I incorporated a text fragment from one of Euripides’ lost tragedies to an image of an abandoned dollhouse discovered on a sidewalk. Informally, the piece is called Enclose the Divine. This work is part of a larger project called IOTA that brings to life the remaining textual fragments of the lost plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.
The Fragment
What house shaped by builders could enclose the divine form within its enfolding walls?
Children and families gather at the road block on Highway One in Santa Cruz begging the state for more resources to fight the CZULightningComplex Fire.
Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
With the encouragement of her mother, Kay Boyle arrived in New York in 1922, determined to build a literary career. Lola Ridge’s literary magazine Broom published her first poem “Morning” in 1923. That same year she married French-born Richard Brault; a visit to his family in Brittany turned into an eighteen-year residence in Europe for Boyle. In Paris, Kay Boyle became a member of the American expatriate literary community, and in 1929 Harry and Caresse Crosby’s Black Sun Press published Boyle’s first book-length work, Short Stories.
Following her divorce from Brault, she married artist-writer Laurence Vail in 1931. That same year she was photographed by Man Ray. Throughout the 1930s Boyle created short stories, novels, and poems that garnered her a strong and growing reputation. Boyle found particular success with the short story, winning the O. Henry award in 1935 and again in 1941. In 1943, two years after her return to the United States, she divorced Vail and married the Baron Joseph von Franckenstein.
At the end of the 1940s both Boyle and Frankenstein, again living in Europe, became victims of McCarthyite witch-hunts. Boyle lost her position as a foreign correspondent for The New Yorker, and Franckenstein his post in the U.S. State Dept. As a result of these experiences, the political aspect of Boyle’s writing became increasingly strong and political activity a larger part of her daily life.
Following Franckenstein’s death in 1963 Kay Boyle accepted a creative writing position at San Francisco State. During her tenure she continued writing and her political activity as well as gaining wide acceptance as a teacher. S.I. Hiyakawa, in the position of president of San Francisco State ten years before he was to become a United States Senator, claimed in 1967 that “Kay Boyle is the most dangerous woman in America!”
On May 3rd, 1953, Walter and Virginia Schau decided to take her parents out for a day of fishing. Virginia Schau brought her Brownie camera although she said later told a reporter: “I’m the kind of person who always takes a camera on a trip and never takes a picture.”
The Schaus were driving on a two-lane road approaching the Pit River Bridge north of the town of Redding, California behind a semitrailer carrying fruits and vegetables. As the truck started over the bridge, the truck’s steering failed causing the truck to crash through the bridge’s steel railing.
The cab, with the driver and one other passenger trapped inside, dangled precariously off the bridge forty feet above the Sacramento River. The rear wheels of the cab were jammed between the side of the bridge and the trailer, which had miraculously remained on the bridge. Walter Schau, and the driver behind him, found a length of rope and with the help of other motorists, attempted to rescue the two men from the dangling cab. Virginia Schau grabbed her Brownie camera and “ran out to a knoll on the right which was directly opposite to where the cab of the truck dangled in the air.”
Walter Schau, hanging by his ankles, was able to lower the rope to the driver, who grabbed onto it and was pulled up by Schau, McLaren and others. The other man remained in the cab, semi-conscious, and when the cab caught fire, Walter Schau had to climb down and pull Baum out, before the cab, fully ablaze, fell into the Sacramento River. While the rescue operations were going on, Virginia Schau, from her vantage point, was able to get off two pictures, using the last two exposures in her camera.
Later, Schau’s father reminded Virginia of the Sacramento Bee’s weekly photo contest. She submitted the photograph, won the contest–and ten dollars–and the photograph was picked up by the Associated Press and distributed globally. Almost a year to the day later, Virginia Schau was “flabbergasted” to hear that her picture of the rescue had won the 1954 Pulitzer Prize for Photography.
I incorporated a text fragment from one of Sophocles’ lost tragedies to an image of an abandoned house outside Watsonville. Informally, the piece is called In Time of Need. This work is part of a larger project called IOTA that brings to life the remaining textual fragments of the lost plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.
The Fragment
For … shines out in time of need like fine bronze; but if the house is neglected, it collapses.
But the thrill we’ve never known is the thrill that’ll gitcha when you get your picture on the cover of Ecumenica: Performance and Religion. A journal that attends to the combination of creativity, religion, and spirituality in expressive practice. Cover photo is of Raegan Truax’s durational performance work Citation.
A peer-reviewed journal, Ecumenica regards performance and religion as overlapping and often mutually-constituting categories, preferring no particular form of creative expression, and privileging no particular religious tradition. The journal’s very aim is to consider the variety of modes in which creative and religious impulses might be realized.
