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In Memoriam

  • Memories of Theresa
  • Play Theresa Duncan's Video Games Free Online
    Rhizome has preserved Theresa Duncan's visionary video games and they are now available to be played for free at http://archive.rhizome.org/theresa-duncan-cdroms/
  • Chop Suey
    "Developed in 1994 and published the following year, Chop Suey was a cunning piece of multimedia edutainment, suited just as well to grown-ups — smirking hipsters and punk rockers, probably — as it was to the prescribed “girls 7 to 12” crowd. But it wasn’t a computer game. It was something else: a loosely-strung system of vignettes; a psychedelic exercise in “let’s-pretend”; a daydream in which the mundanity of small town Ohio collides with the interior lives of its two young protagonists." Jenn Frank
  • Smarty
    Smarty was Theresa's second award winning video. This is a film version used to demonstrate the game for potential distributors. Art direction by Jeremy Blake
  • Theresa Duncan's The History of Glamour
    The History of Glamour “In the film, the main character is looking for an identity, and glamour becomes for her a potent form of self-expression. She finds it very liberating, because she’s from a small town. But by the end of the story, glamour becomes limiting, then imprisoning, so she becomes a writer, chooses grammar over glamour.” Theresa Duncan on The History of Glamour in Salon. ~ The History of Glamour, is a music-based animated film, it aired at The New York Video Festival, The Women Make Waves International Women's Film Festival, The Rotterdam International Film Festival, The Montreal Film Festival, the Channel Hopping Festival in Austria and was selected for inclusion in The Whitney Biennial 2000. Glamour also aired on Channel 4 in the UK, on Canal + in France, and in Japan. * ~Writer and Director Theresa Duncan; Art Director Jeremy Blake; Art work by Jeremy Blake and Karen Kilimnick; animation by Eric Dyer.
  • Memorial Film
    This film was shown at a memorial for Theresa in New York, December 2007. A special thanks to Wilbur King for the use of clips from his film “Charlotte Goes Swimming” and Raymond Doherty, editor.
  • In a Land of 90's Barbieland Wreckage Chop Suey Got Everything Right
  • Memories Of Theresa Tumblr
  • The Lovely Theresa by Baron Von Luxxury
  • Eric Dyer

Worthy of Mention

  • Spoon -

    Spoon: Girls Can Tell
    This is a great, understated album that merits repeated plays. Spoon have made a literate, rocking, breakthrough record that occupies a funny place--the songs are not unconventional, per se, yet they're somehow really special. Girls Can Tell displays the emotional resonance and big rock power of, say, Thin Lizzy and Mott the Hoople; the sonically referential, indie-rock smarts of a band like Versus; and amazing hooks that recall Colin Blunstone of the Zombies. Like Jennyanykind, Moviola, and the Lilys, this Austin, Texas, trio has chosen to work on perfecting their craft without paying much heed to mainstream or trends. In spite of (but mostly because of) wrenching breakup-centered lyrical material delivered in a very real, matter-of-fact way, Girls Can Tell is one of those life-affirming pop albums you know you'll return to in years to come. --Mike McGonigal (*****)

Books

  • Michael Hardt: Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

    Michael Hardt: Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire
    Empire (2000)—the surprise hit that made its term for U.S global hegemony stick and presciently set the agenda for post–9/11 political theory on the left—was written by this same somewhat unlikely duo: Hardt, an American political scientist at Duke University, and Negri, a former Italian parliament member and political exile, trained political scientist and sometime inmate of Rome's Rebibbia prison. This book follows up on Empire's promise of imagining a full-blown global democracy. Though the authors admit that they can't provide the final means for bringing that entity about (or the forms for maintaining it), the book is rich in ideas and agitational ends. The "multitude" is Hardt and Negri's term for the earth's six billion increasingly networked citizens, an enormous potential force for "the destruction of sovereignty in favor of democracy." The middle section on the nature of that multitude is bookended by two others. The first describes the situation in which the multitude finds itself: "permanent war." The last grounds demands for and historical precursors of global democracy. Written for activists to provide a solid goal (with digressions into history and theory) toward which protest actions might move, this timely book brings together myriad loose strands of far left thinking with clarity, measured reasoning and humor, major accomplishments in and of themselves. (****)

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Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Ken Russell's 1955 Photo Essay on London's Teddy Girls

Teddy_girl
It used to be if you were gay or an artist or eccentric you had to go to New York City. But with social standards relaxing everyhere in the U.S. and the rise of extremely accepting Internet coummunities like MySpace and Livejournal, even the weirdest kids in Duluth or Witchita can find a large community to join online. What's wrong with New York? Its streetlife and music and nightlife and fashion are not what they should be and always have been. Is it 9/11 or the Internet?

Here is a link sent to me by Gloria Wong that theorizes about why New York is becoming relatively dull and socially conservative:

"Something wrong has happened here," Mr. Cox said, referring to New York, where safety is now the fashion watchword and where people like a certain influential and inflexibly chic magazine editor whom Mr. Cox calls "cellblock lady" stand guard over ever-narrowing boundaries of taste. "On a physical and on a sociological level the culture is becoming fear-based," Mr. Cox said. "That includes fashion."

Link: Fashion Week - Astrology - New York Times.

Below is a link to an exhibit of "Bombsite Boudiccas: London's Teddy Girls" sent to me by Jorn Barger. It is a photo essay by the film director Ken Russell that depicts British working class teenagers of the 1950's fashionable responses to deprivation, danger and war:

"Britain was in a state of flux. Labour, the party of the working classes, won the 1945 election by a landslide; its first truly significant victory. The place of women in society was being hotly debated after they had proved during the war that they could handle traditionally male jobs. And generational conflict, exacerbated by visions of the affluent, glamorous US, threw up ‘The Youth Question.’ From this turbulence a distinct Youth Culture began to emerge. When these photos were published the girls were amongst the very first to be dubbed ‘teenagers'."

Link: Teddy Girls.

Tuesday, February 07, 2006 in Clothes |

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