The Latest Love of My Life

'I'm Rumbling Thunder! I'll tumble you under! I'm Bear Thicklegs!'
Illustration for The Castle of the Fly.
via http://himmapaan.livejournal.com/26159.html
(For a certain bear I know.)

I have a new video.

It can be viewed here:
http://www.danaosburn.com/video.php

First Friday Listings

me: are you going to vox tonight?

Diedra: maybe? are you? going to show somethign???

me: i have a new video

Diedra: maybe i'll bring baudrillard vid?

me: so i guess i'll bring that

Diedra: oh

how long is it?

me: three minutes, haha

no huge project, just a lil' guy

Diedra: mine too, that's perfect for that kind of thing. anything over 7 is probably WAY too long

me: yeah.

do you think it's one of those deals where you have to show up early?

Diedra: not sure.... if you go i guess i'll go too. would be fun. i just had these ideas about being super productive wknd. meanwhile i'll go out fri, sat, sun haha

me: I have like a million stops to make tonight. I'm putting a video in the first friday show at bookspace, and my friend has a painting show up

so I was thinking of going to vox around seven

Diedra: where?

7pm ok i'll be there then

me: i don't know what gallery, but i have the address 149 N 3rd Street

Diedra: old city

i might try to get to little berlin too finally

me: oh yeah, I guess I'll go there too since they're our neighbors.

and I was thinking of going to vwvoffka too

Diedra: i think they are closed to go to vox event tonight

me: really?

they have a listing...

http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=142438359118442&index=1

Diedra: oh shit and i know jesse, he's meeting me to get led batteries. i'll go there and then http://eexxttrraa.com/

will you be on bike?

me: no, I'll be in my car since i have to deliver that tv and transport my associates

Diedra: i see

i'm hoping to bike, seems ambitious. but maybe we'll get lucky to show early at vox if we're on time. what a fun art evening. thanks!

me: Ambitious for sure!!

maybe i'll blog about it

haha

Diedra: do it

Ai Weiwei

Daily Serving recently published a post reviewing Ai Weiwei's works with ancient urns. In its secret complexity and seeming simplicity, in the potency and cruciality of its gestures and its tragic irreverence, these works, as they say, speak to me. For me, there is a deep sadness in this work that is linked to social questions we will never be able to resolve, and, among other things, the work raises questions about living that emphasize the necessary futility of our constant inner struggles as manifested into physical objects.

There is so much to discuss when dealing with this work, and I won't attempt to cover it all here, but I will begin by arguing a little bit with the Daily Serving blogger. The article posits that "Urns of this vintage are usually cherished for their anthropological importance. By employing them as readymades, Ai strips them of their aura of preciousness only to reapply it according to a different system of valuation....Working in this manner, Ai transforms precious artifacts—treating them as base and valueless by painting, dropping, grinding, or slapping with a logo—into contemporary fine art." Certainly, Ai's actions treat these cherished object as base and valueless. They undergo cheap processes of being painted or destroyed unbefitting the value they have been assigned by our culture. But do these actions truly strip the objects of their aura or rather do they magnify that aura? In the end, the painted and crushed and broken urns do not function as objects independent of their original identity -- they function BECAUSE of their original identity. We gain an added layer of consideration, as viewers, when confronted with the altered urns, but that consideration relies on a primary consideration of the objects' intended purposes and calls on our deep social attachments to the myth of these objects. They become even more precious because our reaction to these works is initially to believe that they are being mistreated. Therefore, Ai cannot divorce the aura from the object - and from looking at the work, I'm not really sure that was even his intention.