimeni nu te bagă în seamă, cu tine nu vorbeşte nimeni, pe tine nici mama ta nu te iubeşte. Eşti trist şi neînţeles. Îţi aminteşti că ai învăţat la şcoală că şi Eminescu era trist şi neînţeles. Asta îţi dă speranţe. Te gândeşti că poate şi tu vei fi ca el, măcar după moarte. Şi bagi o labă.