m a n t a r a y g l o w . com

I should be finished with Lipstick Traces by now, but as it turns out, I'm only half way through it. I've made my dreaded move to LA and had to leave the book behind because it belongs to the Sonoma County library. I'm not moving to the so-called city of angels on a definite basis, God no. I'll be here until May. In any case, that's the plan. After that, I'll probably move back to the Bay Area with Chloe as she gets her teaching credential in San Jose.

I'm actually not glad I had to stop reading it. What can I say? To my own surprise, the book is getting good. It had a slow start if there ever was one, and it never realy shook off that all-too-academic language I complained about, but it does get good. I must say. The problem is I had expected it to be a history book--its sub-title being "a secret history of the 20th century"--when it really is a book of ideas with more analyses than storytelling. The idea of the last Sex Pistol's concert is there as a way to frame a bunch of fragments (historical digresions and theoretical postulations) that have to do with the phenomena of "the spectacle" as a form of revelion, revolution even. Marcu's argument is kinda hard to grasp. Instead of stating his thesis-- that a spectacle is both the penicle and the demise of grassroots rebelions-- he illustrates it. The idea emerges slowly. To Marcus there are moments of freedom, little revolutions, that spring out from time to time, but then get sucked in by The System. These little revolutions, as he shows, have happened in politics, art and pop culture. Marcus loves those carnival-like momets in history when the state seems to crumble down and a new, spontaneous order/society takes hold. The time span from the release of their first single in 1977, "God Save the Queen" to the end of their American tour in 1978, when Johnny Rotten quit the band, was just one of those little freedom/chaos carnivals. 

This is what I got from all those fragments. The first wave of punk might have not had any monumental social or political repercussions in the West, but it for a while freed a group of people from the belief that their society was real. By real, I mean absolute and not artificial. Prompted by the band's only album, "Nevermind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols," a group of people saw that things like school, jobs, religion, the Bollocks, and even streets were bullshit. Punks might have not been the most articulate rebels in history, but they shook things off. They tried to bring monuments down. As Marcus put it, "If a monument was a symbol, the spectacle concentrated on a single point, a demolition of symbols was the surest way to reveal the invisible terrain in which people live." (pg. 131) That's a neat idea. We live on empty space. Beneath the asphalt there is dirt. Sidewalks are arbitrary paths. That idea could be expanded to culture; that is, unless you're a hermit, to everything you see all around you. How did punks shatered their culture's symbols? By taking a shit on the sidewalk in broad day light and smearing it all over the wall, as it were. Negation, offence and violence in the midst of a developed and cultured society. Marcus focusses a lot on other historical events, such as France's Situationist International art/cultural movement, to show that the Sex Pistol's were not the first group to value chaos ( though they were the first one's in Rock and Roll/pop culture). Because Marcus goes into a lot of tangential stuff (May 68, religious societies) at times I lost sight of the main subject, the Sex Pistols. Though it could also be that the Sex Pistol's are only Marcus' excuse to talk about all this other stuff. The second half of the book will tell. I have some problems with the book, but in the end I buy Marcus' argument. For a minute there, there seemed to be some real freedom in punk, some real danger and all that good stuff.

Of course, it was soon comodified. The next time something like that happened, if I'm reading the book right, was the emergence of Michael Jackson's album "Thriller." By then, the spectacle was fully assimilated by The System from begining to end.  Heres' something else: not much humor in Lipstick Traces. I feel like telling Marcus, "Man, you're writing about kids with green hair who used to spit at each other during shows; go ahead, poke some fun, just a little." Yet he doesn't poke fun. His talk is smart, but straight, always straight. And long winded. You got to poke some fun, Marcus. I mean, sure the modern state was a--here comes an overused term--"construction," but so were the pins, and piercings (however more creative). Lipstick Traces is still good though. I'll try to get a copy here in L.A. so I can finish it. I'm sure the public library has one. The problem is, I have a $24 fee on my card. So it's going to have to wait as I try to find a job.I've already been turned down by Pinkberry, no joke. In the meantime, I've started reading "Bright Lights, Big City" by Jay McInerney. Suprisingly enough, I haven't gotten into it yet. The main character is too vapid to be relatable. But Chloe, who stayed in Sonoma County, said it was good, so I'm going to stick with it. 

