AMOR FATI

my tumblr

2009-02-09T19:41:00.001-08:00

my tumblr
repetition
repetition

shit pickle

2009-01-29T11:12:00.001-08:00

Art in America

2009-01-29T11:04:00.000-08:00

Dave Hickey on the mediocrity of criticism in the artworld...both written and curated:

"During this period, "fairness" proliferated. Dealers diversified their offerings to disguise their personal taste, thus eroding their better judgment. Art magazines printed interviews, advance blurbs and diversity centerfolds. They followed works of art to Bali and Cairo as if they were supermodels to be photographed biennially in exotic settings. At the same time, scholarly typing began passing for exhibition reviews. American academics pretended to believe that the traditional financial disinterest of academic inquiry meant that they should not be interested in contemporary finance or inquire about it too closely. This epidemic of fatal lunacy allowed predatory sociologists to submerge the adult practice of visual art in the doggy puddle of "visual culture" wherein students might evade the mysteries of Blinky Palermo by wondering in prose whether Wolverine is the most angst-ridden of the X-Men. By the late '80s, any PhD in art history could identify the iconography of mercantile capitalism in Titian's paintings. One in 50 could tell a Titian from a Tintoretto, and auction houses snapped up those odd ducks to co-opt their expertise...the inability to tell good art from bad is a terminal condition. It's no joke. Some works of art are demonstrably better than others, and, ultimately, it matters, because bad art disappears before our eyes. If you look and can't see anything, there's nothing there."

?!

2009-01-08T22:09:00.000-08:00

F-train

2008-12-02T17:10:00.000-08:00

i need a loft bed

2008-10-28T16:49:00.001-07:00

PC

2008-10-15T20:46:00.001-07:00

The other night I hiked up the hill to SFAI so that I could see what I knew would be a crude documentary on the life of Vanessa Beecroft and her desire to adopt Sudanese twins. I'm referring to Pietra Brettkelly's The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins. I was surprised to find that Beecroft's eating disorder was not the main topic of this highly contrasted (the colors were totally off, and I don't think it could be entirely attributed to the bright colors found in Sudan) film. Glen Helfand introduced the film with a painful expression on his face, then sat down and it started to play. Painful it was, to watch a prim Vanessa Beecroft with her limp-wristed photographer Mathu (matthew?....the way he said it made it sound as though you could spell his name more exotically). Mathu (let's just call him that for now), came equipped with fans and lights and cameras and water bottles and martin margiela boots...and all Vanessa could talk about while breast-feeding two "starving" Sudanese twins, was her silk martin margiela boobless dress. Yes, she refers to all of the typical "other" conversations such as the white Madonna coming in with her pendulous breasts, bearing food for...etc. etc. The entire documentary seemed to catalog each and every topic that Edward Said, Marcus Garvey, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak have ever written about. Yet, Beecroft continued to prance about in front of the camera, carefree. Is this a performance? I kept asking myself. Is it an extension of her already narcissistic bodies (literally) of work? I guess it was not ironic that SFAI chose to screen the film on Columbus Day.

Other works that I've seen recently (at the Whitney Biennial) that seem to relate:

Olaf Breuning's video work Home

Sherrie Levine's Makonde Body Masks

eastern european kitsch

2008-10-03T13:41:00.000-07:00

happy new year!

2008-09-29T14:12:00.000-07:00

vince rogers

2008-09-27T12:31:00.001-07:00

What the Hegel? ? ? ?

I'm trying to shake my Malthusian blues

So I vow to Proudhon to the end

I know I Goethe keep my head together

So I'm trying not to put Descartes before the horse

I'm trying not to let them Brecht me down

I guess it's Sartre like my Dada used to say

'Kierkegaard's gonna make a way somehow'

Still sometimes I just Kant see what it all means

a deadly weapon

2008-09-23T15:18:00.001-07:00

i'm trapped under ice

2008-09-17T14:30:00.000-07:00

HEAVY METAL ISLAM

a marijuana story

2008-09-08T18:37:00.000-07:00

Cannabis, the dried flowering spikes of the hemp plant, is a well known psychoactive drug that was made into hashish by certain Muslim sects in the Middle Ages. The word 'assassin' is derived from the Arab 'hashashin', which refers to a secret order of Muslims that terrorized the Christian crusaders by committing murder while under the influence of this potent drug.

no how

2008-09-08T17:09:00.000-07:00

Women Against Sarah Palin

CYRIL DUVAL

2008-09-07T22:47:00.000-07:00

hottttt

SL

2008-09-07T21:19:00.001-07:00

a UC Berkeley philosophy group holds important meetings at EdTech Island in Second Life...

