racing,

i always feel suffocated in california. maybe it's because i've been here for too long, and that there is nothing here for me anymore. maybe because it's too dry. strange, because i've always felt that i thrive within the mundane, but i sometimes... actually feel like i can't breathe here.

and how can i say i am living, if i can't even breathe properly?

there's a plant at the end of the hall next to my room that always looks like its on the verge of death. but everytime i come back home, it's always still there, the light penetrating the dry leaves, illuminating the skeleton underneath. so slender is its stalk, i wonder how it holds up year after year.


my mom is my best friend. she still drives me crazy sometimes, but her kind of crazy might just be my kind of crazy too. we do this thing, ever since i was little, before going to bed we lay side by side and talk. about health, politics, history, and the deepest philosophies. i think, the most challenging but influential lessons i've ever had were recieved lying there next to this severely anti-social, ocd, stay-at-home mother of mine.



one of my final pieces of the semester was stolen. nice, guys. that's awesome.



i think next semester i'm going to make a portable room.


oh yeah, truly, have a merry christmas everybody :]




oh!! and i want~ http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/016075982X/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&seller=

the solitude of ravens

i wonder what you dream of?

works by japanese photographer, masahisa fukase:

maybe i need to get a life

i'm obsessed. i'm not especially proud of it. you know, i was a well-rounded person at one point.

i'm in the uncharted territory of the olin library, working on this paper. it's comparing Robert Smithson's critical essay "Cultural Confinement" and his piece, Spiral Jetty, to one of my own favorite contemporary artists, Francis Alys. (I posted a video documentation of his performance piece, "When Faith Moves Mountains" earlier). the content is engaging, relevant, and i'm enjoying writing it, but it's 2 am and i think i may have slept a grand total of 12 hours last week.. why am i not in bed??

i know what this is. i've had it before. its when studio ends and it leaves this gaping void in my life, and now i'm compulsively filling it with theory. this is actually sick.

see this is what happens when you love. it consumes everything and as my studio friend aptly puts it, it makes you into this bizarre abstract of yourself. and its weird because then what happens is everything that happens outside of studio becomes hypothetical, unsubstantial. and nothing else is very real? (this is probably why i don't date) and i feel pigeonholed, displaced by my own design. why do i do this?

"In this sense, myth is not about the veneration of ideals--of pagan gods or political ideology--but rather an active interpretive practice performed by the audience, who must give the work its meaning and its social value. After all, isn't the story of modern and contemporary art and its cult of the object really just a myth of materialism, of matter as an ideal? For me, it is a refusal to acknowledge the transitory, a failure to see that art really exists, so to speak, in transit" francis alys

good things

i wonder if people realize how they are surrounded by design, how humanistic art can be, even if it is often confined within white neutrality of galleries and museums. how they function as more than an expression, but a question with a sideways eye. how the thick build up of branches across a span of space, the tips of grass catching the light, or the trajectory of a shadow's movement through a room are all drawings in their own right. i don't believe i view the world through a more beautiful lens, but rather i try to see them for what the truly are. and i bet you that my reality is more beautiful than yours.

and where is this good mood coming from? .. I GOT MY GRANT!!!!!!!!! if all goes according to plan, my piece will be up in Kaufman park by april. sigh.

response?

i have never been in love so i can only guess, but here is what i know. it is a vague term, and an incredibly double sided term. behind every great love there is also great hate. sometimes, it isn't even like they are two sides of the same coin, but they become actually one in the same. while it is capable of terrible things, the thing that makes it special, arguably the most unique human emotion or state of being, is that, in the case of love, it makes us put someone else's happiness before our own. what other circumstance induces something like that? it's miraculous. but why limit love to one person? why is it not possible to embrace any friend, any beautifully flawed human being on this earth, with the same kind of unconditional compassion? why must there be distinctions? because once the distinction is drawn between one person and the other, doesn't that make the love conditional? circumstantial?

i'm asking for a little much.

i can try to pin it down, like a butterfly to a display case, but at the end of the day, as long as i have not experienced it flutter through the air, i will never know its true nature. but i do know, however, that i love art. i love everything about it, all of its beauty and all of its bullshit. it makes me feel free.

crunchy time

√ final critique

√ since 1960 paper part A

√ painting crit

workshop projects

√ proposal for public art piece presentation

√ final presentations, documentations

since 1960 paper part B

dance paper (2)

hello december

(:

in commemoration of a worm who fought

a true story,

on my way to and from class, there is a long flight of stairs where, if you were walking up it, seemed as though it would lead you into the sky itself, as i often like to imagine.

