Natalie.bueno.vasquez

By Tillie Walden

My graphic novel Spinning has been out now for over a month. I think. It’s actually a little hard to remember. Other authors may relate to this feeling - before your book is published, it feels like it’s never going to come out and the world is acting against you. And then when it finally comes out, it feels like its been there forever.

I’ve been traveling around with Spinning, talking to classes full of fidgeting kids, signing books with lines of people who are eager to discover what I actually look like, and getting late night dinners with bookstore owners after a whirlwind evening of talking about myself. Spinning is a graphic novel about growing up as a  competitive figure skater. I talk about the expectations and challenges of being a young girl in that sport, while also dealing with coming out of the closet in Texas.

This is my first real book tour. I’m only 21, which tends to lead to agonizing expressions and eye rolls from a lot of older authors. And being a young, gay woman on a book tour for my graphic memoir has been exactly what you might expect: bizarre and wonderful.

It’s bizarre because so many people are surprised by what I have to say. They think that because I’m so young I don’t have enough real experiences to share. And that’s the moment where I launch myself into stories and use every tactic I’ve ever learned about public speaking to show them I do know what I’m doing. I tell them about moments in Spinning, about how I knew I was gay when I was 5, about the grueling practices and competitions, about how art gave me a connection to myself and a career at the same time. And I talk about how publishing a memoir is so healing because it let’s others hold your memories with you.

After I’m done baring my soul to audiences, people come up to me. They talk to me, they ask me questions, and they tell me about themselves. There was a father who thanked me for being a young successful lesbian that his daughter could look up to. There was the young woman who was having a hard day and simply cried with me. There was a young boy who aspired to one day draw Lumberjanes and wanted to know how he could make that happen. And then there were all the queer teens who simply wanted to share a piece of themselves with me after I had with them.

I think a lot about these moments. And I think about how what really matters about Spinning is not necessarily that it has queerness in it, but that it was made by me, a real queer person. That’s what I see people tapping into. And so much of the conversation about diversity seems to revolve around the content of our books, when really in my mind the focus should be entirely on the creators. True diversity comes from diverse voices.

I think about the queer kids along the way who have shown me their own comics, or who have shared their aspirations to create one day. And they often ask me if they should do a memoir, of if they should try and write a hard, honest story about themselves. I can see that they want to be a part of something, that they want to have an impact. But I always tell them the same thing. If you’re queer and you’re making things, your only job is to make what you want. We benefit from it all. The happy fantasies and the crime novels and the memoirs and the fan fiction. Diversity doesn’t require some hardened, tragic, real life perspective. It only requires that diverse people have a platform to share stories in any form that they want. In Spinning, I wanted to talk about the world of competitive figure skating from my own perspective. I wanted to talk about bullies, my first love, the dangers and beauty of childhood, and finding your identity in a sport where individuality loses you medals. Spinning is a piece of me. I drew every page with care and honesty. At times it was scary to share such a personal story, but I’m so glad I did.

Tillie Walden is a two-time Ignatz Award–winning cartoonist from Austin, Texas. Born in 1996, she is a recent graduate from the Center for Cartoon Studies, a comics school in Vermont. Her comics include The End of Summer and I Love This Part, an Eisner Award nominee. tilliewalden.com

Spinning is available for purchase.

audsbot:

confexionery:

lieutenantriza:

my favorite thing i’ve learned in college is that way back in ancient china there was this poet/philosopher guy who wrote this whole pretentious poem about how enlightened he was that was like “the eight winds cannot move me” blahblahblah and he was really proud of it so he sent it to his friend who lived across the lake and then his friend sends it back and just writes “FART” (or the ancient Chinese equivalent) on it and he was SO MAD he travels across the lake to chew his friend out and when he gets there his friend says “wow. the eight winds cannot move you, but one fart sends you across the lake”

i googled this bc i desperately wanted this to be real, and guess what…it is.

the dude’s name was su dongpo (also known as su shi). his original poem went like this:

稽首天中天，

毫光照大千，

八風吹不動，

端坐紫金蓮

(Humbly bowed my head below all skies
Minutest lights shine through my deepest bounds
Immovable by strong winds from eight sides
Upon purplish gold lotus I seated straightly by the low mound) (x)

on which his friend wrote “放屁” (fart, literally), and you know the rest.

