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btsslowburnfic · 3 years

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The Arrangement Chapter 9

Series Summary: Desperately in need of money, you answered the questionable ad. AKA-Arranged marriage AU featuring Y/N and Yoongi.

Chapter Summary: Getting your bearings at BigHit

Previous chapter here ---------------------------

It’s fine it’s fine, Yoongi kept repeating to himself this morning after you had left to go to the security office. I’m not even home that often, it’s not her fault. He slipped on a t-shirt and jeans and went downstairs. He put his dishes away and looked in the foyer. Two suitcases and a backpack were sitting there. He couldn’t believe this was all you had. That’s it. He sighed and picked up the bags, wheeling them over to the guest bedroom. He looked around the room and frowned. He would need to order a few more blankets. He took out his phone and ordered some quickly. He walked into the guest bathroom. No towels. He placed an order for those as well. Even if you ended up living somewhere else, it was good to have extra towels and blankets, he reasoned with himself.

He checked his calendar and yours. You should still be in the security office with Namjoon. He had already texted Hobi earlier.

Y:WTF dude, I thought you were my friend

JHOOOOOOPE: I brought a nice looking girl to your house, how is that not nice **angel**

Y: You can’t just drop someone off into someone else’s house without asking!

JHOOOOOOPE: It’s not my fault no one told you. I was told to deliver your new assistant to your apartment because you needed her to be available to whims at all times. I do what I’m told like every other person who works here. **shrug** it could be worse. I could use an assistant. Send her my way if it doesn’t work **Grin**

Y: >=(

Yoongi walked off the Elevator and saw Namjoon’s smug face there "What the hell is wrong with you?" Yoongi growled, walking up to him. He was surprised he didn’t see you anywhere.

"Not now Yoongi, I have a meeting in 15 minutes." Namjoon sighed. That fucking prick.

"You just dropped a girl into my house without telling me and think I'm not going to have something to say about it?"

"You knew she was starting today. You agreed that the two of you were going through with all of this. What did you think that meant? Huh?" Namjoon said, almost bored.

"Why don't I get a say in any of this?" Yoongi raised his voice, exasperated.

"You did. You picked her." Namjoon said calmly as he pushed the up button on the elevator.

"This is such bullshit!" he yelled. You walked around the corner, surprising him.

The elevator for Namjoon arrived and he got on it, not bothering to look back.

You walked closer to Yoongi. "Hey. I'm sorry this was a surprise for you. It was to me too. I thought I would be in a dorm with a bunch of other girls." You gave him a sympathetic look.

He took off his hat and ran his hands through his hair. "I'm sorry it's not you. It's just...ughhh…" He put the hat back on.

"Really. It's fine. It seems like Namjoon isn't interested in our opinions though, huh? I'm a good roommate. I'm quiet and I clean up after myself. And I can cook."

Yoongi wasn’t angry at you, so his feelings had morphed into pouting at this point. "It's fine I put your bags in the guest bedroom." He pushed a button on the elevator. He sighed

"Thanks Yoongi." you said, standing next to him.

“And I can cook too. So don’t think that’s part of your job or anything.”

“Now what kind of wife would I be if I didn’t cook for you,” You teased as the doors opened up. You were surprised to see him blushing. He hit the button for the 12th floor, feeling like a total idiot.

You looked so cute and professional. He tried to not think about the fact you had seen him in his underwear that morning. He looked down, mumbling something, hoping you wouldn’t notice how embarrassed he was. He was eager to just get to his studio. He understood abstractly that the two of you would be spending time together but now that it was actually happening, he felt awkward and shy. And vaguely annoyed by everyone else. He got off the elevator with you following. “What are you doing exactly?” He turned and asked.

“I’m your assistant. I’m supposed to help you. Do I have a desk or anything? There wasn’t really an orientation. There isn’t anything on the calendar for the rest of the day.”

“Oh. Ok. Umm take the rest of the day off…? Go unpack?” He shrugged.

You scowled. “That doesn’t seem particularly helpful especially since you want me to move out.”

Yoongi sighed and continued to move down the hallway, “You don’t need to do that. There,” he pointed. “That’s Jiwoo. She’s the office manager for this floor. Ask her if she knows anything. I need to get to my studio.”

You had so many more questions but you didn’t want to bother Yoongi.“Ok. See you later.” You turned and walked over to the woman he had indicated to.

Yoongi continued on to his studio. He had no idea if you had a desk or not. He hadn’t really put thought into it. He cursed himself for not thinking to ask Namjoon about any of this. He detested appearing as though he didn’t know something, which unfortunately meant he hadn’t asked questions when he should have. Oh well. He hoped Jiwoo could straighten it out. Otherwise he would later today. He typed in his pass code and walked into his studio. Fortunately he felt inspired this morning and went straight for his notebook.

“Hello. Excuse me?” You said as you walked up to the desk of the woman who had been identified to you as the office manager. She appeared to be older than you; her hair cut into a bob, she also had super cute glasses. She looked up.

“Yes, can I help you with something?”

“I’m Mr. Min’s new assistant, [Y/N]. Today is my first day and nobody really seems sure what to do with me.”

She laughed. “That doesn’t surprise me at all. They all do a great job with the big picture around here. But the details? That’s my specialty.” She stood up. “Follow me. Your desk is over here, near the lounge area. It’s a little noisy, but it’s across from the coffee maker. Which is important because Min Yoongi loves coffee.”

“Yes, thank you. That is like one of the only things I do know.” You smiled, grateful for any help.

“You don’t have a company laptop yet. I would expect it by Monday. You can do most things via the App though. If something does come up, let me know and we can work something out. Now, if you walk around the corner here,” she led the way. “We have some empty studios. If you ever need to rent space for any reason, they are available under the App. Mr. Min has his own studio so you shouldn’t need to book any spots unless you are helping with a collaborator. Speaking of, here is his studio. Good luck with that.” She pointed down to the doormat which had a cat flipping you both off. You laughed. You looked at the plate by the door. “Min Suga. Genius Lab.”

“Humble. Nice.” You pointed at the placard.

“He is really good though.” She said thoughtfully. She began to move down the rest of the hallway, pointing out the restrooms and arriving back at her desk. “Also, don’t wait up on him. He’s in there most of the time. Follow your calendar. If you try to follow his, you’ll never sleep or you’ll end up with a sleeping disorder. Seriously. He sleeps in there sometimes.” She sat back down at her desk.

Your eyes bugged out a little bit at this. Damn that was some dedication. You hoped he at least had a futon in there then. Jeeze. “Alright. Thanks so much. I appreciate it.”

You almost wished you would have kept your desk plant now, looking at the empty space. You had a few office items in the bags in Yoongi’s house but nothing really worth going back for. A message popped up on your phone. **ORDER READY MIN YOONGI #2983627** You clicked on it. Apparently there was an order at the store ready for Yoongi. Because there was a store in the company building. Huh. Ok. I guess this is part of my job now. You looked up where the store was and headed down to the 2nd floor. It appeared to be a multipurpose grocery and home-goods store with also a few clothing items. Looking around you found the *Pick up online order* section and walked over. You queued up and recognized the perfectly coiffed blonde hair of Namjoon’s assistant.

You gave him a light tap on the shoulder. “Hey!”

Jimin turned around, surprised to see the girl from the interview last week standing behind him. “Hey you.” He smiled, “so you got the job?”

You nodded. “Yep. Sorry again about last week. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

He laughed, his eyes turning into adorable crescent-moons “I’m sorry I literally yelled “shit” at you. So I think we’re even.” He stuck out a hand, “Park Jimin. Nice to officially meet you.” You shook it. “I see you have figured out some stuff. You’ll be on the 14th floor with Yoongi right?”

“Yep. I just got my desk. That’s it. The rest of the day doesn’t have anything and he hasn't given me anything to do yet.”

Jimin turned to move forward in line, with you following suit. He turned back, “Well Yoongi hasn’t had an assistant before but if he’s anything like Namjoon he’ll figure out a million things for you to do soon. Once they get used to it they forget how to even use food delivery apps or how to do their own laundry.” He shook his head. “To clarify: I don’t do his laundry. I coordinate the dry cleaning.”

“And here I was imagining you washing Namjoon’s undies.” You teased, causing him to laugh some more.

“Noooo stop. I don’t want that mental image.” Jimin licked his lips. “If you’re not doing anything later you should join me and Tae for drinks. Not at Club Tokki.” You raised your eyebrows. “Sorry, I peeked at your resume. Think about it and let me know.” He cut the conversation short as it was his turn in line. He concluded his business at the counter quickly. He turned around, carrying a few paper bags. “I’ll see you around.”

You waved, “Alright, I’ll text you about later.” It felt so nice to be included on your first day. He seemed fun. You stepped up and held the QR code up for them to scan. You were handed two paper bags and a larger plastic one. You took them and stepped aside, reading the stapled receipt paper. **PINK TOWELS X 4** on one of the bags. **QUEEN SIZE BLANKET WHITE X 2** on the larger one. He bought me blankets and towels!?!?! You took the bags back to the apartment. Yoongi had taken your bags and put them nicely in the corner of your room. You were pretty sure this stuff was for the guest bedroom and bathroom but you didn’t want to seem presumptuous.

YN: Hey! I picked up your order from the store. Where should I put the towels and blankets?

You waited a few minutes, unpacking one of your bags.

Y: Those are for you. The washing machine is upstairs in the hallway.

YN: Thank you so much. Pink is my favorite color!

Y: :]

You went and started a load of towels and continued to unpack. Holy shit. This was weird. You went back upstairs with the blankets. The upstairs loft area had a more lived in feel to it, with blankets strewn over a black couch, a large tv, and a video game system. There was also a keyboard in the corner. There was a short hallway containing a closet and the washer and dryer. You assumed the door at the end of the hallway led to his room. You were a very private person yourself, so you weren’t about to intrude on that. You honestly felt weird being in the loft area, it felt as though the lower level was for show and this was where Yoongi actually lived.

You moved some more laundry around and decided to head back to the office. You still weren’t sure about joining Jimin for drinks tonight. You decided you would wait and see what the laundry status was. You set a timer on your phone and went back to the office. You stopped by the lounge area and made a coffee for yourself while preparing a coffee for Yoongi. Another ping on your phone.

***EVENT ADDED SATURDAY 6 PM***

Retirement Party for Lee Soobin Akioko Flame Restaurant

The espresso stopped dripping. You added the water and then poured it over ice. You walked over to the studio and gave the door a knock. No answer.

You huffed in slight irritation while trying to get your phone out one-handed.

YN: It’s me. I have coffee.

Y: Leave it by the door.

YN: :( But someone could kick it over

Yoongi took off his hat and ran a hand through his hair and sighed.

Y: Give me a minute.

He got to what he deemed was a good stopping point and walked over to the door, opening it the slightest bit.

“Here you go.” You handed him the iced coffee.

He took it, eyeing you suspiciously. “What?” You said, exasperated. You had lovingly hand-crafted this brew.

“You like shitty coffee so I’m worried.” He took a sip. His eyebrows went up. “This is not shitty. This is good. Where did you get it from?” He noticeably relaxed, the doorway opening slightly more.

“I made it using the espresso maker in the break room.” You said. “I worked in a coffee shop before I was old enough to work in bars. Shitty coffee has to do more with sleep deprivation than actual preferences.”

“True true.” He said, his lips pouting as he took another sip. The sound of a phone ringing in the studio cut through the air. He scowled, making no attempt to answer it.

“Is that your work phone?” You asked.

“Yes. I imagine it’s Jimin or one of BPD’s assistants.”

“So...shouldn’t you answer it?” You asked.

Yoongi shrugged and walked into his office, not bothering to shut the door. You took this as a slight invitation and followed him in. You took a brief look around before the phone rang again and you identified it’s location. You walked over and picked it up. “Genius Lab. This is [Y/N] speaking.”

Yoongi turned around to ask what the fuck you were doing but then you had sounded so professional, he just plopped down in his work chair instead, a dumbfounded look on his face.

“I’m not sure. I’ll find out and get back with you. What’s the number?” You took out your phone and typed the information in. “Ok yes. Thank you.” You hung up the phone.

“What are you doing exactly?” He asked. You weren’t sure if he was angry, amused, or confused. He was difficult to read sometimes.

You smirked. “Being your assistant. Would you like me to have this phone forward to mine so it doesn’t ring in here?”

Yoongi’s eyes grew slightly wider, “You can do that?”

“Yep. There’s an app for it.” You responded, happy some of your previous office experience actually translated to this position.

“Yes. Please God yes.” He said quickly.

You laughed, setting up the forwarding application. You picked up the phone to see what the number of the studio was. “Alright. I can at least triage some of the calls for you.” You said, satisfied with yourself. “Also. Ew.” You eyed a few take-out containers and coffee cups. “I’m coming back for...this.” You gestured to the room and excused yourself to get a trash bag.

Yoongi sat there slightly dazed. He rarely let anyone into his studio and yet you had just come in, fixed his phone anxiety issue, and also scolded him. He scrolled through his phone, seeing the event on Saturday. It was annoying but maybe it wouldn’t be so bad with you and J-Hope there. Maybe. Even if it all was a stupid pretend performance.

You retrieved a trash bag from the break room and came back. You started cleaning without saying anything. It was becoming obvious that Jiwoo had spoken the truth, Yoongi really did spend most of his time in here. You made your way around the surfaces, throwing trash away. To your shock, Yoongi just sat there, drinking his coffee and scrolling through his phone.

“Thanks again for the towels and blankets. It was very thoughtful of you.”

“No problem.”

“Are we going to the party on Saturday?”

Yoongi looked up at you, “Sure.”

And just like that, you had committed to your first event at BigHit. “Alright, I’ll let Jin know.”

Yoongi shifted in his seat slightly, “is that who called?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool. Has he hit on you yet?”He asked casually, belying the fact that he was actually very interested in how you would react to the infamous flirt.

You giggled. You were almost all the way done tidying up. “Of course. Have you seen his face? He had to let me know how in demand it is at all times.” You rolled your eyes. “Yeah, him and Namjoon stopped by the bar last week. Idiots.”

“Agreed.” Yoongi felt his body become more at ease with your answer. He didn’t know why he cared.

You looked around the spartan room. “Alright. I’m all done. Do you need anything else?”

Yoongi put his phone down. “Just to get back to my writing.”

You were so very curious but you didn’t want to intrude. “Sure thing. See you later.” You picked up your trash bag and left the room, shutting the door behind you. You were honestly surprised at how easy your day had been so far. You sat the trash bag down by your cubicle, unsure of where to deposit it. A text to Jiwoo about the dumpster and an RSVP to Jin about the party on Saturday and your day was almost done. You dropped the garbage off on your way to the apartment to switch out laundry. You were getting tired.

YN: Hey! I’m going to take a rain check for tonight. I am so tired and I still need to unpack ;-; I do want to though, so don’t think I’m blowing you off. Lunch tomorrow?

JM: Shit I totally forgot you would need to unpack and everything. Sorry. No worries. Also, check your schedule, we have a huge design meeting around lunch time so they will most likely have it catered. I’ll buy you a drink on Saturday if you actually get Yoongi to attend.

You raised your eyebrows. It was on the schedule clear as day, on you and Yoongi’s calendar. Why wouldn’t he attend?

YN: Of course he’ll be there. Why wouldn’t he be?

JM: HAHAHAHA good luck. See you tomorrow!

It was already after five so you didn’t bother going back down to the office. You finished the laundry and finished your unpacking. And then you stood in the apartment just staring. The sun had gone down and the windows had a lovely view of the city. You could see part of the river and one of the many lit up bridges. You turned on the kitchen light. Shit. You had no idea what the food situation looked like here. Your stomach growled. You took some rice out of the cooker, leaving enough for Yoongi and sat at the countertop.

You opened up your personal email. You had paid the dorm deposit for your brother, using your “disappear in the middle of the night and change your name again” emergency fund to pay for it. It had scared the shit out of you to pull all your money from savings and you still were secretly afraid that the job was lying about how much money it would pay you. Before you knew it, it was 9.

YN: Hey, I ate some of the rice but I don’t want to just go through your kitchen. Do you want me to order or make anything?

No response. Ok. He was probably busy. You rifled through the cabinets. If his office was any indicator there should be at least a few ramyeon packs you could eat and replace. Bingo. You made a spicy prawn one and texted one more time.

YN: I owe you a spicy prawn ramyeon pack. Thanks again for everything. See you tomorrow.

You set the coffee maker for the next day and brush your teeth. You nestled into your new bed complete with one of your new fluffy blankets. You couldn't remember the last time you had your own bedroom. It was before your sister was born. The two of you had always shared a room. And then 7 years ago you started sharing a room with her and your niece. You took a deep breath, feeling as though you were letting 7 years of bullshit go all at once. If only it were all so simple. NEXT CHAPTER @lidda @anpanman-sonyeondan @firefairy1 @cuteipat @sugaslittlekookies @janeelizabeth1216 @deeepvibes @gxldenhunny

#bts fic #BTS suga #bts scenarios #bts suga x you #suga x you #suga x reader #suga x y/n #yoongi scenarios #bts yoongi #yoongi x reader #yoongi x you #bts yoongi x reader #bts fanfction #bts fanfic #bts writing

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player-1 · 4 years

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Anyone who’s been in the TMA fandom (or those who understand the bare minimum of the story) know damn well that whatever was going on with Michael D. Stortion and Gabriel/Worker-of-Clay was not just a simple Avatar/Entity partnership. No, in the twisted timeline of the Spiral itself, the Armageddon arms-race pales in comparison to the romantic tragedy subplot those two had long before Jon and Martin were in the picture.

(This is also going to be a long one, and with some MAG 101 spoilers, so buckle on in...)

Here’s what I mean:

Gabriel (or in this case, Gabe) works with Neil Lagorio (Web aligned special-effects dude) in the mid 1900′s on their first movie The Labyrinth of the Minotaur. Unfortunately for him, Gabe quits in 1972 just as the movie was released.

Not much is known of this time after 1972 up until the dreaded sculpting class in 2004. Speculation-wise, Gabriel might have been corrupted by the Flesh during his movie-making times or earlier before he came into contact with the Spiral.

Reasons: -The Spiral connects with the unraveling of reality, question one’s sanity and eventually “spiraling” into insanity. -The Flesh, in its literal sense, connects to the fear of people or animals being killed for meat; even the appearance of flesh/bone being twisted, bent, or butchered. But it can also connect on a emotional level, such as being viewed weaker than others, mostly relating to a person’s body image. That’s also the reason why the nature of his death is completely unlike the Spiral simply letting him fade out of reality. -Gabriel displays more Flesh-like qualities in his appearance and work up until the end of MAG 126. He doesn’t want people to judge him by appearance alone (even if his entire body is made up of clay) but he makes up for it with his unassuming personality and amazing talent. In a literal sense, he wants to mold himself into the kind of person that gets praised for his clay-making abilities, not just from his creations alone.

[Enter Ｔｈｅ　Ｄｉｓｔｏｒｔｉｏｎ: Stage Left] Of course, while there’s no evidence on how, when or why the Distortion would target him specifically, but there is one thing. Compared to all the other Spiral avatars and fear-aligned creatures, they all used to be humans in the past. The Spiral by nature is to cast aside their humanity and submit to the nature of insanity. But since most of the Spiral avatars either faded out of existence or just refused to do anything ritual-wise, how was it supposed to create a new world if all they ever do is destroy? It adopts an artist, of course. There’s nothing more chaotic than the struggles of a budding sculptor such as himself. But while that may be a convincing argument for the Spiral to get Gabriel to join the Dark Side, there could be more to convince him that it’s worth following the unknowable being of delusions. Long story short, there was no reason for Gabriel to judge himself so poorly if he knew how to reshape the world to how he sees fit. it would convince him that, like the archangel he’s named after, he could show the world the coming future; twisting the laws of reality so that there’s no room to judge how something should be right or wrong, imaginary or real. As if they were said from the Lord himself, Gabriel heard the Distortion’s tell him about a new world and finally found inspiration in them.

Then comes the sculpting class. It’s worth noting that, even with the angel symbolism for Michael and Gabriel, it could be implied that Gabriel is also a goody-two-shoes Christian boy who regularly attends church, as evidence of Michael having knowledge about Mass in MAG 20, assisting the Flesh in driving Father Edwin to cannibalism (so the Flesh and Spiral have an interesting partnership, huh?). Besides that, this is where Gabriel takes the spotlight. From Deborah’s point of view, he was a strange little man from the beginning; eyes always jutted out of his face, appearing right in someone’s personal space and disappearing just as fast, and of course, his works of clay. (Also a random headcanon just because: Gabriel may be afraid of water, either because his entire body being made of clay, and since you need water to help shape the material, he does not want to get it melded into his own flesh. Could also be the reason why he has short and greasy hair, cause he would practically melt into a puddle if he was unfortunate enough to get wet.) And apart from Deborah and her friends’ growing discomfort over Gabriel in general, he’s just vibing in the back of the class, trying to make a shape for the unknowable form of the Distortion. And the second Deborah inadvertently gives him a break from his artist’s block, he quite literally takes control of the class; switching over the biweekly schedule it was before into every week, and even manipulating the space of the classroom to further support his artistic needs.

