Saturday, November 19, 2011

Senseless(?) Drawing Bot

I've been reading Maria Gough on Soviet Constructivism, so I've been thinking a lot about mark-making and the relation of the mark to its maker. As Gough states explicitly, neither version of Constructivism she describes can be at all severed from the Communist impulse behind them: the revolutionary state would suppress whichever individualistic impulses it could. But there’s a kind of fascinating tension in a movement that rejects the maker of the mark while elevating the mark itself. It should constitute a dialectical dissolution of the author/artist/creator him/herself, and yet that doesn't seem to be happening in Gough’s version of things, or in So Kanno and Takahiro Yamaguchi's "Senseless Drawing Bot." Take away the rise of the Soviet Union, and I wonder what's motivating the removal of the human mark-maker here. 

Yes, it's amusing to watch. But there's more there.



Friday, November 4, 2011

Every November, I am Studious, and Hostile

You know that post-holiday enthusiasm hang over? Oh yeah, we have it. All that's left of our 10 lb. candy mix is the bubble gum and jolly ranchers, and Moody and I are both hostile about it. We also didn't get a single Trick-or-Treater, so that tells you how much candy we've been eating. LUCKILY, Christmas is coming. Thanksgiving doesn't count, but it is the day when I start blaring Christmas music unabashedly, so that's something. 

I've started Christmas shopping and making my Christmas-cookie-plan-of-attack, both of which are very good things, but if my posts dwindle in the next 3-4 weeks, it's because I'm drowning in multiple 20 page final papers. Which is a nasty, icky, no-good disgusting thing.

51 days until Christmas!

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Poetry Wednesday

Two Ship

Boatsman,
I wandered, into the killing season
                                                      and You followed

You are your tangles; your boat with sails and stripes
                                   sewn up and the greatcoat
with no pocket (You expected it to hold)

such fearsome strain
on the rigging:         it darkens on the edges
but holds, and in your coat
                           You are your own child
with a beard full of brine, and it keeps You

tempts Me to come up
I am terrible, curious,
red on the edges (Gorgeous fish)
       I have found my anchor,

here am I,
                purring with the urchins
that feel everything You send into the water,
and the leaves,
exhausted with weight and leaving,
                              are light enough.

Annnnnnnnnnnd, something not-mine that I love:

Red Cloth
by Jean Valentine

Red cloth 
I lie on the ground 
otherwise nothing could hold 

I put my hand on the ground 
the membrane is gone 
and nothing does hold 

your place in the ground 
is all of it 
and it is breathing