obsolescent forecasts

nous déménagons

2009-12-16T09:53:00.001+01:00

please visit the new blog site at : www.jinavalentine.com/blog/

though currently under construction, it's going up in early 21st Ce. Mc Mansion Style (tres vite!)

...in praise of folly

2009-12-13T16:44:00.001+01:00

Goya, "The Madhouse"

From Foucault's "Madness &; Civilization," follow a few quotes in praise of la folie. Thereafter, I'll return to this text with more images, and comparison with the previously noted Thévoz texts.

In reference to de Sade, "The madness of desire...the most unreasonable of passions--all are wisdom and reason, since they are a part of the order of nature....There is nothing that the madness of men invents which is not either nature made manifest or nature restored."

In the "classical experience" of art and madness, "there existed a region where madness challenged the work of art, reduced it ironically, made its iconographic landscape a pathological world of hallucinations; that language which was delirium was not a work of art. And conversely, delirium was robbed of its meager truth of madness if it was called a work of art."

And on Nietzsche & Artaudian madness..."(it) is the absolute break with the work of art; it forms the constitutive moment of abolition, which dissolves in time the truth of the work of art; it draws the exterior edge, the line of dissolution, the contour against the void (into which they slipped)...Madness is no longer the space of indecision through which it was possible to glimpse the original truth of the work of art, but the decision beyond which this truth ceases irrevocably, and hangs forever over history."

Though madness is not the only language "common to the work of art and the modern world...but (rather) through madness, a work that seems to drown in the world, to reveal there its non-sense, and to transfigure itself with the features of pathology alone, (it) actually engages within itself the world's time, masters it, and leads it; by the madness which interrupts it, a work of art opens a void, a moment of silence, a question without an answer, provokes a breach without reconciliation where the world is forced to question itself."

**It's perhaps important to reiterate here this blog's agenda, as well as my own here at the computer. I'm busy reading everything written on the subject of Art Brut, particularly the works and writings of Jean Dubuffet in his search for art in the mental institutions in Europe. Before Madness and Civilization, I'd written about Michel Thévoz' writings on Art Brut and art chez les fous (Thévoz was the first director of the Art Brut Museum in Lausanne, and a dear friend of Dubuffet), and is an incredibly insightful critic and art historian.
In the months to come, I'll be updating this site with photos from my visits to archives here in Paris--including the Sainte Anne Hospital, the abcd-artbrut Gallery, and the Biblitheque Nationale Française.... among others. At the moment, the blog is a synthesis of what-all I'm reading, what I'm making here in the studio, as well as my two cents on art-openings and exhibitions I've attended. And as I mentioned above, I'm aiming to condense these text-fragments into something a bit more directed and pithy... thanks for reading~~

this place you see has no size at all

2009-12-05T20:08:00.002+01:00

an excellently attended opening at the Kadist Foundation on Friday December 4th was introduced in pamphlet form thusly :

Sir/Madam,

Everything I am about to tell you began with a sighting of a heron in a tree. There I was in the Jardin Trocadéro at the Parc de Saint-Cloud on a late summer afternoon, burying the bones of Tom Ripley, in what the history books told me was once a labyrinth. When I looked around, I noticed that the place had no size at all. In one instance, the landscape was unusually curvy and in another, intricate alleyways and corridors appeared miraculously as I turned corners. Though I could see no one, a flurry of recombinant voices echoed from the hedges and the dialogues of fourteen characters began to take on the qualities of those around them, in a seemingly ritualistic order.

"This place you see has no size at all..." is an exhibition rooted in the possibility of virtual and parallel worlds as a viable platform for the production and consumption of art. Originally proposed as an out-of the box adaptation to an "alternate reality game", on July 22, 2009, artists were convened from around the globe to partake in a "scenario" at the Parc de Saint-Cloud in Paris, of which they had little knowledge of, yet were immediate to its origin of initiation. In collaboration with sci-fi writer Mark von Schlegell, an abstract time-travel guide was scripted, combining clues, facts, and prompts around the peculiarities of the garden together with the singular questions: What could you perceive as the present? What would this present be? What are the elements of the present? Who are the members of the present? What methods and tools could be used to arrive here? The guide spawned a chain of events suggested by and created for each of the artists with the purpose of activating a work and a communication process.

Puzzles, motion, fictitious force, heuristics, chambres, a perte de vue, lost item, incoherency, the dead end. In one of the alleyways I found a man resting on a bed-sheet. He was surveying the universe with a planisphere. He told me he got there via an air balloon in order to produce a shroud, that this shroud was an embodiment of all of us. A fiction of the strangest kind that can't be materialized in any known form of art including classical conceptualism. He held an invisibility cloak that somehow protected him from the world of visible matter. It was sure to give him good fortune.

A hypothetical collective structure, a private happening, and now exhibition, "This place you see has no size at all..." is purportedly non site-specific; on the contrary it grapples with the objectives of context. At Kadist, newly commissioned works are paired together with existing works, prompting an array of interactions, relationships, and readings in the exhibition setting.      Dear reader, what I am telling you is real. I believe in real things. If we did not have real experiences, how would we have dreams?

i'm well aware it's not the best form... perhaps even "bad form" to fully quote the curatorial statement, but in some cases the statement is far and away better than the work it's attempting to describe. it's really a piece unto itself, the show is illustration at best. at worst, it's attempting to keep up with the textual prompt (as was the case here). although, i do recommend visiting the Kadist Foundation website. and the work of Asli Çavusglu is represented in part on his blog. though i don't recommend attempting to read through the entire faux-thesis presented there, you'll get the gist, and perhaps a laugh (or cringe) from just a brief visit.

at dinner, just before the opening, par hasard, the kind folks at the next table over were also starving, anxiously awaiting the 19:00 H when the kitchen opened. we got to talking, and it turned out they were visiting from the Pays-bas for an artist-book-fair since canceled due to strikes at the various Parisian Museums; last weekend, the Pompidou suffered employee-strikes. Johan and his assistant were wonderful folks and invited us to visit their website; i invite you to do the same.

open studio I : bajtala, ferrier, micheli, valentine

2009-12-04T17:00:00.091+01:00

at the very least, once a week there's an open studio here at the Cité International des Arts. though lately, perhaps it's because of the weather or because the fall season is just winding down, there've been several every week. this week I was had the good fortune to exhibit new work with a few friends here. the image above is a photo of the main-building, pre-reconstruction (read: demolition) taken by Sissa.

beginning at six pm, folks meandered into Aurèle's studio, where i was still writing on the floor. the "performance," the first hour of the open studio, was intended to be a critique of sorts of the gallery-opening model: we go to openings ostensibly to look at newly completed or newly acquired art. though more often than not, we spend the majority of our time there milling around, watching the other folks who've also come to look at the art, drinking free wine, and eating cheeses. this said, in the first hour, the attendees stepped over and around me as they attempted to mingle with each other atop the artwork on the floor. some squatted and attempted to read what was penned (in erasable window marker) on the floor, semi-conscious of the fact that their moving atop it also aided its erasure. mulled wine was served by the gallon, as well as a variety of beers and snacks, some of which ended up mixing with the ink--quite nicely, i should add.

from seven pm till ten, or just about then, Sissa, Aurèle, and Miriam screened movies to what i'm proud (of them) to say was a packed house. for thereabouts of ninety minutes, the studio was completely full of folks sitting on stools, the floor, pillows, the text, and leaning against whatever surface, craning to catch every second of video projected. all the while, still others milled around down the hall, enjoying more snacks, and another open studio of video works and short animations by KID.

i highly recommend checking out the following links for a sample of what was screened:

Miriam Bajtala

Aurèle Ferrier

Sissa Micheli

KID (update coming soon, with apologies!!)

after the screening, everyone was invited to stay on for a final, thorough, obliteration of the text (ie: a dance party). following are images of the text piece, before and after.