“Ray told us the lesson was ‘faces.’ I put my hand up to say that sculpting faces was probably a bit advanced for where we were in the course, but he shook his head, and said that we were… a lot more talented than we thought. He said the key was that faces were twisted. All faces were twisted on the inside, and all you had to do was reach into the deepest part of yourself and put that twisted on the outside of the clay, and as soon as you can scream you’ll have your own face staring back at you.” (MAG 126)

This is also the key to the Spiral itself. With Gabriel’s assistance, he will be able to let the spiral to insanity move in reverse, create the physical manifestation of that fear instead of letting it collapse and destroy itself. And in that lesson as well, Gabriel finally creates a fitting image of the Distortion...A door, the physical entrance to insanity itself.

Then comes the final stretch in Sannikov Land, the nonexistent island that was said to exist between the years 2009 and 2011. And as Michael D. Stortion explains in MAG 101, was the perfect place for their ritual, The Great Twisting. After everything Gabriel had done to appease his good “friend”, The Distortion seemed extremely invested in the Worker of Clay at that point. Nevermind the fact that its telling Jon how its identity was stolen away from Michael Shelley by merging with the Distortion, but there’s more to this origin story.

“Michael was protective of the frail old woman he believed her to be. So… so delicate, so forgetful, yet gently wise. He cared for her. He trusted her. And she fed him to me. She made him to destroy our transcendence. And she did not hesitate.” “And it was me they sought to stop. Me and the others of It-Is-Not-What-It-Is. Our Great Twisting. The-Worker-of-Clay had laboured for decades on that contorted, impossible edifice of doors… and stairs… and falsehoods… and smiles. A thousand staring morsels stood, and not one of them believed themselves sane to look upon it. And in the centre, the door that would open to all the places that were never there, was me.“ “Perhaps I should have realised what was happening; seen those two lonely figures approaching me, but I cannot tell you the existential joys of truly… becoming. Of an entireness finally crossing the threshold into your self. So ecstatic was my completeness, I did not even hear my own door creak open.“ “Even sharper than the joy of becoming is the agony of being opened and remade. To have your who torn bloody from your what, and another crudely lashed into its place. To become Michael. And to do so at such a crucial point in our Twisting, in our becoming, well of course it destroyed it. The impossible altar collapsed. The-Worker-of-Clay tore out his veins to dissolve himself in crimson mud. The others of us were cast to all the places that aren’t; some have still not found their way out again...My very existence tied to my pointlessness. Wearing my failure as the very fabric of my being. Reduced once again to feeding on the unsuspecting and confused. That is who I am.“ (MAG 101)

Even if all of this was to explain how the Distortion became the being it is in the series, it’s easy to see how overjoyed it was during the ritual. All that the Spiral ever did was bring the sense of unreality and paranoia unto people for ages, only breaking down the mind until they eventually spiral into oblivion. It wanted to be something, it wanted to make something twisted and nonsensical from the world, to shape the world itself to the nature of insanity. And after all that time, no matter how many avatars it had in its control, Gabriel was the only one who began creating the ritual. Even if it was for an ulterior motive, The Distortion was pretty giddy as Gabriel worked for years on end to create the meaning of insanity; to create something that the Distortion saw as the perfect vessel for itself. And even as it was explaining it, with all these feelings of joy and ecstasy and very human thoughts and emotions, this was before it was forced to become Michael. So much for not being bound by human nature, huh? But it’s pretty ironic that, as the embodiment of delusions, insanity and lies, it never considered the idea of having an avatar that could make something out of that chaos. Even if the Distortion was explaining how Michael-not-Michael Shelley came into being, it also can be interpreted as Michael just yearning for his best Avatar so far. So instead of “I’m going to tell you my entire backstory.”, it’s more like “I’m going to tell you how a nosy old woman and her idiotic assistant ruined my chances to be with my Avatar of the Decade who may or may not be my boyfriend.”

In conclusion, Gabriel AKA The Worker of Clay AKA Igor with an art degree became the Hands of the Spiral because the nonbinary embodiment of delusion (who is also a door) gave a miserable struggling artist a shot of self-confidence (and a shot out of the Flesh’s control), eventually becoming its #1 Boyfriend Avatar of all time, and is the only person that would make the “hates gender and existence itself” Distortion yearn for years after his tragic death.

Takes notes people, this is what peak performance looks like.

#not kh #tma #the magnus archives #tma spoilers #tma michael #tma gabriel #tma michael shelley #gay shit #shitpost #rant post #text post

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art-angels · 3 years

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CÉCILE PLAISANCE AND HER COMIC, SURREAL AND PROVOKING LENTICULAR WORK

Cover story, via SuperYacht Digest

Cécile Plaisance turns the tables and breaks stereotypes, codes and roles using Barbie not as an object but rather as the incarnation of free, seductive and empowered women.

Barbies are part of every girl’s life. Some put them in the loft and forget about them, some others pass them to their daughters and Cécile Plaisance creates art with them. Feminists have always accused Barbie to promote the objectification of the female body, a perfect and inaccessible body, the idea of a submitted woman and consumerism. She turns the table an breaks stereotypes, codes and roles using Barbie not as an object but rather as the incarnation of free seductive and empowered women.

Born in 1968 in Paris, Cécile Plaisance is a French photographer, mostly active in Brussels. For many years she did not get the opportunity to develop her love for photography. She graduated in Economics and Commerce with at DEA Diploma for Paris Dauphine University. For over 10 years she works in the European financial markets, but photography was always in the back of her mind and her camera followed her everywhere. She also worked in the IT sector with her husband but after moving to Brussels she left the masculine environment of finance to eventually follow here passion for photography. She studied at Contraste Photography Agency and she took Photoshop classes which soon became a fundamental tool for her creations. At the end of the third year the school organized an exposition with its students’ photos and that is where Barbie dolls made their first appearance to Cécile’s works. She wanted to give homage to Helmut Newton but at that time she didn't have enough money to pay for real-life models, so she turned to her daughter’s barbie collection. Plaisance mentions Newton as one of the greatest photographers whose woks have inspired her, along with Barbara Kruger, Richard Avedon, Mel Ramos and Russel James.

Through her work, she pursues a strong message, yet ludic. Her art is not a war of the sexes, it is an ode to femininity and to all women. She is not against men, at all, in fact she things we should find a proper balance between men and women. In her photographs, Plaisance elevates the idea off every girl’s childhood to a superior cause: she defends women’s rights, desires and freedom. She links Barbie to the women of today, playing with her femininity, managing everyday-life tasks, becoming a perfect housewife of boss lady. In some photographs from her Lens series, Plaisance transforms the magazine read by women looking for the perfect outfit into the perfect outfit itself.

Cécile Plaisance is well-known for her comic, surreal and provoking photos of Mattel’s iconic doll. She superimposes difference pictures of Barbie getting dressed-undressed which change according to the position of the viewer. With her Barbie series, the artist does not only want to take us back to our childhood, but she also links the iconic doll to the empowered woman of today in different settings, actions and cultures.

Her works are featured in several exhibitions, fairs, galleries and museums, including LA Art Angels gallery, Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art in Saint Petersburg, Art Miami, Art Cologne, Art Toronto, Scope Miami and Art Basel, Hong Jong. Her photographs can also be found in prestigious art collections, both private and corporative. The Handler family, founders of Mattel, of course had to have one of her creations, but also the King of Morocco, Victor Emmanuel of Savoy, Joe Malone CEO of her eponymous brand and the Ecclestone Family among others.

In 2016 her Nun & Baby was auctioned at Christies’s Paris for of $14,100. In 2018 PHOTO Magazine awarded her with the “Prix Photo” and put her work on cover.

French photographer has great respect for all religions, but none of them should promote physical and moral disrespectful behavior, dictated by some form of patriarchy. To her “there is no religion that can justify flouting women’s rights. Women should be equal to men and should be free to do whatever they want with their image and their bodies.” She uses her art to encourage women to take their freedom back, no matter where they live or what their religion may be. In her photographs, the nun’s cloak or the burqa hide a sexy and provocative woman. She explores the different roles that women play both publicly and privately and every action they take should be their exclusive decision. Despite the differences in cultures, clothes and fashion, al women around the world aspire to be free and to live fully and intensely in their lives.

In her series “La Bella Vita” her dolls are photographed on yachts, at sea, while sunbathing and having fun in the summer weather. They are so perfectly integrated with the environment that the line between fantasy and reality is blurred. The viewer questions whether the dolls are playing the role of a real-life model, or the model is playing the role of the glamorous dolls. Barbies appear to be alive and posing.

A single image was not enough for Plaisance to deliver the complex idea and nature of a multifaceted woman, so she superimposes two different images, with the same subject but in different poses or clothes, that appear to transform into each other. Barbie seems to undress depending on the viewer’s position in front of the photograph. Plaisance started using holograms, or lenticular lens, in 2010, becoming her predominant form of art ever since, to better explore the various aspects of a woman: how she sees herself, vs how others see her, the public persona she shows and the more private, intimate and secret one she keeps to herself. By using this technique, the French photographer animates a static image, making it dynamic and surprising to viewers that do not expect the photograph to change or move as the image is viewed from different angles.

Plaisance is one of the few artist in the world to dare to use the so-called lenticular printing. Lenticular printing was firstly used in marketing to promote and advertise products and now has become part of the world of fine art. It gives artist an incredible opportunity to explore depth and interact with the viewer. Even Pop Art artist Roy Lichtenstein, one of Plaisance’s source of inspiration, employed the lenticular printing technique.

Plaisance claims that lenticular printing could be very time consuming, hard and extremely expensive. She also adds that the whole process could be quite stressing because the results are not always perfect. Also, there are only 3 labs that produce these lenses in the world: in the US, in China and Ireland. That is why this technique is only for the most daring, and Cécile Plaisance definitely is one of them.

In 2016 she turned to real-life models after five years of working with Barbies. Plaisance explained she was strolling through Instagram and saw some photos of Olga Kent. Their collaboration started to culminate this year with a project dedicated to animal conservation and environmental issues: in the black and white “Planet Earth” series, Plaisance uses the photomontage technique, superimposing endangered habitats and animals. A very important subject for future generations, with the woman always at the centre, perfect to deliver strong messages.

During quarantine this year, Plaisance shot a new series called Bubble Gum, the protagonist, Barbie of course, is blowing a big bubble gum while wearing a pair of wide sunglasses.

Q&A WITH ARTIST CÉCILE PLAISANCE

SD: “Your works are not just any regular photos, where you take a picture, you Photoshop it and then you print it out. It is rather a long and time-consuming job, where there result is not always perfect at just, How long does it take you to create one work, start to finish, using the lenticular approach?

CP: “I have used the lenticular technique for ten years now and I have found that it allows me to deliver a stronger message. The shooting is already very complex as the model must not move from one pose (dressed) to another (undressed). Then the work consists of superposing the 2 images so that some parts are not moving, for example the face, the eyes. It takes me between 20 to 50 hours to finish an artwork. But I love the result. So to make a complete series takes some time, several months. The production time is also very consuming. There are very few labels that are able to produce lenticular prints and even less manufacturers of lenticular sheets. At present, there are only 2 left in the world. I need to control every production as the sheets are no originally meant for art.

My latest series about the protection of the species, is not lenticular. It is printed on Ultrasmooth Hahnemühle paper, but I am using the same technique as I am superimposing a few images: the model, the specie, the climate change or the environmental issue... and the frame.”

SD: “You started your career photographing Barbie dolls, plastic and static objects. Later to turned to real life models, made of flesh and bones that move. What is the reason behind this choice and what is your preference?”

CP: “It was a natural move. After having shot Barbies for half of a decade, I wanted some change.. It happens that the beautiful Olga Kent (also on the picture of your cover) contacted me via Instagram. We decided to work together and we still are. She is so natural and so beautiful. Everything is easy with her. I can say that I truly enjoy shooting with real models. Each time I have a great connection with them. They come to my studio that is part of my place and we share some time together. Every series I do, I build it with them. They have to agree to every step. And of course the final image. I can say that my Barbies helped me very much and cam back during confinement, but I have much more pleasure working with humans.”

SD: “Behind all your works there is a clear message, whether it is the defense of women’s rights, stereotypes and injustice or climate change and environmental issues. Do you think good art should always have social implications?”

CP: “I think that it is my responsibility to do so. I can’t stay inactive. I am aware that it is a very small drop in the sea (French quote), but I try to help some causes. I am not sure though that it makes a good art. But it definitely makes a difference.

Q&A WITH ART GALLEY, ART ANGELS

SD: “Very few artists in the world use the lenticular approach, and Cécile is one of them, making her work one of a kind, unique and unexpected. What is the public general reaction to Cécile's works?”

AA: ‘Cécile’s pieces effortlessly make a statement that captures the attention of all of our collectors. Completely unexpected at first glance, she has become one of the most sought after artists at the gallery given the uniqueness of her works.”

SD: “Why did you choose to exhibit Cécile’s works? Do you share her values?”

AA: “We choose to exhibit Cécile as we strongly admired her as a female artist and the uniqueness of her artwork that continues to push boundaries and provoke thought.”

SD: “What do Cécile's works have in common with the others exhibited at your gallery?”

AA: “Cécile's works like this by all of artists breathe life, diversity, humor and uniqueness into each of our collectors homes. It is a pleasure to continuously hear how much joy works like Cécile's continue to bring to our collectors when their pieces enter into their collections.”

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blackkudos · 4 years

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Carrie Mae Weems

Carrie Mae Weems (born April 20, 1953) is an American artist who works with text, fabric, audio, digital images, and installation video, and is best known for her work in the field of photography. Her award-winning photographs, films, and videos have been displayed in over 50 exhibitions in the United States and abroad, and focus on serious issues that face African Americans today, such as racism, sexism, politics, and personal identity.

She said, "Let me say that my primary concern in art, as in politics, is with the status and place of Afro-Americans in the country." More recently however, she expressed that "Black experience is not really the main point; rather, complex, dimensional, human experience and social inclusion ... is the real point."

Early life and education

Weems was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1953, the second of seven children to Carrie Polk and Myrlie Weems. She began participating in dance and street theater in 1965. At the age of 16 she gave birth to her first and only child, a daughter named Faith C. Weems. Later that year she moved out of her parents’ home and soon relocated to San Francisco to study modern dance with Anna Halprin at a workshop Halprin had started with several other dancers, as well as the artists John Cage and Robert Morris. She decided to continue her arts schooling and attended the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, graduating at the age of 28 with her B.A. She received her MFA from the University of California, San Diego. Weems also participated in the folklore graduate program at the University of California, Berkeley.

While in her early twenties, Carrie Mae Weems was politically active in the labor movement as a union organizer. Her first camera, which she received as a birthday gift, was used for this work before being used for artistic purposes. She was inspired to pursue photography after she came across The Black Photography Annual, a book of images by African-American photographers including Shawn Walker, Beuford Smith, Anthony Barboza, Ming Smith, Adger Cowans, and Roy DeCarava, who Weems found inspiring. This led her to New York City, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, where she began to meet other artists and photographers such as Coreen Simpson and Frank Stewart, and they began to form a community. In 1976 Weems took a photography class at the Museum taught by Dawoud Bey. She returned to San Francisco, but lived bi-coastally and was invited by Janet Henry to teach at the Studio Museum and a community of photographers in New York.

Career and work

In 1983, Carrie Mae Weems completed her first collection of photographs, text, and spoken word, called Family Pictures and Stories. The images told the story of her family, and she has said that in this project she was trying to explore the movement of black families out of the South and into the North, using her family as a model for the larger theme. Her next series, called Ain't Jokin', was completed in 1988. It focused on racial jokes and internalized racism. Another series called American Icons, completed in 1989, also focused on racism. Weems has said that throughout the 1980s she was turning away from the documentary photography genre, instead "creating representations that appeared to be documents but were in fact staged" and also "incorporating text, using multiples images, diptychs and triptychs, and constructing narratives." Sexism was the next focal point for her. It was the topic of one of her most well known collections called The Kitchen Table series which was completed in over a two year period, 1989 to 1990 and has Weems cast as the central character in the photographs. About Kitchen Table and Family Pictures and Stories, Weems has said: "I use my own constructed image as a vehicle for questioning ideas about the role of tradition, the nature of family, monogamy, polygamy, relationships between men and women, between women and their children, and between women and other women—underscoring the critical problems and the possible resolves." She has expressed disbelief and concern about the exclusion of images of the black community, particularly black women, from the popular media, and she aims to represent these excluded subjects and speak to their experience through her work. These photographs created space for other black female artists to further create art. Weems has also reflected on the themes and inspirations of her work as a whole, saying,

... from the very beginning, I've been interested in the idea of power and the consequences of power; relationships are made and articulated through power. Another thing that's interesting about the early work is that even though I've been engaged in the idea of autobiography, other ideas have been more important: the role of narrative, the social levels of humor, the deconstruction of documentary, the construction of history, the use of text, storytelling, performance, and the role of memory have all been more central to my thinking than autobiography.

Other series created by Weems include: the Sea Island Series (1991–92), the Africa Series (1993), From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried (1995–96), Who What When Where (1998), Ritual & Revolution (1998), the Louisiana Project (2003), Roaming (2006), and the Museum Series, which she began in 2007. Her most recent project, Grace Notes: Reflections for Now, is a multimedia performance that explores "the role of grace in the pursuit of democracy."

In her almost 30-year career, Carrie Mae Weems has won numerous awards. She was named Photographer of the Year by the Friends of Photography. In 2005, she was awarded the Distinguished Photographer's Award in recognition of her significant contributions to the world of photography. Her talents have also been recognized by numerous colleges, including Harvard University and Wellesley College, with fellowships, artist-in-residence and visiting professor positions. She taught photography at Hampshire College in the late 1980s. She was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2013. In 2015 Weems was named a Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellow. In September 2015, the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research presented her with the W. E. B. Du Bois Medal.

The first comprehensive retrospective of her work opened in September 2012 at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, Tennessee, as a part of the center's exhibition Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video. Curated by Katie Delmez, the exhibition ran until January 13, 2013, and later traveled to Portland Art Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Cantor Center for Visual Arts. The 30-year retrospective exhibition opened in January 2014 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City. This was the first time an "African-American woman [was] ever given a solo exhibition" at the Guggenheim. Weems' work returned to the Frist in October 2013 as a part of the center's 30 Americans gallery, alongside black artists ranging from Jean-Michel Basquiat to Kehinde Wiley.

Weems' work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Portland Art Museum, the Tate Museum in London and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Weems has been represented by Jack Shainman Gallery since 2008.

A full-color, visual book, titled Carrie Mae Weems, was published by Yale University Press in October 2012. The book offers the first major survey of Weems' career and includes a collection of essays from leading and emerging scholars in addition to over 200 of Weems' most important works.

Weems lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn and Syracuse, New York, with her husband Jeffrey Hoone. She continues to produce art that provides social commentary on the experiences of people of color, especially black women, in America.

Weems is one of six artist-curators who made selections for Artistic License: Six Takes on the Guggenheim Collection, on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum from May 24, 2019, through January 12, 2020.