how to catch flies

2008-09-05T09:05:00.000-07:00

in order to catch/kill a fly, one must simply place their hands approximately one inch above the fly's entire body and then swiftly clap hands in a swooping motion. this motion is key, for as soon as the fly senses your presence (causing it great alarm and distress), it will fly (away) directly up into your hands and the deed is done.

burka band

2008-09-05T00:31:00.001-07:00

a year before martin creed

2008-08-28T22:20:00.000-07:00

as the world turns

2008-08-27T08:36:00.000-07:00

landscape #1

2008-08-25T16:02:00.000-07:00

vintage baby wear

2008-08-06T08:28:00.000-07:00

miniature horse for sale

2008-07-30T15:40:00.000-07:00

2006

2008-07-25T20:59:00.000-07:00

i just moved again, and as most everyone probably does, i had to go through each and every article of clothing/writing/tschotchke in each and every box. so, i was looking through all of my moleskins and began to read about my trip to NY in 2006, it was the first time i travelled out of state on my own to meet up with absolutely no one.

12.17.06 (5:45am)
I'm hungover right now. It was really smart of me to get drunk the night before having to board an early flight to New York. I'm at the airport at the moment. I just finished eating a teriyaki chicken bowl (5:45am), only it was teriyaki chicken over mexican rice and beans. Some lady just put a cat in a bag down on the seat right next to me. She just left. The lady sitting next to the cat is yelling over to the lady who's cat this belongs to. My grammar is atrocious right now. Wonderful. Well, I have a story to tell. I'm not sure how to start, but I will start at where it first became a story inside my head. So, I was waiting for my taxi this morning and I called home. I was telling my mom how I hoped my taxi (that I called the day before) wasn't running late, because about a year ago I called a taxi and they were around 15-20 minutes late, and so I called a different cabby. It turned out that both showed up at the same exact time, and I went into the cab that I called secondly, because the other guy was late, and that's that. The taxi driver, whose cab I left abandoned, was obviously very pissed off, but I wasn't in the mood to care. So, this happened a year ago. Anyway, so, back to this morning, the cab driver shows up while I'm on the phone with so and so. She (so and so) was enlightening me about her sexual escapades with a fellow drunkard at the party. As soon as I got off the phone, the driver immediately started to speak to me. He said that he recognized my address and remembered that some time ago I had called up two cabs, both of which showed up at the same time, and I did not get into his cab. He thought it was because his vehicle was unmarked. He kept asking if I remembered this. I hesitated to admit at first, but oviously this story was ironically fresh in my mind. After a while, I acted as though a jolt of electricity went through my body. Oh! Yeah! Sorry about that. The story continues, but I'm bored of this story already. Basically there were no harsh feelings. He gave me his card (it turns out he is the owner of the cab company) and told me to call him whenever (I need a cab)...The ride cost $39, I gave him $45, he wished me a Merry Christmas.

12.17.06 (9:30 pm)
Took a cab to Gershwin Hostel. This place is retarded. It looks like Andy Warhol threw up in here. I'm sharing a room with possibly 19 other people. As of now, I've only met 2. They are from Denmark and have been travelling around the world for the past 3 months. It feels so free (mmmm...cliches) to be alone somewhere, almost like I'm lost, but not entirely. It's expensive to travel alone. It's dangerous to travel alone.

12.18.06 (10:00 am)...on my way to Dia Beacon.
I pretty much have no fucking clue. I mean, I'll just walk around, wait around, until something happens. For some reason I have been feeling like I'm in Chicago right now. Maybe I'm in the right place, I mean, because there are two girls, one on either side of me, sitting on the ground, they look like hipster art kids. One is knitting, the other is flipping through an art history book and wearing Dr. Martens. Suddenly I miss my burgundy patent leather Dr. Marten boots. I hope I don't miss the 1051. I don't know if that's the time of departure or the number of the train.

So, my sleeping situation. What weirdness. I should probably get earplugs and an eye mask. Even around midnight, when everyone has returned to the room and is finished using the bathroom, there are many noises to cause alarm to the light sleeper. There are the people in the hallway using the internet and laughing at their various cellphone rings they are testing out. Also, there is this varying mechanical sound coming from the heater (close to my head), it sounds like a trail of marbles dropped from the top of the Empire State building and down into a manhole. And then, when one wants to get up, get dressed and leave, one has to do it with the lights off, or else be the only asshole in the room who doesn't.

