Vanna Vee and LAZAbeam!

Holy Moses!

Released March 9, 2012. Produced and Mixed by LAZAbeam. Mastered by Interface. Guitars by Michael De Souza. Written by K. Chandradath Singh and V. Girod. 

www.soundcloud.com/lazabeam14
www.trinidadtunes.com 

Cheap & Clean

CHEAP & CLEAN: The Documentary from arrdowblu on Vimeo. A project by Ebony G. Patterson.

Spaces Between Words

Christian Campbell reads his poem 'Iguana' at the Spaces Between Words pod-cast. LISTEN here. READ the poem and my thoughts on it at my tumblr here.

Brianna McCarthy at Artzpub

FIND out more here.

What is a trick vessel?

A trick vessel is a type of mechanical puzzle. It is an impossible object; a magical trick that seems to do something it should not; that should not, logically, be possible. I was fascinated by this idea and how it is a metaphor for so many processes: for art, for the imagination, for love, for memory; for history; for politics and for power. I hope the book deals with these things and that readers will find many secrets.  

READ more here.

An art of fragments

Reni Gower | Fragments: Garnier | mixed media | 2007

Photo courtesy TCC Visual Arts Center

"Poetry writing for Campbell is a somewhat unpredictable process, where the imagination can strike at any time: ‘I’m a fan of the Moleskin notebook.  I carry around one small enough to fit into a big pocket so that I can scribble at any given time.  I think poetry needs that kind of archiving because it’s an art of fragments.’

"The Caribbean is a constant undercurrent; experiences of home have the power to travel, translate and transpire in other places. Another poem such as ‘Iguana’ sing a kind of pan-Caribbeanness. The iguana forms an important symbol in this piece and the writer explores its local significance on various islands including Trinidad, Haiti, St. Lucia and of course The Bahamas, Campbell’s birthplace. In tracing the reptile’s regional importance, Campbell moves beyond the boundaries of a single island, forging links with others: ‘The earth is on the back/ of an ageless iguana’, declaring ‘We are all from the Land of Iguana, / Hewanorra, Carib name for St. Lucia."

POET Christian Campbell's book Running the Dusk is examined in this essay at the ARC website here.

After colour

AfterColour takes a look at the contemporary dynamic of complexion defining beauty in diasporan women. It examines the representation of women of different shades of skin, by themselves and by others, and the idea of ‘shadism’, both in Trinidad and within a wider, global discussion that’s happening right now.

AfterColour's opening reception will be held on March 15th at 6:30pm – 9:00pm at Medulla Art Gallery at 37 Fitt Street in Woodbrook, POS, Trinidad. The show will run through March 29th 2012 with an Artist Talk on Wednesday the 28th of March 2012. For more information or to RSVP call: 868- 740-7597

FIND out more here.

Favourite films of 2011

Tom Hiddleston in Joanna Hogg's sublime film Archipelago

The best film of the year is not always the same as one's favourite film of the year. The former is destined to remain a classic, watched and studied (perhaps in film school) for decades to come. The latter is the film you are most likely to pop into the DVD player when you get home on a rainy Saturday night. In the spirit of today's Oscars, here's a look at some of our favourite films from the past year.

Archipelago. Posh family tensions crack open over a getaway to the Isles of Scilly. Sounds unappealing as the subject matter for a film? Hold your horses. This film from English director Joanna Hogg was an utter surprise. Very few films are all about pleasure and the senses. This film ravishes, it is washed with such pale and cold browns and greens, it is wind and rain-swept. Every single shot is composed with a kind of sly joy: the film is like one long, extended still-life rupturing ever so slightly via changes in the environment and its characters. Not since The Mysterious Case of Angelica have I enjoyed a film so much. This is the work of an important artist.

A Separation. If you like cinema that wraps a tight, suffocating coil around you and never lets go, this is a film for you. I mean that in a good way! A Separation is a searing drama about a family in crisis set in Iran, a country whose films are not often seen outside of it. The crisis at the heart of the film is so well-developed and minutely observed that I had to watch every shot with admiration and a desire to know what happens next. The movie is as much about Iran's moral/legal system as it is about the family which falls apart at its core. Like The Tree of Life, this is a film I have been unable to forget.

