Sunday, February 14, 2021

Amia Yokoyama's exhibition, "In the Midst of Bliss"

I’ve been to a total of 3 exhibitions during CoViD, and I felt like I didn’t want to miss this one. I stopped by Amia Yokoyama’s exhibition in Highland Park at In Lieu Gallery where as I left they recommended that I check out the the press release. But I wanted to record my initial impressions first. I’m also going to refer back to 2 instances where I saw her work last in the last 2 years:

I guess Amia comes from animation, but when I think about her output (which of course is multi-dimensional), I think that her sculptural forms are so consistently satisfying!

Image of two 'slime girls' on a plinth at knee height



To be quite specific, I think it has something to do with the simple but ideal use of white high fire porcelain glazes that I think of as either 'celadons' or 'crystalline glazes' (I could be totally wrong on what's being used). I have to say that of all of the ways that I've seen ceramicists pair this kind of faint hue, mostly transparent glaze for a delicate effect on a particular form, THIS is my favorite use of that kind of glaze with the trippy drippy look.

I first saw these small-medium sized figurine works in an artist-run exhibition called “I Got What I Got” at Dread Lounge. At this height and size they did seem like little stop motion clay avatars (more crafted with care than rendered for consumption by an 'Otaku'.) They inspire a kind of glee that’s borderline cutesy but not over detailed, in their, gloppy, cartoony state of suspended animation stuckness. 

Their sense of gravity in combination with the carefree glaze is so tactile that they remind me of the feeling of being a little kid wrapping oneself in a big blanket and pretending it’s a big wizard robe when you wiggle your arms... what am I trying to get at here? There's wonderful fantasy in there being no discerning separation between drip and body; a frozen moment, that still gives impression that it's perhaps just moving really really slowly, like a kind of mindfulness.
















Here’s what a crystalline glaze looks like, something only possible in a very controlled high fire environment. It’s here, on one of my inspiration walls, framed. If I could, I’d probably have a whole wall of glaze tests. I guess this is the closest I get to having one of those aura photographs.













 

So yeah, I love this surface affect, the ways glazes ooze off of the forms, then makes little fancy transformations in the firing process where it pools, and finding where the glaze gets milky and alchemical is way more fun and subtle than just some perfect round vessel. The cloudiness as well as where crystalline forms would appear would not be on the bodies of the ’slime girls', but it’s below them on the ground that has fallen off of the drips, appearing to have some dimension but is completely flat, glass smooth.


 

 

 

 




 

 

And I like the semi-cult status that these characters inhabit as the 'slime girls' show up on t-shirts worn by friends in this crew of artists. Even in the writing I've come across that accompanies her work, there’s always been a sense of promiscuous words/ideas, a connection of minds all going in and out of the world building. The texts tend to be amorphous too, in multiple voices where that’s something more punk than simply a male gaze.




At JACE in 2018, the exhibit, really the furniture for watching the screening, blew my mind.

It was cozy and bombastic at the same time, but to be honest I can’t remember the video or the details of the wall pieces that well because, comparatively, it was much more distant and set based and maybe somewhat robotic (from what I remember) than the items and people lounging about in that room which seemed to blur audience and installation.

Even now I’m thinking to myself, where the line was between fashion one might wear in the videos vs. what one might one wear out at a party with friends, would there be a noticeable difference in fabulousness? Perhaps real life has less props, and spaces get more crowded. If I knew this bunch of folx were just hanging around here on any given night, I’d probably show up pretty regularly, it was incredibly inviting for involving so many constructed things. In my imagination, this is a pretty rad pad that someone has been living within during quarantine:







I noticed the JACE website was down, so here’s the text that accompanied the red experience:



 

Her installations tend to exude a totalizing color, and the texts seem to continue riffing off of the pleasure of creation.

So I guess now, we can enter the latest works that just came down last Saturday at In Lieu Gallery, which made me think of a Paul Thek solo exhibition with neon green vitrines at PACE gallery in NY who also had these messier, explosively collaborative practices across the ocean over in Europe.



Taking in the space, it's another aesthetic revelation! Finally! Art that actually works best in a white cube (for projection, for multiplying the surfaces of cubes, for looking weird...)

I had been anticipating seeing the white dripping anime shapely figures of porcelain again as well checking out the animations where giant fractal figures walk in step with butterflies and energy, and a romantically animated ‘Tramp Stamp’. (Note: I too have a ’tramp stamp’ tattoo, it’s a bubble level, and a portion of it is a bright yellow green and appears to have a light source that comes from nowhere, but I think of that space on my body, since I can’t see it, as a place where something animated and unexpected can happen. It’s a spot on my body that makes me laugh, and it reminds me to not take myself too seriously.)

