Imagined Membership

2011-05-18T15:30:00.000-07:00

What will we call history in the future? The evidences? The Tale?

2011-04-16T19:02:00.000-07:00

"Memory, and yet deeper than memory: the memory of the trans-personal, the memory of time itself: it used to be called "history", but what will we call it in the future? The Accounts? The Lore? The Evidences? The Tale? Who knows. I for one won't be calling it "history". I want to fit our awareness of becomming into a bigger set of understandings than the mere idea of warring factions winning and losing battles with one another, then inventing a History to justify it." -PD

One month story- the beginning of time agenda

2011-04-16T19:00:00.000-07:00

The Social Practitioner:

2011-04-14T22:50:00.000-07:00

A conductor

Between an orchestra

And an audience

In a hall

The conductor responds to two populations at once, and a physical space. Her first responsibility is to the orchestra. The relationship between the conductor and the orchestra will be referred to as relationship 1, characterized by a performance, collaboration, interdependence, and a task.

Similarly and differently:

The duty of the Social Practitioner

The common social practitioner carefully selects an audience who is different than the common ticket buyers, and this audience will be active within her new project. We will refer to this active audience as the orchestra. Though the social practitioner has invited the orchestra to perform, she is not going to entertain them, pay them, or control them. She invites the orchestra to define the project.

It seems ridiculous that a social practitioner would work with an orchestra. For this reason we will refer to her as a conductor—so be it. The relationship between the conductor and her selected group of participants is based on a common goal—the project.

We will call the public unveiling of the project the concert. In this model, the orchestra will be active and attentive in a situation where they are chosen for the quality of sound they produce and its relevance to the conductor’s song. The conductor often creates a structure for participation in or around a rehearsal schedule.

The production of a conductor often begins with research based on personal interest or longing. Based on her quest, she will propose a program to an Institution or a Venue. She may or may not have been invited to submit said proposal. In the proposal she defines the basic structure of the work— for the sake of this extended metaphor, she describes a series of songs performed by an orchestra over the duration of a weekend to Carnegie Hall. In her proposal, she informs the committee that her research has led her to these songs because of their rich and obscure history, for example, and because it originated in the town next to that of her great-great-great-grandfather. Her submission does not include the complex process of finding her orchestra, designing and negotiating how they will play their instruments, or that she does not actually know exactly how the piece will sound.

As she holds auditions for the orchestra, she performs her chosen self, whether it is her ‘genuine’ self or another character. This self shifts with every project. The way a conductor models herself from the audition to concert sets the tone for the collaboration, representing the type of action, interdependence, rigor and comedy that the musicians will take on. Perhaps she wears a tuxedo to auditions.

The conductor unifies performers, sets the tempo, executes clear preparations and beats, and listens critically in order to shape the sound of the ensemble. In rehearsal, she listens closely to the qualities naturally present in the sound of the musicians, always referencing her original research for guidance. She is attempting to invent a system for the people playing their instruments to create a sound that is entirely theirs, and simultaneously to honor the song and its context (which was written for different people, with different instruments). In the process of listening to the orchestra, the conductor develops an intimate understanding of the musicians, and she forms the arrangement of the song around their sound. A long series of rehearsals leading to a concert builds a complex relationship between the conductor and the musicians, and at best, interdependence happens. This relationship is represented by the staged re-enactment at the concert.

On stage the conductor represents leadership and continuity, as it has been cultivated in rehearsal. The orchestra knows what to do when they are on stage. During the final performance, which we have been referencing as the concert, she gives visual cues to support and elevate feelings and sounds already familiar to the performers. If the conductor wasn’t there for the performance, the concert could go on. Why is she still there?

The language of the conductor in concert is typically created with body movements, specifically the waving of hands and wands. One hand often keeps tempo while the other might indicate pitch or punctuation. Communication is non-verbal during a performance—this is a melodramatic performance of absolute leadership, but do not be fooled! She is not mute! In rehearsal frequent interruptions by the conductor allow for verbal interactions. The face is also an important source of instruction—eyebrow manipulation and the force of the eye, as well as jaw action, indicate spirit and intensity. This language might offer cues for speed, tempo, or intensity. It is cultivated as a temporary dialect that is buried in a piece, specific to the song or the group of musicians.

The conductor’s instructions and actions are most affective when they are consistent and clear, and when that happens, a form for the relationship between conductor and musician can be built, trusted, and manipulated. Good rapport is essential, so that the orchestra members feel comfortable and confident in their abilities to provide meaningful contributions to the collective sound. The orchestra performs as one, but individual musicians must be able to experience the music and play autonomously, so that they can practice at home.

The relationship of the conductor to her live audience will be called relationship 2.

The audience sees the back of the conductor. The conductor does not perform to the audience directly, though her ticket sales and appreciation from her public will win her success and money. She speaks indirectly-- through the orchestra.

In Relationship 2, the conductor deceives the audience. They accept an illusion: that this performance is a live collaboration between the orchestra and the conductor. Along with this concession, the audience also accepts that they do not understand the nature of the relationship between the conductor and the orchestra or the narrative behind the piece that they are witnessing. There is no trace of, nor an opportunity to question what the interpersonal conflicts or struggles were that led to this public presentation of the piece. There is willingness among the audience to misunderstand, or not understand, and then to witness the results of a possibly long-term collaboration.

To the orchestra, the concert performance acts mainly as evidence and evaluation of the work accomplished rehearsals; but to the audience, the performance is the only thing. As we have previously discussed, the function of the on-stage relationship between the conductor and the orchestra is to make the performance of conducting-- specifically, the management of the group on stage-- look dramatic and vital when, in actuality, the orchestrated performers already know very well what to do. The conductor is making the rhythm of the music and the sounds visible for all to see, though she must look as if she is primarily performing this dance for the orchestra, who are playing along with the facade that they are fully dependent upon the arm-waving cues to inform the spirit and pace of the piece. Thus, the conductor’s body faces the orchestra, while her back is to the audience. The audience needs this. Their evaluation of the choreography of the rhetorical instructions to the orchestra is based on the quality of the sound produced. They understand the symbolic presence on stage of the conductor. They are happy to see her back as she reenacts her work.

With her back to the audience, the conductor turns her face away from those that buy the tickets. Her work on stage is to signify her real work, which is finished now. She is not valued for her personality, her stage presence, her choreography. The sounds produced through her labors are not about her. She did not write the music that is being played. The conductor did not create a sound by rubbing things together, blowing or plucking anything. Is she a musician, is she an organizer, is she a performer, or is she just a figurehead?

Her relationship with the space will be called relationship 3.

The space where the orchestra is seen is always a place, sometimes even an entity, with specific expectations and requirements, a relationship to a funding source that might necessitate a bureaucracy as well as an architectural form. The form affects the performance and experience of the orchestra with specific aesthetic and sound qualities.

As described in relationship 1, the process of developing an orchestral project began for the conductor when she sent a proposal, possibly unsolicited, to an Institution or Venue that she has been following, in this case Carnegie Hall. Based on their mission statement it seemed they might support projects like hers. She was seeking fiscal support and a place to rehearse, perform. She was also seeking a publicity campaign, managed by the marketing department, funded by the Institution, with access to the large mailing list.

The conductor knows that the space affects the meaning of the performance. The qualities of the physical space, as well as its history, attract a specific type of audience.

Our conductor must transform out of her role as orchestra leader when she interacts with the Institution or Venue. She must perform the role of a responsible, organized, and accomplished professional. In this character, she must clearly explain her project (playing a few songs from the town next to her great-great-great-grandpa’s village) in a way that the administration will appreciate and understand as practical, organized, and relevant to their mission statement.

The negotiation between the creative processes within the orchestra and the bureaucratic rigidity of an Institution trains the conductor as a diplomat. The self-promotion, communication, inspiration, collaboration, and relationships that develop all the while with her back to her audience is a performance of many selves and for many audiences. The social practitioner who is the conductor, who was accidentally trained as a diplomat, is moving through borders that define function, class, attitude, and intention. She is always being something. She is probably always running a little late.

Is it Time?

2011-04-14T20:46:00.000-07:00

what may or may not be happening

2011-04-14T20:02:00.001-07:00

Legal forms

2011-04-12T10:12:00.000-07:00

"But if you recognize that nature too has rights, and (if you provide) legal forms to protect and preserve those rights, then you can achieve balance."

I don't know.

Why Wikileaks is an art project by V.Vale

2011-04-09T00:41:00.000-07:00

1. MESSAGE FROM YOUR EDITOR, V. VALE: Earlier we advocated, "Give Pfc Bradley Manning The Nobel Prize!"As our specialty is TRULY ALTERNATIVE HISTORY & CREATIVITY, just for fun we will now advocate that WikiLeaks, probably all along, has been THE MOST IMPORTANT **ART PROJECT** OF OUR TIMES (late 2010-2011).

So: Why is WikiLeaks an ART PROJECT? 10 Reasons...

1. The INTERNET is the most important NEW ART TERRITORIALITY encompassing the dimensions of TIME and IMMEDIATE REFLEXIVITY, whose aesthetics & technologies are slowly being deduced, deconstructed, reconstructed and recombined...

2. Art Makes You Think, Redefine, Recategorize, Reassess, Recontextualize, & Reevaluate. Art Changes the Way You Look at the World. Art Changes the Way you Draw Boundaries, the way you Frame "Reality." So does WikiLeaks.

3. What WikiLeaks has exposed makes one REthink the entire media/communications landscape, and illuminates the tropes of the backroom secrecy that has dominated politics since the world began.

4. Art questions power dynamics, power relationships, and exposes hidden agendas and imperatives while adding emotional/aesthetic backgrounding. Gericault's painting of "The Raft of the Medusa" illuminated and immortalized a scandalous cover-up of the time; WikiLeaks exposes manifold cover-ups of our time which go viral.

5. WikiLeaks represents a populist, bottom-up, information-sharing technology revolution reflecting the Do-It-Yourself, Anyone-Can-Do-It Punk Principle. Punk Rock was the social-critical art movement of its time, and WikiLeaks is continuing that imperative...

6. Art predicts, foreshadows and adumbrates future social change, and so, hopefully, does WikiLeaks.

7. Duchamp stated that "The Spectator completes the Work of Art." Numerous spectator/contributors continuously are completing the ongoing Art Project that is WikiLeaks...

8. New technologies make New Art possible. If the Internet is today's most futuristic art medium, then WikiLeaks embodies the cutting edge of art criticism and theory, but from an Empiricist rather than neo-Platonic orientation...

9. WikiLeaks embodies a crazy-quilt, non-centrist, satirical-sardonic public facade, just as 21st-Century Art is characterized by continuous border-crossings and new hybrid-forms embodying dark humor and philosophical skepticism...

10. The purpose of Art is to Inspire, Enliven, Enlighten and Expand Aesthetics. That's exactly what WikiLeaks does by the sheer, perplexing beauty of its Anti-Authority, Anti-Totalitarian Information Revolution-Which-Anyone-Can-Contribute-To...

My work

2011-04-04T15:02:00.001-07:00

If I just keep prying things, this whole thing might fall apart. Or else nothing will happen, again. No one saw me prying. I was hiding because I knew other people who really know the hows and whys of prying would just laugh at me and my last of strategy for bringing the whole thing down. So while I am prying, I am covering up my work with my forearm, ever so subtly, just in case an expert comes by and shows me a better way. That would be the worst. Because then they would save me from all this prying, which was supposed to take all my energy for the next long while, which is so much better than finishing this prying, bringing the whole thing down, and being left with nothing to do, and a false sense of accomplishment. I want to feel the process of discovery within the bringing of this shit to its knees, but the truth is that I know that other people are already working on it and doing a great job. And they really enjoy the work. They’ve invited all their friends to help them, and they are drinking coronas while they chip away—they are celebrating because they have almost finished. I hope they don’t see me, because my progress is so slow, and I would be so embarrassed that I thought I would do all this work myself. I just got here with this screwdriver and I started wedging it into shit, and I assumed that I would finish, somehow, though I hadn’t visualized the way that that would happen. Maybe I don’t know what it is to finish prying things off, but it’s probably not going to make that big of a difference either way. I just wanted something to keep myself busy with, with a sense of progress and great benefits until I am done working.

Telling Time To Go Back

2011-03-31T14:48:00.000-07:00

What is it. It is imagined, it is not anything.

2011-03-19T16:19:00.000-07:00

–noun

a large body of people, associated with a particular territory, that is sufficiently conscious of its unity to seek or to possess a government peculiarly its own: The president spoke to the nation about the new tax.

the territory or country itself: the nations of Central America.

a member tribe of an American Indian confederation.

an aggregation of persons of the same ethnic family, often speaking the same language or cognate languages.

–noun

a state or nation: What European countries have you visited?

the territory of a nation.

the people of a district, state, or nation: The whole country backed the president in his decision.

the land of one's birth or citizenship.

rural districts, including farmland, parkland, and other sparsely populated areas, as opposed to cities or towns: Many city dwellers like to spend their vacations in the country.

any considerable territory demarcated by topographical conditions, by a distinctive population, etc.: mountainous country; the Amish country of Pennsylvania.

a tract of land considered apart from any geographical or political limits; region; district.

the public.

Law . the public at large, as represented by a jury.

10.

country music.

My belly was my sun-dial

2011-03-15T21:59:00.000-07:00

The gods confound the man who first found out
How to distinguish hours! Confound him, too,
Who in this place set up a sun-dial,
To cut and hack my days so wretchedly
Into small portions. When I was a boy,
My belly was my sun-dial; one more sure,
Truer, and more exact than any of them.
This dial told me when twas prper time
To go to dinner, when I had aught to eat.
But now-a-days, why even when I have,
I can't fall-to, unless the sun give leave.
The greater part of its inhabitants,
Shrunk up with hunger, creep along the streets!

Plautus (d. 184 B.C.)
p. 28 of The Discoverers, Daniel Boorstin

There is nothing left for imagination

2011-03-14T13:04:00.000-07:00

Sympathies, an open proposal.

2011-03-13T03:15:00.000-07:00

Open proposal: Sympathies, an event that is aware of so many other events.

Sympathy is:
1. Sameness of feeling
2. action or response arising from this
3. agreement in qualities, harmony, accord
4. a mutual liking or understanding arising from the sameness of feeling

Sympathies are:
Events where we gather to show our fiercest sympathy. We hold signs without words. The posterboard and the language is replaced by mirrors. We amble, we look, we sympathize.

Don't think Hallmark Card Sympathy, think about how you feel about
Egyptian Revolutionaries, Wisconsin Workers, Planned Parenthood Supporters.
Question the 'form' of 'protest' in your life. How do you deal with the savageness that so many other people experience when you are comfortable, and maybe even happy?
Is it possible to design a new form for our own rebellion?

How. As training, I would like to hold a series of walks for people who are captivated, frightened, worried, and unclear about what to do about so many overwhelming upheavals in the world. With mirrors as our protest signs, we will walk and think about what we are and where. We will look at things, see ourselves where we are, see what others see, and look at eachother. We show or feel sympathy for what we see when we see it, where we are. Meanwhile we think of those who are breaking, or almost broken, revolting against forces as big as nations and tsunamis. For many people who are only surviving recent events, there is no meanwhile to take notice of, meanwhile is a privilege. Let us celebrate the meanwhile, offer sympathy, and focus in on the wonder and the disaster of everywhere we are.

fellow feelings, of like feelings.
1. Sameness of feeling
2. action or response arising from this
3. agreement in qualities, harmony, accord
4. a mutual liking or understanding arising from the sameness of feeling
5. The entering into or ability to enter into another person's mental state, feelings, emotions
6. In physics, a relation or harmony between bodies of such a nature that vibrations in one cause a sympathetic vibration in the other
7. In physiology, a relation between parts of the body of such a nature that a disorder in one induces a disorder in the other
8. A supposed tendency of certain things to unite or act on eachother.

