NWA WTF

I just came back from my Monday Neighborhood Writing Alliance writing workshop. After considering today's developments and past comments, I have a few theories about the NWA.
They seem to want to proliferate the status quo. So I ask myself:
- what's my beef with that? (I think I accept this love boat approach - they like it, it fulfills them, and I'm happy for them)
- why should I push against it? (I think I'm bored with the status quo - I want more - I want to be challenged, and to challenge/think/work)

I've heard my written work referred to as "experimental" by undergrad professors (at ISU), graduate professors (at UIC), the NWA publication review staff, and today the head of our NWA group said it. (Perhaps she used it because the review committee did?) So I ask myself:
- is my writing bad?
- am I actually experimenting (and don't know it)?
- is "experimental" a (poorly) named genre?
- are they trying to hold me to outdated modes of production?
This term seems to be used in a slightly back-handed way. It is almost derogatory. Like the things I write are not trite, or undeveloped, and don't warrant consideration.

Maybe it is time for me to look elsewhere. Maybe just artists? Or maybe I just want the warm embrace of an academic institution (but that doesn't really sound like fun).

Ok. So I talked to Allie. She is so smart.
I have unreasonable expectations for this group. Most of the people in this group seem to be there to write "personal narratives;" or something like that. They're not there to challenge what it means to be a writer in 2011 or to bring the critique pain. These are the things that I am looking for. But, my writing is also an extension of my visual art practice - thereby I want my writing to be populist. This means that this may be a good (even if frustrating) place to test the populist waters of my poetry - to see how far I can go and what I need to do to be understood by more than academics.
I'm gunna start going to the Next Objectionists meets at Mess Hall too - to complement the NWA.

John Rainbow

John Rainbow - Nov. 26, 2005

I've been looking back at the work I made with the collaborative group, John Rainbow. At the time (2004-2007) we considered what we were doing to be involved with (juvenile) humor, populist ideals, narrative, and a lack of heavy or serious content. I can say that maybe our goal was to be philosophically set up against the Avant-Garde, and the exclusive nature of art. Maybe we were shooting for kitsch and didn't know it?

 John Rainbow - Hot Shit

 Unfortunately we were still dependent on the academic and exhibition system to disseminate our drawings, sculptures, and performances. But, this was and still is a base line that flows through my work... and the work of the other people that were involved in the group: Neil Vine (Gavin Bunner), Mr. Pine (Dan Mrva), Richard Maple (me), and Lane Woodbridge (Stephanie Lebak). (Our names are made through the "porn name" process of taking your middle name for given name, and the name of the street you grew up on as the surname.)

 

John Rainbow - Boop, Bop, Bleep

How has John Rainbow effected my growth? I think I employ some of the tactics form John Rainbow, but in more subtle ways. It can be seen more in my Interventions. There is a lot of play, pleasure, and humor in these works; but most of all, they are made for the everyday public - not an art audience. I understand that through the few times I have exhibited these as photographs (and at least me posting them here) I am putting them into the "art world". I guess a question here is, how do I want to present myself? Meaning, how do my intentions as an artist align themselves with this problem of audience and access?

Adam Farcus - Menards, Joliet, IL (store intervention and digital photograph) 2009

The group is still together (with only me, Mrva, and Bunner)... but on hiatus till we figure out how to collaborate between Chicago, L.A., and Bloomington, IN.

Full Circle

Adam Farcus - The Earth Below (digital photograph) 2010

I am an American. And I think of myself as a populist artist. A populist artist makes work that is about and for the majority of his or her culture and public (in my case both are American). Therefore I should always make art that is ephemeral and about commodity culture.