Tying off threads

Tying off threads

We are engaging in a week-​​long media diet. Or “media fast” is maybe more accurate. An information diet. It is exactly as hard as I imagined not to fill every dead minute with goalless web surfing.

+++

The rise of “image sharing” (is this what they are called?) and group-​​surf blogs in the past three years seems to have exponentially increased the already sickening pace of image proliferation. Things Magazine references this quite often. Images have never been so disposable, so fleeting, and so easily forgotten.… Read more »

FiledOn Art, Writing
Keywords, , , ,
Date06.9.09
Resistances

Resistances

“To say that you are resisting something means that you have to spend a lot of time and energy saying what that something is, in order for your resistance to make sense. Too much energy flows in the wrong direction, and you usually end up strengthening the thing you want to resist.” “It seems to me that if architects really want to resist, then neither the idea nor the rhetoric of resistance has a place in it. These architects must take the initiative, beginning from a point of

… Read more »

FiledBlog, On Art, Work-in-progress, Writing
Keywords, ,
Date05.28.09
artisdumb

Art Is Dumb. Do Something Else.

A new feature: I answer your letters.

I’ve been interested for a long time in the “art of everyday life,” situationism, relational aesthetics, etc.: the various movements that attempt to bridge–usually for quasi-​​political reasons–some of the cultural space between “art” and “normal, everyday life” (i.e., as lived by poor people). And I remember in a class in graduate school writing about how maybe making “art” as quotidian and banal as the materials of everyday life (a common approach) isn’t as interesting an aim as attempting to… Read more »

FiledOn Art, Thing-a-day, Writing
Keywords, , ,
Date03.7.09
Nature As A Text: Complexity theory and the Modernist eye in Maggie Leininger's "Text/ile"

Nature As A Text: Complexity theory and the Modernist eye in Maggie Leininger's "Text/ile"

This quarter’s The Present Group project includes a piece I wrote about the current work of Maggie Leininger, a textile artist in Illinois.

“A white plastic box inscribed with a colorful legend, anonymously medical or scientific in origin, opens to reveal a woven textile, folded upon itself, black and white threads that merge into a shifting pattern of gray rectangles. Unrolled and displayed vertically, the swatch immediately brings to mind the reductive shapes and optical experimentation of Modernist abstraction…” Read Nature As A Text…
FiledOn Art, Writing
Keywords,
Date09.9.08
Lexicon: Dude Art

Lexicon: Dude Art

Dude Art has become so mainstream since I first started carelessly throwing around the term that the definition is almost too fuzzy to be useful anymore. Originally intended to refer to the type of art that one finds on skateboard decks–but not the type of skateboard decks that you use, the type that you hang on your wall (“you” here referring to everyone but “me”), dude art exists at the highly profitable intersection of graffiti, skate culture, independent comics (post–Fort Thunder), “design” (advertising), collage and video… Read more »

FiledBlog, On Art, Writing
Keywords, ,
Date07.10.08
Lexicon: Art Trolls

Lexicon: Art Trolls

Though actually predating its namesake by a generation or more, the Art Troll gets its current name from the Internet Troll, a special class of Internet users who post “controversial and usually irrelevant or off-​​topic messages…with the intention of baiting other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-​​topic discussion.”#

Certainly art has been shocking and occasionally scandalous for most of its history, but I say the Internet Troll only predates its namesake by about a generation because the Art Troll requires… Read more »

FiledBlog, On Art, Writing
Keywords, ,
Date07.9.08
Figure A.

Lexicon: Problematic Afternoon

The Problematic Afternoon is the sort of mental minefield peculiar to artists, writers, freelancers, grad students and other “self-​​employed” types. The Problematic Afternoon represents the time of day where morning’s promise has finally and completely worn off, all talent seems squandered, and it has somehow become impossible to produce any kind of quality work. This is where frustrated plans turn into a larger existential anxiety over your choice of career and life in general.

FiledBlog, Writing
Keywords, , , ,
Date07.7.08
This is where I talk about my feelings

This is where I talk about my feelings

One of the ideas behind redesigning my website was to give myself a space to talk about art in general, as well as process–my process of “making” “work,” especially as it relates to the current fad of personal productivity, lifehacking, &c.

(It’s hard, though, to transition into that level of discussion with you, my imaginary audience, after years of quietly hanging out in the background. Which is why I’m here now, introducing you to the meta-​​me that talks about this place where I talk… Read more »

FiledBlog, Thing-a-day, Writing
Keywords,
Date04.11.08