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