Navel Gazing

An extremely weak attempt at punnery. And with the wrong fruit, no less.


So, friends, it is nearly the end of April. And where does that bring us? Old MasterGote is contemplating what in the world to do next year? A weighty decision and a mighty puzzle, to which the answer seems entirely unclear. Some days, the bahn mi of Brooklyn beckon. Others, the inertia (or is that momentum?) of work makes me think I'd be a fool not to stick around. Things here are at once so easy and so clear. Everything has been pared down to the bone, a sort of delayed coming-true of some f-ed up dream I've had in the back of my mind since at least 1999. Asceticism and productivity. Simple living and all that. But, as anyone who's had a wish fulfilled would tell you, it never happens the way you'd imagined it.


I miss you guys in real life. I miss LFarns. But the most frustrating part is that I cannot tell with any clarity what might be the right decision. I don't know what goes into the scales - what I'm gaining or losing. As far as I can tell, the two seem pretty equal, each has its perks and disadvantages. It is infuriating.


What should I do, internet? Please send your carrier pigeons with the answer soon! Avoid personal bias if you can; personal anecdotes encouraged.

Warm and Crusty

Justine Lai, Join or Die,* 2007

I cannot stop looking at these paintings. On the surface of it, the project sounds super-stupid: a 24-year-old recent college grad paints self-portraits of herself getting it on with each President of the United States in chronological order. Yup, that's right. But there's something about them that's kind of amazing. I'm going to try to describe it, but maybe it's just a gut feeling, so feel free to skip these next three parts.

I'm surprised, first of all, because I'm really not into art that's about artists' own sex lives.** Koons's brand of pop being the prime example of why: it feels exhibitionist, flashy, conversation-halting, kind of gross, and not really as interested in exploring meanings as using sex to get a rise. What's most annoying about this is that the rise is temporary. You either put it in the art category, or you don't. If not, you may just say it's pornography, which is fine. We've all got genitals, why not? But even if you do accept it into the hallowed halls of, say, the MCA, it's still, as Koons himself says, just a "ta-da" moment. (Not my thing, art- or porn-wise.)

Lai's works don't work this way. Certainly, her pop roots are strong. There's the initial shock of the subject-matter, the magpie treatment of cultural icons, the play with reality and fantasy. But there's also this other thing, what I think of as the sustainable side of pop. It's like this curious calling-attention-to that touches off more thoughts and resists that Koonsian hardening of the surface.***

For example, John Tyler's strange, blind fingering in her mouth and her fearful one-eyed gaze while grabbing his wrist. What's that about? Or Abe Lincoln's weary teat and wearier face. Of course! Of course, that's what that would look like! As Lai herself writes, it's about the vulnerability and the ambiguity. It becomes more than a game of three-card monte with "the artist," "the presidential likeness," and "the viewer" each cycling through their proper positions. They escape becoming fixed or known entities in the exchange, while the range of emotions on display ensures that the stakes remain fairly high, not jokey. I suspect this will become harder with the more recent presidents, since their roles in our collective sex fantasies are more clearly scripted. The first 18, though, are really impressive.

Justine Lai, Join or Die, 2008

To what else does this post's title refer? Why, homemade bread, of course. I've got a batch of this 20-hour creature rising and bubbling by the radiator right now. Should be ready to go by late-morning tomorrow. In this video, the baker from whom Bittman cribbed the recipe demonstrates how everything, even bread - especially bread! - has all this secret knowledge behind it involving squiggles and cracks, crumbs, crusts, and bubbles, proportions, substrates, and who knows what else? In other words, like snuggling up to a fat Martin Van Buren, delicious. Good night.

*No idea what the title means...
**Strange, I'm having trouble coming up with other examples not by Koons where the artist him/herself figures into the explicit image and not just images of partners, implied partners, or stand-ins. Comments?
***Like a printing error in a Warhol Car Crash.

ETA: The bread was a disaster. Better luck next time?

