project idea

two rubber stamps made:

one that says: i find this site to be beautiful
one that says: i find this site to be holy.

A photograph is always invisible, it is not it that we see.
Barthes

i was at the provincal archives today, looking thru photos for the ford show, looking at fords, and there were a few folders that caught my attention

a collection of modernist public and semi public buildings in small towns in the 50s, as part of the population and building boom post war. a new bank in czar, a grocery store in sexmith, a service station in killiam, a town hall, a library. v. little people, the toronto dominon bank in killiam had a family beside it, just one f amily, and not posing, i think that one of the reasons why i love modernism so much, and albertan modernism more, is that it was the first attempt to do something delibrate, non functional and new--it was aping functions, but after a century of farm houses built for the weather, and schools built forever, it was the first mark of fashion in these towns. the images did not come labelled with producers or authours, so that the buildings became collective, they were labelled not with the banker or the realtor or the photographer, but the name of the town. i keep thinking that is what i want from my photos, that they will be patterend according to geogrpahy, time, style--and i keep trying to kill authorial voice, but these shots, so documentary, so impoosible to view as anything but a mark of alberta history. looking esp. at this folder, the tension b/w what i want to do (have my photos made anonymous, have my voice replaced with an anon archival offical, theatrical one) and what i have been doing (making my photos part of an offical conceptual project, make my voice loud with personal baggage and quxiotic eccentricity), became starkly clear.

speaking of that, i also saw photos of a shiners parade from the mid 70s, pmarching down jasper ave, in front of what is now the family good sign, but then was a hazard orange safeways, the way it was shot, we had dancing girls in polyester aqua costumes dancing belly first, in front of a sign that said safe disco--the camp possiblity of that line, saftey disco, and its realtion to edmonton, and the neighbourhood (now a fairly high end queer one) came clear to my mind, the pyschogeographic underpining of edmonton on my pysche, my history, and the cities history made me realise that the oblieration of authorial voice was a discourse and not a monologue. not only northcentral modernism imprinting its pysche on me, i was imprinting my personal history on it, what was an intractable problem about authorial voice became an intractable problem about authorial voice in a historical landscape.

i think one of the things i am trying to do with the ruscha show, is related to this, to talk about the issue of memories that infect yr brain, that you cannot have yrself, that safe disco and the toronto dominon bank near killiam (and i have family near killiam, and i saw photos of the fort, of sundre, of olds, of forrestberg of the places where t hose buildings where shot new) become part of a corperate history, of both belonging and isolation. ruscha was from oklahoma, and the aesthetics/politics/gendering of the ford, of memory, of being an artist, of history, is in that one small sentence.

(totally not going to use this for the didactic panel, but it was interesting)

Mormon Rap.

Granite and Sandstone

Granite and Sandstone
Originally uploaded by PinkMoose

“As a rule, we don’t trust government, we don’t trust politicians, and we’ve always had our doubts about public restrooms.”

– Idaho native Bruce Reed, Slate.com

i am starting to fall in love with kolchalka again, my problem with the strips after his being a parent are exactly that, my problem. now that i have friends with kids, i dont know, i am feeling more tender about the whole mess.

he makes me feel optimistic and he cares deeply about other people, his autobiography is miraculously free of solipism. (or as eddie campbell says:"I count it as one of the important ongoing bodies of work in the comics field today. he draws himself as an 'elf', his friends as assorted dogs or whatever, and none of this could ever convince you that the thing is not a real and accurate account of the daily life of now...")

Dutch Botanical Illustration, 17th Century,


rolling stone spends 5 pages ripping apart the american war profiteers, the usual depressing nonesense, the best bit, is that their is an american catasophric consulting comapny called custer battles

speaking of our return to the 18th century w/o the enlightenment:
The Sunday Telegraph reports that as their partners deliberate on world affairs, APEC wives and girlfriends will be whisked to Garden Island on the Saturday of the conference for an exclusive display of Australian wildlife.


