Monthly Archives: November 2014

by

How to Draw a Bunny | Ray Johnson


“…[A]n extensive series of interviews and compiled photographs, works of art, home movies, and video to formulate an eloquent, fast-paced narrative that flows like a Jazz ensemble and exposes a tantalizing view of Johnson’s polyvalent life. As the investigating police chief said, “Everyone has a story about Ray Johnson. But no one had the whole story.”

 

via How to Draw a Bunny | Ray Johnson Estate.

 

by

Man of Letters: Ray Johnson


Man of Letters: Ray Johnson Art in Motion

Last year, I taught Ray Johnson’s work to my art-school undergrads in a writing class. They were outraged that they had not heard of him before. We read Frank O’Hara’s poem “The Day Lady Died” too, and the casual name-dropping in that celebrated I-do-this, I-do-that memorandum annoyed them—they didn’t know who Verlaine was, or Hesiod or Lattimore or Behan or Genet, and they practically went to sleep with quandariness in feeling unaddressed. But they adored everything about Johnson, and did not care when they didn’t get his references. They loved how willfully he obstructed his own career. They loved that he dropped hot dogs from a helicopter as part of the 7th Annual New York Avant Garde Festival, 1969. Understanding, as Killian explains, that simply by paying attention they had been recruited into his open-ended pass-it-on experiment, they found his self-annihilation thrilling. Normally, I try to counter young artists’ fantasies about immolation on the pyres of genius. In this case, though, what could I say to talk them out of it? He died coolly, slyly, not only for but in and as his art. In this way, he belongs in a class with Bas Jan Ader, another stubborn true believer lost at sea.

via Man of Letters: Ray Johnson Art in Motion.

 

by

Greed & Peace


Greed & Peace preclude each other.

“ 

It means: that I want everything for myself; that possessing, not sharing, gives me pleasure; that I must become greedy because if my aim is having, I am more the more I have; that I must feel antagonistic toward all others: my customers whom I want to deceive, my competitors whom I want to destroy, my workers whom I want to exploit. I can never be satisfied, because there is no end to my wishes; I must be envious of those who have more and afraid of those who have less. But I have to repress all these feelings in order to represent myself (to others as well as to myself) as the smiling, rational, sincere, kind human being everybody pretends to be.

„

— Erich Fromm

‘To Have or To Be’ (1975) p. 5
by

LOCKE: so-called “solutions”


“ 

Therefore the Negro today wishes to be known for what he is, even in his faults and shortcomings, and scorns a craven and precarious survival at the price of seeming to be what he is not. He resents being spoken for as a social ward or minor, even by his own, and to being regarded a chronic patient for the sociological clinic, the sick man of American Democracy. For the same reasons he himself is through with those social nostrums and panaceas, the so-called “solutions” of his “problem,” with which he and the country have been so liberally dosed in the past. Religion, freedom, education, money–in turn, he has ardently hoped for and peculiarly trusted these things; he still believes in them, but not in blind trust that they alone will solve his life-problem…

„

 

— Alain Locke

Enter the New Negro, 1925

Continue reading →

by

Harry Belafonte Speech To Hollywood About Race


America has come a long way since Hollywood in 1915 gave the world the film Birth of a Nation. By all measure, this cinematic work was considered the greatest film ever made. The power of moving pictures to impact on human behavior was never more powerfully evidenced than when, after the release of this film, American citizens went on a murderous rampage. Races were set one against the other. Fire and violence erupted. Baseball bats and billy clubs bashed heads. Blood flowed in [the] streets of our cities, and lives were lost.

The film also gained the distinction to be the first film ever screened at the White House. The then-presiding President Woodrow Wilson openly praised the film, and the power of this presidential anointing validated the film’s brutality and its grossly distorted view of history. This, too, further inflamed the nation’s racial divide. Continue reading →

by

Massage Benefits Health


The Top 5 Health Benefits of Massage

The health experts at National University of Health Sciences want you to know the top five health benefits of adding regular massage therapy to your health and wellness strategy.

Massage therapy from a licensed practitioner can:

Lower stress

The long-term effects of stress can take emotional and physical tolls. Massage therapy may relieve stress and conditions associated with it, such as tension headaches.

Increase immune function

Medical research indicates that massage therapy can help boost immune system strength by increasing the activity level of the body’s natural “killer T cells,” which fight off viruses.

Boost mental health and wellness

Research suggests that symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression (all associated with mental health) may be directly affected with massage therapy.

Manage pain

Pain can negatively affect a person’s quality of life and impede recovery from illness or injury. Recent findings highlight the role of massage in pain management.

Improve physical fitness

Elite and recreational athletes alike can benefit from massage therapy-massage can reduce muscle tension, improve exercise performance and prevent injuries.

(source – American Massage Therapy Association)

via The Top 5 Health Benefits of Massage | National University of Health Sciences.

by

ART we LIKE: Bambi, the ‘female Banksy’



Just who is Bambi? The graffiti star was dubbed “the female Banksy” when she gained more widespread public attention in 2011 with the appearance of her striking image of the late Amy Winehouse on a Camden Town doorway. Like her male counterpart, she keeps her identity secret. And now, just like the renowned Bristol artist, her work costs tens of thousands of pounds: where once she simply paid tribute to the style of celebrities such as Winehouse, David Beckham and Kate Moss, today she is commissioned by international A-list entertainers, including Rihanna, Robbie Williams, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.

via How Bambi, the female Banksy, became the new star of street art | Art and design | The Observer.

 

by

Burn baby burn


Whoever developed an auto-roll video ad for IBT that after muting stays muted for 5 seconds (long enough for you to scroll away) and then unmutes has earned a special punishment in hell…