Author: allychoi

PREVIEW: Journey of Self-Discovery

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From September 19 through 30th, from 12-6pm. come see Richard Moizio’s exhibit, Journey of Self-Discovery at the Duderstadt Center Gallery! 

Moizo seems to really value the audience’s experience of taking in their art, and writes: “To experience an interesting piece of art is to feel ALIVE. It propels one out of reality (for a moment) and transcends the spirit to a special place much like a spiritual awakening or an encounter with God… Mindfulness is the goal.”

Journey of Self-Discovery invites the viewer to take a peek into Moizo’s artistic process, which they describe as therapeutic and one of self-discovery. “It is a chance to play like a child and to allay fears/worries and to lose the confines of the world around you.  It offers you a chance to dream, dance and explore unknown worlds,” just like that of a story, or any other artistic form, such as literature, film, or music. 

It’s interesting that Moizo seems to really emphasize their artistic process, but doesn’t mention what kind of art this is, or what it’s about; we’ll just have to go and see for ourselves. 

Moizo’s words draw a lot of connection to this John Cleese speech about Creativity in Management I watched for my Creative Communities class. It’s always cool to see how art I see in the world connects to things I’m learning in school. I hope to draw more personal connections and exciting comparisons through viewing this exhibition!

Read more about the exhibit here: https://www.dc.umich.edu/2022/08/08/journey-of-self-discovery/

REVIEW: Bodies Bodies Bodies

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Bodies, Bodies, Bodies!

What a film. 

More hysterical thriller than slasher horror flick, Bodies Bodies Bodies encapsulates the essence of a 2022 horror comedy. The characters, drama, and dialogue are all very to the times (Gen Z-ish), but not in a cringey or depthless way, a trap that so many recent Netflix originals fall into the trap of.

A friend and I sat towards the right back of the theater, right next to the exit. No one ever closed the door, so we could hear what was playing in the theater next door. The same trailers we had just watched were gabbing over the beginning of our movie. 

Opening with a visceral, personal, and almost uncomfortably intimate make out sesh between the protagonist Sophie and her girlfriend Bee, the garish green grass made for the backdrop of Sophie telling Bee I love you for the first time. Followed by Bee’s silence and Sophie’s quick assurance and apology, you don’t have to say it back. A highly-saturated color palette. The wheels going screech! after a tender, vulnerable utteration. We’re only two minutes in. 

Everything from the internet-age dance and hyperpop soundtrack, to the dive right in to the meatball-tangled-in-spaghetti, saucy messiness of relationships, to the neighboring theater noise, made you buckle down for the ride, sensing you needed your seatbelt clipped in, since you’re sitting in the backseat, while the driver swerves back and forth, up front.

The I love you scene cuts directly to Bee and Sophie typing away at their own phones, facing each other, but occupied. My friend Debby said she could relate; this really spoke to our generation. 

The following events are the result of a group of friends with a lot of loaded, shoved down history, being “bored in the house, in the house bored.”

The tension of this strange amalgamation of people is felt quite immediately. 

As soon as we enter the house, there’s a lot of toxic energy: friends whispering behind each other’s backs, weird exchanged looks, threats, warnings. 

They start to play Bodies Bodies Bodies, a game that always brings out the worst, bubbles of hidden drama burbling up to the surface. It starts with each person taking a shot and a slap to the face, to commence each new round. The game is a bit like mafia and among us: one person is the killer, and everyone else is trying to figure out who that killer is. All the lights go out each night, and it’s everyone for themselves as the killer lurks for its next victim. Upon stumbling upon a dead body, you scream BODIES BODIES BODIES! and congregate to theorize about the killer’s identity. Who to trust? What are the features that you’re bringing to the table, and how can they be used to your advantage, or leveraged against others?

Immediately, if we couldn’t already tell, the game makes it clear that these friends all seem to hate each other. As soon as the girls find David’s throat slit, his blood-gushing body soaking in a puddle, as the storm pours and pours, the hysterics begin. Everyone is on defense and offense; accusations, alliances, and betrayal all around. In this game (the make believe and real one), feelings are facts. Emotions are running high, and no one will be too afraid to let their own, or someone else’s skeletons out of the closet. And it’s all the more complicated due to “the suffocating weight of their shared history.”

It all starts to get scary when the line between joke and serious, game / real, blurs. Misunderstandings build into tension, then into violence. When the girls go to confront Greg, the only person in the house who wasn’t with David when they found his body, he exclaims “Oh, you guys are fucking with me!” recycling the joke he was just the butt of into his own line. When Bee ends up taking a dumbbell to Greg’s head to protect Sophie, that’s when the bodies really start to fall to the floor. 

