photo by Pascal Ungerer, courtesy of Phaidon Press

I asked if he would draw with me, and he shook his head in a way that suggested absolutely no. He seemed exhausted in a way that suggested too much socializing with people he didn’t know. “Anyway, you might think you’re seeing 2 or 3 madmen [in my studio]. I might be drawing a thing and suddenly I’ll have an idea, so ill go back and write a few things, suddenly I’ll go back over and work on sculpture… it’s completely scattered. I have so many interests and I have too many ideas.”

What I like about Tomi Ungerer is that his work is accessible and playful, and I wasn’t surprised to see this sort of creative exuberance come out of this man. He mentioned the importance of being interested and observant; “first develop your curiosity” and once that happens, “there is no end… The more curious you are, and the more knowledge and facts that you accumulate. Once you have all those facts, the real trick is to compare.” One uses his/her imagination to bring together two disparate things, and that is where ideas come from. I was reminded of a line from Narcissus and Goldmund by Herman Hesse: Der anfang aller kunst ist die liebe or “the beginning of all art is love.”

One example of his playfulness is the Katzenkindergarten—a cat-shaped kindergarten— he designed in 2002 with Turkish architect Ayla Yöndel in Wolfartsweier, Germany (right over the border from Strasbourg). You can look out the eyes on the second floor and slide down the tail. “Why not?” Is one of his mantras, along with, “I’ve got to have my fun.”

photo of Katzenkindergarten by H.P. Mayer

Ungerer is a self-described bibliophile; “I couldn’t conceive of a life without books.” He never finished high school, seemingly because education was not a priority in Alsace in the mid 1940s. Books were the things that enabled him to educate himself. “We were a condemned generation,” he told me. He later said, “I write the kinds of books I would have liked to read as a child.” Perhaps his ideal audience is himself as a child, and he hopes to comfort that young person through humor and showing how outcasts (e.g., a snake, an octopus, a winged kangaroo) can find happiness and meaning. Existentialism reaches even into his children’s books, not just overtly, like in his adaptation of Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain (Warteraum: Wiedersehen mit dem Zauberberg or “Waiting Room: Goodbye to the Magic Mountain,” Diogenes, 1985).

I asked him his opinion of University and upper education, and he acknowledged it as being a noble undertaking, but seemed suspicious of art school education, “you’re so marked by your teachers’ opinions, it’s going to take you 10, 15, 20 years to find your own style.” He practiced drawing constantly, “so that whenever I do have to illustrate a book or anything, I can really let my hand go.” And having a notebook on you at all times helps. I asked him how he manages to get anything finished when his interests are so varied and he responded, “Once I sit down [to write a book], then it’s only that… I have to eliminate everything else around me… because otherwise I’ll never finish.” Then he works 8-10 hour days.

He saw the brush pen I carry with me and asked if he could do something in my sketchbook with it. He was quiet for the first time in the interview as he moved the brush along. “With calligraphy, writing becomes a sensuous experience. You have much greater contact with the paper than you would normally have because you have to make the motions “in one swing.” “Voila,” he said as he handed it back to me.

Tomi Ungerer’s attitude towards making things was very improvisational, and reminded me of a musician I had worked for in the past. When I suggested this, he leaned closer and confessed, “I actually came to American because of my love of jazz and the blues.” Some of his favorite musicians are Earl Scruggs and Lester Flat (the famous bluegrass players) “white trash music,” he said with a wide smile, “is what it was called in New York.”

One thing he did want to clarify was the use of the word “pornographic” to describe some of his drawings. “I draw erotic satire and I draw erotic work. I personally don’t find pornography erotic.” With that comment he highlighted a major cultural difference between his own mixed cultural sense and ours—America’s–limited scope of popular sexuality. It made me realize that Americans don’t have a spectrum of eroticism, it is either an on or an off switch; Pornography consists of the ugly, unfashionable men and women who perform for millions. “I fought for sexual liberation. My work doesn’t’ fit in with [pornography].”

He published Das Kamasutra der Frosche (The Kamasutra of the Frogs) in 1982 where he drew and watercolored, “every possible position but it’s done with frogs.” Apparently numerous adults later approached him and said, “I was 13 or 14 and I saved up all my money to buy your book of frogs.” Perhaps its success was due to its well-executed satire – a more grown-up version of the birds and the bees. Or due to the fact that this was a self-aware book in a sea of how-tos during the Sexual Revolution.

Tomi Ungerer expressed relief in the middle of our conversation, “I’m so happy you’re coming with something specific instead of jumping from one thing to the other. Really what you’re interested in is the creative process.” Ungerer has somehow managed to maintain his creative endurance, not allowing his good work to have to be dug up, as poet Stanley Kunitz once said, “under the debris of life”. And with not many years left statistically, he is pushing hard to create as much as possible.

Buy his reissued books on Phaidon’s website. Also they have a fantastic clip of him discussing one of his books, Far Out Isn’t Far Enough here.

Scanned image from "Adelaide" (1959)

Ungerer, who turns 80 this year, is part of the of post-1950s movement of supremely innovative and creative authors and illustrators who wrote for children. Amongst his contemporaries are Maurice Sendak, Roald Dahl, Quentin Blake, Edward Gorey, Shel Silverstein and William Steig to name a few. Ungerer is also famous for his political and advertising posters, and for his drawings containing mild to overt pornographic content. I spoke with the Special Collections Archivist Adrienne Pruitt to look at some pieces from the collection, and to perhaps figure out why children and adults are consistently drawn to the books and drawings of a man who has said, “My god, children are little bastards who chew and eat you up as they grow. They start with the kneecaps, maybe, and slowly they devour you.”

