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It's a Kansas City day, Part 1
February 11, 2014 · Print This Article
Over the coming months, the Bad at Sports blog is featuring quick glimpses of the art world as it exists in smaller cities across the country and around the world. Each glimpse is byway of some of the said city's local characters, which include but are not limited to artists, curators, creative writers, and critics. This week, we take you to Kansas City, the state-stradding city that produced the likes of Robert Altman, Amelia Earhart, Robert Morris, and Charlie Parker, to name a few.Â
Every City's Second City
Guest Post by Garry Noland
When I was asked by Bad at Sports to write this article, the request focused on what it has been like to be an artist in Kansas City for "however many years it has been.â€
I've been making things since I was a boy but started thinking about the context of my work in 1980. I knew going in that artists didn't make any money. That's why I thought art history would be a good career move in 1976; it seemed like doing research on Frederick Law Olmsted, for example, would be an easier job.  I've had factory work slagging welds and jackhammering frozen coal piles. That didn't work out either. Along with a series of day jobs I've thrown together a studio career that's gone from the kitchen table to a 3,000 sq. ft. studio and back again. I feel successful if I don't factor in money. I'm grateful for the support of my family and artist colleagues here and around the country.
In 1977 I was a student assistant for Hollister Sturges, who was in Chicago curating for a show at the University of Missouri – Kansas City (UMKC). The show, titled Chicago Abstractionists: Romanticized Structures, allowed me into the studios of John Henry, Paul Slepak, Dan Ramirez, Miyoko Ito and others. Ted Argeropolos had passed by then, but his work was unforgettable. We had dinner at Vera Klement's place and a few too many drinks at a Greek restaurant with Jane Allan, founder of New Art Examiner and Derek Guthrie, a painter and NAE's publisher.
Flash forward to 1993. I hailed a taxi at Midway. I was in town for a show at Deson-Saunders Gallery. Mark Saunders had seen my work at the NIU Chicago Gallery and then included a few of my pieces in a group show. I was amazed by the activity in the Chicago galleries and knew there was nothing back home like this.
The driver asked me where I was from. "Kansas City,†I said. Eyes up in the rearview driver says, "you know they call KC 'Little Chicago'.† It had something to do with the mob, he said, and if it got too hot in Chicago, "the boys hightailed it to KC.â€Â Nice to know. It doesn't happen that way, probably, anymore.
So this was the SECOND City?  Driving back to KC with a load of paintings and sculpture I wondered….if Chicago's the Second City, how good was the First City? And like Dorothy's Emerald City, what happened when the curtain was pulled aside? Where did KC rank in all this?
The truth is every city's the second city. Being an artist carries with it a cruel joke. We pursue beauty, achieve it sometimes, but nothing's ever enough. At least it shouldn't be; it's how we move forward. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence or in another gallery.
There's a lot more activity in KC these days compared to 1977, or even 1993. About the only chance for a Kansas City artist in 1977 to gain a little traction was to be chosen for the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art's "Thirty Miles of Art†or to teach at the Kansas City Art Institute (KCAI) or UMKC. "Thirty Miles of Art†(for which my work was rejected twice) was a local, less vigorous version of the Museum of Contemporary Art's "Chicago Works†series. Another alternative was to get involved with the Kansas City Artist's Coalition (KCAC), an artist-run space that formed coincidentally with Chicago's N.A.M.E. and ARC.
What's better now in 2014 stems from one thing:
Millenials are coming to town and sticking around.  The Charlotte Street Foundation's (CSF) sustained programming, supporting the work of Kansas City artists, has not gone unnoticed by recent classes of art school and university art department graduates.  Kansas City is a viable alternative to more expensive locations—such as Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, to name a few—in which to set up a studio, develop and show new work.
The result is young people working in the studio—even if it's a kitchen table, opening exhibition venues, writing poetry and scripts, publishing blogs and creating choreography.
In artspeak, these people are called emerging artists. Truth is, if you're not emerging, you're not an artist. The inherent problem is: if an artist's always emerging (code for not producing commodity), how can the collecting class count on a stable, value-enhancing product? For the commodity art you'll have to go to New York and that's exactly what the collecting class of places like Kansas City does. That will always be the problem in Kansas City. Artists in Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Williamsburg and Red Hook are likely to tell the same story.Â
CSF is not the only institution that's supporting and motivating this new, broader generation:
- The H & R Block Artspace at the Kansas City Art Institute sponsors a biennial of works on paper called KC Flatfile, a project that archives into several large flat files scores of area artists' drawings, collages, prints and more. The Artspace, led by director and chief curator Raechelle Smith, makes a point of involving local and visiting curators to create short-run installations featuring works culled from these flat files. Furthermore, Smith and her Artspace team actively support experimental presentations by local curatorial and studio projects.
- The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art at Johnson County Community College regularly hosts artist talks for the student population. Director Bruce Hartman is a booster of KC artists by making sure that the museum's collection represents KC diversely. Dylan Mortimer, a local artist, is currently having a solo exhibition at the Nerman.
- The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art's newish curator and educator (she's been on the job for a little more than a year) Erin Dziedzic is becoming known for making studio visits and is planning a series of group exhibitions focusing on artists in the metropolitan area.
- PLUG Projects is an artist-operated storefront gallery. PLUG focuses on exhibitions by local and national artists. Its exhibitions are supplemented by a film series, critique night, and 8 ½ x 11, a printed venue for art writing in KC.
- UMKC's Fine Arts Gallery has been remodeled and, under artist Davin Watne's guidance, is kicking up the energy several notches with multi-disciplinary programming and projects by emerging artists.
- Artist Inc., in conjunction with UMKC, CSF and ArtsKC, a city arts council, provides networking resources and entrepreneurial workshops for artists, writers and actors in an effort to help them build a sustained professional career in KC.
- There are others, too: KCAC, Rockhurst University's Greenlease Gallery, Fishtank Theater, The Living Room, Cupcakes in Regalia, Blue Room's Jazz Poetry Series, The Writer's Place, Garcia Squared and Studios Inc.
How have all these millenials affected me, someone who just turned 60? I am amazed at their work ethic and dedication to studio practice. It makes me work harder. Conversations about work and ideas are exchanged in organized critiques, and sometimes one on one.  They've raised the temperature and sophistication of the dialogue. They seem interested in the older generation and the history of KC, thus the paybacks seem reciprocal.
There's pressure too: to perform… to attain or retain some semblance of relevance locally and nationally.  It'ÂÂÂÂÂs common to hear fellow artists comparing and contrasting colleagues' work. A context is established and all boats rise. Artists want to do "8 for 8.†They want fair value for their work. It sounds middle class and that's a good thing. We all want to work and we all do work. There's ample trade in doing what artists do: (cliché alert) asking and answering questions, questioning the status quo and blurring jobs and job descriptions. Maybe the country's new creative class is the country's new emergent middle class.
That's my city. I know though, in the larger picture, if there are 50 artists here working their asses off, there are 100 in St. Louis, 500 in Chicago, 5000 in New York and who knows how many in Dehli or Shanghai.
Turns out, every city's the second city.
Garry Noland graduated from UMKC in 1978 with a BA-History of Art. He contributed regularly to New Art Examiner, Forum (the monthly of Kansas City Artists Coalition) and Art Extra, a publication from Wichita, KS. He won a NEA Fellowship in Paintings and Works on Paper in 1994 and was awarded a Studios Inc Artist Residency in 2011. Noland's work has been exhibited recently at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Indianapolis Art Center, Hardesty Art Center and la Esquina. Upcoming exhibits include The Center is a Moving Target at Kemper Crossroads (Kansas City) and exhibitions at Zarrow Gallery (University of Tulsa) and Beverly (St. Louis) with his daughter, Peggy Noland.
How We Work: An Interview with Nick Jirasek
February 5, 2014 · Print This Article
Guest post by A.Martinez
Nick Jirasek is a food artist and founder of underground food entity Guerrilla Smiles. He has worked with Tony Fitzpatrick, Links Hall, Redmoon Theater, Linda Warren Projects, Hauser Gallery, Ensemble Dal Niente, High Concept Laboratories, and more. Nick has a strong love of Malort and makes a mean pork shoulder. I got to ask him some questions about who he is, what he does, and his exciting presence in the arts scene.
A.Martinez: What is your definition of a food artist and what you do?
Nick Jirasek: A food artist is one who uses primarily comestible materials to create, explore, or challenge ideas. Â I work professionally in this capacity at exhibition openings, private events, the streets, house-parties, underground dinners, performances, pop-ups, talk-shows, and screenings.
Martinez: You are a self-trained- how did you develop your skills?
