Fall Break?
That's right, Fall Break! We get two weeks in october because we're a year 'round school... but we also get two months off in summer, so we're not really a year-ound school.
I apologize to my regular readers (both of you) for last week's blog. I should also say that I don't totally hate the government, and I'm not an anarchist. I like national parks and recycling too much. I guess there's probably some other stuff I like about the government.
New media recommendations. Or new recommendations in the media because some of them are pretty old. I read All Quiet on the Western Front on Hurt's recommendation, who was recommended it from Nicka. That is a really good book, but in the sense of good where you hesitate to use that word due to the gruesome content of the work. Kind of like the movie Seven. Or Se7en. I have a couple friends who were thinking of joining the Forces recently (one actually did) and I would recommend they read this book before they sign anything. This is a book that does not in any way glorify war. Take a movie like Saving Private Ryan, which was actually a really brutal movie. There is still a little element of glorification or patriotism in there. Actually a big element. All Quiet doesn't have any of that shit.
Next came Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen. We're going to read it in my English class after break, so I thought I'd get a leg up on that. This book surprised me a bit with it's cleverness and thin satire. Unfortunately its quality plateaued about a third into it and didn't move much after that. I was slogging through at the end, but still I have to say Austen is a witty and sharp writer with a certain gift for dialogue. And now I never have to read her again.
Music: Nick Drake, Bryter Layter. Kind of a sweeping and whimsical trollop through the daisies, except the daisy field seems to be in downtown london and it's raining? It's like Belle and Sebastian but less twee and innocent. Very pleasant anywho.
Velvet Underground, Loaded. The velvets sounding more like a band and less like a bunch of druggies that could barely pull themselves up to there instruments. I like both bands. This sounds more like the grateful dead but switch in coke for acid.
Beck's new album, The Information. Haven't had enough time to listen to this one yet, but so far it sounds real good. Nigel Godrich produced... very upbeat and slammin. Sounds like Odelay but with vocals more hushed and up front. I don't detect much Sea Change here, but I've read some of that in the reviews.
Events: Marfa Marfa Marfa! Marfa always gets what she wants! Marfa is a small town near Big Bend Texas. It is 240 miles away from Cruces and we got there in 3 hours. You do the math. This town is the site of a sprawling art foundation called the Chinati. It is the brainchild of sculptor Donald Judd. It is a refuge for minimalist art, a place where art and installations are stored/displayed in a large scale, permanent setting. No revolving exhibitions here, no "80% of our collection is in storage." They put out what they have, and they keep it there FOR-EV-UH. This place is a temple. It is very strange to see so much significance and space given to one piece of human work. Things don't share walls here. Actually most of the stuff is on the floor, but they don't share anything. This was a really exciting trip for me because it is kind of what I wrote my senior paper on, how these works of art freeze the space that they are in and thereby freeze the money that funds them.
The place lived up to most of my expectations. For one thing, the whole concept is very snooty. We saw plenty of that element all over town. This was the open house, so it drew art fucks from all over the country, but I'm guessing mostly from Houston, Dallas, and Austin. We were snubbed a few times. That's ok though it's kind of funny. Also we saw a funny interaction between a gallery gestapo and a girl who wanted to take a little rest on a bench:
"um... UH-UH! NO no. You don't sit there. That is a $500,000 bench you just sat on... haven't you ever heard of Gustav Strickler?"
"now my butt feels expensive."
Ok so it is really snooty. Just the concept of putting super high-brow art in the middle of no-where and saying that it's untouchable and it will never move and it deserves this space--that's a snooty concept. The people are a whole other branch of snootyism.
At the same time, the art was really cool, and after tramping around these grounds for two days I started to think this is the only way to do it with art. Each new building is like a new performance. Your focus has time to return to itself and you sort of wipe the slate clean. It's a much more sane and possible way to take in a lot of art in a short amount of time. I compare it to when we visited MOMA in NY this last memorial day. We were totally burnt out by the time we got through one floor. We couldn't do it; it's just a complete overload.