12.18.06 (11:30am)...inspired to write abstract nonsense after reading Rebecca Solnit.
Thinking about how what is, no longer exists. How we do not really experience the world around us, we experience ourselves through the world around us, just as we are never listening/speaking to one another, instead, we do these things for ourselves. We are really listening and speaking to ourselves and ourselves alone. It is not possible to loose our stories before engaging with one another. And, in much the same way, it is not possible to loose oneself. It is possible to loose the world around us, especially since it may very well already be lost. The only fathomable way that one might be able to loose themselves, is if they have not found themselves to begin with.

12.18.06 (3:30pm)
Dia Beacon is quiet, white, towering. Donal Judd and his silly disappearing slopes. Hardly any of the pieces in the galleries are lit. Because of this, the eye is extremely sensitive to disappearing and appearing light, of the natural sort. Specifically, I am speaking of the enormous semi-cylindrical Richard Serra piece which rest firmly on the ground. But, as one walks around and through each piece, one sees slivers of light pass through spaces between the floor and the rusted ore. Someone, about 3 or 4 days before I left Oakland, was just talking about Bruce Nauman's fish fountain. From far away, the sound of water seems to be artificial, perhaps because of the industrial warehouse it is in. And yet, as soon as you turn the corner, droplets of water start to hit the face, and one sees the water spurting out from randomly punctured holes in the body of bronze fish. Long plastic tubes trail down from their bellies into a basin. Directly opposite the piece is the only window on the floor of that gallery. A wall of window. I look out at the horizon, listening to the water fall.

12.18.06 (10:30pm)
I pooped.
I would leave it at that, but I have something else on my mind. So, I went into a church today. After I turned my cellphone off, I slowly walked in and entered from a side door and continued to walk towards the back. Right away, in the back corner, I encountered a homeless man who looked like he had been camping out for a while. He had his cellphone plugged into an outlet. I blindly stepped over the chord and continued walking towards the altar, but stopped in the middle and sat down in a pue. From the corner of my eye, I saw a woman placing her fingers in a fluid motion along certain premeditated places on her body. I wondered if she could sense that I was not of the same faith, that I was simply observing. I was staring intently at the works of art in front of me. The mother mary draped in white cloths, the jesus figure drench in gold, his small white hands gracefully clasped together. I was a witness, but nothing was happening. As everyone but the homeless man had left, I proceeded to move forward until I was sitting right in front of a stately depiction of the virgin. I started to draw her, once again, feeling self-conscious that someone might be watching me. WHOA!!!! interjection here, there is a man who just sat down in the booth in front of me (i'm in a jewish deli at the moment, writing about my day earlier on), he's bleeding all over his face is bleeding all over the place and he's talking nonsense. The waiter came over and told him to wash his face. They finally took his order. This potentially could be a problem. Okay, back to the church. So, I was drawing, feeling perverse and such, while observing these paintings as though I was in a museum. I begin to notice the similarities between both institutions. A looming feeling of someone watching. A feeling of having to pay attention, to control the thoughts. A quietness, a pureness, a focal point. How does this iconic face of Jesus differ when placed in a museum? Is the museum a stand-in for the church? Jesus is an ugly void.

12.18.06 (2:01am)
What if pockets were gloves?
You stick your hands inside your pockets and they fit perfectly to your fingers, gloves.

12.19.06 (8:16pm)
motherfuckmotherfuckmotherfuck. goddamn tired is what i am. bringin the whiskey downtown with a soda. hella.

12.19.06 (10:21pm)
"That is sooooo Dada" - mike.

12.20.06 (2:34pm)
I saw Vincent Gallo on Prince Street today. I texted my friends, and none of them knew who he was.

monologic dialogues.

2008-07-01T18:36:00.000-07:00

All that I see, he said.
Surely.
Necessarily.
By Zeus, I do not, said he.
Quite inevitably, he said.
Far more real, he said.
It is so, he said.
Why, no, not immediately, he said.
Of course.
Necessarily, he said.
Obviously, he said, that would be the next step.

He would indeed.
He would indeed.

They certainly would, he said.
I concur, he said, so far as I am able.
Yes, it is likely.
It would be by no means strange, he said.
That is a very fair statement, he said.
They do indeed, he said.
Yes.
Yes, that seems likely, he said.
I certainly have, he said.
It is likely, he said.
True, he said.
What is that?
True, he said, I did forget it.
By all means, he said.
Most true, he said.
No, by Zeus, he said.
Surely.
No others, he said.
Of course I would.
By all means.
Of course.
We did.
What one?
Why, yes, it must, he said, if that is possible.
They were, he said.
Obviously.
No.
What?

*taken from Plato: Collected Dialogues. Book VII.

blue crab sex mystery.

