Poem-A-Day #92 : And I Can Say

And I Can Say

Above the bar - a sort of haze on the television
a sport with a ball -

I make the same joke I always do about sportsballs and no one laughs -

There is a slippery moment - when I think I am more in tune
with the people in the now - a sort of - haze envelopes me and
I can say the things I want to say -

Let's talk about being away from this room -

The lack of noise outside the cars on the road and the crickets in the grass -
it's a calming tone - we are told it is a calming tone - it is a calming tone -

You want me to be hysterical - depressive - to have razors against my flesh -

The sound of breathing - of thinking about a word for 'this is not sad'
that is also a word for 'the mist on a lake in California right before dawn' - it doesn't exist
it exists outside of this place - a sort of haze in the mind

The Blank Screen

Jason Shulman - 2001: A Space Odyssey

The above image is a time elapse photo of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. It takes a familiar medium, film, and renders it unintelligible. There are objects within the image, but holding them for long becomes tenuous.

English photographer Jason Shulman has been getting a lot of press lately for these images. It began, as far as I could tell, with a piece in Wired on May 9th. From there, the story has been 'picked up' by various reblog sites. This trend of posting another sources news to your own website as if you came up with it is an odd internet for of the Associated Press that I'm both ok and really wary of. But that's another discussion.

J.M.W. Turner -
Rain, Wind, and Speed - The Great Western Railway (1844)

The images are beautiful. They recall the works of J.M.W. Turner, I have professed my love before.

In some of the photos you can make out distinct images from the movies. The above 2001 image, for instance clearly showcases the red light of Hal at the center of the frame.

And while they most strongly resemble Turner or more abstract painters like Rothko or even Pollack, I was immediately struck by an omission from the discussion.

From the Wired article:

Shulman lives and works in London, and typically creates sculptures. During the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics he decided to test an idea he had about photography, which basically involved shooting the Games without going to Russia. He trained a camera on his television and took long exposure photos of athletes in motion. Most of the events he recorded were brief, leading him to wonder what might happen if he shot longer stretches of action.

And I don't doubt that this is the inspiration that Shulman's idea originated from but...

Hiroshi Sugimoto - Akron Civic Theater, Ohio (1980)

This is a photo by Hiroshi Sugimoto taken in 1980. It is a long exposure of a movie screen playing a movie. As a result of the black and white film and long exposure the screen becomes a clean white omnipresent eye hovering over the audience that appear, albeit as nearly unrecognizable smears in their seats. He started this series in 1978. His description:

Different movies give different brightnesses. If it's an optimistic story, I usually end up with a bright screen; if it's a sad story, it's a dark screen. Occult movie? Very dark.

The Guardian ran a great gallery of this series on March 1 of this year.

Interestingly both the National and Tate galleries in London have Sugimoto pieces in their permanent collection. And there was a full exhibit of his work in 2004 at the Serpentine Gallery. Also in London. Where Shulman lives.

Hiroshi Sugimoto - Lightening Fields 128 (2008)

Now. I'm not calling this stealing. I'm not even going to really blast Shulman because artists can and should find inspiration where it lies and I don't think this is malicious or intentional.

Inspiration comes odd, when it comes. And it's not always clear even to the creator where the seed idea came from. And that's what I'm guessing occurred here.

Shulman can be excused for not knowing a photographer since he works mainly in sculpture. I don't know every writer, so I'm going to give him a pass.

The people writing articles about him on the other hand. These are people paid to look into topics. A quick search online brings up Sugimoto's work. And that work was featured in Wired in 2014. Sugimoto's work has been in Wired at least 5 times, the most recent one in January of this year. So I don't blame Shulman. I blame bad reporting.

Because Sugimoto's work is really well-known. His experiments in photography are diverse and well-documented. He spent a few years shooting electricity at photo-sensitive panels. He photographs wax figures in a way to make them look like living people. He's an odd dude.