I won’t spoil more, but some of the funniest lines / moments: 

  • Jordan hate listening to Alice’s podcast
  • Google calendars
  • Alice defending Greg, the biggest unknown, who she’s known for “long, like long” (2 weeks): “He’s a libra moon, that says a lot!”
  • Greg’s light therapy mask for seasonal depression
  • The gang mistaking Greg’s occupation as “vet,” to mean ex-military personnel, when he’s really a veterinarian
  • Jordan’s poor (upper-middle class) parents who teach at a public university 

Now whenever I use my phone flashlight, I’ll have to hope that my body body body! doesn’t end up in a heap in a mansion during a hurricane.

image credits: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/08/bodies-bodies-bodies-had-to-end-that-way-says-director-halina-reijn

https://variety.com/2022/film/reviews/bodies-bodies-bodies-review-pete-davidson-1235204776/

https://a24films.com/films/bodies-bodies-bodies

REVIEW: Here Nor There

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Kristina Sheufelt’s Here Nor There effortlessly took me from place to place, conjuring up wilderness’ role in my own life, while simultaneously taking me into hers.

 

A Wind from Noplace Prototype I combined light-toned wood, metal, grass, and vials to create a “two-second line of data recording the artist’s heart rate in a meadow”. Although I didn’t understand the piece upon merely looking at it, reading that description produced an image of the artist laying alone in a meadow, grass hiding them from view, tickling the edges of their vision. I’d imagine their heartbeat at rest, slow-breathing. It felt like in a way, I knew her, distantly. I thought it was really creative how the artist combined nature with machinery. And yet, I didn’t really understand the piece itself. Were the blades of grass real, or fake? Was it wrong to take a living piece of the earth for our own creation? And why was one vial spaced out from the others? Perhaps the beat stuttering due to a bug in the grass? A plane whisking by overhead, the split-second alarm of engines and vehicles and being seen again?

I really enjoyed the intimacy of All I Have Left of the Mountains. Made of soil engraved with an excerpt from a journal entry following “a failed attempt to hike 500 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail,” again, I felt like Sheufelt was offering us a little window into her world. The mud was dried up, yet felt so visceral, contradicting the fading, fleeting words carved into the piece, oh so personal. Just hearing the word PCT stirs something in my heart, pumping extra blood and life into my veins. My first time backpacking – learning how to live out of a pack, in bare, desolate wilderness, traversing up and down mountains on my own two feet – crosscut that 2,650 mile trail. And I deeply relate – to the relief of going home, but also the ache of wanting to take the hills with you, of wanting to stay there forever. 

Mask III reminded me of something you’d see in the Upside Down in Stranger Things. The eery, gray lifelessness, the material looking like it could shrivel away at a brush of touch, from half-dead wildlife to ashy dust. Even the dried glue between each milkweed pod looked from the slimy, rotting material of the other Hawkins. 

Six attempts to remember Tinker Creek was probably my favorite. Smooth at certain angles and first look, each sculpture gets more geometric, depthy, and dynamic when you shift perspective, and move your head around the piece. This gives a sense that it’s not just a replica, nor a still scenery. I loved the pinkish-brown range, with all its glitter specked through the clay, reminding me of identifying quartz in countless rocks during my own summer, in the month I spent studying Geology at Camp Davis.

Surrogate is a wooden replica of the artist’s hand, carved in a way that makes you feel like the artist’s hand was just near, whittling away, just moments ago. As it stood suspended in the air, I noticed how it seemed to swing a little from left to right, and couldn’t tell if it was in my head or really doing a back-and-forth, but either way, it made it feel more real.

44 Days in Soil captured a wall full of forty-four soil samples gathered daily during a backcountry hike alone through the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. The way the terrain from each day looks truly unique to each spot, unlike any other baggie taped to its left or right, was pretty amazing. It’s exciting to think that even a day’s worth of walking will get you to different lands of the Appalachians, dirt catching up the sole of your boot, old and new grains mixing and grotting together, holding onto you. There is a sense that the viewer can’t fully capture the weight of all that time laid before them, each really from a different day of her life, like the small, same squares on a calendar on a wall. 

The digital photo prints of Nest told such a story in a few images. A dent in the grass, a nude-hued body curled up in a ball, grass pillowing this person, hugging it in, those lines you only get after a really good nap, the slight give and redness to the skin. Laying in the lap of Mother Earth. 

After taking my time to take in each picture, project, and piece, I slowly made my way out, as if leaving the mountains. Heading out of the peaceful wilderness. There was one take-home card left on the table, and just like the rest of this exhibition, it felt like it had been waiting for me. 

PREVIEW: Here Nor There

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Here Nor There is a new solo exhibition by multidisciplinary artist and environmentalist Kristina Sheufelt, who recently received her MFA from the Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design.

In Here Nor There, Sheufelt uses “a variety of media to blur the lines between land and body.” Sheufelt has spent her past few summers living in remote backcountry locations to work on research projects where she monitored marine wildlife populations and self-directed a study of emotional psychology in the wilderness. In this exhibition, Sheufelt processes “the emotional and ecological implications of returning to life in the city between reunions with the wild.”

