Saturday, December 31, 2011

invisible

visited the art institute today - with my new (xmas gifted) membership card, so i got free Intellegensia coffee, mmmm. the Light Years: Conceptual Art and the Photograph, 1964-1977 was pretty amazing, and very hard to get through. the show is large and fairly packed, in addition to most of it being dry and/or cerebral. dear AIC, perhaps 'exhaustively as possible' was not the best way to attend to this type of artwork. i can only imagine how inaccessible this is for people without an art background. anyway, i will need to spend more time with it, but some things do stick out:

 Victor Burgin - Photopath (inkjet prints on vinyl) 2011 (first created 1967) [this was in the foyer of the modern wing - but still part of the show. taken with my phone]

Giovanni Anselmo - Invisible (slide and slide projector) 1971 [not the actual piece from the show - photography is ironically not aloud in the photography show. the exhibited version is red and it projects onto the bodies of visitors when they enter the gallery]

plus, Baldessari and Le Witt rocked the house. (ps - lots of white men in this show)

Friday, December 30, 2011

Journaling / Documenting as practice (some examples)

1. Nicholas Felton - annual Feltron Reports. The Feltron Reports document each year of Nicholas Felton's life through data, statistics, graphs, charts, and maps.

Nicholas Felton - From the Annual Feltron Report, 2009 (encounters with friends)

2. Kenneth Goldsmith - Fidget. "Fidget is a transcription of writer Kenneth Goldsmith's every movement made during thirteen hours on June 16, 1997 (Bloomsday)." full and interactive version, here. the following excerpts are from 10:00 and 18:00 respectively.
Eyelids open. Tongue runs across upper lip moving from left side of mouth to right following arc of lip. Swallow. Jaws clench. Grind. Stretch. Swallow. Head lifts. Bent right arm brushes pillow into back of head. Arm straightens. Counterclockwise twist thrusts elbow toward ceiling...

 * * * * *

...Exhale. Dart. Snort. Drop. Sit. Mumble. Quicken. Left. Right. Left. Cool. Walk. Gulp. Click. Smack. Draw. Loll. Dig Itch. Shudder. Sip. Tip Curl. Spit. Rest Hear. Smack. Smack. Click. Lick. Inhale. Follow. Walk. One. Two. One. Two. Reach. Scratch. Fidget. Pick. Burp. Bend. Up. Out. On. Blow. Wind. Bite. Cross. Scuttle. Twist. Turn. Bring. Tingle. Slide. Spit. Groove. Massage. Strike. Penetrate. Dig. Penetrate. Snort. Dig. Pass. Grab. Sigh. Lighten. Still. Pressure. Rush. Accentuate. Tuck. Raise. Gaze.
also fitting is Goldsmith's piece, Soliloquy - where he documented everything he said for a week.

3.  Roman Opałka - 1965 / 1 -
In 1965, in his studio in Warsaw, Opałka began painting nunbers from one to infinity. Starting in the top left-hand corner of the canvas and finishing in the bottom right-hand corner, the tiny numbers were painted in horizontal rows. Each new canvas, which the artist called a 'detail', took up counting where the last left off. Each 'detail' is the same size (196 x 135 cm), the dimension of his studio door in Warsaw. All details have the same title, "1965 / 1 – ∞"; the project had no definable end, and the artist pledged his life to its ongoing execution: 'All my work is a single thing, the description from number one to infinity. A single thing, a single life', 'the problem is that we are, and are about not to be'. (Wikipedia)
Roman Opałka - 1965 / 1 - ∞ (detail 1-35327) (tempera on linen) [n.d.]

4. On Kawara - One Millions Years. a two volume set of books. one volume lists the years from 1969 back in to the past one million years (998,031 BC to 1969 AD), the other lists one million years from 1993 AD to 1,001,992 AD.

