(incli)NATION

Fifty People, One Question: Brooklyn

"Take 5 minutes out of your day and WATCH THIS BEAUTIFUL VIDEO! really.
Fifty People, One Question: Brooklyn from Crush + Lovely on Vimeo.

Art Basel Miami: Let the Games Begin!

Kim Joon, Bird Land-Armani (detail), 2008

Just got this great summary from Artkrush who will be on the scene again this year bringing you all the goodness to be found. Be sure to keep checking back as the month develops...

"Talk of bursting bubbles and crashing markets has bled through the front page and into the art sections of today's news. And so, as crates of canvas arrive in Miami postmarked from around the world, the most coveted position available in today's art world is that of the spectator."

Pecha Kucha Night at CoCA, Seattle. Thursday 7pm

Just found out about this one and won't be able to make it because I'll be in San Jose covering West Coast Green. But you all should go! These are great...

Please join CoCA as we play host to Pecha Kucha Night. This month's theme is "Trouble". You've got some, we got some - let's share. We’ve assembled an incredible roster of writers, visual artists, race car drivers, actors and other creative luminaries. Share ideas, see great work - we'd love to see you there!

Wabi Sabi, Biogerontology and "The Book of Tea"

"It is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life."

- Kakuzo Okakura
The Book of Tea

via Whisky River

In art school we called it Wabi Sabi, in reference to objects that are imperfect, decaying or in various states of entropy. Picture an old barn, a rusty shovel, or even a rock worn smooth by rushing water, but be sure to leave out the romanticism. Wabi Sabi embraces and celebrates decay, acknowledging it as an essential part of life. The movement of all matter in the universe from order to chaos, from organization to disorganization.

Theo Jansen’s Kinetic Sculpture is Alive! [almost]

These sculptural ‘animals’ are amazing; like a combination of DaVinci and David Cronenberg. Jansen has hit upon a form that resonates with my sense of the future/past as present; fairy tales, dinosaurs and mythical beasts.

They also make me think of the effects of space and time in the way Thomas Mann used space and time. Mann suggested [in The Magic Mountain] that movement through space has similar effects upon a person as those of the passage of time; distanciation, obfuscation and disorientation. Not ‘time-traveling’ but ‘travel-timing’; faster if not as permanent.

Anyway, check out the video too...

From Inhabitat:

“Theo Jansen has been creating wind-walking examples of artificial life since 1990. What was at first a rudimentary breed has slowly evolved into a generation of machines that are able to react to their environment: “over time, these skeletons have become increasingly better at surviving the elements such as storms and water and eventually I want to put these animals out in herds on the beaches, so they will live their own lives.”

Constructed as intricate assemblages of piping, wood, and wing-like sails, Jansen’s creatures are constantly evolving and have become excellently adapted to their sandy beach environment. The creatures sport legs, which “prove to be more efficient on sand than wheels . . . they don’t need to touch every inch of the ground along the way, as a wheel has to”. .”

read the rest after the jump...

Tom Kundig’s Delta Shelter...Again

Tom Kundig has always been one of my favorite local architects. What's not to love; a melange of rural sensibilities, modern aspirations and postmodern mash-ups. And while I've never really understood the argument placing his practice within the Modern movement, C. Mudede makes an interesting case for it in this brief article from The Stranger. Hopefully we will get a fully fleshed-out argument in the future...

From The Stranger:

    "The other modernism, the sort Kundig represents, retains the minimalism of zero-degree architecture, but it does not banish the processes of aging and physical change. In Kundig's work, materials are not only exposed to time but time itself becomes a material. It is for this reason that his homes already have in them the majesty of their movement through time. "Buildings outlive people, you have to design with this in mind," Kundig points out. Buildings, like people, are not permanent; they have life spans, they are born, grow old, decline, and crumble."