Jirasek: Immersion. There are seemingly unending resources, documentation, and wisdom surrounding food. Everyone wants to talk about it, wants to teach you the 'right way to do it,' to share the ritual of eating with you, the most authentic place to buy kielbasa, the healthiest diet, the ethical diet, the best place to eat carnitas. Once I had the feeling that being a food artist is what I wanted to do, I made it my entire life. Some of the learning has been traditional in cooking under trained kitchen professionals, but most of it has been in acute observation and guerrilla learning tactics. I'll sound like a broken .FLAC if I say the internet has been a tremendous resource, so I'll say it's been invaluable. That of course means the usual suspects of e-books, Youtubes, and blog trolling, but also some harder to find fountains of information in more underground and illicit venues of the www. Once one is cognizant of basic technique, cultural/ethnic culinary tradition, and flavor pairing, is when some cooks then begin to hone their craft or get the fuck out; an Italian chef mastering the different regions of Italy, travelling to the Piedmonts to study centuries of tradition in Agnolotti, or a trade-school dropout in search of Tru. They begin to specialize based on their talents, their genealogy, and interests. But, I'm not interested in specializing my edible journey. I want to continually challenge the ideas and traditions of food while building a vocabulary of how to articulate that comestibly, socially, and literally.
Martinez: Who and what is Guerrilla Smiles and how long has it been around?
Jirasek: Guerrilla Smiles started as a social project about 6 years ago; to simply spread smiles in unexpected places and unexpected ways that would serve to beautify our lives and the lives around us.
I was a worn-out, director of food and beverage at Chicago's 4th tallest building, the John Hancock. I worked a ridiculous amount of hours. The dreams at night of P&L's, and the commute home down Chicago on the 66 bus was the cherry on-top of the soul sucking sundae. One day someone at the Hancock had ordered what must have been nearly a hundred gold, helium filled balloons and thrown them in the loading dock after the party was over.  I grabbed all the balloons and walked down the street, handing a floating ball of gold to anyone and everyone that would take them. People like balloons, or maybe just the color gold more than I had thought. I was overrun by would-be gold-diggers by the time I made it to the McDonald's on State street. At that point I walked to the middle of intersection and released the remaining bouquet of gold into the sky. Similar projects came in weeks following like cashing half my paycheck at the currency exchange in quarters and handing them out, then throwing them in the air and off bridges. Safety became an issue.
Around the same time my good friends Claire Molek and Erin Babbin were starting a gallery practice called Studio1020 (later theStudio and thisisnothestudio).  Building on the ideas put forth on the street, I pleaded with them to seize the opportunity of the ubiquitous gallery food & wine table.  The idea was simple; to mirror the displaying artists' work aesthetically or thematically in comestible form. This way the dialogue of what the artist's message was, was literally palatable and hopefully led to broaden and ease the discourse.  Through the past 5 years, a changing cast of cooking professionals, artists, and friends have helped carry on this mission from private dinners of 9 to public events of 900.
Martinez: The Break The Bread series focuses on your collaborations with visual artists at galleries around the city. How do you choose what artists and galleries with which you're going to collaborate? Or do they choose you?
Jirasek: For the vast majority of gigs, the artist, gallerist, or curator approaches us. Guerrilla Smiles does not advertise, has no website, and uses social media sparsely as a means to communicate. That is to say, we truly relish our underground disposition. My time with Studio1020 afforded me a great opportunity to interact and network directly with interested parties, interesting artists, and share lots of ideas through food. It all started from there and kind of naturally branched out by word of mouth. I have, in special situations, approached artists I want to work with and am looking forward to doing so more in the near future, as well as producing independent original work.
Martinez: What is the process of trying out new dish?
Jirasek: I kind of have an ongoing list of techniques, ingredients, serving vessels, equipment and ideas I'm waiting for the right opportunity to try. When it seems appropriate, I get to try out new stuff. In general, the basis for everything I make is a new dish as every exhibition or performance is new. There is some safety in knowing my control of flavor is adept, my technique is solid, but conversely an exciting trepidation in knowing that this dish has components I have done before, but altogether is completely new.
Martinez: What is the biggest revelation you've had about the way you work?
Jirasek: One needs to be aware of their work patterns and not sabotage their opportunities. I don't like asking for help, and no one will ever work for me for free.
Martinez: Is shopping for ingredients an important part of your creative process?
Jirasek: Extremely. I devote at least an entire day to shopping for an event that can completely change the menu. The Green City Market is a staple and only occurs on 2 days of the week. But generally I go to local specialty stores and markets that take me from 113th to Skokie. This process of traveling all around the city, of breathing in the lifeblood of our diverse culture, of interacting with ethnicities whose only commonality with me is Chicago and food, is probably my greatest inspiration. It's not dissimilar to the interaction I have with people on the night of an event. Most 'food people' will disagree with me on this, but I'm less interested in the local food movement and more interested in small, local family businesses, and traditions in Chicagoland.
Martinez: What is your favorite ingredient to work with?
Jirasek: Celery or Popcorn.
Martinez: Guerrilla Smiles has a dish called Oak Street Beach. Describe this dish and how it came about.
Jirasek: Oak Street Beach started as dish for a thisisnotthestudio show featuring artist Xiao Tse at High Concept Laboratories. Tse took upwards of a thousand pictures from the concrete pavement of Oak St. Beach's shore, facing the lake and narrowed it down to one piece that combined around twenty of the most discerning shots. It is essentially a deconstructed soup, with the broth held separately so as not to affect the aesthetic and textural integrity of the dry ingredients. The dry ingredients are held in a ten ounce clear plastic glass. The sand is a combination of ground peanuts, cashews, and maltodextrin.  The grass is julienned wild ramps. The trash is a candied ginger chip. The fish is a rice flour fried smelt. The towel is a soy and turmeric based spring roll wrapper. The wet ingredients are suspended above in a fitting five ounce plastic glass, rimmed with suntan lotion that is garlic mayo. The Lake Michigan water is a kombu dashi. The eater is instructed to take a small mouthful of the dry ingredients and wash it down with a swig of the wet ingredients, going back and forth in a double fisted affair like they are swimming, until they are finished.
The service of Oak St. Beach was very much so inspired by a dish put forward by Michael Carlson of Schwa at Redmoon Theater's Spectacle Lunatique 2011 called "Walking Through the Forest.â€
Martinez: You were born and raised in Chicago and this has a strong influence on the food you make. Are there any other cities or cultures that you either look to for inspiration or are inherent in your work?
Jirasek: I think Mexican food simply got everything right. We obviously have a large population of Mexican-Americans in Chicago, and benefit greatly from the cornucopia of ingredients, flavor, and culture they have imbued upon us. Aside from that, I took great inspiration from my time cooking in Panama City, whose flavors are a great amalgamation of the diverse foreign cultures who have occupied the area and the local flora and fauna. I look forward to delving into historical American First Nation culinaria as a geographical inspiration, and look forward to marrying Filipino and Czech food with acidic flavors.
Martinez: Food-wise, what do you think are some exciting places or events happening around the city?
Jirasek: I think The Plant in The Back of the Yards is going to be a blueprint for metropolitan farming worldwide. Asado Coffee's recent expansion plans and concept of 'nano-roasting' is next level. Smalls BBQ is the kind of approachable, forward thinking neighborhood restaurant that Chicago has lacked to put it on the level of NYC. Floriole's baguettes are worth lining up for a la Paris when they come out fresh at 11am everyday. Three Aces is what every gastropub should strive to be. I also think we'll see a boon in quality independent food writing like Graze, Middlewest and whatever Anthony Todd has up his sleeve.
Martinez: What is your favorite Chicago-style food? And where's your favorite place to get it?
Jirasek: Chicago's hot dog is unmatched. Though not all the classic ingredients are included, Gene & Judes' can't be contended with because of the volume they go through and the freshness that entails, and fries like woah. Gotta go with underdog Chickie's for beef because their giardiniera is only quickly cured and crunchier. Salerno's for pizza because the true Chicago slice is thick crust and party cut.
Martinez: What does Guerrilla Smiles have lined up in the coming months?
Jirasek: In the great tradition of former Redmoon Theater Development Director Sean Kaplan, we will be curating the amuse-bouche portion of the upcoming fundraiser Spectacle Lunatique, outfitted Guerrilla style, primarily by the underground supper clubs of Chicago. We are in post-production for the next episode of our Break The Bread series with OnTheRealFilm for last year's THAW fundraiser for Links Hall, as well as designing a menu for a soon opening southside cafe with one of Chicago's champion contemporary artists.
Martinez: Is there a piece of advice, food-related or not that you think of often?
Jirasek: Don't crowd the pan. When it rains, it pours. Be safe, be strong.
All photos courtesy of the artist.
A.Martinez is a freelance art and music organizer living in Chicago, IL.
