New Project - The Town Below
Starting a new project called “The Town Below”. For now, it will be at thetownbelow.tumblr.com and can be linked from the top of this blog as well. I will be posting some sketches and illustrations that I’ve been working on and may expand into a little shop for prints and stuff if people are interested. I will also do my best to continue posting on this site at a more consistent rate.
Social Work
I think, and hope, that knowing a little bit about my past will help you to understand me and me to more easily put this post together. These, I realize, are both selfish motives but, then again, so is writing a blog.
I’ve spent the better part of my life, as most people under the age of 30, in school. Preschool was followed by kindergarten was followed by grade school, then middle and high school. All of this was, I was told, in preparation for college. I arrived at an institute for higher learning with no idea what-so-ever about what to study or how to study it, only with the knowledge that I liked listening and playing rock music. Music it is! I declared, both orally and with the choosing of my major. This quickly gave way to the erratic and completely unmethodical choosing of many other majors before arriving back at music. This isn’t particularly important to the story, I just felt like butter (read: on a roll).
In my pursuit of musical education, I was exposed to many different types of work. “Classical” is such a weak term and, for that matter, wasn’t really what I was experiencing. Primarily, this was a function of my instrument, percussion. Modern percussion is a relatively new concept and the instruments we played and extended techniques we used were authored long after Bach and Beethoven had turned to dust, or at least really gross skeleton things. “Modern” percussion literature, particularly percussion ensemble works, were completely foreign to me and many sounded like a circumstance of materials colliding with one another. John Cage and his 4’33” was the pinnacle of confusion for me. I’ve included a link there to a performance of it. You may want to turn your headphones up. Or down. Or whatever. Experimental music was of no interest to me until, suddenly, it was.
I couldn’t explain the phenomenon. Perhaps I was playing devil’s advocate or, as it’s otherwise known, being an argumentative ass. Perhaps I had come to an epiphany, a true “Eureka” moment. Or perhaps my instructors finally wore me down with the rhetoric of modern music and its supposed worth. However it happened, I couldn’t get enough of minimalism, atonality, and aleotoricism. Viola! I had changed.
So it has been with art (to return to the point of all this). Who doesn’t love drawing and painting? I think of this, now as the rock music of the art world. That may not make sense, so I’ll briefly (promise) explain. There are a lot of non-classically trained musicians who play rock music. There are a lot of people who draw or paint without formal education. Members of both categories may be completely inspired, genius creators of true art. I don’t say any of this to belittle them at all. At. All. I simply mean that, for most people, rock/pop music and painting/drawing are more easily understood, or were for me, as forms of music/art.
Ignoring (for now) modern works like Piss Christ, Marilyn Diptych, Action Pants:Genital Panic, etc., etc., I will jump onward to my newest fascination/love: Social Practice Work.
Wikipedia, somewhat startlingly, defines social practice as “art whose primary material is a person-to-person exchange, interaction, or participation”. I know, right? I kinda felt embarrassed using that as my go-to for the definition, but it worked out just fine. The first time I’d every heard of this sort of thing was through the work of Rikrit Tiravanija. Say it with me: RIK-RIT TEE-RA-VA-NEE-JA. Very good. His undermining of the gallery system through social experiences at first seemed like nonsense. Silly and, admittedly, fun nonsense but nonsense none the less. (I had to say this last sentence out loud. You know, for funsies.) I’d like to say that I gave it a good think over and quickly discovered its merit, but that’s not going to happen for a few more minutes.
Not much later, a teacher/mentor of mine, Lee Montgomery, opened up a course on broadcast art. Lee is a founding member of Neighborhood Public Radio, whose work was just featured at the MOCA in Los Angeles as part of their Engagement Party series. My classmates and I were fortunate enough to be asked to participate in one of their events which centered around work being experienced through portable radios with headphones. This event was my first personal experience with interactive, social art. Suddenly, the work of Ricky T (my new nickname for the artist mentioned previously) made a lot more sense. The interaction of attendees, not the food cooked or the sleeping bags laid out, was the product. As the master painters of the Renaissance had hoped to draw reverence for God from their audience, Ricky T had hoped for something simpler but no less important for the times we live in. For one person to look over at another, with a mouth full of food, and smile, striking up conversation, was as great a success as one could hope for.
This success crosses great distances with the work of Conflict Kitchen, a street side restaurant serving food from country in which the US is engaged in some sort of conflict with. Aside from bringing pedestrians meals from afar with a message of peace, the kitchen organizes dinners, via Skype, with families from the countries their cuisine comes from. Through this simple method, people are made people in a powerful exchange fueled by a common experience.
Social practice work is both accessible and powerful, which is difficult to say about virtually anything these days. The idea that modern art could be something enjoyed by anyone is something that staunch critics (read: assholes) may poo-poo all over, but look at artists like Josh Short, whose Hell Yes! culminated in the building of a cardboard muscle car and an invitation to barbecue and tell car stories. There may have never been a more appropriate title for a work of art.
