Andrew Schroeder

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.

So, I am actually still making photographs. Instead of getting off my ass and investigating, documenting and experiencing the urban fabric, I’m sequestered in my studio. Here are a few objects of my collection that I keep returning to… because of design as well as their particular place as objects in/out of time.

In the last couple of months, I’ve worked incredibly hard at something that seems incredibly easy to do: doing nothing. Of course it is actually impossible to not do. Human beings are automated machines designed to engage stimuli. However, I’ve been training myself at the timeless art of uni-tasking. Screw multi-tasking and the little high that it has given me in the past. Does a person really need to complete the tasks simultaneously?

There is something incredibly beautiful about doing less and less. Instead of the clenched-jaw feeling of having too much going on, I find myself actually asking myself what I want to do.

There’s nothing more liberating that having that…

Flickr Photo Download: IMG_0011.

I am very lucky to have the friends that surround me (even if they are on the other side of the country). I might even say I am exceptionally lucky. For example, my friend Andrea sent me this great card from the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum in New York. At first glance it is simply a blank slate, ordinary piece of paper. But with a few twists… a pristine new architectural space is created. I have had this thing sitting on my desk… taunting me for the last few days. Taunting you say? How can paper-turned-space taunt someone?

Well, it is taunting me in the “unrealized potential” sector  that is located at the back of my brain (next to the part that craves the delicious muffins from Dunn Brothers).

Perhaps because of the city I live in, my view of architecture is becoming more and more static by the day. Instead of seeing architecture and buildings as sites of potential energy and social exchange, I’m too focused on the restraints, pathways, and barriers that are presented. How does one rectify this situation? Ah yes… by sneaking away to Mexico City again and photographing the informal architecture which shifts, like a sand dune in the sahara, over the city daily.

Wishful thinking… for a very busy Tuesday.

A great site that is holding my attention hostage this morning. Check it out for a variety of fresh perspectives on one of the most important issues in the contemporary city. Few sites I have come across investigate what makes public spaces successful, desirable, and heavily used in the same way that Project for Public Spaces does. Joy.

And bit more of failed public space from my own travel experiences.

Book: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Author: Tom Wolfe Publication Date: 1968

Just to make the morning I’m having a bit better… my friendly librarian, Steve Liska, has sent me a link to one of his blog projects. Steve meticulously catalogs the objects/images/things he finds inside of library books. Its beautiful. Fiendish even. I can’t seem to get enough of this blog… and… it just made me squeal!

I’m just plain giddy to make the connection to the artist Sophie Calle,  who also documents human presence through observation and collection. Her series of images in which she posed as a hotel chambermaid in Venice to document the possessions of guests comes to mind. Here is a great interview with her…

I’m constantly trying to find evidence of human presence with my own work… and I think it has just made my day to take a look at this blog.

Thank you, Steve!

Colleean Mullins 2009

It almost slipped my mind! But in all my thinking of the world of everyday life… I forgot to mention how engaging I find the concept of knowing everyday life only indirectly. What does this mean? Well, if we can never actually experience everyday life as a discrete subject, we can only bear witness to its presence through the objects/forms/interactions that are secreted from it.

Connected with this thought… over at Colleen Mullins’ blog, Elysium, she has written a great post about excavating her family home, making art, and moving through the layers of personal history that become concrete after an everyday life has been lived. The materials she finds are amazing (I’ve seen a few… including some authentic, vintage books on Modernist architecture). Colleen is also examining what constitutes being a “Mid-Career Artist”.

I think just maybe, we are on the same page as artists… going back through the images we have produced in the past, sorting through the layers of history and finding unexpected depth and discovery. But then again… I could just be caffeine hallucinating.

Either way… Definitely check it out!

It is exceptionally early and I am already at work. To be honest, I walked through the doors to the building I work in Downtown at… 5:45 AM. Yesterday was probably the most confusing/stressful day that I have experienced in months. A definite low that was intermingled with a few bright spots: (more…)

Actually Evening in Brooklyn... But Today Feels This Good

All mornings are not created equal. This morning in particular has been exceptionally sublime… for reasons that usually go unnoticed. Listening to someone take a shower… putting the perfect amount of butter on a slice of baguette. These are the things that are outweighing all the stress, chaos, and financial burdens that have been pulling me under. On this fine, sunny Friday, I woke up, showered (ignoring my newly bald head) and decided to linger around Curtis’ place for breakfast. Absolutely perfect.

To make things even better, my first email of the day was a message informing me my friend and colleague Eireann had blogged about my work and linked to my Etsy store. Eireann is an incredibly talented visual artist, poet, writer, printmaker, and conversation partner. I remember sitting on the curb outside of the art building @ the U of M during my first weeks of grad school with her.  I had just finished my first “real” critique with a faculty member and was completely thrashed… Eireann and I started discussing what makes art a place for possibility, not just a place for production. Looking back, that conversation was one of the things that now offsets all my student loan debt (another being… running around the winding streets of Istanbul @ 1:00 AM with two German girls looking for lemon soda and vodkas).

Check out Eireann’s portfolio and site here: http://www.ohbara.com/
Her blog is also great! http://www.ohbara.com/weblog.html