The Dark Angels are a come and go crew. They create then disappear like street art. Their works exist in fragments, particles that float, dust motes that spin before the wind that blows them to faraway places. They are individuals that work as one. Deep as oceans, as impenetrable as the night. Art urchins and poets, they dissolve before they form. They are the Dark Angels, they are discharge. They are a bloody mouthful.
17 comments:
Great makeup!!!
I truly hope this is makeup, Ruela...
Being Harpy by nature (without ever having had adhered to the masters of our mythology), I am compelled to look into the details. I believe her to be 'Liz'. We have already encountered her dreaming of love just a few posts down.
I know her face. I have seen her in too many women (and a man I know).
She believes that love should teach her her insignificance and her 'place' in a relationship. She believes that she deserves such 'love' because she is not worthy of anything better. Her masochism is not nature but nurture.
Fantastic image, Robert. I don't think you could even begin to know how much it impacts on 'audience'. Some of us grew up having to endure observing this perverse concept of 'love'.
Personally, having been exposed to it I didn't give up sleeping with a carving knife under my pillow until I was in my 30's.
Some images are evocative on an abstract level. You've produced a couple of images here that speak to the Harpy in me. No Harpy becomes Harpy out of puerile moralism...
Yes, it is makeup and you are spot on about the story of the character I was creating here. I have seen this in action myself and I was trying to make it very real and very unapologetic. There is glamour in violence, as you know but I wanted to show the morning after the night before :~) This is a very talented actress, too.
How did you know her name is Liz?
You've certainly done an frighteningly powerful job on recreating the facts. Kudos to you.
Yes, there is a morning after the night before and you have depicted it powerfully (and Liz is, as you've noted, an extremely talented actress). Her expression speaks of frailty and resolve. She will not give her 'lover' away... it was her own fault, not his... all the cliché's spring to mind.
Ultimately, I was awaiting the next phase after her battered sleep and you did not disappoint.
There's no mystery behind my knowing her name to be Liz. Sadly, I've found it commonplace in cyberspace for comments to be posted without actually having pieces presented scrutinized. No one posts here randomly (or, I'd like to imagine, any works presented are thought out and prepared with great care).
I click on the image to get the full size. Sometimes I will download the image in order to scrutinize it better. I try my best to treat every posting with the respect I believe it warrants.
I was fascinated by your original photo of the battered woman dreaming of love so downloaded her to absorb every aspect carefully. Right-click and save image as told me it was liz1.png. If you wish to be more obscure, you'll need to change your naming conventions. This second photo is CIMG0247.JPG which is a far better naming convention if you intend to obscure 'identity' or 'identification'... but it was an extension of the 'narrative' already begun.
I do try to be respectful of every artist's work. For me, it is not quid pro quo: that is, I write something nice about your work and expect you to write something nice about my work.
PS Once I have downloaded and poured over an image, I delete it. I would never deign to rehash or re-use someone else's image without their permission.
I believe you to be very respect of all work in general, Iryna. I forgot that the photo was titled "Liz" and was marveling at your powers! I have no worries of any kind. I was hoping it was a psychic gift of Harpies but am satisfied with the prosaic explanation.
Thqnk you for the lovely things you say about these two photos. This is work I did to help out a student making a short film and I had no time, light, space or budget for materials. I really pulled all this out of my ass and took the photos to have a record of it. I was pretty happy with the way it turned out. My young actress is very talented and did her best to give Liz many layers of feeling. I think that, lurking beneath the frailty and resolve, lurking so deeply she is not aware of it is a murderous rage.
If you enjoy the photos please do not feel that you have to delete them. I am very honored by your appreciation of them and would be very flattered if you wanted to keep them around!
Hehe! Any of my 'powers' are purely prosaic, Robert. To be honest, I am pragmatist by nature. Harpy is the combination of pragmatism and mythological powers. I shred without the word of overlords/masters. Such analysis is essential.
Sorry if I disappoint. The moniker is, in itself, parody. The moment I start taking myself too seriously is the moment I understand myself to be ready to be recycled. Ultimately, I am recycler by nature. That is, after all, the nature on DNA in itself.