“Here are some manuscripts that were never published,” said Pruitt as she opened a large grey archival box, full of smaller boxes with drawings carefully nestled inside. Many of the drawings are done in pen and ink and watercolor, and the humor and spontaneity of both line and content is reminiscent of Saul Steinberg and George Grosz. A number of the drawings are doodles on scraps of paper with torn edges, apparently part of an effort to have made them smaller (“recently,” she emphasized with a frown – meaning sometime between the late 1960s and 2008).

Preliminary sketch for Crictor, Tomi Ungerer papers, 1955-1974, Free Library of Philadelphia, Children’s Literature Research Collection

The collection spans the years 1955-1968. The manuscript she showed me was the original concept for the Mellops series: a family of pigs are tricked by another pig into being led to the slaughterhouse (the manuscript is in German, and the Pigs trot from a Rolls Royce towards an ominous red brick warehouse labeled Schlachthof). According to Ungerer’s handwriting on the outside of the manuscript, this pig story was one of the things he brought with him to the U.S. in his infamous “trunk full of drawings and manuscripts” when he moved to New York in 1956.

Ursula Nordstrom was the Editor-In-Chief of Juvenile Books at Harper & Row from 1940 to 1973, and she published much of Ungerer’s work. She used the phrase “good books for bad children” to contrast these edgy, challenging books with “more conventional sorts of children’s books that sentimentalized childhood” (quotation from Dear Genius: the Letters of Ursula Nordstrom). Ungerer was one of the steeds in her corral, amongst Margaret Wise Brown, E.B. White, Maurice Sendak, and Shel Silverstein. To put it simply, Nordstrom was responsible for the existence of Charlotte’s Web, Goodnight Moon, The Runaway Bunny, Harriet the Spy, and The Giving Tree. She also published Where the Wild Things Are in 1963 after it had been rejected by other publishing houses. Ungerer and Sendak are long-time friends; Ungerer dedicated Monsieur Racine (1971) to him. Ungerer also introduced Shel Silverstein to Nordstrom in 1957, ”I never planned to write or draw for kids. It was Tomi Ungerer, a friend of mine, who insisted—practically dragged me, kicking and screaming, into Ursula Nordstrom’s office. And she convinced me that Tomi was right; I could do children’s books.” (Publisher’s Weekly, Feb 24, 1985 issue).

When asked about who he has in mind when writing, Ungerer has said, “I do my books for myself, for the child inside me. In that respect, they are selfish. They are also subversive. They see hypocrisy, and they know the truth of just about everything by instinct” (Through the Looking Glass by Selma G. Lane). The result is a book with no condescension; books with drawings that can be enjoyed by adults and children alike.

It seems as though Ungerer was writing for adults under the pretext of writing for children. It was a way for him to access a lucrative market (books sell more than magazine illustrations). Now that Phaidon has begun reprinting his books, a publicity surge has bubbled up around him and he is more prolific than ever, “I have about 12 books going; it’s madness,” he said in the most recent (June 9) issue of Publisher’s Weekly.

Detail from Zeralda's Ogre (1967). A sample menu for a recovering cannibal.

His stories are often formulaic; a typically “gross” protagonist with a good heart (a snake in Crictor, a Kangaroo in Adelaide, an octopus in Emile) shows heroism in a dangerous situation, protecting himself/herself and an innocent from intruders/dangerous types, and is ultimately rewarded with a statue in his/her likeness in the town square.

Nevertheless, his stories are creative and enjoyable, and they are, after all, picture books – the drawings take up more “page time” than the text. It is challenging to fit a complex plot into the 32-page standard layout, and still manage to have lots of engaging drawings. Perhaps that’s why he said, “I sometimes do 30 sketches—I never use an eraser, I just make another drawing—and yet even after all that it’s never perfect. I don’t feel that way about writing; I’m very pleased sometimes with the writing.”

And then there are his adult drawings, which you can see using a quick google image search or read a bit more about here and watch here, but I’ll save the reader the trouble and just post one rather inventive one:

From Erotoscope (2002)

Nearly all of the adults drawn by him (both male and female) are being humiliated or about to face something unpleasant:

From The Underground Sketchbook (1964)

His best work, in my opinion, is comprised of the hidden details in the children’s book drawings. Like Brueghel or Bosch, Ungerer captures the unaware background characters and objects as they go about their hilariously disgusting lives. This is his satire at its best.

The Beast of Monsieur Racine (dedicated to Maurice Sendak) has a number of very good examples; a hobo carrying a bloody, dripping foot in his bindle. The possible explanation fished out by Selma G. Lanes in her book Through the Looking Glass: “A hobo does a lot of walking. He needs a spare foot for when one of his own gets tired and bruised.”

Note the red, alcoholic eyes and the military decoration. Detail from Monsieur Racine, 1971

Another example from Moon Man shows the cruelty of a population to an outsider.

Detail from Monsieur Racine (1971)

A friend of mine once quietly commented that “the best children’s books are really for adults.” I agree with him – partially. The best children’s books should delight people of all ages who want a guide to help them look at the world through a certain lens (and in this case, the same sort of lens Ursula Nordstrom encouraged). Tomi Ungerer understands that many children and adults understand and love dark humor. If it’s drawn the right way, a mysterious bloody box can be wildly amusing.

