What is an Image (CR)

What is an image? 

You know that excited feeling when you notice a typo in a book? That's an image. When you notice something weird in a photograph or drawing, and then you can't unsee it? That's an image. When your cookie breaks halfway between the bag and your mouth? That's an image. When you write down a word you're saying, rather than the one you intended to write down? That's an image. When you say a word too many times that it stops making sense? That's an image.

There is one fine moment right before ever realization. The thought is in limbo, between your eyes and the space, between your brain and your skull. An image lies there (in my humble opinion). Anything is am image, everything is an image, nothing is an image. You can't hold on to that moment, you can't even recognize that moment. But now that I you can't do it, I bet everyone will try anyway.

This is a Forgery (CR)

I've always been interested in Native American culture, so a few years ago I took a class on Native American art and artistic practices. This specific piece is a rug, a traditional Navajo flat-weaving from the 60's on show in the Denver Art Museum Collection. I'm so enthralled by the patterns on these pieces, and this is only one of thousands of examples. These pieces hold a really strong spiritual existence, as well as an artistic manifestation. Thus, a reproduction would skew the importance of the piece itself: first, I wouldn't be spiritually connected to the weaving, as the Dineh people that traditionally weave these pieces would be. Second, the artistic practice of weaving the rug would be artificial. The means of weaving are passed down through generations in a tribe, and I would thus externally receive knowledge about the practice, creating an insincere experience of creation in comparison to the original.

I've also read a lot of literature about appropriation of Native American culture. Especially in the 60's and 70's, with the New Age movement came a large influx of commercial objects with Native American symbols and themes attached to them. I've read numerous accounts of Native American reaction to this, and feel strongly against it. It turns a deeply rooted spiritual culture into a commodity for consumption, which is really devastating to me. Granted there are a number of tribes across the country that hold open ceremonies solely for tourist income. However, I'm just ver sensitive to the idea of taking cultural and spiritual symbolism and art objects and turning them into artificial objects only for consumption. With this in mind, if I ever were to go through and create a forgery of this piece, I wouldn't sell it, but rather keep it for my own personal reflection and/or use.

MANIFESTO 2012

To follow are 139 statements towards a working Manifesto by the members of Eye & Idea 2012.

