January 24, 2005

Nomadic Museum 1


working model for the European Nomadic Museum (egg museum)
link to musee imaginaire reference
click on image to enlarge, enlarges twice

January 23, 2005

Nomad Museums


working drawing for possible nomad museums and galleries click on image to enlarge, will enlarge twice.

January 22, 2005

Nomadic Hearts


Bayanihan by Joselito E Barcelona 1993

Bayanihan is an old tradition in the Philippines wherein neighbors of a relocating family would help the family move by gathering under their house and carrying it to its new location.Although bayanihan practiced in this form has become rare in today’s modern times, the word bayanihan itself has come to mean any manifestation of the powerful spirit of communal unity that can make seemingly impossible feats possible through the cooperation of many people working towards a common goal.
more on Bayanihan

January 20, 2005

hobby artists

THE TESTED AND TRUE METHODS OF HAMILTON'S HOBBY ARTISTS
Warning; if you have a problem with your reading comprehension or sense of humor do not read this!

If an artist is defined by their full time commitment to their work then it becomes evident who the hobbyists are.

A Guide to be a successful hobby artist in Hamilton

1. Get a partner to pay your way, live off their money then you will have the free time you need to create.

2. Get health benefits from the government. A certificate from your doctor saying you can’t work, will give you an income while you struggle away at your art.

3 (the biggest group of hobbyists) Get a full time job!
I have heard this is the way in Hamilton. You can work full time spend money on your hobby art and show in galleries.

4. (The most dangerous) get a job in arts administration. Where you can define your own hobby approach as the status quo. And help other hobbyists like your self.

5. Own your own gallery; you get immediate recognition from the community of hobbyists that are up your ass trying to get a show.

6. Wait till you retire, have money in the bank and a pension and you will be free to create whatever you want.

7. Use more than one of the above methods and you could be quite a wealthy home owning so called artist.

I have watched as these hobby artists pass the ball between themselves in our community for years. And I have seen many marginalized real full time artists being driven out of the city because of this. I have seen an art community fraught with fraud and chicanery.
In our town the artist is as marginalize as they were in the courts of the renaissance. And the marginalized artist is too busy surviving and making art and in no way can compete with these privileged hobbyists. Unfortunately the tension felt by real artists in this kind of society does not exist in the work of hobbyists. They are comfortable people who want comfort first. So don't expect anything, new, earthshaking, or intellectually riveting from them.
It is your loss Hamilton. Maybe you should inquire of your curators why they prefer the hobbyists that chase them down as apposed to going into the community to find the marginalized full time artists that have given a real commitment to their town. And when you do go to a gallery, note if the artist is a hobbyist or not. I’m sure you will find a difference in the works ability to go beyond the decorative and didactic. I haven’t found this to be the case in other major centres that I frequent. Nope, in Hamilton it is just more of the blight that keeps our city down. Ooops don’t forget some of these curators are the hobbyists that you should watch out for.
What do hobby artists do to a community? They rob it of any sense of professionalism.
This in turn erodes the community’s confidence in the commitment of the work they are looking at. And also reduces all serious artists to the lowest common denominator. What ever you do don’t become a full time artist in Hamilton, you will be ignored. Just ask the other full time artists, who ever they are.

January 19, 2005

abbreviations

WORDS ABBREVIATE OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THINGS
The word snowflake puts a cap on that concept. As in, "oh those are snowflakes." But in reality they are complex ice crystals that come in varying forms and infinite shapes. A point sadly missed if one is regarding a snowflake. This is perhaps why it has taken us thousands of years to build a language barely adequate to communicate our understanding of the world around us. And also why language requires us to string together complex lines of these abbreviated meanings to get back to the initial understandings of the concepts behind them. From the Hopi to today we seem to have evolved toward making things that start out simple more complicated to understand, moving backward as it were. This being a direct result of written languages need to be economized thus abbreviating or cutting off the natural webbing of meaning. Only in works of poetry do we find words that fold in on themselves adequately enough to produce vast meanings and feelings in a terse vehicle.
Abbreviation =complexity
Editing= simplicity
chriseddy

