Quote
“David Bohm said, ‘…according to today’s laws of physics, the bumble should not be able to fly…the shape of its wings, their velocity of operation, and their size, compared to the bumble bee’s body, make no sense…it’s a miracle, it’s comical, and it cannot be denied.’ …This is why I am an artist.” — Tom Friedman
Elsewhere
A visit with Tom Friedman
Tom Friedman @ Gagosian Gallery
Tom Friedman @ Ceysson Gallery
Tom Friedman, the book (Phaidon Press)
The Obsessive Art of Tom Friedman
Tom Friedman interviewed by John Miller
Tom Friedman in Tokyo
Dan Cameron on Tom Friedman
About
‘Tom Friedman’s studio is a sensory deprivation chamber. A small shed about 50 feet from his home in the western Massachusetts countryside, it is windowless and featureless, immaculately tidy, completely empty and painted white.He has compared it to the blindingly white prison cell in the science fiction film THX 1138 (1970).
Friedman works in this environment to get a better view of the shape of his own thoughts. Knotted, looping, self-generating, endlessly expanding and dissipating, these are the raw materials with which he makes his sculptures and drawings. The end result, the object, whether it’s a frail thread of chewing gum stretched between ceiling and floor or a hyper-real dragonfly assembled from hair and clay, is just a diagram and a trace of the stuff he’s scraped from the inside of his head.
Friedman’s works operate as closed, repetitive systems which run until they break down; at this point an eerie sense of the unreal begins to seep from the split gaskets. ‘The idea of pulling things further and further apart is interesting’, he has said. ‘Stretching a piece of gum is an analogy for this idea: as you stretch the gum the connecting thread becomes thinner and thinner. I reached a point where the idea of fantasy started to filter in, because when the connection between things becomes so slight, they are not read as a cohesive whole.’ — Adam McEwen, Frieze (continued)
Media
Public Art Fund Talks at The New School: Tom Friedman
Tom Friedman at Luhring Augustine, NYC (February 2012)
Tom Friedman at Stephen Friedman Gallery, 2012
Tom Friedman – installation at Magasin 3
Tom Friedman remembers Hudson
Serious Playboys
Tom Friedman in Conversation with John Waters
from Parkett
John Waters: A friend who doesn’t follow the art world saw your book and said, “You have to have a real faith in contemporary art to look at Tom Friedman’s work.” Do you agree?
Tom Friedman: It seems like people can enter my work on different levels. People who don’t know a lot about contemporary art seem to enter it because of the type of things I do with materials…
JW: Oh I agree! It is good that you have to have faith in the art world to look at someone’s work. Then at least you’re going to really look at it. Your work is self-assured in a humble but strong way, but in some of the pieces you demand faith. When you say, for example, that you stared at a piece of paper for a thousand hours, you are demanding faith from the viewer, don’t you think?
TF: Yeah, I guess faith in my credibility.
JW: What is so amazing about your work is that even the most unsophisticated art person is not pissed off because before they can say “Oh, my kid can do that,” the words get stuck in their throat because their kids most definitely could not do that.
TF: Because I seem to put myself through a sort of torture, people feel that if I’m going to put myself through that, they might as well give a little of themselves.
JW: But is it torture or magic? I mean you were a magician as a kid—I’m sure critics make too much of that—but were you for real?
TF: My brother and I used to put on shows for kids. We were called Ali & Oop. I was Oop.
JW: I was a puppeteer, so we were on the same circuit; kids birthday parties.
TF: (laughter)
JW: All art shows are magic in a way, aren’t they?
TF: Yeah.
JW: And I wonder if talking about it gives away the trick in a way, even what we’re doing now. Real magicians will never tell you how they do the trick.
TF: I try to be incredibly obvious and straightforward, but this sort of conceals itself again. I’m trying to reveal the secret. It’s like a secret that everyone knows.
JW: When you were young did art ever surprise or shock you?
TF: Not really. I didn’t look at art that much. I got started making things as a way of trying to understand the world around me, and it still is that way for me. It becomes a vehicle for my understanding, so each piece represents some kind of discovery that I make about the world.
JW: But you can see how some of your most obsessional pieces are sometimes shocking to others.
TF: I can see that.
JW: Is patience to you a virtue or a compulsion?
TF: I guess both.
JW: In your work certainly, patience has to be one of your tools, as much as the material, isn’t it?
