I wrote this a few weeks ago and I don't know why. I got a little carried away with the theory I was trying to present. Maggots and Teratoid Heights are good, but definitely not my favorite comics (but Jim Nutt is pretty great, though I prefer the earlier, wilder stuff).
One of my favorite interviews in the Comics Journal takes place in issues 180 and 181 where Gary Groth talks to Art Spiegelman. Spiegelman talks about how much of his favorite culture is at odds with itself.
He references Raymond Chandler, for instance, and how the beauty and poetry of the language of Philip Marlowe is weirdly juxtaposed onto this gritty detective story. Or how Philip Dick creates these philosophical, psychedelic sci-fi novels. I think that's where I'm at, too. I actually hate it when everything is perfectly, elegantly in service to the design or idea of a comic, book, album, or whatever. I think I was playing devil's advocate with myself or something because I hate fetish objects.
I love reading the later Dune novels and seeing how Herbert secretes heady ideas into this superhero fantasy epic. Or reading Dark Knight Returns or Year One or Watchmen. I really gravitate toward culture that wrestles with weighty thoughts in a pop-culture milieu, and is entertaining, but probably ultimately ridiculous and unsuccessful. It's much more satisfying to engage with something that comes from the crank sensibility of an auto-didactic shut-in, goes balls to the wall, and fails than to engage with something that works perfectly and is beautiful.
I might just need a mess. A difficult pattern to decode. Something that has no inherent sense. I was gonna try to fit Austin English in here, but I can't. His comics are amazing. And then I was gonna say some stuff about being part of a transitional generation between pre-internet collectors (like Seth) and post-internet omnivores (like everybody who doesn't need fetish objects because all culture is easily obtainable), but sewing together these ideas would take some time and I have to make lunch before going to work.
53 comments:
Don't the zines and mail art you make qualify as fetish objects? maybe only if the owner puts that on them, eh? I kind of wish I could claim the same hatred, because then I'd be so much more mobile, but somehow the delivery of the material means something to me. I can download mp3s off of the bloggoshere till I'm blue in the clicking finger, finding amazing gems all over the place, but it still isn't as satisfying as laying the same material in slab wax form down on a handy platter. maybe there's something wrong with me that I need the pride of ownership or something. efforts = rewards though man, 'cause I need to care for my "stuff".
i think part of the appeal of these objects is the residual capitalistic value as defined by supply and demand. the internet allows infinite supply. if you were able to print hi res comics from your computer, would you feel as good about them as opposed to buying them with the assumption of a limited print run from someone else's computer?
Tony - I agree with you, but I worry that that's just an artifact of this consumerist system we grew up in. I can want a fetish object, but owning it doesn't give me the same satisfaction that taking in really good culture does. For instance, I was looking for some comics I'd thought I'd brought to my studio, some of which were rare (like NON 5). I couldn't find them, and then I did a cursory glance at the bookshelves at my house and they didn't seem to be there either. I'm sure if I do more digging, they'll turn up, but I was hit with the feeling that maybe I don't even care. How do those books, read long ago, contribute to my enjoyment of life? I know that's simplistic, but I think it's basically true. So much of comics' history is about collecting. We're mired in our desire to own these things, they lend value where it doesn't exist, and comics stay in a state of arrested adolescence.
Blaise - totally
Counter-intuitiveness is a big appeal to me in artwork right now, probably because I feel so jaded about everything that is the result of doing things "the right way". I think that fetish objects are great because in the internet age they are essentially counter-intuitive. Of course it makes more sense to get your work out there via the internet, and just for that reason I value artists who choose not to.
I actually think it bucks the trend of commercialism. It's pretty clear at this point that you can build a larger audience and make more money by putting your work up on the web, so why then are more and more people putting together free underground tabloids and such? Maybe we just want to feel free of everything that is supposedly right and sensible?
It makes sense for artists to find an uninhabited territory of ideas and set up camp there. Why do young artists move into the city and live in neighborhoods that were once inhabited by the working poor? It's about reinventing something that has been abandoned by necessity and sucking the marrow out of it's bones.
