REMEMBER: Samples from the Occupy with Art Photo Archive

INTRODUCTION

In response to the obnoxious co-optation of "OCCUPY" by Phong Bui for the latest Rail Curatorial Projects, I will commence a multi-faceted Valubl/AFH Joint program, basically an Occupy Revival, utilizing content from the Occupy with Art OWS and post-Occupation documentation/archive. The point is to juxtapose blatant capitalization of Occupy by people like Bui, and also to clarify distortions and attempts at erasure after-the-fact by forces who benefit from the disappearance of the actual movement.

SECTION ONE NOTES

I think the fist graphic and hashtag originated from adbusters. I downloaded it from the OwA blog post of April 2012 titled "What Is the Soul of Occupy?" ~ an essay I published in context of the run-up to May Day 2012 marches and protests pushed by parties within the (displaced or disembodied, evicted) movement. I disagreed with the action. I also questioned the analysis from within Occupy, regarding the "Spirit" or "Soul" of Occupy. You can read the essay HERE. Photos sampled from the OwA Photo Archive at 4D Pop.
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ATTRIBUTION: OWS/NYC Photos by Stephen O'Byrne

SECTION TWO NOTES

The “IT’S TIME” poster is one I contributed to Occuprint.

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Scenes, portraits and documentary imagery from Occupy Wall Street, prior to the clearing of Zuccotti Park/Liberty Sq in November, 2011 by Stephen O'Byrne.

A Matterhorn | {[Valubl] | Network/Worknet} Project

“AQUA” [Series 1, vinyl on archival paper, 5” x 7” (2018)]

To kickstart the New Year (2019), I launched the third AFH Instagram exhibit, which is a multi-platform project centered on a mashup of three sets of images. The first consists of photos taken in 2010 in Switzerland, mostly of the famous mountain Matterhorn. The second set consists of photos taken in 2010 at Disneyland in California, mostly of the famous ride Matterhorn. The third set consists of photos taken in 2018 in Brooklyn of meta-elements in the 4D VyNIL “Network/Worknet” series.

This isn’t my first attempt to create compositions with the Matterhorn(s) photos. I built a series of images in 2010 that combined some of the Matterhorn photos with sketches made during the European Graduate School summer session and patterns created for Gramatica Parda, a collective project I participated in (at ANDlab in Los Angeles). The patterns later were adapted for A New Dimension at Silver Shed in Chelsea (NY). I made a couple of dozen digital paintings at titled the grouping “[NoDT][Matterhorn Mashup][D-R-N].” “D-R-N” stands for Reformation, Deformation, Negation. I felt the initial effort held real promise, but something was lacking. The concept had to simmer for eight years until the solution appeared. Sometimes its like that. The 4D VyNIL paintings on paper bridge the border between the “real” Matterhorn and its Disneyfied simulation better than the digitized drawings I made on my first journey to Switzerland.

For each new Matterhorn mashup, I am writing a brief notation on some aspect of the 4D aesthetic. The sequence is first published on the AFH Medium portal, then ported here. I considered posting this work in the 4Dimension blog, the News blog, the 4Dpop site, and finally settled on this channel. I hope you enjoy it! Please note that there are two versions of the images. MH Set A, which is being posted on AFH Social Media at Facebook and Medium, has a two pixel “strip frame.” The version posted on Instagram (MH Set B) has a sturdier “frame” built from small iterations of the meta-elements with some processing added for decorative effects. Here I will post Set A with the affixed text and create a gallery for Set B, mimicking the Instagram design.

1 Matterhorn Project [1]

The Mountain [MH#1]

At the pinnacle there are surveillance cameras and antennae. A squadron of fighter jets maneuver through the clouds over invisible paths to sketch designs in the sky next to the real mountain. A miniature train winds through the cavities within the simulated version of Matterhorn. Mechanical monsters frighten the thrill-seeking passengers. Intrepid mountaineers plunge to their deaths. The wrapper for the chocolates sports a graphic design version of the mountain, flat, edgy. The Matterhorn from one perspective is practically perfect. John Ruskin was enamored of it. So many photos of the Matterhorn, its surface mapped by drones and rendered. Those jet fighters were not, I think, driven by aesthetic impulses, creative desires. I apologize. The Disney Matterhorn is the burial ground of Baudrillard. The originally white card represents an upright red bowl on a blue field. So many layers of textures, patterns and noise, some real and some not. Optically, it is impossible to hold on to the grid.

2 Matterhorn Blues

This candy bar is not a mountain. The experience of consuming the factory-made sweet is not equivalent to being in the presence of the mountain. The Museum of Ice Cream is not a museum, and the installation of a big box filled with plastic balls in which adults undulate is not art. A selfie is not a color. A line has more than one meaning application. The people standing in line to do the Matterhorn ride, in time, will have their satisfaction. This Matterhorn is made to do this. A brush stroke is not a cloud. The Cloud only partially obscures the Mountain at the moment the photograph is taken. It is a lovely afternoon in Southern California. The glacier apparently is melting, perhaps forever gone. What happens next? What are the names of all these people? Where are they now? How many are dead?

3 Reverie

The wiring must be inspected. The Sun over the Mountain is not real. The cloud is shaped like a tree in one picture, and a cloud in the one below. The lighting above is artificial. You could not help but notice that feeling of attraction, the pull it exerts on you. Like magnets. It is visceral. Something about the resemblance. The park management is concerned about the safety of the guests. The Mountain, so far as one knows, is immune to such concerns. Mountains can be killers. It is not personal, though, as far as one can tell. This is a question of assignment of consciousness to an object, a thing. Smart things are today given computer-brains. The speculation: if humans give man-made things brains, so an artificial object is assigned consciousness, what will be the consequence? Before Science, I think people assigned consciousness to things, in nature. What was the consequence? Were people once a Thing? Who assigns us consciousness?

4 Flow Perspective

The ridiculous and sublime are equally distributed in culture, in the cynical view, only as a function of investment. Access to abundance of perspectives available for an object is dependent on demand. Culture is the industrialized Social. The flow between original objects and their cultured versions is facilitated by management, which operates at the behest of owners. The object subject to property regimes functions in a Master-Slave regime, and functions as a resource for extraction and exploitation schemes. The Mountain enters this matrix through Image. The image now is a commodity that can be mapped, reproduced, modified and exchanged. The image of the Mountain is not the mountain. Improvement of translation is a perfect desire for management. Management are assassins of the Original. An effective manager will always argue for additional perspectives on the objective. The goal is to find and secure the best route to the top, the achievement of the objective.

5 In the Shadow of the Mountain

The colorful flag or banner held aloft by a uniformed fellow, draped across a facade, hung from the corner shop by the square. In the distance the Matterhorn rises into the Swiss and Californian blue sky. The music plays and the folk gather. It is a merry time, had by each and everyone. I am a stranger. The artist is seeing the code, the pattern, the template. A form is a mirror for the other, and the artist is not required to choose a side, because art is no game. The memory of the scene and the photograph together create a stage whereupon the imagination performs a dance that is a sequence of broken rules. No aspect of recollection justifies our belief in it. Fondness, mercy and compassion tune the band. We long for a proper conductor to orchestrate our community’s survival. The Mountain provides a backdrop for the play, the assurance of ample duration for all drama to be resolved. Irony arrives late to the proceedings, when juxtaposition affirms the concrete as a foundation for the Real, and denies its projection of power, its dominance over the romantic moment. Creation requires us to temporarily reject the antagonism of representation through the false embodiment of the past.

6 He Sees It

The man, he see it through the crowd, and It responds, returning his gaze. The slope of forgetting slams into the border of here and now. Space fails to separate meaning from value, for any reasonable length of time. The spotlight shines on the cave, but the mob still wanders from attraction to attraction. The Mountain is devoid of clutter. Everything on it is on purpose. Condensing mists obscure the structure, but this fails to change the construct itself. The witness only hoists the camera for verification. Later the Image is utilized, to activate a sensation, which is the residue of the initial experience, the feeling of being there, when you are no longer. In that dimension, the content prefers itself to the actual thing. The rush is better than the hit.

7 Hiding the Foundation

An architect may prioritize the building above all else. By doing so, he will obscure all but the surface of art within the construction. A virtual image builds itself. It has no architect. The visible material is the combination of pixels, which conform to each other within the file parameters. The cohesion of any representation within the image borders derives from optical familiarity possessed by the viewer. The phenomenon of assemblage in the digital medium is metaphysical. The technical description of the phenomenon is of secondary importance to the impact of the restored forms depicted in the image. When multiple images are layered in a single media file, and inter-layer effects are applied, a diffusion of optical meaning occurs. At a certain point, focus becomes the key to rational interpretation of the visible data. The converse (blur) suggests that the action of reconstructing visual logic from the many, variable content components is related to the viewer’s perception of motion. Motion has a virtual structure, which conflicts with static perception.

8 Cloud and the Cave

In the formal thought, idealization is now inert, due to onset 4D perception, and the proliferation of the Virtual. The perfect form is a moot point, because intellectual property is a thing, and the resignation of data to the Cloud decouples the author from the code, then the content. Eventually, the value of context is diminished, so now mesh and identity conflate with authenticity. The product is mass delusion. For the individual, that abstract body for speculative pursuits, uncharted territory vanishes. Adventuring, maximizing experience as a mode of entertainment, encompasses any extreme that can be properly photographed for network distribution. Traditional heroism, the purview of the spelunker, the pilot, the mountaineer and so on, is rebranded as a hybrid, equal parts vice and luxury item. In fact, the secret imaginary hero is no more than a meme, a comic movie franchise, a carnival ride. The thrills and chills are to the extent possible lacking any risk. The contract — on the democratic exchange — assassinates the imagining of free existence.

9 Vertical Iconography

In the media philosophy, is it absurd to claim that there will only ever be one Walt Disney? It is absurd to make claims about any version of reality in Contemporary Art, because in Contemporary Art nothing is true, nothing is real. No one can win an aesthetic argument whose existential basis derives from critique. Negation is unsettling to the imagination, and the Contemporary image is nothing. It is more or less a morbid process of disordering and disappearance, a sign — not an image at all. The comic portion of the theoretical Contemporary arises from the realization that the Contemporary era is defined by insufficiency in time, and a fatal hunger for more in all its forms. And not one of the traditional forms (person, place, thing) agrees in number with the subject of the Contemporary inquiry. Therefore, up only belongs to down, and not the other way round.

10 Building a Mountain

Nature of course can be constructed from wood, steel, concrete, just as an image can be built of bits of color. The process is a trial, the same as the castle. The artificial thing is a gumbo of material and immaterial ingredients. The result is like a fortress, which is the static force of knowing it, when you see it. One thing can destroy you, if it falls on you. Its virtual correlate can destroy your presumption of knowing, when you see it unfettered from its original referent. The damage, either way, seems real enough! Unless the medium permits, like water, the reduction of immediate impact, when a soft thing is hit with a hard thing. The Internet through its transmission devices, for now, smashes into the imagination via a buffer, whether gear, load time, spatial and temporal divergence, etc. The schism separating user and data serves as a moat. The projection of hard-wired, networked humans is scary, because the vision drains the moat that permits us the luxury of divesting from our creation, for whatever reason, as a matter of choice. We can wake ourselves from the web dream, still. Internet addicts explain that they lose that power, that control, and the exchange veers onto a self-destructive path for the compulsive, obsessive user. Another fear arises from the incapacity of the user to distinguish between the true and false, the real and not real. The dilemma of the Creative Engine consists not of a total immersion episode, but rather the consequence of believable illusion without parameters.

11 Contours and Paths

A vision of the Alps could induce madness on the tightly wound mind of a sensitive, rational person. The Mountain as a generator of hysteria is no less fiction, than the Mountain being evocative of the Will. If we stroll the byways in the shadow of the Mountain, we might chat blithely on poetics, the fruitful essence of beauty, and other lively topics. Leisure and the common man are entwined within the conventional thoroughfare. The path to the pinnacle of the Mountain ~ another matter, entirely! Terror, mortality, desperation, physical duress, these are fellow travelers for the climber. The crowd is a distant memory. Congenial, disposable chitchat a diversion for other times and places. The narratives of extreme isolation and stress at the edge of man’s capacity to exist are as systematic as their converse, the narratives of gathering, of comfortable social concourse, soft masses reveling in abundance and ease. It is not unimaginable for these two worlds to collide, to collapse in one another.

12 Gestation of the Image

The miraculous transference of energy from the thing that inspired a visionary to create a simulation of the original wonderment, that energy is the urge to survive and flourish. It is vitality in its own right. The medium is the artist. With all due respect to McLuhan, there is no message to massage. Only the conveyance matters beyond the personage, which is a question of the historical, the event, the list of the people in the artists’ circle, and some context. Relegating the process to an exercise of agency, improperly assigning the artistic action as a kind of writing, falsely suggesting that art is a product of psychological states (none of which existed before the manufacture of analysis) ~ these are common types of contemporary colonialism. This is not a critique, so much as a defense of circuitry.

13 Angled Aperture

The trajectory of obscured movement is a conjecture only in fiction and war. Inevitability and descent are dramatic forces, dynamic enough to drive tragedy to conclusion. In a static image for the moving picture, the speculative downward arc is a business model for media properties associated with youth and stardom. Rock’n’roll, Baby! In painting, all preliminary layers that accumulate to construct the pictorial surface fit the definition of “hidden” and “secret,” and this subterranean reality bonded to the visible erodes the singularity of the seen. A scene in a story may be deconstructed, and the procedure may be critically utilized to fashion a fictional comparison to art, where none actually exists. The artistic is always a third-party overlay for music, cinema and other media, whose composition resists juxtaposition, which is a binary configuration. The elaborate noose for art is the presumption of Roman architecture in its appearance-over-all ethics. The war for the spirit of the artist is ancient.

14 Proximity

The case for nearness is weakening by the day. One can stand shoulder to shoulder with another, and never make eye contact, by looking up from the mobile. A web-app map does not accurately communicate the world itself to the user, in its various data delivery methods (e.g., “street” or “satellite” or modified, interactive road atlas, and so on). The incalculable experiential is a function of closeness. The machining of local awareness is the butt of many a slapstick bit: …Girl so focused on texting on her smart phone, she walks into a telephone pole. The disintegrated, the strange, the irrational encounter in passing ~ the carnival affect for the intertwining paths of the collective particles plays to drugged humor, the psychotic break, the epiphany. The long view of the time traveler is more attuned to the unfamiliar as a derivative of duration-based progressions. One can rely on the Tempestuous “What’s past is prologue,” as an evil you know. One can dread the weird mashup precipitated by creative anachronism. Or one can select a radical, ancient option, which is rooted in the mechanics of mutual location.

