Bloodlines, Emmanuel Gallery, 12/2/2010

Bloodlines was a multimedia performance where I utilized video art, sound and performance with drawing utensils. It was originally written up as a short play with four acts, and then modified into a 30 minute performance art piece.

Performance took place at Emmanuel Gallery on Auraria Campus in Denver, CO.

Special thanks to LOGOS (Asheville, NC) for his expertise in sound engineering, and Steve Gottshall (Denver, CO) for event photography.

"Global Proposal for a New Emoticon" BFA Thesis

At the Center for Visual Art in Denver, CO.

Thesis Statement  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Digital communication, textual and pictorial, is the daily bread of contemporary life in a techno-enthused society. In "Global Proposal for a New Emoticon", the relationship between the psyche and digital expression (YouTube) is explored through contemporary art practices (performance, video, and installation). The use of a YouTube channel as medium provides an intentional documentation on modern-day narcissism, and the failings of "instant gratification" digital expression.

Where there is a limitation of language, there is a void of expression. My installation is a large sculptural environment that reflects this concept, and is designed to house a performer (myself). I use my body in my art as a tool for pictorial narrative and a vehicle for complex emotive expression. Until an object-body becomes a subject-body, the body will only ever be acted upon by outside forces. Once the body realizes its objecthood, it becomes a subject and can thus begin acting upon its environment. Through the act of food preparation, where a kitchen becomes a metaphor for activity, the performer becomes an agent of creation. Through the act of attempting to consume these foods while watching television, the performer becomes an agent of consumption, where the living room is a metaphor for passivity. Through the binaries of participation and spectatorship, technology is convicted in a case against digital communication dependence. Sherry Turkle - writer, professor, psychologist, and director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self - writes about technology and its psychological effects upon the human mind/spirit, especially regarding the internet, the personality, and the culture of instant gratification. We are now living in a culture where the instant gratification from communicating feelings through online experiences becomes dangerous; the danger is in having become dependent upon technology for the expression and edification of feelings.

As I blindly consume the "food" of my habitat, I reveal a relationship between being "logged on" to the internet while being "checked out" from my immediate surroundings (my own reception). I chose to work in a medium fit for the job: a YouTube channel. I uploaded 400 of my own home videos over a year's time. By using my own life as a subject, I critique the culture of "uploading the self", of instant gratification, and narcissism. With a stockpile of hundreds of videos, I created two works of video art for my thesis performance (one as wall projection and one as television programming), and designed a new emoticon after scrupulously analyzing the visual data. From this data, I formulated a ratio of mind-spirit-body 'incidences' based off of each video's predominant content, and that ratio mathematically informed the design of the new emoticon. The three parts of the ratio were the basis of the three structural components of the new emoticon, 'psychospiritual transformation.' The emoticon is itself an absurdity that aims to point to the current flatness that our primitive technology suffers from. The post-performance remnants will be on display throughout the exhibition, and serve as the trace of a psychospiritual, transformative act against emptiness in all its forms.

"Global Proposal for a New Emoticon" considers how technology may or may not evolve to meet the needs of the human psyche that is evolving along side it, and if and when digital communication could ever match the complexity and efficiency of tens of thousands of years in human body language. By employing my body in my art, I choose complexity over simplicity. I point to the sterility of the contemporary 'white cube' gallery, and the lifelessness of art out of context from life in general. In a state of questioning and re-examining what is important in art and culture, I utilize parody as a tool for that questioning. I seriously question the addictive, sedentary nature of a culture consumed in ever-increasing digital worlds; the trademark of the twenty-first century is an obsessive consumption of emptiness, which goes hand in hand with the hyper-institutionalization of art. We are here to change this. It's up to us to fill the void of emptiness; to embed our imprints in all we do. How else can the digital take its course into a hopeful future? The future is bright, indeed...

