Links We Like Friday
Never intending to disappoint, Frame Dance presses forward with a somewhat belated “Links We Like Friday” guest curated by the fabulous Clover Morell. Enjoy!
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My Blog Hit List for Summer 2012
By Clover Morell
Clover Morell is an artist & curator who creates interdisciplinary performances and media works. Often collaborative and experimental by nature, Clover’s work examines the human spirit, interpersonal politics, perception, memory and discomfort.
Morell has exhibited her work throughout Chicago at The Chicago Cultural Center, The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Betty Rymer Gallery, Link’s Hall, Elastic Arts and MOTO Restaurant. Her work in collaboration with Julie Laffin toured to The Prague Quadrennial in 2007 and The Dutch Theatre Festival in Amsterdam in 2009.
Originally a visual artist from New York, Morell received an MFA in Performance from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago in 2008 and an MA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Columbia College Chicago in 2005. She has studied media, writing, movement and performance-making with artists Lin Hixson, Goat Island, Sadie Benning, Lida Abdul, Jenny Magnus and Diego Pinon among others. She currently lives and works in Chicago.
1. My number one, all-time favorite blog has got to be http://wanderlustmind.com by my friend Sebastian Alvarez. He curates the most amazing articles across the web on art, science & technology. It is always an inspiration and I cannot spend enough time with it!
2. Next on my list, as of late, includes this sweet little blog: http://www.brainpickings.org which has a ton of reading suggestions to keep the noodle workin’. I like the way Maria Popova, the author, describes it:
Brain Pickings is your LEGO treasure chest, full of pieces across art, design, science, technology, philosophy, history, politics, psychology, sociology, ecology, anthropology, you-name-itology. Pieces that enrich your mental pool of resources and empower you to combine them into original concepts that are stronger, smarter, richer, deeper and more impactful.
I can spend hours reading over the little blurbs she provides about the concepts and authors behind them. As a bonus, she provides links to videos, often from TED TALKS (http://www.ted.com/talks), which I can’t live without.
3. Photography is a huge inspiration to me – it’s my secret, coveted skill – my wannabe profession. The rich imagery can help me build concepts, color schemes, characters – gives me a boost in a dull day – and illustrates nuance, emotion, space among so many other things. There are a ton of amazing photography blogs and magazines out there. Currently, I am enjoying this one: http://www.seesawmagazine.com
4. During my studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, I had the opportunity to work with some of the members of Goat Island (now extinct) (http://www.goatislandperformance.org/). They taught me about the art of creative response ala Goat Island style which is basically taking something like a photograph and translating it into a dance and then placing a ton of restrictions on it: edit it down to one minute, stretch it to fit a 3 minute piece of music, exchange your dance for a line of dialogue from a friend, now turn that into a 15 minute dance, watch a film, copy a move, paste that into your original dance at 3 minutes and on and on until you’ve developed something that feels right. I was a big fan of their process, their work and their approach to collaborative art making – because it actually works and keeps people together.
One of the members, Matthew Goulish, would occasionally present papers at the school and his writing always had me jotting down notes, running back to my studio inspired to integrate narrative and science into my work, about the brilliant lives of bower birds or some other obscure idea from nature/life. This blog is a collaborative effort and the brainchild of Matthew Goulish and Tim Etchells of Forced Entertainment (http://www.forcedentertainment.com/) (who rocks my world) and is called The Institute of Failure (http://www.institute-of-failure.com/).
BONUS:
I couldn’t get through this without asking my brilliant artist & designer husband, Andy Rohr (http://blog.twenty2wo.com/2009/08/andy-rohr-27-steps.html) for one of the many design blogs that inspires him everyday. After all, as he’s taught me, good design is important to all aspects of creative living. His pick: http://grainedit.com
Links We Like