 On Kawara - One Million Years (artist's book in two volumes) 1999

Thursday, December 29, 2011

from "428 Comments"

skinitback
She looks like a latina Catherine Zeta-Jones. I love it when she's getting it from behind while her little Catholic schoolgirl skirt is up around her waist...
June 29, 2011

Christine
AWESOME, I have watch this three times now and have cum everytime, when she sits on his cock and takes it all a 4.34 it gets me every time. we were never this lucky when I was younger. God knows were all the huge cocks were then.
July 2, 2011

Marc
Very Sexy
July 4, 2011

mmmmmm
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....delicious
July 4, 2011

eageru
so beautiful, this is the kind of girl I want, fuck to die
July 5, 2011

oGC
What a dick !
July 5, 2011

* * * * *
     
luv269
hey Natasha, i'll upload a vid, with my girl, never got ruler out, but say two hands round my cock and room for a mouth. most girls love the feeling when i first hit their pussy lips, they know its gonna be tight from the start. it gets them real horny. and they give better head. you seriously gotta try it, don't be anchored down by hubby. but you must be real moist, which you don't have a problem with. cheers Goodluck
August 2, 2011

Sexy
Hot dick
August 3, 2011

Guy
One of the best fuck clips ever on Youporn!
August 3, 2011

love boys
thats me can you fuck me
August 3, 2011

james
i lke that girl...so hot...hot....????
August 4, 2011

Natasha
hey luv269, I would luv to see a pic if possible. from what you describe I can totally picture a huge mushroom head on the tip uhh god! luv to try and fit that in my mouth. I have to say I tried fooling around with hubby and he was not into it and said go find someone to take care of you. Now i don't know how serious he was so, i went to work today with a light see thru kinda skirt commando. And let this guy I work with see the kitty well actually I kinda leaned over and I'm sure he saw but I did it 2x to him. I started to get wet and got nervous I will try again tomorrow. He seems like he has a big dick from the bulge in his pants. Oh well keep you posted!!
August 4, 2011

LongStrong
Natasha please tell us more
August 8, 2011

luv269
maannnn, NATASHA you've put a bulge in my pants just by thinking of you at work. i wish i worked with you. I'd take it out and thrust it into you, while you're bent over, perfect senario for a porno. Anyway once the "mushroom" head goes in, the rest is roses. keep at him, you're gonna luv the sex with him. you wont want to stop, i had to practically fight my girl off me the first time. Would luv to see you in action, i reakon you are gonna go off!!!!!
goodluck
August 9, 2011

Natasha
Hey luv269 and LongStrong, So I went back to work yesterday in a sun dress but this time I took my thong off at work in the ladies room. I walked out and started feeling frisky already. So I went to the mail room and kinda let the three guys back there see the kitty. Anyway the guy that i work with that has the bulge started flirting with me via IM and it got hot. He stopped over my desk and while I pulled away from my desk I opened my legs and let him see it. At first he wasn't trying to look and he got all red and I asked him why. He was like is that what I think it is? Sure is ,So I asked to see his and he took it out at my cube and WOW huge dick all length. So i just gave it a few long strokes and got him rock hard. I'm talking purple head and i then just put my lips around the mushroom but I wouldn't suck it. I just licked it a little and he wanted more. But i want to play a little and build it up a little before I let him shove that in me. I have a tight little ass too and am tempted to try anal. My co-worker stuck his finger a little in my butt hole and I kept tightening up. it kinda felt weird but good I only let him use the finger tip. Any way I am going see if my husband wants to hit this. he either has another woman/homo or just tired of me.
August 10, 2011

Kristina
Good fuck. I want this big cock in my pussy. I like big cock, I have a tight pussy. Grrrrrrrr
August 11, 2011

george bush
334 coms, famn, a lot of view i agree
August 11, 2011

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

"Expression"

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Saturday, December 24, 2011

done othewise

A text should be written, as Craig Dworkin postulates, not in terms of “whether it could have been done better (the question of the workshop), but whether it could conceivably have been done otherwise.”
- from Lemon Hound

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Kenny G. (a horrible paraphrasing that i have done)

