3.14.17

not forgotten

this project came from a fascination with how the ongoing canon of the global village defines reality. in a platform where any conceivable information is accessible, it becomes challenging and perhaps arbitrary to recognize what continues to be a reality in the physical world. i took old images, some from deep in the past, and altered them in retrospect to my liking. by doing this i created new memories, new objects altogether, and by inputting them to the internet i added them to the global village. the idea is that to those who happen upon them they may as well be the memories i forged at face value (they're clearly edited but the idea is communicated). they may as well be what i intended them to be in retrospect. this is the power of the global village. in some images my edits were minimal, and in some they completely disfigured the original photo. this was as much a personal reflection with each image as it was about the alterations i made. these new images exist in the global village now, thus what they stand for manifests as valid just the same as their original forms.

thinking about my final project. angry about charlotte moorman. angry about lots of things. interested in the idea of the abject female form. a form that incites repulsion rather than desire. the urge to vomit rather than consume. i want to incorporate this into whatever i do. my work will not be for the consumption or ease or satisfaction of others, it is not meant to be easy to swallow. maybe by those it resonates with, but only then.

the global village to me is existence, accessible existence. it is an ongoing canon of information, an example of which one might consider the internet in this age. it may vary; a complex website containing many features and avenues, versus an obscure result at the bottom of a google image search. allatonceness; an erasure of linear planes, fuck the alphabet. i was going to "wonder" if i would fit mcluhan's description of either amateur or professional but i'm fairly certain it would be the former, at least in most regards. professionalism is not attractive to me at the moment. maybe in conduct, but not in practice. i can conduct myself professionally without following guidelines, without planning in advance.

this is just stream of consciousness thought. or not really, moreso organized funneled thought; my fingers cannot keep up with my stream of consciousness and they are too lazy to try. maybe it would help formulate some ideas for my project though.

fabricating memories to add to the global village. staging photographs perhaps in polaroid or something akin to give the impression of authenticity. maybe changing previous memories. in adding them to the global village, some online platform, they gain essence. to a stranger, they are interpreted as real. that has many possibilities. to alter a memory i do not like to think about to make it have an outcome of my choice. it becomes valid when added to the global village. shifting loci of power. erasing people. i could either stage a photograph, or alter one that exists with digital manipulation or drawing or something like that. but i feel like this idea feels a little shallow. i feel like i could do something more. lemme check my mcfuckin sketchbook and see if i've jotted down any other ideas.

(i guess the idea of drawing over an image would be kind of interesting though especially because of drawing's potential, the potential to create images completely out of thin air on a two dimensional space, create narratives that can be understood or interpreted by different people. also with how relevant drawing is to my life, if i were to follow the idea of changing unsavory memories it would be like me personally reclaiming them, having full power over them with a medium that is highly personal to me. but i don't know if that would translate well/if it would be irrelevant, etc.)

okay my other ideas were sort of stupid but maybe not i dont know. one of them was to create a fake profile or identity online, go as complex with it as i could, with a specific intent of course. by adding this identity to the global village, to those who encounter it it would be real, thus bringing the person to life in at least some people's minds. i don't know how i would present it. perhaps if i had an actor, one who i could take pictures of for the profile and one who was willing to be the face, i could present them and then the profile. idk there are some ethical concerns to be mulled over with that one.

i had another idea to "fill the room" in as many different ways as i possibly could, as a sort of nod to allatonceness and john cage. by fill the room i would mean using sound, bubbles, visuals on each wall, balloons, anything that would fit the description of "filling" the room with it. by the time everything was happening, it really would be allatonceness haha. and hopefully some kind of transcendence from concrete sensory stimulation, like it would hopefully be really overwhelming to the point where you weren't really focused on what you were "hearing" or "seeing" but rather on the whole of what was happening, this sense of being absolutely surrounded and encompassed by some things that aren't even tangible.

i've considered animation. i did that for a project in film last year. CHEKC IT OUT!!!1 but that also took a piece of my soul along with it and also some of my will to live because g o d d a m n animation is frustrating. it couldn't be complicated, it'd have to be something blocky like the one i linked. i don't know what my intent would be for this, i suppose it could be anything as long as it interacted with the medium in an interesting way. could be mixed media.

also the idea of crossing invisible boundaries. this was sort of inspired by morgan's project with the property lines. the idea of breaking some invisible codes, crossing invisible lines, where one thing becomes something else, it's almost transformative. exploration becomes trespassing. voyeurism becomes uncomfortable; an idea of making a video that starts out causing viewers to be curious and absorbed, but slowly shifts into something highly uncomfortable and hard to watch. i don't know how i could manage this without being cliche though or kind of ""edgy"". i just think it's interesting, especially in film, the idea of visual voyeurism and scopophilia discussed by laura mulvey. i want to discover where the line is drawn, if there is one. after all, horror movies are a thing. would there be a line? what would cause this shift into discomfort, being hard to look at, wanting to look away? there is some kind of phenomenon that keeps people watching something even after it becomes very graphic or upsetting, like death videos on the internet. what would create a real reaction, similar even to the phenomenon i discussed in my first paragraph, where a desire to consume becomes repulsion? would it be dependent upon the subject? the content, what they were doing? would it be emotionally based, or physically based, e.i. seeing someone very vulnerable or in an uncomfortable emotional state, or seeing them nude or injured or doing something weird with their physical selves? is it dependent upon the audience? it would be interesting to explore.

