Some
of the ideas aren t that original in the proper sense, they are simply things
I would like to do, something I read or saw that I would like to do my take
on, or spring board off of. Treating ideas and concepts as secrets is a luxury
that I cannot afford. If by writing them down I am ruining them for further
investigation, so be it. I can always come up with more, those that fearfully
hang onto a few precious ideas as if they were jewels simply don t understand.
Others have had similar ideas, and created works that relate to mine, it does
not matter: it is not who does it first; it is who does it better. Hopefully
these ideas will strike you as ripe, ready, and alive, not dusty goods upon
a shelf. Everything is a re-creation of everything else - this is a two way
street. This text itself is an idea that has come to fruition, I am doing
this as a means of advertisement, these are my wares and possible investments
for interested parties - but also as a project in itself. Make no mistakes
you are holding art in your hands.
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Miracles
by Mailbox
Proposal
- To exhibit sculptural objects that have all arrived at the exhibition space
via the United States Postal Service. These objects would be ready for exhibit
in their delivered state; they would not be enclosed in packages or containers.
No one would need to unpack these objects, because the outer -postal skin-
would be the actual artwork. The method of delivery would be the content of
the objects. The fact that they arrived via a mail carrier, and not via the
artist directly is what makes the objects artwork. The object s morphologies
will play with the concept of -what is a package- and what is not. And with
shape, texture, and color, the placement of stamps, as well as the sender
and receiver addresses. The style of the text on the object, the postmark,
the stamps themselves and weight of the objects would be an ever-changing
mutation of the expected appearance of conventional postal objects. Also,
the X-factor of abuse during the postal processing would add another dimension
to the work.
This project is about method of distribution
being merged with content, but the possibilities of form and subjects that
it can address are endless. I am trying to make an expression about the power
that is at all of our hands. For a little money (the cheapest postal prices
in the industrial world), Americans could be exchanging sculptures with each
other. Sharing the beauty of canceled stamps, the mystery of a closed package,
the unexpected surprise of an unknown.
One aspect of this
project has been -the puzzle- or component piece(s), in which discrete pieces
delivered separately, can be joined to create a larger, more complex sculpture.
Ideally, an exhibition would begin with the first few objects arriving each
day and placed in the exhibition space. Little by little the objects would
take up more and more space in the room until their interrelationships were
exposed and the pieces were joined to form the intended
combination. It would be important that I not be present in the space. The
receivers of the objects should arrange them, often times the object have
directions or suggestions as to how to display them.
The
primary influence on this work has been the Correspondence art movement of
the 1960s and 70s, represented by Ray Johnson, Buster Cleveland, Anna Banana,
Wallace Berman, and On Kawara. If you affix proper postage, you can mail anything,
through the U.S. postal service (though it can’t be perishable, or something
that would damage other mail). This medium of exchange is the mischief, which
turns mail into system of commerce and exchange in subversive art. Often items
of extreme economic or sentimental value are entrusted to the mail service;
this project plays with this convention, the objects soon to become valuable
art commodities via mundane actions of the postal service.
Besides an exhibition space, a patron
could pay a membership fee and receive a postal sculpture every month for
a year, since this method of working gets a great deal of its content from
the surprise in the mailbox. I have been working on a version of this project
for three years with my friend Scott Wolniak, who has a small gallery space
in Chicago. I jokingly started to send him these objects, but it has become
a force in my life, a constant side activity. No matter what else I have going
on I can make these objects. The production of these miracles allows me to
have a system of meaning; I produce, mail, and never see them again, yet I
know they continue to exist. I am the believer, the objects are my offerings,
the mail is the cycle of life, the postage stamps are my sacrifice, the mail
carrier is an angel, and the receiver is the keeper of the secrets.
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Trashsures
Proposal - To create and then abandon
a series of art works in the city of New York. These objects will be made
from materials that are presently in my studio. They are half-finished, ignored,
false starts that are filling up all the valuable space in my studio. There
is a raw quality to these pieces that I find at once appealing and also repugnant.
I have a compulsive desire to "push" artworks, to keep adding, altering,
and fudging with pieces. I also am constantly finding objects that can become
the beginnings of great aided readymade pieces.
All of the objects have a truth to them. That truth is that they are
unfinished works of art - no one would think that they were random pieces
of trash. Through this project they will become simulations of a very real
urban phenomena: the waste of a failed artist. Part of living in New York,
is to come upon, piles of abandoned semi-destroyed works of art, the trash
pile. My pieces would be more assertively placed. I want to confuse people
as to whether the pieces have been thrown way or left by mistake. They will
be set down, in areas of high traffic where they are sure to be seen. Then
the fickle finger of faith will collaborate, these pieces might be ignored
for days, destroyed by the first passerby, or taken by some urban trash connoisseur,
or some duchampian might claim them as ready-mades. I will produce maps of
their locations, which will be mailed out as exhibition notices so individuals
will be able to seek out these pieces. The random reward of an Easter egg
hunt comes to mind.
This
project would be a means of purging these objects from my life. I will simply
take them in their present state and scatter them across the city, photographing
each one and recording its new home. I hope the outcome of this is two fold,
people will see the objects, and know that they are -Artworks- completing
the Artist/Viewer circuit. Also the city is supposedly filled with keen-eyed
individuals that will hopefully “adopt” these objects, taking
them home, completing the Artist/Collector circuit. If I make enough of the
pieces and they become known, perhaps someone will write about them completing
the Artist / Critic circuit. If that happens perhaps a curator will want to
exhibit the objects or their documentation of them, completing the Artist/Gallery
circuit. If my assertions are correct, it will prove my idea that art that
negates ego and ownership can bring a larger reward for ego and ownership.
If you can make people think that you don’t care or are some kind of
revolutionary, then they will do whatever they can to embrace you. Why? Everybody
wants to be validated by the trickster, on the laughing end of the joke. Everyone
wants to be in on the joke. This may come off as a bit of art-world stratagem, but what
isn’t? What we pretend to be, we become, so I will pretend that I am
"abandoning" these works, but in reality I will be claiming the
greater world as
my own gallery.
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The
Apocagenesis
Proposal - To create a series of large-scale
paintings of a mythic narrative cycle. The key to this work is the focus on
myth- not mythology. Myth is the birth of mythology. I am not trying to retell
old stories in a new way, rather creating a new story with ancient forms.
If we think about the world of fiction as a world that actually exists alongside
our own, then we can begin to better understand ourselves. My interest in
myth is in altering the viewers understanding of this world by altering the
mirror world of fiction. Their sense of recognition, I want people to reconsider
their assumptions about fiction (which is our mirror), and to not take the
fantastic for granted, thereby not taking the mundane for granted either.
This
project will work from the point that theology is anthropology. Humanity creates
God(s) in order to re-create itself. Understanding this retro-genesis is a
hermetic practice, of believing that God does exist solely in the human mind.
This ultimate fiction is the final mirror that must be explored. In my artwork
this content becomes fixed, but the form changes based on whatever aspects
of this idea I wish to explore. This is an infinite system, that I can tear
apart both conceptually and physically without losing cohesion. Any endpoint
becomes a new beginning.
Part of being an artist is dealing with
the fear of “giving away the game”. Agendas are hidden with the
practice of fearful poetics. Everything seems to bend to caution, and discretion
is not the better part of valor. Everyone wants his or her work to be well
received. This want becomes a need, the need becomes a fear, and fear becomes
the thing driving the work. So to break this chain of conceptual cowardice,
I propose to make a series of large-scale (painting/drawings) that have a
dynamic narrative; exploring the -Apocagenesis- the beginning of the world
as the final revelation, in a rebus of mythic reality with fully realized
plastic form. The narrative will be based on the pan-narrative schema that
author Neil Forsyth described in The
Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth.
Lack,
Hero Emerges, Donor, Journey, Battle, Defeat, Enemy Ascendant, Hero Recovers,
Battle Rejoined, Victory, Triumph, Repeat.
I
will couple this schema, with my own idiosyncratic values and assertions,
which includes the contemporary action hero as surrogate Messiah along with
concepts such as Gnosticism, Ancient Astronauts, and Theodicy. My goal is
to create images that can be understood by the active viewer. I don t expect
every nuance to come across, but my work is generous. I always depict a world
that is writhing with abundance in terms of object/subject matter and information.
Nothing is left out. If you look you will see. Nothing outside of the work
for its intended reception: autonomy is paramount; you will not have to read
a title card to understand these works (unless you are a blithering moron).
Aesthetically, this project
will confront fear of the pictorial in art. The pictorial is seen as the realm
of illustration, which is the great evil in -fine art.- Why is it that one
can do anything in this all-inclusive pluralistic world of art, save illustration?
Everything that has been done in modernism, every cube, stripe, dot, and drip,
has at one time or another found its way into advertisements. Why pretend
that any trope of expression has maintained purity? For this reason my pictorial
epic images will be about their subjects, not redeemed by some formalist sub-text,
or kowtowing to art history, their form will be dictated by what will serve
the subjects.
A teacher took a group of students though
a museum and we came upon a Rubens painting of St. Catherine and the Virgin
Mary. The teacher said, -You all know what this painting is really about,
right?- I said, -It s about St. Catherine and the Virgin Mary.- He laughed,
and said, -No it is about this repeating line, you silly puddin head!-He then
proceeded to gesture in front of the painting showing how the fold of her
Mother s arm rhymed the profile of the Virgin Mary, and how that fold was
rhymed again and again in the painting. This is everything that is wrong with
art education. If we think about artwork as being all about the formal devices
used to create them, then all other aspects become moot. This is an agenda
that turns us all into soulless geometers. The greatest works of art become
formalist experiments or decorative luxury objects.
This
project will be well underway by the time this writing has been completed.
There will be around twelve to twenty works in total. These paintings will
be my attempt at the rigorously over-the-top masterpiece paintings. Every
aspect will be considered and all the complexities of form and content will
be explored, making the greatest paintings the world has ever seen.