there were a couple days of rain some weeks ago, when all the worms would venture out into the sidewalks, stretching their long soft bodies around the small stones embedded in the ground. they range in length, in thickness, in stride, but THIS worm, who i found on the stairs after the rainwater had run away, was huge. monstrous, actually. big papa.

i found it dead, and dried, in the middle of the stairs where the railing is. the midpoint of no return. but, you see, it died with it's head up, lifted from the ground. frozen. amazing, don't you think? i don't imagine it's death to be instant, but prolonged and gradual.. but this worm had it's head (or tail, i guess i wouldn't really know for sure) up, persistent even up till its last moment. it fought for life... an arguably pathetic life of blindness and suffering. but it fought.

and there it died, dried, perpetuated in a pose of grit and tenacity.

and as the weeks passed and the rain returned, it was always there. the new rain had softened the body, though, and it would still be there melted against the ground when i came back from campus. it dried up again, and, as of this afternoon, the body had detached from it's original place and was brushed to the side by footsteps or a breeze.. i don't really know for sure. but i can't help but be moved by its great spirit, its will to fight for a life.. of a worm.

bravo, mr. worm. i think you are amazing. your final pose has earned a place right next to the great Greek and Roman sculptures of gods and warriors, at least in my book. good luck on all your future endeavors.

-felicia

http://www.usu.edu/markdamen/ClasDram/images/12/03laocoon.jpg

contacts are dry

today was one of those wonderfully pathetic days where the hours pass on like a leaky faucet. i couldn't bring myself to go back to the studio so it was a really good thing that i brought the borrowed camcorder back to my dorm. i spent some time filming still lives around my room and the kitchen, finding landscapes in the dishes from the drying rack, the natural folds of clothing and sheets, the different kinds of shadows on the walls.. and then finding myself within these domestic mountain ranges, no more a person than the silent objects i find around me. how still, how peaceful..

i can hear the cars go by, feel the sinking weight of my body into the bed. and i feel so much like a child who doesn't want to go back to school, not ever. let me just exist in this deluded brain of mine.

okay look.

im not proud, (of what happened)

but

the sky is so deep and red these evenings,

the clarity that i find in my mind so stark, like the branches of the trees, dark lightning bolts from the earth, the hurt i find at my finger tips from the fight, the

strands of hair i find, loose,

i

find happiness (still).

hair. cut/

this is the proposal i wrote up for a performance piece i was going to do.

hair. cut/

the Proposal.

hair. cut/ is an experiment. a test of conviction, of invisible barriers, humanity, and ultimately, freedom. physically and conceptually, it breaks the artist in two, subsequently proposing other divisions and cuts, until nothing is left.

for you: i am inviting you to cut my hair. you may know me as [blank], under [circumstances], or you may not know me at all. and when you look me in the eye, you see something not of your own. and when i hand you the pair of scissors, how do you feel? are you unsure? nervous? intrigued? ambivalent? bold? and the tension that brews and thickens, only released by a snip. how does this change you? how does this change me? how do you effect other participants? what is this sort of mute relationship we have created?

for me: i am inviting you to cut my hair. traditionally hair is a symbol of vanity and token of identity, and by putting myself in this position where you, someone that I know or a complete stranger, are to snip my hair off however they like, i am putting my own concept of self up for reconsideration. and in a broader sense, i am giving into vulnerability, discovering myself as ephemeral, changeable, my identit(ies) as momentary and passing. subjecting myself to outside effects, becoming something not independent of others, of wind, dirt, damage, change, rendering control as something of mysticism.

don’t get me wrong, i (the felicia) am scared. i, unsure. and fond of this long black hair that has become the symbol of recognition from my peers, something that i have carried for so long, something i (the felicia) am so, so attached to. but I (the other) also need this. because I want to be freed from i. i like touching it, the way it feels through my fingers as though it doesn’t end. i like the unrestrained wildness of it in the wind. after the shower, i like it wet against the total length of my back, like a cold sloppy spine.

it’s something of my own.

ladies and gentlemen: this is a test. of you, me. i can only wonder what will be created by the end.

i wasn't able to go through with it. it wasn't the fear, which was quite real. it was my mom, who didnt want me to have short hair (because of dubious reasons i suspect), who, as it turns out, holds the biggest pair of scissors over my head than anyone else, including myself.

and in a strange way, the piece was, not necessarily completed, but resolved by me not doing anything. aside from not having a final project in mind, i still wish i could've done it. i wanted to know what it would have felt like.

actually.. i think i needed to know what it would feel like.