(here’s a chinese source for the skeptics)

(via @chanderclear, but this reblog has delicious delicious sourcing)

In 2009, a group of artists gathered with one idea – to promote movement and Trans-border exchange in Africa. With four editions completed, many miles logged, and countless social interventions encountered and documented, photographer and Invisible Borders founder, Emeka Okereke reflects here on image making, exchange and art’s place for the everyday person on the African continent. Can art’s inception and realisation, be inclusive? Can it exist for more than its own sake? How does it operate within public spaces?

As he prepares for the upcoming fifth edition of the Trans-African project, and its most ambitious program to date – a road journey through 21 countries in Africa and Europe, he shares this thinking piece as well as news and how to get involved through their current Indiegogo fundraising campaign which closes on April 23, 2014.

From the Diary of a Border-Being

by Emeka Okereke

© Emeka Okereke. La Nouvelle Expression, Doulala, Cameroon (Invisible Borders, 2012).

Reality Can Be Synthesised

I am sitting in a moderately furnished apartment, in the living room precisely. There is a flower vase right before me, on top of my desk – with flowers, yes. Only that these flowers are synthetic and not the real thing. It got me reflecting…

The extent to which reality could easily be synthesised in a bid to approach or reproach its inherent substance…

For more than 20 days, I have been on the road, together with eight other participants. We are artists – photographers, writers, filmmakers and even one who simply calls himself a visual artist.  The project is called Invisible Borders, and as the name seems to imply, it is all about rendering the ‘Visible Borders’ invisible, flattening it, blurring it. But in actuality, the experiences gathered after three years and three editions of the trip, suggests that the name of the project could be seen at most as encompassing different layers and aspects, or at worst, a very vague term.

Here we are travelling through borders by road from one African country to the other, starting from Lagos. We are stuck in our van, with our van – a box in every sense of the word. A box that seems pleasant to be in for the first-timers of the trip especially during the first few days but becomes something to escape from towards the middle and end of the trip; a van which dangles between extreme poles of being an asset and yet a massive liability.

I am forced to evaluate our position in all of this especially, when seen in the context that social-political membranes could be pierced through artistic interventions. In order words, art can become a tangible social intervention.

That brings me back to the flower vase standing before me now. And even though this vase is made of real glass, it carries a synthetic flower, a replica that by the intention of whoever placed it here should offer the same beauty, pleasure or whatever as the real flower. Well, perhaps it could, or at most suggest it. It of course can never be mistaken for the real thing, but its performative value can never be neglected either. It is an intervention in reality that could spark an argument, or sensitise one to a certain consciousness. This flower might not offer me the beauty of a real flower, but it might propel me to want to want to know the real flower, in this case, it (the flower) is not as synthetic as it comes off, especially by the virtue of its metaphorical values.

I like to see things this way, the non-materiality of reality. The real is not in the substance but in the energy, which assembles the substances into existence. To that effect, our travel across border is beyond the physical act, no matter how sensational an adventure can sound or be. What strikes as most impressionable is the performative value of this journey. We are a fiction, in other people’s reality. No matter what we do, we will always be a pretence of that reality when seen from the point of view of those whose everyday existence we interfere or intersect with. But have we not by this intersection created a version of reality both for ourselves and for the others, a sort of a third dimension but something much more remarkable to both parties respectively?

Public Space, More Of An Intricate Network

I am of the strong opinion that art practices and process should aim to reach out to the ‘everyday person’ and most importantly in the public space. But as we travel, I am compelled to reflect on what public space means; it is not so much the physical space as it is the social space of the people who occupy that physical space. Indeed if we should refer to the immateriality of reality, then it suffices to say that the physical space in itself is a derivative of the intricate networks of events, perception, personalities embodied by the people within the space – this is the real Public Space and every work that intends to exist or work with the public space must put into consideration or dialogue the everyday reality by which the physical space is a function. The physical space is a function of the social space, and the social space is in turn a product of the immaterial radiations of those who occupy it.