Irrationally Logical Process  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Golden Ratio of the Self: 

Mining the Video-Journal Data for an Archetype 
of PsychoSpiritual Transformation and It's Visual Expression

New Emoticon:

((()))[oø/]((())) 

1st element: psycho (mind) 

(((o)))

2nd element: spiritual (spirit)

)))o(((

3rd element: transformation (body)

[oø/]

mind:spirit:body ratio = 15:13:12  

where 15:13:12 is the basic expression of relationship of the 3 components above, as mined and identified over the course of reviewing 400 instances of daily routine (the video-stock YouTube channel)

 

psycho - short for psychological, or mental processes 
act of will; ego; vibrational 'outward' energy expression (not an object) 

ex:  "(((o)))" where o = object/body
 

spiritual - long word for spirit, or spiritual beliefs or experiences
act of service; subservience or non-ego; vibrational 'inward' energy expression (not an object)   

ex:  ")))o(((" where o = object/body
 

transformation - to transform 
verbs (actions) need bodies (nouns): all physical bodies transform (molecules, eg.) and all non-physical bodies transform (thoughts, eg.), therefore, bodies of material and bodies of knowledge do transform over time; stagnant 'objects', or bodies, are either acted upon or act upon another body 

ex:  "[oø/]" where [ ] indicates a unified body; a message; a strand of imprints that communicate the nature of the whole body and where oø/ = transformation 
*the transformation symbol was created through a series of logical visual steps (circle, circle plus slash, slash minus circle)

A unified body [ ] may also stand for o where o = object, thus psychological transformation can be written as ((([oø/]))), spiritual transformation can be written as )))[oø/](((, and psychospiritual transformation can be written as ((()))[oø/]((())). The new emoticon places the spiritual inward-energy parentheses around the first layer of the unified body and it places the psychological outward-energy parentheses around in a second layer. Thus the new emoticon is built with both visual symmetry (outward mind, inward spirit) and linear symbology (a transforming body).

Special thanks to John David Davenport (Denver, CO) for event photography.

Painted Belly Casts

A dear friend of mine wanted her belly to be cast and painted. She ordered casting strips from a medical supply store online and we created her belly cast from her first pregnancy (a boy), in May of 2008. She wanted a lot of blues. I later painted the cast according to her taste in regards to color palette and imagery.

For her second pregnancy (a girl), she wanted more feminine imagery, and for there to be a lot of reds. Her wishes were my command! To this day I hope that they are holding up well. They were my first casts, and after doing some research online, I found that there is a way to make the texture of the medical gauze to disappear, which is basically to get plaster and put another layer on top of the cast after it dries, and then sand it down so its really smooth, like porcelain. If I do more of these I will use the smoothing method to relieve myself of the headache of painting on a texture. Other than that, it was a joy to do these... a labor of love.

Post-Duchampian perspectives on the teaching of art

So I decided to lay claim to some of my recent and/or edified influences upon my actions in the world as an artist, a cultural agitator, and a consumer of a BFA in digital art.  These are some notes from a long session at the College Art Association Conference in Chicago this last February....

Post-Duchamp, Post-Production: Delineations of Media in Art Theory and Pedagogy

I took a lot of notes on this session... it was probably one of my favorite panels at the whole conference, hands down. Ideas about how the teaching of art in institutions is evolving were prevalent on this panel, and most engaging was the discussion & debate of the new PhD in Fine Arts or Studio Arts or whatever it's being labeled at this moment. What a time we are living in!

______________________________

Mariah Doren (Columbia University and Purchase College, State University of New York) presented a paper, titled Post-Duchamp Critiques in Art School: Following the Narrative of Originality, and she spoke of the readymade as political gesture. Duchamp shifted the focus from the art object to the art gesture and it was this very gesture that became the cause for us to stop and look and reflect upon our experience, rather than the art object itself.

Applying this to how critiques are run in art school and it is not difficult to see that a shift was necessary in the way we approach the structure of feedback between peers and professors; trying to define meaning in an artwork is an obsolescence that only produces vague and idiosyncratic critiques empty of value. Greenbergian-esque claims of impartiality, universality and objectivity put static meaning upon the work of art and produces not so much of a professor or teacher, but a connoisseur that simply reinforces an outdated hierarchy.

Over time we see trends in art practice and theory whereby as artists we go through cycles of building up value around a distinct theory or trend and then we later break down that value... over and over again. In this way, value becomes a performative act; it is a constant reorganizing of building and breaking. Value becomes a verb; we now have a non-linear, non-hierarchical practice of art production and evaluation based on the idea of the rhizome. The rhizome represents the structure known as network where related concepts branch but do not compete for power. Value need not be linear in the teaching and administering of art.

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Sean C. Lowry (University of Newcastle) presented his spin on artistic production, The Agnostic Readymade: Beyond Art and Anti-Art, keeping me on the edge of my conference seat like some kind of geek. I highly recommend checking out Lowry's website and seeing his history in music and experimentation. A lot of what he was experimenting with back in the day - music appropriation and experimentation in melody matching - is very similar to the mission of today's internet site Pandora (Music Genome Project).

