#published to go with their 2017 exhibition on her

[slugchild]

You Have Beautiful Hands (1929) and Two Women Dancing (1928) - Jeanne Mammen

[laurolive]

Paul and Linda, a collection of PDAs: Part 1 - A Million Kisses

In our walk down the memory lane of Paul and Linda’s love story, which still captivates the romantics and the expressive artists out there, we start with an excerpt of an interview.

Rolling Stone cover June 17, 1976: “Yesterday, Today, and Paul.” In this interview, Paul says something interesting:

I mean, I kissed Linda onstage the other night, and for me, that’s kind of, ‘Wow, I must be getting real relaxed,’ ’cause I can’t do that in public, normally. I’m a bit kinda shy.

Paul McCartney shy about showing affection? Well, artists are certainly a different breed. He can sing a heartfelt love song in a venue full of people, but has to work up the courage to give his wife a little kiss? As photos will tell, he soon got over that quirk.

And even before this RS interview, he could certainly be demonstrative when a photographer or videographer was around, whereas the average person would be more guarded knowing that their tender moment would soon be out there as a picture in a magazine or a video clip on TV (we’re talking pre-internet days here).

RS Interview from The Paul McCartney Project

The 1970s: Not Exactly in Public, but There Must Be Someone Holding The Camera

1970 or 1971. Aww, so sweet.

June 1971 The video for the song “Heart of The Country” was made in Scotland. Is that a kiss? We might have to examine the still pic below. 

June 1971 A still image from the “Heart of The Country” video. I’ll count this as a kiss.

1974 In the garden of their house with baby Stella between them. It’s a published pic, so I’m counting it as a public kiss. (An “almost-kiss” but close enough.)

1974 Photoshoot for the Apr. 7, 1974, issue of New York News magazine. The cover story was "Just an Old Fashioned Beatle: An Exclusive Visit with Linda and Paul McCartney." Aww, lips softly touching the cheek is something I’m going to classify as a kiss.

Magazine article: @johnflyons.beatles on instagram

Post-1970s: Now We’re Really in Public

Sept. 21, 1982, at Linda's first photography exhibition in London. Photo © Robert Rosen. Rosen talks about the snap in this excerpt from an interview with I-D magazine:

What's one photo you're really proud of? Robert Rosen: I love the shot of Paul and Linda McCartney kissing. As soon as I had it developed I just thought, wow, I did that. I sent them a print but didn't hear anything more until a few months later, when, Paul and Linda turned up to a gallery event I happened to be at. At one point, Linda tapped me on the shoulder and said, 'Are you ignoring us?' She gave me a big hug and told me they loved the photo. That obviously meant a great deal to me.

From The Guardian archive, 21 September 1982: First London exhibition for Linda McCartney

I-D Interview with Robert Rosen Sept. 20, 2017

November 26, 1982, in Paris, France during photography month. An exhibition of Linda’s photographs was part of the event. Okay, his lips are just grazing her hair, so I’m going to call this a “hair kiss.”

Feb. 8, 1983 The 1983 British Record Industry Awards. Paul gets a congratulatory kiss from Linda after winning the 1982 British Male Solo Artist award and the Sony Trophy Award For Technical Excellence. The Beatles won the Outstanding Contribution to Music award.

More pics: The Paul McCartney Project

The same 1983 British Record Industry Awards. Two kisses in one night! Paul can’t hide his surprise.

Nov. 28, 1984 Another congratulatory kiss from Linda as Paul is presented with the Roll of Honorary Freedom of the City of Liverpool.

October 16, 1986 British Video Awards at Grosvenor House Hotel, London.

Rupert and The Frog Song awarded the Best Selling Video of 1985

April 4, 1989 Ivor Novello Awards at The Grosvenor House Hotel. Paul wins, Linda gets a kiss (so they both win 😊).

July 29, 1990 Backstage during the Paul McCartney World Tour 89/90 at Soldier Field Chicago. Linda is bidding farewell to Paul as she heads for the dressing room and he to the press tent.

From I Saw Him Standing There, Jorie B. Gracen, 2000. @thebeatlesofoz2 on Instagram

April 27, 1994 Press Conference for Linda's Home Style Cooking at Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. Paul comes out to endorse Linda’s book, and greets her with a kiss.

Video clip of Paul’s entrance from CelebrityFootage.com

1997 from the video for the song “The World Tonight”

1997 A kiss in the studio, from the documentary In The World Tonight.

Let’s see the whole sequence of that kiss, right from the beginning:

Bonus: Wedding Kisses March 12, 1969

You go Linda! Give your groom a kiss like the cameras aren’t around.

Everyone’s relationship dream: Get someone to look at you the way Linda looks at Paul here.

[littlequeenies]

‘I’ve been called a witch, slut, murderer’: the ultra-creative women dismissed as rock star girlfriends

Despite their artistic skill, Anita Pallenberg, Suzi Ronson and Yoko Ono were cast as mere lovers or muses. They're now being allowed to tell their own stories – even if it's after death-Annie ZaleskiTue 21 May 2024 11.46 CEST

In a 2008 interview, Anita Pallenberg swore she would never write her autobiography. The artist, model and actor was weary of publishers who only wanted to read about her intimate dealings with the Rolling Stones – she dated both Brian Jones and Keith Richards, and had an affair with Mick Jagger. “They all wanted salacious,” she said then. “And everybody is writing autobiographies and that’s one reason why I’m not going to do it.”

Yet when Pallenberg died in 2017, she left behind pages of a neatly typed manuscript, titled Black Magic, that contained her life story. True to form, she characterised these memoirs as “memory images, a traveller’s tale through a landscape of dreams and shadows” rather than an autobiography. But she held little back while chronicling her spirited and frequently tumultuous life, quipping: “I don’t think the lawyers will like it very much.”Read in a narration by Scarlett Johansson, her unpublished words are the backbone of a compelling new documentary, Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg. Kate Moss celebrates her as “the original bohemian rock chick that people still aspire to today” but more valuable is Pallenberg reframing her legacy on her own terms from beyond the grave. “I’ve been called a witch, a slut, a murderer. I’ve been hounded by the police and slandered in the press,” she wrote, before adding, “But I don’t need to settle scores. I’m reclaiming my soul.”Given how much ink has been spilt on the Stones over the years, it’s refreshing to hear Pallenberg share her own perspective on her experiences. She’s not the only high-profile rock girlfriend now getting a chance to tell their own story, asserting their place in, and influence on, male-dominated music culture.

Suzi Ronson, who was married to the guitarist Mick Ronson, just released a candid memoir, Me and Mr Jones: My Life with David Bowie and the Spiders from Mars, that’s a clear-eyed look at rock star mythology. Pattie Boyd, married to both George Harrison and Eric Clapton, was interviewed in 2018 by Taylor Swift for Harper’s Bazaar (“George and Eric had an inability to communicate their feelings through normal conversation,” Boyd said, “I became a reflection for them”) and this year she eloquently reminisced as she auctioned her memorabilia, including love letters from Clapton and handwritten Harrison lyrics, for a staggering £2,818,184. “The letters from Eric – they’re so desperate and passionate, a passion that blooms once in a lifetime,” she said. “They’re too painful in their beauty.”

Tate Modern, in London, is meanwhile celebrating Yoko Ono with a career-spanning exhibition, Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind – a pointed reminder that Ono’s artistic collaboration with John Lennon was only a relatively brief part of her career. It shows how her artistry spans theatre, writing and music, but also how it makes space for her story to change over time – for example, the various performances of Cut Piece across the decades – and for others’ perspectives. Take Ono’s 1964 artist’s book Grapefruit, which uses short, abstract action items (“Imagine the clouds dripping. Dig a hole in your garden to put it in”) to generate a huge potential variety of creative responses.

Among those was Lennon’s Imagine. In a 1980 BBC interview, Lennon said Grapefruit provided “the lyric and the concept” of the song, but Ono didn’t receive a songwriting credit until 2017 even though Lennon was aware of the oversight in his lifetime. “But those days I was a bit more selfish, a bit more macho,” he told the BBC, “and I sort of omitted to mention her contribution.”

Pallenberg, too, served as inspiration for Rolling Stones songs such as Gimme Shelter. But Catching Fire reinforces the idea that even if sexism meant she was underestimated by the public, she wasn’t a passive presence or muse. “Neither Anita nor I wanted to be with them because we wanted some of their power,” Marianne Faithfull says in voiceover – she was in the band’s orbit alongside Pallenberg owing to a relationship with Jagger. “We had our own power.”

