Andrew Schroeder

Justin Lentz

During the avalanche of work yesterday, my friend in Los Angeles – Justin Lentz, sent me this great photograph from a photo shoot he was conducting. I’m excited to see the actual photographs that will emerge from his working process… but this iPhone image has me captivated right now. This little juicy tidbit reminds me of a recent blog post about photography as a lifestyle vs. photography as a strict, project based discipline. Personally, I love it when artists using photography are able to blend it into their practices as a human being… not simply running through the parameters of a project outline. (I will photograph X in X style until someone pays attention to how great thousands of images of X are)

It is only Wednesday and I feel completely drained. This week has been an energy vampire of unrivaled proportions. (Speaking of vampires, I find this article about fried blood on the menu in Chad really disturbing).

*****

On a separate note: I am finally going to break down and check out the “Quick and the Dead” exhibition at the Walker Art Center this weekend. Perhaps then, I will finally be able to see which ideas in conceptual art are officially DEAD and which ones the Walker has decided are ALIVE. Remember – ideas are just objects.

Badlands... Looking Forward (Again)

This topic has been on my mind for the last couple of weeks. Many of my friends and colleagues seem to be living out the more adventurous life that I wish I had the resources to engage in. My friend Eireann is in England, David is returning from Norway and may go to Japan, Curtis is going to Greece in the spring… In contrast, my post-graduate school life has (so far) tended to be much more involved in life’s smaller escapades.

That said: I’m looking to take my next plunge and I think it goes a bit like this… (more…)

From Engadget

I am not the biggest Trekkie, but I found this image on Engadget this morning. Apparently I wasn’t the only person that thought product placement in the 23rd century was a bit ridiculous. I wonder, if Frederic Jameson, the author of Archeologies of the Future would have anything to say about this situation. Does the recent Star Trek movie further show the eroding of Utopian aspirations in our society? What ever happened to the future where it seemed people were no longer using the monetary system?

Hopefully soon there will be a big Toyota logo on the Enterprise’s warp core. Pepsi will sign an exclusive contract to be the only soft-drink that can be replicated in space.

But… ultimately… does this mean that we are now unable to see a future without our contemporary branding contining forever and ever?

Tengo Sed

I’m thirsty to travel again after making a pilgrimmage to the great state of Iowa this weekend. Yes. I went to Iowa. However satisfying as a deluxe tostada from Taco Tico may be… I wish that I were in Mexico City at the moment.

Just a couple quick links before the workday really kicks off:

Sinking of Thirst: Mexico City and Water
Dry Taps in Mexico City: A Water Crisis Gets Worse

Coffee @ MOMA...

Another highlight from my time in New York has been ticking that curious part of my brain. While having coffee in the cafeteria at MOMA, my friend Andrea pulled out all of the sweeteners for the coffee and remarked how they are in no-way labeled. White for sugar. Brown for raw sugar. Blue for nutra-sweet. Pink for sweet’n'low. Yellow for Splenda. This led to the rather strange feeling of how signs, symbols, and objects of daily life can be swallowed up by an over-arching visual culture.

Just a rambling… but… it has been tickling me.

White Record of Mystery

I am back from a particularlly satisfying trip to New York. If you happen to be in Manhattan in the near future, the drawings of Unica Zürn in the exhibition Dark Spring are incredible. I also recommend the Aeronaut Mik exhibition at MOMA… anyway…

My trip to NYC has me thinking again about the ways that human beings are able to participate and find validation in the great feedback loop of “culture”. In the past, I was an artist. That was my vantage point from which I diagnosed all of the situations I found myself in. I’ve lost that view point or at least I can no longer identify with where I was just under a year ago. Now, as a member of the working poor, things seem different: much more cyclical and much more bleak.

I buy into Baudrillard’s idea that the art world is a place of nullity. Artists and other members of the community stare infinitely inward, at each other… and call that meaning. In time I’ve found I’m simply not important enough to keep returning this gaze…

On the flipside to this type of production is material culture. Unfortunately, material culture has displaced any/all transcendental aspects of cultural exchange. Here consumers strive to collect fetish objects that increase their status. As I’ve mentioned before, when one is a member of the newly established working poor… there is little excess and little energy left for the pursuit of material gratification. By necessity, I cannot participate in this function of culture either…

So, where exactly does this leave me?
I’m somewhere outside of meaningful exchange with my culture. I’m not sure if this is equatable with being meaningless… but… it has to be close. Right?

Aging Informal/Formal Structure

Two great quotes from Baudrillard’s “The Conspiracy of Art”:

In a way, it {art} is worse than nothing, because it means nothing and nonetheless exists, providing itself with all the right reasons to exist.

Montesquieu once said that “the people can become so enlightened that they are no longer indifferent to anything.” Well, it seems that the people are just enlightened enough to choose to remain indifferent to certain things and to avoid the moral danger of being concerned by anything.

From Artist Fiona Gardner and writer Amy Zimmer

My point exactly: there are places where shared assets like public transit are considered valuable (even a source of pride). Such is the case in New York with the Miss Subways Pageant. LINK.
(Via Infrastructurist)

Munich Metro via Tobi_2008 (Flickr)

Living in Minneapolis entails certain annoyances – one of which is the terrible mass transit. The 20th Century has proven to us that buses make horrible means of moving a lot of people. In Minneapolis/St. Paul, they’ve taken this to the extreme. (more…)

After reading about “Status Anxiety” for the last couple of weeks, I have become acutely paranoid about my status. Like a wet chihuahua shivering and seeking shelter, I decided to switch to something a bit more pleasant.  Enter “The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition” by James Howard Kunstler. Engaging and well-written, it is the perfect remedy for someone tired of feeling like they make no money and lack cultural cachet.

The first chapter looks at Haussmann’s renovation of Paris between 1852-70. The legacy of this project reverberates throughout urban history, up to the “cement blocks in a park” planning of Le Corbusier… and maybe a little Ralph Rapson.

I’m drawn to this episode of urban history because of the parallels between Haussmann’s grand transportation plans for Paris and our current administration’s desire to transform movement in the American city. I’m curious if contemporary property laws will be bent and shifted (as they were for Haussmann) to allow for new infrastructure to quickly be built and utilized or if we’re going to have to wait 100+ years for anything to take shape… Or I wonder if the new plans for our cities will just end up a part of the legacy of Le Corbusier’s radiant city…

Kunstler also throws out two tidbits that still hold my attention: 1) Deficit spending and massive credit to improve urban life was first introduced with Haussmann’s projects, and 2) the movement to higher-density, apartment dwellings in early Paris, firmly put in place a modern set of social norms and values.

The chapter concludes with a parallel implied between artists viewing the urban landscape in 1870s Paris and the work of contemporary visual artists. Where Paris’ new urban spaces were deemed a source of genuine inspiration (something new, genuine and marvelous) it seems almost impossible for an artist to look to our current urban forms in this way. I feel there is an undercurrent of unshakable irony present in the images of contemporary urban spaces, strip malls, and housing tracts. (My own images are certainly not immune)

So, I have just come back, full-circle.

My project for this weekend: grab my Mamiya 7, the rest of the film I’ve been hording, and take the the streets of Minneapolis. Somehow, there must be a way to look at the relics of late modernism that populate the inner portion of the city, with the awe-wonder-appreciate that I am bestowing on Haussmann’s Paris…