It's all about circularity. It always has been, and it always will be.
Showing posts with label earnestness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label earnestness. Show all posts
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
While I'm not here
This is what I've been doing with my time:
Kate Beaton: I love love love. I just keep coming back.
Asterios Polyp. Just read it, if you like comics.
While I was in Laos and Cambodia, I was digging Never Let Me Go. Also excellent.
The world is just full of stuff that's good. How are you supposed to find the time to do your own things?
Kate Beaton: I love love love. I just keep coming back.
Asterios Polyp. Just read it, if you like comics.
While I was in Laos and Cambodia, I was digging Never Let Me Go. Also excellent.
The world is just full of stuff that's good. How are you supposed to find the time to do your own things?
Friday, August 07, 2009
Flailing about in the dark
There's also this:
It's an exhibition. Don't try reading the little bits of text, they're too small and I couldn't be arsed mucking about with preparing images properly. You should know by now that that sort of thing isn't what goes on in these parts.
On the show, though, I was down on my work, but the parts that insisted on not being able to be fixed knew better than me how to self-actualise their constituent selves into a successful work.
I was battling every part of it all the way, and it beat me, and I learned that I was beaten because the work itself is superior to my understanding of what makes it good (when it is). That's a little scary. But it can be no other way. My little brain isn't capable of logically following through to the conclusions of its instincts.
This is what makes it hard to write artist statements, but at the same time is what is the appealing mystery of, like, yanno, art. It needs to reach for something slightly further than your own understanding. Maybe.
I don't learn something from every project I undertake but I have from this... I don't know exactly what it is, but it's there somewhere.
Anyhoo.
Tom Polo is awesome, btw. He's good people.
It's an exhibition. Don't try reading the little bits of text, they're too small and I couldn't be arsed mucking about with preparing images properly. You should know by now that that sort of thing isn't what goes on in these parts.
On the show, though, I was down on my work, but the parts that insisted on not being able to be fixed knew better than me how to self-actualise their constituent selves into a successful work.
I was battling every part of it all the way, and it beat me, and I learned that I was beaten because the work itself is superior to my understanding of what makes it good (when it is). That's a little scary. But it can be no other way. My little brain isn't capable of logically following through to the conclusions of its instincts.
This is what makes it hard to write artist statements, but at the same time is what is the appealing mystery of, like, yanno, art. It needs to reach for something slightly further than your own understanding. Maybe.
I don't learn something from every project I undertake but I have from this... I don't know exactly what it is, but it's there somewhere.
Anyhoo.
Tom Polo is awesome, btw. He's good people.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Do you ever feel it's all been done before?
This Tom Friedman thingy is made out of 30,000 toothpicks. I was prompted by AG's comment that she likes things that look like they were fun to make. I agree, I do too. I covet the having made them myself-ness. I like things that look like they lead out of something that was efficient or made sense according to some unspoken natural law (the tapered shape of the end of the toothpick). I like to think of his play with a thing and discovery of what the natural properties of that thing are and where it should go, and then he takes it all the way there.
Cereal boxes can also have natural properties.
This is, like, the seminal Friedman work (IMHO, obvs). This is just made out of several identical cereal boxes. It's the thing in itself only more of it and bigger, and because of that vaguer. Like, the accumulation and aggregation of many equals more volume but less specificity. The trade-off for scale is lack of resolution; this is like a 3d jpeg. Blur = dilution of exactness caused by excessive multiplication. Too much same = no longer separately clear.
You can get all this from a thing that simply looks (ie is visual. As in, looks like only without the simile). There's power in something that can be seen and not said, but you can't explain that power by saying, because it's in the seeing not the saying. Things that can only be known by seeing are everywhere, in graphics, in photography, images of all kinds. In the dialectics of streets and buildings and trees and the light from the sky. But how can you explain any of that without the thing that is seen that is the explanation in and of itself? (Eh?) It's like the difference between doing and planning.