I guess it also helps that the set up they have at Chinati is totally beautiful and they did a really good job producing the whole thing. The buildings are some kind of recovered Army base and it's really interesting just to wander around the grounds and check everything out. It also really helps that the land is awesome and wide open. You can really hit the reset button everytime you exit one building and walk around until you get to the next building. The land and the pacing and spacing of the buildings and your movement through the grounds really helps facilitate the right dialogue with the work. This is minimalism so we're talking very few visual cues and changes. See molly's pictures of the cement structures of Judd's out in the middle of the field. Those look really boring right? And they kind of are, especially the first set that you walk to. However, after walking all down the line and looking closely at each one, there really is a huge amount of drama by the time you get to the last set. He really does sell it by the end. I think that's one of the most important aspects about this challenging work: do the artsists do a good job selling it, do they make it convincing?
An exception in my mind to this group is John Chamberlain. He is the guy that does the huge masses of car and truck steel mangled into gravity-defying sculptures. With his work you just get it right off. There is not a lot of digging that goes on. He is just obviously talented and important and it's right there on the surface and structure of the work. I love his stuff. But at the same time, the obvious goodness of it kind of prevents further digging, and it's a bit less satisfying when you get it than say when you get the installation by Robert Irwin.
Robert Irwin's installation is not easy to describe, and I'm glad we didn't take pictures of it because it would've looked stupid. Basically he set up the building with these fabric screens and you walked along the screens and through doorways in the screens from one end of the building to the end. Great right? To me though, it's a strength of the work, a testament to its contribution, that you can't really describe its quality in words. I know what it's about, but it's a visual/spatial experience, not a literary one. For example if I tell you that it's about solid vs. transparent, shadow vs. reflection, filters, non-hierarchical sculpture, and the limits of human perception, you may think that doesn't sound very good at all. But if I tell you those things and then you go into it and see it, you may split your skull. Or maybe you will ask the gallery attendants to shut the fuck up, you're trying to have a transcendant experience. See how we ride the edge of snooty and convincing?
That night there was a free meal and mariachi band downtown. Seemed like everyone turned out for that. Really great atmosphere, not so good food. I have to say this was the most laissez-faire large-scale event that I've probably been to, with the exception of the first couple years of the folkfest campground. At marfa, no one really told you what to do unless you sat on some Gustav Strickler bench or something. but there was no one saying, hey you can't drink that beer here, or hey don't have sex with that goat. It was very self-governed. There were no mega-phone warriors tooling around on golf carts, no clip board uptights shaking a pen at you. This was also kind of annoying at parts because there wasn't a great deal of organization in the way of signs or directions or where to camp if you didn't get one of the 12 hotel rooms in town and couldn't afford to have your yacht put on a flat bed and trucked in for the weekend. but we figured it all out with a "minimum" (wink, minimalism) of hassle.
After the dinner there was a free "rock concert" at this weird grain silo called the Ice Plant. The Dandy Warhols were playing, what a great named band to play an art foundation's open house. Anyways, I've heard of them but never really listened to them ("heroin is so passe/ hey-hey" was their single in the mid-90's). Turns out they really rock and the front man is really charismatic in a plaid suit and straw hat. The chick key-boardist was getting really wasted too. They played two kinds of "rock:" the first was this sprawling, aural, low tempo mind creeper in the fashion of sonic youth or my bloody valentine. That shit was really good and quite nice to listen. The second was this chunky and clever short pop form which was good but not as engrossing as the first. They had a couple songs that I didn't know were theirs, good tunes. The general permissiveness of the open house continued at the concert. No one checking the door, no security, people were bringing in bottles and coolers and it seemed like, why not? The band walked right past us, like right there, and no one bothered them.
I want to say why aren't more events like that, why can't organizers just trust people to govern themselves, but I also know that 9 times out of 10 something bad is going to happen especially if there is booze involved and probably something bad happened that weekend. but it seemed ok to me at the time.