These pieces are proof of the fact that the best work somehow emanates from pulling rabbits out of ones arse. I've found this to be the case with photography and film (the true collaborative art forms whether the subject is animate or inanimate). The most poignant images are often not the result of careful calculation.
If I end up keeping any images and am tempted to reproduce them elsewhere, I will certainly ask for your permission; will give you proper credit and will share in the amazing riches that come tumbling in!
I do enjoy you very much, sra Iryna Harpy :~)
Thank you!
Love it when you talk Spanish to me, snr Robert!
cuando quieras, cariño ;~)
Your time spent outside your New York Irish culture has done wonders for you!
I do so love a good flirt! The Irish I've come across aren't terribly good at it unless they're playing a Brit (read 'English Secret Agent') and adhering closely to the script. My experience has been a limited one being that dialogue ends up with someone being beaten up and tossed out of the pub for NOT being Irish.
Ah, I divert (as usual). I was intending to address your astute observation, "I think that, lurking beneath the frailty and resolve, lurking so deeply she is not aware of it is a murderous rage." Again, experience tells me that a violence far more vitriolic than that inflicted festers beneath the delicate exoskeleton...
... and am reminded that I promised both Albano and Anthony that I'd re-post something I pulled within hours just before Discharge 6 waved us all good-bye.
El español no es atractivo cuando usted utiliza un traductor en línea para no transportar nada particularmente, bebé. ¡No obstante, mientras que detesto el uso de la palabra “bebé”, gozo del flirtation y, para el final de un diatribe muy largo, estaría decepcionado seriamente si era solamente válido como babelfish cyberpoetry! Viva la cyberpoetry, JAja!
:~)
Marvelous letter and all to the good; however, I must clarify that my Irish culture came to San Francsico and then wended its way down the California coast to Santa Barbara, ending up in Pasadena. We are Irish Californios.
And It's true that the Irish do not bother with flirting but they are wonderfully apt at fucking. This has been my experience, at least. ;~O What you say about the pubs is true, alas. I never got beaten up, people don't seem to want to do that to me, but I got a great deal of drunken verbal abuse. And being Irish American didn't help: we're the ones that got away. I forgive them for being a perpetually angry people: many occupied people are. And in England, to this day, the Irish are the butt of many jokes. That said, they could also tend to their own knitting and make something of themselves, but we all know it is more fun to bitch and moan!
The use of a translator isn't so much unattractive as it is hilarious but I think I get the gist. I think you are valid on all counts and I do love, love, love to read all your writing.
Ciao nena. Hasta la próxima.
Mil besos y uno
Robertito de Prúsia
If only I could convey to you how much fun I had with Babelfish when it first reared its head! An English colleague (who teaches 1st year Beginners French) used to recommend it to her students. She thought it was fabby-foo!
Without delving into my history involving the pedagogical and practical aspects of developing LOTE (Languages other than English) teaching sites, it was the next best thing to playing Simplified Chinese Scrabble! Mind you, it has improved with the Romance languages... but don't get excited about non-Latin script languages. By the time it kerfuffles the gist of the translation, the syntax has been known to have caused wars.
Which reminds me, I had a conversation with a really pleasant Aussie guy recently. He'd been to Greece and told me that it took him a while to get used to seeing 'stuff written in Acrylic'. Don't ask me about the rest of the conversation. All I can remember of it was making noises in agreement and looking fascinated in order not to collapse in a guffawing heap.
In living in Australia, the Irish are STILL the brunt of many jokes, the biggest one being that many of these Aussies are direct descendants of Irish immigrants. A'Hearn? Of course, you must be of French descent!(?)
Cultures in the diaspora become a strange breed of their own. I had to keep shtum about not being excited about the Orange Revolution lest the KKK be flown in for a good, old-fashioned lynching. Personally, being screwed by Multi-nations from the West, oligarchs from Russia AND the Ukrainian oligarchy strikes me as being screwed over a hell of a lot of times.
Mind you, I can't dispute the correlation between oppressed nations and being a good fuck. If we take this as simple cause and effect, perhaps we should all be oppressed. We might be starving, beaten and live in misery to the age of 25 (if we're lucky) but, damn it if we won't love fucking ourselves stupid!
