appropriation

i just wanted to say my 2 cents about appropriation. for me it is all about respect and ackowledgement. since i use other peoples designs and artwork in my collages i am always careful to alter the image enough so that it will not seem as though i am merely "stealing" the image and changing only the context. since the images i use are from published, public sources it is within my rights to appropriate them as an artist. however, if one of the artists of my source material were to approach me and say "hey, i don't like what you are doing with my work" i would gladly remove the piece from the web or whatever setting it was displayed in. of course i am not saying if marvel comics came to me and said "hey, you're making batman look bad", but if one of the painters who illustarted the marvel book i used images from did, then yes, i would hear them out. and i would hope other creative people would afford me the same courtesy. when we preach about stealing and how anarchistic it is, we forget that we ourselves are targets. and remeber, if you ever post images on myspace- or most other corporate sponsered web services- the site exercises the right to use the images in any way they see fit. newscorp owns myspace and theoretically, rupert murdoch could use your art to sell the ny post if he wanted to. that is if he has enough taste to appreciate what we do! hahaha

counter culture

i am just going to give advance warning that this entry is gonna be long, rambling and might not tie together until the end, if ever at all. first of all, ann powers is a douche bag. the reading pissed me off so bad that i had to google her to add fuel to my argument. she's on wikipedia and there was even a link to her blog! awesome. and the first entry was about the fucking tyra banks show. that's all i'm going to say about that and feel free to indulge yourself, here is the link
http://eensyweensy.blogspot.com/

to me the phrase "counter culture" is quite absurd. lets make a label for something that is anti-mainstream that's very existence is predicated by the "normal". there are so many levels on which i disagree with powers' ideas, but i am going to focus on stealing for the moment. unfortunately her idiotic views on theivery are embraced by many of the most popular "counter-culture" movements. ok, that sentence right there demonstrates how whack things have gotten in terms of what is counter and what is "popular" and what the hell those words even mean anymore. here's one great example- there is a grafitti crew in nyc called "irak". i assume lots of people know who they are, but if not, the name basically means "i steal" rak is some kinda slang for stealing. of course now the name has even more political significance, but it's inception was based on the fact that these kids stole everything they had and basically antaginized the public and the police with their shinanigins. of course once several of the members became visible in the public eye, the crew became famous. one of the most visable members is dash snow. he became famous for being in ryan mcginleys (who was himself "discovered" by non other than counter-cult. godfather larry clark and subsequently became the youngest person EVER to solo exhibit at the whitney- he was 25)photographs and then he decided he was not just a thief and a can hanger, but a legitimate artist. so dash started popping up in vice magazine which his pal mcginley edited and dan colon, another young inductee into the nyc art machine, and he became famous for making hamsters nests in hotel rooms with phone books after snorting ungodly amounts of cocaine. and in case you are wondering, yes, i fucking hate dash snow. but i digress, ultimately the robbing and stealing and overall anarchist slant of irak is completely undermined by the fact that it becomes public that dash is from a wealthy family. a VERY wealthy family, as in billions of oil dollars, as in the menil collection in texas, as in on the board of all the major museums, etc, etc. and on top of that he had gone legit and shown his work at...you guessed it- the whitney bienniel!!! his work in case you are wondering consists of polaroids he took when he was a teenager of his friends fucking and doing drugs. hmmmm, larry clark anyone!! so now, all the young, struggling graffers and punks who were into irak (myself included) were a bit peeved. sure, it's fun to steal and all when you have a goddamn trust fund!!! and it's also easy to buy tons of expensive drugs and get bailed out of jail when you get arrested. in short, up is down, black is white and fox news starts looking appealing to some of these kids. i don't think it's any coincidence that reactionary politics and thinking are en vouge now among
the hipster crowd in nyc. how can you live in the most expensive place on earth and claim to be "counter-culture"??? how can you pay $1500 a month in rent and turn around and complain that you are "broke"??? i suppose stealing can give these people a bit of a rush- a little taste of the dark side. but at the end of the day the reactionaries and the bohemian optimists generally retreat to the same neighborhood and plop down on the same ikea furniture. bought or stolen- does it really fucking matter????