The Judge Was Hypnotized by Alcohol

It was 2am on a January night and I was driving John to buy cigarettes. We were in Montauk where fourteen years earlier he had filmed the Jim Jarmusch Fishing With John episode (the shark one). One of John’s doctors was at this tip of Long Island, and it was a regular part of my job to drive him to doctor appointments. “This town needs more crime,” he commented as we passed the dark patrician mansions that had been abandoned for the winter. We were staying at his friend James Nares’ place, and we were speculating about whether or not ghosts exist. He proposed that ghosts and the infinite in general could always be nearby. “It’s like fish,” he explained, “they can’t possibly conceive that a hand is going to reach down and grab them out of the water. But when you’re about to catch them, they know that something is about to happen, and they’re scared.”

This is what I thought about when I saw John’s pieces in the Angels Without Wings show. His combination of ink, watercolor, gouache, and oil paint is algaeceous in texture and color; browns and greens ooze, flatten out, then spawn yellow fuzzy mold. Each painting features one or two sexless protagonists (sometimes human, sometimes animal) with aquatic vertebrate stupidity and vulnerability. Even the wide-screen TV and k-mart torchiere lamp in their “living rooms” are overgrown in their dirty self-enclosed waterpods.

detail, This Was the Exact Moment Marge Decided to Kill Her Husband

His titles read like a comment that the funniest person you knew from childhood would say to you while looking at the painting, e.g., Anchor is stuck. I cannot go anywhere. Time for a sandwich; and There is a caveman in my apartment examining the fur. I wish he would leave; and Hairy Frog Pig Beast Man with Hat (not featured in this show). John possesses a fundamental creativity, and through his music and paintings he shows the listeners and the viewers a different way to “see” and comprehend. I always thought that John should write for children’s television. Like John K (creator of Ren and Stimpy) and Roald Dahl, he would break all of the standard rules of form and language and embrace the grotesque qualities that attracts the attention of children and encourages their intelligence and creativity.

The Spirits Are Trying to Tell Me Something, But It Is Really Fucking Vague

I didn’t realize how sick he was until I came across his alto saxaphone one day and asked him to play. He fiddled around with the buttons, reed in his mouth while I went to clean brushes in the sink. The sound came out of nowhere and it was sort of terrifying and gorgeous to hear, as though someone had begun singing at full volume in a silent room, but it quickly stopped. He he was trembling, couldn’t breathe, and couldn’t feel the left side of his body. He tried it a few more times but ended up putting the saxophone down. I remember how quiet he was for the rest of the day, this coming from the person who once said, “playing music at its absolute best… is like visiting God’s house for a minute then coming back”. When I returned that following Monday he had pulled out his guitar and was strumming and singing in a gruff voice, “If I had a hammer, I’d hammer in the morning, I’d hammer in the evening, all over this land,” and then he howled like a cheerful dog.

I haven’t spoken to John much since I stopped working for him, besides calls from “Restricted” every year on my birthday. I’ve been thinking about him more because many friends were trying to extract any nugget of macabre information I may have on him since the infamous New Yorker article (subscription required to read) was published this summer. When I was working for John, he depended entirely on me and two other people who were working for him, and I didn’t have much of a life outside of him which was ultimately the reason why I left the job. He’s an incredibly charismatic person and his humor (and his dependency, to a certain amount) made you want to be around him all the time. It was further complicated by seeing him clutch the left side of his body in pain, and I didn’t know what to say when he would voice frustration and depression to me; I could only be there for him to have an outlet. I should also add that I made a horrible assistant. I never wore my glasses so I couldn’t see more than twelve feet in front of me (an unsuccessful self-remedy for myopia). I hated talking on the phone for any business dealings, and was generally scatterbrained; once John found a sausage in the silverware drawer and a spoon in the refrigerator.

It was great to watch John’s paintings in-the-making. He made few mistakes that ever ended up with a discarded painting because he–the musician–would rework and improvise. Often he would name the painting and the problems would be resolved, like Horse With Mullet. His persona (and his ego) is inextricable from the artwork, which is perhaps why the art is so compelling. You laugh and want to be drawn into his world entirely, but after a few moments you hesitate. Perhaps the thing holding you back is a deep ichthyological fear.

I Need to Know If There Is Life After Death, and I Need to Know Kind of Soon

Angels Without Wings is open daily in the Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, 333 South Broad St. until February 24, 2011. K-Fai Steele is an occasional contributor to artblog.

Eve (note the apple in her hand) from Birth, Baptismal and Confirmation Certificate (Geburts, Tauf, und Konfirmationsschein) for Elisabeth Scheffi by Johann Valentin Unger ca. 1800. All fraktur images courtesy of the Free Library's fraktur online database.

Pennsylvania Germans created fraktur (decorated documents) to serve as records of important life events: birth and baptisimal certificates (Geburts-und Taufschein); confirmation certificates (Konfirmationsschein); marriage certificates (Trauschein), death certificates (Denkmal). Fraktur also served as a sort of Pennsylvania German greeting card: house warming blessings (Haussegen); baptismal blessings (Taufwunsch); New Year’s Greetings (Neuesjahreswunsch). And many fraktur were used to teach children how to write and read. They were mostly made between 1683-1850, when many Germans were immigrating from the knight’s dominions and religious principalities that were to become unified Germany in 1871. Fraktur features the easily identifiable thick black broken (fractur, from the Latin “fractus”) type, and watercolor and ink imagery that includes tulips, double eagles, thistles, lillies, signs of the zodiac, and depictions of everyday (often rural) life.

The drawing style in the exhibit seems strikingly contemporary. The folk-art illustrative stylistics are reminiscent of artists whose work is popular now, like Martin Ramirez, James Castle, Edward Gorey, and Warhol’s early drawings. The drawing and line quality is often whimsical, cartoonish, expressive, full of character and naievete. Conversely, the handwriting is extremely controlled and stylized compared to the blobby Adam and Eve and the squashed angels with their deformed trumpets.

