the bad baroque

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 07:33:33 GMT

i am thankful for:

* the music that richard youngs is making lately.

* coffee and scones on a drizzly morning.

* "an artist whose canvas is murder":

* doris lessing's the golden notebook, even if it did take me 400 years to finish.

* whoever played drums on television's marquee moon.

* the intense ass-whuppin' those smug freakonomics nerds are getting over bio-engineering and climate change from just about every reasonable expert in the field.

* the general, thirty-something-ish "stability" that's settling in on my life (respectable job, committed relationship, etc.). i feel pretty cool and collected lately, but not in a complacent way. i think i finally feel like an adult.

* this photo:

p.s. is it me, or is "pardoning the turkey" the dumbest tradition ever? it bothers me in the same way that pep rallies and motivational speakers and customer service representatives bother me. there's nothing more repugnant than rehearsed pleasure.

art stuff

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 02:30:33 GMT

i kinda get mad at myself when i claim to have a big post in the works and then i just post about art stuff. the truth is that i'm fired up and ready to write about a number of things right now, some of which are worth it, and some of which would amount to righteous ranting (suffice to say i think roman polanski belongs in jail, and all my RL friends are tired of hearing me yammer on about it).

so for now, an art post:

Wrap It Up, 2009 (Mixed media: pencil, gouache, watercolor, india ink and paper collage on board, 12" by 12")

i finished the above a month or two back. it's really little, and wasn't too challenging, but i'm moderately happy with it. i need to step my game up.

Positions of Power, 2009 (Mixed media: pencil, gouache, watercolor and paper collage on board, 18" by 24")

... i'm less happy with this one. i feel like i tried to make a big painting on a small surface. too many ideas and not enough space to spread them all out and see what they can do. the next piece i make is gonna be a LOT bigger. hopefully four by five feet. i have a real-ish job now so i can afford complicated art surfaces! whopeee! in other news:

* i was in a group show recently, curated by my friend corey. it was a more conceptual sort of thing, based on a show from the 70's curated by lucy lippard, where artists submitted notecards proposing works that may or may not ever come to exist in reality. because i'm completely incapable of brevity, whimsy or minimalism, i set up a website to accompany my entry. check it out; it's sort of like one of my real entries i guess:

undead ark

tonight's playlist

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 02:29:16 GMT

happy halloween folks! sorry i never post anymore; i've been busy. mostly with good stuff. expect a real post soon...

new painting, some good lectures to check out, other stuff too maybe

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 04:19:59 GMT

hi livejournal! sorry i've been quiet for the past few weeks. i've been busy. but i've got a bit of a dry spell, work-wise, for a while now. so i'll be updating more. to start things off, this is one of those obligatory art posts, with some youtube/podcast links listed afterwords.

i finished this painting a few months back:

Get Familiar, 2009 (Mixed media: pencil, gouache, india ink and paper collage on board, 16" by 20")

Detail (Top left of image)

... as you can see, it's just a little guy. i've been working on a big 5' by 5', acrylic on canvas piece for MANY MANY months now, and i can't figure out what to do with it. so i'm falling back on smaller work for a little while. basically, i'm just shooting off ideas at the moment and not really thinking too hard about how good/bad the results are. expect more little guys like this over the next month or two.

since i've been away from lj-land, i thought i might also share some cool lectures i've been watching/listening to in the studio. my external hard drive died about 5 months back, leaving me without a substantial mp3 connection beside me while i painted. so i started to explore podcasts and video lectures. i became excited by sites like TED, FORA and Talks@Google. here are a few things i recommend checking out...

1.

i've spent the past month or so reading kim stanley robinson's sprawling, epic novel red mars. believe it or not, this is my first foray into "hard" science fiction, and it's proving tougher to get through than expected. the novel is often amazing - particularly as a way of imagining future ecosystems and new forms of social organization. robinson considers himself a "green socialist" - and also writes extensively about the actual, non-sci-fi, earthly environment (and its degradation). his essay about sustainability and "post-capitalism" struck a chord with me... and inspired me to begin reading his work.

anyway, his lecture for google tech talks is pretty impressive, and full of interesting hypothetical solutions to the increasingly catastrophic problem of climate change (which will factor into many of the lectures i'll share below, for better or worse). youtube won't let me embed the video, so

CLICK HERE to see it.

2.
joshua klein's lecture about the amazing intelligence of crows is an oldie but a goodie. this one is short, and a bit of a crowd-pleaser, maybe (apresminuit and chocolatebark will <3 this, i think):

3.

speaking of TED talks, mark bittman's snarky take on meat consumption and climate change is remarkably persuasive. you'll either love or hate his abrasive style (i love it; i have a soft spot for smart folks with a wicked streak), but it's tough to argue with his logic, imo. some of you might be familiar with some of these arguments, c/o the also-quite-persuasive michael pollan and folks like that:

4.

chances are you probably already know about sarah haskins' target: women videos, but if not, you should. every time i watch one of these, i think about how fun it would be to hang out with her. i swear to god sometimes i just sit around imagining what it would be like to shoot the shit with public figures. anyway, the "yogurt" edition is a good place to start with these. and the more you watch, the funnier these become. lately, i feel like great comedy is more about charisma than gags or timing. if i decide i like the person telling the jokes, my affection amplifies the impact...

5.

bill moyers has been reliably excellent lately. in a way, i think he's exactly what the american political landscape needs. there's nothing like a calm, kindly old man to make universal health care, prison reform and strong civil liberties seem sensible and un-radical. moyers feels like a relic from the new deal era, which seems like a useful evocation as we try to reform health care and pass a sensible energy bill. his show is always good, but if you

CLICK HERE

you can hear him interview my favorite ecological fatalist mike davis. together they debunk some needlessly scary assumptions about "socialism"...

6.
i've never read either of zadie smith's novels, but eventually i will. me and my GF went on a road trip about two months back, and we downloaded several podcasts to keep us entertained. smith's lecture to the new york public library was definitely the best of the bunch. it's titled speaking in tongues, and it does a number of things. it's a personal memoir, a study of shaw's pygmalion, a guarded appreciation of barack obama and a partial defense of equivocation. here she is discussing barack obama, cary grant and what it means to occupy several voices simultaneously:

For Obama, having more than one voice in your ear is not a burden, or not solely a burden—it is also a gift. And the gift is of an interesting kind, not well served by that dull publishing-house title Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance with its suggestion of a simple linear inheritance, of paternal dreams and aspirations passed down to a son, and fulfilled. Dreams from My Father would have been a fine title for John McCain's book Faith of My Fathers, which concerns exactly this kind of linear masculine inheritance, in his case from soldier to soldier. For Obama's book, though, it's wrong, lopsided. He corrects its misperception early on, in the first chapter, while discussing the failure of his parents' relationship, characterized by their only son as the end of a dream. "Even as that spell was broken," he writes, "and the worlds that they thought they'd left behind reclaimed each of them, I occupied the place where their dreams had been."

To occupy a dream, to exist in a dreamed space (conjured by both father and mother), is surely a quite different thing from simply inheriting a dream. It's more interesting. What did Pauline Kael call Cary Grant? "The Man from Dream City." When Bristolian Archibald Leach became suave Cary Grant, the transformation happened in his voice, which he subjected to a strange, indefinable manipulation, resulting in that heavenly sui generis accent, neither west country nor posh, American nor English. It came from nowhere, he came from nowhere. Grant seemed the product of a collective dream, dreamed up by moviegoers in hard times, as it sometimes feels voters have dreamed up Obama in hard times. Both men have a strange reflective quality, typical of the self-created man—we see in them whatever we want to see. "Everyone wants to be Cary Grant," said Cary Grant. "Even I want to be Cary Grant." It's not hard to imagine Obama having that same thought, backstage at Grant Park, hearing his own name chanted by the hopeful multitude. Everyone wants to be Barack Obama. Even I want to be Barack Obama.

anyway, this is probably one of the best lectures i've ever heard, and you can

LISTEN TO IT HERE.

finally, now that you have a full year's worth of online lectures to watch... and since you've made it this far... and since this post has been a bit on the serious side, here's a painting i made around x-mas time of my GF's dog, lentil:

Mon, 11 May 2009 03:16:12 GMT

since i'm feelin' bloggy lately, i decided to bring back the holiday posts.

dan walks around: entry one

Sat, 09 May 2009 09:01:15 GMT

in the tradition of charles baudelaire, rebecca solnit, my two favorite "walts" (whitman and benjamin) and - come to think of it - my dad, i've decided i'm going to go for walks and document them.

my work is moving in a landscape-y direction at the moment, so i figured this might be a good way of "sketching," both mentally and physically. yes, this marks my entry into the already crowded club of over-educated wannabee flaneurs. and fair enough - they seem like good company. this idea is also inspired by a growing reading list i've unofficially prepared for myself, including folks like anne dillard, lisa robertson and jane jacobs (in addition to solnit's book about walking). who knows when i'll get around to all of that reading. in the meantime, i'm just gonna use lj to document these experiences. i tend to have decent conversations around here, so i figure this is the best place for it. and don't worry - i'll try not to act all willfully profound about it. cool? if so, read on...

