Category: Uncategorized

Banksy, the pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, film director, and painter, is not actually Paul William Horner, and his mystery makes him even cooler.

Banksy is known for his stencil work on the streets of England where he promoted strikingly truthful phrases paired with dark images that revealed his anti-war, capitalist, and establishment perspectives. The street is his canvas, and has Christened houses, museums, and “do not trespass” grounds with his works. He flees from the police, and for his entire artistic life has remained anonymous. He brings what many other street-artist predecessors have also introduced to the public – a form of art that breaks free from all rules, institutions, and inhibitions. They are representations of the people, a democratized perspective of sorts, which integrates into the very streets you walk and live every day. In 2010 he

created his first film, “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” showcasing “the inside story of Street Art – a brutal and revealing account of what happens when fame, money and vandalism collide,” and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Film in 2011.

Street art brings a sense of truth and excitement that traditional, gallery housed art lacks. The unavailability, raw perspective, and inherently cool factors make its study that much more exclusive and exciting.

Is being said by two or three people around campus. Since the student organization MUSIC Matters released the artist for their annual charity concert, I have only encountered a few students who have been overwhelmingly excited about the choice. The truth is, most folks forgot Ben Folds was even making music when they graduated high school, and the artist choice came as a bit of a surprise. Ben Folds last released an album in 2008, which makes him slightly outdated on a college campus.

However, all of that being said, the concert looks extremely promising. Above all, MUSIC Matters’ principal goal is to raise money for a different cause each year; the 2013 concert will create a needs-based scholarship for accepted high school students to come to Michigan. This alone is praiseworthy, and an excellent use of music and school resources. Furthermore, the concert will be at Hill Auditorium, which will be fairly suitable for Ben-Folds type music. Last year, MSUIC Matters presented their first concert by bringing in J Cole at Hill Auditorium. As I commented on last year around this time, (see here: http://arts.umich.edu/ink/2012/04/08/2456/) Hill Auditorium is possibly the worst venue for a Hip Hop concert, and this severely restricted the level of enjoyment. For a more folk-acoustic type show, comfortable seats and a beautiful theater might be more appropriate.

The concert is April 11; if you aren’t doing anything I recommend checking out the show. The cheapest tickets are $20, and the money goes to an amazing cause. Just think of it as donating the money to an incredible scholarship fund, and then getting to see Ben Folds in return. What could be better than that?

Menstrala: menstrual art. Creating art from period blood. Yes, this is weird and strange and out of the norm but I also find it fascinating and I imagine to be liberating. I can just imagine your grotesque faces, twisted with horror but admit it: you feel fascination as well. And you can see how it can be liberating. Something so shrouded with stigma (God forbid we talk about periods in public or girls walk to bathrooms without veiling their tampons/pads with a folder and their shame) just being brought into light. Just like that. Revolted by period blood? Oh, here it is, in a painting. Beat that with a stick, motherfucker.

Anyways, where was I? Here’s a work by Vanessa Tiegs, who has extensive menstrala work.

However revolted you are by the fact that the red strokes you see were made by a female body’s excrement, you have to admit that there’s nothing but talent here. Using such an intimate source of pigment is almost like exposing your soul… Isn’t it? Or is that just me at 5 AM when sleep is kicking in?

I find this incredibly beautiful, think what you want of me.

Here’s South African artist Zanele Muholi’s work, a commentary on rape being used as a “cure” for lesbianism in some regions of Africa.

What she has to say about it: To read more about, click here.

Isilumo siyaluma is a Zulu expression that can be loosely translated as “period pains/ periods pain”. Additionally, there is an added meaning in the translation that there is something secretive in and about this blood/“period in time.”
At one level, my project deals with my own menstrual blood, with that secretive, feminine time of the month that has been reduced within Western patriarchal culture as dirty.

On a deeper level then, my menstrual blood is used as a vehicle and medium to begin to express and bridge the pain and loss I feel as I hear and become witness to the pain of ‘curative rapes’ that many of the girls and women in my black lesbian community bleed from their vaginas and their minds.

To read more about, click here.

Another artist who combats the stigma of periods being dirty and unclean is May Ling Su. One of her videos is of her going to the beach naked and smearing herself with her period blood, breaking the whole can’t-go-to-the-beach-while-on-your-period “rule.” Here’s an image:

There are entire communities and forums dedicated to menstrala. Here’s a fragile and delicate piece from Blood Art-Menstrala Live Journal community:

Well.

That’s it.

See you all next week, same time, same place.

Flashbacks lead to something that never was. Or is. You seem to feel like the walls crumble and the chairs melt away, the harsh lighting of the projector intensifies to stage lights, the draft becomes the auditorium breathing, and the warm body next to yours familiarizes itself like it used to in between longs summer days.

The projector flashes off and faces fill the void. Familiar voices waft up in the air. Gone.

Like 8 months passed, at least the t-shirts look the same “ETC”. I watch those I spent 3 days with and those I interviewed and those I befriended and those that befriended me all perform. My two worlds collide–interest with social, or academic and event, or myself and others. AKA the UM Educational Theatre Company did a show on race and I had all the feelings.

Race is something that I talk about everyday. It is something that I would like to only talk about, even. Something that I feel like should always be talked about and something that should never stopped being talked about.

So it was both terrifying and wonderful to see this show. Terrifying in that certain scenes and bits of dialogue come from real life–real lived experience. Terrifying that in most of life I’m in a space where racial oppression and racism aren’t spoken of right away. Terrifying in that most people I interact with don’t think about race, in that most people on campus are white and that because of this, like the pervasiveness of whiteness, race becomes a topic often not talked about and it is made invisible and immaterial.

Terrifying in that there are many topics that need to be debriefed more: biracial and multiracial identity, the politics of passing, and the different impact racism has on different racial identities. So I flee into fuzzy phone calls, torn book pages, and cups and cups of coffee.

What is at once infuriating becomes also reassuring. Wonderful in that race actively confronts each and every audience member by a removal of one. Wonderful in that this space is dedicated to talk about a topic that is so embedded in culture that the entire modern world is founded on it (the middle passage and slavery) without even acknowledging it. Wonderful in that it gives the time needed to hear certain stories and gives a voice to certain experiences and allows for a place for them to be heard.

Wonderful in that IGR is here to help to facilitate two dialogues about race and the show–only moments after the performance. But these dialogues, however basic they are, are so nice to be a part of in that it helps to refocus my world view and show me how much shit is truly everywhere and how much we don’t actively talk about it. The fact that only certain experiences can be shared in a facilitated dialogue–where the scene is set, rules established, and safety made certain–make me want to vomit everything I have ever eaten and then some. This realization is wonderful.

But I only can say half of this (read: all of this) because of my white privilege. I get the privilege of how and when I talk about race because my race (white) reads as neutral, normal, socially accepted. I won’t get my white racial identity brought up by the public, I won’t get my hair pulled, I won’t have my skin complimented, I won’t be asked where I’m from and no one will ask me if my mitten isn’t michigan but something else, somewhere even “exotic.”

I have the privilege of being able to talk about race and then walk away from it and into a safe space, which by safe I mean the entire world–all of society.

Events like these, like UMETC, especially UMETC, get me thinking. They get me uncomfortable, angry, passionate, loving, and disturbed. Good theatre does that. In all of my expert opinion, I wouldn’t go to theatre if I agreed with all of it or if I left feeling comfortable. And it is here, at U of M, where racial climate can be completely terrifying but at least we have these moments where we can briefly,

ever so briefly,

talk about it.

Before it crumbles away and we’re faced

with new memories.