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Chronicle Books recently published a tome entitled Epicenter: Bay
Area Art Now. Since I admittedly haven't even flipped through it,
I will quote from their Web site to tell you that it "showcases the
work of nearly fifty prominent and rising-star artists who have made
this region the base of eclectic, cutting-edge art on the West
Coast." Three of these artists—Lynn Hershman, Mark Thompson, and
Mark Pauline—came to
SFMOMA
Thursday night to give brief overviews of their work. I've been
familiar with Hershman's work ever since I worked for her husband a
few years back, and I have the poster for her film Conceiving
Ada hanging in my bedroom. Hershman is an early pioneer of
interactive and multimedia art, and she focuses primarily on female
identity in her work. Her latest film Teknolust, featuring
four different characters all played by Tilda Swinton, should be
released in May, and I'm eager to see it based on the few clips she
showed. Next up was Mark Thompson, who creates conceptual art
utilizing live bees and their by-products. I can definitely see the
influence of the Bay Area in his ecologically-minded projects just as
much as I see this region being a good fit for Hershman's
feminism. But what about the huge segment of the San Francisco
population that goes out to the Black Rock Desert every year and builds
a city just to burn it down again? That's where Mark Pauline's work with
Survival Research Laboratories comes in. His is the stuff that makes
me giggle with glee. SRL takes the deap-seated human urge to blow
things up and turns it into an art form. I have a number of friends
who have done work for the group, and though I have seen a couple of
the machines in action I have never been brave enough to go to one of
their shows. Pauline noted that it has actually been easier to get
permits since 9/11, which he attributes to an acceptance of robot-war
culture by our media. Of course, Battlebots and that one good
scene in A.I. wouldn't exist if it weren't for SRL either.
I experienced yet more love for my geographical region Friday night
when I went to the
Castro on
the opening night of the Noir City film festival to see Bogie and
Bacall in Dark Passage. Heather and Tim had arrived early to
see The Maltese Falcon and saved me a good seat. Eddie Muller
welcomed us and then invited Jill Tracy onstage to sing a chilly love
song and introduce the film. I have to admit that I got more of a
kick out of the scenes of 1947 San Francisco than the story of an
escaped convict attempting to prove his innocence. For instance, I
had to laugh along with the rest of the audience when Bacall's
character Irene crossed the Golden Gate Bridge for a quarter. Agnes
Moorehead was also fun as a peevish troublemaker, and Irene's Art
Deco apartment building on Telegraph Hill was to die for.
I went for darkness of a different sort Sunday afternoon when I
watched Masaki Kobayashi's Kwaidan, the Japanese film that won
the Jury Special Prize at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival. Consisting
of four distinct stories connected only by their ghostly theme,
Kwaidan is really too carefully styled to be scary (thank God,
breathes the highly impressionable young Heidi). However, it does
contain many indelible images. I keep thinking in particular of a
close-up on the eyes of the Woman of the Snow. That one will stay
with me for a while.
Oops, I almost forgot...Best dress at the Golden Globes: Cate
Blanchett. First runner-up: Kate Hudson. My new boyfriend: Colin
Farrell. Still my old boyfriend: Jude Law.
Chronicle Books
Lynn Hershman
Survival Research Laboratories
Noir City
Jill Tracy
Dark Passage
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Heidi J. De Vries
