like the band: "the mars volta"?

Strand on Volta -

1531 33 rd St., NW (corner of Volta Place and 33rd St.)

Tangential but related. From back when WashPo actually reported.

Illicit Encounters at Strand on Volta

Craig Doty's photo "Milk Chuggers." Even his most innocuous images feel illicit. (Photos By Craig Doty)

By Michael O'Sullivan Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, June 10, 2005

THERE'S THE creepiness of a horror movie to Craig Doty's art, on view at Strand on Volta. Which is to say you might want to cover your eyes while peeking through the cracks of your fingers at the same time.

I'm not just talking about the artist's more overtly spooky images, several of which depict nighttime scenes featuring characters engaged in behavior that could be construed as threatening, or in response to threat. Even Doty's most innocuous images -- and there's a kind of calm, classical innocence to almost all of them -- feel illicit, if not illegal. Should I be watching this, or reporting it?

One untitled photograph (like most of Doty's work, staged and dramatically lit a la Jeff Wall) depicts an unshaven, greasy-haired young man in a trucker's hat and with a cigarette dangling from his mouth standing at the bottom of a flight of stairs with a hammer in his hand. The setting is ambiguous. If he's outside someone's front door, looking in, as it appears, is his attitude one of malevolence or protection? Another, called "Paul and Ruba," shows a man lying face down in the grass as a woman in fishnet stockings stands inertly nearby. A third, called "Christa and Jesse," shows a man kneeling before a woman with his head obscured beneath her shirt. She's looking off to the left, almost as if she's afraid of being caught. But at what? On the one hand, their poses suggest a parkside sexual tryst, while on the other, there's something comical, almost goofy about the encounter. Then again, there's a quality about the way the man's head is covered by her shirt that calls to mind bondage, or a prisoner's hood.

Sex, violence and the ritualistic elements of both also come into play in Doty's series of "Chiefed" photographs. Reenacting the frat-boy prank of chiefing, whereby a passed-out partygoer's face is painted (like an American Indian chief presumably) with dirty sayings and drawings in permanent marker, most of the photographs from this series are too crude to be reprinted in a family newspaper, but they generally question the sexuality of the victim . The verbal violence implicit, not to mention the prerequisite invasion of personal space, is belied by the placid looks on the subjects' faces. Yet as they imitate the repose of sleep, they resemble death masks as well.

The centerpiece of Doty's show, however, is a pair of thematically related works: one a photograph, the second a video documenting a performance by the artist, and both related to the phenomenon of "milk chugging." Not familiar with it? It's an endurance-type stunt in which participants try to drink a gallon of milk in a single sitting (an hour is a typical time limit). Vomiting, as a result of the lactic-acid overdose, is not uncommon.

Both pieces, obviously enough, have homoerotic overtones . In the photograph "Milk Chuggers," three shirtless lads, all facing forward in cultlike uniformity, raise gallon jugs to their mouth as milk spills down their chins. In the video "The Milk Chugger," which runs three or four minutes in continuous loop, Doty himself sits in the corner of a yard, sloppily gulping mouthful after mouthful of milk while his chest heaves in exertion (excitement?) and his eyes dart furtively left and right. Again, it's as if he's afraid of being busted for something. The video's climax -- surely you can guess what would happen to you if you chugged milk -- is both funny and disturbing, as much for its casual violence as for its evocation of orgasmic release."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/09/AR2005060900651.html

This is connected to the system of Pizzagate and Global Criminal Corruption.

What is in Ghana? Gold, Oil, Water, and Poor Children.

"The United States enjoys a close relationship with Ghana since their Independence. The U.S. is among Ghana's principal trading partners. U.S. companies with major investments include Mobil, Coca Cola, S.C. Johnson, Ralston Purina, Star-Kist, Pfizer, IBM, NCR, to name a few. Close relationships are maintained between educational and scientific institutions, and cultural links, particularly between Ghanaians and African-Americans, are strong. Travel within the country is considered to be safe."

My guess is it was actually on Volta.

Volta Place is a five block street located in the Northwest Quadrant of Washington, DC.

I can tell you that "Strand" is an ancestral family name for JA