lasermonks
both via mefi
Sunday, May 16, 2004
Thursday, May 13, 2004
I don’t know if it’s just me, but these pictures look like anything you’d see Madonna or Britney Spears do on stage. I mean, this is something you can see at Lincoln Center for an NEA grant.
Rush Limbaugh
While aside from location difficulties (this sort of thing would happen at PS 1 or a private performance space), does he have a point ? The thing about the performance and body art that came from the 60s and 70s was that it was an internalization and reaction against the violence of Vietnam, of the isolation and fear of the death camps, of the mechanical reductionism of capitalism, of terror that surrounds the loss of soul. I do not expect the largest intellectual sophistication from Rush, in fact I do not assume any intellectual ambiguity from him, but he does have something here. When I was in the airport in Minneapolis, and I saw the cover of the Economist, with the man wired and hooded, i thought that at first it was performance art. The grainy, surveillance quality had the sheen of Dogme 95 cinematic. The photos were well composed, they were shot with an eye towards aesthetics, they were shot with a mind full of intense visual cleverness, they imparted vast reams of information about the nature of the act and those who were performing it. This images were intended with an audience in mind, they were intended to be disseminated, and to be shown to large audiences. These were not the casual, ugly, crude souvenirs that came from other wars. (compare the photos taken by Canadian Infantry in Somila of the beating and torturing of prisoners.)
I doubt that Lindsey England knows the work of Chris Burden, Vito Acconci or Bruce Nauman, but the care that she takes to express the tangible isolation and hatred comes with some v. severe aesthetic training. Better then the all information, no slick packaging videos of shootings and beheadings the enemy does.
What does it mean when the photos are intended to be shown, when they are taken with such care and such concern ? Who were they meant for--Jonah Goldberg told us that they resembled pornography, but in the age of bukkake and amateur girls anything shot on home video that isn't a kids birthday party is compared to porn. The thing that is pornographic about these videos is the same thing that was pornographic about the Passion, that is pornographic about Terminator 3: The Return of the Machines. It is this refusal to recognize the transednce of flesh, to think that the only thing that our copreality does is engage in violence, not the small, real, human breaks that are encountered daily, but the looming, insane spectacles that cannot be absorbed without a technological intecessor.
There is something new here, beyond the rape, beyond the torture, beyond the imperial subjecation--America has had that from the beginning look at the Civil War Camps, or the Spanish American War or Wounded Knee or El Salvador. It is also not the documentation, each of those wars has had people cleaning up after it, with words and sometimes pictures. What is new is the ease and the casualness that the pictures came to us, how with in weeks they came to Time and The Gaurdian, CNN and BBC, US News and World Report and Anarchy:A Journal of Desire Armed. There is also a complete lack of poetry and irony here.
They took over the same prison as their enemy and did the same things, like the pyschogeographical desires could not be controlled. They talked of just following orders, and didnt seem to realize who said this first, they talked about not knowing the Genevea Convention, and assumed that the performance would be excused because the script was taught incorrectly. They conflated sex and violence and seem suprised that they were not rewarded--maybe that is what Limbaugh is saying, America is a culture that rewards this shit as a general rule, makes heros of its outlaws. Now it cant.
Rush Limbaugh
While aside from location difficulties (this sort of thing would happen at PS 1 or a private performance space), does he have a point ? The thing about the performance and body art that came from the 60s and 70s was that it was an internalization and reaction against the violence of Vietnam, of the isolation and fear of the death camps, of the mechanical reductionism of capitalism, of terror that surrounds the loss of soul. I do not expect the largest intellectual sophistication from Rush, in fact I do not assume any intellectual ambiguity from him, but he does have something here. When I was in the airport in Minneapolis, and I saw the cover of the Economist, with the man wired and hooded, i thought that at first it was performance art. The grainy, surveillance quality had the sheen of Dogme 95 cinematic. The photos were well composed, they were shot with an eye towards aesthetics, they were shot with a mind full of intense visual cleverness, they imparted vast reams of information about the nature of the act and those who were performing it. This images were intended with an audience in mind, they were intended to be disseminated, and to be shown to large audiences. These were not the casual, ugly, crude souvenirs that came from other wars. (compare the photos taken by Canadian Infantry in Somila of the beating and torturing of prisoners.)
I doubt that Lindsey England knows the work of Chris Burden, Vito Acconci or Bruce Nauman, but the care that she takes to express the tangible isolation and hatred comes with some v. severe aesthetic training. Better then the all information, no slick packaging videos of shootings and beheadings the enemy does.