15 Spectacle Spectrum

A range for the spectacular is an assumption of the Contemporary experience portfolio. Hordes ensure the shared variety. Scarcity is the flip side, and it can be obtained through tactics and execution. A balanced portfolio will contain some of each. The composition of a small group optimized for desired excursions must be a feature of one’s skill set. The partner is warranted but not essential for the scarce, wild and rare experience. Highlighting the unfettered nature of the experience, the element of freedom, is achieved by notation, anecdote, a signature disruption of convention. After all, the compilation of experience signals a certain type of wealth. The moderation of risk is always a concern, with any program for mythologizing the mundane. We all ought to be mindful that the experience portfolio is designed for eulogy content.

16 Still Moving Image Life

A reversion of the cinematic is occurring, and the user of media is swept into the change, like a loose oar in a tsunami. No one can grasp the enormity of the content boom. The phenomenon is not manageable. Ask the Facebook executive team. It is a mistake to assume the flow of data confers power on those who direct it along its route. The channels that contain all the photos, texts, metadata, videos, emojis and so on are mutable. The content moves fast. The mechanics of the network are prone to disruption. Interventions of an endless variety are imaginable. The virtual information fails to represent the real action that the gear captures every day. Compression, lossy effects, drop frames all point to the fact that a movie is nothing at all like living. None of the media and attachments is correct, is accurate enough, is “true to life.” To define the image as entertainment is to abandon the necessity of vital expression in the here and now. The image is a ghost, a shade detached from a body, a dead aftereffect, an unworthy memorial of being-ness.

17 Protecting the Skin

The artist must never care about the operations of the Contemporary market. Art and the market divorced long ago. The decoupling of value from values, means from meaning is an historical phenomenon first, and a cultural one second. The derivative effects are far reaching, dimensional, and resonate with similar effects in a broad sector of enterprises. The opportunity for the artist now is to complete the disruptions that have been pushed by those whose agendas have nothing at all to do with the wellness of art. The innovative artist must create something to fill the vacuum caused by the venal mediocrity on display in almost every important art exchange. The banal and vicious individuals who manage the marketplace for art (see The Price of Everything) are more or less to a person effective, sociopathic predators, expert in extraction/exploitation schemes and long cons. Their nemesis — the armies of art-haters who despise free expression and fear individuality — attacks any form or institution that celebrates humanity’s sustainability and stability. The artist must reject the anti-art hatred in all its iterations, as well.

The predicament of the artist has never been more complex, dangerous and overwhelming. It is a magical, miraculous moment for art, certainly.

18 A Crowded Bus

Discovery has been supplanted by recovery, as our primal motivation in the wireframing of a 4D Civilization. The signs appear in the worst trends, such as the opioid epidemic. The emergent tendencies are pinned to immateriality, to mysterious, non-stuff like HOPE. In the interstitial phase between the old construct and newer one, the goofball who aligns with the hope crowd is in for a battering. The OG crews are cruel, territorial and deeply twisted. They are formidable in their grasp of malevolence as a vehicle to dominance. The steps required to cling to power they willingly take. To dislodge these orcs, we must act simply and decisively. There is nothing to it. For one thing, the most straightforward method is the democratic one. Other options are familiar in their technical aspects and eminently obtainable, but any sane person acknowledges that the most likely scenarios are foul and gross in the short term. Either way, art will also be recovered, reclaimed and redistributed. We have plenty of precedents at this point.

19 Eye Candy + Metadata

An image can say, “Eat me!” An image within an image evokes asexual reproduction, or to put it another way, machining self-replication. The mimetic is present in the image of the image, but the configuration is skewed if the original object is excluded from the represented scene. I personally abhor text within the painted surface, but it took a while to get there. I was very naive. Initially I expressed myself so urgently, and possessed so little craftsmanship. I would use words as a temporary replacement for competent artistry, while I was improving. Eventually, I no longer needed text as a technical crutch. Now, I think about that phase of my artist life with nostalgia. The stupid image is the branded one. Signs and symbols and the artificiality of the marketeer color spectrum (Pantone+) are subverted in the virtual, in the network, by the variability of devices and their aspect ratios and monitor sizes and lumens. Consistency is a casualty of the computer-based need-projection, and therefore one must not be inordinately surprised that addiction discourse attends the digitization of praxis. The snobs of new technology — include those who get rich from it, its hucksters and user- or prosumer analysts, the few tech-literate policymakers who are generally in the pockets of the tech giants and consortia — talk about the cultivation of media junkies about as often as they discuss brain tumors caused by cell phone-emitted radiation.

20 De-sequencing Memory Through Blur Effects

The digital graphic blur significantly tightened the separation between optics and interpretive vision in media. The emotional resonance of the shift from crisp focus to blurred image signaling motion and time has vastly improved photographic realism. The photographer virtuoso and his helpers optimized a set of technical edits to instill in pictures a sense of drama. The pre-digital dramatic photography emphasized a shocking clarity that marked a border between a painterly impression and the capture of a moment in time. The contemporary, which as we now can see, was photo-based. The elegant, gritty, the gross and disturbing, etc. ~ these and all the other tones of experience comprise a general pictorial narrative: The photographic is more real; the camera is the ultimate arbiter of visual truth; the interpretive process should commence with a product of selective focus with proper lighting; and so on. Post-digital, we can see that no image can be viewed without skepticism. Which is not to imply that painters suddenly are more trustworthy.

21 Transitional Mode

The frame emphasizes the transitional in the capturing of an image, while simultaneously suggesting the impossibility of containing a 360 degree phenomenon within a rectangular geometry. Identifying the pictorial methods by which the Impossible is celebrated in art is a good exercise for a student artist or viewer. The competent representation of natural and artificial effects and materials has astounded (and even infuriated) the critic, since at least Plato. Ambivalence toward the profundity of realism in painting is a critical trope, yet the casual art viewer generally is not so jaded. It seems that the impact of eye-fooling, smart painterly realism has generational-spanning longevity. A metaphor might be the horse-drawn buggy…the blimp, less so. Fundamentally, the correlation is between framed experience and human, or conscious, mortality. Death is the bracket most people fear most, and art, especially post-Pollack or -Mondrian art, proceeds fearlessly in the face of certain death.

22 The Perfect Matterhorn

From which angle should the Matterhorn be viewed? What is the mountain’s best side? What is the best season for looking upon its majestic face? What about the mountain commands our interest? Is it size? Does the mountainous contain an invisible power that attracts our gaze? The representational and conceptual analysis of the Matterhorn starts with such questions. They have to do with imagining a painting. It is a Hegelian notion. It is also a design approach, beginning with a sketch, but before the sketch, thinking about where to begin. Why is the question before the question. What is the definition of the project. How is the production. Perfection in the process is considered and affirmed, then forgotten. No Matterhorn is perfect, other than the one signed and hung on a wall, otherwise, why would the mountain change moment to moment, day after day?

23 Rock Solid

The mechanics of composition blend with critical theory without meaning to. The placement of an object within the frame may be a function of nature, or the footwork of the cameraman. The visual maybe is more a vignette than an actual scenario, a diorama rather than an array millions of years in the making. The criteria in the either/or, man versus nature is out-of-date. Time has in some measure, perhaps by 40%, mutated in the virtuality of the Contemporary era into a contingency. Now, physics is beyond the edit of its image, to an extent. In real life (IRL) that extent is discoverable at the moment the rock shears from the mountain and crushes you. If there exists a direct, spiritual, symbiotic relationship between nature and humanity, it will be revealed in short measure, as the latter collapses. The blurring of existential vision will derive from the mandate of urgency, which for the moment is still a sensation.

24 Noticing Details Along the Path

Peripheral vision is key to human survival. Our complex optical system connects what we see to our response functions in close to real time [c2RT]. A synthetic reflex improves our chances of avoiding threats. Accurately measuring the integrated topology, and thereby gauging the speed-path of the things that move within it, involves visual perception and evolved adjustment of one’s body in relation to the landscape and its other active elements. The image flattens all this and more, compressing the shapely world into a framed instance. Moving images add the illusion of 3D spatial dynamics to the pictorial presentation. The digital image contributes an element ~ the artificial infinite ~ that monkey wrenches the suspension of disbelief in both the movie and the still life. The gear/software/wetware combo of VR unites the matrix of these mode/nodes and wedges them into a track that parallels real life. For obvious reasons this is a risky move. Every moment we are not practicing surviving in the real world, we are lessening our connective capacity to be (t)here, successfully. Finding the real world these days is easier said than done, though.

25 The New Parallel

The abandonment of inhibition is deemed a social matter, mostly. Artists, however, have long understood the value of discarding convention for creative purposes. The segregation of artists from society reveals more about the desire of the powerful to control and command, or at least manage, the collective. Making examples of the outliers who abjure the typical for the unusual is a common human practice. Celebrating the unconventional has precursors in tribal life. Contemporary civil society in the 21st Century has flipped the current, so that the status quo cavalierly identifies its activities as equivalent with those of yesterday’s avant garde! Naturally, the paroxysm among the vanguard of civilization is profound. The order of the day is confusion, convolution, complexity. In short, we are thrust into the disorienting, all-directional 4D zone. The tendency for the art world during society’s gross transitional phases is to attempt to cleave to the traditional and embrace the novel simultaneously, in a balancing act. The risk aversion of art elites is a known characteristic. They are hoping to outlast the conflict and land on the winning side.

26 Tapering Expectations for the Real

The metaphorical is a cliche of the imaginary, which is too bad. The skill of the author to craft an apt or even excellent metaphor is a criterion for literary proficiency. Painting is, however, not writing. Imaginary art traffics in the praxis of elevating the mediocre to the level of genius, and the inverse is true, too. Greatness is in the Contemporary Art a demarcation, for the applications of diminishing expectation. An artist today ought to study the utility of critical subversion of accomplishment. The leveling process for the field is arbitrary and pernicious. A valuable hedge against the downward pressure of critical mediation is color. Form once might suffice to stave off the unwanted barb of the critic, until the formal was embraced as the rationale for the critique. No one can argue effectively against color, except in its usage. Color itself operates outside the reach of the anti-art voice. Color is elemental, and, as such evades the false logic of the Real as context for critical domination of art.

27 Collisions and Transcendence

Theory constantly collides with animated material, and each theoretician is himself shaped by such collisions. A theory of the Mountain is only as strong as the expression of the idea in the body of the theoretician and the Mountain. One must conform to profound thought even to conceive of the Matterhorn as a type of Mountain. The existence of Matterhorn permits simulation of it, because of the dynamics of scale and estimation. The matrix within which the simulation exists is authenticated by an original, but the original is only an idea of the actual Matterhorn. The nominal Matterhorn can be simulated, and translates as simulacra across platforms of expression with enough consistency to qualify as a massive icon, a legitimate cultural thing. The fixation of theoretical conditioning to the Mountain, like art, occupies a continuum that relies on more than words and metadata for its standard meaning. The shape of Matterhorn signals a specific response for a diverse demographic. The intersection, say, with Judd’s Specific Object here is ironic. Disneyland’s Matterhorn is in this sense more real than the mountain with multiple national identities, and a host of additional associations, some of them mythic, mysterious and connected to ancient supernatural codes and custom.

28 Hard Code

Context in poetry is the redistributed storyteller. The concrete word merges with the memorial and produces a hybrid that bears the burden nostalgia with less effort than prose. Prose is rarely sculptural. The administration of meaning within the language for prose defies good storytelling anyway. The main problem is a mismatch of duration. Time in its unfolding surpasses the acceleration possible in story code. A list is shitty for narratives, unless it is carved in stone. Even then its contrivance is nominal at best, activated only by the living in honoring the dead for cause. The aesthetics of this phenomenon are twisted. The mechanism is not unlike the fictional devices for eliciting emotion from a reader for characters and situations produced in the author’s imagination. It is not a stretch to assign the storyteller a divine power, albeit one that is naught but illusion. The fragment subverts any debate about the truthfulness of words. A piece of code is not software, and the success of Google demonstrates the potency of compounded symbols. The sequence, the phrase, the name, the thing, the linked construction is a code for imagining a universe that rhymes with reason, no matter what.

29 No One Needs To Know

I can’t remember if the decorations were up, because of the 4th of July. Which has nothing to do with the Matterhorn. We went to Disneyland with our friends and neighbors. I think they were still working for Disney, maybe at the park. I could drop them a line. Eight years in Brooklyn between then and now. On the mountain in Switzerland, where I shot video and still images of the Matterhorn, I was alone. Well, I shared the trail with a few people, but it wasn’t difficult to create space among us. The hikers that day were moving in small groups, mostly. There were hang gliders. Jet squadrons in the sky. Tiny wild flowers blooming. The glacier was melting. It was summer. My idea was to do a half an hour of videotaping at the real Matterhorn and a half an hour at the Disney Matterhorn, make a two-channel projection installation, and be an art world hit. LOL, 2010. I really love those lens flares.

30 Asymmetrical Step Frame

I still remember artists — at least, I think they were artists — using their hands, their fingers in combinations, to “frame” a scene, a detail in a painting and whatnot. This pantomime happened routinely at art openings. This was before the ubiquitous phone camera. Nowadays, people simply photograph everything they would like to capture in a rectangular viewer, for personal use or sharing later. Framing can be an aide for composition, a device for focusing attention and emphasis, a protective measure, a sign of dedicated visible space, an ostentatious display of wealth and more. The image proposes a conceptual frame. Architecture, superimposed schematics, decorations and a host of other things can fulfill the specs for image framing. The image itself can frame an image of itself. The code to frame a digital image specifies the number of pixels and color, artificial 3D effects applied, and so on. These kinds of frames exert or express control on one level. They render a picture into an order made of ideas like “inside” and “outside.” The inclusion of architecture and its referents in framed work aligns the image with its historical emergence. A frame for a painting also denotes an ancient craft, and may signal a hierarchy in which fine art is prioritized within and by that craft. The asymmetrical presentation pushes a skewed perception that evoke anahistory, hysteria, disharmony, being high and a realm for the visionary other. Some symbology is meant to serve as a ward or hedge against bent reality and visible distortions.