For the first time, the marfa weekend, I think for molly's first time too, we slept outside, completely outside. No tent or anything, just a sleeping bag underneath stars "he would lie awake and count them/ and the deep sunset and the television set would never let him/ die alone/ remember to remember me..." sorry wilco non-sequiter. Anyways yeah, sleeping outside, what a trip. It started raining at one point and I freaked out and I was like, Molly, we gotta go to the car and she doesn't like waking up very much so she just grabs the edge of the tarp we're sleeping on and pulls it over us so now we're sleeping under this tarp and it's raining on top of us. Then the rain stops and I tell her to pull it back and she does without opening her eyes or even really moving at all. Then I hear this clop-clop clop-clop and I'm thinking now it's really gonna start raining, it sounds like god damned horses, and I look up and there's a god damned horse 8 feet away from my ground-level head. This was much scarier than the rain. Thus continued a train of 6 horse, coming from god knows where going to god knows where, walking not 10 feet away from my head and I think I gotta bolt then no no if I bolt it'll spook them and they'll rear up and crush my skull. So think ok don't move just don't even breath, like on Jurassic Park when they can't move or the TRex will see them. Wow. Then the sun rise began and I got up and got dressed and put my bag away and told molly to get up. As soon as she was up I gave her the car keys and walked to town because it's good to give molly some space in the morning, but it's also good to bring her coffee in the morning.
We spent the rest of that day looking at the foundation and eating their free food. It's like a potlach from days of yore. The richest man in the village throws a huge party with lots of waste and free things to show that he is indeed the richest man in the village and he has the power to waste. Except now it's like the richest man is actually a foundation and the person throwing the party is saying... what? Fuck you I'm talented, you will pay me to exist and you will pay for this party because I said so? Also, you will pay for this for the rest of eternity. Because this is a permanent installation. Who wins here? Do the shareholders and board of directors win because they get to show their power once a year and throw a snooty party in nowhere Texas? Or does the common man win because everyone can come for free and it's funny to see rich people mingle with poor farmers from Marfa? Or does Judd win because he got everything he wanted and he also gets to thumb his nose from the grave and say ha! you're paying for me even when I'm dead!? Strange times we live in.
There was a bumper sticker that said "I [ ] Judd"
Words I wont' use in my next blog: really, awesome, beautiful, interesting.
I apologize to my regular readers (both of you) for last week's blog. I should also say that I don't totally hate the government, and I'm not an anarchist. I like national parks and recycling too much. I guess there's probably some other stuff I like about the government.
New media recommendations. Or new recommendations in the media because some of them are pretty old. I read All Quiet on the Western Front on Hurt's recommendation, who was recommended it from Nicka. That is a really good book, but in the sense of good where you hesitate to use that word due to the gruesome content of the work. Kind of like the movie Seven. Or Se7en. I have a couple friends who were thinking of joining the Forces recently (one actually did) and I would recommend they read this book before they sign anything. This is a book that does not in any way glorify war. Take a movie like Saving Private Ryan, which was actually a really brutal movie. There is still a little element of glorification or patriotism in there. Actually a big element. All Quiet doesn't have any of that shit.
Next came Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen. We're going to read it in my English class after break, so I thought I'd get a leg up on that. This book surprised me a bit with it's cleverness and thin satire. Unfortunately its quality plateaued about a third into it and didn't move much after that. I was slogging through at the end, but still I have to say Austen is a witty and sharp writer with a certain gift for dialogue. And now I never have to read her again.
Music: Nick Drake, Bryter Layter. Kind of a sweeping and whimsical trollop through the daisies, except the daisy field seems to be in downtown london and it's raining? It's like Belle and Sebastian but less twee and innocent. Very pleasant anywho.
Velvet Underground, Loaded. The velvets sounding more like a band and less like a bunch of druggies that could barely pull themselves up to there instruments. I like both bands. This sounds more like the grateful dead but switch in coke for acid.
Beck's new album, The Information. Haven't had enough time to listen to this one yet, but so far it sounds real good. Nigel Godrich produced... very upbeat and slammin. Sounds like Odelay but with vocals more hushed and up front. I don't detect much Sea Change here, but I've read some of that in the reviews.
