07 March 2009
28 February 2009
On posterity
Let's just take posterity out of the equation. We're facing a major extinction on the scale that wiped out the dinosaurs. These have happened a several times in the history of life on Earth, but this is first one created by an animal species that's part of the system it's destroying, i.e. us.
It's pretty clear it's way too late to stop the process. There's no point in recycling, carbon off-setting, alternative energy, saving for your retirement, or any of that. If anything, we should be preparing to move to Antarctica. Either that or just enjoying the last days as best we can.
We're the first generation of artists in history who can't rely on posterity. We're making art for our time, and only our time.
It's pretty clear it's way too late to stop the process. There's no point in recycling, carbon off-setting, alternative energy, saving for your retirement, or any of that. If anything, we should be preparing to move to Antarctica. Either that or just enjoying the last days as best we can.
We're the first generation of artists in history who can't rely on posterity. We're making art for our time, and only our time.
25 February 2009
Some first impressions
So I mentioned in the last post that I've been finding the other students a little annoying. Today and yesterday at my classes I got to spend the first 10 or 15 minutes listening to these whinging cunts whinging about how they are so hard done by by the university not indulging their every whim and not revolving around them. It's unbelievable.
So far there's only one tutor I've been unimpressed with, but the others seem to be pretty good.
I'm doing a grad diploma. As I explained to someone tonight, this means I've been parachute dropped behind enemy lines in the middle of third year. There are some other mature students, but I'm the only one who's already had an actual practice. Speaking of which, the tutor for my tutorial today seemed very suspicious of me, and my motivation. This may well be my paranoia, but I did get that impression.
Fucking hell, it should be obvious what my motivation is.
So far there's only one tutor I've been unimpressed with, but the others seem to be pretty good.
I'm doing a grad diploma. As I explained to someone tonight, this means I've been parachute dropped behind enemy lines in the middle of third year. There are some other mature students, but I'm the only one who's already had an actual practice. Speaking of which, the tutor for my tutorial today seemed very suspicious of me, and my motivation. This may well be my paranoia, but I did get that impression.
Fucking hell, it should be obvious what my motivation is.
23 February 2009
First day
Last night at dinner, Rose's son Jules told me what I must do to be a proper mature student: sit up the front, put my hand up first for every question, and relate everything I say back to the cool job my wife has.
I replied that I liked the the term, with its clear implication all the other students are immature.
And, Jesus fuck, they are annoying.
I replied that I liked the the term, with its clear implication all the other students are immature.
And, Jesus fuck, they are annoying.
17 February 2009
Last week of the day job
I’m in my last week of the day job. Varsity starts next week.
The office where I work has after-work drinks every second Friday. Different floors host it each time, and Friday 13 was our turn. As it was kind of my farewell, I insisted on a Malevich scheme:
The office where I work has after-work drinks every second Friday. Different floors host it each time, and Friday 13 was our turn. As it was kind of my farewell, I insisted on a Malevich scheme:
04 February 2009
Surmount all obstacles
I watched Werner Herzog’s Signs of life the other day. It’s his first feature film, made when he was 24 from a screenplay he wrote when 15 or 16. Herzog claimed that at 15 he’d had a vision of what he wanted to do, and that that vision sustained him still.
As the film started, I realised that the opening shot was very much like that of Aguirre. In Signs of life, a fixed camera follows an army truck winding its way down a mountain road. In Aguirre, a fixed camera follows the Spanish army winding its way down a track in the Andes.
The similarities don’t end there. Signs of life is set during World War II and is about a soldier named Stroszek (not to be confused with another Herzog film of the same name) who has been wounded and is recuperating on Crete, and who descends into madness.
Like Aguirre, Stroszek stages a grand rebellion. He declares war on everyone (always a good start) and wants to vanquish the sun by firing fireworks at it. Similarly, towards the end of his grand rebellion, Aguirre declares that if he commands the birds to drop dead from the trees they will drop dead from the trees. Both rebels end as failures, as the narrator in Signs of life says ‘like all of their kind’.
One of the enjoyable things about looking at someone’s early works is seeing the echoes of their future work in it. There’re the themes of course, but also the documentary-style realism contrasted with stylisation, the incidental cut-aways that don’t advance the story but contribute to the psychological effect of the film, the importance of music. The scene where Stroszek fires off his fireworks at dawn is amazing, and the music is a crucial part of it.
Another commonality with later films is the production difficulties and Herzog’s dedication to surmounting them. There’d been a military coup in Greece just before the film was shot, and the authorities wouldn’t allow Herzog to fire off his fireworks in the historic fort where a lot of the film was shot. It’s a crucial scene. Herzog reckoned that it was the image around which the screenplay was built. He told them he was going to do it anyway and that he’d shoot and kill anyone who tried to stop him. No-one tried to stop him.
