Saturday, October 28, 2006

the expat podcast

bit under the weather, but i promise to write more soon. in the meantime, visit this site and enjoy:
http://www.dynamodpod.com/live/

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Afghan War Rugs and Other Objects


Recent emails from friends overseas have brought up the topic of shopping as an expat. As a maker of objects, I find our relationship to material culture of special interest. I flash back to my ex-husband's purchase of a Afghan war rug when we lived in Bahrain. (see above) Here are excerpts from the other emails:

1) Found the Motherlode of all Malagasy craft markets. the straw bags are fabulous. All different sizes from beach bags to little purses. Lots of different colors - magenta, lime green, and orange seem to be prevalent though. But there are also primary colors and earth tones. Lots of different patterns – checkerboard, stripes, herringbone for the more traditional of you! And they're all $3 to $10.

2) And all we have here in Rwanda are post-genocidal peace baskets...

Saturday, October 14, 2006

Iana Quesnell, dysfunctional nomad

Please do yourself a favor and see my friend Iana Quesnell's show. The work is smart, beautifully executed, and dovetails with the questions and concerns raised by the Female Expat Project. I hope a page with her work here soon.

The annoucement for the show:

Akemi Hong & Camilo Ontiveros in collaboration with the Voz Alta Collective would like to find you at

La Gringa Turista
Iana Quesnell @ Voz Alta
October 28 – November 8, 2006

Reception: October 28, 7 - 11pm

Voz Alta
1544 Broadway
San Diego, CA 92101

What does it mean to own yourself and to own the space that your body occupies in each moment?
Iana has turned what she sees as “dysfunctional nomadism” into the subject of her work. Through a process of documentation, she explores ways to own space temporally. Her large-scale drawings both depict the intimate details that she associates with owning a space while at the same time they are an act of claiming a kind of real estate through scale. The real estate of her drawings, like the real estate of her body, share the conundrum of having to borrow paths in order to physically exist.
La Gringa Turista is a documentation of living in Tijuana this past summer.
Due to the tension of being an outsider this work focuses primarily on the scene outside as viewed from the sofa inside, where she spent most of her time.

Open by appointment: iquesnell@ucsd.edu | no phone

For more information, contact Akemi Hong & Camilo Ontiveros:
(916) 524-3712
(619) 398-6872
acecollaborations@gmail.com

This Question of Moving

The Advanced Art Workshop has a new subtitle, namely "This Question of Moving." It's from the Charles Baudelaire quote from Paris Spleen:

It seems to me that I would always be better off where
I am not, and this question of moving is one of those
I discuss incessantly with my soul.

FEP folk, sorry for the blogging hiatus. I think I'm finally back. This first year of college teaching has sucked up all of my time and energy. Now back to the business of artmaking.

Friday, October 13, 2006

recent readings, kaplan and all

As I'm planning my Advanced Art Workshop on Mobility for Spring 2007 at Florida State, I though I should share the list of texts with the readers of the Female Expat Project. Here you go:

Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon Press. 1964. ($10)

Clifford, James. Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late 20th Century. Cambridge: Havard University Press. 1997. ($17)

Fitzpatrick, Robert. Universal Experience: Art, Life, and the Tourist's Eye. New York: Distributed Art Publishers. 2005. ($20)

Kaplan, Caren. Questions of Travel: Postmodern Discourses of Displacement. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 1996. ($23)

Kristeva, Julia. Strangers to Ourselves. New York: Columbia University Press.1991. ($21)

Robinson, Jane. Unsuitable for Ladies: An Anthology of Women Travellers. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1994. ($15)

Rogoff, Irit. Terra Infirma: Geography's Visual Culture. New York: Routledge. 2000. ($33)

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

powered by Audioblog.com

use audio blogger!!!

Teaching at Florida State University has been heavenly, and my digital art students will soon start an audio project that is closely aligned to the aspirations of this site. In preparation for the project, I've been researching some of my favorite sound art project. Here's a few with more to come...

Ricardo Miranda, http://www.ambriente.com/wifi/index.php
Murmur, http://murmurtoronto.ca/
Teri Rueb, http://www.terirueb.net/flash/TeriRueb.html
Jeff Talman, http://www.jefftalman.com/install.html

I'd also like to encourage people to use the audioblog set up for this site. It's so easy!!! For instructions, visit:
http://www.female-expat.org/2006/post.php#audiobloginstructions