This post makes me want to give a shout out to C.S. Lewis' Sci-fi trilogy for how awesome, heartfelt and flawed it is. It fails in such a hard way, and yet it burned itself permanently into my shower thoughts. Especially Perelandra.
Jesse - right on!
Ian - that's a good point. I didn't address the Ice P's OG contention that when I hand-stamp letters and individually draw each zine cover and elaborate package I send to people, I'm contributing to this process. And being sensible isn't often helpful because I can't understand the subtle ways these things are positive. Here's what I was going to write before I read your response:
Im reading an interview with this musician where he's describing the first time he went into a record store and saw bootlegs. I totally remember going to Bill's Records and Tapes in Dallas in the early nineties and buying this Pixies bootleg consisting of b-sides, live versions, and studio outtakes. There were songs on that record (like this version of "Wave of Mutilation" where Black Francis is humming the guitar part) that I've never seen on the internet or anywhere since. It was amazing and at the time seemed serendipitous to find those records, but I didn't listen to them all that much. I have no idea where they are now. Again, I don't want to be too reductive (and what I said about comics' arrested adolescence is a little childish), but I'm not sure of the value of those things. Then again, I'm possibly looking at this the wrong way. If life is about living and finding myriad small satisfactions (for lack of any big one?), then those moments of consumerist bliss could be really useful. Or maybe we're all just living in the Matrix…
I can't make a fucking seamless argument! Too many positions to consider!
blaise wrote:
"i think part of the appeal of these objects is the residual capitalistic value as defined by supply and demand. the internet allows infinite supply."
try accessing the internet without a computer or phone.
how is a computer or phone or the internet free from capitalistic value?
when i'm living with the internet beyond it's function as a tool to help me actualize real things i feel its nothing more than a detour to a vacuous impermanence.
blood in blood out
This discussion confuses me. I'm really not being snarky— I am confused!
What we're trying to establish is the role of the "fetish object" in a culture where media of all kinds is so available it renders the specialness of the object moot. Is that right?
And then there's the discussion about different works that present attempts at epic ideas but fail through messy mixings of disparate stuff. These works are inelegant, i.e, not "fetish", because they're too awkward. Is that right"
I think it's a pretty interesting set of ideas. I have a really hard time trying to make clear connections between subject matter and the physical form it takes, however.
Anything can be a fetish object, I think, depending on all kinds of socio-cultural influences.That, to me, seems to be more directly related to the idea of "fetish" than the contents of the work. Hard to parse though.
I mean, the comic book, the sci fi paperback, etc., were lowly, utlitarian objects, really. There wasn't much fetish there initially.
That fancy publications seem more aware of their potential for fetishization doesn't seem to me to necessarily change how I might perceive the work itself. I kind of wonder if the rejection of that isn't motivated by not wanting to feel too bourgeois, or something.
I think feeling that way might be more bourgeois than not worrying about it..
I've sold off most of the stuff I used to treasure. I still buy lots of books ( mostly novels or nonfiction), but the object itself isn't so important to me anymore.
I thought the Lewis Space Trilogy was really successful. Curious to know where you guys thought it failed ( without, hopefully, getting into religion). I thought it was pretty truthful in kind of humanistic/universalist way, especially when it got into the psychology of desire/lust and gender stuff.
Blaise- I think you're right about "residual value", but I think it's important to note that that value is there as an expression of desire, and the supply and demand are only conditions of that desire. We give it all value, rather than it imposing itself on us.
Having been involved in a lot of buying and selling of relatively rare comics, it's pretty clear how certain objects tend to trend based on a lot of social factors. Stuff from the "mid level" comcis era of the 80s trended right when those who were just a little bit too young to get into them when they came out had enough time and money to search them out, for example.
I thought Blaise meant that these objects had added value because they seem rare.