Out of the Mouths of Artists: Nicole Mauser
February 4, 2014 · Print This Article
"Out of the Mouths of Artists" is a new bi-monthly series on the Bad at Sports blog. The series presents a space for guest artist bloggers– of varying career statuses– to write, to reflect, to pontificate on their current situations, failures and/or successes, and ideas on what it means to be an artist. "Out of the Mouths of Artists" also gives readers a glimpse into artists' portfolios and studios.Â
Relocating a Center
By Nicole Mauser
Just last week, a question was posed to me: "Where is the epicenter of Chicago's art scene?†This was part of a casual elevator conversation with someone who had just moved from the East Coast to Chicago. I was struck by this question because it made me pause and consider where I geographically invest my time and conversations about art and research. Having relocated back to Chicago from Kansas City, MO, for a second time this past summer, I found myself picking up where I left off. In some respects, I am engaged in existing dialogues and structures, while in other professional respects I have set out to tackle completely unknown territories and new challenges.
With the question, I realized how fascinating it is to be an observer on the periphery (even if only temporarily) and see what galleries have disappeared, endured, and emerged, while exploring a 'new' to me Chicago in terms of private collections and historic venues such as The Arts Club or Union League.
I had no short answer for the East Coaster-cum-Chicagoan: 119 Peoria has been all but dismantled (will Three Walls stay or go?); however, there is still a bastion of galleries in the West Loop on Washington. Mana Contemporary is becoming a household by name teaming up with various institutions. Each university with a MFA program from the universities—Northwestern, UIC and U of C—to the art schools—Columbia College and SAIC—has is its own mini-epicenter with concentric circles emanating outward into the art scene. A handful (a few handfuls, really) of Chicago artists are being highlighted in the upcoming Whitney Biennial by Michelle Grabner and Anthony Elms. The MCA has gone through upheaval. Art Expo is back. Ultimately, there is no dominant discourse. In dynamic and thriving arts ecologies, there is a multitude of rich conversations happening. These conversations are being instigated by the artists themselves and to varying degrees by the institutions.
One thing I do know: my life now in Chicago is an inversion of the one I led in KCMO.
After an initial brief stint as an art handler in Chicago, I learned a difficult lesson that not all businesses touting the arts support artists; some exploit employees who make the ultimate sacrifice to pay their bills: no longer making their work. Currently, I juggle a full-time administrative job at one local art school while teaching painting as an adjunct at another local university. And I recently struck up a relationship with Reynolds Gallery in Richmond, Virginia, to exhibit a few pieces of my work. While all of these roles help me pay the rent and gain professional experience, they combine to make ends difficult to support a studio practice.
This is the predicament that many conversations with artist friends revolve around: balancing studio/research time with demands of a job to afford overhead. Whereas in KCMO, many artists cobble together part-time teaching, waiting tables, and selling work to afford three times the living space and a studio. In that smaller metropolis, it is a choice to leverage income to focus on the studio practice. It is an option to survive on much less. Therefore, it has become an environment that lends itself to risk taking and igniting experimental collaborations. I found that I was able to do many things, and still work to afford an artist's necessities. With a number of others, I founded and rigorously participated in two artist enterprises: PLUG Projects and Kansas City's Plein Air Coterie (KCPAC), both of which are going still going strong. The collaborative work I did (from 2011 to 2012) with the always professional co-founders and artists at PLUG was rewarding, and I am grateful to my conspirators there for their mutual desire to shape unique exhibitions and ancillary programming, all from the perspective of the artist as curator. Also, this time at PLUG helped me hone my ability to simultaneously hold down a full time staff job at SAIC and an adjunct teaching appointment at UIC. I believe my experience as part of KCPAC, in which I was working from observation in the elements, helped to erode any assumptions about the relationship between abstraction and perception.
Recently, in Chicago, a few artists and I rekindled a critique group consisting of grad school colleagues (and friends!) for studio visits. Inscribing this regular practice into our studio research is gaining terrific momentum. I truly value these relationships and the quality of our conversations. I am continually blown away by the multitude of in-depth cross-conversations, generosity, and ferocity of investment in each other's development. In this context, which is a kind of epicenter for me, criticality is not a rebuff but a way of asking better questions. I find that I am now breaking rules that I once set for myself in the past. I am working to explore abstraction through a host of reference materials, including still lifes, photos, Xeroxed images, and art historical references, in order to push against my own non-objective proclivities.
Through it all, though, I find myself returning to ponder the eternal question, what is the healthiest scenario to support my work? It is the gallery system? Is it the academic system? None of these scenarios are necessarily the sustainable answer. Constantly having open conversations negotiating alternative models and redefining healthy arts ecology seems the best start for me.
In summary, it appears that the current epicenter in Chicago, and in all cities, is a moving target—for me and for others. This scenario seems to simultaneously present plural opportunities and elusive support mechanisms for one's longevity in the arts. And yet, it feels like a great time to be an artist in Chicago.
I hope someone asks me where "the epicenter†is again in five years.
Nicole Mauser (b. 1983, Indianapolis) currently lives and works in Chicago, IL. She obtained a MFA from The University of Chicago (2010) and a BFA from Ringling College of Art & Design (2006). Her works have been exhibited nationally and internationally. Mauser was a 2011 recipient of a Post-MFA Teaching Felllowship at The University of Chicago and a recipient of a Student Fine Art Fund Grant for travel and research in Berlin from The University of Chicago. Exhibitions include Ft. Gondo Compound for the Arts (St. Louis), Carrie Secrist Gallery (Chicago), The Dolphin Gallery (Kansas City), H&R Block Artspace (Kansas City), DOVA Temporary Gallery (Chicago), Gladstone Community Center (Gladstone, MO), Center for Art+Culture (Aix-en-Provence) and AR Gallery (Milan). Collections include The Alexander (Indianapolis) and The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (Overland Park, KS). Mauser's writings have been published in 8 ½ x 11 and Art Practical. Mauser is also a co-founder of the artist run gallery, PLUG Projects and co-founder of the Kansas City Plein Air Coterie (KCPAC).
See more of Nicole's work at www.nicolemauser.com.
Chair Pose
January 31, 2014 · Print This Article
Guess post by Lise Haller Baggeson Ross
At the mini mall where I buy my art supplies, next to Starbucks and Whole Foods, there are two design furniture stores to supply the well to do urban area where we live.
In the window display at Design Within Reach is a Fritz Hansen Egg chair, designed by Arne Jacobsen for the Radisson SAS hotel in Copenhagen in 1958. Originally produced in green wool, the most popular model, like the one it the window, was upholstered in black leather.
A classic.
In the adjoining shop window, they have a very similar chair. It is an egg-shaped swivel lounge chair in white leather with curvy lines and a star shaped aluminum base. The outside of the shell is covered entirely in aluminum, riveted together with chunky bolts, giving the whole thing a patchworked steam-punk-Barbie-in-an-Amsterdam-hair-salon aesthetic.
My daughter, who just turned eight, thinks this chair is dreamy. I think it is an abomination. But I'm having a hard time explaining to her why, and why this is a bad thing —after all one woman's homage is another woman's pimping—and we can't even just err on the side of good taste.
Beyond the field of good and bad taste is the boundary of the shocking, and out there  Allen Jones' Chair is back in style –in Bjarne Melgaard's pimped up "retoxified†version of it — now available in black.
"The racist chair†as it has been dubbed—because now it is apparently the chair that is racist, not the artist who made it, not the patron who bought it, not the editor who published the photo which is currently being circulated, not the context of the international art elite (—who already included Jones's original into our canon as part of the TATE's permanent collection. A Pop art classic. )
Jones considers the threesome (the chair is accompanied by a table and a hat stand following the same design philosophy) his boldest statement. In reference to his work, he explains that:
The erotic impulse transcends cerebral barriers and demands a direct emotional response. Confronted with an abstract statement people readily defer to an expert; but confronted with an erotic statement everyone is an expert. It seems to me a democratic idea that art should be accessible to everyone on some level, and eroticism in one such level.[1]
This abstract statement makes me wonder about the democratic implications of making one half of the population accessible as furniture for the other half, but off course I'm no expert on democracy.
If the image of a rich, beautiful white lady perched on top of a contorted busty black woman in bondage sits uncomfortably, it could be because it reminds us of how comfortable we have become with the idea of our bodies being commodified, black and white, black by white, female and male, female by male.
The Russian art world super nova Dasha Zhukova, for it is she in the picture, claims that the outrage over the picture was caused by it being "published completely out of context,â€.  She claims that it is in fact "a commentary on gender and racial politics,†implying that in these international art world matters, she is the expert and we, the internet mob, are not. That we don't get it.
Melgaard's art-world buddies have come to his defense, one of them claiming that: "He is not racist. He even dated a black man,â€. But, like with Jones' defense of his original when he said, "I love women. I was using misogyny ironically!,†you can love and debase somebody at the same time. Forniphilia (human furniture) is a fine example of this.
That is called pimping.
No stranger to pimping, Melgaard in fact started off his career with (beautiful) watercolors of himself jerking off on the grave of his idol, Paul Gauguin, it is hardly surprising that he has not apologized as much as philosophized about the incidence. His press statement, released to Art Info through Gavin Brown enterprise, ends with the following:
We see this photograph to be extraordinary. We see this debate to be a distraction from the true challenges that face us. We applaud both the sitter and the seated. To fault the sitter, now in the age of the Anthropocene, in the midst of enormous and REAL obscenities that threaten our actual existence, reflects a civilization that is not dying but already dead. Turn your outrage upside down.
