From hundreds of meters away you can see it. The temple that glows orange from its center. Its spires twisting and spiking into the night sky, against the brown and red mountains made dark with the loss of sun. The outline made possible by the fires that shoot up from the center of a giant plastic tubing, expertly installed. It spans several feet, and every few minutes flames will burst up and through. You shiver and pull your coat tighter over you. You touch the inner plastic tubing, hoping to steal some warmth from the Fire of Fires.
The temple is packed at 3am. It pulls people in with a magnetism of quiet and solemnity, so different from the rest of the festival. The winds whip, the dust gets in your eyes. People mill about, run in circles, go in and out, sit in meditation, rock back and forth with their hands in prayer, in mudras. A man dressed in a black top hat, mascara that extends from the corner of his eyes in branches, sits with his false-lash-draped eyes closed, his hands together in prayer, motionless. A woman with red hair and green eyes bows back and forth before a picture of a young woman.
The columns of the temple are made of flat panels of wood carved in latticed patterns, intricate as a church’s confession screen, decorated as stained glass windows, but instead of color, there is only light, negative space, and the pale yellow of the wood. Layers and layers of lattices, some carved out with open triangles, diamonds, stars. There are certain sections with open squares large enough to crawl through. In one, a young woman looks around through the carvings, fingering the patterns in the wood.
The whole structure vibrates with the passing winds that kick dust through the many openings in the wood. We travel up and down ladders, over stairs, across slanted ramps. A temporary shrine that will burn in silence on the final night. Sharpie markers are the main instruments of prayer here. Writing and drawings blanket the temple walls. Read more »
And it sucks and needs months of editing to make it coherent–but you know what? I DON’T CARE! I did it and that’s a hell of lot more than I’ve ever done in the past, ever.
THANKS BE to http://www.nanowrimo.org, without whose inspiring and challenging deadline, I would have continue to just think about doing this “one of these days.”
The Whitney Museum is currently featuring a video projection/film by Sadie Benning entilted “Pause Play.” You enter a large, darkened room with others standing, some sitting, against the walls. If you brave the dark open space you may be rewarded with an empty, square ottoman to sit on.
The projection is a series of drawings set to music.
Overall the piece vacillates back and forth between the ordinary, the entertaining, and the tragic. We see scenes of urban malaise: dilapidated buildings and barren landscapes.
There is an interesting interlude at a local bar, “Ze Bar.” The night seems to progress in several stages. First, there is the introduction: Play Pause: Ze Bar Early On
Drupal is consistently blowing me away with its vast and eager community. Now, in my quest to understand Drupal Theming, I have discovered an easy and powerful tool made by the folks over at PSD2CSS. It’s a free service that allows you to upload a PSD file, and download a zip file containing a new folder you can simply pop into your Drupal install, and Bam! Instant Theme.
Make sure you drop the entire folder (sites/) into the root of your Drupal install directory
I recently read an interview conducted with Lady Gaga, a young artist whose visual sampling reminds me of the best of early Madonna. In her videos, she samples everyone from David Bowie and Grace Jones, to Madonna to Paris Hilton, to a scene from Bertolucci’s The Conformist. She tours and works with a group of collaborators, that she calls the Haus of Gaga. Some are engineers, some are sculptors, all are young, and together they create the look that is Lady Gaga:
Perhaps it is because she is still on the cusp of stardom, but I can’t recall an artist who talked so humbly about herself, her fans, her collaborators, and her . . . meditation practice. That’s right, while she’s on tour, and she’s not clipping magazines, watching films and using those as inspiration to design her next tour, she spends her time meditating.
It seems to have paid off. There was a controversy earlier this month where Christina Aguilera, who’s been accused of stealing Lady Gaga’s look, said:
The columns of the temple are made of flat panels of wood carved in latticed patterns, intricate as a church’s confession screen, decorated as stained glass windows, but instead of color, there is only light, negative space, and the pale yellow of the wood. Layers and layers of lattices, some carved out with open triangles, diamonds, stars. There are certain sections with open squares large enough to crawl through. In one, a young woman looks around through the carvings, fingering the patterns in the wood.
She tours and works with a group of collaborators, that she calls the Haus of Gaga. Some are engineers, some are sculptors, all are young, and together they create the look that is Lady Gaga:
