rainy, thinky

The last week of this program rolled through all tornado-like. Now it's pouring rain outside as if an attempt to wash the past 6 weeks away. It's coming down in sheets and all i can think of is how much energy it takes to pump all the storm water out of the subway lines so it doesn't become completely immersed. Even though...maybe it would give it all a good cleaning?

Days like today, where it rains from sun up to sun down and through the night, make me want to sit in bed with a cup of coffee and think and think and think. I am already accused of thinking too much most of the time so it's no wonder i had to leave PA, where days like this happen on a weekly basis, for Arizona which can withhold a thought for a good 3 months sometimes.

In the last few weeks of the program, i switched into working mode and compiled a series of videos resulting from...let's call them "urban gestures" and a few erased drawings. If you're about to ask me if i'm aware of Rauschenberg and the erased De Kooning, i'll have to remind you that it's not the only time someone has ever erased anything (for example...here or here). I decided i need to start doing some shorter, simpler actions and projects that i could execute within a day or 2 (although the compilation of the documentation or results might take longer).

This is part of an effort to not get too bogged down in some gigantic project that takes over my life and gives me high anxiety. Anxiety and neuroticism is my long-time friend and i need to channel it into a faster start and finish before my head pops off by the age of 40. Maybe it's a result of picking up this Anxiety and Depression book by Scott King at the New Museum (the best book store), but i have become far too aware of my own neurotic behavior.

Friday, the chair of the department took us all on a 2-hour sailboat ride around NY harbour. I like boats. I want a boat. I was giddy with happiness. Then, the day rolled into our final potluck blowout party including David Ross playing Dylan songs on guitar, karaoke, European dance moments, lots of wine, videos, photos, balloon hats and getting kicked out of the building to continue the love at a local bar. A lot of drinking was had and...2 separate, unrelated sing alongs to "Country Roads"

It was literally one of the best days of my life. Everyone in this program is pretty amazing...loving, warm, smart, creative and fun people. I'm feeling pretty fucking lucky.

just going the way...

i'm just going the way the man tells me to go...

today i did a small project/action/walk. i started walking north for a half hour and only went the way the green lights told me to go. with this kind of structure to my navigation, i ended up redundantly crossing streets (i imagine some wind-up toy stuck walking between 2 points over and over again) but also taking routes i might not otherwise take while normally choosing the most direct path. i saw parts of the city i normally wouldn't see...a way to break up the routine with the structure of city-designed direction. where do the green lights WANT me to go?

here's just a few of the photos i took at intersections

the baby train

People here, in Park Slope, seem to aggressively have babies. I mean, they are everywhere, in single, double and even triple form. Today, i saw some woman pushing an unwieldy stroller carting 3 small people around. A man tried to hold the door open for her while she, exhausted and sweaty, attempted to squeeze the device through the narrow doorway.

I like babies. I smile at them. They give me something to look at on the subway that isn't a Budweiser advertisement or warning about bedbugs. HOWEVER, i find myself getting a little tired of the sheer number of babies that are being transported around Brooklyn.

On my first day here, i saw a young, fashionable guy who i immediately assumed was not the father, pushing 2 of them. I commented that he couldn't be the dad and must have been pushing prop babies around. Somehow, babies had become the new ornament, like a small dog or clever hat. Maybe babies could be rented by the hour or day. Instead of paying someone to babysit, you could make a fair dollar by renting yours out. Think of how well they'd begin to socialize! (children are like dogs, right? The more you expose them to people, the calmer they become around them?).

At first, it was a little bit of a curiosity, then an oddity and now an uncanny, bizarre reality which i live in. On my run to Prospect Park, i have to bob and weave around at least 500 large-tired, fully-equipped, bulky, annoying strollers.

An announcement to all...stop having so many fucking children.

sidetracked

i love 30th St Station in philadelphia. i've been to a lot of different train stations but every time i come back to this one, i always feel a little bit of awe. it just doesn't seem to get the appreciation it deserves.

today was a great day of reconnecting with all of my family down in philadelphia after not having seen them for 7 years or more. for my aunt's 70th birthday, over 50 people traversed from new york, new jersey and various places in eastern PA. burgers, red beet eggs, german potato salad, birch beer, ring bologna, Yuengling, sun, heat, hugs, yelling, noise, music, kids, a pool, coconut cake, pizzelles and chaos. i loved every minute of it and loved my aunt and uncle for bringing me out of new york to be there. ursos may be the best family ever.

now it's thundering and lightning here in brooklyn and i'm getting my head back into video editing and how to explain survival skills as a sensitive human being in a country not made for one...i'm sure it will all become clearer later on.

stuck stuckity stuck stuck

stuck. paralyzed...momentarily. first, the ideas are there and everything makes sense and then you find yourself eating Table Water Crackers and wondering why. they look so much like i imagine communion wafers looking like.

like trying to remember the pieces of a dream, putting together a cohesive idea keeps slipping away from me. maybe it's the lack of sleep, lack of time, too much personal pressure or too many Milano cookies.

