This time the things people googled to end up at my blog were really good. Sometimes even whimsical.
tin foil should be placed with the shinn
feeling useless “back in school”
christ claude and other artist who wrap
judd lindquist
ramen
hanging sculpture created with reading g
offf conference comments in nyc
“Mary Bauermeister”
cole lindquist
elephant, moon, millionaire
judge nude marfa, texas
animation being either modernism or post
Samantha Russell You Should Go
elephant kiss
I’m kind of in trouble with Sam here, because I haven’t been promoting our super cute podcast.
So, listen to our podcast please.
It’s called Super Nerdy, and I think you might like it. And if you do, subscribe to it in iTunes for Pete’s sake!!!
So yesterday I had a very positive meeting with my adviser (my next (last!) quarter is going to be way easier than I thought) and I checked my mail folder (which I didn’t know existed) afterwards, and it was full of reading material for the postmodern class I took last quarter. So I thought I’d put up my final paper for the class so you can all leave comments on how brilliant you think I am.
INSERT CLEVER AND RELEVANT TITLE HERE
Sitting down to finally write this paper is kind of a harrowing task. I guess it doesn’t help much that my notes mostly consist of drawings of animals and trees, and one quite elaborate pyramid shaped stack of boxes with holes in the floors/ceilings and the characters inside moving between the levels. Impressive, maybe; but it doesn’t help me solve the riddle of postmodernism.
When I think of postmodernism, I think of the heated arguments I have with my boyfriend (who luckily loves to argue these things endlessly as much as I do) and the gentle generalized explanations I give to my parents (who must wonder where I got this passion for art theory, as it surely was not from them). The boyfriend arguments mostly consist of me saying modernism is not an evil thing, and him saying that everything he likes is postmodern (at least that’s my side of the dispute). The explanation to my parents is that modernism was a setting up of a system of rules and boundaries and yes, “little boxes”, and postmodernism is about not only recklessly breaking down those boundaries, but blurring them and forgetting them and reshaping them into something that makes sense to who we as a culture and society are today.
It’s even more than that, though. It’s about open interpretation and new medias and the internet and new social interactions and creative commons and, most of all, it’s about the discussion about what it is. Postmodernism is about freedom from structure, but also the freedom to use the existing structures, and the freedom to smash down those structures and rebuild them into something else.
The most fun and most exciting thing about that for me, and probably many many people in my generation is the internet. The internet is a place where we can share things with each other in new and exciting ways that no one ever dreamed of before. It’s the biggest breakthrough in art since…ever.
With the internet, not only are we able to see art we never could have seen before and discuss art in ways we never could have discussed before, we can make art in ways we never made it before. And I don’t just mean digital photography and other digital mediums. I mean interactive websites that become interactive artworks that can be interacted with by millions of people worldwide at any given moment.
Interactivity has reached a whole new level in our age. I recently went to a conference in New York City called Offf (you can look up more information on the web at www.offf.ws/nyc if you want this paper to become more interactive). It was focused on the ideas of new media and technology in a way I had never seen before in any other context. Mind you, I have never been to a conference before (and also never spent three nights in a hostel with two Swedes and a Slovenian before), which had a great effect on my memory of the event.
I went with my boyfriend Sam and his housemate Derek. We each brought a different aspect and view to the weekend. Sam was interested in web development and online projects. Derek was excited to see all kinds of great animation and animators. I wanted to see all kinds of art myself. Digital art, new media art, performance art, anything. Luckily none of us were disappointed.
The specifics of the event are irrelevant to my point, just believe me that there were numerous inspiring, beautiful projects being displayed and fascinating people all around us. The point I am trying to make here is that the whole experience was about as postmodern as it gets in my opinion.
Sam found the event on a blog online, and sent it to me and Derek via facebook. We booked the hostel online, taking into account the reviews posted by previous visitors and the online profile. Then we got directions from googlemaps and hit the road. Derek used an adaptor on his laptop to play podcasts over my car’s stereo. When we got to the conference, there was a wireless internet connection set up just for the event, and everyone was online bloging and twittering about the speakers as they spoke. The swedish people in our room told us about how they watch mainly american television, a season behind, by downloading it from the internet.
That’s not to say I think postmodernism is just technology. It’s so much more. It is a new way of looking at things. Postmodernism not only creates new things to look at, but new tools to view them through and new eyes to see them with. It’s like waking up every day not knowing what beautiful and exciting things happened while you were sleeping. In fact, it’s a lot like that. In fact, it’s exactly like that.