This reference to the "age of the Anthropocene†basically means: this is nothing compared to global warming. But the statement skirts around the fact that global warming is the result of an economy that hinges on the continuous commodification of bodies. The REAL obscenity in this context is the business as usual of employing the "end of history†rhetoric by those who consider themselves "winners†—feminists are not "done†with history, nor is the civil rights movement –but Melgaard in his statement turns the moral responsibility for this upside down.
To a certain point he is entitled to this position –after all artworks can operate in this field beyond moral good and bad, because of their dual relationship with form and content –artist's statements, on the other hand, cannot since they are only really dealing with content.
Pimping (like irony) in a sense relies on the knowingness with which we acknowledge the relationship between form and content, and how we are able to destabilize it, in the knowledge that (to use Melgaard's phrase) both the sitter and the seated "gets itâ€, although it does not always sit comfortably.
Recently Miley Cyrus was given a fair amount of push back for pimping a content she didn't entirely get both in the form of the Afro American phenomenon of Twerking as well as the feminist legacy of Sinead O'Connor's shaved head. In Rolling Stone Magazine Cyrus explained how her Wrecking Ball video is a tribute to O'Connor's majestic crying game, Nothing Compares To You:
I wanted it to be tough but really pretty – that's what Sinead did with her hair and everything. The trick is getting the camera up above you, so it almost looks like you're looking up at someone and crying.[2]
O'Connor called her out and replied with a talking to in the "spirit of motherlinessâ€:
It is in fact the case that you will obscure your talent by allowing yourself to be pimped, whether it's the music business or yourself doing the pimping.[3] […] The look I chose, I chose on purpose at a time when my record company were encouraging me to do what you have done. I felt I would rather be judged on my talent and not my looks. I am happy that I made that choice, not least because I do not find myself on the proverbial rag heap now that I am almost 47 yrs of age… which unfortunately many female artists who have based their image around their sexuality, end up on when they reach middle age.
Miley's response was to repost O'Connor's two-year-old tweets, in which she calls for help in treating her mental malady and suicidal impulse, along with an old photo of O'Connor tearing up a picture of the Pope on Saturday Night Live.
(Not getting how absolutely radical that gesture was at the time, and still is. How could she—she wasn't even born then! But some of us remember.)
Proving, if nothing else, O'Connor's point about the pimping.
But, as I was hinting in the beginning, one woman's pimping is the other woman's homage– after all there is no pimping without love.
To that point, I must confess I love that song, which hums like the pimped up cyborg love child of James' Browns Sex Machine and David Bowie's TVC 15, even if I'm told that Robin Thicke is the new exterminator in the "War On Women,†but I don't love Miley Cyrus enough to go to one of her concerts.
Instead, I went to see Sinead O'Conner when she was passing through town, and although it was weird sitting in that winery surrounded by middle aged fans like myself, when the lights dimmed and she took the stage she was as bald and as beautiful as ever. She was wearing a low cut washed out shirt that read "Rasta at Heartâ€. I started dreaming about egg chairs in red, gold and green wool upholstery.
[2]Â Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/miley-cyrus-on-why-she-loves-weed-went-wild-at-the-vmas-and-much-more-20130927#ixzz2rFmPb89N
 [3] – See more at: http://perezhilton.com/2013-10-02-miley-cyrus-open-letter-sinead-oconnor-wrecking-ball/#sthash.ihyg77k0.dpuf
Guest Post by Virginia Konchan
"Feminism is . . . just a gimmick to attract some voters who place gender above any other issue. Respecting the rules of the Money Power during a campaign means toeing the line of oligarchy while in power.   Neither men nor women benefit from this.  [Hilary] Clinton and her neoliberal allies are hijacking feminism and the rhetoric of diversity."
—Pierre Guerlain, Truthout
"There is no liberation that only knows how to say 'I.'  There is no collective movement that speaks for each of us all the way through.â€
—Adrienne Rich, "Notes Toward a Politics of Locationâ€
The lampooning of Mitt Romney's quip in defense to sexist accusations ("I have binders full of womenâ€), aside, the fact remains: the social status of women as "placeholders†or sex objects in the commodity market is subtended linguistically, and historically:  for a woman to define herself as a subject, not relationally as a wife, daughter, or mother, is to demand a changing of the guards in patriarchal lineage, wherein women are permitted to enter discourse only under the name of the father, or husband, as gatekeepers to signification as well as social recognition.  This antagonism is explained away by Slavoj Žižek as a means of condemning women so as to control the flow of "feminine excess,†threatening to destroy the masculine's economy of lack (a woman's performance of these roles for the male gaze or its representative prostheses—camera, video, canvas—the very source of phallic jouissance).
The prohibition against the a priori existence of women as volitional subjects (reproductive femininity as metaphysical and medical "problems"): a black comedy, indeed. The inadmissibility of female self-representation unless patrolled by a state-sponsored or private guardianship (marriage) is the subject of Lindy West's hilarious riposte in Jezebel to the box-office film "Love, Actuallyâ€: in West's reading, the film accords a "27-word allotment†of speech to women, which character Emma Thompson exceeds. "Hugh Grant falls instantly in love with Natalie, which is understandable, because she hasn't yet exceeded her Love Actually attractiveness word quota (Twenty-seven. The quota is 27 words before you become Emma Thompson and must be destroyed.)â€
The 27-word allotment quip, along with Romney's "binders†comment, however funny, provide an important metacommentary to post-feminism: from gaslighting to statistical disproportions in the workplace and economy (documented at VIDA'S The Count), the gag rule of enforced silence is predicated on the objectification of women (dolls don't talk, unless manufactured to do so): all representations of female subjectivity not in service of the neoliberal male imaginary are aberrant misfires, and their authors must either be conscripted into un- and underpaid care work within the service economy, or (in First, Second, and Third Worlds), literally punished.
Rebecca Walker coined the term "third-wave feminism" in a 1992 essay: since then, the Third Wave's focus on inclusivity has steered second-wave feminism's struggle against racism, sexism, and classism, toward an active embrace of pop culture and performance, embodied in Eve Ensler's play and book The Vagina Monologues; the punk rock's riot grrrls movement; the Guerrilla Girls; singers Madonna, Queen Latifah, and Mary J. Blige, among others, and the women depicted in television series such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003), Sex and the City (1998–2004), and Girlfriends (2000–08).  Third Wave cyberfeminists communicate largely through e-zines, blogs, and social media, online feeds proliferating alongside books attempting structural treatments of extant "feminist" aims.  "By about 2000, questions of sexualized behaviour raised debate on whether such things as revealing clothing, designer-label stiletto heels, and amateur pole dancing represented true sexual liberation and gender equality or old oppressions in disguise . . . [The Third Wave's] greatest strength, multivocality, was attacked . . . Third-wavers countered this criticism by stating that the creation of a unified agenda or philosophy . . . was a goal that was not only unrealistic but undesirable.â€Â    [1]
The vision of the Third Wave lay not in economic analysis, or activism, per se, but identity politics:  a privileging of diversity, statistical accounting, and aesthetic hybridity. This rejection of hegemonic culture, however, considering that to divide and conquer is a militaristic strategy imposed from without, the absence of a cohesive vision or praxis, like the Occupy Movement, can potentially weaken a movement, returning us to the question of governance (long abandoned as desirable in a pluralistic democracy ruled instead, ironically, not by a free, self-sufficient citizenry but by mass media and neocon war machines). Opinions vary on the demarcation between the third and fourth waves of feminism, and what constitutes the "fourth wave,†internationally: the fourth wave, like the second, focuses on legislative rights, and statistical tracking (e.g. The Counting Dead Women campaign) but also online misogyny, economic parity, and, during the years after the 2008 financial crash and the coalition government, activism against loan predation (education, housing, credit cards), unemployment and under-employment, zero-hours contracts, bedroom taxes, damaging rhetoric against immigrants, the disabled and those who need support from the state. This new generation of feminists are tech-savvy and gender-sophisticated, in part due to trans-health initiatives (e.g. the Feminist Women's Health Centers in Atlanta) and trans-inclusive organizations like Third Wave Foundation (helmed by feminists in their twenties and thirties).  "Reproductive justice†is an oft-bandied term by fourth-wave feminists, as transgenderism, male feminists, sex work, and complex relationships with the media, spectacle culture, and identity politics structures this aporetic movement.
Anti-essentialism (the recognition that women's condition is always at odds with women's differences from one another, as well as their social and economic power), has become the backbone of postmodern feminism: an academic discipline wherein the idea that subjects (genders, races, and cultures) share intrinsic qualities was exchanged for the "neither/nor†flux of postmodernity's memes (multiplicity, catachresis). Anti-essentialist feminism acknowledges difference, yet, the ontological disciplines contextualizing personhood (biology, psychology) have become increasingly irrelevant in post-humanist discourse. Without the language to mark the difference of one's body from other bodies, and the subtle conditions (social and epistemological) governing entry into discourse communities, it becomes impossible to articulate the "difference" between human branding and consumer choice, amid a glut of media blitzes offering opportunities for self-fashioning through purchasing power (the diet, fitness, salon, cosmetic, and retail industries).  The cults of personality, hipster cool, and "original" ideas:  priced (commodified), shelved, and sold.