Ecumenica’s interdisciplinary premise welcomes all critical approaches to such topics as performance art, theatre, ritual, contemplative and devotional practices, and expressions of community. The journal expects that performance and religion scholarship can add many more topics to this list.
If you truly love film, I think the healthiest thing to do is not read books on the subject. I prefer the glossy film magazines with their big color photos and gossip columns, or the National Enquirer. Such vulgarity is healthy and safe.
When she was like this, when no smile filled her eyes or opened up her face, I cannot describe the devastating monotony that stamped her melancholy eyes and sullen features. Her face, grown almost ugly, reminded me then of those dreary beaches where the sea, ebbing far out, wearies one with its faint shimmering, everywhere the same, encircled by an immutable low horizon.
Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower
Quarantine Blues on Santa Cruz’s Westside…
La vida loca to the accompaniment of the Stars Wars theme.
Steamers Lane, Santa Cruz
At 5:40Am. on March 23rd, 2020 I incorporated a text fragment from one of Euripides’ lost tragedies with a site responsive approach to Environmental Art and Public Art (The statue: To Honor Surfing Statue) on Santa Cruz’s Westside. Informally, the piece is called The Man Who Knows. This work is part of a larger project called IOTA that brings to life the remaining textual fragments of the lost plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.
The Fragment:
The man who knows how to heal well must look to the lifestyles of a city’s inhabitants and to their land when he examines their illnesses.
Coronavirus comes to Santa Cruz, CA
All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it’s up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences.
Albert Camus, The Plague
On the evening of March 9th, 2020 we performed a site specific production of a fragment from the lost tragedy Laocoön by Sophocles at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Sophocles Laocoön is part of a larger project called IOTA that brings to life the fragments for the lost plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.
The Fragment
And fire shines on the altar in the street
as it sends up a vapor from drops of myrrh,
exotic scents.
Poseidon, you who range over the capes of the Aegean
or in the depths of the gray sea rule over the windswept waters above the lofty cliffs…
And now at the gates stands Aeneas,
the son of the goddess,
carrying on his shoulders his father
with his linen robe
stained with the discharge
caused by the lightning,
and about him
the whole horde of his servants.
And with him follows a crowd,
you cannot imagine how great,
of those who are eager to take part
in this migration of the Phrygians.
When one is no longer weary, labors are delightful.
For one takes no account
of trouble that is in the past.
The Location
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive located in the former UC printing plant (printed the official UN Charter in 1945) that was redesigned in 2013 by the New York firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Located at 2120 Oxford Street in downtown Berkeley.
Babatunji Johnson and Aleta Hayes
If Morality was Christianity Socrates was the Saviour
יה [Jehovah] & his two Sons Satan & Adam as they were copied from the Cherubim
of Solomons Temple by three Rhodians & applied to Natural Fact, or History of Ilium
Art Degraded Imagination Denied War Governed the Nations
Evil
Good & Evil are
Riches & Poverty a Tree of
Misery
propagating
Generation & Death
The Gods of Priam are the Cherubim of Moses & Solomon: The Hosts
of Heaven
Without Unceasing Practise nothing can be done Practise is Art
If you leave off you are Lost
The Angel of the Divine Presence
מלאך יהוה [Angel of Jehovah]
ΟΦΙουΧος [Serpent-holder]
HEBREW ART is
called SIN by the Deist SCIENCE
All that we See is Vision
from Generated Organs gone as soon as come
Permanent in The Imagination; Considerd
as Nothing by the
NATURAL MAN
What can be Created
Can be Destroyed
Adam is only
The Natural Man
& not the Soul
or Imagination
Good
לילית [Lilith]
Satans Wife The Goddess Nature is War & Misery & Heroism a Miser
Spiritual War
Israel deliverd from Egypt
is Art deliverd from
Nature & Imitation
A Poet a Painter a Musician an Architect : the Man
Or Woman who is not one of these is not a Christian
You must leave Fathers & Mothers & Houses & Lands if they stand in the way of Art
The Eternal Body of Man is The IMAGINATION, that is God himself
The Divine Body } ישע [Yeshua] JESUS we are his
Members
It manifests itself in his Works of Art (In Eternity All is Vision)
The True Christian Charity not dependent on Money (the lifes blood of Poor Families)
that is on Caesar or Empire or Natural Religion
Money, which is The Great Satan or Reason
the Root of Good & Evil
In The Accusation of Sin
Prayer is the Study of Art Praise is the Practise of Art
Fasting &c. all relate to Art The outward Ceremony is Antichrist
Where any view of Money exists Art cannot be carried on, but War only
Read Matthew C X. 9 & 10v
by pretences to the Two Impossibilities Chastity & Abstinence Gods of the Heathen
He repented that he had made Adam
(of the Female, the Adamah)
& it grieved him at his heart
Art can never exist without
Naked Beauty displayed
The Gods of Greece & Egypt were Mathematical
Diagrams
See Plato’s
Works
Divine Union
Deriding
And Denying Immediate
Communion with God
The Spoilers say
Where are his Works
That he did in the Wilderness
Lo what are these
Whence came they
These are not the Works
Of Egypt nor Babylon
Whose Gods are the Powers
Of this World. Goddess, Nature.