Actual Products Intensify Print Quality

2011-03-12T22:39:00.000-08:00

Today I attended an afternoon workshop at SF Camerawork led by Ariel Goldberg, sponsored by Nonsite Collective. This is what happened to me:

This trip was fraught, as it was only a picture in a picture in a picture, and no one knew who would ultimately be looking at the photos, the final images from the outside. Only we know that the print quality gets better when the product is in the image, or rather when there is a product, not just an imagined one or a referenced one, but a real 4 color product. Its either that or it’s a sense of responsibility that will help the image quality improve. Take ownership of this experience and get into the photo’s shoes, try to sympathize with the paper quality or the texture of the vinyl, and have the self discipline to understand how hard it must be to print on such a low thread count. Feel how impossible it must be to exist with so much tooth that even the simplest image gets distorted when it is merges with you.

The distracting part of all this is that from the get go, no matter if there is ever paper or vinyl, there is or was a photographer, or we hope that there was, and they will never experience texture. But what if the camera was just set on automatic, and if it even cleans its own lenses? What if all the cameras now clean their own lenses? If the lens is always clean, and the photos are always taken at the right time, or every time, on a schedule, then is there nothing behind this photo, is it just a trace of the automation? And the self healing, self sufficient, selfless photographer who never has to take a picture, who can’t even properly dirty the lens? If looking at photos is a mechanical process, which seems to be the case, and taking the picture is too, and they clean their own lenses, then what are you doing? If we enjoy the look of taking photos, the ethos, the freedom of association, the inside jokes and the body language, then we would also probably really enjoy the cleaning of the lenses. It’s good to be needed, you know?

I would like to step up to the podium. I would like to propose a camera club, where we all focus on the maintenance of the camera. We turn off the auto clean function and we enjoy the cycle of the dirtying of the lens, and then of course we enjoy the cleaning of the lens, which we do by hand, with two hands and a handkerchief, just like before time. The lens is so transparent when we clean it, and it could be totally self satisfied, but the truth is that you can’t stand to leave it alone. Don’t let it clean itself, because once it is clean, it becomes everything it could ever be, its total potential is maxed out, and then where else does it have to go? There’s nowhere but up to go until you’re at the top, and then you are pure, clean, alone. And it’s just a lens, and that is not the life worth seeing through. This clean lens obsession and maybe eventually the camera needs to consider whether the lens is a healthy part of its body, or if it should be removable. Its amazing what goes into an automatic image of chance, the lens must be so clean, it must almost not be there.

The Language of the Socially Good

2011-03-11T13:04:00.000-08:00

The community of the untold story: it takes one individual to advocate on behalf of the artisans and create the mission. To create new formulas to institute a new training strategy of healthiness, a system of health by a team from a team of doctors, scientists, artists and film makers. A 2 prong effort with everyone in the field, creating outreach to create funding.

Why is this so hard? Inspired by health issues the investment of wonder is on the market. Imagine being a family of real environmental nightmare strategy.

First, identify creative leaders of the community where everyone is watching.

The successful transition and what was exciting is you’ve removed the teaching barriers-- we took him to the intrenational market problems strategy. 25 community members transitioned to prohibit development, trading in the field, developing with the other, softer voices for the long term benefit of design training.

In our workshop these drawings, a local production, as well as the safety or luxury of time. It shows the deep connection to place she was inspired by herself. The challenges were being fused with and the strong market funding dried up, challenging for sustainable funding to keep this continuing for the community.

For the innovative on going dynamic as well as models, sociologists, better prepared to tackle the community from the field. If you can’t sustain yourself, you can feel the life, its made by hand from the plan to the land, from the soil to the market, this is coming of age. Preserve these rich traditions, learning how to create new models of reproduceable engagement to a deeper appreciation of stones and connection to culture of community, desiring celebration.

Social Craft Explanation// We are going to Bangalore

2011-03-11T12:27:00.000-08:00

Lets now look closely at Social Craft.

Social Craft is a framework and a method of valuing and studying the
minutia of every day experiences.
Please take out your magnifying glass. While holding it in your left
hand, stick your right index finger through the center of the glass.
Hold it up to your eye to examine this experience.

Through the use of magnifying glasses we can see what we often only look at...
By observing the experiences that we often take for granted, we stand
to learn more of their truth and essence. If we magnify our daily
routines and use them as sources of physical, mental, emotional, and
social learning, education becomes universally available and equal.
Social Craft honors the syllabus of your life. Your life begins at
home.

When I think of how I do what I do, it all goes back to what I saw and learned from
home. I had to clean underneath the table as well as the top of it, and now, not
coincidentally, I find myself looking underneath everything I do. I find my interests
to be in finding and attending to hidden details, shining them up or deciding to leave
them hidden. I don’t think it is a stretch to say that my love of secret details and my
thoroughness has come to be out of a rigorous weekly Saturday house cleaning.

Home is our first curriculum. It is where we learn many of the
systems for navigating life. We think it is the best place to start
to study and to practice social craft. To formalize the home as a
site of learning, we will study its physical structure, its relation
to the body, and its ritual use. Our class will build and use a house.
Its use as a site of learning will make it a home.

The discussion of ‘ home’ in India is complex, and cannot be parsed
without acknowledging the domestic laborers that cohabit with many families. There is
a movement in Bangalore to unionize private household workers, and from afar
this seems to be a cultural phenomenon that is currently being questioned in
the media and the art world. The domestic labor industry extends to
many homes- not just of the rich, but across most social strata from
lower middle class and above, wherein maids, cooks, and caretakers complete the
concept and experience of Indian family life.
In speaking to friends in India, I have learned that these workers are not considered to
be employees nor family members, but rather are seen as an undefined aspect of the
household.
We are interested in understanding the social aspects of the Indian home and
acknowledging the expertise that accrues in the process of developing and keeping it as
a viable enterprise. Not only witnessing, but taking an objective look at domestic labor-
- valuing it as a formative part of human development and education-- will no doubt have
an impact on how participants see their own relationship to home and home workers.

To begin our exploration of home and work, we will hire 4 local experts, versed in
homemaking. They are a real estate agent, a vedic architect, a matriarch, and a
builder. We will hire and compensate them as adjunct faculty through
Srishti, opening up the question of class and academic status. We hope to see their homes
and seek their assistance in building a house, understanding its maintenance
and practices, and finding the art and education inherent in it. We
are working with srishti to devise a method of payment and contracts
that value them as a professor-- offering them the opportunity to
be professionally validated, and paid in a way that legitimizes their work with us to the
government and the institution of srishti, or not.

We will meet with students daily to build a home, devise home
practices and to explode these as valuable learning experiences and
art practices. The radical nature of inserting the home inside a
school campus, as a physical structure and as a method for learning,
is not only poetic but speaks to the historical
synthesis of education from the home and the family.

This home/school will happen through daily classes, where students and
experts become immersed in the design and building of a physical
structure, which will house the class. The daily maintenance of the
house generates a learning environment that encompasses the classes
collective idea of home. This idea will be informed by active
research and documentation of local housing and domestic politics.
We will invite Bangalore to a weekly series of open house events, where members of the
class will perform their research, exhibiting the functions of the home on campus.

Manifest my Destiny (shopping list)

2010-09-26T19:59:00.000-07:00

Since arriving on the west coast, I have been overwhelmed by the spiritual 'vibrations' so common in the vocabulary of pedestrian speech. For example, on many occasions I have been told to 'manifest' what I want to experience in my life. I was instructed to be specific and ask for exactly what I want from the universe.

With critical awareness of spiritual capitalism, I have laughed for and with the people who bought commercially successful products including the book and video called 'The Secret' -- with the hope that they could break a hidden code of mind over matter. I like the notion that people desire to feel such freedom, responsibility, and control in their lives. Also, I don’t want to miss a great opportunity to get all the stuff I want, so I thought I would try out this potential new tool.

As a way to get settled in my new neighborhood, acclimate to a new culture, and to remain efficient, I installed a shopping list on various electric poles and trees on my new block. The shopping list varied from posting to posting and included between 10 and 20 of the needs listed below.

I designed this posting with respect to hidden indigenous codes, so I intuitively offered the passerby ‘freedom of response’. In the ‘spirit’, I listed two ways for people to help me manifest what I need through donations or through the gesture of burying a tab to help me get what I want. I also gave an option for needy people to wish for what they need by using one of these tabs for themselves.

Here is the entire list of needs as displayed on the posters:
1. old analog or electric typewriter that works
2. working sewing machine
3. excellent boyfriend who bikes
4. electric kettle that works
5. good haircut (I have a terrible one in need of repair)
6. cordless drill with a good battery
7. nice old couch
8. good writing desk and chair
9. rich soil to start a garden
10. crock pot or rice cooker
11. new bike seat
12. old manuals or how to books with illustrations
13. old chandelier (working or not)
14. battery powered hot glue gun
15. house plants
16. tea pot
17. car repair services
18. small and medium size wheels for a bike trailer
19. copious amounts of fresh vegetables and fruits
20. a friend to go exploring with
21. water proof fabric/sail fabric
22. saw horses
23. old wood
24. record player
25. baking pans for bread
26. a great travel mug
27. battery powered lighting
28. ancient books of poetry with illustrations
29. magic lessons
30. light, aluminum 6 foot ladder

rock

2010-05-23T07:00:00.000-07:00

The word poet in this professorship of poetry is a very general term for a person who puts things together in an era of great specialization wherein most people are differentiating or "taking" things apart. Demonstrated capability in the integration of ideas is the general qualification for this professorship.
Buckminster Fuller
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V

The most notable distinction between living and inanimate beings is that the former maintain themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists. If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered into smaller bits. Never does the stone attempt to react in such a way that it may maintain itself against the blow, much less so as to render the blow a contributing factor to its own continued action.
John Dewey
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V

TODAY

Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas!
You really are beautiful! Pearls,

harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins! all
the stuff they've always talked about

still makes a poem a surprise!
These things are with us every day
even on beachheads and biers. They

do have meaning. They're strong as rocks.
Frank O'Hara

Grad school advice from Facebook

2010-03-03T15:55:00.001-08:00

Gradschool? San Francisco? Opinions please!
February 20 at 2:49pm Only Friends · Comment · LikeUnlike · View Feedback (16)Hide Feedback (16)
Neil Freeman
Neil Freeman
Yes. Yes.
February 20 at 3:12pm ·
Matthew C. Wilson
Matthew C. Wilson
insufficient information for opinion generation
February 20 at 3:22pm ·
Paul Tyree-francis
Paul Tyree-francis
once you told me that you hated san francisco because it was like disneyland. i think you may like it there, however. especially the ocean and the dinosaur botany. but grad school? i always recall the verseless animal collective song with the chorus 'you don't have to go to college'. which school?
February 20 at 5:14pm ·
Carissa Carman
Carissa Carman
whoot whott. It's great! there!
February 20 at 5:35pm ·
Jon Byler
Jon Byler
only if they are paying. not worth the time if they make you pay. someone will pay for talent like you.
February 20 at 5:47pm ·
Jenny Zhang
Jenny Zhang
return on investment?
February 20 at 6:02pm ·
Erin Marie Sickler
Erin Marie Sickler
I think the MFA is essentially the carving out of significant time and space to perform the following activities:
*doing a whole lot of work badly, or, if not badly, without the pressure of being good
*engaging with a supportive and critical body of peers
*establishing a relationship with a mentor(s)
*getting a seal of approval from an institution... See More
*being able to put more emphasis on core art practice versus day job (perhaps setting up unrealistic expectations about life after grad school)
*being given an edited, and therefore more manageable (or censored), depiction of the relevant strains of art right now

If you don't want these or can get them without paying for it, no need. If you want them or cannot, might be a good idea.

San Francisco--unequivocally thumbs up!
February 20 at 6:14pm ·
Neil Freeman
Neil Freeman
Erin - I think that's a really good summing up of any grad school, and especially MFAs.
February 20 at 6:38pm ·
Jesi Khadivi
Jesi Khadivi
Where? CCA? Are you there now? I have some artists to recommend that i just discovered. I think one of them just completed an MFA there. Maybe she has insight? Why SF?
February 20 at 6:39pm ·
Carolyn Soling
Carolyn Soling
I agree with Neil and caressa. Yes yes. San Fran is wonderful.
February 20 at 6:52pm ·
Beat Valley
Beat Valley
have christine put you in touch with jess wallen, she's trying to get in a program for curation at CCA right now
February 20 at 6:54pm ·
Sofía Olascoaga
Sofía Olascoaga
wow!! tell us more! i'd love to retake erin's critical bullets and work on... which school/program? say say besos
February 20 at 7:23pm ·
Diego Leal
Diego Leal
nope.
February 20 at 10:44pm ·
Cassie Thornton
Cassie Thornton
ok. it's CCA MFA in social practice... thanks for all the opinions! i just applied on a whim last weekend, late, and the welcome mat rolled out for me. i think the decision depends a lot on what happens with funding.
February 21 at 1:09pm ·
Matthew C. Wilson
Matthew C. Wilson
Hope everything works out w/ CCA, but, if not, check out Portland State's MFA in Social Practice... might be cheaper. The program is less established, I think, but as a city, I'd take Portland over SF any day.
February 21 at 8:01pm ·
Maya Erdelyi-Perez
Maya Erdelyi-Perez
for selfish reasons, yes> for you...could be really good but difficult too. I like Erin's breakdown. She sounds like she knows whatsup. we will talk more.
February 26 at 6:26pm ·

Advice is beautiful

2010-03-03T15:52:00.000-08:00

How do people get into Whitney and Guggenheim for free? Do they offer secret artist memberships like MoMA?
9 hours ago Only Friends · Comment · LikeUnlike
Jesi Khadivi
Jesi Khadivi
press pass. with the whitney there is also a pole around the corner where people put their stickers when they leave. not sure if anyone is still doing that, but they were when i lived in nyc!
9 hours ago ·
Neil Freeman
Neil Freeman
Or you have an old employee card from another museum. Then you lose your wallet so that you don't have it anymore.
8 hours ago ·
Matthew C. Wilson
Matthew C. Wilson
museum admission hacking...

when walking to the whitney, look for other people walking on the street with whitney stickers and ask if you can have their sticker. good call on the pole -- ppl also leave them on the wall outside of the bldng.

the whitney is usually pretty cool about not having your museum id w/ you. just tell them you are an intern at museum X. and when they ask you what department have your answer ready.... See More

guggenheim, more difficult. they want a picture id to go w/ your museum id that just has your name (not that hard to make one if you want to use mine as a template :). if you go w/ someone else who has an id, they can probably get tickets for you both.
8 hours ago ·
Mario Hinojosa
Mario Hinojosa
i used to work at the financial arm of the Guggenheim, when you get back let me know and I'll get you some tickets...
7 hours ago ·
Diego Leal
Diego Leal
the pole isnt there anymore, err. the pole is but they clean the stickers off now. but you can always just tell the people coming out that youre an artist and would like their sticker. they are always happy to give it to you!
6 hours ago ·
Akiko Ichikawa
Akiko Ichikawa
These suggestions are all really great!
3 hours ago ·
Akiko Ichikawa
Akiko Ichikawa
@Jesi, Matthew, Diego: As of two days ago, the Whitney was using a photo of the pole on their website as an advertisement for the Biennial, to show how popular it was, how many people were going (and so how you should too. Advertising 101: bandwagon tactic.) As of today, it's no longer up. The Whitney probably realized how outré they would seem, promoting the use of the pole they are now careful to clean off everyday!

