Andrew Schroeder

I have come especially to talk to those among you who recognize these failures. I want particularly to talk to those who recognize all of their failures and feel inadequate and defeated, to those who feel insufficient – short of what is expected or needed. I would like somehow to explain that these feelings are the natural state of mind of the artist, that a sense of disappointment and defeat is the essential state of mind for creative work.

 In order to do this I would like to consider further those moments in which we feel joy in living. To some these moments are very clear and to others of a vagueness that can only be described as below the level of consciousness. Whether conscious or unconscious they do their work and they are the incentive to life. A stockpile of these moments gives us an awareness of perfection in our minds and this awareness of perfection in our minds makes all the difference in what we do. 

Agnes Martin
Lecture, 1973

This lecture was originally given at the ICA on February 14, 1973 on the occasion of the exhibition, “Agnes Martin”

So, I decided to do some exploring of Green Bay today. I thought it might be a good idea to go for a walk by the lake… so I picked one of the parks along the waterfront and headed out. Maybe I should have turned around when I hit the gravel road, but I kept going… listening to the shrill voice of my GPS. I found the park and headed out… noting there were a lot of cars parked in the parking lot but no one around.

Tall grass.

I started walking and heard a very peculiar sound.

Kind of like wheezing.

Then… through the grass I saw it.

Two, elderly men going at it.

Yup. On my first day out and about in Green Bay I found the desperate men hookup park. I turned around and got my ass out of there, realizing that, with my giant camera on my shoulder, I looked even creepier than those engaged in dirty dirty park sex.

Kudos me.

Just a couple of things on the back burner(s):

1. Jorg Colberg has a great recent post that includes the thought that all photographs exploit their subject matter. I’m not quite sure this is always the case. I’m more inclined to believe that the connections between photograph and subject (and viewer) are less exploitative than made out to be. Instead, this connection is more of a dialogue – something less cut and dry and more like the relationship between producers and consumers explored by Michel de Certeau in The Practice of Everyday Life.

2. Google +. I’m on it and it is a strange feeling – much like going to a party, arriving early, and then finding out other guests might now be coming. But this did get me back into reading about Jürgen Habermaas and his ideas regarding the emergence of public space. Habermaas wrote about the role newly emergent 18th century European public spaces played in the rise of a new political class. I guess, I’m a little creeped out how quickly we seem to have evacuated ourselves from physical public space to enter into virtualized, electronic, privately-owned public space.

Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to travel to Nauvoo, Illinois. In case you’re not familiar with your US History, this is the first site of the Mormon temple and the city where Joseph Smith is buried. It was from Navoo that the Mormons set out on the trek to Salt Lake City, UT to build a mecca for followers of the LDS. In a way, it is a very strange and creepy utopia. It represents the self-reliant ideals of the Mormon community and also is a newly emergent hotbed of real estate development.

As part of the city’s summer festivities, the church organizes a pageant celebrating the history of the area and the triumph of the Mormon’s over mosquitos.

Q: What could possibly be better than a cast of 100 or so dancing, leaping, singing Mormons?
A: A bourbon on the rocks, some coffee, a mountain dew, being gay, and most importantly not being converted.