Yesterday I started reading "Lipstick Traces" by Greil Marcus. This book, which was published in 1989, is something of a classic of pop culture/ 20th century history. I'd heard quite a bit about it before getting it at the library. I won't start trashing it right away, but I will say, though, that I'm on page 60-something and haven't gotten into it at all. To be fair, sometimes it takes a while, a hundred pages or more, for a book to get good. The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci was like that. I couldn't get used to the scholarly tone right away; many of the sentences were long, laborious, and the verb--many times the dreaded to be-- took a while to appear. I even thought of putting it down, but once I got into it, I really got into it. It's one of the best books I've read in a long time.But I'm having a stronger reaction against Greil Marcus than I had against Jonathan Spence.To be frank, Greil Marcu's voice gets on my nerves. His language is abstract, grand-sounding and poetic in a self-conscious way.Page after page he repeats the same thing: the Sex Pistols were revolutionary; they killed classic rock and started something new, something that freed a generation, at least for a while.

Geez! His delivery and images are so abstract and quasi-poetic that it feels like you're reading pre-Socratic philosophy and not just contemporary (pop culture!) history. Still, I shall read on. At least I'm into the subject matter; I had a blue Mohawk a few years ago (though that's hardly unique and does not qualify me as a punk connoisseur) and still like bands like the Buzzcocks and the Adverts. The good stuff in the book is on its way, I can feel it. Marcus is trying to link, or prove the link, between punk and art movements like dada, the Situationist International movement, and French heretics from the middle ages. I really hope in the coming pages Marcus foregoes stuffy professor crap like this: "Because received cultural assumptions are hegemonic propositions about the way the world is supposed to work --ideological constructs perceived and experienced as natural facts -- the breach in pop milieu opened into the realm of everyday life..." blah, blah, blah. In the intro he says that the book is about the 1976 record "Anarchy in the U.K." and how it changed the pop world. I hope he gets to it before page 200, otherwise I might have to put it down.                                

In some ways being unemployed sucks terribly. I mean, not having money at all can be a downer, especially if you live in a small town. That said, there are good, ahem, great things about not having a job too. You can basically throw yourself into the most time-consuming, self-serving, hobbies. I’m lucky enough to have a Netflix account and know of a couple websites where I can watch sports for free.Thank dog for the “watch instantly” feature on Netflix. It has kept me from going under many a times. Yesterday, I basically had a streaming video online marathon. It first started with my favorite soccer competition on the planet: Copa Libertadores de America, which I watch for free on www.rojadirecta.com. I watched the Monterrey (Mexico) vs. Nacional (Uruguay) match. My co-national, the gifted Walter Ayoví from Monterrey, was chosen player of the game, so that was kinda cool. Wannabe soccer players must live vicariously through their heroes. I do, in any case. There are many much better soccer (football, whatever you want to call it) tournaments in the world, but Copa Libertadores shall remain my favorite one. It has great matches, but it kinda retains an old-school spirit. Many of the players aren’t huge super stars yet (if they were, they’d be in Europe) but most of the best South American players use it as a platform. I guess it comes down to nostalgia. Copa Libertadores was one of the first tournaments I got into when I was a kid growing up in Ecuador. Now I could care less about nationalism, but in Copa Libertadores nostalgia always gets the best of me.

Walter Ayoví                               Francois Truffaut                        Rodney Dangerfield 

After that I watched two movies that could not be any more different from each other. Bed and Board (1970) by Francois Truffaut and, after that, a supreme American classic, Caddyshak (1980). Bed and Board would appeal to movie buffs into foreign film, particularly the French New Wave. Caddyshack would appeal to the kind of folk who can appreciate a good old fart joke and tits on screen. I fall into both categories. Not that Bed and Board was dark, serious and heavy-handedly intellectual. It was pretty breezy. But it was also subtle and quite smart about the nightmarish part of having a good middle class life. The french do that so well. By that I mean both: the bourgeois life and the critique of the bourgeois life. Caddyshack starred Chevy Chase, Bill Murray and, most significantly, one of my childhood heroes, Mr. can’t-get-no-respect himself: Rodney Dangerfield. I first saw Rodney Dangerfield in 1992’s über ridiculous Ladybugs. The movie combined soccer, blond girls and dumb jokes. I was in heaven. He became an instant hero of mine. I was like 10 years old. It’s all in the delivery with Dangerfield. He does not act. He delivers. You either love him or hate him. Not many things to say about Caddyshack, except how different people looked in 80’s movies. Back them movies made people look like people. I don’t don’t exactly what it was. It has to do with the clothes, the hair and makeup and people’s bodies, maybe. Nowadays, even in cheap comedies, people look fake/plasticky. Even when contemporary movie makers want to make somebody look real--say, by making a teenager look pimply and insecure--they exaggerate and make him/her look even more fake. Oh, the old days! Sir Mantaray must be getting old. 