In response to Uland - I was being a little lazy. I think Perelandra is perfect. The other two are flawed to me. Especially That Hideous Strength. Which was disappointing because I was so hyped on Perelandra. T.H.S. starts off strong but degenerates into an absurd mess that can't match the fury I imagine was burning in C.S. Lewis' soul when he wrote it. I feel like he was so jacked up to get the story out that he couldn't sit back and re-think his Merlin meets the tower of babel resolution. Shit could have been way better. In my opinion he could have gotten a lot more complex in dealing with the disembodied head and the destruction of the company than the circus-like ending he opted for. Great ideas nonetheless. That's my short response.
T.H.S was my favorite! There is a sense when you're reading that Lewis knows that you know that certain elements will inevitably meet in a proscribed way, so he just kind of skips through it. Meeting Merlin, for instance, was a little too easy...
As far as the way the "babel" part played out, I was actually kind of surprised how unrestrained it seemed. I was expecting him to avert our eyes a little bit..
internet feels {physicaly} like a keyboard/mouse/screen to me
a fetish object to me has a tactile quality that a screen of lights can't cope with
internet is idea to me not an object
internet is all human all the time
all it's mistakes are human by default of it's existenz
a raver with a silly hat
no blood in the streets with a leaf on top
no bugs crushed between pages
a fart with no smell
pretty vacant
put'm on the glass
goddamn i love this blog
ULAND - agreed, definitely. I don't really know what point I was trying to make other than a mess, but I do think that all of these things are related. Fetish implies a lack of awkwardness, thus no entry other than the prescribed one. And, yeah, I am just looking at this as an abstract problem - the idea of the puzzle, the mechanically built object, vs. the mystery, the accreted one. There is some level of bullshit built into that idea, of course, the romance of the unknown.
Maybe I reached too far or mixed my metaphors, though, because the tangible, gnarly, hand-built thing can be great, not as a collectible or objet d'art, but as a living embodiment of the time and grit that made it, as Father Goodyear more poetically put it.
The made-for-fetishization type of thing (anybody wanna buy a Marvel Collectors Item Classic?) fooled me as a kid, but once bitten, twice shy, maybe?
I don't want to separate form and content. I don't know what is form and what is content.
JTM - I was going to respond that the question is about experience v possession, but I think you'd be on the side of experience so I'm not gonna put my foot in my mouth. In lots of ways the internet has contributed greatly to me enjoying my life and introduced me to many things that do likewise. But I waste way too much time on it, for sure.
Jason, maybe empathy plays a role in your evaluation of "fractured masterpieces." You're an artist yourself so it's pretty impossible not to view art through that lens. It's an empathy for "journey over destination", and finding the final product to be flawed, or a "failed destination" just puts the journey itself into high contrast.
There is a human drama to failing. Watching an artist fail can be more interesting than watching him/her land a perfect 10 on the judges scorecard.
I'm a strong believer in the communion between artist and audience member. It's one of the things that continues to draw me to comic zines. It's like you make 100 books and probably meet all 100 people that end up with them. There is a social communion there. The nature of that relationship itself is a huge part of the context. Propagating fractured, lo-fi or counter-intuitive artwork is a search for empathy. It's saying "I know this is for a special kind of person", and then you get to find that person and share a few minutes with them. It's a powerful thing. It's not the same as the blind exhibitionism of the internet.
That's a little too precious for me.
( Yeah, I know it wasn't addressed to me..)
It's difficult not to see those "special" indicators ( lo-fi, awkward) in all kinds of media/art/entertainment. It's not some kind of rare expression, meant only for an imagined in-crowd.
I don't want to denigrate the potential for direct communication that comics can have— King Cat in my late teens was really important to me, for instance— but I don't think it has anything to do with the print run, or whether the artwork looks really hand made.
I like the idea of a network of people that are interested in the same things I am, but there has to be something that binds it together beyond a certain look, or a certain "feel". It seems like the desire for being a part of something that is difficult to commodify is the commodity, because there is no compelling use for such a network at this point. Damien Hirst, Matthew Barney are millionaires, many times over. The most ultra-personal kind of writing is a click away. Bravo is working a new reality show where contemporary artists compete with one another ( I'm not joking).
