Dan Graham

Figure 7

Re-Vision Re-History

Re-History

Wandering through pillars of erected fixation- standing to the heights of invisibility- cast shadows bleeding into blurs of solidity-

Following one on top of- around and below and beside one another- woven knotted linking binding- whispering shouting splaying blinding-

Disoriented in Mazement- 

Charging forth and tiptoeing hero/heroin/heroish sees through- sees in- sees with-

Peeling out and off- rearranging particles of collected universal- etching figures in grime-

Hollow mythology fading wheezing tired- Sapling hallucinations Incarnate 

Paul Chan

I saw Paul Chan speak today at the Berkeley Art Museum. Every once in a while I see someone speak who I really feel I can learn something from, and this was one of those occasions. 

He was younger than I expected him to be. There is a quietness, maturity, and depth in his work that I just assumed would belong to someone with gray in their hair. I'm not sure why. Maybe because it seems to take people a while to settle and be willing to express sincere sentiments. It is not always fashionable to have heart and make work with a measure of depth and intimacy; and it is certainly not easy to do so without coming off as cheesy or contrived. Maybe that's the point. From listening to Chan talk today, hearing his responses to questions and explanations of his work - I don't think he is trying to make work that has heart, depth, and intimacy. I think that he has those qualities, and he is just making the work that he wants to make, the work that is right for him to make. And his work, because it is a reflection of him, possesses those qualities...

Hear Chan talk about his work, his inspirations, and about his project The 7 Lights. ("Lights" is supposed to be crossed out in the official title, but I couldn't get blogger to do it... note the official title in the video, and the use of crossing out words in the text pieces on his website):

Interview 

with Hans Ulrich Obrist of Serpentine Gallery

Check out his website National Philistine. You'll encounter text pieces, free audiobooks, free fonts, radio, and lots more:

Website

The Amen Break

Nate Harrison, Can I Get An Amen?, 2004, 
recording on acetate, turntable, PA system, paper documents
dimensions variable
total run time 17 minutes, 46 seconds

"Can I Get An Amen? is an audio installation that unfolds a critical perspective of perhaps the most sampled drum beat in the history of recorded music, the Amen Break. It begins with the pop track Amen Brother by 60's soul band The Winstons, and traces the transformation of their drum solo from its original context as part of a 'B' side vinyl single into its use as a key aural ingredient in contemporary cultural expression. The work attempts to bring into scrutiny the techno-utopian notion that 'information wants to be free'- it questions its effectiveness as a democratizing agent. This as well as other issues are foregrounded through a history of the Amen Break and its peculiar relationship to current copyright law."

- From Nate Harrison's website

Show and Tell

I painted this bird today.

It's one of Alfred Wallace's specimens from Malaysia.

Specimens...

I haven't painted in a long time.

When I opened my paint box and went rummaging through the brushes for the ones I needed, it was like saying hello to old friends. I remembered the times we'd had together... moments with this one, and that one... the way they feel against canvas, paper... each one's particular character... it was a nice reunion.

The Body Reflected

The mirror is one of the many surfaces we encounter daily. The mirror is the looking glass in which we see our own body reflected. It is the individual encounters we have with other people, in which our social selves are reflected. It is culture at large, in which our ideas and thoughts are mirrored in the expressions of others. Mirrors are the measure by which we double-check our reality.

The mirror, being that to which we look in order to understand ourselves or the world around us, is not indifferent to our gaze. It’s reflections shift and bend, and sometimes, when it knows we are looking, it denies us insight altogether and shows us lies.

Carrie Mae Weems- Mirror, Mirror

LOOKING INTO THE MIRROR, THE BLACK WOMAN ASKED, "MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL, WHO'S THE FINEST OF THEM ALL?" THE MIRROR SAYS, "SNOW WHITE, YOU BLACK BITCH, AND DON'T YOU FORGET IT!!!"

Jan Švankmajer - Alice 

The mirror, both object and encounter, is the bridge that stretches between the inside and the outside of the head/body.

"My head, for example, my head: what a strange cavern that opens onto the external world with two windows. Tow openings– I am sure of it, because I see them in the mirror...

