MONGER

3 Sections from Barak Marshall's new work MONGER. Premiere: October 25, the Suzanne Dellal Center for Dance and Theater, Tel Aviv Barak Marshall was the former house choreographer for the Batsheva Dance Company under the artistic direction of Ohad Naharin.

Fortune's Bones

"Fortune was an African American man enslaved by Waterbury physician Dr. Preserved Porter in the late 18th century. Fortune was probably born in the 1740s, but we do not know where. Dental analysis may someday reveal if he spent his childhood in Africa, the Caribbean or North America. Upon Fortune’s death in 1798, Dr. Porter, a renowned bone surgeon, prepared his skeleton to serve the study of anatomy. In recent years, Fortune's bones have provided scientific evidence to document the circumstances of his life.
The rugged bone structure, especially where the muscles attached to the bones, suggest Fortune was a powerful man accustomed to the heavy work of a farmer. Fortune’s bones indicate that he suffered several injuries during his lifetime, which had healed before his death: he had a broken lower back and other injuries to the bones in his hand and foot. These injuries, which were not unusual for agricultural workers at the time, did not kill him. He was generally in good health at the time of his death, at about 60 years of age."


"Marilyn Nelson has written a series of six stirring poems to honor Fortune's life. Part funeral mass, part freedom celebration, her spare words are clear about the harshness of his servitude and what his remains tell about his backbreaking labor. In the climactic poem, "Not My Bones," Fortune himself speaks: 'You can own someone's body, / the soul runs free.' "

Linear Life

You Can't Hug a Memory

This is looking at something and not feeling the image it represents. This is a feeling that does not match its environment. This is all the pictures we look at, the awe and potential we see in photography, that for a moment lifts us. But once that moment is over we are left with our stark surroundings, colors not manipulated or enhanced. Just, as they are.

This is wishing for more, hoping the candy red sweetness could really be tasted like its colors promise. This is looking to the future as if it were always better than the present. The same goes for the past, but it is called regret. This is looking at a picture, and creating memories that were not really there, often better than they were, to dull this ever present sense: that we are wasting time, that we must find what we are looking for, that we must soak in these colors even if they are honestly real, or one might say, gray by comparison.

Das Unheimliche

via This Recording

Possibility

The Photography of Joseph Szabo

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JANE

Today is Jane's birthday
She is 18.
Jane wanted to buy beer
to celebrate.
She always gets
proofed.
I never get
proofed
because if it's
an old guy behind
the cash register
I ask him
how many kids
does he have
and if it's a
young guy
I smile and talk
of his wavy brown
hair.
Jane doesn't do that
and that's why she can't
buy beer.
Today, though, she can
but the guy at
the cash register
is really stoned
out
and doesn't ask for
her proof - just her
money.
Jane asks him if
he wants to see her
proof.
He thinks she is
under age and maker her
put the beer back.
She comes out crying.
I have to go in
and buy
the beer.
-Sue Sipos














All images from photosofteenagers.com