Dani's Blog

Tens of thousands of people congregated at Place de la Bastille tonight to celebrate the departure of Sarkozy. Cuz let’s be honest, the enthusiasm for François Hollande is subsequent to the tangible joy of seeing “Sarko” ousted.

I remember how I felt in 2008, so I can relate. Right now the optimism is flowing, along with beer, wine and champaign. France hasn’t had a left-wing president since François Mitterrand left office after two seven-year terms in 1995. The celebration is on.

François Hollande's campaign slogan: C'est maintenant flies at Place de la Bastille. Right now.

Deep in the crowds at Place de la Bastille, listening to President Elect François Hollande's first speech.

Sarko has a great face for caricature.

In observing nine years of celebrations and protests, this is the highest number of people I've ever seen on the monument at Place de la Bastille at one time. May 6, 2012.

It's politics, so there will be disappointment. But right now, the joy and optimism is flowing like beer. Or maybe it's just the beer. It doesn't matter. Au revoir Sarko!

Back in Paris just in time for May 1st. Last year, Côte d’Ivoire had the loudest, most urgent message. This year it’s clearly a distaste (I’m being too kind) for Sarkozy. It will be an interesting week leading up to Sunday’s election results. One of my dearest friends, in updating me on what he’s doing this week, said “and on Sunday we are changing the President.” We shall see very soon…

Sarko's words turned on himeslf, Casse toi, pov'con was the phrase of the day. It was Sarko's response to someone who refused his handshake at an Agriculture fair in 2008, saying 'don't touch me, you'll get me dirty,' and basically means, get outta here, stupid ass.

Boulevard St Michel, May 1, 2012.

Headline on Siné Mensuel: Last elections before the revolition.

Alternatives: Solidarity, Ecology, Feminism, Self-Management

This man was photographed at least 30 times in the five minutes that he walked by me. His sign: Sarkozy: Well, that's good, for US!

Place de la Bastille, May 1st, 2012. 'Sarko, you're an asshole.'

My brother told me I’m acting like a tourist, doing things most normal people don’t do. Normal, as in locals. Although chopping wood and learning to use a chain saw aren’t likely in the Lonely Planet guide to the Midwest (though lots of fun), visiting Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House probably is. It’s only ten minutes from my mother’s house, and I had completely forgotten it was there. It’s in Plano, Illinois, and in the opposite direction of Chicago and all the “stuff” like restaurants and chain stores, down a winding country road, along the often-flooding Fox River. Encountering this house, it was enchantment at first sight. I’ve never gotten teary eyed by architecture before today.

The light! The elegant mathematical minimalism! The Tugendhat chairs! And oh, those 1/4 inch polished glass windows that almost completely erase the barrier between interior and exterior. It is both empty and full, and floating in a sea of green.

One of my favorite details: the only circles in the grid are the discreet electrical outlets in the floor. Mies wanted only lamps, tall and short, no over-head lighting. Man after my own heart.

“My reflexion scares me when I see it in the metro window. Some people are staring, some raise their eyebrows when they see my face. My head feels hot then cold. I wonder if my scalp is blushing.”

I wrote this in a notebook I carried with me in Paris, in the weeks after I shaved my head. It’s not an easy city for a woman to be bald. It showed me how conservative Paris is, how much I prefer to be the one looking rather than the thing looked at, and made me start writing with a vengeance from this new perspective.

Today at 2pm I’m giving a talk in Cincinnati, at the Iris BookCafé & Gallery, where I have a show of three series of self portraits, together entitled FEMME. It’s the first time I’m showing my work in my own country.

Installation at Iris BookCafé & Gallery. Cincinnati, Ohio.

A passing conversation heard on Bedford and 6th,
filtering by on some jazz in the air.

“They never understand art.
Is it about poetics or is it poetry?”

“It’s about occupied poetics.
They never get it.”

Last week I stopped in Place Dalida to finish a sandwich. Between meetings on either side of the butte, I was in the right place at the right time to cross paths with my old friend Ealy Mays, a painter from Texas, who was, at that exact moment, moving out of his studio at Cité des Arts.

I hadn’t seen him in a few years. We met in another life when I was a bartender who took photos and he was, yet as always, a painter who painted. “Whatcha doin’ behind that bar? Got your camera? C’mon, I wanna show ya something.”

Anyway, he had been awake all night moving paintings and scrubbing the floor, and that morning had given a historical tour of Paris to a group of American tourists.

On our way up to his studio we were joined by a guy coming for the room inspection. It felt like college again. As the man started going down his short checklist, Ealy played bartender this time and poured us all a cup of wine.

Ealy Mays leaving Cité des Arts, Paris.

Before leaving he asked me to photograph him doing what all the tourists do when they pass through Place Dalida.

"You have to be out now," says the room inspector. "Here, have some wine. " responds Ealy

30-something male encountered late at night, in a bar. You’ve seen him before – trendy glasses, scruffy unshaven cheeks and saggy pants. He asks, in the first 60 seconds of our conversation, “are you on Facebook?” as he looks, not at you, but at his glowing screen.

Behavior that elicits the antithesis of 'you had me at hello?'

The sun is out, and it’s Sunday. The only thing on the agenda is “anything but work.”
I’m going out to play, with an old camera, a good book, and a notebook.

Butte Chaumont. Spring 2011. What it feels like today, on this late February day.

…a man looked back at his “friend,”
one slow second before a heavy, wet snowball
was launched at his head.

At the same time, a few dozen orphaned
soccer balls were figuring out they may
never escape.

Snow balls & Soccer balls

“Here honey, this is what you look like in Venice through the Hipstamatic filter.”

Cheers to a new year!

One of the most hilariously fun Christmas Eve’s I’ve ever had came together at the last minute when a bunch of strays gathered organically in my apartment for dinner and spontaneous chair dancing.

