eDiscord

The Rotary, and many thanks

Sat, 24 Nov 2012 17:36:09 -0500

Once again, my New York City hustle has presented me the opportunity to work a job for which I’m relatively unqualified. Thank you, New York.

Introducing the next job title I’m able to tack onto my eclectic resumé: Director/Co-Founder of an art gallery!

I’ve named the gallery The Rotary. You can visit the makeshift homepage of The Rotary here: www.rotarynyc.com. I don’t know how I did it, but I built a somewhat legitimate website from the bones of a tumblr theme that I use for this blog. Thank you, tumblr.

I’m happy to announce that the inaugural exhibition will be taking place this coming Thursday, the 29th, from 6-8pm. The gallery is located above Fanelli’s Cafe, whose mastermind so kindly has allowed me to co-found the venture with him. Without him, I would have nothing. Also, he is well aware that I have absolutely no credentials… and yet he is still partnering up with me, in hopes that through this art gallery, we can bring another echo of old Soho back to the present. Thank you, Sasha!

You may have read about this exhibition already, through a facebook event invite, or an email from me, or from one of the artists. So this may be your bazillionth time reading about it. Thank you, friends, colleagues, and distant acquaintances, for bearingwith this first barrage of promotion! I promise I won’t bother you again, unless you elect to be on the official The Rotary mailing list. In which case, I will only bother you a couple times a year for opening receptions, where there will always be free refreshments.

Last but not least, thank you Sena and Iza for being so instrumental to making this first show happen. I couldn’t have pulled this together without the help and patience you’ve given me through the trial and error stages of this venture—but more importantly, I truly believe that your work has the potential to stir the consciousness of the art world, and I feel honored to be showing your work.

Hope to see at least a handful of you this coming Thursday. And bring your posse of art appreciator friends!

xo,

Kat

Director, The Rotary (Muah ha ha hahh!!)

10 Days in Southern Italy: Days 5 and 6

Sun, 11 Nov 2012 19:57:00 -0500

DAY 5

Punta della Suina, 7.4km south of Gallipoli

After a brief and unmemorable night in Gallipoli, we attempt a sandy excursion at Punta della Suina, a beach recommended by a friend of a friend. According to the beach’s website’s “VIP” heading, the likes of Sienna Miller and Jude Law have frolicked among the aquamarine waves and pearly sea foam.

No Jude Law today.

It’s the middle of September so the summer crowds, long since departed, have left in their wake cigarette butts and other remnants of vice. It’s also incredibly windy, so the snorkeling gear we brought is a little misbegotten.

We promptly pack up our towels and flippers and head down the coastline to Leuca, the tip of the boot. It doesn’t feel like the edge of the world, but it’s a rocky, cliffy, serene place to park for a few minutes. We are headed to Lecce for the evening, but are in no hurry.

DAY 6

Castellaneta, 33km east of Matera

We didn’t intend to stop in Castellaneta on our way from Lecce for any reason other than a coffee, but while waiting for an espresso, Evan strikes up a conversation with an Italian guy named Fabio.

Fabio and his friend Francesco are also headed to Matera for the night. They insist we follow them to a mozzarella factory in town. “You can’t get better mozzarella anywhere so cheap,” says Fabio.

The place is called La Latteria. It’s a modest little shop with a couple of fluorescent tube lights and empty shelves, but every bucket in the shop is full of cheese. We opt for a bag of small mozzarella balls as a road trip snack, and a big hunk of pecorino to take home on the plane. This is my first taste of freshly-made Italian mozzarella. I don’t think I can ever be satisfied in New York again.

Matera, 252km from Napoli

The city of Matera, by day and by night:

You may have seen this city featured in such movies as Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, among others that I haven’t seen either. (There is a restaurant there, I believe it’s called La Ristorante Francesca, that serves some sort of pasta a la Mel Gibson.) The ancient part of the city—the Sassi—is built into the mountains, resembling what historians imagine old Jerusalem looked like. Sometimes historic towns can be a little underwhelming or overly touristic, but that’s not the case in Matera. It’s pretty incredible, and many of the tourists are regional, which for some reason is less annoying.

Most of the domiciles in the Sassi have been turned into restaurants or B&Bs, including the one we’re staying in, a B&B called Casastella. The front entrance faces the main street that winds through the Sassi; the view from our room in the back of the B&B is into the deep crevasse, a shimmering ribbon of water far below the pigeons cooing on our windowsill.

We unload our bags in the room around 4pm, rip apart with our bare hands the remaining balls of mozzarella from La Latteria, and after almost a week of non-stop driving, eating, and sightseeing, we finally allow ourselves to take a guiltless catnap… which turns into a guilty five-hour coma. We wake up 30 minutes before our dinner reservation, and I’m not even hungry. A feeling of dread comes over me as I imagine forcing down yet another three-course dinner and yet another bottle of wine.

Moreover, I have an “I’m fat!” breakdown, having gained nearly a pound a day since landing in Rome; I begin sobbing in fetal position on the bed, crying something about looking like a baby seal. Evan looks at me, terrified, wondering if I could actually be serious, and can do little more than pat me on the head and wait for my hysteria to pass.

It passes, I dry my eyes, and I put on a dress with an empire waist. I’m battle-ready for dinner.

Twombly: Scrabble Bingo

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 19:26:00 -0500

Disclaimer: I’d never, to my knowledge, seen Cy Twombly’s work before I went to the opening at the Madison Ave. Gagosian last week.

I vaguely remember scrolling past his obituary on the digital edition of The New York Times, thinking his last name might have been pieced together from an unfortunate series of tiles in a game of Scrabble, an almost-word that one really really hopes is in the official Scrabble dictionary—a trivial thought that seems strangely fitting, after all, since Twombly’s groundbreaking works are notable for the scribbly, calligraphic, almost-words that run across the canvas.

Each of his last paintings consist of a brash color palette of red and yellow swirled over a somehow not unpleasant hue of green. The alphabetic iterations of paint drip down the canvas, the strokes and pigments washing over each other, and I can’t help but miss having a car to wash with a bucket of warm, sudsy water and a big yellow sponge.

They are all of the same gist, big and painty and bright, which at first frustrated my desire to have a clear favorite. After an indecisive ten minutes of flip-flopping, I finally chose.

My favorite:

Did I mention that the refreshments consisted of a seemingly unlimited amount of Veuve Cliquot? Yeah, Madison Ave. Gagosian, I’ll definitely be back for the next opening.

There was another part of the Cy Twombly show on a different floor, which I was now very eager to see. It is a series of photographs he’d taken over the course of the years, dating back to 1954, many of which were taken in his studio.

I was not happy about having to leave my free glass of champagne on the reception desk, and after making a very quick round of this photographic half of the Twombly show, I was definitely even less happy that my champagne had become a little less bubbly in vain.

The photographs, as a whole, looked very much like photos I’ve seen people take through a hipstamatic app. The composition of each of the many, many photographs does not make compelling an often otherwise uncompelling subject.

Tulips? Sigh, Cy.

I’ve never used hipstamatic, nor am I on instragram, but perhaps I’ve become jaded by all of the photos I’ve seen people scroll through on their phones, the true essence of each photo lost beneath a cloying filter of high contrast or strategic blurring or sepic warmth. Not everything can be beautiful, nor should it be.

So maybe I’m a child jaded in a digital age, maybe Cy’s photographs have something to them after all—though its certainly not their composition or subject matter (the former of which seemed overlooked, and the latter of which perhaps does not connect with me out of my own ignorance of his oeuvre). It’s just… did he take them on an iPhone? I had to double-check the press release.

(This all reminds me of how I felt when I looked through Stefano De Luigi’s iDyssey on my digital edition of The New Yorker. Nice idea, but… yawn.)

Anyway, just stay upstairs on the top level of the Gagosian, and you’ll be happy. But if you want to see some really terrible stuff, descend a few more levels in the Madison Ave. Gagosian to see the Richard Prince show, which is up until the 17th.

The Well-Tempered Andras Schiff

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 21:34:00 -0400

I hadn’t realized where exactly my ticket for seat 10 in row LL would place me in the concert hall at the 92Y. Neither did the elderly woman next to me know that our dark corner seats in row “LL” would place us further from the stage than anyone in the hall. At least I had chosen a view of stage left, the pianist’s side. Otherwise, I had no view, not even of my program; assigned to the far back corner, I was plunged in sepic darkness.

Enter Andras Schiff. The light emanating from the ambient hanging brass fixtures dimmed as the revered pianist took his seat in front of his instrument of choice, the grand piano. There was a final rustle of trousers and shawls; a final, hissing sip of air; a stray cough; and then there was music.

I leaned forward, squinting to observe Andras’s hands, which newsworthily had been rehearsing for their most perfect legato phrasing of J.S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier (on this evening, of Book I) perhaps the most seminal body of work from a most seminal composer.

(FYI, Both volumes of The Well-Tempered Clavier consist of a Prelude and a Fugue for each major and minor key, making them a comprehensive study of keys and all of their corresponding sharps and flats, among other things. Bach’s work is characterized, notably, by counterpoint.)

Andras had made the deliberate and principled choice to use only his hands tonight; his right foot would never deign to touch the sustain pedal. This choice was prompted by the reality that Bach composed his music for sustain-pedal-less harpsichords and clavichords, centuries before the invention of the piano.

Unfortunately for me and the elderly counterparts in our shared back, back, furthest back balcony row, the notes of the Preludes and Fugues died before they could reach our ears. Yes, squinting, I could see that Andras’s hands moved fluidly over the keys, independently sustaining the legato phrasing of the compositions as best as they could; Andras, of all people, would be able to master the music. But no, straining my ears, I could not hear anything more than the initial contact of hammer to string. The resonance of the piano simply did not carry. (Not to mention, I can’t say he played a single note above mf.)

During intermission, a german woman in front of me—a pianist and teacher herself—described Andras’s performance as “no salt, no fat,” one of the most boring, dead renditions of the work she’d ever heard. “I don’t know what he’s trying to prove,” she said, sighing.

So there we both were, disappointed and disgruntled at intermission, and I was truly regretting the fact that I bought Andras’s newly recorded CD set before the show—two of them, in fact, as I wanted to get one signed after the show for a friend. (Andras had arranged to do a CD signing following the show.) I resolved to stay through the second half, nearly regretting that decision as well, though his encore gave me a glimmer of hope that I would enjoy his performance of Book II on November 1st. I also have marginally better tickets for that performance, in the back rows of the orchestra section.

It was clear from the standing ovation and the bravos that jumped out like slippery fish from the sea of applause that the majority of the audience seemed to have enjoyed the performance—including the critic from The New York Times, who in his review described the performance as “magnificent.” Perhaps I had missed something in the back row of the 92Y.

I was feeling unsure of my reception of the performance, so I persuaded myself to at least stay for the autographs—after all, having been one of the first people out of the concert hall due to my near-exit location, the line for the CD signing was still very short. Autographs haven’t ever been my thing, but I sort of felt bad for not enjoying the show and somehow felt that getting an autograph would be redemptive.

I’m very happy I decided to stay; Andras was kind enough to sign both CD sets for me, even personalizing each of them even though the bodyguard-type guy standing beside him had interrupted me, when I had asked Andras, that “Mr. Schiff is not personalizing autographs tonight.”

Andras just shrugged and said, “I don’t see why not!” Take that, bodyguard-type guy!

Although the show disappointed me, I’ve listened to the CD set all the way through, and I must say: I love it. The recording captures the resonance of the piano that his performance lacked—perhaps a venue and seating issue, more than an issue of his performance itself. I play it nice and loud through a good set of speakers, and it very much makes me wish I had my piano so that I could challenge myself to play a pedal-free rendition of my favorite preludes and fugues.

To be fair, it’s the first recording of The Well-Tempered Clavier that I have ever owned, so I can’t say I wouldn’t like another pianist’s rendition just as well. Regardless, a 40 dollars well spent. Let’s just hope my seat for the next show is a 60 dollars that won’t lull me to sleep.

10 Days in Southern Italy: Day 4

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 18:02:00 -0400

Ostuni, 36km from Brindisi

Otherwise known as The White City (Minas Tirith anyone??), the town of Ostuni is perched atop a hill a little ways from the sea, its white buildings gleaming under the Mediterranean sun. Which sounds nice in the guidebooks.

To me, it looks just like Locorotondo in the Valle d’Itria, only bigger and filled with more elderly germanic tour groups. Evan and I walk around aimlessly through the touristic city center, and I take a good picture or two.

The really good pictures are not yet available, but are forthcoming in an issue of Conde Nast Traveller. No kidding. An Italian photographer, who has worked for Conde Nast for years, uses us as models in a shoot he is doing about Pugliese food and travel.

We happen to come across him at a modern, bright little deli called Mozzarella & Co., where our mouths begin to water—we see his modeled food laid out on the table. Small braids of mozzarella, burrata whose exposed center oozes onto a small wooden board, coils of pale pink prosciutto and slices of blood red salami, plump cherry tomatoes drizzled in golden olive oil aside a loaf of crusty bread, and a full glass of rich, red wine. The photographer looks over at us curiously and asks us if we wouldn’t mind partaking in this meal. With a wave of his hand, a second glass of wine is brought over to the table and we are urged to sit and be comfortable, to not mind the camera.

I’m not sure what I’ve done in life to deserve a free meal and a photo shoot, but I must be on the right track.

We say our goodbyes, then head to Il Frantoio, a luxurious masseria just outside of Ostuni. Upon our arrival, the owner immediately has someone serve us an afternoon cocktail, ostensibly on the very generous house. “I don’t do business,” he contends. “I do hospitality. Please make yourselves at home.”

After sipping our cocktails, we take a stroll around the compounds. Just off the little piazza at the entrance of the masseria, an arch opens up into a yard of 400-year-old olive trees.

We only manage to take a few photographs before someone calls out to inform us that this area is for the hotel guests only (though it was clear the hotel guests seem to favor the main little piazza where we were first greeted… my guess is that the wifi signal is stronger there).

Little do we know, the owner is surreptitiously tabulating how much it would cost us to stay the night, throwing in a “special discount” on the room rate and on dinner.

Meanwhile, we are shopping in the cellar of Il Frantoio—where non-guests are definitely welcome—and we buy three different kinds of olive oil produced on the masseria, a decorative plate that an artist hand-painted in ‘09, and some pickled olives.

We drop about $150, when the owner of Il Frantoio propositions that we stay here for the evening instead of sticking to our itinerary. When we decline the offer, he slashes the rate even more. (“I don’t do business,” he’d said earlier…) Both of us like a good deal on a quality product as much as any jew or Korean, but we are satisfied with our haul of goods and bid the owner good day.

Moral of the story is that if you come to Il Frantoio after the high season, pretend that you have other plans so that you can negotiate the price down to something crazy cheap. But that’s only if you want to stay on a masseria that sort of feels like a creepy utopian commune filled with english-speaking “artists.”

I don’t really know why I felt that way, because it was a really nice masseria. Maybe it was the pet peacocks locked up in a pen, birds that seemed to serve no purpose other than to act as living ornaments, though all the guests seemed too plugged into their electronic devices to notice the scenery.

Ceglie Messapica, 12km from Ostuni

After escaping the strangely utopian compounds of Il Frantoio, Evan and I drive south to Ceglie Messapica, another town painted white in the Valle d’Itria. Gianfranco, the chef at Gaonas, had recommended a restaurant in Ceglie Messapica called Cibus, so we decide we will stopover for lunch on our way to Gallipoli.

I order orecchiette in a tomato sauce with fresh basil. It only consists of those three elements, from what I can tell, yet the whole is infinitely greater than the sum of its parts.

I can’t manage to remember anything else from the meal, other than a sublime cheese plate at the end, because although we’ve only ordered a bottle of wine, the owner of the restaurant inexplicably lavishes upon us glasses of primativo, a bottle of sauternes, a couple doses of grappa—and then, for good measure, a table of friendly, drunken Italian men call us over for some cognac.

The big guy on the left is the owner.

For the first time in my life, my dormant “Asian flush” gene is activated by the obscene amount of alcohol that is now adulterating my bloodstream. I don’t feel that drunk, owing a little sobriety to the amount of food that we’ve just consumed, and yet my face, neck, and chest have turned purple.

I finally feel at one with my Korean ancestors.

Overall, the best meal yet. And our bill is magically only about $100.

Porto Cesareo, 33km up the coast from Gallipoli

A dip in the warm Ionian sea; a shiver in the cold Ionian air.

10 Days in Southern Italy: Day 3

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 16:09:00 -0400

Martina Franca, 32km from Taranto

While Evan and I were in the planning stages of our trip, I didn’t quite understand the tourism associated with the Valle d’Itria, a tourism which is based around buildings called trulli. Trulli (the Italian plural of trullo) are 19th century agrarian structures that feature conical roofs and generally are situated outside of the urban areas of the cities dotting the fields of the Valle d’Itria. The notion of spending a precious two nights of our ten day vacation in an area solely to sleep under a conical roof didn’t exactly titillate me.

We arrived at our B&B Trulli Valle d’Itria the previous evening after a disappointing excursion to Polignano a Mare (we got there just as the sun sank below the horizon and thus could not appreciate the beautiful seaside location of a town whose junky souvenir shops did not appeal to us in the least). In the dark, we were able to make out the strange figures of conical roofs and spires from the shadows of the fields as we wound our way to our destination, just outside of Martina Franca.

It isn’t until our bike ride through the vast and lonely fields in the daytime that we fall in love with the trulli. The singular whitewashed limestone structures set against a cloudy and blue sky, with the silver-green leaves of olive trees shimmering in the background, take on an otherworldly quality that I can’t imagine existing in the urban setting of Alberobello, the popular city where trulli have qualified it as a UNESCO World Heritage Center.

We come across one that is in the process of being completely restored, or perhaps built from scratch, with not a worker or resident in sight. Leaving our bikes on the dirt trail, we climb over brambles and a stone wall to trespass onto what seems like a magical castle.

There’s nothing to it but stones—no drywall, no plaster, no fixtures, something I imagine I myself could sloppily build if given the materials and time. The trullo has the same magical quality that half-built suburban houses had to me when I was a girl in Kansas, climbing in through empty window jambs to weave my way through a labyrinth of wooden frames of walls.

After deciding in which room we would put a narrow but cozy bed for us to share, which room contained the right light to house our collection of cacti in colorful little pots, from which wall we would mount a decorative plate that I’d learn how to paint and fire in a kiln, we explored outside and found a set of narrow steps leading to the roof. We ascended.

(Ba-donk-a-DONK!!!)

This is where we would leave out rows of tomatoes to dry under the sun, and in the evening, roast chunks of meat on skewers over a small pile of coals and a grate balanced over a couple spare limestone bricks.

I haven’t played house since I was a kid, but it is just as magical for me here somewhere in the Valle d’Itria, at the age of 27.

Our stomachs begin to growl, our appetites whetted by the idea of food drizzled with spicy olive oil and sprinkled with coarse salt and cracked pepper, so we hoist ourselves back over the stone wall to our bikes, and continue on our unmapped excursion to the neighboring town of Cisternino.

Cisternino, 16km outside of Ostuni

For lunch, the host of our B&B recommended a place called Osteria Sant’ Anna. Here, I encounter my first experience with an order of what I think is called “antipasti degustazione,” a tasting course of the house’s antipasto selection. Perfectly battered zucchini flowers stuffed with cheese and herbs, juicy meatballs with a crispy crust, a savory and silky fava bean puree, thin slices of raw swordfish that melt on the tongue, fresh ricotta with sweet cherry tomatoes, and a few other small plates overwhelmed the space on our table.

The pasta we order is tasty, but less memorable, as was our choice of a bottle of Le Fosette, a white wine from the Puglian producer Alberto Longo. Perhaps what should have been the body of our meal is overshadowed is by a post-meal trio of housemade amari—syrupy infusions of walnut, bay leaf, and “centi erbe” (100 herbs)—which are brought to us as a complementary digestif.

We drink these out of tiny little mugs, and agree that the centi erbe is transcendent.

We are tempted to finish the bottle, but instead, ask the waiter if Sant’ Anna would sell us one. He says the amari are not for sale, as they only produce a certain amount of them annually.

Evan, being the unabashedly dogged New Yorker that he is, relents for the moment… but then chats up the owner of Sant’ Anna. The owner tells us that the brew in fact contains 103 herbs, though he doesn’t have a list for us to peruse. After sufficiently buttering the owner up with well-deserved compliments, Evan asks him if we can buy a bottle to take back to New York, employing the broken record tactic: “Can we buy a bottle? Can we buy a bottle? Can we buy a bottle?” He uses this method in life with great success.

Of course, the owner was more than happy to indulge our compliments and request, so he simply gave us a bottle of the centi erbe as a parting gift. Cheers to that!

Very full, and a little drunk, we mount our bikes again and head toward Locorotondo.

Locorotondo, 11km outside of Fasano

Unkempt fig trees line our uncertain path, and the warm, sweet figs are the perfect after-dinner treat—today, better than a prepared dessert.

I sober up pretty quickly as my back tire starts making a strange sound; I turn to discover that it is completely flat. We are on a paved road at this point, but are still in between towns… and without a phone, so no one is coming to our rescue. A few cyclists in spandex suits zoom by us, indifferent to our plight. None of the cars we see are big enough to drive our bikes into the city, and we have no luck hijacking a cellphone from anyone. We realize how stupid it is to have come totally unprepared for a long and unfamiliar biking excursion.

To our great fortune, we look up to see a sign that indicates we are not far from Locorotondo, and we happen to be only a 15-minute walk and a right turn away from getting the tube replaced in my back tire. There is no telltale puncture, so the conclusion is that the tube had inconveniently reached the end of its lifespan.

Repaired and relieved, we take an aimless cruise around the city. The buildings in the city center all seem to be freshly painted, white and well-kept, and all the windows have their shutters open to catch the breeze.

I otherwise don’t have much to say about Locorotondo, since we aren’t there for long; we don’t have much time before sundown and we have no bike lights, so we must be on our way back to our B&B outside of Martina Franca, which from here is about a 10km trek off the main roads.

I think I am the target of a Puglian prankster because an unknown distance from home base, my front tire goes flat. We only have about fifteen minutes of light left—biking in the dark on these winding roads without a bike late is just asking for it—so I stay on my bike, risking ruining the wheel. I pedal slowly and try to enjoy the scenery while not freaking out.

(This was actually taken when we had about 30 minutes of light left; it’s less ominous.)

Again though, we are not far from relief, and get back to our B&B with our sanity and selves intact. After our day, there’s nothing better than a short, twilit nap, where we share a dream of our trullo.

