You call me courageous, I who grew up gnawing on books, as some kids gnaw on bubble gum,
who married disastrously not once but three times, yet have a lovely daughter I would not undo for all the dope in California.
Fear was my element, fear my contagion. I swam in it till I became immune. The plane takes off & I laugh aloud. Call me courageous.
I am still alive.
Erica Jong Born: 26 March 1942, New York, USA Nationality: American
Jong is a novelist, satirist, and poet particularly known for her novel “Fear of Flying” (1973). The book was famously controversial for its attitudes on female sexuality and became prominent in the development of second-wave feminism
BOND Classical Pop Formed: 2000 Nationality: Australian
BOND
BOND is a string quartet formed by music producer Mike Batt and promoter Mel Bush in 2000. The current line-up consists of Tania Davis (first violinist), Eos Counsell (second violin), Elspeth Hanson (viola), and Gay-Yee Westerhoff (cello). Hanson replaced original band member Havlie Ecker 2ho left in 2008 to have a child
Gabbeh 2009 Minimalism Mirrors, plaster, and ceramic Haines Gallery, San Francisco, California, USA
Towards the end of her life, in Iran, Farmanfarmain returned to mirror work whilst continuing to experiment with geometric form and introducing more colour in her work. “Gabbeh” features mirrors in a complex pattern and coloured, iridescent pieces of porcelain made by Abbas Akbari, a Persian ceramist. The piece blends vertical and diagonal lines, circles, triangles, and hexagons. the title “Gabbeh” refers to a centuries-old tradition of rug-weaving practiced by nomadic tribes in Persia,
Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian 1922-2019
Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmain Minimalism, Feminist Art Born: 16 December 1922, Qazvin, Persia Nationality: Iranian Died: 20 April 2019, Tehran, Iran
Farmanfarmaian was an artist and collector of traditional folk art. She is one of the most prominent Iranian artists of her time and the first to achieve an artistic practice that unites the Iranian geometric patterns and cur-glass mosaic techniques with the rhythms of Western modern geometric abstraction. In 2017 the Monir Museum in Tehran, Iran was opened in her honour.
BOND Classical Pop Formed: 2000 Nationality: Australian
BOND
BOND is a string quartet formed by music producer Mike Batt and promoter Mel Bush in 2000. The current line-up consists of Tania Davis (first violinist), Eos Counsell (second violin), Elspeth Hanson (viola), and Gay-Yee Westerhoff (cello). Hanson replaced original band member Havlie Ecker who left in 2008 to have a child
Dear Colette, I want to write to you about being a woman for that is what you write to me.
I want to tell you how your face enduring after thirty, forty, fifty. . . hangs above my desk like my own muse.
I want to tell you how your hands reach out from your books & seize my heart.
I want to tell you how your hair electrifies my thoughts like my own halo.
I want to tell you how your eyes penetrate my fear & make it melt.
I want to tell you simply that I love you– though you are “dead” & I am still “alive.”
Suicides & spinsters– all our kind!
Even decorous Jane Austen never marrying, & Sappho leaping, & Sylvia in the oven, & Anna Wickham, Tsvetaeva, Sara Teasdale, & pale Virginia floating like Ophelia, & Emily alone, alone, alone. . . .
But you endure & marry, go on writing, lose a husband, gain a husband, go on writing, sing & tap dance & you go on writing, have a child & still you go on writing, love a woman, love a man & go on writing. You endure your writing & your life.
Dear Colette, I only want to thank you:
for your eyes ringed with bluest paint like bruises, for your hair gathering sparks like brush fire, for your hands which never willingly let go, for your years, your child, your lovers, all your books. . . .
Dear Colette, you hold me to this life.
Erica Jong
Erica Jong Born: 26 March 1942, New York, USA Nationality: American
Jong is a novelist, satirist, and poet particularly known for her novel “Fear of Flying” (1973). The book was famously controversial for its attitudes on female sexuality and became prominent in the development of second-wave feminism.
Alexander Litvinovsky Jazz Born: 1 May 1962, Minsk, Belorussia Nationality: Belarusian
Alexander Litvinovsky
Litvinovsky is a composer of contemporary music. He works in a variety of genres including chamber music, stage production music, choral music, and electroacoustic art
Expect nothing. Live frugally On surprise. become a stranger To need of pity Or, if compassion be freely Given out Take only enough Stop short of urge to plead Then purge away the need.
Wish for nothing larger Than your own small heart Or greater than a star; Tame wild disappointment With caress unmoved and cold Make of it a parka For your soul.
Discover the reason why So tiny human midget Exists at all So scared unwise But expect nothing. Live frugally On surprise.