In 2006, and 2008, Toril Moi published two consecutive essays in PMLA, and Feminist Theory, respectively: entitled ""I Am Not a Feminist, But . . .â€:  How Feminism Became the F-Word,†and 'I am not a woman writer': About women, literature and feminist theory today.â€Â According to Moi, postfeminist culture gradually arose after the debates between Peggy Kamuf and Nancy Miller in the early 80s dismantled a coalitional feminism, and women's writing and sexual difference as legitimized categories of scholarship and cultural practice.
Poststructuralism also worked to invalidate categories of difference, according to some: in the 1981 essays by Kamuf and Miller, and their correspondence in 1989, Kamuf objects to the feminist "reduction of the literary work to the signature,†claiming an interest in women's writing to be simply a feminist version of the liberal humanism Foucault had upended. Miller believed that regardless of what Kamuf might consider to be theoretically correct, feminists still needed to work on behalf of women writers, otherwise these women would "soon be forgotten, lost to history.â€Â [2]  By the late 80s, Kamuf (a Derridean translator) had disavowed the word "feminist,†as referencing a closed system which inevitably would end up deconstructing itself. Miller, conversely, still thought that feminism was politically necessary, but that identity politics had passed. The path forward was unclear, and critical theory has since been marked by what Alice Jardine calls "non-knowledgeâ€: asignificatory terms ("non-narration,†"anti-lyricâ€), also in critical race theory and Lacanian philosophy (woman as "pas tout"), rather than an appositive definition of otherness (however unhelpful, as Judith Butler has argued, such resignifications can be, reentering as they do the undertow of negative dialectics).
Liberal and conservative feminists alike have been accused of essentializing the category of women, just as, in race theory, the accusation of "conceptual blackness†counters that of "conceptual whiteness.â€Â Neither Kamuf nor Miller exchanged gender-based politics for a class- or race-based feminism, and Marxist feminism dropped off sharply during this decade, though echoes of sociologist Christine Delphy's manifesto ("women are a classâ€) reappear today, as women writers move beyond biological and gender essentialism, static genre definitions, and the high theory of écriture féminine, seeking new access points to postmodern socio-political discourse. "I am interested here in new thought,†says poet Lisa Robertson. "I am standing dressed in the skin of a sheep or a cow in the occidental forest. My name shall be she to them. It is a shame. It is velvety, voluptuous, and odorous . . . each thing's hunger is my fate, is universe of the undiscussed.  My name shall be she to them, in grotesque, monstrous, most ancient mixture.  This is a class.â€Â [3]
Signifiying a movement, in language, or attempting to name a problem, may be recondite, but the struggles for equality, safety and civil rights persist:  complicity in pop culture through the desensitizations of post-ironic media (parodic and slapstick humor), can discharge tension, grief, paranoia, and shame, but perpetuate the underreporting of gender-based violence (a Daily Beast article states only seven percent of these crimes are reported):  the moral relativization of crime coupled with the literality of suffering.  The perpetuation of rape culture will continue for as long as the conversation is one-sided, with rape apologists such as James Taranto, Richard Mourdock, or George Galloway behind the mike (referencing Julian Assange's sexual assault charges, Galloway argued that if the victim is asleep, it can't be considered rape:  "This is something which can happen . . . not everybody needs to be asked prior to each insertion.â€)
If women are only considered as moving parts (domestic workers, mothers, sex commodities) in a post-industrial assembly line, how can they experience themselves, or other women, as agents of their life, bodies, and vocations, unless precedents are set and laws upheld?  Because rape culture, like every cycle of violence, is perpetuated by silence, victim-blaming, and a lack of solidarity, support for women by women can be difficult to find in a culture where the consequences (from social stigmatization to murder) can result from speaking out against rape, misogyny, or hate speech, in, for example, the U.S. Military, where an increase of females in positions of authority has been countered, according to statistics released by the Pentagon, with a sharp increase in sexual assault.
If the most powerful word in childhood and adult development is "no" (determining what one doesn't want before developing preferential desires), how useful is an arsenal of "safe words†in sado-masochistic sexual relations, for a woman who hasn't internalized her right to negotiate the social contract, see its terms as fluid and not compulsory, or decline to participate, at all?   Conscription into sexual and domestic slavery, as well as non-consensual sex, without language, isn't, then, a question of complacency or complicity. According to Catharine MacKinnon, Noam Chomsky's "manufacturing of choice†is the sid pro quo of a woman's initiation into capitalist relations of gender dominance ("more than one-third of all girls experience sex . . . under conditions that even this society recognizes are forced or at least unequalâ€): the manufacturing not just of choice, but desire. Robin West agrees, questioning how "liberated†is the seeming assent of 21st century women in coerced embraces of, say, domesticity (kitchen, child-rearing), when there doesn't seem to exist viable alternatives, an outside to capitalism, or another opportunity for labor.   [4]
The culture industry makes a killing marketing sadomasochistic violence (from revenge porn to snuff films) as "sexy," pumping out images of men as sexual aggressors tasked with "bagging†"having†"shagging†or "nailing†women to maintain social clout, and women, with demurring until the right suitor arrives, initiating only to risk the stigma of promiscuity were the date or relationship to become violent or abusive beyond her ability to identify (name) or control. Celebrities and pop stars also deliver the message not only of consent, but enjoyment in playing the role of the subjugated:  Brittany Spears' "I'm a Slave for you,†and Gaga's "Do What you Want†(with my body), as stylized marketing ploys advertising the woman as penitent whore, as in Sade's Justine:  a willed, even campy, prostitution of body and self.
The link between the erotic and the pornographic, performed or actual subjection, and pain and pleasure, is not a postmodern perversion, of course: George Bataille, more than any other modernist, mourned the impossibility of thinking the un-representable (the "holy terror†as Jacques Rancière put it) except by recourse to images of torture and the erotic; Batailles' Tears of Eros is a paean to Todestriebe (death drive), the "supreme atrocity of nonbeing,†and its transcendence, through art.
If a return to signifying terms (coalitional feminism, eco-feminism, eco-socialism, conscious/creative/cognitive/Bolshivek capitalism) isn't the answer in resurrecting subject-object relations of mutual acknowledgment and reciprocity, rather than mutually assured destruction or annihilation, can it help?  The democratic dream of rule by the people or moral majority is myopic, to say the least:  as Alexis de Toqueville pointed out in Democracy in America, representational democracy can easily devolve into mob rule: control by the moneyed elite, reducing the "other†to a wage-laborer, or tokenistic fetish.  Angela Davis argues for the creation and circulation of micronarratives, crucial to providing a dialogic structure for the survival of self, other, and community in protest against historical erasure: heterogeneous "forms†of representation toppling the vacuous clichés and rhetorics (boosterism, aesthetic volunteerism) of free market capitalism. [5]
Finding new forms of self-articulation outside of these donnés (necessary evils?) are key to exiting the maze:
"I love [Zaha Hadid's] little manifesto 'Randomness vs. Arbitrariness' . . . "Randomness in architecture is a visual translation of pure mathematical order and thinking which is guided by logic, whereas arbitrariness has no underlying conceptual logic. . . . A catalogue exists from which they freely copy anything and apply it with little relevance to any situation. But in architecture our responsibilities are far greater: we must create a new dynamics of architecture in which the land is partially occupied. We must understand the basic principles of liberation' (1982).â€Â [6]
Questioning the utility of a materialist theory of language, and an aleatory "aesthetic†as emancipatory, Robertson asks if we could differentiate, though writing, beginning with recognizing the difference between intentional, or intentioned (purposed for an other) forms. How else, in other words, to transition from being an occupied "site†or essentialized collective to a signifying subject, then to recognize chance operations as a means (revolutionary and freeing) yet not a reified end-game in itself?   "Could we recognize that arbitrariness is not in itself liberatory? [ . . . ] How could a text partially occupy a site?â€
The actual making of art defies the history of female as muse or amanuensis, whose goal is to accurately translate a male speaker (e.g. Vera Nabakov). Mimesis, however, since Homer, can also be seen as a procedural stage or apprenticeship:  Mary Wollstonecraft was inspired by the male-dominated the French Revolution, Simone de Beauvoir adopted Sartre's phallocentric categories, and John Stuart Mill attempted to provide a structural critique of women's oppression. "The point is not the origins of an idea (no provenance is pure), but the use to which it is put and the effects it can produce,†says Moi.  [7]
Alicia Ostriker's Stealing the Language, Prosperpine (1820), by Mary and Percy Byshe Shelley, The Speed of Darkness by Muriel Rukeyser (1960), Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law by Adrienne Rich (1963), Plath and Sexton's archaeo-mythologies, and works by Alice Walker, Margaret Atwood, Chris Krauss, Eileen Myles, Ariana Reines, Alice Notely, and many others, are powerful revisionist texts.  In theory, Helene Cixous and Luce Irigaray have reapproriated Derrida's writings, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, the literary theory of Harold Bloom, and Helene Cixous, the consequences of what she calls "death-dealing binary thought.â€
Shock can be used as political tool to anesthetize subjects, so as to smoothly "rewrite†narratives of place, origin, and criminal history:  or erase them all-together.  During a period of post-9/11 cultural paralysis, this subterfuge began, argues Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine, with the reappropriation of language, perpetuating the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically.   Neoliberal aesthetics hasn't helped, decontextualizing the subject from a frame, leaving said "subject†vulnerable to packaging and branding, as an vehicle consumption and cooptation in the legacy of Marx (claimed by Stalinist and Maoist régimes), Orwell, by neocons, and "feminism†by the Bush administration to justify its wars of choice.
