dérive in a gridded world

[flo#4] - Long Island City

2011-06-08T16:12:00.047-04:00

[flo#4] -LIC (click on images to enlarge)

In the summer of 2010 I had an exhibition my work at The Homefront, a gallery in Long Island City, Queens, New York. It's in a central location, right off Jackson Avenue very near the E,M, and 7 trains, close to the Sculpture Center, not too far from PS1, but also directly in the whirlwind of several HUGE construction sites for office buildings.

I began exploring the neighborhood in the direction of Queensboro Plaza (roughly north and west). This area is mostly huge construction sites, some waiting to be started, others slowly rising, but unlike Williamsburg (where I was shooting images of building sites for my series "Stalled") these sites are not all condos but primarily office buildings. Surrounding the area are a bunch of low rise commercial warehouse spaces, a few aging tenements, some loft condo warehouse conversions, and several overpasses from the Queensboro Bridge. It's like a dystopian novel where the office-y business people are gentrifying aliens, building huge glass cities in the midst of the native species' brick and mortar villages.

One thing that I honed in on was the proliferation of mark making. The streets are ripe with brightly colored shapes and lines, some freshly painted, all denoting a code that the transient construction workers can translate; they are foreign to the average passerby . Buildings, conversely, display identifiable vestiges of time, fading handmade signs warning of obsolete violations, worn metal doors to shuttered garages, house numbers scribbled in sharpie. Construction barricades contain and endless variety of "sidewalk closed" or "sidewalk" with an arrow texts.

here are some images of the neighborhood:

Some new buildings near the gallery (the tall Citibank building completed in 1990 has been there for quite awhile though)

Empty lot waiting to be developed

Typical LIC buildings

View towards Manhattan from near 5 Pointz, a building filled with legal graffitti

Bowery btwn 5th + 6th streets circa 2004

2010-11-19T14:41:00.001-05:00

"Coming soon" site of the Cooper Square Hotel, 2004, often called "Dubai on the Bowery".

Same site circa 2007:

"Oh, It's Not What It Used to Be" - Bowery circa 2000

2010-11-19T14:15:00.001-05:00

NY Times article circa 2000 about the Bowery, written by someone who spent a lot of time there as a child in the 60's probably.

Notes:

"Today on the Bowery the tallest building -- other than the 1970's Confucius Plaza in Chatham Square -- is the 10-story Salvation Army Chinatown Corps, No. 225, near Rivington Street; most are three or four stories."

"Still seedy around the edges, the Bowery is not yet gentrified -- there's no Starbucks, no Gap -- and it's not clear whether it will soon look more like SoHo, to the west."

"Old-timers gape at a two-story terraced gray penthouse, recently erected atop a dark orange brick building." ---- (While there are other seemingly older penthouse structures visible, I think this one is the first real sign of the beginning of what the Bowery has become.)

Also, another mention of its unique street arrangement:

"The Bowery interrupts the city's straightforward grid. Streets like Prince, Spring and Bleecker on the west side, and Stanton, Rivington and First on the east, end -- or begin -- at the Bowery. In some cases, the names change: Delancey becomes Kenmare; Bond becomes East Second; Great Jones becomes East Third."

Asian Pub Will Close to Make Way for Bowery 2.0

2010-11-18T17:46:00.000-05:00

http://ny.eater.com/archives/2010/11/asian_pub_will_close_to_make_way_for_bowery_20.php

EV Transitions: A.T. Stewart, John Wanamaker, the Great Fire, and the Great Flood (Part II)

2010-11-17T21:09:00.001-05:00

EV Transitions: A.T. Stewart, John Wanamaker, the Great Fire, and the Great Flood (Part II)

The "new" Wanamaker building is where K-Mart is on Astor Place......one of my favorite buildings in NY, so well proportioned (1903 - Burnham). This shows a film of the old building burning down. Fascinating.

"This is where streets go to die" - Bowery circa 2003

2010-11-17T20:40:00.002-05:00

This NY Times article titled "Palimpsest Street" from 2003 gives you a mini rundown of the the Bowery's history, and details some sensibility of its different manifestations. Originally the article probably had pictures (I wish it still did).

During this time period there was no way of knowing that the Bowery was on the precipice of massive change, just that things were generally shifting in a more upscale direction. No one knew if it was sustainable at this point.

I like the author's hypothesis as to why the Bowery had essentially sat unchanged for so many decades:

"One answer is surely physical. Like most of New York, the Bowery is much cleaner than it used to be, but it is still an ungainly street, singularly devoid of shade. An informal survey counted only 19 trees, many of them little more than saplings. And in its northern reaches, particularly, the Bowery is almost as broad and as busy as a highway. Trucks rumble constantly up and down its six lanes, either serving the avenue's many wholesalers or on their way somewhere else. And if geography is destiny, then the Bowery will never change. This is where streets go to die. Prince and Spring Streets from the west; Rivington, Stanton and First Streets from the east. All come to dead ends here, creating the impression that the Bowery is somehow cosmically misaligned -- an ineluctable border area, permanently detached from any of the neighborhoods surrounding it.

Or perhaps there's a simpler reason that the Bowery has remained the Bowery. Modern cities developed for the most practical of reasons, as marketplaces of goods, services and ideas. It is only when the markets leave that cities and neighborhoods begin casting around existentially for reasons to exist. On the Bowery, neither the industrial markets nor the artists ever left. The street remained more or less content unto itself. In a way, the Bowery is the only part of the ''real'' city left in Manhattan."

You can check out some aerial photos taken from different time periods by using the NYC.gov interactive map feature (super cool).

Bowery and Houston circa 1924

Bowery and Houston circa 1996

Bowery and Houston circa 2008

Dive bars in NY circa 1996

2010-11-17T00:07:00.003-05:00

I'm working on a big piece for a show I'm doing at La Mama Gallery in January (also showing Wil Ortega's work). La Mama is located right off the Bowery, on 1st street, near the Liz Christy garden. Also, I suppose I should mention its also nowadays sandwiched between one of the largest (luxury) housing developments built in recent times in the neighborhood, built by Avalon Bay, who previous to this complex on the Bowery had mostly build suburban apartment complexes in places like New Jersey. Anyway, if I can pull it off, my portion of the show will incorporate some of the last 20 years of history in terms of the Bowery - pretty much the time person when I would have traversed it as a Cooper Union student, then staff and faculty, and a general NYC downtown resident.

I have a lot of memories, but they tend to be a bit fuzzy. Images are in my heads, but dates are uncertain. I've started doing some research, mostly using the NY Times archive, which so far has been very helpful. I typed in Bowery and Houston and a bunch of stuff popped up. I was tryign to determine when the aforementioned housing development was proposed, because i remember seeing a rendering in a book in the Cooper Library circa 1999? 2000? and thinking "well, thats never going to happen". And it didn't, at least as far as I can tell. Originally it was proposed as city housing. Then it was sold to a private developer. So, big difference there in terms of what it represents. Still looking into finding that rendering.

Anyway, from time to time I'm going to post some of the articles/images I find, and my thoughts here.

Note the date. This one is from 1996:

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/03/news/lives-bar-none.html?scp=98&sq=houston+and+bowery&st=nyt

enjoy.

concrete misplots

2010-11-16T20:46:00.008-05:00

concrete misplots - click for article + more pix

Race and ethnicity: New York City

2010-09-12T13:56:00.002-04:00

Race and ethnicity: New York City, some fascinating maps originally uploaded by Eric Fischer.

The Homefront's website is up!

2010-07-19T17:46:00.004-04:00

go to: here to read the press release for my upcoming show, and see a sketch of the collage! also read about other stuff going on at The Homefront (other art will be on display, including some of Simone Meltesen's wonderful houseboats) busy printing and working on some new images for the "stalled" series of photos (from williamsburg construction sites...)

Summer project in Long Island City

2010-07-01T11:38:00.011-04:00

I wrote this last week in a stream of consciousness, its part of the process of working on an artist statement for the new collage. More thoughts and pix soon.....

-------------

I've been very kindly asked to exhibit my work in a new space opening up in Long Island City called The Homefront. It's in a central location, right off Jackson Ave. very near the E and V (or is it it M now?), towards the Sculpture Center, not too far from PS1, but also directly in the whirlwind of several HUGE construction sites for office buildings.

Since last fall I've been using a large format 4x5 camera to shoot a project based on the large number of stalled building sites in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Half of the show at The Homefront will consist of a selection of these images. The other half will be a large site specific collage installed on the walls.

