this may be all the use my loyal epson sees this year
At some point in the recent past I became what many Americans consider an “adult”. Maybe it is my age. Maybe it is the geographic gorging of my under eye region. But, I have officially reached the phase of my life where all of my peers are doing things like buying houses, sprouting children, or buying Prada handbags.
I’m doing none of these things and really have no ambition to.
However, by some stroke of this thing called “responsibility” I’ve decided that its high time to do things like paying off my credit card debt from my MFA thesis show. If I start now, and use all my extra cash, I can save $3,000 and be out of debt in 12 months.
What does this really mean?
I cannot travel for one year. (Goodbye Mexico City, Montreal, Brussels, and elsewhere)
I cannot fully produce images for one year. (I can take photographs but cannot print, frame, and exhibit)
Two incredibly important things for me to be giving up for New Years.
*****
In doing this, however, I feel there is some hope of liberation. In a time of instant turn-around with digital imaging techniques and also an excess cache of film, I’ve been able to point at will and make photographs with little concern for the resources going into them.
I intend to continue to make photographs, but they will remain latent, unprocessed and unprinted, until December of 2009.
Will this liberate me? Make me take the image making process as something more precious, rare, and important? Will I get to know a new appreciation for the images I see when in 2009 I take the mountain of 4X5 film in for processing?
I cannot guess what an image that has been latent for 12 months will mean to me.
*****
Two things come to mind:
I’m reminded of Andy Warhol’s “Time Capusules”. Warhol would take various items and simply archive them in brown paper boxes, in a warehouse, until he felt the need to revisit them. Here is Andy at his finest:
“What you should do is get a box for a month, and drop everything in it and at the end of the month lock it up. Then date it and send it over to Jersey.”
A. Warhol, THE philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and back again, London, 1975.
The structures that I am photographing reside in the collective public consciousness of our built environment. Ironically, these modernist structures, which emerge from a movement that eschewed monument and past for nature and future, carry cultural memory incredibly well. Traces of failed utopian idealism are still found on display in the architectural relics of this period that linger in our urban fabric.With this series of photographs, it is my intention to explore the ways that historical ideas can collapse when intersected with the practices and needs of everyday life.
Living in Minnesota for the last three years has been a period of intense upheaval sprinkled with moments of lucid stability. This morning was one of those moments. I decided to go for a walk, before the blizzard sets in and take some photographs of this place that I actually have started calling home.
Did I end up here by choice? Is this as good as it gets? Can this locality actually be MY locality? And, if so, how? How am I to inhabit this place? Materially? (Through owning property, things, images?) Socially? (Through interaction with other inhabitants.) Spiritually? (Through ritual, religion, beliefs of this place).
Or is there a course of action that will take me away from here and somehow make me a better person? Is that other person the one I should be striving to be?
Good questions for an afternoon of being stuck in my house.
Longfellow, 12-14-2008
Longfellow, 12-14-2008
*****
In keeping with the “EMO, I reveal too much” facade I’ve had going for quite some time, I thought I’d post one of my daily images. So, basically: I try to summarize each of my days with a photograph/text/drawing… something to make it seem like I’m still an artist and not an “artist type”. They’re always lo-fi and harking back to my days as a printmaker.
5B4 is featuring the rather amazing work of Guy Tilim. I couldn’t be more interested in his images right now. As a die-hard lover/admirer/photographer of the relics of Modernist architecture, Tilim’s images blow my skirt up, way up and over my head. LINK
I’ve been planning a major trip to South America to photograph Brasilia for two years. Seeing the viability, depth, and richness of Tilim’s work makes me want to punish my VISA card and buy some tickets.
Anyone out there up for a trip to a Modernist Utopia?
*****
There are certain things I’ve learned about myself over the last 3 months that continue to amaze me. Things like how many gin and tonics I can drink. How delightful an ice-cold Cornonita can while driving throught the desert in a Toyota Prius. And…
How much I like French-Speaking boys.
They’re dangerous. Alot like the haircuts and dancemoves in this Vive la Fete video for Touche Pas:
*****
Finally, the image of the day. I found this amazing building when I first moved here in 2005. Its been graffitied, burned, reviled, spit-upon, and imploded. With any luck, the condo-crazy gay men will NOT be able to knock it over to build yet another generic building.
I cannot think of anything worse than living in a city filled with wifey gay men who are home owners. Someone out there has to offer a smidgen of difference.
One of the great memories I have from going to the University of Minnesota is the Carlson School of Management – where – tomorrow’s mindless Target marketing boys are bred and groomed. Replete with anonymous looking people in cornflower blue shirts, a stock ticker, and clocks displaying time throughout the world – this place is just one part of my little vision of hell.
(A fond memory: having an opening in the small gallery space in Carlson, but not being able to go… to my own opening… because I wasn’t dressed business casual. Luckily I sold several pieces).
Recently, the School of Management expanded to include the ultra-corporate-chic looking Hanson Hall. Intended as a gateway and new “face” for the University in the Cedar-Riverside area, Hanson Hall maintains the “you can’t see what mischief we’re doing in here” big business architecture. As for being the new face to the U, unfortunately the building is situated so that we’re actually showing our ass to the folks in Cedar-Riverside.
But then again, who want’s to actually welcome the people you’re going to have slaving away for you when you climb into middle-management?
Getting to the point. Before Hanson Hall was decked out in reflective glass, the building’s unfinished, uninhabited guts were laid bare in a display of sheer and utter beauty. I had to crack out my 4X5 and, with my boyfriend at the time watching my back, take some photos.
My colleague, fellow photographer, and thought monger, Colleen has opened up a great dialog about the 20 X 200 project that Jen Bekman has spawned. Here’s a link to the original post. Be sure to check out Bekman’s rebuttal (especially for the last comment).
Now my Friday question:
Is the process of making art for immediate entry into the commercial marketplace (in this case the web) really making the world a better place?
Short Answer: In my opinion NO. The immediate translation of art into readily accessible, pull-out-your-VISA-card-honey commodity is frustratingly shallow. I’m sure I’ll catch hell for that. Maybe Karl Lagerfeld said it best in Lagerfeld Confidential:
(I’ll heavily paraphrase)
Artists used to offer something else. Now we only aim to ape and act like the bourgeoisie. Perhaps it should be our goal to offer something outside of the majorities acceptance for once.
Maybe I am simply too bitter of an old troll to really answer this question honestly and with grace. However, I will try my best.
Exposure is a wonderful thing (unless you are naked and it is winter in Minnesota, but that’s another story). However, is this why we are involved in making art? I can certainly answer no. While, I get extremely down from time to time because I am not exhibiting work as much as I want to, I have to remind myself that I am in the game to make work, gain clarity, and understand.
The purpose of the 20X200 project is to make art more affordable and accessible to a wider audience.
When fully deconstructed and shifted in perspective, is this a noble pursuit? Is art supposed to be for everyone? Should we be whole-saling our ideas for the sake of being seen by as many people as possible?
Apparently, Amazon.com is an incredibly noble pursuit. So is Wal-Mart. So is anything that tries to make rarified resources availble to as may people as humanly possible. Hopefully soon there will be a 20X200 iPhone app that just automatically purchases whatever prints Jen Bekman likes (unfortunately there is a distinct lack of diversity).
I’m getting the willies.
Maybe we should all watch THX1138, just for the quote:
“Buy More. Buy more Now. And be happy.”
(that might have been a more fitting answer than all the drivel I’ve typed out above)