Peyman Maadi and Sareh Bayat in A Separation

Contagion. Talk about an under-rated film. Yes, we have seen virus disaster movies before. Yes, we've done the whole ensemble cast, how-are-they-connected-in-the-end? game. But I will say this: there was — with perhaps only one exception — not a more stylish or better edited film in 2011. It is a compelling and plausible rendition of the outbreak of a mysterious and deadly virus which affects a wide cast of characters as the world comes to terms with it in a frenzy of panic and bureaucracy. The film has slipped below most awards radars because of the timing of its release and possibly its seemingly brain-free box-office content. It's a shame, because Kate Winslet gives what is perhaps the best performance of her career, and Gywneth Palthrow is creepily good as an oblivious party-wife whose personal choices are at the heart of global events.

Drive. If Bronson was a "film" then this is Nicholas Winding Refn's epic tale. There is very little dialogue in Drive and the miracle is in Ryan Gosling, a protean actor who quite surprisingly managed to fit in this gruesome tale of crime and romance. What is most interesting about Drive, though, is its blurring of genres. We're still not sure what it's supposed to be. But whatever it is we were more than happy to go along for the ride. Albert Brooks delivers one of the great performances and is — perhaps predictably — overlooked for an Oscar.

Jane Eyre. Ah Mr Fassbender as Rochester. The film was not rocket science. It was based on an old classic. But how well it worked, how dangerous it appeared, how beautifully scored. Mia Wisikowsa is by far the best Jane on celluloid. Her performance has been ignored by all the awards bodies. Jaime Bell is also exceptional as St John Rivers.

Ryan Gosling in Drive

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Let's not get into a debate about whether the original Swedish version was better or whether the David Fincher version does "justice" to the book. At the end of the day, the film is good, not airtight, but good. It is certainly the rival to Contagion for its stylish look and its editing. There are some lingering doubts over a few of the violent and seemingly gratuitous rape scenes. And it does seem a bit long. Notwithstanding, it worked well.

The Skin I Live In. There are many contenders for "creepiest film of the year" but I think this one takes the prize by a big margin. It's creepy, but not in an expected or garish way: only a few scenes are blood-soaked.  What is unnerving about it is how much of director Pedro Almodovar is in it: his almost perverse willingness to twist a plot into all sorts of odd shapes and to take audiences to complex places. The film has an unforgettable sequence involving a series of events in a lush garden in the backdrop to a party. The sequences is deliberately corny and cheeky and is most certainly comic, but such darkness fills the canvas! The lead actress, Elena Anaya, is extremely good in a very unusual role.

Brad Pitt in The Tree of Life

The Tree of Life. Far from being didactic, The Tree of Life knows nothing and yet it knows, at its heart, that it knows nothing, despite its seeming Christian underpinnings. This is the source of its baffling power. The film is more of a cinematic exercise than a film. Contrary to what many have said, there is a plot, and you can follow it in between all the pretty shots of Brad Pitt's face/babies feet. I saw this on BluRay and can only hope most people get a chance to see it on that format as well. This is one of those films that everybody has to see at least once in their lives. It's a breath-taking cinematic experience that was so intriguing I was hooked from first to last.

Must mention: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Gary Oldman), Wuthering Heights (powerful), My Week With Marilyn (Michelle Williams), The Iron Lady (Meryl Streep), War Horse (don't scorn, it was beautiful!), Midnight in Paris (classic late Woody Allen: a comic gaffe with a powerful and profound sting in its tail); The Ides of March (not bad), Shame (Fassbender), We Need to Talk About Kevin (Tilda Swinton).

Under leaves so green

Jasmine Thomas-Girvan's Gardening in the Tropics
Sculpture

Photo by Michelle Jorsling, courtesy y art gallery.

How to describe it? The extraordinary work of Jasmine Thomas-Girvan, who twists pieces of palm fronds into tongues of flame, who places a cage within a cage within a cage, whose human figures twist into tortured, glorious creatures: bodies illuminated by the mahogany that encases them?

I am referring, of course, to Thomas-Girvan's most recent show held at the Y Art and Framing Gallery at Taylor Street, Port of Spain. The show took its title from Olive Senior's now classic collection of poetry and fused poetry with sculpture to create meditations that, for me, were profound and deeply affecting. This was work commenting on society: Caribbean and beyond (Thomas-Girvan was born in Jamaica but lives in Trinidad).

Consider 'Seeing Red', a lacquered box painted post-box red (of is it blood red?) with a figure sitting with legs split atop it, fingers to its ears. Not hearing, but red all around. The piece is about not being open to what is around us. Unlike the figures in 'The Message' who, in the course of one conversation are confronted, literally, by an iron fist with a message of its own. The intrusion of violence. A violent intrusion. A moment of power. A power reversal.

