About Joe Gibbons

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/rhode-island-man-robs-manhattan-bank-video-camera-article-1.2072890

Word on the street is Out: NSA & RSA Have a Back Door Plan - -

Queer street art/stencil packs a heavy message. It's a good way to get news. I saw this, googled "nsa rsa back door" and came up with this Reuters article. Spread the word, it's time to read.

Security industry pioneer RSA adopted not just one but two encryption tools developed by the U.S. National Security Agency, greatly increasing the spy agency's ability to eavesdrop on some Internet communications, according to a team of academic researchers.

Seen on a San Francisco sidewalk in the Castro District.

Blooming Babel

family dynamics, a social contract, and the workings of identity and power within that family system + greater social systems.

Blooming Babel

Recall Kim Gordon's quote about people paying to watch others who believe in themselves.

Sierra's mom's belief in herself is either false or incomplete.

A woman is important. How important, she does not know. She has a sense of her role in life, and to her that imparts a necessity for her being. But that is not what is truly, actually important about her, that’s not why she is important to the world and universe.

This woman is Sierra’s mom. That is how she is known to people around her, which is why she thinks that her role as mother is what makes her count in the world. And now Sierra has a baby, so Sierra’s mom is even more important because she is a Grandmother. Grandmother is a role in life that feels like a gift to many, because they get to enjoy the grandchildren without the day-to-day drudgery of cleaning, feeding, and raising them. Sierra’s mom enjoys playing with the baby, and proudly strolls through public places with the tiny bundle of joy. Even when her son-in-law Joby comes along. Though he is, well, different in certain ways, he is still very good with the baby. Maybe even better than Sierra is, but it’s hard for Sierra’s mom to admit this, even to herself.

Sierra’s mom finds herself reading more and more about child rearing. She knows this is not necessary because her child/ren are/is adults now. There is a shadow of discomfort that grows a tiny bit each time she is with her daughter and grandchild. Sierra’s mom does not want to admit to herself (yet) that the discomfort is caused by Sierra’s inability to connect with the child. Much deeper and farther along the road to realization in Sierra’s mom’s mind is the truth that she has raised a child who is utterly disrespectful. Still further along the road is waiting the truth that she raised Sierra this way because she was taught, erroneously, that her own importance in the world was based on motherhood.

This definition of herself provided decreasingly easy solutions to feelings of discontent, restlessness, and even indecision throughout Sierra’s mom’s adult life. Anytime there was a stirring in her that she couldn’t immediately identify, she could supplant it with a rote responsibility that relieved her of making any type of reflective decision. She would simply do whatever prescribed task related to housekeeping, childcare, or husband-centered obligation.

About this project:                                                  See the full project blog here

Blooming Babel is a book (and blog) inspired by French romans-photos and Mexican and Italian fotonovelas (photo novels), and by a New Yorker article that extols the benefits of talking to very young children.

Blooming Babel tells the story of a set of family interactions. Using texts, photographs, and other graphics, it looks at the power and identity systems within the family, and in the greater social context. But the project is also a tool to critically take apart ("unpack" & "deconstruct") social bias and hegemony underlying media.

The plot is this: A woman known as "Sierra's mom," learns that children develop more language skills and higher IQs if their parents engaged them in conversation (even if unidirectional when the kids are pre-verbal) from the time they were born (there is really data that indicates this--but how good is that data?).The woman's adult daughter, Sierra, has a baby, and Sierra's mom worries that Sierra may not be talking to the baby enough. Sierra's mom is hesitant to approach Sierra bout this because Sierra is very defensive about her parenting skills, especially when her mother tries to help. However, Sierra's mother feels that Sierra's husband, Joby is more approachable and hopes to get him on board with talking to the baby, even though he has an accent. What kind of accent will not be indicated.

A subplot is that Sierra is very interested in fashion modeling, to a degree that Sierra'sw mom finds worrisome. Related to this, Joby gets upset with Sierra because she spends $80 on real gold leaf to put on her fingernails because she saw it in a French fashion magazine (this actually was in a magazine--don't know if it's real gold leaf or not). In that same French magazine are images of a model who resembles my colleague, Stacey. I'd like to merge this imagery into the plot and plan to style Stacey/Sierra so that she looks even more like this model. Ryan will appear mostly looking like his usual self.

These ideas come from actual media that I have seen/read. I'm not sure why I chose the photo novel format. I think it may intersect all the other forms I use: film, digital & social media, handmade books: all are sequential and include imagery. One inspiration was a wall in Marseilles where someone had pasted pages from a French photo novel. I like that the Wikipedia article below points out that photo novels are an effective way to distribute information, and also to make the essence of movies available to a wider audience. Interestingly, I saw an old Spark episode on public tv which featured the artist Sandow Birk. He said that the way to reach more people with his art is to make a book. Go figure, they say the book is disappearing, and I keep finding ways that books are continuing to be important means of information distribution. Class- based. Not everyone has a computer, no they really don't! Not everyone is middle class, wow! And yet, this piece of art will only be seen by a small segment of the middle class. Oh, well, I am what I is.

