Art & Authenticy

I thought the first thing I could do is comment on the name of the exhibit.

I found it thematically relevant that this exhibit was called “Looking at Music: Side B.”  Traditionally, “Side B” is the other side of a Vinyl record, which usually acts like a double feature to the main song.  This exhibit shows counter-cultural music of the 70s-80s which can be seen as a metaphorical “Side B” to all the popular songs of the era.

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It takes tons of courage, iron guts and a lot of will power to write about your family in thye way Danzy Senna wrote about them. The book “Where did you sleep last night” gives a detailed description of Danzy’s relationship with her parents especially her fistant relationship with her father.  As she siad during the reading session, her father was not pleased by the book as  the book clearly portrays hima s a an inadequate parent.

Although I have not read the whole book, I still admire Danzy Senna for the brave action she took in deciding to write her memoirs. Tobe able to do so not only gives one an opportunity to carefully reflect on the past but may some time shelp to look at the past in anew light.

This exhibit consisted of a large cluster of black and white portraits or real ordinary people paired with a number of abstract ink paintings. The pictures along with the abstract paintings served the purpose of highlighting the process of circle of life. I felt that the abstract drawings were trying to portray the loss of self identity or self worth in the lives of the people depicted in the portraits. It’s as if they are losing their direction in life with the passing of time – hence the title “Please Remind Me of Who I Am. The juxtaposition of the portraits and the drawings indicate the gradual move from a confident self-assured state to an abstract and confused. Further the use of normal people in the portraits and the large numbers of varied, small portraits used for the exhibit symbolize the universality of this theme.

In Brooklyn Museum‘s New Feminist Videos exhibition, feminists test their endurance or even torture themselves to make a point across, I understood most of their points, but they made me shiver a bit inside. The way that these women convey their ideas and express themselves is through a stationary camera. Without any edits, the videos are portrayed more realistically. One of my personal favorites is “Black Out” (2004), a video of the woman, dressed up as a man and has short hair, who was smoking blindfoldedly and “tortured” by her friends pouring alcohol onto her. At times, I could not tell whether she was crying or laughing. The artist and main actress in the video is Cathy Begien and she wanted to express how she felt about one of the nights when she was at a party. I really felt how crazy that night must’ve been for her after watching her torturing herself in her work.

During my visit to the “Looking at Music: MOMA” exhibition, I was exposed to “hippies’ music” that I have never really listened to or learned about. Because of my culture and time of birth, I never had a chance to listen to the music in the 1970s and 1980s and therefore never was interested in it. This kind of music was unknown and fresh for me. The only exposure I had is the current attempts to go “retro.” During this decade, young artists who are almost like rebels experimented with different instruments, beats, techniques, etc. I really liked the wall almost at the end of the exhibition that was comprised of photographs of different artists such as John Lennon and Elvis Presley.

In thinking about presidents, the first things that comes to mind is political policies, leadership, order, protection, and war; this however, was not what I experienced in the Treasures of FDR and the Sea exhibit in the South Street Seaport Museum. Continue Reading »

Watching “Fela” and other dances sing and perform is like going to a party.  The Eugene O’Neill Theater in Midtown Manhattan was transformed into Fela Kuti’s “Shrine” in Lagos, Nigeria, with the audience coming from everywhere to see the performance. The stage design was terrific and it contributed to the ability to allow audience participation to an extent. The entire audience participated—some danced, others attempted to dance, and some are just too embarrassed to dance but still moved along with the music.

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Being read poems or stories is always one thing that bothered me as a child. Being read poems, while unable to see who’s reading them to me is another story. Sitting in the back corner, I could not see the face of the man with the heavy Irish accent pronouncing Baruch as “Baa – rook”. It was like sitting in a large, dark room with only a mini night-light available. The night-light was enough to keep the room going, enough to keep me captivated. There was honesty and “authenticity” in what he was saying, as he chuckled when he stumbled along various lines. I think that’s what struck me most. He was a man of his words, who didn’t need to do such a thing, a man who didn’t need to explain references about certain things or people; everyone just went with the flow. I later recall laughing to my dad about “Tower” and how I didn’t understand it. My dad told me I didn’t have to and that “it” was “just there.” Well, he was right. Poetry is something you don’t have to define a certain way, it’s how you define it.

He may not be too widely known in the U.S., but check his fans out in the U.K!

“Whacker” by Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn, two American-born artists was seven minutes, seven seconds of constant repetition. It was a short film of a woman, wearing heels and a dress, pulling out weeds with a weed whacker. What an original title eh? Though the movie itself was a constant bore, its message was clearly defined. It showed that a woman is just as capable as a man of doing “manly” tasks (in this case, whacking weeds). I’m not saying this from a woman’s point of view, but it’s true. Even I was amazingly shocked to see this. It’s not the normal thing to see; we usually have big, brawny men taking care of the “nitty gritty work”, while women stay at home and look pretty. The change in the gallery was a pleasant surprise, though. It’s about time women got some credit!

The Brooklyn Museum goes into more detail here.

There is a short story in Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man that spoke of astronauts landing on Mars and trying to spread Christianity there.  The gentle martians at the end of the story kindly shook their heads and pointed at their 100% energy efficient Hydrogen generators, their streets empty of crime, their civilizations free of war and their schools full of eagerly-learning offspring.

“We do not need your religion here, we are perfect beings.  Perhaps you are better off solving problems back on your own planet.”

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