2008-05-07T23:06:00.000-07:00

an extremely rare dual-gender crab was caught in the Chesapeake bay (some time ago). how did the waterman who caught this crab know that it was a bilateral gynandromorph? watermen apparently conducted their own experiment by throwing the gynandromorph into a tank with a female crab. the confused crustacean first began mating as a male and then changed its mind and ate the female.

...

2008-04-29T18:36:00.000-07:00

tits at the whit

2008-04-29T18:34:00.001-07:00

eduardo sarabia's installation at the whitney

HATE mail.

2008-04-28T22:35:00.000-07:00

today, like any other day, i had multiple tabs open in safari. i was surfing all around, simultaneously watching my gmail-inbox tab, waiting for a number sandwiched in between two parentheses to pop up. finally i get it: (2) and i get extremely excited, stop what i'm looking at (sleepy kitties on youtube) and switch over to check the mail. oh how wonderful, someone commented on my blog today. it's nice to know that people look at it, even if they are angered by my 'uninformed' opinions. actually two people commented (see Myles and Nicoloff posting) and i thought it would be worthwhile to give an appreciative response. first off, i will just copy and paste the comments in this posting, for those of you who are lazy:

SNAKEOIL said (at 8:05pm today)...
In regards to Michael Nicoloff's poetry: just because you don't get it, doesn't mean it's not good.
SNAKEOIL said (at 8:12pm today)...
p.s. i bet you think american apparel is "omg so edgy!"
fake transgressive L.A. dumb ass
ANONYMOUS said (at 8:49pm today)...
For all yr smack about Eileen's hair--your should have seen Nicoloff's fantastic hair six months ago. I mean, fantastic! But wait!!--that would mean that you had actually attended some readings in the Bay Area and knew who Nicoloff was. Because he was there...and probably reading his great and really fast poems at several of them.
You should really check out this guy:
http://trainwreckunion.blogspot.com/
You'd be great friends. He's equally uninformed.

in response to SNAKEOIL, why yes, like, totally, like, omg, american apparel is like so edgy. i love their flashy rehashing of the eighties onsies, omg and i love that they are like totally all over the place now like so whenever i travel i can stop in and get some awesome dayglo leggings, omg, like totally, because like, sustainability most definitely means going global, fo sho, ah mah gah.

in response to ANONYMOUS, who i suspect is most likely the same person as SNAKEOIL (suspect is the word 'smack' and the time in which this last comment was posted, so close to the other two); well, you are correct, i have not seen Nicoloff's hair any other way than the way it was worn that sunday at 21 Grand. but, thanks to flickr, i have this great photo of his hair, and i'm only guessing that this is what you were referring to when you say "fantastic!"

i apologize for any offensive/uninformed criticism i have relayed over the internet. perhaps you feel as though i have provided the blind and dumb criticism that Roland Barthes once wrote about, but i have not once claimed to be an intellectual nor have i stated that i understand or do not understand anything whatsoever. all i intended to do, which i apparently was not very clear about, was criticize the performance of these poets. i find it sad that presently, to be considered an acclaimed poet (in any nationally or officially recognized manner) one no longer has to include performances on their resume. the only criteria necessary are physical publications. Homer's art of orally composed poetry is slowly dying.

DUDETTE

2008-04-26T21:49:00.000-07:00

DUDE
DOOD
DEWD
DUUUUDE
DUD (modern irish)
DYOOD

Oxford's definition of DUDE is
• noun N. Amer. informal 1 a man. 2 a dandy.
— ORIGIN probably from German dialect Dude ‘fool’.

surgere tentamus.

2008-04-26T10:33:00.000-07:00

whoa, i was kind of surprised to find this. i was in the glee club for a few years at westridge school (for girls), and this was my choral conductor (mr. stephenson). i despised his tie-dyed peace sign shirts and overt liberal personality, but most of all, i was extremely furious when he switched me from alto to soprano. i moped a lot and struggled with the high notes and then finally left. ironically enough, i'm singin some high notes as a tino sehgal interpreter in "this is propaganda" at the wattis, go figure.....

killer free jazz

2008-04-24T13:57:00.001-07:00

no. 1

2008-04-24T13:34:00.001-07:00

Stockhausen

2008-04-24T10:01:00.001-07:00

no, he didn't just write about turkish delight in narnia...

