My studio journal is compromised of daily entries and photographs taken on my phone. I have edited and transcribed some of the entries together as to better organize my thoughts.
First day in the studio, taped up some drawings, painted blue and green “windows” on the three walls. I’m reading books written in the early 90s about the fin-de-seicle. This time period seems more pure to me because it lacks the infinite resources available to us now on the internet. I’m not nostalgic for a pre-internet world I just think people were really on to something and we lost touch with it. Why does looking backwards bring me a sense of shame? I feel a widening gap growing between me and my past selves.
Today I read criticism of Lasch’s Culture of Narcissism, a book that has been in my orbit for the last 2 years. Jan De Vos’ critique centralizes around his thesis on the modern man being a therapized subject, blind to cures yet treated one symptom at a time indefinitely. His main issue with Lasch is not the content of Lasch’s argument but his writings’ dependence on psychological terminology. I feel like I’m sorting through rubbish to find pearls. Since Foucault entered the scene, critical theory has been nothing but chewing fat. And that is when I remember why I like the early 90s. You could still be an expert in one thing back then. Now one needs to thoughtfully consider the whole.
Paglia, Camille. Sexual Personae : Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, Yale University Press, 1990. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/gla/detail.action?docID=3421116.
Had a minor crisis after attending a sound artist gig last night where the performers nutted a bunch of crap out of their expensive instruments. It was good though, to get so infuriated. That combined with a dull artist talk left me feeling spent and introspective. How can someone have such profound research origins yet some to make a bunch of dull and inaccessible art? An artist speaks about invasive plants. Her politics, like cleavage from a blouse, rear its ugly head. On a surface level, I see where you’re coming from. The concept behind the work felt cannibalistic.. to reorient our perception of alien/invasive plants.. to show them in a way that highlights their objective beauty and strangeness… is that not the initial reason for their invasiveness? Am I being cynical for thinking that not accounting for globalism is poor practice?
if I must I will embrace globalism with as much drama as humanly possible
![]()
On the 28th page of American Psycho, Patrick is watching the Patty Winters Show, his favorite morning program. The theme of today’s episode is Multiple Personality Disorder (now reffered to as Disacociative Identity Disorder, possibly the name was changed because of the illnesses’ eerie similarity with captialist consumer programming of identities as exchangable commondities)
“’Now who are you? ‘Well....’ The woman begins tiredly, as if she was sick of being asked this question, as if she had answered it over and over again and still no one believed it. ‘Well, this month I’m... Lambchop. Mostly... Lambchop.”
I am reminded of the disembodied breast of the Madonna, which artists learned to depict as a separate appendage to the mother of Christ. Unconditionally benevolent, in a way only a machine can be.
It feels strange because I want to BE a certain type of artist but it’s a different person from who is in me now and who is making the art now.
The Museum of Jurassic Technology at its heart, according to Wilson, is "a museum interested in presenting phenomena that other natural history museums are unwilling to present."
Weschler, Lawrence (1995). Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, And Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology. New York: Random House.
![]()
![]()
![]()
Had a minor crisis after attending a sound artist gig last night where the performers nutted a bunch of crap out of their expensive instruments. It was good though, to get so infuriated. That combined with a dull artist talk left me feeling spent and introspective. How can someone have such profound research origins yet some to make a bunch of dull and inaccessible art? An artist speaks about invasive plants. Her politics, like cleavage from a blouse, rear its ugly head. On a surface level, I see where you’re coming from. The concept behind the work felt cannibalistic.. to reorient our perception of alien/invasive plants.. to show them in a way that highlights their objective beauty and strangeness… is that not the initial reason for their invasiveness? Am I being cynical for thinking that not accounting for globalism is poor practice?
if I must I will embrace globalism with as much drama as humanly possible
On the 28th page of American Psycho, Patrick is watching the Patty Winters Show, his favorite morning program. The theme of today’s episode is Multiple Personality Disorder (now reffered to as Disacociative Identity Disorder, possibly the name was changed because of the illnesses’ eerie similarity with captialist consumer programming of identities as exchangable commondities)
“’Now who are you? ‘Well....’ The woman begins tiredly, as if she was sick of being asked this question, as if she had answered it over and over again and still no one believed it. ‘Well, this month I’m... Lambchop. Mostly... Lambchop.”
I am reminded of the disembodied breast of the Madonna, which artists learned to depict as a separate appendage to the mother of Christ. Unconditionally benevolent, in a way only a machine can be.
It feels strange because I want to BE a certain type of artist but it’s a different person from who is in me now and who is making the art now.
The Museum of Jurassic Technology at its heart, according to Wilson, is "a museum interested in presenting phenomena that other natural history museums are unwilling to present."
Weschler, Lawrence (1995). Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, And Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology. New York: Random House.
