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Can a person whose feelings are so many and so lovely be at the same time so unfeeling?
– Robert Walser
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June 29, 2010
June 28, 2010
June 23, 2010
The Mistakist Declaration by Harmony Korine
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1. i have never been one to gravitate toward the labelling of things. But i feel forced to declare my adherance to a mode of creation known as "mistakism"
2. i am a "mistakist" and all the work I produce adheres to the tenants attached to the label/movement.
3. (factors involved include)
4. All modes of work exist to produce a single body of work. each facet builds upon the other.
5. you can never differentiate between the seperate modes of creation.
6. A completely unified aesthetic.
7. Mistakes are good.
8. there is no such thing as a true mistake. only a more modern rethinking.
9. Suicide is a show of strength.
10. only in randomness and "mistakes" can one truely announce what is too deep to express in a direct and true way.
11. football games, science projects and explosions.
12. rather than direct a scene - document the action
13. Provocations
14. Heritage - Lineage - Prejudice.
15. grammer means more when words are mispelled and used incorrectly in the traditional sense of the word.
16. ----------------
17. Jokes without Punchlines.
18. Hermits and rural Lonliness
19. A "Mistakist" must believe in God over all else.
this is how I made Julien Donkey Boy
The DOGME 95 is early "Mistakism."
.
1. i have never been one to gravitate toward the labelling of things. But i feel forced to declare my adherance to a mode of creation known as "mistakism"
2. i am a "mistakist" and all the work I produce adheres to the tenants attached to the label/movement.
3. (factors involved include)
4. All modes of work exist to produce a single body of work. each facet builds upon the other.
5. you can never differentiate between the seperate modes of creation.
6. A completely unified aesthetic.
7. Mistakes are good.
8. there is no such thing as a true mistake. only a more modern rethinking.
9. Suicide is a show of strength.
10. only in randomness and "mistakes" can one truely announce what is too deep to express in a direct and true way.
11. football games, science projects and explosions.
12. rather than direct a scene - document the action
13. Provocations
14. Heritage - Lineage - Prejudice.
15. grammer means more when words are mispelled and used incorrectly in the traditional sense of the word.
16. ----------------
17. Jokes without Punchlines.
18. Hermits and rural Lonliness
19. A "Mistakist" must believe in God over all else.
this is how I made Julien Donkey Boy
The DOGME 95 is early "Mistakism."
.
June 13, 2010
June 12, 2010
Gustav Mahler quote
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What you theatre people call your tradition is nothing more than what keeps you parasites comfortable.
- Gustav Mahler
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What you theatre people call your tradition is nothing more than what keeps you parasites comfortable.
- Gustav Mahler
.
June 11, 2010
June 10, 2010
The questions you are currently asking
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The subtlety and delicate brilliance of the questions you are currently asking.
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The subtlety and delicate brilliance of the questions you are currently asking.
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June 8, 2010
To live here you either have to be against everything or become a thief. That’s what makes me love the way we see things.
.
Excerpt from The Crystal Frontier by Mai-Thu Perret:
I am in P. I live in an attic. On the fifth floor. It’s already spring, the window is open. The traffic is awful. Yesterday, I was watching people dance and I really wanted to be home and not here.
It’s true, you’re right, the streets are interesting when there is traffic and at night when they are lit up. As for the advertising, I was very disappointed. I expected something much better, it is so mediocre that there really isn’t anything to say about it. The neon signs are not bad, not really because of what they promote but because there are so many of them and they’re well fabricated. I couldn’t find the poster you told me about though. In general, from an artistic point of view, P. is very provincial. On the other hand, the bridges and the escalators are very beautiful. For some time there had been a growing demand for everything new, and now they’ve started selling the kind of novelty fabrics we love to imitate at home, but there are also a lot of geometric patterns. All the rooms are covered with this style of wallpaper. I’d like to send you catalogues, but haven’t had time to find those stores yet, there are so many streets I don’t know.
Yesterday night I walked down the streets on my own, I saw a lot of circuses and movie theatres, but I didn’t dare go anywhere, there are so many places where you must pay to go in and it’s hard when you don’t speak the language. I observe everything. What imbeciles and idiots people are: they have so much and they don’t do anything, they “make love,” as they say so delicately. The woman as object fabricated by the capitalist West will be its downfall. Everything about them is fabricated: the hands, the postures, the bodies. There are dozens of theatres where naked women spend the entire night silently, wearing huge expensive feathers, in front of an expensive décor, and nothing happens, they walk by, and that’s all, everybody’s happy. Every single one is different. And what’s the point? They parade naked and that’s all. They don’t speak, they don’t dance, they don’t move. They just walk on by, one after the other… In groups of three, five, or 20… and that’s it. And even now, I couldn’t possibly tell whether it is exactly “nothing,” or whether they are “objects.”
In truth there is very little to see in this exhibition. They’ve build an enormous number of pavilions, from afar they are all ugly and from up close it’s even worse. Everything is cluttered.
What this signifies is that we must work, and work, and work. The new light does not only represent the liberation of the worker, it also signifies a new attitude towards men, towards women, towards objects. Even objects, in our hands, must be our equals, real comrades, and we will learn to laugh, have fun, and talk with them. Look how many objects there are here, coldly ornamented and coldly ornamenting the city from outside, while from inside they are doing their hard work, like slaves plotting a disaster to avenge themselves from their oppressors. To live here you either have to be against everything or become a thief. That’s what makes me love the way we see things. Now I understand the capitalist who has too little, the opium of life really is objects. They are absolutely unable to tell the difference between an object and an ersatz. We will never be able to build a new model for life if our relationships are like the ones of those Western bohemians. That’s the real problem. First there is our way of life. Then we must come together, stay united, and trust each other. Now I understand that we must never imitate anything, but to create what is new following our own taste.
The club is ready now, I’m sending you the photographs. It is really so simple, clear, and light that one never wants to make it dirty. A lot of enamel, a lot of white, a lot of black, and a lot of grey.
(My understanding is that this text is adapted from a letter that Aleksandr Rodchenko wrote while visiting Paris)
.
Excerpt from The Crystal Frontier by Mai-Thu Perret:
I am in P. I live in an attic. On the fifth floor. It’s already spring, the window is open. The traffic is awful. Yesterday, I was watching people dance and I really wanted to be home and not here.
It’s true, you’re right, the streets are interesting when there is traffic and at night when they are lit up. As for the advertising, I was very disappointed. I expected something much better, it is so mediocre that there really isn’t anything to say about it. The neon signs are not bad, not really because of what they promote but because there are so many of them and they’re well fabricated. I couldn’t find the poster you told me about though. In general, from an artistic point of view, P. is very provincial. On the other hand, the bridges and the escalators are very beautiful. For some time there had been a growing demand for everything new, and now they’ve started selling the kind of novelty fabrics we love to imitate at home, but there are also a lot of geometric patterns. All the rooms are covered with this style of wallpaper. I’d like to send you catalogues, but haven’t had time to find those stores yet, there are so many streets I don’t know.
Yesterday night I walked down the streets on my own, I saw a lot of circuses and movie theatres, but I didn’t dare go anywhere, there are so many places where you must pay to go in and it’s hard when you don’t speak the language. I observe everything. What imbeciles and idiots people are: they have so much and they don’t do anything, they “make love,” as they say so delicately. The woman as object fabricated by the capitalist West will be its downfall. Everything about them is fabricated: the hands, the postures, the bodies. There are dozens of theatres where naked women spend the entire night silently, wearing huge expensive feathers, in front of an expensive décor, and nothing happens, they walk by, and that’s all, everybody’s happy. Every single one is different. And what’s the point? They parade naked and that’s all. They don’t speak, they don’t dance, they don’t move. They just walk on by, one after the other… In groups of three, five, or 20… and that’s it. And even now, I couldn’t possibly tell whether it is exactly “nothing,” or whether they are “objects.”
In truth there is very little to see in this exhibition. They’ve build an enormous number of pavilions, from afar they are all ugly and from up close it’s even worse. Everything is cluttered.
What this signifies is that we must work, and work, and work. The new light does not only represent the liberation of the worker, it also signifies a new attitude towards men, towards women, towards objects. Even objects, in our hands, must be our equals, real comrades, and we will learn to laugh, have fun, and talk with them. Look how many objects there are here, coldly ornamented and coldly ornamenting the city from outside, while from inside they are doing their hard work, like slaves plotting a disaster to avenge themselves from their oppressors. To live here you either have to be against everything or become a thief. That’s what makes me love the way we see things. Now I understand the capitalist who has too little, the opium of life really is objects. They are absolutely unable to tell the difference between an object and an ersatz. We will never be able to build a new model for life if our relationships are like the ones of those Western bohemians. That’s the real problem. First there is our way of life. Then we must come together, stay united, and trust each other. Now I understand that we must never imitate anything, but to create what is new following our own taste.
The club is ready now, I’m sending you the photographs. It is really so simple, clear, and light that one never wants to make it dirty. A lot of enamel, a lot of white, a lot of black, and a lot of grey.
