Still M.I.A.

50% Hedonism, 50% Getting It Done. See ya in Boston, kids!

What It Takes.

Another thing about writing: like many people who self-publish, I do it compulsively. That doesn't mean I always do it well. I keep myself in check by watching other writers who are clocking in their hours and learning to be disciplined. They're like sword-makers, thrusting their steel into the fire of their minds, folding it and beating it over and over again until their product is hard and perfect. I don't want to look like a grubby five-year old putting crayon scribbles on the fridge ("I HAS A STORY!", with a backwards "R"), so I hesitate a lot before posting. Thank God. I used to be really trigger-happy. A lot of my shitty prose is taking up space somewhere (cough cough, my Livejournal).

Speaking of time, I've been restraining my wanderlust, and have actually been getting the necessary stuff done, e.g. filling out loan applications, scholarship applications and coughing up two months of rent for my new apartment. It's been a really expensive year. For some reason, the fact that I've got a desk job tends to massively inflate my net worth in other people's eyes. All those pay stubs went to application fees, transcript fees, and travel expenses for campus visits and house-hunting, not re-creating James Bond cocktails , buying a Bardot tribute hoody or decorating with world artisan ceramics (because I'm trying to be conscientious now).

While I tick things off on my to-do list, you guys can stare at pictures of Daniel Edward's "Paris Hilton Autopsy". Imagine what it takes to inspire someone to make you the shining example of drunk driving by creating a sculpture that allows people to fondle your innards (tiara, cellphone, and chihuahua included).




More candy? Here's a piece depicting the birth of Britney's first child. Also, Banksy punks Paris on YouTube.

Something Isn't Right Here.

Oh, bunnies! Wait...

The cross-section of soil was my first clue to the wonderful abnormalities in this Josh Keyes illustration. The other pieces are more overtly mashed-up, which makes me suspect that this might have been the first in series. There's one of a lone wolf pacing a floating patch of grass, also containing a Converse All-Star sneaker and a haphazard group of traffic signs. There's also a pair of hyenas inspecting a graffiti-d mailbox. And then there are a few manicured, multi-faceted but supposedly "natural" and self-sustaining (?) stand-alone environments. I love how these are condensed versions of a "big picture" idea.

I stumbled over these at Fecal Face -- a great website, well-designed and frequently updated with lots of cool new stuff. From the Josh Keyes interview:

What is the purpose of the islands in your work?

I don't think of them as islands, though they read that way. The diagrammatic quality of my work refers to the human gaze, similar to the idea of the male gaze, it sees and takes in only what it wants to see or desires to see. The model I am using is the scientific gaze or perception. Things seen in quantity separate from the whole. A laboratory where animals, ecosystems, humans, are reduced to objects. It is a minimal playing field and something that stems from my interest in Samuel Becketts plays like Waiting for Godot, and the theater of the absurd. Though I am tempted at times to fill the entire space, I find that the minimal stage set helps to focus the attention on the narrative. I also use the minimal and segmented landscapes to bring clarity to a very complex word of events. It is a way of quieting down information. I would like to create some sculptures at some point. I have a strong fascination with the dioramas in natural history museums, they are magnificent installations.

Connect the Dots.

The Fall of Icarus, Peter Brueghel

Musee des Beaux Arts
W. H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,

The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

***

[Bold text for emphasis.]

Public Art, Vol. 1

Jenny Holzer

Banksy




Alexander Brodsky




Spencer Tunick

EDIT: I was a bit annoyed with Blogger for re-sizing the photos, but then I realized that it was automatically "thumbnailing" them. In other words, click on any picture in this blog to see the original size.

There's That "Galaxy Expanding" Feeling Again.

"In order to describe the spectacle, its formation, its functions and whatever forces may hasten its demise, a few artificial distinctions are called for. To analyze the spectacle means talking its language to some degree -- to the degree, in fact, that we are obliged to engage the methodology of the society to which the spectacle gives expression. For what the spectacle expresses is the total practice of one particular economic and social formation; it is, so to speak, that formation's agenda. It is also the historical moment by which we happen to be governed."

-- The Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord

Holy crap. You know when you have one of those ideas that won't let you sleep? This is what's rousing me out of bed right now. I have been dwelling extensively on Adbusters (credit actually goes to my roommate for that, she leaves them lying around the apartment), The Society of the Spectacle, 1984, and stuff like this.
The project involves:

* a public, site-specific installation (or several)
* privacy rights (the lack thereof)
* a slick, sassy website
* some negotiation with the city.


Then again, this is the same city that thought the promo for Aqua Teen Hunger Force was a terrorist attack. I don't know if it would be allowed. In a perfect world, it would be greenlighted, I'd get a hefty grant, helping hands, etcetera. Of course, maybe the "thesis" is just a paper, but it would be absolutely perfect, if, in the process of putting together a project I could:

* freak people out I mean, hold a mirror up to our times
* put together a winning grant application
* get past red tape by talking to lots of interesting people

I am still expecting to go to libraries and look at abstracts but the whole point of picking my school was to go way beyond that. Oh. And. I just got a Creative Commons license. I think everyone should have them, just to be on the safe side.

Daughter of a Diaspora(ish)

So I might have a little bit of a girlcrush on Korean pop star Lee Hyori. Or maybe I just feel a bit lost with no one in the media to "model" myself after. I mean, who exactly am I supposed to identify with?

a) Cassandra from Wayne's World
b) maybe Thandie Newton, if you squint (or if I don't squint, ha)
c) a bobblehead hula girl
d) nobody famous

Can I be this girl, for about ten minutes? A twinkly Asian "blonde" with street style and great dance routines?



What's odd is that this 3-part series of music videos is also blatantly a commercial for Samsung cellphones. On YouTube someone called Lee Hyori a Samsung model, whereas no one on MTV's Top 20 is referred to as a Dolce & Gabbana model. MUSIC as advertising? Is this some new Asian phenomenon I'm not aware of? Because I would totally do a paper on it.

Everything's potential research fodder these days. I think I have to scour a few master's theses this summer to get a better idea of what hasn't been done. Also something that would:

a) address a current issue (e.g. inconspicuous consumption, "green" design)
b) be considered edgy and "sexy". I think one achieves that by bringing seemingly disparate elements together in a creative way. In other words, something like this.

EDIT: more sexysexysexy -- We Are All Photographers Now. Hello, dream project!