I loved the characters in Variety of Birds (anonymous artist, 1816). In the drawing, the dozens of splendid birds with startled expressions have taken over the world of two small, pious-looking men.

The Angel Bookplate (Bücherzeichen) for Anna Lädtermänn by David Kulp features that Egyptian-esque (wings of Isis) element of fraktur in the angel’s wings. The handwriting reads, “This little harmonious melody book belongs to Anna Lädtermännin, singing student in the Deep Run School. Written the 12th of January anno 1812.”

Lion (detail) from the Christian Brescher fraktur

Another fantastic fraktur religious text is by Christian Beschler in 1799 which features an even more unusual-looking German medieval lion-cum-human opposite a unicorn. In between them is a set of wings with what looks like a hairy, bucktoothed angel smiling (?) delivering the message, “God, you are so rich today.”

Angel detail from the Breschler "God you are so rich" fraktur

A Big Wonderfish (Ein grosser Wunderfisch), anonymous artist ca. 1820-1840

The Wunderfisch reminds me of warfare-related drawings that my brothers made as children: as though one cannon were not enough to attack and threaten, to attack the Wunderfish (half crowned man, half fish, the feet of swans) you would first have to get past its sword-armed guard, then face the creature itself with a cannon on its back, three swords in its head, a sword in its mouth, and skulls mounted on its scaly body (previous kills). Incredibly dangerous.

The exhibit also displays the box that the fraktur artist (the scrivener) used to hold tools. It is tiny (5 inches long) an contains a bone straightedge, ink powder, and pen nibs. Apparently in the 1700s printers began to sell more generic fraktur woodcuts that only required inscription and coloring-in. A very thick woodblock is on display next to the kit.

I would suggest seeing the Pennsylvania German gallery of sgraffito plates and furniture at the PMA as an addendum to the fraktur exhibit at the Free Library. The plates often feature similar humorous, profane inscriptions and imagery. These plates always reminded me of a brass plate I would see while walking through the medieval section of the Met. The plate is from the Netherlands, was made in the 1480s and is titled Wife Beating Husband.

Wife Beating Husband, image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art digital collections database

If you miss the show, the fraktur collection of the Free Library of Philadelphia is available online (it’s great to peruse). However, you really have to see these pieces to appreciate them (some are surprisingly large), and it gives you a chance to poke around the rare book area. Monday-Friday, 9:00AM-5:00PM, tours of the department at 11:00.

Marjane Satrapi (MAHR-john sah-TROP-ee) is an amazing and effortless speaker. Through jokes, self-deprecation, and candidness she turned the art nouveau lectern at the front of Montgomery Auditorium into a kitchen table with the audience sitting around her. She insisted on referring to herself as a “cartoonist” and her books as “comic books,” not “graphic novels.” Satrapi believes that the term graphic novel was devised to compensate for the shame many adults feel about reading comic books. As she puts it, we have grown to equate comics with immaturity and in our minds, “only children and retarded adults read them.” Satrapi explained that all children draw, and at a certain point in their development (around adolescence) they stop and focus on writing and reading. Adults do not draw. They drop the drawings along with the dolls.

Satrapi gave great insight onto the creative process, likening it to the growth of a baby inside the womb, “It doesn’t just all of a sudden grow a leg, then pop out an eyeball, it all comes gradually at the same time.” The words and the drawings emerge simultaneously. It is always refreshing to hear this from a creative person’s own mouth. At times with those whom we admire, her/his success and brilliance can make the work seem unattainable, but Satrapi is very practical about the literal and emotional work that went into Persepolis.

She also explained her early influences. She was familiar with comics as a child in Iran, which as a Shiite country allowed human representation and also has the history of Persian miniatures. Satrapi shared a story of going bowling (“we made some bowling”) in Tehran in 1977 at the age of eight with her cousin, eating burgers at Big Boy, and then going to an American comic book store where she got copies of Dracula. Through the book she learned that the way to become a vampire was through raw chicken consumption (she pronounced raw like “ruh” and as she went on animatedly with this anecdote, parts of the audience shuffled and murmured “what did she say?” desperately trying to not miss a joke). She and her cousin ate raw chicken throughout that summer and had worms in a matter of months. She mentioned that she didn’t become a “comic reader” until she arrived in France in 1994, where she read Maus by Art Spiegelman. The audience “ooh”-ed collectively.

Photo of Marjane Satrapi. Image copyright Avatud Eesti Fond.

During the Q&A session someone asked for her opinion on the French government banning headscarves in schools in 2004. She asserted that she was strongly against the ban. Even though she hated wearing the veil as a young woman in Iran, she acknowledged that these young women saw the veil as something that connected them to their culture. These girls were neither quite French nor Arabs, and though their mothers didn’t wear the veil, they wanted to as a sign of their own second-generation rebellion. Satrapi told a story about going to an Iranian club in Paris (called “Jet Set”). A veiled woman sat watching the crowd from a table, making Satrapi grow increasingly uncomfortable and embarrassed. This woman seemed to be a symbol of piety and sternness in the middle of this half-naked dancing crowd. A group of “Arabic dancers” came onto the floor, perhaps a notch or two above strippers, and Satrapi saw the veiled woman beckon one of the women closer with a crooked finger. “I thought the dancer was really going to get it, receive a moral lesson.” To Satrapi’s jaw-dropping surprise, the woman stuck a 100-franc note in the dancer’s bra top and said, “you dance so well, please dance for me.” It became clear that it was this woman’s choice to be veiled. She wasn’t judging anyone, it was simply a part of her identity, much like the girls who wanted to wear the veil at school.

