http://www.wallpaper.com/art/james-turrell-show-wolfsburg/4012.
Bridget's Bardo (Ganzfeld Piece), by James Turrell, 2008, from Wallpaper.com
Ahh, art as transcendence. Light, form, meditation combining to induce the mystical. I aspire to this.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
"Bridget's Bardo"
I don't like this just for the name, although that alone is pretty cool. I don't even like it merely for the word Bardo — a Tibetan Buddhist concept that could be one definition of my current art project Interstice, (Tibetan 'between the two, inbetween state'). I also love it because it's by James Turrell and he's pretty cool. Here's a pic, and a link to an interview at Wallpaper.
http://www.wallpaper.com/art/james-turrell-show-wolfsburg/4012.
Bridget's Bardo (Ganzfeld Piece), by James Turrell, 2008, from Wallpaper.com
Ahh, art as transcendence. Light, form, meditation combining to induce the mystical. I aspire to this.
http://www.wallpaper.com/art/james-turrell-show-wolfsburg/4012.
Bridget's Bardo (Ganzfeld Piece), by James Turrell, 2008, from Wallpaper.com
Ahh, art as transcendence. Light, form, meditation combining to induce the mystical. I aspire to this.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
two pics
Too pretty nature. The flower is a study for the cave piece i am working on. The leaves, I am thirty years behind Andy Goldsworthy.
Ana Mendieta
I am in love with this picture right now.
Ana Mendieta, Silueta Works in Mexico, 1973-78
Image is coming from this gallery in Florida.
Ana Mendieta on Wikipedia.
Ana Mendieta, Silueta Works in Mexico, 1973-78
Image is coming from this gallery in Florida.
Ana Mendieta on Wikipedia.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Illuminating Corridors
Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions performed at Williamsburg Music Hall a little while back. I’m not a person to be writing a review, I am blogging about other things, plus both the NYC shows were covered here. She doesn’t do a lot onstage. I haven’t made up my mind on what I think of this statement she's making -- the band is lit, but Hope is not. She stands in complete darkness. If you’re not making out, you’re going to spend a lot of time watching the movies being projected behind her.
Here’s what I am talking about, as depicted by her official photographer, Luz Gallardo. Luz herself is a lush artist, like Sandoval. She manufactures dreams in her portraits, see here: luzgallardo.com.
and...
Spencer Bewley at Hope Sandoval show, photo by Luz Gallardo
Sandoval’s "vj", Spencer Bewley, mixed together clips from a variety of old 16mm strips. He grooved to the music, pulling out 1 ½ foot strips, looping them, switching the lamps on and off. Sometimes he leaned forward and taped gels on the lenses, always he bounced around with the beat. Altogether it looked like exhausting but fun work.
His performance reminded me of The Illuminated Corridor. This project is run by San Francisco-based musician and curator Suki O’Kane and consists of phantom groups of artists taking back the city from the businesspeople and the criminals. An Illuminated Corridor consists of a one-night, site-specific performance by groups of artists who project visuals, sound and build installations into alleys, buildings, onto cars, street corners, trees and planters, whatever necessary. Urban structures are reinvented into the setting of a chaotic, visual block party. At its best, the Corridor will disorient, realigning the viewer’s experience of public space. All cities should succumb at least once.
Illuminated Corridor, NYC, 2008, photo from http://www.dyemark.net/
The last performance in NYC was in 2008 but they occur more regularly for those lucky West Coasters, taking place every six months or so. Check out their website. I did participate in the New York one, with my collaborator, sound artist Jean-Luc Sinclair. Thanks very much to everyone who came out for that.
Here’s what I am talking about, as depicted by her official photographer, Luz Gallardo. Luz herself is a lush artist, like Sandoval. She manufactures dreams in her portraits, see here: luzgallardo.com.
and...
Spencer Bewley at Hope Sandoval show, photo by Luz Gallardo
Sandoval’s "vj", Spencer Bewley, mixed together clips from a variety of old 16mm strips. He grooved to the music, pulling out 1 ½ foot strips, looping them, switching the lamps on and off. Sometimes he leaned forward and taped gels on the lenses, always he bounced around with the beat. Altogether it looked like exhausting but fun work.