Hiroshi Sugimoto - Fidel Castro (1999)

And that's the problem.

In all of this press about Shulman and his movie photos there is not one mention of Sugimoto. A Japanese man who has spent the better part of 60 years innovating and experimenting in his genre.

Let me be clear. Both works can, and should, be praised. They are working towards different ends. Shulman seems interested purely in what each film looks like filmed this way, in the aesthetic of the result. Sugimoto is interested in everything but the movie. He is interested in the rooms, the people, the eeriness of sitting in a room staring at nothingness for a few hours. He is interested in the time it took to film it, what it says about that time.

And this is where I will say something bad about Shulman. One of these artists is creating works that ask us to inspect ourselves and out space. The other is making a pretty picture.

Poem-A-Day #91 : Cole-Prophet

Cole-Prophet

It will happen suddenly - you will be walking
the sky will be blue and so clear - and the path
will be so very easy -

Across your path - a mass of monarch butterflies
their orangeness - paper burning in a fireplace -
they will beat about you until your lines erase -

And your body will cease to be -

Poem-A-Day #90 : Five Ages of Parmigiano Reggiano (after Massimo Bottura)

Five Ages of Parmigiano Reggiano (after Massimo Bottura)

     1
Here some cheese
in a shaker - or plastic container - feeling
for all the world
like sawdust

Put it on your pizza - on your pasta
it will taste like something full
will soak the grease

Pull itself from within and without

     2
When you make tortellini for the first time
you must sing a song

     3
Some vehicle-less wheels
sever themselves form shelving - they will go off to find horses to pull them

This will never be smooth - press your fingernail into the rind
it is like a candle or the skin of a pumpkin

Inside it is the color of squash - it looks like a tree chopped down
splinters itself and peels itself

     4
The milk is pure
it is a bucket a cloth wrapped around itself
a scarf a turban a broken promise of new life

It rests until it doesn't
until it forms itself around a center
the tiniest bacteria itching until a pearl coalesces into curd

Have you watched someone churn butter ?
how it's just liquid until it suddenly isn't
have you kissed that moment ?

     5
What knife
in the heart

When you need that spread
it will come

Paolo Terzi for The Talks

Poem-A-Day #89 : Impressive Instant

Impressive Instant

One eye on the patch of skin at the base of my neck - one on the dog being dragged across the street
its legs strung up in the leash - there is a car coming

The dog has stopped walking the man is pulling and laughing - a woman with a cigarette dangling from her mouth says that both will be hit

I feel like this moment is being binge watched - can it absorb - this compression

There is too much being held by this otherwise dull moment - in reality not much is released

The dog is fine - somewhere the man too - we finished our cocktails within the hour and the night crept over the mountains unsure of its place in the new spring

What is so interesting about décolletage - about the smell of water on dry earth - the color of whiskey floating in the corner of an eye

Poem-A-Day #88 : Gay Poem

Gay Poem

I stand in front of the mirror and I put my gay on :

It sleeps in a silver casket on the edge of the sink
near the toothpaste :

A cat coiled into itself möbius ass to mouth :

I want to tail something and unattached everything else
the sound of it could be a bottle under pressure giving in :

I christen this ship queer as fuck :

What do I look like when I sleep and am without my gay
do you recognize me in those lights
is it blue or some other field :

Turn to open sea full steam something something faucet away :

Ava Gardner touches up her face

Poem-A-Day #87 : Tomorrow

Tomorrow

Tomorrow the book will be done
Tomorrow I will be handsome
Tomorrow the clothes will fit
Tomorrow the car will stop coughing
Tomorrow everyone will be younger
Tomorrow I will have kisses
Tomorrow the TV will say I love you
Tomorrow money will flow this direction
Tomorrow elections will not matter
Tomorrow the cat will learn a skill
Tomorrow sugar will be healthy
Tomorrow this will all be new
Tomorrow this will all begin again
Tomorrow the feet will know the direction
Tomorrow the world will still embrace me