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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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Thursday, February 16, 2006

You're Gonna Wanna Sit With The Bad Kids In The Back

Cigarette_hello_kitty"When you taste the geometry of a church in the cul-de-sac, you're gonna wanna sit with the bad kids in the back."

--David Berman, The Silver Jews

Many were banned from my annual junior high birthday sleepovers, still as legendary in their own way among angry mothers who had to retrieve their daughters after terrified 4 a.m. phone calls as Truman Capote's infamous Black and White Ball is among poseurs.

If I went back to Lapeer, Michigan, today-- which of course I wouldn't dream of doing--someone in curlers in line at Kroger would demand to know what really went down on some evening that still brings up memories of being roused from bed in the middle of the night to drive down the dirt road to our unkempt and notorious household.

A mixture of Boone's Farm wine, ouija boards, proto Lunar Society initiatory rituals, and flamboyant glitter make up and trashy fashion experiments, I presided over the doings from my place among the curling ribbons and trashed wrapping paper that had only minutes before covered magic 8-balls, bubble gum flavored Bonne Bell lip smackers and Love's Baby Soft.

Like some Midwestern drugstore Hindu god, I had a hand to apply lip gloss, one to change 45 records on the portable player, one to French braid my best friend Annette's hair, one to open another gift from the stack, another for candy corn (my birthday's smack up on Halloween)--I could even roll a joint with one hand, something I learned from the older son of our brownie troop leader, who was also the first person to stick his tongue in my mouth, which I could disingenuously claim was gross, when really it blasted my soul up to the moon as if it was an inhuman cannonball.

Billie (now William of my old town's auto dealership) was also the one who first showed me how to "shotgun" a joint, which means he held the lit end carefully in his mouth and gently blew smoke from the tip through my parted lips. All so difficult to describe to ladies in curlers in line at the grocery when you don't want to hurt them with all they missed.

Which brings me happily to the ineffable bottle of Fresh's new Cannabis Santal I received for Valentine's Day. Barneys in Beverly Hills (and maybe Manhattan) has it on exclusive offer for the next two months. It smells like a head shop in heaven, or of an evening when you were still bad, still a kid and doing every wonderful, illegal thing for the first time.

Thursday, February 16, 2006 in Perfume |

Comments

Everret Parker

Essence of weed? I have just the lady who is going to get some of that.

Naughty little girls were thin on the ground when, and where, I was growing up. The first one I met grew up, well not much, to marry E. Flynn. I instinctively knew that there were some girls it was better that your mother did not know about.

We called it "Boo" when I was a kid and you bought joints pre rolled in little match boxes. It was an LA thing.

Posted by: Everret Parker | Thursday, February 16, 2006 at 11:48 PM

Who gave you the perfume? Was it your boyfriend Jeremy Blake? Or did your boyfriend Jeremy Blake give you something else? I hope your boyfriend Jeremy Blake didn't forget to honour the day!

Posted by: | Friday, February 17, 2006 at 12:40 PM

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