12/16/11 7pm
Kenneth Goldsmith lecture @ the Poetry Foundation
In 1969 the conceptual artist Douglas Huebler wrote, "The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more." I've come to embrace Huebler's ideas, though it might be retooled as "The world is full of texts, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more."
-from Uncreative Writing, by Kenneth Goldsmith
on the institution
-occupying power of poetry
-social power of poetry
--poetry is normally marginalized - why doesn't poetry matter?
Goldsmith is asking for an "activist poetry"

with the example of Marcel Broodthaers as a model Goldsmith begins his talk about the power that poetry can use to critique institutions. he emphasized that context should be championed over content and that it should be self-reflexive (staples of conceptual art since Duchamp). these qualities may be found through insincerity and unreadability. here the example of Broodthaers can be used - as this piece (Broodthaers' first sculpture) is made of poetry books of his that he could not sell - and marked his transformation from a poet to an artist.


to further the critique, Goldsmith referenced ISSUE #1 (a large collection of poems that were generated by computer software, and then attributed to famous authors) and Vanessa Place's Factory Work (poems written by others but published under her name, and a nod to Warhol's "Factory"). through appropriation (which of course asks, "who is the author") both of these examples draw attention to how poems can challenge the structure from which they are born.

he then humbly mentioned that avant-guard work like this (which has almost no popular readership) needs to be supported by an institution - and would seem to undermine the whole premise of institutional critique. on the contrary, Goldsmith argues that poetry (an art) can critique and comment on the institution from within. he mentioned some art (Andrea Fraser, to name one) that did this, as well as his reading and suit from the White House Poetry Night (an event he was invited to - with no real strings attached. he was basically free to read/say whatever - sans anything "political"). evidently his suit was of the same style and made by the same people who made Obama's suit he wore that night (of course the pattern was different). he read two excerpts from other poems (one by Walt Whitman and the other by Hart Crane) and a bit from Traffic - all very non-tradition, but accepted in this setting non-the-less. for Goldsmith, he sees this place as a meeting of the everyday and the avant-guard - a place to straddle tradition, but still be radical - and to fuck with the institution in a way that it never notices.

he also mentioned that the occupy movement is a prime place for such activities. he sited a person in S.F. (i think) who brought a sign that read, "GUCCI, Do The Dishes". by Goldsmith's recanting, this person was booted out of the protest because she or he had broken the social contracts of the occupy movement. so, Goldsmith was able to enact his critique because he played by the rules of that institution, while the GUCCI sign carrying protester was excluded from the discussion because her or his message challenged language and social contracts directly. in an interesting twist, a quick google search for 'gucci do the dishes' comes up with this:

anywho, he ended his talk with saying that poetry should be used in other fields (law [Vanessa Place], science [Christian Bök], politics, etc) to drive and alter that field's discourse.
---
in the Q&A he laid out his basic principle of "uncreative writing":
poetry is near 100 years behind visual art. this is because the visual arts were challenged by new technologies: the still and moving cameras. these technologies were able to do what artists had done for millennia, so they had to adapt. writing is facing this change now. "The internet revolutionized writing... Language will become mimetic"

*
i've since, and because of this, decided to put my piece, D, on my site. all the text in this piece is taken from Wikipedia.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

today is a good day

i:
finished reading a nice graphic novel on the Metra into Joliet today
got some coffee from the train station coffeeshop (Expresso)
have 3 lucky pennies in my left pocket
made my brother's "tee-shirt" tee-shirt
love that the sun is out (even if it's 30 degrees)
found a bunch of jobs on Higher Ed - 2 near Brian Biskie (Virginia)
had a good teaching day (did a new project with a fumage/paranoiac critical technique)
smooched a cutie

Friday, December 2, 2011

batch

batchin' it (v)
A term meaning "living like a bachelor," usually used by married people or ones in serious relationships whose significant other is temporarily or permanently away. It has a male connotation.
"My wife is in San Diego visiting her mother and buying yarn for the store, so I've been batchin' it."


