ABOUT
Raphie Frank is a New York City- based interactive producer, writer, photographer and designer, with supplemental expertise in Usability & Online Marketing. Raphie helped found swandivedigital in 2000 after ten years of production, technical and design experience in the Visual and Performing Arts worlds. While at swandivedigital he oversaw multiple engagements for such organizations as the Markle Foundation, Referral Networks and the Shubert Foundation, before setting out on his own in 2005 as a freelance intermedia consultant.
Prior to his experience at swandivedigital, Raphie traversed the artistic globe as Culture House Director (“Asylum” theater/cafe/art gallery, Prague, 1992-1993), award-winning short-film Producer (Bacchus, Germany, 1998), Theatrical Lighting Designer and published photographer. Raphie graduated from Vassar in 1990 with degrees in Psychology and Dramatic Writing and has published 50 interviews with leading city blog Gothamist.com since August, 2004.
PORTFOLIOS ::::: producing ::::: writings ::::: photography ::::: design
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PERSONAL HISTORY
Planning Warhol in Prague: Part I: The Asylum Culture House & The Warholesquian Sensibility
excerpt
The Asylum of cultural myth, for those who were in Prague and in the sub-cultural know during that winter and spring of 1993, lingers in memory as a crazed Bacchanalian Warholesquian happening, even if, public nipple piercings and simulated urination aside, a generally less explicitly sexual version. One minute you might go into the café, a smallish cave-like hole-in-the-wall we always thought of as the Soul of Asylum, and there would be a bongo, guitar and violin foot-stomping Celtic jam. Ten minutes later there might be a cultural film about Rodin flickering across the wall, and another half hour after that you might find a wanna-Kerouac poet spouting Beat banalities or diamonds across the room and over the cheers or heckles of his temporarily captive audience. Read Essay
Planning Warhol in Prague: Part II: Kafka and The “Refounding” of the Asylum Culture House
excerpt
Look at an old 19th Century Italian landscape painting and you might think “Wow! What unique vision those Italians had! Look at the gem-like fragile clarity of the leaves and their sparkling translucence. Look at those elongated spidery trunks! ” Then you go to Italy and look at the actual landscapes and the actual trees and you realize those painters were simply painting what they saw. That’s what it looks like.
To read Kafka is a similar experience. “The Castle” and “The Trial” are not the twisted mad ravings of a genius, but simply faithful recordings of the daily Czech experience with authority. That day was the first, but certainly not last, day I think I truly understood that. Rik felt it too. And that understanding came upon us this time not in a twisted brow knowledge kind of way, but more in a brown coal smog, nowhere-to-get-away-from-it, kind of way. Except that instead of being everywhere all at once, it’s nowhere all at once which is so… Czech. So… passive aggressive. Read Essay
Yes, Virginia There is Still A Santa Claus
excerpt
Interestingly enough, I think that moment bothered me more than — sorry to blow the lid on this Virginia — finding out my parents were Santa Claus four years previous. On some level I already knew Santa was a fraud even before Brian Kux, my red-haired neighbor two doors down back in Washington D.C., cemented into eternity my collapsed North Pole house of card illusions one Christmas Day. Playing outside together with our new toys, he told me with an almost conspiratorial glee that he had seen his parents putting presents under the Christmas tree the night before. It didn’t come as much of a surprise and, although he was a full year older than me, I didn’t need his wizened input to immediately understand the exact implications of what that meant. The writing had already been on the wall for some time now.
After all, Santa looked different every time we met at the shopping mall and sometimes he was in two places at once; I would see him again on the way home from the mall collecting money for the Salvation Army on a street corner, the helicopter he’d come to the mall in nowhere in sight. And didn’t Santa use a sleigh anyway? I knew there was something fishy going on by the time I was four. Read Essay
Riven Hearts
excerpt
I said “no” a couple times, A little too loudly. Guess it made me mad, that unpaid electrician waking up at 3am to catch a train to an isolated Long Island train station the producers “forgot” to pick up. Guess it made me mad having shit bubble up the drain in the shower of the rooms they gave us. And we were told we’d made the choice. After all, we were offered a ride back to the City each night; eight hours between call times. Three hours home and three hours back. And the Assistant Camera Man with a child at home to support who said he was mad as hell cowered in fear when the time came to say “Yes” or “No” to the face of the Producer when I spoke for the crew at the request of the crew.I understood, but wished they had not said they would if they wouldn’t. Read Essay
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- December 2006 (7)
- November 2006 (5)
- October 2006 (1)
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Hello there,
Im currently making a documentary film about art beyond sight and found your article concerning Ralph Baker which I greatly enjoyed. He sounds like a really interesting photographer and as a Williamsburg dweller my self Id love to meet him or email him just to find out a bit more and see if he’s possibly be up for being on film. Im living in Williamsburg my self and it would be great to meet, do have his email or phone number? If so that would be great.
Thanks
Daniel Tapper d_tapper02@hotmail.com
Hey Raphie,
Howzigoin? Long time no speak.
Can you do me a favor and take down the picture of me and Tim on Flickr?– Or at least take my name off the post so it doesn’t come up on searches for me? I need to maintain my web mystique. Plus chicks keep finding it, and I look like a total mook in the photo. If you decide to post a hot picture of me, we’ll talk.
Hope all’s groovy with you.
A.
Who’s the new maitre’d at Planet Tai?
I think I might be in love with her.
Just passing by.Btw, you website have great content!
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Making Money $150 An Hour
Hey enjoyed your writings and felt that something I came across today sort of relates and yeah I am 1/4 native american – and I think maybe it is pointless to post stuff written back in the 1800’s but looks like much history seems to be coming back again so why not….. Keep posting.. I will keep reading.
The native American has been generally despised by his white conquerors for his poverty and simplicity. They forget, perhaps, that his religion forbade the accumulation of wealth and the enjoyment of luxury.
There was undoubtedly much in primitive Christianity to appeal to this man, and Jesus’ hard sayings to the rich and about the rich would have been entirely comprehensible to him. Yet the religion that is preached in our churches and practiced by our congregations, with its element of display and self-aggrandizement, its active proselytism, and its open contempt of all religions but its own, was for a long time extremely repellent. To his simple mind, the professionalism of the pulpit, the paid exhorter, the moneyed church, was an unspiritual and unedifying, and it was not until his spirit was broken and his moral and physical constitution undermined by trade, conquest, and strong drink, that Christian missionaries obtained any real hold upon him. Strange as it may seem, it is true that the proud pagan in his secret soul despised the good men who came to convert and to enlighten him!
More than this, even in those white men who professed religion we found much inconsistency of conduct. They spoke much of spiritual things, while seeking only the material. They bought and sold everything, labor, personal independence, the love of woman, and even the ministrations of their holy faith! The lust for money, power, and conquest so characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon race did not escape moral condemnation at the hands of his untutored judge, nor did he fail to contrast this conspicuous trait of the dominant race with the spirit of the meek and lowly Jesus.
It is my personal belief, after thirty-five years’ experience of it, that there is no such thing as “Christian Civilization.” I believe that Christianity and modern civilization are opposed and irreconcilable, and that the spirit of Christianity and of our ancient religion is essentially the same.
There is nothing like a despicable kapo. Yes,look in the mirror, piece of shit.
Hi Raphie,
Great article on user-centric website design. Do you have any favorite websites that you can refer me to that incorporate the principles of user-centric design?
Thanks for your help!
Jeff