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.

the close show was one of the strongest i have seen at the ago, so strong that the dundas collection, the reniassance masters, and the new art from india paled, and so strong i didnt have the energy or time to really look at the bernini corpus.

the show consisted of three media of potraits, from the same collection of people he has worked thru before: jaquard loom made large tapestries, digital pigment prints combined with poems, and daguertypes. all of what you expected to see in the daugertypes, esp the oval slice of sharpness, against the bluriness of the rest of the canvas. its about reproducing work mechincally, takling the thistory of machine made imagery, and reworking it, de and re historicizing it, with the words and the other images riffing on what portraiture means (often literally, by using people like elizabeth peyton or kiki smith, they become meta portratiurtes, discourses about what it means to represent humans now, by using andres seranno and cindy sherman, they become meta-photogrpahics, what does it mean to photograph people who;s career's have been about hiding, or displacing pesonal meanings thru the mediatation of the camera lens.)

having three images, often against each other, the small daugertype, the pigment print diptych with the poem, and the bigger then human sized tapestry, and have them all with the same effects, becomes a set of formalist excercises in tyhe reporducibilty of an image--what does it meant to artifically reproduce the flaw of an old form, what does it mean to use digital means to recreate the 19th century, what does it mean to dress these v. post-modern figures in black and shoot black and white--are these jaqard loom peices that different then the photo throws that cost 5o bucks at wal mart? does the jaqard looms beginning of a computer/binary peice at the same time as the daugertype is the bridge b/w the two kinds of imagery, a more effective bridge, because it connects all 20 ways of doing things, as opposed to the small connections, the web of interlacings, between the triptych of similar portraits (and that the curator refused to put the three images together, that the daugertypes are collected at a side table, and the pigment prints/tapestries of each artists are seperate, across the room or in other rooms, makes these interlacings more tennous)

the daugertypes in their black frames, with hoods, intended to be that way to perserve the images from hands and light, becauyse the glass plates decay too easily, become small, contained, dark and almost impossible to see, the poems beside the pigment prints are inscrutable collections of sounds and half images, impentrable except for impressions, but the images in the prints and the tapestries are large, concise, not monumental, but holy in their own ways, esp. the loom peices, are so much about surfaces--he has become smoother, tighter, more explicit, and it becomes difficult w/o a close looking to see the weft and weave of the actual work. the paintings that seem typical of close's work (so typical that they had to put them here) seem savage and dark next to the tenseness and vitusou skill of the work here.

this is esp true about a peice on the edge of the show, near the entrence, two daugertypes of his hands, and a tapestry self potrait, it had something iconographic about it, the hands like relics, like silver reminders in mexican churches, tailsmanic like hindu shrines, emblamtic of security, like in a spy movie, outside of time and place, difficult to resist putting your hands on top of them, measuring yr humanness next to his, the initimate urge matched to his face, inscrutable and almost glowering--seeing this image, one is reminded that lebowitz once chose him as the wizard of oz, and in his immediate knowing of people, he almost becomes the wizard here, but w/o the chicanery.

the national cbc show q wants to interview me about the ruscha show

There are so many dirty names for (a woman) that one rarely learns them all, even the ones in one;s native langauge. There are dirty names, for every female part of her body, and for every way of touching her. There are dirty words, dirty laughs, dirty noises, dirty jokes, dirty movies, and dirty things to do in her in the dark. Fucking is the dddirtiest though it may not be as dirty as her self is. Her genitals are dirty in the literal meaning: stink and blood and urine and mucus and slime. Her genitals are also dirty in the metaphoric sense: obscne. she is reviled as flithy...in religion pornogrpahy, philosophy, and in most literature an dart and pyschology. where she is not explicity maligned she is magnificently condescended to.

Dworkin, qouted by Kipnis, in a review in this months harpers, about the reissue of intercourse.

And first a dirty smock appeared,
Beneath the arm-pits well besmeared.
-------------------------------------
he various combs for various uses,
Filled up with dirt so closely fixt,
No brush could force a way betwixt.
A paste of composition rare,
Sweat, dandruff, powder, lead and hair;
A forehead cloth with oil upon't
--------------------------------------
And ointments good for scabby chops.
Hard by a filthy basin stands,
Fouled with the scouring of her hands;
The basin takes whatever comes,
The scrapings of her teeth and gums,
A nasty compound of all hues,

excerpts from her ladies dressing room, swift.