Select exhibitions

Presentations of her work have included exhibitions at:

Women in Photography, Cityscape Photo Gallery, Pasadena, CA, 1981

Multi-Cultural Focus, Barnsdall Art gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 1981

Family Pictures and Stories, Multi-Cultural Gallery, San Diego, CA, 1984

People Close Up, Fisher Gallery, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 1986

Social Concerns, Maryland Institute of Art, Baltimore, MD, 1986

Past, Present, Future, The New Museum, New York, NY, 1986

Visible Differences, Centro Cultural de la Raza, San Diego, CA, 1987

The Other, The Houston Center for Photography, Houston, TX, 1988

A Century of Protest, Williams College, Williamstown, MA, 1989

Black Women Photographers, Ten.8, London, England, 1990

Who Counts?, Randolph Street Gallery, Chicago, IL, 1990

Biological Factors, Nexus Gallery, Atlanta, GA, 1990

Trouble in Paradise, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Boston, MA, 1990

Whitney Biennial, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, 1991

Of Light and Language, Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, Pittsburgh, PA, 1991

Pleasures and terrors of Domestic Comfort, MOMA, New York, NY, 1991

Calling Out My Name, CEPA Gallery, Buffalo, NY (traveled to PPOW gallery, New York, NY), 1991

Disclosing the Myth of Family, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 1992

Schwarze Kunst: Konzepte zur Politik und Identitat, Neue Gesellschaft fur dingende Kunst, Berlin, Germany, 1992

Dirt and Domesticity: Constructions of the Feminine, Whitney Museum of American Art, at Equitable Center, New York, NY, 1992

Art, Politics, and Community, William Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut, Mansfield, CT (traveled to Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA), 1992

Mis/Taken identities, University Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA (traveled to Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany; Forum Stadtpark, Graz, Austria; Neues Museum Weserburg Bremen im Forum Langenstraße, Germany; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark; Western Gallery, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA), 1992–1994

Photography: Expanding the Collection, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, 1992–1994

Sea Island, The Fabric Workshop, Philadelphia, PA, 1993

Carrie Mae Weems (traveling exhibition), The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, 1993

And 22 Million Very Tired and very Angry People, Walter/McBean gallery, San Francisco Art Institute San Francisco, CA, 1993

Enlightenment, Revolution, A Gallery Project, Ferndale, MI, 1993

Fictions of the Self: The Portrait in Contemporary Photography, Weatherspoon Art Gallery, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC; Herter Art Gallery, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, 1993–1994

The Theatre of Refusal: Black Art and the Mainstream Criticism, Fine Arts Gallery, University of California, Irvine, CA (traveled to University of California, Davis, CA; and University of California, Riverside, CA), 1993–1994

Women's Representation of Women, Sapporo American Center Gallery, Sapporo, Japan (traveled to Aka Renga Cultural Center, Fukuoka City, Japan; Kyoto International Community House, Kyoto, Japan; Aichi Prefectural Arts Center, Nagoya, Japan; Osaka Prefectural Contemporary Arts Center, Japan; Spiral Arts Center, Tokyo, Japan), 1994

Imagining Families: Images and Voices, The Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 1994–1995

Black Male, Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, and The Armand Hammer Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA, 1994–1995

Carrie Mae Weems Reacts to Hidden Witness, J. Paul Getty Museum of Art, Malibu, CA, 1995

Projects 52, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, 1995

StoryLand: Narrative Vision and Social Space, Walter Phillips gallery, The Banff Center for the Arts, Banff, Canada, 1995

Embedded Metaphor, Traveling exhibit, curated by Nina Felshin, 1996

Inside the Visible, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., international traveling exhibition, 1996

Gender - Beyond Memory, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo, Japan, 1996

2nd Johannesburg Biennale, Africus Institute for Contemporary Art, Johannesburg, South Africa, 1997

Bearing Witness: Contemporary Works by African-American Artists, traveling exhibition, 1998

Taboo: Repression and Revolt in Modern Art, Gallery St. Etienne, New York, NY, 1998

Tell me a Story: Narration in Contemporary Painting and Photography, Center National d'Art Contemporain de Grenoble, Grenoble, France, 1998

Recent Work: Carrie Mae Weems 1992–98, Everson Art Museum, Syracuse, NY, 1998–1999

Who, What, When, and Where, Whitney Museum of American Art at Phillip Morris, New York, NY, 1998–1999

Ritual & Revolution, DAK'ART 98: Biennale of Contemporary Art, Galerie National d'Art, Dakar, Senegal, 1998–1999

It's Only Rock and Roll, traveling exhibition, 1999

Claustrophobia: Disturbing the Domestic in Contemporary Art, traveling exhibition, 1999

Histories (Re)membered, The Bronx Museum of Art, New York, NY, 1999

Carrie Mae Weems: The Hampton Project, Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA, 2000–2003

Looking Forward, Looking Back, Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, 2000

Material and Matter: Loans to and Selections from the Studio Museum Collection, The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, 2000

The View From Here: Issues of Cultural Identity and Perspective in Contemporary Russian and American Art, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia, 2000

Strength and Diversity: A Celebration of African-American Artists, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 2000

Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present, Smithsonian Anacostia Museum and Center for African American History and culture, Washington, DC, 2000

History Now, touring exhibition beginning at the Liljevalchs Konsthall and Riksutstallningar, Stockholm, Sweden, 2002

Pictures, Patents, Monkeys, and More... On Collecting, traveling exhibition curated by Independent curators International, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA, 2002

The Louisiana Project, Newcomb Art Gallery, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, 2003

Cuba on the Verge, International Center of Photography, New York, NY, 2003

Crimes and Misdemeanors: Politics in U.S. Art of the 1980s, Lois & Richard Rosenthal center for Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, OH, 2003

Double Consciousness: Black Conceptual Art Since 1970, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX, 2004

Beyond Compare: Women Photographers on Beauty, BCE, Toronto (traveling exhibit), 2004

African American Art - Photographs from the Collection, Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, MO, 2005

Figuratively Speaking, Miami Art Museum, Miami, FL, 2005

The Whole World is Rotten, Jack Shainman gallery, New York, NY, 2005

Common Ground: Discovering Community in 150 Years of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2005

Out of Time: A Contemporary View, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, 2006

Black Alphabet: Contexts of Contemporary African-American Art, Zacheta national gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland, 2006

Hidden in Plain Sight, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, 2007

Embracing Eatonville, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI, 2007

The 21st century, The Feminine Century, and the century of Diversity and Hope, 2009 International Incheon Women Artists' Biennial, Incheon, South Korea, 2009–2010

Colour Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today, Tate Liverpool, UK, 2009–2010

Afro Modern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic, Tate Liverpool, UK, 2009–2010

From Then to Now: Masterworks of Contemporary African American Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH, 2009–2010

Carrie Mae Weems: Estudios Sociales, Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville, Spain, 2010

Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, 2010

Slow Fade to Black, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, NY, 2010

The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl, Nasher Museum, Durham, NC, 2010

Myth, Manners and Memory: Photographers of the American South, De La Warr Pavilion, East Sussex, UK, 2010

Off the Wall: Part 1 – Thirty Performative Actions, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH, 2010

The Deconstructive Impulse: Women Artists Reconfigure the Signs of Power, 1973–1991, Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, Purchase, New York, NY, 2010

Posing Beauty: African American Images From the 1890s to the Present, Newark Museum, Newark, NJ, 2010

Stargazers: Elizabeth Catlett in Conversation with 21 Contemporary Artists, Bronx Museum, Bronx, NY, 2010

Unsettled: Photography and Politics in Contemporary Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, 2010

Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video, Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, TN, 2012

This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, 2012

La Triennale: Intense Proximity, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France, 2012

Havana Biennial, Havana, Cuba, 2012

The Maddening Crowd (video installation), McNay Art Museum, Sa Antonio, TX, 2012

Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video, Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR; Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH; Cantor Center for the Visual Arts, Stanford, CA, 2013

Feminist And..., The Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, PA, 2013

Seven Sisters, Jenkins Johnson Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 2013

Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. New York, NY, 2014

P.3 Prospect New Orleans, The McKenna Museum, New Orleans, LA, 2014

Color: Real and Imagined, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London, England, 2014

Carrie Mae Weems: The Museum Series, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY, 2014

Wide Angle: American Photographs, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 2014

The Memory of Time, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2015

Triennale di Milano, Milan, Italy, 2015

Winter in America, The School (Jack Shainman Gallery), 2015

An Exhibition of African American Photographers from the Daguerreian to the Digital Eras, Marshall Fine Arts Center at Haveford College, Haveford, PA, 2015

Represent: 200 years of African American Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, 2015

Under Color of Law, The Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art and Ursinus College, Collegeville, PA, 2015

30 Americans, Detroit Institute of Arts, 2015

Grace Notes: Reflections for Now, Spoleto Festival, Spoleto, Italy, 2016

The Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art. Cambridge, MA, 2016

Viewpoints, Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, WA (February 18–June 18, 2017)

We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY (April 21–September 17, 2017)

Blue Black, Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis, MO (June 9–October 7, 2017)

Matera Imagined: Photography and a Southern Italian Town, American Academy in Rome, Rome, Italy (2017)

...And the People, Maruani Mercer, Knokke, Belgium (August 5–September 4, 2017)

Medium, Zuckerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA (August 29–December 3, 2017)

Carrie Mae Weems: Ritual and Revolution, Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL (September 12–December 10, 2017)

Dimensions of Black, Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA (September 17–December 28, 2017)

Posing Beauty in African American Culture, Mobile Museum of Art, Mobile, AL (October 6, 2016 – January 21, 2018)

We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85, California African American Museum, Los Angeles, CA (October 13, 2017 – January 14, 2018)

Edward Hopper Citation of Merit in the Visual Arts Recipient Exhibition, Carrie Mae Weems: Beacon, Nyack, NY (November 10, 2017 – February 25, 2018)

Making Home: Contemporary Works From the DIA, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI (December 1, 2017 – June 6, 2018)

We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA (June 27–September 30, 2018)

Be Strong and Do Not Betray Your Soul: Selections from the Light Work Collection, Light Work, Syracuse, NY (August 27–October 18, 2018)

Carrie Mae Weems: Strategies of Engagement, McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, Boston, MA (September 10–December 13, 2018)

Family Pictures, Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI (September 14, 2018 – January 20, 2019)

Heave, 2018 Cornell University Biennial, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (September 20, 2018–November 5, 2018)

Carrie Mae Weems: Strategies of Engagement, Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, PA (January 13, 2019–May 5, 2019)

Carrie Mae Weems II Over Time, Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa (September 7, 2019–October 5, 2019)

Awards

2005: Distinguished Photographers Award

2007: Anonymous Was A Woman Award

2013: Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award

2013: MacArthur Fellow, "Genius" Award

2014: BET Visual Arts Award

2014: Lucie Award

2015: ICP Spotlights Award from the International Center of Photography.

2015: Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellow

2015: W.E.B. Du Bois Medal from Harvard University

2015: Honorary Doctorate from the School of Visual Arts

2016: National Artist Award, Anderson Ranch Arts Center

2016: Roy and Edna Disney Cal Arts Theatre

2016: College Arts Association

2016: DeFINE ART

2016: Art of Change Fellow, Ford Foundation

2017: Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Syracuse University

2017: Inga Maren Otto Fellowship, The Watermill Center

2019: Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society, Bristol.

Publications

Carrie Mae Weems : The Museum of Modern Art (N.Y.), 1995.

Carrie Mae Weems : Image Maker, 1995.

Carrie Mae Weems : Recent Work, 1992––1998, 1998.

Carrie Mae Weems: In Louisiana Project, 2004.

Carrie Mae Weems: Constructing History, 2008.

Carrie Mae Weems : Social Studies, 2010.

Carrie Mae Weems : Three Decades of Photography and Video, 2012.

Carrie Mae Weems: Kitchen Table Series, 2016.

#04/20

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fireinmoonshot · 6 years

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ANGELS | AUGUST WALKER x READER | PART ONE

PART ONE OF ? Summary: You’re the daughter of the Secretary of State and, after being caught up in an assassination attempt against your father, are assigned a bodyguard – August Walker. August isn’t sure about his new assignment, especially as it’s so different from what he’s used to, but as soon as he meets you, something clicks, and something tells him that this might not be so awful after all. Pairing: female!Reader x August Walker Fandom: Mission: Impossible Word Count: 2444 Warnings: Mentions of blood, mentions of nightmares, mentions of death, mentions of guns. A/N: I posted before about having started the BBC series Bodyguard earlier today, and this idea came to mind. It’s partially inspired by that scene in episode 2 (which you’ll know if you’ve seen it). Anyway, I know there’s another bodyguard!August fic out there (which I haven’t got around to reading yet!) but I hope you like this one, too! I really loved writing this first part. I don’t know how long it’ll end up being, but maybe 5-7 parts! Hope you enjoy! <3

It’d been impossible to miss the news story that had broken out the week before. Even August, a man who spent a majority of his day working, had managed to catch the breaking news story on TV when he got back to his apartment later that evening.

SECRETARY OF STATE AND DAUGHTER CAUGHT IN AN ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT.

He hadn’t thought twice about it. These sort of things, they happened all the time. Politicians were often in the centre of things like that, and even though it was a little more serious this time, being the Secretary of State and all, he didn’t care very much. It wasn’t a rarity, even though the news stations and media were desperate to make it seem like it barely ever happened. Sure, it was rare for a politician’s family member to be caught up in it, but it meant nothing to him. The only casualty was his personal assistant, and the Secretary was still alive and well.

The following day, he’d gone back to work, focusing only on the job ahead and not on the fact that the Secretary and his daughter had nearly been killed the day before. Why should he have to?

Everything was normal at the CIA that day. Sure, there was a buzz in the air, people trying to figure things out with the Secretary and what had happened, but August wasn’t involved in any of it. He’d spent most of the day in meetings with Sloane and the team, preparing for the next mission. For most of the day, the assassination attempt hadn’t even crossed his mind.

In fact, it only really crossed his mind five days later when he was called into Sloane’s office.

“Walker, I’ve got a job for you.”

He took a seat in the desk opposite her and waited.

“It’s something different than what you’re used to, but I’m certain you’ll do well. My client has asked for the best of the best and I’ve assured him that you are exactly that. It’s not usually something I’d assign to you, but you’re the best agent I’ve got. What do you say?” She raised an eyebrow.

“What is it?” He pressed.

“You’ll recall, I’m sure, the news about the attempt on the Secretary of State’s life last week, yes?” Walker nodded. “Right, well, I’m sure you’ll also remember that his daughter was caught up in that attack, too. The Secretary has asked for a protection detail to be assigned to his daughter. He’s rightfully afraid for her safety.”

Walker furrowed his eyebrows. He wasn’t going on a mission to save the world. Instead, he was going to be protecting the rich daughter of the Secretary of State? He tried to keep the distaste off of his face. “Do I have a choice?”

Sloane didn’t hesitate before she answered. “No, you don’t. You start tomorrow morning at 8:00am. I’ll email you everything else you need to know. And both the Secretary and I expect you to do your best work, Walker. I also think it’s important to mention that I’ve known his daughter since she was young, and I trust you completely in keeping her safe. You’ve had the life of the world in your hands before and I’m sure you’ll be more than capable with having the life of one in them this time.”

She dismissed him and Walker left the room instantly. He sighed as he walked down the corridor, back to his office. He was a bodyguard. There to protect someone he didn’t even know the name of, simply because she’d gotten caught up in the middle of something by accident. Simply because she was the daughter of a rich man.

He shook his head and walked on.

Maybe Sloane was right. He’d had the life of the world in his hands before. What made having the life of one in his hands so different? Wouldn’t it be easier? Something in the back of his mind told him it wouldn’t be, and he believed it.

It had only been six days since the attack and yet you’d been woken up more than once a night by the sounds of gunfire and the images of blood in your dreams. Or, more accurately, nightmares.

You hadn’t told anyone about the nightmares. After all, they only affected you. No one else, bar your father and your driver, Teddy, would understand, and both of them were dealing with their own troubles. They didn’t need to hear your troubles, too. They were your own problem and no one else’s.

And Irene… you’d lost her, your fathers personal assistant. You could still remember the sight of her blood, the feeling of it seeping into your shirt and on your face… you shook your head to shake the thought from your mind.

No, no. Today would be different. You were sure of it.

Your father had called you into his office just after you’d woken up and you hadn’t hesitated in making your way there after you’d gotten dressed. He’d given you space to deal with everything, just like you’d asked, though you weren’t sure if it was doing you much good. Perhaps talking to him about it would be good, or maybe even to Teddy.

Though, your train of thought was cut off when you stepped into his office and found him standing there with three other people. Two of them, you knew, and one of them was unfamiliar.

Your mother, Erica Sloane and a man. A rather handsome man, you had to admit.

“Sit down, sweetheart,” your father smiled, sitting down at his desk.

Usually, things weren’t so formal, but clearly, this was different.

“What’s going on?” You asked.

“Well,” he began, looking up at Erica and the man. Your mother moved around the desk to join you, placing a comforting hand on your shoulder. She knew how hard this all was for you.

You’d grown up away from this life. Your parents had divorced when you were eleven, and your father had moved away after that. You used to spend summers with him and the rest of the year you spent with your mother in Seattle. That was home. The fuss and bother of your fathers second life had never really been something you’d gotten used to. And then you got thrown into the deep end.

“I know you might disagree, but I think it’s important that we do this. After the attack earlier this week, your safety is of utmost importance to me,” your father explained, not looking away from you for a second. “I’ve gotten into contact with Erica, who you know, to provide you with a protection detail. It might seem a little much, but–”

“No,” you shook your head. “No, it’s good. If you hadn’t organised it, I would have asked anyway, Dad. This is good. And like you said, it’s important. It’s good.”

Your father seemed a little taken aback by your words, but he didn’t let the shock show on his face for long, instead, he smiled. “Well, good. That makes things easier.”

You looked over to Erica and the man. Erica smiled at you and you were instantly filled with warmth. Your father had known her when you were young, and they’d stayed in contact for a while after. Clearly, he trusted her to find someone worthy to protect you, and you felt the exact same way. Judging by the look of the man beside her, too, you knew she’d chosen the right person.

“This is Agent August Walker,” Erica introduced. “He’s primarily an agent in the Special Activities Division, but for this specific detail, I’ve chosen him to protect you. He’s the best agent I have at the CIA and I’m positive he’ll give this job everything he has.”

Slowly, and a little hesitantly, you stood from your chair and crossed the room to Erica and August. He nodded at you as you stood in front of him, and then, you extended a hand and introduced yourself. His hand was warm, and even though the look on his face wasn’t particularly friendly, you felt comforted.

“Thank you for agreeing to do this,” you said.

August gave you a tight lipped smile in response. “My pleasure.”

You were, August admitted, not the person he’d expected you to be. When he and Sloane walked into the Secretary’s office that morning, he’d expected a snobby rich girl, just happy with her father’s money, to waltz in. He’d expected you to whine about how you didn’t need protection, that you were fine on your own.

What he saw, though, was completely the opposite of that.

Something inside him stirred with the realisation.

August had to admit that you were rather beautiful. Not just pretty, even though you were that, too. But more than that. He hadn’t seen pictures of you on the television, only a few blurry images that media helicopters had managed to grab when you, your father and your driver had been escorted away from the scene. He remembered one shot in particular – a blurry shot of a young woman, you, covered in blood. The thought of that shot alone made him uncomfortable.

He hadn��t expected you to agree to the idea of having a bodyguard. He was sure he’d have to listen to your father and Sloane talk you into it over a few hours, not for you to agree straight away. And you would have asked for it if your father hadn’t organised it in the first place…

As he and Sloane walked towards the car outside your family home, a million thoughts were running through August’s mind. He couldn’t seem to settle on just one. But after he’d stayed up so late the night before, dreading having to deal with a snobby rich girl, he’d been pleasantly surprised.

His words in response to your greeting were true: it was a pleasure.

Or, he supposed, it would be. He hoped.

He watched as Sloane got in the car and drove off, leaving him practically alone at your home. This would be his base for however long it needed to be. There were a few other bodyguards around. Your father had one, as did your driver, Teddy, and your mother, too. They were recently assigned, just as he was. Yet he was the only one assigned to you. The only one they trusted to look after you.

Glancing down at his watch, August sighed softly and wandered back into the house, heading out to find you. It was a Sunday afternoon, meaning that August wanted to know your plans for the week ahead so he could prepare adequately. If he knew your every move, it’d be easier to keep you safe.

It took him a while to find you, though, when he did, he wasn’t surprised.

You were sat in the library, curled up on a window seat and staring out the window at the lavish gardens surrounding the property. Even from far away, August could tell that you felt a little out of depth here. Something told him that you didn’t spend much time here as a child, or even as a teenager. He’d have to find that out later, though he wasn’t sure a Google would give him the answers he was so curious about.

He was quiet when he walked up to you, and as he cleared his throat to announce his presence, you jumped. August didn’t miss the way your eyes flashed or the way you tensed up until you noticed that it was him.

“Oh,” you cleared your throat. “Sorry… just you… ah, what can I do for you?”

“I’m just here to discuss this week’s schedule with you so I can organise protection details in advance.”

You nodded and sat up a little more, tearing your gaze away from the window. “Right, of course,” you hummed. “Sorry. I’ve never really done this before… the whole bodyguard thing. It’s a bit strange.”

August stifled a chuckle. He agreed wholeheartedly.

You pulled your phone out of your pocket to check your calendar just as August sat down on the other end of the window seat. He pulled his own phone out, too, and opened up a new note, ready to write down your plans.

This was the first time the two of you were alone… August had a feeling it wouldn’t be the last time, either. He wasn’t particularly nervous about being alone with you, no, not that. Just… concerned. There was something about you. Something about the way you were acting. The way you’d jumped when he arrived. The way you were so eager to have a bodyguard. It confused him just as much as it intrigued him. He wanted to know more about you, and that shocked him a little. Usually, he was one to keep back and not intrude when he knew he really wasn’t wanted all that much. But with you? Something told him to step forward a little more.

