January 2004 105 posts, 1375 lines
The Onion comes to the Tribune, Jan 8 "Nation" section.. on the same page:
'Noah's flood created Grand Canyon?'
'Dirty Bombs were feared over holidays'
I must have missed something.
Hey Marc-
I'm glad to see some discussion of the show come up. I saw it at the Whitney last year and felt the same way, yet I also wondered if I had the grounds to feel as confident in the show as I do. I felt that for the first time this show was able to show work by "untrained artists" in a way that was respectful and contextualized instead of colonial or "othering." (See almost every curatorial effort at presenting "outsider art.")
Sounds like you felt the same way. Yet I doubt myself a bit. How do you think the curators were able to present these works in an art context without painting the women of Gee's Bend as genius-naifs or the quilts as something other than they are?
There are plenty who saw this show as ethically questionable, but I haven't heard any convincing arguments yet.
Kevin Hamilton UIUC
Hey Kevin & OGs,
I went to see this show with zero knowledge of the quilting tradition in Gee's Bend, and almost no knowledge of what kind of critical dialogue might be happening around the show. I had only heard that the quilts were terrific and had seen a few reproductions which seemed to confirm that.
One question that ran through my head as I saw the show was: How has this exhibit changed their lives in Gee's Bend? Without having read the articles, I at least have a dull awareness that there has been so much media attention focused on this work that the exhibition must be having some kind of consequences for those people. The show is traveling to six more cities after Milwaukee.
Part of me was somewhat glad that the region they are in seems to be quite remote and hard to get to which makes me hope those artists will be spared the irritation of bus loads of Folk-art loving tourists showing up on their door-steps harassing them and hoping to get bargain prices on quilts. But maybe they want that? Maybe it would improve the quality of their lives? It's hard to know. Do they like being isolated? I have not read the catalog but I am always curious to hear how shows like this happen - how was it organized? How much sensitivity was shown to the people whose art and lives will be affected by the success of this exhibit? How much might their lives be irrevocably disrupted? What about the Quilts that were for sale in the shop? I believe the sign posted noted that the artists would get 60% of the money from those sales. Was there a middleman? Who is representing these people and coordinating these exhibitions? Is it entirely out of their hands, and is that good for them or bad? Are they savvy about dealing with these museums? Does someone help them with it?
I watched most of the video that was produced for the show and it was deeply refreshing hearing the artists talking about their work. I don't recall that they had any of the usual academic 'experts' dragged in for critical reinforcement either. I can't remember. There were scenes of daily life in Gee's Bend that were effective at providing a geographic sense of things. It was helpful to see the quilts hanging on wooden fences in the video - to be reminded that the walls in these people's homes are not 20 feet high and perfectly white.
One criticism I always have - which is not so much a criticism of the show - is, why haven't these works been incorporated more creatively into displays of museum permanent collections? Why does work like this have to get isolated in the textiles department, or ghettoized in a separate Folk Art department. There is no reason why you can't put these quilts next to paintings. Why not show a Frank Stella painting from the 1960's next to a Gee's Bend quilt from the same time period? They're both American artists right? So many museums arrange their collections chronologically - why not mix artists like these into the chronologies and create a more complex version of the history of creative endeavors than the generic one we keep getting handed over and over again? What are people afraid of? (well, Frank Stella should be afraid)
Marc
Hi Marc and all
Thanks for your generous reply. I think this is an important discussion for more than academic reasons - there's more here than the old "What is art?" question, or even a pursuit of political correctness. I think there's good stuff here to think about in terms of how an art community might form, and how it might relate to the rest of the world. This seems to be a subject relevant to a lot of what I've seen on othergroup. I'm curious to see if anyone else is interested. Of course this discussion calls to mind Prisoner's Inventions as well, and so you've had some good experience in thinking through this stuff.
Here are a few thoughts in response-
I would add to your list of good questions - what are people sleeping under now in Gee's Bend, Alabama? How does it change these objects to render them no longer functional as blankets?
I too would like to see these hung in the museum next to other works like Stella, etc. I think the Whitney intended them to be seen this way, as evidenced by the inclusion of another similar artist in the 2002 Biennial. Perhaps the show is to a museum's yearly schedule of exhibitions as one quilt would be to a room full of other 20th-century artworks.
The dangers of this show tend toward two ends of a continuum - one the one end, the work might be too decontextualized, seen as separate from its context. On the other end, it might be TOO contextualized, kept so pure as to be seen only on its own terms. Either way would do a great injustice to the makers. For example:
THE DANGER OF DECONTEXTUALIZATION If a gee's bend quilt was hung in a room with works by ellsworth kelly, sean scully, and stella, we would be asked to see the quilt as solely a compositional innovation, equivalent in value to the other works due to solely formal properties. This would be to rob the quilt of most of its intended properties. As if John Cage recorded the sounds of carpenters framing a new hospital and played it as a masterpiece of musical composition. Sure, it might be interesting to listen to, but such interest has more to do with the listener than the maker.
THE DANGER OF TOO MUCH CONTEXTUALIZATION If at the Gee's Bend show we walked through a re-creation of a Gee's Bend home to view the quilts only on actual beds, we would be asked to see these things as beautiful and wholly other, bound to a world worth admiring but not including. Fetishization. (I think Temp Svc's recreated jail cell avoided this through not claiming to be the sole site of encountering the inventions.)
I think Rinder's show ends up evading these two perils, and I can't really think of another time this has happened! (Except maybe Prisoners Inventions?) As I think out loud here with you, here's how I think they did it:
One thing I thought about when seeing the show was that part of what made it successful was the timing, the context of what else is going on the artworld(s) right now. I'll explain:
We've been fairly well educated by art institutions by now to regard the objects on display as the foliage of a plant, a plant whose roots are materially continuous with what we see, if invisible. In the worst cases, museums try to give us a shorthand for learning about the roots through cheesy wall-text. In the best cases, we learn about the roots through other means - word of mouth, curatorial choice, our own research.
When I walked into the Gee's Bend show it was a little like walking into a room of Forcefield's costumes or maybe even Royal Art Lodge stuff - I saw something that is physically available, but which requires more information to fully know it. (The comparisons should probably end there.) In this case, the quilts themselves taught me what I needed to know. As a group they reveal a critical community, a group of artists who worked together on developing a particular material language, and I can be a witness to the evolution of this language through different economic, social, and physical conditions. The work contains context already, embedded materially, as we see the fabrics change through time (i.e. the "corduroy decade"), and reflect their use in the world (i.e. Worn spots from use, or the incorporation of old work clothes.)
