‘The eighties ended on November 6, 1990. That night, at Sotheby’s in New York, the audience applauded when a painting by Julian Schnabel, its broken plates emblematic of the decade’s heedless excess, failed to elicit a bid. (Apparently, the same crowd that inflated the art-market bubble took perverse pleasure in watching it burst.) The results of the sale were so brutal—less than 50 percent of the lots sold—that Time magazine dubbed the auction “The Great Massacre of 1990.” Ten days later, Sean Landers opened his second solo show in New York.

‘If it seems like bad form to open with money in an essay on art, consider the impact of the crash on Landers, who came of age as an artist at the height of the hoopla. He moved to New York’s East Village in 1986—the same year that Jeff Koons exhibited his Luxury and Degradation series just a few blocks away. By 1989, Landers had been pegged, in print, as a star of the next generation.

‘But success was the new failure. In 1991, Landers wrote (and went on to exhibit) a series of absurdly personal letters to his student-loan officer explaining why he’d fallen behind on his payments: “Miss Gonzales, not one single artwork sold from my show in Chicago. This dizzying fact has not only squelched the raging fire of my artist’s ego, it also rendered me penniless for the ensuing four month period before my show here in New York.”

‘Or was failure the new success? As Landers later wrote in Frieze magazine, “I was lucky enough to have been one of the ‘1990s artists’ who suddenly emerged after the irrationally exuberant New York art scene of the 1980s crashed. I felt like a singer/songwriter wearing thrift-store clothing and playing a worn-out acoustic guitar, thrust on stage directly after a spandex-wearing, hair-sprayed, heavy metal band with their double-necked electric guitars just exited in a blazing pyrotechnics display.” Landers may have been down-and-out, but at least he was down-and-out in the spotlight.

‘The fact is that there is no “bad form” when it comes to the early work of Sean Landers. Formally, he’s promiscuous, moving between text, painting, sculpture, video, drawing, audio, and performance. His practice swings from the de-skilled (setting a chimpanzee loose in the studio, as he did in 1995) to the traditional (casting figurative statues in bronze, as he’s done, off and on, since 1991).

‘As for content, bad form is Landers’s stock-in-trade. He established his reputation by shamelessly disclosing the details of his life, from the banal to the painfully personal, in stream- of-consciousness texts scrawled in ballpoint pen on legal-pad pages (one lengthy text was published as the 1993 book [sic]), then written on giant sheets of paper, and eventually painted on canvas and paired with images (breasts, clowns, monkeys). In all these texts, Landers simultaneously indulges and sends up ideas of narcissism, offering a portrait of the artist that recasts James Joyce’s semiautobiographical “young man” as a comically confessional bad boy.

‘No subject—not his debt, not his doubt, not even his dingleberries—was off-limits for Landers. From 1996 to 2000, when Spin magazine gave Landers the last word every month in his hilarious back-page column “Genius Lessons,” he could be so politically incorrect that Howard Stern seemed like a spokesman for the FCC by comparison. (See “Genius Lesson #20: Soapsuds Afro,” chronicling a pubescent mishap involving hygiene, onanism, and the artist’s urethra, or “Genius Lesson #18: Send Naked Photos,” a plea to his female readers.)

‘Landers didn’t escape censure for skewering political correctness. When Artforum magazine reproduced one of his text paintings on the cover, in April 1994, the issue included a dismissive take on his work by the African-American artist and critic Lorraine O’Grady, as well as a more favorable analysis by the art historian Jan Avgikos. But bad press did not thwart his progress. By the mid-nineties, Landers had installed solo shows in New York, Los Angeles, Zürich, Chicago, Paris, Cologne, London, Berlin, Athens, and Milan. Yet, just as a reversal of fortune had helped launch his career at the start of the decade, a return to “business as usual” would soon change the rules of the game.

