It never takes more than two gun shots to the body. Decisive. There’s no doubt left in any of the detectives’ mind that they’re dealing with someone who acts with purpose. Each act a definite mark with no room for doubt.

There’s no point in running. There’s never anywhere to run to, really; cornered like a rat, eyes shifting anxiously to the piece of metal that catches a bit of light from a nearby streetlamp.   

“Any last words?” 

The time it takes to lazily light the cigarette resting between lips is all that’s ever offered. Words should have purpose, just like actions. If they get stuck at the back of the throat, they were never meant to be heard. Nicotine enters lungs and flows out of nostrils in a thick smoke. 

It’s quick smooth set of motions: Arm out straight. Wrist turned 90 degrees. Finger on the trigger. Two decisive steps forward, pulling the trigger once more, and it’s over. 

“Such a waste” is tossed aside along with a half smoked blunt. 

Meticulous. There’s never a hair out of place, never a drop or splash of blood that doesn’t seem completely intentional. 

It’s a process really. It takes time getting the body just so. Anatomy books have to be study in order to make incisions that allow such a precise splattering of blood. Sometimes it takes hours for the victim to actually die, but when they finally do, the end result is absolutely beautiful.

The detectives always receive an invitation to the crime scene: an artistic photo of the scene printed on an over-sized postcard, with the location of the body spelled out on the back in neat type print. 

It’s a war he’s fighting.

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. It’s a philosophy. It’s a lifestyle. 

He’s a permanent fixture in the neighborhood, with his soft smile and bohemian attitude; tending to the community garden, wedged between two buildings, and delivering its vegetables to the older residents. 

The local kids love designing recycled magnets to stick onto the side of his Go Verde cart, an old refrigerator tipped on its side and fashioned with wheels and a seat. Squeals of delight are often heard when he allows them to use the cart for ‘pavement surfing.’ 

Development in the area has slowed down due to the absence of some of the corporate developers. The police suspect foul play, but are left fumbling for leads.

Despite the cranes, that still cast a shadow over the little plot of green in the middle of a sea of steel and reinforced concrete, Go Verde manages to boast some of the best produce.

“The trick is in the fertilizer. Boosts the flavor,” is the response everyone gets when they ask for gardening tips. 

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. It’s a philosophy. It’s a lifestyle.

At the end of the day, it’s a war he’s fighting. 

Delta Spirit - C’mon People

Just a little musical inspiration for the day. 

“You said a pound of beef shank, Mrs. Harris?” 

There’s that disarming smile that makes even old Mrs. Harris blush, as the meat is expertly cut, wrapped and handed over. 

No one knows that at the back of the large walk-in freezer, there’s always a body or two, hanging and tenderizing among the other large cuts. 

But what everyone in town does know is that the most tender cuts come from the butcher on the corner of Fifth and Saw.

The best part of the game is not in the kill; it’s in the chase. There’s something absolutely tantalizing in stalking one’s prey, getting to know them so well that you begin to understand what motivates them, what inspires them, what drives them.

He always knows when the game is about to end. It starts with fearful over-the-shoulder glances, continues with the anxious clack of heels against pavement, and ends with the delicious stench of fear and paranoia. 

The bodies always appear untouched, aside from the bruised hand marks on the neck. There’s an obvious attention to composition in respect to the use of the space: eyes and mouth open as though in surprise or limbs positioned languidly across a bed as though sated by a lover. 

It’s as though he’s painted a picture…

                                                             …A beautiful twisted picture.

The stench of the crime scene always makes at least one of the arriving officers vomit. Burning flesh mixed with the smell of freshly printed paper. 

The only thing that differs at each scene are the words and typeface printed on the paper, usually indistinguishable among the ashes. A watch or a bracelet are usually the only clue identifying the body previously strung to the wooden pyre at the center of the warehouse, wrapped and stoked with pieces of paper like a human cigarette. 

Ten feet away from the embers of the human bonfire there is always a pile of used cigarettes signaling just how long The Archivist stood, puffing casually as they watched their latest victim burn. 

The victims are always women in their early forties and fifties, always tied up in the same manner, flat on their stomachs, backs arched in a U-shape struggling against the rope attached from the neck to ankles. 

There’s something so tantalizing about the way the muscles in the neck strain against the rope attached to bent legs. It’s all about the structure. The architecture of the body. The design of the kill. 

