when minds run a race a race an inherent kleidoscope, when there >>> IS NO CONTROL … and you photon light and weaving through like light and i speak riddles in patterns that happen to form words ///some social construct and wouldn’t it be great if this were all one big lie, like one bad joke your neighbor, next door, down the hall, knows you not like i do he knows you not because he sees you /i s ee you more than s/he/it will ever hope to meet beacause i will never see your face
Category: semantic misfires
Apr
07
so once again this madness creeps up upon this right brain sentimentality-brutality-fantastical runt of the litter they call it >expression< to disassociate the i from the you and the social organism from this bloody menstrual cycling decay everyone wants to \plug up the hole/ with plastic and dysfunstion and darkness and poetry and i never said this hat shade was anything more than a tool to hide, not a social statement, not provocation .. this is who i am ... not an artistic license to kill, i am already diseased in this >art< death ... AIDS with a lesser cause for social deconstruction ... when you notice the beautiful blue of death as the cold creeps ... more than death itself, more than love, the patterns the colors the beauty the pain the art whore dying living breathing of it all on one
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Apr
06
oh, the lows one sinks to when they’re bored with no end to this mountain of near-sighted, short-sighted obligations
when summer and a soft-spoken boy are a dream away …
over the strange sudden professor crush, had the nerve to call up adam again … why is it so hard to talk to him now? i’ve known him since i was 16.
i know the answer to this question(ing).
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Apr
04
some art theories
(in the context of the moments when I realized my purpose)
Ever notice in a hallway how we often blink and smile, a pleasant, comfortable distance away. Maybe mumble salutations, a communication you acknowledge a presence but don’t often care of its absence. And I believe if I continue staring and keep the silence deafening it means more than a mumble. You’ll remember the awkward and uncomfortable. I desire to convey a piece of this veracity, to form an introspection on their pain-staking details, their poignant emotions. Maybe I knew it in a dream or in those strange moments that only shimmer as a piece of broken glass. This flash is so concentrated, the profound reality so raw, I cannot ignore its potential. I wonder if my harsh convictions are a warning for the bare skin of my consciousness to be cautious with my vulnerability, but I cannot turn away from the glare, step around, obey what this maternal safety blanket tells me: I shouldn’t stare into the sun. Perhaps I could squint at it through a reflection, a forgotten reminiscence, yet I know this is not enough. I can’t ignore and look away even if I wanted to. I must continue to stare at those unknown spaces between distances that seem to catch insecurity and vulnerability as a flash of sunlight. Realize there’s more expression in an empty alleyway and bare skin bleeding than the calculated lines of insecurity. I must lay down defenses and maybe stare a little longer in silence even if I don’t understand right away. Perhaps, it will spark a reaction of a moment in a memory when I disobeyed my mother just once; felt the adrenaline run like children through an alley; decided to wear that old, torn and faded shirt instead of sterile white because it meant something to me—even if it seemed like poverty to some. Have to remember not everyone can appreciate blank spaces and faded lines—the unparalleled meaning beneath. So they close their eyes and walk past . . . mumbling. . . . I will never be one of those.
I want to alter perception in a way, not necessarily “make a difference or change the world, be unique.” I believe the existence of an altered perspective, the existence of a mind that questions, is already a change, an evolution of a kind or the concretization of a possibility. If it exists it has already side-stepped “making and trying” and gone to the product, but change is an inherent element to the product, for human’s perception is forever in limbo.
given this, I feel my art needs to have an aspect of time to it, it seems things that are commonly produced or created have a singular aspect to them, as if we are constantly trying to pick out points in time/reality and present it as a single, crucial event, snapshotting our lives into strobe-like segments, and then expect others to get what we do out of these moments. Is there a way to show the timeline and give a sense of the impending next moment as it is in reality? — both the single moment in time and the inevitable next that makes it all a universal continuum that is the essence of what time is, showing constant movement into some unknown variable. How can one side step the seeming default of a beginning and an end without getting the “strobe effect? ”
when I think of passion, it isn’t singular like, “I am passionate about nature, or animals or family or sculpture?” When I think of this, it is a culmination of diminutive images that I take for granted but they still seem to linger, rising up from my watery consciousness:
waving my hand across wind chimes hanging from a mailbox and hearing the musical resultant of my action, and Wesley, seated next to me in the car, saying, “You rarely find wind chimes that are pitched to perfect harmony like that.” I realize he is hearing and seeing something I probably never will.
obsessively rearranging things in my room and realizing I’m more concerned about the break-up of space then the things in the room—that I want to build shapes on the ceiling and protruding from the walls to satisfy my need for a certain kind of spatial aesthetic.
the glowing of lights on street corners, how light reflections and patterns are often not noticed because we are so used to seeing them and are visually dependent on light source for everyday activity. I remember someone telling me that is all we see, light reflections and interactions bouncing off each other, off people and objects. I remember in physics class, the light graphs we would do, isolating and giving labels to the situations to make it easier. My teacher would always tell us without isolating the activity of light we’d never be able to understand the concept; it would be too complex of a graph to draw. And my mind would imagine light rays of all colors interacting and reacting off each other, I thought of the impossibility of this task and the necessity of it. How sound has this kind of interaction as well.
