LOVER

Workers Unite!

“Any new kind of art practice is going to have to take place at least partially outside of the art world. And hard as it is to establish oneself in the art world, less circumscribed territories are all the more fraught with peril. Out there, most artists are neither welcome nor effective, but in here is a potentially suffocating cocoon in which artists are deluded into feeling important for doing only what is expected of them. We continue to talk about “new forms” because the new has been the fertilizing fetish of the avant-garde since it detached itself from the infantry. But it may be that these new forms are only to be found buried in social energies not yet recognized as art.” Lucy Lippard

M A N I F E S T O
In the post-Katrina landscape it is graphically obvious that the hierarchical capitalistic structures that Western culture banks on can be terribly destructive. These structures produce modernist notions of the artist as an autonomous, neutral authority, supporting an industry that profits from perpetuating this myth, which becomes absurd in the aftermath of graphic disaster and diaspora. So what is the artist’s role in this here/now? ArtInAction only asks.

We make site-specific outdoor artworks in areas struggling to recover from the levee breaks, often collaborative, that call attention to place, history, identity, and experience. It is a simple idea, and not original: we resist delusions of permanence and isolation, and cultivate connectivity. This is art as action rather than idea - egalitarian, social, free.

We do not own or sell the work. We actively seek permission/relationships with citizens on-site – dissolving arbitrary boundaries between spectator and audience – aiming to corrupt prejudices of purity. The work strives to function as a beautiful surprise for a community that has been bombarded with traumatizing visual surprises. A new intimacy is cultivated, marginalized space is reanimated. In its appearance and disappearance, the artwork exists as a moral echo, honoring what was, preparing for what is next. Embracing the liminal, transient properties embedded in all creative practices, we resist the temptation to compete, hold, make permanent. We let go and it’s great.

Below are further suggestions for research into this genre of art making that remains controversial as well as thrillingly inspiring for the contemporary visual artist.

Ex: Heidleberg Project; Allan Kaprow; Project Rowhouse; Border Art Workshop; Estella Conwill Májozo; Suzanne Lacy; Guillermo Gómez-Pena; Coco Fusco; REPOHistory; Shadow Project; Francis Alys; Mujeres Muralistas; Adrian Piper; Tim Rollins and K.O.S.; Fred Wilson; Culture In Action; Gabriel Orozco; Points of Entry; PAC Art For Social Change Progamme; Allard Van Horn; Kimsooja; Wooster Collective; Radiating Places http://26-04-1986.com/; Cary Peppermint; Mel Chin
Text: “Mapping The Terrain; New Genre Public Art”; “Debated Territory: Artists’ Roles in a Culture of Visibility” Suzanne Lacy; “The Reenchantment of Art” Suzi Gablik

the mix-up

"Hold Yr Terror Close" Go Team
"Old Gray" Captain Beefheart
"Internal Wrangler" Clinic
"Ghost Mountain" The Unicorns
"Dream Land" Della Humphrey
"Past In Present" Feist
"Alegría, Alegría" Caetano Veloso
"Blue Flowers" Dr. Octagon
"Big Parade" Rotary Downs
"The Truth" The Black Neon
"Young Shields" Casiotone for the Painfully Alone
"I'm A New Person, Ma'am" Country Teasers
"Slag" Calexico
"Amazon" M.I.A.
"Smash A Kangaroo" Heaps Decent featuring Diplo
"Geremia" Bonde do Role
"Black Cab" Jens Lekman
"No Kings" El-P & Tame One
"Turn A Square" The Shins
"Sky Blue Sky" Wilco

I have moved 18 times since Katrina, now I'm in Bayou St John, it's not over yet

It's a gnome's home with a bowl of cherries and cherry tomatoes, a gnome's tiny dog named Lulu, a gnome's tortoise-shell cat named Sabrina, a gnome's lamp made of an ultramarine colander and measuring spoons, a small gnome's bed that becomes a small gnome's couch, and a gnarly tree out the window that grows teensy pears for the gang of wild parrots to yak over all day.

My dream, it was wild and emotional. They want me to "do the weather" on the news. I have zero training so refuse. The tall old man refuses my refusal. I am not swayed. How absurd! Not only do I not know how to operate their high-tech gizmos but I don't want to. Chaos ensues. I stand mesmerized in front of an aquarium full of breathtaking beauty, dark cobalt water and silvery fluid fish; it can't be made to be this beautiful - it can only happen. I'm lucky enough to witness it.

Walking down Decateur Street from the coffee shop to the boutique, people who don't know me act like they do - all I care about are the aesthetics (is the necklace lined up to its best advantage? Are the shelves clean? Does the window display work from across the street?). A man holds my hand but of course he's been unfaithful, he flashes a seductive grin at one of the island beauties dancing by and then shrugs when he sees me seeing him. I act like I care, mildly, but I don't, not even mildly. I follow the marching band and dancers, I lust after a workman's red pickup truck with shiny steel chests in the bed for tools. It feels exquisitely good to be in this flow.

