Came across this video the other day thanks to a friend’s post on the interaweb and was completely taken aback. In this 8 minutes long performance, Kseniya Simonova–winner of the contest ‘Ukraine’s Got Talent’– manages to bring her audience to tears while narrating a tragically beautiful visual rendition of the country’s history through swift motions of her fingers through grains of sand.

I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Her work is a series of temporal images that morph and change shape through time as she delicately brushes, indents, and sculpts copious amounts sand over a light box. Moving from landscapes to silhouettes to portraits, her movements through the sand evoke powerful emotional reactions from an audience watching her mold, sculpt, and re-create a deeply intimate moments in the country’s history. She conflates the public and private, shaping narratives of the past through her movements and changing images in the sand. Utilizing the protean nature of the sand, her material serves as a greater metaphor for the turbulent nature of history as it is remembered and re-told as she moves from close-up images of men and women, to distant landscapes of the country and city, only to be erased by the shaking of fingers or application of more sand. The process of shaping the images pulls the viewer between intricately personal and public worlds while never stopping for more than a second on one or the other, embodying the flux and motion of human experience over time.

Her performance is simultaneously in and out of time, occupying a liminal zone that extends into a realm where nothing but nebulous feeling exists. Her motions are too swift to linger on any one image or moment for too long. Perhaps it is the music, or the deep sadness portrayed in the images her fingers shape mirrored by the tears of the audience, but it is near impossible to watch her work without feeling a sense of nostalgia and loss, whether or not the experience is your own.

This will mesmerize you.

If you are in Chicago you only have 13 more days to experience the wonders of the exhibit “Take your time: Olafur Eliasson” currently on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

You’ll have to forgive my enthusiasm but this is by far one of the be exhibits of modern art I have ever seen. Olafur Eliasson is a Scandinavian-Icelandic artist whose work integrates architecture, geometry, light, image, and space in order to pull the audience into the landscapes of his worlds.

When encountering his work people are at once amused and confounded by the manipulation of the micro-environments Eliasson creates.

Entering the exhibit in Chicago you walk through a long white corridor lit by yellow fluorescent bulbs attached to the ceiling. The casual eye does not notice at first, however as you walk through the hall everything becomes a little shadier–grayer to be exact.

The optical effect of the white walls combined with the yellow light erases all color from your vision in the hallway except for blacks and yellows. Everyone before you looks straight out of a 1950s sitcom against a yellow backdrop. Eliasson erased the color from your world. And this is only the beginning of the exhibit.

Olafur Eliasson must have gazed into a kaleidoscope when he was 5 years old and never looked back. Each piece of work in this collection is unique, yet they all have a magical way of pulling you in and making you experience the world immediately around in unexpected ways.

Here are some teaser photos.

One of the primary ways we understand new places and experiences is through our past. What we know serves as an interface to what we have yet to know.

Walking through the narrow streets of The Ironbound I’m overwhelmed by the associations I make to places I’ve known before. The flow of Spanish coming from the fast mouths of pedestrians is the rhythm of central and eastern Los Angeles. The cactus pieces at the supermarket are the same as those from Union and 6th.

On the street, people are strewn about their stoops; waiting, it seems, for day to melt into night. Unmoved and relaxed upon the concrete steps, they enjoy the luxury of summer while it’s still here. I’ve seen them before on Kimball in Logan Square. There is the little boy on his new silver bike.

It is unfair to allow memories to color our new experiences. Every city is not the same. Each life is outstanding and unique. Is there a point, one I have not reached yet, where the memories do fade into the background, and the places that were new emerge as separate entities radiating a life of their own? Or are we always seeing the same places over and over again, just telling it with different words? Every place mallieable, and always coming into being?

Calvino explores it better than I do in Invisible Cities:

(Marco Polo begins)

“Sire, now I have told you about all the cities I know.”

Marco Polo bowed his head.

“Venice,” the Khan said.