Lamps and Mirrors

Lamps and Mirrors
Originally uploaded by PinkMoose

dinner with david was fantastic, italian, the usual conversation, the genriousity of spirit, im glad hes in my life

so i am in sheri's show, but im kind of peeved. she said sure to my request a week before the show was to go up, she wanted things framed, and that was the week i was going to go to ontario, i pitched her an idea, she said no, i asked about another, she said okay, the show was installed, and though my work is up, my name is nowhere on the wall, or list of artists. i emailed her about this, and her entire reponse was sorry, dude, no. one line, no explanation.

if she didnt want the work up then she should have said this doesnt work, if she put the work up, she should have my name with the rest of the artists, as far as im concerened.

(thinking about art, had lunch at the lakeview w. jennifer, it was nice, sort of meandering, bio/geo more than anything else, but did turn ever so slightly awkard when she sort of pushed me about school, somethinng i thot about but dismissed for fairly obv. reasons, she also asked about cash, which i think is standard artist question 101, but still makes me feel coy)

seeing a 1062 photo of sontag in the new york times magazine. she is smoking, in 1962, looking at the camera, smoking or at least holding a cigarette...and the way she holds her nands, the directness of her face, the folding of her body, the singularity of her glamour and the clumping of the crowd--she kind of looks like garbo, and like garbo, who's best work is her self, her clothing, the photographs, and the legend, as opposed to films like grand hotel (& the best garbo movies are that which intersect the persona w. the filmic rites, like queen chrstiina), sontag as ikon is the life work there, not sontag as writer.

the story republishes excerpts from her diary and t his is one from 58 in paris: "why is writing important? mainly out of egotisim, I suppose. Because I want to be that personae, a writer, and not because there is something I must say. Yey why not that too? whit a little ego buliding--such as the fait accompli this journal provides--i shall win...

for sontag maybe it wasnt about the ideas, but that the act of writing made her glamourous, her personae iconic, her self famous. like garbo saying i want to be alone, made her immortal; like andy saying i wanna be a machine made him human.

an outline for:
some ways of looking at rhianna: a review.


1. midnite taxi ride after meeting
2. much more music on the airplane
3. deconstructed hooks and the case of raymond
4. qsw, amy winehouse
5. too much noise, too much pretty.
6. rococo pop
7. sounds good loud, sounds good quiet
8. fairy twinkle.

lorna chose 6 of my photos for this weeks sunday devotionals.

Taken near Wembley, the artist describes the works as "semi-abstract" of his usual observational style. Unfamiliar with his previous work, the pieces staggering up the side of the stairs is clearly from a foreign eye to the rural farmland. Only, the mystery eluded to in each photograph does not quite reach out to stop you and make you appreciate the beautiful simplicities. A handful of farm eggs, close markings of fur and hide, the wild and intersecting slabs of 2X4, a cow staring closely into the camera; the subjects are all there, but the context is missing.
The small showing has literally framed itself as a rural exhibit by the looks of their handmade farmhouse frames, but the novelty of rural life would benefit from further investigation.

Amy Fung's review of the farm show.

exellent tea with lorna and rm. lots discussed, some progress made, i took a really nice photo of lorna, but she doesnt like images taken of her, so i wont post it. medicore dinner at victory, with excellent company, and then a little wander thru the annex.

The Wounded Surgeon: Confession and Transformation in Six American Poets (Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, John Berryman, Randall Jarrell, Delmore Schwartz and Sylvia Plath) (Hardcover)
by Adam Kirsch

Excerpt from Dream Song 14.

Excerpt from Dream Song 14.
Originally uploaded by PinkMoose

John Berryman

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) "Ever to confess you're bored
means you have no

Inner Resources." I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as Achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into the mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.

Tentative Schedule for the Next Two Weeks:

Thursday: Ray 8pm
Friday: Free
Sat: RM @ 2 PM
Sun: Free
Mon: Lakeview Noon, David for Dinner at 6
Tues: Ray Noon
Wed: Mark, Lunch, etc Michael at Lillian Smith at 5:30
Thurs: Savi,Drinks, Ted's, 7 pm Opening at XeXe 6-9 pm Thursday August 16th
Fri Wright AWards, After Party, during the evening
Sat TCAF, maybe Invasion
Sun: TCAF/Wright Booth/Glenys during the evening.
Mon: Danielle, Keele, 6:30 pm
Tues: Rachel, art work, hang out, if she is back from Europe.
Wed: Free
Thurs: Flight Back, Fran's before.