WALK ONE: philly (20th and chestnut to fishtown)

* walk one is pragmatic. i left work at about 12:30 am - just late enough to miss the last subway train. and a taxi ride would have cost about $15 bucks, so fuck that option. if the tradition of people-with-master's-degrees-documenting-their-walks calls to mind 19th century french dandies, than the contrarian within me is happy to report that my first excursion began as an attempt to save money, among other things.

*

heading down 20th, i decide to walk around the parameter of philly's huge, neoclassical free library. there's an odd little brick path that runs to the left of the sidewalk. i walk through it, and immediately feel like i'm trespassing. which i'm actually not doing - i'm just taking a peculiar route at one in the morning. this anxiety arises a lot when i move through a city; an odd, subconscious awareness of legality. walking becomes an act of non-insurrection. it's mundane, boring, rudimentary - there's nothing punk rock about it. but i still feel like i'm gonna get caught.

* at 18th and callowhill, there's this huge, gated empty lot that sits beside some corporate office buildings. i'm reminded that certain spaces encourage you not to look at them. rebecca solnit wrote this great essay about the parking lot of the getty museum, which gets into this idea a bit. how spacial context dictates one's attention. what gets to be beautiful and what doesn't - the politics of structured attention spans, basically. you can watch her read the essay online, actually (thanks, bikerbar):

... anyway, these corporate office buildings are impressive and bland at the same time. they appear as objects, rather than parts of the landscape. it's difficult to envision what sits to the right or the left of them. as buildings, they're meant to be feared or entered, never contemplated.

since i'm trying to be quasi-honest with these notes, i must confess that my dirty mind got stuck on the phrase "feared or entered." (*please pardon the sexualized metaphors here*... or take me to task in the comments, if you'd like) in a way, the femme fatales of american noir are meant to be "feared or entered," i think. i've never been attracted to this archetype, with its authoritarian vibe and master/slave dynamics. my desires rarely arrange themselves in a hierarchy, i guess. or maybe a battle of wills appeals to me intellectually rather than aesthetically or sexually. most of the time at least.

when i encounter these buildings, i sense the femme fatale mechanics at work in a less horny way. oppression/submission/possession/etc. - awaiting me, perhaps, along "the corporate ladder." discouraged, i end up looking at the parking lot. hell, i even end up feeling like the parking lot, in a way.

* on spring garden street, there are political banners arranged along an island in the middle of the road. one is for a judge named ted vigilante. is that really his name? does it help or hurt a dude running for office to have a name like that?

* at broad and spring garden, i get an idea for a painting. it doesn't have the faintest thing to do with the walk i'm taking, but hell - maybe this little exercise is working? i'm probably not the most physical person in the world, but i swear i find my best ideas while moving.

* there's a bike lane along spring garden street, and some hipster-ish kids ride by from time to time. if there's any real case to be made for 21st century flânerie in philly, the bike kids probably deserve the claim to it. i like bike-riding, and as far as hip trends are concerned, i think it's one of the most endearing. but i don't notice things the same way on a bike. and this project is really about noticing.

* at 10th and spring garden, there's an abandoned lot with striking purple flowers growing alongside a fence. i'm not sure if someone planted them or if they're just the remnants of an old garden, growing with the rest of the weeds at the edge of the concrete. are certain plants categorically weeds? or do we just call them weeds when we don't like them? is calling a plant a weed like calling a dude an asshole?

like the purple flowers in the weed patch, this part of town sits at a funny threshold. it's a few blocks north of real-deal gentrification, but not far enough to threaten my pale white ass at 1:30 in the morning. i walk by a few shops that seem geared towards artists and immigrants simultaneously. they seem legitimately inviting.

* the path toward gentrified northern liberties is marked by a series of nightclubs, which become progressively less hip hop, and progressively more fratty. as a slight, inhibited white artist, club culture is unsurprisingly the aspect of hip hop i have the least affection for. while i walk by these clubs, i end up thinking about my prejudices about these places. i don't like the idea of condemning things i know little about, but i must confess that this shit really doesn't appeal to me. i probably haven't approached a strange girl on a dance floor since middle school, and i'm not eager to start trying now (i'm spoken for anyway). on one level that probably makes me a total chickenshit. but it's also part of who i really am. eventually, i turn north to escape the noise.

* my two favorite walkable restaurants are in the ballpark of 7th and girard. the closer i get to them, the more my sense of taste overlaps with my memory. these few blocks are about mole sauce and samosas. too bad it's almost two in the morning.

*

closer to my house i think of something that annoys me, and for about five minutes i don't notice much of anything. it's amazing how annoyance can blind you to your surroundings. ironically, my sense of this walk as a performance ("snap out of it, dan! you have to come up with poignant observations for your livejournal!") cools me off a bit. it's amazing how much pleasure i get from noticing my surroundings. i remember that people aren't the only things speaking to me, i guess.

* near the post office a few blocks from my house, i see bird corpses on the ground. then i realize they're BABY PIGEON CORPSES. then i realize one of them is STILL ALIVE. the little dude is quirming around quite a bit and i'm not sure what to do. then the little creature looks up and makes full-on creepy eye contact with me. it occurs to me that mama pigeon may soon return. i heard somewhere that if you touch a baby bird, it's mother won't recognize the scent and will abandon it. this seems like a reasonable enough reason to walk away. i still feel kinda terrible about this. me and erin_lindsay are the only two people on the planet who really like pigeons, sadly.

when i decided to start my "dan walks around" project, i promised myself not to get too carried away with unusual observations. the point was (and is) to pay attention to things differently, and see what ideas i can generate. so, in a sense, it's disappointing that something this dramatic and horrifying interrupted what i imagined would be a contemplative experience. suddenly, i felt like i was stuck in the climax of some raymond carver type story - the part where the ordinaray becomes extraordinary, and i recognize the futile nature of my own existence. or whatever.

* in the opposite spirit, i must confess that i found it oddly soothing to get an awful pantera song stuck in my head. the song is called "walk" - i'm sure you can guess why i thought of it (wakka wakka wakka). it's a wretched song, but it actually kinda captures the rhythm of walking? it reminds me a bit of a marching song from the military. there's something kinda fascist about heavy metal, and "walk" is metal at its absolute most goose-steppy. but for a few minutes, it kept me focused on moving.

SOME STATS ABOUT THIS WALK

LENGTH: about an hour and ten minutes (12:40am to 1:50am)
DISTANCE: 5-6 miles, if mapquest is accurate (yes, i am a dork)
FOOD CONSUMED: a banana, most of one of those "honest teas" which are so delicious, a bag of "dirty" potato chips
SOME NOTABLE OBJECTS ENCOUNTERED: an orange bucket with a hand-drawn "recycle" logo drawn on it in sharpie, a giant concrete blob in the middle of an abandoned lot, an antique advertisement for the marines that says "READY" spotted in someone's window.

... finally, since you've read this far, your reward is a cellphone pic i took of a super-crazy rainbow in the park next to my house a few weeks back:

ten good things

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 09:01:22 GMT

hi, remember me?
looking over this journal, i notice that the past half-dozen entries have either been about self-promotion or wacky youtube clips. consider this my penance...

10.

i never put one of those best of 2008 lists together for music. but if i did, lau nau's nukkuu would be at the top of it. "lau nau" is the rock-star-name of laura naukkarinen, who plays with a bunch of finnish psych folk acts like kiila and avarus. the psych-folk scene in finland has been reliably awesome for the past 4 or 5 years, but i have to say nukkuu is my favorite record to emerge from it.

it's not dynamically different than her earlier album (2005's kuutarha). and heard alongside bands like grouper or fursaxa or kemiallisat ystavat, it wouldn't sound particularly revolutionary. but, for me, it exemplifies everything that makes the current psych/folk/drone scene so exciting. nukkuu is a challenging record, but it's also listenable. it comes from a psychedelic tradition, but there's nothing painfully nostalgic about it. its mix of melody and noisy ambiance blends gracefully - it's neither precious nor pretentious.

nukkuu is finnish for "sleeps." a sticker on the shrink-wrap of my copy claims it was "conceived in tight attics & vacant dens on off hours when her young son nuutti was fast asleep." i like this. a sleeping infant is perfectly emblematic of this music - which is tranquil, gentle and occasionally foggy. the record carries a bit of the uncertainty that attends learning to speak. the mysterious side of childhood, instead of the cute stuff.

here's a nice youtube video. i'd probably dress like her if i was a girl:

9.