Satrapi spoke openly about writing an autobiography (even though she doesn’t’ categorize Persepolis as one). She depended on her memory and her honesty in retelling stories, which included admitting things that she was not proud of, like turning someone over to the Guardians of the Revolution in Iran to “save her own skin” and not get arrested and possibly raped/executed (they weren’t allowed to kill virgins). She acknowledged part of the creative process was mistake-making, self-criticism, and in turn, criticism of others. In the Q&A session a local teacher asked if she had anything to say to the students in the Philadelphia schools who would be reading her book. Although Marjane Satrapi slightly faltered when put on the spot and didn’t quite answer the question in that moment, her candidness and sincerity of character through out the whole talk is absolutely something worth noting and discussing. Keep an eye out for the podcast coming soon on the Free Library One Book website.

John Karel's Wii™ avatar

John Karel, on the Rocky steps of the PMA during his lunch break

In the animation which he made using the open source 3D animation software Blender, John’s avatar scoots around a Wii™-ified version of his own South Philadelphia row home kitchen. As he fills the pot with water and lights the stove with his round, fingerless Wii™ hands, the score in the upper left-hand corner of the screen spins higher. Then you and John wait for about five minutes for the water to boil. John’s avatar restlessly bobs around, kicks at the Wii™ linoleum, and even goes off screen for awhile. You wait too. It’s drudgery at its best. Soon a pop-up box congratulates us on the successfully boiled water. It is now time for “Part II: Cooking noodles.” John’s interpretation of a misinformed translation reminded me of the occasional Japanese-English translation error my brothers and I would encounter on the original Nintendo.

"A Winner is You" a congratulatory message from the creators of Pro Wrestling (NES system, 1986)

The overall feeling of the animation is rather sad. It’s comparable to watching an inexperienced gamer play Wii™ Tennis by himself: both lonely and pathetic. A very existential piece. You can watch Wii™ Macaroni and Cheese here.

John’s show also includes avatar portraits (including a portrait of this article’s author) painted brightly in acrylic on both sides of sheets of plexiglass. They remind me of Northern European Renaissance portraits, which is not surprising considering that John has worked a part-time job in Gallery Maintenance (artwork dusting) at the PMA for over two years. Some of the avatars exude austere serenity against their colorfully pixelated backgrounds.

Portrait of a Man Praying by Ludovico Portinari. Photo from the Philadelphia Museum of Art website.

A portrait of Gavin Riley, by John Karel

A Donor Praying by Jan Provost. Photo from the Philadelphia Museum of Art website

A portrait of Richard Davis, by John Karel

Another challenge/joy for John was to come up with a show title. He and a friend schemed show names to rival those unfortunately generic show titles at cultural institutions in Philadelphia (ahem, Cezanne and Beyond). Some were as follows: “John Karel: Himself.” “John Karel: Color as Structure” “John Karel: Tradition and Innovation” and “John Karel: Portrait of a Man.” Ultimately he settled on the Macaroni and Cheese title, he tells me with a straight face, but I know there’s something wry boiling underneath.

Wii™ Macaroni and Cheese has a closing reception on Saturday, October 2nd at the Philadelphia Institute For Advanced Study (PIFAS) 1712 N. 2nd St. 8:00 PM. Otherwise you can see the work by appointment (717) 413-6951 www.pifas.net. I will be delivering a lecture in conjunction with the exhibit and this article about user creativity (including a discussion of avatars) in The Sims 3™ on Wednesday, September 30 at 9:00 pm.

Alice and Kev 1 Kev with Alice in their "home". virtual photo by R. Burkinshaw

Ranking as one of, if not the best-selling computer game of all time, The Sims (on sale at EA for $39.99) is more akin to gardening and the nurturing of virtual life forms than playing in a dollhouse. I hadn’t played the Sims since high school, and frankly, memories of the Sims 2 recall many wasted summers, but I was intrigued by what the 3rd version had to offer. For example, in The Sims 3 your Sim will exercise a good amount of “free will” predetermined by the game designers’ algorithm-based system, e.g. he/she may watch tv, eat, or use the bathroom depending on his/her environment and user-assigned traits. In 2 you had to dictate tasks, often leaving your Sim in compromising situations. The concept of Sim free will is something that Robin Burkinshaw, a game design/development student at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, UK was interested in when he virtually photographed and documented the story of Alice and Kev. But he didn’t give his Sims a tv to watch, a kitchen to cook in, or a bathroom to “use”. Burkinshaw’s two Sims are homeless.

Alice and Kev recounts the lives of a Sims daughter-and-father family. In addition to the lack-of-kitchen/bathroom/bedroom, Alice possesses the “clumsy” and “low self-esteem” traits and Kev the “insane, mean-spirited, inappropriate, and hates children” traits, along with the wish to become the boyfriend of ten different Sims.

Kev about to hit Alice.

Kev implying that this man's mother is a llama.

Kev fights another neighborhood man after cuckolding him.

As the 24-year-old Burkinshaw writes, “With those traits, that Dad, and no money, [Alice] is going to have a hard life.” This is not an exercise in cruelty, though that type of play isn’t uncommon. “This is an experiment in playing a homeless family in The Sims 3. I created two Sims, moved them in to a place made to look like an abandoned park, removed all of their remaining money, and then attempted to help them survive without taking any job promotions or easy cash routes. It’s based on the old ‘poverty challenge’ idea from The Sims 2,” Burkinshaw continues, “It wasn’t started as any kind of social commentary, or social experiment, but I guess part of the reason I found the idea of that way of playing interesting is that homelessness is something I think about.”

