Metamorphosis: Pt. 1

Picasso, arguably one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, underwent a major artistic renaissance after studying and collecting African tribal masks and art. Perhaps it was the attention to the metaphysical and the sensual that drew him to the abstract. The concept of metamorphosis is fitting. This year at NYU, the African Heritage Month Fashion Show Planning Committee put on Metamorphosis: The Evolution of Fashion. The city’s most successful collegiate fashion show is a true celebration of black heritage. The face of fashion in a burgeoning global society is changing. From the grassroots, students and young designers reinvent beauty as they each visually and aesthetically perceive it. Drawing from a wealth of cultures, each of the designers brings their own unique perspective to the runway.

Our concepts of high fashion are in large part descendant of European modalities of dress and socio-economic standing. But all things change and high fashion’s former legacy of aesthetic hegemony has been re-appropriated by youth across the globe. We are a generation of individuals expressing and appreciating unique modalities. For so long history has regarded the hybrid as misbegotten experimentation. Now we’ve come to embrace and reclaim the word for its beauty and truth.

A P.Y.T. recognized a friend of mine, Richard Murray, from his former runway appearances. Murray, an NYU alum and former Director of Client Relations with the NYU Modeling Club, is a major supporter of the NYU fashion community. He often encourages people to join the modeling club despite their reluctance due to perceptions of inadequacy (i.e. I’m too fat, I’m too short, my hair’s too kinky, I’m too white…)

This year’s runway, in honor of African heritage month, showcased fashions and designs influenced by African, Hispanic and Black American modalities. The resultant show was not only a visual feast, but a taste of perceptual evolution as well. The tremendous efforts of the African Heritage Month committee solidified the show as a success. In an environment where students of color are few and far between, the show stands as a testament to our unity and visionary leadership. As a charity event, the show sponsored groups like KEEP A CHILD ALIVE and the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation. The young models and gifted designers of the show are simply expanding on the legacy of the civil rights movement—the open celebration of who we are and where we come from. Each of the garments put out by the designers worked as a functional realization of a rich hybrid history.

Also in attendance at the show were three esteemed guests who came to support the show—Neil Mautone (President of Red Models NYC), Nina Ziefvert (Manager of Exhibitions Programs with the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation) and Cynthia Phillip (Vice President of Internal Audit with Goldman Sachs). Many thanks to them for their support and encouragement.

Photography by Alex Lobascio (NYU ’11)

Models: (from top to bottom) Keenan Witherspoon, D'andra Williams, Sekou Scott, Loucia "Sweet Lou" Hamilton

The Blind Man's Meal

If you don't feel this. If you don't understand that you're visually interpreting the blind. A man in blue, nourished through sensations of lithe fingers and accentuated aural transmutation--if you can't feel this--you're blind.

"modern art is a one night stand..." Nikki Lee

Romance

you and me

these dirty

refrains for

these petty

freedoms

you and me

books of poetry

rusty apples core

mocking gentry

reclaiming our lives

you and me

a light dynasty

foreboding the castle

of dark majesty

so trusting of these parts

we play in the earth

Superhero

If I were a superhero

I'd be The Universe.

If I were a supervillain

I'd still The Universe.

Shepherds and Sheep

In some societies (most evident in our capitalist society, but not exclusive to) there exists natural hierarchy. Problems arise from the designation of classes; labels. Blackness of skin or yellow stars of david. Enforcing a status quo on hierarchy, always given to fluctuation, can cause static.

Adrien Veidt, Ozymandias of Watchmen fame, was a fictitious shepherd of people. A leader who I, personally, would characterize as more of a villain. Veidt is removed from the idea that each human entity is entitled to life. I suppose Moore did this to mirror the inception of atomic warfare and the rationale behind dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

This mass murder in the present will preserve our future--more or less the idea. Veidt successfully manufactures world peace.

Martin Luther King Jr. was another shepherd of people. The eminent face of the civil rights movement and one of my personal heroes. But non-violent protest relied heavily on the aggression of the oppressor (dogs, hoses, police brutality) and mass media coverage. The world was exposed to the atrocities of civil injustice at the hands of overtly racist southern institutions. There is a strong undercurrent of masochism and martyrdom under the idealism. MLK Jr. essentially encouraged people to come under fire for the good of the cause.

It is true that nothing in this world is gained without sacrifice, but at what cost? How many nameless lives lay at the foundation of our institutions?

Existentialism is a metacognitive realization (factual or imagined) of one's place in the universe. These are all allusions that have been made. To some with status and resource life is only a board game. People are expendable pieces. I believe in order. But how can these hierarchies exist without labels of class. Even if we can demolish aesthetic, religious and other social hierarchies--how will there ever be a solution to discontent and inequality?

