Sasha Soren

CONTENTS:

LIVES
Shinichi Momo Koga, inkBoat

ART
London/”Falsifikacija”
LA/”In the Bright Room”
NYC/”(desi)re”
NYC/”Body Proxy” + “Echoplex”
NYC/”In Word Only”
NYC/”Dating Data”
London/”Lies”
Woodstock/”Foreign Affair”
LA/”Beauty in the Breakdown”
Brooklyn/”Lost in Queens”
NYC/”Women on the Verge”
Boston/”¡Dominicanazo!”

MUSIC
Disc series/Magdalen Hsu-Li, “Smashing the Ceiling”
Miami/Festivals/Subtropics 17

DANCE + THEATRE
INSIGHT/Cherie Carson, “Trikona”
NYC/”Sly Verb”
Athens/”Antigone: Worshipping the Dead”
Miami/”Suite 305”
NYC/”Room”

FILM/SCREENWRITING
Brussels/Festivals/Brussels Int'l Festival of Fantastic Film
Belgrade/Festivals/Belgrade Int'l Film Festival
London/Festivals/Constellation Change
Vienna/Tricky Women

BOOKS/WRITERS
Writers Bloc series – “The Long March”
Readings/NYC: KGB Bar, “Circus of the Grand Design” + “Tumbling After”
The Agent series – “First Year Out: On the Shelves”, Jenny Bent

TRAVEL
“Traveling Solo”

LIFE
Cyber security ping-pong
Naked brunch
Strip club art
Going once...
One crime, 19 suspects

SCI/TECH
Walking the ‘bot
Walking the ‘bot2: Baby robots
A sixth sense for danger
21st century linguistics

Go to: LIVES: ART: MUSIC: DANCE/THEATRE: FILM/SCREENWRITING: BOOKS/WRITERS: TRAVEL: LIFE: SCI/TECH

LIVES: Shinichi Momo Koga, artistic director, inkBoat

What most inspires me to create new works: Dissatisfaction. If I'm just happy about something, I'll usually just dance in that moment.

But what gets me into a studio to spend time and life laboring over? Something is broken and I want to spend the time understanding broken.
How to turn broken into beautiful. Like a junk collector, finding the beauty in what people have thrown away, making something new of it.

If I go into nature, that is inspiring to me, it elevates me and gives me the strength to continue with the life struggle, but I do not put the woods on the stage. The woods make better woods than I can. No competition there.

NEW WORK: “AME TO AME”

The meaning of “Ame to Ame” is "Candy and Rain." The title came first, like brainstorming on the seed that will create the work. The seed came first.

It's a play on words, in that the same sound (in the Japanese language), depending on the Kanji, will have a different meaning. So, the title is connected with desire and pain, two of our great engines for moving in this life.

But what is candy and what is rain?

If you take the rain as tears and the candy as the thing of desire, then a small circle is created. We want, can't have, then we cry.

While we cry, we cement our desire for the thing and then the spiral goes on and on down to some lower depth we don't even want to talk about.

But there's always singing in the rain.

I read things in my own way, but I expect that the audience, coming with filters different from mine, will see it differently.

BUTOH 101

Butoh is hard to explain. But the Japanese cultural references, the line between the grotesque and the beautiful -- these are certainly part of my vocabulary.

I take what is necessary for the moment. Well, sometimes I fall on habit. But I try to keep the form alive by constantly re-working it.

Some people or companies are "classics" in the Butoh world. They have found their way and they keep working it.

Me, I keep getting lost and getting interested in cobblestones (or substitute any small detail which might come across the way of walking).

That's just how I am. For good or ill, I keep my hands in many pies.

COMPLETION: UNEXPECTED ELEMENTS

Most unexpected is how I am going to talk about a work when you put me on the spot. Maybe I'll talk about how the breakfast I ate changed the dance that day, or maybe about a passage from a book I read that keeps resurfacing in my mind. Or process. In the work itself, the surprise is going to really depend on each person.

Completing a work can take anywhere from 10 seconds to 10 years, depending on numerous conditions.

On average, a work that will show in the theatre will take between two to three months to be realized. I've created entire shows within a few days, but these are usually some kind of experiment.

If I stare at the ceiling long enough, something is bound to creep into my brain.

LIFE AS ART

I typically take from childhood events when I'm conceptualizing. But when the moments are coming, it could be anything, from how I drink my orange juice to waiting at the bus stop.

Real life usually has a stronger punch. But there are always exceptions.

The most [powerful] thing anyone ever has said to me was: "I love you."

Many small flashes went across my brain, small revelations others have shared with me, but none of them can hit me like that most overused phrase, spoken by the right person at the right time.

THEMES

Some of the themes that occur over and over in my work: Going back to childhood dreams, life emerging from death, looking for love, and strange crawling insects.

COLLABORATION

This is my constant. I've been working with different disciplines since the first day of thinking "I am an artist." They all feed me incredibly well and I'm growing fatter and fatter from the experience.

DANCE/LIFE

Like love, death and taxes, [dance is necessary]. Can't actually eliminate it.

So, we’re talking about what gets put up on stage? I've never been to Spain, but of course I hear the stories about how the dance is a major part of existence... more, anyway, than in the USA.

But people go dancing in clubs for what? Are they trying to express something?

Usually, they just want to remember that they are alive and have a good time. Or they're on the make. Then we come back to that whole desire and tears spiral.

The most important thing a creative person needs, apart from funding or daily necessities: A life. If a "creative" only has some techniques, then it's totally boring.

What life experience has come to someone, and how is that digested and coming out again?

DIFFICULT WORKS

The hardest was the solo, "Tasting an Ocean." Just being by myself, making a solo, was more difficult than assembling a dozen people for a show. I had no mirror. It was totally disturbing. The only things that ever come easy are improvisations.

SPEAKING WITHOUT WORDS

On what’s more most important: technical proficiency or emotional resonance: Emotional resonance. The rest is just architecture.

On whether dance/body movement is a language:
Ever been punched? Ever been kissed? More direct than words, I'd say.

DANCERS: BORN OR CREATED?

Both. A more finely-tuned dancer or choreographer is created through discipline.

LIFE, THE PUZZLE

Something that genuinely puzzles me: Good question. Yes, plenty, but I can't come to one single thing at the moment. I mean, LIFE puzzles me.

Nothing frustrates me like myself. The world could be hell outside, but in the end, how do I deal with it? When I come short of my own self-expectation, then bingo: frustration.

On whether writer’s block exists: Absolutely. Go back to "frustration."

UNDER THE INFLUENCE

In music, I’m most influenced these days by traditional musicians -- really old style shamisen or shakuhachi or tabla or and or and or...

And then there are people I work with, like "Sleepytime Gorilla Museum" or "Faun Fables" or Sheila or Carla or Nils doing independent stuff. And I've never disliked a Tom Waits record.

Recently I've been reading things like Anne Carson or Murakami or Gurjieff. But there's so much good stuff out there, it's hard to say who’s my favorite.

I saw the film "The Cost of Living" by DV8 recently. I was totally jealous. It was great.

IN PASSING...

The most interesting stranger I’ve ever met: Mase Shooichi. I met then spent some days with him in Kyoto, forming what seemed like a strong friendship.

Then one day he cut all ties and disappeared. Now a stranger again. Hopefully to meet again. He inspired me to make “Black Map” (to be performed in SF in May; a 30-minute version, anyway).

QUICK HITS

Reads: Just finished "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" by Murakami and just opened "A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters" by Julian Barnes.

Discs: Right this second, I'm listening to the song "Viel Glück Im Privatleben!" by Zak May and Shiva. Russians living in Berlin.

Downtime: Photography. Playing shakuhachi(badly).

On the biggest myth about being a creative:
The biggest myth: "How wonderful it is that you get to express yourself!"

If I wasn’t a dancer/choreographer, I would definitely be: "Farmer" is next on my list. Been a photographer, cook, multimedia producer (or slave may be a better term) and coffee maker.

What I wish someone had told me when I first started out: Get real.

Favorite quote: "Am I shoveling sand to live, or living to shovel sand?" by Kobo Abe. So, what's the point of our struggles, anyway?

Interesting fact that nobody knows about me yet:
Interesting? What would someone be interested in, exactly? The more hidden, the more interesting. Best is whatever I've kept hidden from myself. Hmmm, have to get back to you on that...

Life is:
Life is life is life is life is life.

Artist bio: Shinichi Momo Koga (Artistic Director/Performer, inkBoat). Originally a photographer, filmmaker and theater actor and director, Koga became primarily known as a Butoh dancer after 1991 when he began dancing under Hiroko and Koichi Tamano (primary dancers in Tatsumi Hijikata’s company). In 1994, he created the group Uro Teatr Koku with Alenka Mullin Koga. This group became inkBoat in 1998.

Koga's productions, both solo and ensemble, have been experienced since 1988 throughout the U.S., Europe and Japan.

Restructuring dance, theater and cinema forms, he extracts the vital essence of each to create a sharper reality. As a teacher, performer, and director, Koga inhabits the shadow self and swims the collision between modern life and primal being. He challenges himself and others to attain balances between chaos and serenity, to be a raging storm in blue skies and a breath of calm in the midst of turbulence.

Koga collaborates consistently with diverse performance artists such as Yumiko Yoshioka and TEN PEN CHii (Germany: 1996-2001), Do Theatre (Russia: 1997-present), Shadowlight Theatre (USA: 1993-1997) and the group adapt in Berlin (co-founded by Koga in 2001) with Minako Seki, Sten Rudstøm, Yuko Kaseki and Yael Karavan).

Upcoming tour dates: "Ame to Ame" at Dock 11, Berlin, on March 10 - 13, 15 – 19, and "Black Map" at Dance Mission on May 26,28,29 as part of
the SF International Arts Festival.

Visit official site: inkBoat

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ART/London
”Falsifikacija”
Through March 6, 2005

IBID Projects presents Milena Dragicevic’s second solo show. The “Falsifikacija/Falsification” exhibit is a complex visual and psychological riddle, illustrating the mysterious process of creative thought in a tangible form.

The human figures depicted are not portraits of specific people, but actors absorbed in introspective but active anticipation of some magical event of their own creation; their gaze is withdrawn and secretive, yet the same gaze captures the viewer and draws them into the ritual of creative reflection, directed outward and inward simultaneously.

In this new series of paintings, the artist constructs a paradoxical world which is inaccessible yet within reach; concealing, yet full of revelations; dynamic and still, abstract and figurative, both contemporary and intentionally anachronistic.

The paintings accentuate moments of transformation -- the viewer’s gaze activates and ‘unlocks’ the artwork, while the border between the representational realm and the spectator’s reality collapses.

Is art merely falsification of reality? Is it a more subtle, but genuine reflection of reality? Or is art actually reality itself, as individual thought forever alters our perception of the world? These are some of the thoughtful questions Dragicevic raises for discussion, in “Falsifikacija/Falsification.”

The notion of ‘falsification’ belong most comfortably to the discourses of theology and philosophy of science, yet Dragicevic’s paintings suggest that it is particularly relevant to the opaque powers of art - acts of representation and naming, the seduction of images and doubt towards singularity of truth.

Artist bio: Milena Dragicevic lives and works in London. She has recently exhibited in Martin Janda Gallery, Vienna, I-20 Gallery, New York, Man in the Holocene, London and The Yugoslav Biennial of Young Artists in Vrsac. Her work is represented in Arts Council of England Collection, London and MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art), Los Angeles as well as numerous private collections in Europe and the United States.

Gallery hours: Thur-Sun 12-6pm or by appt.

Find it: IBID Projects
210 Cambridge Heath Road
Unit 4
London E29NQ, UK
Get info: +44 (0) 208-983-4355

Concurrent exhibit:
Find it: IBID Projects
Sv. Stepono g. 18
Vilnius 1 LT-01138 Lithuania
Get info: +37 05-233-5395

ART/LA
“In the Bright Room”
Through February 12th

Somewhere between the realms of reality and imagination lies the photographic art of Mayumi Terada. Terada’s moody images suggest not a physical place, but a state of being.
Terada builds diminutive domestic sets she calls ‘dollhouses’, then photographs them.

Her large monochrome pictures show a world filled with scenes and objects completely familiar to anyone living in our Western culture, yet eerily devoid of human presence.

Thus, a soup plate sitting on a table, an empty trash bucket, or a shower stall with water droplets still lingering on the glass door have a mysterious sense of reality.

The viewer can’t help wondering who might have just emerged from that shower, who left the bed wrinkled and tossed, whose suitcases are packed and waiting. Yet no matter how seductive these speculations, the real subject of her photographs is light -- streaming into windows and illuminating stories suggested by the imagination.

Find it: White Room Gallery
8810 Melrose Avenue
West Hollywood, CA 90069
Get info: (310) 859-2402

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ART/NYC
Feb. 18-Mar. 26
“(desi)re”

And now, a novel take on the theme of desire...
Desire simmers with passion, is ruled by obsession and driven by purpose.

As George Bernard Shaw once remarked, “You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last you create what you will.”
But that’s not the 'desire' referenced by this particular exhibit.

”Desi,” a Hindi word implying “of one’s own country” and used frequently to mean “of Indian origin” is employed here to express not only sensual desire, but the longing for home or cultural identity -- or the redefinition of both.

Find it: Talwar Gallery
108 East 16th St.
New York, NY
Get info: (212) 673-3096

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ART/NYC
“Body Proxy”
+ “Echoplex”
Through March 26th

A motorcycle’s revving engine roars like an animal, louder and louder as visitors approach.

A year’s worth of disposable contact lenses worn by one person suggest an archive of what was seen during the year.

A comfortable sofa, saturated with pheromones. The hair of the artist, in a single, knotted strand over 100 km long, wound around a Teflon spool...

The body, central to the work of Norma Jeane, is represented by proxy: never present but always hinted at. Norma Jeane’s work proposes a reading of the body as an entity becoming abstract.

“Body Proxy” reveals the power, energy and will of the body. As its title indicates, the exhibition presents works that stand in as authorized representatives for the body. However, there are no bodies to be seen in the exhibition except those of the visitors.

The visitor is central to the activation of the main work in the show, “RPM,” which consists of a grey Yamaha YZF-R1, 998 cc, linked to high-tech sensors. The powerful engine remains off, but as visitors approach, the motorcycle revs, roaring like an animal, in a deafening noise.

Only when the viewer withdraws does the motorbike return to a lower gear, and off again, while powerful fans try to cool it down. Waste of energy, excess, and the erotic pair of repulsion and attraction form essential elements in this work.

The Swiss Institute will also house “Echoplex,” special project by Mika Tajima: a site-specific installation merging sculpture, sound and architectural space.

The work is composed of reflective plexi, laser-cut with repeating patterns, and installed in modular panels around a rough perimeter of the library so as to create a destabilizing environment; one where sound, sight and architecture interchange.

Tajima invites the viewer to interact with reflections and reverberations comprised of a two-dimensional minimalist pattern and simple serialist sounds.

The mirrored space propagates the pattern, which becomes dense, repetitive and then broken, layered, and degrades like an echo. The reflective surfaces begin to shatter the images and break down perception.

Ultimately, the viewer may see an echo or hear a reflection: the diverse products of sound and vision traded freely.

The title of the work "Echoplex" comes from the name of an analog effect box for music, which delays, echoes and loops sounds.

In order to achieve a similar kind of effect in her installation, combining loops of both sound and space, Tajima researched Robert Smithson’s work focusing on his use of mirrors and Dan Graham’s insights on the integration of sound and architecture.

Tajima is interested in perverting the tropes of pure minimalism to create works that allow her audience to slip between comfort and discomfort, harmony and discord. Tajima works and lives in Brooklyn, New York. She is a central member of the New Humans, who will be playing during the inaugural events at the new Walker Art Center. This is her first solo project in New York.

Find it: The Swiss Institute
495 Broadway
3rd Floor
New York NY 10012
Get there: N/R to Prince St./6 to Spring St.
Get info: (212) 925-2035

ART/NYC
“In Word Only” (Basquiat retrospective)
Feb. 15-Mar. 26

The “In Word Only” exhibition of the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat presents paintings, drawings, and notebooks that feature only Basquiat’s written words.

The artist was well known for large, colorful works dense with gesture, collage, figures, symbols and words, but this exhibition will be the first to exclusively feature Basquiat’s unique and significant use of language.

The exhibition includes works from the artist’s entire career, dating from 1979 to 1988 (the year of his death).

For Jean-Michel Basquiat, the meaning of a word was not necessarily relevant to its usage; he employed words as abstract objects that can be seen as configurations of straight and curved lines that come together to form a visual pattern.

The artist also employed words and phrases that are loaded with meaning and reference, in particular those words related to racism, black history, and black musicians and athletes.

Basquiat’s word paintings and drawings often appear to be a secret, coded language that the artist devised and left for the viewer to attempt to decipher.

He readily acknowledged his manipulation of words, stating: “I cross out words so you will see them more; the fact that they are obscured makes you want to read them.”

However, Basquiat’s casual, random manner is deceptive, because on closer inspection his choice of words often coalesce into intelligent, meaningful, and cohesive thoughts and subjects.

The majority of the works in “In Word Only” have never been exhibited or published. The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat has generously lent a number of important paintings and drawings, in addition to several of the artist’s private notebooks.

Basquiat continually wrote and drew in notebooks, and used them as a laboratory for experimentation and personal expression. These rare notebooks offer a rare and fascinating insight into the Basquiat’s aesthetic and creative process. Additional works have been borrowed from private collections in the United States and Europe.

“In Word Only” coincides with two major retrospective exhibitions of Basquiat’s work at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, March 11-June 5, 2005; and the Museo d’Arte Moderna, Lugano, Switzerland, March 19-June 19, 2005.