Alice Walker
Alice Walker Born: 9 February 1944, Georgia, USA Nationality: American
Walker is a novelist, short story writer, poet, and social activist. She is the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, awarded for “The Colour Purple.” Walker has published seventeen novels and short story collections over her career, and also twelve non-fiction works and collections of essays and poems. Walker has faced criticism for alleged antisemit5ism and for endorsing the conspiracist David Icke
Yuvan Shankar Raja Film and TV Born: 31 August 1979, Chennai, India Nationality: Indian
Yuvan Shankar Raja
Raja is a film score and soundtrack composer and a singer-songwriter. He is known for his music scores for Tamil films and is considered a versatile composer. Raja utilizes Western music elements and has been credited for introducing hip hop to the Tamil film and music industry. Over a 25-year career Raja has worked on over 100 films winning wards such as the Filmfare Award for Best Music Director in 2004 for his score for &G rainbow Colony. In 2015 raja formed his own music label, U1 Records, and in 2017 the film production studio, YSR Films
Yuvan Shankar Raja Film and TV Born: 31 August 1979, Chennai, India Nationality: Indian
Yuvan Shankar Raja
Raja is a film score and soundtrack composer and singer-songwriter. He is known for his music scores for Tamil films and is considered a versatile composer. Raja utilizes Western music elements and has been credited for introducing hip-hop to the Tamil film and music industry. Over a 25-year career, Raja has worked on over 100 films winning wards such as the Filmfare Award for Best Music Director in 2004 for his score for &G rainbow Colony. In 2015 raja formed his own music label, U1 Records, and in 2017 the film production studio, YSR Films
Artist: Dorothea Tanning Surrealism, Installation Art, Proto-Feminist Artists, Modern Sculpture Born: 25 August 1910, Illinois, USA Nationality: American Died: 31 January 2012, New York, USA
Tanning was a painter, printmaker, sculptor, writer, and poet. Art pervades much of Tanning’s life; her images, objects, and texts have become worthwhile art and her very presence transformed photographs and moments in time to make them more artistic. The whirlwind energy that followed Tanning as a person is found in her brushstrokes. Tanning’s complete oeuvre is dominated by her unstoppable life force characteristics. Her ideas were too big for rural Illinois so Tanning left for Chicago and then New York. In New York, she found both the style and company that she identified as a Surrealist. She also married Max Ernst. Tanning meticulously depicted her own dreams throughout her long career. This psychological exploration of self continued as his work developed into more abstract and sculptural.
Birthday by Dorothea Tanning, 1942. Oil on canvas Housed by The Philadelphia Museum of Art,USA
Tanning’s paintings are often direct illustrations of her dreams, like other Surrealists such as René Magritte and Salvador Dali. Her intent was to make the psychologically complex visible by revealing the unconscious of one person experienced through a dream with at least one figure within a dream scene with their eyes closed.
Tanning’s painting is characterized by whirling kinetic energy and by her beliefs in dynamism, flux, and immediacy which uncovers a comparison with the ideology of the Italian Futurists. There is vitality and intent connected to everything Tanning does such as illustrating the folds of fabric to highlight constant movement.
Tanning’s work pulsates sexual energy. Clothes appear torn and hair takes on a lavish life blurring the line between innocence and experience. The eros at work is a force that transcends sexuality to become an urge for life in any and all its manifestations.
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik by Dorothea Tanning, 1943. Oil on panel. Collection of the Tate, UK
Born to a working-class family, Tanning was the second of three daughters, originally from Sweden who had settled in Illinois. She was raised to strict Lutheran values. From an early age, she expressed a love of art and would find sanctuary reading the books of Lewis Carroll and Hans Christian Anderson. after completing initial schooling, Tanning worked at the public library prior to enrolling in Knox College. The college did not offer art classes but Tanning contributed illustrations to the school newspaper as well as painting and drawing in her own time.
Following just two years at Knox College Tanning moved to Chicago in 1930 where she stayed with friends. She worked as a hostess in a restaurant while attending night classes at the Chicago Art Institute. She left the classes after three weeks. Tanning was a self-taught artist learning independently by visiting museums and galleries. In 1934 she secured her first exhibition in a bookshop gallery in New Orleans and showed a series of watercolours. In the spring of 1935, Tanning moved to New York and supported herself as a commercial artist, and encountered Dada and Surrealism for the first time.
Hôtel du Pavot, Chambre 202 by Dorothea tanning, 1970-73. Fabric, wool, synthetic fur, cardboard, and Ping-Pong balls. Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
The ”Fantastic Art, Dada, and Surrealism” show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1936 sparked a lifelong interest in Surrealism for Tanning. In 1942 as an exhibitor in Peggy Guggenheim’s “31 Women” show Tanning met participants in the movement. She travelled widely between 1936 and 1940, first to California and then to Europe in the years before the beginning of WW2
On her return to New York in 1940 Tanning went back to commercial work and created a series of advertisements for Macy’s department store. She was introduced to Julien Levy owner of the Julien Levy Gallery. Shortly after WW2 brought an influx of refugees fleeing Europe, including influential artists such as Salvador Dali and Max Ernst. Tanning became his friend, then his lover. The couple married in 1946.
