severed and encouraged

i don't know what i want to say.  something has shifted in me since going to europe.  i can't describe it.  i was so immediately calm once boarding the plane from london to berlin.  so indefinably calm, at ease in the most remarkable way.  natural.  i was never once afraid.  but now here i am, back in the U.S. and not knowing what exactly to do with myself...

i sign up for french classes and decide i need to know more about cheese and wine.  i'm sitting here with my second bottle of Gewurztraminer and a block of Parmesan Romano.  my roommates are helping.  we all feel spoiled.  we all feel special.  life is good.

but my heart aches.  it pulls toward those old bridges.  my broken german longs for a bit of completion.  that strange sadness finds me every couple days. travel sadness.  the need to be back in germany and walking across the Oberbaum Brucke, the need to race through berlin on the back of a blond's motorcycle, the need to sit quietly at a cafe and sip a latte while i scribble in my diary.  it all sounds so lofty and spoiled to american ears but maybe what i'm talking about is simply Living.  maybe what i'm describing are the simple pleasures that come from trusting a stranger simply because you receive an unnameable buzz while in their presence and decide to follow the white hot line of it.  maybe what i'm describing is the utter joy that floods one's being once deciding that Flatliners was right and today really is a good day to die...  so take a deep breath and embrace what you've got.  i'm trying to tell myself exactly that right now.  i'm attempting to play tourist every day and see california as a foreigner might.  it's a tall order but i'm having a great time trying to satisfy it.  still, loneliness finds me.  i just need to be in the wind.  i'm in that Searching phase of life.  i need no schedule and no expectations, just a map and a hunk of bread stuffed in my backpack.


...


while i was away, from time to time i worried about my yarnbombs. i worried whether they'd been taken down yet, snipped away by passersby who wanted a bay-area souvenir or an angsty teenager who felt akin to the sentiments.  i was relieved and ecstatic to find them all in place upon my return.  each and every banner from Aileen to 59th was still there.  AND!!! it seemed as if someone had even been tending to them- straightening them out as they slid down the stop sign poles and making sure the text was straight and discernible.  a week or so later, i noticed two had disappeared.  then, as i walked to the train station this weekend on my way to work i found two banners sliced off and cast to the ground:

 

the jaggedness of the cuts and the fact that these pieces were then thrown aside let me know that the person who cut them down didn't give a shit about this work and, in fact, was probably pissed off.  this is a wonder to me.  i've never actually ever seen a yarnbomb be so violently removed from public view.  but then again, i've not seen any pieces in the bay area that employ text.  maybe the message angered this person???  maybe they found it annoying and was tired of walking passed it on their way to the train???  whatever the reason, this person was obviously angry as evinced by the fact that not all the banners on telegraph have been cut down, only those on a particular block.  basically, i'm saying they weren't cut down by the authorities.  the authorities would have removed them ALL and wouldn't have cast them into the street.

i'm not at all hurt or offended.  if anything, i'm encouraged.  this type of response lets me know i'm on the right track and that i need to keep going.  i felt a sense of lost whenever a banner would disappear before i went on my trip.  so much so that i replaced the one at 58th and telegraph (whoever you are :)  ).  but something changed in me...  i feel more generous these days, more open to evolution and the pain of transformation.  i feel spurred on by your violence.  your anger gets me hot.  it leads to a deep sense of resolve.  i don't give a fuck.  laugh at me or ignore me.  whatever.  slice my work to pieces, just know i'm sitting at my kitchen table tonight eating Parmesan cheese and drinking a lovely bottle of Gewurztraminer:  my feelings are not hurt.  in fact, i like having these photographs of my fallen banners.  i like having them laying on the corner of my bed.  i plan to frame them.  they have a history now, a story i could never have provided that adds to their beauty and intelligence.  it's beyond description.  

i am thankful for the raggedness that my hands are incapable of dealing.  

.

part one- attempting to weave and unravel art history, religion, art theory, contemporary society, and A Clockwork Orange...

one thing i've been thinking about a lot lately in terms of art (in general) and my practice as i continue to wrestle with contemporary theory, is the assertion that original thought is impossible (The Death of the Author) which i don't (at this point) disagree with at all. in fact, i'm very comfortable (and comforted by) the lineage of artistic enterprise. there's a lot to learn and build upon and struggle with/against/for.

but the idea of "genius" is not one of them. at least not for me and what i'd like my work to accomplish.

the problem i have with this notion of the impossibility of original thought or "newness" in art or thinking, is that the idea itself claims to be new. and it isn't. "There is nothing new under the sun" is a biblical quote and contemporary art theory unveils the religious lineage of art by making this assertion. which is only strange due to the fact that most intellectuals (and that includes a great deal of theorists, artists, writers, psychologists, philosophers, etc) will tell you God is dead. more specifically, the judeo-christian God is dead and that morality is a governmental device intended to control human behavior and impulse. basically, it is brainwashing mechanism, government stamped and approved (as religion is, historically, government), to eliminate free-will.

