Buried Letter Press ~State-Side~ JULY/AUG 2013 ŠBuried Letter Press 2011-2013
Cover Design by Matthew C. Mackey
Buried Letter Press Akron, Ohio
BURIED LETTER PRESS Proper noun: 1. the particular magazine dedicated to innovative and quality criticism of art in all of its various forms, such as literature, music, film and theater, visual art, etc. 2. a provision of encouragement to artists and patrons worldwide.
Burie
d Lett
er Pre
ss
STATE~SIDE JULY/AUG 2013 Gatsby’s (Great?) Return and the Problem of Returning to the Past by slm young We Say It to Their Faces: Theatre in America by Noah Simon July 4th, 1984 by Heather Haden Meandering Thoughts, Crossing the States by Roger Hoover Good and Folked Up by Matthew C. Mackey How to Celebrate Our Inevitable Robotic Future by DeDe Parker
Gatsby’s (Great?) Return
and the Problem of Returning to the Past by slm young It’s difficult to know when it comes to Hollywood what came first—the chicken or the egg—and so it seems impossible to discern whether the current obsession for all things 1920s began with Baz Luhrman’s interest in filming F. Scott Fitgerald’s book or if it has culminated with the release of his The Great Gatsby. (It is important to note, too, the popularity of Downton Abbey and how its popularity has also affected our obsession with this era.) The 1920s, the Jazz Age, the flapper era—it all is defined by excess, and not just simple excess but excess so excessive that when we read a book that shows that excess in all its tragic implications and banality, as we do in The Great Gatsby, we feel embarrassed for its characters and its author, a man who too late understood the cost of selling one’s soul for a few drops more of alcohol and fame. The reception of Luhrman’s Gatsby is not unlike the reception of most of his films, which is clearly divided between those who adore him and those who despise him. Romeo + Juliet seemed to receive the same exact reviews as The Great Gatsby currently is receiving, which were that Luhrman either didn’t take the movie far enough in his own interpretation of the material, that he was “too faithful” to the original material, or that in his own interpretation of the material, he somehow missed the intent or meaning of the original author (either Shakespeare or Fitzgerald, it doesn’t seem to matter). The worst review that I came across was written by Peter Travers of The Rolling Stone, who didn’t say much of anything other than to “skip” the film because it was a “crushing dis-
appointment,” this, I think, because he believed that Fitzgerald’s novel was “a great American novel, perhaps the greatest.” When I was sixteen and reading Gatsby for the first time, I am sure I agreed with Travers’s assessment of Fitzgerald’s novel. To a sixteen year old, what could be better than the recklessness and hopeless romanticism of Jay Gatsby? Doesn’t every teenager stare out into the night—whether at a green light across the water or at something else—and long for someone who is not longing for her? Isn’t this the definition of youth? It was all of this—the bad reviews and thought of Fitzgerald’s novel as the Holy Grail of American novels, and the reinterpretation and the rereinterpretation of Hollywood that was running through my mind as I sat back in the auditorium seat and began to watch this new Gatsby. What was going through my mind when I stood again two and a half hours later was why, I mean really, so many critics thought so little of this movie. I admit, like so many of the critics, I didn’t enjoy the framing device either. I found it annoying rather than useful, but I also found the framing device Spielberg used in Saving Private Ryan annoying rather than useful, and that movie didn’t get panned the way that Gatsby did. So what was it that these critics were reacting to? Did all of these critics hold Fitzgerald’s text in such high regard that they couldn’t stand it being changed, or interpreted, at all? This love or nostalgia or whatever it is certainly does seem to impact the critics’ view of Luhrman’s interpretation (Tierney Sneed of U.S. New and World Report called Fitzgerald’s writing “generous” while Luhrman’s revamp was “gaudy,” while my memory of the book would certainly describe it as much less generous than it was gaudy, though I admit, I couldn’t make myself read all the way through the nov-
el again; perhaps all that youth and disillusionment was fine was I was young and not yet disilluioned). The problem, it seemed to me, that the critics really had with Luhrman’s Gatsby was that it reminded us all that we aren’t as young and hopeful as we used to be, that none of us could actually do what Gatsby failed so miserably at doing, and that is to recreate the past. There is that scene between Nick and Gatsby, when the summer is already fading and the dream already dying, when we viewers know what’s going to happen—we have, after all, all read the book in high school—we know that Gatsby will not succeed in luring Daisy away from her disgusting husband because she has long ago chosen the life she wants, she has long ago chosen to be a stupid girl instead of a happy one. She has chosen not money, but status, and Gatsby, despite all the money he has swindled away from however many people, can never attain the reputation that would once and for all convince Daisy that he is worth giving up the rest of it. What Gatsby doesn’t understand, and what we inevitably see in that scene between Nick and Jay, is that he can never be anything other than he was when his name was Gatz and he was a poor no-name nobody. What we understand as viewers is that the American Dream is a lie. Fitzgerald was Gatsby; we know this now. He dressed the part, and lied about his family, and lived the life until he didn’t. It’s all fleeting—the money, the fame, the good times—they all fell away until he lost everything except how we remember him. And we remember him the way that Tobey Macquire as Nick remembers Gatsby, as the most hopeful person he’d ever met. It’s easier to think of Gatsby as hopeful rather than pathetic, but he is both, isn’t he? Hopeful to the point of death. Pathetic in his hope that the past is perfect and the present can be the past. It was in my high school history class that the phrase, “Those who fail to learn from hisF. Scott Fitzgerald, Photo Source whoseverdesires.wordpress.com
tory are doomed to repeat it,” was plastered above the chalkboard. This was the same year I was assigned to read The Great Gatsby. I doubt I realized the significance back then, and now, as I look back on it all, the only thing that seems clear is that the history we need to learn from is the one we deny. Baz Luhrman reminds us that then is now, the era of excess is here again, and there are far too many Gatsbys and Myrtles failing at the American Dream. It seems to me, this is why we’re so angry at Baz Luhrman for mucking this all up again. We didn’t want to remember everything we’ve lost.