Yesterday I joined a small group of friends trying to help a collaborative pair of artist friends to workshop a long-running project they've got going on. Because of the kind of project it is (connected to a festival) with lots of planning time, they are researching and researching and trying to draw the work out of that. But they're blocked, stymied by what is a non-intuitive process for them. Can't make the leap from research to performance/work. From what it's meant to be about, to thing-that's-independent-of-all-else-but-itself-and-embodies-ideas-rather-than-illustrates-them. Which is what they normally do intuitively. We have so much to prove/explain all the time, it reduces our confidence just to do. It sounds so airy-fairy, intuition, but the thing is our intelligence as artists needs to be trusted (inc. by us) that we will be able to embody intelligentness (intelligence?) in the thing itself, in how the thing itself is executed, rather than in via how known a quantity it is before it is undertaken.
I'm struggling with this meself.
I seem also to be making a collection of works that are pieces of A4 paper.
I owe someone a nail. It's waiting patiently in my studio. It's actually nail plus these days. It's accrued interest. But not in anyway that undoes the inherent simplicity of nail as nail, fear not. It's just more practical now. Shall I show you? OK, hang on. Maybe next post.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Procrastinatin'
I was cataloguing books on Goodreads, a task I allowed myself as a reward for finishing Dreams From My Father. A chance encounter with Spike Milligan on said site reminded me of how much I loved his war memoirs when I discovered them as a young 'un (teen). I mean to read them again, now. Soon praps. (Or not - I have to read according to the rules first). Anyway. I added a new category to account for his description of shellshock in the fourth of the trilogy (and his bi-polarness in general), which I called mental illness. Then I needed to go through all my 'read' books (I know, I know) and mark up the other books with that tag. This proved a problem; is (for example) The Virgin Suicides about mental illness? They all killed themselves - something must have been going wrong in their brains, right? Or what about American Psycho? Does he have an illness? Is sublimation an illness? Or nihilism? What constitutes a mental illness anyway? How about Louis Riel? Is going a bit nuts not a rational response to oppression? And maybe his vision was true, truly from god - who am I to say?
Anyway, the anti-climax here is that I changed the label to the more inclusive and unreconstructed 'madness_mental illness', which allowed me to tag tales involving things like depression and OCD.
This labelling thing is a lark, innit. In the words of Sandra Bernhard, "don't label me: I'm a people person".
Anyway, the anti-climax here is that I changed the label to the more inclusive and unreconstructed 'madness_mental illness', which allowed me to tag tales involving things like depression and OCD.
This labelling thing is a lark, innit. In the words of Sandra Bernhard, "don't label me: I'm a people person".
Monday, June 15, 2009
Circular Post About Miranda July
I've been reading Miranda July's blogs and interviews with her and watching YouTube clips from her movie all morning. She's a great character, just very honest and real. Not that she's a 'character' like someone who's made up, but I don't know her so I can't exactly say she's a great person. She has a kind of earnest lightness, or a light earnestness that makes me feel good.
When I first saw You Me and Everyone We Know I thought it was just OK. I liked certain things about it a lot, but I found it a bit self-conscious, or found the pace a bit forced or something, just in general. But taken in the context of her whole work, you figure out a bit more where she's coming from, and it becomes a whole lot more likable. A long narrative like a feature film I guess, when it's made by someone who's perhaps less of a 'pro', comes out as different, uses different narrative techniques and different scales of events, and less conventional structures. I guess I was just being conservative in how I looked at it.
Like, OK (bear with me), when I chatted with TP and said it was hot here and I was wearing a skirt and t-shirt, and he commented about how cold it was there and he wished he was wearing a skirt, and I went ha ha boys in skirts. MJ probably would have said, yeah, boys should try wearing skirts because it's light and airy in summer and they don't know what they're missing. Whereas I had a small-scale knee-jerk conservatism. 'Haha, you're a boy and you said you wished you had a skirt, haha'.