What I didn’t expect to see was a wonderfully playful and coy fox. It was so distinctive that I wondered if it would it be possible to, or if there was a reason not to, give each digital figure and ‘slime girl’ as much personality as the Fox and the… pinched pot animal form that I think was a dog?

What was immediately successful was the feeling of digital angels via video installation framing (any time the videos curved around figures it reminded me of inverted wings, and Neon Genesis Evangelion). There were ambiguous sculptures at the base of the vitrines, which neither grounded nor elucidated forms that tended to whip around each other. But I liked them enough, like the way that some beaches are made up of larger shells, not just fine sand.



This concept I'm thinking might be upside down, but the warped green reflection reminded me of a cool toned version of a sun flare burst, the kind that can supposedly take out the Internet and Bluetooth temporarily. I want this kind of disruption, like an EMT blast. The quiet emptiness of this gallery during CoViD didn’t seem right. The images were so sharp, the perspectives so jarring, I wanted to be bombarded with music by SOPHIE or Autechre mixing with the Final Fantasy 7 theme and loud dripping, but of course that would be cruel to the person doing the gallery sitting. What’s the binaural version of Cardi B made up of ASMR noises of hair whooshing and the magic wand adult toy?

Unfortunately the maker in me couldn’t help but note all of the construction choices that stuck out in the silence.

I wish the plexiglas didn’t remind me of the fragility of the works; their presentation seemed to suggest examining the sculptures as if they could rotate, because of how they appeared to float and also felt more like a display than a space one could infinitely melt out into. I imagined that these figures could be in fountains, that they could blink anime eyes or be given a specimen tag.



I wish there could have been a taut white fabric obscuring the plexiglas from above that was distorting the projection upon the walls, similar to the treatment of covering the edges of the flatscreen tv display, so that I would only be aware that the light source was coming from there, not how it was refracting and bending. I wanted there to be some secrets, something not able to be seen. Perhaps then I’d be left to imagine another worldly explanation of the digital bleeding and morphing beyond crisp frames.


I also flat out wanted to take out the paintings, which stuck out in the darkness. They felt heavy with pieces of ceramic that felt quote tacked on/outlined, when maybe I wanted to see each piece of ceramic have the same bodily sense of gravity; perhaps appearing sunken into a substrate that made sense being vertical on a wall rather than being on a thing that appears to help make it look 'mountable' on a wall. It looked like a size I like to work in, small enough to not take up space, but all of the other works really demanded space, which meant that these seemed to be more about fitting these in, when these in between spaces could have just been quieter. I wish that instead of feeling like a sculpey version of a Matisse cut out, it could have been more of an obscured figure not dictated by a rectangular box, maybe more like an organic form that takes a moment to sort out what it is, like that one diver who spends a lot of time trying to detect the camouflaged creature in ‘My Octopus Teacher’.


 

 

 

 

The exhibition puts me in the mindset of spirits or things not here, or Jennifer Moon talking about BEI gut faeries… Even without anyone else in this space I could imagine someone rocking a related t-shirt; I could imagine pulling out a beer from a metal container on the ground filled with ice and the cool perspiration of the can of beer in my hand… something about this set of works feels like a friendly party would complete the work, give it its full context; not that I was supposed to have reverence for the works as if I was at, say, Matthew Marks Gallery. The little ‘slime girls’ are somehow too aware for that kind of pared down minimalist treatment even though they are worth giving that kind of attention to them.





 

 

The figures themselves encapsulate not only a color, as the whole exhibition exuded a color much like Amia’s red exhibition, this time blues and greens, but this one had the personality of that gushy 💦 emoji since digital light and space bled and glaze worked in a tromploi way.

The simulated wetness of the figurines that are larger than a trinket, and this time, featuring more than one figure, means that we have here a multiplicity of cuddle puddles. I bet there’d also be no problem finding friends of the artist to write about the project to give further mediums to supplant the work that is here. How many writers could there be? I think there could have been a different writer, one for each day the exhibition ran.

But whose collection would these sculptures be in? I’m thinking the 2016 Korean film The Handmaiden where... [spoiler alert]... just kidding, I won't ruin anything for you, go watch that film with no expectations, it’s great!




What I guess I’m trying to get at is that I’m not convinced this work is either for populist consumption, or for rich people who buy art as investments, but that the artworks, and the opportunity to exhibit them, are like representations of a group of friends that ‘get’ each other…  like an inside joke or series of photographs of a trip to a cabin or Joshua Tree where many psychedelics were taken and very good times were had both on the way there and actually at the destination. Like Thek, I think of Amia as an artists’ artist. This is maybe why I made it a point to want to see the work in person.