I began exploring the neighborhood in the direction of Queensboro Plaza (roughly north and west). This area is mostly huge construction sites, some waiting to be started, others slowly rising, but unlike Williamsburg these sites are not all condos but primarily office buildings. Surrounding these sites are a bunch of low rise commercial spaces, a few aging tenements, some loft condo warehouse conversions, and several overpasses from the Queensboro Bridge. It's like a dystopian novel where the office-y business people are gentrifying aliens, building huge glass cities in the midst of the native species' brick and mortar villages.

One thing that I honed in on was the proliferation of mark making. The streets are ripe with brightly colored shapes and lines, some freshly painted, all denoting a code that the transient construction workers can translate; they are foreign to the average passerby . Buildings, conversely, display identifiable vestiges of time, fading handmade signs warning of obsolete violations, worn metal doors to shuttered garages, house numbers scribbled in sharpie. Construction barricades contain and endless variety of "sidewalk closed" or "sidewalk" with an arrow texts.

here are some images:

Some new buildings near the gallery (the tall Citibank building completed in 1990 has been there for quite awhile though)

Typical LIC buildings

View towards Manhattan from near 5 Pointz

Locals and Tourists #2 (GTWA #1): New York

2010-06-16T20:46:00.002-04:00

Locals and Tourists #2 (GTWA #1): New York, originally uploaded by Eric Fischer.

This visually beautiful project has convinced me to start to use Flickr in a more active way, in terms of comprehending the power of the modern photograph's metadata and geotagging.

I'm beginning to understand this idea that there is this collective archive of space, place, time, and technology which is happening almost unconsciously worldwide. People put pictures up as a record of an event/moment and through their metadata they are instantly linked with everyone else who has posted images from that same location throughout time. I've always thought about metadata in a creepy way, as a sort of surveillance tool (how can you not having lived though the 90's), but now i can almost see it as a transcendent way of creating a collective memory of a place/time/space. One that, though mediated, is directed by the masses and not a professional eye. Yes, most of the millions of photos uploaded everyday are mediocre, banal, compositionally horrible, and technically lacking, but if I think of them less as "photographs" and more as "artifacts" they come alive. They are documents. Documents which now live in cyberspace and have gained meaning in history by their relationship to other "documents" - i.e photos.

I've been lamenting the fact that we are losing these sorts of moments because people no longer print out pictures. They get shot, downloaded, and put into a folder, which gets put in a folder then onto a hard drive or CD/DVD somewhere and forgotten. In the old days everything would have been printed. Everything had a negative, somewhere, even if it was blurry or out of focus. "mistake" photos could be thrown away, but some record of them still existed. Often nowadays people delete the photos they think are not perfect, erasing potential histories. While this will forever be true, I see now that places like Flickr can/will/are actually may, in effect, become the dresser drawers of the future. Publicly accessible dresser drawers. Kinda mind blowing.

Ugh, more to say but I have to get some other work done tonight. More soon.

very wet day, late march, wandering from midtown to union square

2010-03-31T00:15:00.002-04:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/beatricethecat/sets/72157623738648552/

two more stalled williamsburg projects rise from the grave

2010-03-19T21:49:00.002-04:00

via curbed.com (click to go to article)

its a thursday night

2010-03-18T20:10:00.003-04:00

haven't been able to focus very well all week. not sure why, been taking my vitamins, getting almost enough sleep. on the way back from eating dinner tonight I looked at the sunset sky and though "that looks photoshopped" (we learned the "Liquidfy" tool today in class). Walking across the Brown campus today I thought "this is just too perfect, like a facsimile of what an ivy league college is supposed to look like". I've always said it felt like being in a movie. People I meet are often meant to be on their way to somewhere else. I get there at the very end of their "this-ness". I myself am in my own bubble. I've started photographing my apartment again. It has many dustbunnies. when i get in the car I want TO GO. Not across town, but away. wherever, anywhere. until I run out of gas. my new job is intense. the students are great, they challenge me. i need to clean off surfaces. the state of my desk is the state of my mind. its 8:30 already. damn. gonna try to put things here on blogger more, more streamline, though the cacophony of facebook seems to suit my state of mind. but i can try. seems like when echo and the bunnymen got to "ocean rain" they lost steam. too poppy.

Misunderstandings (A Theory of Photography) (1967-1970)

2010-02-25T21:23:00.000-05:00

a work by Mel Bochner

Originally published by Multiples Inc. New York as part of "Artists and Photographs" (1970). The project consists of ten photo-offset prints on note cards (5x8 in each)

(handwritten)
(apparently three of these may not be not true quotes, but he may have made them up)

"I would like to see photography make people despise painting until something else will make photography unbearable" - Marcel Duchamp

"I want to reproduce the objects as they are or as they would be even if I did not exist" - Taine

"Photography cannot record abstract ideas" - Encyclopedia Britannica

"Let us remember too, that we don't have to translate such pictures into realistic ones in order to 'understand' them, any more than we need to translate photographs into colored pictures, although black-and-white men or plans in reality would strike us as unspeakable strange and frightful. Suppose we were to say at this point: 'something is a picture only in a picture language'" - Ludwig Wittenstein

"The true function of revolutionary art is the crystallization of phenomena into organized forms" - Mao Tse-Tung

"In my opinion, you cannot say you have thoroughly seen anything until you have a photograph of it" - Emile Zola

"Photography is the product of complete alienation" - Marcel Proust

"The photography keeps open the instants which the onrush of time closes up; it destroys the overtaking, the overlapping of time" - Maurice Merleau-Ponty

"Photographs provide for a kind of perception that is mediated instead of direct....what might be called 'Perception at Second Hand'" - James J. Gibson

new york state of mind

2010-02-23T09:40:00.000-05:00

I'm eating breakfast at 7A again before driving up in the rain to Providence. They are playing Billy Joel's "The Stranger" album. This is one my parents had when I was a little kid, like grade school (I'd fogotten abot this one, and can now put this with the Donna Summer, Dolly Parton, and Bee Gee's version of Sargent Pepper as things I vaguey remember).

Anyway, hearing this album (it's pretty good actually) made me think about what my perception of New York was back then, o even before I moved here. And while you may think, from knowing me, it would have been shaped by music, I think it was really formed from television. Pittsburgh was far enough away, and different enough that New York really was very foreign to me when I got here.

Thinking back, Sesame Street was very informative. We had no sidewalks where I lived, no apartment buildings, no stoop, no deli's. It was this glimpse into urbanity that I didn't understNd but I think probably penetrated my unconscious and stayed there in terms of understanding that there was a bigger world out there than Elizabeth, Pennsylvania.

Taxi is the other show that comes to mind. I always felt it was kind of gritty and mean and I know I didn't get all the jokes but you could identify with these characters and their struggles as a diverse group. This was not "Friends".

Then there was Good Times, The Jeffersons, and Sanford and son (were these all in NY? I chat remember). But they all offered a glimpse into this world I never touched living in the country. I also vaguely remember watching Soap, obviously not getting much of the plot but watching it now.....

Even The Facts of Life had Jo from Brooklyn.

Strangely I don't rememer any tv from the 80's set in NY. At least at the moment. Maybe I mean mid 80's, because i bet a lot of these shows were actually from the early 80's. I wonder what shifted, but then reappeared on the 90's in totally different way. Should "Friends" be blamed for creating all these condos and kickstarting the city's plunge towards suburbanism?

Hm, not enough time to exlore this right now. Parking meter is up in 5. So I will leave you with that thought.

1984 French Industrial/Noise/New Wave Complilation (from cassette)

2010-01-14T16:17:00.000-05:00

OK, 80's industrial French Complilation cassette from 1984 with a terrible title - but aparantly a rare Psychic TV track on here. Some it is mostly (slightly unlistenable) free form noise but then towards an early sonic youth direction, some more coherent, but i'm liking a bunch of it so I'm sharing.

The Son of Sam single "nature makes a mistake" track is on here too. early electro indeed!

Sex & Bestiality - 4 x Cassette, Compilation - France [1984]

http://rapidshare.com/files/221924569/k.1.rar

http://rapidshare.com/files/221928928/k.2.rar

http://rapidshare.com/files/221929143/k.3.rar

http://rapidshare.com/files/221929807/k.4.rar

originally found here: http://mutant-sounds.blogspot.com/2007/10/vasex-bestiality4xtape1984france.html

also good resource for info: http://www.french-new-wave.com/compilation.php?annee=1984

Kylie mix for you all....

2010-01-11T17:53:00.000-05:00

Back to work mode means back to Minimal Wave, so i'm putting Kylie to rest for now.

Made this mix, mostly of remixes i found, which makes me energized, helps me to turn OFF my brain, and provides a sunny feeling during these cold winter days. I'll admit its the gayest thing i've ever put together, in every sense of the word, but you know what, i'm ok with that. (because as you know i'm all about being "cool" haaaa)

and just for the record, i heard her cover of "Love is the Drug" and got hooked from there. after much research I found some tunes/remixes that pleased my ears.

