Video: Taylor Mead Talking About Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis, and Holly Woodlawn

Taylor Mead, who appeared in several of Andy Warhol's independent films, died earlier this month at the age of 88.

He was one of the few surviving Factory members -- most died quite young, including Jackie Curtis and Candy Darling, mentioned in this short video.

Links & Bits: 1/27/12

SaraB from Persephone Magazine  asks who gets to to call oneself an artist.

Arwyn from Raising My Boychick explores the "healthy food" myth.

xoJane's ohall  writes about her conversion to Islam.

Anurag Lahiri  talks about desi women on primetime TV.

Links & Bits: 10/14/11

Feministing's Jos talks about being a feminist in art school.

Laiand from Writing is Fighting wrote a great piece  about racism, gender, and metal music.

 Meghan reviewed Lucinda William's show at the Pageant in St. Louis.

The Question of the Day  from Shakesville: What positive word do you frequently hear used to describe men, but rarely used to describe women? Some good ones supplied by the commenters? Iconoclast, dashing, logical, charismatic, wunderkind, and visionary.

Photography, Hauntology and Faux-Vintage

Most damming for Hipstamatic and Instagram is that these apps tend to make everyone’s photos look similar. In an attempt to make oneself look distinct and special through the application of vintage-producing filters, we are trending towards photos that look the same. The Hipstamatic photo was new and interesting, is currently a fad, and it will come to (or, already has?) look too posed, too obvious, and trying too hard (especially if the parents of the current users start to post faux-vintage photos themselves). -- Nathan Jurgenson for The Society Pages

I like vintage photography -- I mean actual, vintage film photography -- but hate the "faux vintage" look that Hipstamatic and Instagram offer. If that makes me luddite, so bet it.

an actual Kodak Instamatic shot

The entire multi-part article is worth a read. I'm not entirely averse to Photoshop: I use PS myself, and have played with the levels, temperature and contrast of photos to give them a different look, but it's the downloadable apps that simulate the look of different stock films with a click that really bothers me, particularly when they're paired with thoroughly modern photography. Who is this supposed to be fooling?

This is a real Polaroid

Simon Reynold's says hauntology (a concept originally conceived by French philosopher, Jacques Derrida ) is "all about memory's power (to linger, pop up unbidden, prey on your mind), and memory's fragility (destined to become distorted, to fade, to functionally disappear.)"  It's easy to mourn this as the loss of traditional photography -- and I do a lot of that -- but as these effects become commonplace, even expected, they become divorced from their original source and less a part of our collective memory.

Icons: Lady Pink

Born Sandra Fabara in Ambato Ecuador, Lady Pink is a respected graffiti artist, and one of the few women well-known in the male-dominated genre. She started writing graffiti in her hometown of Queens as a student at High School of Art and Design, and won the respect of art world luminaries such as Keith Harring and Jenny Holzer, with whom she later worked. (site)

Being a women in graffiti world is no easy gig. According to Tricia Rose in her book Black Noise: "in some cases, male graffiti writers spread rumors about female writers' sexual promiscuity to discourage female participation and discredit female writers' executions."

From Lorraine Dowler's Gender and Landscape, on her style and choice of colors compared to her male contemporaries, Lady Pink is quoted as saying, "Men have a passion for black! I sometimes exclude black altogether. I work more with light colors. Things that are a little softer, more tender, sensitive."

Art and Responsibility

Lately I've been thinking a lot about "the responsibility of the artist." (In quotes because it sounds like this BIG IMPORTANT THING to make art responsibly, though it's an impossibly tricky subject to cover, or even define.) Yesterday when I was looking for something else, I came upon two posts from Bitch magazine's blog, The Transcontinental Disability Choir: Disability Chic? (Temporary) Disability In Lady GaGa's Paparazzi and  Popular Songs That Get Disability (Mostly) Right . From the former: