some things i have been thinking about:
neko cases version of kansas city, makes me wonder--when does a song become a standard, when you have a certain number of versions, when one version trumps the original, when there are debates on one version or the other, when an interpertation becomes cannonical, etc---the weird thing, is no matter how much i love the shangri las--and i do, i think i like neko cases version more.
mom has bought a car, and i think that her driving is stupid, if she can barely walk from the bedroom to the living room, but maybe boredom is a reason that she sleeps until late afternoon or early evening, i mean i go to bed closer to dawn then dusk--often past dusk, but still, makes me wonder about questions of independence etc.
need to talk to raymond about the civil war, in relation to navouu and early american armed forces, well not only ray--how many miltary historians do i know (well dave, but he isnt answering my emails and hes russian) -- i am mostly curious about wether it works in relation to the second ammendment, and how b ig the army was, and about the devolpment of the concept of standing army, and of course their colonial history, american history sort of clumps in my brain, and i need a better map.
fido calling me at least a dozen times in the last month was not about a bill or anything resembling a bill, it was a motherfucking survey, and them asking me questions like how much money do you make or are you nervous all the time, etc--i keep the thing because i want to move back to toronto (before sept--the plan is a year in toronto, and then 5 at william wellman, if god is good and im not an asshole)
i wonder if i should get a second opinon from dr roberts, he has not made any stabs at diagnoses or any chart notes or anything like that, if the papers i got were any indication since 2004--and another reason to get back to TO is that there are more t elemetry placements in siani then there are in the entire province of alberta. i also wonder if its not brain but nervous (not anxiety, but nerves etc)
big studies about gender come out lately--one from sci am talking about how gender is immuitble, forgetting that brain chemistry and brain structure change based around things like human contact, etc and also forgetting large amounts of evidence related to things like chromosonal and hormonal, and also how, depending who you ask, from one in a hundred to one in one hundred thousand infants are born w. genitals that are non integrous--ie intersexed, even if their is a boy brain and a girl brain, there is a huge ranging field of things inbetween---and much of what those boy brains and girl brains do are socilaised
burned bridges, i think w. todd
redoing my resume tomorrow (having two)
going over my flickr account and realising that, if my ego can speak, im a damn good picture taker.
glenys goes to manilia in a few months, and shes being good--sorting thru the colonial and post colonial baggage, sorting thru the implications of what it means to be a queer white women there, in a culture that is deeply divided by sexuality, religion and gender--and it still reminds me of the fresh faced boys going two by twos and well i cannot get over the colonolism of mission work.
conserative christians are apparently going to colonize the tory party, nationally--which proves that the reform where chest suckers that destroyed any semblance of pcs, and also (in addition to their work with the bq, and their rural policies, etc) prove that harpers party is stil lthe regional protest party it always was.
Saturday, May 28, 2005
Friday, May 27, 2005
It takes me five minutes or so
to realize that everything (inside and out) near me is white
banks of the milk river, in southwestern alberta,
the cows who graze are a dirty cream
the same colour on their flanks
as the milk in their bellies
the sheep, who eat the remeants
after the cows, will clean up nice
but now, are some variation of
dustbrown grey.
They drink from the river,
that because of the water
grows more opaque with
the silt that looks like
flour
and on the banks of the river
in june, are milkweed blossoms
called for the think sap in green steams
and looking over phil, who is sitting with me
looking at all this nonsense (his family owns the farm)
hes not as brown as he should be, courtesy of the sun
in fact, hes as white as sheep, cow, river,
and perhaps even the sap of the milkweed.
to realize that everything (inside and out) near me is white
banks of the milk river, in southwestern alberta,
the cows who graze are a dirty cream
the same colour on their flanks
as the milk in their bellies
the sheep, who eat the remeants
after the cows, will clean up nice
but now, are some variation of
dustbrown grey.
