Lux Lotus

Together Alone

I just got back from a screening of the new short film Alone. Directed by Gregory Orr, Alone is an exquisite meditation on the nature of solitude in the city. Ana was really stunning in the film, natch, and with its lush cinematography and costuming to boot, I'm sure it will be quite popular on the festival circuit, including its next stop in Cannes.

Cigarillos + Femmes de Paris

When someone invites me to Hudson Bar & Books for a few drinks and a little clandestine smoking, what can I do but say yes? I had the pleasure of doing just that with Ron Hogan, the editor of the literary weblog Beatrice.com last night. Ron has a book about American films of the 1970s coming out this fall and I was lucky enough to see the proofs, which look dazzling! He's also getting married at City Hall next month, which I think is a very stylish move.

He invited Pearl Abraham, author of the intriguing new novel The Seventh Beggar to join us, and she brought her equally fabulous friend Ines. Ines, who besides being just about to open a restaurant here in New York, is also the owner of a chic cafe called Morlang in Amsterdam that just so happens to be walking distance from the hotel I'll be staying at for the first couple days of next week. All in all, a serendipitously lovely and uncommonly charming evening.

Right now I'm also delighting in the spoils of two separate out-of-town houseguests in the past week: a lush Botanicus "Blue Bamboo" candle from Chris, and Femmes de Paris Vol.1, which technically Kevin forgot here, but y'know...

I'm headed out the door in a mo' to make my way downtown for an early screening of a film headed to Cannes and starring my gorgeous and ultratalented friend Ana, and then back to my apt. to do some work later on tonight. More tk, as always.

Soft Cell

I am bummed that I can't avail myself of the free art being given away through Nokia's Connect to Art program. J'adore: Louise Bourgeois, Nam June Paik, Osmo Rauhala, and (pictured) David Salle. Got a fancy model mobile? Download away...

The Smart Set: March 28 - April 3

From the Smart Set, my weekly round-up of books not bombs at premier literary weblog MaudNewton.com:

THURSDAY, 3.31: On the occasion of the centenary of John O'Hara's birth, NYU's Glucksman Ireland House presents an evening exploring the writer's life and work. Pete Hamill moderates a panel discussion that includes New Yorker editor Roger Angell, O'Hara's biographer Geoffrey Wolff, and novelist Thomas Kelly.  Sadly, no Liz Taylor, but it still sounds fabu. 7:30pm, $10; call 212.998.3950 for reservations (advised). Also of note, translators read French poems from the 20th Century in "A Celebration of French Poetry," featuring John Ashbery, Paul Auster (un-event-, but poetry in translation-related: whose daughter Sophie is - with the help of One Ring Zero - a poetic rocker now), Mary Ann Caws, Marcella Durand, Richard Howard, Pierre Joris, Ron Padgett, Marie Ponsot, Kristin Prevallet, Grace Schulman, and Cole Swensen, and a post-reading reception. 7:30pm, $10.

Read the rest. Where will I be? Ah, that's the question...

Get a Little Spring in Your Step

I made my reservation for next week's trip today. The Low Countries accent is very cute. I was trying to think of an image to build a post around, just to be visually-oriented for a change, and I was like, "Hmmmm...orange clogs?" Perhaps because I was just looking at an orange painting by Belgian Surrealist painter Rene Magritte, Hegel's Holiday. Or perhaps just because these are empirically darling.

Bound By The Red Thread

Yesterday I had an out-of-town guest to entertain on a rainy afternoon, so we went to see Born Into Brothels. The Academy Award-winning documentary tells the story of life in a notorious red-light district of Calcutta through the eyes of prostitutes' children, who are taught how to use a camera by visiting photographer Zana Briski. It was an extraordinary portrait of the cruelty and hope of human existence, and the images taken by the children are stunning. Prints and a book are available for purchase.