Though I can only guess that there are quilts that the curator or makers looked at and rejected from the show, the show suggests a kind of isolated critical dialogue, manifest through making. Stylistic variations on each other's work and on outside traditions testify to this. They decide what is good, better, and work on it.
I've never seen this in any representation of "outsider art." Usually it's all thrown up as homogenous - we see years and years of undifferentiated work by Darger or Traylor, or we see a whole group of individual works that don't relate to each other physically (Art Brut). For that matter, I've rarely seen it in any show.
To sum up: 1 - the quilt show presents a community of artists engaged in physical exploration of their world, reflecting consideration of economic, physiological, social conditions and site. 2 - the show reveals this community as dynamic, not static 3 - the bulk of all this information is provided in the work and its assemblage into a show, not from extra texts or artifacts.
I'm filtering my thoughts here through a book that is sitting very heavy in my head, a little piece from Chicago's own newish press, the Prickly Paradigm, by Baffler contributor Chris Lehmann. In REVOLT OF THE MASSCULT, Lehmann points out how often we see unqualified celebration of all cultural artifacts and taste choices as inherently and equally worthy, in a world devoid of criticism. Since the collapse of high/low culture, only market success can make any artifact rise above the rest as representative or worth keeping around. Though I know I'm no fan of Hi/Low categories, I really learned from Lehmann some of the political implications of forgoing distinctions of value based on taste. I see Gee's Bend as a place where dialogue and distinctions about good and bad result in material complexity, beauty and richness.
Don't get me wrong, I'll never argue for absolute standards of taste, of good and bad in art, but I'm seeing more and more where we're responsible for keeping such terms around in the interest of sustaining lively communities. I'd rather contest value than dismiss it as a concept, which is also why I relish an opportunity to go on here awhile about this show. To accept it as "all good" and be done with it is death.
Where does this happen? When I go to galleries or museums only rarely does discussion or debate last longer than the bar at the end of the day, and even there only for the first drink or so. Othergroup seems to support these kinds of discussions, and I say let's keep it going!
Kevin
On 1/13/04 10:07 AM, "Marc Fischer"
Thanks Kevin,
That might be the longest and most thorough post on othergroup in years. I
doubt that I'll be able to respond to all of it or even much of it.
Some more thoughts. The question you bring up about how the quilts might have
been curated or what the criteria for inclusion might have been is an
interesting one. This might sound cynical but one of the things those quilts do
is they effortlessly excite one's modern art knowledge - that is, knowledge
about classics of modern art which probably had absolutely zero influence on
the making of those quilts. So I can go through the show and think "That one
looks like Stuart Davis, and that that one looks like Sean Scully, and there's
Jonathan Lasker but better, and there's 1970's Frank Stella but not boring or
ugly, and there's an op art quilt but with irregularities that make it more
interesting than Vassarelli etc. etc.." And when you think of the show being at
the Whitney, you can imagine thousands of artworld hipsters thinking the same
way and from there it is easy to understand the show's success. Of course
that's an incredibly limited way of looking at those things and the quilts kick
ass on many levels, but it is one way. I know that many people have been
familiar with that work for a long time, but for newcomers like myself, it's
easy to imagine why the work might have grabbed people some audiences so
easily.
I think nearly all art is too decontextualized in the way it is presented.
Museum exhibits - particularly contemporary ones - constantly ignore the social
context that informed the making of the things. Why couldn't an Alex Katz
painting show have a video of him hanging out at garden parties in the
Hamptons, sipping cocktails with the friends and patrons who appear in his
paintings? Why do we get that good contextual video for the Gee's Bend quilts
but not for Gerhard Richter? Doesn't he have a community and a social context
that informs his work too? What does he look like when he's painting? Does the
public really know his world all that much better than they know the world of
the people at Gee's Bend? Why don't we get to see some nice video showing what
the role of the assistants is in the making of all these solo shows? Why don't
we get to watch their gallerists at work - showing how they pitch the art to
the people who buy it? I find it incredibly arrogant how much knowledge some
artists seem to expect people to bring to some incredibly hermetic bodies of
work.
There are some exceptions. There's a Leon Golub video that I've seen
accompanying his exhibits a couple times that is very detailed and does a great
job of demystifying things. It includes the comments of visitors at his shows,
shows him interacting with his assistants and shows their role in how his
paintings get made. It shows him making a painting from start to finish, shows
him talking with his wife who also talks about her own work, includes
documentary scenes from the political events he paints via news footage, shows
where he lives, shows people challenging him on his politics and on the kind of
decisions he makes in what he does with his work, etc. etc. It's one of the
best documentaries on an artist I've seen and it really deepens ones
understanding of the guy no matter what you might think of the work. I don't
think every exhibition needs to have a video (there are certainly plenty of
videos I never watch), but many exhibits barely even try, or don't even seem to
take into account what different kinds of information might make the work a
richer experience. The Barnett Newman retrospective in Philly a few years ago
was a stunningly elegant and minimal show, but at the very end they had a
wonderful film of Newman talking. Did it help anyone? I don't know, but it
provided a great counterpoint to the work on view. There was a show of Roy
Lichtenstein's late work at the MCA a few years back that included lots of the
original clippings he took from phone books and from comics - it was extremely
helpful toward understanding where his visual language came from. It made me
give more thought to paintings I normally don't really care about.
Trying to figure out how much context (and what kind of context) is the right
amount to provide is a difficult balance to stike. I know some people think
that Temporary Services provides way too much context when we organize things.
We almost always put the info in a booklet rather than on the wall and you can
read it or not read it. You can take the booklet home and read it later if you
want. We'd rather err on the side of providing too much information instead of
waiting for people to guess and then having them be wildly wrong in their
assumptions. In Prisoners' Inventions, Angelo - who authored the book and made
the drawings - provided more of a social context for each invention drawing
than we had ever asked for or suggested. He made the choices about what he
thought people needed to know in order to understand the inventions and I think
he did a terrific job - particularly for someone who doesn't normally enjoy
much of an audience for his art.
That's all I can do at the moment. More later? Someone else?
Marc
someone else? how about me,
Kevin and Marc, I have really enjoyed reading your musings on the Gee's
Bend show and the context of other art exhibitions and products. I
especially applaud Marc's insight about the difference between the
video documentation of the Gee's Bend quilters in comparison to what is
provided for more conventional artists. I think you have hit a
structural nail on the head, and address an issue that is always
present (for me at least), that being what goes into that which our
society places great monitory and cultural value upon.
