Porter’s story of our bike ride across the Mekong comes out in the NY Times travel section this weekend.

The pictures are gorgeous. Read it here.

When I was in college I interned at VDAY for Eve Ensler. We went to Juarez to lead a massive protest against the feminicides in Juarez and bring international attention to the issue. While I was there I met some of the mothers who had lost their daughters. I guess that’s part of why helping with this piece was so amazing. Here’s some info on the situation in Juarez

Here are the details for the opening, please come!

Portrait of Sylvia Elena, a collaborative installation by Swoon & Tennessee Jane Watson at Honey Space, 148 11th Ave, betw 21st & 22nd, 6-8

More info form nonsensenyc.com :

Honey Space presents:

Portrait of Sylvia Elena

Honey Space is honored to present Portrait of Silvia Elena, a collaborative installation by Swoon and Tennessee Jane Watson. The exhibition — a memorial to Silvia Elena, a 17-year old girl who was murdered in Juarez, Mexico, in 1995 — combines text, sound, excavation, shrine elements, and one of Swoon’s most intricate paper cut-out/block prints to date. A different version of the installation is currently on view at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

Portrait of Silvia Elena is a somber, emotional work that, beyond functioning as a powerful memorial, provides a window into the tragic and ongoing issue of femicide. Defined as a pattern of murder targeting women, to which authorities have often systematically turned a blind eye, femicide has haunted communities throughout the Americas. In Juarez, located just across the border from El Paso, the issue became pronounced in the 1990s when, following the passage of NAFTA, maquiladoras sprang up there as they did elsewhere along the Mexican-American border, to take advantage of cheap Mexican labor. Young women who worked long hours in the factories often disappeared as they walked home at night along dark and dangerous roads. To date, over 500 women and girls have been confirmed killed in Juarez, with at least as many more reported disappeared. Human rights organizations put the number of murders much higher- estimating they could surpass 4,000. Most of the victims are young, po
or, and have been sexually assaulted prior to their deaths.

Swoon and Tennessee Jane Watson traveled together to Juarez in 2008 to learn about this issue first-hand. There they met Ramona Morales Huerta, whose daughter was one of those killed. They went with Ramona to visit her daughter Silvia’s grave. They recorded interviews with Ramona, captured the sounds of the desert winds and streets of Juarez, and pored over pictures of Ramona’s lost daughter. From this experience, came this exhibition.

For their installation in Honey Space, Swoon and Tennessee have made use of a long-sealed sub-basement that has been revealed by a hole in the gallery floor. Entering the gallery, visitors encounter a near-empty ground floor space, with a shrine located near the back wall, dedicated to Silvia’s memory. From the hole in the floor, sounds of Ramona speaking about her daughter, clearing dirt from Silvia’s grave, and the desert winds emerge. Viewers are able to enter the hole, and descend rubble to this catacomb-like space, where Swoon’s piece- extending over the back wall, ceiling and floor- is pasted, and candle-lit.

Honey Space
148 11th Avenue, between 21st and 22nd streets, Manhattan
6-8p; $free
honey-space.com

Angela is a talented photographer and filmmaker. Her flickr page is here.

Hey All-

Back in NY from dodging bullets in the DR!

My friends from the awesome wonderful band Dark Dark Dark are living in NYC for the summer and are looking for housing. Please let them know if you hear of anything.

Here’s what Marshall said:

We are 4-5 artists and musicians that would like to sublet a space together for June and July. It seems like something in Bushwick would be ideal, but we are open to other neighborhoods from Gowanus to Greenpoint. A space around $1500 would be fine for our needs.

We will have time to take care of the garden or the cat (probably not the dog), or do small projects around the house. We’re not looking to move into a party space, but next to one is okay. If you know anything respond to marshalllacount@riseup.net ASAP! Thanks!

Thanks!

Marshall

4/26- NEW YORK CITY- more acts TBA- Space Space- 390 Seneca Ave -(L train to dekalb ave exit front of train at stanhope st walk against traffic on stanhope 3 blocks last door on left before seneca ave)-Ridgewood! - 8 pm

Details here!