They drink from the river,
that because of the water
grows more opaque with
the silt that looks like
flour
and on the banks of the river
in june, are milkweed blossoms
called for the think sap in green steams
and looking over phil, who is sitting with me
looking at all this nonsense (his family owns the farm)
hes not as brown as he should be, courtesy of the sun
in fact, hes as white as sheep, cow, river,
and perhaps even the sap of the milkweed.
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
it is true that large discussions in anti masterbation texts among in americans in the 19th century dealt with phyiscal weakness, personal obessions, lonlieness, secretiveness, and an almost opedial neuroticism about going against parenting, and the inability to produce off spring. the discusssion deals less with moral turpitude and more with corperal lassitude.
there is something in the 20th century moving away from the coperal to the moral--i just cannot figure out what it is.
(another semirelaed qoutes from Thomas W LAquers The Social Evil, The Solitary Vice and Tea, in the book i quated earlier)
it is striking, for example, how litle the Greek Church Father Gregory of Nyssa is explcity concenrned with sexual intercourse or desire in his tract On Virginity. Instead he returns again and again to the pain of human existence (155)
"As Peter Brown has recently argued:"the debate about virginity {in the early church} was in large part a debate about the natures of human solidatary"It was a debate about what the indivduals did and did not need to share with fellow creatures" (156)---my note if we argue that the church in america between the second and fourth great awakenings resembled the early church--can this be extrapolated
In the 19th Century, virgiinity is of course no longer the issue. But the bodys sexuality, in the specters of prostituiton, and masterbation this time, still haunt society. (ibid)
...The supposed physical sequealae of masterbation seem almost secondary reaction to its understanding social pathology....
The debate over masterbaton that raged from the 18thcentury onward might therefore be understoof as part of the more general debae about the the unleashing of desire upon which a commerical economy dependend and about the possibilty of human community under these circumstances... (156-157))
there is something in the 20th century moving away from the coperal to the moral--i just cannot figure out what it is.
(another semirelaed qoutes from Thomas W LAquers The Social Evil, The Solitary Vice and Tea, in the book i quated earlier)
it is striking, for example, how litle the Greek Church Father Gregory of Nyssa is explcity concenrned with sexual intercourse or desire in his tract On Virginity. Instead he returns again and again to the pain of human existence (155)
"As Peter Brown has recently argued:"the debate about virginity {in the early church} was in large part a debate about the natures of human solidatary"It was a debate about what the indivduals did and did not need to share with fellow creatures" (156)---my note if we argue that the church in america between the second and fourth great awakenings resembled the early church--can this be extrapolated
In the 19th Century, virgiinity is of course no longer the issue. But the bodys sexuality, in the specters of prostituiton, and masterbation this time, still haunt society. (ibid)
...The supposed physical sequealae of masterbation seem almost secondary reaction to its understanding social pathology....
The debate over masterbaton that raged from the 18thcentury onward might therefore be understoof as part of the more general debae about the the unleashing of desire upon which a commerical economy dependend and about the possibilty of human community under these circumstances... (156-157))
a thot after reading a couple of wank books (the one qouted below, laquers, foccualt history in a round about way):
the danger of masterbation in communities that legislslated other kinds of sexual radicalism was that it encoruaged work against the community when needed--the same argument could be made against singular marriage--namely, that if you are trying to feed an entire community with a small farm, or are in the middle of the utah desert, then it makes sense to communalise everything.
it is why sexual pairing off exisits but is minimalised in amish, hutterites, and old order mennonites--and why it didnt matter much in the mostly urban communities that founded around sda, cs and pentecostalism.
holes poked in this
most of the lds population was not polygamus
the oneida community fell apart with sexual bickering.
the danger of masterbation in communities that legislslated other kinds of sexual radicalism was that it encoruaged work against the community when needed--the same argument could be made against singular marriage--namely, that if you are trying to feed an entire community with a small farm, or are in the middle of the utah desert, then it makes sense to communalise everything.
it is why sexual pairing off exisits but is minimalised in amish, hutterites, and old order mennonites--and why it didnt matter much in the mostly urban communities that founded around sda, cs and pentecostalism.
holes poked in this
most of the lds population was not polygamus
the oneida community fell apart with sexual bickering.
