Netiquette and Thought Crimes

I spent the last week on a cross-country road trip. While trapped in the rented minivan, our family indulged in listening to several episodes of the podcast "Welcome to Night Vale", written by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor and narrated by Cecil Baldwin. In case you've been living under a rock for the last two years, the podcast is somewhere between horror fiction, classic comedy radio play, and the hypnotic aesthetic of public radio news. The central theme of the series is a fictional desert community called Night Vale and the news regarding its various residents and visitors, human and otherwise. In the podcast, there is frequent mention of secret police and the ambiguous penalties for "thought crimes". The notion of thought crimes within the podcast is proposed in a humorous manner - though as with all things humorous in the podcast, they parody contemporary societal issues. Challenges to the ideological problems with digital surveillance are craftily hidden just beneath the surface of the comedy.

Logo by Rob Wilson

 So why am I thinking about Night Vale in relationship to this blog, you may wonder? Well, for those few human readers out there following the autonomous exquisite corpse art happening in the comment section of Marcel Duchamp and Invented Pseudo Algebra, you may be asking the same questions I have been lately. Is there something unethical about approving spam in service to the work of art? Are there consequences for allowing this artwork to continue? What kind of monitoring does this artwork undergo and what purpose does such monitoring serve? Who watches the watchmen?

All joking aside, I have recently begun to think about the lifespan of the autonomous exquisite corpse work hosted on this site. I wonder if I should consider a specific end point for the work? I am also curious about the life span of the work beyond this mortal coil. I have to review and approve all comments for that section now. I originally set up this blog to auto-approve comments, but then the Blogger platform changed and deleted many comments that were auto-approved as they had been identified as spam. Essentially, the continued process of approval of the comments is the primary reason I still maintain this blog.

What will become of this artwork in the future? What will this exquisite corpse say about our society some day? Even though his work was not directly related to the present dilemma, I can't help but think about the work of the artist On Kawara. The simple act of marking time has provided so many opportunities to reflect on history, both personal and global, for such a great number of those who have encountered his work in person and via the internet. Of course, I wonder if On Kawara would see a relationship between his work and the exquisite corpse on this blog. As often as we admit that no person creates in isolation, artists have the funny habit of believing that they have original ideas. Along those lines, I can't help but wonder that in the absence of linear time and the impediment of mortality, what Marcel Duchamp might make of this project as well.

Let me know what you think. Do you see similarities between the exquisite corpse and the "Today Series" by On Kawara? Also, what do you think Duchamp would say about this blog, if anything?

All Along The Watchtower: Layers and Time

"There must be some way out of here" said the joker to the thief 
"There's too much confusion", I can't get no relief 
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth 
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth. 

"No reason to get excited", the thief he kindly spoke 
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke 
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate 
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late". 

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view 
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too. 

Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl 
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.

Online Graffiti Art

A fellow art educator and blogger posted an interesting link on his blog (which is a verrry nice blog, I might add) that I responded to earlier today, but I wanted to further explore the topic.
For proper background, first check out his post here:

The Carrot Revolution: A Blog About Art Education... and Vegetables.: online graffiti art

Now, assuming you read his post, investigated the web link he included, and read the beginning of my ramble in response format and decided that you wanted to hear me proceed with my thoughts on the subject, read on!