la felicita

so, i'm supposed to be writing my rough draft for a paper..




my eyes are so bad that when i close them, i see a print of the world lingering on the back of my eyelids. sometimes it feels as though this copy may be clearer than its original.

somehow by coincidence, both my chinese and english names mean "happiness". but you see, i waver, all the time. i ask myself, what do i have to be unhappy about? and i'm not sure what is more frightening, the fact that i have nothing to say, or its implication...

dissatisfaction. the root of my difficulties and ignorance. wealth is not measured by how much you have, but by how much you don't need. and oh how independent i think i am sometimes, until i enter this cycle of going to bed feeling like *this* and waking up still feeling like *this* and it feels as though the days all become this one giant day strung together with dragging feet and periodic naps. why do i always feel this heavy weight on my shoulders, when i have so little to bear?

on the other hand, i can be so happy sometimes. when i feel like i don't need nothin' and it's just me and this big, beautiful world. there will be days when all the leaves from the trees fall at the same time, and all of a sudden this space, this space that i pass through every day is activated through the unfurling of leaves in their own signature descent back to the earth. the most beautiful thing ever. and i feel like i am so filled with love, there isn't anything out there i'd want.


but my point is, i guess, i just can't decide what kind of beast i am.

rabbia, stuppore, la parte, l'attore

dottore, che sintomi ha la felicita?

thursday notes to self

met something real ugly today


how would you ever know if you were stupid or smart?


process versus product, and its relationship to value. is there a value? worth?
---> cultural value, market worth, or any combination

---> and is strong concern for value-worth of your own piece indicative of a concern for your own genius?


death of the mythical artist-genius


yoko ono's Cut Piece translation, research and clarify position



seriously hate the guy who posted up that sign on the door. i feel targeted =( hatechu.

wednesday morning post

there always seems to be a challenge to chase around here

so, since i can back from my trip, i find myself constantly asking, "what am i doing?", and an even scarier question "what is worth doing?" i feel like i was constantly stuck between this opposition between social responsibility and self-gratification of art. and i think for a while, this question was resolved, in that i do believe that what i'm doing has a benefit, or at least has the potential to, and also the realization that i probably would be asking myself that same question even if i were in a different field of study. what is really worth doing anyways? there are so many holes in any answer in any field, so maybe i should just leave it as an unanswerable question but also an evolving challenge in my practice.

but i've come back to it. the two long-term projects that i've been working on both have social functions (or at least i like to think they do), and while i believe in them, as an artist i have found them to be incredibly unsatisfying to make. both involves lots of engineering and logistics, and i don't have that sense of satisfaction in their creation. and see, over the summer i had to come to the unavoidable conclusion that the reason why i make art is almost purely for self-gratification, and to sort of justify this, i've been planning projects centralized around the goal of social benefit. and so here i am, in this rut of electrical wires and rulers and t-squares. and while i have been laboring for two months now, i havent been able to create something truly satisfying for me.

and so it all comes full circle: what am i doing?

my head is so full of nap

/edit/

Francis Alÿs - When Faith Moves Mountains (2002) - Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

"When Faith Moves Mountains" by Francis Alys

/edit/

a couple of weeks ago, i took this very debillitating nap that made me lose certain functionalities.. (not bodily functions, don't worry). however, i am feeling it again today and it feels as though someone stuffed my brain with cotton. maybe this is the result of making stuffed organs last semester? i don't know.. karma works in mysterious ways.

anyways, my situation has recently become clear; while my major department has revealed itself to be grossly inept, and while it is still unfair that i have paid so much money for a school where trying to get someone to educate me in my field is like pulling teeth, i gotta pull my own weight. i still think it's unfair and wrong and unjustified.. this is the situation that i am in, i'm not going to transfer, so what else can i do? it's tough and poses its own set of frustrating problems that i don't feel that i need to run into right now, this is how things played out so i guess i have to respond appropriately. sigh. and it feels like the world is on my shoulders.. but i'd be feeling like this anyways.. (a happy person will always be happy, a complainer will always be a complainer.. i guess i'm a complainer)

something is beeping rapidly from the architecture studio.

BUT. other than that, i bought a typewriter from Goodwill for $12!!!! joy and joyness~ (:

did you realize? you have the most beautiful face!