January 18, 2005

ARTIST AS NOMAD

Artist as nomad

In my research of my first nations heritage I was surprised to find a model of a nomadic life style that I had not encountered before and one that offers an insightful metaphor into the artist as nomad.
The first nations people that I am descended from call themselves the Mi’kmaq. They are one of the first people here to have first contact with Europeans. But it is their recorded nomadic life style that I would like to discuss here. The Mi’kmaq made their homes out of tree poles, spruce roots and grass mats or birch bark. These wigwams were easily moved around. The Mi’kmaq migrated following the appropriate seasons. In the winter they live in small family clans alone in the forest. In the spring they would move to a planting area. And then in the summer months they would relocate at predetermined places along the coast. They would settle into the same area and form a tribal community. The leader or chief was chosen out of the heads of the larger family units, and was a temporary figure for the summer. In the fall they would break up and trek to their own harvest grounds and then retreat in smaller family units into the forest for a winter of hunting.
It is not hard to see how this social model not only speaks of our liberation from property ownership, but also of a need to be both social and individual, a need to form our own territories and to find ways to share these meanings with others. As Delueze and Guattari point out, in a capitalistic society our desires vacillate between the two poles, schizophrenic and paranoiac.
We see in the Mi’kmaq way of life that the two disparate poles of desire take the lead at different times of the year. Paranoiac desires requiring social codifications are fulfilled in the summer months. Objectives like the coupling of young people would be accomplished. The winter months seeing the schizophrenic need to be alone and revolutionary/anti-social being fulfilled. This is the time for self expression through art and writing. Yes the Mi’kmaq were known to have a form of writing that they kept secreted in birch bark boxes.
How does all this relate to artists? If we look at some of the problems with artist groups and collectives this soon becomes apparent. There have been many attempts to organize artists. We have seen groups that tend to work more from the paranoiac pole (group or mob mentality) which has resulted in artists being forced into boxes of someone else’s choosing. Someone else’s idea of what art is or should entail, or what should be shown in order to get the most points for grants or institutional notoriety. They are asked to jump through stylistic hoops or be judged from within their peers. The structure of group codifications dictates a subversion of individual freedoms to allow the group to function.
As Andre Malraux makes clear in The Voices of Silence, artworks are to be understood in the context of the artist’s body of work not a larger grouping. Making what we have come to know as the “isms” ineffectual to adequately describe a work of art. Asking an artist to conform to group mentality runs the danger of adding a condition to their own plane of composition. It would be like adding a prerequisite to their creativity. A creativity that already finds value in the context of the induvidual artist.
We need to see artists as natives, nomads, free to create new percepts and affects. Artists, that are aware of, but unfettered by outside codifications, artists as the winter hunter alone to define a new spring becoming.
But in reality artists like the Mi’kmaq people can not survive alone in the forest forever. Artists depend on accesses to the outside codified capitalist world for their survival. A survival that is well recorded through out history to have left the artist crippled and marginalized, artist’s groups or co-ops being a recent attempt to empower the artist. This resulted only in empowering organizations and their membership’s definitions of art.
I think that if we look at the Mi’Kmaq model for inspiration we can come to an understanding of how to group artists without compromising their individuality.
If artists use the codes of their society to organize themselves they will inevitably be victims of these codes. Codes that are set up for socialization and not artistic individual goals. Think tanks, chat sites, sweat lodges, or roundtables can be open groups where everyone is equal in their intellectual input. Perhaps it is time the artists formed nomadic partnerships and met in sweat lodges instead of galleries and boardrooms. Modernism pointed out the individuality of the artist but failed to insure it. Postmodernism pointed out the equality amongst artists/text but failed to create a bridge between the individual understandings and society.
The nomad is free, part of the land not owner of it. The nomad seeks and doesn’t build. The nomad is constantly moving and not growing roots. The nomad is not alone but part of everything. The nomad eats, drinks, thinks, and makes love. To embrace the nomadic in thought and action is to start to truly create what is yours/ours.

by chriseddy

January 11, 2005

nEotEXT 8

In search of a muse

There is no vitrine
Or glassed in diorama
Containing the muse
In the namesake castle
But traces can be found
Between the object's decorum
Through the vast halls
In every museum


Out in the park
A fountain says "spewing"
There are statues, sculptures
Just for viewing
And even though this is absolutely amusing
There is only a hint
Of the muse coming through it

With the radio on
Inside of your head
It’s the music's world playing out
The text that is read
Here in the sounds it is also know too
That the footprints of the muse
Are left there as clues



The sacred place
Deep inside of you
Is where you will find the leavers of clues
The ones that we search for
And have faith they will come
The muses, the mused,
Our creativity begun.




More.....

January 09, 2005

gravity's rainbow


From chaos to thought
Wishing you the best
becoming in 2005

January 02, 2005


Fred's House and Sky Spirit

-neOteXT 7

Rear Axel

Jazz Radio
Rain window background
Car tires rush water
Between sax solo
And drums

New beat vibration
Moving water falls
daggers of water
stabbing the piano
Mind is where?

Bare bulb energy saver
Glares inside
Rains envelopment
Water prison bars
Focuses freedoms
Life’s and umbrella’s

Cinematic rain standing
Naked
Ends of lines, water
Pounding the flesh
Pounding the heart
Freedom or fuckyou
Or just pure desire?

Jazz instruments sing
Indoor songs
To the rain
That beats the rhythms
Of natures chaotic response
Rhizomes in the middle
Slide off in infinite directions
Becoming in flow
Pure joy


More.....