Therefore, as we progress on this discourse surrounding borders, it becomes imperative not to undermine the performative nature of this intervention as a philosophical foothold and to inculcate it into the aesthetics of representation. Our objective therefore would be to constantly look for ways to present this project as an intervention within the everyday reality of the regular inhabitants of any given geography taking into account the element of spontaneity and improvisation, which are the core ingredients of non-curated interactions.

© Emeka Okereke. St George and the Fallen Dragon (performed by Christain Nyampeta). Ontisha, Nigeria (Invisible Borders, 2012).

We Are Masters of Improvisation

If today I were asked what exactly is contemporary Africa? I would first of all begin to talk of radiations, a kind of energy which flows through the continent like a continuous line. This energy, this radiation is indeed what a whole lot of people tend to coin words to define. It has been there from the onset, and no matter how time changes, it surfaces in myriad forms, it is ever constant and re-inventive in nature, it permeates everything and everyone whose feet are rooted in the soil of the continent and thus has long since become our nature – subconsciously. This radiation gives rise to the shared reality of the people of this continent, but at the same time is nourished and fine-tuned by the struggle to circumvent unfavourable situations. It is what gives rise to the ‘arbitrary’ indefinable nature of existence in the continent. This energy is the unequivocal tendency towards spontaneity, the sheer extent of improvisation – that which flaws any form of predefined statistics. It is said that it is in Africa that the weatherman is always wrong. Why? Because naturally people live shoulder to shoulder with the moment and between two moments there are one billion ways of being.

Living in this reality is like being in a space where everything is non-linear, shapeless, yet this is the shape because it works. It reevaluates the defined and invigorates the stagnated. It momentalises every interaction in such a way that it seems far-fetched to base one’s reason of action on the awareness of the past or the assumptions of the future. This however does not mean that people do not make plans but this planning is never incapacitated by predefined notions, every moment is a stand-alone regardless of the fact that one leads to the other.

If there is anything like contemporary African art, it is those creations that are cognisant of this element of spontaneity and improvisation, which tends to work with, and draw from it the possibility of alternative forms and aesthetics. Therefore “being African” is to blur the lines between possible and impossible rendering the very state of “being” indefinable.

This radiation, this energy permeates everything but manifests prominently through the everyday space of the African people – the public space, where all the drama of living and co-existing is symbolised. Consequently, our work over the years followed this trajectory and hinged on depicting the exchange, the interaction of people and things within the public space; looking at what might be dismissed as banal, but by the act of “putting a frame to them”, we extract them from the ordinary. Moreover, we are consistently conscious of the fact that no click is a waste as far as posterity is in consideration.

Therefore our approach to imagery goes beyond making “beautiful photographs” or the need to show astuteness in photographic skills or even capturing the “decisive moments”. For us, the real story – often left out in the quest for blatant headlines – is embedded in the indecisive moments. We are much more interested in how the approach to imagery mirrors the reality that we are immersed in, rather than how images define this reality.

We are in transition towards another era as by virtue of our present circumstance we perfect the act of improvisation becoming a master of it by the minute. In this energy, which is becoming ever assertive, we find the vestiges of stagnation and the wake of creative vigorousness. The African public space has come to symbolise that spirit of dynamism that is as a result of the playing-out of everyone’s creative attempt at survival. It has become the heritage of today’s struggle to transcend the limitations for which her people have always been defined. It has come to become our studio, our space of work and our core philosophy.

© Emeka Okereke. Dilemma of the New Age. Aba, Nigeria (Invisible Borders, 2012).

Aesthetics, Presentation and Interpretation

In the past years, what has become challenging is not just the struggle to permeate the implications of borders, but also (1) in what ways to use the different media at our disposal to effectively question and invigorate discussions about limitations in Trans-African exchange (2) how to present and interpret the project in such away as to convey the true experiences of the journey as a performative endeavour for which the process of the journey is in essence the outcome.

It is rightly said that it all began as a photographic project, but over the past years it has evolved beyond the term “photography”, as writers, filmmakers and art historians began to play a major role in the discourse.  This came with its challenges as many people continue to see the project as solely a photographic one, thereby neglecting or paying little importance to the literary and filmic aspect of the project. It is indeed deliberate that we have had only few exhibitions where we had to put up photographic prints on a (white) wall.

