dreams

so once upon a time i started a photography project where i made wire statues and then photographed them. the photographs were based on peoples dreams. i would like to continue this project. however, to do so i need some peoples dreams. if you let me use yours i will send you a print 🙂 what i need to know is as much detail as you can give me, i.e. what did it looks like, smell like, feel like, was there color, were there little oddities or minute details that seemed really overwhelming, how did you feel when you woke-up both physically and emotionally. the more detail the better. i will post the photographs i´ve already done soon.

i’m a jerk

so i haven’t been making art. which is sad. i can never seem to get the balance right between making art, political activism, work, and play. since i have to work in order to you know, survive, it always stays in the mix, but the other 3 end up getting overplayed at one juncture or another. right now, it’s play. but that play pretty much involves me getting totally trashed one night, and then chillin at the house doing nothing for the next few. 

 

any suggestions?

haven’t been doing much and SOCIALISM 2008!!!

so i agreed to do photo editing (for free) for a student who’s doing a documentary film on the robert taylor homes housing project in chicago . (if you don’t know anything about them you should do some basic reading but more importanly is how mixed income housing effects the poors ability to find housing, esp in places like new orleans). however, though politically i am committed to this project. the time it’s taking is zapping my desire to do much of anything else.

i’ve made some posters and bumper stickers though. (if anyone wants any contact me at catach138@netscape.net and i can make you some, of pretty much anything.)

get it, it’s zombie trotsky eating stalins head. it amuses me at least.

 

on another note, socialism 2008 has put out the initial list of talks. they look fan-fucking-tabulous! i would recommend EVERYONE come to this conference if they have any interest in movements or how to change the world for the bettter. there are many speakers from varying movements and viewpoints. and what’s better than 3 days of politics?!?! nothing. that’s what!

 

photography shows in nyc

so my mommy was nice enough last weekend to take me to nyc. we saw 2 photography exhibits. 1 was irving penn portraits. most of the imagery i’d seen of i.p.’s prior to the show was his still lives. i was always amazed with his sense of light and shapes; more specifically his sense of negative space. however i found the majority of his portraits lacking in this respect (except the corner series).

the other exhibit we saw was at the international center of photography. where there was an exhibit called archive fever. this was a relatively broad ranging group of works. from boltanski to ruff to warhol. there was one piece in particular which i took particular dislike towards. it was a fake history of a created 1970’s african american movie actress named faye richards. what this piece made me realize is that i don’t care about peoples lives. it holds no interest for me whatsoever. afterwards i began thinking about the i.p. exhibit and i think that the same holds true for his portraits. they are masterfully taken; the lighting and composition are very well done. but frankly i don’t care about these people. their faces may hold some insight to who they are or their personalities but that has no interest for me. i do not know these people, they held no effect on my life. it’s not them ‘in action’ or at some event which may or may not contain interst to me. it is just their face. in essence, a foreign thing, apart from me and my experience. i cannot implant any of myself into the image of someone else. i cannot take something away with me from a portrait of someone i do not know. an image of someones face does not give me insight into the human existence or the life of someone in a situation i can relate to, because there is nothing to bring into it within the image. and i personally don’t know enough about most people to be able to bring aspects of their lives into an image which excludes those aspects. for me, they are just faces and they go no further than that.

for those of you who have skimmed through my work i do not photograph people (for the most part) and the one project where i have, i have excluded the faces. i want to allow my work to be accessible to anyone. for people to be able to draw something away with them. to place their own lives and experiences into the images. even the self-portraits i want to keep them apart from myself exclusively. i think accessibility has to be open ended. it has to be universal. accessibility has to have levels more than just appreciation of the mastery of the medium.

rant

so i’ve been noticing a lot lately that blogs and magazines always seem to be saying “art and photography”. this phrasing says to me that photography is outside of art. what the heck!? i thought this debate was over in the art world and photography was an accepted and respected artistic medium. i don’t have the vocubulary to make a clear arguement on why photography is an art form other than i think anything made with artistic intent is always art, now, it may not be good art, and i may not want to look at it, but that’s a whole nother story. there is also a whole world of items which are artistic looking (i.e. they are beautiful and viscerally compelling), which were not designed to be art, and for me, therefore they are not.

on a totally vulgar argument: i’d rather stand in a museum looking at work by sally mann, or robert frank, than look at 9 out of 10 paintings. photography is art damnit!

SOCIALISM 2008!!!!

The most important socialist event (in the U.S.) of the year is coming up (the annual Socialism
conference)!!!  there’s even a VIDEO!!!
Speakers so far include: Anthony Arnove, Alan Bean (from the free the Jena Six campaign), Barbara Becnel (from the campaign to free Stan Tookie Williams), John Carlos (from the Black Power salute at the 1968 Olympics), Sam Farber (socialist author on Cuba), Laura Flanders (from Air America radio), The Freightliner Five, Amira Hass (the only Israeli journalist working and living in the occupied territories), Dahr Jamail, Adrienne Kinne (from IVAW), Paul LeBlanc (author of Lenin and the Revolutionary Party), Camilo Mejia (from IVAW), Mohammed Omar
(journalist from Palestine), Yusef Salamm, Jeremy   Scahill, Ahmed Shawki, Sharon Smith, Mark Steel, Jerry Tucker, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Dave Zirin.

A list of workshops, etc. will be out soon.

 however, signing up now is important! that way the costs for speakers, the event center, and the like can be paid upfront. please check out my del.icio.us for videos from last years conference.

fastidious

so i’ve been fastidiously working! here’s where the work was: and here’s where it is! hopefully i’ll get some suggestions on which is the best path. i.e. here’s the question: which of the 3 gives the most visceral response? which is most asthetic? i need any and all comments on this as it’s a long-term project that i’m pretty invested in. i’m leaning toward the one where it appears to be more of a tattoo and is just the ribcage. i’m going to put this one on hold for a bit and start afresh in a few weeks. got some other work on the backburner as per usual… enjoy!

more to come…

anti-dull magazine

just found out about this: it’s NEW!

random

fun fact about me that realistically has nothing to do with this blog: i really like apples, but whenever i eat them i get bits stuck between my front teeth. so i started carrying around dental floss with me, so i can enjoy apples to their fullest.

here’s some random samples i designed at work:

Art + Resistance: Naji al-Ali

in general i found this event at ‘around the coyote’ gallery rather disappointing. i think one of the problems with this is when the art community talks about art and activism/resistance they focus on the art rather than the effect that art has on the resistance movement.

i think the major point that i took out of this was that naji al-ali’s art was successful because he had a confined and well-informed audience. his art was in papers that were distributed in the palestinian refugee camps in southern lebanon. therefore, his audience had full access to this art and because of their situation (being palestinian refugees) were well aware of the situation to which he was commenting. for me, this has been the major problem with making political art. my audience is dispersed and undefined. but because of the type of art i make (photographs) there is a defined place for them to be seen (i.e. an art gallery). this poses a problem in the sense that by and large the art community is not my audience, or at least not all of it. and by confining my art to a gallery i am not posing it as primarily political, but primarily art.

here are some random quote i wrote down while listening to the talk:

– political cartoons have the ability to exist outside of the political content of the rest of the paper, which are tools of the ruling class/ruling parties.

– naji al-ali saw his role as to provide a critique not a way forward.

– much of naji al-ali’s work is more potent now (30+ years later) because the issues he was addressing have still not been resolved

– the little boy in all the cartoons is the graphic representation of naji as a 10 year-old boy in a refugee camp, and the blob-like people are the ruling class of all countries INCLUDING palestine

– political arts function is not necessarily to push the medium of the form

– naji wanted to make the palestinian people self-aware