The only proper subject for art is the utter ridiculousness of it all.
I don't mean just the ridiculousness of the art game, though that is pretty ridiculous. Art is an integral part of human society, and human society is an integral part of the world. Therefore, the ridiculousness of art leads inexorably to the ridiculousness of the world.
And how ridiculous the world is! This spinning ball of mud with these ridiculous creatures crawling across its surface, deluded by pretensions of grandeur.
You have to laugh.
It's final hand-in for the studio paper today. Said hand-in will form part of the end-of-year exhibition, which opens on 5 November.
It's been an up and down kind of year, but I'm pretty happy with how it's turned out. What made all the difference was our class. I'm not much of one for groups, but this one is all right. We've had a good time.
The last thing I've got to do, before I can put academia behind me for the year and get stuck into some painting, is come up with a proposal for Masters next year.
I was derailed from doing a book this year. Maybe I should do one next year?
Then again, there's a general election next year, and it'll probably be quite funny. Maybe I should stand as the common-sense nihilist candidate for Wellington Central?
Decisions, decisions.
Oh, and I'm bitterly disappointed with the lack of response to the caption competition, you useless cunts. This is an interactive, multidisciplinary art work, don't you know, and so as such it needs some fucking interaction! If I fail, it's all your fucking fault.
Arseholes.
27 October 2010
24 October 2010
22 October 2010
Something in Wellington to go to
Tonight, Rose and Daniel will be spinning some records at Happy, from 7.30 to 8.30.
Update: So I lied. Turns out it's from 6.30 to 7.30.
Update: So I lied. Turns out it's from 6.30 to 7.30.
20 October 2010
Parallel worlds
According to the many worlds theory, 'the universe (or multiverse in this context) is composed of a quantum superposition of very many, possibly even non-denumerably infinitely many, increasingly divergent, non-communicating parallel universes or quantum worlds'.
Some people, particularly science fiction writers, like to imagine this means there are a near-infinite number of parallel versions of themselves inhabiting all sorts of exotic parallel worlds (usually featuring airships).
However, each of us is a product of a unique set of circumstances, each of which had to happen for us to have been born. The vast majority of parallel worlds, by definition, are worlds in which different things happen – that is, worlds in which you were never born. And the worlds in which parallel versions of you do exist will be substantially similar to this one, their only differences being the different possible courses your life can take.
Therefore, if you could travel between parallel worlds, the chances of meeting an alternate version of yourself would be vanishingly small, and the outcome if it did happen fairly boring.
Some people, particularly science fiction writers, like to imagine this means there are a near-infinite number of parallel versions of themselves inhabiting all sorts of exotic parallel worlds (usually featuring airships).
However, each of us is a product of a unique set of circumstances, each of which had to happen for us to have been born. The vast majority of parallel worlds, by definition, are worlds in which different things happen – that is, worlds in which you were never born. And the worlds in which parallel versions of you do exist will be substantially similar to this one, their only differences being the different possible courses your life can take.
Therefore, if you could travel between parallel worlds, the chances of meeting an alternate version of yourself would be vanishingly small, and the outcome if it did happen fairly boring.
Racism
I hate South Africans. The sound of their accent makes my skin crawl.
Nazi cunts.
I can't stand the English either. Imperialist motherfuckers, starting off with the locals, then exporting the concept.
And don't get me started on the Americans.
Me, I'm Maltese. Fuck the Maori and their being colonised 150 years ago. We were colonised 2000 years ago. From the fucking Phoenicians to the fucking English, who gave it up in the late 60s.
There were all sorts in between – the Arabs who cut down in all the trees and turned it into an arid wasteland, the Knights of St John and their crazy siege.
Fuck me, I am a racist. I hate the human race.
Nazi cunts.
I can't stand the English either. Imperialist motherfuckers, starting off with the locals, then exporting the concept.
And don't get me started on the Americans.
Me, I'm Maltese. Fuck the Maori and their being colonised 150 years ago. We were colonised 2000 years ago. From the fucking Phoenicians to the fucking English, who gave it up in the late 60s.
There were all sorts in between – the Arabs who cut down in all the trees and turned it into an arid wasteland, the Knights of St John and their crazy siege.
Fuck me, I am a racist. I hate the human race.
19 October 2010
The universe
Check out this whizzy interactive scale of the universe thing.
Speaking of whizzy physics stuff, I also came across these ten purported answers to the question 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' What bollocks. Apart from number 2 (and maybe, if we're feeling generous, 1), they are no such thing. They explain how – not why – there is apparently something rather than nothing.
Now, of course, in reality neither I nor the world exist. But we indisputably appear to do so. Why is this? Logically, nothing should.
Maybe it's cos we can appear to exist. The apparent universe we inhabit is the expression of the possibility that it can appear to exist.
If you know what I mean.
Speaking of whizzy physics stuff, I also came across these ten purported answers to the question 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' What bollocks. Apart from number 2 (and maybe, if we're feeling generous, 1), they are no such thing. They explain how – not why – there is apparently something rather than nothing.