Faithfull’s power was her own music career; Pallenberg, who spoke several languages and worked as a model, influenced the Stones’ look. (“I started to become a fashion icon for wearing my old lady’s clothes,” Richards quipped in his bookLife.) And she refused to rearrange her life for the Stones. “No girls were allowed in the studio when they were recording,” she said. “You weren’t allowed even to ring. I did other things; I didn’t sit at home.” She maintained an acting career, notably in 1968’s movie Barbarella and 1970’s Performance – though her voice was dubbed out in the former: you wonder whether her “muse” tag meant casting directors underestimated her.

Suzi Ronson, a colour-loving hair wizard who brought David Bowie’s tomato-red Ziggy Stardust coif to life, also took a different path from other women of her time. She left a steady job and went on the road, steering the Ziggy Stardust tour aesthetic by handling hair, makeup, and other tasks.

Me and Mr Jones illuminates her part in helping Bowie crystallise his vision – and shows how fame and rock stardom corrupt. On a Mott the Hoople tour, she seethes while Mick, cozying up to a baroness, orders Suzi to find his hairbrush, treating her like an assistant rather than a girlfriend. It wasn’t the only time she was underestimated. “I’m now the pathetic girlfriend, clinging on to my man, a position I never thought I’d find myself in,” she writes after joining Mick on tour with Bob Dylan for a few days, after not being invited. “I try to be understanding, but truthfully I’m infuriated at being left out.”

These new works also highlight how each woman, at a time when women struggled to “have it all”, cultivated agency through one of the only paths open to them: motherhood. Rather than being something limiting, becoming mothers allowed them to reinvent their lives. Suzi Ronson, long out of Bowie’s orbit and living in England with her parents after giving birth, reflects that “the life I created for myself has disappeared, and my career with it,” she writes, but her daughter brings joy and solace – and encourages her to stay optimistic and keep striving for a unique path. “As I push her around the same streets my mother used to push me, I swear to her: this isn’t going to be it, and I pray I’m right.” Ronson closes the loop by noting that she and Mick return to the US, living in the singer Maria Muldaur’s house and finding equilibrium.

Ono confronted motherhood’s messiness. Her installation My Mommy Was Beautiful used photos of breasts and vaginas to demystify birth and celebrate the strength of the body, and the 1969 song Don’t Worry Kyoko (Mummy’s Only Looking for a Hand in the Snow) – which Yoko wrote for her young daughter Kyoko – conveys primal agony and frustration. “Society’s myth is that all women are supposed to love having children,” Ono said in 1981. “But that was a myth. So there was Kyoko, and I did become attached to her and had great love for her, but at the same time, I was still struggling to get my own space in the world. I felt that if l didn’t have room for myself, how could I give room to another human being?”

Pallenberg also navigates this conundrum. Jake Weber, the actor son of notorious Stones associate Tommy Weber, becomes visibly emotional when talking about how “generous and funny” Pallenberg was to him after his mother died in 1971, during the Stones’ debauched French summer. “She filled a vacuum of a surrogate parent,” he said. “She was lovely like that. Her thing was trying to give us joy.” Catching Fire also visits the agonising fallout of the sudden June 1976 death of Pallenberg’s 10-week-old son Tara.

Pallenberg has the last word in Catching Fire, and her conclusion illustrates the importance of women directing their own narratives. “Writing this has helped me emerge in my own eyes,” she noted. “Reading over what I’ve written, I get a lump in my throat. But it doesn’t need to be a doom and gloom kind of story.” The film makes it clear that Pallenberg’s chief power was, ultimately, resilience, which she needed during an often-challenging life (she lived with various addictions, including to heroin and alcohol) and several tragic events, such as when a 17-year-old shot and killed himself in Richards’ bed.

“I felt like some nasty person who caused death and destruction around her,” Pallenberg said after the 1979 incident, but Catching Fire refuses to let Pallenberg become a tragic figure or cautionary tale. The film ends noting that she got sober, graduated from college, and aged with iconoclastic gusto. The lessons are clear – redemption is possible and we are not our worst moments – while also reinforcing what we miss when women’s voices are silenced or ignored. Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg, directed by Alexis Bloom and Svetlana Zill is in UK and Irish cinemas now

[hotwaterandmilk]

I was going through some older photos and realised I'd never posted these or discussed this art book so hey, easy Friday night post!

Originally released in June 2017 for the "Tanemura Arina Genga-ten ～20th anniversary～" event held at Seibu Ikebukuro, this art book is 144 pages of pure Tanemura lace, frills, and saucer eyes. If that interests you then you'll absolutely love this book, if it isn't your thing then probably best to avoid it.

Unlike Tanemura-sensei's previous artbooks which were produced for standard retail sale, this 20th anniversary volume was limited to sale at the exhibition (+ through Housaidow) and highlights select art works that were on display for the artist's anniversary along with some comments on the illustration's context etc. (So if a picture was used as a bunkobon cover, or perhaps a colour page in Ribon, it's noted.)

While a lot of earlier artwork in this book has been published cleanly in previous publications, there's a lot of newer art that hasn't seen a nice release like this before (including reprint volume covers and images from series like Neko to Watashi no Kinyoubi, Akuma ni Chic x Hack, Idolish 7, and 31☆I Dream that haven't been printed this cleanly or clearly in a collection until this book).

Also included here are some new (at the time) illustrations that Tanemura drew for advertising this particular event (which feature as the front and back covers).

Although this book isn't comprehensive by any means, it does contain a LOT of illustrations and they cover the first 20 years of her career, so there is plenty to keep fans busy here. The comments for each picture give some insight into Tanemura's thought process with certain images and exactly which ones stand out and are truly memorable to her.

Overall print quality is high for an event book and even though its resell price these days is quite high (usually over 6k yen) it is a worthwhile investment for anyone who wants a snapshot of Tanemura Arina's works because this feels like a deeply personal collection of images, shared with us for a reason, and I appreciate that.

Plus y'know, I'm a tragic for some 90s/00s nostalgia.

Anyway I scanned some pages from this before I decided to step back from scanning so I might share a few of those in the future.

[logansphotoarray]

Research Post 6 - Sofia Dalamagka

Born in Lamia, Greece 1984, Sofia Dalamagka started her work in photography in 2011 when she pursued photography lessons at the Zografou artistic workshop in Athens. Since then she has worked with several exhibitions, her photos being distinguished in competitions and published online. She would also go on to be an editor for Focus.gr and Freethinking.org in 2017 and Photologio.gr in 2019, all the while remotely attending several photography and art programs from places like National Kapodistrian University of Athens, Museum of Modern Art in New York and The Camera Never Lies at the University of London, and at the University of Melbourne. Then in 2022 she would curate her own project “Under Negotiation” and “Everything but the Girl” while teaching online photography lessons. Through her work, Dalamagka explores themes of identity and belonging, utilizing bold use of color, intricate symbolism, and expressive forms, inviting viewers to engage with its deeper layers of meaning and interpretation.

While looking through her work, her project “Grief” fascinated me because as its title describes it, her work portrays total breakdown and mourning in all 5 of its stages, but of course from her perspective of what each stage is like to her, “Mourning does not ask you. It doesn't knock on your door, it doesn't wipe its feet on the mat before entering. It invades and it's merciless.” The first image that, although not necessarily perplexing, that I more or less recognize is of her wearing what is maybe a bag with holes cut in it for eyes and a mouth over her head, running violently out of some shrubs. This to me would represent anger because the primal urge to do something rash and act out in outbursts due to holding in anger, trying to hold back the emotional outburst but all one can do is flail around in hopeless resentment. Another image is of her smoking, holding a dumbell, and wearing something resembling a trash bag? I was initially thinking this scene represented acceptance but forming bad habits like smoking while feeling like garbage when trying to portray a happy façade, yet contemplating more about it as I question if this is either acceptance or denial, I now recognize this as denial. Thinking back to how I treated myself after facing an unfortunate event, I started working out to distract myself by trying to make my body healthier while also picking up bad habits to “ease” the pain, feeling like shit overall. “[Greif’s] truth is inexorable and universal, and only by coming to terms with its existence can you be reborn.” 