the tag-line on this old-school edition of gustave flaubert's salambo is indicative of its problematic nature: THE BLOODLUST AND PASSION OF ANCIENT AFRICA. if that testimonial gives you pause, i understand your discomfort. this book is one of the most notorious examples of "orientalism" in literature, and its historical setting becomes a fantasy canvas of sordid sex and violence (with conveniently non-white perpetrators). but because this is the author of madame bovary, there's a strange sobriety to the prose that really impressed me. so i have to say i loved the novel, in spite of major reservations.

the story takes place following the first punic war in carthage (3rd century B.C.), and details a mercenary revolt against hamilcar barca (the real-life father of hannibal). the mercenaries are lead by matho, who is in love with hamilcar's (fictitious) daughter salambo. don't be scared off by the historical specifics (though apparently flaubert's research was extremely rigorous) - i have a pretty sub-par understanding of antiquity and it didn't take me long to worm my way into the story.

flaubert is typically thought of as a "realist" novelist - capable of prying open the human psyche with great precision - as made evident by his most famous works (madame bovary, sentimental education). but there was a quasi-flip-side to his realism. in his personal life, he maintained a long fascination with northern africa and the middle east, much of which is apparently documented in flaubert in egypt (which i need to read). edward said consideres this side of flaubert in orientalism, where he expresses an ambivalent fascination similar to my own as i read this novel (though my reaction is far less informed and critical, obviously).

let's face it - if someone allots real artistic space to their most lavish, subversive impulses, i'm bound to take an interest. if that person has a rich sense of history and an absolute mastery of language, then even better. so it follows that the image appearing in my head as a hacked-off elephant tusk is lodged into a tree during one of salambo's battles is about as odd and exhilarating as any offered by my bookshelves. in fact, i found salambo superior to what i've read of the "french decadent" literature it helped inspire. lautremont's maldoror and huysmans' against nature feel contrived by comparison. there's something cold about salambo - if it's an act of catharsis, it's not particularly ideological. i didn't feel any particular connection to its characters, and even the hyper-sexual descriptions of its title character seem set at a distance. to use the terms of 21st century identity politics, it's as if flaubert speaks about otherness, rather than for or through his exotic subjects. this doesn't excuse his impulses necessarily, but it does complicate them. and i like my novels complicated.

8.

have you guys heard this mark gormley dude? i have a feeling these videos are making the rounds on account of their kitchy appearance (imagine your dad dropping acid and filming a karaoke video on a boardwalk in new jersey), but i gotta say i genuinely LOVE the guy's music. if you close your eyes and ignore the fabulous blue screen, he wouldn't sound out of place beside kindred spirits like mark fry, skip spence or marc bolan...

(and before we move on... let's hear a round of applause for "the flamboyant" phil thomas katt...)

7.

a few months back, i was fortunate enough to see mark dion's project for bartram's garden. dion is an artist famous for staging mock scientific experiments - he uses his affection for natural history and museum culture to poke fun at the certainty of western knowledge. bartram's garden is the oldest surviving botanic garden in north america, conveniently located in an otherwise scary pocket of southwest philly. with bartram's travel journals, drawings, and maps as his guide, dion retraced the exploratory path of the 18th century naturalist through northern florida, collecting environmental "specimens" along the way. but being that dion's journey occurred in the 21st century, the cabinets-of-curiosity he eventually exhibited at the gardens consisted mostly of gift shop knick knacks, trash, seeds and leaves.

i saw dion speak while he was in town, and i was struck by his lack of irony. he had a sense of humor about his projects, but it was clear that he takes his "science" seriously. in a project like dion's, it would be easy to sail by on the quirkiness of his concept, instead of the labor needed to carry it out. too often, artists merely flirt with other disciplines, when they ought to throw themselves into them. dion's approach is the real nitty-gritty. he seems to understand that historians and archaeologists can be every bit as innovative and eccentric as "artists," and he structures his experiments accordingly.

while i'm on the topic, i'll add that bartram's garden is well worth a trip with or without dion. more and more, i'm learning that philadelphia contains several, secret nature-utopia-hideouts. my inner-granola has been satiated lately.

6.

i know we're all tired of gushy blog posts about how great obama is, but can i just say that this schoolboy yearbook photo of his features some of the most fantastic style i've seen in ages. look at all the crazy-ass 70's patterns on display, people! check out the teacher in the forest-green muumuu! ladies and gentlemen, this is why i make paintings.

5.

well, hollywood finally made a western for people who actually watch westerns, but almost no one seemed to notice. ed harris' appaloosa is pretty lean on biblical dread and ham-fisted "revisionism." no one drags a rotting corpse to mexico, the violence isn't particularly sadistic, and there are no sophomoric observations about the connection between religion and oil. harris isn't looking to sam peckinpah or sergio leone, he's looking to budd boetticher and anthony mann.

in its heart-of-hearts, appaloosa is a film about two dudes hanging out. that doesn't mean there isn't a central conflict, a narrative arc or great performances (two of which come from people with no business being in a western: jeremy irons and renee zellweger). but its scope is small, and its agenda is unimposing. instead of looking back to the "twilight westerns" of the 60's and 70's, harris draws from the genre's first heyday of sophistication - the post-high noon period of the 1950's.

in films like the naked spur, day of the outlaw and the original 3:10 to yuma, the bombast of "cowboys-and-indians" was mostly set aside in favor of minor-note adult dramas. these were films with flawed heroes, sympathetic antagonists and human-scale predicaments. appaloosa looks back to these films with laid-back humility. this is the first hollywood film i've seen since zodiac that really takes its time, instead of overloading the screen with excess gravy. things are simply - and carefully - rendered, and the effect is refreshingly effortless. each character feels like an affectionate portrait, often in spite of what's happening on screen. zellweger is particularly noteworthy, since (for me) she manages to circumvent chauvinistic expectations. she should be an unlikeable character, but she comes out on top. not through some contrived tug-at-the-heart, but by moving in sync with a narrative that isn't particularly concerned with judgment. appaloosa takes a warts-and-all approach to human companionship. and it does so while paying close allegiance to genre lines, which is probably why so few seemed to notice.

4.

when i was a little kid, i would occasionally break rules just to see what would happen. i'd hide from babysitters, curse in front of parents... nothing too outrageous. there was something exhilarating about getting caught in these moments. in fact, part of my curiosity necessitated it. without getting caught, i'd never know what happens when you get caught. punishment was part of the game.

as i read georges simenon's disturbing novel dirty snow, i found myself thinking about these moments. there's something experimental and philosophical about them. as a child, i needed to act out once in a while to get a sense of my own parameters. by learning social protocols, adapting to them and understanding what awaits me when i transgress them, i became (for better or worse) a "moral person."

but what if those parameters never settled into place? or worse, what if i were born into a system that rewarded my ugliest acts of insurrection? these are the questions posed in simenon's often-appalling little novel. dirty snow tells the story of frank - the young son of a brothel madam who spends his days doing as he pleases. frank lives in occupied europe (probably france during the vichy years) - where his mother's business, a culture of injustice and his own will-to-power have served him very well. frank is an unrepentant scumbag, but there's nothing otherworldly about him. his desires and emotions are familiar, he has a strong oedipal fascination with one of his neighbors and he seems genuinely bewildered by the lack of punishment following his most disgusting acts.

in a sense, frank is suspended in the same juvenile game i used to play as a child. his actions are ultimately metaphysical - he seems to want to challenge the universe. but there's no diabolical scheming involved; frank isn't smart enough to be a philosopher. and in spite of his "metaphysics," there's a well-rendered political dimension to dirty snow - create an authoritarian state, and assholes like him will rise to the top. but frank doesn't want to thrive exactly. his most desired transgression might be a slap on the wrist. as the novel progresses, the retribution that awaits him becomes an odd form of wish fulfillment. there is "justice" - i guess - in the abstract. but never catharsis.

3.

i don't know why it's taken me this long to plug my friend (bearbait) ed luce's comic wuvable oaf, but i think a lot of you would really like it. it's funny, it's drawn well... there are kitties everywhere... musclemen wear morrissey t-shirts... showgirls references abound... what's not to love? male body hair has never been so lovingly rendered.

