From the archives, here’s artist Lauren Steinhardt talking about the series:

“Don’t Bite the Pavement provided a crucial platform for nurturing the talents of emerging film and video artists in the Puget Sound area. Each gathering of Don’t Bite the Pavement was a chance for artists and viewers to gather, interact, and to show and discuss their work both completed and in-progress. In this way, DBTP became an integral and vital part of the arts community.”

Here is something I wrote a couple days ago looking back at Central Symmetrical Rotation Movement:

Paul McCarthy may be an odd choice as an example for what’s ideal, as his work is often centered around the not ideal, and in many instances explores the shockingly corporeal. But last year I was lucky to catch the tail end of Central Symmetrical Rotation Movement at the Whitney, and saw how his work captivated and utterly transformed the dynamics of a gallery space. The exhibition was built around three installations (two of which were made specifically for the show, but based on unrealized proposals McCarthy made in the 1970s), and perhaps because these plans came from earlier in his career, we see the artist’s ideas less entrenched in the shtick of being Paul McCarthy (in his defense, the work still centers around spectacle and neurosis, with architecture here being a stand in for the human body, so it’s still classic McCarthy). Aggressive and disorienting, McCarthy’s is a violent and disruptive architecture, one that displaces us as viewers, and one that shows how art can transfix and demand presence.

The most compelling pieces in Central Symmetrical Rotation Movement were the two mechanized installations Bang Bang Room and Mad House. Both involved disruptive movement in box-like rooms, and their fury of motion drowns everything else out when they became active.

Bang Bang Room was belligerent and bossy, a sculpture confident and doing it on its own terms, I am going to do something and you are going to watch, but elegant in its intentions. At first stationary, four walls of a room each with a door ajar, the viewer might enter the small room-sized construction, but at regular intervals its nature changes. At these “on times”, the room becomes manic and possessed, as walls slowly fan away from frames and doors aggressively slam then reopen. The ongoing sound and spectacle were jarring, and for its duration it was hard to look away. Architecture coming to life in such a disruptive way mesmerized, as the room appeared to delouse itself or tried frantically to express something essential but couldn’t.

Corresponding to Bang Bang Room was Mad House, which became active at the same moments (both pieces were on a timer that left them alternately alive or dead at approximately ten minute intervals). In the center of another square room/structure sat a single chair. The chair, perhaps a space to sit and relax, here pivoted in a room spinning at fantastic speeds. Inside, the chair also spun, but at a slower rate than the room, so the two were always out of phase. The chair’s measured orbit caused a lag between the two speeds that seemed to carve out a hollow space in time between the stationary vantage point of the viewer and the hyper-acceleration of the room it inhabited.

Central Symmetrical Rotation Movement demanded attention in such a pleasing way. These pieces were tactile and took complete ownership of the space around them; so that once they began it was impossible to not pay attention. They thrust the viewer into some inexplicable process, and getting lost in the amazement of watching ordinary structures thrust open and spin like carnival rides, these objects demanded that we stop and watch, showing us what can be done when you get lost in the senses.

I just sent off a new article entitled Uta Barth’s Distrust of Narrative Cause/Effect and Agnes Martin’s Surrendered Perfection for an upcoming anthology by Evo Girls. I’ll keep you all posted on that, but I also sent off two new video pieces for exhibition (one to London and the other for the US and Australia). So a lot is coming out right now, but beyond all this thinking about Barth and Martin, I’ve been thinking about having had the opportunity to study and work with Claire Denis and Barbara Hammer. Each are very different, and the way their work looks and approach are completely different, but I think they are both an influence on the work I have been doing lately. It’s odd how these things come together, but take inspiration where you find it I suppose.

In Deleuze and the Sign, Drohan maps Delueze’s ontology of signs into worldly signs, signs of love, sensuous signs, and finally signs of art. The first three categories all closely align with objects and materialism and illustrate a sort of journey. In the worldly sign, the sign is basically a stand in for an object where sign is equal to object, whereas with the sign of love the sign’s origins are unclear so it creates a loop where all meaning is the projection of the individual encountering the sign and thus utterly subjective. On the other hand sensuous signs find affinity in other signs and can be said to experience multiple origins. Through these three categories Drohan illustrates an almost “three bears” approach to encountering the sign. With worldly signs, one comes across what may be thought of as the “too hard”; here the sign is rigidly defined through the object or action that it depicts without much leeway for exploring meaning. Conversely the sign of love might appear “too soft” as its entire reality is constructed from the subjective readings of the individual and has no basis in an object, and thus mean anything the individual projects. Following these the sensuous sign expresses a limited “just rightness” of sorts, in that it finds origins and affinity in other signs. In a sense it provides multiple origins upon which the sign can rest, however the problem with all three categories is that they inevitably lead to dissatisfaction in one form or another. It takes the fourth variety of sign, the sign of art, to become truly dynamic:

We grasp the work of art again, differently this time, as filled with qualities signifying infinite relations to other objects, as well as entirely immaterial relations to ideal essences. Our search pushes into the source of all meaning, into the pure significance of the sign without limits (Drohan 66).

But with all this, where Drohan excels most is in making Deleuze’s often abstract-sounding ideas on the sign become concrete, while highlighting the dynamic nature of his concepts. In exploring the nature of the love sign for example, much of the discussion is pinned on a vigorous metaphor of jealousy. Here Drohan’s language captures Deleuze’s idea as jealously becomes a drive searching for meaning in every nuance of the signs of love. Drohan explains the process as:

Jealousy contains the depth of the search itself, for it continues to obsessively interpret and reinterpret the signs of love. This ensures that our sensitivity to the beloved’s signs are sustained, and that the broadest interpretation of our beloved can be made. This is why jealousy is so much better at approaching the truth of the signs of love: in jealousy, the lover mistrusts every meaning they find for their beloved’s signs. They perpetually refuse to believe that they understand their lover, or that they have ‘figured their lover out’, denying their own interpretations of their love, as well as those their beloved gives them. Every ‘I love you’ is taken as a lie, for each lover knows that there will always be some degree of betrayal between them, as their private experiences cannot ever be completely conveyed to the other (Drohan 48).

In as such the love sign of these passions is unknowable as anything other than a projection of the self, but jealousy leads to an obsession for catching signs in a lie or searching for signs of betrayal. Key to understanding this type of sign is an uncertainty of meaning and an inability to discern origins as separate from one’s own desires. In these terms Drohan and Delueze might look to Alain Robbe-Grillet’s novel Jealousy in which an unnamed narrator is caught up in a system of unknowable signs to determine if his wife (only known as A…) is having an affair with a character called Franck. In Jealousy everything is signs, details, and possible interpretations, as the narrator suspiciously pours through and replays minutiae in the hopes of uncovering some discernible truth, which inevitably remains elusive. Through this obsession it’s never clear if an affair is in fact taking place, or if any of these signs indeed mean anything at all. Each instance is scrutinized for clues of a betrayal and replayed as the narrator seeks to confirm his suspicions:

A… has gone to get the glasses, the soda water, and the cognac herself. She sets a tray with the two bottles and three big glasses down on the table. Having uncorked the cognac she turns toward Franck and looks at him, while she begins making his drink. But Franck, instead of watching the rising level of the alcohol, fixes his eyes a little too high, on A…’s face. She has arranged her hair into a low knot whose skillful waves seem about to come undone; some hidden pins must be keeping it firmer than it looks (Robbe-Grillet 56).

Like Drohan and Deleuze’s signs of love, the narrator in Jealousy falls into an unfulfilling frenzy, searching for meaning that cannot be objectively ascertained. In this world even the pins in A…’s hair, a glance, or the distance between glasses become signs scrutinized as pregnant or bankrupt of meaning, but which ultimately bring one no closer to truth. In both texts this feverish trap of the sign of love leads deeper into jealousy and an infinite scrutiny of signs that are ultimately unknowable, and to eventual dissatisfaction. While the signs of love are shown to be dynamic they always disappoint:

Moreover, love abounds with the infinite: senseless and insensitive actions and pasts, and unknown futures. Every lover is well aware of all the signs of love that both they and their beloved do not know the meaning of. Lacking origins, these signs express a love that is never objective but infinitely meaningful, provoking great “pain” as they lead us only toward the perpetually dissatisfaction with their meaning (Drohan 49).

Though all this signs are shown as a process for creating and discerning meaning, but ultimately one may lead further into infinitely meaningful association or flounder in the unknowable.

Several days ago I put together this video to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the death of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis and the Mt. St. Helens eruption on May 18, 1980.