{{PD –Art}}
We Say It to Their Faces: Theatre in America by Noah Simon
The Tony Awards were a couple weeks ago. If you don’t know what The Tony Awards are, they are the Chicago’s Redtwist Theater, Photo Source redtwist.org
Tony Letts, award winning mster thespian, photo Courtesy Noah Simon
It’s a Friday night at the end of a long week. You’re tired but still looking to get out and about. What to do? Your choices are bowling, miniature golf, dinner with a friend, the new Superman movie, or the latest interpretation of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie at your local theater. As a theatre artist, I know that these are the decisions are regularly being made by every potential audience member. And it’s not just a question of what’s the most entertaining prospect, but what kind of dent it’s going to make in their wallet. In this entertainment saturated marketplace, how do I, and thousands of my brethren, make going to see live theatre the most appealing choice. While I’m lucky because I live in Chicago where people know that they live in a town full of great theatre and regularly, that’s not the case in countless smaller markets. And to be honest, even in Chicago, audiences are shrinking. We are looking for inspiration in our collective quest to make live performance so important that the average citizen can’t live without it. Tracy Letts has some ideas.
annual awards given to live theatre’s best and brightest. It’s the stage version of The Academy Awards. This year’s recipient for Best Actor in a Play was Steppenwolf company member and Chicago Theatre stalwart, Tracy Letts. Letts is not only current the recipient of that award, but in 2008 his play, August: Osage County also received a Tony Award for Best Play. He is one of those rare artists who has won in multiple categories. In his acceptance speech for Best Actor this past June 9th, he was the essence of graciousness. He thanked his fellow nominees and the theatre artists who were present at the awards ceremony, and at the end, he gave a special mention to the Chicago theatre community, of which he has been a member for decades. As a member of the same Chicago theatre community, I was overwhelmed with pride, especially when he said, “We are the ones who say it to their faces, and we have a unique responsibility.” When he says, “to their faces...” he means that literally. Many of Chicago’s storefront theaters are small enough that the front row of audience seating can be as little as 5 feet away from the actors. Over the years, it has not been uncommon for audience members to have been hit by anything from spit, blood, or sweat as a result of the on-stage action. Chicago isn’t the only place to have such a visceral experience, but it’s certainly the most well-known. I know, you’re thinking, “what about New York, and Broadway?” Well I’ll tell you what, go see a play on Broadway in a 1000 seat house, and then go to Chicago and see a play in a 50 seat house. Then tell me which one left a more sustained impression on you. And that, my friends, is the big word for American Theatre: Sustainability. The kind of sustainability that keeps the doors open and audience members engaged. All across the country, in theatres big and small, the same conversation is taking place. How do we keep audience members coming in amid a plethora of alternative forms of entertainment, and an ever-shrinking pool of funding? How do we keep ticket prices down and dramatic presentations exciting? To begin with, we have to deconstruct the theatre business model. Instead of bringing audiences to us, perhaps we should be going to them. This is not a
new thought. There are several theatre companies across the country doing just that, bringing their art into the community. They’re going to schools, to prisons, to nursing homes, to private parties, to community centers, and the list goes on. Each one of these companies has tailored their product to not only fit the needs and desires of their respective communities, but I’ll go even further, and suggest that they have found and continue to find new ways to weave themselves into the very fabric of the community.
Lakeside Shakespeare Theatre, Photo Courtesy Noah Simon
For example, Lakeside Shakespeare Theatre is a group of actors who spend 6 weeks in Chicago rehearsing two Shakespearean plays, one comedy and one tragedy, and then they take the whole kit and caboodle up to Frankfort, Michigan, located about 45 minutes south of Traverse City, right on Lake Michigan. LST uses a small clearing in the woods that used to be an old ice skating rink. Founded in 2003 by Elizabeth Laidlaw, the company’s mission is as follows: “Lakeside Shakespeare Theatre was founded to share the thriving creative and artistic force of the Chicago Theatre community with the Benzie County community, and to establish a mutually beneficial relationship in art, theatre and theatre education.” And true to their word, LST, in addition to two weeks of performances, conducts workshops for children and adults alike. For performances, audience members arrive with blankets and coolers and are treated to professional actors weaving some of the greatest stories ever written. The performance is technically free. Lakeside simply asks for a suggested donation of $20, but no one is turned away. You might think that most audience members would pass by the suggested donation sign without so much as a glance, but that is not the case. Not at all. Some people actually pay double the suggested price. Why would they do that when they don’t have to? It’s FREE. Perhaps the answer lies in that idea of Community. And maybe that idea and practice of community-building is the key to Sustainability.