2.

there's a great post up at the house next door, comparing mike leigh's brilliant film happy-go-lucky to charlie kaufmann's (in my estimation) rotten synecdoche, ny. for my money, it's a case of earned optimism versus unearned profundity. there's a lot to say about happy-go-lucky, a character study that outperforms everyone from miranda july to barack obama in the "hope and sincerity" department. i can be pretty hard on "the new sincerity" sometimes (since i think it places too much emphasis on shared notions of authenticity), but leigh's film is the real deal. its optimism is earthy, legitimate, subversive and unexpected. beside it, kaufmann's film feels like a fossil. the house's luke de smet puts it well:

There is nothing intrinsic to our suffering that endows us with wisdom, and our misanthropy does not render us wiser. This is a film that challenges any sense of resentment in identity building, and for that alone, it deserves wide praise. It does not challenge the existence of pain. Rather, it challenges our attempts to define ourselves in terms of it.

while i'm no the subject, i must say that sally hawkins' performance as the initially-annoying-but-ultimately-admirable polly is an absolute sight-to-behold. too often, "good acting" is remarkably easy to categorize. it's default-mode is either "method" or "shakespearean" - which is to say it's either "brando" or "olivier." or for arthouse snobs like me, there's a third (bressonian?) category in which charismatic people just basically stand still (michelle williams makes great use of this in the also-excellent wendy and lucy). hawkins' performance doesn't readily fit any of these. she's far too loud and jumpy to fit the arthouse model, but not bombastic enough for the shakespearean one. furthermore, she never relies on conventions of "realism." hawkins doesn't slip quietly into an established naturalism, but she never appears to be hamming it up either. her character is believable, but she's out of sync with my universe. and as she ruptures that universe, i still find a way to connect to her, which is rather remarkable.

1.

television seems to get better and better lately. and for my money, the best show currently on the market is AMC's mad men. a lot has been said about this show, so i'll limit my observations to three basic remarks:

A: people tend to describe mad men as an historical drama or a throwback to hitchcock, but for my money - when you get past genre signifiers - it mostly functions as a dystopia. it has all the characteristics of dystopia - it sets its audience at a cultural distance from what is depicted, uses that distance to create tension, and redirects its tension toward contemporary issues. as peggy tiptoes through the corporate universe of the 1960's, it often feels like she's stuck in some gender-nightmare-world. and that journey inevitably gets me thinking about my own notions of gender.

B: mad men is the perfect show for straight men who easily befriend women. don draper isn't only a chauvinistic womanizer, he's also a man in desperate need of decent conversation. he can't find it with the guys at work and he hasn't figured out how to establish it with his wife or children. so he sleeps around - preferrably with someone more interesting than he is. i don't mean to imply that don's not in it for the sex. one of the things i like about mad men is its unapologetic sexuality. but he's in it for the pillow talk too. and to the show's credit, this isn't depicted as a threat to his masculinity. don isn't a "closet case" or a sensitive artist. he's an alpha male who also happens to be intelligent. he's expected to act patronizing or predatory in front of women, and it feels false to him. but since he lives in the gender-nightmare-world, sordid sex tends to be the solution he comes up with.

as a guy who's occasionally been dealt a dirty eye for not spending sufficient time with the dudes at a social gathering, i gotta say i feel for don sometimes.

C: sometimes mad men is just plain old sad. at its best, it sharply examines the ways that ideology overpowers individuals. the characters are often literally trapped, and the show avoids sentimental solutions. it produces a kind of cultural claustrophobia. the fact that it takes place in a design firm makes perfect sense. everyone is artistic, but no one is exactly "an artist." its characters often flirt with something counter-cultural (writing a story, reading a poem, smoking a joint), but they can't quite "go underground." this tension is most brilliantly exemplified when bertram cooper - the ayn-rand-quoting windbag that owns the company - purchases a mark rothko painting for his office. several characters break into his office after hours to assess the painting, knowing cooper will expect them to say something profound about it. as they stand there, they become aware of their lack of profundity, and their melancholy begins to mirror that of the painting. but no one makes the connection. the rothko stains the office like a bad omen.

new painting!

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Wild Thing, (2009, mixed media: pencil, gouache, india ink and paper collage on board), 36 " by 36"

... not sure i'm wild about this JPEG. looks a bit yellow-y? anyway - as you can see - things are getting more chaotic and a bit less figurative. here's a detail, from more-or-less the center of the image:

as usual, bigger images are available on my flickr. as well as a folder of gallery shots from my show at rebekah templeton, on display till the end of february. less narcissistic blogging is on the way soon... if there even is such a thing?

my show opens tomorrow

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 21:41:31 GMT

Up All Night: Mixed Media Paintings by Dan Schank

January 8th - February 28th, 2009
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 8th 6 - 9 pm
Rebekah Templeton Contemporary Art
173 W. Girard Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19123
267-519-3884

... so tomorrow night is my big opening. i wish i had more time to write about this around these parts. the past 3 days have been super crazy style busy. it's a solo show, featuring 7 paintings. one of them is brand new. i finished it yesterday afternoon, and i haven't shot pics of it yet. the image above is a detail from an old one. anyway, expect some documentation later in the week.

if you're local, definitely drop by tomorrow night! and if not, the show is open through february...

happy new years!

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:36:51 GMT

these dudes need to find themselves some GIRLS.

seriously though, i could watch soulja boy-related youtube all day. search "crank dat," you won't regret it.

2008 went better than expected. it was certainly the most broke-a$$ year of my adult life, but otherwise i could have done worse. i got my work on a few gallery walls (and i'll ring in the new year with a solo show at rebekah templeton gallery in philly opening january 8th... expect an official post later), found some decent teaching work towards the end of the year, went on a few nice trips (milwaukee, chicago, various nature-ish things), and met some cool people (including a nice young lady). some resolutions:

* shake it up a bit in the studio. i've got a few ideas about this, and most of them revolve around scaling up, working more quickly, and being less fussy about technique and materials. i'd like to finish 8 large scale works in 2009, and i think i can do it.

* start paying off some debt! yikes!

* write more often - here as well as semi-professionally. i find that i'm happiest when i've got art and writing practices going simultaneously, and i've fallen off the wagon a bit with both. expect more posting. oh, and did i ever link to murdermystery's film site, where i reviewed harmony korine's mister lonely? might be fun to do more stuff like this, etc.

* read more. i only read 30-31 books this year, which i've chronicled on goodreads - complete with mini-reviews - if anyone is curious. i'd like to be more in the 50-60 zone, honestly. or read a book a week, which i always say i will do (and don't). i got a LOT of books for x-mas, which should get me started. oh and maybe i'll get back to marx's capital one of these days too... sigh...

otherwise, things are on a decent track for me. i hope your new year's celebration is fun. mine involves an attempt at a vegetarian soup from morocco; we'll see how that goes. i'll leave you with more crank dat youtube, so you can party like it's 2007:

this one is clearly my favorite.

merry x-mas! go tell it on the mountain! testify!

Thu, 25 Dec 2008 17:14:27 GMT

i was at church last night. i still get roped into going once a year. the experience of what it feels like to sit through a catholic mass in suburban PA has never been more accurately captured than it is in this video. i felt like the younger one on the right...

otherwise, the holidays rule! i'm gonna get drunk with my high school friends tonight!

happy thanksgiving!

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 07:08:49 GMT

i figure this is as good a time as any to post the much delayed fall mixtape, part of my on-going mixtape for each season project which i promise from now to eternity. i guess technically i'm a few days late for the season, but thankgiving always feels more "fall" than "winter," right?

1. emmanuelle parrenin, "ce matin a fremontel"
2. nina simone, "cherish"
3. donovan, "sunny goodge street"
4. brenda holloway, "every little bit hurts"
5. gal costa, "tuareg"
6. mona baptiste, "calypso blues"
7. bridget st. john, "back to stay"
8. white rainbow, "mystic prism"
9. wganda kenya, "tift hayed"
10. orchestre super jheevs des paillotes, "ye nan lon an"
11. tall dwarfs, "all my hollowness to you"
12. the clean, "end of my dream"
13. rodriguez, "crucify your mind"
14. neil young, "star of bethlehem"
15. maher shalal hash baz, "september come i will"
16. lau nau, "vuoren laelle"

DOWNLOAD HERE

so... if this works ok, the trick (apparently?) is to dump the tracks into i-tunes and then list the mix by album. supposedly they'll play chronologically that way.

making the tracks flow in a specific order is 75% of the fun with these, so please let me know if you're having trouble playing this properly...

(some tracks will be mentioned in an upcoming ten good things post that i SWEAR will actually happen one of these days!!!)

art showcase at the university of the arts

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 22:09:15 GMT

hey, if anyone is in philly tomorrow, i'm having a closing reception for some work i've had in a little showcase at the university of the arts on broad street. here's the official invite:

ON DISPLAY: A collective show

Works by Dan Schank and his students from the 2008 Pre-College Summer Institute Collage class. Also featuring student work selected for the Continuing Studies permanent collection from digital photography classes in Continuing Education and Pre-College Programs.

