“Graphic Metafictions Involving a Lot of Bondage and ... - Associated Content” plus 2 more

Graphic Metafictions Involving a Lot of Bondage and ... - Associated Content
All Visual Arts Presents Jonathan Wateridge's "Another ... - Art Daily
Vintage makes case for living in the present - Denver Post

Five Filters featured article: Into the Abyss. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Graphic Metafictions Involving a Lot of Bondage and ... - Associated Content

Posted: 06 Jun 2010 01:29 PM PDT

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Robert Glück, a cofounder of New Narrative (author of Elements of a Coffee Service, Margery Kempe,Jack, the Modernist, and Denny Smith) expressed an ambition to write close to the body—the place language goes reluctantly." Fetishized body parts and body functions can be uncomfortable to write about and uncomfortable to read about, and usually only focuses of "pornography." William Burroughs wrote of Glück's fiction that in it "self-exploration is so precise it becomes impersonal." I think this is only sort of true for either Glück or Killian. There are some recurrent personal themes, including B&D for Killian, ecstasies of surrender for Glück.

The narrators of Killian fictions (sometimes named Kevin Killian) observe themselves doing things to younger mails. They are generally acutely self-conscious and often questioning what they observe themselves doing, and more than a little aware that others (gay others, not just straight others) would disapprove of the head games and body games they play.

About a character (who is using Kevin's boyfriend while Kevin watches) in a story from Killian's first collection (little men), not the one reprinted in Princess, Killian wrote: "Like all cheaters, [he] made a precious gift to himself—he was able to think of two things at the same time: his own safety and his own pleasure." Killian's narrators can and do think of at least two things while they are maneuvering males into sex or during sex.

"Spurt," the most notorious Killian story, leaves a young man tied to a fallen motel shower rod in a sea of broken glass. The aptly titled new piece "Too Far" ends with a broken condom (and a folder of Kylie Minogue glossies).

There's homage to Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" (the setting in Midgeville, Georgia signaled O'Connor even before the grotesquerie of a lethal hitchhiker came along).

If I'd been making choices for inclusion from little men, I'd have included "Santa," or "Chain of Fools" or "Who Is Kevin Killian," rather than "Zoo story, which I thought one of the least interesting fictions from the first collection, wrapped up in the remake of "Cat People" (double yawn). Impossible Princess is only 164 pages (ten pieces). I don't much like the obvious pun of Piers in "Greensleeves," a story of prolonged (consensual) humiliation, including having sex with the younger brother of the submissive (and bound) erotic slave bound on a chair, forced to watch. "Rochester" amused me more. I shrugged off "Zoo Story" and "The Young Hank Williams," but found things of interest in each of the other eight. My favorites are "Hot Lights," "Ricky's Romance," "White Rose" (all from I Cry Like a Baby,) plus the newer "Too Far."

The corpse count is less than in Dennis Cooper fictions, but nonzero.

Five Filters featured article: Into the Abyss. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

All Visual Arts Presents Jonathan Wateridge's "Another ... - Art Daily

Posted: 06 Jun 2010 06:16 PM PDT

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LONDON.- Having been championed in Saatchi's "Newspeak: British Art Now", Jonathan Wateridge has a new solo exhibition showcasing a series made up of 7 mammoth works.

Another Place consists of a series of seven large oil paintings, each 3m x 4m, depicting scenes from the production and narrative of a fictional American film that is centred on an unseen catastrophic event.

The production process of the paintings is in itself redolent of film‐making. Prior to the first marks on canvas, scale model sets are built, props fabricated, costumes made and performers cast in each role.

Executed in a robust realist manner, the paintings are on the one hand akin to a grand historical cycle and on the other, a playful study of genre structures. But this is serious play, an adult playground – role‐play for grown‐ups that has more sober subtexts.

A sense of unease and disquiet pervades the scenes and though each picture relates to the disaster, there is only one explicitly catastrophic image: a section of an overpass or directional interchange that has collapsed onto the ground below.

The theme of divided strata runs throughout the series. This is represented by certain motifs such as the division caused by the collapsed highway, or within the work's fictional cityscape: the relationship between hillside and valley living and its connotations of class and economy.

