Memories

A page of my sketchbook from last year

Flashlight dream

These pictures by Dana Boulos remind me of a film I watched when I was thirteen about teenagers that spent most of their time at a local roller disco.I think it was filmed in the 80s or 90s...I'm not sure..I tried to find it years later but I can't remember the name of the film or anything else.I only remember a girl with big brown eyes getting dumped by her boyfriend who(I think) takes back the plastic ring he gave to her and tells her he likes someone else now.The girl rollerskated out of the disco in tears.
That's all I remember.

Nowhere girl

nowhere girl you're living in a dream,
nowhere girl you stay behind the scenes,
nowhere girl you never go outside,
nowhere girl cause you prefer to hide.

Obsessions

When I was 14 a girl at my school showed me the picture of Richey with the word '4 REAL' carved on his arm with a razor blade.She told me that he did that because a journalist questioned his band's authenticity. I didn't know anything about the band yet but the fact that he reacted like that fascinated me.
A year later my best friend moved house and she had to go to a different school.I didn't have any other friends and spent most days at school by myself listening to my discman at the girls toilets.I was forced to go on a school trip where I had to be on a bus for 6 hours with all the people from my school that I hated.Nobody sat next to me so everyone kept asking me if they can leave their coats on the empty seat next to mine.After an hour my discman batteries died and I was left there with nothing to do sitting next to a pile of coats.The other kids where listening to really annoying Greek pop music very loud.I really didn't want to be there.I don't know why but I started crying.The same girl that showed me the Richey picture saw me and asked me what was wrong.She gave me her batteries for my discman and she also gave me Generation Terrorists to listen to. For the rest of the trip I was listening to it while I was looking at the pictures and reading the lyrics from the booklet. The music was so powerful and the lyrics were like nothing like I've heard before.I felt kind of ashamed and stupid because I couldn't really understand most of them.There were a lot of things mentioned in the lyrics that I didn't know.I was the worst student in my class and I was generally not interested in learning anything that the school 'forced' me to. I was more interested in things that I chose to learn.The lyrics also reflected the loneliness and emptiness that I felt but they did it in a way that made me want to do something to express my sadness and anger rather than just sit there depressed and do nothing.

We've never changed for anybody.Once people realized there was such a band as us, playing honest, straight-up rock 'n' roll,they came to us.They're all people our age fed up with dance and techno music.They're the 'blank generation' in that they come to us without any history to judge us by.
                                                                                               Richey James Edwards, 1992

Inspirations

Mary Ellen Mark Photography

I have been obsessed with these Mary Ellen Mark images and Streetwise for almost a year now. I am drawn to the raw reality of those young adolescent lives. Also I am fascinated by the irony of the fact that everyone in Hollywood and elsewhere became so interested in their lives after the documentary was released but shortly afterwards they forgot about them and the kids lives remained the same.

My exhibition

Candid Arts,Angel,EC1V 1NQ,London 14th of September-19th of September

asleepteenagerdrugsrunningdesertedretrofuturisticspace

I can't stop playing this song

I always loved Dakota Fanning and I've always been jealous of her acting abilities.Even though she naturally doesn't look as tough as the real Cherie Currie she gave a great performance in 'The Runanways'.I loved this scene most of all because it shows Cherie before she joins The Runaways,when she wasn't that confident and hadn't even realised that she wanted to be a performer but she still wasn't afraid to perform like this in front of the whole school.She just lives in her own glitter world and she doesn't care.

Sleepless

After not sleeping properly for so long my face started deforming.I constantly have bags under my eyes and I always look tired.Also my eyes look like they're going to fall out of and my face looks thinner.I took pictures of myself when I couldn't sleep and pictures pretending that I was sleeping and then I did drawings of them.

I'm never going to draw myself sad again

I guess it's easier to draw sad people instead of happy people.I mean how do you draw someone smiling with teeth without looking stupid?I don't know how to do it.Also I never managed to smile naturally without looking stupid in pictures my whole life. I even tried to rehearse in front of the mirror(apparently thats what famous people do, thats why they always have the same smile)but it didn't work.I prefer sad faces.

I'm trying to make a comic

Based on the pointless waste of time I spent in a cloakroom

Everything is annoying

My Exhibition

People

Last month I went to New York by myself. I kept a sketchbook/scrapbook and decided to draw all the people I met,even the ones that I didnt't met but just overheard their conversation or saw them on the street.

Laurel Nakadate:Only the Lonely

'A Catalogue of tears: I wanted to deliberately take part in sadness every day'.

This exhibition was so inspiring, I think I spent almost 2 hours looking at the pictures and videos by Laurel Nakadate.I've never heard of her before but I'm glad I went to MOMA PS1 and found out about her work.I never realised that loneliness and exhibitionism are actually two very connected concepts. Especially in our time where everyone is obsessed with myspace,facebook,youtube..All those websites that give a chance to everyone to show everything about themselves. Laurel Nakadate captures the loneliness that most people feel perfectly. Sometimes she uses humour that sort of gives hope to lonely and sad people. There were 365 huge photographs of herself crying which at first seems too much but after a while I realised that these photos are something like a background to everything else in the exhibition. The videos with the lonely men (men in their 50s or 60s that agreed to make an art video with her because she promised to go home with them) are funny but if you think about it they're not that funny. These men seem desperate for human contact and it's not just them, there are so many people, especially in big cities that wake up every day and go to bed without having said a word to another person. People are afraid of each other.It's easier to talk to a stranger on the internet and open up and send pictures of yourself to them but it's so hard to do that in real life.

However, the videos give a sense of female power, in the way that Nakadate tells these men what to do and they obey everything she says ,which kind of ridicules them and make you think that most men would do anything if there is a possibility for them to have sex.

In the 'Love Hotel' video she acts out love scenes with an absent invisible lover which also made me laugh because in a way she's making fun of the sexist stereotypes.

“It’s a strange little movie about the ways the world can disappoint or enthrall us, and the things we do to be okay”

This is video of Laurel Nakadate's film 'Stay the same Never Change'.The actors are amateurs from Kansas City and the story is scripted and is shot at the actors' real homes.It follows the lives of teenage girls in the Midwest that go through what every normal teenager goes through and like most people they're not satisfied with their lives nad they want more.Also like most teenagers(and people in general) they need desperately to feel that somebody understands them and a sense of belonging somewhere.Laurel Nakadate's goal was to make the viewer feel uncomfortable (as with most of her work) and show how self-absorbed teenagers are but try to be brave and keep going. I wish I could find this film, I'm not sure if it was included in some of the videos I watched in PS1. I rememeber some videos with teenage girls and interesting dialogues and cinematography but I think they were parts of other short films she made.

If you're in NY go to Brooklyn Art Library to check out my sketchbook

I need to sleep

I finished my sketchbook!!!

I'm sending it to New York tomorrow and it's going on a sketchbook tour around USA in February.