I clearly enjoy the visual experience that is graffiti, as my photography indicates. I enjoy the process of finding it and photographing it, too. I do not, however, engage in creating graffiti. I did grow up with friends that were taggers. They weren't the artists or writers that decorate the global human landscape that garnish gallery recognition. They were kids with sharpies and spraypaint stolen from the theatre department. We grew up in a poor community where 70% of the residents lived at or below national poverty level. I watched my friends tag their world without judging them as delinquent because I lived in two worlds. My 100 year old home was at the edge of town on 20 acres. We had horses, cows, a few milk goats, rabbits, labrador retrievers, and a variable number of feral cats in the hay barn. My parents were both educators by day and farmers in the evening. My siblings and I never went without. Just across the road that ran in front of our farm was a hill that served as a neighbor's hay field. Behind that was the Northside. It was one of the poorest neighborhoods in town. My tagging friends lived there.
Once those friends climbed the water tower and sprayed over the letters to change the name of the town into something humorous and illegal. Often though the tagging was restricted to bathrooms, lockers, walls on the Northside or desks in school. I knew my friends were angry. They wanted their tag on those things because they had nothing else to claim as their own. Many of my tagging friends went home from school to houses with no electricity or food. I doubt that any of my friends back then though of their actions as a way to claim territory, or have a sense of agency, or to bring attention to their plight. I think most of them just thought of tagging as a way to buck the system, in one of the few ways they could.
I wonder where some of those people are today. None of the handful of friends I had from that neighborhood went to college. I see some of them working around town when I go back to my hometown. I wonder if some of them finally had enough of being stuck in the Northside and found themselves stuck in jail as the alternative.
The point is, there is a certain amount of my personal identity that is wrapped up in photographing the graffiti. The tags are both beautiful and ugly to me, all at once. I see my friends and students reflected in those cryptic created identities. The invented names that the tags depict are mysteries to me. Is that name the one thing you can give yourself? Is it your property, your fame, your hopes, your dreams? Are you still tagging or have you found a way out? Do you tag because you need another identity after you leave your 8-5 job? I even wonder if the tags are a tiny bit of immortality for some of the writers that die in the perilous environments that squatters endure. It doesn't happen often, but the thought that some "anonymous" kid dies in the process of writing their alias sends a shiver down my spine.
I made an effort not to glorify or promote graffiti in my classroom when I taught middle school. We studied the history of graffiti (which is huuuuuge, by the way). We looked at the evolution of styles. I showed them some of my photography and some impressive urban bombing and expertly executed pieces. I contrasted that with simple tag images. We discussed key differences between categories of graffiti. The one point I emphasized in all cases was the legality and safety of writers from all categories. Rather than drag you through the rest of that unit, let me say that the students did create their own tags and they were displayed in our school. My principal and the campus police officer supported the unit wholeheartedly. I think that was due to my emphasis on the safety/legal issues and the fact that we didn't use spraypaint to create the final pieces.

I reflect on that unit often since leaving that school. I have mixed feelings about the results. While I think the students learned quite a bit and were proud of their finished products, I can't help but think something about the unit was askew. The finished works weren't really graffiti, by street definition. It's the same weird feeling I got when I saw that the Brooklyn Museum's Graffiti Exhibit. I can't help but think that many people, including my students and the museum goers, have the same voyeuristic fascination I have with graffiti. For some of those people it becomes an interest in making artistic creations of many forms. For others, viewing is enough. Do these hybrid creative forms and appreciative cultural audiences take the urgent messages out of what some of those street tags are shouting? Does transforming graffiti into an acceptable art form further silence the disempowered? As an educator with a heart for the underdogs, I hope not. Conversely, can this proliferation of sophisticated tagging such as the kinds found at Graffiti Research Lab bring the message of youth in peril to the forefront by presenting in in a flashy new media format? I have a sinking feeling that it's often a mixed message that isn't living up to its socially transformative potential.

Tagging as Teaching?

I have spent a week trying to wrap my head around several conversations. On leap day I met with my fellow blogger/artist/teacher/researcher and our professor to discuss our progress. I have been writing in a meandering fashion trying to reflect on many things that I encounter and relate to my learning and teaching. I felt that the tangential posts I was developing were logical until I had the blog opened up on a projector screen. Suddenly I had this sinking feeling that what may to me seem a cohesive process of connecting the dots (or aiding a growing rhizome) may just be a big mess to everyone else. So, I don't think that's how arts based research is supposed to go (?).
I am currently trying to contemplate how I can explain the photography I have been doing for a few years. I know how it is integral to my thinking and my teaching... but how can I tell you?
I have this funny vertical gallery that I add a few pictures from each photo shoot on the right hand side of this page. What questions do these images raise, if any? I think about how this blog could be speaking to people I'll never meet in person. I wonder if they wonder what kind of artist/teacher/researcher I am. I do.
The tags meet me, but I've never seen a writer in the process of tagging.
I wonder who they are.
I recognize some writers' pieces and tags as familiar. I know their unique style.
I have no way to reply to their pieces, so I photograph them.
I wonder where my students will go when they leave my classroom. Will their unique style reflect their experiences with me?
I keep thinking of those six degrees.

Public Art or Crime?

I just ran across an interesting article about the German town of Rummelsheim. Know for its cleanliness and organization, the community has recently been faced with an interesting problem. Despite strict laws governing the removal of trash, a toy shrine has existed in defiance to the laws. This toy shrine, described as "kitsch" has won a place in the hearts of many local residents.

So as I reflect on the cultural presentations we hold in our aesthetics class, I can't help but wonder what role order and civic responsibility play in the German aesthetic. When I visited Germany last year, I do remember seeing graffiti. Where does that fit in the aesthetic? Unlike the toy shrine, the graffiti in Germany isn't actually waste. In fact, it was generally more impressive to me in regard to artistry. Here's an example:

I remember my father telling me that you could always tell when you were in a German community while driving in rural Texas. German farmers had the best fences and they would blast and haul stones out of the fields. They always had well maintained irrigation terraces. While riding on the bus in Germany, I watched in amazement as I saw field after field of agricultural precision. It reminded me of David Hockney's landscapes.

