Andrew Schroeder

Well shit. I made it to Vietnam. Now, as an atheist, I believe there is no such thing as heaven or hell. I was wrong. There is definitely a he’ll. And, that hell is a booked united airlines 747 flying for 16 hours from chicago to hong kong. Loud. Old. Cramped and stinky all good words to describe the experience.

But, I made it.

And so far Vietnam is really beautiful. Well, I might be wrong as it is night and I can’t really see anything. The delicate ballet of motor scooters, cars, and bicycles is something truly horrifying. Imagine for just a moment, a city with virtually no street lamps, but crowded to capacity. Now combine that with a general disregard for any sort of painted lines on the road and you have late evening here. Pretty.

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.

The best way to begin this blog is by pointing out that I, Andrew Michael Schroeder, do not enjoy blogs.  Perhaps it is my interest in Foucault and Bentham’s Panopticon that makes me distrust the blog format.  (Do I really need to mirror my existence with a digital record?) Or maybe I’m just way to old to actually do this well.  But, for all intensive purposes, I have never been interested in perpetually displaying my thoughts/ideas/actions in a digital format – until early this morning when I realized that I have lost one of my sketchbooks.