(via
) Benjamin Verdnock’s nest
——
The Subliminal State wants you to write for the next issue of our newsletter. Deadline for submissions: June 30 (EXTENDED!)
The call:
Living Land
When you listened to the land, what did it say?
A compilation of stories from the land through us
Submit to Subliminal Statements 4: Living Land. The next issue of Subliminal Statements will feature articles on land: its life alone and with ours. This issue will explore how the land lives, interacts with us and how we interact with it. Your articles can be literal, scientific or beyond.
Does land have a voice, can you hear it, are you listening? Do we shape it, or does it shape us?
We want to hear your land stories. Write about where you live, the earth you stand on, the lake, riverbed, mountain, or swamp you know. Tell us what the land says to you, the role it plays in your life.
Please send your articles (750 words or less) to submit@subliminalstate.org by June 30 with the subject “Subliminal Statements Submission.”
edited jointly by society co-director’s Carrie Dashow and Jesse Pearlman Karlsberg.
——
From the STEIM website:
http://www.steim.org/michel/
Michel Waisvisz passed away peacefully in his home last night after fighting the mean cells in his body for the last eight months.
He was born on the 8th of July 1949 and lead STEIM as Director for 27 years. He left us on a day when artists and friends from around the world gathered downstairs to perform for a full-house season-closing concert.
Michel was a musician, visionary and occasional gardener - touched by sound and forever happy to be surprised. He was the source of an enormous surge of energy that continues to flow through STEIM into the world.
We will miss his touch, crackle, inspiration and constant improvisation of the now.
STEIM
June 19, 2008
——
THURSTON MOORE + BILL NACE (Sonic Youth, Vampire Belt, X.0.4., etc).
ROBEDOOR (amazing duo from LA)
POCAHAUNTED (another amazing duo from LA)
CENTURY PLANTS (Albany)
THURSDAY June 26 @ 8PM
UPSTATE ARTISTS GUILD
247 Lark St. Albany
Eric Hardiman
Albany Sonic Arts Collective
www.albanysonicarts.blogspot.com
—–
Hey everyone! Daniela Kostova and Olivia Robinson has a show opening June
28! Hope you can make it. Support our Grads!
Waste to Work: Everyman’s Source
Schenectady Museum & Suits-Bueche Planetarium, 15 Nott Terrace Heights,
Schenectady, NY 12308, Jun 28 2008 2:00PM
Come see this presentation by Olivia Robinson (MFA 2004) and Daniela Kostova
(MFA 2005) entitled Waste to Work, which transforms our everyday sweat into
powerful energy that promises to surprise and illuminate you!
Edison Media Project presents
WASTE TO WORK: EVERYMAN’S SOURCE
With Daniela Kostova and Olivia Robinson
Have you ever thought of sweat as a renewable energy source? New media
artists Daniela Kostova and Olivia Robinson have. They turn what most of us
think of as a waste of labor into power we can use to work.
In their performance, “Waste to Work: Everymen’s Source”, Kostova and
Robinson will use video and an installed cabinet of batteries to illustrate
how they developed batteries powered by their own sweat. The power produced
by the sweat batteries will illuminate a world map of LED shapes that
designate centers of manufacturing and labor.
Sponsors for this Edison Media Project program are NYSCA, 1st Playable
Productions, and Audio-Video Corporation.
Free with museum admission.
For more info go to http://www.schenectadymuseum.org/01_info/01.htm
—-
A legend remade
Half-hour film pieces together life of Troy’s Mame Faye
By DANIELLE FURFARO, Staff writer
Click byline for more stories by writer.
First published: Friday, June 13, 2008
How do you keep a once-famous person from being forgotten? How do you
put a face on someone for whom there are no known photographs and
just barely an official record?
Filmmakers Penny Lane and Anne Marie Lanesey found out while making
their new film, “Sittin’ on a Million,” which explores the reality
and myth of brothel-owner madame Mame Faye, who was once nationally
known and Troy’s most famous proprietor. Now she is but a legend
remembered by dozens of the city’s aging residents.
According to their tales, Mame Faye ran her well-furnished brothel in
downtown Troy from 1906 to 1941. The clients who visited included
politicians, factory workers and military men stopping through Troy.