Who first spoil & then destroy
Imaginative Art
For their Glory is
War and Dominion
Empire against Art See Virgils Eneid.
Lib. VI.v 848
For every
Pleasure
Money
Is Useless
There are States
in which. all
Visionary Men
are accounted
90Mad Men
such are
Greece & Rome
Such is
Empire
or Tax
See Luke Ch 2.v l
Jesus & his Apostles & Disciples were all Artists Their Works were destroyd by the
Seven Angels of the Seven Churches in Asia Antichrist Science
The unproductive Man is not a Christian much less the Destroyer
The Old & New Testaments are the Great Code of Art
SCIENCE is the Tree of DEATH
ART is the Tree
of LIFE
GOD
is JESUS
The Whole Business of Man Is
The Arts & All Things Common
No Secre
sy in Art
What we call Antique Gems are the Gems of Aarons Breast Plate
110Christianity is Art & not Money
Money is its Curse
Is not every Vice possible to Man
described in the Bible openly
All is not Sin that Satan calls so
115all the Loves & Graces of Eternity
William Blake, c. 1826-7
Rehearsal for Sophocles‘ Laocoön
at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
using William Blake’s Laocoön as inspiration
The last day of Fry’s Electronics in Palo Alto…
Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.
Ends and Means
The Palo Alto location was Fry’s oldest. Each Fry’s store had a distinct aesthetic, this location was Wild West-themed…
The Fry’s chain completely taps into MSE: Male Shopping Energy. This is to say that most guys have about 73 calories of shopping energy, and once these calories are gone, they’re gone for the day—if not the week—and can’t be regenerated simply by having an Orange Julius at the Food Fair.
Microserfs
Mickle Maher There Is A Happiness That Morning Is presented by Performers Under Stress
Children of the future Age
Reading this indignant page,
Know that in a former time
Love! sweet Love! was thought a crime.
William Blake
Mickle Maher There Is A Happiness That Morning Is
Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason Street, San Francisco
Performers: Geo Epsilanty, Valerie Façhman and Scott Baker
Directed by Katja Rivera
Wanderlust: surfing on the Autumnal Equinox…
[T]hat old September feeling, left over from school days, of summer passing, vacation nearly done, obligations gathering, books and football in the air … Another fall, another turned page: there was something of jubilee in that annual autumnal beginning, as if last year’s mistakes had been wiped clean by summer.
Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose
Frank Bacon grew up in San Jose and at age fourteen went to work on a sheep ranch, where he remained for three years, until he became an apprentice to a San Jose photographer. Eventually he established his own photography studio. After four years taking portraits he moved on to newspaper work with the San Jose Mercury News and a few years later he bought The Napa Reporter and later established The Mountain View Register. He tried a couple of times to run for public office, but was never elected.
Dissatisfied with newspapers and politics, he returned to San Jose and joined a stock theatre company, or in his own words: “turned respectable and became an actor.” What came next for Frank Bacon was years of drudgery in stock, repertoire and vaudeville, and seventeen years at the Alcazar Theatre in San Francisco, where played more than 700 parts during his time there. Frank Bacon’s theory of acting was explained by him in an address to the American Academy of Dramatic in 1921: “If you were to ask me what I know about acting. I would say I don’t know anything. My advice to young actors would be to learn all about acting and then forget it. I believe absolutely in naturalness—believe in yourself.” He moved on to New York after the 1906 earthquake terminated his career in San Francisco .
Fourteen years later, when Frank Bacon was 54, Lightnin’ a play he had been writing for forty years was finally produced. The production, staring himself, broke all records and eclipsed all past Broadway successes. “Lightnin’ ultimately ran in New York for three years and a day— a total of 1,291 consecutive performances. George M. Cohen called Frank Bacon America’s greatest character actor. When Lightin’ closed its Broadway run to go on the road, President Harding congratulated him; the New York mayor and United States Secretary of Labor headed a parade accompanied by the Police Band; and hundreds of actors escorted Frank Bacon to the Pennsylvania Train Station where he was presented the world’s champion belt of the playwriting and producing world.
After his death at 58 in 1922, Frank Bacon’s manager said of him: “A kindly man, of simple tastes, who gave much to the public that he served and asked little in return, Bacon was known to his friends in the profession as much for the big, human man he was as for his sterling qualities as an actor. He really died on the Saturday night when he gave his las performance— and his greatest.”