gifts

i really liked joel and amy's presentation today- and not just because of the free food! it's interesting to watch how people respond to being given unexpected gifts and then once they are used to the idea of having the gift a sense of entitlement develops. and even the most stoic among us were moved to laughter and excitement at the prospect of presents!!! it was really fun and also a great way to involve everyone in the ideas from the reading without it being boring or putting anyone on the spot. my boyfriend's mom is constantly giving me unwanted gifts- the last time i saw her the gifts included: a pair of bright orange suede moccasins, a dream catcher, countless newspaper clippings from the NY Times arts section, a red satin purse and a silver claddah necklace. as anyone who knows me might guess, none of these gifts are in any way useful to me (maybe the clippings, but i read the times online). i can't even wear the moccasins (i'm probably spelling that wrong) because they are way too narrow. and i don't ever wear jewelry, i'm allergic to gold and silver. yet everytime i see her, she bestows on me more useless ephemera. it's really a horrible situation because she is so awesome and she really wants to give me what she considers to be cool stuff that she thinks i'll like. but the gifts often actually create resentment. i resent the fact that this woman who has known me for almost 4 years still gives me the same gifts that i have told her dozens of times i do not want or need in the most polite way possible. i eventually just resigned to the fact that the happiness she gets from giving me things is more important, so i just smile and say "i love the moccasins!!!" and then i re-gift them to whoever i can find who might want them. i used to feel guilty about the re-gifting. but i feel comfort in knowing that re-gifting is a part of that cycle of giving that hyde talks about. and my mom just happens to love dreamcatchers, so i have re-gifted about 4 to her and also several pairs of moccasins. which makes me and her happy, so i guess it all works out in the end

art

i just got back from nyc and i am supercharged with energy and optimism. i saw so much great work and i wanted to share some of the stuff i saw with you guys. if anyone is going to be in nyc in the coming weeks i highly recommend checking out the greater new york MFA exhibition at hunter college in midtown. it includes work from 20+ MFA programs ranging from montclair & rutgers to yale & brooklyn college. it was great to see what is happening in other programs. some of the work was great, some sucked- but it was just nice to have a bit of context for what we are doing and how other people are handling the grad experience. one of my best friends just started the program at hunter and it was great to have some insight from outside of our little pod city. i also went to PS1 and they have several great shows up. there's a vik muniz show that was so awesome i almost peed my pants. it had the toy soldier portraits, the peanut butter and jelly mona lisas and a bunch of my other favs along with a lot of stuff i had never seen. it was wonderful to be reminded that there are still people out there pushing the boundaries of photography. it seems like academia is trying to talk us out of the craft as if it "isn't enough". like when in one of daeshas critiques people kept saying she should intervene in the environments or stage some sort of public sculpture. why can't the photographs be enough??? when will we have to stop defending what we do? anyway, i just forgot how awesome vik muniz is and if you like him, get your ass down there. there was also a tom sandberg show at PS1 that was almost all gelatin silver prints. for those of us who know the significance- "the cult of silver" is alive and well- wink, wink. these photos also made me feel better about my own respect for craft and the process of photography- the respect that i was worried had been methodically brow beaten out of me, but it is still alive! and lastly, there was also a show at ps1 called "not for sale". an amazing group show that relates directly to the class. all the work was literally "not for sale". there was a broad range of stuff- richard prince, matthew richie, jeff koons, sharin neshat, robert rauschenberg, just a ton of stuff. most of the work had short explainations from the artists for why the piece was not available for purchase. the explainations were all over the place and given the status of many of the contributors, they were pretty funny to consider. especially the koons. (here's a link to the press release if you want more info: http://www.ps1.org/ps1_site/content/view/229/102/) it's well worth the trek to check these two shows out if you have time. here's some pics from the hunter show and the last one is from this funny interactive installation at ps1 that was supposed to be emulating iceland. i wanted to take more pics at PS1 but the security was on high alert or something...