Alice, exhausted, falls asleep on a neighbor's walkway.

Burkinshaw documents their life by way of short written descriptions and screenshots (what he refers to as “virtual photography”) to record events “with the minimum of embellishment”.

Users of The Sims have generated an extraordinary amount photography and video. A Flickr group with 55 members contains captured (usually romantic) moments and user-designed outfits that walk the line of fetish (not surprising, considering the role-playing aspect of the game).

"Kissing in the park." by M. Calero. Found in The Sims 3 Gameplay and Photography Flickr Pool.

"Michael's Birthday II" by Flickr user and Sims 3 Flickr pool contributor bingblog.

"Lingerie #1" designed by M. Calero. Also found in The Sims 3 Flickr Pool.

You cannot design furniture in the Sims, but The Sims Modernlist tallies up the in-game designer furniture knockoffs, including the Eames Tulip chair and Marcel Breuer/Knoll Wassily chair.

Virtual photography is also widely practiced in other games, such as Grand Theft Auto San Andreas and World of Warcraft. Generally there are fewer videos than photographs of Sims on the internet, most likely because video is more time-intensive. I discovered one particularly disciplined Sims 2 user who remade Titanic (1997 with Leonardo DiCaprio) in its entirety. Burkinshaw does not utilize the video capture and editing tools, though you can download Alice and Kev themselves if you own a copy of The Sims 3.

The implicit humor and short rhythm of Burkinshaw’s narration and photography allows the Alice and Kev blog to read like a comic, encompassing true comedy in the classical sense. The simplicity and the sad inevitability of the character’s programmed flaws compels the reader to look on with impotent horror. Oftentimes the comments (the most recent installment has 562) are as entertaining as the storyline. On July 2, 2009 at 11:14 pm the reader Samantha analyzes Kev’s inexplicable midnight solo wandering:

“…He just ruined the only relationship he really ever had, and his daughter is now a young adult who hates him and didn’t even invite him to her birthday party. He’s an old man, he is miserable, and probably not too far from death. He’s got a lot to think about and he probably wants to do that alone. If he’s walkin off to die, he was going to be alone when it happened anyways because Alice has been avoiding him, he might as well do it somewhere pretty rather then his little park he probably doesn’t enjoy too much.”

To which JMBailey on July 11, 2009 at 1:17 pm adds:

“or could it be that in his old age he just so longs for companionship and for so long has had none-even as a result of own doing-that it is finally hitting him that he is alone-after all Alice will soon be grown and gone and who then will he turn his hateful brand of love on?”

Kev's wandering. Note the glow of the virtual sun on the river in the distance.

It seems that readers want to analyze Alice and Kev psychologically, interpreting their actions as though they are real people with human motivations. The reader Brock struggles with his conception of human versus artifice when he comments on June 9, 2009 at 11:18PM, ”…I find myself strangely touched by the plight of two computer-generated characters.” The reader is drawn into this story much like the fanatic readers of Harry Potter books or Dickens’ The Old Curiousity Shop.

The creation and viral quality of the Alice and Kev blog broaches all sorts of questions about the nature of virtual photography and video. Who is the intended audience for this work? Are they interested in virtual photography and storytelling because they love the quirky challenge that Burkinshaw created for these simulated characters? Or is it because it’s a new method of telling a story?  Where is virtual photography and video best seen? In a gallery/theater or on a computer? Do the virtual photographers and filmmakers consider themselves artists? Is Robin Burkinshaw an artist/writer? The implications of this new form of media are deeply interesting: the creation, participation in, and documentation of a virtual world for an audience who is eager to rapidly consume it.

Further reading :

Self-Portrayal in a Simulated Life: Projecting Personality and Values in The Sims 2 by Thaddeus Griebel. From Game Studies, December 2006.

Sims, BattleBots, Cellular Automata God and Go, A Conversation with Will Wright (the designer of The Sims) by Celia Pearce. From Game Studies, July 2002

This Sims Life, Directed by Charles Wittenmeler. A documentary that follows the real lives of six Sims users. Aired on MTV in 2005.

I hate to sound trite and bring up more impacts of the recession, but the booths did not reflect any sign of economic crisis and penny-pinching. It was rather the opposite. Brainstorm, a print and design team of recent art-school grads Jason Snyder and Briana Feola, had a flurry of activity around their booth. “Our prints are flying out of here,” said Snyder over his shoulder as he slid a piece into a protective sleeve for a customer.

"Extinction" an 18x24 3-color silkscreen by Brainstorm

One of the major selling points of buying handmade, as one young man pointed out to me as he thumbed through Brainstorm’s prints, is the unique quality of the items. Buying from an individual rather than a mainstream commercial store justifies the spending.

I met artist and seller Andrew Zangerle because I couldn’t help but notice his booth. Two signs in front of his booth read “Come over here!” and “Buy some art!” He later wrote to me that someone had bought the signage.

Andrew Zangerle’s booth

 Zangerle is a UArts graduate who moved back home to Rochester, NY after matriculation in 2002. He had recently returned to Philadelphia “not quickly enough” and that day was selling small figurines (“dolls”) made of painted Sculpey ( $20 each) and small framed 5×7 watercolor drawings that combine a cute, simplified image with a seemingly unexpected phrase underneath, also for $20.

“you see that? that bird is laughing at you. he's laughing. look how "jerky" that bird is. what a freaking a-hole. and you know what? he's like ALWAYS there…” description of the above piece from Zangerle’s Etsy page.