Need to Slot:
Jennifer, Lorna, Sally, Mr Nobody, Collen (derive),Pat, ROM, AGA, movie, QSW crawl (with Dundas), Danielle, Alan, Peter

From Laura Kipnis' The Female Thing, mostly a retread, but she is an excellent polemicist, and esp. the chapter on housework is a sustained blast against conventional wisdom on all sides. (Her chapter on Rape, entitled Vulnerability, isone of the more difficult calls to honesty about the issue)

...Children have to be taught not to play with their own shit, and the fact that most of us have indeed renounced this early pleasure is one index of just how effective bodily socialization is...our thresholds of disgust about such bodily matters have risen exponentially with sanitation advances, making our bodies even more dirty as a civilization marches on...neurosis is civilizations trade off for improvements in personal hygiene: we smell better, we have fewer gastric ailments, but we fret about it all far more... (91)

...Perhaps the shape of the problem begins to come into focus:the household and the body stand in for each other at some not entirely conscious level. But here's the complication:wouldn't scrubbing away at unwelcome feelings also serve the dual purpose of confirming them? Can you scrub away an existential condition... (102)

...What exactly is it about dirt that keeps impeding sexual harmony between men and women? And why the constant accusation mode: one sex somehow more polluted then the other; one sex always offending or sullying or reprimanding the other? (Though occasionally the charge is that someone isnt dirty enough; the accusation of sexual prudishness, usually aimed at a female, though once in a while at an undersexed man.)
Classicist and poet Anne Carson summarizes the dilemma rather elegantly in an essay on the theme of women and dirt in antiquity:"As members of human society, perhaps the most difficult task we face daily is that of touching one another--whether the touch is physical, moral, emotional or imaginary. Contact is crisis"...
(104/5)

(about second wave feminism) Liberal feminists focused on rights based themes like equal pay, fighting discrimination, and reproductive freedom, while radical fminsits seized on the old social-purity motifs: namely, the preoccupation with men;s dirtiness, from their failure to share the housework to their sexual dirtiness, There were distressing new scourges to combat: not germs, but "the objectification of women" (Dirty minded"), the pornography plague (filth), even sex jokes at work came in for sanitation. For some reason, female reformism just keeps returning to the theme of dirt, male cleansing of one sort of another is the fundamental demand...
(113)

If you are a chick, you're sitting on some pretty valuable real estate. Is any other human body cavity quite so laden with symbolic value, not to mention actual monetary worth, particularly for exclusive access? Fathers once traded their virgin daughters for bride payments; non virgins were handed over at reduced rates. Even today, play your cards right and a vagina can mean all sorts of social rewards. Just about everywhere on earth, right of entry to the revered female cooze...can still command wads of cash or cash equivalents, even for non-professionals. Pricey dinners, diamond rings...in what other system of exchange can you trade exclusive access to an orifice for a suburban split-level and a life time of monetary support? Not such a bad deal, considering he back breaking and alienated things a lot of people end up doing for money..(123)

An Old Freud Joke:
Sigmund: Anna, altough I am yuor father, as part of your eduation I must show you my penis so you understand certain fundamental concepts. Now , do you see the difference between the penis and the phallus?
Anna: Yes, Father. The penis is like the phallus, only much smaller
(148)

Evel Keinevel jumps oevr some shit.

Tom Papagordge long lost essay interacting Robert Frank's The Americans, with Walker Evans American Photographs. He makes an argument that Franks book is an explicit counterpoint to Evans, that he shot for shot interpreted and reconstructed the narratives of Evans 35 years earlier, and Frank admits this. I knew that Frank connected himself closely to Evans, but it ws interesting to see how the two texts interlaced.

the American assoc. of civil engineers has a critical infrastructure blog, and the entries are chilling.


172 minute 1972 documentary on the Manson family, from American Pictures International. The doc won the Oscar, but the most interesting thing about it, is that the whole thing has a psychedelic aesthetic, with odd splits, coloured lenses, and other camera tricks, look at the kaleidescope lens segment with the three men, two women and a horse, it looks like ken kesey directing equus. (the matching of manson's aesthetic and the film producers aesthetic, leads to some really interesting questions about the connections b/w politics and form)



New Eine Mural in London.



I like this one better, for its scaling, its almost imperial grandeur, its sly wit, and its refusal to engage in the usual wall writers ideas of property and public/private space.


Mitt Romney talks about the church, b/w the commercials on an Iowa radio show. one of the more interesting deferences of his faith, well thot out and explicit. it will lose him the election, just as gulliani's new york lifestyle will lose him his. more on romney here

vladimir zrimaov's woodcut illustrations of gogol are sufficiently Russian and bleak.