In the 10 years of Lakeside Shakespeare Theatre’s existence, community support has grown by leaps and bounds. Businesses and individuals are falling over themselves to donate supplies, food, and actor housing, among a host of other things. LST has become important to the Benzie County community. Laidlaw and her company of actors brought theater to the people, and the people have responded inkind because they collectively recognize that this is something that is as important to them as little league and Fourth of July fireworks. In Urban centers like Chicago and New York, there are some theatre companies that are bringing theatre to the people, companies like Barrel of Monkeys, a group of actor-educators who conduct 6 week residencies in Chicago’s public elementary schools. The initial purpose of their residencies is to teach 5th and 6th graders (and they’re starting to work with older kids as well) creative writing. But it’s so much more than that. They’re also teaching these kids that they have a voice. By taking the stories that the students write and creating a performance that Barrel of Monkeys company members present to the entire student body at the end of residency, they empower these kids. They imbue them with confidence and a healthy sense of self-esteem. In return, Barrel of Monkeys has benefitted financially, artistically, and humanistically from their interactions with the kids, educators, and parents. As time goes on, government funding for the arts is being reduced to a statistical nothing. It’s happening right now; it’s been happening for years, and it’s going to continue to happen because our American culture doesn’t allow for even the idea that theatre can be a useful tool for anything other than a couple hours of inconsequential entertainment. Every theatre company in this country will have to adjust their business models to reflect a more inclusive and direct approach to engaging not only their patrons, but their communities as a whole. This is the only way to make theatre not just engaging but important, and thus, sustainable.
July 4 , 1984 th
by Heather Haden
“Somehow it seems wrong to photograph a blind person. It’s like stealing something valuable they don’t even know they own.” ― Chuck Palahniuk, Phoenix Last month we celebrated the birthday of George Orwell, author of the now all-too apt book, 1984. This month we will continue to question the feeble independence of our nation at its own birthday celebration, with Edward Snowden as our absentee party planner. The recent upsurge of attention toward Snowden’s National Security Association leak regarding their PRISM surveillance program has brought the issues of media enslavement, propriety, and privacy to the fore. Yet the government is not the only assemblage that has been capturing data and collecting evidence. Surveillance and art have merged in novel ways in recent years, including the Google Art Project (whose users’ art searches have likely, in turn, been sold by Google to aid PRISM). In my April 2013 Buried Letter Press article, “Art Survey: The Eyes that Bind and the Ties that Blind,” I explored how surveillance has conceptualized art and society for centuries through the act of imparting both the glance and the gaze upon ourselves and the other through both our biological eyes and through technological aids (social media and drones). In reacting to recent and ongoing press, this month I will explore new initiatives in transdisciplinary art, specifically that of the burgeoning genre of Surveillance Art and the work of Information Artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg, in order to critically enable us to address the ways art is adapting, and might continue to adapt, to the paranoiac cultural climate. Above: Genetic Portraits by Information Artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg, Photo Source deweyhagborg.files.wordpress.com
Many surveillance artists rely on strategies similar or nearly identical to those being employed by the government, for example photographing apartment rooms from afar with telescopic lenses, in order to critique and subvert the very means through which the state is penetrating privacy. If we are to look at art as artifacts of the present, no genre (formed or in formation) could be more anthropologically relevant than surveillance art. While this genre is not as yet officially recognized, I hypothesize that we will see it rapidly congeal within the next six months to a year, given the rate of current events. As more and more artists are approaching this genre, it raises issues not only of violation and authorship, but it also reexamines the Rauschenbergian collapse of the elitist distinctions between art and life. By revealing the private, the candid, and, as we will see, the invisible, these artists are transforming reality into hyperreality.