File Under: Ebay, Trashheap of Your Lamest Fantasies

In case you're interested.

Also, a search for variations on Reisiger schwarzer Ballon revealed:

Really, German ebay? You have a 13 thousand-carat diamond to sell me? Well, I've got a diamond of my own you might be interested in. I found it on the sidewalk in Philly after my first (and last) half-marathon. It's pretty shiny...

ETA: Right, commas = decimal points. Those crazy Europeans, getting MG all hot and bothered. Blow me.

Kitty Kat Named Blinchik

This one is for Lisa, who eats 25 ruble blini with abandon and who should spend more time in Moscow.

Hilarious house kitten belonging to the blini place by Taganskaya

Burdens

The conceptual art group Art & Language

intend[ed/s] to abandon the separation of competences between artists, critics and observers, and to transform the art-world into a system of communication between contributors with equal capabilities of reflection.

Maybe I'm naive, but how does one define communication? I mean, how do you (yes, you!) know you're communicating? If A & L put their "blurtings" and "annotations" up on the internet and invite people to respond to their communications, how do they know they're getting their messages across? Or, hmmm, is getting a particular message across not the point of communication? I feel dizzy.

A & L provides a clue. The group's goal

in internal discussions, [was/is] to find non-hierarchical forms of presentation with which to activate readers outside the group. The members of Art & Language developed their methodological basics within a process of »conversational exchanges« ... and they wanted to provoke readers to proceed with this process. So the form of presentation of »Blurting In« sustains a reading habit, which creates a dialogical interrelation between parts of the text/annotations as »surface-structures« ... and »set[s] of contexts« ..., which offer parts of the text. The dialogical intratextual character of the reading process should motivate further dialogues within contexts outside the group. The feedback between group-internal and group-external dialogues was the ideal case for Art & Language.

So, dialogue informed by "a reading habit" was/is the goal. But still, I don't mean to be thick, but how do you tell if your dialogue is mutually productive, that you're not talking past each other without even realizing it? This seems relevant beyond the scope of conceptual art. To teachers, for example - is our goal to inspire reading and discussion or is there content in this class? Students are, unsurprisingly, confused.

And, perhaps more importantly to me (here comes my pet gote...), are you not throwing out the baby with the bathwater when you say that

The discourse investigates functions of the art-world ..., but doesn´t explore the function of art works within the context of art ...?

That is, when you only talk about the institutional structures which support art making/looking/discussing/exhibiting/purchasing/etc. and not the art itself as art, what remains of the art? I guess that's where the idea of "blurring the boundary between art & life" turns into disregarding, denying, or erasing it altogether. Thoughts?

(Art & Language's amazing indexing project "Blurting in Art & Language" [the source of the above quotes] can be read and communicated with here.)

Man carrying a file cabinet.
Oh so painfully literal, I know.

*Please do not use the comments section to count the number of conceptual art-induced tears of boredom you have just experienced. Like A & L with "art works within the context of art," I guess I just don't care.

Eureka!

I've got a dissertation title:

"Moscow Conceptualism: Crazy Free-for-All, 1976-1995." Enh? Ennnnh???

And some other notes for the short of attention span:

1) VDNKh: I don't have to tell you twice.



Well, maybe just a little:


Also, don't you know it, people's friendship has officially been "outlived." Whew! Guess we don't have to worry about that anymore.

2) You'll get your point across better if you're naked. Witness:

Carolee Scheeman, Interior Scroll, 1975

Linda Benglis, ad in Artforum (Nov. 1974).

Wait, what was their point again? It also helps if you actually have something to say. Not sure this lady does. (But, twice in one slide-show...good work, ъ!)

Eloise Fornieles, performance at the opening of "Natural Wonders: New Art from London" at Baibakova Art Projects at Red October Candy Factory.

...natural wonders, indeed.

3) Woody Allen thinks he can get away with the same lame-ass shit he's always pulled but now with extra-perky tits. That's right, I said it. (I'm sure many others have, too.)

