WAHappenings

Monday, May 19, 2008

RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW

At the moment I am:

looking like a schoolgirl
reading Jorge Luis Borges "Labyrinths" (still!!)
preparing to move into my new flat on Kingsland Road!!!
listening to bassline
drinking soy vanilla lattes
watching Todd Solonz "Happiness"
smelling of Comme Des Garcons 2
eating anything I want
dreaming of kissing boys (no joke, I keep having snogging dreams!)
wearing more red than usual
walking in Clarks Wallabees and espadrilles
singing church hymns
trying to keep my room tidy
wanting to keep my Vegas tan

BRING ME THE HEAD OF JOHN THE BAPTIST

The boys never got over that line, huh?

FINALLY

To complete my sexy Latino peasant girl look...

GIMME A ZOOT

1942 female Zoot suit gang being taken away by the PO-lice...It is strange to think that there was a time when you could be arrested for wearing your trousers too wide, or wearing a leather jacket, or generally just looking different to the norm. If i lived in 1942, I'd be locked up for life...

Sunday, May 18, 2008

SEVEN SAMURAI

The Barbican are having a directorspective for Japanese film legend Akira Kurosawa, and today I watched The Seven Samurai (1954). The story is basic; a farm village is regularly under attack from bandits but this time they decide to hire samurai to protect them. It's over 3 hours long and yet there was never a point when I was bored. This film makes you laugh, cry, think and wonder. An amazing film with a simple, eternally enduring story. I recommend.

POWER

Saturday, May 17, 2008

DEATH BEFORE DISHONOUR

PICTURES OF GIRLS

by Ashkan Sahihi

Friday, May 16, 2008

TAINTED LOVE

I NEVER REALLY WANTED TO BE BLONDE...

But this was still one of my favourite TV shows...

Brilliant theme tune!

MONSTROUS FEMININE

Sorry about the eternal reminding, I'm feeling like an OAP right now, HOWEVER, that post about the art show below reminded me of a book I read 4 years ago called The Monstrous Feminine, by Barbara Creed, about females in horror fims and the symbolism and relations of their feminity to horror. She looks at films such as Alien, Poltergeist, Psycho and Little Shop of Horrors. It's got lots of psychoanalysis and film analysis, and although I take all the theories with a pinch of salt, its definitely worth a read...

KINETIC ENERGY

My Matilda post reminded me of a brilliant piece i saw at the Tate Modern about a month ago where the artist had taken 5 video clips of females in film using psychic or kinetic energy to make something happen. It was sooooo good! the clips were brilliant (Matilda, The Craft etc) and the colours were amazing. the clips built up into a frenzy accompanied by drum music until they reached climax and then they swapped screen colours to white noise and started again. I'm being a bit crap here because I dont remember the artists name or all of the films, but I'm going to Tate in a bit to see Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia so I'll try and find it in a bit and update you...

+++ Update - So the piece is called PSI Girls by Susan Hiller...

"PSI Girls focuses on the theme of adolescence and late childhood as represented in the mass media - the unpredictability and threat of unfocused special abilities in children, particularly girls. The work investigates our common understanding of what is possible, and our desires and fantasies of what we wish were possible, using popular film as cultural artifact.

PSI Girls has been sampled from five previously unconnected films in which young women are represented in altered states of consciousness, and empowered with extraordinary and unsettling telekinetic skills. The physical nature of the work responds to the physical powers portrayed - powers of moving, manipulating, controlling and playing. The soundtrack, featuring the rhythmic hand-clapping and drumming of a gospel choir, seems to physically "drive the rhythm of the brain" whilst the vibrantly coloured images absorb and surround the viewer"

Room 8, States of Flux, Tate Modern