no strings attached
__________
I love everything Christina does. So honored to have been at PSU with her.
Andy Paiko at the Wexler Gallery in Philadelphia.
The photos are great, but they’re even better in person.
http://www.wexlergallery.com/artists/glass/contemporary/Paiko_Andy/index.php
no strings attached
__________
I love everything Christina does. So honored to have been at PSU with her.
"Laurie Penny’s Saudade There are more of us than you think, kicking off our high-heeled shoes to run and being told not so fast The best minds of my generation consumed by craving, furious half naked starving- Who ripped tights and dripping make up smoked alone in bedsits bare mattresses waiting for transfiguration. Who ran half dressed out of department stores yelling that we didn’t want to be good and beautiful Who glowing high and hopeful were the last to leave the gig our skin crackling with lust and sweat and pure music Who wrote poetry on each other’s arms and cared more about fucking than being fuckable Who worked until our backs stiffened and our limbs sang with the memory of misbehaviour that was what it was to be a woman Who dared to dance until dawn and were drugged and raped by men in clean T-shirts and woke up scared and sore to be told it was our fault Who swallowed bosses’ patronizing side-eyes stole away from violent broken boys in the middle of the night and vowed never again to try to fix the world one man at a time Who slammed down the tray of drinks and tore off our aprons and aching smiles and went scowling out into the streets looking for change Who stripped in dark rooms for strangers’ anodyne dollars because we wanted education and were told we were traitors Who sat faces upturned to the glow of the network searching searching for strangers who would call us pretty Who bared our breasts to hidden cameras and fought and fought and fought to be human Who waited in grim hallways with synth-pop crackling over the speaker system for the doctor to call us clutching fistfuls of pamphlets calling us sluts whores murderers Who crossed continents alone with knapsacks full of books bare limbs clear-eyed vision running running from the homes that held our mothers down Who filled notebooks with gibberish philosophy and scraps of stories and cameras to prove we were there keeping our novels and the name of out children close to our hearts Who were told all our lives that we were too loud too tisky too fat too ugly too scruffy too selfish too much too and refused to take up less space refused to be still refused refused refused to be tame Who would never be still. Who would never shut up. Who were punished for it and spat and snarled and they shook the bars of our cages until they snapped and they called us wild and crazy and we laughed with mouths open hearts open hands open and would never not ever be tame. Sara, I’m with you in hospital, in the narroe rooms where you have put off your veil to count your ribs through your T-shirt, short hair and secrets and quiet defiance crying together that we don’t know how to be perfect- Lara, I’m with you in mandatory art therapy, where we draw pictures of weeping cocks and are told we are not making progress- Lila, I’m with you in a north London bathdroom, watchhing unreal maggots crawl in the cuts in your arms and listening to your girlfriend drunk and raging through the wall- Andy, I’m with you in Bethnal Green where you love ambitious angry women with heart brain pen fingers tongue and you have a line from Nietzche tattooed over your cunt- Adele, I’m with you in the student occupation, with your lipstick and cloche hat and teenage lisp drawling that there’s not enough fucking in this revolution and we must take action- Kay, I’m with you on the night bus, half drunk and high dragging bright-eyed boys home to our bed, where we watch them worn out sleeping and whisper that we will never be married- Katie, I’m with you in Zuccotti Park, where a broken heart is less important than a broken laptop is less important than a broken future and we watch the cops beating kids bloody on the pavement for daring to ask for more- Tara, I’m with you in Islington where you have thrown all your pretty dresses out of the window and flushed your medication so you can write and write- Alex, I’m with you and a bottle of Scotch at two in the morning when you tell me that no man will make us live for ever and we must seduce the city the country the world- We are always hungry. There are more of us than you think."
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Laurie Penny’s Saudade, from Fifty Shades of Feminism (via mollycrabapple)
So good.
(via neil-gaiman)
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I’m sure all of the Beats would be proud.
(via amandapalmer)
Today’s majestic as fuck photo comes from: New Zealand.Home to middle earth, and some beautiful fjords. A place I also hope to visit some day.
Great photo of the glow-worm cave. Our caving club’s hut is just up the road from here.
I’m lucky enough to have been to this cave - it’s amazing. NZ glowworms are really bright.
Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth. Currently at 43. Very cool - I mean interesting.
- Allow events to change you.
You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.- Forget about good.
Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.- Process is more important than outcome.
When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.- Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child).
Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.- Go deep.
The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.- Capture accidents.
The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.- Study.
A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.- Drift.
Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.- Begin anywhere.
John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.- Everyone is a leader.
Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.- Harvest ideas.
Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.- Keep moving.
The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.- Slow down.
Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.- Don’t be cool.
Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.- Ask stupid questions.
Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.- Collaborate.
The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.- ____________________.
Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.- Stay up late.
Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world.- Work the metaphor.
Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.- Be careful to take risks.
Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.- Repeat yourself.
If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.- Make your own tools.
Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.- Stand on someone’s shoulders.
You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.- Avoid software.
The problem with software is that everyone has it.- Don’t clean your desk.
You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.- Don’t enter awards competitions.
Just don’t. It’s not good for you.- Read only left-hand pages.
Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our “noodle.”- Make new words.
Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.- Think with your mind.
Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.- Organization = Liberty.
Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between “creatives” and “suits” is what Leonard Cohen calls a ‘charming artifact of the past.’- Don’t borrow money.
Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.- Listen carefully.
Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.- Take field trips.
The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.- Make mistakes faster.
This isn’t my idea — I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.- Imitate.
Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.- Scat.
When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else … but not words.- Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.
- Explore the other edge.
Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.- Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms.
Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces — what Dr. Seuss calls “the waiting place.” Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference — the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.- Avoid fields.
Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.- Laugh.
People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I’ve become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.- Remember.
Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.- Power to the people.
Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free.
(Source: o-oo-ooo-oo-o, via confessionsofamichaelstipe)