 

Cast:

Sierra - Stacey Rivet

Sierra's mom - me
Joby - Ryan Schnirel
Joby's mom, Valencia - Sue Fandel

Joby's dad - Alfred Hernandez

other characters to be determined, and may include and Sierra's dad.

Crew:
Claire Bain - Writer, Director, Props, Camera, Editor, etc.

Sam Russell- Consulting Stylist

Settings:

Westfield Mall, Macy's Small Scale Furniture Section, Art Explosion Studios

Other settings are likely, some decorated them with the actors' artwork: all four of us are artists.

Information sources:

"The Talking Cure" The New Yorker magazine, January 12, 2015

Current public service announcements about talking to your kids.

"Femme actuelle (Modern woman)" magazine, December 9, 2014 - January 4, 2015 and January 5-11, 2015
Wikipedia
The New Yorker Magazine's biased article

Other inspiration:

A recipe in a sort of high-end magazine for risotto with a sheet of gold leaf on top. Now you, too, can feel rich enough to eat gold and shit it out...of course, nobody that rich cooks for themselves, but the readers of this one can feel oh so ostentatious.

Ryan and The Baby

Sam Russell style magic

Sue Fandel Rocks the Role as classy grandma...

Shopping with the young parents:

Sierra: Ohh! I need to have this

Joby: I don't think we can afford that.

Sierra: It's definitely an essential for the home.    Joby is shaking his head.

Joby: I don't think it's a good investment, I don't, I truly don't. No.

What'l my friends think if I don't have anything?

Current Pieces

These sculptural systems either grow from walls or are built free-standing. They are from re-purposed motors, plaster, and other materials chosen for their sound, visual, or other physical properties such as weight and texture. While I don't necessarily set out to have them symbolize anything in particular, they often evoke social systems. They have qualities that oscillate between grotesque, hilarious, and beautiful, depending on the viewer's perspective.

System 3 Projection View

System 3 Apparatus View

See it in action! Click Here


System 3 Projection Installation

System 3 has elements of projected shadow, movement and sound. The sound can be amplified via both piezo contact (clips on and amplifies sound waves moving through solids) and regular microphones (pick up sound waves moving through air). The attached video shows it set up in my studio with dimensions of about 3ft wide by 3ft deep by 6ft high, but this would be adjusted to the window space. The shadow image is projected onto paper, and viewers can see the whole piece by stepping around include it in the videos, so the sound you hear is what the camera mic picked up.



                                                                     *****

System 2 Oblique View

System 2 Head On View

System 2

System 2 grows from the wall and has "hair," a "wall-thorn," and other elements that work together to produce sound, rhythm, shadow, and light.

Click here to see it in action!

Night at the Diner, When It All Blew Up

http://www.atasite.org/2014/01/screaming-queens/
Though it was almost a year ago, I still think about this screening of "Screaming Queens," the documentary film which tells of a rebellion of trans* women against the San Francisco police. The attendees ranged the gender spectrum, and filmmaker Susan Stryker did an in-depth question and answer session. We learned that this momentous 1966 incident was barely reported, was hushed up even though a police car was burned in downtown San Francisco--and that the police chief who came around to supporting the trans* women pretty much got framed and lost his job... The brave actions of these women, who stood up fearlessly for their right to exist, reverberated through the City in ways little remembered and barely recorded.

There were ripple effects radiating from this revolt at Compton's Diner, from tangible actions to help trans* people, to influence on the local community (including the Warfield Theater half a block away, its hippie patrons intermingling with the downtown queens directly or indirectly, contributing to the sexual and political liberation ethos). As housing was destroyed in nearby areas, activism was augmented by the resultant efforts by the queer community to protect homes that they and other poor, working class people lived in.

The value of this film is to everyone, not only queer and trans* people: it brings to light an event of resounding historical importance. Because it involved the most marginalized gender group in our society, it is overlooked as something irrelevant to the general population. This inspiring show of bravery is helpful to everyone who is being oppressed and needs to stand up for their rights.

The impact of this screening itself also attests to the importance of organizations like Artists' Television Access, who provide a place where a wide range of programs and audiences can meet. Each community needs its space to be together among themselves, and they also need to intersect with others, which is what happened at this program.

From "On the Origin of Language" / Rousseau

Lineage: Matchmaking in the Archive

http://www.queerculturalcenter.org/Pages/Lineage/L_Index.html