Lowry spoke of his earlier projects while in art school of strategic concealment of music appropriation (music sampling based on key, melody, etc.) which he is calling "subliminal appropriation". The main difference between the readymade-type appropriation and this type has to do with the intention of the artist. Blatant appropriation is different than concealed appropriation because of the differences in the self-consciousness of the artist. Lowry played samples of the musical experimentation that he examined while still in school. He gathered musical data (songs) that had similar melodic properties and played in similar keys, blended the data together to create a montage sound of familiarity, and had musicians play their instruments on top of those montage tracks... creating and essentially curating an entirely new sound that ended up getting him signed on to record deals.

Lowry said something profound that got my total attention and has been resonating in my mind ever since... he said that in a post-Duchamp world, we are agnostic. We don't believe in art anymore. We believe in the idea of art. No longer is it necessary to continue to enforce the binary of art and anti-art, where the aesthetic is a belief in art as an index of culture and the anti-aesthetic is a belief in art as culture itself. Art and anti-art are now entering the pluralistic state of being equivocal, of being companions and no longer opponents. In Lowery's opinion (and I completely agree), the most provocative art refuses to exist at either end of the binary. The agnostic readymade is about finding peace between cynicism and anti-cynicism.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Natalie Loveless (University of California, Santa Cruz) presented her written work titled Participatory Dissent and the Fine Arts PhD and I swear to you my NERDA friends, though her name is Loveless, she is more like love-full. The passion this woman has for the discourse around institutionalized artistic practice has gotten me to start seriously considering the possibilities of a much different future for artists in the United States... a very bright future.

Where to start? Well first of all, Loveless began the presentation of her paper with a call to action. Her first slide was a quote from one of my deeper and more potent influences in artistic practice...

Every human being is an artist... called to participate in transforming and reshaping the conditions, thinking and structures that shape and inform our lives. - Joseph Beuys

Loveless began by posing a very serious question:

What is the definition of PhD labor, or, what are the limits of PhD labor?

She spoke of the process of research being at odds with the process of making art, that art is at odds with the university proper because art itself is messy, indulgent and creative - far from research practice. She took a very critical look at the fine art PhD, calling it a candy-like degree that takes away the artists' creativity and economy. Calling for a new way to look at the degree, she laid the foundation for something she is calling "participatory dissent", a model for institutions to follow that supports and allows both dissent and libidinal investment on the artists' behalf, a model that would allow for all participants to reconfigure themselves in incredible ways. Using a Lacanian psychological model as the grounds to understand participatory dissent, we can transform antagonism into agonism.

Practice and theory need not be separate endeavors. One is not the instrument of the other. Using theory to make art or making art to create theory is not as transformational and engaging as living in a world where practice and theory envelop one another, become one another, and shape the way we live in profound ways. Practice becomes theory and theory becomes practice and there is no real boundary between the two. (One is not organized and one is not messy. One is not above and one is not below in a hierarchy. One is not words and one is not visual. That is my own interpretation of the idea.)

Loveless reminded us that pedagogy is a political act; it is social sculpture.
And she reinforced the important question in regards to the PhD... What is that labor that we call research?

It is important to remember that the PhD is not the same as an artwork. It is not an MFA in Studio Art. It's more of a question, a philosophy, a research practice where theory becomes practice and practice becomes theory without a collapsing of either of the two. The current structure of the Fine Arts PhD as a justification of disciplinary labor in art that entangles us in relations of debt, and it needs to updated to reflect the interests and needs of the artist.

Ramblings on graduating and suffering

There's an art to struggling, and I think I am on my way to mastering in it.

************

So I was going to expel something trance-like, lyrical almost, about the nature of suffering and somewhere between getting my laptop out and sitting down to dazzle the keyboard, I must have remembered why I never write about suffering anymore - not post 21 anyway. I'm over the physical labor of cursive. I spent the ages of 15 to 21 writing heavily in journals made of paper and fine leather bound covers, making friends with writer's cramp and the bump on my middle finger, and making every word count, every sentence as poetic and packed with meaning as possible. So instead, I'm rambling, like a proper 21st century blogger.