I sometimes wish that people in the US had such a drive to interact with their environment with more care and precision. I grew up seeing this as one of frames of reference for public art.

While I love Ant Farm and the Cadillac Ranch, the comparison made me stop to consider my notes regarding the role of cultural aesthetic in such matters.
So what does the difference between US and German public landscape aesthetics indicate about the people? Why is there such a noticeable difference between the two cultures?

Marcel Duchamp and Invented Pseudo Algebra

I have been perplexed with the limitations I still encounter with preparing a document of research that can wholly represent my research and learning that I have encountered in my current degree. I have changed my thesis topic at least once each semester. The topics are all related, but they all have their own beauty and difficulties. I am continually fascinated with the interplay of words. I want to change how they are interpreted by placing them in opposition to each other. In equations, even.
I think about Marcel Duchamp frequently while I get frustrated with my lack of progress. He was often criticized for his lack of visible products. Despite this criticism, it has been said by many that Marcel Duchamp was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. He was born in France in 1887 and became an American citizen in 1955. He lived a rich 81 years. Marcel Duchamp described himself as,"an artist, chess player, cheese dealer, breather, fenêtrier."

Numerous books and articles attempt to interpret Duchamp's artwork and philosophy, but in interviews and his writing, Duchamp only added to the mystery. The interpretations interested him as creations of their own, and as reflections of the interpreter.
A playful man, Duchamp prodded thought about artistic processes and art marketing, not so much with words, but with actions such as dubbing a urinal "art" and naming it Fountain. He produced relatively few artworks as he quickly moved through the avant-garde rhythms of his time.

John Cage said of Marcel Duchamp,"The check. The string he dropped. The Mona Lisa. The musical notes taken out of a hat. The glass. The toy shotgun painting. The things he found. Therefore, everything seen–every object, that is, plus the process of looking at it–is a Duchamp.

He simply found that object, gave it his name. What then did he do? He found that object, gave it his name. Identification. What then shall we do? Shall we call it by his name or by its name? It's not a question of names.

One way to write music: study Duchamp.

Say it's not a Duchamp. Turn it over and it is.

—from ‘Statements Re Duchamp,' see Marcel Duchamp in Perspective, ed. Joseph Masheck, 1975, pp.67-68

Duchamp, whose art career had been built on painting, painted very little after 1912. During this decade Duchamp began working as a librarian in the Bibliotèque Sainte-Geneviève where he earned a living wage and withdrew from painting circles into scholarly realms. He studied math and physics – areas where exciting new discoveries were taking place. The theoretical writings of Henri Poincaré particularly intrigued and inspired Duchamp. Poincaré postulated that the laws believed to govern matter were created solely by the minds that "understood" them and no theory could be considered "true." "The things themselves are not what science can reach..., but only the relations between things. Outside of these relations there is no knowable reality," Poincaré wrote in 1902.

Duchamp's own art-science experiments began during his tenure at the library. To make one of his favorite pieces, 3 Standard Stoppages (3 stoppages étalon), one at a time from a height of 1 meter, he dropped three 1-meter lengths of thread onto a prepared canvases. They landed in three random undulating positions. He varnished them into place on the blue-black canvas strips and attached them to glass. Then he cut three wood slats into the shapes of the curved strings, and put all the pieces into a croquet box. Three small leather signs with the title printed in gold were glued to each of the "stoppage" backgrounds. The piece resembles concepts described in Poincaré's School of the Thread, a book on classical mechanics.

The power to name, to tag yourself. Call it what you want to call it.
I was also recently enamored with reading an aesthetics textbook that created analogies in a somewhat algebraic fashion to illustrate several aesthetic philosophies. I was so intrigued by the analogies that I wanted to create diagrams. Here are a few.

Anarchy vs. subversion

Yesterday I told someone (somewhat jokingly) that I advocate subversion, not anarchy. I felt this sinking feeling that I was not adequately informed to make this statement after I had said it. I decided to read about anarchy and subversion to possibly edit my comment upon next encountering the friend with whom I had originally conversed. I came across the following two discoveries:

Many of the anarchy websites I read information from seemed ill-informed/contradictory/naive.
Subversion is a software primarily, and an attempt to undermine systems of power secondarily, according to the search engine I was using.