His performance reminded me of The Illuminated Corridor. This project is run by San Francisco-based musician and curator Suki O’Kane and consists of phantom groups of artists taking back the city from the businesspeople and the criminals. An Illuminated Corridor consists of a one-night, site-specific performance by groups of artists who project visuals, sound and build installations into alleys, buildings, onto cars, street corners, trees and planters, whatever necessary. Urban structures are reinvented into the setting of a chaotic, visual block party. At its best, the Corridor will disorient, realigning the viewer’s experience of public space. All cities should succumb at least once.
Illuminated Corridor, NYC, 2008, photo from http://www.dyemark.net/
The last performance in NYC was in 2008 but they occur more regularly for those lucky West Coasters, taking place every six months or so. Check out their website. I did participate in the New York one, with my collaborator, sound artist Jean-Luc Sinclair. Thanks very much to everyone who came out for that.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Cellphone Frolics on the Beach
Kevin and I visited the marvelous Cape Cod recently, during the full moon. We camped out, shooting photos and video. We needed to make it to the beach before it was too cold. And there was that moon. You forget about the sky when you live in New York. Missing the moon, stars and planets is one of the reasons why so many New Yorkers salivate over country homes. One night, the moon actually threw ruby light onto the horizon of the ocean in advance of it’s appearance, sunrise-style. Of course The New Yorker has an illuminating article about light pollution here.
On the first night I even got to shoot in fog, a desirable rarity. Two things impeded my fog explorations, however. First, after the 4 ½ hour drive to get there, setting up the tent, more driving around to choose the right beach, finding firewood for Kevin, figuring out what we were really doing, then 4 hours running around the beach with the tide nipping at our feet, we were exhausted, wet, cold, and hungry. Kevin trudged his gear back to the car. I completed the exposure for this picture.
When I joined him, he showed me a cellphone in holster. Some anonymous, honest person left it on top of our car, but it wasn’t his or mine. We set out to do what anyone should do when they find a stranger’s phone—call some numbers. Kevin found “House,” immediately. That’s convenient. I don’t have a contact that would be so obvious in mine.
Kevin rang up “House” and a woman with an excessive Massachusetts accent answered. Their conversation took much longer than would seem necessary. All you need to do is figure out where to meet and handoff the phone, right? She was deeply confused by the fact that her husband had dropped his phone on a beach. It turns out that “House,” although in Massachusetts, isn’t on the Cape. After she grasped our really quite simple intentions, she was kind of enough to say she’d try to find that cellphone-negligent husband of hers so he could make an arrangement with us.
“Wow, that seemed to confuse her quite a bit.” I remarked, and Kevin looked pretty confused himself. “I am not going to drive down to whatever town she lives in and give it to her, what are we going to do with it?”
The phone rang before I had a chance to answer him. I looked at it in my lap and froze. Answering some stranger’s phone violated a boundary, even though I knew the person must be searching for it. And there was something else. “Kevin, was the wife’s name Kim*?” (*I’ve changed these names).
“Uhhh, I don’t remember, but that doesn’t sound right.” I stared at him. He really had spoken to her less than a minute ago. I looked back at the phone. The wife wouldn’t be calling that phone right now, it made no sense.
“He’s having an affair.”
“What, why do you say that?” Kim went to voicemail.
“I don’t know, why would his wife call this phone and not you? It’s got to be his girlfriend.”
Now, Kevin stared at me. “Look through his texts maybe, or recent calls, we can try them.” This was a good suggestion, at the bar I used to work at, we did that all the time.
So I scrolled through his Nokia list of texts. “Yep, it’s his girlfriend.”
Text after text was from Kim, in fact every text was from her. “I love you, good night.” “Good morning, how are you? I am getting in the shower now.” “Can’t wait to see you.” “What are you doing?” And several more that looked different. I thought were unopened so I left them. I don’t know, maybe it was his daughter? A little weird, but they weren’t explicit.
Kevin pulled into Provincetown and we looked around for food. On an off-season Sunday, at 10:30 pm, all we found was grungy pizza. Kim rang again as we got out of the car.