The Gee's Bend quilts are extraordinary, quite beautiful, and very
romantic and sentimental due in no small part to their determined
practicality and their transformation of otherwise unremarkable
materials. They are also not unlike other quilts and crafts that are
and have been produced for generations by groups and individuals around
the world. The context of their display at the Whitney and other major
art museums singles them out, but we should not assume that they are
unique. In fact, and this is why I am energized by your discussion, we
should use them as a launch pad to identify other examples of similar
passion and artistry, and hold all these examples in comparison with
the works of "artists" who have opted to play the high stakes/ high
culture game.
Who wins in this game? What are the stakes? Who is the audience, who
is the user?
I would love to see more documentation of the artists at work. A
Scully documentary, Katz, Lichtenstein, Matthew Barney, Louise
Bourgeois, Tony Fitzpatrick, any contemporary artist would be well
served with a documentary (not just an interview) on their process and
context. So many artists work in a day-to-day context that is either
ignored or fetishized into meaninglessness in most
gallery/museum/publication settings. This weakens both their practice
and how their work is viewed and understood.
Most artwork that I return to over time has some element of the
everyday, recognizable, that hooks me in and allows me to wander. If
it is not inherent in the object (often the case especially with
minimal works) then it is in the context I am provided with. Instead
of being cryptic and willfully obtuse, how refreshing to be expansive
and open about materials, desires, process, audience and use. I found
this in Gee's Bend, in Prisoner's Inventions, in Golub, in Sarah Sze,
in... oh it is late.
someone else?
Barbara K.
On Wednesday, January 14, 2004, at 06:16 PM, Marc Fischer wrote:
One other point about the Gee's Bend show was the way that individual
authorship and biography was greatly downplayed in order to shine a light
on a larger whole. Yes, you could find out who made what, but essentially
this quilting community was the star of this show - not any one
individual. That was an unusual thing to see. In the video you could see
one woman working on a quilt while another helped with the lighter more
structural stitching that criss-crossed over her more dominant patterns -
a nice moment showing how these people seem to help each other in the
making of the work. My sense of this community is that it is utterly
lacking in the pointless competition that infects so much of the art
world. Very refreshing.
Marc
Hey Marc and Barbara
Thanks for your replies! This is great. There are of course a lot of good
directions to go here in this discussion, but I'm gonna continue on the
context thing.
From both of your words about the helpfulness of videos and other similar
contextual documents, I begin to think more specifically about this question
of "the right kind" of contextualization. Examples are a great way to talk
about this, and I appreciate Marc's very much. It's helpful to me to think
about examples in which contextualization has been unhelpful. Some examples:
CULT OF PERSONALITY (biography)
The arrival of the John Currin show in NYC after its stint at the MCA has
been accompanied by a great deal of contextualization in the "personality
press." For example, the New Yorker provided us the contextualization of an
arty b/w photograph of Currin holding up his naked baby boy, who appears to
be shockingly well-endowed. Similarly, the Matthew Barney show brought us
articles in the New Yorker and elsewhere about Barney's days as a football
player, his life at Yale. The Times' Michael Kimmelman visited here at UIUC
last year and gave a whole lecture of anecdotes about the little quirks he
noticed in artists as he accompanied them to museums. There is a lot of this
sort of contextualization going on, which we might generously call
biographical, and which we are as likely to find in Vogue as in Art in
America.
As in Barbara's email, we should ask of this sort of contextualization "Whom
does it serve?" "How does it serve our experience of the work?" I find this
kind of contextualization less helpful.
DANGLING THE SECRET KEYS (hermeneutics)
Of the same shows (Barney or Currin) we might find a different kind of
contextualization in the pages of Artforum, museum catalogs, or wall texts.
These venues perhaps consider biography or personal anecdote too unscholarly
or undignified, and so instead rely on a certain kind of decoding or
access-granting. For Currin, we get lists of the painters and paintings to
which his pictures refer. For Barney, we get the color and symbol codes, the
masonic keys to the universe of his films. The catalog for the big Barney
show even contains a lexicon of references and words, symbols, like a
Masonic bible.
Like biographical information, this kind of context lends itself to
word-of-mouth and a weird kind of tutelage that goes on in the social space
of the museum. Those who know that the artist used to play football or
wrestle, those who know that "the color red in this artist's work always
stands for male insecurity about height" can then guide the unknowing
through the museum, standing between the "ignorant" viewer and the work.
Again, we should ask whom this serves and how.
I think these two varieties of contextualization are unhelpful because
neither one helps us understand how the stuff we're looking at achieves
VALUE. The museum asks us to regard its wares as valuable and worth our
attention, and perhaps worth preserving. The process by which something
achieves this status is difficult to grasp - revealing this process also
puts the institution at some risk, making vulnerable that which grants it
power.
I'd have to see the show again to be sure, but I suspect that the Gee's Bend
gives us both biographical and hermeneutical information, but in service of
a bigger function - that of showing us how these objects result from a
critical community engaged in material, social, and economic exploration.
That is, how they became valued.
I'm on a limb here a little bit, partly because I don't know everything
about how these quilts were selected, but I suspect that by seeing how these
objects result from everyday utility, need, and desire, from individual
assertion and communal conversation, from material invention and rote
everyday repetition, we see how the quilts came to be AND how they came to
be valued.
I would make the same case for a lot of the contextualization around Philip
Guston's work, actually, if we're looking for an example from a more
artworldy mythology.
More later, hopefully in response to others?
kevin
On 1/15/04 1:32 AM, "Barbara Koenen"
group at othergroup.net wrote:
Hi,
First of all, these are the first long-entries in Othergroups that I have read in entirety. Taps into what I've been thinking about in regards to exhibiting, viewing, etc.
I saw the Helter Skelter show in LA back in the early 90's, where the Robert Williams collection was accompanied by a video of him talking about hot rods, and how he and a friend spent weeks creating a shorter roof and more-drastically-inclined windshield to an old beater. To my experience: good contextualization.
On the Matthew Barney point, I did appreciate the glossary to his large photobook. His strength is his research/sources and how he weaves it all together, but the philosophical insights one might gain by solving his films would (I believe) have much less to offer. In his case, I think being enigmatic was a successful marketing ploy, but only marginally beneficial to the work. And less beneficial to an artist trying the same trick with less money, marketing clout, and a Soho gallery providing the magic carpet.
As an exhibitor, I'm starting to feel that only a certain strain of works deserve to sit properly in a white cube. At other times, the white cube becomes forced distillation. I feel compelled to generate a mass of material around it - either in print or as a website with links, peripheral materials, etc. I'm starting to feel that putting and image/object in a space without umbilicals is relying on a shared agreement between myself and the viewer that the undiluted viewer-object relationship is for the best -- which is a pact shared by probably too few people in Chicago for my own liking.