Matteo Ricci is born in 1552 in Macerata, Papal States. He is the oldest of 14 children. As a teenager, he moves to Rome to become a Jesuit priest. Besides theology, he studies classical Greek, Latin, Hebrew, cartography, mathematics, Mnemonic arts, astronomy and clock-making. At 18 he takes a Portuguese trading ship from Lisbon and heads to Goa, India, then a Portuguese colony, to work as a missionary. The dangerous trip lasts 6 months. From Goa, where he stays 4 years, he’s sent to Macao, China. Goa was far from Rome, but Macao may as well be Mars. In China, at 30-years of age, is where his life really starts. The Christian mission in China is very small. Jews, Muslims, Christians (all called huihui in China) are all the same to the chinese, who are not only uninterested but wary of foreigners. It takes Ricci a lifetime to understand chinese society. He is one of the first Western scholars to master chinese script. By the time of his death, at 57, in Pekin (he has slowly made his way from Macao to Pekin) Ricci dresses and acts like a high-class Confucian scholar. His lifetime dream of converting the Chinese emperor to Christianity never comes true. Some scholars and officials respect him; in fact, some convert to Christianity and a few churches are built. But also a few enemies are made. Many want him deported. Most common people think of him as a strange alchemist who worships a woman with a baby (Ricci had to focus on displaying images of Mary because the chinese found the image of the crucified Christ offensive).

Jonathan Spence’s approach to this 1984 biography, The Memory Palece of Matteo Ricci, is very scholarly. It can, at times, be dense and a little over-loaded with non-crucial historical explanations. Still, the book is fascinating and daring in form. Spence takes Ricci’s life-long notion that he can convert high-raking chinese officials to Christianity by, as a first step, getting them interested in his scientific and philosophical knowledge. Ricci writes and publishes (in Chinese!) books about friendship and Christian doctrine; he drafts a huge world map that takes him years to complete and presents it as a gift to the emperor, I think, through his jealous eunuchs; he teaches the chinese mathematics and how to make good clocks. But most importantly, according to Spence, Ricci tries to attract chinese scholars with his mnemonic techniques.

Ricci Statue, Beijin           Chinese stamp of Ricci             Jonathan Spence

As opposed to the chinese approach to memory, which focuses on poetry and repetition, Ricci’s approach (I could say the European approach, but in China, at that time, Ricci is Rome) focuses on imagining striking visuals and placing them in a palace. If you, for instance, wanted to learn the names of 20 people, you would create in your memory palace a room and would have a striking image--such as, say, a beautiful princess-- next to the names you wish to remember. That way, every time you wanted to remember those names, you would go to that room in your memory, think of that striking image and that would help you recall the names. There would be hundreds of rooms in you memory palace. Ricci was said to be able to read a long passage once and be able to repeat it verbatim, backwards. For this biography, Spence takes images that mean a lot to Ricci and writes around those images, not in chronological order. The book is not a psychological assessment of Ricci’s wants and desires. It is the telling of the encounter of Western and Chinese cultures in the XVI century by way of Matteo Ricci’s fascinating life.

In this spatial experiment from 1980 Israeli video artist, Buky Schwartz, plays with the notion of space and perception. 

The artist starts by unrolling a long carpet-like roll of paper on the floor. A half-drawn figure of a chair (the two front legs and part of of the seating pad) can be seen at an angle. He then brings out an actual chair and puts it on top of the drawing. Since the drawing and the actual chair match in size and angle, the real chair fits perfectly on top of the drawing.

For a second there, it looks like a drawing, but he then sits on it. After that he goes out of the picture frame and comes back with a can of black paint and a brush and starts to paint on the paper roll. The viewer can’t see much of what’s going on because this happens behind the real chair.

There’s a sense of mystery and expectation. Once he’s finished painting, Schwartz stands on top of the chair. He steps down and puts the chair away and walla! He appears to be standing on top of the drawn chair; an optical illusion, of course. One almost feels like clapping, as if it were a magic trick.

And in a sense it is a magic trick. There’s a bit of acting involved. Schwartz pretends to jump off of the drawing. The effect is throughly convincing. It looks as if he were jumping from a chair to the floor when in reality he’s just jumping from left to right. One looks at the drawing in disbelief. There is no real chair there. Still, when the artist rolls away the paper, the first reaction is “He’s made the chair disappear!”