‘Ironically, it wasn’t Landers’s words that altered his circumstance—it was the lack of them. As he shifted his process, from working on paper to painting, he began to experiment with imagery for its own sake. Satire persisted, as in the colorful stripe painting I’m With Stupid, which pairs a T-shirt slogan with a riff on Duchamp’s rejection of “retinal” art—specifically, the apocryphal anecdote that he dismissed painting with the old French expression “bête comme un peintre,” or “dumb as a painter.” Then, in 1996, Landers shipped his gallery in Los Angeles five entirely figurative canvases, all based on William Hogarth’s 1733 painting of colonial-era male bonding, A Midnight Modern Conversation.

‘Landers later confessed, “The end of the ’90s for me was the instant that the crate containing these paintings was pried open and [my dealer] got her first glimpse of them. In a fraction of a second, her big pretty brown eyes shot me a look that said, ‘Your career is over honey!’ I’m not saying that it wasn’t a sympathetic look but it was like buckshot through the heart just the same. What I didn’t realize was that ‘playtime’ was officially over and ‘business’, which had been suspended since the late 1980s, was back on.”15 Sean Landers had failed again. There was only one thing to do: try again and fail better.’ — Andrea K. Scott

 

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Further

Sean Landers Site
Sean Landers @ Petzel Gallery
Sean Landers @ Andrea Rosen Gallery
seanland81 @ instagram
Book: ‘Sean Landers’
It’s Not Easy Being Green
December 2011: Sean Landers Interview
TO EVERYONE’S CHAGRIN
A Former Slacker Artist Gets Real
Writing the Song of Myself

 

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Five videos

​Νάρκισσος [Narcissus], 1993

Watch it here

 

Skyline Pigeon, 1995

Watch it here

 

Singerie: Le Peintre, 1995

Watch it here

 

Day and Night Potatoes, 1992

Watch it here

 

93% Sincere, 1992

Watch it here

 

____
Extras

A Discussion with Sean Landers

Sean Landers and Jason Rosenfeld, with Jeffrey C. Wright

On the Work of Sean Landers

Sean Landers-Video Artist at Armory

 

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Interview

 

GARAGE: Your last two solo exhibitions at Petzel were comprised of colorful canvases depicting animals dressed in Scottish tartan and lone clowns sailing ships. What made you return to the textual focus of your earlier work?
Sean Landers: For as long as I’ve been making art there’s been a pendulum swinging back and forth between relying purely on image and purely on text, as well as moments where those things get mixed. I see my tree paintings as a “mixed” moment, and my new yellow legal pad paintings as a homecoming, in a way, because it’s how I entered the art world in the late 1980s and early ’90s.

How did you develop your stream-of-consciousness way of working?
From the time I was a teenager, whenever I experienced turbulence, I would write to calm the waters. When I moved to New York, I experienced a big shift in my work and my personal life, which resulted in a “get real” moment. I picked up a legal pad, starting writing and created a character to say things that I normally wouldn’t express. I taped these notes to my studio walls, and when my art friends responded positively, I started to make it part of my practice.

When did your writing become the art itself?
Once I removed the fictional character from the story it became more about me. I turned writing into drawing, and then writing into painting. When I confronted a big piece of paper or canvas it became like action painting or process art, and I loved how that married into art history. Having felt stuck between being a writer and a painter, it gave me a way to fuse the two things together in an honest and purposeful way. Instead of swashbuckling with a big brush, it was just some guy’s thoughts.

Over the years you’ve found many ways to incorporate language into the context of figurative imagery. What is it about that mix that fascinates you?
I often paint an image that stands alone, which is fine, but at other times I feel like I need to put more of my soul into it. Some paintings arrive extemporaneously, where I make a lot sketches and wipe them off so that there are all of these overlays, which lead to the final subject. I seek something in it to access the subconscious and then I just stream-of-consciously add some text.

Why do you like using a yellow legal pad paper, which in the case of the current works is pre-printed on canvas?
I’ve stuck with the yellow legal pad paper ever since I first started using it. It’s always been what I use to jot things down on, like when I’m planning a painting or sketching out ideas. I don’t make many conventional drawings, but I have scores of yellow legal pad pieces.

