Philosophy

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

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

Strandbeest8 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...

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Tom Kundig’s Delta Shelter...Again

Deltashelter 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...

Thursday, August 07, 2008

"Love of bustle is not industry"

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

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Tom Kundig's 'Delta Shelter'

Deltashelter 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...

Friday, July 18, 2008

"A goal without a plan is just a wish"

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

Saturday, June 14, 2008

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...]

Data_3Erector 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




BuckywithtensegritymodelDymaxion 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...





Davidbyrne[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.

Friday, May 30, 2008

Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight

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

Monday, March 03, 2008

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":

When_you__re_sleeping_by_bolshevixe "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

Monday, February 25, 2008

Real Poverty

KoyaanisqatsiLa 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

Friday, February 22, 2008

On Laughter, Angst and Cai Guo-Qiang

Arar01_artists_cai_2

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.

Mount_rushmore_ritemailblogspotco_2

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.

Empire_2
 

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!

Inopportune_ecalderon_3

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.]

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Duchamp on Chess

Kasparov2 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']

Friday, February 15, 2008

Ambition is to Idleness as Industry is to...

Industry_and_idleness_plate1_2

Art. The only profession in which idleness is an asset is the artist's. It takes time--distance some like to say--to make something interesting, unusual or unexpected. This is one of the reasons that great art is rare; it takes time, a lot of time (and not a little talent). It cannot be scheduled, regimented, put on a calendar or charted by project management software. It is not some romantic notion of inspiration we are talking about, but a kind of lack of industry.

Warhol_selfportrait_pgc Lou Reed quoted Andy Warhol's refrain, "All that really matters is work." ('Work' on 'Songs for Drella' ) And he was right. But a large part of what Warhol called 'work' is not the physical production of objects as might be assumed. Producing an object is but the last five or ten percent, for me anyway, the flowering of a plant whose root system is deeper and wider and has taken longer to manifest than is commonly acknowledged.

Additionally, one of the greatest things about most art today is that it is worthless, at least according to the principles by which most ventures in the west are measured: it can't be processed, incorporated, unionized, depreciated, consumed, added to or subtracted from? [this argument is not the Platonic/Aristotelean split in which Plato dismisses art as mere imitation while Aristotle champions it as a means of conveying universal truths, this little riff has more to do with economics than philosophy, though the slope is slippery] Obviously, this is not the art that is stolen from museums or auctioned at Sotheby's. We are talking about the world of objects and ideas that are never commodified, that never make it into the history books, but that make up the vast majority of art that is produced every day--the painting you saw at a swap meet, the novel that came and went and was never read again, the poem by that unknown poet you heard that one time downtown and will never forget, but which will nevertheless go on to be forgotten by 'history'. Its 'worthlessness' is the very thing that makes art so important in a world of de facto global capitalism.

Duchampchess_2 On one end of the spectrum, Duchamp plays chess; on the other, Chihuly fills the world with glass, glass, glass...the rest of us fall somewhere in between. I make art and I run a business, several business ventures actually. I am married, have children, need exercise, nourishment and sleep. I want a house, a car, a TV, maybe some nice shoes--all that bourgeois shit. I want to feel good about the work I do. For me and for many of the artists that I know, ambition and idleness are constantly at war. Does this seem odd? It shouldn't. It is a cliché. Finding the balance-- the sweet spot between the joy of the creative process and the rest of life's joys--continues to elude me.

In the classic "The Poetics of Space", Gaston Bachelard wrote that, "To say that one has left certain intellectual habits behind is easy enough, but how is it to be achieved? For a rationalist, this constitutes a minor daily crisis, a sort of split in one's thinking which, even though its object be partial--a mere image--has none the less great psychic repercussions." He was laying the ground work for his definition of the transsubjectivity of images, what he called a "phenomenology of the imagination", but what he described resonates with my own daily experience.