These ‘slime girls’ seems to be a stand in for folx immersed in their own world, too busy to make it about mass consumption like an episode of Vida, where the demographic ends up actually being middle aged men that live in the Midwest, where the point of its existence seems much more to be about hiring POC actors/actresses than it is to appeal to them as a target audience (hint, maybe making characters that represent some kind of vague anti-gentrification activists where it's actually filmed in a part of town that actually shut out a lot of art galleries and culture vultures due to actual gentrification means you probably won’t get this demographic to vouch for the ‘realness' of your show nor get a bunch of friends together to watch it... It's the tone deaf kind of 'meta')

 

Nor does the work ever seem like it has a deeper mission to educate/expand your mind, that it will explain to you the values inherent in some kind of sub-culture demanding respect and body positivity. This is gonna be a fairly odd tangent, but did anyone else find that one ‘Transparent’ episode in Season 4 where Ali visits Ramallah kindof cringy where she meets up with a whole group of Palestinian activists? The feel of these scenes are more telling than showing, a kind of preaching to the choir (obviously to convey that the producers have done their homework) but it comes off as rigid and forced breaking the narrative angle all of the other episodes are shot through. You wonder if they really winged it and had no idea what they were getting themselves into or felt like they just needed to pay lip service in an attempt to avoid any online criticism about just going to Israel and not mentioning the occupation of Palestinian land.

These are both examples of well-connected producers that want to expand the opportunities for POC, and yet I feel like they have to rely on attention-grabbing sex scenes or online articles about how casual activism can be, where it's as easy as contacting your local activists!

This is a bit clunky, but I'm trying to explain that you get the opposite here, what on the surface appears to be an attention-grabbing busty anime body, upon slower, closer looking, is a matter of overall exquisite craft. Really what I see instead is a different kind of story entirely, not about where these 'slime girls' come from, but one about how this artist spends much of her time crafting something ultimately funny and curious. (Another case in point is the fine line silvery details of cheesy flames and the caring ways that the ceramics are tied together with soft material.)


 

I think that talking about bodies by representing them only vis-à-vis onion peeling digital worlds and anime tropes is to suspend it all in the realm of speculation, not to actually be relegated to these realms.

They’re the backgrounds to our actual space where we might be seen leaning on each other, making each other laugh in that ugly uncontrolled too loud way, taking a break, or egging each other on with more and more imaginative scenarios. They're the gut bacteria that secretly makes up 80% of what we thought was our very unique personality.

I’m looking back at my photos and something I noticed then, actually appears in the photos too. It's that amazing digital-lookingness of this tangible fox. It was the first thing that captivated me when I walked in the space, so I think it should be what I leave you with at the end of this ‘review’. The style of this thing… It’s another favorite art thing... the way you might come across some contemporary art assuming its digital, and then well, obviously, it's not, but it still feels digital. 

To see the piece in 3D, cross your eyes until the two images blend; you’ll know it works when its voluptuous booty comes out at ya. This was totally a show worth seeing in person, and now this is the next best thing you get until she exhibits again.


A stereoscopic image of a fox made out of ceramics

Sunday, January 24, 2021

(1500 words) Clubhouse App & Trickster Energy

I’ve been too addicted lately, unable to structure myself to at least get things done that won’t make me need to rush later. 

 But first, some gratitude:

  • I was invited to DJ by K
  • invited to re-visit Bar-Fund by Tatiana
  • a poetry thing by Joey
  • am in an exhibition that I was invited to by Holliday 
  • and I need to silkscreen a shirt for Sylvie who I met through Kim. 
 This is amazing! This is all good! Yes!

But I’m also completely immobilized. I found myself enthralled by Clubhouse, an invite only app and “Being seen” on Instagram.

I think I need to get back to the basics. 

  • I haven’t done yoga in months but have been doing physical therapy every other day, 
  • I asked my dad to help pay for somatic therapy, 
  • I’m really on a kick to make a radical vision board, 
  • I’ll be sharing that in a “Hip Magic” class I’m in, 
  • I might be talking with friends about starting a gallery to support QTBIPOC folx and conversations in Mexico City later today, 
  • I’ll be taking meds paid for by being on Medi-Cal eating food paid for by food stamps and maybe just need to call EDD one more time to find out what is going on with the $810 I would get every two weeks...
  • I’m trying to get myself to show up to practice Spanish, 
  • to bathe/lotion more, 
  • to set up studio visits with friends, 
  • to play and have pleasure routinely...


and to be honest I feel about 40% here.

One of the reasons I’ve been staying in bed longer (besides that I went to bed at 4:30 am) is because I’ve been doing “Morning Pages” another app, and it’s one of those  “don’t break the chain” productivity apps and it’s been great (it is great).

But also if I’m honest, there are some people that I miss talking to and being with, the Weirdos (5 hilarious women who met up once a week with no plans), being with Fabiola who met in Mexico City, everyone in Glasgow but especially Francis McKee’s rambling research, but at the same time I feel alone in a good way, like the way you may find yourself needing to go your own way with no guide (and I’m not great with maps).