Instead of trying to out-transgress the transgressors ( which young artists seem to think is their duty..How radical to do what you're told..), I think a far more edifying/humanizing approach is to reattach oneself to the historical narrative by way of craft...
Another thing worth considering is that all art is economic, so you can't make truly subversive art without being economically subversive. The way lo-fi or esoteric art is economically subersive is in it's rejection of intuitive commercial aesthetic values. In other words the "rules" of design that are central to the tradition of craft that you talk about Uland. The socio-economic subtext is a rejection of mainstream/commercial values, and I think that in and of itself is an important statement.
I like all the art Jasons talking about that comes from the "crank" sensibility.
although id argue that no one is a crank and its impossible for any art to "fail." not sure what failed art is?
i saw the new terry gilliam movie last night which was really messy and confusing and had parts that made you cringe because they were silly. but it had great parts too...
basically it felt WORKED on, which makes me feel good and engaged.
dylan williams once wrote this bit about comparing an alex toth page to a seth page and how the toth page is just looks better(im mis representing dylan here) even though the seth page is cleaner or whatever...but that made sense to me, because the seth page was more "composed" but basically knocked out. the toth page had all this energy and thought in it.
so even though the gilliam movie was incomprehensible in some parts i was more into it then whatever slop tim burton serves up even though i guess hes a better "storyteller" or what have you (burton doesnt "fail" either since so many people love him and really get a lot out of him). charlie kauffman too...totally valid artist but doesnt make art that i can get into...gilliams crazy movie makes less sense but has more of the stuff of life in it. somehow.
Alphaville
But Ian, you know as well as anyone that appearing "subversive" is very, very marketable. Your attempt to escape the market is being done in the very terms the market presents to you.
When you're talking about comics in particular, you're talking about a form that began as a commercial endeavor.
"Craft", as I use the term isn't something that the market demanded. If craft is simply a commercial concern, we'd all agree that Spawn #1 is the most well crafted comic of all time.
The market didn't place value on craft; craft is an expression meant to edify us. It's an attempt to do something really well— so well that it will maintain a value that transcends market values and will look just as amazing in 50 years.
Krazy Kat. Kirby, etc., etc..
There are values that extend beyond market/utility.It's up to us to use the market as a means to get it out there.
@Uland
It's true that they both use the market as a vehicle, but I still think there is something substantial to the pop/esoterica divide. Pop welcomes all and makes it easy for the consumer, the economic subtext being "sell as much as possible."
With esoteric art there is a underpinning of social organization. The message is "You, come with me. You, stay over there."
Perhaps the most economically subversive form of visual art is graffiti. The artist can't "sell" it, the audience can't "buy" it, in a lot of ways the audience doesn't even get the choice of whether or not to "choose" it. One of the things I love so much about PAPER RODEO is how it was like graffiti. It was free, it was informal, it attached itself like a beneficent virus to the business of others (being distributed in record shops, coffee shops, etc.)
I think about free comics a lot. I really want to make free comics more than anything else.
I feel like there's a lot of attempts going on here to reduce art to such ultra- relativistic terms that basically anyone and everyone can be a part of it— or more specifically, those saying that around here get to regard themselves in a way designed to meet a certain desire.
If you're unwilling to think in terms of an essential human nature, I think it's still possible to think in terms of a kind of universal human experience. That is to say, though it is subjective, it isn't random. You have to encounter all this stuff with questions in mind about how well a given work speaks to that. It can be on all kinds of levels.
Ultimately, I think you guys are trying to find ways out of having to deal with those ideas cause it's hard. It's really difficult to accept ones limitations, or maybe consider how your art might really stink. It's much easier to deal in sensations and random associations. It's way sexier, really, especially if you've left your shit town for Brooklyn, or whatever, and you're basically just a single ego drifitng among so many exactly like you.
But that stuff isn't going to stay with you. You won't care about C.F's triangle bullshits forever, I promise.When you're 35 and accepted your lameness, you'll understand how foolish it all is.