Along with textual revisionism, erasure poetics can also provide a necessary ground clearing for the recovery of place (beginning with, as Adrienne Rich noted, a reclamation of the gendered, racial, scarred, female body by differentiating between "the body" and "my body" as a particularized, specific site) and post-colonial, post-imperialist history. Collier Nogues sets her erasure poems in sites of recollection (her childhood spent at military bases in Japan): poet Lynn Xu has spoken about her writing as shaped by her childhood in Shanghi.  Erasure poetics (the whiting-out rather than inscribing of the "traceâ€), unlike silence, acknowledges context: the self as conceived, stabilized, through mirroring, then made, through overwriting, erasing, or succeeding a precursor's frame.  (Derrida rightly cites writing as a "pernicious†pharmakon, both remedy and poison:  as an externalization of experience, writing requires citationality to shore up ethos, and any attempts at inscription, in the technocratic age, prompt issues of intellectual property and copyright, parasitism and plagarism.)
However we choose to reconcile with the paradoxical power and vulnerability of language, speaking cogently (or deliriously, as declared by the censors) is crucial to combat non-economic (sexual violence, sex trafficking, reproductive rights) and economic realities for women in an era of contingent labor (decreased wages and job security, declining living standards, unpaid overtime, exacerbation of the double/triple/quadruple shift – and a rise in poverty, increasingly concentrated in female-headed households).  Uncritical consumption of neoliberal cant (brand yourself, or be branded, and buy, or die), using the rhetoric of female empowerment to justify exploitation, feeds, rather than helps dismantle, capital proliferative anti-logic: Homo economius' dog-eat-dog (Darwinian) "laws," relegating exiled representations to the margins of the canon as minor or, simple inadmissible, as  "literature," both in form (realpoetik vs. corporatespeak), publication, and distribution.  F@*$ the Bauhaus, in the words of Isa Genzken, German multimedia artist whose works explode notions of scale and perception (the word "no,†in its most eloquent form).
[1] Encylopedia Brittanica entry on Feminism, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/724633/feminism
[2] Toril Moi, 'I am not a woman writer': About women, literature and feminist theory today,†Feminist Theory, vol. 9(3): 259–271, 2008, pg.
[3] Don Share, reposting of Lisa Robertson's "Dispatch from Jouhet!,†Harriet, November 11, 2009.
[4] Robin West, "The Difference in Women's Hedonic Lives: A Phenomenological Critique of Feminist Legal Theory,†Wisconsin Women's Law Journal 3 (1987): 94.
[5] Angela Davis, Truthout, May 6, 2013, "Recognizing Racism in the Era of Neoliberalism.â€
[6] Share.
[7] Feminist, Female, Feminine, The Feminist Reader:Â Essays in Gender and the Politics of Literary Criticism, Eds. Catherine Belsey and Jane Moore (London:Â Blackwell, 1997), p. 4.
Virginia Konchan's poems have appeared in Best New Poets, The Believer, The New Yorker, and The New Republic, her criticism in Workplace:  A Journal for Academic Labor, Quarterly Conversation, New Madrid, and Boston Review, and her fiction in StoryQuarterly and Joyland, among other places.  Co-founder of Matter, a journal of poetry and political commentary, regular contributor to The Conversant and, in 2014, Jacket2, she lives in Chicago. Â


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TORONTO -- The Toronto Blue Jays acquired minor league infielder Stubby Clapp from the Cleveland Indians on Tuesday for a player to be named.
The Indians will also receive cash for Clapp, who has been assigned to Toronto's Double-A affiliate in New Hampshire. Clapp is Canadian.
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Alec Stone Sweet
Given certain conditions, legal institutions will evolve in path dependent ways: that is, the social processes that link litigation and judicial law-making will exhibit increasing returns. Once under way, these processes will build the discursive techniques and modes of decision-making specific to the exercise of judicial power; they will enhance the centrality of judicial rule-making vis-à-vis other processes; and they will, periodically but routinely, reconfigure those sites of governance constituted by rules subject to intensive litigation.
The paper follows in a line of research on how new legal systems emerge, mutate, and mature, and with what political consequences (for example, Stone 1992a ; Stone Sweet 1997 ; 2000). The concepts of path dependence and increasing returns have at times been deployed and given empirical content (especially Stone Sweet, Chapters 1 and 4 , this volume; Stone Sweet and Caporaso 1998a); nonetheless, they were used to complement other theoretical materials and priorities, and were left under-theorized. Here I provide explicit theoretical foundations for the path dependence of legal institutions, and an argument as to why this should matter to social scientists and to lawyers.


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Intl. Family Entertainment's attempted takeover of TVS Entertainment, parent of MTM, has developed into a last-minute poker game between IFE and a significant minority of TVS shareholders, who are holding out for a better deal.IFE is threatening to walk away from the deal if its $ 78 million offer is not accepted by 90% of TVS shareholders before the new deadline of Tuesday. The U.S. company announced the extended deadline this week, after the original Jan. 4 deadline passed with acceptances from 78.4% of TVS ordinary shareholders, and only 42.6% of preference shareholders. The preference shareholders are hoping to force IFE to sweeten their deal, which they believe is less favorable than the one offered to ordinary shareholders. But it is a risky game of brinkmanship. If IFE can persuade 75% of preference shareholders to accept its current offer voluntarily, the remainder will then be legally obliged to sell on significantly worse terms. The non-cooperative shareholders are gambling that IFE wants TVS too much to give up now, and that it will increase its cash offer from 67 cents to at least $ 1.09 for each preference share. TVS' main asset, now that it has lost its ITV broadcasting franchise, is the Hollywood TV producer MTM. It also has studios and staff in the U.K. which IFE is planning to use as a foundation for the launch of a European version of the Family Channel.
Chips down in TVS bid
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Chinimaya Group
She is organizing a group and asking for a loan in order to buy fabric and shiny cotton embroidery thread to do her embroidery work. In the future she wants to have more capital and employees.
The other members of the group also work in embroidery and in agriculture.
Organiza un grupo y solicita un préstamo que lo va utilizar para la compra de telas y lustrina para realizar los bordados, en el futuro quiere tener mas capital y tener trabajadoras; las demás integrantes del grupo se dedican también a bordados y a la agricultura.
Additional Information
About Asociación ASDIRASDIR (Asociación de Desarrollo Integral Rural - Association for the Development of Rural Communities) is a community-based organization that works to promote development in the villages and communities where it serves. It was founded in 1999 in the village of Nimasac, Totonicapán Department, by a handful of local men and women to support community projects and group loans. Today ASDIR has 5 offices across 3 departments (Totonicapán, Sololá and Suchitepéquez) serving more than 6,000 clients, most of them in rural communities.
This is a Group Loan
In a group loan, each member of the group receives an individual loan but is part of a larger group of individuals. The group is there to provide support to the members and to provide a system of peer pressure, but groups may or may not be formally bound by a group guarantee. In cases where there is a group guarantee, members of the group are responsible for paying back the loans of their fellow group members in the case of delinquency or default.
Kiva's Field Partners typically feature one borrower from a group. The loan description, sector, and other attributes for a group loan profile are determined by the featured borrower's loan. The other members of the group are not required to use their loans for the same purpose.
About Guatemala
69View loans »
Success!! The loan was 100% repaid
- Repayment Term
- 14 months (Additional Information)
- Repayment Schedule
- Monthly
- Pre-Disbursed:
- Mar 14, 2013
- Listed
- Apr 7, 2013
- Currency Exchange Loss:
- Possible
- Ended:
- Apr 16, 2014


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Firefly: A Celebration (Anniversary Edition)
ISBN13:by WHEDON, JOSS
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This is the Anniv. edition with a publication date of 9/25/2012.
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- The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any CDs, lab manuals, study guides, etc.
