Elasmasaurus

New Blog

2011-12-02T08:56:00.000-08:00

I have a new blog and website. So I probably won't be using this one anymore. It is www.shelbyrichardson.com!

BUUUUUUUUUBYEEEEEEE

north american freedom

2011-06-20T20:06:00.000-07:00

It is the ability to conform to commodity. The freedom to choose how you will articulate your life through consumer representation. How you fit into an advertised taxonomy reflects your freedom, your value, your monetary interest in reality.

Is this the driving force for the art object or is it the underpinning structure of collecting? The collector creates the s/he persona through the collected object. The supposed universality in art is clearly articulated through the wealthy collector. Not that of the visual but of the imagined creation of a representational whole. Choice of value is determined in relation to an imagined social significance. Choice bears the illusion of a false democracy, subverting its totalizing and suffocating nature.

so anthropology.

2011-04-13T20:05:00.000-07:00

So i am half way through my current MA in anthropology. and i guess it's not half bad. i went into this thing thinking all anthropologists are just assholes. and i suppose i was about half right.

there are those jerks who think only born anthropologists can be anthropologists. but what about born again anthropologists? i mean art is material culture isn't it, so why is it such a fucking foreign concept to people? and aren't foreign concepts what's happening? isn't that what we're all in to? god forbid you talk about something made after 1902... (that doesn't fit into the 'non-linear' linear narrative) the inalienability of objects isn't just about what we are constantly shoving in tiny boxes with tiny labels with tiny ideas circulating all over the place. (or are they big ugly ideas?)

we need to position ourselves in-between things. how else are we going to get anywhere? if we are constantly redrawing the disciplinary lines we aren't going to get anywhere and your going to continually have artists saying anthropologists are all assholes and all anthropologists saying artists are postmodern crazies. but you know i guess that's what university is about right? pay money to learn to fit in this tiny box that doesn't teach you anything about participating in real life and teaches you to unlearn the fact that theory doesn't really make a fucking difference.

too bad theory is so awesome.

anyways, anthropologists aren't all assholes...

Salish Wool Dog

2011-04-04T11:54:00.000-07:00

Paul Kane

Detail: A Woman weaving a blanket

1848-1856

What happened to you little buddy?

We put gates around the wrong things.

Opening what wasn't meant to be opened.

Imperial taxonomies and the 'magic circle'

2011-02-24T14:29:00.000-08:00

"Thus there is in the life of a collector a dialectical tension between the poles of disorder and order. Naturally his existence is tied to many other things as well: to a very mysterious relationship to ownership...also, to a relationship to objects which does not emphasize their functional, utilitarian value- that is, their usefulness, but studies and loves them as the scene, the stage, of their fate. The most profound enchantment for the collector is the locking of individual items within a magic circle in which they are fixed as the final thrill, the thrill of acquisition, passes over them. Everything remembered and thought, everything conscious, becomes pedestal, the frame, the base, the lock, of his property."

Walter Benjamin p.13

"Only in extinction is the collector comprehended."

Hegel p.15

qtd. in Kiendl, Anthony. "Toward a New Understanding of Collecting." in Obsessions, Compulsions, Collections

oh yeah

2011-01-14T15:09:00.000-08:00

mary anne barkhouse is pretty awesome.

image from: http://www.medicinehatmedia.com/2009/02/mary-anne-barkhouse-boreal-baroque-tonight/

reciprocity

2011-01-14T14:23:00.000-08:00

this blog is mainly for me to complain about institutional practice and converse about art and criticism i believe to be valuable to the greater conversations of local bc and canadian culture (if those 'things' really exist).

however, sometimes components of current anthropological and art theory cross over into the personal realm and i think it is helpful to comment on these things.

reciprocal relationships are such processes. i'm not a sociologists nor have i gone to school for anything related to practical reality but i think we can think about our personal relationships in correlation with larger relationships between peoples and cultures. in the last year i entered into a relationship with someone who made me recognize the importance of facilitating talents and how the level of intellectual interaction between partners bolsters and encourages this kind of practice. we have both made (if i can speak on behalf of both) significant changes to our lifestyles in the last year and have become more productive in terms of our expressive necessities.

bringing this back to museums and art i can see a connection between this kind of relationship and the more general relationship between museums, contemporary art and first nations communities. if museums take time to act reciprocally with contemporary first nations artists their institutions will move in more positive directions of collaboration. this puts people on an equal playing field where differing perspectives reflect off each other and provide both positions with increased opportunities and possibilities. most museums still neglect to look at differing perspectives on an equilibrial level, constantly privileging the institutional perspective. this is most visible through exhibition practice and the constant confusion surrounding where contemporary art has to go and how to make room for it. over and over again these expressions of ontological thinking are separated from the 'artifacts' of everyday life, however if some museums took the time to look reciprocally at different perspectives on artistic production they would possibly realize that these boundaries don't necessarily exist.

