MCN Blogs
Kim Voynar

By Kim Voynar Voynar@moviecitynews.com

Posted Tuesday, March 29th, 2011 - Comments Off on Going to the Center of the Earth
Be Sociable, Share!

Going to the Center of the Earth

I meant to write earlier about our trip to the Seattle Art Museum to see the Nick Cave: Meet Me at the Center of the Earth exhibit, but kept forgetting (this, among other things, is why I need a personal assistant).

I wanted to take a bunch of pics to show you, but unfortunately the entire exhibit was a “no photography” zone. I need to go back a couple more times to fully absorb what I saw and what it all means. But the Soundsuits, when you see all of them together, have a completely different feel than just seeing pictures of them.

The Soundsuits were the brainchild of Chicago artist Nick Cave, who is NOT, as I learned a while back, the Nick Cave you are thinking of. Evidently it’s not just me who was confused about that; they had a placard at the exhibit explaining the difference between this Nick Cave, who is a black artist from Chicago, and that Nick Cave, who’s a white Australian musician.

Anyhow …

When you’re face-to-face with these suits, you can’t help but start to marvel at the mind that conceived them. I was reading something at the exhibit about how the first Soundsuit Cave conceived and built was one of the twig suits, and it said something about one of the ideas for the suits being that they are a way to hide. There is no race or gender when the wearer is covered head to foot in one of Cave’s amazing creations.

Walking through the exhibit is a bit like stepping through the looking glass into a world of fantasy. There are tall, regal columns of colorful fake fur that immediately, for me, evoked Aunt Beast from Madeleine L’engel. Others made me think of Where the Wild Things Are. There are the twig suits, wild and primitive. There are suits made of various found materials — afghans, purses, sweaters, socks, whatever caught his eye and his fancy.

The suits are meticulously put together such that the designs flow organically. Metal apertures suspend a garden of metal flowers, a cacophy of noisemakers, ceramic birds, over suits comprised of colorful knits. One room houses suits comprised of thousands of seemingly identical white buttons sewn to the fabric shell. It’s all quite remarkable to look at.

Now, I’m hoping to catch a Soundsuit performance to see them in motion. If I manage that, I’ll let you know.

Be Sociable, Share!

Comments Off on Going to the Center of the Earth

Comments are closed.

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon