Worms Weekly
Pierce Eldridge
Something to let your peepers feast on at BFI: Jacquelyn Mills’s Geographies of Solitude. Review by Esmé Hogeveen.
Hettie Judah on the Place of Motherhood in the Art World
Last night I had a few friends round and we together filled little wonton sheets with a gingery, mushroom, kale stuffing; making dumplings – and I got to talking about this article I had read the night before about motherhood and the strange echo-chamber artist-mothers work within, oftentimes too ashamed to directly reflect on motherhood as its not deemed ‘contemporary’. Hettie Judah really outlines this complicated landscape with reference to Caroline Walker, Martina Mullaney, and Camille Henrot who specifically explores the maternal body as a site of productivity.
Arcadia Molinas
I started listening to this podcast which tells the story of Ana Mendieta, performance artist, and Carl Andre, avant-garde sculptor accused of murdering Mendieta, his then wife. Contrary to the narrator, I have been exposed to Mendieta’s powerful, chilling work a lot more than I have seen or discussed Andre’s (in fact I could not recognise a piece of his if it was displayed in front of me). Mendieta’s story is well known to me. However, this courageous podcast takes on the elephantine task of asking: what really happened on Mendieta’s last night alive? The question, from a lot of fronts, is met with silence. We cannot stop asking ‘Where is Ana Mendieta’. The world was deprived of a visionary artist, a radical femininist and compromised ecologist by misogynist, violent hands and her death cannot be forgotten. Be prepared to get angry.
Caitlin McLoughlin
I read this weird and funny New York Times piece by writer and actor Annie Hamilton about deciding to move from LA to New York.
This interview with Stephanie LaCava on The Cut led me to this essay by Leslie Jamison which was so good.
Really loved this essay by Rebecca May Johnson on Granta about her allotment, but also the internet, illness and reproduction. I loved this bit: ‘That violent heteronormative cultures of sex and reproduction among humans are attributed to ‘nature’ feels astonishing after spending time on the allotment. The slutty ingenuity of vegetables when it comes to desire and reproductive methods is a marvel that makes a mockery of conservative ideas of the natural. If a hack to proliferate or hybridise is possible, plants will invent it’.
Great convo between Sarah Shin, Sophie Lewis, Francesca Wade and others about Dianne Di Prima’s Revolutionary Letters, recently republished by Silver Press.
Pierce Eldridge
Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
Fell in love about 5 pages in as soon as it started talking about sandstorms as something inside us. (For those that have read, ahhh right!). Read that lil-section outloud to my housemate and made her cry too. We sobbed at the idea of embracing the chaos, and then embraced the chaos. What a twisting, wavy, story. If you like mystery, talking cats, and secluded libraries this is one for you. But.. be prepared for some horry scenes. Spoiler, some cats die tragically as the story takes strange twists and turns, but everytime I talk about this book with someone who has read it (admittedly, I’m still making my way through) they all squeal with delight; and I suspect it has something to do with the lucidity of the conscious and unconscious colliding.
Empathy: Why It Matters, and How to Get It, Roman Krznaric
TBF, I’ve only read chapter ‘Habit 5: Travel In Your Armchair’ this week, and it provided an interesting prompt about literary, videographic and photographic stimulus as a conduit to provoking empathy. There’s a really nice take on photography enhancing our visual intelligence where Sontag’s theory on the vast proportion of ‘shock’ images, that show atrocities, is challenged with the reformation of how we might narrate these visual stories now. I was led into reading around the book on David Goldblatt’s photographs. Enjoyed viewing his photos here: David Goldblatt: Some Afrikaners Photographed.
Caitlin McLoughlin
Nothing But My Body by Tilly Lawless
Stormed through this. Get it here if you haven’t already.
Arcadia Molinas
Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency by Olivia Laing
Took me a while to finish this but I finally did on a late Saturday morning. My biggest take away from this book was Laing’s taste for art; sophisticated, entangled with the world and a flare for the politically compromised. I’ve come away from this book a lot more learned on art as well as, importantly to me, writing about art.
I made a thread on twitter with all the different artists that Laing talks about in the ‘Artist’s Lives’ section, which I enjoyed making and found to be an engaging way of reading a book; sort of like writing a summary at the end of every chapter. I find myself seeking ways of reading more attentively and making a silly thread on Twitter satisfied this craving.
Some favs from the book:
Robert Raushenberg - Bed (1955)
Sarah Lucas - Self-Portraits and her ‘nuds’ spindly, limby sculptures. <3 <3 <3
Ryan Trecartin - Saw the first couple of minutes of I-Be Area and wtf. Amazing.
Very curious to read her Crudo - a story in which she inhabits the person of Kathy Acker as a ways to explore the boundaries between her and Acker’s biography and use Acker as a sort of screen for her own experiences, migrating from the personal ‘I’ to the more distant and impersonal ‘she’
Pierce Eldridge
Hideous, Oliver Sims (via Mubi)
Deeply profound and moving, Oliver Sims is a genius (chic) of shedding the heart into vulnerable pieces for all us worms to compost with. I feel like I’ve not seen anything like this before yet it’s so familiar. Perhaps I can relate to the admiration of the strong female character, Jamie Lee Curtis who comes up, time and time again, against the horror-licious Michael Myers. Or being a kid, spiralling my arms in front of the TV searching for those like me. For as long as I can remember various thriller franchises have orbited my queer brain, so to see the narrative reestablished into a ~monster-queer-coming-of-age~ feels very correct (also chic). Not to mention the lyrics that reckon with HIV stigma. If you can’t catch the full premiere on Mubi, check out Youtube for the Hideous music video.
Jennette McCurdy on Armchair Expert
Not so much a watch as it is a listen, and an important one as Jennette McCurdy attempts to unravel the complexity of her relationship with an abusive mother. I was most taken when she discussed ‘the necessary delusion of my childhood’ as a survival technique, emphasising ‘[my mother] became the thing I wanted her to be’ in order to work within the spotlight of Nickelodeon. Questions on establishing healthy boundaries, reprogramming your mentality beyond the abuse, what it feels like to develop a codependent disease, and how to build and form new connections that are conducive of caring are laid bare through some very vulgar, and hard to hear, reflections of her upbringing. I’m desperate to get my hands on a copy of her new book ‘I’m Glad My Mom Died’
Caitlin McLoughlin
Horror is a perfect medium for the tension between religion and sexuality. It is pretty male gaze-y, but still so good. I <3 Sissy Spacek.
Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind
Forgot how much I loved this film. The memory sequences are so good.
Arcadia Molinas
Shroom Trip Opera by Joseph Keckler
As seen in Funny Weather. Just click on the link and enjoy this opera.
I finished this show this week which was so amazing. A civic education teacher (not sure if it translates, apparently a thing in Israel and Italy too and probs other places) in Israel sets the following homework for a troublesome student - bring a topic to debate in class. Simple, right? Except the topic Lian picks is ‘should arabs be let into our pools’. The uproar that ensues snowballs into a larger than life discussion of present life in Israel, that simultaneously explores all the conditions and minutiae of the characters’ life. A great story with even better storytelling.