Martina Franca, 4km from Trulli Valle d’Itria

We decide upon dinner at a place called Gaonas, a cozy restaurant hidden somewhere in the winding, narrow paths in the city center. Not quite hungry for dinner after our big lunch, we skip the antipasti but order a plate of an unbelievable risotto in a red wine reduction, made from an aged white rice from a producer called Acquerello. The chef and owner, Gianfranco, tells us it is the best producer of risotto rice in all of Italy, so we make a note to buy a can before we head back to New York.

(In hindsight, that risotto is easily the best dish I ate on the entire trip, which I myself find hard to believe; we had so many amazing entrees that I really can’t believe I have such a knee-jerk reaction to the potentially damning question of which dish was my favorite. That’s what I mean by an unbelievable risotto.)

The next course is a plate of lamb chops, which are, to our dismay, not at all pink. Little did we know that despite all of the raw and cured meats and fish associated with the tradition of Italian cuisine, Italians do not eat red meat if it’s at all red. Sadly, for us Americans (and for those of you Frenchies) lamb and beef are always cooked through. We pick the bones clean, regardless.

Evan and Gianfranco have a sort of simpatico, so they exchange email addresses and we insist that he must visit us in New York some day. In return, Gianfranco insists upon gifting us a little can of olive oil and, deciding it isn’t enough, reaches for a recipe book that he’s had displayed in the foyer for diners to flip through while waiting for a table. The book is entitled Puglia, and features 101 recipes from 101 of the best restaurants in Puglia with a little blurb about each of the chefs, including one from Gianfranco for Egg Fettucine with Wild Herbs.

We ask him to sign it for us.

I can’t actually read what it says, but I’m sure it’s something as humble and kind as Gianfranco himself.

10 Days in Southern Italy: Day 2

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 22:47:00 -0400

Taurasi, 100km from Napoli

It’s not easy waking up in a different time zone, especially when you’ve booked a room in the shadow of an active campanile.

I woke up at seven clangs of the bell, but it took me until eight clangs of the bell to drag myself out of bed. By nine clangs of the bell, Evan and are out the door, headed toward our first breakfast in Italy together.

Needless to say, our breakfast at Vino e Caffe (where we were to use our B&B’s breakfast voucher) is a Spartan meal of bad coffee and a pastry apiece. Evan and I notice that I seem to be the only female in town; the same all-male crowd who were drinking “vino” here the night before happen to be the same all-male cast who are now staring at me longingly while drinking their “caffe.” It isn’t a threatening presence; merely a lonely one, on their part.

By the way, I’m not a coffee drinker, but I had seen a sign written in magic marker for something called “Cafe con ginseng” which seemed like a compelling beverage in such a small, sleepy town. It turned out to be an espresso-sized portion of what reminds me of a vending machine hazelnut cappuccino. I should have known—Taurasi isn’t exactly a place known for its ginseng cultivars or coffee innovations.

What it is known for, however, is its wine, which is primarily based on Aglianico grapes and named after the town. Taurasi, in the bottle, is the reason why we are here.

Cantine Antonio Caggiano

The Cantine Antonio Caggiano is one of the finest producers of Taurasi wine, though I’m not quite sure how we came across it in the first place. From what I can tell, its a quiet little operation, rarely appearing on Italian wine menus and certainly not making its way to the U.S. in any meaningful quantity. In any case, we were interested and had called ahead to see if Antonio wouldn’t mind showing us around his cantine himself.

It’s still before eleven when we get to the cantine so we’re not surprised to be told that Antonio hasn’t quite arrived, but in the meantime to feel free to look around the main area, which is littered with photographs of every which subject.

I can’t quite shake off this sense of mystery as I go through a pile of photos set atop an empty wine barrel.

I feel even more compelled to meet Antonio while looking through an album set atop another upturned wine barrel. The first half of the album is a collection of photos from a trip to Morocco, occasionally featuring a beautiful naked woman rolling around in the sand.

After Morocco, the camera travels to the North Pole, documenting the construction of an igloo, the trapping of a seal for a meal, and the smiles of a pair of Inuit siblings. I surmise that Antonio must be the photographer, and I begin to wonder if he is the fine gentleman from the Dos Equis commercials.

Perhaps inspired, I take a photo, myself, of something mid-construction and something mid-disintegration in the cantine’s backyard:

It’s no naked lady or bloody seal, but I like it.

The space on the main floor is furnished with wine barrels and their retooled iterations. I’m told that Antonio built these pieces himself:

Antonio finally arrives, and he is a few years older than the man I saw in many of the photos hung on the walls, pasted in the albums, piled around the room; but it is undoubtedly him. He has a warm, smiling face, and worker’s hands with palms as rough as sandpaper. I feel their texture as he takes my hand to greet me.

He endears himself to both Evan and I instantly. I don’t speak Italian, but Evan is fluent, so we have no trouble communicating with Antonio, who doesn’t speak a lick of English.

Even had we not asked him about the photographs, we would have known within the first three steps into the wine cellar that Antonio was the photographer behind most everything upstairs, because he immediately gestures toward the camera in my hands. I hand it over willingly.

He takes this:

And this (which he made us model):

And this (above us is a cross filled in with wine bottles):

Halfway through our time with Antonio, we are joined by a group of four European tourists—three Germans, and one Italian, so the day gets a bit merrier and Antonio opens up a bottle of white wine called Bechar, whose label is named after the color of the sands in Bechar, Morocco. Another white wine with a blue label, called Devon, is named after the color of the glaciers in the North Pole…

Evan and I reluctantly leave the cantine, with a few bottles of Taurasi in tow, ready to hit the road toward the Valle D’Itria, the land of the Trulli in Puglia.

But first, we’re invited by the German-speaking Italian to a lunch at his mother’s place (he’s brought his German friends with him on his visit to his hometown of Taurasi), which happens to be one of the few other restaurants in town. It’s a little, out of the way place called L’Archetto, which isn’t open on Mondays and Tuesdays. But its no matter because there’s food and wine on the table for family, friends, and strangers alike.

