I think sad is beautiful!!!!
I'm for more sad in art, we need to get it out. . .this world is changing. . .things are dying, new things replace them. . .and not all of them are very cool at all. damnit. . .it's ok to express melancholy.
it's the way I feel a whole lot. and, it's not surprising really. it's healthy to be sad sometimes, despite the pressures from the cult of positivity. in my experience, growing up in the deep american suburbs of the 80s & 90s, positivity is a coping mechanism. . .but also a way to oppress those who struggle against total assimilation into the monoculture. but it might be healthier to let people express their sadness over the loss of more diverse, less commercial subcultures, and the loss of unmanufactured space. . .progress is good AND awful, both. in a progress-only world, a lot of invisible constituents are forced deeper into invisibility. . .(more on that later)
I recently installed a billboard on the side of my house in cabbagetown. . .in response to the sad, sad "cleaning" of the c'town wall, a symbol of territory ownership by the professionals who gentrify this place. the image, posted above, is a sad one, but also beautiful. . .in the tradition of opera, drama & requiems. sadness, which a lot of people feel right now, is important to acknowledge. billboards are our most common form of public art. . .and most all of it is advertising (images with words, almost never - images only). Large public advertising for the most part is exceedingly HAPPY! when one feels sad, looking at screaming smiles sure can be antagonistic.
just talked to louise shaw last night, about the line between positivity/unquestioning acceptance of corpo-norms (the currrent norm of the american mainstream), and outright foolish denial. thin line, indeed.
-kt
3 comments:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doc1eqstMQQ&feature=related
sigur ros glosoli
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBTH2E5QPEE&feature=related
saeglopur.sigur ros
"So what do you think of Atlanta's art scene, Eggtooth?" The morning air is cold and he is standing by himself in Cabbagetown,seemingly conversing with himself. Karen Tauches is inside making espresso or some other french press aberration of just a normal cup of fucking coffee.
Long silence from Eggtooth.
"I dunno." He kicks nothing with a paint splattered boot.
"What do you love about art?" Suddenly asks Eggtooth with sarcastic gravity. He stares at a car stalled in the way of standing Karen's billboard up. It is public art. It is "artist initiated," he was informed by her.
There are moments where the very thing itself, The Idea itself is crystal clear and inspiring. Sometimes this is all that matters. Sometimes it seems important that this seem obviously all that is important. Deliberately eschewing traditional senses of how to experience art. Operating entirely outside of traditional gallery systems. It is in these moments Eggtooth would gladly assist an artist initiated project.
Eggtooth blames himself,before his environment,but feels a duty to the environment to be honest.
"I'm writing an article about art." He adds to the silence of the cold dew covered yard.
"Really? You?" Imagining his own persecution he walks over to his truck,considering leaving without warning. A liking for art guided by gut instinct, overridden momentarily by paranoia's strange braiding with strong clear logic. Thoughts of his own art,his own person - lost in some sort of submission,some sort of dream of investment,supporting a dream for making good art. Eggtooth realizes he must roll with the perspective he is operating from. He asks himself as a sidenote, "Is there such thing as burning bridges in this town?"
Karen returns with two tiny steaming cups.
Eggtooth leaves to go take notes somewhere in his mind. The person left standing there politely smiles and accepts the drink, a humble,grateful, & paid assistant. The billboard laying across her yard is humorously massive in comparison to the size of her residential corner lot.
"Is this even legal?" Asks Jeff cautiously.
Walking & Surfing w/ Art: CRITCART features Karen Tauches
by Eggtooth
This is art. This very thought put into publication. It has a person on either end and floats between. The critic has been forced to become the artist. The act of critiquing the critic -who is the artist - who is part of a community or world where art is perceived. Defining the environment art is perceived in.
Abandoning the artist, the person left is both more solid and more permeable at once. Distance and closeness required at once. The art is forced beyond any realism,into more of a reality. The support of the work itself.
The person on the written end of the expression sees Eggtooth become Jeff Dahlgren. An idea of an audience or those we share with becomes defined. Expressing the self. Applying value and context to art.
All of this stirred by the Internet and a sense of self. The timeless value of art. The different ways it is valued.
Railing against commercialism is dead.
This is about reasons for creating.
There exists in any given moment many types of artists and their art. Right outside your front door as much as in the pages of the history books. Daily life,the regular and the fascinating,it remains even as much disappears. Karen Lee Tauches is amongst a number of Atlanta artists who deliberately recognize an intent in their work, given the environment it is happening and disappearing in. Her performances channel the dead in one moment and in another obliquely point to bizarre futures. Presently,Karen is interested in the fact that Everything Disappears.
It's cold in the morning at K Lee's and the healthy morning walkers are mixing in the streets with the late night freak stragglers. She lives in Cabbagetown, an old pocket in the city of Atlanta.
Her house is a strange corner lot on the edge of what was an early 20th century mill town. The streets are small grid designs in short intersections. There is a tightness between these cozy and old character filled houses. Aging together. A bend in the narrow road follows a graffiti covered wall. This flanks KTauches house,where two days later,the graffiti will have disappeared. There carries a tradition in this area. Artistically it has been host to odd creatives for several decades now. It is in the soil for some reason.
Atlanta,one could say,is actually a small art community. Some consider it a weigh station or a purgatory for artists,as if almost knowing they will be moving on to some other place to operate - if they wish to "succeed" as an artist. The reason given by some being that the environment itself is not conducive to proper context for serious or challenging work. Some say Atlanta is perfect because you have absolute freedom to do anything. Almost as if to say, because nobody is watching,it makes it more exhilarating and liberating to create in. Some point to an over abundance of commercialism and a general business driven sense to the city. Others point to the city itself and scream for art funding. The freedom to be interested in what you are interested in being a strength and a weakness at once. Different pockets of art happen in Atlanta,many brilliant,all seemingly reaching out to some vague liminal barrier.
Karen Lee Tauches erects her own billboard in the middle of this climate,which also happens to be a gentrificating Hell for artists. Her environment is disappearing and she is, at the very least, pointing at if not recording it happening. The city seems to grow richer while the mentality towards art remains just as it is.
Tauches exists in a city that she feels forces artists to reconcile with several factors at once. It is in its history and in its freshly silver shoveled soil- as they merge together. The fact that everything disappears remains. Her work has retained an intent as an artist,not an act of deliberate resistance to an idea of "commercialism",so much as a deep spiritually connected creative reason. She is about awareness and the actions it provokes in others. The memories that will become memories,whether or not they are aware of it.
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