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.
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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.
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~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.
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 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. (****)
"Hundreds of eager shoppers were given a sneak preview last night - and the chance to be the first to own a Kate Moss waistcoat - when Topshop's flagship Oxford Street store opened between 8pm and 12pm.
By 6pm the queue stretched 200 metres and Topshop staff handed out water and sweets and a red velvet curtain kept the window display hidden from view.One shopper, Sophie Hardcastle, 20, summed up the mood when she said the day 'had been in her diary for a long time'."
A political riot and a bit of bargain fashion shopping has the makings of a perfect afternoon for we of Wit, and we would be delighted to kill two birds with one stone. Such are the contradictions of the Staircase.
"THE launch of Kate Moss’ Topshop collection in London’s Oxford Street faces disruption from anarchist protesters.
The supermodel’s new range goes on sale at the chain’s flagship store on Tuesday.
But organisers fear choosing May Day to introduce her new collection could prove a mistake.
May 1 is the biggest day for street protests, with anti-capitalist groups planning a string of demonstrations in London.
Sources claim the protesters are planning to launch their strike around midnight tomorrow when Kate appears in the storewindow wearing some of her creations. In 2001 protests led by anarchist group The Wombles turned violent when a mob clashed with police just yards from the Topshop store. Now store bosses are planning to beef up security over fears shoppers could be caught up in any trouble...."
"With her first line of clothing due to cause riots in Topshop at the beginning of next month, plus other projects in the pipeline, Brand Moss has arrived, her new image sealed by an identity masterminded by Peter Saville, in collaboration with typographer Paul Barnes.
'Kate is in an exceptional territory of her own,' explains Saville. 'She is an icon to everyone, in that young women can relate to her and aspire to be her. She’s an accessible icon, and similarly she’s not intimidating. She’s synonymous with possibility for young women – she’s not impossibly beautiful, or alluring, or mannered. It’s that that’s made her such an astonishing role model for her times. Plus Kate has never denied or denounced her roots; she hasn’t moved on to another world. All this has endeared Kate to a generation. She’s a brand. And this next stage for her is the inevitable product realisation of that brand'...."
"Babyshambles frontman Pete Doherty dedicated a song to lover Kate Moss, describing her as his fiancee as she appeared on stage alongside him.
Performing a solo gig at the Hackney Empire in east London, he introduced the track 'KP Nuts', and said: 'I am dedicating this song...' before the crowds interrupted him to shout out 'Kate, Kate.'
The singer then replied: 'Yes, to my beautiful fiancee'."
The Wit Of The Staircase is way under the weather. I hope to respond specifically later today to some comments in the thread on the left about citizens' ability to identify the 9/11 perpetrators and bring them to justice.
As the speaker at the 9/11 conference I initially posted about here and then attended put it, "We're better than that."
Meaning, better than to allow not just all our leaders to be killed, like JFK as the commentor mentions, and RFK and MLK, but better than the milquetoasts who allow democracy to be completely subverted before our eyes that they want to turn us into.
Democracy has already been the cause of blood, sweat and tears spilled by people better than me and I won't be one of the ones known for handing it over without a similar outlay of my own energy.
This fight is already far more public and mainstream than the perpretators would like it to be, so why any talk about bending the knee?
9/11 was an inside job. At the very least we can give them the permanent taint of guilt by constantly referrring to their crimes, so let's start there. Though I do not think criminial prosecutions in the near future are impossible by any stretch.
Repeat after me: "9/11 was and inside job! 9/11 was an inside job!"
Wow. Kate Moss has one of those tattoos known here as the "Santa Cruz license plate" for its ubiquity above backsides in those fabled California climes...
"It's said that Kate Moss needed TEN stitches after treading on a glass picture frame at the weekend.
And, according to the Daily Mirror, Kate put up with the pain at her Cotswolds home until it all got too much.
So she whipped back to London's Harley Street for treatment - with Pete in tow, of course.
And the singer was on hand to help the supermodel back to their car after she'd been sewn up."
A kind and professional Kate Moss discusses motherhood etc., at her clothing line's debut. We at Wit often use Kate Moss as a symbol of the wildly fluctuating worth of women in the world, so it is nice to see the real lass a bit.
"The 33-year-old did not speak about her controversial love for bad boy Doherty, but she criticised the paparazzi who trail her every move for a picture exclusive.
'Once I was walking from The Mercer (hotel) in New York down the street, because otherwise I don't walk anywhere, and this woman paparazzo who was following me fell over a fire hydrant and her whole tooth went through her lip,' she told the magazine.
'I leant over her saying: 'Are you alright?' and she was still taking pictures.
'I was, 'You know what? You are sick in the head.' And she was really surprised that I had stopped. Like she thought I was going to leave her bleeding?'"