Events: Marfa Marfa Marfa! Marfa always gets what she wants! Marfa is a small town near Big Bend Texas. It is 240 miles away from Cruces and we got there in 3 hours. You do the math. This town is the site of a sprawling art foundation called the Chinati. It is the brainchild of sculptor Donald Judd. It is a refuge for minimalist art, a place where art and installations are stored/displayed in a large scale, permanent setting. No revolving exhibitions here, no "80% of our collection is in storage." They put out what they have, and they keep it there FOR-EV-UH. This place is a temple. It is very strange to see so much significance and space given to one piece of human work. Things don't share walls here. Actually most of the stuff is on the floor, but they don't share anything. This was a really exciting trip for me because it is kind of what I wrote my senior paper on, how these works of art freeze the space that they are in and thereby freeze the money that funds them.
The place lived up to most of my expectations. For one thing, the whole concept is very snooty. We saw plenty of that element all over town. This was the open house, so it drew art fucks from all over the country, but I'm guessing mostly from Houston, Dallas, and Austin. We were snubbed a few times. That's ok though it's kind of funny. Also we saw a funny interaction between a gallery gestapo and a girl who wanted to take a little rest on a bench:
"um... UH-UH! NO no. You don't sit there. That is a $500,000 bench you just sat on... haven't you ever heard of Gustav Strickler?"
"now my butt feels expensive."
Ok so it is really snooty. Just the concept of putting super high-brow art in the middle of no-where and saying that it's untouchable and it will never move and it deserves this space--that's a snooty concept. The people are a whole other branch of snootyism.
At the same time, the art was really cool, and after tramping around these grounds for two days I started to think this is the only way to do it with art. Each new building is like a new performance. Your focus has time to return to itself and you sort of wipe the slate clean. It's a much more sane and possible way to take in a lot of art in a short amount of time. I compare it to when we visited MOMA in NY this last memorial day. We were totally burnt out by the time we got through one floor. We couldn't do it; it's just a complete overload.
I guess it also helps that the set up they have at Chinati is totally beautiful and they did a really good job producing the whole thing. The buildings are some kind of recovered Army base and it's really interesting just to wander around the grounds and check everything out. It also really helps that the land is awesome and wide open. You can really hit the reset button everytime you exit one building and walk around until you get to the next building. The land and the pacing and spacing of the buildings and your movement through the grounds really helps facilitate the right dialogue with the work. This is minimalism so we're talking very few visual cues and changes. See molly's pictures of the cement structures of Judd's out in the middle of the field. Those look really boring right? And they kind of are, especially the first set that you walk to. However, after walking all down the line and looking closely at each one, there really is a huge amount of drama by the time you get to the last set. He really does sell it by the end. I think that's one of the most important aspects about this challenging work: do the artsists do a good job selling it, do they make it convincing?
An exception in my mind to this group is John Chamberlain. He is the guy that does the huge masses of car and truck steel mangled into gravity-defying sculptures. With his work you just get it right off. There is not a lot of digging that goes on. He is just obviously talented and important and it's right there on the surface and structure of the work. I love his stuff. But at the same time, the obvious goodness of it kind of prevents further digging, and it's a bit less satisfying when you get it than say when you get the installation by Robert Irwin.
Robert Irwin's installation is not easy to describe, and I'm glad we didn't take pictures of it because it would've looked stupid. Basically he set up the building with these fabric screens and you walked along the screens and through doorways in the screens from one end of the building to the end. Great right? To me though, it's a strength of the work, a testament to its contribution, that you can't really describe its quality in words. I know what it's about, but it's a visual/spatial experience, not a literary one. For example if I tell you that it's about solid vs. transparent, shadow vs. reflection, filters, non-hierarchical sculpture, and the limits of human perception, you may think that doesn't sound very good at all. But if I tell you those things and then you go into it and see it, you may split your skull. Or maybe you will ask the gallery attendants to shut the fuck up, you're trying to have a transcendant experience. See how we ride the edge of snooty and convincing?
