The World by Us

Writer/author/performance & visual artist/filmmaker/director/actor Miranda July is the ultimate ‘slashie’ and an incredible inspiration for aspiring creatives. Though according to her twitter account, she spends her time ‘divining the future of every single person…including you.’

Back before the success of her two feature-length films, Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005) and The Future (2011), Miranda was lonely, eager to learn, and longing to connect with other women. So she began an online project called Joanie 4 Jackie (previously known as Big Miss Moviola) – a video chain letter for female filmmakers to share their work.

The project became a beautiful support network and as one of the filmmakers interviewed describes it, “it was something special and different and kind of sacred…It was a little pod of love and hope.” Or as Miranda says, “Joanie 4 Jackie saved me, because I felt like I was part of something. That was my film school.”

The project is now archived at Bard College in New York where it continues to inspire and encourage budding female filmmakers.

For more Miranda, be sure to watch her latest film, The Future, which she wrote, directed, and starred in. It is a quirky and heartening take on life, love, individuality and the creation of art.

“I guess my favorite thing in the world is when I look at a piece of art, or read a story, or watch a movie where I walk away feeling like “Oh my god — I have to do something, I have to make something or talk to someone — things are not the same anymore” — and so I try to make work where you come away with that feeling. It’s like, yeah, you’re thinking about what you just saw, but even more than that — you feel able, you feel like, kind of propelled.”

- Miranda July

When was the last time you got your hands dirty and did a little finger painting? Unless you’ve got small children at home, you probably left that hobby behind long ago… Not so for American artist Judith Ann Braun.

Using fingers dipped in charcoal, Braun creates impressive murals, often drawn directly onto the wall. Her pieces range from stunning and intricate landscapes, to abstract symmetrical formations. No doubt a believer in the potential for constraints to boost creativity, Braun has set herself four simple rules which she follows in creating the majority of her other work:

1. Graphite
2. Square paper
3. Abstraction
4.  Bilateral symmetry

Intrigued by Braun’s unique form of art? You can catch her quirky, self-told life story in video form here. Or check out more of her work here.

“Look. Really look. Take the time to see it in their eyes. See their hunger for experience, the wide-eyed optimism, the fear that eats into their soul and the glint that twinkles when something, anything small, turns out just right.

They are the ones with independent minds. Hunting (not-so-secretly) for extraordinary experiences. Giving desire its due thanks to some kind of chronic fantasy they can not shake. Sweating it out for their cause, unwilling to conform and eagerly embracing the path les travelled as a way of asserting a uniqueness of experience and something all of their own…

…As we grow out of acts of youthful defiance and into finding our own meaning, we look most for why we struggle and why we live. For this, we need to be a little foolish. We need to fear less. To be true to what we know. To do what we can with what we have. Make like mavericks in our own small way. And show commitment as best we can.”

- RUSSH Editor, Jess Blanch

From the editor’s letter for issue 45 saluting ‘the people who have rebelled, outraged convention, sacrificed or done the jobs they didn’t want just to support their dreams.’

We’ve been on the look out for ways to reinvigorate our little backyard garden. In our travels, we’ve come across some fabulous ideas for repurposed planters, along with more brilliant & easy ideas for recycled design…

Spare tea pots lying around? Don’t let them hide in the cupboard!

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Same goes for those giant tea cups:

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Keep an eye out at your local vintage haunts for old mailboxes:

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And vintage bathtubs:

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Put those old coffee tins to good use:

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Broken chair? Bathroom shelf & towel rack!

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Give your storage a little character (notice the antler hooks top left!):

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Put your wine on display with varnished old paletts:

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Same goes for wine glasses and that rusty old rake:

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Check out more of our ‘Trash to Treasure’ inspiration here.

Ah New York…

Brilliant food, world class theatre, and the exciting possibility of being saved by oncoming traffic from Ryan Gosling. The city has so much to offer…Today, we take you on a photographic tour of the birth place of the hipster: Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Williamsburg bridge

Diner

Diner specials, written on the table for us to contemplate (we went with the Bar fish and it was delightful)

A fine afternoon beverage: Brooklyn Lager

In case of fire…

Signs of spring!

Perhaps one of our favourite finds: Maison Premiere. Absinthe cocktails, oysters galore, and just look at the place:

It is Thursday evening. 7:30pm. We  arrive at the McKittrick Hotel in Chelsea, New York for British theatre company Punchdrunk‘s interpretation of Macbeth. It appears to be a converted warehouse and reminiscent of the elaborate haunted houses of my childhood. The ambience is similarly eerie. Upon entering, we discover the hotel’s curious ‘history.’ Completed in 1939 and set to be New York’s most luxurious hotel, six weeks before opening, just after the outbreak of WWII, the hotel was locked up and abandoned.

We’re advised to check our bags & coats. ‘It’s warm inside’ they assure us. “And you’ll want to be free to run around…”

Bags & coats checked, we’re given white masks (which we’re instructed not to remove), and escorted through big red curtains to the bar, complete with 1930′s jazz band, songstress and decor. We grab a drink, only to be told we’re heading off, bottom’s up, and we’re following our guide to the lifts. Lift doors open one floor up, our guide invites us forward, allows one person to walk ahead, stopping the rest of us as the lift doors promptly close…leaving one lone soul on floor 3. Here we go.

Surprisingly, the rest of us are allowed off together a few floors up. We are told we cannot talk at any time, but can return to the bar on the 2nd floor at any time we like. Then we are left to roam almost 100 rooms across 5 floors for the next 3 hours…in silence.

The further we explore, the deeper we dig, the more we surrender to curiosity, the fuller the experience: The discovery of the candy shop (and a fellow masked participant happily munching on sweets as if he owned the place) – a delightful room we return to often for a quick sugar fix. The decision to follow a frantic actress down two flights of stairs to the ballroom, rummaging through drawers, reading letters left behind, trying to piece together the story. Lingering to discover what happened when the psychiatric nurse leads a fellow audience member into a small hospital room, shuts the door behind the two of them…and screams.

This is what we came to New York for. Something we couldn’t find anywhere else (save maybe London, where we were once invited to a club in an abandoned underground railway station and were only allowed in if we donned vintage dressing gowns and animal masks.)

The most powerful moments of our adventure were a stunning slow-motion, bloody, and erotic banquet scene, and what was described by another audience member on our way out as ‘the foetus rave’ – a mind-blowing, strobe-laden, nudity-filled birth/beheading scene.

The beauty of interactive theatre is the way it challenges us to move beyond being passive recipients of entertainment and invites us to actively engage with it. We’re left to put the pieces together as we go. The intention was not for us to see and understand the full story of Macbeth. Instead, it offered us a break from the predictable and coherent, the opportunity to return to child-like exploration and adventure, part dream, part nightmare, letting our imagination determine the meaning behind the various scenes we experience. Each of us participating in the creation of art, rather than simply observing it.

If you happen to be in New York, Sleep no More is still running. Catch it while you can!