Backs arch, muscles taut in exertion, legs straining. He likes it best when they wear heels, something to highlight the muscles in the legs just a bit more. He doesn’t even need to strangle them, they do it themselves as calves eventually give out. 

He calls himself an artist.

“I absolutely love to embroider.” 

Her voice is eerily casual as she grabs a needle and sorts through the various colored spools of thread. 

“This is nice. Should bring out the color of your eyes.” It’s said with a cheshire grin towards the figure, dangling by the wrists from a hook in the ceiling. A plain white cloth keeping the figure faceless and muffling any cries for help.

“Relax. It’s just a prick… Or two.”

When the police arrive at each scene, the bodies are always still hooded, but no longer faceless. Instead a grinning visage  is expertly stitched onto the cloth, stained with blotches of deep blood red.

In this town, murder’s a form of entertainment.

If only people weren’t so boring. Boredom always sparks thinking, thinking develops constructing, which in turn always leads to devising. And what’s the point of devising a plan or inventing an object, if one doesn’t intend to put it into action.

It’s not until the third kill that all the kinks in the device are sorted. That was normal, there are always bound to be trouble shooting issues with a new invention. 

“Will you shut up,” an exasperated eye roll and an irritated twitch of the shoulder and neck are the only acknowledgment given to the body hopelessly struggling against restraints and gags, dangling upside down like piñata.

“Can’t you see I’m trying to watch a film.”

The only clue the officers find is the pool of blood drained from the missing body.

Rather poetic really.

Sweet. Agonizingly sweet. After all, it’s important to be a good host. 

“I hope you aren’t allergic to anything,” She grins shyly, as she flits about setting the table. It’s hard not to find her whimsical and shy manner sweet and enticing.

“I mean, who doesn’t love cheesecake,” she smiles as she takes a seat across from you. 

In fact, the way she cocks her head to the side, as if asking for your confirmation, reminds you so much of a puppy that for a moment you forget that you’re gagged and bound to a chair wearing your best dinner outfit.

The scene is always the same: a romantic table set for two, candles burning quietly, one orange lily and one lily of the valley in a simple vase at the center, and an exquisitely arranged dessert plate, always untouched. The splattered blood always resembles a calculated plating of raspberry sauce.

At first she never did the killing, but instead offered her services as a consultant, suggesting unique and ingenious ways of disposing of the bodies. However, it didn’t take long for her own homicidal appetite to grow. 

No one knows exactly how she kills since the bodies have never been found. According to the books, in the past year there have been 12 still unsolved missing person cases in the Logan Park Circle neighborhood. 

The only clue left with each disappearance (effectively linking them to each other) is Xaphoon Jones’ Sleepyhead I Want You Back playing on the victim’s iPod and a note, always written in a different type face.

“Sorry you missed me. Be Back Soon.” 

Violent. Personal. There’s an obvious foundation of unleashed rage with each victim. The bodies are desecrated in a mass of twisted limbs and disfigured faces. 

Despite the obvious anger behind each kill, there is never a trace of the monster. The weapon was always left at the scene, wiped clean of any information other than the bits of person stuck to the blade. 

“What’s going on?” It was always a casual question. 

“They’re saying it’s the ghost again.” 

She’d always return to the scene of the crime, slipping in with the crowd that typically formed at the edge of the yellow caution tape.

“That’s just horrible.” 

 No one ever detects her sarcasm. 

The first time it happens, it’s an accident, or at least that’s what she tells herself. How could she know Dr. Cooper made a mistake? It wasn’t her fault that the body in the morgue just ‘appeared’ dead. 

She bought Dr. Cooper lunch the next day as a means of thanks. 

It only happens when her girlfriend leaves on business and she can’t fill her need to control a warm body. She’s careful, normally finding a willing yet unsuspecting victim from the sleazier parts of town. 

It’s never done outright. There’s something delicious about savoring each cut, each twist of muscle. But in the end, it’s the eyes that get her, the shift from lust to fear to emptiness as Bobby Vinton’s voice croons into the otherwise silent warehouse. 

Some people might think it strange, but she doesn’t think so. After all, everyone has their own quirky collection. Some people collect snow globes, others coins, what’s the big deal about collecting eyeballs.

She’s like L. Frank Baum’s Mombi, except she doesn’t exchange body parts, she just takes them. If only she could exchange them with her own, then she’d be able to coordinate her outfits perfectly. 

Until then, she’ll be content to browse her collection, protected by glass in a secret compartment at the back of her closet. 