Dewey-Hagborg’s genetic self-portrait., Photo Source technabob.com
Hyperreality functions to turn reality on its head in mockery. Many have celebrated the freedom to access information through the internet quickly and efficiently rather than spending hours poring through books at the local library, which had been the reality of many for decades when the internet as we know it was born. In many ways, as Snowden has revealed, this informational freedom has become hyperreal. Increasingly secretive surveillance tactics may maintain virtual freedom but are faulty methods of gathering information with which to image the face of a true and actual American democracy. The façade of a democracy, operated in secret as a spying, politicocapitalist oligarchy, is absolutely
not synonymous with the management of the democratic state in which we have been led to believe we still live. With or without technological aid, we are not privy to be omniscient Peeping Toms, and as a result these moments are, in reality (not hyperreality) invisible to us. Manipulating access to these realities constitutes the hyperreal in both government usage and in art. The resulting hyperreal artistic manifestations, be they video, painting, photography, sculpture, etc. – as signs of the time, how accurately can they construct a reliable, readable text of the present moment? Heather Dewey-Hagborg is an Information Artist who creates what could best be described as genetically-based portrait likenesses. Based on my distinctions above, I interpret her portraits to be hyperreal in their physical manifestation but to represent reality through the process of creation them, as I will show. On her personal website, her work is described follows: Traversing media ranging from algorithms to DNA, her work seeks to question fundamental assumptions underpinning perceptions of human nature, technology and the environment. Examining culture through the lens of information, Heather creates situations and objects embodying concepts, probes for reflection and discussion. The process of creating a genetic portrait involves collecting information from chewed pieces of gum, cigarette butts, and stray hairs that Dewey-Hagborg finds within the urban setting. She then reads the DNA found in these urban artifacts and is able to construct a portrait likeness of the individual who had, sometime before, chewed upon the gum, dragged upon the now-discarded cigarette, or shed a hair (we shed 100-200 every day – imagine all of your asyet unrealized portraits strewn throughout the world!). She often displays the resulting three-dimensional visage on a wooden plaque above a petri dish containing the evidence. Genes here, like alleles in grade school Punnett Squares, construct meaning for visual mapping. For example, one gene determines gender, another gene only
partially determines ancestral information, yet another determines eye color, etc. Time, not genes, holds the information regarding the age of an individual. Therefore, the portraits produced are always of a 20-something. If it is that systematic to reconstruct portraits from biological debris, we are leaking our own visual bread crumb trail through involuntary activities like hair shedding and skin cell self-exfoliation. However, according to a Forbes article published on May 31, 2013, “Artist Creates Portraits From People's DNA. Scientists Say 'That's Impossible,’” two people contest the accuracy of Dewey-Hagborg’s portraiture: the first, Daniel MacArthur, Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School, and University of Wisconsin-Madison Anthropologist John Hawks. Further in the Forbes article is an explanation of “why the idea that you could reconstruct a face from just a few DNA markers is, well, wrong.” Assuming that these genetic portraits are only loosely accurate, how do they function in our paranoiac sociocultural context? It is today a common practice for artists to use found objects in their art in order to construct an indexical mark of society. Last century, at the point in time that Dewey-Hagborg photographed holding her genetic objects were deemed trash, they likeness, Photo Source booksofjoe.typepad.com shed the ties to their previous owners and entered the public domain, free to be transformed into aesthetic media by artists. Twenty-first century technology is preventing a full shedding of these ties, as Dewey-Hagborg’s process illustrates. Her work is able to sleuth out a snapshot in global time. Hairs, chewing gum, cigarette butts are genetically encrypted – someone stopped chewing this gum here, someone stamped out this
cigarette nearby and perhaps the wind rolled it around for a while until her forceps delicately placed it in a plastic bag for aesthetic analysis. How have Dewey-Hagborg’s artworks functioned, and how will others in this genre continue to function, to make identities visible and/or invisible? Dewey-Hagborg makes figural the index of what it is to have a unique genetic code, yet the physical features she unearths, accuracy aside, are no more than visual coordinates, underscoring the fact that our appearances matter little. Her work fails to image culture through her end result, but it is her process, rather, that succeeds through using the procedures of making the invisible visible; this process is more real as an index of our present paranoia than the resulting three-dimensional images. Her aesthetic practice reenacts public scrutiny and detective work to try to find people out. Individuals found, or perhaps rather arguably created (more on that later), are less real - hyperreal in the fact that it is manipulation of the otherwise invisible knowledge of what a person, who interacted with a stick of gum or a cigarette, looked. Just as her process engages wonderment of the spectral, but to uncover only the figural, the spectrum of light through the magnifying glass of PRISM uncovers IP addresses, email transactions, and untold amounts of other mined data – the experiential. If our features can, relatively speaking, be loosely tracked by artists from our physical debris and if our work and recreational transactions can be monitored by Big Brother from our nonphysical, experiential, ethernet debris, how then are we to construct our identities in the twenty-first century? It is said that one’s true character shows when an individual does not think they are being watched. Constant scrutiny prevents the development of genuine multinational character. I must make it clear that I do not advocate ignorance of these issues and acknowledge that the intent of some of these practices is to protect our country. However, I also must ques-
tion how this paranoiac climate may be enabling a transition into a disingenuous and superficial society. What I predict for art is an upcoming and groundbreaking transition for political art: perhaps curated Google searches for government spies to decode or flash mobs specifically choreographed under surveillance cameras. While painting has fallen in the postmodern, I also predict a renaissance of this tradition, of doing things the “old fashioned way” as a counter-production to digital art that may begin to feel all-too connected to an all-seeing state. Furthermore, with so many feeling that anonymity is quickly being destroyed, I foresee a resurgence of artists not signing canvases in an effort to reestablish the agency of the private and of “the other”. As Dewey-Hagborg’s work continues, questions about authorship a la Sherrie Levine’s establishment of the Appropriation Art genre will beg to be answered. The fact that “anonymous” individuals are contributing to the success of another artist raises ethical concerns about the royalties and copyrights associated with genetic content. Just last month, the government ruled against the patenting of human genes. When a company patents a “product” or idea, they are essentially claiming that they have created something – in this instance, possibly the most audacious act of copyright infringement of all – that of mother nature. If corporations are unable to patent human genes, how, then, can surveillance and information artists say that pieces constitute their body of work - works of art that fundamentally claim to have created something new through appropriating someone’s near-physical identity? In this new contest, laws against copyright infringement set in place for older genres will likely be restructured in order to continue to function toward the protection of both artists and their subjects. Despite all of our cameras, watch dogs, and whistleblowers, at present we simply are unable to remove ourselves enough from the situation in order to provide an omniscience that only time and
hindsight can provide. What is certain, though, is that art has never been so ingrained with politics, science, and the fundamental core of nature simultaneously than it is now. However, we must learn to keep critical distance, for if our artists or our government spies unblinkingly through the Orwellian telescreen for too long, we will lose our binocular agency for monovision and, like strains in a global petri dish, become monocultural.