Sears Catalog Page, 1945

kerry james marshall's lost boys series, discusses issues of masculinity, the african diaspora, cultural memorial, and art historical practice. the paintings are difficult, oddly decorative, and have a kind of intellectual viciousness. His use of white as an element that rises contrast, and not as an obvious erasing or whiting out, also has a formal profundity. The link is an interview, with this great qoute:

If I think about them in terms of the traditions they address in painting, I wouldn't say that it was limited so much to a tradition in American painting as much as a tradition of painting icons and/or a kind of elegiac portraiture. Look all the way back to Egyptian funerary portraits. So I would link them more specifically to that kind of a tradition and then from there into more medieval and early renaissance traditions of portraiture than I would to any particular kind of American style of painting. If anything could be said to be an American component to the painting, there's a certain element of gestural abstraction in those portraits, especially in the background. And also a certain quality of graffiti in the application of that kind of gestural kind of abstract painting in the back. If we had to link that to something that might be peculiarly American, that might be the closest. The Lost Boys was a way of combining various styles of painting into one painting so that you can have a representational image, very stylized, like the figures are, and then you add to that or superimpose on it or overlay a different style of painting. Instead of taking a particular moment in history and making paintings that are a response to that, I'm looking back and taking all of our history and trying as many of these formal styles as I can and incorporating them in my painting--as many as will support the idea that I'm trying to communicate, not just taking things at random, but as many as I can to support the idea of what the pictures are about.

(thnx sally)

jan spahr a presbyterian,was convicted of her synod for marrying same gendered folx.

christian science monitor reviews September Dawn.


Martin Creed, Installation at Hessel Gallery, Chelsea.


Pegah Emambakhsh, a Iranian Lesbian, has been denied refugee status in the UK. story here

apparently owen wilson tried to kill himself over the weekend and is now at cedars siani

context on that wood qoute and list posted below.


Neil Gaiman took this photo of Chengdayu, China, out his hotel window, god it looks depressing.

black prof discusses homophobia, the african american community, and obama. the essay is brilliant, but the comments are jaw dropping in their stupidity.


Joe does not let his children watch television, after he watches this video, i cannot imagine anything but immediately buying a 60 inch HDTV for the play room.

fascainting article about how forensic dentistry can be used to prevent domestic violence.

the pope is immune from lawsuits and arrests because he has diplomatic immunity because he is the leader of the vatican.


Still from the new Todd Haynes Biopic of Dylan, this is Heath Ledger.

canadian archivists had images of
inuits from the 19th and the early 20th century. They gave the photos to inuit youth, as a project to have them communicate with elders, and learn stories, getting important information to the archives at the same time. I think this is almsot a uniquely canadian project, and its amazing.

the crystal bridges shitload of capital saves Fisk unversity.

david k johnson who wrote Lavender Menace, a history of the queer scare as it relates to McCarthy, is interviewed by the UC Press, and he makes the point about youth, and cities that allows for sexual diversity in most cities (apparently there were gay bars and people were crusing in layfette parks across from the white house in teh 40s and 50s), he doesnt say it directly, but he alludes to the idea that before kinsey, before sexuality was highly codified, the polymorphusness made at least same sexual contact easy to find, if not safer:

But after the war a concern began to grow throughout the nation that American morality was in a state of decline. Publication of the Kinsey report fed these fears, particularly Kinsey's statistics that suggested widespread homosexual behavior. Congress responded by passing a tough sexual psychopath law for the District of Columbia to crack down on deviant behavior. At the same time the U.S. Park Police initiated a "Pervert Elimination Campaign" for D.C. parks frequented by gay men. With the rise of Senator Joseph McCarthy and his charges that communists and homosexuals had infiltrated the federal government, the men arrested in Washington's parks on sex charges seemed to threaten not just the morality of the city but the national security. Their arrest records were forwarded to the executive agencies and hundreds began losing their jobs.

how to case mod a taxidermied beaver.


Erotic Missionary Calendar, fags stop watching about 4 minutes in. (cause thats when the chicks start)

one of the victims of that murder sucide has an ex wife, who has a blog, this is it. true crime blog gives some pretty good context and updates on the event

ray explained these two stories of finical meltdown thusly:

Basically, to wit:

-People trading in subprime-anything aren't buying. Either players are
holding on, waiting to see if there's any value left in them at the end
of the rollercoaster, or they desperately want to sell but nobody wants
to touch them with a 3,000-mile-pole. Or both. Which means that
portfolios have no trade price to value themselves by, which means that
anybody trying to withdraw their money can't be sure how much they're
supposed to get.