Douglas Paulson
use your union card and secret handshake. if it doesn't work threaten that the union will get kick their asses. if that doesn't work: GENERAL STRIKE

The art movement of education?

2010-01-31T07:17:00.000-08:00

Elizabeth Warren

2010-01-31T07:16:00.000-08:00

So the awesome facts in this video: we spend less on food, clothing, and technology now than in the 70's.
Parents would rather live near a nuclear test site than a bad school district. People are buying into schools.

God darn grad school statement

2009-01-04T21:15:00.001-08:00

One winter day in Finland I took a walk into a big forest with a mushroom expert. After 15 minutes with my head down following a network of puddles, I looked up and didn't see Miyuki. The sun was about to set for the next 20 hour stretch of night. I couldn't see the edge of the forest where we entered and any sounds I made were instantly absorbed by the trees and moss. I had never been so scared. My sense of direction was confused by my anxiety, so I closed my eyes and spun around until I felt that I was facing the direction I came from. I ran in that direction for only a few seconds and the road appeared. The dehabilitating fear was wonderfully humbling.

The contrast between this fear and all previous fears before caused a realization that I have lived a protected life with a narrow spectrum of experience-- limited by my identity and my urban dwelling. My disorientation seemed unremarkable in the context of the daily lives of the Finnish people I related the story to, and I learned to accept that other people's realities have different extremes. A goal of mine is to be able to work independently from the comfort and stability of controlled situations provided by my nationality and my upbringing in order to interact with realities of extreme contemporary experience and to create my own. In search of these situations I confront the unknown with planned unpreparedness. I seek extremes where I can ask questions and develop work based on the answers. The systems I have developed for inquiry include writing and distribution of surveys, offering free collaboration/pedagogy, and meeting one-on-one with people. My interrogation techniques are designed to unravel people's private and public experience (first to themselves, second to me) in order to get a larger sense of what is happening.

When I arrived in rural Finland last winter for an art residency, I forgot my boots. My unpreparedness forced me into a search that took me into several Finnish homes and provided the unintentional research I needed to begin my project. I believe in the openness of a traveller without the right gear. This vulnerability creates opportunities for me to move within a community and to begin to prove my legitimacy and interest in a place and its people. You might call this my discreet system for free education.

Although I arrived with the least appropriate footwear, I travelled with what I needed to improvise some kind of self-legitimation. I have found that my introductions and inquiries are easier if I look like an authority, so I often make a title for myself that is supported with paperwork and business cards. Assuring people of my employment by an institution or a concept in town or elsewhere helps create an image of me as a person who belongs. I used this system to begin navigating the town of Haukivuori, Finland when I had to search for winter boots to borrow. This necessity created the chance to invite people for a free introductory consultation from one of the staff at my consultation firm in the forest—Future Unincorporated. With business cards and a list of complimentary services, I began to build what became a tight schedule and a full rolodex.

To further legitimize my place in a town, I have often worked to secure, build, or find a space where I can invite the public and can curate a situation that will nurture the kind of intimate conversation that I need for my project. In Finland, I began to wander through fields and forests in search of lightly used building structures that could accommodate the needs of a small corporation. After a few days of searching I found an abandoned well-house that was less than a mile from a major road. With minor renovations like wall paper, unblocking the insulation that was blocking a potential skylight, and creating a new floor, I was able to move my desk and waterpoofed cardboard office equipment into the building. Less than two weeks after my arrival in Finland, I was beginning to accept clients for free introductory consultations. We ate cake and coffee until we couldn't feel our toes or see eachother in the dark afternoon, and I learned about what these Finnish ate for breakfast-- which led to the origin of the foods, the significance of tradition, the impact of globalization, and the state of agriculture in the town. By the end of the consultation I had a sense of what each client saw in the future, and after a few weeks I was a hub for information, gossip, and I felt that I had found a place in the community.

In the past this type of built or found structure and the situation that develops inside of them have become a supplementary parasite (a parasite wouldn't live without the place and the place secretly needs the parasite) to what I find in a town, where I can offer complimentary services as a teacher, collaborator, or consultant. I become professionally adaptive-- I offer services that accent, emphasize, or critique--and always supplement the place.

The first project that could be characterized by its supplemental parasitic qualities was the Infinite Museum, which was located in a shack that I built onto the side of the HVCCA in Peekskill NY. I was inspired by the relationship between idea and failure in the work of architect Le Corbusier, so I wanted to realize one of his ideas that was never totally realized: the museum of unlimited growth.

I proposed an addition to the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art as a gesture to begin a constant outward building process in the spirit of Le Corbusier. I built a canvas covered shack onto the side of the museum building, and that became the Infinite Museum. I hired myself to run an outreach program and began to offer classes throughout the town for youth and seniors that were around themes of attempting failure.
My mysterious presence in the institutions of the town as an interested outsider-- suddenly offering workshops to people who did not ask for them, was grounded by the fact that I was working for the Infinite Museum. In one class for elderly women we built modernist renditions of the home they remembered most fondly, and it was difficult to convince some of my simple intentions, but my briefcase of brochures and business cards with the address of the museum signified my authenticity.

The role of the artist in a highly interactive social practice often seems to be that of a professional organizer with clear motivations and a clearer mode of very directed research, evaluation, and implementation. My sense is that this streamlining makes for sterile and predictable work that is too practical to be magical, and so specific that the audience is denied flexibility in interpretation. I hope to transcend the utilitarian aesthetic I have developed as I have followed in the footsteps of artists, activists and architects who necessarily developed skills to organize and activate the public for political purposes. Now that we have seen the large network of individuals that supported the election of Obama, I want to be part of a new phase of socially interactive artwork that builds on the success of those grass roots tactics using a new language of materials and brave experimentation with aesthetics. A very observant and responsive public is needed to expand on the success of the campaign, and the systems developed in art will become the models for how to do this—but I want to see more radical modes of implementation, and less conservative processes. In a time of political and economic desperation, art can be the thing that reminds people how to be keenly critical of their reality.

My next project will incorporate some of the physical remnants of the American recession to prove that physically and conceptually, when there is a depression, a space is created. Using frozen spaces that have lost their function or purpose due to the global financial crisis—an empty office space, a foreclosed property, or an abandoned construction site—from 4 cities, I will create a community redesign center. The center will be a temporary found or built structure in each town that will act as a design laboratory where the public will be invited to come and reimagine the fortune of the community by suggesting a practical form and use for the empty place. Using architectural modeling as the principal method for idealistic re-landscaping, community members will be led to develop macquettes and drawings for the repurposing of frozen spaces in their town so to stimulate their community. There will also be workshops from local community members with expertise in handicrafts and other practices that maximize resources in creative ways to support a lifestyle that can withstand economic fluctuations.

Many of my projects have been successful, but many of them have been underdeveloped or feel unresolved due to my independence from institutional support. I have many large ideas that I would like to pursue with the support of a grad school community at UCSD. In this type of work, I have often, if not always, been alone in the field. I do most work solitarily in order to maintain my powers of camouflage and nearly silent imposition because I have desired total immersion in new places and communities. However, I would like to pursue larger projects with more human support for the development and critiquing processes as well as more collaboration and feedback in the field. I am interested in continuing to develop projects and systems that are recognized within and outside of the art world, that expose opportunities for people to engage in new types of observation and interaction with their society. While at UCSD I would like to pursue the completion of several of my projects with the help of specific faculty members, each who I feel have a body of work and/or a sensibility that has informed my development as an artist.

Peter Doig Acrylics

2008-10-03T11:02:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I did my first full set of acrylics. For those of you who don't know, 'acrylics' refer to the false nail extensions a gal can put on her nails. I bought a bunch of supplies, not quite knowing how they all went together, but I managed a full set, including some 'gel' toppins. So basically I gave this girl 3 inch extensions to her finger nails, and I also gave them a real robust look with a heavy coat of thick hard coating. I am sad to say I do not have a photo of this momentous step in my life and art practice, but I do have what you see above: a painting of Peter Doig's painting called '100 Years Ago' that I painted/collaged onto a large false thumb nail. I have to say it was a successful first experiment, and I was happy to donate it to the collection of Nick C. Herro on this, his 26th birthday. I think he will wear it with pride. Now the kids at the salon have started to make a real scene everyday. Nails are getting did, and I am happy to say that the quality of conversation is getting better as the nail doin skills improve. Yesterday I found out that two of the girls who are regulars in my salon have close family in Iraq. All sorts of stuff is coming out over the salon table.

Trying to get into beauty.

2008-09-26T16:38:00.000-07:00

I need you.

2008-09-26T09:08:00.000-07:00

Oliver Sachs, let's talk about emotional memory.

2008-09-23T08:36:00.000-07:00

Often I can't remember events, people, or facts. When I was young I was known for memorizing license plates, car makes, and could recite entire conversations. Now, it seems that my memory is almost non-existent.

When I do an art project, when it is finished, I all but forget that it ever happened. When I remember it, it is often with bitterness—even if I had a good feeling about it while I was working on it or when it was being shown. It translates as an emotional imbalance, a lack of confidence, or amateurism. I am not disgusted by those traits, all of which I have to some extent, but it does become a bitter war between my intellectual decisions and my gut's hateful memory of my recent past.

About one year ago, my mom moved to Indiana to a farm because she ran out of money and the ability to deal with her previous life. It caused me to recall my childhood, which ranges from unconventional to completely abstract and difficult. I had not really visited my childhood memories since I was in it. It seems like that was a reflex of my brain. It was all protecting my happiness and shit.

I am credited with a very 'present' way of participating in life, but I think it might be that I have no ability to access my memories most of the time. It is great for yoga class, and fantastic at parties and for participating in intense conversation, but terrible for Trivial Pursuit. Sometimes it almost feels like I don't want to escape the forever of the present moment. I dread the end of things, feel anxious and impatient with small changes. I hang on to ideas and forget the reality. But who doesn't?

I haven't spoken to high school friends or had any contact with the past since I left each location. It is undeniably different from the experience of my peers- it is not a generational trend. It has made me a great participant in NY social circles because I easily forget who I was friends with before the present friends came around. When my best friend from High School showed up in NY, I was surprised by the memories she accessed in me and by the feeling of being remembered earlier than my contemporary era. I could not access some of the important memories that Kelly brought up.

For me, every project and experience is linked because it is mine, but I have trouble building on them. I work foundationless, which leads to a sense of always starting over. Everything is always a revolution.

I have trouble interacting with family or even finding a place for them in my life. It is as if I forget them and only their nagging and reminding me can keep me in touch with them—and often it is out of guilt instead of love. It is not that I don't love them, because when I interact with them I do. But I cannot access those feelings when I am moving along through life. I never call to say 'Hi', because it doesn't occur to me.

This is just the first exploration of the failure of my memory. What can I say? I have been disappointed by my brain in the past few years. Maybe I could at least give my mind credit for protecting the rest of my experience from being infected by what might have been a dark history.

BEAUTY SALON!

2008-09-23T08:23:00.000-07:00

A new project. This will take place at BCCP at Brooklyn College this fall.

BEAUTY SALON is a space to explore these two words. The project has many possibilities due to the spectrum of meanings behind the words in the title.
Beauty is something to talk about. As an artist, I am interested in what other people find beautiful.
To begin this project, I will make a map of all the local beauty salons in Flatbush, of which there are many (on the wall if that is ok), and I will begin to install a 'booth' made of cardboard.

Beauty salons are common and often they are able to survive economic downturns because people always need a haircut. Beauty as a pursuit and an interest is inseparable from being human, so no matter what political, economic, or social degradation happens, the salon will be in business.
The beauty salon will be open on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday from 2-6 pm, and I will offer beautification services in return for a typewritten receipt that acknowledges the most beautiful thing that the client had witnessed that day.
*The currency accepted is a story, because the dollar isn't worth much.

Clients are also invited to rent a booth at the salon, where they can offer beautification services and expand the client base (invite their friends). To rent a booth, the stylist is responsible for decorating their booth. All stylists must maintain receipt policy and all beautification must be documented.

The beauty that happens in the salon will be documented and put on the wall, salon style. The accumulation of beautiful images will evolve into a beautiful installation.

THIS IS A SALON
sa·lon n
Also called beauty salon
Also called beauty shop
1. A large room, such as a drawing room, used for receiving and entertaining guests.
2. A periodic gathering of people of social or intellectual distinction.
3. A hall or gallery for the exhibition of works of art.
4. A commercial establishment offering a product or service related to fashion: a beauty salon.

OF BEAUTY
beau·ty n
1. the quality present in a thing or person that gives intense pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind, whether arising from sensory manifestations (as shape, color, sound, etc.), a meaningful design or pattern, or something else (as a personality in which high spiritual qualities are manifest).
2. a beautiful person.
3. a beautiful thing, as a work of art or a building.
4. Often, beauties. something that is beautiful in nature or in some natural or artificial environment.
5. an individually pleasing or beautiful quality; grace; charm: a vivid blue area that is the one real beauty of the painting.
6. Informal. a particular advantage: One of the beauties of this medicine is the freedom from aftereffects.
7. (usually used ironically) something extraordinary: My sunburn was a real beauty.
8. something excellent of its kind: My old car was a beauty.

My apartment

2008-06-16T11:18:00.000-07:00

These pictures are in my apartment, styled by my roommate, Jenny.
That POP! book is from the Milwaukee Art Museum, and that is the dirty floor I didn't wash for a while.

Those are the stripes painted by Alan Oei, all in one night in 2005. There is a mirror from my mom and a collage from a tiny Argentinian guy who was obsessed with Madonna in London. The couch is from THE BIGGEST FURNITURE STORE IN NY, formerly on Nostrand. It was $300 and it was delivered in plastic straight from 1970. No ass had ever touched it directly before me. Or at least I like to think that.

There is the wallpaper from MFTA, probably once made for or used in a bodega bathroom in a Mexican restaurant. That butterfly is from Dominique, via a friend who had a lot of free jewelry from the store she worked for. I gave it to Jenny before she moved to NY because I thought she needed a status symbol. The red trim to your right is candy apple red and I suddenly stayed up all night one night painting that one simple thing the same color as my tricycle.

That is one really hot jacket in front of a wall piece Jenny made out of wall paper, cardboard, and grommets over a month when she was brand new to NY. What a warrior.

I love to see all this stuff from a new perspective. It all has a new life. It has grown up and out without my help. Now I can set it free and move to Africa.

Woah love

2008-06-16T10:57:00.000-07:00

This is Jesi. She is marrying Paul, who I love. Now I love Jesi. Look at her happiness! And her tiny torso! Is that a glow or something?

On starting a new country:

2008-05-15T07:28:00.000-07:00

This is a project completed with a group of 4th graders at PS 276, where I asked them to start their own countries.

Step one was to create a new landform out of felt. They became topographical map paintings of imaginary places.
Next we made tools out of the materials we found on the island. Our resources were wood, styrofoam, wire, grass, etc... You know, 'natural' stuff. Pictured above is a microwave, a chair, a table, a bow and arrow, a cell phone- everything you need for basic survival.

