Unstills

Visibly Absent, Central Station, Amsterdam

lynnmarie — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 04:05:48 +0000

I’m pleased to note that I was included in Dutch artist, Viola Renate’s piece Visibly Absent for the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Renate’s task was to take a piece from the museum’s permanent collection (in storage for several years due to renovation) and bring it to the attention of the public. The result was Visibly Absent, a piece inspired by Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #54, wherein six light boxes feature Flickr images of artists around the world emulating Sherman’s work. My own documentation can be seen in boxes below. More documentation can be seen at: Response to Cindy Sherman. You can see larger version of the light boxes by going to the Flickr site and clicking on each picture.

To see more of Viola Renate’s work, visit her myspace page or Flickr page.

The End.

lynnmarie — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 00:27:04 +0000

An exciting new project has encouraged me to re-visit this web site and write a few final posts (more on this if/when the project is solidified). To clarify, I did end Unstills early for personal reasons. At the end of July I was so incredibly repulsed and depressed by the project that I had to stop or sink deeper into both of those feelings. In retrospect, trudging through the last two weeks and chronicling those emotions would have been captivating and as my father would say, character building. But at the time not wanting to leave my house or go to work was detrimental to paying my bills. I’m sure this was also correlated to my relationship with C ending.

Since then my best friend has been encouraging me to finalize the project. I almost always listen to her advice, but for the aforementioned reasons, I was having difficulty re-visiting the project. (Amanda, if you read this, I’m sorry that your nudging and my own personal motivation wasn’t enough). It’s taken validation from a stranger to propel finalization (again, more on this later if and when awesome things happen). Up until now I hadn’t felt like this project was a success. Success to me would have been waking up everyday, putting on my Cindy Sherman attire, attending many events and taking lots of pictures. I was going to be happy and brave, but instead regularly felt embarrassed, ashamed, apologetic, and guilty. Success did not include ending two weeks early. Perhaps someday I will attempt this project again and be all the things I intended to be. Until then I’m going to cross my fingers and wait to see if the really good thing happens.

48 Hour Film Project.

lynnmarie — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 01:35:32 +0000

And finally… the 48 hour film I worked on. I’m not visible until the very end of the movie, but you can hear my voice in the third scene.

Day 46… Untitled Film Still #42

lynnmarie — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 04:16:41 +0000

Photo by Megan Brooks.

What am I staring at this picture? Creepy, decapitated doll heads. I was going to keep this a secret, but alas no, why not share? It’s no wonder that this space is nicknamed the Rape Room. If you like you can imagine that this is what I’m gazing at in every picture I’ve taken over the last month and a half. I’m sure that’s what Cindy Sherman was looking at based upon her later work. Check out this and this and this.

Day 47… wrong side of the tracks.

lynnmarie — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 20:22:19 +0000

photo by Jamie Vasta

I fell off my bike riding home from work yesterday which meant I walked back to work and ordered that pictures be taken of my wound. So here I am looking sad and battered. My fall was the equivalent of diving into home plate without the satisfaction of winning the game. A special thanks to Imin Yeh for bandaging me up and kissing my boo boo to make it feel better.

Day 44… over the shoulder boom holder.

lynnmarie — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 19:24:02 +0000

I worked on a movie this past weekend as part of the 48 hour film festival. As the character, Agent 2, I had some very important lines which included saying:

“Your neighbor who lives next door. 49 kills, 3 Central American coups.”

“We need you to go in his house and get something for us.”

The lead actor was a toe-tapping country singer bad-ass named Tommy Thompson (yes, like the former gov’nor of Wisconsin) playing Gus Lorenz, an expert in espionage.

He was obsessed with the blind woman across the street, played by the lovely Asha Kancherlapalli. Jamie McPartland, right.

Agent #1, Zac Maricondia, lost all sorts of cred for not being able to operate the stick-shift crime-fighting vehicle (and for wearing this jacket).

Finally, directors, Jon B. and Jon B. (or Sloop Jon B.’s as was discussed early evening).

The movie is showing one day only at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco.

July 28, 2008 7:30 & 9:00 pm

Day #39… Posing

lynnmarie — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 22:55:03 +0000

Upon the suggestion of my co-worker, Blake, I sent some of my documentation photos to the printers (AKA Walgreens). Dang! Why didn’t I do this earlier? There’s something so satisfying in holding the real thing in your hands, I had forgotten the pleasure. The odd thing is that when I look at the images, I forget that I’m looking at pictures of myself. Or not forget really… but, how to describe? OK, when I was 18 I worked in a bank and handled large quantities of money. After a while the money itself lost it’s quality of being currency and simply became pieces of paper I was expected to count and uncrease. In most of these pictures, I’ve lost of the quality of being me and have become something else entirely. I think this photo in particular is good example of this:

This expression does not belong to me, I don’t know where it came from or what I was thinking about when this image was captured. On my second photo shoot with Alexis Litzky, Alexis kept saying that there was too much of me in the pictures. Though I understood what she was saying, I kept acting the way I usually do in front of a camera. As of Day 39, I feel like I’ve been able to reinterpret my relationship with the camera so it works for this project.

Day 36… Cindy + Tupac=?

lynnmarie — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 07:52:45 +0000

Someone made the comment, how do you think Tupac would feel about a bunch of white people idolizing him? In the same realm, I ask how would Cindy Sherman feel about her reenactment posing in front of a dead rap superstar? Ahem…

I’m working on a 48 hour film this weekend and this photo was taken at the planning meeting. If all goes well I will be organizing costumes and maybe acting. It would be excellent if I could act as the Untitled Film Still of the day. We shall see…

Day 35… A trip to the Berkeley Art Museum

lynnmarie — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 22:06:40 +0000

Yesterday I decided to take a trip to the Berkeley Art Museum to see the Joan Jonas exhibit.

I rode the train too far and had to get out at Orinda and wait for a train to Richmond.

Looking weary while waiting.

The view you see coming up the BART escalator.

I walked to the museum only to find out it was closed.

As a consolation they have a complimentary gallery in the lower section of the museum for poor folk like me who fail to check the hours of operation. I was delighted to find Scott Snibbe’s Falling Girl, an interactive media installation featuring a young girl falling gracefully from a skyscraper. While she falls she interacts with the people in each window (party goers, TV watchers, etc). The installation is set up so that the viewer’s silhouette is captured and inserted into the windows. Unfortunately, the museum does not allow photographs, so I’m only able to tell you that my silhouette was included.

By the time the little girl reaches the pavement, she has aged into an old woman and dies.

In all, it was a lovely day.

Day 34… Yes, I’m aware that I’m not wearing pants.

lynnmarie — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 19:37:28 +0000

Day 34 looked like this. In costume I looked like this:

My boss didn’t say anything regarding the brevity of my shirtdress, although some of the customers did. Hence the title “Yes, I’m aware I’m not wearing pants,” a comment I made more than once yesterday. For the first time during this project I really wasn’t uncomfortable with how I looked in a costume. At the halfway point I consider that a success.