Author: arantxatxatxa
Not Yours
Supernumerary, acrylic on canvas, 2010
No, it’s someone else’s now. But you can still get yours at Corey Helford until May 5. Or tell Mr. Petker you’d like more notice next time.
For The Manifesto Alone
How I am enjoying the revelation that is recognizing the influence Instant Coffee has had on Even More Legendary. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The first revelation – the impetus to post – was that Instant Coffee is more than its email list. Not to get too windy, but…I was reading about Micah Lexier’s multiples book I’m Thinking Of A Number on the Art Metropole site, and just below its listing was one for an Instant Coffee poster. As a longtime fancier of the seemingly arbitrary IC email subject lines (the only one still in my inbox serves just fine as an example: “peak everything!”), this made instant sense (no matter that the actual posters may not be, in fact, what I’d imagined in that instant).
Subsequent clicks revealed the secret life of IC as an artist collective. This also made instant sense, although I would not want to have to explain that to anyone. The Coffees make things and happenings, like Light Bar, pictured above, and Make Out Parties (and their documentation, Year of Love).
The Coffee spirit enjoyed by email subscribers across this fair land is evident in their manifesto, and forgive me for reproducing that entirely here, I know how you like your internet bite-sized, but then if you come here you would probably reject an apology for including the full manifesto. It’s only short anyhow.
With wavering clarity we understand that what we do is confined to the limitations of representation and we’re okay with that. As a product and service Instant Coffee is an effective substitute: It mimics the real thing without the pretense of being better. It isn’t that much easier to make, which is reason enough to justify it. Taste is a factor, taste being an important way to designate quality and define preference. But quality is too particular and preferences change. They are superfluous really, misnomers that distract from the basic reasons for ingesting either the real thing or its substitute. Value is in their effect. In its taste, Instant Coffee barely resembles the real thing, but its effect is the same. Regardless of taste, it still works. Quality is beside the point. In this disregard Instant Coffee becomes a medium to be used. This is Instant Coffee.
Represent
Chinoiserie, oil and acrylic on canvas, 2007
I’ve read some interesting texts on representation lately. One of them was the thoughts of Mark Tansey, from at least eighteen years ago, in Arthur Danto’s Mark Tansey: Visions and Revisions. The other was by Alicia Paz, on her website, linked below. Paz says that her current practice is about exploring the tension between illusion and process. You probably get a sense of the illusion side of that battle from the image above. It’s not like any place you’ve been before, admit it. For a better sense of the process side, click it and you should have a slightly better view of the assembly that’s deliberately on display.
The Complicated Post
I post this even though it’s over (not in my email = viewed maybe monthly. Email sub option please, LIMO, cuz monthly’s not enough of you) partly because I want to be able to look at the pretty picture in here, and partly assuming it will go on to other locations (assuming because there is no googleable indication of this). Set your alerts.
Apropos Of
Left, Ngar Ball Traditional Masquerade Dance, Cross River, Nigeria, 2004, Phyllis Galembo. Right, Economies of Living no. 2, 2005, Nicola Siddons
Don’t read too much into this post, folks. I actually just wanted to adjacentize these. Selfish. Do visit both sites, however, as each contains thoughtful and rewarding views.
Truth Fully Avenged
I bought Don Domanski’s book All Our Wonder Unavenged about a year after it had won Canada’s most prestigious literary prize, the Governor General’s Award, at the end of 2008. Last night, a year and a half later, I finished it. I had loaned it mid-read, impatient to share its joys, and then it took a while to come back to me.
It was only the second book of poetry I’d read. I’ve enjoyed poetry as much as anything, but almost always in an anthology or periodical. I don’t know what possessed me to buy it, but I bought two – one for me, one for my Dad. Turned out they were the last two in the store, and signed.
I’ve been googling around about this poet today, as I always do when something moves me, and have reached the conclusion that Don Domanski is succeeding. Sure, I could have concluded this from the GG, but hear me out.
As I contemplated my experience of his poetry, I identified various sources of enjoyment. The subject matter – explorations of existence in pastoral settings – would tend to appeal to me. The accessibility of the language and structure welcomes the relative neophyte like myself. But what was lighting it up like transcendental truth? For these poems were fully true, true in every way they could be. Not just “I recognize the metaphor” true, “I agree with the observation” true. The magical property of the poems is that they seem to communicate the full essence of a thing.
Now, my point about succeeding. Here’s Domanski talking to the CBC:
“What I’m doing is making my way to presence…There’s a very deep truth there that strikes well below the thinking level, a connection richer than language, which can give words a more inclusive depth and reach.”
C’est ça! The transportational quality of the poems – drifting you here, and here, and here – does seem to originate from something richer than language.
This experience grows out of reading the poems for a little while, so I don’t want to include an excerpt or single poem here. But here are a couple of links to Domanski and his work:
All Our Wonder Unavenged on Amazon
Walk For Me
Copyright 2009 by Journeys with the Messiah
Fashion photographer Michael Belk imagines Jesus in the 21st Century.
Job To Know
This is a sister post to Curiosity Killed Some Time, on Till Gerhard (also seen on our #1 Webcrush Booooooom!). It’s not a twin sister, as I’m not going to be doing any digging on this – you’re on your own this time. But it is a sister in terms of rhetorical inquiry. This one being “how is he incorporating so much video game aesthetic without crossing over to Heavy Metal?” Job to know, as they say, but if you have time to contemplate this, you may also have time to read this interesting essay on Games as Art. Then you can come back here to the comments and lay it all down. Then you will be making us look at you as a potential Webcrush.
Christopher Mir – BOOOOOOOM! – CREATE INSPIRE COMMUNITY ART DESIGN MUSIC FILM PHOTO PROJECTS.
You Think You Know
Lucky, 2010 © Jessica Joslin
There is a school of thought which maintains that everyone has some special ability. Obviously, I have no idea whether or not that is true. One thing I do know, Jessica Joslin’s experience of flea markets and antique shops is different than mine. I see antlers, casters, saxophone. She sees Lucky (pictured) and his pals (link below). If that’s not enough, she can actually realize that vision.
Something else you can’t know without asking, but that I am comfortably imagining, is that Jessica Joslin enjoys Barbara Gowdy‘s writing.
Even More Legendary 
You must be logged in to post a comment.