Laundry List

dirty laundry:

geology
scale

story telling
community
humor
listening

adventures
time alone

heritage and hillbillies
italy and michaelangelo
ambition vs humility
to do lists

maintenance

movies
history: distortion vs acuracy
specialization vs (well roundedness?)

indifference and greed
relationships
the nature of people and their ability to change

documentation

lies imbelishment
seclusion and secrets
confessions

Borseda
Bodyworlds
Prostate cancer
interviews
parents
home
travel
family
guilt
responsibility

chess and competition
against competition and originality

words to strengthen the mundane

pride
we/they vs us
politics
historical fiction

teaching, mentors, and humility
martial arts movies, practice, discipline

materials

home again

so i moved to portland oregon from south carolina for a shift in view. i applied to graduate school and got in. that sealed the deal. there is a ton of stuff that i miss about south carolina. including the dogwoods, the heat, my kin, and words like "kin". i like it in portland and have no interest in puting a length to my stay here. i've made some friends quickly, (i joke about it being like i bought them by going to grad school) the land is breathtaking, and there is an endless amount to do even when money is scarce.
still my parents home in pickens south carolina, and mine for my first eighteen years, will always be the one against all future ones will be measured. my most formative stories come from there. what each of those stories means to me changes often but there are visceral memories that shock the shit out of me with their clarity. the creek i played in as a kid can at times seem real and like i can even hear it a little. all its bends and falls are ones i can walk along in my mind almost like you can move through google earth.
what is it that occurs when you go back to places like that? some kind of endorphin thing? like a nostalgia hormone or something? is it a comfort zone thing? familiarity?
right now i have a sick nana. that is the toughest thing for me to be so distant from. with everything else the absence is making the heart grow fonder. i'll always go back and i will always look for the rocks to be in the same place. the roads will lead to the same places and anything that has changed will undergo a thorough investigation. my stories change a little as memories blur and the stories i invent to explain the changes that occur while i'm gone will probably mix in with them.
i don't think this story is all that amazing or anything. there are tons of kids that grow up like this in the country. my parents are a little unusual for the area but other than that i was a regular dirty kid there. and is back woods south carolina really all that different than back woods Vermont or Wyoming other than different fruit trees grow there and a few variations on how you pronounce things like 'racecar'? the thing i get a little kick out of is the combinations of places i think of as homes. Pickens, Charleston, and Southeast Portland. I might just be one of a hand full of people ever with those places under their belt. Doubt that anyone can tell me if that means anything but its one of the few things that can make me feel a little special. Not in the short bus sense or the 'my president cares about me' sense but more in the vein of 'i am an artist and i am a snowflake.' But still I think Dan Attoe said it well when he wrote "You're vulnerable just like the rest of us. Get some Balls. Better get your shit together." in bright neon.

minestroni

a couple folks asked for the recipe so here it is as good as i can remember.

*some olive oil
*a clove of garlic
*a large onion
celery
a carrot
a can of sliced tomatoes
*spinach
zucchini
broth of some kind (bout 2 of those cardboard things of it)
*a sprig of rosemary
pepper and salt
a potato
noodles
a can of white or pinto beans
some parsley

everything with a * goes in first and then add the broth and everything else.
i really don't know the subtleties of timing in cooking so the noodles got all mushy. i guess those should go in last.

for real details consult someone who knows what they are doing. my grandma's # is 864 380 1268

then parmesan all up on the top

chemelion

i guess this is what you are if you change often. i alter my path artistically depending on who i'm around sometimes. i even will start talking like someone if i spend enough time with them. i wonder if this is a common thing. do other people/artists/animals do this? i feel like its an ingrained part of my personality now. i feel like i learn by imitating and then finding new sources. when some of my hippie friends ask me this question about whether i most associate myself with water, land or sky, i always answer water. i like the notions behind that element. i like that its flexible most of all.

thesis outline

outline

I intend to compose my "thesis exhibition statement" as though the sections within it were sections of a book that will be made for and about the exhibition.

opening
start with a story. one that grabs and directs. one that ends with why i moved to portland and came to grad school. the tone i'm going for is very conversational or comfortable. i think i'm going to do my best writing if i don't try to write it like an essay, not that i won't reference things or try to make it obvious that i have done some work and research, but just so it is more alive like i have always wanted my writing to be.
maybe i should write this part as a letter to myself when i'm 45 because there is the looming notion that the art you make in graduate school is not going to be the best art in your life. i would be speaking to a version of myself that would be making better art. i think i'm interested in this because of the attempt i keep making to look at myself from another person's perspective, and because i tend to talk to myself when i write in sketchbooks. also, i like the potential for humor, and it would be a new style for me. then again maybe that's stupid.

some of the history of what got you here and why this is different than the art you have made before.
the newness is what makes this valuable to you. regular work on something more deeply rooted makes this valuable.
explain why it is deeply rooted. with a story? i do want to become a better storyteller and i can't get there if i don't just get on it.

write a lot of back story and then edit down. no one cares about most of that shit and you should probably stick to most of the stuff that has to do with this project. keep it for later though
a quick modest and mildly pathetic admission of your process sounds good.


middle
list of things important to the cause of the book. this will be where the laundry list comes mainly into play. maybe it will be done as a list of bullet points or short sections that get elaborated upon.
i think i will attach all the writings done on the list topics and then hack off the things that seem less pertinent to the project.

dirty laundry:

geology
scale

story telling
community
humor
listening

adventures
time alone

heritage and hillbillies
italy and michaelangelo
ambition vs humility
to do lists

maintenance

movies
history: distortion vs acuracy
specialization vs (well roundedness?)