-Someone's prognosticating doom, either because it's going to happen,
or some computer model said it'll happen, or by saying it's going to
happen, it won't. Someone's trying to make a shitpile or make sure
they don't lose a shitpile. Either way, it's brilliant and stupid at
the same time. Which means a hedge fund, for sure. With deep pockets
and leverage that would make Archimedes weep.

so some things about gays and republicans.

we all know that the idaho republican larry charles was found to solicit sex in the washroom of a minnepolis airport. i think that some context is in order.

1) he claims not to be gay, and i think i believe him. he has been rumoured to have msm sex since 1982, and his tastes for the high life have been well known inside the beltway for a long time, and he does like the cock, pretty inarguably. but to be gay requires a self knowledge, which he doesnt have.
2) i think why he doesnt have the knowledge is that the history of boise. this is little known (i didn't know it was published on metafilter today) sex scandal in idaho in 1955. 3 men were arrested, hundreds were suspected, of having sex in public, a moral panic that resulted in at least one man going to prison for seven years. (documentary about it. reissue of a book written about the scandal in 1966. original time story about the scandal. Apparently the moral panic was made to disappear when a mysterious figure high in the state government named the queen quashed it all.
3) which leads me to think, that not only did Charles expect to be saved from this scandal by someone in power (and he has been protected by the powerful for at least 20 years), he must have been terrified. growing up in Boise, frightened about being kidnapped and raped by predatory homosexuals, then wondering what happened when you turned out to be one of those. the full power of the state collapsing in on you. with so much to lose, and being so afraid, adn they grew up with situations like the boys from boise. its not being hypocrites but self loathing and terror, and maybe that requires more pity then anger from us.

that said---

this triple murder suicide from closeted republican operatives in flordia, looks much much jucier esp. since one of the operatives knew both ralph reed and jack abramhoff.

Underworld," he has written, "proves, once and for all, or so I must hope, the incompatibility of the political paranoid vision with great fiction."
Wood

20 "great" novels that are also politically paranoid:

1) The Crying of Lot 49, Pynchon
2) The Stigmata of Palmer Edritch, Dick
3) The Castle, Kafka
4) The Tin Drum, Grass (though oskar had a reason to be paranoid, so it might not count)
5) Mumbo Jumbo, Reed
6) The Piano Teacher, Jelinek (the politics might be a little unclear here)
7) Mao II, DeLillo
8) The Cold Six Thousand, Ellroy
9) Catch 22, Heller
10) The White Album, Didion (is this a novel or something else)
11) Anil's Ghost, Ondaatje
12) The Handmaids Tale, Atwood
13) 1984, Orwell
14) The Abbess of Crewe, Spark
15) The Quiet American, Greene
16) The Master and Magerita, Bugalov
17) Hunger, Hamsun
18) War Of the Newts, Capek
19) Waiting for the Barbarians, Coetezee
20) V For Vendetta, Moore
Wood might accept one of these

pac man orgy

pac man orgy
Originally uploaded by PinkMoose

does anyone know who made this epic peice of modernism in high park?

I think that the reason why the drive by truckers are so effective in their critique of current american policy is a deep geographic respect for where they are from. This is a ive performance of Dress Blues, a memorial ode to a friend who died at 18, as a marine. from the beginning, with the intoning of he was 18, to the clarion calls towards mother and family, w/o the rhetoric of the state, makes it one of the more profound anti war anthems in recent memory (esp the line american boys hate to lose/but you never planned in the bombs adn the sand/or sleeping in yr dress blues)
(also, i think its how exhaustion and confusion become foregrounded, over anger and righteousness)

the freakanomics dude discusses the tactics of terror.



those stupid baby einstein videos do nothing for yr children

uk's pulling out of iraq, and the americans are angry about it.

a semi long peice of verbal virtuosity by anselem berrigan. 15 pairs of columns, possible to be read across the two columns, down one column and then the other, down the whole page, and then down the next, or in other ways. some of the word choices, and the construction of paired ideas/themes are confusing, but in that fecund noisy poet kind of way.