Merrillium Trovatum by Dorothea Tanning, 1997. Oil on panel – Dorothea Tanning Foundation, NY, USA
After her successful solo show at the Julien Levy Gallery in 1944, Tanning and Ernst moved to Arizona where they built a hose and hosted visits from their creative friends such as Lee Miller. The couple relocated to Paris in 1949 and later to the Provence but continued to spend time at their home in Arizona throughout the 1950s. Tanning’s work went through a stylistic shift from being populated by dreamlike landscapes to almost entirely abstract.
Tanning returned to New York in 1980, four years after Ernst died. She spent the remainder of her life travelling between Los Angeles, New York, and France. Tanning’s last known painting, part of a series of flowers, was completed in 1998. However, she continued to write poetry until she died in New York in 2012, aged 101.
PPincushion to Serve as Fetish by Dorothea Tanning, 1965. Velvet, plastic funnel, metal pins, sawdust, and wool. Collection of the Tate, UK
Tanning’s oeuvre – from her painting to her poetry – has profoundly influenced subsequent generations of artists. Her explorations of the female form led to her association with the Feminist movement. Along with other female Surrealists, tanning provided the role model for younger women trying to break away from the restrictive views of femininity and womanhood to become independent artists in their own right
I was sick of being a woman, sick of the pain, the irrelevant detail of sex, my own concavity uselessly hungering and emptier whenever it was filled, and filled finally by its own emptiness, seeking the garden of solitude instead of men.
The white bed in the green garden– I looked forward to sleeping alone the way some long for a lover.
Even when you arrived, I tried to beat you away with my sadness, my cynical seductions, and my trick of turning a slave into a master.
And all because you made my fingertips ache and my eyes cross in passion that did not know its own name.
Bear, beast, lover of the book of my body, you turned my pages and discovered what was there to be written on the other side.
And now I am blank for you, a tabula rasa ready to be printed with letters in an undiscovered language by the great press of our love
Erica Jong
Erica Jong Born: 26 March 1942, New York, USA Nationality: American
Jong is a novelist, satirist, and poet particularly known for her novel “Fear of Flying” (1973). The book was famously controversial for its attitudes on female sexuality and became prominent in the development of second-wave feminism
Karl Jenkins Jazz, Rock, Classical Born: 17 February 1944, Gower, Wales Nationality: Welsh
Karl Jenkins
Jenkins is a composer and multi-instrumentalist. His best-known works include the song “Adiemus.” Educated at Cardiff University and the Royal Academy of Music Jenkins joined the jazz band Soft Machine in 1972. He became the group’s leading songwriter and worked with them until 1984. Jenkins has written music for TV ad campaigns and has won the industry prize twice
We Was Mostly ‘Bout Survival 2017 Identity Art and Identity Politics Mixed media assemblage on vintage ironing board The Eileen Harris Norton Collection
Saar repurposed a vintage ironing board on which she painted a bird’s eye view of the slave ship, Brookes. The ship is crowded with bodies and other items have been attached to the board such as an old bar of soap, and a washboard printed with a photograph of a black woman doing laundry. Symbolic of black female domestic labour combined with the symbols of diasporic trauma portrays a powerful story about African American history
Betye Saar
Betye Saar Feminist Art, Identity Art and Identity Politics, Assemblage, Collage Born: 30 July 1926, California, USA Nationality: African-American
Saar is an artist best known for her work in the medium of assemblage. She is also a visual storyteller and printmaker. In the 1970s Saar was a part of the Black Arts Movement which engaged with myths and stereotypes about race and gender. Her work is highly political and challenges the negative ideas about African Americans
Yuvan Shankar Raja Film and TV Born: 31 August 1979, Chennai, India Nationality: Indian
Yuvan Shankar Raja
Raja is a film score and soundtrack composer and singer-songwriter. He is known for his music scores for Tamil films and is considered a versatile composer. Raja utilizes Western music elements and has been credited for introducing hip-hop to the Tamil film and music industry. Over a 25-year career, Raja has worked on over 100 films winning wards such as the Filmfare Award for Best Music Director in 2004 for his score for &G rainbow Colony. In 2015 raja formed his own music label, U1 Records, and in 2017 the film production studio, YSR Films.
Every morning the sad girl brings her three sheep and two lambs laggardly to the top of the valley, past my stone hut and onto the mountain to graze. She turned twelve last year and it was legal for the father to take her out of school. She knows her life is over. The sadness makes her fine, makes me happy. Her old red sweater makes the whole valley ring, makes my solitude gleam. I watch from hiding for her sake. Knowing I am there is hard on her, but it is the focus of her days. She always looks down or looks away as she passes in the evening. Except sometimes when, just before going out of sight behind the distant canebrake, she looks quickly back. It is too far for me to see, but there is a moment of white if she turns her face
Jack Gilbert 1926-2012
Jack Gilbert Born: 18 February 1925, Pennsylvania, USA Nationality: American Died: 13 November 2012, California, USA
Gilbert was a poet, acquainted with the prominent figureheads of the Beat Movement, Jack Spicer and Allen Ginsberg. However, Gilbert considered himself a serious romantic poet. Over his five-decade career, he published five full collections of poetry
Suddenly this defeat. This rain. The blues gone gray And the browns gone gray And yellow A terrible amber. In the cold streets Your warm body. In whatever room Your warm body. Among all the people Your absence The people who are always Not you.
