> banal as compliment, as another adjective for
> vencualar, like Warhols personae, like the found
> images in Polke, like the comfort one gets from bad
> television
>
> the lds churches of my youth looked like rotary
> clubs ca 1950, meeting Hero in the offices of the
> local dioceses, look like that.
>
> blonde wood, Berber carpet, the symmetry and
> asymmetry of 50s ranch houses, red and white or
> white and black lino, small black tiles as back
> splash.
>
> ikea as a way to dumb down and sell up Aalto and
> Jacobsens dream, but in a good way.
>
> someone on ilxor talked about their love of an allen
> wrench, like a fetish-sexual and religious contexts
> of that word.
>
> the third international style building in the world
> is in edmonton, next door to a fake neo classical
> and across the street from a sandstone deco with
> friezes of airplanes.
>
> the grids of sky scrapers, and of window panes, and
> of lay outs in offices, remind me how vital the grid
> was to contemporary modernism.
>
> art galleries look like offices, sterile.
>
> boring postcard books, the latest hipster catch,
> from america and england and germany-images of ugly
> buildings and banal places- roadways, hotels, scenes
> of local kitsch- maybe ironic, maybe genuine
>
> according to Momus, the hippest real estate in
> berlin is old soviet block houses and there is a
> happy family style card game about them.
>
> on the car back from this retreat, i talked with
> love about the tory building, a 1960s style
> skyscraping square.
>
> the new volkswagen ad, with the sterile techno, and
> all of those square images (cheese slices,
> industrial sites, air conditioners)- compare and
> contrast square vs round headed.
>
> theres a hip new electro clash band called
> squarepusher, does that fit in anywhere ?
>
> as much as a i am postmodernist in life, the rigid
> control of the international style the obsession
> with rules and order-esp. in things like hotels,
> highways, gas stations, bridges, office towers is
> comforting.
>
> the poetry i have been writing and reading lately
> are struggles with the wcw maxim not ideas but
> things, but things carry ideas, grand things like
> pine trees and stars and banal things like what i
> ate today and what's in my wallet and talking like
> techno Beckett about an aim chat room
>
> Gareth calls his photos surface vs depth, and i
> think thats a false binary, they are v. deep- in
> that the Ordinary brings meaning, and wonderful and
> beautiful-ut in ways ugly and common and awkward and
> boring and banal-not as an insult, but as a new way
> to look at things. as a comfort and a sly critique