31 Simulating a Slippery Slope

A painting of a mountain, a battle, or a tryst is usually not as thrilling as mountaineering, fighting for your life or making love. Yet the success of new media in displacing and co-opting thrills of every description is unprecedented. Massive industries have appeared, practically overnight, to service the desires of billions of people, who wish to satisfy their thrill-urges via network-wired electronics. Look at porn [LOL]. The numbers of folk who prefer thrill content delivered into their living spaces through a monitor, big or small, or by projection — OVER THE REAL THING — is astonishing. The current phase of mass selection of the simulation instead of the authentic original is troubling for those of us who, like artists, are dedicated to originality. The problem is that simulation art and artists are as prevalent simulations of every other sort.

32 The Future Has No Substance

“Destroy the image, and you will break the enemy.” — Enter the Dragon

The future of the 20th Century proved to be a production, a design fiction. The Contemporary is really a conflict with Time itself. Negating the fast color of experience with photographic and cinematic black and white initiated a wholesale co-optation of the visible spectrum. No viewer possesses sight anymore. The visual is a property to be managed. This phenomenon certainly extends into the 21st Century and the enormous salon of images that exist in web-based presentation media like the one you’re looking at now. None of the original material embedded in the facsimile above carries more than a tiny fraction of essential sensation necessary to assemble a scenario in a real world, in a real life. The gift economy of existence is abandoned to optical colonialism and pushed into all manner of markets, including the “attention” marketplace. The product of vision subsumed is waste, but what sort? The loss of trust in perception threatens human survival. Ask Coyote what the Roadrunner meant with his trompe-l’œil representations, created out of nothing on the fly.

33 Surveillance Mountain

At the pinnacle of the Disney Matterhorn one spots a mini-forest of gear erected. From the foot of the mountain, one cannot be certain, but some of those fixtures could be camera platforms for scoping a 360 degree view of a substantial portion of the park. The corporation is like atmosphere at Disneyland. Security is always, if not obviously, present. The professional enforcement of happy experience at The Happiest Place on Earth™ [Trademark info HERE.] is a matter of record. From a media philosophy perspective Disney operates in a unique sphere in which perception and practice mesh consistently in a complex production environment. Park functions, from a public relations standpoint, have gargantuan value, but also massive inherent risk attaching. The pressure of maintaining goodwill to the Disney brand, which extends to an enormous media conglomerate, is a prime dynamic in the parks. The task of bracketing park visitor experience from the banal facets of Disney Corp’s is a case study for management literature (e.g., employee pay structure, relations with Anaheim and the communities surrounding the park, and many controversies). Imagine the cost over the decades devoted to producing the Disney image, and the armies of lawyers, executives, marketeers, PR and HR professionals, industrial shrinks (anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists), designers and less-than-savory types who have been employed and deployed to “create” and service that image!

34 Shaping Motion with Object Placement

Nature demonstrates the dynamics that apply to objects that dictate the movement in the spatial environments they occupy. For example, a boulder in a stream sorts water flow. Designing for artificial or man-made environments entails related concerns, which at some level can become events in decision trees or sequences. The process in both cases (natural/artificial) involves Time, and therefore is easily ported to a 4D discourse. In a derivative but structurally similar application, the process applies to 4D art exhibition creation and design. In 4D art, there is no convincing rationale to radically separate creation and design, except at the level of the technical, in addressing issues of disciplinary excellence and craftsmanship. There are many methods that can be used to ensure quality in creation and presentation, and although not all of those approaches work well in both art-making and exposition facets of projects, this does not exclude any technical consideration outright. A better production sensibility might be “a time and place for everything,” or “right tool for the job,” etc. A subject for 4D content is contrasting static and flow elements in a single or multiple time-frames. The subject can be extended to exhibit design, in numerous ways, including installing objects in such a manner that viewer flow is made directional, for whatever purpose.

35 Bendable, Virtual Surface

Evolving presentation device technologies over the past several decades provide the core for a meaningful discussion of image suspension and coherence in relation to mutable material substrates for projection and light-emitting screen. The image body exists in the digital media in some kind of file format. Still and moving features are considerations that do or do not affect the choice of projection substrate or screen. The viewer profile is central to any technical discourse on 4D/New Media image presentation practicum, as is a concept for energy or power appropriation and distribution in what amounts to a multi-use facility for informatic systems. The network potential is massive, with cultural, political and specifically scientific/educational implications, not to mention emergency notification apps. The fundamental question is at what point does the picture disintegrate, due to surface distortion. Engineers have made tremendous, documented progress in this area of manufacturing and design, but the research and development has unfortunately been meshed with high expectation/low cost consumer markets, and often public and aesthetic interests are set aside for other priorities. The privatization phenomenon intersecting 4D media technology has subverted advances in sectors that bring primary value to society. A reasoned conversation about who and what is driving the cart is called for.

36 Glacial and Nominal Cohesion

The Gorner Glacier in Switzerland is retreating. The observation points I used to photograph and videotape the Matterhorn start in Zermatt, ascend from there to Gornergrat summit and descend in reverse order. A little less than 6000 miles separates … — The Gorner Glacier in Switzerland is retreating. The observation points I used to photograph and videotape the Matterhorn start in Zermatt, ascend from there to Gornergrat summit and descend in reverse order. A little less than 6000 miles separates the Matterhorn Bobsled ride at Disneyland in California and the actual mountain in Switzerland. The names Matterhorn, Disneyland and California are generative of complex images, possess imaginary power, are vivid drivers of multifaceted cultural identity and vision. How much of the imaginary associated with these names conforms to reality, as such, and how much emerges from actual experience. The associative quality of these place-things has an immaterial effect on the substance that derives from arrivals of people, their immediate encounters, their departures and memories. Being in place alters programming, including DNA. The propaganda of imaginary experience generates a layer of illusion that can artificially be attached to location. I wonder if this speculative layer might be thought of as a pollutant for the image and imagination. I wonder what sort of damage such pollution might cause.

37 Constructing Clutter

Any image proposes a critical analysis of composition. The documentary photograph transfers responsibility for composition from the subject to the photographer, who can disperse that responsibility through the notation. The dimensionist composition consolidates multiple images in layered stacks with a range of options for effects in the configuration. The opacity or transparency, color filters, tonal shifts in grayscale, effects and so on expand possible permutations for complex imaging. The digital or virtual version and the analog version of this process (painting and sculpture) behave differently. Where the two seams join is in output, especially the most recent types that permit 3D textures to operate as simulation assets for hi-resolution color-matching. Cloning is the purview of virtuality, which redefines the material as printed matter with camouflage. Still, some aspects of imagination exist beyond the current capacity of technology to challenge or consume. I am thinking of world-building in a concrete, organic or natural meaning of the term. The world, as far as we know, may still be building itself, and humanity with its mimetic obsessions, may be unaware that it functions simply as the effector, the utility for that construction, for the Earth’s future projection of itself for itself.

38 Pattern Recognition

Eventually, the exposed features of cycles inspire curiosity in the mind of the intrepid viewer. Patterns crave detection. An artist usually is a curious person by nature. Some artists are notorious creatures of habit. Repetition is vital to progress for a craftsman. A technique is the product of cyclic action. To achieve greatness as an artist is to refine and improve one’s art. To do so requires technical advancement through progressive application, starting at the conceptual and finishing with an object. Anti-artists naturally argue the opposite case. In 4D both ideas of art are right or wrong, depending on the stage of production. The studio is where the truth begins. The art tells that truth and proposes an answer to the question, “What is art?”

39 A Picture Is a Kind of Wish

I remember when photography was not allowed in an art museum or gallery, and many other parts of society. Privacy was not erased by virtual projection of self and the collective into social media, which is not society. The harm done to humanity and democracy is little understood. The developments to which I refer are relatively novel. To suggest that all change must be embraced in the spirit of progress is stupid and dangerous, and wrong. In the art world* the power shift toward the Contemporary market is radical enough to be termed a coup. The erasure, disenfranchisement, and displacement of many facets of art culture, economy, community and tradition in the interests of furthering the ambitions of art industrialists has caused great harm. Art is civilization’s “canary in the coal mine.”

40 Chasing Perfection, Finding Unity

The Ideal underwrites Art. It also subverts it. Art at its best rejects Plato and perfection every time, disproves it, illustrates the folly of idealism, of perfectionism. The artist who discovers the secret of the perfect flaw has jumped a practical level immediately. Machines pretend to perfection, which is basically formal worship of a copy of something. Design standardizes quality, while applying the cost benefit analysis to consigned labor, which standardizes failure for any project. The arbitrary is not the same as selectivity or choice. The presence of narrative does not compensate for aesthetic inadequacy. Rigor is great, prowess is better, genius is marvelous, but endurance, equanimity and tenacity are equally valuable for the artistic enterprise. But über alles, Joy, like a mountain, magic.

41 The Platform, Time and the Arcade

I have done quite a bit of thinking about Main Street. The Disney version represents a specific vision of social facades, and the media philosopher should be giddy to deconstruction that fabrication, especially in the pursuit of post-Marx, -Ford, -Net solutions to societal fragmentation. Those who embrace the dystopian version of future projection with tremendous ease will have no good use for the Disneyfied imaginary construct. Which has little to do with art or happiness, or even usefulness. The observation platform dedicated to scientific analysis of universal phenomena, sited in close proximity to ye olde House of Worship ~ now there is a grand proposition. Better yet, wrap it round a posh destination hotel or resort boasting magnificent natural assets. Artists ought to know to suggest there is more to offer outside the borders of such projects. Which is problematic, given the laws of popular attraction, in late-stage Capitalism. The short answer is always “property value.” One can take comfort in the belief that some day that term (property value) will again have no meaning, anywhere.

42 Integrating the Dark with Blur

Darkness offers a space in which edge disappears. This is true of light, unless the line contains color and/or tone that contradicts the enlightened extreme. The dark can be counted on, on the other hand. Blur is a condition, as much as an effect. People, like me, who possess an optical handicap, perceive the world as blurred. If you know nothing else, you adjust and increase reliance on other senses, get better at estimation, improve your pattern analysis, and so on. If you at some point are fortunate and have your vision medically corrected, through lenses or surgically, you will revel at the crisply focused real world. The secret to imperfect sight is that it won’t last very long, anyway. Humans, and human sense organs, are very fragile, and have a limited duration. An artist who illustrates the truth about sensual existence is singing to the choir a pretty discomfiting tune.

43 Symbiotic Skins

Xanthoria elegans is an eye-catching alpine “lichenized species of fungus,” according to Wikipedia. That orange is fabulous. So are the wild flowers growing along the Matterhorn trail. Juxtaposing the be-hatted costumed character [whose fake fur is roughly the same hue as X. elegans (shout out to Johann Heinrich Friedrich)] with that rusty-looking, rock-mounted stuff is I guess a facile composition move, unless I simultaneously strike a conversation about “skins,” which has a specific reference in New Media, for gaming, avatars, digitally enabled or enhanced cinema, cyberpunked animation and fiction and more shit like that. “Skin” is the best kind of polysemic. Its a term that drifts into so many conventional and unconventional regions: Redskin; the biggest organ in the human body; surface for most anything; the stuff you shed when you’re morphing, like a reptile, into a bigger, badder version of yourself; etc. In the broadest conceptual gear-centric analysis ~ which means we’re talking about machines, now, perception-extending, time-/event-capturing technology ~ the photograph and video, camera-based imaging, adds a bit of skin to any incident its pointed at. It also indicates some concern happening “behind the camera” in the mind of the operator, unless he or she is simply shooting on instinct, which is maybe a chimerical notion anyway. Interactivity adds dimension to the configuration. Check out the difference between the kid’s pose and the passerby’s. Nowadays, we spend time suspended in complex, networked states of lensing — am I a model or a shooter, at any given moment, within systemic media and its ideatic creep? In response to this circumstance, inspired by X. elegans, I enter the term Creeping Skin into the virtual discourse.

44 Bottlenecking

The concept of interference has to be updated. Interference is the weed of intellectual and practical habitats. Variations are noise and disruption. In defense of interference, with a nod to Claude Shannon, the notion propels the binary focusing on … — The concept of *interference* has to be updated. Interference is the *weed* of intellectual and practical habitats. Variations are *noise* and *disruption*. In defense of interference, with a nod to Claude Shannon, the notion propels the binary focusing on types of sums (zero versus the “all boats rise with the tide type”). The bitchiness associated with interference derives from management analytics, efficiency modeling and the like. Also technical problem-solving, associated with sonic, and later visual or digital media and communication systems. The network integrity, its reliability, depends on constant minimization of interference. Unfortunately, the praxis of weeding interference has seeped into politics, where it joins forces with monopoly economics. The product of this 4D convergence is the ugly global neo-fascism evident today. Art loves interference, noise and disruption. More than those phenomena, art loves bottlenecks of all kinds, for the solutions they inspire. The workaround is a practical creative response. Art to some measure can be a vital workaround in the labyrinth of Civilization’s humanity-strangling bottlenecks. Or art can be a bottleneck. At least the (democratic) artist today has the option, the choice, of being a part of the problem or the solution.

Instagram-sited art exhibits @valubl

To close out 2018, I launched two Instagram-specific/-sited/-exclusive expositions at the AFH I-gram portal, Valubl. I have been practicing in the social media platform, since February. The three-window grid format (how Instagram appears on my desktop monitor) presents some fun parameters for arranging images. There are many examples of elegant and witty design approaches available. Over the years, through many formats and platforms, I’ve developed my own sensibilities for displaying blocks of still or moving pictures on the web. I almost never like the constraints the major players and their marketing/engineering/design teams settle on. Their interests are rarely mine. GUI, UX and the other buzzwords dry brush over the real grift and graft installed in the fun and friendly squares and malls of the sharing economy. Culture, as it is defined for the utilities of outfits like Facebook and its subsidiary Instagram, is oxymoronic, an empty term, generic fluff. Or to put it another way, the platform is conceived as a machine, a culture generator, an empty container, a culture container, an exchange, a culture switchboard. There is a lot of hype, critique, deconstruction and so forth attaching to ubiquitous, networked soc.med at this point. The stream of immaterial content that coincides with Instagram and other portals is pointless to try to fathom, it is so vast, and in service to so many ends. It is virtually like a metropolis, a New York City, now, a sprawling feature of the branded topology, in that there is too much for any individual to adequately comprehend. However, like all such outcrops in any kind of topology, natural and/or artificial, we can be certain it will transform and/or disappear, eventually. For the time being, please enjoy the efforts I have made at testing Instagram, utilizing it, and finally appropriating it for 4D art production and project(-ion) purposes.

