Circus Journal Entries

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• Circus Shoot...
  by Hien Nguyen

  This is a short gig I did today for a local circus act of acrobatics/jugglers. They needed some images for advertising materials. Fir…

  This is a short gig I did today for a local circus act of acrobatics/jugglers. They needed some images for advertising materials. First set of pics were shot using a SB800 to the right. Only have one flash available as I left my other PW at the last wedding I shot. 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / Then turned the flash off, jacked up the ISO, and did some jumping photos. This is the first time I’ve found a legitimate use for 9FPS in RAW. 11 / 12 / 13 / Fun shoot!!

• Sales Thanks Re Circus Chicks & Linda Longface Tees
  by Karin Taylor

  !ht…

  Thank you to my lovely mystery buyer of the following tees!! / Chicks on Tightrope TShirt Chicks on Tightrope TShirt / Linda Longface TShirt

• HATS OFF TO THE ANGEL PHOTOGRAPHERS!!! CHECK THESE IMAGES OUT.
  by Alateia

  I was so impressed with the shots taken at the Angels staged last week. They are phenomonal. *Please take a moment to check these imag…

  I was so impressed with the shots taken at the Angels staged last week. They are phenomonal. Please take a moment to check these images out and pop over to the photographers site to see more…...they did a huge job…... it wasnt easy shooting as there were alot of factors to take into consideration. / here are a few of my favourites. Introducing: / PHOTOGRAPHER, MISSYMISS / / / / INTRODUCING: FELINEMIND / / / ...more to come…. / / by me

• FINALLY!! Journalist Puts Spotlight on Animal Cruelty
  by Crockpot

  *Th…

  The Sadist Show on Earth? / Posted by Joel Schwartzberg April 14, 2008 1:12PM / Categories: Family & Kids, Hot Topics, New Jersey Life, Policy Watch My kids and I went to the Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey circus on Saturday at the Izod Center. I can’t remember the last time I’d been to the circus – possibly never – but we all have associations to the circus and know what to expect: clowns, animals, trapeze artists, overpriced souvenirs, and other shocks. / Irate at Izod Just outside the entrance was something I didn’t expect: a group of anti-circus protesters from the New Jersey Animal Rights Alliance, shouting gory details of animal mistreatment and holding signs. There were only a handful of them, corralled in a yellow iron-gated playpen, but their point was compelling, especially when I had to explain it to my five year-old daughter. “Why are those people mad?” she asked. “They’re saying it’s cruel to train animals to perform for humans.” “Why?” “Well, sometimes the training involves…” As I tried to find the right word, the image of Jack Bauer came to mind. “Sometimes the training hurts.” This was enough information for all three of my kids to take a hard stance against the circus, but I said it was important to go at least once, to see what it’s all about. Animal cruelty aside – and audience cruelty considered – “The Greatest Show on Earth” was, to these grown-up eyes, a bit underwhelming. The clowns were earnest and energetic, but nothing about them mitigated the “evil clown” imagery that takes frequent residence in our nightmares and phobias, so the resulting combined impression is that they’re just…creepy. / Uhhhh…I’ll pass on that balloon, thanks. When we stood for the National Anthem as a bedazzled lady held an American flag and rode past us atop an elephant, I knew we were in for something incredibly, and perhaps annoyingly, over-the-top. In fact, “Over the Top” was the theme of the show, in which a head clown steals the hat of the ringmaster and…oh, never mind. There were some incredible, daring feats to be sure: seven Paraguayan motorcyclists criss-crossing each other at full speed inside a steel sphere, triple-somersaulting trapeze artists, Chinese acrobats, and powerful Russian gymnasts. But the comic segments were painfully slow and dumb, the songs were excruciatingly cheesy, and the gorgeous tigers and snow-white horses in particular seemed decidedly unhappy about being prodded with an electro-whip. Looking resigned to their fate, majestic elephants traveled tail-to-trunk in a slow parade around the ring. Occasionally they sat back and raised their front legs like poodles, among other completely unnatural tricks. It’s apparently open season for making elephants act completely out of character. All of the animals were trained to act in direct opposition to their natural inclinations, probably to make them seem as lovable as their stuffed counterparts at the concession stand. PETA’s anti-circus site circuses.com puts it this way: The fact is, animals do not naturally ride bicycles, stand on their heads, balance on balls, or jump through rings of fire. To force them to perform these confusing and physically uncomfortable tricks, trainers use whips, tight collars, muzzles, electric prods, bullhooks, and other painful tools of the trade. As I waited on line to spend $10 on a box of popcorn and a bottle of water, I began to think the animals weren’t the only ones being trained. The human audience was being guided, instructed, and occasionally duped as well. Complaining about the price of a Diet Coke would probably have gotten me zapped by a bystanding attendant. / Pachydermocracy? Izod Center, April 12 On the way out of Izod, we saw the protesters arguing with police about their signs. Maybe they should have been a little more creative in their tactics. “Everyone is WATCHING!” one protester yelled, but in fact, few were watching at all. We were busy herding our children into cars and following the exit ramps as directed. “Everyone’s got a complaint about something,” I heard a man tell his wife dismissively. But the protesters made an impact on me, enough to investigate further. Turns out the facts are pretty disturbing. A report by the the Animal Welfare Institute, the Fund for Animals, and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals details not just abuse and mistreatment of circus animals, but also evidence that the USDA has looked the other way when it comes to circus animal mistreatment. Ringling Bros. extols its own dedication to ethical animal handling in a document buried on their website, though it’s weirdly short on details. Maybe because Ringling’s history of past violations has a sizable lead in the details department. The circus strongly encourages you to watch the animals during the show with your own eyes to understand if they’re being mistreated. That’s like watching a Michael Jackson video to determine if he’ll be a good babysitter. Considering one of the Meadowland Sports Center’s biggest sponsors, you’d think someone would be answering to a higher authority. I’ll probably steer myself and my family toward non-animal circuses in the future. All beasts deserve a free-to-roam home in their natural habitats, be it in a wildlife preserve, the jungle, or – in the case of our cats – the master bedroom.