Sources:

https://sofiadalamagka.com/work/grief

https://lenscratch.com/2023/03/sofia-dalamagka-evanescentium-memento/

https://tagree.de/words-are-not-enough-by-sofia-dalamagka/

[mi4011hemanshapeiris]

Mai Yoneyama Secondary Research

Mai Yoneyama, born on July 12th, 1988 in Nagano, is an animator and illustrator based in Japan. Her most popular works include "Kiznaiver" (2016), "Cyberpunk: Edgerunners" (2022), and her work on the animated music videos for J-pop star, Eve. PERSONAL LIFE AND EDUCATION: Mai Yoneyama was born in Japan. Her father is Japanese, and her mother is Taiwanese. She spent a period of her life in Taiwan as well. Mai Yoneyama is the youngest child in her family, having an older sister, who is always praised for her accomplishments, which she says must be the reason that she's a perfectionist, feeling defeat more strongly than others. Mai describes herself as a "typical drawing lover". She would always draw pictures on the blank paper at the back of calendars, alone in the countryside of Negano, while her grandmother was sewing close by. Drawing inspiration from anime, she wished to be a manga artist in elementary school, then an illustrator in junior high. Mai Yoneyama originally thought of going to a college for architecture, but she also wanted to be involved in animation and art, therefore enrolled in an anime vocational school. She attended Tokyo Designer Gakuin College. When she graduated from vocational school, she joined Gainax as an animator. The passing of her father in 2017 changed the trajectory of her career and the decisions she wanted to make with her life. WORK AND CAREER She started working as an animator at 19 years old. She describes her work experience at Gainax to have been difficult at first, as it was a commission system. She did her best as an "in between-er", and lived with her parents sending her money, but this only lasted about two years. She started her career after this. In 2013, she was in charge of character designs for "Kill La Kill" and "Kizuna Ever" in 2016. But she says that the more important she became, the less creative it was for her.

After her father passed away in 2017, she decides that she wants to make things with her own technical and imaginative skills.

Around this time, she leaves the animation production company and starts freelancing. In 2019, she worked for SSS by applibot, working as an illustrator and posting them to Pixiv. In 2021, Yoneyama had a solo exhibition named "EGO". During this time, she thought of herself as a commercial writer and entertainer, as apposed to someone who leaned into artistic expression. LATEST PROJECTS: On November, 2023, she hosted her solo exhibition "EYE" compiled works that she drew as a hobby, illustrations, solo exhibition works, and animated works that she has published. Mai is currently working as an illustrator HOBBIES AND OTHER INFO: She's very relatable in a sense, due to the fact that she draws lying down on her bed sometimes. She also mentions how she has never drawn anything in under an hour before, which i personally connected to. I also relate to her stance and opinion on Artificial Intelligence; the feeling as though "letting the AI do the work" will make my process less interesting and enjoyable. Mai Yoneyama describes illustrating as capturing a single shot or a frame of an animation. She aims to create a transcending genre in her work, trying to increase the level of refinement that she puts in her methods, and what she wants to express. SOURCES:

*please click on the underlined words for the links* Youtube: Youtube channel Documentary: EYE Art Behind Animation and Illustration Passion of Drawing: Naoki Urasawa & Mai Yoneyama Live Drawing

Other Sources:

Mai Yoneyama, PALOW. The world of globally recognized "comic art" Yoneyama Mai: twitter The Art of Yoneyama Mai An interview with Mai Yoneyama and Kei Mochizuki  Mai Yoneyama's profile on Artstation NewsWire Article

2024/03/08

[research604jo]

Deeper research on Mila Useche

Link to her website Link to her instagram

Website about page: "Mila Useche is a Colombian artist and film director based in Berlin. After graduating from university in 2017 with a B.A. in Illustration, she started working in video games and comics as a designer and illustrator. In 2020 she decided to start freelancing as a character designer for animation and publishing. Among several clients are Disney, DreamWorks, Nickelodeon, Scholastic, Harper Collins, and Warner Bros. Animation. Most recently, Mila’s work has shifted from client-based digital services to more personal and physical artworks."

Looking through her instagram, I saw lots of personal insights in a lot of her posts where I was able to understand her thinking and thought process as she went from character design + animation to physical paintings.

HER EARLY WORK:

Early in her instagram, you can see her diverse skill in animation. She is a character designer and scene builder working in a textured digital style that gives her artwork a very cosy, heartwarming, storybook style. She was getting commissioned by animation studios, even to make promotional art for Disney's Encanto (see above). Che did instagram "challenges" such as the "hue challenge" (see above) which is a big commitment and is mainly to drive instagram engagement but also seems to encourage many illustration styles from her. During this time she mostly did digital painting on her iPad, only ever doing studies and plans in her sketchbooks.

HER TRANSITIONAL WORK:

She had expressed that it had been years since doing something fun and expressive in her sketchbook and was very inspired on her trip to Tokyo earlier this year. She began branching out of her sketchbook, using watercolours on paper, using acrylics on canvas, eventually to pastel crayons on large paper and even having a go at some miniature sculpting of her characters. Drawing oil pastels on paper was the thing that inspired her the most, she says it brings back the feeling of drawing in her sketchbook as a child, and that the pastels allowed her more freedom to make mistakes because it's cheaper than watercolour and acrylics.

Because of her new freedom in creating her personal art instead of animation work, she also began being inspired by memories and personal experiences. Although she never fully describes the meaning or origin, you can see the concept in her art and the expression in it. Quotes from her instagram descriptions in under a few images: "Going back to traditional feels so good!" "I know it's not my usual art, but bare with me, cus I'm having so much fun"

HER CURRENT WORK: (What I'm inspired by)

She began buying larger and larger canvases, showing each peice with pride - even when she doesn't love what she has created she tells us "I'm not very happy about it (the painting), makes me a bit uncomfortable, but that always motivates me to start the next (painting)". This is such a great perspective as an artist.

"I think I will name this art movement Colobia Pop Kawaii"

Her current goals in life are to be able to afford a big, bright, well equipped studio with a view and a garden.

She expresses that her original dream when she left university was to have her art exhibited in galleries and museums and she felt as though she'd lost that dream when she moved to digital only art work. I think it's interesting that despite doing amazing digital art and working for amazing animation studios and projects, she didn't feel fulfilled. That is the dream of many artists and she was able to be honest with herself and her audience and take the leap into an entirely different art style and was able to bloom and express herself in a more truthful way.

I think a lot of creatives and artists can relate to this path and are somewhere along it. Although I'm obviously early in my artistic journey, I'd say I'm in that transitional stage at the moment where I'm looking for my true style and looking for a way to create that is truthful to myself.

[movedbywords]

SAT AUG 26@2PM Join Moved By Words & Frye Art Museum for New Voices Of Color 2023

Our Moved By Words fall event is coming up this weekend presented by the Frye Art Museum, if you have a minute please pass this information on! More information about our New Voices 2023 reading featuring Zaji Cox, author of 'Plum For Months' below (and for writers a chance to write with us in the beautiful Frye Art Museum on Saturday!)

MOVED BY WORDS: NEW VOICES OF COLOR READING — SAT AUG 26 2PM MORE INFO & FREE EVENT REGISTRATION FOR ATTENDEES: https://fryemuseum.org/calendar/event/moved-words-new-voices-color-reading

WRITE WITH US 

We still have spots for writers and volunteers for this Saturday. Please reply ASAP if you would like to get early entry to the museum, sit with the writers, read with us during the event, and have a space to put your books or art after the show then give us a shout. There will be tables available and we will have time to spend as a writing community together. We are going to write one short piece on "Remixing Identity" based on the Kelly Akashi exhibition at the Frye Art Museum: https://youtu.be/3pxw5pJw-E8  VOLUNTEER TO HELP

If all you want to. do is come early and support, help set up tables, and do a general vibe check that's fine too—just reply to this email ASAP and tell us you are interested in volunteering. Otherwise we hope to see you at the show~!

MOVED BY WORDS: NEW VOICES OF COLOR READING — SAT AUG 23 2PM Join the Frye and Moved by Words as we celebrate 10 years of poetry project New Voices of Color with a special reading at the Frye Art Museum, honoring both a decade of emerging talent and the closing of current exhibition Kelly Akashi: Formations. Headlining the program, Zaji Cox will offer a special reading from her recently published book of essays Plums for Months, which explores life growing up mixed race in the outskirts of Portland, Oregon. Other participating artists include Maryam Imam Gabriel, Stacy D Flood, Prashant Kakad, and more special guests!

New Voices of Color invites emerging authors and poets to workshop, connect, share works, and get inspired. Participating poets will have spent the day at the museum with Moved by Words founder Skyler Reed, touring the galleries to absorb Akashi’s work. Their responses will be shared during the reading, highlighting the special symbiosis between the visual and literary arts.

ABOUT THE PRESENTERS

Zaji Cox wrote her first short story at age nine. A dancer, model, and artist, she has performed at the PDX Poetry Festival, Survival of the Feminist reading series, Corporeal Writing’s LOOP, and the Northwest Folklife Festival. She holds a bachelor's degree in English and her writing can be found in Pathos Literary Magazine, Entropy, The Portland Metrozine, Cultural Daily, CARE Covid Art REsource, and the anthology 2020: The Year of the Asterisk (University of Hell Press).