My first 6 years of the 2000's was spent stiffly practicing Vipassana while helping people die in their homes (hospice work) and taking care of those whom had begun losing their minds and bodily functions. Suffering was my psychology. Theory and practice were completely indistinct. Vipassana gave me great insight and almost an indifference towards pain and pleasure. Thank you, Satipatthana Sutta. It was a serene six years with you.

My perfect lover was a text, universes long, on the condition of suffering. It was imperative for me to gain experiential knowledge in metaphysics, and it manifested through my meditation practice. My primary relationship was between myself and what was called 'dhamma'. (Woe to any lover that tried to change that.) It was a sort of Theravadic romance that left me with one very tough lesson about the way in which my psyche works, which was that my existence has always been a constant appraisal: an appraisal of the self.

In this moment... Am I seeking suffering? Am I relieved of suffering? Am I currently suffering? Am I anticipating suffering? Am I evading suffering? Am I postponing suffering? Am I running from pain or running towards pleasure? (The teaching, and my experience, begs me to be neither.)

I have just put myself and my artistic insight, talent and specialty all up for grabs while undergoing the trials of art school. Mostly I have been rewarded for my efforts. I did what they said. I wrote papers and read texts and learned what was proper to learn. I consumed, digested, and excreted knowledge for the sake of fitting in and earning my fair place in the world via a degree in higher education. I prepared for the future (or so I thought). I looked back at my past and evaluated it, to help myself accomplish many academic projects (drawing from experience, like my meditation teachers insisted). But never did I let myself live in the moment... for if I had, I would have never gotten through my degree. My thoughts about the institutionalization of art would have sent me running. So I kept them drowned out, and I did not live in the moment. I did not meditate, and clam myself daily in silence like I had so cleverly done before. In silence, one can hear their own voice. In a crowd (the institution), one only hears the loudest voice. Now here I am, after several changes in my major of study, a semester away from graduating.

In this moment, I am evading suffering. I am forsaking all committed love and romance, for my big love. What's my big love, I ask myself? In this moment, it is the idea of delving into two years of advanced study in the very things that move me... and in the form of visual art and narration. I'd like to focus on this thing of suffering. I'd like to tackle it. It's been my specialty all my life.

I can not escape it and I have many stories to tell of it. And so, thinking about a master's program that is right for me and what I have to offer, I have had a couple of eurekas...

First, that I must honor my struggles by acknowledging their influence. Minorities and others less fortunate, that show promise for community, would be wise to approach endowment and grant proposals with an honest history of the self and it's advances in the world, physically, intellectually, socially, spiritually, professionally. My approach to essay writing has always been influenced by my trials of pain and my trials of pleasure... my sufferings, and my passions. It seems that everything in this academic "system" demands of us the detailed proof of our worthy existence, in exchange for the promise of privilege and security. Are you 'good' or are you 'bad'? Well, why not ask us, are you 'real'? Everyone is both good and bad. Period. Not everyone is real. Some people are simply stand-ins for what the media wishes us to be; they are actors and actresses standing in as 'real' people, but what is real about hiding your past and your flaws (which, in my humble opinion, is the source of beauty and truth)? What is 'real' about trying to be the perfect model of 'good'? Absolutely nothing. There is no character so great that hasn't endured an even greater amount of adversity.

It's funny how my own suffering, which led me to help myself with Vipassana meditation, was the reason that I got "lucky" with a full tuition scholarship for my undergrad. It's almost disturbing that my pain led me right into a situation where I was offered, without asking, a full ride. (That's a story for another day.) As I sit here sifting through bits of scrap paper, emails, links, brochures, conference materials, napkins, notebooks and websites - looking to narrow down the list of desired grad programs - it hits me. I thrive in strife. I succeed because I suffer. In 2005 I was majoring in psychology with a minor in creative writing. I was prepping myself to professionalize in a realm where an existential human concern (the nature of suffering itself) was the absolute zenith of my proposed future work. As a visual artist, does my proposed future work look that much different than a psychologist's work?

I never created art other than for myself. My dire need for the expression of an overly active imagination was the most important part of what I called my 'art'. The process was really all I cared for, and is the reason that I refused to enroll in SAIC straight out of high school (the proposed route as per my father). That cathartic chunk of time that I'd spend on the floor (or in a tent, wherever), always on my knees as if in holy reverence to the internal temple of life, was a medicine with no substitute. The end result was only an index, a reference to those moments that culminated in a 'final' piece of art. I never had commerce in mind, and certainly not collectibility. I had my own needs in mind. My need to create. It was and is selfish. And it will never change. If I keep creating, I keep existing.