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
knowing shore made ade a series of commerical post cards for his fotos from amarillio to finance the second half of the uncommon america series was really really interesting, because its a major puzzle peice for me, because i was wondering why he chose to display his work in the way he did, and i kept getting my wheels stuck in the same mud, about tourism, and the large scale redemption of tourist imagery--and knowing he made tourist images, i reconsidered
Saturday, May 21, 2005
what does it mean that i have found myself in lust more and more with girls--big, round, indie girls, with dykish haircuts and conspicous tatoos--like the woman at rx comix on main and broadway, w. a single panel tattoeed opn her arm, almost worn, like a xerox, adrian tomine by the way of lichenstein
Friday, May 20, 2005
in vancouver, turned away at seattle border, stopped caring about what people think, thirsty, broke.
8 things to do in the next month
1) contact harcourt wrt currating a design show (painters who use design, the idea that hi/lo does not exist anymore, etc--call the show hi/lo?)
2) Submit 6 poems to various places (10 poems are required in order to get government grants)
3) update, make fancy, portfolio and cv (divide into three sections short, medium, long--include 5 peices each, cd reveiws, crit, essays)
4) email peter at no depression and ask if he wants yr article on absence,presence, country music and the queer gaze
5) find out and compile anything and everything you need for the c magazine internship.
6) print out the 126 page outline, do the reading and start writing--ask publisher for brief extension
7) email todd to see if i could do cowboy troy/toby keith
8) get on that art blogging thing
art i saw today
(note: fotorealism (the thing that i wrote the big essay on, the thing that d is doing, the thing i spent 6 months thinking about, less clinical and less weird then other examples--w. the poor exception of joanne tod--who i think i might write about) and the city are huge this season, but in limited doses--so is decortive prettiness, pink is on its way out, so is diy/text based irony.)
substance over specatcle
ubc
D
usually excellent birken gallery at the ubc was deeply disappointing, with a flash bang, too media heavy, badly curated collection around architechture, about how we are doing real things now---mostly rip offs of erikson, venturi, ben and some other avant gardeists--one good idea, making buildings out of modules like jenga bricks, fit into blank spaces, any blank space, can grow quickly, etc--but problems of ego and neigoubgourhood site placement still exist
artspeak
christian kuras
b-
big talk withh the dudes who run it--v. spare show, with only two small drawings and a largerinstallation--surrunding cagean ideas od silenmce and noise--an ink jet print of a turntable, a schematic of said turntable, and in the main alley a large circle of bullhorns, suspended from the celling--muted, the presentation and antcipation of high levels of RAWKLEVELNOIZE has a preciptous tension--and how everything was formally a circle in a sqaure, it wwas aa strange inward outward thing--the prints relasin into each other and then into the larger space--a large collection of supporting materials, news stories, antomoical illustrations, etc made me think he should do ziney bookwork.
aurara robson
(part of a larger medicore group show)
if i curate that thing at harcourt, i want her in it--fantastic, ink andacrylic abstracts, in primal disney colours--an almost biolgical, organic flowering that overwhelms and decentralises the picture plane--really happy, really chaotic, does large sculptural work as well--appeared in this months domino (from the people who brought you luck and cargo--conspicous ocnsmuption for your home)--she cant draw, which is strange, considering how meticlous her large peices are.