Shepherds and Sheep

Kubrick & God Simulacrum

I'm fairly adept at playing video games. As I sat there, succeeding in the static realm of virtual reality (surreal and controlled chaos), I'd realized how much of an android I've become. The chemical gratification of advancing through a plot isn't necessarily new. Such is the function of all virtual entertainment--novels, movies and now video games. But the medium, our technology, is preprogrammed and removed from the direct control of our hands--the last semblance we have of unadulterated nature. And even our hands are regarded as impure things, never quite sterile enough. Tools mark our progress in evolution.

Evolution exists. It should not be so controversial or frightening. Like any natural process it occurs on several levels. 2001: A Space Odyssey is as much a visual odyssey as it is a reworking of an ages old origin tale. How far have we come? Are we unknowingly deconstructing the romanticism of life in favor of rationality and order? When will we reencounter the black monolith?--a postmodern tree of knowledge of Good and Evil. Hal 9000 beckons me at street corners, boarding trains, in the quiet pieces of any metropolitan day. Above and below ground. He, Hal, is the quintessential metaphor for the hubris of man's infatuation with his tools.

The film's austere silence--the lack of basic human interaction--the morbid Happy Birthday transmission reminiscent of online social networking well-wishes; it all conveys an odd regression in our supposed evolution. An evolution of people away from each other and towards tools--sympathetic, servile creatures algorithmically perfect or infallible. The lack of genuine human presence leaves negative space, both visual and aural. We are exposed to the vast black emptiness of the universe; the white noise of the console and the heavy breathing of a man stranded in space and time. The sublime, the metaphysical, the microcosmic devolution of creationism :

God makes man

Man becomes sentient

Man mimics God

Man creates life/tools

Man is now God

life/tools become sentient

life/tools mimic God

God is now Man

Man is incensed

Man destroys life/tools

Man is alone

Slavery is one of the oddest human institutions. It still exists in several invisible ways. How do we explain the natural recurrence of this phenomena? An appropriation of time, knowledge, people. Hoarding. Anti-Social behavior. Apathy. Death.

In the final disturbing scenes of the film man confronts his mortality. David Bowman becomes the starchild--significant of the next step in evolution--a renaissance of man.

Are my colors

Are my colors

&Phraseology

my brushstro

ke phraseolog

y my brushstr

oke & Are my

colors anythin

g-dot simulac

rum --?-?-?-?

& Am I the G

od simulacru

m I see the G

od simulacru

m.

I get you Kubrick. Maybe.

spatial gravity is the same as atomic mass.

Matchbook Dada

to the left

your body

; your hea

d turned t

owards ve

risimilitud

e.

Umwelt Spine

these are the oddities of my body, she points—

oui, mais ceci sont les seins de mes reveries l

ovage. larking, my dreamery around the galle

ries explaining blue to the blind; blue is when

you feel like this. she points— yes the urgency

of war is realest when a father must beg for of

fered pardons. I seen that shes lived for the b

are souls; a near star whose distant yesterday

lovelier than its present begs a future of cold

thanatology speaking through sense memory

gold eyed the neglectful idealistic. she points—

J. Holzer (min)

This may have been the most brilliant exhibit (with the exception of Dave the charismatic security guard from Trinidad/Venezuela) I've ever seen. Two jennys and curiously strong mints. and Dave.

the charismatic security guard from Trinidad/Venezuela.

G. Ligon

Good Golly Ms. Molly

Infinite abyss or some shit say

s the sudamericano dragon wit

h gusto we lay in heat and high

glory contemplating limbs and

electric things amiss the specta

cre of a reminiscence tinged ju

nior high brow discourse and a

wkward cold hands must have

character. And she holds them

and lolls about my body all the

fey i’d ever wanted. finnish lok

i the knife waiting ever wanted

Silhouettes

Gentrification

I always come home from Manhattan expecting a down-to-earth reunion. The city, especially the downtown areas, is pretentious and quaint in a manufactured way. But my neighborhood is hundreds of years old; Flatbush gentry without the garish elitism of the city. Ditmas park is a hub of unadulterated culture. Hedged in on three sides by a vibrant middle eastern, west indian and jewish community. Cortelyou road is something like the aorta. I went to kindergarten on Cortelyou. I walked there in the mornings with my grandfather. I took some corporal punishment from my teacher for doing and saying inappropriate things. I sat at the smart table. Not much has changed. But the environs has...

In the past five or so years Cortelyou has seen a boom in loud mouth yuppies.

How different it was just four and a half years ago, when Vox Pop opened. “This was all 99-cent stores and video stores, socioeconomically challenged, surrounded by lovely Victorian houses that people have lived in forever,” Ms. Ryan said.

