Beatrice Sylvas Wickens (1917-1928) June Miller (1928-34) Janina Martha Lepska (1944-52) Eve McClure (1953-1960) Hiroko Tokuda (1967-1977)
Henry Valentine Miller (26 December 1891 – 7 June 1980) was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is distinctly always about and expressive of the real-life Henry Miller and yet is also fictional. His most characteristic works of this kind are Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn and Black Spring. He also wrote travel memoirs and essays of literary criticism and analysis.
there are no bizarre subcultures left. Or if they are they are further underground. but even considering this, why would they be driven so underground? the only reason i can think is to gain exclusivity.
It seems that so much is accepted now that people can deal with subcultures and infact don't mind anymore. It's almost as if there is a group of people doing something that isn't the norm or could be questioning it and someone will say 'oh look. there is those people doing that thing that those small groups of people do. That's weird. BUT you know, we should let people get on with what they're doing. it's good that they have a club to indulge this sort of thing within.'
and of course acceptance is amazing. when there wasn't any, the media ganged up and tried to educate the masses and turn them against the subculture which ultimately meant war and death.
there we go. that's really fascinating to me. I think that if i am to be including myself in Generation Y or Generation Me or whatever the hell it's supposed to be called, then of course I'm going to want to know what it's like to be included in this. Why are we like we are. And should I really be questioning anything having being brought up in this big wave of putting oneself first? the answer is really in the latter part there. YES i should be thinking about me. because this generation has been told that the self is more important than being patriotic or conscious to anything non-consumer.
So! Yesterday I had a really mind easing tutorial which dissolved quite a bit of stress. Later on in the evening my back and shoulders began to ache weirdly. Maybe they were so tense that the previous weight being lifted was too shocking to bare and instead they ached because they missed the tension.
Anyway. The nicey nice thing is that i no longer feel like i'm performing for the course. I now feel like i can pursue what ever i want and use the course as an environment in which to do so.
Less second guessing, more conviction. I think i'm easing out of the ruse of obligation with my work and into what i want to do. Which is exciting.
ANYWAY:
Simon showed me this artist called Keith Tyson who won the Turner Prize in 2002. (I should really read more about the Turner Prize and that.) Looking through his overly interactive website, it was brilliant to see another artist with a decent variety of practice. And the volume is incredible. He just produces so much work. The amount of exploration that is evident is exhausting....! BUT this is the natural way in which he thinks.
It has really made me consider what an 'outcome' or finished piece of work is. In the case of Tyson, a few pieces of his work don't reach a conclusion, they are an exploration into.
I think the reasons i have been so preoccupied with finding conclusions in my work is just the natural wont of, in relation to my identity crisis, and also because through out GCSE and A level, it was encouraged. Towards the end of a project, you collect together all your influences - artists and original props for observational drawing, you then smoosh them all together and design your final piece. After you draw it up, label each part and tell everyone where you got the idea from! - imagery of meat = Francis Bacon, -mechanical components = Paolozzi, -reference to bodily parts = Chadwick fuck, i've been doing this for almost 5 years. There is only the smallest amount of original creativity. Mainly, it's lifting and spreading around influence. Which has meant that I've learned to make valuable links here and there, and to remember a lot of artist's names...but it seems that as part of the curriculum for art, i have just been squeezing ideas out of existing ones, rather than investigating things i'm really interested in. Or something like that.
I think that putting words like 'FRAUD' and maybe even BULL SHIT GURU into my work are counter productive. And they serve to destroy me a little bit.
Everyone is so much more optimistic than I am. Especially when it comes to being optimistic (optimism: hopefulness and confidence about the future or successful outcome of something.) in areas concerning me. Where has this come from? Where is my conviction and hopefulness and confidence. What did your mother say
This is from a conversation i had via msn with a friend. about my work. I have edited out the scarce replies ( I think maybe he regretted asking me, haha ) And tidied up the spelling. i might amend it to make it a little more coherent.
I am really interested in how a lot of people are living 2nd or 3rd hand, through the things they read in magazines, on the Internet, in books, or see in films or on TV. i think that too many people are experiencing life second hand rather than actually living it fully aware.
i count myself as one of those people
and parallel to this i have found myself in the middle of an identity crisis
and these things are definitely linked
it could have been that living this way cause the crisis
i think there are more degrees to this not living life first hand thing too, that i don't count myself in...