2008-04-22T16:16:00.000-07:00

Myles and Nicoloff

2008-04-21T18:15:00.000-07:00

I had heard of Eileen Myles before, but I wasn’t exactly sure from where. For some reason I placed her with the likes of Laura Mullen; a proper name, a white name, an intellectual name. It was windy today, like yesterday and the day before that. I ran toward the closed door at the entrance to 21 Grand in Oakland where Eileen Myles would read after an unknown angsty Michael Nicoloff. Before sitting down I headed straight for the bathroom, and on my way bumped into a greasy-haired woman dressed in a masculine way. She was talking to someone quite far away from the door to the bathroom, but alerted me that she in fact was waiting for it and that I would be in line after her. She looked away. After emptying my bladder I entered the white-walled room and sat in my red metal chair. A baby with the middle name Duchamp introduced Michael Nicoloff, the unknown amateur poet of Oakland who published the chapbook ‘punks’.

Nervously stumbling toward the microphone, Michael’s head hanging low for his entire set. Not once does he acknowledge the presence of his audience, perhaps to avoid an awkward moment or two where he would suddenly gain enough awareness to be embarrassed of his present situation. His eyes glued to his angsty words (punk, fuck you, Satan, Spinoza-sucking, nothing is real, the dick train). Yawn. As soon as he opened his mouth, all of his nothing words fell out in a messy vomitous stream, at 100 miles per hour. Uh, Michael, are you reading for me? Am I supposed to understand you? Or am I just supposed to remark at your impeccable spitting skills? I realize that secretaries who can type more words per minute are valuable to their employers, but I never thought that there was an incentive toward spewing out a high amount of words per minute. Each poem sounds the same, is read in the same monotonous voice, and abruptly ends in such a way that I am delighted to experience silence so that I no longer have to deal with the anxiety-inducing task of attempting to understand a word Michael says. Even Michael’s angsty cliché words must hate him, for they are most likely insulted by his total disregard for the whole thing. In his last breath, his last word, Michael spits out just as fast as anything else, a “thank you”, and runs off the stage.

After eleven minutes of i-pod DJing, Eileen Myles finally entered the spotlight, equipped with a witty prop; a black box. She joked that it had something to do with a bomb and then flipped the case open and grabbed a pile of papers. She began reading excerpts from her upcoming novel Inferno. A dim light shone over her greasy hair as she talked about some slick-haired man she once fucked in New York. I then realized it was she I bumped into waiting for the bathroom. And then just as quickly, I remembered it was her whose name I had come across in high school when I was first exposed to the quiet video works of a youthful Sadie Benning. As Myles continued reading, imagery of New York punk popped into my head, and so did dialogue from Andy Warhol’s from A to B and Back Again. She reads about sex, art, sex with punks, sex with business-men, typewriters, pill-popping prostituting sexy sex lesbian lifestyle, poetry, New York and ultimately this:

(F)utility

2008-04-20T15:24:00.000-07:00

what is irony?

2008-04-11T10:57:00.000-07:00

is it Thomas Kinkade's painting entitled 'Heading Home'? Let's all give a round of applause to Modern Painters for bringing Kinkade into the Artworld dialogue. I have some plans for you mister Kinkade, but i'll save that proposition for another day. On a different note, I was walking down College Avenue the other day, passing by the thick cloud of sweetened udder-milk hibernating in front of Bittersweet cafe, when I noticed their sidewalk sign in my path. It clearly stated that Bittersweet is now "proudly serving Starbuck's coffee". I laughed a bit and then realized the genius behind the words. I then proceeded to walk through the rank dairy cloud and up to the front counter only to find out that it was all a straightforward joke. Perhaps there are no geniuses out there after all.

(kinkade's description of his piece: I did not choose to show the warrior's face in my painting of the homecoming veteran. The hero of Heading Home is not an individual at all; he is the essence of the American soldier. We cannot tell whether he returns from Normandy, from Saigon, from Beirut. In a sense, he has spilled his blood on all those fields of honor.) hm..............................

Stone's Throw

2008-04-03T15:49:00.000-07:00

Biting my nails while waiting in traffic to get into the city this morning, the radio turned on (yes, all by itself, you see, my cd player broke and ever since then the radio has a mind of its own and makes this harsh popping sound when it decides to turn on or off). Jennifer Stone came on (KPFA). I had no idea who this lady was, but her mature voice began to crack a little as she started talking about spring and birth and death and poetry and HBO...yeah, she's all over the place, but all in the right places. She's very poetic and knowledgeable about seemingly everything, and she enunciates every letter in every word with such care, it makes my ears tingle. She's sort of the female counterpart to Andy Rooney, but less crotchety. Sorry Andy.