PAY ATTENTION MOTHERFUCKERS

1. Curiosity is my inspiration. The class is the reason I took this class.
2. My work is about the suspense that comes with the loss of balance, and the resulting tales that come with the process of regaining equilibrium.
3. Balance is:
4. …About things in moderation.
5. …Things in various perspectives.
6. …Expensive Jordans and an unassuming gait on Erie Ave.
7. …Understanding nature, yet avoiding animals.
8. …Using both experience and knowledge to inform lines.
9. …Knowing when to hang it up.
10. Art is for the birds, flamboyant types, but I couldn’t stand to let it go, the craft, the gaggle, so they kept flappin’ until I ended up in Manhattan where all of the artists live.
11. Was it better the way it used to be,
12. When we could all speak telepathically,
13. With no need for science, religion, or math,
14. Because we knew everything, and knew not to ask?
15. «We are circling around in the night and are devoured by fire » : I have no time, I have no more time, I am the burn, and I am elsewhere. We do not have enough of one life to taste what this entire universe harbors, every opportunity must be ceased.
16. get it out of your head
17. look
18. digest
19. execute
20. mock
21. be kind
22. primal
23. artificial
24. mislead
25. misunderstand
26. misrepresent
27. not always a wall
28. multiple
29. Everyone interprets truth differently.
30. Believe in something.
31. Love someone.
32. Love something.
33. Eat healthy.
34. There are people who manipulate. Avoid these people.
35. Treat people with respect.
36. Everything ok?
37. Hey, are you back yet?
38. What’s up?
39. Are you alive?
40. What do you want to do?
41. What’s going on?
42. Where are you?
43. What do you mean, “I’m not sure?”
44. Why?
45. What is your reasoning?
46. What’re you doing tonight?
47. What the FUCK?
48. Where are you?
49. What do you want out of this?
50. Pay attention
51. Frustration is an opportunity
52. Become a ninja
53. Be ruthless about your intentions
54. Embarrass yourself
55. Wax
56. Notice what keeps you up at night
57. Appropriate the accident for your own intention
58. emancipation
59. alien
60. memory
61. mythology
62. Are you doing art work to satisfy yourself or please others?
63. One day, I’m angry at the world and decide to do whatever pleases me, weird, exotic, odd, and random.
64. Strangers pass by, cold, numb, without looking at me, without answering any questions, until I finally find out that word, that password, for any reaction----Pick a random one, say “I love you”, say “Je t’aime”, say “Te amo”.
65. Open the third door, I fell into the gap between times and places, a journey begins, different scenes are altering in front of me, until I catch the real one, the concrete one, something not an illusion.
66. Feel it.
67. I WANT TO MAKE THE KIND OF ART I WANT TO INHABIT. I WANT TO STOP STUMBLING OVER CONCEPTS I WANT TO MAKE A SPACE FOR CONCEPTS TO BREED AND MULTIPLY AND DISSOLVE.
68. I WANT TO MAKE ART TO GET STUCK IN. I WANT TO STICK YOU.
69. I WANT YOU FORGET I WAS EVER THERE AND GET LOST IN YOURSELF. I WANT YOU TO PUT YOUR EAR TO STONE & OPEN YOUR HEART TO THE SKY EXCEPT NOT AS ANNOYING.
70. Language is death. Art points beyond itself.
71. THAT BLIND FARMER ONCE TOLD SKI THAT CHORE BIGGEST CRIME STUCK
A RAISIN IN THE SHADE MY BRAVE LIT TIL ENGINE [TH] AT COULD [STOP] THE PARTY UP HIS RALLY [ING] HAND EDUCATION
TO FRUITION ON MY PARTION BE TWEENS LIKE TO SUCKLE AND CU DDLEPUDDLEPU BURP SNEEZE NO
72. The history of the present institution is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these artistic minds. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. The Academy has refused enough freedom, the most wholesome and necessary for the artistic good.
73. Her Majesty
74. Trying to Not fall off of the back of bicycles..
75. This: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2OdPDEG6aQ
76. Also This: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHf7TD4qwjk
77. Also This: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELxeSadruMI
78. Being Hilarious
79. Being Super F*cking Hilarious
80. Being Quiet. Chocolate Jesus. The Jerk. "You mean I'm gonna stay this color"
81. ONE LINERS
82. Everything about this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI8NuFAETMQ
83. It takes courage to follow one’s intuition and creativity but the rewards tend to be great. I like the sense of experimentation and collaboration in art. You can try something and fail or succeed, and look at the work of someone who had the same idea, and what they did with it: you’re never alone in your explorations.
84. Just need to learn to see it.
85. Photos - camera is eye.
86. No significant alterations though. (Where is the line drawn? Is there one?)
87. We all see things differently anyway. Who’s to say someone doesn’t already see it that way?
88. Closeups.
89. Me. For me.
90. Not creating - altering.
91. an event that is different from real life makes you think about "real life"
92. the opening as a performance, the exhibition is its afterlife and the objects are the artifacts
93. artist as producer, organizer, catalyst of object-making environment
94. MAKE 1 GOOD PAINTING
95. The object carries the story of how it was made but it is also beautiful, it can travel independently. The value of how it came to be is now inextricable from an object. So the object is a story.
96. the audience came freely but now they are trapped
97. CHOICE
98. lead me by the hand, spoon-feed it to me
99. "Trooping into her apartment as individuals, her subjects nonetheless left behind likenesses that formed groups along its walls and ultimately a crowd"
100. and then THAT happened
101. The way that you show it relates to the initial experience: if you were there, you know. if not you're still cool
102. אותי זה מעניין אז אותך זה יעניין
לא -- רק אותי זה מעניין. ואם אני רוצה שזה יעניין אותך אני צריכה לעניין אותך
103. Debris/piles of stuff/leftovers
104. Thigh Masters
105. Consumer Culture
106. Fabio, spokesman for fake butter
107. Reality TV
108. Disposable pop culture
109. Contradiction
110. Sweating to the Oldies
111. Amish livestock auctions
112. Interchanging Vowel Sounds
113. Whoever designs the packaging for generic laundry detergent
114. Plastic Surgery=New Media
115. Departures without arrivals
116. Unreal/ uncomfortable/ untrue
117. Eye sore
118. Eyeball
119. Delineate conditions of the seen
120. Absent arrivals
121. Looking and seeing
122. Modes of seeing
123. Is color that important?
124. Non-color dreams:
125. The continuous life span of found objects: object-hood
126. Found identity
127. Sexuality in excess
128. To Do / To Don’t Do:
129. Overanalyze
130. Overreact
131. Be stubborn
132. It’s not my fault
133. Learn to drive
134. Repeat mistakes
135. Be pissed
136. Forgive
137. Judge
138. Read literature
139. Let it go

