Dancing on My Own Mixtape #3

Have a swinging Easter everybody!

Two art shows I have not seen (yet)

Melanie Bonajo, Evolution, 2012, C-print

I have always believed in Melanie Bonajo's superstar quality. She's just that kind of girl. Her work, that balances humour and dead seriousness, consists of photography, installations and performances. It's playful and thought provoking and, well - completely unique. Bonajo's exhibition One Question, Three Rooms, 44 Possible Answers is on view at P.P.O.W. in New York. Interview wrote a niece little piece on it on their website, read it here.

In another part of Earth, Nicoline van Harskamp just opened her solo exhibition Yours in Solidarity in art space NASA in Amsterdam (formerly SMART Project Space). The title of this post might have tipped you off, but just so you know: I have not seen this exhibition yet. But I am going to, and if there's any truth in the things people say on Twitter, then you should too. Read more about Van Harskamp's exhibition here.

Melanie Bonajo, One Question, Three Rooms, 44 Possible Answers
P.P.O.W., New York
Feb 28 - Mar 30

Nicoline van Harskamp, Yours in Solidarity
NASA, Amsterdam
Mar 10 – May 19

Dancing on My Own Mix Tape #2

This week's tunes to sing and/or dance along to!

Dancing on My Own Mix Tape

We're kicking off the weekend ánd getting our groove on with this nice mix of both nostalgic and new tunes. TGIF!

The distinct voice of Hanna Bervoets

Dutch literature is sparked to life by young female writer Hanna Bervoets, whose third novel was recently published.

Dutch bookstores have been curiously drained of colour these past weeks. The reason? Their displays are filled with stacks of the latest novel of young Dutch writer and columnist Hanna Bervoets, Alles wat er was, its psychedelic black and white cover immediately catching your eye.

I quite enjoyed Bervoets's previous novels and though I wouldn't call myself a fan per se, I'd praise her distinct voice and obvious talent and ambition. As the line-up of the upcoming Das Magazin Festival proves (which features 30 writers, five of whom are female), Dutch literature is largely dominated by men. Some may be annoyed by Bervoets's overexposure. But I'd rather see one talented female writer in the spotlight than none at all.

As for the book itself, the feedback on Alles wat er was, a grim post-apocalyptic story, is mainly postive. The exception is this bitter review in Vrij Nederland (which also happens to contain quite a few spoilers). Fans of Bervoets might want to skip that one and check out the word on Twitter instead, where it reads:

Zarayda Groenhart: Mag k even aand8 vr t nwe boek vn @HannaBervoets? Sjezus, wat n meesterwerk! Sla vanavnd seks over om em uit te kunnen lezen #alleswaterwas

Vittorio Kempenaar: @HannaBervoets Heb vandaag je laatste boek, @AllesWatErWas in een ruk uitgelezen. Loved it. En niet te vergeten de "Achterflap". Nice pic!

Yeji Streppel: "Een ruzie als een Escherschilderij." Liefde voor deze zin. Dank, @HannaBervoets

Kramer & van Doorn: @HannaBervoets ""Alles wat er was" al gelezen ? Beslist doen anders ! Claustrofobisch spannend, confronterend en goed geschreven. #aanrader

More on Bervoets and Alles wat er was on the official Facebook page of the novel. I can also recommend following Bervoets on Twitter.

Of songs and memories

‘(T)hat girl isn’t me anymore. Now it’s just a story.’ In Paradoxical Undressing, Kristin Hersh tells the story of herself twenty-five years ago – a story of songs, snakes, shows, madness and friends, in which she gets lost and finds the beginning of a way out. The book is based on a diary she kept for a year when she was eighteen years old. It reads like a song – like a Throwing Muses song that is. It is fast, colorful and strange, the story is fragmented, the chronology unclear, but it does make sense. And by describing what took place when the first Throwing Muses songs came into being, the book makes clear why they sound like they do, and gives insight in the meaning of the lyrics.

Almost twenty years earlier, Patti Smith went to New York to become an artist. She met Robert Mapplethorpe, with whom she lived and worked together for years – as lovers and as friends. Smith wrote a book about their relationship, Just Kids. Although the main focus is on the first years of their relationship, the book starts with Smith’s birth and ends with Mapplethorpe’s death.

Although they are set in different time periods, there are striking similarities between these two autobiographies. Both describe the coming of age of a musician, which is accompanied by a feeling of alienation. They perceive themselves as different (from other people) and relate this to being an artist; the people they can relate to are also outsiders (band members, other artists). At the same time, they do not really know yet how to make being an artist work in a practical sense. But music is what gives them direction and what will save them.