What does it mean when the photos are intended to be shown, when they are taken with such care and such concern ? Who were they meant for--Jonah Goldberg told us that they resembled pornography, but in the age of bukkake and amateur girls anything shot on home video that isn't a kids birthday party is compared to porn. The thing that is pornographic about these videos is the same thing that was pornographic about the Passion, that is pornographic about Terminator 3: The Return of the Machines. It is this refusal to recognize the transednce of flesh, to think that the only thing that our copreality does is engage in violence, not the small, real, human breaks that are encountered daily, but the looming, insane spectacles that cannot be absorbed without a technological intecessor.
There is something new here, beyond the rape, beyond the torture, beyond the imperial subjecation--America has had that from the beginning look at the Civil War Camps, or the Spanish American War or Wounded Knee or El Salvador. It is also not the documentation, each of those wars has had people cleaning up after it, with words and sometimes pictures. What is new is the ease and the casualness that the pictures came to us, how with in weeks they came to Time and The Gaurdian, CNN and BBC, US News and World Report and Anarchy:A Journal of Desire Armed. There is also a complete lack of poetry and irony here.
They took over the same prison as their enemy and did the same things, like the pyschogeographical desires could not be controlled. They talked of just following orders, and didnt seem to realize who said this first, they talked about not knowing the Genevea Convention, and assumed that the performance would be excused because the script was taught incorrectly. They conflated sex and violence and seem suprised that they were not rewarded--maybe that is what Limbaugh is saying, America is a culture that rewards this shit as a general rule, makes heros of its outlaws. Now it cant.
Silly Picassos and the Nature of the Market
What could you have bought if you wanted to spend a $104,168,000
at the auctions this season:
*A loose, easy and chaotic, very early ink drawing by Phillip Guston, from a period that is vastly under valued and
*A graphite de Kooning Grotesquerie that prefigured the best of this madonna/whore women paintings and
*A midnight blue melancholy reliquary, by Cornell, featuring a Plaster owl. and
*A charming DeBuffet Cow and a
* A wise and startling pencil sketch by Andy Warhols of his brother, done before ads and pop, reminding one of why Jamie Wyeth was in the factory and a
*One of Krasners tangled, pink brambles, looser and more gestural then Pollock could ever manage. and a
*two amusingly naughty Wessleman pin up (cock and tits) and
* Ruschas 9 swimming pools, that seem loving and savage, wry and graceful, and calming and ambiguous and are like a min version of his baseball Fields and sunset strips,
* and some of his seminal Gas Station photographs (10 of them) and
* A smooth, accomplished and elderly artists pencil sketch by Hockney
* One of Alex Katz's graceful, semi abstracted, sky and leaf, nature paintings, with colour like Bonnard.
* A Cy Twombly where a sheet of granite seeps down the page, imposing its will on a crimson scrawl of writing, censorious and chilling. and
* Two Christo sketches for the Umbrellas in Japan and California and
* An epic Gursky Print (8x6), just a bunch of white and black buildings against desert and sky
* One of Richard Princes ironic emasculations of the Marlborough Man and
* Jeff Koons and his wife sorting out the implications of the protestant marriage bed in the Made in Heaven Series and
*5 early, violently psychedelic, superflat and retchingly cute, in a good way, Mr Dob Paintings by Murakami and
* A Black Mountain Albers and
* a dark, brooding, tan, plum, indigo and grey Rothko and
* a solid, lonely, late Ocean Park by Dieborken and
* One of Richters Colour testing digitalized abstractions, like snow on a television and
* one of the light sculptures Dan Flavin dedicated to Donald Judd , in lemon yellow and candy apple red and
*a hyper realist, haunted sea by Celimens and
* and a ugly, honest, pointilist portrait by Close
* and a v. late, blocky, pastel blue square by Agnes Martin
* 7 cerulean boxes, in joyous formation by Judd, and
* Andy Warhols Silver Screen Lone Gunman, Elvis and
* one of those rigid and formalist attempts at medium, when Brice Marden painted in Graphite and Beeswax and
*a casual, and deeply erotic portrait of a woman dressing by Vuillard
*a twisted, voluptuous Degas broad getting out of a bath
* A kelly Green and Turquoise sketch of Provence trees and lakes by Pissaro
and
* A Rodin bust of Victor Hugo, where he looks angry and canonical and
* A sweet, quick red chalk Toulouse Le Trec drawing of a bull fight, made chilling
by implied violence and death and
* pen and ink of a pair of Matisses fat bottom girls.