• TOPSY Exhibition coming!!!!
  by grubbanax

  EXHIBITION BY CHRIS COMER (CURATOR), ELEANOR AVERY, JAMES AVERY, RA…

  EXHIBITION BY CHRIS COMER (CURATOR), ELEANOR AVERY, JAMES AVERY, RAY COOK, KIM DEMUTH, ALICE LANG, DAVID SPOONER AND GRUBBANAX SWINNASEN Opening Wednesday 5 September 6-8pm Artist Talk Wednesday 12 September 6pm Exhibition 5 – 22 September Metro Arts Galleries: Gallery 1 Metro Arts Galleries Program 2007 topsy turvy turns the world upside down as it cancels conventions, social codes and hierarchies to create a liberated, utopian space; or is it a safety valve for popular discontent and a subtle form of social control? topsy turvy features wordplay, excess, parody, inversion and the grotesque. CATALOGUE ESSAY: Roll up Roll up! Gather around and watch what we’re gonna do. It’s all free and it’s starting right now! This is the one you’ve read about, you’ve heard your neighbours talking about it. And here it is, all live, right here and starting now! We’re gonna bring out the prehistoric monk, the mule-faced man, the unwooded Pinocchio who would become wood if he could…watch the doorway, here they come, we’re gonna bring ‘em out here, all free, so you can see what they look like, …watch the doorway, so stubholders¨ keep your eyes wide open, you don’t want to miss any of the acts, and it’s all free… 1. Prehistoria is the Order of the day in David Spooner’s exhibit. Step right up. Step right in. Are they from another world? Watch the skin of the monks fossilise in front of your very eyes as they meditate cloaked in their growling cowls. Witness their souls escaping their petrified bodies and slip through the fabric of time. ST Dimetrodon of the Savage order is one roughneck monk- a Sailor and Tailor. A seasoned traveller, and covered in the shed skins of the prehistoric creatures he tames. If you’re lucky enough you will also see plush³ prehistoric animals stampede out of the shrine/time portal. 2. Now, behold Alice Lang’s photographs of anatomical wonders. Yes, we have it all here! See the photographic evidence of people with their insides on the outside. People who have mutated from a normal state to one of post-human; from familiar to unknown, from form to formlessness -the ‘grotesque body’ ladies and gentlemen! You will stand in wonderment as you try to explain your empathy, your attraction to something so repulsive (or repulsed by something so beautiful). This body is unfinished and extends beyond its boundaries at every orifice during sexual excitement, childbirth, consumption of food, defecation and rogue cells that grow with disease. 3.Send in the Joeys. We get to now see more of the carnival’s participants: Ray Cook’s clowns and Pinocchio. Their camp attitude suggests that the meaninglessness of life abounds but urges you to become liberated by the absence of this meaning. They tell you to invert good taste, value the overlooked, relish absurdity and childishness, express a heterodox view of the mainstream. Pinocchio thumbs his nose¶ at anyone outside the carnival who doesn’t get the ironic value and opposition of the status quo from a camp aesthetic. 4. In the next stall we are standing before Grubbanax Swinnasen’s fordigraphic caricatures of the scholastic carnival. There’s the ogrish librarian, the ogling P.E. teacher, the brutish punks† etc. With all the billingsgate language and comic verbal compositions scrawled on the cheap paper. All this and more! With the methylated pages should begin a chemical trigger recall to all of you over the age of 1 score and ten years. The outsideness of the bullied kid marginalised by a dominant ideology can now yell out in purple prose to announce not only that he has a voice (now that it’s carnival time) but also to say something about the ideology that sought to silence him. 5. Boom. Boom. Boom. Next, is a part of the fairground spectacular itself: a huge opulent arm covered in beads and flickering lights. Drawing you in, but what exactly is it? Is it a relic from a prosperous bygone era? Does it now reside in a land tipped downside-up, a wonderland without the wonder? I wonder. You will too! The fabricator, Eleanor Avery, says that she is “interested in the point where something changes status”. It’s been inverted from its original orientation that was displayed at Black Lab to the one here. Not only that; when you stand before it shifts from an object, to a sound, to a location and back again. 