Which brings me to an astute observation made by my ex-pat host the other day, which is that here (Japan) there is no concept of the 'tryhard' such as in Australia. We had seen some wannabe (see there it is again!) like boy band/girl group j-pop kind of singing teams practicing in the park, and thought that no young people would do that in Australia, because they'd be laughed at. She reckons that in Japanese culture, people respect people for trying hard, at whatever it is, and would not judge you negatively for it. She claims there's an absence of cynicism about people's aspirations and actions here (I'm wildly paraphrasing), and that people are hence more encouraging and experimental. She called it an absence of irony, I think. She said she'd miss it when she left.
It's a fairly appealing quality. I imagine I'd have trouble shaking my sense of irony. Probably a balanced approach would do. We yam what we yam, a bit.
Anyway, Miranda July's movie blog has a post from Paris about spending the day in looking at antique lace in a store. She picks four bits and buys them and makes a lace collar in homage to the Viktor and Rolf clothes she will never own. It made me feel better about what I've been doing here. And also like today might be the day I go and buy the curtain fabric.
I'm so impressionable!
[Meta-moment: OMG, this means I can reuse that post label I thought would never ever come up again!)
I was looking actually at the YouTube clips (it's all about Miranda) to find that part of the movie where there's a visit to an artist's studio. The visitors try to get rid of the artist's trash and he's all 'don't touch that sculpture!', and when they get stuck into admiring another work, it turns out to be his coffee cup or something. I couldn't find it. This happens to me all the time with my work. I was reminded of it because I went to a Martin Creed exhibition here a couple of days ago, who I bet this happens to all the time. He probably enjoys it. It happens to me, and I get frustrated, thinking 'does this mean I'm a gimmicky one joke artist like Martin Creed?'. (Disclaimer: I don't know anything about Martin Creed's work really. I'm sure it's complex and interesting. Most things are, even a screwed up piece of paper.)
The show I saw had that work in it. It was in a small side room. I started to go towards it and the gallery attendant stopped me, explaining that it was the office. I guess they don't feel it's important that people can get close to that particular piece of work. I encourage you to look at that work. I guess I was thinking of that when I made this. What a hack.
When I gave my newly developed short spiel about my work the other day to a friend of my host, she asked me 'but why?'. I mean, what can you say to that?
I'm going to take this opportunity to find out about Creed's practice properly.
When I first saw You Me and Everyone We Know I thought it was just OK. I liked certain things about it a lot, but I found it a bit self-conscious, or found the pace a bit forced or something, just in general. But taken in the context of her whole work, you figure out a bit more where she's coming from, and it becomes a whole lot more likable. A long narrative like a feature film I guess, when it's made by someone who's perhaps less of a 'pro', comes out as different, uses different narrative techniques and different scales of events, and less conventional structures. I guess I was just being conservative in how I looked at it.
Like, OK (bear with me), when I chatted with TP and said it was hot here and I was wearing a skirt and t-shirt, and he commented about how cold it was there and he wished he was wearing a skirt, and I went ha ha boys in skirts. MJ probably would have said, yeah, boys should try wearing skirts because it's light and airy in summer and they don't know what they're missing. Whereas I had a small-scale knee-jerk conservatism. 'Haha, you're a boy and you said you wished you had a skirt, haha'.
Which brings me to an astute observation made by my ex-pat host the other day, which is that here (Japan) there is no concept of the 'tryhard' such as in Australia. We had seen some wannabe (see there it is again!) like boy band/girl group j-pop kind of singing teams practicing in the park, and thought that no young people would do that in Australia, because they'd be laughed at. She reckons that in Japanese culture, people respect people for trying hard, at whatever it is, and would not judge you negatively for it. She claims there's an absence of cynicism about people's aspirations and actions here (I'm wildly paraphrasing), and that people are hence more encouraging and experimental. She called it an absence of irony, I think. She said she'd miss it when she left.
It's a fairly appealing quality. I imagine I'd have trouble shaking my sense of irony. Probably a balanced approach would do. We yam what we yam, a bit.
