Not many were left and the few who were had to watch their back. People wore many faces and often changed their expressions dramatically from a wide smile to a brooding to a confused innocence. Sometimes the change was so quick that between each blink you had a different man stand in front of you in the same body. The colors where both bright as fresh paint and dull and raggy, all at once. It was never quite day and never quite night, the medieval light of northern winter lit the outside, and door and buildings contained different worlds. I was the last singer in the world of cannibals and they needed my hands for business. The hands where the best when they were soft and white and belonged to someone like a singer or a young woman, or both in my case, so that they could be easily liquefied and molded into belts. The unwanted hands were thrown down a deep well-spiral-stair case to the bottom of which no one has ever been. Runaway thoughts and memories fell down this well too, hiding from misuse. They approached me and asked if I could lend my hands for their business, being such a wonderful singer. I agreed, but first, I said, I must take a walk. And I ran as fast as I could toward the well and flew down the stairs and into the darkness, for I knew that with my hands they will take my soul. In the soul-less world, merchants did anything to acquire a soul, for it was worth millions and could power a machine for much longer than any other fuel. I shouted sweetly, trying to conceal my getaway, that I will be right back, I’m just taking a short walk, I shouted up into the darkness, and I felt that they had sent their hounds after me. So I just let my feet tumble and fell. After an eternity of this falling chase I reached the bottom floor, which opened up into a large storage space, blue-gray cement and metal, fluorescent lights and locked doors. I ran through the labyrinth of halls. I didn’t know where I was, touching the doors and running up and down back stairs and elevator shafts. Then I reached the door at the dead end of a hallway that had no handles on the outside, but I opened it, or it opened to me, and I was in, and I knew I made it. This was the ‘afterlife’ ward for singers. In the afterlife they must segregate the males from the females, just like in a hospital or a private religious school, so it was full of women. The whole place looked like a rehabilitation ward, although everyone seemed physically healthy. The hallways were lined with lockers. I was handed a key and a lock and I had to find my locker. Suddenly I was running again and knew that if I didn’t make it in time I wasn’t going to be safe, I wasn’t going to be able to stay here and I would have to go back outside, may be even up and out of the well. With the feeling of being late for the final exam I flew up stairwells and down halls, lined floor to ceiling with small lockers next to which single figures and small groups where calmly conversing and moving things in and out of their lockers. I found my number, quickly opened it and put the bundle of clothes I had in my hand on the bottom shelf. I think it was a cloth hat and a shirt. I also had a bottle of water. I made it in time and stood looking around and catching my breath. A group of women approached me and asked if I wanted to come along.It was time and they saw I was new and they could show me where to go, although it wasn’t too hard, because everyone was going there. I decided to take the clothes and the water bottle along, just in case, and closed my locker. I was staying here, probably forever, and a deep melancholy overtook me – these were all singers! And I was a painter, I was only a singer up there cause I could sing some, but I was actually a painter and now, surrounded by all these women with their opera statures and singer eyes, I felt a deep longing. Then I realized that to be stuck in a madhouse full of painters for eternity wouldn’t be much better, the melancholy lifted a bit, although my mind was still trembling at the vanishing thoughts of my recent chase, the hounds, the cries, the well, the fluorescent lights, my hands. I had my hands now, everyone here had their hands, and carried notebooks and coffee cups in them. We sat down in a big room, what looked like a cafeteria and a lecture hall at once, and I think we were about to be explained something about our condition. Then I woke up.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
letter to emir kusturica written as a facebook message
a poem for nikola
emir kusturica, you live in such a sad and drunken world,
we only dream in nightmares of joining you out there,
we dream, emir,
we dream.
but we are so afraid our heads
will explode if we take them out of the hole,
so instead we say our prayers for you from here,
from our coma,
from our uniformly glowing letters
our white-clicking buttons,
our neon lights of idols
that glow in our eternal night
and we tell the children
it's the sun,
the stars,
the moon.
we lie, emir!
we praise the bards with the golden tongues,
and drink their poison words
and put our fingernail clippings and our first-borns in their jars.
Dress us, O! whitely smiling ones!
dress us in yours sausage casing and pull our muscles tight,
we want to learn every dance in the world,
for we are immortal!
and our soles will never wear - we dance on clouds, emir,
our feet don't touch the ground.
what color is the dirt of your shoes?
Red
like the blood and the setting sun
or black
like the memories of ancient trees and the mouths of the hanged ones?
emir,
we are afraid and we hate each other
but we keep our clenched hands around our own throats
and try to sing.
we dance of clouds, emir.
we dream and dance on clouds.
emir kusturica, you live in such a sad and drunken world,
we only dream in nightmares of joining you out there,
we dream, emir,
we dream.
but we are so afraid our heads
will explode if we take them out of the hole,
so instead we say our prayers for you from here,
from our coma,
from our uniformly glowing letters
our white-clicking buttons,
our neon lights of idols
that glow in our eternal night
and we tell the children
it's the sun,
the stars,
the moon.
we lie, emir!
we praise the bards with the golden tongues,
and drink their poison words
and put our fingernail clippings and our first-borns in their jars.
