‘bad’ or ‘amazing,’ it’s all relative

Photo: Courtesy Judah Friedlander / NYmag.com

In an interview with Flavorwire earlier this month, Judah Friedlander, the trucker hat-wearing dude on 30 Rock and host of the recent charitable Bad Art Auction, set the record straight on the subjective nature of taste and art: 

“… for the record, I don’t call bad art “bad art”, I call it “amazing art”. Because by calling it “bad”, you’re basing your description of it on another institution’s criteria of what makes art good or bad (a museum’s or gallery’s or art critic’s opinion).

I’ve been collecting art for over 20 years. And I really think the bad art that I collect is amazing. It interests me. If art doesn’t interest me, I THEN think it’s bad.” 

To which I say, “touché.” Or, alternately, “you go, boy.”

new york = the internet?

Where, oh where, does Jennifer Senior, the author of the cover story in this week’s New York magazine, find the … excuse me, the balls, to claim that New York “has become” the Internet?  Or, better yet, that New York was a prototype of the Internet before the Internet existed? 

“… [John Cacioppo, director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago] was describing the ballet of the train station. But his description could just as easily have applied to the Internet. Think about it: Serendipitous encounters between people who know each other well, sort of well, and not at all. People of every type, and with every type of agenda, trying to meet up with others who share that same agenda. An environment that’s alive at all hours, populated by all types, and is, most of the time, pretty safe. What he was saying, really, was that New York had become the Web. Or perhaps more, even: that New York was the Web before the Web was the Web, characterized by the same free-flowing interaction, 24/7 rhythms, subgroups, and demimondes.”

Which isn’t to say that she hasn’t done her homework (she has), or that the piece doesn’t have it’s merits (it does), or that New Yorkers couldn’t use a little bit (or a big bit) of a hug right now (the do), whether they admit it or not (they don’t).

But if this comparison between a thronging, buzzing, chaotic cityscape and a humming network of fiber optic cables works, how is it not applicable to a dozen or more great cities around the world? Or the great cities of history, for that matter? 

Arriving at this climactic final assertion after passing through such touchy-feeley pit-stops as a visit with a sociologist who reassures us that friends are as important as family — “home of Friends, after all,” Senior quips in a parenthetical aside — I leave the piece with a conclusion of my own. Sadly, it’s the latest instance of New York centricism/egoism gone unchecked.

winging it

The latest issue of the Atlantic has a fantastic new piece by Jeffrey Goldberg titled ”The Things He Carried” (November 2008) that reveals just how hard it is to get in trouble with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). His thesis? “Suspicious that the measures put in place after the attacks of September 11 to prevent further such attacks are almost entirely for show—security theater is the term of art—I have for some time now been testing, in modest ways, their effectiveness,” Goldberg writes.

For months the author blatantly attempted to raise red flags at airports across the country, carrying any number of questionable or prohibited items, including: “Al-Qaeda T-shirts, Islamic Jihad flags, Hezbollah videotapes, and inflatable Yasir Arafat dolls (really). … pocketknives, matches from hotels in Beirut and Peshawar, dust masks, lengths of rope, cigarette lighters, nail clippers, eight-ounce tubes of toothpaste (in my front pocket), bottles of Fiji Water (which is foreign), and, of course, box cutters.” 

The whole thing is laced with the blackest—and bleakest—sort of humor, and is just begging to be adapted into a short film. Not unlike Catch-22 or even the Cohen brothers most recent film, Burn After Reading (other than the fact that Goldberg’s account is nonfiction), “The Things He Carried” is a classic critique of big bureaucracy and our culture of fear. And an entirely vindicating read for anyone who’s ever rolled their eyes at the ridiculousness of 3 o.z. bottles in quart-sized bags.

behind the looking glass (part 2)

And then there are the people. Half of what’s so fascinating about looking at animals is observing people watching animals.

i see you (green frog at Bronx zoo)

The things they say: “Eww look at that one, he’s sniffing the other’s poo!” (a child at the warthog exhibit at the Bronx Zoo). “Is that real?” (an elderly woman approaches the rabbit display at the Village Petstore with some trepidation.) “It is!” (she concludes).