Ian- I think the most economically subversive thing you could is make something really, really mainstream and give it away.
MTV animations look a lot like Paper Rad. They don't anymore, actually. I think they've moved on.
I don't really know what you mean by "esoteric". Nothing we've mentioned here, nothing I can think of in the art/zine/comics world could really be called esoteric. It's pretty easy to latch onto, really. It just doesn't havea super wide appeal. It's a boutique art form, more than anything. Everyone who is into this stuff is a hyper aware, expert consumer.
The irony of this conception of art is that you want it to read as egalitarian while simultaneously constantly redefining what it means to be egalitarian, thereby rendering it inaccessible and available only to those who can speak your language.
most arguments arent seamless, no work of art is flawless, it feels to me like everyone's trying to quantify subjectivities. if you like something, you like it. sometimes you can't explain it, and sometimes you like things that dont fit into the conceptual framework you envision you or your work in.
something inside me believes that tangibility, or that stupid term 'fetish object' creates a psychological bond between the artist and audience. holding something physical in your hands that, even if largely the production of a big company like Marvel, or a small zine, gives you a sense that the work manifests itself in the way the artist made it. with music it's a bit different because outside of a live performance there is little tangibility involved with music. songs can be made and written and recorded but never exist in a physical form. visual art usually has a tangible aspect to it, welcome to the whole idea of the asinine minimalism/conceptual art/installation movements. there is digital artwork, i suppose, where there's a hole here. the problem is is that people here make artwork on paper and then scan it in and want to talk about the nature of fetish objects when creating anything is just creating a fetish object for yourself.
and again i still feel like it's ridiculous for people to be conscious of making art that's subversive or going out of it's way to go against the grain. i guess there's no hard evidence but to me it seems like making things from that mindset will end with work that seems miles away from you, dishonest kind of work. it just seems weird that the vibe i get from people here is that they should be apologetic for making something like..the powerpuff girls or something. like they're trying to explain their way to why their stuff is 'better'.
Uland -
You're just going to have to accept that not everyone views art appreciation through the lens of some constructed hierarchy of static values. You use "relativism" like a pejorative, but the truth is for a lot of people it's the cornerstone of an entire worldview. Dynamic values basically.
You take a "what's old is new" attitude about aesthetic philosophy but you must realize that this is almost a fringe notion in this day and age.
Ian- I think you need to understand that the term "relative" doesn't describe anything on it's own. Saying something is "relative" is what you say before you try to figure out what it is [i]relative to[/i].
"relative" is not the opposite of static. If you're suggesting that "relative" means "no fixed meaning" and that that is a "cornerstone", you're telling us that there is no such thing as a cornerstone.
Saying something is not an eternal truth is not the same thing as saying it's "relative", or untrue, in the sense that we understand "truth".
I think you can maybe develop a value system ( every value system is a hierarchy, obviously) without believing in an eternal, essential truth.
You just use "relativism" to avoid developing one.
And really, the idea that I'm not aware of ways of seeing the world that I don't agree with is insulting. I'm aware of plenty, and I think there's plenty of legitimacy there, I just don't agree.
yeah, I probably do value the "journey" because I'm viewing art from the lens of how I make it. Diff'rent Strokes - I should've said at some point that I don't want to place a judgement of merit - these are my personal criteria.
Craft is a good rule of thumb when you're making art, but harder when you're looking at it. I know that the first ready-mades required a lot of work, for instance, but the craft is thinking and harder to quantify.
Austin - that's exactly what I'm talking about.
Ian - I'm trying to make my comics as free as possible - I'm reading this book called "The Gift" by Lewis Hyde - pretty inspirational.
Sam - you really don't think that Krazy Kat is better than the Powerpuff Girls?
And I'm 35 and have fully embraced my lameness.
