Thursday, December 16, 2010
EyE CaNdY
there's so much for you to see.
only some of it will set you free.
...best one night stand you've had in a while.
you don't even have to stay long.
we certainly won't be making you breakfast.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
" i'm not ashamed if you're entertained. " :PosT AltPressExpo pOsT
*book, letterpress, assorted pills, subcutaneous syringe, resin
there's a hole in our soul that we fill with dope
and we're feeling fine
-m.m.
*book, metal capsules, glass syringe, assorted pills
a pill to make you numb
a pill to make you dumb
a pill to make you anybody else
-m.m.
*book, letterpress, novelty rounds
I read that book every page
And then I put it away
Said I don't think so
It makes slaves of all womankind
And corpses of the men
And I just don't know
-grinderman
cliche. pastiche. kitsch. one liners are worth it if they make you smile. lets not pretend we shouldn't all also be in the business of making a joke. delicious and nutritious.
"automatic charisma for your chemical mind."
no lightning, nada, nothin'. just a sore hand, numb finger tip, heaps of human sized gerbil bedding, a dull knife and a handful of narcotics. it's all for the show.
mostly...
over a thousand miles have passed. mounting the summit only to have to return to the bottom and start over again. when you push the rock long enough it should become easier to push. every day, your muscles become more defined and solid. your endurance builds. eventually, the stone begins to chip and wear. its surface becomes smooth from the unending friction of its own crushing weight..to grind the the stone instead.
in a matter of hours..cast once more amidst the gauntlet.
good ol' fashioned misguided gluttons.
at least someone helped jesus.
i'll be dragging my wooden stand alone for certain.
boys with bashed in eyes line the roads
but the longest walk was the one back home
-therapy?
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Love's unidentified pharmacology badge appears in local town...
* collagraph, photo-transfer on paper
on view at
The Black Triangle, Los Angeles.
aug. 7 - sep. 4.
Opening Reception: sat. aug. 7, 20:00.
five bone$. live noise. rude comments.
come be seduced, stay for the spectacle.
because life is just too damn short, and you might find yourself alone inside your psychotropic mind hunched over bitter and jaded, striking a forgotten pack of matches from a vegas hotel which hasn't existed since your grandparents were chain-smoking to the tune of keno, patriarch, and america
- too cold to cry.
sometimes the best way to discover if something exists is to injure it indefinitely.
the pain that cannot be bared will annihilate outright.
legend has it Oscar Wilde suffered the world a blow and killed what would otherwise have killed him.
if the proper amount of neurotransmitter careening it's way through plasma and cerebrospinal fluid is met, i will cease to be myself, or at least my expectations.
creeping its way forward through the synapses in your optic nerve, stalking you in old towns near the sound of railroad tracks. keeping you up late at night.
influence the mind and the body will follow.
as lungs dry in a heaving, tuberculous sigh - and so the host of draining struggle and illness dies from its own inherent cure.
when Freud was finished pounding open his third eye with the ludvodican hammer of cocaine the shade was drawn aside as old men relinquished themselves to the insanity of their logic. stories were told. numbers fudged. softly fingering the warm tissue of time and recollection, bemoaning the dripping past's longing for nostalgia. dreaming up a lie whispered through centuries of cytoplasm, waking upon the death of tradition's nihilism. even Bentham and Mill couldn't resist a good old fashioned longing of the earth.
one of the few things worth attempting.
especially in the desert of unreason.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Thursday, July 15, 2010
OpeN MiC NigHT...
*Etching, Photo-transfer on Paper
Open mic night. The Disparate spot light, the confession of what you wanted but weren’t. a platform for fuck-ups and preachers. the lonely, the bored, the self-important. hipsters and poseurs. washouts. i drop more than names. “you ain’t a has been if you never was.” dirtbags. water drinkers. scene kids. armchair philosophers. it’s like the undead say: if god does exist it never makes it to the stupid parties. heLLed up in traffic. Dying in an automobile like the rest of us. disappeared under the earth’s chapped lip
in the envious green-flash of a nihilist Western son. Hope Full, but hope less. i can only hope to be a wash-up, decaying in the sand. you can’t die if you never lived. you can’t live if you never die. after-lifes are for still-borns. you’re only more famous when you die if you can taint the air as you rot. anything is something if anyone notices. all was not for naught. vicarious a synonym of death. nothing’s depressing like karaoke.
no one smiled. and the crowd went mild...