TF: I think my patience comes from faith and also a need to pursue an idea. I have to see it through and make it physical to complete my understanding of it.
JW: Do you ever change your technical approach mid-way through?
TF: Well, yes. I was working on a piece with pins in a sheet. I started it off by doing it one at a time — which became absurdly monotonous. Then I tried to figure out ways of doing it faster. I constructed this screen so the pins would fall through with their heads all in the same way. Then I had to work out a way to orient the pins, so I could pull out a clump and stick them in. I rigged up a device that consisted of a block and a magnet so I could then stick in a whole bunch at one time.
JW: So in a way you came up with a primitive form of mass production.
TF: Right. I do look for ways to make things easier. My work tends towards this very repetitive labor process for some reason, yet it is not really about that.
JW: It is and it isn’t. When I look at one of your pieces, I wonder how could such a thing be done, and buried in that, I think, is a whole hierarchy of labor processes. In most cases, the disappearance of the hand makes something more attractive — unless you flip back into an Arts and Crafts esthetic which values something for its archaic qualities.
TF: That’s something you’ve mentioned quite a few times.
JW: That’s because the machine qualifies what it is to do something by hand in this day and age. It plays out in a lot of different ways. Warhol said, “I want to be a machine,” but that was very romantic, a romanticization of the mechanical.
TF: I always interpreted that statement as striving to reveal the human element by denying it.
JW: By falling short of perfection?
TF: Yes. Striving for that machineness might show the residue of what is human, and that always interested me: the absurdity of wanting to be a machine.
JW: David Robbins has referred to you as “the Manzoni of the ’90s.” Manzoni’s canned shit and his pedestal for the earth — like a lot of his other work — both have a lot to do with how one orients oneself. I think of your inverted map: looking at the world from the North Pole. Then, of course, there’s your speck of shit versus his can.
TF: What I know of his work seems to emanate from thoughts about his self in relation to … the world, I guess.
JW: Yeah, but also in relation to the readymade. His pedestal claims the earth as a readymade and the canned shit claims the results of an involuntary, physiological process. In your work, everything you start out with remains the same. The spaghetti is still spaghetti, the pins are still pins, the map is still a map …
TF: I try to establish a logical connection between what a material is, how it is transformed and what it becomes. It retains its identity, but as symbolic material. It becomes symbolic because you are looking at it.
JW: Does the scale and fragility of your work ever create storage or transportation problems? Take your bubblegum piece, for instance.
TF: The bubblegum just goes in a box and that’s it.
JW: The one that stretches from floor to ceiling?
TF: Oh, that one. I thought you were talking about the bubblegum. [laughter]. Yes, a very long box!
JW: So you just make it again every time.
TF: Well, I’ve only shown it twice. Once at Feature, and then once in a show curated by Ivan Moscowitz. And he installed it.
JW: Oh really? He must have had a lot of patience.
TF: I had very specific instructions. They had to be incredibly detailed. Well, not incredibly detailed but … you know, second by second. The first thing was that I had to figure out a way of making it more predictable. I found this stuff called Friendly Plastic and I mixed a small amount of that into the bubblegum. It made the mixture slightly harder when it was stretched, and so it wouldn’t sag — which is something I was concerned about. But the Friendly Plastic actually complicated the installation because you have to boil it, then you have to wait exactly the right amount of time for it to cool off before you stick it on the ceiling and stretch it to the floor. So when it came down to shipping, it all just went into a small box, a slide box. Other things just get thrown away, like the piece I did with laundry detergent. That just got swept up. The toothpaste — I did a piece with toothpaste on a wall — that just gets scraped off and thrown away.
JW: So a collector ends up purchasing instructions?
TF: Yes — and a lifetime supply of bubblegum. [laughter].
Work
blackandwhitepaintfig. (2006)
black and white paint on concrete floor
4 x 31 x 75-1/2 inches (10.2 x 78.7 x 191.8 cm)
Untitled (1990)
approximately 1,500 pieces of chewed bubble gum molded into a sphere and displayed at head height in a corner, hanging by its own stickiness.
1000 Hours of Staring (1992-97)
a blank piece of paper stared at by the artist for 1,000 hours
32 ½ x 32 ½ inches
Untitled (1990)
a partially used bar of soap inlaid with a spiral of the artist’s pubic hair
3 x 4 x 1½ in. (7.6 x 10.1 x 3.8 cm.)