picturing the downtown east side
112 west hastings
a+
first show curated by charo neville--new from the ubc curating program--after all that bullshit tourism of poverty stuff that we have enocuntered for years, and as it gentfies, the residents are finally getting a voice--the video work is weak, but a post card project with pictures of alleys and vacant lots, the text on the back being first person stories, and a series of drug store prints from disposable camers from local resdient, with wall text that used the f word, and documentation of ggraf poems and sidewalk politics done in chalk were really intensely powerful and proved interesting lessons about colonising voice, a really good xerox, folded 8.5*11 zine completed it. not sentimental. fucking brilliant.
monte clarke
david kramer
b
the woman who ran it was an asshole, the work combines the dirty comix star, with the wry wit of jenny holzer--the slogan ones arent really good, but a series of 6 small drawings on found paper were good--the paper was stained, and ripped, and different colours, the drawings had fotos, tracings, the usual pop stuff--but the type written stories fit into the compostions nicely and were sweet and complicated musings on what it means to sell out, how does one sell out, whhat if one cannot sell out, etc etc.
douglas udell
mixed bag--as always, no cohesion ever in udell, adn not really currated--some shit, but some really really good stuff
a uta barth silk screen, a twin bechter, dean deaver saying naughty things in clean hygenic shiny enamael, a dozen freud etchings--he should paint, the grotesque pleasure of flesh doesnt come well in etchings, and two tiny, rectangluar paintings, facing each other on a corner wall by mara korkoal--the vague edges of cities, mostly balck, neon and stage light--how seattle has bellingham and edmonton has the industrial east and toronto has missiguga or scarborugh and how they all look the same--slick, haunting, sexy and ennui driven, d you should google her.
wim blom at ian tan
more fotorealism--commerical gallery, but proof its back in fashion.
also saw:
a 19th centruy, milk painted, blue pine and tin pie cabineint--amish or pennslyvania dutch; two 17th century calllgraphers tables, some micahel melded(?) paintings, to match the ones i saw in victoria, some fotos by selwyn pullen--still alive, a candian julius schwartz, mostly for western living, armani doing bridget riley on their shirts in gloirus shades of cinniamon, paprika, tumeric, etc; some nice silver bbq stuff from caban and others (only 15 galleries) (going to an opening tonite)
mostly disappointed.
8 things to do in the next month
1) contact harcourt wrt currating a design show (painters who use design, the idea that hi/lo does not exist anymore, etc--call the show hi/lo?)
2) Submit 6 poems to various places (10 poems are required in order to get government grants)
3) update, make fancy, portfolio and cv (divide into three sections short, medium, long--include 5 peices each, cd reveiws, crit, essays)
4) email peter at no depression and ask if he wants yr article on absence,presence, country music and the queer gaze
5) find out and compile anything and everything you need for the c magazine internship.
6) print out the 126 page outline, do the reading and start writing--ask publisher for brief extension
7) email todd to see if i could do cowboy troy/toby keith
8) get on that art blogging thing
art i saw today
(note: fotorealism (the thing that i wrote the big essay on, the thing that d is doing, the thing i spent 6 months thinking about, less clinical and less weird then other examples--w. the poor exception of joanne tod--who i think i might write about) and the city are huge this season, but in limited doses--so is decortive prettiness, pink is on its way out, so is diy/text based irony.)
substance over specatcle
ubc
D
usually excellent birken gallery at the ubc was deeply disappointing, with a flash bang, too media heavy, badly curated collection around architechture, about how we are doing real things now---mostly rip offs of erikson, venturi, ben and some other avant gardeists--one good idea, making buildings out of modules like jenga bricks, fit into blank spaces, any blank space, can grow quickly, etc--but problems of ego and neigoubgourhood site placement still exist
artspeak
christian kuras
b-
big talk withh the dudes who run it--v. spare show, with only two small drawings and a largerinstallation--surrunding cagean ideas od silenmce and noise--an ink jet print of a turntable, a schematic of said turntable, and in the main alley a large circle of bullhorns, suspended from the celling--muted, the presentation and antcipation of high levels of RAWKLEVELNOIZE has a preciptous tension--and how everything was formally a circle in a sqaure, it wwas aa strange inward outward thing--the prints relasin into each other and then into the larger space--a large collection of supporting materials, news stories, antomoical illustrations, etc made me think he should do ziney bookwork.