I did find the following two websites useful for the sake of this conversation:
for anarchy-
http://www.zmag.org/AWatch/awatch.htm
for subversion-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subversion_%28politics%29

I know, I know, subversion is a wiki article, but that's in keeping with the subversion. I thought it was a good starting place. I decided that the subversion I have in mind is not the political subversion that alerts the "powers that be" to come stick me in a box with Ted Koszinski. That's the fuel for anarchy. Remember I said I didn't want that.

When I was in 6th grade, we studied castles in our history class. I forget the context for why we were studying castles, or what we studied after castles, but I remember the castle study for a number of reasons.
We were asked to create a model of a castle. I researched many castles and I finally decided to create a model of the Place de la Bastille. I did not then realize the ironic twist that project would provide for my adult learning.

If you are unfamiliar with the story of the Bastille, here is a bit of the history:

The Bastille was a prison in Paris, known formally as Bastille Saint-Antoine — Number 232, rue Saint-Antoine. The storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789 marked the beginning of the French Revolution. The event was commemorated one year later by the Fête de la Fédération. The French national holiday, celebrated annually on July 14, is officially called the Fête Nationale, and commemorates the Fête de la Fédération — but it is commonly known in English as Bastille Day. Bastille (from bastide) is a French word meaning "castle" or "stronghold". In most accounts of French revolutionary history, La Bastille generally refers to the prison in Paris.

Beginnings-
The Bastille (little bastion), originally called the Chastel Saint-Antoine, was built between 1370 and 1383 (under kings Charles V and Charles VI) to serve as a fortress for the protection of the city against Anglo-Burgundian forces during the Hundred Years' War. The four-and-a-half-story building, surrounded by its own moat, was located at the eastern main entrance to medieval Paris — overlooking the Faubourg St. Antoine of the Marais quarter, a former swamp. It had eight closely-spaced towers, roughly 77.1 ft. (23.5m) high, which surrounded two courtyards and the armoury. The towers were named as follows:
1. Tour du Coin
2. Tour de la Chapelle
3. Tour du Trésor 4. Tour de la Comte
5. Tour du Puits
6. Tour de la Liberté 7. Tour de la Bertaudière
8. Tour de la Basinière
The outer stone walls, 15 feet (4.5m) thick at the base, were pierced with narrow slits by which the cells were lighted. In early times, the Bastille had entrances on three sides, but after 1580 only one, with a drawbridge over the moat on the side toward the river, which led to outer courts and a second drawbridge, and wound by a defended passage to an outer entrance opposite the Rue des Tournelles. Close beside the Bastille, to the north, rose the Porte Saint-Antoine — approached over the city fossé (ditch) by its own bridge. At the outer end of this bridge was a triumphal arch, built upon the return of Henri II from Poland in 1573. Both the gate and arch were restored for the triumphal entry of Louis XIV in 1667, but the gate (where Etienne Marcel was killed on July 31, 1358), was pulled down in 1674. Until the 17th century, the fort was used both as a castle and for the safekeeping of the royal treasure.

Keeping Them in Instead of Out-
During the first half of the 17th century, the Cardinal Richelieu (under King Louis XIII) converted the royal fortress into a state prison for the upper class — mainly people who committed high treason or some other kind of offense against either the King or the state (which were considered to be essentially the same). In addition to political prisoners, the Bastille also housed religious prisoners, writers of "seditious" and overtly sexual material, and young rakes held at the request of their families. The very often arbitrary warrant of arrest (known as the lettre de cachet, or letter with the royal seal) made the Bastille fortress one of the darkest symbols of royal despotism, although the conditions of imprisonment were generally quite comfortable. The prisoners could welcome visitors, bring their servants, their furniture, clothes, and books, and the daily ration paid by the state provided them a luxury cuisine. During the reign of Louis XV (1715-1774), the Bastille accommodated more and more ordinary criminals, whose existence there was rather less comfortable. Common prisoners were held within the five- to seven-story towers, each having a room around 4.6 m (15 feet) across and containing various articles of furniture. Thankfully, though, the infamous cachots — the oozing, vermin-infested subterranean cells — were no longer in use by the later half of the 18th century. As the protectors of the Catholic religion, the king's authorities also imprisoned Protestants and freethinkers, and Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) was arrested twice during his youth. In the last decades after 1750, many inmates were committed by their own families as insane or because of some shameful carnal deviation. Among the more prominent convicts of the late 1780s were Latude, a notorious and querulous swindler; the quack and alchemist Count Cagliostro; the diplomat and general Dumouriez, later to be the hero of the French victory in 1792 at Valmy, but finally in 1793 deserting to the Austrian army; the wallpaper manufacturer Reveillon, who was arrested for his own protection after the riots in the Faubourg St. Antoine in April 1789, when the rumour that he intended to cut his workers' salaries claimed more than 300 lives; and the Marquis de Sade, who however was transferred to the lunatic institution at Charenton on July 4, 1789, after he screeched out from the window of his cell to the neighbourhood that "the prisoners were massacred and one should come to help". By this time, the government was already planning to close down and demolish the expensive medieval fortress.