*A Marquet landscape of cold, nordic sea fisheries, rigid and unfeeling and
* a charmingly naif Kees Van Dorgen cityscape
* A Schiele sketch where a nude looks like a contorting amputee dwarf, strange and gorgeous
* and the one with the woman flashing her cunt for the world to see
* and two savage anti american cartoons by Grosz, including a famous study for his evil kilroy
*and Klee's silly, childish faeries
* and Giocemettis starving, thorny Ostrich that holds its egg on its back
* and the heavy black, imposing ritual contraption Ernst called Torture
*and a copper, sanguine biomorphic sphere by Arp
* and a pell mell, sweet and bountiful still life by Lipschitz
* and a very early, very japanese chrysanthemum before Mondrian went all square eyed
* and two Balthus nymphettes
* and a peasant girl bronze w. birthing hips and jutting breasts by Malloloi
*and a claustrophobic depiction of a girl washing her feet by Bonnard
*and one of Roulats Gold Kings, before he worked on the King of Kings
*and Duchamps two artist Boxes, full of Museums and Labyrinths
* a Box Elder Manquette by Hepworth
* and the Jigsaw Puzzle of Sophie Tauber Arp's wood Reliefs
* and Blakes metaphysical masterpiece about the struggle for good and evil
And you could hire a name architect for the 75 million dollars that was left over as change
or you could have one sentimental, mediocre picasso, more then the acquisition budgets of most major museums, more then the rest of the world spends in years, and they blew it on a boring, obvious, dull, grating, kitschy, chintzy, decorative piece of tripe, a portrait of a type that is common to tourist images of spain, and proves that any of the energy that picasso had it never amounted to much. (Cubism-Gris and Cezanne;Neo-Classicism-Balthus and De Chirico to name two)
The ever so conservative Whitneys (which might explain this years bienelle as well) bought it as a status piece, with the same fuck you energy of the very rich that means we cannot see any of the larger Van Goghs in private collections, though he did sickly sweet, fake and inauthentic romanticizations of peasant classes too. (Poor, and misunderstood, the romantic myth of genius.)
A smart collector could have had some steals this year, cause everyone was paying attention to the same Horatio Alger bullshit thats been coming from the art world faster than anywhere else. The sad thing is that people still believe it.
What could you have bought if you wanted to spend a $104,168,000
at the auctions this season:
*A loose, easy and chaotic, very early ink drawing by Phillip Guston, from a period that is vastly under valued and
*A graphite de Kooning Grotesquerie that prefigured the best of this madonna/whore women paintings and
*A midnight blue melancholy reliquary, by Cornell, featuring a Plaster owl. and
*A charming DeBuffet Cow and a
* A wise and startling pencil sketch by Andy Warhols of his brother, done before ads and pop, reminding one of why Jamie Wyeth was in the factory and a
*One of Krasners tangled, pink brambles, looser and more gestural then Pollock could ever manage. and a
*two amusingly naughty Wessleman pin up (cock and tits) and
* Ruschas 9 swimming pools, that seem loving and savage, wry and graceful, and calming and ambiguous and are like a min version of his baseball Fields and sunset strips,
* and some of his seminal Gas Station photographs (10 of them) and
* A smooth, accomplished and elderly artists pencil sketch by Hockney
* One of Alex Katz's graceful, semi abstracted, sky and leaf, nature paintings, with colour like Bonnard.
* A Cy Twombly where a sheet of granite seeps down the page, imposing its will on a crimson scrawl of writing, censorious and chilling. and
* Two Christo sketches for the Umbrellas in Japan and California and
* An epic Gursky Print (8x6), just a bunch of white and black buildings against desert and sky
* One of Richard Princes ironic emasculations of the Marlborough Man and
* Jeff Koons and his wife sorting out the implications of the protestant marriage bed in the Made in Heaven Series and
*5 early, violently psychedelic, superflat and retchingly cute, in a good way, Mr Dob Paintings by Murakami and
* A Black Mountain Albers and
* a dark, brooding, tan, plum, indigo and grey Rothko and
* a solid, lonely, late Ocean Park by Dieborken and
* One of Richters Colour testing digitalized abstractions, like snow on a television and
* one of the light sculptures Dan Flavin dedicated to Donald Judd , in lemon yellow and candy apple red and
*a hyper realist, haunted sea by Celimens and
* and a ugly, honest, pointilist portrait by Close
* and a v. late, blocky, pastel blue square by Agnes Martin
* 7 cerulean boxes, in joyous formation by Judd, and
* Andy Warhols Silver Screen Lone Gunman, Elvis and
* one of those rigid and formalist attempts at medium, when Brice Marden painted in Graphite and Beeswax and
*a casual, and deeply erotic portrait of a woman dressing by Vuillard
*a twisted, voluptuous Degas broad getting out of a bath
* A kelly Green and Turquoise sketch of Provence trees and lakes by Pissaro
and
* A Rodin bust of Victor Hugo, where he looks angry and canonical and
* A sweet, quick red chalk Toulouse Le Trec drawing of a bull fight, made chilling
by implied violence and death and
* pen and ink of a pair of Matisses fat bottom girls.