This back, which I can feel leaning against the pressure of the couch when I am lying down and which I might catch but only by the ruse of the mirror. And what is this shoulder, whose movements and positions I know with precision, but that I will never be able to see without dreadfully contorting myself?...

There's no need for a soul, nor a death, for me to be both transparent and opaque, visible and invisible, life and thing. For me to be a utopia, it is enough that I have a body."

-Michel Foucault "Utopian Body", from "Sensorium" by Caroline Jones

Michael Jackson- Man in the Mirror

Studio #91

Just in case you were wondering... that's where you can find me. Top O' the Stairs, Main Building of the Graduate Complex, California College of the Arts. Knock Loudly, I'm probably in the midst of a dance party with my iphone.

Here is my desk after a day of exploration through the creative wilderness.

p.s. I'm not killing that plant. I actually rescued it from the dumpster and am rehabilitating it. Sheesh!

Cupcakes and Spiders

What would happen if a processed, packaged Sprinkle-Head dared to head out into the unknown and discover what life was really about...?

Find out! In this adorable (and somewhat: oolala!) animation by Kirsten Lepore

"Sweet Dreams"



Also, a little folksy number to get you ready for bed:

"Story From North America"

Kirsten Lepore also has a great website, and blog of her very own, with more informations and animations:

http://www.kirstenlepore.com/

Joseph Beuys - What Would Buddha Say?

"Buddha would say... Art would like to release something... It is social sculpture that is no longer related only to the art business... But related to all people and the social problems in which we live... "

-Joseph Beuys, quoted from Documenta 6 Satellite Telecast

****Call 415.294.3609 then enter 407# to hear SF MOMA's audio regarding Joseph Beuys and the three works that represent him in the 'Participation' show, now on view at the museum.

Action:

The Jungle @ PlaySpace Gallery

Curated by Stephanie Mansolf and Natalia Nakazawa

Artworks pictured below by:

Nwamaka Amaka Nnenne Chika Ikejimba (floor painting/sculpture)

Natalia Nakazawa (hanging beaded sculpture)

Jen Prather (detail from larger installation: tangle of colorful pillowish things, yarn, jewels)

There are lots of other great artists and interesting works in this show, which is worth making a special trip to see. The pieces are meditative and thought provoking, as well as playful and sensuous. And the Raccoon in your heart will be pleased with all the glittery baubles. 

New Digs

Moving moving moving

I have a new studio... for real now! Time to dig in the heels and stir up the waters. 

What am I? I think I'm a social practice artist, who also draws, paints, and makes stuff. The important thing for me was always the context. That the dialogue about the work would revolve around social relevance, content, meaning. Yes, I paint, but I am bored by conversations about form and color. (Even though, I'm a sucker for pools of color my eyes can swim in)

All The Things

Late August - November 12, 2008

These are my 'notes to self' from my sketchbook. Artists, books, films to remember and check out. Ideas to explore, thoughts to think more about. Loose threads of fabrics not yet woven.

I'm trying out something new. This drawing of all the things I want to revisit and think about and explore. I have sketchbooks galore filled with ideas and references but they don't really help me in book form. My brain has been overflowing lately with all these ideas I'm trying to keep track of. At first I was sort of diagraming the information. Eventually the words began to feel like marks and a composition began to form. - Seeing it all at once makes so much sense to me. It's in my brain all at once.
I really like the process of discovering how things are connected.

Things People See

We see a baboon at Cape Point

in South Africa

photo blogs

200 years from now
100 solid years of digital photography, at least
everything has been seen
all is uploaded
we are ready for the virtual world
we can go anywhere
see anything
we just plug in
Already today
I've seen:

heroes

death

children
clouds
landscapes
lightening
cute animals
flooded piazzas
flooded frozen basements
barns
stars

"Destruction Is Creation"

While not posted as a comment on my last post, this was a response that I got to my reflections on the neon statement: "Artists need to create on the same scale as society has the capacity to destroy"

I've been thinking about this statement. "Destruction is Creation."

Here is a quote by Chuang Tzu, as translated by Derek Lin:

"When you break something up, you create things.
When you create something, you destroy things.
Material things have no creation or destruction.
Ultimately these concepts connect as one." 

Yes, this is true. 

It is true that forest fires create space for new growth and generate ash which is very fertile for the land.