The things they do: The whistles, the clucking noises, the ridiculous postures, energy expended, all to momentarily capture the passive gaze of some animal. (An exception was a gorilla at the Bronx Zoo who sat next to the glass, bemusedly inspecting us, sticking her tongue or putting her hand flush up against the glass over where a child’s hand pressed against the glass from the other side). And then there’s the faux hunting, donning camouflage or safari gear (an excess of pockets, tan and olive tones) and crouching low behind bushes so as to not disturb the wildlife, but get the best shot (as in photograph) of “nature in action.”

existential monster crisis!

monster an' me

Look at this face. Is it not cheek-pinchably cute? Don’t you just want to feed him some sushi? He’s one of three awesome monsters skulking around DUMBO these days as a part of Kylin O’Brien’s Monster Project, where monsters drawn by school kids (Maya, age 5, imagined this one) are blown up many, many times and pasted up on buildings around the city — at least, that’s the goal. So far there are just these three. 

Monsters were a reoccurring theme this year at the annual Art Under the Bridge Festival in DUMBO. Elsewhere I recall monster finger puppets shaking their skinny, gelatin-y limbs at me from collage-on-wood-panel works at one of the open studios at 20 Jay Street (“rawrr come in and drink some wine,” was how I interpreted it). There were others. 

… which, without going too off topic, brings me to the existential monster crisis. It’s a serious issue these days

the best thing i’ve ever written. so far.

The Institute For Figuring Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef, with urchins by Christine Wertheim and sea slug by Marianne Midelburg. Photo © The Institute For Figuring (by Alyssa Gorelick)

 

A simple question, the pulling at a loose string, plus the faith of one excellent editor, has resulted in One Live Stitch, a globetrotting piece out this month in the Brooklyn Rail that explores the evolution of crochet — or, more precisely, how such scientific and mathematic principles as evolution, taxonomy and hyperbolic geometry have recently inspired crochet works. Do you see the photos adjacent?

a thread starfish in the field. Photo © Anita Bruce.

This stuff is amazing.Read the story via the link above or grab the PDF here: 0908_bkrail_onelivestitch.

more evidence

I’m changing it up. Less intensity. So far I’ve only voiced “Deep Thoughts,” to homage the SNL skit by Jack Handy. But the problem is that this blog has not as of yet captured my sense of the culture [at large], (nor my adoration of brackets and parens), how I filter the world or what makes me laugh. Any of which may or may not be followed up with a more critical, more studious, interpretation later or inbetween. (god bless the infinity of the internet.)
Let’s face it, I’m silly. I think life is ridiculous. I love to laugh. I love to marvel. To drink. To think. To go. There are plenty of people who will take life too seriously for me to justify reserving my blog for entirely original moments — thoughtful chin-scratching, bemused smiling, “yes, yeesss”ing — okay I want all of that to happen too. But mostly, I want this blog to be a collage, period. Bits of everything that strike my interest, paired with a bit of commentary, or not. Because I want this blog to reflect (as this blog has not reflected thus far), my everlasting quest to wrestle with (arm wrestle? mud wrestle? thumb wrestle?) with this culture that is EVER so alive.
Hence, not dead.
And yes, that’s my idea of a joke.

DUMBO

Cabbages on lightposts.The hunt for an elephant that paints (really). Stacks and stacks of iron stairs to climb, chasing abstract arrows to an artist’s open studio. A net, strung with glittering decoupage. The smell of Barbosal; $2 PBR. At least a half-dozen wedding parties—layers of ruffles; aqua, pink, chocolate brown, bobby pins and smiles—oblivious until they arrived. This was DUMBO’s Under the Bridge art festival, Saturday afternoon.

I adore festivals unconditionally; art, beer, books are among my favorite excuses. I particularly love festivals that I leave, inspired. The day is warm, sunny. Jeans, layered tanks, sunglasses, Converse. It’s not winter yet—yet. I hoard information in my satchel, constantly scanning, constantly scouring the flyers, the upcoming shows. It’s the hopefulness. I hoard the feelings of the day, determined to catalogue, so that in February I can remember it.