For Hersh this happens in a painful and uncertain way, the songs really take over, for Smith it seems to be much clearer and calmer. But they both do not really choose music; music chooses them and gives them a sense of belonging. In terms of gender, Smith repeatedly speaks of perceiving herself as ‘not a girl’. Hersh also states this explicitly – ‘but I am not a girl’, and she continually questions gender roles, on stage and in her personal life. They are forced to think about gender because people define them in terms of their femininity (or, in other cases, lack thereof), and they need to respond to this image. And those are not the only issues regarding femininity they are forced to deal with: both women become pregnant when they are young. The books do not describe the relationships with the fathers of the children; Smith gives her daughter up for adoption, Hersh chooses to care for the baby by herself.

Of course there are many differences between the two – Hersh acts more maturely when she is young, Smith is more naïve. Smith’s book focuses more on the relationship with Mapplethorpe than on her own development (which is unfortunate, in my opinion), though both are closely interrelated, whereas Hersh is the main character in her book. However, although Smith’s prose is more romantic (Hersh is wilder), the tone is really similar. Maybe this is because both Hersh and Smith are songwriters, maybe it is a result of the fact that they share a lot of experiences – touring with a rock band, raising children, the changing music industry and so on. During the course of their lives they have made their memories and stories into songs, and now they have made the memories, diaries, poems and songs into books. But the strongest connection seems to be that both Smith and Hersh had to create their own space, in music, in order to be able to work and live. Their books give us some insight in how they did this, by showing how they started.

This piece was written by guest contributor Eva Meijer. Eva is an artist, writer, philosopher and singer-songwriter. Find out more about her on her website.

Grimes confessions

One of this year's break out musicians is sharing her life and thoughts on a new tumblr account. Worth a click.

Pitchfork.com recently named Grimes' Oblivion the best track of 2012. Why? Because of its "steely, hyper-minimal beat, layered vocals, and hypnotic, circular melody". Pitchfork also notes: "The song became a major highlight of (Grimes') live sets, which grew wilder and tighter as her crowds and venue capacities increased in size."

This Christmas, Grimes a.k.a. Claire Boucher, stated on Twitter:

'since i am incapable of enjoying christmas, im gonna start an official Grimes tumblr (for real this time)'

Now, actuallygrimes.tumblr.com offers an interesting insight in the life and thoughts of this young musician. Worth a click for both Grimes fans ánd for those who, like Lena Dunham, enjoy confessional prose.

Watch the video of Grimes' Oblivion on YouTube
Look up Grimes on Wikipedia

The week in scandals

Cover Girls: pop diva Katy Perry, kick ass filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow and queen of quirk Zooey Deschanel

If you're into women's issues on the one hand and straight up gossip on the other, it has definitely been an interesting week for you. This was the week of Katy Perry vs. the feminist movement, Brett Easton Ellis vs. Kathryn Bigelow and basically everyone vs. the "manic pixie dream girl". Intrigued? Read on!

'Are you a feminist?'

Last Friday Katy Perry was named "Billboard's Woman of the Year". The twenty-something pop singer, who beforehand said to she "liked being viewed a strong woman", stated she isn't a feminist in her acceptance speech. Needless to say, feminist bloggers throughout the United States were NOT AMUSED. For example, Madeleine Davis of Jezebel.com posted this angry piece of writing. Slate blogger Amanda Hess adresses the whole issue in a more balanced article. She suggests that Perry's answer might have been ignorant but the question ('Are you a feminist?') is wrong to begin with. Writer Nona Willis Aronowitz explains: 'Ultimately I think it's a lot more important to look at what someone is doing rather than how they're labeling themselves.'

Male fantasy
A more fun piece on Slate talked about the end of the "manic pixie dream girl" character that has been popping up in movies for years now. This female stereotype may not be a standard sex bomb but she's a male fantasy nonetheless. The MPDG is a quirky mix of tom boy and girlie-girl with a superhuman lust for life. Never the main character, she serves as the male protagonist's love interest, teaching him how to enjoy life. The ultimate MPDG is probably Natalie Portman's Sam in Garden State. In recent years it has mainly been "queen of quirk" Zooey Deschanel who has embodied this cliched part, most famously in (500) Days of Summer. Now, a satirical video called Manic Pixie Prostitute may be announcing the death of the MPDG character. A major victory for fans of well-rounded female characters, if you ask me.

OK junk
And then there's this month's Bret Easton Ellis Twitter controversy. The American Psycho writer has become known for his bold 140-character statements, causing Twitter riots on a regular basis. This time, Ellis got in trouble for bashing Oscar winner Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker, Point Break), whose new movie Zero Dark Thirty was recently awarded prizes for Best Film and Best Director by the New York Film Critics Circle, prompting an instant Oscar buzz. On Twitter, Bret Easton Ellis called Bigelow's body of work "OK junk", and continued with this Tweet:

'Kathryn Bigelow would be considered a mildly interesting filmmaker if she was a man but since she's a very hot woman she's really overrated.'

