How Creativity is Killing the Culture

Fine let it die. it has been on it's way out for awhile now. Seriously though. This article brings up a sad point and one of the reasons I'v always hesitated to call myself an artist and force my visions on the world. There are too many, and it is saturated, and who says who is good anymore. I partially agree that all people should have something that energizes them makes them feel necessary and relevant in the world I don't think that all are endowed with the talent and skill to share these inner experiencees thru an art form, but if it makes someone happy or fulfilled to write a bad song or paint a mediocre painting let them, look around, listen i think there is plenty of mediocrity that is celebrated all around us, maybe that's the point....I've felt this way about photography for awhile now too. Everyone is a photographer what makes me any moe better or relevant than anyone else? cause soon i will have a degree that should give me slightly more validity. whatever there are just too many people period unfortunately you can't pick who should be kicked off the island. and if no one made crap what would we laugh at?

Ok so iread the rest of this article, So what do we do how do we stop this march toward pablum in the art world? Fallon offers no solutions only grips which I agree with. This is a problem one I have always considered butnever put into words. Yes Yes Creative People Must Be Destroyed I mean Stopped. But it is not the truely creative people who are at fault, I can't help the brain in my head and what I am driven to do did't used to care if anyone even looked at my work. school has influenced me to show my work is this wrong? Should I change my mjor to Psychology? Help what is a creative person to when surrounded by imposters? Am i an imposter?

Mr Goldsworthy and the Jews

I gotta say i agree with a good deal of what Harriet is ayin in this article. It seems thta all of this would have been clear in Goldsworthies proposal. i thought that ahving a show of other proposed works and getting more public input on the nature of this memorial would have perhpas solved this issue. The fact that by placing stones at this memorial the viewers read it like a grave site would be evidence of the feeling it is inspiring. I'm all about a memorial to the idea and process of death but in this case maybe not so appropriate. I also feel that work should stand on its own without cards to provide that "key of understanding" The people obviously see it as more representative of death than honor or tribute. The fact that the trees to be planted would not survive seems it was obviousl from the get go. Maybe Goldsworthy is saying that death is monumental and that strentgh comes from the thought that we will all die one day like these trees, cramped and suffocated by the fired stone of oppression that is this world.

Unofficial Manifesto For Truth About Public Art

Not real sure why this is just about public art i think it is about all art. what is public art persay? Any anything anyone can see is public. There will be no secrets in the future. What then is private art? i could replace the words "public art" in most of these phrases with" artist" and they still apply. Ex; I am for artist/ public art that/who aspires to rise above the stature of "merely appealing". I am for artist/public art who/that makes room for irony, earnestness,satire, juxtaposition,contradiction, and revolution. . I am for open spaces and artist and childern yes children in costumes with bombsacting out with bombs and balloons in these places. NO No wait. Tangent. sorry. Point is a I agree with many of these statements but they could be true for other topics not just public art. Being in Charlotte my experience of public art has greatly diminished, sad to say. i really need a vacation- somewhere there's lots of beautifully wrong profoundly erotic and explosive public art that is evolving as I am looking at it and perhapsI am contributing to the evolving. Utopian perhaps but Auntie M Auntie M where is this place? Can it be here ? just in my mind. Been so long since I have gotten out of this town i think I may have almost lost my death grip on the memory of a thriving and uncompromising art scene. Infact I wonder if I imagined it all. OK now I'm sad this sucks! I need public art good public art crazy wildly costumed creatures chanting releasing praying jestating. Things are all to calm a nd placid. Where is this spice that is truely public art. I am for public art that belongs to the public and is created for and by the public and it should be voted on then tossed out and then the public art anarchist guerillas should come at nite and make art as they see. fit. Art iss for everyone. I remeber teaching the kids in this slightly ghetto neighbor hood i lived in how to spray paint cause i knew they were doin it cause i saw their juevinille attempts so i taught them some skillz and the graffitti, or our neighborhoods version of public art improved. whether or not people believe that risk is a permanent condition it is. We risk so much every day without even knowing it. I am for public art that increases awareness of the public and the space that the art and the public occupy.

An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

I love this piece of wisdom! It reads like a rule book for my life. Only rules that are anti rules and pro experimentation. I am proud to say that i practice many of these ideas and it is refreshing to hear my thoughts are shared. Mau's pearls of modern thought reminds me of Hakim Bey . Bey is a truely a revolutionary voice in a time of massive change. He like Mau incorporates ideas from all fields of thought and encourages or enrages others to do the same. Challenge established structures and give rise to the exspasion of the human possibilty. We are here to grow and strain against the limits of power and control. No one should rule another. We all need to focus on truely ruling and expanding our own experience of the world.

The Happiest Day of My Life

I can relate to this idea of liberating oneself from objects very well. Partially because i have moved around so much and things always seem to get lost in the shuffle. There was a particular incident when i was living in San Francisco-it was Halloween nite and agroup of us were fixin to venture to the Castro District for some rabble rousing. We were congregating at my place and i had candles burning in my room some how they caught the curtains on fire and my neighbor was franticly trying to alert me to this fact in spanish. When i got the message i ran to my room to find huge flames climbing toward the ceiling. I had photos strewn all over the window seat where the heart of the blaze was. For one instant i considered grabbing my camera to document the event but thought better of it since i was renting. i threw a vase of tuber roses on the blaze and in the fray managed to get pretty burned. The tops of my hands got burning plastic dripped on them from the curtain rods and my palms were blistered from patting out the smolder. Still went out and had a blast but will never forget the notion that at any moment all of my precious belongings could be destroyed. It was noteable to me that the artist logged in allthe items pre-destruction and that he chose a machine to destroy the objects. Also wonder why we feel like we are so defined by our things, consumer culture perhaps. I enjoy the notion of undoing oneself in order to recreate in a new and modified form.