'Sam - you really don't think that Krazy Kat is better than the Powerpuff Girls?'
i dont know. i grew up with powerpuff girls being a formative experience, not krazy kat. there was a japanese translation of powerpuff girls and then now an entirely different japanese version of it. arguably more people who exist in the world today have had a big experience with powerpuff girls. what does that count for? when im making things i think a subconscious reference probably more comes from the powerpuff girls. but there are people who grew up on Krazy Kat, and it's a klassic komic. can i probably objectively say it's better? yeah, but if you look at it from different contexts you see how obsolete something like krazy kat or chester gould is in a way. and to me it's crazy because some of what i dont like about comics is how it's still steeped in the rigidity of 1920's slapstick somewhat. so maybe i find that the powerpuff girls fits into the world more aptly nowadays than krazy kat? i mean, everyone thinks this is better than that, it just gets tricky at times when talking about it to other people. and i'm sure you were kidding anyways.
though im kidding too. i love both. but no one should feel like they have to be apologetic because they're too over analytical and they've developed a weird sense that 'great art' has to be some kind of self aware art school buffoonery. no one should feel like they have to fight themselves to make things because they want it to fit into the framework of 'underground'. I donno. everyone here seems really smart, and probably too smart to not know when they're making things that are 'weird'. I guess you can spar with me over the word 'weird' but that would be too hairsplitting for even this board.
I guess I was too old when Powerpuff Girls came out, but if it speaks to you, or entertains you better than Krazy Kat, that's all that matters.
I think you think that the comics I make, for instance, are self-consciously weird. I swear to you that Blaise and I have had numerous conversations about wanting to make comics that work transparently, aren't meta, are drawn "realistically." But I'm too old to learn how to draw cars and buildings and whatever the hell things are in the world, and, as you can see from even this blog post, I can't make up my mind about anything - how am I supposed to come up with a plot and depict it with verisimilitude? I'm not trying to be arty - maybe I'm just lazy...
This is not a pose - I'm really trying to be as honest about my experience in the world as I can. I make autobiographical comics mainly because I am my only window to experience, but get confused about where to draw the line between "I" and "not-I?" There are no rewards for drawings things that are "weird" other than the opportunity to make sense of things.
jason, i dont think you're purposely trying to be weird, and i dont get that from you or blaise's or whoever's pages. and this isnt from you, im not saying this because you showed up and put your foot down, im just saying when people start talking about the contexts of underground art and trying to make work in that frame it is odd to me. i dont think anyone is 'posing', i just think that maybe they are too antithetical.
for me it's as simple as seeing a peer's work freshman year... they were into like zombies and robots and stuff and I thought 'that's stupid' and thought that i had to go the other way and make work I thought was like avant garde or something. i think people here feel the same way but instead of 'keeping it real' they start talking in rhetoric; like 'fetish object' and 'meme' and 'residual capitalistic value'.
people here probably on a day to day basis are more worried about having things look 'cheesy' or seeming 'hokey'...they're probably NOT worried about the notion of an 'art object' and how comics fit into the confines of that. (there's a difference between the 'art object' concept and 'book presentation' and how that effects reading tho) no discussion is that simple but sometimes when i read things here i feel like it could be benefitted from more 'stupid talk' and less banter about lofty rhetoric.
whatever, i always say i shouldnt respond and then do. but there was a day when a dude like shepard fairey or jhonen vasquez ( the latter on a much much smaller scale) was 'underground', and i dont think people quite remember that. because i dont see anyone here making work that acts like those guys' despite the feeling they still want it to be 'avant garde'.
also im not against making 'weird' drawings or something. sometimes you just feel like making this picture or that picture and trying something. it's when it gets super headgamey that the picture (or whatever it) sometimes creates distance from both the maker and the audience. i think a teacher i had put it as 'watching a comedian bomb onstage in a small club; you want it to be over for them, not you. it's awkward for everyone'
Sam, I actually think the process of making mainstream art is way more headgamey and fucked than making underground/esoteric art. The true path to making great esoteric art is freeing yourself of all of the psychological poison that comes with mainstream culture and just being a weirdo on your own terms.
Uland, I know you understand different perspectives, I'm just suggesting that maybe you don't beat yourself up so much over the reality that they exist.
ummm, what is the 'psychological poison' of the mainstream culture? that sounds a little weird to me.
