Feuchtgebiete

The novel Feuchtgebiete was published in Germany earlier this year and has been in the news ever since. The book has generated an amazing amount of controversy - it sounds provocative, disturbing and utterly fascinating. Despite being Amazon’s worldwide bestseller in March, it has yet to find an English language publisher.

Feuchtgebiete which translates roughly as ‘wetlands’ or ‘moist patches’, is the first novel by thirty-year-old Charlotte Roche, born in England but raised in Germany. She has been a recognizable face in her adopted home country since she started working as a presenter on Viva, the German equivalent of MTV, in the mid-1990s. But her first novel has lifted her to new level of notoriety.

According to what I've been able to glean from websites like this, Feuchtgebiete is narrated by an outspoken 18-year old girl whose childlike stubbornness is paired with a premature sense of sexual confidence. After a failed attempt to shave her private parts, she ends up in the Hospital, in the Department of Internal Medicine. She doesn’t leave the ward for the rest of the novel. Surrounded by surgical instruments and humming X-ray machines, she reflects in ever more uncomfortable detail on the eccentric wonders of the female body. By all accounts this is an explicit novel, often shockingly so, but also an accomplished literary work, which has earned comparisons with The Catcher in the Rye, the perversion of J.G. Ballard’s Crash and the feminist agenda of Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch.

Granta Magazine has an in-depth interview with Roche here. If squeamish sensibilities permit it, the book will soon be available in English.

From the Streets

This is exquisite. Created on the streets of Buenos Aires by English artist Blu.



So don't give me that "graffiti ain't art" crap!

Stencil Nation

Russell Howze, who has been running Stencil Archive for years, is about to release a beautiful new book on stencil art. The book, called Stencil Nation: Graffiti, Community and Art, not only presents full color photos of stencils from around the world, but also presents a social history of stenciling, documents the movements that have employed it, and describes the repercussions of specific stencils on the public discourse. The book is slated to be released on June 1 by Manic D Press out of San Francisco. You can also reserve a signed copy on the Stencil Nation website.

Pedal Pushing

The seventh annual Pedalpalooza takes place in and around Portland from June 12-28. This event is growing by leaps and bounds, and now features 192 events over 20 days. Events range from family friendly to drunk-and-nasty. There's the Stumpdown Joustdown ("a call to arms for the Pacific Northwest's finest bicycle jousters") on Saturday the 14th; the Great Tricycle Race on the 15th (Prizes for the best dressed tricycle); the Zombie Cycle Rampage ("Learn to ride with a noticeable limp, a faraway stare, a droopy-walkingdead-sneer.") on the 21st; and of course, Zoobomb every Sunday.

Much much much more on the massive events calendar here.

The poster was just released this weekend and features a gorgeous stencil, of all things, by Portland artist (via Italy) Tiago DeJerk. DeJerk himself is hosting a stencil ride on Monday the 15th after dark. Bring spray paint!

Simic Steps Down

Charles Simic has resigned his post as Poet Laureate of the United States, effective immediately. He gave his last presentation as PL on May 8 at the Library of Congress. All of the previous Poets Laureate had held their position for two to three years. Simic left the position after only 9 months. Other than this vague press release, no reasons were given for Simic's early departure. He expressed a desire to spend more time writing poetry. However, with his cynical world view and well known intolerance of misguided authority, one may reasonably assume that politics were involved.

In honor of Mother's Day, this double-edged poem from the brilliant and bitter Mr. Simic.

AUSTERITIES

From the heel
Of a half loaf
Of black bread,
They made a child's head.

Child, they said,
We've nothing for eyes,
Nothing to spare for ears
And nose.

Just a knife
To make a slit
Where your mouth
Ought to be.

You can grin,
You can eat,
Spit the crumbs
Into our faces.

Noise for the Needy needs you!

Seattle non-profit Noise for the Needy is hosting a series of concerts from June 11-15 to benefit the Urban Rest Stop, a free hygiene center for homeless people in downtown Seattle. The gigs run the gamut from hardcore to hip-hop and back again, and take place all over the city. NTN needs volunteers for all of them. Specific tasks include hanging posters, taking photos and pushing propaganda, any of which get you into a show for free.