these are the images of stuckness

no, i did not

i did not art this past weekend.

instead, i wandered onto a beach in a ukrainian populated part of brooklyn where people wearing headlamps caught crab in the dark. i stepped on dead fish, nearly walked into a giant spider and coated my feet in sticky sand. it was all part of a scheme to attend a clandestine art party re-enacted after a 5-year hiatus. the directions, received by phone after arriving in a remote parking lot, were too complex for me to remember and after walking a half mile without a sign of the next turn and walking into dark plants, my roommate and i decided to abort the mission. the aerial view of this stretch of beach put the supposed location of this party (i like to convince myself there were only maybe 5 people there, including the one guy i heard shouting "WOOO" in the background while i received directions) out on some remote arm by some remote lagoon under some random bridge. still...i went because i was looking for an adventure of sorts. it just turns out i wasn't as up for it as i thought i might have been.

i still somehow stayed up til sunrise and leaked into my sunday with a yankees game, a long, stuffy subway ride home and me, crawling into bed early.

non-art weekend succeeded.

here's your poetry, cracker

here's your poetry cracker

those were the days

what...happened since last friday? not sure...i think it's been a blur.

i arted myself a bit more by visiting the the Whitney (for free, bitches!) to see the Cory Arcangel show (he's speaking to our class on Thursday) and the Kevin Jerome Everson films. both, totally worth it. Arcangel uses pop imagery and contemporary culture (video games, youtube, sitcoms, photoshop) in a way that doesn't make me feel alienated like some video mashups do although it seemed some of his projects could work without ever being executed. just the idea of enlarging the photoshop gradients to museum proportions was enough to make me understand. but, my roommate liked their visual impact so it seems there's something for everyone. my favorite piece used youtube video clips of people playing heavy metal guitar to perform a classical guitar piece.

then, today i went to see The Kitchen's Soho Years exhibit and spent a good hour and a half reading all the posters, press releases and project descriptions and watching tons of video including performances by the Talking Heads, Bill T. Jones, Elizabeth Streb and video pieces by the great Dara Birnbaum and Bill Viola.

also, been reading a ton of Foucault to figure out some thoughts i'm having about power, authority and structure. then, today i picked up Derrida's Archive Fever. not entirely sure i understand what i'm reading but i'm hoping i'll absorb a bit just by being in proximity to the book.

on my walk over to The Kitchen today, i decided i needed to provide some more photos of this fine city while i'm here and carried my camera at my hip, taking shots in the direction of whatever i was looking at. i don't know why, but i'm kind of interested in removing any framing or control over the photos i'm taking lately. and at the end...a photo i took from my bed one night recently when the moon was shining in on me.

so much space

we were piled into a bus titled the "Golden Touch" and whisked away to Dia Beacon today. large scale artists galore, and many restrictions about photography which didn't exactly sway me. so, i attempted to keep my hip shots to the windows and lighting from above.

i came around the corner to find a huge Robert Smithson installation that literally made me gasp (maybe even a little yelp, as a witness will attest to) and make me feel pretty weak in the legs— a shiver ran over me. one of the other students started singing "hallelujah". a nice moment of convergence.

i layed on the floor for the Michael Heizer, crawled inside a Franz Erhard Walther piece with 5 others and attempted to not get too art-ed out by Smithson, Agnes Martin, Louise Bourgeois, Fred Sandback, Sol Lewitt, Judd, Ryman, Serra (him and his massive objects). if there was anything close to a temple being constructed to worship contemporary art, i think this must be it.

Then, off to Starn Studio. These twin brothers built this enormous, changing bamboo structure plus one that went on the rooftop of the Met and another in Venice for the Biennale. listening to these guys talk was like listening to one person who took requisite pauses for breath. if you closed your eyes, you wouldn't know there was 2 people there. we perched ourselves on their "living room" and tried to not fidget too much. and then i lost my lens cap.

and for all the fans out there, here's another photo of me looking either dissatisfied, angry, confused, hungry or constipated. outside, in the garden designed by Robert Irwin.

wave dreams, rosler, giddiness

Martha Rosler spoke with our class today. i got to ask if she always had her confidence with her work and ideas and if it ever made her lonely. her unapologetic self inspired me to get out of my studio, go run 4 miles, have a Yuengling and finish the night working at home. i ran into her in the bathroom and told her she was an inspiration (or was it another word? i'm terrible at remembering these details)...then i saw her laugh when i was telling someone else that i've had a lot of experience with men not liking it when i tell them no.

the night before i had a dream i was in a house near the beach and saw a giant wave crash in the distance. the crashed wave water rushed right up to where i stood. when i tried going the other direction, waves came at me from that side, too, but never covered or drowned me.

a few photos from the past few days.