So that sort of thing was already on my mind (not that it isn't often: welcome to capitalism) when Jeffrey Yamaguchi, whose work I greatly admire, sent me a note today letting me know that his wife, Juhu Thukral, who runs the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center here in New York, and her colleagues are releasing a report tomorrow about indoor sex workers. Here is the press release:

For Immediate Release:
Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Contact: Juhu Thukral

Indoor Sex Workers Are Isolated And Fear Violence

Urban Justice Center Interviews U.S.-Born and Immigrant Sex Workers About Police Contacts

(New York City, March 30, 2005) - The Sex Workers Project (SWP) of the Urban Justice Center (UJC) has released the first-ever in-depth report in the U.S. examining indoor sex work. Behind Closed Doors: An Analysis of Indoor Sex Work in New York City, released today, includes interviews with sex workers who work independently or for brothels, escort agencies, dungeons, and private clubs. The report highlights the extreme violence that sex workers experience from customers, and the dangerous effects of isolation and stigma.

According to the report, 46% of sex workers experienced violence in the course of their work, and 42% had been threatened or beaten for being a sex worker. Additionally, 14% reported violence at the hands of the police, and 16% encountered sexual situations with the police. Sara, a respondent in the report, describes a client "who came in and had a knife . . . I was cornered and I was about to be attacked and raped . . . I didn't go to the police because it would be coming out about what I've been doing." "Many people are unsympathetic to prostitutes," says Juhu Thukral, Director of the SWP, "however, this level of violence is unacceptable, even if they are engaging in unlawful activity."

Leticia, another respondent, adds, "Just find a way to help us with the police . . . we need somebody to protect us when we get beat up. Around here, they don't arrest you, they just mess with you like they own you."

Eight percent of the report's respondents were trafficked into the country for prostitution. The trafficked women told of being threatened, beaten, raped, and having their money withheld by the traffickers. The respondents were ethnically diverse and included women, transgender women, and men. Sex workers interviewed ranged in age from 19 to 54. Forty percent were born outside the U.S. and its territories.

Shockingly, 67% of respondents got involved with sex work because they were unable to find other work which provided a living wage. Previous jobs included waitressing, retail, and domestic work. Immigrants without work permits saw sex work as their best economically viable option. The unlawful nature of most sex work often results in extreme isolation, which serves as a barrier to accessing legal, financial, educational, and other necessary services. Prostitutes explained that they feared arrest and its consequences, and expressed a need for peer support and substantive services.

New York City's quality of life initiatives have always caught prostitutes in their net. However, Thukral stresses that "these police operations result in arrests that destabilize the lives of many sex workers who are members of the working poor, and jeopardize other legal employment." "This activity comes at an extremely high cost to the public, and is a waste of valuable public resources," added Melissa Ditmore, a co-author of the report. "Stringent policing creates an environment of fear and isolation that prevents sex workers from coming forward when they are victims of violence and other crimes."

Thukral aims to have the City do two things: ensure that all violence against sex workers is taken seriously by law enforcement authorities; and offer in-depth and appropriate services that lead to long-term solutions. "There is clearly a need for a fact-based public discussion around the problems of police and violence that include the voices of sex workers themselves in order to effectively and productively address the needs of sex workers and the community's concerns."

The full report can be found at http://www.sexworkersproject.org or http://www.urbanjustice.org

Obviously, there's rarely a simple solution for complicated issues such as this one, but I do tend to fall on the civil libertarian side of the debate. And of course, the paying patrons and black market managers who make prostitution a viable career path for women are hardly held accountable in any meaningful way.

Noted, the reference to "the red thread" in the title is De Rode Draad, the union of choice for sex workers in the Netherlands (the image is from their site).

Construct, Destruct, Instruct

I find most all of Robert Birnbaum's interviews to be positively illuminating, and I particularly enjoyed this one with Nick Flynn. Flynn is a poet and the author of the memoir, Another Bullshit Night In Suck City, which details his experiences working in a Boston homeless shelter where his father was a frequent patron.

The great thing is that, while almost any traditional media coverage of Flynn's book would quite literally be like, "Oh yes, isn't that such a dramatic story? Well, that about sums it up," Birnbaum has the depth and the extra space to have an expansive, true conversation with writers. Very enjoyable indeed.

Here's what I loved most about this one:

Robert Birnbaum: In terms of what you want to do as a poet and writer, are you interested in movies, dance, drama?