Marco smiled. “What else do you believe I have been talking to you about?”

The emperor did not turn a hair. “And yet I have never heard you mention that name.”

And Polo said: “Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice.”

“When I ask you about other cities, I want to hear about them. And about Venice, when I ask you about Venice.”

“To distinguish the other cities’ qualities, I must speak of a first city that remains implicit. For me it is Venice.”

“You should then begin each tale of your travels from the departure, describing Venice as it is, all of it, not omitting anything you remember of it.”

…

“Memory’s images, once they are fixed in words, are erased,” Polo said. “Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it. Or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little.”

I’ve always been the sort to think in lists. “Things to tell my son”, “Best Names for My Future Dog”, “Excitable Rhymes to Remember” are some of my ongoing mental tallies. Lately though, my lists are in neglect as recently I’ve found myself speaking to myself in blog posts:

Saturday, August 15th, 2009  11:29 pm

Saw the Flaming Lips in concert. Why is it that concerts are immediately nostalgic? Why do we reminisce on the night before it’s over, looking back on the present through a haze of foggy memories and the fog machine….

Monday, August 10th, 2009 6:15 am

Dear Readers: Who are these people? I know they’ve harvested more money than I ever will. Does that mean I will never understand them? Cold hard cash stacks its bricks between us, as graffitied and beloved as the Berlin Wall…

I ache for the internet to validate my thoughts, but alas. Their limited transmission is my own electric impulses. Inadequate. 

We’ve split the atom. Since Fallopia has left Los Angles, it’s Em and Vy launched off on opposite trajectories. We’ve kept low to the ground, choosing to travel on black waves of rubber and asphalt, navigating the limitless opportunities of America’s Interstate freeways.  Asleep, askew, between the seats of my car,  I keep dreaming about Los Angeles. I’m sure there I’ll find my lost parts, but now is the time to keep moving.

The less you shower, the harder it is to do so. It seems less appropriate to stop in a public restroom and wash your face when the rest of your body is slick with the sweat of your car seat. People might notice you. I crossed the desert. My feet and teeth are dusty. I wash my hands every chance I get, but it makes me feel worse. 

What is it we learn on the road? Anyone who has tried it knows you’re supposed to be acquiring something. There’s a heavy romantic obligation of the wanderer to be emboldened or inspired, but what can we afford to take with us if we can leave nothing behind? At at the end of every day is the beginning of a longer day than the last.  

I want to stop at an old friends house in an approaching city, but I’m losing track of days. Is it Thursday? Shouldn’t they have a job? Do I smell? Should I call first? I pass the exit. Just keep driving. 

If I can quote a dear sweet man quoting a dead old man, 

We’ll be together again.

Installed by former President Bush’s administration in 2006, the crimson addition to the diplomatic post was billed as a way to circumvent censorship and “offer hope and freedom to Cubans oppressed by a brutal regime”. Five-foot-high red letters that ran across 25 windows on the outside of the fifth floor streamed news, political statements and messages blaming Cuba’s problems on the country’s communist system and socialist economy.

After the United States launched the ticker, Cuba erected obstructions so it could not be seen, inciting increasingly negative “dueling billboards”.

Fidel Castro accused the U.S. mission of becoming “headquarters of the counterrevolution,” which he said violated diplomatic protocol. He led a million Cubans to protest in front of the mission in 2006, and erected 138 black flags (later traded for Cuban flags) to block the view of the ticker from those passing.

U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters in Washington that the news ticker was turned off in June.

The Obama administration believes the ticker was “really not effective as a means of delivering information to the Cuban people”, and was “not serving the interests of promoting a more productive relationship.”

Pause.

Really?

I need a moment here to pause and be grateful. I live a wonderful life, and these are the things I am thankful for today:

1. Oatmeal cookies when I come from work.
2. Air in my bicycle tires.
3. A President that doesn’t humiliate me, or make me sulk in American despair.