Skyler Reed (Skyler / Skylers / he / him / they / their) is a Sycan River Paiute (PIE-YOOT) artist, writer, and musician of the duo Lark & Raven currently living under the troll bridge in Sia’hl (SEE-AL-TH) on Duwamish (DOO-WAU-MISH) Tribal Lands. The founder of Moved By Words and a recipient of the Dean’s Residential Fellowship at the UW Information School, Skyler is the author of two chapbooks, And All Ampersands (2016) and Sex & Wikipedia (2017).

ABOUT MOVED BY WORDS

Founded by Skyler Reed, Moved By Words is a project dedicated to connecting new writers with writing workshops and community outreach. In 2020, Skyler hosted and organized the first ever free-of-charge women and queer folk of color writers' workshops and reading series, in community collaboration with the women and queer folk of Northwest Native Writers Circle and of the Whitenoise Reading Series community.

ABOUT KELLY AKASHI

Kelly Akashi: Formations is organized by the San José Museum of Art and curated by Lauren Schell Dickens, Chief Curator. The presentation at the Frye Art Museum is organized by Amanda Donnan, Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions.

Major support for Kelly Akashi: Formations provided by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Fellows of Contemporary Art. Generous support for the Frye’s installation provided by the City of Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, the Frye Foundation, and Frye Members. Media sponsorship provided by The Stranger.

SKYLER REED

MOVED BY WORDS

[irvinenewshq]

Quinta Brunson Talked About How Folks Would Have By no means Cease Speaking About Mindy Kalings Achievement If She Had been A Man

Quinta Brunson, one amongst Mindy Kaling‘s staunchest followers, thinks extra individuals ought to hitch her in celebrating Kaling’s skilled achievements. The erstwhile Mindy Mission producer and actor, 32, was talked about by Quinta Brunson the Abbott Elementary superstar as being amongst the Hollywood heavy hitters she’s most desirous to collaborate with going ahead on Thursday. Quinta Brunson in her latest interview with the Hollywood Reporter stated about Mindy that she is a little bit renaissance in herself. She stated that she don’t assume that Mindy’s jobs are that simple to drag off. Quinta Brunson added how she thinks that individuals has turned their eyes on the inventive superstar. Brunson stated that she thinks if it was a person doing all these works that Mindy Kaling is pulling off, the entire showbiz would have gone loopy after her. In praising Mindy in that interview, Quinta Brunson named a number of of her exhibits saying how nice these exhibits are. Quinta Brunson Has Praised Mindy Kaling: For 9 seasons of The Workplace, Mindy Kaling gained widespread recognition as Kelly Kapoor, and in 5 years ffrom 2012 to 2017, she starred because the star of The Mindy Mission on platforms like Hulu and Fox. She is presently working two jobs: writing and government producing for Netflix & HBO Max sequence. In August Mindy has achieved an interview with the PEOPLE the place she stated that she has been shocked with the response she acquired from the Netfliz present, By no means have I ever. She defined her stance saying that it was a present that she thought solely individuals from a sure age group will like. Nonetheless, when the present got here out, she was shocked to she how that has not been the case. Originally published at Irvine News HQ

[kudosmyhero]

The Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 1) #6: Face-to-Face with... the Lizard!

Read Date: July 17, 2022 Cover Date: March 1968 ● Writer: Stan Lee ◦ Steve Ditko ● Penciller: Steve Ditko ● Inker: Steve Ditko ● Colorist: {uncredited} ● Letterer: Art Simek ● Editor: Stan Lee ●

SYNOPSIS:

When reports of a humanoid-lizard (naturally dubbed "The Lizard") come out of Florida, Daily Bugle publisher J. Jonah Jameson issues a challenge to Spider-Man: Defeat the Lizard. Hearing about this, Peter goes to see what Jameson's intentions are. He learns that Jameson only issued the challenge to sell more papers.

Later, while at the Natural History Museum with his classmates, Peter takes an express interest in the lizard exhibits. When crooks try to rob the museum and take Liz Allan, hostage, Peter slips away and changes into Spider-Man and comes to her rescue. Hearing another report of an attack by the Lizard in Florida, Peter decides to take Jameson's challenge. As Spider-Man, Peter pays Jameson a visit to take him up on his challenge, in the hopes that he'd send Peter Parker to Florida to take pictures of the event. The plot works, however, it backfires ever so slightly: Jameson himself is going to accompany the boy in order to supervise him.

When they arrive in Florida, Peter makes an excuse of needing to buy film for his camera to get away from Jameson. As Spider-Man, Peter checks out his only lead: Curtis Connors, a resident expert on lizards. However, when he arrives at the Connors home, Spider-Man learns from Curt's wife that her husband is the Lizard: He was trying to find a way to allow humans to grow back limbs. Since Connors had lost his arm in the war, he used himself as a guinea pig on the project. While his arm grew back, the side effects of the serum he created caused him to transform into the Lizard.

The Lizard then attacks the Connors home, and Spider-Man defends them. He then works in Connors' lab to create an antidote for the serum, in the hopes that it can change Connors back to normal. Going into the swamp to find the Lizard, he finds him and his army of obedient reptiles in an old castle. Setting up his camera to take pictures, Spider-Man battles the Lizard and eventually slips him the antidote which changes the Lizard back into his human form.

Connors thanks Spider-Man for his help, and they all decide to keep mum about the fact that Connors was the Lizard, as he had no control over what he did while in that form. Returning to a furious Jameson as Peter Parker, when Peter offers him the pictures (Which he said he bought off a local) Jameson dismisses them as fakes and tears them up. He then tells Parker that this dud of a trip is coming out of his future pay.

Returning back to New York, Peter tries his luck getting a date with Liz Allan, which ends with her hanging up on him because she is expecting a call from that dreamy Spider-Man. As a round-up to his adventure to Florida, Peter sends Jameson a mocking letter to the Bugle. (https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Amazing_Spider-Man_Vol_1_6)

FAN ART:

Lizard by antoniofabela

ACCOMPANYING PODCAST:

[psitrend]

Demystify the romance trope

New Post has been published on https://china-underground.com/2019/10/21/demystify-the-romance-trope/

Demystify the romance trope

Featured image: Installation view of Sun Yunfan & Dave Liang: Flashbacks in a Crystal Ball at Inna Art Space, New York (all images © Inna Art Space and courtesy Yufan Sun and Shanghai Restoration Project, all photos by Anyan Wu)

The romantic anecdotes of a collaborative couple are often more evocative than general stories about an artist’s inner growth.

Event site | Original music

They can act as mental opium to feed the nerves of those who feel abandoned to their lusterless fate. Just as people of the past used to seek therapeutic power through religion, today’s art practitioners and art lovers tend to consider art as a panacea helping them push through spiritual desolation.

It has the potential to connect them to like-minded souls, most ideally, to someone who can provide romantic comfort.

Understanding this, it is not surprising that a recent exhibition featuring visual presentation by a collaborative couple at Inna Art Space, titled Sun Yunfan & Dave Liang: Flashbacks in a Crystal Ball, could easily make a scene among the Chinese community in New York City.

This is in addition to the fact that the two artists also perform as an electronic music duo, Shanghai Restoration Project, popularized both in China and the United States due to skillful integration of romanticism and nostalgia into their music.

Shanghai Restoration Project was initially founded in 2006 by Dave Liang, a Chinese American who grew up in Upstate New York and aspired to create music synthesizing Western-leaning beat music with 1930’s Shanghai jazz. Compared to Liang, Yufan Sun’s navigation toward music was much more circuitous.

Born and raised in China, Sun relocated to the United States to pursue a master’s degree in accounting, though she eventually redirected her career to art. After earning a BFA from the School of Visual Art and an MFA from the Pratt Institute, Sun worked as a cultural journalist before joining Shanghai Restoration Project as a music producer and visual director at a relatively late stage.

Although Liang had been collaborating with different musicians and animators, it was not until he paired up with Sun that the band developed a much stronger chemistry between music and visual presentation, therefore expanding its influence to a larger circle of art lovers.

Yunfan Sun & Dave Liang, “Is it worth to believe that it will always get better?” (2019), ink drawing, guitar strings, baseball cards, and mixed media installation, 43 x 86 inch

Though the concept of “artist collaboration” is used as bait to trigger public curiosity for the show, the only collaborative artwork exhibited is an autobiographical assemblage that strings together the creative trajectories of both artists.