We share one of the bottles from the cantine, while ravioli filled with ricotta and drizzled with flavorful olive oil arrive at the table, followed by a selection of cheeses and cured meats. Between the lot of us, everything is pretty much demolished.

Our lunchmates probably knew that they might never see us again, but they were nonetheless the most gracious of hosts, insisting we eat the last ravioli or have last bit of wine. Its a far cry from New York City, where lunch is often followed by a stressful division of the sums of the bill amongst even the closest of friends. It’s just different here. And I certainly could get used to it.

Before finally leaving Taurasi, we hop over a little ditch to have a little taste of something fresh and sweet…

10 Days in Southern Italy: Day 1

Sun, 23 Sep 2012 12:39:00 -0400

Fiumicino Airport

As I receive my vacuum-packed allotment of dinner on the flight to Rome, I come to the unfortunate realization that my first travels through Italy will be bookended by meals containing fat-free Italian dressing and unspecified shapes of pasta.

The flight attendant scowls a little when my boyfriend, half in jest, asks for a glass of chianti. She then points to a box of merlot from a company called “Bistro Mundo.” It is palatable enough to wash down the chicken and pasta, so we share a cup of it before catching a few hours of sleep. Soon, it will be my first time setting foot in Italy.

Velletri, 55km from Roma

Evan and I meet Federica, a dear friend of his at a jewelry store called Attimi on a main street in the centro storico. The store belongs to her boyfriend Andrea, and together they make and sell some of their own designs. It’s not a very cosmopolitan suburb of Rome—we just missed the town’s porcini mushroom festival—but a steady trickle of shoppers somehow finds its way to Attimi to haggle over strands of Swarovski crystal necklaces, mood rings, and e-cigarettes.

Fede and Andrea have us over to their little house, which is a guest house that they are renting on a property from an elderly man. The man sits outside on a wooden chair set against the front door, facing nothing in particular. He is usually asleep, but stirs as the dog, a friendly border collie mix named Stevie, barks to announce our arrival.

In Fede and Andrea’s house, we are treated to a lovely lunch of caprese, caponata, red wine, and rigatoni with a spicy tomato sauce. After lunch, Fede and Andrea smoke alternately from real and e-cigarettes, while Evan and I stir sugar into our warm espresso cups.

Taurasi, 100km from Napoli

Fede insists that we stay the night, but we are set on making our way south to a small town called Taurasi outside of Avellino, about 250km away. The quiet Campanian town, with a population of 3,000, has little more in store for us than a visit to Cantine Antonio Caggiano, a vineyard perched just outside of the city center—that is to say, a few blocks out from the campanile that marks the highest point of Taurasi. The two bells of the campanile still never fail to call out each hour and its quarter hours in loud, clanging tones.

In addition to being home of the good wine that we’ll be drinking at the Caggiano vineyard, Taurasi is a decent halfway point between Rome and our first stop in Puglia. We’ve rented a car, a tiny blue Fiat Panda, for our excursion to the heel of Italy.

We have dinner at one of the few restaurants in town, a place called Da Pino. The restaurant is known for its pizza (at least in the near vicinity of Taurasi) but having just flown in from New York City, we opt for an otherwise very affordable and satisfying three course meal at this little village eatery—a cheese and meat board double the size and half the price of one I’ve had at Eataly in the Flatiron District, cavatelli with a tomato sauce and sausage, tender and thinly sliced roast beef with gravy, a bowl of arugula, and a bottle of red wine from a regional vineyard called Guerriero. I’m sitting against a wall hung with two faded Kandinsky posters, and Evan is on the other side of the table where he has a view of the television that’s airing an Italian spy drama.

Other than our waitress and the owner, an Aussie from Canberra, we are the only other beings in Da Pino (and seemingly, the town). Fortunately, neither of us cares much for ambience, so we are happy to eat in solitude in a village restaurant. For the two of us, our bill totals only 44 Euros. We leave full and jetlagged, and after our transatlantic travels very much look forward to sleeping with blankets, pillows, and a mattress.

Little do we know that our B&B, a little place called Al Campanaro, is situated just catercorner to the campanile. At midnight, just as we settle into bed, we hear the lullaby that will be singing our tired bodies to sleep: CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG.

Karen Kilimnik and Kim Gordon at 303 Gallery

Sat, 08 Sep 2012 19:02:00 -0400

Devoid of context, much of the exhibit which opened last night at 303 Gallery gave me the impression that I was in a gallery run by evil cheerleaders—which should not necessarily be interpreted as my praise for either Karen Kilimnik’s or Kim Gordon’s work featured in this two-person show.

Immediately upon entering the gallery, I almost tramped upon a pile of clear plastic cups that had been shepherded to the side of the entrance hall.

“Art?” I asked my artistically-knowledgeable boyfriend, while desperately seeking a title card for a little authoritative guidance. He shook his head, slightly disappointed by my lack of discretion, before we continued into the space proper.

The first pieces to accost my eyes were hung on the north wall—a collection of flags (glitter on canvas), most of which feature the Union Jack. Others share a color scheme of red, white, and blue.

My Judith Leiber bag, Viva La France!, 2012

There were a few that required intricate gluing and glitter sprinkling, including the flags of the South Georgia & South Sandwich Islands, the royal house of Scotland, and the Grand Cayman Islands. Each of pieces was entitled “My Judith Leiber bag, (insert country/commonwealth or something related here).”

First, a little background. Judith Leiber is known for designing gaudy and expensive clutches—think Damien Hirst’s diamond-skull-meets-Polly-Pocket:

I’d never heard of Judith Leiber before, but I do admit to recognizing the cupcake purse from Sex and the City: The Movie. (Charlotte’s daughter hides Carrie’s cellphone in the cupcake purse, causing her to miss Mr. Big’s phone calls as he’s running late to the New York Public Library, where they are to be married… hysteria ensues.)