As someone who loves the wilderness and relates to the jarring back and forth between the city and backcountry, this caught my eye right away, and I think I’ll be able to draw a lot of personal connection to the collection. I also got a peek through the RC art gallery windows, and from what I could tell, the collection looks really raw, unique, and evocative.

It will be available to view at the RC art gallery from September 9 – October 14, 2022, 9am – 10 pm! Come see Here Nor There!

Event page on RC website: https://lsa.umich.edu/rc/news-events/all-events.detail.html/97342-21794350.html

PREVIEW: Bodies Bodies Bodies

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Bodies Bodies Bodies is playing at the State Theater this Sunday at 3:45!

The American black comedy horror film was released on August 5th, directed by Halina Reijn in her English-language debut. The synopsis from A24: “When a group of rich 20-somethings plan a hurricane party at a remote family mansion, a party game goes awry in this fresh and funny look at backstabbing, fake friends, and one party gone very, very wrong.” Some actors you might recognize are Amandla Stenerg and Pete Davidson. 

I’m looking forward to seeing a horror movie in theaters. It has been a while! I’m also a big fan of Amandla Stenberg; I first heard about the movie through her instagram. I’ve heard things on Twitter about the dialogue being a little too realistic, about how the movie contained conversations that sounded straight out of their own lives. The movie seems to have echoes of 1990s/2000s thrillers. Another plus is that the film features a new single by Charli XCX, one of my favorite artists. I look forward to experiencing the thrill! 

If you miss this showing, there are plenty more to come at the State Theater very soon!

featured image and synopsis credit: https://a24films.com/films/bodies-bodies-bodies

REVIEW: Lorde: The Solar Power Tour – Detroit

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After a week of rain and snow, the sun launched its revival just in time for the first week of Lorde’s Solar Power Tour. 

This was her second show in four years, and man was she in good shape. From the live vocals that went off without a hitch, to her insane range, the two-hour experience in Masonic Temple Theater felt surreal. Lorde’s groovy dancing and laid-back body language made the whole thing feel like a casual jam session between friends – the perfect space to let loose and feel the stress of the semester fall off of my shoulders. An encouraging hurrah before finals kicked in; a celebration in anticipation for summer right around the corner.

My seat was perched up in the nosebleeds – the literal last row in the house – so high up that I could physically touch the peeling ceiling with my fingertips if I just reached up. I somewhat mourned the state of my view, especially upon seeing the GA pit get showered in confetti during Solar Power. But thanks to the intimate size of the theater, I could see Lorde with perfect clarity.

Thoroughly exhausted from staying up late in the sewing studio to finish the top for my concert outfit, I took a quick nap after the opener, Remi Wolf, finished her set. Lorde is one of my favorite artists, but I wasn’t feeling nerves, excitement, anything. It didn’t hit me until the house went pitch-black, her silhouette appeared, and I felt all my tiredness detox itself from my body as a beast awakened within. I was up on my feet and screaming at the top of my lungs like everyone else before I even registered that I had woken up from my nap. 

The emotions were running high this Tuesday night.

As Lorde crooned the opening song, Leader of a New Regime, I burst out bawling, unprovoked. I continued to nurse a tissue in one hand, and shakily record in the other during Ribs, and blew my nose through the chorus of Liability. 

The mood boosted when the band started to pump out the vivid strums of Mood Ring and psychedelic colors filtered through the set and on screen. Harder hits like Perfect Places, Supercut, and Green Light had everyone jumping like the place was one giant house party. 

There was such good energy in the venue. You could tell that everyone in the intimate audience (Lorde’s idea) were big fans who genuinely loved her so much. The noise in the crowd was no joke. With every body screaming to the best of its ability, I felt twinges of pain deep in my ears. They started ringing at one point, as if my eardrums were creating reverberations in attempts to shield themselves. Several scream-worthy moments included Lorde’s two outfit changes – one where she disrobed directly on stage (behind a piece of the set that kept a spotlight on her silhouette) during the Secrets From a Girl interlude. Her adorable dancing – where she kinda punches the air and wiggles around (but makes it look good) – also raised hoots. Finally, the finale. I had scoped out the setlist ahead of time to mentally prepare (and last minute memorize some lyrics) but the encore song, Team, was unexpected. See, this song and I go waaay back. In 2013, my family would blast it on the car ride to school, light up when it came up on the radio. The derailing intro that repeats the lyrics “send the call out” fades out in a rhythm that makes the order actually sound like “the call out send,” which my family always jokingly mis-sang as “the cold Allison,” during the height of my emo middle school years. To hear the wholehearted chorus of a few thousand people singing “and you know, we’re on each other’s team,” followed by Lorde flouncing away with a cute skip off stage, left me reeling.

We drove back from Detroit with sore throats, sleepy and sated, hugging overpriced merch in the back seats.