linux cannot support software being used to monitor someone who was convicted and sentenced for downloading the new stairwars movie.

mitt romney's sons, who i frequently fantasize about, in an incestous orgy kind of way

boris kobe daucha prisoner, architect, and political prisoner, created these tarot cards when he was in the camps.

society of pius X's members forbidden from praying in two denver area churches.

the bst thing about this 19 photo slide show of Phillip Johnson's estate in new cannan, is that it totally upends the idea that he stopped being an impt architect in the 50s, or that he was more impt as an idea man then he was as actual builder. the work here, from the early 50s to the late 80s, is a natural and logical progression, of ideas, concepts, and technology, with a careful consideration of site placement and historical importance. Look at the gallery, with the moving walls, the library, and the brick house i wrote about earlier. It's as impt as his work for the crystal catherdral or the at and t building.


You know, i think beauty pageants should just drop the q&a

the spdier ti defense band system when you cant choke that bitch with your barehands

the most interersting thin abotu this story taht features GErard Richters new window in Cologne, is how well or poorly the translation b/w digitial and analog material's worked:

The Cologne window is made of 11,500 four-inch " pixels" cut from original antique glass in a total of 72 colors. Why not 4,096? Turns out there are stained glass-smart colors, too. Some hues in Richter's initial design were either historically inaccurate or too pale — they would have outshone the squares around them. So the artist modified his palette to include only colors with a suitably archaic cast. Because it's fine for a church window to look like it's been designed by a computer, as long as it's a computer with a gothic sensibility.

the photo comes from der sepigel, hence the german caption.

these graph paper stamps, are really really pretty. three for 12 american, including the polar condiarate, which is all circular. great for the pomo grid show, i think.

dryers still lives are really commerical and slick, but some of the work featuring jewelry in the corner of brightly painted rooms is pure formal joy, esp the coral and diamond ring on a cerulean counter, and the emerald and conch pearl brooch with a bone background. he can also shoot cheap plastic dice well.


Resin Table with Orange Slice Graphic, Californian, ca 1970

47 dead in terrorist bombs in the indidan city of Hydererbad. 600 injured. The same city in may had a blast that killed 12.


Baroness Thatcher, Lord Snowdon, 2006.

These two photos of amy winehouse and her husband lead to some questions

1) what is the ethical realtionship an audience has to a producer when violence becomes less of an autobiographical construction? i would call this the nan goldin question, but i am unsure that winehouse has the same motives, or the same habits of narrative construction as goldin, and goldin is primally visual, while winehouse is something else (who's songs about co-dependence, drinking, addiction, pleasure, and destructive, seismic desires have been treated as pretty anthems for the summer) (like this from Just Friends "it is not safe for us, even in the evening,in the morning, it is dangerous--it is always dangerou....can we be alone, can we be alone") there is the assumption that nothing this universal could be so autobiographical, but it seems to be
2) thinking about the whole history of soul singers who were destroyed by their men, is this kind of viscousness part of a historicised process, a lifestyle accessory, like the beehive? (cf tina turner, ronnie spector) (and some of the violence does seem to be gendered, like the idea of the blood soaked ballet slippers)
3) in the previous example, both women were victims and left--winehouse speaks like one, he is the only one who loves me, he is the one who saves me, but having both of them in such a violent state suggests mutally assured destruction more than a man using a woman as a punching bag (which makes me wonder, how common is that sort of hurlyburly destruction, the sort of thing you saw in who's afraid of virginia woolf or more subversively in mr and mrs smith versus farah in burning bed, which one is she here)
4) when asked about the images/ the incident, she writes: "I was cutting myself after he found me in our room about to do drugs with a call girl and rightly said I wasn't good enough for him. I lost it and he saved my life" texted to perez hilton--one of the reasons why hilton is making millions, is his ability to construct morally heremetic, melodramatic narratives, and this one has the perils of pauline all over it), apparently winehouse texted perez first, b/c she is one of the heros, there is a gaurentee that perez will be kind to her---and as well, b/c the images are diseminated via the net first, that they might be too strange or shocking for us or people, and because the daily mail hates her, and because there is no huge english blog that is as kind as perez, etc--it suggests a presence of mind and media savvy to use him,
4) which leads me to the final question,why did she let herself be photographed like this? (doherty and moss apparently are fucking and drugging right now at claridges but no one has seen her there w. a camera, she leaves late at night, under the cover of darkness, she is public here, she is posing--like tina brown's only new peice of info in the diana bio, where she suggests that diana knew exactly what she was doing in the ritz in paris that night) (is this a question of class--i mean clardiges, the ritz, this didnt occur in any place so exciting, and can you avoid publciity, when the arguement moves from the room, to being dragged down hallways, to elevators, looking like this, with another couple present, a couple unknown to you?)