Untitled (1992)
a sphere of the artist’s feces ½ mm in diameter centered on a cubed pedestal
Pedestal: 20 x 20 x 20 inches
Untitled (1995)
a gelatin pill capsule filled with tiny spheres of Play-Doh
¼ x ¾ x ¼ inches
Untitled, 1992
approximately 3,000 garbage bags layered one inside the other until no more could be added
63 x 28 x 20 inches
Untitled (2000)
construction paper
12 x 114 x 120 inches
Untitled (1990)
two identically wrinkled sheets of paper
2 parts, each: 11 x 8 ½ inches
Zombie (2008)
newspaper and wheat paste
67 x 28 x 96 in. (170.18 x 71.12 x 243.84 cm)
Untitled (1994)
self-portrait carved out of a single aspirin
Wooden School Chair (1999-2002)
This sculpture started as an everyday wooden school chair. The artist drilled holes in the chair repeatedly until the majority of the chair was removed.
Inside Out (2006)
cardboard box, christmas lights, styrofoam and various media from the artist’s studio
Untitled (1993)
a ring of plastic drinking cups, using the smallest number of cups possible to close the ring to form a perfect circle
Untitled, (1999)
36 dollar bills combined to make one large dollar bill
14 x 35 1/4 inches
Untitled (Hair) (2000)
2 15/16 x 1/2 x 1/2 inches
Untitled (2005)
a replica of the artist’s shoes made entirely out of paint
Each: 4 x 11 ¼ x 4 ¾ inches
Untitled (2002)
a cardboard box covered with Styrofoam balls
23 ¾ x 27 x 27 inches
Untitled (kite) (2012)
wood, paint and monofilament
Diameter of base: 41 1/2 inches
Figure: 1 1/8 x 3/8 inches
String: Dimension varies
Untitled (White Bread) (2013)
styrofoam and paint
36 x 36 x 3 7/8 inches
(91.44 x 91.44 x 9.84 cm)
Big Big Mac (2013)
styrofoam and paint
38 1/2 X 50 inches
(97.79 X 127 cm)
Moot (2014)
paint and styrofoam
Guitar: 41 3/8 x 15 5/8 x 4 3/4 inches
Mic: 54 1/2 x 10 1/2 x 10 1/4 inches
Stool: 23 1/4 x 12 1/4 x 12 1/4 inches
REAM (2006)
a 500-page flipbook made in 2006
Witch (2008)
paper
51 x 39 inches (129.5 x 99.1 cm)
Installation video — watch here
Looking Up (2015)
stainless steel
390 x 130 x 90 inches (990.6 x 330.2 x 228.6 cm)
Everything (1995)
all of the words in an English language dictionary written on a piece of paper
36 x 36 inches
Circle Dance (2010)
a circle of eleven life-sized dancing figures, cast in a highly polished stainless steel
Untitled (1999)
Nine Total cereal boxes cut into small squares and combined to make one large box
Untitled (1989)
“painting” using Crest Tartar Control Gel Toothpaste
Hot balls (1992)
a collection of differently sized and coloured balls stolen by the artist from various stores over a period of six months
Yarn Dog (2006)
yarn and wheat paste
23 x 44 1/2 x 24 1/4 inches
Dotted Line (2017)
video projection, silent
Dimensions variable
Untitled (Foil Guitarist) (2004)
aluminum and wood with colored pencil on paper Tootsie Pop wrapper
70 x 48 x 30 in
*
p.s. Hey. ** Chris Cochrane, Morning and love to you, Chris! $500 a ticket, in the 70s? How is that possible. When I first lived in NYC in the early 80s and met you, that space was used for ‘White Parties’, and I remember crowds of completely zonked out clones stumbling around in front of it. I’m really surprised that it’s still a theater, or theater-shaped at least. Huh. xoxo, me. ** Uday, The food wasn’t unusual, just unusual for me: donuts, galette. Your legs have my luck should they need it. Could be very glamorising for them? ** _Black_Acrylic, Leeds Town & Country Club is legendary even outside the UK. Actually, so is the Orbit, come to think of it. Nice. ** kenley, Hey! Oh, wow, Dog Whistle is fantastic! I can see the Sepultura thing. That was such fun. You’re the singer, no? Nice speech/rant there in the middle. I’d love to see/hear more. And Searing is really strong too. What a nice, moody video. So, as to which one is your beloved … wild guess: the drummer or the bass player? You guys are such a music power couple. That’s exciting. I hope the world creates a situation where your band can play over here. For the French visa I have, you don’t have to speak French. I don’t speak French, embarrassingly enough. I think you only have to speak French if you want to be a citizen. Awesome, thank you! Now I’m your fan. ** l@rst, Nice: you at that Mudhoney show. I haven’t watched the whole video, but I will. ** Montse, Hi, Montse. Oh, thank you for the festival tips! I’ll go see if any of them are in the submission period. Hopes about FIRE, yeah, although we’ve had quite bad luck with