To my thinking, Mudede doesn't make a convincing case, but I'm up for more. [Kundig's aesthetic is far from 'zero-degree' IMO] Regardless, it's always great to see Kundig's work getting the attention it deserves. He's a Northwest treasure.

Read the rest after the jump...

"Love of bustle is not industry"

—Lucius Annaeus Seneca (often known simply as Seneca, or Seneca the Younger) (c. 4 BC - 65 AD)

Tom Kundig's 'Delta Shelter'

Tom Kundig has always been one of my favorite local architects. I mean, what's not to love; a melange of rural sensibilities, Modern aspirations and Postmodern mash-ups. And while I've never really understood the argument placing his practice within the Modern movement, C. Mudede makes an interesting case for it in this brief article from The Stranger. Hopefully we will get a fully fleshed-out argument in the future...

From The Stranger:

"The other modernism, the sort Kundig represents, retains the minimalism of zero-degree architecture, but it does not banish the processes of aging and physical change. In Kundig's work, materials are not only exposed to time but time itself becomes a material. It is for this reason that his homes already have in them the majesty of their movement through time. "Buildings outlive people, you have to design with this in mind," Kundig points out. Buildings, like people, are not permanent; they have life spans, they are born, grow old, decline, and crumble."

To my thinking, Mudede doesn't make a convincing case, but I'm up for more. Regardless, it's always great to see Kundig's work getting the attention it deserves. He's a Northwest treasure.

Read the rest after the jump...

"A goal without a plan is just a wish"

 
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery French writer (1900 - 1944)

Dream Holiday: Bucky Fuller, Chris Burden and David Byrne

If I were not going to be floating in my father's Arizona pool week after next, here is a list of the things I would be seeing on my [imaginary] trip to NYC. [not that I in any way take for granted my father's generosity...]

Erector Set Skyscraper at Rockefeller Center Is Adult Fantasy: ...a sweet, old-fashioned tribute to boyhood optimism...Chris Burden's "What My Dad Gave Me"... [images]- Bloomberg News

Dymaxion Man: The visions of Buckminster Fuller: By staging the retrospective, the Whitney raises—or, really, one should say, re-raises—the question of Fuller’s relevance. Was he an important cultural figure because he produced inventions of practical value or because he didn’t?- New Yorker

and of course...

[David] Byrne’s new installation produced by Creative Time, “Playing The Building,” is located downtown in the Battery Maritime Building, which was built in 1909, closed in 1938 and hasn’t been open to the public for 50 years.

Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight

Is Dr. Taylor with us? More than most... http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229

Weltanschauung: The Wind in the Trees

The Weltanschauung, Ignatius J. Reiley spoke of, if you haven't already guessed or if you've forgotten your high school German, is a kind of personal world view. Yesterday I had a confirmation of sorts of my current weltanschauung. I'd picked up a translation of Montaigne's 'Essays', and flipping through the collection literally 'at random', I read this passage from "Of idleness":

"Lately when I retired to my home, determined so far as possible to bother about nothing except spending the little life I have left in rest and seclusion, it seemed to me I could do my mind no greater favor than to let it entertain itself in full idleness and stay and settle in itself, which I hoped it might do more easily now, having become weightier and riper with time. But I find-

Ever idle hours breed wandering thoughts
                                                                --Lucan

"--that, on the contrary, like a runaway horse, it gives itself a hundred times more trouble than it took for others, and gives birth to so many chimeras and fantastic monsters, one after another, without order or purpose, that in order to contemplate their ineptitude and strangeness at my pleasure, I have begun to put them in writing, hoping in time to make my mind ashamed of itself."

And the moment for me took on the aspect of revelation. I shit you not. The experience of, 'seeing as in a mirror, dimly' my own reflection, reminded me of one of the things that first attracted me to art and literature; a process of discovery, of learning to be human.

Montaigne wrote this passage in the late 16th Century and it is just as relevant today as ever. Not in the term 'idleness' per se, but more specifically, in the false industry of instant information availability.  For example, do something like Google your name--'chimeras and fantastic monsters' indeed!

