A Little Civilization

From Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, which I read (and liked quite a bit) a few weeks ago:

In every important way we are such secrets from each other, and I do believe that there is a separate language in each of us, also a separate aesthetics and a separate jurisprudence. Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable -- which, I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live. We take fortuitous resemblances among us to be actual likeness, because those around us have also fallen heir to the same customs, trade in the same coin, acknowledge, more or less, the same notions of decency and sanity. But all that really just allows us to coexist with the inviolable, untraversable, and utterly vast spaces between us.

Art Major Mess

All art is quite useless. -- Oscar Wilde

Alright. It's icky, but (for reasons not entirely clear to me), I feel I have the duty to post on Yale student Aliza Shvarts and her senior art project. Shvarts' project was billed as a provocative exploration of the relationship between art and the human body featuring layers of plastic sheeting smeared with the blood from a series of self-induced miscarriages. Shvarts said she filmed these miscarriages over a 9-month period when she alternately inseminated herself and took over-the-counter abortifacient drugs, and that she planned to project the footage onto the plastic sheeting. "Sure, some people will be upset with the message and will not agree with it," she told the Yale Daily News, but it's not the intention of the piece to scandalize anyone." Anyway, some scandalized parties came knocking, and the project was ousted as "creative fiction." Grossed out yet? Slate's Dana Stevens, who knows a thing or two about abortion and all along suspected that this was a scam, has assessed things nicely:

Hoax or not, I guess Shvarts’ installation is an accomplishment by some negative measure: In a single attention-getting move, she’s managed to make the pro-choice movement, feminism, performance art, and Yale all look bad at the same time ... Was Shvarts' point simply to trick people into being horrified that a young woman might really have done this to herself (and, depending on your point of view about abortion, ended the lives of several incipient human beings in the process). And if so, was her piece a success?

I suspect Shvarts just thought she could get away with pretending she had those abortions in the name of art, but if the deception was part of the project itself I'm a little more intrigued -- her work then becomes more like a highly-effective booby trap for reactionaries on both sides of the issue than just a tasteless and hollow fake-out.

Let's Be Honest, the Weather Helped

I went to the MoMA today to check out the "Color Chart" exhibition (running through May 12). Pictured: Part of Walid Raad's "Let's Be Honest, the Weather Helped," which made more of an impression on me than anything else on display. Raad explains his work this way:

Like many around me in Beirut in the late 1970s, I collected bullets and shrapnel.  I would run out to the streets after a night or day of shelling to remove them from walls cars and trees.  I kept detailed notes of where I found every bullet and photographed the sites of my findings, covering the holds with dots that corresponded to the bullet's diameter and the mesmerizing hues I found on the bullet's tips. It took me ten years to realize that ammunition manufacturers follow distinct color codes to mark and identify their cartridges and shells.  It also took me another ten years to realize that my notebooks in part catalogue seventeen countries and organizations that continue to supply the various militias and armies fighting in Lebanon: Belgium, China, Egypt, Finland, Germany, Greece, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Libya, NATO, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, the USA, the UK, and Venezuela. 

Big Numbers

From The Best Creative Nonfiction Vol 1 on the number seven:

Seven is the largest prime number between zero and ten. Out of all the numbers, the very largest primes are still unknown. Still, every year, the very largest prime is larger. Euclid proved the number of primes to be infinite, but the infinity of primes may be slightly smaller than the infinity of the rest of the numbers. It is here, exactly at this point, that my ability to comprehend begins to fail.

Big Fat Super Tuesday

This heart-shaped purple map -- which presents Brooklyn's donations to Clinton in pink and Obama in blue -- comes from The Brooklyn Paper. Interesting, no? Between the primaries and the ticker-tape parade, tomorrow is going to be a big day in the city. So study up on what things will look like inside the voting booth and underground on the subway, get a good night's sleep, and remember the wise mayor (I wonder who he'll be cheering for?)'s advice: "Don’t throw anything heavy out the window.”

There Is No Time

Long day at work.  Longer post(s) tomorrow.  For now, this poem by D. Nurkse ("There Is No Time, She Writes"). 

Heath Ledger's Death

Yesterday I didn't really feel like writing about Heath Ledger, who was found dead a few blocks from my apartment in the early evening. But here's a quick dispatch: Yes, there was a mob of reporters and fans and rubber-neckers in the vicinty (“because of the way our generation is" one girl told the New York Times, "we sort of feel we’re a part of each other’s lives”). Yes, all the Heath Ledger movies were checked out of Cinema Nolita last night (or so I overheard). Yes, it's tragic.

Obit for Mr. Big

Yesterday, Mr. Big, my hardy, bright-eyed goldfish of seven-and-a-half months stopped swimming. My roommate Ryan delivered a short eulogy: "He lived a long and fruitful life. You know, goldfish only cost like twenty cents." Will Mr. Big be missed? Absofuckinglutely. "He was a fighter," Lan remembered. But as they say -- when it's through, it's through. Time to look for a memorial plant to put in his bowl.

"Widows" at 59E59

Very much on my calendar: Reverie Productions' New York premiere of "Widows" by the outspoken Ariel Dorfman, brought to my attention by Sam, co-proprietor of the zany Audience of Two site. He writes, "I have a small part as a soldier and a torture victim (whee!)" Apparently the show previously played at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, and was workshopped extensively with Tony Kushner ("Angels in America," Munich). Running through February 3 at 59E59. Serious stuff!

Mongolian Helmet

This caption comes from a New York Times slideshow (emailed to me by mother) about Tibetan artifacts now on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

One helmet of Mongolian origin is so heavy with text and imagery that one imagines the wearer collapsing under the spiritual weight. Encircling the conical form are inscriptions offering protection from bad planets and stars, destructive demons, weapons, harmful ghosts and a host of other threats.

Leaden indeed.