“This is usually all private… feels weird to share it,” you mused. Then, you looked up at him and gave him a small smile. “Ready?”

He nodded, urging you to continue.

The two of you sat in the library for about ten minutes, August listening as you relayed the upcoming weeks plans to him and writing them down. You didn’t have too many things planned, and August was a little surprised. As the daughter of the Secretary of State, August had expected your diary to be full of events and galas. To find out you only had four things planned, and for all of those things to be nothing particularly serious or grand, was a little shocking.

When you finished, you locked your phone and leant back against the pillows behind you. “Is that all, Mr. Walker?”

He glanced over at you as he tucked his phone back into his pocket. Mr. Walker… “Yes, that’ll be all. Thank you,” he replied. “This place is pretty well secured, so I’ll be just outside if you need me.”

You watched as he walked out of the library and sighed, crossing your ankles. When he was out of sight, you turned to glance out the window again. This would be good, just as your father had said. Necessary. You squeezed your eyes shut for a second, but even a second was too long – blood flashed, gunshots echoed. You opened your eyes instantly and took a deep breath.

This would be good. August Walker seemed capable of protecting you. He seemed more than capable, actually… if only he could protect you from the terrors of your mind, too.

#august walker x you #august walker imagine #august walker #august walker x reader #august walker reader insert #mission impossible imagine #mission impossible x reader #mission: impossible #mission: impossible fallout #mission impossible #mission impossible reader insert #angels

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lakambinimagph · 5 years

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Where power really lies: Depiction of female superheroes today

Chances are you are one of many who saw Captain Marvel in theaters recently or maybe you saw Wonder Woman when it was released back in 2017. Or maybe you are one of those who likes to shout “Darna!” when you were younger (or you still do it today). Next to being a princess, becoming a superhero is one of many young girls’ fantasies.

But why is it that despite the long history of comic books and comic book movies, only now are we seeing successful films or upcoming films about female superheroes? Has the film industry finally realized that you don’t need good-looking men with ripped muscles to be the face of your movie? Or that women have been demanding for big productions revolving around female comic book characters? Or, maybe, these filmmakers and storytellers had a hard time figuring out how to write an excellent female superhero that truly embodies the essence of being a woman in this society.

Let us take a look on three superheroes and why their great characterization has contributed to their success as films and to their impact on women here in the Philippines and around the world.

Wonder Woman: Love is not a weakness, but strength

Wonder Woman, or Princess Diana of Themyscira, is a DC Comics character that has very feminist roots. She was created by William Moulton Marston who wanted to create a superhero who gains victories not through violence but through love or compassion. His wife, Elizabeth, suggested that he make the character a woman.

There have been numerous adaptations of Wonder Woman and many fabulous women have had the chance to step into this role. A lot of you though are mostly familiar with the recent adaptation played by the incredible Gal Gadot in movies such as Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) and in her own solo movie, Wonder Woman (2017).

Unlike her fellow superheroes in DC Comics, previous films or television series about Wonder Woman have failed to attain the success that films about Superman and Batman have reached. For a long time, there weren’t any films about this female superhero. That’s unfortunate because, how many reboots of Superman and Batman occurred already? Two? Three? I’ve lost count (and also stopped caring). What, then, did Gadot’s Wonder Woman did right, that previous versions failed at, that made it such a hit with women everywhere?

It’s because it stayed true to what her creator, Marston, wanted the character to be. He wanted a female superhero “with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman.” This was perfectly portrayed in the film, where Diana displayed qualities such as compassion, sweetness, and peace-loving and wasn’t seen as weak because of these. In fact, the film emphasized that these traits made her stronger. It’s not because of her capability to punch through hundreds of bad guys, but the strength of her character and goodness of her heart is what made Wonder Woman really special.

Captain Marvel: A ‘90s Heroine with Present-Day Struggles

Carol Danvers, or Captain Marvel, graced our screens and made her debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) just a month ago. It is the 21st film in the MCU and is the first one to be led by a female superhero. Makes you wonder what took them so long…

When the first posters and trailers came out, there were people, mostly men, who criticized Carol for “not smiling enough” or “not showing any emotion” besides looking fierce and tough. Some of them even photoshopped the posters to make it look like she is smiling. Brie Larson, who plays Captain Marvel, clapped back at her haters and posted on Instagram photoshopped images of other superheroes like Iron Man and Captain America smiling on their own posters. She showed how ridiculous it is that women can’t be portrayed as tough or fierce just like male superheroes. Brie also said that, sadly, many women have experienced this kind of thing, having men tell you that you should smile more because you’ll look prettier that way. It’s like women are not allowed to feel any other emotion or that we can’t look serious.

Coincidentally, a similar situation happens to Captain Marvel in the movie, where a biker guy tells Carol to smile. Both Brie and the director, Anna Boden, have said that it was not a response to that criticism but that it was not an uncommon thing that women experience. It was written in the script long before the controversy happened and, lo and behold, the same thing happens in real life.

Darna: A Powerful Dalagang Pilipina

The Philippines also boasts a rich collection of superheroes, but none has had a greater impact on Filipino pop culture like Darna. There isn’t a single Filipino who doesn’t know this female superhero. When you are asked to mention a Filipino superhero, I bet the first one to come to mind is this character.

Darna was created by legendary comic book cartoonist, Mars Ravelo. He started working on this character before World War II, when she was still named Varga. She was intended as the Philippines’ equivalent of Superman, drawing on Ravelo’s concept that America is “male” and our country, as the one colonized by them, as “female.” He proposed the idea to both Filipino and American publishers but was turned down because, according to them, “female superheroes will not sell.”

But, as we can see now, Darna became a big hit with readers and many film and television show adaptations have come out throughout the years. Rosa del Rosario was the first actress to play Darna on screen in 1951. Other actresses that have brought this character to life are Vilma Santos, Lorna Tolentino, Rio Locsin, Angel Locsin, and Marian Rivera. There is an upcoming remake of Darna and, with Angel Locsin and Liza Soberano exiting the project, who knows who the next woman to step into her shoes would be. There is a pressure on both the filmmakers and the actress who would play Darna because this character is so iconic and well-beloved by Filipinos.

Of course, Filipinos were quickly endeared to her not only because of her superpowers, but also because of her love for her family, a trait that is very special to Filipinos. Darna, as her alter ego Narda, takes care of her grandmother, Lola Asay. Who would also forget her brother and sidekick, Ding. Also, we grew to love the ever-inspiring story of a simple village girl who, upon encountering a small meteorite from space, transforms into a powerful being. It’s a very good metaphor than you can become someone extraordinary despite of your small beginnings.

Dawn of a New Age

These three superheroines all have faced their challenges and criticisms. For some reason, they underwent greater scrutiny than their male counterparts. But, despite all these, they found a way to triumph and still make their impact on women all around the world. Their films made millions at the box office and it’s good to see that the film industry is now more confident in telling superhero stories from a woman’s perspective. In the past, and, unfortunately, some movies still do this, women are just there as love interests or as the prize that the hero gets to win at the end. There are still others that sexualizes female superheroes, but because of the help of social media, these kinds of films get called out quickly.

Women using social media to better voice out what they want to see in these kinds of films may be one of the reasons why the film industry is starting to pay more attention and improve their characterizations of women in films. Women are now at the forefront and not just sidekicks to male superheroes. Let’s hope that this continues and lastly, let’s hope that future endeavors continue to portray these female superheroes with a much honest reflection on how it is to be a woman in this present society.

Words by Jemimah Cresencia

Graphics by Kimberly Joy Alejo

Image Source for Darna, Wonder Woman, and Captain Marvel.

#venus with a mirror #superheroes #wonderwoman #captain marvel #darna #lakambini #beyond barriers

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holyfaithbiblechurch · 3 years

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What does the Bible say about reincarnation?

The whole thrust of the Bible opposes reincarnation. It shows that man is the special creation of God, created in God’s image with both a material body and an immaterial soul and spirit. He is presented as distinct and unique from all other creatures—angels and the animal kingdom alike. The Bible teaches that at death, while man’s body is mortal, decays and returns to dust, his soul and spirit continue on either in a place of torments for those who reject Christ or in paradise (heaven) in God’s presence for those who have trusted in the Savior. Both categories of people will be resurrected, one to eternal judgment and the other to eternal life with a glorified body (John 5:25-29). The emphatic statement of the Bible, as will be pointed out below, is that “it is appointed unto men once to die and after that the judgment” (Heb. 9:27). This statement and the concept that mankind’s creation in God’s image is unique from the animals and even angels stand totally opposed to the idea of reincarnation—dying and coming back as another person or in the form of an animal or insect. The claim of some that they have information of past history is nothing more than some kind of encounter with demonic powers who have been present throughout history.

Below is information from A Handbook of Christian Apologetics by Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli. (InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove).

Six Basic Theories

The human race has come up with six basic theories about what happens to us when we die.

1. Materialism: Nothing survives. Death ends all of me. Seldom held before the eighteenth century, materialism is now a strong minority view in industrialized nations. It is the natural accompaniment of atheism.

2. Paganism: A vague, shadowy semiself or ghost survives and goes to the place of the dead, the dark, gloomy Underworld. This is the standard pagan belief. Traces of it can be found even in the Old Testament Jewish notion of sheol. The “ghost” that survives is less alive, less substantial, less real than the flesh and blood organism now living. It is something like a “ghost image” on a TV set: a pale copy of the lost original.

3. Reincarnation: The individual soul survives and is reincarnated into another body. Reincarnation is usually connected with the next belief, pantheism, by the notion of karma: that after the soul has fulfilled its destiny, and learned its lessons and become sufficiently enlightened, it reverts to a divine status or is absorbed into (or realizes its timeless identity with) the divine All.

4. Pantheism: Death changes nothing, for what survives death is the same as what was real before death: only the one, changeless, eternal, perfect, spiritual, divine, all-inclusive Reality, sometimes called by a name (“Brahman”) and sometimes not (as in Buddhism). In this view—that of Eastern mysticism—all separateness, including time, is an illusion. Therefore, in this view, the very question of what happens after death is mistaken. The question is not solved but dissolved.

5. Immortality: The individual soul survives death, but not the body. This soul eventually reaches its eternal destiny of heaven or hell, perhaps through intermediate stages, perhaps through reincarnation. But what survives is an individual, bodiless spirit. This is Platonism, often confused with Christianity.

6. Resurrection: At death, the soul separates from the body and is reunited at the end of the world to its new, immortal, resurrected body by a divine miracle. This is the Christian view. This view, the supernatural resurrection of the body rather than the natural immortality of the soul alone, is the only version of life after death in Scripture. It is dimly prophesied and hoped for in the Old Testament, but clearly revealed in the New.

For both (5) and (6), the individual soul survives bodily death. That is the issue we shall argue here. We do not take the time to argue against paganism (2) or reincarnation (3) or pantheism (4) here, but only against modern materialism (1), since that is the source of most of the philosophical arguments against immortality in our culture.

Ten Refutations of Reincarnation

Christianity rejects reincarnation for ten reasons.

1. It is contradicted by Scripture (Heb 9:27).

2. It is contradicted by orthodox tradition in all churches.

3. It would reduce the Incarnation (referring to Christ’s incarnation) to a mere appearance, the crucifixion to an accident, and Christ to one among many philosophers or avatars. It would also confuse what Christ did with what creatures do: incarnation with reincarnation.

4. It implies that God made a mistake in designing our souls to live in bodies, that we are really pure spirits in prison or angels in costume.

5. It is contradicted by psychology and common sense, for its view of souls as imprisoned in alien bodies denies the natural psychosomatic unity.

6. It entails a very low view of the body, as a prison, a punishment.

7. It usually blames sin on the body and the body’s power to confuse and darken the mind. This is passing the buck from soul to body, as well as from will to mind, and a confusion of sin with ignorance.

8. The idea that we are reincarnated in order to learn lessons we failed to learn in a past earthly life is contrary to both common sense and basic educational psychology. I cannot learn something if there is no continuity of memory. I can learn from my mistakes only if I remember them. People do not usually remember these past “reincarnations.”

9. The supposed evidence for reincarnation, rememberings from past lives that come out under hypnosis or “past life regression” can be explained—if they truly occur at all—as mental telepathy from other living beings, from the souls of dead humans in purgatory or hell, or from demons. The real possibility of the latter should make us extremely skittish about opening our souls to “past life regressions.”

Please Note: While I would agree with the demonic aspect, I do not agree with the idea of purgatory nor can I agree with the idea of the souls of dead humans communicating with living people. The dead are confined, according to Scripture, and cannot reveal themselves. This is suggested in the story of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16 and by the extreme surprise of the witch of Endor when she saw Samuel who was dead (see 1 Sam. 28:8f). She claimed to be a medium or one who contacts the dead, but when Saul requested that she contact Samuel and when God brought him forth, it startled her and brought great fear. This appeared to be her first experience with the real thing, i.e., with seeing the dead because this is normally not possible. When people do experience such experiences or contact, what they are seeing or experiencing is better identified as demonic.

10. Reincarnation cannot account for itself. Why are our souls imprisoned in bodies? Is it the just punishment for evils we committed in past reincarnations? But why were those past reincarnations necessary? For the same reason. But the beginning of the process that justly imprisoned our souls in bodies in the first place—this must have antedated the series of bodies. How could we have committed evil in the state of perfect, pure, heavenly spirituality? Further, if we sinned in that paradise, it is not paradisical after all. Yet that is the state that reincarnation is supposed to lead us back to after all our embodied yearnings are over.

If the answer is given that our bodies are not penalties for sin but illusions of individuality, the pantheistic One becoming many in human consciousness, no reason can possibly be given for this. Indeed, Hinduism calls it simply lila, divine play. What a stupid game for God to play! If Oneness is perfection, why would perfection play the game of imperfection? All the world’s sins and sufferings are reduced to a meaningless, inexplicable game.

And if evil is itself only illusory (the answer given by many mystics) then the existence of this illusion is itself a real and not just illusory evil. Augustine makes this telling point.

Where then is evil, and what is its source, and how has it crept into the creation? What is its root, what is its seed? Can it be that it is wholly without being? But why should we fear and be on guard against what is not? Or if our fear of it is groundless, then our very fear is itself an evil thing. For by it the heart is driven and tormented for no cause; and that evil is all the worse, if there is nothing to fear yet we do fear. Thus either there is evil which we fear, or the fact that we fear is evil. (Confessions, VII, 5)

(See also Justin Martyr, Dialog with Trypho [ca. a.d. 180], and Albrecht, Reincarnation, for extended Christian critiques of this idea.)

The following information is from The Bible Has the Answer by Henry M. Morris and Martin E. Clark (Master’s Books, El Cajon).

The first, most glaring dissimilarity between reincarnation and Biblical doctrine occurs in the idea of a recurring cycle of existence. Does each person live many times in the same or different form? The Bible says, “It is appointed for men once to die, and after this comes judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). The Scripture pictures death as a separation of the soul from the world, Christ Himself describing death as God requiring man’s soul (Luke 12:20). When a saint of God dies, rather than merely being promoted to a higher status for another lifetime, he enters his eternal estate, secured for him by God’s grace. The divinely inspired apostle exclaimed, “We are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8). Christ’s record of the rich man and Lazarus shows that both the saved and the unsaved enter their respective rewards following death (Luke 16:19-31).

So then, one’s life is not followed by an indefinite number of succeeding lifetimes. This vital difference established, more tangible differences emerge.

Classical ideas of reincarnation know nothing of a personal God who enters holy relationships with His creatures. In fact, ultimate reality is usually conceived as a cognitive process within man himself, rather than as a personal God.

Further, reincarnation schemes make men’s spiritual advancement contingent upon his mortal efforts, attempting to make merit outweigh demerit. Christianity shows, however, that salvation cannot be earned by sinful man, but rather, it is merited by Jesus Christ’s substitutionary death and resurrection for all who believe. “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

Also, many theories of reincarnation hold that man’s spiritual, physical, and moral conditions are determined by a former life and therefore not under his control. Physically, this has led to a passive, pessimistic acceptance of untold misery that was actually unnecessary. Spiritually, it is even more devastating. The Bible reveals that no one is bound in his sins against his will, and though born under Adam’s curse, “if we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Through God’s forgiving grace, “though your sins be as scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they will be like wool” (Isaiah 1:18). Consequently, the Christian does not worry about his merit outweighing his demerit, for his sins have been forgiven, God having promised, “I will remember their sins no more” (Hebrews 8:12).

Finally, some people attempt to equate reincarnation with the Christian doctrine of resurrection, but in doing so, violate the meanings of both reincarnation and resurrection. Reincarnation advances a future life on earth, bound by similar constraints and physical laws, while the resurrection speaks of that time when earthly bodies with all their accoutrements will be transformed and fitted for their eternal estate (John 5:29). Reincarnation holds that matter is essentially evil, while resurrection demonstrates that there is no moral dualism between matter and spirit. Reincarnation posits a future life in a different body (or even a different order of physical life), while resurrection promises that one’s own body will take on a new, incorruptible, glorified form. Describing the resurrection, Paul stated, “It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body . . . it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:42, 44).

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houseofvans · 7 years

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ART SCHOOL | Q&A w/ Mark Rogers (PDX)

Known for his oil paintings of extraterrestrial beings in Western backdrops, artist Mark Rogers creates quite literally some out-of-this-world artwork. Rogers’s pioneer and alien narratives started out as writings that would later evolve into his body of work, focusing on this idea that “aliens are [the] modern folklore creatures of our current time.” We’re excited to chat with this self taught artist and talk about various topics including his paintings, his sketchbook, and his sighting of a U.F.O in 2009!

Photographs courtesy of the artist.

Tell us about yourself Hi, I am Mark Rogers. I am a painter from Portland, Oregon. I have an irrational fear of bees, I am a vegan, and I love metal. Thanks so much for interviewing me.

What is your art background and when did you first get into drawing? I have been drawing for as long as I can remember. A lot of my elementary school memories were of me drawing on back side of whatever assignment the teachers had handed out to us, and possibly getting into trouble for it.

Being self taught, what are your thoughts on the advantages and disadvantages of maybe not attending art school? Well, I don’t have to deal with the crippling student loan debt. Perhaps this is the most advantageous aspect of being self-taught. I received my degree in Political Science of all things, perhaps out of a sense of naive idealism before the grim apathy of adulthood sunk it’s fangs into my heart. I started making art seriously at an older age, (around 27) and felt that the school-thing wasn’t for me any more. Because I have never been to art school, I can’t completely attest to the advantages, but I do know quite a few other artists who have gone to art school, who also work a few shifts a week in restaurants and bars like myself. The same holds true of political science majors. It seems like I’m on the right path.

Tell us about your current work which feature some prominent protagonist in the form of extraterrestrial beings interacting with American pioneers in the 1800’s. How did they evolve into your subject matter? Before I started painting, I dabbled in writing, but I wasn’t really that good at it. My pioneer/alien narrative coalesced over the course of many paintings and sketchbook doodles and I am learning more about the story all the time. I feel that Aliens are the modern folklore creatures of the our current time as maybe fairies and elves were their predecessors from earlier generations. I have always loved westerns, but felt that they were sort of boring due to the lack of magic or mystery. A lot of people might say that my work is science fiction, but I am actually trying to create/explore a newer fantasy paradigm that is both magical and American. …..also I saw a UFO in 2009.

Wait, whoaaaa … Please share with us your U.F.O story. It was the early summer of 2009 and I was married at the time, living in Springfield Oregon. My ex-wife and I were walking down Centennial Blvd around dusk, headed to the corner store, when we both saw a glowing ball of orange light silently make its way really low across the sky to our right to vanish over the horizon line. We both looked at each other with huge eyes and say at the same time “UFO”. It was super weird and eerie.

Later that summer we bought a telescope and spent a bit of time each night in the back yard hoping to see something like what we had witnessed, but sadly I have never seen anything like that ever again. That was around the time that I first began painting, although I didn’t paint aliens and such until much later. The painting that I made called, “Prayer to the Magi” depicts the actual UFO that we both witnessed. It might not be an actual ship from outer space, but it was certainly unusual, and unidentifiable.

What’s the weirdest comment or compliment you’ve gotten on a piece? I had a guy the other day tell me that if I painted an Alien virgin Mary, he would have that tattooed on his belly. Some people just message me wanting to talk about their experiences or their extraterrestrial DNA.

What were you painting or drawing prior to extraterrestrials? Can you look back and see a direct evolution to what you’re painting now? What was your first painting, painting? I have always done narrative paintings with characters but they didn’t have the same theme as my current work. They focused usually on something personal in my life that bothered me and I would use symbolism to create an image usually with ghosts and skulls and creepy spooky stuff. My first painting sucked and it was of a woman with branches growing out of her head and perched on the branches were crows. I recently learned from Game of Thrones that was she was doing would be considered “warging”.