I have been easy with trees Too long. Too familiar with mountains. Joy has been a habit. Now Suddenly This rain
Jack Gilbert 1926-2012
Jack Gilbert Born: 18 February 1925, Pennsylvania, USA Nationality: American Died: 13 November 2012, California, USA
Gilbert was a poet, acquainted with the prominent figureheads of the Beat Movement, Jack Spicer, and Allen Ginsberg. However, Gilbert considered himself a serious romantic poet. Over his five-decade career, he published five full collections of poetry
In the worst hour of the worst season of the worst year of a whole people a man set out from the workhouse with his wife. He was walking-they were both walking-north.
She was sick with famine fever and could not keep up. He lifted her and put her on his back. He walked like that west and north. Until at nightfall under freezing stars they arrived.
In the morning they were both found dead. Of cold. Of hunger. Of the toxins of a whole history. But her feet were held against his breastbone. The last heat of his flesh was his last gift to her.
Let no love poem ever come to this threshold. There is no place here for the inexact praise of the easy graces and sensuality of the body. There is only time for this merciless inventory:
Their death together in the winter of 1847. Also what they suffered. How they lived. And what there is between a man and a woman. And in which darkness it can best be proved
Eavan Boland 1944-2020
Eavan Boland Born: 24 September 1944, Dublin, Ireland Nationality: Irish Died: 27 April 2020, Dublin, Ireland
Boland was a poet, author, and professor. She taught at Stanford University from 1996. Boland’s work deals with the Irish national identity and the role of women in Irish society. She was awarded the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry
A. R. Rahman Film and TV Born: 6 January 1967, Chennai, India Nationality: Indian
A. R. Rahman
Rahman is a composer, record producer, singer, and songwriter and is popular for his film work. He is a humanitarian and philanthropist, donating and raising funds for a variety of causes and charities. Rahman was honoured by Stanford University for his contribution to global music and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Rotary Club of Madras. In 2017 he made his debut as a director and writer for the film Le Musk
We get on a boat, never mind if it sinks, we pay the captain by throwing him overboard. And when he gets back onboard we say, captain, please don’t be angry. And he forgives us this time. And so we throw him overboard again just to make sure we have fully paid the price we have set upon our passage. When he gets back onboard he is not anxious to forgive us, and he would like it much better if we would get off his boat. There is nothing left for us to do but to repay him and hope that this time it will be enough. And so we throw him overboard again. When he comes aboard again we say, now this must be the last of this, we will pay no more, we want the journey to begin.
But it seems there will be no journey since we have gotten the captain used to a good thing. And so we must spend the rest of our days throwing the captain overboard.
Russell Edson 1935-2014
Russell Edson Born: 9 April 1935, Connecticut, United States Nationality: American Died: 29 April 2014, Connecticut, United States
Edson was a poet, novelist, writer, and illustrator. Son of the cartoonist-screenwriter Gus Edson, he studied art from an early age and attended the Art Students League as a teenager. in the 1950s Edson began publishing poetry and his honours include a Whiting Award and a Guggenheim Award
He’d spent his life trying to control the names people gave him; oh the unfair and the accurate equally hurt.
Just recently he’d been a son-of-a-bitch and sweetheart in the same day, and once again knew what antonyms
love and control are, and how comforting it must be to have a business card – Manager, Specialist – and believe what it says.
Who, in fact, didn’t want his most useful name to enter with him, when he entered a room, who didn’t want to be
that kind of lie? A man who was a sweetheart and a son-of-a-bitch was also more or less every name
he’d ever been called, and when you die, he thought, that’s when it happens, you’re collected forever into a few small words.
But never to have been outrageous or exquisite, no grand mistake so utterly yours it causes whispers
in the peripheries of your presence – that was his fear. “Reckless”; he wouldn’t object to such a name
if it came from the right voice with the right amount of reverence. Someone nearby, of course, certain to add “fool.”
Stephen Dunn 1939-2021
Stephen Dunn Born: 24 June 1939, New York, USA Nationality: American Died: 24 June 2021, Maryland, USA
Dunn was a poet and educator. He authored twenty-one collections of poetry and won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2001 for his collection “Different Hours.”
The first of the undecoded messages read: “Popeye sits in thunder, Unthought of. From that shoebox of an apartment, From livid curtain’s hue, a tangram emerges: a country.” Meanwhile the Sea Hag was relaxing on a green couch: “How pleasant To spend one’s vacation en la casa de Popeye,” she scratched Her cleft chin’s solitary hair. She remembered spinach
And was going to ask Wimpy if he had bought any spinach. “M’love,” he intercepted, “the plains are decked out in thunder Today, and it shall be as you wish.” He scratched The part of his head under his hat. The apartment Seemed to grow smaller. “But what if no pleasant Inspiration plunge us now to the stars? For this is my country.”
