Katie Grinnan
Asger Jorn
Thomas Hirschorn
Situationism
cammouflage vs fluorescent orange
Lacan
the Looking and Thinking Game
cardboard
unemployment insurance
David Hickey
Ariel Pink
traces of human interaction with architecture and other authoritarian constructs
Molly Gochman
All iterations of the horse
Civil uprisings
blogging about blogging is probably the boringest kind of blogging i feel like i should offer an explanation--which is that its all but impossible to write or read or concentrate at all on anything at elsewhere. clearly the entire world is full of distractions, but elsewhere is like a real world reduction, cooked down so to its most potently distracting elements. not to mention the constant protrusion of little obstacles like the internet being down or my computer charger being missing, things like this happen in the real world too, but again, elsewhere is extreme.
that said, it's fabulously stimulating to the point of being overwhelming. navigating the constant tension between goals and plans and new arrivals info and people and use of space--that was the name of the game last week when i was preparing for my artist conversation. Remembering the hose. I've made it my goal to cherish the incidental. accidents that work. Because working too hard never gives you the satisfaction it should... if its too hard its not worth it, right? i mean nothing is absolute, but really you should always do what comes naturally. this is yet another possible interpretation of Remember the Hose on several levels--remember to be like a hose, a conduit for the passage of energy, a release--if too much builds up, you're going to explode--if you use yourself the wrong way, something is bound to blow.
Big breakthrough today with the pace of my work.. it is now 4am Wednesday, well Thursday the 20th .. sadly I am not blogging as regularly as I would like. Not really sadly, but anyway-- I blame this on the insane timewarp that is the maniacal “institution” that is Elsewhere.
My first night at elsewhere I used the alley shower—a fabulous construction for which we have Kim Holleman to thank, and the destruction of which we have Simone Frazier to thank. Like most things here, this gerry-rigged work of genius requires several steps in several locations in and outside of 2 buildings to use—a process that begs for lapses of memory. Needless to say I forgot one of these steps. The consequences were dire. Because I didn’t turn off the tap at the kitchen sink that the hose which leads to the shower outback is connected to, the water pressure inside the hose built up, and the hose, having been the victim of this same negligence on many previous occasions, BLEW UP.
Hence my first Elsewhere piece.
REMEMBER THE HOSE – photos to come.
This lightbox sign was originally intended merely as a reminder to future alley-shower users, but it has since become a symbol of an omnipresent phenomenon at the Elsewhere heterotopia, and the global heterotopia that we all inhabit. Distractions are everywhere, we must embrace the schizoid fractallized space with its the tangent-loaded objects that confronts us at every turn, AND talk to the inner voice of memory and whatever else we happen to be thinking bout, AND simultaneously see our immediate plans (i.e., shower) through AND make coherent pertinent work—not to mention the coordinating, negotiating and collaborating with the other totally distracted minds in our midst. We should all seriously give ourselves a major pat on the back because no kidding, we are heroes for getting through each day and remembering all those hoses.
Tassles/ribbons attached to cieling of my room following the line of where the plaster fell out
Goal is to create a gentle and organic/meandering spatial dynamic within the stark and scary chelsea hotel-esqueness of the room kim and i sleep in.
3 different lighting options:
Lit from above/outside of the curtain-this
emphasizes the surface of the ribbons. From the door of the room and
and bed to the left of the door, the surface pattern and the painting
on the ribbons becomes most prominent. For the occupier of the bed,
the silhouette of the ribbons comes out.
Lit from behind-when
the occupant of the corner bed behind the curtain turns on the bedside
light (perhaps an intervention into this situation also to be
considered), the silhouette of the ribbons becomes predominant--shadow
puppetry also an option
No light-when there's no light, it's dark. Glow in the dark paint?
next you can cop a feel at the psychedelic roulette wheel, located on the top floor. bigish, maybe 6' diameter wheel-of fortune style wheel with loosely defined pie slices which is also a topographical time based MAP, mostly made of fabrics, chicken wire for varied depths. Path for the ball to roll is valleys and riverbeds instead of the circumference of the wheel. Costumed elsewherians gamble their livelihoods on video. Big hats, possibly lampshades
but my favorite idea just came to me while i on the phone earlier
The SELF HELP office building described in the previous post re-designed to actually BE a center for self actualization of many literal levels.
yes. i think this may be the one. cardboard. Photo of the actual building becomes the cladding for the the model. Height should be around 6 feet, so you relate to it as a human figure.
My first day at Elsewhere i engaged in a peripatetic journey into the unknown streets of Greensboro. I'm writing this now looking back from 2 days later, so sadly my perspective is a little overprocessed, and would be verging on stale, but luckily my manufacturer uses high-grade preservatives so the crunchy little tidbits remain. Plus i have these photos to jog my memory.
First significant encounter: a 10 story office building dedication to SELF HELP. This town takes self-actualization seriously. The ground floor is a thrift store that for in spite of the 95 degree weather is currently selling absolutely no summer clothing, weird and totally un-helpful to me personally, whatever. The actual bona fide self-help office is on the 10th floor. Slap-stick encounter with an impatient elevator that remains open a full 1.5 seconds. It shut twice before i succeeded in entering. The self-help office was a disappointment. I lost my nerve to engage their services when it became clear that the help they offered was more small-business community-based and less of the new-age-zen-motivational-coach-yourself-to-interpersonal-success-and--live-like-you're-45-when-you're-80 variety.
Later veering off of elm street, I found myself in glorious pomo strip-mall heaven.
My next discovery did not disappoint: across the street.. er.. highway from Georgie's i found
THE CHRISTIAN ISLEY HOUSE:
No wonder we americans have such and estranged relationship with our history. It's presented to us as totally boring, pathetic, and completely insignificant, like some unappealing distant relative. Why bother connecting? Later i want to talk about antique stores and strip malls and Elsewhere and how I (and probably we) are really struggling to cope with the new and the old and how none of the new seems new in a good way anymore, and the old is getting harder to contextualize nostalgically because its all been re-appropriated by the new. it's a really big topic. Maybe too big.
So then i went to a drug store and looked at some greeting cards.
On my way back to the art compound i bought a sandwich and while waiting for it to be assembled found myself in a terrifying flesh-toned bathroom. Its like the walls are covered in bandaids. ...
on blogging about blogging is probably...