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The
Apocagenesis: The Teleplay
Proposal
- To produce a video in which I will act out an elaborate narrative based
on the Apocagenesis paintings. About two years ago I painted oversized portraits
of my Dramatis Personae, the characters in the Apocagenesis. These archetypal
characters are Heroes, Villains, Gods, and Monsters, each of whom represents
various concepts of import. These portraits are mounted on poles to create
protest sign-like placards. I will use these placards as the sole signifiers
of character in this video play. I will stand before the camera and perform
passionate monologues as each of the characters. These monologues will be
edited together to give the impression of character interaction, creating
multi-character scenes. All of the text will be improvised and emotional.
The final video piece will be no more than 60 minutes long; this piece will
be segmented into smaller acts. This could be expanded into a play with other
actors playing the parts.
I am interested in dealing with the Fantastic
in a manner that focuses on ideas, not special effects. I want to utilize
Brecht s Epic Theater, in which there is an intellectual distance from the
subject. The fact that it will be me, wearing a black robe, standing in my
studio, will force the viewers to focus on my words and actions to -get- the
story. The placards will become signs for quick identification. This work
will be the documentation of a ritual being born, and will be an attempt to
re-create theater in its primordial sense, in the manner of Thespis, the first
actor.
Thespis, who lived in ancient Greece,
is believed to have been the first playwright to introduce an actor, independent
of the chorus, who delivered monologues and also engaged in dialogues with
the leader of the chorus. The birth of drama is dated from this innovation.
Thespis is also said to have introduced the use of pigments and masks to disguise
the performers. Just as Thespis stood in front of the audience and stated
that he -was Bacchus,- I will stand in front of the camera and become the
various characters in the Apocagenesis. Thespis s actions mark the moment
when theater broke away from ritual and lost its direct connection to the
mystic. This project is about -the forward return,- I want to do the opposite
of Thespis, to access the mystical power of character invocation. Through
ritualistic magic, I will become the characters.
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The
Dawn of Time Proposal
To
create a completely actualized diorama in which the first moments of humanityÕs
mythic history are depicted. This will take the form of a vast field of battle
in which the Proto-humans square off against an army of Angels, depicting
the moment of original sin as an outright collective rebellion. The Proto-humans,
or Dawn people, will be a multiracial group of industrious, robust Neanderthals
wielding clubs, spears, bows and arrows, trained wolves, and catapults. Their
enemies, the Heavenly Host, will be tall, muscular pale skinned emotionless
hermaphrodites, grouped in the nine sub-orders of Angels: Messengers, Seraphim,
Cherubim, Dominations, Thrones, Rulers, Powers, Virtues, and Archangels. This
project will be a physical manifestation of the conflict between Evolution
and Creationism. It will recast the expulsion from the garden as the rebellion
of humanity against the yoke of an oppression, fact verse faith verse fantasy.
I witnessed this battle as a vivid dream. This diorama would be constructed
with an overhanging guard railed platform that would allow viewers to walk
into the piece. The figuresÕ scale would be manipulated to give the illusion
of great perspective. The figures in the foreground would be about twenty
inches tall; the most distant figures would shrink to under half an inch.
The reconciliation of Evolution and Religion has been one of the rocks in
the belly of the Modern Age. We are constantly re-creating our God(s) to fit
into an ever-changing scientific landscape. This retroactive genesis syndrome
sees myth and science as the interchangeable tools of assertion. Our religious
beliefs actually change our scientific facts, instead of the other way around.
The prehistoric world is just as malleable as our future. Every day we are
discovering new facts about the past that cancel out or radically change the
Òtruth.Ó I grew up in Texas, where NASA and the Bible belt co-exist, and there
was an odd mixture of big science and fundamentalism. Everyone knows that
there were Neanderthals and dinosaurs, but they were all in denial of it.
Every day, science becomes more and more like magic, and it becomes clear
that all the ancient mysteries were really scientific in origin. God is a
reflection of humanityÕs ever changing self; we are cave people attempting
to turn ourselves into angels. This piece can be seen as an extension of the
Apocagenesis project into a three-dimensional experience. I am interested
in the inversion of painting into sculpture. There is a powerful dogma in
paintingÕs dialogue that believes that painting is Òall about Space!Ó This
is absurd. If painting is a two-dimensional activity that is only about simulation
of the third dimension, then is sculpture only about the second dimension,
or the fourth? If we look at painting and sculpture as opposites (which I
donÕt), then the inversion of one creates the other. What happens if we use
three dimensions to deal with ideas from the second dimension? This paradox
will create a higher level of implausible, yet dynamic, plastic space. The
Angels will be emerging from a rip in the fabric of reality. The scale of
the figures in conjunction with the platform the viewers will be standing
on will hopefully manipulate the viewersÕ sense of scale, increasing the experience
of having the privileged ÒGodÕs EyeÓ point of view. Just as this piece would
be a conflict between science and religion, it will also be a conflict between
pictorial and actual space.
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Props
Proposal - An exhibition of props from
all of the other projects. Since a number of pieces and projects I am proposing
will use props and other such trappings, it would be of interest to have an
exhibition that was only props. At first, it would seem to be simply that,
the objects will be presented and there would be photo-documentation of the
prop being used by a model or myself. There will also be a short text explaining
the how and/or why behind the actions or events. But as the exhibition proceeds
the props will become more and more bizarre and the actions more and more
fantastic. This will transform the props into -power fetish objects.- The
end result will be an expression of what Sigmund Freud called technology,
The Prosthetic God.
The
prop collection will include, ceremonial robes, musical instruments, tools,
walking spools, balancing devices, masks, costumes, armor, robots, exoskeleton
jetpacks, E.S.P. Helmets, soul catchers, medusa ray guns, and time machines.
The inspiration and influences
of this show include the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, which is the prototype
artist/ inventor. Also, Robert Rauschenberg s retrospective at the Soho Guggenheim
in 1997, which showed props and artifacts from some of his action and performance
pieces. These pieces proved that anything could be used to turn the everyday
into a meaningful event. I have a love for the -low-tech- and temporal nature
of theatrical props and illusionist gadgets, the economy of their construction,
and how their workings are obscured, not exposed. I have been an aficionado
of -magic props- since my childhood.
I was always finding odd pieces of wood, or broken discarded tools and infusing
them with imaginary powers and functions.
Object
endowment, the practice of rehabilitating found objects with new and unintended
functions, is an important part of my life. I am amazed at what people throw
away.
This
project will present the props, written statements for each piece, photos
and/or videos of the props being used. Half of the objects will be actual
props from other projects, the rest will be completely fictional, with the
documentation being the element of truth in the exhibit. The rewarding art
experience is based upon the revelations of unknown histories. People go to
see art in order to see the residue of a secret meaningful life that has been
going on unbeknownst to them. The most interesting parts of retrospectives
are the early, quirky unknown works or the bizarre later-day tangents. Novelty
is a bi-product of discovery, and there is nothing new under the sun, but
the sun's light can be broken into new form by prisms.
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The
Timeline
Proposal-
To create a long scroll-like drawing on paper, with ink, collage, and acrylic
paint, that will be the ultimate timeline of all events, real and imaged throughout
history. I believe that drawing is the highest form of human expression. Drawing
timelines has moved outside the bailiwick of artists and into the world of
scientific/historic illustration, like cartography. This project will be a
timeline to end all timelines, re-claiming the creation of such things to
the world of the artist/philosopher.
This project draws from the history of
humanity s habit of mapping the future along with the past. In the Vedic traditions,
the basic unit of time cycles through 4.3 billion years, and then begins anew.
Everything that happens will occur again. Christendom has been producing timelines
for hundreds of years that begin with biblical history and go past the present
to show the -apocalyptic end times,- Many of the timelines are available on
the Internet. Scientist have produced numerous theories about the future of
the universe. In Speculative Fiction, many writers present the reader with
-the history of the future.- H.G.Wells, E.E. Smith, Olaf Stapleton, Arthur
C. Clark, Philip Jose Farmer, Philip K. Dick and H.P. Lovercraft have all
setup complex chronological frameworks that destroy themselves upon their
lack of maturation. My timeline will reconcile as many incompatible histories
as possible. This project will create a timeline that presents a -true- multi-layered
history of the universe, instead of a linear progression. It will be a vast
Gordian knot of various conflicting, revisionist histories. All manner of
unknown, or untrue facts will be explored and the future will be thoroughly
explained in detail. The events covered will be from before the Big Bang to
the End of Time and beyond.
No
matter how much -proof- is brought forth to support the Big Bang, it will
always be a theory, (unless time travel becomes a reality). This piece will
treat all the ideas about where we came from and where we are going as equal.
Did the universe begin with a Big Bang or with the breath of a Giant?
History
and Science dominate our view of time. This project will represent all the
theories and concepts about Time equally, all the wormholes, paradoxes, divergent
realities and loops. This timeline will be a kind of -artifact- akin to the
Mappa Mundi (World Map). Completed around 1280 AD. The Mappa Mundi was the
culmination of the Medieval Christian European search for a world that would
accommodate the Bible and Greco-Roman learning. The offspring of art and science,
it was an encyclopedia of the world, including strange -races of humanity-
and mythical flora and fauna. The Mappa Mundi is an artifact of a worldview
that was complete and dynamic. This artwork is a closed yet infinite system.
We exist on the other side of the Mappa
Mundi. We exist on a completely different Earth than the one that it depicts.
It is the duty of the artist to create such things. Art is a means of thought
that actually allows communication between the past, present, and future.
The final goal of this project will a
document for future generations about our current understanding of Time itself.
A future when we understand mechanics of Time as well as the waterways of
earth. When we of the present are the primitives, marking dragons at the edge
of the world.
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Unicycle
Action Paintings
Proposal- To create a series of large-scale figurative paintings using
my unicycle as the -brush.- This proposal stems from two major inspirations
and influences.
1.
Jackson Pollock and the history of Action or Process Painting, which is about
the mechanics of compromising or removing the ego from the act of creation.
