In Italian, "tra" means between, often used as a reference to a time frame. X tra - extra - too much - not enough time - in between times/moments - non-permenance - x marks the spot? - does it? - this spot - this place - in time - a moment - never arriving - arriving - journey - motion - falling - rain - growth - transition - trasferirsi - to move oneself - transmutation - permanent change? - permanence - change - cambiare - sempre - there is - there isn't - ho cambiata - cambiero - passato - presente - futuro - breaking down - building up - experience - a $2000.00 shot of Napoleon's whiskey - why? - perche no? - cause I can -
When I think about art, my initial thoughts go to a museum, then maybe a gallery, a show, etc..., all these places where the art is regarded as something sacred or special. Ancient works are often referred to as "treasures", and indeed, I agree, yet, when proposed the idea of ..."What Remains of a Rembrandt Torn into Little Regular Squares and Flushed Down the Toilet..."a huge manuscript on Rembrandt by Jean Genet, which Genet himself torn up and flushed down the toilet, is a very interesting concept to me. I have seen many Rembrandt's, they are haunting in the way in which one is confronted by the portraits' humaness and the figure stands more naked before you with their gaze than if they were nude. They are magnificent. "Genet writes of Rembrandt: 'It is from the moment when he depersonalizes his models, when he strips all identifiable qualities from objects, that he gives both the most weight, the greatest reality...But it was necessary that Rembrandt recognize and accept himself as a being of flesh...of meat, of blubber, of blood, of tears, of sweat, of shit, of intelligence and tenderness, of still other things, to infinity, but none denying the others, or better, each saluting the others.'" ..."You are me, as you are we, and we are all together..." - Lennon; to truly see the self, to see the self as all others, to see the self as these separate objects of disintegrating waste or accumulative intangible qualities or defects - defecate - waste - waste away - death - dissemination - and then what is true, what perchance is truth? "Everything is approximate, even less than approximate, for if you peer more closely, even the most perfect painting is a filthy, wart infested approximation...Form had turned to formless, the finite into infinite, the individual into totality."
Friday, February 29, 2008
Life, death and unity
As I began reading “Water Closet” I found myself lost and frustrated as I often do when reading this book. To be honest I couldn’t really connect or follow it until about half way through the chapter. I began to understand and even enjoy the reading when I started to understand the ideas of entropy, unity and death. The author quotes Bataille saying “essentially all beings are only one.” I really like this because it communicates the way that people, and indeed art as well, are all connected in life as in death. Not only do humans live and die but so can art and other non-living things. They also quote Jean Arp where a beautiful image is created where decomposition and death create new life and continuity in a new way. Arp talks about how imperfections in art showing the process of the art, or decomposition of the art can be viewed as something beautiful rather than imperfections and deaths of art.
When the authors begin talking about the idea of cutting paper into unique strips and claiming it is special in it’s process, I can not relate. I think I understand what they are saying, the process of doing something, for example cutting paper, is unique to one experience, moment and time. When the moment is later remembered by looking at the art it can not be re-experienced only viewed and remembered. I think they are saying that the experience is sacred if for no other reason that it can not be recreated at any other point in time. To me this is easy to understand, but I find it boring and even a little inconsequential. Why dwell on a moment that can not be relived? Certainly every moment is unique, but how you capture that could be more interesting that cutting paper in my opinion. Maybe what I can gather from this is that my own experiences can be unique and more interesting if I share them in other ways. Maybe it is a challenge to me rather than inconsequential nonsensical blabber.
Mcollum’s talks about the beauty in nature is fascinating to me. I really like the idea of emphasizing, duplicating or recreating nature in art pieces. Nature is the purest and most interesting form of art to me because it is everywhere and in no way created by anyone. I like the innate beauty that nature offers. The display of fossils and dinosaur tracks is beautiful because it recreates life and nature millions of years ago. I really respect this recreation of life long after it died and decomposed and is now being burned in my car as fuel. I see a connection between this idea of recreating life from long ago and this entropic idea of decomposition and unity. I like the connection between life and death and the display of both.
-sean
When the authors begin talking about the idea of cutting paper into unique strips and claiming it is special in it’s process, I can not relate. I think I understand what they are saying, the process of doing something, for example cutting paper, is unique to one experience, moment and time. When the moment is later remembered by looking at the art it can not be re-experienced only viewed and remembered. I think they are saying that the experience is sacred if for no other reason that it can not be recreated at any other point in time. To me this is easy to understand, but I find it boring and even a little inconsequential. Why dwell on a moment that can not be relived? Certainly every moment is unique, but how you capture that could be more interesting that cutting paper in my opinion. Maybe what I can gather from this is that my own experiences can be unique and more interesting if I share them in other ways. Maybe it is a challenge to me rather than inconsequential nonsensical blabber.
