shout out to the REAL ART CRITICS

Aftermath of Thomas Albrecht's Performance at Grace Exhibition Space, Body / Mass, Feb 7, 2014

Preliminary remarks:

I decided to forego the no-capitalization policy I have tried very stubbornly to uphold. I wanted to create a more casual and approachable aspect to my writing, and also attempt to eliminate hierarchy that capitalization sometimes bestows on words, concepts, names, etc. But it seemed that the content was as casual or unapproachable to many, as well as just making it difficult to read for those who are not comfortable reading long teenage personal diarrhea on the web.

And the real stuff:

A few recent observations about the “art world” and “artistic discourse”:

1.     No matter where you go, a social community is inevitably social; i.e. there will be hierarchies and dynamics that define the relationships between those involved—creator, distributor, manager, promoter, consumer, etc. etc. but those relationships, depending on the climate of the locale, may be more fluid than others, more open to negotiation and flux.

-       I used to contrast my frustration of feeling “locked out” of the “high art” scene in Venice, Chelsea of NYC, etc etc with the free love of the “community” in the not-so-financially supported Bushwick environment, but people are people and relationships will end up becoming the shitty, standard, fixed, unproductive nonsense that perhaps “art as commodity” has become unless we are aware of it from the beginning and take action to protect what is good about the freedom, the raw energy, the support of people who share common visions, feelings, spirit of a time/generation.

-       Let Bushwick live at the edge of art and gentrification; never let it fall fully into either one…

2.     I made several decisions in the past few years to slowly step out as “creator,” first, from being an object-maker to one who speaks about objects, then to someone who “manages,” helps, induces “creators” and others who speak about objects. So the latter you can throw together a bunch of “professions” such as curator, editor, manager, promoter, and I took the liberty of throwing in there “lawyer,” or at least someone who went to school to learn about boring rules that some old white farts made and keep making, and use that boring shit for purposes that matter to me: art.

-       I keep telling people, it’s OK to run around naked on the street or temporarily “steal” epic art from museums without a permit, I will get them out of jail. I’m not really kidding. Do what you need to do in the name of art, or in the name of shitting on art, and I will do the dirty work of clearing the old white farts out of your way.

Aftermath of Nyugen E. Smith's Performance at Grace Exhibition Space, Body/ Mass, Feb 7, 2014

3.     This is kind of 2.5… But I have sadly rediscovered the importance of CRITICAL art writing—you know, the kind that actually requires thinking and not reading and regurgitating pre-existing material, whether they be theory or press releases.

-       When I was told to write reviews, and when I tried to tell myself to write reviews of art later, I thought my words didn’t matter. The idiots who try very hard to get published will get published and I don’t want to fight with idiots to gain exposure over them because I am too smart for that kind of survival soul-selling bullshit… is what I told myself to make myself feel better about not being able to write a book of philosophy or poetry or new theory on the state of art in OUR generation, since I am still young and all.

-       BUT after removing “art criticism” as a serious obligation from my own plate, I noticed more and more bullshit regurgitation passing as “criticism.” I cannot stand it!

Sadly, what pushed me to the point of this, verbal response, is working on the other side: being a promoter of the creation, and not the “press” or “consumer” or “critic.”

I wrote and edited most of the English-language press kit material for a film recently, including the synopsis and press release.

A review was just published after the film’s screening at Berlin. What do I see? Copy, paste, and rearrangement of what I had written and edited a thousand times in the press kits.

You think I don’t recognize my own words, buddy? Or maybe you think because there is no name on there, a press release just magically appeared. Oh, I guess that’s what you think an “intern” stands for… so many anonymous and over-qualified writers and thinkers working as “interns,” producing promotional texts for “critics” and “journalists” to regurgitate as their own original evaluation of an artist’s work.

Fine.

But to actually recognize someone rearrange MY WORDS, then publish it as a “review” made me realize that, shit, that is what everyone else does all the time.

Geraldo Mercardo Performing at Grace Exhibition Space, Body / Mass, Feb 7, 2014

Where is real art criticism? Where are all the critics, REAL thinkers at?

Stop publishing bullshit, because real thinkers are not damn machines that can churn out real words in real time. Creative thinkers don’t work on Facebook time, Twitter time, or at least in depth anyway. Pay writers for giving thought to their work, not for reproducing bullshit.

Give real writers and thinkers a good chance to contribute to artistic discourse. The kind where relationships happen on a genuine level.

BRING BACK ART CRITICISM!

more nights with weird art people

it's easy to fall out of touch with a world--you need only to allow yourself to hang out by cliffside and fall away--half-accident, half-voluntary, with a hint of relief that you are no longer committed to it. the fall-out sheds friendships as well as responsibilities tied to all those things, like love. no pain, no stress, but no pleasure either. just null. then try to get used to the limbo, or find another world temporarily, then hang out at cliffside, repeat.

some are born drifters, some aren't. when people asked me what i wanted to be when i grew up, i told them "artist" on one day, "writer" on another. a long, toxic, ecstatic, tumultuous romance with both has created strings so numerous, vast, stubbornly clingy that they can no longer be called strings but a net, a world that never lets me free--gives me the illusion sometimes, yes, but invisible chains are perhaps the most powerful of all.

sometimes i find it's easier to deal with something by not dealing with it at all. detach the problem from the real source and tack it onto an external but also subjective one. my own pain is more tolerable when it is removed from me and visible from a distance--just like the sublime, nietzsche's tragedy, when i can contemplate it, like a tortured sculpture.

so i can hate and blame the people there--artists are full of shit, art is a bunch of bullshit, why care about writing, why care about art when… 

but when a fall-out is never a true one, when you already have bound yourself to a world--willfully or not--the fall-in, the shameful but intoxicating return is more painful than the accidental feigned escape. 

probably because love sometimes resembles pain when it takes you by surprise.

and for me, the regular returns to art come as love for people, too.

when i love the people living art, i have no choice but to fall back in love with it.

this time art is more forgiving and more generous than ever, because the people do not exist separately from it, but they are it. because every moment is their work.

through a performance art community in brooklyn, i encountered the necessary urgency of a writer, that necessary fuel to placing words on paper and to putting them out.

that drive--i had forgotten, it has been too long--in which i feel no choice but to speak and share. not an "i guess i could," but "i need to or i will go insane."

a writing classmate once described this as a feeling of "responsibility."

i think that is right too--

i sit and listen to a handful of artists tell horror stories about their performing, and throughout most of the talk, a guy next to me ceaselessly (or so it seemed) muches from his bag of tate's white chocolate chip macadamia cookies and later pulls out and drinks from a bottle of red wine he brought with him. and the play of shadows against the wall, passersby gawking and shouting through the glass windows.

or another time another handful of people (some the same ones from the other occasion) fix their attention on an electro music duo at an artist's closing party and suddenly a woman, face invisible under multiple long black wigs, clad in a fur coat and a pair of disposable underwear, bursts through the door waving a white cane. when she bounces, squats, dances to the irregular sounds and yells out to people at random intervals, "what the fuck ya lookin' at?!" the countenances of others do not express surprise.

that sort of thing.

and i'm thinking, someone's got to document this.

can an "isolated" study of that woman's persona do full justice to her as a performance artist? or others gathered there?

or to even think about whether all of them would consent to their being labeled "artist," or otherwise…

the initial elation feels higher, especially when a realist cynic is propelled into space.

all this will come down--

but i had to, 

i had no choice but to,

speak

out loud.