I leave you now with the only thing I can think of to reward you for hanging in this long. Waffle Shop.
THE NEW ART: Manifesto
Art is no longer sacred.
Art is no longer defined by the artist.
Art is no longer the product of an extraordinary mind.
Art is no longer challenging, resorting to esthetic appeal alone to satisfy mindless people, considering themselves experts on what it, Art, is and isn’t.
Art is no longer an exertion of will over a medium.
Art is no longer going forward.
THE NEW ART is a return to form.
THE NEW ART is a return of power, from the hands of the many, the bland, to the few, the light of our culture.
THE NEW ART is a celebration of all that is new and different.
THE NEW ART is a funeral for what has been hung up on the walls of our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and so on.
THE NEW ART removes the need for outside interpretation and critique.
THE NEW ART inspires new interpretation, from a place of carnal and guttural nature.
THE NEW ART requires no words for its message because it is beyond the capability of those words to describe it.
THE NEW ART is sublime.
THE NEW ART is perfect.
THE NEW ART is singular.
THE NEW ART works toward the future, considering the past only as what has been and what shall never be again.
THE NEW ART is beautiful because its creator has deemed it so.
THE NEW ART must never be given back to those who only wish to copy and repeat.
THE NEW ART must be gripped so tightly by those who have wrestled it from those frauds, that their fingers may be removed before they allow art, the old art, to live again.
THE NEW ART and its creator must believe that the life of old art, in the new era of THE NEW ART, would be an abomination.
THE NEW ART makes a corpse of what has been; beginning the moment something new is started. What is old must never be raised because doing so would be against God and, more importantly, against THE NEW ART.
THE NEW ART is all that is important.
THE NEW ART is that which sustains our hunger for beauty.
THE NEW ART is what makes those who call it theirs significant.
THE NEW ART will never allow its creator to settle for art.
Forced inspiration
Sorry I haven’t posted in a while, I suppose I’ve been quite occupied*.
I find it difficult to post even now, as I don’t know that I have anything to say. I’ve opened this window a dozen times in the last two months and have inevitably closed it again with little to nothing to show for it. I imagine it’s because I haven’t been inspired to write, but that will not do. I desperately want to write, not for your benefit but for my own. No offense. So what, then, is the problem? If one should want to do something that is within their ability and right to do, why wouldn’t they do it?
Writing about inspiration, admittedly, is a cop-out. It’s a topic that provides its own content, a self-propelled machine running perpetually on hot air, the likes of which fills all artists’ heads in some capacity. It is that self-propellant property, however, that lends it some consideration. The nature of inspiration allows it to strike at any time and, conversely, take as long as it may between strikes. What to do, in that interim, is where I struggle and perhaps you do too.
The wonderful thing about art is what people outside of it seem to be the most frustrated about. Art can be anything. Quite literally, EH-NEE-THING. Josh Short sees cleaning up a street corner and keeping the debris in a plexiglass trash can as a work of art. Jeff Koons, with his Made in Heaven series, brought hard core pornography to the gallery through sculpture and paintings of he and his wife. My own project, KCTI, stems from the silly question of what a cactus might do on the radio. All of this gives someone, calling themselves an artist, the freedom to do whatever they like and call it art. Whether or not other people agree, we may talk about some other day.
So, I ask myself, if I may do anything I like, talk about anything I like, and call it whatever I like, what’s the fucking holdup? There is a hesitation that comes before any action. I don’t say hesitation as a moment of fear, however, but as a moment of consideration. This is a moment of qualification and evaluation. Is what I’m about to do:
- Worth my time
- Important to me
- important to others
- Otherwise meaningful in any capacity
It’s difficult to meet all these criteria. I’d imagine virtually nothing does. Do others simply have the will to overcome this hesitation? Do they care about this at all or is it purely impulsive. Perhaps this dialogue come afterwards, in reflection of what they’ve created. This is my struggle and hopefully the documentation of it will be instrumental in overcoming it.
I shudder to think that Nike has been right all this time in their encouragement to “Just Do It.”
*While this is true, it is also an attempt to find myself here.
You’re on my team.
When thinking about a collaborative project, I can’t help but think of a team. Teams work together to accomplish one goal. That goal is usually to win. What they are winning can vary from situation to situation, but the idea is always to succeed. Maybe that’s a better word than win. Regardless, the idea of a team brings to mind the opposition from another team. I think this is where my inclination towards a competitive project comes from. The idea of strangers competing with each other looks to me like a pickup basketball game or a round of stickball on the streets of New York. What more iconic sense of community is there than those sorts of neighborhood games. Freeze tag, hide-and-seek, kick the can. Those are the games of my childhood and they were played with anyone who wanted to join. There was no one more important than anyone else, as the games were designed to have the primary character change from round to round. “You’re it!” one might cry, as he or she suddenly became part of the mob, relinquishing the singular role that drives the game’s operational mechanism. Collaboration through a narrative, as a drama or something similar, is a little bit more frightening to me. In this scenario, there is a necessity for one person to take charge. The narrative must be written and, in that, I see collaboration being more of a roadblock than a bridge. While it may be possible to divide the narrative up, like a campfire story, I don’t see the result being something rich. The potential, I think, is much higher for failure. Failure, not only in execution, but in maintaining the group dynamic. The integrity of the group and the willingness to work together is a precious commodity and the likelihood that everyone will see eye to eye on a narrative process, let alone any kind of underlying message or intent, decreases with every member added. I suppose, in the end, I like to imagine a collaboration as a return to the playground. There, and only there, does a group exist that is willing to go along with a simple idea in unison. “I’m the lava monster and you can’t touch the ground because it’s lava!”