Mcollum’s talks about the beauty in nature is fascinating to me. I really like the idea of emphasizing, duplicating or recreating nature in art pieces. Nature is the purest and most interesting form of art to me because it is everywhere and in no way created by anyone. I like the innate beauty that nature offers. The display of fossils and dinosaur tracks is beautiful because it recreates life and nature millions of years ago. I really respect this recreation of life long after it died and decomposed and is now being burned in my car as fuel. I see a connection between this idea of recreating life from long ago and this entropic idea of decomposition and unity. I like the connection between life and death and the display of both.
-sean
Thursday, February 28, 2008
"inside-out"
Thinking of entropy I think of a process going from order to disorder or going from a state of obtainment to loss. A state of transition where something is is further removed from the comfortable state it was previously. The idea of Egyptian paste and the process of "burn out" intrigues me because it turns objects "inside-out" filling in once empty spaces and exposing enclosed ones. This state of "inside-out" and "outside-in" seems disorderly because it is the opposite of reality. In X Marks The Spot, Bruce Nauman and his casts of interstitial space explore the idea of distorting reality by creating material forms of formally empty spaces created by solid common objects. The idea of order through containment must be thought of differently as open and closed spaces are switched, redefining what is the apropriate and familiar way to look at objects. Would we recognize our world if empty and solid spaces were switched? It seems not.
Water Closet and X marks the spot
Entropic closet X
'"Strong communication" is not accessible through the language of common usage.' ' The human being is dissolved in "strong communication," by opening a tear in [oneself] through which [one] loses "a part of [ones] own being to the profit of the communal being...."'
How much of our daily communication is strong? Much more than we are aware of. How many times have I had an intense, emotion filled conversation with someone and not until the next day do i understand what was talked about, only to find that the topic was about a completely different thing? How much do we dance around the thing we really want to communicate? Perhaps accessing "strong communication" is painful. "Loss" is often congruent with grief. And yet we are at a loss when we miss opportunities to access the profits of the communal being. Communal being? seems to me the phenomenon I have accessed in certain altered states in which there is connection with all things, the idea of separation vanishes as does attachment to the ego or self - the loss of self. The profits? as infinite as all that is.
"'...I knew I was identical to this man.' The identity of the self is canceled in this revelation. The self is disseminated, since if all men equal one another, 'each man is every other man.' 'No man was my brother: each man was myself, but temporarily isolated in his individual skin.' 'Essentially all beings are only one. They repel each other at the same time that they are one. And in this movement-which is their essence-the fundamental identity is annulled.'"
These thoughts bring me back to "The Sacred" project, each drop of water, an individual, yet they fall onto the land, seep into the groundwater, which flows to a stream, which flows to a river, which flows to an ocean, which evaporates into the atmosphere, which collects and becomes rain, new rain, which falls again. This clay that I use contains the minerals from the bones of my ancestors, from the fossils of transgressed oceans, the sedimentary layers of the earths crust worn down to clay by the drops of water.
How much of our daily communication is strong? Much more than we are aware of. How many times have I had an intense, emotion filled conversation with someone and not until the next day do i understand what was talked about, only to find that the topic was about a completely different thing? How much do we dance around the thing we really want to communicate? Perhaps accessing "strong communication" is painful. "Loss" is often congruent with grief. And yet we are at a loss when we miss opportunities to access the profits of the communal being. Communal being? seems to me the phenomenon I have accessed in certain altered states in which there is connection with all things, the idea of separation vanishes as does attachment to the ego or self - the loss of self. The profits? as infinite as all that is.
"'...I knew I was identical to this man.' The identity of the self is canceled in this revelation. The self is disseminated, since if all men equal one another, 'each man is every other man.' 'No man was my brother: each man was myself, but temporarily isolated in his individual skin.' 'Essentially all beings are only one. They repel each other at the same time that they are one. And in this movement-which is their essence-the fundamental identity is annulled.'"