Your work of the 1990s was sometimes identified as “slacker art.” Were you that apathetic or was that just a cool subcultural tag?
That was at a time when I was doing maybe three solo shows and a dozen group exhibitions a year, which made me anything but a slacker. I was working my ass off. But because I was just emerging, I thought any attention was fine. It was only later that I realized the slacker label didn’t really fit—even though some of my work might have fit the characters in Richard Linklater’s 1991 film, or the grunge movement of that time. The tag stuck, however, and because of the Internet, it still has a long tail.

You were definitely more angst-ridden when you were emerging. Are you becoming more philosophical and sagacious with age?
I hope so! Because I used to write when I was in emotional turmoil, more of that content found its way into the world than when I was walking to my studio without a care in the world. I was writing when I broke up with my wife Michelle, before we were married. It happened only once, but it famously became the basis for my book SIC. Unfortunately, I recorded it for all time, which means it could become a major motion picture some day.

Are you parodying your earlier self in the current work?
No, these yellow legal pads have always been a part of my practice. I just haven’t shown them to anybody. All of my work comes into the world on these pads. The guy in the work is less self-abusive now, but that’s because I’m further away from my Catholic past, where one’s taught that if you show pride, you have to beat yourself down and get back into the flock.

What kinds of thoughts have shaped these new word works?
They’re very existential, which goes back to the question of what does an artwork say? It says that the maker was here. Art is a transaction between a genuine gesture by its maker and an empathic reception by the viewer. The more truth you put into the work the more it will stand the test of time.

Should we be reading between the lines?
Always—you should be reading between the lines when you read anything, particularly my stuff. The character that you find between the lines is the true character of the work. There are cracks and fissures where I’m naked as hell.

What about your doodles, where a mouse is caught in a trap or a guy in a barrel is about to go over the falls? Why so dark an outlook for such a successful guy?
There are doodles and there are doodles—some are subconscious while others are meant to illustrate precise thoughts. It’s very heavy-handed to have a guy in a barrel going over a falls or a mouse caught in a trap, but both of those images are allegories for aspects of art making.

Applying the text to your tree paintings, where you make it look like it’s carved, is visually quite clever. Are you aiming at a juvenile delinquent look?
No, the carving in the trees is actually inspired by a glade of heavily carved trees that I stumbled upon near the Prado Museum in Madrid. However, the trees in my paintings are Aspens, which are linked underground by their roots, which I find to be a wonderful metaphor for an artist’s body of work.

 

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Show

Plankboy (Narcissus), 2019

 

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, 2015

 

At Least We Have Wine, 2019

 

Sailor Jack and Bingo, 2016

 

Snowman in Brueghel, 2016

 

Jaguar (The Urgent Necessity of Narcissism for the Artistic Mind), 2014

 

Here Lies, 2010

 

Id, 2009

 

Success Is the New Failure, 2006

 

Andy Kaufman, 2004

 

7095, 2001

 

The Robot Poet, 1999

 

Alone, 1996

 

36 Hours, 1995

 

Chris’s List of Truths, 1990

 

Wood Chimp, 2020

 

A Voir, 2020

 

Goosebumps, 2006

 

A Midnight Modern Conversation (Boredom), 1996

 

The Feverish Library, 2012

 

Say Your Goodbyes, 2017

 

#1 Dad, 1999

 

Plankboy Redux, 2016

 

Jesus, 1999

 

100 Year Storm (Clogher head, Ireland), 2022

 

Brown Bear, 2021

 

Beaver, 2014

 

Captain Homer (Seven Pipes for Seven Seas), 2016

 

My Existence is as Tenuous as your Attention, 2017

 

I’m Not Cool and I Know It, 2005

 

Home Alone All Grown Up, 2008

 

I Live, 2023

 

