upcoming exhibition and festival

Just invited and approved by school to attend the 3rd Yogyakarta International Media Arts Festival, thanks to Vladimir. Excited. I get to show the recent projects of Huashan and Taishan and my GPS works. Should be an exciting week.

life and death. up and down.

Getting somewhere with this last trek up Huashan. Perhaps it was obvious from the beginning, but I don't remember picking the mountains based on location. In any case I did intuitively somehow opt for the eastern most and western most of the sacred Taoist mountains of China. Had I thought about it before I would have thought of the sun. I'm sure. Taishan was birth from the research early on, but for some reason Huashan eluded me and my research assistants. Once there it hit me. so obvious. The mountain is constantly referred to as the most dangerous in china, the dwelling place of the gods, of the five immortals, a place pilgrims go to seek immortality. Huashan is the west. the setting sun. Taishan the east, the sunrise. Taishan is birth and the bloodline and king-line of china. Huashan is death.

The trek up was gorgeous. lonely. solo. precarious. rainy, cold. by the time I reached the midpoint where the majority of the 'pilgrims' start from the cable cars, I was wet with sweat and drenched by the rain. Unlike Taishan where there are regular covered rest spots and cafes and even hotels and restaurants, Huashan was (although crowded) without a dry place to sit and get warm.



I walk fast and compete when there is a slope. I had pushed myself hard and really needed a place to dry off and warm up while I waited for my students and family. Instead I sat in the rain and my body warmth quickly turned to extreme chill. I waited for 50 minutes and by the time they arrived on the cable cars I was shaking and chattering and as close to hypothermia as I've ever been. I had to descend. It was on my cable car decline that I had the space to reflect on the nature of the mountain (Kaatje was on my lap warming me up). It was then that death and the west and the setting sun hit me. so obvious. what else is seeking immortality but a wishful attempt to avoid death? The death mountain.

challenging orders - humor that pokes.

Two new favorite movies. Sedmikrásky (Daisies) by Vera Chytilová and Céline et Julie vont en bateau (Céline and Julie Go Boating: Phantom Ladies Over Paris), by Jacques Rivette.

Fantastic fun. a fusion of Dada, fluxus and Agnès Varda. the laughter, magic, gender and narrative play are inspirational.

by name

i was just enlightened in a delightful way that if you translate my name into japanese (after a decade there it's funny i never found this one) it's:

あす（明日）とぅ（登）れっど(赤）
it's a treasure. it means "Tomorrow climb with red"
and so as the days begin to count down towards the next mountain, Hua-shan, I have this new focus. an absurd new drive to paint the next mountain red.

creative genius and inspiration

This talk by Elizabeth Gilbert at TED touches something so wonderfully deep. I love how genius is the pixie, the shoe-making elf, the imp outside that touches us, passes through us, comes to us but is not of us. Creativity comes to us from daemons, from a divine genius. It removes the pressure of blocks, in some ways. Of course we need to work, to exercise our craft and skills and be ready, it's not that it can lead in all ways, but that there's this possibility of a spirit of creativity that can come through us. wonderful.

crayon art

Picture: CHRISTIAN FAUR

this has nothing to do with what i do, but it's so deliciously simple and so hilariously complex.

goals

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me,
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.

— Jenny Joseph, Warning, Selected Poems (1992) Bloodaxe Books.