Whether or not you’ve ever been a fan of President Obama or his politics, maybe some can agree on this point. Let’s not broadcast hate speech on our diplomatic posts.
Let’s not.

Spokesman Kelly noted that the Cubans had dismantled “a few very negative billboards and graffiti” around the facility and the United States viewed their removal as “a positive gesture.”

The result of over a decade-long field study, Righteous Dopefiend follows the lives of several heroin addicts living under Edgewater Boulevard, a freeway overpass in the picturesque city by the bay. The authors’ approach to the project is one that self-consciously “suspends moral judgment.” The challenge to both the writers and the audience is to set aside opinions on urban vice associated with homelessness and addiction, enabling the narrative to emerge from the people who live these lives.

The self-conscious decision to make a critical yet sensitive study is conveyed through the distinct style of the book. The risk of confirming negative stereotypes through “jarring photography” is of the upmost concern to the authors. Bourgois and Schonberg thus create a dialogue between rich black-and-white photographs, vivid excerpts from their field notes, and critical social theory. Excerpts from the fieldnotes give context for images which the audience may not readily comprehend.

By accompanying the photographs with fieldnotes and scholarly analysis, the impression of addiction becomes multi-faceted, ensuring that the addict experience is not pigeonholed. They remark, “as anthropologists studying people who live under conditions of extreme duress and distress, we feel it is imperative to link theory to practice. Otherwise, we would be merely intellectual voyeurs.” Bourgois and Schonberg’s balance between image, word, and theory reflects their research methods, inviting the audience to witness and experience, rather than analyze , this community.

The community created through drug use is the centerpiece of their study. The authors depict aspects of street life through the voices and meditations of various people living under Edgewater Boulevard. The personal relationships between addicts create a distinct community with its own particular moral and ethical rules. Dopesickness, for example, an ailment encompassing the severe physical symptoms of heroin withdrawal, is an experience that fuels the “moral economy of sharing.” Being sick elicits empathy among members who are both friends and enemies. “It is considered unethical,” the authors observe, “to leave a person stranded when he or she is dopesick unless one is openly feuding with that person.”

Assuaging dopesickness is one of the few instances where ethnic and racial boundaries may be crossed. Although the power of addiction may appear to overwhelm racism, division along racial and ethnic lines is part of everyday life on Edgewater Boulevard. When Bourgois asks Hank, one of the white dopefiends, why the scene is predominately white, Hank replies, “You’ll see very few black people homeless…because they’re knocking out kids on welfare.” Several members harbor mistrust and stereotypes of dopefiends from differing ethnic backgrounds despite being intertwined in a network of dealing and dependency.

Besides delving into the shadows of street life, the authors also explore the evolution of love between residents of the camp. One couple, Tina and Carter, develop a surprisingly domestic and committed relationship despite personal histories of abuse, homelessness, and addiction. Bourgois and Schonberg also follow Hank and Petey, best friends and lovers who struggle to live in a homophobic, yet fraternal, environment. Their turbulent relationship is tempered by the impediments that surround them: possible eviction, pan-handling, hospitalization, methadone treatment, and death.

Bourgois and Schonberg preserve the dopefiends’ humanity while simultaneously excavating the grittiest aspects of life on the street, managing to keep their commitment to put aside moral judgment. Reminiscent of an evocative documentary film, their book is beautifully shot, intelligent, and engaging.

Photography by Jeff Schonberg

The outcry for a re-count comes after the surprising landslide victory for incumbent Ahmadinejad last Friday. Supporters of Mousavi have called for, and been granted, an investigation into the election.

The whole thing sounds a little familar, doesn’t it?

While Bush didn’t exactly win by a landslide–or at all–in the 2000 election (or again in 2004), I think some of us can empathize with the people of Iran, Bush supporters or not.

When democracy fails, or we seriously begin to question it, what is our responsibility as citizens? Do we riot or protest in the streets of our capitol or do we submit our inquires to the democratic justice system?