funding

i have pretty strong feelings about this subject. i do think art is very important for society and that more people of diverse economic backgrounds should have access to art. that being said, i do not think it is the governments responsibility to fund individual artists. community arts programs, museums and other venues that are open to and benefit the general public should receive a certain amount of support, the same way health care and other social programs should, but as for individual artists, I don't think we should strive to rely on the government for money. There are many other professions that benefit the public- doctors, health care workers, day care workers, teachers- the list goes on- and none of these people are given individual support from the government for their efforts, so why should we as artists expect it? for me the choice of becoming an artist was not predicated on an assumption that i was owed a debt from society or the government for my noble efforts. there is so much private funding out there not only for artists, but for non-profit spaces- you just have to find it. like most careers, that of an artist takes a lot of administrative work. that anyone would expect to work in their studio 24/7 and just get handed money without lifting a finger to facilitate is just outrageous. yes, we will all probably have to work jobs that may or may not be related to art to get by at first, if not for the rest of our lives. and we will most likely bust our asses without a great deal of recognition. i believe that struggle is what makes life worth living and it is also what keeps you connected to humanity. living in an ivory tower where you make art that has no relevance to the general public is useless anyway. i'd much rather start a community arts center and impact the lives of young people than to exist in a bubble and receive accolades from an academic or other institutional structure that benifits only those with access to it.

dylan

overall i found the meredith tax writing to be on the mark in terms of how our criticism of different forms of expression become compartmentalized. and that the very categories people work within tend to weigh heavily on how the work is judged and interpreted. i did think her example of bob dylan was very funny though. of course dylan wrote from the heart and commented on the political climate, but to assume that everyone listening to his music was informed by it is absurd. he is largely regarded as a pop singer, not just a poet or even activist. and he distanced himself from many of the protest movements he had originally been a part of because he felt they were not really successful and that he was being exploited. his divergence from the folk scene was also a symptom of his own desire to change with the times and remain viable in american popular culture. which brings us back to the question of who his work was/is for? is it for young revolutionaries? maybe once it was. but now it is pop music that has about as much to do with revolution as the backstreet boys. i don't neccessarily think this deminishes the initial impact of his writing, but to hold him up as a pilar of "art as process" seems a little convoluted. i would posit ani difranco as a much better example of someone who never took the dangling carrot, always kept her artistic integrity and maintains popularity with her origianl fans because she has never waivered in her militant protests against civil injustice. and her work reaches far outside her music in her support of the arts locally and her personal involvement within the community. she will never be as mainstream as dylan, and that to me is a sign of her success as an activist. subversion can only go so far, sometimes you have to just say what you mean.

1st year opening

hey guys, i think our show looked pretty damn good! yeay us! here are some pics....

collecting

in the past 10 years i have lived in 11 different apartments. when i first moved to nyc i had one small suitcase that held all my belongings and i kept that same mode of living for about the first 4 years i was there. i lived on peoples living room floors, in cutained off kitchens and once even in a large closet. these small living quarters did not afford me the luxery of accumulating objects. because of this i always thought that i was above collecting the trinkets and decorative objects that most people like to fill their houses with. i even remember helping a very good friend of mine move several times and every time scolding him for having too many trinkets. why accumulate all that stuff if you know you'll have to move it again in a year? now that i am in a place where i know i will be for the next 2 years i have definitely gotten the trinket bug. i imagine what my apartment would look like full of wooden boxes and flowers and pier one accessories. and i wish i had bought more trinkets from my various travels. because if i don't have the objects, how will anyone ever know i was there? when i think about my future 10 years down the line or so, it does always include a vision of a house filled with objects i have accumulated over the years. up until last september i had never owned a bed, couch or any furniture beyond a thin futon cushion. but now that i have aquired furniture i find that it is having a psychological effect on me. i feel encumbered, tied down. what if i need to move tomorrow??? i can't seem to shake my nomadic tendancies even though i am probably the most stable i have been in my entire life in terms of a living situation. for me the gesture of collecting has so many more implications than just status, fetishism and historical relevance. to me it is a commitment. a commitment to the objects- that i will take care of them and protect them from being damaged during an inevitable move. and while i love to fatasize about a house full of trinkets and souveniers, it's probably never going to happen. a good example of this is a spencer tunick print i acquired for free after being in a shoot in manhattan a while back. i had the print in an envelope squished between some old screenprints and other artwork from my undergrad days. i forgot i had it for 4 years until i moved all my supplies here and rediscovered it. i pulled it out and without even hesitating i slapped some masking tape on the back and stuck it to my studio wall. and there it stayed for a couple months until i was broke and decided to sell it on e-bay. even though i obviously have the knowledge of what tape will do to a print and that the print was probably valuable, i just don't have the mindset that it requires to obsess over objects. i guess it's ironic since i'm an artist and hope for people to obsess over mine someday. but a leopard can't change it's spots.