Aside from the sparkly nature of the work, I can’t say exactly why Kilimnik decided to title them My Judith Leiber bag… (personally I would’ve felt more titularly satisfied had she created the flags with rhinestones instead of glitter), since I wouldn’t say the flags embody anything a young girl playing dress-up might dream up, which I feel is the inspiration behind Leiber’s more notable designs.

Anyway, forget the titles. Had I a daughter on the Olympic women’s gymnastics team of the Grand Cayman Islands, I wouldn’t have minded the lack of context or idea that the glitter flags expressed to me as a viewer. But, since that’s not the case, I thought the flags insipid and cannot understand why she’s felt compelled to make them over the course at least 8 years.

In the middle of the gallery floor, Gordon approaches her evil cheerleader sparkle art more successfully, ostensibly having picked a spot on which to twirl with her arms outstretched, while pouring out two pitchers full of black glitter—the result, a blurry, sparkly circle that begs the viewer to become the doer.

I couldn’t resist sticking my toe in the outline and drawing out a flare of glitter as if the figure were the corona of an eclipse, while others stepped in an out of the circle, always one at a time, with the tacit understanding that the geometry begged a sort of sacred solitude. It also made me think of gunpowder, evoking self-destruction or funeral pyres. That the “work” was Gordon’s, the alternative rock queen of Sonic Youth, made me appreciate the simple black, glitter circle all the more.

Moving on to the south wall of the gallery, I didn’t watch either of the video projections—one by each of the artists—because I tend to lose interest in “art video installations” very quickly. (A notable exception: Hassan Khan’s video “Jewel” which was part of the New Museum’s triennial The Ungovernables. I really wish there was a good video file of that somewhere, because I would watch it every day.)

On a section of the east wall, Gordon’s other piece consisted of black paint streaked up, down, and all around, which didn’t pique my interest either. When I learned that she had “painted” it with stockings, my opinion went from “neutral” to “strongly disagree.” I wasn’t there when she made it, so I felt confused by the strokes; it neither evoked a clear sense of chaos or a specific kinetic choreography. Furthermore, that the paint was applied with stockings (I imagine with black fishnets) didn’t add depth to the work, but instead seemed passe. I don’t know, maybe I’m not appreciating the feminist commentary that could’ve swayed me back to “neutral” for this piece.

Lastly, there’s the west wall covered in Kilimnik’s fake-blood artwork from 1992: one painted directly on the wall, the other three framed and hung, depicting names and an address tied to the serial killer Charles Manson.

I can’t get my head around the lionization of serial killers, nor the glorification tragic figures. It’s upsetting, for many reasons, but especially because the deification tends to be directly related to how famous or beautiful or psychotic the characters were before they were killed (or before they killed themselves). If you’re average-looking, can’t play guitar, or have never killed anyone, then you’ll probably be overlooked by the obsessive masses and forgotten as soon as you die. (I imagine “tragic” figures like the Star Wars kid are a sort of corollary to this phenomena.) Maybe it’s the urge to have even a glimpse of the extremes of human experience, because we all feel so ordinary.

It’s something that bears more than a superficial allusion, and Kilimnik’s blood paintings don’t even reveal the tip of the iceberg. Instead, she created what looked like an 8th grader goth chick’s personal art project, either immature in its exploration of the theme or gratuitously self-absorbed as in a teenage diary. I don’t know if they are based on actual photos of a Manson crime scene, or if she conjured them up, but either way, their intent falls flat.

Kilimnik has done better with the subject before, take for instance I Don’t Like Mondays, the Boomtown Rats, Shooting Spree, or Schoolyard Massacre, 1991. I haven’t seen it in person, but I can’t even look away from the photo.

The exhibit runs until the 29th at 303 Gallery, and is potentially worth seeing if you are already a fan of Kilimnik; otherwise, you might not give her the benefit of the doubt that she can, in fact, create something worth seeing. Sonic Youth devotees, I’m sure, will make their way to the show regardless.

In the meantime, I had more fun looking up photos of Judith Leiber’s “minaudieres” and will probably make a note to go see her permanent collection at The Met.

My Graffiti Illiteracy

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 22:35:00 -0400

Up in the Bronx in a neighborhood called Hunts Point—a place I’d never heard of before, despite it’s geographical proximity to Astoria—there exists a block and a half of warehouses and cinderblock perimeters of auto part junkyards dressed in a pastiche of spray-paint murals.

Some of the best contemporary graffiti artists come up here periodically… actually it’s best if you just read this article for the background info because I know absolutely nothing about graffiti, as it’s never been a form of creative expression that has any personal relevance.

This is probably because I am from suburban Kansas. My only exposure to graffiti prior to moving to New York was through Jet Grind Radio, a video game I found really challenging as it involved coordinated sequences of button-pressing. For the record, I prefer simple controls and complex gameplay, which may or may not even be the correct jargon.

The graffiti in JGR was actually created by an artist named Inkie, who in a recent interview mentioned working alongside TATS Cru, a group who has a presence at the Hunts Point murals. So I guess I’m not completely out of the loop, through this nth degree of separation from my weekend excursion to the Bronx.

Admittedly though, I think I shall forever be an outlier to the medium. Trying to decipher the calligraphy of some of the artists was dizzying to the point of frustration. “I can’t read it,” I whined again and again, squinting, cocking my head, stepping back and dollying forward to see if a different perspective might reveal the keystone to the work. It gave me a headache, and I couldn’t help but compare my incomprehension to what I imagine it might be like to have a reading disability.

I gave up with the word/name-based graffiti and made my way down to the most expansive mural, which was dominated by images. I hoped for comprehensive relief, but honestly, I still had trouble getting my head around everything that was going on. Without the internet, I couldn’t even figure out how to credit this particular mural correctly because I couldn’t be sure of what the few words on it said or meant.