The facts of this art s creation are almost always less interesting than their
appearance. Having blind mice dipped in paint crawl around on your canvas
sounds like a great idea, but if I have to know that to justify the painting,
how good of a painting can it be? Pollock s paintings, at their best, transcend
their making. They are not about the dripping of paint, but rather about the
Void, Chaos, Hope, Tragedy, Infinity, and Doom. I think the challenge of Action
Painting is trying to tame a wild bronco- instead of just hanging on and hoping, to tame the beast. Pollock had control and a purpose when he
worked. The idea of him, as a monosyllabic wild man is completely erroneous.
He said that he denied the accident. Pollock was controlling the chaos, not
the other way around. My unicycle painting would be an attempt to do the same.
2.
Various divination practices from around the world- In which chance operations
take place within a selected zone or area that are then interpreted. These
interpretations of phenomenon are taken as prophetic signs. For example, the
Shaman would create a square frame and prop it up, so as to give an unobstructed
view of the sky. Then, the Shaman would wait to see what entered the frame
and from what direction - a flock of birds from the north, a leaf blown up
from the east, a dark cloud floating by from the west. All these things havemeaning,
and their position within the frame effects that meaning as well. If I were
to look upon the field of the canvas as such a divination field, and then
ink up the wheel of my unicycle and ride it on that field, what meanings would
arise? The very morphology of my rather amateurish unicycle riding could be
analyzed for the divination, conceptual, and figurative direction of the painting.
In all of my artwork, I am trying to set up a battle between the lofty
aspirations of my content and my purposefully brutal way of working. This
project would extend that dialectic. I have always considered my tendency
to clean up the accidents of creation to be an obstacle in my work. I overly
tweak and hedge things, and that can sometimes take away the vitality of objects.
If I am forced to use my unicycle as my only painting tool, then I can only
aestheticize the results by become a better unicyclist. That is why I would
attempt to make figurative paintings with the unicycle. To make abstract paintings
would not be a challenge, there would be no index of recognition to deal with.
The end image will be based on whatever image came out of the riding, as in
Rorschach blots. This practice of extracting images from random marks is a
common surrealist game, and in the end has more to do with what the artist
wants to see. Just as the Shaman interrupts the omens that chance generated.
This project will be completely photo-documented from start to finish.
The photo-documentation will be of passing interest, and not to be intended
as a justifier of the project. The most important factor in this project is
the paintings being autonomous of their process. Knowledge of their making
should never be more interesting than the finished pieces. The Non-traditional
methods must create an unexpected object, not an interesting anecdote about
their own method of creation.
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The
Earth(s)
Proposal - To create a collection of models of the earth that are all
completely autonomous and mutually exclusive of each other. Each of the models
will present a paradigm of our earth that is based on some sort of logic,
but does not adhere to current scientifically-approved ideas of what the earth
looks like, i.e.: an oblate spheroid covered with two thirds water and seven
continents with a molten core. These models will be made of common map and
globe making materials. Since modern globes and maps are made digitally for
accuracy and mass-production, I, too would use desktop publishing software
to create these maps and models. However the final pieces will be made my
hand. The models would be a fusion of my own assertions and the vast history
of geographic apocrypha: the flat, hollow, inverted, square, fantastic, and
geo-political earths.
What if a globe was created that charted all the invented lands of
fiction: Atlantis, Lemuria, Lilliput, Oz, Brigadoon, Prospero’s Island,
and Xanadu would all be given their proper place upon the earth, How much
bigger would the earth have to be in order to accommodate these lands? Models
would be based on the mythic and ancient ideas of how the world exists in
the universe: upon the back of giant turtle, resting in the womb of a giantess,
floating in a void under the floodgates of heaven. This project would entail
the creation of numerous other paradises, paradigms, and parodies of the earth,
including all the subjective cosmologies that can be imagined. This quote
from the Flat Earth Society should help to illustrate what I mean:
The
Box
Proposal - To create a giant clay humanoid figure that would be concealed
within an even larger pine, crate-like box.
The viewer would be presented with a twelve foot long, six foot wide
and four foot deep closed crate, but on closer inspection the figure within
could be seen within through the small opening in the crate. This piece was
inspired by The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon,
and by my life-long interest in the myth of the Golem. The Golem is a figure
from the Jewish mystical tradition. In times of distress and need for the
Jewish people, the rabbi would create a giant figure in clay, write <Emet>,
the Hebrew word for Truth, upon the figure’s forehead and place a piece
of paper inscribed with the tetragrammaton (the unspeakable name of God) into
its mouth. The Golem would then come to life and protect the Jews. It was
only supposed to do the will of God. If ordered to do something profane, for
example, the household chores, the Golem would go berserk and destroy everything
in sight. The only way to stop the giant was to wipe away the first letter
on his head, changing <Emet>, and truth, to <Met>, which means
death. The Rabbi Judah Löw was reported to have actually created such
a being in Prague during the 16th century.
I have always been interested in the Golem, initially because of its
connection to the Frankenstein Monster, and secondly because it is a powerful
symbol of the Artistic process. A figure is made that approximates the creation
of Adam from clay, and then language brings it to life. Art exists as a powerful,
yet mute, giant, but writing brings it to life. A work of art is not finished
until it is titled. The creator finishes their work and then calls it truth. Art history and theory, when correctly
applied, bring art to life in the wider world. Art is the fusion of thought
and form to the visceral end of the surrogate self, the homunculus, the twin,
the robot, the artificial companion. This doubling desire
goes from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the frontiers of contemporary science.
In Chabon’s book, the main character Joseph Kavalier escapes
from Nazi-occupied Prague by hiding inside a giant crate that was the coffin
of Löw’s Golem. I was struck by the image of a giant coffin that
contains the defunct Golem. An essential part of the Golem mythos is the potential
for it to return to life. All someone would have to do would be to find the
lifeless giant and write the proper letter on its forehead. This image is
one of magical potential in a mundane world. For me, the interesting aspect
about actualizing this piece is what the viewer is confronted with: the antiqued
wood crate and upon closer inspection, the giant clay figure could be seen
within. This piece would not be a straightforward illustration from literature,
but rather an interpretation of a text. The idea starts from the text, but
in the making it will change and become something as yet unknown.
Another text that relates to this piece is The Little Prince (Le Petit
Prince) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, in which the intended subjects
of drawings, elephants and sheep, are concealed within the forms of snakes
and boxes. Only persons that have retained a child’s sense of wonder
are able to see the true subjects of these drawings. This project would be
an experiment in the viewers’ ability to see the world of mystery, as
opposed to surface appearances. The caveat of this piece would be in the discovery
of the box’s contents. Only on closer inspection will the faint highlights
of the Giant within become visible through the cracks. The viewer’s
imagination is the sleeping giant.
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Lighter-than-Air
Objects/ Released into the Void
Proposal: To create groups of lighter-than-ai, three-dimensional objects
that will be “released” into the sky, to simulate mystical events.
I will use helium filled balloons with lightweight paper external skins. Perhaps
this project could be expanded to include custom-made plastic inflatables.
All manner of objects could be created for various permutations of this project;
each group of objects would gain something different from being “released.”
At
its heart, this project deals with the Enochian ritual magic as a motif for
making art. Enochian magic is a system of ritual in which the supposed tongue
of the angels is spoken. Each letter is an elemental will to power for the
speaker. But speaking is not enough. The text must be given physical form
to be complete. What if an Enochian magic evocation took place upon a rooftop,
and each one of the ancient magic sounds uttered was given physical form as
a lighter-than-air object, and allowed to float away into the night? The sky
itself would become the elemental tablet of human will.
An
example of Enochian text
:
Another object group could be the Platonic Forms: the pyramid, cube,
octahedron, icosahedrons, and dodecahedron, which are supposed to be ideal,
eternal, and perfect shapes. They are intellectual symbols of logic and reason.
I envision a human being holding them in their hands and releasing them back
in the heavens; when an object is floating above a viewer, it loses its object-hood.
The viewer cannot encompass it. It becomes an image, and then disappears into
the atmosphere.
This project deals with what art and magic share, that word and the
thing are one and the same: eternal, and yet ephemeral. An artwork may outlive
its creator, but how long does the viewer look at any one piece? 5 minutes,
if you are lucky!
What if an ad were placed in the local paper, and anyone answering
the ad would be measured and become the template for a highly realistic life-size
lighter-than-air sculpture? At a set time perhaps 500 of these people would
release their doubles into the sky. A common dogma of millennialism is that
the truly faithful will float up to heaven when the Rapture comes. These floating
doppelgangers would create a miniature mock-rapture. Across the city, people
would see individuals float away into the nothingness. On a smaller scale,
this version of the project could be done as a self-portrait. I’ll do
one better than Yves Kline: not just leaping into the void, but also flying
up into it forever.
The photo documentation of these actions will be very powerful; I will
need numerous collaborators to accomplish this part of the project, with Cameras
located in numerous rooftops and on the street. For sadly, these objects will
eventually land. This Icarus effect will add another poetic dimension to the
projects.
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Manifestoes
Proposal - An exhibition in which numerous manifestoes will be presented
to be read and/or purchased by the visitors. The exhibition space will be
arranged with ten to fifteen tables, each one having a stack of 100 to 500
copies of a different text. Each text will be a staple-bound photocopied document
printed on its own distinct colored paper and designed and illustrated in
a manner for its content. Each of the texts will address the pillars of philosophy:
Metaphysics, Epistemology, Human Nature, Ethics, Politics, and Aesthetics,
in a completely different way, to create a unique and complete worldview.
These texts will all be in serious radical conflict with each other. The goal
of this project is to force me to think in a prism fashion, breaking myself
into a spectrum of contrary attitudes and beliefs to push myself to see many
different sides to an argument.
This
project is an exercise in Memetic theory, in which ideas are thought to act
similar to viruses. The word MEME is defined “as a contagious information
pattern that replicates by symbolically infecting human minds and altering
their behavior, causing the host to propagate the pattern to other individuals.”
Slogans, catch phrases, melodies, icons, inventions, and fashions are typical
memes. An idea or information pattern is not a meme until it causes someone
to replicate it, to repeat it to someone else. All transmitted knowledge is
memetic.
These texts will each be written to “have all the answers.”