Despite the lack of legitimacy in terms of the format (as a two-person exhibition), the presentation of the show, in my eyes, does have an unexpected effect in discouraging the mindless mythologization of the romantic aspect of collaborative couples.

The exhibition showcases a series of enlarged prints of album covers designed by Sun, while sealing the music co-produced by the two within special edition cassettes and vinyl records.

This two-person exhibition actually functions more as a celebration of Sun’s contributions to Shanghai Restoration Project as an active agent and an affirmation of her identity as a visual artist alongside her pursuits in music.

Yunfan Sun, “R. U. R” (2017), archival pigment print, 20 x 20 inch

The illustration on a record sleeve never merely advertises the music, as the visual strength of the design supplements the lyrics in terms of communicating concrete ideas behind the music.

On the record sleeve of R. U. R, an album responding to Google’s DeepMind AI that defeated the world’s top Go champions, Sun reconstructs a chessboard into a labyrinth-like architectural space.

Above that, a hand, positioned like it is about to play a keyboard, approaches a chess piece to make the next move.

Deconstructing and recomposing different signifiers, Sun creates a visual puzzle indicating her presumption about the future relationship between art and technology; when the spontaneity of music composition and the complicated calculation of chess-playing both lose their original association with human intelligence, the apparent differences between the two intellectual activities will no longer exist.

In addition to the dichotomy between human and artificial intelligence, Sun introduces a third party: plants.

The chess pieces with binary code written in Chinese characters hang on two plants just like fruits growing from branches.

The circuit which connects individual chess pieces on the plant hints at the metabolism of natural substance, thus providing another potential reading of the image that contradicts an anthropocentric worldview: as the overwhelming binary logic is simply something rooted in genetic codes of natural substances, the victory of AI is an ultimate manifestation of a cosmology never fully understood by human beings since ancient times.

Visualizing such a complicated power dynamic among different elements requires a large amount of intellectual labor.

Yunfan Sun, “Dubalonia Radio International” (2018), archival pigment print, 16 x 16 inch

Moreover, the way Sun feeds the music with a modern interpretation of Eastern philosophy aligns with the Shanghai Restoration Project’s mission in integrating elements and ideas from Chinese culture into a Western form of music.

In Chinese art history, natural substances like plants and rocks were originally associated with a unified, omniscient cosmos. However, within the modernization and urbanization process started during the Ming Dynasty, there emerged a new genre of paintings depicting domestic space, within which plants and rocks always refer to feminine concepts such as sentimentality and melancholy.

Legitimizing biocentrism within a sci-fi setting, Sun seems to playfully suggest that plants always know more about the future than humans do, whereas humans constantly redefine the future by technology but ultimately lose their initiative.

With such an idea tapping into the paradox of human history, Sun elevates the status of plants, which are usually regarded as inferior to humans. By doing this, she empowers the cosmological expedition conducted within art, which appears to be less progressive compared to those heroic endeavors pushing technological development.

The overall sense of quietness and solitude that you can feel through Sun’s art does not mean that it is not aggressive.

Her visual strategy of juxtaposing unrelated objects to provoke deeper thoughts can be understood as a conscious resistance to an indolent mind.

The more time you spend with Sun’s images, the more you are going to believe that they appeal to the contemplative mind for deeper meaning rather than to the hungry eye for immediate satisfaction.

With such a self-sustaining ecosystem of creative forces, the seriousness and the artistic value surrounding Sun’s work should never be obscured by a romance trope due to her partnership with another artist.

Yunfan Sun, “Spooky Party” (2017), archival pigment print, 42 x 42 inch

#DaveLiang, #SunYunfan

[littlequeenies]

Why Do We Love…

Charlotte Martin

Our series "Why Do We Love..." published on each muse's birthday are getting to an end, and French former model and artist Charlotte Martin is next!

[Charlotte Martin in 1967 by Robert Whittaker. Sent to us by lovely Kana from Japan for our Family Zepp site, remember?]

We first new about Charlotte when one of us created a website called Family Zepp on piczo back in the day, remember that? We were teenagers and we loved Led Zeppelin, but unlike The Beatles, there weren't any sites for the girls or the children, so one of us started and we became familiar with the names of Maureen and Carmen Plant, Sabel Starr, Lori Mattix ... and Charlotte!

[Charlotte in 1969 by Barry Lategan]

Truth to be told, we had to do a real detective job with Charlotte, because it was said that she was a 1960s supermodel, but unlike Pattie Boyd, we couldn't find anything! And, like her, she had a relationship with Eric Clapton, before having one with Jimmy Page.

[Charlotte and Eric in 1967, by Robert Whittaker]

We also learnt that she had a short relationship with Beatle George Harrison, but never was included anywhere as a "Beatlegirl". Little by little we found (sometimes with a little help from our friends) more and more Charlotte information and photos, including modelling pics, but in every pic she looked different, so we weren't sure if it was her or not!

[For years these were the only Charlotte pics on the net we could find, early 1970s, late 1970s and 1980s...]

Little by little we learned she was on The Beatles "All You Need is Love" video or in Led Zeppelin's "The Song Remains the Same" film, so we took screencaps of her, to build our collection for the Family Zepp website!

[Left, 1967 "All you need is Love", sitting between Paul McCartney -not shown- and John Lennon. Right, with her baby daughter Scarlet Page in a cameo in "The Song Remains the Same". Our caps]

But we think most of the photos we found came after, maybe thanks to tumblr and later (recently) instagram. We found amazing blogs like Liz Eggleston/Miss Peelpants who find the greatest and rarest Charlotte pics and share them with us all. So we could see Charlotte's beauty and talent once and for all!

[Three of the numerous of modelling Charlotte scans that Liz Eggleston/Miss Peelpants shares in her blog, go and follow her!]

[One of the typical images of Charlotte... thanks to tumblr and instagram we could find out the date and occasion! The 1967 Legalize Cannabis Rally at London's Speaker's Corner]

[Left, another Beatles' connection! Modelling The Fool for The Apple boutique in 1968. Right, Charlotte shared her 1969 modelling image on her instagram]

We respect Charlotte for never selling her stories of the times she spent with The Beatles, Eric, Jimmy Page and Led Zeppelin... even if we'd like to know all the details!

[Charlotte, Jimmy, and their daughter, photographer Scarlet, in a Scarlet photography exhibition in 2007. Charlotte is in good terms with both Eric and Jimmy.]

Nowadays she is a very successful artist and painter, and you can see her creating her work on her website or the numerous exhibits she's done.

[Charlotte in 2017 with one of her paintings, from her website]

Today, for her 75th birthday, we wanted to share with all of you, dear followers, how we knew about Charlotte and what made us love her.

Here we share:

OUR BIOGRAPHY OF HER, WITH LINKS TO AMAZING SITES

HER POSTS IN OUR BLOG

OUR PHOTO COLLECTION HOSTED AT GOOGLE PHOTOS (all the photos have been collected from the net, photographers, details, websites etc are credited when known)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR BEAUTIFUL ARTIST

[nopefun]

Interview #495: Quince Pan

q: Give a short introduction of yourself: a: I am Quince Pan, a documentary photographer born in 2000, currently based in Singapore. I am now waiting to enter university to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics.

q: What is your series "JBM" about? What was the process of making the series? a: “JBM”, my family’s abbreviation of “Jalan Bukit Merah”, is a documentary photo project centred on my maternal grandmother, Lau Giok Niu, her cultural heritage and her HDB flat where I spent my childhood under her care. It is my first exhibited series and also my first serious long-term documentary project.

In 2015, I followed my grandmother to visit her hometown in Fengwei, Quangang District, Quanzhou City, Fujian, China. Bringing my camera along on the trip, I noticed that instead of shooting purely for fun or beauty, I would include certain objects (for example, a calendar on the wall) in my frames because they had historical significance. I submitted those Fengwei photos as my portfolio for the 2016 Noise Art Mentorship (Photography and Moving Images). I got selected, and my mentor, Jean Qingwen Loo, urged me to pursue a project which I could speak authentically about. Through her criticism, I learnt to further prioritise meaning over style. My grandmother and my childhood were topics close to my heart, especially as she cared for me during my childhood and gave me the gift of the 头北 Thâu-pak dialect, a unique variant of Hokkien from the Quangang District. Eventually, “JBM” was born as my mentorship capstone, and was exhibited at the “Between Home and Home” Noise Art Mentorship Showcase at Objectifs in 2017. I haven’t stopped shooting; that’s why it’s an ongoing long-term project!

