these texts are an archive of my life in the San Francisco Bay Area from march 2007 - march 2015. it stands as a record of close to a decade of my life, charting the struggles i faced as an artist, daughter, and lover. messy and chaotic at times, eloquent and poetic at others, these texts are an index i am proud of. it was here in this electric box that i learned how to be honest about my experiences and the person i needed to become. it was here that i first learned the truism that words make the world and how to trust such a beautiful, rife, hard fact.

thank you for meeting me here in such tall grass.


my artist website is here.

Mar 26, 2010

more thinking...

i read guy debord's 'the society of the spectacle' today for the 5th or 6th time- it's one of the theory bits i always go back to... probably because i'm completely sold on most of what it says. and then i went and kept reading 'the bell jar' and i am presently 40 pages from the end. i am drinking a cup of coffee even though it's late enough in the day to make that idea a bad idea. it means i've committed myself to a night of lucid dreaming and highly fitful sleep. and... that's not really entirely bad or unfun when it's friday night anyway. all this reading, all this brain activity, all this swimming underneath the covers, all this ingestion of ideas and words and politics has got me skipping across images and ideas of my own, words of my own, values of my own, and it feels fiery and enormous and swelling and sweeping and energetic. the investigation that becomes inevitable. and more and more i'm thinking of art (or a person) as an evidence room- a collection of evidences: the books in the shelf, the baby teeth in the jewelery box, the music in the back bedroom, the underlined passages of words, the refrigerator magnets, the left over stuffed animals from childhood. all these things. the signifiers. but what do they signify? who? i'm settling on what and not who. i'm settling on an idea that the signifiers are evidence of desire. evidence of loss- the yearning, hoping, coveting, begging, wishing, and craving that create a (true?) portrait of a person's desire. i am not my cd collection and that collection can't be trusted to tell you anything substantial about who i am, what my personality is like, or what my deep values are. but if you take the cd collection and add it to the book collection and add those to my clothes, the pictures in the lip of the mirror, the trinkets on the dresser, the pictures on the wall, the towel on the bathroom floor, the shoes in the hallway, the shoes kicked off right inside the front door, the dish left unwashed, the fragrance of perfume, the stamp collection, the rosary collection, the art collection, etc etc etc... maybe a strange, shifty definition of my desires emerge... as evidenced by all my attractions. just like a flickr account or a tumbler account. a list of images that belie what the person behind the buttons wants for themselves, dreams for themselves, or at least wants you to dream of them as...

these are things i've been thinking about a lot the past couple weeks. this is how i'm thinking of my practice at present. this is why i want to keep a lot of the new work private for awhile. just a bit. just a breath. i am collecting the evidences, i suppose.

side-note: this is my 666th post on this blog. eeewwww.

6 comments:

Radish King said...

I love love love that you speak of your work in terms of practice because for a long time I felt I was the only person I knew who felt that way who thought that way and maybe I was. It always makes me happy. I have to read this post several more times before I can report anything intelligent here. It's wonderful.
love,
Rebecca

angela simione said...

do come back! i'd LOVE to talk more about this- of looking at one's work in it's entirety, as PRACTICE, rather than piecing it apart and seeing it one individual work at a time... as if ONE SINGULAR work could possibly solidify one's title of 'artist'... whatever that even means now today. i love reading your thoughts on this because i learn so much from them and from you, your practice, your perception and the freedom/fight it offers. i value your thoughts and insights so so very much because they help me from boxing myself in, pushing myself in to a corner and stagnating.

Elisabeth said...

Wonderful thoughts, Angela, especially on this your 666th post.

I'm all for thoughts about signifiers. Signifiers connote meaning and meaning is just about everything. At least it gets us away from judgments of good or bad. Things can mean something in more neutral terms and that has to be helpful.

Radish King said...

Good morning! I was thinking last night and again this morning how excited I am to see the icebergs.

If you lived close to me I'd go get some blueberry Danish and bring it to your house. It's amazing and I get it at a true Danish bakery.

love,
Rebecca

angela simione said...

hi elisabeth! yes- signifiers, connotations.... metaphors. yum. i love them and i think you are exactly right. i need to break out my big book that deals with semiotics and read, read, read. highlight passages and chew on them for awhile.

"at least it gets us away from judgements of good or bad"

so valuable! and i think the right course through most of the ideas i'm exploring. i do not want to slip in to the horrible slot of making "didactic art" and i know that this is a great possiblity considering what my motivations are. thank you! :)

angela simione said...

good morning, darling rebecca! oh, i am excited for you to see them too!!!! and i love blueberries! and raspberries! it would be so fun to sit around looking at art with you, eating danishes, and let the ideas all come tumbling out in to a great big glittering mixed-up pile of good ol' passion and hard-won resolve. i would absolutely love it! :)