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editor's note
Editor's Note
“We forget all too soon the things we thought we never could forget. We forget the loves and betrayals alike, forget what we whispered, what we screamed, forget who we are.” *
Comfort food. What is yours? Ice cream, maybe. Maybe it isn’t food at all, but rather the smell of laundry done in a specific manner. It could even be the feel of warmed seat in winter. It is what you are. But whatever it is, it has the trigger that brings it all back. For me it is TV.
I just got 7000 channels with the installation of digital TV yesterday. It’s weird that somehow, I don’t end up on HBO Z—I felt sure that I would be a frequent user of this channel. I instead find myself watching channel 58: We, Women’s Entertainment. This is not a new channel, it was part of my previous Time Warner cable package. We, the channel, I have had for at least a year, and even though the premise of this channel seems promising, I never watch it. It always seems to be playing Chasing Amy.
But tonight it’s Jenny . . .
Love Story.
I tune in at the point the doctor is telling Oliver that she, Jenny, will die. The doctor is speaking frankly to Oliver keep in mind, not Jenny. This is the first time I’ve seen this film since, as a child, I tagged along with my mother, to a packed theater. And this movie crushed me. It’s weird when you remember things, and they appear so differently than the memory that conjured them. And that’s the way Love Story now played. This was my very first realization of death in the cinema and then, the shock and horror was disturbing beyond my years. It was my Lion King. Now, the movie featured the typical themes that populate life’s tortured path. “Preppy”, as Jenny refers to Oliver, from the “right” side of the tracks, Jenny from the “wrong”. Family desertion based on class and an equally devoted and ethnically divisive single father on the other. She is sick. They are young and in love. The malignant cancer test result is delivered in abstentia to the dying patient via the ears and eyes of Oliver, her husband, who would immediately survive her. Love Story suddenly doesn’t seem so much a “Love Story”, rather it becomes, then and there, watching it, “Oliver’s Story”. No need for the sequel. But then again, as the message reverberates, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry”. And Jenny doesn’t, nor does Oliver. No apologies. But now, life has been populated by experiences that change one’s semblance of reality. And “Oliver’s Story” is that which remains, that which is still here. Not no apologies, rather, “all apologies.” (Nirvana)
Oliver’s Story, the movie, then begins. It’s weird they couldn’t get the same actor who played Jenny’s dad from Love Story to reappear in Oliver’s Story. Wonder what he was holding out for.
Comfort food. Maybe it is the first daffodils, maybe seeing Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Maybe it is the image of that long standing melodramatic embrace as it is about to happen, lovers, running across the field towards each other and the future—full of love, hope, peace, everything ‘70s, and “I’d like to buy the world a Coke”. Somehow it is a reminiscence of a Love Story in itself, or a pastiche of it anyhow.
Olive Ann Burns, the Southern writer of the Cold Sassy Tree scribbles on the back. Like Jenny, Olive Ann Burns succumbs to a breakdown of life, physically expiring to cancer, and yet her story of Georgian generations, and the tales of loveless marriages, town gossip, and speculative associations cast similar questions of class acceptance, love, life and death as that of the movie, Love Story.
The daffodils. Burns relishes these blooms, expectant of them as they reluctantly surrender their power to the red bud, and dogwood.
Time relinquishes decades like flowers in a season. In the early ‘90s there was a resurrection of the Pop Psyche phenom, which recalled a phenom from the Contemporary release of Love Story. The “Jennifer Syndrome”. All [men and women], young and old, idolized the icon of Jennifer. The pure, the young, the immortalized, simply for her spirit, her panache, her mystique, even in the most mundane ways. Kind of like the seasons as the spring unfolds, so do we love the different blooms, each having their own arrival, but painstakingly replacing the short life of its predecessor. But then comfort food comes in all varieties.“It all comes back. Even that recipe for sauerkraut: even that brings it back. I was on Fire Island when I first made that sauerkraut, and it was raining, and we drank a lot of bourbon and ate the sauerkraut and went to bed at ten, and I listened to the rain and the Atlantic and felt safe. I made the sauerkraut again last night and it did not make me feel any safer, but that is, as they say, another story. 1966”*
May the memory of Bart, Caroline, and Kent Rickenbaugh rest easy, and the lives of Anne, Katherine, Auntie Ba, Auntie Susan, Lisa, Sam, and Lila—and all who loved them be comforted.
