At the staff xmas picnic, I met a swan





and fed it.

Grocer Jack

This video is better but can't be embedded. See also the notes attached to this version.

I have the whole album, who could not.

Library closure

I see the North Village Branch has just closed in advance of the new building being completed. But the replacing new one isn't due to open til April 2009 and I can't see that opening date staying like that either.

Australians are innately Fascist, whist I am God

The theme for this third and final ’artistic’ intervention into a now despised and over ideated environment is that of age.

The piece consists of the placement/arrangement of 3 bodies in a series of 3 staged vignettes. Faced away from the audience, the unidentified bodies may stand for the everyman, but also in their aspect as representatives of age, the young, the old, the new and the eternal.

The first image of two standing children shows outwardly the easy impost of humans on the flora and fauna of Canberra. But take away the debased utilitarian concept of a foolishly created capital and what we have is intrinsically and unmistakeably a fullsome representation of the rural youth of Emilia Romagna (1) who at Mussolini’s behest imposed an ancient ideal of youthful despoilation upon Italy in 1922. The seemingly casual innocents in (school) uniform are clearly redolent of the blackshirted (uniformed) youth of the Fascisti who marched triumphantly on Rome on October 30, 1922. That it is Australian youth who stand challenging and representing the defeat of European liberalism, the overthrow of enlightenment and the destruction of tradition is no plain device, but a telling portent. There are no Edelweiss pirates on Australian soil.

The second image is of the children fallen, or so it appears. The viewer may firstly perceive here is the collapse of nihilistic Fascism, the rejection of the power of youth, the failure of the new, the re-establishment of ancient order and precedence, but look again, this is a negotiated fall, there has been no collapse, the supposed fallen are attentive, alert, resting and ready to spring immediately back to a standing position, ready to overthrow at any moment again the ‘old’ order. They are the waiters in the wings looking for the chink in the armour of age. This thus is the threat of the new and the young, that they are ever present, ever waiting, ever ready. The past is always with us, but so is its replacement.

The final image is in some respects a Chronos manque - a looker into time, but not here looking both to the past and simultaneously the future. In this instance with eyes averted, back turned, the viewer is thus left unsure of direction and so caught between time/s so that they cannot from this vantage point tell which is present, which is future, which is past. Are we receding or arriving and if either to what point. Is this the defender of age and experience over the righteous anger of youth, or a progenitor of times collapse.

But time past and future notwithstanding, the central singular individual (or indeed singularity) at which our eyes are focussed plays another role. Is this the figure outside of time, the eternal figure that may answer the question that has been around since the idea of God was first implanted? What are you, my God? asked St Augustine(2) this image answers that question. But it also denies the possibility of access to what is revealed. For, whilst we may see the very incarnation of God, yet we cannot look into the eyes of God, through our failings we are still cast from Eden, the viewer found wanting is thus rejected, the impossibility of a true knowledge of God is returned.

(1)
“I read in the eyes of those young men the divine smile of triumph of an ideal” Benito Mussolini – Thus we took Rome from My Autobiography (1924)

(2)
Quid es ergo, dues meus?
Summe, optime
potentissime, omnipotentissime,
secretissime et praesentissime,
pulcherrime et fortissime,
stabilis et incomprehensibilis,
immutabilis mutans omnia,
numquam novus numquan vetus

What are you, my God?
Most high, most good,
most potent, most omnipotent,
most hidden and most present,
most beautiful and most strong,
stable and incomprehensible
immutable and ever changing
never new, never old. - St Augustine

John L has posted a pdf of a feminist zine he has from 1983, it is worth a look at: http://anterotesis.com/flatpress/index.php?entry=entry081201-202330

The Cost of Living

Sing your life

Sing your life
Any fool can think of words that rhyme
Many others do
Why don't you?
Do you want to?
Oh...
Sing your life
Walk right up to the microphone
And name
All the things you love
All the things that you loathe

Oh, sing your life
The things that you love
And the things you loathe
Oh, sing your life
Oh, sing your life

La, la-la, la-la, sing your life
La, la-la, la-la, sing your life

Others sang your life
But now is a chance to shine
And have the pleasure of
Saying what you mean
Have the pleasure of
Meaning what you sing
Oh, make no mistake my friend
All of this will end
So sing it now (sing your life)
All the things you love (sing your life)
All the things you loathe
Oh, sing your life
The things that you love
And the things you loathe (sing your life)
Oh, sing oh...
Oh, sing oh...