Hugs for now, Robert. I do enjoy these little diatribes!
When fucking is your only entertainment, the only one not taxed or regulated, you get very creative with it and give it the resect it deserves...at least I hope so.
I, too, have suffered the pain of trying to decipher Acrylic. A difficult script whose only real benefit is that it dries so quickly on the page. But, it is pretty.
The thing about the oppression of peoples is that they probably deserve it. For they have certainly oppressed others in the past and, given their chance, would cheerfully turn the tables and brutally oppress their current oppressors. Because that is the sort of animal we are. As an amateur historian I can safely say that everybody has been a king and everybody has been a slave, and those that groan under slavery dream of enslaving their masters.
I know next to nothing about Babelfish other than it is some sort of language tool. Should I look into it? What is it, exactly? I do love languages.
We Irish are our own worst enemies. With all the intrinsic talent and depth and poetry, we can not help shooting ourselves in the feet, because combined with all the foregoing is an essential frivolity and love of skylarking, arguing and seizing the moment for immediate gratification. Very similar to Greeks, we are! And the disposition to self pity! Oh, la! Luckily, I do not suffer from as I see nothing to pity about myself. I am, simply, dreamy ;~O
I adore our diatribes, my dear! many hugs to you
Babelfish is basically the precursor to various online translation tools.
Well, in truth, experience has taught me that they present as individual translation tools. The fact that they all come back with the same translation (usually verbatim) suggests that they're more like the plethora of insurance companies all underwritten by the same bastard monopoly.
I don't know whether you use Firefox which is still my favourite (although I use various browsers for web development) but you can download the FoxLingo add-on. It's fairly versatile. This add-on makes its money from those who are ultimately looking for (their native)single-language specific translation software. For web-development reasons, I've tried their Russian, Ukrainian, Japanese, Chinese and Korean software. They're mainly focussed on the dictionary and pronunciation aspect and are still fairly troublesome. As a general translation tool for anything from a paragraph to the entire page, it's reasonable enough for someone who has a grasp of the complexity of the structure of language. One can certainly get the gist of the translation.
Decent language learning software is still far more primitive than I know, for a fact, it ought to be.
I worked on a project for the European Union a few years ago... Due to my realising that it had totalitarian implications (oh, surprise, surprise!) I wheedled out of the contract. Language-learning and translation software must have progressed in leaps and bounds since then... but not for us propagandised plebs. Can't say more but can say that there WILL be some amazing learning and translation software available soon!
Enjoy language! I would, however, suggest that you do as I do: learn at least one obscure 'Endangered' language...
To address the second major tangent, Robert, I do (in all seriousness) concur with your thoughts on the aggressive nature of the oppressees.
I could go into at least one historical precedent that belies this as being some sort of absolute: nevertheless, in the face of the generalisation, it presents as being an exception.
Yeah, we all deserve a serious kick up the butt with steel-toed winkle-pickers! As I've already expressed, I'd have both my arse and head kicked in by now if I were back in Ukraine. Every culture that has been in contact with others over the past few thousand years are on the stomper/stompee side of the relationship. In many cases, the roles change. In cases where the role hasn't changed, the stompee is someone you wouldn't want to wield power because you KNOW they'd be worse than their predecessors (at least the predecessors as scared shitless by the historical lessons learned of disregarding the need to throw a few breadcrumbs to the peasants).
The most brutal overlords are the ones who are ignorant of history and simply hold a terrible grudge against every other culture (including large portions of their own: wrong religion, wrong shape of ears, wrong everything).
Much more to say on the subject but must make lunch now (being a Sunday at noon).
- Big hugs til next time!
Full agreement here and I await the "much more" with interest. It is so marvelous and educating to have a "cunning linguist" as a friend. ;~∆
I am taking your advice and starting to study Català again. I know it well enough from living there but their nationalism annoyed me so much I refused to speak it, on principal. But that was long ago and I am somewhat homesick for that place and time. I am also trying to learn Latin.
Enjoy lunch. Do you eat food or do you follow an exotic diet?
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