(the texted space is approximately 25' x 15' irreg.)

les marie antoinettes

2009-12-01T14:39:00.037+01:00

all photographs by Sissa Michelli
(note : this is not "performance art," rather 5 Marie Antoinette Wigs on 5 persons)

lydia lunch et des choses dangereux...

2009-11-25T18:30:00.003+01:00

Lydia Lunch played last night at a place by Clingancourt called Mains d'Oeuvres.
ah...what's to be said of Lydia Lunch beyond what the lady herself has said?
so for your reading and viewing pleasure, here's a few pictures, and a few fantastic quotes:

"you (the audience) are my alibi tonight ."

(in response to the guy in the audience who asked why she was drinking so much whiskey on stage) "it's cognac motherf*cker)

"i hate a f*cking musician who can't hold his drugs. if any of you out there can't hold your drugs, please deposit them here on the f*cking stage--i'll hold them for you."

note i scrawled down during the show:
"from whiskey infused Southern Baptist prosthelytizer to torch singer circa 1920 to Lynard Skynnard sans penis mais con cojones...still waiting for the gospel."

yeah she's still got it. but what's the decision you make to adhere to the person/a you embodied 20+ years ago? do you make this decision then, or as time goes by, there's no not sticking to it?

synthesizing notes: honor to savage values

2009-11-23T17:32:00.002+01:00

from Dubuffet's text Honneur aux Valeurs Sauvages:

in reference to the artistic creation, in general, Dubuffet states:
"il faut qu'il soit une projection immédiate de ces humeurs de l'artiste..."
if we assume that there is little advance consideration of developing a well-rounded and cohesive oeuvre--by the ArtBrutists--during the actual creation of the works, the artist then is free to change. and we must assume that the artists' temperment must necessarily change from day to day...so if there is no professional motivation underlying, one is truly free to be one's expressive-self-in-constant-flux.

"l'art consiste essentiellement dans cette exteriorisation des movements d'humeur les plus intimes, les plues profondément intérieurs de l'artiste."
Dubuffet continues this thought stating that this exteriorization of the deepest essential self will be recongnized by those seeing the art and the we will recognize that psychically we are the same (as the mad, or the psychically free, rather); we possess the same essence, compulsions, and inner-workings.

"we look for an artist who explodes away the surface layers, revealing all those glimmering beneath."

and sometimes we as artists do not realize we've been knocked-up by someone else' ideas, aesthetics. the bastard art we call our own, not realizing it's been tainted by some outside forces to which we'd not seen we were susceptible.

an artist--argues Dubuffet, in regards to those interned in mental hospitals--needs solitude, perhaps a bit of boredom, to find in himself the drive and the will to create. in the absence of other excitations, he will fabricate his own "théâtre de fêtes et d'echantements."

"tous les méchanismes qui fonctionnent chez le fou existent aussi chez le sain, et ils sont l'un et l'autre bien plus semblables qu'ils ne le croient--ou du moins que ne le croit celui-ce qui prétend être sain"
my translation follows:
all the mechanisms that function in the crazy also exist in the sane, and the are both more similar than they believe--or at least less so than those who pretend to be sane are willing to believe.

on the artist Aloïse, whom will undoubtedly be revisited in detail, in future entries...

the figures with blued-out eyes in Aloïse' drawings are often mis-construed to be representative of masked persons. rather, they are blind to the reality into which their portraits gaze, for the simple fact that they don't exist in it. in addition to bluing out the eyes, the figures are further removed from reality by Aloïse' negation of a continuous narrative consistent between the thousands of images. though, some narrative may be perceived from one page to the next, the absence of any continuous logic frees her oeuvre from such banal requirements. and further, it insists on a certain timelessness, impermanence, and irrationality as its rules, rather than its exceptions.

Dubuffet, unconvinced of Aloïse' acting mad--though her sever autism is documented in other writings-- says that one mustn't lose sight of the fact that one who's given themselves over entirely to madness has, at least in some small part, done so voluntarily.

Foucault, who we'll revisit in a few days, says in Madness and Civilization "madness is the déja-là of death... what death unmasks was never more than a mask...from the vain mask to the corpse, the same smile persists. but when the madman laughs, he already laughs with the laugh of death."

les huîtres

2009-11-23T14:44:00.000+01:00

sunday night we ate a lot of oysters... specifically "Les Papillons #4" et quelques autres, aussie #4--les plus petites, but more delicious. also, we made a ton of couscous with fresh vegetables, mint, and enough garlic to fend off the entire vampire population of France. additionally, there was some strange green I found at the market--not Kale, not Collard Greens, and certainly not bok choi--but some relative of all three perhaps. with even more garlic, onions, lemon, and a pinch of salt, i'll immodestly confess that it was by far the best pot of winter greens i've yet made. mmm. and en plus, untold bottles of red and white wine, with the evening rounded off with clementines and whiskey.

perhaps it's imperative that i define the number of we present at the occasion, as well as elaborate a bit on why i've chose to write about it just now. we were six, hailing from the states, switzerland, austria, and italy. it's important to note the nationalities to give you some idea of how complex dinner conversation could become--what, with my little knowledge of German, better knowledge of French, and ability only to curse a storm in Italian. now also imagine that between us, we've all got these linguistic limitations, but a profound love of eating and wine drinking, apparently. oh, also we ate two enormous baguettes and fresh tomatoes with balsamic vinegar and artist picked and pressed olive oil (compliments of Aurèle). i'm also mentioning this because i'm imagining you might've wondered to where i've disappeared--i've been meeting the other folks here and eating. oh, ok and drinking a bit of wine too.
here's a few photos of the after-dinner merry-making, which included video-sehen, wein trinken, und ein bißchen tanzen...

au tour des galeries : conceptual ethnography

2009-11-20T19:44:00.000+01:00

thursday night: Galerie Karsten Greve hosted an exceptional exhibition of "Photographs" by the long-time, British collaborators Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin. Photographs explores four conceptualizations (dubbed "conceptional ethnography") of media representation the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

the Red House, is a particularly fascinating series of photographs (100 x 76 cm each) taken inside a torture location (a "jail") nicknamed the Red House. in 1991, after the site had been abandoned, by Saddam Hussein and his cronies, the graffiti made by the previously deferred Kurd prisoners was discovered. the photographs themselves are simple, unpretentious documentations of the scrawlings carved into the stone and plaster walls. admittedly, i'm quite fond of them for their inherent naïve qualities, and for their aesthetic semblance to those lovely chalkboard scribblings of Cy Twombly (also represented by Galerie Greve). but, beyond that, beyond the aesthetic interest, they're loaded with so so much that escapes traditional photojournalism essays. what sort of boredom inspires such belabored work? and particularly from those men who'd ostensibly never previously explored their artistic visions? and what'd they endure between drawings? and to where did they disappear? all these questions remain unanswered, and we're left with the imaginings of obviously imperiled and desperate men, incarcerated in what must've been the very worst of the worst torture cells in Iraq...previous to those in more recent times perhaps.

the three other experimental photographic works featured left less of an impression on me. however i did have a brief conversation with Broomberg about the conceptional content of the exhibition--specifically the different lenses through which we watch war. and more precisely what's the difference between journalistic photographers (with their responsibility to accurately portray reality) and artists who use photography to present their own admittedly opinion-ed interpretation of events and peoples. i asked Broomberg if he imagined that he, in the Red House Series employed the same, or a similar, lens through which the Iraq war is presented to the Western World... and more specifically if he thought that he'd a wholly objective view of what he saw. he unabashedly replied that "well of course I have an opinion. so do you. I'm not a reporter..." and he went on to suggest that this is why it's important that artists are looking and representing war images--that we admit our bias, and yours as well. he also explained his fascination for the way in which the Western media lens is always that of watcher or colonizer, or at worst ethnographer. this he accepts is also his role, but he explained that the difference he sees is that the media will likely never admit that this is theirs, fundamentally.

more images of the exhibition are online here, as is further information about the artists.