Dress us, O! whitely smiling ones!
dress us in yours sausage casing and pull our muscles tight,
we want to learn every dance in the world,
for we are immortal!
and our soles will never wear - we dance on clouds, emir,
our feet don't touch the ground.
what color is the dirt of your shoes?
Red
like the blood and the setting sun
or black
like the memories of ancient trees and the mouths of the hanged ones?
emir,
we are afraid and we hate each other
but we keep our clenched hands around our own throats
and try to sing.
we dance of clouds, emir.
we dream and dance on clouds.
Monday, January 17, 2011
portfolio for MuralArts
photo from a newpaper article on Huntington Firestation Mural, Boston, MA
project partner, Kristie O'Donnell, in front of Huntington Fire Station Mural
detail, Huntington Fire Station Mural
Rindge and Latin High School Mural, Cambridge, MA. The students used Gauguin's painting and questions Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going? to explore their own ideas of home and belonging. Each student painted several sections of the mural and contributed a found object of personal importance for the installation on the bottom.
R & L Mural, detail
student working on R & L Mural
R & L Mural, detail
R & L Mural, detail
R & L Mural, detail
Immigrants (Lost and Found), oil
with sculpture professor Batu Siharulidze, discussing mural installation Mother in Gallery 5 at Boston University
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
suggestion i sent into studio360 to do an episode on 'On the Road'
I am a twenty-three-year-old Belorussian immigrant and I have been fighting with a disabling feeling of the loss of national identity and the unclear emotions following the event of moving to the States at the age of twelve, for ten years now. Anger at my mother, at the governments, at myself, at art, at anything, really - it's a frantic kind of feeling, like an egg that got dropped out of the nest and went into shock. It's the kind of anger that egg would feel after the shock is over, and it's supposed to fell like a happy little egg 'because this new place is better, so slap on a smile and run along!' I learned fast, but I could not find a sense of peace in the new identity I was supposed to identify with and even though my accent went and my Russian instead got an American accent (which was a traumatic realization brought on by a visit to Belarus after two years out and getting called 'an American), despite my assimilation, I still felt like an outsider, especially in the subtle matters like humor and childhood memories, that people around me could share, and settle their nostalgia and camaraderie into. It's the intimacy of the cultural identity that I lacked and that lack brought me the most painful confusion. Nevertheless, I managed to get myself a full scholarship to BU and graduated with a double major in painting and sculpture and went along with my life, got a job. But the momentum of my migrant youth didn't let me stay put and I decided to backpack through Europe (again, but for longer this time) and go to the Balkans and see the gypsies and roam and have no home, because I was so sick of having a changing my permanent address, always with a feeling of shame somehow, and of being the undercover outsider, like an unpaid spy.
But as I was getting ready to leave for the journey... I discovered the Blues and Woody Guthrie, then jazz, and then the whole wide mystical country rolled out before me, like a veil lifted and through the music I 'got it'. And I left for my journey with a new feeling boiling up inside, the feeling of 'leaving home to go on a journey', but a home that I could come back to, a wild home, and home that was itself homeless, wandering, desperate for greatness, and I can live there, because so was I. And somewhere along my trip I found 'On the Road' online and listened to the whole thing in a gulp and Kerouac opened for me the last floodgate and I finally felt happy to be... well, I have to say it - an American. I am planning many projects based on these new feelings - paintings, murals, documentaries, and I want to talk about home to those who feel like they don't have one, I want to talk about the Blues, about singing, about storytelling. America is nothing but road, and on the road I found my home.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
the 'store' and the goatman, star istevnik, macedonia
a daily philosophical debate with a goat-owning neighbor as he crossed the road to the field and as i waited along to road to hitchhike into town:
- ey ey, okay okay!
- hey, hey!
- hello!
- how are you?
- okay okay, [macedonian words and gestures adding up to 'getting by']
- oh, alright.
- where you go?
- to town
- for what?
- internet
- ah, eh, okay okay. you coming back?
- yes, tonight.
- ok, okay [i'm just taking my goats for a walk in the field over there]
- oh, how many do you have?
- three, [for milk, enough for me and my family to eat. you like?]
- yes, i do, i would love some, thank you.
- ok ok super [in the evening when you come back i will bring some by maja's house and you can boil it and drink]
- oh, thank you so much.
