2008-07-29

i think you need to read this.....

my partner found this from this website.

http://deoxy.org/ct/dailylife.htm

The Contents of Your Daily Life

How many hours a day do you spend in front of a television screen? A computer screen? Behind an automobile windscreen? All three screens combined? What are you being screened from? How much of your life comes at you through a screen, vicariously? Is watching things as exciting as doing things? Do you have enough time to do all the things that you want to? Do you have enough energy to? Why? And how many hours a day do you sleep? How are you affected by standardized time, designed solely to synchronize your movements with those of millions of other people? How long do you ever go without knowing what time it is? Who or what controls your minutes and hours? The minutes and hours that add up to your life? Are you saving time? Saving it up for what? Can you put a value on a beautiful day, when the birds are singing and people are walking around together? How many dollars an hour does it take to pay you to stay inside and sell things or file papers? What can you get later that will make up for this day of your life?

How are you affected by being in crowds, by being surrounded by anonymous masses? Do you find yourself blocking your emotional responses to other human beings? And who prepares your meals? Do you ever eat by yourself? Do you ever eat standing up? How much do you know about what you eat and where it comes from? How much do you trust it? What are we deprived of by labor-saving devices? By thought-saving devices? How are you affected by the requirements of efficiency, which place value on the product rather than the process, on the future rather than the present, the present moment that is getting shorter and shorter as we speed faster and faster into the future? What are we speeding towards? Are we saving time? Saving it up for what? How are you affected by being moved around in prescribed paths, in elevators, buses, subways, escalators, on highways and sidewalks? By moving, working, and living in two- and three-dimensional grids? How are you affected by being organized, immobilized, and scheduled rather than wandering, roaming freely and spontaneously? Scavenging? (Shoplifting?) How much freedom of movement do you have--freedom to move through space, to move as far as you want, in new and unexplored directions? And how are you affected by waiting? Waiting in line, waiting in traffic, waiting to eat, waiting for the bus, waiting to urinate--learning to punish and ignore your spontaneous urges? How are you affected by holding back your desires? By sexual repression, by the delay or denial of pleasure, starting in childhood, along with the suppression of everything in you that is spontaneous, everything that evidences your wild nature, your membership in the animal kingdom? Is pleasure dangerous? Could danger be joyous?

Do you ever need to see the sky? (Can you see many stars in it any more?) Do you ever need to see water, leaves, foliage, animals? Glinting, glimmering, moving? Is that why you have a pet, an aquarium, houseplants? Or are television and video your glinting, glimmering, moving? How much of your life comes at you through a screen, vicariously? If your life was made into a movie, would you watch it? How do you feel in situations of enforced passivity? How are you affected by a non-stop assault of symbolic communication--audio, visual, print, billboard, video, radio, robotic voices--as you wander through a forest of signs? What are they urging upon you? Do you ever need solitude, quiet, contemplation? Do you remember it? Thinking on your own, rather than reacting to stimuli? Is it hard to look away? Is looking away the very thing that is not permitted? Where can you go to find silence and solitude? Not white noise, but pure silence? Not loneliness, but gentle solitude? How often have you stopped to ask yourself questions like these? Do you find yourself committing acts of symbolic violence? Do you ever feel lonely in a way that words cannot even express? Do you sometimes feel yourself ready to LOSE CONTROL?


2008-07-13

鉄男 (Tetsuo)


今日はたまたま「鉄男」を拝見。 by 塚本晋也(1989)
社会に見られる機械に頼りたい人間のフェティッシュ、人間の感情と機械がぐっちゃぐちゃにとってもグロテスクに表現されてます。
アキラ好きの自分としてはどうしてもあの「鉄雄」との関連性を感じずにはいられない。

"More shoes, more boots and more garlic!" by Herzog

I am a big fan of Herzog as a person.
I was going to post this on my blog for all the image makers, film makers and artists,
but i think that anyone should watch this and listen to this person talk anyways.

This was taken in 1980. There was no internet, no Youtube videos, no blogs, no space for ordinary people to get their images out their. So Herzog's mission to generate more and more images for the civilization problems in the world made so much sense as a film maker back in the 80's, and I admire his intension very much.

But it's 2008, now everyone can be a film maker, writer, jernalist, an image producer all over the world. This is a s tart of everyone to become producers of one's own culture.

Yet, in this super mediated world that we live in, people are not expected to become producer of their own culture, but merely consumers of products lined up for them to give them the false idea of what freedom is to them.

I am interested in where we are going in terms of film making. Imagery makers like film makers and artists now have to challenge themsleves a lot more to keep their titles as image makers. Jobs titles are just another label to your identity though. There are many people who make amazing images but not call them selves film maker or artist.

Werner Herzog Eat His Shoes (1980)

2008-07-04

Residency Programs



今年はアーティスト・イン・レジデンスに申し込む事にした。
アーティスト・イン・レジデンス、またはレジデンスプログラムとも呼ばれるシステムは、
日本も含めて世界各国で実施されている。簡単に言えば、アーティストやライターなど、クリエイティブな人たちに一定期間スタジオを与えるプログラム。
認められれば、とてもいい条件の元、いつもとは違った場所で気分転換をしながら、制作のみに集中できる代物も見つかる。例えば宿泊先とスタジオと食事が提供され、しかもそれに加えて毎月のお小遣い/制作にかかる材料費などまで出してくれる所もある。そういった所は特にプログラム終了後に展覧会をしなくてはいけない/コミュニティーにレクチャーしなくてはいけない、などの条件もついてくるから、責任感もやる気も増えるんじゃないかと思うし、地域の人たちと自分のアートについて語ったりする様な機会は、私にとってはとても貴重だから、ぜひとも体験したい。ほとんど生活費がかからないので、ほとんどいつも通りの予算さえあれば、Why not try it!?

参考サイト:http://www.resartis.org/