September Dawn, a stupid anti-Mormon propaganda movie (the inimitable Lindy West: “It’s narrated by a BABY (a literal infant!) who, admittedly, doesn’t remember much: ‘But I remember feelings!’

Via The STranger

1. thank you emails to savi, richard, lorna, sally, david, peter, mark, seth, etc
2. reminder emails to the rest of the artists
3. list of work already gotten, emails sent out to thank artists, reminder emails all for the ruscha show , to be done by my meeting on the 28th
4. follow up on anything that needs to be done for the farm show (ie take down)
5. email/call debar about wether a show will pan out
6. call petro.
7. see which work needs to be done for exposure
8. send photo call to people who might be interested that you found on this trip.
9. contact type bookstore about possible photo show
10. write proposal for d's show, send it to her, then tofino
11. read the rachel cadbury thing.
12. pitch photos to the gallery with the bok peice in the front window.
13. pro/con list possiblities for move to TO.
14. Rhianna review (with baseball game added)
15. Pitch See
16. others?

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ten things i like about nickelback's rockstar
ten things that i like about it

1) Because its lack of jaded posing. i like that someone suggests that the real estate, the drinking, the pussy, the drugs, and the fame, esp. the fame are fun--not pointless, not useless, not vapid, but pleasurable.
2) Because it reminds me of Kenny Chesney or Tim Mcgraw, the presence of rich from big and rich in the video, plus Ted Nugent and Paul Stanley from kiss presently, add more evidence to the now ubiqitous notion that the middle section of a Venn diagram featuring rock cheese and pop country is becoming wider.
3) Because its like Ashlee or Avril, except w/o the per formative gender politics, because i actually have to like it for its own sake
4) Because its oddly democratic, in how he wants everyone to be a big rock star, and that he thinks that everyone actually might be able to pull it off, and i mean optimism isn't class war, but sometimes imagining playboy bunnies and enough jack to lift a ship is enough to keep going.
5) Because its charmingly retrograde
6) Because sometimes i done want to think about the politics: the whole idea of women as property is just sad, sometimes i want to watch a video with clever and self referential jokes, and a supremely hooky chorus, and not deconstruct it at all.
7) because the sopken half senteces by that dude from zz top, have a gravelled, long time on the road, energy that seems to have gone away. (esp when he says been there, done it) (some hip hop king should sample how he says quesadilla though)
8) because some of the lines, spit out really fantastic examples of rhyme (fashion/mansion, tassles/assholes) or connaissance (big black jet w. a bathroom innit, playboy bunny with bleach blonde hair) the song is really well written.
9) because the chorus is really fucking fun to sing at top volume, this years genuine bar anthem.
10) because the video consists of a series of cameo's that are truly weird (including:the elderly, small children, Hugh Hefner's gfs at the playboy mansion, two cops, paul Stanley, Paul wall, various blondes, some one on the trading floor of wal street, interpretive hippie dancers, rich from big and rich in the the studio, a half naked ufc fighter, a valet, someone who kind of looks like Peter O Toole, kid rock, Nelly Furtado on her tour bus, a nascar driver, Ted Nugent, two punks in Washington square park, one wearing a misfits t, TI (i think) in a case study house, someone smelting heavy metals, security guards, the naked cowboys, an nba player, Wayne Gretzky and others.

crazy dinner tonite, with joe matt, chester brown, seth, the publisher of drawn and 1/4ly, and a bunch of others. deeply pleasant

me on the front page of the cbc today

so, one of the photo books, the 100 fords in and around ft sask alberta photo books, was bought by the library of the naitonal gallery of canada.