Suddenly they remembered how it was cheaper in the country. Wimpy was thoughtfully cutting open a number 2 can of spinach When the door opened and Swee’pea crept in. “How pleasant!” But Swee’pea looked morose. A note was pinned to his bib. “Thunder And tears are unavailing,” it read. “Henceforth shall Popeye’s apartment Be but remembered space, toxic or salubrious, whole or scratched.”
Olive came hurtling through the window; its geraniums scratched Her long thigh. “I have news!” she gasped. “Popeye, forced as you know to flee the country One musty gusty evening, by the schemes of his wizened, duplicate father, jealous of the apartment And all that it contains, myself and spinach In particular, heaves bolts of loving thunder At his own astonished becoming, rupturing the pleasant
Arpeggio of our years. No more shall pleasant Rays of the sun refresh your sense of growing old, nor the scratched Tree-trunks and mossy foliage, only immaculate darkness and thunder.” She grabbed Swee’pea. “I’m taking the brat to the country.” “But you can’t do that–he hasn’t even finished his spinach,” Urged the Sea Hag, looking fearfully around at the apartment.
But Olive was already out of earshot. Now the apartment Succumbed to a strange new hush. “Actually it’s quite pleasant Here,” thought the Sea Hag. “If this is all we need fear from spinach Then I don’t mind so much. Perhaps we could invite Alice the Goon over”–she scratched One dug pensively–“but Wimpy is such a country Bumpkin, always burping like that.” Minute at first, the thunder
Soon filled the apartment. It was domestic thunder, The color of spinach. Popeye chuckled and scratched His balls: it sure was pleasant to spend a day in the country
John Ashbery 1927-2017
John Ashbery Born: 28 July 1927, New York, USA Nationality: American Died: 3 September 2017, New York, USA
Ashbery was an art critic and poet. He was the most influential American poet of his time. He published over twenty volumes of poetry, winning almost every major American award for poetry including the Pulitzer Prize in 1978 for his collection “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.” Ashbery was renowned for his postmodern complexity and opacity and his work still proves to be controversial
A dove lived in a village. When it opened its mouth sweetness came out, sound like a silver light around the cherry bough. But the dove wasn’t satisfied.
It saw the villagers gathered to listen under the blossoming tree. It didn’t think: I am higher that they are. It wanted to wealk among them, to experience the violence of human feeling, in part for its song’s sake.
So it became human. It found passion, it found violence, first conflated, then as separate emotions and these were not contained by music. Thus its song changed, the sweet notes of its longing to become human soured and flattened. Then
the world drew back; the mutant fell from love as from the cherry branch, it fell stained with the bloody fruit of the tree.
So it is true after all, not merely a rule of art: change your form and you change your nature. And time does this to us
Louise Glück
Louise Gluck Born: 22 April 1943, New York, USA Nationality: American
Glück is a poet, essayist, and winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize for Literature. While in high school she suffered from anorexia nervosa and later overcame the illness. Often described as autobiographical poet Glück’s work is best known for its emotional intensity and for drawing on mythology or nature to reflect modern life
BOND Classical Pop Formed: 2000 Nationality: Australian
BOND
BOND is a string quartet formed by music producer Mike Batt and promoter Mel Bush in 2000. The current line-up consists of Tania Davis (first violinist), Eos Counsell (second violin), Elspeth Hanson (viola), and Gay-Yee Westerhoff (cello). Hanson replaced original band member Havlie Ecker 2ho left in 2008 to have a child
BOND Classical Pop Formed: 2000 Nationality: Australian
BOND
BOND is a string quartet formed by music producer Mike Batt and promoter Mel Bush in 2000. The current line-up consists of Tania Davis (first violinist), Eos Counsell (second violin), Elspeth Hanson (viola), and Gay-Yee Westerhoff (cello). Hanson replaced original band member Havlie Ecker 2ho left in 2008 to have a child
What name do I have for you? Certainly there is not name for you In the sense that the stars have names That somehow fit them. Just walking around,
An object of curiosity to some, But you are too preoccupied By the secret smudge in the back of your soul To say much and wander around,
Smiling to yourself and others. It gets to be kind of lonely But at the same time off-putting. Counterproductive, as you realize once again
That the longest way is the most efficient way, The one that looped among islands, and You always seemed to be traveling in a circle. And now that the end is near
The segments of the trip swing open like an orange. There is light in there and mystery and food. Come see it. Come not for me but it. But if I am still there, grant that we may see each other
John Ashbery 1927-2017
John Ashbery Born: 28 July 1927, New York, USA Nationality: American Died: 3 September 2017, New York, USA
Ashbery was an art critic and poet. He is the most influential American poet of his time. He published over twenty volumes of poetry, winning almost every major American award for poetry including the Pulitzer Prize in 1978 for his collection “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.” Ashbery is renowned for his postmodern complexity and opacity and his work still proves to be controversial
Fall fell: so that’s it for the leaf poetry: some flurries have whitened the edges of roads
and lawns: time for that, the snow stuff: & turkeys and old St. Nick: where am I going to
find something to write about I haven’t already written away: I will have to stop short, look
down, look up, look close, think, think, think: but in what range should I think: should I
figure colors and outlines, given forms, say mailboxes, or should I try to plumb what is
behind what and what behind that, deep down where the surface has lost its semblance: or
should I think personally, such as, this week seems to have been crafted in hell: what: is
something going on: something besides this diddledeediddle everyday matter of fact: I
could draw up an ancient memory which would wipe this whole presence away: or I could fill
out my dreams with high syntheses turned into concrete visionary forms: Lucre could lust
for Luster: bad angels could roar out of perdition and kill the AIDS vaccine not quite
perfected yet: the gods could get down on each other; the big gods could fly in from
nebulae unknown: but I’m only me: I have 4 interests–money, poetry, sex, death: I guess
I can jostle those. . .