like computer games and being slaves to advertising and that
so, whilst in the thick of this, i have realised that a lot of the things that i like and dislike are beginning to define me
the things that i collected as the starting point for this unit we references to a variety of different things that were pulling my interest all over the place. film, literature,philosophy etc
and whilst these aren't tangible things that are defining me, they are still second hand reference
anyway. i started to brainstorm a final outcome idea that would serve all the references i wanted to pull together, but also satisfying the need to meld all of these different things together to make a representative thing from
-i definitely think that i have been trying to crush all these different aspects together to find conclusions and to make larger entities from them, as maybe an extension of myself - as in, having an identity crisis means not feeling as though i have a definite outline
so i was going to make a big quilt and sew separate patches together - on each patch, a different quote or theory or part of a film would be stitched to another, in an effort to draw all of this together using the language of patching up
but the entire quilt would be referencing the Existential Blanket Theory from the film I Heart Huckabees -where everything is connected
but at the same time (and this goes back to my previous work on making pods for humans) the quilt can be used to wrap one individual up and cocoon one person in a separate compartment from everyone else.
and that would be the significance of making a quilt
however i became unhappy with the progress of this and have really given in to my want to make t-shirts
which is quite a flaky thing to do
but i feel that my work can go in this direction for a reason
in reference to my idea of a 2nd or 3rd hand set of information or morals or ideas
i was thinking about what the visual aspect of my work could be
and i became interested in the idea of an Encyclopedia aesthetic
where encyclopedias often have images from all over the place -some are photographs some are illustrations but they're normally never matching as if they're old images where the copyright was either really easy to obtain or had run out
i want to put the images I'm creating onto t-shirts
mainly because i want to learn the skill of silk screen printing
but also
because i think that t-shirts are a fascinating platform for art
and they would be the new concrete poetry for our generation
well, the images are going to be these different ideas crushed together in image form
jack said 'why can't these people be expressing you' -instead of themselves
which means it will be a 7th hand image by the time it's slapped on a t-shirt
but also, it will be a second hand expression
because i made the shirt
okay...like
if i find a photo of a statue in a book
I'm looking at this book which is a mass produced item
which came from an original compiled book
where the photo was sourced from somewhere -maybe taken specifically for the book, or maybe found when the copyright was out or what ever
the photo is a photo of a statue
and the statue was probably made from a drawing
and the drawing was of, say a woman wearing some roman woman attire
and the drawing would have had to be posed for
which would be a re-creation of and event or idea
that's just a fun one because it's a statue
but say it was a drawing of a flower
in a book
it's very removed from a real thing
and that's the justification for the imagery I'm using
Basically
i want to get the idea of melding a film and some philosophical theories across BUT! they don't have anything tangible
so I'm using images that are far removed in a way
if you think of an encyclopedia
it has all these different things compiled
but it's mainly text and diagrams etc.
but then if you think of one of those tacky souvenir tea towel for, say Scotland, and they put everything that's to do with Scotland -typically, all together on one tea towel
i want the feeling of the encyclopedia
but with the crushing together of the whiskey bottle and the bag pipes and the yappy dogs wearing tartan hats
at the moment the thing i want to put on, has little meaning :)
and yes i have regressed a little
the t-shirts make a lot less sense than the quilt
however, i think the quilt needs to be an accumulated piece
and i just don't have the time to make it before the quilt
and with the t-shirts, i have the space to learn a skill and make a visually engaging(on aesthetic level) and functional thing
“You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present." Looking For Alaska, John Green
pseudo is a prefix meaning 'counterfeit, deceptive, false' and it requires a hyphen when joined to a proper noun; quasi is a prefix meaning 'resembling' or 'in some manner' and it is usually hyphenated to a noun
So i've become completely obsessed with Justin Blyth's work. But not the stuff i just linked you and his name to. That's all his commercial stuff which, although it's very pretty, it's not what i'm interested in.
it's an incredible collection of images. Not only are these images sourced from a multitude of fascinating crevices, and not only is each image something intriguing to observe in itself but even more amazing is how they relate to each other as one fluid page of image and thought. The contexts can be vastly different between each picture, but the language which is communicated between them is coherent and extremely beautiful.
Research-File-Inclusion-Justification
I think that it related in the way that i want to crush together a lot of different elements from all over the place to create a fluid ...semi conclusion. or theory. or something as a result for putting all this stuff together.
Saturday, 17 October 2009
I had a tutorial and in it, it was decided that i should begin making. to see what my ideas will look like. what I'm most worried about is that the work will be much less interesting than the ideas.