Interior/Exterior (CR)

Political Image (CR)

Prompt 4: Change your world (CR)

Words pour past your lips like sand.

Slits in the weights that tether your

Hot air balloon spirit to the cold ground.



Can't you feel my steel bones?

Bathe them in the river.

Set them out to dry.



Sand at my feet. Sand in your pockets. Sand in my arms.

Sand in my feet. Sand is my feet. I like sand.

My wet newborn child body covered in a layer

Of beige sand and mud.

Screaming out a question song.

Writing the answer song, screaming the answer song

To the space between my skull and my brain.



When do you know?

When did you know?

When did I think?

When do we think?



My bones rusted in the lag time.

CR: There is Nothing to See So We Look

RealEyes
"There's nothing to see so we look."
The other day, I wrote down the time at which I came to some sort of realization. Some with my girlfriend, some with myself, some with the homeless man sitting across from me on the F train. I've been thinking about this quote a lot, and I've been thinking about ways that we see without necessarily "seeing." Realizations are sometimes described as eye-openers, and I think recording times of day that you come to these sort of conclusions or understandings is a really beautiful way to interpret this phrase. Also, I thought it was a really genuine experience to write it down so delicately on the back of an old Book Culture receipt in my pocket. Receipts seem so worthless sometimes; we always get them and never save them and throw them out or use them as paper to spit gum into. But at the same time, it's a record of something. A way to remember some kind of formal transaction. In my mind, realizations can also be formal transactions of understanding, so pairing the material receipt with my writing was really interesting for me to explore.

At the top, I wrote my "song of the day." Everyday I have a song that seems to really resonate with me, and that day it just happened to be a song by Tegan and Sara. The main chorus is "I wouldn't like me if I met me. You wouldn't like me if you met me." Usually I write out the lyrics that stick out to me in my journal or keep in my pocket somewhere, and today I thought it was appropriate to include in my realization list.

What Happens? (CR)

Photo, c.1991

Shirt, c.2008

I don't remember what I wear everyday, but I remember certain things that I've worn. I think the idea of clothing as a medium for memory is something really beautiful and really confusing. If you asked me what I wore last Tuesday, I couldn't in a million years answer that. But if you pull a shirt from my closet, and ask me to tell you something that happened while I was wearing that shirt, I could probably come up with at least one memory. More commonly, if you pulled a photo from my family photo album, I can almost definitely tell you when and where that was taken, and any relevant circumstances to the time. This shirt is one that I still wear because I really like it, but I also have a lot of uncomfortable memories tied to it. The dichotomy between this and my baby picture, I think, is something that only really comes into consciousness when they're place in adjacency.

Also, I find this pairing striking in reference to the importance our outward presentation has on the way we're received. The baby picture is one of those classic infant shots; in a photo studio, sitting on a blanket, ridiculous but really funny wallpaper with clowns and rubber ducks and whatnot. This is the way I'm perceived as a child. This is the way my parents wanted me perceived. The shirt here has bleach stains on it, is often wrinkled, and isn't the most refined of materials. How do these compare as tools for memory and as platforms for our social presentation?

Prompt 1 (CR)

I actually have no background on this image. I have no idea where it's from, when it was made, or anything pertaining to the situation shown. But there's something about fooling conventions that really compels me. Our minds are trained to recognize certain images and distortions, that when something is off, it's interesting to see how we react. I actually prefer that I can't see the face of the guy in the blue coat on the left side of the image. I'd like to think he was un-phased, but imagine seeing that in real life; easier said than done. But this image is dark, but witty and kind of funny, but also a little disturbing. There's a beautiful contradiction between the top image and that moment of recognition, and the bottom image where that recognition becomes flipped upside down. It's just confusing and the library in the background is a nice backdrop, I think.