 A large amount of sales occur online. Etsy, a social networking site/online craft bazaar, launched in 2005. In the month of February 2009 they reported 690,000 items sold for $10.3 million, with 132,000 new members. That’s in one month. A recent article on the Etsy website gives tips from fifty Etsy sellers who have now given up their day jobs because they make their living off of their Etsy store.

Matt Stinchcomb, the Vice President of Marketing at Etsy (and former singer/guitarist of the French Kicks) quoted some interesting statistics, “The average Etsy user is 32. Our users are mostly college-educated, tech savvy—I think about 50% or more are active bloggers or social network users—and women from the US.” 

I cannot help but notice uniformity, both on Etsy and particularly at the Art Star Craft Bazaar. I’m not just referring to the items. It is a craft fair and one expects to find jewelry and screenprinted t-shirts, though I did see a plethora of skull-patterned baby clothes, one-eyed monster dolls, even wheat beer-infused soap. The overarching aesthetic is eerily homogeneous: animal and nature-based imagery, highly stylized in shades of pastels and warm browns, and above all, an embrace of cuteness combined with a little bit of twisted nastiness, in a Yoshitomo Nara/Edward Gorey/Henry Danger way. Like the style or not, it clearly has a broad appeal.

Art Star Craft Bazaar logo. Illustration by Julie West, 2008

Both Fred Greenblatt and Ellen Gilman came from New York specifically to shop at Art Star (though afterwards they asked for directions to Old City). Greenblatt was sitting on a bench holding the beginnings of a sweater, “it’s for my grandchild” he explained, as he carefully curled the soft umbilical cord of the yarn. Gilman offered an immediate reaction to the crowd: “I’ve never seen so many tattoos in my life! Look at that woman behind you” she pointed to one woman with an octopus-emblazoned arm, “she’s pushing a baby carriage!… And there’s another one!” She was right: the majority of crowd looked the same, 20 and 30-somethings in vintage clothes, many of the young men with ironic moustaches (“face hobbies”).

Greenblatt and Gilman’s largest complaint, in the end, was the high price of the items. “In New York you’d be able to buy a silkscreened t-shirt for $10-$15. The t-shirts they were looking at were priced at $18-$25. Another complaint issued by Greenblatt was the lack of men’s items, considering that Father’s Day is around the corner (June 21) “I wanted to buy some men’s jewelry, but there’s none here.”

Although the items for males was lacking, the number of men selling the items seemed to match evenly with the number of female sellers. Perhaps this is an indicator that feminism has succeeded: it’s no longer homely, boring, and feminine to participate in traditional crafts. In fact, they have made crafting trendy again, and take what they do quite seriously. The dozen or so surprisingly slick business cards I was given serve as testimony. It was interesting to witness a manifestation of the cottage-industry crafting phenomenon through the Art Star Craft Bazaar. These creative people have found a way to achieve a sort of economic independence by making a living off of what they enjoy doing: making things, even if they all sort-of look the same.

A construction site dwelling, or Crèche, in Mumbai. Photo taken from the IDC website.

In August 2008, Scott Shall organized a 40-person team in collaboration with the Temple Study Abroad Program and D.Y. Patil University to work in crèches (on-site temporary housing for construction workers) scattered across Mumbai. The group worked alongside the NGO Mumbai Mobile Crèches, a non-profit that provides schooling and health programs for the crèches’ children. The students’ goal was to utilize their knowledge as creative thinkers to engage in “guerrilla design.” Inventing new, cheap architectural and design strategies allowed them to attenuate the effects of the temporary living settlements for the crèches’ inhabitants.

The  AIA show accompanying Shall’s talk was in the large space behind the AIA bookstore. The room was dark, with small sources of light glowing from inside small USPS Priority Mail cardboard boxes which were stacked on their sides and arranged around the room. Upon closer inspection, each box held an individual slide photo, illuminated by a keychain LED. A double convex glass lens was mounted on top, and acted as a magnifying device. Each image was taken by one of 210 Mumbai children, who were given cameras by members of Shall’s team and told to photograph their homes and lives. (See more photos at IDC’s flickr site.)

Projections. Photo taken from IDC's Flickr page.

The installation/opening party was very interactive. Perhaps this was due to the nature of the space: one tends to feel less self-conscious in a dark room. People were holding the projection boxes in front of them like pregnant stomachs, moving in front of the screen, causing the image to grow and shrink. A DJ was on the side of the main room playing electronic music, next to a video projector which showed a backwards-projected rickshaw ride, and children playing in small colorful triangular collapsible structures which turned out to be child-sized freespaces, designed by project members.

Images and diagrams sat on removable mounts, illuminated by small dangling maglites. The mounted images described a history of IDC’s projects since 2006. A photocopier next to the display encouraged the viewer to take the diagrams and copy them. It is in Shall’s hopes that these projects will be taken up by others, to be “hacked” and improved upon. The diagrams followed an Ikea-like format, with the universal no-language and numbers, only line images.

Woman carrying 99-rupee water filter. Photo taken from the IDC website.

One particularly intersting project was the 99-rupee (2 dollar) water filter. Using a sweater bag, a recycled tarp and four grommets, the team created a bag for purifying water that utilizes solar radiation to eliminate 99% of waterborne pathogens after 6-8 hours. Access to clean water in Mumbai is a serious problem. According to a 2003 study, the water in much of Mumbai is septic. The people of Mumbai are literally drinking and eating shit.

At six weeks, the students’ time in Mumbai was temporary. The homes of the migrants on the construction sites are also temporary, lasting about two years before construction completion. The migrant workers in these crèches are not looking for, or in need of, permanent structures such as schools; they need ideas that allow them to make effective improvements in their temporary communities. One thing that should be noted is that these crèches are not slums. One can argue that they are worse. Slums by comparison are permanent neighborhoods. 64% of Mumbai’s population lives in a slum (middle-class slums also exist).