Woah, so i watched this film called Waking Life that Patrick lent me. I'm not sure what to think. First of all, i watched it in lots of parts as i have been sleepy and busy and it's pretty heavy for a weekend film. I think i found the rota scoping (sp?) very distracting. but then it made the heavy ...i want to say text, but 'dialogue' less ...preaching? but i wanted to rewind constantly to take in all the things that were being said. It has given me things to semi-ponder. i don't feel as though i can dedicate too much time to thinking about whether i am awake or asleep or whether i have died and I'm living the life I'm living retrospectively as an old woman looking back. I mainly don't want to spend a lot of time on this because i don't feel like i can do that without feeling a little bit crazy. I also think i need to dedicate time to living in 'the moment'. and i don't mean that in one of those thrill seeking 'happy-go-lucky' prick ways. i mean, i need to get a grip on the 'now' and interact and absorb the fleeting moments. because right now is 'fleeting', it's gone. it's irretrievable.
( i might be writing in a very dumbed down and honest way and not really thinking about structures of sentences today as i am reading The Perks of being a Wallflower by Stephen Chobski and that's the writing style of the character -the story is told in letters. I think i have been influenced by this style of writing. also I'm really tired from last night and my interview thing.)
So, whilst Waking Life was extremely interesting and it's fascinating and freakish and refreshing all at once to find that people are thinking these kinds of things, it's the sort of terrifying subject matter that has no answers, just infinite pondering and theories. At the same time, i think it's an extremely valid and necessary foray. People need to be questioning this all.
One of the scenes is two women talking and one says about how she was expecting to arrive at this plateau in her mid 30s where things would be easy and settled and exhilaration would be lost but she arrived and this was not the case as she knew that everything is on going and changing and evolving. and this sounds exhausting at the moment. honestly i think the idea of dying is maybe what a lot of humans hold in their minds without realising it. If everyone felt infinite, maybe they wouldn't get married or have children. or maybe they would, but there might not be the same trends. as no one would feel pressured to do all this before they were 30. or whenever they think they should. would that happen? maybe this is the smallest and most boring aspect of this whole thing ! what i was trying to get at was that -at least the way i envision time and my life is one column and it is sketchy and rough and there are things i want to do before or at certain ages. and there is definitely an end to this column. but i think maybe envisioning the column ending, could be what spurs me to do the things i want to do before certain ages. but is this right? i'm getting distracted and tying myself up in knots.
maybe rather than thinking about these infinite large things, i should be concerntrating on now and what i can do to sustain myself now and absorb the seconds. and 'making it count' and all that shit.
should i be outlining the things that matter and sticking to them? is that the best way to go about it? i think it could be. a lot of the self-assured people i know, know what they like and don't like. and they seem to have a strong sense of what they think they need, perhaps. i think that my living is mostly theory and no doing.
There is a part in the film where four men are walking along and just..saying sentences and asking rhetorical questions and they are talking about people who are all doing and no theory and how they are all theory and no doing and the rota scoped figures seemed subdued at that conclusion.
I'm looking at the use of quotation marks. the first time speech marks were explained to me, was when i was in class 2. It was explained by the head teacher! which was a big deal - she never taught lessons. I remember being both scared of an in awe of her. - As in very scared. I was a shy child. So maybe that's why this stuck with me.
UNFINISHED!
Continued:
Quotationsto Scare Quotes. I always want to type square quotes.
So i was looking on the net for information about quotes and the usage, and the second usage listed is
Another common use of quotation marks is to indicate or call attention to ironic or apologetic words:
He shared his “wisdom” with me.
The lunch lady plopped a glob of “food” onto my tray.
To avoid the potential for confusion between ironic quotes and direct quotations, some style guides specify single quotation marks for this usage, and double quotation marks for verbatim speech. Quotes indicating irony, or other special use, are sometimes called scare, sneer, shock, distance, or horror quotes. They are sometimes gestured in oral speech using air quotes.
This reminded me of Island- the book i read over the summer by Huxley.
The main character is washed ashore onto the forbidden island of Pala where he observes the communist Buddhist life of the inhabitants.
The messages in the book are fascinating to me. The Palanese have a way of life which creates a harmonious existence and it's based on a few simple things:
birth control - they don't have a population problem so there is enough food
under industrialised - modern technology doesn't hinder personal advancement. -infact there is a small amount of electricity around. -from what i remember, on one part of the island there is a water powered generator that's used to power a communal freezer.) (Like in Dinosaurs)
Yoga of living - the idea is that living in a certain way and being fully conscious of doing so creates the ultimate way to live, by practising life in a way that makes it...more of an exercise...i need to re-read and render this because i can't explain it properly.
ETC
The Palanese life is presented as very wholesome and complete where everyone is happy. The main character is the devil's advocate in that he is very cynical and questions the validity of their way of life.
He is described as snorting and laughing like a 'hyena' and his cynical remarks are presented in an subversively negative light, where the faults he picks out in the Palanese theories, ultimately point to the faults in him.