These thoughts bring me back to "The Sacred" project, each drop of water, an individual, yet they fall onto the land, seep into the groundwater, which flows to a stream, which flows to a river, which flows to an ocean, which evaporates into the atmosphere, which collects and becomes rain, new rain, which falls again. This clay that I use contains the minerals from the bones of my ancestors, from the fossils of transgressed oceans, the sedimentary layers of the earths crust worn down to clay by the drops of water.
negative space
When I was reading x-marks the spot about how that artist filled the empty space under his chair with clay and that became the art form. I like that idea of taking spaces that get over looked and creating a solitary form from it. I started searching negative spaces on google and found a couple different artist. I looked at the monumental creation called double negative. It has been eroded over time, but is still recognizable from the air. Then when were started discussing what our group's objectives or thoughts were for the entropy final project, we discussed negative space. I brought in my first pair of running shoes and I am going to fill the inside of them with the paste, so hopefully the shoe burns away and the inside form is left. Everybody in the group started thinking of things they wanted to fill and we began determining if the object needed to be personal or just any object. Then we thought back to things that are sacred or personal and the image of a shrine came to mind. We could put anything in the shrine and for whatever meaning, it will have meaning because it is in the shrine. Then we digressed back to negative space and decided to fill the entire kiln with the shrine and our objects inside. When we first put the shrine in the kiln with all the objects inside. It will have order and look like an untouched shrine, but then we will fire it and the order will be burnt away. Entropy will be evident and the shrine will represent the space within the kiln after firing.
Congealing the Paradigm
X Marks the Spot
Finally an article…where the boat doesn’t seem docked at the asylum. Entropy. I wonder, is life and design nothing more than framing empty space?
Novel concept of Bruce Nauman to cast empty space. We need it, we design for it, we work around it, and yet it has no substance. Dealing with that invisible elephant in the middle of the room is always a problem. We place items in space, create items that won’t work without space to move through, or allow other things to work. It is the final ingredient in the recipe, and it won’t work without it. Yet the space has no visible context.
Casting Empty Space -
When I think of casting to reveal a form the image of the plaster casts of the victims made from the ruins of Pompeii comes to mind. Maybe the most surprising casts ever made, these empty cavities revealed the final moments of people dying from the volcanic eruption. Shocking and poignant, but there is nothing left of them but empty space….like the underside of the chair. Yet the person who has long since vanished can be seen like a still photograph.
But, unlike Nauman’s work, without a title you have no idea what his work is, in this case the cast is a revelation of the unknown. You don’t need a title to know what it is once it dries. With these empty tubes or spaces, unless they had plaster poured in them, they would simply have been empty space.
I find it interesting that in casting the footprints of dinosaurs he runs into the conflict if repeated too much; industrial or biological. Is that any different than the plaster cast of a dog from Pompeii that is now repeated over and over? I don’t think I'm going to order one for the family room, but somebody must be. (tried to include picture in document but didn't go - picuture of 20 plaster casts of same dog)
Is life a case of entropy, that we are constantly moving toward change. Filling a space, yet eventually we vanish unless we are cast like the people in Pompeii. But, the only way to make that is to vanish. At least the foot prints in the muck were not of an animal at the moment they were dying.
Again I find my mind saying does casting a hundred fragments in 4 colors and then displaying them appeal to my sense of time well spent? No. But, in 2000 years will people be making casts of decayed items from a dump, and wondering about us like the ancient animals?
Finally an article…where the boat doesn’t seem docked at the asylum. Entropy. I wonder, is life and design nothing more than framing empty space?
Novel concept of Bruce Nauman to cast empty space. We need it, we design for it, we work around it, and yet it has no substance. Dealing with that invisible elephant in the middle of the room is always a problem. We place items in space, create items that won’t work without space to move through, or allow other things to work. It is the final ingredient in the recipe, and it won’t work without it. Yet the space has no visible context.
Casting Empty Space -
When I think of casting to reveal a form the image of the plaster casts of the victims made from the ruins of Pompeii comes to mind. Maybe the most surprising casts ever made, these empty cavities revealed the final moments of people dying from the volcanic eruption. Shocking and poignant, but there is nothing left of them but empty space….like the underside of the chair. Yet the person who has long since vanished can be seen like a still photograph.
But, unlike Nauman’s work, without a title you have no idea what his work is, in this case the cast is a revelation of the unknown. You don’t need a title to know what it is once it dries. With these empty tubes or spaces, unless they had plaster poured in them, they would simply have been empty space.
I find it interesting that in casting the footprints of dinosaurs he runs into the conflict if repeated too much; industrial or biological. Is that any different than the plaster cast of a dog from Pompeii that is now repeated over and over? I don’t think I'm going to order one for the family room, but somebody must be. (tried to include picture in document but didn't go - picuture of 20 plaster casts of same dog)
Is life a case of entropy, that we are constantly moving toward change. Filling a space, yet eventually we vanish unless we are cast like the people in Pompeii. But, the only way to make that is to vanish. At least the foot prints in the muck were not of an animal at the moment they were dying.
Again I find my mind saying does casting a hundred fragments in 4 colors and then displaying them appeal to my sense of time well spent? No. But, in 2000 years will people be making casts of decayed items from a dump, and wondering about us like the ancient animals?
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