Devon Dikeou
New York, New York
2002*all quotes from Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem
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curators' notes
Curators' Notes
Brian Alfred was born and raised on the South Side in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where he had a clean view of steel mills and the Heinz pickle plant. He now listens to music, watches 24 hour cable news, and makes work in Brooklyn where he has a clean view of building after building after building . . .
General Assembly is a music studio, a record label, and sometimes a group. Paul Parreira is at the helm, controlling the production of releases and organizing events and collaborations. Paul used to run a gallery space in NYC called 407, from there he started a band (Terceira) with Rebecca Mason. Subsequently, he found himself DJ-ing, putting together music for fashion and art shows, and organizing some now-infamous house parties called Dark Green/Casual Green. Then, he formed another band called Azores, a trio with John Codling and Darren Crawforth. They have released one EP called “September” and created soundtracks to accompany performances by two of the most exciting dance companies in New York City, the Maria Hassabi Co and Chemeckie & Lerner. General Assembly’s manifestation as an ambient performing/recording entity is represented herein and is at work on a full-length CD. David Mclewaine (mrmclewaine.com) is the unofficial in-house designer for General Assembly, and the idea for this project stems from an advertisement that he and Paul put together for the last issue of zingmagazine.
Dr Ben Satterfield is a social critic whose commentary, fiction, poetry, drama, reviews, and cartoons have appeared in scores of periodicals from the whimsical to the literary and from the popular to the scholarly.
Lee Stoetzel is an artist living in New York. Wood grain and the texture of materials (old paint on window sills in this case) have been at the forefront of his photography, painting, and sculpture for eight years. He also co-curates and manages the West Collection at SEI in Oaks, Pennsylvania.
Mike Lohr: Most of the time I’m a graphic designer for my studio semiliquid. The rest of my time is spent drawing shapes, going out to breakfast, working on a new line of T-shirts and designing wrapping paper. Drunk on color, high on repetition. www.semiliquid.net
Sam Hecht: Sam Hecht was born in London, but spent most of his formative years in Japan and the USA. An Industrial Designer, he continues to collaborate with IDEO, most recently with projects for Prada, Orange, and Egg. His effort in occupying territories not common to designers is relentless. He is currently working on a series of projects for Proverb.
Mary Barone is an independent curator who lives and works in NY.
Luis Macias: Well, I already have had so many projects in this magazine that I don’t know what else I could say about myself, or my artwork. Maybe I could say that you are FUCKED UP, and I am lucky. But there is no way I’m gonna be that nice. Instead, I will say that to have a project in this mag, you need to have friends, and I don’t know about you, but I can tell I do have “friends” at zingmagazine.
Angus Hood lives and works in Edinburgh, Scotland. Usual service will resume as soon as possible.
Serge Onnen is living & drawing in Amsterdam. Editor of Volume (Horizon issue coming in 2003 check volumehead.org for details and please send drawings—deadline Nov 30/02). Animation for public space on the facade of De Balie in Amsterdam. On view from dusk till dawn, first two weeks of October.
The SANITARY PARK is a place where everything is clean & perfect. A man-made park where no human is allowed. A pure environment; the organic chemistry is perfect, the air is purified, and the wood is sterile. Get yourself together. A park for industrial relaxation.
Giasco Bertoli was born in Switzerland in 1965, he lives and works in Paris. He has exhibited his works and photographs in galleries, and he is a regular contributor to magazines like Purple and zingmagazine. His recent book 15 LOVE is published by Editions Outcasts in Paris.
