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I’ve currently been giving most of my non-required attention to the e-flux journal reader 2009, which was a gift from this man: Daniel Miller.

If you’re avidly concerned with the currency of visual art, I simply can’t recommend this book enough. The reading reminds me of the urgency required by students (of the arts) for teachers who occupy their time with charting and understanding the multiple dimensions of contemporary arts practices. It’s been six years now since I’ve graduated from my undergraduate education and the e-flux journal reader 2009 is finally giving me concrete access to a range of individuals and cultural actors with similar concerns as those I had while in school.

And to take a second to reiterate: e-flux + Sternberg Press = cerebral intoxication [see image below].

[via awkwardstockphotos.com / via twitter.com/stephcd]

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The following MP3 list is a short overview of some of the music I’ve been listening to lately, while making things [particularly in the drawing-vein].
CUD-Spy.mp3
Colouring of Pigeons.mp3
03 Circling.mp3
02 deutsche wertarbeit - wertarbeit - deutscher wald.mp3
08 Lewis Takes Off His Shirt.mp3
05 the felled trees-1.mp3
01 Bed för mig (KJJ Edit).mp3
05 Be Your Baby.mp3
01 Take Five.mp3
01 K.O. Debout.mp3

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The Art School that I attended [2000-2004] placed the thinking/writing of Dave Hickey squarely at the center of its belief-framework because [I think] it appeals to a pragmatic need for cynicism and a totalizing gaze when considering the ‘what the fuck is going on?’ situation.

[I'm going to make a brief aside here as I point out that this defense-strategy was one of the only tools that my education gave me for 'dealing' with the real world of art. I'd love to hear additional strategies if they exist.]

Hickey has that personable wise-man from the woods way about him that when regarding the common hierarchies of social-art-relations is terribly pleasant [similar to your favorite uncle, whom tortures you with tickling]. And as much as I don’t want to like his position in the history of art thought, he does bring up a lovely lineage of troublesome support-system relationships that pervade the field of art practice [troublesome mostly from the artists' perspective].

It’s clear that practicing art in an idealistic and ‘pure’ fashion is becoming more difficult and complicated by the second. I personally have no idea what the overproduction of art students is going to do with the art world, nor do I have any idea of whether or not art is sustainable enough to survive within the hyper-development of our attention economy. I suppose we’ll look to our wizards [like Mr. Hickey] to show us the way as we continue to try and calm our neurosis and keep walking down the eerie path of solitude.

Below are four embedded video’s of Dave Hickey talking. If they don’t work on this site, please follow this link.

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The theatrical intentions of the realistic have been in place for quite some time, and the masterful craftsmanship of Spanish artists during the golden age are a superior model for this understanding. The exhibition The Sacred Made Real:
Spanish Painting and Sculpture 1600 – 1700, closes this coming Sunday, so if you happen to be in London, please go for me.

[A video of the exhibition's curator, Xavier Bray, is embedded below or here.]

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Currently reading through, e-flux journal #12, which is chock-full of exceptional texts potentially teetering on the opportunity and failure of asking the question What is Contemporary Art?…

The most operational* of the texts is Jan Verwoert’s Standing on the Gates of Hell, My Services Are Found Wanting. This [um] essay [?] encourages the art-text to have potential beyond the typically discursive lines that their writers often fall short with by working on the same liminal grounds that the work of art often works on.

*Operational is being used here as a way to describe a process of delineating a phenomenon by performing it [a sort of in-and-of-itself].

The following excerpts have been compiled in order to persuade you to read for yourself.

“Standing there, I find myself, for instance, in the company of Irit Rogoff, and I am with her when she writes that what makes us contemporaries is the act of looking at the problems of our time together and the realization that we share these problems—and maybe not much more apart from these problems—as we inhabit the condition of contemporaneity together. I agree with her in principle.”
…
“Weeping and laughing on the gates of hell, I do not feel particularly postmodernist. Postmodernism was neither particularly funny nor sad.”
…
“In art and thinking we find the historical codes for understanding what meaning will have meant and how experience will have been experienced.”
…
“This is done through a simple trick. It is the secret of the trade of true liars: Always only give people what they already have and think they deserve. But give it to them in a guise that allows them to rejoice in the illusion that they received something new, foreign, and exciting.”
…
“A philosophy that creates laughter because it is a joke and consoles the weeping because it is a philosophy of tears, a philosophy in tears.”
…
“Standing on the gates hell, facing the gates of hell, laughing and weeping on the gates of hell, I summon you now, my uncontemporary contemporaries, because you have summoned me to come here, to address you.”
…
[Read it.]

And for those of you like me, who find yourselves needing to flip back to the author photo, continuously, while reading a book [so you can feel better about trying to understanding where the hell something is coming from], I’ve attached the following photo.

The x-initiative is (for now) a non-profit art entity with a simple goal to inspire and challenge us to think about new possibilities for experiencing and producing contemporary art. The charmingly experimental intentions of “reaching across traditional boundaries” by providing a framework of investigation based in a quick responsiveness to the cultural shifts taking place around us is most appropriately realized by the pre-established life-span of the organization. The x-initiative is organized into three phases starting from Spring 2009 through Winter 2010.

Each of the phases, their accompanying artists, lectures and events are all suggestions of the durational sort and when conceptually compiled and reflected upon, as a curatorial whole, clearly represent the changing landscape of contemporary art. However, this sort of ‘changing’ in the landscape of contemporary art, is to a degree, a constant in so far as the reciprocal energy needed by artists, organizations, galleries and curators, isn’t always available, therefore rendering the inert qualities of these endeavors durational, by nature. [i.e. how many galleries and/or institutions have you seen open and close in the life-span of your attention for contemporary art?]

My favorite of the events listed on x-initiatives site is [ironically] ArtTable presents BLOG THIS! Blogging the contemporary arts, a panel discussion, 6:30 PM, 1/15.

And thus, I’d actually like to propose that all start-up arts organization design their operations to live for only one year. Perhaps this strategy might encourage more practically resourceful, thoughtfully designed operations and ideally more engaged receptions? If anything, it will help prepare those instigators involved, for the death of the organization upon inception, giving them a more vital relationship with creating something strong enough to survive longer, and a more palpable taste of acknowledgement during the grieving period.

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Another ‘must-share’ and say nothing moment.

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