regardless of the weather...

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...i come equipped with clouds of my very own.  force of fucking nature.  ;)


the fracturing of The Sublime.


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kitsch???

i've been following this discussion about kitsch and its "poetry roots" for the passed few days and i find it so compelling. totally intriguing. and there is such a huge possibility for this kind of discussion to blow up, morph, twist, writhe, and then maybe create a site for a bit of understanding too.

i went to leave a comment but my comment got so big i decided to just stick it here. :)

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mmmmmmm... Greenberg. i have issues with Greenberg.

a lot of his theories are based in class/social systems/beliefs: those who can afford leisure, those who have time to become educated about art vs. those who don't. and he is quite blatant in his theories that poor people are stupid because they can't afford to become un-stupid: they're too busy working and scrubbing and scrimping.

i have deep, angry issues with Greenberg.

and so, based on his theories of Art: rich people have art. poor people have kitsch.

did poetry fall in to the hands of The Poor? did Poverty impoverish poetry? did The Poor infect it with their "bad taste" and lack of education? is it "fraudulent" to be poor? or... is it the social pressures to HIDE poverty that make one's actions (poetry) appear "fraudulent"? is it "evil" to be poor? and therefore, Evil to express poverty? or, by way of lack of access, to function within/expose a language of impoverishment? dirt offends. that's why The Angel of the House never did any cleaning. women are expected to be "pure" and not offensive. and so she had some other Poor Woman to do the cleaning for her, touch the dirt, finger the grime. status in direct connection with one's proximity to dirt. to cleaning. to scrubbing floors.

and so i really like kitsch described as an "ineradicable residue" - dirt that cannot be removed. a grime that does not go away. a stained language. or the language of The Stain.

there are only two choices then: to ignore it (which has been the case) or to reckon with it (war or acceptance).

but, since the era when Greenberg was shoving all this out in to the world, the middle-class has become the biggest class in America. they create(d) a space between the extremes of rich and poor. but... a person of The Middle Class does not ever want to be mistaken for "Poor". if anything, a person of The Middle Class would love to be perceived as "Rich". and so i wonder... is kitsch, now, a sort of keeping-up-with-the-jones's value system? is it a new breed of disdain for The Poor? that we are soooooo taken in and harnessed by the appearance of wealth (not necessarily actual wealth, just the appearance of it) that people who have the means to emulate wealth, do? or at least attempt to? is kitsch a Faux Elite?

if so, would kitsch, then, be an object produced that, through simulating the appearance of wealth, actually makes Greed concrete?

is kitsch, in essence, a representation of envy?

and therefore: shame.

an object or language that feels bad about itself? an object or language that refuses to accept itself as is, and wants to be perceived as something else? a play of pretend? a conscious action of trying to "trick" the sight and perceptions of others? a "poser"?

sight is the most easily tricked of all the senses: if you look like you have money, people will think that you actually do have money. kitsch understands this but somehow manages to miss the mark. there is the "ineradicable residue" of self-loathing (an acceptance of the ideology that "Poor" is a crime) on the surface. it is, somehow, an anti-reality. it doesn't understand The Myth of Photographic Truth.

Bertolt Brecht said, "realism is not what real things are like, but what things are really like"

i have to read that statement out loud most of the time to get it. but once i catch what he's saying, it makes such wonderful sense that it is the only way for me to describe my personal experience of what Kitsch "is". it does not attempt to describe things as they actually are. it describes its own desire to be something it isn't but hopes to be mistaken for. it is Frailty made visible. it is Inferiority-Complex made visible. it announces its complicity with regimes of wealth, power, and desire. it agrees that individual human value can be determined through the appearance of wealth. and, at this stage in the game, the actuality of Poor and the appearance of Poor (in its extremes) line up and therefore have an authenticity that kitsch will never have.

the Language of the Stain has honesty in it. art can be made with such humble materials. it can transcend its physical components. kitsch does not have the power of transcendence because it attempts to mirror what it sees to be art, not what art actually is.

Greenberg had it wrong. poor people are able to see and know art. they make it. they live it.

envious people have a hard time knowing what art is. an envious person spends their time in anger and fear, not learning.

a person becomes a leader by leading. not by making a knock-off of the jacket the leader wears. maybe kitsch is a physical manifestation of a NOW NOW NOW quick-fix culture?

it is an object that wants YOU to believe it has value. and kitsch is conscious of this. it is conscious of its own desires, shame, and motivations. it actively seeks to be perceived as The-Something-Else it admires.

this is not an effect of poverty itself. it is the effect of making being poor a blemish, a crime, something to be ashamed of... and the people who have become complicit with this outlook.

if people were not ashamed of poverty and did not try to hide it...
if people were not ashamed of the struggle they face...

??????


what would kitsch be then?





all this is preliminary. i'm just thinking out loud. this is such an interesting topic and i can't wait to see where johannes goes with this.

the language of kitsch is quite compelling and i think it can be harnessed to create tremendous works of art, and maybe even a new language.

partnership

i've been thinking a lot lately about diptychs and triptychs... pairs of images or a small collection of images that, though they might seem disparate, are not. and how the audience, the viewer, is very important is helping create narrative... that maybe i'm more of a guide or suggestive force than an artist who aspires to giving concrete answers. that i could set up an environment, a point A and point B, and then relinquish control; let the viewer "draw" the line between the two points:

too much! AHHHHHHHHHHHH!

deleuze and guattari make my brain turn to either soup or puke. bruno, i need you! help me understand d&g!

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.

The Struggle!

good morning, sunshine! where are you? tucked away behind these heavy clouds, lost behind the puddles. it's okay. stay in bed a little while longer if you must. take another sick-day. i am happy even without a bright, warm morning.

i know i've been repeating myself lately about how good it feels to be working with such ferocity again but it DOES! it really, really does! and i see myself circling back toward ideas i was working with 2 years ago before the big bad depression hit. i'm going back to old ground. higher ground. but all the better now for having struggled. 2 years. geez. i still can't see the entire depth of it but i can see the difference in a normal day NOW vs. a normal day this time last year. all the financial worries heaved on top and what a horrible, depleting fight i was in. but if not for that fight i might not have this current clarity and focus. i definitely don't want to repeat the experience any time soon (it slowed my practice to a trickle) but i'm thankful for the experience and insight it gave me. i'm thankful to have been polished by it in such a way that i become more passionately involved with my practice, that i see the power of images and know how strong, how forceful they are (or can be). the financial difficulties are still a factor but i've learned now to not look at them with such a dire, frenzied eye. the student loan will not break me apart.

as i plod through "of the refrain" (we covered another 6 pages last night before our brains leaked out our ears) and focus on my current drawings, i also have been taking the time to look back at the work i did when i was first dealing with these ideas: fractured identities, the fragments of a personality or history, the splintering, the redaction, the erasure of a person... the idea that LOSS is a major component in identity construction. that we are as much defined or formed by what we do not have, what we've lost, what we've never had, as what we possess. this is not entirely negative or morbid. not at all. i am currently wrestling with the sadder side of these ideas but i also see how these sad things can be translated (or composed/organized/viewed) in such a way as to make an individual more compassionate, more knowledgeable, more engaged with the world as a result of having had the experience of loss. finding a way to translate that experience, to find a means of expressing it in a thoughtful way that, not only, expands what art is or how it can be made or thought about or DO, but also establishes a site of hope, is important. at least it's important to me. and this thoughtfulness about The Image, about Art, about Expressiveness is not necessarily pretty or nice or even angry or shocking. there are so many routes to thoughtfulness and i think, for me, the route to take is a path that is inclusive of not only THEORY but of POETRY... of real-life concerns paired with philosophy and thoughts about justice and beauty. this is the struggle and the challenge i welcome.

my practice wants to be more than just an "i like to draw" mentality. i'm not bashing that mentality but, in a very direct way, that mentality is one that refutes and refuses to accept responsibility for the manufacture and presentation of images. it denies, in a somewhat snide way, that images have power. if images didn't have power there would be no controversy whatsoever over things like pornography or burning crosses or even stomping on a flag. no one would blink an eye if these Images didn't have power, if they didn't carry real-world concerns and connotations and possess the ability to destroy what we value as a culture and as human beings. Religion is, at its most basic level, an IMAGE of how life should be percieved and practiced. and just look at how powerful that image is, in particular. so...