aurara robson
(part of a larger medicore group show)
if i curate that thing at harcourt, i want her in it--fantastic, ink andacrylic abstracts, in primal disney colours--an almost biolgical, organic flowering that overwhelms and decentralises the picture plane--really happy, really chaotic, does large sculptural work as well--appeared in this months domino (from the people who brought you luck and cargo--conspicous ocnsmuption for your home)--she cant draw, which is strange, considering how meticlous her large peices are.
picturing the downtown east side
112 west hastings
a+
first show curated by charo neville--new from the ubc curating program--after all that bullshit tourism of poverty stuff that we have enocuntered for years, and as it gentfies, the residents are finally getting a voice--the video work is weak, but a post card project with pictures of alleys and vacant lots, the text on the back being first person stories, and a series of drug store prints from disposable camers from local resdient, with wall text that used the f word, and documentation of ggraf poems and sidewalk politics done in chalk were really intensely powerful and proved interesting lessons about colonising voice, a really good xerox, folded 8.5*11 zine completed it. not sentimental. fucking brilliant.
monte clarke
david kramer
b
the woman who ran it was an asshole, the work combines the dirty comix star, with the wry wit of jenny holzer--the slogan ones arent really good, but a series of 6 small drawings on found paper were good--the paper was stained, and ripped, and different colours, the drawings had fotos, tracings, the usual pop stuff--but the type written stories fit into the compostions nicely and were sweet and complicated musings on what it means to sell out, how does one sell out, whhat if one cannot sell out, etc etc.
douglas udell
mixed bag--as always, no cohesion ever in udell, adn not really currated--some shit, but some really really good stuff
a uta barth silk screen, a twin bechter, dean deaver saying naughty things in clean hygenic shiny enamael, a dozen freud etchings--he should paint, the grotesque pleasure of flesh doesnt come well in etchings, and two tiny, rectangluar paintings, facing each other on a corner wall by mara korkoal--the vague edges of cities, mostly balck, neon and stage light--how seattle has bellingham and edmonton has the industrial east and toronto has missiguga or scarborugh and how they all look the same--slick, haunting, sexy and ennui driven, d you should google her.
wim blom at ian tan
more fotorealism--commerical gallery, but proof its back in fashion.
also saw:
a 19th centruy, milk painted, blue pine and tin pie cabineint--amish or pennslyvania dutch; two 17th century calllgraphers tables, some micahel melded(?) paintings, to match the ones i saw in victoria, some fotos by selwyn pullen--still alive, a candian julius schwartz, mostly for western living, armani doing bridget riley on their shirts in gloirus shades of cinniamon, paprika, tumeric, etc; some nice silver bbq stuff from caban and others (only 15 galleries) (going to an opening tonite)
mostly disappointed.
Sunday, May 15, 2005
Saturday, May 14, 2005
Friday, May 13, 2005
eight pages written on the photo realists today, a tiny bit of book work, but as i near the end of the larger notes, i find myself losing motavation, i need to finish it before i go to seattle.
five books read:
joan didions new book on california, which has places of brilliance, her work on agriculture, her moving personal memoirs, her history of religion and her obsession with objects are all worth while, and it has that solid fluidity and refusal of genre that marks the best of her work, but lacks some cohesivness.
minimalism art and polemic in the 60s--mostly over my head, mostly silly and mostly arguiing with greenberg, which doesnt seem to be worthwhile. some interesting things said on anne truitt though, and there is a thread thruout that problematizes design and art, which i think is work that still needs to be done, and hasnt been.
curioser--a book on queer kids, has one of the best essays foregrounding the idea of prescriptive gender as it relates to boys, something that has been shockingly absent from current discourse, and has some brave things to say about pedophilia and censorship, esp. in this climate, but i think that 3 peices on henry james is really too much.
