New media artist Theresa Duncan reportedly committed suicide in New York last week, LAObserved posts. Her blog, The Wit of the Staircase, has been silent since July 10, highly unusual for one of the most prolific blogs out there. Her boyfriend, artist Jeremy Blake (who did work on "Punch Drunk Love"), is missing, apparently after relinquishing himself to the ocean off Rockaway Beach in Queens. Duncan blogged, wrote fiction and non-fiction, made films, and developed CD-ROM games for girls. FishbowlLA has that link and more.
In an interview with LAist last year, Duncan was asked, "If you could make a perfume that embodied the essence of Los Angeles, what would it smell like?" She responded:
My cologne is called Santa Ana after the powerful winds that bring desert heat and faraway smell into the city. It smells like: Celluloid and sand, coyote fur and car exhaust, contrail cloud and chlorine, bitter orange and stage blood and one bushel of ghostly, shivery night-blooming jasmine flowers like blown kisses from the phantoms of the ten thousand screen beauties who still haunt our hills every full moon because they think it's a stage light.
I didn't know Duncan, but met her once, briefly. We read on the same Vermin on the Mount bill in Chinatown last fall. I hope The Wit of the Staircase stays up as a living archive of a vigorously curious mind. More at Modern Art Notes and Art Fag City. On Monday July 9, Duncan posted this: "Goodnight, children, we're in the arms of the great lover."
* Vermin Mourns. My condolences as well to Theresa Duncan's friends and family.
** UPDATE: Confirmation in The New York Times and New York Daily News, via LAObserved.