It’s quick. Just a thrust upward, followed by a twist and then an apathetic glance as eyes go wide with the brief recognition of the end before the body quietly slumps to the ground. 

The splintered piece of wood, colored in a thick red clatters to the ground, joining the rest of the rubbish. A cigarette is lit, shoulders relaxing back into an apathetic stance as the brief adrenaline rush escapes with a puff of smoke. 

Disposing of the body is never a problem. Not hers anyways. It’s an easy matter of just lighting a match, flicking it among the waste and walking away as the smell of burning flesh and garbage fills the small alleyway. 

If anything, she’s done the world a favor, one less idiot populating the earth. And it’s not as though the waste department had come to collect the trash in weeks.

Two birds, one stone. 

Elegant. That’s how the lead detective described each kill. Committed with the calculation and elegance of a choreographer. 

They were always former acquaintances, his victims. A quick prick of a needle while in a crowded club or while passing in the school’s hallway was all it took. 

The next day he would hear the terrible news from a mutual friend. Tears would be shed at the funeral.

None of the victims ever saw it coming. 

The urge usually occurs when she’s traveling, either on the subway or train. Someone will be speaking on the phone flawlessly in one language only to then strike up a conversation with their friend in another, accent untraceable.

It always appears like an accident. A staged stumble off a bike, forcing the victim out in front of traffic, or a flailing arm swung sideways, sheers in hand.

No one ever faulted her, always comforting the girl as she explained how she hadn’t see her latest victim turn the corner right as she was backing her car out of the driveway. 

“I didn’t see them!” The sniffles, red eyes, and tear tracked cheeks were enough to convince anyone. 

No one ever questioned her ability to act. 

7while23:

Alessandro Lupi, Identity, 2013

Photos from the Design Week show. Waiting for the super nice photos. Working on a new display for a show on May 12th. 

So, pretty exciting news. I was asked by our program coordinator to display some of my preliminary work at a show that will be held in a space during Milan Design Week. The space is pretty rad. It’s and ex-panetteria of an old worker’s comune - Societá Umanitaria.
We are cleaning up the space on Monday and then setting up for the show Wednesday. The show opens Thursday. Exciting stuff! Especially since there will be a lot of people coming through the area during design week. The building complex (Quartiere Operaio Umanitario) is host to the Small Public Works show that is happening this week. So, exciting exciting stuff.

apparelmusic:

APPAREL MUSIC e THISISWIRE bookings presentano una nuova esperienza multisensoriale all’ interno di elita design week festival 2013 tramite l’ ausilio di cuffie wireless (3 canali) fornite dall’ associazione culturale NNOO, in collaborazione con Music Priority, Panic Room, APL Booking e Apparel Silent.

Programma Design Week, Silent Park
c/o giardino Teatro F. Parenti:

www.apparelmusic.com
www.wirebookings.com


Mer
Canale 1 Main Room
Canale 2 M2o
Canale 3 Thisiswire present Dariolem + Modulove (Subculture/ Destroy)

Gio
Canale 1 Main Room
Canale 2 Apparel Music Radio show + video streaming live
Canale 3 Apparel Music present Toky + Jacky 0 

Ven
Canale 1 Main Room
Canale 2 M2o
Canale 3 Thisiswire present 10minutslater (HOME means after party) + Trip.holy (Panic Room)

Sab
Canale 1 Main Room
Canale 2 Apparel Music Radio show + video streaming live
Canale 3 Apparel Music present Roy Gilles + E-dward!

Dom
Canale 1 Main Room
Canale 2 M2o
Canale 3 Apparel Music & Thisiswire present Kisk (Apparel) + Vanderlik (Music Priority)

nickelcobalt:

Invitation to an Area night club party. The capsule was placed in water and the invitation appeared. Area was open from 1983 to 1987.

rhamphotheca:

Paraceratherium

Paraceratherium is probably the biggest land mammal that ever lived (an Indricothere Hyracodont from the Oligocene, 23 - 33 mya). These crazy looking things were around 16 feet tall at the shoulder! They were almost 30 feet long and probably weighed 18 tons. Whoa.