(My understanding is that this text is adapted from a letter that Aleksandr Rodchenko wrote while visiting Paris)
.
June 4, 2010
Negative Art Writing
.
1.
For a long time now I have been wanting to write a catalog or brochure text for an artist. I have been wanting to write a catalog or brochure text that was completely and irredeemably negative about the work. I am just looking for an artist and gallery that will let me.
2.
More specifically, I would like to write about work that I like. But write only negative things about it. And yes, everything I write would be true. And yes, the writer and/or curator would agree on the parameters with me beforehand. It would be a way of trying to grapple with the fact that so much art writing (most? all?) feels like little more than sophisticated PR. And the fact that within catalog and brochure texts purely negative, yet still honest, writing is never allowed.
3.
Writing a sanctioned, but purely negative, text about an artist has a whiff of the perverse, even S & M, about it.
But one thing I feel quite sure about is it would only make the artist stronger. It would be a kind of supreme act of self-confidence, showing that they could take it. (I say this in the belief that I would be able to write some truly devastating negative texts.)
Yes, this is also always the problem with sanctioned institutional critique. It is most often a kind of strategy to control the nature of critique without actually having to change any of the problems of the institution.
But I wasn't so much thinking of these kinds of power games. I was more thinking of a way to draw attention to how unrelentingly positive most art writing is, even when its being critical, and to think about how often art writing is a kind of PR. Perversely, I think writing a purely negative text would be even better PR, because it would probably get the artist a bit more attention.
A tangle of paradoxes.
.
1.
For a long time now I have been wanting to write a catalog or brochure text for an artist. I have been wanting to write a catalog or brochure text that was completely and irredeemably negative about the work. I am just looking for an artist and gallery that will let me.
2.
More specifically, I would like to write about work that I like. But write only negative things about it. And yes, everything I write would be true. And yes, the writer and/or curator would agree on the parameters with me beforehand. It would be a way of trying to grapple with the fact that so much art writing (most? all?) feels like little more than sophisticated PR. And the fact that within catalog and brochure texts purely negative, yet still honest, writing is never allowed.
3.
Writing a sanctioned, but purely negative, text about an artist has a whiff of the perverse, even S & M, about it.
But one thing I feel quite sure about is it would only make the artist stronger. It would be a kind of supreme act of self-confidence, showing that they could take it. (I say this in the belief that I would be able to write some truly devastating negative texts.)
Yes, this is also always the problem with sanctioned institutional critique. It is most often a kind of strategy to control the nature of critique without actually having to change any of the problems of the institution.
But I wasn't so much thinking of these kinds of power games. I was more thinking of a way to draw attention to how unrelentingly positive most art writing is, even when its being critical, and to think about how often art writing is a kind of PR. Perversely, I think writing a purely negative text would be even better PR, because it would probably get the artist a bit more attention.
A tangle of paradoxes.
.
May 29, 2010
1,2,3.
.
1.
We live in a consumer culture. Advertising is everywhere, and would not be everywhere if it did not perceive within us something closed it considered worth opening. We do not live in a democracy, we live in a corporate oligarchy. We are nervous about politics, about politicians, about most utopian options or possibilities for positive social change. For the past fifty years, whichever party has had more money, spent more money campaigning, has won the election. Facts and statistics often convince us, however much we wish they did not: it is as if our brain wanted to eat them whole. We know those in power continuously shape the truth, shape what will be considered true by the vast majority of the population, that there are two kinds of truth: the kind you read in a newspaper, or see on television, and more timeless truths, which will be equally true for future generations as they are for us today. Stating that something is timeless and true is a value judgment requiring conviction. We fear productive convictions are in short supply. History has taught us that certain convictions, taken to their absolute extreme, are terrifying. There is much talk about happiness, about development, about different ways of seeing things. There is a great deal of talk suggesting the future will be tragic. We know predicting the future is a suckers’ game. It is easier to predict the past. It is easier to predict the past than it is to remember it.
2.
The fact that a concept such as planned obsolescence exists, and is the model for so much of our industrial production, generates within me a level and intensity of anger I am simply unable to process. However, one rational trajectory for such anger is equally pernicious: to purchase only expensive, well-made objects that will last a very long time. Works of art are made to last a very long time. Their physical durability, in some sense, echoing their thematic or qualitative timelessness. If they have not been made to last, conservationists and restorers might be hired to preserve them. The term planned obsolescence is generally attributed to the industrial designer Brooks Stevens who used it as the title of a 1954 talk. Wikipedia says: Stevens defined it as “instilling in the buyer the desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary.” His view was to always make the consumer want something new, rather than create poor products that would need replacing. Depression is reactionary. Depression is anger turned inwards, instead of outwards at a system that is either exploiting or casting us aside. Depression is perfectly reasonable given the other available options. A natural sense of pure joy is also perfectly reasonable. I can imagine, utilizing certain advancements in pharmacology, a kind of planned obsolescence of emotions. Your anger no longer serving you, throw it away, it is time for a new kind of anger. It is time for a new kind of anger. A moral outrage with the skill of viral marketing and the precision of Zen. It is always time.