Titan's three bestselling Fireflytitles -- The Illustrated Companion Volume 1and Volume 2, and Still Flying-- are collected together at last, just in time for the 10th anniversary of Joss Whedon's beloved series. This huge, 544 page full colour volume is simply one of the most lavish books ever produced for a TV show, and is presented in a foil-stamped leather-effect binding with additional behind-the-scenes material from the cult show.


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LETTER: Bentley should accept Medicaid funds
Published: Wednesday, December 18, 2013 at 3:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, December 17, 2013 at 8:57 p.m.
Dear Editor: Alabamians have about $1.5 billion in 2014, 2015 and 2016 that is due them. That's $4.5 billion. Who would turn down such a deal? Gov. Robert Bentley, unless he changes his mind by the end of this month. It would help all Alabamians as well as our poorest citizens.
Despite our governor loudly proclaiming his devout Christian belief, he is choosing political gain over accepting money to care for Alabama's poor. He chooses to stand on political principle rather than accept Medicaid expansion funds to insure our poor.
Despite his promises to create jobs in Alabama, he is passing up the next chance we have to make huge gains in employment in our state — many more jobs than any business can generate. If Alabama could generate even one-fourth of the jobs Georgia is projected to generate, that's 17,500 jobs!
Accepting these Medicaid expansion funds is a sure bet to increase tax revenue without Alabamians paying any more taxes. But he's not accepting the revenue.
If Gov. Bentley doesn't accept the funds until after next year's elections, we lose $1.5 billion that could work for Alabama by creating jobs, increasing revenue and insuring the poorest in our state.
We are paying now for all the Alabamians and Americans who are uninsured and can't pay their medical bills. Alabamians have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Gov. Bentley should allow Alabama to have the money that is due this state.
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Admission: Free
Meeting Place: Visitor Center
In celebration of Arkansas Archeology Month, grab your GPS unit or use your Smartphone App to start searching for clues about the first settlers to Lee Creek Valley. Learn about our cultural heritage by visiting the home sites of the first pioneers to this rugged area. This fun event requires you to explore many areas of the park.
Drop by the visitor center to pick up the coordinates to lead you on your historic journey in this month-long event.
Explore Devil's Den State Park with our helpful maps and brochures! Just click on an icon to view, or right-click on your mouse to save a
copy to your computer.


text: I got this new Blackberry Playbook and I am very excited with it. I was looking for such thing from a long time and now that I have got it just really excites me to use it. But now suddenly I have been facing from some problem. The problem is that BlackBerry PlayBook does not restart after initial Software Update.What happened is that the PlayBook successfully downloaded the 270MB updates and installed it. It then restarted but all I am looking at now is colored circles.So can anyone tell me how to fix the issue that I am currently facing.


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The star-studded event hosted by Village Bicycle and sponsored by Cruciani C saw every guest received a heart-shaped bracelet upon arrival.
Was Reets out to make Cara well jel? As well as getting up-close and personal with Zara, Rita also Instagramed a pic with the caption, "Who else to spend Valentine's Day with than the love of my life wearin my jacket like a true wife!"
So she did meet and greet with Cara in the end... Or not! Apparently Nick Grimshaw is the new love in the singer's life. C'mon Rita, polygamy is totes illegal in the UK.
#Awks. After the rumour mill begun a'churning with talk that the Hot Right Now star's dating X Factor winner James Arthur.
More from RO:


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Poznan, Poland
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What's the best time to travel to Poznan in Poland? Here are some facts:
* Data from nearest weather station: Zielona, Poland.
- The months June, July and August have a nice average temperature.
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- On average, the coolest month is January.
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* Data from nearest weather station: Zielona, Poland.
Weather Forecast Poznan, Poland
Show in Fahrenheit
Clear sky
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May 26
Light rain
Average minimum and maximum temperature over the year
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The dragon essence of compassion. Made from the iron red waters of the Chalice Well. This energy was assisted by Quan Yin the Eastern goddess of mercy likened to mother Mary.
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'Hannibal': Memorable Moments From The Season 2 Premiere 'Kaiseki'
3/1/2014 8:43am EST
Hannibal's much anticipated season two premiere sure opened with a smash. Beginning 12 weeks in the future, we are treated with the sort of epic fight scene that only a food-obsessed, epically violent show like Hannibal could deliver.
We begin with Jack Crawford coming into Hannibal Lector's kitchen during what was presumably a nice dinner meeting. (Hannibal smiles like they've been getting along.) But Jack's face is filled with quiet anger. In Red Dragon, Will discovers that Hannibal is a killer by seeing his drawings and putting the clues together. Could Jack's discovery be similar?
Things that happen during the fight:
Overall, it was a great use of the kitchen setting. All of the major kitchen tools were used in some capacity. It was so quintessentially this show that it was the perfect way to open. Now we only need to wait 12 weeks to discover how they get to that point.


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The Wing Ding
ISBN13:by MARKEY KEVIN
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"I'd heard stories about the yips actually taking over a player's arm. Making it twitch like a dog with fleas. But I'd always thought they were urban legends." After winning the pennant last year, the Rounders can't wait to host the midseason All-Star Game! But shortstop Stump Plumwhiff's got a mean case of the yips. Balls used to disappear into Stump's glove as if he were a one-man Bermuda Triangle, but now he's jumpier than the grasshoppers infesting Rambletown Field. Nothing can get these bugs to bug off, not even the windiest weather in Rambletown history! The Rounders need a way to rid Stump of the yips and their home field of insects-before the hated Haymakers hijack the All-Star Game.


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The Essential Guide to Portraits (2nd Edition) (2011)(gnv64)
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The Essential Guide to Portraits - 2nd Edition (2011)
English | PDF | 132 pages | 52.2MB
The Essential Guide to Portraits - on the quest to create better pictures? The up-to-date information, inspirational guides and helpful instructions within this magazine are an invaluable resource for any serious amateur looking to become a better photographer.
With experts guiding you through every stage of shooting a portrait - from viewing the subject to considering the use of lighting, composition, backgrounds and techniques involved in recording the image, this magazine provides you with the information you need to create maximum impact photographs! Covering all stages of digital portraiture, this guide starts with fundamentals such as setting up your camera, mastering camera modes, understanding exposure and lighting, and progresses onto easy-to-follow tutorials covering manipulating daylight, capturing memorable family portraits and digital techniques including using Photoshop and post-production tools.
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Posted May 31, 2004 and updated on February 13, 2012
The Stepford Wives
The most recent home video release of this movie is November 8, 2004. Here are some details…
Related home video titles:
Matthew Broderick is anything but perfect in his goofy role as a robotic cop in Inspector Gadget. Planning the perfect wedding gets out of control when the family hires a wedding consultant in Father of the Bride. A Hollywood producer invents the perfect blonde actress to help him save his latest film in Simone.


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Most universities are liberal these days, Brown stands out as liberal among them.
The GAO says BOTH wars cost left than $700M when Bush left office.
Now if you assume none of the aircraft would have existed and the troops not been enlisted without the war, that is a different set of intentionally false calculations as to the "cost of the war".


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What should I be doing instead of this?
by Rick Pender
Posted In:
at 10:36 AM |
Stage Door: A Dying Salesman, Barbra Streisand and a Prince in Search of Meaning
There are almost too many good shows for you to enjoy this weekend, but depending on what you like, you'll probably find it somewhere.Cincy Shakes production of Death of a Salesman doesn't open until tonight, but all sings point to a strong production, headlined by one of our region's best actors, Bruce Cromer, as beaten-down Willie Loman, who I interviewed for my CityBeat column this week. He's matched with another fine local stage performer Annie Fitzpatrick as Willie's faithful but worried wife; two of the Shakespeare team's excellent company of actors, Jared Joplin and Justin McCombs, play Willie's sons who can't quite bear up to the weight of his expectations. Arthur Miller's play is one of the greatest, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award. So if it's serious drama, get tickets for this one, onstage through Nov. 7: 513-381-2273. Want something more frivolous and entertaining, but still a great performance? Show up at Ensemble Theatre for Buyer and Cellar, a one-man show about a guy pretending to be a shopkeeper in a vast basement treasure trove of acquisitions on Barbra Streisand's Malibu estate. It's 90 minutes of non-stop storytelling, rooted in a real place — but with a fantasized chain of events. Actor Nick Cearley is a comic gem, performing in a smartly written script that requires him to conjure up not just Alex, the actor hired to wait on Barbra, "the customer" (one and only), but the singer herself and a handful of others. Great fun to watch. Here's my review. Through Nov. 1. Tickets: 513-421-3555.If you love a good Broadway musical, you need to show up at the Aronoff and score a seat for the touring production of Pippin. (CityBeat review here.) It's a show from 40 years ago (by Stephen Schwartz, the creator of Wicked more recently), but this version of an award-winning Broadway revival from two years ago is full of Cirque du Soleil-styled acrobatics, as well as some great songs and performers. It's a sort of fairytale embroidered from a real historical character from the 9th century, the son of the monarch who launched the Holy Roman Empire. It's about the young Pippin's arduous search for a meaningful life. The "Leading Player," a kind of emcee/storyteller, is Gabrielle McClinton, who handled the role on Broadway for part of its two-year run there, and Charlemagne, Pippin's father, is played by veteran actor John Rubinstein — who originated the title role back in 1972. (He's 68 now, but still an energetic, animated performer.) Tickets: 513-621-2787.Shows previous opened that are also worth seeing include the very serious drama Extremities at the Incline Theater in E. Price Hill (tickets: 513-241-6550), onstage through Sunday; and Sex with Strangers, a very modern romance about writers who envy one another's careers and lust after one another's bodies, has another week and a half at the Cincinnati Playhouse (tickets: 513-421-3888).Rick Pender's STAGE DOOR blog appears here every Friday. Find more theater reviews and feature stories here.
