I was recently at a party where the subject of man-cuddling was brought up and became a point of debate. A friend of mine made it clear that he was afraid, for allegedly unknown reasons, of cuddling with another dude, and everyone else (most of whom were girls), naturally tried to pick apart why he felt this way. What could cause a fear so limiting as that of man-cuddling?

There is the obvious gut assumption made by many a Women’s Studies students that his masculinity must be so precariously balanced as part of his self-identity that he cannot indulge in the finer things in life. Buddy cuddles are such an integral part of any deep relationship that I cannot imagine what it must be like to deprive oneself of that. It became clear rather quickly that this did not explain his apparent phobia of the cuddles, however. The “fragile masculinity” explanation seems pretty extreme (I’m a Women’s Studies minor and even I think it sounds a little radical) and doesn’t usually translate well to the average Joe who doesn’t want to snuggle up with his best bro. So what is it? Why does my friend have real fears about hitting the cuddle couch with his friends?

Has he never experienced the glory of laying back and relaxing with his best dudes? Nope. He has in fact had perfectly fine cuddle sessions in his past, always with some dude named Ben, and never with any traumatizing side-effects. We can cross aversion off the list, along with any worries about finding out a deeply buried sexual preference, which he explained rather eloquently using a very specific and very vivid stand-up bit performed by Louis C.K. (if you want to watch it you should probably go seek it out yourself, and maybe turn on safe search while you’re at it). We were able to conclude that his fear was in no way the result of any past experience or prospective future experience.

At this point we were at a loss. None of us could see any reason why my friend should be afraid of being a cuddle bug, and neither could he. Perhaps some of it is rooted in his idea of what it means to be a man of his specific point of identity – his ideas of man-cuddling from the perspective of a straight male could differ from those who identify as LGBTQ. Or perhaps his views on cuddling are truly unique and dudes everywhere are settling down with a nice blanket and their best guy friend as we speak. We may never know, because we don’t really talk about dudes cuddling. We don’t really talk about cuddling in general, as if it’s not the most spectacularly comfy experience in the world (even when your arm is falling asleep and your neck is forming a kink from being at a weird angle). Maybe the solution is to bring cuddly conversation into our daily lives. When did physical contact become such a taboo talking point?

I have no idea why or if this is important, but I do know one thing. I am about to go cuddle with my roommate, and you all probably should, too.

Sunday I will present my Senior Recital and I’m scared.

I have never been one to get nervous before a performance: shaking and breathing heavily as I struggle to get the nerve to walk out on stage. Or to panic the night before, jumping out of bed to check my score unsure of whether it was an eighth or a quarter note rest.

No, I have never had these concerns. Of course I’ve gotten the usual butterflies but I have always refused to acknowledge them as nerves. No, I never get nervous – only anticipatory.

Yesterday, nerves and that little voice in your head that says “I can’t” got the better of me and I struggled to get my head in “the right place”. I wasn’t able to function as a person, let alone as a singer, and for the first time in a long time I was scared: scared of the future, of jaw tension, and tuning, scared that I would forget the words to pieces memorized weeks and months before, and scared that I wouldn’t be enough. Enough of a singer, enough of a performer – simply that I wouldn’t be good enough to met the expectations of family that has financed my education, friends who have heard incessant chatter about Anna Netrebko for the past four years and my own lofty expectations.

For me, the difference between this recital and every other performance that I’ve done is simple and boils down to two main points: the sheer quantity of music and the fact that on Sunday it will be just me on stage. On Sunday there will be no costumes or sets to hide behind, no co-star to steal the lime light and no blocking to distract from the fact that it is Alexandria up on stage – not Phyllis or Brooke or Servillia. This vulnerability is what frightens me. If the audience doesn’t approve, there is no character or director to blame – just me.

I know that things will be fine on Sunday – better than fine. I am well prepared and love the music which I am presenting. Now all that remains is to turn the lingering butterflies into anticipation for what is sure to be an amazing day.

Check out the Ann Arbor Film Festival this week. The AAFF is one of the premiere experimental film festivals in the Northwest.