au tour des galeries

2009-11-17T15:16:00.001+01:00

Galerie Eric Mircher : Nazanin Pouyandeh
this gallery is perhaps thrice the size of my studio, and was full full full of people and paintings. as Peggy Olsen, of Mad Men quotes (season 3 episode 4 i think) "it's so crowded in here i feel like i'm on the subway." and they spilled out onto the street, mingling with the respective crowds of the nearby galleries. now what i'm trying to understand is, what's all the hubub about? i'd rather be kind, and say, "i just don't get it," rather than flat out denying there existed any merit to the work in this show. but, i'll let you decide for yourself. here is the exhibition card image:

my neighbors in the building offered an excellent reprieve from a rather unsatisfying evening out at the galleries (Saturday). short animations and films...one entitled "White Out," was discomfitingly similar to Paul Pfeiffer's earlier videos wherein he'd remove the basketball players (or boxers...etc) from the arena, leaving the viewer with swishes, blinking lights, and the sensation itself, minus the spectacle's main characters. another, beautifully done, though i missed the title, involves a slow rotation through domestic spaces...as though the camera, panning 360 degrees moved so slowly there was time enough to change the scenery entirely before it'd come full circle. we begin our voyage in the attic of an old house, panning eventually past bedrooms, bathrooms, living room spaces and workshops, a doorway with someone desperately ringing to get in, and finally conclude in the garage, just as the door shuts. and it's also so eerily ersatz, the pieced together photomontaged landscape, in its hyper-real color, and just-a-wee-bit off movement. kudos you guys. if you'd like to find them online, my neighbors organized a screening of works by themselves &; friends including: claudia larchner, liddy scheffknecht &; armin b wagner, and markus hanakam & roswitha schuller. later i went out with some friends, residents here, sissa and auréle.

last night le Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac hosted a vernissage for Elger Esser, whose work i'd forgotten was so breathtakingly poetic. the exhibition entitled Saone & Rhone features photos of those two landscapes printed large enough as to allow each of us the opportunity to dive right in. and standing before one of them i realized i'd never seen so clearly the division of air, land, and water. i'd never been offered such an opportunity virtually. the uppermost and bottommost edges of each print fade to almost-white before the frame's edge, and in each a modest strip of land is suspended like a tight-rope pulled taught through the middle. and it's revealed: the division of water, solid, gas. and it's so simple, and we wonder why we'd never seen it this way before. and not to ramble on at great length, but the colors, so muted, seem to have been breathed onto the paper's surface. they're somewhere between entirely desaturated, sepia tinted, and that artificially yet nostalgia-inducing hand coloration effect from the early 20th ce.

also on exhibit are francesco clemente and terence koh, both of which were terribly disappointing.

DEADLINE

2009-11-14T12:54:00.075+01:00

at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris - ARC
(à coté de la Palais de Tokyo)

your last words. your last meal. your last experience listening to music. your last kiss. your last sarcone's hoagie. imagine all these. i mean, imagine knowing full well that it may be your very last, this one right here, in front of you, this person right here in your arms, and this last morsel of hoagie, it's the last one for you.

i highly recommend watching the video above, the curator's statement about the deadline exhibition. in brief, the exhibition centers around the idea of "last works," primarily of artists with terminal illnesses, who fully aware of their imminent ends, infused their last oeuvres with a force that we healthy people cannot imagine. years ago, i wrote a paper on Deleuze, Peter Greenaway, and the impossibility of imagining auto-defenestration. while it's possible that we can imagine all those experiences falling from some too-high elevation, it's frankly impossible to imagine our own bodies hurtling through a space at such a great speed that the impact would kill us. and so, it's with this sort of awe, terror, and curiosity that we approach the works in Deadline.

the show features works by: Martin Kippenberger, Hans Hartung, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Robert Mapplethorpe, Gilles Aillaud, Hannah Villiger, Absalon, James Lee Byars, Joan Mitchell, Chen Zhen, Willem de Kooning, and Jörg Immendorff.

Absalom's three videos, entitled "Bruits," "Bataille," and "Solutions," are short films of actions, respectively: yelling in bursts until the throat is too raw to continue (i cried watching this), fighting off imaginary enemies whilst wearing a suit, and the artist at a table eating, drinking, smoking, being calm.

The Death of James Lee Byars (excellently reviewed here)

Robert Mapplethorpe's last series possesses a sort of gloomy luminescence not uncommon to his earlier work. but in this setting, in this context it's a much seriouser thing. take for example "Bust & Skull," image below. perhaps it ought to've been titled "Pan, Death, Self Portrait."

Jörg Immendorff's enormous untitled works from the last years of his life reflect the evolution of the disease from which he'd suffered, "lateral amyotrophic sclerosis." more than any other artist included in this exhibition, Immendorff's works seemed to be the artist's great triumph...the crowning achievement of his entire oeuvre. i'm aware this is arguable, and it's a loaded thing to say, but i'm just saying. and what's further, the last years of his life were pretty scandalous... i'd forgotten..

also on view at the Musée... Albert Oehlen. Albert, i love you. not because you work with trash and found objects, or because your painting is trashy and bad-it's really bad painting-or because your collaging together of various found imagery is so awkward and almost unconvincing, but you see color in a way i never have. you see all those places where too many hues come together as awkwardly as your imagery...where the oils go all muddy, blur, and find their ways again. and your artist statement is pretty ok too :

the title of the exhibition comes from Abstract

Reality, an album by a very good metal band Nasty

Savage. I personally didn't take it seriously. Maybe

they wanted it to be, but I think as a title it's a bit

wacko. It sounds as if they were trying to be

abtruse and hard to understand. I like it when

people take it as a swear word, or meaning a

sickness or a mess. That's very close to my

definition of what my work is.

his interview with the preeminent Glenn O'Brien lives here .

Oehlen is represented by Luhring Augustine, whose website is here.

and with that i leave you Nasty Savage ...serious smoke machine footage here...

pre-text to yesterday's post (re:PALANC)

2009-11-12T13:08:00.001+01:00

it should have been noted, in yesterday's post, that all quotes and references therein were taken from Dubuffet's Prospectus et tous écrits suivants Vol. I . and it should also be noted that Thévoz also discusses PALANC in his writing Art Brut.

so i'd like to premise yesterday's post with two brief explanations. firstly, i'd like to elucidate why i'm personally drawn to les écritures des gens fous. secondly, i ought to explain further the connection made between Foucault & PALANC, and their ideas about words and things.

to begin with the second agenda first, because, why not? here's a bit of writing i've done on the subject of words & things and Deleuze & Foucault, which should help a bit :

In Gilles Deleuze’ essay Strata or Historical Formations, he argues that speaking is not seeing (and seeing is not speaking). This is a reference to Michel Foucault’s concept that although statements and visibilities are primary and irreducible utterances, there is not necessarily any system of causality between the two, nor is there any transferable symbolism. Deleuze explains that the object of a statement is specific to that particular statement alone. It can neither be transferred to another statement nor can it be transferred to the visible object to which it ostensibly refers. The lack of direct causality between articulable elements and visibilities evinces their truly independent existences. They effect each other indirectly, modulating the threshold of tension that binds their relationship.

He then argues that the visible qualities of an object are exclusively related to its sensual experience; the articulable elements exclusively relate to the supportive text or dialogue. And that which is addressed in the form of text/statement creates its own correlative object within the text (the object of the statement is particular to that statement). The visible qualities of an object evoke a visceral response (particular to an experience of an object). Because they are so very self-specific, or collapsed, they are each subject to their own revelatory limitations.

and in relation to my own work:

Rene Magritte suggests, “thought is what sees and can be described visibly.” In this, thought, an action, assumes a form. Deleuze employs Magritte’s Ceci n’est pas un pipe as an example of an artwork that exacerbates the limits of articulable and visible things. Ceci est incroyable in its com-possible relation of words and things. In Consumption I, I attempt to “exacerbate that thin little line separating text from figure.”