Also above, take notice of the coins on the right hand side. You guessed it, we made currency for each country. But that came AFTER we made treasure maps so we had somewhere to hide it.

After we had developed tools, we could get into some serious construction. We built our own shelters, which we hoped would keep us alive on our islands for the first few weeks until we had the lay of the land. That's where the currency became really useful because we could pay other people from other islands for their services. Everyone could use their expertise this way. And sell it. We are not socialists at ps 276.

You can see the passports we made layed flat on the table above. Travel was also a priority for all these adventurous capitalists.

Somebody might read this.

2008-04-27T10:47:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it is hard to see through a situation. Why did I waste all that time being uncomfortable? What was I doing? Why am I writing this? Someone might read it.When I was in Finland over the winter I had a dialogue with Jennifer Sullivan. We called it an interview, and I learned a lot of stuff from answering her consciously lame questions.
When she asked me about who my role models were, I learned that I had none outside the people who I have intense relationships with. Those people are the only people I allow myself to know, and for being a social person, I am not very open to learning very much about new people.
The people I elevate to role models are the ones who make me feel the best. It is a waste to spend time around people who make you act in ways you don't like. Or that is what I have been saying. But maybe it can be useful to pit yourself against someone who challenges your idea of your so called self. It is hard to stay in an uncomfortable situation. Immediate gratification in any given social situation usually makes the boundaries for interaction. I only present what I want to show and you only stay in the conversation until you are finished presenting yourself. We both push the easy buttons to get what we want, which is usually some sort of self serving advertisement of what we think the other person will like about us. The more people who like us, the more successful people we are.
In social situations past, I imagine people playing more risky interpersonal games. With less stimulation in other facets of life, socializing and relationships must have been more stimulating. The fertile ground of a context can be explored, an exchange can be manipulated and experimented with, and a conversation can be an outlet for creativity. Instead it seems that our creative output is hoarded, compressed, digitized, and distributed freely to an anonymous public, but it is egotistical or un-hippishly immodest to present your ideas, creativity, or complicated self to a local public. It feels compromising to invest in new relationships because it requires a conversation that goes beyond comfort in order to make it special. They might steal your ideas, your ways, your stuff-- your soul.For these reasons, I stayed home the last few weekends. I don't want to go back outside until I have the will to experience people with fewer needs- more selfless and more adventurous. The rest of me can just fit into this web-like infrastructure.

SANS MASCARA

2008-04-25T11:26:00.000-07:00

The mascara test has been going pretty steady. There were definitely some weak moments, but I think the addiction has been reversed. Today and yesterday I wore a slight bit, but it was because I wanted to match my outfit (stylistically- less rugged country bumpkin) but not because I wanted to look like who I think I have to be.

Isn't it supposed to take 3 weeks to be over an addiction or to form a new habit? So maybe I am in the denial phase. Yup, everything is fine. No mascara, no evidence of cry. Maybe what really led to the mascara freeze was the three weeks of depression I endured, and the annoying aftermath of black crust after a sudden dip in mood. Maybe I am making a myth out of a practical decision. Maybe folklore comes out of logistical situations made into something worth retelling.NOT PURENESS.

Sometimes I actually enjoy the concept of eye makeup because I would like to rebel against superficial purity. Like the kind you get in flow yoga class. So while I do want to feel authentic, purity is not what I am getting at by wearing no eye makeup. Sometimes I see people who look pure and often they have heavy eyeliner and eyemakeup on, and it makes their eye balls light up. So I don't want to hate on the practice of putting effort and experimentation into beauty, but it does not have to be basic to existence. It would be great if it became part of a special ritual for a certain kind of day. Like maybe I will wear it only when I teach in the Bronx. Every day in the Bronx is a special day, and any tears shed can be marked with black streaks on my cheeks.

Grad School

2008-04-22T12:15:00.000-07:00

Why would I do that? Would it mean that one day I could do design work for Gucci? I mean I am already doing a lot of their work for free. I was starting to write my application, stating what led me to the decision to apply... what events? I was born, I saw well designed stuff, I wanted it, and I can't stop trying to make it. Please teach me how to do it better and for free. Done.

A solution

2008-04-22T12:08:00.000-07:00

So it turns out I am a scorpio. I feel afraid of what I seem to be doing all the time! Here is my solution.

``I like to ask audiences to consider this as a hiring decision,'' Clinton said on MSNBC's ``Countdown with Keith Olbermann'' show. ``If you were to hire the person you thought was ready on Day One to do the toughest job in the world, what would you look for?''

Everything. And if I was hiring a boyfriend? Also, everything. Let's make everything into a personnel decision. Send it to human resources. Do the paperwork. Invoice later.

Day 3: No More Mascara

2008-04-10T07:32:00.000-07:00

As long as I can remember my mom was wearing mascara. When things were bad it would pool under her eyes. As she got older and the skin around her eyes became looser and drier, she had some difficulty wearing the same eye shadow system that she had developed over several decades, but mascara never caused any problems so it remained part of a daily and weekly beauty regiment. Her eye shadow routine is more complicated than I could understand at its most refined and practiced point, but the application involved layers of dark shadows deepening creases blended with layers of light, bright, iridescent, and undetectable hues to advance important bones and shapes. When she felt she had gained weight and her face shape became rounder and the contours less defined, it became all the more important to feature her eyes with plenty of strategically placed color. As I grew older these types of small adjustments in routine and aesthetic seemed commonplace, and I adopted these systems, though I never refined the processes the way my mother had mastered them.

The weird thing is that my mom developed these operational aesthetic systems by herself. My grandma didn't ever wear makeup, and even bragged to me as a teenager that she never even considered it an option, and her skin was nicer than my young and vibrant mother's ever was because of it. My mom had two brothers and lived amongst farm fields where tornadoes, tupperware, horses, and Catholicism ruled, so her expertise was self taught.

Just because you have nothing doesn't mean you have to look that way.

I guess I thought that the mascara was a requirement for existence. When I was in Finland, isolated from humanity, I was to be found walking across frozen lakes, mascara running down my cheeks when the wind made my eyes tear up. When I was avenged by Montezuma in the Yucatan and hadn't managed to eat for 8 days, I did apply a little mascara before I visited the doctor. It didn't feel like a choice. I also didn't take it for granted.

Every day it feels like a luxury to apply some black muck to my long eye lashes. A little magic trick. I know it changes my whole profile. I worry that I might actually look like a completely different person, maybe not even a female person if I don't have this little accent to my face. Yesterday was day two of no mascara. That makes today day three with no black magic eyes.

Everyone has treated me the same so far. Less gunk is in my eyes when I wake up. No black spots on my pillow revealing the position of my face for 6 hours.

Is this the end of something? I will keep you up to date.

Apple Station

2008-01-19T02:35:00.001-08:00

Apple Farm Station, originally uploaded by cassieshotz.

so many times at once

2008-01-18T06:05:00.001-08:00

so many times at once, originally uploaded by cassieshotz.

Newspapers, clocks, and VCRs.

2008-01-18T05:50:00.001-08:00

What is all this stuff? Do kids know how to use any of it? I suppose the clock and the newspapers are wireless... In a school where there are hidden projectors and remote controlled overhead lamp projector heater wineglass organic microscopes, there are also yellowed newspapers, outdated technologies, and un-digital clocks. I was really refreshed by what I saw in the middle school. The warmth of the institution was easy to locate when I was in the English Department Teacher's Lounge, where a table is always overflowing with homemade sweets, and the chairs were always full with teachers and lively conversation filled the air. There is a sense of community and collaboration that has left the public schools I attended in the midwest and now the ones I work at in NYC. The excitement for experimentation that I received when I proposed outlandish ideas and the energetic effort put into the conversations I had with all the teachers and staff was incomparable to anything I have experienced in my education. So thank you to all the teachers and staff that helped me to get acclimated at the school and allowed me to keep coming back to photograph everything.

my island before snow

2008-01-18T05:46:00.003-08:00

my island before snow, originally uploaded by cassieshotz.

I was busy drawing this when all of the sudden...

my island after snow

2008-01-18T05:46:00.001-08:00

my island after snow, originally uploaded by cassieshotz.

This is what happened while I was busy drawing the first unsnowed island.

THE island

2008-01-18T04:39:00.001-08:00

So this is how it went down. Here is the island I claim as mine. It is off the side of the cemetery in Haukivuori. I sat down to draw it. As I was concentrating, it started to snow. The island changed forms. All the depth of the lake and the surround islands got washed clean, into one flat nordic painting.

I went home and tried to redraw it a few times without my ink getting all fudged by the snowflakes, but the character wasn't the same. Sad thing is that now the ice will definitely not carry me to the island. Anyone have a canoe? I want to go back to say goodbye...

Black Finnish Snowflake

2008-01-18T04:34:00.001-08:00

I was sitting on one island, trying to draw another one. It was a sad day because the snow was melting and I barely made it to the island (or so I thought) because the ice was so thin. Some kind of winter.
I was concentrating on shading the one side of the island in my drawing when a snowflake dropped on my paper. I tried to look really close and notice the real shape of it. I haven't spent much time one on one with a snowflake, and this seemed like a good time to try to understand the shape. I kept drawing and redrawing, and the snowflakes kept coming, ruining my drawing. The drawing was getting blacker and blacker with my many layered attempts to sketch the damn things. I wasn't upset, but only so curious and excited to find a basic shape to these snowflakes that I think are different than those I got to know as a kid in the midwest.

So here is the black Finnish snowflake.

Drawings.

2008-01-18T03:38:00.000-08:00

I had a dream that someone stole my sketchbook and I killed them for it. I never got it back. So, in case the dream foreshadowed a coming loss, I wanted to show you what I have been drawing.

islands.

trees out my window.

A fork in the road of the tree out my window.

Yesterday's shack.

A Request

2007-12-23T01:05:00.000-08:00

Hi.
I am working on some videos out here in the dark Finnish forest, and much of my music is not with me. So, I am asking pals to send me an mp3 in the internet mail.

My first request is for your favorite, most aggressive, sad, energetic, or whimpering pop scream. I am thinking rock and roll yells, but interpret it however you like. If you are equipped to record your own shouts, that would also be great. If you are sending me a blood curdling yell from someone else's song, would you include the title of the song and the artist? And if you cut the yell out of its context, will you leave a little of the lead in and lead out in there?

You can send it right here.
Oh, and if this request is just a pain in your butt, tell me.

Thank you for your audio support.
Love,
ct, phones home.

Happy Holiday

2007-12-22T05:26:00.001-08:00

Finnish Christmas Traditions:
Christmas Eve- Go to the cemetery and put lit candles on the graves of family members and also on the graves of strangers if some of your dead family members are buried far away. Eat light dinner. Many snacks. Evening mass.
Christmas Day- Go to early morning mass (7am here!) and clean the house. FUN. Big dinner: carrot mash up, a whole pig, potatoes, pickled fish, ricey moist bread stuff, berry cheesecake, creamy chopped mushroom pudding, and other things that remain mysterious to me.
Christmas Day 2- I don't know about this, but people with families don't really want to hang out because it is a family day.

Timeline for the future uninc.

2007-12-21T05:26:00.001-08:00

From Cabinet Magazine's Timeline of Timelines:
"Laurence Sterne's novel, Tristram Shandy, includes a set of sketches indicating the non-linear path of a well-told story; narrative digressions appear as deviations from a straight line.

I found this image when I was trying to find ideas for how to communicate ideas of chronology when I am speaking with Finnish people about the future. The idea I have had for a visualization is to use one of the many photos I have found of the local city of Mikkeli as it is reflected almost perfectly in a nearby lake.

The reason I like using this image as a visual metaphor is that I want to create a link between my interviewee's personal futures and the future of others outside of their direct contact. A visual to explain the Bell's Theorem that is inside their personal narrative.

The idea is that the individual is represented by the concrete buildings, the trees and the things that represent their material reality, and the reflection of these things in the water can represent the rippling effect of their actions.

So this is the first image I have used. The timeline will go through the center, horizontally. The top line is the personal story, the bottom is the story of everything else imaginable.

Miyuki Kido

2007-12-16T05:30:00.000-08:00

Miyuki.

She makes houses out of paper. Her works are universal symbols and they function where language stops in communication. Ever so gently they exist as a tiny powerline between her heart and everyone else’s. She has developed this language through her own craft of paper macheing, of which she is a professional expert. Her work is generally tiny. She also uses very simple but sensitive language to communicate about her work. She says that in Japan, there is the infatuation with tiny models based on the idea that the universe can fit in your hand. I see that she is creating tiny worlds, like warm microcosms. They are paper boxes that you can see into. Everyone can see into them and everyone can see everyone in them.

Dog Garden Network

2007-12-15T15:15:00.000-08:00

Here in Haukivuori, there is a network of Dog Gardens. The owners of the gardens don't want anyone to know. Instead of growing grass or having children play in their yards, they have mazes of chain link fences connecting little modules of dog groups, unclassified by size, shape or breed.

My local garden has a minimum of 27 dogs, but sometimes there seems to be a few more or less. It is about 300 meters from where I stay.

There is not much noise pollution in Haukivuori, so if a door should open, or if a person shifts positions in their sleep, it causes a wild caucophony of singing bored dogs. The many different sizes and shapes of dogs make all different types of barkings, woofs, or waachk-waachk (japanese translation). It sounds sometimes like a symphony. Nothing baroque or flowery but like a really angry (maybe a little inspired by Lord) version of 'The Rite of Spring' for the dark of winter. But these dogs wouldn't participate in a Russian song, they are Finnish. So it would be the Finnish version.

The anger inspired by the Dog Gardens in itself is an orchestra of frustration. There is nothing easier to bring up in a conversation with the nearby home dwellers than the dogs. As commonly happens, when someone is drawing a map for me of the area, all I must ask for orientation sake (and to create some excitement) is where the dog garden is. The fury invoked by the dog songs might be compounded to produce a sound much louder than all the actual 24 hour howlings do. The time spent plotting against the garden include: plans to move the dog part of the yard to the other side of the house where the sound would be absorbed by the forest, recording and replaying the dog sounds to the dogs and the owner at an extreme volume, creating a way for the dogs to escape and then catching one and torturing it in front of the others, and my own: hiring a someone to conduct the orchestra. A professional. Hiroshi, can you do it?

Ahh, and the network. Today I met Ana, the public school art and cooking teacher from Mikkeli- the nearest city. This renaissance woman also runs marathons, or she did before she broke her wrist in two places playing volleyball. During the last marathon, she passed the second dog garden of her time. She was so fearful (as she is of our local dog garden) of the dogs escaping and chasing her that she couldn’t pass near the yard. She made a detour and sacrificed her running score time. In a conversation some time after the run she learned that the Finnish government shut down this second dog garden. This is a confusing event because though the Finns require a contract, a license, a series of papers, a signature, and a formal dinner party with a special dance in order to say, get permission to use a new type of scanner, to have a dog garden is unquestionable. This is lucky for the neighbors of all dog gardens of Finland. The owner was arrested and the dogs taken away. One neighborhood is free from dog symphony, but not ours.

Mysterious as it may be, it is also clear that the clever and evil owners of the dogs know eachother, they are friends. They know all the other dog garden owners in South Savo, and they know what they are doing to these wonderful quiet neighborhoods. This much is clear. I am not allowed to say anything else about this.