November 7, 2008 5 pm - 7 pm

9th Floor Showcase, Terra Hall

it's not a full-blown gallery thing. just five paintings behind glass in a hallway, along with some student work from the Collage course i taught there in the summer. the work is on display in Terra hall, which is on broad street at the corner of walnut. it's a few blocks up from the rest of the campus. take the elevator to the ninth floor.

i was gonna post the show flyer, but i couldn't convert the file, so you get halloween pics instead. i came out a bit more "beastie boy" than cannonball run, but whatever. if i hadn't just cut my hair, i'd have made creative use of the blow dryer...

i need to wear those shoes more often.

my age, the election, predictions, presumptions

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 04:02:11 GMT

my dad is convinced that the bradley effect will cost obama the election. i've tried to reason with him-- stressing the increasingly insurmountable lead he has in basically every poll. i think barring a last minute terrorist strike or news of a sordid affair with sister souljah, obama is sitting pretty at this point.

george packer has been writing some interesting things about the end of an era, documenting the palin gaffes, greenspan apologies and ineffective hate that's triggered the current GOP implosion. their old tricks don't seem to be working. my dad notices this, but remains fatalistic (he's a political moderate who supports obama). when we talk, i try to play the role of "realist" rather than "optimist," because what's happening seems to be "realistically" good...

one of the striking personal distinctions between the 2008 and 2004 elections is my age in relation to it. and my dad is almost exactly 30 years older than me. i turned 32 in september; he'll be 62 in december. four years ago i was 28, and he was about to turn 58. back them, i was still a part of the wide-eyed "youth" demographic... one of those supposedly naive optimists expected to applaud howard dean as if he were MLK marching to washington (i didn't). but in '08, i'm entering the boring "adult" demographic, and my dad is approaching retirement.

the funny thing about the mc cain/palin campaign is that it's been banking on my dad instead of me. i'm not convinced that right-wing hate has suddenly lost its use-value, but mc cain certainly didn't choose his hate wisely. for example, while a baby boomer might look at bill ayers and see a terrorist radical, to a dude in his early thirties he seems like someone they'd interview during an imaginary episode of david crosby: behind the music... another nostalgic 60's activist with tenure at some random university. when people my age hear about his romanticized generation, we remember how many of his peers voted for reagan when we were little.

and hell-- some of us don't remember reagan at all, which is why the "socialist" card doesn't seem to have much effect. hell, when i think of the soviet union, stupid bullshit like this comes to mind:

communism isn't threatening anymore. it's not red meat for the right, and it's no longer the baby of the left. do sarah palin's supporters even know who hugo chavez is? do they really care? "joe the plumber" is *one year older than i am*... when he looks at barack obama does he imagine a black panther with his fist in the air? does he realize how closely his own image mirrors the "everyman proletariat" of the old left? his appearance becomes a strange tombstone for "red scare" tactics-- he's the bizarro tom joad of the far right. mc cain has an ad where random people say "i'm joe the plumber." it's the red scare in reverse-- government comes along and makes everyone the same. only in this case that "same-ness" necessitates an odd preoccupation with the tax rights of the extremely rich.

i think obama is gonna win the election tomorrow. and i'm gonna vote for him. rather than yap about why, i'll just say i agree with steven shaviro:

In the present circumstances, this means that Obama’s rhetoric of hope, no matter how vapid and empty it may actually be, still matters. Anyone who thinks that Obama will actually change things is in for severe disappointment if he wins. It’s pretty clear that Obama will do no more than restore Clintonian neoliberalism, in place of the revanchist militarism and rampant looting and pillaging that characterizes the current Bush-Cheney regime (and that McCain, for all his promises of “change”, will do nothing to alter). In other words, Obama may well rescue us somewhat from the nightmare of the last eight years, but only to the extent of restoring the status quo ante, with its foreign bombings and domestic “rationalizations” of the economy, that we rightly objected to in the 1990s. Nonetheless, the fact that Obama, Biden, and company pay lip service to humane values that they will not actually uphold is in itself a cause for hope, for maintaining a “hope we can believe in,” or (to quote a past Presidential candidate whom it is now taboo to mention) for “keep[ing] hope alive.”

as for mc cain, the cynic in me says he banked on the wrong type of hate. he's preaching to a silent majority that's thankfully begun to disappear. which isn't to say that hate isn't still with us, or that we've arrived at the "post-race america" conservative ideologues will undoubtedly spend the next four years pretending is upon us. my father might remember an era of "colored" water fountains, but i'll come to maturity in an america where one in nine African American men between the ages of 20 and 34 is in prison (and we have that commie pinko joe biden to thank for much of the legislation). 21st century hatred is often invisible (and institutional). consider this presidential campaign, with its endless panic about racism and misogyny. there's obviously been boatloads of both, but (for my money) the nastiest hate has been directed towards muslims. as i watched rudy guiliani address the RNC a few months back, i invented a morbid game for myself: every time he mentions "islam," substitute the word "jew" instead. exhibit A:

And he will keep us on offense against terrorism at home and abroad. For 4 days in Denver and for the past 18 months Democrats have been afraid to use the words "~~Islamic~~ Jewish Terrorism." During their convention, the Democrats rarely mentioned the attacks of September 11.

sounds a lot more fucked up, doesn't it?

if i do get a president of color tomorrow, i hope he signals an era of less "invisible" bigotry. i'm sure that, a few months from now, obama will break my heart with an array of "centrist" compromises... but hopefully he'll have eroded some of the WILLFUL ignorance of the bush years as well. i don't quite swallow the "change" he's selling, but in my cranky way, this is about as excited as i've been about a political candidate in my lifetime. the side of me that wants to light the white house on fire and start over is probably alive and well, but i'm hoping that november 4th will allow me to showcase my kinder, gentler side.

P.S.- some predictions for the truly dorky (and just for the hell of it):

* obama wins by 3-5% of the popular vote
* obama wins PA, VA, NV, CO, NM, IA, MI, MN, NH
* obama loses FL, MO, WV, IN, NC and possibly OH
* that's 271- obama, 243- mc cain, in electoral votes
* if you're still reading this, i simultaneously love you and am concerned for your mental health
* and, oh, what the hell: palin, or someone a lot like her, will be the 2012 candidate... the GOP will find someone essentially like mike huckabee, but either non-white or female (bobby jindal?)... palin will spend the next four years undergoing a makeover of mark wahlberg-level proportions, and the party will bank on her protective-den-mother bullshit to kneecap an obama re-election... the faux-populism will continue (though with less emphasis on "real americas"), but neo-con foreign policy will head to the back burner... the most unpopular conservative image will be the mitt romney type (the fiscal, country-club CEO image), and people like him will retreat behind the curtain more convincingly... meanwhile, danschank will wander a mad max- like eco-dystopia, jobless, fueled by stolen oil, with student loan bureaucrats and collection agencies hot on his trail. with an ever-graying head of hair, and striking lack of virility, he will resemble dennis kucinich more than ever.

I, TOO, AM GREY-HAIRED AND ELFIN... AND I APPROVE THIS MESSAGE!!!

happy halloween

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 23:55:27 GMT

real posts are on the way soon, i promise...

in the meantime, here's a halloween youtube mixtape for y'allzzz...

let's start things off with the best homemade music video on the web, with the most halloweeny hasil adkins song i know of...

this is what your childhood looked like...

NSFW...

arguably the best pop song ever written...

this is your brain on drugs...

my favorite member of kiss sends this one out to a special lady...

most quotable danschank movie dialogue, circa 1987...

and finally... the late, great charles nelson reilly...

HAPPY HALLOWEEN, MOFOS!!! and for the morbidly curious, my costume.

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 16:25:14 GMT

r.i.p.

happy birthday georges bataille

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 12:12:24 GMT

dennis cooper has a great tribute post up today concerning philosopher/economist/author/peripheral surrealist weirdo georges bataille, who would have been 111 years old today. click the quote to check it out:

Man has escaped from his head just as the condemned man has escaped from his prison. He has found beyond himself not God, who is the prohibition against crime, but a being who is unaware of prohibition. Beyond what I am, I meet a being who makes me laugh because he is headless; this fills me with dread because he is made of innocence and crime; he holds a steel weapon in his left hand, flames like those of a Sacred Heart in his right. He reunites in the same eruption Birth and Death. He is not a man. He is not a god either. He is not me but he is more than me: his stomach is the labyrinth in which he has lost himself, loses me with him, and in which I discover myself as him, in other words as a monster.

(us virgos are friggin' weird.)

ten good things

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 06:37:51 GMT

(it's been a while... hopefully the insane length of this will make up for my tardiness)

10.

i was in NYC about two months back, which afforded me the opportunity to geek out old-skool-style with purldrop about music. apparently both of our tastes are moving ever closer to seventies soft rock, of all things. the deeper we both delve into the folksy side of psychedelia, the more a mild hybrid of the two begins to open up. this soft little niche offers a number of charming, pleasantly arranged, well-conceived albums that don't get the love they deserve.

nick garrie's the nightmare of j.b. stanislas is one of the best of the bunch. released-- in france only (???)-- in 1969 to little fanfare, it fits nicely next to "baroque pop" gems like bill fay's time of the last persecution, nick drake's five leaves left and the first four solo albums by my beloved scott walker. garrie's breezy vocal delivery calls to mind early donovan, but his arrangements owe more to the psychedelic momentum that followed the release of sgt. pepper. the orchestration is often wildly inventive, but never overbearing. perfect summer music-- and probably the album that's been in heaviest rotation around these parts lately.