marx

as you could all probably tell from our little skit we decided to have fun with the marx reading. there is not enough fun in this program in my opinion and any time there is an opportunity for laughs, i'm gonna take it. of course it was not a serious interpretation on our parts of his (limited) theories on art, but more an example of how theories are often misused. mao zedong was marxist and he used marx's theories to defend and uphold everything he deemed to be appropriate (be it actually related to marxist theory or not), in much the same way certain religious zealots use broad interpretations of the bible to substantiate their views. ideas are fluid and open to interpretation and people often bend and contort them for their own purposes. our purpose was comedy!

warhol at gagosian

i am such a ding-bat i forgot that i went to the warhol retrospective at gagosian over the break. i don't have too much to say other than it was freakin' huge! the space, the work, the foot traffic. anyway, here's some pics i took...

warhol

for me warhol is not only an icon for pop culture but also an icon for the excess of american capitalism through the unbelievable value that his work has been assigned through the auction market in recent years. conversations abound about how awesome and/or disgusting he was and that his work is nothing but rehashed memoirs of a shifting economy and/or genius. i am rather ambivalent about his work, but i really enjoy his writing. the way he talks about money so unabashedly always makes my stomach turn a bit, but then i realize that perhaps i have been taught to have an aversion to money by the rather seperatist art education that i have had up to this point. i don't crave money, but like warhol, when it is in my pocket i spend it. so in that sense maybe i do like it a little bit more than i am willing to admit. and maybe i am a big fat capitalist pig in sheeps clothing. when i think about being able to "get by" it does include certain luxury items that might not be considered neccessities. i want to eat organic food, drink belgian beer and feed my cat special food so her bladder doesn't get infected. these things require money- more money than i have access to. so i guess the idea of working pretty much any job available is for me not all about art and the struggle it entails, but also about the luxury items that i desire. my students had a raging debate in our last class about "aura" and when does art become art (they had read part of art in the age of mechanical reproduction) and a resounding majority of them ascribed to the opinion that art is not art until validated by a source outside the artist. henry darger be damned, these kids want their 15 minutes of fame. and i am slowly starting to realize that maybe that is ok. most people who enter a given profession aspire to some sort of recognition for their efforts and why should art be any different? the recognition could be fame or money or someone simply telling you that your work had an effect on them. i doubt the latter would be any less profound than the first two, but it would perhaps be more elusive given the investment status that art now has in our culture as opposed to the carefree days when people bought things becasue they "liked" them.

6 year plan

I just wanted to say to Arthur that his candid response to the 6-year plan query was really refreshing. It woke me up out of my grad school coma. When I sit alone and really give it some thought my plans are not much different. I'd like to own a house, have a yard, animals and maybe some foster kids. But when you put a bunch of artists together in a room things become a bit diluted, at least they do for me. I start thinking about my own experiences and those of my friends and the next thing I know I am alternately praising and defaming the "art world" depending upon which memory I conjure up. I agree with Anne in that I am not in this for fame and fortune and that I would be happy to pay my bills as a retoucher, teacher, graphic designer, wedding photographer, etc. I am not above any job and would gladly return to bartending in a heartbeat if it would afford me the time to make my work. i just want a little bit of autonomy and the freedom to continue living my life pretty much the same way i have been up to this point. I'm happy. I don't feel that i am suffuring, I feel that i am damn lucky to have a room to go into to make things every day and people around me to talk to about it. The degree is a step towards teaching and I guess some sort of legitimization of my choices, but really i just wanted the time and the space to work and people to share that with. there are lots of ways to make money and i don't neccessarily see art as the best way, but i do see it as a possibility. as much of a possibility as any other choice i suppose. i think the main problem with the group discussions is that we all already know the choices that lie ahead in our futures and are trying to enjoy this suspended reality period before we have to confront them. beyond that i know that most of us are just looking for grant money, residencies, and other cash and opportunities. maybe the class should focus more on finding resources rather than theorizing on how we define ourselves as artists?

