Lust and Landfill...

One of my New Year's Resolves have been to chuck a good half of my wardrobe.   You know - the trendy, unwearable reminders of the oughties (and creeping back in vogue 90's)...

Trouble is... Where does it go?

Photo by Christian Boltanski

Yuletide Bullying #2: National Portrait Gallery Protest

Man protests Smithsonian's censorship of the David Wojnarowicz video art piece "A Fire in My Belly" on his iPad, is wrestled to the ground, arrested and is banned from the Smithsonian for life, proving that art is dangerous and not to be trusted by it's very keepers. Good luck in trying to keep people out with ipads, different ideas and non-violent strategies.

Yuletide Cultural Bullying

Wow - sometimes backsliding culturally goes so unseen and unnoticed, to where you wake up and think - huh - is it really a 1990-culture war all over again?  Eerily enough - 20 years later - the Smithsonian's move to remove David Wojnarowicz from the Hide/Seek exhibit, namely the "Fire In My Belly" video, is like a sad synchronicity. Something that's not grabbing headlines as it should be, and not angering enough people.  Just in time for Christmas - and even more sadly enough - on World Aid's Day.
It is, however, self-edifying on two fronts - The exhibit is called Hide/Seek: all about that gay and often hidden desire, so subtle and lurking that no one knew (or cared to know). The National Portrait gallery is showing the other "secret history" of America - one that angers conservatives if taught and expressed and causes religious fervor, such that, the artist is hidden under a campaign of intolerance.    The gallery has works that start to evolve and become more prevelant and then show what happened with the epidemic.   Maybe there will be a shift in heart among the intolerant to see an arc of work, then a crisis followed by many deaths.
And secondly, that Wojnarowicz was practically showing the stifling silence and censorship that was killing his friends and loved ones in his work (including this one). It is amazing that this has come up AGAIN. As pointed out in prior posts, the man meant not to go quietly...  He wanted to serve as cultural beacon - and his "One Day" work is very much the anticipated panacea of gay bullying if there ever was one, and this work here is very much a religious work (and derives images from biblical passages and themes) as pointed out by Andrew Sullivan.
So - we must say thank you once again for illustrating our point, Bill Donahue - your timing on World Aid's Day shows you've got real showmanship potential.    Fortunately for us (and unfortunately for you) - the world has a secular device called "the Youtubes", and while we email the Smithsonian to ask that they project this on the biggest wall possible - I'll gladly post this here...

Flarts

The air is artificially crisp, movies are slower-paced, and the poly-wool blends are hitting the racks at H&M. That can only mean one thing - FALL ARTS (which I'm hoping to condense into a new phrase: FLARTS... workshop it around, etc). Flarts means more art than we can shake a stick at. Instead of foliage, we hibernate into big buildings with theme-shows... Like we have SAM anticipating "Target Practice", and who better to intro this but Paul McCarthy here in all his goeyness at SAM ... I share the same fascination with him as the Stranger, but alas, his talk is happening as I type this and had i known, i would have cut my cardio-20 minutes short and walked down there from the gym. Oh well. I can only hope they can stop things like this from happening:


Also - my perennial fave Ryan Trecartin has posted new videos from his Younger Than Jesus Show on UbuWeb. K-corea is bit too blond and shrill (but the themes are global credit which is both blond and shrill), but i do like the Sibling Topics (which you can tell he filmed at the PDX Eagle of all places).
Sibling Topics (section a) from Ryan Trecartin on Vimeo.

I did it for fun! I did it for fun!

Did a refresh to see what Ryan Trecartin was up to of late (*mostly b/c there's no facebook fan page for him), and saw this article. Looks like he's leaked to NYT. Thought it was a good profile - but again, they approach it with high-brow theory, something that is not as organic as his overall work.
I met him at Fruitfarm this past summer, but sitting across from him at dinner - was too bashful to admit I was a huge fan. Besides, the questions i would have asked, NYT did and unsuccessfully. Like all good artists - you really don't know what journey you're own - you just know it while you work on it.
So - all i'm gonna do is hopefully add another google hit to build a much deserved web presence (afterall, that's the landscape where it lives online)... In the meantime - enjoy AFFE in it's entirety on Ubuweb.

Cancelled Due To Writers Strike

Today was one of those days where I felt like Bruce Dern in Silent Running; running around the space station with very little human contact. I've been sick and coming out of quarantine, but decided not to go to the company party at EMP. It's literally 30 degrees out and miserable (and since I've been good about not drinking and taking it easy this week, I figured don't push it). Instead I stayed in, cooked a salmon and watched Deadwood (*which I've had out on Netflix for ohhh, 3 months?)... I've come to conclusion that while I find it interesting, the characters intense and nasty (kind of like a corporate environment on steroid rage, surrounded by mud and bad grammar). I don't think I'll finish the rest of the season...
Instead I've been catching up on various gay art blogs. I found this image courtesy of Kaiserin (tagline: A magazine for boys with problems). I've been actually reading on zine assembly (courtesy of a little book called Stolen Sharpie Revolution). It makes me wanna get my sharpie and start something. I've still held the rites to Indiefag.com (or maybe it's gone... not sure) - but something where I can put my manifesto up for all to see... But then again, I really don't have a manifesto (except, be nice and try to give people some room in life), and it wouldn't take up more than 2 pages. Oh, and isn't this what this blog is for? I guess I wanna be prolific in some fashion...

Worried Noodles!

I'm enthralled by a few things... among them, "Worried Noodles" as pointed out on LineOut is downloading all them fine fancy tracks on my iTunes. I love Shrigley's work, stumbling upon it by accident at Giant Robot when I was buying a bunch of his postcards to terrorize friends. I am listening to tracks - they remind me of the compilation-cum-tribute album for Daniel Johnston , who like Shrigley, has that same comic-naivety in his work... in any case, it'll make for a fun workout mix. The other things I'm enthralled with at the moment? Ohh, I will save that for some other post...