Bulletin Board of the Brain » Cultural Shifts

William Emmert On My Wall

Kj — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 07:04:46 +0000

While at MHGS, I spent three years on Student Leadership. Part of what my particular team (Sacred Space) did was to curate the two art galleries in our building. The main floor gallery is for local artists and the upstairs gallery is for artists from the MHGS student body. For my final summer as a student, I was stoked to get to bring in my buddy William Emmert as the main floor gallery artist.

Having worked with William for two years, I’ve been witness to the many hours he spends meticulously drawing and painting the images that fill his extensive body of work. I love the mix of nostalgia, strangeness and specificity in what William does. The materials he uses, the images he collects and his crafting process all contribute to the themes of identity, absence and American culture that his work engages. You can see most of his work on his flickr page.

Many of his pieces he showed at MHGS are not framed, but rather, constructed in actual desk drawers hung against the wall. This effect is especially cool for his pieces that use baseball cards. Its art but its also just a drawer full of someone’s card collection.

I enjoy William’s work for a lot of reasons, many of which have to do with my own obsession with nostalgia, collections, pop culture, repetitive images and adaptive reuse, but I also enjoy his work because of how much I enjoy William himself. He’ll be leaving to get his MFA in San Francisco in a few weeks, and I will absolutely miss how much he lets me annoy him with loudly sung pop songs in his very close proximity. Lucky for me, he let me pick a piece to keep! I choose this two piece work which utilizes a 1930’s yearbook. I can’t believe how good it looks in my room! Thank you William.

“Fast Times” By William Emmert

On my wall

More William Emmert links:

The Weird World of William Emmert on ThinkFaest

Unstage.com

Beautiful/Decay

Kj’s Corner: Real Presences & Adaptation

Kj — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 09:38:16 +0000

This summer I had the opportunity to serve as research assistant to Dr. Chelle Stearns for her course on “Theology & the Artistic Impulse.” This meant I got to give two lectures on the class material. (At MHGS we don’t use student TA’s due to dual relationship concerns- so research assistant is a kind of newish thing). Struck with the utter surprise and amazingness of this opportunity, I sort of wondered out loud about it to Chelle, and her response was, that since I’m likely heading into academia moreso than ministry proper, it makes sense that as I got to practice pastoring in my program, I should also get a chance to try on teaching before I graduate. I guess its a good sign that the thought of having two whole hours of class to do with what I wish felt like receiving a ticket to DisneyWorld. Frankly- i would have loved even more time, but two lectures was PLENTY work for this crazy final term. So twice I got to facilitate classtime, focusing on any aspect of the readings- through whatever lenses I felt like bringing to it. Chelle dubbed the time “Kj’s Korner.”

1st lecture: The week’s reading was George Steiner’s “Real Presences,” an incredibly difficult but fascinating text. The amazon review gives a good idea of what I had to work with: “Steiner asserts moral and metaphysical issues are the basis of all art and that our experience of meaning in music, painting and literature presupposes the existence of God as a “necessary possibility.” Dense, difficult, rewarding, this passionately argued essay ranges fluently over aesthetics, linguistics, philosophy, post-structuralism, the range of Western culture.”

As I do with all things, I read, asking myself, “What else does this bring to mind? Where do I see this applied in a way that makes sense to me?” I quickly landed on Charlie Kaufman’s film Adaptation. I used quotes from the book to explore scenes from the film and scenes from the film to explore concepts from the book, etc. Here’s some images my my lecture, as well as the opening scene of the film.

Of Mice and Meals

Kj — Fri, 07 May 2010 19:08:55 +0000

Redwall by Brian Jacques

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Continuing in my process of reading books for young people that I neither read nor heard of as a young person, I’ve started the Redwall series. Actually, my friend Tucker holds Mossflower as one of the most influential books in his life, and I want to read that, but it comes after this first book, Redwall, so I read ths first.

It was sweet. Can’t say I was ever at a loss for what would happen next or which cranky bad guys would turn out to be good, or what monstrous villain would suffer a vicious death or which sweet mouse girl would marry the brave mouse hero, but the world of woodland creatures who inhabit castles, belong to mouse monk orders and gather dandelions for salads, was quite a reprieve from my graduate studies.

But putting the more-than-predictable plot aside, the true delight of this book is the descriptions of food and feasts the medieval woodland creatures create. I leave you with some incandescently hunger-arousing descriptions.