never again 511

2010-12-21T09:50:00.000-08:00

What do our institutions do?

draw the lines. line us up. count the lines. move the lines. never cross the lines.

encouragement is just a practice they use to build us up and make it easier to pick us apart.

when a professor tells you that you have that characteristic canadian women voice,

that uncertain, unstable, unsure voice.

she is just perpetuating a discourse of difference, of dependancy on male ontological technologies.

being more like them rather than being more like myself. fuck the cynical boy bashers.

fuck you. and fuck your opinions on the concern i have for being taken seriously.

Museum Manifesto 1

2010-12-21T09:49:00.000-08:00

What is it about museums that make them so foreign to us.

travel in space to travel in time. chain of being time machines.

An encapsulated sector where things can be parcelled off in order to represent a compartmentalized reality; a bounded off space in which we can OBSERVE with a detached sense of ourselves.

But in our current state where identities and genres are stuffed down our throats at every other turn, how do we anymore see ourselves as detached, independent organisms when we are so enthralled and exhilarated by every beep flash and digital delineation that comes our way.

History isn't stagnant and compartmentalized. the world is hybridized and although there are some aspects of cultural quarantines (spiritual copyrights) we exist in a state of the hyperreal where everything is nothing and everything is something. Our contextualizations of these notions (in terms of museums) should reflect these fractures. pointing to our state of instability in a world where profit makes the difference; 'originality' speaks to conformity in all sense of these definitions.

eff.

2010-10-22T12:37:00.000-07:00

ontologies of technology are driving me crazy. maybe i can get a new one in the pottery barn's african chic department.

boredom bourdieu

2010-10-04T21:52:00.000-07:00

habitus habitus habitus

you cottage fucks

2010-09-29T21:09:00.000-07:00

"...the panoramic perspective is linked to the exercise of political power precisely because of its ability to abstract universal meanings from the specifics of landscape. The panoramic point of view reflects an elevated social position; those with the ability to see the big picture are those who are given the power to control and alter social as well as physical landscapes..."

Michael E. Harkins (2000) Sacred Places, Scarred Spaces p.55

salami somalian sommelier

2010-08-26T08:48:00.000-07:00

How do we balance the oncoming collapse and our incessant need to delve into convoluted extractions of visual culture. I'm not going to pretend I don't find anything interesting in the new art criticism and its multifaceted layers of self-gratification and eclecticism, but is it preservable? When a society breaks down and its imperial systems begin to deconstruct, objects become new sources of symbolic stimuli. The imperial (or capitalist) economy changed the classification and context of each and every object in the western world (by way of expropriation and assimilation); the 'art' object has become linked to a kind of status ascendancy. So when such a system breaks down, what do we do with all the abstract expressionists, colour field painters, minimalists, conceptual artists and new postmodernists (the second half of the 20th centuries modern 'progress' builders)? Do we bargain with art museum elitists (Marc Mayer...?) for local produce in lieu of pretentious public access fees? Probably not. May'be we can just look from the outside in like me and my dad used to do at the oversized glass display case that is the Museum of Anthropology.

Dear Derek Carlson: Please start a blog.

well...

2010-08-17T01:40:00.000-07:00

it's happening all over again...

2010-08-06T08:35:00.000-07:00

Anngjerd Rustand

Erratic

2010

image source: http://anngjerd.no/

Unstable and apprehensive, a suspended vortex.

This is kinda how I feel today.

Pretty insides.

2010-06-24T19:06:00.000-07:00

Rebecca Stevenson, Bambarella, 2007

http://www.rebeccastevenson.net

Rebecca Stevenson's polyester resin and wax sculptures are suspended within critical ideas of art, craft, tradition and hybridization. I have an inherent need to make anything and everything about visual identity and I continually manifest intrinsic links to cultural production through these realizations. The use of wax and synthetic materials with the combination of traditional western forms and processes moves Stevenson's work into the realm of post-identity, into a physical hyperreal that proves a tactile existence. This is something craft pushes visual culture to realize, the importance of hybridity, the location of culture swerving in and out of determined boundaries, beyond 'post.' If we are academically situated in that overfed 'postmodern cloud' of intellectual obscurity, we need work that locates us as we are, as consumerists of the image. Because the work is so tactile -sensory response is actually stimulated through aesthetic choice- we are made aware of our visual bias and the work moves visual identity into a new state of 'seeing' or peripheral understanding. Stevenson's work points to the manipulation of tradition, the deconstruction of visual aesthetic and the contemplation of craft material. The sticky, the sappy, the waxen slippage between past present and future is our current western location. As dominion continues and neocolonialism creeps throughout our socially constructed boundaries; this hybridization takes on bizarre renditions of Bernini encrusted with mucusy flora, an opening up of our circumscribed perusal.