A. R. Ammons 1926-2001
A. R. Ammons Born: 18 February 1926, North Carolina, USA Nationality: American Died: 21 February 2001, New York, USA
Ammons was a poet and winner of the Annual Book Award for Poetry in 1973 and 1993. He wrote about humanity’s relationship to the natural world in both comic and solemn tones. Ammons’ poetry uses religious and philosophical ideas with natural scenes in a transcendental fashion
Take Care of Yourself 2007 Installation Art, Feminist Art Installation
A breakup letter via email was the starting point for her “Take Care of Yourself” installation. Originally it was created for the French Pavilion of the 2007 Venice Biennale. Taking the starting point of the final words of the email Calle asked over one hundred women to interpret the letter for her. She then presented the collected multimedia reactions as her installation. It echoes our emotional need to understand the hurt of a breakup. The collection of responses included an exhaustive analyzing of every word and phrase within the email to a totemic repeating of those final totemic words “Take care of yourself.”
Sophie Calle
Sophie Calle Conceptual Art, Feminist Art, Performance Art Born: 9 October 1953, Paris, France Nationality: French
Calle is a writer, installation artist, photographer, and conceptual artist. She is known for her use of arbitrary sets of constraints and for evoking the French literary movement Oulipo. Calle’s work often portrays human vulnerability and examines identity and intimacy
BOND Classical Pop Formed: 2000 Nationality: Australian
BOND
BOND is a string quartet formed by music producer Mike Batt and promoter Mel Bush in 2000. The current line-up consists of Tania Davis (first violinist), Eos Counsell (second violin), Elspeth Hanson (viola), and Gay-Yee Westerhoff (cello). Hanson replaced original band member Havlie Ecker 2ho left in 2008 to have a child.
A man and a woman lie on a white bed. It is morning. I think Soon they will waken. On the bedside table is a vase of lilies; sunlight pools in their throats. I watch him turn to her as though to speak her name but silently, deep in her mouth– At the window ledge, once, twice, a bird calls. And then she stirs; her body fills with his breath.
I open my eyes; you are watching me. Almost over this room the sun is gliding. Look at your face, you say, holding your own close to me to make a mirror. How calm you are. And the burning wheel passes gently over us.
Louise Glück
Louise Gluck Born: 22 April 1943, New York, USA Nationality: American
Glück is a poet, essayist, and winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize for Literature. While in high school she suffered from anorexia nervosa and later overcame the illness. Often described as autobiographical poet Glück’s work is best known for its emotional intensity and for drawing on mythology or nature to reflect modern life
Vanessa Mae Classical, Classical Pop Born: 27 October 1978, Singapore Nationality: Thai-British
Vanessa Mae
Mae is a violinist and has achieved album sales reaching several million, and in 2006 she was the wealthiest entertainer under 30. Mae also competed under the name Vanessa Vanakorn for Thailand in the 2014 Winter Olympics alpine skiing
BOND Classical Pop Formed: 2000 Nationality: Australian
BOND
BOND is a string quartet formed by music producer Mike Batt and promoter Mel Bush in 2000. The current line-up consists of Tania Davis (first violinist), Eos Counsell (second violin), Elspeth Hanson (viola), and Gay-Yee Westerhoff (cello). Hanson replaced original band member Havlie Ecker 2ho left in 2008 to have a child
Alexander Litvinovsky Jazz Born: 1 May 1962, Minsk, Belorussia Nationality: Belarusian
Alexander Litvinovsky
Litvinovsky is a composer of contemporary music. He works in a variety of genres including chamber music, stage production music, choral music, and electroacoustic art
Vanessa Mae Classical, Classical Pop Born: 27 October 1978, Singapore Nationality: Thai-British:
Vanessa Mae
Mae is a violinist and has achieved album sales reaching several million, and in 2006 she was the wealthiest entertainer under 30. Mae also competed under the name Vanessa Vanakorn for Thailand in the 2014 Winter Olympics alpine skiing.