“JBM” contains a range of visual styles, ranging from photojournalistic fly-on-the-wall documentations of heated family discussions and visits by distant relatives from China to more tender images of sunlight at the void deck where my late grandfather’s wake was held in 2006. Rituals and festivities are anthropologically significant, so I pay particular attention to Chinese New Year, the Qing Ming Festival and the Winter Solstice, which my family celebrates. I also look at how other photographers document their families: Bob Lee, Nicky Loh, Bernice Wong, Brian Teo and Nancy Borowick.

More broadly, “JBM'' extends beyond photography and is a family history project. Since 2013, I have been researching the Quangang district, 头北 Thâu-pak dialect and my grandmother’s clan. I discovered that other descendants from her clan established an ancestral temple in Singapore, which initially stood on Craig Road but is now housed in a flat in Telok Blangah. I already did some fieldwork, interviews and preliminary documentation, which led to an article I published in April 2021 in Daojia: Revista Eletrônica de Taoismo e Cultura Chinesa. Maybe I will explore this in greater depth in future photo projects!

q: How did you get into photography? a: When I was around seven years old, I loved to play with my father’s Fujifilm compact. As a young student, I hadn’t heard of terms such as “light painting”, “Dutch angle” and “rule of thirds”, but those were the techniques I subconsciously used in my photographs. 

I entered the Noise Art Mentorship, as previously mentioned. During the school holidays, I worked as a media intern at Logue and as an assistant at Objectifs for the “Passing Time” exhibition and book by Lui Hock Seng. Through these work experiences, I learnt so much from Jean Loo, Yang Huiwen, Ryan Chua, Lim Mingrui and Chris Yap: news angles, editorial writing, scanning and touching up negatives and slides, colour management for print, liaising with clients and issuing invoices, among other skills. As part of the Noise Art Mentorship, I was given a copy of “+50” by the PLATFORM collective, which opened my eyes to diverse approaches within the documentary genre. I started to regularly attend talks at Objectifs and DECK, where I got to know people in the local photography scene, particularly in the documentary tradition.

q: You also do videography. How do you see it in relation to your photography? a: Videography requires a different way of seeing and thinking compared to photography, because video has additional temporal and auditory dimensions. With photography, I don’t have to think about how long I want a scene to be, what foley and B-roll I want to overlay, or have a storyboard in my head before heading out to shoot. In that sense, photography is more reactive to and receptive of situational contingencies because it requires less pre-planning. 

Also, photography can be a solitary endeavour, but it is quite difficult to make films alone, and the schoolmates I used to make films with have since embarked on separate paths in life. However, photography and videography share the same basics as visual media: composition and sequencing.

Fundamentally, I see myself as a documentarian, and this applies to any medium I work in, be it photography or videography, or even writing. The end goal is to record and share history by telling stories from lesser-known perspectives. Thus, the topics of my video projects are similar to the topics of my photo projects; sometimes I do both side by side! The films I made were all documentary shorts of places which do not exist anymore, such as the Hup Lee coffee shop at 114 Jalan Besar and the old Sembawang Hot Spring before NParks took over the site from MINDEF and redeveloped it. 

Currently, I am working as a videographer for Sing Lit Station’s poetry.sg archive. Thankfully, this job can be done solo!

q: What or who is inspiring you right now? a: Bob Lee, for being an amazing father and spreading hope and joy to others through his images. Alex and Rebecca Webb, for pairing literature with photography. Tom Brenner, for approaching photojournalism like street photography. Sim Chi Yin, for her international achievements and being both an academic and a practitioner. Brian Teo, for being an eminent contemporary. Last but not least, Kevin WY Lee’s advice, “CPR: Craft, Point, Rigour”, which I try to benchmark my work against.

q: Upcoming projects or ideas? a: Nothing concrete on my mind so far. I am just going to see where life takes me and what topics life makes me want to explore or talk about.

q: Any music to recommend? a: First and foremost, my fight song: “倔强 Stubborn” by Mayday. A close second, Queen’s 1986 “Under Pressure” live performance at Wembley is a transformative experience. The catchy “他夏了夏天 He Summered Summer” by Sodagreen brings out the grandeur in the mundane. “Silhouette” by KANA-BOON and “Everybody’s Changing” by Keane remind me of the fragility of life and time. I also like The Fray, Kings of Leon, Last Dinosaurs, Stephanie Sun, Tanya Chua, and the Taiwanese indie band DSPS.

his website.

Get more updates on our Facebook page and Instagram.

[lastsonlost]

The star begins a libel trial against a U.K. tabloid that called him a "wife beater." No matter the verdict, he's destined to lose.

If there's a single word to describe Johnny Depp's status at the moment, I'd go with zugzwang, which chess aficionados know to be the moment when a player basically gets cornered into making a move that will inevitably lead to an even more inferior position. On Tuesday, the star actor appeared in a London courtroom to take on the U.K. publisher of The Sun for characterizing him as a "wife beater" in the print edition of an April 27, 2018, online article.  Unfortunately for Depp, it seems to be a defamation trial that's a no-win situation.

Depp appears to think that success is achievable at a proceeding that will last several weeks and feature all sorts of inside details about his life plus celebrity friends including Paul Bettany and Winona Ryder. Depp is claiming that during his tumultuous marriage to Amber Heard between 2015 through 2017, he didn't actually throw a phone at her, slap her across the face, and grab her by the hair, as she once testified in a deposition during one of the nastiest divorces in Hollywood history. Perhaps Depp will play audio tapes in an effort to claim his ex-wife was the abusive one in this stormy relationship. It won't matter because there's really no reversing the damage that Depp has incurred these past few years.

That should have become obvious on June 26 when it was revealed that Disney was working on a new Pirates of the Caribbean, this time featuring a female-fronted cast led by Margot Robbie. In other words, at the exact moment when a U.K. judge was deciding on whether to actually proceed with Depp's libel suit after the actor's attorneys breached a court order by failing to turn over a series of text messages concerning the procurement of drugs, Depp may have lost his most lucrative role. A source tells The Hollywood Reporter that Jerry Bruckheimer would like to at least nod to the popularity of the Captain Jack Sparrow character in the coming film if the controversies die down, but at this point, Disney is resistant. Depp is too controversial. (Disney didn’t respond for comment.)

So Depp will pursue a favorable verdict and a nominal damages award from a trial that's playing out under English defamation standards — in other words, where the burden of truth is on the news publisher to establish rather than Depp. Meanwhile, over the next few weeks, amid an international pandemic, Depp will surely incur additional reputational harm from these prying court proceedings, the impetus for which was a column questioning J.K. Rowling's defense of Depp being cast in the adaptation of her book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. It's hard to sue one's way out of controversy.

Given this situation, it's no wonder Hollywood insiders are increasingly puzzled over Depp's moves. I spoke to several industry attorneys and publicists, all of whom offered some variation on the theme that the public would likely have forgotten Depp's years-old troubles but for court actions that keep reminding everyone.

“One of the things you’re always balancing is, how do you respond to accusation? Do you add more fuel to the fire or let it dissipate?” asks Howard Bragman, a longtime crisis manager in the entertainment industry.

Says Neville Johnson, an attorney who has previously brought suits against tabloids but questions the star plaintiff's wisdom here: “Depp doesn’t need the money [from any damages award] and it is not going to enhance his reputation.”

***

How did Depp find himself at the point of zugzwang? More and more, one has got to question Depp's reliance on attorney Adam Waldman. Depp has many attorneys, and the others seem to be the ones actually doing the hard work in court, but Waldman has become Depp's mouthpiece and also looks to be the lawyer who has emerged as the star's svengali of sorts.

Who is Waldman?

A search on Google (where he referred this reporter instead of agreeing to an interview) yields some clues, though hardly anything definitive. Unlike most attorneys, Waldman maintains no bio page these days. A few years back, Waldman's D.C.-based Endeavor Group did have a working website, but no longer. A trip to the Internet Archive reveals that Waldman once took credit for overseeing "all corporate aspects" of the landmark antitrust trial United States v. Microsoft, being the "principal architect of several ground-breaking initiatives" including the Center for Global Development, and even predicting the 2009 financial crisis with a "seminal law review article" authored all the way back in 1993. That would be when he was a student at American University, which did indeed confirm his graduation in 1995.

Waldman, according to reputable press reports, seems to have been involved in various dealings with the Kremlin, Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. He had a lucrative ($40,000 per month) lobbying contract with Deripaska, was registered as an agent for the Russian government, visited Assange nine times in one year at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, apparently in connection with efforts to strike a deal with the DOJ, and more. His associations have become fodder for intrigue among reporters and lawmakers even if there’s a lack of public evidence of anything more than Waldman having a talent for landing recurring, if minor, roles in real-life Russian political dramas.

