Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Postmodern Art Ed pt. 2!!
i haven't fully scoped this, but it is the handbook for k-12 professional development planners.
Postmodern approaches in Art Education?!!
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1320508
This is such a good jumping point at making my hypothesis valid for experiment. However, I have yet to overcome the obstacles that arise with elementary education with putting more on their plate than can be ingested, and the article admits the extra time, work, and cooperation that Postmodern Art Education demands. How does one avoid pitfalls with time restraints? it still seems clear that students can grab onto modernist understandings of art, but it often slips away with puberty.
for reference, the following information is a comprehensive description of Discipline-Based Arts Education - a notion which is referred to often in the article.
The Discipline Based Art Education approach to curriculum combines experiences
from four disciplines in the study of art:
Art Production Art Criticism Art History Aesthetics
Discipline Based Art Education merges the disciplines instead of teaching concepts
from each discipline separately. There would not be a "Unit in Art History" or a "Unit
in Aesthetics".
Art Production is the making of art, and the various components of making art,
such as use of tools, manipulation of media, form and expression.
Art Criticism is the examination and discussion of style, formal principals of design
and elements of art (in terms of color, line, perspective, texture, and shading).
Art History is not just "who made what when," but is the history of objects and the
history of people through art. Works of art provide a unique documentation of
cultural changes throughout history. Studying historical works not only gives us
insights into the past, but can also provide valuable insights and information about
the present.
Aesthetics is the philosophy of art. Philosophical questions about art seem to be
unanswerable. What is art? What is good art? What is beauty? It is important in the
study of art that students engage their brains, think about what they are doing,
learning, and feeling about their art and the art of others. In studying art through
aesthetic questioning, the answer is not important. The act of working through the
puzzle provided by the question is extremely important.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Oh, Charlotte.
This is her deal.
This character convinces me that if I were to live in any other time period that I would be a tragedy because how she loves is how I think that I love.
Charlotte, in 1930's Chicago, can only die to put to rest her destroyed love. Manifested in her unwanted pregnancy.
(And then, at the end of Modernism, late 1960's New York, Valarie Solanas shot Andy Warhol. So that is my other proof.)
I don't know. I still feel like I could slip past my time.
I highly recommend a reading of Wild Palms. Often, it is included a half of a novel called If I Forget Thee, Jerusalum. The entire book has another great story called "The Old Man". In total, the page length is around 3 hundred the Wild Palms is just shy of 130, max.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
I am going to try to put these things together
http://www.videoart.net/home/Artists/VideoPage.cfm?Artist_ID=1431&ArtWork_ID=1786&Player_ID=2
http://www.videoart.net/home/Artists/VideoPage.cfm?Artist_ID=1431&ArtWork_ID=1791&Player_ID=2
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Sunday, June 7, 2009
a tool is a suggestion, don't toss it aside.
if you are given a tool, you have the option to use it.
as long as you have it,
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Let it OUT
this is for my TIME IN ART class. Wait up for my other projects when I get my hands back on them.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
On Rainbows and Space: 5
We must be conscious of our performances in order to uphold our own lifestyle.
In order to function: Use what you got.
Know where you are.
Know what you can do.
Know why you are doing it.
Unconscious performance can be manipulated by titles, labels, abstract forces. Unconscious performance is how the Man Threat keeps you within his construction. It is how he keeps you from being a human.
“She was just a blank shape, the empty vessel in which each of them strove to preserve, not the illusion of himself nor his illusion of the other but what each conceived the other to believe himself to be”
-William Faulkner; Absolom, Absolom! (119-120)
If we unconsciously perform, we are muted and thus, mutated. ‘The other’
(the female; the grotesque; the representative; the indigenous; the frontier; etc.)
performs unconsciously (the parenthetical, instead) and is, thus, wiped blank:
(the female; the grotesque; the representative; the indigenous; the frontier; etc.)
And can be stretched and replaced with abstractions and constructions unlike what true being is.
(bitch; monster; scary; disgusting; dark; ill-repute; freakish; to be destroyed; etc.)
On Rainbows and Space: 4
Make people uncomfortable:
Make the Man-Villagers aware. They may have never thought before that they have been acting on a structure and without secure basis.
However:
Do not threaten a bigger structure from one that you are already standing on.
If people can see that a Man Village was settled on terrain much higher than the frontier, the jump may be too great for them to fall at once. The self-conscious gets too cold too suddenly without a comfort blanket. They must be allowed to adapt. Let it seem like it was their idea the whole time. They may be inspired. Thus, it is your duty as an agent of action to inspire and facilitate inspiration. Every one person has influence to a body that you, alone, cannot not access on your own.
So never believe that you don’t need anyone.
Our goal is to use, shape and change, the concept of monster within the Man-Village. Act as the monster and with the monster, but in a way that no one could ever consider it monstrous.
