20 Years of Strangers Looking into Each Other's Eyes

count my blessings and my thumbs

2009-11-27T00:24:00.004-05:00

it's hard to remember days
mornings lost in a chronic haze
breath is fast and the trains are slow
i barely feel it though
all day long I fantasize
in the dark, behind all the people's eyes
and when they disappear
words get lost in the atmosphere

*

Untitled (Hanging Woman), 1992
i fucking love Kiki Smith, i don't care how gimmicky or un-legit or whatever else people have to say about her
i find her work incredibly emotionally charged -- evocative, raw sentimentality like bleeding vulnerability, sometimes in such a gentle way that some others might overexert themselves in order to come close
i think she was teaching at Columbia while i was there, but alas, our paths did not cross, and probably with good reason, i don't i would've taken any of her classes anyway

maybe it was just this show -- i saw her "Kiki Smith: A Gathering, 1980-2005" exhibit at the Whitney Museum in early 2007, shortly before i went insane for the second time
maybe i was just vulnerable then~
but i knew i felt something when i spotted this

Blue Girl, 1998, silicon bronze installation
in the paper, i knew it was something i had to see for myself

Untitled, 1992, beeswax, cheesecloth, wood and pigment
on the back of this figure were two sets of nearly identical claw marks curving symmetrically downward from the spine, like painful negations of wings or bloody rainbows
they weren't overwhelming in size, but the depth and red colour which filled the jagged ridges elicited quite a response (probably their desired response in 98% of viewers)
i stood there in front (well, in back) of the figure, sort of frozen in parallel fascination and horror, paralyzed by an intense impulse to run my own fingers along those marks and dig in, to do that on someone else's body and to know what it feels like on mine

Untitled III (Upside Down Body With Beads), 1993, white bronze, glass beads and wire installation
it's good to know that sometimes i don't pay attention to possible controversy or cachet~ or status, and that i'm not always such a stubborn little bugger about resisting hype -- i honestly have no idea where Kiki Smith stands in the vast contemporary pantheon -- that sometimes i can just like something because i connect with it and it's honest and simple and soothing and strangely familiar
for me, art is something that should connect people with themselves and with one another, that should elicit pathos and fruitful contemplation of those elusive skeins of feeling and remembrance buried deep within ourselves beneath the debris of the quotidian and burden of the mundane, which enmesh us in the vitality and possibilities of The Common Human Experience...in this vast, disparate expanse of existence, so often cruel, brutal, heartless, cold...i really want to appreciate any sort of phenomena and sensory experiences that unite us, that remind us that we are after all flesh and blood relatives, that we all feel pain and loss and disappointment, that beauty in whatever form does inexplicable wonders (even though it can hurt us and set us back at the same time, and that is what critique and progress are for), that in the end, it's not bad to help another human being and choose kindness over okay yeah i'm falling asleep here i should probably practice what i preach a little bit but nah that's not fun~ ;P

Sainte Genevieve, 1999, ink on Nepal paper, 95 x 70 inches
i realize that i come from a privileged point of view, but i no longer feel as though guilt and apology are a necessary response; instead, all i will do is recognize it, understand some of its implications within wider contexts, and then resolve to do whatever good i can while enjoying myself and y'know, just doin' ma thang~

plus there can be something incredibly inventive and sexy about friction and destructive impulses, if one does it right; not everything has to be honey and caramel kisses (eugh cringe)
i guess i just wanted to ramble back there, and boy am i a hypocrite for criticizing Gertrude Stein! yes i am enjoying her book after all, i'm sure everybody is shocked~*~!!

Near, 2005
i don't use periods very often in my entries; i feel as though they are too definitive, a terminus for which i am never quite ready because i like to leave things open and my thoughts dangling, and lately i've been hesitant to leave text hanging in the middle of a line because the empty space looks cold and unprotected, and that isn't fair when i'm always huddled in a cushy sweatshirt or blanket, but eh, can't fix everything~

i don't want to make art that is naïve, at least not without a sensible distance and understanding, perhaps even (dare i say it!?) a mastery of that naïveté -- i understand that there are certain risks artists must take, which put them in positions for ridicule and belittlement (wow didn't know that was a word), and i think one of my principal objectives right now is to work on developing a thick skin and a sense of self not so that i may avoid those things necessarily but so that i will be prepared to meet them and to learn from them, to take them in stride and absorb them in such a way that they might inform and improve my practice rather than impinge my creative impulses and drive to produce work
i think my paintings are pretty right now, and i like that, but it's not enough, not even close
i'm glad i have the ability to make things that people like and which bring people joy...but would it be too presumptuous of me (HAHAHAHAHA) to find that empty and unsatisfying