9.

my friend laura recently lent me chimamanda ngozi adichie's half of a yellow sun, which marks an unsettling first for danschank: the first novel i've read by someone literally younger than me (born in 1977). aargh! what am i doing with my life?

anyway, it's a remarkably accomplished book. it's a page turner that requires patience. an un-pretentious epic, let's say. the central narrative concerns the short-lived republic of biafra-- which seceded from nigeria in 1967, only to reunite in 1970 after a long conflict and intense famine. adichie approaches the subject through three figures: a beautiful young igbo activist named olanna, her 13 year old house-boy ugwu, and a british ex-pat named richard.

the structure of the book might be described as brilliantly lop-sided. from the start, i knew atrocities were coming. the famine that ultimately destroyed the republic was horrifying-- doctors without borders was formed as a response to it, for example. but rather than dive right into the horror, adichie spends nearly two-thirds of the book concentrating on her characters. beneath a cloud of oncoming pain and suffering, she offers an extended glimpse of long conversations, infidelities, difficult friendships, superstitions, celebrations, arguments and romances. i felt firmly located within her world by the time it began to unravel. during its final pages, it's as if its sense of gravity has transformed entirely. the balance begins to tip-- and the ship starts to sink. all the affections i'd generated over the previous 350-ish pages begin to mutate into something tragic and horrible. but also intimate and totally worthwhile.

8.

as many of you know from my recent art-related brainstorming, i'm preoccupied with the overlap between the political sphere and the world's resources. i've been browsing a number of eco-blogs like treehugger (really comprehensive, but too distracted by gadgets and celebrities) and world changing (more legit, not as fun to casually scroll through), and trying to alter my behavior as best i can. accordingly, i wanted to pass along a link to this article by paul roberts:

the seven myths of energy independence.

.
i'm obviously not well-informed enough to offer a conclusive stamp-of-approval about everything it contains, but i found this piece comprehensive and convincing (not to mention funny... consider myth #5: some geek in silicon valley will fix the problem). roberts is especially weary of "gadgeting" our way out of the problem-- the idea that if we just keep consuming things with energy star or usda organic stamped on them, then al gore will carry us off to the heavens.

7.
when i think of "film canons," there's a certain kind of movie that always fits the bill. let's call it the david lean prototype: rise and fall of charismatic figure, grand historical backdrop, lavish sets, dynamic performances, and so on. in addition to lean's own stuff (lawrence of arabia, dr. zhivago), this type re-occurs throughout film history-- from citizen kane to the godfather to there will be blood. some of these flicks are great and some aren't, but they share a certain aesthetic path to critical acclaim.

still, there are weirder films that find their way to these "canons" as well. and not just brilliant, revisionist canons like jonathan rosenbaum's. your garden variety top-100 is bound to include ambiguous, understated films like the rules of the game or tokyo story. films with covert agendas, that lack battle sequences and handsome panoramas. for every wizard of oz, there's a sullivan's travels. for every stagecoach, a johnny guitar.

i recently revisited charles laughton's the night of the hunter, a film that's generally interpreted according to david lean-ish terms. hunter takes the guise of transcendental, biblical allegory-- its corny, moralistic side is brushed aside in favor of expressionistic photography and robert mitchum's charismatic performance. both of these things work splendidly, of course. but there's more to the picture.

revisiting night of the hunter, i was struck by what a knot of contradictions it is. it begins with the nauseating wholesomeness of a fifties sitcom. there's a remarkable lack of ambiguity-- it doesn't take long to sort the good guys from the bad guys, and character depth isn't part of its vision. even the strength of mitchum's performance (and let's face it, it's one of the greats) comes from its intensity rather than its complexity. but his arrival marks a tonal imbalance. mitchum, and the suddenly austere cinematography he seems to bring with him, appears as if from a different universe. the film becomes stylistically mis-matched. imperfect, even. this isn't cape fear-- it's our town, and mitchum marks a significant shift in the weather.

and he's not the only sign of climate change. laughton is an impulsive director-- he's hygienic one minute and nightmarish the next. instead of balancing the two, he lets each impulse exhaust itself. and the discordant physicality this creates is unlike anything i've seen.

when the harper kids famously take to the river, it's as if the film itself begins to dream. nothing that comes prior-- not even mitchum's malevolence-- prepares me for this extended, gentle twilight. in a typical film, the shift would be psychological. but laughton doesn't develop his characters. the kids remain dull and innocent, but their world begins expanding. as the boat moves on, it sheds its human skin. there's too much atmosphere-- too much darkness, too little dialogue, too many creatures of the forest. as a rupture in the film's narrative, it neither adds nor subtracts anything. but it creates a kind of simultaneity. the universe seems to express itself-- to align itself to the events onscreen-- and these kids aren't the only instruments of its expression. hell, they might not even be its focus.

and eventually the film wakes up. the boat comes ashore, and lilian gish makes her entrance. gish's den-mother moralizing isn't radically different from the stuff at the beginning of the film, but by this point i've been banged around quite a bit. the story she steps into is equal parts horror movie, bible study and surrealist dream. with her keen, silent-era physicality, she anchors these impulses. as she sits with a shotgun in her rocking chair at the film's climax, i get a sense of her gravity. she seems to embody the same eerie presence i felt on the river. when mitchum arrives, i buy into the biblical tension that results. it's as if the film prepares me for it physically, redefining my capacity to dream as it rocks me off to troubled sleep.

6.

while we're on the subject of idiosyncratic, well-respected movies that are worth their hype, i gotta say that WALL-E is pretty remarkable. a few scattered thoughts...

years ago, when pixar released toy story, i remember this conversation i had with my friend justin about it. i thought it was ok, being vaguely impressed with the animation. but justin hated it. he thought it subtly implied that creativity is bad. if you've seen the movie, the bad kid pulls apart all his toys and reassembles them. they then become evil monster toys that torment all the normal ones. justin thought the implicit message was: don't fuck with your toys. a cowboy is a cowboy, an astronaut is an astronaut and boring, bullshit actors like tom hanks and tim allen should be accepted uncritically as role models. fantasy should be passive and unambiguous.

now, WALL-E might also be a pixar movie, but its message is almost the exact opposite. one of my favorite moments in the film is where we're introduced to WALL-E's home. it's a cabinet of curiosities not unlike papa jules' cabin in l'atalante... but instead of old phonographs and KITTIES, there's out-moded computer parts and cockroaches. WALL-E is a radical aesthete-- he finds pleasure almost exclusively in the impractical. it's telling that "holding hands" becomes so central to the storyline-- a gesture that exists only to make something special. WALL-E seems to live exclusively for this sort of "specialness"-- which is repeatedly presented as impractical, accidental and "useless."

for a movie notable for its sweetness and sincerity, WALL-E is remarkably frank about some awful things. i couldn't help thinking of philip k. dick as i watched him do his "work"... transforming trash into compact cubes and creating obelisks out of them that no one sees. WALL-E's post-apocalyptic universe fits dick's definition of "kipple" (from do androids dream of electric sheep? among others) to a T:

Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday's homeopape. When nobody's around, kipple reproduces itself ... the entire universe is moving towards a final state of total, absolute kippleization.

it's a sentimental movie in a lot of ways, but not about stuff like this. WALL-E's labor is stupid and soulless, and there's no redemption to be found in it. the film's also come under some criticism for its portrayal of obesity, but i think it needs to go as far as it does. there's a crunchiness to its world of disembodied, instant-messaging zombies that's timely and relevant. and the film is smart enough to argue against culture instead of individuals... in keeping with its love of the inconsequential, a simple act of introduction becomes a moment of redemption. when WALL-E accidentally bumps into "john" (voiced by cliff from cheers... nice touch), his greeting is enough to jolt him out of his passionless existence. like night of the hunter, WALL-E isn't focused on intellectual complexity. i'm not implying that its arguments are tantamount to the society of the spectacle (psst... they're better...). but it is that rare film that can make something with deep roots understandable to a wide audience.

in fact, much of its strength comes from this simplicity... from the way this little dude seems incapable of passive engagement, and the way he approaches each scenario with the same goofy generosity. even the romance avoids a lot of the usual trappings. hell, take away names and voices and it might well be genderless (eve's slender, i-pod "femininity" is cleverly canceled out by her ability to needlessly transform into a weapon of mass destruction). too often, romantic comedies-- whether aimed at children or adults-- are about boys trying to civilize themselves. it's true of lady and the tramp, and it's true of knocked up. the male character is brutish, or defiant, or vulgar, or filthy... and the woman forces him to clean up his act. which is a boring, unfair imbalance-- the dude gets to wrestle with various demons, have adventures, provide me with laughs... and the girl gets, i dunno, rewarded for her patience? in WALL-E, there's almost none of this nonsense. if there are "masculine" traits to be found, they belong exclusively to eve. she's the one who saves the day... and does it in the least angelina-jolie-sexpot way possible. but ultimately it's not about male/female at all. it's about making connections, and it sure as hell made one with me.