Iceberg (Greenland Sea), 2022

 

Yellow Dog, 2022

 

The New Englander, 2018

 

Around the World Alone (Coxswain Moon), 2011

 

Le’Go My Ego, 2007

 

Anger, 2002

 

I am still this guy, 2017

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Guy, The really best slaves seem to live very, very far away, like in dreamland. And you can never physically have them as a result, but at least they don’t have to be relocated. Yours maybe visiting you in the summer is a coup! Tentative congrats. Well, I mean, it’s possible that that TC-ish slave has a chin like the Wicked Witch of the West and a mouth like an alligator, but I do have a tendency to anticipate the worse case scenario. Nah, you’re right, he’s probably dreamy. Who’s gonna write a poem about him first, you or me? ** Dominik, Hi!!! LA is weird and great because it’s kind of not one thing. It’s like every kind of city kind of stitched together except without the historically pretty buildings and stuff. Me too: I actually spent a minute trying to figure out how to look and sound like a wind chime, but no luck unfortunately. Well, of course I think you should write the story of that odd isolated couple. Or make that the rules of a SCAB writing contest. It does have promise, for sure. Love making the Block function of my email account work when I ask it to block something called FluffCo Affiliate that sends me literally 18 spam emails at least every day, G. ** Steve Erickson, I’m on it. I hope the doctor helps. But I fear you’re going to have to grow a thick skin about the American media now that we’re in the scariest election year ever, for one thing. Everyone, Steve has reviewed two things for the world including us here today. Here is his review of Bertrand Mandico’s new film SHE IS CONANN, and here is his review of Chelsea Wolfe’s new album SHE REACHES OUT TO SHE REACHES OUT TO SHE. Gisele really likes Chelsea Wolfe. Our ideal with the audio novel is that would come packaged in some kind of book-like object, but we haven’t figured out what would be in that object yet other and than a download code or sound file drive. I think we’ll probably decide that after we’ve recorded it. Thank you asking about that. ** Justin, Yeah, right? I tried really hard to find a video of it moving, but no luck. I don’t know NewDad. I’ll look/listen once I’m out here. I didn’t know there was a new Gacy movie. Huh. Okay, I’ll find it, and I’ll hope your ‘yikes’ is the good kind, ha ha. Thanks a lot, Justin. Enjoy the waning hours of the pre-weekend week. ** Bill, Yeah, me too on hunting a video of that piece. I mean I guess it’s not hard to visualise, but still. No, I don’t know that site. On first peek, it looks very mysterious and weird to navigate. Cool, I’ll scour it in a bit. Thanks, Bill. ** Uday, Hi! I saw your email in my ‘box’ this morning but I hadn’t incorporated enough caffeine at that point to dare to open it attentively, but I will in a bit. Thank you, that’s cool, I’m excited! A favorite wind? That’s an interesting question. I can tell you my least favorite: the hot Santa Ana winds that blow allergy-creating hell on earth into Los Angeles a few times a year. Favorite, though, … nothing pops to mind. If I stuck to the options in the post, I saw Pope.L’s ‘Trinket’ in person, and it was one of the most beautiful things ever. What about you? ** oliver jude, Hi, oliver! Hm, you know, it’s strange but I can’t remember writing about poppers being used in my fiction. Almost every other drug. It does seem possible that I would have referenced poppers in ‘The Sluts’ because it would sees weird if I didn’t, but I don’t remember. Anyway, nice prompt there for a future fiction piece. Thank you. What’s going on with you? ** Okay. Today my galerie hosts a show by the charming and dumb/smart and deliberately kind of annoying and faux-self-deprecating artist Sean Landers, and I hope you’ll find something there. See you tomorrow.

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________________
Yan Pei-Ming Landscape of Childhood (2009)
One huge landscape directly painted on the wall of UCCA’s Big Hall frames a series of painted flags representing portraits of 34 Chinese new born children. Imagined as an abounding walk trough faces and urban views, the exhibition powerfully conveys Yan Pei-Ming’s intentions and gives the audience an opportunity to discover a vision of our world in a landscape of crisis and beyond.