Anyway, Miranda July's movie blog has a post from Paris about spending the day in looking at antique lace in a store. She picks four bits and buys them and makes a lace collar in homage to the Viktor and Rolf clothes she will never own. It made me feel better about what I've been doing here. And also like today might be the day I go and buy the curtain fabric.
I'm so impressionable!
[Meta-moment: OMG, this means I can reuse that post label I thought would never ever come up again!)
I was looking actually at the YouTube clips (it's all about Miranda) to find that part of the movie where there's a visit to an artist's studio. The visitors try to get rid of the artist's trash and he's all 'don't touch that sculpture!', and when they get stuck into admiring another work, it turns out to be his coffee cup or something. I couldn't find it. This happens to me all the time with my work. I was reminded of it because I went to a Martin Creed exhibition here a couple of days ago, who I bet this happens to all the time. He probably enjoys it. It happens to me, and I get frustrated, thinking 'does this mean I'm a gimmicky one joke artist like Martin Creed?'. (Disclaimer: I don't know anything about Martin Creed's work really. I'm sure it's complex and interesting. Most things are, even a screwed up piece of paper.)
The show I saw had that work in it. It was in a small side room. I started to go towards it and the gallery attendant stopped me, explaining that it was the office. I guess they don't feel it's important that people can get close to that particular piece of work. I encourage you to look at that work. I guess I was thinking of that when I made this. What a hack.
When I gave my newly developed short spiel about my work the other day to a friend of my host, she asked me 'but why?'. I mean, what can you say to that?
I'm going to take this opportunity to find out about Creed's practice properly.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Update
It’s been a really interesting day today that seems to be summing up lots of the stuff that’s going on.
1. MW and I went to see a house (apartment) that we really liked and it was before the proper inspection and a private rental so maybe we can even have it! It had a big kitchen with gas and a bathtub and was in Summer Hill near all the shops and 2br and overgrown garden. But it’s likely the saga of looking for a place will continue for some time. That’s just how it is, full of disappointments and rallying and so on.
2. I had an interview for a new job that could be very good and is actually perfect for me right now, with an academic art and critical theory publisher. It’s part time but only just, which makes me somehow feel constricted and tight in the throat like Diane Keaton’s character in Love and Death where she says ‘can’t breathe, open a window, no, the other one, the one in the kitchen’. I don’t want to work jobs at all! But anyway, it would beat the shitkickiness I’m engaged with at the moment, which wants me to become permanent in three weeks and be paid 30% less per hour for the privilege of losing my flexibility (which is the point of that job).
3. I went for lunch with MW and chose the salad over the omelette with chorizo. It was the healthy choice, and I still want that omelette now, but I exercised a discipline uncommon in my general life, hence felt powerful.
4. Had a hair cut. My long curly locks are now a short short bob. My hairdresser is six months pregnant, something I didn’t know was happening. I felt all peaceful and relaxed and had lots of head massages and they brought me tea and it was all luxurious. And now my head is all 1920s, which is good.
5. A blur … I have a lot of follow up work to do on the exhibition I have on at the moment. Emails, images, opportunities to grab … lots of pressing blah better get on with it …
6. Went to a nice opening and talked to good people. People I haven’t been talking to for months because I’ve been locked down working on my show, and now I can go out. Solved some of my worky problems in a nice social environment. Sometimes these things look after themselves.
7. Came to MW’s house, he is making lasagne and listening to his iPod in the kitchen. As I type, I can sometimes hear him singing along. Warm feeling.
8. I was sent this link, thoughtfully. It made me want to write this post, so I did.
In conclusion, life is good and change, although it can be stressy, makes you feel alive. You know you are alive because you are in your life, living it. Currently.
1. MW and I went to see a house (apartment) that we really liked and it was before the proper inspection and a private rental so maybe we can even have it! It had a big kitchen with gas and a bathtub and was in Summer Hill near all the shops and 2br and overgrown garden. But it’s likely the saga of looking for a place will continue for some time. That’s just how it is, full of disappointments and rallying and so on.