5.

man, i had a blast in chicago. it was all about great mexican food, decent conversation and AWESOME KUNG FU MOVIES. chicago seems like a great blend of a bunch of different cities. there's generally more enthusiasm there than here in philly, but none of that overbearing self-promotion horseshit i can't escape in NYC. i felt like it was really easy to chill out there, and i met some great people who were willing to do it with me.

plus, check out these handsome longshoreman i picked up down at the docks:

apologies if this is the 60th time this photo has ended up on your friends' page... isn't it weird how the grey-hair on my temples make me look like that stretchy guy from the fantastic four? also pay close attention to the intense awesomeness of everyone in the periphery of this photo... good times...

4.

i'm pretty sure bing_crosby mentioned this like three months ago, but since it's been forever since i put one of these together, i gotta mention how awesome carla bozulich's evangelista was live. *TOTALLY FUCKING INTENSE.* and to make things even better, i saw them in the chapel of the first unitarian church here in philly. it's gonna be tough to describe what this setting was like. here's a picture i found while googling that doesn't do it justice:

you can't quite get a sense of it, but the room is tiny tiny tiny. seats 50 people. and considering evangelista had about 8 people on stage at any given time, it was tightly packed. add to that the music itself, a really intimate mix of avant-garde noise, blues, and patti smith-style bad-ass-ed-ness. i wrote about it before, actually.

when the doors shut, and the performance began, it felt claustrophobic and inescapable. but in a good way. bozulich wandered up and down the aisles-- whispering, hollering, breaking the space between performer and audience in exciting ways. every once in a while, she'd drop the mike entirely and sing loud enough to be heard without amplification. i could feel it run up my spine when she did that. a one of a kind experience.

3.
as tired as i am with the whole stuff white people like schenanigans (i'm not linking to it... enough already), the site got me thinking about the ways that being white, educated, privileged, etc. actually does amount to a culture. maybe there's even a fear of "culture" simmering beneath that site. it's as if, by endlessly renewing my ability to condemn myself, my tofu-eatin' ass avoids the intimacy of "culture." these traits emerge as embarrassing residue, and the antithesis of authenticity. lazy self-ridicule replaces legit introspection.

which isn't to say that stuff white people like isn't spot-on sometimes. or funny, for that matter. but it's emblematic of this pannicky, guilty-white-liberal button that lurks beneath a lot of people i know (maybe myself?). i'm trying to un-plug that button, frankly. and i think one of the ways to do it is to be honest about my so-called "whiteness."

about a month back, i got pretty wrapped up in this HBO show called in treatment. it's not the best show in the world. it gets bogged down in a may/december romance that's never as interesting as it wants to be. and it lays on the melodrama a little too heavily. the premise is enjoyably simple-- each week, for a half hour at a time, a psychologist (played by gabriel byrne) meets with one of his patients. each patient (there's 3 individuals and one couple) gets a specific day, and then on fridays byrne visits his own therapist. that's it. the whole show is people talking.

my favorite plotline concerns sophie. as far as "whiteness" is concerned, sophie is about as wretched as they come. she's a spoiled suburban teen. she's defensive, petty and materialistic. she's cruel to byrne, she's really cruel to her mother, and she's EVIL to her friends and classmates. i would not have hung out with her in high school.

but rather than satirize her shortcomings, the show kinda buries itself into them. i guess the tactics aren't that unusual: get into a character's head to create empathy, follow bad behavior toward childhood trauma, vulnerability, etc. these tricks aren't anything new. but in treatment is unusually sensitive about them. the tone is respectful, and its intensity is often unforgiving. sophie's drama rarely falls prey to the soapy sensationalism that scars some other parts of the series.

her story is typical of white privilege at its worst. she's a product of superficial parenting, substituting wealth for care and concern. the adults that surround her are mostly suspended adolescents, too concerned with success and appearances and getting laid to attend to her. when sophie asserts the suicidal tendencies that land her on the therapist's couch, these adults barely know what symptoms to look for, let alone what help to offer.

sophie's alienation plays out almost exclusively in terms of the body. her sessions are repeatedly marked by physical feats, food taboos and sexual thresholds. her uncertainty is always performative; she uses movement both as a means of defense and as a cry for help. it's a little weird to talk about this as a dude, but there's something unfortunately familiar about her. in treatment got me thinking about the ways women-- and rich, young white women in particular-- often inhabit vastly different social bodies than my own. by the series end, i recognized that my own feelings of alienation-- which are almost always interior, private and psychological-- carry with them a kind of privilege. unlike sophie, i rarely feel obligated to parrot some unnatural social disguise. because of race and gender (not to mention weight and age... though less so with the latter!), i am entitled to feel "normal" physically. sophie is a potent reminder that most people aren't. i guess this is the kind of "whiteness" i'd rather be thinking about.

2.

i'm in love with the writing of rebecca solnit (more proof that when erin_lindsay says something is worth my time, it almost certainly is). i started with a field guide to getting lost, which is nearly perfect, and was so fired up by it that i quickly worked through storming the gates of paradise: landscapes for politics as well. solnit writes in a style i'm a sucker for-- a hybrid of social theory, history, art-history, philosophy and personal memoir. put simply, she's the kind of writer that might seem "unfocused" or "digressive," if her thoughts weren't so poetic and unique.

as far as content is concerned, she fits somewhere between the eco-uncertainty of mike davis and the cultural criticism of walter benjamin. solnit has a knack for unusual subjects and analogies. she describes the social neglect of urban spaces through the language of eighties punk. she sees similar trends in landscape photography and the pube-grooming standards of mainstream porn. she discovers that crows have profited from globalization as much as humans have, with similarly unsettling results. and there's no self-righteousness to her language. i can sense her curiosity as i read. it's as if she's sharing her thoughts as they appear in her head.

solnit is also chock-full of tidbits i can apply to the way i think about art. my own art, even. check out this little morsel from a field guide to getting lost (pages 89-90), about cities and ruins:

A city is built to resemble a conscious mind, a network that can calculate, administrate, manufacture. Ruins become the unconscious of a city, its memory, unknown, darkness, lost lands, and in this truly bring it to life. With ruins a city springs free of its plans into something as intricate as life, something that can be explored but perhaps not mapped. This is the same transmutation spoken of in fairy tales when statues and toys and animals become human, though they come to life and with ruin a city comes to death, but a generative death like the corpse that feeds flowers. An urban ruin is a place that has fallen outside the economic life of the city, and it is in some way an ideal home for the art that also falls outside the ordinary production and consumption of the city.

word to that.

1.

i've decided to make a mixtape for each season of the year. i posted spring's a few months back. the idea is to choose music that vaguely fits the time of the year. this is summer's:

cover image from square america aka the best site ever

1. nick garrie, "the nightmare of j.b. stanislas"
2. julie driscoll and the brian auger trinity, "indian rope man"
3. the osyatanaa show band, "disco africa"
4. the outsiders, "i love you no. 2"
5. david axelrod, "holy thursday"
6. the go-betweens, "cattle and cane"
7. grenadine, "i only have eyes for you" (sidenote: jenny toomey has the best voice in the world)
8. the bodines, "skankin queens"
9. the rolling stones, "out of time (orchestrated version)"
10. royal trux, "stop"
11. desmond dekker, "unity"
12. laurel aitken, "jericho"
13. nara leao, "fui bem feliz"
14. france gall, "chanson indienne"
15. mogollar, "sun flower"
16. p.p. arnold, "the first cut is the deepest"

DOWNLOAD HERE

~~let me know if those tracks don't load in the right order on your i-tunes~~. IT HAS COME TO MY ATTENTION THAT CLICKING ON "ALBUM" VIEW IN I-TUNES (I.E. PLAYLIST APPEARS BY ALBUM) IS THE WAY TO MAKE THE TRACKS APPEAR IN THE RIGHT ORDER. i'm trying to get the nuts and bolts of this right. also, track #16 is blatantly stolen from liamtheruiner's girl group mixtape. which, accordingly, is part of his amazing attempt to make 101 mixtapes in 101 genres. check them out if you're not already. it's probably the most awesome thing goin on in lj-land at the moment...

some quick notes

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 03:35:44 GMT

1.
you may have read about this already (i know alex and bess did, haha), but social theorist david harvey is currently posting video documentation of an entire course he teaches on marx's capital:

http://davidharvey.org/

i've been considering reading capital anyway lately. i try to read one big, intimidating book a year (more or less). maybe capital will be this year's moby dick? i might use harvey's project as the catalyst to actually do it. it's one of those books that seems insurmountable without a classroom to support it, and a cyber-classroom has apparently arrived.

if anyone else thinks this is a good idea, i'm considering setting up some kind of cyber-reading group? nothing too heavy-duty, maybe an email correspondence or a yahoo group or something (maybe even an lj community)? i read harvey's a brief history of neoliberalism about three months back and found it compelling. anyway, comment or email me at danschank at gmail dot com if you're into this. i probably won't start the actual reading for a week or two though.

