feeling like nero but without internet access

Okay while the legend goes that nero fiddled while rome burned, the truth will never be completely known. I just like the analogy of someone who indulges in artistic and cultural endeavors while all around him infrastructure and practical things collapse. I feel like that person. Currently the closing/relocation/downsizing of two businesses has had an impact on my life. I feel a bit silly/selfish/shallow thinking of it in such terms but both of these businesses were my main hubs for internet access. First, the business that I rent my studio from is no more. For the last 18 months I have been occupying a modest warehouse that I renovated the summer of 2007. In the front of the building was the ladyfingers bakery and in the back was me. This situation worked well, rarely was i making too much noise for them when they were open and rarely did they bother me when i was working, they even had wireless internet, which i had actually quite using back in august of 2008, determining that not only did i need a windowless space to work in, but having no internet in the studio was the right choice for me. But knowing it was available when i needed it definitely helped if i wanted to update the website or draft a writing or idea when i was right in the middle of the process of creation. the second lost internet access has been the closing of the rutledge coffee and cream. I have known about the closing for over a week and still have not made alternate plans. we have shared a wall with the rutledge coffee and cream for about a year now, so we easily latched onto their wireless signal. In the past month or so his router has been spotty and he had swore up and down that he ordered a new one, but when he never fixed the problem we probably should have gotten the hint that he was closing down. When he finally told me, it came as no surprise. So now I have gone back to old techniques of internet access, namely leaving the house and going to a coffee shop to conduct all my internet related activities, this isn't all bad and definitely gives me some ideas for how to expand my work and my understanding of the coffee shop and particularly the current laptop farms of today, which i am now an overly active part of. On some level being forced to compute in public is a good thing. the previously private and anti-social activity of working on ones computer has become a public event shared by many. But the real reason i feel like nero fiddling is that when I have gone to the studio or worked on site for the last 4 years i have listened religiously to npr/pri radio. In fact it made my art feel less disconnected from the outside world since i listened intently to the world unfolding. Lately it has been difficult not to put down my tools and stare at the radio in disbelief, especially when the business closings are hitting so close to home and the news gets darker. I have no problem finding continued beauty and inspiration in the detritus of consumer culture that has sustained my art thus far, but i want less and less to know what is going on outside of the confines of the studio, gallery space, or dumpster i am working in. To this end I have been listening repeatedly to girl talk's upbeat albums. Not only is girl talk the perfect background noise for work, but the mixes are like a game of name that tune that flies by at 100 miles an hour. The irony of my substitution of girl talk for npr, is that i learned about girl talk from a review on npr, so as soon as i burn out girl talk i will have to get back to listening exclusively to npr in hopes of finding new musical inspiration.

red hot chili peppers videos, the art of erwin wurm, and self censorship

I was looking at this amazing music video for the red hot chili peppers

and was immediately struck with how familiar the actions and look of the video were. The first time I was watching it through I said right away these look like 1960’s performative works/conceptual art pieces. It seemed like an early nauman series of tasks or even some sort of full color richard serra esque or vito aconci video documentation, only a bit more playful. Sure enough when the credits rolled Erwin Wurm was acknowledged. I think for the people who might know wurm , they know him for his iconic fat car,

and other modified sculpture projects.


But his best work and most indicative of his line of thinking are his actions and interventions, especially the one minute sculptures referenced in the music video.

Rather than being left with my train of thought at the station, I became intrigued with what kind of filmmaker would encourage a band from the eighties to make a music video riffing on the art of the sixties. On the Mark Romanek's website (the man responsible for the video)I found my answer. He was educated at the school of the art institute of Chicago and he sights a long list of visual artists of the sixties as his influences. I was further intrigued to find out that he was the same person responsible for the full length film one hour photo(which i kinda dug). In needing to know more I dove right into his faq page and I found a quote he used as advice for aspiring artists/ filmakers, that resonated with me.

"you have to fight every day to stop censoring yourself. and you never have anyone else to blame when you do. what happens to artists is that it's not that somebody's standing in their way, it's that their own selves are standing in their way. the compromise really isn't how or what you do, the techniques you use, or even the content, but really the compromise is beginning to feel a lack of confidence in your innermost thoughts. and if you don't put these innermost thoughts on the screen then you are looking down on not only your audience but the people you work with, and that's what makes so many people working out there unhappy. these innermost thoughts become less and less a part of you and once you lose them then you don't have anything else. so many people have so much to say and there are so many really worthwhile things to say that it seems impossible that we could cut ourselves off from this whole avenue of enormous excitement." from cassavetes on cassavetes edited by raymond carney
i lifted this from the mark romanek website faq section

Self censorship is one of those areas I am incredibly familiar with. I am also incredibly conflicted about the function of self censorship. I am a big fan of art, music, literature and people in general who consider the context in which they are presenting themselves. Sometimes I think too much about this. I am incredibly concerned with the audiences experience of art and and the physical space it inhabits and give great considerations to this, but at the same time I am making work to satisfy myself. The trick is that half of my output is a body of work I have never shown as it’s own independent direction. That body of work includes sets of drawings, videos and photographs. These exercises help fuel my understanding of the more public work I have been undertaking. I always censor myself when considering shows and ideas to shop around, or more specifically showing these to people when they come for studio visits. On some level this has allowed my drawings, photos and other works to develop out of the light of total exposure. It is true that when I exhibit or show some object or work on paper, on some level it kills the work for me. I know these rules are arbitrary but I am able to put so much into the incredibly public art I have been making because I have the complete opposite work running in a different direction. If the installations are the ultimate blurring of the boundary between the space where the art is created and the place where it is exhibited , the drawings will always be bound to the mental space in which they were created and conceived. On a side note I have noticed a re-emergence of the hand in contemporary art and of works on paper in particular. My own idea about why this is happening is pretty simple, works on paper and drawings are the most sincere gesture one can make as an artist. As color photography, and design based art seem to capture the larger interest of the public, myself included, I think the natural reaction by artists, either consciously or unconsciously is to make more humble work on paper, or to present drawings as finished works. I can't be sure of any of this but sometimes watching a red hot chili peppers video on you tube the same week that I am reading over brian odougherty's essay Studio and Cube, the follow up to inside the white cube, can lead to a re-evaluation of what one is observing.