Nick Flynn: It's funny you bring that up. I went to an old bookstore in NYC yesterday, 12th Street Books or something. I looked at a Rauschenberg retrospective. He's like the great collaborator. I'm teaching a class at Houston this spring on collaboration. And so I'm working with the art department, theater department, dance department, and we are inventing this class. I don't know what I am going to do. I am desperately trying to find a book about collaboration or about at least from my discipline. I have done a lot different collaborations with people. I did a play a year ago in New York. I have done dance performances.

RB: What do you mean?

NF: I did a collaboration with some dancers in New York and we did a thing at St. Mark's.

RB: What did you do?

NF: They put me on stage and made me dance. [both laugh] I had text. It was improvisational dance and so they started messing with me. I was just trying to read my text. And they came up and started flipping me over and doing all this stuff. I think it's real important to keep open to different forms and to see the possibilities within different disciplines. And see how they can feed each other. I have done a lot with artists. Artists have taken my poems and worked on them and done pieces with them. I have done visual stuff. There is a friend and we have been mailing things back and forth for five years now. A piece of wood, and we cut it up—my friend Michael Landis; we cut a piece of plywood in half and each take a piece and mail it back and forth and keep changing it, putting things on it. Erasing and changing. After a year we stop and do another one—for five years.

I'm quite fond of his sense of perspective and unusually creative approach.

Hot Shots (3.2.C)

Diane Arbus Revelations at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Larry Clark at International Center of Photography
"Portraits of an Age" at the Neue Galerie

Confetti at the Ready

Last night an old friend came in to town who I hadn't seen in two, three years. It's strange how out of a loop you can be if you steer clear of it long enough (the career path I tried on despite the poor fit for a couple of uncomfortable years). We went to Florent and he wined and dined me, in a most deluxe fashion, and told me about how exhilarating it is to go to St. Marten by yourself and a few other things that are, of course, unbloggable.

Today I was at a friend's place before we did a little sweep through the gallery district of far West Chelsea looking for some highly acquirable contemporary photography, and he told me about an email he got from a semi-public figure but didn't forward to me for fear it would end up on some out-there blog somewhere. As if! Obviously, I'd have posted it here...(I am being completely facetious, dear). Also, afterwards, I swear I saw King Neptune in the Half King.

Tonight my lovely boyfriend surprised me with an exquisite, absolutely electric blue leather tote and a little "modern patchouli", just 'cos. Divine. It seems like, every step I take outdoors, little buds are bursting forth at every turn and spring is about to go all flower bomb (And you know, if New York, like Viktor & Rolf's "Flower Bomb" fragrance, actually smelled like bergamot, rather than hot dogs, as was the case on 26th street today, well then, I might never leave).

Have I mentioned yet that I am totally feeling the love?

In semi-related news: The New York Times discovers that handbag exhibition I saw last year; Forget about the been-there, done-that, Gates project -- where's our flower carpet, New York? ...and 10 With Trigger - Then It Hit Me, which I've always been fond of, on both accounts.

Image source: Martina Mullaney at Yossi Milo Gallery.

New Wave, New Wavelength?

From an item entitled "Pop Ups Are The New Wave":

Life, for Jean-Luc Godard's 'children of Marx and coca-cola,' was an extended meditation on politics, pop culture and the vicissitudes of dating. Peter Horvath adapts the concerns of this generation and the filmic style in which they were rendered in his new work of net cinema 'Tenderly Yours.' Here, the story of Josephine--a contemporary French woman who 'detests money/ thinks herself a marxist/ and thinks she is too old for her age'--unfolds in two simultaneous Quicktime videos. The central window illustrates her brief encounter with a like-minded young man while the smaller, peripheral frame provides ambient and intimate asides in the form of colorful abstractions and pixilated close-ups. Nodding both to the early writings found in the journal Cahiers du Cinema and Lev Manovich's more recent Soft Cinema, 'Tenderly Yours' exploits net conventions to emulate the spontaneous, fragmented and naturalistic mode of new wave filmmaking. The question is whether the quandaries of the children of Marx and coca-cola are relevant to the kids these days, or if perhaps the generation to which Josephine belongs should claim new lineage.

[via Rhizome's excellent Net Art News]