Absolutely beautiful.
(Via Helmut Smits)
Creative exhaust(ion)
I haven’t posted in a while and for that, I have a hard time feeling guilty for. I feel like I kicked this thing off in high gear and I’m trying to find an appropriate pace to continue on. Never the less, I am hoping it will be closer to 2 times/week than 2 times/month.
I’ve been pretty worn out the past few weeks. I don’t mean to imply that I haven’t had a moment to myself; that would be an exaggeration. I do know, however, that I’ve felt a sort of brain fatigue that I’m certain I don’t like. There comes a point, I think, when your brain just doesn’t have any more juice. I know this from close friends who have done things like study for the BAR exam, write dissertations, etc.
This seems different, though, than the sort of creative fatigue that I have seen my colleagues experience and have experienced myself. Maybe it’s as simple as saying that they are the right and left-brained versions of each other. If that’s the case, then perhaps everything I write from here out is pointless. I’m going to write it anyway, but this is your opportunity to get out early.
Between school and work, I spend roughly 50-60 hours per week trying to do something creative. That doesn’t include the errant freelance job that comes my way from time to time but I’ll just let that fall into the outlier category. This also doesn’t include the time I spend writing here or in other venues. It takes me probably 20 times longer to write these posts than it does for anyone to read them. After all of that, I feel…something. Maybe nothing, actually. It’s often as though I’ve emptied everything I had in me out onto paper, or into my computer or whatever. I find myself wanting only to lie on the couch, eat ice cream, and play MarioKart.
Is it possible, I wonder, to limit the amount of time that I spend in this exhausted state? Can I manage the investment that I put into my work? I don’t mean that to say “I want to invest less of myself in my work”. I mean, can I invest it in one part of the process and then move into a production mode that is free of that emotion? Is that a bad thing to wish for? I think this is what causes the fetishization of objects. Not so much the time, but the type of time we put in. If every moment spent with a project is such heavy, intense time, of course you should feel exhausted. Does that ascribe more value to the work though? Is the “work smarter not harder” attitude inappropriate for work away from a “corporate” atmosphere? This is what I’m thinking about right now. That and MarioKart.
A new project
I’d like to share with you all a new project I’m starting. I won’t say too much about it just yet but I think the website may speak for itself.
Afterthoughts
Removing myself a bit from my performance (available below) I have to believe it was a success. I would, however, like to explain the path that has been leading me in this direction.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this interconnected series of tubes that so much of my life (and others too, I hope) revolves around. We spend so much time on our Facebook pages and Twitter apps and so on and so forth, and much of it is spent relaying the mundane details of our lives. We tell anyone who reads our posts what we had for lunch, what movies we liked/hated, and what music we listen to. At times, we even tell people about our hardships. We ask people to pray for our loved ones and for their loved ones. We ask people to cross their fingers for our job interviews. We share pictures of our children and update people on their first days of school.
All of this is information that, 10 years ago, would have only been shared with our partners and closest friends. This is the information, the level of personal allowance, that creates intimacy. We’re including so many people in that through social networking, and many of them are strangers or very near it. Is it intentional? Maybe not for most people. I wonder how many people really think about the number of people with access to their inner monologue. A simple Twitter search for words like “sex” or “love” would begin to say that many don’t.
I like to think that technology is a good thing. I like to feel that we are moving in a positive direction. Perhaps this is just the way it will be from now on. My only worry is that the level of intimacy we are on with anyone tuning in will start to compete with the level of intimacy that we are capable of with the people we truly care about.
Sorry this post wasn’t as much about art as usual, but I wanted to share what is driving the work that I’m doing right now. So…maybe it is about art.
A moment of panic
As previously mentioned, I believe there is a period of anxiety before the presentation or execution of any work. This, I think, can cross a lot of occupational boundaries. Before an engineer fires something up for the first time, before a composition is played for the first time, before a speech is made to a large audience… I’m in this moment now. I’m presenting a work at 12:30 today. It’s 10:10 now. The pressure has been rising for hours and hours. In following my fascination with intimacy and the internet, I’ll be streaming this work for you to view. I’ll also post a recording of it here. This sort of personal moment, most likely, will be a rare occurrence here but I want this to get out there.
That being said, join me HERE around 12:30 Mountain time for my performance. I’ll have more thoughts later.