December 17, 2004

Come join the party

Come join the party. I don’t mean the liberal party or the communists what I am talking about is Hamilton’s art party. There has been a lot of new galleries open in Hamilton in the last few years. And boy, this has resulted in a lot of parties. So many that it looks like there is an art party on the election ticket.
The gallery owners come from a lot of different walks of life, factory worker, curator, real estate agent, post–pre picture framing, etc, etc. And you will find a lot of people out there at these opening parties lapping up drinks like they are in the Sahara and putting down snacks like it was grub in a boot camp. The art being thankfully silent on the walls and if you are really lucky you can take in a poetry reading with so many poets reading that you cannot retain or think about what you are hearing any more. Let alone appreciate the ones that you related too.
No, this is not New York where everyone is celebrating the artist that is opening and buying up the work. Nor is this Toronto where people are making connections and buying the work. Sorry this is Hamilton, we do it different here.
In Hamilton we have the artists decorate. That’s right artists here are expected to be decorators. Artists here decorate the walls of these art parties at their own expense with no effort (or to be begrudgingly fair, little effort) on the part of the owner to represent, and sell the work. As long as the work stays silent on the walls and the party continues to make you look just like you were somebody someplace everything is eerily fine.
The amazing thing is this view is perpetuated in all corners of this city’s art scene. From the major player down to the artist owned galleries there is so little focus on the artist that one would think that art made its self.
Are our artists such desperate whores? Or perhaps they are affluent hobbyists that don’t need any professional relationship with their dealers, and are willing to decorate these art parties in the guise of increasing awareness. In the thirty one years I have decorated galleries in this city I have witness no increase in awareness what so ever in fact we have been loosing ground.
If the gallery owner wants drinks at his/her opening then they will have to shell out a few hundred dollars, snacks can be expensive, and flowers alone can cost hundreds of dollars. But the artist is given nothing? I find it ironic that artists are the reason for the so called openings and receive less than the liquor control board for their part in decorating the walls. And in terms of attention the works of art seem to go unnoticed on the walls. Is the art that bad?
I really don’t see how throwing art parities for personal friends can build any art community, commitment, or most importantly sustainability for the artists in Hamilton. This town has a history of artists receiving some stature and leaving. Now I can not and will not believe they are leaving because it is Hamilton the city they love and perhaps the most endearing city an artist can live in. I believe they leave because it is a bankrupt art community that only acts out some sort of art scene to perpetuate the art party.
Through out history artists have been tagged with decadence and partying. But does the so called support community have to use this tag to make an excuse for their behavior? If they want to be eccentric then by all means go for it and if they are alcoholics I recommend medical help not art. I have expressed my eccentricities in this community by being a full time artist in this town for over twenty years and spending my time divided between making art and related research. As well as sharing what I have learned with my community through teaching children, up to the age of senior citizens. There are a lot of artists working very hard in your community to create affects or to give you some new percept in your life.
I suggest to the artists that we find some way to address this problem of our stature in the arts community relegating us to decorators at a party instead of major players tying to help shape the progressive thinking about our city. I for one love this city to much to stand back and let stupidity and alcoholism define what I am offering as help and commitment to my community. Art is a necessary part of any community, to inform us, whether we are, business folk or philosophers. Art demonstrates what Hamiltonians are about as a conglomerate of peoples that define themselves from a common base independent of their ethnic backgrounds or their time/ heritage in this shared territory. And it is by looking at ourselves through art that we create a strong bond with the other people around us.
For a community such as ours to have art we must have artists. And to keep these artists beyond their early years we must have some sustainability. In most communities a large part of this is the responsibility of the galleries. There are dedicated owners that court and cultivate a clientele and take responsibility for the art beyond the background in a party. Another factor in sustainability is the role of the non-profit or public galleries. They can also provide support for the growth of the local individual artists. This kind of commitment goes way beyond giving locals a show and a few hundred dollars.
It has become popular in other communities to promote artists. In other words make them know as a whole to other parts of the globe. I have seen groups of artists in art publications from all parts of the globe and most of the time these so called collectives are a promotional package for their region of origin. Something has to change. The artist can no longer be the beleaguered decorators for Hamilton. Artists have to be given the stature that they deserve in a community of this size. And the art buying public has to be steered away from buying their works in other major centres. At the ridiculous low price of art in Hamilton someone should be cleaning up anyway.

December 14, 2004

Dem Bones


Calvin is seen here drawing in the bones of "his" skeleton after spending some time cutting out a tracing of his body. This four year old busied himself on this project for three solid classes. His mother informed me that at night he would take it to bed with him.

December 12, 2004

Jackson Pollock


"Convergence 10" 1952

nEoteXT 6

A gift refused

A gift given
In the darkwrapped
Lost contextual
Deadfall dangerous
Cutitout before eyes or hair

A gift nutured
Grown
A light afire
A flowtoward desire
When ripe

See the children
Ripreveal the gift
Relish and embrace
Almost missed
In chaosexcitement

Humans grown
Blind, deaf, and dumb.
To shun run the shared
Blaring darkness
Beaking bleakness


Stand shitfaced with your gift
Your box in your lap
Shrinking with agetograve
Creating the gift
And waiting to be unwrapped


More....

December 06, 2004

REMEMBER THE CHILDREN


December marks the Holy days for many cultures.

Remember the global culture.
HELP THE POOR CHILDREN NEAREST YOU

Feel free to appropriate this image for your holiday cards and posters, artist chriseddy. web the message!