So that’s a rough summation I guess of where I’m at.

If I had to give a summation of my context:
  • CoViD is a useful holding pattern especially for enjoying what little Socialism America has to offer but it’s still not enough to keep people from working and catching and spreading it. 
  • Deb Haaland is the first and only American Indian ever nominated to a Cabinet position in the United States of America! 
  • And everyone is going bonkers over Bernie Sanders’ gloves weeks after a bunch of White supremacist off duty police and military stormed the Capital building and even killed some on duty police officers (Happy no Black folx were killed in this skirmish, and what happened to “Blue Lives Matter”?). 
 So all in all, I guess this is what “returning to normal” looks like...

And with that I’d like to go into a topic/focus for this mornings writing:

What does it mean to be a trickster?

— — - — — - — — - — —

No goals, not even values, but full on curiosity, drive and pure energy.

It means to want to help and be helped in the process of doing and woke in the sense that there are infinite, equally fake versions of reality, and so everything and nothing is sacred.

A trickster first tries to mask their own sadness, to trick themselves into moving, and yet can have the deepest darkest existential angst.

A trick could be a placebo, a spectacle, a hustle, a quick exchange, a long con, it could be years in the making for something seeming stupid, foolish, obnoxious, and it asks why and how and what else is there?

Trickster energy is a goat that can play the devil gouging out eyes with a satisfying pop and has plenty of real advice to give and can talk (or play) with anybody. (See: Asher Hartman)

Maybe let’s take a moment to talk about misdirection or vulnerability because I don’t think it takes any money to be a trickster but I don’t think a trickster could not value themselves very highly. Then again the trickster may be smiling, a personality trait of concealing getting what one wants at another’s expense and so I wouldn’t say there’s much sincerity in that look but it’s actually crazy sincere isn’t it? Yeah there’s a lot of showmanship, but there’s a lot of indirectness and pain management isn’t there?

There’s flexing and setting the stage and and a great deal of production behind the scenes to only show what one wants to show but there’s a feeling to it isn’t there? Maybe some heroes include Houdini (a great marketer) and Penn and Teller (the most lovable Libertarians) and Alejandro Jodorowsky but what about the women?

Maybe that’s Queen Nanny of the Maroons, and that’s Kim Zumpfe and that’s even my own mother, who would see people waiting in line and make herself laugh imagining people's lives and what they’re really up to, and when she was a kid saying “ka-ping” so much in a car that her dad pulled over because he thought something was wrong with the car.

Had to look something up on Wikipedia and Etymology, "Trickster" didn’t really exist on the Etymology site I use but “Trick” did:

“from trikier "to deceive, to cheat," variant of Old French trichier "to cheat, trick, deceive," of uncertain origin, probably from Vulgar Latin *triccare, from Latin tricari "be evasive, shuffle," from tricæ "trifles, nonsense, a tangle of difficulties," of unknown origin.

Meaning "a roguish prank" is recorded from 1580s; sense of "the art of doing something" is first attested 1610s. Meaning "prostitute's client" is first attested 1915; earlier it was U.S. slang for "a robbery" (1865).”

And now for Trickster on Wikipedia:

“who exhibits a great degree of intellect or secret knowledge and uses it to play tricks or otherwise disobey normal rules and defy conventional behavior.”

“Br'er Rabbit is a trickster character who succeeds through his wits rather than through strength.”


Ah so there it is, it’s survival isn’t it?

To be an animal that can speak and get others to act, but also, these perhaps are stories of hope, of being smarter than the actual person in the actual skin of being a prisoner, but perhaps one with an audience.

“Many native traditions held clowns and tricksters as essential to any contact with the sacred. People could not pray until they had laughed, because laughter opens and frees from rigid preconception.”

Oh to be needed..., to be a guide, to be important. People tell me this shouldn’t be embarrassing, but when isn’t needing love not vulnerable?

Humor is also a heightened control of focus: attention, interest, maybe misdirection, maybe timing, maybe tickling, the lowest form of pain, absurdity, the lowest form of existential angst.

Laughing is relief, sharing is a relief, being heard is a relief, the end is a relief.

What is not a trickster? God, (but the Gods are) plants like grasses with no thorns, poisons or sticky parts, mechanical moving parts that are exact and replicated?

This seems too difficult really to say what definitely is NOT a trickster, who is looking? Who feels tricked?


More importantly,

What is the bodily feeling of a trickster? It’s a quick rush of air out of the nose, it’s the holding of a secret in the crick of the neck behind the ears, it is a broad chest and open hands in an offense/defense position, it is a buzzing mind and a silent mouth and withholding eyes. It is waiting with a smirk, it is comfortable in its clothes but aware of all of the pockets and what is contained in each one.