They will come from all socio-political stand points, and be impassioned calls
to action. None of the texts will be written with internal irony. I will actually
attempt to adopt the viewpoints of the text, if only for the duration of the
writing. In essence, I will be acting as a Memenaut, brainwashing myself into
becoming a rabid convert to a series of new beliefs and writing a manifesto
expressing those beliefs.
Cognitive dissonance is the state in which most people exist today.
We are all walking around with conflicting meme systems in our minds. Most
of us are unable to resolve our internal confusion, so exposure to the beliefs
of others is almost always a rejection. To actually believe in something is
very suspect. The one thing we are all supposed to have in common is doubt
about everybody else. It is only through having a high meme tolerance that
an individual can actually explore the beliefs of others. Human survival mandates
thinking to be selfish. We are always seeking out reinforcement to our beliefs,
who really wants to experience something that makes you doubt yourself? Only
when you go outside of you bailiwick, outside of your interest, outside of
your world, will you have a truly occult experience.
Occult, in the true sense of the word, means secret knowledge, the
possibility of direct and intuitive acquisition of ineffable knowledge or
power. Notice that I said "possibility of.” All that can be hoped
for is the possibility of understanding. If any of us were really able to
look into the mind of another person, we would only see a convoluted web of
motivations that would look like insanity to us. All we can ever hope to do
in any social interaction is understand one another, even for a moment.
I have always had a deep appreciation for manifestoes, over-the-top
artist statements, all-encompassing pseudo-philosophy, crackpot writing and
outlandish biblical tracts. I find in them something that is hard to get elsewhere:
fearlessly uncensored human expression. That would be the goal of this project:
to access that power and reproduce it whole-heartedly.
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The
Public Defacement Experiment
Proposal - To have full-color posters made of my face mass-produced
and posted around the city of New York. The posters will be the same size
as the advertising posters that are plastered around the city and in the subway.
My hope is that, once posted, the posters will be subjected to defacement
and graffiti. After a few weeks I will photo-document the posters in their
new form.
The phenomenon of defacement is an ever-present part of New York City’s
public transportation. Since the Manhattan Transportation Authority, like
all public services, has the “anything for a buck” attitude, they
allow advertisers to promote their products all over the subway and its stations.
These signs invariably become defaced. Teeth are blackened out; cartoon scars,
mustaches, pimples, boils, and black eyes appear overnight. Profanity, scatological
images and subversive scrawls become crude gatecrashers at a black tie affair
for desktop publishing, upper-crust typography, and expensive photo shots.
Movie and pop music stars become conceptual toilets. The human sprit rebels
against the “image sickness” that inflects our world. The constant
bombardment of deposable celebrities and flavor-of-the-month culture becomes
more than most people can bear, and they retaliate. Eventually, anything posted
will become defaced.
Sometimes this defacement happens the same day as the posting, and
sometimes it happens after days or weeks of the image being consumed. What
is especially wonderful is when the defacements combine over the course of
a few weeks; part of the intended message becomes altered. My goal is to open
myself up to this potential through this project. I choose a full color self-portrait
because I want the viewers of my poster to be unaware that they are looking
at anything different from the Madison Avenue images, logos, and advertisements
that they encounter in the city. If I were to make smaller, black and white
“flyer” images, they would be obvious defacements themselves.
People want to “Stick it to the MAN.” If my posters are anything
but highly professional, they will not get the treatment I am looking for.
These posters are intended bait for graffiti, and they have to look
the part. From what I can tell, human faces get the harshest treatment. The
bigger the face, the less text the better, and the more free space the better.
My poster will be a straight-on headshot with my face floating in a monochromatic
field, to provide a maximum incentive for defacement.
Another aspect of this project is direct and shameless self-promotion
as a form of rebellion. Why should I have to see all these corporate zombie
hollow people be celebrated for movies that I will never see and music I will
never listen to? Why can’t I be in their place?
This is also an experiment in popular culture. How many posters need
to be distributed before the image becomes an autonomous entity? The floating
head logo is a counter culture institution with such notable examples as The
Church of the Sub Genius’ “Bob Dobbs,” and The André
the Giant images of Shepard Fairey (which now can be purchased at Urban Outfitters.)
My
poster will not pretend to sell anything; it will embrace its true purpose
to be a vehicle for defacement and transformation. I will open myself up to
all that can be done to my image, sit back and reap the rewards. After a week,
I will begin to photo-document the defacements. Hopefully, all manner of transformations
will be done to my visage.
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The
Spoolway: Across the U.S.A.
Proposal - To produce a video, perhaps 30 to 60 minutes in length,
in which I am documented riding a wooden construction spool across the continental
United States. All the trials and tribulations of such a feat would be recorded
for the camera: the start off, the bad weather, the inevitable injury, the
reactions of the public as I pass by them, interspersed with short interviews
with friends and family about my lifetime of “spooling.” The end
product video is the important factor in this project; the actual performance
does not always make good art. The endurance piece can turn the artist into
a flagpole sitter. Chris Burden’s and Tehching Hsieh’s endurance
and duration pieces are really amazing, but I have neither the economic nor
chronological resources to match them.
This project will be based on such cultural institutions as The Guinness
Book of World Records, Ripley’s Believe It or Not, and television shows
like Real People, and That’s Incredible, where “everyday”
individuals are featured doing amazing, bizarre, and absurd feats. I will
travel to Los Angles from New York via a spool for a cause greater than an
endurance stunt itself: this project will test the spool as a real means of
alternative transportation. Also, this is a bootstrap, neo-Luddite response
to the Segway, that self-balancing electronic two-wheeler that basically works
the same way a spool does. This project will be framed as a rebellion to the
world the Segway represents. -A world in which Yuppie-Morlock overloads are
carried about on Segways because their withered limbs can no longer support
their own weight. Spools cost next to nothing, while Segways are $3,000.00.
-segway.com
I do not want this project to become the fodder for self-promotion;
I want it to produce a great video that makes a John Henry-like statement
about the world. Great Art must serve great purposes. It’d be great
to have a race between a Spoolway and a Segway, a tortoise against the hare
race.
To produce this video, I will have to take time off from work, rent
a truck for my support crew and the cameraperson. I will follow a route that
will allow me to get from New York to Los Angels within a week. I will need
to have at least three other persons with me in order to shoot the footage
and share in the driving of the support truck. To take this project to its
logical end, I have been learning to “sleepwalk” on top of the
spool. This will allow me to complete the whole trip without dismounting from
the spool. I will do this next summer.
I will need custom-made spools, the proper size with grip tape, and
reinforcements. The video will also have footage of myself and an expert team
of fabricators designing and building the perfect traveling Spool. The Spoolways
will be displayed on my website with instructions as to how to make one yourself.
The human sprit is greater than greed, class, and technocracy, and. for that
matter, reality itself. A good set of calf muscles and a sense of balance
are all one needs.
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How-to
Show with Kari Gatzke
Proposal - To write, direct, produce, and star in a “How-to”
television series with my friend and fellow artis, Kari Gatzke. The subject
of the show will be the creation of artworks. The episodes will be 30 minutes
long and feature the creation of one work of art from conception to completion.
Our projects will run the gamut of contemporary art practice, spanning all
manner of media, styles, and forms, but focusing on painting, drawing, and
sculpture. This is one of the few projects in this collection in which unabashed
tongue-in-cheek humor will be the goal. However, as in all my work, any irony
will be external, something contributed by the viewer, not the artist. I believe
that a work of art should always be created and presented in a manner that
is internally positive to its goals. The best, most humorous, “how-to”
shows are the ones in which the viewers, not the creators of the show, get
the joke. This is what attracts most artists to such programs as Painting
with William Alexander, Bob Ross’s Joy of Painting, and, my personal
favorite, Commander Mark’s Secret City.
I see this project as a way to parody this image of how art gets made.
The general public, schooled in “how-to” books and videos, sees
art as an activity that has more in common with making a pie or laying floor
tile than capturing the sublime torture of the human condition. As a result,
most people hold art and artists in a state of contempt. The public sees art
as a specialized leisure activity, one that anyone can pick up after learning
a few standard techniques. No one would ever make a “How to be a Doctor”
show, but, for some reason, everyone thinks that they can be an artist.
Our show will, in actuality, be the opposite of a “how-to”
show. Our elaborate, Rube Goldberge-esque instructions will have little or
no connection to what is being made. The processes will lack causality. The
show will use camera tricks and off-camera preparation to create the artwork.
Pre-assembly is a standard feature of the “how-to” show. Viewers
watch as the presenters magically produce finished pieces from under the table,
out of the oven, or off-camera. Kari and I would develop this method to a
baroque degree. Our processes will also include a ridiculous amount of cumbersome
extra steps. If someone were to attempt to make the pieces following our instructions,
they would fail.
The goal of this project is the re-mystification of the art process.
Kari and I will return Art to its Mystical and Alchemical status through the
“magic” of television. The show will be distributed on public
access channels, the internet, and cable TV. Also Do-it-yourself kits will
be for sale in art supply stores, VHS tapes and DVDs
will come along with the needed materials for projects.
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The
New Talent Exhibit
Proposal - To create an exhibition that will seem to be a group show
of “New Talent.” This exhibition will include recent works by
emerging artists from around the world. A variety of media and styles will
be displayed, and the show will be presented as “New Directions and
Possibilities in Contemporary Art.” In reality, I will make all of the
works in the show under a number of alter egos. Each fictional artist will
have a name, background story, and motivation. This will be a form of method
acting for visual art. Through my fictional alter egos, I will explore all
the avenues of art that are not what I do in my own work. The materials, techniques,
concepts, and presentations will be as unique and realized as my own work,
but completely different from it.
The rigid absurdity of style is an overwhelming shadow on the creative
mind. Economics often forces artists to limit themselves to a signature style.
Often, style becomes a gimmick enforced by the pressure of marketing and reception.
The challenge of this project is to force myself to create in manners that
are not “my style.” I want to become a completely different artist
each time I enter the studio. I see this project as a way for me to push myself
in terms of how and why I make art, while simultaneously creating a meta-work
that causes the viewer to question reality.