Queer festivals, I guess because ‘RT’ isn’t sexy? Fingers crossed. Thank you, thank you! Love, me. ** Carsten, ‘Yeelen’ sounds exciting, yeah. I’ll see if I can find it on some illegal site or somewhere. Seems possible. Oh, wait, you say it’s on m.vkvideo.ru. Perfect, easy. I’ll watch it as soon as I’m able. Thanks, pal. ** Bill, I have something of a soft spot for those kinds of films too, maybe not as soft as your spot, but still. I went to Club Lower Links. I might even have done a reading there, maybe at the time of Spew, I’m not sure. I saw that Bottom of the Hill is closing. That’s really too bad. I never went, but I kept something of an eye on their programming, which was very impressive. ** Måns BT, Hey, Måns! Oh, I do know that Moodysson film, but embarrassingly I know it from its English title ‘Together’. I did really like it. I want to watch it again. I should do a Moodysson Day if I haven’t already. Hm. ‘Thriller: En Grym Film’ sounds like a serious must watch. I’ll hunt. Crazy. And ‘Fyra Nyanser av Brunt’. I don’t know it all. Thanks a lot, buddy. I’ll catch up. Spain: I’ve only been to Barcelona and Sitges. I liked Barcelona a lot. I was only there for one day, so I don’t really know of anything to suggest, but, if you go there, I think you’ll be at least somewhat enchanted. Montse, one of our commenters and a great friend of mine, lives there. Maybe if she sees this, she’ll have ideas. Sitges is just a kind of touristy beach town, I wouldn’t bother. Very cool everything back your way. ** Alice, Hi. I played an ‘Ape Escape’ film at some point. Yeah, fun. Lispector is wonderful, yeah. Hugo’s blurb is a total keeper. Wow, I’d buy whatever had that phrase adorning it. Thank you, I look forward to reading it. I’m happy to hear you sounding sparkly and determined. xo. ** Lucas, Haha, that was a lot comments, but they’re a gift too. I only just peeked at your Letterboxd list, but it’s stellar. ‘Jerk’! On the post, you can hook me up with the google doc if you like. People send guest-posts that way sometimes, and it works. Thank you! The shift in your perspective is very interesting, and it sounds worth the hours it involved. The bigger the palette, the greater your frontier, you know? ** Eric C., Hi. Oh, March, probably too late for us to try for, but I’ll check the listing and see. Yeah, too late, damn. 2026: Well, Zac and I going to be pretty concentrated on getting ‘RT’ out and about probably through the spring. It’s a lot of work. And I hope to have the script of our new film finished asap so we can start the exhausting process of finding out how we can get it made. That’s kind of the future I’m seeing. I would like to write some fiction, but we’ll see. What’re you planning for? ** Steeqhen, Sad about the Savoy. My memory of Cork is pretty limited. I was basically confined to the area around wherever that conference on my work was held. It was in some kind of theater, but not the kind where bands would play. The mentoring prospect sounds really interesting, obviously, well, depending on the mentor. 35 spots, though, pretty tight. But still. ** Steve, No, haha, I know nothing beyond those pictures. Like I said to Chris, I’m surprised the Fillmore East is still physically extant and not just NYU dorms. I wonder why. ** politekid, Oh, uh, yeah, ‘Southland Tales’ was one of my ‘huh?’s. I actually like ‘Donnie Darko. but only the original theater release version. I tried the director’s cut, and I thought it was pretentious crap. You’ll be back to reading novels in no time. Seriously. This week? I think just ‘RT’ stuff and going to see some films that are playing here and look exciting. Mostly older experimental films. I’m in the middle of trying to work out a London screening for ‘RT’ right now. There are a few prospects, and fingers crossed. ** James Bennett, Hey. The one time I went to Venice my travel-mate friend and I made a pilgrimage to the ‘Death in Venice’ hotel, but it was so disappointing because they didn’t film the interiors there, and it was no great shakes on the inside. ‘Funeral Rites’ is my favorite Genet. I don’t think it trails off, but I haven’t read it in ages. Amazing, that reading technique. Trippy. Tempting. I kept a journal when I was a teenager until my sneaky mother found it and read it and discovered I was a gay boy with a fucked up imagination and sent me to a psychiatrist, and that warded me off ever keep a journal