The Art World Expands

This makes me ponder the artist role in society as one of critic and instigater of change. The rapid expansion has not only made art difficult to discuss but also more challenging to create. I believe that one of the roles art plays is to incite discussions , but I also wonder how far discussions can really take us. It seems that sometimes actions without to much premeditated thought can be some of the more liberating and advancing devices. Allan Kaprow thought that sometimes artistic happenings began to loose some of their power once they were repeated. There is something intrigueing about an event that only happens once and cannot be duplicated, an anomaly in such a copy cat world. more to come.....
One drawback to publicaly funded art is that the artist is more accountable to the patrons for the content and message of the art. It seems that artists struggle to exist in the gap between telling people what they want to hear and what they need to hear. It is not an easy job to expose humanity to the flaws and issues of society.this social response began after WW 2 when people questioned what it meant to be a modern human. With Pollock and Rauschenberg the canvas traveled from the wall to the floor to the table then out in to the streets with Kaprow and Oldenberg. Photography further blurred the boundaries of high and low art and caused people to question what was the most ral representation of reality.With photography 2d reality became much easier to alter and therefore transform.There arose adivide between hyper slick representation and ultragritty documentary work. Artist began to mimic the media format more and more to express ideas., which made art more available to the masses. In some ways this created more respect for handcrafted objects and things not machine made. The ability for more people to own cheaper copies of peviously exclusive art further aided the dissemination of art into mass media. Photography also allowed us an insight into time peviously unexplored. We are now able to freeze and capture fractions of a secound and return to scrutinize those moments again and agian. The real danger her is that folks accepted photos as real representations and believed them to represent truth. Many artists politicians and other media masters used this for control over opinions.
This was taken even further when Virtual reality became mainstream.I remember working at CyberMind VR center in SF and being a virtual witness to thefirst marraige ever in Virtual time. Since i was spending so much time in the virtual world my dreams began to take on a VR quality. Everthing has become super saturated and super sized nothing is subtle anymore.we even use plastic surgery to enhance/exaggerate our bodies. David Lachapelle comments on American popped culture from an ironic, just poking fun bubble gum asetheic. his subjects allow themselves to be lambs to the hysterical photographic slaughter of individual, cultural self-importance. There seems a carnival element to the world and lachapelle is some ringmaster.
The ability to mass produce visions of reality caused a kind of homogeny to grow in the world. Languages vanish at an alarming rate, species are lost in scramble for more better faster resources to support our consumer life styles. Hmans ourselves are becoming more like machines while at thes ame time discovering through more open info excahnge about remote ancient people who have never even seen a photo of themselves. Artist have more responsibilty to critique a world evolving at hyper speeds. Information has the ability to travel extensive distances in millisecounds. THose who control the media control the people. Fidel castro said when he resigned power that "now he just wanted to be a soldier in the battle of ideas."
People now seem to need some sort of media validation for theirr existence-videos photos-reality tv.Individuality is now a commodity and fleeting form we must nurture daily to not become absorbed by the dominant media paradigm.TheManifesto for Incomplete Growth is a good starting point for taking charge of your own mind and perhaps creating ripples that will empower others to exert their will into the fray.
Artsit are always the first to step up, no we see more and more risking themselves and their audience in order to subvert the mechanistic paradigm dominating culture. Artist must extract meaning from a flatline societ and insight individuals to act and not be apathetic.Everything matters but nothing counts, you will always get a new moment to affect change, it can start at any time at any place and for what reasons =we decide.

The Stories They Tell 1/14/08

Intention is everything, well not everything but apparently a largely significant part. One thing i glean from this is that being specific i your choices of materials, dimensions, textures, every single part of the art can be investigated and evaluated by the viewers. this reminds me of Susna Harbor Page's Light boxes at McColl. I wouldn't have thought that leaving the plug exposed was important to her message. One student when asked about the inclusion of the power source in Page's light panels that she wanted her "work to seem grounded" . This makes sense I wouldn't have immediately been drawn to this part of the piece, i was more dazzled by the light panels. This brings up what kind of history the viewer brings to the work, baggage as it were. Some people have huge amounts of knowledge in their heads to evaluate and understand art, some do not. Parrt of me thinks that a"successful art work" does not cater to only the overly informed critic but also to the novice viewer. Not saying art should dumb down but maybe there is something to be said for viewing with an unfettered eye and also to creating art that speaks to all humans no matter how steeped in artistic culture they are. this would bring into play the artist intention and their ability to convey that in a "language" that is truely universal.
This article speaks to the fact that subtle differences in color or material or lighting can change the message and interpretation of art. Artist have to be aware of cultural morays, taboos, universal symbols, political power struggles, pervasive religions, human prejudices, fears, and ultimately deep-rooted desires. When the woman cuts her hair the witnesses are filled with the sense that they have been privy to a sort of daring ritual of imposing the will and creating change. Something was risked, blood was spilled and the smoke rose carrying the charged moment out into time.There is a scene in Electra when the wronged princess is being cast out of the castle and denied her name and freedom,she cuts her hair and throws it at her evil mother's feet in an act of rebellion and grief. For some reason the ability and will to alter oneself constantly is not totally universal. Many people seem quite attached to a certain look or dress or food or whatever, and anything that deviates is frightening or threatening. When someone drastically and willfully alters their form people are alerted. They seem either impressed or fearful and reactions vary. It is brave to perform an intimate reach for transformation in front of others. Like mudman covering his form with sculpture and taking to the streets in search of his audience.Ritual is severly lacking in our culture there are remnants in perrformance art and it appears more and more artist are devouring boundaries between who can do and who does.