this is why my practice aspires to be more, much much more, than the "i just like to draw" mentality. my practice beats me over the head and screams in my face "EITHER GET ENGAGED OR GO HOME!" i'm not saying every artist needs to think this way or proceed this way. not at all. i'm recognizing a desire and drive and need within myself to at least TRY to participate in that arena. there is a fearlessness in work that comes from that particular stance that i admire. all the artists and writers whose work has ripped out my heart, stitched it back together, and then reinserted it into my body, possess that fearlessness; that belief that Art, that Words, that the Image has relevance and power... and enough power to alter the way we view the world and practice our lives. i know that i have been changed AT MY CORE by the work of certain writers and artists. being exposed to their images and words gave me a new perspective and a new hope. it isn't all cerebral. some of it is emotional. some of it is psychological. some of it is in the body.

somewhere along the line inside my big bad depression, i became fearful of going this route. i was in such a weakened state that i did not trust myself, my instincts, my motives, or even my interests. i didn't trust them because i had somehow convinced myself that they might be wrong and bad and i was AFRAID of the repercussions.

i'm admitting to this because i think a lot of artists struggle this way. i think a lot of us deal with moments when our courage falters, if not altogether dries up and disappears.

i still somehow managed to make images i cared about during that time. i still managed to take some risks. but now, i'm ready to stand my ground again and say "THIS MATTERS" and take whatever consequences may result. in fact, i'm not even thinking of the consequences. i'm not thinking about where a painting may end up once it leaves my home. right now, all i'm thinking of is THE WORK. that is where my allegiance lies. that is where my practice needs to be.

the art i am most attracted to, the work that captivates me and spins me around and makes me dizzy, sometimes to the point of elation, sometimes to the point of nausea, is work that trusts itself- work that is fearless and doesn't shy away from how it might be received by The Outside. it is persistent. it doesn't back down after one angry word. it doesn't go away if a person might be dismissive of it. it stands its ground. it plants its flag. it stakes out a territory. it trusts that there is an audience, a community, or at least listeners, out there.

and so i'm sweeping up the fragments and the splinters and seeing what kind of assemblage results. what kind of lines can be drawn. and i choose to trust this process, this way of thinking and responding to the world. i'm choosing to trust my instincts and to not second-guess them. self-doubt is a nasty motherfucker that must be put to sleep... if not put to death. ;)

good morning

last night, while my sweetie played a video game with the sound turned all the way down, i read the first 6 pages of 'of the refrain' by deleuze and guattari aloud to him, to myself. and i went back and forth looking up words and we both laughed at how totally illiterate this writing made us both feel. our vocabularies have been increased by words that we will never ever use in a normal conversation. hahahaha! but the idea, the metaphor, of the refrain is burning inside my head now. a refrain... an art practice. the recurrent ideas and images. repetition. and i looked up "refrain" and saw that, in music, it has an archaic synonym: a "burden". all these words with double meanings... i love them. and the rain kept coming down. the rain keeps coming down. it is a wet world and i found a sound to fit the mood.

call

last night i started reading 'a thousand plateaus' by deleuze and guattari of all things. i've been thinking of the book for weeks, feeling there's information somewhere inside this monster that i can use. especially after accepting the schizophrenic nature of my practice as a whole. the multiple personalities of it. the splintering. the fragments. the shattering that occurs almost daily. and then after reading The Bell Ringer, i saw that the act of sweeping up all the fragments, all the splinters, in to a pile and calling it a human that that is what my art practice is and has always been about. a collection of evidences. the appearance of the images i make only seem disparate. how they are produced - oil, graphite, collage, embroidery - accounts for this difference but they all are hauled up from the same deep well. so i will haul them up and lay them out to dry and work work work and take a peak at all these things in a couple weeks or maybe a couple months and see what i've got staring back at me. i'll see the red thread later when all these images are spread across the living room floor. not a second sooner. for now- just the taking in of ideas and information. deleuze and guattari paired with aase berg and angela pnueman and angela carter and rebecca loudon and hans christian andersen and patti smith and banks violette and ed ruscha and kiki smith and anna gaskel and gerhard richter and alice in wonderland. take it in, take it in, take it in and then go draw. don't worry about it just yet. don't think too hard about it. just draw. the drawing will help me process all these things. it always has if i just let it. i have such a fire of ideas in me right now. such a tremendous and beautiful burn. beyond smoldering. way beyond. i don't need to know where i'm going, i just need to GO! and this morning i stayed in bed for an hour after i woke up just thinking about art and the articles i've read recently and all the poetry and i thought "maybe art is more about noticing things- the connections or discrepancies and anomalies and fissures, not saying something concrete". and that thought felt right and made me feel good. i got out of bed then and poured my coffee and went outside in to this cold sunday, this last day of february, and wrote wrote wrote on my frigid stoop outside the front door.

