The Moth, a not-for-profit storytelling organization, was founded in New York in 1997 by poet and novelist George Dawes Green, who wanted to recreate in New York the feeling of sultry summer evenings on his native St. Simon's Island, Georgia, where he and a small circle of friends would gather to spin spellbinding tales on his friend Wanda's porch. After moving to New York, George missed the sense of connection he had felt sharing stories with his friends back home, and he decided to invite a few friends over to his New York apartment to tell and hear stories. Thus the first "Moth" evening took place in his living room. Word of these captivating story nights quickly spread, and The Moth moved to bigger venues in New York. Today, The Moth conducts six ongoing programs and has brought more than 2,000 live stories to over 60,000 audience members.
"A post-modern exhibition strategy begins with the realization that categories and criteria have no innate validity--only the validity that is projected upon them--and thus that their transgression can be an opening into freedom. In terms of the culture of the exhibition, this means that humans can exhibit anything whatever to one another for whatever reasons. The post-Modern exhibition does not compete in the conflict of different ideas of quality, priority, or historical centrality. It allows different definitions and standards of quality to stand side by side without giving one of them dominance or authority over others....The post-Modern exhibition must strive not for slices of sameness...but for a focus on difference which honors the Other and allows it to be itself..."
-Thomas McEvilley, "Opening the Trap: The Postmodern Exhibition" 67-8). In Art and Otherness: Crisis in Cultural Identity McPherson, 1995.
A friend of mine sent me this link to a magazine called Beautiful Decay. This month's issue is all about the grotesque and features an old friend of mine, Tanya Batura, as well as the work of Folkert de Jong who is on the cover.