What advice would you give the people of Iran? Should the results of public elections stand, even if they are undesirable? How do we live in a country and under a leader who we do not support?

Tell us what you think.

Here is a video for your inspiration and education.

The article, With Crime in Decline, a Fragile Sense of Hope, continues with a two-page spread complete with photographs of women in mourning, young children in graveyards, police searching young men for tattoos, and a celebratory shot of the “new” mix of Latino and Black youth which “reflect the demographic shift of South L.A.” There is also a map that tells us where specifically the Gang Injunctions Zones are in South L.A.

The ways South Los Angeles has been depicted in both image and words for the past two decades never ceases to amaze me. South L.A. continues to be an issue that must be “addressed” much as violence and terrorism is handled abroad. But L.A. is our home. These neighborhoods are a ten- to twenty-minute drive from “our L.A.” Ever since moving to L.A. I have made a conscious effort to erase my image of South L.A. as a movie, rap-song, or new piece about a fictional place on the other side of the world where kids got shot while going out to buy a quart of milk in the middle of the afternoon. It is, however, still difficult to distinguish illusions from reality.

The realities of living in South L.A., and the ways Angelenos confront and mediate the struggles of these communities, is not an issue of foreign policy, and it is very frustrating to see that the myths of South L.A. continue to be forged into reality by those who would call Los Angeles their home. South L.A. can be a very dangerous place to live, but it is equally dangerous to section these neighborhoods off, condemning them to always be the sterotype of Boyz N’ the Hood.

Scott Gold begins his article by taking us into the home of a middle-aged mother who allows her teenage children to keep loaded shotguns alongside textbooks of algebra and literature in their rooms. “This is a dangerous weapon,” the police tell the distraught mother, “in a room where four children sleep. You are the parent here!” Irresponsible parenting, it seems, is an issue plaguing the adolescents of South L.A. “The boys’ lives were at risk.  The gun was for defense,” the mother replies, “this is South Central,” the mother replies.

Where we live defines who we are. Thus the decades old problem of social justice and geography in South Los Angeles emerges once again.

Identifying solutions for the social epidemic know as “South Central” has plagued policy officers, city officials, researchers, and community members for years. Gang Injunctions were introduced as a way to give the LAPD more liberty with their powers. Such injunctions, as are discussed in Gold’s article, enable officers to arrest men gathering in groups on street corners or loitering in local parks under the auspices of suspected gang activity. According to their statistics, the LAPD has found these injunctions to work. Homicides are decreasing and some community members reportedly feel safer with the increased police presence. The backlash of these injunctions, however, is an outcry that they are a gross violation of civil liberties, threatening to transform neighborhoods into big-brother police states. Groups advocating against the effectiveness of these injunctions note that while the LAPD may indeed be picking up gang members, they are, at the same time, also picking up kids who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Such threat only contributes to an atmosphere of fear. The short-sightedness of the LAPD reflects our inability to understand that a culture, real or imagined, of violence in “South Central” is perpetuated by the actions of citizens and of law enforcement. The LAPD cruises the streets hollering, harassing, and brandishing their weapons just as much as gang members do. The only difference is that law enforcement is using these actions to promote peace instead of hostility. Their actions, however, create just as much fear, hostility, and bitterness.

The LAPD is not a gang; however, there are remarkable similarities between the social and political structures of police forces and that of street gangs. Those who work on the streets of South L.A., both cop and criminal, are mutually influenced by the culture of mistrust and violence that surround them. Both groups are looking for a sense of control and power, and they use similar means to reach those ends. Wearing baggy jeans, being Black, and walking down a street in South L.A. does not make you a gang member, but that has not stopped the LAPD from stopping Yusef Omowale, the director of the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research. Injunctions are introduced as a way of creating peace but, as Omawale observes, “under injunctions you are being criminalized because of the circumstances you find yourself in.” Luckily, living in South L.A. has not yet been made a crime.

