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Tobey: Can you please tell us what you think of solitude? And not just a general, every-person sort of solitude, but the more slightly romantic solitude, the artist’s solitude.

Tobey: Well, that’s rather simple, really: You’re not alone. You’re not alone, so why pretend like you are? Solitude, seems [to me] to be humanity’s great creative act of the twentieth century. I imagine that it was ‘created’ as a therapuetic device for the overwhelming understanding of bodily depth, that is the shear number of human beings populating this planet at one given point in time. In addition to the overwhelming number of individuals, some times acting as a whole, comes the overwhelming emotional burden of realizing the rate at which they come and leave existence.

Tobey: So, we invented solitude out of a fear of togetherness?

Tobey: Yes, I believe we did. The speed at which we had to make this collective confrontation was too overwhelming. Thus, we had to retard the process until it seemed as though we could get a bearing on it. Until, we realized that the world is actually ending. That the world ends when each of us closes our eyes for the final time and the individualized world we made out of togetherness, disappears.

Tobey: Are we coming close to being able to be together?

Tobey: I believe we are. Although, it simultaneously gets more difficult, more confusing, as we get closer to clarity.

Tobey: Do you have any advice for those who are getting, as you say, ‘simultaneously confused with clarity?’

Tobey: Yes. There is an ancient ritual of repeating multiple breaths, at a very quick rate, while concurrently making vocal noise on each expulsion of breath. These repetitive expressions of breath can make tonal shifts both up or down in scale, or they may even hold the same note for a small period of time. When it comes to confronting emotions that are triggered by ‘external’ stimulus that we could never really control, this ritual is a proven method of calming the nerves.

Tobey: You mean laughing?

Tobey: Yes.

Tobey: Couldn’t you just have said laughing?

Tobey: Yes.

[ratings]

Unfortunately for you, this blog is not a tumblr. Although there are images used, there is also accompanying text. If all you’re looking for are images, of the art-full sort, try ButDoesItFloat and VVork. For those of you interested in something similar, yet expansive, try ClubInternet.

Oh, and please support reading by reading.

Such a beautiful title deserves a comparable level in return of attention.
“In celebration of the late, great Walter Hopps (1933–2005) and curators everywhere that his spirit has influenced, we have re-created the original walter hopps will be here in 20 minutes button. At this critical moment as the art world is facing a time of crisis, it is important to remember those who have come before, those who faced opposition and through reinvention, experimentation and the mounting of radical exhibitions are a guide into artistic landscapes that yet to emerge. As Daniel Birnbaum, curator of the 2009 Venice Biennale, says, “The future of exhibition making will deploy devices we once knew but had forgotten about.” ForYourArt invites you to pick up a button and wear it as a “protest against forgetting” as the great historian Eric Hobsbawm says.”
-taken from WalterHopps.com

If you find curatorial behavior interesting, you should know the man’s name [Walter Hopps] and history [1932-2005]. You can read more about him here [NYTimes] and here [A Brief History of Curating].

No way around it: although, there are aspects of it that remain seductive.
For instance, Jerry Saltz likes the youngsters and the redemptive aura of their frenetic tendencies: “‘Younger Than Jesus’ indicates that the alchemical essence known as the sublime, the primal buzz of it all, is no longer in God or nature or abstraction. These young artists show us that the sublime has moved into us, that we are the sublime; life, not art, has become so real that it’s almost unreal. Art is being reanimated by a sense of necessity, free of ideology or the compulsion to illustrate theory. Art is breaking free. Even the New Museum itself, founded in 1977, is “younger than Jesus.” Since it reopened in December 2007, it’s become, despite its clinical spaces and a couple of misfires, the most consistently challenging, polemical art institution in the city. It, like the art in this show and everywhere, is being reborn.’
-taken from ‘Jesus’ Saves: God bless the New Museum’s tantalizing triennial. By Jerry Saltz Published Apr 9, 2009

[post prompted by conversation with Daniel Miller]

[ratings]

There is nothing* that had more impact on my perspectives on making/loving/organizing/keeping art than art school. While involved in its processing I worked rather desperately against it, testing its boundaries and opportunities as only a student can. Now, outside of it, I can’t help but continue to look back at it and consider its role as a behavioral script which proposes an expressiveness akin to free-jazz, where the “spontaneous” and “improvisational” gestures of the mind and its tools are simply the paradoxical tension of a highly specific system and an idea.

Because I believe that collective sharing of such ideas will soon become quite fashionable, all while the intentional augmentation of the young-artist becomes that much more transparent, we’ll soon move towards collectively understanding the limits of art education [primarily as a remote economy] and its supposed economic expansion of the creative mind. With such collective understanding might come a renaissance of creative concern for populist well-being, or conversely, a hyper-ironic rebirth of the super-specialized-art-school-artist. The questionability, of outcomes alone, is enough to pursue an ongoing post [+ art school] in order to participate in a developing market of art values.

References:
Art School (Propositions for the 21st Century) [A more thorough than thou version of said topic.]
I like your work: art and etiquette [A pamphlet of codified art professionalism, or an attempt thereof.]

*nothing is not true. It’s safe to say that the compilation of my most recollected memories within my personal history is just as responsible for my art behavior, if not more, than art school.

[posts prompted by multiple conversations with Bradley Wester]

Please listen to these songs loudly, while staring into the center of the ear.
Since you probably aren’t going to listen to these songs while staring at the ear, please give thanks to the music gods [or the makers of music] instead, and please don’t push them like they were drugs.

[wpaudio url="http://tobeyalbrightandfriends.com/morewriting/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Love-Me.mp3"]
[wpaudio url="http://tobeyalbrightandfriends.com/morewriting/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/A-AMAZING.mp3"]
[wpaudio url="http://tobeyalbrightandfriends.com/morewriting/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/01-ayo-ayo-ne-ne-lp-cut.mp3"]
[wpaudio url="http://tobeyalbrightandfriends.com/morewriting/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/03-Cutting-Branches-For-A-Temporary-Shelter.mp3"]
[wpaudio url="http://tobeyalbrightandfriends.com/morewriting/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/My-Boys-Animal-Collective-Cover.mp3"]
[wpaudio url="http://tobeyalbrightandfriends.com/morewriting/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/The Hollow Earth.mp3"]

[A placeholder for a post on the frustratingly limited character constructs for creatives in the year 2009.]