aesthetic dialectic

I love the work of Audra Woloweic.  We had a year overlap at RISD (she graduated in 2007).  Here are instructions for her piece Freckle Exchange (which I really want to do!).

Freckle Exchange
Choose a freckle on someone that you love
(Don’t let any blemish go unnoticed)
Ask them to choose one from your body
Find a willing tattoo artist
Tell her your story
Exchange

the ever amazing Serena Kuo in indieWire

My classmate, Maria del Carmen Montoya, on VVORK.

Carmen Montoya (DM ‘07) and Kevin Patton received a rhizome commision!

Nathaniel Katz and I remain undecided as to what to name our thesis papers. So, we decided to ask Christopher Robbins, DM ‘07 and the wittiest man alive, for help.

From Chris:

you can fill in the academic byline, but here are some perhaps catchy titles
i feel like i’d do better if i knew more; these are prettymuch based on your $5000 videos.
and let me know if you wrre looking for academic titles
BUT: I am off to czech for 2 weeks, so wont be looking at my computer for awhile

My fave:
JJ don’t stop belieiving - something about hope
NK disparate connections desperate connections

JJ
-tiny impossible have-to-do’s
-little essential escapes
-tiny essential escapes
-what lasts most is most fleeting
-finding forever in
-everyday escapes
-don’t stop belieiving (- the mispell is on purpose)

NK
-ulterior links
-coming together so far away
-distant meanders
-disparate connections
-desperate connections
-linked obliquely
-oblinqued

Tomorrow, I am headed to Dallas.

I am really happy to be going and looking forward to being in Social Fabrics, with Rachelle and Islay, and for Heather’s show (Points of Convergence: Masters of Fine Arts).

Lucas Roy 

A few months back, we shot another video of Serena’s. I carry a baby and walk down some stairs.

From her website:

“5/4” uses an infinitely rising staircase to demarcate and map a physical continuum. rom a visual stance, each flight of stairs is as nondescript as the next. During the six-minute loop, the central character continuously walks upstairs to imply that the path is infinite. While her uninterrupted motion cuts through this spiraling physical construct, actions around her take place in loops with varying lengths. For example, a man waits next to his fiancée’s door every four flights of stairs on loop. Another woman taking her dog for a walk descends in a five-flight loop, thus intersecting with the man at different points of her descent during each loop. Each character occupies separate temporal continuums like different durations of melodic ostinatos in a musical composition. Their spatial occupation, in turn, become individualized and isolated, despite the sharing of the stairwell. This work visualizes the multi-layered quality of time as defined by actions in space using film and architecture as means of organization into a logical narrative.

We exist in separate layers of reality, prescribed by our own sense of space, time, and thus actions. Resonating the writing of Henri Lefevbre, to say that we perceive our coexistence because we occupy the same physical space is negligent of the social interactions that signify the intersection of our actions. The changing manners of interactions between the protagonist and the surrounding characters most demonstrate the multilayered quality of time and space theoretically discussed above. On a surface level, the loop structure form permutations of intersecting actions. Taking advantage of the spectator’s familiarity of film narrative tropes, these intersections generate escalating expectations, investment in characters, and build an ascending story arc that takes after traditional cinema. From a metaphysical angle, “5/4” questions the social nature of our lifestyles as dictated by routines – a built-in, programmed personal sense of time – our unique metronomes.

Here is a link to Jonah Brucker-Cohen interviewing my friend Pete Froslie.