“You have to answer! I can’t do it!” I know, I am totally a coward. But I also thought I might giggle uncontrollably and destroy my attempts to engage in a serious conversation.
“So you’re the one who found the phone.” She said it so loudly that I could hear her. Her accent was less pronounced than the wife's. Her voice was also far less friendly. There was no greeting, or a ‘thank you.’
“Yeah, someone left it on our car at the beach in Truro. We were the last ones there so they probably thought it was ours. We called “House” already.” Kevin explained. Kim passed the phone over to its owner, the husband, “Chris*.” An agreement was made that we would leave it at the Provincetown police station. Kevin hung up and I ran down the street laughing. “You were right, he’s with her!” Kevin was incredulous.
“I told you!” Giggle, giggle.
“How did you know?”
“I don’t know, I just knew. Besides, why would his wife call it immediately after you talked to her, that makes no sense.”
We sat down to eat and Kevin is a bad boy. He started looking through the phone. The messages that I thought were unread turned out to be picture messages. Chris's sent messages were terse, but apparently effective. “Love you.” “Bowling.” “Nude pic.”
She seemed a little insecure in her comments to him, sending him pictures of her body from different angles. “I hope I made it better, I didn’t like the way they looked in the first one.”
Unfortunately she mostly shot herself looking straight down. Do not do this if you're sending your lover nudie pics. It's a bad angle for anyone. Her body was, well, not young and not classically beautiful. There’s enough mean commentary about unattractive bodies out there, why should I contribute to this? I like that they had such a hot relationship in consideration of that. It's so easy to get sucked into the media and think that only attractive, young people can enjoy real passion. But then, there is that infidelity thing.
The look on Kevin’s face was uniquely mirthful, probably never to be seen again. I was so impressed that I shot a cellphone video of his illicit message scanning, but I am not showing it here. You will have to find my cellphone to see that. He also found the photographs of Chris’ kid. Nice.
“Wow, I bet Chris is busted now! His wife is going to want to know what the hell he was doing on the beach, up by Provincetown, on a Sunday night. He probably told her he was going bowling!” Of course I was perversely pleased.
But Kevin asked the important question. “Should I tell her? I have her number, I could call.”
“Hmmmm, no, I mean, it’s not our business. And besides, we are seriously invading his privacy.” I felt a little bad though, about my newly missing moral compass. I started drawing a mental image of the wife.
“Yeah, but it’s not right. And what if we had found plans for a terrorist attack? Or to kill his wife? We’d have to say something. We couldn’t just let that go even if we are invading his privacy.” He had a point, and I was thinking about it. The gut reaction was "no", but does a spouse have a right to know about an affair?
“I guess he could be in an open relationship? Or separated?” I postulated. In which case, the wife would merely be annoyed with us, but what difference would that make? However, I could also imagine her hurt feelings if she really did have no idea. What if we caused the kid to lose his dad? Did we have a right to introduce this to their lives? Wait, we wouldn’t be introducing anything. We didn’t make him have the affair.
But, I am curious. What do y’all think? Please comment. Did we do the right thing?
We dropped the phone off at the police station and have had no further interaction with the beachgoing, cellphone-dropping lovers. And Kevin programmed a pin into his phone. You could learn about someone's life by snooping through a phone. I am leaving mine unlocked. I am far more likely to lose mine and when you find it, please pick it up when it rings.
On the first night I even got to shoot in fog, a desirable rarity. Two things impeded my fog explorations, however. First, after the 4 ½ hour drive to get there, setting up the tent, more driving around to choose the right beach, finding firewood for Kevin, figuring out what we were really doing, then 4 hours running around the beach with the tide nipping at our feet, we were exhausted, wet, cold, and hungry. Kevin trudged his gear back to the car. I completed the exposure for this picture.
When I joined him, he showed me a cellphone in holster. Some anonymous, honest person left it on top of our car, but it wasn’t his or mine. We set out to do what anyone should do when they find a stranger’s phone—call some numbers. Kevin found “House,” immediately. That’s convenient. I don’t have a contact that would be so obvious in mine.