This is how I remember it. There weren't any cutesy restaurants. Just indecent Chinese food places that took immense shit from the bused Junior High School students. And as my neighborhood dies a slow death, people swoon over "feeling safe" and "socioeconomic revival". It's only natural for people to be protective of the land they know as home. Domicile is sacred--from cave to Victorian shingle. I'm not a fan of yuppies; who know everything and nothing at the same time. Yuppies are the goons of Anthony Burgess fame--a new hegemonic force re-appropriating land that doesn't belong to them. Then the atmosphere turns into a scene from Amelie, a Wes Anderson film or the Science of Sleep. And suddenly the discussions you overhear are of Vicky Cristina Barcelona and how some crazy black guy gave his crazy white girlfriend a really (really) naughty look. Sure, everything is relative--yuppies are people too. But I don't want these social climbing chimps fcking up the warmth of my neighborhood with indie rock, environmentally friendly ascots and bangs everyfckingwhere.

“It’s changed for the better,” says Sam Levin, an owner of Cortelyou Hardware, a few steps from the check-cashing store, at 1004 Cortelyou Road.

“I can see a new face every day coming into the store,” he said, “and automatically, the neighborhood’s much safer than before because these are new, nice people.”

Really man? Come on...Some people really love affectation.Didn't know you were such a pussy.

In the words of a good friend (Sr. Haroon)--on feeling safe

Personally, I'd rather thank education, better jobs, better economy, social programs, after school programs, better schools, better teachers, cleaner streets, more jobs, better libraries, etc. But if you'd rather ignore the problem and just confine the less educated and poverty stricken people to one isolated, congested area where they are forced to commit crimes and possibly expand, then be my guest. It will definitely come back to haunt you if you just ignore the problem rather than tackle the root cause.

NY Times: A Cafe Struggles To Stay Afloat

Music: With a Miles D. sample and a lot of shit talk...it's just so hard to feel safe with these hoodlums running around.

Black Moon - Niguz Talk Shit

The Yuppie Theme song:

Black Moon - Make Munne

& on Alto, Mr. Ornette Coleman

This is the house on Linden Boulevard.

These are the suns in the window of th

e house on Linden Boulevard. These ar

e the branches of the bare tree that sca

tters the light of the suns in the windo

w of the house on Linden Boulevard. T

his is the gray soil from which the bran

ches of the bare tree grows that scatter

s the light of the suns in the window of

the house on Linden Boulevard. This is

the rusted chain link fence that hedges

in the gray soil from which the branche

s of the bare tree grows that scatters th

e light of the suns in the window of the

house on Linden Boulevard. These are t

he funereal sneakers of the child on the

rusted chain link fence that hedges in th

e gray soil from which the branches of t

he bare tree grows that scatters the ligh

t of the sons in the window of the house

on Linden Boulevard.

Jenny Ave. H

The properties of

Jenny's hands--extant

in ways ineffable

The proportion of

finger to nail

length like shyness

The truth is,

you know, that

someday your face

will grace parcel

corners. Several hundred

people will lick

your behind before

you ferry them

across the sound--

this too, ineffable

Imaginary Proper Time

When I

was very young, my father brought me a stack of comics. Perhaps in the hopes that id ealism osmoses through imagery. I am the lab ored son of zeitgeist. I am the labored son of z eitgeist & rationality. Sorely toeing the lines of social acceptability; more akin to villainy than heroism. The natural progression of man’s mi nd & one unraveling knowledge without under

standing we are mercurial

An Obscured Strand of DNA

Agrarian living in the lower orient

And you: like men who used to wr

ite things with their hands on dead

trees

You cannot speak on aggression u

nless you’ve sat through delirium

tremens

you understand duty above all thi

ngs and will not be moved by fear

My grandfather’s eyes glaze when

he sees old black men who’ve ma

de it through their diasporic mito

chondrial curses

he knows delirium tremens and s

ays nothing of them and perhaps t

his silence is what ails us

I have not forgotten that xanadu is

a tangible place known as Halifax,

Nova Scotia where I will be promi

sed Africa and Africa I will find

Agrarian living in the lower orient

will ground me again to the earth

I’ve come from.

I tire of your patois nigger bullsh

it and I’m no leader no champion

no fast american no capitalist no

commie politician no visionary n

o master of this or any universe

I am a quiet farmer—a poor mest

izo who likes to write and listen a

nd walk in tall grass and haunt the

peaceful nights

because lovers know aggression b

eyond thoughts of fighters. beyond

thoughtful blows and bellows of r

ighteousness

because lovers know aggression be

yond thoughts of fighters. We are n

ot so simple. So I wait for afterlife r

omance and make love on Sunday a

nd spit and cry and assume and tre

spass chained properties and smile

when I can.

My grandfather’s voice has the atro

phied timbre of an aged troubadour

island traversing with a band of me

rry boozing muse-icians who drink

on Saturday and sing their way into

her bed on Sunday and on Monday

they till the earth for more of its wa

rmth & idyll arrogance.

My history occupies the space of th

e world’s last colony and he hardly

misses it and he admits to being a

merican. the next place he was eve

r a nigger. See, true lovers release t

heir aggression, tenderly, between

the legs of others and lay there and

hold and sigh and wait for the sun

or the moon or another celestial co

ugh of tomorrow and

yes

its promise.