The last thing I want from this show is for a visitor to quickly figure
out that the work is the product of one artist. At the same time, I do not
want the truth to be to totally obscure. If someone were to look carefully
at the work, the titles, and the artists’ names and statements, they
might smell something fishy. The last and crowning test of this exhibition
will be the balance between cheap prank and airtight sham. I think the problem
with this sort of alter-ego work is that people are too quick to let the cat
out of the bag. As my father always said, “if you want something to
be a secret, don’t tell nobody.” This project will be most successful
if some visitors suspect the truth, but most believe the lie. This tension
is the birth of mythology. We all have to pick the lie we want to believe
in, and that lie becomes our truth.
There is a certain bizarre energy created by the group show. As the
artworks all vie for your attention, and they often cancel each other out.
They become a dialogue of extremes, or there is confusion as to who made what.
This project would be about creating an exhibition that will be received as
a “great show.” Does that mean that the works are all powerful
and masterful, or does it mean that there is some odd synergy between them
that was unseen before the show was put together? This is an unknown factor
that I will take into account as I execute this project.
Since the openings of group shows tend to be “blow outs”
with lots of traffic, I will need to hire “fillers” to make up
for the fictitious artists’ lack of friends and family. Actors will
also portray the artists all of who will be happy to talk about there work
and what they’re working on now. This project could become an ongoing
series, as each fictitious artist goes on to have one-person shows, reviews,
retrospectives, public works, monographs and obituaries.
Possible
names for these artists-
Noah
Moncrief, Sarah
Glasscoffin, Kent
Klark, Cinderella
Jones, Jacob
Kutzberg, Roscoe
Arbuckle,Ulysses
Singingbear, Ajax
Gingerbread, Zoltan
Pederastvic, Donald
Quake, Roy
Legume, Veep
Jackston,
Shiri Panonglee, Branny
Forth, Hexan
Samhain, Emit
Flesti , and of course Harpy
Holloway
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The
Ethnographic Collection
Proposal - To create an exhibit of artifacts simulating an ethnographic
“collection” from remote areas of the world. Masks, artifacts,
statues, totems, and fetish objects will be presented to the viewers. Each
object will be presented with detailed documentation as to its place of origin,
its former purpose, and other items of interest. Of course, I will be creating
all the artifacts myself from various woods, clays, fabrics, animal hides,
and metals. There is so much fakery in ethnography that it will be important
to give these objects the authentic touch. I will “age” the artifacts
to simulate time and use paints that are close approximations of primitive
materials, like pigments made from ground-up flowers and animal organs.
Having
never seen “primitive” art outside of a museum context, anthropological
documentary, or in a curiosity shop, I have always been suspect of these objects.
Who is to know what is real? Laypeople buy these artifacts for aesthetic reasons,
so forgery must be the norm.
I am always struck by the visual power of the primitive object, and
I have a guttural desire to create work that will respond to this power. The
primitive art object belongs to a world in which art is the gateway to magic
and the artist is a shaman. This world evokes empathy in the contemporary
artist. This project will allow me to explore the power of the “primitive”
through mimicry and pastiche. However, parody is not my goal. I will go to
great lengths in the fabrication of the fictional documentation that will
accompany each artifact. The artifacts will come from all over the world and
span centuries. The Gods, Devils, and Ancestors they will depict or celebrate
will come from distinct and diverse fictitious societies: cultures of war
and peace, matriarchies, patriarchies, and all points in between. The goal
will be to create artifacts from fully actualized fictions, to create unique
peoples with histories, beliefs, tragedies, and triumphs.
The relationship between modern and “primitive” art is
a bone of contention. In my own education, Picasso was cast as owing a debt
to Africa that can never be repaid. The myth of the primitive is a powerful
thing; the viewer is presented with artifacts that are not supposed to be
seen as art. In fact to look upon ethnographic works aesthetically is a great
act of cultural insensitivity. This is the great conundrum; the reason why
“primitive” artifacts are preserved, studied, displayed, exported,
and purchased in the western world is because of their aesthetic power. These
objects have an inexplicable and unknowable quality that allows the Western
viewer to project into them the myth of the other. The primitive mask has
remnants of power within it. If Hollywood has taught us one thing it is that
every museum has at least one truly mystical artifact within its walls, just
waiting for some unsuspecting cat burglar to release it. The “primitive”
artifact is one of the last territories of belief in magic that still exist.
The long forgotten sprits sleep within those masks.
This project will attempt to tap into this power. The pieces in the
exhibit will play off all the projections that the modern western world has
about “the primitive.” All the fears will be called up for one
last laugh. The mask is a portal into the sprit world. The artifacts in this
collection will be simulations, but will not be soulless forgeries. This is
not a proposal for elaborate pranks. The best parodies become something beyond
a parody. The classic story of the white man’s folly is what I want
from this project. I want to tamper with things I don’t really understand;
I want the objects from this show to give new faces for forgotten powers.
I want to awaken the old gods, (and I want them not to be happy about it.)
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Ben
Zu-kut Nene Pand-Abalu
Proposal - To create a film in which my character, Caveman Robot, materializes
in the real world. Caveman Robot is a recurring character in my artwork. He
is a giant silver robot dressed in a leopard skin, a synthesis of ancient
past and distant future. He is a tabula rasa, a polymorphous character that
takes on many forms, from hero to monster to Saturday morning cartoon star.
In this project, he represents the ubiquitous stranger in a strange land,
a creature out of time and space, confused and angry, and possibly dangerous.
The film will feature an individual not only dressed as Caveman Robot,
but acting the part as well. The actor wearing the costume must be extroverted
and pathologically fearless. A dose of LSD before the shoot should produce
the desired effect. To free the actor’s mind, the costume will be made
from bulletproof Kevlar. This suit of body armor will foster a feeling of
superhuman power, eliminating the actor’s inhibitions. I have a few
candidates in mind to play this part. The main factor in casting the part
will be the actor’s willingness to take this play-acting to extreme
levels.
Since the film will record the world’s reaction to Caveman Robot,
there will be no preconceived script or plot. The goal of this project will
be to set up a “Frankenstein’s Monster” scenario, in which
Caveman Robot runs amuck in New York City. Caveman Robot will be released
onto the world with only three directives: follow your impulses, speak only
Mangani, the ape speech from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan novels, and
try not to break any laws. The story will be created from stolen shots of
the interaction between Caveman Robot and unsuspecting city dwellers. My film
crew and I will record the day’s events on video. The footage will also
be used to produce large photographic stills that could be exhibited autonomously.
The video footage will become part of a larger work, in which we see
Caveman Robot traverse the primordial wasteland, hunt for food, make fire,
scream to the Gods, and become frozen in ice, only to be revived in modern
times. My cast and crew would film on location in Iceland to give a sense
of “the Land Before Time.” Later, in the distant future, we see
Caveman Robot in a disassembled state. He is slowly brought back to working
order by hooded technicians in a mysterious laboratory.
This work will illustrate my maxim: The Fantastic is not Fantasy.
This project will create images and tableaus dealing with the figure
in the sublime landscape. A major influence on this piece is the work of Kenneth
Anger, particularly the film Lucifer Rising, in which a number of actors in
fantastic garb are filmed in remote locations, creating a sense of the world
as a place of forgotten mystery. Postmodern thought dismisses the sublime
in favor of irony and style. Although Caveman Robot appears to be an ironic
or humorous character, he is really a vehicle for returning Art to the Sublime.
The idea of the caveman and the spaceman shaking hands is by definition sublime,
beyond our comprehension.
If taken seriously, Caveman Robot is both a paradox and a truth. He
represents humanity. We are primitives who have re-created ourselves in the
image of technology, our new god. Caveman
Robot is an Everyman; like each one of us, he is a lone figure trying to survive
in a world that is beyond any control and in the end -insane.
The
title of the piece is my translation of Caveman Robot’s name in Mangani:
Great
cave beetle thunder brother warrior.
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Cryptozoology
Exhibit
Proposal - To create an exhibition in the manner and style of the American
Museum of Natural History, displaying mythic or imaginary animals and creatures.
The exhibit will give elaborate details about the point of origin, time span,
evolution, and anatomy of each “animal”. Detailed flow charts
and diagrams will expose how creatures such as the centaur, griffin, Minotaur,
unicorn, triton, yeti, and harpy fit into our natural history. Anatomy charts
will inform the visitors of the placement of internal organs and the evolution
of certain traits. There will be an attempt to cast these creatures in a new
light of fictitious natural history by relating the unknown facts and discoveries
that have been made about them. For example, the unicorn has a brain similar
to a dolphin, centaurs have three sets of lungs, and tritons are evolutionarily
related to manatees, in the same way that humans are related to chimpanzees.
This project relates to my interest in the ““arti-fakes”.”
People want to believe in unreal things. The problem is that as people get
more sophisticated, their illusions require a higher level of veracity. If
you present something as truth, even the most skeptical person will believe
it to some degree. This project takes an epistemological approach to the Fantastic.
Its goal is to make the Fantastic real by using the same scientific methods
that are often used to disprove it. What we pretend becomes what we believe.
We believe in dinosaurs because of the evidence of their existence. What if
the bones of a Titan were unearthed? When the ancient Greeks came upon giant
fossilized bones, they thought they had discovered the remains of giants and
Homeric heroes. In the future, will our descendants look back at us and laugh
at the myth of the dinosaurs as we laugh at the Titans?
Adrienne Mayor’s book The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology
in Greek and Roman Times puts forth the theory that fossilized bones were
the inspiration for the creatures of mythology. Another related project is
Dale Russell’s model for the Dinosauroid, a fully realized “life
size” humanoid figure representing what dinosaurs might have evolved
into had they not died off. The great charlatan P.T. Barnum displayed the
Fiji Mermaid in his American Museum. This curiosity was actually a mummified
chimpanzee’s head, arms, and torso attached to a large, dried-out fish
carcass.
This project aspires to Barnum’s idea that fakes can be more
real than real; it is all a manner of presentation. We believe that the creatures
in the Museum of Natural History are real because they are presented as such.