But because of inherent properties of light, sound, space, time, they are visually almost invisible, sometimes more neglected than anything else. What materials would have these properties, be able to show the density of activity, but also have that translucent quality, something easily missed?
>>i wrote this when i was seventeen, too. i’m twenty now and things haven’t changed; they’ve just grown deeper, like the roots of the tree, feeding the leaves so that one day at least some part of itself will reach the sunlight above …
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Apr
01
splurge: the usual insensitivity and misunderstanding
a: i need that mattress by this weekend. you will bring it for sure?
mother: oh, you don’t need a mattress, i thought you were making a window.
a: i am making a window …
mother: well, if you’re just using the bed as a symbol, get some blankets and pillows and put them in a pile and that will be enough …
a: what?! i can’t do that. that would ruin the entire concept, the whole metaphor, the whole integrity of the piece would be destroyed. will you help me or not?
mother: oh, why do you need a mattress? mother, mother, annika wants a mattress to make an art piece … (mutual laughter in the background)
i promptly hung up on her, split-second furious. it made no sense to me to explain further. i have to have the coils to a mattress and i have to tear apart a real mattress to get those. i have to build the hole; i have to build the structure around the hole. that’s the point. that’s the window, that’s the breach, the metaphor worm hole … without this it is only a mattress … without this it is only a hole in a mattress.
i must be crazy
*sigh* there is a void where context ceases to be admitted …
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Apr
01
as i said to adam, “whenever i think of a book lying on my floor, splayed open, pages slipping between fingers, the explosion of language, so latent, so calm and demure on my floor, i say to myself, goddamn books are sexy.”
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Apr
01
kick me, it’s an essay, it’s kinda interesting dammit.
(these all need editing badly: run-on sentences, repetitive language in places, but the ideas are sharp anyhow)
YOU ARE NOT WHAT YOU ARE: the new American flavor twist
In an insidious turn of events, it appears the freedom and democracy of America has been intercepted and destroyed by itself. If you can make sense of this, the idea that America is free and democratic without an actual evaluation of the country as being free and democratic and without a concrete definition of what freedom and democracy means to people nowadays is destroying the very thing which it believes it is doing, being free and democratic. The truncated response to the elimination of public art funding and all its complexities shows how this sort of haze of definitions so common in the common American is being used by politicians for personal gain.
How could anyone deny the ridiculous outweighing of perspectives examining the discourse of politicians and the opposing artists? D’Amato spitefully proclaims that artists and those who support them, “defame us and to use our money” (Hyde 253). It is as if these two sectors are on opposite ends of the earth rather than in the same country fighting for the same ideals, sentiments, and desires: “the virtues of the government derive from the virtues of the people” (Hyde 255). The artist is still a part of society that represents it in a personal, non-commercial, often more real than acceptable way that seems to underscore the civic jobs of politicians. It is glaringly obvious to me that the politicians that cause such a fuss over controversial artwork are more stirring up the natural emotional and intellectual power artwork has for political gain rather than actually caring that this artwork exists and that public sees it. It is even more crudely evident by the actions and the slanderous words of politicians, the insensitive, impersonal remarks such as Jesse Helms remark, “I have fundamental questions about why the Federal Government is supporting artists the taxpayers have refused to support in the marketplace” (Hyde 168). This all seems like a backhanded slap at the (art) people that said bad things about them publicly, undermine their rights of passage persuasively, and give the populace a real taste of freedom, something politicians can only talk about. It is as if they want to use art’s inherent properties to their own ends. And actually this is nothing new either: “Big government was necessary … to wage the Cold War, developing the requisite technology and surveillance not only to fight off communism as an ideology, but also and more importantly to consolidate hegemony of American capitalism” (Yudice 289). What better way to convince the world of America’s empty promises of freedom and the glories of democracy than show the artwork that demonstrates that? It is as if these politicians want to jump the gun and use the freedoms of the art world as an example of this great nation but at the same time mark it as “unnecessary and purposefully decadent, undermining the hard work and practicality of the working class.” The definitions of art and what it stands for seem, at least on the public level, to ride the tide of political agenda right down to its conflicting center. Come on, guys, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Americans get angered because, gee, they don’t give themselves the context or the attention spans to know what such a statement means, no less reflect on how it could be a benefit to them. It’s different, it’s intellectual, it’s free, I CAN’T DO THAT OR UNDESTAND, so let’s squash it!