[I love this photo. It's a chicken (get it?) fashioned out of entirely consumed/entirely recycable materials (mostly). This cluck of chickens is so fucking cute.]

You can also see this rambling at www.artsreporting.blogspot.com.

Jane! Jane! Jane!

…And then there was Jane. New Yorker’s conduit de jour to talk about their general freak-out at the progressive gentrification/ homogenization/ corporatization of their nabes is none other than Jane Jacobs, that champion of neighborhoods feeling like, well, neighborhoods. (Her classic book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) outlines her ideas much more eloquently.)

First, the Jane Jacobs show evaluating New York City nabes based on her criteria opened at the Municipal Art Society of New York. Bay Ridge, Brooklyn and Astoria, Queens come out looking pretty good, curator Christopher Klemek told the New York Observer. A Time Out cover story, Has Manhattan Lost It’s Soul? (Sept. 20-26) followed en suite, using a Jacobs-inspired rubric to rate Manhattan neighborhoods. Alphabet City topped their list. And this weekend (Sept. 29-30), the Center for the Living City is leading ambitious free “Jane’s Walk New York” tours through a dozen or so neighborhoods including the South Bronx, the Atlantic Yards, Manhattanville, the UWS, and more. (There are more walking tours and a series of panel discussions scheduled through November in conjunction with the MAS exhibit.)

While I love the celebration of the many varied identities of the many varied New York neighborhoods—and the excuse for us to get out of our own neighborhood bubble—I can’t let go of the suspicion that these sinking ship declarations are New York snobbery in disguise, aka “New York pride.” They’re another way of declaring “New York is nothing like it was back …” or “I remember when…” Statements that essentially are stated to remind you, the recipient, that the speaker remembers the good/old New York because they were here then. …And all that’s left today is crumbs.

New York was, is, and always will be — different. But it will always be New York. And I can only think that when people lament the New York that was, they’re missing something about the New York that is. I’m not championing the opening of another megachainstore in your neighborhood, or the closure of a nabe institution because of rent disputes. All I’m saying is that if that’s all you see then you’re not looking close enough. And as for gentrification? It happens. I like what Jan Lee, a furniture designer and Chinatown store owner, tells TONY in the same cover story (Chinatown ranked #2): “Chinatown hasn’t resisted gentrification. Chinatown was gentrified 100 years ago by the Chinese. I know—my grandfather was one of the people who participated. There’s a Chinese bank on every corner. There’s a multimillion-dollar gold and diamond business. But because it’s been done by an ethnic group, it’s not considered gentrified.”

culture is dead.

That’s a bit of hyperbole on my part. But I did recently hear someone whom I think knows a thing or two about the subject issue a not-unlike indictment of the state of cultural affairs. Culture has been in a headlong tailspin since the mid-twentieth century, she lamented, and she’s sorry that this is what we’ve been left to work with.

I beg to differ. If only because of the sheer volume of information that’s available to us—literally at our fingertips—we are living in the most diverse, dynamic cultural period yet.

Granted, it’s nearly impossible to compartmentalize the cultural sphere in a postmodern world, particularly after the explosion of digital technologies in the last decade. That wasn’t a death knell, but a signal of evolution.

Culture today is a kaleidoscopic vision, fragmented into a thousand pieces, constantly shifting, expanding outwards, various forms spontaneously intersecting and collaborating before evolving again, all within a decentralized power structure.

In short, it’s a minor revolution.

***

The purpose of this blog is to document in that evolution/revolution as manifested in New York City, my home turf. This blog is my breadcrumb trail tracing my discoveries, my encounters, my revelations. It is also an entirely subjective catalogue of the best references I can find for information on goings-ons within NYC’s fringe culture—the locus of my interest.

***

I realize that this all sounds very high-flautin’ and I hope you’ll bear with me. A majority of my future entries are going to be very grounded in actual events and experiences, informative and hopefully entertaining. But that doesn’t mean the occasional waxing poetic won’t slip in… every once and a while.