Additional Resources http://deweyhagborg.com/bio.html http://bigthink.com/endless-innovation/dna-street-art-or-the-future-of-geneticsurveillance?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed% 3A+EndlessInnovation+%28Endless+Innovation%29 http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/02/09/artist-reconstructs-faces-using-dna-leftbehind-in-nyc-and-a-3d-printer-considers-implications-of-genetic-surveillance/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2013/05/31/turning-found-dna-intoportraits-what-an-imagination/ Image Sources: http://deweyhagborg.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/side_view_faces_web.jpg http://technabob.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/dna-faces-sculpture-3dprint.jpg http://bookofjoe.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c5dea53ef017d41bdfc92970c-800wi
Meandering Thoughts, Crossing the States by Roger Hoover
Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity. – John Muir Men and nature. The connection. I was out in the deep woods of Ohio with a friend of mine, foraging for morels, that delectable fungi that grows for three weeks a year, when he asked, “Why are we doing this? Why is it fun? Why do you fish?” We live in an era, have long-lived in an era, where foraging, fishing, hunting and sleeping out of doors, is no longer required necessities for our survival. *** John Muir, American Naturalist, a man who, in 1867, walked from Indiana to Florida, and later into the Alaskan wilderness and Yosemite for weeks at a time with little more than a hiking stick and journal, continues to inspire a new generation of adventure-seeking Americans. For Muir, the “over-civilized” were the Industrial and Political elite, the rubber and steel barons. Today, perhaps, we have all become “over-civilized” spending the majority of our days in quilted plastic automobiles, in front of desks. We rarely cook homemade meals anymore and spend the majority of our time locked into computers and cell phones. If Muir were alive today, he would have little wilderness and woods to escape to; He would be driven past by 30 foot long Winnebagos. *** Eighty years later, Edward Abbey left his family’s Appalachian homestead and hitchhiked west to the Pacific. What he saw changed his life. He discovered "a land that filled me with strange excitement: crags and pinnacles of naked rock, the dark cores of
ancient volcanoes, a vast and silent emptiness smoldering with heat, color, and indecipherable significance, above which floated a small number of pure, clear, hard-edged clouds. For the first time I felt I was getting close to the West of my deepest imaginings-the place where the tangible and the mythical become the same." *** When Abbey returned to the West in 1956, he returned as a seasonal ranger for the United States National Park Service at Arches National Monument near Moab, Utah “backed solidly by the world’s most powerful Air Force, biggest national debt, and grossest national product.” On Wednesdays he made the 5 mile journey to Moab on foot to replenish supplies. Campers were few and far between until, a few years later, when, Arches National Monument, like all the other National Parks, except for, maybe, the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, were “developed.” *** Today, all national parks in the contiguous United States have been developed. You can now take State Highway 82 to the scenic overlook on Independence Pass in the Rocky Mountains (which bills itself as “the highest elevation of a paved Colorado through road) or skip the hike altogether at Clingman’s Dome in the Great Smoky Mountains (with a concrete observation tower, built in 1959, that offers a panoramic view in every direction). *** Every year, hundreds of thousands of families board their gas-guzzling 30 foot long RVs bound for Yosemite, the Grand Canyon and other landmarks. In 2012, 282 million people visited the National Parks. Nothing exemplifies the wild, freedom-loving, chest-pumping, adventure-seeking American quite like traveling the west. The west was opened up first as a gold mine, literally, and then free land given away created a land grab that saw a mass exodus America wouldn't see again until the Great Migration northward by black Southerners seeking work and, again, freedom. How much freedom can be found from the cozy confines of an air-conditioned, TV-broadcasting gas sucking beast of an RV?