Deep Winter Theory Folklore

2007-12-14T13:03:00.000-08:00

Today I picked up a brochure for some sort of Suomi Cultural Institution. I know it is for a cultural institution because of the gloss of the brochure and the weight of the paper, the design of the booklet, and the building pictured on the cover, which screams when it was built and why.
The simple idea that occurred to me this evening is because of the picture of this universal late 1990's to early 2000's image of a museum- all romantically reflected in some overlit pond-- that I could identify everything but place in this photo. The museum's reflection in the water is superimposed so it is a perfect vertical mirror reflection, creating sideways symmetry. The gaussian blur used on the reflection part is ever so slight, just barely admitting to be a reflection at all- however it does represent itself as 'reflection in water' enough to read as such without too much squinting and straining. So I argued to myself that the reflection is timebased and the building is more representative of space. So I cut it out. The photo of the non-reflection is real space, its mirror changes with the time of day. Architecture=space, water=time.

This seems politically correct or something. But I am looking around at these places with the descriptions on the signs I cannot read. And I know the visual lingo, though it wants to be indistinct. Colors, shapes, window sizes, landscaping... they all know what they are doing to their visitors, and it has been agreed internationally that a white box with bluish tinted windows adjacent to a well lit puddle means museum. But who knows where the museum is by looking at it? The only thing I can read is what time period it was made, I can guess who made it or what or who the design was appropriated from, and in the photo I can see that it is nighttime when the photo was taken. So it was not taken in Finland in the summer.

So phew. Now that I have achieved status as MA of the Obvious, I get to the point. Time is winning in the scheme of things. Time is a bigger force that space, and it might even have space tied around its smallest appendage. In Finland, time is very slow, which makes space bigger. Buildings are shorter but they feel taller because time is so slow that a short walk becomes long. If you find a building and look up you are so tired and cold that the building is immense. Two floors, each 29 floors high.

And this leads me to proclaim that Finland is a bright black hole.
Ever since I got lost in the big forest last week, I have been much more sensitive to the details of this place. With so much wildlife and such complex relationships between all the wildlives (I found moss that was holding a foreign dead leaf onto a living but bald tree), the interchanges between all the little lives are so dense that they take up space. There is a lot of matter here, but there is an extra layer of interaction between mosses, trees, farmers, mushrooms, bears, and ivy that fills the air. Put your ear to the ground though, and everything shuts up. Quiet. Like nothing is going on. When you step on a bunch of frozen weeds it sounds like an earthquake. There is nothing here if you are tuned to urban energy, but the silence is so filled with action that it is stifling.

A black hole happens when there is so much matter in one minute little space that the gravitational force from all directions is so strong that it explodes all the light out. That's why it is dark here. So much matter made from so many layers of conversations between teeny mosses and old trees that the whole place got yanked in every direction (for only a few months a year) and so it is now dark. The light is all other places. Luckily the snow stores up what it can during the fall and slowly and methodically releases it around noon each day so that for a few minutes Fins can go outside to pick some potatoes.

So,
Finland (FI) = bright black hole (BBH)
BBH = so much matter that the light explodes out (m(n)LEO)
architecture signifies time and evolution
water signifies space, depending on my mood.

Roni Horn in Iceland, CT in Haukivuori

2007-12-14T12:59:00.000-08:00

Mirror, Desert And Mirror
Not Being Here

Here I am. Everywhere I look—north, south, close, and far—I see the same thing. An unusual position to be in, an unusual place too; but is it a place at all? Is it the place that doesn’t change or is it boredom—my mind busily extinguishing all difference out there? There’s a mirror in boredom and the reflection makes it impossible to distinguish between myself and the place I’m in. Somewhere along in time I started to look the other way. Maybe it was in the beginning. Maybe I started out looking the other way and that’s why I can’t recognize the place I’m in. Or maybe I just haven’t come to a place that draws me out. Maybe I’ve only been in a place that keeps me seeing in, not out, and as long as I’m in a place like this I may never arrive.
I was walking for some time. It felt like a circle, I was the center. The sameness of the place obsessed me. It was hard to believe that anything out there could be so uniform. I’d look out, out from between my partially opened lids, each view framed and ticked by my lashes. But the lashes made it clear, they were my lashes, they were a part of me. They moved when I moved. They distinguished me, assuring that I was not the place I was in.
Here I am, I’m thinking about something, I’m thinking around something not here, about looking slowly, almost staring. I’m sweating even though it’s cold out. My gaze lingers on things not here, my gaze mingles wonder at the nothing out here and the distance of what’s inside me. And even though I haven’t arrived yet I wonder what I’m doing here.

The new homeless. We are establishing our own landmarks, naming places, finding poetry.

2007-12-05T14:38:00.001-08:00

Everyone knows you in Haukivuori. That is what I have been told. Everyone knows I am here, they know where I live. Haukivuori was its own town but as it has been bereaved of its independent status. The end has been mourned in the blogs I have read, and by the last mayor (at the christmas fair in the public gym) who will preside over Haukivuori as an independent town, autonomous and proud, with its own town meetings. When I got into the Saksala Artradius minibus from the bus station in Mikkeli, the first topic of conversation was all about the new Haukivuori, which is now being taken as part of Mikkeli, the larger town on the block. The new buildings, oh the ugly new buildings. The bureaucracy, it is so much! The colorless powerpoints that go on for hours, the focus outward on tourism, the lack of funding for the arts! And then there are those barking dogs. Oh the dogs, they are so bored. No one is taking care of them. Listen to them barking all night. Why can’t they bark on the other side of the house. And the son of the woman who owns the dogs, he is so clever but once when he was late for school, it was unearthed that no one helped him wake up! A mother and a father who don’t wake their son up! And he doesn’t have any good winter boots!

“The ensuing exploitation soon demands airports, military, and paramilitary bases to defend what is being siphoned off, and collaboration with the local mafiosi. Tribal war, famine, and genocide may follow.

“People in such zones lose all sense of residence: children become orphans (even when they are not), women become slaves, men desperadoes. Once this has happened, to restore any sense of domesticity takes generations. Each year of such accumulation prolongs the Nowhere in time and space. -Ten Dispatches About Place by John Berger

Everything is changing. The story of Haukivuori sounds like the story of the everyplace, and everyplace is boring. It won’t be a village, it will be a zone. It’s ok! It will have wi-fi! This is the conemporary struggle. Don’t you want to go organic now that you read about what that is on your aunt’s wifi in Mikkeli? Then surrender your cute well built homes for shipping containers that can be easily stacked and floated in the many Finnish lakes after the forests are cleaned out and the earth is shipped elsewhere to build mountains for indoor waterparks in post-climate change tropical Canada. No one I have encountered has complained about the massive deforestation that is taking place on the edge of every forest. It seems to be a fact of life that is not worth talking about. What about the lakes? People are draining the lakes!?

“The Caribbean writer Edouard Glissant puts this very well: “the way to resist globalisation is not to deny globality, but to imagine what is the finite sum of all possible particularities and to get used to the idea that, as long as a single particularity is missing, globality will not be what it should be for us.” -big B

Another note of advice as given by two locals: Don’t read the news, because you can’t do anything about it. It is unrelated to your actual life here in Haukivuori. Sadness of other people will ruin your experience when you should be writing your own story unaffected by exterior affairs.
If you did read the news, you might celebrate the fact that there was only one piece of trash to be found on the street during 6 hours of wandering.

I will be establishing landmarks, naming places, finding poetry.
Give up on the way things were, Haukivuori: “We can foresee a whole new geography, a kind of pilgrimage-map in which holy sites are replaced by peak experiences” Hakim Bey, TAZ

Escaping Noplace and Notime

2007-12-05T14:28:00.001-08:00

New ideas abound in no specific direction. There is no escape. Maybe I will have to complete something.

‘“Escape” is one of those words I cannot hear without abandoning myself to endless ruminations. The search for the anchor in which I am engaged seems to indicate for me an avenue for escape, perhaps a metamorphosis, a resurrection. With a shudder I dismiss the thought that the prison is my mortal body and the escape that awakes me the separation of the soul, the beginning of a life beyond this earth.’ –yeah yeah it is another stinking quote from If on a winter’s night… it is a really good one for universal quotes for a lonely girl in the winter.

A loss of imagination would leave me stuck in whatever situation I land in, mediocre and without a wandering wondering desire to imagine things outside and away. It is so easy to slip into survivial mode in easy or hard times, but hopefully one can always imagine another world where space and time aren’t so long. You can’t live in an imaginary world if you cannot imagine it. You can get stuck in bleak grey and white reality if you aren’t careful. So no escapism, just a contract with Finland that my body is here but my brain can and will escape into the netherlands of the neverlands.In a more logistical direction:
I think it is a good idea to use this solo time, especially this empty space before I fill it up with a project, with copious amounts of email exchange. This has been decided to be ok with my inner management. The human relations department in me likes to write and to read the notes of others. I would like to initiate contact with all the army of office workers, homeless people, and perpetual inbox checkers in NY who I have failed to involve in a serious conversation in the last year of ridiculous kinetic energy. I might have to make a format for it so that I feel a good excuse to take it seriously, and maybe one or two others will as well. I am clearly not getting enough attention from the homeland.

I also think it would behoove me to write a new artist statement and to spend the time I usually wouldn’t to work it out, refine it, and to let it show me who is boss.

I would like to work on a video I have been thinking about where I use still photos I have taken in sequence and to weave them together with drawings and blank frames to make tiny narratives that read a little like film, but are so quick that they barely read. I am so mystified and wooed by other people’s teeny products. Products is a bad description. I don’t have a better one. But within the well presented but never featured life clippings of art and non-art friends alike, the little curatorial decisions like one blue set of eyelashes, a mix cd, a pile of books or dvds, a podcast, an unpublished email, a sticker on the notebook, tiny written notes in the journal, a bedroom wall display of jewelry, a good date, or infinite other perfect nothings are my favorite art things. They are fearless and honest, and they have to do directly with a person.

Anyway, I feel an insane amount of fear in showing my identity in my own art. The idea of authorship is a slippery slope for me. When it is intentional and featured as art in a place that advertises it as such it is especially daunting. The cursed responsibility that accompanies the presentation of one’s self as one’s art means that failure weighs ever so heavily on the ego when your friends don’t respond. Avoidance is of the utmost importance for we the weak of knees and other joints and arteries.

This little tiny gesture of packaging little observations or moments that I treasure so that others can like them too is a conscious step towards a braver, more flexible and experimental maker of junk. My life is in fact far more interesting than my art these days, and if I think of this as a mode of communication and a way of keeping people around me close to my experience, this work can take on a new functionality that my other work has never known.

Communication is a missing tooth in my art mouth. Never tried it, never wanted to. Now I don’t have much else since I don’t see people. Not even dead ones or gnomes or fairies (yet). The footage I have is of cars passing, highway fires, bulldozers, wild dogs running, horses standing, walking on the street, walking in the snow, walking on a sidewalk, walking in a forest, riding the bike, riding in a car in North Carolina, and things like this. What I hope is to combine them to find that the aesthetic and my perspective creates a strong enough link between all of them. I hope they tell a story or at least smell like something. That would be so nice.

Shine on sister!

2007-12-05T14:06:00.000-08:00

Come on in, it’s cold outside!
I can see the revolution now!

Miyuki is vital to my experience. She is the perfect company for me—we don’t have to talk but we know or I assume we have lots to say, lots of time to figure what those things are. We eat together and wake and sleep together. And I like to pour her the coffee she makes. It is not terribly different from the way I functioned with my mom as a child or with any close friend, roommate, Anne, or other close person. In fact, I think that the main criteria for relationships is if the other person can make the coffee. If they make the coffee I am so very happy to serve it to them and to keep their cup full. I even like to clean the coffee pot after. I will make them a compost pile if they don’t have one and I will put the grounds in it. I will make breakfast to go with the coffee. But if I should go to the bathroom and my coffee gets cold while I am gone, I think it is necessary that they fill up my mug or make sure the coffee is still warm. And if we are in the midst of a conversation, maybe they will make some more. Once, when I was staying with Paul in Berkeley, I missed my plane due to this type of situation. We were sitting in his yard, and the super black coffee kept coming. We were talking about shoelaces and freedom or some such thing, but it could not be stopped by some silly need to return home on time. It was a plane well missed.
Today is already better than other days for several reasons. For one, when I went to bed I was filled with anxiety and it had a lot to do with things I left in NY. Things I left in the fire. But I meant to leave them there and not to let them simmer in my pockets. The woodburner keeps me warm, I don’t need friction in my head and heart.

So I have taken to this midnight yoga, and instead of the normal routine of moving around and trying to empty out my brains, I just spilled them all out on the floor and almost passed out from doing a headstand for as long as I could stand it. Then it was easy to go to sleep. But I woke up at 630 or so with a start. The bad feelings returned. Bad is the wrong adjective. Unsettled. I feel unsettled. That is because I am unsettled, physically, in my routine, my relationships, my thoughts, my stomach. It is what I asked for.
So back to today. It is better. A look outside, a cup of coffee. A shower, and Miyuki making more coffee for me to pour.
She is reading my copy of Invisible Cities because she makes cities out of paper with holes for light to come in. She made dinner last night and after we spent a few hours sitting with our tea and reading our Calvino.
Today is also better because there is a plan. We will walk the long walk to the center of town. We have been warned against this but we are both walkers. To the bone. And if I am not allowed to discover new things I might die. And no one would know. So to whoever might read this, if I die in Finland, it will be in the process of discovering new things, the opposite of how they want it-- in a warm dry room with lots of soft wood things to sit on and drink coffee out of. Also, if anyone is reading this. What are you doing?!
What I mean is:
1. Why are you wasting your precious, well earned or selected free moments?!
2. Do you feel like you are reading my diary? Is that terrible? Maybe I am not so interesting.
3. Why aren’t you writing me a letter? If I told you all this banal stupid nothing, don’t you feel like you must reciprocate? I am such a good listener and all I have is eyes and time. Eyes and time.

4. If you read this, I want to tell you that:
Jesus is cool jesus is scared
Baby you are the only car I drive.
Foolin around fooling myself
Baby you are the only car I drive.
Easy to touch easy to find
Baby you are the only car I drive.
Melts in the mouth
Melts in the hand
Baby you are the only car I drive.
Out of my skin, out of my life
Baby you are the only car I drive.

How shaving ruins time and space

2007-12-04T11:21:00.000-08:00

"There is no difference between time and any of the three dimensions of space except that our consciousness moves along it.” The Time Machine, H.G. Wells

And my consciousness is in the toilet much of the day. Freedom to think whatever all the time is not so glamorous at first before it gets comfortable. My thoughts are quite limited:

To shave or not to shave. Maybe I should save that for tomorrow when I am calmer, my hair is longer, I will make a better decision about how to deal with this. It could turn out that I don't shave my legs for the two months I am in Finland. Who would know? Besides, I don't have time to do it right now. There are so many other things I thought I would be working on this morning. How silly of my to sit and debate this.
Actually, I think I should just go ahead and do it. The shower and the whole nine yards. But I AM NOT going to wash my hair. Absolutely not. I have not done anything to cause excess oil or dander that needs to be washed out so soon. I am living and breathing purity, who am I to waste precious water and soap and electricity (I can't NOT dry my hair when it is cold) when I practically AM purity itself. And who knows what my hair will look like if I wash it and dry it in such a dry climate. It could be hideous. And then I would have to wear a hat more often, maybe inside the building, in the studio, in the library, the kitchen... even though I am usually by myself or with Miyuki, looking at my own afro is way more than I can handle. So I will shower. I will shave. I will absolutely not wash my hair.
I am so glad I shaved my legs. And a shower, it is so soothing, so warm, and now I feel as though I officially started the day. It is important to have some sort of signal to self: the day starts... do dee dooh... NOW. It is now clear what has to happen. The day. The formless, flowing, timeless, spaceless, dark day of Haukivuori, Finland.