 

________________
Spencer Finch 2 hours, 2 minutes, 2 seconds (Wind at Walden Pond) (2007)
I recorded the wind at Walden Pond using an anemometer and here re-created that wind, both its speed and direction, using a programmable dimmer. The maximum wind speed was 8 mph and the prevailing wind was from the south and southwest.

 

________________
Céline Condorelli Structure for Communicating with Wind (2012)
A space blanket curtain provides presence to what passes unseen and unheard: the abstracted form carrying Wind’s news to Tiger, silently. The golden curtain’s ultra-light material produces an amplified shape and noise from the slightest sigh, and separates inside from out, near from far, dark from light and hot from cold.

 

_________________
Daniel Buren Le vent souffle où il veut (2009)
Daniel Buren wanted to make a work that would create the illusion of a forest. Instead of putting up trees, Buren created with Le vent souffle où il veut (The wind blows wherever it pleases) a design of a hundred flagpoles, with weathercocks in different colours. Each weathercock begins and ends in a bright colour and the coloured bands are, as always in the works of art by Buren, alternated with white.

 

_________________
Joan Jonas Wind (1968)
‘Wind is a Super 8 document which shows a group of people dressed against the cold individually or col-lectively performing different movements on a snow-covered and wind-battered beach. The static shots appear as a series of mini-performances: crossing the field of vision sideways with mirrors attached to one’s clothes; walking with one’s back pressed against one’s partner’s; forming and undoing human clusters, etc. These ges-tures, between ceremony and choreography, are made uncomfortable by the struggle against the natural ele-ments and jerky by the jolts of the camera. The protagonists appear in a mechanical relation to one another, like puppets in the open air, or perhaps like penguins on ice. The surreal, burlesque impression is reinforced by the use of masks which reify faceless bodies in synch with the weather. Experimental slapstick. The more or less or-dered movements seem at times to obey an organic model: connection and dispersion of units, assembly and disassembly of elements, or individuals subject to inner and outer forces and necessities within a living system.’ — navigart

 

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Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec Body Speeds (2012)
In its first version, the project involves measuring velocities of several trams in Amsterdam, streaming the data to the exhibition space in real time. There the velocities of trams are transformed into airflows recreated by several powerful fans, each blowing the air at the speed of a moving tram. The situation created is an impossible intersection of different speeds flowing through the centre of the exhibition space.

 

________________
Céleste Boursier-Mougenot harmonichaos (2000)
Installation, 13 vacuum cleaners, each outfitted with one tuner, one harmonica and one lightbulb.

 

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Tori Wrånes Spin Echo (2019)
‘Wrånes’s large-scale piece about sound on wheels, Spin Echo, was a concert in Disney Concert Hall parking structure in Los Angeles. A choir on bikes and bodybuilders pulled and spun around musicians on carts, creating spiral sound-drones.’ — ISCP

 

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Stephen Vitiello Gain and Lift (2014)
Vitiello’s suspended speaker works process low frequencies of sound to create three-dimensional scores. The freed speakers are suspended by wires, which hold them gently in the air allowing them to move. The installation utilizes four channels, sixteen 6.25″ speakers and the flutter of hummingbirds recorded at Mountain Lake Biological Station, Pembroke in the Appalachian mountains. The playback features only the lowest frequencies, causing movement to the surfaces of the speakers while remaining below the threshold of human hearing.

 

________________
Yan Bing Wind – Aridity (2010)
Electric Fan, Mud, 52 4/5 × 16 1/2 in

 

________________
Carsten Nicolai Pionier I (2011)
Pionier I consists of a large white silk parachute, a wind machine, sound proof panels, and a timer. In regular intervals, the wind machine inflates the parachute.