The context, the attention to detail, and the proof by scholarship are what
sell us; the rest is masterful fabrication. Mayor’s book and Russell’s
model are important to this project for the same reason as Barnum: they show
that if the story is good, people will believe it.
A high degree of fabrication will be needed for this project. I will
use the same methods and even the same fabricators as the Museum of Natural
History. This project could actually be done within the Museum or a similar
institution, to foster an odd mix of real and unreal indeed. Realism will
be the most important aspect of this project. Fiction is only as powerful
as its ability to supersede reality.
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The
Entire Collection of Caveman Robot Comics: 1938 to the Present
Proposal - An exhibition of the entire collection of Caveman Robot
Comics. This will be a detailed simulation of a fictional superhero comic
that has (not) been in existence since 1938. The exhibition will consist of
endless rows of Caveman Robot Comics mounted on the walls in archival bags,
as they are displayed in comic book and collectable stores. Each “comic”
will be a cover that is offset printed and aged to look as authentic as possible.
The internal pages will be blank newsprint, and will not be viewable because
the comics will be bagged. The exhibition will include an essay written by
myself under a pseudonym, expounding upon the history of Caveman Robot Comics
and their influence on culture at large. The essay will include examples of
the artwork that is supposedly inside the comics on display, and will be printed
as a brochure accompanying the show.
This project will be a fully realized “mockument.” There
is a phenomena in the art world in which a collection is sometimes presented
as an art exhibit. Often, this is a crossover event, in which the standard
art gallery or museum visitors are introduced to a sub-cultural realm previously
known only to aficionados. The visitors are exposed to a secret history; the
“collection” show pulls a secret lever that reveals a hidden wonder.
People want wonder--they want it bad. Since comics have been ghettoized in
the art world, this exhibition will play off that by presenting the visitors
something that they will have no reason to doubt. The accompanying essay will
be filled with the politics and drama that is the standard tragedy of the
American comic book. Caveman Robot will be the brainchild of a humble, economically
abject artist, and the character will follow the same reactionary path as
other super heroes over the 20th century. At first, the stories will be rooted
in a pulp sensibility. Then, they will become engrossed in World War Two,
then move into High Fantasy in the 1950’s, then deal with the counter-culture
in the 1960’s, and so forth.
The thrust of the project will be to illustrate how comics mirror and
also escape from the “real world.” Most comics are the products
of corporations, though there are a few individuals that make quality work
of great depth. The majority of super hero comics are absurd fantasies cobbled
together by committee. They are more the products of market pressure than
artistic vision. The publishers of comics have often treated the greatest
artists horribly, and their works were often butchered. Their characters live
on, but the artists are often forgotten.
This project will involve a lot of nose-to-the-grindstone drawing,
plus research on the artistic styles and cultural values of the time periods
being simulated. With the right inks and papers, I should be able to reproduce
the look of a vintage comic.
This project will be another attempt to have Caveman Robot become known
without ever making a fully realized comic or cartoon. I want to create artifacts
of a fictitious history that will dupe the unknowing viewer with their mastery.
I want people to waste whole weekends trying to find copies of Caveman Robot
comics.
The truly successful fictional character
takes on Godlike powers. It has no body, but is constantly given new form
by the collective human mind. Disney’s characters exist this way, not
only as merchandising icons, but also as life forms in the minds of countless
hosts. Caveman Robot has the potential to exist in this way. Every now and
then, someone sends me an unsolicited drawing or art piece of the character,
which I have posted on my website. I want the ephemera and trappings of Caveman
Robot to multiply in the absence of any actual body or text. Eventually, this
peripheral material will become the actuality.
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Color-Coded
Work Experiment
Proposal - To hire a group of 34 individuals to “hang out”
in an otherwise empty exhibition space during gallery hours for the duration
of a month-long show. Each person will wear a different color of coveralls.
This project will be an experiment in the creation and documentation of a
purposefully absurd “work” environment. The “colors,”
as they will be referred to, will all be people who answer a classified ad
that will run in local papers, and be posted in the job boards of local colleges.
The ad will read something like this:
The hiring process would involve short person-to-person interviews
and the filling out of a long questionnaire. The selected group will purposefully
include the full spectrum of personalities. People will be matched with the
appropriate color of coveralls to their personality. The colors will be based
on Ken Nordine’s Colors, a spoken word album in which Nordine personifies
each of the colors. These “colors”
will each be given strict and involved instructions regarding how to act when
they are “performing” in the space: But, just as in real work
environments, each “color” will be told slightly different information.
Some will be told a lot less than others. Some will be told that they cannot
speak to visitors, others will not. Some will be told that they must arrive
on time or be docked pay, others will not. Some will be told they can bring
books or personal music players, other will not. Some will be told to report
improper activity of their fellow “colors,” others will not. Each
“color” will be under a slightly different impression as to what
the project is and their part in it. Perhaps most importantly, there will
be a sliding scale of payment. This will be randomly chosen, and will be designed
to reflect, on a micro-scale, the reality of the work force, in which some
people make more money than others for the same or less work, for no apparent
reason at all. The Exhibition space will have a punch clock and time sheets
for the “colors.” Each day a different “color” will
collect and tally the time. There will be no other clocks or timepieces allowed.
The space will have a number of digital video cameras recording the
space in time elapsed increments. I, as the manager, will appear at a set
time during the day and meet with all or some of the “colors.”
Each of the “colors” will be instructed to fill out a complaint
or suggestion in written form, and place in my “in-box” These
complaints and suggestions will be recorded and completely ignored.
The goal of the project is to document the interactions of the “colors”
with one another: the cliques, friends, enemies, and dramas that develop.
The hope is that these interactions will produce interesting and arresting
images in the documentation, since the “colors” will be milling
around all day. This project is about color relationships. Instead of using
a formalist theory or a chance operation to compose, I am setting up an elaborate
system of human power relationships that will create the compositions.
Susan Sontag once stated, “Fascism is when people try to turn
politics into an art form.” I want to do the opposite of this: to create
politics from art, to expose the dehumanizing power of formalism. When human
beings are reduced to rigid systems of employment, they not only lose hope
and pride, the also lose a sense of reality. The world becomes the work they
do, this project will produce something of interest: the visual documentation
by-products or the psychological group dynamics will all be recorded to produce
a book of images and accompanying text.
Olive Lavender
Burgundy Yellow Green Beige Maroon
Ecru Chartreuse Turquoise White
Flesh Azure Puce Magenta Orange
Purple Muddy Russet Amber Blue
Black Gold Crimson Brown Rosey
Hazel Mauve Fuschia Sepia Nutria
Cerise Grey Coral
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Mythopolis
Next Right
Proposal - To cause a mythic transformation of the cultural cartography
of America by the distributing of a number of street, traffic, and warning
signs that will be placed on the streets and highways of America. These signs
will be “mockuments,” actual in everyway, save that they will
be made by myself and my resources, as opposed to the government. The signs
would be painted with the same enamels and paints that are used by cities
for their signs, and will be placed around the country in an attempt to demarcate
a Fantastic landscape that will be overlaid upon present maps. Fictional cites
with such names as, Metropolis Utopia, Necropolis, Exotica, Asshole City,
and Forgotten Realms will be marked with non-existant highway exits and miles.
Crossing signs for Imaginary beasts, will replace the leaping deer, drivers
will be warned to be on the lookout for, griffins, centaurs, and unicorns.
Instead of Falling Rocks or Icy Roads, drivers will be warned about Attacking
Robots and Space/Time Worm Holes.
The
key to this project is not to place any sign where it might cause undue chaos
or injury to anyone. Although this is a factor, someone would have to be a
class- A chowder-head to actually believe any of these signs. None of the
warning signs will be anywhere that there will be actual danger. The false
city signs will be so far apart from each other that the majority of drivers
would miss them. The mythic overlay maps will be mass-produced and left in
truck stops and visitor centers.
Related will be the production of road, street, and public transportation
maps that will be distributed in cuckoo bird fashion, by methods of “reverse
shoplifting” and midnight raids.” Reverse shoplifting” is
a distribution method in which products are placed within stores in a clandestine
manner without the store’s employees or owners knowledge. These items
can be purchased thanks to the placement of a Universal Product Code sticker.
The hope is that individuals will assume that they are purchasing authentic
maps, but buyers beware. These maps will have completely different systems
depicted. The land itself will be the same in its physical depiction; the
layout would be from an alternate reality. The exits, cities, landmarks, and
subway stops will not only have different names, but the lines would go in
different directions. The actual production of these maps will be as close
to reality as possible, and the printing and materials would be exact in the
parody.The thrust of these pieces will be to make the passerby do a double
take, to push them out of their everyday thinking, and make them believe that
reality has hiccupped.
My
father’s 20-plus years of being a sign painter has been a great influence
on me and particularly this project. He once misspelled a word on a diner’s
sign. No one noticed for a few days. Then people started asking for a HAMRUGER,
and the diner chose to keep it that way. They still call them hamrugers to
this day. When something is wrong but looks intentional, you remember it.
The wrongness sticks in your mind. Memory is a tool for survival, when a predator
is near the status quo is disturbed, if anything is wrong it screams out to
our most base self of animal survival. The urban jungle is our habitat now.
The signs and maps we use to navigate with are the new natural world, primitive
humans, knew every rock and tree, just as sailors once used stars, we know
every twist and turn of the subway and highway. This project will awaken our
world to us anew.
The traffic, street, and highway signs can be fabricated by any number
of private companies that produce the actual signs for cities. All that is
needed are master layouts to work from. Any offset printer from digital files
can create the maps. A van or
truck can be rented to distribute the signs, and I would need a few others
to help with the installation. A network of people using the above-mentioned
“reverse shoplifting” method can distribute the maps. This project
would basically be a form of positive vandalism.