a selection from my Efforts of Persistence photos

yes, i'm now one of those people who takes pictures of their food. but just look at how pink and fluffy they were. i joked that maybe they weren't actually food and the wait staff was just laughing at us dipping styrofoam into peanut sauce

an in-action shot while running in Prospect Park

edges of in betweens

took a walk into Gowanus yesterday. it was warm, humid and breezy. i heard some people say it was hot but as long as there's a breeze to blow across sweaty skin and keep me cool, i'm not complaining. the mere fact that i can walk outdoors in the middle of the day and not worry about my closest source of water or shade makes me appreciate it even more.

i had no idea what i was doing...i just needed to get out of the damn white walls of my studio. i couldn't find any in between spaces wherever i walked, so i filmed the spaces where the edges of the built met something else.

these videos are comprised from stills of video footage. i just liked that flow better. would like to watch La Jetee again when i have a few moments.

a night with a view

There are always views in New York looking up. This is one of them.

A night of talking, beer and tote bag forgetting and a long meandering ride home.

I seem to be missing a lot of thunderstorms in Phoenix.

saltz and pepper

Art critic Jerry Saltz came and spoke to us today. a lot of people seemed to have some strong opinions about this, because of him being on some Bravo TV show, his review on the Venice Biennale and his recent write up on Cy Twombly, after his death.

It's a good thing i don't tend to put a lot of stock in what other people tell me about other people because i really enjoyed him, his talk, and being able to see him right now, after all the above-listed hullabaloo.

some things i wrote down during the talk:

• need to be awake
• "no one had thought to deploy it"
• "our negative manifesto"
• "are you saying anything?"
• "difference between surprise and novelty"
• getting same source material
• critics limiting themselves—afraid to say what they think
• "a place to be happy and miserable"
• "i would secretly, in the backs of trucks, destroy a lot of art"
• "i want to be in the conversation now"
• "lowering the visual literacy"

how can i...

how can i get any work done with all this nice stuff around here.

the moments pop up in between.

today, it was a donut and cheap coffee, regular style, taken in on a bench in front of a building in a few spare moments before i had to be anywhere.

later, it was the dangling lights and tight quarters at the indian restaurant when a disco ball was turned on to wish a kid a happy birthday (candle in mango ice cream).

how can i stand it sometimes? all these moments and places, stuffed together without gaps. nestled in.

attempts were made

attempts were made at venturing out into the city today. sometimes i forget how much distance there is in between things here. a run in Prospect Park, a visit to MOMA and the Francis Alys show: it felt scattered and a bit overwhelming...how did all those dots connect? my favorite part were old b&w photos he had collected of people walking in the city. they even had a display of toy cars like the magnetized one he's used before to walk through the city and collect any metal debris. only, this display was a simulation of something authentic. they stuck a bunch of bottle caps to it to "simulate" debris from the city streets. did they miss the point entirely?

then, gyros and falafel on the street and an infinitely long and dark train ride to busy Coney Island. Kim's friend Dee brought us to the Coney Island dance party...i always love to watch people dance. watch some video of it here.

i did not eat a Nathan's hot dog, but i did witness a lot of body types in all levels of non-clothiness...and a dog with huge, human balls. the owner kept parading him around in front of us. it was awkward for us all.

school starts tomorrow so i'm celebrating the nation's independence by re-reading Ranciere's "Problems and Transformations of Critical Art". this girl knows how to make things happen.

rainy lazy sunday

A night of wine and tequila leaked into a day of sleeping in under rumbling thunder and steady rains.

poor little ouija board...

"poor little ouija board... never had a chance."

it sat...discarded on the side of the street.

i am not here yet. my body is...but my head still isn't. various couplings of wine and tequila haven't quite assisted in making it real so i'm waiting for the morning to bring new revelations. maybe with coffee, it will become apparent.

but at least a few moments in the grass in Prospect Park

all backround port-a-potties aside...

it was a beautiful, warm, breezy day in Brooklyn. glad to be out of the 116º searing heat.

my 6-week home is stunning. i feel spoiled.

they're coming to get you BAHRbra!

Zombies are kind of the in thing right now. Or maybe it's vampires, or werewolves or whatever the new show is on MTV about hot teenagers who are immortal and feast upon each other.

So in this spirit, I am bringing Bustories back from the dead. To get in the spirit, you should probably watch Night of the Living Dead (the original, duh), filmed entirely in Pittsburgh and partly in a cemetery that i've been to.

The reason for the resurrection has little to do with buses or stories, or even zombies, for that matter. Call it pragmatism but i figured it would be easier to keep people up to date on my upcoming 6-week long adventure in New York as i begin my MFA in Art Practice at the School of Visual Arts if i just keep all the information, random thoughts, elaborate dreams, observations and reflections on various city smells to one location: this blog. Bustories has served this purpose before while i was a resident artist at Taliesin in Wisconsin.

So if this sounds like it's your sort of thing, follow the blog and i promise to keep you up to date on all the useless information i normally share with you in person. It's like i'll be right there in front of you, being self-depracating and neurotic as usual. I'll try to keep the posts brief but, as you know, i have that damn propensity for verbosity.