The piece consists of eight 4 x 6 foot dry-erase boards, almost entirely blacked-out with hand-drawn text in dry-erase ink. The textual content ranges from Mixtape + Maussian gift-exchange, to the Limits of Rebellion in the Arts, to Spitwad Theory, and each text is approximately eight pages when typed. The content, though deadly serious, analytical, and accented with dorky wit, is intimidatingly densely penned and difficult to read (a six foot long sentence is hard to follow). Up close, it’s possible to read in the speed-reading method: scanning an amorphous area of text for content, rather than following entire sentences.

From afar, the text forms grey waves on the white surface—Agnes Martin or Bridget Riley drawings come to mind. And true to formalist sculpture, the object itself is intimidating. Hung higher, and encompassing greater surface area than the human body, the text-on-board is elevated beyond its word-on-page/computer screen status. Beyond decorating the surface of the object with text, as I’d intended, the text adds value-in-content to the object, and the object magnifies the potential power of the written word. And as if this dialogue between viewer and text-covered object weren’t already confrontational, the ink of course is impermanent. The reader is tempted (taunted) by this realization.

Dubuffet's chapter on PALANC concludes with a transcription of Palanque's text on Autogéométrie, which if i understand it correctly, is basically a set of instructions on how to draw with one's entire body, mind, and spirit simultaneously. apparently, Palanque used a large black table to draw with both arms simultaneously on one sheet of paper. he stresses understanding the difference between "la geste règle" and "le gest compas." and the attitudes of gestures : "curved," or "straight." and the process of drawing (writing really) becomes a sort of metaphysical gymnastical exercise.
he says (my translation):

All these reunited disciplines are a psychophysical treatment.
All the gestures, following their attitudes, their drives, their regularity, their precision, influence the physical and mental well-being.

also, there are 17 published "poèmes géométriques," by Palanque. when i've found and read them, i promise you'll be the first to know!

"fortement déconcertante et dépaysante"

2009-11-11T22:34:00.003+01:00

PALANC l'écrituriste, born Francis Palanque, foretold Michel Foucault's The Order of Things (Les Mots et les choses: Une archéologie des sciences humaines) by almost twenty years.

briefly, in an effort to envigorate the text, to give life to his words on paper, Palanc developed two entirely new alphabets--"ouvertitude," and "fermotitude," or opened/closed texts. in exercising these phonic symbols, he'd hoped to discover the perfect voice for his revelations-- and of course in finding this voice through writing, the form of the letters themselves would embody the revelation.

and this i love: for most every écriture, there is an expository text. the following is but one example:

Croyez-moi --vivez moi-- je vous rénoverai.
Je suis géométrie-- visage universel.
Mes lignes sont des mots-- des murmures sans bruit.
Par vos gestes qui tracent-- la beauté de ma vie.
Lentement-- doucement, je vous pénétrerai
Pour venir me loger dans votre être.
Vous ne me verrez pas-- vous ne m'entendrez pas,
Pourtant je serai là-- chantant silencieux.
A vos états je mêlerai ma voix,
Je freinerai les uns-- j'exciterai les autres,
Faisant de votre forme-- pureté de mes lignes,
Offrant à votre âme-- la clarté de ma vie.
Vous deviendrez-- un sublime sourire,
C'est un sourire joie-- il est rouge brillant.

la closerie falbala

2009-11-09T16:59:00.007+01:00

saturday afternoon, at 14:30, we arrived at the Closerie Falballa-- the site itself is in Périgny-Sur-Yerres, approximately 2 hours by train/bus/walk from centre-ville Paris.

i went with Edith, from Austria, who's last name, i've lost track of at the moment. it's not that i'm so forgetful--see, Edith was here this weekend visiting my friend Miriam Bajtala, who fell ill and couldn't come along with us. and so, it was just the two of us strangers...either way, Edith is the one person i've met in my time here that shares the same interest in ArtBrut, and specifically art of the insane. and so we had a lot to say to one another. we'd talked most of the way there about what we'd been reading, what we were making in our studios, and why it was relevant at all to read about art brut at this point in our histories. we agreed that it was particularly in effort to unlearn everything piled-on in art school, and in effort to unlearn critical thinking.

the closerie falbala was executed between 1971-1973 by Dubuffet and a team of technicians. it's quite a grand accomplishment, and is representative of the Hourloupe Cycle for which he's most known. the site is nestled away in the woods, and was damp and slippery with wet leaves when we arrived. the Closerie, the garden-simulacrum is just large enough to feel like a site, once you're in it, but not so grand as to feel like a park, say, and is larger than monumental sculpture--or more inviting anyway. and our group numbered about 10 people--two families, including a set of talkative toddlers, and locals from the banlieu. i'll update this post with pictures soon, but what was really most striking about being there, navigating this undulating, black and white terrain, was watching the way in which the groups' shapes and colors interacted with the piece. imagine this: a blond woman in fur coat, 50ish, stockings, and 3 inch heels with a toddler modifies her movements to the terrain and to the child run-amok. i mean at first you'd think the site seems out of place (stark white and black on earth-tones). within the closerie, you realize we the visitors are quite out of place there--tripping, wobbling around, and interrupting each others' views of the work with our brightly colored, awkward bodies.

the interior of the Closerie-the Villa Falbala- is warm, carpeted, and silent. it reeks of laquer and styrofoam, and is a claustrophobic's worst nightmare. the interior motif is blue and white and black (where the exterior is white and black), and for all its cavernous qualities, it's close and calm and very still. within the Villa Falbala is housed the Cabinet Logologique (completed between 1967 and 1969. it's made entirely of carved styrofoam slabs, vinyl based paint, and laquer....hence the odor. if not for the smell, it'd be possible perhaps to live there, in awe of the thing for months. unfortunately photography is not permitted. but if i were to attempt to paint you a picture of what i'd witnessed i'd begin thusly: imagine the linear intensity of Jackson Pollock's splatter paintings, four of them, measuring 20 x 20 feet each in very close quarters, forming a room. though, Dubuffet's lines demark 2D spaces with some intentionality, and within the spaces themselves live small terrains, and the individual terrains converse with one another across the grander space. and the colors of each line and each space are also in conversation. and we were there with three toddlers who, like us, were completely in awe and completely optically over-stimulated . and, the most remarkable things happen to non-archival substances over so much time: you'd never imagine what on earth the medium was--it'd yellowed so much that maybe it was marble, or papier- mache. and the combination of the yellowing and the boldness of the painted primary colors was so ecstatically perfect. and you know, i'm not biased at all...

Dubuffet says of the Cabinet Logologique:
"My work preceding this cycle creates sinuous graphics responding with immediacy to spontaneous and, so to speak, uncontrolled impulses of my hand which traces them. These graphics start uncertain, fleeting, ambiguous figures. Their movement unclenches in the spirit that finds itself in their presence a " suractivation " of the faculty of seeing in their tangles all sorts of objects which make and unmake themselves as the eye moves, thus aligning intimately the transitory and the permanent, the real and the deceptive. It results in (...) a grasp of conscience of the illusionary character of the world we believe to be real, to which we call the real world. "

the site across the road houses the CouCou Bazar, a grand selection of Dubuffet's earlier paintings, the maquettes for Closerie, and several large sculptures from the Hourloupe Cycle.

and it is with apologies that this post comes almost a week after the fact. j'avais la Grippe (the flu) since visiting last saturday. c'est pas la Grippe H1N1, peut-etre la Grippe Dubuffet??

art brut préféré aux arts culturels

2009-11-04T20:15:00.002+01:00

In its entirety and in translation, here is Dubuffet's (& Compagnie d'Art Brut) essay from 1949:

"Anyone who undertakes, as we do, to look at the works of the Irregulars, will find his notion of the approved art of the museums, galleries and salons - let us call it cultural art - totally transformed. This type of approved art will not seem representative of art in general, rather merely the activity of a particular clique: a cohort of careerist intellectuals. What country lacks its small clique of cultural arts: its troop of careerist intellectuals? It is obligatory. From one capital to another, they ape each other marvelously; they practice an artificial, Esperanto art tirelessly copied everywhere. Is art the right word? Does it actually have anything to do with art?
It is fairly widely thought that in considering the artistic production of intellectuals one is at the same time grasping the flower of production in general, since intellectuals, being drawn from the common people, cannot lack any of their qualities, having rather those additional qualities acquired by wearing out their trousers on the schoolroom bench - without allowing for the fact that intellectuals think themselves by definition far more intelligent than ordinary people. But is this really so? One also meets plenty of people with far less favourable opinion of the intellectual type. The intellectual type seems to them directionless, impenetrable, lacking in vitamins, a swimmer in pap. Empty, without magnetism, without vision.
Perhaps the solid seat of the intellectual has been pulled out from under him. The intellectual's labours are always carried out while seated: at school, at conferences, at congresses. Often while dozing; sometimes while dead. Dead in one's seat. For a long time, intelligence has been highly valued. When one says of someone that they are intelligent, has not said everything? Nowadays people are growing disillusioned with this; they are beginning to demand other things. Intellectual qualities are less prized. People now value health and vitality. One can see that what was called intelligence is nothing more than a modicum of knowledge in the manipulation of simple, false and pointless algebraic formulae, having nothing to do with genuine vision (but rather obscuring it).
One cannot deny that on the level of vision, the light of the intellectuals is far from bright. The imbecile (or those the intellectual calls imbeciles) shows greater aptitude. It might even be that this vision gets worn out by the school benches, along with the seat of the intellectual's pants. Imbecile perhaps, but sparks fly from him, unlike Mr Grammar School, who doesn't spark at all. Good for the imbecile! He is our man! [...]
There are still people, particularly the intellectuals, who do not clearly see that the intelligent are hopeless cases, and one needs to rely on the so-called imbeciles for moments of lucidity; indeed, they just laugh at the idea. They cannot take the idea seriously.
The intellectual is of course crazy about ideas; he loves to chew them over, and cannot imagine any type of chewing gum.
One can with justification call art a chewing gum totally devoid of such ideas. One can sometimes lose sight of this. Ideas, and the algebra of ideas, may be a level of knowledge, but art is another means of knowledge, whose levels are completely different: they are those of vision. Ideas are an inert gas. It is when vision in blinded that the intellectual pops his head up.
Art exists to be a way of operating that does not involve ideas. When it is mixed with ideas, art becomes oxidized and worthless. Let there be as few ideas as possible! Ideas do not nourish art!
There are people (the present writer for example) who go so far to maintain that the art of these intellectuals is false art, the counterfeit currency of art, which is intricately ornamented but unsound.
Certainly the ornament is of some slight interest, but whether it sounds true is more interesting. Many slight works, brief, almost lacking form ring very loudly indeed; and for that reason they are preferable to many monumental works by illustrious professionals. It is enough for certain people just to tell them that the creator of a work is a professional artist, so that the spell is immediately broken. Amongst artists, as amongst card-players or lovers, professionals are a little like crooks. [...]
True art is never where it is expected to be: in the place where no one considers it, nor names it. Art hates to be recognized and greeted by its name; it runs away immediately. Art is a person in love with anonymity. As soon as it's unmasked, as soon as someone points the finger, it runs away. It leaves in its place a prize stooge wearing on its back a great placard marked ART, which everybody immediately showers with champagne, and which the lecturers lead from town to town with a ring through its nose. That is the false Art. That is the art that the public knows, the art of the prize and the placard. The real Mrs Art no one recognize. She walks everywhere, everyone has met her, jostled her at very junction, but no one thinks it could be her, Mrs Art herself, of whom so much has been said. She does not have the right air about her. You see, it is the false Mrs Art who has the air of being the true one; it is the real one who lacks this air. That means that one is deceived! So many people deceive themselves! It was in July 1945 that we undertook in both France and Switzerland, then in other countries, methodical research into the relevant ways of producing that which we now call Art Brut.
We understand by this works crated by those untouched by artistic culture; in which copying has little part, unlike the art of intellectuals. Similarly, the artists take everything (subjects, choice of materials, modes of transposition, rhythms, writing styles) from their own inner being, not from the canons of classical or fashionable art. We engage in an artistic enterprise that is completely pure, basic; totally guided in all its phases solely by the creator's own impulses. It is therefore an art which only manifests invention, not the characteristics of cultural art which are those of the chameleon and the monkey.
Before concluding this essay we want to say a word about the mad. Madness gives man wings and helps his power of vision; many of the objects (almost half) that our exhibition contains are works by people in psychiatric hospitals. We see no reason to segregate them, unlike others. All the numerous dealings that we have had with our friends have convinced us that the mechanisms of artistic creation are the same in them as in so-called normal people. This distinction between normal and abnormal seems to us to be quite far-fetched: who is normal? Where is he, your normal man? Show him to us! The artistic act, with the extreme tension that it implies, the high fever that accompanies it, can it ever be considered normal?
Finally, mental 'illness' are extremely diverse - there are almost as many of them as there are sick people - and it seems quite arbitrary to label them all in the same way. Our point of view is that art is the same in all cases, and there is no more an art of the mad than there is an art of the dyspeptic, or an art for those with bad knees.

synthesizing notes III : Michel Thévoz

2009-11-02T15:44:00.005+01:00

from Art Brut, psychose et médiumnité:

Dubuffet believed that the most cultured people were the 'everymen,' those who found high culture intimidating.
He said of his own work, in an interview, "I seek to paint like everyone--like the everyman."
The interviewer is baffled.
"I am the only one in the world who paints like everyone," he explained.
(note : Sartre's 'serial alterity // passive activity // recurrence)

Baudelaire : "Genius is infancy revisited at will." (+ perhaps the capacity to play one's alter-egos, those perhaps retired since childhood)

Foucault : "la maladie mentale est comme une archéologie de la libido."

Feyerabend : "they must make an oneiric world to discover the characteristics of the real world"... (de la délire heuristique)

Dubuffet : "il n'y a que de l'art psychopathologique."

Thévoz : "la teneur artistique d'une oeuvre est en raison même de sa déraison."

Nietzsche : "si on voulait la santé, on supprimerait le génie."

Thévoz : "The theory of mediumnity adequatly reflects, or in each case is symptomatic of, the condition of the damned of Earth in search for their soul."

Augustin Lésage

Thévoz argues that spiritism/occultism is at base "psychology projected on the exterior world." unless we believe mediumistic practices actually channel the dead, we must believe that the medium is both author and 'reader' of the received messages. by displacing ownership of the messages received, the medium is freer to express 'pulsionnel' aspects of his being--those perhaps previously sublimated by the author.

et jadis,
le Platon dit que "les plus beaux poèmes épiques ne sont pas les effets de l'art de poète, mais d'un état d'inspiration et de possession. Tel poète sera possédé par telle Muse, telle par telle autre."

translation:
Plato says : "the most beautiful epic poems are not the effects of the poet's own artistry, but the state of inspiration (that comes from) possession. this poet will be possessed by this muse, each by each other."

synthesizing notes II : michel thévoz

2009-11-02T14:37:00.006+01:00

from Art Brut:

it's essential to understand that the original impulse to study & classify ArtBrut as such (Dubuffet et al) was an antagonistic gesture--against culture, against 'fine art proper.' Thévoz points out that the modernists' initial interest in ethnographic art was similarly motivated. however, where the fetishization of ethnographica sets up a false dichotomy between Occidental Art and that of the Other, ArtBrut attempts no such polarization.

naïves perhaps cannot be accused of mystification (of their work/lives), rather the art world is guilty of "mythification" of these artists who are "with only one foot" in fine art, and with the other very hesitant to move from surer ground.

while there is no visually apparent defining characteristic to l'art chez les fous, the circumstances under which it is created are unique (life in l'asile vs la réalité):
*Thévoz compares life in the asylum to that of semi-somnambulance...the outside world ceases to be at all pertinent, and one undergoes an marked decline in ability to conceptualize reality.
*he also suggests that those interned were already existing on the cultural margins. they'd most likely not "paid the ransom (ie sold their creative innocence) to acquire the finesse of abstract-thinking, technical mastery," etc.
*the asylum also strips the interned of all reason to adhere to the structures of finite time and socially mandated behavioral limitations.