2

WOVENFORM [Shipwreck]

Artist Statement: "the skeletal remains of a century-old shipwreck; a fragment in foamy wash."

On Christmas Day, my family and I visited the shipwreck of the Peter Iredale at Fort Stevens State Park. The recent storm surf had piled mounds of kelp on the beach. In my 4D perspective, these kelp piles serve as lovely natural examples of wovenform. I shot the source photos with my old smartphone, then applied minimal processing in Photoshop. These ten images represent the first stage of conditioning the visual phenomena for 4D art purposes. We stopped to photograph the elk in the yard on the return drive to Astoria [OR]

1

HRMNUTIK-POLY-INK [Code Duello]

In 2013 I undertook a residency in Pine Plains, NY hosted by Chashama. The ChaNorth AiR program is interesting. We shared cooking tasks, etc., and the org-orientation was real green. I focused on producing two sets of ink on polyester paintings, one small + one large format. @shanekandy joined me for the last week or two after his second Voyage of the Hippo summer trip. We collaborated on some big pour/press/pull attraction pieces that would be exhibited in "Code Duello" at David Lusk Gallery Nashville in 2014. In this set of images, I focused on details of the p/p/p paintings, and the buttery Hudson Valley light shining through the studio windows. I'm adding a few samples of other pieces in the series for reference.

Illustrations for Propective Notations to Dissertation Text, etc.

I started creating these graphics initially for posting on social media, specifically Facebook and Instagram, to test visual optimization within those feed formats. Then, the concept and scope of the project expanded. I see possible usages for the images as illustrations for short essays on Medium, and in an appendix for my dissertation text. The latter usage would be to provision artists with suggestions to aid development of their own personalized 4D art practicum.

New Artist Economies: Contracts for Art

The rugged face of society, checkered with the extremes of affluence and want, proves that some extraordinary violence has been committed upon it, and calls on justice for redress. - Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice

In the spirit of Thomas Paine's Agrarian Justice I would like to offer a simple proposition for artists who wish to redress problems in the art world that arise from rampant economic inequality and the insidious social tendrils that form to reinforce it. The distortions apparent in art market protocols for exchange are currently being discussed publicly, by critics (e.g., Jerry Saltz) and in art press (e.g., artnet). Over the past decade, as a collateral condition of general trends, a few powerful players have quickly consolidated inordinately dominant positions in vital nodes of what we can identify as the art ecology. As a result, significant portions of the art market have withered. Many institutional models for broad provision of access to art are threatened. The livelihoods of artists, dealers, administrators and suppliers are disappearing or substantially diminishing. It is not arguable that the quality of art is improving in this scenario. It is not. Certainly the prevalence of opportunity for art world players is being channeled bottom to top, and the effects are only beneficial to a fraction of participants. Art has folded into monopoly capitalism on a global scale. If you believe as I do, that the status quo is unhealthy for democracy, and the art and artists who thrive in a healthy democratic society, then we must develop dimensional solutions to the current problem. These solutions may or may not apply to other disciplines and industries being deeply impacted by the consolidation of power and wealth we have witnessed.

My proposal starts with the artist and is contractual in nature. Even though Paine's Agrarian Justice is predicated on a definition of property that distinguishes the natural and artificial, its focus (on pensions derived from land holdings) can be amended and ought to be reconsidered for implementation in the art market. In short Art occupies a special territory in human society, in that it spans both natural and artificial on many levels. The production of paintings, sculpture and sketches is evident from pre-history through the present, and as such can be defined as a basic human occupation or function, with many variations. Given its transcendence of the binary (natural v. artificial), art lends itself to innovative solutions to flaws in property regimes, especially those that exploit and extract immaterial or artificial benefits from natural resources. My proposal suggests that the key to solving the radical redistribution of benefits from art is located in the artist-created object at the point of transferring ownership from the creator to the purchaser. The solution takes the form of a stipulated agreement, and enforces a future action upon the purchaser or his agent(s).

I propose that the artist will only sell her art object to a purchaser who is willing to follow a protocol for redistributing the art purchased (recycling it into a common property regime), or paying a fee for the retention of the art over a reasonable, appropriate, designated time-frame. That fee for retention can subsequently be invested in the art ecology+economy, which can be summarily defined as costs for art production and conservation among the community of identifiable artists, organizations, schools, etc., whose existence assures the progressive development of artistic excellence, which is of clear value to a healthy democracy. The purchaser may thereby enjoy personally the benefits of possessing a particular art object for the duration of his life. At such time that the purchaser dies, the art can be either retained by his heirs for the proportional fee based on the value of the object, or donate it to a reliable public art institution for presentation and conservation.

The proposal at this stage is only a sketch. The program can be refined in great detail. For instance, a system by which the art object is transferred to an institution can be made into a very effective mechanism for "spreading the wealth" of art equally across the country. Simultaneously, it can be programmed to disperse art locally>nationally via concentric mapping and other design tools that monitor the distributions of art among communities. The overarching goal is to serve all communities by adding art to their portfolio of common assets. This system obviates reliance on top-down philanthropy. All art exchanged between artist and purchaser will be inducted into the program, and a registry of art can be cultivated to document and follow the trajectories of individual artworks over time. The art database becomes a shared archive and history of the flow of art through the society. Researching the contents of the database yields a profile of the art preferences of the society over time.

Clearly, this proposal suggests that the cultural practices of the society can be productively directed toward a sustainable, democratic model that dramatically redefines a future art economy. For example, the programs sketched above can productively employ many citizens, on a local to national basis. Attribution of recognition for contributions to the program (for artists, purchasers, mediators/facilitators, presenters/conservators, administrators, technicians, etc.) is a programmatic corollary. So is a system of rewards to encourage advocacy beyond participation. Art, after all, provides a formal link to the intangible, and good feeling is the sort of intangible that reinforces sustainable support.

To reiterate, the point of origination in this visionary scheme is the contractual exchange between artist and purchaser. To begin, it is up to the artist to demand the condition for completion of the transference of the object between artist and purchaser, and the purchaser must be willing to comply. Change begins as a simple agreement between two parties. I hope to have a prototype contract ready in the not-to-distant future. I invite feedback on the proposal.

4D VyNIL: Real.Pure.Digital.

For the first time since 2008 or -9, I am processing patterns for output on the AFH web platform, decorative/design purposes, digital printmaking, and textures for a variety of uses across the digital platform. I will integrate these patterns into web pages, animations, images, etc. The processes I employ have been developed for this practice since at least 2000, although I began to experiment with patterns as soon as I started learning digital graphics programs in the early 90s. The way that digital media fabricate an image suggests these types of applications, reductive to the pixel structure, or scaling up to large format/high resolution printing and moving/still image output/presentation. Throughout, its about 1s & 0s, squares & symmetry, formats & ratios, & most importantly, dimensions, optics, perception/interpretation.

The "mosaics" + mosaic/pattern hybrids above are related specifically to the Pattern series I generated for the Mimaki hi-res UV printer, for shows at Yarger-Strauss (now Timothy Yarger Fine Art in Beverly Hills) and AFH Gallery Chinatown. I am working with an online graphic generator for creating schematics used in Rubik's Cube art/translator practices; then doing iterative system play with those outputs. Real.Pure.Digital.

4D VyNIL

VyNIL (PHOTOS: Chris Borrok)

You are cordially invited to visit the studio of Paul McLean in Brooklyn, Saturdays February 24 and March 3 from 2-6PM. The open studio sessions offer visitors the opportunity to preview McLean’s new 4D+ vinyl paintings on canvas, panel and paper. Created in series, these paintings represent the first set of four collections that McLean is producing for his doctoral thesis.

Datum Series 1-3 (iPhone photos + Photoshopping by the artist)

NOTES

Titled “4D VyNIL” the first set of paintings (like the large canvas “Network”) references Internet dynamics, such as data movement and visualization, the archive, the icon and the avatar. In the “Weird/Wired Man” paintings, McLean renders the networked, virtual Self in a patterned and flattened version, levitating in the web. Throughout “4D VyNIL” the artist subtly integrates the actual and the immaterial, a parallax view that toggles between the world of recognizable, touchable things, and the simulation that now threatens to displace our common perceptual conception of the Real. Within this construct we find anomalies and glitches that spawn mutations, animated creatures that populate the dark spaces in massive artificial matrix like ghosts in the thinking, counting machine universe. We realize the imagined scenario is metaphorical, like a reflection of the strange blooms in a bio-lab Petri dish. One is compelled to wonder, “What kind of new personhood are we making?” Is the procedure accidental, experimental or a contrivance beyond regulation? The observer is afforded a modicum of ambivalence, but in the ambiguity lurks catastrophe arising from unforeseen causes. Is this not the danger of new technologies, whether atomic or AI? The “Topo Archipelogos” paintings suggest that the interstices separating concrete and imaginary currently dissolves and recombines in a more complex form from the binary, and the intense process of emergence of this derivative, hybrid form coalesces in a painterly correlate to the camera snapshot.

In “4D VyNIL” the viewer is navigating a course through the array of paintings via the repeating elements and consistent colors, in an activity flow similar to clicking from site to site on the Internet. The paintings’ surfaces eventually take on the quality of an [GU]Interface, but the texture of each piece undermines this comparison, due to subdural variance from one to the next. A superficial viewing promotes the notion that the body of work is approximately uniform, but closer inspection reveals diversity in the layering by which the image is achieved. Ultimately the aesthetic border between 2D and 3D is blurred and the 4D characteristics of the art transits that divide. Content and context subtly intertwine in a woven form that infers infinite, sequential possibility.

While “4D VyNIL” is immersive in its treatment of the Internet as a potent contemporary, phenomenal subject, the paintings themselves are beautiful, even traditional objects. McLean deploys a broad range of techniques and aesthetic strategies that owe much to the innovations of painters that preceded him. The all-over effects of Pollock, the endless lines of Mondrian, the flashy compositions of Davis - to name but a few of McLean’s obvious inspirations - inform his paintings. These artistic citations establish situational resonance for “4D VyNIL” and an argument for the paintings’ relevance. Further, the references encourage a discourse between painting today and, for example, the mode of Impressionism, which can be rehabilitated by prioritizing its optical roots. McLean is emphasizing a conjoining of arts and science that is not bereft of wild color and beautiful pleasure. So, there is time-based common territory available via technics. The decorative in his paintings is akin to the “skin” of a 3D model online. The vinyl paint is key to this aspect of the artist’s programmatic approach here. The intensity of the hues, the mostly matte finish, the sharply defined contours of many of the paintings’ elements, and so on - these fixtures reinforce a direct, visceral interaction between viewer and art. A path by which art can recapture its potency from advertising can be deduced, and this path does not require the reduction of art to a visual lowest common denominator, a lo-res jpeg or print (faux) aesthetique. On the contrary McLean is proposing in “4D VyNIL” that the encounter between art and human has never possessed the psychological and technological complexity it does right now. The argument is that the vehicle of painting, its rectangular presentation field, its physicality and capacity for rich meaning in actuality surpass other media available to us. Simultaneously, painting reconnects us to our ancient selves, since the structural nature of painting is unchanged from Chauvet through the present. Moreover, the artist is empowered in painting to make visible a plausible, desirable future. The artist can, through skill and logic (and love), communicate a triparteid vision through a singular thing, since that Thing additionally constitutes the memorial, and enlivens a current experience. The natural medium for the visionary moment or event that McLean and his paintings connote is both social and individual in the exhibition phase. In the studio, the viewer is closer to the generative phenomena that invigorate the clarified presentation to come. In a sense, connecting with “4D VyNIL” in AFHstudioBK is like dancing with the image while it is still in the projector, before it hits the wall of Plato’s cave.

To close: For myself, vinyl is a curious choice for the medium of McLean’s new work. Vinyl is the stuff that my record collection is made of. That record collection essentially is the soundtrack of my life. Thinking about particular tracks, and albums and the significance of these dear, myriad, wonderful songs, these sounds informing my affair with the world, the universe, and the people and things inhabiting it all, I drift into the inevitable consideration of Time. The artist and his “4D VyNIL” perform to time, as much as they identify the quandary of timeliness in painting: Is the attempt to embody Now in something that has duration a type of madness, especially peculiar to the artist? Yet withal that, make no mistake… The pre- and subtext of Paul McLean’s “4D VyNIL” is excommunication. In this respect the enterprise is vehemently American, and wrought in the unfolding maelstrom of inequity, despair and corruption enveloping that creative gesture - though I doubt anyone would arrive at such a conclusion, while consumed by the act of simply and exclusively looking at these lovely paintings! Maybe that is the point, too.

- MILO SANTINI, Bushwick 2018

AFHstudioBK [open]

WHERE: 1002 Metropolitan Ave. * Studio #21 * Brooklyn, NY 11211
WHEN: Saturdays, February 24 & March 3, 2018 * 2-6PM
CONTACT: 615 491 7285 * artforhumans@gmail.com
PRE-MARKET PRICING (Please request a price list)

SOCKET * VINYL ON CANVAS * 3' X 3' * $3000

ON PRE-MARKET PRICING

Last Autumn, I invited Misha and Iva to gather a few friends at the studio for a presentation and discussion. We introduced them to the art in the studio and engaged in a wide-ranging, open conversation about their general and personal perceptions about art and culture, production, markets, and more. The point was to begin to determine what this important generation expected of, find interesting and are willing to invest in art. In short we had a focus group, consisting of recent Bates College grads and a sample of other demographics, concentrating on the factors that might affect the art economy that could be compatible with their desires, concerns and capacity. Afterwards, we applied this information to concepts we had been developing over time. I shaped these findings into a pricing program for the "4D VyNIL" series on view Saturdays February 24 and March 3.

At the moment, I don't have formal representation through a gallery or agency, which is why it's possible for me to conduct this experiment. That said, the terms of pricing attached to these new artworks are subject to immediate change at any time, if my circumstances change. I suspect this will occur sooner, rather than later.