*A Marquet landscape of cold, nordic sea fisheries, rigid and unfeeling and
* a charmingly naif Kees Van Dorgen cityscape
* A Schiele sketch where a nude looks like a contorting amputee dwarf, strange and gorgeous
* and the one with the woman flashing her cunt for the world to see
* and two savage anti american cartoons by Grosz, including a famous study for his evil kilroy
*and Klee's silly, childish faeries
* and Giocemettis starving, thorny Ostrich that holds its egg on its back
* and the heavy black, imposing ritual contraption Ernst called Torture
*and a copper, sanguine biomorphic sphere by Arp
* and a pell mell, sweet and bountiful still life by Lipschitz
* and a very early, very japanese chrysanthemum before Mondrian went all square eyed
* and two Balthus nymphettes
* and a peasant girl bronze w. birthing hips and jutting breasts by Malloloi
*and a claustrophobic depiction of a girl washing her feet by Bonnard
*and one of Roulats Gold Kings, before he worked on the King of Kings
*and Duchamps two artist Boxes, full of Museums and Labyrinths
* a Box Elder Manquette by Hepworth
* and the Jigsaw Puzzle of Sophie Tauber Arp's wood Reliefs
* and Blakes metaphysical masterpiece about the struggle for good and evil
And you could hire a name architect for the 75 million dollars that was left over as change
or you could have one sentimental, mediocre picasso, more then the acquisition budgets of most major museums, more then the rest of the world spends in years, and they blew it on a boring, obvious, dull, grating, kitschy, chintzy, decorative piece of tripe, a portrait of a type that is common to tourist images of spain, and proves that any of the energy that picasso had it never amounted to much. (Cubism-Gris and Cezanne;Neo-Classicism-Balthus and De Chirico to name two)
The ever so conservative Whitneys (which might explain this years bienelle as well) bought it as a status piece, with the same fuck you energy of the very rich that means we cannot see any of the larger Van Goghs in private collections, though he did sickly sweet, fake and inauthentic romanticizations of peasant classes too. (Poor, and misunderstood, the romantic myth of genius.)
A smart collector could have had some steals this year, cause everyone was paying attention to the same Horatio Alger bullshit thats been coming from the art world faster than anywhere else. The sad thing is that people still believe it.
Wednesday, May 12, 2004
in mpls airport early. went home,rich men in suits on cellpones surround me,including one trying to be black.
bought magazines, nyer,ew,vanity fair,new york times, us news and world report, atlantic monthly + diana krall for kim (bryans not patricks; for patricks i brought cheese)
going to buy a bottle of bourban for dad, but couldnt find one, coundt find anything for aj or dad, .
i have learnt things in gethsmanae, complicated and ambigous things, and i will type' my diaries here sometime soon, but at the end of the day my desire towards catholicism is dissiapited, my desire towards xianity has disolved
even that miasama of femmine protection that i called god & was my last resort seems to have left.
the monastary was the gentlest, most peaceful, most collective, quietest place ive been to in a long time, and i made it there w. freinds sitting under the gingko tree, chatting, reading.
i realized that i could do manual labour, that there was honour and satisfaction in packing cheese, edging gardens, shovelling dirt.
i'm happy free joyus about it, no negitavity. bemused by the irony, though.
bought magazines, nyer,ew,vanity fair,new york times, us news and world report, atlantic monthly + diana krall for kim (bryans not patricks; for patricks i brought cheese)
going to buy a bottle of bourban for dad, but couldnt find one, coundt find anything for aj or dad, .
i have learnt things in gethsmanae, complicated and ambigous things, and i will type' my diaries here sometime soon, but at the end of the day my desire towards catholicism is dissiapited, my desire towards xianity has disolved
even that miasama of femmine protection that i called god & was my last resort seems to have left.
the monastary was the gentlest, most peaceful, most collective, quietest place ive been to in a long time, and i made it there w. freinds sitting under the gingko tree, chatting, reading.
i realized that i could do manual labour, that there was honour and satisfaction in packing cheese, edging gardens, shovelling dirt.
i'm happy free joyus about it, no negitavity. bemused by the irony, though.