this is just a nice idea : "one may choose to 'émajusculer' reality rather than immasculating the Ego."

james ensor

2009-11-01T22:03:00.004+01:00

what more is there to say about james ensor, really?
the show, previously in New York, is now on view at the Musée d'Orsay.

everything is words and things

2009-10-29T22:49:00.010+01:00

stephanie syjuco's booth

thought provoking figures

provocative words (+ intervention) . click image for large view

london times

2009-10-29T21:15:00.009+01:00

transcribed from journal:

" everywhere is sufficient. i mean it's probably possible to call anywhere 'home' as long as you leave often enough. the alternative perhaps would be to just never settle in anywhere. to be constantly on your toes and invigorated by, but enervated by your environs. that's really no way to live. and so we venture out every once in a while. clearly, the impulse to travel is manifold, for everyone. and i'll not be one to assume i know your motives, or anyone's... or quite frankly my own really. however, perhaps it's possible to simplify it into two impulses: on the one hand, we leave to fortify our connection to whatever place that is (or person, or emotion, etc) we call 'home.' on the other hand, traveling, leaving one's comfort zone is also perhaps a good test of one's wits. (as noted in previous blog entry) to expand on that, i think i meant that it's part of testing our selves (whomever we are at home) out in a non-familiar environment. and concomittantly the inverse--the non-familiar environment offers souvenirs {i'd always imagined this as getting stuck in brambles, or rolling down grassy hills...you bring all sorts of surprises back with you}.

everyone gets a souvenir! like it or not. your time away from 'home' will have a residual effect on your future interactions with 'home.' the very first time i went to California was in 1998. i distinctly remember wanting to maintain that California-ness {i think i'd called it the glow} upon my return to Pittsburgh. having visited half a dozen times since, and coming down from three years living there, i'm still quite sure there's no word to describe 'having been psychically affected by living in California.' and i was. and i remember after returning to pittsburg, how in the days and weeks that followed, something died...or faded rather. the light. and. because i could never figure out what it was, it remained impossibly irresurrectible.

i don't intend to suggest that one would ever think to venture off to some alien environ in hopes of becoming affected--though maybe this happens too--i'm just reflecting.

in the end, i was correct in presuming that a trip out of Paris might do me some good. getting there, or rather, getting together the means to get there, was in itself a day of traveling and tribulation. after a day and a half (literally 15 hours) of scouring ticket websites, kelbillet, and similar sites, i found the facebook-eurostar ticket exchange group and hooked up with two brits living in France, who'd found themselves stuck with extra passes. all told, the extra effort saved me a few hundred euro, though planning a month in advance would have done just as well. i'll spare you the gory details of waking up at too-too early & spending hours, cell-phone-less, attempting to rendez-vous with this chick.

friday night, around 8:30, i linked up with a dear friend from Philly days. you can see his blog at thevanities.org. a charming and brilliant cabbie gave me a lift from the station to Tottenhamcourt, where Will'd hunkered down for the moment. we had some drinks, caught up, and rounded out the evening at some norwegan metal pub.

saturday at the frieze fair: my eyeballs ache just to think of it. what is it about convention hall lights? that dry out the eyes, induce headaches, and wash out everyone's skin? the booths' rubber carpeting was pleasant: grey, cushioned, non-slip.

about the art:

if you have the means, i highly recommend going to marianne boesky gallery to see the Barnaby Furnas'. or buy one--they'd sold out the booth by saturday though.

claire fontaine . (period)

i'd like to propose an open forum on the works of Turner-Prize nominee Roger Hiorns. while i'm fairly certain i could fabricate some cleverly construed criticism of this work, i'm not entirely convinced by it. i mean, because i could argue either way--in 20 directions really--and truly believe my own words. by far, the most beautiful aspect of the piece on exhibit was it's ghostly remains on the gallery floor. briefly, the Hiorns involved a soap bubble extruding compressor and wire. the bubbles, extruded vertically, from a 4" diam. tube, tower precariously above the viewer. they eventually topple over--when they do, the bubbles leave behind a sea green residue on the carpet. here's a much larger version:

Bill Woodrow's Electric Fire with Yellow Fish
it's hard to see here, but the fish is cut from the heater itself. every once in a great long while you come across a work of art like this. one that reminds you why you got into this racket in the first place.

later, much later, i went with some friends to a gallery party at le moustache II, where i drank a bit (much) whiskey and apparently professed my love for Matthew Higgs (in the way that i love, say, Cyndi Lauper, or SpongeBob...as a fan). anyway, the gaggle of curator-ladies i arrived with and i danced the night away and had a grand old time."

hibernating and so...

2009-10-15T22:18:00.002+02:00

My sincerest apologies to my fans, both of you, for my absence in the past few days. i've been reading, nesting, meditating on this new place.

what is it that happens exactly when a place transforms from 'strange and new' to something more akin to 'home?' it doesn't happen so suddenly i suppose--not overnight anyway. i mean, don't get me wrong, i'm not yelling "I OWN THIS TOWN" from the rooftops or anything. not yet, anyway. but you know what i mean. at some point, you stop getting lost all the time. it's easier to spot the tourists, not to get bowled over in foot-traffic in the metro, and you feel ok about the bakery lady being brusque... 'cause she's just like that. nothing personal. exact change makes her day.

but at the same time, that transition from alien-to-home, there's something discomfiting about it. it's perhaps why residencies are generally a month or so. just enough time for one to be wildly thrown off course and, while regrouping, sort some things out in the studio. that "fight or flight" gene kicks in and you make stuff of pure gut. the newness of place puts a good fear in you, i think.
..and you might guess from my tone here that i'm fearful of it wearing off in the coming weeks. but, quite the contrary! it's cold outside! i'm pleased to have found a home in my studio surrounded by books i've been dying to read! i swear to you.

tomorrow, i'm hoping to make it to london for frieze art fair. i naïvly imagined the eurostar train was something like amtrak: not inexpensive, yet not wildly overpriced. it's unfortunately the latter. and, as both of you know by now, there is no Chinatown bus to London. who knew? that said, we'll see.
plan b means going to la Closerie Falbala, which is arguably Jean Dubuffet's magnum opus. it's a private site about an hour and a half out of Paris. there are some photos of the site here. I'm also hoping to visit the Tiffany Lamps exhibition here in town, as well as the graffiti photography exhibition at the Cartier Foundation. but, we'll see how the chips fall. stay tuned...

michel thévoz : synthesizing notes

2009-10-10T23:48:00.004+02:00

these are just fragments for writing coming...later :

on children's drawings: it's noted that although there may be some preconception of a piece at the onset, it's likely that it'll be changed if the actual execution (an exact rendering) hinders the speed or joy of mark-making and discovery.

thévoz references the malapropism! i wish i'd read this ages ago. i have a long-standing crush on mrs. malaprop. she was brilliant! anyway, he suggests that the art-brutist creates the intentional malapropism and that while not able to entirely ignore spoken/written language, she takes liberty in using existing symbols to create her own mutant language.

Francis Ponge says (my translation) : "language (words) are all made and express themselves: they do not ever express me. there is where i choke (on them). it is then that to teach the art of resisting language would be useful--the art only says what one wants to say, the art of power and of the subject... so, let us ridicule words with a catastrophe!! it's a simple abuse of language."

art brut intends to mettre en cause (jeopardize) the location or the meaning or the territory of art-propre. it was born as an outsider, but is not diametrically opposed to "art culturel." Dubuffet compares it to a strange wind blowing against culture--challenging it to mutate and perhaps dry up before our very eyes.

