Andrew Schroeder

Obsession:

Again my day-job as a media services coordinator makes me smile. Today I have the distinct pleasure of purchasing a wonderfully indestructible Pelican Case for a new HD DV camera. This stuff is crazy. I want to organize everything in my life with the pluck and tuck foam inside of the Pelican case.

Imagine an architecture of pluckable foam. What would this be like? A city that is constantly being reduced to fit our bodies and objects shapes perfectly? Would we value properties by how much they’ve been shaped? Or would a new property be the only way to get a perfect fit all over again?

Hmmm. Ramblings.

While searching for cases to order I came across this image. Apparently, Pelican expects people’s digital cameras to see some serious action.

Hardcore Photo Gear Protection Baby!

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Tokyo:

I have the extreme pleasure of having an amazing library down the hallway from me. Inside it are mountains of great photo books that are just lying there, begging me to love them. At the moment I have Takashi Homma’s Tokyo staring back at me.

While I may not be as skilled in analyzing and writing about photographs as Jörg Colberg at Conscientious or as intune with writing about photobooks as 5B4, I think I’m going to go ahead and dive in and make today’s blog post about this beautifully detailed photo book.

My first thoughts upon looking at Homma’s work: this work seems like a more elegant, refined, calm version of Wolfgang Tillmans’ photos.  Homma seems to embrace a fundamental freshness when looking at the world of suburban and urban Tokyo.  His photographs of children take this a step further: they are distant yet within close enough conceptual proximity to the subject to not feel invasive or dismissive.

Cover

Spread - Architecture in Tokyo

His photographs of architecture in suburban and urban Tokyo also follow this nuanced, distant yet still engaged approach. The work breaks free of the typological constraints that usually inhibit photographers that document similar spaces and forms repeatedly. Somehow, Homma is able to take the everyday architectural forms that he sees throughout Tokyo and show them in a greater, wider, contextual light.

McFlurry

Finally, his work begins to step closer to the acts of inhabitation that must be taking place within Tokyo. I’m especially drawn to photographs that depict the act of consumption (both on a literal, physical level and also on a conceptual and cultural level).

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Anyway, I feel refreshed today and find myelf going back through images I’ve taken in the last few years and appreciating them in new ways. Perhaps, afterall, I’m finally gaining a sense of awareness and appreciation for images by not making them at the moment.

Temporary Confluence, 2007

Badlands at the Soap Factory, 2008

(As for me, tonight I’d like to be out there again – in the Badlands – with the window down, driving away from everything through everything.)

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An incredibly fast blog post. 

I’m still recovering from going out last night and dancing with my friend Rosie. What a pleasure. To watch and be watched… to feel the panopticon of homosexual culture descend over oneself.  Bliss. 

I’m back to asking a question that was asked of me my first year in graduate school: If a magic genie gave you the option of being invisible, would you do it? Or – does being seen constitute existence?

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This question gets more and more difficult to answer. 

I ran into an old professor from my days at the U who, as I was bartending, made me feel like utter shit. Apparently, I’m not working enough on my own work (that silly full-time job to pay my bills keeps getting in the way).  I’m not writing enough.  Not attending the right residencies.  Not getting the right grants. 

If you are an artist – apparently – not being seen is equitable with not existing.

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Rebuttal: What a joyless and mechanical art world it would be if this rang true. What is the point of making only to show? What is the point of never coming out of production to take a fucking look around and see how you do?

That’s my defense for not having a full exhibition calendar, a residency, and a tenure track teaching job: I WANT TO KNOW WHAT I DO NOW MORE THAN EVER. In a way that is of value to me.

Not just to the panopticon.

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NYC 2008

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I remember the comforts of being an academic. Sometimes I miss it – the all encompassing construction, the goals, the competition. Just a structuring of value that seems so noble at first…

Maybe I should finally learn how to write – write well – and go back… for those next special letters and become Dr. Schroeder.

From the delightful Super Spatial – an advertisement for the Madrid metro system. This just makes me want to run away and actually live in an urban environment, instead of holding out and stockpiling dry goods here on the tundra.

http://www.superspatial.com/2008/03/012-surreal-madrid.html

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FGT_LEONG, Studio Wall

Almost Healed, Thanksgiving Day 2008

Good Evening World.

I’m almost recovered from my little make-out session with the wall of the Lagoon Cinema.  With any luck I’ll have some sort of terminal cancer that is causing me to black out a random. If this is the case, I’ll officially put PLAN B into effect: utilize every single scrap of credit I have to travel until I die. See the things that I’ve always wanted to see.

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Jessica.

A good friend and colleague from my days in the great state of Nebraska was in Minneapolis. After consuming way too much wine last night and smoking way too many cigarettes, I woke up to some really beautiful ephemerality on my coffee table. 

Talking to Jessica reminds me what a different person I ended up being.  And also, somehow, I’ve maintained a basic part of my identity that is the same.  Situated in the past, but not in the dangers of nostalgia, talking to Jessica has put me back on my timeline.

For that I am grateful.

Emphemera 1

Empemera 2

We must stare into a crystal ball and only see the past
And in the caverns of tomorrow
With just our flashlights and our love
We must plunge, we must plunge, we must plunge

From Bright Eyes, “At the Bottom of Everything”

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When is it time to leave a place that you have been inhabiting? Is there a quantifiable amount of time? Months? Years? Or is there just a matter of looking for certain signs that tell you it is time to pry the door open and leave?

I have been in Minneapolis for 3 years. And I am very comfortable here. I make enough money. I have friends I love and who love me in return. I have an apartment. A car. Warmth.

But all of this comfort has come at a price: artistic dullness, the sacrifice of experience, the worshiping of the material. 

I learned today that it is time for me to start looking for a new life. And to remember that it is making art, learning about art, being critical of art that make my life worth living through. That is the place where the inherent abilities of my person have value, purpose, direction – not in the day to day avoidance of pain.

Wish me luck on this.

Utopia

Jonanjima C-Print 2002

Its an exceptionally slow day at work and I feel like not being here.

In the spirit of not being a total art grinch, I thought I’d show some work that I continue to be fascinated by.  Asako Narahashi‘s work is simply amazing.

I first became acquainted with her photographs when I was killing time at my favorite bookstore, The Strand in New York. Somehow, the images capture the buoyant dread that I feel right now – the sense that I am floating perilessly or sinking profoundly.

Her images are beautiful and the book is a must buy (I’m still kicking myself for not picking it up).

Happy Friday to all!

(perhaps I will continue to be as bored as I am right now… and post again later. It makes me look like I’m actually working.)

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MORE:

Words Without Pictures is currently featuring an amazing essay by Walead Beshty.

Link

Taken two weeks ago... and missed every day.

Pulled from FLICKR

Lines Moving From Intention to Actualization, 2008

1. If you can’t think of anything good to say — show an image.  Here are three that I can’t get out of my head. Taken on the banks of the Hudson. My friend Andrea is directly to my left. Maybe one of the best days I’ve had in years.
2. Paris in the early 20th Century.
3. A page from my sketchbook.  I am still trying to come to terms with the gap between intention and actualization.  How much of one’s intentions actually make it into the world?  And, how much of what is made actually gets picked up by the consciousness of other people?