The signature, it turns out, reads “HOWNOSM,” indicating that this work is by two Basque-born twin brother artists of TATS Cru, HOW and NOSM. On the left is written “Bleu,” the name of the son of another member of TATS Cru; Bleu was killed in 2010 by a stray bullet during a shootout at a barbecue in the Bronx. This is a far cry from my life in the suburbs of Kansas City, the BBQ capital of America.

Delving into the artwork from a research standpoint, it becomes more interesting and tangible. I want to know more.

But objectively, I’m still at a loss. Something is getting poured onto something. There’s a fish head, or the fish is eating someone else’s head. I think someone is shooting lasers out of his eyes, but he’s not too excited about it. And that might be a slice of fruit…

One thing was clear as I stood in front of this black-white-and-red-all-over mural—the smell of discarded produce, ostensibly dumped from the back of a delivery truck.

A cardboard box insists that the vegetables are fresh.

You can’t really tell, but alongside the curb on the left side of the photo, there is a pigeon whom I witnessed suffering his final moments of life. He limped in aimless, irregular zigzags on the asphalt, occasionally keeling over onto his back, motionless, hinting at a sort of surrender.

And here, another bleak portrait of surrender:

Poor Bleu. Poor pigeon.

Poor eggplant and bell pepper.

Ratatouille, amen.

Light-up dance floor at Westway…

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 16:25:00 -0400

Light-up dance floor at Westway…

Is it unrefined of me to say that these painted rocks by a guy...

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 20:14:00 -0500

Is it unrefined of me to say that these painted rocks by a guy named Nicolas Party were some of my favorite things that I saw at The Independent today in Chelsea?

I don’t think the photo quite does them justice, as their entire shape dictated which fruit it would become, and how that fruit would be sliced and presented. Which I find entirely amusing. As an added bonus, the fruit rocks became even more endearing to me when I learned that they were rocks discovered in Manhattan—local rocks, if you will. Nicolas paints rocks in the cities to which he travels, which may be purposeful, or may be because it’d be a pain in the ass to fly rocks to and fro to shows for people like me to either covet or ridicule.

When I discovered, to my dismay, that most of the fruit rocks had been sold by the time I had inquired about pricing (not that I can afford to buy painted rocks willy-nilly for $1500+) the exhibitor consoled me by whipping out his iPhone to show me that there were other oranges still available at The Swiss Institute in Soho. Which means I’ll be going there tomorrow to ogle the other oranges and sundry fruits.

I’ll also be on the lookout for rocks in Queens with fruit rock potential with the intention of replicating these works of art that have so captured my heart.

I’m not much of a reblogger, but this was impossible not...

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 19:00:31 -0500

I’m not much of a reblogger, but this was impossible not to reblog.

A dog-eared poem.

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 08:21:45 -0500

A dog-eared poem.

Mirror, Glass, Water and Wine Going to the final performance of...

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 17:27:00 -0500

Mirror, Glass, Water and Wine

Going to the final performance of Richard III at BAM tomorrow.

“Shine out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass,
that I may see my shadows as I pass.”

A typical text from Oma.

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 13:30:18 -0500

A typical text from Oma.

A summation of my thoughts re: the Cindy Sherman retrospective...

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 18:50:16 -0500

A summation of my thoughts re: the Cindy Sherman retrospective at MoMA.

Untitled Downpour Saxophones rose up from theirhard caseswith songs of unclearbeginning and endlike...

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 13:39:00 -0500

Untitled

Downpour

Saxophones rose up from their
hard cases
with songs of unclear
beginning and end
like earthworms
flooded out of a muddy field.

Yes,
but the rain’s
the same—
elemental,
always a conjurer of things
overlooked.

Not an American film not from this decade

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 02:28:00 -0500

Today was the final day of the Jan Svankmajer exhibit at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria. Svankmajer is a Czech animator/filmmaker whom I’d never heard of before and don’t expect to ever hear discussed directly again. Meanwhile, most of America will be preoccupied with The Artist as the most original application of cinema that people have seen this year. Or something like that.

That very well may be. But I can’t really say, as I’ve yet to see it. So instead, I’ll offer you my anti-Oscar pick for not an American film not from this decade.

The film is one of Svankmajer’s, released in 1982. Part two of it can be seen here, though fast-foward to 2:52 specifically for my anti-Oscar pick:

“Vyčerpávající,” which I believe means “Exhausting” based on a cursory online query, is a funny and disgusting sort of “variations upon a theme” piece where all variations upon combinations of everyday objects are exhausted. The episode is irresistible, even to a catholic crowd of Muppets exhibition runoff; there were two children in front of me at the museum hemming and hawing at the sequence, simultaneously repulsed and compelled by the seemingly banal combinations and their inherent incompatibility; taken to a very literal degree, the combinations result in a suspenseful, visceral mash-up. It’s hard to not want to watch it again. Like I said, the exhibition is over now, but you can find the first half of the film online as well.

From what I could glean from the other parts of the film, Svankmajer is a master of destruction—or rather, systematic deconstruction. In Svankmajer’s world, it’s clear that chaos is not random; there does not exist a proverbial sledgehammer to categorically destroy any idea or object, as the dispersed shards will always reconfigure themselves into a different sort of order or transform themselves into a different medium altogether. Nothing is entirely extinguishable, so nothing is really ever “safe.” It’s an empowering idea for a group seemingly at the mercy of any sort of absolutist political or religious regime. I’m sure this is all informed by the political climate enveloping the former Czechoslovakia, but I don’t know history well enough to do much more than allude to it.

In conclusion, watch some steak sex in “Meat Love”:

#shitastoriansthrowaway

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 18:59:46 -0500

#shitastoriansthrowaway