A crazy Picabia pic for your viewing pleasure

Memories of the future

I have a show on at Robert's at the moment, but here are some images from a show at Aratoi last year.

Peter Gutteridge has died

Awful news.

Tribulations

It was a nice day for drying gesso today, but the cat and the chickens had other ideas:

So now some of them have a slight brown tinge.

Amusement

This is worth breaking the drought for, I reckon. I let the Herald know the caption was wrong when someone drew my attention to it a few days ago, but their journalistic regard for accuracy doesn't seem to extend to fixing it.

Funny.

In other news, I've had a concussion since early December. Tapping words into a screen is quite hard going, so I'll stop now. Might try again later, or I'll leave it for another year.

How creepy is this?

The NSA is following Rose on Twitter!

That is, if it really is the NSA. Still funny though. And creepy. Don't forget the creepy.

Ye gods

All these struggles of god with god, power against power, the gods feeling those forces they are thought to control crackling at their fingertips; this separation of the power from the god, the god reduced to no more than a sort of word, falling, an effigy dedicated to the most hideous idolatries; this seismic din and physical convulsion in the heavens; this way of riveting sky into heaven, earth onto earth; these mansions and expanses of heaven which are handed on and pass from mind to mind, with each of us, inside our heads, refashioning our gods; this interim occupation of heaven, here by a god and his wrath, there by the same god mutated; this takeover of power, succeeded as though by the perpetual spasmodic pulsation, top to bottom and back again, of other takeovers of power; this respiration of cosmic faculties, similar, on a higher level to the coarse and buried faculties dormant within our own individual natures – and for every faculty there is a corresponding god and a power, and we are heaven on earth, and they have become the earth, the earth drawn into the absolute...

– Antonin Artaud, Heliogabalus: Or, the crowned anarchist

The perils of the graphic designer wife

Next week

Gold

Oh well

I have recently thought to myself, 'I should probably update my blog with something other than silly photos and videos.' Then I sit there in front of a blank screen for a while, until I give it up as a bad job and watch Doctor Who instead.

Oh yes, I've been watching a lot of Doctor Who.

I've also been reading about John Heartfield, the photomonteur and famously angry person. Near the end of World War I, after a night out with his fellow Dadas drinking heavily and snorting cocaine, he 'became so unruly that we had to restrain him'. They tied him to a chair and then taunted and provoked him 'with words and blows', so they could enjoy the resulting tirade of rage.

The things you had to do to amuse yourself in war-torn Berlin!

When I recounted that anecdote to Rose, she said 'Ooh! Can we do that to you?'

Serious Fall discussion

The resurrection

Aaaaand we're back.

A waking dream

When the fluidity, the flexibility of thought – fluid flexible thought – calcifies into belief, it dies. That shimmering white figure flitting between the trees falls to the ground and turns solid and leaden grey, to be dragged away to the city and placed in yet another edifice looming over the benighted hordes scurrying on their pointless pursuits below.

That abstract edifice made of elusive illusions, that blank featureless face relieved only by the odd grimacing gargoyle, spattered with the blood of the bodies hurled from the roof, who fall into the crowds of hunched brown and black figures thronging the narrow streets with a faint wet splat.

In a forgotten and neglected district of that city there sits, crammed between a uniform outfitters and a propaganda outlet, a small cafe. It only ever has a couple of people sitting at its cracked formica tables with their wonky legs, never less, never more, no matter the time of day or night you push through the door to take your place at the counter and nurse your drink for hours, your overcoat on the stool beside you, forlorn.

Your phone rings, earning you a sharp recriminatory glare from the man in a scarf in the corner.

'Where are you?'

'Nowhere.'

'Are you coming home soon?'

'No.'

The Cafe Nowhere, in a forgotten and neglected district of the city, crammed between a uniform outfitters and a propaganda outlet. The Cafe Nowhere. Where the music sounds like the grinding of gears.

Where the music sounds like the grinding of gears.

Albert Gleizes did not like dada

The impossibility of constructing, of organising anything whatsoever, not even having the foggiest notion of it, led [the dada] to decree that nothing existed and that he could do anything under the guise of instinct...

What they call instinct is anything which passes through their heads [and] from time to time something very good passes through them...

But very soon we become aware of ... the 'leitmotives' which recur in their paintings and literary work. And the pathological case becomes brutally evident. Their minds are forever haunted by a sexual delirium and a scatalogical frenzy ... Their frolics abandon themselves freely around the genital apparatuses of either sex ... Moreover, by lingering in these realms, they have found ... another source of instinctive inspiration. They have discovered the anus and the intestinal by-products ... They confuse excrement with products of the mind. They use the same word to designate two different things.

Well, there's my next artist statement, should I need one. I might have to apply for something just so I can use it.

'Intestinal by-products'! 'Genital apparatuses'!

I think the former'd make the better title.

Certified maniac

I mentioned to a friend the other day that I plan to come off my mad pills in a couple of months. I was a bit peeved by how worried he looked. Rose has been quite resistant to this plan too. The standard thing to do once you've been certified a maniac is to stick you on pills for the rest of your life.

I'm not into that.

The worst thing about this diagnosis is its retrospective nature. I think of myself as a normal human being. But no! They charmingly tell me I've been diseased, disordered my entire life. No, David, you are not an acceptable human being. You need to be treated to make you so. Dull, grey, sluggish.

Bullshit.