Todd Hido, a native Ohioan, now lives in San Francisco, and Nazraeli Press has just published a second book of his work called Outskirts—a companion to his monograph published last year called House Hunting.
Melanie Flood: As a solipsistic junior at SVA, in a requisite course, Photo Since 1960 taught by gallerist Julie Saul, curator/photographer Melanie Flood was exposed to the weird/wacky world of Todd Hido. Everything developed from there.
Omar Lopez-Chahoud earned an MFA from Yale University School of Art, New Haven, Connecticut and The Royal Academy of Art, London. As an independent curator his exhibitions include: “Never Never Land,”—University Gallery, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tampa, Florida; “Hash Brown Potatoes,”—Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, New York; a curatorial project in connection with “Crossing the Line,”—Queens Museum of Art, Queens, New York. He is one of the founders of The Brewster Project, site specific installations exhibition in the town of Brewster, New York (Summers 2001 and 2002.)
Ester Partegàs today has spent $3.00 on breakfast, $10.45 on groceries, $23.75 at the hardware store, $26.25 on dinner, $1.50 for a late night ice-cream and has payed Verizon $61.13 for one month cell phone use. She expects to spend money tomorrow too.
Steven Severance is an artist and reader in West Grove, Pennsylvania. His illustrations for “The Persians by Aeschylus” were published in zingmagazine issue #5. He has also illustrated works by Chekhov and various Asian poets.
Severance’s translation of Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone accompanies his etchings and was made possible by The Perseus Digital Library. He relied heavily on their electronic Greek texts and translation tools (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/).
Steven adds, “many thanks go out to The Perseus Digital Library as a free and valuable resource. For a good and concise translation of the whole play I would suggest Cocteau’s version published in English by Hill and Wang. It is one of the few translations which retains the energy of the original. AND many thanks also to Devon A Dikeou who inspired the entire project.”
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masthead
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Dr Ben Satterfield
America's Game
Dr Ben Satterfield
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General Assembly
New Music Mondays Volume 1
General Assembly
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Tido Hido, curated by Melanie Flood
Roaming
Tido Hido, curated by Melanie Flood
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Serge Onnen
Sanitary Park
Serge Onnen
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Sam Hecht, curated by Mary Barone
Fashion Computations
Sam Hecht, curated by Mary Barone
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Mike Lohr
Semiliquid
Mike Lohr
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Giasco Bertoli
In A Year of 13 Moons
Giasco Bertoli
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Luis Macias
Blue Rage
Luis Macias
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Lee Stoetzel
Accidental Tourism
Lee Stoetzel
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Brian Alfred
Why I Don't Leave the House
Brian Alfred
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Angus Hood
Now Known as 15th, 1st, 2nd
Angus Hood
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Omar López-Chahoud
French Cooking
Omar López-Chahoud
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The Reflections, The Reviews, The Reactions
The Reflections, The Reviews, The Reactions
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zingmagazine poster #3: Ester Partegàs
zingmagazine poster #3: Ester Partegàs
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zingmagazine CD #3: General Assembly
New Music Mondays Volume 1
zingmagazine CD #3: General Assembly
1. Rusty Santos - "High Road"
2. Sweden - "Way To Love"
3. Louis Epstein - "Sleeping In Denmark"
4. Her Space Holiday - "Key Stroke"
5. Dopo Yume - "Sexy Girl"
6. Hit - "Christmas"
7. Melomane - "Aria in D"
8. JC + Anphibius - "Watchable"
9. Khabarta - "Hard Time Sayin' No"
10. Northern State - "Man's Dollar"
11. Max Pask - "56 Bushwix"
12. Tim Allen Incident - "Looking At You"
13. Plate Tectonies - "You Want It Now"
14. Azores - "Nothing To Hide"
15. Edison Woods - "Lullabies + Goodbyes"
16. The General Assembly Allstars - "End Credits"
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zingmagazine book #4: Steven Severance
Antigone
zingmagazine book #4: Steven Severance