The first volunteer meeting is a pizza party at the Comet Tavern on 5/18. I'll be there, and I've already signed up to lend my elbow grease to the Talib Kweli/Common Market show on 6/15! Damn! Perhaps you'd prefer to trip out with The Black Angels. Or get your folk on with Two Gallants. Lotsa good music going on. Volunteer info here, or write directly to volunteer coordinator Darlene.

Feels like SIFF

All outward appearances to the contrary, summer is finally on its way here in Seattle. I know it's true because the Seattle International Film Festival just released their 2008 Program Guide!

As always, the festival boasts 3 packed weeks of cinema, including dozens of movies that are having their world premiere, and many of which will never again be seen on an American screen. Lots of new French and Italian films this year, several about gay and transgendered families, and a whole lot of flicks on suicide, war and ritual murder. Must say something about the state of the world. Personally, I'm looking forward to the German/Swiss film Dust, "an ambitious documentary about the tiniest of particles" and the French movie Faces in which a team of graffiti artists paste giant close-up photos of smiling faces on the Israel/Palestine wall.

Check out the impressively full schedule on the newly re-vamped online SIFF guide, or you can pick up a hard copy of the program in today's Seattle Times. The highly opinionated Stranger SIFF Notes are due out on May 22.

Silhouette Masterpiece Theatre

Seattle puppeteer and playwright Scot Augustson has been performing shadow puppetry for 10 years under the name "Sgt. Rigsby and His Amazing Silhouettes." The writing and aesthetic have evolved considerably since Scot's early days of struggle at the Annex Theatre, but the best Sgt. Rigsby episodes still proudly feature horny preachers, merry drunks, lovable hookers and operatic chickens.

Sgt. Rigsby's most recent show, A Boy in the Beastly City, which played at the Theatre Off Jackson in February, has been brilliantly filmed and turned into a two-part online epic. Newly recorded music and sound effects are by the much beloved Circus Contraption Band. The show is bawdy, witty, nostalgic, and profoundly fun. And you can only see it on Sgt. Rigsby's website.

And speaking of silhouettes, extraordinarily clever graphic designer Wilhelm Staehle has been busily expanding his ouevre over at Silhouette Masterpiece Theatre. Staehle exposes even more of his warped and nostalgic worldview at his blog, The Dollar Dreadful Family Library. "There is something to be found for all, be it occult adventures, mysterious crimes, woodsmen, foreign lands, or domestic disputes!"

Vote for Bush? I wasn't Even Born Yet!

Gurldogg has made a point of ignoring the endless Clinton-Obama carwreck. But this video is worth posting - really sums up the whole spectacle beautifully.

Calligramme

A charming concrete poem for a spring day from Guillaume Apollinaire. For Pepita.

CET
ARBRISSEAU
QUI SE PREPARE
A FRUCTIFIER
TE
RES
SEM
BLE

[This
shrubby bush
preparing itself
to blossom
re-
sem-
bles
you]

Aurelia's Oratorio

Aurélia Thiérrée was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, into a family of renowned performers. Her grandfather was movie icon Charlie Chaplin, and her mother was Victoria Chaplin, one of eight children born to Oona O'Neill, daughter of the playwright Eugene. Her father, Jean-Baptiste Thierree, was a French film star who acted for directors like Fellini and Alain Resnais before becoming a full-time ringmaster. The counter-cultural circus family had an epiphany in 1978, dispensed with animals altogether, and redefined circus for a modern audience with the frills-free touring show, Le Cirque Imaginaire, in which Aurélia and her brother James made their theatrical debuts as scurrying suitcases.

Thiérrée is bringing her acclaimed show Aurelia's Oratorio to the Seattle Rep for only seven shows over five days, May 7 though 11, as an opening spectacle for the Seattle International Children's Festival. Thiérrée is a gifted acrobat, illusionist and puppeteer, and Aurélia’s Oratorio is an upside-down, inside-out world of reversals and altered states. A place of clocks and whistles where time and people disappear, coats wrestle and dispatch their owner, dresses twitch and dance alone, limbs take on a life of their own as if a poltergeist has taken over the stage. Buy tickets here. I got mine already.

The Stranger Slog has a short and intriguing interview with Ms. Thiérrée.