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
L A Z Y...
*Temporary Installation. Parking Garage Elevators, CSUF
Ohi Rucecky Collective
"man ain't meant to work / come on build a machine" -Jane's Addiction
let's be honest.
if every person used their bones and atp like they could there would be an entire legion of lift operator, service crew, fabricator, engineer, architect, physical plant, turn screw, turn key, business, bureaucracy, genius out of work.
as society becomes more complex, the basic tenets of a human - human relation to others and the environment changes. cooperation becomes necessary only insofar as it is required to procure a more efficient, pragmatic, utilitarian, calculated hedonism. the close relations once relied upon are now a mere formality in regards to each individual's potential to murder their neighbor and make use of resources. this is heightened in situations of dense population. as survival becomes simpler, larger groupings of individuals create a "social"/"civil" rhizome from the primitive roving-pack seed. distance travel becomes possible. high density populaces call for more complex organization in order to maintain its present operational capacity without caving in.
as numbers increase, physical surface area becomes crucial. room necessary to accommodate the actual spacial volume which a larger population necessitates is directly related to its relative increase in demand on the physical resources necessary to sustain it. power becomes important and necessary as a means of gaining and maintaining control of resources necessary for existence. as technology advances, so does the ability to direct a population's biopower. this is necessary to ensure proper use of available resources in relation to the vast masses which surge against them in a constant vacuum of utilization.
as agrarian society grinds its last plow for the portions of the world which will morph into super power "civilizations," we no longer need to hunt the meat and gather the rest. we have the silicone chip, silicone flesh, modern logic, nuclear fission and apposable thumbs. "you said you wanted evolution / the ape was a great big hit."
the monkey. the man. then the gun.
an old man told me a story once:
with the advent of a less "primitive" warring state of existence, agrarian society ushered in a new era of human prosperity. tools are fashioned to till the earth and make it bountiful. soon, the industrial revolution allows for the mechanization of anything, allowing for more efficient work and machines like tractors. more leisure time now exists. naturally, this portion of solace will be exploited as another means of deriving from the individual. some nights at the end of the week, there's a small gathering at the town hall or some other central locale of the populace where food, music, some form of entertainment and socializing is present and encouraged. and some times, travelers pull into town with odd things not from those parts. and sometimes, there's a special bear that a ringleader has trained to stand on its hind legs and dance through positive reinforcement, behavior modification, and a ring through its septum.
eventually, technology allows humanity a means to procuring much more leisure time as well as a means to answer that void. eventually, crucial skills for the basic security of survival become diminished in a haze of trivial, vacant, expendable tasks and experiences provided to great masses as a means to tranquilization, control and a cognitive buffer against revolt. the dancing bear becomes any great superstar celebutant and the great public a slack-jawed, open-mouth breather scraping their substance from the planet only to hand it back to the man in the top hat holding the reigns. and periodically throughout the eons this carefully manicured machine grinds itself down, and those with the ability necessary to basic survival will be the great achievers for the world ahead. given the opportunity, a mammal has been known to stimulate its pleasure impulses to the point of self-destruction. and while there certainly is a sucker born every minute, an entertaining actor will still be a dancing bear with shit dried to its ass and a ring though its nose as the public gapes upward in amazement and throws coins at it.
rome wasn't burnt in a day, but it owned slaves like the breath drawn through the dust of existence it smashed, and also apparently murdered the world's hope for a creative hero taken too seriously in renovated shipping warehouses, households, beds, hearts, minds and weekdays off. if god came to earth, we told told it to get in line, have the i.d. ready, sign the form, get back in line, and then smashed its head in on the way to the parking lot because it invented the cure for cancer and no one cared about joe dimaggio or fiber optics. human blood is usually dripping from the sharpened finger clenched behind the back of its greatest achievements.
hunt, gather, hut, clan, village, burg, township, polis, city, county, metropolis, eat, sleep, procreate, war, control.
and for fuck's sake, take the goddamn stairs once in a while.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
A Sight for Power.
*Downtown Santa Ana Art Walk
Ohi Rucecky Collective Installation
our new installation featuring nothing shocking, upsetting, or offensive for any self respecting institutional square. do you still look up to your big brother?
*MaNifEsTO - Official Propaganda:
(Available in print and hand touched, for la escuela vieja.