The stand-out, however, for me was 'The Illuminated Heart', a hybrid between a sculpture and a pendant: an illustration of how art can literally be wearable. A bronze pendant (a heart with a head atop it in ecstasy/pain/worship/song) is detached from a mahogany body. The idea of detachment revealing something more vulnerable beneath. The feeling of isolation. The suggestion of a fetal kind of vulnerability. The simultaneous suggestion of strength; of a solid core. All from this piece, which you can see in the catalogue for the show.

The Tower of Victory - mahogany and bronze, height 15". Photo courtesy Y Art Gallery.

Other highlights included 'Flame', a simple sculptural construction made of palm frond material and brass and inspired by Orwell's line: "and I was alive it's a feeling inside you a kind of peaceful feeling and yet it's like a flame." Another was 'Finding your Soul', which offers a glimpse of freedom by placing its subjects behind bars. There is politics in all of this: both in a limited and wider sense of negotiating a place amid oppressive forces. But the key note is a sense of hope, and, in my estimation, love.

SEE the catalogue here. READ more here.

FILM REVIEW: The Skin I Live In (La Piel Que Habito)

Antonio Banderas in The Skin I Live In

This is the creepiest Almodovar film yet, and that's saying something for the great Spanish director.

La Piel Que Habito is an uneasy blend of suspense/thriller and melodrama. To describe the plot is to rob the film of part of its considerable power. That said, the movie follows a crazed plastic surgeon (Antonio Banderas in the performance of his career) and his experiments on a woman he keeps captive at his home. From the start, an overwhelming sense of mystery intrigues each scene. Slowly, bit by bit, Almodovar lays down plot pieces of a complex puzzle which coils into a frenzy of sex, violence, gore and murder.

The film falters and lags, however, in its middle section, especially after Almodovar deploys the device of the expository conversation to reveal crucial plot points. Also, the film sometimes lacks the flair we expect from Almodovar. It's as though the weirdness overwhelms key plot sequences which, in an Almodovar film, normally flow with a kind of effortless ease.

However, all of the tension is in the service of a powerful ending that is astonishing in its contradiction: simple yet complex. Complex because of its questions about identity. This is an audacious film that builds itself on a central premise revolving around the nature of the body and what it really means to inhabit it. Queasy, astonishing and philosophical. One of the year's best films.

STARS: ****/ four

Studio Swap // Che Lovelace

FROM THE ORGANISERS:

Opening Reception
Thursday 08 December 2011
6.30 - 9.00pm
at 37 Fitt Street, Woodbrook, Port of Spain
RSVP 740 7597 / medullaartgallery@gmail.com
Exhibition continues until 22 December 2011


ABOUT THE SHOW


Conceived as an open studio event that takes place outside of Lovelace’s studio, Studio Swap will showcase many new, large-scale paintings, smaller works, and a projected piece. Lovelace’s new, large-scale paintings demonstrate the artist’s increased focus on the human body in various environments and situations. He has been using performance as part of his work process, executing and photographing specific actions, out of which he then develops his paintings. Short stop-motion films are also produced from these performances.

Parallel to his work with the body and movement, Lovelace has continued his long-standing series of Carnival and 'Mas' oriented paintings. A selection of the most recent of these works will also be presented. The artist has also been a fervent documenter of his works in progress as well as day-to-day life and moods in the studio, and a selection of these and other images will form part of the projected piece.

READ MORE at Medula Art Gallery website here. WATCH a video of painter Che Lovelace talking about his process below:

Town to town

Barbadian artist Sheena Rose has a cool tumblr called Strictly Art, which you should check out here.

WATCH a cool Artzpub video featuring her here:

Who are the mikemen?

Photo by Alex Smailes

Here's sneak peak at Miquel (Hit Me With Music, Why Do Jamaicans Run So Fast?) Galofre's latest film, The Mikemen.

FIND OUT MORE here.

Misuse of magic

FROM THE ORGANISERS:


Nov 17, 7pm
Drink! wine bar, Roberts Street


Roger Robinson will be performing a selection of old and new work, and will be supported on the night by poet Keegan Maharaj and DJ Tillah Willah SoundBoy Killah.




SEE VIDEO:

BEDSIDE BOOKS: Poetry!

In honor of World Poetry Day we thought we'd share some of the books near the top of the pile of all the books we are currently reading.

THE POLITICS by Benjamin Paloff, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2011.