In the commentary, the interviewer asked Herzog what it was that made him want to make films. He told of how as a teenager he’d gone to see a Fu Manchu film with some friends. An extra on a cliff gets shot and falls. As he falls, he gives a distinctive kick. Later in the film, the same thing happens, and Herzog recognised the kick and realised they’ve simply used the same shot again. Talking with his friends afterwards, none of them had noticed and wouldn’t believe him. They all (including Herzog up till then) had thought what they were watching was real. After that, Herzog started paying attention to how a film was put together.
Addendum: I should also probably mention the setting for Signs of life. It's on a Greek island untouched by the war. They leave their lights on at night. The soldiers (Stroszek and two others) live in an old fort where their only duties are to guard an ammunuition dump, even though the ammunition doesn't fit anyone's weapons. They're living in unreality and engaged in an absurd task.
As the film started, I realised that the opening shot was very much like that of Aguirre. In Signs of life, a fixed camera follows an army truck winding its way down a mountain road. In Aguirre, a fixed camera follows the Spanish army winding its way down a track in the Andes.
The similarities don’t end there. Signs of life is set during World War II and is about a soldier named Stroszek (not to be confused with another Herzog film of the same name) who has been wounded and is recuperating on Crete, and who descends into madness.
Like Aguirre, Stroszek stages a grand rebellion. He declares war on everyone (always a good start) and wants to vanquish the sun by firing fireworks at it. Similarly, towards the end of his grand rebellion, Aguirre declares that if he commands the birds to drop dead from the trees they will drop dead from the trees. Both rebels end as failures, as the narrator in Signs of life says ‘like all of their kind’.
One of the enjoyable things about looking at someone’s early works is seeing the echoes of their future work in it. There’re the themes of course, but also the documentary-style realism contrasted with stylisation, the incidental cut-aways that don’t advance the story but contribute to the psychological effect of the film, the importance of music. The scene where Stroszek fires off his fireworks at dawn is amazing, and the music is a crucial part of it.
Another commonality with later films is the production difficulties and Herzog’s dedication to surmounting them. There’d been a military coup in Greece just before the film was shot, and the authorities wouldn’t allow Herzog to fire off his fireworks in the historic fort where a lot of the film was shot. It’s a crucial scene. Herzog reckoned that it was the image around which the screenplay was built. He told them he was going to do it anyway and that he’d shoot and kill anyone who tried to stop him. No-one tried to stop him.
In the commentary, the interviewer asked Herzog what it was that made him want to make films. He told of how as a teenager he’d gone to see a Fu Manchu film with some friends. An extra on a cliff gets shot and falls. As he falls, he gives a distinctive kick. Later in the film, the same thing happens, and Herzog recognised the kick and realised they’ve simply used the same shot again. Talking with his friends afterwards, none of them had noticed and wouldn’t believe him. They all (including Herzog up till then) had thought what they were watching was real. After that, Herzog started paying attention to how a film was put together.
Addendum: I should also probably mention the setting for Signs of life. It's on a Greek island untouched by the war. They leave their lights on at night. The soldiers (Stroszek and two others) live in an old fort where their only duties are to guard an ammunuition dump, even though the ammunition doesn't fit anyone's weapons. They're living in unreality and engaged in an absurd task.
26 January 2009
After the bubble
There have been several articles recently about why the financial crisis/recession/Even Greater Depression will be good for the art world (see here and here). These tend to take the same form: the art world has got bloated and decadent, and the recession will get rid of the dead wood and make it all strong and pure again.
As a somewhat extreme counterexample, take the Weimar Republic. It was also portrayed by conservative critics as bloated and decadent, what with its cabarets and jazz and modern painting and all. Then came the Great Depression, and people found out what getting rid of the dead wood and making everything strong and pure again really means.
Sure, there is a good case to be made that the recent art market has been a classic investment bubble. Clearly, regardless of the recent record prices for contemporary art, we haven’t been living through a golden age of art. How anyone ever thought the market value of an art work is in any way related to its (for want of a better term) aesthetic value is beyond me.
However, the idea doing the rounds seems to be that, if a strong art market equals lots of bad art, then a weak art market equals lots of good art. This is ludicrous.
There is no guarantee that tough times equal better art. Only breezy columnists with a deadline too close for considered thought would suggest so. Tough times guarantee tough times. The good artists went their own way when the art market went mad, and they’ll carry on going their own way now that it’s gone bad. It’ll just be harder.
As a somewhat extreme counterexample, take the Weimar Republic. It was also portrayed by conservative critics as bloated and decadent, what with its cabarets and jazz and modern painting and all. Then came the Great Depression, and people found out what getting rid of the dead wood and making everything strong and pure again really means.
Sure, there is a good case to be made that the recent art market has been a classic investment bubble. Clearly, regardless of the recent record prices for contemporary art, we haven’t been living through a golden age of art. How anyone ever thought the market value of an art work is in any way related to its (for want of a better term) aesthetic value is beyond me.