(by the flaming lips, a song i haven't listened to since high school probably)

Coffee + studio time = :)

video installation= 80%

elevators= 55%

hehe

tracks. (2)

WAIT YOU KNOW WHAT. i'm not done.

you know what freaking sucks. i hate how i make myself find justification for art. when was it that making art for art's sake wasn't enough?? why isn't self-gratification not enough?

because it isn't enough.. not for me anyways. i can't make art based off of some faraway philosophical inkling that doesn't offer a useful perspective. i don't want to make something that needs to be protected by the gallery space, by the label of "culture" or "high Art" with a capital A because some art theorist in the 1950s determined it so. i don't want to make something that is contained within itself. i don't want to make something that disappears the moment the viewer blinks. 

i want to make something that is alive. that moves and interacts, that can die and be reborn. and i want it to open people's eyes. i want to make people see the true nature in things, and that everything in this world is essentially free. and that people can always be free. 

seriously, most people don't understand how hard art can be. it can be so much about problem solving. 

tracks.

i have four more weeks until i have to install my work for our second crit and i have so much left to do and to figure out and to experiment.

first of all, the electronics still aren't working. i really don't understand how this is possible because i've seriously been working on it for weeks. i'm not sure if i'm just an idiot.. or if i'm just an idiot. i've probably gone back to the electronics store about four times to get it fixed. but, somehow, something comes loose, or i record the wrong connections, but SOMETHING always goes wrong. i don't know what it is, or else i would've fixed it.. 

secondly, i still haven't learned all of the skills in metal fabrication to make what i want. i will, i guess, but not yet. let alone practicing. and i've heard that precision is something that is very difficult to achieve in metal working, and is yet something necessary to what i'm crafting. 

i'm trying to keep this tenacity, stubbornness even, to  keep going, but amongst all my blindsightedness about this project, it is still laced with this kind of fear of what if it just sucks. if my installation won't express what i want it to, if people just see it just as some stupid carts going up and down (which is really, essentially, what it is), if it isn't interesting enough to withstand a short attention span.. 

but i really cannot think about it like that. just gotta do it. do it do it do it. 

think big, be tenacious. every work is your most ambitious. 

(i feel like i'm getting wrinkles)

a revival in the fall

okay, so i kind of just let this go for a while.

school has started, and the warm summer days are gradually cooling down. i can't wait for the leaves to start changing color, to take out my coats and my scarves and some thick socks.

its been.. i don't even know.

it has been one crazy year.

but basically here i am again, all settled in this familiar place, and i can't put my finger on how things have changed, or how i have changed. i've gone from place to place, country to country.. my body has traveled, my mind has roamed... i've gone through so many moods, so many obstacles, cathedrals and mountains, islands and countrysides, so many challenges that threatened to take me down.. so many moments that filled my vision with chasing light and freedom.. so many memories that have since become a construction of a haven in the back of my mind..

and i have this feeling that i can't stop running.

though i have neglected this blog, i've been religiously recording my travels in a journal. fabricated by hand, this journal is worn and coverless, its pages bending this way and that way.. an active relic of a time passed. here is an excerpt:

it's hot in Paris tonight,

and it's raining

so hard.

I feel warm right through

this loose blouse.

you see, today, there is a rainforest of flies inside of me

and a cliff upon which I am

a tightrope dancer.

and in this night, through the fear between the line and my toe,

i dream of an impossible fantasy on solid ground,

a memory of dappled raindrops

copper colored and gold

projected, lining your face and burning

underneath the street lamp

you will be my comfort.

my illusory shelter from the fall

an open window

to a thunderstorm summer.

felicia wants to live in tuscany

 

heheyeyaaargh!!!!

it's that one week before final crits and i'm expectedly nervous and stressed. i always write in this blog when i'm feeling whiny, so i'm sorry :P

it's Pasquetta tomorrow and we're planning on attending mass at il Duomo tomorrow. they are reeling around a big ol cart from the 1600s (or so i'm told) around the city in a parade of white bulls, and wrapping it in dynamite and blowing it up!!! the cart, not the animals. so that's what i'll be doing tomorrow morning.

nervvvverververous and stressted. and quite homesick. i want my mom's cooking so badly!!!! and holy cow. i have some really amazing people in my life. i hadn't been checking my mail, and one day i just got three letters and they were just so incredible. i posted them up on the bulliten board above my bed with the others that i had collected... and, it helps :)

i'm right there, over here.

it's been four weeks since i came to florence. oh, come si dice. it's really incredible here.

we live in a beautiful apartment on la Via Borga della Noce. my bedsheets are lemons, and our non-functioning washing machine is in our bathroom. illegal immigrants from Nigeria sell watches and bags right outside our alley, which opens into il mercato di San Lorenzo, then, the church of San Lorenzo, and five minutes later, the Cathedral, il Duomo, and the Baptistry, with the famous gilded doors of Ghiberti . if we're on our way to our language class, we pass by L'Arno, and il Ponte Vecchio, and if we're on our way to the discotecas or bars on the weekends, we often pass by Chiesa di Santa Croce, where the tombs of Machiavelli, Michelangelo, Dante, Galileo, and other rather important people, are held. and finally, on the way back from a night out, Palazzo Vecchio and the Uffizi. 