"Deep within the folds of / my being I am carrying an urgent message. / I'd pay attention if I were you," the voice of 'Diptych of the Annunciation, Left Panel' implores. "People I do not know put words / in my mouth,  take my picture. And still I am not / untouched by beauty." The warning is a reflection of a way to read these poems, which pulse with a willingness to embrace ideas and philosophy in tight, clear lines that build arguments but also aim to create something as equally ephemeral: beauty. The juxtaposition of history and contemporary elements is effective. As the California Journal of Poetics remarks: "Paloff has a gift for combining the historical with the contemporary." The effect is like a lush Sofia Coppola film: filled with pop, pathos and a bold stillness. This work is about pushing ideas to their limit, and finding out, perhaps, our own limits and our own simplicities. 

WATCH Benjamin Paloff read poems from this book here.

LAGAHOO POEMS by James Christopher Aboud, Peepal Tree Press, 2011.

With a clear understanding of the way folklore creates tantalising possibilities for poetry, Aboud finds an energetic space between occasional poems and self-reflexitive lore. These startling poems send out red herring after red herring, the Lagahoo himself is both a symbol and a deception: a vessel bearing a passionate feeling for the world, while simultaneously understanding the dangers of drawing close to mortality. It is a macguffin in a sense, for the point is not who he is or what he makes, but what happens when readers try to find him. First published in 2004, the book was heralded by the Caribbean Review of Books which declared: "A remarkable poet has kept us waiting too long – has made us practise, you might say, the patience of the Lagahoo."

DARK AND UNACCUSTOMED WORDS by Vahni Capildeo, Egg Box Publishing, 2011.

"The poetry of Vahni Capildeo not only breaks down conventional notions of seeing the world, but re-affirms ideas of the value and worth of individual experiences. This work attacks and affirms order and underlines what matters above all: the fate of the free self. It is a subversive ocean of diamonds, rubies and bones, raging against limiting forces." 


READ a full review HERE. 

LUMINIOUS EPINOIA by Peter O'Leary, The Cultural Society, 2010.


Luminious epinoia: a gnostic notion which is taken to represent the primal consciousness from which all creation came into being. These poems are meditations, perhaps, but also they carry strong voices and  unsettle, moving fluidly across the page.

NEW COLLECTED POEMS by WS Graham, Faber and Faber, 2004.

Harold Pinter once said of WS Graham: ''I first read a W. S. Graham poem in 1949. It sent a shiver down my spine. Forty-five years later nothing has changed. His song is unique and his work an inspiration.'' A comprehensive gathering of WG Graham's work. 

THE JOURNEY TO LE REPENTIR by Mark McWatt, Peepal Tree Press, 2009.

Is a poem in four narrative sequences. It is the product of fifteen years labour. "Around the year 2000, I realised that I was working towards at least two different goals," McWatt says in an introduction. "The first of these was that the book would be in four parts, with each part containing a central narrative poem or sequence and this would be balanced or counterpoised or embellished with other poems." These autobiographical poems are strong, there is really little embellishment. A vast work, which nets treasures for the devoted reader.

SELECTED POEMS by Jorge Lui Borges (edited by Alexander Coleman), Penguin, 2000.

Borges is more well-known for his short fiction. But he was first and foremost a poet.  This is a wide selection with a diverse cast of translators who create a rewarding and essential book. 

NO BACK DOOR by Mervyn Taylor, Shearsman, 2010.


"Taylor’s book, which was awarded the 2011 Paterson Prize for Sustained Literary Achievement, is a continuation of many of the themes of the poet’s earlier work (which includes Gone Away and The Goat). It is a potent examination of contemporary Trinidad life, of migration and of the spaces in between and beyond. Death, loss, aging and illness confront characters of complexity who are given fine and gentle lines that hum like the low tide of the sea, always threatening to rise and eat away at an easily forgotten land."               


READ full review HERE.                   

THERE IS AN ANGER THAT MOVES by Kei Miller, Carcanet, 2007. 

A collection about migration and imperialism, with rage, anger and grace. The poems challenge ideas of home and adopted home-land and finds spaces in between. Followed up by the excellent Light Song of Light.

RUNNING THE DUSK by Christian Campbell, Peepal Tree Press, 2010.

A strong and impressive collection which shows up Campbell as a consummate poet, adept in different forms and willing to experiment and play with language. "Time to time I dare / myself to race the sun," the voice of the opening poem 'Bucking Up On Evening' remarks. The poems fly amid the blue hour of dusk.

SHE WHO SLEEPS WITH BONES by Tanya Shirley, Peepal Tree Press, 2009.

Tanya Shirley is an exciting poet whose poems, when she breathes them to life, startle, amuse and rally. Her voice can be heard on every page. The poems are  sharp, personal and sometimes harrowing, but always unforgettable. Compelling work which also conceals its craft.

***