I have posted this before, but its getting some mileage, b/c of the Flavin LACMA show, so here it is again.
monument 4 for those who have been killed in ambush (to P.K. who reminded me about death), 1966
(the permanences of the idea of monument and the ephemeral nature of the material, being in the corner of a room, like a shock, like an ambush, the four bulbs, simple and explicit one-one connection and the almost religious literalness of the red, undermined by the conversational parentheses, and the initials, its clarity becomes inscrutable at that point)(i think that tension, and the cold, technocratic machine feel of the work as well, makes it so profoundly against not only vietnam but how we conduct war post-dresden)

iraqs power grid is beyond fucked, for a variety of reasons, some not the americans fault.

gorgeous hand drawn graphic design, with an excellent website.



Jerome Lebling, South Saint Paul, 1962. From his book on Minnesota.

more info on the thesis that Neanderthal breed into homo sapiens, and did not make themselves extinct, i've always been fond of this theory, so its good to know the physical evidence is encouraging it.



WeeGee, Infrared Photo of Lovers on Long Island Beach (similar to the infrared work he did at movie theaters)

waissa has applied to be part of the exposure photo show, and i don't want to get into any trouble, but it would be an honour if we had him, his work combines interests in vintage technique and the difficult v
varragicies of isreali history, into gorgeous and haunting (important) work. (esp. his polaroid transfers, which decay and fall apart into abstract landscapes, like the lacunae of people, of memory has phyiscally imprinted itself onto the text, like words on the body.

22 photos of Chicano murals, from orange county, in disheartening states of disrepair, peeling in the california heat. these works of history, art, and racial conciousness should be perserved as landmarks.



Matt Damon, why wont you love me?



Random Bunny Man, why wont you love me?

stephanie dearmond's cermaic textual peices are femmey, and kind of sweet, in an interestingly crafted way.

pfizer has released the first anti-hiv drugs in years, spec. for people with drug restient infections. looks like good news.

Glen Murphy rising star in the young republican, likes mansex, resigns (he's also basically a rapist, which is why he should resign)


New PJ Harvey, live at Copenhagen. Much less out there and angry then her earlier work, but the unique voice and vocalizations.

imagine if that catholic heart of christ thing looked like a muppet and happened to a sad indie boy in love, you have the gist of the video here. the song is awful.





Grinderman, Nick Cave, he totally stole john wilmot's monkey.


and two lolcats:

talking to mom about coupland, first time i had thot about him in forever, and she said that you think you are better then everyone in this town, and out of some kind of humility, i said no, etc but i was thinking , well kinda yeah.

Out at the airport Oedipa, feeling invisible, eavesdropped on a poker game whose steady loser entered each loss neat and conscientious in a little balance-book decorated inside and out with scrawled post horns. "I'm averaging a 99.375 percent return, fellas," he heard him say. The others, strangers, looked at him, some blank, some annoyed. That's averaging it out, over 23 years, he went on, trying to smile. Always just that little percent on the wrong side of breaking even. Twenty-three years. I'll never get ahead of it. Why don't I quit?" Nobody answering. — The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon

Qouted by Jane Dark, in his review of Ocean's 13

i always get slightly paranoid when a couple of days pass w/o any real work being done, and then i always realise that i need to start looking at work done in a week rather then every day, today, i felt the weekend was kind of lazy, but then i realised this week i continued the ruscha project, installed the farm show, did pr for the farm show, had a 2 hour meeting, coordinated progress reports, wrote an agenda and planned time/date for the next programming meeting, asked people to be part of the postcard project, met with joe (lunch but also the installation), got some help and made some progress with the exposure religiuos project, confirmed november for the sugarbowl, and arranged at least 4 lunch/dinner dates for toronto.

next week, i have to give images to sheri, attend two meetings for exposure, secure postcards, do some homework for exposure, work out a grant for the grand prairie project, pack, sort out cash, find a way to the airport, and go back home for two weeks.

which is a weeks work

They should be encouraged to take up bridge, gardening and Egyptology...
Baroness Howe, on how to handle Chavs.

article on the mountain meadows massacre from the ensign this month. it is a brave document, taking full responsibility and not sparing difficult details. that it was posted as a full text on the net, suggests interesting things about the lds realtionship to new techonology.


norman foster talks to anthony caro.

the original text of the chicken house article, the basis for the best little whorehouse in texas. melvin howard died this week



Lizzie Grubman at a Getty Event.