Erik
Kevin,
To reply a little to both chapters of your last email, it has been enjoyable to
me in recent years to sporadically read critical assessments of Jasper Johns'
work of the past, say... 25 years, and to see how completely fed up many
writers are with all of the quasi-secret personal iconography and coding in his
later work. The implicit assumption in Johns' work that we should give a shit
about the deep meanings inherent in a quote of a blueprint of his grandfather's
house has clearly pushed a lot of people to the breaking point. His gorgeous
brushwork ain't enough anymore. I am waiting with baited breath for the kind of
critical assessment that has been happening to Johns' late work to happen with
the tedious overblown symbology in all of Matthew Barney's work. Man, am I sick
of hearing about that motherfucker. But uh, that's just a small aside...
Many of the wall labels in the John Currin show at the MCA confirmed every
clich way of proclaiming that we were in the presence of Masterful Great Art.
Articles like the one you mentioned (which I did not see) or others like one in
the New York Times magazine (which I did see) point to Currin being an active
participant in the reiteration of these boring old narratives. I stopped
reading the MCA exhibit wall labels somewhere around the point of a text about
the masterful way that Currin paints rope. I hope I didn't miss a wall text
describing the way he has started to masterfully produce snide caricatures of
homosexuals. That guy was a lot more fun when his paintings were more openly
and brazenly hateful.
So, while it would be easy to blame museums for the way they shape the context
that a lot of art gets situated in, artists like Currin seem to play a great
role in how this context is formed around their work. And it is not as though
you have to cooperate with every goofball who wants to write about your child's
penis in Vogue. You don't have to dangle that baby over the balcony when you
know a camera is gonna be present. And if the work is being outrageously
misrepresented or mis-used, the artist certainly doesn't have to be silent or
sit back and say 'them's the breaks'. If an important part of one's project
isn't getting considered, the artist can write or talk about it and try to make
sure that gets corrected. Of course if you die and your work is sold to idiots
who use it in foolish ways... that gets a little harder. It is also hard when
articles materialize that you did not participate in at all, but where you
still you find yourself being quoted. Le Monde did an article on Prisoners'
Inventions where I am quoted as saying something (I'm not sure what) and I have
no idea how on earth that article came to be. Neither did the exhibition
curator, who is also quoted. Merde on us and c'est la vie.
The hard part about attempting to have an effect on how your art gets situated
is that it requires an endless amount of effort, patience, and attention on the
artist's part. It takes a LOT of time to double check things with curators, ask
lots of questions, ask to read wall texts and catalog essays before they are
printed, etc. etc. And still mistakes happen and things slip by that are
disappointing and inaccurate and eventually you just have to let things go. I
think it's worth the effort to give every detail as much time and consideration
as possible, but it is very exhausting. Many writers make zero effort to check
out anything or call back to confirm their assumptions before going to print.
Their deadline is more important than being accurate. This can also yield
infuriating results that do a disservice to everyone. Artists seem to be taught
to be grateful that anyone gives a shit about their work at all, and I guess to
a degree that is true, but if you are going to participate in the exhibition of
your work, I'd prefer to see people being active and conscientious
participants. Details matter a lot and can reveal as much about the work as
anything else.
I'm probably running very low on useful observations by now and have to go out
of town shortly so over to Kevin, Barbara, now Erik (welcome Erik!) and anyone
else...
Marc
On of my favorite passages from one of my favorite books. Forty
years old, but it seems eerily topical tonight. - bulka
On my forty-sixth birthday they put an ape into space. They shot him
farther than they intended. They recovered him alive. He flew
through space at a fabulous speed, pressing buttons, pulling levers,
eating banana-flavored pills. He signaled with faultless regularity,
just as he had been trained to do. He did not complain of space. He
did not complain of time. He did not complain either of earth or
heaven.
He was bothered by no metaphysical problems. He felt no guilt. At
least it is not reported that he felt any guilt.
Why should an ape in space feel guilt? Space is where there is no
more weight and no more guilt. And an ape does not feel guilt even
on earth, for that matter.
Would that we on earth did not feel guilt! Perhaps if we can all get
into space we will not feel any more guilt. We will pull levers,
press buttons, and eat banana-flavored pills. No, pardon me. We are
not quite apes yet.
We will not feel guilt in space. We will not feel guilt on the moon.
Maybe we will feel just a *little* guilt on the moon, but when we get
to Mars we will feel no guilt at all.
From Mars or the moon we will blow up the world, perhaps. If we blow
up the world from the moon we may feel a little guilt. If we blow it
up from Mars we feel no guilt at all. No guilt at all. We will blow
up the world with no guilt at all. Tra la. Push the buttons, press
the levers! As soon as they get a factory on Mars for banana-colored
apes there will be no guilt at all.
I am forty-six years old. Let's be quite serious. Civilization has
deigned to grace my forty-sixth birthday with this marvelous feat,
and I should get ribald about it? Let me learn from this contented
ape. He pressed buttons. He pulled levers. They shot him too far.
Never mind. They fished him out of the Atlantic and he shook hands
with the Navy.
Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, 1965
nice one, Mike.
I was expecting that was Vonnegut. Merton, eh? Wow. I didn't realize
he was so trippy!
B
On Tuesday, January 20, 2004, at 07:58 PM, bulka wrote:
Fabulous quote, Michael.
Claire
Sorry for the non-art digressions, but I have to think of something,
huddled here against the cold. The good books are in the apartment,
while the art, besides sucking, is outside somewhere.
So, I'm reading another old book.(I went through a Merton phase 15
years ago; Conjectures is still my favorite. This famous old one,
though is new to me.) Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in
the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.
The quick and dirty version of his thesis is that Man didn't become
conscious (subjective, introspective, analytical) until the invention
of writing. Until that time, the left side of the brain, that does
stuff, was subject to hallucinations, visions, voices from the right
side, which were interpreted as revelations or instructions from God.
He points out that we still do very complicated things, like driving,
without being conscious of what we are doing, until something unusual
happens.
Somewhere near the middle of the book, where I am now, he tries to
present the inevitably violent meeting of people from different
not-yet-conscious, vision-and-voices-led cultures.
Then I look up to the TV and see an anti-violence PSA (or a movie
commercial, they sorta look the same) and I hear dubya's Axis of Evil
God Bless America spew, and I wonder if this consciousness thing has
trickled all the way down.