"Surrealism is never having to say you're Surrey."
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

hand-in-hand with someone else

2009-11-16T15:21:00.001-05:00

♥ ReSpekt

walk on mighty reds

2009-10-25T14:24:00.003-04:00

Liverpool 2-0 Man Utd

fuck yeahhhh

hahaha

the book of love

2008-11-11T10:20:00.002-05:00

amazing.

plastic dance break

2009-09-03T13:49:00.002-04:00

teehee

"Beauty will be convulsive or will not be at all."
-- André Breton

barring the obnoxious yelling at the beginning, i am deliciously enamoured of this song (as i am of many things in life, lucky me!), and i find the video really interesting in an "i never expect manufactured pop products to carry any semblance of depth or thought" kind of way. i mean yes, there are the generically attractive dancer girl side items, the outrageously over-the-top outfits and sets, production value blah blah...but something really struck me with the apple core bit :>

haha i don't know, maybe i just really like apples? (i do) i found something strangely dystopian and (dare i say it?) biblical about the incorporation of apples into this conceptual landscape~ (lol @ my pathetic attempt to be ~academic~ about a freaking g-dragon music video hahahurrrineedajob). i mean we've got the ~tree of life~ conspicuously installed in the background of the first set, and it appears as though all the 'fruits' have fallen, as there are cans scattered all around the foreground -- and they're in cans! for chrissakes! mass-manufactured, prepackaged ooo0o0oh now we're getting into it! ~social commentary~ what what. so he's surrounded by these unnatural substitutes, and as the scene progresses we see that they do not even contain their supposed product, but merely cores -- used, spent, the detritus of what once was new and fresh and whole. the cores are preserved in a liquid (formaldehyde? haha i just like that word), and one of the ~~fembots~~ generic girls takes one and makes a move as if to consume it, as though it were an acceptable product for consumption (scathing critique of the music industry much? hmm...). g-d later takes a drink from a can, but he seems dissatisfied, resigned. cue obligatory dance break with sub-par choreography (but hey give the kid a break, he's not a professional choreographer and is doing everything himself)...

in the next scene, we see what i'm going to call a 'transitional' atmosphere -- camera tracking him through a tunnel of sorts composed of a large billowing white sheet, illuminated with bright, blinking colours. the words "Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable" pop into my mind, but i never did that reading for 20th-century Art and therefore haven't a clue as to what that looked like, haha. in any case, it reminds me of a womb, as though he were traveling through something organic in search of the pure, the natural...and oh look! he's holding a real apple! progress already. and another crazy dance break with happily ridiculous outfits to match.

whatever, i can't be arsed to finish commentating on the rest of the video (and oh how the world will suffer). suffice it to say that there are more apples (fresh-looking but all bitten! eve must've been feeling territorial that day), and our platinum-topped hero finally picks one and gets his fresh-faced girl after battering down a brick wall ~oh emotional barriers oh~. *snickers* yeah, okay. suddenly i feel incredibly silly having written this much about close to nothing. maybe i should eat an apple for good measure.

it occurred to me that i might want to look up the lyrics, as i have absolutely no idea what the song is about save for the english bits (obvi), but if those are any indication, i'm willing to bet that it's the standard pop formula of lovey dovey this and brokenhearted that without any true deviation into individual experience. y'know, which i'm fine with because it sounds good :) but i thought it'd be even more fun to mix my half-assed ~academic analysis with blissful unawareness, because that appears to be what i'm all about! \o/

slow dancing

2009-08-12T01:57:00.002-04:00

a powerful and provocative reminder of the communicative abilities of dance and choreography
lol i don't even care that it's a john mayer song; i think it's damn good

nothing comes to my mind

2009-08-11T04:24:00.002-04:00

insomniac ;]

[ ]

2009-08-10T03:27:00.001-04:00

...♥

[track available here]

so much for the light show

2009-04-09T22:05:00.006-04:00

looped this song for about a week
~~before tragedy struck~~ it's a really good song
~~am actually considering purchasing their album(s?)~~ lol n/m
new one drops the 14th
idk, who even buys music anymore?
(oh wait, i just did this week...)
but torrents (butt torrents? ew) are so much more um FREE

anyway who cares this is fantastic and they're also on Twitter!

slow dance

2009-04-14T09:48:00.007-04:00

it's like being at the circus
but slightly cleaner

everyone takes better pictures than i do
but that's okay

i'm considering shipping my tweets here
but probably nah

break my fall

2009-05-04T21:10:00.004-04:00

well, this'll certainly give me more time to ~create~ hur hur hurrr

maybe now i'll really get to be the 'starving artist' i'd always dreamt of. haha. ha.