indifference and greed
relationships
the nature of people and their ability to change

documentation

lies imbelishment
seclusion and secrets
confessions

Borseda
Bodyworlds
Prostate cancer
interviews
parents
home
travel
family
guilt
responsibility

chess and competition
against competition and originality

words to strengthen the mundane

pride
we/they vs us
politics
historical fiction

teaching, mentors, and humility
martial arts movies, practice, discipline

materials


the second part of the middle will be all the exhibits. photos and stories of each piece in the show.


end
this could be a good point to describe all the experimentation in the first year of school. all the shit that didn't work out. or the shit that will resurface later. this is another section that i will probably blow out of proportion and then whittle away from.
the end of the book should have a bit about the failures and the successes of this particular project.

back east

interview pieces.

ny times interview with laurie anderson. i like her. and i really agree with what she says about space. this is exactly what geology does for me. i can look at the ground and feel comforted probably just like she can look at the sky and feel comforted.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/magazine/30QUESTIONS.html?_r=2&scp=13&sq=artist+interview&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Since you don't identify with astronauts, what moved you to spend a year at NASA?

I like the scale of space. I like thinking about human beings and what worms we are. We are really worms and specks. I find a certain comfort in that.

Whom is your art intended for?

I think I do my work for some sadder version of myself, a woman who would be sitting in Row K. I am trying to make her laugh.

At 57, do you worry about aging and wrinkles?

Not really. I think some prunish people look pretty good. I am more worried about turning into a schlump than into a prune.

How would you define a schlump?

A schlump is someone who doesn't care about anything and who is just protecting their own turf, which is getting smaller and more meaningless, and then they disappear.

Do you find this to be a schlumpy era compared with the 80's, when you were part of a creatively inspired New York art scene?

I don't miss the 80's. I don't miss anything right now. I have zero time for nostalgia.

i thought this was a good question to end on for an interviewer interviewing an interviewer.
interview with ira glass

How much of a person’s authentic self do you think can be conveyed in an interview? I don’t think you necessarily get to the deepest truth of every person. I don’t think there is a deepest truth, often. But you can get to something revealing.

Hans Ulrich Obrist interview with Howard Becker

[This interview was conducted at the Hotel de la Perle in Paris, October 20, 2004. It is published as part of the catalogue of "The Welfare Show," Ariane Beyn, editor, published by Elmgreen & Dragset and a list of others in 2005. Hans Ulrich Obrist is Curator Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and an author and editor, who has published HuO: Hans-Ulrich Obrist: Interviews and Do It.]

HUO The first question I wanted to ask you is about interviews, as I am recording this ‘infinite conversation’ with philosophers and architects and artists – so far 900 hours. When I researched your interviews, I found a few interviews but I found a lot of literature on you and interviews and the use of interviews in your work. So I wanted in the first chapter of this interview to interview you about your interviews! Could tell me a little about how you use interviews in your work and the importance of interviews?

HB I use interviews for lack of something better. Something better would be to see it myself. If I can’t be there, if I want to know about something that happened to you five years ago or yesterday or sometime when I wasn’t there, then I would have to talk to you. What I really want to find out is how people organise themselves to get something done. What I have been thinking about now for many years is how people organise themselves to get a work of art done: everybody who is involved, how they co-operate. The best way to do that is to be there, to watch them do it, to watch the false starts, the mistakes.

HUO To be in the studio?

HB Yes. You see, I am a piano-player originally; my original trade was playing the piano, playing jazz, and I played in bars and nightclubs, in striptease joints, for weddings and bar mitzvahs and company parties, all of that, for many years. So when I was doing that I was there. I saw exactly, as best I could, what happened, who did what, how people responded to various pressures, and that’s what I want to know about when I investigate something. If I can’t be there, then I have to talk to people and say, ‘What happened? I wasn’t here’. So in a piece I did fifty years ago I was interested in how people learned to smoke marijuana. I couldn’t be there when they all learned, so I interviewed them and said to them, ‘How did you first happen to smoke marijuana? Who introduced you to it? What did you think about it and when you first lit up a joint what did you do? And then what happened?’ My favourite style of interviewing is [the style I used when] I did a study of actors and theatre people some years ago. They all claimed that they were very busy and they didn’t have a lot of time to talk to me but they would make an hour. When I sat down with them they almost always asked me, ‘How long is this going to take? I am very busy’. So I said, ‘I’ve only got maybe two questions: the first one is, “How did you get into it?” and, “Then what happened?”’ So they laughed and then they started talking and they talked for maybe two or three hours! I only asked questions to clarify things. So that is what the interviews are for. I don’t think of it as a very complex or complicated thing to do; it’s really just a conversation. You are sitting next to somebody on an aeroplane and you start talking to them: ‘What kind of work do you do? Oh, you are an art curator. How did you get started doing that?’ I mean it’s just that kind of conversation.

HUO Beginnings often, questions about the beginnings.

HB Very often. Or another kind of question that I use a lot is to ask about problems, trouble: ‘You are an art curator. What do you have trouble with as an art curator?’ It’s a question that everyone has an answer for. So it’s not an interview in the survey meaning of interview. I don’t ask, ‘What do you think about this: a, b, c, or d?’ I ask. ‘What happened?’ ‘What did you do?’ Something that is open and that you can respond to in a way that makes sense to you.

this work was one we saw in venice. calle recieved a breakup email from a lover and had all these tons of women respond to the letter. it was bad ass. an archer lady shot at the letter. dancers coreographed dances for it and a female parrot ate a small version of the letter. a mime acted out the letter and aclown read it emphatically.


i liked the way it created a community of women in a way. i want something similar in my thesis show i think.


sophie calle
her collaborators are highlighted in a way, but her pieces are all about her.
"take care of yourself"
http://odeo.com/audio/13831723/view