Messes of Life Mixed Up with Systems of Messes

One mess of things to take and another of things to leave behind. Packing up a life into a couple of suitcases just isn't possible. I guess that is why we have family members - to store what doesn't fit.
Why am I keeping all of that crap? Why am I still collecting crap?

This leads me to think about something I heard recently that collecting and individuality aren't as interesting as system and principle. So collecting is synonymous with individuality? Is that true? I had always thought of collecting as about groups, but each component of a collection is individual. Usually people say that the individual components make up a whole. Can the individual components stand on their own?
You ask that question often as an artist, especially if you work with dipyichs/triptychs, or anything that may be a series. Can those pieces stand on their own? And do they need to? If they stand on their own, does it make the whole piece redundant?

But back to this whole more interesting thing. System and principle are more interesting than collection and individual. The principle for your system of collection; you collect individual things.

...

I tried to write a story about this. I do mean "tried". The concept of deconstructing collection and system seemed so abstract as to not lend itself to narrative. Now this seems odd. Narrative exists in everything, even non-narrative (I can touch on that in a later post).
Here is an except: I didn't think that any of them were particularly interesting. The seemed pretty boring; a few were gray-ish, some were brown-ish; some were large-ish, some were small-ish. From what I could tell he may as well have collected them moments before our encounter.
I plan to finish that story one day. A narrative must exist somewhere. Even if it is only a non-narrative.

...

This begs the question: what is my system of collection? is it still valid? WHAT NEEDS TO BE THROWN OUT?

Words That I Question

• feasible
• construct (verb)
• trappings
• standard
  

This importance of communication

I received an email about an exhibition in Shanghai. The exhibition looked super interesting. There was a link to the artist's blog. I clicked on it.

I assumed, because the email came to me in English (this wasn't SPAM, I am on two mailing lists for organizations in China) that the blog would be too - well that was what I realized after I went to the blog. All Chinese (and why should it be any different?). No English translation.

Native English speakers are spoiled. Our native tongue has currently evolved to be the lengua franca in the Western world. Every gallery or festival or organization website that I go to, in North America or Europe, is either in English or has an English translation available. The English translations aren't necessarily there for the anglophones - oh no! Don't kid yourself. In northern and eastern Europe, in particular, there are a plethora of English, as a foreign language, speakers - and many speak it quite well. English is fairly easy to learn - to communicate on a base level. So, English has become the default language.

Being back in the States, I have started to take the ability to understand everything around me for granted. To be quite honest, at first I found it annoying. While waiting in line at the grocery store, I don't truly want to listen to the fight between a mother and daughter about being able to purchase something. I am not sure if, while abroad, I actually tuned it out, but when it is in English - it is significantly harder. Also what lends a hand to the ability to "tune out", when living abroad there are always moments (sometimes whole days) when your ability to understand or communicate effectively breaks down, has a lapse. I suspect that those moments keep you on your toes. You know they are coming. No matter how fluent you are, there is always a time when you are lost. (Hell, sometimes that even happens to me in English.) Knowing that may happen keeps you alert and learning, soaking up all the information around you.

Here I am lazy. It is all my fault that I am lazy. I have gotten comfortable with being lazy and have therefore gotten even more lazy. I'm sure not everyone shares this experience. Some are probably able to stay on their toes without the push. I am not. The lack of challenge makes me complacent.

So, seeing this communication, which communicated nothing to me (I'm talking about the blog in Chinese, again), woke me up. I regained that sense of wonder that I love to have. I thought, "I want to understand that" - not just the writing, but about the text: it's structure and roots. How did these marks evolve to mean what they mean? How did that system become the elaborate syntactical arrangement that it is? How did that become universal throughout lands? And how did people figure out how to translate these codes so that the marks then become meaningful to every person? What relationship, if any, do these marks, which we classify as letter forms or characters, have to the non-verbal communication that humans and animals make with one another? What networks are created? What structures are erected? How do marks interpret sound? Why do we feel the urge to "record" sounds, events, thoughts, things ... ? How can sounds that are actually drastically different be perceived as the same? Is body language clearer?

I seem to be in a phase of questions, but not of trying to solve any of them.

I suppose I should sleep on it.

Questions from an insomniac - they don't need to be answered, just asked.