OH MY GOD

2009-04-28T12:34:00.010-04:00

SUNDAY June 7th 2009
BALKAN BEAT BOX @ The Bell House
7:30pm $25 21+

UM YES PLEASE
Ok this pretty much redeems all of this blasted month. Oh, also getting my apartment, haha. WOO!

so you can't hold a star in your hand though

2009-04-12T22:59:00.010-04:00

the view from my rooftop:

[click]

[homg]

[whaaaat]

[hello]
:)

never gonna stop looping this

you have gone and dreamt them dry

2009-05-16T01:01:00.007-04:00

mmmmmm. this is my new love song to myself.
i'm only going to be 23 once. what if i fuck it up?

- - - - -

United won the league. Again.
They've now tied us for 18 titles.
And I'm also out of a job.

Music isn't going to fix this, but it can't hurt.

New acquisition:

Logic is a complication. Logic is always wrong. It draws the threads of notions, words, in their formal exterior, toward illusory ends and centers. Its chains kill, it is an enormous centipede stifling independence. Married to logic, art would live in incest, swallowing, engulfing its own tail, still part of its own body, fornicating within itself, and passion would become a nightmare tarred with protestantism, a monument, a heap of ponderous gray entrails.
[ Tristan Tzara ]

protect me from what i admire, desire

2009-05-22T22:59:00.009-04:00

so finally made my pilgrimage to a not-so-holy land, the Whitney Museum, in time for the Jenny Holzer show, "PROTECT PROTECT" (among other things)!

a cursory recap, because that's the only kind i have the discipline to do:

Jenny Holzer, "For Chicago," 2008, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY

Jenny Holzer: i really didn't/don't know anything about her, except that apparently she likes to do politically engaged/charged work. she incorporates text into many of her pieces, which i enjoy, and in this latest installment (and perhaps in others, i don't know; like i said, i'm not familiar with her œuvre), she'd appropriated previously classified documents from US military intelligence and chopped them up and reconfigured them. alternating between scrolling blinking LED marquees (so mesmerizing and really cool!) and mounted blowups-cum-'canvases', she displays bits and pieces of these documents to reveal...well, you get the point. stuff we civilians~ don't normally get to see or think about. i stood at the scrolling tunnel for quite awhile, reading its narrative and just...feeling at once entranced and appalled by what i saw, what i was reading:

Installation view of Jenny Holzer: PROTECT PROTECT (March 12, 2008 – May 31, 2009) at the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, ©2009 Jenny Holzer

[photos from here and here]

the NY Times tells a better story than i, obvi: Sounding the Alarm, in Words and Light

Claes Oldenburg: -deflates-

Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, "Soft Viola," 2002

ok ok, all jokes aside, i was a little disappointed. i don't know what i was expecting, but apparently something...with grandeur. with stated sophistication, and...elegance? i don't know why. again, i am wholly unfamiliar with Oldenburg's work, save for that slide of the plaster burger or what have you that was subsequently photographed and ~made an art all its own~...hahaha. *eyeroll* but i'll just chalk it up to my own lack of knowledge regarding this particular artist's work, his legacy and influence etc etc. i did enjoy his drawings and sketches that were on display -- a sampling of which can be found here: Jill Krementz Photo Journal - Oldenburg & van Bruggen

Claes Oldenburg, "Giant BLT (Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato Sandwich)," 1963

"Photoconceptualism 1966-1973": i was really pleased! :D

Bruce Naumann, "Waxing Hot," 1966

saw a lovely sampling of Bruce Naumann's photos, a playful selection in which he explored puns and dallied in muted, whimsical colours. very much my thing on some days. i don't know, photography's a tricky area for me to navigate, but i guess that's just cuz i'm a fickle pickle.

Mel Bochner, "Photographs 1966-1969," 1966-69

also spied an interesting series by Mel Bochner, who took a piece of glass and alternately smeared Vaseline and shaving creme on it and hired a photographer out of the phone book to photograph them in "a way that makes it beautiful" -- i was very tickled by this, as there's something decidedly Duchampian about having someone else do the actual photographing and then signing your name to a work. they turned out well.

and surprise of surprises, what did i spy sandwiched between a Dan Graham (ugh) and a Wegman (??) but a couple of Gordon Matta-Clark's Thresholes! *eyes glaze over* awww, truly a lovely little treat, brought memories of Rosalyn Deutsche's class flooding back. and then i thought about what a tragedy it is that he died so young, and that of course brought Ana Mendieta to mind, and i grew rather somber and downcast. but no matter; i drafted a note to Professor Deutsche in my little red notebook, and i also drew up a list of artists to Wikipedia. yes, i do use that as a verb. and you can too!

