Documenting a generation
LINK
I find it really interesting to discus our contemporary generation as we live it. I'm always trying to figure "us" out. I don't know how successful I am because it seems like generations are only formed in retrospect out of huge generalization (that we're not suppose to make after being raised in the PC 1990's). but I think it's cool that we are very aware of ourselves and are trying to understand our age group in relation to society at large. Now rather then later. But maybe there's a huge down fall... we seem to be extremely self continuous to a crippling - contrived - trying so hard - extent.
Summer Vacation
Rainy day
Today is a lovely rainy day in new york. Its smells like green, dewy summer-ness. I went to the book store with hot tea and walked home through the park. Very Seattle. Now I'm going to get cozy and watch a movie.
Cool kids making art
My friend recently sent me this article about Dash Snow, and it got me thinking about art scenes and the art they produce. Figures like Dash Snow are encased in such huge a mythic aura, they are celebrities. If you google image his name you get an assorted collection of mostly Polaroid images of him and his friends fucking around, getting fucked up, or actually fucking. A white guy blowing a line off a black penis, a sad looking threesome, some one shooting up, more naked sad looking strung out girls... this is not to say that he didn't produce anything of value. The article lists a couple working ideas like : skull cum shots (he literal cums on skulls) and puts glitter on them to in his words "make them pretty". Or his hamster nests where he and his friends would take a bunch of drugs and destroy a hotel room, shredding phone books to make a hamster nest (I like the hamster nest idea better then the skull cum shoots...)
But anything he did create only further feed a legendary image of himself. He lived a crazy life of his own choosing. I can't help but be pulled in the the romantic, self destructive, liberating, rebellious nature of it all. there is something so appealing about people who live out our fantasies for us. Instead of living a normal, well adjusted life that follows the pattern we have all grown so accustom to, some people, like Dash Snow, live an alternate reality full of drugs & partying that runs up against a mortality that normal people run away from. As I was looking up stuff about him on the web, I found a lot of sites commenting on his "shocking" death - while his death is tragic, especially because he leaves behind a daughter, I wouldn't say its all that shocking or even surprising. he and WE understood the risks he was taking and we watched. Art scenes sell vicarious living. What the scene creates is a myth, an aura, which can be sold as the art it self. Its the ultimate form of representation. The representation of a life style. As the watching audience, we can live out our self destructive fantasies that we are too scared to realize, all from the safety of our normal, well adjusted lives.
Painting Porfolio
ok so I got a B+ in painting. The teacher really didn't like me that much. she had just graduated and was kinda insecure about teaching. I was quiet and kinda reserved in the class, because I'm not a big painter and I had no experience with oil paint. and she took that as me being aloof/too cool for school basically. which I really didn't think I was! I was nervous and awkward. But any way, the lady gave me a B, which is a fine grade, but it hurts a little as a visual arts major. woop woop. but regardless, here are some of my paintings:
The last one is an super embarrassing self portrait that is referring to the old self portrait I did in high school.
Final Project
This a rough edit of my final project for my seminar. Thanks Maddie for helping me document.
Sorry its so small and poor quality. I printed "make of it what you want" on the 150 notebooks. and handed them (with mini pencils) out in front of MoMa.
Finally saw the biennial...
Finally got around to going over to the Whitney to see the biennial. overall, quite enjoyable. I went during a performance by Lars Jan and it was a free Friday so the place was packed. But I escaped the frenzied lobby and was greeted by James Casebere's sublime suburban landscapes. He photographed scale models of Duchess County, NY depicting them as almost uninhabitable, utopic, surreal American landscapes. I was transported right away.
A lot of video pieces. I wasn't a huge fan of them all. but I did like Kate Gilmore's Standing Here, a performance video that shows her enclosed in a tiny closet like space and her subsequent violent attempts to escape. the film was taken from above, looking down at her, but was projected on to the wall in a room with the remains of her constructed closet, creating a wonderful sense of disoretation.
Also liked : Couch for a long time by Jessica Jackson Hutchins
-Newspaper clippings of Obama covering the TV receptical. Lumps of clay ready to be molded.
Also Aurel Schmidt's garbage Minotaur is amazing. check it out: http://www.whitney.org/Exhibitions/2010Biennial/AurelSchmidt
Wait I have to take it back, my FAVORITE PIECE was definitely Michael Asher's work to keep the Whitney "open to the public" (wait, dose that mean FREE?!?!) for 24 hrs for a whole week (they shortened it to 3 days, May 26th to May 28th.) I am so going at like 3 am!
Tom Petty - Zombie Zoo
After I heard this song once, it was stuck in my head for 2 weeks. still a great song through.
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