Do you keep a sketchbook or work your ideas as you go along? What type of sketchbook do you keep – disorganized chaos or neat and clean? Hell Yeah!! My sketch book is my most important art weapon as well as a wonderfully antisocial lifestyle choice. I have used a lot of sketchbooks over the years, but my total favorite is the Stillman and Birn Gamma Series 9X12. My sketchbooks are filled with thumbnails, doodles and watercolor paintings. Some pages are organized and some are bonkers depending on my sobriety during my bi-weekly drink and draw sessions. I usually go out to coffee and draw once or twice a week too. I bring my sketchbook along with a box of art supplies with me everywhere.

What are the current mediums you work with? What about them are forgiving and what about them is challenging if at all? I love oil painting!! It is my main medium and mega-forgiving. I have tried comic-style inking but getting all the lines perfect on the first shot really stressed me out. I love the slower drying time of oils, the rich colors you can get with glazing, and the texture of the paint. The poisons are fun too! I live in a small studio apartment and my easel is about 8 feet from my bed. The only thing that is really challenging about oil painting is that packing in tiny details can be a little tricky, but it works for me, and I don’t ever foresee changing mediums.

What’s your specific artistic process like? Does a schedule help you? Are you a morning person or night owl? I am extremely process oriented. My typical flow goes: Sketchbook thumbnail, gather reference, better sketchbook thumbnail, draw on the panel, spray fix and cover it with matte medium, then do an underpainting and then the final layers. After that I varnish the painting and photograph it, frame it, and then usually mail it somewhere. I have a suggested art schedule, but I never stick to it. Instead, I am always kind of working or squeezing in chunks of painting time in here or there. I am a total night owl, in fact I rarely leave my apartment unless it is dark out.

What artists are you really into at the moment? What is it about his or her work that stand out to you? I like so many artists both classical and contemporary that it is hard to really answer this question. I am very inspired by a lot of my friends and the community of people that I have met online. I feel like the person that most fascinates me currently is James Gurney because he is really into sharing his process. I have learned so much by just reading his blog. I love how he is a plein air painter as well as an amazing illustrator. I have almost all of his books.

Do you have a favorite pair of Vans (classics, sk8-hi etc)? I am currently wearing the AUTHENTIC black on black, but I also have had a ton of the OLD SKOOL and SK8 HI in the past.

What are some words you like to live by? I don’t have an exact quote, but I am very big on the idea of “Grit” as a personality trait. According to wikipedia: “Grit in psychology is a positive, non-cognitive trait based on an individual’s passion for a particular long-term goal or end state, coupled with a powerful motivation to achieve their respective objective.” I feel that Grit is the most important personality trait of any serious artist.

What are you looking forward to the rest of this year artwise? I have been working a ton with Red Truck Gallery in New Orleans, and I will continue to over the course of the year, with maybe a trip down to Los Angeles for the LA Art show and another trip to NOLA for fun. Also, I would really like to complete a very large painting with lots of characters before the year is over. Finally, it would be nice to have the Alien implant in my frontal cortex removed if possible. Thanks so much for interviewing me, Mike!

Follow Mark Rogers Website | http://www.markrogersart.com Instagram | @Markrogersart

#Art #Vans #Vans art #Mark Rogers #Art School #Interview #Aliens #Extraterrestials #oil painting #pdxart #painter #ufo

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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Supernatural: The Best Episodes

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This Supernatural feature contains MAJOR spoilers up to and including the series finale.

Over the course of 15 years, Supernatural aired an extraordinary 327 episodes, every single one of them starring the same two people, a quite incredible achievement (there were two attempts at backdoor pilots, but both featured Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles at least briefly).

In 327 episodes, of course, there have been some stinkers, and there have been moments of brilliance. Supernatural did scary episodes, gross-out episodes, funny episodes, tragic episodes, tragically funny episodes and episodes set on its own soundstage. Here are 25 of the very best.

25/327*. Carry On (Season 15, Episode 20)

*delete according to preference, and see “Dishonorable mentions” below

We’re being controversial right off the bat, as the series finale has fans split right down the middle between feeling pretty pleased with it and absolutely hating it. And for the many fans that hate it, they really, really hate it. If that’s you, we understand your issues with it – see our ‘Dishonorable Mentions’ list.

But for others, while this ending was somewhat marred by coronavirus restrictions (which are surely to blame for Sam’s wife being blurred in the background instead of clearly shown to be Eileen, and possibly for the absence of Castiel as well), there were also moments of emotional catharsis and beauty. Heaven has undergone some drastic improvements since we last saw it and the afterlife is no longer strangely lonely and depressing. The music choices for the episode are perfectly on point – it almost seems strange we haven’t heard ‘Brothers in Arms’ before – and finally the promise of ‘Carry On, Wayward Son’ is fulfilled, as “surely Heaven waits for you”.

Best moment: Hearing the voice of Original Bobby (not Apocalypse World Bobby) for the first time since Season 11.

Quotable: “Always keep fighting” (Dean, to Sam)

Watch if you like: Tragic melodrama, great music, Bobby

24. Devil’s Trap (Season 1, Episode 22)

Supernatural’s very first season finale set the tone for many more finales to come. The arc plot kicked up a gear, Winchesters pointed guns at each other, and the whole thing ended in a nail-biting cliff-hanger. This episode sets up much of how the show will work, including the important detail that demons possess innocent humans, which led to our heroes spending some years trying to avoid killing them where possible (before they eventually gave up on that one). Most important of all, though, this is the episode that introduces Jim Beaver’s Bobby Singer, who would become the Winchesters’ surrogate father, and whose particular brand of caring, with a hefty dose of calling them idjits, was always entertaining with a warmth underneath the humour.

Best moment: Sam refuses to kill his father – the first of many times this sort of decision will be forced on the brothers.

Quotable: “The storm’s coming, and you boys, your Daddy – you are smack in the middle of it” (Bobby)

Watch if you like: Family melodrama, demon arc plots, Bobby

23. All Along The Watchtower (Season 12, Episode 22)

Death and life have always gone hand in hand in Supernatural, and nowhere is that clearer than in this game-changing season finale. We lose one of the show’s few regular characters, Mark Sheppard’s Crowley, along with a newer, highly likeable, recurring character, Courtney Ford’s Kelly Kline, both in moving self-sacrifices that honor the characters and their development. (Oh, and Castiel dies again too, but of course that doesn’t stick). On the other hand, we gain two new characters. We meet Apocalypse World Bobby, and while he can never really replace the Bobby the boys knew and loved, he brings some essential Bobby-ness back into the show. And Jack is born, Castiel’s (and later the Winchesters’) adoptive son, whom Cas is convinced will create a paradise in the future. This episode is full of great character work featuring numerous fan favourites, along with genuinely exciting plot developments that left viewers itching for the next season to start.

Best moment: Castiel took an online doula class in preparation for Kelly going into labour, but it didn’t cover quasi-celestial beings.

Quotable: “Whenever there is a world ending crisis at hand, I know where to place my bets. It’s on you, you big beautiful lumbering piles of flannel” (Crowley)

Watch if you like: Alternate universes, self-sacrifices, Bobby

22. Don’t Call Me Shurley (Season 11, Episode 20)

This episode has shifted down the list since we last ranked it, as the plot developments of season 15 have robbed it of some of its joy, but the episode itself still stands up. It’s well known that Supernatural is often kind of a grim show, and one of the pleasures of watching it is that, however crappy your life is at that moment, it’s not as crappy as Sam and Dean’s. There are occasional moments of satisfaction (like the killing of Azazel in “All Hell Breaks Loose”) and there’s certainly plenty of humour, but real, honest to Chuck, joy? That’s rare, and the best example (Dean’s Heaven) required both main characters to be dead. So there’s something really special about this Season 11 episode, in which God finally comes back (and reveals that He has, in fact, been helping out on the odd occasion all along). The rest of the episode, in which Metatron makes the case for humankind to God, is a philosophical and meta-fictional treat as well, but it’s that conclusion that really makes it something to remember.

Best moment: Dean pulls his old amulet out of Sam’s pocket – signalling that God has returned.

Quotable: “You know what humanity’s greatest creation has been? Music. That, and nacho cheese” (Chuck)

Watch if you like: Philosophy, happy endings

21. Lebanon (Season 14, Episode 13)

Supernatural’s 100th episode (“The Point Of No Return”) was an arc-plot heavy drama; it’s 200th (‘Fan Fiction’) was a delightful and comedic take on the show. For this, the 300th episode, the series went in a different direction again, and focused on the Winchester family unit, bringing Jeffrey Dean Morgan back as John Winchester for the first time since the season 2 finale. Sam and Dean’s whole story has been driven by their broken family life, and before this the closest they’d come to being together as a family was a brief car ride with their parents’ unknowing younger selves while time travelling. Here, they get to spend some proper time together as a family, before it’s inevitably cut short – and as a bonus, we get to see Zachariah (not seen since the 100th episode) and Scary Castiel again as well.

Best moment: All four Winchesters, all alive at the same time, have dinner together. It’s lovely.

Quotable: “Now you live in a secret bunker with an angel and Lucifer’s kid” (John)

Watch if you like: Jeffrey Dean Morgan, family dinners, anniversary episodes

20. Roadkill (Season 2, Episode 16)

Many of the episodes on this list are major arc plot-related episodes, or hilariously funny format-bending episodes, or both. But it’s also worth celebrating episodes that offer just a really good Monster of the Week, and this is one of them. Supernatural was inspired early on by urban legends, and this episode is a sad, scary and effective take on a classic, the Vanishing Hitchhiker. Guest star Tricia Helfer does a great job as Molly, whose perspective we follow throughout the story, keeping her true predicament from both her and the audience until the twist ending. The episode’s conclusion was also the first time we saw a suggestion of something potentially positive waiting for human souls after death, giving all the many, many dead characters on the show a glimmer of hope.

Best moment: The reveal of Molly’s true nature isn’t really a surprise if you’ve ever read a ghost story, but it’s very well done.

Quotable: “Follow the creepy brick road” (Dean)

Watch if you like: urban legends, scary ghost stories, plot twists

19. Scoobynatural (Season 13, Episode 16)

By Season 13, inevitably some viewers had drifted away from the show, as people will when something runs as long as Supernatural has. “Scoobynatural” had a concept so enticing, it brought some of those viewers back (only out-performed in the ratings that year by the season opener). Not only was the idea of Sam and Dean in a Scooby Doo cartoon too good to miss, Supernatural also has an excellent track record in comedy episodes. These can be hit and miss on most shows, but Supernatural’s comedy misses are few and the hits are plentiful enough that six of them are on this list. Viewers trusted the show to make this work, and that trust paid off – the episode is both very funny and touching, as all the show’s best comedy episodes are.

Best moment: Sam and Dean trying to explain to the Scooby Gang that no really, ghosts are real.

Quotable: “We’ve been stopping real estate developers when we could have been hunting Dracula? Are you kidding me?! My life is meaningless!” (Fred)

Watch if you like: Scooby-Doo, crossovers

18. No Rest For The Wicked (Season 3, Episode 16)

The writers’ strike cut Season 3 short (yes, Supernatural has been going that long), which meant the planned story arc, in which Sam and Dean desperately tried to find a way to get Dean out of the deal he made with a Crossroads demon, also had to be wrapped up in fewer episodes than anticipated. The solution was truly shocking – they failed. Dean was sent to Hell and viewers were left with an image of him being tortured and screaming out Sam’s name. OK, no one really thought he was going to stay there for ever, but it was still a bold move.

Best moment: Sam joining along in a singalong to Bon Jovi’s “Wanted” with his brother, knowing they only had a few hours left.

Quotable: “Family don’t end with blood, boy” (Bobby)

Watch if you like: Dante’s Inferno, soft rock anthems

17. All Hell Breaks Loose, Parts 1&2 (Season 2, Episodes 21&22)

Like “No Rest For The Wicked,” this was a real watershed moment for the show. Sam’s death and the deal Dean makes to bring him back set in motion just about every major storyline since. But these episodes don’t make the list just for that reason. The “only one can live” set up Sam is dropped into is always an intriguing premise, and these two episodes make up a dramatic, satisfying season finale in which the bad guy of two years is dispatched, the Winchester men get some closure, and the mythology gets a bit more development.

Best moment: Sam’s first death. The regularity with which the Winchester boys die and come back to life is a long-running joke and has even been the focus of more than one episode over the years, so it’s easy to forget just what a huge, horrifying moment that first death is, back when they used to take it seriously.

Quotable: “That was for our mom, you sunnnuvabitch” (Dean, to Azazel’s dead body)

Watch if you like: The Hunger Games, Jensen Ackles emoting

16. Abandon All Hope… (Season 5, Episode 10)

Season 5 was Supernatural creator Eric Kripke’s final season as show-runner, and it was written to be the final season of the show. The story arc followed the boys’ attempts to stop the oncoming Apocalypse and recapture the Devil himself, with the stakes getting higher and higher as the season wore on. “Abandon All Hope…” is a turning point, hammering home the seriousness of the situation by killing off half the regular supporting cast, after which the story became increasingly grim until our heroes faced an impossible choice in the season finale. It’s also the episode that introduces Mark Sheppard as Crowley, King of the Crossroads Demons, who immediately cements himself as much more fun than your average demon.

Best moment: Ellen staying with a mortally injured Jo as they sacrifice themselves to save the boys.

Quotable: “Your choice. You can cling to six decades of deep-seated homophobia, or give it up and get a complete bailout for your ban’s ridiculous incompetence” (Crowley)

Watch if you like: Mark Sheppard as Crowley, tear-jerkers

15. Nightshifter (Season 2, Episode 12)

Sam and Dean spent much of the first few years of the series on the run from the law, despite having several police officers in their debt. This would continue until the police thought they were dead, only for the pair of them to turn up again, and the threat of jail time if they were ever caught and identified never quite went away. This episode, in which a shape-shifter is carrying out bank robberies, really notches up the tension as they come to the attention of the FBI in the worst possible way, as well as observing the tragedy of a well meaning civilian caught up in something he doesn’t understand.

Best moment: The brothers escape to the tune of “Renegade,” by Styx.

Quotable: “We’re not working for the Mandroid!” (Sam, to Ronald)

Watch if you like: Bonnie and Clyde, The Lone Gunmen

14. Death’s Door (Season 7, Episode 10)

The decision to kill off Bobby permanently in season 7 was controversial, to say the least, but it’s hard to deny his final episode as a living member of the team is a great one. Poor Bobby’s backstory is revealed to be even more tragic than we already knew it was, but more importantly, his bond with the boys and the reasons their relationship is so important both to them and to him are explored. It also prompts the show to explore a fairly obvious question – we’ve seen plenty of ghosts on the series whose bodies were burned, so even with hunters’ funerals, how is it we haven’t seen more beloved deceased characters return after death?

Best moment: Bobby giving his alcoholic father a proper telling off in his imagination.

Quotable: “As fate would have it, I adopted two boys, and they grew up great. They grew up heroes” (Bobby)

Watch if you like: Bobby and Rufus, daddy issues

13. Dark Side Of The Moon (Season 5, Episode 16)

The earliest episode to acknowledge how often the boys have died and come back to life, “Dark Side Of The Moon” sets its cards on the table by abruptly killing them both in the first few minutes. We finally get to see what happens when you go to Heaven in the world of Supernatural, and it’s a little weird and oddly lonely (with the exception of “soulmates”, everyone is off in their own little worlds – thankfully this is eventually rectified) but it’s a satisfying journey nonetheless. Not that Dean or Castiel would agree, as this is the episode in which they give up on searching for God, having been told He isn’t interested.

Best moment: Dean’s Heaven – playing with fireworks with Young Sam. It’s a truly joyful sequence.

Quotable: “Gentlemen, I don’t mean to be a downer, but I’m sure I’ll see you again soon” (Ash)

Watch if you like: Family drama, nihilism

12. Baby (Season 11, Episode 4)

The Supernatural team have always been clear that the Impala is the third main character on the show (sorry, Castiel) so this Season 11 episode shifts focus to tell a story entirely from the car’s point of view. No, this isn’t a Herbie or Transformers situation – rather, the entire episode is shot from inside the car. What this means for the story is that we get to see different parts of Sam and Dean’s day – while they’re off investigating, we see the Impala get taken for a joy ride by a car park attendant, and Sam and Dean’s traditional emotionally-charged conversations are given a little more space to breathe. This is how you shake a show up while keeping its unique feel after eleven years.

Best moment: All of Castiel’s hilarious phone calls.

Quotable: “Never use Swayze’s name in vain, OK? Ever” (Dean)

Watch if you like: Classic cars, Bob Seger’s “Night Moves”

11. What Is And What Should Never Be (Season 2, Episode 20)

Towards the end of season 2, as the series started to grow in confidence, Supernatural started to do slightly more experimental episodes that took us away from the straightforward “Sam and Dean hunt a monster” set-up. The first meta-fictional episode was the fun “Hollywood Babylon,” while this was an early glimpse of an alternative timeline – or, rather, an hallucination of Dean’s under the influence of a djinn. The result was a fun “what if” scenario and a lovely penultimate appearance from Adrianne Palicki as Jessica, but it culminated in a truly heart-breaking moment for Dean as he confronts everything he, Sam, and their father have had to sacrifice in their attempts to help others, and is forced to choose life at the expense of happiness.

Best moment: Dean breaks down at his father’s grave.

Quotable: “Look, whatever stupid thing you’re about to do, you’re not doing it alone. And that’s that” (Sam)

Watch if you like: Alternate timelines, wishes gone wrong

10. The French Mistake (Season 6, Episode 15)

In this episode, Sam and Dean are pulled into a parallel universe where they are the actors Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, the stars of the TV show Supernatural. The story takes the highest of high concepts and makes it work beautifully, including an appearance from Padalecki’s real life wife and former co-star Genevieve Padalecki and Misha Collins sending himself up gloriously. There’s even a clip of a much younger Jensen Ackles on Days Of Our Lives thrown in. A joy from start to finish.

Best moment: Sam and Dean trying to act. They are not good at it.

Quotable: “You married fake Ruby?!” (Dean)

Watch if you like: High concept comedy, Misha Collins

9. The End (Season 5, Episode 4)

What better way to raise the stakes early in the season than to flash forward five years and reveal what the world will look like after the Apocalypse has come about? Funny and heartfelt in equal measure, this is a classic alternate timeline story with a twist. It is also a really important episode in the development of Lucifer as a character, here played with squirming intensity by Jared Padalecki, who gets to sit out most of the story while Jensen Ackles pulls double, only to come and steal the show at the end. It also features some advice from Chuck (i.e. God) to hoard toilet paper, which turned out to be remarkably prescient.

Best moment: The reveal of Hippie Future Castiel, who has taken a surprising attitude towards the end of the world.

Quotable: “When you get back there, you hoard toilet paper. You understand me? Hoard it like it’s made of gold. Cause it is” (Chuck – some people clearly took this advice too much to heart in 2020)

Watch if you like: Dystopias, toilet paper

8. Fan Fiction (Season 10, Episode 5)

The show’s 100th episode was an important moment in its then-current story arc, but it was the 200th that really celebrated in style. Watching a girls’ school put on a musical version of the Supernatural story (the Kripke years) sounds like a terrible idea but they pull it off brilliantly, making an episode that is both funny and sweet. Most of all, though, this is just a treat for long-term fans, full of call-backs, references, and in-jokes, and that finally ties up a loose end from “Dark Side Of The Moon” in an emotionally satisfying way.

Best moment: The lovely cover of “Carry On, Wayward Son” at the end of the show.

Quotable: “That is some of the worst fan fiction I ever heard!” (Marie, on hearing what happened after the end of Season 5 – a popular take on just about everything that’s happened since then in some quarters)

Watch if you like: Musicals, subtext

7. The Monster At The End Of This Book (Season 4, Episode 18)

Neither “Don’t Call Me Shurley” nor “Fan Fiction” would have been possible without the episode that introduced Chuck in the first place, though back then he was nothing more than a cowardly writer and (apparently) reluctant prophet. Supernatural had done a few meta-fictional episodes by this point but “The Monster At The End Of This Book” was the moment they took it to new places, creating the fictional Supernatural universe within the Supernatural universe and allowing the show to explore fandom, fan fiction, fan conventions and fan musicals further down the line. The whole concept is a real treat for the show’s real life fans.

Best moment: Sam and Dean discover online fandom and slash fiction.