The roundup on the controversy that The Guardian posted is definitely worth reading. And, if you don't want to miss any other BEE scandal ever again, make sure to follow him on Twitter.

Undercover reading

This week Robert Gottlieb posted this piece, entitled Girls before 'Girls' on the New Yorker blog, about Rona Jaffe's 1958 novel The Best of Everything. I'll certainly put that on my reading list, as it's 'about that old story of three, or four, or five very young women land up in New York, trying to find their way'.

It made me think of my own first encounter with that timeless theme: Mary McCarthy's 1963 novel The Group. Which is about, well, read it yourself, Penguin has practically printed the whole book on the cover. It is this edition that I found on my parents' bookshelves, aged eleven, and took upstairs to my bedroom. It must've been the interior decor and the cooking that triggered me.
My dad was slightly dismayed when he passed my bedroom door and saw me reading it in bed, but he let me. Still, I read on under the covers, because I was a little ashamed to be caught with such adult reading material. And adult it was.

It wasn't the sex, really, though that was pretty explicit. But those girls from the thirties being seduced by boho alcoholic artists or raped by Norwegian ski jumpers were just as innocent as my eleven year old self, so that part of the book worked for me. Big time, even. Never had I read anything like that before, and certainly not from a woman's perspective. I did have a few sleepless nights trying to figure out what exactly a diaphragm was and where it went. I still haven't reached any definite conclusions. 

I read on under the covers, because I was a little ashamed to be caught with such adult reading material

The part of the book that felt so adult to me was everything else in those women's lives. The politics (and there was a lot of that, much more than in Girls), the psycho-analysis, the breastfeeding, the bitchyness, the marriages falling apart, and just the general air of bitterness and disillusionment that set in immediately after those girls graduated. This novel was pretty autobiographical, apparently, Mary McCarthy herself graduated from Vassar in '33. But it's very clear that she wrote it many years later, after there was time for life to happen and bitterness to set in. 

 I loved The Group so much  that I reread it often, growing up, but never thought to discuss it with anyone. It was such a strange old book, who would even like it? When I left home and my parents' bookshelves I forgot about it entirely. Then last year, thanks to Mad Men, it became popular again. It even got reissued here in the Netherlands. And when I attended the book launch, suddenly there were all these other women who loved The Group too! It was strange to find out they existed, it had been such a private book for me. Many of them were a lot older than I am, and had read the book when it first came out, in the sixties, when they were young women themselves. I wonder if Girls will make a similar comeback in forty years time. Hope so. 

Since I realized there were other people out there who liked The Group, I have been trying to force all my friends to read it. I don't think any of them have, so far. Maybe you will? It's worth it, I promise. And maybe, if you find out something about that diaphragm, you can let me know.

Iconic sleuth

Even the hip enjoy the occasional whodunnit, especially when it's Jessica Fletcher who's solving the crime. At 86, actress Angela Lansbury is still a female role model - and a cover girl to boot.

The Gentlewoman is probably the hippest among women's magazines, known for their bold choices in both content and design. But this season, they're beyond bold. On the cover is Angela Lansbury, the actress we've come to identify with amateur sleuth Jessica Fletcher, who solved murders for twelve straight seasons of Murder, She Wrote. But there's more to Lansbury than just one iconic part. She's delivered many great performances, notably as the bitch mother in The Manchurian Candidate and naive Nellie in musical Sweeney Todd, which won her one of her four Tony Awards.

For this issue of The Gentlewoman Lansbury got her portraits shot by cool-as-can-be photographer Terry Richardson (posing with his famous glasses in the cover shot), the interview is by Holly Brubach. Brubach notes that Lansbury's life is very much like Fletcher's was back when she portrayed her in the 80s and 90s. Like Fletcher, Lansbury is now a widow. And though she mourns the loss of her husband, she's content being single, having no interest whatsoever in a new romance. Plus, both Fletcher and Lansbury have a fulfilling career. Lansbury still works as an actress, both on stage and in movies. Next year she's to play a tiny part in Wes Anderson's new movie, something I'm really excited about.

'Jessica didn't want to begin a whole new cycle of life, because she had a very complete life as an authoress.'

The interview with Lansbury, which is a joy to read, made me realize that Jessica Fletcher truly was a unique role model, mostly because Lansbury made sure she'd be as independent as any male hero - or even more so. Lansbury tells Brubach that the Murder, She Wrote writing team tried to write Jessica a romance, but Lansbury resisted. Lansbury: 'Jessica Fletcher didn't want to begin a whole new cycle of life with somebody new, because she had a very complete life as an authoress. She had success and the comfort and cosiness of her home, her persuits, her friends.'

It's nice that Lansbury - and the writers of Murder, She Wrote - gets credit for giving the world a female role model we hadn't seen before. But I wonder: where are those tv role models now?

Read more about The Gentlewoman