mental hygeine, a collection of canadian news paper peices, solid but kind of boring, but that might be my general connection to cancon.
the end of gay, after about 5 years--forgot how readable, how wonderfully impt, and how personal it was to how i view sex and gender.
i got kicked out of scm, for a bunch of reasons, some legit and some not...and there are other things afoot, if i got a paper done by tomorrow on art blogging, i could go to montreal, but i dont have a chance, and there might be a chance to be on a steering committee for general art blogging conference outside of montreal, like the emp thing for art, but i have to email the dude, and i havent done that tomorrow, i will do that tomorrow, i think.
so tomorrow--book work and the email.
five books read:
joan didions new book on california, which has places of brilliance, her work on agriculture, her moving personal memoirs, her history of religion and her obsession with objects are all worth while, and it has that solid fluidity and refusal of genre that marks the best of her work, but lacks some cohesivness.
minimalism art and polemic in the 60s--mostly over my head, mostly silly and mostly arguiing with greenberg, which doesnt seem to be worthwhile. some interesting things said on anne truitt though, and there is a thread thruout that problematizes design and art, which i think is work that still needs to be done, and hasnt been.
curioser--a book on queer kids, has one of the best essays foregrounding the idea of prescriptive gender as it relates to boys, something that has been shockingly absent from current discourse, and has some brave things to say about pedophilia and censorship, esp. in this climate, but i think that 3 peices on henry james is really too much.
mental hygeine, a collection of canadian news paper peices, solid but kind of boring, but that might be my general connection to cancon.
the end of gay, after about 5 years--forgot how readable, how wonderfully impt, and how personal it was to how i view sex and gender.
i got kicked out of scm, for a bunch of reasons, some legit and some not...and there are other things afoot, if i got a paper done by tomorrow on art blogging, i could go to montreal, but i dont have a chance, and there might be a chance to be on a steering committee for general art blogging conference outside of montreal, like the emp thing for art, but i have to email the dude, and i havent done that tomorrow, i will do that tomorrow, i think.
so tomorrow--book work and the email.
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/search/LOTDETAIL.ASP?sid=&intObjectID=4489894
so i was going thru the christies catalog, and their is a collection of flavin--which led me to some questions
1) are you buying the object or the concept
2) do you get an unlimited supply of light bulbs for 500 000 dollars
3) is it the same as if it was created or installed by flavin, if it has different light bulbs
b) this is a varration of the hammer puzzle and also do flavins not depend on spec. places--work that he has installed, is it possible to have a flavin when he is not alive
c) if he intended it to be in x and it is now in y, is it in the same peice ?
4) at night, do you unplug the flavin
5) what happens if they do not have the same kind of bulbs as they used to (in the colours spec--i mean what if they discontinue the grass green or the bright red bulbs--they all are commerically availble right ?)
does any of this really matter ?
(note: i love flavin, i think he is impt and beautful, and it has been a deep joy when i have had the honour of seeing them live the few times i have)
so i was going thru the christies catalog, and their is a collection of flavin--which led me to some questions
1) are you buying the object or the concept
2) do you get an unlimited supply of light bulbs for 500 000 dollars
3) is it the same as if it was created or installed by flavin, if it has different light bulbs
b) this is a varration of the hammer puzzle and also do flavins not depend on spec. places--work that he has installed, is it possible to have a flavin when he is not alive
c) if he intended it to be in x and it is now in y, is it in the same peice ?
4) at night, do you unplug the flavin
5) what happens if they do not have the same kind of bulbs as they used to (in the colours spec--i mean what if they discontinue the grass green or the bright red bulbs--they all are commerically availble right ?)
does any of this really matter ?
(note: i love flavin, i think he is impt and beautful, and it has been a deep joy when i have had the honour of seeing them live the few times i have)
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