2. I had an interview for a new job that could be very good and is actually perfect for me right now, with an academic art and critical theory publisher. It’s part time but only just, which makes me somehow feel constricted and tight in the throat like Diane Keaton’s character in Love and Death where she says ‘can’t breathe, open a window, no, the other one, the one in the kitchen’. I don’t want to work jobs at all! But anyway, it would beat the shitkickiness I’m engaged with at the moment, which wants me to become permanent in three weeks and be paid 30% less per hour for the privilege of losing my flexibility (which is the point of that job).
3. I went for lunch with MW and chose the salad over the omelette with chorizo. It was the healthy choice, and I still want that omelette now, but I exercised a discipline uncommon in my general life, hence felt powerful.
4. Had a hair cut. My long curly locks are now a short short bob. My hairdresser is six months pregnant, something I didn’t know was happening. I felt all peaceful and relaxed and had lots of head massages and they brought me tea and it was all luxurious. And now my head is all 1920s, which is good.
5. A blur … I have a lot of follow up work to do on the exhibition I have on at the moment. Emails, images, opportunities to grab … lots of pressing blah better get on with it …
6. Went to a nice opening and talked to good people. People I haven’t been talking to for months because I’ve been locked down working on my show, and now I can go out. Solved some of my worky problems in a nice social environment. Sometimes these things look after themselves.
7. Came to MW’s house, he is making lasagne and listening to his iPod in the kitchen. As I type, I can sometimes hear him singing along. Warm feeling.
8. I was sent this link, thoughtfully. It made me want to write this post, so I did.
In conclusion, life is good and change, although it can be stressy, makes you feel alive. You know you are alive because you are in your life, living it. Currently.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Things are looking up
- Feel less rutty (ie no longer in rut)
- Room tidied
- Breaking back of art projects
- Spring arrived!
- More work obtained (poverty fended off again)
- Haircut
- Quazillions of books mooched waiting for me to read!
- internet addiction subsiding (enabling life to be addressed)
In other news, it has been so long since I blogged that blogger has changed its interface in the interim. (Blog, blog; inter, inter).
- Room tidied
- Breaking back of art projects
- Spring arrived!
- More work obtained (poverty fended off again)
- Haircut
- Quazillions of books mooched waiting for me to read!
- internet addiction subsiding (enabling life to be addressed)
In other news, it has been so long since I blogged that blogger has changed its interface in the interim. (Blog, blog; inter, inter).
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Officially drowning
I am coming to realise that I *always* have a layer of stress or anxiety lurking just below the surface of my consciousness (that's if it's not out there for all to see, which it frequently is).
For all my talk about my work (art) being about representation (signification etc), I suppose it actually *is* expressive, in that it's (becoming more and more) a sublimation of my anxieties (about time running out, my not-perfectness, lots of other things). Which might be stuff that shouldn't be indulged, that should remain below the surface. Sublimatedly. Because surfaces are fragile, and I'm not sure I can walk around with all my guts spilling out all the time ... which leads me to a pro-unselfawareness position, see, the weakness of which I'm sure my dear readers would recognise and consequently reject. "Maintain the surface for the sake of preserving the status quo? Never! Break it down!"
(those are my readers speaking).
Anyway, there are a lot of people in the art world who speak sense. I forget to focus on them. Or forget to be rigorous enough to look hard enough for them and listen properly.
I suppose for me art's a safe place to strip down the boundaries of meaning without risk (risk of losing one's grip on meaning in the real world: one's grip on reality).
Sublimation.
Is that noble?
Not So Sure.
Only if it heals or something. The worry is that it perpetuates the issues or negativity that are being sublimated, or gives you a reason to keep unhelpful thoughts s freshly watered.
Heh
I just want to feel connected. Is that too much to ask?