And I'm reminded of this other bit from Conjectures:
Is there any vestige of truth left in our declaration that we think
for ourselves? Perhaps the man who says he "thinks for himself" is
simply one who does not think at all. Because he has no fully
articulate thoughts, he thinks he has his own incommunicable ideas.
Or thinks that, if he once set his mind to it, he could have his own
thoughts. But he just has not got around to doing this. I wonder
if "democracies" are made up entirely of people who "think for
themselves" in the sense of going around with blank minds which they
imagine they could fill with their own thoughts if need be.
Well, the need has been desperately urgent, not for one year or ten,
but for fifty, sixty, seventy, a hundred years. If, when thought is
needed, nobody does any thinking, if everyone assumes that someone is
thinking, then it is clear that no one is thinking either for
himself or for anybody else. Instead of thought, there is a vast,
inhuman void full of words, formulas, slogans, declarations, echoes --
ideologies! You can always reach out and help yourself to some of
them. You don't even have to reach at all. Appropriate echoes
already rise up in your mind -- they are "yours". You realize, of
course, that they are not yet "thoughts', yet we "think" these
formulas, with which the void in our hearts is provisionally
entertained, can for the time being "take the place of thought" --
while the computers make the decisions for us.
Nothing can take the place of thought. If we do not think, we
cannot act freely. If we do not act freely, we are at the mercy of
forces which we never understand, forcers which are arbitrary,
destructive, blind, fatal to us and to our world. If we do not use
our minds to think with, we are heading for extinction, like the
dinosaur: for the massive physical strength of the dinosaur became
useless, purposeless . It led to his destruction. Our intellectual
power can likewise become useless, purposeless. When it does, it
will serve only to destroy us. It will devise instruments for our
destruction, and will inexorably proceed to use them . . . . it has
already devised them.
bulka
Mike wrote:
It seems to me there is thinking, and then there is self-awareness. All
sorts of minds think. But what was supposed to be unique about humans
(I thought) was the ability to be aware that one was thinking and to
then to assess, critique, enjoy, dismiss or whatever, one thought with
another.
I watched a Frontline documentary last night about the hunt for the
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and at the very end of it they
showed George Bush being interviewed, and being asked about the fact
that none have been found after he insisted they were the reason we had
to invade Iraq. Not only did George Bush avoid answering the question,
and just stupidly insist in the face of reason that Saddam was a bad
man and that the world is safer now that he is no longer in power, but
he honestly appeared incapable of even considering any other possible
conceptualization of the events. He certainly was capable of thinking,
but he seemed genuinely incapable of applying one thought to another so
as to reasonably assess the first one.
Dave S.
For Mr. Bulka,
My image of the ghost, including everything conventional about its
appearance as well as its blind submission to certain contingencies of time
and place, is particularly significant for me as the finite representation
of torment that may be eternal. Perhaps my life is nothing but an image of
this kind; perhaps I am doomed to retrace my steps under the illusion that I
am exploring, doomed to try and learn what I should simply recognize,
learning a mere fraction of what I have forgotten.
Breton, Andre. From Nadja.
Happy trails,
MT at dog
Gee Golly, while the hefty quotes are flying, how about the old favorites:
On Fri, 23 Jan 2004, bulka wrote:
I'll repost Bulka's two pieces, for they got mangled in the HTML to text
conversion by the Lynx browser, whcih like a number of other browsers,
does not recognize repeated BR tags, and thus failed to insert 'blank
lines' where Michael appropriately hit 'enter' twice to create a blank
line between paragraphs on _his_ email thing. I just noticed that and
tracked it down in a script and fixed it.
If you have no idea what this is all about, ignore it. /jno
On of my favorite passages from one of my favorite books. Forty
years old, but it seems eerily topical tonight. - bulka
On my forty-sixth birthday they put an ape into space. They shot him
farther than they intended. They recovered him alive. He flew
through space at a fabulous speed, pressing buttons, pulling levers,
eating banana-flavored pills. He signaled with faultless regularity,
just as he had been trained to do. He did not complain of space. He
did not complain of time. He did not complain either of earth or
heaven.
He was bothered by no metaphysical problems. He felt no guilt. At
least it is not reported that he felt any guilt.
Why should an ape in space feel guilt? Space is where there is no
more weight and no more guilt. And an ape does not feel guilt even
on earth, for that matter.
Would that we on earth did not feel guilt! Perhaps if we can all get
into space we will not feel any more guilt. We will pull levers,
press buttons, and eat banana-flavored pills. No, pardon me. We are
not quite apes yet.
We will not feel guilt in space. We will not feel guilt on the moon.
Maybe we will feel just a *little* guilt on the moon, but when we get
to Mars we will feel no guilt at all.
From Mars or the moon we will blow up the world, perhaps. If we blow
up the world from the moon we may feel a little guilt. If we blow it
up from Mars we feel no guilt at all. No guilt at all. We will blow
up the world with no guilt at all. Tra la. Push the buttons, press
the levers! As soon as they get a factory on Mars for banana-colored
apes there will be no guilt at all.
I am forty-six years old. Let's be quite serious. Civilization has
deigned to grace my forty-sixth birthday with this marvelous feat,
and I should get ribald about it? Let me learn from this contented
ape. He pressed buttons. He pulled levers. They shot him too far.
Never mind. They fished him out of the Atlantic and he shook hands
with the Navy.
Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, 1965
Sorry for the non-art digressions, but I have to think of something,
huddled here against the cold. The good books are in the apartment,
while the art, besides sucking, is outside somewhere.
So, I'm reading another old book.(I went through a Merton phase 15
years ago; Conjectures is still my favorite. This famous old one,
though is new to me.) Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in
the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.
The quick and dirty version of his thesis is that Man didn't become
conscious (subjective, introspective, analytical) until the invention
of writing. Until that time, the left side of the brain, that does
stuff, was subject to hallucinations, visions, voices from the right
side, which were interpreted as revelations or instructions from God.
He points out that we still do very complicated things, like driving,
without being conscious of what we are doing, until something unusual
happens.
Somewhere near the middle of the book, where I am now, he tries to
present the inevitably violent meeting of people from different
not-yet-conscious, vision-and-voices-led cultures.
Then I look up to the TV and see an anti-violence PSA (or a movie
commercial, they sorta look the same) and I hear dubya's Axis of Evil
God Bless America spew, and I wonder if this consciousness thing has
trickled all the way down.