As we progress from one edition to the other, so does our experience, and we have come to the point where we realise that the idea of borders could act as a double-edged sword, therefore must be approached meticulously. It could easily play us against our dogma. The naivety that borders are something tangible and eradicable. We have come to realise that borders are what happen when an individual or a group of people decides to transcend the norm. Therefore the subjects of this project are first and foremost the participants and the very first intention to go beyond the norm – the act of becoming a fiction in other people’s reality using themselves as the proverbial guinea pig. Furthermore, there are those who we meet in their everyday reality – a crossbreed of realities occur and the offspring of this crossbreed is a circle of deconstructed dogmas and freshly acquired perceptions.

These things happen at random, and at a pace that could never be likened to a normal routine – we are constantly in roller-coaster mode. We make plans and we counterplan, to an extent that haphazardness becomes our orderliness. It is never realistic to see the trip as one definite thing, it encompasses everything, failure compliments success and vice versa. It is where “wrong” is not easily written off as the opposite of what is right, but could be seen as its precursor or its consequence.

When we travel on the road trip we see flashes of images and not one single photograph or two, therefore it is completely impossible to talk of a selection of images in this context. How can we “freeze” a moment when we are swamped with infinite moments?

Sometimes the image made does not justify the experience lived, and this amounts to a certain frustration, the shortcoming of the camera, the lens, the view and the limitations of materiality: the window screen shielding you from all the expanse out there, the van constantly moving and bumping, your position displacing at 100 miles per hour (and so are your thoughts) – all of that is lost to the click of the camera. Therefore the indecisive-moment images tell the story much more than the decisive.
The true nature of the African Space is that swarming with unquantifiable moments carrying in each one of them an integral part of the people’s existence and by that, their history. Therefore, every click of the camera is history in the making.
In photographing the “banal”, we tend to focus on those tiny moments, which give the “headlines” their backbones. Our concept is basically simple: to highlight the everyday interaction between people and the space that they occupy, and with time and consistency we would have created an anthropological archive of how people shared in their various modes of co-existence – the beauty, the harmony as well as the many contradictions.

The near-best form of presenting this project so far would be an installation that depicts a performance of imagery rather than a succession of meticulously curated photographs.  We are not interested in the photographic nature of imagery but in its performative nature, that which suggest the process as an important precursor to a conclusion, there will be no conclusion without the process, which led to it, there will be no decisive moment without the myriad of indecisive moments sandwiched in between. We ought to make installations that convey that feeling of being overwhelmed with images upon images as we experience from the interior of the moving vehicle, but more so because this is the reality of the African public space.

This became the inspiration for our installation at the Biennale Benin 2012, where we came up with the idea of recreating a suggestive replica of the interior of the van as we have experienced it during the trip, using the relics of the actual van since we drove in the van from Lagos to Cotonou for the festival.  The installation also featured reconstructed objects that we were obliged to use (or things that used us), such as the road signs, the checkpoint barricades etc. There was equally a large plasma screen on which images and texts from the artists were displayed in a loop – flashes of images after images, with texts. The display was comprised of the actual photographic works by photographers, photo essays that were a joint venture between the photographers and the writer Emmanuel Iduma, as well as photos of participants while on the trip. We created a “pool” of images, which tend to convey a feeling of being submerged in the experience of the trip through images rather than emphasising on the individual approach of the artists.

A note from my diary on evening of the installation reads thus:

“We are much more interested in conveying the feeling and atmosphere within the van as we journey thousands of miles traversing landscapes and people of immeasurable numeric, that feeling of wanting to take in everything in a gulp of a click yet the picture falls short of conveying anything close to what is lived. How can we convey this particular experience, which transcends the photographers’ ability to settle on a particular frame, a particular scene out of thousands?”

Having said this, it is therefore imperative to understand that we aim to go further than the act of image-making, but to seek ways to put them to use as a performative tool, to set in motion its ability of being a strong implement of sensitisation. We are constantly asking the never-ending question: How can photography be used in such a way, as it becomes a tangible act of social intervention rather than art for art’s sake? How can also “seeing” with the eyes carry the entire body along?

I believe that this is the stage we find ourselves today. We do not lack the energy nor the vigour to create or be inventive; what we need in abundance is the sensitisation towards the myriad forms that this creative energy could manifest.

