Stating here to you all that I have an idea, which could be sort of an action if I can knit it together with other people, orgs, visual results. I want to create a bike tour that makes stops at all of the former landfill sites of the 5 boroughs of new york city. First on the list is Fresh Kill, and perhaps they would even have some grant money to pass to me if I flesh out the idea more. What would happen at the stops? What i would want to do is perhaps different from what i would expect a grant allocator would want to hear. I can see myself quietly writing and drawing at each site, perhaps setting up a booth and taking interviews of visitors - what brings you here? how do you connect with this site? is it a park? what should we as a community do about landfills that have been capped? what do you see when you imagine what is under us? what should we do now...? it could be a great venue for both reflecting the layered urban past underneath us and radically projecting into a future we unfortunately need to build rather quickly.
a perfect pile of things, on first glance useful objects, on close inspection all a little wrong, no longer appealing. they look stuck together like someone learning how to 3d model but not used to the move tool. down the street under the bqe a man is hammering something. he's not hammering it actually, he's hammering it apart, absolutely whaling on an air conditioner using the whole length of his musculature. theres a yellow fabric cart next to him, the ones that fit in freight elevators. it's half filled with scrap of a similar color to the AC. across the street theres a construction shop and USED TOOL PURCHASER. it's trash day on russell st, and someones put out a selection of dog harnesses (furry), in front of an upended sofa with its guts exposed.
I was just closing some tabs and wanted to jot down what I was closing, for posterity and future reference. this is what was rattling around last week, and what's edging into this week. what of these thigs will keep on strong into Next week? hard to say it's a tight race and not every horse survives the derby!
---------------------------------------->
today i've spent most of the afternoon downloading and sorting a small collection of photos and screenshots and instagram saved posts, trying to imagine where the crossovers and clusters of topic/imagery/intent will sit. it's like i know what i'm into right now, but what does what i'm into look like and how predictable are my predelictions (sp?). I asked emmett about how to make a data map of tagged images, but I'll start by just making my own in some website. maybe kinopio?
the folder titles so far are: bug, caterpiller, creature, death, imperial texture, lanternfly, love on the plinth, place space industry, print and book, sex, surface and airbrush, texture color plant, vessel and clay, writing texture. Needs some honing for sure.
something keeps pulling me back to the idea of recycling bag portraits, it has to happen soon. they are plump and modern and archaic and industrial and organic and shameful, our refuse organized but in full view, very organized chaos wishful thinking, compartmentalizing, willful obliviousness in the effort to carry on. what if we had no "trash" but had to spend our entire afternoons figuring out how to repurpose and discretely place the morning's trash? good project too. lush colors and transparency, i think pretty large, a little looser, i think all airbrush on paper (at first anyway)
saw the xiadie "cut utopia" show at drawing center. enveloping gorgeous colorful urgent-feeling cutouts of queer utopia, public floral sex scenes and domestic lovers. got bowled over by the small one in which they are changing a lightbulb together. and the very very large one with choruses of erect queers and explosive fantasy lovers taking root into the ground and sucking eachother off.