At the end of each show, Stone remarks; "this has been Jennifer Stone with Stones Throw. Till next Tuesday at 3:30, go easy. And if you can't go easy, go as easy as you can".

on peace

2008-03-27T12:32:00.000-07:00

i'm trying to clean out or dispose of the clutter in this room of mine. i'm moving soon and have to part with some of my most treasured forgotten papers hidden away in the dusty crevices next to my bed. one of these papers turned out to be a poem my grandmother had written and sent to me in November of 2006. i somewhat remember having read it and sort of pushed it aside, thinking it was sort of silly. but, it has since resurfaced and been reconsidered.

PEACE THE LOSER WORD by grandma

How did peace become a loser word?
The loser-est word we've ever heard.
War is macho
Hate is fine
Kill the mid-east, that's devine
But peace? Who needs it?
It's for nerds.
It's one of those smart ass liberal words.

How did peace become a loser word?
The most boring word we've ever heard.
Power's great
Big money's fine
Steal the oil,
That's devine.
But peace? Forget it.
It's for nerds.
It's one of those love-thy-neighbor words.

Blow up towns with bunker busters,
Kill small kids with bombs in clusters,
Get the refugees to run
Then blow them up for good clean fun.

Neo-cons we all attest
Pre-emptive war is still the best.
Forget Viagra and the rest
Try the manly war-hawk test.
Scare the people with fake dangers
Then get it up by killing strangers.

How did peace become a sissy word?
The sissiest word we've ever heard.
We let them scare us
Our minds froze.
Bush and Cheney's
Who we chose.
So peace? Forget it.
It's for nerds.
It's one of those save-the-planet words.

two-month old balloon

2008-03-27T12:20:00.001-07:00

creative commons

2008-03-09T23:02:00.000-07:00

my mother called me up today and told me she was trying to find my website (i don't have one). so, she typed in my name on google and found a link to a flickr page where someone (mystery person who i will soon find to thank) posted a photo they took of my show. thank you to the mystery person who documented my show, for i didn't get to it. also, thanks to creative commons and the internet for making image sharing/stealing/copying/borrowing so goddamn easy.
flickr link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wink/2321382264/

2008-02-19T17:25:00.000-08:00

odure

2008-01-29T16:01:00.001-08:00

One night i was hanging out with a friend and we were watching youtube videos like my computer was a television; what a capacity television has for delusion. Somehow the topic of poop came up and then they pulled up a video from this site:
www.2girls1cup.com (if you plan on watching this, make sure you are not eating or about to eat and/or do not watch this with your significant other erroneously thinking that this will get you into the 'mood' so to speak). Admittedly i had a few beers that night and although it was probably the most disgusting thing i've ever watched on any computer or television, i found it somewhat funny (perhaps it was the way both girls were completely and honestly enjoying their odious performance), so i proceeded to forward my father the link to this site. The next morning i get an email in response stating: "That is truly the most disgusting thing I have ever seen. Daddy is not proud...". I made sure to call him later on that day to apologize.

Today, i picked up a copy of Harper's and inside was an intriguing article on the subject of feces, entitled "wasteland: a journey through the American cloaca" (by frederick kaufman). The article is evidently about where our poop goes. After interviewing a family-man living in the suburbs of NYC, Kaufman begins his story. Not so recently, our waste has been overflowing into certain of our living situations and sooner, rather than later, our future will hold an unsettling closeness to this filth that we historically have kept ourselves distanced from. Reflecting on thoughts of excrement, I realized that maybe this disgusting video I showed my father (pseudo fetish porn) is actually somewhat of a sci-fi, socio-political commentary (of course that is stretching the creator's intention, i'm sure). Even though socially we are trained to react a certain way to that which is abject (just as we are socially trained to cry at a funeral), one day, for as long as we continue to live in the way that we do, it will be necessary for us to accept this unappealing closeness with our bile. As Nietzsche says, we must 'love our fate'.

********other odorous material

. Pier Paolo Pasolini's film SALO
. Dominique Laporte's History of Shit
. Paul McCarthy's work
. Viennese Actionism
. Duncan McLaren on Beyond Reason: Stuart Brisley

2007-09-17T21:31:00.000-07:00

(Munster)

(Mike Kelley's petting zoo at Munster Sculpture Projekts)

(Prenzlauer-Berg)

(bertolt brecht's grave - Berlin, Mitte)

(tampon nosebleed - Kassel)

(Bela Kolarova - Documenta)

(Tanaka Atsuko at Documenta 12)

(performance at Documenta)

(Dom in Koln)

(hm.)

(the top floor of K21 in Dusseldorf)

(stills taken from Markus Schinwald's film Dictio Pii, shown at Dusseldorf's K21).

MACROS

2007-09-09T14:54:00.001-07:00

...

2007-08-05T00:16:00.000-07:00

why is it that one never sees baby pigeons slumming around?

no way.