again. For whatever reason, the idea of keeping one is completely uninteresting to me too. Maybe for the same reason I never liked using my biography in m fiction except in ‘I Wished’ and rare strategic situations. ** HaRpEr //, I do like ‘Romy and Michele’. I saw it in the theater when it came out, and I was, like, why is this film not crazy popular? I actually did a post here a million years ago about the Crystal Palace, but it wasn’t very good, so I let it die. But a very interesting thing. ** Malik, Hey! Living in Paris, there are times when I catch myself thinking, ‘I would kill for a Taco Bell’. That’s how rough it is living here as a Mexican food addict. A place where going to a Chipotle constitutes an exciting birthday treat. Have you seen Bakshi’s ‘Mighty Mouse’ reboot cartoons? I don’t remember what age I was when it was on TV, but it blew my mind. My friend the writer Darius James, who wrote a great novel called ‘Negrophobia’ and a terrific book about Blaxploitation films, is obsessed with ‘Coonskin’. He can wax scholarly and poetic about it for hours. Exciting about the new short play and of course the longer one! So happy to hear that! ** Laura, Hi. Where I grew up there was this large area of abandoned mansions situated where they eventually put in a freeway, and I grew up spending endless hours exploring them as a kid and doing drugs in them as a teen. Changed my brain. My TV ‘ban’ is pretty solid. I’ll watch what my LA roommate watches when I’m visiting there and get a taste of some of the trending shows like, oh, ‘Wednesday’ or ‘Succession’ or ‘Adolescence’ and those sorts of things, but I’m never tempted to go any further. That writers group sounds like a complete and total nightmare. Oh my god. I’m waiting for Zac to give me his script feedback, and he promises by sometime next week at the latest. Ideally, that’ll be the final polish, but we’ll see. I’m dying to start getting it ready for a life. ** horatio, Oh, god, you know I just had a horrible flu. Really bad. But the good thing was that antibiotics and steroids murdered it pretty quickly. Don’t hesitate to murder it with those weapons if it starts messing with you too much. ‘Last Night At Lounge Ax’: I’ll definitely watch for that. Thanks! Did you ever see Shellac? If not, needless to say they were crazy good live. Feel better whatever it takes. ** Okay. I’m giving my galerie space over to the super smart and clever and tons of fun artist Tom Friedman today. Please take a stroll and look around. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
Hey Dennis. I really like that “Wooden School Chair” and the two identically wrinkled sheets of paper. It’s a bit Levé “Works” in a cool way, like a set of challenging-to-execute but conceptually simple pieces of art. The distorted cereal box is amazing too, I really love that kind of visual distortion, real-world pixelisation is something I always find charming.
I’m not sure if this message is going to get through, the wifi in my flat’s been fucked up for a few days. I’ve got a ton of stuff to do for work, so I’ve had to do most of that in a coffee shop, which isn’t amazing. It does mean that my flat feels even more disconnected from the world though, which is so pleasant that I may look into making this a permanent fixture, which I realise sounds very irrational/hipstery.
Oh, and I got my final box of stuff from my childhood bedroom delivered, which has been kind of a relief. There isn’t much of note, it’s mostly emo CDs and YA literature, but I did find an annotated Nabokov book from when I was trying to improve my English. Really funny, and maybe the most bizarre choice of vocabulary booster ever. Anyway, thanks, cool day today. Hopefully this comes through, see ya!
P.S. hArPeR, any news on your work being published?
Hey. Thanks for asking! Well, it’s been a long and arduous journey seeking publication. It’s mostly just been the quest of finding the right publisher, because the book I’ve written is sort of a tough sell. There are some presses I’m hopeful about. I emailed the pdf to Crop Circles (who are into occult stuff) and although their submissions window wasn’t open, they said they were interested by the idea and wanted to take it into consideration anyway. It’s a very slow process but I think I’m learning more about how publishing works along the way, and if I just stay patient and keep my faith in the book, I’ll get there eventually.