I'd say that Waldman's foray on the periphery of the industry hardly matters, except that it appears Depp is publicly burning bridges with the sort of abandon that one hardly ever sees among big Hollywood stars. Depp's recent legal pursuits include battling his former money managers over the disposition of hundreds of millions of dollars; splitting with longtime transactional attorney Jake Bloom; and, of course, continuing to face off against Heard again and again and again, including in a separate defamation suit against her over an op-ed she wrote for The Washington Post. That latter case is currently scheduled for trial in Virginia in January 2021.

That's a lot of legal work, and Waldman appears to have taken on a central role. As Stephen Rodrick put it in an often-cited Rolling Stone article, "Waldman seems to have convinced Depp that they are freedom fighters taking on the Hollywood machine rather than scavengers squabbling over the scraps of a fortune squandered."

Waldman is also conducting a public experiment on social media. In a nutshell, do tactics of preaching to a choir of a small number of Twitter accounts achieve anything outside of politics? Most attorneys don't pick fights with the media during a big case, particularly in the weeks before trial. Not Waldman. For weeks, he's been goading reporters at The New York Times who apparently are investigating him, and he's been whipping his followers into a frenzy with attacks on Rodrick, Variety ("Saudi Arabia's Variety"), THR ("too much corruption") and other journalists and news publications. (That said, Waldman may not be above going to his own favored media outlets. Depp's attorneys have been accused in court papers of leaking to outlets like The Blast, which seems to be to Depp what Fox News is to Trump.) He's also litigating on Twitter, presenting evidence procured from Depp's cases, and overall, exhibiting highly unusual behavior for a working attorney.

To what end? That one is very hard to answer. But if anyone in Hollywood is ready to take on "fake news," the ticket of Depp-Waldman should be deemed real contenders.

***

In the era of #MeToo, allegations of misconduct get attention — and deservedly so — but some newsrooms have traditionally made a distinction between behavior in the workplace and domestic conduct, with the latter being perceived as tabloid fodder. This time, though, an ugly divorce proceeding has transformed into something quite more.

Alas, the trial of John Christopher Depp II v. News Group Newspapers Ltd has now begun.

On July 7, Depp himself took the witness stand and accused Heard of being sociopathic, a narcissist, and completely emotionally dishonest. He insisted her "sick" claims of abuse are untrue. And in opening statements, his attorney David Sherborne said, "This is not a case about money. It is about vindication."

Depp, in fighting a battle against an unflattering headline, is merely going to draw more attention to The Sun's accusation that he's a "wife beater," especially once Heard gets on the witness stand. At the end of it all, no matter the verdict, this trial will likely do nothing to tamp down the controversies that have tarnished his career. He's elevated a tabloid columnist's random musing into something that's going to be covered by serious news outlets for weeks, months, years on end.

For that, Johnny Depp should regain his senses and fire his lawyers.

Vindication ain't possible. The damage is done. That's the only thing a successful libel claim shows.

__________

What kind of Weinstein bullshit is this?  So what, If he gives up on getting Justice for what hes been through Hollywood might throw him some crumbs? 

JUST SHUT UP AND SUFFER IN SILENCE!  ACCEPT THE LIES THAT WERE SPREAD ABOUT YOU! LET YOUR ABUSER WIN!

 I wonder if this clown would tell metoo victims not to get Justice?

[meeedeee]

Here is a list of fan-run, professional and semi-professional virtual conventions for the rest of 2020. This is not a comprehensive list, feel free to drop a link below (Name; URL; dates; type; whether the event is free or charges a fee)

https://tinyurl.com/virtual-cons

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vLyi3qcuOUZGcPKWd0PF4mTtYNlpEbgmjhQtR1sHKv8/edit 

 I am also posting a recent essay about  the history of virtual conventions written by Claudia Rebaza with her permission

________________________________________________________

Many fan conventions aren’t being held this year but some are going virtual. Surprise – this isn’t actually new!

by Claudia Rebaza

Pandemic restrictions have meant that many events are moving to some kind of online equivalent, but fan conventions have offered online alternatives for a very long time. What’s more, conventions have only been one type of activity fans can take part in online with other fans.

Although numbers are hard to agree on, there’s little doubt that fan conventions have never been more popular. But while it’s possible to find a fan gathering in most cities (or even on the ocean!), there are still barriers that keep many people from participating. Whether it’s because of high costs, difficult travel schedules, physical disabilities, or social anxiety, many people have found themselves on the outside when it comes to fandom events. However fans have always been inventive, so the virtual convention developed decades ago. These virtual cons might mean:

an entire convention held online

live streaming of a physical gathering

activities taking place online at the same time as other fans were meeting in person

The 2000s Say Hello

Yuri Con began in 2000 not as an in-person gathering, but an online fan community. A few years later it sponsored a three-day anime and manga convention in Newark, NJ. The convention brought together fans of Yuri with panels, an academic lecture series, games, vendors and video programming. This was similar to FemSlash Con, which ran from 2012-2017.

Femslash, which is art, fiction and more involving female/female romantic pairings, was celebrated with panels for different TV shows as well as workshops for the creation of fanworks.

In the UK, VidUKon has been held since 2008. The convention focuses on the making and sharing of a style of fan videos called vidding, and features showings, panels, and workshops. People who can’t attend can still follow along with events through the use of convention memberships, which allow access to real time streaming as well as access to content after the convention ends.

But if an event isn’t online or doesn’t offer access to drop into the in-person event, there’s a third option. For example, the Starsky & Hutch fandom's Share Con began in the 1980s and is now held every other year. Like many conventions it has a mailing list and a Facebook group, but some fans also held a Virtual ShareCon from 2012-2016. The virtual con was a side event that took place at the same time as the physical gathering for people who couldn’t meet up in person. At the virtual con, members met at a community on LiveJournal, with an organizer making posts and people commenting. They watched an episode of the show together, watched fan videos together, played a trivia game, had panel discussions, and had a drawing for prizes. Attendees also contributed to the creation of a virtual goody bag with pictures of Starsky & Hutch items.

Virtual con attendees also used the opportunity to prompt one another to create fan art and fanfiction in what has become a common practice among fans – the challenge or fest.

Challenges and fests

Given that not all convention activities are free, and many a fan is having a particularly hard time economically this year, there are fan events that don’t cost a thing. They do, however, require some time and creativity. A fanworks challenge or fest, is an organized event that prompts participants to create fanworks. These events can take many forms, one of which is the “challenge” where people create fanworks to fit certain criteria, or an “exchange” where people create fanworks to order for one another. The fandom wiki Fanlore lists nearly 800 entries on fests that have been held for a wide variety of fandoms over the decades, with many more out there.

The fest is a typical option for a virtual con, so that fans who are not going to an in-person gathering can celebrate as well. In some cases people sign up ahead of time to create fiction, art, videos or other fanworks to share on an assigned day. In others, people respond randomly to prompts from the fest organizers or other participants in a more game-like activity. But in the case of a virtual con, the fest is important for both keeping people engaged, as well as producing new content that outlasts the few days during which the con is held. That way the benefits can be shared with people who couldn’t attend the virtual con due to its timing.

Sometimes virtual con events are held at the Archive of Our Own which includes a feature for fanwork collections and tools for creating specific types of fests. Some virtual convention contributions that can be found on the site include fanworks for Due South, The Closer, Shadowhunters, Game of Thrones, Highlander, and the K-pop group B.A.P. 

The con on your laptop

With large public gatherings prohibited almost everywhere, many fan conventions have been cancelled or postponed, including the mega-popular San Diego Comic Con. But other organizers and fans alike are still trying to keep fan activities going. As a result some events are still being held, only online, and sometimes at no charge.

May saw Balticon 54, WisCONline/WisCON 44, Con Carolinas, and the 2020 Nebula Conference go virtual. July will see more taking place from smaller events such as CON.TXT 2020 (free) on July 24-26, to major cons like CoNZealand (WorldCon 78), host of the Hugo Awards, on July 29-August 2. Just as with the early virtual cons, these events will adapt activities to online space, and not just for panels and vendor rooms. In the past many fans have paid to shake hands with their favorite artists, writers, or actors in quick meet-and-greets, photo or autograph sessions. Some events are shifting these bookings to one-on-one video chats, where each person has a few minutes in which to spend some face time with those celebrities. 

What about next year?

Researcher Dr. Naomi Jacobs published an article on virtual conventions in 2018. Discussing the future of such events, she said “I think that as the barriers between online and offline fandom become more fluid, and as technology improves, we might see new ways that conventions become digital spaces as well as physical ones. Conventions are about fans coming together to share experiences, to ‘convene’, and it is no longer the case that this has to involve a face to face meeting.”

