Art

Sethloader, Burning Man 2006, 2 minutes, 15 seconds.


The role of popular artist appeals to narcissistic personalities because it's something that can generate positive identity as well as an aura of special skills that therefore magnify the uniqueness and importance of the artist. This is a boat everybody wants to be on since people want to be congratulated and sought after. Yet it loses it's value when 'anyone' can be an 'artist' hence the creation of those widespread cliques and elitist clubs. Special interpretations and ways of being an artist are meant to exclude the majority in order to magnify the minority; the inveterate search for a monopoly through the power of definition. The clique that can define what art actually is to the masses gains enormous power and coveted prestige. Connect the dots. Today's art movements are no better than anything else, the artist are no better either they just hold a very transitory monopoly. (source)

So far, except for on my blogger profile, I have said almost nothing about myself either on this or on several of my other blogs. Here I'm going to post some updated excerpts from a discussion on Animal Rights Community Online Forum (ARCO) where sometimes ago I was briefly answering some questions regarding my life and art. You can see that full text here.

By the way, before I was banned from that message board, I had posted almost thousands of posts and numerous topics there. Most of these posts are gone now because of a server crash. Well, that is according to what the ARCO administrators have said. So here are couple of my self indulgent lines from some of the remaining posts there:

PORTAPAK

You say you see forums as a chess game, I see them somehow as a new cinema.

About 35 years ago as a graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), working on my Master of Fine Arts degree in the area of art and film, I had run into something called video and portapak. I was fascinated by it because unlike film it was able to produce immediate results. The image was black and white and of poor quality but what was new about it was that it worked like a mirror; you were seeing what you were recording right there and then. It was about here and now.

These days, video is everywhere being used and abused, from YouTube to MOMA. However, in a similar way that I felt video to be interesting then, today I find internet forums phenomenon to be a breath of fresh air as a possibility for a new expression. In this new medium each poster is in a way an artist-writer-actor living while directing themselves and creating their own lines together with still or moving images and sounds in response to all the other participants so that the work takes it's own organic direction and shape without predetermined plot or any authoritative control. Moreover, while each poster is a character with her own ideas and visions in this ongoing group effort, they are also the audience actively participating in the making and shaping of this work all at the same time. The only preset common factor is that the forum is about animal rights, in this instance for example, which I think is good since I feel that art should be addressing the important issues and that it should be for a meaningful social and political change. Furthermore, in this global communal setting, each participant of the forum becomes an integral part of the whole process while the learning and sharing of the ideas takes place. The result, in my opinion, is a democratic expression of all those who are involved and a creation of a very interesting transparency,

After graduating from UCLA, I received National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Individual Artist Fellowship which helped me a bit monetarily and got some people interested in my work and showing it. So in terms of that, right at the beginning I had some minute "success." However, the money I got from US government run out quick; I had to get a job or beg and sell out.

I ended up in NYC alone trying to survive and pay rent, couldn't deal with narcissistic cliques and elitist clubs of art world and became involved with animal rights, street protests etc. Actually, I documented a lot of that on hundreds of hours of video which I hope to edit and somehow present some day. I also used to lug around at least 50 pounds of video gear including portable monitor on NYC streets along with huge posters which I would design myself in order to display animal cruelty. Nowadays, with new technology, displaying video on the street has become much easier. I have seen PETA people just strapping a large but rather light video LCD flat panel on their chest.

CALIFORNIA VIDEO AT THE GETTY

To get back to your question about irony and have I changed my views? Yes it's ironic and I have not changed my views regarding art, art dealers and museums but at my old age I find all this a little depressingly amusing and entertaining.

Thegettylosangeles, California Video March 15-June 8, 2008 at the Getty Center, 2008, 3 minutes, 54 seconds.


Even though I've never stopped doing art and my work gets to be shown at different places now and then, I've never had time or the ability to actively participated in any of this and to work on my art career.

Once in a while, I get a letter or a phone call telling me that so and so wants to show my videos here and there, but about eight months ago, out of the blue, I received a phone call from the Getty Museum representative asking me if I was willing to be interviewed on camera by them regarding oral history in connection to their forthcoming exhibition survey of California video. Considering that this was the Getty, the richest art museum in the world, I must admit I got tickled a little and had fun talking for couple of hours in front of the camera about my work and things I did more then 30 years ago.

So, although I had fought it all of my life, I think I am starting to understand now why some of my friends and so many people I have known have become "art whores."

PISS CHRIST

To add to this, I've just run across some more thoughts about art:



Art be it 30,000 year old cave drawings in France or a crucifix in a jar of urine all have a crucial common element - the evocation of emotion, the conveyance of a message.

But ultimately art should be more than just a source of passive bemusement, it should be a participatory activity. When art is a recipe rather than a static monstrosities collecting dust in pretentious museums, art where the viewer is part of the process, they become artists as well. Not only does this dissolve the repulsive elitism staining modern art but it becomes entertaining and enlightening too because there's nothing holy or mystical about art or the qualities an artist must posses. This is the most nihilistic and democratized art movement I can think of because it has no set genre, no clique is defining what's acceptable. Every artist creates what they are best at creating and what's most appealing to them while anyone else that appreciates the same material can use the recipe, the instructions to create their own version, slightly changed to suit themselves. Paint the walls, post on the Internet, wear it on your shirts, it doesn't matter. The more you practice the better the product looks. (source)