2010-06-20T17:18:00.000-07:00

when will people get back into theory?

?

2010-06-11T11:48:00.000-07:00

"The museum has become a storehouse of human values, a cultural bloodbank." -M.M.

Who's values?

mmmm... sounds a little supremacist?

2010-05-28T08:10:00.000-07:00

the others

'The shock of recognition! In an electric information environment, minority groups can no longer be contained - ignored. Too many people know too much about each other. Our new environment compels commitment and participation. We have become irrevocably involved with, and responsible for, each other."

-Marshall McCluan The Medium is the Message

although our environment 'compels commitment and participation' i don't exactly feel that this participation is encouraged by our institutions in minority groups. this paragraph here seems to encourage that Canadian sense of multiculturalism that ghettoizes and essentializes the hybrid state of our current society. As the electrical age has moved into the technological and now the hyperreal, the myths fabricated by imperialism continue to threaten our understanding of cultures that have been positioned in which to be 'othered.' what we know about 'these' cultures is filtered through a western understanding of academia and eurocentric cerebral pollution. Our museums, schools and electric media often deliver a disneyified description of such cultures, bypassing subjugation and genocide. and what about the idea of being 'othered'? how do we balance that? is it better to separate or integrate? i guess that depends on the kind of integration. integration into to the 'Canadian' society is based in imperialism and is just a form of assimilation. it is the Canadian society that needs to be deconstructed and repositioned in order to reflect and promote the various and distinct values of the many diverse indigenous communities that make up this continent.

we ARE wild?

2010-05-20T18:00:00.000-07:00

Hi.

I curated a show that is opening tomorrow. it features recent photo graduates and their work concerning our detachment and developing manipulation of the wilderness.

http://www.xpace.info/exhibition_current

For all those who believe polyvinyl chloride and the great outdoors were meant to be...

So...

2010-05-17T20:10:00.000-07:00

Are first worlders anti-children or anti-polar bears

i heart the pinky show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHGaH-7wq6M

My New Favorite

2010-05-16T13:46:00.000-07:00

Micah Lidberg: The Migration

Angry Cloud -detail

thanks kristi!

today

2010-05-11T07:52:00.000-07:00

i have no idea what's going on.

waxen jargon

2010-04-25T19:27:00.001-07:00

maybe it's time to forget 'postmodernism.' maybe people need to get over the white designed train wreck they call the individual. the individual is just the modern subject broken apart and put back together using tabloid cut outs and electrical tape. i understand the need for the subjective perspective, but an emphasis on the postmodern leaves the margins continually reduced and expropriated. museums and galleries continue to include rather than integrate. this forms the basis of their mandate. embracing instead of restructuring. these institutions maintain the white standard. decontextualize. recontextualize. monopolize. pursuing the interests of their corporate do-gooders. we need hybridization. not just in the object, but in the framing space. without the frame the object is invisible. this is pretentious but fuck it.

dear blog,

i think the blow jobs are getting better.

holy.

2010-04-15T10:57:00.001-07:00

done school. need a life.

we're moving

2010-03-30T18:24:00.000-07:00

life loves: 122 days

Summer 'to do' list:

2010-03-30T17:58:00.001-07:00

Aesthetic Theory: Theodor Adorno

Wretched of the Earth: Frantz Fanon

The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths: Rosalind Krauss

Critique of Judgment: Immanuel Kant

The New Imperialism: David Harvey

The Question of Palestine: Edward Said

seeing, seeing, seeing, sewn.

Moperialism

2010-03-09T14:47:00.000-08:00

I hate researching 'Modern' artists because every other word in every text is Marxism followed by progress. Get the fuck over it, progress is a negation of the everyday and our primordial selves.

2010-03-08T20:49:00.000-08:00

circle circle circle circle circle circle circle

AK

2010-02-25T11:41:00.000-08:00

I had a dream and you were in it. licking your lips and frowning your brow.

the coffee sits on the table. caffeinated ripples of trepidation. i will watch you slow me down.

a fish is easier to confuse and influence, while the archer pins her down. a distorted glass blocks her vision, imposed from the outside in.

I lose myself in your illusion. I lose my ability to stop and swallow.