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The
Super Symbols / Hubristic
Proposal - To create a new language for the utilization in artworks,
a symbol system that holds no affiliation with any one country, group, or
creed. This language will allow text in artwork without ever having to deal
with translation or misinterpretation. These Super Symbols would allow any
participant in the art world to understand and better consume an artist’s
message/product, regardless of their native language. This system will be
a fully realized cultural construction that will pick up the torch that Esperanto
dropped. Polish occultist-philologist Lazarus Ludwig Zemenhof, who hoped his
universal language would help achieve world peace and understanding, invented
Esperanto. Sadly, this language, while a robust construct, never gained the
wide acceptance as a “second language for everyone” that it should
have. People are lazy. American English is becoming the international language
more from avarice than any other motive.
This
new language will attempt to fuse other existing artificial and natural languages
into a new pan-ideogram international tongue and symbol system. The Super
Symbols will be a language that will have no disparaging relationship between
the word and the symbol. The pictorial based logic of Eastern Languages (Chinese,
Japanese) and the phonetic logic of Western languages will fuse to produce
“super symbols” The alphabet will be pure in its logic and incorruptible
in its images. This project comes out of my desire to use text in my artwork.
Foreign text functions in an image state. The viewer sees the text as the
symbol of an unknown tongue. When text is presented to people that cannot
read it, the texts become a symbol of an “unknown language.” When
an English speaker sees Chinese, they still understand that they are looking
at words. Even if they do not understand any of them, they know that someone
else does. All foreign languages are a form of cryptography. That tension
between image and text is the space in which my Super Symbols will function.
They
will function as a code that will allow anyone who desires to access the language,
but will also function as unknowable code to the passive viewer. In other
words, they will be a language that will be accessible by all in one form
or another. Most people believe art to be universal, but whenever text is
used that cannot be the case. The world of art already has certain symbols
that have taken on semi-linguistic shorthand power: the drip, the zip, and
the cube, to name a few. Many of the “self referencing” idioms
of modern art have become quotidian. I merely suggest forging these elements
into a dynamic pictographic system. Individuals already have to study art
history to understand most art. The Super Symbols would be a key or dictionary
that will be available to those who were interested in learning, but the simple
visual beauty of the symbols will be enough for others. The meanings and translations
of the super symbols would not be simple; they will require study.
The
Super Symbols will also look to past artificial tongues, taking from them
anything useful or of interest. Enochian, Solresol, Esperanto, Voulkspeak,
Quenya, Sindarin, Tengwar, Lingo, Protong, Krypotian, Klingon, and even Pig
Latin will be included. The hubris of creating a language is itself a remarkable
act of art and frankly beyond my abilities. I will have to force myself to
think in ways that I am hardwired against. Due to my own language-processing
difficulties, it seems right to create a new language: my own system not another’s.
The reason for creating an artificial language should not be to actually replace
existing natural languages; it is to radically speed up the mutation process
of language, to push language somewhere it will never go with an absurd egomaniacal
vector. Since the name of a Language should be derived from its own internal
logic, which has not been created yet, I have been using the “working
title” of Hubristic as a name, In truth, what else can I call it.
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Walk
Across the World
Proposal - To walk across the entire earth without ever boarding a
car, plane, train, boat, sled, rickshaw, bicycle, skateboard, or any beast
of burden. This project will be an attempt at reclaiming the world of mystery
through the very process that stole it from us: exploration. The mystery of
terra incognita has been lost. Thanks to the advances in aerospace travel
and global satellite mapping, humanity has come to think of itself as masters
of this earth. Part of me laments the “known” status of the earth.
I seek the earth that is a much larger, much older place than anyone has realized,
it is not a small world after all!
I
would leave my home in New York City and walk across North America. I will
head toward Alaska, but will follow the paths that become available. I will
not follow the human-made routes. I will walk at least 40 miles a day. The
end goal of this part of the journey will be the Bering Strait, which can
be walked across to Asia. This can only be done at certain times of the year,
when the water is completely frozen, and can be quiet dangerous, physically
and politically. When I was growing up in the waning years of the Cold War,
one of the mythic battlefields was Alaska. Alaska, which had once belonged
to the Russian’s, is now part of America. When you looked on the World
Map, you could see the further most tips of the East and West almost touching.
The Bering Strait is also the “great white man’s out,” the
theory that Native Americans crossed the Strait from Asia, is used as a way
of justifying Manifest Destiny. The -land bridge theory- makes Native Americans
displaced Asians: thus, their claim on the Americas is erroneous. Looking
at the Strait on the Map, I think of two overlapping images separated by time:
Ancestors of the Americans crossing the Strait, and then thousand of years
later, Russian Commandos duking it out with American soldiers in an obsolete
World War Three Nightmare.
To cross the Strait is to walk across miles of arctic ice into Russia.
This will involve getting some sort of permission from that country. The actual
crossing of the ice will require research and extensive training. Once in
Asia, I will continue to walk across the earth, following whatever paths become
available to me. The end goal will be to walk across every country that I
am allowed to enter. I will be very upfront and friendly with every person
and group I meet. My travels will be publicized, and I will arrange with a
major magazine or newspaper, to publish updates and travel journal entries.
In addition, I will utilize a corporate sponsor (perhaps a footwear or wristwatch
company) to help pay for my expenses. This publicity will create a -safety
buffer- which will protect me from any hostility. In addition, my passport
will be issued from a Native American tribe instead of the United States.
This will be an added precaution to deal with anti-Americanism. This may be
an urban myth, but I have been told from more than one source that certain
Tribal Nations do sell passports as a way to make revenue and promote their
sovereignty. The primary goal of this project will be to prove that the earth
is a lot bigger than we believe it is. To prove this, I will produce a subjective
map of my journey. I will not use any preexisting maps; I will only use simple
cartographic tools that I can carry with me. Once I have returned to my home
in New York, I will have an exhibition of the photographs, drawings, writings,
and souvenirs from my trip. This project will be the stuff that myths are
made of. It will help to foster a better understanding of the world we live
in, a world that in truth has no countries or borders. Our world is greater
than our understanding; it is a world of possibilities, not history. I will
prove it.
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The Limbs of
Osirus
Proposal
- To re-create the Egyptian vegetation god, Osirus, as a group of sculptures.
According to the myth, Osirus was dismembered into 14 pieces and scattered
across the earth. These sculptures would be a reasonable facsimile of the
human body only 10 times larger in scale. Constructed of heavyweight materials
that can withstand the external elements of the earth for at least 10 thousand
years: Metals and Stone with Fiberglass and resin skins. In keeping with the
myth, the sculptures will be 14 in number. These pieces will be scattered
across the earth; I will place them in remote areas, or in plain sight within
the most congested metropolis. The Limbs of Osirus are symbols of the lost
mysteries of the past. Humanity now seems to be under the impression that
all has been discovered, that whatever knowledge the ancients had is well
within our current domain.
The beginning and end to all wisdom is to admit that you know nothing.
I want to scatter Osirus’s limbs back into the world, so others can
gather them. Wisdom will always evade us as long as we think that it is finite.
These sculptures will be made for the unborn seekers of the distant future.
The Limbs will be crafted and then placed in the appropriate location.
The final placement will be photo-documented. Once scattering is complete,
photographs and maps can be published and/or exhibited. Anyone can go and
“find” the actual sculptures, but it will not be an easy task.
The directions will be riddles. There will be no tour buses that will take
you to them. It would be up to you to find the paths.
There
is a theory in occult studies that puts forth the idea that there are certain
locations that are “soft”, in terms of reality, the final locations
of the pieces will be based this theory. These “soft” spaces are
where unexplained phenomena occur. They are gateways to other realities, where
individuals might witness things that cannot or should not exist, Lake Monsters,
Sasquatches, UFOs, ghost, and all the rest. These are all very normal for
the reality of their origin, but they have somehow slipped into our world
via a “soft” place. These places bend time and space. Human beings
cannot process reality when they are in such an environment, so their brains
project fears and desires upon whatever they encounter within the “soft”
areas.
I
will attempt to scatter the Limbs as markers of certain “soft”
places around the world. The Limbs will hopefully become part of the “soft”
place and slip into them, returning to whence they came, the human imagination.
Art is the attempt to bring myth into reality and then to create new myths
in the process. Osirus dies and is born again, to live (again) forever. The
hope of this project is to create a new enigma, People will discover the Limbs
and have no idea what they are and where they came from. The limbs themselves
will become “unexplained
phenomena.”
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The
Messiah Game
Proposal - The creation, operation, and promotion of a complete virtual
reality environment that will be an interactive facsimile of this earth. Every
aspect of our world and the people that live in it will be re-created as a
virtual interface, using all the available data of maps, the census, demographics,
population, social behavior, weather and natural phenomena, politics, wildlife,
mortality
rates,
transportation, and economics. The cities, towns, villages, streets, bridges,
airlines, railroads, farms, oceans, lakes, rivers, deserts and all possible
forms of terrain will be reproduced in this VR Earth. This VR Earth will have
the same amount of people in it as ours; they will not be exact duplicates
of you and I, merely approximations. These virtuals will be artificial intellects;
they will not, however, be aware that they are within a game, acting out their
“lives” based on complex logarithms based on all available information.
The virtuals will wake up, go to work and school, eat food, go to the bathroom,
talk with one another, get caught in traffic, cheat on their taxes, publish
newspapers, go to the movies, have sex, commit crimes, exchange gifts, go
to sleep at night, and die, all by mathematics developed from information
of our world.
The player of this game, will be able to enter this world by a VR interface,
the more fully engrossing the better. The virtuals will “perceive”
the player as nothing more than another virtual in the world. The player’s
avatar in the game can look however the player wishes. However, there will
be some major differences between the player and the other persons on this
earth. The player has freewill; He or she can go wherever they like and do
whatever they want. As the player will have a number of special abilities,
they will be able to know the name, address, and personal information of any
virtual they encounter instantly. They will be able to heal the sick, raise
the dead, shoot lighting from their hands, transmute matter, speak with animals,
and speak all languages. But the player can be killed, and once this happens
the game is over, To play again the player will have to create a new virtual
self. The primary goal of the game is to improve this world, to make it a
better place ethically, politically, socially, environmentally, culturally
or in whatever bailiwick(s) the player wishes. The secondary and perhaps higher
goal of the game is to somehow make the virtuals understand that they are
projections in a game. Since they are able to interact with the denizens of
this world the player can make friends, lovers, and enemies. The virtual earth
does not reset itself, and the player cannot be erased from the records. The
virtual world continues everyday just like ours. It does not however mirror
ours, it has its own earthquakes, scandals, trials of the centuries, serial
killers, terrorist bombers, wars, and noble prizes, and if you are successful,
it can have it’s own messiah, as well.