MFA's

i just happened to come accross the post below on gawker.com today randomly, so i thought i'd share it for a few laughs....

Creative Writing MFA programs have always struck us as a bit of a scam. We mean, we respect that they provide workshop-leading jobs for writers who are qualified for little else, and we admire the work they do in the 'keeping entitled assholes who consider themselves artistes far away in Iowa where they can't annoy us' department. But seriously, we don't think that having a bunch of jealous, bitter, insecure writerly types sitting in a room sniping at each other shapes anyone into a better novelist (except maybe Curtis Sittenfeld. Uh, and George Saunders. Well, so there are some exceptions, but it makes us feel better to think that MFAs are pointless so just let us, okay?). Anyway, it was with relief and a bit of awe that we read this letter to Salon's 'Since You Asked' column, from an MFA student who seems to have seen the light:

"Since I started being serious about fiction writing, say about four or five years ago, I realized there was only one thing that I wanted. I wanted a shot at being a writer, and the way I defined that (knowing there were many ways I could have defined it) was to be accepted to a certain rather prestigious MFA program."

The writer goes on to say that she has since fallen in love, realized that love is the most important thing, and lost a lot of faith in her abilities.

"I'm not sure that I deserve to be here. I can't see that my work is getting any better. I feel like my classmates are all better writers than I am and it doesn't help that most of them have odious personalities. I have continued to write, which in my mind is better than giving up, but I find myself constantly thinking I'm crap and wondering if I should give up this ghost . . . So what am I doing here? I'm going to stay and finish my degree, but I've been thinking a lot lately about never writing a word afterward. Does that make me a terrible person?"

MFA lady, we applaud you! If only everyone else in your program would come to a similar realization! The world would be a better place! Entire forests would be saved from pulping! Singing and dancing in the streets! And that must be the advice that Salon's Cary Tennis is about to dole out, right?

"I am glad you are going to finish the program. No matter what you decide to do later, it is good to finish the program and get your degree."

Oh. Sigh.

Dave Hickey

I love Dave Hickey. I remember reading Air Guitar as an undergrad and it was the first thing I read for a class that i could relate to in any way. I agree with his views on higher ed for the most part and could not agree more with his analysis of the contemporary art "world" and it's conflated sense of self-importance. I worked for a very high end appraiser for the past year and a half and it was all I could do to keep from bursting out laughing when clients would call asking if we could "just make the value a bit higher??" Which was usually only about, say $100,000 or so. These same millionaire collectors would troll the auction sites themselves to get the latest sales prices and then turn around and expect us to inflate the insurance value to the auction price. Hickey summed it up so well by pointing out that art has no value. Once people resign themselves to that, I think the cncept of being a "professional" artist can seem much more realistic. If someone likes your work and wants to buy it, then sell it. Beyond that it is all a game of chess between a very small group of wealthy people controlling a small group of artworks that have been, with the help of museums and galleries, inflated to values that could never be realized outside of the fantasy world of the auction house. This world juxtaposed with the equally fantastic arena of academic critique often makes me want to vomit. But at the end of the day theory is just that, an idea. We can shuck and jive oursleves to death during these two years or we can be honest with ourselves. I make things because I enjoy making things. If someone wants to buy the things I make then that is great. If they don't then I will still make them. All the defeatist lore that was contained in the other writings did not seem to have any effect on me. I will continue to get sticky glue covered fingers every night from pasting ladies heads onto superhero bodies and I will continue to dress up in costumes for my own amusement. When I first decided to go to art school all those years ago I had this cheesy idea of it being a community of "kindred spirits" filled with fun artsy parties and people who would nurture and lift eachother to new heights. But the main problem i found with art school as an undergrad was that 18 year-olds, even cool arty ones, have no fucking idea who they are or what they are doing and the arena of art school just becomes an extension of the competetive, unsure awkwardness of highschool. One would hope that grad school would be more akin to the utopian arty paradise I dreamed of, but Hickey was right about that too. Fuck it, I am going to go have a beer...