The basic equation for the pre-market price point is 1) percentage of facility cost/overhead/time + 2) materials + 30% (of costs 1 + 2) + any additional costs = price. For me wholesale is basically half of retail. Factoring in the pricing applied to my artworks in my most recent retail gallery shows (SLAG, for example priced roughly at $1000 per foot/dimension), these numbers are fairly simple to determine and reflect appropriate market value for my art and this point in my career, relative to sales history and to comparable artist/art in the market. In short, the pre-market price model here is pretty much simple manufacturing/production pricing for market sale/re-sale, minus any distorting market projection. I reserve the right to bundle-price, or otherwise adjust the price to fit the client and her circumstances, purchase history (especially for my art), and so on. I shift any shipping/framing cost to the buyer, but I recommend quality shippers and framers. I can make qualified presentation/installation and preservation recommendations. I generally don't do this stuff myself anymore.

Finally, the "4D VyNIL" array of paintings reflects my interest in making serial art objects that combine to form a "whole" body of work, whose individual pieces are accessible to all budgets. A young person fresh from college may not be able to afford the 8' x 6' entry piece "NETWORK" at the moment, but she or he will find something here that IS affordable on all but a survival budget. If you are on a survival budget, you still can see/experience the art, of course, but I suggest you spend your available money wisely! I've been there!

NOTE: I have been dedicated to develop alternate economies for art, since the late 80's and Freedom Gallery. From my first major collective project, Regional Standard Arts Project in the Santa Fe Railyard in the early 90s through the CO-OP model for Occupy with Art in Huntington, NY to this project, I believe it is important to program community feasibility for art/the artist in the spaces for exchange. That means facilitating the transaction between collector and myself in the spirit of meaningful reciprocity and mutual aid.

4D VyNIL [Pre-Market Price Lists]

1) Basic spreadsheet-style price form for "4D VyNIL" paintings on canvas, wood panel and boxes.

2) Basic spreadsheet-style price form for "4D VyNIL" paintings on archival paper.

SELFIE PROJECT 2017

SELFIE Series #1

SELFIE Series #2

PJM SELFIES [Round 2]

CONTEXT:

http://www.mysticnovad.com/nanf-blog/2017/6/19/hw2-selfie
http://www.mysticnovad.com/news/2017/7/2/afh-update-july-4-weekend-2017

Paintings 2017

This series was executed in Spring over a three-week period. The gallery below documents the vinyl on canvas paintings' progress from start to finish.

For Paris

[Click on image above to see the gallery.]

http://www.parisforever.nyc/

Thanks to Dane + Samantha Rex/Wild Heart Salon for hosting this pop-up memorial show for my friend Paris.

DIM TIM IN 2014d!

DONATE EVERYWHERE!

NOT AN ARTIST [NAA] Tumblr 2.0

On April 1, 2014 AFH is re-activating the NOT AN ARTIST post board. The Tumblr will be accepting recommendations for not-artist vignettes from AFH reader-viewers. Please use the contact form above to request our consideration of viable candidates. All suggestions will be considered on the merits. Longtime AFH collaborator Milo Santini is serving as NAA curator for the foreseeable. Expect regular updates. Below are new samples.

KYSP Prints [Suite 1]

Kill Your Smart Phone [KYSP] Suite 1

11" x 8.5"

Digital paintings from digital photographs [iPhone]

Edition of 10 + 2 A/P

[Pricing on request]

The Artist's Zoo [TAZ] - BOS2014 Concept Text

"Thomas Kinkade Self-Portrait" by Shane Kennedy (2011)

The Artist's Zoo [TAZ]
[concept]art by Paul McLean
For the Society for the Prevention of Creative Obsolescence

“I am not an elephant! I am not an animal! I am a human being! I am a man!” - The Elephant Man

NARRATIVE 1:

[SUPPORTING TEXT]

“On Zoos”
By Paul McLean

Zoos, or menageries, are a feature of many important civilizations, appearing in various forms across the globe, often attached to palaces, existing as signs of power [See Wikipedia’s entertaining entry on the subject, from which much of this first paragraph arises. - PJM]. The Romans notoriously pitted exotic captive animals against one another and against humans for entertainment purposes, as spectacle. Obviously, the Roman arena and what we think of the zoo today are not convergent in many respects. However, even a superficial examination of the diverse manifestations of artificially contrived, performative human-nature encounters reveals that each age, place and culture produced and produces their version with particularity. In fact, the most valuable product of the zoo may its mimetic capacity. To put it another way, the zoo reveals much about the perceptual framework of the society and the individual, especially in terms of object and subject, which are dimensional.

I am thinking of nakedness, of Derrida’s cat, and The Animal that Therefore I Am [1]… Seen one way, the zoo is just another penal system, an expression of power-over. The phenomenon, however should not be reduced to just that. Today, most zoos are urban destinations. One must acknowledge that for many who are born, live and die in the city, nature is met at the zoo, in a controlled environment, staged as a kind of animated Natural History Museum (which is where the dead things live). Artificiality is pervasive in all of this. Meeting a large carnivore in the wild, or a tiny but highly poisonous reptile, or a magnificent raptor, is beyond the ken of the city dweller. The e-/affect of media on the phenomenon cannot be overestimated. Nature has its own television channel. National Geographic and a host of other naturalist-adventure outfits trek to all parts of the earth with camera gear and other sophisticated technological tools, usually somewhat war-derived and de-militarized, to create stories and images for the consumption of the curious public. The net is rich in virtual encounters with all manner of nature, which in itself seems a strange contradiction, with all due respect to the actual. Considered through this lens, the ubiquitous web “kitteh” attaches a very different, expansive meaning. A pixel-kitty does not a lion or lioness make. The ether of the network is not a savannah. The bugs are not the same.

How much of the zoo impulse is rooted in compulsion of Nature to human will? How much is rooted in fear, or love, or desire, or mindless revulsion or hate of the monster? How much in the zoo as concept is now rooted in mankind’s loss of the natural as mundane immediacy, how much is indicative of a collective guilt for his waging a relentless war on nature, either as mindless destruction? Or as addiction to consumption, a linked sign-cum-amelioration of humanity’s general, maniacal pursuit extraction/exploitation campaigns for natural resources of all types?

Does the zoo exist as a salve for a common anxiety that Nature may rebel against the decimation inherent in the human ownership regime? Is the zoo a control mechanism, which clearly is insufficient, when weighted against the big picture? Will Nature reject its chains, its bondage, and punish us for uncounted episodes of torture, violation and disregard? What will it look like, when Nature manages or somehow “decides” to shrug off her subjugation? Will man face a vengeful Nature? Will natural revenge play out in a flip-flop of position, as in the Planet of the Apes, or will the endgame manifest as plague, catastrophes such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, an Ice Age, or some other horrific event?

It is telling that humanism has affected the zoo culture. Over time, especially in the modern era, the function and mission of the zoo evolved. Scientific study, species conservation, and other analytic enterprises conjoined with the sensational aspects of staged interspecies encounters sited in the zoo. America, and its storied wilderness, made accessible by an extensive highway system in the 20th century, generated another form of zoo: the roadside attraction. Can the animal-centric iteration of the zoo be construed as a well-intentioned effort to right systemic wrongs perpetrated by man against beast? What of the Biblical notions of man in relation to animal, from the Garden, through the Ark? What do we make of our derivation perceptions of beasts like lions, whales, serpents, asses, etc., and has science successfully altered these perceptions (with the help of media, and mediated ecologies, such as those exhibited in or as “the zoo.”)

Is the near-fully mediated, man-dominated world itself a zoo, and we, as humans, distinctive from all the planet’s inhabitants, in that we not only are part of the exhibition, but occupied with its management? Now that our cameras can reach most anywhere, and almost every beast has been captured, documented and/or caged and staged, and this set includes ourselves, whom should we assign the task of zookeeper? Does this state of the world not strike you as unnatural? Are you comfortable with the notion that the zoo model is now fungible, thanks to media? After all, what is Reality TV?

It seems worth noting that exotic people were at times displayed alongside the beasts, that caged animals often suffer horribly, even though cultural perception of such instances of morally problematic scenarios changes over time and from place to place. Awareness of animal welfare among the parties invested in the zoo as complex social-commercial-scientific enterprise is in its current version a very recent development. The aesthetics of zoos and menageries are also worth a look. Thinking about the hyperreal but artificial enclosures at major destination zoos, and also those staged environments that afford the zoo visitor with great proximity to the beasts on display, how willing is man in the 21st century to touch nature? How close are we willing to get, and what happens when we get too close?

Finally, the function of language + image in capturing nature ought to be introduced. We should bring up the bestiary, in its implications. This literary mode is probably a bridge connecting the mythic and the modern, with faith as the span. In any event, the power of the book, as catalog, and as container, even prison, is prodigious. Da Vinci created a bestiary.

I would suggest that the real, the authentic human-beast interactive model is suggested in the caves, like Lascaux and Chauvet, but also in countless other ritual sites across the planet. Modern man is only beginning to come to terms with the scenarios that existed, where man and beast functioned in natural communion. It seems odd that we arrive at understanding of such high-functionality only by study of sites that must be addressed at least to an extent in the domain of conjecture. The habitat of Lascaux, for instance, of early man and cave bear living together amidst dedicated expressive production and representation, has been transformed now and is functional only as a lab with an exclusive visitation regime.

Drawing of a bear by Leonardo da Vinci [Metropolitan Museum]

∞

[PROBLEM]:

America does not consistently or systematically support the formation and maintenance of programs for organizing grassroots artist communities. Case in point: As far as I can tell, there’s no nationwide listing for open studio tours in the US, much less a framework or infrastructure for fostering these immensely popular, (usually) artist-organized local art platforms.*

Given the frequency, utility and popularity of open studio tours across the country why would a) artist studio tours in America not be funded through federal programs; b) no open studio tour catalog exist; c) no service network exist for rating studio tours, for compiling useful data on participating artists, attendance, etc.; for generating studies examining preferences of populations across regional, urban-rural spectrums; for producing and disseminating guidelines for developing best practices; and d) no joint marketing campaigns exist to support the growth, collaboration potential and commercial success of artist studio tours.

* The logical location for a map of open studio tours is the National Endowment for the Arts website. Another logical location would be Americans for the Arts’ site. I looked at big artist collective sites like wetcanvas.com – nada. A nice lady named Serena Kovalosky, a “sculptor, curator and cultural project developer” who refers to herself as the “artful vagabond” has put together a fine, but very partial listing for the US. The Google produces lots of results for “art studio tours” and “open studio tours.” The Collector’s Guide for New Mexico has a good list of that state’s tours. The domain name openstudios.org belongs to a Boulder-based artist community.

∞

NARRATIVE 2

The Artist's Zoo [TAZ]
[concept]art by Paul McLean
For the Society for the Prevention of Creative Obsolescence

[ARTIST STATEMENT]

“Fact is better left to fiction.” – Jerry (The Zoo Story, by Edward Albee)

[I need to record the phases of emergence in the narrative. – PJM]

In 2005, I was a participant in the East Austin (TX) Studio Tour [EAST], at Pump Project/Shady Tree Studios. At some point during the tour weekend I came to the realization that my bad attitude towards studio tours, as a general proposition, derived from a weird, intellectual linkage my brain had forged between two phenomena that most people wouldn't naturally or readily compare in any apples-to-apples way.

My mind had asymmetrically contrived a structural connection between artist studio tours and zoos. I was equating the artist and the zoo animal. I think I still do.

∞

[User #46 comments at Bushwick Manifesto, a Tumblr project]

What is it about the artist that the non-artist finds so alluring, scary and exotic? Is it our proclivities for transgression? Our bohemian lifestyles? Our wild fashion instincts?

I suppose the culturista could compose a list of reasons artists and art studio pique the public, but it would just be anecdotal, because artists are resistant to definition, especially the high kind.

Abject? Check. Precarious? Check. Dark Matter? Check.

Hell, the NEA of recent years has a tough time even defining “art” and “artist.” They can’t even figure out what categorical cage we belong in!

Talk about a crazy artsy nature! In Bushwick, the freewheelin’ artoidz can stiffen the twisted upper lip of the snark dispensing NY Times culture critic, Guy Trebay, which is an impressive feat. Just read his idiotic piece on BOS2013 [“At Every Turn, Another Strange World” (June 6, 2013)]. Trebay sounds like a guy shopping in SOHO who ends up at the Monkey House in the Bronx! Definitely out of his element! ObvEOsLY out his comfort zone!

Go back to PACE! Stop ur haten & drift back to Rohatyn!
But b4 you jet on the L, Ante UP M-Fer!

BTW Whatever happened to the Gorilla Girlz?

[Excerpt from interview for podcast (with Milo Santini)]

PJM: Don't get me wrong. EAST was and is a terrific studio tour, one of the best in the country, thanks to the hardworking artist-organizers, the good people at Big Medium, and many others. This year’s EAST will be the 13th, and the event enjoys sustained community and commercial support. Presenter Big Medium gets funding from the City of Austin, Texas Commission on the Arts and private donors.

…

MILO: In truth, most of the studio tours I've encountered are fun and worth the effort. Over the years I have covered, participated in, and attended a fair number of them. I have a few favorites. Studio tours (and visits) are preponderantly pleasant affairs, because most artists are as a class pretty pleasant and social.

PJM: Let's face it. It's such a generous act for the artist to invite the general public to inspect the artist's studio. Doctors don't have anything similar. Neither do attorneys, plumbers, mechanics... Most professions don't put together tours of offices and warehouses and the like, except as highly managed PR affairs, which is hardly what most artist studio tours turn out to be. It's doubtful many people would come to those other types of tours, if the other (less-cool-than-artist) professionals did produce tours.

…

MILO: On top of that, Artist studios are by and large unique. No two are the same, except in the interstices between artist-occupants, in industrial studio buildings, like the ones sprouting up all over the place in Bushwick, during which periods you have an empty, bare room with white walls. Over time, artist studios develop a patina. Think of Francis Bacon's, which is now enshrined in Ireland. I helped move stuff out of Sam Francis' in LA, after he passed away. Sam's couldn't have been more different than Bacon's.