My YNY colleague and Seattle resident Morgan will try and make it to the Room Temperature screening at the Grand Illusion! Word is it’s a fab venue.
Major Tom Friedman fan here. Remember back in 2002 I was a wet-behind-the ears 2nd year sculpture student in Dundee going around with that Phaidon book tucked underneath my arm. Ah certainly an innocent, idealistic time.
She’s gone and secured her ticket!
I actually borrowed that Darius James book from the library a couple years ago! That’s Blaxploitation: Roots of the Baadasssss ‘Tude, right? Mostly got it for the piece on Coonskin because I was screening it for a small event, and wanted to read some other texts to get more ideas for the discussion. I strangely never realized the connection to its character design and Yoruba sculpture until James pointed it out. Really broke open another level on the film’s genius.
I know of Bakshi’s Mighty Mouse series, but haven’t seen it. Luckily the whole thing is on YouTube, so I can catch that any time. The catalog that man has is so strange and unique, even more commendable that he’s still going strong as a painter, still sharp and astute to apply his own work to the world at large, from art to politics. I think his director commentary for Wizards is among my favorites.
Years ago I first saw Tom Friedman’s construction paper guy splattered on a gallery floor. It’s still one of my most memorable gallery experiences. I’ve only seen one or two other pieces over the years. His work is so diverse, it’s quite likely I saw something and didn’t make the connection. What great ideas.
Was at the SF Tape Music Festival Friday. The short Yasunao Tone piece was pretty good, and there was a fine Horacio Vaggione piece, written last year when he was 81. I hope I’ll still be making interesting music if/when I get up there.
Bill
hi dennis! i agree with jay, “wooden school chair” is breathtaking. and i liked reading friedman and waters’ convo. i like his provocation that the value or revelatory element of his pieces is inherently derived from the labour that what went into making them. something something marx
anyhow, you’re so kind to watch those sets! i’m obviously a big fan of you, so huge honour! yes, i sing in dw, and actually im with the guitarist with the glasses. he’s gonna be so mad you didn’t guess him (hehe, jk, he said thanks for checking his band out!!)
i passed your compliments along! the searing boys are pretty adamant about how they present themselves, with the incandescent bulbs and incense and stuff. i think it’s really fun seeing diy bands cobble together their own vision for lighting and presentation. like sure, its very punk on its face to play as starkly and as visually unappealing as possible, but for searing it creates this great brooding atmosphere that works with what theyre doing. i’m the opposite tho, i like all the lights on when i’m performing. i think i need to feel i’m part of everything and everyone to be fully present, i guess. i’d love to know if you have any thoughts on how you position yourself or your work. the set dressing of it all, if you will.
good to know re: french. thank god, my french is intermediate and horribly out of practice. and ooo…ok, i think the searing boys are trying to hop over to europe this summer. their vocalist runs his own label so he’s buddy-buddy with some spanish and italian bands who invited them over. i’ll let you know if/when they have shows solidified. actually that leads me to ask, now for my own sake—does a french visa give you schengen travel?
Hey Dennis.
Saw Alice quoted my blurb. I think it sells her work pretty well. I think Alice does a whole lot with little things. The short story I read from her is quite something actually. She does a whole lot with only one room and a daydream. It reminded me a lot of “The Instruction Manual” by Ashbery, where there is immense detail poured into an extravagant and deeply moving flight of fancy, and its conflict of existence with the deeply mundane realities around us. Really, Alice is a great symbolist poet working in prose. That is how I would praise her work.
Also, RE: Journals with what you were saying to James – I’ve kept a journal since 2022, and honestly, I sometimes consider giving it up, but then at the same time, I like forcing myself to narrate things I would otherwise consider unremarkable and then having to think of ways for it to be interesting for myself. My natural instinct in prose is to go big and fall straight into the barely coherent and collagelike. But for you, isn’t this blog already kind of a journal? It seems to fulfill the same kind of need.
Anyway, wish you the best! Many hugs!
Hey Dennis!
Yes, hopefully there will be a showing of RT close enough where I could potentially travel to see it! Exciting that there’s a new script in process – I’m sure that excitement goes miles to carry one through all the bullshit that comes along with the nuts and bolts of getting a film made!
