90s Are Back

I’m Desperate – from Signs that Say What You Want Them To Say and Not Signs that Say What Someone Else Wants You To Say, Gillian Wearing, 1992-3.

said in 2 days ur 27 and and ur destiny was comin

M.I.A. released this demo yesterday as a tribute to Amy Winehouse. The track makes no attempt to explain the senseless assertiveness of her addiction. Instead, it manages to eloquently describe the futile empathy that so often stains relationships with an addict. Unbearable Nonsense would like to thank Maya for avoiding the maudlin canonization and too fast too soon dialogue that usually accompanies the death of a self-destructive pop star. And for providing us with something so gorgeous and reified to latch onto. 

27 by _M_I_A_

Dedicated to all my friends that died at 27.

LYRIX
= = = = = =
said your all mouth and no brains
all rock stars go to heaven
you said you'll be dead at 27
when we drunk in a English tavern
the owner poured you the Bourbon
and you drunk your self so rotten
he got so rich he bought a Bentley
and moved himself to Devon
you started dirty dancing
and you bar tended a dozen
i took you to the clinic
to get you clean but you couldn't
said in 2 days ur 27 and and ur destiny was comin
and ur papa passed so sudden
and left you with lil somin
you blew that money on a mountain of drugs
and staged your self a bedin
a month later when i popped in
your still high but the winter set in
i bought you a coffee and a muffin
and you quoted me some Lenin
i wished i was that clever
but thats what kept me coming
your friendship did mean somin
but you left me for nothin
when i left, you befriended a rope
and i found you both were hanging.

'Woe unto those who spit on the fear generation, the wind will blow it back.'

Spring Summer 2002, Raf Simons. 

Extreme Blondeness Brings Bad Luck

Stills from White Material, Claire Denis, 2009.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Repeal, Don't Progress

For Rembrandt, Ryan Harman 2010.

Top US military brass testify before congress about whether or not to repeal DADT, arrive at no consensus or decision, contradict themselves and each other, and dramatically reenact Rembrandt's 1662 painting, The Syndics of the Drapers Guild:

The Syndics of the Drapers Guild, Rembrandt, 1662.

See also:

Rachel Maddow: Signs Point to DADT Repeal

For Omar Khadr

For Omar Khadr, Ryan Harman, 2010.

I honestly thought that things were going to get better. You can promise to close Camp X-ray, Guantanamo, wherever? But when does that actually happen? The Bush doctrine is that strong? The most ineffectual president in the history of our country has created a system so powerful that you cannot avoid operating under the auspices of its unpublished/unwritten/unknown rules since election day? And now, as a country we persecute a man (now a man) that committed crimes against the United States of America at the age of FIFTEEN, and call his guilty plea a victory? Congratulations, this blue print for change is everything we HOPED for...

See also:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130961713

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/26/us/26gitmo.html?scp=3&sq=omar%20khadr&st=cse

http://unbearablenonsense.blogspot.com/2008/11/camp-x-ray-sarah-kane.html

You Know Who I Am...

You Know Who I Am, Ryan Harman, 2010

Digital fallout from the Rachel Maddow Show, 2010

Scoped

Scoped, Ryan Harman, c. 2000

From my first screenprinting class, c. 2000.

Shallow Tears

Imagine that Al Jourgensen and Peter Murphy got together and managed to (finally) produce Q Lazzarus' debut album. Gorgeous, visceral, intensely compelling pop music. I look forward to hearing whatever this band puts forth...

 

Dark Allies, Light Aslum. 2009

See also:
Light Asylum
Wikipedia: Q Lazzaurs

The Final Solution

M.I.A. manages to both invoke Huggy Bear circa 1995 and realize South Park's 'Ginger Kids' episode to its most possibly devastating trajectory:

Her Jazz, Huggy Bear.

Born Free, M.I.A., 2010, Directed by Romain Gavras.

Ghost Rider, Suicide, 1977.

All via a Suicide sample.