Anselm Kiefer: Die Frauen der Antike

Image from: artnet.com

Die Frauen der Antike ('The Women of Antiquity') 1999-2000.
Oil, shellac, emulsion, sand, ash and pastel on paper mounted on linen canvas, 280.5 x 190.5 cm, Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London.

Birthday wants* list

2010-02-08T10:08:00.000-08:00

There is a book in my school library called A Stó:lō-Coast Salish Historical Atlas. Apparently there is ‘no room’ for this atlas among the plethora of 'world' and 'Canadian' Atlases listed throughout the aisles. So, it is regulated to a hidden bookcase at the end -completely invisible to any student looking for an alternative perspective of Canadian (geo) graphy and geopolitics. Historical experience is expressed through multiple viewpoints that are often conflicted -one side frequently being degenerated and censored by the dominant enforced society. Western institutions neglect these historical interpretations and Coast Salish artistic practice is repeatedly seen as 'second rate' to the art production of northern indigenous communities (Olympics anyone?). This book is integral to the representation of Coast Salish and Stó:lō perspectives on historical experience and knowledge. It shouldn't be assigned to a dusty corner, segregated from so called 'legitimate' articulations of place and territory; especially when it is just as -or more correctly more so- appropriate to interpretations of land use and cartography.

2009-09-11T07:04:00.001-07:00

Yes you lied to me all these years
You told me to wash and clean my ears
And talk real fine just like a lady
And you'd stop calling me Sister Sadie

-N.Simone

this blog was never intended to be serious...but whatever..

2009-05-04T14:04:00.000-07:00

there seems to be a declining interest in First Nations thought processes, especially in the critical theory aspect of toronto art schools:

your boredom with first nations art and theory is inadmissible

postcolonial theory means nothing to an audience whose practicalities and 'discourses' have too much to do with existentialism and metaphysics when the institutional chain gang makes its way down the throats of our greater populace.

have you ever considered the viable nature of those outside the western canon?

you claim to understand the 'native' and their 'beat down' culture but our conversations proceed as if such issues have been handled accordingly as we blissfully transcend into our postcolonial existence

fuck those colorful renditions of untouched landscapes and their inextricable tales of corporate fist fucking

i guess your bored with the sacred and sensation

keep on packing intellect with your new academism, moving from one philosophy to the next without achieving any real sense of accomplishment.

as if your country was climbing the hills of acceptance when this is the counterfeit of oppression and degeneration

your praise of Darwin and Hegel allows the institutional creep of genocide to slip beneath the pillows of sleeping children and their brain dead parents

fuck your apathy, you sink lower then those you chastise when you neglect a people who own the very land you rape

your decay is useless

2009-02-25T14:39:00.000-08:00

the pictures you paint with their tattered edges
the loneliest place you can find
you beg for their beauty and abandon their fears
liquidity hidden in the palms of your hands

keep promising them an existence
riddled with-
without vacancy

your broken down houses
sheds
and bedrooms
let them sleep without provoking them with your silent lens.

fancy that

2009-02-23T14:39:00.001-08:00

today i looked over into the book the lady beside me was reading on the street car. i read only this one sentence:

"what is taking so long Ashok, is this going to be the same as last time."

2009-02-15T17:03:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txqiwrbYGrs

2009-02-04T18:49:00.000-08:00

zhang peng: goldfish

there is always that sweetness that grabs your entrails and drags them slowly across the linoleum.

the manufactured face, plastic forms of grotesque internal associations.

what part of ourselves do we see here,

a subverted presence of hopeless and ruined aspiration.

a lostness

a desire to devour and to ingest.

cheesorama

2009-02-04T18:44:00.000-08:00

dear diary/ kristi

i think you are traumatizing the cats with your lasers.

2009-01-23T06:04:00.000-08:00

dear jackie tileston

'i'll go if you go 2008'

i think we like to think about abstract like how we think about coffee or wine
or something 'fancy' like that.
but it doesn't need to be.
it can be something affecting, it can be something effecting.
it can be a space that you live in,
hovering through layered patterns, a digital map of subconscious.
here there is a soft absorption where I'm sure,
if one saw it would be somewhat resonating and seducting.
we are pulled up the left and coerced to the right.
with reverberating chroma absorbing out into a blanketed canvas.

awesome

2009-01-20T14:34:00.001-08:00

uuuuuu

jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj JUST JUST JUST JUST JUST uuuuuuu University (yes)

JJJjjUUUjjjj jugs

....finally

dear miss loch ness

2009-01-20T14:27:00.000-08:00

dear blog,

its nice to finally meet you. hopefully you will fill me with all sorts of insight that will help me along my path to successfully perform blow jobs without gagging.

sincerely yours