As for me…..idk, not to get too political or anything, but we’re pretty heavily beset by ICE up here in the Midwest, after the murder of Renee Good last week in Minneapolis. I grew up in the Twin Cities area originally, so it weighs very heavily, but conversely, it’s beautiful to see how the community always comes together in these times. I just wish we didn’t have to so often in recent memory. My friends and I attended an anti-ICE rally up here in the Fargo/Moorhead area (ie, ND/MN border) and we all agreed that just experiencing the solidarity from so many others was helpful. ICE agents are confirmed to be active here in Fargo as well, so I’m really just hoping everyone stays safe. But yeah, things are really weird and really heavy here.
On a lighter note, I’ll be attending an event in Minneapolis called Drone Not Drones with some friends February 6th – 7th. It’s an annual 28-hour event featuring a long set of drone music by a rotating cast of musicians, with proceeds going to Doctors Without Borders. IF interested, you can search “Drone Not Drones” on bandcamp if you wanted to check out what the sets have been like from previous years. Stoked for that, there’s some other bucket list concerts on the horizon I’m excited about, and possibly a vacation to Switzerland and France toward the end of the year!
this looks so cool.
i sent you an email with the link to the post:).
dont have much to share today other than i feel really sick today as always but my lymph nodes are swollen and rly hurt which worries me because that rarely ever happens in my body. going to the doctor tomorrow hoping maybe she doesnt dismiss it.
in theory being sick is awesome because youre just resting and have time for the things you usually dont but im just so exhausted that i can barely concentrate.
but these moments also remind me how precious my time is when i feel well.
xo
A previous lover told me once about an Italian book about massochism that had extensive passages about the pleasure of being ill, and completely under the thrawl of your caretakers. Wishing you a speedy recovery ! Take care !
Hiya again!
Oh, I kind of loved this guys work, haven’t heard of him except for that dollar bill one. I don’t know why but I think his work is kind of scary. There’s something about the whole thing with incredibly small spheres made of excrement, shoes made in completely unreal material (HOW is that paint!!??!) and most especially the two pieces of identically wrinkled papers that remind me of childhood nightmares. You understand that feeling? Like everything’s crooked and incomprehensible. Spooky.
Moodysson-Day sounds terrific! Swedens best working director, even if he has gone crazy lately. I don’t know if you know it but he’s extremely pro-Israel in the whole conflict, and he has admitted it’s partly just to provoke people (he’s always been a provocateur and contrarian, although his films are mostly tame), which I deem to be a childish thing to do when it comes to people’s lives being taken.
Oh yes, Thriller, you have to find that one! There’s a vinegar syndrome release, and recently a Klubb Super 8 release which has even more stuff on it (and Klubb Super 8 are personal friends of mine!).
I think I mentioned a time ago a friend and I have started experimenting with different art forms and today we went out and did a photo shoot. We’re also shooting a music video next week, and I’m currently writing a short film that seems promising. So lots of fun stuff going on! You have any tips on how to get your stuff out there as young aspiring artists?
Xo, månsmånsmåns
Hey Dennis – Just back in town and catching up with the blog. Happy belated b’day! Loved the film post and seeing everyone’s lists in the comments, too. Yesterday’s dead music venues was great – though I was shocked to see how many of them I knew first-hand.
I didn’t know Tom Friedman’s work and this is a cool intro. Hot Balls, Everything, and the Total cereal grabbed me on first read, though it’s all strong and intriguing. Have you seen much of his stuff in person?
Are you free to talk later this week or weekend via Zoom? I’m fairly open, if there are better days/times for you.
Hey Dennis,
I remember you saying it was the Granary Theatre, which is on Mardyke Street. A very distinct road in Cork, though with nothing too interesting or memorable aside from Presentation College (which is the secondary school of Cillian Murphy, my cousins, and me in a different universe), and the skate park and hospital on either ends. It’s basically the end of the city that is primarily for UCC and parks, and an end I was living for the past almost two years.
I emailed the Library and they responded to me quickly, which was a shock… I’ll need to send my CV on tomorrow and hope they take me on as a volunteer/intern. I’m also in the middle of writing; I’ve assessed the feelings I experience every time I’ve sat down to write and just couldn’t over these past few months, and I think I have some sort of fear, though I don’t know what exactly. Perhaps a fear of writing something stupid, or doing it ‘incorrectly’ or just messing up. I miss having deadlines so that I didn’t have time to feel like this. Probably connected to some of my own indecision and problems with the weight of choice and ownership, but I’m finding ways around it.