[Extracts from surveillance recording of phone contacts between artist X and artist Y (>12:48-13:12. 05/02/2013. X: 40.6942° N, 73.9186° W; Y: 35.6672° N, 105.9644° W. X =BB FDL0126518, VER XXXXXXXXXXxXX; Y =IP imei:010113005310121 ATT x2558; X+Y =+17/x2,55,98,48,x49,00,2y …)]

There's a macro-narrative, too, here, having to do with imaginary and real economics. Very few art districts in the US contain sufficient numbers of artists capable of sustaining yearly leases, especially expensive ones. In New York City, Los Angeles and other major metro centers with substantial creative class populations, a lot of artist studios aren't artist studios at all. They are studios for filmmakers, ad agencies, pre- and post-production media shops, digital workspaces, small manufacturers and craftspeople of many kinds, and so on. After all, the creatives are the ones who can fork out the rents for the mixed use commercial spaces in desirable or destination points in a city's cultural topography. As for painters and sculptors, in the fungible art world, they occupy a very tenuous ranking in the creativity complex. For those of us who came up in places like 1980s Santa Fe, like I did, hardly anyone BUT painters and sculptors were considered *real* artists. It helped that every other arts discipline's *practitioners* (relatively new terminology) didn't feel the need to identify as an artist to get the respect from anyone. Being a musician or dancer or actor was cool enough in its own right. The middle decades of the 20th Century were tough ones for academic artists, in terms of street cred. Artists didn't usually have to have five professional jobs to survive. Then, unlike now, temporary work between sales or shows - in galleries, foundries, frame shops, art supply stores, museums and schools - could support an artist, even those with families. Some had day jobs. That was before the exploitation racket for unpaid interns caught on. Cheap immigrant labor has also consumed a lot of jobs that used to keep artists from starving in America.

[ibid.]

Anyway, I was talking about studios. During my Arts Management Masters study at the Drucker School, I met the lady – I forget her name - who at the time was in charge of cultural development in Santa Monica. They had generated a really powerful branding campaign for the city, and some stellar programs like the GLOW show. Santa Monica was touting itself as the most creative city per capita in the USA. During one of our classes with her, after listening to her present the data on how vibrantly creative Santa Monica was, I asked her how many artist studios were there. I think the first time I asked there two hundred and change. Over a couple years, that number would shrink substantially. There seemed to a big disconnect between the burgeoning creative population and the existence of the dedicated, actual architecture needed for art production. Santa Monica was really into creating a creative atmosphere, though. I guess I'm thinking about this a lot, after attending a panel discussion at CUNY's Graduate Center called the Politics of the Creative Economy and reading an article in the NY Times titled "Rising Rents Leave New York Artists Out in the Cold. Maybe I've been thinking about this for awhile. People are always talking about studios in Berlin. I think it's fairly easy to secure cheap studio space in Detroit. I built my own studio in Pecos, NM in 1989 or -90. It was 10' x 20' and cost about $800 to construct. Some friends came over to help me with the drywall and roof. I bought the beer. Maybe I should make a list of every studio I've ever occupied.

∞

[MTS #2004790451, 3/14/08, Claremont, CA 9:14AM]

A zoo is a place with a bunch of wild animals put on display in safely secured spectacles of artificial nature. Zoos fabricate non-threatening encounters with beasts as a form of entertainment. At a zoo, you can get pretty close to the non-human mammal, or reptile, or bird, or amphibian, or fish, or insect, minus the worry that the exotic creature will devour you or your children, sting you, maul you, spit on you, throw poop at you, whatever. A zoo is a wunderkammer populated with bodies of fur, fang, scales, wings and claw, not stuffed, but breathing, moving. Like a prison for animals who have committed no crime, except piquing human curiosity, zoos afford the person unused or afraid of nature on its own terms, to existentially grapple with a version of it on civilization's terms (which are not good for captive animals).

∞

[Resolve divergent characteristics, Paul! – MILO]

As you may have noticed, I not only consider artist tours bizarre. I think zoos are clearly oddities of civilization, particularly European and euro-affected civilization, which is responsible for the modern zoo concept. Morally, I think zoos are flat bad, and we should be rid of them. Do we know whether imprisoning animals for whatever purposes habituates us toward imprisonment, say, for people? Is it a slippery slope to butchery, cannibalism or torture? Consider also the hospitality factor. Does incarceration for zoo animals negate hospitality arrangements? Is this why, when a dopey kid falls into the lion’s den, they don’t eat him right away? Or does that happen just because the big cats are very well fed? Also, how do you configure the art school open studio phenom into this? In NYC, as the recent NYT article indicates, when bubble conditions are in effect, academic [BFA, MFA] hosted open studio weekends are feeding frenzy opportunity for speculative art investors and gallerists/brokers/agents, etc., on the prowl for the next big art star [nbas]. Is this scenario at all comparable to what happens at the South Orange Maplewood AST? …Just brainstorming here, on points of convergence, Milo!

1b
[Extract from digital recording (10-23-2012); recorded at Wyckoff-Starr; informal roundtable on TAZ, with Jez, Shane, Konstant, Atchu + Milo]

Yes, I do acknowledge that studio tours are an important tool in local art economies for building community, connecting artists with collectors, making artist life more transparent to non-artists, de-mystifying and democratizing the artist, and de-centralizing art markets that generally exist in urban environments, and so on. Many artists feel much empowered by the studio tour format. Hey, they must work! They're EVERYWHERE! Just ask the Google. Type in "artist studio tours USA" and check the results.

JEZ: Or they’ll check YOU, Lulz!

[CONT’D]

KONSTANT: I suppose what I find objectionable about studio tours is the dynamic that seems common amongst them, which I would characterize as dimensional. I came up at a time and in a scene (Santa Fe, mid-80s), when the studio visit was a serious matter. In some places, like New York City, it often still is. Whether the invitee were another artist, a gallerist, a collector, an art writer, or whatever, the elder artists I knew treated this particular sort of exchange ritualistically, with gravitas. It was a very different scenario than, say, bringing the crew back to the studio after the bar closed, so the party could continue, which was also cool, but, like I say, different. The studio tour mostly obliterates that tradition. Tours only last a few days, so it shouldn't be a big deal, right? Another thing: I am an artist who didn't invite ANYONE to come to studio to visit for the first twelve or thirteen years I was painting. I think I imagined the studio as something like the Bat Cave, or Ali Baba's cave, or some other kind of magical, quasi-dangerous cave, but not like Plato's. A hideout, a lab, an asylum - my studio was this and more. It was the generator, the percolator, the mad den where the alchemy was done. It was a special place, for letting everything hang out, where great dead artists appeared in dope-soaked visions to encourage you, in the middle of the night, as you sobbed over that grand new painting, which by morning would be only another failed, flawed attempt. Finally, I got this vision, after visiting a studio tour, maybe in Dixon, New Mexico, or maybe it was Galisteo's or Pojoaque's or Eldorado's or Madrid's. I saw this kid with her mom and dad, framed like a children's book, pointing at this disheveled, grizzly old vato painter, slouched, miserable, suffering through the indignity of it all, a cigarette in one hand, a paper cup with Tequila in the other, paint all over his clothes, soft hat brim hiding his red eyes. The kid says, "LOOK, MOMMY, THE ARTIST IS SMOKING!!!" The dude just groans.

ATCHU: I realize it's not like that.

SHANE: ~ For most artists… Can we look at the pictures you shot of the last few, Bushwick Open Studios again, Paul? I really want to see the one with the naked girl in the mask and wheelchair, with that nutty mirror-covered dude pushing her down the street. Didn’t he about run you down?

MILO: You won’t see that shit anywhere else.

[CONT’D]

PJM: (Back to Austin) At that time, my involvement in EAST took the form of an intervention, calling attention to the lack of press coverage for artists and art projects outside the nodes of UT-Austin, The Blanton (which is attached to UT-A), ArtHouse at the Jones Center and the Austin Art Museum (which merged in 2011 as AMOA-Arthouse, and in 2013 re-branded as The Contemporary Austin) and a few other art spaces and organizations. During the tour, I shut my studio door, posted photos and protest statements, etc., on the exterior, and refused attendees access. When a local arts reporter (Rachel Korper) drifted in with a crowd, we staged a photo-op that gave the impression I was berating the writer, while an angry mob cheered me on. The reality was a less rambunctious, coming across as not much more than artsy shenanigans. But our crew acted with discipline. It all happened pretty quick, impressively. Mulvany, the Irishman was perfect. Actually a “friendly;” Rachel kind of went with it in the moment, although she probably wasn’t pleased the next day, when the press blast appeared in her inbox (and the inboxes of Austin daily, weekly and monthly print editors), along with the candid photoset.

Anyway, the concept of "The Artist Zoo" was one of the derivatives of the intervention. The success of the direct action gave the alt.Austin movement some momentum. The subsequent collaborations were thereby invested with some agency and urgency. A stream of successful collective projects followed, like the successful art/exhibition + text collective Cantanker, which published until recently. The whole thing fed a number of other very positive developments in the blossoming Austin art scene, such as Co-Lab, which resonate through the present. Sometimes it just takes a dust mote shifting to start an avalanche.

For the 2014 Bushwick Open Studios Tour, I'm envisioning a new iteration of "The Artist's Zoo" [TAZ]. On my website [artforhumans dot com], in the AFH Projects section, I will be periodically posting progress reports on the production, concept ideas and art, models and other goodies. Really, I’m not entirely sure what it will look like, yet. My initial vision entailed staging a hyper- or parallel- or 4D alt.reality scenario and shooting it, then rear-projecting it on a screen at the Jefferson Street location, which would require removing or modifying the door. I also thought about constructing a 1/10 scale model, which would dovetail nicely with the Prop-Art production in the works for later this year. I have a vast database of studio documentation, dating to the early 90s, with a few shots of studios predating Santa Fe. The Statue of Liberty piece in process in the garage at my Beckley, West Virginia home, is a gem. I wish I had more images from Notre Dame. A lot of that has been lost over the years, trashed in transition, disappearing with dead digital drives and so on. Did it really even happen, if there’s not a photograph or video of it? The AFH Anarchives have been relatively assiduously maintained, with great attention paid to establishing a progressive history, a record, over time, from location to location, studio to studio, across the continent, around the globe, to Scotland and Switzerland, to Kauai… Turning fifty this month, I am reflective, searching the past for bits of information to assimilate into a big picture. There are questions. What if I had only had one studio all this time? I know a few artists with that kind of durational relationship with their studios. Only a few though. The laws and rules, the bad game of Property versus People, destroy that potential for almost everyone, including artists. It’s wasteful and stupid, and one big reason why artists in this regime tend to produce mediocre art. The problem is logistical, and the studio problem is a big part of it. In New York City, the worst solution is to rent from another artist. The landlord artist is a special breed of prisoner-guard/regime manager. I’m thinking of Django and Samuel Jackson’s character. Hey! Whatever you gotta do to get by!

∞

Let me just say, in my opinion, BOS2014 is the best I know of, all factors considered. The best in the world, right now. Can you believe it?! Arts in Bushwick is a terrific organization, and the attendees over the past few years I've participated in BOS have been remarkable, to say nothing (but good things) of the diverse and massive group of high-performing artists of every description who will be opening their doors to the world May 30th through June 1.

[1] Nothing can ever rob me of the certainty that what we have here is an existence that refuses to be conceptualized.

And a mortal existence, for from the moment that it has a name, its name survives it. It signs its potential disappearance. Mine also, and that disappearance, from this moment to that, fort/da [here/there, present/absent], is announced each time that, with or without nakedness, one of us leaves the room.”

(Jaques Derrida. The Animal That Therefore I Am. Edited by Marie-Louise Mallet. Translated by David Wills. New York: Fordham UP, 2008.)

"KILL YOUR SMART PHONE [KYSP]"

Actual phone, as described in the introductory prospectus for [KYSP] below (Photo: LULA

KILL YOUR SMART PHONE: A Cathartic 4D Action Art
By Paul McLean

SUMMARY DESCRIPTION: Liberating Oneself from Addiction to the Network and Some Aspects of Network Surveillance Programming, While Simultaneously Creating [Object]Art, Concept[Art]; or Performing Political/Economic Action - by Destroying One's Mobile Electronic Device

DISCLAIMER: THIS 4D ACTION ART, "KILL YOUR SMART PHONE," IS METHODOLOGICALLY AND PHENOMENOLOGICALLY VERIFIABLE AND REPEATABLE. YOU ARE NEITHER ENCOURAGED TO TRY THIS AT HOME, IF YOU BE SO INCLINED, NOR DISCOURAGED FROM DOING SO, IF YOU BE SO UN-INCLINED. HOWEVER, IF YOU CHOOSE TO ATTEMPT TO REPEAT THE DETAILED "KILL YOUR SMART PHONE" ACTION, THE ARTIST CANNOT GUARANTEE THAT THE [OBJECT]ART YOU CREATE THEREBY WILL BE AS GOOD AS HIS. AFTER ALL, HE IS A PROFESSIONAL ARTIST. BE ADVISED: THE ARTIST IN NO WAY ASSUMES RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY DAMAGES INCURRED BY ANYONE ATTEMPTING TO DUPLICATE THIS ARTWORK, INCLUDING LOSS OF DATA, MISSED CALLS, OR ANY OTHER CONSEQUENT INCONVENIENCES DUE TO PHONE/INTERNET SERVICE DISRUPTION AND/OR DEVICE-DEATH; INJURIES TO BYSTANDERS, OR ANY SECONDARY OR COLLATERAL DAMAGE TO OBJECTS OR PERSONS IN THE PATH OF THE HURLED PHONE OF AN UNSUPERVISED, FREE-WILLED RADICAL PRACTITIONER, IN THE OPERATION OF ATTEMPTING TO REPLICATE THE 4D ACTION ART HEREIN DESCRIBED.

NARRATIVE:
Tuesday, March 18, 2014

1) I hurled my Blackberry mobile phone against the steel door of my Bushwick loft. [I will explain why I did so in an appendix to this document, and through subsequent presentations on this project/artwork.]

2) When my wife later showed me the broken device, I noticed immediately that the screen had "frozen" beautifully [see attached photographs].

3) Being a professional artist, I realized that this act of violence (throwing the phone against the steel door) had unexpectedly created Art.

4) Being a trained (avocational) thinker, I realized that, simultaneous to the actualization of the [object]art, a conditional, contingent [concept]art emerged - or irrupted - from the performative action (throwing the phone against the steel door and consequently killing the device's utility, as a transmitter of messages),* and that this phenomenon deserved further investigation.

*...Even if the concept[art] appears as a kind of temporary product or asymmetrical solution derived through autonomous recursion or evaluation.

NOTATIONS:
1) A WOVENFORM/technical + theoretical thread connects "KILL YOUR SMART PHONE" to the SENDER-RECEIVER body of work (@2008-present).

2) The screen image [see attached photographs] initially generated by throwing the phone at the door eventually disappeared, and despite efforts to recover it, apparently is gone forever.

POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS AND SECONDARY ART PRODUCTION FOR "KYSP":
1) Digital still images for web
2) Digital still images for print
3) Digital animations
4) Analog sculptural work
5) Viral collective project
6) Multimedia exhibition
7) Oral presentation on the subject
8) Video presentation on the subject
9) Live presentation on the subject
10) Essay

Prop-Art

PROP-ART PROJECT #1
THE PROPERTY GALLERY
BY PAUL McLEAN

Cover Letter:

RE: Property
A Conceptual/Real 4D [Cultural Analysis] Project by Paul McLean

March 10, 2014

To Whom It May Concern:

Please let me know if you are interested in participating in the production, actualization and realization of “Property,” and in what capacity. The project, which is outlined on the following page, may potentially require such services as those a realtor, financier, architect, construction contractor, interior designer can provide. The project might also benefit from either institutional support or a private arts entity for the purposes of advocacy, consultation and/or validation.

Sincerely

∞

Paul McLean
Bushwick/Brooklyn/NYC, NY (USA)

“Property and democracy over time are incompatible.”

— Milo Santini

Property
A Conceptual/Real 4D [Cultural Analysis] Project
By Paul McLean

Summary:

The artist wishes to purchase a 6” x 6” section of Manhattan real estate, on which to site a gallery titled “Property” to house a 2” x 2” abstract painting titled “Free Speech,” to exist in perpetuity.

Questions:

Does the installation need to be established as a product of a foundation, or as a monument, or assigned some other kind of specialized designation, in order to satisfy ordinances, et cetera?
What special protections would said installation require (from elements, vandalism, et cetera?
Where should or could “Property” be located?

Notes:

The painting “Free Speech” should be housed in a miniature 4” x 4” “white cube”-style gallery.
The gallery should bear a sign that reads “PROPERTY.”
The interior and exterior of the gallery should be properly lighted.
A tiny wall text placard next to the painting should be mounted, bearing the following inscription:

   Title: “FREE SPEECH”
   Artist: DIM TIM
   Date: 2014
   Medium: Acrylic on Board (framed)
   Price: ø

Relevant precedents, references and/or citations [among many]: Claes Oldenburg, “The Store” (1961, NYC); Elmgreen and Dragset, “Prada Marfa “(2005); Louis Vuitton/Marc Jacobs with Takashi Murakami, “©Murakami” (2008), at the Geffen Contemporary MoCA

GFS: Moving Image [Eulogy]

Good Faith Space [ENDNOTES]

Good Faith Space: An Art of Disappearing

I. You can’t buy this.

Good Faith Space

· TIMELINE: Between May and December of 2012.

· NUMBER OF SHOWS, EVENTS, HAPPENINGS: @10 (maybe more)

· PARTICIPATING ARTISTS: @TWO DOZEN (maybe more)*

In all New York City, over that period, only Banksy may have outperformed GFS. Thank goodness he’s not really an artist, and a rich tourist to boot. At least he’s great and tells the truth.

I realize it’s stupid and inconclusive to make an assertion about what the 100,000 NYC artists were doing between May and December 2013, not to mention all the dead ones on display. Maybe I missed something. It’s entirely possible, since I barely visited Manhattan. When I was in the city, I stayed in Brooklyn. Who cares about Chelsea, anymore? The only shows I really regret skipping were the fall auctions. Not that they have anything at all to do with art. They’re just dog shows. Bet on the poodle, bet on the hound. The A-list art market is where gunrunners and other operators and those who use them go to practice their craft in the open. It’s murder and slaves and drugs and worldly power. The odor reaches all the way to Williamsburg.

I guess somewhere along the line, after you realize that all your calls, email, snail mail are hacked, that you’re being filmed as you move through the canyons of stone and steel, dodging idiots in every kind of murder machine, lunatics and addicts and homeless all around you, stench and garbage underfoot on the blood-soaked concrete, ancient tunnels and worn-out crap trains, underground, stuffed with potential TERRORIST victims, and below there the caverns and bones of slaves, and all the mediocre and cowardly ideas and reactions floated around and above you, and you look in the eyes of all those supposedly hardy New Yawkahs, and all they register is fear and fatigue and sickness and hate, you realize almost everybody doesn’t really give a shit anymore. It’s all about the next fix: …Buncha addicts, killin’ themselves and anything in the way for one big score, after which they plan on cashing in and turning tail, like the soon-to-be-ex-Mayor.

Oh, the cops are ready to rumble, for sure. The rich fucks (from all over the world) all walk around like they own the place. The mercenaries guard all the palace-hi-rise residential buildings and offices. You can feel it all over the island now. It’s been true from the get-go, but there have been many beautiful anomalies, along the way. The Big Apple is an Occupied Zone, a couple clicks just shy of all-out class warfare, and I mean a shooting war, a burning and breaking war. Sandy was a warning. People are starving, inches from living in the cold, unforgiving streets, or already there, and Bloomberg can’t wait to get out of town, praying no crazy person with a beef guns him down before he boards his private jet to paradise.

I personally don’t understand how any artist worth a damn, supposedly a visionary and hypersensitive and -conscious being, pretends to be a totally myopic shoulder shrugger. How do you carry on with technical improvements, or the social life, or theory creativity and whatnot in this End-of-the-World scenario we’re living through? I am so disappointed with the artists of NYC. After a lifetime of thinking they were all like those Ab-Ex guys at the Cedar Tavern, I realized they’re mostly punk-asses, careerists who first and foremost just want a steady income to pay the brutal landlords and eat out twelve times a week with pretty, smart, traveled, drug- & drink-addled sophists. Attention spans among the beleaguered creative class typically plot a range between PTSD and SIDS. I love asking people what they’re reading. On the L, 80 percent of riders with a smart phone, laptop or electronic tablet is lost in BAD music or playing games or both. The other 20 are sleeping, nodding out from hard stuff, panhandling or committing a more serious crime.

Everyone is “busy.” You hear it over and over. It’s the most common response from all NY artsies to “What’s up.” Almost none of them actually spend any time making anything. It’s a minimal production mentality and actuality. The subways don’t run half the time, the roads are clogged, and moving anything substantial from A to B is epic. Worse, all the old concepts, especially those shopworn Marxian critiques and deconstructions, have been hollowed out and used for car commercials. Foucault is like, “I know, I know, I know, man!” The costs of studios mean that trust fund babies, (high-pay) day-jobbers, students on loans and “media artists” working in advertising services or internet or photo shops or print businesses, real estate factories, whatever, are the ones who have the juicy spots. Everything is about tricks and finish. The signature style is hungover. Hacks abound, the grim do-it-over-and-over mutts who try to convince you that a REAL artist plays broken records until a new tube of paint changes everything. You can visit their galleries or studios every ten years and get déjà vu. The clever ones know this, and their work is about keeping you on your toes with tactical variations and dopey medium-hopping (yawn).

Why anyone pretends to give a shit about anything outside Bushwick (or even further out) is beyond me. Merit and risk aversion are roughly the same quality here. Getting a straight answer from any artsy is almost impossible. Jerry Saltz still terrifies and seduces the dummies. Most of the great art beat writers are gone, and that’s not just an NYC problem. They’ve been strangled and left to die by the media monopoly. Clearly there are loads of blogs, but those lies told the FCC and other regulators and bought by a cowed or apathetic public – that NEW MEDIA meant it was cool to give the 99% of the SPECTRUM to the Corporations – have murdered free public thought and the pros who used to referee-mediate the culture scrum. Ed Murrow? LOL. Finding any two people following the same thread is not impossible. They’re couples. Twitter provides the closest thing to a beret and smock hang IRT, but the 140 characters regime is the MRSA of discourse. Ryan Trecartin and Gaga are gods to the tweety-insta-face-people. They spend all their “spare” time hooking up via Tender and the other Goodbar sex apps. Plus, you never know who’s a plant.

The NY art world is a universe of constellations, dominated by the 1%, which is absolutely mediocre and obvious, spewing waste everywhere, hiding from any accountability, and referring to itself as great in the company of sycophants and similars. It’s a drag to realize you’re living in East Germany without a Wall to blame, and Dallas and Dynasty 24/7 on the fucking TV. But who are you gonna complain to, Mac? The Ecuadorians on the L? Nine out of ten professors are like pimp-beaten-ho’s. The biggest liars are all the jerks who cry in their beers, “Nobody coulda seen this comin’!”

You didn’t hear a word about Pearl Harbor on December 7 this year. American history is subsumed by regularly scheduled global corporate media. It only takes one generation to collectively forget. Call it the Sideways 8 effect. The past is a waving peeling memory behind us. The future is crashing in like a Tsunami. Now depends on you, on us. A few madmen feel entitled to own Now.

The whole game is about erasure. Before long, Bill Gates will be teaching kids in schools all over the world about how he and Warren Buffet cut down the Apple tree and got Steve Jobs to invent the 89-hour work week, which will free everyone from everywhere of malaria, so you can run a production line or operate a calculator by cell phone, which will reduce overpopulation. Lloyd Blankfein will be in the Cloud by then, with his god, working hard, being effective and productive with other people’s Judgment Day, in the service of Universal Global Capitalism and Ayn Rand, flying Billionaire rocketships to the diverse stars of destiny, leaving behind this cesspool once and for all.

If you stand in the center of GFS as I did, on its last day of existence, and spin, do a 360° turn, you’ll realize that’s what the art in that room is about. The buffalo, the eagle, the sacred geometry, lovers embracing, even the drone, whitewashed – an art of disappearing, as Baudrillard suggested. This is what NYC and the sick property regime it serves do to everyone and everything. It’s the art the city deserves, a blank art for cannibals, a non-art for the creative destructive schemers who thrive in its pestilence, an art for forgetting, an art with no future, in a room waiting for its next tenant, who’ll add another coat of paint, most likely, without a second thought.

1. Ghosts, shades of memory, memories

I am introducing this text about GFS, and the project, itself. I suppose we have this all backwards. Good Faith Space is over. We’re done. The finish coat of primer white paint will be applied and the keys to the room will be returned to Standard ToyKraft, our hosts.

Introductions ordinarily happen at the beginning of things. This is the end, my beautiful friend.

Today, Lauren is photographing the project space, making a short video and panorama. I remember when you would employ several cameras, lots of connecting wires, hard drives, software and computer power to gather and prepare the documentation for dispersion. She’s doing it all via iPhone. Progress!

Not that the End of GFS is absolutely truly happening. Virtually GFS will continue, in the web version of perpetuity, which means however long the domain housing the content about the project remains online. Additionally, the players are not ended by this iteration of GFS coming to a close. Quite the contrary – all of them to my knowledge are pursuing projects solo and collective here in the city and far afield. For examples, Joe Riley just mounted an exhibit at Cooper Union, and Clemens Poole + the Hippo crew will follow with their own soon. Shane just successfully presented new work, building on his shows during BOS2013 and at GFS, in Nashville at an up-and-coming art venue. The structure of collective movement is similar to the rock’n’roll model, with band projects toggling with individual ones. It’s a healthy rotation, one that produces technical and conceptual refinement, assimilation, and regeneration.

GFS will be more than a listing on the participating artists’ CVs. The Good Faith Spacers established a spiraling configuration of shared and personal arts in a humble commons, and the potential for GFS to pop up again as a new, improved version is there. Will it happen? Who knows! Time will tell.

2. The Orb self-propelled

Not to presume to be in his head, but I believe I comprehend much of what Paul McLean programmed into the matrix that is GFS. We’ve worked together now, since the early 90s, and I guess I have the gist of what he calls 4D art. GFS is in most respects a Fourth Dimensional production. Superficially, GFS exhibited a series of art shows, happenings, artist talks, performances and installations, like any other precarious alternative multidisciplinary, contemporary arts venue would, nowadays. That’s not the whole picture, though. As soon as you establish a 4D protocol to the programming, you have created a system that moves differently than a strictly linear series of events will.

3. Emptiness is form.

In its nominal interface, Good Faith Space determines the domain in which the practicum functions. GFS pronounces itself to be a moral enterprise from the outset. While the pre-figuration of the project accepts a condition of Spirit, in a Hegelian and post-Hegelian sphere, in a phenomenological paradigm, let’s say, GFS also nominates the secular aesthetic for its foundation. “Space” is the Void in the equation, and the topology toggles consequently in the interstices of finitude and infinity. I realize this particular feature bears more discussion, but for now let’s go with it.

4. Form is emptiness (empty).

The orientation therefore is fluid, and circular. In actuality, GFS existed in a box, or more truly, a box within a box within a box in a topology. White Cube praxis was utilized without attachment, since the architecture of the project could only abstractly adhere to the strictures of the lab methodology. Our project room consisted of almost-raw, rudely cut and mounted drywall, exposed brick and pipes, haphazardly installed doors, window, and a disintegrating plank ceiling. The lighting was industrial fluorescent, with a few clip lights. Wiring was marginal. The flooring was minimal. Thousands of rooms in New York City are better appointed for the purpose of art exhibition.

A sturdy plywood platform came with the space, suspended by chains and supported with bolts and nails to the adjoining brick wall. After initially wanting to remove the unfinished thing, Paul decided to keep it. It eventually became the Novad Library, then Wilson Novitzki’s art bookstore. Periodically, it was used to store supplies and functioned as an ersatz cloakroom.

Some of the GFS program occurred in the STK theater, which was in the process of being reconditioned during the run of GFS. The presentation and Q&A for Voyage of the Hippo, the Maintenance Series performance, the Novadic gathering for “Titles R {p}REFORMIST,” the Eric Leiser screening – all happened in the big middle room, which was reconfigured for each. The STK theater amounted to a satellite to GFS during those happenings, and over the production operated by modular rules in that capacity, more or less. In one instance – the Fall Festival Fundraiser (STK)/”Picture ‘IS” (GFS) – the two entities conjoined.

More didn’t happen than did at GFS. By that I mean to say that concepts for projects were more numerous than realized ones. It’s normal. In a 4D model, however, the conceptual and the real are in some respects not differentiated as divisible. Or, to put it another way, qualitatively, the virtual and actual are not distinguishable in terms of value to the undertaking overall. For example, Paul wanted to do a number of shoots, performances and shows at GFS and in the theater that didn’t get done. I’m fairly certain, based on some conversations we had, that he essentially carried on the actual program while behaving as if the virtual one existed. In his imagination, he “sees” the virtual program elements as ghosts or apparitions in the space. Weird, right?