2007-06-16T12:40:00.001-07:00

this is what lauren's vegetable drawer in the refrigerator looks like. notice the bag of liquid lettuce.

silly pink bunnies.

2007-06-16T11:17:00.000-07:00

so, a friend shared with me the works of a group of artists known as Gelitin. I was interested in a giant-sized knit and stuffed pink bunny plopped down in the middle of the Italian Alps. It is so large that google maps has it documented from outerspace.

After sharing these images with another friend, we soon realized that pink bunnies are everywhere.

. silly pink bunnies.
. the energizer bunny.
. the boy dressed as a pink bunny in Gummo.
. the easter bunny.
. pink bunny peeps (sugary candy marshmallows).
. the playboy bunny silhouette (sometimes in pink glitter on black hotpants.)
. pink rabbit (the name of a crazy looking dildo.)
. oh, and this girl:

Now I am most curious, what does the pink bunny symbolize? All that I can gather so far is that the pink bunny is connected to sexuality, fertility (one doe can produce 42 young a year), excess, Jesus's second coming, and possibly Lewis Carroll's "down the rabbit-hole" syndrome (connecting to Freudian dream-states). If you have any more ideas, let me know.

randomness from los angeles. 4/17-21.

2007-06-05T00:37:00.000-07:00

(Johanna Went - track 16 gallery)

(melt banana at the troubadour)

spoiled mattress and the springs.

2007-06-02T20:22:00.003-07:00

well, they played at Edinburgh Castle tonight, and I was impressed in a way that I am not normally, i mean, it was definite Camp, and Susan Sontag has said she does not believe that Camp taste can be applicable to music, more specifically jazz, but this band is the closest Camp musical talent to come to earth, thus far. This is the run down, three guys, one looks like a Hanson brother, another, by the name of Avishai is obviously a jew boy, but is like a hot Israelite, no jesus or nothin, but some elvis hair gel, oh, and this guy on the saxophone, who looked as though he was well read, only for the simple reason he wore glasses and a tight vest (the kind you would wear when serving cabernet sauvignon to Al Gore on his birthday). The drummer is almost always too slow, the keyboard and saxophonist play the same notes, and a glimpse of bar mitzvah boys celebrating their coming of age comes to mind. I was immediately reminded of the jew boy garage band, which included a clarinetist, in Welcome to the Dollhouse. super enthusiastic chinsy glitter fabric and tinker toy mariachi shakers. Also, Lauren grabbed the mic out of the saxophonist's hand (i think his name is matthew) and she started to rap about her mother. she thought he insulted her when he said that her rapping style reminded him of the creative growth kids who jammed with them in berkeley earlier today. i told her this was not so, and she winked at my foot.

ice-cold nugrape.

2007-06-02T20:22:00.001-07:00

it was an accident, but i'm pretty sure there are people out there who make sure they color coordinate the food they eat.

indigenous murder cloth.

2007-06-02T20:21:00.002-07:00

friday morning i woke up at the time i'm supposed to leave my apartment to get to work on time (8am). upon stumbling out my front door, i caught a glimpse of a tangled mess.

what is camp?

2007-04-29T00:49:00.000-07:00

(salvador dali)

(john waters)

drinking milk.

2007-04-28T18:05:00.000-07:00

(william wegman-1972)

(me and lauren - 2007)

marquis de sade.

2007-04-14T15:53:00.000-07:00

(Hans Bellmer: La Poupee)

(Jake and Dinos Chapman)

bodybuilding universe routines.

2007-04-14T15:46:00.000-07:00

(charles atlas video of Leigh Bowery)

(Miike's Ichi the Killer)

where we are is always miles away.

2007-04-12T23:15:00.000-07:00

...on tavares strachan's solo show at the luggage gallery in winter of 2006.

In problematizing a space, its function, its history and value, Tavares Strachan extracts information from a place and carefully transplants it into another existence. Strachan, a Bahamian artist, has completed two projects, so far, that accentuate multiple dialogues attached to a designated space or site. His Arctic Ice Project, The Distance Between What We Have and What We Want, involved displacing an enormous block of ice from the Arctic and shipping it to the Bahamas, where it was preserved in a pristine glass freezer with energy supplied by the Caribbean sun. His most recent displacement, entitled Where We Are is Always Miles Away, involves the replacement of a neglected chunk of Connecticut sidewalk and its static placement on the second-floor of the Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco.
With the completion of these works, Tavares has ultimately deciphered a way to simultaneously create a void, fill a void, revive the banal art object, and entirely compose a performance of history. In elevating the mundane, Strachan has drawn attention to a site that will remain forever frozen in a mythic space. A space where there is the illusion of communication and a spotlight on alienation. In regards to the piece of sidewalk that he convinced the city of New Haven to replace with a functional replica of the same, the work completely exposes the transformation of value in regards to object. Strachan presents the preserved historic site as an art object, which in the context of the gallery has a significantly different value than the new and functional version of sidewalk that the city installed after the excavation. The old, now historic, non-functioning sidewalk has no use value to those who encountered it in New Haven, Connecticut, and evidently, that community will most likely never have the opportunity or even interest to view it as the monumental art object it has presently become.
Ultimately, this piece directly questions the function of a place, how we locate ourselves within a space, and how a site is defined by the image that its inhabitants have of it.

the potential of a body.