John Bond

A dashing Dutchman arrives, screams are heard

Laughing til the bottle spins

Give me the cameraaaaah

Luis y son vino tinto

"Champagne" imported all the way to Paris from... Michigan! Of course!

Competing standup routines

Josephine, photographed by a man she met flying over Africa

Dutchman disarmed

The camera turns on me

Tonight I was moping around the Marais in the rain, eating Belgian chocolates, longing for Chicago and slipping into the feeling of old horse-drawn, cobble-stoned Paris, fantasizing that I’d find a small abandoned Christmas tree that I could drag home and hang my earrings on.

Sinking comfortably into my solitude, my eyes in the shadow of my wide-brimmed winter hat, I took the least populated streets until I found a clean, dimly-lit café terrasse and installed myself in the corner. There were only two other people outside: men bent over smartphones, quietly complaining to each other about their jobs. Inside there was only a woman about my age at the bar, poking fiercely at an iPhone. The waiter was cheerful and so was I, when he set down my glass of rouge that sparkled so prettily in the over-head heat lights.

I took out Le Monde magazine and turned to the article on Ai Weiwei, but my vulnerable pre-holiday state of mind needed the comfort of English. So I took out The New Yorker and felt more at home. Between these two subscriptions, if I spent all of my spare hours reading, I would still never finish them.

Two days before Christmas, this normally busy Marais street was wonderfully silent. Sitting in the warm red light, across the street from a building draped in twinkling blue, with both colors swirling around each other on the shiny pavement in between, it was a lovely scene.

Until it got better. I then had the luck to witness something really great. The girl from the bar came out, apparently needing some privacy to yell at her boyfriend. I looked up and our eyes met. I expected her to turn around and find somewhere to be alone, but she didn’t seem to mind me eavesdropping. She faced me as she yelled into her phone. “T’es ! Un ! Vrai ! Con ! Tu m’as pris du fric puis tu m’as jeté ! Je ne vais PLUS être ta connasse ! Je comprends pourquoi les gens te jettent, Chris ! Et moi, je te jette ! VA…TE…FAIRE…FOUTRE ! Et crever dans ta merde !” With that, she went back inside, gathered her things and left.

I felt I should applaud. I have never witnessed such a performance in person. Impressively effective.

Merry Christmas eve eve Chris, wherever you are with this girl’s money.

Lonely man. Green light.

about to play with her toy carrot

A night with Paddy Sherlock and his band at The Coolin in Paris heals all wounds.

And it’s even better when he plays Lulu le Chat
and it’s your birthday.

Linda McCluskey turns 23

Hi, you handful of people who may read this blog (hi Mom). So, I just did something that feels kind of courageous. I’m working on a new website that will have only “personal” work (of course, everything is personal), but this site will only be self-portraits. At least for now. It might evolve. It’ll probably evolve. Of course it will evolve.

It’s 2/3 finished and one of those thirds I haven’t shown before, aside from some professional portfolio reviews here and there. (Mom, you’ve never seen them, and when I began the series you asked me what the point was, what on earth I was going to do with them.) Well I took them out of the box, off the hard drive, and they’re up there on the internet. Open to criticism or to being completely ignored and passed up for more important things like the pepper-spraying cop attacking Julie Andrews. In any case, I can be pretty determined, and I’m determined to carry this on for life. So maybe we can talk about it again in a few years, or for as long as I keep waking up.

I feel better having mentioned it.
(If you read this far, thanks for indulging me!
Now click here.)

I went to la Defense yesterday to check out the Occupy France/Les Indignés protest. I hadn’t realized they were there and apparently I wasn’t the only one, as I found the area not very occupied. It was rather disappointing. They have been there for 16 days, were washed away with police force mid-week, and put a call out for support to come yesterday at 17h.

Before going, I sent out many messages to friends, and was unable to convince anyone to come with me. Most already had plans, and others it seemed like just didn’t want to bother. One friend said that it was too far, if it had been on the way somewhere she would stop by. True, it’s physically outside the periphérique, but the metro takes you to just below the protesters and an escalator carries you up right next to them, up to probably the most obvious place the protest should happen.

It was late Saturday afternoon and the shopping center just below the protesters was more crowded, as was the line 1 metro on the way there, which deposited crowds of people from Chatelet to the Champs Elysees, where consumers hang out en masse on weekends. Leaving the protest, taking the stairs back down to the metro felt like returning to another reality, the hand-written cardboard calls for change replaced by big fancy shopping bags.

View of Les Indignés' meeting last night, viewed from the top of the steps leading to the Arch de la Défense

The welcome desk of Occupy La Defense, with a list of reasons they came, what they need in terms of logistical support in order to stay

Signs and posters delineated the center of the protest. The Hope Area.

At the meeting they went through a list of speakers, with a megaphone that distorted more than it projected. Considerable time was spent on how to be heard. Suggestions for the human megaphone, like in NYC, were offered and eventually someone came with an orange construction cone that worked rather well

Occupy La Defense, 19 November 2011

Overheard in front of Arnulf Rainer‘s work at Paris Photo.
“Je suis un peu malade de la tête, alors c’est normal que j’aime ca.”

Ok, well I like his work a lot and I’m not sick in the head!

Arnulf Rainer's work at the Christophe Gaillard stand at Paris Photo

“The timeless communicating to the time-bound.”

…

This photo is part of a series that I’m editing, taken during my residency at the Halsnoy Kloster, and today it makes me think of this sentence above, by Steven Pressfield and inspired by William Blake, in The War of Art.

He is getting old, he can hardly see, but he still runs silly with abandon. In the happiness that only a dog, a child, or my free-spirited friend Alex can inhabit. Letting it all hang out.

Pirate on the run