I KNOW there are many of you that would enjoy this just for its bubblegum pop qualities. this is why i'm sharing. do the songs all kind of sound the same? YES! does she sound like Madonna/Fergie/Bjork/Gwen Stephanie at times. YES! but she can hit the high notes like Donna Summer - YES! all the same, she is Kylie, not the others. I think i "get" her now. and she's awesome.

so here you go, enjoy!

jen's kylie mix: http://www.zshare.net/download/7104312402f7c8ac/

also, some repeats here but i quite like this compilation:

Rare and Unreleased: http://www.zshare.net/download/710445675ce35d4a/

In order for me to concentrate, i will be turning back to some serious Minimal German techno very soon (i.e. Kompakt). not as fun, but helps the gears turn when writing *new* multi-disciplinary course descriptions.

and to watch! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTLBnf7bPHA&feature=rec-fresh+div-r-2-HM

Watch This! Queens of British Pop on the BBC

2010-01-04T10:33:00.000-05:00

List of collected youtube clips.

I quite enjoyed this series, esp Annie Lennox, Siouxsie, and Kate Bush!

Dusty Springfield
http://www.youtube.com/user/AGY1962#p/search/7/HLvo7yBbE9Q
http://www.youtube.com/user/AGY1962#p/search/2/WoI9iJ_4fiI

Marianne Faithful
http://www.youtube.com/user/AGY1962#p/search/1/KnBSXB5bGQY
http://www.youtube.com/user/AGY1962#p/search/6/2UJ0oiYHGXg

Sandie Shaw
http://www.youtube.com/user/AGY1962#p/search/5/U00NnAbzisc

Susie Quatro
http://www.youtube.com/user/AGY1962#p/search/7/HLvo7yBbE9Q

Siouxsie Sioux
http://www.youtube.com/user/AGY1962#p/search/4/5nz-QX_1XFs

Kate Bush
http://www.youtube.com/user/AGY1962#p/search/3/GiQCt5PAcIg

Annie Lennox
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMHtzQmmOXw

Alison Moyet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8w-3HV2Wg4

Kylie Minogue
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D868UeemBFE&feature=related

Geri Haliwell
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D868UeemBFE

Leona Lewis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxolkZGXMAY&feature=related

Amy Winehouse
(couldn't find a link....)

its going to be dark again already

2009-11-29T14:45:00.000-05:00

so this daylight savings time is still messing with my head, i often have no idea what time it is or what day it is for that matter. and ok, i'll admit, staying out til 2 or 3 (or 4)AM probably does not help any, but a) hanging out with old and new friends is very important to being a healthy, happy human being and b) i can do this easily in NY - this is what being in the city is for. if i went to bed at 10 I might as well live in ......ahem.... Providence (sorry people).

absorbing the car into city life as well is a bit of a mind-bender......i HAVE been using it to facilitate the creation of art, but then i put it "away" and grab my bike to run around or hop in the subway. its like i have too may choices. i know i sound like i'm complaining, but really i'm not.

additionally, i've been spending most of my daylight hours in Williamsburg (and photo stores but mostly Williamsburg), because my recent project revolves around stalled building sites there. I haven't spent much time there since i worked building audio furniture on Berry street in 1995, and then in East Williamsburg on Scholes street in 1998-99ish, so you can imagine its changed dramatically since then, esp. the northside. Every now and then i'd go over to meet with friends, see a show, get a drink, but usually just riding my bike down bedford to my studio in Greenpoint sent chills down my spine due to the intensity of hipster-y people all hanging out even on a weekday. One day, last summer, Betsy and i had a girls afternoon out and she showed me some nice bars near grand that had craft beer and back gardens. i was sort of impressed, as anywhere in the LES with nice beer like that is full of wannabe yuppies. the Williamsburg places felt way more like Berlin. (or, i guess Berlin became Williamsburg, right?). I feel like more and more the East Village and LES is full of generic NYU/SVA students and people who moved here because they think it makes them cool (but they work for an investment fund company or something). Williamsburg is sort of the same but there are no dorms and the people who move there to be cool actually probably work at cooler jobs. (or don't need one - trust funds). anyway, as of right now, i feel like it seems like a nice place to retire. plenty of nightlife, good record stores, maybe a little full of itself but i so is Manhattan. Now, i can say this because i never have had to live in Brooklyn, while most people have. yes, i am on my high horse. sorry again peoples.

Another good (and bad) fact about Williamsburg is that the rabid trend of massive condo building has stopped. in its wake a series of abandoned empty lots have been left adjacent to the hulking shiny new structures. so, weirdly, while more destiny has been created in previously desolate spots, once populated blocks have now become dangerous and empty wastelands.

I started photographing some of the structures built to shield the public from construction sites this summer, though mostly structures in Manhattan. I began scouring Williamsburg in earnest about a month ago, and have noted several spots which i have been visiting weekly. To my amazement i've witnessed an incredible amount of transfiguration within a short time period. Typically we are meant to ignore the crude structures, and to the untrained eye not much may have changed. The areas they exist in seem like desolate wastelands, their facades invite interaction on a scale like no other in the city. There is a battle being forged, between nature and man as well as man and man. hostile external forces are constantly on the attack, driving the internal occupiers to perpetually shore up their fortifications. creating a visually rich and layered dialog back and forth. this trail of mark making on these sculptural piecemeal structures tells a universal yet anonymous time sensitive story.

blah blah blah...ok, putting this artist statement part of this on a word document and working on it separately......cos you all don't need to go though THAT. this was meant to be more informal but, well, i guess it just started me off.

4PM = 26 pieces of 4x5 film to pick up from manhattan color! yeah!!!!! i wish i would have waited until today to shoot, as yesterday the wind was terrible (but created some cool destroyed construction barricades which got knocked over. my camera was swaying at times though)

video connections:

2009-11-08T18:33:00.000-05:00

hollaback girl just came up on my itunes, so i watched the video again (yes, procrastinating again in stead of using the computer for work purposes.....)

so watching this made me think about the history of high school band-ish videos (amoungst other things intangible at this moment)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AU-kAnB24I

then i thought of tony basil:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4CyNvEfWoE

then i thought of one of my fav kate bush (and ok, not as wide of an audience saw this video) (and ooh, the rollerskates)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEVMfG8z490

crazy.

bill viola/james turrell - 1980's- pittsburgh peeps some help? please.....

2009-11-05T21:07:00.000-05:00

uber rambly, beware, this is the contents of my brain after teaching 9-5:

something today compelled me to look up, yet again, the line up of artists from the 1988 Carnegie International. I looked it up once at Bobst (NYU's library) and like most books you'd actually want there, it said they had it, but it was missing. Jump to now and well, Brown has the catalog from 1988 and 1991. They are fascinating to me because, well, i'm sure i saw at least one of them, and have very vague memories about what i saw. nothing in these catalogs, though, seems to be the work i remember the most vividly, so i'm imaging there must have been a show somewhere in between the two.

looking back i've put names to two pieces, though maybe the names are wrong. there was what i've determined was a james turrell piece, a larger than life size mesmerizing blue glowing circle seamlessly placed on the wall which had a path towards it lined with small speakers which gave pout a faint buzzing sound. i'm not sure how long i stood staring at it, trying to figure out how it worked. it was the most amazing thing i had ever seen. i think its interesting that it resonated on some basic level in my teenage brain.

the other was a video piece, in a dark, thin, tall space. there was an image of fire projected on the top of the walls and ceiling. it sort of dived across the space fleetingly, it was there for an instant then gone. there was sound. it was scary, but not terrifying. i feel like there were also hands instead of fire sometimes. hmm, now that i'm thinking about it maybe it was bruce nauman. will look up now. ok just checked and no it wasn't.

so i'm stumped and there isn't an exhibition archive online for the Carnegie Museum that goes back that far. does anyone remember these pieces?

in coming back to this memory, and placing it in time with other memories, i think i have begun to identify my displaced feelings about being here at Brown. its not just taking myslef out of New York, but there are many levels. i keep saying things like "i feel like i'm in a movie which is about going to a University", in that my college experiences were very much not like this. Sure, there was some "bubble" ness, but not this "University" experience. but its not entirely alien, i've only just uncovered. I spent nearly 3 years of saturdays and 2 years of summers going to pre-college at Carnegie Mellon. I never lived there, but i could take book sout of their library all year round and use their studios in the summer. it has a campus, you could eat in their cafeteria. i could walk into Oakland and buy records, and go to the museum. while not everyone in the program was talented, they were all much more serious about art than i'd encounter on a daily basis in high school.