When I was little we lived about thirty miles from the mountain. On that morning the sky turned dark, everything shut down, and grey ash snowed from the sky. Schools around us were called off for the rest of the year and ash had to be plowed and shoveled like snow. When school started we practiced volcano drills wearing paper breathing masks and getting under our desks the way previous generations prepared for nuclear bomb drills.

The mountain had been known for its symmetry; the most beautiful mountain in the Cascade Range, the “Mount Fuji of America.” And so it felt like some mythological vengeance or jealousy when the prettiest mountain exploded, destroying itself and everything around.

On the same day singer Ian Curtis of Joy Division killed himself. Only a month before that the band released the single Love Will Tear Us Apart, and it is probably the song most associated with lead singer Ian Curtis’ suicide. I like the way the song sounds as the mountain destroys itself, they feel the same, coincide, and remind us that indeed: volcanoes (and love) will tear us apart, again.

With all the coverage around the gulf oil spill lately I’ve been thinking about beaches when I was a kid. Growing up near the coast in the states, we spent a lot of time beachcombing and scavenging the shoreline. When lucky you’d find bits of beach glass, the frosted shards produced by the tumbling action of the shore. Through a simple process garbage was transformed into gems, and there was a hierarchy and system of colours based on rarity. As I got older this glass was gradually replaced by the then still exotic plastic castoffs from Asia; strange junk food wrappers, laundry detergent, and unknown bottles labelled in foreign script, all caught in a direct current from afar. Then it seemed evidence of some elephant’s graveyard of objects, a place where things were drawn to as a final resting place out there, and you were lucky to catch a glimpse of on shore.

And now one hears about the great Pacific Trash Vortex, an immense floating island of plastics and sludge that some say is the size of Texas or possibly the entire continental United States. We’ve made a destination of our garbage, and as such it may still be an elephant graveyard of sorts, however instead of the fevered desire of poachers, we’ve constructed a manmade continent or monument of temporary objects that never break down, always hovering just past our shore and accumulating.

What does this mean when things don’t break down or go away, but instead continually accrue? Exploring this is Ramin Bahrini’s film ‘Plastic Bag’ about a discarded bag struggling with its immortality, and narrated by Herzog.

It’s not often that you look at a line forming in history while it’s happening. Usually it’s from some vantage in the future—here’s how life used to be and now things are different. But over the past year I’ve had this feeling that things are changing and we all actively sense the stakes on some different level, drawing lines in sand every morning as we wake up, only to revise them again before tucking ourselves into bed. Art helps gauge our shared place in the world, but the environment of art changes, everyone proclaims that a bad economy is great for art, that it thins the herd and reinvigorates the impulse. But there’s panic in these affirmations—what happens to the art that we are moving away from—the art that comes from the time just before?

Several months ago I viewed British artist Carey Young’s “Counter Offer” in Toronto, and felt friction between the present and what had just been. Here meaning had shifted from the time when the exhibition was commissioned and the following year when it was installed. On the whole Young’s work deals with issues of corporate culture and the artist’s place in it, but the spaces they were cast in no longer seemed to exist culturally. Filmed in the bland corporate spaces of Dubai and the interiors of corporate banking offices, often populated with bankers, lawyers, and motivational coaches, but the context had changed in our economic times, and I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what that may mean.

Young’s “Counter Offer,” on display at Toronto’s Power Plant, was a cautiously slick show, clever, clean, but all the posturing for an overlay of art and corporate structure seem a little beside the point in the current economy—like somebody forgot to blow the candles out on this birthday cake. We’re in a recession. Corporations are cutting fat or going bust, but Young’s pre-bust work is still two stepping at corporate jingoism or flat institutional critique. Remember when every band wanted to be a robot or at least sound like one? Well, it’s a great premise, but those bands—despite their best attempts—were still made of people, and that’s what made them interesting; it’s the friction between these two ideas that’s exciting, not the hollow assimilation of corporate speak into art. “Counter Offer” draws from Young’s work over the past decade: video, photography, text, and performance, all of which explores themes of corporate culture, but the show may ultimately be a victim of the current economic downturn and a corporate identity that has stepped out to lunch.

