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Idiom
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Art, #class: Interview with William Powhida and Jennifer Dalton
by Idiom July 13, 2010
I quickly realized they wanted my persona; drunk, coke-sniffing, womanizing douchebag, or some variation on that. I spoke to a few people who agreed it’d have been fun to watch me on the show, but none of them would do it themselves or think it would be beneficial for my art career. I also felt that they were undermining the ‘reality’ of the show by inviting artists to cut the line of the open call. In the end, I decided that D-list celebrity status was probably not going to do much for my art and that I am not smart enough to outwit a Bravo reality show crew or the producers. Plus, the Belgian actor I would’ve sent in my place for the audition was out of town that week.
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Post-Soviet Traumas: Interview with Yevgeniy Fiks
by Idiom March 25, 2010
The big next project is on Alisa Zinov’evna Rosenbaum, who is better known in the US as Ayn Rand. I’m attempting to illustrate her novels using images from Stalin’s Socialist Realism. Rand’s imagery is hyper-romantic, monumental and heroic. Very similar to the Socialist Realist formula, if you think about it. The difference is of course that while in Socialist Realism, it’s the Worker who is heroic, while in Rand’s texts it’s the Industrialist. Aside from that it’s uncanny how similar the two styles are.
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This Better Be Decent: Interview with Ann Liv Young
by Idiom March 5, 2010
Even when I was little I can even remember doing somewhat provocative things. One episode comes to mind that certainly wasn’t filmed but was definitely a performance, though I guess a more site-specific, ephemeral one. My 8th grade class went on a field trip to an alligator river to go canoeing and I found a way to jump or fall into the water. I’m still not really sure which it was. I think it was pretend to fall but jump. There were alligators – not sure why 8th graders were canoeing in water with alligators but whatever – and it was such a big to-do. I then inspired many other people to jump into the water and it was mayhem. I don’t remember exactly what happened. It was like the work spread and on different field trips everyone was jumping out of their canoe.
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Hypochondria and Other Pleasantries
by Idiom March 2, 2010
The modern sensitive genius is not preoccupied with his physical health, but rather with his mental health. These are the ones quick to self-diagnose (I’m so OCD, I’m so ADD), and turn quickly to therapy, or, more often, pharmaceuticals – occasionally for good reason, though often not. Contemporary literature, while lacking in bedridden misanthropes, is full of headcases.
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Idiom at the 2010 NoPassport Conference
by Idiom February 24, 2010
The arrival of widespread interest in performance amongst contemporary artists has not immediately translated into an expanded interdisciplinary interest in that other, classically time-based medium, the theater. Nor has the theater, broadly speaking, seen fit to expand its categories to correspond with the sudden promiscuity of its traditional methodology. What is the nature of this reciprocal ignorance? Is it simply a question of incompatible constituencies? No doubt there is a deep divide in each community’s respective method of production – but are we so determined? This panel aims to examine the recent history of performance as it relates to current patterns of production and dissemination, with special consideration given to the divide between contemporary art and theater.
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Interview with Julia Weist
by Idiom February 3, 2010
And yet, once the book was published there were these gems related to its distribution that I had to give voice to, such as when I was outed on a chicklit book forum pretending to be a fan of the book and concealing my role as author. The forum administrator who suspended me was named FunkyTown, and the exchange became one of the vignettes performed in relation to the work. Another centered around an Amazon user named “soulnourisher” who identified Sexy Librarian as number 3 on his list “Ultimate Guide to Literary Soul Nourishment for Librarians” (other compendiums included “Ultimate Guide to New Modern Day Female Clerical Sleuths,” and “Ultimate Guide to Faith Based Scrapbooking”).
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On the passing of J.D. Salinger
by Idiom February 1, 2010
I read Catcher In the Rye around the time when postwar coming-of-age novels were required elementary school reading (possibly 6th grade?) and I remember being struck by Caulfield’s off-kilter slang and vaguely psychopathic tendencies—as well as being shocked by the fact he could simply run away without fear of parental reproach. But even as I admired the novel, it never really resonated, and until college I dismissed many of its advocates as teenage fanboys happy to find a justification for hating their daddies in one of literature’s most overexposed rebels.
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