*** Abbey argued that places like these, while protected, should be left alone. In his essay “Industrial Tourism and the National Parks” he decried the mass visitation, exploitation and inhabiting by motorized vehicles. Once we started building roads into the parks, we destroy their significance. *** “When I first came to the Arches country back in 1956 this was the official entrance road, eight miles of sand and dust and rocks and when it rained as it sometimes did a lot of this turned into quicksand, real wheel sucking muck. But, I loved it, I loved it all. The miserable road, the dust, the wind, the flash floods and quicksand, Voodoo rocks, Hoodoo arches, the ravens the space the silence.” *** With their playlists booming from their iPods, drowning out the sounds of the wild, windows rolled up, air-conditioning on, ignoring the scent of the wild… *** ...a paved road, a box office planted into the middle of the street, no more free admission, you can buy a ticket now to get into the park...a modern visitor station...with a clerk always on duty...learn all about the arches now without actually having to go see one...Used to take all day to drive into this god-awful place now anybody can do it in a few hours. You can see it all out of your windshield. Used to be you had to walk in here, take about half a day. You can buzz in and out in half an hour or less. Have to truck water in now...tourists expect it. *** The so-called “Western” bands like Riders in the Sky are polished dandies posing as cowboys (one has a Ph.D. in theoretical plasma physics another has a masters in literature – none were born or lived in the west), commercial successes on par with your modern Cowboy in his over-sized pickup truck with coyote mud flaps,
donning his cowboy hat and boots without the slightest inclination of what to feed a horse, let alone spend months on end sleeping alongside one. This modern cowboy knows horsepower and galvanized hitches decorated with dangling ball sacks. True Western songsters like Tom Russell are ignored by popular culture and the mass media machine because, well, they use nostalgia of a lost time to show the modern problems eroding the modern west. We prefer to romanticize and wax nostalgiac about these things. We don’t want to look the truth in the eye. We don’t want to walk among the rattlesnakes and scorpions, we want to see them from a distance, or from behind the plexi-glass at the Visitor’s Center. *** I am not much concerned with the state of the world a thousand years from now, for in that long-range view I am an optimist: I think that the greed and stupidity of industrial culture will save us from ourselves by self-destruction. What I am concerned about is the world my children will have to live in, and maybe, if my children ever get around to it, the world of my grandchildren. *** While these people pound the asphalt to camp a night at the Grand Canyon, snap family photos to use for Christmas cards, I say walk your neighborhood, raid your neighbor’s neglected gardens, get to know your neighborhood park or river by walking it. It’s just as wild there because, simply, you’re outnumbered by the wildlife. Walk into the wild.
Good and Folked Up by Matthew C. Mackey
America is so folked up right now. Within the past decade, a surge of folk and alt folk and indie folk and whatever folk has flooded radios, record stores, and mp3 players. Bands like The Decemberists, The Mountain Goats, The Avett Brothers, and the ever popular Mumford & Sons, to name only a few on the laundry list of folkish musicians, have set the stage for a long overdue resurrection of folk music. Reconnecting to a long tradition, we once again enjoy the twang of the banjo, the voice of the violin, the raggish piano, the moody standup bass, throw in a mandolin, acoustic guitar, accordion, washboard?, anything really. So what is all this folking about? “Come gather ‘round people wherever you roam…” The famous opening line of Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are AChanging” rings out the inveterate call of folk music. It’s no surprise that one of the most recognized folk musicians of all time asks for the ear of the people. After all, folk music is people’s music, stemming from deep roots of oral history, community, and identity. Coming into its own as a genre in the late 1800s, folk music celebrates an even longer history as an expression of the community. Sung in churches, living rooms, union halls, town centers, and at funerals, and weddings, folk music serves to bring people together. Every nation, culture, ethnicity has a version of its own, and as long as a people have been, well, a people, there has been music to keep record, celebrate, and lament. America, especially, has quite a unique heritage of folk music. As a land of immigrants, America has witnessed many peoples bringing with them a musical history and culture specific to their experiences, later becoming the foundation of American folk music. In fact, the most unique characteristic of American folk music is Woodie Guthrie, Photo Source NY Times
Joan Baez & Bob Dylan, Photo Source National Archives and Records Administration
Often referred to as “working class” music, folk has a strong tradition of “speaking” for the people. Full of love songs, social commentary and satire, folk music carries with it the voice of the people, often demonstrating an exquisite preservation of storytelling, often retelling the histories that don’t make the textbooks. Musicians such as Lead Belly and Woodie Guthrie, among others, helped blaze the trail for American folk musicians to later follow. By spinning the yarns and listening to the salt of the earth folk along the American countryside, both Lead Belly and Guthrie have an impressive repertoire of standards that include a range of topics, such as heartbreak, romance, prison life, racism, poor conditions of the working class, family, the Great Depression, drinking, dust storms, gambling… In fact, any situation people get themselves into, one is sure to find the anxious ear of a folk singer, spinning it into a melody. During the sixties and seventies, folk music experienced a revival and played a major part in the revolutionary minds of that generation. Once again, folk surfaced as a popular voice, speaking its concerns against government tyranny, the atrocities of war, and the advocacy for civil and human rights. Notables, such as Dylan, Joni Mitchel, Joan Baez, and many, many more helped give an identity to the
Lead Belly on accordion
its diversity. America itself is a melting pot and so is the music that characterizes its folk. Folk music in the States celebrates a wide diversity of influence, ranging from deep southern spirituals to Midwest bluegrass, Appalachian music in the northeast, bluecollar blues all over the nation, and immigrant tunes from all over the globe.
troubled people of America. Even attending Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 march on Washington, these folk musicians became a symbol of the American voice. But, folk isn’t just limited to speaking for the concerns of the people. It’s also a voice of celebration, expressing the wide variety of complex human experience.