There's no editing and the camera remains set in a medium-shot from beginning to end. No real story emerges. Though with video ( in general, as a medium) something of a story always tends to come out. In this case: man prepares trick, performs trick, picks up and leaves. It might not seem as much of a story, but it beats, say, Warhol’s endless shot of the Empire State building.

A jarring noise coming out of some type machinery, is heard during the whole experiment/project. It probably comes from somewhere in the studio. Some type of meaning might be construed from this noise, but my guess is that it wasn’t intended. It’s just background noise. I muted the video as it becomes really hard on the ears right away.

What’s the point of The Chair? It seems open ended. It’s fun to watch, if anything. 

It also messes around with the notion of reality, for instance. It shows that a drawing can pass for the actual thing if placed at the right angle. It makes one look more closely at everyday things--they might just be imitations of reality.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find this or any of Buky Schwartz’ projects on Youtube, but here’s the link to The Chair on viodeoart.net.

Buky Schwartz has kinda caught my eye, so I’ll blog more about him in the next few days.

I'm thinking of changing this blog's focus. In truth this blog has no focus. It's al over the place. Well, most of the stuff I write about has to do with the arts or politics, but the "the arts" are so vast...

I enjoy writing about theatre, music and the news. Also, sometimes i feel like switching to Spanish, but since most of the events and things that go on around me happen in English...and it seems that most people who visit the page are English-speakers...I'm going to keep it as is, language wise. A focus is needed here--that's for sure. 

Things I really like and that I could learn more about/ write about exclusively:

--photography

--video art

--experimental video

--contemporary art

--novels, poems

According to some older folks from the area, a few years ago wine tasting used to be free. Now most wineries in Sonoma and Napa county charge for a round of tastings. If you look a little hard, however, you can still find a few free places. Korbel, the widely known American champagne—or sparkling wine, to be more precise—does not charge for tours and tastings.

A good option for broke students or recent graduates.

Plus the Korbel headquarters is just a short drive away from the impressive Armstrong Redwoods State Reserve, a destination in itself.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Even the best Sonoma County Korbel does not resemble Veuve Cliquot Ponsardin. But then again, to taste Veuve Cliquot at its headquarters one has to fly to Reims, France (and be willing to shell out a decent wad of cash).

And so we went to the Korbel Champagne Cellars. And it was much better than expected. I cannot imagine a nicer area—rolling hills, blue sky and fog, and the clear winter light just kind of nestling above the vines.

Then there’s the tour. Much of it, granted, is pure Korbel marketing. There’s a clear effort to make the brand seem classic, classy, spiritual, and even progressive (it was the first woman-managed winery in the area, or something). But that self-promotion is only expected.

To be fair, one does get some good info between the self-promotion; specially those of us who don’t know much about champagne-making.

According to the tour guide, when the Korbel brothers came to America from the old Czechoslovakia they tried their hands at ventures like cigar-box making and the production of Slivovitz–a cool but strong plum brandy popular all over Eastern Europe.

Only after failing at their other ventures did the Korbel brothers settled for sparkling wine.

Old Storage Room. Photo by Rexana Khan. 

Korbel was founded in 1882 and the tour takes you to the original storage rooms. Seeing how champagne used to be made and corked in the past was my favorite part of the tour. In the beginning each bottle had to be turned over manually in order to distribute the sparkle-creating yeast, I think. Sometimes it blew up on the worker’s face.

The champagne tasting is done in a big room with various bars. The room, by the way, could have used a couple of couches. But then again, if there were couches people would probably stay there for hours and hours, demanding free champagne.

The tour guide pours four kinds of champagne, starting with the driest and ending with the sweetest. Not much can be said about the champagne. It’s not great, but it’s not terrible either. Good enough (except for the Brute Rosé, which is too-candy like).

Would I buy a bottle? Sure; in fact, I did. And let’s just say I had some Slivovitz money left. 

I'm in LA--more exhibits to come. 

Right now Los Angeles is one of the best cities, if not the best one, for contemporary art. It has so many galleries, it would take months to visit all of them. Some artist are even choosing LA over New York because of its dynamic art scene.

I was hanging out in LA with my friends Pablo and Casey. Not really knowing what they’re into in terms of contemporary art, I decided to go see Kellesimone Waits’ “Power Plays” at the Frank Pictures Gallery. It seemed accessible as it deals with mostly current political figures and seemed to have a social message (as opposed to, say, some abstract postulation about the nature of reality, or something).

Kellesimone is also singer Tom Waits’ daughter, which was also another reason that brought us there. Not a bad thing–just another element to play with, something to talk about at the café afterwards.