For all my talk about my work (art) being about representation (signification etc), I suppose it actually *is* expressive, in that it's (becoming more and more) a sublimation of my anxieties (about time running out, my not-perfectness, lots of other things). Which might be stuff that shouldn't be indulged, that should remain below the surface. Sublimatedly. Because surfaces are fragile, and I'm not sure I can walk around with all my guts spilling out all the time ... which leads me to a pro-unselfawareness position, see, the weakness of which I'm sure my dear readers would recognise and consequently reject. "Maintain the surface for the sake of preserving the status quo? Never! Break it down!"
(those are my readers speaking).
Anyway, there are a lot of people in the art world who speak sense. I forget to focus on them. Or forget to be rigorous enough to look hard enough for them and listen properly.
I suppose for me art's a safe place to strip down the boundaries of meaning without risk (risk of losing one's grip on meaning in the real world: one's grip on reality).
Sublimation.
Is that noble?
Not So Sure.
Only if it heals or something. The worry is that it perpetuates the issues or negativity that are being sublimated, or gives you a reason to keep unhelpful thoughts s freshly watered.
Heh
I just want to feel connected. Is that too much to ask?
Friday, January 25, 2008
Monday, January 14, 2008
Huh what right uh
I think I am too self-centred for music. How eye-openingly ... I don't know. Lyrics make me overstimulated.
I am listening to a mix CD I made recently to give to a friend. It's really good. Right now I can only listen to Led Zeppelin or the Beatles or the Velvet Underground. Or quite a lot of other things. Hmm.
When I started blogging, it was this kind of free diaristic kind of thing. Now I have all these phantom audiences of readers (you know who you are! ha. I even know who you are, mostly. probably) that I consider when I 'blog'. I like having readers. My ego likes it. But now I think of the diferent audiences and self-inhibit. Not that this was ever a tell-all deep thing anyway. But maybe it might have been.
I feel that I've blandified.
Anyway. I've got to work on that.
I am moving furniture. I've been all over the shop today. Up, down, up. Unreleased energy, then tired, then antsy, then happy. Now moving drawers and shelves. At 12.30 am. Ah! Peaches is on. Must dash.
I've got a short little span of attention and oh, my nights are so long /Paul Simon
I am listening to a mix CD I made recently to give to a friend. It's really good. Right now I can only listen to Led Zeppelin or the Beatles or the Velvet Underground. Or quite a lot of other things. Hmm.
When I started blogging, it was this kind of free diaristic kind of thing. Now I have all these phantom audiences of readers (you know who you are! ha. I even know who you are, mostly. probably) that I consider when I 'blog'. I like having readers. My ego likes it. But now I think of the diferent audiences and self-inhibit. Not that this was ever a tell-all deep thing anyway. But maybe it might have been.
I feel that I've blandified.
Anyway. I've got to work on that.
I am moving furniture. I've been all over the shop today. Up, down, up. Unreleased energy, then tired, then antsy, then happy. Now moving drawers and shelves. At 12.30 am. Ah! Peaches is on. Must dash.
I've got a short little span of attention and oh, my nights are so long /Paul Simon
Friday, November 23, 2007
Brief political interlude: How Should One Vote?
What a good tool. GetUp have revived my hope in hope. That, and the fact that my father, who I would certainly vote for if I could, is volunteering for the Greens. That revives my hope in hope too, people I trust doing things that they believe will help others. I like idealism. I wish there were more idealists active out there.
I am also digging the Colbert Report. Truthiness for all!
And making lots of things. Just wait! They're so good, my new things I've made/I'm making.
I am also digging the Colbert Report. Truthiness for all!
And making lots of things. Just wait! They're so good, my new things I've made/I'm making.
Monday, July 24, 2006
Results of survey
I've analysed the data and must now conclude that's its better for the soul to be a lovable tit/harmless fool and always be dancing like a wally than to bore the pants off some perfectly interesting normal musician about why you hate [insert annoying thing here].
Keeps em off the streets, see.
Parties without dancing - what's WITH that?
Keeps em off the streets, see.
Parties without dancing - what's WITH that?
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