Like their name suggests, Fast Molasses plans on delivering the sweetness in nuanced ways. Currently, the band, fronted by Christopher Smith and Shawn Wee, is in the workings of stagger-releasing a three album concept project. Mimicking the process of creating rum from molasses, the albums simulate the planting, harvest, distillation, and wonderful consumption stages of rum production. The first album, set to debut in the summer of 2013, is titled, From the Sugarcane and provides the rich, raw material sound of good old fashioned American folk. The album harbors a playful quality tempered only by the skill and technique of the performances. This first collection is perfect for toe tappin’ in the dance hall or crooning with your best gal or guy. Teamed with the talents of Josh Boord on guitar, Jason Willis on the double bass, and Walter Prettyman on the fiddle, Smith and Wee deliver a well written and composed first album. Joined by Hunnabee and the Sandy Tar Boys, a wellknown folk group from Athens, Ohio, Fast Molasses cut this first full length in the studios *** where they blended organic recording
Fast Molasses, Photo Courtesy Fast Molasses
Once again, folk has made its way back again into the consciousness of not only America, but across the world giving new generations a chance to connect to tradition, community, and identity. Contemporary folk in all its variations is as popular today as it was in the 20th century. Still, some groups, like Fast Molasses, have preserved the traditional stylings of folk music with a new approach to presentation and album conceptualization.
techniques, with a hand-made, community project spirit, furthering the tradition of togetherness. Each track is heavy with the warm smell of sugar and the air in the distillery is getting thick with anticipation for the next two albums. The next two albums, To the Still, and At the Bottom of the Barrel, take the listener through the alchemy of distillation with a blending and layering of acoustic and electronic processes, and the drunkenness of an empty barrel, reviving swamp jazz and reconnecting with vaudevillian roots, bringing one back for more molasses and starting the rum soaked journey all over again. The three albums are a celebration of an eight year catalogue of music, written by Smith and Wee at various points in their lives. At the very heart of their project is the ecstasy of a drunken soul, drunk on life, love, booze, virtue or vice, and with no strict timeline on the development of the albums, Fast Molasses is letting From the Sugarcane ferment for as long as necessary. For the band, the production and release of rum is just as much an art as the process of creating an album. With the popularity of folk growing in the US and abroad, both folk purists and contemporary revisionists will undoubtedly find something to love in the music of Fast Molasses. Folk music today, like its predecessor, will remain as one of the strongest expressions of the people that sing its songs, dance to its rhythms, tell its stories. Like a good barrel of rum, folk music is the draught that brings us together, helps us celebrate, eases our lament, and helps us remember where we came from and where we are going. I say let’s raise a glass, shoulder the weight, drink our fill, and get good and folked up.
Robot LactoBot by Cyndi Bellerose, Photo Courtesy DeDe’s Snaps
How to Celebrate Our Inevitable Robotic Future by DeDe Parker
The year is two thousand and thirteen, as the humans count time. They have begun rudimentary space travel, the personal computer is essential in their daily lives, and they have built simple robots to do the work that they are unwilling to do. Their mistake, building robots who can think for themselves. It is only a matter of time before the artificial intelligence takes over and subjugates the human race. Their only chance for salvation is to celebrate the inevitable robot revolution any way they can. On Friday June 7th, Columbus, Ohio paid tribute to Earth’s future robot overlords by hosting the RU Robot? Show at Clayspace Gallery at 831 Front Street. Clayspace is unique in that not only do they have a large ceramic studio for classes, but there is also a beautiful gallery space where they feature “local and emerging artists in all types of media.” The show, conceived and curated by Columbus’s own W. Ralph Walters, featured robot-themed art and sculptures by over thirty artists. Walters got the idea for the show as a Christmas gift for artist Rob James. James had mentioned that in Indianapolis it is difficult to get art shows, and Ralph wanted to put on a show that would not only appeal to the artists but to a potential audience, and as robots have been reinvented for science fiction films, television, and comics every decade since the 1940s, it was something that everyone could enjoy no matter their age. In addition to the artists themselves, the show also featured local models Krista Kitty, a burlesque performer, and Sarah Feite, both of whom were in full robot regalia. Feite, who represents The
Robot Krista Kitty, Photo courtesy
James R Parker
Robot ROM by Matt Brady, Photo Courtesy DeDe’s Snaps
The centerpiece of the show was unveiled when Walters requested everyone’s attention and announced, “As many of you well know, I've been promoting this art show as a way to appease our future robot over lords, and as it is, there's one of them in the back right now… and he'd like to have a word with you." The bewildered attendees filed to the back room where a 6’5” robot lurched out of its frame and began menacing the guests with a saw accompanied by electronic music. The music picked up tempo and the bot, named Brainstorm (pictured opposite), began tentatively dancing. The audience cheered as Brainstorm, a fully articulated robot operated by Kevin Becker, got his groove on while being accompanied by husband and wife team Mark “Trade Mark G.” Gunderson and Christy Brand on keyboards and electronic music. Gunderson, a founding member of the band Evolution Control Committee in 1986, is frequently credited as the creator of the ‘mash-up’ genre of music, risking copyright violations many times in the pursuit of musical mashup genius. Another show standout was ROM, a six foot tall 122 pound fiberglass robot. ROM, built and launched right before Y2K as an “entertainment character for the new millennium”, was inspired by Robbie the Robot from the film Forbidden Planet, and B-9 from Lost in Space.
