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Look! It’s Libby and Roberta, Episode 6
By roberta
April 11, 2007 · 3 Comments
We’ve posted the video for Episode 6 of Look! It’s Libby and Roberta in the column at the LEFT. In case you’ve missed it, Look! It’s Libby and Roberta is our video project with the great David Kessler, who also made the documentary film on Zoe Strauss, If You Break the Skin You Must Come In, screened recently at ICA.
To watch EPISODE 6 of Look! click the picture in the LEFT column. Or Watch EPISODE 6 here. All clicks get you there.
EPISODE 6 covers Asuka Goto‘s MFA show at Temple Gallery and Guariglia and Chen‘s exhibit at Gallery 339. Goto’s MFA show — like all Tyler MFA shows — was a three day-exhibit, and it’s over now. But between now and May 19, there will be other MFA students’ work in Temple Gallery, so be sure to stop and take a look. As for the Guariglia and Chen, that’s up to May 5.
As usual, Libby and I took some photos the day of the shoot.
See more pictures at Libby’s flickr and Roberta’s flickr.
Joseph Borelli, sculptural foam He-Men in his MFA show at Temple Gallery. This work was in the gallery the day we saw Goto’s show.
And be sure to check out our video guru, David Kessler‘s other project, Shadow World, a dreamy immersion in daily life encountered under the El in Kensington. In several short, moody episodes, David captures the people and the place with great empathy.
Tags: asuka goto, david kessler, gallery 339, guariglia and chen, joseph borelli, temple gallery
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Readers Comments (3)
Yes the shao Lin (sp?) works were very interesting. Roberta, I agree with you when you mentioned that the artists were seemingly presenting a very physical perhaps violent activity as a gentle, contemplative one. And it made me wonder if, by doing this, the artists were presenting the martial artform in a way the Shao Lin perceive it rather than the way we westerners do? Its interesting to think about diferent cultural readings of things.
I think you may be right, Mark. I wonder if the word contemplative is somehow a problem in its East and West translations. I think of contemplation as requiring stasis and quietude. But these martial arts which can be physically strenuous and choreographed like dance are active and as practiced by the monks they may be about inner focus, like the focus a dancer or athlete would try to achieve while performing…Egoless channeling of a learned routine.
Are contemplation and athletic inner focus the same thing?
Second issue is how these practices came into being. Martial arts (I’m guessing here, not knowing their history) probably were warrior arts. That they are done by monks may be vestigial from a time when monks needed to protect themselves? Can someone who knows about this come rescue me from my ignorance?
Martial arts in Western pop culture are all about fighting. Whether that’s a perversion of something pure…or merely a gross exaggeration of what’s inherent in the practice would be nice to know.
There’s a philosophical component in the Asian martial arts that somehow unites an understanding of the body with an understanding of the world that is quite different from our own approach. The control of what’s inside has a relationship to what happens outside oneself. Although the martial part is there, it is not the only part. We who are so analytical in our approach to the world, by dividing the issues, have glommed onto the part we get–the martial part. This of course has been emphasized by pop culture and kung fu movies–i.e. it’s not all our fault.