LANDING 1989-Present Earth Art Earthwork Staten Island, New York, USA
Ukeles has been working on “LANDING”, a reclamation project, since 1989. At the 2200-acre site of Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island, New York, the project aims to make the site accessible to local people as both a work of art and open space. In 2001 the landfill was closed and the City Planning Department and Municipal Art Society began working with Ukeles and other designers to envision an end-use design for the site.
Mierle Laderman Ukeles
Mierle Laderman Ukeles Feminist Art, Performance Art, Conceptual Art, Earth Art Born: 1939, Colorado, USA Nationality: American
Ukeles is an artist based in New York City. She is best known for her feminist and service-orientated artwork which relates to the idea of process in conceptual art to domestic and civic maintenance. The Artist-in-Residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation she creates art that gives life to the essence of any urban centre with depictions of waste flows, sustainability, recycling, people, ecology and the environment
House with the Ocean View 2002 Performance Art Sink, bed, chair with mineral pillow, table, toilet, shower, pants and shirts in different colours, white towels, metal bucket, metronome, bar of natural soap, a bottle of rose water, a bottle of pure almond oil, a ladder of wood and butcher knives
For “House with the Ocean View” Abramovic spent 12 days in the Sean Kelly Gallery without eating, writing, or speaking. Within three “rooms” six feet off the ground, she slept, drank water, showered, used the bathroom, and gazed at viewers. Each day Abramovic wore a different coloured outfit. She could walk between the rooms but the ladders leading to the floor had rungs made of butcher’s knives. Abramovic ritualized the activities of daily life to the sound of a metronome focusing on self and simplicity without narrative or dialogue. “House with the Ocean View” marked the shift from the masochistic nature of her previous works to performances to the idea of presence and energy. There remains an element of danger, however, with the butcher knife ladders.
Marina Abramovic
Marina Abramovic Performance Art, Feminist Art, Body Art Born: 30 November 1946, Belgrade, Yugoslavia Nationality: Serbian-American
Abramović is a conceptual and performance artist, filmmaker, writer, and philanthropist. Her work explores endurance art, body art, and feminist art, the relationship between the performer and the audience, the limitations of the body, and the possibilities of the mind. Abramović has been active for over forty years and refers to herself as the ‘grandmother of performance art’. By bringing the active participation of the audience, focusing on confronting pain, blood and physical limitations of the body Abramović pioneered a new notion of identity. She founded the Marian Abramović Institute in 2007 as a non-profit foundation for performance art
Bryn Terfel Opera, Classical Born: 9 November 1965, Pant Glas, Wales Nationality: Welsh
Bryn Terfel
Terfel is a bass-baritone opera and concert singer. Initially known for the roles of Mozart, including Figaro, Leporello, and Don Giovanni, Terfel has since taken on the heavier roles, especially of Puccini and Wagner
Sometimes I can almost see, around our heads, Like gnats around a streetlight in summer, The children we could have, The glimmer of them.
Sometimes I feel them waiting, dozing In some antechamber – servants, half- Listening for the bell.
Sometimes I see them lying like love letters In the Dead Letter Office
And sometimes, like tonight, by some black Second sight I can feel just one of them Standing on the edge of a cliff by the sea In the dark, stretching its arms out Desperately to me
Sharon Olds
Sharon Olds Born: 19 November 1942, California, USA Nationality: American
Olds is a poet. She won the first San Francisco Poetry Center Award in 1980 and in 2013 the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Olds teaches creative writing at New York University where she was the director of the Creative Writing Program.
Down behind the dustbin I met a dog called Ted. ‘Leave me alone,’ he says, ‘I’m just going to bed.’
Down behind the dustbin I met a dog called Roger. ‘Do you own this bin?’ I said. ‘No. I’m only a lodger.’
Down behind the dustbin I met a dog called Sue. ‘What are you doing here?’ I said. ‘I’ve got nothing else to do.’
Down behind the dustbin I met a dog called Jim. He didn’t know me And I didn’t know him.
Down behind the dustbin I met a dog called Sid. He said he didn’t know me But I’m pretty sure he did.
Michael Rosen Born: 7 May 1946, Harrow, UK Nationality: English
Rosen is a children’s author and poet; he has written over 140 books. He as the Children’s Laureate from June 2007 to June 2009. He has also worked as a political columnist and TV presenter.
Alexander Litvinovsky Jazz Born: 1 May 1962, Minsk, Belorussia Nationality: Belorusian
Alexander Litvinovsky
Litvinovsky is a composer of contemporary music. He works in a variety of genre including chamber music, stage production music, choral music, and electroacoustic art.