3.
You find yourself standing in front of a door. Inside, on the other side of the door, is everything, and outside, where you currently stand, is nothing. It is a common predicament, one you have faced many times before, and like so many times before, you wonder if opening the door, going inside, actually means anything: if it has content, will give or remove energy, could be said to be taking a stand. So many things in life are empty gestures, but opening a door is never entirely empty. It is always something a bit more or less. What exactly might it mean to open this door. You know you cannot rely on past experiences to guide you, that at the precise moment of every new decision past experiences mean nothing. It is within the heart of the most tepid and timeless clichés, why always search for the undeniable.
.
1.
We live in a consumer culture. Advertising is everywhere, and would not be everywhere if it did not perceive within us something closed it considered worth opening. We do not live in a democracy, we live in a corporate oligarchy. We are nervous about politics, about politicians, about most utopian options or possibilities for positive social change. For the past fifty years, whichever party has had more money, spent more money campaigning, has won the election. Facts and statistics often convince us, however much we wish they did not: it is as if our brain wanted to eat them whole. We know those in power continuously shape the truth, shape what will be considered true by the vast majority of the population, that there are two kinds of truth: the kind you read in a newspaper, or see on television, and more timeless truths, which will be equally true for future generations as they are for us today. Stating that something is timeless and true is a value judgment requiring conviction. We fear productive convictions are in short supply. History has taught us that certain convictions, taken to their absolute extreme, are terrifying. There is much talk about happiness, about development, about different ways of seeing things. There is a great deal of talk suggesting the future will be tragic. We know predicting the future is a suckers’ game. It is easier to predict the past. It is easier to predict the past than it is to remember it.
2.
The fact that a concept such as planned obsolescence exists, and is the model for so much of our industrial production, generates within me a level and intensity of anger I am simply unable to process. However, one rational trajectory for such anger is equally pernicious: to purchase only expensive, well-made objects that will last a very long time. Works of art are made to last a very long time. Their physical durability, in some sense, echoing their thematic or qualitative timelessness. If they have not been made to last, conservationists and restorers might be hired to preserve them. The term planned obsolescence is generally attributed to the industrial designer Brooks Stevens who used it as the title of a 1954 talk. Wikipedia says: Stevens defined it as “instilling in the buyer the desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary.” His view was to always make the consumer want something new, rather than create poor products that would need replacing. Depression is reactionary. Depression is anger turned inwards, instead of outwards at a system that is either exploiting or casting us aside. Depression is perfectly reasonable given the other available options. A natural sense of pure joy is also perfectly reasonable. I can imagine, utilizing certain advancements in pharmacology, a kind of planned obsolescence of emotions. Your anger no longer serving you, throw it away, it is time for a new kind of anger. It is time for a new kind of anger. A moral outrage with the skill of viral marketing and the precision of Zen. It is always time.
3.
You find yourself standing in front of a door. Inside, on the other side of the door, is everything, and outside, where you currently stand, is nothing. It is a common predicament, one you have faced many times before, and like so many times before, you wonder if opening the door, going inside, actually means anything: if it has content, will give or remove energy, could be said to be taking a stand. So many things in life are empty gestures, but opening a door is never entirely empty. It is always something a bit more or less. What exactly might it mean to open this door. You know you cannot rely on past experiences to guide you, that at the precise moment of every new decision past experiences mean nothing. It is within the heart of the most tepid and timeless clichés, why always search for the undeniable.
.
May 26, 2010
May 25, 2010
The work
.
The work is full of bad faith, hypocrisy and not being consequent. It is also full of a struggle with bad faith, hypocrisy and not being consequent.
.
The work is full of bad faith, hypocrisy and not being consequent. It is also full of a struggle with bad faith, hypocrisy and not being consequent.
.
May 24, 2010
I often wonder
.
I often wonder if people speak about me behind my back. Upon further consideration I feel that, for the most part, they do not. I of course also wonder what they say about me.
.
I often wonder if people speak about me behind my back. Upon further consideration I feel that, for the most part, they do not. I of course also wonder what they say about me.