"I create, therefore I exist."

And having always been a creature of both strife and passion, what I have created has mostly been about human psychology. We are hard-wired to perceive pain and pleasure and move around in the world based off of those basic functions. I am now discovering better ways to bring light into heavy subjects, to bring love into stories of strife. In my selfishness as an artist I must know that someone, anyone, will get it.

In this moment, I am diminishing my own suffering. Surely, there is a road for me that isn't wrought with ego-mania and that actually nourishes my heart, rather than my head. Is that an oxymoron for a hopeful grad student? The questions we must ask ourselves!

(In 1996 I tried painting for the first time. I was 16, trying to convey my strange sense of isolation in an ironically large family. It was a rainbow arch connecting two floating land masses in space, where I painted a house for me to live in, keeping most of the details of the other land mass a mystery. I called it, "It's Alright". This is a far cry from what I have been doing with my art education in the last few years, with the pressures of doing something 'new'. What has the academic art world to offer me, if not solace and redemption?)

Video compositing; psychological states & circumstances

     Finished the first and most important part of my thesis (Global Proposal for a New Emoticon) which is the 400-video stockpile of daily banalities captured via web cam. (Okay it's at 399, but I am kind of having anxiety about the last video, so give me a minute). Next step is to merge them into one massive video mosaic. FUN! (Or headache?)

     Been reviewing the footage every month or so since the project began last November. It's as if the psyche sees everything before we do, acts on everything before we do, knows everything that's about to happen before we do.

     The videos are part of a multi-sensory experience constructed from video documentation of growth and development within my own psyche from the last 7 months. Self as study.

     On another note...

     ...I picked up my Jung books recently. Better than even the thickest of his original writings and concepts, is Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1961. Here, Jung was talking about the end of his mandala period.

"The years when I was pursuing my inner images were the most important in my life-- in them everything essential was decided. It all began then; the later details are only supplements and clarifications of the material that burst forth from the unconscious, and at first swamped me. It was the prima materia for a lifetime's work."

"this thing we did" net presence, net art

http:// this thing we did

     A group of artists gathered 'round an internet table and discussed practically nothing... fulfilled as it was, in that moment... eagerly consuming, and gracious to be spoon-fed a delicious philosophical and practical diet from the hands of an energetic professor. The last time I was that entertained while simultaneously challenged was when Prof. C.C. taught Understanding Visual Language. Oftentimes the best are the most provocative.
     Still, being busy with heavy class loads and a variety of end-of-semester burdens, we all pulled off this little stunt. Created a collective web presence for each members' solo digital art exhibitions. The kind of exhibitions that never happened. But now they have. Get it?

     "...the video projections exacted onto select walls and spaces within the Denver Art Museum's Frederic C. Hamilton Building. The projections were plotted and integrated into the geometric architecture, constantly streaming and sourced from a real time feed of the artist's web cam. The anti-performance took place via two IR motion sensors that tracked the artist's movements from room to room in her Denver apartment. The sensors were networked into 5 laptops, one for each major traffic area, and triggered a public access internet channel to switch it's broadcast from one area to the next, thus tracking the artist during the museum's hours of operation throughout the duration of the exhibition."

   

     "...from some random gallery. I was compelled by the natural light's effect within the interior. Nevermind the seating that was never pointed in the right direction. Coincidentally I just finished video recording one dozen instances of relieving myself of pee (potty time) over several weeks and I had footage I wanted to utilize while it was fresh. After doing the math of the 12 videos, I discovered that it takes me an average of 1:23 to go from pants down to pants up (including full flush). The numbers of 1:23 add up to 6, which is the number of videos I chose for compiling into multichannel video projection. In the end, I noticed the fountain in the courtyard. Like I really noticed it. And I called it the Fountain of Piss."

Censorship of an Artist at Metro State

What can be done to change this?

I hear there are talks about the artist having his own area, sectioned off by walls, with a disclaimer about adult content. That seems fine, but the artist is still being told how his nude models can and can't be posed. This makes no sense. Censorship. That's all it is. And it is such an academic no-no to censor someone's ideas for their very own senior thesis.

Students should be flying right behind the soaring wings of their superiors, not being held back in time and in philosophical progress by them. We should be led into a path of an evolving art dialog and not be shoved ten steps back into art history.

What is the real issue here? Naked people in the arts is nothing new. Why is this a problem in an art department?