Paul Klée dit que "l'acte d'écrire et l'acte de représenter sont à la bas une seule et même chose"
I agree. (the act of writing and the act of representing are at base one in the same thing)

"le fou serait un homme qui n'a pas su refouler ses instincts normaux et se conforme à une société anormale" . I agree here too. (the madman is the man who hasn't doubled back his normal instincts and conformed himself to an abnormal society)

contradicting Dubuffet's argument for individualisme, Thévoz suggests that in order to be considered individual there must be a society present to make such a claim. the art brutists are too far gone to be considered alongside "normal". they're not other than . they're outside of .
art brut "implicates us intimately" in the neutralization of le Moi (ego) // l'autre and reveals that the uncanny / exotic are also familiar within each of us.

rouge ciel + michel thévoz

2009-10-10T22:53:00.004+02:00

What sort of nerd carries along a (library) copy of Michel Thévoz' "Art Brut, psychose, et médiumnité" to a movie screening about art brut? You know, just in case the man himself made an appearance...not to ask for an autograph, clearly, just in case I needed to quote him.. to him... you know ? "Michel, the way you cite Sartre's notion of serial alterity and the idea of recurrence in reference to Dubuffet's motives... on page 28.. that was really brilliant. I also notice Sara Koffman in your references, I'm surprised Nietzsche doesn't rear his ugly little head more often. Or are you more interested in what she's got to say about Deleuze?..." you know.. just in case.

Unfortunately, M. Thévoz was either not present or for all my efforts, I couldn't find him. And, alas, neither was Mme. Peiry, the new-er director of the Art Brut Museum in Lausanne.

The film itself was directed and produced by M. Bruno Descharme, director and founder of the Collection abcd-artbrut, with the assistance of scores of people in production, and of course the gallery director, Barbara Safrova. A preview of the film is online, HERE, and pretty much sums up everything that was aesthetically masterful and abysmal about it. A friend of mine from Stanford, who's just graduated from the documentary film program came along and offered the following criticism: in short it's the problem with all movies about art... or really about all documentaries about art, the directors aren't really interested in painting an accurate portrait of the subject. Instead they take the subject matter and bury it under their filmic aesthetic. It's more about making a beautiful film than telling a story. We agreed that we hadn't really learned anything from the movie and that it was really difficult to see the work of the artists represented. Clearly, this is problematic....as far as documentaries go. But beyond that, with the limited number of films on art brut out there, I suspect this'll be the one that circulates the widest in the coming years. And the one that tells us nothing about the work really at all. Nothing that one couldn't find out by doing a bit of reading on the subject, or visiting a gallery. The most offensive bits, which are toward the end of the online preview, are the animated narratives of Jean Dubuffet's life. It's cute. I wondered what Jean would think. He seems to have had a pretty good sense of humor, but most definitely was a grumpy old man when he passed. It seemed disrespectful and entirely unnecessary.

The film did have it's shining moments. The interviews with Michel Thèvoz and Randall Morris (of Cavin Morris Gallery in New York), and Barbara Safrova were really heart-felt testaments. What I mean to say is that it was clear that these individuals are actively engaged in reevaluating their cause, the "meaning of art brut," its significance, and how to explain these things. That sense of urgency and of delight in their testimonies... I mean, that's how you want to talk about art. That's how you want to talk about your passions. Every time they'd appear on screen, I'd get a bit giddy. I'm writing this blog, and reading, and meditating on this work because I feel that passionately about it. I hope you understand.

On the bus ride over to the gallery abcd-artbrut (clear across town from the movie house), Nick and I talked about life, film, food, monsters, and madness. You know, the usual. He's making a monster movie and is trying to figure out how to go about figuring out what we modern people are afraid of, collectively. Are we afraid of change in general, of failure (and in what form), of technology, of untimely death, ourselves? Emmanuel Dayan & Nicholas (same Nick) Berger made a documentary together recently, interviewing women with rare chemical allergies. Apparently there's an institution/research center for people, the canaries in the coal mine they call themselves, who have become allergic to contact with common place things, to the air, to tap water and so on. They're convinced that modern life is toxic, and that one day we'll all be allergic to everything.

At gallerie abcdartbrut, the food and wine were very good and in abundance. The show... I think deserves a second pass. It's online in bits here.

Please forgive the abbreviated account of last night's film. I think I'm still processing. In short, I wish it'd been less like the "documentary" on the life of Henry Darger, out recently, and more like "how to draw a bunny" on the life of Ray Johnson---brilliant .

nuit blanche deux

2009-10-04T20:40:00.005+02:00

a few projects of note from nuit blanche include :

Nathan Coley's "THERE WILL BE NO MIRACLES HERE"

Rune Guneriussen's "Don't Leave the Light On"

Noël Dolla's Chauds Les Marrons aux Buttes Chaumont"

Eric Duyckaerts "Vidéastique et performanciel" (it should be noted that the artist also lectured at 3:30am!!)

Eric Duyckaerts, Kant (Part 1) from Argosy on Vimeo.

nuit blanche

2009-10-04T19:58:00.002+02:00

from my journal, written with a pen i'd borrowed from a kind parisienne:
" 5000-10000 red umbrellas, unlit, on a hillside-somewhere between Mariko Mori and Yayoi Kusama...less garish (guerre-ish), more modestly poetic. but somehow, for all it's static-ness, not un-lively." i believe i meant, there were no flashing lights, no looky-loos milling around, nothing automated... but the way they were poised on the hillside there, they seemed to be hiding thousands of little children. they were alive in that we anticipated their animation...
"paired with the pond-strobe lighting, flickering away across the pat, and the general hum of life-swarms of parisians abound- they were elevated to something of the staid, elegant spectator--maybe not unlike the woman in red (from 90210) at the Vivienne Westwood show last night.
and up the hill, in the fields, sprouted several hundred desk lamps. strange autumn daffodils? they're terrifically awkward, unsightly almost, with the Paris skyline backdrop and the park's evergreens in the nearer background. i'm thrilled for the moment to be here alone (surrounded by thousands). ..as a quiet observer of couples necking, screaming babies, foreign exchange students, the Japanese tourists.
my front tire fell off on the way over. apparently, the bolts had come loose...by some strange miracle though, i happened upon a cell phone repair shop (still open at 10pm) staffed by avid bike enthusiasts. they just happened to have a repair kit, tool box...

it took an hour to bike to Theatre Châtelet, or rather where i thought the theatre was. after milling around the station area behind Pompidou and realizing nothing good could possibly come of being there (it's akin to Old City Philadelphia, or the Marina or SOMA in SF), i set off to see the Janet Cardiff installation at Eglise Saint Severen (c.1495). The choir in Cathedral architecture is generally located in the western part of the nave, seperated by the nave itself by a wood or stone screen. And of course a choir sings in union, in harmony to or with the mass/es, creating one voice. In Cardiff's installation, the viewer/listener is surrounded by speakers--in the space where there would be pews--projecting the individual choir membors voices."
when i've sung in church, i'm aware first of my own voice, of my neighbors' voices, and then the harmony of the choir's voice as it merges with that of the mass. although, in Baptist Church, growing up, i do recall this one older woman who had a remarkably high and warbly voice. i don't know why it always stuck out to me...it wasn't unpleasantly shrill or anything, just distinct.
"and that we are free to roam around the space insists we find a new relationship to the Eglise itself," and to the individual voices.
from the entrance, and from the exit, the choir is just that--one harmonious voice. Cardiff's vocal isolation technique individuates the members of that choral body and offers us the chance
to really know those singers. i was clearly moved by the experience. listening for meaning in so many individual voices is overwhelming and exhilerating . i imagine it's that sort of ecstatic experience that inspired such grand cathedrals. and i think it's what one seeks out, in going to church in the first place.

all told, Nuit Blanche was like an art fair or biennial on opening day + new orleans mardi gras + "two street" around new years, in french . from 7pm-6am special projects are open throughout the entire city, and the museums are open for free . mostly, the projects are oasise from the street/bar mania, and are worth the trek . however, if you can imagine art basel miami happening during ...i dunno... spring break, you've got the picture .

and... speaking of which, my camera died early on last night . however, i'm sure there's no shortage of images online and movies on youtube by now.

oh miss westwood.

