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fuckyeahyonicsymbols · 5 years

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The Cave

Images from Young Joon Kwak's collaborative exhibition, The Cave, at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

I recommend going to Kwak's portfolio site to read the artist's statement because there is a lot going on here. Principally, the exhibition takes its name from the a natural feature of Banff, Alberta, the Cave and Basin site, which was the first site in Canada to be designated as a National Park. The cave is significant for a number of other reasons, particularly its sacred uses by the Stoney Nakota nation, and the fact that it is the only home of the Banff Snail, a tiny gastropod found nowhere else in the world.

Most of the included pieces abstract or distort conventional ideas of sex, gender, and sexuality. The ones which I found most striking, once I knew what they were (and there is no signage - I was just lucky enough to be able to attend a curator’s tour), were the objects on the pillars. These sculptures are made of the melted and distorted parts of fleshlights (a masturbation toy designed for use with a penis, for those of you happily in ignorance), in one case turned inside-out. In this inverted form, the remains of the fleshlights become even more alien, deeply unsettling, a bodily/non-bodily horror. The melted metal parts, shaped into almost a human hand, take on an ethereal, fungoid life of their own.

Kwak encounters and reacts to the “social concepts of nature and outdoor culture” which are a part of the atmosphere of Banff the town, Banff the park, Banff the natural space, and Banff the popular, fictionalized image. Subverted here also is the idea of a “man cave,” and the natural world as a rigidly masculinized space. The gauzy, tawdry drapery of the tent piece particularly drags this notion out in absurd style. Rather than a practical shelter, the tent becomes a diaphanous cocoon, more illusion and instagram than haven.

In this way, it almost seems that Kwak is maintaining their exclusion from the outdoor world, imposing their body on the space, but ultimately remaining inimical to it. In the main video piece, Kwak and Ye wander through the urban and natural spaces of Banff, alternately ethereal and grotesque, seemingly desperate for belonging, or at least survival. Of course, I am not unaware of my own subject position in viewing all of this, particularly my position as an outdoor educator and a female person in the context of the wilderness. Watching the pair hike up mountain slopes in heels, dragging wheeled luggage and draping tinsel from trees causes me almost visceral sympathetic pain. But with this is in some ways how we all approach first experiences - with discomfort and struggle, clinging to the things which are familiar and comfortable to us.

However, this struggle and exclusion does not seem to be a comment on femininity and non-masculine identity being at odds with the natural space. One of my old favourite video art pieces, the Lesbian National Parks and Services: A Force of Nature by Shawna Dempsey and Lori Millan, which is also set in Banff and radically rearranges the assumption of female and feminized bodies in the wilderness setting. Adrian Stimson’s Buffalo Boy’s Why Not?, another video piece, also tackles expectations of gender, but focuses on the commodification of the First Nations experience by tourism, and the places this intersects with gender and sexuality.

Overall, The Cave is a hodge-podge, a space weirdly alien, at least to me. Every piece included by Kwak was absolutely part of the overall theme, but I think that the net was cast too broadly for such a small exhibition and led to a confusion of voices. Perhaps this confusion is the real take-away from the exhibition; in trying to fit themselves into the space of Banff, or Banff into themselves, Kwak has created an unresolved, limbo-like space. It is not a destination, but a question. I can’t say that I figured out what that was.

Other artists who contributed or lent their work to this piece included Marvin Astorga, Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan, Adrian Stimson, and Kim Ye. Most of these artists were included for their own prior interpretations of the site of Banff, either physically or ideologically.

Photo credit: 'twas I.

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landscape-atlas · 5 years

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Lesbian National Parks and Services

For example, the 1997 multimedia project Lesbian National Parks and Services, developed by the Canadian performance art duo of Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan, queers the idea of national parks and “[challenges’ the general public’s ideas of tourism, recreation, and the ‘natural’ environment."[11] Additionally, the artist collective The Institute of Queer Ecology seeks to “nurture a new environmental paradigm based on the concepts of interconnectivity and inseparability.”[12] They have participated in group shows, curated exhibitions, and edited “The Queer Issue” of the zine ECOCORE.

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wandagreeneus · 5 years

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Parents Arrested in Phoenix For Doing Drugs with Children in the Car

Authorities in Arizona have released a report that confirms that the two moms and dads who were detained for doing drugs with children in the car had been living out of the lorry for more than a week.

Cops say an officer stopped a car driven by 26-year-old Alfredo Paredes in a community near 32nd Street and Thomas Roadway after observing it break numerous traffic laws, consisting of failing to stop at multiple stop signs and intersections.

Paredes did not have any form of identification with him, and when officers looked for his name, they found he was driving on a revoked license and had an active warrant for DUI, according to a possible cause statement. Twenty-four-year-old Karla Millan, the mother of the two little girls, was in the traveler’s seat.

Paredes was taken in on the warrant and officers saw several pieces of aluminum foil with a scorched residue on the driver and passenger sides of the car and in both door pockets.

Authorities state the kids were barefoot in the back seat and not using restraints. Officers found numerous razor blades on the floor of the back seat in addition to more aluminum foil with burnt residue. Cops said the kids, ages five and seven, had flies in their hair and assumed they had not been bathed in a minimum of two weeks.

The kids informed private investigators they had not eaten or drank anything in more than a day and were well aware of the parents doing heroin before spending time with them, according to the police reports.

After being driven to the healthcare facility for examination, they were found to be dehydrated, but no drugs were discovered in their system.

Paredes and Millan are behind bars, serving time for child abuse and drug charges.

The Phoenix Police Department, which is handling the investigation, referred to the fire department’s statement and provided no further details regarding the case.

from http://www.ivdaily.com/parents-arrested-in-phoenix-for-doing-drugs-with-children-in-the-car

source http://ivdaily.weebly.com/blog/parents-arrested-in-phoenix-for-doing-drugs-with-children-in-the-car

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wendyjimenezus · 5 years

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Parents Arrested in Phoenix For Doing Drugs with Children in the Car

Paredes was taken in on the warrant and officers saw several pieces of aluminum foil with a scorched residue on the driver and passenger sides of the car and in both door pockets.

After being driven to the healthcare facility for examination, they were found to be dehydrated, but no drugs were discovered in their system.

Paredes and Millan are behind bars, serving time for child abuse and drug charges.

The Phoenix Police Department, which is handling the investigation, referred to the fire department’s statement and provided no further details regarding the case.

from Daily News http://www.ivdaily.com/parents-arrested-in-phoenix-for-doing-drugs-with-children-in-the-car source https://ivdaily.tumblr.com/post/183798324372

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donaldehillfl · 5 years

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Parents Arrested in Phoenix For Doing Drugs with Children in the Car

Paredes was taken in on the warrant and officers saw several pieces of aluminum foil with a scorched residue on the driver and passenger sides of the car and in both door pockets.

After being driven to the healthcare facility for examination, they were found to be dehydrated, but no drugs were discovered in their system.

Paredes and Millan are behind bars, serving time for child abuse and drug charges.

The Phoenix Police Department, which is handling the investigation, referred to the fire department’s statement and provided no further details regarding the case.

source http://www.ivdaily.com/parents-arrested-in-phoenix-for-doing-drugs-with-children-in-the-car from Ivdaily https://ivdaily.blogspot.com/2019/03/parents-arrested-in-phoenix-for-doing.html

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