good morning. :)

life and theory and excuse and reason and, in the end, just say 'fuck it!'

being part of any lineage does not make you a copy-cat. it does not demand resignation either. is a child, though the product of her parents union and DNA, still not new? still not a package of potential? and as she grows, a unique collection of experiences and influences and fragments of beauty and torment and song and prayer? is this "collection" somehow false? i don't see how that could be possible. and being the next in a lineage of one's own choosing is a gorgeous thing. it feels right and that feeling needs to be clung too with everything you've got.

no theory will ever account for that original impulse you felt as a child to just simply play. to scoot around the paint and scribble on the wall and make yourself sick with too many cartwheels.

there is a value to theory. it gives us new lenses with which to view the world and i appreciate having them. but as i study, i come to see that asking for a reason, an explanation, an argument for why it's okay for me to spend my time making art is basically the same thing as asking me to supply an argument for why it's okay for me to attend to any of my needs.

do you mean it or not? art is not merely a picture on the wall. art is not merely letters on a page. it is an entire way of seeing. a mode of being. a way to LIVE. what works for me, what feels right to me isn't going to work for everyone and i'm getting to the point where i can finally except that. and so the proper breed of anger rises up- either except me for who i am or leave me alone. i promise to do the same for you.

i am an artist. it is who i am. i cannot stop being an artist any more than i can stop myself from taking this next breath. and this one. and this one. this is how it is and there is no explanation i owe. none. does a cat apologise for cleaning itself? does a dog apologize for kissing? why should i apologize for painting?

the fact some people feel the need to construct historical arguments for why it is OKAY to be an artist in this time and place and moment within history is not my burden. if it works for you, it works! if it leads you to deeper levels within your practice then it's good! i read the theory and i participate in the discussion but at the end of the day, for however thankful i am for my new lens, i wake up the next day and paint because it is how i live. asking me to stop is asking me to be someone else. if i stopped making art i would cease completely. i would become something other than what i am. this person who is here, now, would go away.

and adorno said "There is no poetry after Auschwitz"...

really? what about paul celan? what about charlotte delbo? fuck you adorno, you hater of humanity. you jaded freak. how dare you quantify horror. how dare you critique this witnessing. how dare you belittle the very true compassion that exists inside humanity to make sense of our station. do not trivialize it and claim that we are only capable of atrocity. i think adorno is a sad, scared, hateful child who looked for a reason to NOT engage with the world... to say that life is pointless and ugly and valueless. and honestly, that sort of pessimism is so easy to come by. it is a childish response to loss and confusion and it is common in the worst sense of the word.

i prefer charlotte delbo. i prefer her work, her poems and plays and her request, her poignant longing and despairing question "who will carry the word?" to survive the camps and then to be taken by cancer... goddamn my tears cannot come fast enough. i cry as i type because they, sometimes, are one in the same. and paul celan survived the camps and was so guilt ridden that he survived something that so many others did not. inexplicably survived. and this confusion, this weight, this tremendous guilt and suffering caused him to write and write and write and in the end when he could not come up with some satisfactory explanation for why it was okay that he survived, why it was okay that he made poetry, he threw himself in a river and left.

it is okay to make poems.

it is okay to survive.

sometimes, they are one in the same.

you can choose to go about your life in a way that feels right for you.

theory and knowledge and education are meant (in my opinion) to be used as tools to strengthen this resolve, this beautiful and flawless inborn logic. they are not meant to undo it. knowledge of the world should not be used to abandon compassion. opening your eyes to the pain of the world does not mean you must close your heart. it means the exact opposite.

theory gets me there sometimes. barthes and sontag... but also the philosphy of andy warhol and the journals of sylvia plath and the angry lyricism of patti smith and the deep regret of beethoven. alice's adventures underground and the beauty marc jacobs creates and even my dog snoring in her sleep. the smiles that come at the exact right time. the tears that well up, be it anger or despair, let them come! sensitivity is necessary to know where you are! at least it is for me. and i refuse to be jaded, to be pleasureless, to feel like i must make an argument for my needs, to become arrogant and divisive.

our differences are important but it is our common thread that will allow us to unravel the tangle set before us. it is the thing that will allow us to accept difference and to see it as the shining beauty it is.


(this might just be PART 1)