- bye
- bye
star istevnik
A village consisting entirely of Francis Bacon portraits, surrounded by the rolling hills of Eden and fresh sunbathed pine forrest, where a sadly notable number of young people hang themselves each year. The winding roads rise to the steep horizon and lead right into the luxurious clouds. The landscape - a collaborative vision of Bruegel and the art director of Teletubbies. Always a dog barking somewhere, the brass gypsy dream beats always just far enough to hear but not to see. Excerpt:
'the store'
How I love to watch the light of that stoically decrepit building employed by the village as the local store but mostly serving as the bar for the few but dedicated old men (and an occasional woman disguised almost seamlessly as an old man); how I love to watch that pale blue-yellow fluorescent rectangle, interrupted quietly by the panes and the permanent and solemn decoration of lined-up beer bottles, inviting and mournful; how I love to watch that window elevate into the night as the tractor rolls downhill and away. A muddy pedestal for the glowing smoke altar, the blue cube of the television suspended above the dusty wooden shelves, stacked with a few loaves of bread, cookies, cigarettes (though not tonight, and who knows when there will be any), beer, matches and other necessary, but somehow blandly unsatisfying items. It ascends, raised by the road, remaining on the hill, surrounded by the windy and endless darkness of the half-abandoned village, by the ringing tide of the surrounding forrest, whispering of ancient gods, of invasions and rebellions, of the men hanged on its limbs. Turning the corner, the rectangle disappears, the stage curtains, the unread and the unwritten play continues among the night hills, without an audience, unwitnessed, abandoned into oblivion and out of memory, our of history. But by those circumstances it is unstirred and uninterrupted, sliding along the narrow cracks of tradition, slowly and without blinking, without looking back, without looking forward. Gaze fixed on its thick dry cracked warm hands, or a few paces up the road on its goats, chickens, tractor wheels or another endless ageless tasks of survival dictating the rhythm of each sunrise-to-sunset day.
The sun sets, the dusk colors' magical transcendent performance ends in gray, violently tumbling into the colorless pitt of the country night. The demons rise up from the ground, floating out of rocks and glassless windows. The trees grow arms and eyes and roam and moan for man. No more questions or answers, the night reigns silently and judges blindly, documenting the forgotten histories, finishing the phrases and cries cut off by days, deaths and doubts. A mouthless toothless mumble and the song of the nightingale.
- ey ey, okay okay!
- hey, hey!
- hello!
- how are you?
- okay okay, [macedonian words and gestures adding up to 'getting by']
- oh, alright.
- where you go?
- to town
- for what?
- internet
- ah, eh, okay okay. you coming back?
- yes, tonight.
- ok, okay [i'm just taking my goats for a walk in the field over there]
- oh, how many do you have?
- three, [for milk, enough for me and my family to eat. you like?]
- yes, i do, i would love some, thank you.
- ok ok super [in the evening when you come back i will bring some by maja's house and you can boil it and drink]
- oh, thank you so much.
- bye
- bye
star istevnik
A village consisting entirely of Francis Bacon portraits, surrounded by the rolling hills of Eden and fresh sunbathed pine forrest, where a sadly notable number of young people hang themselves each year. The winding roads rise to the steep horizon and lead right into the luxurious clouds. The landscape - a collaborative vision of Bruegel and the art director of Teletubbies. Always a dog barking somewhere, the brass gypsy dream beats always just far enough to hear but not to see. Excerpt:
'the store'
How I love to watch the light of that stoically decrepit building employed by the village as the local store but mostly serving as the bar for the few but dedicated old men (and an occasional woman disguised almost seamlessly as an old man); how I love to watch that pale blue-yellow fluorescent rectangle, interrupted quietly by the panes and the permanent and solemn decoration of lined-up beer bottles, inviting and mournful; how I love to watch that window elevate into the night as the tractor rolls downhill and away. A muddy pedestal for the glowing smoke altar, the blue cube of the television suspended above the dusty wooden shelves, stacked with a few loaves of bread, cookies, cigarettes (though not tonight, and who knows when there will be any), beer, matches and other necessary, but somehow blandly unsatisfying items. It ascends, raised by the road, remaining on the hill, surrounded by the windy and endless darkness of the half-abandoned village, by the ringing tide of the surrounding forrest, whispering of ancient gods, of invasions and rebellions, of the men hanged on its limbs. Turning the corner, the rectangle disappears, the stage curtains, the unread and the unwritten play continues among the night hills, without an audience, unwitnessed, abandoned into oblivion and out of memory, our of history. But by those circumstances it is unstirred and uninterrupted, sliding along the narrow cracks of tradition, slowly and without blinking, without looking back, without looking forward. Gaze fixed on its thick dry cracked warm hands, or a few paces up the road on its goats, chickens, tractor wheels or another endless ageless tasks of survival dictating the rhythm of each sunrise-to-sunset day.
The sun sets, the dusk colors' magical transcendent performance ends in gray, violently tumbling into the colorless pitt of the country night. The demons rise up from the ground, floating out of rocks and glassless windows. The trees grow arms and eyes and roam and moan for man. No more questions or answers, the night reigns silently and judges blindly, documenting the forgotten histories, finishing the phrases and cries cut off by days, deaths and doubts. A mouthless toothless mumble and the song of the nightingale.
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