6. To the big top construction of Kim Demuth. To witness it is to realise that we’re both inside and outside the carnival. We stand looking at the container of what we are all participating in. What is going on inside that tent is what is taking place right here, right now! The circus is a symbol of identity, human relations and belonging to a place, and it shows the ephemeral nature of these concepts. The concerns of life are played out inside: adversity, comedy, love, illusion and danger. It is a mirror of life, perhaps a concave one as nanty« goes wrong in there. It is the space for the imaginary, the instant, the temporary and the extraordinary. Because of its mobile nomadic life it is never forever; it is always momentary. It is a sojourner in the environment, not resident of it. It does not belong anywhere. 7. So is it all out and over? Do we start tearing it down and move on to somewhere new? Bakhtin says that there is no beginning or end in carnival; that it is outside of time and a permanent feature of society. He also would like to point out the difference between the carnival of old and the carnival of today, that carnivalesque today pales with the endless bingeing, rampart orgies and physical mutilation of days past. He obviously hasn’t seen Big Brother, watched Idol, read Who Weekly or visited the biggest carnival of all: the internet. There’s a place in cyberspace called myspace where the idiot is hero?, there’s YouTube where the amateur is king¤ (or the king is amateur – see the PM’s attempt at social networking?) and PornoTube or yuvutu where people indulge in a celebration of bodily excess or just piss-fart? around – quite literally! So, the carnival isn’t over or existing as a paler version. It penetrates into everyday life and language with its reversal of rituals (what is normally high is low, what is taboo is compulsory) and with its democratic vision of every individual becoming one in the carnival square. “The carnival offers the chance to have a new outlook on the world, to realize the relative nature of all that exists, and to enter a completely new order of things” (Bakhtin, 1984, p.34). Goodbye, Grubbanax Aloysius Swinnasen¢ 8. Note to the gilliesª:- I have used Parlari¤ or Ciarzarn² in the writing of this bible° essay. Definitions below: ¨ The audience. ³ Stuffed animals. A clown. Derived from Joseph Grimaldi a famous English clown 18c. ¶We know from psychoanalytical research that the nose is a male phallic substitute, see: Karl Abraham, “The Female Castration Complex” (1920), in Selected Papers of Karl Abraham, edited by Ernest Jones, translated by Douglas Bryan and Alix Strachey, Hogart Press, London 1927, p. 351. † A child. Also a stuffed animal on a ‘knock ‘em over’ game. « nothing End of the performance. ? http://www.myspace.com/soybuddha ¤ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQO3K8BcyGM ?http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5jtiJPlv4Y&mode=related&search= ?http://yuvutu.com/modules.php?name=Video&op=view&video_id=69643 ¢ a Robin Marks£ £ Sort of “utility name” when a carny wants to give a false name for himself. ª A gilly: anyone not connected with the circus, an outsider. ¤ (or alternatively Polari, Parlare, Parlary, Palarie, Palari, Parlyaree) a distinctive English argot in use since at least the 18th century among groups of theatrical and circus performers and in certain homosexual communities, derived largely from Italian, directly or through Lingua Franca ² Carny slang. ° Souvenir program, catalogue.

• T0psy is approaching!!!
  by grubbanax

  *come along if ya like… it will be carny-like.. Kellie Vella performing some circus tricks on the night and some grotesque artworks to …

  come along if ya like… it will be carny-like.. Kellie Vella performing some circus tricks on the night and some grotesque artworks to offend and titillate your eyeballs.! / COME!

• One sleep to go!!!!
  by grubbanax

  *come along if ya like… it will be carny-like.. Kellie Vella performing some circus tricks on the night and some grotesque artworks to …

  come along if ya like… it will be carny-like.. Kellie Vella performing some circus tricks on the night and some grotesque artworks to offend and titillate your eyeballs.! / COME!