Quotable: “They do know we’re brothers, right?!” (Dean)

Watch if you like: Fan fiction, meta fiction

6. Faith (Season 1, Episode 12)

This low-key Season 1 episode may seem like an odd choice for the sixth best episode ever out of 327. But there are two reasons for singling out “Faith” here. One is to highlight just how good Supernatural’s early ghost stories were. We could fill a whole list with classic examples of spooky tales done really well from the show’s early years (“Dead In The Water,” “Bloody Mary,” “No Exit,” “Playthings”). “Faith,” though not strictly about a ghost, centres around a faith healer’s wife controlling a reaper. But “Faith” is more than a good yarn done well. It’s also the episode that showed what the series could be, as it started to deal with the deep and complex philosophical themes the show would later explore in more obvious, explosive ways. There’s also a great guest performance from Angel: The Series’ and Dexter’s Julie Benz, and poor Dean finds himself dying from something fairly mundane – not for the last time.

Best moment: “Don’t Fear The Reaper” is put to great use here as the reaper hunts down a jogger.

Quotable: “You better take care of that car, or I swear, I’ll haunt your ass” (Dean)

Watch if you like: Theology, Blue Oyster Cult

5. Mystery Spot (Season 3, Episode 11)

The best comedy episodes of Supernatural are not only side-splittingly funny (and they are), they also have a dramatic punch, an element of real drama behind the comedy. “Mystery Spot” is based around a twist on the Groundhog Day concept, in which Sam has to relive a day on which Dean seems doomed to die over and over and over again, unable to prevent it. Dean’s many, many deaths caused by all manner of strange things (just how did he manage fatally to slip in the shower?) are very funny, but Sam’s increasing difficulty in dealing with the situation, and then his terrible three months without Dean (this was the first time that had happened since the series began) bring sincere emotions to the table as well.

Best moment: Sam working out that the Trickster is behind everything.

Quotable: “OK, look. Yesterday was Tuesday, right? But today is Tuesday too” (Sam)

Watch if you like: Groundhog Day, Final Destination

4. Pilot (Season 1, Episode 1)

Not too many shows can claim their pilot as one of their best episodes. But Supernatural’s Pilot really is a great episode of the show. It kicks off the series’ major plot arc, of course, but it also introduces the show’s humor and heart. On top of all that, the Pilot also features a classic Ghost of the Week that’s spooky and sad and ghoulish, as all good ghost stories should be.

Best moment: Our introduction to Dean’s “mullet rock” music collection, including two classics from AC/DC (“Back In Black” and “Highway To Hell,” of course).

Quotable: “We got work to do” (Sam)

Watch if you like: Mullet rock, ghost stories

3. Swan Song (Season 5, Episode 22)

The episode that would have been the series finale, if the show hadn’t been renewed and taken over (first by Sera Gamble, then Jeremy Carver, and finally Andrew Dabb and Robert Singer). “Swan Song” would have made a great finale as well – it’s thrilling, satisfying, tragic and funny all at once. The main reason it’s not higher on this list is that it is a little bit of a downer – if the series had actually ended there, there would have been a lot of Fix Fic out there online, sorting it out. Granted, that’s true of the series’ actual finale as well, but honestly, think about it, and take out the sequel hook shot of a resurrected Sam at the end of “Swan Song” which presumably wouldn’t have been there – this one is even more depressing.

Best moment: The opening narration, describing how the Impala has always been the boys’ real home.

Quotable: “Hey! Assbutt!” (Castiel, to Lucifer)

Watch if you like: Supernatural. Honestly, this one is the conclusion to five years’ story-telling – don’t start here!

2. Changing Channels (Season 5, Episode 8)

Is this the funniest comedy episode of Supernatural? It’s a tough contest, but the genital herpes commercial Sam is forced to star in might just give it the win. But “Changing Channels” is more than comedy. The reveal that the Trickster is actually the Archangel Gabriel in disguise really shouldn’t work, but somehow it does, and it brings a new dimension to the Trickster’s previous appearances (especially “Mystery Spot”) as well as a solid conclusion to this one. But really, the episode’s greatness lies in the fact that it’s just. so. funny.

Best moment: The Impala/Sam as KITT from Knight Rider.

Quotable: “Should I honk?” (Sam/the Impala)

Watch if you like: Grey’s Anatomy, CSI, Knight Rider, cheesy sitcoms, Japanese game shows, adverts for genital herpes treatments

1. Lazarus Rising (Season 4, Episode 1)

What with running for 15 years, Supernatural went through a fair few major upheavals and shifts that sent the show in a new direction, and several of them are on this list. Nothing, though, beats the appearance of real, possessing-someone-else’s-flesh-and-blood angels on the show. This was the episode that made Supernatural what it has become, for better or for worse.

But that alone isn’t the reason we’ve put it at Number 1 of 327 episodes. The episode is hugely emotionally satisfying – although Sam and Dean had both come back from the dead before by this point (Dean technically dozens of times) Dean coming back from being buried for months is undeniably huge. The series needed to show how much of a big deal this was, and they did. We immediately learn that angels are terrifying and that wherever they go, collateral damage follows (it’s easy to forget that the first thing Castiel does on this show is burn out an innocent woman’s eyes).

And then, we finally get to meet an angel face to face. Castiel, in his first appearance, is genuinely something to behold. The deep voice, before it became the subject of in jokes and deadpan comedy, was originally intended to convey gravitas and power, and it works. This is a force like nothing the boys have encountered before, and it is awesome in the classic sense of word – full of awe.

Later, of course, Castiel would become the third member of Team Free Will and one of the most important characters on the show, next only to Sam and Dean. Misha Collins has made the character funny and loveable and awkward and generally indispensable. We wouldn’t change Castiel for the world and certainly don’t mean to suggest that it’s all downhill from his first appearance. Indeed, that later legacy is part of what makes this episode so special.

But really, it’s that entrance we can’t get enough of. We get shivers every time.

Best moment: Castiel’s entrance, of course. Though the rest of the episode is very good as well.

Quotable: “I’m the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition” (Castiel’s first line)

Watch if you like: Castiel, angels

Honorable mentions

There were so many great episodes we didn’t have room for here – “My Bloody Valentine” (gory and funny in equal measure), “It’s A Terrible Life” (a classic Angel Shenanigans of the Week story), ‘The Born-Again Identity’ (Castiel’s return after it looked like they really had killed him off this time), “Houses Of The Holy” (the first references to angels on the show), “Everybody Hates Hitler” (a solid adventure during the course of which the boys discover the Bunker that has become their home), and “LARP And The Real Girl” (probably the best and most fun episode featuring fan favorite Charlie, played by Felicia Day) are just a few of the other greats.

Dishonorable mentions

We don’t want to spend too much time focusing on the negative, but we should probably acknowledge that, in 327 episodes, the show has occasionally got it wrong. Generally speaking, any time the show decides to feature dogs (the domesticated variety, not werewolves) the results tend to be less than excellent – “Man’s Best Friend With Benefits” is a real low point, and while many fans love “Dog Dean Afternoon,” we find it cringe-worthy. “Bugs” and “Route 666” (the one about the racist truck) are the two most often picked on by the writers themselves as examples of terrible episodes, though since both are from Season 1, they’ve long receded into most viewers’ long-term memories.

And of course, there’s “Carry On.” For every fan who found it a flawed but satisfying ending, there’s another who ranks it somewhere up there with Game Of Thrones’ and How I Met Your Mother’s finales in the All Time Terrible Series Finales Hall of Fame. There were too many people missing (largely the fault of COVID-19, but that doesn’t really help), especially Castiel and Eileen, whose absences were palpably felt. To leave Misha Collins and Castiel out all together after years of him sharing show-leading duties with Padalecki and Ackles seems very wrong, and many fans were disappointed that we never really see Dean react to Cas’s confession of love for him in ‘Despair’. Dean’s abrupt death felt anti-climactic to many, and the fact he was robbed of the chance to live a life free of Chuck was frustrating. And on top of all that, Sam’s grey-haired wig really was quite terrible. So all in all, while we would still say that for us it felt like a fairly well played conclusion to the story, we can understand that for many, it belongs at the top of the list of Dishonorable Mentions.

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Did your favorite episode of Supernatural make the list? Let us know in the comments below…

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areyoulookingforanintern · 4 years

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WEAVING STORIES /Artefact Magazine

Originally published on Artefact Magazine,

https://www.artefactmagazine.com/2020/01/29/weaving-stories/

Fate is a funny thing; the ancient Greeks believed it was the Moirai, who controlled fate through the art of spinning and weaving. One crone to hold the string, another to measure it out, and the final crone to decide when it is time to cut.

Penelope, the wife of Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey, was a weaver; it was said that she would weave a shroud by day and unravel it by night to keep potential suiters at bay while she waited for Odysseus to return.

The Roman poet, Publius Ovidius Naso (Ovid), wrote about the story of Philomela: a Princess raped by the husband of her sister. The husband threatened her to keep silent, but she was defiant, and had her tongue cut out as punishment.

Unable to speak, she wove the story into a tapestry and sent it to her sister. The sisters killed the sons born to the husband and served them to him in a meal; praying to the gods for protection, Philomela and her sisters were turned into a nightingale and a swallow.

Weaving, one of the oldest skills, is intertwined in everything: from our myths to our clothes, and yet it is a medium that is under-acknowledged.

Premier Vision is one of the leading French companies responsible for organizing textile and fashion trade shows. Twice a year, they host trade shows that revolve around a changing concept. For the Feburary 2020 show the brief is the word ‘Revelry’, meaning lively and noisy festivities.

UAL weaving student Caitlin Hartmann will be attending the show with samples of her textile work and hopes that she will be able to sell her unique designs.

Caitlin has chosen to interoperate with the Premier Vision brief, ‘Revelry’, in a fantastical way, coincidentally in spirit with the myths and stories surrounding the actual skill. “I wanted to look at something much more frivolous essentially. The brief itself is called ‘Revelry’ so you want it to be something fun” Caitlin said. Drawing inspiration from the nature of Scotland, her own photography, and exhibitions she had seen recently, she emphasised a William Blake exhibition at the Tate Britain.

“He often looks at things about the supernatural and fairies. A few of them really drew themselves to me. I realised I kept going back to that way of thinking [about Revelry], so I thought I would look into something to do with fairies or mythologies, thinking about summer solstice and all the abbreviations of that [like] looking into Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

In connection to Scotland, where Caitlin spent her summer and visited right before Christmas, inspiration was found in poems about the Lady of the Lake, connected to the Scottish lake, Loch Arthur.

“When I looked down the pathway of the Lady of the Lake, a lot of the poems that were written about her were all based on lakes in a really Moor-y Scotland and by the lochs; so, it is really misty and blue, pale and magical in that sense”.

During her trips to Scotland, Caitlin’s photography is mainly based on different elements of water, mist, and fog. That kind of drew me down a pathway of looking at things from woodland to water”.

While on one of her trips to visit her dad in Scotland, they went to a new restaurant that opened in Newport-on-Tay. The restaurant has an amazing view over the river Tay, allowing guests to see two bridges that cross the river to Dundee.

“I photographed it whilst I was in the restaurant at lunchtime and it had the most beautiful foggy-misty scene, and different tones of blue”. Caitlin prints all her photographic research out on high-quality photography paper as the colour can change drastically from what is seen on a phone and what is seen in real life – this always helps with colour matching when shopping for yarn.

The main trio that provides the overarching colour inspiration for Caitlin’s piece for Premier Vison are blue; all three photos have a variant of grey and blue gradients going through the picture.

The pictures were all taken at different times of the day during the visit, which gives a much richer sense of tone to the area, as well as an understanding how a place can change so drastically.

The main blue collection can be compared, and aligned with this photo taken outside the restaurant. By then the day had turned into a much darker and moodier colour – just before nightfall.

The greys and blues tie well with the main blue collection seen above. However, the photo also has whites and pinks, offering further connection with the more moss and tree oriented pictures and their colour scheme.

The greys featured in the photo are also similar to the greys used in William Blake’s ‘Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing’, as well as the light peachy pink.

The winding for this photograph uses green, pink, and a light brown – corresponding well with the other earthy photos she has produced. The winding mimics the way that the colour travels through the photo, no matter what way the winding is rotated.

This colour palette stays coherent throughout all the natural and earthy research photos – it is important to note that black is never used in any of the windings as it is much too harsh.

This photo of a tree stump closely aligning with the imagery of William Blake’s Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing, in colour scheme but also in imagery: “This was the photo that was taken from the wood recycling place, it has connotations of fairy wings or moth wings inside bark of the tree. I thought it was really beautiful”.

Similar to the bark with fairy wings, this photo of a beached jellyfish carries the same colour palette but with almost more of a celestial feeling; again bringing in connotations to William Blake’s work, specifically the Angels Hovering over The Body of Christ in the Sepulchre.

The navy used in the natural windings is also keeps up with the main trio of blues taken at the Newport on Tay restaurant. “I didn’t want to make it too harsh, I wanted to make it like it bonded with the rest of the work.

I am using these navy colours in some of my other pieces I thought it translate easier into the blue sections”.

“The last vestiges of autumn, I really like the different shaping and how it travelled around. It is a much closer detail as opposed to looking at something as a whole, far away in the landscape”, offering contrast to looking at the leaf as whole object on its own, Caitlin also has a companion photo that offers the alternative perspective of the whole landscape.

The colour scheme of greens and delicate reds and oranges, the reminiscence of autumn before winter, stay the same but the context changes giving it new meaning and understanding.

The corresponding windings for the images featured more mossy tones that are less hard and cold than the bark and jellyfish windings.

The research that goes into developing one of Caitlin’s textile designs is not always necessarily imagery-based. “I often think it is quite hard to look into what other weavers might do; It’s amazing to see the history of weave before you, but to then translate that into your own work can often be seen as copying”.

Instead Caitlin would rather draw inspiration from fine artists and other textile designers, and then go off a do research through photography and drawings. “It is a process of looking at the world around you based on the influence of the theme that you are going for, and then translating that through paintings in my art book, that will form the basis.”

Alternatively, lots of inspirations or research for Caitlin’s projects comes from interviews with people that are relevant to the chosen theme. “I will start, quite unusually I think, from a word basis to then get colour depictions and ideas from”.

Her last project looked at alternating perspectives in contrast to her own; the project was based in and about Morocco. “I wanted to think about the way I see Morocco and the way someone the same age as me, who is at the same point in life as me, sees the country completely differently based on different perspectives”.

During a trip to Morocco, Caitlin met a boy, same age as her and in the same point of life, who’s perspective of Morocco became the ground research for the project.

Throughout the project, Caitlin kept in constant dialogue with the boy about how they each see colour differently. Asking him series of questions about how he saw Morocco.

“One of his answers that really caught me was when I asked him to summarize it through this colour perceptive, he said that he saw it as a mixture of dark colours with small drops of red that are filled with the love that his family have for him. That then formed the grounds for the majority of my weaving”.

Caitlin made her warp threads, the threads used to weave into, out of blue-black and green threads. An extra warp, which you can bring in and out of the weaving, of red thread was used to convey the red drops filled with familiar love. She conducted three formal interviews with her friend: one in the beginning, one in the middle, and one in the end, to keep a constant communication between research and researching – like live fact-checking.

After the first interview, Caitlin created a colour pallet purely based off of what she had been told, this helped her make colour studies surrounding the raw pallet.

She sent them to her friend and asked if this is what he meant when he was being interviewed the first time, “the colours had changed meaning; I showed him a colour of red, he said initially it meant happiness but I mixed it with a much darker tone and added some different bits of black to it, so he said no, this now represents more of a depression.

“I said it was still the same colour you [he] told me, he said when you have added these other components it has changed the meaning. It really shows how colour is such a fluid concept, and that it changes depending on perspective and position in the world”. His response to her first colour studies made her tweak and change it until eventually her final piece was created, this she sent to him too for a final interview.

The final piece was very different to the initial samplings that Caitlin has made and become attached too, but the end result was a harmonious mix between what she had seen in Morocco as a visitor and what he had experienced in Morocco as a native – further emphasising her original understanding of differing perspectives despite being that same age and at the same point of their lives.

Conducting interviews functions as a major part of project research makes the pieces have a much deeper meaning and connection, in contrast to only responding to imagery with no outside viewpoints or information – very different from the current Premier Vision project that is majorly based on reaction to imagery.

Research stemming from a word basis to create colour depiction was only a recent methodology that Caitlin experimented with during her foundation year – at the beginning of her fascination with textiles.

Her final major project, Connotations of Love, was based on paternal love. “I started looking at how different people all understood the same word that we have, that covers so many different things. I wanted to uncover how multi-faceted and fluid the word, and the nature of the word, is”.

Caitlin interviewed her twin sister about her relationship with their father, one that has always been very interesting, she also went ahead and interviewed her.

She also spoke to own father about his relationship to his fathers, “he has his biological one and his stepfather, both of who he has had really difficult relationships with at times… his biological father he did not speak to for 10 years for different reasons, he understood that having two [fathers] did not change the love”.

Caitlin also sought interviews from outside her own family, asking a friend who has never met her father her understanding of paternal love and how different it is for Caitlin and her sister’s understanding and perspective of paternal love. “Love is just a word, it is how you attribute it to your own life that gives it meaning; it is a neutral term, but how you experience can make it good or bad”.

The final piece became very 3D based and interactive for the audience, shown alongside snapshots of the various interviews that Caitlin had done. The main element in the final piece were three large pieces of wood that had been found at a wood recycling place near Caitlin’s house.

“There are these massive pieces of wood that they have, that people have donated or cut down from trees to help repurpose them. They have their own workshop and factory which they make handcrafted items from. I picked this one huge piece of tree with the bark still attached on the edges, which is really rough and natural. They cut it down for me into three pieces which formed the three pillars, where I discussed visually the interpretation of my research”.

Caitlin’s discussion included ceramics found at a workshop that had many old forgotten pieces of china that people did not want anymore; she smashed them against the patio of her home, stemming from her research-based on Ai Weiwei’s installation of a precious vase that had been broken, thought to be high in value.

Caitlin’s own china was repurposed to look like they were coming out of the wood itself – perhaps this can be interpreted as something to do with broken trust. Caitlin also cut out blocks of wood from the bottom of her three pillars, inserting rocks and roses trapped in resin, “trapped in a state of decay,” hanging from string in the now open space.

With the spare wood that she had cut out, she burned it in her garden and featured the ashes at the bottom of each pillar. Her final major project piece is much more multimedia oriented than what she is working on now, “but I would not ever limit myself to one form of medium, because there are so many different ways to express feelings and information that I get.”

In February 2020, after her trip to Paris for Premier Vison, Caitlin will be going to India for a sponsorship opportunity. The sponsorship itself will work as a placement for her final major Bachelors project focused on sustainability and is much more akin to the type of work and weaving that Caitlin aims to do after University.

She will be based in a rural village in north-east India, Nagaland, where she will be able to learn their indigenous techniques of weaving, using a back-strap loom, which is much different the weaving technique she has currently been doing – and not something available to her currently at University.

“It is pretty much the furthest region of India that you can go to, so it has a really interesting cross-cultural mix of its surrounding areas. It is a very tribal area, so it will be really interesting to learn about their culture and history,” she said.

“I am really excited to go and learn about how they do it, and get that real cultural sensitivity to what they are doing but understanding how it works in the wider context of the world”.

The prospect of being able to travel around the world learn how other cultures weave and what it means to them is a much more attractive thought of life after University for Caitlin.

Having a cross-cultural exchange of knowledge that would allow someone to find ways to improve businesses, work as a part of the community, “and not just take from them and what they give me, but also see how I can interact with them on a very holistic level.” Caitlin’s interviewing technique would come in handy in such a life – almost like a weave-specific anthropologist.

The interviews that Caitlin will conduct while in India will work as a ground basis for her final major project as well as the final major project essay. It is all about understanding who they are, who she is in relation to them, as well as understanding their interactions together and the connections she will undoubtedly make; similar to her work in Morocco.

“A lot of their weaving is very culturally rich in heritage and have very specific meanings, and they do not want to have that appropriated and sent out to the western world of fashion to have that extrapolated from them. I really want to understand their real sacred sense of weaving”.

You can follow Caitlin’s artwork on Instagram @caitlinannatextiles

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sleepyskunk · 6 years

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Deconstructing the 2017 Movie Trailer Mashup

Why deconstructing a mashup? Because these videos are often perceived as a random mess of pretty images from movie trailers. While that’s absolutely true, there’s an opportunity to explore themes and also pay a few obscure tributes to elements that don’t belong in the video itself but that are generally widespread within pop culture. These montages have been going on for a few years now, and it’s hard to edit the footage in a way that won’t feel reminiscent of one of the many great retrospectives put out by other talented editors in years past. I have to say that trying to build a narrative with all that footage has now become more enticing to me than to highlight the moments that made the year in cinema within their proper context. Let’s get right into it, shall we?