Danielflahiff_untitled3_07 My "minor daily [psychic] crisis" is also a kind of transsubjectivity, not of images but rather of consciousness, a way of being in the world; a subjectivity that is not fixed but fluid, fickle and unpredictable. It could also be called a kind of schizophrenia, which is kind of a relief, and kind of fucked-up.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

TrailerWrap by Michael Hughes

Trailer1_2

Love this idea, though the economic model does not seem to work. Trailer parks exist to fill a gap in the market. Anyone who can afford to will buy a stick-built house. Not to mention the fact that trailers actually depreciate in value rather than appreciate. But this one does look good:

"To Hughes, trailer parks offer an architectural opportunity to address questions of affordable housing. And he believes that trailers simply make sense as high-density alternatives to suburban sprawl. But first, they need to be made into attractive living spaces. "This is refabricated housing," Hughes says. "What does it mean to have light pouring into your home, with nine-foot instead of seven-foot ceilings? We wanted to highlight what’s possible even on a small house."

Read the rest here

via

Trailer2

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

On Ugliness by Umberto Eco

UglybettyJust read a great review of Eco's "On Ugliness" in the Telegraph. I confess a weakness for Eco's essays and fiction, but Brian Dillon pulls no punches in his attempt to put Eco into historical place. Worth the read, made me want ot read him again:

"By the Romantic period, the grotesque and the sublime were established as aesthetic categories, and the decadents of the late 19th century loved nothing more than a deathly consumptive countenance. In the wake of 20th-century avant-gardes, unadulterated beauty looks saccharine, immature or kitsch. We seduce only with our faults, wrote Baudrillard. Or as Johnny Rotten put it: there's nothing so boring as a pretty face."

read the rest after the jump HERE

Friday, December 07, 2007

Proverbios y Cantares by Antonio Machado

Caribbeansea_sugimotoYour footsteps are the path, and nothing else;
there is no path, paths are made by walking.
Walking makes the path, and on looking back
We see a trail that never can be walked again.
Traveler, there is no path,
Only a wake in the sea.

- Antonio Machado
Proverbios y Cantares

via 

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Let's Get Lost @ NWFF Oct. 26 - Nov. 1, Seattle, WA

As long time Chet Baker fans, we can't wait to view this one:

OCTOBER 26 - NOVEMBER 1, Fri - Thurs at 7 & 9:15pm

LET'S GET LOST

(Bruce Weber, USA, 1988, 35mm, 119 min)
In the 1950s, Chet Baker's jazz trumpeting, edgy, intimate crooning and pretty boy good looks epitomized West Coast "cool."When famed photographer Bruce Weber caught up with him three decades later, time and drug addiction had ravaged his life and angelic beauty with deep valleys and crevasses. LET'S GET LOST artfully intercuts gorgeous black and white footage of the gaunt latter-day Baker, with images of the young jazz trumpeter in iconic 1950s early television and film appearances and photographs by William Claxton. Shot by Weber and cinematographer Jeff Preiss during what would turn out to be Baker's final year, the film also includes interviews with friends, family, lovers and associates. This transfixing, bittersweet portrait of the jazz legend won the Critics' Prize at the Venice Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award. Nearly 20 years since its premiere and nearly 15 since it has been seen in any medium, we're pleased to present a brand new 35mm print of a recent restoration done by Weber himself.

"It's the music doc as film noir, with a vampirish city-of-night gleam that suits the subject and his darkly romantic sound."-Jim Ridley, THE VILLAGE VOICE





OCTOBER 26, Fri at 7 & 9:15pm
NOT AVAILABLE ON VIDEO

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Project7ten: NOW in Venice!

Project7ten Gonna miss this one, but let me know what y'all think...

Los Angelenos looking to continue their environmental education can head to Venice to take a tour of the recently completed LEED® Platinum certified Project7ten house, before it goes on sale to the highest bidder. Real estate developer Tom Schey (in conjunction with the A+D Museum’s “Enlightened Development” exhibition) is opening the doors of his environmentally conscious home to the public to raise awareness about simple everyday choices and green products that can lead to a healthier living environment. Throughout the month of October, locals and tourists alike are invited to tour the cutting-edge structure and catch a glimpse of the future of sustainable building—which in this case includes solar paneling, recycled materials and certified lumber for building, as well as reusable rain water irrigation systems, lower gas emissions, and more. Proceeds from the tours and the sale of the home will be donated to Healthy Child Healthy World, an organization dedicated to educating the public about environmental toxins that effect children’s health.