of course, we can't go anywhere without passing by at least four caffes. at the *very* least. 

classes are also really amazing. for our drawing class, there was a lecture on the personality of each pencil, the rich dark sensuousness of a 6B, the calm meditation and sharp precision of a 3H, as well as the broad range of qualities of different marks one can make. it made my heart race! and for our theme-sequence class, after every 6 hour studio, i feel as though there was something blooming inside of me, the sense of freedom to explore, to make mistakes, to be truthful and honest. in a dialogue that we read for class, the speaker said that art wasn't about expression anymore, but about inquiry. but not just an inquiry, but a need, for our own humanity, to create something outside ourselves.

this brings me to a running project for the theme-sequence course. we all chose an object, and upon much exploration, gathering, and developing, i've chosen the plushie as a package, something wrapped, an object with specific physical and mechanical properties, as well as much cultural and personal significance. 

here are some points of my exploration: the stuffed animal can be seen as a toy or a plaything. or, it is an object of comfort, something tactile to be fiddled and cuddled with. stuffed toys are also often a marketing strategy; when there is a successful television show or movie, its characters are often made into dolls (for example, Disney characters, Looney Toons, Pokemon, etc.). they become three-dimensional manifestations of cartoon characters. what if they become a portrait of someone real? a materialization of a real identity? plushies can also become collectibles (beanie babies), and even cultural artifacts (hello kitty dolls, raggedy anne, etc.). the personal meanings we often assign to stuffed animals is also very important; they are usually seen as living memory of our childhood, sometimes even specific times or feelings we had when we turned to them for comfort. from this perspective, it’s interesting how a stuffed animal, usually designed for aesthetic and business reasons, can retain so much personality and significance for us. what does this say about our interaction with the inanimate world? and the animate?

other questions: why do we wrap things? what is the purpose of an external skin? is it to protect, or to hide? is it to represent, or transform? why do we wrap presents? and what is the charm behind an ambiguously wrapped package in the mail, even when we know what is inside? do we wrap for aesthetic reasons, because of our inherent desire to beautify things, or because we enjoy the mystery behind something unknown? i'm not looking for an answer, but a point to start looking. and isn't that what it's all about? a new perspective, a metaphor for something bigger?

so far, florence has been a great place of growth. granted i haven't been here long, but i'm slowly getting into the pace of things. and i'm very excited for what's to come. 

sinceremente, felifel!!!

the black museum- piece of morbid nostalgia

good afternoon!

i added a new link to "i like". i found the Black Museum a while ago, and it was a match made in heaven; it catered to my appreciation of talk radio and all things strange and grotesque (remember my final 2d project last year? yup. Jerry Brudos was quite a violent man with a fantastic taste in shoes.) it's a great form of macabre entertainment and something you can zone out to while you're writing essays for internships. (:

enjoy!!

(4 more days!)

rant

home is disorienting for me. i'm never really sure if i ever truly "come back". In some senses, it's really more like i'm "going". 

Like i'm always going places, never returning.

sure, so many things are the same, the house, the climate, the old familiar roads. the usual hang-out spots. and the habits that you revert back to when you're back home. it's only for the small changes like construction work, a friend's new car, a deepening wrinkle in a parent's face, that convince me that time had really passed since i had been gone. but even so, everything is just so damn the same. and it bungles up my thoughts because i can't decide what exactly about it is so... off?

maybe it's like i'm a fish, who has been put in a new pond and evolved, and then plopped back to the old pond. and now i'm this hybrid, really confused fish of old and new. i apologize; what a dumb metaphor. 

its so inexplicable, its frustrating.

---------------------------------------------------

a record of the last couple of days:

found old ass manual camera and got a lens for 90$ (HAH). i love the beach and want to go into the water so. bad. sang to Brand New in Michael's new car. for a moment thought i reverted back to emo music tastes. miss that truck though. rediscovering Stars to be an excellent band. saw the movie Doubt, which was also excellent. Meyrl Strep is incredible. still need to see Benjamin Button, Slumdog, and that Clint Eastwood movie that's out. ate at Gypsy Den. Bought carrot cake. failed at making truffles. ITALY IN LESS THAN A WEEK. am pretty confused. 

oh and applying to internships is really irritating.