I think I want to know more about what does it mean to write a bio on the app Clubhouse, where ephemeral podcasts meets LinkedIn if LinkedIn included empaths talking about CBD oil and linking to their Instagram which had a Link-tree with a link to a cash app. It gets meta that on the app you can hear them talking about how they want to improve the app, how they want to improve bubble of what you see based on who you follow, hearing people take turns speaking and moderating and pitching and choosing which sentence to pick apart.

What about a chat room where every person who talks must be asking a question and each question can only be answered with another question? So far what is toxic is only kind-of amusing (as opposed to totally disrupting and day ruining),

yes it’s easy to see who has more friends and celebrity status than you, yes it’s filled with venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, creative, but where is the trickster producer with a big bag of silence?

And it’s not the same as being a listener or limiting the number of speakers, but it’s the practice of not networking, not seeking endless connections, not 20 second pitches and not being a model minority. At least the nap ministry can take a break.


Where are the people who are working against White Supremacy characteristics?

I’m saying a lot here, but on Clubhouse I notice that I have nothing to say...


The weirdest/awful part is I feel like I want to have “the perfect” bio... *sigh*

This is what I made, feeling cute, may delete later:

(Rach says that she'll join it if someone pays her, but even this much info in a bio is akin to giving too much of our own personal data...)

— — - — — - — — - — —

(Plain text version)

“see-drick”: ✋🏾Mom from 🇵🇭, ✋Dad from 🇭🇰,  🙌🏻Trauma from 🇺🇸

⚈⚈⚈ ⚈⚈⚈ ⚈⚈⚈
Undisciplinary artist - educator - friend - trickster - skeptic - disability justice advocate - quick thinker - cheerleader
⚈⚈⚈ ⚈⚈⚈ ⚈⚈⚈
(I use any/all pronouns.)
⚈⚈⚈ ⚈⚈⚈ ⚈⚈⚈

👀Currently seeking:

🆘 PLEASE consider sending energy to my friend Loni Weems, Black femme in cottage industry foods who has been hit hard by white supremacy and the pandemic:

Venmo: Native-Kitchen-Det

⚈⚈⚈ ⚈⚈⚈ ⚈⚈⚈

Native Kitchen is an eclectic alternative healthy food pop up and cottage bakery for specialty diets in Detroit, MI

“I started to fill a need of healthy foods allergies and use of local and natural food ingredients. I had restarted doing pop ups and the business before the Pandemic hit leading to closings after I had secured 3 pop ups at two family owned cocktail bars and a belly dancing school in March.

I even created a Vegan Gluten Free Traditional spiced Irish Banger to serve. It took a long time to get into these places without contacts most have.

Unfortunately one of the locations will not survive to reopen. And...so without these venues and farmers markets I can’t even gain a following again.” - Loni

⚈⚈⚈ ⚈⚈⚈ ⚈⚈⚈

Pathologically Curious,
Agnostic by choice,
Scorpio moon,
Aries rising,
‘85 Ford Taurus

⚈⚈⚈ ⚈⚈⚈ ⚈⚈⚈

📍Currently in Los Angeles (Gabrielino/Tongva land),
born and raised in Detroit Metro (Waawiyatanong ),
went to school in Glasgow, Scotland,
starting an Art Gallery in Mexico City to promote QTBIPOC artists.

⚈⚈⚈ ⚈⚈⚈ ⚈⚈⚈

⚗️Addictions:
sugar, the internet, fried chicken, making variations of To-Do and “Did” lists

🤷🏼 Hypocrite-isms:
Capitalism🛍️ Skeptic but still does money dances 💦 💃🏻,

⚈⚈⚈ ⚈⚈⚈ ⚈⚈⚈

Latest facts I learned on Clubhouse:
“It’s only illegal in 11 US states for doctors to perform pelvic exams (to train new doctors) on unconscious women.” 1-23-2021

⚈⚈⚈ ⚈⚈⚈ ⚈⚈⚈

💓DM me to chat about Psychomagic Acts, somatic therapy, ADHD, studio visits, accountability, or whatever weird kinky stuff you’re into.

Friday, December 4, 2020

Anti-Psychiatry (critical psychology) and de-colonizing ADHD care

Rather than assume everyone's good intent, where the PC thing to say is "Now I'm not saying ADHD doesn't exist, and I'm not saying that medication isn't absolutely necessary for those that need it but..."

(which is the ableist, neurotypical version of "I'm not a racist but...")

But I've been getting the runaround so to speak on whether or not the existence of ADHD is a good thing or not. In my experience, I was prescribed Adderall in 2008 without being told it was for ADHD, and then put on an anti-depressant (Wellbutrin) in 2016, and finally an anti-psychotic (Seroquel) to be used off-label to deal with the insomnia which is the only thing I still take maybe once every 2 weeks if I need it.