It is true that the breaking down of a structure can allow for a new one to form. If one is not attached to either form than the "destruction" of one can certainly be the "creation" of another.

Still, there is something sticky. I suppose I am thinking about different types of creation and destruction. Different qualities, different intentions. As an artist, I'm thinking about my own creative process, and the things I've learned along the way. I'm thinking about a transformative process and calling one type of energy "creation" and the other "destruction". 

The process I am aware of, which I call "creation", has an intention which guides it. This process is deliberate and considered. It is a kind of refinement and also communication. 

The process I am aware of, which I call "destruction", uses a totally different type of energy. I feel like the difference is in the intention. I think that the attempt at communication is missing, and rather, it is a kind of erasure. 

Here is a piece that I "created" this past week for a show at 23HAM in Berkeley.

To create this piece I cut out 95% of all of the words that were printed on the map. This was a subtractive process, I was, in a sense, taking the map apart. Does this make it a destructive process? I don't think so.

I did destruct the map to create the artwork. Is that the same as cutting up the map aimlessly? Destruction that results in a pile of cut up paper? Is a pile of aimlessly cut up paper different than art? Hmmm... these are tough questions. My sense is that they are not the same. Intention seems like the key.

Here is a Scottish artist (who shares my name) who focuses in this type of creation through destruction, Georgia Russell:

De Baudelaire au Surréalisme 2007

Farmlab

Seed Samples

?

Is this supposed to mean that the one balances out the other?

First of all, destruction is a much more rapid process than construction... Second of all, that's a HUGE responsibility for Artists!

How about:

"SOCIETY IS ONLY ALLOWED TO DESTROY AT THE RATE AT WHICH SOCIETY CAN CREATE"

Junker Gardens

"... (they) grow from the engine cavities, cabs, flatbeds, and trunks of scrap vehicles. Conjuring new ways to integrate organic life into an auto centric built environment the wheeled vehicles are still mobile when pushed or towed."

-Farmlab brochure

Photos from Farmlab in L.A.

"Continuing to serve as a catalyst for community involvement and change through the development of art actions, projects, and otherwise, Farmlab is dedicated to the preservation and perpetuity of all living things."

Egret Observations

I see them

4 white Egrets in the marsh

fishing 

looks like

They have orange bills

they stand, they don't swim

every once in a while 

they jab at the water

Actually there are 5

Spied unaware

bathing together

on a warm afternoon

It's The Little Things...

I've been doing projects with found pennies since 2002.  Why? I'm asking myself that regularly. They are these recurring elements, falling in between valuable and worthless, noticed and unnoticed, cared for and disregarded. They are like so many, many things in our world. It's not about the pennies...

I Declare!

The Bread & Puppet "Cheap Art Manifesto"

"Thank you, Francis!"

by Francis Picabia

January 1923

One must become acquainted with everybody except oneself; one must not know which sex one belongs to; I do not care whether I am male or female, I do not admire men more than I do women. Having no virtue, I am assured of not suffering from them. Many people seek the road which can lead them to their ideal: I have no ideal; the person who parades his ideal is only an arriviste. Undoubtedly, I am also an arriviste, but my lack of scruples is an invention for myself, a subjectivity. Objectively it would consist of awarding myself the légion d'honneur, of wishing to become a minister or of plotting to get into the Institute! Well, for me, all that is shit!

What I like is to invent, to imagine, to make myself a new man every moment, then forget him, forget everything. We should be equipped with a special eraser, gradually effacing our works and the memory of them. Our brain should be nothing back a blackboard, or white, or better, a mirror in which we would see ourselves for a moment, only to turn our back on it two minutes later. My ambition is to be a man sterile for others; the man who set himself up as a school disgusts me, he gives his gonorrhea to artists for nothing and sells it as clearly as possible to amateurs. Actually, writers, painters, and other idiots have passed on the word to fight against the 'monsters', monsters who, naturally, do not exist, who are pure inventions, of man.

Artists are afraid; they whisper in each other's ears about a boogey man which might well prevent them from playing their dirty little tricks! No age, I believe, has been more imbecilic than ours. These gentlemen would have us believe that nothing is happening anymore; the train reversing its engines, it seems, is very pretty to look at, cows are no longer enough! The travelers to this backward Decanville are named: Matisse, Morandi, Braque, Picasso, Léger, de Segonzac, etc., etc. ... What is funniest of all is that they accept, as stationmaster, Louis Vauxcelles, whose great black napkin contains only a foetus!