Curtain Call
Fathers, Sons and Theatrical Honesty
Rick Pender
0 Comments · Wednesday, October 14, 2015
Some plays become classics because they last across time — Shakespeare's plays are still produced after 400 years. That's what's usually onstage at the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, but they also dig into more recent "classics," qualified by elemental stories that burn fiercely.
Curtain Call
'Cyrano' Fell From the Moon
Rick Pender
0 Comments · Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Edmond Rostand's play, like its hero, seems to have fallen unexpectedly from the moon. Cyrano de Bergerac was a surprising instant hit in Paris late in 1897. Its premiere received an hour-long standing ovation, and it was subsequently performed for 200 consecutive nights.
by Rick Pender
Posted In:
at 09:07 AM |
Stage Door
Make 'em Laugh: Midsummer Theater
Hundred Days, a Folk Rock Opera onstage at Know Theatre, continues to be the go-to show of the summer. The story of a marriage that gets short-circuited by a fatal illness turns into a joyous 75-minute concert music written and performed by the dynamic duo of Abigail and Shaun Bengson, with five musicians and singers behind them. Rather than wallow in grief about having only 100 days, they celebrate their love by condensing what they imagine 60 years of life might have held. It's a lovely story, told in an imaginative, contemporary way. Read my CityBeat review, which gave it a "Critic's Pick." Tickets: 513-300-5669 Cincinnati Shakespeare has three excellent comic actors onstage at the moment who know how to wring every possible laugh out of a satiric script. Geoffrey Barnes, Justin McCombs and Amanda McGee are performing The Complete History of America (Abridged), another script by the zany trio who wrote The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged). I think this one tries a little too hard to be hilarious, so a few moments feel kind of lame, but these three players manage to pick things up, make a little fun of themselves and move right on with more gags, jokes, pratfalls, spit takes and costume changes. It's an evening of hilarity. Here's my CityBeat review. Through Aug. 15. Tickets: 513-381-2273 Cincy Shakes' FREE Shakespeare in the Park tour continues this weekend with a 7 p.m. performances of Romeo and Juliet at Cottell Park in Deerfield (Friday) and the Community Park Pavilion in Milford (Sunday) as well as A Midsummer Night's Dream — at the Community Pavilion in Glenwood Gardens, a Hamilton County Park. Finally, if you're willing to drive to Dayton for the Human Race Theatre Company's first-ever Festival of New Works. The weekend offers a collection of readings of five scripts — three plays and two musicals — by local, national and international writers. The lineup includes full readings of Have You Ever Played, Dayton?, a play by Robb Willoughby, and Mann … and Wife, a musical by Douglas J. Cohen and Dan Elish based on the latter's novel Nine Wives. There will also be three 30-minute "snapshot" readings: Karen Righter's play, The Day After Epiphany; Central Park Tango, a musical by Nicky Phillips and Robert Gontier; and Scott Stoney's adaptation of Some Self-Evident Truths, a play based on the journals of Lucille Wheat and Lois Davies. Open talkbacks with the creative teams follow the readings. The "snapshots" (Saturday at 8 p.m.) are presented and ticketed as a group. Readings will be held in the 60-seat Caryl D. Philips Creativity Center of The Human Race and The 212-seat Loft Theatre in downtown Dayton. Info: 937-228-3630 or humanracetheatre.org Rick Pender's STAGE DOOR blog appears here every Friday. Find more theater reviews and feature stories here.
Curtain Call
Theater League Gets Its Act Together
Rick Pender
0 Comments · Wednesday, July 8, 2015
The League of Cincinnati Theatres was established in 1999 to strengthen, nurture and promote local theater companies.
Crass Behavior and Silly Lewdness Generate Summertime Fun
Rick Pender
0 Comments · Tuesday, June 16, 2015
A woman pursued by Francis Henshall says, "I know exactly what he's after. And if he carries on like this, he's going to get it." In Cincinnati Shakespeare Company's production of One Man, Two Guvnors, Matthew Lewis Johnson plays Henshall in precisely that manner, behaving manically and getting exactly what this play aims for — unbridled, bawdy humor.
Learning How to Act: Onstage and in Life
Rick Pender
0 Comments · Wednesday, May 20, 2015
Annie Baker's Circle Mirror Transformation is a deceptively simple play — on the surface, it's a comedy about five people enrolled in a community center class about learning how to act.
Pageantry, History and a Few Laughs
Rick Pender
0 Comments · Monday, May 11, 2015
Cincinnati Shakespeare Company is engaged in an ambitious effort to become only the second theater company in the U.S. to present Shakespeare's eight history plays in historical order.
by Rick Pender
Posted In:
at 08:10 AM |
Stage Door: The Heat Is on at CCM ... And All Over Town
There's a ton of theater opening up this weekend, something for just about every taste. But if you're looking for something free, I have a special recommendation: It's 110 in the Shade at UC's College-Conservatory of Music. This is a production in the Cohen Family Studio Theater (an intimate black box venue that seats about 150). The production is in the "Musical Redux" series, bringing back a show that's not often produced. 110 dates back to 1963. It's the story of Lizzie Curry, on her way to being an "old maid," who lives with her dad and her brothers. A charming con man shows up posing as a rainmaker and promises relief to drought-stricken farmers. Is he for real? Lizzie has her doubts, but he works hard to win her over. CCM Studio productions are free, but reservations are required (513-556-4183), and performances are often filled up. This one is likely to be a lot of fun; it's this weekend only, final performance at 8 p.m. Saturday.I gave Cincinnati Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew a Critic's Pick in my CityBeat review here. It's lusty and lewd, and the battle of the sexes has never been fought in a more entertaining way. Two of the company's veteran actors, Nick Rose and Kelly Mengelkoch, play Petruchio and Katherine, and they mix it up with with and humor. Definitely an entertaining evening. Tickets: 513-381-2273.A week ago I had a chance to see one of the Cincinnati Playhouse's current touring productions (this one is aimed at kids in grades K-3), Bird Brain. It's funny fable that teaches a lesson that strange behavior isn't always foolish. More info here. This weekend it will be presented at Springfield Townships Grove Banquet Hall (Friday at 7 p.m.), The Drama Workshop at Glenmore Playhouse in Cheviot (Saturday at 2 p.m.), the Blue Ash Recreation Center (Saturday at 7 p.m.) and The Lebanon Theatre Company (Sunday at 1 and 3 p.m.). Admission is usually free (or very inexpensive). Grab a kid and go.Other productions opening this weekend: Steve Martin's very funny farce,The Underpants, kicks off a three weekend run at the Carnegie in Covington. New Edgecliff Theatre, still not in its new permanent home in Northside, is staging David Mamet's piercing drama, Race, at the Hoffner Lodge (4120 Hamilton Ave., Northside). At Falcon Theatre (636 Monmouth St., Newport) you can catch the first weekend of The Cover of Life, a drama about three young women married to brothers from the same small town who have gone off to fight in World War II. Meanwhile, in Bellevue, Ky., at St. John United Church of Christ, you can see a production of Joanna Murray-Smith's Honour by WIT-Women in Theatre. The story of three women propelled to ask the question "What is love?" when they've been struggling with tough relationships, is onstage for two weekends. Children's Theatre kicks off two weekends of public performances of Disney's Aladdin JR. at the Taft Theatre. It's a stage version of the popular animated musical feature; the production includes jugglers, acrobats and stilt walkers. And Lion King continues its month-long run at the Aronoff. (CityBeat review here.)Don't forget that Monday evening at 7:30 p.m. is another quarterly offering from the True Theatre guys at Know Theatre. The theme this time is "true beauty," with real monologues by people who talk about things they've really experienced.Something for everyone, as they say!Rick Pender's STAGE DOOR blog appears here every Friday. Find more theater reviews and feature stories here.
A Jolly Romp Through a Problem Play
Rick Pender
0 Comments · Monday, April 6, 2015
If you've ever seen The Taming of the Shrew, you might remember it as the tale of an ill-tempered woman brought into line by an abusive, gold-digging suitor. In
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I set 'Hide out of stock items from the catalog' and everything went well in my shop page.
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