I'm going to the shrinks this arvo to work out a plan for going off the pills. It's quite scary how much power they have, the enforcers of the reality consensus. The default options are to get drugged or to get locked up: Eradicate all disallowed thought patterns! Enforce circumscribed normalcy!

Once I go off the pills, they'll be hovering around waiting for the first excuse to put me back on them. So we're working out a plan.

One of the first questions is 'what gives meaning to your life?' Ha ha ha ha ha.

Fuck the medical profession is dodgy. Not that long ago they used to cut people's brains in half to make them 'normal'. And then experiment on them to find out how the brain works. How insanely inhuman is that?

Fucking norms. Any group of people is an incipient lynch mob, ready to deindividuate at the drop of a hat and act in unison against the perceived 'other'. If that's ordered, give me disordered any day.

Quiet

Yeah, so you might have noticed I've been a bit quiet on the blog for a while. I've even had an email pleading for an update. Bizarre.

The truth is that, after the last few months, I simply can't face stringing words after another. (I've just had a wee rest after typing that previous sentence.) And there's not a lot to say. I haven't been going out much. I've just been enjoying the resumption of (somewhat) normal life.

I've started back at the day job. I've been doing some painting. Nice leisurely painting. I've been hanging out with the dog. Both Rose and I have been sick. Same old, same old. Nothing to see here.

I suppose the main thing of note is that I, quite amazingly, got my phone back from Auckland. It took a while. The morons who took it even left photos of themselves on it.

Look, a moron:

I suppose I should be grateful they returned it. Though I'd much rather they hadn't took it in the first place. Nor required so much encouragement to return it.

And I won't mention what else the disgusting little creeps left on it either.

Examiners' reports

So I got back the examiners' reports last night, with names and marks removed. At first, reading Examiner A, I had a moment of horror: 'Oh no, don't tell me they're just going to accept it!?'

But then I got to Examiner B and went 'Phew!':

This is an unusual MFA exegesis and one is required to read between the lines negotiating meandering historical and personal narratives. The texts variously provide short narratives of the candidate's life, champion the marginalised artist (Picabia), the autodidact (pg.25); and makes claims to reject culture (pg.11), and the art academy (pgs.7, 12).

From this it is apparent that the exegesis preferences the attitude of the candidate positioned as avant-garde and antagonistic. This overriding attitude is given greater weight than how the work is contextualized and what it is attempting to do. The work is located in a limited range of existing practices and at times the candidate critically examines aspects of the topic, notably via the above discussion of della Francesea's Baptism of Christ and in the discussion and research into the avant-garde. The aims and purposes in the research are inferred in the exegesis, the overall structure makes this information not readily available. There is a comprehensive bibliography but there is no direct referencing of source material in the exegesis. This fails to meet minimum academic standards. Further to this critical thinking, analysis and argument do not contextualize the liberal use of profane language. Without this it is inappropriate for the topic and context.

No physical work has been presented for the assessment, making a thorough engagement with the art practice difficult. The subtleties of the work cannot be gleaned from the printed documentation provided. No dimensions are provided for the works. The documentation of the work Cauchi contra mundum does not include details of all components of the installation.

 (Emphasis added.)

The Nobble Savage

So I've just been at the new City Gallery opening, their sculpture show, their as my friend put it Bizzaro-Prospect show.

We arrived during the speeches. Oh dear gods, I wish we'd missed them. Paula Savage, the Destroyer, whose cold dead hand has ruined that building, is a bad public speaker at the best of times. These were not the best of times. She gushed. Oh, did she gush. It was hilarious: 'This building ... I love it ... I love it ... I love it ... I just love it ... And I love you too ... Everyone of you ... And let me tell you about my sons ... And my new job ...' Seriously, she spent some time talking about her sons and her new job and, of course, how much she loves everything.

And look how she's left that place.

Ye gods, I wish I'd missed that speech. The start a sentence and then mumble into incoherence. The rambling. The inanity. The gushing.

And then the goddamn Registrar came up to me trying to talk about the argument we'd had over the Fomison library in the previous show, when she'd been summoned as soon as I started looking at the books. When she'd bossily and officiously not let me use the books, no no they're not for reference, told me they're just there for admiring, and other such bullshit. I don't know what the fuck she was going on about tonight, but it made no fucking sense to me.

But then I am insane. Every time I go to see my shrink, she brings up her power to institutionalise me under the Mental Health Act. What's up with that?

When I think back to the time I spent in that building as a child, the many hours, when it was a library, it's a bit rank, what's happened to it.

The least they could do is put on some good shows.

What a load of shit.

(As you may have gathered, I've been a cunt tonight. I do enjoy it so. Up yours.)

Hmmm

Are the secret police sneaking into my studio when I'm not here to move things about just to mess with my head? Is it maybe alien robots from the future using amplified telekinetic ray projectors? Maybe I'm slipping into yet another alternate world every time I leave the house, each separate world distinguished by subtle changes in the arrangements of objects? Or is it hostile telepathic interference from a higher power falsifying my memory of the supposed previous arrangement of those objects?

Did those objects even exist before I walked into the studio today? Did I exist before I woke up this morning? Is my alleged memory of a continuous identity before today merely a psychogenetic implant? Am I I? If I say I and you say I, to what does 'I' refer? Am I you? Are you I? Which I? What is I?

Might be time to do another self-portrait. Just to check.

Hey, does that reasoning thereby make me an impressionist!?

Ha ha.