Perhaps this has more to do with the times we live in than the work itself, but this friction shows best in the details. In the video piece “I am a Revolutionary,” the artist is coached through her delivery of the line: “My name is Carey Young and I am a revolutionary.” Through much of this work Young casts herself as a gorilla in the mist of corporate nature, blending in or interacting with a world of beiges, power suits, casual Fridays, and the conceptual space of legalese. Here a corporate trainer in a dark suit offers bland guidance; slower, louder, again—reminds her that she is something, what is that? She is a revolutionary. But the emphasis seems always in the wrong place—first on I, then am. He coaxes her through the syllables of rev-ol-lu-tion-ar-y. There’s something lovely about this word, implying somebody whose vocation is to be in a state of revolt, the way the v thrusts, but out of place in this wasteland of corporate culture-—it’s hollow. One doesn’t have to be revolutionary, just deliver the words convincingly. Behind them a glass wall opens onto offices across the way, but it’s not Young’s stagy corporate life but the details behind her corporate rehearsals that draw us in; here a man sits at a desk doing data entry, while nearby someone gathers files into a case then exits. Where does the artist or individual fit into these oversized corporate spaces—or is this the specter that haunts Young’s work in our current economy?

Across the gallery in a smallish nook was the installation “The Representative” consisting of a white chair, lamp and end table featuring a red phone and framed photos of a man and woman. The setup is simple: pick up the courtesy phone and interact with one of the call center agents pictured. The show invites us to converse with a call agent and ask questions about his or her life. Normally call centers are faceless—portals between the individual and corporate interests—so this is a snapshot into the unsung person entrusted with the soul of a corporation. But today when I pick up the receiver a prerecorded message simply states that the attendant has stepped away from her desk.

Upstairs was the video projection “Product Recall” in which the artist and her therapist conduct a session in a spare, but well-appointed office. Reenacting the classic tableau of psychoanalysis, the therapist rattles off corporate slogans, while Young—on a reclining couch no less—attempts to match them with the correct brand: “Passionate about creativity”—“Citibank.” The call and response drifts through a litany of mottos, but it’s unclear whether the goal is to recollect the proper responses or to map the ways that corporations colonize the popular mind; as the therapist notes: he’s looking for how many ad slogans the artist remembers and how many she’s managed to forget.

Before leaving I tried “The Representative” one last time, sat in the chair and picked up the phone, but again was greeted by the prerecorded message: “You’ve reached ‘The Representative’ sponsored by Charter Communications. I’ve stepped away from the desk. Please call back in a few minutes.” Maybe the person was out to lunch, or I got an off day, but I can’t help wondering if calls now simply routed to a callbox—the victim of golden parachutes and corporate downsizing.

“Bad Habits,” on display at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery through Oct. 4, is a far-reaching show and the first since the gallery’s recent re-commitment to highlighting works in its permanent collection.

While I’m not convinced that each piece in the exhibition is naughty enough to fit the theme, it does include a hodgepodge of works from some of the most important artists of the past few decades, showcasing the gallery’s Noah’s Ark approach to art collecting. Loosely organized around the premise of bad habits — taking its name from a series of prints by Lisa Yuskavage — the galleries house such art world heavyweights as Janine Antoni, Matthew Barney, Louise Bourgeois, Cecily Brown, Gilbert & George, Glenn Ligon, Tony Oursler and Jeff Wall.

Read the rest at Buffalo News:

Notes on Conceptualisms—This came out in May and I’ve been seeing reference to it around including Dennis Cooper’s Best of 2009. Here’s a blurb from the publisher’s site:

“What is conceptual writing, how does it differ from Conceptual Art, what are some of the dominant forms of conceptualism, where does an impure or hybrid conceptualism fit in, what about the baroque, what about the prosody of procedure, what are the links between appropriation and conceptual writing, how does conceptual writing rely on a new way of reading, a “thinkership” that can shift the focus away from the text and onto the concept, what is the relationship between conceptual writing and technology or information culture, and why has this tendency taken hold in the poetry community now?”

Whew—-that’s a long sentence. Has anyone had a chance to look at it yet?

I’ve also wanted to read Dave Hickey’s revised and expanded The Invisible Dragon… The old version was on my reading list for a while, but I never got around to it. But now that it’s re-issued… I read Air Guitar a while back and enjoy Hickey’s writing style.

From University of Chicago Press:

The Invisible Dragon made a lot of noise for a little book When it was originally published in 1993 it was championed by artists for its forceful call for a reconsideration of beauty—and savaged by more theoretically oriented critics who dismissed the very concept of beauty as naive, igniting a debate that has shown no sign of flagging.