La, la-la, la-la, sing your life
La, la-la, la-la, sing your life

Don't leave it all unsaid
Somewhere in the wasteland of your head, oh
Head, oh, head, oh, head, oh
And make no mistake, my friend
Your pointless life will end
But before you go
Can you look at the truth?
You have a lovely singing voice
A lovely singing voice
And all of those
Who sing on-key
They stole the notion
From you and me
So, sing your life (sing your life)
Sing your life (sing your life)
Oh, sing your oh...
Oh, sing your
Sing your life
Sing your life
Sing your life
Oh, sing your oh...
- Morrissey

Shopping the Abject

Another swimming lesson to attend, another 45 mins of outdoor creation.


The theme for this second ‘art’ installation is the discourse inherent in negotiating relationships within the context of an anti-historical present.

The piece consists of the placement/arrangement of 3 trolleys (shopping carts). The trolleys have been removed from the delineated and discrete lanes (aisles) of the supermarket and placed within a ‘natural’ environment. In this way we can negotiate their purpose without the contextual situation of commercial space. We thus can now truly see the trolley as both signifier and totem.

The trolleys have been positioned and imaged three times.

The first image of standing trolleys represents the commodification of relationships removed as they are in the West from familial or community control and historical procreational purpose. The trolleys placed in a line symbolise the commerce that is concomitant with love. We shop with our conceptual trolleys browsing society with our mental lists of desired attributes (some ours some inherited) searching for the partner commodity. When we perceive the symbolic trolley is filled, we then negotiate the emotional price and freedom we are prepared to lose/pay. The commodity purchased can thus replace/negate a self lived life and create an artificial human value (price), the exchange also potentially unequal.

The trolleys upturned represent the rejection of the commodity principle and of the necessity of competing in a denatured environment. In the prone position the trolleys are unable to be filled purposefully with the commodity we may want, but are left open for nature to fill with the potentially abject. Pushed over, the trolleys are in a ‘state of nature’ where our ‘logical’ expectations can ‘fall out’ and the fundamental elements of nature may grow around/within/thru subsuming the inorganic back into the organic. But this is also a representation of decay, the destruction of civilisation, and in essence a return to a brute master/servant scenario as opposed to the current purchaser/provider model. Thus we are given the question, if the present is unequal and the past problematic, then how may we transcend the future.

The third image wherein the trolleys have been physically removed (but the idea of trolleys is still present) represents the absence and distance inherent in the impossibility of a real knowledge of a creator god.

Pink

When terrorism was hot.

Tyre

First cake - starting simple

A house (apartment) is not a home until you've baked a cake. This here is a basic vanilla sponge that I made on Friday evening.

Huncke

Having recently moved, I have made a another re-appraisal of what books to keep and bother to transport, something I have been doing for a long time, there are hundreds of books I have lost or left. I had a large collection of 'beat' books, every Kerouac, Burroughs etc., funnily enough the only ones I miss (I'm not a frequent re-reader) are those of Herbert Huncke, not a major writer, but the editions I had of his writings, generally cheap and printed in India were lovely objects (the coloured inks used on the covers of the Indian books were never strong or bold and so have this washed out quality that was lovely). His style of autobiographical writing was very gentle and flowing, he not only wrote of his life but would draw out lovingly the marginal characters he had met in the lower depths of New York. The man was a whore, thief and junky to be sure, but unlike say Genet, he was also a man of honour and charm. Another factor is of the all the beat writers I know very few (or none) of the major writers (who were all male) could write of, or describe women in any realistic way. This maybe because many were gay or were such as Kerouac simply mother complexed and Catholic. But Huncke seems to be the only one who liked and befriended women to any extent, which rounds him considerably.

2 Nice Girls

I listen to this song a lot, like a lot, and thought I should at some point share wider than the song provider.

There is a sample mp3 at: http://mog.com/fairportfan/blog/174942

Here is their video in .mov format

Go maybe support them somehow - http://www.twonicegirlsmusic.com

If you don't know the two songs co-joined here you deserve to be shot, seriously.