- - - - -

browsing Picture Postcard, saw this:

Marilyn Minter, "Little Egypt" (detail), 2002

took my breath away.

coming up for air

2009-06-03T02:19:00.006-04:00

Placebo have taken over my earwaves.

...and I like it that way.

Marilyn Minter is the matriarch of squeamishness amidst the excesses of glitz & glamour, of luxury & decadence gone awry. I love it.

Marilyn Minter, Soiled, 2000
C-print
86 x 60 inches

[track available here]

- - - - -

Recently watched films:
Secretary
The Machinist
The Darjeeling Limited

Currently reading:

fading

2009-08-06T23:23:00.002-04:00

don't kid yourself
and don't fool yourself
this love's too good to last
and I'm too old to dream

don't grow up too fast
and don't embrace the past
this life's too good to last
and I'm too young to care

don't kid yourself
and don't fool yourself
this life could be the last
and we're too young to see
where did this summer go?

Currently reading:

:|

2009-01-27T23:50:00.008-05:00

i don't know what has gotten into me lately
but gosh
this is the most romantic piece of music i've come across in awhile

it's probably because i want it to be

sing your melody

2009-05-27T02:18:00.005-04:00

an excellent recommendation by felipe:

Once, John Carney, 2006.

Stream it here

no me siento nada

2009-05-26T20:29:00.005-04:00

Maria Full of Grace, Joshua Marston, 2004. Subtitled.

Stream it here | Download it here [FLV, decent quality]

i wish i was the hunter

2009-05-25T18:56:00.002-04:00

be prepared to meet him

2009-05-24T01:44:00.004-04:00

watching this now as i paint [download or stream here]

and now i want to watch this:

- - - - -

[track available here]

when your mind is your might

2009-05-10T08:37:00.008-04:00

so when you go solo you hold your own hand
and remember that depth is the greatest of heights
so if you know where you stand
then you'll know where to land
and if you fall it won't matter
cuz you'll know that you're right

don't worry so much about making it new
worry about making it true
and real

worry about that.

art must be neither realistic nor idealistic, it must be true;
and by this [i mean] above all that any imitation of nature,
however concealed, is a lie.
-- Alexander Archipenko

i worry about it.

seduction dances hour by hour

2009-05-08T03:29:00.009-04:00

"One must be drunk always," wrote Charles Baudelaire. "If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time that breaks your shoulders and bows you to the earth, you must intoxicate yourself unceasingly. But with what? With wine, poetry, or with virtue, your choice. But intoxicate yourself."

the only bohemia to be enjoyed
would be a self-made one
inasmuch as one can and does 'make oneself'
in a world in which originality is a rapidly dissipating illusion
we are—everything is—quotation
we lift emotion from poetry and song
because it fulfills a double act of consumption as well as expression
we are told by cinema and advertisement what to covet
and how to mistake it for necessity
i sometimes wonder if everything has not already hardened to artifice
i sometimes worry that i am always being lied to

I went to a tattoo parlor and had YES written onto the palm of my left hand, and NO onto my right palm, what can I say, it hasn't made life wonderful, it's made life possible, when I rub my hands against each other in the middle of winter I am warming myself with the friction of YES and NO, when I clap my hands I am showing my appreciation through the uniting and parting of YES and NO, I signify "book" by peeling open my clapped hands, every book, for me, is the balance of YES and NO, even this one, my last one, especially this one. Does it break my heart, of course, every moment of every day, into more pieces than my heart was made of, I never thought of myself as quiet, much less silent, I never thought about things at all, everything changed, the distance that wedged itself between me and my happiness wasn't the world, it wasn't the bombs and burning buildings, it was me, my thinking, the cancer of never letting go, is ignorance bliss, I don't know, but it's so painful to think, and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think, I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.

"My insides don't match up with my outsides." "Does anybody's insides and outsides match up?" "I don't know. I'm only me." "Maybe that's what a person's personality is: the difference between the inside and outside."

[ Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close ]

delirium.

i already know where i want my ashes scattered;
nobody can accuse me of lacking foresight

- - - - -

Our cult of death is also a cult of life in the same
way that love is a hunger for life and a longing for death.
Our fondness for self-destruction derives not from
our masochistic tendencies but also from a certain variety
of religious emotion.

-- Octavio Paz, as quoted in Ana Mendieta's unpublished notes

mortality is an awesome power
and i am humbled

terrified.

tumult

2009-05-03T20:13:00.010-04:00

i miss painting and being by the ocean
i shouldn't compromise, censor, or limit myself for anyone
i wonder what my life would be like now had i gone to pont aven
or berlin

f said he might be here by october
we'll see