Now, of course, in reality neither I nor the world exist. But we indisputably appear to do so. Why is this? Logically, nothing should.
Maybe it's cos we can appear to exist. The apparent universe we inhabit is the expression of the possibility that it can appear to exist.
If you know what I mean.
18 October 2010
Popular art
People want art like those mirrors in clothes shops that make you look skinnier than you really are.
But only if it has a stamp of approval from some authority on it.
But only if it has a stamp of approval from some authority on it.
16 October 2010
12 October 2010
To reiterate
I call myself an intertemporal avant-garde artist. At the end of last year, I issued a challenge to anyone who would dispute my claim to the avant-garde. There are many possible reasons for the lack of response to that challenge, but, naturally enough, I prefer to think that it's because no-one disputes that claim.
In his Theory of the avant-garde, Peter Bürger defines the historical avant-garde as Dada, Surrealism, and Constructivism, while classifying such movements as Cubism as modernist. According to Bürger, what distinguishes an avant-garde movement from a modernist one is that the avant-garde rejects aestheticism, an exclusive concern with formal qualities, in favour of integrating art with life.
Bürger contends that the historical avant-garde failed to achieve this goal. He argues that the neo-avant-gardes of the 1950s and 1960s were a farcical repetition of this failure. For Bürger, the historical avant-garde’s failure was heroic, but the neo-avant-garde’s repetition of that failure actively works against the goals of the historical avant-garde.
Hal Foster gives an example: ‘Thus, if readymades and collages challenged the bourgeois principles of expressive artist and organic art work, neo-readymades and neo-collages reinstate them.'
However, this alleged common aim of the avant-garde to integrate art and life is obvious bullshit. Yes, there were avant-garde artists who did have that aim, but there was also others who didn't. Having that aim is neither a necessary nor a sufficient property of being an avant-garde art work, artist, or movement.
In his Theory of the avant-garde, Renato Poggioli takes another tack. He identified four essential features belonging to the avant-garde:
Basically, according to this theory, all you need is a bourgeois capitalist society with official and academic art institutions, and certain attitudes towards those institutions and that society. What matters is not whether a particular art work was made in 1910, 1960, or 2010 but its relationship with the official art institutions of the society it inhabits.
Hence, rather than historical and neo-avant-gardes, we have the intertemporal avant-garde.
So fuck you.
In his Theory of the avant-garde, Peter Bürger defines the historical avant-garde as Dada, Surrealism, and Constructivism, while classifying such movements as Cubism as modernist. According to Bürger, what distinguishes an avant-garde movement from a modernist one is that the avant-garde rejects aestheticism, an exclusive concern with formal qualities, in favour of integrating art with life.
Bürger contends that the historical avant-garde failed to achieve this goal. He argues that the neo-avant-gardes of the 1950s and 1960s were a farcical repetition of this failure. For Bürger, the historical avant-garde’s failure was heroic, but the neo-avant-garde’s repetition of that failure actively works against the goals of the historical avant-garde.
Hal Foster gives an example: ‘Thus, if readymades and collages challenged the bourgeois principles of expressive artist and organic art work, neo-readymades and neo-collages reinstate them.'
However, this alleged common aim of the avant-garde to integrate art and life is obvious bullshit. Yes, there were avant-garde artists who did have that aim, but there was also others who didn't. Having that aim is neither a necessary nor a sufficient property of being an avant-garde art work, artist, or movement.
In his Theory of the avant-garde, Renato Poggioli takes another tack. He identified four essential features belonging to the avant-garde:
- alienation from bourgeois capitalist society
- activism and antagonism towards the public and public institutions, especially official and academic art
- a fundamental break with the past
- self-consciousness as an elite vanguard of the future.
Basically, according to this theory, all you need is a bourgeois capitalist society with official and academic art institutions, and certain attitudes towards those institutions and that society. What matters is not whether a particular art work was made in 1910, 1960, or 2010 but its relationship with the official art institutions of the society it inhabits.
Hence, rather than historical and neo-avant-gardes, we have the intertemporal avant-garde.
So fuck you.
09 October 2010
Quote of the day
We were sitting in the sun listening to some nice jazz when this song came on. It has the best lyrics ever:
It was by this guy:
I'll be dancing on the corner full of gin
When they bring your dead body in
I'll be glad when you're dead
You rascal, you
It was by this guy:
07 October 2010
All quiet on the blogging front
Yeah, so it's been a bit quiet around here recently. That's all right. I'm not one of those wankers who put inane shit up every day just so they can have inane shit up every day.
No! There are gaps between my inane shit!
I've been trying to get my essay for school written – and over and done with – so I can concentrate on painting instead. Like all things that you want to be over so you can move on something far more interesting, it's dragging on and on and on...
Bollocks.
No! There are gaps between my inane shit!
I've been trying to get my essay for school written – and over and done with – so I can concentrate on painting instead. Like all things that you want to be over so you can move on something far more interesting, it's dragging on and on and on...
Bollocks.
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