Us Ones Inbetween

"I think that I'm finally finding out there's absolutely nothing worth shouting about, I'd rather say nothing then lose my voice - I'd rather shut up and say nothing. On the outside we have to stick together. I see gray skies and I feel better, I see gray skies ahead and it's fine by me. All the right people seem squeaky clean, well all the right people mean nothing to me. Jeepin & creepin just to stay on track, they'll offer one hand & put a knife in your back. You notice that something is terribly wrong when they offer the world and they turn and they're gone. You finally understand you came from the outside you'll stay on the outside. People and places just pass me by, if I told you I'm sorry I'd be telling a lie. Look at me laughing I'm way outside, and I'll be happy as long as I stay here. Pushing and pushing I'll say right out, I'm bound to do something you'll complain about. I'm happy to offer nothing at all, this is entertainment make no mistake; if you're after answers you're in the wrong place. Just watch where you walk you're losing your way - I came from the outside I'll stay on the outside." Whitey

Intro – Teenage Bad Girl
Bring It On – Goose (MSTRKRFT Rmx)
Flash Gordon – Révolte
She’s a Man – In the Club (Killdahype Rmx)
Battle 79 – Amen Birdmen (Raw Man Vs Ponkrocks Rmx)
Home Alone – Digitalism (Electro Cypher Mini-Break Ended)
Walkman – SebastiAn (Insane Edit)
Emotronic – Killdahype (Exclusive)
Blood on our hands – Death from Above 1979 (Justice Rmx)
Ventura - Thomas Bangalter
Bush beat - Prince Charles (Happy Funky Ending)

Please Address All Mail To My Suitcase (after Rimbaud's "The Drunken Boat")

The Baroque is a wedding cake fountain.
For theorists, emblems shoot through
With the clarity of wet glass plate prints
In amusement park photo booths.

Forgetting always starts with names.
"I am another." Is it in these nights
Without limit that you sleep
And are lost to us, oh future vigor?

We frame nautical charts
With preternatural fear,
Undressed up as mermaids -
Fate the stars the Tarot cards

Reproductions of reflections
Stupidly so lifelike, they cannot
Tell a lie. Psychic spy chick
Qu'est ce que c'est? If you wanna

Break up with me you gotta stand in line.
Though combustion still is paramount
For any shiftless love, transgression's there
To hide the fact that laws do not pertain.

Putain! - I who vibrated at the clamor of fucking
Behemouths, and heavy whirlpools of fifty miles
Off! I've seen what men have only thought they saw.
I've seen sidereal archipelegoes! Ships, wrecked

Where giant serpents afflicted with parasites
Hang black perfumes on tortured trees.
In great stinking marshes, I have seen
Sea monsters rot, caught by snares among the reeds!

While July in its brutality smashed
The oceanic sky with aggressive cyclones.
Yet I sailed on, as the drowned passed sleepily
Through my fragile trailing nets ...

Malaise descends on men uncomprehending.
Twenty years ago I presented this key
Into a beautiful policewoman's palm.
Now she leads the rebel attack at Peking.

Eusebius wrote bats bring on night
As squid spread ink in volute curtains.
But these are folk and fishwife tales, whose
Scope exceeds bold strictures set by theorems.

Neighborhoods

This was a lot of fun for everyone!

but a phantom your thin smile briefly shined upon

The bees are buzzing,
And piled up at the base of the columns
When I am heard, and what I say is solely
to matter, for the flushed boys are muscular
Brush the lone giant in that somber pall.
into early blooming. Then, the inevitable blizzard
Merely a mockery of spring
wonders if she'd ever be brave enough
With a hand freed from weight,
the foul pole relaxes. She's raged all afternoon
Wheel tracks entrench themselves in snow, yet painted
Against this sky no longer of our world.
By bloody pool—rattling, gasping his last.
Everywhere, utterly.
It is as though I were at a second threshold.
Want anything said at all, which I still doubt)
Again awaken from your being gone to find
XIX. Jones Sound and Beaufort Sea
In the woods, close by,

Party!

The paper hats weren't my favorite part though they were great including the unicorn one for me. The fireworks in the rain weren't either though they did get me so crazy I fell down and that's always good. The bounty of food including homemade onion rings, nope. Not even the mustaches or the one cigarette. My all-time favorite part was when she said, buckled over laughing so hard, "Oh Ellie you're killing me!!!"

Only Kindness Only Air

Today the rain the rain and comforting lessons folded into my back pocket and put through the washer and come out clean and soft-wet. I had an epiphany and I liked it and my mouth tastes like boys. A whole team of them, chopping wood and swinging bats and throwing knives. After I finish this I'm taking a nap then I'm taking a shower and then I'm going to the store to get food to cook in my electric skillet in the trailer, one of my last trailer meals. I love the trailer and I love the electric skillet and I really love my people who are brave.

4 mammoth chunks of cedar are piled on top of eachother at my feet; the bird cage left here years ago collects weeds; now bells, the kind that warn of crossings. Being comfortable with uncertainty isn't just about honestly facing loss, loneliness, and death. It's about accepting intimacy, joy, and life. Actually I begin to see it as essentially only being about the latter. The former are just roadblocks that a life wholly experienced will inevitably manifest. The real trick, the real coup is to stay open, to lean into the instability of an open heart, open arms. Not to be a whore, you know, but to be ... aware that the really challenging uncertainties of life, the real gutsy hard rebellious risky work is in loving. I made a list and lost it; something surprised me on the way.