Kevin rang up “House” and a woman with an excessive Massachusetts accent answered. Their conversation took much longer than would seem necessary. All you need to do is figure out where to meet and handoff the phone, right? She was deeply confused by the fact that her husband had dropped his phone on a beach. It turns out that “House,” although in Massachusetts, isn’t on the Cape. After she grasped our really quite simple intentions, she was kind of enough to say she’d try to find that cellphone-negligent husband of hers so he could make an arrangement with us.
“Wow, that seemed to confuse her quite a bit.” I remarked, and Kevin looked pretty confused himself. “I am not going to drive down to whatever town she lives in and give it to her, what are we going to do with it?”
The phone rang before I had a chance to answer him. I looked at it in my lap and froze. Answering some stranger’s phone violated a boundary, even though I knew the person must be searching for it. And there was something else. “Kevin, was the wife’s name Kim*?” (*I’ve changed these names).
“Uhhh, I don’t remember, but that doesn’t sound right.” I stared at him. He really had spoken to her less than a minute ago. I looked back at the phone. The wife wouldn’t be calling that phone right now, it made no sense.
“He’s having an affair.”
“What, why do you say that?” Kim went to voicemail.
“I don’t know, why would his wife call this phone and not you? It’s got to be his girlfriend.”
Now, Kevin stared at me. “Look through his texts maybe, or recent calls, we can try them.” This was a good suggestion, at the bar I used to work at, we did that all the time.
So I scrolled through his Nokia list of texts. “Yep, it’s his girlfriend.”
Text after text was from Kim, in fact every text was from her. “I love you, good night.” “Good morning, how are you? I am getting in the shower now.” “Can’t wait to see you.” “What are you doing?” And several more that looked different. I thought were unopened so I left them. I don’t know, maybe it was his daughter? A little weird, but they weren’t explicit.
Kevin pulled into Provincetown and we looked around for food. On an off-season Sunday, at 10:30 pm, all we found was grungy pizza. Kim rang again as we got out of the car.
“You have to answer! I can’t do it!” I know, I am totally a coward. But I also thought I might giggle uncontrollably and destroy my attempts to engage in a serious conversation.
“So you’re the one who found the phone.” She said it so loudly that I could hear her. Her accent was less pronounced than the wife's. Her voice was also far less friendly. There was no greeting, or a ‘thank you.’
“Yeah, someone left it on our car at the beach in Truro. We were the last ones there so they probably thought it was ours. We called “House” already.” Kevin explained. Kim passed the phone over to its owner, the husband, “Chris*.” An agreement was made that we would leave it at the Provincetown police station. Kevin hung up and I ran down the street laughing. “You were right, he’s with her!” Kevin was incredulous.
“I told you!” Giggle, giggle.
“How did you know?”
“I don’t know, I just knew. Besides, why would his wife call it immediately after you talked to her, that makes no sense.”
We sat down to eat and Kevin is a bad boy. He started looking through the phone. The messages that I thought were unread turned out to be picture messages. Chris's sent messages were terse, but apparently effective. “Love you.” “Bowling.” “Nude pic.”
She seemed a little insecure in her comments to him, sending him pictures of her body from different angles. “I hope I made it better, I didn’t like the way they looked in the first one.”
Unfortunately she mostly shot herself looking straight down. Do not do this if you're sending your lover nudie pics. It's a bad angle for anyone. Her body was, well, not young and not classically beautiful. There’s enough mean commentary about unattractive bodies out there, why should I contribute to this? I like that they had such a hot relationship in consideration of that. It's so easy to get sucked into the media and think that only attractive, young people can enjoy real passion. But then, there is that infidelity thing.
The look on Kevin’s face was uniquely mirthful, probably never to be seen again. I was so impressed that I shot a cellphone video of his illicit message scanning, but I am not showing it here. You will have to find my cellphone to see that. He also found the photographs of Chris’ kid. Nice.
“Wow, I bet Chris is busted now! His wife is going to want to know what the hell he was doing on the beach, up by Provincetown, on a Sunday night. He probably told her he was going bowling!” Of course I was perversely pleased.
But Kevin asked the important question. “Should I tell her? I have her number, I could call.”
“Hmmmm, no, I mean, it’s not our business. And besides, we are seriously invading his privacy.” I felt a little bad though, about my newly missing moral compass. I started drawing a mental image of the wife.