Since the game is about freewill and awareness, a player could just
as easily play a negative role, and be a demon to make the virtual earth worse.Either
way, the virtuals are not sheep. They will not walk into the line of fire
(unless they are suicidal). The will have to be won over to a cause. They
have their own worries, day jobs, kids to freed, and mortgages. There could
be two versions of this game, single player and multi-player. It is likely
that the multi-player game would quickly become a world of battling demi-gods,
amassing armies to fight one another.
The
Game is an experiment in human nature. If you were able to mold realty, and
become a Messiah, would you? How would you change about the world? The Messiah
Game would serve as a great form of therapy. We would all get the chance to
be a God. What kind of a God will you be?
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Corpus Dei
Proposal-
To
create a 900 foot tall human sketelton, this sketelton would be made from
the same chemicals as actual human bones, such as calcium. The consturtion
of this sketelton would be for the sole purpose of creating a facsilme of
the skeleton of God. Once created the ÒbonesÓ would be treated to give them
the appearnec of being six thousand years old. The body could then be unearthed
insome local, hopefully within the Tigris-Euphrates rivers, creating a Earthwork/Archological
hoax that would invoke faith questioning gusto from all manner of religious
and spritual presons and groups.
This
project directly relates to the cryptozoology exhibit, and my interst in
the ÒmockumentÓ and a somewhat diaboical interst in modern day miracles.
The world of weeping madonnas, bleeding stautes, and Holy images appearing
in tortilla chips. The 900 ft. height of the skeleton comes directly from
Oral Roberts propurted communion with a 900 ft. tall Jesus Christ. The falsh
age date of six thousand years comes from the creationist dogma that the
world is only six thousand years old. The actual facrication of the skeleton
is rather simply aside from the cost, the rather difficult part of this
project would be getting the ÒbonesÓ in the ground without the public knowing
of it. This can be done, with enough money, the final and most important
factor of the project would be the dissenation of information, currently
I think that a artifical church would be created, the hope would be to get
ÒbeliversÓ to come a insepct the site, and for a small fee actually touch
the bones of God. A number of ÒexpertsÓ will be avaibale to certifel that
the body is actually six thousand years old. At no point will anyone invole
in the dissenantion say that these are the bones of God.
If
one reads the old testemate the God that is discribed has a body, what happen
to that body? Hopefully with proper media manitpulation the exconvation
site would become a heated spot of belife and doubt. The size of the body,
the ÒageÓ of the bones, the location are all open factors that can be worked
out later, the important vector of the idea is that a perfect simulation
of GodÕs remains are created and appropreatly placed. What if these giant
bones were created and buried, thousand years from now to be discovered,
a prank played on the future. When asked if I belive in God, I ofen say
that I am an atheist, but that I hope there really is a God, so that my
being and atheist will mean something. If there is a God, I have some real
probmels with it/ him/ her/ them.
I
see my artwork as a battle agianst God. Growing up in the Bible belt, I
spent a large amount of my time having to deal with southern bapstis dogma,
when asked to explain the existence of dinosaure bones, a common reply is
that they were put in the ground by God to test our faith. This kind of
paranoid retro-active brainwashing demands to be challenged. Mao Tse-tung
was right religion is posion. Art which is the only real magic, is essential
about making desire real by approximation and fabrication. I want God to
be Dead, so I will make bones as proof of my desire. If God is dead then
perphaps humanity can move on to a world were no one is killed in the name
of God. Our childhood must end, realize the folly of our youth and realized
that God is the ultimate Boggiey man.
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The
Fortress
Proposal - The Fortress will be an inversion of Andy Warhol’s
Factory. Every aspect of the Warholian model for what is an artist will be
inverted. The Fortress will be located in a remote area of the Arctic Circle,
it will be an impenetrable stronghold. The occupants will be a collection
of “super losers.” These will be formerly famous celebrities that
I will turn into forgotten nobodies. They will have an endless string of sit-down
brunches, where everyone behaves themselves and no alcohol, cigarettes, or
drugs are consumed. These events and other cultural interests that have been
forgotten or fallen out of style will be reported in a monthly magazine that
the Fortress will publish, called Monologue - this magazine will be entirely
written, edited, designed, and published by myself. Monologue will be written
on stone tablets, it will be exclusively distributed by being thrown through
windows of illiterates. When I am not working on the magazine, I will be producing
one of a kind laborious artistic masterpieces that only deal with archaic,
philosophical, and unpopular subjects that will be sold for no more than ten
dollars each. These works will each be specially crafted for their unique
subject matter and content. They will be vehicles for self-revelation and
moral growth. My most famous quotes will be, “Stop acting like a bunch
of androids!” and “No one will ever be famous again!” I
will have a completely uncontrived, honest public persona for my countless
public appearances, where I will speak for hours with loquacious bombast.
I will have a deep tanned skin, long flowing hair, but will wear an ever-changing
series of costumes, uniforms, and outfits. I will have no studio assistants;
I will pay people vast amounts of money to stop producing rock music records.
I will have plastic surgery that will enlarge my nose into a formidable proboscis.
I will change my name to make it sound more “Ethnic”. I will make
short films that will have a lot of action and plot. I will carry a gun at
all times, and walk down the streets of New York, shooting anyone who appears
to be “normal”. I will do a series of collaborative pieces with
old forgotten artists, these artists will become even more forgotten, almost
as if they never had existed. I will give everything up, to work as a nameless
hack graphic designer, and live to a ripe old age. My younger brother will
not try to cash in on my name and start making artwork. My countless bastard
children will go out onto the world, to live meaningful lives of genius and
charity. I will be damned as America’s greatest
visionary and praised as it greatest charlatan.
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Jetpack
Justice with
a Medusa Ray Gun
Proposal - To turn everyday life into meaningful and moral artwork. I will fly about a large metropolitan
city by means of an actual Jetpack strapped to my back. Jetpacks have been
in existence since the 1950’s, but are still expensive- about $80,000.00
dollars. The funds will be obtained from interested investors, who will come
out of the woodwork once it becomes known what I am trying to do. Perhaps
I can work out something with one of the few private companies that produce
these devices.
I will act as “the eye in the sky,” flying around on a
patrol of the city, searching out people who are doing acts that offend my
sense of justice. These include yelling at their children, kicking pets, playing
music too loud, stealing library books, littering, panhandling, speeding in
cars, and any actions that could fall under the heading of “herd behavior.”
These offenders will be “zapped” with my Medusa Ray gun. A Medusa
Ray gun is a “non-lethal” weapon that shoots powerful adhesive
foam at its target. It was developed during the Gulf War but was never used
by the Army, probably because it is more macho to kill people than to subdue
them. This adhesive creates a hard shell about the target, which is porous
enough to allow air to enter. The airflow is not enough to allow consciousness
to be maintained, so the target exists in a dreamlike sleep state, until the
appropriate solvent is used to dissolve the medusa shell. For all purposes,
the target has become a living “sculpture,” which can be retrieved
by my crack team of henchpersons. Once collected, these “sculptures”
will be exhibited for a month’s duration. Small holes will be drilled
into the shells to allow an intravenous feeding system to be utilized. The
Medusa adhesive material has the ability to totally absorb any bodily waste
of the sculptures.
The sculptures will be displayed as works of art. The titles of the
pieces will be whatever deed the target was performing that brought my wrath
upon them, i.e. -Not putting out their cigarette butt,-Taking too long at
the ATM,-Watching too much Television,- or, the classic, “Not Living
a Meaningful Life.” The sculptures will all be for sale, with the understanding
that the person within will be removed and the remnants of the medusa shell
will be the art object, (with plenty of photo documentation of course.) Hopefully,
the “sculptures” will gain something from the Medusa-ing process,
and learn to balk and curb their “wrong behavior.” This hope will
be ensured by the implementation of a Reverse E.E.G. machine. This device
allows preprogrammed “behavior modification information” to be
sent directly into the sleeper’s mind. Once again, this will be applied
by the drilling of small holes in the medusa shell for the application of
the device’s prongs.
Once
the exhibit is concluded, there will be a public “rebirth” ritual,
in which the person within the “sculpture” will be restored to
waking life and “freedom.” Hopefully, they will not to find themselves
within my sights again. Once this experiment proves successful, I will train
and outfit a number of like-minded individuals to carry on the work. This
will allow a constant flow of exhibition/ rehabilitation events across the
country and the world. These exhibitions will consist of 5 to 10 “sculptures,”
each one having their own reverse E.E.G. machines and I.V. drips. Also on
display will be a video of their Medusa-ing, and a rap sheet of each “sculpture”.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and the prices paid by patrons
for the Medusa shells will pay for the project to continue.
This project is taking street photography and stolen moments to their
logical end. The world at large seems to exist for the arts and media to capture
it piece by piece. No one is safe. Walk down the street, sit on the train,
or have dinner in a restaurant and without your consent or maybe even without
your knowledge you may be the subject of a news reporter’s piece, or
an urban shutterbug’s snapshot. If the artist really is given carte
blanche to take whatever they need from the public world for their own ends,
then why can they not also take the actual person themselves?
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The
Robert Joseph Bell Institute for the Advancement of the Future
Proposal - To found, design, build, organize, and run an international
cultural Institute for the advancement of my father’s ideas for the
future of humanity, this planet and beyond. My father has been the foremost
influence on my life; it is because of my father that I am who I am today.
I feel that in a better world he could have been a great man, but this world
tends to crush people like him. I have devoted my life to realizing both my
own and my father’s visions and interests.
The
Institute will be devoted to the promotion and advancement of the following
fields of study and interest:
The Nutcracker Sweets
The Serect Life of the Elephant Man