That night there was a free meal and mariachi band downtown. Seemed like everyone turned out for that. Really great atmosphere, not so good food. I have to say this was the most laissez-faire large-scale event that I've probably been to, with the exception of the first couple years of the folkfest campground. At marfa, no one really told you what to do unless you sat on some Gustav Strickler bench or something. but there was no one saying, hey you can't drink that beer here, or hey don't have sex with that goat. It was very self-governed. There were no mega-phone warriors tooling around on golf carts, no clip board uptights shaking a pen at you. This was also kind of annoying at parts because there wasn't a great deal of organization in the way of signs or directions or where to camp if you didn't get one of the 12 hotel rooms in town and couldn't afford to have your yacht put on a flat bed and trucked in for the weekend. but we figured it all out with a "minimum" (wink, minimalism) of hassle.
After the dinner there was a free "rock concert" at this weird grain silo called the Ice Plant. The Dandy Warhols were playing, what a great named band to play an art foundation's open house. Anyways, I've heard of them but never really listened to them ("heroin is so passe/ hey-hey" was their single in the mid-90's). Turns out they really rock and the front man is really charismatic in a plaid suit and straw hat. The chick key-boardist was getting really wasted too. They played two kinds of "rock:" the first was this sprawling, aural, low tempo mind creeper in the fashion of sonic youth or my bloody valentine. That shit was really good and quite nice to listen. The second was this chunky and clever short pop form which was good but not as engrossing as the first. They had a couple songs that I didn't know were theirs, good tunes. The general permissiveness of the open house continued at the concert. No one checking the door, no security, people were bringing in bottles and coolers and it seemed like, why not? The band walked right past us, like right there, and no one bothered them.
I want to say why aren't more events like that, why can't organizers just trust people to govern themselves, but I also know that 9 times out of 10 something bad is going to happen especially if there is booze involved and probably something bad happened that weekend. but it seemed ok to me at the time.
For the first time, the marfa weekend, I think for molly's first time too, we slept outside, completely outside. No tent or anything, just a sleeping bag underneath stars "he would lie awake and count them/ and the deep sunset and the television set would never let him/ die alone/ remember to remember me..." sorry wilco non-sequiter. Anyways yeah, sleeping outside, what a trip. It started raining at one point and I freaked out and I was like, Molly, we gotta go to the car and she doesn't like waking up very much so she just grabs the edge of the tarp we're sleeping on and pulls it over us so now we're sleeping under this tarp and it's raining on top of us. Then the rain stops and I tell her to pull it back and she does without opening her eyes or even really moving at all. Then I hear this clop-clop clop-clop and I'm thinking now it's really gonna start raining, it sounds like god damned horses, and I look up and there's a god damned horse 8 feet away from my ground-level head. This was much scarier than the rain. Thus continued a train of 6 horse, coming from god knows where going to god knows where, walking not 10 feet away from my head and I think I gotta bolt then no no if I bolt it'll spook them and they'll rear up and crush my skull. So think ok don't move just don't even breath, like on Jurassic Park when they can't move or the TRex will see them. Wow. Then the sun rise began and I got up and got dressed and put my bag away and told molly to get up. As soon as she was up I gave her the car keys and walked to town because it's good to give molly some space in the morning, but it's also good to bring her coffee in the morning.
We spent the rest of that day looking at the foundation and eating their free food. It's like a potlach from days of yore. The richest man in the village throws a huge party with lots of waste and free things to show that he is indeed the richest man in the village and he has the power to waste. Except now it's like the richest man is actually a foundation and the person throwing the party is saying... what? Fuck you I'm talented, you will pay me to exist and you will pay for this party because I said so? Also, you will pay for this for the rest of eternity. Because this is a permanent installation. Who wins here? Do the shareholders and board of directors win because they get to show their power once a year and throw a snooty party in nowhere Texas? Or does the common man win because everyone can come for free and it's funny to see rich people mingle with poor farmers from Marfa? Or does Judd win because he got everything he wanted and he also gets to thumb his nose from the grave and say ha! you're paying for me even when I'm dead!? Strange times we live in.
There was a bumper sticker that said "I [ ] Judd"
Words I wont' use in my next blog: really, awesome, beautiful, interesting.
posted by j0eb0t-xj9 at 9:40 AM
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