i don't remember much about visiting RISD back in 1989, except that the tour around RISD and Brown gave me a familiar feeling, it was like Carnegie Mellon but far away form home. it felt do-able. very do-able. i have no idea what my life would have turned out like had i gone to RISD, but i bet it would be very different. no, i know it would have. being in NY set me on a different path entirely. So i bet in some ways being here is some weird continuation of that thought from 1989, but now instead of familiar it just feels foreign and maybe just a tad restrictive in some unconscious way. i'm beginning to make connections between here and pittsburgh now, and maybe that way it will make more sense.

the reason i looked up the Carnegie International in the first place was for my Brown artist talk, before i got this job. i was trying to pinpoint when, and where, my sensibilities came from in terms of how i relate to photography/art. looking at these catalogs now, i'm not 100% convinced it was any of the Carnegie Internationals, but instead two things i saw in college......Christine Osinski took us to see "Special Collections: The Photographic Order From Pop To Now" in 1992 at ICP, and the Gordon Matta-Clark retrospective at the Serpentine in London in 1993. Things started to congeal after this point. something clicked. i think, perhaps, it was one of the first times i'd seen photographs used in a sculptural way.

but back to these here catalogs.......i'm sort of shocked to see all these household names were in these exhibitions in 88 and 91 (thomas struth, anish kapoor, jeff koons) who i though had risen a little later that that. its also hillarious to see an agnes martin painting then turn the page to an elizabeth murray. another aspect though it that a lot of the work doesn't look dated. i'm not sure if its because people my age grew up with this and are now producing work which sort of references it, or if its the younger generation of artists which are a) maybe not aware of this work and some kind of similar aesthetic is happening or b) HAVE (or are) discovered(ing) this work and think its awesome and are just going with it or c) it never really went away.

I mean, Phillip Taaffe is back. fischli & weiss, bruce nauman, michael asher, richard artschwager, hiroshi sugimto. but then again some of the curator/critics are the same now as then, lynne cooke, barbara london, thomas mcevilley. (i didn't take out the catalog for '85 but Saskia Bos has an essay in it i think.....)

also looking at the Mattress Factory's past exhibition lineup......maybe i just think i'm younger than i really am, i mean if Tracy emin did a performance there in '94......hmmmm

the early 90's are definitely in the air

2009-10-31T11:55:00.000-04:00

ok so i bought several flannel shirts the other day, at Uniqlo. why does this matter? i'd like to discuss.

recently i gave a portrait assignment to my photo 2 class. on tuesday durn g our preliminary crit we were discussing the difference between the photographer dressing up the model for the shoot, the model dressing themselves up for the shoot, and the model just being shot as they were a that moment. how do these factors add/detract from the sense of "portrait"? but anyway thats a whole big can of worms and not really where i was going.

one student directed her roommate to dress in a certain way, tough she said it was in a style the roommate would wear. her model was wearing a red flannel shirt, black spandex-y paints, and those girly faux combat boots. the student photographer said she was gong for a "my so called life" aesthetic, and so we discussed what that meant to all of us, me being in my late 30's, my TA being 30, the students being in their early 20's.

which, in my head, led me back to the buying of flannel shirts. my initial motivation was because Jersey, who i used to work with at Cooper Union, was wearing them and they looked good on her. i suddenly remembered they used to exist in my life too. She's the one who initially told me about the Uniqlo store on Broadway (big Japanese clothing store, men's and women's clothes cut very unisex. their women's button down shirts fit me and that never happens). so i went there recently and lo and behold there was a large selection of flannel shirts. so i bought 3. (and ok, they only have like 2 stores in the US, so they aren't really a trend but they def. can be starting one, though i think its started already where it left off maybe in 1994?)

NOW....Jersey is 25. she grew up in Italy. grunge was happening when she was like 10. i was there. you did not buy flannel shirts, you acquired them. "New" was not cool, used, preferably with holes in it, was. and of course baggy baggy baggy.

but now is not baggy at all, but slim. and come to think of it while re-reading this, my thoughts on this topic really didn't start with Jersey at all, but Alannah last semester, a Cooper student who i noticed wearing a red flannel shirt, who's style is kinda rather on the other end from Jersey. Alannah is rather fashion forward though. hm.

then on Wednesday night i had a chat with my TA again, this time about what the hell happened exactly in the mid 90's......when did the shift happen, where did grunge go? also earlier in the week i had a chat with Simone at A.I.R. about riot grrl, so the early 90's are definitely in the air.

so in my aged state (haa) i've started to look back at the early 90's with a different kind of filter than i would have when i was living in them. (Simone kindly asked me if i was able to discuss this because i was listening to all these BBC documentaries about music and, well, yes, but the truth is i'm old enough that i was actually there.). what things were in place to make grunge happen, and why did it fizzle out so completely by the mid/end of the 90's?

american radio has always been the blandest of the bland (i mean compare to British radio). why i just don't know. but there was a time in the late 80's when we had a syndicated alternative radio station, all over the states. it wasn't quite college radio, but it was rather radical compared to most. here you could hear the cure, siouxsie, echo and the bunnymen, and a host of lesser names making what was, arguably, kinda crappy late 80's overproduced music, but still, it wasn't milli vanilli. we had 120 minutes on MTV and Night Flight on USA (someday we'll have that discussion Terri). and as much as we might have thought it was ours individually, we were living in a countrywide "i have cable" (and its new) cultural moment. this stuff was being made available on a level it had never quite been before.

what i'm not 100% sure about is why. Reagan was in power, so everyone had something to rebel against. then it was Bush Sr. I remember being at an election party in NY when Clinton won, and it was joyous everywhere. The world changed, the economy changed, people changed. but as soon and the country equilbrisallized (ok thats not a word but, whatever) and there were "good times" (i.e. people being able to pay me to walk their dog, park their car, and eat lunch....i.e. artist assistant), the music situation turned to crap. the rein of grunge ended (its been touted as an anomaly anyway in terms of "popular" music if you read any theory). so i wonder why, with Bush Jr., we didn't see a resurgence (or did we and i missed it)? what kept mainstream music bland? i know the way music "happens" now has changed radically with the internet and all, and that probably no one really listens to radio at all anymore (i know i plug my iphone straight into the car, though when it crashed one night i was very pleased to be able to find Providence College radio playing some "Future Sounds of London" tracks at 12:30 AM).

which brings me back to flannel shirts. and "my so called life". we have had a large dose of the 80's revived over the past few years, though happily its been all mixed up, so much to the point that all the meaning has been drained out of it (pennyloafers and oxford sweaters on grungy art boys with bad mullet haircuts is just kinda funny and wrong). so what's going to happen now in popular culture now that that "reality bites" and "slackers" might be back, and Pearl Jam has reformed?

i'll keep you informed. since i'm working at a university now and not an art school, i'll be experiencing a larger demographic of students. we'll see how they morph......

http://www.uniqlo.com/us/explorer.html#/code:058985-000-63/

the reading.......

2009-10-30T21:55:00.000-04:00

after reading terri's post about goodreads earlier and almost posting "i'm a member but don't read books", i was compelled to look up some spatial politics books i might want to re-read from grad school for a course proposal. and you know what, now as was then, the ones i'd want are all checked out of the library already. the article "'New Wave' interchanges: Celine and Julie and Desperately Seeking Susan by Laura Mulvey" was of particular interest, in a book called "Hollywood and Europe : economics, culture, national identity, 1945-95", which has an image from "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" on the cover. NOT related to the course proposal, but you know, whatever. its checked out anyway. instead i think i'll go home now and watch my roommates DVD's of "the Sarah Connor Chronicles", and be able to say I TRIED to be scholarly........

listening to la roux

2009-08-29T16:56:00.000-04:00

silly english pop star fodder but she's quite sweet and charming and down to earth. fun to see when pop stars are just starting out, before they're "seasoned". plus that song "bulletproof" has been stuck in my head all day, so you have to hear it too so it can be stuck in your head (if you already are in the UK then you can laugh at me because i'm sure you hear it on the radio every day).. sorta tilda swinton-ish? but the hair...well, i think it can only last for one album.

i guess, also, since posting all those clippings yesterday...well i guess this is sort of the new version of clippings from magazines? you tube videos......hm.......i'm gonna go with that i think, maybe do this for other bands as i get obsessed with finding little weird info and clips about them. sounds right! things is though, 20 years later, i won't have you tube clips in a folder under my bed. sad. but in some ways more humanizing than the magazine articles we used to read.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlGY8fIjRs4&feature=fvst

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJn2aMPH1Qk&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbAJGq4Sm50&feature=response_watch

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGBrZCeUIpk&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOYufRHQSms (love when the shapes explode)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsTylFumCw8&feature=fvst

fifty

2009-08-05T23:13:00.000-04:00

OK, here are the rules. Test your memory and your love of live music by listing 50 artists or bands (or as many as you can remember) you've seen in concert. An act you saw at a festival and opening acts count, but only if you can't think of 50 other artists. Oh, and list the first concert you ever saw (you can remember that, can’t you)?