II. In fact, someone did buy it.

Although Lauren and Paul covered most of the project costs out-of-pocket, GFS received substantial contributions towards operational expenses. Early on, Kellogg LLC provided for rents and purchased a portfolio of Novitzki photos. Egogradients provided initial rent support. Individual artworks and zines were sold during exhibitions and commissioned, too. Guests paid entry fees for performances. The general economic architecture for provisioning GFS was rooted in the gift, co-op and free exchange formats. There were exploratory gestures at non-profit status,† and the default was for-profit (there were no GFS profits). The principles possessed an understanding of innovative or hybrid frameworks that might have emerged for GFS, if the program had been longer in duration. GFS probably will continue in some capacity as an online business, although what shape that might take is still an open question.

1. ONE

Let’s cut the bullshit. Good Faith Space has almost nothing at all to do with money. It’s one and only reason is great art. Sure, a critic might not find greatness in anything that happened there. Wait a second. Almost none of those exist, anymore. Which raises a question. What does an artist do, when art is lost? Well, GFS is one answer.

2. TWO

It’s possible to reverse engineer a machine, and impossible to reverse engineer time-based meaning without creating new reality or realities. Mapping a journey through a topology hardly constitutes a full rendering of the travelers’ experiences. Perception is measured in terms of endlessness, and value is codified through scarcity. Paul was searching for common ground. To summarize: the Art for Humans crew founded a commonwealth at 722 Metropolitan in Brooklyn – it’s what they do. Why? I could insert here in brackets [Dimensional Time] and repeat Paul’s thesis TIME IS THE ONLY OBJECT. EVERYTHING ELSE IS SUBJECT. I can remind the reader that he is pursuing a doctorate with the European Graduate School, and suggest that he has been dropping hints and leaving clues throughout the process of becoming a doctor of media philosophy, as to the nature of his struggle/mission/task (which is how I gather he perceives his action, cumulatively). Note the geometry. Shane did, and he manifested a new iconography, sharing it with us in several iterations, under the auspices of the Society for the Prevention of Creative Obsolescence. Linking GFS to Gramatica Parda at ANDLAB, “A New Dimension” as The Silver Shed, the installation in Saas-Fee, AFH Studio BK, Occupennial/Occupy with Art, The Spatial Occupation at Hyperallergic, Occupational Art School (at Co-Lab in Austin and Bat Haus in Bushwick), the Novad End of the World and Interstitial zine projects, “Dim Tim: Fallacies of Hope” at SLAG, Code Duello at chanorth and the texts composed during from 2008 or so through this one, to Good Faith Space is a monumental undertaking. I won’t even attempt it. It’s beyond me. I have my own garden to tend, and the weather is all wrong.

3. THREE

Is the good Dr. McLean designing an updated navigational tool, a modern Antikythera mechanism, or employing Metatron’s Cube for 21st century applications? Ask him. In the meantime, you can catalog the crimson chalk lines. You can deconstruct the arrangement of artworks in their four quadrants in GFS and deduce a critique or infer theory from the hand-painted signs. Superimposing the literal on the anti-property regime presented in the course of GFS operations will not yield a formulaic conclusion. The techne of GFS is not epistemological. A show title is a show title. A signature is a signature. Except when they’re not. Any associative binary you might discover or uncover will ultimately turn out to be incomplete, a fragment. I don’t know that Paul has a key to de-encrypt the code he is employing in his work, but if he does, he’s not saying, yet. Maybe the truth of GFS is unspeakable, which would explain why art is necessary, here. One thing is clear. GFS could not have occurred anywhere else, at any other time. Maybe that doesn’t matter, or is no big deal. I guess it depends on your perspective.

4. FOUR

In closing, I would add I’m quite fond of Paul’s portrait of Kittler, which was included in the SLAG exhibit. The painting is densely layered in meanings. The Kittler is a key to GFS, which is a portrait of Baudrillard, a loving one. The two (Paul & Jean) never met. I am wondering whether Paul found it easier to make art as homage to the thinker he knew, or the one whose traces are all he had to go on.

- Milo Santini

Santa Fe, NM

December 7th (Pearl Harbor Day), 2012

* It depends how you count. - Milo

† The political/free speech limitations on the NFP arts-org are flatly unacceptable, a none-too-subtle form of censorship that continues only through the permutations of powerful. They (e.g., the Koch brothers) manipulate the code with ease, generally speaking. - PJM

An Art of Disappearing

“There has to be an art of becoming visible as well as an art of disappearing.” – Jean Baudrillard

“Art is kept isolated and half visible. You can seldom see much of what is being done in New York or of what has been done. Art isn’t visible in normal circumstances. New York City doesn’t want it around.” – Donald Judd

4D is additive (N + 1). The following is from memory. Heidegger was correct about true time being 4 Dimensional.

White base. We start with charcoal drawings and a teaching-teachers exercise, framed as art play. A thin layer of white paint covers the first layer. I do a series of woven form paintings in black. The chalk lines are introduced. Next, we do a show of travel photos, tour photos, portraits, a continuation of DisciplineAriel. It is Wilson’s first exhibit. Jez is in a final phase before departure. He arrives with the Novad Library, and the ukulele. The presentation is laid out on a partial grid pattern. Fluorescent orange Sumi ink is applied. Isham Christie and Jez do a free radical thing, hanging a few prints and artworks. Jez is doing a dance around the artist inscription, testing himself as producer, comedian and other more hard-to-name Novad, anarchivist, gamer anti-roles. Some substantial folks from original OWS Arts and Culture come to the Christie/Bold celebration. This one is not just about art, for sure. That’s true more often than not, but by degree or theoretically the “Titles” show is a special type of gathering. We didn’t take any pictures. Dane’s exhibition follows. It’s a doozy. We took lots of pictures of that one. They tell the story. To this point, it’s everyone’s first show. Wilson and Andrew perform in the STK theatre. I’m forgetting the stages of covering the woven form paintings. One of the wf paintings, after a little Photoshop-aided refinement, becomes the GFS logo. Hahaha. Voyage of the Hippo next (white-ish orange walls). Then Shane’s show and Eric’s screening, followed by Picture ‘IS. At this point in the sequence, Shane is fulfilling the programmatic tasks of lead artist, demonstrating the methodology and providing data vis for the space. This is evidenced in his 4D geometric wall painting bridging his solo and the group show (featuring surf guru/artist Ambrose Curry, Dane, Wilson, Shane, [ME], and newcomers Ashley, Jakey, John and Timur. Over several months Lauren built the web site, gathered content and populated site sections, and performed the final documentation session, after I applied two or three coats of Guerra Paint white base. It was a beautiful moment: spinning in the middle of the room, thinking of Robert Ryman, and 1000 other things. Quite a run. It was worth dreaming at the End of the World.

I’ll share some of what streamed through in that reverie, some of which is technical. First of all, we can situate the expositions and interventions that AFH/GFS hosted and/or produced autonomously, in relation to the programmed 4D art project that unfolded on the production timeline. I had conversations with most of the artists about the wall treatments, the quadrants, the grid, etc. Those, like Dane and Shane, who painted directly on the exposed surfaces of the room, were engaged in the conversation at more depth, since the ghosts of their images remained visible after their respective shows closed. Our first action at GFS was a presentation on 4D followed by a free wall drawing session (ecogradients). The “educational” component of the practicum was primary and carries through the program. For some of the GFS artists, these were their first exhibits. The “local” in the concept wasn’t Williamsburg, Brooklyn or NYC in general. It was Bushwick. So, the project room location was problematic, or subtly dislocated. Anytime a project has a web-based feature (glocal), the project’s “local” is a function of the network and has a different set of rules, contrary to a strictly brick-and-mortar operation. We – especially for Dane’s exhibit – discussed the virtual evidence of GFS in terms of the virtual visitor to the “space” and the perception of that visitor of us in terms of modified or non-actual versions of ourselves. Documentation is not just a response to the presentation in our case. The phenomenology is far more complex. Our gear for documentation was inconsistent, compared to AFHGC or OAS/Co-Lab. Project discipline in documenting on the sequential timeline therefore was also inconsistent. So, we operated with a programmatic tension, a disparity between the experiential [IRL] and the experiential [virtual]. I would argue that the GFS program aesthetic accounts for the economies of praxis as a function of maintenance, not consistency. Professional standards or management discipline did not override pragmatism as a symptom of the circumstantial at GFS. In short, we were true to Bushwick, not Manhattan, in the NYC art market topology. Furthermore, we did our best to adhere to each other as artists within the production, not some to quasi-virtual or norm-biased critic’s programmatic indications for quality presentation (best practices, LOL). The GFS prioritization protocol was a vestigial hierarchy. The conceptual architecture was neither limited by the horizontal or vertical (as a schematic), nor enslaved to the impetus of command. Drawing on the lessons of the Regional Standard Arts Project (Santa Fe, 1992-3), maybe even starting where it left off, GFS brokered a truce between “professional” expectations and expedient tactical moves by Dark Matter artists. Our approach is a refutation of what is called loosely “emerging” in the art critical discourse and marketing materials. Fortunately, the “disagreeable”π conditions for artists working in NYC over past decades, now centuries, justifies most of our decisions on the basis of realism. It is nice to be in an historical environment that acknowledges that great work occasionally happens now in spite of systemic opposition to it. The anecdotes available for expansion on that remark are plentiful. I can share about the $4 million rat turds in the de Kooning now hanging in a Beverly Hills mansion, painted in a Manhattan cold-water flat, if anyone’s interested. The punch line is: “They speak to the authenticity” (a Getty conservator)… GFS was Old School “authentic.” For 4D purposes, however, “authenticity” is only one layer. Another is artificiality, and GFS hardly exhibits any of that, except in its virtual iteration, and even there it is minimized.

One feature of 4D production in the collective aspect is the appearance of the unresolved concept, which does not materialize. Calling such instances “failure” is incorrect. It’s a falsity that derives from misinterpreted Hegelian phenomenology (concept to object/destiny or linear pre-determination driven by force of mind in its command modality) and organizational principles. GFS was not solely focused on outcomes or output. Realization is more holistic and catholic (universal – all-directional-at-once) in our method. Apart from and/or in conjunction with art (object-making), Realization has a spiritual meaning, as well. For example, what if we decide to map or track energy in a project? We will be operating in another domain, not one subsumed exclusively to estimations of time-based material expenditures and repetitive activity translated to serve a contrived tertiary exploitation regime (like money), which is to say as labor. The premise “art for art’s sake” is not sufficient either. We are free to embrace art not as an alternative, but on its own terms. That’s exactly when art shifts into 4D. That’s exactly when art assumes the vestments of the Dream, of Eros and Chronos, plus one Thing - ART. [The remainder of this text is not included in the preview. –Milo]

∞

COMMENTARY

By Dim Tim

Every society gets the art and artists it deserves.° NYC deserves Jeff Koons. You elected Bloomberg THREE TIMES! …HOORAH… Now. The owner regime is defeated by GFS. Happens all the time, actually, but every once in a while the victory is more than nominal, and ripples through the conflict, shifting it, unsettling decided-upon outcomes. Or does it? GFS is a 4D painting. It is a collaboration – Paul’s first, he thinks, except for one painting he and a cowboy made in Pecos a long time ago. Wonder whatever happened to it? Probably painted over, just another layer. At GFS, you can still see the marks of all the stages, even in the end. If you were to database all factors in the making of this painting, that task alone would be as complex and expensive as the treatment the caves of Lascaux are getting from the French. The equation is only soluble through employment of dimensional numbers. Structurally, the method is the same as Yayoi Kusama’s latest. Man. Those two universes are not the same. Art isn’t only math. Why make art where no one can see [IT]? Why point in the other direction, pushing attention over there, and not here? Why send the signal asymmetric to the irruption? Calculating sentience is not exact science. I get it, but America isn’t native to me. I’m virtual-native. America is disappearing, like an art. Forget Baudrillard.

∞

ENDNOTE:

[Baudrillard, Fatal Strategies]

I think that there’s an essence of the dream, as of all things, that is to say, an ideal figure whose illusive power has been stolen from us by psychoanalysis. I think there’s a form of appearance, an ideal figure of appearance whose power of illusion has been ravished from us by interpretation.

(Pages 142, -3, -4)

π Judd.

° Paraphrasing Lascussagne. - Milo

Picture 'IS

GOOD FAITH SPACE PRESENTS "Picture 'IS" AT STANDARD TOYKRAFT

PRESS RELEASE

[For immediate release in all media.]

Art for Humans [AFH] is proud to present "Picture 'IS," a group show for small format art at Good Faith Space [GFS], Saturday, November 23, 2013, at 6PM, in conjunction with Standard ToyKraft's Fall Festival Fundraiser. Good Faith Space is located at 722 Metropolitan in Williamsburg/Brooklyn, on the 3rd Floor, at Standard ToyKraft.

"Picture 'IS" will feature photos, prints, paintings, graphics and sculpture by GFS collective artists who exhibited in 2013, including Wilson Novitzki, Shane Kennedy and Dane Rex, as well as some of the artists who will be exhibiting in the GFS project room in 2014, including Jakey Begin, Sebastian Gladstone and Ambrose Curry, III. The full roster of "Picture 'IS" artists will be announced on the GFS website, via e-vites and event sites online.

BY SUBWAY: L Train to Graham Avenue, G to Lorimer Street

CONTACT: AFH/GFS Lead Artist Paul McLean [artforhumans@gmail.com or (c)615.491.7285] or GFS Director Lauren Guardalabene McLean [lguardalabene@hotmail.com or (c)916.206.6564]

URL: www.goodfaithspace.com

∞

ABOUT GOOD FAITH SPACE

GOOD FAITH SPACE [GFS] currently inhabits the Project Room of Standard ToyKraft in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NYC. The mission of GFS is to platform Dimensionist Art projects and multidisciplinary collaborations by accomplished and emerging creative practitioners, and to serve as a nexus for 4D discourse in NYC. Paul McLean is lead artist of GFS. Lauren Guardalabene McLean is director of GFS. Core GFS Collective artists include Wilson Novitzki, Shane Kennedy and Dane Rex. GFS is sponsored by Kellogg LTD.

Above: Photos by Jakey Begin

Some images from øKtuber

øKtuber weekend was awesome. Thanks to all who participated and attended.

"Something about Encryption..." [iPano by SK]