He Xei 2011 Conceptual Art Porcelain The Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK
“He Xei” (meaning river crab) but in a complex homophonic system created to evade governmental detection, it also means censorship. It can aurally sounds like the term for harmonious. “He Xei” is a clever play on words implying the society of crabs/censorship is anything but harmonious. The hard-shelled creatures trample over each other yet the few who may escape are even more vulnerable as exemplified in 2014 when a visitor accidentally stepped on one and crushed it.
Ai Weiwei
Ai Weiwei Conceptual Art, Performance Art, Capitalist Realism Born: 28 August 1957, Beijing, China Nationality: Chinese
Ai Weiwei is a contemporary artist, documentarian, and activist. He grew up in harsh conditions due to the exile of his father. Ai Weiwei encapsulates political conviction through his many sculptures, photographs, and public work, making use of Chinese art forms to display Chinese political and social issues. He was allowed to leave China in 2015 and has since lived in Germany, the UK, and Portugal
Vanessa Mae Classical, Classical Pop Born: 27 October 1978, Singapore Nationality: Thai-British
Vanessa Mae
Mae is a violinist and has achieved album sales reaching several million, and in 2006 she was the wealthiest entertainer under 30. Mae also competed under the name Vanessa Vanakorn for Thailand in the 2014 Winter Olympics alpine skiing.
Inopportune: Stage One 2004 Installation Installation of various cars with lights Seattle Art Museum, Washington State, USA
“Inopportune: Stage One” featured nine Ford Taurus cars positioned in a sequence to achieve the effect of a single car flipping over through the air. Suggesting a beginning and end the first and last cars are on the ground and the other seven hover on cables suspended from the ceiling. Strewn with lights the scene has a vibrant kaleidoscope effect over its 90-meter length. Part of a series of installations with Cai exploring social and political associations and meanings the moving car is metaphorically symbolic of momentum and destruction. Cai aimed to provoke a dialogue surrounding terrorism and terrorist attacks and the car represents the unstable climate of terrorism and its unsettling atmosphere in the world.
Cai Guo-Qiang
Cai Guo-Qiang Installation Art, Conceptual Art, Earth Art, Performance Art, Postmodernism Born: 8 December 1957, Quanzhou, Fujian, China Nationality: Chinese
Cai is an artist; born in China he currently lives and works in New York City and New Jersey. Cai forged his way into international art stardom as one of the first Chinese artists to expose contemporary dialogues in Chinese art to the world. With the ground-breaking mediums of gunpowder and fireworks and spectacle into the art-marking process, his work is well-known for its ability to leverage fear and tension toward a common consideration of the beauty in destruction. His unique artistic language, in which art becomes a reckless action, has given him the role as one of our most innovative modern artists
Mike Oldfield New Age Born: 15 May 1953, Reading, Berkshire, UK Nationality: British
Mike Oldfield
Oldfield is a musician, composer, multi-instrumentalist, and songwriter, best known for his debut album Tubular Bells in 1973. Primarily a guitarist Oldfield also plays a range of instruments including keyboards and percussion, as well as doing vocals. Throughout his career, he has adopted an extensive range of styles such as progressive rock. World music, classical, ambient and new-age music
Alexander Litvinovsky Jazz Born: 1 May 1962, Minsk, Belorussia Nationality: Belarusian
Alexander Litvinovsky
Litvinovsky is a composer of contemporary music. He works in a variety of genres including chamber music, stage production music, choral music, and electroacoustic art.
Alexander Litvinovsky Jazz Born: 1 May 1962, Minsk, Belorussia Nationality: Belorusian
Alexander Litvinovsky
Litvinovsky is a composer of contemporary music. He works in a variety of genres including chamber music, stage production music, choral music, and electroacoustic art.
Glacial Rock Flower Garden 2016 Installation 150 tons of imported granite rock Chateau de Versailles, France
Eliasson was invited to create “Glacial Rock Flower Garden”, a site-specific installation, at the Chateau de Versailles in 2016. Eliasson took the opportunity to his spotlight onto climate change by including a triptych of water-related projects on the palace grounds. Consisting of 150 tons of granite rock, imported from Greenland, which had been ground down by glacial erosion. It surrounds a statue of Persephone, the goddess of spring, invoking the reflection on the loss of nature.
Olafur Eliasson
Olafur Eliasson Installation Art, Environmental Art, Institutional Critique, Relational Aesthetics, The Sublime in Art Born: 5 February 1967, Copenhagen, Denmark Nationality: Icelandic–Danish
Eliasson is an artist best known for his sculptured and large-scale installation art employing light, water, and air temperature to enhance the experience of the viewer. He has been involved in a number of public space projects, including the intervention Green river, carried out in various cities between 1998 and 2001. Eliasson was a professor at the Berlin University of the Arts from 2009 to 2014 and is currently an adjunct professor at the Alle School of Fine Arts in Addis Ababa. Eliasson’s studio in based in Berlin, Germany
Jezzie G 