“Tender freshwater shrimp garnished with cream and rose leaves, deviled barley pearls in acorn puree, apple and carrot chews, marinated cabbage stalks steeped in creamed white turnip with nutmeg.”

View all my reviews >>

Dialogical Film Club: Rundown 2010

Kj — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 09:42:02 +0000

Next month will mark the one year anniversary of the Dialogical Film Club, which, considering that it all started because six of us wanted to deconstruct Twilight, that’s really pretty amazing. Here’s what we’ve been up to. And DFC members- feel free to amend my versions of things. I know I forget about 80% of what we talked about once it’s over.

December 2009: DFC Christmas Extravaganza

Stop-Animation Specials: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, The Little Drummer Boy
Bonus Feature: Little Women
Chosen Because: I was really curious what Rudolph would be like for people who didn’t grow up with it, and I wanted to parse out my theory of Rudolph being a pro-queer text. Also, since I’d bought a Stop-animation Christmas DVD collection, we decided to explore one none of us really knew. Little Women came out of conversation around movies we always watch at Christmas, and after sitting there quoting Christian Bale and Gabriel Byrne for twenty minutes, those of us still hanging out decided to go ahead and just watch it.
Our Dialogue: Rudolph & Drummer Boy- you really have no idea how violent and angry they are till watching it with those who have never seen them. And I lost track of my “dentist/misfit=okay-to-be-gay” subtext as we realized what an A-hole Santa is in Rudolph. Little Women–I have no idea what we talked about, but man that night made up for the two weeks of Christmas break I spent weeping at my desk alone in the middle of the night writing my thesis. We even had British style Christmas Crackers- the kind that explode with toys, not covered in cheese.

January 2010: The Nines
Chosen Because: Ian was visiting us from NYC and curated this DFC, bringing with it questions of determinism, fate, spirituality, and how the film might function well as a play.
Our Dialogue: Much prediction around the trajectory of the mysteriously bifurcated narrative, and what the filmmakers wanted us to question about our reality. Also- we got kind of scared a bit.

February (though we met first week of March): Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azkaban
Chosen Because: Harry Potter comes up a lot, and this is one of my top ten films of all time. Plus, Chasten had just finished reading the series.
Our Dialogue: Orphanhood, identity, protection–the various ways the story explores Harry’s need for care and protection from adults, but also how those relationships enable him to learn to protect himself.

March: Where The Wild Things Are
Chosen Because: The DFC is largely counseling psychology graduates and good lord, this film reads like a DSM article on the childhood subconscious.
Our Dialogue: This was the most heated (and lengthy) DFC meeting yet. We literally took an hour and a half to get through the first twenty minutes of the film. Factions formed between those who found the boy overdrawn, overwrought and heavy-handedly hipster, and those who found his portrayal heartbreakingly true. We discovered the split seemed to exist between oldest siblings (the former opinion) and youngest siblings (the latter). There was many a battle fought over this one- which doesn’t surprise me since when I saw the movie in the theater last October, it was the first time I ever walked out of a theater and said “Now that’s a movie for the DFC.” This viewing also marked another time where we were blessed with visits from Ian and from the Pietsches as well. The DFC misses them!

April: The Graduate
Bonus Feature: Garden State
Chosen Because: I don’t know who initially suggested The Graduate, but since most of our choices center around watching and wondering about what’s most popular culturally, The Graduate was a great opportunity to reflect on an iconically popular classic. I suggested Garden State as an intertext since it’s functioned in some similar ways for our generation as The Graduate did for our parents’, not the least of which being, the significant role of soundtracks for each film.
Our Dialogue: We were shocked by how clearly The Graduate (at least acts I & II) illustrated the cycle of abuse- with seduction, manipulation, guilt, abuse of power, etc. We were all equally flummoxed by WTF was going on during act III other than that Benjamin just basically goes insane. Then those who were able to stick around, shared embarrassing and cathartic stories of why Garden State felt so amazing six years ago, and now seems absolutely ridiculous. Go figure.

That’s it for now. Here’s to another great year of dialoguing our way through some breathtaking films and some crappy ones too!

Time to Talk Twilight

Kj — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 09:31:29 +0000

For about eight minutes, at least.

Anyone in Seattle who’s interested, some of us from my MDiv cohort will be presenting our Integrative Projects

Wednesday, April 7th at MHGS from 3-5.

You would be most welcome.