 

________________
Isa Genzken Wind II (Michael Jackson) (2009)
I was already attracted to the title Wind, and then, when I saw how you implemented this idea of putting wind into a sculpture—or this is at least how I read it—the combination of objects and their implications made sense to me. And then of course in relation to this, the suggestion of how to read the Michael Jackson figure. That all seemed quite clear. It’s always difficult to link a series of positions without being too forceful, and this balance is one I appreciate.

 

________________
Zilvinas Kempinas Double O (2008)
Somehow, the air currents created by two industrial-strength fans turn the two loops of videotape in Double O into a living, dancing sculpture, performing tirelessly for hours.

 

________________
Ross Manning Domestic Ascension (2011)
Ross Manning presses the humble electric fan into service of psychedelic kinetic sculpture. In this work the upper halves of two pedestal fans are trussed together on an axis suspended from the ceiling. To one blade of each fan is attached a long strand of rope, which, when activated by the fans’ spinning, creates a pair of parallel spirals.

 

________________
Hans Haacke Wide White Flow (1967-2017)
Wide White Flow consists of a large piece of white fabric, secured at the corners and blown from underneath by fans at one end. It occupied pretty much the whole of the space it was shown in. The fabric moves beautifully and I was held there for quite a while watching it billow and flow, almost like water.

 

________________
Alice Aycock Sand/Fans (1971)
I wanted a lot of people to see it, but the piece is really best when there are just one or two people watching it happen. Everybody was standing around it, waiting for some huge dust storm. But it’s far more Zen, it happens over time: Little piles of sand make ripples and waves and little dunes. It takes hours. It’s not a crowd-pleaser, not like a football game.

 

_________________
William Pope.L Trinket (2016)
“Trinket” by artist William Pope.L is a custom-made 16-by-54-foot American flag blown continuously during museum hours by four industrial-grade fans typically used on film sets to simulate rainstorms. Over time, the forced air will cause the flag to tear and fray. “The American flag is not a toy. It’s not tame. It’s bright, loud, bristling and alive.” — William Pope.L

 

_________________
Wes Heiss Dustbowl (2011)
33RPM record, acrylic, glass, electronics, sugar. Recordings of the wind in Roswell opposite a silent dust storm trapped within a glass dome.

 

_________________
Alistair McClymont The Limitations of Logic and the Absence of Absolute Certainty (2009)
The work is comprised of a mister, two fans, and lights and creates an ever-changing, realistic inside tornado.

 

________________
Geoff Mullen Wind Chimes (2013)
I recorded myself taking a walk with some bamboo wind chimes, early in the morning–in the summer–during the 17-year “magic” cicada brood. Then I played this recording, along with simple tape manipulations, back into a new space– using portable amplifiers, transducers, objects, MP3 players, cassette players, a phone, etc. I let myself get distracted, following the sounds of nearby streams or giant HVAC generators. I took these recordings and repeated the process again and again. The audio can be streamed or purchased here. You can play the mp3 from your phone — or wherever you have handy — and walk around while the record is playing. Or you can set up impromptu audio stations, costuming a spatialized version of this piece for your listening pleasure.

 

_________________
Tokujin Yoshioka Snow (2010)
The Snow is a 15-meter-wide dynamic installation. Seeing the hundreds kilograms of light feather blown all over and falling down slowly, the memory of the snowscape would lie within people’s heart would be bubbled up.

 

________________
Patrick Gallagher and Chris Klapper Symphony in D Minor (2012)
Symphony in D Minor is a set of interactive hanging sculptures by Patrick Gallagher and Chris Klapper. Using video and sound, the hanging cylinders respond to air pressure caused by movement, intensifying effects of heavy rain, lightning, and thunder as the audience leaps and flails beneath.

 

________________
Wia Stegeman Handkerchiefs drying in the Wind (2012)
The installation has the size of one of the caissons that closed the last hole in the dykes after the Netherlands flood disaster in 1953. The 1200 handkerchiefs are the size of a farmer handkerchief and are all sewn by women from Zeeland who survived the flood. The handkerchiefs refer to the immense grief that the flood has caused. The tears in the handkerchiefs dry here in the wind.