But know that we don’t want for anyone to sense that they are being projected as monsters, either.
Remember: We need every light to reflect in order to make a rainbow.
For the law lovers, know the law.
For the moralists, demonstrate the morality.
For the winners, reason why they can’t lose.
On Rainbows and Space: 3
No one can tell to wear shoes!
No one can tell you to do anything, really.
Everyone is an agent of action, of change. You are free to be, think, enact as you want, as you truly are, and no one should stop you. At the end of the day you are the only person to hinder your performance, your agency to perform. If you do not want to wear shoes, do not wear shoes! No one can tell you to wear shoes.
However! Know that, yes, there are exceptions: first and foremost, consider if your health or someone else’s can be put into jeopardy by your action. Be conscious of your the decision to wear or not wear your shoes. Consider the decision, as you would a restraint-strap in a car. Even if the risk is low, you still know that there is a chance of being thrown around by some uncontrollable force. To jeopardize your well being, or another’s, for a cause is ultimately useless and will most likely ruin your cause. Therefore, your actions and your requests of others should not, and furthermore, cannot pose a logical threat.
Act clearly and honestly. Root every intention in value and truth and demonstrate this to every other live creature. Being bare footed will not stop you from participating in activities or engaging in your work, your contribution to good. You have a right. Everyone else has the same right. If your argument can help their argument, you have just realized a common desire between conscious beings; you built a new bridge (a new construction and a new transgression).
Root yourself in logic.
Do not make enemies.
Your adversaries must be the ones who introduce their malefice to you.
If you introduce someone to reasons for our lifestyle, be prepared that they can and may counter your argument. If you reject their lifestyle, they will resent yours and you have still gained nothing.
If you take away the reasons they have for their way of being, then they cannot refute yours.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
On Rainbows and Space: 2.
[Freak: 1a. A sudden or seemingly pointless idea or turn of mind…
5. one that is highly successful.
Through these definitions, I see polarities within social discourse from which the other end will determine their monster.
Abstract <---------------------> Representative
Consider the space in between a theoretical bridge, as I described media to be. The context of monstrosity is created when, being of one end of the spectrum, you cannot cross this bridge – either because you cannot cross or the other side will not allow you. Social reality is built on these parameters, and when this is forced, we witness another polar spectrum shifted between:
Construct <----------------->Transgress.
Know where you are.
Man Threat pins transgressors and the grotesque against his complicated construct. Because you are excluded from the construct, he can make you believe you are not human and that he is. He makes you believe that other people aren’t, either. He created a hierarchy (or low-archy) of sub-people. The Man threat demands dependency, he demands his power over you, he demands your inhumanity.
2b.The Man Village: An Arena for Monstrosity to Veil Itself.
The Man Village is the constructed social microcosm with which one interacts and lives among. The Man Threat built the village and said no where else is safer. In the Man Village, Man Threat makes laws and enables them through utilizing our terror and projecting from the gaps made in communication/technology/media. He fills the gaps by wrapping context around the form – breaking, suffocating, killing – like a boa constrictor.
Walled in (and wrapped within), hierarchy (or low-archy) can be understood. Here, customs and culture are familiar. It is here where you must first carve your hole of space within. [myth making. Adapting culture of man village to your agenda.] Here, you will first discover who will listen and how you can make those who don’t. Refuse to do anything that is not exactly what you want. Expect no less. If you consider what someone tells you to do, it’s because you want what they want. You should only expect the same returned. Always engage in the interactivity of communication/technology/media. This agent enables automation through cooperation.
2c. The Frontier: An Arena for Transgression and the Grotesque
“The serene confidence in their amorous destinies like that of birds in their wings—that tranquil, ruthless belief in immediate deserved personal happiness which fledges them instantaneous and full-winged from the haven of respectability, into untried and unsupportive space where no shore was visible… and this without terror or alarm and hence inferring neither courage nor hardihood: just an utter and complete faith in airy and fragile and untried wings…”
-William Faulkner; The Wild Palms (54)
Video Perfomance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xEdPZFAkBI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQIZlLPYhhI&feature=related
(HOW do i post youtube videos as videos?)
Ben, bring an auxilary chord with you on friday with maybe another mix tape? i'm going to switch my room up something wild. i still don't know what i will be saying or doing.
it has to be between 30 seconds and two minutes and that's not a lot of time to fuck shit up but if i'm careful it should be plenty.
On Rainbows and Space: 1.
In the 21st Century, America is no longer a melting pot, if we ever were. The flavors which we lend cannot all blend together. Our time has been pronounced as a participatory culture, a convergent culture; we are the information age, prophesized to soon enter the conceptual age. Each title conveys a sense of individualism and personal agency. We interact with other agents, but we always still maintain our terministic screens through which we filter content back out into application. This being said, we must remember that after some time, solutions always separate. Compounds with the least density rise to surface. The densest, the thickest, the most viscous, sink to the bottom.