allie is visiting her grandfather in California for the weekend - i told my mom and said, "Oh, so your batchin' it this weekend huh?" this is something people have said to me before. i understand the use of this term, but not why people thing this is an accurate term for me. through the definition, and the way the term is used, it implies that i will somehow have more freedom without allie around. meaning that i will not necessarily be acting like a bachelor (not cleaning, going dates, giving flowers to girls, etc, etc) but that i am somehow restricted by my partner - which couldn't be farther from the truth (and is actually more the opposite - that i feel more freed when i'm around allie).

perhaps this says more about how people normally conceive of others' relationships (or of men in their relationships) - that they are somehow more happier and free when their significant other isn't around. yikes.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

harder rain

 candles, matches, a working flashlight and battery powered AM radio - in Ken and Sondra's basement, Beloit, WI

road barricade at the Shoppier Road entrance ramp to I-90 outside Beloit, WI (used to block traffic when the highway is snowed over and impassable)

these are some objects that signify a potential. they have potential energy; they are waiting to be put to use. in these two photos the objects wait for a large meteorological event (e.g. blizzard) that would cause a blackout or impassable roads. the barricade, flashlight, radio, and candles currently serve no function other than foreshadowing what may be - when they will become active.

the above photographs predict an external action (blizzard/blackout) and an action that will be taken by the object(s) (barricade set up/candles lit/etc). this second action is somewhat internal to the object(s) - it is its purpose. in these, the two actions are fairly obvious. whereas the objects in the photograph below signal its two actions in a less pronounced manner. i see the predicted and external action here as a death. the second action is the burial and engraving of the tombstone; but there are other, more slippery, actions that are sprung into play after the predicted event: the wake, funeral, funeral precession, prayers, and even the flowers that are left at the graveside years later. in actuality, the second event here is mostly emotional.

then, the predicted events/tragedies trigger a flash light that illuminates a darkened house, a shut-in winter day, a body that is laid to rest, and a person that is mourned for. i like thinking of these together.

 my grandparent's tombstone, Oakwood Protestant Cemetery, Wilmington, IL


(i think i may like to re-create the radio/candle arrangement as a sculpture titled we go to bed, but we don't sleep too hard)

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Saturday, November 26, 2011

avacado love boats

It is an unspoken hunger we deflect with knives--one avocado between us, cut neatly in half, twisted then separated from the large wooden pit. With the green fleshy boats in hand, we slice vertical strips from one end to the other. Vegetable planks. We smother the avocado with salsa, hot chiles at noon in the desert. We look at each other and smile, eating avocados with sharp silver blades, risking the blood of our tongues repeatedly.
-Terry Tempest Williams, from An Unspoken Hunger

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

everything is on fire, slow fire


I'm talking about the individual US citizen's deep fear, the same basic fear that you and I have and that everybody has except nobody ever talks about it except existentialists in convoluted French prose. Or Pascal. Our smallness, our insignificance and mortality, yours and mine, the thing that we all spend all our time not thinking about directly, that we are tiny and at the mercy of large forces and that time is always passing and that every day we've lost one more day that will never come back and our childhoods are over and our adolescence and the vigor of youth and soon our adulthood, that everything we see around us all the time is decaying and passing, it's all passing away, and so are we, so am I, and given how fast the first forty-two years have shot by it's not going to be long before I too pass away, whoever imagined that there was a more truthful way to put it than "die," "pass away," the very sound of it makes me feel the way I feel at dusk on a wintry Sunday...
And not only that, but everybody who knows me or even knows I exist will die, and then everybody who knows those people and might even conceivably have even heard of me will die, and so on, and the gravestones and monuments we spend money to have put in to make sure we're remembered, these'll last what -- a hundred years? two hundred? -- and they'll crumble, and the grass and insects my decomposition will go to feed will die, and their offspring, or if I'm cremated the trees that are nourished by my windbown ash will die or get cut down and decay, and my urn will decay, and before maybe three or four generations it will be like I never existed, to only will I have passed away but it will be like I was never here, and people in 2104 or whatever will no more think of Stuart A. Nichols Jr. than you or I think of John T. Smith, 1790 to 1863, of Livingston, Virginia, or some such. That everything is on fire, slow fire, and we're all less than a million breaths away from an oblivion more total than we can even bring ourselves to imagine, in fact, probably that's why the manic US obsession with production, produce, produce, impact the world, contribute, shape things, to help distract us from how little and totally insignificant and temporary we are.
-David Foster Wallace, from The Pale King