One thing I get very caught up in in every new place I venture to that has some sort of extreme climate is the effect that the weather has on time and space. I cannot say if time here is longer or shorter, as the days have gone by very quickly with very little sleep. I think the best part of the day is precisely between the hours of 11:30 pm and 2:30 am. It couldn't be any darker or more silent than it is right then.

Back to my spacetime problem- a walk to the gas station/coffee shop/bar (pictured earlier) that takes less than ten minutes to get to is considered a trip. Taking into account the prep time for the walk, I suppose that there is a time commitment that is longer than 10 minutes, but the distance feels physically longer than it would in NY. Because of the bodily discomfort you necessarily experience in travel, you can't help but notice more of your physical experience of walking, and all these details drag time out into noticeable milliseconds; but the noticing takes longer, and soon one milli is three or four. That is one part of the extension. This sort of thorough physical involvement in the experience also effects distance, as every step is a little dance with death. Your right pinky toe is going numb, your sock has a rupture under your heal and a little drip of water got in and is frozen on the bottom of your foot. Where will you step so not to trip on a branch, sink into a secret stream, slip on some ice? And that is assuming you are alone. Mix it up with some slow talking, english as a third language locals where conversation is forced, slow, and broken, and soon your auditory sense is also consumed by the extension of time and space. Further, look up and wonder why you can't see the stars, wonder about the few sounds that survive the silence, notice every detail of the one car you see in your one hour/ten minute walk or that you remember seeing on your other walk--(and why aren't there any cars driving tonight? Is it some sort of holiday?) and then try to understand that this is probably the equivalent of walking two long blocks down Fulton St. in Bed-Stuy. The space time interval between Saksala Artradius and the gas station described on wikipedia timespace article: "Certain types of worldlines are the shortest paths between any two events, with distance being defined in terms of spacetime intervals. The concept... may be thought of as "pure motion" in spacetime, that is, free from any external influences."

so in addition to walking extreme distances, my first few days schedule looks like this:
7:30 am wake up. read articles on computer saved from previous night (no wi-fi in room)
8:00 coffee, continue reading on couch.
9:30 check email in library (down the hall)
10 forest investigation, walking in the vinter vunderlund
11 breakfast with Miyuki (we rotate cooking meals every day)
12 wonder/wander/errands/ try try try or give up and read a story or play with cats, have ideas at the kitchen table, listen to music, fiddle, whittle, mcdiddle.
2pm yoga, meditate
3:30 eat a snack, hang out with Miyuki, read stories
4 nap
7 dinner with Miyuki
9 email, write, look up articles to read in am
11 walk outside, record sounds or take pictures
12 yoga
1am read stories, draw, map ideas
2/2:30 sleep

The idea that I can do anything at anytime is amazing and overwhelming. I crave a structure so that I can take mini vacations. Everything seems really distant, and because it is seemingly impossible to leave my residence, I don't even consider the outside world. So there is my timespace problem for today.

Another Flexible Personality

2007-12-03T07:15:00.000-08:00

Today is maybe a little bit scary I that it is the beginning...

Geographical dispersal and global coordination, just-in-time production and containerized creativity kits, a generalized acceleration of adaptation, and a flight of barely accumulated capital into the lightning-fast international financial black hole: International Artists Beware. and take a break from your laptop before it takes away your imaginary 401k.

The Flexible Personality by Brian Holmes was what I read when I woke up.

'... it can be said that the networked organization gives back to the employee—or better, to the "prosumer"—the property of him- or herself that the traditional firm had sought to purchase as the commodity of labor power. Rather than coercive discipline, it is a new form of internalized vocation, a "calling" to creative self-fulfillment in and through each work project, that will now shape and direct the employee's behavior. The strict division between production and consumption tends to disappear, and alienation appears to be overcome, as individuals aspire to mix their labor with their leisure.[26] Even the firm begins to conceive of work qualitatively, as a sphere of creative activity, of self-realization. "Connectionist man"—or in my term, the "networker"—is delivered from direct surveillance and paralyzing alienation to become the manager of his or her own self-gratifying activity, as long as that activity translates at some point into valuable economic exchange, the sine qua non for remaining within the network.

Ahemm. Fear wells up in my throat when I read this. You and me and everyone we know are getting closer to perfection. My perfection exists in a seamless relationship between my ideals and my life, my career and my imagination, my magazine subscriptions and my groceries. I desire intimacy with my boss that is the same as with my best friend, and my paid activities are blurred by my equal devotion for my job as for my personal practices. And no one can tell me that my time spent learning how to bake naan or tracing pictures of Jay-Z doesn't add to my professional practice? I don't even see the bounds between my shower and my job, and I can't see why I am not paid for all of it since one probably wouldn't exist without the other.

I taught an 'action' art course recently where the idea of the performance of every day and the horizontal sacredness of all rituals was a prominent thread. I was teaching what is closest to my heart and to my daily life. I would never deem my habits or practices as a 'calling' but it is possible that I talk about it like it is. My skin crawls to feel that I am part of a movement of 'networkers' working in a 'sphere' that ultimately creates its own models of surveillance, mistrust, and dirtiness that have been designed and serenely embedded by the perfect corporate model. Perhaps we are no longer mocking the corporate systems but sincerely recreating them for ourselves. Maybe I should get a well paying job designing at a company desk so I can afford the subscription to Adbusters and Harpers so I can be inspired to continue on with my seamless payed art dreams.

Fear two: being the 'networker'. By the way, you should really come over for dinner, I have this friend you should really meet. I think you two would have a lot to talk about and the potential to work together or make out or something.

'The computer and its attendant devices are at once industrial and cultural tools, embodying a compromise between control and creativity that has temporarily resolved the cultural crisis unleashed by artistic critique. Freedom of movement, which can be idealized in the figures of nomadism and roving desire, is one of the central features of this compromise. The laptop computer frees the skilled intellectual worker or the nomadic manager for forms of mobility both physical and fantasmatic, while at the same time serving as a portable instrument of control over the casualized laborer and the fragmented production process; it successfully miniaturizes one's access to the remaining bureaucratic functions, while also opening a private channel into the realms of virtual or "fictitious" capital, the financial markets where surplus value is produced as if by magic, despite the accumulating signs of environmental decay. In this way, the organizational paradigm of the network grants an autonomy which can be channeled into a new productive discipline, wherein the management of social relations over distance is a key factor, constantly open to a double interpretation. To recognize this profound ambivalence of the networked computer—that is, the way its communicative and creative potentials have been turned into the basis of an ideology masking its remote control functions—is to recognize the substance and the fragility of the hegemonic compromise on which the flexible accumulation regime of globalizing capital has been built.

First day is thinking day.

2007-12-03T03:25:00.000-08:00

Today is the first day I have had time to think in Finland.
So far it has been a long day spent rotating between bed, desk, kitchen table, couch, other kitchen table inside the library, and back around again. I haven't gone outside since last night at 2am.

I officially met my roommate, Mayuki, who I have been thoughtfully paired with by THE MANAGEMENT. By thoughtful I mean that she is friendly and her art is very good. She makes houses out of paper mache that you can look into. There is a series of houses with secret lives happening inside, viewable through a peephole, which are titled something like 'Light comes from the outside' or 'the house of Jack' (I am becoming more sure by the moment that my attempts to remember the titles are only approximations)... Anyway, I hope to interview her in the next few days. We don't speak the same language exactly so it will be a face to face writing/speaking interview of sorts. A buffet of the senses for understanding of a person, all at our little ikea kitchen table in the woods.

Right now I think that we are both trying to figure out what we are doing here in Finland on the edge of many forests and lakes that the weather prohibits us from wandering to.

One thought I had this morning when I woke up with a start at 8am is that in NY I have been in the CHAOS-EFFICIENCY-ARMY, and it has prepared me for the trenches of the silent-order-forest. Like, maybe I can complete a thought or something here. Maybe I can finish a sentence and follow it with another completed sentence about the same idea. But I might not have been ready to do this ever before. Nor would I have known enough to want it. The good news to self is that all signs of schizophrenia melted off of me as I flew over NYC. It is not just me, it is me mixed with the kinetic humping thumping grinding big time city that makes it difficult to concentrate enough to remember that the water is on because I was going to take a bath.

Last night as I was too excited to sleep after a little wandering in the snow, I began to read If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino. How appropriate to come to this:

'It’s all very well for me to tell myself there are no provincial cities any more and perhaps there never were any: all places communicate instantly with all other places, a sense of isolation is felt only during the trip between one place and the other, that is, when you are in no place. I, in fact, find myself here without a here or an elsewhere, recognized as an outsider by the nonoutsiders at least as clearly as I recognize the nonoutsiders and envy them. Yes, envy. I am looking from the outside at the life of an ordinary evening in an ordinary little city, and I realize I am cut off from ordinary evenings for God knows how long, and I think of thousands of cities like this, of hundreds of thousands of lighted places where at this hour people allow the evenings for God knows how long, and I think of thousands of cities like this, of hundreds of thousands of lighted places where at this hour people allow the evening’s darkness to descend and have none of the thoughts in their head that I have in mine; maybe they have other thoughts that aren’t at all enviable, but at this moment I would be willing to trade with any one of them. For example, with one of these young men who are making the rounds of local shopkeepers collecting signatures on a petition to City Hall, concerning the tax on neon signs, and who are now reading it to the barman.

However, I don't actually feel much envy for the people I have seen yet as I usually do. I think that is because I have had very limited experience of people because I am in an extremely remote place. People really don't have nearly the effect on the environment that they have had everywhere else I have ever been. If they have had an impact, it is well covered by snow and trees.

Everyone that I have met has boasted about homemade breads and family recipes, home remedies, ice fishing, and singing, and their clear skin and rosy cheeks brag about their simple life and great skin care products. Ha, just kidding about the skincare products.

rainbow for sadness

2007-12-02T13:30:00.001-08:00

Defrost rainbow at Zurich Airport yesterday.

Harmony competition playground.

Big savings happen close to heaven.

Construction is a natural phenomenon like rainbow.

Forceful traffic patterns form natural wonders too.

Packing up for Merida

2007-08-09T07:10:00.001-07:00

Fast breaking news is that I am leaving for Merida in the Yucatan on Sunday. It looks like a pretty big city, I know it contains half the population of the Yucatan which is in the 2 million neighborhood. I cannot imagine what it will look like or feel like beyond what I see on people's blogs and in y tu mamá también. I was talking to someone last night about ancient pictograms and I am most excited about learning about Mayan culture, which as advertised maintains its hold on the community despite the tourist culture that has descended on the scene. There is also supposed to be a center for traditional medicine in Hopelchen in the Campeche state where a lot of Canadians go for herbalists, bonesetters and midwives. Mmmm, Canadians.
I think I am mostly ready to go. I even said goodbye to Martin on the Block. Martin sits in his old green Lincoln every day (when he is not on his stoop) and if I don't say hi to him two times a day, things are a little out of whack. Since I was in Wisconsin for a week without telling him he got a little nervous and started asking every white person on the block where I was. So I made it back, only to have to tell him I would be gone for 6 weeks! All the alternate side street parking revolutions I will miss! So many times Martin will sand and re-bondo the patchworked green coat on the car that I will not compliment, and how many times the inside will be re upholstered with new found blankets and fabrics! Martin has lived on Halsey since his kids were small, and he is probably 150 years old even though he looks like he is 50. So he has been here a while and he knows EVERYTHING that happens on the street. It is his job. One time when someone in my building got rid of an old Apple 2e and a tv, we installed them at Martin's house. He asked me if the tv was the type of thing with 'movin pictures'! So we welcomed him to the age of technology. Now you can see the tv on at night, lighting his living room. After about three days with the computer, I found it on the curb. Martin doesn't have time for that junk. I understand.
So even if only for 6 weeks, I feel like I have to say goodbye to Halsey St. By fall there are less people on the stoop. All the Jamaican men will have to put their canaries back inside. So goodbye Bed-Stuy, my warm and hostile home sweet home.

Northampton Massachusetts

2007-04-09T19:13:00.000-07:00

There are still places within 4 hours of the city where a grilled cheese sandwich on 7 grain bread with tomatoes and swiss cheese costs $2.

Hey that's my block!

2007-03-31T20:50:00.000-07:00

holistic jane

2007-03-31T20:47:00.000-07:00

sincere combo #2

2007-03-31T20:46:00.000-07:00

sincere combination #1

2007-03-31T20:43:00.000-07:00

AYURVEDA + NEIGHBORHOOD

2007-03-31T20:18:00.000-07:00

AGAINST MAPS tries to understand the forces at work in urban space by abandoning the whole of the city to study the separate interlocking parts. A map assumes authority through the implied power of its maker's perspective. To see an area from above, as in a map, is not to participate in it. The goal of being AGAINST MAPS is to stay close enough to the ground to rearrange the rocks and to hide stuff in the cracks of the sidewalk. Maps systematically abstract space in order to narrate the details of a place. This science of abstraction assumes the semi-permanence of details and the value of networking them. To be AGAINST MAPS is to monitor the functionality of buildings and space by and for people that use them. To become AGAINST MAPS begins by noticing how things are going where you live.

AGAINST MAPS IS A METHOD created to evaluate the effectiveness of space for people in a particular community. This method involves analysis of a distinct area in a temporary time frame, so as to develop site specific questions that will lead to an appreciation for the many detailed and organic individual parts that compose the whole. Following the analysis of a space, AGAINST MAPS does not attempt to create permanent structures. It is more interested in adding, subtracting or changing subtle ephemeral elements that impact the ambience of a place. By focusing on unique details and independent experience, a community can be developed and maintained from within.

SITE = NEIGHBORHOOD Each neighborhood is a local community with unique characteristics made out of many different levels of activity, physical systems, and structures of varying permanence. In order to thoroughly examine and understand one place and its residents, I will focus attention on one block in Toronto for one week.

NEIGHBORHOOD = BODY As I examine the intricacies of the block I will define it as a social body and compare its functions to that of a human's. I will monitor the internal systems of maintenance and preservation as well as the impact of outside forces on the place and the people in the neighborhood. The neighborhood's human likeness depends upon necessary and constant evolution, as it is a container for many infinitely unique and changing humans. A system of evaluation must therefore be constantly adapted to analyze the health of the communal body. Commonly the well-being of a neighborhood is considered only when problems in that neighborhood demand the attention of outside authorities. Health of cities is primarily observed during situations of crisis instead of a constant and gradual pursuit of comprehensive health. Disasters, crime and poverty are likely dealt with by a government that descends upon the neighborhood. Generalizations based on these difficulties begin a cycle of knee-jerk attempts to isolate and fix singular problems instead of treating a city or a neighborhood holistically. This process reflects western medicine's lack of concern for prevention, a lack that leads to generic prognosis and a sterile system of treatment. This practice of reaction instead of prevention disconnects each natural system and organ from all the others. Problems such as crime or poverty, a disease within this metaphor, are related to a fault in the larger underlying structure and can be treated as a sign of a greater imbalance. When disease is understood as a call to explore the whole system, a higher level of wellness can be achieved.