Yes, it is terrifying to know that there are kids who keep loaded shotguns in their bedrooms next to their literature textbooks, and yes it is unnerving to see first graders doing the “crip walk” on the playground. But it is equally unnerving and terrifying to know that a police officer has the right to pull out his gun and arrest you for talking to a friend of yours on the street or for looking-like a gang member. There must be a way that communities and law enforcement agents can work together to fight against geography and social injustice without perpetuating it.

Redevelopment, including mixed-income housing and much needed community centers  providing social programs, is one way that the city and the community are attempting to bring change to these communities. The LAPD, as well, reports that they have “evolved” away from the menacing reputation that they built in the eighties and nineties. They encourage their officers, “don’t arrest everyone because you can. Arrest them because it’s the right thing to do.” This is, no doubt, the right direction to be going. But is it enough? And is any of this really working?

Freeing South L.A. from its geography and social stereotypes takes an effort on that part of all Angelenos. L.A. needs to find a way to integrate these neighborhoods into the city, preventing them from being isolated problems. The roots of this reform are found in refining civic institutions such as public education, social programs, public transit, and city culture. But it has has its beginnings with us fighting against these neighborhoods and treating South L.A. like a virus that we must quarantine. As our president told us in his speech last week in Cario, we need to find out similarities and build peace based upon those common principles. Mothers from Sherman Oaks and Westwood want their children to be just as safe and prosperous as mothers from South L.A. do. All people should be free to walk the streets of their neighborhoods without worry of gunfire from gangs or police. We should take what we know about building strong and safe communities and share it with each other. Walk each other’s streets, learn our neighbors names and customs. Help them address their problems by contributing our presence and compassion and making South L.A. part of Los Angeles again.

After some coffee and breakfast—1 tablespoon of instant powder coffee mixed with a 1/3 teaspoon sugar along with a petit pain au lait—I sat down to finish reading a book by an author who is “the Einstein of memory.” Throughout the past week I have been reading W.B. Sebald’s novel Vertigo. I have followed this German man on his journey through Italy, southern Germany, his memories, and the memories of others. At times his words bore me to death, but there are moments when he captivates my imagination. The way he renders place and experience, especially the unknown dark corners of memory, is remarkable. He tells less a story of what is remember than what is not remember, or what is never completely known. I would say he narrates the shadows that followed him throughout his life; only through telling the story does he begin to dissolve les ombres. His writing made me think about how memory functions when we do an about-face and chase down the shadows. By nature these semi-opaque entities seem tangible enough if not completely at our mercy to be sculpted as we please. But only the great craftswomen knows well how to manipulate the vellum-like figures. The rest of us, try as we may, only run out of time and misshape them. We try though, and that is what I found so fascinating about Sebald’s work. He danced with the shadows–getting close, but never too close as to chase them away. Conjuring them towards him, he wove them into new memories that were a hybrid of old imaginings and new experiences, crafting an entirely innovating kind of memory.

A friend from birth, possibly even from conception…has just graduted from college in Colorado, and I ventured forth to meet and greet her in congratulatory celebratory fashion. 

Colorado. What a trip. I have traveled by cow-cart through the West African mountains, on the back of a camel through the Sahara, by raft down the Yukon, afoot into the alleys of Skid Row, and THIS has been the most challenging journey of my life. I felt like a rookie, a wayward wanderer, thrust into unfamiliar terrtiory without the necessary skills to conquer culture shock or adapt to strange customs. There I was, lost in the middle of America.

If it were a sitcom, and not my life it would be…less funny. Things like Colorado should happen in scripts. Not in the space I’m trying to inhabit as reality. I fear the internet is not the place for absolute honesty. Yet emboldened, I would like to introduce you to my understanding of The Rest Of The World. 

Meet our players:

Friend: A beautiful young brunette, and recent graduate, who aspires to be right. And happy. Simply those things I believe. Her major was criminal justice. Her favorite color is still pink, despite what the world says. She hopes to to be a CO Police Officer in the near future. 