Project7ten
710 Milwood Avenue
Venice, CA
ph: 310.454.0290

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

La Révolution du Jour: Art, Memory, Form and Peter Schjeldahl

Huang_yong_ping_const_site_2_2007

Form is how memory works.

Peter Schjeldahl dropped the above mini-aphorism on us about three-quarters of the way through his Oct. 8th, article in The New Yorker, "All Together Now" which covered the 2007 Istanbul Biennial, among other things. Coincidentally, I've been thinking alot about memory too, mostly because I've recently gotten back in touch with some old friends who seem to have entirely memories of our childhood together and I'm not sure how this could be. After reading Schjeldal's article, I thought I'd try to get some of these thoughts down on paper and see what kind of connections I could find.

Sarcastically, the first thing I thought after reading Schjeldal's assertion was, whew! Now we don't have to worry about the hippocampus, basal ganglia or all those pesky neural pathways in the limbic system. Forget those cumbersome classifications like working memory, phonological memory [whatever that is], visual/spacial memory, procedural, declarative, and semantic memory. Olfactory sensations? Emotions? Nope. Form is it.[yep, I know about these obscure things because I'm on meds that influence these systems and I have an obsession with knowing how I'm 'knowing', if you know what I mean...]

Guernica Well okay, obviously he didn't meen it that way you're thinking, but I'm not so sure. Schjeldahl made the statement, with no apparent irony, in support of a remark by curator Okwui Enwezor that "contemporary art spaces risk becoming 'incubators of amnesia,' devoid of historical recall." In this context we have to conclude that Schjeldahl would like to see art spaces--and by extension art works--that are 'incubators of remembering,' and 'rife with historical recall.' As if David's The Death of Marat, or Picasso's Guernica were viable models to aspire to. Too much? Maybe, but Schjeldahl's statement certainly betrays a longing for a more engaged, even efficacious art. The notion is touching, nostalgic and powerful.

Lascaux After all, the history of the relationship between images and real things is one of continual distanciation; as EH Gombrich had it, "in primitive societies, the thing and its image were simply two different, that is, physically distinct, manifestations of the same energy or spirit. Hence, the supposed efficacy of images in propitiating and gaining control over powerful presences. Those powers, those presences were present in them."

In other words, the power to paint the bull was the power to kill the bull. In this sense, art did change the world, it gave man the ability [psychologically and therefore physically] to survive. It was as if we were literally in Plato's Cave; the shadows and the reality behind the shadows were one and the same. Not entirely unlike some video games...

After_walker_evans_sherrie_levineToday, it's a post-Postmodern, post-Simulacrum, post-Theory, post-[insert favorite enemy here] world, and art is made up of:

a vertigo of serial signs--shadowless, impossible to sublimate, immanent in their repetition--who can say where the reality of what they simulate resides? -J. Baudrillard

Art has evolved--like any other complex endeavor--mathematics, science, poetry--quite indifferenent to concerns outside itself, with its own lanquage, theories, factions, professionals, critics and fans.

And while it often takes everyday life as its subject, contemporary art does not address an everyday audience. When Sherrie Levine rephotographed Walker Evans work, did anyone outside the art world take notice, except to laugh, jeer or write dismissive articles in local newsletters? Which brings us again to the subject of language. Memory, history, politics and form are all of a piece, unified through language, naming and knowing. In other words, we've been hi-jacked once again by narrative.

RashomonNarrative, not form, is the stuff of memory. If the form we are talking about is visual, which one assumes given Schjeldahl's profession and the subject of his article, then his use of the term is an obvious set-up, and a good one at that. For if form is how memory works, it begs the question, do the blind have no memory? How would the lack of this one sensation eliminate a major aspect of cognition?

It doesn't, obviously, and Schjeldahl isn't implying that it does. I think he is implying something entirely different: synesthesia, or the union of the senses. Can we smell red? Can a sound taste bitter? Or in this case, can one see history ['see, that is history!], or more precisely, can memory be seen ['that is what I saw!'...Rashomon anyone?] both questions which have at their core the classic aesthetic nut, 'Can art change the world?'