As you can see in the video, Pablo, who has an incisive -if ruthless- eye, had a mostly negative reaction to her art. Well, to be fair, not an altogether negative reaction. He didn’t love it. “Too cartooney” or not deep enough was his main complaint. Casey liked the paintings a little more. She found them, if anything, entertaining. She also took the artist’s statement into consideration and found the art successful in light of the original intent.

Hilary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi, 2009

acrylic on canvas

60″x42”

Our main criticism didn’t have to do with the concept behind “Power Plays,” which I found unique and quite interesting. It was a mostly technical criticism: some of the portraits did not fully resemble the politician being portrayed.

The painting where Hilary Clinton and Nacy Pelosi are engaged in some type of sexual wrestling is a good example. One has to look very closely or read the title, otherwise it kind of looks like them, but not enough.That quick second of doubt (“is that her?”) takes away from the potential comedic reaction one may have.

Lack of resemblance is not something only up-and-coming artists like Waits have to deal with. The same may be argued of, say, Elizabeth Peyton’s portraits. Maybe photography is so prevalent nowadays that viewers ask more of portraits. Maybe contemporary artists are not as craft-oriented as artists a hundred year ago were. In fact, many work from photographs.

That said, I think Kellesimone Wait’s “Power Plays” is a strong group of paintings. She plays with some interesting ideas. The result of seeing political figures in sexual positions is both funny and telling at the same time. The limited palette (pink, brown, black) and the simple composition help focus the paintings. “Power Plays” brings a usually all-too-solemn group of people-- politicians--down to earth. My favorite painting was that of Margaret Thatcher.

What can I say? I have a hard spot for sexually risqué blondes with saggy tits. 

Margaret Thatcher, 2009

acrylic on canvas

24”x30”

Manu Chao and his band, Radio Bemba, made up of musicians from all over the world, combine politically charged lyrics, catchy melodies and a punk rock delivery with trumpets, accordions, Spanish guitars, bongos and pre-recorded loops (think political speeches or Tarzan screaming in the jungle).

“Baionarena,” Chao’s new 30-song album recorded live in 2008 at Bayonne, France, makes clear two things about the French-born multilingual world rocker. First, his patent sound—full of Latin, Jamaican and Eastern European influences—is better suited for small venues. Second, his career as a solo artist has been just as fruitful as his early work with seminal gypsy-punk group Mano Negra

Musically speaking, “Baionarena” isn’t a complete success. Manu Chao’s previous live album, 2002‘s “Radio Bemba Sound System,” did a better job at showing musical complexity. During some songs, the highly amplified guitars and drums in “Baionera” smother the feverish acoustic catchiness that make Manu Chao songs so festive (the big venue is partly to blame).

That said, the album packs a great number of hits and captures the band’s live energy in an immediate, highly energetic way.

Though some songs don’t come through clearly because of over amplification, “Baionarena” has several powerful renderings. “Casa Babylon,” for instance, a Mano Negra hit, comes through very cleanly because, among many reasons, the trumpet becomes more notorious than the electric guitar.

“Desaparecido,” from 1998's masterpiece “Clandestino”--which is Chao’s best album to date--brings in acoustic elements with even better results. At midpoint in the song, Chao stops singing his catchy chorus and allows the Spanish guitar to interact with the public and various loops, including that of a police car siren. He only interjects to make short statements that blend with the music.

The whole concert displays the powerful, emotional connection between the musicians and the public. “Hiver,” one of the last songs from the second CD, has Ska elements and is delivered in French. In this song, Manu Chao’s punk rock influences show in its speed and power. An unexpected little gem.

“Baionarena,” which includes a DVD with six music videos, a short documentary and the full concert recorded live at France’s Bayonne Arena, has several accomplished moments. All the powerful songs are too many list. Suffice it to say that Manu Chao has had a fruitful career and this album captures him playing a big concert at the height of his power and popularity.

So by now something's clear:  drag queens own Christmas shows in San Francisco.

But the're all so different. 

The great Countess Katya Ludmilla Smirnoff-Skyy, reigning diva of the opera world, is the classiest drag queen in the Bay Area.

And she knows it too. Between incredible poperatic deliveries, she likes to enlighten the audience about her wealthy past, her endless talent and her bitter departure from the former Soviet Union.

Her new life in "the America" is the subject she likes best. Apparently she arrived with little more than "a title, a voice, and a fabulous collection of imperial jewels."

Katya's Holiday Spectacular continues through Jan. 2 at The New Conservatory.

Read entire show review on EDGE