The Word for Us, Marc Hundley

The small deaths
people die each day
when some one
they want to learn to love
won't even give them
enough light
to study by

it's time
for some happiness
I say
a little life at least
maybe some love
if we can decide
what that means
and if it is
the word for us.

Jerry Chadwick October 31 73 Allen Street

Profit / Prophet / Prophit

Paul Chan's notes from Waiting for Godot in New Orleans

From Joy Garnett's Flickr set of Paul Chan's Cultural Politics

Kunst your self.

"Anyway, people don't make literature, architecture and art--the culture makes those things. We make books, buildings, and objects. We do our crummy little shit, and the culture assigns value to it."

[Dave Hickey, as interviewed in The Believer]

"Time is fast, and space is slow."

"Public space is the air space between bodies and information and other bodies; public space is a mix of electronic current and sexual magnetism. So much information fills the air, and so many things and so many bodies, that you can trust and love any one of them 'only for the time being'; there's no danger of being a true believer, no danger of being a husband or a wife--you're playing the electronic field, you're on the move and on the make...

...The model for a new public art is pop music. Music is time and not space; music has no place, so it doesn't have to keep its place, it fills the air and doesn't take up space. Its mode of existence is to be in the middle of things; you can do other things while you're in the middle of it. You're not in front of it, and you don't go around it, or through it; the music goes through you, and stays inside you. It's a song you can't get out of your head. But there are so many voices, too many songs to keep in your head at once; you walk down the street and hear one song from the soundbox you carry with you, another song blaring out of an audio speaker in front of a store, one more through an open bedroom window, yet another coming off the radio in a car that speeds by another car with still one more, and then another, as the driver changes stations. This mix of musics presents a mix of cultures; of course pop music exploits minority cultures, but at the same time it 'discovers' and uncovers them, so that they become born again to sneak into and under the dominant culture. The music of the 70s was punk; the music of the 80s was rap. Each of these types is music that says: you can do it, too. You don't need a professional recording studio, anybody can do it themselves, in the garage and in the house. The message of punk was: do what you can do and do it over and over, until everybody else is driven crazy. The message of rap is: if something has been done better by somebody else, who had the means to do it, then steal it, and re-mix it, tape is cheap and air-space is free. The message of punk and rap together is: actions speak louder only because of words, so speak up and talk fast and keep your hands free and your eyes wide open and your ear to the ground and be quick on your feet and rock a body but don't forget to rock a culture, too."

[Vito Acconci, from Public Space in a Private Time, 1990]

Rebekah's new studio

Early in the week I went over to my friend Rebekah's new studio in Greenpoint to check the place out, have a little wine, and watch her work. Dave and I sat for her, and as usual, we talked suspiciously of popular culture. Divine.

To do: read Middlemarch, write (a sitcom?).

All the Variations of an Incomplete Dog

"All the Variations of an Incomplete Dog," courtesy Sebastijan.

The Kids Aren't All Right

From a 2005 article by Aaron Rose in the LA Weekly:

"From the creative side, art theory has begun to play such a dominant role in art school that I feel it has lobotomized many young creative minds. Young MFAs are required to read endless texts, many written more than 20 years ago by stuffy Frenchmen with navel-gazing theories holding little or no relevance to life in Bush’s America. They are then asked to somehow relate their work to these deconstructionist theories and then be judged by how successfully they do this.

The primary problem with this kind of education is that by diving deeper and deeper into the theoretical and self-referential, artists lose touch with their public. As a result, the public, particularly the young public, often feels alienated from art. Intentionally or not, people have been made to feel inferior to the art intelligentsia. What inevitably follows is that art becomes simply something to be bought, sold and understood by a very small sector of the population and it loses its urgent role as a means of communication or as a catalyst for social or cultural change.

On more than one occasion I have felt the urge to spray-paint “Mike Kelley is the Enemy” on walls around the city. Nothing against Kelley; his early work in particular was a big inspiration and holds great meaning for me. Rather, I want to do this as a statement to young artists that they need to kill their heroes to discover themselves...

...The point of all this is that if young artists had the courage and the encouragement to focus more on their art than the “art business,” there would be even more inspiring work to see and less distance between art and the public.Maybe all it takes is a little less thinking and a lot more feeling. If we could open our hearts amazing things could happen."