Never Out of Ideas

Why is it so difficult to come to terms with my lack of artistic ambition? Or, a better question: why is it difficult to make myself do things?

Have I become the master procrastinator?

I have several new projects in the works. With any luck, this will drag me away, kicking and screaming, from my personal obsessions, relationships, and other detritus.

Maybe.

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Enrique Chagoya

(St. Anthony Village, 2008)

Very few artist's lectures have made me want to make new work.  The presentation that Enrique Chagoya gave tonight at the Regis Center for Art at the University of Minnesota (go gophers) was just one such occasion.  Chagoya showed us a chronological survey of his drawings, prints, and books that utilize appropriation as a means of critical analysis of American culture.

I'm reminded of Julian Stallabrass' book, Art Incorporated, in which contemporary art's parallels with mass consumer culture are analyzed and refuted.  Ultimately, Stallabrass notes that one way art is able to maintain its autonomy from pure consumer culture is through self-reference or visual intertextuality.  

I've always had a gooey sometimes nauseous feeling about art that references other art.  By doing so, I feel that artists lose agency and their ability to actually critique... reality.  (social, psychological, personal, aesthetic... whatever).  

Chagoya's work has made me completely change my opinion.  Instead of a feelings of masturbatory superfluousness, his work draws a biting critique of visual culture... by using visual culture.  I loved the way he described one of his pieces as "a thesis/antithesis -- points where humanity crashes against itself." 

His work embodies the belief that history is written from an ideological standpoint. Consequently, it is the task of the artist to try to intervene and understand what might have happened... if say... the Aztecs had colonized Europe or if Modernism's fetishistic obsession of the "primitive" is laid out to be what it really is: a cannibalistic fascination with consuming/controlling/destroying culture. 

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This Blog's Namesake

I have completely neglected to explain how this blog was named.

When I first moved to Minneapolis, I knew absolutely no one. Not a soul. I was befriended by two great artists: Dave Stordahl and Rosie Kimball. Together they began our first collaborative project.

Each morning they would email me a distinctly different audio file saying good morning. Even though it may be a common,trite expression, when layer after layer of audio is blended together a meditative harmony forms.

Knowing that Dave and Rosie were out there - two welcoming forces of ephemerality and also stability got me through my first year of grad school.

I'm grateful.

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Fleeting

(Untitled–Bushwick, 2008, 16 X 20", C-Print)

Every morning I take the Business Casual Bus (#24). This morning, while I was surrounded by the hordes of Target employees on their way to the hive, I started to think about art production. While gazing out the window I noticed that the poorly thought out construction work on 9th AVE was kicking up dust - this dust was in turn being highlighted by a single beam of light - bouncing off the IDS building.

It was perfect. Something I could never make or document - only experience.

As my hiatus from the world of perpetual art production for the sake of personal glory, esteem, and attention deepens, I'm realizing that perhaps the best work is non-work. Maybe, after all is said and done the moments of perfect atmosphere/diffused meaning/ambivalent presence can be more meaningful than any object, image, text, or sound.

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Making Do

(Fermin, Post-Champagne, Pre-Coffee)

I'm back from New York (where I was visiting my friend Andrea and her rather dangerously great roommates Jeff and Paul). When the $100 + bottles of champagne start mixing with the sangria, I should know that I'm in trouble. There may have been dancing involved. Just keep that in mind.

The purpose of the trip was to figure out if I can actually move to NYC this year. Or to be more accurate, to figure out if I can actually make a life work in America's largest (and maybe only true) city.

The answer is a sad no.

I lack the "making do" instinct. I've decided I'm such a flighty and escapist person that I cannot make things work as they are. I'd never be able to carve out my niche amongst the metropolis. Maybe its the modernist/utopian in me... but... I'm going to have to stick it out in Minneapolis, MN... loving my new shoes, haircut, and single life.

Perhaps my liver will recover sometime this week?

Andrew


(Squid on a Stick, Manhattan Bridge)


















(Looking West, 86th Floor)

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Utopia

Two things:

1.  I'm writing this from the inside of my crumbling modernist apartment building.  Perfectly rectangular.  Relatively soulless.  And very tough to grow plants in.  But still, somehow I remain fond of the place and continue to live here.  I think on some level, its modernism's connection to the creation of all-encompassing utopias that keeps me here in Longfellow.  

This building, in its decaying international style glory, surrounds me in an envelope of nostalgia for.... modernism.  I never thought I'd say that - but - I miss those periods of history that were shaped by some sense of moving into a new direction.  However, alienating and failure bound that direction may have been.  

It was the search for Utopia.  Or someplace very much like it.

