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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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Friday, June 01, 2007

Comments

Steven Augustine

As ever, the words are so much grander than the evidence that the eye itself gathers...where would gallery "Art" be without the necessary evocations of talent that artspeak provides? Well done, writers! (And I post this as a former insider in The Racket; I cranked that stuff out with the best of them...)

theresalduncan

Steven, I respectfully disagree.

The best of contemporary art--and I would include Jason's work here--makes connections and allusions to the world and its stuff (and self reflexively to the unfolding history of art) to which words must strive to do justice.

If you "cranked the stuff out" you must remember this experience with art too?


Steven Augustine

Well, my experience with big ticket Art is that the post-post modern incarnation is more about the framing devices of the gallery and the catalogue than it should be.

My view is that the allusions an artifact radiates should be secondary to, or even side-effects of, the aesthetic impact of the artifact itself...an artwork's stability is a clue to its inherent value. In other words, a Benin bronze (semi-random example) is a Benin bronze whether you see it in a gallery, a dumpster, or somebody's laundry room. The same can't be said for the great majority of the post-'70s material commanding astonishing prices these days. Big-ticket Art has reached the abstraction-value of money itself: often, the intrinsic value simply isn't there...it's added with words and rituals which speak to the arcane obsessions and prejudices of the very rich.

Not to get long-winded here, but I'm old (and faded) friends with a genuine modern-day art star...(see the story "Career Move" on my site for clues-laugh)...and I know how it works. It's very much The Emperor's New Clothes; so much of the feted material would not look out of place in a dumpster. The imprimatur (and catalogue hagiography)of an exclusive gallery produces a halo effect that the Artist once relied on her/his talent for.

Allusions are fine but there should be free-standing magnificence as well. That's very rare these days.

Of course, TD, I remember coming up against the ineffable while cranking out my catalogue texts, but those moments were one-in-a-thousand at best.

Look...pay me no mind...I'm cranky before my time! (laugh)

theresalduncan

"The trivial is as deep as the profound because there is nothing in creation that does not go to the profound."

— Robert Duncan


"The symbols of the divine initially show up at the trash stratum."

— Philip K. Dick

I see you have yet to read The Alchemy of Trash, by my dear pal Erik Davis.

Man, are you in for a treat: The Alchemy of Trash, by Erik Davis.

Fortune's Pawn

This exchange puts one in mind of an aside in the New Yorker's recent profile of Banksy:


But for every litter freak or culture purist driven to indignation by Banksy there’s a person who is entranced. While setting up the show in Los Angeles, Banksy ordered a pizza, ate it, and tossed the box in a Dumpster. Within weeks, the pizza box was sold on eBay, for a hundred and two dollars. The seller suggested that a few anchovies that had been left inside might yield traces of Banksy’s DNA.Dept. of Popular Culture: Banksy Was Here: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

Personally, while I am nowhere near as jaded, cranky or weary as Mr. Augustine, I too, feel that there is more hype than meat, at least in the pieces shown in the linked-to gallery site.

Steven Augustine

Fortune's Pawn:

Now you've got my tummy rumbling!

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