And I'm reminded of this other bit from Conjectures:
Is there any vestige of truth left in our declaration that we think
for ourselves? Perhaps the man who says he "thinks for himself" is
simply one who does not think at all. Because he has no fully
articulate thoughts, he thinks he has his own incommunicable ideas.
Or thinks that, if he once set his mind to it, he could have his own
thoughts. But he just has not got around to doing this. I wonder
if "democracies" are made up entirely of people who "think for
themselves" in the sense of going around with blank minds which they
imagine they could fill with their own thoughts if need be.
Well, the need has been desperately urgent, not for one year or ten, but
for fifty, sixty, seventy, a hundred years. If, when thought is needed,
nobody does any thinking, if everyone assumes that someone is thinking,
then it is clear that no one is thinking either for himself or for
anybody else. Instead of thought, there is a vast, inhuman void full of
words, formulas, slogans, declarations, echoes -- ideologies! You can
always reach out and help yourself to some of them. You don't even have
to reach at all. Appropriate echoes already rise up in your mind --
they are "yours". You realize, of course, that they are not yet
"thoughts', yet we "think" these formulas, with which the void in our
hearts is provisionally entertained, can for the time being "take the
place of thought" -- while the computers make the decisions for us.
Nothing can take the place of thought. If we do not think, we
cannot act freely. If we do not act freely, we are at the mercy of
forces which we never understand, forcers which are arbitrary,
destructive, blind, fatal to us and to our world. If we do not use
our minds to think with, we are heading for extinction, like the
dinosaur: for the massive physical strength of the dinosaur became
useless, purposeless . It led to his destruction. Our intellectual
power can likewise become useless, purposeless. When it does, it
will serve only to destroy us. It will devise instruments for our
destruction, and will inexorably proceed to use them . . . . it has
already devised them.
bulka
Here are a couple of chestnuts for you.
-Noah Webster
-HAL, 2001, A Space Odyssey
MT at Dog
Adding to posts by bulka, stull, dogmatic, aeelms..
Even dogs are 'self aware'. Jaynes (chapter 1), has:
At the extreme: I ran accross the following a few days ago. Very funny
(sad too). If anyone is destined to extinction, it might be our
politicians.
I have read a lot of the following stuff over the years, but here for the
first time a paleontologist reacts appropriately to a simple fact from his
field. This is from Noel Boaz.
He is talking, below, about Homo Erectus, who ranged over East Africa and
Asia (into China) 1,800,000 to maybe 200,000 years ago. Erectus weighs
about 100 to 150 pounds, walks on his hind legs, has a brain case only a
little smaller than us or Neanderthals, and likely was a lot smarter than
dogs, apes, or chimps. But did he 'think?'
He was most likely naked, and had a very thick skull, like Neanderthals.
Unlike Neanderthals, he does not bury his dead. He eats fruit, vegetables,
and road kill; but also hunts down antelope, uses fire to roast meat and
to burn down prairies, and makes tools... well, **one** tool.
Here is Noel Boaz (emphasis is his)..
/jno
On a seperate note. I would like to note that the Art Institute has a new
head. James Woods has stepped down. James Cuno is his replacement. Perhaps
we should say hello as a community that loves our institute. Or otherwise.
MT/DB
It would be a good moment to say hello to James Cuno because I'm sure the
very first thing he did when he got to Chicago was sign up to receive emails
from Other Group. I mean, I know he has a museum to direct, but I'm sure a
community like this one was the most appealing reason to come to Chicago.
Marc
Dogmatic gallery wrote:
Thats what I'm saying. I mean by this that I did read he came here because
we all love the art institute so much. As such it could be infered that he
felt the vibe from the othergroup, right?
mt/db
On Tue, 27 Jan 2004, Dogmatic gallery wrote:
Not in a million years.
On Fri, 23 Jan 2004, bulka wrote:
objections to Jaynes:
Is it possible that hearing the Gods speak was an activity particular
to Mesopotamia, Anatolia, the Levant, and Egypt - all centers of intense
agricultural practice, and perhaps used as a means of controlling the
working population? What about the rest of the world?
I object to Jaynes' insistence on authority. It seems to be a peculiar
Western outlook that you cannot have a village of 200 people without some
sort of control, much less a city of 10,000. This is not true even of the
Maya.
I would place the acquisition of consciousness earlier than the first
century BC, despite his best (and overwhelming) evidence.
But read Jaynes to reach an understanding of _how_ we think: through
metaphors, narratisation, and spacial fantasizing. Judgements and
reasoning are never consciousness activities. See how your right brain
still runs you today. Good stuff on the otherwise inexplicable status of
prophets, talking in tongues, hearing voices, the meter of rap, and more.
/jno
OG
re: jaynes
I don't know anything about these particular ideas, but it is an interesting
topic.
In defense of arguing that we still have yet to reach consciousness, our
modern thought processes and prime motivations for life seem of vary only
slightly from how we were in 1810, even before that.
Is evolution within consciousness a basic fundamental of having achieved it
in the first place? In that sense, we as a species really haven't come that
far.
The Golden Rule, the ten commandments, and other codes of ethic, are
considered true and important to a "good" life, yet they are all broken,
around the world, thousands of times on a daily basis. This runs against
the grain of my understanding of "consciousness".
re: something else
The latest issue of Wired has an article about digital artist, Charlie
White. From the "Post Photography School of Photography". Looks to fit in
somewhere between Barney, Koons, McCarthy, and Sherman. Maybe some Jeff
Wall too.
Point being, it was thought provoking that Wired would do a six page spread
about a contemporary artist, and it looks so familiar. The transformation
has begun. Many would say, it actually began years ago. Either way, it is
here. We will soon be replaced (or rather, you all will be) by robots.
Soon, instead of people saying "my kid could do that" they will be heard to
retort "any machine could do that".
re: not to ruffle any feathers
Having recently leafed through a current (I think) publication by Whitewalls
detailing various gadgets and inventions developed/found in American
prisons, the thought of subtle exploitation came to me. Anyone else get
that?
On Thu, 29 Jan 2004, Adam Mikos wrote:
Consciousness is not ethics (or the reverse), or goodwill, despite the
occasional goodwill of dogs, dolphins, and that one gorilla in a US zoo,
it is not innate, and has no biological substrate to support it.
But with consciousness you can imagine yourself into an ethical space,
aided by childhood and later admonitions. Freud had a word for that.
Expanding on Bulka's first part of the 'quick and dirty' description, here
is Jaynes, paraphrased..
Language is an absolute prerequisite. Language is a system of naming which
begets other names. It is ever expansive, and especially as the names for
anything new is metaphorically related to something known. Like any ideas
we have, consciousness is created metaphorically.