See Also:
South Park - Ginger Kids

The Three Beggars

Still from Antichrist, Lars Von Trier, 2009.

Pain, Grief, and Despair. More to follow...

See also:
Antichrist (2009)

Soundtrack...

for the cause of future revolution:

It's Up To Me & You To Prove It

For everyone in Washington DC this Sunday, thank you.
Please remember everyone that came before Me & You:

Barbara Gittings, Washington DC, 1965.

The Ladder, 1965.

Washington DC, May 29, 1965.

Mattachine Society Protest, Washington DC, 1970.

First Pentagon Picket, Washington DC, c. 1965.

Barbara Gittings, Independence Hall, Philadelphia PA, July 4, 1966.

Independence Hall, Philadelphia PA, July 4, 1965.

Picketing Independence Hall, Philadelphia PA, c. 1965.

Barbara Gittings Picketing Independence Hall, Philadelphia PA, 1969.

Pickets from Frank Kameny's archive.

Mattachine Society Washington, Informational Flyer, c. 1965.
(please click through to read)

We've been at it for 45 years.

see also:
Equality Across America - National Equality March
Wikipedia - Mattachine Society
Mattachine Society of Washington DC Resources, especially the constitution, informational flyer, and blackmail questionaire.
Wikipedia - Barbara Gittings
The Kameny Papers: Frank Kameny's Online Archive, please look at the button collection and instructions for picketing in the memorabilia section of the site.
The Rainbow History Project - Early Protests
Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community

Flag Day

Tina Modotti, Untitled (Woman With Flag, Mexico), 1928

Lovett/Codagnone, Stripped, 2006

Robert Mapplethorpe, American Flag, 1977

Robert Frank, Parade — Hoboken, New Jersey, 1955

Bernhard Wilhelm x Francois Sagat, Spring Summer 07-08 Men, 2007

See Also:
http://www.usflag.org/

Once More, With Feeling

"...y’know, I always wanted to be the kind of person who really took chances in life. Someone who got off the main highways, and took those little back roads and byways, and experienced a kind of an America that few of us get to see... a bittersweet, nostalgic, brave America.

I wanted to walk through the Midwest early in the morning, and watch all the farmers on their way to work in the amber fields of grain in Nebraska.

To pick strawberries next to my Chicano brothers and sisters underneath the hot California sun.

To watch the morning light shining off the lady of the harbor onto all the Korean grocers as they stocked their salad bars.

These were the sounds, sights, and smells I that I wanted to incorporate into my worldview. To learn to change my own damn tires, and get dirt under my nails and jack up my car, and live life to the fullest. I never wanted to depend on Triple A.

And I don’t know if I’ve become that kind of a person… But I would like to dedicate this last song tonight to all of those that came before me and forged those emotional and aesthetic highways so effortlessly. To those that had the guts to live life right on the edge..."

From Without You I'm Nothing, Sandra Bernhard, 1990.

Sandra Bernhard returns to New York City June 10th to re-perform Without You I'm Nothing, celebrating the show's 20th anniversary at Town Hall. The 1990 film version of the performance reenacts the original off-Broadway production as it is staged in LA. In the film, Bernhard executes Without You I'm Nothing for an almost entirely African American audience, and throughout, everyone slowly leaves. No laughter is heard, and at the film's end the audience's one remaining member scrawls "Fuck Sandra Bernhard" on a tablecloth in red lipstick.

The staging of Bernhard's film skillfully and subtly underscores racial strain and anxiety in the United States. It was also released a full two years before that stress catalyzed the Los Angeles riots of 1992. Throughout the film Bernhard addresses multiple facets of the American dream and its failure. She manages to narrate and inhabit the various characters she conjures with both a compelling, empathetic sincerity and caustic wit. The performance's greatest strength is her singular ability to occupy both of these disparate polarities simultaneously. What could easily be derided as a sarcastic and brittle or "petty, bilious" critique emerges as the best film about American Life in the 1980s.

See also:
http://www.sandrabernhard.com/