“Yeah, but it’s not right. And what if we had found plans for a terrorist attack? Or to kill his wife? We’d have to say something. We couldn’t just let that go even if we are invading his privacy.” He had a point, and I was thinking about it. The gut reaction was "no", but does a spouse have a right to know about an affair?
“I guess he could be in an open relationship? Or separated?” I postulated. In which case, the wife would merely be annoyed with us, but what difference would that make? However, I could also imagine her hurt feelings if she really did have no idea. What if we caused the kid to lose his dad? Did we have a right to introduce this to their lives? Wait, we wouldn’t be introducing anything. We didn’t make him have the affair.
But, I am curious. What do y’all think? Please comment. Did we do the right thing?
We dropped the phone off at the police station and have had no further interaction with the beachgoing, cellphone-dropping lovers. And Kevin programmed a pin into his phone. You could learn about someone's life by snooping through a phone. I am leaving mine unlocked. I am far more likely to lose mine and when you find it, please pick it up when it rings.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
it begins — announcing me and the CPDRC
Hi World!
I am an artist, a writer and a traveler based in New York City. Check out my website: www.bridgetbatch.com. This means I have a very fortunate life for which I am grateful. And that is all you need to know about me at the moment. I hope the rest can be ascertained from this blog.
Post number one regards a story that my husband, the fabulous photographer Kevin Cooley, and I have just completed. We went to the Philippines to find out more about these guys — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMnk7lh9M3o. They are the youTube-famous dancing inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center (CPDRC) in Cebu City, Philippines. The show that we saw, on August 29, 2009, was one of the strangest and most joyful things I've ever experienced.
Please check out Kevin's pictures here: http://redux.wg.picturemaxx.com/series/1.146.
Here are two:
(CPDRC performance)
(inmate with a tattoo of the name of the prison director, Byron Garcia)
And as a shameless plug, this is a great feature article and photo essay. We are currently looking for a magazine publisher. It's an amazing story of redemption. Please contact us for more information.
So you, the reader, I am hoping that you will tell me about your reaction the first time you saw this video, whether it was now, or some other time in the past few years. Email me at bridget@bridgetbatch.com and tell me about it. I've written one article about the "Dancing for Discipline" program that has lead to these shows. Read the current draft here! However, I think the combination of emotions that these performances evoke deserves more exploration than can be covered in one article. Please write me and tell me all about your response.
The success of the CPDRC inmates, and the prison director who designed this program, Byron Garcia, is a unique story of the Internet, global pop culture, and one man’s experiment coming together to make a positive contribution to the world.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
*bridget batch*
I am an artist, a writer and a traveler based in New York City. Check out my website: www.bridgetbatch.com. This means I have a very fortunate life for which I am grateful. And that is all you need to know about me at the moment. I hope the rest can be ascertained from this blog.
Post number one regards a story that my husband, the fabulous photographer Kevin Cooley, and I have just completed. We went to the Philippines to find out more about these guys — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMnk7lh9M3o. They are the youTube-famous dancing inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center (CPDRC) in Cebu City, Philippines. The show that we saw, on August 29, 2009, was one of the strangest and most joyful things I've ever experienced.
Please check out Kevin's pictures here: http://redux.wg.picturemaxx.com/series/1.146.
Here are two:
(CPDRC performance)
(inmate with a tattoo of the name of the prison director, Byron Garcia)
And as a shameless plug, this is a great feature article and photo essay. We are currently looking for a magazine publisher. It's an amazing story of redemption. Please contact us for more information.
So you, the reader, I am hoping that you will tell me about your reaction the first time you saw this video, whether it was now, or some other time in the past few years. Email me at bridget@bridgetbatch.com and tell me about it. I've written one article about the "Dancing for Discipline" program that has lead to these shows. Read the current draft here! However, I think the combination of emotions that these performances evoke deserves more exploration than can be covered in one article. Please write me and tell me all about your response.
The success of the CPDRC inmates, and the prison director who designed this program, Byron Garcia, is a unique story of the Internet, global pop culture, and one man’s experiment coming together to make a positive contribution to the world.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
*bridget batch*
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