Previously I was told by my 3rd to most recent therapist that... he's not saying that ADHD doesn't exist, it's just that it's a version of anxiety and depression, unfortunately, as much as he was able to stop my panic attacks, we weren't able to get any further into my learned helplessness because there was this part of me that just couldn't trust how he put my ADHD aside so easily. But he was also backed up by my Kaiser psychiatrist at the time (who was terrible btw that's another story for another day) who said that Sensitive Rejection Dysphoria didn't exist, all I needed was more psychotherapy (and he boosted the amount of meds I was taking to boot.) So I was left to my own devices, learning about the dangers of Seroquel from "The Body Keeps the Score" and put a bunch of ADHD books on my To-Do List.


So that was all of the last 2 - 3 years, where am I now?

Well, I just wanted to show how continuously confusing it is to try to take care into your own hands, it's like disavowing mainstream media and realizing that you need to be able to figure out how to be a journalist because information simply isn't neutral and you have to know how to ask the right questions.

Not to say there's anything wrong with any of the following sources, but just imagine this trifecta of information that's been sitting together in my head, and now I'm starting to see why I'm so muddled even though everyone is kindof rooting for the same team:

So I've got these 3 vantage points (and put in 2 links each so you can get an idea of what exactly I've been catching up on):


1. Jessica McCabe's How To ADHD YouTube Channel: Why Stimulant Medication Helps ADHD -- and How Stigma Can Hurt + How ADHD Treatment is not ADHD Friendly

An informed FUBU movement of ADHD'rs OR is it a cult of well-intentioned mis-informed C.H.A.D.D. members? One thing is for sure, it's incredibly understanding, a resource for many that not only cites its sources but intrinsically places personal experience on an equal footing with the science.


2. Queer Vengeance and their Research Rabbit Holes + ADHD is More Than Deficits.


A guide to how to BURN IT ALL TO THE GROUND and re-plant society OR is it one big experimental science fiction novel where we abolish prisons like we did to mental facilities and collectively hold people in power to a level of accountability... only to realize that Instagram was a Trojan horse for their own means of getting and destroying your precious attention? Is anyone else alarmed that the best content is only 1 instagram connection or 1 post away from being THE craziest most ungrounded conspiracy theory... one that gives all the insane but true conspiracy theories a bad name! (i.e. that the Iraq War after 9-11 was a sham, that the government is spying on everyone)




3. Mad in America: Insane Medicine, Chapter 3: The Manufacture of ADHD (Part 2) + Non-Drug Therapies for Adults with Depression (Where I noticed that nothing was listed for ADHD?)


Is this the sources we've always wanted so that we could ground our conspiracy theories in a more robust way or is this just the more academic looking version of it?


So the joke is if you were to get to the bottom of all of the different views on ADHD, you're ripe for a PHD. But that flies in the face of accessibility! Just the other day I wrote in big block letters:
WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?

and just to give an example here are 3 real world questions where the rubber hits the road just to contrast 'the research' with the kind of things I think about:

How do I figure out what is actually helping me when I feel like I've been gas lit for years by psychiatrists and parents? For the last six years I've been trying to figure out my 'treatment plan' which includes medications for ADHD, how does one become anti-psychiatry exactly and get help?

What if one therapist says NEVER take hallucinogens you may find out you're the 1/100 that unlocks latent skitzophrenia, another friend says that's BS we'll do acid together, and from personal experience, the only time I did take mushrooms I was pretty emotional but it was an overall meaningful time with friends, so... is it safe?

Lastly, when we talk about being patient with ourselves... how long are things actually supposed to take, like say... writing a blog post? How long are we supposed to wait for people to figure out what people mean by Socialism, Defund the Police, Black Lives Matter?



I've tried tackling this before from the view of self-compassion & the known unknowns this is what I published in my Draft of an ADHD Guide for/by artists:



And then today I was able to sit with all of the confusion and tried to map out all of the various sources of information that were whirling around my head, in part because I'm sure there's stuff I'm traumatically procrastinating on, but also it did give me a great sense of comfort and accomplishment, so there's that.




So that's all I was able to get done today, (really all this just shows is how I lose about 6 hours of my life if I realize that I have a slight disagreement with someone/something...)

BUT, I do at least feel slightly less confused about why everything seems so confusing. Now I get to confuse everyone else with my diagram where if you can't tell the ball can go into the square hole and the round hole, but not the triangle hole, and the pyramid can go into the square hole and the triangular hole but can't go into the circular hole, and the cube can only go into the square hole, but technically if you only took like 75% of each shape, you could probably jam it down through the hole anyways...