Boy: A dapper young lad, athlete and scholar, engaged for all practical reason’s to our Friend. They are hopelessly in love, and everyone is HAPPY for them. 

Boy’s Boys:  Lifelong playmates of the Boy. They’ve studied baseball and finance. Golf on Fridays. 

(Friend’s) Mom: A mother of six + how-ever-many-more she can fit under her wing/foot/scrutinizing eye. 

Family: The American family. Teacher, Businessmen, nice Catholic sons. You get the idea. They belong to the Boy. Wonderfully good people. 

These are the rules to the game, as I have been taught by these winners: 

1. It is completely appropriate for white, educated young men to shout out “Move ova nigga!”, or “Nigga shuthefuckup!” in mock (dare I say ghetto?) accents while pulling their hats down over their eyes IF they have been drinking AND they are watching George Tillman’s brilliant documentary “Notorious” for educational reasons. 

2. It is NOT okay to bring your guitar into a nail salon/ “Zenorama Spa” where people are relaxing to $40 acryllic fumigation. It may upset the balance of the place. 

3. It is important if you have straight hair that you straighten it, more, in preparation for the curling hair process. 

4. It is not okay to quietly turn down a burger at a family barbeque because someone will have to remind you, loudly, that “God gave us animals”.

5. Words like “damaged” children and “art” should be said only with the necessary air quotation marks. This is done by cocking your head innocently to the side, wiggling two fingers on both hands and rolling your words in honeyed sarcasm. 

6. People with dreadlocs do not wear deodorant. And their dogs have rabies. And they should not be allowed near public pools, or children. 

7. Africa IS a country, after all these years of confusion. And the word primitive should never be taken as an insult. It just means diseased. 

I may have learned more. I got back on the plane and came home.

What was different about this flight home? Oh yeah, nobody was staring at me. 

I’ve been called an exhibitionist before. Generally I take this the wrong way, but I am embracing the identity now. It means I am not one-of-them. It’s sad that I’m using such deragtory, segragationist language these days, but for the past six days I’ve felt like everybody was STARING at me. I’m relieved to back in LA’s forgiving chaos. 

I came home to my MacArthur park apartment, climbed out onto my balcony/fire escape ladder, and watched my neighbours shuffle up and down the street as only Mara Salvatrucha will do here. I loved them for it, and rooted for them silently when three LAPD cars showed up on cue and six armed men disappeared into the quiet  building, leaving their cars in the middle of the road to stop traffic for no apparent reason. One Pacifico (and never another Bud Light) later I am ready to take on the big dogs. I venture out to Arclight Cinema on Sunset and Vine to a sneak preview of Jim Jarmusch’s “The Limits of Control” (see next blog). I am escorted by a bearded usher to my seat behind a young black woman and white man with matching shaved heads. Indulging in an intentional dose of obscurity and aestheticism, I feel refreshed and joyous. A 45 year old woman in skinny jeans and converse bumps into me in the restroom. Two men who look like twins but are probably lovers pass me on my right as a flock of emotional young men with vintage sneakers halts in front of me. I dodge them only to smash into the back of a sexy young Japanese couple wearing too many colors.  Girls in flowy skirts kiss each other on the cheek in greeting as toddlers with mowhawks dash between their legs. I step over a man laying on the sidewalk this evening as he smiles up at me. I am now writing to you from a Korean coffee shop/Christain book store/surprise jazz lounge where a balding old man with a fu manchu is singing heartwrenching Astrud Gilberto covers into a lonely microphone. 

I feel beautiful here, among these people. And why? Los Angeles has a reputation of being dirty, shallow, violent. I loved it today as all of these things. I realized joyously that if everyone in Los Angeles is trying to be seen, it means nobody is looking at you! Thank God.

Who knows how long this newlywed romance will last between this city and I, but for now, I am proud to be at home, here.

emvy/V