Find it: Cheim & Read
427 West 25th St.
New York, NY 10001
Get info: (212) 242-7727

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ART/NYC
“Dating Data”
Through March 5th

“Information is a lover that doesn’t speak our language, a lover we visit every day with no hope to touch, explain or understand.”(Witold Gombrowicz)

“Reality cannot be avoided,” argues curator Josée Bienvenu in “Dating Data,”an exhibition of works on paper by 18 artists.

Reality cannot be avoided, but watching an infinite sequence of simultaneous, precise and live news reports is not enough to understand the difference between live broadcasting and death, between business and democracy.

The artists included in “Dating Data” address our ambivalent fascination with information culture. They manipulate and process various kinds of data to produce works that confirm that we are condemned to know more and understand less.

Beth Campbell makes art out of the way we think. In her “My Potential Future Based on Present Circumstances” series of drawings, she connects autobiographical events, thinks them through and mines the data of her thoughts, presenting the potential outcomes of personal events through parallel chains of circumstance.

Mark Lombardi’s monumental flowchart drawings trace the circuitous yet intersecting flows of legal and illicit capital, revealing the links between clandestine plots and the rogue beauty of global corruption.

Devising his own conspiracy theories, David Opdyke invokes well-known symbols, such as the American flag and corporate logos, using them as quasi-magical emblems of largely unlocatable sources of power.

Danica Phelps’s “generation drawings” document every financial transaction in her life. Nicolas Rule’s genealogical charts tracks the major bloodlines of current American horse champions, with particular attention given to inbreeding.

Ingrid Calame traces the contours of stains she finds on the streets of New York and Los Angeles, left behind after the transactions of daily life are finished.

In “Tide Drawings,” Jill Baroff meticulously registers the repercussions of waves and turns them into micrographs. Tim Bavington’s stripe drawings are color visualizations of music's passage through time.

Type A, the collaborative team of Adam Ames and Andrew Bordwin produces works that explore the phenomenon of male competitiveness and needless aggression. In “Push,” they take turns standing and shoving each other. The pusher’s steps and the pushee’s landing are outlined and systematically numbered in sequence.

The artists in “Dating Data” have also set up various processes of recording, fragmenting and obliterating information. Stefana McClure and Fidel Sclavo condense text and typeface to the point of near illegibility. Jacob El Hanani’s drawings, based on the phone book, also display inaccessible data.

Elena del Rivero’s “Letter from the Bride” is made up entirely of clothing labels where the word “medium” is repeated throughout the page.

Tom Friedman’s “Secrets” is a letter made of infinitesimal words -- things barely heard or said and totally impossible to read. “Down” is an alphabetized list of words with negative connotations taken from the dictionary.

Rutherford Chang cuts out every word in a copy of the “New York Times” and rearranges them in alphabetical order, turning daily news into abstraction. Finally, John Sparagana "distresses" photo spreads he finds in fashion magazines, rolling and creasing them until the once-glossy pages become so thin that the selected image evaporates.

Find it: Josée Bienvenu Gallery
529 West 20th Street (between 10th & 11th Avenues)
New York NY 10011
Get there: 1/2/3/9 to 23rd St.
Get info: (212) 206-0297

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ART/London
“Lies”
Through March 12th

”Lies” is a minimal but powerful video installation. There is only one element shown against the sky's background -- a flag -- but there are many different meanings associated with this thin strip of fabric.

In the video, Cagol elaborates on the symbology of the Stars and Stripes in particular; the flag stirred by the wind becomes something menacing, or the exact opposite -- it takes on the aspect of a butterfly and of a heart, its message continuously transformed. The extreme, continuous and complex mutability of the image symbolizes the unstable political situation of the world we live in.

The video is 25 minutes long, composed of fragments of random length, between ten seconds and five minutes. There are five seconds of black between each fragment, but the sequence doesn’t follow a clear narrative progression; the fragments are always different; the background of the sky, the distance of the flag from the viewer, the light patterns, effect of the wind, are all different.

The end is sudden, and always the same – the image blurs, develops through a zoom effect, and finally invades the entire screen.

The soundtrack was created using found audio recording the sounds of traffic on New York City streets, slowed down and altered by reverb.

Stefano Cagol comments on his work: ”The continuous aesthetic mutability of a flag -- in this case the American one -- moved by the wind make me think about the changeability, the insecurity of ideals, of promises, of truth that all seem wrong, that all seem to be ‘Lies’. It makes me think how harshly a man can fight and die for the simple name of one flag. At this moment, I think in particular about the States, they try by any means to convince the world that their projects of war are only for truth and for peace.”

This exhibition is the first step of a public art project about the symbolic meaning of flags, which will run through other cities with the collaboration of international art spaces in Tokyo and New York.

Find it: Platform
3 Wilkes Street
London, UK
Get info: +44 (0)207-375-2973

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ART/Woodstock
“Foreign Affair”
Through March 27th

“When I consider...the small space I occupy, which I see swallowed up in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I know nothing and which know nothing of me, I take fright and am amazed to see myself here, rather than there: there is no reason for me to be here rather than there; now, rather than then. Who put me here?” - Pascal, “Pensées”

What motivates us to leave home is as diverse as what we encounter along the journey, but dreams of far away lands can often begin with a photograph. The relationship between photography and travel goes as far back as their inceptions.

Expeditions to visually record the far corners of the earth were planned as soon as the development of photography was announced.

Photographers such as Francis Frith, William Henry Jackson, and Timothy H. O’Sullivan (who had a darkroom on a boat) showed us the earliest ‘real’ images of the then unseen and undiscovered wonders of the world.

Soon followed two firsts which simultaneously opened the world to us further. In the 1880s, while George Eastman invented roll film and the box camera, the combustion engine was ignited, rendering photography and global travel accessible to middle class and working class families.

Seeing and portraying the world firsthand was no longer reserved for the privileged elite. Tourists were photographing the great pyramids as early as 1890.

Today, photographs continue to fuel the tourism industry, but photography and travel have the ability to lead us far beyond glossy brochures.

Departing from the tourist snapshot used to evidence “being there” or to consume place, the artists assembled in “Foreign Affair” focus the camera on the experience of the foreign, exploring our multifaceted relationships to travel, exploration, and dislocation.

From expectations of the new to the confrontation of realities, from the rapture of release in a new environment to the anxiety of estrangement, the work presents a dialogue about transience, elation, loss, and discovery in a world where boundaries are ever shifting.

Many travel seeking beauty with the innocence and optimism that there is a better place beyond the one they call home, where a release from the rhythms of our daily routine will allow our problems to melt away.

One glance at that photograph of a swaying palm tree on a beach is all one may need to get packing, but rarely do our actual experiences meet the expectations which a carefully composed, distilled photograph can inspire.

Scott Whittle’s colorful images of sightseers in unfamiliar landscapes mine the gap between our fantasy of exotic travel and its less-than-ideal reality.

We see the sites but also the obligatory omni-present vacationers who have become part of the view.

What is refreshing about Whittle’s images is that in fully encompassing the tourist into their temporal destinies, we move beyond the package tourist mentality and see people interacting with the sublime landscapes that envelop them.

How do we process and understand a new place where the fixed boundaries of the familiar collapse? Language, food, colors, and sounds become unknown fragments overwhelming the senses, while our mind valiantly attempts to create cohesive connections.

Fred Cray’s dense travel diary montages evoke a virtual experience of the dizzying layers that can disorient the traveler upon arrival in a new place.

With no memories or previous landmarks, one may find this exhilarating, terrifying, or both.

In contrast to the dislocating feeling of estrangement in Cray's work, Priya Kambli’s “Suitcase” series inverts displacement by carrying the idea of home abroad.

Inspired by the experience of cramming her belongings into one suitcase when she emigrated to the U.S. from India in 1993, Kambli’s suitcases remind us of the self we carry within no matter the geographic location and the memories we allow to escort us as loyal companions through transformation.

Brent Phelp’s sweeping landscapes paired with original writings from Lewis and Clark’s journal literally carries the viewer on a fascinating historical voyage, to a time when the world was still “new” and yet to be explored.

In this remake, the images inform our understanding of history and move us into the mindset of explorers seeing these sights for the first time.

Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz’s collaborative images of snowglobes containing figures in transit. In this series of photographs, Martin and Muñoz subvert the cheerful conventions of the snowglobe with dark ruminations.

The typical snowglobe winter wonderlands are supplanted by desolate and sometimes sinister snowscapes. Forests of dead trees are traversed by solitary figures laden with suitcases.

The characters seem dressed for a more civilized sort of commute, their business attire ill suited for wading through deep snow and biting cold. It seems as if they were collectively caught off guard by some series of events and forced from their familiar habitat into a harsh and premature exile.

Ultimately it is left to the viewer to speculate about possible narratives. These scenes encased in glass and water each represent an attempt to in some way encapsulate, isolate, and illuminate a certain form of human dread associated with the unexpected and the obvious but often ignored inevitabilities of mortality.

In a sense, the figures in the globes become stand-ins for us; their nomadic isolation a metaphor for our own sense of unknown origins and unknowable destinations.

Departing from the idea of the destination altogether, the artists have framed the journey itself: solitary commuters, wanderers, and the lost attempt to find their way amidst the anxious territory of the unknown and the uncertainty of what lies ahead.

Tom Hunter’s series was created over a two-year jaunt through Europe in a double-decker bus. His detailed portraits of the domestic environments of a contemporary nomadic group express his concern with the political issues surrounding the rights of 'squatters', 'travelers' and those viewed as 'outsiders'.

Not rooted by the geographical and cultural conventions of traditional community, these modern day gypsies are viewed as ‘others’ based on their lifestyle choices and priorities that keep them on the move.

In comparison, Soon-Mi Yoo’s video, “Isahn,” brings to light the extreme challenges faced by people and cultures forced into exile due to political unrest and conflict.

Exploring issues of loss and alienation, Yoo recreates the experience of displaced North Koreans looking through tourist stereoscopes near the North/South Korean borders as they view images of a country they can no longer return home to.

Crossing borders to make a new beginning, they must negotiate a conflicting state of non-belonging and learn to assimilate the new and simultaneously preserve their uprooted culture while coping with the pain of separation.

Finally, what has often propelled us forward into uncharted terrain is the quest for knowledge and the idea that enlightenment could be within our reach. Vicki Ragan’s iconic imagery of astronomical charts, moonscapes, and explorers awakens longing, wanderlust, and the elation of discovery.

A transient position affords us a unique perspective and can expand our understanding of how we know the world. The artists in “Foreign Affair” reveal that photography and travel share the ability to shift the frontiers of perception, empowering us to see beyond the confines of the world as we know it.

“Should the chosen guide be nothing more than a wandering cloud, I cannot lose my way.”
– Wordsworth

(Via exhibit curator Kate Menconeri, 2005)

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Stories: Artist commentaries on the works in “Foreign Affair”

“Isahn”/Soon-Mi Yoon: In October 5, 2001, I heard TV news that Mr. Chung, an 82-year-old man originally from North Korea, killed himself after failing to get into the lottery to take part in the family reunion and meet with his family in North Korea.

The split screen in “Isahn” is from the stereoscopes at Imjingak, which is located 30 kilometers from Seoul and borders North Korea.

Tourists and displaced North Koreans can go and drop a few coins in the stereoscopes to look at the government sanctioned photographs of North Korea.

The images from the stereoscopes are mixed with contemporary footage (shot in 1999) of Burmese refugee camps around Mae Sot, Thailand, in which inhabitants are forced to relocate to yet another anonymous site.

For those who are not allowed to go back home, the sights of exile are just ersatz landscapes. Sometimes they may offer consolation. Often times they work as hindrance. Many would say, “When I close my eyes, I can still see my hometown so vividly”.

“Travel Diaries”/Fred Cray: This work is about literal and metaphorical travel, simultaneity and the accumulation of meanings. Controlled chance is an element in gathering the images, but in this series I use a much higher percent of what I photographed than in any other work I do.

The work reflects the difficulty of thinking and of accumulating thoughts to form a coherent whole. Most of all, the work is about looking and seeing in a visually loaded world.

“Red”/Priya Kambli: My work has constantly dealt with issues of journey and memory. I integrate traditional photography with digital media as well as elements of mixed media and installation.

In an essay of [my] work, one critic notes that "The particulars of (these pieces) are all simply props on a stage where our own memories must take on the role of actors. We are asked to imagine first the millions who set forth in this world leaving their homes and their families or bearing them with them. But we are moved by stages to consider our own losses, the bridges we have crossed, and the ones we burned behind us as we went."

When I moved to America in 1993, I crammed 18 years of my life into one suitcase. It weighed approximately 45 kg. It wasn't until recently that I started thinking about the objects I chose to bring and their selection process.

The objects were chosen for their magnetic ability of attracting and repelling memories.

The status of these chosen objects increased substantially to the level of sacred relics for having being touched or given by a loved one, etc. These souvenirs contain within them the ability to vividly conjure memories of the past.

Distilling ones life to fit the finite parameters of a suitcase meant editing -- the inevitability of certain memories being discarded while others attain a new significance.

It further implied simplification of ones past, untangling the chaotic web so that a clear succinct pattern emerged.

In the “Suitcases” series, I am interested in juxtaposing snippets of information that interact with each other to convey an open ended narration.

The essence of the “Suitcases” series is the dialogue created by pairing of fragments. The items contained within the suitcases are sticky with associations and often pertain to travel. Each suitcase deals with a separate theme and corresponds to a specific hue.

Color is the origin of each piece, giving each suitcase its individual personality and focus by dictating the objects it contains and their relationships. Even though the suitcases are self-contained and conceived to function independently, they all share many physical and conceptual characteristics.

Details from “The Navigation Project”/Vicki Ragan" These images are photo collages assembled from maps, charts, NASA images, details of historic aircraft, and silhouettes of human figures.

Travel, the study of space, and the methods man uses to find his way, both physically and spiritually, are among the themes explored.

Although the images in this exhibition are printed digitally, they were created the old-fashioned way, with a pair of scissors. The figures were cut out of bits of map, placed on another image, and re-photographed. Each final image is derived from a single black-and-white negative.

Find it: The Center for Photography at Woodstock
59 Tinker Street
Woodstock, NY 12498
Get info: (845) 679-9957

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ART/LA
“Beauty in the Breakdown”
Through March 19th

“Beauty in the Breakdown” is the debut Los Angeles solo exhibit by Chicago-based artist Laura Mosquera.

Laura Mosquera’s work is grounded in contemporary human experiences and reflections of everyday life. Her work explores the representation of reality and the perception of what is real and its construction using non-linear narrative.

Her tableaus are cinematic depictions of seemingly inconsequential moments describing everyday narratives. While there is no linear narrative, there is enough information to suggest a mood to the viewer.

Mosquera’s drawings and paintings are constructed with the use of snapshots. The figures are never posed, but rather captured in a moment, unaware of being documented. Mosquera’s paintings are similar to movie stills, shots of a moment in time, captured in a single frame.

In general, the story Mosquera tells is one of a sense of loss, of something missing. There is also a sense of longing and searching for this intangible, whether its name is yet known, or whether it remains elusive.

Each piece in “Beauty in the Breakdown” evokes nostalgia, and reflections on the emotional worlds we live on the interior.

Mosquera's work reflects the unusual view that true nostalgia is nostalgia for the present, not the past; her work is imbued with a melancholic awareness that it is always the present, not the past, which is in the process of coming apart.

Find it: sixspace
549 West 23rd St.
Los Angeles, CA 90007
Get info: (213) 765-0248

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ART/Brooklyn
“Lost in Queens”
Feb. 18-Mar. 21

Plus Ultra Gallery presents: “Lost in Queens: A Natural History Museum in Seven Parts,” a solo exhibition by artist/architect Brian Walker.

As an experiment in extreme artistic constraint, Walker presents seven architectural drawings of 13 proposed Natural History Museum buildings located throughout the borough of Queens.

Each proposal is located on one of the highly improbable, oddly shaped and sometimes all but inaccessible lots actually purchased by Gordon Matta-Clark for his 1974 project “Fake Estates.”

Walker traveled to each of these locations in a self-imposed ritualistic process, including eating the same breakfast in a neighborhood diner after each visit.

He thoroughly documented the lots, researched the City’s zoning regulations, and then designed a building for actual natural history collections of various animals, including bees, passenger pigeons, dodo birds, ants and a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

His designs include display spaces, storage facilities, a theater, a café, and a research laboratory throughout the seven buildings. Walker’s results are as fantastic as they are humorous and inspiring.

Find it: Plus Ultra
235 South 1st St.
Brooklyn, NY 11211
Get info: (718) 387-3844

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ART/NYC
“Women on the Verge”
Through March 12th

In “Women on the Verge,” artists examine the darker side of human emotion with wit, introspection, and verve. The artists utilize a wide array of media and techniques to explore the tension between the organic and the artificial chaos of our world.

The exhibition features the work of nine international women artists: Maggie Cardelus, Jennifer Coates, Kim Fisher, Servane Hottinger, Elizabeth Huey, Lori Nix, Mary Redmond, Eva Rothschild and Clare Woods.

Clare Woods, Jennifer Coates and Eva Rothschild examine our fear of the unknown using semi abstract imagery.

Maggie Cardelus uses photo cut-outs and paper to create massive wall hangings which draw upon her associations of memory and family.

Her labor-intensive sculptures are remarkable constructions; conceptually and aesthetically they draw the viewer with their organic edgy intimacy. Cardelus lives and works in Italy and has been widely exhibited in Europe.

Kim Fisher and Mary Redmond employ an abstract aesthetic with a contemporary sensibility to create innovative works of art. Fisher creates paintings which have a unique sculptural quality.