 

________________
Claudio Capelli Cherub (2006)
Designed by Claudio Capelli. Claudio’s attention to detail results in a fascinating and precise design. The kite flys at a high angle without a Pilot. It has many interesting ‘details’ including an internal air chamber where building pressure sometimes causes the cherub to burp and fart realistically and at such volume that they can be heard far below on the ground.

 

________________
Heinz Mack Telemack (1969)
In 1959 Mack drafted the so called “Sahara-Project”, which he started realizing in the African desert from 1962/63 on. Several times, he installed an “artificial garden” in the desert, consisting of sand- and wing-reliefs, cubes, mirrors, sails, banners and monumental light-stelae. This experimental practice with the force of light is shown in the highly respected and awarded film “Tele-Mack”, which was made in 1969.

 

_______________
Kris Martin KM_TYFFSH (2009)
Belgian artist Kris Martin has installed a hot air balloon in the gallery, entirely dissolving the architecture. As if ready for launching, the balloon and basket are lying on the floor. In the main space ventilators blow up the balloon until the subtly flittering fabric touches the walls. A surreal effect takes place as the visitors walk into the room through the balloon’s opening, as if entering a whale’s stomach.

 

_______________
Roman Signer Zwei Ventilatoren (1998)
In this piece Signer shows, at first, a single metal fan which is unplugged but still running. Then another fan appears next to it facing the first, both running. We see rhythm in the movement of the fan blades beneath the metal cages in addition to the repetition of the fans. The piece is also balanced by the two fans being equally spaced within the small room with white walls. You could also argue that the piece shows economy by the minimalist set.

 

_______________
James Lomax Untitled [Me and My Friend] (2011)
Latex and computer- controlled pumps. Two latex casts of the artist’s body. The perpetually distorted figures inflate and deflate at random intervals, giving them an unpredictable life and death cycle. Created as a tribute to a friend who passed away in tragic circumstances.

 

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Arcangelo Sassolino Piccolo animiamo (2011)
Piccolo animiamo is presented as a large rectangular box composed of stainless steel plates welded together, a monolith that is only apparently static. The initial state of quietness of the forms is called into question by a cyclic movement of blowing intake and sucking subtraction of pressurized air, which creates an evident alteration of the volume of the metal structure, until reaching the maximum tension, which manifests itself with a strong sound impact, a sort of artificially induced thunder.

 

_______________
Fabian Bürgy Smoke (2013)
Funnels of black smoke coming out of a hole.

 

________________
Dorette Sturm Breathing Cloud (2012)
“The Breathing Cloud” is a monumental floating organism. The work transforms a space by its motion, light, and rhythmic breathing. The technology is designed so that the strong LED modules and the mechanism support the pervasive breathing. It gets physically bigger and smaller and embraces with its bright light space.

 

________________
Claire Ashley peepdyedcrevicehotpinkridge (2013)
Ashley spray-paints the sewn plastic material both when deflated and inflated. By spraying across the forms and folds, she creates synthetic folds and wrinkles, as well as spray-painted zigzags, color gradations, and geometric shapes that create visual complexity and allow painted compositions to exist. When one focuses on the paint, the form flattens into an odd-shaped painted surface or silhouette, which then transforms with each step around the object. When one focuses on the forms, the paint becomes part of their skin, which includes patches, sewn seams, and attached electric fans that keep these things alive.

 

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Michael Snow Solar Breath (2002)
Solar Breath consists of a sixty-two minute shot of the window of Snow’s cabin in Northern Canada. As the curtain gently flaps with the breeze and we periodically glimpse the view outside, nature and chance choose the precise nature of the composition at any given moment.