Since the war, a ponderous and half-witted sentiment of morality rules the entire world. The moralists never discern the moral facts of appearances, the Church for them is a morality like the morality of drinking water, or of not daring to wash one's ass in front of a parrot! All that is arbitrary; people with morals are badly informed, and those who are informed know that the others will not inform themselves.

There is no such thing as a moral problem; morality like modesty is one of the greatest stupidities. The asshole of morality should take the form of a chamber-pot, that's all the objectivity I ask of it.

This contagious disease called morality has succeeded in contaminating all of the so-called artistic milieux; writers and painters become serious people, and soon we shall have a minister of painting and literature; I don't doubt that there will be still more frightful assininities. The poets no longer know what to say, so some are becoming Catholics, others believers; these men manufacture their little scribblings as Félix Potin does his cold chicken preserves; people say that Dada is the end of romanticism, that I am a clown, and they cry long live classicism which will save the pure souls and their ambitions, the simple souls so dear to those afflicted by dreams of grandeur!

However, I don not abandon the hope that nothing is finished yet, I am here, and so are several friends who have a love of life, a life we do not know and which interests us for that very reason.

originally published in Littérature, new series no. 8, Paris, January 1923 as 'Francis Merci!'

"the radical artists' manifesto"

by arp, baumann, eggeling, giacometti, helbig, henning, janco, morach, richter

11th april 1919

A clear, straightforward gaze must predominate if decisions of great import are to be taken. Spiritually and materially, we demand our right: representatives of an essential part of culture, we, the artists, want to take part in the ideological development of the State; we want to exist in the State and take our full share of responsibilities. We declare that the artistic laws of our time are already formulated in their main outline. The spirit of abstract art represents an enormous extension in man's feeling of freedom. Our faith is fraternal art: art's new mission in society. Art imposes clarity; should serve as a basis for the new man. He should belong to everyone without class distinction. We want to channel the conscious production-strength of each individual into the completion of the communal undertaking. We are fighting lack of system, destroyer of strength. Our highest aspiration is to realise a spiritual basis of understanding for all men. This is our duty. This work ensures the greatest vitality for all people. The initiative for this is ours. We shall direct its course and give expression to its wishes by joining into a harmonious whole its most disparate elements.

11 April 1919.

arp, baumann, eggeling, giacometti, helbig, henning, janco, morach, richter

"Extropic Art Manifesto 

of

Transhumanist Arts"

____________________

We are transhumans.

Our art integrates the most eminent progression

of creativity and sensibility

merged by discovery.

I am the architect of my existence. My art reflects my vision and represents my values. 

It conveys the very essence of my being—coalescing imagination and insight, challenging all limits.

We are exploring how current and future technologies affect our senses, our cognition and our lives. 

Our attention to these relationships become fields of art as we participate in the most immediate and 

vital issues for transhumanity—extending life, augmenting intelligence and creativity, exploring the universe. 

Artists, as communicators, bring together the passions, the dreams and the hopes of transhumanity and 

express these emotions in ways that touch us deeply. 

Transhumanist Arts reflects an extropic appreciation of aesthetics in a technologically enhanced world.

We are voices of transhumanity. Our voices are a synthesis, rhythm and exploration of imagination.

The Transhumanist Arts movement and its genres regard art as more than an artifact. 

Art influences social and cultural change: how we live and who we are. 

It creates a sense of self, art as being, autonomous yet connected to culture’s 

continuum. How we accomplish our intentions is a matter of selective individual choice—

whether abstract or representational, whether artifact or conceptual. 

Our criteria for art remain open and we welcome cross-disciplinary innovations.

As we move into the 21st Century, 

Transhumanist Arts and Extropic Art will suffuse the universe around us. 

Our unique ingenuity will spread far out into the capillaries of our culture. 

We are active participants in our own evolution from human to posthuman. 

We are shaping the image—the design and the essence—of what we are becoming.

Natasha Vita-More

Authored January 1, 1997 ©

2003 ©