LiLo, just before her arrest.

biologists engage in excercises in taxonomy with bookstores.

i like justin vinseky's photos are v. quiet and sort of politely suburban in the best way.

discussion of china's finical involvement in africa:

African markets are so undeveloped that the opportunity there is still quite small. According to Stanlib, a South African asset-management group, the market capitalisation of the whole continent is just $800 billion, of which South Africa itself makes up $600 billion. The rest of the continent’s markets, in other words, are worth a good deal less than Exxon Mobil. Put another way, China could buy every African quoted company with its foreign-exchange reserves.

ted stevens house was raided by the irs.



On the front cover of the TImes of India, last week.

small stakes does v. elegant limited edition silk screen posters, with a sophisticated visual wit.

the election results from japan, are being called evenge of the middle classes. i dont know nearly enough about it, but more questions then answers are coming.

these 10 images from mayfair, in london, by rob gardiner have a refined elegance that jettisions most of what we have learnt about the aesthetics of photography in the last 70 years. for the better.



Sol Lewitt, In Four Directions, Ink on Paper, 1980.

the bishop of chelmsford's new ordination has gone a bit off the rails, in one of those stories that is so petty, it becomes an episode from a david lodge novels.

new truitt site, which begins a CR of her work, list of collections, some writings, etc. The best thing about it though is that her cv is going to include DVDs, so that people can actually treat the sculptures as 3D objects.

the new us pasport is a fantastic example of the triumph of ornament.


The Alpaca's they plan.

great article on why ehtonal is a huge scam, which results in less food for poor people, doesnt aid emissions at all, and prevents/encourages corn famers from actually growing something that might be useful.

Robert Olen Butler's wife left him to be one of Ted Turner's girlfriend, this resulted in a letter that is a masterpeice of pasive agressive boasting.

jack barnes has been the head of the socialist workers party for decades. he was reposnible for the turn to industrialization the SWP did in the 70s, which resulted in soft college students attempt factory jobs, just as the sector was startign to die a massive death. he just sold the new york loft that the party had for 109 years to a executive at Warner Music for 1.872m.


Tim McGraw stops concert. asks for his pinky ring back (same concert where faith hill told an anon concert goer to stop grabbing tims balls)



Sometimes I am a cliche. (50 Hunks from 50 States, this one is from Nebraska)

mexico city allows same gender congujals.

the weird thing about this trailer for rendetion (a list cast, about the cia and their moving prisobners to eastern europe to tortue them) is that the prisoner is jake gyllenhall. they couldnt find an arab? (though the idea of gylenhall being tied up and his clothes being stripped from him is kind of hot)


Wolly Bully, by Sam the Sham

skull a day blog



Two Traffic Choppers, Collision, Phoneix.

one of the (many, many) interesting things about MIA, is though she raids global funk, msot of her sources seem already mixed...(ie favela is a mix of south beach, samba, afro-pop, and portugese dance music; bhangra is euro-house, american hip-hop, and bollywood; grime is american hip-hop and the anglo narrative tradition; ghana/nigerian afro-beat works to cross africa in ways marcus garvey never imagined; etc)

had a seizure on the train, thinking about moyra and this committee stuff, other things too, but mostly the comittee, she most likely reads this, which means i should be discreet, but she doesnt listen, shes cryptic, her email skills are shit, and she has no concept of time management, etc...

***Indian Red is renamed Chestnut in 1999 in response to educators who felt some children wrongly perceived the crayon color was intended to represent the skin color of Native Americans. The name originated from a reddish-brown pigment found near India commonly used in fine artist oil paint.

Via Crayola Creative

Baptist Student Ministry Belief Survey
(they were handing them out at sub today)

what one word would you use to describe your life:
exciting
purposefil
fulfilling
average
directionless
burdensome
carefree
empty
other

what do you hope for most about the future
having a family
peace
success
hapiness
money/wealth
fufilling life
fun/interesting life
to make a difference
other

what do you fear most about the future
war
death
unemployment
being alone
the unknown
sadness
failure
debt
other

What is your current spiritual belief?
Muslim
Catholic
Atheist
Hindu
Sikh
Buddhist
Other

how would you describe god
(a centimeter of space)

What do you think makes someone a xian
(a centimeter of space)

How would you rate your desire to know god (0=not at all, 10+very high) Why

Contact Details
(name, year of study, m/f, phone no., email)

Please Check any of the following that interest you:
participate in a Bible study group
Meet to talk about christianity wih a christian student or staff
other, please specify)

(end of survey)

this is why i have so much contempt for baptists, is the sheer banality of their belief system. that and if you filled out the survey, you could win an ipod. nothing says LOVEMEJESUS more then portable data.

The Aussie Skill for Pure Vitirol is alive and well. (best line: by the sperm of all these boys who fuck you) (also note the casual racisim)((said by a preist)