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.

Wanderlust: Frost(ing)

Wanderlust: Bridges/Balconies/Learning to Fly

                     

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!

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