i've also, on the contrary to PRETTY MUCH ALL OF THIS, been interested in ideas of healing, too. i looked into tabita rezaire, an artist morgan mentioned, and was highly interested in the ways she seeks to heal the internet, use the internet to heal others, decolonize it. tabita seems to regard the internet as a site, almost an entity, but definitely composed of lots of different identities, often toxic ones. i believe she tries to create spaces in it that are healing, that encourage and teach viewers to heal. i wonder how this could be accomplished with other mediums, or if it could. it's a highly interesting idea. i think it is far easier to do harm than to heal. it's far easier to do most things than it is to heal. it's easy to incite a reaction, but it is hard to incite the desire to or the ability to heal. healing is a different concept for everyone. everyone has varying levels of harm already done to them, they are at different points, different places. some cannot fathom their wounds ever closing and they don't want to, and some welcome it. i do not know how i could suggest this in a work i did. it would be interesting to do with film, if my audience were an audience. or i could incorporate it into the memory/photo idea.

i had entertained the idea of talking to others about it as well, staging photographs for other people that would be an interpretation of a bad memory, and then helping them reclaim it in an expressive way of their choice. i don't know if this is beyond me though, if it would be too personal or beyond my place, so i shy away from it for now. if others had interest i would consider it, but for at least the first draft of the project it would probably be safer to keep it to myself.

I DONT KNOW I DONT KNOW I DONT KWNONWNWNWNWNWNWFFNNFNWEJHWHHH none of these necessarily SCREAM at me to do, i don'tk now if theyre UP TO PAR or what god Damn it

charlotte moorman is known by most as "the topless cellist" after she was dragged off by police during her performance of her opera sextronique and she was convicted for public indecency. she was a badass avant-garde artist who changed the canon of both the music and art world forever. she used her body as a medium in the time of the second wave of feminism when many condemned her for exposing herself for the sake of a man's vision (nam june paik). however nam had little to do with it, or at least receives more credit than he should. charlotte explored ideas of revolutionizing music and television, and using it to reach as wide of an audience as possible. she appeared on nbc dressed as she is above, and prides herself on being the first to appear fully frontally nude on network tv. her legacy had an enormous impact on the art world, having been responsible for creating a site for avant-garde artists to meet and share and showcase their most experimental and chaotic works for the first time. all aspects of her were accessible to both artists and the public.

many criticized her as a young harlot from arkansas too eager to take her clothes off at the drop of a hat. however it's more than apparent that she was an avant-garde visionary artist. i'd say she was before her time, however i feel that she was exactly what the art world needed in that time. she embodies mcluhan's idea of the global village in her utilization of technology such as tv broadcasts and television sets, and the mediumship of her body both physical and politicized. her work created an impact that has lasted through time, despite having not physically produced a lasting body for it such as a painting or sculpture.

preparing for a gallery becomes a part of the performance of any work you are exhibiting. some of us scrubbed at our picture frames and glass until they were close to spotless, and others chose to leave them scuffed and imperfect. they were ordered deliberately, after switching each picture around, seeing the conversation they created between images. our magazines were left in the middle upon two pillars. i thought our gallery to be extremely personal, richly emotive. there was a lot to be gleaned and seened in every set of images, and even moreso in the books. i was thinking a lot about all the effort it would take to put together a high-end gallery. all the cleaning, the heavy lifting, writing and printing things out, networking. it's so much work, but in the end it is worth it i guess. though i wouldn't mind a gallery in a more accessible, fucked kinda place like a cave, or someone's shitty grimy art house, or under a bridge, or on a roof, i don't know. that would be hella stylish.

https://soundcloud.com/user-558313407/my-ass

john cage wrote a silent orchestral piece and he also said "one must be disinterested, accept that a sound is a sound and a man is a man" (119). i had him in mind when i put this piece together, along with some songs stuck in my head. i was interested in the idea that sounds are constantly occurring, absolutely all the time every single second, and at the same time sounds are happening in my head, in everyones heads, that we cannot hear. thoughts that pass, words that stick out, songs that get stuck, ESPECIALLY when one is as ~DISINTERESTED~ and ALOOF as john cage, with his cowboy ass name. i entered the Garage Band and pretty much played whatever i was thinking of at the moment, whether that meant a solid tune or an impulsive smashing of the keyboard.

how about that rashaad newsome

newsome's work had been one of the first multisensory mixed media art installations i'd seen in my short lawrence career. it was very striking!!! from the explosive blooming radial image compositions, to the hypnotic thrumming latin-chanting/beats in the background, it was impossible not to devote complete attention to his art. 

i was really fascinated by his use of iconography, especially in the emblems and symbols of power. i love the idea of recreating emblems with historical significance with more modern images that possess their own sociocultural significance. that might be my favorite part of his breadth of works, that keen attention to the meaning attached to symbols, and how he uses and recreates them.

Rashaad Newsome (American, b. 1979). Status Symbol #20, 2009. Collage on paper, 30 x 22. 

for another class i was asked to comment on the dichotomy between masculine and feminine qualities in newsome’s work. i felt that a lot of his depictions of gender, at least in his royalty works, showed acknowledgement of historical symbolism; beautiful women as icons of power, wealth, desire, queenhood, attractive disembodied limbs, et cetera. however in his other works, gender is represented in a more fluid, modern light. in a number of his performance pieces newsome includes elements of vogue dancing, a mode of artistic expression birthed from primarily queer/POC communities. he reflects this in his art.

bibliotech

"amateurism is anti-environmental" p.92

what defines a perception as anti-environmental
is it a distracting fixation on menial detail, rather than a broad-stroked realization of a space? amateurism vs professionalism, i wanna see a bullet pointed list. i wanna see portraits.
i consider myself an amateur at every single thing i do. at no point does my self consciousness step over the line to professionalism.
does professionalism coincide with mastery? or is it in the way you handle things.
i moved around the library i work at in an ""anti-environmental"" fashion. i focused on breaking down my perception of the place i was in and instead narrowing in on interesting images i saw with my eyes in that very second. i doctored each photo with the same two tools on instagram. i was very amateur.