Us PpD):
“the new methods of power whose operation is not ensured by right but by technique, not by law but by normalization, not by punishment but by control…”
-Michel Foucault
A Sight for Power is an exploration of the camera specifically employed as a mechanism for surveillance. Interactive, live, site-specific closed circuit video feeds feature appropriated footage containing situations of institutional power actively forcing itself upon the individual interspersed with that of routine social behavior. This dynamic of visual disparity between scenes of brutality and banal watching is indicative of surveillance's potential to be a site for power in the vein of knowledge production and information gathering commonly exploited by the institutional apparatus of the state.
By exposing and appropriating this means to control, it is our goal to re-direct the flow of power stemming from the use of surveillance by engaging in a critical unmasking of an apparatus typically utilized for coercion. We aim to question, subvert, and comment on the dominant use of the camera as an implied panopticon which silently enforces conduct and behavior based simply on the presence of its gaze.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Flesh and Bones...
*a first solo show! tell your mom and bring your sister if you can't handle it.
...Ladies und Gentlemen...drop your pissroom bait
And make sure you're not late, you tramps and lunatics.
Here's A trick that's gonna make you
Click.
-Marilyn Manson
*cyanotype on canvas
*chromogenic print
*chromogenic print
~MaNiFeSTo:
Working within the realms of image making and immersive installation, I have become increasingly interested in the notion that “objective” representation is one of the most pernicious myths to ever plague humanity’s understanding of the world. Initially, employed as the handmaiden of this ideology, the camera and its ensuing photographs ushered in an entirely new era of technocratic domination. This method of recording reality simultaneously serves to establish the fabricated reflection of a machine and is used to further legitimize an institutionally ordered world. The camera in this respect is not a neutral tool for documenting “truth,” but rather a panopticon which enforces a system of values founded upon the acceptance of its gaze. Controlling the images behind an idea is a means to reinforce its authority. I am deeply interested in exploring this potential for the image and art experience to exist as a discursive site for power utilized within the realms of knowledge production. I believe this power dynamic is irrevocably present at the heart of photographic production and reproduction. With the image as an arbiter of value, “the heavenly fire no longer strikes depraved cities, it is rather the lens which cuts through ordinary reality like a laser, putting it to death.”1
In my body of “environmental portraits,” I am seeking to address the existential crisis of subjectivity in relation to one’s personal understanding and connection with the Other. In each image, the Subject’s face is physically cropped out of the frame, isolating the body in a specific space. Without the ability to connect a complete facial identity to the person depicted, the viewer is instead forced to construct a persona based on body language, personal objects, and anything that one may glean from the mis-en-scene of the Subject’s domestic space. I am interested in investigating this sliding of the universe away from the individual in an attempt to probe the objectifying nature of another’s gaze at a Subject unable to return the look.
My “Flesh and Bones” series is a direct visual interfacing of both the external and internal structures of the body. In examining humanity’s tissue, these images serve as a simultaneous viewing of the exterior human visage in conjunction with the interior aesthetics of x-ray and endoscopic imaging. Immersed and often subsumed by the medical-visual codification of physical malady, the subject’s internal characteristics are laid bare and made public, forcing us into a confrontation with the intimate sliver of an unseen doppelganger. Operating within the visual lexicon, representation is an incision made by the Foucaultian blade of institution, which peels back the veneer of our external projections, literally cutting to the bone in its attempt to diagnose, prescribe, and control both creature and culture.
By subverting “the (modern) belief in vision as a privileged means of access to certainty and truth,” images may be constructed to challenge the viewer’s dominant perceptual paradigm.2 In this way we may realign, re-asses, re-conceptualize, and reflect on the manner in which we apprehend our reality, ourselves, and others.
1. Jean Baudrillard, qtd. in “The Crisis of the Real: Photography and Postmodernism,”
Andy Grundberg
2. Craig Owens, “The Discourse of Others: Feminists and Postmodernism”
Thursday, January 21, 2010
farm birds...
*stone lithograph on rile target
(on view at W. Keith and Janet Kellogg University Art Gallery
Cal Poly Pomona. mar. 18 - may 1.)
...she focuses on something...that's how she destroys it. intelligent?...oh, she's a nice girl...just not the sharpest razor to cut yourself with. ... let me keep your hands warm, she said as she closed her thighs. i'll do my best to do the same. ... Beautiful in Black...and you don't meat nice girls at the pub either.
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