Redmond manipulates found objects to the brink of fragility, fashioning a dark, absurdist aesthetic using fabric, metal, and wood. Redmond lives and works in Glasgow. Her work is currently included in an exhibition the ICA, Palm Beach, Fl.

Elizabeth Huey and Servane Hottinger utilize the human figure in their paintings to explore the darker side of human emotions, while Lori Nix subverts our expectations of seeing by photographing minutely constructed dioramas, which have an eerie, otherworldly quality.

Using humor and pathos with equal aplomb, the nine artists featured in "Women on the Verge" toy with the tension between the real and the imagined with remarkable ingenuity and skill.

Find it: Alona Kagan Gallery
540 West 29th St.
New York, NY 10001
Get info: (212) 560-0670

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ART/Amsterdam
“On Patrol”
Through March 20th

“On Patrol” examines the many different systems that police our society, from traditional investigatory techniques to the unofficial practice of gathering and classifying personal data, that have become a form of social control.

In “On Patrol,” exhibition artists, responding to societal trends, show how their work fits into the framework of a surveillance society.

Participating artists: Marc Bijl, Sophie Calle, Ergin Cavusoglu, Paul Chan, Claudia Cristovao, Harun Farocki, Robin van't Haar, Nicoline van Harskamp, Janice Kerbel, Jill Magid, Yucef Merhi, Julia Scher and socialfiction.org.

The artists invited for the exhibition “On Patrol” explore various aspects of (in)security: they play with the observations of other people, manipulate techniques of espionage, hack, break codes and appropriate methods of power. They reveal the fear of insecurity, as well as worries about an excess of security.

In “Evidence Locker” (2004) Jill Magid deploys the local police force and the 242 security cameras stationed in the center of Liverpool to allow herself to be observed. From the resulting video material, she creates a film in which we can follow her closely. She also chronicled her stay in Liverpool in an exhibition diary.

Nicoline van Harskamp's new project shows how passers-by change their reactions to gatherings of teens in temporary uniforms, who look more like guards than young rebels.

Ergin Cavusoglu's video installation, “Entanglement” (2003) makes everything and everyone suspect, evoking an oppressive feeling of potentially threatening danger, turning man into a frightened animal through the sound of invisible, hovering helicopters and roving searchlights.

”On Patrol” is a response on the ongoing debate about security measures and the new cultural offensive being waged by various governments.

Critical and artistic confrontations about policing and surveillance are deployed in order to make viewers ask themselves: what is acceptable in the name of security? When is our individual freedom so much at stake that a boundary has to be transgressed -- and whose interests are being served by capitalizing on or fuelling fear?

Find it: De Appel
Nieuwe Spiegelstraat 10
Amersterdam, NL
Get info: 31-20-6255-651

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ART/Boston
“¡Dominicanazo!”
Through February 27th

In the Dominican Republic, a country in which painting has always prevailed, sculpture is seldom attempted, and performance art is often misunderstood, this group show includes installation, sculpture, video and painting.

Samson Projects presents the most provocative and stirring images from the current Dominican Republic art scene.

Artists include: Elia Alba, Tony Capellán, José García Cordero, Nicolás Dumít Estévez, Mónica Ferreras, Iliana Emilia García, Scherezade García, Pascal Meccariello and Belkis Ramírez.

Through their imagery, they examine their country's most pressing social issues: poverty, tourism and third world politics.

The exhibition decodes and debunks cultural stereotypes as the artists use diverse ways to translate their experiences in relation to their culture.

Mónica Ferreras psychoanalytical mandala paintings attempt to capture the essence of thoughts. Elia Alba's body suits comment on the ephemeral nature of skin and its cultural labels.

The poignant sculpture by Tony Capellán, included in the Samson exhibit, uses found objects to invoke the hunger pains suffered by the country's children while Belkis Ramírez, an architect by trade, incorporates wire, fences and netting to depict the distressing position of women in this traditional macho culture.

Scherezade and Iliana Emilia García are sisters with unique voices. Scherezade works reflect her fascination with duality. Iliana Emilia's multimedia work is strongly experiential, as the viewer’s imagination dictates each encounter.

José García Cordero divides his time between studios in Santo Domingo and Paris. Cordero creates large-scale paintings that reflect both the duality of his personal experience and the historical clash between European and Caribbean culture.

(Via curator Camilo Alvarez)

The show closes on Sunday, February 27th - Dominican Independence Day. Samson Projects will hold be holding a party in the gallery at 6PM to celebrate Dominican Independence Day.

Find it: Samson Projects
450 Harrison Avenue
Storefront 63
Boston, MA 02119
Get info: (617) 357-7177

MUSIC/Disc Series
Magdalen Hsu-Li, “Smashing the Ceiling”

My upcoming album is called “Smashing the Ceiling.” When I was writing the songs on this album, I felt I was experiencing a kind of quantum leap or personal gestalt.

There were so many breakthroughs that happened to me personally, emotionally, musically and spiritually.

“Smashing the Ceiling” was an incredible album to make. The songs felt completely inspired as I was writing them, as if I were a just a channel and they were coming from some higher source.

When I wrote the songs, I was trying to break through many personal ceilings in myself, things that most people would not know about unless they were exceptionally close to me. Later, as the album progressed, I began to feel pretty smashed up, myself.

This album has been the hardest thing I have ever made. It has been a rough time for me. I admit I'm glad to be moving into the performing end of things again.

What helps me create: Dreaming, sleeping. A lot of my best ideas come when I am awakened at 5am. I like to think it’s a time I can truly tap into the collective unconscious.

Sometimes it takes half an hour to complete a new song, sometimes months or years; in general, I like to try to wrap things up on a song within about a day or two.

SONGWRITERS: BORN OR CREATED?

Well, my first song ever was a nine-stanza adaptation of my own lyrics, and a schoolmate’s lyrics to the tune "Old Susannah". It was about a turkey that got botulism.

"Oh dear turkey
Oh why'd you have to die
Oh why'd this sickness come to you
I think I'm gonna cry"

We got a standing ovation from the class. I think I was like nine years old.

So, maybe songwriters are born. But what you do with your artistic inclination is up to you.

REFLECTIONS OF REAL LIFE

Fiction is the work of artists. Real life is something a lot of artists are really bad at!
So they create lives of fiction.

[But] I try to keep all my songs based in personal experience or personal feeling. Songs are better if they’re connected to something real.

Personal favorites: Probably “Redefinition” or “Mary Magdalene,” because I have changed myself so many times in my life, and certainly I have lived out the stigma of the virgin/whore, the bad girl -- what woman hasn't? Mary Magdalene is getting a makeover nowadays, thanks to the book "The DaVinci Code".

SMASHING THE CEILING

It's hard to say [what’s different about this new album, compared to “Fire” and “Redefinition”]. It might be better if other people listen to it and decide that for themselves. I can say that the drummer is different for this album, and also
that I think this is a much more inspired album than the last.

The songwriting is better; more universal and concise. The songs are shorter. I do think the politics are more deeply embedded; more hidden -- but still they are there to see, if you look deeper.

[Also], the personal takes precedence over the political in this album. I was writing where I was in my life, so it's an accurate portrayal, with hopes that the personal becomes universal.

PERFORMING ART: WHAT MATTERS TO ME

Depth and connection, giving to an audience of listeners, sometimes catharsis for myself. Writing songs is my way of giving to others.

Many performers are kind of broken people already; they would not have gotten into performing unless something was already lacking in themselves.

Maybe they are incapable of normal expressions of intimacy. Their art becomes their primary way of expressing intimacy of giving and receiving love, of being accepted by others.

Nothing gives me greater satisfaction than hearing someone say: "Your song meant so much to me because of _________," or "Your lyrics echoed my feelings, it really sounded like you were speaking for me and what I've been going through."

COMPASSION VS. COURAGE

I think they are equally important. We need more compassion in this world -- which, to me, equals understanding or putting yourself in someone else's shoes. We would have less wars if we had this.

On the other hand -- we need to be courageous, which, to me, equals righteous conviction. You must have an enormous amount of righteous conviction to be an artist, to be a human being, or how else can your ego take it?

It's pretty hard just being a human being, on an emotional level. We get all banged up and are expected to be perfect on top of that.

MUSIC, THE EXPERIENCE

Music just kicks ass over other art forms! The only other one that comes close is film, in regard to creating a large emotional connection to people.

I think that seeking a deeper connection to others is a theme that predominates in my music, also striving for spiritual or social consciousness. I also strive to create magic
through my music.

I would like to think I write from all the different places I’ve lived: the Southeast, the Northeast, and the West Coast, that my music is a true amalgamation of country, folk, pop rock, jazz, even punk.

LIVING IN THE WORLD

Things that piss me off: People who are spiritually lazy; people who are hypocrites; people who think they are better than other people and go out of their way to make others feel bad just so they can feel better about themselves; egomaniacs, dishonest people who bend the rules and the truth so that they can serve themselves.

There is an incredible lack of integrity in most people, I find. Most of all, I really dislike people who project their own character flaws onto other people so that they don't have to look at themselves.

What I’d like to see change in the world: That all people would really try to self-examine and look at their own behavior to discover what it is that makes them think and act the way they do. And practice self-restraint and diplomacy.

I really think that we would have no wars if people just could look at themselves objectively and say: “I need to work on myself and make myself a better person every single day and be relentless with myself in terms of my own growth.”

CREATING VS. PERFORMING

I think performing is more difficult for me, because I am actually a really very shy person. Most of my friends would scoff at this, but it’s true.

INSIDE TRACKS

“Mary Magdalene”

She always looked a little
Deeper into things
She could find a heaven
In the hell that life can bring

Took a long walk down that
Lonely road to find herself again
Went a little crazy
From the places that she’d been

Well, I don’t know where she’s goin’
But I do know where she’s been...she’s
Comin’ on the scene
Just like Mary Magdalene

She had compassion
She was fearless and bold
A fallen angel
With a heart of gold

She had a faith
That no religion can give
A wisdom far beyond
The years that she’d lived

And I don’t know where she’s goin’
But I do know where she’s been...she’s
Comin’ on the scene
Just like Mary Magdalene

Several people have asked why I chose to write a song about one of the most controversial figures in biblical history.

“Mary Magdalene” is both an autobiographical song about my life, as well as a blend of various biblical mythologies about Mary Magdalene.

I think she is one of the most iconic, provocative, loved, hated, and mysterious women in history. Yet her story has been misinterpreted through the centuries, so I felt it was time to help redefine her story in a more positive light.

“Northern Light”

I come from inside a mountain
A mountain made of stone
From a river full of blood
With the truth the world has known…

What would you say
If this world was at an end
What would you do
If these hurts we could not mend

Where would you go
At the end of it all?

I’d wanna be with you
In the northern light…

An early morning song. I woke up hearing the chords progression in my head and stumbled naked to the piano (freezing) and got the basic song form down on tape.

It came out very quickly, and I was inspired by the fact that the song has a dimensional space in it that is very large and vast, like looking out a huge expanse of mountain and sky.

I like the idea that music is a multi-dimensional medium. You can create soundscapes much a like a landscape in a painting and people can feel or visualize what you are seeing in your mind.

This song comes from many strange places, some personal and others ethereal. I could feel a vaguely Canadian type of energy around its creation, also the Iraqi desert and the center of the war activity played a role in this song, too.

Maybe the northern lights are actually a dimensional doorway and when we see the lights maybe we are actually seeing a glimpse of what is on the other side of that doorway. I’d like to console myself that if we continue down our warmongering path, maybe I will move to Canada. Or another dimension.

“Take Me There”

There’s a place in greyspace
Where my soul was made
And when my time comes
May I be safely laid there

I was just playing around on my guitar not attempting to write anything, when the verse popped out and I really liked it...then the lyrics came out and after staring bewilderedly at them for a minute, I began to understand and remember what they were about.

I once had this amazing acupuncture treatment where when the needles were left in for a while, whereupon I went to a very strange grey space that I could see in my mind’s eye.

There was nothing there and there was everything there. I knew nothing and yet I knew everything; all the secrets and knowledge of understanding music were revealed to me and I knew that I carried them inside of me, that I had always carried them inside me.

I cried when I came out of the treatment and asked: “How did I forget?” My acupuncturist said: “You didn’t forget. You still have all that knowledge inside you. You just need to re-learn it again.”

Really, that's part of what this song is about. But it’s also about the awakening of passion in oneself, and going back to the place of your original nature; where you are just you, and where wholeness exists.

“Sweet Hereafter”

I get through each day
But these scars will never fade
It’s been years since you left
This crazy world, my love
And all of my heavens have
Crumbled to dust

I saw the words “sweet hereafter,” rolled the words around on my tongue a few times and liked the way they sounded. I thought “there’s a song in those words.”

Then, a month or so later, I awoke at 5am to music in my head. I stumbled naked to the piano and, in the dark, recorded what I heard in my head.

As I wrote the song, I began imagining a morbid fantasy about what my life would be like if I lost someone I loved who was very dear to me.

I cried a great deal while writing the song; while tracking it in the studio, I cried a lot, too. Imagination can make you crazy. Or maybe you’re just feeling what others around you are feeling, and it just comes through you and you are just this vessel for it.

“Change The World”

There’s no one else
Has all the magic that you have inside
Or knows the way
To share the gift that only you provide
If you wanna change the world
Then you gotta change yourself

And though you may feel
That everything you do is small
You can’t deny the ripple
That you send through it all

I first heard the melody and lyrics for the chorus of this song while I was driving in my car. Often, song ideas come to me when I am traveling or in a moving vehicle -- sometimes traveling helps your mind hitch a ride on to the universal highway.

I think that the song has a few meanings for me. One is that I have changed myself so many times in my life that I know it’s possible to do things like that. I’m not talking about little changes, but about big 360-degree turnarounds.

Also, I know what it is to feel very small and insignificant (which is most of the time), and then to run into someone I met like eight years ago who tells me they chose to walk down a particular path in their life because of a conversation we had, instead of taking another path.

QUICK HITS

Reads: Re-reading “Northanger Abbey” by Jane Austen

Downtime: Painting, hanging out with my friends, political and social activist work, running, walking, swimming, hangin’ with my honey.

The biggest myth about being a creative: That we live these incredibly romantic lives on the road, that the road is romantic. In truth, traveling in the U.S. can be an endless chain of hotels, stripmalls and Walmarts. The performances are fun, varied and exciting, but the traveling hardly varies from city to city in regards to what you see, visually.

If I wasn’t a singer/composer, I would definitely be: A trapeze artist!

Bio: Growing up in rural backwater Virginia, singer-songwriter and painter Magdalen Hsu-Li began playing classical piano at age eight, and started writing music at an early age.
Says Magdalen, "You just couldn't stop the songs from coming. I was also painting, and at the time it seemed (to everyone) that was my stronger gift. But music was always the way for me to get in touch with the deepest parts of my emotional myself and confront my inner fears."

Early on, Hsu-Li focused intensely on painting, graduating with a degree in fine art from Rhode Island School of Design, and set her sights toward an art career in New York City.

Soon after graduating, she had a vivid dream that abruptly changed the direction of her life. "I dreamt I was a musician living in Seattle, and I felt utterly compelled to follow its message." She followed her instincts and moved to Seattle to study voice and classical and jazz piano at Cornish College of the Arts.

Magdalen writes songs that visually portray what she sees with her painter's eye, addressing universal themes about love, loss, and relationships; identity, spirituality, and the search for consciousness. "I write completely from the heart," she says. "But I also write from the places I'm from (the Southeast, Northeast, and West Coast), and from my heritage. “

Hsu-Li has sold over 8,000 records through her own independent label and formed a dedicated grassroots following through constant touring.

Her previous release, "Fire," was named one of the Best Top 12 DIY albums of 2002 by "Performing Songwriter." She holds a BFA in Painting from Rhode Island School of Design and has been awarded the Oxbow Fellowship, Talbot Rantoul Scholarship and Florence Leif Scholarship for Excellence In Painting.

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MUSIC/Miami
Subtropics 17 Experimental Sound Arts Festival
Feb. 24 – Mar. 5

Subtropics 17 Experimental Music and Sound Arts Festival launches its ten-day festival on February 24, with a performance by the West Coast new music group E.A.R. Unit.

E.A.R. Unit combines acoustic and computer generated sounds with video components. Consisting of winds, strings, percussion, piano and computer, E.A.R. Unit performs eclectic selections ranging from austere minimalist works to lighter, more humorous pieces, and others with political content.

E.A.R. Unit will perform a series of works, including Amy Knoles’ autobiographical music/video work, “Squint,” exploring the phenomenon of squinting your eyes while stuck in traffic in order to alter your environment, while absorbing the ensuing audio collage of myriad car radios. Yes, really.

Highlights: Festival Schedule

February 24, 2005 [7pm-9pm] Opening Reception
“Sounds in Space: Works from the Diapason Archive”
Twelve unique sound works, scheduled by a computer to play installations ar random intervals. “Sounds in Space” features the work of Tom Hamilton, Doug Henderson, Leif Inge, Tetsu Inoue, Stephen Vitiello and Amnon Wolman.

Tom Hamilton’s “London Fix,” a sound installation featuring music that changes with the price of gold, is featured on opening night, with special performances by street theater troupe “Urban Disturbance.”

Friday, February 25, 2005 [9pm]
Makihara/Meneses: Electro-Acoustic Percussion Duo
Makihara/Meneses is percussionist Toshi Makihara and marimbist Jim Meneses. Makihara/Meneses present dynamic and original electro-acoustic percussion soundscapes, using a variety of conventional and homemade percussion instruments, discovered and invented sound media and digital sampling systems.

February 26, 2005 [7pm]
“Mathematics of Resonant Bodies”
From his home in Alaska, John Luther Adams has created a unique musical world, reflecting the “choirs of inner voices” in natural percussive noises. His music is grounded in wilderness landscapes and indigenous cultures, and in natural phenomena from the songs of birds to elemental noise. His music includes works for orchestra, small ensembles, percussion and electronic media.