Too big a jump? I don't think so, given the context of Schjeldahl's article. It's implied by the guilt-ridden invocation of the idea that artists somehow have a responsibility to keep people from forgetting...about political and social injustice and atrocities one assumes.

But that is not how art changes the world.

Piss_christ_serranoEvery 'outrageous' or 'blasphemous' or 'seditious' work of art is always already dismissed by the general public--the audience it most likely intended to arouse [Serrano's Piss Christ anyone?]--and counted on in advance on by the 'institution'--the very power it probably intended to denounce. Need evidence? The following list is in no particular order and is by no means complete: Constructivism, de Stijl, Bauhaus, Dada, La Révolution surréaliste, Situationists, The Personal as Political, Fluxus, Happennings, Futurism, Expressionism, Suprematism, and most of the art of the seventies...

Whether stated or implied, much of this art attempted to align itself with the la révolution  du jour. Of course, I'm just as guilty as the next. I'd like to believe that the practice I've given my life over to has some kind of importance beyond the limited influence of galleries and publications, friends and critics. I often play with these ideas in my work, developing projects that use the language of global aspiration and political ambition. The projects have been accused by some of signifying the inability of art to change the world. Conversely, they've been called flat-footed agit prop or propoganda; an ironic attempt to revive a 60's, grass-roots ethos.

But that is not how art changes the world.

For_pr_copy

So now after all this, how does art change the world? I don't really know, but I have a kind of working definition which is helping me in the studio and elsewhere. It goes something like:

  • It can let us know that we are not alone.
  • It can make us question assumtions we didn't know we had.
  • It can show us things in a different way.
  • It can stimulate our imaginations
  • It can be absolutely useless, and in so doing, be invaluable
  • It can make the world a better place by the simple fact of its existance.

I've strayed far from the subject of memory, true. But I think this post makes a kind of sense, because just as we need to believe we are doing something worthwhile, we need also memory, for as Saul Bellow said:

Memories keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.

(to be continued...)

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

L'embarras du Choix. Vauvenargues

Threegracesjumping21_4 La nécessité nous délivre de l'embarras du choix$.$
[Necessity delivers us from the difficulty of choice.]

--Vauvenargues

via Word of the Day

Monday, October 15, 2007

Stitch Room @ Vitra Design Museum

Stitch3 "At the intersection of green design, space-making, and textiles, the Bouroullec brothers’ Stitch Room is one part design genius, one part child-like playtime. Known for designs that cross the boundary between furniture and architecture, the creations of this design duo tend to emphasize possibilities, and their exploration of space in The Stitch Room is no exception. Using eco-friendly textiles from the ultra-green Danish company Kvadrat, the brothers have created organized, versatile spaces that can be transformed to almost any imaginable use."

(more…)

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Joan Didion and "Alienation from Self"

Alienation_from_self "If we do not respect ourselves … we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out — since our self-image is untenable — their false notions of us. We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait: a gist for imaginative empathy, evidence of our willingness to give. Of course I will play Francesca to your Paolo, Hellen Keller to anyone’s Annie Sullivan: no expectation is too misplaced, no role too ludicrous…

It is the phenomenon sometimes called “alienation from self.” In its advanced stages, we no longer answer the telephone, because someone might want something; that we could say no without drowning in self-reproach is an idea alien to this game. Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the specter of something so small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that answering it becomes out of the question. To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves — their lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home."

--Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

via the excellent Maud Newton

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Andrew Mwenda: Let's take a new look at African aid

Do not miss this video: a REAL look at the politics of humanitarian aid to Africa. It will open your eyes. I remember presenting a similar--if more simplistic--paper in high school in the early eighties on the crisis in El Salvador. History has borne out the argument I think, but have a listen and judge for yourself:

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/159

Thursday, September 06, 2007

Waiting; Roland Barthes

8b14845r_3
I am waiting for an arrival, a return, a promised sign. This can be futile, or immensely pathetic; in Erwartung (Waiting), a woman waits for her lover, at night, in the forest; I am waiting for no more than a telephone call, but the anxiety is the same. Everything is solemn; I have no sense of proportions.(...)
Waiting is enchantment: I have received orders not to move. Waiting for a telephone call is thereby woven out of tiny unavowable interdictions to infinity: I forbid myself to leave the room, to go to the toilet, even to telephone (to keep the line from being busy); I suffer torments if someone else telephones me (for the same reason); I madden myself by the thought that at a certain (imminent) hour I shall have to leave, thereby running the risk of missing the healing call, the return of the Mother. All these diversions which solicit me are so many wasted moments for waiting, so many impurities of anxiety. For the anxiety of waiting, in its pure state, requires that I be sitting in a chair within reach of the telephone, without doing anything.(...)