• How do you teach students to use the computer to develop process not just product?
• How does creating work on the computer create residue?
• Does digital residue exist?
• Why is it considered old school to use a sketch book?
• Can a blog replace a sketch book?
• Can a machine be a tool instead of a means to an end?
• Why is the first place I look for information the internet?
• Is that a good thing?
• Can students learn how to think by drawing lines with the Wacom tablet?
• Why does it seem that students know less and less about history, even contemporary history?
• When did soley making become the curriculum?
• How did reading become passé?
• How is it that the more I try to find other methods of thinking I find that I still seem to fall back on the same method?
• How do you know when an original idea is radical and when it is original?
• What's the difference?
• Is being focused all the time truly a good trait?
• How many different generations of the same thing must I do before I realize that it is complete?
• Damn, it is never complete, is it?
• When will I stop imagining roaches randomly and nonchalantly walking across my floor?
• How did the classics become the classics?
• Can I nominate books for that distinction?
• Why do I find myself consistently and constantly inspired by people/artists that inspired me long ago?
• Why do I feel like everyone should be as inspired by them?

to be continued...

Repost

Ok. Taken from Lebbeus Woods's blog about dead words:


experimental

While this word is bandied about in architecture [ I insert ART, DESIGN, ANYTHING - REALLY], its meaning is all but dead. There is little architecture, or design, that truly experiments, that is, plays with the unknown. The single defining characteristic of an experiment is that no one knows at the outset how it will turn out. The experimenter is looking for something, has a hypothesis to prove, but has no idea if the experiment will verify the hypothesis, or prove it wrong, or result in something entirely unexpected. Experiments are risky. Architecture is today, and generally has been, averse to this kind of risk.

Woe is me, the melancholic artist...

I think this idea that the experimental is dead about sums up my views recently - or maybe always. I am always the malcontent..... should I work on that???
Nah.

What are we to do?

I've been having a conversation with myself, as well as friends and colleagues about the commodification of art. I am completely ambivalent about this. One minute I agree and try to figure out how my work can fit into this box and the next I don't care at all and just want to continue to make moving work. This conversation has been exacerbated by my current teaching position. I like to call the school the Devry of art schools. From a fine art perspective this sounds like I don't think highly of the school. And by fine art standards I don't, but it isn't a fine art school (and every day I have to remind myself of this). It is an applied art school that doesn't have time to mess with or teach theory. Their agenda consists of generating students that can produce the work that the capitalist commercial society wants. The only 'thoughts' that the creative person can have is how to make it look 'cooler'. Obviously I don't agree with this, and honestly, I don't think one needs to agree with this philosophy in order to teach in this environment, but I do. This type of total disregard to values that I hold dear is taxing on my mind and heart. I come home from work completely frustrated. I call my friends from architecture school (the genesis of my completely idealistic view of the world and art) for advice. I recently received an email from a former advisor about the changes in fine art education as well as applied art education (prompted by my email describing my utter frustration). What am I trying to say with all of this? Basically that I just read an article in the New York Times that prompts me to say - I am not alone (not that I ever thought I was - well at least not with this feeling). The article is titled: An Architect Unshackled by Limits of the Real World and talks about the work of Lebbeus Woods. I remember in architecture school that Lebbeus Woods was giving a lecture down in Charlotte, NC (I was at Virginia Tech), and there was a big big commotion about who was going to drive down there, could we miss class, where were people going to stay or were they going to drive back... Being a first year I didn't know who he was, but I made a point to find out. Of course he wasn't that big of a deal because all the other architecture gods that I was introduced to had similar theories about designing. As described in the article, most of those architects have made it big (i.e. Rem Koolhaus) and are making money and designing for a myriad of clients. Woods on the other hand is designing abstract buildings, sites, environments, where the idea of it seems to be more important that whether or not it can be built. The theory and the design are paramount. The article offers a reason on why his contemporaries, and the world of architecture, have shifted their ideals: ... 'High end architecture became a valuable commodity. ... The pressure to smooth over anything in a design that might be perceived as threatening has only increased in recent years, as a lot of architecture has begun to look like a sophisticated form of marketing. Architects who once defined themselves as rebels are now designing luxury residential towers for the super-rich.' Upon reading this I realized why I am so frustrated and unhappy with the current state of everything. We are soft. Society is soft. It doesn't want to ruffle feathers, it only wants to make money or make things pretty. Everything is about big business. Then I have to ask myself - well, then, what does being a professional artist mean? Professional. This implies business. What is business without commodity and marketing (This being asked by a child of a capitalist and materialist society that thinks that it has taken over the world and can do whatever she sees fit in order to propel her own gain.) I don't know what professional means. Yesterday I thought I did (seriously, yesterday I was having a conversation with a friend). Now? Who the hell knows? And a bigger question is why am I compelled to label it?