2010 Pop Culture Conference Rundown

Kj — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 01:49:55 +0000

4 days, hundreds of professors, PhD/Grad/Undergraduate students and very short food breaks = the Southwest/Texas Popular and American Culture Association’s annual conference.

Ian Klein joined me in Albuquerque for another year of frying our brains with academic discourse on popular culture. We heard about 50 papers and drank a lot of smoothies. It was indescribably delightful.

Here’s the panels I attended and the papers I liked best (per panel- not overall):

Science Fiction & Fantasy 19: Battlestar Galactica and Narrative
Fave paper:
“I Came to Galactica to Tell a Story”: Battlestar Galactica and Transmedia Interactivity
Jennifer Fong, UCLA

Science Fiction & Fantasy: Twilight Fandom
Fave paper:
Undead Authors, Anne Rice, J.K. Rowling, and Stephenie Meyer Battle Roland Barthes on the Internet
Bridget R. Cowlishaw, Northeastern State University, Tahlequah

Science Fiction & Fantasy: Joss Whedon, Sexuality and Gender
Fave paper:
Anya’s “Disturbing Sex Talk”: Breaking the Pattern of Punished Female Sexuality in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Tamy Burnett, University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Science Fiction & Fantasy: Sex and Violence in Twilight
(I presented on this panel)
Fave paper:
Rewriting the Byronic Hero: How the Twilight Saga Made “Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know” Acceptable Teenage Fiction
Jessica Groper, Claremont Graduate University

Religion: Conservative Christianity and Culture
Fave paper:
Sacred and Sexular: Ann Veal in Arrested Development
Brandon Barnes, Texas A&M University

Computer Culture: Game Studies 7
Fave paper:
Beyond the Button: The Nintendo Wiimote Interface and its Implications for Embodiment, Performance and Play
David O’Grady, UCLA

Science Fiction & Fantasy: The Dangers of Twilight
Fave paper:
Un-Biting the Apple and Killing the Womb: Genesis, Gender and Gynocide in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga
Colleen Orihill, Cleveland State University

Science Fiction & Fanstasy: Whedon and Genre
Fave paper:
Firefly: Between the Noir Frontier and the Final Frontier
E. Chrlotte Stevens, york University and Ryerson University

American History & Culture: Rethinking Suburban Sense of Self: Identity and Memory in the Suburbs
Face paper:
Everything’s Bigger in Texas: Mega-Religion in Lone Star Suburbia
Charity R. Carney, Stephen F. Austin State University

Computer Culture: Game Studies 11
Fave paper:
America’s First Person Shooters: Violent Interactions with Historical Narratives
Harrison Gish, UCLA

Horror (Literary & Cinmenatic): “Torture Porn”
Fave paper:
It’s all Liv Tyler’s Fault!: Male Shame and Protective Failure in The Strangers
Glen Donnar, RMIT University, Melbourne

Horror (Literary & Cinemantic): Affective and Imaginary Machines of Horror
Fave paper:
Manufacturing Images: Allegories of the Factory in Tomb Raider
Craig Bernardini, Hostos Community College

Punk: Punk Literature Philosophically and Rhetorically
Fave paper:
Punk’s Not Dead, it’s Un-Dead: The Vampire Spike as Punk Rock Expression
Bryan L. Jones, Northeatern State University, Oklahoma

Computer Culture: Ethnography, Writing, Second Life, and Film
Fave paper:
The Sex Life in your Second Life: An Ethnological Study of Women as Sexual Objects in Second Life
Alexis Waters, Northeastern Illinois University

Science Fiction & Fantasy: Whedon and the Body
Fave paper: Ian, of course!
“I Like My Scars”: Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse and the Narrative of Flesh
Ian Klein, Columbia University

Computer Culture: Theorizing Internet Forms
Fave paper:
“Wizards and Witchcraft in the Wired World”: Magical Thinking in Popular Culture
Nicholas Goodman, Northeastern State University

The Woman Buried Under the Words

Kj — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 07:13:23 +0000

Here’s a link to a paper I wrote that’s currently featured on Mars Hill Graduate School’s site for student and faculty writings. I can’t vouch too much for the the writing quality, but I can confidently say the topic is pretty amazing. Do you know about Junia, the first (mentioned) female apostle? If not, this is a pretty decent intro to her and the controversy surrounding how her name disappeared from English Bible translations. The whole story is still pretty unbelievable to me, even two years after writing this. An interesting activity after you read it is to check whatever Bible translations you use, see when or by whom they were published, then look at Romans 16:7 to see whether they mention “Junia” or “Junias”. I’d love to know what you find.