Saturday, February 26, 2005 [9pm]
jamJam Strawberry
Featuring Sony Mao, Sawako Kato, Dino Felipe and Otto Von Schirach
Web-based band, jamJam Strawberry a.k.a. The Strawberries, is an online, computer band which improvises, layer by layer, from server to server, on the world wide web.

The first notes were 'sounded' with an .aiff file placed in the "sonymao" drop box on the Microsound list's hotline-client server, intercepted by Sawako Kato in Tokyo, passed back to Miami’s Sony Mao, then to the "sonny browsers" uploads folder on a kdx-client server, picked up by Øivind Idsø in Oslo, Norway, and then swiftly routed back to Sony Mao.

For their in-the-flesh world premiere, the Strawberries are Sawako, a.k.a. Tokyo Digital Mutation Girl, and Beta Bodega Coalition's agent of chaos, Sony Mao. They are supported by solo performances from Miami's prince of computer cabaret, Dino Felipe, and, fresh from a North American tour with industrial band Skinny Puppy, Otto Von Schirach.

Wednesday, March 2, 2005 [7pm]
“Body Over Water”
Body Over Water is a new work by Maria Jose Arjona inspired by the passage of time. “When I think about water, generally, I think of life. Life as a fluid element that changes in stages generating a rhythm and multiplying itself endlessly over time,” says Arjona, who has been working in performance and installation since 1997. Arjona has participated in solo and group
shows in Bogota, Miami, Marfa (Texas) and New York City.

Thursday, March 3, 2005 [7-11pm]
“Transfers”
Digital media artist Matt Roberts, a member of DeLand’s duo DropBox, has taken a day job – driving a taxi. Sort of. Roberts offers no ordinary cab ride. Customers create their own unique multi-media works by directing Roberts to their destination of choice.

As the taxi travels, the passenger experiences a
real-time manipulation of live video and audio.

Utilizing GPS technology coupled with custom real-time audio/visual manipulation software, Roberts enhances the mundane experience of a cab ride
by marrying its own locomotion with the passing visual environment. Pick ups in and around South Beach.

Thursday, March 3, 2005 [7pm]
“Shared Frequencies”
“Shared Frequencies” is a mobile electro-acoustic studio producing a fluctuating, changing sound installation culled from acoustic transmissions and environmental sounds, modulated by sound artist Kabir Carter.

Carter's work zeroes in on the confluence of speech, urban environmental noise, acoustic feedback, analog sound synthesis, transmissive acoustics, specialized microphone technologies, tone sequences, and other sound events germane to
General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) and Family Radio Service. His compositions, live performances, and sound installations have been presented at P.S. 122 and d.u.m.b.o. arts center.

Thursday, March 3, 2005 [9pm]
Subtropics Videos: Selections from the Festival for Art on Film
A varied program of video works by national and international artists. Kristen Baumliér’s “Antenna” is a three-minute work investigating the nature of communication technology.

Francesca N. Penzani’s “Donne, Citta' ed in Vestito Nero/Women, Cities and a Black Dress” is a trilogy of short dance videos performed by three women in three different cities wearing the same dress.

Regis Ferguson Collective from Minneapolis presents “Gesture Lesson,” which knits together disembodied gestures, digital sound and algorithmic imaging.

“Texture Mapping II” by Claudia Esslinger exposes the interaction of organisms and industry reliant on water and the ensuing ecological dangers.

Friday, March 4, 2005 [9pm]
“Sound Mess and Other Poems”
The Be Blank Consort performs “Sound Mess and Other Poems.” The works in “Sound Mess” convert the raw material of spoken signs and messages to produce a cacophony which is a new language, with its own rhythms, structures, and signifiers.

The simultaneity of texts and meanings produces a three-dimensionality of language which is ordinarily absent in writing and speaking. The members of Be Blank subvert the linearity of conventional language and offer an experience more akin to music.

Saturday, March 5, 2005 [7-11pm]
Closing Concert: Subtropics Marathon
The Subtropics Marathon unites artists and sound practitioners from various disciplines. The Marathon has been a catalyst and springboard for collaborations that are subsequently recorded and produced beyond the Festival.

This year’s Marathon features the work of Rene Barge (Miami), Kabir Carter (New York), Charles Recher (Miami), Guillermo Gregorio (Argentina), John Vanderslice (Miami), Absolute Zero (Miami) and Gustavo Matamoros (Miami).

Find it: Dorsch Gallery
151 NW 24th St.
Miami, FL
Get info: (305) 981-0600

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DANCE/Insight
Cherie Carson, “Trikona”

My love of movement is my inspiration to create performance works. I'm also inspired by the act of creation itself.

Sharing my ideas through my art and how that reaches people in a new ways is powerfully exciting to me.

To me, dance is any gesture made with intent and style. I look to connect gestures in a meaningful way taking dance beyond the original impulse.

BEHIND THE SCENES

I get a germ of an idea that I want to explore. I may spend months tossing around thoughts, interviewing people, researching my topic, and developing movements that capture the kernels of truth that I see.

Then I pick a physical place and design costumes and props to breathe life into what will finally develop into a finished performance piece.

Often, I find that the best place to fully realize a performance work is in a non-traditional space, such as a planetarium, a banyan tree, a reflection pool, sculpture gardens, a lake, or a warehouse.

At other times, the energy of a space attracts me and a dance is born out of my partnership with the nature or architecture of the space.

The creation of a new work can vary from three rehearsals to three years. I created a wonderful duet, “Pregnant Pause,” in three rehearsals. The ideas and choreography just poured out.

On the other hand, “Water Dreams” took over three years from start to finish. It was a multimedia site-specific work created in phases.

For instance, the first phase was to create underwater choreography for video, edit the footage into a 25-minute piece, then go back into rehearsals to create the site-specific performance that incorporated the video.

My newest aerial work, “Trikona,” is taking about three months to complete.

ON PAPER

I often improvise to the idea using everything but the music. I sometimes write to release the images and do research to gain greater depth.

DANCERS: BORN OR CREATED?

Both. One can be born creative, but it takes perseverance, time and work to grow into one’s art form.

PIECES OF ME

Several works have been created from my life. All of my works contain pieces of me, whether in abstract form or from a real-life experience.

As I see it, there is a thin line between fiction and real life, because we create our own reality. What is more important is that the story we tell
through our art transcends its specific details and enables the audience to relate in a meaningful way.

LIFE LESSONS

The most [powerful] thing anyone ever said to me was: That everything has consciousness. Nothing in my upbringing had ever taught me that, and when I looked at my surroundings, I had a very different sensation and could no longer kill bugs.

SITE-SPECIFIC WORKS 101

Site-specific works are events/performances created for a particular place, and are only considered unusual because western art has
confined the creative experience to even more specific places, such as theaters, galleries and museums.

Site-specific work brings art out into public places, where the experience is unexpected. Art can be, and is, anywhere and everywhere.

NEW WORK: "TRIKONA"

"Trikona" is a new dance piece to be performed by three dancers suspended on three ropes. It is based on the structure of a yantra, which is a geometric design composed of basic primal shapes. These shapes are psychological symbols corresponding to inner states of human consciousness.

At the basis of yantra operation is something called "shape energy" or "form energy". The idea is that every shape emits a very specific frequency and energy pattern.

A yantra represents a particular configuration whose power increases in proportion to the abstraction and precision of the diagram. A yantra gradually grows away from its center, in stages, until its expansion is complete.

The structure of "Trikona" will be based on triangles and circles. This new work as an aerial dance that bridges body and spirit, creating a sense of expansion and freedom. (Premier at 1PM,
Feb. 13th, at Motivity Center, 8th and Dwight Way, Berkeley, CA, as part of a benefit for the National Cervical Cancer Coalition).

I am using this architecture of enlightenment as the basis for "Trikona," combining dance with the aerial apparatus (dynamic rope) and yoga movements and mudras.

I'm interested in pushing the limits of taking yoga/meditation into a moving performance in the air.

The Sanskrit word 'yantra' derives from the root 'yam' meaning to sustain, or hold.

I'm interested in the visual aspect of moving these elementary shapes in a direct and bold way in order to represent the sustainment of enlightenment. Something as small as a miniature can create a sense of expansiveness.

"Trikona" is an aerial dance that establishes and then follows a focal point that is a window into the absolute.

I see it as an expression of life continuing and unceasing, and also as the essence of artistic creation.

THEMES

Consciously or unconsciously, strong women are often present in my work.

WRITER'S BLOCK

I don’t consider what I get as a creative block, more like losing the thread. I drive. I take a shower. I leave it alone for a couple of weeks.

INFLUENCES

Visual artists, DV8 Company, journaling.

EMOTION VS. TECHNIQUE

Both are necessary, but in choosing one --emotional resonance wins, hands down! I need to see a dancer integrate the experience, not have
a veneer of emotion covering technique.

Do I consider dance to be a language, also?: YES.

QUICK HITS

Reads: "The Architecture and Design of Man and Woman"

Downtime: I love teaching yoga and meditation. I am starting a new corporation, the International Wholistic Institute, to support healing and
awareness through several diverse programs.

If I wasn't a dancer/choreographer, I'd definitely be: A yoga teacher. I’ve been teaching yoga for 12 years and find it has changed my approach to dance and choreography. I am much more centered and balanced.

What I wish someone had told me when I first started out: Success is meaningful when it comes from within.

Favorite quote: From Soen Nakagawa Roshi: "When one is climbing Mount Fuji, one has no view of it." -- it keeps me focused.

Artist bio: Originally from Texas, Cherie Carson currently resides in Oakland, CA. She has choreographed performances in a planetarium, on stilts, on roller blades, in sculpture gardens, swimming pools and on a bungee cord hanging from a banyan tree.

Her work has been presented throughout the U.S. and twice on the PBS mini-series "Razor’s Edge Cafe." Carson has choreographed works for Room
to Move Dance, Several Dancers Core, Moving in the Spirit Dance, and Dance Force.

Her underwater dance video, “Water Dreams,” was a finalist for the Robert Bennett Award at the American Film and Video Festival in LA. She is currently on staff with the International Wholistic Institute.

Visit official site: Cherie Carson

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NYC/Dance
“Sly Verb”
Feb. 15-20, 2005

One of Canada's most exciting choreographers and dance companies returns with a fresh blast of intelligent and provocative dance, in Toronto Dance Theatre’s compelling New York premiere of “Sly Verb” (2003). Exploring touch, perception and boundaries, “Sly Verb” seduces with the beauty of its dancing and the force of its ideas. Phil Strong's score throbs with the pulse of life, while Scott Eunson's inventive set evokes the fragility of the body's architecture.

Find it: The Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Avenue at 19th Street
NYC, NY 10011
Get info: (212) 868-4488

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THEATRE/Athens (GR)
“Antigone: Worshipping the Dead”
Through April 19th, 2005

"So for me to meet this doom is trifling grief; but if I had suffered my mother's son to lie in death an unburied corpse, that would have grieved me; for this, I am not grieved."

Antigone, the daughter of Oedipus, king of Thebes in Greek legend, is the heroine of one of Sophocles' most powerful dramas.

According to legend, when Oedipus blinded himself, Antigone shared her father's exile near Athens.

After his death, she returned to Thebes and attempted, with her sister Ismene, to reconcile their quarrelling brothers Eteocles and Polynices.

Both brothers were killed in battle, but their uncle Creon, now king, forbade the burial of Polynices because he had betrayed Thebes.

When Antigone defied the edict of her uncle and secretly buried her brother, she was executed.

Sophocles used the plot and characters of this legend in his tragedy, “Antigone” (440 BC).

The plot revolves around Antigone's loyalty to her brother and her defiance of Creon's edict in order to obey a higher law of devotion.

As the play opens, her two brothers, Polynices and Eteocles, have both died as the result of Polynices' rebellion against Eteocles, the successor king of Thebes.

Creon, the new king, forbids Polynices' corpse to be buried. Out of respect to the dead, Antigone performs funeral rites despite the ban and is sentenced by Creon to be buried alive.

The play has often been interpreted as a justification for civil disobedience, and as a vindication of acts driven by the unwritten laws of conscience.

Related links:
Historical context: Antigone
Read the play: "Antigone"

Find it: Chytirio Theatre
44 Iera Odos (Keramikos)
Athens, Greece
Get info: +30-210-3412313, 3412822

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DANCE/Miami
“Suite 305”
February 26-27, March 5-6, 2005

Open the door to “Suite 305,” the latest work by Dance Now! Ensemble. The evening of dance peers into the goings-on in Suite 305, in an unnamed hotel.

“Suite 305”captures moments in the lives of many of its past guests. The hotel's occupants range from a wedding couple to a single woman to two lovers fresh out of a one-night stand.

The closing piece, “Waiting for Jeanne,” was inspired by the experience of waiting for the slew of hurricanes that swept through Florida last fall.

Find it: Byron Carlyle Theater
500 71st St.
Miami Beach, FL
Get info: (305) 867-4194

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THEATRE/NYC
“Room”
Feb. 7-12

“Room” creates a space for us all to inhabit. Wynne Greenwood and Fawn Krieger build a utopian living room out of wood, foam, cheap carpet, and video projections that envisions new ideas about community and home, identity and social communication. And just for the hell of it.

An immersive video environment during the day, the installation serves as a stage in the evening for the art punk band Tracy + the Plastics. Greenwood assumes the role of each band member, performing live as Tracy, with bandmembers Nikki and Cola present as video projections.

Find it: The Kitchen
512 West 19th St.
New York, NY
Get info:(212) 255-5793

FILM/Festivals/Brussels
Brussels International Festival of Fantastic Film
March 11-26

Something wicked this way comes – the Brussels International Festival of Film.

The nearly month-long festival is a mecca for fans of the dark, odd and unusual, and there’s a film line-up to suit every palate: sci-fi, anime, psychological thriller, campy horror, and films which can only be classified as indefinable.

This year, the festival features feature-length and short films, but adds an anime series (Mar. 19, 20), and a few more offbeat touches, like the Body Painting (Mar. 12) contest, and the Vampire Ball (Mar. 26. At midnight. Of course.)

Then there are the random art exhibits. This year features works by Jean-Paul Baibay, who grew up seemingly keyed into a universe of virtual realities which seemed more attractive to him than daily life. His childhood friends were the mildly deranged geniuses of the Belgian comic-strip such as the Count of Champignacc, Doctor Septimus and Professor Sunflower.

Lastly, the festival organizers have thoughtfully invited theatre acts La Compagnie Tultétar, Magic Land Theatre, Lionel Lê “Akuma” and Kuriakin’s Freaks Show to distract folks when it gets too boring waiting on queue to snatch tickets for sold-out screenings.

Highlights: Features

“Abnormal Beauty”
Jiney relates to the world through her photography. Her work is met with admiration and acclaim, which leaves her cold and indifferent.

One day, she witnesses a fatal car crash and, torn between revulsion and fascination, snaps a shot of a dead pedestrian.

This morbid shot awakens latent emotion and excitement inside Jiney. She becomes increasingly obsessed with death, snapping shots of suicides and hiring butchers to slaughter animals on camera. When her fixation threatens to overwhelm her, she withdraws, trying to extinguish her obsession.

All seems well until someone anonymously leaves a package of photographs and a video for Jiney -- photos and film that appear to be an actual killing planned and caught on camera especially for her.

The Pang brothers (“The Eye,” “The Tesseract”) are at it again. “Abnormal Beauty” is a chilling tale of extreme obsession, full of gorgeous and disturbing images, edited with punch and style.

“Appleseed”
The year is 2131 and Deunan Knute, a hi-tech fighting machine, roams the scorched earth of a planet ravaged by war. With her communication lines severed, she’s unaware that the fighting ended long ago, until she’s ambushed by former lover Briareos. Nearly killed in battle, Briareos has been reconstructed as a cyborg. He needs her help, but his mission is a mystery.

He takes her to the gleaming metropolis of Olympus, where he now lives with the servile Hitomi. Beneath the apparent calm surface of Olympus, Deunan discovers something disturbing about Hitomi and the denizens of the city.

Conspiracy is rife, powerful forces are preparing for battle, and Deunan is the only one who can stop the coming Armageddon.

Based on the popular manga by Masamune Shirow, whose work has been adapted by Mamoru Oshii (“Ghost in the Shell”, “Innocence”), “Appleseed” is an high-impact dose of cyberpunk anime.

“Arahan”
Sang Hwan is a bumbling cop who gets beaten up regularly by the local gangsters. One day, he finds himself on the wrong end of a showdown
between a bag snatcher and a seemingly superhuman 7/11 clerk.

Eui-jun, the gorgeous register jockey in question, knocks Sang Hwan out flat. When he wakes up, he's covered in thousands of acupuncture needles and surrounded by five doddering old people who keep talking about his incredible ch'i. This mystical force, when unlocked, can turn a normal human into a superhuman.

They call themselves the Seven Masters – and they've got a major crisis on their hands. Heung Un, the Master of Absolute Evil, has freed himself from the prison in which the Seven Masters had sealed him in and the inept Sang Hwan is the only one who can prevent Heung Un from plunging the world into chaos.

With “Arahan,” director Seung-wan Ryoo crafts a stylish, funny and spectacular urban martial arts fantasy.

“Les Revenants”
It’s the middle of the day in a small provincial French city. An army of the living dead pour out of the municipal cemetery and invade the town center. They look no more fearsome than a stream of middle class Sunday strollers dressed in casual sweaters.

All over the world, millions of the recently deceased have risen from their graves. The city council is soon freaking out over the enormous logistical problems of providing shelter for these returnees from beyond. And as for their families, well, there are some macabre homecomings in the offing.