.
You're only seventeen
.
You're only seventeen but you need a hit
a real chart-topper not this Myspace shit
you've got the beat, the hook and your mad sick flow
then when you're nineteen there's nowhere left to go
.
You're only seventeen but you need a hit
a real chart-topper not this Myspace shit
you've got the beat, the hook and your mad sick flow
then when you're nineteen there's nowhere left to go
.
May 22, 2010
Meeting of Failures and its 1950 manifesto
.
From Serge Berna, host of the Meeting of Failures and author of its 1950 manifesto:
They portray us as DUDS, and that is what we are.
We are nothing, we mean it, NOTHING AT ALL, and we intend to be of NO USE.
“Respectable people” harp on: ”WORK! BUCK UP! SUCCEED!” SUCCEED IN GETTING WHERE? IN DOING WHAT? IN WHAT CONDITION?
Our motto: IN ORDER TO ARRIVE, ABOVE ALL, DO NOT LEAVE.
All you, INCAPABLE, USELESS, IDLE, RAGGEDY BARFLIES!
Come and acknowledge one another and assert yourselves at the
GRAND MEETING OF FAILURES
to be held at the House of Learned Societies
8 Rue Serpente, Paris 5
15 March 1950. 8:15 p.m.
The following will discuss “The Merits of Impotence”:
Serge BERNA: left-wing syphilitic
Maurice-Paul COMTE: individual
Jacques PATRY: former Dominican
A free buffet will be served along with Madeleine AUERBACH.
Evening dress required!
.
From Serge Berna, host of the Meeting of Failures and author of its 1950 manifesto:
They portray us as DUDS, and that is what we are.
We are nothing, we mean it, NOTHING AT ALL, and we intend to be of NO USE.
“Respectable people” harp on: ”WORK! BUCK UP! SUCCEED!” SUCCEED IN GETTING WHERE? IN DOING WHAT? IN WHAT CONDITION?
Our motto: IN ORDER TO ARRIVE, ABOVE ALL, DO NOT LEAVE.
All you, INCAPABLE, USELESS, IDLE, RAGGEDY BARFLIES!
Come and acknowledge one another and assert yourselves at the
GRAND MEETING OF FAILURES
to be held at the House of Learned Societies
8 Rue Serpente, Paris 5
15 March 1950. 8:15 p.m.
The following will discuss “The Merits of Impotence”:
Serge BERNA: left-wing syphilitic
Maurice-Paul COMTE: individual
Jacques PATRY: former Dominican
A free buffet will be served along with Madeleine AUERBACH.
Evening dress required!
.
May 20, 2010
To resist the way that PR is subsuming all forms of art writing
.
Clouds uses other people's money to make books. We are not trying to make money off our books, instead making them so they exist and can be in the world, as they are wished to be rather than being what the market requires of them. We practice what the artist wants in the development of art books, and we try to resist the way that PR is subsuming all forms of art writing. What is post-PR writing and publishing in an information economy? We are interested to find out what this means, and what might be possible, at least, at first, by talking about it to others.
- Gwynneth Porter, Clouds Publishing, Auckland, NZ
.
Clouds uses other people's money to make books. We are not trying to make money off our books, instead making them so they exist and can be in the world, as they are wished to be rather than being what the market requires of them. We practice what the artist wants in the development of art books, and we try to resist the way that PR is subsuming all forms of art writing. What is post-PR writing and publishing in an information economy? We are interested to find out what this means, and what might be possible, at least, at first, by talking about it to others.
- Gwynneth Porter, Clouds Publishing, Auckland, NZ
.
May 17, 2010
Historically, artists have not...
.
Historically, artists have not necessarily been the most astute political commentators. Perhaps the mental agility required for making art and the mental agility required for useful political analysis are fundamentally at odds.
.
Historically, artists have not necessarily been the most astute political commentators. Perhaps the mental agility required for making art and the mental agility required for useful political analysis are fundamentally at odds.
.
May 16, 2010
How is it possible...
.
How is it possible, how is it ethical, to feel such joy in a world constantly spiralling downwards into greater and greater catastrophe, greater and more excruciating comedy.
.
How is it possible, how is it ethical, to feel such joy in a world constantly spiralling downwards into greater and greater catastrophe, greater and more excruciating comedy.
.
May 8, 2010
Geographic Fatalism
.
Geographic fatalism: the idea that whether you are born in the first world or in the third world determines how your life is going to be.
.
Geographic fatalism: the idea that whether you are born in the first world or in the third world determines how your life is going to be.
.
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