I believe we will head in the direction of an answer when as photographers; we begin to perform images, rather than make them.

–

All images courtesy of Invisible Borders and the artist, Emeka Okereke.

Thanks so much to Vivek Haldar for his fantastic testimonial for our new line of gapingvoid laptop stickers, which I’m quoting in full, below [Photo- Vivek's laptop.]:

I’ve been a fan of Hugh MacLeod’s work since the early 2000s, back when he was actually making cartoons on the backs of business cards and putting them up on gapingvoid.com. Back when gapingvoid.com looked much simpler.

I remember when he broke out of the card format. When he first used color. I adored how he mixed dark, caustic bitterness with a tinge of humor and hope. (There are times in grad school when one really needs that.)

I took color printouts of his cartoons and stuck them on my cubicle walls. I felt somewhat guilty about him not making anything off that, but then, the real prints were kind of expensive. I bought his books to redeem myself, but they were worth it on their own.

So when he came out with something I had been looking for for a while, a unique decal for my laptop, at a price I didn’t have to think too hard about, I jumped at it. The landscape looks barren when the fifty laptops around the conference room all sport combinations of the same ten stickers.

In nearly a decade, during which time he has given me something cool and new to look at nearly every day, he has made less than a hundred dollars from me. That’s a ridiculously small amount of money given the consistent pleasure I have derived from his work over a long period of time. But that’s emblematic of the new economy.

As MacLeod himself says, “Have something to say, have something to sell”. He lives that. And I thank him.

That’s very kind, Vivek, thanks again. Some thoughts:

1. I went and posted Vivek’s story because I wanted to show y’all how yeah, Vivek pretty much nailed the gapingvoid business model.

And pretty much nails how most of content marketing in general works, besides. Textbook.

You have to love them every day, even if they don’t buy from you every day.

Hell, even if it takes years, sometimes…

In an ever-faster-churning world, it’s an easy lesson to forget.

2. The thought occurs to me, that besides giving the customer something cool and unique to visually seperate his computer from everyone else’s,  a good laptop sticker is really a piece of “portable office art”, if used correctly.

A great way to spread a message to, or start a conversation with the outside world, without being too pushy.

Like I said, it’s a thought…

Greetings from Australia, where anyone following my tweets, pix and links to interviews will know I am, as ever when here, loving the place. I keep having little nagging thoughts that I should write a blog – about my meeting with the PM, about the kamikaze politics of the ruling Labor Party’s leadership struggles, about the dislocation between economic numbers – good – and polling numbers – bad, about the fact ex PM Paul Keating was so right to place Australia as part of Asia, about the Lions, about the excellent depression and anxiety campaign, Beyond Blue, about some of the interesting interviews questions, about etc etc etc – but the etc always got in the way.

Then overnight I get an interesting email to remind me of home, and to remind me that every now and then it is good to give the blog over to others. So take the floor the creators of a new social networking platform, Born To Connect, which has been developed by a group of students at the University of Hull, and who took the liberty of putting the following in my own words.

The website is targeted specifically at serving those who suffer from any type of mental illness/disorder. Its main goal is to prevent the social isolation caused by the stigma of suffering from a mental illness/disorder. This problem can be resolved by providing members with the opportunity of liaising with one another, offering support, forming friendships or romantic relationships, if desired. My understanding is, that this social platform is the first of its kind in this country that provides a fusion of social networking, online dating and most importantly, peer support.

Membership to Born To Connect is entirely free for its users, since their objective is not profit motivated, it is primarily to raise awareness for those that have been diagnosed with similar illnesses/disorders.

There are a vast number of features that are available for members at Born To Connect, which allow users to message other individuals who also have a mental illness. Support is available instantly through their instant messaging service whereby users can message other online users immediately and therefore one is never short of help if they are experiencing problems. Users can also use the search bar to search for those who have the same diagnoses as them. They can get in touch with those who understand the world in the same light as them, or by talking to a member who has joined the website specifically to offer support.

I believe that those who suffer from mental illnesses/disorders require more support and should not be shunned away, and I believe that the social platform that has been developed will aid them in achieving this. I would like to offer Born To Connect my full endorsement and I highly recommend them as a potential platform for people that suffer from mental illnesses.