Images: Top: Dmitry Bogdanov - Wikimedia commons. Right: AMNH - Wikimedia commons.

the-absolute-funniest-posts:

kylejthompson:

untitled by Kyle Thompson

My lovely followers, please follow this blog immediately!

kpierrephotography:

kylejthompson:

Void by Kyle Thompson

Inspiration.

exhibition-ism:

Print work from Solita Rose Harder-Montoya

Wonderful Life - Giuliano Palma & The Bluebeaters

newyorker:

While researching Kelefa Sanneh’s article about Dapper Dan, which ran in The New Yorker’s recent Style Issue, we looked at the work of many photographers who covered the eighties hip-hop scene. One of them, Janette Beckman, recently returned from Caracas, where she photographed the hip-hop community at a school that teaches a new kind of break dance and music called Tuki, which mixes street styles, pop culture, house, and techno.

Tuki is taught at Tiuna el Fuerte, a cultural center built from old shipping containers and covered in graffiti, in the El Valle barrio. There is a recording studio, an underground performance space, and hip-hop and break-dancing workshops. It’s funded by the Chávez government, and is run by the rap artists Apache, a.k.a. Cultur MC, and Piky.

- Jane Yeomans. Here’s a look at the Tuki crew, photographed by Beckman: http://nyr.kr/ZIYkKS

robot-heart:

(via Noah Goodrich | Photojournalist & Videographer in London | Chernobyl)

thekhooll:

You are ‘on’ an island

Alicia Eggert and Mike Fleming   mounted the phrase neon “You are ‘on’ an island” on a truck, in the interval by the word ‘on’.They toured the sculpture around West Yorkshire for two weeks. 

sfmoma:

Tomorrow! Arcade in the museum! Get relaxed!

laughingsquid:

Hotello, A Portable Sleep & Work Space That Packs into a Trunk

gqfashion:

A new Hermes chronograph creation. Stunner. TS

saloandseverine:

 Objects from Marina Abramovic performance piece Rhythm 0 (1974)

jam-it-in-your-box:

Photos from the Design Week show. Waiting for the super nice photos. Working on a new display for a show on May 12th. 

jam-it-in-your-box:

So, pretty exciting news. I was asked by our program coordinator to display some of my preliminary work at a show that will be held in a space during Milan Design Week. The space is pretty rad. It’s and ex-panetteria of an old worker’s comune - Societá Umanitaria.

We are cleaning up the space on Monday and then setting up for the show Wednesday. The show opens Thursday. Exciting stuff! Especially since there will be a lot of people coming through the area during design week. The building complex (Quartiere Operaio Umanitario) is host to the Small Public Works show that is happening this week. So, exciting exciting stuff.

Avery F. Gordon

I am going to be doing a lot of reading over spring break. I’m excited! 

25 February 2013 - Milan, Italy

“Following the ghosts is about making a contact that changes you and refashions the social relations in which you are located.” - A. F. Gordon, Ghostly Matters, 22

Yesterday while on my way home from the train station, I started to ponder about narratives and perspectives, the idea of ghosts and traces, as described by Avery F. Gordon. 

In my mind I wrote this very eloquent and poingant essay, obviously I don’t remember half of what I thought, but I can tell you with the utmost certainty that what my mind conjured up was absolutely stunningly brilliant.

However, the only thing I remember, as I sat wedged between a man who looked as though he could have been a linebacker in the NFL and another, even larger, man, with fingers the size of sausages, was that each and every person on that train had some sort of ghost following them, an event that haunts them, a trace of something that leaves them wandering in realm that falls between the real and the imaginable, the factual and the fictitious. 

“What kind of case is a case of a ghost? It is a case of haunting, a story about what happens when we admit the ghost - that special instance of the merging of the visible and the invisible, the dead and te living, the past and the present - into the making of worldy relations and into the making of our accounts of the world” (Gordon, 24).

“Ghostly matters are part of social life” (Gordon, 23).  Each of us has a ghost, possibly more than one, that haunts us, in which the intermingling of fact, fiction and desire shape our personal and social memory. The question is, as Gordon wonders, “What does the ghost say as it speaks” because “we are part of the story, for better or worse: the ghost must speak [to us] in some way sometimes similar, sometimes distinct from how it may be speaking to the others” (Gordon, 24). 

As I said before, what I had written (or should I say ‘thought of’) in my head as I pondered the possible hauntings of the various passengers of the Green Line to Romolo was, as I stated before, brilliant. Obviously brilliance of thoughts that seemed so precise and articulate at the time do not translate well into actual written words, especially when written a day later. Go figure.

Instead, you have the privilege of reading a stream of consciousness written at midnight with the aid of Ferrero Rocher and a glass of MezzoCorona Rosé, and which is more than likely only comprehensible to me. 