However, the idea doing the rounds seems to be that, if a strong art market equals lots of bad art, then a weak art market equals lots of good art. This is ludicrous.
There is no guarantee that tough times equal better art. Only breezy columnists with a deadline too close for considered thought would suggest so. Tough times guarantee tough times. The good artists went their own way when the art market went mad, and they’ll carry on going their own way now that it’s gone bad. It’ll just be harder.
22 January 2009
A resolution
I don't usually do new year's resolutions, but this year I resolve to not go on about what sad-arse cunts the Barrs are.
I tend to buy books from Quilters in Lambton Quay. My advice is, if you're going to sell books to a second-hand dealer, either remove the name from the front page or rub out the nong underlining you've done on the wrong bits of the text, you fucking twits. We know you're stupid.
Okay, that's the last of it. Honestly, it is. Honest.
I tend to buy books from Quilters in Lambton Quay. My advice is, if you're going to sell books to a second-hand dealer, either remove the name from the front page or rub out the nong underlining you've done on the wrong bits of the text, you fucking twits. We know you're stupid.
Okay, that's the last of it. Honestly, it is. Honest.
Aleatory art
So I've been thinking about artists' intentions and the illusory nature of the self, and then I read The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart. Now, this is one of those books that I've been meaning to read for 20 years or so. Friends have raved about it, and The Fall wrote a doozy of a song about it.
I quite enjoyed the book at the start, but then it paled. But first, some background.
There are several arguments for why neither the world nor the self exist. I'm not going to go into them now (though I do quite like this one). The Dice Man recognises this, and comes up with a method for allowing what he calls the minority selves to come into their own by giving over his free will to the dice.
The philosophers of art reckon artists' intentions are important. It's another complicated area I won't get into in any detail now. Basically, for example, an allegorical painting can't be allegorical unless it was intended to be allegorical. But if the artist's self is illusory, who or what is doing the intending?
There is a good tradition of randomness in art. Hans Arp ripped up pieces of paper and dropped them on to another piece of paper, then glued them where they fell. Tristan Tzara applied this idea to poetry and pulled words out of a hat (which was then ripped off by Billy Burroughs to become what he called the cut-up method). Duchamp did Three standard stoppages, where he dropped three metre-length strings from a metre's height and glued them where they lay, to use as measurements (ye gods, he did do some shit work, didn't he!?).
In each of these cases, randomness, rather than the artist, determines the work. Intentions don't come into it (well, directly at least).
So is the answer simply to randomly determine the form and content of art work?
I'm afraid the answer is no. This is the problem I had with the Dice Man. Replacing the dictatorship of an illusory self by the dictatorship of chance is no advance at all - you're still suffering under a dictatorship. A system based on randomness is still a system.
I'm not sure what the solution is.
I quite enjoyed the book at the start, but then it paled. But first, some background.
There are several arguments for why neither the world nor the self exist. I'm not going to go into them now (though I do quite like this one). The Dice Man recognises this, and comes up with a method for allowing what he calls the minority selves to come into their own by giving over his free will to the dice.
The philosophers of art reckon artists' intentions are important. It's another complicated area I won't get into in any detail now. Basically, for example, an allegorical painting can't be allegorical unless it was intended to be allegorical. But if the artist's self is illusory, who or what is doing the intending?
There is a good tradition of randomness in art. Hans Arp ripped up pieces of paper and dropped them on to another piece of paper, then glued them where they fell. Tristan Tzara applied this idea to poetry and pulled words out of a hat (which was then ripped off by Billy Burroughs to become what he called the cut-up method). Duchamp did Three standard stoppages, where he dropped three metre-length strings from a metre's height and glued them where they lay, to use as measurements (ye gods, he did do some shit work, didn't he!?).
In each of these cases, randomness, rather than the artist, determines the work. Intentions don't come into it (well, directly at least).
So is the answer simply to randomly determine the form and content of art work?
I'm afraid the answer is no. This is the problem I had with the Dice Man. Replacing the dictatorship of an illusory self by the dictatorship of chance is no advance at all - you're still suffering under a dictatorship. A system based on randomness is still a system.
I'm not sure what the solution is.
13 January 2009
Chucking in my job
Yesterday, I told my colleagues I’m chucking in my job to go to art school (at Massey no less). Yep, the start of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression is just the right time to give up your relatively safe public service job. The course starts at the end of Feb, and I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve had an amusing range of comments about it. The answer to ‘I hope you know what you’re doing’ is no, but that’s nothing new.
In other news, my brother got married the other day. This involved a cruise up the Whanganui River on the Wairua, which was built in 1904 and spent 30 years at the bottom of the river before being restored (which took another 18 years). Jo has put up some photos here.
In other news, my brother got married the other day. This involved a cruise up the Whanganui River on the Wairua, which was built in 1904 and spent 30 years at the bottom of the river before being restored (which took another 18 years). Jo has put up some photos here.
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