Freezing The Tiny Tyrant’s Words.

John Roach, Aaron Moore, Brian Chase, Victoria Keddie, Alexander Rosenberg, Ben Wright, “Frozen Words Hot Air” (2017) (courtesy the artists).

Many of us probably feel the urge, at least once each day, to smash the hateful things President Trump has said (or tweeted). On Friday, September 8, the artists John Roach, Aaron Moore, Brian Chase, Victoria Keddie, Alexander Rosenberg, and Ben Wright will use those overblown and grammatically incoherent groups of words as the basis for a multidisciplinary, poetic, satiric performance at UrbanGlass titled “Frozen Words Hot Air.” Handpainted glass objects emblazoned with words from Trump’s speeches will be blown live by Wright and Liesl Schubel, then played by Chase and Moore, while audio snippets of those same speeches are remixed and manipulated by Keddie.

John Roach, Aaron Moore, Brian Chase, Victoria Keddie, Alexander Rosenberg, Ben Wright, Frozen Words newspaper (2017) (courtesy the artists).

Inspired by the 16th-century French satirist François Rabelais’s The Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel (ca 1532–64), the performance references a particular scene from that tome. In it, the heroic giant Pantagruel crosses a sea of thawing ice that, as it melts, releases the ghostly sounds of a gruesome battle that took place there during the winter. On Friday, all the hot air blown by President Trump will be symbolically frozen, manipulated, and smashed. An accompanying artists’ newspaper to be distributed at the performance, Frozen Words, will gather the jumbled and rearranged speeches for posterity.

When: Friday, September 8, 7–8pm
Where:UrbanGlass (647 Fulton Street, Fort Greene, Brooklyn)

This sounds like a fabulous show, it’s certainly a well-inspired one, and I’d love to see this in person. If you have the opportunity, take it! Via Hyperallergic.

The quest for medievalism in ‘The Witcher 3’.

I realize that not everyone finds Medievalism to be as fascinating as I do, but this is really, um, fascinating!

Introduction: In the fictive landscape of the Northern Kingdoms, the character Geralt of Rivia rides on his chestnut mare clad in chainmail armour whilst sporting two-handed swords comparable to a zweihander or longsword of the late 15th century. As I encounter my second village through the third-person view of my protagonist, a short observation leaves me with the impression of a plausible society taken from the Middle Ages. Such a historically detailed environment within a fantasy game of the 21st century should be no surprise to the avid gamer, however, it raised the question of the representation of history within computer games.

[…]

This study seeks to investigate the medieval thematic in computer gaming and pursue what historical elements that persist through this relatively new medium. More distinctly, the many missions and quests experienced in the ‘The Witcher 3’ is the main object of study as they work in concert, providing both enhanced purpose for the player as well as constricting the freedom given in the open world of the Northern Kingdoms. Quests – a task or mission given by non-playable characters (NPCs) or during certain interaction with objects in the game – present a variety of impressions through participatory segments that the player encounters in the game. It is the potent meaning of said quests that this study seek to delve into in order to find, not only the historical features, but also the fascination that seems to propagate itself in games.

You can read Christer Lidén’s full thesis here. (.pdf)

Via Medievalists.net.

A New White Excuse: “I Was At Standing Rock!”

Courtesy Wind Over Fire Healing Arts Center/Facebook
A New Age “ghost dance” held in southwestern Minnesota has many indigenous people wondering just when the cultural appropriation will end.

White “aggrieved entitlement” people. They never seem to run out of excuses for their bloated sense of entitlement, of helping themselves to the least little thing; of exploiting marginalized peoples. It’s damn near a way of life for many white people. When it comes to “new age” rites, seems to me there’s a wealth of pagan history to mine, gosh, you might even find some you’re related to in some way.

Towards the later days at the No DAPL camp, I wasn’t quiet about all the entitlement-minded white people there, who had no use for the rules laid down by the people running things. Because of course, rules, they are never for white people are they? I wasn’t quiet about all the white protest/event tourists, either. People who were there to honestly provide support and help, no problem. As usual though, they weren’t the ones making a fuss or making it all about them, because they knew it wasn’t about them. They knew that in the end, they would go home, and not have to deal with it all.

