Andrew Schroeder

Via US National Archives via Flickr

Beginning to dwell

Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space has been filling my imagination as I work through the most intense nesting instinct I’ve had in years. His focus on the lived aspects of architecture over the historical and formal are the imaginative quirks that served as inspiration for my work as an artist and as an apartment dweller. At the moment, I am gazing over my apartment as it lays in the throws of a passionate clean-up, updating, and general sprucing.

Peeling back the layers...

I didn’t really expect the archeological findings of my new apartment… however, so far I have fought my way through about 15 layers of paint. Each decade is accurately represented:

• 1980′s: multi-colored pastel wallpaper
• 1970′s: citrus yellow
• 1960′s: light green
• 1950′s: light yellow
• 1940′s: back to the light green
• 1930′s: original light butter-nut squash brown…

Ah… time travel.

It is official. I am deeming 2010 my year of… LESS. Less stuff. Less trauma. Less want. Less erroneously placed ambition…

As many of you know, I am moving once again. This time into an amazing, large, and friendly apartment in an Art Deco building somewhere in the confines of Uptown. Think classy but with a certain degree of good humor about it.

In retrospect, my past moves have always been my periods of introspection and healthy purging (of both material and emotional baggage). Feeling like I need to somehow congratulate myself, just a little, here is a brief list of what I have joyfully removed from my life this year.

• Mamiya 7 Camera (finally passed the 9 months without use mark – meaning it was time to sell)
• Television
• 2/3 of my ENTIRE library (this was a feat, trust me)
• Unnecessary pots and pans
• All of my old and heavily used dish-ware
• The majority of my wardrobe
• My sofa
• Chairs
• Numerous pieces of art, photographs, etc (still have a LONG way to go)
• Gigantic IKEA bookshelf

And the rest… still eludes me.

White Flower, 1960. Oil on canvas, 71 7/8 x 72 inches (182.6 x 182.9 cm). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Anonymous gift 63.1653. © 2007 Agnes Martin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

As the slide into full-blown winter solidifies, the concepts of failure and reduction have taken over my thoughts. When one thinks of improvement, of being a “better person”, the tendency is to look at what we lack and emphasize what we can acquire. I feel like I have been caught in this quagmire of acquisition for way too long (perhaps roughly 27 years).

Reduction.
Simplification.
These are my new goals.
By all intensive logic, I want less.
I want to fail.

What does it mean to fail? According to Agnes Martin, failure is a state which exists only when one has exhausted all means and possible courses of action. Failure is a terminal condition–an end of possibilities.

Can one consider it a victory to stop doing something? To cease to acquire? To cease to care? Is that really failure? Or is the act of losing all choice, movement, and flexibility that elusive  apex of liberation I have been searing for?

Just a bit more Agnes and then I am going to call it a night, crawl into bed, and be blissfully unconscious.

“To progress in life you must give up the things you do not like. Give up doing the things that you do not like to do. You must find the things that you do like. The things that are acceptable to your mind.”

I really cannot think of anything I would like more.

1. Bean. I love a good word processor. Fortunately, there seems to be an upsurge in new, ultra-functional and lightweight software for getting words out of my head via keyboard. My favorite right now is Bean. It is definitely worth a trial run for anyone that is looking for a reliable, free, fast and pretty place to record their thoughts. Although Apple’s Pages software (part of iWork) continues to be my heavy-duty, Microsoft Word replacement of choice, Bean offers that perfect “one step above textedit (or simple text for that matter)” feeling.

2. The Daily Archive. I’m inspired by Andy Warhol’s practice of collecting items in large, brown, nondescript cardboard boxes. After filling the box to the desired level, Warhol would archive them away in a warehouse. I have been trying to do the same thing with the random files, images, and videos I encounter on a daily basis. My workflow has changed so dramatically over the last year – when I log onto my computer at work in the morning, I automatically make a new folder on the desktop, titled simply with today’s date. As the day passes, clippings of various sorts drift into the folder… which is then archived to DropBox. No fancy Evernote software or massive sketchbook full of notes. Just a simple folder with a day’s worth of accumulation tucked neatly inside it.

3. Tretorn Strala Boots. Winter in Minnesota is a bitch from hell. I’ll just be honest about that. In order to survive in this climate one must indulge both the materialist and hoarder instincts that surface from December to early March. My winter splurge: exceptionally comical looking Swedish boots. Today was their first real test run… and I’ve got to say… trudging through the snow with my coffee, I felt just a bit better knowing my feet were not going to turn blue and fall off.

TPTP

AH! Finally some exceptionally good news comes my way. I have been selected to participate in an exhibition at TPTP in Paris. It looks like an amazing, energetic, and fun gallery space and I am thrilled to break the spell of exhibition drought with this show. Thank you Phillip Tonda, for selecting my work!

I will have further details on the exhibition as it begins to take shape…

20 Rue Muller - 75018 Paris

Daylight Savings Chart

As I was walking into work this morning, I realized that living in the far north of the continental US has its benefits. While I may complain that the city is often unpopulated and boring at times, it is almost always a great place to turn to for a healthy dose of surrealism. For example, my early morning schedule (arriving to work at 6:00 AM) means that I encounter downtown Minneapolis under a heavy drape of darkness. This in itself is not strange… but there is this odd liveliness to the downtown, which continues despite the pitch black sky outside. It is roughly the same vibe as living inside of a space station, moon base, or other outpost like environment.

Again… rambling.