Re-Enactments

I haven't seen Errol Morris' new documentary about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, Standard Operating Procedure. Not because the material is bound to be gruesome and disturbing, but simply because it hasn't been released in Seattle yet. I'm a fan of Morris, and have a great appreciation for the way his distinctively minimal approach to film making creates uniquely thought-provoking documentaries. As with his last film, The Fog of War, I'm sure the images in the film will leave me sick with frustration. I'm equally sure that it will show me details to challenge my assumptions about this horrible episode, and will affect the way I think about it from now on.

As has been the case with Morris' films since The Thin Blue Line, Standard Operating Procedure has come under attack from critics for its use of re-enactments. This time however, Morris anticipated the reaction, and has written a lengthy philosophical essay on his blog defending the use of re-enacted history in forming clearer ideas about complex realities.

He writes: "Memory is an elastic affair. We remember selectively, just as we perceive selectively. We have to go back over perceived and remembered events, in order to figure out what happened, what really happened. My re-enactments focus our attention on some specific detail or object that helps us look beyond the surface of images to something hidden, something deeper – something that better captures what really happened."

The essay is quite lengthy - the size of a long magazine article - and rather than trying to process all of his insights by scrolling through your computer screen, it's well worth printing out.

Puppet Show

I've been collecting puppet-themed short films from around the world for the upcoming Drunk Puppet Film Festival. In doing so, I've met some remarkable people and been exposed to many beautiful, bizarre and outrageous films. Puppeteers are a notoriously hard bunch to pin down, so the date of the festival remains nebulous, but I will start screening some of my glorious finds here on the web.

This absurd and gorgeous animated puppet film, Anthropo-Cynical Farce, was made in 1970 by the Japanese master Kihachiro Kawamoto. Kawamoto is currently touring the United Kingdom with a program of his films.



And for those whose hunger for puppet and animation films is more than I can satisfy, The Motion Brigades has a powerhouse of a Youtube channel "Dedicated to showcasing stop motion animation from the masters of the genre, with focus on rare and hard to find titles." Enjoy.

Critical Mass

It's not all doom-and-gloom around Gurldoggie headquarters. Critical Mass this month was a glorious affair. For the first time in months the weather cooperated with our plans, and around 300 of us turned out to take over the streets on our bicycles.

The ride circled through the city, passed down 1st Ave. amongst Mariners' traffic, and hooked back for a velodrome-like ride around the Seattle Center fountain. After a brief break, we headed straight up Dexter and over the Aurora Bridge to catch the last rays of the warm spring sun. When we finally stopped for beers and smiles in Gasworks, there were still some 200 of us, including lots of new faces. This bodes very well for summer.



Had a nice chat with Daniel who has been riding and documenting Seattle Critical Mass rides since 1996. Check out his extensive photo archive here.

American Pictures

I saw the remarkable film Chop Shop at the Northwest Film Forum last night. The movie follows main character Alejandro, a pre-adolescent street orphan in Queens, New York, as he hustles for work and finally scores a job and a room with a bed at an auto body repair shop in an industrial neighborhood. With a great deal of effort, Alejandro locates his sister Isamar, and the two of them obsessively save money in a doomed effort to buy a taco truck.

The story isn't as important as the accomplishment of creating a beautiful and positive portrait of some of America's poorest people. The film doesn't romanticize the personal qualities of its characters. Often they are petty, suspicious, hateful, callous and vicious. However, the film is so well made and so subtle that we never interpret these traits as suggesting that any of the characters are bad or inferior people. Rather, these are people who are simply acting, thinking, and feeling in ways consistent with trying to survive or being successful in an inhumane system which distorts and mangles so much of what is otherwise truly warm and good in people.

Interestingly, the entire film takes place within spitting distance of New York's Shea Stadium, a playground for some of the wealthiest, most famous, and most powerful people in America. We only hear the echoes of the crowds, but it's enough to provide a stark contrast between the extremes of oppression and privilege which the film says are inextricably intertwined.

The film put me in mind of several other documents that I've been reintroduced to recently. Charles Burnett's film Killer of Sheep and Jacob Holdt's book and slideshow "American Pictures." All of these works skirt the line between fiction and documentary, and all serve to document the immoral and ever-present squalor of the communities that live in the shadows of American wealth. Each of these works, created over a 30-year span, retains its power to shock and surprise. However aware we may be about poverty, few of us ever expect to see the level of pain, fear, and violence that these films, and Holdt's pictures, reveal as an everyday reality for a sizable number of Americans.