Sunday, November 20, 2011

no man

island

* * * * *
figured out a pattern in my practice today - it seems pretty accurate:

Friday, November 18, 2011

a silent radio, tuned to an EAS station


working titles:
silent shortwave
silent radio
EAS (silent)
a silent solid-state analog shortwave receiver
candles lit by no hand, then melted into nothing
still shortwave

other recent notes:
the morning light annexed our apartment
"He is out. Needs 2 get used 2 new blood." (text from my mom, 11/16/11 11:54AM)

[i'm noticing more and more that i am drawn to dismal/beautiful ideas]

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

on when i might eat someone

had a collaborative-cook dinner with allie. over spaghetti and asparagus we talked about how we would, or could, live in a distopian future. some subjects were: avoiding suicide and murder, how we would get supplies from Home Depot, and when we would resort to cannibalism.
this is not an uncommon subject of thought for me, but i had never talked about it with allie. it was kinda revealing to hear that she has similar fears.

still sick - it still sucks.
made this drawing (or sketch, or something) at USF today:


it's a rubbing of a man-hole cover outside of the Rialto in downtown Joliet.

Monday, November 14, 2011

my insides

feeling like i'm somewhere between squishy, un-confident, and __________.
from teaching, from lack of clarity (?) at a PD, and from getting sick :(

(Active ingreedient (in each drop)                        Purpose
Menthol, 4.8mg.......Cough suppressant, Oral pain reliever)
-i like how the back of packages sometimes read like T.S. Eliot poems.
my mom called to tell me that my grandfather has something that she couldn't remember - turned out it is diverticulitis. then i said some things about how i will probably be sickier tomorrow and she was all like, "that's good."
at least the (brief) critique in Intro to Drawing went nicely. a student brought this in:

 Inside Looking Out (tattoo transfer papers) 2011

(detail)

Sunday, November 13, 2011

swirling my coffee

gyre; noun

1. a circular or spiral motion or form; especially : a giant circular oceanic surface current

Friday, November 11, 2011

11/11/11 11:11:11

(i wasn't awake for the AM [or real] version - oh well)

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

bluets

 leaves in the Harris Bank parking lot, downtown Joliet, IL

For Mallimaré, the perfect book was one whose pages had never been cut, their mystery forever preserved, like a bird's folding wing, or a fan never opened.
-from Bluets by Maggie Nelson, pg 70

Monday, November 7, 2011

Untitled, Chicago (to Cy Twombly)

i found this object outside of the hidden gallery of Cy Twombly sculptures at the end of a row of galleries at the Art Institute of Chicago - it really mirrors his work in the gallery. while i was photographing it a few people stopped to look at it, as if it were a sculpture.

 found object/sculpture/wall outside Gallery 267 at AIC
 Cy Twombly - Untitled, New York (wood, cloth, nails, and house paint) 1955

 Cy Twombly - (To F.P.) The Keeper of the Sheep, Jupiter Island (wood, cloth, plaster, and nails) 1992

Cy Twombly - (To F.P.) The Keeper of the Sheep, Jupiter Island (wood, cloth, plaster, and nails) 1992 (detail)

Saturday, November 5, 2011

silence, in 9 parts


Silent Band (from My iTunes)

Aphex Twin - Penty Harmonium
Beck - Black Tambourine
Blackalicious - Ego Sonic War Drums
Boards of Canada - Dawn Chorus
Fela Kuti - Funky Horn
Sparklehorse - Piano Fire
Squarepusher - The Modern Bass Guitar
Talking Heads - Sax and Violins
Thom Yorke - Cymbal Rush

Friday, November 4, 2011

YES
YES
YES
YES
YES
YES
YES

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

disposable

some highlights from the disposable camera that i just had developed.