A Special Variety of Soft-Skinned Dangerous Game

 Artist Statement: "A Special Variety of Soft-Skinned Dangerous Game” is a series of photographs and video that has developed from an ongoing investigation into camouflage, performativity and the grotesque. My particular interest in camouflage is where art, fashion and warfare overlap, its formal properties and social function. This work is visually aggressive, humorous and sexual. It utilizes visual tactics of camouflage and disguise to rewrite...

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mad props: lady gaga invitation number seven

Artist Bio: Jon Rutzmoser (b. 1982) is an artist, writer and educator living in Los Angeles.  He recently received an MFA in Writing and Integrated Media from California Institute of the Arts. His work engages with notions of ethical subjectivity within a world of collapsed metaphor, linguistic slippage, and self-exploitation.  His blog is www.hystericallyreal.c...

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Letter to a Young Monster: In the Spirit of Minor Truths and Major Dreams

by Blair McDonaldTamworth (Near Toronto) CanadaOctober 27, 2010Dear Fellow Monster(s),What keeps getting lost in all these discussions of Lady Gaga has nothing to do with the politics of interpretation. Sometimes, in our excitement to make sense of things, we cross a line as critics: we engage in inappropriate touching, or better – interpretative molestation. In most instances, Susan Sontag reminds us, “interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal...

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mad props: lady gaga invitation number six

Artist Bio: Jon Rutzmoser (b. 1982) is an artist, writer and educator living in Los Angeles.  He recently received an MFA in Writing and Integrated Media from California Institute of the Arts. His work engages with notions of ethical subjectivity within a world of collapsed metaphor, linguistic slippage, and self-exploitation.  His blog is www.hystericallyreal.c...

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Two Portraits by Kimiko Yoshida

 Kimiko Yoshida, Painting (Balthazar Castiglione by Raphael). Self-portrait, 2010 COURTESY PACO RABANNE Kimiko Yoshida, Painting (Queen Marie-Antoinette in a Court Dress by Elisabeth Vigée Le Bun). Self-portrait, 2010 COURTESY PACO RABANNE Artist Bio: Kimiko Yoshida studied photography in Japan and in France, where she has lived and worked since 1995.&nb...

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mad props: lady gaga invitation number five

Artist Bio: Jon Rutzmoser (b. 1982) is an artist, writer and educator living in Los Angeles.  He recently received an MFA in Writing and Integrated Media from California Institute of the Arts. His work engages with notions of ethical subjectivity within a world of collapsed metaphor, linguistic slippage, and self-exploitation.  His blog is www.hystericallyreal.c...

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Just Dance

Artist Statement: Just Dance is a call and response reaction to Lady Gaga's song "Just Dance."  First an abstract object was made to "dance" and then the artist mimicked the object’s movements. The whole act seems part puppeteer, part Jazzercise, part youtube spectacle. Gaga's original command to "Just Dance" becomes more abstracted as the video progresses calling into question other ambiguities in the video such as the gender and intention of the artist. The lines between joke and a sincere commitment to the call are continually coming in and out of focus as the artists body cycles through an awkward and tender negotiation with fatigue,...

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mad props: lady gaga invitation number four

Artist Bio: Jon Rutzmoser (b. 1982) is an artist, writer and educator living in Los Angeles.  He recently received an MFA in Writing and Integrated Media from California Institute of the Arts. His work engages with notions of ethical subjectivity within a world of collapsed metaphor, linguistic slippage, and self-exploitation.  His blog is www.hystericallyreal.com....

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Take a Bow

by Burnt Filament"It is in the theory of perception that we have established our bond. Or, the lie, I should say, for which we kill."—Lady Gaga, The Manifesto of Little MonstersIn browser windows,you hoof past airportsecurity :               In our minds,gloved handsprobe your assas you don shades& blooded lips :princess who picksscabs like sequinsfrom our eyes glazedlike hams, we marinatein your whiskeybreath that pervadesFM waves,MP3 compress-ion, smoke-ring-éd vinyl rotation : You, Y-Generation-distraction, glitterati-Xeroxed-erectionreflection :              ...

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Do Ask Do Tell: Lady Gaga and the Politics of Mimesis

by Willow SharkeyOn Saturday Night Live’s September 25th, 2010 episode, in the sketch of Weekend Update, the writers submitted, in their de rigueur amalgam of wryness and serious political commentary (a tone that is both to be taken seriously and just kidding), that Lady Gaga’s efforts on behalf of repealing the policy of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” while commendable, could not be taken seriously because she had only days before worn her dress made of...

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