"These are the best of times, these are the worst of times"
17 March 2008
pamela's list
1. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert 2. "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" by Jorge Luis Borges 3. A History of Colors by Manlio Brusatin 4. if on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino 5. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
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Anonymous
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"Nicole's List"
The House of Spirits, Isabel Allende (as well as other magic realism authors: Gabriel García Márquez, Laura Esquivel)
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho Shogun by James Clavell Siddhartha by Herman Hesse Miles the Autobiography by Miles Davis and Quincy Troupe The Time Travelers Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
1. Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
A quote from Lou Reed:
"Rock and roll is so great, people should start dying for it. You don't understand. The music gave you back your beat so you could dream. A whole generation running with a Fender bass...
The people just have to die for the music. People are dying for everything else, so why not the music? Die for it. Isn't it pretty? Wouldn't you die for something pretty?
Perhaps I should die. After all, all the great blues singers did die. But life is getting better now.
I don't want to die. Do I?"
2. tie: American Psycho and Less Than Zero, both by Bret Easton Ellis
3. Indian Killer by Sherman Alexie
4. Being There by Jerzy Kosinski
5. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
6. tie: Night by Elie Wiesel and The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness by Simon Wiesenthal
Here are some passages from The Zahir, a book about obsession in love. It questions the notions in which all relationships function or do not function and challenges the ideas of what love is and means. Obsession is curious to me in my art practice because of the impact certain images can have on us. Repetition, bombardment, and intense focus on something can put you in a trance like state, while at the same time making you aware of the false reality that it exists in. I was struck one day after viewing the film, Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait. Pamela had made a comment that she felt like she was in love with Zidane after viewing the 90 min film intensely focused on him playing soccer. I thought this was interesting because I related the notion of love and obsession equally interchangeable. Another example is Dara Birnbaum’s Wonder Woman video- http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/technology-transformation/video/1/ “In the words of the Mongolian creation myth: “There came a wild dog who was blue and gray and whose destiny was imposed on him by the heavens. His mate was a roe deer. Thus begins another love story. The wild dog with his courage and strength, the doe with her gentleness, intuition, and elegance. Hunter and hunted meet and love each other. According to the laws of nature, one should destroy the other, but in love there is neither good nor evil, there is neither construction nor destruction, there is merely movement. And love changes the laws of nature…the wild dog is seen as a feminine creature. Sensitive, capable of hunting because he has honed his instincts, but timid too. He does not use brute force, but strategy. Courageous, cautious, quick. He can change in a second from a state of complete relaxation to the tension he needs to pounce on his prey The roe deer has the male attributes of speed and an understanding of the earth. The two travel along together in their symbolic worlds, two impossibilities who have found each other because they overcome their own natures and their barriers, they make the world possible too. That is the Mongolian creation myth: out of two different natures love is born. In contradiction, love grows in strength. In confrontation and transformation, love is preserved…love is an untamed force. When we try to control it, it destroys us. When we try to imprison it, it enslaves us. When we try to understand it, it leaves us feeling lost and confused.
1. The Zahir by Paulo Coelho 2. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho 3. Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel 4. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls 5. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky 6. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold 7. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
8 comments:
"Nicole's List"
The House of Spirits, Isabel Allende (as well as other magic realism authors: Gabriel García Márquez, Laura Esquivel)
Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
The Book Of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa
Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austen
The Giver, Lois Lowry
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Shogun by James Clavell
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
Miles the Autobiography by Miles Davis and Quincy Troupe
The Time Travelers Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan
Performance Art, Kristine Stiles
Challenging False Logic, Norman Willis
You Shall Know Our Velocity, David Eggers
Paragraphs on Conceptual Art, Sol Lewitt
Betty Crocker Cookbook, Betty Crocker
1. Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
A quote from Lou Reed:
"Rock and roll is so great, people should start dying for it. You don't understand. The music gave you back your beat so you could dream. A whole generation running with a Fender bass...
The people just have to die for the music. People are dying for everything else, so why not the music? Die for it. Isn't it pretty? Wouldn't you die for something pretty?
Perhaps I should die. After all, all the great blues singers did die. But life is getting better now.
I don't want to die. Do I?"
2. tie: American Psycho and Less Than Zero, both by Bret Easton Ellis
3. Indian Killer by Sherman Alexie
4. Being There by Jerzy Kosinski
5. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
6. tie: Night by Elie Wiesel and The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness by Simon Wiesenthal
RANDS BOOX
1. The Church of The Subgenius, Bob "JR" Dobbs
2. The Giver, Lois Lowry
3. Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You to Know About, Kevin Trudeau
4. Mark Kistler's Draw Squad, Mark Kistler
5. The Bible
Here are some passages from The Zahir, a book about obsession in love. It questions the notions in which all relationships function or do not function and challenges the ideas of what love is and means. Obsession is curious to me in my art practice because of the impact certain images can have on us. Repetition, bombardment, and intense focus on something can put you in a trance like state, while at the same time making you aware of the false reality that it exists in. I was struck one day after viewing the film, Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait. Pamela had made a comment that she felt like she was in love with Zidane after viewing the 90 min film intensely focused on him playing soccer. I thought this was interesting because I related the notion of love and obsession equally interchangeable. Another example is Dara Birnbaum’s Wonder Woman video- http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/technology-transformation/video/1/
“In the words of the Mongolian creation myth: “There came a wild dog who was blue and gray and whose destiny was imposed on him by the heavens. His mate was a roe deer. Thus begins another love story. The wild dog with his courage and strength, the doe with her gentleness, intuition, and elegance. Hunter and hunted meet and love each other. According to the laws of nature, one should destroy the other, but in love there is neither good nor evil, there is neither construction nor destruction, there is merely movement. And love changes the laws of nature…the wild dog is seen as a feminine creature. Sensitive, capable of hunting because he has honed his instincts, but timid too. He does not use brute force, but strategy. Courageous, cautious, quick. He can change in a second from a state of complete relaxation to the tension he needs to pounce on his prey
The roe deer has the male attributes of speed and an understanding of the earth. The two travel along together in their symbolic worlds, two impossibilities who have found each other because they overcome their own natures and their barriers, they make the world possible too. That is the Mongolian creation myth: out of two different natures love is born. In contradiction, love grows in strength. In confrontation and transformation, love is preserved…love is an untamed force. When we try to control it, it destroys us. When we try to imprison it, it enslaves us. When we try to understand it, it leaves us feeling lost and confused.
1. The Zahir by Paulo Coelho
2. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
3. Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel
4. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
5. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
6. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
7. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Vivienne Westwood: An Unfashionable Life by Jane Mulvagh
Ways of Seeing by John Berger
The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture edited by Hal Foster
Shock Value by John Waters
Slaves of New York by Tama Janowitz
Take It Like A Man by Boy George
keri's list
A Separate Peace, John Knowles
All Quiet on the Western Front, Enrich Maria Remarque
The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
Waiting for Godot, a play by Samuel Beckett
Eva Luna, Isabel Allende
Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival Anderson Cooper
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