Monday, May 03, 2004
alright i am at a kiosk in mpls,managed to get nyer & ew cheap. airport runs to the large and banal, but i am really hopeful right now
had some trouble in customs on the way here, they didnt belive the monk thing, didnt know why i was here, asked what monks did, and took all off my property out of my suitcase.
airports are post national states who try w. all their might to remain national, so become the worst of what liminal spaces can be...narrow, catching,beruocratic,,cold,efficent,qausi facist
reading the life you save might be yr own, about o connor, percy,merton and day day had an abortion, ...how much work w. the poor is required to be forgive for what the vatican considers murder, can we trot out saul here ?
tried to get to ilxor and they censored the fucker. aargh !
had some trouble in customs on the way here, they didnt belive the monk thing, didnt know why i was here, asked what monks did, and took all off my property out of my suitcase.
airports are post national states who try w. all their might to remain national, so become the worst of what liminal spaces can be...narrow, catching,beruocratic,,cold,efficent,qausi facist
reading the life you save might be yr own, about o connor, percy,merton and day day had an abortion, ...how much work w. the poor is required to be forgive for what the vatican considers murder, can we trot out saul here ?
tried to get to ilxor and they censored the fucker. aargh !
Nature is, above all, profligate…Extravagance! Nature will try anything once. This is what the sign of the insects says. No form is too gruesome, no behavior too grotesque. If you're dealing with organic compounds, then let them combine. If it works, if it quickens, set it clacking in the grass: there's always room for one more; you ain't so handsome yourself."
-from Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
-from Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Saturday, May 01, 2004
religous collation for reproductive choice, wants to make sure that womans wombs are womens buisnesses, suppourt them here
ampersand
ampersand
52 people, including the former ambassodors to syria, kuwait, iraq, iran, suadi arabia, egypt have all signed a letter to Tony Blair basically saying, get the fuck out of iraq and quit mucking about in israel, you have done enough damage to ensure that the thing will fall apart at the seams this thing is falling apart at the seams.
via mefi
via mefi
last three links mefi
john d's favourite translation of Cattulus 16, both filthy and deeply bitter but with an elegance can be found here--inspired by an ilx thread about chris p learning greek (which i heavily encourage)
john d's favourite translation of Cattulus 16, both filthy and deeply bitter but with an elegance can be found here--inspired by an ilx thread about chris p learning greek (which i heavily encourage)
islamic rabble rousers in europe, force the issue of multi cultralism vs assimaltion, i dont have any easy or quick answers, but as a general rule ghettos on the edges of cities are not usually a good idea.
William Floyd Norman is now one of my favourite architechts, okie who found his way to houston(sp), did these amazing, low slung, overly minimal, recessed into the landscape modernist wood and concrete cubes...think neutra in la, but w. oil money and elms. (they are tearing them down to replace w. mcmansions, elphantine houses on mouse sized lots...100 yrs its historic, 50 yrs its worthless.
huge link site of pictures near memorial bend, w. lots of examples like these:
notice the butterfly roof ?
or the presenting front wall, larger then the length of the house, so its wrapped like a cocoon ?
or this, its plainess, its elegance, its 4/4 beat ?
huge link site of pictures near memorial bend, w. lots of examples like these:
notice the butterfly roof ?
or the presenting front wall, larger then the length of the house, so its wrapped like a cocoon ?
or this, its plainess, its elegance, its 4/4 beat ?
J Lenham (who wrote the tour de force Fortress of Solitude) writes about comics, he does it in the LRB , which is good but it is a nostalgic peice about his teenage geek hood, which is bad.
(well written, concerns marvel, like proust in middle america, but shorter and w. less homosexual longing.)
two questions
do you ever think some kid will write a column like this for his fantagraphics years or his drawn and qauterly years
when do you think nyrb, the nytbr, the globe and mail or the lrb will review graphic novels like they review poetry ?
(well written, concerns marvel, like proust in middle america, but shorter and w. less homosexual longing.)
two questions
do you ever think some kid will write a column like this for his fantagraphics years or his drawn and qauterly years
when do you think nyrb, the nytbr, the globe and mail or the lrb will review graphic novels like they review poetry ?
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