Guess what I didn't get to? Talking about de-colonizing care, but if you want a good start, I already mentioned the link, but here it is again because it's just an insightful way into what non-researcher researcher looks like: @QueerVengeance RadPsych (A collection of prev. Instagram stories)

Who also produced these great plain text documents:
(Note to self, make plain text versions of my own graphics above...)

- ADHD is more than Deficits
- Things I Learned About ADHD From The Internet (But Never Doctors)

and they also made this meme (that to be honest I haven't done enough HW to understand in its entirety):


What a wonderful time it has been for so many people to be unemployed, it is truly creating the kind of reflection, introspection & protest that everyone WARNED about!

Friday, October 30, 2020

Instructions to self, September flew by, October is almost over... Post ANYTHING. Trying = Starting = Finishing = Relief.



Well, this is strange, it's 4 am, I'm in LA, still pre-divorced but still living with and even still sharing a bed with my parter, it's CoViD times and the election is right around the corner and right now I'm feeling good. 



I'm saying this as this past Tuesday should've been my worst day of the year... I couldn't figure out a why a new used (but expensive) computer wasn't working, and I ended up unintentionally staying up until 5 am then trying to hash it all out. I truly believed that this would fix all of my life's procrastination problems, buuut it turns out you're not supposed to buy electronics during mercury retrograde, so that means it's all my fault.

That all then led me to sleep through a whole morning, missing a therapy appointment and getting a parking ticket because I didn't move my car in time, but I was given the task this week by my therapist to... 'do nothing'... so perhaps ironically, Nailed it.


I have to say, now that 'do nothing' has much more Officially been given to me as homework, (maybe it was only alluded to before?)
there's been more presence in joy, and in being with people, that was all worth the experiment, and I imagine that it's only a hybrid version from here on out... 

I wanted to send out an update... even though it's kind of to no one in particular, and my Time-Blind brain is sayin' let's go with it... so hello.

I think I'm taking advice from my friend Mallory to take motivation when I can, similar to striking when the iron is hot...

 

- I want to write about how I have a new somatic therapist with ADHD!
- I want to talk about how I ended up in another Navel.LA assembly group this time it's all about "Hip Magic"
- and then I've been in a pseudo book club talking about 'The Entreprecariat' (I say pseudo since Solidarity Club isn't always a book club and I've only read like 16 pages before I started getting lost in this authors way of writing...)
- I want to write about what interesting things that seemed to just happen and while attempting to  'do nothing'... that I hadn't really anticipated, one of those things being: a deep level of understanding myself, and the other is my pure spontaneous joy...



I can say that with my new somatic therapist it's serendipitous that they're providing me with a bunch of missing pieces that I had wished I had had for my ADHD guide on:

 - Boundaries (and specifically HOW to set them) it's like the adventure of Consent!
 - What's the medical (or more holistic) take nowadays on Sensitive Rejection Dysphoria?
 - Advocating for oneself in the doctors office
(As I've learned more about ADHD specific gaslighting in the process of getting help for ADHD)

and also strategies for not beating myself up, so instead of things being just general 'self-care' I was given a plethora of information on grounding, but lots of better language all around it, like when I was describing that I have a problem with discipline, they very matter-of-factly said that consistency in ADHD is complicated/contradictory and maybe to:

"try again, when it feels accessible, if you want to."

which was a much more caring kind of balance rather than... a razor's edge.


And also in short order, there was this slow horror reveal that my trauma goes much deeper than I really know, (not get into it too deep before I understand how to talk about it better) but for example, I qualify EVERYTHING that I do as either good or bad quite unconsciously, and quite seriously heavy.

Feel feelings? Doing 'Good' work
Applying for things? Doing 'Good' work
Making 'Bad' art is 'Good'
Post SOMETHING to represent the last two months, something = better than nothing
Doing 'Good' is the bare minimum (as opposed to just being alive which is not Good enough)
etc.

and... I can't really drop the Good / Better / Best or the Bad / Should / Waste without feeling completely disoriented and specifically dissociative.

But I also want to write about a discussion put on by 'The Artists Office' and 'Other Places Art Fair' that ended in talking about strategies to be purposefully, un-Capitalistically, unproductive; and that was sooo nice.

- One artist clears two entire months of their schedule so that there's actually space to just be!
- Tatiana gave her tips on grounding with literal feet on literal dirt, she also inspired me by just describing candidly being talking about deadlines that she totally missed, but then dealing with it all the same, she too ruminates on missed opportunities, AND shit happens.
- The example I wanted to give was going to be about how I've heard of artists sharing the power/opportunities they have by flexing the leverage they have

i. when artists refuse individual awards and share the wealth against scarcity/competition
ii. 'Riders' that performers write into contracts that demand that the rest of the staff be diverse

- and my art piece attempting to visualize anti-FOMO, and asking for help to expand it, but in the end it was better that I just listened, there'll be more discussions on another day, I'm sure.