Stephanie Dejarnette, who previously earned her BFA in printmaking at Temple commented that IDC changed her perspective of what she was capable of, as though she no longer had artistic limitations, “I’m not a chemist. I never thought I’d be helping to design a water filtration system.”

Shall mentioned, “We were given a grant to show what we had done in Philadelphia. But for what public? We didn’t know if it should even be in a gallery space,” as though he was aware that people/the students themselves may not necessarily call their project “art”. I asked him if students realign their artistic course towards sustainable efforts after participating in an IDC project. He responded, “Many begin to lean in that way.”

Although the show at AIA was on the oblique side, the perspective that Shall (certainly an aptronym) was encouraging in his students seemed invaluable. He brings young architects, designers, artists, etc to places where they can channel their creative thinking towards a common goal. Perhaps this is where the creative people go in times of recession, as predicted by articles in the past three months like The Boom Is Over. Long Live the Art! by Holland Cotter, New York Times (February 12, 2009) and End the University as We Know It by Mark Taylor, Op-Ed Columnist New York Times (April 26, 2009). These articles have been sent to me by, not surprisingly, many of my artist friends. It’s as though our economic recession has made us wish to justify our art-making, by tying it in with other disciplines and putting our aim towards less narrow objectives. Taylor writes, “through the intersection of multiple perspectives and approaches, new theoretical insights will develop and unexpected practical solutions will emerge.” The idealism encouraged by Shall certainly falls in line with this perspective, and seems like an entirely positive thing.

Newspapers sell for 5 rupees per kilo, or 4 cents per pound. Photo copyright Enrico Fabian.

We constantly see people throwing trash on the street in Delhi, but despite few to no trash cans, and the large population (around 17 million people, Philly’s population is around 1.5 million) there is less trash in Delhi than I anticipated. Businesses seem to sweep their stores periodically through the day, and every night we see businesses burning a small pile of trash in front of their stores.

Because India is a rapidly developing country, I did not expect recycling to exist. It does, but it is not municipal, and it doesn’t have the same good-for-its-own-sake impetus like in America. It’s done to make money by low-level Kabari who sift through dirt, food and shit to collect plastic bottles, paper, glass, and metal. According to Fabian, there are about 150,000 Kabaris total in Delhi who recycle about 59% of the city’s waste to support themselves and their families.

Over 95% of homes in Delhi have no formal system of garbage removal. A typical day for a Kabari includes picking up trash door-to-door in a neighborhood, and separating recyclables that can be sold to a trash trader. We occasionally see men on bikes with refrigerator-sized blocks of precycled trash on their backs, navigating a street in Delhi on their way to a trash trader.

Kabari also collect and sell plastic bottles. This is very profitable in touristy areas because most westerners like us can’t/don’t drink tap water. We each go through about three bottles a day. According to Fabian, this soft plastic is sold for 9-12 rupees, or 8-11 cents per pound. More money can be made from plastic bottles in the summer rather than the winter, when people tend  to drink more. The bottles are brought to a processing plant, shredded up, washed, dried in the sun, then brought to a factory where the plastic is melted down to make new items such as clothes and toys.

Man sorting plastic bottles. Photo copyright Enrico Fabian.

A particularly interesting aspect of trash recycling in India is e-waste (electronic waste). Often, computers and appliances are cannibalized for their parts to fix other electronics, providing some hazard for the recyclers who are exposed to CRTs and radioactive tubes. 146,000 tons of electronic waste is recycled informally in India each year.

Man on a “cliff” in a landfill. Photo copyright Enrico Fabian.

Landfill trash-pickers collect what street-level trash-pickers miss. The occupational hazards of working in landfills is a serious issue. Besides the environmental danger, items such as hypodermic needles are scavenged, risking exposure to AIDS and Hepatitis (the number of people with HIV/AIDS in India is 2.4 million). Oftentimes Kabari have to bribe city/gov’t workers to gain entry to the landfills. Ghazipur, one of the largest landfills in Delhi, is one of the many landfills that is reaching capacity.

Sorting trash in a landfill. Photo copyright Enrico Fabian.

Over a million people in India earn their livelihood through waste recycling. On top of  a low standard of living, they now face joblessness with India’s new business-model approach to waste management — replacing the preexisting informal Kabari system with a model from developed countries. One of Chintan’s goals is to provide Kabari with legal provisions, such as providing access to education for children, who are unfortunately more useful to their families as trashpickers. Children often receive central-government incentives like bookbags and pencil cases, then sell them and return to scavenging.

Fabian’s show is an eye-opener on how Delhi (and India) deals with its trash — the culture and economics around trash picking. Immediately after we left Fabian’s show, we saw what looked like a huge bag ambling down the road. As we passed, we saw the man carrying it. He was old, barefoot, dirty, and hunched under the bag’s weight. A few minutes later we saw some children sitting in a pile of trash, separating the plastic bottles.

Urban recycling in India, we learned, is inextricably tied in with poverty. I’m currently reading “Maximum City” by Suketu Mehta while we travel. He writes, “One slogan that’s been particularly absent from [2005 elections] is GARIBI HATAO. ‘Remove Poverty.’ It’s as if there’s a tacit acknowledgment on all sides that the poverty is insurmountable…” Though this quote refers to Mumbai, I find that it also applies to the overall troubling image of poverty in India.

Enrico Fabian can be contacted at mail@enrico-fabian.com.