If you have any questions feel free to contact Born To Connect at the following e-mail address. I would like to wish this new venture every success for the future.

Born To Connect E-mail: borntoconnect@outlook.com

Ps … The other reason for non blogging has been jetlag which has not been helped by middle of the night phone calls with my friends from the Albanian Socialist Party, who have just won a landslide victory in the elections there. Maybe another time I will tell the story of the guy who persuaded me to go and help put together their campaign. it is another story of how social media is changing the world. For now, I am just really pleased that Edi Rama will be PM, and that I got to know a fantastic (small) team who I think can do the job of helping develop the potential of this poor, fascinating country.

by Elizabeth Kiem

Should the cicadas arrive just in time for your wedding—biblical, unexpected, and yet, routine as clockwork—there’s nothing to do but carry on with the ceremony. Come hell or, in fact, high water.

If the enemy is in range, so are you.' - Infantry Journal-
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'It is generally inadvisable to eject directly over the area you just bombed.' - US.Air Force Manual -
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'Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword, obviously never encountered automatic weapons.' - General MacArthur -
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'You, you, and you ... Panic.  The rest of you, come with me.' - U.S. Marine Corp Gunnery Sgt.-
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'Tracers work both ways.' -  U.S. Army Ordnance Manual-
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'Five second fuses only last three seconds.' -Infantry Journal -
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The three most useless things in aviation are: Fuel in the bowser; Runway behind you; and Air above you. -Basic Flight Training Manual-
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'Any ship can be a minesweeper. Once.' - Maritime Ops Manual -
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'Never tell the Platoon Sergeant you have nothing to do.' - Unknown Marine Recruit-
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'If you see a bomb technician running, try to keep up with him.' -USAF Ammo Troop-
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'Yea, Though I Fly Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I Shall Fear No Evil.  For I am at 50,000 Feet and Climbing.' - Sign over SR71 Wing Ops-
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'You've never been lost until you've been lost at Mach 3.' -Paul F. Crickmore (SR71 test pilot)-
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'The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire.' -Unknown Author-
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'If the wings are traveling faster than the fuselage it has to be a helicopter -- and therefore, unsafe.' - Fixed Wing Pilot-
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'When one engine fails on a twin-engine airplane, you always have enough power left to get you to the scene of the crash.' -Multi-Engine Training Manual-
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'Without ammunition, the USAF is just an expensive flying club.' -Unknown Author-
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'If you hear me yell;"Eject, Eject, Eject!", the last two will be echos.' If you stop to ask "Why?", you'll be talking to yourself, because you're the pilot.' -Pre-flight Briefing from a 104 Pilot-
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'What is the similarity between air traffic controllers and pilots? If a pilot screws up, the pilot dies; but If ATC screws up, .... the pilot dies.' -Sign over Control Tower Door-
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'Never trade luck for skill.' -Author Unknown-
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The three most common expressions (or famous last words) in military aviation are: 'Did you feel that?' 'What's that noise?'  and 'Oh S...!' or (appended from the Arkansas Air National Guard):"Hold my beer and watch this!" -Authors Unknown-
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'Airspeed, altitude and brains. Two are always needed to successfully complete the flight.' -Basic Flight Training Manual-
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'Mankind has a perfect record in aviation - we have never left one up there!' - Unknown Author -
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'Flying the airplane is more important than radioing your plight to a person on the ground incapable of understanding or doing anything about it.' - Emergency Checklist-
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'The Piper Cub is the safest airplane in the world;  it can just barely kill you.' - Attributed to Max Stanley (Northrop test pilot) -
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'There is no reason to fly through a thunderstorm in peacetime.' -Sign over Squadron Ops Desk at Davis-Monthan AFB, TUCSON, AZ-
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'If something hasn't broken on your helicopter, it's about to.' - Sign over Carrier Group Operations Desk-
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'You know that your landing gear is up and locked when it takes full power to taxi to the terminal.' - Lead-in Fighter Training Manual -
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As the test pilot climbs out of the experimental aircraft, having torn off the wings and tail in the crash landing, the crash truck arrives. The rescuer sees a bloodied pilot and asks, 'What happened?'  The pilot's reply: 'I don't know, I just got here myself!'
Remember: there are more airplanes in the sea, than submarines in the air.