But language is not enough for consciousness. After all, many animals use
languages but can only conceive of the present tense, "Let's play; let's
eat; let's screw."
We can construct in our minds real and imaginary spaces. These can be
observed and inhabited by a copy of ourselves, an analog 'I'. With
language we also have the metaphorical means to displace our 'thinking' to
new imagined locations and far beyond or before the present time. Dogs
cant displace their imagination much beyond the next few moments.
So to complete the definition of consciousness, Jaynes adds the individual
creation of an analog 'I' to the already expanded mind space. Now we have
consciousness as we understand it: a focus on specifics, seemingly located
in the mind, and using an 'I' which is able to move about through spaces
of actualities and possibilities, shift time, and evaluate alternative
courses of action based on probable outcomes. This is the level of
'judgement' the left brain is capable of.
None of this is anywhere like what a wolf does to chase down an elk, which
is totally automatic, involves quick judgements, preguessing the moves of
your prey, and who-knows what else. But if you or I did that we would make
the same moves, and never be 'conscious' of them. Try becoming conscious
of your fingers while typing or playing a piano. You will come to a halt.
Consciousness is a focus which completely knits over the chasms between
spacial locations (or time) in your mind - to make it seamless to the
point of not ever being able to be conscious of not being conscious. It
reorganizes memories to make them seem like 'looked at' spaces, rather
than actual sensory impressions. It forces you to remember anything you
have done by taking an exterior spacial view of the activity. Even
mathematics when reviewed is ordered into spacial relationships.
Consciousness has almost nothing to do with any ongoing sensory
impressions or the movements of your body. Not that you cannot shift your
consciousness to something that catches your attention - but it is another
(unconscious) part of the brain whcih tips you off, and then you shift to
an analog real space to inhabit, and reflect on yourself in that space as
an observed 'me'.
But this focus of consciousness is only a minute portion of your sensory
experiences. More important, and despite what you think you do in your
head, it excludes ideas, formation of concepts, so-called reasoning, and
most judgements. These are made in the background, unawares, and we only
apply logic (as 'reasoning') after the fact. Ask any artists where ideas
come from: most appear out of thin air. Ask Einstein where his concepts
came from: they just came from no-where, usually while shaving.
What Jaynes next suggests is that consciousness is learned. He places it
at about age 7 or 8. It involves recognizing yourself as seen by others -
an analog 'I' which is then internalized and placed into the spaces of the
imagination and vaulted through time. You can actually watch parents make
these suggestions to small children.
Since it is learned, it is cultural, rather than biological. There is no
'evolution' involved in the biological sense, and since it is cultural, it
could change radically - even in the span of a thousand years, as Jaynes
has documented for the first millenium BC in the Levant. So consciousness
could again change radically. And who is to say to what or how?
In fact it should be suggested that there are people with a consciousness
to different from us that we can have absolutely no concept of their
'thinking'. Even the language that you grow up with changes how you think.
I should go on about the 'voices of the Gods' - maybe later.
/jno
Adam Mikos wrote:
"re: not to ruffle any feathers
Having recently leafed through a current (I think) publication by Whitewalls
detailing various gadgets and inventions developed/found in American
prisons, the thought of subtle exploitation came to me. Anyone else get
that?"
Adam,
Before you start making assumptions, there are at least 2 people active on
othergroup who can answer questions about that book. Or you can check out this
long dialogue on the project which describes a lot about how it happened and
how we worked with Angelo (the book's author):
[http://www.static-ops.org/essay_13.htm]
Marc
I would guess that Angelo was less exploited by this project than most
artists who sell their work in galleries...
Hi All,=20
I had a professor who wouldn't allow anyone to start a paper with a
dictionary definition. "Who is this Webster? Should we take his
definition as gospel?" she would say.=20
But between the Gee show and this, I, seriously, had to crack open the
book and re-look at the term:
ex*ploit*ative =20
especially : unfairly or cynically using another person or group for
profit or advantage=20
So based on this, I want to ask: Who is "another" in the definition?
When we talk about exploitation, who is doing the exploiting? The
curator? Any entity that profits from the show? The audience?=20
In our culture, we toss around the word exploitation a ton, we say porn
stars exploited (even when they live in mansions), people who are famous
for 15 minutes are exploited, news stories are exploited. Is it about
profit? Is it about feeling used? Is it about being ridiculed?
I would like to know who were are accusing, and of what we are accusing
them.=20
K
OG's
Possibly the sense derives from the abrupt clinical manner in which the
subject, book, and resulting exhibition were handled.
Thank you Marc for sending me the link.
It could be the art making/viewing process that was exploited. I have long
recognized Tmp Services removed demeanor when presenting artwork. However
in this instance, that distance indicates a larger problem (for my tastes,
of course).
If Marc has been in communication with "Angelo" for over twelve years and
collected some 10,000 drawings/letters/ephemera (using a low calculation
based on figures from the earlier link), yet still doesn't know why the guy
is in jail, if/when he is getting out. And has no intention of finding out.
This is where the discretion of TS comes in, assumedly to preserve the
artwork not he inmate.
And yet, you all go through such great lengths to promote it, attach your
names to this person, SPEND PUBLIC FUNDING ON IT (Whitewalls I'm looking at
you), and spend your own money (re: link) to expand it.
Is it that you lack or intend to lack compassion? Considering "Angelo" has
been a constant part of your life since 1991, I find it hard to believe.
Yet you go to such pains to appear the exact opposite.
Do you wish to protect him or remove him from the equation ? Reminds me of
a museum joke that the best artist is a dead one. Meaning the live artist
usually muddles up everything concerning their work ie schedules, placement,
handling. Just going for some levity there, not really thinking that TS
would go to Angelo's parole hearing and testify that he should be denied!
So then at face value the viewer isn't given any info concerning who or what
created the pieces, why TS cares so much, or why a toilet paper Bar-B-Q
amounts to anything more than esoteric knowledge amongst a couple Rube
Goldberg enthusiasts? Intended only for the initiated (for those who like
definitions).
After laboring through a set of og emails concerning art and therapy, I am
surprised that this issue didn't elicit any more response. What I see here
is the total removal of "art" from the human hand and carrying it to a
sterile location meant for observation only.
The point is that he is in jail, a restricted area for most, and boy are
those prisoners crafty.
On the surface, yes, you proved that spare time is the devils playground and
that necessity is the mother of invention. But, we already knew that.