2009-10-02T20:23:00.011+02:00

Please, laugh all you want, but I honestly thought it might be possible to gain access to the Vivienne Westwood prêt-a-porte show this afternoon. I mean, this is a democracy...one should be able to talk one's way in...or at least it's a capitalist culture, so tickets should be for sale. Or I could play the punk-card "Vivienne, it is highly un-punk to leave us all standing out there in the street like that. Sneaking in should be encouraged!!" Seriously. All the same, it was quite the spectacle. Though I'll have to wait to find out if Pamela Anderson (dis?)graced the runway again this fall. Here's a view of the mayhem earlier-on (at 4:30...showtime)
I eventually ended up sharing a perch with UC Berkeley students (below), who offered some hilarious commentary, pointed out a 90210 starlet passing, and were quintessentially Cali-girls.

The blond with the earpiece
and the bad attitude (not pictured)
eventually called for final passes, tickets,
and for us those without move on out.
Ms Westwood showed up fashionably late
(45 minutes)
in an enormous, tinted-windowed, suv.
Here's the aftermath

les galeries

2009-10-01T23:20:00.006+02:00

1. i visited the following galleries today:

Galerie KerotArt
Galerie Anne Barrault : solo show by Jochen Gerner
this image is from a series entitled Branches. it's one of an impossibly immense series of drawings done between 2002-08, while the artist was talking on the telephone.
while it's a rather banal premise for what is presented as the masterwork of an exhibition, it was certainly the most honest, humorous and personal. Gerner's other works on display can be seen online & are definitely worth the look.

Galerie TAISS : the exhibition is titled "back to the cave." of one piece, entitled "Temptation of Intelligence," the artist writes:
"I discover sensuality and perceive a world of fantasy through a veil of black silk. On a table, a game of chess. Hands speak to me, but I hear nothing. Do these signs really mean anything, or is it just a choreography of HR's or a cunning indecipherable lure?"
maybe it reads better in French?

Galerie Polka :

(photo by Marc Ribold of statue of Mao)

The Brownstone Foundation : is marking the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution with a stellar exhibition of photography thereof.

Galerie Bernard Bouche
Galerie Baumet Sultana : former Philadelphian, Gavin Perry is exhibiting heavily shellacked, rather sumptuous paintings--which he prefers not to have photographed. the one i loved most wasa kinda shoved behind the director's desk and read (black paint on white canvas) "Jesus is coming! Everyone try and act busy." it felt familiar, you know...like i'd seen it on a tee-shirt somewhere.

Galerie Chez Valentine . I thoroughly enjoyed the curator's statement on "Diversification."

2.tomorrow i'm revisiting La Dame à la licorne... a series of six tapestries woven in the 15ce in Flanders.

c'est terrible

2009-09-22T22:06:00.002+02:00

i'm fairly certain i've given this blog a terrible title.
obsolete forecast might've been better.
obsolescent forcasters too.
or maybe obso-phosphorescence.

anyway. today i went to the library . not just any library, the bibliothèque nationale française. c'était incroyable! here's a photo . it's a research libary, meaning one must reserve--in advance--a carrell and the books they'd like & spend the morning/afternoon there in place reading . . which sounds like a dreamy way to spend the winter. the local library around the corner, while quaint, and "cozy" (read:tiny) has access to the city's reserve stacks.

tonight, i'm watching the men with the wheat paste & posters ready the banks of the seine for next week : fashion week paris .

!!!

en fin

2009-09-22T13:39:00.002+02:00

dubuffet's autobiography ends thus:

"ma santé est mauvaise, je marche difficilement et suis affligé de parmanent essouflement."

though a wonderfully detailed account of his life in studio & in the business of artmaking/vending, ou est la boeuf? i'm off to find the beef--assuming for the moment that it's to be found within the four enormous volumes of " ...tous écrites suivantes." the biography, written in the last months of dubuffet's life perhaps serve to set the record straight on his affairs in the art world, and his reticence to ever participating in the first place.

nouvelle mots:
écoulé : running (as a faucet) or dripping (as paint) .. he uses this term to describe passing years.
par boutade : defined as "as a joke," though boutade is literally "bad/mean humor"
défiler : to unravel, as in to pull loose what is woven into a larger form (loose threads)
dérouler : to unravel, as a plot, or to unwind rather.\\

off to the bibliothèque ...to find michel thévoz

ketchup

2009-09-21T20:37:00.002+02:00

my little brother used to eat pools of ketchup (when he could get them) at fast food restaurants, at home, at fancier places. recently at dinner with italians in france, it was suggested some olive oil might be good on the fois gras .

anyway . catch up :

saturday was spent haggling in french at the marché aux puces at Porte de Montreuil. see, i was looking for a bicycle (since renting one's impossible unless you've a european credit card). i did end up buying one, initially offered by a vendor for $35, later offered to me by the woman actually selling the thing for $20. either way, after closing the deal and biking around the area a bit, i realized the thing probably wasn't worth any more than $5. so i managed to convince another vendor that he should trade me a nicer bike for the one i had + $15...this took abou 2 hours start to finish. anyway, she's a beaut . i'm sated .

i spent the entirety of sunday biking the city. porte de vanves marché aux puces : stop #1. they're open fridays & sundays, closing relatively early, and boasting a fairly vast array of awesomeness: old coins, over priced american vinyl, vintage clothes...it's reminiscent of the alameda fleas in sf, though a miniscule and quaint-er version. a vendor dressed in his sunday best (from Ghana i think he said)- attempted to sell me a casque to cover my "rastas". admittedly, yes, i do need a helmet for biking. but certainly not the motorcycle helmet he thought i should buy. we ended up discussing at too-great-length where my family is from, and why i'm lighter than he. how to explain to an african that the part of you lineage traceable beyond a century ends abruptly? or that the surname Willis was given indiscriminately to a portion of owned people on a southern plantation? or to whom this lightness oughta be attributed? our conversation was interrupted by a potential sale.

the bibliothèque national français on the rue richelieu is here. sundays, it's open to public viewing, as a museum/national landmark. the remainder of the week it's available to researchers and students. i'd intended to return today, but alas.. this "biographie au pas de course" has me in its claws. returning to the cité internationale, i took a two hour detour (i got lost) and sat in traffic by the louvre --utter deadlock involving cars, busses, scooters, bikes and pedestrians.

today, i read. while the dubuffet is a necessary read, i'm plowing through it to get onto Michel Thévoz' texts on art brut & outsideryness...

a manana.

6 pm update

2009-09-18T18:15:00.001+02:00

re: the previous post, the abcd-artbrut gallery is here . and if you're in the neighborhood, they are screening a new film, by gallery director & film director Bruno Descharme. you can see the preview here . the screening is on october second & it should be quite good i think.

i also thought to mention having seen "spy numbers" at the Palais de Tokyo. ken gonzales-day, who shows with steve turner in LA exhibited a gargantuan billboard print--a dark gathering of folks watching a public hanging, though the hangee is missing from his image. luca francesconi's decapitated mountain summits was pointed (haha), elegant, and humorous. being that it was the first show i've seen since the venice mash-up, palais' respect for open space and spartanly curated exhibitions was a relief.

baring all

2009-09-18T15:30:00.001+02:00

bearing all.
barring all.
baring all :

it's certainly one thing to keep a journal--something that i'd let slip for what were in retrospect my "formative years"--but it's entirely another to keep one so public! anyway. welcome! thanks for reading thus far.

i'm hoping this will be a seriouser blog, charting what (if any) progress i manage to make here in my studio in the next year.

i've just begun reading jean dubuffet's autobiography "biography au pas de course," and have just gotten to the bit where he recounts having abandoned his beret (!!) and long hair for a more pedestrian lifestyle. he develops "la conviction que la création d'art devait s'ancrer dans la vie pratique banale, le chapeau noir fut remplacé par une populiste casquette."

tomorrow, it's off to the abcd-artbrut gallery and the marché aux puces at Montreuil.

à bien tôt!