The being I am waiting for is not real. Like the mother's breast for the infant, "I create and re-create it over and over, starting from my capacity to love, starting from my need for it": the other comes here where I am waiting, here where I have already created him/her. And if the other does not come, I hallucinate the other: waiting is a delirium.... (more)

via the incomparable wood s lot

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Sympathy for the Devil @ MCA Chicago, 9.29.07

Sympathyforthedevil As far as I'm concerned, this is THE show to see this fall; a perfect storm of music, art, and politics with the likes of Tony Oursler, Richard Prince and Jack PIerson, together with (incli)NATION favorites like Marnie Weber, Dave Muller and Jason Rhoades, not to mention references to Warhol, Lou Reed, Destroy all Monsters, Red Crayola, and Kraftwerk among many others.

So now all we need to get are tickets and a schedule and see you there!

CHICAGO.-The explosive social and political climate of the late-1960s produced a revolutionary spirit that led to the fusion of avant-garde art and rock music. Artists as diverse as Andy Warhol, The Velvet Underground, Captain Beefheart, and Richard Hamilton burst forth with new creative endeavors. The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Chicago, presents Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967, the first major exhibition devoted to the convergence of contemporary art and rock music over the past forty years. Sympathy for the Devil opens on September 29, 2007, the MCA’s official 40th Anniversary and the kick-off of “40 Free Days,” and closes on January 6, 2008

more at the MCA

via Artdaily

Monday, August 20, 2007

Nancy Davenport Awarded DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art Grant

Nancydavenport_workersleaving

This photograph made me immediately think of this email I found in my Inbox:

Les maçons désoeuvrés venaient par habitude tourner chaque jour autour des
chantiers. Les mains dans les poches, chaussés de lourds sabots, ils arrivaient
piane-piane...

[The unemployed masons had the habit of coming, each day, to hang around the
work yards. Hands in the pockets, wearing heavy wooden clogs, they slowly
arrived...]


--from "Mémoires de la Société d'agriculture, commerce, sciences et arts" by
Société d'agriculture, commerce, sciences et arts de la Marne

And big congrats to Nancy for getting this:

DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art is delighted to announce its very first production grant to New York based Canadian artist Nancy Davenport. The grant helps Nancy to complete a project titled Workers for the 2007 Istanbul Biennial. DHC/ART is committed to initiating and supporting the production of new work by Canadian artists in a variety of media through an annual commission or grant.

Workers is an ambitious media installation which laterally tackles the representation of labour and issues arising from globalisation by connecting Norwegian workers to their out-sourced Chinese counterparts in a seamless, multi-screen DVD environment. At the centre of this merged, moving frieze of animated portraits of both sets of workers is an image of a factory -- itself subjected to digital enhancements where workers gather at the gates or rocket into outer space referencing film pioneers the Lumière brothers and
Georges Méliès.

via French Word of the Day and NancyDavenport.com

About

  • My name is Daniel Flahiff and I'm the editor here at (incli)NATION a blog about art, architecture, music, technology and a few other things. Mostly Seattle, Los Angeles and NYC, but not exclusively. Artists, inventors, philosophers, engineers, conspiracy theorists, novelists, poets, and filmmakers. If you like what you read, subscribe!

    Subscribe FREE via email:

    [Never sold or shared]

    Or grab the feed below

    AddThis Feed Button

    (incli)NATION is: Daniel Flahiff, editor :: Dorothy D., Akira Rabelais, and Bryan Schultz...

Obama T-Shirts

STATS-N-STUFF

Blog powered by TypePad
Member since 08/2006