2.

i started teaching for the first time in about 7 years yesterday and i'm really enjoying it. i was in a thrift store today picking up stuff for a still life i'm making tomorrow, and i came across this beautiful promotional picture book about albert lamorisse's the red balloon. 99 cents. i love thrift stores.

3.

political boy wonder ezra klein just posted an interesting chart from the center for arms control and non-proliferation comparing the american and iranian military infrastructures. as you might guess, it makes the current war-mongering sound ridiculous.

4.

google blog search makes it really easy to download obscure records all day long. good thing i have steady work to distract me.

5.

the gallery in milwaukee that's showing my paintings just posted an online tour of the show, and video interviews with me and the other artist (elizabeth ann lopez). the conversation in the interview comes right out of the artist's statement some of you have been helping me with (btw, you are all AWESOME for giving me advice). i love the idea of video interviews-- and i'm glad to do it-- but watching myself on quicktime makes me really self-conscious! anyway, to the 75% of you who've never heard my voice or seen me move around ~~or wondered how many times a person can say "umm..." in one sentence~~, the link above is your chance.

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 18:26:36 GMT

christopher hitchens is waterboarded

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 19:49:54 GMT

at the risk of spreading around the bad cheer, i'm cross-posting a video i found on atthesametime's journal of christopher hitchens being (voluntarily) waterboarded.

* the video is HERE.

* hitchens' article about the experience is HERE.

obviously, this is disturbing stuff, so consider yourself warned.

and to those of you unfamiliar with hitchens, i'd be hard-pressed to find someone with more peculiar political allegiances. the official story paints him as a "reformed" leftist turned neo-con, or a "liberal hawk," or simply a contrarian alcoholic. all these tags are at least partially true, but the full-picture is more complicated. hitchens was and remains an ardent supporter of the war in iraq, but is also sharply critical of the occupation of palestine. he speaks favorably of people like paul wolfowitz (deputy secretary of defense under rumsfeld), but also authored the trial of henry kissinger-- in which he argues that one of the key administrators of our last giant, publicly-debated foreign policy catastrophe (vietnam) should be tried internationally as a war criminal. recently, he's received a lot of press for being perhaps the most belligerent anti-theist in the public sphere-- having authored the not-so-subtly-titled god is not great: how religion poisons everything.

i'm including this long, weird bio because i think it absolves him of any clearly-define-able political opportunism going into this. sure, there's a sense of bravado to it-- and hitchens is almost certainly trying to generate publicity/controversy for himself (in fact, he's a total showboat in this department). but it's not a gesture that can be reduced to, say, a moveon.org prank or a ploy to get obama elected. in a way, the fact that he's alienated himself so deeply in the public sphere (the right AND left typically deplore him) makes him an interesting candidate for this horrible experiment.

but enough political yapping. for whatever reason, some potent evidence that waterboarding is DEEPLY fucked up has arrived on the internet. if you have the stomach to check it out, click the links above.

done.

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 20:33:14 GMT

Lights Out (2008, mixed media: pencil, gouache, india ink and paper collage on board), 18” by 24”

this came out a little wonkier than expected. not sure how i feel about it yet. i wanted to loosen things up a bit, so mission accomplished on that front, i guess? i think i need to scale up again. my ideas are starting to need more space to move around. detail to follow after the cut...

... that's the bottom/right of the image.

ok, my butt is off to chicago and milwaukee... i'll return to more textual blogging when i get back. i have ample ten good things material already, and hopefully more to come upon my return?

do sumthin nice for the old man

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 20:33:33 GMT

"landscapism" at the armoury gallery in milwaukee

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 22:27:07 GMT

hi folks. sorry things have been so quiet on this here journal. part of the reason is that i've got a show coming up. it's in milwaukee-- a city i've never actually visited. do any of you guys live in or near milwaukee? if so, you should come. i'm actually gonna be out there for the opening, as part of a week-long trip to (mostly) chicago. hell, if chicago peeps want to come along, we might round up a little posse? i'm not entirely sure how to hype this thing, since it's in a city where i know literally no one. but the gallery is brand new, they're showing some really nice work, they've been super professional and accommodating with me, and they're excited enough about what i'm doing to showcase 10 of my paintings. some more details:

Landscapism @ The Armoury Gallery
June 20th - July 18th
Opening Reception Friday, June 20th 7-11pm
All artists will be in attendance
http://www.thearmourygallery.com/

The Armoury Gallery is pleased to announce Landscapism, the second exhibition for the new gallery, with an opening reception to be held Friday, June 20th, from 7-11 pm. Philadelphia artist Dan Schank, and Chicago artist Elizabeth Ann Lopez will exhibit new and old works, while recent MIAD graduates Mark Schieber and Erik Baden will collaborate on an installation for the show.

if anyone isn't totally tired of looking at them, most of my paintings can be viewed on my flickr page. as i said, ten of these will be on display, and nine are visible on flickr... it's essentially all of my work since about 2005, save broken eggs for breakfast (which was too heavy to ship) and december in the dust (which i sold, appropriately, last december).

the tenth painting is still unfinished! however, i took some in-progress shots of it today for a lecture i'll be doing later in the summer (i'm teaching a course on collage at a local university). i figured i'd post them here as well, since i often fear that the cut-and-paste aspect of what i do doesn't translate well into JPEG format...

...so here's all the pieces laid out on the board. there will be a few more as well, i'm sure. eventually i'll start adhering all these pieces on top of one another. sorry these images are all green and barfy...

...a few of the more detail-ish parts (the paper i laid these out on top of is super gross!)...

...and this is the piece i had the most fun with, i suppose.

anyway, spread the word... if you're local, definitely try to check out the space, regardless of whether or not my work is in it. the show following my own will feature another fine philadelphian, jackie hoving (who is an awesome artist/really cool person). i'm excited to make my trip out in a week or so...

Sun, 11 May 2008 18:57:40 GMT

...a round of applause for the ladies that introduced us to this little planet of ours...

the bad baroque

i am thankful for:

art stuff

Wrap It Up, 2009 (Mixed media: pencil, gouache, watercolor, india ink and paper collage on board, 12" by 12")

Positions of Power, 2009 (Mixed media: pencil, gouache, watercolor and paper collage on board, 18" by 24")

undead ark

tonight's playlist

new painting, some good lectures to check out, other stuff too maybe

Get Familiar, 2009 (Mixed media: pencil, gouache, india ink and paper collage on board, 16" by 20")

Detail (Top left of image)

1.

CLICK HERE to see it.2. joshua klein's lecture about the amazing intelligence of crows is an oldie but a goodie. this one is short, and a bit of a crowd-pleaser, maybe (apresminuit and chocolatebark will <3 this, i think):

2.

3.

4.

5.

CLICK HERE

6.

LISTEN TO IT HERE.

dan walks around: entry one

WALK ONE: philly (20th and chestnut to fishtown)

ten good things

10.

9.

8.

7.

6.

5.

4.

3.

2.

1.

new painting!

my show opens tomorrow

Up All Night: Mixed Media Paintings by Dan Schank

happy new years!

merry x-mas! go tell it on the mountain! testify!

happy thanksgiving!

art showcase at the university of the arts

my age, the election, predictions, presumptions

I, TOO, AM GREY-HAIRED AND ELFIN... AND I APPROVE THIS MESSAGE!!!

happy halloween

happy birthday georges bataille

ten good things

10.

9.

8.

the seven myths of energy independence.

7.

6.

5.

4.

3.

2.

1.

some quick notes

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

christopher hitchens is waterboarded

done.

do sumthin nice for the old man

"landscapism" at the armoury gallery in milwaukee

Landscapism @ The Armoury GalleryJune 20th - July 18thOpening Reception Friday, June 20th 7-11pmAll artists will be in attendancehttp://www.thearmourygallery.com/

CLICK HERE to see it.

2.
joshua klein's lecture about the amazing intelligence of crows is an oldie but a goodie. this one is short, and a bit of a crowd-pleaser, maybe (apresminuit and chocolatebark will <3 this, i think):

Landscapism @ The Armoury Gallery
June 20th - July 18th
Opening Reception Friday, June 20th 7-11pm
All artists will be in attendance
http://www.thearmourygallery.com/