Was chatting with my mother today about how her and my dad almost moved to Logan in Utah before me and my sibling were born. She said that they were incredibly close to moving, but something happened with the job. She said as well that she didn’t want to raise us there, and at most would have had us there for a year or so, though I wonder would that have changed. I know myself that growing up how I was, in a smallish town in Utah, I think I would have gone crazy. I actually started to get panicked that somebody would go back in time and change my parents’ decision, and I’d find myself as a child in Logan, Utah…
Thanks for the introduction to Tom Friedman. I think my favourite is ‘Inside Out’. I obviously have a thing for Christmas lights.
The editing for the book is going well, although I will say that I’m in the doubting stage where every idea I ever thought was great is placed under scrutiny. On a bad day I’ll think a given thing is gratuitous and by the next morning I’ll think it’s very strong, so it can be confusing to remember the bottom line of what I’m trying to do (which is impossible to refine since it’s all confused). I keep remembering this thing that John Waters once said, something to the effect of ‘if you’re thinking about cutting something then the answer is always that you should’. Do you believe that to be true for you?
I saw Shellac a couple of months before Covid. They were brilliant. I think I was the youngest person there, and I was only like fifteen. Albini was great at on stage rants. The energy in the room was constantly tense. I’m so glad I got to see them.
hi Dennis!
Friedman is so weird to me! sort of love him bc he’s like ‘fuck it, we’re doing this lol’ but i feel the same stuff w a v slightly off slant would… suck. he walks such a tightrope, which is v cool. but also hideous, hideous trypophobia fodder every once in a while, i mean i’d rather play/watch The Last of Us, which i totally can’t do for the same reason.
you’ve been invited to watch tv w which i’ve got a bone to pick up lol. maaan, i wanted to love Succession but then it just… sthjjgfddffhjj, no. Wednesday wasn’t for me, is Adolescence worth it tho? i’ve been hearing about it so i might go there.
the writers group was def a nightmare but also a lot of fun in the near-immediate aftermath, like so embarrassing lol. also the closest i’ve felt to being back in kindergarten and most of the other kids and i had a language barrier so everyone’s hackles were raised all the time. if this thing had happened in the flesh we might have even fought fr. ^_^
hope Zac loves the script! so far i’ve been acquainted with just the first two as per the resulting films, and i think… how to put it, idk, just big congrats ya 3ami. would love to read them, are they actually out there? i was waiting for you to finish this one so i wouldn’t be bombarding you w my thing like a total weirdo, but now it’s on lol. obvi i don’t expect you to go straight for it or anything!
but oh! i recently re-ordered The Sluts bc i think i already said at some point i lost most of my books during a move (i can’t even, and i mean i can’t) and now the bookshop emailed me w a partial refund offer bc the book is apparently ripped down the back. i’m like wtf that’s perfect, i’ll pay extra lol.
happy Wednesday!
<3
how did i forget to say nooooooo they put a motorway in place of yr abandoned mansions? nooooooooo! i would’ve even taken a pilgrimage, like i can think of few better things than not just the one abandoned mansion but a whole fuckload of them? the fuckers.
Hey, D. Was somewhat glamourising for my legs. Especially because I found an Onsen at the end. Got a haircut today and it might be too short, but it’ll grow back. Friedman, nice. Very suited for galleries, I’ve always thought. I’m excited to get back to college for my final semester; I miss conversations and feel like I’m getting duller without them. Not a huge galette fan usually?
Hey ! How have you and the blog’s denizens been ? Any big news or stand-out posts I should check out ?
Wrote a review of a public glasgow ball-booting performance piece the other day; a cherubic xerox saint has made a wee run of copies (bless him, I do adore him). I was helping a friend move out a [ ] living situation today. Did a grand wee trial shift in the fry-cook arse of a cafe yesterday; it was a delight; I think- I’m sure that -I hope, yes- I got the job –maybe!
Have been finding a lot of luck on typewriters recently. Got an old German named Erika (same model, I found, that someone else had once saved from a skip (I had met him at an after-party (to a very delightful Jewish Techno night (where I had experienced something close to theophany !)) where one was to covid-test in fear to the death of a cat with feline AIDs)). Do you give much ritualistic value to writing tools ? I’m developing a relationship with Erika and a safe prescription amphetamine.
Hope you’re doing fabulously, as always !