Dead Dash Snow

Dash Snow overdosed last night. Another artist dead too early at the age of 27. I wasn't a fan of his work, though I find any larger-than-life persona interesting as a cultural phenomenon, like pop music or fast food fads or clothing trends- the gritty child of Warhol's shadow.Mr. Snow's personality eclipsed his work, and that may very well have been the point. I imagine he knew the risks and accepted their possibilities...

A somewhat relevant scene, from the film HAPPINESS, regarding the excesses of the human condition and their effects (the real tragedy...):

nowhere, everywhere...

This is Nowhere, on view now at the Hollywood Art & Culture Center.
Reception is on the 12th.
Going? You should...

this is nowhere (december 1st)

2 weeks until the show opens.

roman signer on the brain

july and it's hot

This image is incredible. I'm not sure the distance from the explosion that it's shot from, nor the altitude of its top (10thousand to15thousandfeet?).

Sabre-rattlers out there take note, and be wary of your war mongering.

I just began reading Kevin Brockmeier's new collection of short fiction, The View From the Seventh Layer. After Things That Fall From The Sky, and A Brief History of the Dead I've developed a real appetite for his work.

In an effort to save cash, more frequent trips to the Library have temporarily added these books to the coffee table:

1)Phaidon's SCULPTURE TODAY

2)The Architectural Unconscious (James Casabere + Glen Seator)

3)The New Urban Landscape , edited by Richard Martin

4)PAUL McCarthy, published by the New Museum of Contemporary Art , NY

a great list...I'm suddenly very interested in James Casabere's photographed miniature spaces, especially the flooded ones. I'll have to look for an image to post here.

from the wit of the staircase

So here I am, in the middle way, having had

twenty years -

Twenty years largely wasted, the years of

l'entre deux guerres -

Trying to use words, and every attempt

Is a wholly new start, and a different kind

of failure

Because one has only learnt to get the better

of words

For the thing one no longer has to say, or

the way in which

One is no longer disposed to say it. And so

each venture

Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,

With shabby equipment always deteriorating

In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,

Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what

there is to conquer

By strength and submission, has already

been discovered

Once or twice, or several times, by men whom

one cannot hope

To emulate - but there is no competition -

There is only the fight to recover

what has been lost

And found and lost again and again: and now,

under conditionsThat seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither

gain nor loss.

For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not

our business.

--T. S. Eliot

East Coker

Four Quartets

(more) Minor Transgressions....

We saw Michel Gondry's new film last night, Be Kind Rewind. A lite comedy about two videostore goofs who ,after filming short and glib low-budge remakes of well-known movies , reclaim their town's past and in turn their own. Propoganda for relational aesthetics, and a democratization of the art making process, the film insists - as does so much of community based art - that there is redemtion through art, and that feel-good conclusions are an inherent product of these all-inclusive formats. Gondry's film falls subject to the fluff that dooms so many egalitarian / community participation based projects: It is overly sentimental and sappy.
Despite moments of genuinely funny moments, it wasn't Gondry's best.

And, a last word on relational aesthetics. I just don't buy so much of this kind of work that seeks to branch out and include "everyone", that seeks individual epiphany and growth via communal experience. Harrell Fletcher, Miranda July, and all others alike, I don't buy it. Their comes across as genuinely insincere and, frankly, lazy. I'll admit that the organizational abilities of these and like-minded artists is applause worthy, but their works (and i realze i'm generalizing here..) tend to leave me feeling empty, uninspired, bored.

and to combat said boredom, I give you the above....