2.  Next week I am kicking off my first new series of images by making a pilgrimage to a literal utopia:  the city of Utopia, Queens, New York. 

A city with this namesake can only be the perfect place for me to travel.  

After all:

Any map without Utopia on it isn't worth looking at. 

-Yoko Ono

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Pacts or "Le Pacte des loups"

(Right hand raised, swearing on the hard copy)

The Wawina Pact

October 12, 2008

12:-- PM CST

Written and signed with a sworn oath with one Patty Healy-McMeans in a very posh shack in Wawina, MN.

The City of Wawina, MN is not a city.  It is a strip of houses clustered around a heavily worn highway somewhere northwest of Minneapolis.  The only indication that Wawina, MN exists is the corrugated metal shed with the words "TOWN HALL" emblazoned on it.  What a perfect place to figure out the new parameters of my life.  

As I'm writing this I keep thinking back to the various phases in history which have been shaped by various pacts, accords, and treaties... all beginning with a certain city in their title.  The Treaty of Versailles.  The Yalta Conference.  On and on. Where those pacts charted out the courses of millions of lives - from very real places (Yalta is beautiful), Wawina is no where and the pact bearing it's name charts only the furthering of my own endeavors.  

Article One:

Learn to Speak French.  Easy.

Article Two:

Become physically active.  No-one loves a Jabba-the-Hut that isn't Jabba-the-Hut.

Article Three:

Reinvigorate your practice as an artist.  However, this must be done without a focus on production.  Instead, research, reading, writing, looking at other work that has been floating on the periphery of my vision.  That's the ticket.

Article Four:

Purchase/Adopt a companion animal.  Kitten.  Free Kitten.

Article Five:

Rediscover the Twin Cities by pretending you don't live here.  Act like a tourist. Never go to the same bar twice in a week.

Article Eight:

(previous articles not suitable for web presenation)

Stop sleeping with people you don't really know.  Qualification: three date minimum replaces three drink minimum.  

I Andrew M. Schroeder here by swear to uphold the preceding articles.

October 12, 2008

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Compulsion and Distraction

I am a man of very simple tastes, few means, and many many compulsions.  Why does this matter?  Ok - I've become addicted to tracking various components of my life - mainly - my acts of consumption.  Through the website mint.com I have developed an obsessive love affair with the pie chart that shows me all my spending.  Its more of a love-hate relationship: as I'm embarrassed to report I spent $600 on sushi in one month.  And an additional $200 on booze.  

That's a lot of sake and raw fish.

Speaking of raw fish, sake and other things I put in my mouth (shut up Colleen), I briefly flirted with another life-tracking website: Fitday. Fit day is one of those well-meaning websites for people that can actually track what the eat/drink and then make healthier choices.  NOT ME.  Not me at all.  All that Fitday has told me is that roughly 45% to 55% of my daily caloric intake comes from vodka, gin, and vermouth.  As if I didn't already know.

Why am I rambling on about this you ask?

Simply because I am trying to focus myself on the compulsions in my life that actually matter.  Why isn't there a good website that makes me all OCD about photography?  Or printmaking?  

Why is it that I can never really focus on the thing that my time is supposed to be about?

Perhaps because I am an American with all of the term's Baudrillardian implications. As Eddie Izzard points out, "It's 10% what you say and 90% how you look while your saying it." 

Now, if you'll excuse me.  I need to marvel at that pretty, shiny, and colorful pie chart which tells me I spend way too much money on books, booze, and other "entertainment".  The things in an average American life that really matter.

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Introduction

The best way to begin this blog is by pointing out that I, Andrew Michael Schroeder, do not enjoy blogs.  Perhaps it is my interest in Foucault and Bentham's Panopticon that makes me distrust the blog format.  (Do I really need to mirror my existence with a digital record?) Or maybe I'm just way to old to actually do this well.  But, for all intensive purposes, I have never been interested in perpetually displaying my thoughts/ideas/actions in a digital format – until early this morning when I realized that I have lost one of my sketchbooks.

I am an analog kind of guy.  Although I admire the digital existence (Hey! Save a tree), The physical nuances of a good piece of paper and some graphite sticks known as pencils will never be matched by the blogosphere.  

However, that lost sketchbook is grating on me.  And that is why I am here, typing in 12 pt Courier/Courier New.  I need an open format that allows me to share my ideas and not freak out when I accidentally leave a Moleskine on the #24 Metro-Transit bus.

With this blog I hope to actually present my viewpoints on various topics of interest: specifically, conceptual approaches to art, architecture, urbanism, and also the constructions of the dialog of space and place which seem to shape my life so exquisitely.  

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