Another central facet of the pictures is an exploration of their status as a construct. These paintings are elaborate fictions but with visible seams. Schisms within the work are created by blurring the boundaries between the narrative and the production process. Within this alternate reality, the series exploits the different angles from which you can approach the paintings and establishes a Brechtian sense of defamiliarisation and estrangement.

The paintings draw you in and establish a genuine, though uncanny, relationship with the figures depicted, which, like a ventriloquial movement of the lips, is then disturbed by revealing the underlying construction.

The subtle dislocations within the narrative of each image emphasise a notion of intrinsic remove. Ultimately, in a world awash with the consumption of received and generic imagery, everything occurs to someone else and in another place.

Vintage makes case for living in the present - Denver Post

Posted: 03 Jun 2010 08:21 PM PDT

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In the world premiere of his 20th play, "Books on Tape," William Missouri Downs flexes his considerable wit in asking if our ability to live in the present has been quashed by our need for familiar outcomes.

If that sounds like a lot to get your mind around, fear not, for Downs brings this down to earth in the person of Adriane, an audio-book junkie, who wants her life to be the incarnation of her favorite taped stories.

This brief play is being presented by Vintage Theatre late nights on weekends following earlier performances of the comedy "Hospitality Suite." (It also gets a "normal" start time on Sundays through June 20.)

We meet Adriane (Kellie Rae Rockey) as she's enraptured in a "bodice ripper." Fantasy meets

reality as the narrator, the handsome Jeffrey (James O'Hagan-Murphy), suddenly appears and snuggles up next to her. We discover that Adriane met Jeff at a store where she rents and buys her books on tape.

Downs' lively dialogues move easily, between the couple's cooing assurances that they are sexually attracted to each other, to a discussion on the subtleties of time as manifested in the tenses they use — future, present, past or past perfect (Adriane's favorite) — to frame their conversation.

Rockey sparkles as Adriane, breathlessly weaving fictions into whatever circumstances she encounters. O'Hagan-Murphy deftly moves Jeffrey back and forth from a hapless, everyday guy, trying to enjoy an intimate encounter, to a Don Juan, systematically enveloping his liaisons.

Downs broadens his satirical targets from prepackaged electronic media to psychology and religion, as the plot unfolds. Jeffrey entraps Donna Paige Murphy (Boni McIntyre), a well-known self- help guru, whose books he narrated. "There's something familiar about you," she says.

Meanwhile, Adriane happens upon an exciting new church that she is persuaded to join by "Father" Larry (Anthony Bianco), who mixes and matches practices from various belief systems. Downs expertly milks this opportunity, verbally serving up a series of whipped-cream- filled pies in the face of sanctimonious mythology.

McIntyre zestfully embraces Donna Paige Murphy's mile-a-minute pop psychology, setting Jeffrey and Larry back on their heels. Bianco is one surprise after another, as his Larry morphs through a series of life changes.

In her director hat, Rockey sets a brisk pace that lets the dialogue speak for itself and keeps the laughs coming. Downs leaves us with some thoughtful advice on the importance of being in the present.

Bob Bows also reviews theater for KUVO/89.3 FM and for his own website, coloradodrama.com. He can be reached at bbows@coloradodrama.com.

"Books on Tape" *** (out of four stars)

Comedy. Vintage Theatre, 2119 E. 17th Ave. Written by William Missouri Downs. Directed by Kellie Rae Rockey. Starring Rockey, James O'Hagan-Murphy, Boni McIntyre and Anthony Bianco. Through June 20. 80 minutes. $12. 10:30 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays (following performances of "Hospitality Suite"), and Sundays at 7:30 p.m. Added performance 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 8. 303-839-1361 or vintagetheatre.com

Read a scene from the script

The Denver Post offers you the chance to read samples from original plays being performed in the area. To read a scene from "Books on Tape," click here

About "Hospitality Suite"

"Books on Tape" runs in repertory with Vintage Theatre's "Hospitality Suite, right (photo by Ellen Nelson). In a small hotel room, three representatives of an industrial lubricants firm prepare to host a convention hospitality suite, desperate to make the acquaintance of the one man who can save their ailing company. A regional premiere by Colorado native Roger Rueff. Performs at 7:30 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays, and June 8; and 2:30 p.m. Sundays, through June 20. 303-839-1361 or vintagetheatre.com

Five Filters featured article: Into the Abyss. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Fiction

Minggu, 06 Juni 2010