Nice

The image above is the piece that Rose put into the Vent group show at Thermostat Gallery in Palmerston North. It's called Now hear the word of the Lord. She dug the skull up in the garden. There are some pics of the opening here.

I haven't bothered including a pic of the boring painting I put in. You've seen it before anyway.

I reckon Rose's one is very nice indeed, and I'm a bit annoyed that it sold at the opening. I selfishly would've liked it on our wall. However, it's spurred her on to do more stuff, so it's all good.

We've just been up to Palmy to check the show out. We couldn't make the opening cos of the film festival. We ended up buying a pile of books, some coats, and a work from the show.

Repeat

Friends! Wake up!

Escape from all originality. Take your penetrating mind, your sensitive psyche, and throw them in the rubbish bin. Make large numbers of old works. Never work. Say no to life.

No time has been more imbecilic than ours. What are you doing here?

Quote of the day

Today, with art being practically driven out by machinelike competence and gimmicks, with the course of the world no longer influenced by humanitarian ideas derived from art, , with art and artists limited to a small professional in-group, with art being judged quantitatively and pluralistically (namely, according to mass success), people may understand what we were saying.

...

In an age in which base jokesters are the idols of the nation and earn millions of dollars, the cultural worker should devote himself to laziness, indifference, or some sort of practical work. Since 'intellectuality' is not only not appreciated but totally misunderstood, one has to be careful not to let one's artistic work play into those whose guilt feelings make them look for aesthetic decorations. Art is not meant for people who believe that manufacturing shoes is more important than writing good books or painting.

- Richard Huelsenbeck, Memoirs of a Dada drummer

This is a somewhat depressing book. It was written in America during the McCarthy era, and Huelsenbeck goes to considerable pains to distance himself from any association with communism, despite such Berlin Dada slogans as 'Dada is on the side of the revolutionary proletariat!' and Huelsenbeck's statement in the Dada Almanach of 1920 that 'Dada is German Bolshevism'. However, despite the revisionism, it's still well worth the read.

Oh, and I chose laziness and indifference long ago. Bollocks to practical work.

Here's another quote from the Dada Almanach:

One must be enough of a dadaist to be able to take a dadaist attitude to one's own dadaism ... Dada is the great parallel to the relativist philosophies of this era; dada is a state of mind independent of schools and theories, involving the personality without raping it. You cannot pinpoint the principles of dada. The question: 'What is dada?' is undadaistic and sophomoric in the same sense as it would be in regard to a work of art or a phenomenon of life. You cannot comprehend dada, you have to experience it. Dada is immediate and self-evident. A person is a dadaist simply by living ... Anyone living for this day lives forever. This means that anyone who has lived the best of his time has lived for all time. Take, and give yourself over. Live and die.

Another crappy drawing

The poet with the world's shortest hair tells it like it is

I write to infuriate my colleagues ... With such intellectual readers as mine, I am obliged ... to say that I consider a man intelligent only when his intelligence has a temperament, since a really intelligent man resembles millions of really intelligent men. Therefore, as far as I am concerned, a man of subtlety or refinement is nearly always nothing but an idiot.

- Arthur Cravan, quoted in Dada culture: critical texts on the avant-garde (a book with little else to recommend it)

Yet another project to go unfinished

I'd like to write a science fiction story set in Zurich in 1916. Two time-travelling agents: one from the intertemporal avant-garde, the other from Control. The Control agent plans to kill Dada dead in the water by using mind control rays to ensure the audience for early performances at the Cabaret Voltaire find them boring. While he's at it, he'll do Lenin in as well by kaiboshing his deal with the Germans.

Quote of the day

'Creativity' may well be one of those words that must be abandoned as irredeemable at the growing garbage dump destroyed by advertising and politics. The list of such words is long, but it includes nearly every word used by politicians, professional inspirational speakers, preachers, and degreed poets, with the possible exception of conjunctions and some adverbs.

- Andrei Codrescu (a degreed poet), The posthuman Dada guide

I'm very much enjoying this book, lent to me by my assessor (who recently signed an email 'Tineye'). The first two sentences are: 'This is a guide for instructing posthumans in living a Dada life. It is not advisable, nor was it ever, to lead a Dada life.'

It is written in a very readable, chatty style, as the above quotes should make clear. I'm a little dubious about some of what he says. He likes the Dada language. The contrast between Tzara and Lenin seems a bit forced.

It draws quite heavily on Dada East, a very interesting book (though also a bit forced) on the Romanian origins of Dada, but Codrescu is very selective in what he draws from it – no criticism of Tzara for him, no, no! I suppose these Romanian poets stick together.

Also, it's a small point, but Codrescu coins a new pronoun 'herm' to use instead of 'he or she' when there's the perfectly good 'they' available. Wanker.

Hmm, these comments are not exactly a glowing endorsement, but it is a good book that's well worth reading. I want to get my own copy.

A couple more drawings

Don't forget

Both Mock-up on Mu and The posthuman Dada guide mention the temporary autonomous zone.

From an email I sent today

Got to love a project where you hang round public toilets for research!