AYURVEDA is an ancient Indian form of holistic medicine. It is a practice that incorporates all aspects of human health and well being. The eight arms of Ayurveda include internal medicine, surgery, ears, eyes, nose and throat, pediatrics, toxicology, purification of the genetic organs, health and longevity, and spiritual healing. The basic procedure of analysis of a body is similar to western medicine or city planning. Three vedic barometers of diagnosis are used: see and observe, touch, and inquire by asking questions. These meters determine the dosha, or psychological/ physical type, with particular strengths and susceptibilities based on the characteristics of universal elements: space, air, fire, water, earth. In Ayurveda, problems occur because of an imbalance in the doshas. A person is born with a unique combination of elements and as they mature, the balance shifts due to their situation and experience. This shift can cause an unhealthy imbalance, and it is the goal of Ayurveda to bring the individual back to his or her original combination of elements. Consistent attention to this balance in each of the eight aspects of an individual's health alleviates the need for medicine as a response to malady and increases the ability of a person to achieve a constant state of health.

AYURVEDA + NEIGHBORHOOD The relationship between Ayurveda and a neighborhood starts with the observation and analysis of the function of the space on the block in an unsystematic way, through sensitive observation and detailed analysis. After seeing the block first-hand, I will consult with a Vaidya to determine the dosha of the block. Based on the constitution of the neighborhood we will devise a week long program of actions and installations within the block that will encourage rebalancing or maintenance.

Bed Stuy blooms in Spring

2007-03-28T11:28:00.000-07:00

Thank god I survived that rough long winter. NOT.
But either way, I am ready for Bed-Stuy summer. Questionable papaya, coconut water, the island that is my roof, the surround sound effect that occurs on my block when everyone blasts HOT97 from their car stereos all at once. To celebrate, I bought new shoes at Payless and fed the compost pile while wearing the new shoes. During my hour lunch excursion to Payless, I met about 5 women from the neighborhood who were shopping for their 8-11 year old girls who, they complained, wore much larger shoes than I. Size 8! 9! 10! The general consensus is that after my generation they started putting something in the water, something in the food. 'These poor kids, the young ones are huge and the old ones never mature" -- quite a natural phenomenon! I was part of the 'old' category who never matures. Who knew?! I had a great time at Payless today, and I would like to thank the knowledgeable salespeople and fellow shoppers for helping me to select the best shoes for my feet.
So as per last spring, it is back to the garden of the fire escape and the transit authority of my bike.

"natural state" at the Heritage School

2007-03-26T19:05:00.000-07:00

Students in Government class in their senior year of high school at Heritage in Harlem are eager to participate in a play about the social contract. Why is this subject interesting to a kid from Harlem who is about to bust out of the nyc education machine? The hook could be tacit consent. That theory, written by Locke, focused on the benefits that we accept from a source creating a relationship based on constant reciprocation. Whether we choose the benefits or not, when we are granted something, do we owe something of equivalent value to pay for what we have received? Perhaps that is a good question to ask. I can see how the attitudes of an individual about this might be linked to their generation and cultural heritage as well as every other factor.
A social contract is silent and understood in most cases. And different contexts, social atmospheres, and time connotes different readings of the same invisible rules. A sense of national pride might not translate to the same cycle of benefit and service on an interpersonal level or vice versa.
Leaving the educational system with or without an education (these kids have been awarded an honest education from Heritage), some growing up with State 'benefits' to supplement their family's basic needs, or at least being surrounded by the monuments to governmental benefits all up and down 106th st could/should have induced some strong feelings for or against the 'generosities' of the state and nation. Do they feel like they owe anybody anything? I don't feel like I owe anything for my free public education.

Politics of Vacant Land in LES

2007-03-19T15:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday CUP (Center for Urban Pedagogy), led by Damon Rich gave a tour of the area known as SPURA or Seward Park Urban Renewal Area

We viewed Seward Park, the big brown bears of coop housing that line the east river, and the vacant parking lots that hug the South side of Delancey on the east side. How could you forget the wire fences with the tarps draped over them that say "Can you read this? Others can too! Advertise here!" as well as the treacherous moonlike ground cover- a mix of construction leftovers and the unwanted beverage containers from the cars going to Brooklyn on the Williamsburg Bridge. Maybe you've considered throwing something at this area as well when you're riding your bike onto the bridge, jumping the curb of the ridiculously inconvenient median that serves as a ramp up onto the bridge, also known as an obstacle course or death trap. The photo on the left is of a woman (THE WOMAN) who has lived in this neighborhood for 63 years, since she was 20 (I don't have her name because my handwriting got too messy by the last part of our walk). In lavender from head to toe, she passionately defends the LES in all its diversity as well as for its baked goods and its opportunities for working class living. I wonder if her kids know what a nearly extinct breed of revolutionary she is.
We were almost able to go up inside one of the coop buildings, which would have been cool. I had totally misunderstood these buildings, and I offer my apologies. They look like an army of evil bears from my ride on the bridges and from above the island they are so stark and, brown. I didn't realize the concentration of parks and culture that has evolved around and because of them. Of course there are the stories of tenements being leveled and people being displaced by less than generous private companies, but the people we met on the street were happy to show off their affordable NY residences. Yes, the idea of the buildings is frighteningly close to a Le Corbusier insular brutal-box of city with its own commercial, spiritual, health and recreational institutions, but this version worked. They have a strip mall of bakeries and several synagogues and shoe repair stores. It is the real old New York that me and my contemporaries 'missed', but the fact is that I didn't recognize it for the two point something years I have been in NY.
Keeping with the high threshold for acronyms that any government agency maintains, a new and novel one (for me) is what some of the coops have been titled: NORC = Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities. Aka old people are holding tight to their affordable soon to be priceless apartments. And so the neighborhood caters to them. It's quiet. Each coop has a mural in the foyer
by Hugo Gellert of important socialist visionaries (and Einstein). Prices for big apartments seem to be in the half a million dollar range, insanely inexpensive for Manhattan, and the LES seems to be a hotbed for a continued battle for affordable housing while it isn't even a conversation piece in most other parts of Manhattan.
The final moment of the walk'n'talk was standing in the vacant lots on Delancey with no particular destiny. The conclusion for the area seems to be a constant borrowing of space. The LES is a visual battlefield where the dialogue between old and new, wealthy and working has overwhelmed a lot of landscape in proportion to the relatively small island. Luckily they still have a couple ladies in lavender who are old-fashioned-fearless.

Vanauley St., Toronto

2007-03-16T11:22:00.001-07:00

FROM THE RAP DICTIONARY
PROJECT ORIGINALS: A violent Bloods set hailing from the Vanauley Walk complex in Alexandra Park; a Co-op housing community in downtown Toronto, Canada. The P.O. Boys, as they're referred to, are said to be major players in the crack/cocaine trade in the downtown area, but are also known to be involved in break-n-enters, robberies, theft, fraud, extortion and juvenile prostitution. It is believed that this gang has been in existance since the mid 80's and are in their third generation of gang bangers. Traditionally, their enemies include street gangs from the Regent Park area, who have been so since the 80's. What sparked the conflict between the two groups, and continues to cause tention to this day, is unknown. The Project Originals have clashed with gangs from Parkdale as well as Regent Park, and are known to have ties with known gang members from the Esplanade area.

So, Vanauley St. above Queens St. is the block where I will work on my Ayurvedic Urban Planning Project. You can see it here. A stream of images, photographed by Jim Ruxton at Subtle Technologies are available here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/evilarchitexture/
Here is a "blog devoted to examining how immigration and multiculturalism are changing Toronto and Canada": http://hogtownfront.blogspot.com/search/label/Vanauley%20Walk
Le Corbusier Strikes Again!: This image is of Vanauley Walk, swiped from a website: Master builders
meet citizen activists
where we are reminded that:
"The harmonious city must first be planned by experts who understand the science of urbanism. They must work out their plans in total freedom from partisan pressures and special interests; once their plans are formulated, they must be implemented without opposition."
Plans to "blow my little system to smithereens," she wrote, "make my blood boil slightly." It seems in and around 1964 the major redevelopment of downtown Toronto 'slums' took place around Alexander Park.

you can eat dinner with my art in amherst, mass

2007-03-14T13:14:00.000-07:00

we've been here a long time, we cannot abandon it

2007-03-05T18:40:00.000-08:00

THE REALIZATION OF SELF THROUGH ARCHITECTURE: So anyone starting out that morning in search of princesses to save, Holy Grails to quest for new countries to be discovered, souls to save, lands to conquer, or lost paradises... to all those who leaving the comfort of daily routine, were searching for themselves through the magical and heroic acts of creation, architecture appeared unexpectedly, after the first bend in the path.
It loomed enormous and immobile, full of years of glory, of dreamt-of perfection, of marble and chrome, of polarized glass, of corner stones, of dried mud.
It consisted of innumerable geometric forms, as in an infinite polyhedron, out of which grew organic excrescencies, tensile structures and pneumatic appendices. Innumerable libraries were contained within its body, and the golden mean and divine proportion were not sufficient to describe it. This was the great animal and the mirror which hunters had created and followed after for as long as memory could tell. It was said that whoever ate of it would become immortal. It was also said that only from the mystical union of the subject with his representation could the existence of the subject himself derive. There was therefore dramatic problem of self realization, since the hunter had to create the beast in his image and likeness (the mirror) in order to recognize himself therein, and on the other hand, it was diccicult to create an image of oneself wihtout a mirror. Several other efforts had been made in the past, through mean statistics and the trial and error system. Naturally, all the creators of the creature had died, leaving erronecous descriptions of the creative process, as an ultimate mystification, in order to render the way more difficult for the other hunters...
-Superstudio

Chris

2007-03-02T09:45:00.000-08:00

He is living a music video.

3rd St., Gowanus

2007-03-02T08:35:00.000-08:00

Oswego County NY

2007-02-21T13:51:00.000-08:00

emotional librarians/ cataloguing mayhem

2007-02-20T19:57:00.000-08:00

In a paper called, "Has cataloguing become too simple? Why it matters for
cataloguers, catalogues and clients," Paul Staincliffe gives an emotional read on the state of cataloguing for library purposes, and in doing so brings up some interesting questions about the shifting position of library and librarian in our access obsessed digi world as well as our instinctual/habitual gathering, digitizing, and organizing of information.

Cataloguing, as an art or science is not specific in its reason for existing. Information Science was once at odds; split between the arts and sciences, then confirmed to be science, and now appropriated as a mode of art making and is engineered to suit the www ready population. Now the question lies more in whether cataloguing (especially for library purposes) should split itself between following pre existing rules or move towards creating complete access to the widest population it can reach. The conflict between rules and access is in that if there is total access, the chaotic structure of the web would upset the principals that empower the rules, which are: 1. we all follow the same rules 2. the rules are interpreted the same way, and 3. we understand the catalogue exists in a global environment. The split has already taken place and from my perspective, access has been favored in the public library system of Brooklyn and NYPL. The idea of library/librarian has shifted to supply the library "client" with what they need by mimicking the tools we are able to use.

We catalogue things because they exist and we are compulsed to organize things in order to understand them. The desire to digitize all information is widespread and all encompassing. Even when we have the literal object in our hands, there is something valuable to us in scanning it with i-sight and showing it to our online community, or maintaining our own library catalogue online (http://www.librarything.com/). I definitely feel this compulsion. More versions is better. But to what end are we collecting information on our hard drives and on our ftp sites? All the endless projects to network information on and offline, to catalogue endless resources is all mysterious labor with incalculable cost with no clear far reaching purpose.
An analogy that was used in the paper was that the idea of "catalogue" (analog of course) was to be built like a wall, adding one brick at a time, all surfaces coming together in relation to all the others to form a solid whole. With the amount of sources and information available, it seems that our wall would be growing with gaps that anticipate all the other information that will be missed initially.

ownership and access. they hate eachother.

vienna, a coloring book.

2007-02-20T19:35:00.000-08:00

"Delete! - Delettering the Public Space"
Happened: Jun 6, 2005

Delete! � Delettering the Public Space is a huge public installation that takes place on Neubaugasse in Vienna�s 7th District from June 6 � 20. During this two-week period, all signage will be covered by yellow foils and plastic. All signage (barring those needed for safety), company logos, advertising, symbols and pictograms will be obscured in order to focus on various aspects to this art project organized by Christoph Steinbrener and Rainer Dempf. Will the Viennese be lost in time and space without the media-driven bearings they have come to expect?

This is ultra exciting to look at given my upcoming project where I want to help a city block to find its authentic self using Ayurvedic concepts of classification and systems of care.

china beat me/ mystic city planning

2007-02-18T12:12:00.000-08:00

China takes DIY approach to mountain greenery

Associated Press
Wednesday February 14, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

The green-painted mountainside in Fumin county, south-west China. Photograph: China Daily/Reuters

Villagers in south-western China are scratching their heads over the local government's decision to paint a barren mountainside green, it was reported today.

Workers who began spraying the Laoshou mountain last August told nearby residents they were doing so on the orders of the area authorities, but had not been told why.

Some villagers believed Fumin county officials were attempting to change the area's feng shui - the ancient Chinese belief of harmonising the physical environment for maximum health and financial benefit.

I'm a lightning rod for jesus.

2007-02-13T18:51:00.000-08:00

Last week I accidentally went to the UN, which was a strange but slightly thrilling experience. For one thing, this sign is hand painted or colored in. However, there was an exhibition of Holocaust survivors' work inside the lobby of the UN but all the work on display were low quality digital print. From very far away they passed as paintings and prints and were framed very nicely, but up close they were pixelated. The meditation room is mysterious and otherworldly. A 'mysterious mural' by painter Bo Beskow is behind a huge slab of stone.

There have been some interesting reactions:

"The U.N. Meditation Room (right) is built in the shape of a truncated pyramid. In the center is an altar made out of magnetite, the largest natural piece of magnetite ever mined. For meditation purposes it is probably the most ideal spot on the planet, since the magnetite altar has its foundation straight down, built into the bedrock of the land below; tapping into the energies of the earth itself. The mysterious mural also helps the worshippers tune into esoteric energies, and helps facilitate a state of altered consciousness."
or
Two weeks ago, I was in the United Nations while on my seventh trip to New York City. I stood in the meditation room, which contains Satan's altar. I went into this room to do spiritual warfare and bind devils through the blood of Jesus Christ. The room was designed by the late Secretary General of the UN, Dag Hammerjskold, who said that the black stone monolith or block is "every man's god." The room is 18 feet wide at the entrance, which in numerology is 3 sixes. The room is also 33 feet long and tapers inward to form a truncated pyramid. There is an abstract mural on the front wall, which is full of witchcraft symbols, and in the middle of the room, is a black stone block, which weighs exactly 6.5 tons or 13,000 pounds. The black stone block has a certain kind of magnetism about it, and when I walked into the room with my praying wife, I could sense the intense presence of an evil force beyond description. This is where the world leaders and Illuminati masterminds go to meditate, which is why it is open to the public only in the mornings. Once the sun moves from antemeridiem to post meridiem only the adept in witchcraft are allowed into that room, for that is witchcraft doctrine regarding meditation. As the sun gives way to waning light and the female power of the moon goddess, the meditation room at the UN becomes off-limits to what they call the "profane."

Anyway,

Sara and Ari visited over the weekend, here they are at Salmagundi, the art club on 5th ave where I met Lisa Yuskavage and awkwardly invited her to the Project 1981 show on Friday.

Ken Resseger had an art show, here he is with his work.