December is A List-Lover’s Favorite Time of Year

Kj — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 02:51:22 +0000

While I’m currently chained to my desk working on my last paper of 2009, due Monday dec 21st, i figured I’d encourage myself my posting my annual list of paper titles a little early, as proof to myself that I have indeed, on numerous occasions, actually completed the paper-writing process.

Seems like I wrote fewer papers this year compared to last year, but I also wrote a curriculum, two sermons, and did a few more project/essay things in lieu of research papers. But it’s all leading up to the biggie- my integrative project/thesis- which I need to hit “send” on this coming Monday at midnight-final title TBA once it’s done. But here’s a year in review even though I ain’t really done. This year’s batch definitely branched out from the realms of Biblical Greek and Church History…

**********************************
“There are More Things in Heaven and Earth, Harris, Than are Dreamt of in Your Philosophy”:

Poetic Transcendence and Mystic Benevolence
in Steve Martin’s L.A. Story

*********************************
Unfamiliar Territory:

Rest, Mystery
And the Western Washington Peninsula

*********************************
“One Nation, Under Insecurity”:

Consumerism As American Civil Religion

*********************************
Woman vs. Machine:

Comparing Dinnerstein and Gould’s Recordings of
Bach’s Goldberg Variations

*********************************
From Beige to Technicolor:

A Six-Week Journey Towards Food

*********************************
Head to Head:

An Introduction to the Complementarian/Egalitarian Divide
as Expressed Through Interpretations of
1 Corinthians 11:2-16
*********************************

I’m Published In A Magazine! (ad)

Kj — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 07:40:37 +0000

If you happen to flip thorugh the latest issue of Relevant Magazine, you’ll find something that looks like a non-bifurcated version of this nestled into an article about the new face of homelessness, somewhere after the Matisyahu and Switchfoot interviews… (My ellipses are trying to connote irony, but about what, I’m not entirely sure).

MHGS marketing (Josue) has been experimenting with ads that are essays by students instead of the normal catchy image and hyperbolic quote thing. I don’t know if it works, but I guess the idea is to expereince a bit of MHGS and its students, even just at the print ad level. I appreciated the invitation.

I asked Josue what he wanted me to write about and he said “Why don’t you shoot me a few ideas” and I said “uhhhhh…a few ideas on what to write 500 words about for an ad for an interdenominational seminary/counseling graduate school to put in a progressive/Evangelical Christian magazine about pop culture? That should be…easy?”

But I shot him a few ideas and he suggested I run with the Shakespeare idea. This is literally the least I could say on the intersection of Shakespeare, hermeneutics and the gospel –so little in fact that I’m afraid it makes no sense, but Josue said it was okay, and maybe somewhere out there a twenty-something liberal-arts minded Christian gal who can’t decide between getting an MFA in Directing or trying out the seminary thing will decide to click on mhgs.edu and who knows what might happen next…(This is a rhetorical reference to myself, not a knock at Directing MFAs. I’d like one of those as well, if you have an extra one lying around)

Either way, it’s fun to sort of have an article in a magaizne (and get to toss out the word eschatoligical while also talking about the smell of popcorn). I say this a lot lately, but, Thanks Josue.

(Also-about the top image-when I realized one page was Hamlet and the other was the Book of John, I had an intertextual joy heart attack)

Can I Just Clarify One Thing Real Quickly Here?

Kj — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 05:32:17 +0000

“…one of the problems with women taking full leadership is that it inevitably involves a collapsing of the distinctions between the sexes.”

–Thomas R. Schreiner in his conluding statements about contemporary application of 1 Corinthians 11:2-16, in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism, edited by J. Piper and W. Grudem. Wheaton: Crossway, 1991.

It’s probably irresponsible or lazy for me to just throw this quote out here without offering an in-depth response or critique, but as I sit here reading this text, researching “Male-Headship” readings of 1 Corinthians, I just want to go on record to say that as women continue to take on full leadership roles both in church and society, it will highlight the distinctions between the sexes, not collapse them. That’s the whole point, from my perspective. I want women in leadership because they will lead as women, not lead as men. Only then can we experience a reframing/healing/redesign of what we have only been offered from male paradigms.

An egalitarian society does not equal an un-gendered society.

That’s all I have to say for now, Messieurs Piper and Grudem.