I am very excited to invite you all to Make Them Love You, "a series of hand-painted signs exhibited throughout the city of Chennai that explore the negotiation between desires and exterior space."
My husband Jason and I created a portrait of ourselves called "We intend to be happy" where we appear in camouflage outfits sharing a proper English breakfast tea in bed. We thought it was the least we could do after after having fought against the immigration laws of three different countries in order to have our rights as a couple recognized! Our inescapable need to love each over the years faced an indiscernible force of three governments with their border agencies, a dozen of churches and family organizations and those 7,001,084 Californians who wanted to void our marriage when they voted for proposition 8 last November 2008.
We created this commercial sign to promote our couple and the possibilities of love to overcome geopolitical borders and the definitions of terms such as partner, family member, couple, loving relationship that border officers utilize in entry clearance forms.
Please read the attached press release for a more clever description of the show and of our project
I brought Jason to see Dirty Projectors' concert at Scala last Thursday. I shall not say anything about them because we all know that Dave Longstreth is a genius and that their music is the best thing coming out of Brooklyn at the moment.
Instead, I am posting a video of Lucky Dragons, the collective from Los Angeles that performed before DP.
If you do not know them, here is their bio.
I loved the Native American vibe that they brought to London in a warm spring evening. I felt like I was walking in the Navajo Desert with husband on my side, peyote in my stomach and many many miles to go..
There are not words to describe my love for Ricardo Terfry aka Rich aka Buck 65.
Last September, Rich started this show on CBC Radio2 which really rocks and that, of course, it is not only about hip hop. I am learning a great deal from Buck 65 and his guests, check it out and let me know if Buck is not the wickest man of Canada.
If you do not know Buck 65, watch/listen to these two classics and love him forever:
Two days before my actual birthday, a quite handsome UPS man delivered a package from SAN DIEGO to my door. Although I had to pay 55,94 pounds of bloody taxes to bail it out, I was simply in ecstasy when I opened it.
The sender, Mr.Jason Moore, was able to put together in only one present my love for maps, my addiction to electro/experimental/anticon music and my desire to own BOSE QC2.
My man is awesome and I am a lucky motherfucker I know...
UUUUUuuuhhhhh happy birthday to me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Music Included:
Tape/Luminarium
Near The Parenthesis/L'Eixample
Eero Johannes/Eero Johnannes
Dosh/Wolves and Wishes
Remeber The Knife right?Karin Dreijer Andersson has a new project called called Fever Ray, their (self titled) debut album will be out March 24th. The video for “If I Had A Heart” is released January 6th, is directed by Andreas Nilsson, and is creepy and beautiful. Enjoy!
About a month ago, my friend Edoardo Zamuner, a Reserch Fellow at the Laboratory of Neurobiology of Professor Semir Zeki (UCL), invited me to participate to an experiment in Neuroaesthetics. As described in Wikipedia: Neuroesthetics investigates the structure and activity of the brain in response to experiences of esthetic phenomena. This relatively young discipline take advantage of neuroimaging tools such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and in genetic analysis which makes everything more interesting from a visual and semiotic perspective.
The particular project that the lab of Prof. Zeki is working on at the moment is about romantic love and obviously has something to do with face recognition of the loved one. The group is interested in scanning the brain of eterosexual and homosexual subjects in a love relationship from 1 month to 5 years.
This is how the experiment was intorduced to me:
"Love is one of the most overwhelming sentiments in human experience. Understanding what happens in our brain when we see our lover is of great benefits to society. If you agree to take part in this study you will be invited to a laboratory visit. You will be asked to provide photographs of your lover and also other people of the same sex for whom you have natural feelings. We will scan these images and return the photographs to you directly. You will also fill out a questionnaire about your feelings toward your lover.
The scanning of your brain will last about one hour. During the scan you will see the faces of your lover ad the neutral people repeatedly. You are asked to press a button when you see a particular visual prompt. We will monitor your heart rate, breathing and skin conductance by instruments attached to your body. Directly after the scan you will fill out the questionnaire about your feelings a second time."
I did the lab visit last week and yesterday I did the brain scanning. It was a tremendously interesting experience. Not only because I think this project is amazing and because all the people involved are highly qualified and inspiring individuals but also because of my interest in data visualisation in the art-formerly-known-as-new-media-art.
At the end of the experiment John Romaya, the computer programmer who coordinated the scanning of my brain gave me a software application to explore the regions of my brain. The images I am posting here are from a structural scanning, from a side, back and zenithal point of view.
Oh and the reason why they are not looking into individuals in a relationship longer then 5 years is because it seems that after only 1 year..the brain does not react to the sight of the loved one in the same way anymore..This is a sad and not very surprising fact.
I am looking forward to the paper that will examinate the results of the empirical data, which is supposed to come out sometime in 2009. If you live in London and you would like to volunteer for this amazing research project please contact Doctor Edoardo Zamuner at e.zamuner@ucl.ac.uk. At the particular stage of the project they are particularly interested in scanning the brains of homosexuals subjects and of people from ethnic minorities.
So, in this instance I must let you know that your application was unsuccessful.
There is not enough specific, targeted content here to sell you effectively to employers.
Kind Regards.
In any case, stop by our office and say hello.
Therefore you must reflect performance results, your ability to influence the role and add value.
And an exceptional understanding of the restaurant business.
In his last years my father would sit on the porch of his Long Island nursing home looking out on the sea, and between long silences he would speak. “You know, sometimes I see a little dot way out there, and then it gets bigger and bigger and finally turns into a ship”. I explained that the earth was a sphere and so forth. In his 80 years he had never had time to sit and watch the sea. He had employed hundreds of people and made tens of thousands of coats and shipped them to towns and cities all over the States, and now at the end he looked out the sea and said with happy surprise, “Oh. So it’s round.” (Arthur Miller)
You're not a baby if you feel the world.
All of the babies can feel the world. That's why they cry.