Should you choose this challenge, here's what you do:
Copy my note. Click on “notes” under tabs on your profile page. Select "write a new note" in the top corner. Paste the copy in the body of the note. Make your list. Once you've saved, don't forget to tag friends (including me) on the right.
-------------------

ok, i did end with friends bands, good ones, and a few obscure ones, and i'm sure i've seen other shows too. sorry , this is all i have in my brain tonight.

-------------------

1. gene loves jezebel
2. new order
3. echo and the bunnymen
4. cranes
5. love and rockets
6. the pixies
7. depeche mode
8. siouxsie and the banshees
9. muse
10. catatonia
11. cocteau twins
12. skinny puppy
13. nine inch nails
14. lamb
15. luscious jackson
16. pj harvey
17. pulp
18. kristen hersh
19. shellac
20. lady sovereign
21. dresden dolls
22. jaggery
23. r.e.m.
24. susanne vega
25. bikini kill
26. le tigre
27. stereolab
28. M.I.A.
29. Bauhaus
30. Yeah Yeah Yeah's
31. The Creatures
32. Dead Can Dance
33. Garbage
34. thrill kill kult
35. Hole (acoustic at Rough Trade in London)
36. Laurie Anderson
37. New Young Pony CLub
38. rebecca moore
39. Ari up
40. tracy and the plastics
41. duran duran
42. siouxsie sioux (just siouxsie)
43. tampasm (terrible name!!!)
44. diamanda galas (sat by her feet....amazing!)
45. huggy bear
46. the dust dive
47. the raincoats
48. tara de long
49. lianne hall
50. bela emerson

finally, a thought

2009-06-15T01:00:00.004-04:00

so here i am in Rochester, NY, on a residency. i thought, while here, i'd be posting more, that my thoughts would be clearer, that everything would fall into place after a crazy hectic six months or so. i was not entirely wrong, but i think i thought i'd just switch gears and that'd be it. i know better, really i do. the list is too big. at least now i'm honestly trying ot tackle one thing at a time., instead of 3 or 4. and speaking of that list, its still in my brain and not on paper. something i also know better about, when you write it down you aleviate some worries. i'll do it tommorrow, along with laundry....

Rochester isn't a bad town, and the Visual Studies Workshop isn't a bad place to be. i live in the building where the studio facilities are, and i'm here by myself what feels like 90% of the time. the interesting thing about it though is through facebook and skype and the internet well, i'm not really alone. esp facebook, cos you all are out there if/when i need you, sitting by the computer just like me, emailing, color correcting, watching youtube, etc. and we share. although some part of that equation seems like it should be "sad", in that we're not interating in person, actually i've come to believe its not. if i want to make my work, i need to be here, in front of this laptop, next to the darkroom, exposing cyanotypes for 35 no 40 no 50 minutes, using 5% acedic acid diluted to be a 5 solution in water, yadda yadda. and lucky for me, a whole bunch of you also need to be by your machines to do the things that make you tick. so united we sit.......

and i still have my moments of being 21 again (ok, for me more like 25), staying out talking til 4AM, because at times i can, my job allows for it and i'm thankful. i just can't do it every weekend like i used to. i think its necessary sometimes to give perspective, and remember the world outsidethe 9-5. and, well, the longer i'm here in Rochester on my own, the more my schedule shifts towards a 12PM - 3AM world. this happened the last time i was on a residency, so its not so unexpected.

i'm torn between making work about where i am, and making work that i proposed to make. right now i'm doing the latter, as i thought i would require less prep work, but ultimately its really the same, as the "prep" work i did previously was half cocked. i just got the roll of film i need to use, and because of that i pretty much needed to start testing out everythign iwas doing again. i've been attemting to learn gum printing, but its a beast. i have 12 other things i wanted to accomplish, but all i really want to do is ride my bike around and take pictures.

i know i shoudl take advantage of the reseach library here, especially because i'm going to be a profesor next year. talk about life change.....i still am not sure how this is all going to pan out. well, theres know way of knowing. i bounce between thinking "you can handle this" to "OMG you better get those lesson plans together RIGHT NOW!!!". I've taught 2 classes a semester before, while working a full time job and other stuff on top of that, but this is 15 weeks of classes meeting 2 times a week. i'm worried about keeping the students attention. i don't want them to get bored. the thing i'm not going to be used to is the fact that i will be able to just focus on them...i won't have this other full time job to worry about which takes up 40 hours of my week. weird!!!! but, ultimately, super awesome. unbelievably awesome.

then there's the whole commuting/Providence thing. as betsy pointed out the other day, all our friends have moved outside the city anyway. and its more than just that, so many things are up in the air. who knows if our new landlord is going to renew our lease? other personal issues are up in the air anyway, now they're x2. yet i'm worried i won't be able to make art without the city, without its struggles and strains and ultimately its energy. i've been other places, and the energy just is not the same.

at the same time i do sort of have a weird side "reailty" (shall we call it for lack of a better term). My job at Brown give me a studio. yeah. so, i should just move there, i'm not sure why i'm pussyfooting around that. well i do, i mean providence is not NY, and there was a mall next to the train station which throughly scared the bejesus out of me. but anyway, what if........i can live in a place where i can make music too, bring my drum set back, have it all ready to go. i've always felt bad that my speakers have to live in an apartment, i barely can move the dial to 1/4 before they are too loud (they are HUGE and i got them for free, but thats another story).

alright, anyway, my cyanotype is cooked. more tomorrow

New Cooper Building photo update and Foundation Building Hole!

2009-03-20T10:43:00.003-04:00

The NAB is sloowwwwly being closed up, supposedly (hopefully!) to be ready for the Fall semester. Its looking pretty good. We're all wondering how they are going to finish the corner details of the skin.

also, they are doing a big renovation of the heating and cooling of the Foundation building. they had to get out a huge hole in front to get out some of the machinery.

images from cooper union "quality service" show

2009-02-22T20:01:00.006-05:00

An image of the wall installation i put up today for the show! it was a fun process learning this new material (pro-tex wallpaper-like removable sticky-back inkjet paper), and working around a few of my printing faux pas. overall ithink it turned out alright, and a step toward the future.......

cyanotype 30"x 38" right around the corner:

some installation diagrams kindly penned by my lovely assistant for the day - Alannah Farrell (aren't they fun! i love the drawings she made):

A shot of my studio form the night before, cut outs by myself with help from Natalia:

the 25 things you all were asking for........

2009-01-26T21:17:00.002-05:00

is on the face book yom, notes. they made me,......go to there....

no more mushrooms

2009-01-13T15:34:00.004-05:00

a cold finally caught up to me, yesterday. been trying to take it easy, watching some sarah connor chronicles and samantha who? both from season 1. room is a mess from trying to fill out applications over the weekend, its hard to look at and not want to clean up. yesterday i remembered i had this bottle of awesome mushroom tincture which boosts your immune system, but its almost gone and i can't seem to find it in the city (metagenics: mycoferon), which has made me very sad. how am i going to get better now? still on this colon detox, until thursday, but i have to admit that i'm not following the dietary guidelines very closely. so, well, it will still do some kind of job, just maybe not the best. i have been giving my liver a rest though, so at least thats something. i thought maybe at first this "cold" was related to detoxing, but i think its a real cold. maybe i need some vitamins, which the "dietary guidelines" would be providing if i were following them more closely. but bugger, i'm sick and don't want to cook - so soup from a can is just fine. anyway, here's some iphone pix from a mid-morning walk last week with my gal somewhere in the east village, i can't remember where now, but up in the alphabets below nearish to 14th.....so many reflections! i need a mini polarizing filter for the cameraphone!! they had awesome little plants inside...truly other worlds, and thay were huge! some were 2' wide.

promised myself i'd go to sleep on time tonight

2009-01-04T23:38:00.002-05:00

last night i got sucked into you tube, then there was an incessant barky dog outside for like 2 hours, THEN a couple all bundled up in winter jackets, proceeded to have an almost fist fight outside my window at like 4 AM. or something. so, even though i've gotten myself slightly more organized to tackle the week ahead, i really should just go to bed now. i want to show you pictures from walking around chicago. and i already posted a bunch of pictures from home on facebook. and i have like 6 rolls of film to get processed. all of this not related to any real up and coming art project. i have to pack 4 pieces to go to the slow way to Seattle....seems like its going to be a great show at Platform Gallery, i wish i could be there! this is my first "someone found me" show, i.e. i was asked out of the blue to be in it, and it just feels great! new hard drive for my computer is coming tomorrow, with a new back up drive, hopefully soon my new keyboard will be here so the laptop can be portable again (dont' spill things on it, its a no-no. especially when you don't recall spilling anything on it, but obviously something was spilled on it). work starts tomorrow, which isn't necessarily a bad thing because i work best against the grain. i have a bunch of teaching stuff to apply for, hopefully i can write some cover letters without too much brain numbing action. and i want to alter the desk in my (half) studio. lets just hope martin luther king day is farther away than i think it is. all this and the day has been spent reading final papers from digital photo last semester with yo-yo ma playing Bach cello suites in the background. all i can say is in some sick sense its good that there was only one season of Firefly, or would have gotten nothing done at all this weekend.

have to figure out how to post things here, on flickr, and facebook simultaneously. or not.

and i have to finish that book about richard nickel in 2009. or any book. seriously. not counting the ones with mostly pictures.

to sleep. now.