Jacobs studied fans’ experiences at Supernatural conventions and found that, while most of them preferred meeting in person, there were various reasons why virtual attendance was important. For some fans who go to many conventions a year, attending them is a part of one’s social activities and a way of staying up to date on happenings in their community. Jacobs said, “Being part of the digital space during a convention seemed to be almost as important as being at the event, particularly because there were so many conventions each year and many people attend several, but very few could go to them all.”

For fans whose favorite part of attending a convention is meeting celebrities, a virtual con might not seem like much of an alternative. But for many fans, the principal draws of a convention might be interacting with other fans, shopping, or sharing information about their fandom interests through meet ups or attending panel discussions, all things that could be done in other ways. There are many conventions whose principal draw is activities rather than celebrity guests – although even celebrity appearances will be going virtual in some cases.

For example, one staple of conventions that has become a central part of many fans’ experience is cosplay. While you’d think that this kind of fanwork would be something missing at a virtual con, being online doesn’t have to be a barrier to sharing one’s costuming skills. A lot of cosplay experience has already gone virtual. For example, in 2015 Nicolle Lamerichs wrote about the rising popularity of cosplay music videos (CMV) which are created and shared after the event. In discussing common factors for the videos, Lamerichs notes that “the videos are usually shot at the fan convention and are also a means of preserving the performances and making them accessible to a wider audience.” The practice has developed to the point that “some CMVs are also fan works in their own right." 

Is it for you?

While the virtual con may not replace the experience of an in-person gathering for the majority of fans, it does address the importance of these events for both specific fandoms as well as fans as a whole. When writer/producer Alison Zeidman wrote that comic books changed her life, the examples she gave were of personal experiences surrounding comic books, such as attending a fan convention. "At Wondercon, I was the most relaxed I’ve been in years, but it was also so incredibly creatively stimulating and inspiring. And I realized that how I felt on that exhibition floor is how I want to feel every day of my life: constantly learning, seeking out new experiences and meeting new people — whether or not they’re dressed in a custom-made Captain Marvel uniform.” Whether in-person or online, many fans share that feeling.

[justkarliekloss]

Joshlie timeline

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 |

I’m using this article by Jewish website Hey Alma as the base, and I’ve added details they’ve missed or didn’t add.

2018

-> January

They start the New Year in Perú with their friends (x) (x)

-> February

Josh posts this story with Karlie and a dog, and also a throwback photo from their trip to London in December (x)

They are seen out in NY (x) and attend the NBA All-Star together (x) (x)

Josh posts a photo of Karlie at Eames House (LA) and attend David Geffen’s birthday party (x)

-> March

They are seen out and about in NY (x) and attend the March for Our Lives (x) (x)

-> April

They are spotted in NY (x) (x)

Trip to Isreal and Jordan with some friends (x) Josh posts a photo of Karlie, and Karlie of both of them together. During their visit to Isreal they are spotted in Jerusalem (x), and even though the comment was deleted, a wedding dresses shop comments on one of Karlie’s photos thanking her for her visit.

Back from their trip, they are spotted again in NY (x)

*According to Kusher.Inc, Karlie and Josh had temporarily split during March/April, but they were seen put and about, and spent time together.

-> May

They attend the Met Gala together (x) (x)

They are seen leaving the city and arriving at The Hamptons (x), and the both post from the same place. Josh a video of Karlie (x) and Karlie a photo of herself (x)

-> June

According to People magazine (this is the article that will be published next month when they announce it), they got engaged after Karlie finished her conversion to Judaism and Josh proposed to her at their place Upstate:

“He proposed a few weeks ago during a romantic weekend together in upstate New York. They’re both overjoyed and happily celebrating. Their hearts are full and they’re excited to build their future together.”

They are spotted in NY (x) and Karlie posts for Josh’s birthday, confirming that they were together for the August eclipse in 2017 (x)

Trip to Japan for Josh’s birthday (x) (x) (x) (x)

-> July

For the 4th of July, Josh posts a photo of Karlie (x), and a few days later another photo (x)

Trip to Capri with some friends (x) They are photographed there (x) (x)

They announce their engagement (x) (x)

-> August

Karlie posts a photo of her and Josh kissing (x), and two more on Weibo to celebrate the Chinese Valentine’s Day (x) (x)

-> September

They are seeing together attending the US Open (x)

On an interview with Vogue, Karlie talks a bit more about the proposal:

The proposal was romantic and sweet. We spent the weekend in upstate New York, just the two of us.”

Josh posts a story facetiming Karlie (x)

-> October

They are seen out and about in NY (x)

Karlie posts a story of the J ❤️ KK they wrote at one point on a street (x) She had shared it before, but I haven’t been able to find it.

They have dinner with Josh’s parents (x) (x)

They got married! (x)

A few days later, they are spotted in NY (x) (x)

-> November

Josh posts a photo of Karlie Upstate (x) and another one of Karlie getting ready (x).

Karlie posts a photo with Josh at a dinner event (x)

They spend Thanksgiving in St. Louis with Karlie’s family (x) (x) (x)

We also see them at an art exhibition where. They post photos ot each other (x) (x) and together (x)

At the end of the month Karlie posts a story visiting another museum (x) (x)

-> December

Page Six reports: “Karlie Kloss spent Shabbat with husband Josh Kushner at an event for Britain’s former chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks. Kloss, who converted to Judaism, was reading in Hebrew and “clearly knows her stuff,” according to onlookers.” (x)

Josh posts a photo of Karlie at his office (x) and a story of them together at the tube (x)

They spent their honeymoon in South Africa (x) (x) and the New Year with some friends, maybe in the Sheychelles (on her 2019 recap video she mentiones they also went there for their honeymoon) (x) 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2019

-> January

At the begining of the month they travel again to St. Louis, where they visit the same museum as in November, but this time they are joined by Karlie’s sisters (x) (x) As she mentiones on her 2019 recap video, they were celebrating with her family.

Josh posts a photo on a plane with Karlie (x), and they attend a basketball game (x)

-> February

Karlie posts a story Upsate with Josh (x) and a photo for Valentine’s Day (x)

They again attend the NBA All-Star game (x) (x)

Karlie posts some stories of Josh in LA (x) (x) (x) and another one of them together also in LA (x)

Josh posts a story of Karlie at their place (x), and Karlie shares another photo of the J ❤️ KK (x)

-> March

Josh joins Karlie and her team at Project Runway’s premiere viewing party (x) and posts a photo of Karlie wearing a dinosaur jumper, Josh’s nickname (x)

This month they also make a trip with Mikey and Misha (x) (x) (x), and at the end of it they are Upstate with some friends (x)

-> May

Karlie posts a photo kissing Josh (x)

For they first time, they pose together at the Met Gala red carpet (x) Karlie posts a photo getting ready with Josh (x) and a story kissing “burguer Josh” (x)

Josh posts a photo of Karlie (x) and she shares a story congratulating him and his team for their new Oscar office (x)

They travel to Fogo Island to attend their friends’ wedding, though we wouldn’t find out until August when Vogue posts photos from the wedding (x) (x) (x)

Karlie posts a photo with Josh (x)

-> June

Karlie posts for Josh’s birthday (x)

They celebrate their second wedding in Wyoming (x) (x) (x) (x)

-> July

Josh posts a couple of stories with Karlie. One of them at was loos like their place rooftop (x) and another one kissing (x) He also posts another photo from Fogo Island (x)

Karlie posts a story with Josh at Moulin Rouge musical in Broadway (x)

-> August

They go on holidays with some friends (x) (x) (x)

And at the end of the month spend some time at Bir Sur (x) (x) (x) (x)

-> September

They attend Ellie Goulding’s wedding in England (x) (x) and Misha and Mickey’s in Italy (x) (x) (x)

Josh posts a photo of him and Karlie at Karlie’s old place (x), and Karlie posts another one from Shangai where we can see Josh (x)

Josh also shows up at the end of this Klossy video, min 4:15

-> October

Josh posts a photo of Karlie in Paris (x)

They are spotted out and about in NY (x) (x)

-> November

They attend together the WSJ Innovator Awards (x) (x), and Karlie posts a photo with Josh before leaving for that event (x)

They are spotted out and about in NY (x) and attend a basketball game with Penni (x)

Josh posts a photo of Karlie (x)

This year the also spend Thanksgiving with Karlie’s family (x) (x)

-> December

Karlie posts a photo with Josh (x) and we see him among the people who attend Klossy’s Holiday party (x)

They are spotted leaving their place in NY (x) and in St. Barts (x) (x)

They spend the New Year in New Zealand (x) (x) (x)