Although it is theorized by some that these utterances by the Marquis de Sade may have inspired the storming of the Bastille ten days later, in fact a far more complex series of events led to the violent insurrection.

Interestingly, Count Alessandro di Cagliostro had been imprisoned in the Bastille because of his purported connection with a royal scandal known as the Affair of the (Diamond) Necklace, a charge for which he was ultimately acquitted. However, since the scandal indirectly involved Marie Antoinette, the wife of King Louis XVI, it is considered by historians to have been one of the precipitating factors in the French Revolution.

So...
I chose the castle that became a prison.
I recall this choice requiring defense when we presented our models, but my argument was that originally, the structure had been intended as a military fortress. The fact that it became a prison was not relevant to the structure.
I disagree with that conclusion now.
Turning into a prison is very relevant to the structure and my current exploration of subversion vs anarchy.

1-dimensional art

I have mixed feelings this morning. Part of me is excited, part of me is deflated.
My Critical Theory class will meet again tonight. It's an enigma wrapped up in some irony wrapped up in bacon, battered and deep-fried. The course content is very engaging. The professor is sharp witted and well-read. My classmates are all over the map, though. Some of them read the material and have very thoughtful comments, some of them seem to skim the material and come to class to have someone fill in the blanks while they discuss less philosophically challenging subject matter, such as animal art. (and now my SNL reference for today...don't get me started, don't even get me started!) I am frustrated with the direction of the conversations in the course. It's a seminar course, so the students lead a portion of the course...or at least they should be leading a portion, in theory. The two groups that prepared materials to lead the class haven't even been able to lead yet. Thus far, we've met three times. In the course of those three meetings a series of events happened that prompted me to resort to desperate artmaking to try to make sense of my frustrations.
So...it's pretty biblical.

It is related to the modernism v postmodernism dissonance that creates the creepy background music for our melodrama.
(imagine the pipe organ here...and pardon the double entendre)
Why snake tree? The tree of knowledge, fall from grace story is topical (to me, at least) when discussing the historical development of aesthetics theories. The idea of biblical truth, truth in aesthetic experience, and the belief in an absolute truth all came together for me in the form of an embellished handbag. It's a representation of the fork in the road. Utopia or dystopia? So hard to choose...My pastor called me Lillith when I was a teenager.
As with my eagle post, I may add more here later, but for now this is as far as I'm going.
I saw the bag with the four empty trees and I had to find forbidden fruit and a snake. I just needed that to be my expression of the revelation I had in reading critical theory and becoming aware of my awareness and the levels of awareness that are only partially perceptible by me of my classmates. What isn't said in conversation is just as important as what is said.
This is my way. I use art as a way to work out ideas. To practice my developing philosophies. It was cathartic when I was an angst filled youth. Now creating art is something else for me. It's a conversation with myself that I have loudly enough to enable those within earshot to eavesdrop. I don't often seek to speak directly to others. If my work speaks to you, it's because we share a common language, a dialog begins. We can invite others, too. I recognize that my work incorporates the work of others directly in the form of appropriation, but even when I don't intend to draw from ideas, it happens anyway. I live in a media saturated world. My chances for creating in a vacuum died with the snake and the tree. I happily create meta-art instead. Nobody can make an unoriginal piece of art in the linear 3-D paradigm I know.

So about that eagle...

I always wanted to go to UNT. My dad was completing his doctoral work at UNT when I was born. I used to ride in a basket on the back of his bike when we would go to the library so he could do research. He and my big sister and brother and my mom would go listen to live jazz at UNT all the time. The eagle was an important icon from my early childhood. We moved when I was four and I told my playmates at the daycare my mom ran out of our house that I would come back to UNT for college. I didn't make it back for my undergraduate degree, but I did finally achieve my goal. That eagle was something to strive for all those years. It represented the education I felt was key to my success. I also think of my dad when I see the eagle. He was a historian, and an expert in native culture. There's more, too....

I think about how perceptive people are described as having the "eagle eye". I will continue to add to this post, I think.