Someone on Reddit commented: “starting off with GEOSTORM, that’s a bold move!” and it didn’t even cross my mind. The shot was exactly where I wanted to go right off the bat - a blend of childlike wonder and eerie caution reminiscent of earlier Tim Burton films. The track was composed for a television spot called “A Wonderful Day” from IT and it showcases major Danny Elfman influences. Thus, this was my small tribute to the Burton/Elfman collabs happening under snowfalls like EDWARD SCISSORHANDS or BATMAN RETURNS. I loved the contrast in dialogue from PERSONAL SHOPPER which was such an under-appreciated indie film this year. Every mashup has its horror section, but I am gently sneaking you in by the supernatural door this time around. It’s just innocent enough to deceive those who hate horror.

Childlike wonder flawlessly captured in one shot, from the lens of Matt Reeves. I can’t say I connect emotionally with his APES movies, but the quality control on every frame, CGI or otherwise, it pretty much above and beyond all industry standards. That facial expression is exactly what I needed, you can tell she’s not too sure whether she’s safe or not but without feeling properly scared either. This is like the part in the original POLTERGEIST where kitchen chairs are moving on their own and the family still thinks it’s kind of fun. Kind of.

KING ARTHUR is the best type of release when it comes to trailer mashups because 1) it had a fantasy undertone 2) it was tracking poorly and 3) it went way over budget. Big studios know months in advance if they have a major bomb on their hands, and they have two choices at that point: either stop spending a penny on it and dump it for a quick theatre run and VOD release (more common if the movie didn’t cost that much) or, like in this case, spend extra millions of dollars to sell the shit out of that movie on opening week-end before everyone realizes it’s bad. Those extra millions go towards CGI money shots like the one above, which is really meant to make the marketing more attractive and oh dear lord, did KING ARTHUR have some last minute money shots to offer or what? It was a joy to pick and choose from its nine trailers.

This is where I put my cards on the table, whimsy never happened and I am taking you all to creepytown. That shot from ANNABELLE: CREATION is one of the many that upstages the featured evil doll in that wonderful movie and the film’s cinematographer Maxime Alexandre reached out because he was happy so much of his work was featured. You never know in front of who your videos can end up and industry people are keen on celebrating the year in film, especially if their own works are included. This is just a top notch unsettling shot clearly inspired by THE SHINING (the girl’s dress and the way her arms look lifeless.) On a side note, I always manually add all sounds including that floor cracking. If anyone reading this is starting off editing mashups, I promise you one thing: using professional, isolated, studio-recorded sound effect packages such as BOOM library is much superior to the original trailer track (unless you get a clean sound within the trailer.)

Another random insight (if you’re interested in making your own movie mashups) is to try as much as possible to avoid that one marketing shot everyone recognizes. You can revisit a memorable moment but going straight to the most oversold shot of a film hurts you. While you’re eager to make everyone relive the most epic imagery of the year, some value gets lost when a studio bombarded the same shot over and over and you go for it. Two quick examples: Giant hologram JOI pointing at Ryan Gosling in BLADE RUNNER 2049. I wanted that moment, but the original side-scroller shot was so overused that I went with her from a closer angle (see video thumbnail). Another example is that uncomfortable sniffle from Daniel Kaluuya in GET OUT which I favored over the super overplayed mouth open crying paralyzed shot from every marketing piece. In both cases, I assume you know which shots I am referring to without having to show them. Trying the alternative makes us relive the moment without its obviousness. It gives that other shot they didn’t choose its moment to shine (and more often than not, it’s just as effective.)

Someone’s not getting much sleep. A CURE FOR WELLNESS is a gorgeous-looking film no matter what you think of its bizarre plot points. I spend much of the first segment flirting with the creative key points from IT. One I tried to play around with is the idea of Pennywise as a half-real/half-fiction monster, and how similar to Wes Craven’s A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET his realm of terror extends. A few winning concepts in both films: 1) He isn’t real but he can really hurt you so you have to stay on your guard at all times and 2) Only a select few have been cursed with having to deal with him, adding a psychological layer to an already spooky premise. Dane Dehaan looks like a kid from Derry, or Elm street if you prefer, whose mental focus seems affected by the fact that he saw something, and his friend saw him too. Meanwhile, I throw in a completely out of context quote from Vanessa Redgrave which ties in that mysterious “sickness” from Verbinski’s film.

A shot from PROFESSOR MARSTON AND THE WONDER WOMEN from a trailer edited by Kees van Dijkhuizen Jr. for Annapurna Pictures where he works as an in-house editor now. In 2015, I talked about Gen Ip’s storytelling approach and last year I praised Matt Shapiro’s famously epic crescendos, so this year, let’s talk about Kees a little bit because I find all their influences fascinating. My first observation is how far his much-adored Cinema series has taken him, and that one of the top production houses in the business (if not the top, sorry A24 and Fox Searchlight) hired him so he could bring his own distinct style onto their major features. The whole trailer mashup craze started off only a few years back and so many editors were recruited right off YouTube to turn their passion into a livelihood down in Los Angeles. I can think of at least six editors whose names you’d recognize and who are now living the dream, and I consider this to be really inspiring because none of them initially got into it thinking something like that was ever possible. (side note: I also moved to L.A. and was poached by a trailer house but prefer to keep things on the low-end until it’s been long enough. I wouldn’t want to jinx it.)

The second observation about Kees is how much influence he’s had on every mashup that gets uploaded on a daily basis every December (me included) - I will link his Cinema series below. Instead of pairing clips into a horror bit, an action bit, a laughing and dancing bit, a kissing and crying bit, Kees was always out to create new feelings and nothing ever seemed more important than proper flow. Many shots would pop-up that you would never expect thematically, images of moving objects like a breaking glass transitioned with a girl’s hair waving through the wind (also see the lie detector in the previous shot.) He would connect nature documentaries right along with major superhero blockbusters and the movements flowed so perfectly that nothing ever felt out of place, quite the contrary. He was the best shot curator we’ve ever seen, and the order in which he put them together was beyond logic and predictability. Imagine “One Perfect Shot” but with 275 perfect shots back-to-back. If you want a prime example of what I’m referring to (random objects and flow), check out 2:49 - 2:52 from his Cinema 2011 (links below). Kees set the bar so high that attempting an end-of-year mashup certainly felt foolish at times, but hoping to improve made the editing process all the more inspiring.

CINEMA 2008 | CINEMA 2009 | CINEMA 2010 | CINEMA 2011 | CINEMA 2012

So apparently, they have the internet and flat-screen TV’s in RINGS but landline phones are still a thing. Quite frankly, I haven’t seen RINGS and I bet it’s aggressively ordinary, but how retro horror is that shot? Paired up with the voice of THE SNOWMAN saying “Mister Policeman” it’s a throwback to Nancy being terrorized by Freddy in the original Nightmare of Elm Street (minus the tongue.) I was also pleased with the aesthetic of HAPPY DEATH DAY, clearly the product of horror fans who grew up during the low-budget slasher craze of the early ‘80s. It’s got MY BLOODY VALENTINE written all over it (meanwhile their poster was paying homage to APRIL FOOL’S DAY.) Retro horror, in all its disturbing practical gore glory! Rick Baker, Tom Savini, how much we missed you in our modern times where only a few major productions have enough VFX money to escape the uncanny valley (and even then... *cough* JUSTICE LEAGUE.)

I always tend to edit right on tempo, which means switching shots at the exact moment the music beat tells you to. But over here, I thought this elevator drop from FLATLINERS looked so frenetic and out of control that I started it half a second before as if the beat couldn’t keep up! Like in cartoons when the car accelerates so fast that it takes off but their eyeballs are standing still for a little fraction. This whole mashup sequence is meant to be a little cartoony and tongue-in-cheek. To anyone who found this to be disturbing (and yes, I heard from a few viewers who said it was too much) I must admit that it wasn’t my intention. I won’t apologize for my work, people choose to watch if they want to or not. But if I really tried my best to scare the crap out of you, I can assure you THE LEGO NINJAGO MOVIE wouldn’t have made the cut.

Now channeling a CHILD’S PLAY vibe thanks to this retro television shot from the highly underrated BRIGSBY BEAR. A kids program works well as an element of fear because it��s supposed to be a safely protected zone of positivity and care, just like a doll or a clown for that matter. Once that turns on its head and begins to attack, you basically have nowhere else to hide. It also makes for great contrast, and Andy Muschietti must have had an absolute blast this year incorporating this component into his remake of IT. The bear costume was one of the many shots that wasn’t from a horror movie and yet I used to great effect in this section. I know there was a new CHILD’S PLAY movie this year but sadly, it didn’t hold a candle to the Hitchcockian original.

“At the end of the day, people are out for themselves.” That’s not true, and only people who are out for themselves could believe that. Because if you’re weighing low on the morality scale at some point in life, you still wanna go to bed thinking you’re a good person. So if you can’t justify what you did, the best logical next step is to convince yourself that human nature is to blame, that everyone else would have done the same as you. Ask people who were charged with insider trading on the stock market, they’ll always say “everybody was doing it.” I could refer to a certain World War to keep hammering that point but instead, I’d like to point out the interesting contrast between this and Part 3. I try to disprove that very statement by showing in the finale that everything we do that matters is for others, and others are the only thing that matters once everything else has come and gone.

The KING ARTHUR studio spending extra millions of dollars to sell the shit out of that movie on opening week-end before everyone realizes it’s bad money shot festival continues. EPIC! In fact, that shot is so gorgeous, you could place it anywhere in any mashup ever and it would probably work.

Having a bit of fun giving a more literal visual cue to IT’s “We all float down here” with Guillermo Del Toro’s hypnotically beautiful THE SHAPE OF WATER. However, it’s not the tudum tssshh, get it? movie connection that works here. It’s the underwater sound effect and the incredible sound mixing by trailer house Buddha Jones so that Georgie’s voice seems to come from the bottom of the ocean. This is likely the best sound work you’ll hear in the entire mashup, and I didn’t mix it, the editors behind that teaser trailer did. In fact, their work was so effective at scaring people that it earned twice the amount of views on YouTube than what Avengers: Infinity War received. A fact Kevin Feige will likely never admit.

That moment when you realize your manic pixie dream girl wears white socks! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I've used vulgarity in the past but not every year, depends whether it brings value. Some of you may remember “Game on, c***suckers” from KICK-ASS 2 in 2013 or “Nap time, motherf***ers” from COOTIES in 2015. Perhaps there’s another guilty pleasure at play here, however, which is that feeling of pure creative freedom. As mentioned earlier, not everyone digged the horror undertone of this year’s Part 1 and that’s okay because it went exactly where I wanted to go and no compromise was made. No client notes. No studio revisions. No censor beeper (which makes it worse because we seek to find out what the word was.) If you get into professional careers that are creative in nature, you’ll find that teamwork, compromise, and not taking anything personally are all essential components for success. But when the movie trailer mashup comes around, I report to no one. And that moment from THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING MISSOURI is one I wanted included as soon as the red band trailer came out.

This shot comes from a small movie you should seek out called MY NAME IS EMILY starring Evanna Lynch (aka Luna Lovegood in the Harry Potter movies.) The film was directed by Simon Fitzmaurice who was diagnosed with Motor Neuron Disease (ALS) a few years ago, the debilitating disease for which the viral ice-bucket challenge was based on. He wrote the screenplay for this movie while his body was entirely paralyzed, and the only way he could communicate with the cast and crew while shooting the film was through eye gaze technology. There was a documentary following his brave journey that played Sundance called IT’S NOT YET DARK. Check it out if you need some real work ethic motivation and want to feel truly inspired about overcoming challenges. Much better than THE DISASTER ARTIST which is a spoof about a millionaire with no talent who mistreated the people who worked on his film. Okay, it’s still very entertaining and James Franco is hilarious but I don’t get a ‘never give up’ vibe from it, more like ‘maybe this isn’t for you.’

With the second segment, I was going for a British Gangster film vibe, hence the music cue Main Offender by The Hives. No movie captured that feeling better than Ben Wheatley’s FREE FIRE this year. I find the criminals in British movies are equally as clever in their quips as they are dangerous and often have the appearance of fair, well-behaved citizens until they have a reason to go mad. Jon Hamm’s performance in BABY DRIVER was also a textbook definition of that archetype, because all the build-up scenes where he acts friendly and discusses music with the titular character only bring an element of surprise at the end of his arc (spoilers: he’s not that nice in the end) I am aware that BABY DRIVER takes place in America but it’s directed by a Brit so it counts!

If Kubrick only knew his famous jump cut from 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY that connects a flying bone to a space shuttle would lead to this fifty years later. What a shit show jump cuts have become! But they’re fun, and let’s be honest here: 7 minutes of serious quotes about life would get a little heavy. The way you edit jump cuts is the same way to solve a puzzle with over a thousand pieces. Extract dozens of short action clips onto your timeline and try to make them fit with one another over and over until you’re entertained. I mean, the music stays the same in the background, all I am doing here is deciding which projectile this pair of underpants from CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS will become. The answer was a tranquilizer from the underground mall chase sequence in Bong Joon-ho’s excellent OKJA. Maybe we should try one really long domino of jump cuts one day. Should take forever to edit, but how much fun would it be?

Did you know that Academy Award winner Alicia Vikander was a professional ballet dancer before she started acting? Work ethic applies in everything you do. When you hear about successful actors, you often discover people who are world-class at delivering under pressure and dedicating themselves to their craft with an insane amount of work. Acting is hard and yet so many people think they can do it, which makes it even harder. At least ballet puts constraints right off the bat, you need flexibility and a specific body frame. Part 3 is about finding your passion AND putting in the work. Just finding your passion is hard! It’s not always the bottomless pit one could hope for, especially when it becomes a real job with hours upon hours of work. Many people don’t even know what their passion is, they know what they’re good at but don’t love it. “Without your passion, it’s very hard to find our place in the world.” I don’t think you need your income to come from your passion in order to find said place, but I wish everyone that many of the limited hours they have each day goes towards their passion, and not towards something that feels like a waste of time. Wanting to wake up has everything to do with what happens after your first cup of coffee. Put your time towards something meaningful to you, even if it’s only on evenings and week-ends and you’ll never make a penny from it. If you love animals, volunteer at a shelter. If you love to travel, just GO!

But what happens when your family conflicts with your passion? Would you leave them behind to pursue your dreams? We all remember the tragic scene from DEAD POETS SOCIETY where a young scholar gets forced by his father to become a doctor instead of his passion and commits suicide. And then we have this year’s COCO, Pixar’s big comeback, where music is prohibited in Miguel’s family but it’s all he dreams about. But that conundrum doesn’t even have to be confrontational in nature. What if you wanted to work in a low-paying field like online journalism because it’s what you love but your single parent (who always took care of you) became sick and needed you to take care of their treatment. What happens then? What comes first? I humbly try to answer that later in the segment, of course.

We always told you Daniel Radcliffe... you’re special. That’s why you have a scar on your forehead that looks like a bolt... Just kidding, poor guy. I look at Mark Hamill in THE LAST JEDI and keep thinking that if studios are still a private enterprise in 40 years, some new Harry Potter movie will come out in which an old bearded Radcliffe will be teaching at Hogwarts. (PS: he keeps making bold choices, so much so that I am willing to watch anything he’s in.)

A man’s reach... (or woman, btw) should exceed his/her grasp. Words from a poem by Robert Browning, suggesting that, to achieve anything worthwhile, a person should attempt even those things that may turn out to be impossible. The downside with attempting the impossible is two-fold, however. 1) You may spend your life trying and never succeed. 2) If you do get there after so much sacrifice and effort, the world will expect you to do it again, or to keep doing it at the same level or better. If you won a Gold medal at the last Olympics, what are the expectations for the upcoming Olympics? That’s where passions and dreams enter a darker road, one many people choose to avoid altogether. But whatever happens, it’s worth the risk as long as you have the one thing along the way that’s a hundred times more important. And that thing is...

...people who love each other! Look at this guy, he just figured it out!

Kate Mara in MEGAN LEAVEY really seems to be the one thinking out loud in this shot while we hear a quote from THEIR FINEST. I had a blast with the Freddy Krueger references earlier but this is my favorite part. Audiomachine make the best tracks to bring that crescendo to its proper peak. You can say this part of the mashup is more in my comfort zone. And the influences from Kees that I discussed earlier can be felt here. Some shots of objects and landscapes that aren’t thematically connected but keep a nice flow. I also handpicked the best cinematography of the year all at once here. MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS was a damn pretty movie, then SHAPE OF WATER, then THE MAN WHO INVENTED CHRISTMAS, then OKJA. Every shot looks like a million bucks. Notice the use of paper, letters and ink. I want to see you again, a character from EVERYTHING EVERYTHING writes on a sheet.

Family comes first is nice, but along with family comes conflict and distance at times. Things we said that we regret. Times we let each other down, or weren’t there when we needed to. All the papers dropping from the bridge, all the shots that refer to letter writing, that’s where I was going with that. Not always obvious because it moves so damn fast which is why I do this deconstruction blog post every year!

The final big lift from Disney’s BEAUTY AND THE BEAST! Also, the first frame I added onto my AVID timeline. This is how I organize my work basically. I pick the right songs, then I identify the exact moments in that song where a big moment should happen - if you use trailer music, it will be crystal clear what those are. And then I try money shots in each of these spots over and over until one really, really fits. Then, I ask myself how did we get here, how can I get to that point? And build around these big moments. The second shot I added into the mashup was the little girl in Part 1 under the bed who points to another version of herself sleeping in her bed and says “Shhh! That’s not me.” I put that in right when the music stopped, it became a big moment, and then I built around it in order to get there. Every editor works differently, but I am just sharing how I personally prefer to do it. Back in 2012, the first clip I added onto the timeline was “I have an army. We have a Hulk.” from THE AVENGERS which means I’ve been editing this way for five straight years.

Those letters of reaching out to people you care about. Apologies or wondering how they’re doing. Flying everywhere around Winston Churchill (that’s my dog’s name, he’s a Pembroke Welsh Corgi!) I guess you should always be the one to reach out in difficult situations with important people. The mistake is to not reach out, or convince yourself that they were dragging you down and you’re better off without them. That’s rarely the case, and you’ll never get over them when you know that’s not the case. Maybe they will reply someday, maybe they never will. But you swallowed your ego and you decided to give it one more shot. That’s the bravest thing we can do in this life, and I hope you’ll see it that way if the time comes. Happy New Year! Achieve your passions, take care of the ones you love and make it a wonderful day! (Halle Berry: “Aaaarrh!")

- Sleepy Skunk

#2017movietrailermashup

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bitefriction · 6 years

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There’s a lot going on in this post that I really want to address lol Mercury just went Direct so I don’t want to forget to mention anything I’ve been thinking about because I want to speak some things into existence.

This was a TV show called Noah’s Arc about the lives of Four gay best friends living in Los Angeles, with Noah undeniably being the main character. It premiered in October 2005 on the Logo cable-television network, quickly becoming the network's most popular program, and was Logo's highest-rated original series. I remember being maybe 11 or 12 stumbling across this show on the internet, I didn’t even find out about it until maybe 2007. Too bad it was cancelled shortly after 2006. I’ll admit, being very young and trying to figure out my sexuality I was only interested in the show for the very hot actors lol but as I got a little older I started to really see the world for what is was(I will get to this later) and actually held much appreciation for this show.

Let’s start with Noah, a concept. I recently went to this LGBT Seminar in Harlem where the creator of Noah’s Arc, Patrick Ian-Polk, was a guest speaker. Respectively, he is very well known in the Gay black community as the show’s creator and he was explaining his ideas that contributed to creating Noah’s Arc. He said something that particularly stuck to me about the character Noah being “sort of a Fantasy” don’t quote me but I very much remember the fact that there seemed to be a lot of Depth behind the idea of Noah being a Fantasy.

Noah was not very masculine, he was more of a feminine bookworm, it’s safe to say that he was more feminine based on his Voice, Wardrobe, and based on the way His boyfriends treated him. As a young boy, seeing this made me much more hopeful that Being Black and Gay was okay and that it was possible to find true love. Racial Representation in TV Shows is very important because we all know Society has a certain standard when it comes to promotion and Beauty, we can’t deny it, especially in America. Seeing a familiar image of Yourself on TV unconsciously informs us of our worth in the world. We ALWAYS see the “love interest” in most Hollywood shows and films being White, Blonde, Long Straight Hair, etc, and representation for Black Femininity and Beauty is at an all time low. Also being Feminine, Gay and Black? The way kids can be cruel and how the world already has it’s prejudices, being the combination of those three things can be seen as simply asking for ridicule. I think this was one aspect of what Director Patrick Ian-Polk thought of as Noah being a Fantasy, because it seems like in the world we live in, it would be a Fantasy to see a Beautiful Feminine Black Boy with Long Natural Hair being the Beautiful One, The Love Interest, or hell even just the main character.