It's Sunday

2008-12-28T11:39:00.001-05:00

In the car, something called "prehistoric X" on the radio , all music from high school. "she sells sanctuary" is just ending. Along with this facebook slide into the past this holiday, I have been fighting pulling out the yearbooks. All these really hazy memories of people, it's like puzzle pieces fitting together. SO strange.

-- Post From My iPhone

a walk in bushwick

2008-12-07T22:33:00.003-05:00

today i attended the 3rd ward holiday craft fair, where my friend betsyply (check it out!) had her wonderful yarn and other fun handmade stuff on sale. these things always mystify me a bit, but also make me feel warm and fuzzy (craft fairs, that is). i think it has something to do with being taken to year/fabric stores all the time as a kid by my mom. she'd plop me down by the pattern books and say "find something that you like and i'll make it for you". unfortunately there weren't any unisex pattern books in the 70's, and everything always seemed too frilly for me, but if i didn't find something she'd find it for me. looking back its obvious she just wanted a project to work on, and it it was for me then it was practical. my poor mom, she obviously was born a few decades too soon.

anyway, i got off a million stops too soon, since i was taking the J instead of the L. the hewes street stop was an old haunt anyway, i used to work on scholes st in the late 90's in an artists storage space (you had a choice of the chinese/mexican place for food, or the yummy but all too brief in existence cuban sandwich place.) this was before cellphones (think pagers people) and there was a payphone nearby you could trick into thinking you gave it a quarter by hitting it (it was a bit obscene. you'd hit it, then it would say, in that automated female voice "thank you"). so i walked towards bushwick up montrose, past betsy's old east williamsburg neighborhood (it looked the same), then hit the montrose L stop (all the sudden it went from a wasteland to white people and restaurants), the abruptly turned into empty streets full of warehouses. the light was just gorgeous, and i really wished i had a zoom lens for my little digital camera. i took a few snaps, and here are a handful. i just wish it wasn't so frakkin cold out today! otherwise it was a perfect outing.

iheartphotograph!

2008-12-04T12:33:00.002-05:00

i'm featured on there today:

http://www.iheartphotograph.blogspot.com

yeah!

its been awhile......

2008-12-01T12:42:00.002-05:00

overwhelmed with work lately, not entirely unpleasant but definitely have let my brain only be in work mode.

luckily have had a few days off to vegetate, and let myself vegetate, so i am feeling refreshed. and i'd even be able to think too if it weren't for the cement trucks which have been outside my window since 7:30 AM.

trying to write a coherent cover letter for a job application is nearly impossible at the moment, yet i keep trying......

otherwise, have been obsessed with louis sullivan. can't stop looking at this picture of one of the columns on the bayard building on bleeker that i took last week. its just sculputure. its the future. its beautiful.

ok, off to eat sandwiches and get away from the cement mixers.

New Academic Building Tour

2008-11-05T21:18:00.005-05:00

today i went on a tour Cooper Union's NAB (New Academic Building). I must admit, as its been shaping up on the outside, I'm kinda proud of us for producing something pretty cool looking. its much better than the model/renderings that i saw. A bunch of people went on the tour, one of them being none other than Mr. Owen Soloman, the man who controls everything that goes in and out of the foundation building and can remember your name even if you graduated in 1992. We agreed it was shaping up nicely and was pretty darn exciting overall.

The upper floors gave me sense of moving within space which and not formerly been occupied by humans ever before. Years ago, when i worked for Amazon Movers, we moved a woman into a condo in the 60's on the west side. the space was brand spanking new, it had no sense of history, it contained views of the city never seen before by anyone except maybe the construction guys who built the building. this was such a different feeling from most of everywhere else in the city, which had been trodden on and lived in a million times over. it had no resonance unlike apartments in my neighborhood of the lower east side. i guess i was shocked that a space like that could still exist in the city. funny thinking back on that now, because a million more spaces like that have been built over the last few years. walking in the upper floors of the NAB felt like this to me. space i previously could have never imagined occupying.

The Hewitt building, which was torn down for this new building, was only 2 stories high but very grand inside. it had 3 underground levels, the third one was pretty small, but still noteworthy i think. i have pictures from a tour we did before its destruction, but they are all on film. i'll have to post some at a later date. originally built in the 1920's i believe, it was meant to rise 7 stories. the popular myth on campus was that an underground river flowed beneath it, and it began to sink and therefore couldn't be built any taller than 2 stories. today i learned that it was probably a combination of lack of funds, and very sandy soil on the northern end which was very hard to build on. the building had massive bomb-proof girders in its foundation, and proved very hard to the demo crew to remove. i also have some pictures somewhere of the demo crew and its mesmerizing backhoe operating clearing out rubble.

but now, picture from todays tour. i don't know yet if the building we be as functional as they say it will be, but it will be mighty pretty. Some of these are blurry i know, it was getting dark outside already at 4:30.

Voting day!

2008-11-04T20:44:00.000-05:00

Obsessed with the idea of finding out how things are going, but know there's nothing to be done. Someone suggested looking here www.fivethirtyeight.com . Fasinating! Going to hopefully get some ben and jerry's ice cream right now, and then maybe some of that starbucks dealie. Hope I can fall asleep tonight!

-- Post From My iPhone

Pie!

2008-10-26T11:43:00.000-04:00

-- Post From My iPhone

oct 22nd

2008-10-22T22:15:00.003-04:00

Oct 21st

2008-10-21T18:44:00.000-04:00

-- Post From My iPhone

oct 20th

2008-10-21T11:25:00.002-04:00

Oct 19th

2008-10-21T11:17:00.000-04:00

-- Post From My iPhone

Oct 18th

2008-10-19T20:10:00.000-04:00

-- Post From My iPhone

Oct 16th-#2

2008-10-17T22:20:00.000-04:00

-- Post From My iPhone

Oct. 16th

2008-10-17T16:28:00.000-04:00

-- Post From My iPhone

oct 16th

2008-10-17T08:27:00.001-04:00

Oct 15th

2008-10-15T15:19:00.000-04:00

This must be the secret escape hatch from the engineering building, here at cooper union. RIP 2009. One building which won't be missed, for sure.

-- Post From My iPhone

Oct 14th

2008-10-14T13:23:00.000-04:00

-- Post From My iPhone

Oct 13th

2008-10-13T19:17:00.001-04:00

-- Post From My iPhone

First try

2008-10-10T12:57:00.001-04:00

Just seeing how this works from the new phone....exciting!