4) Andrei Kuz'kin inspires me with his pessimism. But he lets me touch his art, so I don't mind.

Andrei Kuz'kin - the caption reads something like: "Please, save that baby! Save it, for god's sake! Perform a caesarean section, please!!!!"

There were other, better works of his at the ArtStrelka show, but like I said, you've got to be naked to get on in the internets, so all I could find was this naked baby.

More about the Kuz'kin show here. (In Russian.)

"Like being alive twice."

Judging from this doozy, I may have to start reading the Obituaries instead of the Weddings & Celebrations for the real potboilers. Novel and screenplay-writing friends, you're welcome.

And this Zadie Smith piece about speaking in tongues may require comment. But for now, I just wanted to share.

Healing "laying on of hands" ceremony in the Pentecostal Church of God. Lejunior, Harlan County, Kentucky, September 15, 1946. Photo: Russell Lee (Department of the Interior/ Solid Fuels Administration For War). Source: The National Archives (via)

Semiosis for the Masses, or Conceptualism in the Streets

Making Do...Another Cooking Dispatch

The mid-year report that I have been asked to fill out on my progress so far asked how I have dealt with social and cultural differences and changes in my daily life here in Farawayistan. Well, one frankly underreported difficulty (I have hardly complained about this at all!) has been my lack of a microwave and my resulting feelings about cooking for one. Namely, it is a huge pain in the kiester to cook for myself when reheating anything made in more than one portion means frying it in a pan the next day. I'm not even talking about the fact that my frying pan has no handle. This is purely a greasy-food issue. So, in the interest of getting the word out, I'm blowing the whistle on the no-microwave situation. And, as an extra-special bonus, I'm offering a solution that does not involve purchasing extra equipment that will not fit in my suitcases or my future electrical sockets anyway. Here we go:

Step 1) Cook something. Let's say: boil some potato chunks, add butter, salt, and dill. Go ahead, let your eyes be bigger than your stomach and cook way more than you can eat. Don't worry, no need to invite friends over, this one's all for you.

Step 2) Eat more than you should, but leave some in a tupperware in the fridge to ensure self-respect in the morning.

Step 3) Pull out all those little plastic bags you have squirreled away in the cupboard and discover, behind random rice cookers and bread pans...are you ready?...a blender!!!!

Step 4) Cook a soup whose main ingredient is whatever you didn't finish the day before. Look! The Times has like 10 soup recipes that involve potatoes in its health section right now. Don't worry that the main ingredient is already cooked, will get mushy, blablabla; when you blend it, it all turns out awesome. I bet it works with anything: potatoes, eggplant, probably pasta, maybe even pickled herring. Awwwright!

Step 5) If you don't eat all the soup that day, repeat the process the next day to create a kind of second-degree soup, or soup to the soupth power. This is a special kind of cooking I like to think of as "cooking with eugenics." (Related examples of this might be yogurt or kombucha, where you grow a strain of "good" [Gr. "eu"] bacteria in a neutral medium like milk or sweet tea and then perpetuate the strain by adding a little bit of the old batch to the regular old medium to form a new batch.) Our leftover soup example, however, is even more eugenic, because not only are you perpetuating the genes of the yummy leftovers, but you are concentrating them in a new and more powerful super-soup whose qualities we can scarcely imagine today. History may condemn you and you might die of food poisoning. But - need I even say it? - it will be delicious.

Pardon the Dust

It just didn't feel the same without the acid green. I hope you will forgive.

Here are some pictures to make up for it:

Sinkhole

omfg.

Special Friends

I know, I know. Bad Gote. Never leaving the house except to frolic in virtual reality. I promise, more pictures of the Motherland. But for now, you'll have to just stare into the gaping maw of Vinny, a canine friend from back home. I'm trying to tell him about late-Soviet performance art, but he seems to find it all a bit of a bore. Well, we can't please everyone.