All I can listen to is "I'm a lightning rod for jesus" by Calvin Johnson, but sometimes also the Clash or the begging and bragging (fundraising) on WNYC. Otherwise, people have been eating because it is that season. See above. See Jenny eat. See Joe eat. Eat, kids. Eat.

Moscow? Berlin?

2007-02-13T18:31:00.000-08:00

Nope, Brighton Beach. Does the picture above mean the cursive 'i love you' tagger still exists? this is a fresh one, this bus stop was not labeled last week. maybe the writer moved to the south of brooklyn after graduating from pratt with an mfa in 'creative writing'.

g train afterparty

2007-02-11T00:22:00.000-08:00

After leaving the Project 1981 opening in Queens, we were forced to rely on the G train for transportation home. Introducing, the gang. A gang.

a little funny

2007-02-11T00:04:00.000-08:00

Project 1981 opening night for "It isn't funny anymore"

her game

2007-02-08T21:38:00.000-08:00

this is the game i have been making, i think it is done now. you can make things or ruin them and slowly travel along the path of the river. if you make it across the board, then you have to figure out what to do- because then my job is done. you can be the mobile sky scraper, the sailboat, or the exploded.

the difference between a pond and a puddle

2007-02-05T20:03:00.000-08:00

puddle. definition of waterbody here. adopt-a-waterbody (utah) here. Puddles are often considered a source of recreation by children, who consider jumping in puddles to be an "up-side" to rain.

Not just a puddle, not quite a pond.

A puddle is a spontaneous water body determined by a surface and a water source. It is mobile and adaptable. By preserving a puddle it becomes a contained man made ground water resource, or a pond. A pond can be traversed by boats and can show its awareness of the night sky that floats above. A pond is an institutionalized puddle with restricted water flow. A puddle moves freely in all directions, unchanneled.

In Ayurveda, the doshic analysis of personality/body type places a person as a combination of universal elements of water, ether, air, earth, and fire. If you are a Kapha dosha, or combination of water and earth, to be successful the earth is in there to provide a natural structure for the water. A happy kapha supposedly will create their own natural structure to keep themselves from flowing in all directions. Channeling energy requires a substantial ability to create and maintain direction so not to seep into too many cracks at once.
A pond seems more dignified, and the puddle more pathetic. But, I like the underdogness of the puddle. Humility in a body of water is always good.

pumping out kitties

2007-02-02T22:39:00.000-08:00

this cat is coco and she is about to squirt out some babies real quick like. we can safely blame the guy waiting outside our gate below.

back in the basement

2007-02-02T22:23:00.000-08:00

cold as hell but less murky than i expected. cafe bustello comes to my rescue.
the first image is the pond/puddle and the billboard/sailboat is my first attempt at making a sky to float on the water. the rocks in the last picture are paper mache discarded brooklyn telephone books, which there are ever so many of. they make lovely rocks or spitballs or whatever you need them to be. anyway, things are back to normal. i haven't spent more than 25 minutes of waking life at home for a few weeks. i am also pretty excited about a book of public school bldg photos i have been unconsciously building. i got new photo paper and found a lame binder. perfect.

skyscrapers and sailboats

2007-02-02T21:25:00.000-08:00

If we could combine the two designs, we could have a travelling autonomous zone, another facet of the temporary autonomous zone (TAZ).

Here is an attempt at being a sailboat and a skyscraper, an eyesore and a 7 star hotel:
"The Burj Al Arab is the tallest building with a membrane structure, the tallest hotel in the world, and the only hotel to have been awarded seven stars. It contains an atrium that, at a height of 591 feet, is the highest in the world. This building was designed to break every record and for its construction to be an international event. It appears in modern iconography alongside the Eiffel Tower; the Statue of Liberty, the Sphinx, and London Bridge in a fantastic panorama of the new 'wonders of the world.' In other words, it is already recognized worldwide. None of its features pass unobserved, beginning with its sailboat shape. Purposely situated on an artificial island 920 feet from the coast and connected to it by a road it preserves the privacy of its guests...."
all the new wonders of the world.

PUT YOUR HANDS ON THIS BLOG

2007-02-02T17:58:00.000-08:00

Certain airwave preachers tell you to "put you hands on the BLOG (radio)!" to receive a blessing or healing. The modern media are by definition forces for alienation -- and yet -- they contain within them hidden & unplanned magical linkages which are IMmediate -- or at least far more direct than reason would allow. No technology can leach itself clean of the residue of magic which lies at its source -- and communication tech is the most "spiritual" of them all. The mail is full of gnostic traces -- even of love. Why not initiation?
Last night when I read the treatise on the hate of email delivered in the "intellectual situation" of the new issue 5 of n+1, I felt very bad. I decided to limit my emailing, but I also thought of the above statement by Hakim Bey in Moorish Mail-Order Mysticism. I am not chained to the office, but I am chained to communication. Babble. But is it so bad? Efficiency has been ruined by cell phones and email and constant communication creates an excuse not to ever really do anything, just to talk about it. The author (I cannot say with certainty who) complained that we are desensitized, unobservant and rude. Yes, yes, and yes. But could we Please say that something is being talked about that needs to interrupt meals and be paraded in confined spaces? With ample communication, we are able to find out more faster, to apologize for tardiness, reschedule; it does make getting to know people easier and more internationally possible. Are we supposed to know what someone ate for breakfast in the Honduras? No, but we do and it's interesting. I may have ADD but uh, I am so thoroughly immersed in the culture of multi communication o rama that all I can do is apologize in a text message to everyone that just read my hemming and hawing.
Anyway, onto Mail-Order Mysticism, I agree that communication is magical. Information is passed and with email it is terribly mysterious. There are no rules for it and despite all the spam and chain mail and poorly written letters, when someone says something nice or in just the right way, email can make me react in not computered ways. Writers are my favorite people because they have worked so hard to communicate using what we have been giving. And I love recycling. But they can be a depressing bunch.
I was trying to find some old emails today that were important media specific emails. And so here is a really good email from times past, and I had not met the person who wrote it before it came:

Miss Thornton,
  Puzzles are like fish.  And I am a sportsman with a hybrid SUV.  I want
to outwit the fish but I don't want to kill him.  So upon catching the fish
I hold him, marveling for a suffocating moment, then release him back into
the stream.  I shake up his box and store him between Monopoly and Trouble.

  I have a friend who's grandfather was an artist and he owned a very old
and very large house in the Hamptons which he filled with mildewing
textiles.  Then he died.  And the rugs and blankets and pillows and hand
towels continued to mildew and fifty years of architectural magazines
continued to brown and the house became the sort of place where teenagers
congregate unsupervised during the Summer to wear bikinis and eat popsicles
and get disemboweled by madmen.  In short, the house is terrifying.  But
also quite lovely.  It's the unspoken Hamptons.  No one wears white linen
pants with white linen shirts and brown coarse chest hair.  It's cheap beer,
scrambled eggs and unadorned crackers.  And popsicles.

  Projects.  I'm always tripping over projects.  I have frames full of
thousands of crayons, pigeon feathers, glue bottles, assassinated
presidential memorabilia, pencil shavings, cigar boxes full of dominoes,
bird cages, mirrors, wallpaper samples, shreds of graph paper, gum wrappers
and a thousand mutilated magazines.  And paperbacks.  I'm convinced a young
man could forgo the expense of higher education and learn everything he ever
wanted to know from paperbacks purchased or found on the streets of New
York.

  Well Miss Thornton, I'm going to go toast something.

teachers lounge

2007-02-02T10:53:00.000-08:00

Happy Birthday dj donut and Phil Glass!

2007-01-31T20:30:00.000-08:00

To celebrate I drank Mojitos with Alison and then listened to as many arpeggios in a row as i could stand. As a dedication to Alison's bday and as a review of the month which closes in one half hour, I review my astrologyzone.com Scorpio forecast and see what sweet little lies Susan Miller cooked up for last month and if she hit any nails on the head. Alison really likes talking about astrology and one time we made a functional model out of cherry tomatoes and pennies and squashes on the kitchen table of the universe. One day (in a few more birthdays) she might become the next susan miller.

this school

2007-01-31T20:04:00.000-08:00

this school could exist now or 40 years ago or in 14 years. it feels like the end of the world or the beginning, but design takes a lot from it, because something tells me that it's not taking much from design.

Lying about natural phenomena

2007-01-30T20:13:00.000-08:00

That's what I'll do.
So the story goes for my new piece of art that will be on display February 10 here.
Two parts make the piece. The first part is a photo collage I have made of parts of puddles I photographed mostly in Bushwick and Bed-Stuy during this past summer's heatwave-- when all the hydrants opened up for a pool party in the streets.
The collage looks like a sparkly puddle or pond and is printed about 24x36" on paper. It will sit on the floor surrounded by stones I find in Brooklyn, which will gesturally contain the water.
Second part of the piece is a lil billboard with an image of what looks like a starry night sky that can sit next to the gigantore windows. The image is actually the homemade pond but super saturated and extra contrasty so it looks like nighttime sky in a place where you can see galaxies and stuff.

The project is a bunch of lies about our experience of nature here in NYC (the climate/culture of turbo environmental awareness/total inactivity). The clean and clear puddle water in the streets was caused by sweaty children. The 2d pond is preserving the idea of water as an image and an idea. The symbolic preservation of water as a resource is just a worthless ceremony.

The faux night sky billboard mocks the NYC one with invisible stars. But this more ideal sky is water.

So, the title of the show is "It isn't funny anymore." There is no confusion about sincerity in my work, it is amusingly present even when it's not funny anymore. I think the piece worries about hyper preservation of ideas with ignorance when it comes to the actual thing.

Everything in our NY experience is constructed. So now I am lying about natural phenomena too. Or just constructing my own versions. But I suppose that these homemade celestial bodies are not so much fake as they are my own.

protest posters

2007-01-29T22:31:00.000-08:00

2007-01-26T22:47:00.000-08:00

A dog! A bookmobile! Hank-n-books! The bookmobile is totally putting the Library of the Streets out of business. They have a staff of three people who fill the streets with joy and books. But they don't limit themselves to the joy of people, they are open to k9's as well.

I have become rather excited by the lagoon blue that has been added to the entrance of every public school in NYC. Notice the paint job on the landscaped front yard: the lovely concrete pool blue bushes compliments the new digital sign in front of the school that has recently replaced the screaming security guards.
The new subway technology that puts us on par with the likes of San Francisco (bart) and European train technology is being tried out on the L platform at Broadway Junction. Very exciting.

I just ran into this photo, the first addition I built onto a museum as a study for the Infinite Museum. This is a little 3d photo collage of a add-on shack on Lee St. in Jewish Williamsburg. In this photo I first tested out the expansion of the HVCCA.

cheap wine

2007-01-26T17:11:00.000-08:00

The story of living in NYC: trying to remember that everything that you can't see is always happening and contracting amnesia on scheduled days so you can rest. Eagerly attending to the radio, the news, the family, the culture, and everyone else's culture probably isn't healthy and doesn't allow for sleep but here we are masters of everything. I think we are addicted to knowledge. I have been addicted to exercise, to food, to people, to a ritual, to coffee, but in New York I am on a compulsive search to discover information that will excite me. I join and follow many colleagues in the search. Scouring the publications, wandering the streets, documenting everything: trying to know something first or more than thy neighbor. Trying to find something to be critical of. Being critical of everything, especially when it seems acceptable to others. I think the desire for a unique body of knowledge is not that different from the desire for organized religion. It is not acceptable to be holy, but it is status quo to maintain a scrupulous journalistic questioning of everything. Don't have an opinion unless you can support it and keep the churches in the strip malls and the museums expanding in every direction. Our American education is very passive and there seems to be a movement towards creating a infallible structure of intellect that we can believe in with more than our tender loins. Is it my generation or is this a permanent NY framework? Nothing is ever cutting edge enough. The artists are always ruining everything for the crazy people when they appropriate the turbo-nerds' lifelong work. No idea is original and no one gets to own anything that is worth owning. Cory Arcangel is boring and he stole my college boyfriend's projects. Relationships seem important from an anthropological standpoint but are very repetitive and cliche in practice. Very few chances are taken in proportion to the chances there are to take chances. There are websites to act as catalysts for couch surfing. Experiences remind us of good websites, websites lead us to human interaction; Nerve.com sounds like a hybrid of the flinstones and the jetsons: Neanderthals01011100. Embarrassment is not easy to come by when everything is so understood, and accidents are prevented instead of responded to when preempted.

some earth

2007-01-25T18:30:00.000-08:00

from the plane, around 4:30 pm travelling east over some fancy landscapes.

Anarchists vs. Hippies

2007-01-25T18:07:00.000-08:00

In Berkley, California, a fine line divides the anachist frozen soy stick vegans from the organic goat cheese eating vegetarians: rats. I witnessed an instant of battle. The anarchists killed a house rat in a trap in the house and the vegetarians winced. The anarchists called the vegetarians wimpy and pathetic and the vegetarians put their heads in pool of soppy soy milk granola. I have to say that I sided with the vegetarians despite my fondness for zines and intolerance. I hate to see a dead rat and now the kitchen is filled with infinite little ghost rat cries.

California is like a caricature of itself when in Berkley. Drugs and tea and new age and sun. Good food, ugly buildings. Tanned homeless people and vast hills. Dumpster diving and car pooling. These are the things my california dreams are made of. And this is why I missed my plane when I tried to come home.
Sara Blaylock's curatorial endeavor at Blank Space Gallery seemed to go well. This is her friend Jamie who lovingly spray painted every beer can with pink or brown. One old college acquaintance saw the card for the show with my name on it in San Francisco and came to say hi. That was very exciting. I like to pretend she is my fan base. Her and my mom.
The show was very professionally presented. It was weird to be reunited with my work after such a long time, especially because it hadn't seemed much like art to me before, more like mail. But it was a good experience to have made a piece and to let it go out into the world with out getting my grimey hands all over it. Here is a picture of the piece:

These guys spent about 2 hours talking with me about NY, cable cars, and a movie called 'Remo Williams' which they went and got for me during a lapse in our conversation.

Anyway, my project was born out of running into a Swiss girl in Iceland. We kept in touch and decided to do a project where I designed a construction site and she made the appropriate building that would come out of it. So I made scaffolding for a floating skyscraper and she made a homeless building that fit inside. Then Sara made an Oakland version where there were homeless boxes for roaming mini people.

The highlight of the trip was either heading to Marin County and tromping around in the Headlands or missing my plane due to sitting in Paul's yard with way too much coffee and nice california sun complaining about the anarchists and 'pop'apocalypse (paul's version includes a reversal of the poles and massive volcanic eruptions in 2012).

dirty bronx sunset

2007-01-25T18:02:00.000-08:00

January 11, 2007
A moody sunset in the Bronx. The smoke billows really stood out in contrast to the saturated greenish skies.

Ryan=Still Walking

2007-01-16T19:06:00.000-08:00

I hadn't heard from dear Ryan since New Year's Eve at approximately 11pm. But with good reason, because it looks as though he has been strolling across the east coast like the two footed gentleman that he is. He could not post to the walkspot so i will do the dirty work for him.

beautiful business

2007-01-16T18:55:00.000-08:00

My receipt sheet. I have been spending a lot of money on art supplies for children. The creative desert that is the public school system relies on me and what I can carry in my backpack to Canarsie, Manhattan Beach, and the Bronx to provide the creative component of thinking.
This is the building (with the high attention to gutter design) that houses the school I teach at in Manhattan Beach. Temporary for almost 35 years and still going strong! If you could see through the school you would see the ocean.