We all have ghosts that haunt us. It’s important to remember that I don’t intend the word ghosts to mean the soul of the dead. I use the word ghost to mean a trace, a possibility. 

While the ghosts that haunt us may be the stories of those who are dead or who are missing, the ghost itself is not the person per se, but instead is the traces, which are left behind that leaves us wondering and grasping between a myriad of possibilities and imagined scenarios, trying to dissect memories, which are based on real and imagined events, and warped by our own personal desires and imaginations.

This is the world of the ghost: a world caught in a intricate web where the difference between fact and fiction, remembered and imagined, is not as important as what each of those means to our collective sociological imagination.

At first I thought ghost hunting with my uncle at the forefront of my mind would mean uncovering who he was, but I have found over the past weeks of researching that it is much more than that. Ghost hunting entails uncovering and understanding the collective memory of a family, the living memory of a nation, and an imagined future of an individual and making sense of it all through the art of storytelling. 

A Proposal In Three Acts 

jam-it-in-your-box:

Ghostly Matters, Avery F. Gordon

My display professor suggested I read this in order to get a feel for how to approach my writing my final thesis project. I’m actually really excited. I’m hoping to find some information on Toni Morrison and Luisa Valenzuela and their fiction work. So we shall see! 

jam-it-in-your-box:

So the original idea I had for my thesis has changed. Completely. After much deliberation, it seems logical to just make my Voz Sin Vos project my final thesis. 

While, my first idea was a proposal of 3 different (yet integrated) works, after receiving quite a bit of feedback from one of my professors, it looks like it will end up being one work: a book. 

And the more I think about it, the more I like that idea. The more I like the idea of it being a written work, supplemented by documents (photos, sketches, letters etc.), which can have various lives (read aloud, performed, etc.). 

It’s funny. If someone were to have told my 17-year-old self that I would be writing a book for my Masters, I would have laughed in their face and told them they were crazy. The world knows, I’ve never been the best at writing, but the fact remains: I do rather enjoy telling a story. 

So as of right now (aside from studying for my February exams), I’m doing quite a bit of research. Let’s see how this goes. 

Read More

January 24, 1982

“There is so much killing. We have press people in jail. It is absolutely ridiculous to talk about March elections. Even to make journalism in our country is a dangerous thing. “

More than 26,000 have been killed in political violence in the last two years.

“The government gets good results because the population is terrorized. The people will not give support to the Frente because of the terror.”

Vargas’ kidnapping is part of a pattern of attacks on doctors and health works. In 1980, the committee for the Defense of El Salvador patients formed to protest military and paramilitary incursions into hospitals to kidnap or kill patients suspected of being wounded in gunfights. 

“They would go after the wounded. the doctors when on strike. The committee was not political, but in the eyes of the miltary it was. There is a list of doctors, a secret army list, with death sentences.” - January 24, 1982 SacBee

“We have heard he is in a jail and that he is alive. Our family in El Salvador received a call from the U.S. Embassy. We were told the U.S. State Department ordered the embassy to investigate my brother’s case. 

It seems to us that many innocent people, things happen to them, regardless of their political beliefs… we were told there may not be hope because the other physicians have never turned up.” - Evelyn Vargas-Castaneda, January 24, 1982

A group of armed civilans stood in fron of Louis Pasteur Clinica on #250 11a Avenida Norte. One man picked out the doctor as he head out for some Christmas shopping. The men wore no uniforms and carried M16 machine guns. 

Initially, three men grabbed him as he walked along the street. When he resisted the others joined the trio and began to hit him with the butts of their guns. They tied his hands behind his back, gagged him and threw him inside the van…

Then drove away…

GENERAL ASSEMBLY. Yesterday afternoon at the National School of Medicine, hospital physicians got together to discuss the situation of the personal safety of fellow physicians. The meeting was due to the recent deaths of two medical doctors last week and of another one yesterday morning. - El Diario De Hoy, 1981

“Instead of favoring greater justice and peace, your government’s contribution will undoubtedly sharpen the injustices and repression inflicted on the organized people, whose struggle has often been for respect of their most basic human rights” Monsignor Óscar Romero to President Jimmy Carter

Liceo Salvadoreño

Carlos Armando Vargas Lopez.

Dr. Carlos Armando Vargas Lopez

B. 22 June 1950 

Disappeared 17 December 1981

Storyboarding begins