@Sam-
Commercialism, crass materialism, sexism, racism, jingoism, social conformity, triviality, willful ignorance/know-nothingism, greed, hostility, paranoia, sexual repression, intolerance, etc.
The list goes on and on really.
Ian, I'm really not "beating myself up" over anything. Maybe lack of productivity, but that's another story..
I think you're deluding yourself, and it's pretty upsetting to be confronted with such craziness.
I mean, "esoteric art" being possible only after we cleanse ourselves of "social poison"? That's insane. It's totally nonsensical.
Jason- I really like your comics. I'm not saying criticizing specific modes of drawing comics, more ideas being presented here ( Ian and Blaise and Austin, really).
They might even make comics I like— there's often a huge gap between what an artist think they might be after, and how it reads.
that's weird, ian, all those things existed before any notion of a mainstream culture did.
Thanks, Luke. I should probably stop blogging - I don't want my "personality" get in the way of what people think about my comics..
@jason you have an interesting online personality. it reflects part of your 'irl' personality, but is also like ... like you 'edit' these thoughts in real life but they all come out in real time via the internet.
kind of like the idea of 'mirror face' or something
it's very excitable, i enjoy it.
@jason are you being serious about your personality getting in the way?
i feel like your personality is very important in the way i see your comics now. same with everyone i've met. i feel like it's not even an individual taste, but a way of seeing the world. (feel like we're at the end or the beginning of the 'conceptual decade')
@jason i think i invest in artists over art
I wouldn't worry about it too much. I don't think I'd carry over that much from reading a blog to reading your comics.
In both, I get the sense that you're doing it in earnest. That's what's really important, I think.
True, true
Blaise - XOXO
this blog usually annoys the shit out of me, but i still read it all the time because i'm an idiot.
i like what sam said here though...
it's a funny line to look at
some artists are so amazing to me but they are very repulsive to me personally and likewise i really dig a lot of artists as people but find there art uninteresting
not much ryme or reason to it but i do often gain an apprecieation for some ones art after i figure out i like them personally
it adds to there depth often
jason overbee, I know the conversation has shifted, but...
I'm not sure I agree with this idea that consuming is a default negative thing. true, it's important to be aware of what/how we consume, but I'm not convinced that all consumption is negative.
objects can become charged given the right set of circumstance. If I give a book as a gift to a close friend, maybe inscribe some special message on the first page, their reading of the material itself will be different than if they bought the same edition for themself, will be different than if they read it on their kindle, will be different than if they found it at a yard sale, etc... The material itself changes fundamentally depending on the mode of travel it takes. I believe this is a way that magic works on a very pragmatic level.
also, screw a "seamless argument". I dig that you dropped a half baked notion on your site and left it open for argument. more room to hash this shit out!
another position I take with my collection of stuff is that it acts as my physical memory. I have a library of reference material that I could never recall every nuance of.
it also acts as a sort of emotion storage. I know how skibber bee bye makes me feel to read, so I can access that emotion by accessing that text/images.
totally @tony re 'materialist elements'
Yeah, Tony - I think I'm with you, too. There is an actual difference between physical information and its virtual counterpart. And I think this discussion just brings about the imprecision of language. I can throw out a phrase like "fetish object," assuming it will connote the same thing to everybody, but it doesn't, of course. Even trying to make any sort of quantitative argument is about taking a real, physical sensation and essentializing it. But essentializing is tricky, and often, like those inscriptions in a book you're gifting to a friend, or the decorations on a package of zines you're mailing, those "inessential" details can be the most important.
I know I use the term broadly; certainly more broadly than you had intended it. I remember talking to you about the Justin Green book and both of our issues with it. How the art artifact aspect can get in the way of the bona fide content of the work (sorry if I'm mis-remembering and putting words in your mouth).
that's totally what I meant re the Binky Brown book. It's like a simulacrum of an artifact instead of being a hand-crafted, numinous thing.
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