I feel like I connect with the character Noah through many aspects of life, including his Hair. I started growing my hair out in 2011 and I remember going to my Childhood barber basically asking him how do I get curly hair lmao but that is a whole other conversation.... I eventually achieved the look that I wanted maybe 2 or 3 years later. At this time I was around 16 and I had achieved this look that I pictured in my head and I went back to watching Noah’s Arc. I noticed that I looked like Noah. I was Noah. Every aspect of his life was reflecting into my own life. I felt beautiful, I felt wanted by other men romantically... It wasn’t my intention to look exactly like Noah or maybe it was, but when I started growing my hair out the Natural Hair movement wasn’t as big as it is today. Nevertheless it was very much on the come up, there were very few black guys with long hair around me so I saw them mostly on tumblr and other social media sites. But now I can not deny the fact that Noah inspired my hair journey, and helped form my views of myself as a Gay man. Also, the hairstylist for this show deserves an award for promoting natural hair before it was even a movement. It’s very interesting to me, Noah’s Arc had the most versatile hairstyles for natural hair EVER seen on Television. I intentionally wanted you all to see that through the pictures.

It is a little difficult to watch the show online for free, I’ve tried many tv shows sites and didn’t get very far. If you got the coins like that, purchase the show it’s only 2 seasons, DVD online whatever, it was a really good show. Noah was played by Darryl Stephens and Noah’s boyfriends name was Wade. Maybe I’m living in a fantasy but I’ll be lucky if someone as handsome as Wade looks at me like he did Noah.

The true Standard of Beauty cannot be defined. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, beauty is not one specific thing. America and Hollywood like to push a certain standard which makes it harder for it’s polar opposites to get any recognition. You don’t have to look like Blake Lively to be seen as perfect, no shade to her but I’m bingeing Gossip Girl so it makes sense to me. I feel like I’ve found one of my purposes in life. As an actor, I want to portray character like Noah. Even if I only am known for one role, I want to change the way black men can be viewed just like Noah’s Arc did for me.

#Noah's Arc #Natural Hair

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impressivepress · 4 years

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Charlie Chaplin in Moscow

Early Soviet filmmakers took great inspiration from Charlie Chaplin, but his critique of mass production put him at odds with them.

In Charlie Chaplin’s 1914 film The Fatal Mallet, you can see “IWW” chalked on a wall in the background. While no one knows if the director — who grew up in south London’s slums and became a globally recognized comedian — supported the Wobblies at the time, we do know that the characters he played in dozens of short films in the 1910s and early 1920s would have.

In The Adventurer, he plays an escaped convict; in Police, an ex-con forced into burglary by unemployment; in The Bank, a janitor working next to, but unable to get ahold of, money; in Work, a downtrodden contractor; in The Immigrant, a migrant so frustrated by his treatment he kicks an immigration officer; and, of course, in The Tramp, a homeless man looking for a stable life. All these men, who populated the rapidly changing, expanding, and radicalizing United States, might well have written IWW on a fence in Los Angeles.

Chaplin wouldn’t state his politics explicitly until well into the 1930s, a move that would put him in the House Committee on Un-American Activities’ crosshairs. But in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, young Soviet artists, designers, and filmmakers already thought they knew exactly what his politics were.

In 1922, the new Moscow magazine Kino-Fot, edited by the constructivist theorist and committed Communist Aleksei Gan, published a special issue on Chaplin. Throughout, painter and designer Varvara Stepanova depicted the actor as an abstract object, his body’s parts transformed into exploded shards and flying polygons, identifiable only thanks to his trademark hat, cane, and moustache.

Aleksandr Rodchenko’s text declares, manifesto-style:

[Charlie’s] colossal rise is precisely and clearly — the result of a keen sense of the present day: of war, revolution, Communism.

Every master-inventor is inspired to invent by new events and demands.

Who is it today?

Lenin and technology.

The one and the other are foundations of his work.

This is the new man designed — a master of details, that is, the future anyman.

That same year in Petrograd, teenagers Grigori Kozintsev, Leonid Trauberg, and Sergei Yutkevich, who collectively called themselves The Factory of the Eccentric Actor (FEKS), published something called “The Eccentric Manifesto.” Under the sign of “Charlie’s arse,” they demanded:

ART AS AN INEXHAUSTIBLE BATTERING RAM SHATTERING THE WALLS OF CUSTOM AND DOGMA. But we have our forerunners! They are: the geniuses who created the posters for cinema, circus, and variety theatres, the unknown authors of dust jackets for adventure stories about kings, detectives, and adventurers; like the clown’s grimace, we spurn your High Art as if it were an elasticated trampoline in order to perfect our own intrepid salto of Eccentrism!

Meanwhile, a film director was perfecting a technique that would eventually bear his name: the Kuleshov effect, in which the juxtaposition of unrelated material creates a new mental link between them. He argued against slow paced, European montage, which treats cinema as a high art form akin to theater, and for the high-speed American montage that thrilled audiences.

Somehow, these people, all trying to create art in the young Soviet Union, agreed that Chaplin represented their ideal. In a series of theatrical productions and films over the next decade, they would try to make something that had the same effect on their viewers — a socialist, avant-garde slapstick comedy, informed by silent farce, technological romanticism, and contempt for high culture.

This history sits a little strangely with what many know about the Soviet Union’s first fifteen years of experimental filmmaking. Its directors, including Sergei Eisenstein, Lev Kuleshov, and Vsevelod Pudovkin as well as documentary pioneers like Dziga Vertov and Esther Shub, have earned formidable reputation for applying Marxist methodology to film.

Their contributions, including “the montage of attractions,” the “camera eye,” the “intellectual montage,” and the aforementioned Kuleshov effect, have grounded film curricula since the 1960s, often used in contrast to Hollywood’s formulaic spectacles. In fact, when French filmmaker Jean Luc-Godard stopped making crowd-pleasers in the 1960s and opted instead for punishing Althusserian didactic tableaux, he signed his films Dziga Vertov Group.

What this story leaves out is how Soviet directors’ ideas came out of their obsessions with the crassest and most lurid kinds of American film, its chases, special effects, and pratfalls. In translating Chaplin for Lenin, they combined these elements with their equally strong interest in another aspect of 1910s America: scientific management and industrial efficiency, especially the work of Frederick Winslow Taylor and Henry Ford.

The resulting films shared a bizarre and unstable comic Americanism, which you can see still in films like Kuleshov’s Adventurers of Mr West in the Land of the Bolsheviks, a high-speed, Keystone Kops satire about Western perceptions of the Soviet state; Boris Barnet’s Miss Mend, where an international communist secret society foils the evil plans of nefarious capitalists; Sergei Komarov’s A Kiss For Mary Pickford and Pudovkin’s Chess Fever, which used footage of American stars on Soviet visits and put them into new, bizarre farces; and Eisenstein’s first feature, Strike, where insurgent workers move with all the bounce and assurance of a mass circus troupe.

Stage director Vsevelod Meyerhold helped pioneer this style. From the early 1920s onwards, he developed a “biomechanical theater” that borrowed equally from the circus’s high-wire tricks and gymnastic leaps, from Charlie Chaplin’s and Buster Keaton’s jerky, ironic slapstick, and from the USSR’s development of Taylorism, led by government-sponsored think tanks like the League of Time and the Central Institute of Labor. The latter’s founder, Aleksei Gastev, a former metalworker, union leader, and poet, became a key figure for most of the 1920s avant-garde.

Looked at coldly, his ideas are unnerving and dystopian. He imagined the new Soviet working class as nameless machines working in seamless unified motion, a somewhat unlikely and wholly unfulfilled demand of the chaotic, largely rural, and unskilled labor force of the Soviet 1920s. Yet while Taylorism involved monitoring the worker’s motions to transform them into a predictable, high-performance cogs, Meyerhold’s biomechanics saw its protagonists as Chaplin-like comic machines, capable of humor and exuberance, not drab labor.

This appears even more strongly in another form of Soviet Chaplinism, which comes from an unlikely direction — formalist literary criticism. The great Viktor Shklovsky used Chaplin as an exemplar of his concept of “ostranienie” or “making-strange.” In his 1922 Literature and Cinematography, he tried to work out what set Chaplin apart from other actors, finally deciding that “the fact that [the movement] it is mechanized” makes it so funny.

In the American context, Chaplin was satirizing industrial, mass-production labor, but in the Soviet landscape — destroyed by seven years of war and economic collapse — the little tramp who moved with jerky assurance through a mechanized world was exactly the sort of “new man” they needed.

American visitors found this all disconcerting. The sympathetic artist Louis Lozowick had to explain to eager young constructivists in Moscow that he didn’t know anything about biomechanics, and that they, the Russians, had invented it themselves. A Ford Motor Company representative, treated by his hosts to some biomechanical theater, thought the whole thing ridiculous and farcical.

In the mid-1920s, the Soviet Eccentrists would move away from the leaps, special effects, and extravagant silliness of movies like The Adventures of Mr West and develop a more sober style, although equally indebted to the frantic pace of American montage and cartoonish American acting styles. The results, such as Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin and Pudovkin’s Mother, had a mixed reception in the USSR but became international sensations. Their kinetic action sequences changed cinema history, and their rousing revolutionary narratives got them banned across the free world.

This is when Charlie Chaplin first became aware of his Soviet fan club. He opposed the bans and helped get these films shown to American audiences. When Eisenstein made an abortive attempt to film Dreiser’s American Tragedy in Hollywood, the two directors became fast friends. But the Soviet film director who had the strongest effect on Chaplin — whose feature films like The Gold Rush and City Lights had become ever more sophisticated and socially critical — was Eisenstein’s great adversary, Dziga Vertov.

A groundbreaking documentarian, Vertov thought fictional films were inherently bourgeois and escapist. Nevertheless, his special effects, comic juxtapositions, and pounding sense of rhythm made him an Americanist in his own way. In 1930, he made the first Soviet sound film, Enthusiasm — Symphony of the Donbas. This hour of grueling industrial propaganda doesn’t much resemble The Fatal Mallet. It depicts mechanizing the Donets coalfield in Eastern Ukraine and teaching the mineworkers Taylorist efficiency.

Chaplin, however, was attracted to the unrivalled intensity of its juxtaposition of sound and image. Using field recordings from Ukraine’s mines and steelworks, Vertov created an industrial jazz of still-astonishing power, a relentless clanging pulse echoing that puts the soundtrack closer to Einsturzende Neubauten than to Al Jolson. Chaplin called it “one of the most exhilarating symphonies I have ever heard.”

Six years later, he made his response. Modern Times has become justly famous for its definitive critique of Taylorism and Fordism. In the factory sequences, machines feed Chaplin, his all-seeing boss monitors him on film, and the production line eventually eats him, until he floats, weightless, through the cogs inside, a tragic and bitter image of the smooth and seamless mechanized labor the Soviets longed for. Insisting on keeping the film wordless, Chaplin used a soundtrack of rhythmic clangs and crashes that mirrored Vertov’s “Donbas” symphony.

Coming when Taylorist speed-up was sparking some of the greatest strikes in American history — not to mention the CIO’s formation — you might expect that the Soviets welcomed the film as a critique of American capitalism’s brutality.

They didn’t. In a text called “Charlie the Kid,” Eisenstein criticized his friend for his satire’s infantilizing and utopic take on what mass production does to workers. Regarding the factory sequence, he asserted, “At our end of the world, we do not escape from reality to fairy-tale, we make fairy-tales real.”

The tramp of Modern Times, exhausted by labor and made homeless by unemployment, accidentally picks up a red flag midway through a strike, getting him arrested as a dangerous agitator. Chaplin himself would be notably supportive of the Soviet Union, and his refusal to fall in with McCarthyism was admirable; but the tramp might have silently held other opinions about industrial efficiency and five-year plans than those he helped inspire.

#charlie chaplin #film #jacobin magazine

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junker-town · 4 years

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What was most popular the last time the Chiefs and 49ers won a Super Bowl

The last two times these two won the Lombardi Trophy, things were pretty different.

It’s been quite a long time since the Kansas City Chiefs won a Super Bowl. In fact, it’s been a whole 50 years — the Chiefs won Super Bowl IV in the 1969 season. Kansas City had the fourth-longest active drought without a Super Bowl appearance until it earned a bid this season.

The San Francisco 49ers, on the other hand, have won a championship more recently. Their last Super Bowl win came in the 1994 season, when the Steve Young-led 49ers defeated the San Diego Chargers in Miami.

This year’s Super Bowl is also in Miami, but that’s about all that remains the same. A lot has changed in the world since the last time these two won championships.

Let’s take a look at what was happening in sports, TV, movies, pop culture, and technology the last time the Chiefs and 49ers won the Super Bowl.

1969 vs. 1994 in sports

1969

The New York Mets won the World Series, 4-1, over the Baltimore Orioles. Nicknamed the “Amazin Mets,” the victory was one of the biggest upsets in World Series history. The Mets it had a losing season each year before that.

The Boston Celtics were the NBA champions, as they defeated the Los Angeles Lakers in seven games. We saw the Celtics-Lakers rivalry heat up during this decade, and the two played in the finals six times — Boston won them all.

In college football, the Texas Longhorns won the national title, beating Notre Dame, 21-17, in the Cotton Bowl, and thus, Texas was truly back. What’s also interesting about this season is after the Longhorns defeated No. 2 Arkansas in December earlier that season, President Richard Nixon presented Texas with a plaque claiming the Longhorns to be the No. 1 team in the land.

1994

Major League Baseball strike: 1994 was a chaotic year for the MLB. Owners wanting to implement salary caps led to a players’ strike in August. It didn’t end for 232 days, the longest stoppage in MLB history, and there was no World Series. The strike cost management close to $1 billion, and players lost millions. It effectively ended Michael Jordan and Bo Jackson’s MLB careers, too.

The Nebraska Cornhuskers won the college football national championship by beating then-No. 1 Miami in the Orange Bowl. It marked head coach Tom Osborne’s first national title, though he’d go on to win two more in the 90s.

The Houston Rockets won their first-ever NBA championship, taking the seven-game series against the New York Knicks.

The O.J. Simpson chase: During Game 5 of Knicks-Rockets, NBC’s telecast was interrupted for the police chase of Simpson in his white Bronco:

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Tonya Harding won the U.S. Figure Skating Championship. As you probably know, that was before she was later stripped of her title for her role in the attack on her competitor, Nancy Kerrigan, which happened that same year.

1969 vs. 1994 in music

1969

The Billboard No. 1 song in 1969 was “Sugar, Sugar,” by a cartoon band named The Archies, from the animated TV show The Archie Show. Yes, this is incredibly weird to me, too.

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Other big hits during this year included “Honky Tonk Women” by the Rolling Stones, “Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In” by the 5th Dimension, and “I Can’t Get Next To You” by the Temptations.

The Woodstock music festival was held in August 1969. More than 400,000 people gathered on a farm in New York to see artists like Jimi Hendrix, The Who, The Grateful Dead, and Janis Joplin.

Photo by John Dominis/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images

The festival is known as one of the biggest and most important music events in history, lasting four days (it was originally supposed to be only three) while heavy rains caused delays of several acts.

The Beatles recorded their final album together, Abbey Road, which included classics like “Here Comes the Sun” and “Come Together.” That year, the group gave its final live performance, which took place on the roof of Apple Records.

1994

The No. 1 Billboard single for 1994 was “The Sign” by Ace of Base, which was the title track of the Swedish group’s debut album. This one was an absolute banger:

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Other hits like “Don’t Turn Around” and “All That She Wants” were on this album.

Some other popular songs from this year included Sheryl Crow’s “All I Wanna Do,” and Boyz II Men’s “I’ll Make Love To You.” This year Mariah Carey released her Christmas album, which is the greatest holiday album in history. I’m not 100 percent sure about that fact, but I’m right, OK? Hootie and the Blowfish’s Cracked Rearview Mirror album was released, though it became more popular the following year in 1995.

This was a pretty big year for debuting artists. Some of the more notable ones, to name a few: Weezer, Outkast, Beck, Notorious B.I.G., and Oasis.

Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain sadly died in April 1994.

1969 vs. 1994 world events

1969

One of the biggest moments in both the U.S. and the world history was the Apollo 11 mission, which successfully put the first-ever man on the moon. The mission, led by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, launched on July 11, 1969, and landed on the moon on July 20.

Photo by CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images

On July 18, 1969, U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy drove his car off of a bridge in Chappaquiddick, which resulted in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, a former campaign worker of Robert Kennedy’s. Although the news made headlines in the beginning, it ultimately was largely overshadowed by the Apollo 11.

President Richard Nixon was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 1969, for his first term.

On Dec. 1, 1969, a draft lottery was reinstated, for the Vietnam War. It was the first since World War II.

1994

Bill Clinton was sued for sexual harassment by Paula Jones while serving his first term as the President of the United States. The accusations Jones brought forward were allegedly from when Clinton was the governor of Arkansas in 1991. Judges allowed Clinton to avoid trial for the lawsuit until after he left office. Jones later settled her lawsuit in November 1998 after Clinton won the 1996 election.

The Republicans took control of the House of Representatives after Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America. Before Republicans took control. Gingrich signed the contract which laid out legislation that would be passed within the first 100 days of Congress.

Nelson Mandela was elected as South African’s president, in the country’s first-ever democratic election. The elections marked the end of apartheid in South Africa, and Mandela later established a commission to investigate human rights and political violations that happened during apartheid. Beyond his time in office, which lasted until 1999, Mandela is considered to be one of the greatest champions of peace and social justice, both in South Africa and around the world.

1969 vs. 1994 television and movies

1969

The No. 1 grossing movie was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. It later won four Oscars, including for Best Original Screenplay.

The children’s television show Sesame Street debuted on PBS in 1969. Sesame Street is still airing new episodes on TV to this day!

Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In was the most-watched TV show, a sketch comedy show hosted by comedians Dan Rowan and Dick Martin. The show featured actresses like Lily Tomlin and Goldie Hawn as performers, too.

1994

Seinfeld was the most-watched television show, while Friends and ER premiered this year. Nearly 22 million people watched the Friends premiere, and ER had over 23 million viewers. All three shows were the anchors of NBC’s Must-See TV lineup.

Disney’s The Lion King was the top-grossing movie that year, and other greats like Forrest Gump, Shawshank Redemption, and Pulp Fiction were released.

Frasier won its first Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series. It went on to win 112 Emmys until it last aired in 2004.

1969 vs. 1994 celebrities

1969

Celebrities born this year included: Brett Favre, Renee Zellweger, Jennifer Aniston, Paul Rudd (who’s a huge Chiefs fan), and Jennifer Lopez, who coincidentally is performing the halftime show at Super Bowl LIV.

Dwight D. Eisenhower and Judy Garland passed away. Eisenhower died of congestive heart failure. Garland was just 47 when she died of a barbiturates overdose.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney both got married this year, McCartney to Linda until her death in 1998, and Lennon to Yoko Ono until his assassination in 1980.

1994

Lisa Marie Presley married Michael Jackson. The marriage lasted two years before the couple filed for divorce.

Time to feel old! Celebrities born this year include Justin Bieber, Harry Styles, Dakota Fanning, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Joel Embiid.

Richard Nixon and Jackie Kennedy both passed away. Nixon was 81, and he died after suffering a stroke. Jackie O passed away of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at just 64 years old.

Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley divorced after 10 years of marriage. Brinkley was said to have partially inspired Joel’s hit “Uptown Girl.”

1969 vs. 1994 Technology

1969

The first-ever ATM was installed in the U.S.: On Sept. 2, 1969, the ATM became available to the public at Chemical Bank in Rockville Center, New York.

This one could only give customers cash, though more ATM advancements came soon after.

Televisions looked a lot different!

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On July 3, 1969, the internet’s first message was sent from UCLA: Two machines on campus that were linked together through ARPANET. There was an attempt to send “login” over the network to a group of Stanford students, but the program crashed after “l” was typed in.

1994

DirecTV’s first satellite digital television service launched. That year, there were just 320,000 subscribers.

Something called “Netscape Navigator” was the leading web browser at the time. I am 27 years old, and have no idea what this thing is:

Screenshot via Wikipedia

The IBM Simon debuted as the first-ever “smartphone” for sale: Thank God we have iPhones now.

Via Microsoft

There have been many changes in the 25 years since the 49ers last won a Super Bowl, and in the 25 years before that, when the Chiefs last earned the Lombardi Trophy. Fans of both teams are hoping they won’t have to wait as long to see them play in the Super Bowl again. But if they do, one thing’s for sure: the world will look a lot different.

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