Writers use scare quotes for a variety of reasons. When the enclosed text is a quotation from another source, scare quotes may indicate that the writer does not accept the usage of the phrase (or the phrase itself)[3], that the writer feels its use is potentially ironic, or that the writer feels it is a misnomer. This meaning may serve to distance the writer from the quoted content.
The significance of this to me relates to the identity crisis i am having.
I find it interesting that people use scare quotes and how they came to have a place in human language.
History
Use of the term scare quotes appears to have arisen at some point during the first half of the twentieth century. Occurrence of the term in academic literature appears as early as the 1950s.[1][2]
BJ: Say this blanket represents all the matter and energy in the universe, okay? You, me, everything. Nothing has been left out. Alright? All the particles, everything.
AM: What's that side of the blanket?
BJ: More blanket. That's the point.
AM: The blanket's everything.
BJ: Exactly, this is everything. OK, let's just say this is me, and I'm what, 60 odd years old and I'm wearing a grey suit. Blah, blah, blah. And let's say that over here this is you and, I don't know, you're 21, you've got dark hair, Etc. And over here this is Vivian, my wife and colleague. And over here, this is the Eiffel Tower, right? It's Paris! And this is a war. And this is a museum. And this is a disease. And this is an orgasm. And this is a hamburger.
(WELL! everyone's blogging about the same things as me. Trying to find the quote i want. and the whole thing is right here.)
"When you get the blanket thing you can relax, because everything you could ever want or be, you already have and are."
(I totally stole this quote off another blog -along with the image, when i realised i couldn't take a screen shot of my dvd 'cause Jamie's borrowed it. -also, is it illegal to do that? actually, who gives a shit.)
The quote and still image is from the film I Heart Huckabees which is 'an existential comedy'.
Albert Markovski goes to these 'existential detectives' to investigate a coincidence, but in fact he is having an existential crisis! etc. just watch the film. Bernard Jaffe explains the Blanket Theory (i can't really get a proper explanation of it.). and the 'interconectedness' of everything.
Moving on. I really want to reference the 'blanket theory' in my work. I THINK. because, firstly i really like the whole quote. also the existentialist theory is interesting. -in that it's a treatment as well as a theory. (this sort of links back to my consolation towel.*) ---In the film, Albert is meant to be using the blanket concept whenever he is angry or upset or anything. also, the blanket is a textile object - literally speaking. and i'm pretty damn into textiles. ALSO! it's a theory that (don't quote me) sounds Eastern. ..as in slightly Buddhist. the whole nature of things being connected. So it's going towards my wanting to meld a lot of things together. Theories are born of other theories, i suppose. i think it's the case here.
I bought this new super pretentious art magazine that i had never before seen from Borders. 'Blown _________________________________________ cultural intelligence'
and then a large price, read the front cover. I felt like a wanker buying it. But it intrigued me. Mainly, the mention of Nick Cave, Diane Arbus, the Vennice Biennale and some amusing looking articles were the pull.
So. i read it. on my own. in a park. whilst eating a Lord Sandwich sandwich. The quality of the writing was brilliant, if, as it was the premiere issue, a little enthusiastic at times. but heck, why not. it WAS the first ever. Oh i should shut up. mainly the editor's note was just a bit crazy. the rest of the magazine held it's pace. interestingly, a lot of the articles written by the editor! So i like this magazine. i'm not sure how most are written. but with this i was quite interested to know. it's totally Ric Bower (the ed) 's baby. i don't know about most mags really. he founded the whole deal and i have no idea if that happens usually. (Wow, i just had another flick, and i've only read to half way through. exciting :)) anyway. the zine was interesting. and it had articles from all over the place. lots of voices. which was great. in a section called 'Fluff'.
i just realised i called this magazine pretentious off the bat. maybe i shouldn't. or maybe i should accept that i kind of like these pretentious looking/sounding/being things.
ANYWAY! my point was to document this:
that i read an article called Blue Movies in Full Colour by Brennan Street.
it was about the loss of privacy and innocence in a digital age. but it wasn't just about that. it wasn't ranting. it was remorseful and sad. but also celebratory of memories.
mainly it was about the memory of a young boy looking through a neighbor's window and watching them have sex. but how the 'amusement and memory of that event is imprinted on the cranial celluloid' and comparing the vouyeristic properties of this and the modern equivilant -which would be to video with a mobile phone.
I'm fed up of writing now. but totally read that article. i might come back to this. but i'm really reeeally hungry right now.
Okay, so this should read like a flow chart, vertically. any additional text/links going ------> this way (horizontally), should be read as little tangents i wandered off to. Little, but amazing ones.
ARGH I CAN'T GET IT ON THE SAME LINE. but it goes 'self act.' and then it's tangents. and then 'self act' to 'Nirvana' below.