-- Post From My iPhone

that fall feeling

2008-10-03T22:54:00.004-04:00

its nice that the weather is changing, although it means i need to find a bigger board to put in my window which decided to not close anymore this summer. and try to fix my roommates heater, again.

went to Dia: Beacon on monday, i haven't been there since before it opened (when i worked at Dia we were sent up to move Vera Lutter's giant pinhole camera, which we made for her. if i remember correctly it was on wheels, so it didn't take long.). it hadn't changed much, just that most of the contents of 535 W22nd street had been put on display. Nice to see it all again, as well as the "Dia" construction aesthetic.

the best part though was seeing 2 rooms full of Hilla and Bernd Becher photographs, printed at 20x24 i think. ther eis nothing quite like seeing them in person, to realize that they arent' perfectly frontal, that there is a slight bit of keystone-ing, and that these moments reveal the human behind the camera. Photoshop makes it possible to erase all of these so called "flaws", often draining images from any sense of preconception. their photos are even more proof of how amazingly beautiful analog photography can be.

on a side note, i'm having a hard time finding books by contemporary color portrait photographers in the library. i think i must just be having a mental block, cos i know there are oodles. tryingt o find some examples for class on monday. any ideas?

time , oh, and Ellen

2008-09-24T09:17:00.004-04:00

so many new ideas, so little time. why is it that you can think of great stuff to make when you really don't have the time, but when you have time you space out and watch you tube? i guess sometimes you need to watch ellen confront john mccain on gay marriage on national daytime TV and hear what lame thing mccain says, then compare it to what hillary clinton said on the same show. very interesting. it DOES in some ways show how far we have gotten just to have someone who i actually gay and a natinal icon, on national television, confront the possible next president with these issues and get a response. I liked hillary's answer the best sort of overall, but it wasn't quite sufficient either. i'm not sure if i agree that calling it "marriage" is the right thing to do, just because there is so much history attached to that word (frankly, a lot negative esp. for women). perhaps it can be called something else. maybe everyone, gay and straight, should have the right to choose between the words "marriage" and "civil union" or something else. I think it should be more democratic across the board, really. everyone should have more rights in these situations.

ok, i didn't mean to go there this morning, i'm not sure where that came from in my brain. i'll go to work now and turn it off.

a few months later

2008-09-17T08:51:00.004-04:00

i know its been awhile, and I'm sorry about that, but life here has gotten in the way of thinking in any sort of ordered fashion. wanted to give an update on the collages in public, and here are some pictures i took a few weeks ago of the situations. "accumulation" is totally gone, in that the construction barricade is totally gone that it was on. "glob" has been covered over by some posters. they had plenty of room, I'm not sure why they chose to paste over the collage, but i guess that's just territory. "leaning" has some tasteful additions that almost make sense in terms of its structure, and "gyrate" is on a panel which they seem to take off to access the space behind it. when i stopped by to take some pictures the whole panel was removed and off to the side. seems like it had also been cut down slightly, they left the collage on there and just cut through it. "spurt" is pretty much the same, i really thought someone would have spray painted over it by now! I'm very happy to watch these collages as they morph and change while living in their new outside enviroment, and will post some detail shots soon.

oh and also, 2 of my cyanotypes will be in a show at Soho Photo in November, "leaning" and "pile #3". I won the "jurors prize" (which means he really liked them), so it should be good! more info soon....

the cycle

2008-08-29T09:55:00.003-04:00

you know the problem i have with applying for shows is that while i'm doing that, i can't make new work. its good to reflect and all and write about what you do, it helps the work grow, but damn, how much time do i spend formatting my pictures as "jpgs 1900x2400 with a black background" or "no bigger than 100 pixels wide" or "powerpoint format only please". ugh. then again, slides were probably worse.

anyway thats what i've been up to all week (except for going to work), so no wheatpasting. boo hoo.

dubstep

2008-08-22T22:40:00.003-04:00

listening to "Generation Bass!" on radio 1, mary ann hobbs show. can't say i've heard mych dubstep, but i have heard ABOUT dubstep for quite awhile. reminds me a lot of pirate radio from back in the day (alien sounds to my 20 year old head) , but more of a mash up. i think i liked starkey the best, but then i was listening through a timy G5 speaker which i know doesn't do any music justice. ok, maybe i like them all. but as usual, where's all the women DJ's? its always boys, boys, boys. why?

"derive" has been on hold due to achy swollen ankle, but finally moved into the studio today, ace bandaged up my sprained ankle and set out into the world. have found some new spaces to wheatpaste onto (ok, one is old and close to my house, but its still valid). i lost my cute little measuring tape though and can't seem to get started until i find it (yes, just buy a new one i know). so many places to work with, its kinda insane.

i'm just itching to walk somewhere, anywhere, but i don't want to mess this ankle up more than it already is. double urgh.

haven't visited my old sites as of yet because of the ankle, but i will tomorrow and take some pix if things still exist. having some ontinuity issues in myhead, but what else is new. worried about the new semester, but can't seem to sit the fuck down and flesh it al out. so many ideas in my head, how do i get them out and into the world? urgh.

worried about my apartment too. we don't know whats happening to us. for the first time in 17 years i have no lease. we seem to be owned by a rather faceless "management company". i know , this is new york, get used to it, but i think we had a good run here. now its time to face 2008. kicking and screaming, but that means its worth it right?

took my old comuter to the studio today, and got lost in a pile of old scans, chunks of collaged photos i'd taken years ago that i scanned a few less yeas ago. some are super cool, but i'm not sure what to do with them. ugh, this whole continuity in project land is frustrating. or whatever.

ok, gotta elevate this ankle and watch some more "the wire - season 5". in the meantime, contemplate this picture of a midtown highrise. i couldn't figure out what was actually going on. why all the doors?

pix from the trip

2008-08-17T19:50:00.003-04:00

started to talk about it, but have to finish it later. took awhile to learn this here flickr thing. here's some pictures from my recent trip:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/beatricethecat/sets/72157606790402144/

i sprained my ankle mere hours before leving seattle, and have been battling a wee bit of a cold. so i'm hobble-y and just plain tired. but back to work tomorrow, i hope i can ride my bike! the swelling has gone down.....hmmmmm

on the outside

2008-08-16T13:21:00.003-04:00

back to home, back to new york. i can't help but think what it must be like to see this place form the outside. i've been looking at cities from the outside for a month now, even my hometown of pittsburgh to a certain degree. what would i feel about this place is i was visiting it for the first time? just moving here? hard to tell. its my home, and that feeling usually kicks in within seconds of seeing manhattan's magnificent spread of urban verticallity. all other cities are compared to new york, and all others pale in comparison, at least visually, and each has its own identity nevertheless.

soon i will be buried in a fall semester work avalanche of my own making, and any fresh outside-of-new-york thoughts i have right now will be lost, therefore i will try to just talk about them now. i've only been back a day and feel that my attention span has been lost, my mind is darting through 500 things i need-to-be-doing-right-now. shake it off, ladie, shake it off.....

i'll save the trip pix for flickr. too many for here. looky: http://www.flickr.com/photos/beatricethecat/sets/72157606790402144/

i visited 5 cities, and each one was different, of course. some i'd been to before, some not. i had friends who lived in (almost) all of them, and therefore fell like i had a bit of an inside edge.

chicago (3 days). could have been the stress of friends getting dicked around about their potential new apartment situation, and the stress of getting out of new york wearing off, but chicago just seemed gritty. i didn't see all of millennium park, but it just didn't seem like enough of a park for the whole city. there was much walking, and it seemed like the place was sort of divided (like so many big cities) by a giant highway. downtown had some hoping spots, probably mostly during the day, but the action was really somewhere else. the area where i was staying was being overrun with gentrification, much like my neighborhood here in new york. overall it seemed like a big city, but something was missing. once again, i didn't see everything, so i am unfairly judging probably. good food, lots of nice shops, but it did seem like it was trying to prove itself.

vancouver just felt very star trek to me. star trek with uber nature. new new new condos everywhere, kinda freaky really. then the old bit was full of the homeless and addicts, much like the east illage of old. so radical of a contrast. it didn't make sense to me. beautiful place, but odd.

san fransisco. this is the second time is was there, and i realize i might have judged it unfairly last time i was there, because i had a nasty cold. once again, there for only a few days, but i could see why people compare it to london. the "mission" style architecture still throws me for a loop, and i know it actually is california, but it just kinda doesn't seem for real, like it should be a movie or something. it felt like a proper city this time, all big and impersonal and with museums on hordes of tourists and the hassle-y hussle and bustle. and some bad ass coffee at ritual. (vancouver also had good coffee, i must admit)

portland oregon was a big suprise for me. i knew absolutely nothing about it before driving there. once again, i walked quite a bit, then found a cool guidebook, and was just really so pleased with the whole day. it felt so nice there, almost kind of familiar. also, my day began with some nice trash on the street to photograph. but they are so serious about their beer, and their bicycles, and their local produce, and their public transport, well, it just was a mighty wonderful place. i'd like to visit it again sometime soon. my friend robin tells me the downside it that it rains much of the year (london anyone?). hmm,,,,,,.....

and lastly, seattle. theplace that gave me a sprained ankle on my way out. well, the henry art gallery is awesome, and i'm sure so is the REI store, but overall i thought it was a bit bland there. sure, it had some interesting bits, but so spread out. took to long to walk between neighborhoods, and there was just dead space in between.

more to say but my head is back in new york now. for better or worse.......

zzzzzzz

2008-08-11T10:58:00.002-04:00

well, i thought i would have posted more, but its funny how tired you get when travelling....the thoughts are there but the discipline to sit down and write is lost. driving is also tiring (6 more hours to portland from california). but i'm on the last leg of my trip and looking forward to going home actually. even though i will be busier than ever once i get there.