“Les Revenants” is not your average zombie film. Terror, gore and F/X are replaced by existential consideration.

What if the dead really rose from their graves to cohabit with the living? Director Robin Campillo directs a thoughtful drama with considerable visual flair and subtle camerawork. By confronting his characters with their deadly beloved, Campillo forces us to come to terms with our own failings as living human beings.

“Alive”
In an act of revenge, Tenshu Yashiro brutally murders the men responsible for his girlfriend Misako’s rape. He is sentenced to death, but after a failed execution, Tenshu gets another chance.

He awakens to find himself in a sealed room with another “lucky” survivor, the psychopathic Gondoh. The two men are now part of a secret government experiment.

A team of scientists watches via camera as a power struggle unfolds between the prisoners and The Displacer, a parasite that eats away at its host’s soul until nothing remains but a machine of flesh bent on destruction.

”Alive” marks the return of Japan’s action cinema maestro, Ryuhei Kitamura. He has traded the horror of the undead for an inventive science fiction setting that builds to a shattering finish.

“Blood Red/Rojo Sangre”
Once famous actor Pablo Thevenet is having a hard time finding work. He endures humiliating casting sessions by young directors who’ve never heard of him and by veterans who’ve forgotten him.

Then his luck turns.

Wealthy and eccentric Mr. Reficul engages him to play a living statue in front of his fashionable night club. The job doesn’t amount to much, but it pays well. So well, in fact, that Pablo now has the freedom to start eliminating empty-headed good-for-nothings that have stolen his place in the limelight.

Impersonating the most infamous human monsters like Gilles de Rais and Jack the Ripper, Pablo starts thinning out the ranks of the unjustly famous. Strangely, he seems to be getting away with it, as if an unknown benefactor is watching over him...

Debut director Christian Molina treats us to a ghastly variation on Goethe’s “Faust.” He has given his slow paced and atmospheric horror film a unique look with ingenious camerawork, creative transitions between the scenes and very effective F/X. Cult actor-director Paul Naschy (“Night of the Werewolf”) is brilliant as the narcissistic and deluded Pablo Thevenet.

“Hotel”
Irene is hired as a receptionist in an isolated, virtually inaccessible hotel in the Austrian Alps. The humorless proprietor is fanatically obsessed with cleanliness and order. The other employees are equally odd, remote and strangely reticent.

Irene is replacing Eva, a girl who has disappeared without a trace. Irene slowly learns that the area has a reputation as a place where people go missing. At night, the surrounding woods call out to her, issuing an invitation to enter a deserted grove...

“Hotel,” the second feature by Austrian director Jessica Hausner (“Lovely Rita”) is a disturbing, psychological chiller reminiscent of the work of Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock and even the Brothers Grimm. Hausner combines supernatural elements from fairy tales and German mythology in this atmospheric, otherworldly tale. The superb cinematography is complemented by an effective sound design that animates the hotel with an eerie, breathing presence.

“Kamikaze Girls”
Lonely dreamer Momoko finds herself stuck in the paddy fields of rural Ibaraki prefecture when her petty criminal of a father has to skip town after his latest scam goes wrong. She yearns to escape back into the opulent world of the 18th century court of Versailles.

Unlikely salvation arrives in the form of foul-mouthed Ichiko, a member of the notorious girls-only biker pack, The Ponytails. Asses are kicked and garments embroidered as the two outsiders strike up an unusual friendship that will transform their lives.

“The nail that sticks out, gets hammered down,” as a Japanese saying goes. Anything but true for Momoko and Ichiko, played by Kyoko Fukada and Anna Tsuchiya, in the superbly kitschy pop-cultural extravaganza that is “Kamikaze Girls.”

With vibrant colors, infectious humor and fast editing, director Tetsuya Nakashima recreates the bubblegum world of the “shojo manga,” or girl’s comic strip. Think of “Amélie” remade by Takashi Miike and Quentin Tarantino.

“Nina”
“Nina” is an contemporary retelling of Dostoevsky’s "Crime and Punishment," set in the concrete jungle of São Paolo.

Nina is a struggling comic artist, who rents a room from Eulalia. When Nina loses her job and falls behind on the rent, Eulalia begins a sadistic power game with the young artist, including labeling every piece of food in the freezer.

Nina scrambles for money, selling her underwear to a sexual pervert and stealing the wallet of a blind one-night stand. Under the relentless pressure, Nina withdraws into her art, and her destructive impulses can no longer be stopped; she plunges into a violent fantasy world of her own devising.

“Nina,” the feature film debut of director Heitor Dhalia, is a refreshing piece of modern Brazilian cinema. Nina’s downhill ride into a nightmarish universe is filled with both comic absurdity and horror, portrayed with style and originality by Dhalia. Manga-like cartoon pop-ups, gloomy production design and a pulsating techno soundtrack complete this chilling tale of contemporary urban isolation.

“The Promise/La Promesa”
A dead marriage and an irrational attachment to religion constitute the tormented life of Gregoria. Nevertheless, a chance encounter with a man who has narrowly escaped death offers her a way out. His words, filled with hope, give her the courage to change her destiny.

After a last violent encounter with her husband, Gregoria flees to northern Spain and assumes a new identity. Now called Celia, she works as a nanny to the only son of a rich family. Rumors about the house and inexplicable appearances gradually invade Celia’s world.

Tormented by ghosts and her own paranoia, she resolves to protect the boy. What she doesn’t realize it that the true danger doesn’t lie in those around here, but in herself.

Carmen Maura (“Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown”) gives a powerful performance as a woman falling prey to her religious psychosis.

“The Vanity Serum/Il Siero Della Vanita”
When a number of TV personalities start to disappear, Inspector Lucia Allasco takes on the case, along with her colleague Franco Berardi. As the investigation progresses, the officers suspect there’s a connection between the disappearances and powerful TV talk show host, Sonia Norton. As they dig deeper into the case, Allasco and Berardi dredge up a world where appearance is more important than life itself, where even the meekest person can become a ruthless killer.

Director Alex Infascelli runs the risk of becoming a BIFFF regular. After surprising audiences with original serial killer flick “Almost Blue” in 2002, he now presents a blood-soaked attack on that monumental temple of bad taste, vulgarity and sensationalism; talk show television. “The Vanity Serum” is based on a novel by Niccolo Ammaniti.

“Audition”
Video company executive Shigeharu Aoyama, who lost his wife seven years earlier, is trying to find a replacement.

A colleague suggests that they fake auditions for the female lead in a non-existent film, which will allow them to pick out potential brides from the actresses who answer their ad.

Only one candidate stands out; Asami, a 24-year old former ballerina who only wears white. Her docility and air of subservience are exactly the qualities Aoyama finds attractive in a woman, and it seems like a match made in heaven.

At first, he can’t believe his luck in finding this soft-voiced beauty. Then he notices weird scars on her legs and starts hearing strange stories about people who have met Asami, then disappeared. His perfect plan starts to unravel, as Asami’s hidden rage begins to reveal itself.

The central theme of the movie is the deleterious effect on women of male sexual attitudes and assumptions. ”Audition” is a powerful and graphic horror film, made even more disturbing by the haunting beauty of its images.

“Trauma”
Ben wakes up from a coma to discover that his wife, Elisa, died in the same accident that nearly killed him.

He tries to rebuild his life by getting a new job and moving to a new apartment, where he befriends his attractive neighbor, Charlotte.

But his mind starts playing tricks on him. Someone is moving things around in his apartment and methodically destroying his possessions. Then he suddenly begins to see his dead wife everywhere.

Fearing that he’s going crazy, he visits a childhood therapist. Charlotte, however, takes him to see a psychic, who tells him that she senses his wife is still alive.

Then the police pay him a visit. They tell him that he’s under investigation – for murder.

Director Mark Evans (“Resurrection Man”) delivers a gripping, psychological thriller with Hitchcockian twists. Elliptical editing and menacing sound design is deployed to create an angst-written canvas, as we watch the main character treading a razor-thin line between grief and self-delusion.

“Spider Forest”
Min loses his wife in a plane crash, a tragedy he foresaw in a dream shortly before it occurred.

Tormented by grief and unable to forget his beloved, Min trudges through his existence with no apparent will to live.

He leaves his job at a TV station, and loses entire days drowning his misery in alcoholic binges. Then he meets Soo-young, an anchorwoman who lost her father in the same terrible accident that killed Min’s wife. Over time, the memory of the tragic crash is slowly replaced by the desire to start a new life with Soo-young.

Then Min starts receiving mysterious phone calls that lead him to a remote cottage hidden in an ancient forest -- a cottage Soo-young appears to know very well.

After his feature debut, “Flower Island”, in 2001, director Il-gon Song creates a an engaging psychological mystery thriller, with “Spider Forest.”

The movie was inspired by a folk legend that warns of forgotten spirits that are turned into spiders and trapped in a forest until they are once more remembered by the living.

Song defies genre boundaries, as the film moves between detective story, supernatural thriller and subtle psychological drama, luring the audience into a deftly constructed web of eerie storytelling.

Highlights: Shorts

“Love Story in B-minor”
Film noir is not always film noir.

“La Peau du Loup/Skin of the Wolf”
Little Red Riding Hood is actually called Virginie, who has to think quick, as she’s pursued by Italian werewolves.

“Hell Bent for Whiskey”
Chicago, 1928. Gang wars, prohibition and some very deadly whiskey.

“The Strange Portrait of the Glass Lady”/Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani
The last moments of a woman, seen through a shard of glass.

Find it: Rue de la Comtesse de Flandre, 8
Gravin van Vlaanderenstraat, 8
B-1020 Brussels - Belgium
Get info: + 32 [0] 2-201-17-13

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FILM/Festivals/Belgrade
Belgrade International Film Festival
Feb. 25- Mar. 6

About seventy films will be screen during the ten days of the Belgrade International Film Festival.

The program includes several sections: The Lighthouse, for works by new directors; X-Files, a look at erotica and its role in modern art film, and Facts and Puzzles, a program of documentary film.

Also on the program, Objection of the Conscience, featuring intriguing works examining ethical dilemmas; Spiritual Territories, consisting of films by regional authors and new films from Scandinavia, and Slavic Package, featuring new films from the Balkans.

A separate program, Roads, will feature films and the promotion of books by contemporary director Abbas Kiarostami.

Highlights:

“Awakening From the Dead”/Dir. Miloš Radivojevic
The story takes place in Belgrade and a provincial town in Serbia, at the beginning of the U.S. bombing at the end of March, 1999.

Miki, who died at 40 as a disappointed senior lecturer in an art department, unrealized writer, discouraged Democrat and fired columnist, walks out of his own grave and re-enters his own life.

He visits his family, his old, incurably ill father, his friends and the one woman he always loved; the surreal contacts and conversations he has with them release them -- and him -- from illusions about his life.

The things he failed to do during his lifetime, he is trying to do "during his death time".

He takes care of that job quickly, clumsily, and stained with ink and blood, but with the conscience of a human being who, after the whole life of hesitation, irresolution and doubt, has decided to take action. Then he returns to his own comfortable, quiet, safe grave to spend his remaining time waiting until the end of an unjust and evil world.

“South by Southeast”
Sonya, once a popular Serbian actress who has settled in Slovenia, is on a short visit to Belgrade.

She enters a police station in near-hysteria, claiming that her daughter Sofia has been kidnapped. Then Sonya herself vanishes.

Inspector Despotovic, assigned to the case, finally tracks Sonya down.

Now she claims that she made everything up, that she never had a child and therefore there was no kidnapping.

Secret Service men approach Despotovic, and tell him that the story about the kidnapping is true, and that that is highly classified information -- the father of the child is the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The Minister claims that the Secret Service has made everything up, in an attempt compromise him politically. Despotovic is puzzled. Who is lying? Who is telling the truth? Who is crazy? And who is about to die?

“2046”
He was a writer. He thought he was writing about the future, but he was actually writing about the past. In his new novel, every once in a while, a mysterious train leaves for 2046.

Everyone who goes there has the same intention: to recapture lost memories. It was said that in 2046, nothing ever changed. Nobody knew for sure if it was true, because nobody who went there had ever come back -- except for him.

In “2046.” a writer (Tony Leung) is working on a book about a mysterious train that travels to the year 2046.

He thinks he’s writing a science-fiction story, but as time passes, he starts to realize it’s actually an autobiographical adventure.

A loosely-related sequel to “In the Mood for Love,” the film took nearly five years to produce and shares something of the same style, including a characteristic melancholy.

Although “2046” has many similarities to its predecessor, “In the Mood for Love,” it’s more a variation on a theme, rather than a sequel.

“2046” takes the viewer on sporadic leaps in time between the present, past and future. The story is about memories of lost loves; memories that fill the head of one man, in a virtuoso performance by Tony Leung, as the writer Chow Mo-wan.

Chow Mo-wan is a writer who has casual affairs with different women. The women always stay in hotel room 2046; he has the room next door. In the novel he is writing, a train leaves at irregular intervals to travel to the year 2046.

All the passengers have the same aim: to recapture lost memories. No one ever comes back.

The writer is seemingly stuck in his past, fixated on a doomed love affair he had with a woman called Li-chun.

His affairs are a desperate attempt either to forget her, or to rediscover her -- even the main character in his novel is like her. But when he, too, catches a train to 2046...

“2046” is a surreal visualization of desire and the inability to surrender to anyone but oneself; a dazzling, melancholy film about the inconstancy of love, memory and fate.

In the end, the film's message seems to support Chow's assertion that "it's no good meeting the right person either too soon or too late."

Find it: Sava Center
Majke Jevrosime 20
11000 Belgrade
Get info: (011) 33-46–946

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FILM/Festivals/London
Constellation Change Festival
Mar. 16 – Mar. 19

One of the premiere multi-venue festivals for dance on film, the Constellation Change Festival was launched in 1998 to celebrate the Carol Straker Dance Company's 10th anniversary.

A short film, "Constellation Change," was made to celebrate the dance company's work. The first film highlighted the stars and repertoire of the company. The film won Best Documentary at the Du Pre Awards in France.

From that simple beginning, “Constellation Change” has developed into an international festival, with over 800 film submissions from 47 countries in the last four years.

Visiting filmmakers this year include Cynthia Newport (Director, “Dance Cuba: Dreams of Flight”), Albertina Pisano(Director, “Bailaores”)
and John Albanis (Director, “Distemper”).

Highlights:

“Dance Cuba: Dreams of Flight” (105 mins.)

Focusing on a historic collaboration between dance companies from Cuba and America, “Dance Cuba: Dreams of Flight” intertwines several personal stories to capture the beauty of dance and the love of family, both being deeply affected by political environment.

Septime Webre, Artistic Director of the Washington Ballet, brings his dance company to Cuba for the first American performance there in 40 years. The son of a Cuba-born mother, Webre takes time to find the remnants of his parents’ lives on the island.

The rich history of Cuban dance is also revealed through the stories of Alicia Alonso, and dancer Carlos Acosta, who grew up in one of the poorest areas of Havana.

Today, Acosta is a world-renowned dancer frequently compared to Baryshnikov, and a principal dancer at the Royal Ballet.

The 82-year-old Alicia Alonso is a founder and Director General of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba. She became a superstar with the American Ballet Theater in New York, only to lose her eyesight. Despite her blindness, Alonso defied her doctors and continued to dance.

After the Revolution, Castro welcomed Alonso and then-husband Fernando and financed their ballet company. For decades, Alonso’s will and personality have held the Ballet Nacional together, but not without conflict. Today, many of Alonso's best dancers still make the difficult decision to leave Cuba.

Director Cynthia Newport teams with documentarian Barbara Kopple to present a filmic ballet of exile and return, loss and redemption, tradition and innovation. World premiere.

“Bailaores” (30 mins.)

Documentary about four contemporary artists (Rafaela Carrasco, Israel Galvan, Andres Marin and Belen Maya), each trying to expand the boundaries of traditional flamenco.

The filmmaker follows this young generation of flamenco artists who are radically innovating the art form.

The film mixes interviews and performances, exploring the influences and evolutions which inform each artist's aesthetics, and the obstacles they face in changing an art form which is linked inextricable to a complex cultural system.

The film shows how their quest is often misunderstood and attacked by traditionalists as a dangerous heresy.

The four protagonists share a common, compelling necessity to find a personal language for flamenco dance, one which draws inspiration from different art forms, such as contemporary dance, Butoh and Katakhali.

Filmmaker: Albertina Pisano was born in 1976. She holds a honor degree in philosophy and film at Milan University. She has filmed several cultural programs for RAI, and studied flamenco dance in Madrid and Sevilla. This is her first documentary.

“For a Tango” (5 mins.)
Fleeing from WWI, a massive influx of immigrants arrived in Buenos Aires. There were seven men to every one woman. The tango, with bravado and skill, illuminated lost dreams, new hopes, and captured in tangible form the longing to remember – and to forget.

Filmmaker: Gabriele Zucchelli was born 1972 in Pavia, Italy, and worked as an animator in Milan. In 1994 he moved to London where he worked on TV specials and musical featurettes with Paul McCartney. “For A Tango” is his first short film.

“Anything But Love” (99 mins.)
“Anything But Love” celebrates the style and sensibility of the 50s Technicolor musicals. It tells a contemporary love story about young woman choosing between the life she wants and the dreams she can’t live without.

The film stars Isabel Rose as Billie Golden, a woman infatuated with the glamor of an era long past. Dressed to the nines in the look of Hepburn and Hayworth, Billie envisions herself singing in plush nightclubs amidst velvet curtains and the sparkle of champagne.

After a series of setbacks, she runs into heartthrob Greg, who sweeps her off her feet. But when she meets a jaded pianist, Elliot, she finds herself caught between competing dreams, a dilemma only Eartha Kitt can solve.