Robot Sarah Feite, Photo Courtesy: DeDe’s Snaps
Costume Vault on Sawmill Rd in north Columbus, was head-to-toe robot in silver boots, headpiece, and skirted costume with buttons on the torso. Ms. Kitty was similarly garbed, sporting full length silver boots and silver wig. Local make-up artist Bobbi Jo Gonzales was available to do robot make-up for show attendees. In addition to being a nurse at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Gonzalez does make-up for Funhouse Faces, Scare-a-Torium haunted house, and freelance work.
Robot Brainstorm, Photo Courtesy DeDe’s Snaps
ROM cuts a formidable figure with his blocky limbs and chaser light eyes that seem to follow your every move. ROM’s past antics can be seen at www.animatronicbear.com. There you can see video clips and other characters and media created by Matt Brady. For the Robot Show, ROM was installed and operated by David Yonek. Other notable artists who participated in the show were organizer W. Ralph Walters, Jessica Bradley, Rob James, and Billy Tackett. Robot Shopping List for World Domination by Chris Tenant, Photo Courtesy DeDe’s Snaps
Walters is a local artist with an international following. He is most well-known for his album covers for doom metal bands. His pieces have been seen in countless exhibitions, and the detail in his mythological-themed paintings must be seen to be believed. Walters has many homes on the web including Facebook, www.redbubble.com/people/ wralphwalters, and his studio is in the 400 W. Rich building in Franklinton, which houses studio space for almost 100 local artists, and he shares that space with community art group Art Party Columbus.
Ms. Jessica Bradley resides in Millersport, Ohio on Buckeye Lake and displayed a painting entitled “Herr Al Bot” a robot owl with steampunk reminiscent gears for eyes. Bradly works mainly in watercolors and is known for her brightly colored floral and animal pieces. She also owns and operates www.guitarpartsresource.com, an online guitar parts hardware store. Ms. Bradley is also very active with Art Party. Robert James attended art school at University of St. Francis in the 1990s, and after focusing on writing for a few years, has been “back with a vengeance” with his artwork for about six years now. He uses textures and repetition of numbers and letters to create a
Gnostech by Billy Tackett, Photo Courtesy DeDe’s Snaps
Billy Tackett says that the motivating focus of his artwork is to bring the fun back to horror artwork. “I know that some folks see my subject matter as dark, but almost everything I do has at least a little bit of tongue in cheekiness. I grew up reading equal doses of Mad Magazine, Famous Monsters & Marvel Comics so everything I come up with is run through that filter.” His piece for the Robot Show, entitled “Gnostech” features a crucified robot. Tackett does illustrated covers for CD’s and books, and is mostly known for his zombification of pop culture figures like Rosie the Riveter and Uncle Sam. He has a Facebook page and a website www.billytackett.com Art Party Columbus participates in several gallery shows each year in addition to street events like Crest Fest (August 24th in Clintonville) and the Columbus Arts Festival. Art Party is affiliated with the Clintonville-Beechwold Community Resources center, where their monthly gathering is held. Many of the artists participating in the Robot Show are members of Art Party, which was founded by Randal and Tona Pearson, both of whom had pieces on display. Their credo is “All art, all levels, furthering knowledge and the community.” Those interested in joining Art Party can contact Tona Pearson via Face-
Bender’s Belch by Eric Shook, Photo Courtesy DeDe’s Snaps
depth of field in his paintings. His piece for the Robot Show, entitled ‘Aftermarket’, is truly a feast for the eyes, a painting with so much detail and characters that each time you view it, you notice something different. He will also be publishing a novel to be available on Kindle later this year. He resides in Indiana, and you c a n s e e h i s w o r k a t www.RobaljamArt.blogspot.com.
book or at art.party@ymail.com. Monthly gatherings are free for everyone to attend, and for a small yearly fee, members can have their work displayed in Art Party affiliated events. The R U Robot show was attended by approximately 200 guests. Walters said “I couldn’t be more pleased. The turnout was such that we’ll be able to do it again next year.” Maybe, just maybe, when the robot overlords come, those who submit their work for display will have their names on the favored scrolls…So start painting, sculpting, and building your robots for submission for next year!
BURIED LETTER PRESS NOW ACCEPTING SUBMISIONS! Visit www.buriedletter.com For full submission guidelines, tasty treats, and fancy hats!