And, in those days, if you traveled anywhere in the country and told
someone you were from Troy, they’d reply, “Oh, that’s where Mame Faye
is from, right?”
“She was really famous, but then not anymore, and there weren’t
really reasons,” said Lane, 30. “I thought it would be interesting to
make a film about someone about whom there is no historical record.”
Differing versions
In the opening moments of the film, quick shots show a series of
several different actresses sitting on an antique couch, each
proclaiming they are the famous madame.
“There are a lot of variations of what people described her as, so
this was a way to deal with that,” said Lanesey, 28.
Lanesey first learned about Mame Faye from a customer when she was
working at the Ale House while attending Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute’s iEar program in 2002. She told Lane, also then a student
in the program. The pair decided to make the film, but put it on the
back burner until 2006.
When Lane and Lanesey advertised seeking people who knew about Mame
Faye, they got hundreds of responses, mostly from members of the
World War II generation, who were children in Mame Faye’s heyday.
No one interviewed in the film admitted to having worked for or
having been a patron of Mame Faye’s, although the filmmakers suspect
some did.
“We were disappointed to not find those people, but it really is too
late. If someone was a prostitute in Mame Faye’s house in the 1920s,
she was born in about 1905,” said Lane. “The living voice of this
history is gone or going fast.”
That makes the film even more important, Lane believes.
“She was a force in this city. She spent a lot of money and gave
money to politicians,” Lane said. “Way before Uncle Sam became Troy,
Mame Faye was the face of Troy, New York.”
Options limited
Mame Faye was very different from the modern stereotype of a
prostitute as impoverished, drug-addicted and under the thumb of a pimp.
“The streets of Troy are filled with prostitutes today. They have
such a different struggle than women who were working at the turn of
the century,” said Lanesey. “Back then, police protected them.”
Lane said a film about Mame Faye was way past due.
“If we can have several books about ‘Legs’ Diamond, who killed
people, we can have a half-hour movie about a woman who was a
prostitute,” said Lane. “We tried to see her as a human being and
understand what life was like for this woman, who grew up the
daughter of Irish immigrants and whose options were limited. To try
to look at her choices through today’s societal values is a little
bit off. You have to look at how moral values change over time.”
Kathy Sheehan, registrar and historian at the Rensselaer County
Historical Society, believes “Sittin’ on a Million” is important
because it provides a new way of looking at old Troy.
“A lot of people get that twinkle in their eye when they talk about
Mame Faye,” Sheehan said. “The movie encourages oral history and
encourages a dialogue among people who were around at that time.”
Like Lane’s previous film, “The Abortion Diaries,” “Sittin’ on a
Million” gives a glimpse into an aspect of women’s lives that is
rarely discussed. But this film tries to do so in a historical context.
“Women’s lives changed so dramatically during the time Mame Faye was
around,” said Lane. “Halfway through her time of being a madame, she
got the right to vote.”
Balancing act
A big challenge in the filmmaking process was to balance folklore and
reality.
“Neither one of us wanted to make it just one or the other,” Lane said.
An early cut of the film featured plenty of text about Mame Faye,
whose real name was Mary A. Fahey Bonter, the history of prostitution
in America and the life of women in Troy. But Lane and Lanesey
decided it was cumbersome and removed much of it. They put the
removed text onto a paper insert in the DVD package.
“We did so much research and we felt people needed to get the
information,” Lane said.
Now that the film is completed, Lane and Lanesey are sending it to
various film festivals. It will also play locally on WMHT Ch. 17 in
July.
Danielle Furfaro can be reached at 454-5097 or by e-mail at
dfurfaro@timesunion.com.
Where to watch
SCREENINGS
Two Saturday screenings of “Sittin’ on a Million” at the Sanctuary
for Independent Media have sold out. A Sunday matinee has been added.
When: 1 p.m. Sunday
Where: Sanctuary for Independent Media, 3361 Sixth Ave., Troy
Cost: $10 suggested donation; $5 for students
Info: 331-2831 or http://www.MameFaye.com
ON TV
The film will also be shown on WMHT Ch. 17 as a part of its new local
film series, TvFilm:
When: 10 p.m. Thursday, July 17; midnight Saturday, July 19
All Times Union materials copyright 1996-2008, Capital Newspapers
Division of The Hearst Corporation, Albany, N.Y.