“Anything But Love” pays homage to movies shot in Technicolor, featuring outrageous scenes where everyone and the waiter break into a new dance number. For fans of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”, “Pillow Talk” or “Funny Face.”

“Distemper” (5 mins.)
Based on Decidedly Jazz DanceWorks' staged performance, “Velvet,” “Distemper” deals with the nightmare of suffocation.

“Dance to This” (5 mins.)
“Dance to This” is a ballet film that features the innovative choreography of Sabrina Christine Matthews, as set to composer Douglas Schmidt's modern classical soundtrack. This is the story of a toy ballerina's dream of becoming real, and features Mathews in a variety of urban landscapes, the Rocky Mountains, and the Alberta Badlands. A moving meditation on the power and
beauty of dance. Nominated for an AMPIA award

“Together” (8.5 mins.)
A silent man enters a house and is confronted by memories from the past. Through a series of dance routines, we watch a couple’s relationship at different moments.

As the man is drawn through the house, he draws closer to the present and the couple's final confrontation. “Together” is a film about the things we leave behind.

“Gold” (10 mins.)
“Gold” is a short experimental dance film exploring the impressive skills and playful competition of two gymnasts at their local gym. The film evokes the solitary pursuit of physical power, exploring the strength of will it takes to win.

“B-Girl” (15 mins.)
“B-Girl” is a story of hip-hop, of what it means to be a breaker. Angel is a b-girl struggling in the six-step, a fundamental move.

Her coach, Carlos, and her all-male crew doubt her skill when she can’t even support herself through the most basic steps. With a huge competition coming up, Angel has to prove her place among them. She stays to practice late at night, building her strength.

Through pushing herself, and trusting herself, she finds a new power and style all her own. She doesn’t just succeed; she blows the room away...

“Silent Collisions” (26 mins.)
“Silent Collisions,” the new work created by Frederic Flamand with his company Charleroi/Danses - Plan K.

Inspired by Calvino's “Invisible Cities,” and created with the complicity of California architect Thom Mayne, choreography,and architecture are blended into a work about the tension between the lingering traces of common memory and the virtuality of a post-urban era which has yet to be discovered.

“Crutchmaster”(15 mins.)
Bill Shannon, better known by his B-boy moniker “CrutchMaster,” has a career that defies all categories. CrutchMaster's mix stems from philosophy as well as physical necessity as he lives with a degenerative hip condition.

Shannon considers himself to be a performance artist rather than a dancer, and defines his
work as rooted in street culture but informed by the fine arts.

He has developed a version or skateboarding and hip-hop that incorporates his crutches, creating a floating style where weight is shared rhythmically across four points.

The 5th Constellation Change will take place in various venues in central London. Fest central is Curzon Soho.

Find it/Festival venues:

Curzon Soho
93-107 Shaftesbury Avenue
London W1D 5DY
Get info: 020 7734 2255

National Film Theatre
Belvedere Road
South Bank
London SE1 8XT
Get info: 020 7928 3232

Rio Cinema
107 Kingsland High Street
London E8
(corner John Campbell Rd)
Get info: 020-7241-9410

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Film/Festivals/Vienna
Tricky Women
Mar. 3-6

Hello, Vienna...here comes Tricky Women 2005, the third edition of Europe’s first and only animation film festival devoted exclusively to female animators.

This year, audiences can expect four days packed with films -- 111 films, to be exact.

The schedule this year once again offers up fresh ideas from the diverse world of animated entertainment -- from biting satire to odd cult films, experimental computer design to sophisticated plasticine animation.

The growing number and quality of the entries from more than 20 countries provide a variety of film animation in terms of content as well as technique, creating a stimulating forum for discussion among international filmmakers and animators.

In addition to the international program, Tricky Women 2005 also features a retrospective of work by Maria Lassnig, the grande dame of Austrian animated film, and lectures by Ruth Lingford (“Animating the Unconscious”), Gabriele Jutz (“Scratchy Women”) and Brigitte Vasicek (“meatspace – virtual reality job agency”).

Highlights

“Pocedi Trymion/Heavy Pockets”
Sarah Cox, GB 2004
35mm, 5´58´´
A film about a girl who becomes immune to gravity.

“Accordéon/Accordion”
Michèle Cournoyer, CA 2004
35mm, 6´13´´
A powerful and at times disquieting piece steeped in black humor.

“Der Kussdieb/The Kiss Thief”
Elena Madrid, CH 2004
Beta-SP, 5´50´´
A man without a mouth is in love with his neighbor. He decides to steal a mouth so that he can kiss her.

“The Upside Down Day”
Andrea Lira, US 2004,
DVD, 1´
“The Upside Down Day” is about a little girl that can travel anywhere she wants, by walking into her stories and dreams.

“SW-NÖ 04”
Barbara Musil, Karo Szmit, A 2004
DVD, 10´30´´
A walk through the Austrian village of Reinsberg. Frozen snapshots come to life.

“City Paradise”
Gaëlle Denis, GB 2004
Beta SP, 6´
When Tomoko arrives in London, she has no idea that she'll soon discover a mysterious secret hidden beneath the city sidewalks.

“even odd even”
Barbara Doser, A 2004
Beta-SP, 7´30´´
You might not be able to believe your eyes. A film which reveals what seems to be hidden.

“Liebeskampf”
Adele Raczkövi, A 2004
Beta-SP, 1´20´´
A funny and macabre depiction of the struggle for existence.

“The Grass in the Strange World”
Kyeong-ah Kim, KP 2004
Mini DV, 11´02´´
The people living in a black star are tired of their boring and meaningless lives, so they take a little trip...

“No Trespassing”
Alexandra Regel, Eva Grün, A 2003
Mini DV, 8´20´´
A woman’s shadow trespasses the limits set for it. Now she’s had enough and tries to get rid of it.

“Gone with the wind oder eine Ameise wie du und ich/Gone with the wind or an ant like you and me”
Charlotte Wetzel, D 2004
35mm, 3´20´´
The exciting journey of an ant through the interior of a car up to the roof where he experiences the greatest -- and shortest -- moments of his life.

“Cage of Flame”
Kayla Parker, GB 1992
16 mm, 10´
A film is based on the artist’s dreams.

“How Mermaids Breed”
Joan Ashworth, 2002
DVD, 10’
This film answers the question of how mermaids breed.

“Novelty”
Leigh Hodgkinson, 2001
Beta SP, 6’
Jessica remembers time spent in a colorful world with two imaginary friends.

“Three Ways To Go”
Sarah Cox, 1998
Beta SP, 6’
A trinity of dying, as hand exposure of film, drawing, live action and stop-motion conspire to probe the mystery of life's final moments.

“Fire”
Jenny Bowers, GB 1999
1’
If your house was burning down and you could rescue one thing, what would it be?

“Rien”
Kunyi Chen, 1998
Beta SP, 2’25’’
Learning the word “rien”.

Find it: Top Kino
Rahlgasse, 1
1060 Vienna, Austria
Get info: +43 (0)1 990-46-63

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BOOKS/WRITERS
Writers Bloc series
“The Long March”
by Stephanie Elizondo Griest

Author’s Note: The past third of my life has been consumed by a single project: the researching, writing, and selling of my first book, “Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana.” This little essay tells the story behind the story.

Wanderlust prowls in my genes. My great-great uncle was a hobo who rode the rails; my father drummed his way around the globe with a US Navy Band.

But while I was desperate to escape my hometown in South Texas, I feared I never could -- largely because I couldn’t fathom how.

I mean, I could conceptualize buying a ticket and boarding a plane, but what would I do after it landed?

Then, my senior year in high school, a friend’s neighbor triumphantly returned home after a semester abroad and introduced me to the magical, mystical world of youth hostels, backpacks, and “Lonely Planet” guides.

She was only a few years older than me and -- unlike my role models -- female: if she could roam in foreign lands, surely I could too. But which ones?

A few months later, I attended a journalism conference that featured a keynote by a rockstar CNN correspondent who’d covered the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

His stories of riots and revolution surprised me. When he finished, I ran up to the microphone and asked how I could be a foreign correspondent, just like him. He looked straight at me and said: “Learn Russian.”

So I did. Although I barely knew enough Spanish to talk to my abuelita, or grandmother, I enrolled in Russian at the University of Texas at Austin that fall and four years later jetted off to Moscow to establish my career as an overseas reporter.

Russia had other plans in store for me, however, and I ended up volunteering at a children’s shelter and falling in love with an ex-soldier.

I set out for China next, hoping to be censored and oppressed and slip political dissidents dumplings filled with subversive messages through the iron bars of their prison cells.

Instead, I fought to run the Spice Girls on the entertainment page of the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party.

Those experiences gave me a deep fascination for nations that had experimented with communism in the 20th century.

Between 1996 and 2000, I visited a dozen, unrolling my sleeping bag in the Pamir Alay mountains of Kyrgyzstan and riding a pony across the Inner and Outer Mongolian steppes.

I drank café sua with Vietnamese businessmen in Ho Chi Minh City and cerveza with Cuban hip hop artists who rapped about Revolution. I dated a Chinese college student who carted me around on his bicycle.

Mother Road changes each of us in profound ways. I found that as I traveled, the identities I had spent my entire college career cultivating began to peel off one by one.

My vegetarianism drowned in a bowl of yak penis soup; my brand of “I can open my own damn door” feminism dissolved under the gazes of chivalrous Eastern lovers. I never felt less Chicana than I did in my mother’s homeland Mexico, where my Tex-Mex Spanish was barely intelligible to the people with whom I so badly wanted to connect.

Mother Road has also taught me a thing or two.

Hunger, for instance, was a vague concept until I saw it in a child’s eyes staring me down as I nibbled on a pork dumpling in Burma. I didn’t know desperation until I tripped over it in a crowded bakery, where comrades stole groceries out of one another’s shopping bags.

I found valor among the coffee farmers of Colombia who refused to cave in to guerillas’ demands to turn their crops into cocaine fields. And I experienced true forgiveness from the Vietnamese who so readily welcomed me -- a traveler from former enemy turf.

Traveling built within me a foundation that allows me to stroll the world's passageways with confidence.

It taught me the difference between being alone and being lonely, and made me ever selective of my company. In fact, Mother Road turned me into such a self-sustained, self-contained unit, I’m expecting to self-pollinate any day now.

I also came to understand the momentousness of the Mexican culture I left behind. All of those former Soviets who risked the gulag to distribute underground samizdat printed in their native language and Tibetans who braved sanctions by continuing to prostrate before their gods had risked so much to maintain their culture.

I, meanwhile, had abandoned mine.

They made me question why -- and, moreover, resolve to change it. My future travels will be to Spanish-speaking nations so that I can try to regain all that has been lost in my family’s migration to the United States.

However arduous my journey around the bloc, though, it paled in comparison to my navigation of the rocky road of publishing.

I officially began writing my book about my travels in Austin, Texas, on January 8, 1999 -- three days after getting dumped by the love of my life (whom I had moved back to America to be with!).

I was 24 years old, had zero contacts in the publishing industry, and hadn't a clue as to what I was getting myself into.

I did, however, have a lot of discipline, and soon adopted a writing schedule of 7 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. on weekdays, an hour or two of editing weekday evenings, and a four or five-hour block of writing on weekends.

By the time my contract with the Associated Press and apartment lease were up that August, I had completed several dozen travel vignettes and queried my first two rounds of agents.

All ten rejected me, but one gave me invaluable advice: narrow the terrain of the book so that it focused only on communist/post-communist nations, rather than everywhere I'd ever been. My first draft -- tentatively titled “Ramble On” -- had included some 20 countries.

So, I decided to give myself one calendar year to complete the book while living rent and utilities-free with my parents in Corpus Christi.

It was a tough year: having neither a car nor a "day job," I essentially locked myself into a very small bedroom and wrote, researched, and edited between 8 and 12 hours a day.

Yet it proved immensely productive: I completed a 450-page travelogue of 12 Communist nations called “Seeing Red,” wrote five versions of a book proposal, flew out to New York to meet with agents (and signed with a wonderful one), and read every book and Web site on publishing that I could find.

In June 2000, my agent sent the book proposal to 18 publishers. My parents and I took a roadtrip to Mexico and lit velas at every church we passed along the way.

By August, however, every last publisher had rejected it. The day I received my rejection letters in a thick manila envelope, I drank an entire bottle of wine and cried. Had I just wasted a whole year of my life?

Crushed, I did the best thing an aspiring travel writer could in such a situation: hit the road again.

Between August 2000 - May 2001, I drove some 45,000 miles across the nation in a beat-up Honda, documenting US history for a Web site for K-12 students as a national correspondent for “The Odyssey.”

I took “Seeing Red” along for the ride and had the strange but wonderful experience of listening to my colleagues read it as we drove down the highways and byways of America.

I also thought a great deal about why the proposal didn't sell, and how I could write one that would.

After that adventure ended, I spent three months performing major reconstructive surgery on my 103-page book proposal so that it read more like a memoir than a travelogue.

Then I moved to New York City with the vow that I would give myself one year to sell it -- or else, I'd go to Kinko's, crank out a bunch of copies to sell to family and friends, and move on.

Amazingly, Villard/Random House bought it in April 2002. My advance, however, was the equivalent of four months’ room and board -- and I still had a full year’s worth of work ahead of me.

And so, at age 27, after having successfully avoided it since high school, I buckled down and got a “day job” as the spokeswoman for a think tank on artistic and intellectual freedom and the founder/director of an anti-censorship youth activist organization.

I generally wrote between 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. to midnight on weekdays and logged in at least 15 hours on the weekend.

I also did a two-week residency at the beautiful Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, Illinois, where I wrote and edited 12 hours a day.

The book was christened “Around the Bloc” soon after I handed it in on May 1, 2003. It was published on March 9, 2004.

The first time I held my book in my hands, I literally dropped to my knees and cried.

Later that night, after consuming copious amounts of Soviet champagne on Brighton Beach with a friend, I experienced the most blissful inner peace of my life.

All in all, my publishing saga included nine versions of the book proposal, four complete manuscript rewrites, 33 agents and 31 publishers queried, and countless edits, revisions, split ends, and nervous breakdowns over a four year period.

I lost two good friends, most of my savings, and any concept of "free time" in the process.

Through the madness, I learned a few lessons about book writing that I’d like to impart:

Deeply reflect upon your reasons for wanting to do this to yourself. Fame and fortune simply cannot be part of the equation -- and frankly, neither can publication. Those rewards are just not worth the struggle.

Rather, you must believe in the story you have to tell, and be fully convinced that it will change the perceptions and perspectives of others.

Those are the only goals that can justify the immense amount of work involved in this grueling process.

If you decide to go for it, build a community. If you don’t know any writers, go to conferences or join a group and befriend some. Seek out mentors.

Whenever you read a wonderful book or article, send its author a note and -- if they live close by -- an invitation for coffee. Sell yourself and your ideas to editors, agents, and publishers.

Follow up on every lead and jump on every opportunity. Always write heartfelt thank you letters to those who help you along the way.

Learn from your mistakes, revel in your successes, and above all -- enjoy the journey.

You are a thinker, a storyteller, an artist, a writer: OWN IT!

And watch out for the Bloc Party nearest you. I performed excerpts of “Around the Bloc” in 25 cities in 2004 and many more are in store for this year.

Please visit my online home at Around The Bloc -- and I’ll see you on the road!

Bio: Stephanie Elizondo Griest has belly danced with Cuban rumba queens, polished Chinese propaganda, and mingled with the Russian mafiya. These and other adventures are the subject of her critically-acclaimed memoir “Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana” (Villard/Random House, 2004).

Official site: Stephanie Elizondo Griest

About: The Writers Bloc series is an ongoing column featuring practical advice for writers. Nope, not a support group. Not until someone busts out the tequila, anyway...

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NYC/KGB Bar/Reading
Mar. 16, 7pm

The Fantastic Fiction series, curated by Ellen Datlow and Gavin J. Grant, is on the third Wednesday of every month at 7pm at KGB. Come early.

Reading:

Robert F. Wexler, "Circus of the Grand Design"
The debut full-length novel from the author of "In Springdale Town." Featuring otherworldly circus entertainment: elephants, acrobats, jugglers, and a mysterious mechanical horse.

Also reading: Paul Witcover, "Tumbling After"
The long-awaited second novel by Paul Witcover, “Tumbling After” is a provocative work of imagination – part coming-of-age story, part contemporary fairy tale, part technological nightmare, and a dark vision of dystopia.

The author of "Waking Beauty," Paul Witcover has also written a biography of Zora Neale Hurston and numerous short stories. He is the co-creator, with Elizabeth Hand, of the cult comic book series “Anima” and has served as the curator of the New York Review of Science Fiction reading series.

Find it: 85 East 4th Street (just off 2nd Ave)
New York, NY 10003
Get info: (212) 505-3360

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BOOKS/WRITERS
The Agent series
Featured columnist: Jenny Bent
“First Year Out: On the Shelves”

Getting published for the first times is at turns exhilarating, frightening, exciting, nerve-wracking, and sometimes extremely disappointing.

Remember the old saying, "be careful what you wish for?" Having your book published offers much potential for happiness, but also carries the possibility of a fair amount of disappointment.

There can be nothing so exciting for a writer as holding your finished book in your hands for the first time. And while there is no way to comprehend the experience of being published before the actual event, it can helpful to know a little bit about what you're getting into as soon as you get that momentous call from your agent: "We have an offer!"

The following questions and answers are my attempt to prepare you for the joys and the sorrows of being published.

Hopefully, forewarned will become forearmed, and you'll be able to better enjoy the experience if you're prepared for some of the potential pitfalls. Reasonable expectations are the key to being happily published for the first time.

Q: I went to my neighborhood bookstore today and they didn't have my book. Isn't that the publisher's fault?

A: Remember that the publisher ultimately has no control over who does or does not choose to stock your book.

Their sales rep has pitched your book, but if the store chooses not to order it, there isn't really anything they can do.

If you find a store that doesn't carry your book, don't call your editor. Instead, ask to meet the store's manager.

Tell him or her that you are a local author and show him a copy of your book or a flyer that you have made up with reviews, etc.

Ask him or her politely to consider carrying it. Then, if you want to be really cunning, have one or two of your friends go in the next day and ask for it. Chances are, they will reconsider their decision.

Also, keep in mind that the publisher doesn't control how many copies of your book a bookstore will order.

If you see only one or two of your books on the shelf, keep in mind that this isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's far better to have the bookstore sell out and re-order more books, than to have too many and have to send them back.

No matter how many books the store is carrying, remember to offer to sign stock. Hopefully, this will get you more prominent placement in the store, if you don't have it already.

Q: Why hasn't the publisher released a paperback edition of my book?

A: It means that either they tried to sell paperback rights to another house and no one wanted to buy them, or that hardcover sales have been too low to justify the publisher printing their own paperback edition.

Another possible reason is that sometimes if a hardcover book is selling phenomenally well, the publisher waits longer than is traditional (usually about a year) to release the paperback.

The idea is if readers are still willing to pay $23.95 for your book, why give them the opportunity to get it at a much lower price?

Bio: Jenny Bent has ten years of experience working in the publishing industry. She is currently a literary agent with the firm of Trident Media Group, LLC in New York City. Prior to becoming an agent, she worked at "Rolling Stone". She was also an editor at Cader Books, where she was responsible for books on pop culture.

NB: Lit agent Jenny Bent is providing this information as a courtesy to readers. She is not accepting new work. Unsolicited materials will not be read or returned.
##
About this series: The Agent is an ongoing series of columns or Q/A sessions with literary agents, providing practical advice for writers.

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TRAVEL
“Traveling Solo”
by Stephanie Elizondo Griest

Never underestimate the power of the Open Mother Road. She will push you to your physical, spiritual, and psychological limits -- then nudge you one step further.

She will teach you to be self-reliant and self-sufficient. Communing with her has been the most formative experience of my life: I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Every woman should travel solo at some point in her life -- be it a weekend escape or a year-long journey. But all too often, fear holds us back.
Fear of our safety. Fear of getting lost. Fear of being alone.

Women never really travel alone, however. We are constantly being temporarily adopted as someone's daughter or sister.

This was illustrated for me the afternoon I arrived in the town of Cesky Krumlov in the middle of a thunderstorm and -- unbeknownst to me -- a medieval "Festival of the Five-Petalled Rose."

The mobs of drenched travelers I met on my way toward the center of town warned me that every hostel, hotel, and pension had been booked for miles for months.

Cold, wet, hungry, and lacking either a reservation or a back-up plan, I wondered what to do.

Suddenly, the sky exploded and the rain became a downpour.

I darted into a pension for cover. The clerk, a portly woman in her late 40s, looked up.

"No room!" she clipped.

"Could I just stand here until the rain stops?"

"Don't you have anywhere else to go?" she demanded.

I shook my sopping head.

"Where are your friends?"

I shook my head again.

"You're all alone?!"

When I nodded, she muttered something in Czech and grabbed the phone.

After a few calls, she scribbled something on a sheet of paper and handed it to me. "I found you a room. Now hurry up and change out of those wet clothes!"

Indeed, single female travelers (SFT) elicit the empathy -- and curiosity -- of all walks of life. There is always extra shelter or food for one of us.

That said, we do face a few obstacles on the road that our male equivalents do not -- from basic safety to hygiene to being forced to abide by local social customs that we might find oppressive.

The following are tips on how to deal with these challenges, gleaned from my own travels and those of other SFT I know:

FOR STARTERS...

Pack only what you can carry for half a mile at a dead run. This is the golden rule of foreign correspondents and should be adopted by solo travelers as well.

A good method is to lay out everything you think you'll need, then pack up half of it and double the money.

A few things I try to never leave home without: a versatile pocket knife, a strong piece of nylon rope, a flashlight (or better yet, a headlamp), a combination padlock, a rain poncho, blank paper, pens, a journal, condoms, and a lot of...tampons.

A friend of mine traveled the developing world for nearly two years with a single device -- a menstrual cup -- and swears it is one of the greatest contributions to womankind. No strings, no wings!

Another friend eliminates her menses altogether by taking Depo-Provera, a shot of progestin that can prevent ovulation for intervals of up to three months. I wish I could adopt one of these options but admittedly -- they freak me out. So I just pack a hell of a lot of tampons.

Other SFT take along O.B.s or other non-applicator tampons, which take up half the space of regular tampons and won't get tampered with by customs agents looking for drugs.

Although...twice, in Canada and Colombia, I sadly watched agents destroy my boxes of perfectly good tampons because I fit their pot-smuggler profile.

STASH THE CASH

Every traveler has their own proven method of keeping their money and valuables safe.

Some sew little pockets on the insides of their clothes; others stash emergency bills and contact information into their bras or shoes.

Throughout my travels around the Bloc, I kept a copy of my passport, a couple of traveler's checks, and some money in a hidden waist belt, then stored the important stuff (passport, airline tickets, credit cards, bulk of money and traveler's checks) in a hidden thigh pouch.

Then, one morning on a non-Bloc stop in Istanbul, I got tired of that annoying bulge around my belly and decided to ditch the waist belt and transfer everything into my thigh pouch.

Naturally, that was the day disaster struck.
I now advocate "spreading the wealth" -- leaving a little money everywhere, from your backpack to your person to beneath the mattress in your hotel (if it seems secure).

If you are going somewhere where theft is a serious problem (i.e. Colombia or Brazil), consider carrying a decoy money belt or purse -- that is, something to hand over if you get mugged. I've met foreign correspondents who collect expired credit cards, IDs, and keys for this very purpose.

Before you go anywhere, leave behind a folder with your itinerary, contact information for any friends you might be visiting, and copies of your passport, visa, driver's license, student ID, traveler's checks, and credit cards with your parents or someone else you can count on.

Also, try to memorize your passport, credit card number, 1-800 credit card replacement number, and pertinent contact information.

Finally, what American Express says in their commercials is true. Their Istanbul office promptly replaced my traveler's checks, advanced me money, and let me call my parents for free. Their hefty annual fee is a pain, but you can always cancel it when you return home. I'll never leave home without it.

MALE REPELLENT

One of the most challenging aspects of being a SFT is dealing with aggressive men. While women can be harassed anywhere in the world, the probability is higher in some places than others.

I have personally found Russia and the former Soviet Union to be equivalent to the United States in terms of lurid looks and inappropriate comments. (I once got chased down a dark alley by drunk men in Moscow, but similar things have happened in America as well.) In China, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Vietnam, I had no problems with men whatsoever.

Though I hate to perpetuate stereotypes of a badly misunderstood area of the world, I must admit that my two weeks in the Middle East (Egypt and Turkey) intimidated me from further solo exploration there.

In Istanbul, I was harassed unrelentingly, and many of my SFT friends have had similar experiences both there and throughout Morocco.

If you decide to venture to this region solo, pack very conservative clothing, invest serious time in studying the local language and culture, and arrange to stay with families if possible.

Some women wear fake silver wedding bands and carry photos of hulky men they call husbands as a form of male repellent.

This is an excellent idea, but I tend to focus more on learning a few key phrases in the local language: "Thanks so much for inviting me to your ______ with you. My husband -- a martial arts instructor -- will love to come."

Guilt/humiliation is a good strategy for dealing with men who molest you on crowded buses or subways. Try saying loudly and firmly: "How would you like it if someone treated your sister like that?" or simply: "Shame on you!" Chances are, your fellow passengers will come to your rescue. If you turn around and slug the guy, however, they likely will not.

In conservative/religious settings, you might also try quoting passages from the local holy book.

SAFETY

“Lonely Planet” is very good about pointing out safe places for women to stay in their guidebooks.

As a general rule, pensions, homestays, bed and breakfasts, and hostels are far more "women friendly" than hotels or motels.

If that is all you can find, however, abide by the following: use only a first initial when checking in. Request a room that is not on the main floor. Always take the elevator instead of the stairs. And never leave your key where someone can see your room number.

HAGGLING

Though it might seem intimidating at first, this can actually be one of the fun aspects of traveling. A few rules: only haggle when you really want something. It's poor form to haggle just for the sake of haggling.

Do keep in mind that no matter how good of a haggler you become, you'll probably still get ripped off, just by virtue of being a foreigner. So what? Hand it over. Consider it your way of revitalizing the local economy.

TOGGED OUT IN SIBERIA

This can be the hardest aspect of being a woman on the road: conforming to local gender roles/social customs.

Although foreign female travelers might be forgiven/excused for pushing the limits of local dress codes, it is simply disrespectful to wear tank tops and shorts in more conservative societies (especially the Middle East).

Breaking these codes will also make you a target of sexual harassment, as my friend and I discovered during our spring break vacation in Egypt while we were exchange students in Moscow.

Envisioning luxurious sunbathing on the Red Sea, we packed little more than bikinis, cut-offs, and mini-skirts.

That outfit worked in Hrygada, a beach town that primarily caters to Novie Russkie tourists, but it was a nightmare in Cairo.

We eventually had to join a group of Russian male tourists to ward off the advances (and in turn got hit on by them).

As for dress codes in the Communist Bloc, it depends on the area. Big city Eastern Europeans take style seriously: my mud brown corduroys, ripped jeans, and hiking boots made me feel like an androgynous pauper there.

I also found that former Soviet women are not afraid of a little color. If you don't wear make-up, be prepared to feel washed-out amidst the turquoise eye-shadow andl pink blush.

Georgia and the Central Asian republics (Kyrgyzstan, Kazakstan, Uzbekistan, etc.) tend to dress conservatively in the countryside (long skirts and kerchiefs or scarves), but downright outrageously in the cities (mini-skirts and spiked heels).

If possible, spend some time flipping through magazines and renting contemporary movies from your destination country and pack accordingly.

Do try to resist the temptation of going totally "native" with local traditional dress, however, no matter how fabulous it might be.

It will be considered disrespectful if you wear it incorrectly (which, when you're talking about six yards of sari, is easy to do).

After living in China for nine months, I worked up the nerve to wear a traditional qipao to a banquet.

My colleagues seemed to appreciate it, but I definitely got some funny looks from those who didn't know me (all of whom were wearing cocktail dresses).

I tend to be overly sensitive about these sorts of things, but there is a fine line between admiring local culture and exoticizing it. If you are going to a wedding or ceremony and your local friends throw you a sarong, though, by all means wear it!

ABS OF STEEL

You take a fairly substantial gastrointestinal risk when you travel abroad, particularly in the "developing world."

There are many rules on how to keep out of harm's way (i.e. "Cook it, wash it, peel it, or forget it") and I've seen them carried out to the extreme.

One girl in my Moscow dorm painstakingly peeled the skin off everything -- including mushrooms -- before sauteeing them; a guy used bottled water for everything -- including washing his face.

I, meanwhile, ate absolutely everything in Russia, and when I got tired of boiling my drinking water, I slurped straight from the tap.

Never did I have a problem, and this gave me something of an attitude: My stomach is made of steel!

So when I arrived in Beijing, I started sampling every dumpling, stir fry and chick-on-a-stick in sight.

Once again, I had no problem, and my ego grew. I became downright fearless, snacking on everything from sea slugs to yak penis stew (neither of which I'd recommend).

Then a colleague invited me out for Mongolian hotpot one evening. This meal consists of dangling raw vegetables and assorted meats into a boiling caldron with a pair of chopsticks until cooked, then dunking into spicy sauces before eating. Divine.

My problem was that the caldron burned the hell out of my fingers, so I didn't let my raw chicken, fish, and lamb bits cook long enough.

I threw up three times that night, and around 2 a.m., the cramping began. It came in the form of contractions that literally caused me to sit up in bed and scream. Like giving birth. To Satan.

That morning, a friend escorted me to the hospital. Diagnosing me with "Beijing Belly," the doctor prescribed some funky black pills (which I never took) and lots of Sprite (which I did).

He told me to return if the cramping hadn't subsided within 24 hours. Amazingly, at precisely 2 a.m. the following day, it did. So, that was pretty bad, but the street stalls of Thailand are what truly ruined my intestinal chamber.

Here are the tips I plan to abide by from here on out: Avoid salads and other raw vegetables, unpasteurized products (like milk and yogurt), iced drinks, cold meat and cheese platters (where it's probably been sitting out for hours), shell fish, and milk or cream in your coffee or tea.

When choosing a restaurant, try to check out the bathroom first: if the Board of Health would condemn it, the same probably goes for its kitchen too.

Give your body time to adjust to local spices before hitting the street stalls -- and only patronize the busiest ones when you do.

If you wind up somewhere even remotely sketchy, go vegetarian -- or at the very least, avoid chicken and fish, as it goes bad fast.

In many restaurants in China, you can actually ask your waitress to grab the aquatic creature of your choice straight from its aquarium and bonk it on the head in front of you. That's hard to watch, but at least you'll know it's fresh.

WATERWORKS IN ANGOLA

I really hate to recommend that women rely on their perceived fragility or weakness to get by, but in my experience, occasions arise when this is the most effective approach.

There's just something about a lonely foreign woman crying that opens the doors, wallets, and hearts of the people of this planet. It is how I got all of my critical documents replaced in Istanbul in record time. It is how my friend Daphne literally stopped a departing airplane in Angola.

Use only as a last reserve, but if you're going to do it -- go full throttle. If you're trying to avoid an exorbitant fine, jail sentence, or getting thrown off the Trans-Siberian train in the middle of the night for not having your papers in order (which happens), think: Oscar. Drop to your knees. Convulse. Make such a scene that passersby get involved.

If the situation is truly critical, consider fainting -- but only if you've gotten enough sympathetic people involved that your oppressor/ bureaucrat can't just toss your body off the train).

Another strategy is pretending to get sick. I once read of an elderly expat in China who never left home without his Chinese doctor's business card.

Whenever his cabbies turned kamikaze (which happens), he would hand it to him with an ominous: "I suffer from severe heart failure, particularly when driving through Kutong at 90 miles an hour like this. If I have a heart attack, just drop me off at this address."

The cabbies instantly came to screeching halts.

That's genius -- although younger travelers may have a harder time pulling it off. If you really need your taxi to slow down, try shouting "I'm getting carsick!" and heaving.

RETURN THE GOOD SISTER KARMA

Spread the love. Be nice to female travelers you encounter at home, and try to help out your local sisters abroad.

Make it a point to support female artisans, vendors, tour guides, and taxi drivers wherever you wander. Your money will almost certainly go where it is needed most.

Bio: Stephanie Elizondo Griest has belly danced with Cuban rumba queens, polished Chinese propaganda, and mingled with the Russian Mafiya. These and other adventures are subject of her critically-acclaimed memoir "Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana" (Villard/Random House, 2004).

Official site: Stephanie Elizondo Griest

SCI/TECH
Experimental research
Walking the ‘bot

Robots that walk like human beings are common in science fiction but not so easy to make in real life.

The most famous current example, the Honda Asimo, moves smoothly but on large, flat feet. And compared with a person, it consumes much more energy.

But researchers at Cornell University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Holland's Delft University of Technology have built robots that seem to more closely mimic the human gait -- and the Cornell robot matches human efficiency. The researchers' inspiration: simple walking toys that fascinated children in the 19th century.

"Already our robot seems to be at least 10 times more efficient than anybody else's," says Andy Ruina, Cornell professor of theoretical and applied mechanics.

The Cornell robot consumes an amount of energy per unit weight and distance comparable to a human walker.

In contrast, they estimate that the Honda Asimo uses at least 10 times as much energy as a human.

The MIT and Delft robots, though not built deliberately to be energy-efficient, also use much less energy than the Asimo.

More important, the researchers say, is that their robots provide a more realistic model of how humans walk.

Ruina, his former student Steven Collins, MIT postdoctoral researcher Russ Tedrake and Delft postdoctoral researcher Martijn Wisse describe their new robots in the latest issue of the journal “Science” (Feb. 18, 2005).

They present a briefing on their work on Feb .17, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C.

Cornell's robot equals human efficiency, Ruina explains, because it uses energy only to push off, while other robots needlessly use energy to absorb work, for example in moving the limbs forward more slowly than they would naturally swing under gravity power. "In other robots the motors are fighting themselves," he says.

Researchers at each of the three universities have built walking robots, differing slightly but based on the same principle. They are an extension of several years of research into "passive-dynamic walkers" that walk down a shallow slope, very much like simple walking toys that have been around since the 1800s and developed more scientifically starting in 1988.

These downhill walkers were developed further in Ruina's lab, leading to a two-legged version with articulated knees built by Wisse during a visit to Cornell.

Collins further refined that and then built the first Cornell powered model, while Wisse returned to Delft and developed other unpowered and powered robots.

For the robots being described in “Science,” the researchers at all three institutions have simply substituted small motors for gravity power.

Ruina says the research followed the example of the Wright Brothers, who carefully researched gliders, then simply added a motor to achieve powered flight.

The robot work was done primarily to study the biomechanics of human locomotion, but it could have applications in practical robotics.

Collins, now at the University of Michigan, already is applying some of what he has learned to the design of a powered prosthetic foot for amputees. "It's not exactly the same thing, but certainly the mode of thought comes from thinking about robots," he says.

Information gained from studying walking robots should be of use to the rehabilitation community, he adds. The researchers note in their “Science” paper that gravity-powered walkers have been considered irrelevant to human walking by some because humans don't always walk downhill, but that these new machines demonstrate that there is nothing special about gravity as a power source.