I am of the opinion that Tmp Srv has quite a bit of knowledge of who this
character is. They choose to withhold that from the audience which is their
prerogative. However if TS is unwilling to give me any more information, I
don't think I get a clearer picture of what I am looking at, unfettered by
leanings or pre-concieved notions of guilt or innocence. Just that I am not
one of the initiated.
For that, Angelo has been, ah, made a bit of a puppet, however willingly.
And so have you all for swallowing it without questioning.
Re: consciousness
As I reclined last night and put on record, I began thinking about
self-awareness. Much like Sherlock Holmes I chose to augment my critical
thinking as well. It occurred to me that consciousness and self awareness
are very close to the same thing. I think, therefore I am. In fact, it
seems that is the litmus teat for any sentient creation.
Continuing from there , I propose that consciousness is a latent part of
virtually everything, not something to be "attained" or "achieved", but
rather the application of said consciousness that demonstrates it.
Much like a speedometer in a car doesn't really tell you how fast you are
going, instead it tells you how fast your wheels are turning and from there
your actual speed is inferred.
Therefore, consciousness is demonstrated by behaviors, not gray matter or
the lack of such.
inspad
To clarify a couple things:
1. whitewalls receives public money, which is not the same as spending public
money, and only public money, on projects. Our books do sell, and private
individuals do give to WhiteWalls. We did not spend public money on PI.
2. The book is Angelo's book, not Temporary Services' book. he is the sole
author. The book is also separate in effect from the exhibition form.
3. Our book gives you as much information about Angelo, as Stephen
Lapthisophon's, or Helen Mirra's do about them. or that Steve Lacy's 7 inch gives about
any of the musicians involved. Or that Brennan McGaffey's CB broadcast gave
about him.
4. WhiteWalls picked the book because we liked the content, as much as
Lapthisophon's or Mirra's or Lacy's. Mirra could be a sociopath, Lapthisophon could
rob old ladies in his spare time. I wasn't good friends of either when I
picked the project. I picked them because I like the work.
5. Angelo received the same treatment from WhiteWalls as any of the above
artists, with the difference that when we try to send him copies of his book, the
prison system sends them back.
6. WhiteWalls promotes the book as much as any WhiteWalls publication. No
more, no less, and in the same manner.
7. So WhiteWalls can print items, and support projects on the edge of
legality as long as the person doesn't have a prison record? The second that person
lands in prison, and submits a project much more legit (in the strictly legal
sense) than Lapthisophon's, or McGaffeys, or heck...Chuck Jones' postcards for
that matter, we should say no?
Adam,
Anthony Elms clarified bunch of things, and I am grateful for that because he was a lot
more generous than I'm going to be. As anyone who has ever visited the old Gravy Magazine
archives on spaces.org should be able to see, you remain a lazy, sloppy and shallow
thinker who is happy to make careless assumptions and could care less about even the
slightest attention to factual details. If that distorted mess of errors, wrong
assumptions, and bizarre leaps of logic in your last email was the best you could deduce
about our work, I can't help you. I don't think it's worth it. I'd rather take the time to
write a letter to my "puppet" friend. He's a lot more thoughtful and articulate than you
are. If you need me for anything I'll probably be out 'exploiting the art making/viewing
process.'
Marc
Aeelms at aol.com wrote:
" Nothing can take the place of thought. If we do not
think, we cannot act freely. If we do not act freely, we are at the
mercy of forces which we never understand, forcers which are
arbitrary, destructive, blind, fatal to us and to our world. If we do
not use our minds to think with, we are heading for extinction, like
the dinosaur: for the massive physical strength of the dinosaur
became
useless, purposeless . It led to his destruction. Our intellectual
power can likewise become useless, purposeless. When it does, it will
serve only to destroy us. It will devise instruments for our
destruction, and will inexorably proceed to use them . . . . it has
already devised them." bulka
"A paranoid is someone who knows half of what's really going on."
- William S. Burroughs
"In a world that really has been turned on its head, truth is a moment of
falsehood."
- Guy Debord
"For the moment, the inseparable philosophy of our time is contained in the
Pac-Man. I didn't know when I was sacrificing all my hundred yen coins to him
that he was going to conquer the world. Perhaps because he is the most perfect
graphic metaphor of man's fate. He puts into true perspective the balance of
power between the individual and the environment. And he tells us soberly that
though there may be honor in carrying out the greatest number of victorious
attacks, it always comes a cropper. "
- Chris Marker
"Besides, its only others who die."
- Marcel Duchamp
"[stuff]
"Lets start with 'A."
"I'm sorry Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."
"(Stull:) It seems to me there is thinking, and then there is
self-awareness. All sorts of minds think. But what was supposed to
be unique about humans.......
- consciousness not necessary for concepts
- consciousness not necessary for learning
- consciousness not necessary for thinking
- consciousness not necessary for reason
"The available archeological data on Home Erectus reveals that one
type of tool was used for about a million years -- **one** type of stone
tool, for a **million** years, all over Africa wherever Homo Erectus is
found after 1.4 million years ago. For some reason it is not associated
with Asian Homo Erectus. This stone tool is the Acheulean hand ax.
"It is not an easy tool to make and modern Homo Sapiens graduate
students are not able to fashion a very good one even after an entire
academic term of practical experience.
"The implication is that Homo Erectus would have expended a
tremendous amount of time and energy -- years -- laboriously learning how
to make hand axes. The technique must have been passed on by rote
repetition. Hand axes stayed the same for untold generations.
"This method of cultural transmission is entirely foreign to us.
Nothing that we Homo Sapiens learn and internalize stays the same. We have
to change it, improve it, make it look better, modify it to fit our
specific needs -- be it a chair, an art form, or our own language. But
this never occured to Homo Erectus, not in a million years.
- looks like the Paleolithic weapon of mass destruction. To put Homo
Erectus in perspective: Neanderthals fashioned stone spear points, cutting
blades, scrapers, and awls, besides hand axes. Homo Neanderthalus overlaps
Homo Erectus by maybe a half million years. On a lesser scale, so do we.
We do all that, and make art, but so did the Neanderthals.
"Thats what I'm saying. I mean by this that I did read he came
here because we all love the art institute so much. As such it could be
infered that he felt the vibe from the othergroup, right?
"This famous old one, though is new to me. Julian Jaynes, The
Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.
"The Golden Rule, the ten commandments, and other codes of ethics,
are considered true and important to a "good" life, yet they are
all broken, around the world, thousands of times on a daily basis.
This runs against the grain of my understanding of
\"consciousness\".
" Arf arf, arf arf arf
- the mailman is at the door
- he is going to kill us all" (-- my dogs)
-Steve