I'll just give a quick snapshot of where I've told myself it's OK if I can't get around to it (even if I'm not actually trying to say no.)

I've dipped a bit in participating in some other projects where I was previously a bit more active, which I've told myself is okay:
- connecting more with those in the Level Ground Collective,
- Jennifer Moon's Scrooging Missions,
- and I've got a whole 4-hour conversation I'm sitting on with Tatiana Vahan to go over 'Bar-Fund' as a way to lead me into writing an epic piece on Money & Art.

But on top of all of that I have been struggling with finishing the following things in the last 4-8 months:

- Just finish figuring out how to bring Over Over Over Part 3 to a brilliant end...
- Just finish figuring out how to use Unity to complete turning the art into a VR piece...
- Just finish figuring out Medi-Cal and when you can see someone for acupuncture or physical therapy or dental work...
- Just finish up looking at all of your finances since being on unemployment and figure out how long it will be until I've depleted my savings vis-a-vis a complex Excel visual aid
- Just tell people, curators etc. all about my brilliant art practice and post juicy snippets daily and weekly on Instagram
- Just finish figuring out who will write some really good letters of rec for applications deadlines coming up... (I got as far as making a diagram...)



Pandemic aside I just keep expecting to Nike the whole thing (Just do it).

I've also been beating myself up because there's also shame around not being able to be consistent about showing up to a practice whether that's art or yoga... it's the whole 'not waiting for inspiration to strike' deal which I've been seeing versions of this motivational quote seemingly everywhere lately?


 
 
But with Intention-Deficit Disorder and some kind of trauma that throws me into extremes, maybe a nicer, less work-a-holic way of saying that would be phrase it as: 'expect joy to strike at any moment, act on it if that's ideal, or don't act on it if that's actually ideal.' So yeah clunky, but basically reminding myself that things can be quite inexplicably tough for me...

This is me:

And this is me:

Then this is me:

Because I really...


And this seems too true...



So uh yeah, this is a real ramble of a post, but basically I just wanted to remind myself that among all of the pretty meh stuff, was a lot of glimpses of a horizon. I don't quite know what's beyond my early coping mechanisms that probably are no longer serving me, but I will say that sometimes I do... get 'round to it.

Is there a phrase for the artistic version of actually starting something that you've been avoiding...

that's akin to "the bark is worse than it's bite?"

all I've come up with is "The Relief of Now AND Later", but surely there's some kind of word play that will just *click* in a much smoother way... I can almost picture this motivation, something that I hang in my bedroom so it's the first thing I see when I wake up.

Right now the message I use is, "just try it for 15 minutes..."
The only problem is well.. right now it's 6 am.

Tuesday, August 25, 2020

Part 1: Precursor to a Perspicacious Vision Board

I keep thinking about making plans, but some antagonism towards work, as well as participating in some reading groups has also inspired me to find ways that I DO want to work.


“The major job was getting people to understand that they had something within their power that they could use, and it could only be used if they understood what was happening and how group action could counter violence…” - Ella Jo Baker

Ella Baker had an audacity to dream big, but she also said the following: 

"This may only be a dream of mine, but I think it can be made real.”

And there’s many interesting notes about the kinds of plans made by George Schuyler and Ella Baker from Irvin J. Hunt’s essay “May Things Fall Apart” (Looking at their interest in co-operatives in the 1930s)

"Planning for the collapse of the governing body was thus tantamount to remaking the body of the black public sphere, turning a collectivity organized around charismatic male leaders into one defined by gender-critical societies, each governing itself into ungovernability.”

Dr. Irvin Hunt went on to say that Ella Baker never wanted to be held up as an exceptional individual (like Biden did during his recent DNC speech) because the whole idea was to have each generation get to work in their time, not to rely on each older (usually male-centric) generation, and to be radically horizontal.

Then I looked up “Things Fall Apart” and I stumbled on this...
 



I kindof wanted to see it in inclusive language so I re-wrote it thus:

Visual art/ Literary arts/ Performing art/ Culinary art is one's constant effort to create for oneself a different order of reality from that which is given to you or me or any of us.

“Fugitive Planning” in Fred Moten & Stefano Harney’s terms involves “self-sufficiency at the social level, and it reproduces in its experiment not just what it needs, life, but what it wants, life in difference, in the play of the general antagonism”
(Honestly I have to re-read all that to figure out if I really understand it. I know it’s important somehow...)


So a Vision Board… 

Maybe one can update what it is and how it works? So it can take in consideration:
  1. Bene Brown & Whole Hearted Living (See workshops based on it)
  2. The skepticism from one guy on 'Vision Boards'
    (even though he probably wants to sell you his version of an ‘Action Board’…)
    (the secondary title is mine)