Happy Medium

I can hardly believe it's been a month already, and [only] have three more months left. This is such a beautiful place to be and to live! I've been doing a ton of things, spending what feels like a ton of money, and generally enjoying myself. I'll try to condense as much of September as possible, even though there's so much to tell! If you have any questions that I don't answer within the rest of this post, please feel free to either post in the comments or email me. Here we go! Home life: My host family is just lovely! My mom's name is Mari, and my sister's name is Omaira. Omaira, or "Oma" as she is sometimes called, is one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen in my life, and she's getting married next September! I'm so lucky to live with them! Mari is an amazing cook, and she really enjoys using Moroccan spices in a lot of her dishes (which makes me so incredibly happy). We live at the top of a very large and steep hill in a n

I cannot even really begin to express the emotions running through me even now, as I sit on the terrace in my casa, looking out at Granada por la noche. I've only been here a few days, but I'm already starting to feel familiar with the calles and the tiendas. Estoy muy contenta. My first days in Spain were a little overwhelming, they were filled with touristy activities -- all of them important and exciting and different, but I'm happy to find where my home will be over the next four months. In Madrid, we went to several museums and saw two very famous art pieces that I've heard of, but never seen. This painting is called "Saturn Devouring his Sons" by Goya. Its part of a series called the Black Paintings, all depicting gruesome images that he painted on the walls of his home after he witnessed the effects of Napoleon's war. This piece has always struck me on the computer screen, but seeing it in real life was incredible. I also got to see Pablo

Unfortunately, I can’t at this moment publish frenzy because I don’t want to carry the burden of representing Bon Appetít as an institution. If you’d like to see it again (unlikely) I can find a way to get it to you. If when you’re watching frenzy , you find yourself stressed, annoyed, and bored at the same time, that is exactly what you’re supposed to feel. Welcome to the life of a Bon Appetít worker. These two videos serve two purposes; first, to show the near-constant and insatiable desire for food, which manifests itself through the enormous amount of dishes in the film, second, to show how the people who run and work in this environment become part of the machine that feeds the masses, as displayed by the blue shirts and constant movement. In De Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life , he says “Everyday life invents itself by poaching in countless ways on the property of others.” “ Along with the lazy man... the dying man is the immoral man: the former, a subject that does

As much as I enjoyed this film, I also found it highly unsettling, both in the unfulfilled way that we're supposed to feel at the end and in Eva's construction. The way that Eva is built up and made into such a shining and interesting character, only to be reduced to a plot device or catalyst for the upheaval in Bruno's life was (I'm not going to lie) very disappointing. For some reason, her behavior at the end just didn't feel like something Eva, the character the filmmakers constructed and made us believe in, would do. Perhaps in that way, it was the ultimate betrayal on Eva's part, one that tricks the audience as well as the main character. Even so, I less resent the character for leaving and more the [male] directors for deciding to move the narrative in that direction. I suppose it had to happen in order to drive the male-centered narrative about the trusting, helpless, honest Bruno who takes in this poor prostitute and gives her a new life, only to find ou

Equality is the name of the game! Judy Chicago's art, in all mediums, sizes, and varieties features themes from the feminist movement. Her "masterpiece" installation piece The Dinner Party features 32 place settings signifying muses/artists throughout history that have marked founts of feminine creation. The first is of the Primordial Goddess:  And ending with Georgia O'Keefe:  Her medium fluctuates frequently, and but in many of her larger shows, spray acrylic paint is featured quite heavily, as well as embroidery, quilting, and other forms of needlework or "woman's" work.  The Creation , for example, exhibits her work with needlework and also her desire to find femininity in a world dominated by men. This work focuses on the darkness of before birth, the genesis of the work, and the birth of all things living.  In the clip below, Chicago speaks about her the trouble she went through trying to "make it" in the

I very much enjoyed Lawton's visit! A lot of his work resonated with me, for a variety of reasons. His introduction in particular was extremely relevant to what I've been thinking about recently, being: how the hell am I going to live after college? All we're required to do is make enough money to eat, supply the government, and consume. Where in this formula is the real action of living? I feel like for so many people, their job is not a part of their experience of 'life' - their real life starts after they leave their workplace. I do not in any way, shape or form want to live only outside of work. I'm hoping to eventually make money by creating film, something that I find both a worthwhile use of my time, and something that I genuinely adore to both create and consume. ANYWAY, with this in mind, my favorite piece of Hall’s was his work with Carl – I connect with the medium and understand the use of sound on an academic level. The thing that I found most su

I wanted to use my phone for this project, and to try to embody the feeling of a vine, but I needed it to be a little longer for my purposes. In the Eddie Izzard clip that I show, he is talking about British Imperialism, and how just the presence of a flag and a gun makes a space into a place, and beyond that a place that is OWNED. I don't know how a person really owns a place, but it happens! It happens on the large scale and on a much smaller scale. This happens all the time, every day--if you want to grab a table for lunch, you put a marker there, and that space suddenly becomes yours, if only for a short amount of time. And then, if people continuously own that space, it is thought to be their's, like a lunch table that is generally thought of as the 'nerd table'. I wanted to try to mimic this kind of behavior, while also making something kind of funny featuring my favorite comedian. Featuring my friend Jacob, who very kindly was my antagonist.