 

_______________
Maskull Lasserre Long Range Clarinet (2019)
Clarinet, scope, bipod, laser sight, sling, case, potential sound/action

 

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John Gerrard Surrender (Flag) (2023)
a continuous simulation made using real-time computer graphics software

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! LA actually can get kind of ghosty in places because almost everyone drives cars everywhere so if you pretend the cars aren’t there, the sidewalks can be strangely empty. Paris during Covid was so extremely eerie and beautiful. It got so empty that you could hear the footsteps of a person walking a block away from you. Right. Uday, If you see this, Dominick recommends two hustler novels: “Rent Boy” by Gary Indiana and “Shuck” by Daniel Allen Cox. Thanks for that! Love as Shakespeare is oddly easy to picture. Huh. And us being his dumb little queers isn’t much of a stretch either, haha. Love making everyone in Vienna cosplay as wind chimes, G. ** adrian, Bonjour, adrian! I’m relatively alright. Welcome back from the school/hard work jaunt. Enjoy. January did finally shuffle off this mortal coil, yes. And now what? Thanks for choosing here over the lecture. That’s much appreciated. Yes, see you soon, I hope. ** _Black_Acrylic, Me neither, although, I think I did reach states of delusional all-knowingness here and there. ** Misanthrope, Sun is a hot commodity these days. Thumb drives, ah. I could sort of vaguely see the TC thing in that slave’s face too. ** Steve Erickson, Yes, I think that would do MethSlut a world of good. Friday … tomorrow! The name Astrit Ismaili doesn’t ring a bell, but, naturally, I will go see who this figure is, thank you. And will await your assessment as well. ** Bill, Hi, Bill. You’d think so, but since I’m guessing slaveNo.8 is totally fiction, that might explain it. Although I guess there could still be a biopic. I remember Radian, yes. I liked them. I had no idea they were still extant. I’ll hit that link, many thanks. Enjoy the Terayama imbibing. I should do the same really. I’ve been dipping into the wacked oeuvre of Jose Mojica Marins aka ‘Coffin Joe’, if you know his stuff, because I’m doing a Day on him. He’s no Terayama, but his stuff is amusing. ** Guy, Hi, Guy. Yes, I was pleased when I trawled through the post looking for a pull quote title and noticed that post saver. According to that commenter though, when the mask came off, the TC-likeness did too. But that’s just one master’s opinion. Cool about the slaves, and, yes, the best ones so often live in another country. There’s always relocation? Him to you, I mean. ** Frank Jaffe, HI, Frank! How cool to see you, maestro! Our film is getting finished at last. We plan to bring it to LA to show cast and crew and friends. I’ll let you know if you want to come see it. We’re really happy with it. Enjoy NYC and the screening and meeting Mandico. I’m surprised he hasn’t been over here before. Cool. Envy on you seeing the zine show. Uh, hm, I think I’m behind on NYC possibilities. I haven’t been there in so, so long, it’s scary. Have a great trip, pal! ** Justin, Hi. Yes, the punch line (advertent or in-) is the keeper there. Some of these slave guys are quite good writers. Or at least my editing help they are. The ventriloquist thing could be cool, yeah, I think so. Any highlights pop up in your field of vision or hearing or sense of touch today? ** Darby 🦕, I think Chalamet fetishists are so hungry they’ll take any resemblance they can get. My memory is that Maus was quite reserved and pleasant, and I can’t remember much else about our short convo. Well, I don’t think a novel needs to stick one thing. At all. But, you know, they call me an experimentalist, so I’m not the normal judge of such things. I personally wouldn’t worry about that stupid supposed rule. Everything you’re describing sounds exciting. I’m all about editing. I let my novels be as shitty or out of control as they want to be until I start editing them. Anyway, you say you may have gotten your answer just by addressing the question, and that’s the best. Usually the writer has the answer, and the only problem is when they won’t blab about it ‘cos that’s when clarity comes magically often. Enjoying setting up and meeting your goals. I’m here if you need me. ** Okay. Let the wind take you away or blow you away or whatever the wind decides to do to you today. See you tomorrow.