I cast your form
formless islands
on waters obedient to the current of my thirst
absurdly I cast your overthrow and my defiance.
Stubborn reason will not prevent me.
15 May, 2011
Excerpt from Return to My Native Land
By Aimé Césaire:
18 December, 2010
Statement from a recent art exhibition open call submission: Aafia Siddiqui Trial Sketches
My statement from a recent art exhibition open call is reprinted below (the bulk of this text, and a link to the relevant images, can be found at my previous blog post):
I recently had the opportunity to assist with the making of a documentary film about the late artist, Mark Lombardi. Best known for his abstract drawings that depicted the scandal-ridden relationships between international figures of power, Lombardi believed that the most compelling art was based on real world events - events that sometimes remained largely unnoticed by the general public.
04 October, 2010
Aafia Siddiqui Trial Sketches
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| From Aafia Siddiqui Trial Sketches |
The included sketches are from a series that were made during the trial of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. On September 23, 2010, Siddiqui received a sentence of 86 years after being found guilty of numerous charges - among them, attempted murder of U.S. soldiers and federal agents.
What makes Siddiqui's case unique are the questions that still remain in light of her trial. Where was she prior to her arrest in Afghanistan in July 2008? Was she, as some have alleged, being held in a secret prison at Bagram as Prisoner #650? After all three of her children disappeared, two have turned up - where were they, and what is the fate of her third and youngest child, Suleman?
The fact that some of these questions may never be answered (without the revelation of classified information) highlights some of the shortcomings of the U.S.-led War on Terror. But more broadly, the limits of law, as an ideal of modern, constitutional liberalism, come to the fore. And it is precisely this condition of incommensurability with our ideals that I had in mind when producing these courtroom sketches.
Stylistically, these sketches intentionally differ from the rote, courtroom sketches usually made for evening-news panning. Either finished and flat, or rough, with notes on the side, they retain a resistance to a completely fleshed-out story. A deference to skepticism is maintained, paralleling that which is deserved for Siddiqui's case, as well as any other instance in which a nation proclaims "Victory" over its enemies.
(A digital piece based off of these sketches is in the works...)
17 August, 2010
Xtranormal: for the increasing need to say something, via an animated/avatar/de-humanized voice.
For example, a discussion on the gender politics intricacies of "Michfest," the annual, all-womyn music festival, and their trans- admittance policy (Created by Amita Swadhin):
Nerd Alert: Context Highlight - Awesomely Useful Add-on for Firefox
Allows you to quickly and easily highlight all instances of a word or phrase within the current page. Simply select the text you want, right click and choose "highlight"...A good workaround for a "multiple-find word" option, provided that you can already find one instance of the word(s) you're looking for on the page. Holding Ctrl- while selecting "Highlight Word" from the context menu allows for multiple, highlighted words, à la Google Cache.
29 June, 2010
On dump.fm
I don't think I'll ever be 100% convinced by the micro-blogging of image-macros (saturation is finite; over-saturation is finite, too), but I can still appreciate this:
...if one GIF can be a "grammatical molecule", than 100 can be a "complete sentience" and 10,000 can be a "book"...
- Ryder Ripps, in a response comment following his article, "Introducing: dump.fm" on Rhizome.org
(Btw, I'm reading "sentience" as intentional.)
Way to go Ryder!
http://dump.fm/
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