lucid city / Texts
Order by: date ↑ - rating ↑i wish i was in humanitarian crisis sometimes. you all have the coolest tasks.
props on this. did i tell you about that palestine youth institute thing i'm helping organize? i think you'd be really interested.
one. it was good talking with you last night. made me feel reconnected to home. and excited to come visit. thanks.
two. the word, as we determined, is synergy: combined action or operation. a mutually advantageous conjunction or compatibility of distinct participants or elements.
three. thanks for inviting me to this site. repeatedly. (as in repeated thanks and repeated invitations) i really needed it. and not for the points, but for similar reasons as you: lack on inspiration. it (sf0) finally got me was when i was sitting around at 2 in the morning, i couldn't sleep, i was depressed, homesick, and damn i hadn't made "art" in like 2 months. and i saw your "fortune not cookie" and "trash liberation" proofs. and i just decided to do a task.
what i've gotten (gotten not in the possesive sense, but gotten as in the enjoyment sense) out of this site isn't points, comments, or votes. why i like the site is that it has encouraged me to imagine and invent novel ways of interacting with my environment: my friends, my job, my city. it's helped me look at things from a different perspective.
and now that i'm doing that, i don't post all the stuff i do. sometimes because i don't feel the need to, many times there's not a task that fits it, often because i don't have a digital camera or the time needed to post the stuff online (i hear you on that remark about how being part of a class that has leisure time, or intentionally working part time makes it easier to play sf0, as does the ability to afford a digital camera.)
and that's ok. while i feel it's fun to share the things i'm doing with all of you, what i think is more important is that i do things. things that not only encourage me to interact differently with my environment, but also maybe shake other people from their monotone routines.
i feel like i'm rambling. so i'm going to move on to:
four. it makes me sad to hear that you hadn't felt good about the art you'd been making for a while. i mean, i know those shopping carts gave you hell, but shit, my piece didn't stay up either (fuck that installation project). and more to the point, you've been a huge creative inspiration for me over the years. (crazy, we've known each other for, what, 5 years now?) which means you were creating stuff that was good enough to inspire others to create. i looked forward to your postcards almost daily this winter. ran to the mailbox like a kid looking for presents from santa. and when i got one, got all excited about making one to send back (we should post those as a proof, by the way). that project kept me going. seriously. it was a hard fucking winter. so i'm glad to hear you're not feeling that way anymore, but if you ever are, know you've got a fan in this friend....
(ps: this parentheses thing is catching)
the paper you choose (re: RAoK/SAoB: the Random Acts of Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty Task 2)
one benefit (sometime drawback) of tracing paper is that you can see through it in areas that are not colored in.
when choosing paper, keep this in mind:
the thinner the paper, the better.
the mroe porous the paper, the better.
so, the papers that work the best are newsprint and tracing paper.
yeah, i really like how that line is preceeded by the word:
"...cyclic."
"I that you that he that you that which which which."
i also like:
"...hallucinate death.
you are a death.
i am a death."
acknowledgement of an inevitable truth.
the difference being one death has greater chance of coming first.
but in the end, both will die. there is no escape.
so why all the suffering?
beautiful. i'm glad you addresses the poop issue. personally, that was the thing that i thought was most intriguing about this task. have you heard of the artist sophie calle? i think i may have told you about her-- -she did this a few years ago as a piece, documented it (no poop) and published it in her book. i think she did pink and black, too. at the end she held a huge banquet dinner for her friends-- each seat at the table was a different color meal. beautiful.
ok, so i'm still getting used to the submitting proof interface. to read the rest, make the images smaller, then click on them and the story unfolds....
Locate an Iraqi phone book, or the equivalent of the white pages online for Iraq. Starting calling random numbers until you reach someone who speaks English.
Once you find an English speaker, interview them about how the war is going, from their perspective. Try and document their words as best as possible, via a taperecorder, videocamera, computer microphone, etc.
Take the transcript of your interview and distribute it publicly. The more creative and far-reaching, the better: get on a local independent radio station, public access TV, wheatpaste it around town, present it to a gathering of friends, etc.
two dimentional representaions of three dimensional things are inadequate.
i offer you pictures of shadows: two dimentional representations of two dimentional things.
they are honest.
aware of their dimentional (in)abilities, they do not try to represent something they cannot.
there's something so calming about this.
i love that you caught the water splashing up through the pipe.