power-structures of greed and dominion are at the root of this and also the common man's struggle for personal liberty. freedom, in this context, is what contemporary art signifies no matter what a person's subject happens to be. artists are no longer in the service of the church, painting murals for popes and members of the nobility. or are they? could contemporary theory be descibed as a Pope? has the pope's hat merely become invisible? and is currently being shuffled around, worn by different heads? would not a rose by any other name still smell as sweetly? (thanks, bard!) especially when that sweet smell emanates from wealth and the power wealth affords (the umbilical cord of gold: the avant-guard does not actually exist)? today, based on Guy Debord's work The Society of The Spectacle, the invisible Pope Hat would be dominant culture itself. the masses who have accepted Images as reality. status symbols. surrogates for the truth rather than the truth itself. if i look rich, people believe i am rich. if i am perceived as successful, i am successful. if i am titled "good", i am good.

which takes us in to A Clockwork Orange, a subject i'll be returning to a lot as i think it is a very important work that i, individually within my practice and thinking, need to wrestle with.

this idea of goodness... what it is and how to create it.

aversion therapy as a means of controlling behavior, of presenting a painful consequence for desire. any desire that is deemed problematic.

violence is definitely problematic as humans are social creatures that must find a way to work together in order to simply not extinguish ourselves. compromise is a necessity. but i find it very interesting that the violent actions of the narrator of the film is juxtaposed with signifiers of youth and innocence: drinking milk and rhyming speech. Alex DeLarge refers to his meal as eggie-wegs and steaky-wakes. a very sing-song slang that, at first glance, heightens the creep factor of the story for sure, but the more i think about it i begin to wonder... is Burgess and Kubrick saying that acts of violence are childish behaviors? a signifier of being spoiled rotten? because violence itself is a form of greed, a take-what-you-can-grab (as evidenced by rape and theft in the story) and but-i-want-it-and-i-deserve-it toddler-esque mentality. yes- i am saying violent people are over-grown, ill-behaved children. but the critique this film performs is to say that contemporary western society itself is pretty much a stunted adolescent, enamoured with sex and power. any method of displaying power or acquiring sex is a-okay: violence: the taking of something by brute force. and this is juxtaposed also in the film by the fact that Alex is shown as being more than capable of receiving sex from a willing participant. he picks up, not one but two, girls and has a threesome- the scene itself, sped up to a blur of hundreds of images too fast to keep up with, is actually quite funny and playful. this highlights common psychological knowledge about rape as actually not being motivated by a sexual impulse whatsoever, but is rather a desire for power. dominion. a person to person mirroring of The State. a microcosm. very much an act of imperialism when it comes right down to it. "might makes right" and all that. again, the take-what-you-can-grab philosophy hard at work.

in this way, Alex is an "every man". a poster child. common. the unavoidable end of living within a society that champions power and aggression. it's like Reagan-omics but with violence instead of money. shit rolls down hill. if your leaders are corrupt, and the masses are so dazzled by Images of status and wealth as to be blind to that fact, the masses in turn will seek for themselves the same level of power and corruption. if you are raised by a burglar, chances are you know how to pick a lock. you've seen it done too many times not to have the steps memorized. and that is called indoctrination. nurture. Alex's droogs even try to attain (take) the level of power he enjoys in the group. an uprising. and Alex puts the kibosh to that with fast violence. pretty much the same thing (again) that the state does to those who challenge its power.

more later. i must jog.

brewing...

just about 1 in the morning... a pot of coffee brewing and a whole bunch of ideas swirling in my head. i think it's safe to say my health has returned. enough at least to dive back in to my beloved night-owling. i missed my nights of smudging graphite and spilling ink and smearing oil. what's not to love about an art studio? room of one's own, indeed! and i am thankful every day to have it. just sitting in my own space surrounded by my own tools and my own books and my own stupid little nic-naks feels great and precious and miraculous even. and above all else, it is safe. a protected space where i am king. i can do what i want and there's no apologies necessary. it's been a big help the last couple days while i've struggled to get over this sickness and start doing some more hard-hitting, risky work. the drawing i posted last was fairly difficult even though i've had the idea to do it for quite some time. it's hard work to do... to literally tape a small child's mouth shut is no easy task even if it is "just" a drawing...

there have been plenty of images that i feel a bit damaged by, haunted by, sickened by... and i'm not just talking about art. there have been tons of advertisements that have offended me to such a deep degree that sometimes it's taken quite a bit of work (and time) on my part to shake it off and get back to my own life. images have power. and images can do violence. in the case of this last drawing, the role was reversed and i did violence to the image. i spent some time drawing a lovely, academic rendering and then pulled out a roll of duct tape and destroyed it. i shut it up. i made it a victim. not an easy thing to do to the image of a someone who died a horribly violent death. not easy at all and i still feel a bit fucked up by the experience. i wanted to highlight the loss of HER. she was silenced in such a hateful, violent, unspeakable way that i guess that's what i wanted to get at... somehow... the unspeakable loss of her... the quick violence done to something cherished and beautiful and admired... silenced... undone... without all the drama and media frenzy and judgemental spectacle, the sensationalism... just the loss of a child, a daughter... and what a horror it is.

Anonymous Girl 5

15" x 11"
graphite and duct tape on paper
angela simione
2009

it felt violent laying the duct tape down across her mouth. it felt horrible and monstrous and unforgivable... exactly like what was done to her.