This is not the idleness artists need. What we need, what I need, is to be still; to listen to the wind in the trees. Godard said we need more films with wind in the trees. I trust Godard. I've got to go back into my DVDs and find the scene. Was it "Helas Pour Moi" or something much earlier?

Here's one from YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwrLmtlo1e0

Real Poverty

La vraie pauvreté est celle de l'âme, une pauvreté dans laquelle le mental est toujours dans un tourbillon créé par les doutes, les soucis et les craintes.

Real poverty is that of the soul, a poverty in which the mental is forever a whirlwind, created by doubts, worries, and fears.

--Swâmi Râmdâs

On Laughter, Angst and Cai Guo-Qiang

And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh. --Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

When I read Roberta Smith's description, in todays New York Times, of the small army of assistants to the artist Cai Guo-Qiang--Mr. Cai puts large sheets of paper on the floor, distributes some combination of gunpowder and/or fuses across the paper and then lights it all, after which the assistants rush to put out the small fires which have ignited on the paper itself--it cracked me up! Imagine the sight, a room full of blue, sulfurous smoke and a half-dozen m.f.a. students running around stamping out little fires with their soon-to-be-ruined Converse lo-tops.

Mr. Cai's work reminds me that Democritus and Heraclitus were both right; we are at once pathetic and pitiable. But we are hilarious as well. Mt. Rushmore? It's a caricature of hubris and it's really funny!  Or Warhol's "Empire"? Sadistic and terrifyingly boring and bust-a-gut funny! Thank you Mr. Cai for taking up this honored tradition.

 

Mr. Cai's bravado illustrates how in the western world, where anything seems possible, much of our privileged, existential angst can be traced to the ongoing problem of keeping our Franklin/Covey® 'To Do' list up to date; schedule the meeting, pay the bills, buy the groceries, fill the gas tank, finish the novel, call mom. It's frantic. It seems really important. We court misery and worry ourselves sick. And eventually we need meds. [some of us, anyway.] And this is all exactly like  Mr. Cai's work. The tyranny of absolute freedom, theoretical or not, wreaks havoc among every one of us not singularly motivated by financial gain. Remember John Kennedy Toole's Ignatius Rielly,  from 'A Confederacy of Dunces':

    "Employers sense in me a denial of their values." He rolled over onto his back. "They fear me. I suspect that they can see that I am forced to function in a century which I loathe. That was true even when I worked for the New Orleans Public Library."
     "But Ignatius, that was the only time you worked since you got out of college, and you was only there for two weeks."
    "That is exactly what I mean," Ignatius replied, aiming a paper ball at the bowl of the milk glass chandelier.
    "All you did was paste them little slips in the books."
  "Yes, but I had my own esthetic about pasting those slips. On some days I could only paste in three or four slips and at the same time feel satisfied with the quality of my work. The library authorities resented my integrity about the whole thing. They only wanted another animal who could slop glue on their best sellers."
    "You think maybe you could get a job there again?"
  "I seriously doubt it. At the time I said some rather cutting things to the woman in charge of the processing department. They even revoked my borrower's card. You must realize the fear and hatred which my weltanschauung instills in people." Ignatius belched.

Slap me in the face if that ever fails to make me laugh!

Thank you John Kennedy. Thank you Andy Warhol. And thank you Cai Guo-Qiang. You crack me up, even those flying Fords in the SAM lobby. [I know I'm supposed to be thinking about the ubiquity of violence, post 9-11, ruminate on the mediation of extreme brutality and terrorism by technology, etc. But they just look so...hammy! Thanks again.]

Duchamp on Chess

Chess is a sport, a violent sport...If it's anything at all, then it's a fight.

- Marcel Duchamp in 'Marcel Duchamp Plays and Wins, Yves Armand

[left, the famous Kasparov 'evil eye']