Come on up to MassMoCA if you’re free. It’s Miss Rockaway’s first art project in a museum!

Here are some pictures Tod Seelie took of the build going on there

It feels funny to say it, but it’s true, I’m really glad to come home after traveling for so long. I can’t wait to help build the massmoca show and I’m excited not to be scared for my safety. In the DR it’s impossible to walk down the street or be in public anywhere for that matter without someone mean-mugging you like crazy. you get an exorbitant number of nasty looks from local men. i hear this is called “guapa” which actually means handsome but refers to an angry girl here. i dunno. this may be something that happens to everyone, or specifically to us as tourists/foreigners. also women are fair game for sexual harassment and cat-calling and people are totally shocked if you get mad about it. there are lots of things about latino machismo which i find hard to stomach, though i find machismo repulsive in all its locations. of course getting shot at and robbed while already struggling with money, with impunity, has a way of disrupting one’s sense of safety as well.

this photo has nothing to do with street art except that i took it during the ‘05 wooster street art walking tour. i think that was the year they let me help them tell people about street art history. they’re pretty great.

i’m not sure how appropriate it is to dig right into all the details. here are some.

my boyfriend and i had rented a house in the dominican republic and after three days there two men came into the house and robbed us of our laptops, my ring, my camera, cell phone, and a few other things. we ran out of the house as the gunman was fumbling with the clip in his gun and they fired at us as we ran. barefoot, we ran out of the yard to the neighbor’s, scaled a fence and ran through a briar field to get away. they shot 8 times as we ran, some in our direction and some when were already out of the yard.

i believe the gunman were haitian, though i don’t know for sure. [note: the following paragraph was added to help explain why i believe the attackers were haitian. it is the result of countless conversations and interviews with both poor and rich locals, police, expats etc. i only know one haitian man here but he is wealthier than the migrant workers of this town] i believe this because the situation has been explained to me as the following: haitians, the most oppressed and impoverished rung of society here, are hired by higher-up dominican crime bosses who pay off the police, if they’re not hired by the police themselves. night guardsman are paid very poorly ($500/month is the higher end) and often tip off the thieves to the victims’ whereabouts. entry-level police are paid very very poorly here, worse than armed guards in fact, and make about $120/month. With so little to survive on, is it any wonder that they are corrupt? furthermore, the haitian border has been opened up fairly recently, and an influx of oppressed and starved people has left migrants seeking work and ways to survive, beyond the horrendous conditions of the sugar cane fields where they work for less than $1/day and are paid in (overpriced) company food store coupons. A movie called the price of sugar came out about this recently. further, a good deal of crimes have been committed in this wealthy tourist town over the years by haitian assialiants, likely being used as henchman for a much wealthier crime ring. lastly, they had very dark skin (unlike the mixed race appearance of many but certainly not all dominicans). in any case, they were driven to this by some kind of need.

it’s tough to not feel hopeless in the face of people risking their lives and trying to take yours for some stuff. most of the haitian people you see here are digging ditches for $2/day, which is not enough to live on even by local DR standards. on that salary it would take ten years to make the amount of money equal to the value of the stuff they stole from us, probably longer. the other day I saw a couple of the haitian boys who walk around trying to shine your shoes for cheap on the beach. they were looking in a storm drain pipe for change or anything of value that could have washed out of the sewer. i can’t for a moment pretend to forgive the robbers for shooting at us and for doing what they did, but clearly the circumstances that created the reasons to do such a thing are pretty brutal. the going price for our laptops on the street is like $600 or less. who knows what they were getting paid, but it reflects the value of their lives and ours in this situation, which really isn’t much.

what to do? wringing my hands and feeling sad at the moment, but i’ll learn more about the situation as time passes and try to understand how people can help. for now i’m just trying to eat, sleep through the night, work and proceed with caution.

this experience was nowhere near as bad as I could imagine it being, and I’m grateful for that.

we’re very safe now, despite being shaken.