Experimental cinema, unlike Narrative or Art film, lacks a consistent set of artistic practices. By nature, experimental film eschews coherent meaning, lengths, times. It is far easier, therefore, to define experimental cinema by what it is not than by what it is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YhmrD7J7ZI

In Europe, post world war one, Surrealists such as Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel argued used the ability to jump across varying imagery and soundscapes to explore the dreamlike and ephemeral quality of film. Un Chien Andalou is a classic Surrealist film which delves into the Oedipal complex, social anxiety towards violence.

In the US, Stan Brakhage, a reclusive filmmaker refusing to engage in the dominant narrative practices of Hollywood, worked with film reels by hand – adding ink drawings or even moth wings onto the film strips to explore how abstract imagery could be interpolated over elapsed time – literally decorating time and space with his creative vision.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaGh0D2NXCA

The Canadian film board subsidized work for many talented animators. Norman McLaren is a particularly prolific figure in Canadian experimental and animated film, working for over 30 years with hand-drawn film strips.

I highly recommend attending the Ann Arbor Film Festival this week to see how these early experimental artists’ legacies have continued to influence a broad-based and versatile form of self-expression!

As a senior working on his thesis project in the Stamps School of Art & Design, I’ve been (obsessively) thinking about different ways to display artwork. Outside of the traditional gallery setting, the general public has more access to art than ever before – most artists have portfolio websites, or galleries documenting exhibitions in their spaces, in addition to physical forms of “takeaway” objects meant to summarize the work through postcards and artist books.

This past weekend marked the opening of Stamps MFA exhibitions – the third year students’ shows taking place in the Stamps gallery spaces (Slusser here on north campus, and Work down on central), as well as a warehouse in Hamtramck and a smaller gallery further inside Detroit; while the first year graduate students showed their initial ideation processes and studies in the faculty studios on Green Rd. here in Ann Arbor. On Thursday, the school provided a bus for us undergrads to travel out to Detroit to see the two separate venues, spending about 45 minutes at each location before concluding the adventure where it began outside of the Michigan Theatre.

The first stop was the giant Hamtramck warehouse space, where the work of artists Joshua Nierodzinski, Natasa Prljevic, and Cosmo Whyte will be up for the coming weeks. The art itself was well done, consisting of paintings, an installation of images, sound, and video, as well as a multimedia collection of prints and sculpture. However, I couldn’t help but feel more overwhelmed by the building itself, only three rooms of which were occupied out of what must have been thousands of square feet and at least ten floors of space. I don’t think it made the work look bad by any means, but perhaps it would have had a bit more of that “wow” factor had the warehouse not dwarfed the focus of the show itself. For me, the saving grace of the exhibition was an artist booklet that was put together by a local publisher in collaboration with the artists, which included more detailed explanations, process photos, and high quality documentation of the work. In contrast to the warehouse-turned-gallery space, it seemed obvious that the format and size of the book was created to fit the art inside it, not the other way around. And for a small fee ($20), anyone could essentially take the show with them and revisit its contents whenever they wanted.

I was immediately struck by the possibility of a book acting as an almost custom, portable gallery space. Of course, art is always better when experienced in person, but especially for someone who was able to make it to the actual exhibition, a book serves as a trigger for the memory of the tangible objects and images it represents. Working in tandem, it seems to be the perfect combination. So much so that I’ve since decided that in addition to the thesis paper I’m required to write about my “project”, I’ll be putting together a sort of thesis zine to act similarly as a takeaway of the work, including process images and writing that the viewer wouldn’t get otherwise.

Sometimes I have nightmares that all the gallery spaces will be filled up, torn down, or taken over by the wrong kind of crowd and that my work will have no place to go. It’s comforting to be reminded that art can live in between the public and private realms of culture, and that if nobody wants to show it, I can at least clear out my room for a photoshoot and pass out booklets to my friends and family. That is, until I’m able to open up a gallery myself 😉

http://www.nierodzinski.com/

http://www.natasaprljevic.com/

http://www.cosmowhyte.com/