some more pix from michigan

2008-08-02T14:29:00.002-04:00

just so you know i'm still there, cool fallen in house thing natalia took me to see, on a bike ride to saugatuck state park.....

its late, in the woods (but not i guess)

2008-07-25T21:31:00.005-04:00

friday night, and there is some sort of dance party here where i am, in the woods of michigan. just came from chicago, the windy city, and although it is nice there, it is still a bit weird being in the middle of this ginormous country. yes yes there is water enough to feel like there is a coast, but its fresh water, and in my head i know its a lake and has a beginning and an end which is sort of quantifiable. and thats a bummer.

chicago was nice, but i got the feeling that the trash situation there would not fulfill my needs. most of the wicker park area where i was had these back alleys where people put there trash, and things were quite spread out. it was nice that there seemed to be many bikers around. must be tough in the winter, even though its flat. 3 days really isn't enough time to see a city, but the place had a nice sensibility and some yummy food for sure.

airport #1

2008-07-21T14:02:00.003-04:00

at the pittsburgh airport, waiting for a flight to chicago. usual airport chaos, they are doing seat assignments for some people at the gate. why? doesn't that seem to be more work for everyone? i dunno. but this has happened to me before in the recent past. i really don't get it.

here's a picture of what i just left. i've ben looking at this horizon all my life. its the property line between my families land and the Guffey farm behind us. it neve fails to amaze me, and somehow magically hasn't changed much since i can ever remember. i've had nightmares before of the bulldozers coming in, the skies all grey, and tearing up the land for a housing development. with the economy the way it is, it might be safe. though i have heard that they rent the fields to other farmers now. no matter, it still looks like its being used the way a farm should.

hmmm, we might be able to get on the plane soon, so i better go.

map

2008-07-20T13:24:00.004-04:00

i promised you all a map, so here it is.

spent all day friday driving to pittsburgh from new york. the thought occured to me that driving in new york is a lot like tetris or some sort of video game, and driving in PA is a bit like being on those cars at the amusement park where all you do is turn the steering wheel. well, def. with the cruise control on. both seem sort of unreal though, because you are so disconnected with the world around you. its all inside. and the great majority of this country lives like that every day. weird.

6am

2008-07-16T08:12:00.012-04:00

yeah well, 6am was a tad bit ambitious, especially since i set my alarm, but didn't run it on. like clockwork i woke up at 7:30. not construction noise, cement trucks, or jackhammers as of yet, but still my mind has been set to that time. Here's the clinton st. pasting. this is the head on view, but i've learned from taking a side view that wrapping around (adding on) may be possible. if i have time tonight i might just do that, but then again i might pass out asleep. its supposed to be super hot today, not looking forward to it at all. also, here's my pasting accessory, courtesy of H&M....... no new intellectual observations this morning, it will have to wait for my brain to wake up. i'm going to go on the roof now and take some pictures while i still have a roof to take pictures from. we haven't been allowed up there in years, so its pretty special. i have a panoramic spread from 1994 from the roof, will be fascinating to compare.

2am

2008-07-16T02:04:00.000-04:00

the moon hangs low in the sky, it has been for days, as its been growing. a group is throwing things around on rivington street, physically in the street, regardless of cards. glass is breaking. things are being thrown. its rather quietly rowdy. clinton street, an asian lady is way more interested in taking out the garbage than seeing what i'm doing with my bucket in the dark corner. i keep waiting for someone to yell at me, maybe so far i've been lucky, i shouldn't jinx myself. its all been rather interesting, this foray into the night, times when i usualy am fast asleep. i know the warm weather keeps sleep light. i should do that now, as i'm meant to be up at 6 to document. zzzzzzzz........

construction

2008-07-15T08:11:00.000-04:00

construction on the left, construction on the right. 7:30 every morning, either jack hammers or cement trucks or that damn truck crane, louder than it should be, like its in my room, in my head. i'm up, i'm up, i'm up. i have no choice. urrrrgh. notsogreat when you've been up the night before taking pictures and trying to fend off mosquitoes because your window suddenly won't close at all, and you forgot to cut that piece of wood to prop it closed. you won't forget today (write it down). mmm, sleepy damnit.

night photo of spurt:

july 11th, 7:34 AM

2008-07-11T07:33:00.000-04:00

Walking around at 2AM, then at 6AM, same streets, different lighting, different mood, different spacial reality. at night, below houston, below delancey could be hoxton square, london - kreuzberg, berlin. if i think hard enough i am transported there. veiled in darkness, the street activities are highlighted, blips of conversations caught from passing groups of carousing revelers, bars and restraunts spilling onto the streets, and being a thursday night, everyone on the verge of going home. 6AM, bright sun, garbage, traffic. shapes of buildings, color of concrete, faces - everyone in single file, going somewhere specific. the only things open are starbucks, duane reade, dunkin donuts, no real food to be found. he sun is reflecting off a window across the street and creating "indirect" dancing shapes while large trucks pass by on delancey.

all the same, no one seems to care what i am doing. some people on a bike last night said they liked my picture, and we talked about wheat paste a little bit, but thats really it. crazy.

i've always always always worked best with found materials. its something i learned from my grandfather. a new pristine piece of plywood, in my mind, should stay that way. a cut up crappy one can be anything. literally anything. thats what makes this project so right in my mind. the spaces i've found are easily overlooked, yet each has unique chracteristics which have built over time. layers of paint, chunks cut out then repaired, tape, scaffolding, each element makes them unique.

ok, here's some images:

the right mix

2008-07-07T11:16:00.000-04:00

late night, july 4th, just sticky enough paste, and the rain didn't disturb it thank goodness.

very quiet for such a night in the LES. well, compared to friday nights' past. lots of thoughts, but we'll get to that later.

midnight

2008-06-30T22:46:00.001-04:00

i said i'd go to bed by midnight tonight, but i have too much energy. i don't know why. they say its going to rain tonight, so no new anything. but i think i have a spot, so soon.

here, looky:

late sunday night

2008-06-30T02:13:00.000-04:00

ok, so i meant to go out last night, but with all this rain, i chose not to. tonight i pasted one collage up on orchard street, with the new paste mix. maybe a little overkill. super sticky, and i realized i do need some sort of squeegie type thing to smooth out the paper. i used my hand this time, we shall see tomorrow what has happened.

i feel like i'm drinking water as if i haven't seen it for days.

its late, and roaming the streets of the LES on a sunday night is actually rather pleasant. a few drunken groups, mostly around ludlow, and a gaggle of girls on orchard below delancey, but otherwise rather peaceful. very unlike a friday or saturday night. Found a few choice plies of boxes to photograph. I was thinking how the "empty" of the streets actually felt safe, whereas i can remember a time when empty would have been super creepy and potentially dangerous. i don't know which is weirder, in terms of the fact that this is new york city. what does it mean that the streets are safe at 2AM?

i was going to paste up two, but decided i'd wait on the second one until i found the right location. i did a little research and will do some more tomorrow. I think placement, in terms of each composition, outweighs the visibility factor. while i want people to see them, i think its more important that they work where they are placed on the whole. this one is 6' tall and 4' wide, so i have to find somewhere big. i'll try again tomorrow....

i have found some wonderful constructed construction baricades, here's a picture of one....and also, here's a picture of last weeks 1st attempt. i haven't gone back to see if its still there all week, perhaps i will go in the morning. oh, and i better go take my film out of the fridge.

let me ramble a bit

2008-06-28T17:45:00.000-04:00

"In philosophy, a Dérive is a French concept meaning an aimless walk, probably through city streets, that follows the whim of the moment. It is sometimes translated as a drift,." (wikipedia)

*drift* sounds a lot harsher than *aimless walk*, but i aspire to the concept.

for 3 months in the summer, i have 3 days off a week. during the 9 months of the academic year, i have, at best, 1 day off a week. often none. therefore, this summer i am using those 3 days like never before. multitasking the hell out of space and time. forcing my brain to organize things in a logical way (for me). leaving myself enough time to walk to brunch in greenpoint and back, to discover things like the skyscraper museum, to go back and photograph things i've seen alongthe way when the light is better. to list things on ebay until 3am while watching DVD's of "heroes" that my roommate left out for me to watch. those japanese guys crack me up! making it all ok for everything to be ok. making art. noticing things.

actually liking new york, instead of just living here.

i've just begun to interact with my neighborhood directly. not just drinking in bars, buying groceries, going to a show, but using its spaces as vessels for images that i have been making. their contents come directly from the streets in the first place, therefore it only seems right that they make it back out there somehow, in a just as ephemeral form. pictures forthcoming from tonights adventure, check back tomorrow.

another reason to start this blog now, i'm making a month long trip across the US of A, with a little Canada thrown in for good measure. someplaces i've been, most i haven't. lets see what happens.