2007-04-12T23:06:00.000-07:00

...on anselm kiefer's show at SFMOMA in October of 2006.

Underneath material corrosion and decay, there is a more confident search for what can be renewed. The recent exhibit at SFMOMA of Anselm Kiefer’s work, presents an intense look at almost 40 years of his singular creations, working within the realms of painting, sculpture, book forms and metaphysical exploration. Born into a fractured German post-war body, Kiefer’s work directly portrays an active struggle between repairing a broken national identity and creating a personal mythic history, while retaining the notable histories of his past. The layers of material corrosion in Kiefer’s paintings are reminiscent of a familiar setting in the post-war German landscape, yet there is something unfamiliar occupying the same space in the active eye of the outsider. Laying down physical mounds of paint and dead pieces of tree matter in his painting Des Herbstest Runengestpinst – fur Paul Celan, Kiefer is exposing the landscape as a setting for the decay of the living, whether it be human or other.
There is a definite theme that passes through the monumental canvases hovering in the white-walled rooms of the museum. The largescale depictions of such emotive landscapes, exposes Kiefer’s internal dialogue with his cultural past. Kiefer paints himself into these landscapes many times, mostly lying down in the midst of a post-apocalyptic vision, but as a stationary receptacle. In physically placing himself inside the works, Kiefer is “working through [German] history. [He has] to inhabit it to overcome it”. Even the glass vitrines (which seem to mimic Beuys’ use of the same object) that house Kiefers’ decomposing books, are suggestive of life-sized glass coffins that directly relate to the shape of the body and the cycles of life. In thinking about Kiefer’s work in terms of the body, “it is true that everything symbolizes the body, so it is equally true (and all the more so for that reason) that the body symbolizes everything else.”
Throughout every medium that Kiefer works in, there is a consistent heaviness. Whether it is the physical weight of the lead pages in his books, the visual density of his color palette, the violent Turner-esque landscapes, and the loaded metaphors used to reconstruct what had been destroyed. The horizon line is almost always painted above the head of an onlooker, creating an intense environment that is all encompassing. To enter a Kiefer painting, is to be consumed by an apprehensive darkness, giving one the sense that there is no escape. The question then arises of whether or not Kiefer is able to escape his own past by recreating such a landscape, in which it is seemingly possible to become trapped.
Kiefer’s reconstruction is one of a personal matter, in relaying a spiritual communication between the mind, the heart, and the hand. Many post-war German artists, in problematizing the issues of the body, referred back to German romantic painters like Caspar David Friedrich. One could draw connections between Friedrich and Kiefer in their expressions of a religious mysticism and national symbolism, but also through the idea that “the painter should paint not only what he has in front of him, but also what he sees inside himself.”
The concept of narrative has a strong presence in Kiefer’s work as well. Not only does his work express the conflicted stories of his past, but there is also a more prominent narrative language that is adapted over time. Painted over many of his ominous environments is a somewhat inconspicuous German text. This non-abrasive use of text in his paintings is peculiar. It does not really serve as an extended narrative to anyone but Kiefer. In a way, his use of text in paintings, as well as his use of book forms that are void of text, are examples of how a written history of a German past has become splintered. German post-war history is indeed history, and what is more compelling is Kiefer’s own creation of a personal and mythic backdrop for his own present. The artist has said, “history has shown us that there is always a darkness inside the light...Maybe we should be looking more carefully in the darkness.”
Most recently, the art world seems to be partially dominated by a relational aesthetic, in which the artist is no longer at the center. Without the singular creator, Kiefer’s work would not exist. If anything, his work exists for himself, yet through its highly personal content, it relates to a larger body of people in a contemporary society. Without material, there is only one thing. There is the internal struggle within the human, be it the individual or social body, “researching about who we are in this universe”.

this is something.

2007-02-13T00:44:00.000-08:00

what if pockets were gloves?
you stick your hands inside
your pockets and they fit
perfectly to your fingers,
gloves.