If I am conscientious to conditioning, then when I allow myself to submit or follow another, it is only because I can trust that they will not remove my agency, but assist me in expanding. That willingness to fall back or pick up is intimacy at its deepest. My vision is to recognize that every one of us is one stripe of color. Some of us are analogous, complementary, of duller chroma or a purer hue; some are of shared light, some amalogous – but any combination can be useful and worth consideration for the right composition. And when we unify, it can be the most remarkable thing ever.
On Rainbows and Space: A Manifiesta to Inclusively Explain a Particular lifestyle
i have been shut out of where i signed on to live, assuming it to be the perfect environment (the arts and social change house -- i should have run that shit and i just wanted to run it to the ground for its exclusivity) and totally unable to even have a decent night sleep without fearing the disturbance of others, myself, or my work.
so while hayley mason was shouting from the rooftops she climbed on about rainbows i was shouting about space and together we began to piece together what we believed was the separation between our way of living from what we called "the man village" (from the jungle book. 'i don't want to go back to the man village! i want to be here in the jungle!)
eventually everyone has to encounter or live within the man village, but that doesn't mean you can't fuck some shit up in it.
i'm going to begin to post this in sections. there are six, including the preface.
Preface: Finding the Space to be Angry
In the Summer of 2008, I watched a film about Valarie Solonas, “I Shot Andy Warhol”. She was a homeless prostitute, a lesbian, a victim of child molestation, and most notably the writer of the S.C.U.M. manifesto (the Society for Cutting Up Men). This woman was driven by anger against men and privilege. She had a chance encounter with Andy Warhol, and thought that since he ran the apex of intellectual counter-culture-- the Factory -- that through him, her work, her art, and her design would be heeded and acted upon.
However the particular elitism of the Factory drowned her out, ripped her art from her, and used her for their own design – chewed her up, spat her out, left her humiliated and with nothing. Sitting in a living room with my male lover, some close friends, and a bottle of whiskey to share among us, I watched and sympathized with Valarie. Throughout her whole life, she was left dangling on a fringe of society. No one gave her any room to stretch, breathe, wiggle into security. So she tried to make her own room.
“Yeah, he was controlling my life, I had to do it,”
Her character told the police man immediately after the shooting, placing the bagged gun in into his arms. So I got angry for her. I got drunk for her. I started to yell at the screen:
“I would have shot Andy too!”
I started telling my friends:
“He was controlling her life. She just needed for someone to hear her,”
I told my lover:
“I hate men. I don’t hate you because you’re a man – but I hate men!”
I passed out for the rest of the night. The movie finished at 4pm.
I couldn’t take it. She was totally crazy. She was absolutely bat shit, but then again, I would have been just as crazy if I was allowed no space, no voice, no protection.
"It's not when you realise that nothing can help you- religion, pride, anything- It's when you realise that you don't need any aid"
-William Faulkner; The Sound and the Fury (80)
Those who are deemed crazy are ‘driven’ so by, as the rhetoric implies, an active, signified connotation. There is no fault of the individual for his agency performed in response to this drive. Even still, ‘crazy’ is what they call you when you pose a threat to comfortable standards. Why are we not threatened by the ‘dysfunctional’? We are made aware by the definition that to be dysfunctional signifies that one is literally unable to function in a society. If we are ‘driven crazy’— given that under this label, one is allowed a particular space to use that is no one else’s— why not push at the walls you have been blocked into? Working in that space— pushing in that space— is still function; it is still your capacity. Why not claim what you have been allowed if you are allowed nothing else? How else will the world hear what you say, respect what you do, or be ‘driven’ to function with you?
It is with this goal that I write my Manifiesta. I gave this name to my progeny because this medium (from my consciousness to your consciousness), as Marshall McLuhan would put it, is an extension of me. My images and words have every right to be interpreted by any definition or representation that you may associate them with, respectively. What can be considered by communication, if not the bridge that was built between two conscious beings? You may not ever reach what lies beyond the bridge, but how can you expect to comprehend or experience a different environment any other way?
What is deemed monstrous is often based on context, without the consideration for the form – the medium, the bridge. We make the progeny (the context we assign) hideous. My Manifiesta explores my own conception and responses to the rhetoric of monstrosity, agency, and being. Therefore, I will be working with my own personal definitions. That being said, my work should be taken as a literary device. I say this because Valerie Solanas didn't retract from the S.C.U.M. Manifesto, and claim that her work was a literary device until after she was doing time for shooting Andy Warhol, and in case I ever get that angry I don't want for it to hurt my work. This device is for me to extend myself celebrate of my methods for living. This is my wildness, my craziness, my flirtation, my challenge, and my good time with the world.
I want for reading this to feel memorable.
I want for people to look back and think “that was so intense. I almost threw up, man”
Welcome to my party of (and for) a cause; I hope we get to dance.