Gravity-powered walking toys work by swaying from side to side, allowing first one foot and then the other to swing forward. Human beings minimize the swaying and bend their knees to allow the moving foot to clear the ground, and two of the three new robots do the same. All three robots have arms synchronized to swing with the opposite leg for balance.

The Cornell robot supplies power to the ankles to push off. When the forward foot hits the ground, a simple microchip controller tells the rear foot to push off. During the forward swing of each leg a small motor stretches a spring, which is finally released to provide the push.

The Delft robot uses a pneumatic push at the hip, and the MIT robot uses electric motors that directly move the ankle.

Control programs in the Cornell and Delft robots are extremely simple, while the MIT robot uses a learning program that allows the robot to teach itself to walk, which it can do in about 600 steps.

The fact these robots can walk with a humanlike gait with very simple control programs "suggests that steady-state human walking might require only simple control as well," the researchers say in their paper. "The success of human mimicry demonstrated here...strongly suggests an intimate relationship between body architecture and control in human walking."

Related info: Andy Ruina's research page
Get more info: Cornell University, (607) 255-7164

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SCI/TECH
Experimental research
Walking the ‘bot2: Baby robots

Three independent research teams, including one from MIT, have built walking robots that mimic humans in terms of their gait, energy-efficiency, and control.

The MIT robot also demonstrates a new learning system that allows the robot to continually adapt to the terrain as it walks.

The work, to be described in the Feb. 18 issue of the journal “Science,” could change the way humanoid robots are designed and controlled and has potential applications for robotic prostheses. It could also aid scientists' understanding of the human motor system.

Developed at MIT, Cornell, and Holland's Delft University of Technology, the three robots are all based on the same principle: they are an extension of several years of research into "passive-dynamic walkers" that walk down a shallow slope without any motors. Passive-dynamic walkers were inspired by walking toys that have been around since the 1800s.

Toddler

Control programs in the Cornell and Delft robots are extremely simple, because a large portion of the control problem is solved in the mechanical design.

The MIT robot uses a learning program that exploits this design, allowing the robot to teach itself to walk in less than 20 minutes, or about 600 steps.

Dubbed "Toddler" because it learns to walk and because it toddles when it does so, the robot "is one of the first walking robots to use a learning program, and it is the first to learn to walk without any prior information built into the controller," said Russ Tedrake, a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.

Among other things, the learning program allows the robot to navigate efficiently over a variety of walking surfaces, and may eventually allow robots to navigate very rough terrain. That's because the program works so quickly that Toddler is able to continuously adapt to the terrain as it walks.

Energy-efficiency

The three robots are quite energy-efficient. Cornell's "seems to be at least 10 times more efficient than anybody else's," said Ruina.

Rough calculations suggest that it approaches human efficiency, consuming an amount of energy per unit weight and distance comparable to a human walker.

The MIT and Delft robots, though not built deliberately to be energy-efficient, still use much less energy than, say, their famous cousin, Honda's Asimo.

How do they move? The Cornell robot supplies power to the ankles to push off. When the forward foot hits the ground, a simple microchip controller tells the rear foot to push off. During the forward swing of each leg, a small motor stretches a spring, which is finally released to provide the push.

The Delft robot uses a pneumatic push at the hip, and the MIT robot uses electric motors that directly move the ankle. All three robots have arms synchronized to swing with the opposite leg for balance.

The robot work was done primarily to study the biomechanics and control of human locomotion, but it could have applications in practical robotics.

Get info: MIT, (617) 258-5402


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SCI/TECH
Experimental research
A sixth sense for danger

While some scientists discount the existence of a sixth sense for danger, new research from Washington University in St. Louis has identified a brain region that clearly acts as an early warning system -- one that monitors environmental cues, weighs possible consequences and helps us adjust our behavior to avoid dangerous situations.

"Our brains are better at picking up subtle warning signs than we previously thought," said Joshua Brown, Ph.D., a research associate in psychology in the Arts and Sciences department of Washington University, and co-author of a study on these findings in the Feb. 18 issue of the journal “Science.”

The findings offer scientific evidence for a new way of conceptualizing the complex executive control processes taking place in and around the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a brain area located near the top of the frontal lobes and along the walls that divide the left and right hemispheres.

"In the past, we found activity in the ACC when people had to make a difficult decision among mutually exclusive options, or after they made a mistake," Brown said. "But now we find that this brain region can actually learn to recognize when you might make a mistake, even before a difficult decision has to be made. So the ACC appears to act as an early warning system -- it learns to warn us in advance when our behavior might lead to a negative outcome.”

Implications for mental illness

The ACC has been the focus of intensive scientific research in recent years because it plays a critical role in the brain's processing of especially complex and challenging cognitive tasks. Abnormalities in the region are associated
with a host of mental problems, including schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

"Our results suggest how impairment of the ACC mechanisms in schizophrenia can lead to breakdowns in the early warning system, so that the brain fails to pre-empt or control inappropriate behavior," Brown said. "On the other hand, in individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder, the ACC might warn of an impending problem even when no problem is imminent."

"Interestingly, we also found evidence that the same neurotransmitter involved in drug addiction and Parkinson's disease, namely dopamine, seems to play a key role in training the ACC to recognize when to send the early warning signal," he added.

Known to be an important component of the brain's control system, the ACC is believed to help mediate between fact-based reasoning and emotional responses, such as love, fear or anticipation.

"For a long time we've been interested in how the brain figures out how to integrate cognitive information about the world with our emotions, how we feel about something," Brown said. "For many reasons, people think the ACC might be the brain structure responsible for converging these different signals. It seems to be an area that's involved in deciding what information gets prioritized in the decision-making process.”

New paradigm for brain's "whoops center"

Recent studies have documented spikes of activity in the ACC just as people realize that they've made a mistake of some kind, a sensation some describe as the "whoops" moment.

Theories based on these findings suggest that the primary role of the ACC is to help detect and subsequently correct mistakes or, alternatively, to detect the state of high-conflict that often accompanies mistakes".

Brown's study, co-authored with Todd Braver, Ph.D., an associate professor of psychology in Arts and Sciences at the same university, offers compelling evidence that the ACC is better understood as a pre-emptive early warning system, one that is actively working to help us anticipate the potential for mistakes and thus avoid them altogether.

"We started with the premise that perhaps the cingulate was not responding to the detection of an error or state of conflict, but maybe instead what the cingulate is detecting is the likelihood of making an error," Brown said. "We wanted to see if the cingulate would become more active even in situations where no conflict is presented and no errors are made, but the potential for error is still higher than normal.”

To test their hypothesis, Brown and Braver developed an experiment requiring healthy young people to respond to a series of cues on a computer screen.

Participants were presented with either a white or a blue dash, which soon changed into a small arrow pointing either right or left.

They were instructed to quickly push one of two buttons depending on the arrow's direction. To simulate conflict, researchers occasionally slipped in a larger second arrow that required participants to change gears and push the opposite button.

"The idea is that at some point you have these competing tendencies – to push the right or left button -- and both are active in brain at same time, which creates conflict," explains Brown. "Some theories suggest that whenever you see these two arrows, then that drives this state of conflict and it's the state of conflict that is being detected by the cingulate."

By increasing the delay before presentation of the larger second arrow, researchers raised the odds that an individual would reach "the point of no return" and thus be unable to change gears in time to avoid pushing the wrong button.

They then adjusted the delay time over many trials so that each participant eventually exhibited error rates of about 50 percent when provided with an initial blue priming dash, compared with error rates of only 4 percent when presented with a white priming dash.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers captured images of brain activity at 2.5-second intervals throughout the experiment.

"We didn't tell them that the white or blue cue offered any clue about their likelihood of making an error on any particular trial, but by the end of the session, some of them had begun to figure it out, at least on a subconscious level," Brown said.

Even among those who remained relatively unaware of the blue cue's significance, researchers found that simply showing the blue color was eventually enough to spark increased activity in the cingulate, and that this effect strengthened over time as the subject became more familiar with the task.

Thus, brain imaging confirmed that the ACC had "learned" the significance of the blue cue, and had begun, at least subconsciously, to adjust behaviors accordingly, the study found.

"It appears that this area of the brain is somehow figuring out things without you necessarily having to be consciously aware of it," Brown said. "It makes sense that this mechanism exists because there are plenty of situations in our everyday lives that require the brain to monitor subtle changes in our environment and adjust our behavior, even in cases where we may not be necessarily aware of the conditions that prompted the adjustment. In some cases, the brain's ability to monitor subtle environmental changes and make adjustments may actually be even more robust if it takes place on a subconscious level."

[Image shown above: Research flowchart. Researchers provided study participants with a series of blue or white cues and asked them to push one button or another depending on the direction of arrows. Brain imaging suggested that an area of the brain had "learned" to recognize that blue cues indicated a greater potential for error, thus providing an early warning signal that the ongoing behavior might result in negative consequences.]

Get more info: Washington University, (314) 935-6375

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SCI/TECH
21st century linguistics

Educators may rail against the increased use of 'txt' shorthand by children in their school work, however, the advent of new language styles and forms engendered by the Internet, and related communication developments such as SMS messaging, should be greeted with delight, says language expert David Crystal, Honorary Professor of Linguistics at the University of Wales, Bangor.

Speaking at the Annual Conference of the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science), Crystal asserted that our current time period is the greatest opportunity for the development of the English language since the advent of the printing press in the Middle Ages.

The variety of applications of new technology leads to new stylistic forms and increases the expressive range of a language, especially at the informal end of the spectrum.

Changes in communication technology are invariably accompanied by concerns about language, explains Crystal. In this instance, because people notice a growth of informality in language use, their concerns center around whether this will cause a general deterioration in the quality of the language.

"The prophets of doom emerge every time a new technology influences language, of course -- they gathered when printing was introduced, in
the 15th century, as well as when the telephone was introduced in the 19th, and when broadcasting came along in the 20th; and they gathered
again when it was noticed that Internet writing broke several of the rules of formal standard English, in such areas as punctuation, capitalization, and spelling," he says. "All that has happened, in fact, is that the language's resources for the expression of informality in writing have hugely increased -- something which has not been seen in English since the Middle Ages, and which was largely lost when Standard English came to be established in the 18th century. Rather than condemning it, therefore, we should be exulting in the fact that the Internet is allowing us to once more explore the power of the written language in a creative way.”

Technology also bears gifts also for linguistics scholarship -- according to Crystal, it is a new opportunity for academic study, who suggests the possible academic study of “Internet Linguistics.”

From his own early assessments, Crystal concludes that a surprisingly small number of new words have been spawned, while 'txt'ing, blogging and other forms have given radical opportunities to develop new stylistic rules.

He believes that the new forms of interaction seen in Internet exchanges are far more important than changes in traditional vocabulary, grammar or spelling.

Get more info: University of Wales – Bangor
+44-124-838-3298

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LIFE
Cyber security ping-pong

A new security approach called "delayed password disclosure" is being touted to safeguard credit card numbers, bank passwords and other sensitive information for those who surf the Internet using wireless connections.

The same protocol could be employed in many computer networks in which two computers, hand-held communication devices or network nodes need to simultaneously verify the identity of each other.

The protocol was created by Markus Jakobsson and Steve Myers of Indiana University. It may have application in any environment where "mutual identity authentication" is required, the researchers say.

If the protocol were used by an online bank, a technical version of the following dialogue would occur between the bank and the online customer to authenticate the identity of both parties without divulging passwords.

CUSTOMER: Hello bank. I know my banking password. If you really are my bank, then you already know my password. I don't trust you and you don't trust me. I'm not going to tell you my password. We're going to use this authentication protocol called "delayed password disclosure." It allows us to both be sure the other one is not lying about our identity, but without giving out any sensitive information in the process.

BANK: Proceed.

CUSTOMER: Bank, I will send you some information that is encrypted. You can only decrypt it if you know my password. If you don't know the password, you could of course try all possible passwords (although that is a lot of work!), but you would never know from my message if you picked the right one. Once you have decrypted the message, I want you to send it to me. If it is correctly decrypted, I will know that you know my password already. Once I know that you know my password, I will send it to you so that you can verify that I also know it. Of course, if I am lying about my identity and don't know the password in the first place, then I will not learn anything about the password from your message, so it is safe in both directions.

Get more info: Technical documents

LIFE
Naked brunch

A group of nicely-dressed diners arrived at a NYC restaurant on a cold February night and stripped off their coats, hats, gloves and scarves.

Then they kept on going. Skirts, shirts, pants, underwear and stockings all ended up stashed in bags by the bar as the dinner party got naked for their monthly "Clothing Optional Dinner."

"It's exciting to be in a restaurant nude," said George Keyes, a retired English teacher. Nude yes, but not unadorned. Keyes, a lifelong nudist, wore a necklace, earrings, and white sneakers.

The dinner was started by a group of New York nudists who wanted something a bit more posh than wilderness getaways and beach resorts.
[Source: Reuters]


LIFE
Strip club art

Meanwhile, back in Idaho...

A strip club in Boise, Idaho has found an artful way to prance past a city law that prohibits full nudity.

On what it calls Art Club Nights, the Erotic City strip club charges customers $15 -- for a sketch pad and pencil.

In 2001 the Boise City Council passed an ordinance banning total nudity in public unless it had "serious artistic merit" -- an exemption meant to apply to plays, dance performances and art classes.

Erotic City owner Chris Teague said he got the idea when a customer asked if he could get in for free to sketch the dancers.

Realizing that "art classes" were exempt from the law, Teague decided to bill Mondays and Tuesdays as art nights. "We have a lot of people drawing some very good pictures," he says.
[Source: Reuters]

NB: The image used above is from an upcoming exhibit by Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Gagosian Gallery, London. But the question still stands...


LIFE
Going once...

An Ohio State University student has put their school president on eBay, saying in the ad that the school president is ruining the school.

Bidding started at a penny and the seven-day auction had 64 bids from 19 bidders topping out at almost $100 million.

The auction notes that the item for sale cannot be shipped: "Will arrange for local pickup only."
[Source: AP]


LIFE
One crime, 19 suspects

The sign said it all: "Wecota, Pop. 19. We're all here because we're not all there."

That is, until earlier this month, when somebody stole the sign that had been bolted to a wooden fence on the west side of the Faulk County South Dakota village since September.

One crime, 19 suspects. What to do?

Nothing, this time around. It turns out that Wecota resident Dave Griffith, who came up with the idea for the sign, has some insight into human nature. He’d ordered two signs at the same time -- just in case something happened to the first one.
[Source: Canadian Press]

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UPCOMING ISSUE
MUSIC

“You’re like a tattoo on my tongue
A permanent scar of an invisible someone
Seeking words I’m not supposed to tell
Like a wish got lost down a wishing well...”

A “petite blonde with unruly hair and a voice seven times her size,” this singer/songwriter draws comparisons to Janis Joplin, but captivates listeners with a soulful, honey-gravel voice that's all her own.

If you’re in the mood for hippie-soul-gospel-bluesy-folk-rock with quirky, intelligent lyrics, you’ll love this album.

Read an in-depth interview with this artist,
in an upcoming issue of “Arte Six.”

UPCOMING ISSUE
ART

Past and present life in the “free city” of Christiania is the subject of this five-channel video installation.

In 1971, Danish activists broke through the fences of an abandoned seventeenth-century military base, founding what is now one of the largest anarchistic communities in the world.

This work displays multiple perspectives on the city's original utopian ideals and the daily realities of living outside the law as a form of protest.

Find out more about this exhibit in an upcoming issue of "Arte Six."

UPCOMING ISSUE
TRAVEL

What begins as a harmless family visit explodes into an around-the-world adventure that finds this writer unexpectedly navigating the world’s most dangerous corners, with no intention of running for cover.

But while her hair-raising trek through Beirut, or her black-market shopping spree in Cuba might be chalked up to offbeat life experiences, it’s in Costa Rica that things start to spin out of control —- when she falls in love with a man imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit.

What she finds out along the way: that a successful "vacation" —- much like that elusive thing, happiness —- can be created in the most unlikely places on earth.

Trade stability for adventure; read an excerpt from this writer's edgy, honest, funny and unforgettable travel book, in an upcoming issue of “Arte Six”.

UPCOMING ISSUE
BOOKS/WRITERS
Writers Bloc series

"What The Hell Do I Call This Chapter, or, Do It Right"

That Was a Really Dumb Thing To Do #3,492: I knew that.

"I had a dance instructor, Barbara Wiley, who taught me more life lessons in the course of the two years I studied with her than I probably learned in the entirety of the rest of an errant childhood.

"One day we were doing a routine at the studio, and I was tired, slacking, just phoning in the steps, and Barbara stopped the dance and asked me what the hell I thought I was doing.

"And I said, promise, on performance day, I'll be on, but today I'm tired.

"And Barbara said, practice like you want to perform, because if you don't, your body is learning right now what to do, and come performance day -- this is what it's going to remember..."

You! No slacking off at the keyboard, or this LA screenwriter will whup your...anyway, read the rest of this very funny but straight-up column about professionalism, in an upcoming issue of "Arte Six."

UPCOMING ISSUE
MUSIC

Like any artist worth listening to, this singer/songwriter creates complex, unusual tracks that defy easy categorization.

Is it French chanson/electronica? Trip-hop/acid jazz? Retro-future lounge/ambient synth?

Whatever it is, it's good -- she serves up intelligent, steamy chill noir, with lyrics referencing everything from 1940s jazz ("harlem back in 43'/ella, billie, love supreme/cotton club coltrane/rule the scene") to the Russian space program ("down below the green blue/my eyes transfixed/valentina to ground control/aboard the vostok 6/ i am seagull...").

Heavily influenced by jazz greats Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, her voice is a sultry trad jazz contralto infused with contemporary Euro cool.

Meet this artist, in an upcoming issue of "Arte Six".

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