Andrew Schroeder

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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.

I’m actually going to be good about selling work again! Please check out my Etsy shop for books, prints, photographs, and drawings from my overflowing flat-files. I need to keep clearing out all the work that I’ve produced over the years…

LINK TO STORE

The Touch of Satan

Life is good and I’m enjoying myself. What can I say? I’m completely spellbound by the new wall shelves that my friend Christopher Pole is going to build for me and I’m also salivating at the thought of getting out of MPLS for a while.

On a recent trip to Barnes & Noble, Curtis and I came across the Mystery Science Theater 3000 box sets. Wow. Talk about taking me back to my youth. For a second, I had bad acne and felt like I was back in my family’s basement watching the Sci-Fi Channel. Anyway. As we were watching The Touch of Satan, it occurred to me that there has to be greater critical depth to this program.

In a past post, I remarked that I thought the FOX animated television show Family Guy might be an apex of late Postmodernism. After watching MST3K again, I believe that it represents yet another facet of Postmodernism coming to fruition. Where Family Guy represents the splintering, mish-mashing, and appropriation of aspects of contemporary culture to create a new whole, one could argue that MST3K indicates another core part of postmodernism in visual culture: questions of authorship.

I couldn’t help but notice that the commentary introduced by Mike, Tom Servo, and Crow acts both as a humorous (exceptionally, even) device, and also, as a means of redrawing the narrative of the film as it unfolds. It is fascinating to watch the linear format of a bad film be verbally cut up, digested, and wittily put back together into something better.

Babbling.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is Friday. I’m off to have happy hour with David before he departs for Bergen, Norway to become a famous photographer and eventually will be stalking my prey and having dinner with Courdis. Before departure, here are a few images that are keeping me sane on this dismal day.

-as

UCLA has an amazing collection of images available through its library. Here’s the link. Over the last two weeks I’ve really soured with photography. It feels like I’m able to know what a photographer is going to do before he/she does it – that the practice of making photographs involves personal style and marketability to such a degree that 90% of the photographs I see are UTTERLY PREDICTABLE.

Maybe that’s why these images have such sway over me right now. Here are a few choice pics from the UCLA archives.

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Clinton AVE S, 2008

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Hedwig

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According to Wikipedia, this is LOVE