Visitations after Katrina

These are a few pictures that I was able to find from my travels to New Orleans in January (my computer recently crashed and I lost most pictures...but here are a few left over). There are many more back home and several detailed books compiled by the New Orleans newspaper chronologically outlining the events of the Hurricane. The lower 9th ward was a wasteland...out of some tens of thousands of homes, only 3 or so survived (the number was below 10). I did a "post-katrina" tour which opened my eyes to many outrages: victims being given only 10 thousand dollars to rebuild their homes, the amount of time it took for any help to actually arrive, etc.




This is the markings of the height of the water when the flooding occurred.



If you notice the "X" on the front of the house, this is significant of when the support came to help. As described on the front of other houses, there are 4 areas to write within the "X"/square. On the top marked the date they arrived, one side marked who came, another marked (possibly) the time, and the bottom had a number which indicated how many dead dogs, cats or people were inside.


But their marching bands are always rocking on...all in uniform it reminds me of the future patient-musicians


These are everywhere.

it's all in the attitude

some selected images from the fantastic portfolio of 'South African' photographer Roger Ballen
see http://www.rogerballen.com/

of water and refugees from the real life

Gini and I were discussing some of our visual memories from Hurricane Katrina. A picture search has come up with some remarkable images that tell the story of both the space and costume of those in detainment when the Republic falls apart, of Marat/Sade.

credits (top to bottom):

1-11, 20: Alan Chin/Gamma. New Orleans. 2005.

12: Houston, TX., 9/2/2005 -- Hurricane Katrina survivors sheltered in the Red Cross shelter at the Astrodome reflect on their losses. FEMA photo/Andrea Booher

13: New Orleans, La., 9/3/05 -- Evacuees from New Orleans are taken to the airport and those needing medical attention are treated by members of FEMA's DMAT teams. Photo by: Liz Roll FEMA#14772

14: Photo by: Liz Roll FEMA#14767

15: New Orleans, LA, 08/31/05 -- Residents on the side of the road near the Superdome (not shown) waiting to be rescued. The entire population of New Orleans was displaced as a result of Hurricane Katrina and the breaks in the levees which flooded most of the city. Photo by Jocelyn Augustino/FEMA

16: Houston, TX, September 2, 2005 -- A physician on her way to the Red Cross drops off food and diapers for displaced storm victims at the Houston Astrodome. Stockpiles of food, water and ice were brought into the Astrodome for the people who have arrived from New Orleans in a massive FEMA organized bus caravan. Photo by Ed Edahl/FEMA

17: unknown

18: Houston, TX., September 2, 2005 -- Hurricane survivors in the Astodome continue to search for missing loved ones. Approximately 18,000 hurricane Katrina survivors are housed in the Red Cross shelter at the Astrodome and Reliant center. The City of New Orleans is being evacuated following hurricane Katrina and rising flood waters. FEMA photo/Andrea Booher

19: Eric Gay/AP. Around midnight, August 28, 2005. New Orleans Superdome. At YahooNews.

We were talking costumes the other day . . .

. . and Gini mentioned Tammy Faye, recently passed away RIP. Click on her picture for a short video from MSNBC. (it takes a while to load, and after the requisite commercial)

on the subject of distortions, here is another star in that constellation, Amanda Lepore

. . . and she showed up at the opening of the exhibit “Men, War & Peace” juxtaposing photos by James Nachtwey and David LaChapelle, take a look at the photogallery at that address

music again: this one is for you Joma!

funny where research takes us: this is Sade!

the legacy of the music . . .

some excerpts found on YouTube:
Homage to Marat (Royal Shakespeare Company)



Corday's Arrival in Paris (Royal Shakespeare Company)

Death's Triumph (Royal Shakespeare Company)




film trailer (Royal Shakespeare Company)


urls:
Homage to Marat
Corday's Arrival in Paris

and some curiousities . . .

Gini keeps reading

Selected Writings of De Sade, selected and translated by Margaret Crosland. Peter Owen Limited, London, 1964 excerpts from: Dialogue entre un pretre et un moribond (entire), Les 120 journees de Sodome ou l'Ecole du Libertinage, Justine, Contes et Fabliaux d'un Troubadour Provencal du XVIIIeme Siecle, Aline et Valcour ou le Roman Philosophe, Discours prononce a la fete decernee par la Section des Piques aux manes de Marat de le Pelletier (entire), Juliette, ou les Prosperites du Vice . . . at Amazon

Huet, Marie-Helene. Rehearsing the Revolution: The Staging of Marat's Death 1793-1797. trans. Robert Hurley. University of California Press: Berkeley, 1982. . . . at Amazon

our world of the detained: Baghdad

The detention facility at Forward Operating Base Justice in Baghdad's Khadimiya neighborhood holds nearly a thousand men arrested in raids. July 2007.

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/07/19/world/middleeast/20070720_DETAIN_slideshow_1.html

revisiting the big house in Fellini's Satyricon

see the excerpt on YouTube, especially the last 15 s

Gini and David meet in a heady mix of anxieties . . .

. . . and I am reminded about Societas Raffaello Sanzio and that excellent show Genesi, Museum of Sleep by Romeo Castellucci that I saw years ago . . . are there lessons here? Some stills gathered from the web,

traumwerk.stanford.edu:3455/MichaelShanks/287

http://www.theatre-contemporain.net/spectacles/genesi/

when you gotta go, you gotta gogh

I call this "the ruins of a toilet that once was". This was actually a public facility in a bathroom in Barcelona. I don't understand this. How did the toilet get this way? Do they not realize it needs to be fixed? How can anyone do more than a #1 with this? Perhaps these frustrations similarly lie within the compounds of a prison where you must do with what you are given.



Ever since visiting Amsterdam, I've been into Van Gogh's work. A few friends and I visited this mysterious place called the Vondelpark: a magical park - no more than a fraction of the massive oasis appearing on any map -where many bizarre things happened. The entrance to the park was covered by a dome of trees, preventing anyone from seeing inside, and then surrounded by a moat that required one to physically cross a bridge to enter. It almost resembled our own type of prison, one that we were happy to be in (and i'm sure cell phone reception would have been at zero bars, if I had one). Upon leaving this place, we concluded that many things we saw resembled some of the paintings of Van Gogh. One of his most popular works "Starry Night", we were certain could have actually been painted in the Vondelpark. After research, and to my surprise, it turns out that this was actually painted while Van Gogh was in an Asylum at Saint-Remy in 1889. Perhaps the large black structure represents his own asylum.

i think i found the space and time

the painting by Reino Heitanen: Activities, 1969

memories of the Big House in Satyricon?

and the time:

this sound to that picture . . .

here is a QT movie of the finding I made today . . .

(wait for the suprise)

made by this object by Otto Donner and Ismo Kajander: Multimedia, 1964