As always in business terms (something all Americans should understand), let us look at the numbers. Money has been distributed to art industries, support, administrations, and managements when it is fitting for a political aim as in the Cold War era, an example used by both essays (“The Children of John Adams: A Historical View of the Fight Over Arts Funding” by Lewis Hyde and “The Privatization of Culture.” by George Yudice). Both authors show an alarming interest slip of the government when their monopoly on world culture was deemed a success by the fall of the Berlin Wall. Shortly after this, artistic aims were seen as not usable by the government anymore, so it was high time for the assimilation of latent racist/sexist beliefs to be enraged and show their ugly heads. As always the rich feed on the uneducated vulnerability of the poorer classes. Though one might point out America’s poorer class have always been richer by global standards, this complaint is a political diversion of issues once again. It is a common plight, a strategy by demagogues for centuries, yet for some reason it still works because of Americans’ love of the dramatic, emotional appeal, their want of a collective unity it seems, however desperate that is. As both essays address, the government’s dull public discourse coats the euphemistic and demagogue terms that seek to disenfranchise and “undercut any kind of collective action not in accord with its beliefs” (Hyde 260). They operate as if America truly is a “democracy as a homogeneous space filled with citizens, each equally empowered (Hyde 261) What is the heart of the conflict and what are these alarming beliefs that so enrage the public? Sex, drugs, and politics? Movie producers have made millions on the exploitation of these topics in the last 20 years, yet an artist is publicly crucified? But as Hyde so bluntly puts it: “the appeal to the ‘common’ man and woman is there to preserve a set of privileges already in place” (Hyde 161). Are we not a country famous/infamous for diversity, is it not cultural cannibalism to insist we are all the same, and that if not we must eat our own words/identities for the sake of the collective? Or is it that American ignorance is making “someone” a very wealthy owner of the controversial art of dead artists worth millions now because of its public recognition.
Europeans seem immune to this national cannibalism and cyclical rhetoric, hiding agendas a hundred appendixes thick. They have a basic understanding that government must reflect and honor all the individuals in it and let the cities run at their will without sapping them of their autonomy, causing strife and separation and blame to run rapid in a desperate quest for survival at all costs. They let their communities be inter-dependent, not codependent. “Almost all arts funding is administered on the state and municipal levels…. Each city invariably takes great pride in its cultural offerings … contributes to the quality of their lives …prestige to their community” (Osbourne). A strange principle indeed and their art policies and budgets reflect this: “a median of forty dollars per person in Western European countries” (Yudice 288). The American numbers regarding public art funding compared to this are hideous: average Eauropean tax dollar reserved for art is $40 an individual, in America it’s fifteen cents. Why, the American would ask, would Europeans allow so much money to be taxed from them for mere frivolous expenditures? This logic may be quite foreign to Americans: “Political interference in the arts is a firmly established taboo in German government …. Private sponsorship of the arts is rarely encouraged … viewed with extreme mistrust … will lead to less funding based on the sporadic whims of the patrons who often have superficial tastes. Embarrassingly, it is often referred to as the American model” (Osbourne). Why, oh why, would they ever think such a thing. Why I don’t even understand where this comes from it is so foreign to me. I think I need to go travel and spend a thousand dollars to borrow someone else’s culture because my country won’t let me have one. It’s too damned expensive. Cruises seem more pragmatic and acceptable.
Hyde, Lewis. “The Children of John Adams: A Historical View of the Fight Over Arts Funding” Art Matters. New York University Press, New York: 1999. pg. 167-181.
Yudice, George. “The Privatization of Culture.” Art Matters. New York University Press, New York: 1999. pg. 167-181.
Osbourne, William. “The German Arts Funding Model.” Jan 4 2002. March 25, 2004. http://www.oxbourne-conant.org/funding_model.htm.
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Apr
01
wow. fuck me in the ass and call me christopher. i just might ACTUALLY be content for once. how or why i’m not sure, i think words from people have most to do with this. i drew diagrams and tickings from matresses all day, yet i haven’t been this serene in MONTHS … hmmm, sex didn’t have anything to do with it either.
i baffle myself sometimes …
no madness poetry as of late … apophenia sleeps … language is secondary …
i am working
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Mar
30
so visual literacy in America is sky diving off roof tops with no ropes … so art is cultural and intellectual and aesthetic suicide … so i am deemed crazy in a society where i do not, have never, will never be able to belong … however much i want to be a part everyone, however much i AM this part … this disease, this artistic pornography, i am finding where this is, in my gut, i have to let it decay me, whore myself to the colors and the patterns and twisting logic of contradiction and paradox in this scientific apotheosis, an abnormality, this lie everyone so fervently believes … i never believed, i still do not believe, and at least now i know why this is happening …
i feel so cold …
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