I took these notes one day when Sam was sick and had to miss class. They are very concise and informative and illustrate how I viewed this class, so I think it is important to include them. But it’s kind of a lot, so I’ll single space to be fair.
10-9-07
-Alex is wearing beige cargo pants, but still a black belt
-Much of the class seems to be missing
-some event we were not aware of/invited to?
-The class is divided
-Derek and new media guys and me vs. B-list hipsters
-The screen is down and Alex’s laptop is hooked up
-multimedia postmodern presentation?
-We are asked to refrain from zoning out due to the abstractness of Alex’s screensaver
-Turns out I took the Michael Fried essay differently than everyone else, but I silently refuse to change my mind
-While writing the last note, Alex says something about “art that drinks 40’s in the hood”
-I miss the context
-I notice the wear pattern on the carpet, and wonder if there is any one spot in the room that no one has ever stepped on
-what about the whole building?
-the whole campus??
-the whole world???
-I feel claustrophobic
-Apparently artists are people too
-Can we go one class without talking about Warhol or Pollok?
-should we?
-The back of my hand itches like crazy
-does it still mean I will be getting money soon?
-Re:Raushenburg: “sometimes it’s paint, sometimes it’s a sock”
-I notice a piece of masking tape on the floor
-buried treasure?
-Does anyone even use overhead projectors anymore?
-Friedian: someone who doesn’t like Hirst, Koons, Duchamp, rainbows, puppies, or sunshine
-Girl says feudal or futile in a sentence where either could make sense
-I am confused
-Art is nothing but politics, we are all screwed
-The art world is not a conspiracy, but might be a cult of some sort
-I am not sure “analization” is a word, but I think “analize” is, however, I am not sure of the spelling of either
-There is a piece of black tape under my desk, and another a few feet to my left
-someone slowly covering the whole floor?
-are they here now?
-Even though I am sitting in a completely different spot than last class, I am still sitting in my usual desk
-how does this happen?
-Modernists: thinkers; truth
-Literalists: wrong thinkers; lies
-Pop/ Op artists: non-thinkers; dumbing down
-Next week we will talk about allegory
-I have several white flecks on my nails
-someone must be thinking about me a lot
-There’s more in experience than in a work of art
-The front table looks dangerously close to collapsing
-this does not stop Alex from sitting on it
-I wonder if the show about light is at the Albright-Knox yet, or if it is there still
-If that table breaks, it will be very painful for Alex and very funny for us
-Time for a video presentation
-we watch some Goldstien films on ubuweb
-they seem less dramatic then when reading about them
-We watch feathers fall on a chair for seven minutes
-Alex gets back on the table, tempting fate again
-Would looking at a blank screen for an hour really be a waste of an hour?
-Interpreters are not allowed to participate in classes
-Kid who wears pink sunglasses all the time is a huge douchebag
-big surprise there
-We turn in our papers and are dismissed
A few things I think are true about that I either realized while studying postmodernism or had confirmed by it:
· Everything is art to someone
· The experience of the art is just as important as the art itself
· Most art can be seen as either modern or postmodern, depending on what way you look at it and how long
· Postmodernism is as much about thinking as it is about doing or making
· All you have to do to be an artist is proclaim yourself one, and sometimes not even that
· There is a fine line between art and science, and I want to make it even finer
· Technology is art
· Technology is all around us and a beautiful thing
· Most famous and semi famous artists are total assholes, but they earned the right
· Most people just want to be Andy Warhol instead of themselves
· It is better to be the first [your name here] then the next [their name here]
During the course of the summer I totally changed the direction of my personal work. I went from photography to sculpting tiny animals out of heresy kiss wrappers and placing them in tiny scenes. They portray loneliness and hopefulness and longing much better then photography ever did for me. And this class has helped me feel like that’s okay.
I am 50% Tortured Artist.
Art is significant in my life, people are scum but I have the capicity to deal with it. Give it a few more years and I will either forget about art or hate the world.
Take the
Tortured Artist Test
@ FualiDotCom
Via Art News Blog (via another blog). I’m only 50 percent tortured artist for now, but I’m working on it.
It FINALLY snowed for real here in Rochester. Like real snow on the ground and everything. And it’s cold out. Very cold. I hope there’s enough to make a snowman soon.