In Minnesota, there’s a group who recently held their 2nd annual “Ghost Dance”. When called on this, they denied it was a ghost dance. They said it was a “Ten Moons” dance. Then they decided to go with “Ghost Dance isn’t exclusive to Indigenous people! Lots of cultures had ancestor dances! China! Africa! So it isn’t indigenous in nature.” Oddly enough, their not indigenous at all dance is decidedly indigenous in appearance, and specifically so. The history of the Ghost Dance is a dark one, once the colonials got terrified and started up more wholesale slaughter, and brutally oppressed indigenous peoples all the more out of fear. It’s not a toy for white people to play pagan. It’s not yours. It’s not your culture, it’s not your history. If non-indigenous people ever wonder why various rites and dances have been closed to outsiders, look no further.

“It would be great if everyone just joined together,” said Laven, discontented by the scrutiny of their ceremony and the charges of cultural appropriation. “We have enough crap. I was at Standing Rock, and I hear the Native Americans, and I had heard them.”

Oh my. What a fine example of white entitlement. There’s really nothing else like it. Golly, white people have had enough crap! It’s just like everything indigenous people have gone through! And now, Standing Rock is the latest excuse. Fuck you, Ms. Laven. A universe of fuck yous. You have not heard one godsdamn thing. You don’t give one little shit about indigenous people or their struggles. All you care about is exploiting them to make money. I hope you are bad-mouthed from here to the end of the galaxy, because that’s the very least of what you deserve.

Full story at ICTMN.

The Book Women.

A group of “book women” on horseback in Hindman, Kentucky, 1940. Kentucky Library and Archives.

They were known as the “book women.” They would saddle up, usually at dawn, to pick their way along snowy hillsides and through muddy creeks with a simple goal: to deliver reading material to Kentucky’s isolated mountain communities.

The Pack Horse Library initiative was part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA), created to help lift America out of the Great Depression, during which, by 1933, unemployment had risen to 40 percent in Appalachia. Roving horseback libraries weren’t entirely new to Kentucky, but this initiative was an opportunity to boost both employment and literacy at the same time.

“Sometimes the short way across is the hard way for the horse and rider but schedules have to be maintained if readers are not to be disappointed. Then, too, after highways are left, there is little choice of roads,” c. 1940. Kentucky Libraries and Archives.

Another fascinating article at Atlas Obscura, with absolutely splendid photos! Click on over and see.

Revitalizing Detroit.

Charles McGee, Unity. Photo by Sal Rodriguez. All images courtesy of Library Street Collective.

In 2014, when the City of Detroit threatened to sell many of the Detroit Institute of Art’s prized artworks to help the Motor City exit bankruptcy, the question of art’s role in the city’s future came front and center. Ultimately, the museum raised nearly a billion dollars to preserve the city’s cultural heritage—and its Picassos. Two years before, in what has become known as a “grand bargain,” local residents, husband and wife duo Anthony and JJ Curis, decided to open the Library Street Collective on a once-barren stretch of land. The Collective is a gallery with a traditional artist roster and a mission to revitalize the city by commissioning artists from the city and around the world to make public art in the streets of Detroit.

“Me or JJ don’t have an art background,” says Anthony Curis to Creators. “At the time, I was redeveloping a building in downtown Detroit that was meant to be a restaurant.” Back then, downtown Detroit’s state of near-total abandonment led him to open a gallery instead, at the suggestion of his wife. “The model wasn’t focused as much on the brick and mortar as it was on what kind of change we can make in the city.” He explains, “When we opened the gallery, we were really focused on public art and how could we change the landscape, making the community a little bit more vibrant and interesting. We are very interested in and keen on our mission to engage the public and reach people. That’s where the gallery was born.”

You can read much more, and see more about this project at The Creators Project.

Dear Fashion Magazine Editors…

“I guess Melania is used to wearing heels around a disaster area.”

Like everyone else the other day, I rolled my eyes over Ms. Trump heading into Texas on 4 inch spikes. The sheer inappropriateness of these vulgarians is always and never surprising. What would be truly fabulous, though, is if one (or all ) the powerhouse fashion mags published serious articles on how to be stylish and practical when touring disaster areas – avoid those embarrassing fashion faux pas with our guide! If only the editors had the spine to do so, that would be one happy and grand statement.